The Life
by casquis
Summary: The Great War was a long one, millions made it, more didn't. Frank is an ODST, a human just like us, that has managed to survive the most grueling battles for years. With so much experience under his belt he has some amazing stories to tell. This are the life stories of an immature, not-all-in-there, and talented Marine just living, fighting, and being plain badass during the war.
1. Blown Away

Chapter I: Blown Away

**March 13, 2542 (UNSC Calendar)/ **

**Aztlan, Eta Cassopie System**

I stepped over a large tree that only moments ago had been standing. The air all around me was sizzling with the plasma shots, the temperature display in my HUD had gone some two and a half degrees Celsius in the last minute and a half. The exploding needler shards weren't exactly helping, with flora raining on me from every imaginable direction.

You could say I was in a very uncomfortable situation, and truth be told, I actually was in a less than desirable place. It wasn't really that bad though, just keep running in front of that Irish rookie and I'd be fine in the time it took me to run three kilometers.

I started noticing that this might actually be a really bad situation the moment that five of my squad's vitals went black in less than ten seconds. I turned my head just in time to see the Irish kid stop and turn to fire a sustained burst from his rifle. He was cut down within seconds, he actually managed to get cut down by a sword weilding elite. Probably not the most glamorous or heroic way to go, but still a pretty painless one.

_Idiot, _I thought.

"You got that right," my comm crackled. The statement was accompanied by a chuckle. apparently I had been thinking out loud.

The man in question, the only remaining member of Titan squadron was in fact my oldest friend. Not because I had met him particularly long ago, but because he had managed to survive for the longest.

I didn't bother answering him. I kept running as fast as I could while tossing my flashbang supply at carefully timed intervals.

Two minutes later I finally emerged from the dense tropical jungle of Aztlan. In front of me was a two-hundred-meter stretch of land that was devoid of anything other than dirt, craters and corpses. Just over the two-hundred-meter mark there was probably the most imposing looking trench to have ever been built in the world. In this world at least.

I stopped for a fraction of a second to make sure that my friend was still with me. A black blur against the bright greens, purples and yellows of the rainforest I resumed my dead man's sprint. I hadn't gone more than one step when the whole air in front of me exploded.

Technically speaking it was only the oxigen in the air that exploded, but when a large area in front of you explodes, you can't really worry about the technicalities. I dropped to the floor and happened to land in a very muddy crater that was halfway filled with water, there were also a couple pints of blood there, but I chose not to think about it at the moment. Hell, it still creeps me out when I think about that redder-than-normal water.

I stayed in that crater for about fifteen secondsbefore I realized that the air I was breathing tasted somewhat stale and a bit boring for the colorful atmosphere of Aztlan. The explosion had burnt all the breathable air that was remotely near me, so I would be breathing that boring air for at least fifteen more minutes. I was lucky that I was an ODST, my helmet had a small supply of oxigen in case of emergencies.

I finally dared to raise my head above the rim of my comfy-yet-creepy crater. The first thing I saw was that the tranchline in front of me had been reduced to molten glass. I turned around and noticed that the jungle a couple of meters venid me wagreatly reduced in density. Covies don't usually miss when they perform orbital bombardments in support of their ground troops, but this time thay managed to both eliminate the army chasing me and the army waiting for me without actualy managing to land a single first-degree burn on me. Well, truth be told, I'd probably get some nasty blisters in the back of my neck, but I was feeling quite triumphant right now.

I stood up and managed to lift my rifle up to my shoulder while I looked around.

"Always a showoff aren't you?" said Pavel Klaus, my oldest friend for the past three years and it looked like he would still hold that honorable position for a little longer, even if little longer meant forty-five more seconds.

I looked behind me and broke off my pose to shoot a stumbling elite that was missing it's right arm up to its shoulder. It went down with a single round.

"You wish you could look as good as I do right now Pavel."

He chuckled and gestured at his semi-wrecked armor.

"You got that right," he retorted. With a heavy dose of sarcasm in his voice.

I chuckled and simply started trotting towards the wreckage of my front line. I stepped carefully on the patches of molten glass that didn't shine bright red. I crossed the fifty-meter-thick strip of molten glass and then another hundred meters before stopping on a tree stump that was actually quite comfortable for a tree that had been blown to splinters. I crossed my leg over my knee and pulled out my combat knife. I scraped off the already-cooling glass of my boots and waited for Pavel to do the same. We kept walking without a sound for a while longer in silence.

"How much longer?" my impatient partner asked.

"Check your goddamend HUD!"

"Well, since I asked you it probably means that I'm too goddamned lazy to do so myself."

I didn't bother answering, instead I simply took of my helmet (which is against regulations, specially in a combat zone) and kept walking.

"Oh no. How will I check my HUD map now?" I said in a completely emotionless voice.

Pavel just cursed and in a matter of few seconds shouted out the answer to his own question.

"Half a click."

I nodded and put my helmet back on. I managed to smile at the thought of a relatively safe pelican evac to the UNSC _Inconvenience_ and a quick series of random slipspace jumps. We'd be in another allegedly safe colony within two weeks.

Unfortunately it was never that easy, and this time was no exception. I heard the grunting noises of elites and the high pitched squeals of grunts to the front, they were within thirty feet.

Me and Pavel both dropped to a cave that was formed by a thick tree root. Those thirty seconds were probably the longest thirty seconds of the past three and a half months of my life.

Shortly after I heard the regular thumps that only an elite could make. They were elegante yet somehow managed to sound rough. Elites were a warrior race through and through. The thumping stopped and I almost squealed as the two legs of an elite major suddenly appeared right in front of me. The legs stood still for a few seconds and I could almost picture the elite turning its head and sniffing the air, sensing that something was wrong. I then saw around six grunts and two jackals appear in front of the elite.

I glanced at Pavel. He nodded at me and I moved my rifle as noislessly as I could. I brought it up and changed the BR55's setting from three-round-burst to full auto. Thankfully, it didn't click.

I pushed my back to the floor and launched a two-legged Kick at the knee-joint of the elite. I don't know if it broke, but it brought the small giant to the floor. I emptied half my magazine into the body of the monster while keeping it down with one leg. Meanwhile Pavel strafed the lesser squadmates with his M247L. He managed to knock down one grunt and both jackals. As I put three rounds to the now unshielded elite I turned and checked the area to our backs, our fall-back point was supposed to be that way.

Pavel killed the remaining grunts with well placed bursts and then we resumed our march. This time it was different, as our rifles were up and ready. We crossed some sort of hedge that was acting as a wall between the trees and found ourselves in front of at least fifty covenant soldiers. Hunters included.

Pavel and I jumped backwards as plasma fire rippled above our heads. We slid towards a thick tree as soon as we landed.

I glanced at Pavel.

"You do realize we're dead?" I asked.

He simply nodded as he heaved his LMG. We stayed there for a few moments as the tree we were in started to disintegrate and atomize with the intense heat of the plasma. It was probably on fire already, but I barely noticed any of it.

"Count your rounds?" I suggested.

"Count your rounds," my squad-mate acknowladged.

We left our cover, guns blazing to meet death in the face. Unfortunately, we didn't get that honor, as the ground in front of us and under the covies balooned up and cracked. Through those cracks came flames and onle moments later I felt the shokwave hurl me into the same tree we had been using as cover. It wasn't like in those action movies, where people fly into objects. It was more like a shove. A shove that managed to collapse one of my lungs and turn one of my kidneys into mush.

My vision darkened just as I saw a pelican in the distance. As it got closer I thought to myself that it would be fine and I could just let myself fall unconscious and I'd wake up a week later with a cloned kidney and a reinflated lung, ready to jump into the fight again.

Unfortunately reality didn't meet my expectations, the pain kept me alive. I watched as ten regulars dismounted from the pelican and bayoneted the survivng covenant. The two hunters were treated as materiel and were blown up with three grenades each, just to be sure. Finally two marines, one of which was a very pretty corpsman with blonde hair carried me onto a stretcher. Pavel was limping and being helped by two other marines. I rested my head back and had my helmet taken off and a breathing masked atatched to me. I looked at the boring metal ceiling of the pelican and could feel it flying away before I finally managed to slip into unconsciousness.

_Man, getting blown up sucks._


	2. Raised by a Soldier

I do not own Halo or any part of the series. I only have a copy of each game. Bungie/343 studios/Microsoft owns the Halo series.

I forgot to add this welcoming thing to the first chapter, so I'll simply out it here. I'd like to thank everyone for taking some of your time to read this. I appreciate reviews and everything tha ressembles constructive criticism. Also, warning, the main character is partly an author avatar, meaning that he has some traits based on myself or that I would like to have. Ideas are welcome. Enjoy.

Chapter II: Raised by a Soldier

**January 16, 2525 (UNSC Calendar)/ seventeen years earlier**

**Mexico-Toluca Highway, Mexico City, Mexican Autonomous Region, URNA**

I saw a white flash and a dark shade moving quickly. I felt pain like no pain I had ever felt before and was instantly knocked out.

I opened my eyes, every movement bringing pain. My hair felt wet and my fémur felt shattered. It probably was too. I didn't know at the time, but I had also cracked four ribs and broken three fingers in my left hand.

I am not entirely sure how, but my eleven-yeat-old body somehow managed to break the car window (which was already almost pulverized), climb through it and then collapse on the highway. I leaned on the undercarriage of the family car, which was now turned sideways and sported dents all over the framework. I started crying. There wasn't really anything else I could do. I was ten, I was in pain, and my parents were in all likelyhood dead.

I stopped crying because it caused me even more pain, and I saw a man descend from a large truck. He was babbling and looked even worse than I did. He was the one that had hit us. He asked me if I was ok and then started cursing. He called emergency services and then started crying himself.

"What have I done?" he kept repeating.

When I next woke up I was in a hospital bed, almost all the pain gone, just a weird stinging in my left side and a mild headache. Sitting in a chair to the side of my hospital room was uncle Manuel. My dad's brother. He's usually hard eyes were red with tears. He laughed, it was a sad lauch. He hugged me and didn't let go.

When he finally let go. He slumped back into the chair.

"What happened?" I asked.

"You were in a car crash," he was avoiding the topic.

"Where's mom, and dad?"

"They're…" his voice broke and he stopped.

I started crying.

"Your dad is gone," his shoulders slumped and he took a deep breath. "Your mother's alive, but she's in a coma and the doctors say she probably won't wake up anytime soon." He was crying now. "I'm glad you're ok."

Before I knew it I was on a UNSC destroyer on the way to Lambda Serpentis, to the planet of Jericho VII. My uncle happened to be a marine drill sergeant. He used to whip rich boys into something ressembling real marines. I used to think that that made him softer than other drill sergeants, but it turned out that he was a real ass. He just managed to intimidate his recruits into not making any sort of contact with their rich parents.

At first I hated him for being the way he was. I actually hated him for everything. Making me move a gazillion parsecs away from home and into a colony with nothing in it other than oceans so large that they could've served as a test bed to prove that Jupiter would, in fact, float if placed on water. The land was not all that interesting either.

My uncle had made me leave my home and my mother. He had made me leave my friends and even my planet. It took me years to understand why he requested that transfer away from Earth.

Despite all this quasi-legitimate reasons to hate my uncle. I hated him the most for a different reason. Actually it was more like a bunch of other reasons bunched up into one.

My life was as hard as a boot camp. Literally.

Wake up at 5:30. Run the track for half an hour before the recruits woke up. Clean my room. Take a shower. Get breakfast. School. Help the cooks at the mess hall. Study time. Run the track for another fifteen minutes with uncle. Historic battles discusión with uncle. Dinner. Bedside reading (mostly classics and war novels). Bedtime.

It was a tough life, but it probably saved my life many times afterwards. No, scratch that, it _definitely_ saved my life a bunch of times.

As an orphan (or the next closest thing) I was troublesome. I got into fights with kids my age whenever I left the base and more than a few times I had been shot for trespassing into restricted areas. I have to give credit to my uncle, he never gave up on me. Sure, he spanked me like crazy and gave me the most inusual punishments for a pre-teen. Cleaning all the rifles in the armory and polishing his office floor was a common occurence for those first years. I eventually got better, but that didn't mean that my life got any less harder physically-wise.

By the time I was fifteen I was already at the shooting range whenever the recruits were running their mini-marathons. I was actually pretty good with the M392 DMR. By the time I got to the age of seventeen I was running drills with my uncle's recruits. Unfortunately, the rest of my schedule was still there, albeit with shorter time slots and a later bedtime to allow for more physical work. The best part of my day was probably being in the kitchen with the cooks, Besides being able to munch on something whenever I wanted to, there was this large cook that was also from earth. He was some sort of American indian. Native American he had said to me once. I forget the tribe, but I clearly remember his talent with knifes. In fact, whenever we had free time in the kitchen we would start a knife throwing contest, usually it was between Dominic Tenare (the Native American) and another cook with philipino heritage. Eventually we all got into it as they taught us basic grips and throwing techniques.

My relationship with my uncle had gotten better. So I was living a life as normal as possiblefor an orphaned child living in a military camp with his uncle. Hell, I even managed to pick up some girls at the bars in some of the bars in Olimpia, the capital city (tip: knife throwing happens to be a skill that ladies are attracted to).

Then I turned eighteen. My uncle was already expecting me to joing the marine corps, but he was still sad that I would be leaving his side. I said goodbye to him in one of the most awkward farewells in the history of man and left to the recruiting station.

When I got there it was relatively crowded with ten people milling around asking questions to the three recruiters. Army, Navy, and Marines. I joined them and started asking questions. I immediatelly realized that being in the UNSC Navy wasn't my place. I belonged groundside, fighting insurrectionists, and if the rumors were true, aliens. Last I heard Admiral Cole had kicked their asses back in Harvest, but contact with a couple of other colonies had been lost, allegedly due to Insurrectionists. Regardless, I was opting to join the Marines but there was still something missing for me there, something new.

"Something missing eh?" the recruiter had said.

"Yes, somehow this doesn't feel like enough o fan adventure, or a thrill."

The recruiter laughed and handed me a pamphlet. It was completely black and only had the words _"Feet first into hell"_ written in silver letters. I opened the pamphlet and went through it. I coud feel my eyebrows rising with every sentence. I finished reading it and wondered how was it possible that I had never heard of the ODST's choice method of transportation. I knew they were the elite forces of the Marine Corps, but I had no idea they were this insane. I tried (and failed) at keeping a pocker face with the recruiter as I gave back the pamphlet.

"Sounds interesting," I said.

"You my young friend, are going to Mars."


	3. 19th Batallion

Chapter III: The 105th Marine Expeditionary Unit, 19th Batallion

**July 3, 2533 (UNSC Calendar)/**

**New Paris, Mars, Sol System**

And so it was. I took the month long trip to Mars, carrying with me only two duffel bags filled with clothes and some other personal items.

Leaving Jericho VII was easier than leaving Earth. My only friends were the cooks in the mess hall and they came and went quite often so it wasn't like I had a lot of time to bond. I did miss my uncle a little bit, after all, he had been there for me (sort off) for the past eight years. No girlfrieds either, so it was fine in that sector.

I left the pelican dropship that had flied me from orbit. I shivered as I zipped up my jacket (which I had brought at my uncle's advice). Despite having been terraformed for more than four hundred years, it was still far away from Sol. The temperature seemed to be in the low thirties. Farenheit-wise. The sun looked much smaller than I remembered, but that was to be expected, since (as previously mentioned) we were farther away from Sol than Earth was. The star seemed to glare at me in the distance. I hadn't gotten a chance to look at the martian landscape since the pelican had no windows and the cargo door was closed. It looked like the weather should've been scorching, but I was starting to shiver, after all I was used to the semi-tropical climate of Jericho VII.

"Move it farmboy!"

Apparently everyone that was from the Outer Colonies and not a soldier or a politician was obviously a farmboy. I turned around to the man that had said that and noticed that it was the Marine sergeant that had been on the ship with me and the four other recruits. I didn't think it would be wise to retort something after glancing at the M6C that he had holstered in his hip.

"Of course sir, right away," I answered in the manner I had used on my uncle whenever he was pissed at me or at the world in general.

It seemed to work since the sergeant only nodded and motioned for me to walk forward.

I was apparently in some sort of military base in Mars. It looked like it had to be a large base since I could see both the flag of the UNSC Marines and the UNSC Army. I walked towards a table with a bored-looking corporal sitting there.

"Name?" he asked me.

"Francisco Castillo," I said.

He motioned to a troop transport Warthog standing fifty yards behind him.

"Next!" he shouted.

I looked over my shoulder and no one was behind me in line.

_Asshole._

I walked to the Warthog and put both my duffel bags on the rear. I leaned back on it and waited for whoever was going to drive it.

Fifteen minutes and eight pelican landings later another man in his mid-twenties joined me. With him came another armor-clad marine that jumped on the pilot's seat.

"C'mon!" he yelled. "We ain't gota ll day!"

I promptly jumped on the back while the twenty something guy took shotgun. The warthgog immediately lurched forwards and soon we were doing 70 mph through the red and dusty surface of Mars. I just glanced at the featureless landscape roll by.

An hour and a half later I saw some buildings in the distance that looked suspiciously similar to the camp I used to live in back in Jericho VII. Yep, there were the barracks, the mess hall, the officer's quarters, and the good ol' track. This track's obstacle course looked even deadlier than the one back home.

The hog screeched to a halt and all three of us jumped down. There were already other transport warthogs parked here and there was even a group of recruits leaving a pelican that had landed here recently.

Everyone looked like normal people here, bar the ODST soldiers standing guard. The age of the recruits went from seventeen to early thirties. I was one of the younger ones, and I could even make out some recruits that were obviously former Marines or Army soldiers.

"Ok, listen up!" said a man with a powerful sounding voice.

I glanced in the voice's direction to look at the speaker. He was a man in his mid thrities. As black as charcoal and as muscular as a Draconian bodybuilder. He was wearing a black shirt with the letters ODST written on it and gray cargo pants.

"My name is Staff Sergeant Gabuka, and while you are here under me! I. AM. GOD."

We were a bit surprised by this man and no one had nothing to say.

Someone clearing his throat interrupted the silence. The man in question was in his fifties or something. He had graying hair and was wearing the same attire as SSgt Gabuka. He wasn't nearly as muscular, but he certainly looked intimidating for someone old enough to be retired. The large scar that covered the left side of his face didn't help in making him any more friendly-looking.

"I am sorry captain. scratch that recruits!" he started. "While in here, Captain von Klaus here is your god." He stopped and turned to the captain, who motioned for him to continue. "I am, in fact, the devil. You will learn to hate me, but you will learn to do it right goddamit! There are three-hundred and two of you in here." He enunciated every syllable of the word three-hundred. "That means that a year from now there will only be thirty of you remaining. My duty is to produce one platoon every year, and I'm not feeling being nice enough to make two." He banged his fist agains a Warthog. I winced involuntarily.

"Only the best of you will get to be Helljumpers," his volume was lowering. "You will be the pride of the armed torced of the UNSC and it will be thanks to the captain and myself."

There were some nervous whispers among the crowd of recruits.

"I advise you to rest," this time it was the captain speaking. "Tonight will be your last day of being civilians in a long time."

We started walking towards our new home, a group of large buildings on the west of the camp. There were six barracks, each one large enough to hold about fifty of us. Before we had gone to far though, I heard the captain's voice.

"Oh, and welcome to the 19th."

We recruits just got into the houses, most of us wondering what the hell we had gotten ourselves into. I picked a bunk and put my two duffel bags underneath it, the bunk on top was picked up by a kid that looked younger than me. The fact that he was a skinny looking guy probably didn't help either.

"What's your name?" I asked.

"Tarkov," he answered. There was a thick accent in his voice that I couldn't quite identify. Sounded like a recruit from Reach that had been under my uncle.

"Nice to meet you man," I said as I offered him my hand. He just took it and leaned back on his bed. He seemed sad, perhaps even grieving. I switched my attention from him to some of the other recruits in my bunk. There seemed to be a lot of recruits here speaking some foregin language. It sounded Russian, but not quite.

"It's Hungarian," a voice said.

I looked at the bunk in front of me to see the man that had been on the warthog with me, he was just sitting there, examining the barracks. He smiled and introduced himself.

"I'm Jonah," he said.

"Francisco Castillo," I said.

"Castillo," he mumbled to himself. "That's Spanish for fortress right?"

I laughed. "Nah, it mean's castle, but that's close enough. Anyways, how do you know it is Hungarian?"

"I'm from Reach," he explained.

It made sense, so was that recruit my uncle trained.

"All of them speak Hungarian?"

"Yep."

"Someone is going to be pissed, the might have to bring in a special drill sergeant just for this guys."

Jonah laughed. "They just might."

I looked at my watch and realized it was already close to midnight, back home at least, here the sun was still a couple of hours from going down. Right before my mind started wondering a fat man with an apron and a chair came in the barracks.

"It's haircut time!" he announced, in an almost maniatical tone.

This was welcomed by a groan from the recruits.

"You! Get over here!" he motioned to one of the Bulgarians closer to him. He understood enough English to know what the fat man was talking about. Truth be told, everyone spoke either English, Spanish, or Mandarin in adition to their native language this days. I was lucky enough to be able to speak two of the major languages of the UNSC controlled space.

As a line formed to the shaving chair, I went to take a leak. I looked at myself in a mirror for the first time in a month and a half. Cryo had made my skin look pasty white. I splashed my face with water and looked at myself again. I still had that redish brown hair that my mother used to love so much., but now I had gotten muscular and tall thanks to my uncle's torturous life. I was handsome looking (at least that's what I told myself every time I had the chance) and would probably seem attractive to a lot of girls (read previous parenthesis). My 6'1 frame was large enough to be imposing, but not overly intimidating.

After my piss I washed my hands and couldn't help but smile with nostalgia at all the scars that my fingers had. Most were small and realtively recent, they would disappear with time, but there were some pretty nasty ones, namely a large gash that crossed through my left palm. I'm still not entirely sure how I managed to cut myself like that. I must've looked like and idiot to all the other kitchen staff at the time.

As I was standing there reminiscing about the past looking at my hand like an idiot, someone came barging into the bathroom.

"So here's where you were hidin' eh?" it was the pile of lard with a scary looking machine in his right hand.

"Wha… No I was…"

He didn't let me finsh, he simply grabbed me by the hair and pulled me out of the bathroom and through the barracks. I could see that all the other recruits were now bald and their heads had clear scratch marks. He had shaved them all already? _How is that even possible? I was in the bathroom for a minute and a half tops._ A couple of seconds later my questions were answered as I was unceremoniously slammed into the folding chair and the hairdresser managed to shave away all my hair in the span of five seconds. My head felt itchy and I was pretty sure that it looked that way as well.

"There we go, that wasn't so hard now was it." Every woed was dripping with sarcsm and mocking me. Unfortunately for the large man, I was used to that.

"No sir, it wasn't," I answered in an almost cheery tone.

He grumbled and left, dragging his chair with him. He was obviously dissapointed that an undisciplined recruit hadn't started a fight with him. He probably had a shock baton with him, so I probably made the right choice.

I sighed as I felt my head. It was shaved completely and I could feel bumps where the man had pushed his machine to hard onto my skull. I was surprised that we didn't get the regular marine buzz cut, all of us were completely shaved. The ones that had beards looked awkward, but they promptly went to the bathroom to remove them.

I still had about half an hour before the sun set (or so said a recruit) so I wandered around the barracks and confirmed that they were in fact, plain old barracks. There was nothing of note in them other than obscene messages and curses written at the drill sergeants of centuries past. There was even a boring looking "Vlostok was here, 2389." This place was had been spewing out humanity's best soldiers ever since the ODST unit was created within the UN Marines.

I promptly moved all the stuff from my duffelbags to the chest under my bed. Once all my civilian clothes were in the chest, another ODST trainer came inside the barracks. He ordered us to throw all of the things that we had brough with us out the door. When someone asked why, he shocked him with a humbler baton. We promptly complied. I managed to keep a knife that Dominic Tenare had given me. I pushed it on top of the metal sheet that supported the bars where Tarkov's mattress was restinga upon. I felt some anger well up in me as I was forced to depart with all but one of the belongings that conected me to my home.

A truck drove by the barracks and a couple of soldiers started throwing out cardboard boxes with names and numbers on them. I looked around and turned over some boxes until I finally found mine. I brought into my bed and opened it. Inside of the box there were a number of things, on the very top was a set of dogtags. They made very clear that I was a recruit and not a fully-fledged ODST. I put them on as I stared at the rest of the contents of the box. There were five pairs of cargo pants, three black, one dark gray, and one sporting black and gray digital camouflage. There were five shirts, all of them black with the UNSC sign on the left side of the chest and our last name on the right. There was a pair of shorts and running shoes in there as well. To top it off we had also been issued two pairs each of combat boots. They were just regular looking combat boots. They probably had the same design as the ones they issued to recruits half a century ago. I had expected something more interesting for the renowned ODST's. Same went for our issued clothing. It was all boring looking fatigues, Besides, it was all black, who the hell do they we are? Batman?.

I huffed at my own lame joke and but back the clothes into the box. I slid the box under my bed and retrieved my knife. I looked at it. It was a large knife, about thirteen inches long, it had a blade that was a mix between a bowie knife and kukri. It was made with what Tenare had called damascus steel. The pattern of the blade was almost hypnotic.

"That's a nice blade," Tarkov mentioned. He was standing there with his box in his hands.

"Thanks," I said as I twirled it around my hand in well practiced moves.

"Showoff," Jonah said as he joined the conversation.

Tarkove simply raised his eyebrows as he pushed his box into the designated space for it. I simply smiled as I sheathed it and looked for a good place to hide it.

"That is against regulations my friend," said Jonah.

I motioned for Jonah to look around and see all the recruits retrieving their own personal contraband items. Some had datapads, some had smokes, some had weed, and some even had pictures of their families.

Jonah laughed and pulled out a datapad from under his matress. This time it was me who raised an eyebrow. It said _hypocrite_, that is, provided that eyebrows could speak. He simply laughed again and turned on his datapad.

I prepared to take off my clothing, the only personal colthes I still had before I notcied I had nothing to sleep on.

"Great, what'll I sleep with now?" I mumbled to myself.

"There are some pajamas in the box," Tarkov helpfully spoke from his bunk.

"Ok, thanks."

I pulled out my box once more and saw that there was in fact an extra pair of shorts and a shirt made with a different fabric that I hadn't noticed before. There were also half a dozen boxer briefs with the words ODST written in them.

_Talk about pride in their unit. _I thought.

I took off my clothes and put on my new pajamas. I noticed that the label in the back of the neck of the shirt said: _These are your motherfucking ODST Jaimes! Treat them well! _Apparently someone up there had a sense of humor. I glanced at the other recruits do the same and jump into their beds, taking as much rest as possible. Most of us knew we were going to have a tough day tomorrow. No one knew better than me, since it used to be a passtime of mine to watch the new recruits' faces when my uncle woke them up at 4:30 in the moring to take them for a walk. By walk I obviously mean forcing them to move through the plains around base at a breackneck pace.

My thoughts were getting blurry once I had pulled up the covers. Most other recruits were already sleeping in their beds. I started drifting away into the realms of my dreams. The last thing I remember was hearing an echo of a voice in my head that kept saying "Welcome to the 19th."


	4. Training: Discipline

Chapter IV: Training (Discipline)

**July 4, 2533 (UNSC Calendar)/**

**Camp Mars IX, Mars, Sol System**

"Wake up, wake up, WAKE. UP!"

_I'm already awake goddamit._

"Is that so mister?"

I opened my eyes _Fuck, thinking out loud again._

"Yes staff sergeant!" I yelled as I literally jumped out of my bed. No good in antagonizing the large black man that could look like he could break someone in half.

"I though so," he said, his voice a deep rumble. "Everyone put on your track shorts and your running shoes! We are going for a walk."

I had been somewhat expecting this to happen, but not forty minutes after I had fallen asleep. I felt dizzy because I got up to fast and it took me longer than I would've wanted to to get dressed. I was still one of the first ones to leave the barracks. I could see recruits from the other six barracks stumbling out as well. Each group had a different drill sergeant with them. Barracks Number Two had gotten the devil himself. Lucky us. It was warmer in here than in the New Paris spaceport. There were weather satellites taking care of that, and we were also closer to the ecuator than New Paris was. Still, I couldn't help but wonder how the hell didn't a major city get their own weather satellite or something to change their climate into something a little warmer.

I sighed and noticed that it was still cold enough for my breath to fog up. A few moments later the entirety of Barrack Two was outside, shivering.

"Let's go!" said SSgt Gaduka with his booming voice.

He started at a fast jog towards the back of the camp, I was starting to ge tinto rhythm when he yelled, "Whoever finishes up more than ten seconds behind me gets latrine duty for a month!"

That got us going. Unfortunately, the sergeant was already at a slow sprint, which was more than enough of a challenge for us.

I wasn't a particularly fast runner, but eight years of running laps had made me a good distance runner and as close to a decent speed runner as most people could ever be without being good at it naturally. I kept up the sergeant's pace, but before long I was breathing hard. I could hear stumbling and even people tripping down. Around twenty minutes later, just when I was starting to fall behind, I noticed some sort of installation in the distance. This gave me the resolve I needed to run a little faster. Three minutes later we were outsider of a complex surrounded by a fence. I was about four seconds behind the sergeant and was sixth recruit to arrive overall. I turned around to see a crowd of forty recruits sprinting as fast as they could to avoid latrine duty. There were around seven that didn't make it in time.

Gaduka walked to them and asked them for their names, they answered in between breaths in weak voices.

Gabuka nodded as the last man told him his name.

"You are luck men," he announced. "There will be no latrine duty for you today or any day of the following month."

There were sounds of complaint from the rest of us recruits. _All this for nothing?_

"However," he resumed. "You will have the honor of being the first to go into the ditch tonight!"

That did not sound good at all. In fact, it sounded even worse than latrine duty. The Ditch.

Another drill sergeant opened the chain link fence for us, this one was armed with an MA37 rifle. The armed sergeant led us into the complex. My heart sank when we reached our destination. The ditch was about thirty feet wide and at least two hundred meteres long. At least. That wasn't everything. The ditch had ditches within istself and barbed wire a foot from the ground. I think there was even a section of the ditch (the main one) that was partially underwater. Or undermud-water, whatever you want to call it. On top of all that there were bits and pieces of animal flesh all over the place. Hell, there were even a few pig carcasses littered over the place.

"You will cross this ditch and you will do it fast! If you don't you'll get latrine duty."

You could almost hear the groan, but no one had enough energy to actually groan. Another trainer appeared with two MA37's, he tossed one to Gabuka and he walked to the middle of the ditch.  
>"You seven," he gestured to the ones that arrived late, "will be the first ones."<p>

They moved into place and the staff sergeant yelled "Go!"

They dropped and started crawling through the mud, they were making slow progress to start with, but just when they got the hang of it, the three armed men started shooting bullets right over their heads, it seemed to be live ammo too. One man in particular got a scare when the pig carcass he was trying to get around of got riddled with bullets.

"Fucking FUCK!" a very appropiate statement considering the circumstances. Unfortunately for the recruit, he didn't shut up right away. "This is horseshit!" he continued.

Gabuka ordered his subordinates to cease fire.

"You, get over here!" his voice now dangerous.

The man crawled sideways through the ditch and got out, chest out and shoulders pushed slightly back, I'm certain that he did this on purpose to look more intimidating. He failed hopelessly. He was shivering, covered in mud, covered in blood and on top of everything, he was only about 5'5.

"You saying my training is horseshit?" asked Gabuka.

The recruit didn't even think before answering. "Yes, this is fucking insane!"

Gabuka looked at the other drill sergeants and they smiled at him, he smiled back and then turned to face the complaining recruit with a punch to the jaw. I could almost feel it crack.

The recruit collapsed and started weeping, but Gabuka wasn't done. He delivered a kick to the ribs and the man cried out.

"Don't you DARE insult my training," he said as he leaned in on the beaten man. "He pushed himself up on the man's obviously broken ribs. "Gentlemen, we have our first washout."

No one said anything. No one dared. It didn't seem like Gabuka cared what we did because he went on talking.

"Your time now stands at two minutes twelve seconds," he said to the men still in the ditch. "What are you waitng for? GO!"

The men crawled furiously through the mud as the staff sergeant fired a burst dangerously close to their feet.

They finished with a time of four minutes and ten seconds. Gabuka laughed at them as did the other sergeants. I was really starting to not like them. One of them looked like a bulldog and the other one was the skinny type that could probably think of the meanests punishments.

"I need ten more," called out Gabuka. No one moved. He pulled out a baton. I was among the first to reack the starting line of the ditch. Gabuka shocked some of the other recruits just for kicks.

"Go!" he said as he kicked me into the ditch.

I crawled through the ditch, mud and water getting in my mouth and eyes. I could barely breathe.

My mind flashed back to the first time I had crawled under the equivalent of the ditch back in Jericho VII. I had been twelve. I remembered the irregular floor and the barbed wire there. The only difference was that the ditch over there was dry and the barbed wire was higher. Oh, and there wasn't any gunfire or dead carcasses. My uncle was calmly telling me how I should move my arms and legs. It wasn't really all that complicated. "Move your feet Francisco," he had said.

"Move your feet dirtbag!"

I snapped back to reality with live ammuntition flying over me. I rolled into a trench and almost threw up when I landed on a gutted pig carcass. Then it started raining.

"Fucking great," I said, keeping my complaints low so that the sergeant wouldn't hear.

I kept shuffling my hands and feet, moving very slowly under the wires. I think that Bulldog and Skinny fired right in front of us to make us go slower. It was getting fucking ridiculous.

I finally made it out of the ditch, my time slightly over three minutes. I looked over my back, rain obscuring my vision and noticed the rest of the recruits crawling through the mud. The recruit that had complained was still groaning in pain in the floor, no one helping him out.

All of a sudden I felt my body go numb and I doubled over.

"You think you're done? YOU THINK YOU'RE DONE?" someone yelled in my ear.

"What?" was all I could really say.

Bulldog prodded me with his baton and I almost collapsed.

"Give me fifty pushups!" he ordered.

The scene was so cliched, so common that I couldn't help but laugh.

"Think that is funny?" he asked me. "Make that one hundred and fifty."

I dropped to the floor almost as fast as my smile disappeared. My arms were tired from the crawl through the mud and weak from the electricity that had just danced through my body.

I started at a reasonable pace, but when I hit thirty I started slowing down, by the time I had done fifty I could barely lift myself up. Bulldog pushed his boot on my back and my face went into the mud. He leaned close to my ear and whispered to me, "Who ordered you to stop?"

That was more than I could take I swiped his feet from under him and he fell into the mud. I stoop up over him and the last thing I remember from that night was a sharp pain in the back of my neck.

I woke up in a hospital bed next morning. There was a doctor next to me. He saw that I had opened my eyes and he rolled his.

"You mister," he said, "are an idiot."

I groaned, the back of my head still hurt. A lot. He simply shook me awake. The guy was mean for a doctor.

"Report to your barracks immediatelly. You're lucky Gabuka thought you had balls, or else you would be on your way home."

_And what would be so bad about going home. _ I had to physically squeeze something to stop myself from thinking out loud.

"Well what are you waiting for? On your feet."

I stood up lest this mean doctor shocked me with a hidden baton and walked towards my barracks. I still had my muddy clothes on. I couldn't tell wether it was good or bad, but the dried mud in my buttcrack certainly helped me make up my mind. I was also thankful I had been shaved.

I walked in the barracks to find most of the recruits sleeping, some others were taking showers or just milling around. I found out that they had been running the ditch and getting beaten up for at least four hours more after I was knocked out. Then they ran back here and did some marching.

I was now grateful that my head hurt bad enough that it merited some time in the infirmary. I jumped in the showers and took a super quick shower. When the mud was washed from my body I changed into cargo pants. That was what everyone seemed to be wearing, so why not?

Minutes later Gabuka almost brought the door down.

"On the courtyard!"

We all marched, despite having only been here for two days, we were starting to get the gist of boot camp.

"Form two rows of ten and one of nine!" he yelled. Or spoke, his regular tone seemed to be screaming.

We did this as quickly as we could and found ourselves standing at ease. He instructed us about the difference of standing at ease, at attention, and standing easy or rest.

Before we even had time to digest the information he shouted for us to stand at attention. It was pathetic really. The few marines that were here did it right. I did it right as well, but the rest of the recruits did it at different times.

Gabuka proceeded to insult us in two different languages for about one minute straight. He then ordered us at attention again, at ease, at attention, at ease, and so on. Once we had mastered (sort of) the art of moving our left foot upon command we took on the ancient sport of marching. It took a little bit longer, but we managed to march in synchrony within half an hour. The sergeant yelling in out ears wasn't helping with anything, but eventually he got tired. He resumed his position at the front of our little parade and we kept marching in pace behind him. We kept marching, and marching, and marching. We must've walked for two hours at least. It was only then that we turned back. We marched another two hours, this time with Gabuka behind us, if anyone missed a step or walked slower he was promptly shocked by Gabuka's ever present baton.

I managed to stay in step through the duration of the trip. I thanked my uncle endlessly during our march as well.

When we returned to the base, it was only about mid-day. We were allowed lunch and fifteen minutes rest time before we went back to the physical stuff.

This time it was the gym. We all got different routines involving running, lifting weights, doing push-ups, sit ups, pull ups, jumping rope, and some shadow boxing. After I was done, there was a pool of sweat at my feet. The floor was moving sideways. I couldn't help it, I reched for the nearest container and threw up. I managed to prop myself up with some weird machine used for… something.

Bulldog laughed, he had joined Gabuka a few minutes ago.

"Not so tough now are you?" he said with a smile.

I didn't say anything, I just glared at him.

He laughed some more and this time he swiped me. I fell with a noisy thud on the floor. Bulldog left while laughing an I slowly pushed myself up. I was ready to kill that man, but in my current condition I probably would've fallen to the ground before catching up with him.

"Now it's time for the ditch!"

At least half the recruits joined me and emptied their lunches on the floor.

Is soon became a routine. We would wake up at at random time during the night, then we would do something incredibly tiring. We would then either have breakfast or lunch, then do something else that returned that lunch to the floor. Fifteen minutes rest, we would march for what seemed like ages, and finally we would do something tiring before dinner. Now that I think of it, it wasn't much of a routine, the drill sergeants were very imaginative and came up with very tiring excercises. We were even made to dig holes in the ground for three days straight. By the end of my second month in mars I was actually beginning to get used to it. I would end up the days workout, get screamed at, march, lunch, manage to keep my lunch, march some more, and still have enough energy to actually change into my motherfucking ODST jammies.

The part I hated the most was what they called patience. They made us stand at attention in a cold room for hours at a time. The sergeants would then bring in chairs and a table and have their lunch, sometimes they brought datapads and played games on them. That one actually gave me a laugh, as I thought back at Jonah's datapad and it's questionable contents. It had served to keep the morale of Barracks Two comparatively high for a long while. It had been used by everyone that was still here. I used it as well, only that now I felt slightly nervous touching it, still I never passed the chance to have some alone time. I smiled at the thought.

"Castillo!" the staff sergeant yelled. "Is something funny? Why the hell are you smiling during patience time?"

"Am I not allowed to smile staff sergeant?" I asked in a formal tone.

"No you are not!" he yelled at my ear. "In fact, you are not allowed to be happy in my boot camp. Ever!" He took a deep breath. "Is that understood?"

"Yes staff sergeant!" I yelled back.

"Good," he said as he slid back into his chair.

Two hours later I was finally able to move my cramped legs. We had completed the last excercise of the day and were ordered to go to our barracks. I sat on my bed and sighed. I looked around just to realize how empty the building looked with half our original numbers gone. Tarkov was gone too, but it was because all the Hungarians had been rounded up and placed in their individual barracks. The captain even had to request a trainer to be transfered from Reach so that the Hungarians didn't mutter conspirational whispers at themselves without the sergeants being able to understand. Or something like that.

I leaned back on my bed and hit myself on something pointy. I cursed as I bolted back up.

"The fu…" I stopped myself as I noticed a box. Unlike the last box this one was metal as opposed to cardboard. It also had my name and temporary number. Yeah, we still hadn't gotten real dogtags.

Anyways, I opened the box and was surprised to find an ODST body armor. Well, parts of it at least. Actually it was only the armored boots and the armored rucksack. It was somewhat disappointing. Who am I kidding? The armored backpack was empty, what was the purpose of this?

Four hours of sleep later I found out.

"Wake up ladies!" boomed the all to familiar voice. "Tonight we're taking a walk."

Sergeant Gabuka made us put on cargo pants, our newly armored boots, and shoulder the rucksack.

The boots were surprisingly light, only slightly heavier than our regular boots. Kudos to the engineers that created them. The rucksack was empty so nothing to complain about either.

As soon as I exited the building I was surprised to find a pile of rocks waiting for us. "Fill up your schoolbags boys!"

I knew better than complaining, I quickly picked up four relatively large rocks so that my backpack would have some spare space in it. I shoudered it. It could've been heavy, but the backpack still ended up weighing about forty pounds. Later I found out that the rocks had been in fact some sort of dense matal, not just plain martian rocks.

As soon as all of us recruits had shouldered our bags, Gabuka set off towards the ditch. Of course, he was comfortably wearing his fatigues and shirt. No armored rucksack filled with rocks for him. We followed the man at a steady pace, not as fast as usual, but we managed to keep up with him. When I finally saw the complex the ditch was in, we turned ninety degrees to the right and kept on running. We ran maybe twice the distance we had traveled so far. Just when we were about to collapse, Gabuka kept on going. I know, anticlimactic, but it's the truth. We ran, tripped, stood up and ran on. Eventually I started a conversation with Jonah.

"So…" I helpfully started.

"Watcha think about all this Covenant crap?"

I raised my eyebrows.

"To be frank, I'm worried, we get news of Cole's victories, but still hear nothing in between. A war can't be fought with onle space battles every couple of years."

_Fucking great I shouldn't have started this conversation._

"I think the Covenant, or whatever they're called are actually kicking our asses out there."

While Jonah rambled a recruit behind us, O'Donell, fell facefirst into the ground. The two men behind him picked him up and placed his arms over their shoulders. They managed to keep up, if only a bit slower than the rest of us.

As Jonah kept going on with his conspiracy theories about ONI, the suspicious time stamps on battles, and the Illuminati, I kept on going without paying much attention. I made my mind wander off into the nice little universe that existed in Jonah's datapad. The girls in there were really quite nice. They knew how to make a soldier happy. Even if I was simply a soldier in training.

The men that had picked up the collapsed O'Donell calling out snapped me out of it. Better that they did, lest a bulge start forming in my pants. They passed O'Donell's arms to me and Jonah. Apparently it was our turn.

Jonah rambled on. I returned to my happy place.

"Are you even listening?" asked Jonah. "What the hell is so funny?"  
>I failed to notice that I was smiling like and idiot.<p>

"Nothing, never mind." I changed the subject. "Let's speed up, the sergeant is loosing us."

We both sped up a bit despite the pain it caused to our legs and lungs. I spent the rest of the tortuous marathon in silence.

Once we arrived back in our barracks I used whatever was left of my energy to run into the showers so I didn't have to wait in line. Soon it wouldn't be a problem though, with our original numbers down to twenty-seven from the original fifty.

I puked into a toilet stall specifically designated for that right after I left the showers.

"Feeling a little queasy there Castillo?" asked one of the actual marines.

I wiped macarroni from from my chin before smiling. "It seems like you forgot to wipe your mouth Ramsey."

Ramsey stopped smiling and wiped some vomit from his mouth with a towel.

"Also, you forgot to flush," I added as I did so.

He smiled at me. "I'll get you eventually you smartass," he said in a semi-playful tone.

Apparently I had gotten quite the reputation for being a sarcastic jerk in the camp. I'm not sure how this was possible, since I rarely started conversations. I mostly kept to myself.

I went to my bed and pulled out my knife. So far it hadn't managed to get confiscated. I twirled it around my fingers. With considerable skill, I might add. The familiar weight gave me some sort of reassurance, which was weird, since most people near a spinning sharp implement felt unsafe.

Maybe I'm a little off up there. Maybe not.

"Hey, Doug!" I yelled.

"What?" came tha answer.

"I'll bet my turn with Jonah's pad that I can hit whatever you want with my knife."

"Fuck that," he said. "Last time you made that bet, Ramsey had to give you all his datapad turns for a month."

I smiled at the memory.

"Suit yourself then."  
>I threw the knife underhanded at a piece of wood I had sneaked in to make a suitable target. It was a weird throw, you threw the knife underhanded and pulled your whist back at the last second. This way the knife flew forward whily spinning backwards. It was impractical for almost everything except showing off.<p>

It hit the wooden target after two revolutions. I smiled as I pulled it out. There were groans of annoyance all around.

"Fucking show off," someone muttered.

I didn't care, they didn't mind either, we were all just cranky and tired. It had been four months exactly since we got here. Four months of doing nothing other than getting humiliated, beaten up, shocked, or forced to return our lunches by the sergeants. There must be some regulations against that. I was certain there were, but it didn't seem like the sergeant or even the captain would care about it.

Four months, and we still had twice that amount of time left in here before we were able to leave this hell.

Provided I was able to complete a full year under Gabuka that is.


	5. Training: Weapons

Chapter V: Training (Weapons)

**Novemeber 5, 2533 (UNSC Calendar)/**

**Camp Mars IX, Mars, Sol System**

I woke up feeling surprisingly well rested. In fact, I _was_ surprisingly well rested. I glanced at the clock. It was about mid-morning.

_The hell?_

We hadn't woken up more than thirty minutes after sunrise since we had moved into the barracks. I was surprised, but I wasn't about to complain about being allowed a couple hours more sleep.

"Then what are you complaining about?" I heard from some beds over.

"Nothing, I was just wondering what we are still doing here," someone else said.  
>Can't believe someone actually managed to see the negative side of this. I sat up and glanced around. I wasn't really surprised to see that O'Donell's stuff was gone. It seemed like he had been sent back home. He wasn't ODST material if he couldn't run fifty clicks in the time it would take someone to run a regular marathon. Then again, few people could do that.<p>

I stood up and got dressed. I yawned as I ran a hand over my hair. It had grown to a short buzzcut, didn't actually look so bad. Well, maybe I just grew used to it. I yawned again.

"Rise and shine ladies!" yelled a voice that wasn't Gabuka's.

I turned to face the source of the voice and was mildly surprised to see the captain. I hadn't seen him more than a couple of times since his welcoming speech. Even then it was just short chats with Gabuka about our progress. The only time he had talked to me in person was when he told me his dead great-grandmother could do push-ups better than I could.

We all stood at attention immediatelly. Well, at least the ones that weren't still in dreamland, but those were given a warm welcome into reaality by Gabuka shocking them with his baton. We had even given the baton a nickname, but it wasn't really all that nice. Us recruits laughed in the night picturing the sergeant sleeping with his baton by his side.

"Listen up soldiers," he started. _Did he just call us soldiers?_ "Today we start weapons training!"

Yep, he called us soldiers, not sissys, recruits, dirtbags, failure as men, pregnant women, infants, sauropods, bugs, grunts, farmboys, imbeciles, idiots, slack-jawed, bastards, inbred bastards, transgendered bastards, any derivative of bastard, dogs, or any other demeaning nickname. For the sake of myself I'm going to ignore that he called us ladies when he walked in.

_Wait, weapon's training? That's gotta be good right?_

And it was. At least when compared to Gabuka's fitness programs. We left our beds and walked into the courtyard. There were six trucks out there (one per barrack) and we were actually allowed to hop on them. They drove for thirty seconds to the west side of the camp. I think it was a really mean joke of sorts, first time we're allowed to hop onto vehicles, we're taken to a place that would've taken less time to get to by foot.

_Well fuck you, sir. _I could picture myself saying that to Captain Scarface, but I knew I would never do that, or anybody else would, for that matter.

We got of the trucks, all remaining 147 of us. I had never been to this side of camp, there wasn't anything interesting and it wasn't like I had spare time to do some exploration.

We left the camp through a gate in the fence. There was another truck over there waiting for us. I could make out targets in the distance. This was a shooting range, as rudimentary as any other, but we had all the space in the world, well _a _world. Mars, to be precise.

The captain hopped up on the truck.

"Soldiers, congratulations, you are no longer recruits and you have managed to survive through one of the toughest boot camps in this side of the galaxy." Gabuka nodded, mostly to himsef. The captain continues. "You could now run away from a battle with little to no problem, the issue here, is that you have no idea how you would win one. For this, you will need to learn how to shoot a weapon."  
>I was smiling as the captain signaled to the driver to open the door to the cargo area. As he did so Gabuka, Skinny, and Bulldog, as well as the drill sergeants from the other barracks started unloading some pretty heavy-looking crates.<p>

I smiled at the thought of what might be in those crates.

"Now for the bad news…"

You've got to be fucking kidding me.

"…the bad news is that we have a shortage of food in camp, so you will need to earn it. Those targets you see down range are have numbers on them, they might look like hit-scores, but in reality they are credit-producing magical papers. The number you hit, the amount of credits you get.

I groaned.

"Is there a probelem Francisco?" the captain asked me, dead serious.

_How the hell does he even know my name? _I wondered.

I was feeling a little balsy today, specially after that long sleep that served to soften up my judgement a little.

"Can't we use our own credits captain?"  
>"No, the UNSC has phased out old credits in favor of this new magical ones."<p>

"Wait, what, really?" said one of the recruits, no soldier, of Barracks Four.

No one even answered him, the guy next to him simply hit him in the back of the head. He didn't say anything else.

By that time all the boxes were off the truck and placed at regular intervals along the firing range.

"Move out to your drill sergeants."

"Sir!" we all said at once as we snapped at attention. The fear of doing one-handed pushups if we failed to answer now ran deep in our blood, courtesy of Gabuka and his evil mininos.

"Ok," roared Gabuka. "You heard the captain, we are suffering from a shortage of food right now, so you each need ten thousand credits for a meal. Any additional credits you may gain won't count and will be donated to the whorehouse your respective mothers work in."  
>This was actually pretty light for our sergeant. He was probably running out of insults.<p>

The sarge pulled out a rifle with bullpup configuration, it looked slightly skeletal, as if it was mssing some parts. On top it had what looked like a filled-out carrying handle on top and a rather large flash-hider.

"Now this is the MA37 Individual Combat System. It is currently on use by the Army, but the captain here managed to get us a few crates worth of them. They are the standard assault rifle of the UNSC Army, and despite the fact that we are marines and you are training under me we will use this as it is deemed easier to operate and you maggot heads probably couldn't handle an MA5," that was actually a pretty nice one.

I made sure to pay attention as Gabuka explained how the rifle worked and did my best to remember the names of all the parts it had. I succeded in the obvious ones, but it would be a while before I got down most of them right.

Gabuka put the rifle aside and pulled out a rather large black pistol.

"Now this bad boy here," started Gabuka, "is one of my personal favorites. The M6G Personal Defense Weapon System. It fires 12.7mm semi-armor-piercing-rounds. It is the standard issue sidearm to the UNSC Armed Forces, it can…"

He went on and on about the virtues and disadvantages of the pistol as I did my best to keep up.

Next up he pulled out a rifle. I raised my eyebrows a little bit. It was a good looking gun. It was slightly short of three feet long, slightly less, this one had a real carrying handle with a telescopic sight on top, it also sported bullpup configuration, but then again, what gun didn't nowadays.

"This is a BR55 Battle Rifle. This little baby fires 9.5mm rounds in what I would like to call a very accurate manner. It has a 36 round magazine and can fire it single fire, there-round burst, and fully automatic. It can take the head of an innie or an alien at up to 1000 meters…" I listened extra carefully to this one.

The sergeant then proceeded to pull out weapon after weapon, including an M7 SMG, a M392 DMR, a shotgun, the M247L SAW, and an SRS99D S2 sniper rifle among many others.

He explained the workings of each one carefully and taking his time. He even asked us questions when it seemed like we were not paying attention. Skinny, the poroceeded to demonstrate how to fire the weapon, how to reload them, and how to fix a jamming.

While he was demonstrating how the sniper rifle worked we heard a loud boom and turnes to see an explosion down range.

"And that, gentleman, is how the SPANKr works," cried out triumphtantly one of the drill sergeants of Barracks One.

"Wipe those smiles of your faces, we'll get to that when we need to." Gabuka's voice distracted us from the pyrotechnics.

"Ok, now each one of you grab an M6," he ordered us.

I lingered a little longer than necessary and stared longingly at the BR55 for a few seconds before Bulldog yelled at me to move my ass, which I promptly did while saying 'yessir' and 'sorry sir.'

I stood at the edge of the designated shooting area and aimed at the target in front of me. It was perhaps fifty yards away.

"Fire!"

I fired, hitting the target right in the middle of the 10 score ring. I had shot my uncle's M6A once before, which was basically a downsized version of this, so I wasn't prepared for the recoil.

I smiled as I saw that I had hit the center. _Maybe I'm a natural marksman,_ I thought.

I shot again. This time I missed the score rings altogether, hitting the target's "arm" and proving myself wrong

I shot again and again, gradually getting better and managing to cluster my shots close together.

"Huh," Ramsey said as he looked at my latest hole-riddled paper target. "Next time you go around crossing borders maybe you'll be able to shoot back at the US rednecks that only want to keep their jobs safe."

It was an old joke, there wasn't even a real border between Mexico and the former US anymore, but it was still annoying.

"Maybe I'll shoot you with my crazy Mexican skills." Was all I could retort.

"Wait, you're Mexican?" Jonah asked all of a sudden.

I stared at him. So did the guys that could hear him.

"Did all those border jokes mean anything to you?" I asked. "At all?"

"Well I thought… nevermind." said Jonah as he flushed slightly, certainly feeling like an idiot.

"Well don't worry Jonah, he certinly doesn't look Mexican with his past complexion skin and brownish hair." Ramsay said.

He kept looking for a fight.

"Oh shut up, you're Scottish." I said as it was possibly the worst thing in the universe.

"What the hell is that supposed to mean?" yelled a recruit from Barracks Three.

"Oh shut the hell up!" this time it was Dutch, being surprisingly level-headed. Normally he would've jumped at the chance of a fight.

I kept on shooting and after burning through six clips, we were ordered to switch to the MA37's. I picked it up and managed to stay a few seconds staring at the BR55. I fell to the ground in a heap.  
>"What the hell are you waiting for?" yelled Gabuka as he shocked me again. I stood up and managed to stand straight.<br>"Sorry sergeant!"

"STAFF Sergeant."  
>"YES STAFF SERGEANT!" I shouted. "SORRY STAFF SERGEANT." Just to be sure. I picked up the rifle and went back to my position.<p>

"Serves you well," said Ramsey.

I stayed quiet.

After a few minutes of nothing but gunfire. I turned to Jonah.

"Seriously, how could you possibly not know I was Mexican." I was slightly offended that my best friend (if Jonah could be called that) didn't even knew my nationality.

"I always thought you were like a Spaniard or something, I wasn't even sure you were an Earth-born," he said sheepishly.

"Are you kidding me? I've told you that a thousand times!"  
>Jonah decided it was best to ignore me and fired a burst at his target. I rolled my eyes and did the same.<p>

After we had gone through a sizeable amount of rounds, we were ordered to put our MA37's back in the crates. This time we were told to use the M7 SMG's. I cursed at the sergeant for not allowing us to use the BR55's.

I brought up the SMG and switched back to the closest targets. I fired a burst. I was surprised by how much recoil this puny thing had. It was hard to control. I tried and tried, but didn't seem to get the hang of it. Not like all my rounds missed the target, but from the third round up they all went into the shoulder and off the target. I simply started shooting one round at a time.

"Castillo, get over here!"

I turned around to see Skinny holding a rifle for me he tossed it. I almost dropped my SMG to catch the BR55. I had to stop myself from squealing with glee while I put the safety on the M7 and gave it back to the sergeant.

I grabbed the appropiate ammunition and went to my spot.

"Try for the 750 meter mark's head," suggested Skinny.

I located my target through the scope. I sighed and squeezed of a round. It hit right outside of the eight point ring.

Skinny nodded and went back to checking on the rest of Barracks Two.

I kept on firing, most of the time I found my mark, and I never even missed the target. This gun fired beautifully, there was little to no recoil.

After two magazines I started feeling adventurous and decided to switch to three round burst. I kept on firing with the same accuracy I had achieved so far, still no recoil to throw off my aim. I could even fire two or three bursts in a row without sacrificing too much accuracy.

As my gun clicked empty I turned to Ramsey, stroke a pose, and asked in a seductive tone, "Jealous?"

"Oh, piss off," he said, although I could see he was trying hard not to laugh.

Around noon I was sweating and could barely stand up, but at least I was having some fun. I had not switched back from my BR55 in the whole time since it had been handed to me and I had riddled targets as far back as 1200 meters with 9.5mm holes.

Ramsey had been handed a DMR, but wasn't really doing that well, his strong point was the MA37, he could fire long steady bursts and keep them within a two inch radius.

I was surprised by Jonah, had I not known he used to be in the Marine Corps (he certainly didn't look like it) I would've been jealous. He was switching through weapons and hitting home with surprising accuracy. He was by no means a sniper, or even a marksman, but he was the best shot here.

I was ordered to switch to the DMR, which I grudgingly did so, and found out that it was nearly as accurate as the BR55, but it had a hell of a lot more recoil. After a few magazines spent we were ordered to cease fire.

We were then marched to the mess hall, where we were fed a healthy dose of goop. It looked like it could go alive any moment and attack us. It certainly tasted like it too, but it had all the necessary calories, proteins, vitamins, etcetera that a marine, or in this case ODST would need. It seemed that they had forgotten about our new "credits", they probably just said that to make us sweat a little. Most of us had met the 10,000 point mark. If you spent half a martian day shooting, you were bound to hit something.

I swallowed my goop down as fast as possible as to aviod the taste. We then did an hour and a half of drill before we were sent to bed.

Next morning we were woken up at the usual time. Which was before the night could be considered morning, and made to march while carrying our rifles in addition to our rocky backpacks and armored boots.

We only ran five kilometers, and when we returned we were immediatelly sent back to the firing range. I resumed my training with the BR55, occasionally switching back to the M6.

We only stayed there for an hour this time, then we were sent to the courtyard and taught how to clean our pistols. We were told that the pistols we had been given for range training would now be ours. We would keep them, care for them, nurture them, and a bunch of other weird crap that came from Skinny's mouth.

Cleaning a gun is an annoying process to learn, specially the assembly/disassembly part. You have to get it right (obviously) or else the gun won't work. Luckily the M6 was designed for a quick field strip, so we all had it down by the end of the lesson.

We than had lunch, ran, fired our weapons, ran, cleaned our pistols, and ran some more. In that order. We were tired, but only normal tired, when we got to the barracks. Most of us even kidded around a little and did the usual manly things. Good thing there wasn't a chick in our barracks, unlike in barracks five. Poor guys, well, poor girl.

We fell asleep soon, trying to take in as much rest as possible.

"Welcome to hand-to-hand combat training!" yelled Bulldog.

We were standing at attention in the courtyard, The other barracks had been sent to the firing range, the ditch, or simply made to run. We were simply listening to our instructor, which was, unsurprisingly, sergeant Bulldog.

"What happens when you loose your rifle?" he asked. "Which I'm sure you piss-ass excuse for marines will certainly do more than a couple of times."

No one answered.

"Well, you use your knife." While he said that he produced a large knife from seemingly nowhere, although I knew that he had it tucked into the back of his pants. _Neat move Bulldog._

"Hand-to-hand combat is…" he asked. "Anyone?"

No one said anything.

"It's when you fight with your hands for combat you idiots!"

I could tell he was enjoying this, for that matter, so were Gabuka and Skinny on the other side of the courtyard, watching us.

"What about the knife sir?" this was Sasha asking.

"Now don't get smart with me you filthy maggot."

Hand-to-hand combat is meant as a last resort way to neutralize an enemy. At least that's what sergeant Bulldog told us. He went on about the doctrines, definitions, variations, uses, and origins of hand-to-hand.

I'm not entirely sure why he even mentioned origins, we all knew about the sword-toting warriors that had existed on Earth a long time ago.

As Bulldog rambled a 'soldier' yawned. He tried to stiffle it, but it was to late.

"Weinberg!" yelled an angry sergeant. "Get over here! NOW!"

Weinberg did so as fast as he could.

The sergeant ordered to step right in front of me. I could make out Gabuka and Skinny laughuing at the scene. _This can't be good._

"Hit me," he ordered Weinberg.

"Sir?"

"You heard me!"

Weinberg hesitated a little before taking a combat stance. I saw his stance and wished I was someplace else, this was going to be embarrasing. Weinberg then threw a right cross.

It seemed to happen in slow motion, Bulldog grabbed Weinberg's fist, then his elbow, and threw him into the ground. The large man dropped down along with the unfortunate recruit and in a matter of seconds had it in an armlock. The defeated man cried out in pain as his arm was twisted. The sergeant waited five seconds before releasing him.

_Nice knowing you Weinberg._

"So, as you can see, it can be very useful to know how to turn an enemy into a piece of crap pile of flailing limbs without weapons."  
>"You, you're next!"<p>

_Oh crap. _The sarge was pointing at me.

I walked towards him and stood in front of him. This time we were both given some thin gloves to protect our hands with. I stood in front of the sergeant, he offered me his fist and I bumped it, we both immediatelly took a fighting stance.

My stance was a little bit looser and I was on the top of my toes, while the sergeant had hunched over and taken a guard more akin to a boxer.

I kicked at his leg. He lifted his own leg and my shin collided with his. I instantly felt the pain, but didn't show it. The sergeant threw a quick jab at me, hitting me square in the forhead. I managed to absorb some of the blow while throwing an uppercut to the stomach, I could tell he was surprised by the way he opened his eyes, or maybe he just needed some air.

He punched me again, this time I managed to dodge his swing and strike his ribs with a quick hook. He kicked at my face. I put both my arms up to block the kick and as soon as his shin bounced of my hands I felt his other shin up in my ribs.

_How can he kick so fast. _ I was quickly distracted from my thoughts as another kick brought me to the ground. I turned and swiped the sergeant's feet from under him in a similar manner as to when I had first gone to the trench. He fell and I managed to jump on top of him. I started pummeling away, he covered most of the blow, but I managed to strike home a few times. Just as I thought everything was going well I felt something in my back, all of a sudden the sarge had caught my neck with his legs and pulled me down, he grabbed one of my arms and bent it slightly backwards using his legs as levers. I felt a stinging pain all over my arm, and on top of all I couldn't breathe to well since his legs were squeezing my trachea.

I moved around, trying to get out of the lock, but he just pulled my arm farther down. Eventually I simply tapped out.

I stood up and shook hands with Bulldog. I was slightly embarrased , but not overly so. The sergeant went on to explain the virtues and mistakes of the fight, praising me (or as close as he could get to praise someone anyways) for my speed and strong punches, but pointing out the mistake in me not knowing any locks, throws, or grabs.

In fact I think his exact words went something like this:

"Well little mister here can punch better than most five year olds can, he also moves faster than an Arcadian slob, but only slightly. On the other hand, he has no idea of how to fight on the ground, his lack of knowledge in grabs is a shame to all the human race. I know parrots that can do better ground combat than him!"  
>I didn't know what to think at the time, but it wasn't such a mean insult, and other than the fact that it was probably one of the stupidest similes ever, I felt moderately good about myself.<p>

The sergeant then proceeded to teach us the basics of hand-to-hand. He taught us grabs, throws, and all the necessary things to make your hands weapons, by the end of the week, we could all fight pretty decently. Fourteen straight hours of combat training will do that to you.

On day eight, our meeting in the courtyard started slightly differently.

"Knives!"  
>No one moved.<p>

"Since you can now fight at the level of blind and crippled five-year-olds, I will now move on to showing you how to use sharp and pointy implements," he told us.

I think he was proud of us.

"A knife is a very useful tool, it can be used to cut and slash, as well as to stab, carve, gouge, scratch, hit, pummel, dismember, torture, scare, and a proyectile weapon."

He explained us the virtues of knife fighting much like he did with hand-to-hand combat. He produced two knifes, a thin one with a blade of weird make, it was apparently balanced for throwing as well as cutting. He then showed us a knife that was slightly over a foot long. It was a glorified knife or a downgraded machete. Your choice. As he finished showing us the details he called for a volunteer.

No one was stupid enough to take the dare.

"Castillo, you just volunteered!"

I think he still had something against me since that time I knocked him down first day of training. Last week's fight probably didn't do much good to his feeling towards me either.

"Sir," I said as I walked towards him. He handed me a mock knife made covered with rubber.

I had to resist the urge to smile, knives I'm good with.

I switched it around so that the blade was facing backwards and the sharp edge pointed outside.

Bulldog grabbed it in the exact same way I did. I took up a guard, using the hand my knife was in as a deterrent.

We started spinning around each other, each throwing a efw feints, measuring each other. All of a sudden he kicked my thigh. It hurt like hell and I was surprised by the kick, but I jumped backwards to dodge an upwards slash. I lifted my own leg and caught his knife hand. Then I launched a slash towards his neck as his knife hand flew upwards. I stopped my strike an inch from his neck and smiled triumphantly.

"I got you sir."  
>He smiled at me. I looked down only to be surprised by the sight of his own weapon pressed agains my stomach. I had to resist the urge to roll my eyes. We were re-enacting the most cliched scene in knife fights ever.<p>

"Nicely done Castillo," he complimented me.

He actually complimented me, and with a smile in his face at that. At the time I thought I was going to go into shock.

This next week went much like last, with us learning the techniques needed to master knife fighting. Once we were done with basics, we started another routine, this one mixing out weapons, hand-to-hand, and knife training. Nothing out of the ordinary happened during the next months, other than the fact that our number got ever smaller of course. I was allowed to fire the sniper rifle, but I was apparently too impatient to become a sniper, so I was allowed to keep the BR55.

Eventually we were forced to do firing on moving targets and firing while moving. The sergeants rigged various scenarios in which we would clear a building while shooting at targets that popped every now and then.

We were all issued whatever weapons we were profficient with the most. I was lucky enough to get one of the few BR55's. I also had my pistol. We were then given four knifes. Two of the small machetes (or glorified knifes) and two of the smaller (yet still sporting seven inches worth of blade) knifes that were meant to be used as a last ditch effort.

Ramsey had gotten a shotgun in addition to an M7 SMG. Jonah had gotten the good ol' fashioned MA37 rifle and he was quite happy with it. The only guy in our barracks that had been issued something different was Sasha, who had gotten a grenade launcher in addition to an MA37.

That night we kidded around with each other and with our weapons, which had to be stored in a newly installed weapons locker. Our knifes were kept inside our trunks, which were now looking a little fuller.

"Hard to believe we've been here eight months already," mentioned Jonah.

"Hard to believe there's only twenty of us remaining in the barracks," I said.

"Hard to believe you guys are so fucking gay!" Ramsey shouted from a few bunks over.

I nodded at Jonah and we both sprinted at him. I tackled him while Jonah secured his arms, we then beat him up a little, mostly slapping him and hitting his head with our open palms.

"Get.. the fuck… of me!" he complained. After a few seconds we complied while most of the population in the barracks laughed at him. As we leet him stand back up he dusted himself with as much pride as he could muster and leaped on his bed.

I did the same, looking into the bottom of the empty bunk above me I thought of all the great moments I had spent here. I couldn't come up with more than three or four, one of them was being issued real guns, the other was a particular night when we were allowed to sleep for more than three consecutive hours, and that one time when the cooks had prepared lasaagna for us.

It was actually really sad that those werethe only big moments for me in the last eight months. Usually it would've been scoring with a girl or winning a barfight. Maybe even something vaguely realted to aceing one of my uncle's tests. I sighed while thinking back at my sad life. I closed my eyes, trying to take in as much sleep as possible and doing my best to ignore someone's vigorous use Jonah's pad.


	6. Training: Combat

_To any readers this story might have:_

_First of all thank you all for reading this story. Ok, now that that's over with I can go straight to the business part. I'll be out of the country for two weeks, so I won't be able to post the next chapters. Just reminding everyone that the story isn't over yet. Also, I apolagize for any and all grammar and spelling mistakes, although I could blame it on the Spanish autocorrector. Also, I could use someone for proof-reading my chapters before I post them, thanks and enjoy._

_-casquis (pronounced: _CAS-KEYES)

Chapter VI: Training (Combat)

**May 13, 2534 (UNSC Calendar)/**

**Camp Mars IX, Mars, Sol System**

The rain was hitting us hard. It was almost sideways and it stung whenever it hit my unprotected face and forearms. Yet still I managed to feel like I was in an oven. Oh Mars, you and your funky weather.

"Movement right," Ramsey warned.

Me and Jonah shifted our aim to the right, the rest of the squad didn't bother.

We were in one of the more rocky parts of Mars, so there were plenty of places to hide. The rain wasn't helping either.

I saw muzzle flashes and I dropped. I could hear the training rounds whistle overhead. Jonah opened fire while everyone went to cover. We were playing a simple game of elimination. The last squad to survive was the one that won. The only problem was that there were six squads all fighting each other. It was some sort of massive free-for-all.

By now there were only ten people per barracks, so there were sixty persons in teams of ten shooting at each other. Right now we were under fire by one of those teams.

I skidded to a large boulder while paint splashed all around me. Our squad managed to take cover from the ambush intact. I looked around to see that there were only six of us in here, the remaining four were probably flanking our attackers.

"Draw their fire," ordered Jonah, our de-facto squad leader.

We did so, firing in short bursts at the muzzle flashes and keeping our heads down. We did this for around five minutes before we heard the cries of surprise from our attackers. We rushed their position while they were in chaos by our flanking fireteam's manouver. Before seconds they were all knocked out by our tranquilizer-infused paint.

I nodded at my squad mates. We were clad in a mix of Army and Marine armor, they were old leftovers that our captain gave us for practice. It was more than good enough for the use we gave it. Jonah did a quick check of our squad and was pleased to find that there were no "wounded."

I smiled to myself and we moved on. It was the second day of this war game, we hadn't gotten any intel on the status of the other squads, but we knew that Five was done for, we had only just done that ourselves. Four was at 30% strength at least, and One was two men down.

We moved up to a position that had been marked in a rough map of the area. It was an abandoned building on top of a small rocky hill, it would make a perfect position for the duration of the excercise.

We arrived at our objective a few minutes after we had killed Squad Five. We checked every rock twice to prevent booby traps from taking out some of our numbers. When we were satisfied that the place was clear we set up inside the small building. It had only one floor but it had some broken windows that were quite nice for shooting. I noticed that the walls outside and inside of the building were covered in red and yellow paint from training rounds. Apparently we weren't the only ones with the great idea of setting up here.

My thoughts were proven right when two hours later we fell under attack by Squad One. We could handle them, since there were only eight of them and they were surprised to find us already there.

I aimed at the men from inside the house. I didn't shoot just yet, I was looking for the man in charge. I ultimately found him, at least I thought it was him since he was the only one shouting stuff at the other ones. Instants after I had seen him, three training rounds slammed into his right temple, knocking him out.

One fell into confusion as we peppered their position. It didn't last long though, since a moment later our machine gunner, a skinny fellow whose name I managed to keep forgetting was hit in the back of the head.

I turned around and sprinted to the other side of the house, there was another squad charging. I cursed. I opened fire on them, bringing one down and getting another in the leg. The rest took cover, the one with the wounded leg didn't, but I didn't shoot him, instead I waited for someone to go help him. It didn't take long for an idiot to take the risk, I shot them both with two bursts.

"Frank! What the hell is going on?" asked Jonah.

I was slightly annoyed at being called that way, but fore some reason no one could pronounce either my name or last name completely right, so they settled for the english version of my name.

"It's the fucking Hungarians," I spat through my teeth.

I was pissed, those guys were fucking hardcore. They had managed to kill our gunner, which in turn allowed the guys from One to shoot down two other of our men. It turned into a desperate situation at that point. We were down to seven men, but that didn't last for long, soon it was only me, Ramsey, and Jonah left. Ramsey took out the rest of the members of One before being hit himself by one of the Hungarians.

Jonah closed the door and placed a chair on it. He looked at me and then looked around, he was unsure as to what he should do. When it finally seemed like he had found an option the worst imaginable thing happened.

"Ok," he started. "Frank, here's what we'll do…" his chest exploded in red as a round made contact with his armor.

"Ouch," was all he had time to say before fainitng.

"Sniper rifles, fucking sniper rifles!" I screamed at no one in particular. "No one gave us sniper rifles." Even as I said that, I had traced the vapor trail back to a small ridge 700 meters away from me. I spotted the sniper and took him out with three quick bursts. He hadn't even bothered with cover.

There were now only three Hungarians left. They were nowhere to be seen. I was now scared. It's not a nice feeling when you're facing superior forces _by yourself,_ even if said superior forces are only armed with high speed paint.

Before I had time to even think, my world went white and loud as hell.

"Flashbangs!" I yelled as I blindly fired my rifle at the general direction of the door. "No one gave us fucking flashbangs!"

As the pain in my eyes and ears receded, I heard the clicking sound of my rifle signaling that my gun was empty. The ammo counter in the back of the carrying handle was a good indicadtor as well.

I opened my eyes and was surprised to see two Hungarians on the floor, splattered with paint and another one kneeling, with his hands covering his head. It was Tarkov.

I smiled as I drew my sidearm. I raised it and right before I had time to fire Tarkov threw his rifle at my face. I dropped my pistol in reflex and suddenly all the wind was knocked out of me as the wiry kid tackled me. He punched me twice in the jaw before pulling out his knife. I punched him in the nose and grabbed his knife hand. If that training knife touched any vital part of my body, its sensors would immediately declare me as dead.

I had to use all my strength to keep him from stabbing me. He punched me twice before switching his free hand to push down on the knife. Now it was only inches from my neck. I started panicking. I flayled my legs like a madman and managed to make Tarkov loose some of his balance. I immediatelly took off my helmet with my free hand and slammed it into his face as hard as I could. He collapsed. I stood up and threw my helmet at him, then I grabbed my gun and emptied the whole magazine into his chest.

That was it. I had won.

"That's right you mothers!" I yelled out triumphantly. I left the building while kicking and punching the air in triumph. I even did a cartwheel. I was whooping and yelling out insults and challenges to the unconscious troopers.

I don't think I had ever felt that happy in my life. I fact, it wasn't until many years later that something I deemed happier happened.

I was ecstatic. I had managed to knock out most of the Hungarians by myself even when they had surprised us from the rear. Granted, we should've posted some sort of sentry to prevent that from happening, but I had still won. I turned around a rock only to find myself face to face with one of the soldiers from Three. I knew that because of the large white three painted onto his chest piece. Now that I think of it, I shouldn't have been so surprised, after all there was absolutely no information about them. My smile faded from my face into what must've been record time.

I immediatelly raised my hands.

"Mercy?" I said, not really expecting any.

The man just smiled while he shook his head, and ever so slowly he raised his MA37, aimed it at my chest and fired a single round. The last thing I remember was him and another man from Squad Three looking over me.

I woke up next day in the medical bay. I sighed with disappointment.

The doctor was sitting in a chair next to me, reading some book about poetry. I sat up and shook my head.

"Where is…"

"Mess," he cut me off. He hadn't even raised his head.

_Mean doctor._

I walked out of bed, put my armored boots on and carried the rest of my armor towards the mess hall.

I heard roaring laughter before I even got in. _Well this can't be good._ Turned out it wasn't good. Not for me at least.

For some reason, there was footage of me being shot. It was from the guy that tagged me vantage point. He must've had a helmet cam in working order.

"No one can beat Francisco the Great!" I heard myself screaming like a maniac.

I facepalmed at how stupid I sounded. _I'm never going to speak again._

The phrase was welocomed with laughter from everyone in the mess hall. That meant everyone in the whole camp was laughing at me, drill sergeants, captain, and other staff included.

A man turned around and called out to the others to turn.

"Here be the one and only!"

Everyone laughed while I was being shot on camera.

"Ha ha, very funny," I said while sitting down.

They all teased me for a while, but I mostly ignored them while I ate my chicken. It tasted like plastic, but it was better than a piece of goop that tasted like plastic. After a while their jibs subsided and they went back to their business.

"You'll never hear the end of this you know," said Ramsey as he sat down next to me.

"I am aware thank you very much."

He laughed and ate his own meal.

The captain, who had left a few instants after I came in walked back into the mess hall with a hurried pace.

He went towards the holopad that had been playing my shameful moments from yesterday. I thought he was going to start playing it again, but luckily he pulled out the chelmet chip and tuned the holopad to a inserted another chip.

An ONI officer popped up on the holopad. A very good looking ONI officer at that.

"Captain, I appreciate the intention, but I do not want to watch this with other people around," said one marine from Three.

"Shut up!" yelled Bulldog. The soldier complied.

"It's not porn you idiot," I could hear another man of Three saying.

There was an audible chuckle amongst us recruits.

"This is a message from ONI to HIGHCOM in Australia and Reach," explained the captain.

That made sense, people were a lot more likely to pay attention to a pretty gril giving a debriefing than to any other person. I stopped my mind from wandering off and payed attention to the broadcast.

"As you all know," the blonde officer started, "we are fighting a war against a collective race of aliens that refer to themselves as The Covenant. The war has been fought against them ever since 2525, when the First Battle of Harvest took place. Since the last nine years they have managed to glass most of the Outer Colonies…"

_What?_ We had never heard any of this before.

"…some of which have been abandonded and some of which have seen terrible human casualties, both civlian and military-wise."  
>The proyection of the blonde woman switched to recording of a battle somewhere far away from here.<p>

There were approximately thirty marines, regulars, fighting a small group of ten aliens, there wasn't only one race, but four different ones.

The battle paused momentarily and the camera zoomed in on a smallish alien with some sort of large backpack. It looked slightly pigish and it's skin was gray.

"This is called an Unggoy, that's the name they give themselves, they are colloquialy known as grunts. They serve as the Covenant's cannon fodder. They are physycally weak and are considered cowards, however, in large numbers they can be quite deadly."

The camera panned out as the battle resumed and quickly zoomed in on another alien. This one looked like a bird. It was carrying a purple rifle.

"The Kig-Jar, or jackals, as they are more commonly known are excellent marksmen and often serve as scouts."

The camera switched to another jackal, this one carrying some sort of energy shield in it's right arm.

"They also serve as light infantry roles sometimes," was all the ONI woman said.

The battle went on and suddelnt two marines went flying thanks to a green explosion. The camera followed the trail to a pair of gigantic monsters. They had shields and it looked like their weapons were quirurgically implanted into their bodies.

_Talk about commitment to the cause._

"This are Mgalekgolo," she pronounced it muh-gah-leg-olo, "they are otherwise known as hunters. They serve the role of heavy infantry and are also devastating in close combat."

Her point was made as the hunter jumped forward and slammed a marine at least thirty feet in the air with its shield.

"Their armor is incredibly strong and they are only vulnerable in the unprotected parts of their bodies. It is advised to neutralize them with heavy weaponry."  
>That being said, the hunter was blown up by a SPANKr rocket. While its partner howled in anger it was blown up as well.<p>

The aliens in the battle were now reduced to five.

The camera then zoomed into a tall alien that looked sort of lizardy and quite puny when compared to the hunters, but it didn't make it any less intimidating.

"Finallly, we've got the Shangeili, or Elite. As thier name suggests, they are the most skilled soldiers that the Covenant has. They generally serve as squad commanders and apparently hold most, if not all of the higher ranks within the Covenant military."

While the officer spoke, the elite fired pink rounds from a weapon that looked like the rifle the first jackal had been holding, but with pink spikes protruding from it.

"Elites on the battlefield always sport energy shields that can stop proyectiles. It fired away and his armor seemed to flicker with golden lighting whenever he was hit. After a few seconds of concentrated fire the elite was brought down.

"Elites are incredibly tough and skilled, they should be handled with the utmost care and with extreme prejudice."

The video then went on to describe many of the Covenant's weaponry and vehicles. I was particularly impressed by a pistol that fired pink crystals, whenever to many cristals bunched up together they would explode in a majestic display of fireworks. The result was not pretty. At least that's what the pictures told us.

After rambling for about an hour, the ONI officer finally bid her farewell and the video ended.

"Gentlemen, the video might not say so, but we are fighting a loosing war," stated the captain. His face inescrutable.

"This means your training just got harder."

No one said anything, if anything we snapped at attention and saluted.

"Sir!"

Our training did get harder. We weren't only forced to do live-fire excercises, we were also forced to memorize the names, roles, strong and weakpoints of all aliens in the Covenant. Hell, we even had to take some random tests every now and then. We were still missing a month from our training, and our sqaud numbers were now reduced to about eight men each. I would've said barracks numbers, but we could barely fill them, so no point in wasting ink for the story.

We did different missions for our training, including VIP retrieval and guarding, we did recon, infiltration, sabotage, we practically did almost everything.

Our superiors also saw fit to give us crash courses on pretty much every single vehicle that the UNSC had in posession. We were taught how to drive warthogs, scorpions, rhinos, hornets, pelicans, and my personal favorite, mongooses. Or mongeese, whatever the plural of mongoose is.

In addition to that, we also did some simulations on captured covenant vehicles. There were few of those, so the information provided by the simulators was sketchy at best, still, it was better than nothing.

I was driving away from an "enemy base" when the mongoose me and Jonah were in hit a rock. _Fuck._

"It's gonna slip!" I yelled as I slowed hit the brakes.

It was no good, the ATV tipped sideways and Jonah and I jumped off before it could land on top of us.

Yeah, I was kidding when I said it was my personal favorite.

I jumped up, blood flowing from my unprotected arm and legs. Jonah stood up equally quickly with similar injuries. We pushed the mongoose upright again and Jonah secured the package, which was essentialy a piece of hollow steel.

We drove on as fast as we could. The other team would no doubt be chasing us, and we had no time to spare, since me and Jonah had absolutely no backup.

Who the hell sends a two man team into a heavily fortified base to retrieve a piece of crap? They could've at least made the packaged a box with something intereting inside of it, to motivate us or something.

I still wasn't entirely sure how me and Jonah managed to sneak past thirty other recruits without them noticing us, grabbing a guarded piece of metal and then leaving before anyone knew what was happening. Jonah's timed bombs on the opposite side of the enemy base probably had to do something with our success.

After a five minute drive we made it into our evac point. We were slightly early, so no reason to worry about the pelican not being here.

"Over there," Jonah motioned.

I saw the pelican coming here to pick us up, but all of a sudden our radios crackled to life.

"Oh no, we have been hit. We won't be able to land, we need you to fall back to the following coordinates."

The man speaking had been Skinny, I could clearly make out a completely intact pelican as it flew overhead. Skinny's bad voice acting didn't help in any way to lighten my mood.

I checked the coordinates only to find out they were located all the way back to the enemy base and then some miles further on in the opposite direction. I kicked a rock.

"Wait, look over there," Jonah said, again, having eyes that could see through lead.

I glanced in the direction and saw a plume of dust. I aimed at it with my rifle and zoomed in. It was a single mongoose from the base defenders. Only one guy on top.

I immediately got an idea.

"Here help me tip over the mongoose," I asked Jonah.

A few seconds later we were hidden behind a boulder about fifty meters from our upturned mongoose. The enemy scout arrived and stopped. He stepped down from the vehicle.

_Unforgivable. _I thought.

"Amen to that," agreed Jonah.

I really have to watch my mouth.

I fired a burst at the man and watched as he collapsed. Me and Jonah then pushed the ATV into an upright position and did a two out of three rock-paper-scissors contest.

I won, so it meant that Jonah was to be bait. He gave me the package as he grumbled something about cheating and hopped on the now unoccupied mongoose the stupid soldier from the enemy squad had left.

He drove straight back towards the enemy base while I took a route that would circumvent it.

Three hours later I was on board the pelican with Gabuka and Skinny whooping my ass for sacrificing a fellow squadmate to complete the mission. Apparently he had been splattered with paint by the enemy guys as soon as he approached their base. Despite having suffered a 50% casualty rate, our mission had been accomplished. We had successfully returned our box to command.

Training went on like normal for three weeks. A whole lot more intense than before, but the prize defenitely went to our training jump. The remaining 34 of us had been flown up to the sky to a station designed to provide us with a platform to launch from. We had been on simulations before, but nothing beat the thrill, the fright, and the panic of our first jump. Even combat jumps weren't as intense.

We had been stripped of our weapons and armor, we would be jumping with only fatigues on. I wasn't experienced enough to know if that was a good or bad thing.

While we were in the aisle where the SOEIV pods were located, Captain von Klaus stepped in the room.

We snapped at attention.

"Gentlemen, today is the firs time you will experience the most thrilling ride in all the known universe. Today you are going to become real men!" he started.

"Today, you become ODST's… and how will you do that?" he asked.

"We go feet first, sir!" we answered, reciting the ODST's creed.

We proceeded to occupy our pods. I stood there nervously for a few seconds before I heard a banging on the walls. I banged back twice. The "ready" signal.

I looked up at the pod's countdown system. It went like this: red, yellow, green.

I felt my stomach lurch upwards as the pod was launched from the space station.

I could see Mars very clearly from here. I could also see about a dozen other pods all around me. This part was actually enjoyable, I was in zero gee, which was always a funny situation to be in.

Then it startd getting hotter. Like a lot hotter. While I was there, leaving some very visible wetspots on my clothing, I thought back at the past year of training. I remembered how mean our sergeants had seemed at first, how mean they had remained throughout the year, and how mean they still were.

"Deploy chutes!" yelled an automated alarm system. I pressed the appropiate button. I could see the red landscape of mars coming to me at incredible speed. I felt the pod lurch slightly.

"Deploy rockets," the voice ordered again.

"Gee, you don't have to be such a meanie," I said as I complied.

The pod slowed down considerably and I closed my eyes as it slammed into the ground. I managed to keep myself stable and pressed the button that opened the door, it flew away.

I left my pod and saw that all the other pods had already landed. Marines were out of the SOEIV's high-fiving each other and whooping triumphant war cries, except for one, who was throwing up his lunch.

A few minutes later a pelican appeared overhead.

"Congratulations soldiers, you are now ODST's," said the captain, smiling.

We yelled in triumph.


	7. Graduation

Apolagies to any and all Readers of this fic, as I said, I was on vacation for two weeks with little to no access to the internet. The only time I had some wifi was interrupted by my little sister deiciding she wanted to play Angry Birds. Anyways, here's the new chapter, enjoy.

As always, reviews are appreciated.

* * *

><p><span>Chapter VII: Graduation<span>

**July 7, 2534 (UNSC Calendar)/**

**New Paris, Mars, Sol System**

It was cold. Very cold.

Apparently this region of New Paris had had some sort of crappy guy overseeing the terraforming, so the weather was colder than it should've been.

I was back in the base that I had first landed on when I came to mars. I was standing at attention my new dress uniform. Like the rest of the stuff us ODST's (I was so excited at being able to call myself that) had. Everything was black.

We weren't armed, we were simply standing at ease while the Colonel that was the leader of the 19th Batallion awareded us with this and that crap. It was surprisingly similar to a school graduation. Scratch that, it wasn't.

There were approximately three hundred men standing in the large courtyard. That is without counting the Colonel, his aides, and our trainers.

We had managed to finish our training more or less without physical harm to our bodies. Our minds were another story, but let's not get into that.

I was standing at ease now. The Colonel had inspected every last one of the platoons before us and handing each soldier individually his lapel pins. I knew that not many of us would use them unless on funeral detail, and at that time I felt like I was invincible, like my friends were invincible. We could take on the whole Covenant ground forces for all I cared.

Well, we stood there until the Colonel passed by, at his prescense we immediately snapped to attention. He walked in front of us, nodding at each one of us as he passed each one of us. He looked as bored as I felt excited. He then handed each of us a pin shaped like an SOEIV drop pod. We saluted the Colonel and then went back to standing at ease as he moved onto the next platoon.

By the end of the day, there were seven new platoons adding to the numbers of the 19th Batallion. Ours was the largest, with 32 members.

"Fall OUT!" we were ordered.

We did so and boarded our designated pelican. There we were adressed by Gabuka, who seemed to be the leader of all other trainers.

"I have no idea how you piss-ass excuse for men managed to complete the training program, you should not be marines, you should not be ODSTs, and you certainly shouldn't have the right to have balls!"

_Love you to sarge._

"However, I trained you, and the level of your skill will be directly linked to mine as a trainer. So you will do your goddamned best!"

"YES STAFF SERGEANT."

"That's how I like it."

A few seconds later we landed. Distances become really shot when you're doing Mach 5.

We dismounted the pelican and walked to our respective barracks. There were only five men in mine. It was me, Ramsey, Jonah, Dutch, and the man whose name I kept forgetting, turns out it was Chow.

Us five were the only remnants of the original number of Barracks Two. We were damn proud of that.

"Time for your graduation present!" yelled a familiar voice. I turned around to see that it was the same fat man that thad given us haircuts when we first got here and every couple of months ever since. This time, however, he was not carrying his shaving machine thingy, he was handling a needle with a pistol grip.

We were getting our tatoos.

"Why don't you just use a mold?" asked Dutch.

"Are you a man or not?"

"Fine, jeez, I was just asking," came the answer.

I was first in line, so I sat in the chair after taking off my suit jacket and shirt.

"No running away this time," mumured the fat man. He still remembered me.

It was about fifteen minutes before he was done. This guy was fast, although dozens of years doing this same thing would probably hone his skills. I stood up and cleaned up the blood from my new tatoo. It was up on my right shoulder. I couldn't see it that well, so I went to the bathroom mirror.

I looked at it carefully. In black ink it showed the silhouette of an SOEIV with a flaming skull in its middle. Said skull was missing its lower jaw and had a mean look to it. Underneath the skull was a ribbon with the letters ODST inscribed into it.

I stared at it for a while until I wasn't able to resist temptation. I flexed my arm.

"Now what girl would be able to resist you right now?" I asked myself.

"Anyone who knew how screwed up you are up there," said Jonah, standing a the door of the bathrooms.

I laughed.

"You be jealous man, you wish you were as good looking as I am," I said while chuckling.

"Yeah, that way I'd stop being harassed by attractive women every place I went to," was his retort.

"Keep telling yourself that bud," I said, still smiling.

Jonah simply shook his head and left for his new tat. I looked at myself detainedly. My body was probably looking the best it had ever looked, although it certainly didn't feel like it. The last year had been quite exhausting. I sighed, this time with relief at training being over, although somewhere in my mind I knew it was bound to get worse. It was no secret now that the war that we were fighting wasn't one we had a chance of winning right away. We needed luck, or a whole lot of firepower. Lately, both those things seemed to be running out for humanity.

I was actually surprised that we weren't only getting our tatoos for presents (well, technically speaking tatoos don't really make much of a gift, unless you are into needles and stuff), our next "gifts" were much more better than our precious ones. Next up in our series of graduation presents was protection. Well, actually it was our armor, but I felt like doing a double entendre.

They came up in plain-looking suitcases. Each one of us was handed our individual suitcase by Skinny and Bulldog themselves. I opened mine. Cleanly laid out was the ODST Battle Armor. It looked shiny, clean, new, the mean-looking helmet design, the large shoulder guards and equally oversized chest piece. We even got spare boots and a new armored rucksack. Truth be told it looked lame, no scratches or anything to brag about. Granted, we were as green as that armor, metaphorically, but my point still holds.

It even had my blood type and some additional medical information on the left pauldron.

It had my last name written in white ink on that same shoulder guard as well. The armor also sported the UNSC insignia on the left side of chest protector and the letters UNSC on the underside of the central part of the chest protector.

"Just because I am feeling nice to you, I will paint paint your armor for you today. I don't usually do this, but you are one of the goddamned finest group of recruits I have ever seen. No matter what the sergeant says."

I was surprised, it was the first time in months that someone had offered me a favor other than passing me Jonah's datapad.

Regulations only allowed for the afromentioned chest protector, parts of the shoulder guards, and the stripe running down the middle of the helmet to be pained. I chose a dark crimson red for this and the hairdresser/tatoo artist complied. A few minutes later the armor was painted. The large man finished by spray painting back on the UNSC insignia and acronym into their former positions. He did the same for the rest of my fellow squad members. They each chose their own colors.

The man stood up and we thanked him. He grumbled something and left, dragging his chair and equipment behind him.

I went to bed that night with the heavy smell of paint lingering in the air.

"Only one last thing before we ship out people," called out Ramsey.

I nodded, wondering what the med check would be like.

Next morning my questions were answered. It was quite nice, at least for me. There was this nice nurse injecting me to guard my immune system against any known otherworldy diseases. Quite literally, since I was going to be deployed to other planets. We were also being injected with several performance enhancing drugs, they would make our muscles denser, our bones stronger, and our reflexes faster. Not by that much really, any further augmentations would've proved fatal to our bodies. My designated nurse was quite good looking compared to the other nurses, in fact, she was quite good looking compared to a lot of people. She was blonde and very… vuluptuous. Yes, I am talking about her large breasts.

"Any side effects to this?" I asked right after she was done injecting some thick black fluid into both my arms and legs.

"Erectile disfunction," she answered, totally deadpan.

"But doesn't this make my muscles bigger and stronger?" I questioned her, doing my best interpretation of an innocent voice.

She paused for a moment to think of a clever comeback to my own clever comeback. "Nope, I've got nothing," she said as she brandished an unaturally large needle, "you're actually the first one to not freak out over that."

I smiled at myself.

"Now if you just stay still," she asked while she drove that needle deep into my body.

After she had given me the last injection she patted my behind. I would've been flattered had the last injection not consisted of a massive needle being stuck deep into my rear. The patting she gave me didn't really help ease out the pain.

"You can look but not touch," I said while I limped away.

She smiled. "Remember to eat healthily for the next couple of weeks, that way the enhancements should work better," she warned as I left.

_Yeah right, like I'll have the chance to eat healthily in cryo._

I met with Ramsey limping in a similar way. He took a single glance at the nurse that had done my medical stuff and his facial expression went from in pain to annoyed.

"How come you get the vuluptuous one?" he asked.

"Who the hell says vuluptuous?" I shot back. I know I'm a hypocrite, but most of you are too, so you really are in no place to judge.

Ramsey realized my point was a valid one, at least that's what he thought, before he rephrased his sentence.

"How come you get the really attractive one?"  
>"She petitioned to service me," I said, this time phrasing my sentence carefully.<p>

Ramsey rolled his eyes.

"See what I did there?" I asked him.

"Don't. Don't explain the joke," he said, "please."

I simply laughed again and watched Dutch, Chow, and Jonah walk out from another room, their hands covering their butts.

"I think I'd rather run the ditch in thirty than go through that again," said Dutch.

"I'd go in my room again," I said simply.

Ramsey slapped me in the back of the head.

We were interrupted by the sound of someone clearing their throat. We looked up to see the captain. That man was everywhere. He was carying a small box and Gabuka was flanking him.

"You five are the last men that are missing this," he said as he opened the box. Inside that box there were dogtags. They weren't really used to identify bodies anymore, but they still were a symbol that was used to represent soldiers.

I took mine, looked at the numbers in it and clutched them in my hand. Us five snapped at attention as soon as von Klaus was finished.

We must've looked pathetic in our hospital gowns, but every one of us was more proud of ourselves than we had ever been.

For the first time since arriving at Mars, I felt like a real soldier.


	8. UNSC Count Me In

Chapter VIII: UNSC _Count Me In_

**July 30, 2534 (UNSC Calendar)/**

**Interstellar Space (Slipspace)**

The gigantic monkey-rhino hybrid stood over me, it was riddled with bullet holes but was apparently unaffected by them. I glanced at my rifle, the ammunition counter telling me it was empty. I pulled out my pistol to try and shoot the brute, but it promptly stepped on my hand, totally crushing it. Strangely, there was no pain, it was probably because all my nereves were completely destroyed or something like that.

The alien roared at me, spit flying from his mouth and hitting my visor. Before I had time think of how disgusting it was, I was staring at two spikes protruding from my chest. They were stll bright. I glanced at the brute and was almost surprised to see that it had a somewhat bored look on its hideous face.

I stared back at the spikes and was surprised to find out they weren't hurting either, in fact they just felt a little warm.

"Did you just call my face hideous?" asked me the brute in a pleasant voice.

"Whaaa?" was all I could say before I was slapped.

I opened my eyes.

I was in the cryo bay of the UNSC _Count Me In_. It was the ship that my five man fireteam had been assigned to along with another five man unit from barracks five. We conformed one of the two ODST squads stationed on the cruiser. Squad A and squad B. Guys in here had no imagination when it came to naming things. Other than the awesome name of the ship of course.

The slap on my face still hurt.

"What the hell?" I shouted, half in surprise and half in fright.

As my eyes adjusted to the light of the room I threw up. The lime-tasting fluid that was meant to keep the cells in my lungs from freezing was splattered on the floor of the alleyway.

"Why the hell did.." I was interrupted by my body as it threw out the rest of the mucus still down my throat.

"Why the hell did you open the tube before you woke me up?" I cried out.

This was the first time I had the chance to take a good look at the person in front of me. She was a navy tech by the looks of it. A rookie navy tech.

She blushed. It probably also explained why she had slapped me when I had been mumbling stuff about the brute's hideous face. Normally you forgot every single dream you had while in cryo, but I was in the process of having a dream when I was woken up, so the rule didn't really apply.

I shook my head and put my hand to my cheek, right now there was probably a palm shaped bruise forming up there.

"I'm sorry I slapped you," the navy tech said sheepishly.

I simply gurnted as I stepped out of the pod, careful not to step on the chunky bits of the anti-freeze fluid. I then stretched my arms and yawned. At that very moment I realized that I was naked.

This time it was my turn to blush. The fact that the tech, Wickett her nametag said, was looking as awkward as I felt didn't help ease up the situation. Also adding to the uncomfortable situation was the fact that no one else was in the cryo bay. It was just me and Wickett.

"Umm, thank you," I said.

The navy tech simply nodded and left the room. She didn't run away, but she was moving a lot faster than should've been necessary.

I shook my head at the situation. I was annoyed.

I reached to the side of the cryotube and opened the drawer where my clothes had been located. After puting on the regular attire that I had used for the past year for training I thought to myself that I needed new clothes. The cargo pants were worn and even broken in some points, the shirt looked better, but only because it was completely black and couldn't get dirty that easily. My boots were another story, the leather was completely worn, and broken. The laces were due to a date with the closest trash can and the soles were almost completely worn.

I left the room and followed the colored arrows that helpfully pointed me out to the direction of the mess hall.

After what seemed like hours of walking through empty metal hallways I finally heard human voices. Most weren't familiar, but I could make out Ramsey's and Dutch's voice. I was surprised I couldn't hear Jonah, and Chow never spoke, so no worries regarding him.

I entered the mess hall to see that it was filled with regular marines, most looking like veterans. There were some navy personell in there as well, and of course, my squad. I walked towards them.

"Hey!" called out Dutch, "how was it sleeping beauty?"

I simply sat down and stole one of his buns.

He didn't mind since he didn't start a brawl so I proceeded to eat the first solid piece of food in the last two weeks since I had been in cryo.

"Are we there yet?" I asked.

"Nah, we're still gonna be a couple of days before we arrive in Secundus," answered Jonah from behind me.

Our destroyer had been dispatched along with two other such vessels to the Neutron Secunda system to reinforme their defences. There weren't any covies there yet, but that was probably bound to change sooner or later, probably sooner.

I ate some of Jonah's lunch before we left and headed to our sleeping quarters. On the way there Ramsey spoke up.

"Just out of curiosity, who dragged you out of the freezer?" he asked.

"Why do you want to know?"  
>"Well, if you had paid attention to my question you would've noticed that the first part of said sentence started with the words 'just out of curiosity' which means that there really is no reason for me to ask other than curiosity."<p>

I was dumbfounded, I had no idea Ramesy could speak in such eloquent sentences. Luckily for me, Jonah came to my aid.

"Nice wording, did you think that up over the last few hours?"

We all laughed, save Ramsey, who punched Jonah's arm pretty damn hard so Jonah stopped laughing soon after.

"Well, to answer your question Ramsey, I was woken up by a navy tech whose last name was Wickett," I said, still laughing a little.

"What? The cute chick with the light brown hair and pretty decent body you say?" I was surprised to hear Chow talking. I was also surprised by the tone of his question.

"Yes…" I said, confused. He was givinig a rather accurate description Ensign Wickett.

Ramsey cursed and handed Chow a UNSC coupon worth about 500 credits, it was either that or 5000 credits, but I doubt that Ramsey would've ever put so much money on the line.

Chow smirked as he pocketted the coupon and then turned right. There was a long aisle with doors on either side. It looked like a regular hotel floor only that with unflattering metal floors, walls, and ceiling. We walked for about a hunded meters before we reached our room, this just helped give me a sense of the massive size of the warship.

The door slid open as soon as Ramsey stepped in front of it. I glance into my new room and was amazed. Everything looked so nice. Well, compared to the ratty bedsheets and missing pillows from Camp Mars IX, we were in a five star hotel. Granted, it was tighter than the barracks, but the matresses were more comfortable, I can vouch for that. There was even a shower and a toilet inside. This was all very weird for me, not really used to the luxuries of being deployed.

In addition to all that there was a weapons locker where our armors and personal weapons were kept in. Most marines weren't allowed to have their main weapon with them while not in combat situation, so they had to pick their rifles from the armory. They really didn't seem to care though, as half the marines I saw in the mess hall were sporting assault rifles slung to their backs. Can't really say I blamed them.

I grabbed my armor and checked its condition, it looked fine, so I put it back. Next up I pulled out my BR55, I thoroughly cleaned it and then proceeded to load the magazines with the deadly 9.5mm ammunition that the rifle sported. I loaded a magazine into the slot designed for that and put the safety on, then I placed my BR under my bunk. I repeated the process with my pistol while my roomates went to sleep. My internal clock told me it was mid-morning, but I was probably wrong. My roomates didn't have such a high chance of being right in this either, since their biological clock was probably as messed up as mine.

As I finished cleaning my pistol and loading its magazines I leaned back on my bed. I stared at the metal sheet holding up the next bunk, it was sort of tradition to do that for a few moments, thinking back to the events of the day. This day had been a short one, but all of a sudden I realized something didn't fit.

"Ramsey, how come I wasn't woken up at the same time you guys were?" I asked him while I kicked his bunk.

"I dunno, something about problems with the circuits and whatnot of your cryo pod," he half mumbled back.

_Great, I could've been frozen for a millenium for all I know._

I went to sleep and had a lot of dreams involving freezers and people from a very advanced future. Being trapped in a cristal cylinder was also a recurring occurance that night.

I woke up around six hours later, having had a pretty good night's sleep. I noticed that most my squadmates were still sleeping, trying to be the nice guy I didn't make noise while getting out of my motherfucking ODST jammies. I got dressed up and shaved my scarce beard. I looked at a map of the ship that was on one of the walls in my room.

I decided to go to the gym. There wasn't anything else to do before the mess hall opened in a couple of hours, so I decided to do some cardio.

I know what you're thinking, "Why would you run when you've been doing marathons every day for the past year?" Well, it's none of your business, although it is probably because it had become some sort of routine in my life.

I made sure to holster my pistol and strap my knife to the outside of my boot before I left. I was surprised my knife had made it through the countless inspections that had claimed more than one pack of cigarettes. It's weight felt reassuring, although odd, since I had never kept it there.

I walked through the empty hallways, they were cold and I felt a little heavier than ususal, it was probably because the gravity in the _Count Me In _was adjusted to mimic Earth's which was slightly stronger than Mars'.

I arrived into the gym, unsurprisingly it was empty. I got into one of the treadmills and grabbed a towel. I set the speed for a comfortable jog, or about 10 miles per hour. I set the timer to two hours and put on my headphones. I closed my eyes and started running. I forgot about everything for a while, I simply ran while I listened to some crazy epic music.

I opened my eyes to check the counter on the treadmill and was pleasantly surprised that I had only half a kilometer left to run. I also checked the name of a song I particularly liked. It was an oldie from the 21st century. Racketeers, it was called. It was the kind of song that would play in that part of the movie when the hero convinces everyone that they can still fight and make a difference. Cut to montage of people arming themselves up.

The author of the song was some group called Two Steps From Hell. How appropiate it seemed at the time. Us ODSTs are always two stops away from hell. It sounded like something you would say to sound badass. Then it would become humanity as a whole the one that was two steps from hell. It didn't sound quite so badass when you put it that way. For all I knew humanity was already that close to extinction. ONI and the ODST corps weren't particularly known for their honesty.

"You say something?" someone asked.

I cursed myself for not being able to make my mouth stay closed, even when I was alone, which unfortunately wasn't the case right now.

"Ignore that, I was thinking I loud," I said to the only other person in the gym, which incidentally happened to be the cute chick with the light brown hair and pretty decent body that had dragged me out of the freezer, to quote Chow.

She only mumbled something that sounded dangerously close to: "You should really keep your mouth shut, or else you might call someone's face hideous."

Truth be told, she didn't mumble it, she said it quite loudly and to my face.

"Hey, I'm sorry, I was having a nightmare," I explained, "and you slapped me."

"I said I was sorry," she said.

"Well so did I."

Que to awkward silence.

After fice seconds of said awkwardness I spoke up.

"I never did catch your name," I asked.

"Ensign Wickett,"she answered.

"No, I know that, it was on your nametag."

"Why do you wan't to know my name?" she snapped.

"You don't have to tell me your name if you don't want to then," I said, trying to sound hurt.

She didn't say anything else and I glanced at the display in the treadmill, it told me that there were only two hundred meters left in my mini-workout. I really wanted to get her name.

"I'm Francisco by the way," I said in a last ditch effort.

She sighed "Layla, my name is Layla," she said.

_Layla, that's a nice name._

"Thanks," she sounded surprised.

For once I thanked my brain/mouth's lack of self control. At that moment the treadmill finished the ten click run. I jumped off as it slowed down to a stop. I wasn't sweating, which was surprising, I probably had to thank that nurse for the muscle enhancer thingys.

"Where are you going?" she asked as I turned to leave.

"I can stay if you want to," I said jokingly.

She just shook her head and actually smiled.

"See you around Layla," I said as I walked out.

_Boom! She's yours man! _I thought to myself, careful not to say anything. I also made sure I had walked far enough away from the gym in case I failed in keeping myself in check.

_I really need to see a shrink about this._

I went back to my room and took a shower, by the time I was done, the rest of my squadmates had awoken and were ready for breakfast.

"Never took you for a morning person Frankie," noted Ramsey.

"And I never took you for a man, but what do you know, there really is something down there after all," I said. Ramsey was naked so that he could take a shower, no one really minded, after all, we had taken speed showers back in Camp Mars many times before.

Ramsey started towards me.

"Woah woah, do you really want to wrestle me while your naked?" I asked, making a face.

"You make a fine point," he acknowledged "if it wasn't for that mouth of yours, someone would've whipped your ass a long time ago."  
>"I believe the correct term is 'whooped,'" I noted.<p>

Ramsey went apeshit.

Soon I was slammed against my bunk and being punched in the kidneys. Now Ramsey was slightly shorter than me, but he was a quite a lot bulkier. He was the kind of guy that could've made for a mob enforcer.

"God Ramsey, I only think of you as a friend!" I yelled through the pain and laughter. The rest of my squadmates were now laughing as well and cheering on either of us. "Show him who's the man in the relationship!" called ot Jonah.

"Talk dirty to him Frank!" yelled Dutch.

_We really need to get some girls._

All of a sudden the door slid open to reveal a confused-looking marine sergeant.

"I heard a commotion," explained the sergeant. "Now, would you explain to me what the hell is going on!"

We stood at attention.

"Well, you see, Ramsey here was teaching Frank what being a real woman is like," said Dutch. Everyone snickered except me.

"Is that a proper way to adress a superior officer?" asked the sarge, his voice now dangerous.

"No sir, I'm sorry sir!" apolagized Dutch.

"That's what I though." As he turned to leave he looked back. "For chrissake, put something on."

Ramsey's face went as red as heated metal. We all roared with laughter as he entered the small shower.

I waited outside, chatting with my fellow squadmates while they each took turns showering. After five minutes we were done. A year under Staff Sergeant Gabuka can really teach you how to make water last. Not that it really mattered, with the ship's water recyclers, but it was a habit by now.

Us five left together to the mess hall, Chow stopped at the ship's store to exchange his coupon for smaller ones. He bought himself a candy bar as well. Ramsey seemed ready to explode.

We arrived at the mess hall and I was unsurprised to be served the same goop that we were served back in Mars. At least we got some bread and apples. We sat next to the other five ODST's in our squad. They were all from our same camp, only different barracks. Their names were Sergeant Banks, our squad leader, PFC Noxon, we all called him ox, PFC Sunga, PFC Jäger, a former marine, and Private Nejem, he only barely made it to selection.

On out side Ramsey, Chow, and Dutch were all PFC's, Jonah had made it into Corporal and I was a Lance Corporal myself, thanks to my outstanding performance in boot camp. Or so I liked to say to myself.

Sergeant Banks would obviously be the squad leader. He was the only one here that had ever seen combat against the Covenant he fought against covies for the last couple of months of the Harvest Campaign, he was hitting his forties, but he was still in tiptop shape. Ox, was as his nickname suggested, a human Ox, he would be in charge of our SPANKr and explosives. The rest of them were regular riflemen, being issued MA37's. On our five man band, we had three regular riflemen, myself as a marksman, and Jonah as our medic.

We made quite the sight in the quiet mess hall, ten loud marines joking around and being, well, loud.

"Well that's one hot BAM," murmured Sunga as a female marine walked past our table. He made a point to stare at her rear every possible moment. BAM meant "Broad Assed Marine" and it looked like this BAM in particular knew the meaning of the acronym very well. A moment later Sunga was on the floor and received a kick in the ribs by the woman. We all laughed, no one helped him up.

"Well, if you excuse us, we have to leave now,"said Banks, "We have to meet up with a man about a job."

He laughed at his own lame joke. Banks wasn't really sergeant material, at least not yet, but since our unit wasn't mixed up with more experienced veterans, he was the best we had.

The rest of the five men from his barracks left and mock saluted us. Sometimes I wondered how they had made it through selection. I wondered that about myself too, so it wasn't personal.

Soon after Chow left with Dutch. I stayed there, chatting with Jonah and Ramsey when I saw Layla, or Ensign Wickett on the other side of the hall. I waved at her. She waved back ans smiled. She quickly caught herself, but it was to late, a friend of hers was already calling her on it. My friends were too.

"Well, when you get someone from the opposite sex to wave at you, you can repeat all the crap you just said."

Ramsey and Jonah promptly shut up.

I stood up and left.

My day had just started and already I had nothing to do. I walked around the ship, memorized it's hallways and important rooms. There really wasn't much to do. Ultimately I decided to return to the gym. There was some sort of betting going on. There were a couple of men up in the ring sparring with each other. They were wearing padded gloves, no helmets though.

I decided to join, lost a couple of bets and then took part in a match, which I won. Unfortunately a participant wasn't allowed to bet, so I ended up loosing money.

Then I had lunch, by myself, I hadn't seen any of my teammates since I left the table. I sighed , must've looked pathetic. I quickly finished my meal and went back to my room.

There I lay on my bed, my mind going from place to place. I finally decided that it was best to spend the rest of the day in the shooring range near the bottom decks of the ship.

The shooting range was only fifty meters deep, it was covered on all sides by Titanium A Armor. I think regular plating would've done the trick, but someone in the design table didn't think that way.

I picked a target and started shooting. There were only a couple of other soldiers in there, so I didn't have to worry about hitting someone else's target. Not that it mattered, I was a crackshot with both the BR55 and the M6.

I burned through a clip for my BR55 and decided it was to easy. I switched back to my pistol.

I shot at my target for a couple of hours. I was getting bored, and shooting practice started to look more like load-your-pistol-as-fast-as-possible practice.

As I was about to leave, I saw out the corner of my eyes another person join the practice. I smiled when I saw it was Layla. She was carrying an M6C, which was basically a downgraded version of my M6G without the camera-scope.

She placed herself two targets away from me.

"Hello there," I greeted her.

"Hi," she answered, not smiling. Her friends probably gave her a lot of grief about me waving at her. That or she had something against me. The first one was more likely. I decided to stay a little longer, I had already fired upwards of five hundred rounds, so I'd have to leave soon before they started charging me the bullets. The _Count Me In_ had a small factory that could use the slugs from the firing range and the used casings to make new bullets, I'm not sure where it got the gunpowder from, but I wasn't about to complain.

I glanced at Layla as she shot at her target. She wasn't actually that bad, and by not that bad, I mean she sucked so bad I was surprised all her shots actually managed to hit the paper target, and only then because it was shaped like a live-sized elite. I had to resist the urge not to laugh. Another marine wasn't as nice and got a glare from Layla hot enough to melt through the plating surrounding the firing range. He stopped laughing immediately, but he was still smiling and shaking his head to himself.

I decided it was to sad to see her doing this and decided to interceed.

"You're anticipating the recoil," I noted.

"What?" she asked, slightly annoyed.

"Well, right before you fire you pull the pistol up, instead of letting the pistol itself do that for you."

"No I'm not," she sounded incredulous.

I fired the last round from my pistol straight into the center of my target, mostly to showoff.

"Yes you are."

She was now facing me, hands on her hips. She looked very attractive that way. I always wandered what she was doing here, she could've been a model, not a supermodel, but one of those girl-next-door types that often appear on billboards for GAP and Old Navy stores.

"The gun won't hurt you," I said, "it's designed to protect you, just hold it tight and try not to move your wirsts while you shoot."  
>She shook her head but took my advice. She fired a round, which hit the elite's right eye. Her arms flew upwards.<p>

"Ok, don't keep your wrists so stiff, just try to absorb the recoil with both your wrists and elbows." _Or something._ I almost added. Teaching wasn't really my thing.

This time she simply nodded and fired a whole magazine. It wasn't amazing marksmanship by a longshot, but she managed to place all of her shots inside the elite's chest.

She seemed surprised.

"Thanks," she said. At least she had the decency to admit that my advice had helped her.

"Hey, don't mention it," I said as I slung my rifle over my back and holstered my pistol. "I'll see you around," I told her, for the second time in the day.

I yawned and stared at a clock. It was already 9:00 PM, Earth time. I had been awake for sixteen hours.

I walked to my room, only stopping to observe a model of the ship I was currently in. It basically looked like a frigate with extra plating everywhere. It also had two large armor plates that joined on the top from the mid-section of the ship and converged on the front, forming some sort of tip.

There was a small plaque besides it that read:

UNSC _Count Me In_

_Viper-_class destroyer

Launched: December 1st, 2514

Reyes-Mclee's Shipyards

Mars, Sol System

Nothing interesting there, so I walked back to my room, as the door lid open, I realized that all my friends were already sleeping, smart of them.

I undressed and simply jumped into bed. Within seconds I was out cold.


	9. Naked

Chapter IX: Naked

**July 11, 2534 (UNSC Calendar)/**

**Outer Neutron Secunda**

I woke up to the least pleasant sound someone can wake up to. Alarms. Not regular alarms from an alarm clock, but full-on fucking loud alarms from every corner of the ship.

"What is going on?" I yelled as I jumped from my bunk, rifle already in hand. At that precise moment the door slid open to reveal Sergeant Banks standing there, fully armored, helmet under his hand.

"As soon as we left slipspace a few hours ago, the sensors detected a dozen Covenant ships already in the system. We are racing for orbit so that we can be dropped off, as well as the regulars," he explained in a calm voice.

We simply nodded and started suiting up. I hadn't finished putting on the armored boots before there was an explosion. I could only stare in shock as the sergeant was engulfed by a ball of flames right outside of our room.

I was standing there like an idiot before the alarms changed. They went from battle-stations alarms to abandon ship right fucking now alarms. Those I had memorized. I reached for the kevlar vest that went under the chest and abdomen armor before I was thrown to the floor by the ship rocking.

"Ship's don't rock!" complained Ramsey.

_Something must've hit the gravity generators or whatever._

"Something must've hit the gravity generators or whatever," I repeated for the others' benefit.

That was bad. Ships rarely get hit in the gravity generators. They are usually placed deep within the ship.

"Ok, I'm getting the fuck out of here!" called out Dutch.

Those were my thoughts exactly at the time. I grabbed my rifle, slung it over my shoulder, my pistol was already holstered to my pants, and my shirt was halfway down, so I was technically good to go.

I pushed my shirt all the way down as I did the belt on my pants and made sure my knife was still strapped on to my boot. By the time I confirmed all of those situations were under controll, I was already halfway through the living quarters area.

I am not a fast runner, or a speed runner, whatever you like to call it. I have never been and I am pretty sure I never will be. But at that time, with the ship skewed sideways, marines and Navy personel yelling everywhere, and small explosions all over the ship, I ran faster than an Olympic record holder.

All of a sudden, the ship tilted further sideways. Everyone with me fell down. I jumped back up and was now running with one foot on the wall and one on the floor. It probably made for a very awkward sight, but everyone else was doing it, besides, they were to busy to care.

A few seconds later the ship was tilted back to normal, well, almost normal. Kudos to the pilot or captain. The small amount of happiness that that had brought to me was quickly gane with the arrival of several explosions along the walls in front of me.

"What the hell is this ship even made of?" complained Chow. "Everything is flamable or what?"

I would've laughed had I not already been sprinting towards the stairs that led down into the SOEIVs. I wasn't about to use the elevator right now. It's not like I had the time either. I jumped down an entire flight of stairs and slammed against the wall, I shrugged it off and did exactly the same thing on the next flight of stairs. This time it hurt more.

Before I could even turn around, there was an enormous explosion that shook the ship, shook, not rocked. The abandon-ship alarms were soon accompanied by a pleasant voice informing us that the hull had been breached.

"Fucking great," I shouted out to whoever was listening.

I finally arrived to the drop room after what seemed like hours, but the real time was probably closer to a minute and a half.

"Jonah, you with me?" I called out to my best friend.

"Right behind you man!" he shot back.

I didn't call out for anyone else in my squad, that would be pushing my luck. I wasn't ready for them not calling back.

I jumped into my pod, the second to last one. I closed the door and was able to glimpse Jonah runing towards his. The SOIVs were usually dropped off by a Navy tech after he had made sure everything was fine, he or she would press the launch button and then all pods would drop off at once. Luckily, some genius had decided to put an emergency button in there, so that pods could be used as emergency escape vehicles.

I must've pressed mine a couple of hundred times. I couldn't help but wait as the blast doors below the launch room slowly opened. As soon as there was enough space for my pod to go through without hitting anything, it was propelled towards the planet, well, it was a moon technically.

My pod moved at what seemed like the slowest pace possible. I knew I was doing at least some clicks per second, but it didn't help calm my nerves. The fact that I passed a covvie CCS-class Battlecruiser at what seemed like inches from its portside wasn't really good for my psyche either. I stared in hopeless shock as I passed the massive vehicle. Luckily, they either thought I was simply a piece of debris, or decided I wasn't worth it, anyways, I am thankful.

My pod then started shaking, I was entering the atmosphere. It shooked harder and harder until it was stabilized. I kept an eye on the altimeter at all times, ocassionally watching some debris fall a couple of kilometers away from me. I deployed my chute and rockets at their respective altitudes and closed my eyes before I landed hard. All in all, a pretty regular orbital drop. I depolarized the window on my pod before opening the door. I used the "drop door" button, not the "blast door into oblivion" button. My door complied, and it simply fell forward. I raised my rifle scanning the area in front of me. There was a lot of debris, probably courtesy of my pod, I was encase by four walls, and a ceiling with a hole in it. I looked through the hole to realize that my pod had gone through five full floors. I couldn't help but smile a little. Then the floor fell from underneath me. I fell a full eight feet and landed on concrete. I stood up, relatively unaharmed and jumped sideways just as the floor under my pod gave out as well. I looked around, the light was hitting this building in a strange way, with multiple shadows and streaks of light here and there.

I walked slowly towards the windows and looked out.

"Great, this is just great," I said to myself.

Of all the places in Eden I could've landed on, I hit the top of the tallest building in the largest city with the heaviest Covenant prescence. Granted, the _Count Me In _was in orbit above the city of Jotunheim, but managing to hit a mile tall skyscraper straight on the top was a full on miracle. I looked outside the holes my pod had made and confirmed that it was only five floors deep, six now.

I sighed, this was going to be tiresome. The fact that no other human from the ship was within sight was also quite unnerving.

I sighed again and rolled my pod upright. I jumped in and grabbed all the equipment I could carry. I had no armor, but the armored rucksack was there, I filled it with the food rations inside my pod and slung a bandolier over my shoulder. I had six mags of thirty-six rounds each for my battle rifle and three twelve-round magazines for my pistol. It could've been worse, but not by much. I grabbed my rucksack and started the long descent.

Forty floors later I realized that the building was not that tall, in fact it was simply placed upon a hill overlooking the city. A tall hill. I left the lobby and walked outside. I looked over the city and was surprised to see that it was mostly intact. Then I heard an explosion to my back. I rolled my eyes and ran to the other side of the building.

I overlooked the city from a different vantage point.

It looked like hell. The sky was red with the flames of the burning city, there was a Covenant carrier in the distance, I could make out a couple of gravity lifts reaching out to the floor. In addition to the large Covenant battleship, there were several other enemy aircraft. There were banshees here and there, a couple of phantoms over there, and of course, seraphs stafing some point or other of the city. I looked at the enemy aircraft through my scope, while I was doing this I also noticed pelicans departing from the northern edge of the city, located to my front and left. I kept doing this for a couple of minutes before deciding to head down to the area where the pelicans were landing and departing. I used my range finder on my rifle to measure out the distance, but since I had no helmet on, I couldn't figure it out. Now that was genius, placing a range finder that only works whenever you're wearing a helmet.

I cursed at the guy who had thought of that before I decided it was around four kilometers to my destination, so I set off. No armor, no backup, no radio, no friends, I was alone.

* * *

><p>I jumped over a wrecked car, there was a covenant patrol right around the corner. An elite minor and three grunts. I might've been able to ambush them and take them out quickly, but since I was out of grenades and only had one flashbang, I thought it better to wait until they went by. Oh surprise, they came straight towards me. I looked under the car, they were about twenty yards away, prime distance, I wasn't exactly on a wonderful location to ambush them, but it was now or never.<p>

"Wort?" was all the elite could say before I emptied half my clip into its chest. Since it was a minor, its shields weren't all that strong, so it collapsed, half its chest a bloody mess. I quickly changed the setting to single fire before dispatching the grunts with three well placed shots.

_Kind of anti-climactic, _I thought to myself.

All of a sudden it started raining. The sky seemed to be emptying all its reserves, there was water everywhere, and on top of it all, I wasn't wearing my comfy armor.

I went inside a building with its walls blown up before taking a seat. Now, the fact that the patrol I had just taken out was so surprised to see me told me one thing. They were with their guard down, even the elite. That assumption told me another more worrisome thing. If they were so relaxed, even the warrior elite, it probably meant that they had reason to be.

I was behind enemy lines all by myself.

I placed my head between my hands, thinking. The rainstorm outside would somehow help me sneak around, the light from the fires wouldn't do the same, but at least they would burn out eventually if the rain kept going. I climbed a couple of floors to get a better view of my surroundings. On the second floor I found a nice-looking jacket, it was sort of like those skiing jackets, only thiner, I'm not entirely sure what you can call them. Look, all you need to know is that it was black and looked good.

Anyways, I looked out the street and was surprised to see muzzle flashes far away. I looked through my scope and could just barely make out a group of marines through the rain, they were holding out against covvies from a downed pelican. I watched in morbid fascination. The skirmish seemed to be an even battle until there was a white flash of light that consumed two marines. I watched in horror as a wraith tank slowly advanced towards the pelican, its coaxial machineguns making short work of any marines that had left their cover. I noticed a flash and then an explosion hit the wraith tank. Its anti-grav thrusters failed and it fell to the floor, another rocket quickly blew it up. Their victory was short lived, as seconds later a banshee patrol carpeted the area with their fuel rods, reducing the surviving marines to charred meat.

I stared, there was nothing I could've done and yet a I felt guilty about not doing anything. My thoughts were distracted by the sound of groaning metal. I rushed back to the window and stared in shock at the burned hull of the UNSC _Count Me In_ streaking through the sky. It had only been around an hour since I left in my pod, but I was surprised the Navy guys had managed to keep it flying for that long. When I was escaping it seemed like the ship was about to collapse in that same moment.

The ship flew across the city and landed a short distance from the Covenant carrier across the city. It was certain to have splattered some aliens, I just hoped they didn't hit any humans.

I watched as the enemy soldiers that had just defeated the marines near the pelican made their way towards the crash site. I was knocked back by banshees streaking past my window. I dropped to the floor and waited a minute to confirm everything was safe.

The covvies seemed to be moving away from the human stronghold, or whatever it was. This was my chance. I left the building, now further armed with a jacket. Not having taken two steps from the front door, I sprinted back to the second floor. I entered a bathroom and promptly emptied my bowels, who knew when I would have another chance.

Now feeling a lot lighter, I left the building, this time for good. I started jogging in the general direction of the pelicans I had seen. I had gone four blocks, dodging one covenant patrol and waiting out another one before I made it to my destination, safe and sound.

A round ricocheted of my feet. I automatically raised my rifle in the direction I had been shot from.

"Identify yourself!" a voice called out.

I moved my rifle closer to the drection of the voice.

"I'm human, isn't that enough?" I answered.

Nothing happened for a couple of seconds, then I saw a man's head peeking outside from the corner the building at the edge of the block. He motioned for me to join him. I proceeded to do so before the ground next to me was shot at, this time with plasma fire. I turned around and saw a group of three elites and at least a dozen grunts and jackals not a hundred yards behind me. I started sprinting, sigzagging every couple of meters. I made it to the edge of the building and a marine pulled me into cover as plasma burned the air that was filling the position I was in a moment ago. The marine grabbed a sniper rifle and sprinted across to the other side of the street before I could even thank him.

I decided to return the favor and provided some covering fire. I softened up an elite before a sniper round tore through its shoulder. I switched my target and seconds later another round hit it square in the chest. I looked at the marine and he nodded at me. I fired the rest of my ammo into the last elite, a major, before a sniper round hit its neck. I reloaded and the other marine switched to an MA5. No sense in wasting sniper ammunition on grunts. I fired at the disorganized grunts, every few seconds I would have to take cover again before a plasma round burned my face off. Within a couple of minutes the covenant force was reduced to nothing, they really aren't that fearsome without the elites leading them.

I wasn't about to believe myself immortal, but a couple more of this non-fights, and I would very much be on my way to think I was.

"Ok, cover me," yelled the marine from the other side of the street.

I popped out and he ran over to my position. No one shot at him.

"Thanks," I said.

"Hey, don't mention it."  
>He was a bit older than me by the looks of him, probably been in this battle since it started, however long ago that was.<p>

"Follow me," he ordered.

I complied and fell in step with him.

"When did they arrive?" I asked.

"Two days ago, they jumped inside the system and immediatelly started deploying troops, right now we just finished evacuating the remaining civilians, not many of them, but better than nothing."

I nodded. We walked for a block before he spoke again.

"So you're supposed to be our reinforcements?" he asked me.

"Well… yes," no point in lying to him.

He shook his head.

"I take it your ship didn't make it quite so well," he half-asked half-stated.

"Nah, in fact it crash-landed a few minutes ago."

He simply nodded and we continued our march. A minute later we made it into a large building. It happened to be a correctional facility. It made sense actually. There were large walls preventing easy entrance, the guard towers could be used as platforms for SAM's and snipers, there was a relatively large courtyard that could house a couple of pelicans, and there were enough living quarters to acomodate a couple of thousand marines.

There were only a couple hundred marines inside though, and most were wounded. I could tell that this was a loosing battle. The soldiers in here were only buying enough time to be able to retreat and leave the planet. Pelicans came and went, taking of batches of twenty men each.

"Any word on survivors from the _Count Me In_?" I asked the soldier.

"The what?"

"My ship," I explained.

He shook his head. "I'm sorry, no."

I shrugged, it still hadn't hit me, loosing all my friends, but I knew it would soon. The marine led me to the armory, which consisted of five rifles and a couple of crates containing ammo in a room.

He told me to grab whatever I needed and handed me a helmet and chest plate. I parted with my jacket and put on the helmet. I linked it to my rifle and pistol. The chest plate was the upper part of regular body armor, it was scratched and there were burn marks on it.

"I take it the former owner of this isn't with us anymore," I asked.

The marine simply shrugged and left after telling me to report to cell block C and report to Captain Hendricks. I put on the armor and stocked up on ammo before leaving towards cell block C. With people around me, and with my head protected, I no longer felt like I was strolling around naked.

I walked into the B block and reported to the captain. He happened to be a tired looking man in his forties. He was sitting on an ammo box and using a bigger crate as a desk.

"Who the hell are you?" he asked.

"I'm Lance Corporal Castillo, ODST 19th Batallion, attached to the UNSC _Count Me In_," I stated.

He gave me a once over and seemed confused, then he saw my ODST boots and simply nodded.

"You abandoned ship huh?"

I nodded.

"Well, there's no sense for you to be here, we are bailing, there is only one more undamaged cruiser in orbit, and that won't last for long. We are going to board it and leave the system."

I nodded again.

"Just go to the wall and help in the defenses," he said.

I saluted and left the room. I walked across the prison. It looked like something straight out of a war film. Only gorier. There were men laying down on the floor every now and then. Most had bandages covering parts of their bodies. The groaning of pain wasn't something nice to the ear. I almost sighed with relief when I left the building and emerged into the courtyard.

I looked around and cought sight of a junior lieutenant. I caught up with him and told me that the captain had ordered me to add to the defenses.

"Where can I help the most?" I asked.

He pointed at a particaular place in the walls that was partially collapsed, there were several soldiers sitting in the rubble, talking or playing cards.

I walked up to a sergeant.

"Who are you?" he asked, he looked bored.

"Reinforcements," I stated.

He rolled his eyes and told me tos tay put in case of a covvie attack. I sat down on a rock a couple of meters away from him.

"Quien es este maricón?" I heard someone ask.

I turned around, I hadn't spoken spanish in a while, but this guy had no idea what was in for him.

"A quién le dices maricón, nenita?" I shot back.

I stood up and faced the offender, a short man about my age.

"Calmate, aquí todos somos amigos?" he said, backing up now. His accent sounded Colombian or perhaps Venezuelan, but he could've been from Paris IV or Miridem for all I knew.

"Eso creí," I said before sitting back down. The sergeant just laughed and went back to counting rocks.

I pulled out my knife and twirled it in my hands. It was somewhat calming, but the main purpose was to discourage any idiot from saying a bunch of crap.

So I waited, and waited. I waited some more.

I waited until there was an explosion just outside of the walls.

The wait was over.


	10. Fort Convict

Chapter X: Fort Convict

**July 15, 2534 (UNSC Calendar)/**

**Jotunheim Correctional Facility, Jotunheim, Eden, Neutron Secunda**

The first shot of that battle was, unsurprisingly, a wraith mortar explosion, followed by a couple of beam rifles firing on the marines manning the AA guns. Then came the Grunts. It seemed like they were thousands of them, a lone jackal here and there, but it was mostly Grunts.

I knew that Grunts were used as cannon fodder and as a way to probe and poke us into revealing our firepower. I never imagined that over five hundred enemy soldiers would be sent straight at us.

Those first hours of battle were a massacre. Grunts fell to the floor, the rocks and debris behind them were now dyed in bluish blood. The LAAV's were making quick work of the unshielded grunts. The jackals were being taken out with grenades or acurate battle rifle shots. I contributed with a couple of jackal kills, but mostly I dedicated myself to shooting any heavily-armed grunts I could make out in the rear of their advance. I probably bagged around fifty kills in an hour alone. This was like a shooting gallery.

The only bad part of this (aside from being in a war) was that I knew, in the back of my head, that as soon as the grunts either fell back or were wiped out, the real assault force would come at ue. We would be exahusted, low on ammo, and probably a little bit sleepy was well.

I hit a grunt in the head. The grenade it had primed fell to the floor and the three grunts next to it were engulfed by the blast. I could make out their melted skin and armor through my scope.

"Ugh," I said.

About two hours after the first wraith had fired on us, the remaining dozen grunts fell back behind the buildings, we had suffered no kills, but eight men had gotten some pretty nasty plasma burns.

We waited for the onslaught, the rain hitting our helmets. I wasn't feeling very well at the moment. My friends were dead, and I was, for all intents and purposes, alone at the moment. Don't get me wrong, I loved having a small army backing me up, but I was being generally ignored by everyone, so it wasn't like I was having a jolly good time with the jarheads here.

"What was that?" someone asked.

Two seconds later, there was already a flare up in the sky. People were peeking through their covers to look for the enemy. I saw something shimmering about twenty yards from my position. I raised my rifle and fired a single shot. To my surprise, my suspicions were right and there was actually a shielded elite there. It was promptly taken down by a sniper round through the skull.

"Nice eyes buddy," someone bahind me said.

"I aim to please," I said to the marine. The HUD on my helmet wasn't working, so his name didn't come up. He wasn't wearing his helmet, so even if my HUD was working, it wouldn't have identified him.

Then the night lit up like the Fourth of July. I stood in awe, watching the wall of plasma and needle rounds coming at us.

I dropped to the floor, behind a relatively sturdy piece of debris. This section of the wall was the only one that had a hole in it, so the Covenant were doing their best to come through here, that didn't mean we could ignore the walls on the other side though. Those guys could be sneaky bastards.

I looked up and saw a couple of strafing banshees being peppered by small-arms fire. One blew up from the concentration of lead hitting it, the other was knocked down by a rocket, from what direction, I do not know.

I fired blindly before looking at the ground in front of me. There were a dozen ghosts escorting three revenants. The revenants fired onto the ground in front of me. I could feel my rocky cover heating up.

Laying there, with heated plasma streaking through the air around me, I did the best I could to take out the drivers of the revenants. The ghosts were being worked on by a couple of LAAV gunners and some SPANKr weilding marines. I concentrated my fire on one of the drivers. It was an elite, so I had to fire bursts at it quickly to avoid his shields from recharging. It is a lot harder than it sounds, especially when said elite is weaving around like a drunk driver after Saint Patty's day. After a long minute, he hit the floor.

"Yeah motherfu…" my celebration was interrupted by a ghost flying upwards right above me. I could actually feel its anti-grav generators push me slightly against the floor. I was lucky it was airborne, or else I would've been squashed.

I flipped onto my back as I switched to full auto. I hit the ghost with all I had. Luckily, so did five other marines. A round eventually hit its gas tank, or energy tank. It blew up at least five meters into the air in a beautiful blue explosion. I didn't have time to watch though, as a wraith being escorted by no less than five elites was slowly making its way towards here. I peeked over my bunch of rocks to take a look. I was forced back down by plasma from its turret. The guy next to me had his face melted into his cranium by the same gunner an instant later.

"Shit!" I cursed. There wasn't really anything else I could say.

I heard the loud noise of an SRS. I peeked against my better judgement and saw the elite gunner's limp body hanging over the gunner's position. My joy didn't last for long, as the wraith, ever so slowly, turned to face one of the towers. I watched, not being able to do anything, as the same marine sniper that had saved me before threw his weapon to the men below, he tossed a bandolier and a grenade belt as well. An instant later he was disintegrated under a flash of blue and white.

"Fucking hero," muttered the sergeant next to me. He was right in being impressed.

I simply nodded, the wraith was now only half a football field away. I turned around just in time to catch a grenade launcher someone had tossed at me. I never was really good with them, but I could handle it better than most untrained soldiers.

"Cover me!" I requested.

As I popped up from cover, bullets streaked at the enemy, most missed, a few hit home, but they made the enemy elites dive for cover.

I took careful aim and fired a shot. It hit the wraith head on, but it simply bounced of the tough armor. Luckily, it exploded in midair. Taking out an elite escorting the tank. A major by the looks of him.

I popped back down, I had no spare ammo for the launcher, and the marine that had tossed it to me was nowhere to be seen. I simply put it aside and resumed firing desperately onto the oncoming elites and grunts. The wraith was not something I could handle, and it wasn't firing at our position, so I was good for now.

Just when our small group holding the collapsed wall was about to fall back, I saw an orange flash in the corner of my eye. I turned out to see a rocket hitting the ground underneath the wraith, making it tilt about forty-five degrees upwards. Before it had even landed back down, another rocket hit it square in the cockpit hatch. It went up in flames, useful only for cover from now on.

After what seemed like years I could make out the covvies retreating. They were certainly not feeling well of having to walk over the dead bodies of their peers. There was a carpet of bodies lining the floor around the walls, here and there they made little mounds.

Before long, a messenger arrived.

"We will be falling back as soon as possible, the UNSC _Marilyn_ is sending seven pelicans to pick us up, they will be here in an hour. Hold the line for as long as possible, you'll be the last to fall back."

As soon as he said that, he ran to another position.

Me and my new friends simply stayed there, guns always aiming at the no-man's-land in front of us. There was nothing to report. In twenty minutes we would be falling back in an organized circle into the pelicans from the cruiser orbiting above us. Seven pelicans, only seven. Pelicans could carry fifteen people under normal circumstances. Fifteen times seven was one-oh-five. Only a hundred men were left here, give or take a few. There weren't really all that many in here to start with, but over half the numbers we had sported five hours ago were gone.

"Oh shit," I heard the sergeant say.

"What?" I asked him, slightly nervous.

He simply passed me a pair of binoculars. I looked through them. I could see a lot of collapsed buildings, a lot of grunt bodies, and the ocasional jackal skittering to a sniping position.

"Dead ahead, in between the first standing buildigs you'll see," he helped out.

I shifted my field of view and zoomed in to the place the sergeant had signaled.

"I don't see…"  
>"Just wait," he interrupted.<p>

I waited, and sure enough, about half a minute later, there was some movement. By some movement I mean an AA wraith.

"Oh shit," I said.

"Those things need to be taken out if we are to leave this place."

I nodded. The sergeant notified a lieutenant, who in turn notified the captain, who ordered a raiding party to blow them up sky high as soon as possible. Before long, there were six marines that had volunteered for the job, me and the seregeant were included in that small group.

"Pop smokes," someone ordered.

The police riot vehicle, useless until now launched ten smoke grenades in quick succesion into enemy-held land. It then launched a different set of grenades. Regular ones. I don't know how they managed to get the grenades to fit in the tube, but I am grateful they did.

"Ok, listen up marines," spoke the captain, now in battle gear and next to us, "you will reach those wraiths, and neutralize them in less than five minutes. Then you will fall back into this point," he signaled into his map and then pointed at a semi-collapsed building.

"There, you will be picked up by a pelican and you'll go home."

We nodded, we knew our odds were not high, and I suspected that he was lying about that pelican, but this was something that needed to be done.

"Go," whispered the sergeant, and with that we crept into the smoke.

Our six –man group was made up of three riflemen, me, the sergeant, and another marine, and three marines weilding SPANKrs, with the last of our ammo. We walked silently, each rifleman partnered with a rocket-weilding marine. I got a skinny looking guy that couldn't have been over five four. I was wondering how he could carry all that rocket ammo without even looking tired or struggling.

"Shhh," he whispered.

I wasn't talking, but I wasn't about to call him out on that right now. I dropped to the floor as a covvie patrol walked by. It was mostly grunts, they were led by one lone elite. At that moment, more smoke grenades were deployed. Good timing as well, we were just starting to be able to see more than a meter in front of us. This smoke grenades had my props, they produced some very nice dense smoke that somehow managed to keep itself together for longer than it seemed to be physically possible.

The lead marine motioned for us to go ahead. We must've looked like idiots, running on our tipotes like that, but better to look like an idiot because you're running like one, than look like one because your face is melted.

Terrible comparison, I know, but give me a break here.

Anyways, running like idiots before we finally stopped at a trench. There were some dead marines there, so it must've been our frontline at one point. It was covered in front by a pile of debris, and it couldn't have been more perfect for our objective.

It was semi-circular, and right now it surrounded the four enemy wraiths. They were on the ground, no one was manning them right now, but their drivers were sitting on top of them, chatting in elite language, they could've been human in that aspect. They were taking a break from their job, they were joking around, there was even one that looked like it was laughing. Well, that or it was choking on something.

Four wraiths, three rocket launchers. We could take out three of them in two seconds, but the other one would be just lying there, and with the elites firing on our asses it would be very hard to reload and aim before someone got in the drivers cabin.

_No one to blame for bad intel here but us._

"Shut up," muttered the sergeant. He was the one that spotted the tanks, and I hadn't checked my mouth again.

"Ok, now what?" the skinny marine asked.

"We need to booby trap that last wraith," I said. They all nodded. It wasn't like there was any other option. "Ok, do you have grenades, or C12 packs?" I asked.

A marine laughed quietly.

"Us regulars don't get C12 issued," he whispered, "however, we get to use the C10. Not as powerful, but it'll do the job."  
>I nodded at him as I took the plastiline he was putting out. I placed all of our grenades through some metal rod we had found and secured them with wires. Now, we just had to wait for a distraction. I wasn't about to sprint into a Covenant artillery site with only five men covering me.<p>

I sat in there, ready to jump out any moment. We were waiting for an explosion to draw the elite's prying eyes away from us. We waited for scarcely five seconds before another barrage of grenades hit the covvie positions.

I was too busy running towards the closest wraith to think about the reason why our own army would shell an area that we could still be in.

_Why the hell are they still bombing them? _I thought as I ran, my body as low as possible.

Now that I think back to it, I did curse our captain for that at the time, but I can't really complain, since we got exactly what we asked for and no one got hurt.

I was now behind the wraith. There was only five meters of alien metal between me and two elites. Normally, that would've been great, but not so much when they could simply walk to the side and blast me with their plasma rifles. They could jump over as well, those legs were quite strong.

I took a deep breath as I placed the rod with grenades into a wedge in the back armor of the wraith, we had been taught that it was the weakest part of the alien tanks, and that a grenade could be thrown through the rear plates and into the reactor if you were close enough. It was completely true.

Next, I pushed the C10 plastic explosive into the hole between that rear plate and the rest of the tank, covering it up. I inserted a detonator into the soft material and ran for my life. This time, I ran the thirty meters to safety with plasma fire hitting every possible square inch in a one meter radius. Me being in its center, coincidentally, I was the only thing that wasn't hit. I thanked God, Allah, Budah, Brahma, and any other god I had ever heard of in those five seconds.

I made a point to run into a different place from where my little squad was hiding, to draw fire away from them. I jumped into the trench, practically slamming myself into the ground to reduce my air time.

"Woooooooo!" I yelled in triumph. My yell was quelled by the sound of six explosions. I stood up and sprinted through the trench and towards my friends. Just when I reached them I was dismayed to see a body slam down right in front of me. It was the short marine.

I grabbed his rifle and fired over the pile of debris covering the trench.

"Fall back!" called out the sergeant.

_Well said, sir._

By the time my mind had finished that sentence, I was sprinting as fast as I could towards our extraction point and so was everyobody else.

We didn't even bother with running from cover to cover, the lingering smoke would do the trick for now. The rocket marines even dropped their large weapons to the floor as they sprinted right behind me. We even passed a startled patrol on our way to the extraction point. They were too surprised to even shoot at us. That made it all much easier for the guys behind me to spray them with assault rifles.

After a minute of frantic running, we made it into the building designated as our evac point.

I turned around and realized that it couldn't have been that easy. There was only one other marine with me. It was the other rifleman.

"Oh fu…" once more I was interrupted by an explosion, this time it was a plasma grenade slamming into the house.

"Upstairs, upstairs!" I yelled to the marine. On the second floor there was a collapsed ODST pod, I didn't even stop to check it, I just silently prayed for whatever friend was lying in that grave.

"Watch the stairs!" said the other marine.

I nodded and dropped to the floor, battle rifle and assault rifle both aimed into the stairs, one on each shoulder. The other marine did the same with his MA5, kneeling right beside me.

An elite's head popped up. It was promptly reduced to pulp as three weapons fired in full-auto at the small target.

"What's the time?" I asked as a grunt toppled over, dead.

"One more minute!" returned the marine, this time he killed a jackal as I reloaded my BR55, the assault rifle was now down to twelve rounds, and I had no spare ammo for that one.

"Pop the smoke!" I told him.

The marine complied, tossing a grenade that blew out bright green smoke onto the lone remaining corner of the roof on top of us.

I emptied the rest of my clip on an elite, I hit it a couple of times before it hid back.

"Sneaky bastard!" I called out to it.

An instant later a grenade was tossed from behind the corner.

"A la verga!" I yelled, returning to my native language, it wasn't very often that I did that.

Luckily for us, the grenade was tossed with more strength than necessary and flew over the collapsed walls and into the street below. I could hear a grunt's methane tank blowing up as well. I smiled when I realized what that meant.

"Aaaaargh!" yelled the marine as he charged towards the stairs. That's right, he actually charged down the stairs.

He aimed his rifle around the corner without looking and fired all sixty rounds in his magazine before returning, unharmed.

"What the hell man?" I snapped. He simply dropped his rifle and pulled out his pistol.

All of a sudden the wall on top of us was sprayed with plasma and needlers.  
>"Watch the door!" I ordered as I crawled towards the improvised balcony that this third floor now was. I looked over to see a couple dozen enemy soldiers, mostly elites this time. I fired and killed the closest one before the rest fired upon me.<p>

I was on my back, looking at the night sky, rain falling on my face, thinking that my military career was going to be over in a couple of minutes when I heard something. It was the most beautiful noise that I had ever heard. It was like someone knocking a door or wooden table repeatedly. Only that it was a hundred times too loud.

I heard the wind go 'whoosh' behind me and flipped over to see the covenant soldiers on the ground, dead or dying.

A pelican hovered triumphantly over the dead bodies. As it turned one-eighty degrees its rear gunner opened fire on the dead bodies, dark purple blood flying everywhere.

The trigger-happy man ceased fire as soon as the rear hatch was facing us. The other marine jumped into the cargo bay and I did the same as the pelican flew away. I sat down when I noticed we weren't going any higher.

Before I could even ask what was going on, our vehicle had landed again, inside the jail. I stood up to see what was going on only to see two pilots and three marines sprinting as fast as they could from another pelican. A marine was cut down and one of the pilots was hit, but made it into the deck before collapsing. I was firing my rifle at the enemy elites, jackals, and grunts on the ground, I took out a few grunts before I fell a sharp pain in my left leg.

"Ouch!" I said, it was more of a complaint than a scream of pain.

I fell backwards and the door gunner jumped at me less than a second after I had been hit. I glanced down to my leg and saw a long pink crystal protruding from my leg. I stared in horror as it glowed brighter and brighter. The door gunner grabbed it with both hands and pulled it out. He tossed it aside as quickly as posible. It exploded mid-air, a couple of small shards embedding themselves in my armor and the gunner's.

There were probably countless microscopic shards in my skin right now as well, but those would be dealt with later.

I started feeling cold all of a sudden. I glanced back down at my leg as blood actually bubbled out. There was already a pool of red liquid forming around my body. My eyelids flutters as the rear hatch sealed. I felt a stinging pain in my leg. It felt like someone was jabbing a million needles in there. I relaxed, as I knew that someone had used a can of biofoam on my leg.

All of a sudden I was floating.


	11. Transfer

Chapter XI: Transfer

**August 19, 2534 (UNSC Calendar)/**

**Pálháza, Reach, Epsilon Eridani System**

I had been released from the hospital two days ago. The needler round hadn't done much damage besides tearing through my flesh and cutting my femoral artery. The biofoam had held me together for long enough. I arrived at the ship's hospital and my artery had been stitched together, then I had been promptly placed on cryo, to prevente any further damage on my wounds and to free some space in the hospital bay. There were plenty of wounded people in the ship, there were even a few dozen civilians that hadn't made it in time to the evacuation transports.

A week and a half later I had woken up from cryo, only to have someone slip me a breathing apparatus. A day later I had been abruptly woken up, this time by one of my nightmares. When I looked around I realized I was in a hospital, it looked like a ground-based hospital, since the walls weren't metal gray or that light green that was supposed to make us feel calm.

I had been given two days leave after I was able to walk. No one really knew what to do with me, I had lost all my unit and was probably the sole survivor of the _Count Me In._ I was limping down one of the streets in the red district of Pálháza, the second largest city in Reach.

It hit me hard, the death of my only friends in the universe. Literally. It took a while to sink in, but when it finally did, all the signs that pointed to the "sole survivor syndrome." There was guilt, sadness, depression, stress, and all that bunch of medical crap. I had been given some pills to relieve my stress and depression, but I dealt with it the way any sane marine would have.

Cheap booze and cheap women.

I went to a crappy little bar hidden under a couple of skyscrapers. I drowned myself in whiskey. The only thing I remember clearly is that I started a conversation with a veteran. He told me a couple of stories and listened to mine. He nodded understandingly but said nothing. The last thing he said before he left the bar was something that instantly turned off my urge for cheap women.

"Damn hooker gave me herpes," he complained as he scratched his crotch.

I downed a couple more glasses and went outside. I walked through the city for about ten minutes before I had to throw up, I emptied my stomach on a trash bin on the street. I stayed there for two more hours while the nausea went away.

Don't get me wrong, it wasn't my first time drinking, but it was my first time drinking to drown my sorrows. There's a big difference in the amount of liquor consumed in both of those situations.

Next thing I remember was an armor-clad police officer shinning a flashlight into my face. It was early morning, but it was still dark.

"Get up!" he ordered. I heard the familiar noise of a shock baton powering up and complied.

I jumped up and the ground spun in circles around me. I tried to keep my balance but I fell back to the bench I had slept on.

"Hmm, drunk and disorderly conduct," started the police, "that is going to cost you some creds to get out of kid."

"C'mon, give me a break," I mumbled, my head hurting like hell.

"Now why would I do that?" asked the officer.

I said nothing for a few seconds.

"All my friends are dead."

The officer's eyes went open. He eyeballed me thoroughly before reaching into my shirt and pulling out my dogtags.

"You a soldier then," he stated.

I nodded. The officer simply sighed and talked into his helmet. He looked at me as he did so and shook his head.

"Ok, I'll give you a chance this time pal, I'll even call you a cab," he said.

"Thank you," I said as I collapsed sideways onto the bench.

Before I knew it I was on top of a taxi with a man with a funny accent that complained that I smelled like "dried pig excrement" every chance he got. I left the cab and paid the man, no tip though.

I stumbled upstairs into the hotel room that the UNSC had been nice enough to rent for me for the duration of my leave. I collapsed on my bed and downed a couple of aspirins. I then took my stress relievers and fell asleep.

A couple of hours later the sound of someone banging on my door woke me up. At first I thought it was someone from the other room banging. Yes, banging, but I woke up fast enough to realize the difference in sounds.

I opened the door, my headache now only a lingering feeling and my dizzines completely gone. _Thank God for aspirin._

"You Lance Corporal Castillo?" asked a marine soldier, he was unarmed and unarmored, probably doing courier or messenger duty.

"Yeah?"

The marine simply rolled his eyes and handed me a letter. I tore it open while he waited there. It consisted of two lines. They gave me a location and a time. I was supposed to go to a meeting in the Bonaparte Marine Base. It was the marine garrison closest to the city, about thirty minutes away from my current location.

"You driving?" I asked.

The impatient marine simply nodded.

"Lemme pack," I said. I was still tired and not completetly awake, but I managed to pack my clothes in under a minute (not that there was much to pack anyway) and left the building, trailing behind the marine. I no longer needed to hop on one foot, it's amazing what modern medicine can do for a sliced femoral nowadays.

The marine drove me to the Bonaparte Base in a wharthog. I tried some small talk, but he didn't look like the chatty type.

I was dropped off in front of a large building in the center of the base. Said building was about ten stories high, but it probably went much deeper underground. Before I even had chance to ask the driver what I was supposed to do he drove off, leaving a dust plume behind.

"Jackass," I mumbled under my breath.

I walked towards the main door, which was flanked by two marines. I did a quick salute as I went through the doors.

The lobby of the building looked like a normal building's lobby should've. The floors were white marble and there were some modern-looking brown leather sofas on the edges. There was a reception desk that was also made of marble. In the middle of the lobby was the insignia of the UNSC, it was surrounded by a number of stars representing the colonies. I had no idea there were that many. The insignia was black against the white background, it was probably made of marble as well, but it could've been black onyx. Who knows?

I approached the receptionist, who was, unsurprisingly, a striking young woman, she looked slightly younger than me, and I was only nineteen years of age.

"Hello," I said with a smile, "I got this letter saying to be here at 1700 hours."

The girl didn't even glance upwards.

"Can I see that?" she said even as she grabbed the piece of paper from my hand. For some reason, people from Reach seemed to be very mean. Or just touchy, again, who knows?

She raised an eyebrow as she read the twenty words which made up the letter. She even managed to look up and once-over me. For some reason, it made me very uncomfortable.

"Wait a sec," she ordered. That's right, ordered.

A minute later there was a fully armored marine escorting me to an elevator. He showed me in and placed an electronic key in a special slot. A panel actually slid down to show more buttons. This was getting absurd.

The escorting soldier pressed a button that signalled "U-32" and stood back from the elevator.

"Good luck," he said.

"What do you…" I said just as the doors slammed closed. I rolled my eyes. Objects had a bad tendency to interrupt me. The elevator ride took roughly thirty-two seconds. About a second per each floor, and I was going downwards.

The elevator stopped and the doors slipped open with an almost comical ping. I was really starting to think that someone in top brass had been a comedian. I walked out of the elevators and found myself in a large room. This room was almost exactly like the lobby of the building, only that instead of the UNSC insignia, it had ONI's.

I walked towards the end of the room, instead of a receptionist, there was simply another door, guarded by another armored marine. He looked exactly like the one on the first floor.

_Are they cloning people? _I asked myself. _Nonsense. _Even I knew it was a stupid notion.

The marine asked for an ID. I told him I had none, since I was in my civvies. I simply showed him my dogtags. He pulled out a datapad from his backpocket and checked something on it. He looked up from the datapad and at me.

"Where were you born?" he asked.

"Earth," I answered.

"Where in Earth?"

I rolled my eyes. "Mexico."

He nodded. "How's your dad?"

"Dead," I said, my eyes shooting daggers.

"Mother?" This guy really had no sense of tact.

"She's a vegetable," I was ready to punch his face in.

He read more stuff from his datapad. After a while he decided it was enough and opened the door for me.

"Third door on the left," he said helpfully.

I would've thanked the man, but I was slightly pissed at him. I was also creeped out by the amount of information that ONI had on me. I guess that not all of the rumors were a bunch of paranoid horseshit.

I entered the signaled room. As I crossed the doorway I noticed two things. One: the room was quite nice for a military office, two: there were a couple of guys dressed in ONI uniforms sitting down, smoking cigars.

"Ah, mister Castillo, I'm glad you made it," said the older man with a smile. He even offered me his hand. "Cigar?" he offered.

"Nah, thanks, I don't smoke."

He simply shrugged and served me a glass of whiskey, I wasn't about to turn that down and I gladly took it.

"I'm Major Cavallaro," he said as he handed me the glass.

"Nice to meet you," I said. "Who might that be?" I asked, pointing to the younger man sitting in a comfy-looking chair.

"Well, don't worry about him, he's my friend," he answered.

I shrugged.

"What can you tell me about the death of your squadmates?" he asked me as soon as I had taken my first sip from the whiskey.

"Damn, this is the good stuff," I noted.

He simply nodded in appreciation.

"Ok, I'll get to the point."

I told him everything since the moment I woke up on that day. I told him about the ship falling under attack, the unexpected Covenant presence in there, and evacuating the ship in our SOEIVs.

At that point the man sitting down spoke for the first time.

"That's enough," he said as he waved his hand dismisively.

I stopped talking. Cavallaro looked at the other man and he nodded to him.

"Have you ever heard about the SPARTAN program?" he asked, his voice measured.

I nodded. "Why, you recruiting me?" I joked.

"No, you're too old," said the Major absent-mindedly. The other spook cleared his throat.

"Right, pretend you didn't hear that," Cavallaro told me with a smile, although the threat was clearly there.

"Sir."

"What do you know about them?" he asked me.

"Well, until now, I though they were just propaganda," I answered. "I've heard that they are supersoldiers, more machine than human. Freaks. They are supposed to be able to take on thousands of enemy soldiers by themselves, they're supposed to be the best of the very best."

There was an edge to my voice. I had always been the best of the best, at least since last year. I had joined the ODST corps with the though that I would become the pride of the UNSCDF. Now I realized that I was outmatched by some obscure freaks in fancy armor.

"Anything in that head of yours regarding Section Three?" he asked me again.

"Yes, they conduct the top-secret proyects and stuff like that."

He simply nodded, as if he was a satisfied parent or teacher.

"I take it you haven't heard of the Alpha-II division?" he asked.

"No, sir," I answered.

"Well, you see, SPARTANS are outfitted with fancy armor, as you say, to create this armor, ONI outsourced to several civilian companies to place bids. Their projects were quite good, don't get me wrong, but some were simply not SPARTAN material. Alpha-II takes charge of combat-testing said armor and if the armor parts are deemed good enough and cost-efficient, variants are issued to the UNSC forces."

"So you're saying Alpha-II gets sloppy seconds?" I asked.

"That's one way to put it," said the major with a smile, "but they get sloppy seconds from what would I would compare to banging a supermodel that has only had sex once before."

As crude as that simile or comparison (whatever) might've been, the man certainly had a way of making it sound interesting, everything gets more interesting when you throw supermodels in the equation.

"The point being?" I asked. "Sir."

"Well, we would like you to join out section," he stated.

"Why?" I had seen it coming, but I whanted to know the reason I was picked.

"This projects need to be tested under extreme battle conditions," he started, "you got outstanding ratings on your training and managed to survive a battle where there was a 88% casualty rate, granted, you entered it late, but you entered it from an exploding spaceship and with a blind jump."

"Sir, why did you pick me?" I asked again. They probably could've picked up a whole lot other people with similar characteristics.

He sighed. "You're a sharp one." For some reason, that didn't feel like it was a compliment.

"Well, you have nothing to loose," stated the man.

_I am expected to go into battle and see how long I last before the equipment gives up._ I realized.

"What if I say no?" I asked.

"Well, god forbid a psychotic killer tear out your tongue and vocal cords," said the man sitting in the couch.

I nodded, I had seen to many spy films to be surprised by this.

"Ok, I guess I'm in then."

The major nodded. " First of all, you need to know how Alpha-II operates. They are based of an improved _Paris-_class frigate. There are about 300 Navy personel on board the ship, as well as a small Marine Batallion. The battalion, Alpha 2nd, as it is commonly known, is composed of a mix of Army and Marine soldiers. All soldiers do some orbital insertion training, since you are an ODST, you won't have that problem."

He paused for me to get a moment to catch up. I nodded at him to continue, which he gladly did.

"I said that the section's main purpose is to test the ineffective armor, but you also get some of the armor pieces that actually made it through selection, in addition to those, you get some shiny toys that aren't available to the general public," he told me.

I nodded once more.

"You should also know that the discipline on the ship is… somewhat lacking," he explained. "The marine contingent in the ship consists mostly of sole survivors and other people that have nothing to loose, that makes for a pretty interesting crowd."

"As I said, I'm in," I repeated.

"Ok," he said as he pulled out an envelope from his desk. "Report to landing pad 72, you'll be transported to an orbiting dry-dock, then you'll be flown to your new ship."

"What? That's it?" I was slightly surprised, almost no paperwork.

"Yes, just sign here," he said as he pulled out another sheet of paper.

I skimmed through the document, it had the same basic clauses about no disclosure, admitting the risk of death. There was slightly more emphasis on the death part, although the no disclosure of secret information section was also quite lengthy.

I scrawled my signature.

"On your way son," said the major as he dismissed me.

I turned around and left. Before I walked out of the door I stopped.

"What is the name of the ship?"

The major smiled as he answered. "It goes by the name UNSC _Inconvenience_."

* * *

><p><em>Well guys, just taking a moment to thank anyone who's actually reading this. Also, I still need someone who is willing to proofread my documents.<em>

_Love- casquis_


	12. New and Old Acquaintances

Chapter XII: New and Old Aquaintances

**August 22, 2534 (UNSC Calendar)/**

**UNSC **_**Incovnenience,**_** Slipspace**

The first noise that reached my ears when I climbed out of the pelican that transported me from the UNSC _Truthfull_ to the _Inconvenience _was not a noise I was familiar with. It sounded like someone was scraping the floor with something soft. I also heard a different noise, it sounded like someone was repeatedly hitting the same floor with a pointy instrument.

I had been flown to a large dry-dock in space. The kind that builds frigates and cruisers. I had stayed there for a full day before a small corvette had picked me up. The corvette had flown me at sub-light speed to the edge of the system. From there I had hopped on the lone pelican this ship posessed and was transported to the my new home. The pelican simply docked instead of landing on a hangar bay. The pilot motioned for me to leave her ship. I complied, carrying over my back all my personal belongings in a duffelbag. The bag was only filled up halfway.

I walked out of the small room containing the double doors, the air seals. The noise I had heard at first got stronger, the scraping was soon joined by the sound of human voices. Before I left the small walkway leading to the docking port and into a larger hallway a woman in rollerblades flew by. I was stunned. Behind her was a guy dressed in marine fatigues. He also had rollerblades on.

"No way in hell you'll beat me," he called out as he sped up.

_Way to breach protocol_. I thought to myself as I shrugged. I jumped to the wall before a huge dog almost ran me over. It barked a couple of times and chased after the racing marines.

So that was the clacking noise.

I turned to the opposite direction the two marines in rollerblades had been going on before a soldier turned the corner.

"You the new guy?" he asked me.

"I guess," I answered, a little bit confused by the way he looked. He didn't look weird by normal standards, but he was sporting a scruffy beard and his hair was quite a little longer than regulations allowed. He was also wearing jeans and a t-shirt that proclaimed that Rock n' Roll lived on.

He motioned for me to follow him. Halfway to my destination, which I assumed was either the bridge or the ground forces leader's office, the ship shook. It had made a slipspace jump. It hadn't warned us over the PA, another breach of protocol. This was beginning to look like a weird place. Weirder than ONI secret proyects weird.

I finally arrived at the bridge. There were two men there in addition to the pilot.

"Dismissed," said one of the men to the guy that had accompanied me.

Said man was wearing full battle armor, except the helmet, that one he had under his left arm. His armor wasn't standard armor, his chest plate was one of those old pre-war pieces. It was flatter than the new ones and a lot thicker. The only reason that I saw for him to have it was that he had fought in Harvest. The rest of his armor was not standard either. He was wearing ODST armored boots, although they were painted the same brown as his armor. He had thigh armor on one thigh only and his shoulder protectors were of unknown origin to me. They were curved ractangles that covered part of his neck. They looked slightly oversized. His helmet was standard Army issue.

The man himself was built like a fricking bull. Not as large as Gabuka, but his back was wider and his legs looked like tree-trunks.

His strong appearance was countered by a face that looked like that of a loving, caring granfather. In another situation, he could've been an old man accompanying his grandkids trick or treating.

The other man was a lot less imposing, slightly taller than the armored soldier and obviously thiner. He had a stoic face and some sort of expression that made him look like he came from some sort of royalty. He was dressed in standard Navy fatigues. His insignia made him a captain. The other man had no insignia.

"Hello," he said as he looked down at a file he was holding in his hands, "Corporal Castillo…" he said carefully. "Did I get that right?"

"Yes, sir," I said as I dropped my bag and snapped to attention.

"At ease soldier."

I complied.

"My name is Captain Brooks, I command this ship and everyone on it. That now includes you," he said to me.

I nodded.

"This man right here is Colonel Zavala, he is in charge of the ground forces on board this ship. That now incluyes you."

I nodded again.

"I read your file, the single page it contained at least," he said.

Now that made me feel bad, but I had only seen combat once and it hadn't been for more that ten hours.

"Sir?" I asked, confused as to what that had to do with anything.

"Do not think for a moment that you will get special treatment, or that you are any better than anyone else on this ship because you were lucky enough to see all your team killed soldier."

The captain sounded angry, looked like there were some past issues there.

"Of course not, sir," was all I said. Better to say as little as possible before I said something stupid.

"Since you have no armor, the colonel will escort you to the armory," he said.

The colonel motioned with his head for me to follow him. I did so prompty, I was starting to get a bad vibe from the captain. Not that I believe in vibes and stuff. Once we were far enough from the bridge the colonel started talking.

"Ignore the man, he doesn't want the job he has right now. He was caught doing some general's daughter and two days later the daughter caught him doing another girl," he said. "Couldn't keep it in his pants, that's what got him here."

I simply nodded and smiled. The colonel went on.

"First thing you need to know, is that you were lied to, you will not get to test additional armor, the only pieces you will get are going to be shoulders, knees, and with a little bit of luck, you might get other thigh protection," as he said this he patted his left thigh.

"You are allowed to configure your armor as you please, I recommend you keep it as simple as possible."

I was now confused.

"Technically speaking, you are testing the performance of experimental armor, every now and then you'll be asked to answer some questions about whatever armor you have used that isn't standard issue."

I nodded, still confused.

"You weren't lied when you were told you'd get to use some special gadgets, that we have plenty off, just don't think you'll get to use a cellphone grapple-hook. The additional equipment we have here is limited. Also, I am sure you were told about the discipline problem in this ship."  
>I nodded once again.<p>

"Well, it is worse than you imagined, on board the ship it is probably more like one of those sea cruises that are so famous in Jericho VII. No one listens to anyone and everyone does what they want, we even have a couple of dogs on board."

"Yeah, I saw one," I said, talking for the first time since the colonel started his sermon.

"However, we are still soldiers and we are still trained to fight. On the ground you will never encounter a better contingent of soldiers. Every single man and woman here is going to die for you, and you will learn to do the same for them," he said proudly.

"My recomendation is that you make some friends, meet a nice girl, and try to keep yourself alive on the battlefield. Good luck," having said that, he turned around and walked away. We had walked accross the ship and I was now in front of a door labeled 'armory.' I walked in.

There were rows of weapons on either side of the long room. There was a man sitting at a holding chair playing something on a datapad. He glanced up at me.

"You the new guy?" he asked.

"I guess," I said. The exchange was identical to my first one on the ship with the exception that this man was actually dressed in regular marine fatigues.

"I take it you need some armor," he said.

I nodded.

He shrugged and lifted himself of the chair with loud groans, as if he was doing me a huge favor, which in a way, he was.

"Army or Marines?" he asked as we walked to another door on the end of the weapon's room.

"ODST," I replied.

He raised his eyebrows. "We don't get many of you guys here, you are in luck, we have a couple of spare ODST suits of armor in here."

He opened the door and led me inside a smaller room, this one had morgue-like drawers on the walls, they were labeled with an armor type and what piece of the body it protected.

"This room gives me the creeps," I said.

"Ha, me too, did you know that it used to be the ship's morgue?"

_Go figure._

I shook my head as the man looked through the drawers. "ODST, here it is, he said as he pulled out four drawers. He handed me another duffelbag and I dumped the torso armor and helmet in the bag, in addition to the bodysuit that went under the armor. I also picked up the vambraces. Boots and thigh protection I had managed to put on before bailing out of the _Count Me In_.

I hesitated when I reached the ugly pauldrons.

"Can't I get anything other than this?" I asked.

"It's not for free kid," said the soldier. For some reason I really hate when people call me kid, I was nineteen for christ's sake.

"Seriously?" I asked, slightly surprised.

The man seemed to think for a second. "You are entitled to full body armor for free, any additional pieces you might pick up are charged to your account."

"I haven't picked shoulder protection yet," I pointed out.

"You're right," he said as he closed the opened drawers and opened all the ones that were marked with shoulder.

I looked around at the amor pieces, asking what their carachteristics were and stuff like that. Eventually I settled for two different models. A UA Multi Threat pauldron for my left shoulder (it was the one that was more exponed when I fired) and the slightly smaller Gungnir shoulder cover for my left shoulder.

"Will that be all, sir?" asked the man in charge of the armory.

"That'll be all."

I left the Armory before I realized that I had absolutely no idea what I was supposed to do next, I didn't know if I'd be stuck in cryo for a while or if I needed to go to my room, whichever it was. I settled for asking a marine I encountered in a corridor. As soon as he found out I was the new guy he told me to go to the mess hall and ask one Sergeant Bell.

I complied. I found the man after asking around for a while.

"Sir," I said, to get his attention. The man was resting his head on a table. He raised his head slowly

"Whaaa?"

_Great, he's fricking hungover._

"Sir, I just got transferred to this ship, someone told me you were the person I should ask where my quarters are?"

He groaned as he straightened up.

"Sure," he coged a couple of times, "Deck 4, room 4011, you'll be bunking with two other guys while you are not in cryo."

I nodded. "Thank you, sir."

He simply slammed his head back into the table and fell asleep again.

_This place is crazy._

I arrived at my room a minute later. I opened the door and found myself facing two soldiers wearing VR googles.

"What was that noise?" one of them asked.

"Pause," the other commanded the videogame system.

They both took off their goggles and stood up. They gave me a once over as I did the same to them. They were dressed in standard-issue fatigues, the one on the right had a gray t-shirt with the word ARMY written on it, the other one had a white t-shirt.

The one with the army t-shirt spoke first.

"You're the new guy right? My name is Dominic McNabb, PFC," he introduced himself as he offered his hand. I shook it.

Dominic was a regular-looking guy. He wasn't particularly tall and not strongly built either. He had dark blonde hair and brown eyes. He could've been from pretty much any ethnicity except black.

"I'm Singh, you probably can't pronounce my name, so I'll keep it to myself. I'm a Lance Corporal, from the Army," said the other man as he offered his hand to me as well.

"So you both are from the army?" I asked.

"Nah, I'm from the Corps," said Dominic.

I stared pointedly at his shirt for a few seconds before Singh explained to me that McNabb seemed to be unable to operate a washing machine, so he had to borrow shirts every now and then.

Singh was shorter than me and McNabb, but he was more muscular than his roomate. He had a completely bald face and otherwise looked like an Indian person would. No offense to Indian people.

"Lance Corporal Francisco Castillo," I said, telling them who I was.

"Nice to meet you Franceescoh," said Dominic.

I sighed. "Just call me Frank," I said, resigned.

"Coolio, where you from?" he asked.

"I was born on Earth, but lived on Jericho VII since I was young," I answered.

"Really? Where on Earth?" this time it was Singh asking.

"Mexico."

"What, crossing the border was not enough? Did you have to cross half of Human Space?"

I said nothing, my eyes could've burned through his face.

"Chill man, I was kidding,"

"Ignore him, he has the IQ of a dirt worm," Singh said as Dominic put on his goggles again and called out for the game to resume.

"Sure," I said to Singh, "what game is that?" I asked him, curious.

Singh looked slightly embarassed and looked at the floor. He shuffled his right foot a bit before he answered.

"It's umm… an art videogame," he murmured.

"Ahhh, and you two play this… art game together?" I asked, imitating the tone of voice that shrinks used. Singh didn't answer and continued looking ashamed.

"Interesting, do you play this game on cooperative or on individual campaigns?" I asked, still doing the shrink impersonation.

"Ok man, don't judge me, I've got lots of time on my hands!" complained the Lance Corporal.

"Does that mean you have to share your time with him?" I asked as I motioned to Dom.

"Keep it down you guys!" called out Dom, he had a smile on his face. I avoided looking at his pants.

"I'm going to the gym," I said, "I'll be back in an hour."

I was specific about the time so I didn't walk in to find two grown men on the verge of orgasm in my room.

I walked out and once I arrived to the gym I hopped on the treadmill. I ran only five kilometers before switching to weights to kill the remaining time. I mostly worked on my arms, hadn't really had time to excercise in the last week. I was bench-pressing around two hundred before my muscle 'roids came in the form of a rather painiful injection, but now I was doing slightly under three hundred. I felt good about myself.

Once I had completed one hour I returned to the room.

I opened the door carefully. "You done?"

"Oh piss off," said Singh.

I laughed. These were bound to be some interesting roomates, at least I knew they shared their porn.

* * *

><p>I was going as fast as I could, still, it couldn't have been more than a slow sprint. My opponent was already ten meters ahead and I wasn't really sure of what I was doing. My rollerblades felt unnatural and heavy on my feet, but I managed to speed up a bit, I was slowly catching up. Right on a corner I slowed down a bit before slamming onto the wall, I kept on going, pushing myself with help from the walls. I gained speed again and was now only five meters behind my opponent.<p>

We had arrived at Sigma Octanus IV a day ago, we were here to pick up a couple of Navy personel before leaving for the frontlines. Unlike soldiers, the Navy forces on the ship didn't really have to consist of sole survivors, but they still picked them from different ships. The newcomers were supposed to arrive any moment now, so this was the last race of the day before the ship started boosting away from the system. Roller-blading on a shaking ship isn't really a pleasant experience, or so I was told. The Roller-blading championships would resume once we were in slipspace.

I was going faster and faster, I was getting the knack of this sport quite quickly, I had borrowed some roller blades and practiced on the hallways of the ship, no one seemed to mind.

I was only a meter behind the guy in front of me when I slammed onto something, well, someone. She had appeared from one of the docking stations adjacent to this hallway. I think it might've been the one I was almost run over some time ago.

I hit the girl head on doing at least twenty five miles per hour. I hit her and we rolled for a few feet before I landed on top of her and my head slammed into hers.

I woke up in the medical bay, my head feeling like an elephant was sitting on it. Everything looked to damn bright, it was like the worst hangover I had ever had up to eleven.

I slowly got myself up as my eyes adjusted to the light. I sat on my bed and glanced to my left. On the bed next to me was the girl that I had hit. She looked at me with a familiar glare.

"So you're awake now?" she asked, sarcasm soaking her lovely voice. She sighed and looked up again, her left eyebrow was patched up and there was some dried blood on her cheek. She had bags under her eyes that looked like they could've reached down to her ankles. She looked beautiful, especially in the way the light from the med bay was hitting her face.

Truth be told, I almost cried, at least there was someone in this universe that could make all the guilt I felt for surviving go away. I gave the girl the biggest smile I could. It was a genuine smile, warm and honest.

"How did you make it?" I asked, curious.

"Long story, I managed to bail out in time and then we were picked up by another UNSC ship."

"That wasn't a long story." She sighed, slightly annoyed.

"I am glad you're alive Layla," I said.

She sighed once more.

"Truth be told, I am glad you're alive too, but I still don't get why you had to give me a concussion."

"I'm sorry," was all I could say, given the situation.

"You'd bettter be," she said, crossing her arms. Her tone was now getting a little bit superior.

"Well, you slapped me," I countered.

"I am sorry!" she almost yelled, "It's like the tenth time I've said that."

"And you gave me a concussion."  
>"Ok, fine I'm sorry," she said.<p>

I smiled.

"What? No, I am not sorry, you gave yourself a concussion with my head!"

"You already said you were sorry for that," I said while giggling like an idiot. The blow to my head had probably been pretty hard.

"No, I take that back!" protested Layla.

Our bickering (which was worthy of five-year olds) was interrupted by the sound of someone clearing their throat loudly.

Me and Layla both turned to the door to see a doctor and Dom standing at the door with puzzled expressions on their faces.

"Okaaayyyyy?" said Dom.

The doctor cleared his throat again before speaking.

"You, mister Castillo, you might be able yo be discharged right now, can you stand up for me?" I complied with his order and promptly collapsed on the floor.

"Maybe not just yet," said the doctor. I'll see you both in a couple of hours, maybe tomorrow. Depends on how much alcohol I manage to drink."

"What?" exclaimed Layla.

"Kidding, I'm a professional doctor," he said. I could almost see the parenthesis with the word 'fairly' in between the words 'a' and 'professional.'

I sighed. The doctor chuckled and left.

"What are you here for Dom?" I asked.

"I wanted to show you something," he said, with a dangerous grin on his face.

"What is it?" I said, my head was starting to hurt more.

He pulled out something from his pocket and showed me a picture of me fainted on top of Layla. It was possibly the most unflattering picture ever taken of me. That's counting all my yearbook pictures. My face was pushed against hers and I was bleeding a little from my nose, my mouth was slightly open and there was a little bit of drool on my chin. Layla was also bleeding and her tongue was hanging out of her mouth in a comical fashion.

A very bad picture.

"Don't you guys look cute?" said Dom in a baby voice after Harding the polaroid to Layla.

"When was the last time you were on top of a woman?" asked Layla calmly.

Dom's Grin disappeared from his face in what could've been record time, but Layla wasn't done yet.

"A real woman I mean, videogames don't count."

"Snap," I said.

"How… how does she even know that?" Dom asked me. "Did you tell her?"

"Lucky guess," said Layla.

Dom looked confused for a few seconds and then simply smiled and shrugged. "See you later Frankie," he said as he walked out of the room.

"Nice," I complimented Layla. "High five," I said as I put out my hand as far out from my bed as I could. I wasn't about to stand up again. She reached out to high five me with a grin on her face when her balanced failed her and she fell of the bed.

I roared with laughter.


	13. Waste

Chapter XIII: Waste

**December 2, 2534 (UNSC Calendar)/ Three Months Later**

**UNSC **_**Inconvenience**_**, in orbit over Amber, Beta Calope System**

"Yes, yes, yes!"

Despite having my pillow over my ears I could hear the noise coming from Singh's videogame. We had been de-freezed a couple of hours ago and he was feeling the urge to… well, you know.

I sighed, lately, I'd been tempted to ask Singh to borrow his videogame, but my pride prevented me from doing so. Besides, if my blossoming relationship with Layla kept going on, soon I wouldn't really need his videogames. At least that's what I hoped for.

After stocking up on Sigma Octanus IV, we had left straight for Amber, in the Outer Colonies. It had fallen under attack by a Covenant fleet. It wasn't a particularly significant world or anything, but no one was about to let the millions of civilians living there to be slaughtered. Our ship had been sent along with a small battlegroup consisting of five cruisers escorting an armored colonizing ship that would carry whatever survivors couldn't fit into the escape crafts.

Our frigate, I had found, sported additional armor and an improved MAC cannon. The MAC was like a pre-prototype and hadn't been tested, it was practically only theoretical stuff. It was supposed to fire two shots in quick sucessions before needing to heat up again. Our thrusters allowed us to move as fast as any Covenant ship not in slipspace. We were basically a hit and run craft. A hit and run craft straight from the drawing board. I wished that I hadn't learned that particular piece of information, as it made me quite nervous, to say the least

We had arrived to the Beta Calope System (what a weird name) shortly before we were unfreezed. The Covenant were on the other side of the system and already gunning for Amber. We started the race later, the covvies would get to the planet first. They'd probably have time to deploy ground forces.

Just as the virtual girl in Singh's videogame was getting louder and louder, the ship alarm signaled for battle stations.

"Thank God," I said as I jumped of the bed. _I couldn't have taken much more of that._

I quickly dressed up in my new armor for the first time. It was completely black. I hadn't gotten the chance to paint it yet. I grabbed my BR55, the same one I had been given back at Mars. Luckily, it had survived everything.

It was now outfitted with a laser sight which doubled as a laser designator and I had changed the standard scope with a more expensive one that could switch distances and measure them with help from the laser. That would help me if I ever needed to make long-distance shots. The only other thing I had gotten were some quick-release additions to my armor, to release it… ahem… quickly in case any piece was hit by plasma.

"Ok, listen up soldiers," called out Captain Richardson. He was the leader of my section, which consisted of ten six-man squads. On my squad were my two roomates and three other guys whose names I didn't know, one of those guys was the alcoholic Sergeant Bell. He was our squad leader. That only made me more nervous.

"We will be dropping off in a Covenant camp, there we'll catch themby surprise and eliminate as many of them as possible. It is really quite simple. Questions?"

A soldier raised his hand. "Will we drop literally on top of their camp?" he asked, sounding nervous.

"Yes," stated the captain.

_?_

That's right, I didn't even know what to think. That operation would have a casualty rate of at least 30%, and it was more than likely to go well into 50%.

I sighed along with the rest of the soldiers on the room. I couldn't really complain, that was what we had signed up for after all. We all left the room as we went to the drop pod bays. There weren't enough SOEIV's to fit all 200 soldiers, so some would have to go down in Multiple Occupant Exoatmospheric Insertion Vehicles, or MOEIVs, for short. They were basically SOEIV for six. They were square in shape and each corner sported thrusters. Those could actually maneuver quite well to compensate for their size. They could also break atmosphere and be reused to compensate for their cost.

Before I entered my bay Layla bumped into me.  
>"Oh, I'm glad I found you," she said.<p>

I smiled. "Is that so?"

She looked at me but didn't smile. "Please don't die," she said as she hugged me. Around us there were catcalls and whistles, even female soldiers were teasing.

"I won't," I said. "I promise."

Layla nodded and simply left. As I turned around I smiled at my teammates, but inside I was feeling worried, what the hell kind of whacko sends us straight into a Covenant base with no intel on numbers.

I jumped into my SOEIV while immersed in those thoughts when the speaker crackled to life.

"Ok, listen up soldiers," it was Grandpa Zavala's voice, "the camp you are going into contains roughly a thousand enemy combatants in addition to a dozen ghosts and five wraiths, at least that's what our intel tells us. There are sniper towers along the complex and also a couple of transmitter antennas. I'd really appreciate if you could take those out. Good luck soldiers."

The speaker went silent just as the launching light turned on. I gripped the handles on the pod tighter as we started our descent. There were about 75 pods flying through space right now. The MOEIVs would follow soon after and the rest of the soldiers would arrive in pelicans as surprise backup a few minutes into the battle.

The pod started shacking as we entered atmosphere. The landscape below me started to take real shapes and I found out that we were going to land in the outskirts of a middle-sized city.

"We'll land on the western side of the enemy complex and regroup there, remember to use your pods as cover and do not fire at friendlies, clear?"

The channel was filled with yessirs, and mhmms, and all that. We were going to land soon. I could already see the small shapes of the buildings and wraiths on the Covenant camp if I squinted my eyes. I deployed my drag chute and my thrusters when I had to and at the last second directed my pod to strike a sniper tower. Time seemed to slow down as the jackal that had been firing into the air with his carbine was squashed by my pod, I went through the tower's floor just as my windows polarized and hardened to protect me. I stopped suddenly. Just like planned.

I depolarized my pod's window just as a plasma bolt hit it, denting the glass and making it start to melt. I pressed the button that pushed the hatch away at a high speed. It smashed an elite into a wraith, as it fell down, I was pleased to see a purple smear on the wraith's side.

I smiled as I pulled out my battle rifle from its case inside the SOEIV. I fired a couple of quick bursts at some adventurous elite that decided to poke it's head over a rock and took cover behind my pod. I fired a single shot into the body of a jackal that was making noises on the floor. The platform had crushed its legs but not killed it completely.

As the dust cleared, I could see my fellow marines and soldiers firing at enemy soldiers. The area where our pods had landed was already clear, or mostly clear. In any way you saw it, we had just gotten ourselves a rudimentary perimeter.

"Advance!" ordered Richardson's voice through the intercom.

_No regrouping then._

"I remind you that I know who is currently speaking Lance Corporal Castillo," the Captain's voice said.

The comm channel was filled with chuckling, but it quickly died down as we complied with the captain's orders. The first fifty yards were easy, as the covvies were unorganized and surprised, but later on we found ourselves facing two wraiths and the entirety of the ghosts on the base. We were forced to take cover when the ghosts started peppering us with plasma fire. More than one soldier didn't make it to solid cover in time. I managed to slide into the burned out husk of one wraith. Dom slid as plasma hit the air right behind him.

"Dom, you ok?" I called out.

"Yeah, I'm fine;" he said.

We nodded at each other and peeked out of the sides of the wraith to fire at the Covenant. I knocked down a couple of grunts.

"Whatdya get?" asked Dom.

"Couple grunts, you?"

"Turkey-face. I hit an elite, but its shields held up, damn cheater."

"Amen to that," I said, I was already peeking out again and managed to hit a jackal in the arm before requiring cover. Needle shards were starting to explode over my head.

"Ok, where's the elite?" I asked.

"Behind that concrete slab," answered Dom.

I nodded and primed a grenade I threw it as my roommate provided covering fire. It exploded in front of the concrete slab an overturned it.

"Damn it, I fell short," I complained.

"I killed three grunts," said a Dom that could only be smiling.

I rolled my eyes inside my helmet and popped from cover again, only to be surprised by an angry elite charging at me. I quickly switched my rifle to automatic and emptied a third of my mag before bringing it down. I looked around for enemies, but they were falling back.

"Push forward!" This time, the captain was calling out through his helmet speakers. We all complied, running with our backs hunched and our rifles up. I arrived at a crater near the place I had killed the elite and jumped into it; it was fairly roomy and provided accurate protection. I decide not to look over the rim for a minute.

It paid off as soon as I heard the captain's voice ordering us to move forward. I stood up and looked around, the enemy was falling back to their radio antenna, which also happened to be a very fortified position.

"How you doing?" asked Bell's voice.

"I'm good sir, how about you?"

"Never better," he said, although I could see the burn marks in his helmet and shoulder pieces. He then asked me a couple of questions before we were interrupted by the groan coming from the elite I thought I killed. He ignored me and started telling me what we would do to take the antenna, it involved something with rockets and a hijacked ghost, I didn't get half of it because the elite kept moaning and groaning in pain. I finally shot it in the head absent-mindedly and listened to the sergeant, but he was finished and was now sprinting towards the antenna. The wraiths had been blown up by the rocket-toting marines, and so had the ghosts. I looked around and saw a dozen human bodies lying still. I shook my head and followed the sergeant. I slid into a wall that was missing it's upper half. I was next to two unknown marines. Dom was nowhere to be seen since he jumped into his own crater and no sight of Singh anywhere nearby. I popped out every few seconds to shoot at the grunts manning the plasma cannons. The marine next to me was shot in the chest by a plasma bolt. He twitched once and did not move. The other guy was hit in the neck by a green bolt from a carbine. I cursed and sprinted for a different place to take cover. This place happened to be the dead body of a hunter. I sat down as I heard and felt the dull thuds of plasma connecting with the hunter's armor. I crawled under the death behemoth's shield arm and poked my rifle from underneath. I shot a couple of sniper jackals and took down an elite with its shields down before they figured where my fire was coming from.

_Time to move._ I thought as I sprinted to a different place. And not a moment to soon. The hunter's body blew up in a blue flash and I felt something splattering on my back. Hunter blood and body bits no doubt. My next cover spot was a burned car. As I jumped at it two marines arrived. They were carrying an M247 general purpose machine gun. They set it up on top of the car as I provided covering fire for them. They managed to get it going in ten seconds only. It made a loud noise as it ate through ammo. One of the marines ran back to the rear as the other kept firing. I wondered where he would be going. This was complete chaos, we were not organized, there was no rear, there was simply the front line and that's about it. You can count the wounded not being attended to if you want.

The soldier returned with two canisters filled with 7.62mm ammunition. Solving my doubts. He probably picked it up from his pod.

The soldier firing the machine gun was hit in the chest and shoulder by a plasma pistol. He yelled in pain and collapsed. He grabbed his burnt armor and took it off. It was melting into his body.

_Add to my to-do list: avoid impact from enemy fire_

"Stop saying horseshit and fire the goddamned gun!" yelled the wounded marine.

"As you say," I said as I pulled back the loading lever and fired at an elite that was commanding its troops, it had red colored armor, which meant he was a major. He was turned into bloody pulp from the chest up by my machine gun in seconds.

"Charge!" called out a different voice. This time it wasn't the captain, so I assumed it was a lieutenant, no one else would be stupid enough to give that order.

But sure enough, there were marines leaving cover as they fired their weapons wildly into the enemy position. Oddly, it seemed to work.

I yelled like an idiot as I joined this charge. I unfastened the clip securing my main battle knife to its sheath in my lower back. I ran without being shot and jumped over some purple metal and into the antenna itself. I landed in front of frightened-looking grunt and promptly slammed my rifle into the back of its head. I then stomped his already dented head with my metal boots a couple of times. I turned around and sprayed a couple of shielded jackals, hitting one in the knee.

I had no cover right now, but I was saved by two soldiers shooting the jackals from behind. I gave them a quick salute and entered the antenna itself. There were only a handful of enemy soldiers left in there, but I had made the stupid mistake of going in alone, or at least uncoordinated. As soon as I turned the first corner, a couple of thin and long hands grabbed my rifle and yanked it from me. I found myself facing an armored skirmisher. Before I even had time to react, it was bringing its fist to my head with an uppercut. I managed to lean slightly back, so that his blow only hit my helmet. Still, it stunned me.

"Fuck you bird!" I cursed at it as it jumped at me. We tumbled to the ground. I kneed the jackal a couple of timed before realizing I couldn't get it in an arm lock. Its head was to far forwards to allow for a nice grip with my legs. Instead I pushed it over my head and quickly stood up, I was greeted by claws slashing at me. One blow actually managed to pierce the undersuit on my forearm. I cried out as I bled. Here I was, having a one-on-one with a freaking jackal. There was no way I was going to get killed by a motherfucking ostrich on steroids.

I punched it with all my strength. The blow connected with its metallic beak armor. I cried out in pain. "Fucking fuck!"

The jackal recovered and decided to bite on my arm. I twisted it so that his teeth would only hit armor. It made a noise that clearly meant it was in pain as it broke its own teeth. Now I grabbed its head and kneed it in the ribs a couple of times. Then I brought my knee into its head with all my strength.

It collapsed as I let it go. I snapped its neck just to be sure. Once I had done that, I grabbed my rifle and climbed a ramp, kicking the jackal on the way. There were a couple of marines up ahead, they were fighting and elite ultra. It pulled out a sword and slashed at them. One of them ducked, but the other was decapitated. Decapitated is being used loosely here, since her body from the mid-chest up was separated from the rest of her body. Her chest and head fell to the ground with a dull thud the elite kicked the other marine before pulling out his sword from the metal wall. It set its eyes on its next victim, which happened to be me.

"Oh crap."

I stood there for a moment, frozen in fear before the elite's attention shifted to five soldiers peppering it with lead. I snapped out of my daze and joined the fire, the elite collapsed within five seconds and its body stopped moving. One of the marines brought a pistol to its head and fired one shot. I simply walked over to the marine that had been kicked in the chest by the elite and asked him if he was all right. He nodded and a second later he coughed up some blood. I told him to hang in there when my eyes met the dead eyes of the sliced woman. I was able to lift my helmet just in time to throw up. The scene was so macabre. Her upper body was lying a foot away from her lower body, her rifle still clutched tightly in her hands, a look of pure horror on her face.

"Oh God," was all I had time to say before I threw up again. I staggered up and leaned on a wall, facing away from the dead woman. I walked out of the building when a guy carrying a bunch of explosives prompted me to do so. I was helping the guy with the crushed ribcage. He could walk, so that was a good sign, I guess, I'm not really a doctor.

I left the antenna, which was now spewing smoke. I glanced back at it and had the strangest of thoughts _What happened to the hijacked ghost? _I asked myself. Later, I would learn that there was no need for that since the marines arriving by pelican had distracted the covvie defenders for long enough for us to make our charge.

I hopped over a rock and two minutes later the antenna was blown up. It didn't come cheaply though; over seventy marines were dead or wounded, with the majority of that number being dead.

I found out from the sergeant that Singh had been struck as soon as we arrived, the captain had also been hit by two needler rounds to the forehead. I was lucky I didn't know that many people here, otherwise, I would've gone into shock.

I waited at a clearing for a pelican to come pick us up. We were pulling back to the _Inconvenience_. That meant that all the people that had died here had died for nothing. Absolutely no greater goal for the UNSC, or for Humanity. They had just been sent there to die. Our small force had been sent to death for a strategically insignificant position. We had won, but about a quarter of our number were gone.

I sat on the pelican, blank stare in my eyes, I'm sure someone would've been freaked out by it if I had had my helmet off.

"This is madness," I murmured into my helmet, its speakers off.

_Why did we just do that? All those men died for nothing._

* * *

><p>When I arrived at the <em>Inconvenience <em>an hour later, I was feeling gloom. Sixty-two men and women had been sent to their deaths for the sake of dying. Our small battle group had failed their objective of rescuing the majority of the civilian population, only managing to cover the retreat of around three million souls, less than a third of the planet's population. It had cost us two of our ships and a large number of infantry. At least those other men died for a cause, we had done no good to anyone down there. If we were going to be sent on high-risk missions, we should at least be sent to the ones that mattered for something.

I left the pelican and jumped to the hangar. A hundred soldiers were doing the same, some were wounded and limping, while others were being rushed to the medical bay in stretchers or just being carried over someone's shoulder. I sighed and walked to my room. There would be no debriefing after this mission. I just felt like getting stoned, and quickly.

I met up with Dom on the way to the room, he wasn't his usual cheery and goofy self, but he was looking less affected by this than me.

"You ok buddy?" he asked me while patting my back.

"I'll be fine," I lied.

"Huh, yeah right. Hey, don't worry about it, all of those soldiers knew what they signed in for."

"To be sent to their deaths for no reason?" I said.

"Hey, the ONI might be ruthless, but they're not stupid, there was probably a reason why they sent us there, besides, it really wasn't such a bad mission, last time the whole contingent was deployed, we suffered a 70% casualty rate."

"Well that certainly makes me feel better," I mumbled.

Dom chuckled. "It's not supposed to, but trust me, there was something special about that enemy camp."

"Sure, whatever you say," I told Dom before walking away.

On my way to my room I suddenly realized that the ship wasn't moving. A ship is supposed to be moving if it is falling back. This wasn't making any sense.

Suddenly the ship shook, but not in a good way. It was rocked sideways and I could hear explosions, there was the rumbling of AAA fire from the ships point defense guns as well.

"Great, now we're under attack," I muttered as the alarms started ringing.

I ran towards my battle station, which happened to be an emergency pod. I was joined by two other scared-looking marines soon after. I felt the ship shake, but this time it was because of the MAC firing. The ship shifted position and fired again, this time I could almost swear I heard a gigantic explosion on the other side of the ship's armor.

The alarms subsided and I was able to breath normally again. During those three minutes that the engagement lasted, I was scared as shit, it was all I could do not to shit my pants. Seriously, there was nothing I could do to avoid being either melted or going into vacuum.

The alarms subsided as the ship started moving, this time it was clear that we were using our own thrusters. The _Inconvenience_ must've had a hell of an AI at the time.

A few hours later, we were on slipspace and on our way out, we would be doing six or seven random two-day jumps. Then we would be on our way back to Reach or Paris IV. Probably Paris IV, since it was a less important colony.

I was to be placed in stasis for the duration of the trip, so would the rest of the crew, including officers. The AI would handle the ship for the two weeks that we would spend in candy land.

As I walked into the cryo bay where I was supposed to be in, I was dismayed to find it surprisingly empty, only about half the tubes were occupied. I simply took of my clothes and neatly folded them and placed them on the designated space next to my freezer. I jumped on it and swallowed the anti-freeze fluid. A second later I felt really cold and then it all went black.


	14. Leisure

_Hello readers, First of all, thanks for reading this. I also really just want to express how wonderful I think summer is, it actually allows me to a lot of stuff. Like A LOT. I'm actually reading a couple of other fanfics while writing my own (don't worry, I'm not stealing ideas). As weird as it sounds, I actually enjoy writing my story, it gives me something to do and keeps me busy for hours._

_Also, tell your friends about this piece of art and that it represents the pinnacle of literature, I'm sure they'd be interested in reading my masterpiece, also I NEEDZ MOAR REVIEWSSSS, that way I'll be one step closer to my goal of conquering the world!_

_That is all, enjoy_

casquis

* * *

><p><span>Chapter XIV: Leisure<span>

**January 25, 2535 (UNSC Calendar)/**

**UNSC **_**Inconvenience, **_**Paris IV, Paris System**

I woke up to someone shaking my head. My eyes took while to get used to the light in the cryo bay. I could see a silhouette looming over me. I could also feel chunky stuff on my chest and belly. Apparently I had thrown up the anti-freeze without waking up. That's dangerous shit, I could drown with it if I wasn't careful.

I didn't want to move, so I didn't. I was quite comfortable in my sleeping position, which was ironic, since cryo tubes are covered by some sort of hard plastic.

A few seconds later, when I refused to wake up, I was slapped.

"What the hell? Again?" I complained as I jumped up, now fully awake.

I blinked repeatedly and saw Layla's pretty face smiling at me. I calmed down and smiled back.

"Boy, you really do enjoy seeing me naked don't you?" I asked playfully.

Her expression remained the same as she handed me a towel to wipe the vomited fluid from my chest and face. Once I had done so, I put on my fatigues. There was no one left in the room, they had all left by the time I started lacing my boots. Layla, however, stayed there, with a small smile on her face.

"For a while, I thought you were dead when I couldn't find you," she said.

"Don't worry, it'll take more than that to bring me down," I replied, trying to sound cool.

Layla wordlessly stood up and walked towards me. I must've wiped all the vomited anti-freeze clean of my mouth, because as soon as she was close enough, she kissed me.

I was dumbstruck. It was by no means my first kiss, but it was certainly the first that I had received from a girl that was not filled up with alcohol up to her throat. It was weird, and different. It felt nice.

I kissed her back, and for a moment I forgot about everything, I just focused on enjoying the moment. After what seemed like hours, we pulled apart. I smiled at her and she returned the smile, it was what I would consider a perfect moment. Of course, it was ruined. We were interrupted in the form of another navy tech coming into the room. She had an awkward look on her face when we both turned to face her. She shuffled her feet and blushed. I did the same.

"Ummm, I need your help with something Layla," she said. Her voice sounded as uncomfortable as she was probably feeling right now.

"Right," I said, before leaving the cryo bay at a brisk walk. "I'll see you later."

I walked to my room with a huge grin on my face, I probably looked stupid, but I didn't really care at the time. I was feeling the happiest I had in a long while, and for a few minutes, there was nothing in my mind that could take that from me.

* * *

><p>"Aaaaaaaand…." said Dom hopefully as I swigged down the glass of liquor. I finished it. "Yeah!"<p>

I was now the drinking champion of the ship, a dozen people were cheering for me along with Dom. My adversary, a large burly marine had a dumb look in his face right before he collapsed. Everyone around laughed and patted my shoulder. I wasn't feeling all that well suddenly. The floor started shifting on me. I held on to the table to ensure that I wouldn't fall down, after all, I didn't want anything to ruin my dramatic victory.

After I was done, the party went on like a regular college party would've, except that there was a whole lot more drinking involved, a lot. I had had enough for the night, so I went straight to my room, Dom helped me out by not letting me slam into the walls or the floor. He helped me sit down on the bed and gave me a container for me to throw up in in case I needed to throw up.

"You're a good friend Dom," I said, my speech slurred.

"Hey, don't worry…" he started saying before he was interrupted by me heaving much of my lunch and dinner into the container.

He started laughing like a maniac until I realized that the container was nothing other than my own helmet. I groaned. "You asshole!" I called at him as I threw my helmet at him. It hit the wall next to the door and splashed the floor with vomit. Dom had already left the room and I could hear his half-drunken laugh in the hallways.

"Oh, God," I said before rushing to the trashcan to empty the rest of my stomach.

* * *

><p>I woke up the next day feeling as bad as that time when I got a concussion. My head was hurting and I was still drunk. I got up from my bed and immediately had to hold on to something. I decided to take a warm shower.<p>

When I left the shower I was feeling slightly better. I shaved and managed not to slice my own neck open with the blade, quite a feat considering the state I was in. I headed to the mess hall to get some food in my empty stomach.

As I entered the hall I found the remains of the party. It looked so much like something straight out of a teen comedy that I couldn't help but laughing. There were a couple of passed out persons on the tables and on the floor, the entire room smelled of vomit and alcohol. I was even cheered by a couple of guys that promptly grabbed their heads in pain after calling me champ. There was even a girl marine in her underwear lying on top of a table, there was a pool of vomit by her head, with little chunks still in her mouth and hair. She was lucky I didn't have a camera, otherwise I would've taken a picture and posted it on the ship's blog. I probably would've put on printouts on the news boards that were scattered around the ship.

Again, lucky her.

"I heard you beat our ruling champion," came a voice from behind. I turned to find myself face to face with the Colonel. He was wearing his full armor, it didn't seem like he took it off. Ever.

"That I did, sir," I said with a smile on my face.

"Well, then you're entitled to a double ration today," the colonel said as he patted me in the back. He signaled for a soldier on cook duty, probably one of the only few people on the ship that wasn't drunk or hungover. Poor him.

The cook nodded and brought me a tray with two pieces of lasagna, two bread buns, two apples, two chocolate bars, and two juice boxes.

"Enjoy your breakfast son," said the Colonel as he left, his boots clacking on the metallic floor.

I smiled at my meal and dug in.

A few minutes later I was joined by Dom, for some reason he looked as fresh as ever. There was a big smile on his face.

"Morning man, did you see Vicky?" he asked as he gestured at the girl in her underwear, she was snoring loudly now.

"Yes, I did, poor girl," I said. "What would her parents think?"

Dom simply laughed and tried to steal one of my juice boxes before I slapped him with my plastic spork.

We ate our breakfast while talking about whatever I had missed yesterday, apparently it hadn't been much, the party had turned into some sort of throwing up competition a couple of minutes after I left.

_Lucky me, _I thought.

Dom told me about how a guy twisted his ankle by tring to do a backflip from one of the tables and how another one landed face-first trying to do the same. I laughed at that right as I finished my second lasagna.

I stood up and left Dom to go to the gym for a while. I hadn't done my regular routine for the past couple of days. With the new meat we had picked at Paris IV we had gotten a large shipment of alcoholic beberages, courtesy of our loving and caring Colonel Zavala. That man really cared about his men's sanity. Had it not been for the large quantities of booze so many of us would've already put a bullet in their temples.

Just as I finished my ten-click run and was about to start doing weight lifting, I was given a paper sheet by Lieutenant Wilkins, he was the lapdog of our ONI liason on board, Commander Albaf. She was a real bitch. I glanced at the sheet of paper to find out it was one of those interviews about the armor and all that crap.

I sighed as Wilkins handed me a pencil and started answering.

The questions asked me how my armor performed, mostly I answered N/A, since I hadn't been hit once. When asked about my equipment I wrote down that it performed as it was supposed to. In the section for additional comments I scrolled down an angry "Why don't you send us on missions that matter?" and I added an angry face for effect.

I handed my questionnaire to the Lieutenant and he simply raised an eyebrow once he read that part, but made no comment. He left as I started excercising again. I was careful not to exercise to much, I didn't want to turn myself into a monster. I was still careful with my appearance.

Once I was done excercising I went to the pelican hangar bay. There wasn't anything interesting going on there, I mostly went there to watch the paint jobs on the pelicans. Pilots here was as undisciplined as the rest of us, and most of them had painted their craft with different colors and given them crazy names. There were some names that sounded intimidating, like: _God's Thunder, Flash of Blood, Warhead, _and _Deathslayer._ Despite those very respectable names, my favorite one was a pelican that was painted with red in certain sections of the hull that was named _Mary's Little Lamb_. I always laughed at that one. Under said ship was just what I was hoping to find by coming down here.

There was a man with a blow torch doing something with a metal sheet and some steel bars. I came up to him and tapped him on the back, only to be greeted by blue fire dangerously close to my face.

"Point that thing away from me!" I cried out.

"Crap, sorry!" yelled the man as he took off his mask, revealing he was indeed a she.

"Jeez, you scared the shit out of me," I said.

"Sorry, anyways, what can I help you with?" she asked, impatient.

"Yeah, could you like melt this little metal pieces into my boot?" I asked as I pulled out my right armored boot and two steel bars that had been folded to look like a half rectangle with flaps. They were supposed to be for my knife to be kept there.

"Like melt? she asked, probably wondering why I hadn't simply said the right word.

"Hey, I forget the proper word," I admitted. "Will you do it?"

"For free?" she sounded incredulous.

I grunted, having expected this, it would take her five freaking seconds and she was asking for cash. This ship was doomed to hell, both literally and metaphorically. Not even doing favors to each other, please.

"I'll give you twenty creds," I said. She simply nodded and got to work. It took her exactly twenty-one seconds.

"There you go," she said as she handed me my new and improved boot. "I would've done it for free if you had insisted."

"I would've given you more creds if you had asked me," I shot back.

She simply shrugged and went back to work with her metal sheet and bars.

I went to my room to see if the new holdings fit my knife's sheath. I was glad to see that the sheath's loops, designed to go through a belt, fit the bars well, and snuggly. I tightened the bars more with the help from a hammer and my walls before I was completely satisfied with the result.

I then had lunch, went to the armory to see if we had gotten anything interesting, and left when I found out I wasn't the only one that had had that idea. I watched a couple of movies before I went back, there were less people there now, so I looked around for interesting stuff. Since nothing caught my attention, I left.

Layla was nowhere to be found. That was probably because the Navy personnel actually had to work during the day. We only had to bore ourselves to death. Luckily, we would be placed in cryo before long, we were on our way back to the frontlines, probably being meteorited down to our deaths.

"Frank!" someone called from behind. I turned to find out it was just the person I had been looking for.

"Let's go someplace quiet," she said, with her everpresent smile.

* * *

><p><em>Feel free to ignore the second paragraph of my author's rant before the story.<em>


	15. Home

Chapter XV: Home

**February 10, 2535 (UNSC Calendar)/**

**Olimpia, Jericho VII, Jericho System**

We had been dropped into the planet that had served as my home just a few hours ago. This time we had been dropped into a zone that was relatively free of enemies, our force had been divided into four fifty-men platoons. Since we had just barely gotten replacements, there were no permanent squads, although I was careful to remain close to Dom and to a monster of a man carrying a light machine gun. He was appropriately called Bear.

I was dismayed to find out that the city had been bombarded by the Covenant and had been one of the places where thay had landed significant ground forces. They had 36 ships in orbit while we had around fifty. We were dramatically outgunned in space.

My unit had been sent to the outskirts of the city to cover the evacuation of any civilians and to do the same in case any unit from downtown needed to retreat in our direction. We had picked up a nice position by a couple of damaged buildings. I was placed on top of a Wal-Mart with a couple of snipers and two other marksmen, from my position I could see the Wal-Mart sign proclaiming that the store had been humanity's supplier of cheap goods for over half a millennium.

_That's a long time._ I thought to myself.

"Long time for what?" asked one of the snipers.

"For anything," I answered as I pointed to the sign, this time I wasn't even surprised at my lack of ability to keep my mouth shut.

The sniper shrugged and went back to to scanning the area for enemies. We all stayed quiet for some time before our radio crackled.

"Oversight, do you copy? This is Command."

Since no one moved to grab the radio I had to stand up myself. _Lazy bastards._

"Command, this is Oversight, we copy," I answered.

"Oversight, there's a convoy of civilian trucks and some hogs coming our way through our eleven o'clock. Just don't shoot them."

"Roger," I said as I out down the radio. I had no idea why we couldn't use our comms for that, but I wasn't really complaining.

Soon enough I could hear the roaring of large trucks and the familiar sound of a couple of warthogs. The convoy was massive, it was made of at least fifty trucks filled to the brim with men, women, and children. Some of them were wounded. I wondered if my uncle was amongst them.

_Probably not, he's a soldier, so it's likely that he was put to fight._ This time I was careful with my thoughts, I didn't want anyone to hear.

"That's good news right? So many civvies alive," said a man with a DMR.

"Sure, if you say so," answered another marine.

For hours after that, nothing interesting happened. We could hear plasma and gunfire in the distance, we could also see the sky turning red from all the smoke and fire in the city. Good thing my uncle's house was in the base, which was to my back, outside the city.

While I was immersed in those thoughts, I failed to notice the small groups of marines coming through our ranks, eventually our small group of fifty had swollen up to about a hundred. That was bad news, that meant our boys in the front were being pushed back.

"Uh-oh," said one of the snipers. I aimed my rifle in the same direction as his and cursed. There were two wraiths and a couple of dozen covvies headed our way. I picked up the radio and dialed command.

"Command, this is Overwatch, there is a large group of enemy armored and infantry about two clicks out, directly ahead oh us. Doesn't look like they have spotted us."

"Roger that, do not engage, I repeat do not engage until I give the order," came the answer.

"Yessir," I replied before cutting of the conversation.

I looked at my fellow long-distance fighters and they nodded at me, making it known that they had heard. We aimed at the enemy force to do some recon. There were exactly 27 enemy infantry, mostly grunts and jackals, but there was also a hunter pair in addition to five elites, three minors, a major, and an ultra. They were unsuspecting of our location.

"We have positioned rocket launchers in the path of the enemy force, feel free to engage, we will fire after you," that was the radio, instructing us as to what we were supposed to do.

"To far away for clean headshots," murmured one sniper. "We'll shoot at the ultra and the major, then you will pound away at them with your guns, ok?"

"Yessir," I said, jokingly of course, since the sniper was a PFC while I was two ranks higher than he was.

"On my mark," he said to the other sniper, "I'll take the ultra," he said.

"Dibs on the major," I called out, after all, I had the only weapon with the capability to fire in burst or automatic, the other two marksmen would use their DMRs on the ultra.

"Roger," said the marksmen as they went belly down on the floor, taking carefull aim. I simply placed my rifle on top of a metal ventilation box for support.

"Three, two, one, mark," said the sniper.

The silence of the position we were in was interrupted by two simultaneous sharp cracks. I had fired less than a second after the two men, I let out two quick bursts aimed at the space above the head of the red helmet of the major. I looked through my scope as the sniper rounds traveled the 700 meters to their target in about a second, they hit both targets in the torso area.

The lading elites recoiled and my target's chest armor suddenly sported six holes in the middle. The major collapsed an instant before the ultra. Just as the ultra's body hit the floor, there were another sharp cracks coming from the snipers, they both hit a single elite, the first one taking out its shields and the second one tearing a decent-sized chunk from its waist. It fell to the ground and twitched. A DMR round to the chest quickly put it out of its misery.

I fired two bursts at a couple of surprised jackal snipers, hitting one in the leg and torso and missing the other one altogether. That was six enemies down in three seconds.

The two wraiths blew up in a fiery blaze, courtesy of four rocket-toting soldiers. The rest of the enemy soldiers were promptly brought down by our sniper fire and the wall of lead that came from the first line of defense down in the street level, all in all, the engagement had taken about a minute and a half. No casualties on our side.

A small squad was sent to confirm that the enemies were all dead, they dragged back a struggling jackal, that would certainly give our unit a bonus. ONI was always up for interrogating and vivisecting enemy combatants. The jackal was calmed down by a blow to the head and placed in shackles on our lone pelican. It would be taken to the ship, put on the brig, and then transported to Reach.

"Nice work Oversight," crackled the radio.

"Thank you, sir," this time another soldier had answered the call.

We stayed there for a while, nothing interesting really happening, sometimes a couple of shortswords would level a couple of city blocks, or knock down a banshee in the distance. We were starting to get bored. We had only been here for about twelve hours, but we were still at full alert, which meant that we had to scope the area in front of us and to our sides at all times, lest a couple of eager grunts cross our lines and sabotage the whole unit. I rolled my eyes and wondered what would happen if I shot a certain bird of the corpse of a hunter. Or what was left of the corpse, a rocket to the midsection usually doesn't do you much good.

Our boredom was interrupted by a couple of scorpions rumbling into our position, they were supposed to be reinforcements, there was also a pair of rhinos in a small hill five miles to our rear. We had also been given the channel to the shortsword bombers. All in the duration of a couple of minutes.

"Well that can't be good," I muttered.

"What's so bad about armored and air support?" a marksman asked me, with irony strong in his voice.

I chuckled without any humor in my voice. "Buddy, it means that we're going to need it."

"Oh crap," he said with realization.

_Oh crap indeed my friend._

We only had to wait for a few minutes before the position we were in fell under attack. Our commanding officer, a new Captain, had chosen a nice position, we were located in an area which contained the Wal-Mart and three four-story buildings, there was some debris from the buildings in and around the parking lot, serving as nice cover, there were also barricades and wrecked cars there, they had been arranged to function as a barrier. We had a semi-circle protecting us, it was strengthened with regular infantry in addition to mounted machine guns and a single gauss cannon, which was placed in the second floor of one of the buildings. There were some mortars behind the Wal-Mart as well. We also had the tanks.

The first enemy onslaught came in the form of a large force of grunts, as usual. We dispatched them all quickly, I didn't waste my ammo on those, neither did the snipers. I had moved away from the bulk of the five men in the roof and to a corner, which provided me an ample field of fire. I looked for high-value targets, finding none. As the last of the grunts were riddled with holes or managed to return to cover, the boys down there reloaded their guns and waited for the next wave. I was surprised to see it come in less than five minutes. Usually they waited a couple of hours before throwing the elites at us.

_Maybe they are being pressed from behind? _I wondered. They probably were, since instead of sending just infantry, we were met by the onslaught of what seemed to be hundreds of covies and dozens of vehicles, incuding banshees. It was like a shooting gallery for me, targets everywhere, mind that the targets in question were supported by armor and were exceedingly good at shooting back.

We called in a couple of strafing runs on the advancing force, but our shortswords were running out of bombs, they were limited to machine gun fire and small missiles now.

Our tanks were making short work of all the ghosts and specters that ventured into their fields of fire, and the rhinos had caused devastation among the enemy ranks. I simply dedicated myself to shooting down as many unshielded elites as I could find. I usually listened for the mortars flying overhead and waited for their impact, the explosions killed grunts and jackals, but sometimes only weakened the elites, those were my targets.

The two snipers dedicated themselves to shooting down the hunters, the rocket jockeys were to busy trying to take out the banshees to be able to handle the walking tanks. They succeeded in knocking down one of the behemoths, only one.

"Shit," was all I could say as the other hunter started a sprint towards our line. Bullets seemed to bounce of its armor, and whichever round managed to hit its unprotected skin (or worms) didn't seem to affect it.

It slammed a marine hard with its shield, he hit a lighpost in the parking lot with a crunch. The hunter then disintegrated three retreating soldiers with its cannon before it was hit from the side by the gauss cannon. It was shot one more time, just to be sure.

"What the hell is that?" asked a sniper.

I searched the battlefield frantically before I found what he was referring to. It was an elite, or at least it looked like one. It was taller than most elites, at least eight and a half feet tall. What was weirder about it was that it didn't have the usual armor that elites wore. It was instead wearing a silver-gray armor that was full of carvings and runes. It looked more ornamental than anything else. It was barking orders at the yellow-armored zealots around it, energy sword sizzling in its hand.

"Well, take it out!" I called out to the snipers.

One of the soldiers fired a round at the elite, it hit him square in the chest. The monster barely moved an inch as it shields flickered. What it did do, was reach out to a jackal next to it, it tore a beam rifle from its hands and fired a single shot. I was in shock and awe as the single beam of plasma flew straight at the soldier's head. It passed right next to the scope and hit my sniper friend right in between the eyes. All that within two seconds after being shot at.

The sniper fell to the floor, his face bloody and missing half the back of his skull.

"Fuuuuck!" was the general response to the event in our roof.

Three DMRs and my BR55 shot straight at the monstruous elite. I managed to hit it a couple of times while shooting without really aiming, through my scope I could see the elite recoiling while shots bounced of its armor. There was also dust flying up around its feet, a couple of the zealots around him were hit and the weaponless jackal was shot at least five times. The surviving sniper fired his rifle four times in quick succession, with one round managing to tear a zealots head from its body while the others hit nothing but air.

We were forced to take cover when plasma started burning the ledge of the roof we were on.

"That shit was freaking crazy!" complained one soldier.

"Tell me about it," answered another one.

"Anyone managed to get the coordinates?" asked the surviving sniper. He was well-trained.

"Yes, the elite is about a click and a half to our ten!" I yelled, my ears ringing from the barrage of our rifles. "That is grid Foxtrot-Mike Niner." I was also well trained.

The sniper nodded as he called in air support, plasma still flying over our heads. Before he could give the coordinates the floor seemed to groan. I felt the noise of a fuel rod flying through the air before the section of the roof we were in collapsed.

"Shiiiiiiiiiiiiit!" was all I could hear before the clamor of concrete and metal tumbling ten meters down blocked everything else out. Since we were on top of the roof, we escaped undamaged since it fell at a forty-five degree angle, working as a slide to ease our ride to the ground. Of course, most of us landed on our necks and backs to the pointy rocks waiting for us at the bottom.

I groaned before a plasma beam hit the concrete a foot from my head, leaving a black ring with smoke coming from the center. I got up and started running for cover, I wasn't the only one, the surviving sniper ran towards one of the closest buildings for a better sniping spot, of course, it was blown up by three simultaneous wraith mortar shots before he could get near. Lucky him. The rest of us marksmen ran towards the line of cars and barricades, closer to the enemy, but at least we had something in between us and them other than good ol' O2.

I managed to find myself a place in between Dom and Bear. They weren't taking cover, simply firing at the enemy, who didn't seem to be taking any cover either.

"How's it going down here?" I asked through the noise.

"It's going well," roared Bear through the sound of his machine gun. I took down a couple of grunts before we had to take cover from a sniper jackal.

"It's going relatively well," commented Bear. He seemed to have a funny sense of humor.

When it was going relatively well for Alpha 2nd, it meant that we were in what any other platoon would've called a clusterfuck. We were running out of ammo, had no air support, and our troops were giving the parking lot floor a new dye job.

Yes, with their blood. Crappy analogy, or simile, or whatever it's called, but it doesn't take away the fact that it was true.

I lifted my head only to pop back down as a beam rifle tore through the metal of the car an inch from my head.

Dom looked at me with a surprised look on his face.

"That was a close one," he noted.

"No shit."

We switched cover to a larger SUV. I was able to localize the jackal harassing us through the window, but wasn't abe to leave cover, a group of elites had seen where we were and were now melting the other side of our metallic cover. I signaled a marine wielding a BR55 like mine the position of the jackal, he nodded and popped out, taking it down with three bursts. He returned to cover with a smile on his face, at least that's what I assumed was behind the faceplate, since he seemed to have been an ODST before joining our unit.

Bear and Dom fired blindly over and below the car respectively. Bear was making good use of the M247L he was carrying, while Dom's MA5B turned more than one pair of elite feet into mush. As they fell into the ground we jumped over the SUV simuteneously, we ran while hunching down and I put a round into each of the wounded elite's skulls before we slid to a pile of rubble. The SUV we were in was completely atomized by a blast from a wraith. I had to close my eyes from the bright flash. I could feel the heat even from ten meters away. As I was on my back I noticed something on the sky that I hadn't before. It just so happened to be that a CCS-Battlecruiser had decided to hover over our heads.

"What the hell is that?" I asked.

"Well Frankie, that just so happens to be a cute stripper," said Dom. Bear laughed and I flushed. I was mad that no one decided to radio our sniper team about a fucking enemy battleship hovering right above us.

"Why hasn't it glassed us yet?" I asked.

"Apparently there's a high-ranking elite that the covvies don't want to waste, at least that's what Albaf says. The ship is supposed to be the evac for this legion, they are being pounded on the other side by some sort of spec ops team. We are lucky the ship is empty of infantry, otherwise they would've sent reinforcements long ago."

"And no one decided to tell me," I complained.

"Nah, they wanted you to die here," said Dom.

Just as I was about to say some pretty unsavory comments regarding his mother and any sister he might've had, three seraphs flew overhead, dangerously close to the ground. They were headed for the rhino hill.

"Aaaaand there goes our artillery," I said as the hilltop turned white and blue, with small flashes of orange in the middle of the grand explosion. One Seraph was knocked down by a jackhammer while the other two returned to the ship hovering some miles above us.

"Don't worry, our line will hold as long as they don't get reinforcements and that ship doesn't decide to glass us," said Bear with his gruff voice.

Just as he finished saying that, I heard a mechanical noise, it was coming from the CCS-Battlecruiser, so it must've been quite loud for me to hear ir. I looked at it and saw its cargo bay opening. A large object fell down.

"Why thank you very much Bear, of course our line will hold," I yelled angrily at him.

By the time the scarab had hit the floor, most of the infantry here had fallen back, only the soldiers manning the machine guns remained, making good use of the last ammo boxes the guns would ever fire. A squad of banshees chased them as they retreated, some were shot down by the plasma fire. The banshees themselves were either destroyed or damaged by the concentration of small weapons fire. I was already running for my life when our captain stopped us.

"One of you needs to stay and paint the target," he said bluntly, plasma raining all around us.

"Come again?" said Dom.

"We managed to get a couple of longswords to give us a strafing run, I need one of you to remain here and mark the scarab," he explained.

"Shotty not."

"Shotty not," Bear and Dom spoke a fraction of a second before me.

"Shotty fuck!"

"Good luck soldier," said the captain as he hopped on on a warthog and left at full speed.

"Better luck next time buddy," said Dom, not a trace of shame on his voice.

"Fuck you very much," I said to him. Bear laughed. "You too!"

I was pissed.

I ran towards the collapsed wall of the Wal-Mart while Dom and Bear joined the full retreat. The two remaining scorpions blasted any infantry coming close enough while rolling backwards at full steam. I was alone. Again. At least this time I had a mission. I aimed my rifle at the scarab while activating my laser sight's designator mode. I kept it on the scarab without to much trouble, nobody had seen me yet. I was under a section of the wall that covered me from above, in addition to that a bunch of smashed concrete covered the rest of my body.

"Thirty seconds," a voice crackled in my comm it was probably the pilot of a longsword, since it was unfamiliar. _How come they can use comms and we can only use our radios? _ was all I could wonder before the scarab shot one of the tanks, its turret flying thirty feet in the air before crashing down next to the main part of the tank.

The other scorpion shot at the scarab's body. It shook the insect-like combat platform before the scarab turned its rear turret and melted the scorpion to a pile of titanium and ceramic.

The scarab's triumph was short lived, as suddenly two black flashes flew over it, an instant later it was covered by orange explosions, a good portion of the ground around it was hit as well, taking out a large number of covvies. I just hoped that the creepy elite had been taken out as well.

I left my hideout and started running in the same direction as the rest of the unit. Dom and Bear had left five minutes ago, so I probably had a lot of catching up to do. My train of though was interrupted by the loudest noise I had heard in my life. It was like the noise a gauss cannon made up to eleven. I glanced up at the enemy ship to see its hull littered with explosions.

"Fucking great, all of a sudden we start winning," I complained.

I stood there looking at the ship for a couple of seconds to determine which direction it was falling in and then ran in the opposite direction as fast as I could. Away from the ship, and away from my friends.

The ship's failing anti-grav generators slowed down its fall, and I managed to escape the ship's crash-site. Only by two hundred meters, but it was sufficient. I just hoped that enough covvies had been squished by the ship for me to not have to worry about the enemy chasing me. I started a fast jog down the street until I realized it looked barely familiar. Yes, there were a couple of bars that I had been to before. I was close to the camp. I knew I was probably making a mistake, but for the first time in years, I headed home.


	16. Camp Afghan

Chapter XVI: Camp Afghan

**Feburay 11, 2535 (UNSC Calendar)/**

**Camp Afghan, Olimpia, Jericho VII, Jericho**

I pushed the semi-collapsed gate out of my way as I entered the perimeter of the camp. The sign designating it as Camp Afghan had been riddled with holes, probably from spikers or needlers, brutes had been here. Not good. I looked around at the ruins that were once my entire world.

The warthogs were nothing but burnt out husks, their turret cannons either bent or broken. Marine bodies lumped over sideways, blood dripping from their wounds. There were the bodies of unarmored recruits, rifles still in their arms. They barely had a warning when the Covenant attacked. There were numerous grunt bodies, so there had been a fight here, and not a massacre. There was the occasional body of a brute here and there, so my earlier suspicions proved to be right. I walked around the wasteland. Careful not to step on the bodies of any humans, it was harder than it might sound, there were sections of the ground that were completely carpeted with bodies.

I heard a noise, I was to shellshocked to really take cover, I turned to see a surprised-looking grunt staring at me. I shot it without breaking my stride, breaking the deadly silence of the place. I walked around aimlessly for a while, before deciding to head out to the residential section of the camp, where trainers and officers lived.

Afghan street, as that zone was called, was relatively undamaged, there were holes in the walls of the houses here and there, and one house was on fire, cars were positioned to serve as cover or barricades. I saw Mrs. Flanaghan, the old lady next door and the wife of the commanding officer of the camp. She had always been nice, giving me cookies she baked or a slice of apple pie. She told me of how much she missed her children, who had gone to fight insurrectionists after joining the UNSC. She was always nice to me, now she was lying on the street, her hand still gripping the car's door handle, with a dozen spiker rounds on her back. I shook my head and walked on. I could see other dead bodies on the street, from officers that had tried to protect their families, a couple of grunts were lying on their own blood. I averted my eyes and entered my house, my home, for the first time since I left for Mars.

The door was completely blown of its hinges, the hall was damaged and some of the pictures had fallen to the floor, no doubt thanks to the large bodies of the brutes. I walked into the kitchen and looked at the living room. My uncle was there.

I would love to say that there was a mountain of bodies around him, and that he smiled at me while smoking one of his beloved cigars, with a weapon on his lap.

Instead, my uncle was leaning backwards on his favorite couch, six spiker rounds protruding from his chest. There was a weapon in the floor next to him, his favorite hunting shotgun, it was one of those monsters designed to hunt the megafauna on this planet, two barreled and ressembling the look of those ancient shotguns from the XIX century. The gun wasn't smoking, but there was an used up shotgun cartridge on the floor. I couldn't help but smile weakly at the dead brute in front of him, a large portion of it's face torn away. I looked behind me and I saw that the kitchen window and part of the wall around it were broken and riddled with holes respectively.

I stepped over the brute and sat on it, staring at my uncle's dead body, he had an expression of anger on his face, like daring the aliens to come at him. At least he had made them pay. I closed his eyes with my hands before I finally burst into tears.

I stayed there for a while, helmet off, just crying like a little kid, all my family was gone, everyone that had ever cared for me was dead. I considered killing myself right then and there, but immediately discarded the option. I simply stood up, not crying anymore and walked around the house. I went up to my room; it looked exactly the same as I had left it. There was dust covering most surfaces on the room. I smiled at the posters of girls in swimsuits or with convinietly placed scenery covering their bodies. There was a poster with every single infantry weapon that the UNSC had, it was old, most of the weapons already phased out in favour of newer ones.

I sat on my bed for a few minutes, glanced at the shelves filled with books. I sighed, I wasn't crying anymore, now I simply felt numb. I took a deep sigh, as if it was a big effort getting up, like the first school morning after summer vacation.

I got up, went downstairs and left my home before paying my respects to my uncle on last time.

I was walking down the street and towards the main area of the camp when I lost it.

"Fuck!" I cried out as I punched a wall. I kept cursing and punching the wall until at least two of my knuckles were broken. My hand was trembling and it hurt like hell, but somehow, I felt better.

"Whose there?" croaked a weak voice.

I raised my rifle in the direction of the voice, cursing as my broken knuckles didn't allow me to grab my weapon properly.

I turned the corner to one of the small buildings to find myself facing a man in ODST armor, he was slowly getting to his feet, one hand on the wall and one trying to lift his M247L. He looked like crap. At least his armor looked like crap, which meant that the person underneath all that metal was probably looking even worse.

He was missing one of his shoulder pauldrons and I could see that the round that had taken it of tore through his body suit and his skin, blood was oozing from the wound. His visor was cracked from top to bottom and there was a spiker round lodged into his chest protector. The rest of his armor was filled with scorch marks and the arm he was trying to use as support on the wall was hanging at a weird angle.

I ran to support him before he fell down to the ground again. I grabbed his wounded arm and realized it was twisted at the elbow. I decided it would probably do no harm to put it over my shoulder and I did so. The marine moaned as his arm slammed into my armor. With my other hand I helped sling his machine gun over his shoulder and tightened the straps, so that he could fire with one hand if he needed to.

"What's your name soldier?" I asked him.

"Private Pavel Klaus, 105th Marine Drop Jet Platoon," he answered, his voice sounding weak.

"Never heard of it," I returned, not giving either my name or unit, I don't think I was allowed to. "You the only one left?" I asked. He nodded weakly in response. I walked him to the infirmary of the camp, the door was opened, forcefully it seemed, and the doctors had been killed by plasma fire. I reached the room with the medicine cabinet and smashed it open, I grabbed a couple of painkillers and handed them to the weakened soldier. He took of his helmet to reveal blue eyes and blonde hair. He downed two painkillers before he decided to have another one.

"Easy now," I warned him.

Just as I was saying that I found what I was looking for.

"Ok now, don't move. This will hurt, probably a lot," he didn't have time to say anything before I jammed a large needle into his neck.

He screamed in pain as the adrenaline started flowing through his veins. He started shaking like crazy before finally settling down.

"Whoo!" he said as he shook his head. "That was awesome."

I liked this guy.

Once I had told him not to move his arm I called down a pelican. I still had contact with the _Inconvenience _and therefore with my unit.

"Where the hell have you been soldier?" said Zavala's voice in my helmet. "You were supposed to fall back to Position Yankee with the rest of your unit."

"I was left behind to mark the target sir," I said.

Gramps simply grumbled something before cutting the channel. Fifteen minutes later a pelican from my ship had been sent down, it was hovering right in the middle of the courtyard, a hundred meters away from the infirmary. I propped Pavel on my shoulders before he told me he could walk just fine. He was probably doing a lot of internal damage by doing that, but he wasn't feeling any of it. The pelican landed completely and a pilot peeked out of the troop bay, she was carrying a M6J carbine and was wearing a pilot's armor, with some slight modifications. She saw me and Pavel walking towards her and called out for us to hurry. I jumped into the pelican, which was designated as _Mary's Little Lamb_ and helped Pavel up. The pilot either recognized me or her handiwork on my boot, because she smiled and looked at me.

"The correct term is weld," she teased.

"Oh shut up and get us out of here."

She looked at Pavel doubtfully. "I don't think I'm allowed to transport him," she said with a nervous tone to her voice.

"He's a lone survivor," I said, trying to convince her to let him on the ship.

"Well, he certainly fits the profile, and I'm not about to let him die here," she said as she jumped back into the cockpit.

"What was that all about?" Pavel asked.

"You'll find out soon enough," I said.

The pelican airlifted us out of my former home and towards Position Yankee. I couldn't help but feel a pang of nostalgia through all that pain. This would be the last time I would see my this place. I checked my rifle to confirm it was in working order as I gazed out of the cargo bay of the airship. I could see the crashed cruiser on the ground below us, it was a smoking and flaming wreck. Behind it there was a small trail of dirt where it had destroyed everything in its path. Further down from the crash site there was the city of Olimpia, once glorious and beautiful with its tall glass buildings. I could see the sea even farther out, it would soon be boiling out of the atmosphere.

The pelican landed in Position Yankee, which seemed to not only be the fallout point for our unit, but for the whole UNSC forces in the area. I could clearly see the difference between the UNSC Army and the Marines. There were pelicans appearing and disappearing in the distant sky, I even caught sight of two albatrosses evacuating mobile hospitals.

We had managed to fight the Covenant to a standstill down here, but it didn't seem like the swabbies up there managed to accomplish the same feat.

"We're retreating son," was what Colonel Zavala said when I asked him about the situation.

"Sir," I replied. "Do you know anything about what happened to the unit I was with?" I asked.

The colonel nodded grimly and told me. "They were caught by a force of banshees. They managed to take down most of them, at the cost of a large number of soldiers."

The colonel had specifically said a large number. I had only been with Alpha 2nd for a couple of months but I already figured that if our unit had suffered casualties that could be rated as "a large number" it was nothing but bad news.

I asked around the camp to see if anyone knew where my platoon was located. When I finally found my batallion I was dismayed to see that it was now only slightly larger than a company. My own unit was reduced to ten men, most of them were armorless and sporting bandages in certain parts of their bodies. Dom and Bear weren't amongst them.

I almost punched another wall right then and there, but the growing pain in my hand kept me from doing so. I gestured to Pavel, who had followed me since we left the pelican, to follow me. I led him to the med bay assigned to our ship's contingent. Despite the fact that we had been sent to aid regular soldiers in the defense of Jericho VII, I could tell that our batallion had been sent to do the particularly dangerous missions. The blood on the floor and the tired-looking doctors were a clear sign of that.

They weren't attending anyone now, there were bodies on the beds, which meant that they had probably done all they could so far.

"What can I do you for?" asked the doctor from my ship. He was looking tired and perhaps even depressed.

"I have broken knuckles and my buddy here is only standing up because he's on a drug cocktail," I explained. That last part was starting to show. Pavel was now staring at points in the air and trying to grab invisible butterflies.

"What's in his system?" he asked me as he reached for a large syringe and a jar of something.

"Adrenaline and painkillers," I answered.

He nodded, "You remember the brand?" he asked me.

I shook my head. The doctor shrugged as he put the needle in Pavel's neck. He unceremoniously dumped a corpse from its bed and placed Pavel on it right before he lost consciousness. He motioned for two other doctors to help him, they promptly began taking of the wounded soldier's armor, revealing bit by bit the extent of his injuries.

"Well, he's going to need a new liver, and throw in another right kidney and lung just to be sure," said one of the doctors, mostly to herself.

"Don't forget the skin grafts," said the other one.

_Talk about black humor._

My doctor smiled. "It's the only way we can deal with so much death," he said sadly. "Now, what do you prefer, the quick or the painless cure?"

"Quick," I replied after a moment's hesitation.

The doctor nodded, as if he had been expecting that he checked which knuckles of my hand were broken (the outer two) and grabbed an apparatus that looked like a torture device. He placed two large needles into it and attatched a jar on top with a silvery fluid.

"Bite onto something son," he said as the remaining doctor grabbed my arm and prevented me from moving.

_What did I get myself into?_ I asked myself as I bit into a bloodied pillow.

The doctor plunged the two needles into my knuckles; they went all the way through the skin and partially into the bone. My scream was muffled by the pillow, but only barely. When he pressed the trigger and the silvery stuff started disappearing into my hand the pain only intensified. I was banging a table with my other hand, I was careful to use the side of my hand, so that I didn't break any other knuckles.

A few seconds later the doctor was done. He pulled out the needles and handed me a couple of painkillers. I swallowed them down as fast as possible.

"The liquid will help heal your hands, try to move them around a bit, so that they don't heal your knuckles in one fixed position," he warned me.

I nodded, the pain already receding. The doctor was bandaging my hand now.

"You'll get a scar in your hands, you might need stitches later, but I don't think that's a pressing matter," he said as he finished the bandage, blood was already beginning to soak through.

"How did you do that to your hand anyway?" he asked me.

"I punched an elite," I lied.

"Right," he said. He obviously hadn't believed me, it was such an obvious lie, you don't often get to punch elites and make it out alive. I should've said I did it to a grunt or even a jackal, that would've been true enough.

"Anyways, thanks doc, mind if I ask your name?" I said as I prepared to leave.

"Yuri Zhivago," he said.

"Like the guy in the book?" I asked, surprised. My uncle had made me read that book when I was sixteen.

"You know, you're the first person to tell me that. My parents decided it would be funny to name me after a twentieth century character."

"Hell, you're even a doctor," I said, smiling. It was probably because of the painkillers.

The doctor didn't smile back, I don't know if it was because I had forced the joke or because he was simply to tired. I decided it was best to leave, which I did after thanking him again.

Six hours later I was on my way to another colony, Jericho VII being reduced to nothing but a molten sphere of glass behind me.


	17. Merry Easter

Chapter XVII: Merry Easter

**April 29, 2537 (UNSC Calendar)/ Two years later**

**UNSC **_**Inconvenience**_**, Middle of Nowhere, Carentan System**

"Are you wearing any socks?" he asked me.

"Yes," I answered, then: "What the hell kind of question is that?"

"Well, in your diary, you didn't mention getting issued socks on your ODST training camp."

"What the hell man?" I replied angrily. "Besides, it's not a diary, it's a journal, you creep," I told him. "Wanting to know if my feet are covered or not you foot fetishist."

Pavel was now embarrased with himself, I knew that because he didn't say anything else.

"Woah, woah, careful now," he told me.

"I know what I am doing," I told him.

I was placing a bunch of C12 explosives on a Shiva warhead. We were doing a space walk, with only our ODST suits, a couple of oxygen tanks, and our jetpacks giving us protection. Pavel had a sniper rifle while I only got to carry my pistol.

The Shiva warhead I was working on was the size of a small trailer. It was one of those with higher payloads. We should've been using a lesser HAVOK warhead, but their design didn't allow for them to be blown up they way we intended to. With the ship's electronics out, we had now way of activating it remotely. Our three longswords wouldn't be flying anytime soon, so this was all we had, detonation with explosives.

"I think they spotted us," Pavel warned me as he aimed his rifle at some point where a bulge in the Covenant cruiser blocked my view.

"Almost done," I said.

I cursed as the body of a dead elite ranger slammed into the bomb. Pavel held his breath before I angrily kicked it away.

"Shit," he muttered. He almost pissed his pants. Pavel wasn't a big fan of zero-gee or explosives. Particularly such a dangerous combination as the one he was experiencing right now.

"If you don't like the bodies then don't kill them," I told him.

"You killed that one," he replied.

"Damn right I did, you were to scared to shoot that big gun of yours."

"Oh piss off," he said before scoping the area where he suspected there were more enemies.

"Aaand… done," I said.

I connected a couple of wires, set the timer for ten minutes, and pushed the bomb towards the enemy ship. It would stick there since it had been attatched to a magnetic platform. I let my own momentum carry me to the ship, not wanting to give away my position by using my booster rockets.

Plasma fire flew past me and Pavel, hitting the plating of the _Inconvenience_, barely even scorching it.

_Oh how well the name fits the ship,_ I thought as Pavel fired his sniper rifle at an elite ranger, tearing its suit. It seemed like the EMP had taken their shields as well. It only made sense, since the cruiser's shields were down too. I activated my thrusters, gaining a sudden burst in speed. I arrived at the ship in seconds, Pavel close on my wake. I stood up on the port armor of the _Inconvenience_ she was slightly damaged from point defense fire, but she would hold.

* * *

><p>The pit stop was supposed to have been a quick one. We jump to Carentan, stop at the resupplying station, grab a couple million rounds of ammunition and some food supplies for our ship, live like kings for a couple of weeks.<p>

The captain had agreed to the mission mostly out of hatred to the UNSC command, he saw it as a way to get back at them without really going against the greater good of humanity. I was inclined to agree with him. This operation was of the books and highly illegal. We weren't supposed to pick anything at the station. Since it was unmanned, like all resupply stations, it was easy, we would only have to load things manually instead of letting the robots do all the work.

The fact that Carentan had no colonies in the whole system only helped make our goal easier. I remember high-fiving Pavel as I found myself a crate of Sweet William cigars and he grinned while holding a larger box with experimental grenades. The mission did proceed easily. We jumped into the station without reporting. Loaded goods into our pelicans, and went back to the ship. Pavel and I were one of the lucky few sent to pillage the station. We had been allowed to keep whatever we could carry. I just took the cigars and a crate of fine coffee. I didn't need coffee, but whenevere I fought with regulars, they offered me their souls for a single small-sized jar.

Pavel himself decided to take the grenades in addition to some biofoam cans. They were always useful on the battlefield and could be sold for high prices to almost anyone. A personal biofoam was bound to save your skin more than once. Probably.

I myself didn't need to buy one from Pavel. I had gotten a Tactical Trauma Kit on the armory. It had been one of the only two to arrive in the ship. Agreed, it had cost me half my savings to the smug armorer, but it had been worth it. That little box had some sort of biofoam on steroids, it would cure almost everything in seconds. Granted, it stung even worse than regular biofoam, but still. In fact, it was strapped to my left thigh right now.

Well, as I was saying, our stop was supposed to be a quick one. Easy in, easy out. That's what our captain had told us. We believed him, there was no reason not to at the time. Our slightly inconvenient event happened halfway back to the ship. Our pelican had made its last trip before picking us up. I was smelling my Sweet Williams on board of _Mary's Little Lamb_, I had just offered a free one to the pilot of the ship. She was a cool chick, not as cool as Layla, but funny to be around.

The two Covenant CCS-class battlecruisers had appeared less than one hundred kilometers away from the _Inconvenience_. What are the odds right?

They must've been more surprised than we were, because our ship fired two MAC rounds at the lead cruiser before it was able to lift its shields. A barrage of Archer missiles knocked it out before it could respond. God bless AIs and their reaction times.

The other cruiser, however, had more time and was able to put up its shields and face us directly for an attack. My pelican had barely arrived in its bay before the ship started moving with a foolish boost towards the enemy cruiser. We were able to dodge two incoming plasma torpedoes but another one did an air burst on our side, damaging us. We fired half our Archer reserves before shooting our MAC. Half the missiles and the round hit our opponent head on. They barely lowered their shields.

Our AI must've been a genius, because she slowed us down with our front boosters before it played the only ace we had under our sleeve.

She detonated an experimental EMP that we had on board. It had been given to us by ONI, not stolen. It fried everything withing a twenty-click range. That's why we had been doing a full burn at the covvie ship. Our frigate scraped the top of the cruiser before coming to a relative halt, staying about a hundred meters away from the inutilized enemy ship. Bad news was that our ship was inutlized as well. We had only managed to fend of boarding parties because our point-defence cannons worked without electricity. We had to manually fire them, but they did the job.

It wasn't long before the covvies learned better and stopped sending soldiers to their deaths.

That's about the time me and Pavel had been sent on our little mission. Operation Merry Christmas, it had been called. It wasn't even Christmas yet. Operation Happy Easter would've been more suitable.

* * *

><p>So here I was, on one side of the ship, towing the ship with the help of two dozen more marines in EVA gear and jetpacks. It was a very weird image. Twenty-something little ants dragging a squirrel is the closest I can put this to smaller terms.<p>

We were actually making pretty good progress on the ship, moving it at a hundred miles per hour. The fact that there was no friction in space was helping us make progress a lot faster.

The silence was broken by a laugh, it came from one of the marines towing the ship (comms were still working). "What's so funny?" he was asked by at least ten other soldiers.

"The situation, this is so absurd," he replied.

There were mutters of agreement from the rest of the towing soldiers, they were quieted by the _Inconvenience_ making use of its last working booster. We slammed against the hull of the ship quite hard, but no one was really harmed. A second later the black space flashed the purest white for an instant. I heard nothing at all, I only felt the shockwave push the ship faster. We had been far enough away from the blast.

"Thank God," I said to myself. My helmet speakers only gave out white noise. They had been knocked out by the EMP from the nuke. I simply pushed myself from the hull until my cable was taut. I started towing the ship back towards the resupply station, It would probably take a couple of hours, and we would likely need radiation treatment when we got on the ship, but this would be a hell of a story to tell to my kids. Provided the radiation didn't render me sterile.

We entered the ship and were greeted like heroes, well, Pavel and I were. The other ones didn't have such luck. We received pats on the back and were offered cold beers. The captain was even clapping at us. Turned out he had been the one to think of the crazy stunt with the EMP, not our AI. He deserved at least as much clapping as I was getting. Gramps was there, next to the captain, with a smile on his face, clapping as well. For all the world he looked like a proud grandfather. Except for his ever-present armor.

"Nice job Sergeant Castillo, you as well Corporal Klaus," said the captain as he shook our hands. Truth be told, anyone could've done what we did. Not anyone would've volunteered for it though. Now that I think of it, few people on the ship could've shaped the C12 for it to detonate the nuke.

I smiled at the captain and turned to Zavala. "Do you sleep with that sir?" I asked jokingly.

"Only on weeknights," he replied.

I laughed at the joke and enjoyed the applause for a while. I spotted Layla through the crowd and she hugged me. As usual, the crowd met our display of affection with catcalls, wolf-whistles and raunchy comments. We were both used to it, we had kind of become the "official ship couple" as Pavel liked to call us, but no matter how used to being teased you are, you still feel uncomfortable when 300 people are doing it at the same time. When the captain and the colonel joined the crowd I almost lost it. Layla's face was a deep shade of red and mine probably wasn't far behind. We managed to push our way through the crowd and make our way someplace else while repairs of the ship started. We had to wait for all circuits to restart and replace the fried ones, so it would be a few days before we were able to set off without the slipspace engine transporting us to some crazy alternate universe.

Out of the glimpse of my eye I saw Pavel with his arm around Vicky, she was the closest thing this ship had to a brothel.

"So, what does it feel like to be a hero?" Layla asked playfully as her arms hugged my waist.

"It's getting old," I said while giving her butt a squeeze with one hand and opening the door to my room with the other.

"You're terrible," she said as she pushed me to my bed.

I smiled.


	18. Istanbul, not Constantinople

Chapter XVIII: Istanbul, Not Constantinople 

**June 3, 2537 (UNSC Calendar)/**

**UNSC **_**Inconvenience,**_** Draco Prima System**

It had been a couple of months since our last incident in Carentan system. Pavel and me were given the UNSC Red Legion of Honor. Didn't really think I deserved it, but the comitee was impressed by our stunt and they decided that we were worth it. It was given to me by one Vice Admiral Danforth Whitcomb. As he was clipping the medal to my chest I couldn't help but fearing that the large man was going to snap my neck with his fingers. He must've been born in one of those higher gravity colonies or mining asteroids, because he was built like a fucking rhino. He was around 6'7 and had arms as thick around as tree trunks. It's not usually that I am intimidated by people, not since Gabuka, but then again, it's not usually that I meet men that were a head taller than me, that particular man also happened to be the fifth highest-ranking officer in the UNSC Navy.

"Good job son," he said as he crushed my hand.

"Sir," was all I was supposed to say as I gave him my best salute. I was proud of that salute, it could've done for a recruiting poster. Me getting condecorated in my black uniform and saluting the intimidating man that represented leadership. It was probably going to be publicized or something. Nowadays every condecoration was being used as propaganda by ONI.

The admiral's shuttle left the ship and went towards the UNSC _Disproportionate Retribution_. I wondered what name was better for a ship, the one of his cruiser, or the one of my frigate. I was immersed in that thought when Ensign Layla Wickett interrupted me.

"Hey there," she said while smiling at me.

I smiled back at her, I was beginning to think that she was the only thing that I really had to live for. Well, that and Pavel's priceless quips, although those came rarely nowadays, it had to be a special occasion. Or so he told me.

"Well, it seems like you're finally as heroic as I am," she said.

She had been given a Silver Star for bravery under overwhelming circumstances a month ago. She had actually killed a stealth elite from a boarding party that managed to make its way to the bridge. Using my teachings with the handgun.

"Be thankful young one, had it not been for me, your shots wouldn't have hit anything but air." I said as I lifted her up in my arms.

"Besides, if it hadn't been for me and my fellow marines holding back the real Covenant forces during that incident you would've gotten your medal posthumously," I told her. I think it was a quite clever and funny comment, but she didn't really pay attention, as she kept yelling at me to put her down.

"Ajem Frank…" came a voice from the end of the hallway.

It was Warrant Officer Marina Bogdanovic, the pilot from _Mary's Little Lamb_. She had become the unofficial pilot for my squad. Well, for me and for Pavel, since the rest of my squad seemed to keep dying.

"Yes Marina?" I said with an irritated voice.

"The Colonel wants to see you in his office," she said before she hurriedly retreated down the corner, a little bit embarrassed by the situation she had found me and Layla in.

"I don't like her," said Layla matter-of-factly.

And how could she have liked her? Marina was a striking blonde from Croatia. She had eyes as blue as Pavels and her longer-than-regulation hair framed her lovely Balkan features. Her body was not that bad either.

Despite that, I still think Layla was prettier, hotter as well. Her light brown hair was usally tied in a ponytail (something I liked) and her green eyes were quite the sight, although lately she had been keeping them hidden behind glasses, God knows why. Her body was at least as good as Marina's so in my eyes she shouldn't have been jealous.

"You're jealous," I said.

"I am not!"

"Liar," I told her. "C'mon, you know you're way prettier?"

"You think so?" she asked, taking her hand to the back of her neck, as if she didn't believe it. Girls love compliments, especially when they're true.

"I know so," I said as I kissed her. "I'll be right back;" I told her as I left towards Colonel Zavala's office.

I suddenly realized that I did have some sort of thing that managed to draw attractive women to my life, Ramsey had been right for once. I made my small trip with a large grin on my face at the thought.

Those thoughts quickly disappeared when I entered Zavala's office. There were already a couple of other sergeants and a captain waiting there. It meant that we were going to be briefed for something, likely a mission, and since we weren't traveling in slipspace to another system, it meant that the Covenant had discovered Draco Prima and New Constantinople.

"Was little Miss Perfect keeping you from your duties?" Zavala asked in his granfatherly tone that he used to joke with us.

"She really is perfect, isn't she?" I said while making a lovestruck face and voice. Which in reality I was.

My comment was received by "Ughs" and "Whipped!" from the other soldiers and laughter from the Colonel.

"Let's get to business," he said after a few seconds of everyone laughing, that certainly cut the fun short. It wasn't often that the colonel got "straight to business."

"Listen up," he said, although we were already doing just that. "Not twenty minutes ago a slipspace anomaly was detected on the edge of the system, a probe was sent to confirm it, but it was destroyed by unknown forces before it could contact command. As you all know, this is the standard operating method for the Covenant, it is very likely that they have discovered the system. As per Winter Contingency, our ships will defend the planet and ground troops will counter-attack to any landing force that the Covenant may land on the planet," he paused for a breath. "This is not a sure thing yet boys," he said, although he clearly didn't mean it, "but we are now at our highest level of alert."

We all nodded.

"You all know what you signed in for," he told us, "you'll be sent to the planet as soon as the enemy lands their ground forces." He said as soon, and not if. "You know the kind of missions you'll be sent on, there isn't anything definite yet as we don't have targets, but good luck boys."

We all stood at attention and saluted him. He dismissed us and we returned to our respective squads, telling them what we had just learned and arm ourselves up. I opened the locker door that held my armor and weaponry. I eyed my ODST Body Suit. It was the second I had had in my relatively short carrer as a soldier. It was still completely black; I hadn't really gotten around to painting it.

_I gotta take this to Marina for her to paint it before I get skewered by a brute,_ I thought to myself as I started putting it on. The boots were the same as always, they had been reliable and I hadn't needed to switch them. My old knife was still there, the metal brackets had done their job well enough. The knee guards I had had to replace a couple of times, but always for the same model. My left thigh contained regular armor and my trauma kit. On the other thigh I had a thiner, more flexible piece of experimental armor. I forget the name of it. It had my pistol holster attatched to it. I wasn't really a big fan of magnetic straps. They had failed me once a year ago.

A light kevlar ballistic vest and a special abdomen piece covered my abdomen. The abdomen piece functioned as a wide belt, attatching behind my back. Titanium and ceramic plates covered it, with the thickest one being on the front. The original plates had been replaced by thiner ones made out of ceramic armor. They were lighter and provided around the same protection as the original ones. On top of those plates I had my ammunition pouches. To cover my chest I had kept the classic ODST chest piece, the only thing differenciating it from regular chest piece was two inch-deep scratches running diagonally along the center section of the chest piece, courtesy of a Brute Bodyguard. I had spray-painted an A2 for Alpha 2nd into the right strap of the harness that held up the heavy chest piece, the other strap held my backup knife, while the larger knife was strapped across my lower back, right above my butt-pack. My helmet was the same as I had gotten it except that I had now upgraded it with the new fancy VISR technology and had the word _Inconvenience_ written on the bottom back of it. My shoulder covers were still the same ones I had gotten from the armory when I came here. They had actually done quite well, stopping more than one plasma burst and spike. Forearm protection was the lighter version that the ODST body suit sported. Those were new and yet untried; you don't get hit in the forearms very often. The regular ODST full-hand gloves covered my hands, only that now they had pointy studs in the knuckles. You should've seen those babies in action, they had torn more than one grunt's skin from their ugly faces.

I finsished putting my armor on and grabbed my rifle. It was still the very same weapon I had been issued in Mars. It had lived through more than most marines on this ship and had saved my life in more than one way. I hadn't really upgraded it other than adding a "pig-stucker" bayonet. It was a thin metal piece that went under the barrel and ended in a sharp point. It deployed when I pressed a certain button and hid back in the body of the rifle when I didn't need it anymore. It was perfect for putting in between gaps of elite and brute armor. At least that was the theory; I hadn't been stupid enough to fight one of those monsters one-on-one.

My pistol had only been outfitted with a longer barrel that also acted as a silencer, that puppy could knock out a brute with a single headshot and no one would know any better. I holstered the pistol and headed to the armory, by now, the room was full of soldiers doing the same thing I was doing. I filled my ammo pouches with spare mags and slammed a specialized 100-round box magazine into my BR55. They were too large and uncomfortable to carry strapped on to your body, but they were perfect for turning your rifle into an LMG while you looked for cover after a blind jump. ONI had specifically designed them after someone from this ship requested larger magazines.

Once I was finished with conventional ammunition, I picked up two grenades and strapped them to the left of my body, halfway in between my armpit and my waist. I had found that that was the most comfortable position to throw a grenade quickly when a spike grenade landed in between my arm and my body. The brute that threw it wasn't quite so lucky and wasn't able to throw it back. On the same place, but on the other side I hung two flashbangs, they were always quite nice to use when you were outnumbered, and then quietly disappear after leaving behind a C7 pack. I smiled at the thought as I loaded my pistol. I slid back the slide and holstered it to my thigh.

I caught sight of Pavel just as I was leaving. The man had made so many additions to his armor that he made mine seem like minor tweaks. He had gotten the same shoulder plate that the Colonel had on his right shoulder, his left one had the two-piece pauldron of the CQB specialized armor. His helmet's forhead had some sort of extra plating and it sported a camera with the ability to zoom up to the end of the universe. It was creepy actually, recorded footage he had shown me from the camera was like a freaking telescope. His torso was covered by the standard ODST armor and so were his legs, but they had many add-ons, the man had gotten an armor plate to go on top of the abdomen armor as well as hard cases on both legs, to the date I still don't know what he kept there. He had his large M247L slung across his back. He had half his rucksack filled with ammo crates that connected to the LMG through a metallic hose. When those ran out, he had five 200-round packs strapped to his body. I am still not entirely sure how he managed to carry all that and still be able to move. Either he was on LSD or something like that, or he wasn't completely human. It seriously crept me out so see a man carrying so much equipment. He even had a sawed-off shotgun strapped to the bottom of his rucksack. That particular weapon was technically not allowed by the UNSC, it was an M90 without the top barrel-cooler and the stock having been removed. The barrel had been shortened until it reached the same length that the cocking handle had.

I pushed him on the shoulders.

"What are you doing?" he asked me with a raised eyebrow.

"I just wanted to see if you'd tip over from all that steel on your body," I said while making a worried face.

He smiled "This steel has saved my life more times than you can count," he told me.

"I've been with you ever since you started buying all this crap, and you haven't been hit once since you got on this ship, you lucky bastard," I told him.

He just laughed and walked with me towards the drop pod bay. We were halfway through when we heard the alarm sounding us to go to battle stations; we put on our helmets and sprinted to our pods.

We were joined by three other men dressed in ODST armor, the ship seemed to be becoming something closer to normal with regular marines and specialized ODST teams, Army troops were now non-existent in this ship. I kind of liked that, going back to normal. Of course, we still did crazy things that no other ship did. I was still drinking champion of the ship and had managed to win the rollerblading championship a couple of times. I didn't do so badly at the poker tournaments we had either.

The three soldiers that had joined us were seasoned veterans, they were all older than I was, which made it a little awkward for me to be their leader. They had been transferred to this ship just recently, and this would be their first battle on board the _Inconvenience_. I kept forgetting their names. For once I was thankful that the ship had assembled permanent squads with code names. Mine was Titan squad. I was Titan-1, Pavel was Titan-2, although he liked to jokingly call himself Cronus, he had even painted a schithe into his right shoulder-plate. I wasn't sure if he had the right titan, but I wasn't big on Greek history. The rest of my squad was Titan-3, 4, and 5. My HUD helpfully signaled which one was which.

We all hopped in on our SOEIVs and waited. The Covenant were in the system, but they hadn't sent a landing force yet, so we would have to wait in our cramped pods until they decided to land on New Constantinople.

We were in the pods half an hour until I got a transmission from our captain.

"Sergeant, the Covenant have sent a large landing force to the city of New Istanbul, kind of a weird name to name a planet and a city after the same place don't you think?"

"Sir?" I asked, confused.

"Nevermind, as I said, they have sent a large force to the city, luckily, it was evacuated in time and is now mostly empty of civilians. Your squad will be deployed to the point where the leading enemy forces are assumed to land, you will prevent them from establishing a strongpoint, do you understand?" he told me.

"Sir, my squad is supposed to halt an enemy advance by itself? You do realize we are only five men?" I said, outraged at the mission I was given.

"Oh, and you need to hold out long enough for our troops to arrive and form a stable front," he said, ignoring my tone.

"Isn't that job usually given to a company-sized force?" I asked, still mad.

"Your squad, will function as a spearhead, halt the enemy invading troops, and hold out until a stronger force can arrive," the captain told me, his voice dangerous now.

"Yessir, an honor serving with you sir," I said before the captain cut the channel.

"So, what you got Frank?" Pavel asked me through our squad channel.

"Pavel, it was a pleasure fighting by your side."

"That bad huh?"

"You have no idea," I said just as five pods were dropped from the _Inconvenience _and towards the planet under attack. It was already burning.


	19. Threes and Alphas

Chapter XIX: Threes and Alphas

**June 3, 2537 (UNSC Calendar)/**

**New Istanbul, New Constantinople, Draco Prima System**

"Come on!" I yelled while throwing my halmet to the floor. I stumbled a little from the damage to my body, but managed to stay upright. I banged my Damascus Steel knife to my chest, as if taunting the brute to attack me. My other two knifes were stuck in the brute's ankle and shoulder respectively, the monster had countered by throwing me of its back and breaking a rib. Or three.

The brute roared in anger as I took a fighting stance. It went completely berserk, throwing it's brute shot to the side and charging towards me like an enraged gorilla. I didn't flinch, I just yelled at it to make it angrier. Just when it was about two meters away from me it flew sideways.

"Nice job buddy," I told Titan-4, who was sporting a smoking shotgun in his hands.

"You weren't that bad either, sir," he said.

"Don't call me sir," I told him. "Sergeant's fine."

I walked through the rubble while picking up my pistol. On my way to the brute I shot it twice in each kneecap. One shotgun blast to the side of a brute is lethal, but not that much. It was bound to be still alive, even if it was missing all the skin on that side of its body.

I flipped the brute around with effort and jumped back as it roared at me.

"You human mongrel will burn!" it grumbled, blood in its lungs.

"They can speak English?" I said, startled.

"They can speak?" asked Titan-4, equally surprised.

As the brute captain went on with a sermon about the might of the prophets and some crazy shit about a journey into the divine beyond I kneeled next to it and slid my knife into its eye socket.

It let out a howl way to high-pitched for a monster that size before it went still. I grabbed the large knife embedded in its shoulder and repeated the process on the other eye, kicking the monstrous piece of steel deep into the monster's brain. I had seen brutes take rounds to the skull and still be able to tear a man in half. I wasn't about to let that happen to me.

"All clear?" I spoke into my comm.

"All clear," said Pavel's voice inside my helmet.

"You should've fired into its face," I told Titan-4 as I pulled my knives from the brute's body and wiped them on its fur. The man just shrugged. I confirmed my knives were in working order and put them in their respective sheaths.

"Did you see where my gun was knocked to?" I asked my squadmate. He pointed to a pile of debris, there it was, relatively undamaged, only sporting a few scratches.

We had ambushed a small brute pack with booby traps and the element of surprise. We managed to kill the minors and a major before the captain went apeshit and tore Titan-3's arm from its socket before he could be taken out with a rocket. Pavel and Titan-5 were forced to take cover and I managed to improvise a beautiful plan, with the help of Number Four here.

We had been dropped to a position in downtown New Istanbul. We hadn't been spotted and managed to take out some jackal snipers that had set up shop in the buildings in front of us. The brute pack we had just neutralized was probably sent here to investigate until they had met our hastily planned ambush.

"So, whose kill was it?" asked Pavel as he hopped from a collapsed second story, Titan-5 in his wake.

"It was a coolaborative effort," I told him. He shrugged and smiled. Right now he was leading the kill count by two. Only majors or higher-ranking covvies counted. He was fifty-two to my fifty. I am pretty sure that I had killed more Covenant leadership over the course of my short career, but it was really difficult to compete with a man carrying a weapon that can fire for three consecutive minutes.

Titan-3 was still alive, we had bandaged his stumpy arm as best as we could and gave him a heavy dose of morphine. He was probably going to die, so we left him there and called for a medvac that probably wouldn't come anytime soon. We took most of his ammunition and his SPANKr and left him with one mag for his pistol and one for his MA5. He was in to much pain and under to much opiates to care. We placed the assault rifle near his hand, the remaining one, and left him there.

We sprinted out of the battle area and away from enemy soldiers that were probably going to investigate soon. I knew that our small squad couldn't halt an enemy advance by ourselves, even if we had an impenetrable wall and were safe from enemy fire, which we were not, we would quickly run out of ammunition. Our only solution was sabotage. We had requested explosives to the _Inconvenience_ and they had dropped us a Fury "nuclear grenade." We would infiltrate the Covenant lines before detonating the small nuke near an important looking structure.

A SOEIV landed in a small park right in front of us.

"Cover us," I told Pavel and Five, they had the LMG and the sniper rifle of the squad respectively. Four sprinted next to me while aiming at our surroundings, making sure a lone jackal wouldn't end our trip. I reached the SOEIV and knelt next to the door. Four aimed his MA5B at the space around us, his shotgun now slung over his back. I found the latch of the pod after burning my hands, even through my gloves. I had forgotten that the pod had just burned through atmosphere. Nah, I didn't forget, I was just in a hurry. I pulled the latch and the door hissed as it started to fall. I let the piece of metal fall on my shoulders and gently lowered it to the ground. Had my armor nor been so thick, I would've been missing part of my skin right now. I looked into the pod to find a couple of ammunition crates for Pavel and loaded magazines for Five's sniper rifle. There were also clips for my rifle and MA5 ammunition. I handed all those to Four and he made the run back home.

In the middle of all that ammunition, right where an ODST should've been, there was not one, but _two_ Fury tactical nukes.

I giggled in giddy anticipation. I placed the two football-sized devices of doom on my rucksack and made my way back to the building where the rest of my squad already was. I found them reloading their weapons; Pavel was switching the half-empty ammo crates in his rucksack for full ones, not a single one of them had bothered to cover me as I made my way back.

I slapped Pavel in the back of the head.

"Way to cover me, buddy," I told him. Four and Five looked at each other. "You too bastards, don't act all innocent."

They all shrugged and went back to business. "I am surrounded by incompetence," I said and joined them.

* * *

><p>We had managed to avoid all Covenant patrols so far. We only had to keep some jackal sentinels and a few lone grunts. Those were quickly dispatched with either my silenced pistol or a nice second mouth in their necks. We were making good progress, taking alleys and side streets. A couple of times we were forced to use rooftops to move without being spotted.<p>

Right now we were in a large sewer tunnel waiting out a Wraith that was patrolling the street above us. We had been avoiding covvies for hours now, managing to advance only a few hundred meters into their perimeter. Luckily, we only had about two hundred meters before we arrived at our target, a large structure where their command was located and surrouned by a large number of inactive Wraiths and Specters.

"So, how are we going to leave this place after we plant the bomb, sarge?" asked Five through the comm channel.

"Well, I hadn't thought of that, I assume we will throw the bombs with a two minute timer before running our asses off."

"Oh," was the only reply I got.

We hadn't received a word from command since they confirmed the delivery of our nukes. We hadn't been able to contact them so far either, so a Falcon gunship was out of the equation.

"Ok, I think it's safe now," Five said while looking over at the entrance we had entered through. Just as he began to climb the ladder Four called out.

"Shhh," he whispered.

"What is it," I asked through the comm channel.

"I think I heard something," he replied.

We had all heard, so we were now at the ready. Five had hopped off the ladder and was looking around.

"Brute stalkers?" I asked.

"Nah, they would've showed up on our radar."

There were nodds of agreement all around. I took a couple of careful steps to my right before I raised my rifle slowly, there was nothing in sight. Just as I was about to tell my squad to climb back up I saw something that startled me. It was a bootprint in the dried shit of the sewer. There was no running water, but it still had nasty stuff stuck to the floor and walls. I looked over the area, finding another boot print right next to the first one. I raised my eyes and for the briefest moment, I saw the air flickering.

"Fuck!" I said as I raised my rifle, ready to fire. Within an instant, my squad was next to me. In that same instant, an olive suit of armor materialized in front of me, an MA5K aimed at me. Four other similar suits materialized around the same area and all of a sudden I found myself in a nine-way Mexican Standoff. The armored soldiers were aiming their rifles at my squad, with two barrels aimed at my head. My squad was responding in kind, with Four pulling out his pistol to even out the equation.

One of the armored soldiers turned its head to the one I was aiming at, it nodded. They all lowered the weapons and we carefully did the same. Five got a little twitchy in the process and raised his sniper rifle again, so we all found ourselves aiming at each other again.

"Don't shoot, we're allies," a voice came from the yellow glass helmet in front of me.

"Prove it," I said to it, not lowering my gun.

"Fine, I'm going to take off my helmet now," it told me.

"Don't try anything funny," I said as he lowered his rifle and reached for his helmet. He took it off with a hiss of air and I was startled as to what I was seeing. It was a kid, a regular human kid. He looked out of place with his military buzzcut and his bulky armor.

I lowered my gun, conscious that I wasn't about to shoot a kid. This guy was around sixteen years old, he couldn't have been much older than that.

"What the hell are you?" I asked. I meant to ask something along the lines of what unit he was in, but those were the words that came out of my mouth.

"We're SPARTAN-IIIs" called out a youthfull voice.

I turned to face the other armored soldier, this one sounded even younger than the one in front of me looked.

The sixteen year-old kid without helmet shot a glare that could rival Layla's to the soldier that had talked.

_SPARTAN-IIIs? That means that that this is the second class of SPARTANs_, I told myself. Major Cavallaro had confirmed that the SPARTAN project was real. Officially, it wasn't but everyone in the UNSCDF had heard at least one story about the supersoldiers that fought through hordes of Covenant soldiers with impunity. Oh how I hated them. I joined the ODST to become the best of the very best, and ONI decides to pull out a bunch of supersoldiers out of its sleeves? I found that quite hurtful to say the least. And now this kid was telling me that theywere another class of SPARTANs, I no longer belonged to the second most elite class of warriors in the universe, I was now bumped down another spot to third place, surrounded by Elites and perhaps Brutes. No, just Elites.

The helmetless kid sighed. "I am Carter A259, Team Swarm," he hesitated before stopping and deciding he shouldn't say anything else.

"This is my squad," he said as he started introducing them to me.

"The one with the big one is Mick A001," he said as he pointed towards the other soldier that had spoken.

"That one over there is Sasha A167."

"Yo," said Sasha.

"And those last two are Rose A111 and Elizabeth A089," he said as he pointed at the remaining two armored figures.

"Call me Liz," said one of the female SPARTANs in a cheery voice. I swear, she could've been around thirteen by the sound of her voice.

"Should you really be telling me this?" I asked once I had gotten past the shock of the encounter.

"Nah, but who cares right?" he told me with a smile on his face. His face got serious all of a sudden before he asked: "So, I assume you're the guys from Alpha 2nd?"

"Yes we are," replied Pavel, who wasn't good at staying quiet.

"Well, our company was sent here to provide support to you regulars," started the kid. He had the balls to call me a regular, it was all I could do to keep my face from showing the anger I was feeling. My visor helped too.

"Our team was separated from the rest of our company to meet up with you and provide support on your mission. We lost contact from command shortly after we were dispatched, it was only by chance that we managed to…" he chose his next word carefully "…meet."

"Ok," I said.

"That's it."

"That's it?" I asked, dumbfounded. Not even we dropped to combat with that much lack of intel. The SPARTAN nodded at me before putting his helmet back one.

"So, what's the plan?" he asked me.

"Well, we were going to sneak in as close to that Covenant structure as we could before placing the two Furys on a two minute timer and bailing," I told him.

He nodded thoughtfully.

"Sounds like a plan, we'll take one of the nukes and place it farther back in the enemy lines," he told me even as he reached into my rucksack. The balls of this kid.

"We'll contact you when we have placed our bomb and will come here to help cover your escape," he said as he placed the bomb on his back, where it attatched magnetically.

"You're kidding me right, we're not going to wait for you to cross a mile and a half of enemy-held land to the next Covenant spire," I told him.

"I never joke when it comes to combat," he told me, with steel in his youthful voice, "besides, it is _us _who will have to wait on _you._"

Having said that, he disappeared in front of me, the rest of his squad vanishing with him.


	20. Curious Help

_Hey, sorry for the short chapter guys, didn't even break the 2000 word mark. :sadface:_

Chapter XX: Curious Help

**June 4, 2537 (UNSC Calendar)/**

**New Istanbul, New Constantinople, Draco Prima System**

"Take cover!" I yelled at the surviving members of my team, right before the Fury exploded.

15 kilotons might not have been a lot by regular standards, but it was still a very disturbing event if you were in close proximity to it.

As soon as the SPARTAN-III's disappeared into the darkness of the sewer, we climbed back to the surface, still a little bit confused as to what had happened. We still had our Fury nuclear grenade with us, so our mission would proceed as normal. The sun had set over two hours ago, so we still had a while before it went back up, the night would hide us from the Covvies' line of sight. We moved through the streets in a tight-packed formation, each one of us aiming at a different point, our progress was only interrupted by a patrol, which we avoided by jumping into two large garbage containers.

There were less and less enemy patrols as we neared the Covenant spire, but we found that there were more enemy soldiers milling around and doing what aliens do whenever not carrying out genocide. The grunts were mostly sleeping or eating from some weird machines. The brutes mumbled and grunted amongst themselves while the jackals looked here and there for interesting trinkets. Hunters were nowhere to be seen.

I was startled by my helmet speaking to me. "This is Carter, our bomb is in place, you ready?" he asked me.

"Just about," I told him, we had just placed our nuke on the turret of a Wraith twenty meters away from the spire and retreated to an undamaged and empty store nearby. The timer had just started. "You have a minute and fifty seconds before it blows up," I warned the young Spartan.

"Nah, more like 10 seconds," came the reply.

Before I could even reply as to what he meant, Pavel dropped to the floor. "Incoming!" he called out as loud as he could. We all dropped to the floor with him as fast as our body weight allowed us to. Four was not fast enough, and the green projectiles that were fired from Covenant carbines pierced his helmet through and through. His head jerked back as blood, heated fluids, and bits of brain tissue flew out of the back of his head, hitting the wall behind him.

"Spartan team, we've been made, we've been made, we need backup, do you copy? We need backup!" I yelled into my helmet mic. I wasn't really relying on this guys, after all, they were just kids, they seemed to be well trained though, and it was all I had.

An instant later the world went white, for the second time in months, I was uncomfortably close to a nuclear explosion. The only difference was that this time I heard the boom. Had it not been for my helmet and its convenient noise blockers, my eardrums would've been gone. The comm on my helmet failed as the EMP from the blast reached our position, sending a tingling sensation through my body and making all my electronics flicker for a few seconds before recovering.

"Spartan leader, you there? Carter?" I only got static in response. "Damn it," I cursed as I ordered my team to bail out.

The first explosion would have been a great distraction had those two jackal snipers not found us instants before the nuke went off. We were now running without any cover and any support, three ODSTs down the middle of a street make good targets. For the first five seconds of our run we were free of any enemy attention, they were still probably rubbing their eyes or holding their hands over their ears, but it wasn't soon before the Brutes that hadn't been dazed by the explosion started firing at us. Spiker rounds were hitting the ground and air all around me, some coming to close for comfort. One round even lodged itself in my rucksack, God bless that metal box. We were shooting at the stunned Grunts, Jackals, and Brutes that were in our way whene my comm crackled to life.

"ODST squad, this is Carter, you ok?" came a voice through bursts of static.

"You know what?" I told it. "Fuck you, you could've at least warnedus about that? You aren't even providing us the support you promised!" I cried in outrage. While I said that I was thinking that we really should've exchanged our codenames, to ease up communications. It was weird talking in casual tones in the midst of a heated battle, or whatever you'd like to call a Covenant advance force finding a few saboteurs.

As if on que, a sniper jackal's head disappeared in a red mist and a brute's neck was twisted over 180 degrees by some invible hands.

"Here's your support," came Carter's cocky voice from my helmet.

_Those freaks are good, I'll grant them that._

"Thank you?" said one of the kids, who had suddenly materialized two feet to my left.

"No problem," I said quickly, to make my sound like a compliment. Which technically speaking, it was.

"Banshees!"

Before I could even turn around or jump behind a car, a blast lifted my up and slammed me against a wall, next to me landed a spartan with a damaged helmet, I could make out Carter's bloodied face. I could just make out one of the armored kids shooting down a banshee with a well placed rocket as I stood up, my ears ringing, sounds around me muted by the sound of the explosion. I also caught a glimpse of Pavel doing a "cocky throw", which basically consisted of throwing a fragmentation grenade upwards with impeccable timing, so that it would start falling back down and detonate over an enemy flier. We had named it after some new kid had been throwing a grenade up and down in his hand, we were surprised by this lone banshee, and the kid, finding inspiration from nowhere, created the strategy. Had I learned his name I would've named it after him.

Pavel's throw was impeccable, hitting the banshee and bouncing a bit before detonating inches from the craft, sending it to the street covered by blue fire.

What surprised me the most of all of this, was how the Spartan sniper took out the last strafing banshee with a single shot through the upper and lower parts of the banshee, hitting the pilot in the chest, and knocking down the craft. As this was happening I dragged Carter to a small alleyway, coincidentally, this one happened to be the same one that contained the entrance to the sewer we had hidden in.

"Over here!" I called out to my allies. They came rushing at top speed, the Spartans moved faster than any normal human should have, they also managed to shoot while firing and making every single round hit their targets. They could've held off against the Covenant for a while before sheer numbers beat them, the fact that they were surrounded didn't help either. They were here mere instants after I called at them.

Pavel arrived a few seconds later, blood oozing from a gap in his armor, I pointedly looked at it as he arrived.

"Oh shut up," he told me.

"Where's five?" I asked.

We all looked back and saw our squad sniper firing his weapon, hitting two brutes in the chest and blowing out large portions of meat from their bodies, he leaned back against a pile of debris and shot an enraged brute charging at him before he was forced to reload.

"Shit," I said, both me and Pavel were already running to the edge of the alley, to provide covering fire to the stupid soldier. "Get over here!" I ordered.

Five got up after firing all four rounds from his rifle. He dropped the weapon and started sprinting towards us. Suddenly, a white flash outlined his silhouette before he was propelled forward, much like I had been a few instants before, the only difference between the two events was that he flew at a much higher speed before he slammed into a wall. There was a sickening crunch of bones that was audibly heard over all the noise in the battlefield. The wall he had crashed on was also damaged. I checked his vitals on my HUD to confirm he was beyond saving before returning to the sewers. I tossed Carter's unconscious body before letting Pavel go first. I was firing at a group of adventurous grunts when I saw a plasma grenade fly at me. I ducked and it fell right behind me. I let myself go, hitting Pavel on the way down and landing on the arms of a waiting Spartan, unfortunately, he (or she) wasn't strong enough and I still slammed to the floor pretty damn hard, Pavel didn't fare so well either.

"Awww fuck," three different voices said almost simultaneously. I rubbed my back and waited a moment before trying to stand up. My bones felt jarred and my head was spinning, but it didn't seem like I was seriously hurt. I was still deliberating as to wether Pavel's heavy armor had protected him or just accelerated his fall when Carter started coughing up blood. He didn't look good, but he would be fine. His face was all bloody and torn, and I could see at least one place where he would get a nasty scar.

The young soldier stood up with help of his comrades before nodding at me in thanks. He seemed to respect me more than when we first met. He stumbled a little before he and his team started heading out, motioning at us to join them.

"C'mon you bloody idiot," I told Pavel as I kicked him in the ribs. He moaned a little and stood up, he managed to stabilize himself before the second Fury nuke went off. This explosion was much more imposing than the last one. It was twice as close, but we were underground. The fireball produced by a Fury tac-nuke is around 75 meters in radius, we were about 300 meters away from ground zero. By all means we shouldn't have survived such a close blast, but the sewers held after a few pieces of rock collapsed from the ceiling.

I picked Pavel back up and Liz-A089 helped me carry him. We made our way faster, trying to outrun any radiation that might've made its way into the sewers, Furys were supposed to be almost completely clean, but I wasn't willing to risk a lifetime of not being able to spread my lovely genes around.

"You know something, you Spartans are not so bad," I said.

Four helmeted heads turning to look at me and an uncovered face doing the same thing greeted this comment. You could almost see the the shock in their faces, in Carter's case, you actually could.

"You're not half bad either," said Carter with a smile that likely brought pain to him, "for a Helljumper," he added.

I let that one pass.


	21. Assault and Battery

Chapter XXI: Assault and Battery

**June 4, 2537 (UNSC Calendar)/**

**New Istanbul outskirts, New Constantinople, Cygnus System**

"Not exactly what I asked for sergeant, but good enough for our objective," said the captain as he walked Pavel and me through the joint Army, Navy, and Marines forward operating base.

"Thank you sir," I told him.

"How did you manage?" the captain asked curiously as we waited for a Scorpion to rumble past us.

"We had a little help, sir," Pavel said.

"Really?" asked Captain Brooks as he raised an eyebrow. "From whom?"

We hesitated with our answer, so the captain simply nodded before we resumed our walk. "I see," he said carefully.

The Spartans that had helped us had broken off from us about halfway through our sewer trip. They had disappeared on a side tunnel while me and Pavel grabbed a warthog with a useless turret and an even more useless crew. We met the UNSC advance on our way here; they gave us the direction of the FOB, thanking us for detonating the Furys and making their jobs easier.

The forward operating base was really something to look at. Since the Vice Admiral was doing a hell of a job in stalling the Covenant Navy, the troop-transport ships were actually able to land on the planet, eliminating the risk of extra-orbital insertions of costly and valuable equipment. There was a massive carrier, which was spewing troops, tanks, hogs, hornets, and even falcon gunships. In addition to the carrier there were three frigates, two on each side of it, and another one hanging back. The two flanking frigates were pushing out more specialized equipment, such as Cobras and Wolverines, the UNSC anti-air and anti-materiel machines, respectively.

The frigate that was hanging further back was none other than the UNSC _Inconvenience_. We walked the length of the 3000 meter-long carrier, which was named the UNSC _Bayonet._ As we walked between the carrier and the frigate to its side, we encountered squads and platoons marching towards the front, there were also warthogs coming from the side doors of the carrier and frigate. A couple of Vulture gunships flew overhead, escorted by two falcons and two hornets. The covvies were in for a hell of a fight. Or the other way around, maybe that's why command was pulling out the big guns.

I found myself climbing the metallic ramp of the _Inconvenience_. Unlike the other ships, ours was being loaded with vehicles and some spare troops. The cargo bay looked like it was about to burst with soldiers. The captain made way for Pavel and me to cross the crowded room.

A UNSC frigate isn't particularly large, only 500 meters, but you can fit a lot of stuff inside its cargo bay of you place it properly. Right now, even the scorpion tanks were bristling with marines, we looked like ants.

We were able to cross the mass of flesh and steel with relative ease, as the captain's shoulder bars were a clear incentive for everyone to move out of the way.

"The vice admiral is holding the covvies out there," the captain explained. "Doesn't look like he will be able to do it forever, but our job is to eliminate every single enemy soldier ground side."

We nodded at him when he looked at us to confirm we had been listening.

"As you saw, our ship is loaded with soldiers and equipment that aren't usually here. This is because we are going to function as a massive pelican for the next couple of minutes. Our ship will fly across the city in-atmosphere and drop our forces in the Covenant rear, effectively encircling them and crushing them. The troops that are not loaded here will function basically as a gigantic diversion in addition to being our main front for the battle," as the captain finished saying this we had already reached the bridge, and the frigate was clearly lifting up from the ground.

"Altitude is now one kilometer captain," the pilot notified us.

"Proceed," the captain ordered.

The ship suddenly received a burst of speed as we headed across the damaged city.

"You two will be attatched to a marine platoon whose task is to destroy this Covenant artillery position."

When he said that, a hologram popped up in the room. It displayed a dozen Covenant artillery pieces placed in a completely destroyed portion of the city. The cannons were similar to the wraith's mortar, only that they were a lot more powerful and fired in a similar way to human artillery. They looked like massive beam rifles supported by four legs. They were about a hundred feet long and perhaps thirty feet tall. They had a similar look to Covenant AA battieries.

"They have been playing hell with our frontlines, these puppies here fire quite slowly, but a single well-placed round could destroy our line," the captain told us.

We noticed that the ship had stopped.

"Well of you go, we can stay hovering here forever now, can we?" the captain said before dismissing us.

Pavel and me made a quick pit stop in the armory before heading to the cargo bay. We each popped some painkillers on the way there, while we might've not broken anything, a fifteen foot fall usually leaves one place or another hurting.

We arrived at the cargo bay to witness the last scorpion tank leaving the cargo bay. As promised, ther was a marine platoon there waiting for us. We were coldly greeted by its lieutenant.

"You're late," she said.

"Well, somebody's got their panties in a bunch," Pavel mumbled. I thought something along those lines, but I was careful not to antagonize the higher-ranking woman.

She shot a deadly glare at my friend before deciding he wasn't worth it. She turned to me. My HUD marked her as 1st Lieutenant Haruna Motou. My instincts marked her as an eager daddy's girl trying to prove herself in battle. I rolled my eyes behind my faceplate.

"Well, let's not waste any more time shall we?" I said as I hopped off the lowered cargo door. A couple of marines snickered at the comment, they obviously didn't like their leader very much.

We hopped of the ship and were greeted by a grisly sight, this part of the city was where the Covenant landed first, every single building was almost completely destroyed, with little more than the bottom walls still standing. The streets were mostly covered in debris and they would provably be giving the hogs a hell of a time crossing them. The scorpions wouldn't have so much trouble, but it was still sort of a bitch.

Our platoon made way across our newly formed line. We were headed to the artillery position as quickly as possible. Right now there was no sign of enemy presence, but there was bound to be a large detatchment out there waiting for us. It wouldn't be that hard, since it was brutes that were attacking this planet. Elites rarely showed up in the same system as those gorillas did, hunters didn't seem to be big fans of them either. Our biggest problem would be their support craft, namely choppers and banshees.

The lieutenant held her fist and we stopped. The platoon had formed into two fifteen-man columns behind the lieutenant, with two marines acting as scouts. The lieutenant stared at one of the scouts, who was out of my line of sight, and then turned toward us.

"Three lone grunts, 2 o'clock," she explained. We all nodded and waited for the shots to ring out. We waited some more.

"What the hell is taking them so long?" someone asked. I was beginning to feel the same. Taking out three grunts wasn't that hard, even a video game addicted teenager could've done it without really breaking a sweat. These grunts in question were even unaware than we were here.

I turned my head to my friend, who nodded back at me, and headed of towards the spot where our two scouts were supposed to be.

"Where are you going?" hissed the Lieutenant. We ignored her and resumed our walking. We crossed over a large pile of rubble twice our height before we saw them. They were both lying dead in small pools of blood thirty feet away from us. At first I thought they had been taken out with needlers, but the wounds on their bodies were to small. I closed in on the bodies, with Pavel guarding my back. I activated my helmet cam so that it would transmit to Pavel.

"Spiker bayonets?" I asked, zooming in on the wounds.

"Nah, not wide enough."

"Shit," we both said simultaneously.

I heard the noise of heated air sizzling right before I jumped to the side. An energy sword missed my face by no more than a couple of inched. As I landed on the floor, already lifting my weapon, there were two thoughts in my mind. Number 1: Why the hell are Elites groundside with Brutes? And number 2: This helmet cam footage is going to be pretty impressive if I ever feel like showing it to someone.

I fired a quick burst at the center of the shimmering air in front of me. An elite materialized out of thin air, looking slightly dull. My rounds actually hit it in the neck, going through the weak shields that Spec. Ops Shangeili. For being the equivalent counterpart to humanity's ODST troops, they weren't that impressive, unless of course, you found yourself facing an invisible 8 feet giant that you can't see.

The dead elite landed on top of me, its violet blood obscuring my visor. The air was knocked out of me when he fell on top, I would've been in the uncomfortable situation of having a split-chin corpse over my body with no way to defend myself had Pavel not tackled the body of of me. He took a knee before taking out the three grunts, which had left their cover to peek curiously at the sound of a gunshot. They really should've been better trained.

"What the hell was that?" came Motou's voice from behind us, her rifle raised and at the ready. Behind her were three marines, the rest would have likely held back and found more defensible positions.

"Cloaked elite," I said, while still taking deep breaths.

"What? That doesn't make sense," she said. "Brutes are never on the same battlefields as Elites." That was something that wasn't taught at bootcamp, at least not when I was there, but it was the truth. A planet was either invaded by baby-kongs, or by split-chins. I had never seen two on the same planet. I had heard that that had been the case in Harvest, but only because that had been a five year engagement.

I didn't enjoy the idea of finding myself stuck in a battle that would last that long.

"Well, let's keep moving," I said, distracting myself from those thought. "Those cannons are pretty close," I said while pointing over the rubble of two collapsed skyscrapers. I could tell they were skyscrapers because one of them was still half standing and the other one was at least a mile long while on its side. Well, what was left of it was. Peeking over those piles of concrete and steel, there were three purple cannons.

"Agreed, let's move people," said the Lieutenant. She sounded like something straight out of a movie, it probably was because she had watched one too many war films before joining the Corps. This time Pavel glanced at me, I could tell he was thinking the same thing I was, the smile could be seen even through his polarized visor, metaphorically.  
>I turned my VISR on, choosing the thermal display. It made for difficult walking, but it would prevent any elite from sneaking up on our group. Well, on my part of the group, because the platoon had broken up into three different squads, each placed at about thirty meters from each other. We were now moving more carefully, one half of the squad advanced while the other provided cover, then repeat. We leapfrogged across the distance separating us from the collapsed buildings before the Lieutenant called the two other squad leaders to join her. Since I was a sergeant, I was invited to the impromptu meeting as well.<p>

"Sinha will set up in the semi-collapsed building, two marksmen will provide support and cover for him," she was saying, Sinha was the platoon sniper.

A sergeant nodded.

"Our two rockets will climb to the top of the other collapsed skyscraper and will provide us with further support, taking out any enemy armored support or hunters, in case we find them."

While she was saying that, Pavel was climbing to the top of the collapsed building, he was sporting a couple of binoculars, not entirely sure why, since his helmet cam could certainly do the job, and he could transmit the image to the rest of the platoon as well. The lieutenant was going on about overlapping fields of fire and whatnot when a small image popped up in my helmet and on the marine's eyepieces. The image displayed the enemy position. There were twelve batteries, as shown to us in the hologram, and they were manned by crews of elites. That by itself wasn't exactly unexpected, specially with the recent discoveries we had made. I glanced at Pavel, turns out he had used the binoculars so that he didn't have to expose his head, using the displayed picture in his visor as a way to guide where he was aiming.

_Makes sense, _I though entirely to myself.

The transmission also showed a couple hundred troops milling about, most of them alert and behind sturdy energy deployable shields. There was a large number of elites in addition to grunts, jackals, and the deadly hunters. I also caught a glimpse of something that frightened me.

"Shit," the lieutenant spat as she mentally went over her plans again. "There's no way we're getting air support."

Pavel was already descending from the collapsed building, being careful not to kick any rocks down.

"We are going to have to go through with this, else the main front is screwed," said the lieutenant.

While she was making small tweaks to the plan, so that we would have a shot at surprising such a large number of soldiers, I contacted the captain.

"This better be very fucking important sergeant!" came out his voice, I could hear voices in the background calling out the position of enemy ships and saying which decks were breacked and what armor was weak. I suddenly grew worried about Layla.

"Sergeant?" came the captain's angry voice.

"Sir, I assume you are not able to provide any type of orbital bombardment right now?" I asked sheepishly.

"No." His voice was dangerously montone.

"So no support then?" I asked once more.

"Well, normally I would send an ODST squad in their pods as some sort of kinetic proyectile barrage, but you aren't on board right now."

"Oh Captain, you flatter me," I said.

"Fuck off sergeant," he said before the connection was cut.

_Well, no backup it is._

The lieutenant had contacted a couple of warthogs that were supposed to be here in fifteen minutes, while a scorpion tank would be sent to aid us as soon as it was possible for our strike force to spare one. It wasn't likely that would happen any time soon.

"Ok, let's move, we strike on my mark," said the lieutenant as she dispatched the two squad-leaders back to their respective squads. I could make out two rocket marines climbing the building, taking the same path Pavel had. Three other soldiers went to the other skyscraper that was still partially standing. The squad to my right (and to the back of the enemy position) broke off to surround the building, while the other squad joined us as we advanced through the collapsed one. I entered the building through a broken window, I was actually walking through the walls. It felt slightly weird. We made our way to the other side of the of the building so that we could see the spectacle ourselves.

"Did you see it?" Pavel asked me. He was talking about the thing that had freaked me out. I nodded in response.

We made it to the other side of the building, the outside walls were actually tilted outwards, we could use them as slides if we needed to. I peeked over to see the enormous concentration of enemy troops. I saw a jackal sniper sitting down on the edge of the rubble near the floor. As I watched, a marine slid down, knocking a few rocks as he went down. The jackal turned just in time to have a knife stuck through the throat and cranium. We all took cover behind something.

"Eagle Eye, is there enemy movement headed towards us?" the lieutenant asked.

"Negative, although there is one elite that is eyeing the place where you took down the jackal," came the answer from our sniper teamin our radios.

"Its clear, the squid-face seemed to have thought better of it."

The lieutenant sighed with relief, she was definitely a rookie. We waited for Eagle Eye to tell us that we were clear to slide down the building. It took a few seconds, but we made it. The warthogs arrived when we were taking cover in front of the damaged building, we were still in slightly higher ground that the rest of the enemies, which was good.

"You guys hold back until there's enough caos in their ranks, when I signal you, you will make a speed run across this position, knocking down as many alien bastards as you can, roger that?" the lieutenant informed them through her radio.

"Roger that ma'am."

She nodded, mostly to herself. "Eagle Eye, have you spotted the highest ranking officer?"

"Yes ma'am, a beautiful elite zealot. It's clad in yellow armor, I'm glad we didn't get one of those squids with the fancy helmets, those are terrible to headshot since the helmet is very large and I am not sure where exactly the head ends and…"

"Enough," snapped the lieutenant. "Rockets?"

"We're set el-tee, we have our sights on a pair of hunters, we have located another two pairs so far, no vehicles though."

"Good, take them out as soon as possible," ordered Lieutenant Motou. "Third Squad?" she asked finally.

"We're set, ready to go when you order ma'am," the squad leader replied.

Motou took a deep breath to steady herself for the oncoming battle. I hoped with all my heart that we would be able to catch the numerically superior forces off guard and that they'd be surprised enough not to form an effective counter-attack.

"… two, one, fire."

I fired at my preset target, a grunt manning a shade turret. I heard the sharp crack of the SRS and saw the vapor trail its ammunition left behind on the corner of my eyes. The round hit the zealot square in the chest. Another two sharp cracks were made in quick succession, both rounds ending their trip on the golden-armored elite's chest. The elite roared in anger as its shields were completely drained. I shifted my fire to a surprised grunt carrying a fuel-rod cannon. One final boom was heard from the sniper rifle before the golden elite collapsed, its right hand letting go of its energy sword and going to the gaping hole in its chest. Two ultra elites pulled him to cover as I shot an elite through the head. I was surprised that it only took one round to kill it. We must've caught them really of guard for them to have their shields deactivated. I switched my priority to shooting as many elites as I could in the next few seconds. I had only just put three rounds through a minor's chest when I heard the explosions. The rocket's had been aimed perfectly, slamming into the midsection of the two nearest hunters.

"Fuckin' A!" cried out a marine that was spraying the closest jackals and grunts.

I shot another elite minor, this one was shielded and returned the favor with a burst of superheated plasma at my head. I dodged just in time to avoid the fiery blue balls of death.

The wall behind me was starting to turn decidedly black. I was about to recommend to our leader that we should switch positions when she gave the call to move forward.

The building behind us had been lying in a hill of rubble and debris, propping it up around 20 feet from the ground around it. We were currently on top of that small hill, right next to the collapsed building, so moving forward involved a combination of acrobatics, sliding, and gracefully falling down a pile of hard concrete that often ended in pointy parts.

Regardless, we all did it. Three marines were shot on our frantic scramble to the bottom of the hill, two of them fatally, the other would be loosing a leg. The position we had been in was blasted by a green hose of energy, courtesy of an advancing pair of hunters.

I reached a partially collapsed wall for cover before I was able to breath (relatively) easy. I watched the rest of the marines do the same, with Pavel joining me. He was carrying a spare assault rifle from one of the killed soldiers. He also took the soldier's ammo belt off.

I placed the assault rifle across my back, letting the magnetic strips hold it there and placed the bandolier across my across my body, in the other direction. I believe I looked like a revolutionary from the "Century of Revolution" in Latin America, back in the 1900's. Or 1800's. I dunno. Of course, I was sporting ballistic armor a couple of centuries more advanced than any type of bulletproof vests that existed back then.

I was thankfull I had left my rucksack back in the ship. I don't think I would be needing the mini-tent or a C-ration. Not likely that I would live long enough to have one of them ever again, not the way things were shaping up.

I peeked out only to fall back behind the wall to avoid a beam rifle shot. "Crap!" I said as my friend pulled me back up.

"Eagle Eye, there's a jackal sniper on top of the first cannon, it is perched on top of the rear right leg." Pavel had read my mind, addressing our sniper before I could.

"Roger," he said.

A second later a single shot was audible over the rest. "He's down," came the sniper's voice.

I didn't bother thanking him before peeking out again, this time I was forced back by a trio of needle rounds slamming into the wall between an elite and my head. They detonated with dull thumps after a few seconds of being stuck there. I threw myself out of my wall and across to a crater with a small pile of rubble in front of it. As I did that, Pavel was already swinging his light machine-gun around. The M247L was basically the one-man version of the heavy machine-gun that the falcon gunships sported. It was a mix between the afromentioned weapon and the original M247 concept. It had a stock and grip like the original M247, but its barrel was a short version of the one that the M247H (the falcon gun) had. It was quite a versatile weapon, able to dish out 570 7.62mm rounds per minute without the need to stop, at least in Pavel's case, since he had it connected to his rucksack/ammo box.

I landed on the crater with my shoulders; I was able to glimpse the sight of needles landing on the ground, right behind my feet, dangerously close. Farther back, I saw the imposing silhouette of Pavel, carrying his large gun and popping out of cover, dirt lifted from explosions slamming into his body. He fired in full-auto at the elite that was shooting at me. His aim must've been pretty good, because the alien stopped firing. He returned to cover as a bunch of enemy projectiles hit the air he had just been in, also making contact with the wall and the floor around him.

I was able to leave cover to fire, now that I was partially forgotten by our enemies. I shot two shield-carrying jackals that were turned slightly away from me, engaging an unknown target. I watched a grenade throw an unshielded elite ten feet backwards, the shrapnel reducing his face and chest to something ressembling ground meat. I also something else right before I went to cover, a single rocket was flying towards one hunter. It made contact beautifully, hitting the monstrous creature in the exposed orange flesh in its midsection, blowing it apart in two, with its shielded arm separating from the upper half.

I would've sent my regards to the guy that took it out had he not forgotten that hunters always come in pairs. The other hunter raised its arms to the sky and a noise so scary that it seemed designed to make us panic, came from it. It was a mix between a lion roaring and thunder. Marines around me quickly noticed the danger and fired at the enraged alien. I could see sparks all over its armor, but it didn't seem to be bothered. It started charging to our line, gunning straight for my direction. I happened to be right between him and the rocket marine that had taken out its bond brother from the top of the collapsed building. Even as it ran, we all held fire on it, only that it still looked like it was only tickling the giant.

The hunter jumped far more than a beast that size should have been able to and landed right in front a group of three marines. It immediately slammed one of them at least a hundred feet away with its shield. The other marine was promptly stomped on and received a fuel rod to the face. The last remaining soldier had managed to avoid those fates, she was making her way back, stumbling with fear while looking over her shoulder. The hunter made that noise again and started chasing her. As she went between Pavel and me we started emptying our magazines into the hunter. It seemed to have liked me better, because as soon as it was close enough it swung its shield. I dodged it rather successfully, but somewhere along the road I fell to the floor. I moved to the right just in time to avoid my head being flattened by a massive alien foot. As it slammed next to me, I couldn't help but gaze at the small crater it had left on the floor in wonder. I rolled once more to avoid the side of its shield slamming into me. I used both my legs to jump away from the monster. Big mistake. It now turned towards me and leveled its cannon at me. It even seemed to calm down for the few moments that it would take for it to anatomize a large chunk of my boddy.

I almost cried with joy as the hunter jerked in that familiar way living beings usually do when hit by bullets. I could see Pavel going all out on it with his gun, aiming at the unshielded orange worms. I grabbed my BR55 and leveled it at the hunter's head. I switched to full auto and emptied the rest of my magazine into the small orange section which occupied the neck and lower face. The enraged hunter seemed to confused to decide who to attack and instead collapsed, dead.

"When we get out of here, I'm buying you a beer!" I told Pavel.

"That's if we live long enough for that!" Pavel said in a cheerfull voice that did not go with his comment at all.

I looked over the pile of rubble protecting me to see a large number of elites bunching up, obviously prepating to attack. There were two banshees coming at us, already starting to fire on their strafing run. One of the enemy fliers moved to the right and headed up and away, I saw a rocket flash by at full steam, it was headed to the banshee, the purple craft made away at prodigious speed, but the rocket caught up with it and exploded in a blast of orange and blue.

"You'll get fancy equipment," I said, mimicking Major Cavallaro's voice, "you'll get to try out fancy gadgets and stuff… FUCK YOU MISTER!"

"What?" came Pavel's voice.

"Nothing, how come they get the new SPANKrs with the tracking missiles. He shrugged, which made his armored sillhoute look funny.

"Shoot the cannons!" called the lieutenant, her voice sounding like she was in panic, she was loosing it. If she was willing to waste what little rocket support we had on the batteries, she was definitely worried as to our overall capability to complete our mission successfully.

Two rockets sailed at the nearest cannon. It was only fifty feet away from me. They hit one of the rear legs, causing it to collapse and turn slightly sideways. The cannon made a noise that sounded like it was heating up and fired the round that had just been loaded into it. The blue plasma hit the other cannon right next to it in the center, actually detonating the shell within it and various other unused shells and fusion coils, actually causing a very pretty explosion totally disproportionate to the two rockets that had been fired.

"Well, I did not see that one coming."

"You've got that right sarge," came a marine's voice from behind me. I still found it odd that guys in their early-thirties would call me, a 22 year-old, sarge.

As the dust from the explosion settled, we watched with slightly less caution than we had had a few moments ago. We were all curious as to what had happened. The explosion had been a huge one, taking out at least two of the enemy cannons; a large number of their infantry had been engulfed by the blast as well.

The dust began to settle down just as I saw silhouettes within it. They were packed closely together and occupied a large area across the battle area. The dust finally settled and I was facing a hundred pissed off elites. When elites get angry, they roar and charge and yell, much like little kids, but when they are quiet after something that bad happened, you knew you were in deep shit, much like you know something's coming when a little kid silently goes back to his room after being scolded for doing something, already scheming on what his next mischievous act will be.

There is a big difference between seven-and-a-half-feet-tall genocidal monsters and two-feet-tall toddlers.

Right in the middle of the mass of elites, was the largest elite I had ever seen, it was clad in a grayish armor that was carved on with runes and drawings. It held two energy swords, one on each hand. In its eyes, even from this distance, I could see the look of pure anger and hatred. As the blades of the two swords appeared out of thin air, the elites to its sides charged, he stayed there while the mass of soldiers moved past him, like something right out of a fantasy movie.

The marine behind me was the first to react, "Fu-"


	22. Luck, Chance, and a Little Bit of Talent

Chapter XXII: Luck, Chance, and a Little Bit of Talent

**June 4, 2537 (UNSC Calendar)/**

**New Istanbul outskirts (other side), New Constantinople, Cygnus System**

The unfortunate soldier didn't get to finish, as he was rudely interrupted in the form of a large needle through his left eye. He died instantly, at least that's what I hope, net because the explosion would hurt (he wouldn't even feel it), but because we would spend two seconds knowing that his head was about to be blown up. Nobody should live with that knowledge. His head exploded in a mist of red and pink, effectively ending my worried thoughts.

The elites were now at a full charge, headed straight for us. They had been around 400 meters away when they first started their charge, but they were now only a third of that distance, their large legs and powerful muscles allowed them to run pretty damn fast.

The sound of that unfortunate marine's head disappearing was what snapped me back to reality. I raised my rifle and fired at the berserk elites. I managed to bring one down before I heard the lieutenant shouting through her comm.

"Third Squad, warthogs, NOW!" she yelled.

The rest of the platoon, which hadn't participated in the battle so far opened fire from the enemy's flank, joining our own barrage, well, more like covering our hasty retreat while we tried to get as far away from the wall of psychotic elites as possible. I looked behind me as I climbed the rubble frantically. The elites were obviously less than when they started, there were a couple of explosions in the center of their mass, killing at least five of them each. A couple of sniper rounds took down two elites before the floor Sinha was in was blown up with help of a fuel rod cannon.

I reached a relatively decent piece of cover and started firing back. I saw the two warthogs roll towards the enemy charge, one of them headed straight towards it, while the other went around, simply firing at it. The one that decided to ram the elites went through at least six of them before the engine stalled. No matter how powerful is your car, you'll never be able to go through a mass of bodies, especially if those bodies are elites. I watched as three elites pulled the crewmembers from the car, snapping their necks or executing them on the spot.

"Hold the line!" ordered a lieutenant that was going increasingly psychotic.

"There is no fucking line!" called out another marine. He was partially wrong, most of the soldiers that had managed to survive, which was seven, were actually forming a line of sorts, if it had been drawn by a five year old with Parkinson's, but a line nonetheless.

I placed switched to the assault rifle that Pavel had given to me and started firing, soon other weapons joined me. We managed to kill a number of the first line of the enemy assault, but it wouldn't be enough, when the elites reached our position, we would be killed. Simple as that.

I looked around while firing (didn't really have to aim) to see if I could find a better position than this. The building behind us was way to steeply inclined to climb back up easily, to the right side we were faced with the base of the collapsed building, and to our right was the other partially collapsed building. We could go to either side for similar cover, but the building where the sniper team had been blown up to our left was much more closer.

"Follow me!" I called out as I started running towards our new cover. Pavel knew me well and went right behind me, the others hesitated for a brief moment, but pretty much every single one of them was sprinting behind me in a question of nanoseconds. I fired to the side while running, eating through my assault rifle ammunition, those things could fire pretty damn quickly if you wanted them to, but nobody used the MA5s like that.

We entered through the glass doors, or what was left of them, with the elites very close on our tails, the marine to the rear was actually picked up by the neck and thrown to a wall before being curb stomped. I turned to provide some sort of covering fire to the rest of the marines, shooting down the lead elite. I threw my rifle away, it was out of ammo and I wasn't planning on carrying ten extra pounds around.

"Stairs, over here!" Pavel called. He kicked down a metal door and we all went in. As soon as I was in he closed it and used a fire axe through the handle to prevent the elites from coming through. Like that was going to stop them.

The door bent inwards, actually falling of a hinge. I could see an angry elite through the corner of the door. Pavel emptied at least thirty rounds through the door, leaving a very large hole in the middle and allowing us to see to dead elites.

"What the hell's wrong with them?" I asked as I climbed the stairs, "They might go nuts every now and then, but not like this."

"Well, I don't know," he answered as we climbed to the third floor, where our sniper team had been located, "maybe the big one is controlling them with his mind?" he suggested.

"Sure, that's exactly what is happening, he is controlling them with his mind."

"Oh shut up," he said. We had made it to the third floor nice and safe. Elites had a really hard time climbing stairs and ladders, their backwards knees were to thank for that, it was really one of the only downsides to their legs.

I noticed that the lieutenant was pale and looking unhealthy, at least she hadn't broken down yet.

"Third Squad, what's your status?" she asked.

"We're fine, they seem to be solely focused on you guys, there are a couple of them taking potshots at us, but nothing we can't handle."

"Ok, as soon as you can, take down the remaining cannons," she ordered.

"Are you sure we need to? No one is manning them anymore, besides, that explosion took down four of them, how do two rockets even do that?" said the sergeant from the last remaining undamaged squad. I was inclined to agree with him, we had had a brilliant stroke of luck when the rockets fired.

"Destroy the remaining cannons sergeant!" she ordered again.

"Yes, ma'am."

"Rocket team, how are you doing?" she asked as she switched channels.

"We're fine ma'am, regrouping with Third Squad, although Yago here was nicked in the leg. He's complaining like a little girl."

"Ok, regroup and help the third squad in their objective," the lieutenant told them.

"Ma'am," they acknowledged before the connection was cut.

"Corporal, what's our status?" she then asked.

"Well lieutenant, we're down to six men and woman, there are angry aliens at the door, and they seem to have surrounded the building," the corporal informed.

The lieutenant looked like she was finally about to break down and cry, which she did.

"I don't know what to do!" she cried out.

I rolled my eyes, I hated when this happened, if it were up to me, lieutenants would have to be promoted to leading a platoon after going through at least some hours of combat. Whenever this happened a lot of good men died.

Time to take over.

"Ok, that's enough ma'am, Pavel, grab one of the soldiers and cover the stairs. We don't want any of them coming through there. The rest of you, spread out to each corner and fire at any and all elites you can see. That includes you lieutenant," I said as I propped her up, dusting her off.

"It's not much, but its all we've got."

She nodded and took her own corner. I heard Pavel's gun go off a couple of times before it went silent.

"You should've seen that one Frankie," he called out, "it was even gripping the rail for support, like it wasn't sure how to climb stairs!"  
>"Hope you recorded that man, sounds like fun," I called back as I set up. From my corner I could see the enemy cannons and the other collapsed building to the side. The remaining warthog was still there, it was stationary while its passenger and gunner fired at some elites I couldn't see. It moved slightly to the front to avoid a fuel rod. It then started full march before it was suddenly halted. An elite materialized out of thin air in front of it, halting the hog's progress with its shoulder. It was not any elite, it was the monstrosity that had shot the sniper next to me back in Jericho VII. The driver floored the pedals and managed to push the silver-clad elite about ten feet before it decided to stick on of his swords in the hood and jump up. The engine kept working, but there was smoke coming out of it. A couple of rounds from the LAAV pushed the elite back before he used his other sword to cut the cannon in half, eliminating that from the equation. Then he stabbed the passenger in the chest, leaving the sword stuck there, he then moved on to the driver, punching his face in. The gunner got smart and jumped off. The elite crouched before jumping at least ten feet in the air and landing in front of the escaping gunner. He got a couple of rounds to the chest for his damage before stabbing the marine through the torso. He lifted him up with his sword, the marine clearly still alive. He said something to the soldier before throwing him to the side.<p>

"Woah," I heard from the other marine that saw that happen. My reaction was a bit different, a bit different as in five bursts of 9.5mm lead to the monster's head. It recoiled as its shields flickered, all bursts made contact, but they didn't seem to harm it. It rolled behind the warthog and disappeared.

Pavel's gun fired again.

"Got another one!" he boasted.

I switched my target to an adventurous elite minor that had decided to stand in the middle of the rubble, firing with his plasma rifle. It was promptly taken out with three bursts.

I looked around for any jackals or grunts, there were none to be seen. I could make out a couple of hunters hanging out back, looking like they didn't want to join the charge or something. As I watched, one of them was blown up in an explosion to large to be from a rocket. I followed the trail that the round had left to see nothing other than a scorpion tank. A scorpion tank escorted by at least ten marine soldiers, which proceeded to open fire on the remaining elites. There was still about seventy five of them, the warthogs had taken out most of them while they were in their suicide charge, but I like to think I did a good job with helping as well.

"Ok, regroup!" called the Lieutenant's voice. She sounded less worried now that there was a decent-sized allied force blasting our attackers away. I felt better too.

"Ok, we will help those marines wipe out the remaining split-chins ok?" she said as we all huddled around her.

"Ma'am, shouldn't we just let ourselves be rescued and feel grateful for that?" asked Pavel.

"I'm inclined to agree with Corpoal Klaus on the matter lieutenant," I added.

"Corporal Klaus? Like Santa Claus?" asked one of the other marines.

"Yeah," I said, "but with a K, sounds more exotic."

Pavel punched me in the shoulder, it probably hurt him more than it did me, but I got the point.

"Anyways…" started Lieutenant Motou, giving us a weird look, "we will join those marines and help them out, understood?"

"Yes ma'am!" we all said. Not that we had much of a choice, the chain of command is the chain of command.

"That's how I like it, now check your ammo."  
>We all raised our rifles so that we could see the ammo counter more clearly, my HUD had an ammo counting option, but it consisted of little dots representing bullets, so it was difficult to count them that way. I looked at my rifle, it told me that I had 29 rounds left in the rifle, the moment I checked the ammo display in the back of the carrying handle, I also noticed something farther back, it was that familiar distortion of the air.<p>

I pressed the button that projected my bayonet outwards and lunged at it. In a way, I was lucky that there was an elite there, otherwise I would've looked like a total psycho. The bayonet made contact with its belly, going through the armor there with relative ease. Cloaked elites rarely had shields, and since most of the other elites do have shields, elite armor isn't that strong.

The elite materialized with an angry roar. It bitch-slapped me and threw me to the side, the bayonet broke off and I managed to hold on to my rifle.

"Shoot it! Shoot it!" I called out as I landed on a potted fern. Everyone felt like it was a pretty smart idea, so they complied, leaving an elite riddled with bullet holes on the floor, with steam coming up from its armor. Despite the potential creepiness of the scene, it felt good every single time you managed to kill one of the top warriors of the Covenant.

A marine even decided to approach it and give it a kick. He got decapitated for his trouble. "Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck!" was the universal response. Very elaborate. The mysterious elite that we had seen back in Jericho VII and that had somehow met here was standing there, its armor looking like it had met a warthog face to face, which it actually had. Its eyes were bleeding, or perhaps it was from farther up in his helmet, anyways, he looked scary as fuck. He pretty much was too. He kicked Pavel as he was lifting his M427L to shoot it. Pavel managed to lift one arm to block the kick, leaving the short encounter with a broken arm and not a broken sternum. The lieutenant fired a long burst at it, forcing it to dive for cover. The two other marines joined her, wrecking a wooden desk completely. After a few seconds a marine moved cautiously forward to investigate. He peeked over the desk carefully.

"It's not here," he announced before he started screaming. I watched as the marine was lifted in the air by an invisible hand and then thrown out the window, screaming as he fell. The three of us that were still able to fired at the place we thought the elite was in, hitting nothing, but lifting papers as well as rock and wooden splinters.

I could hear the tank's cannon booming, but it was only a distant noise in the back of my mind. Three of us backed up into a tight triangle, each taking aim at a different spot, Pavel was pretending to be dead or unconscious on the floor, the sneaky bastard.

Motou fired a quick burst from her MA5, none of us moved. It was now eerily quiet, even outside of the building there was no noise.

"Aaargh!" cried the other marine in pain. I rolled to the front just in time to avoid a horizontal slash from an energy sword. The marine that had cried out had been impaled through the chest, the lieutenant simply dropped to the floor to avoid being hit. The elite flickered into existence. I aimed my rifle at it before I was backhanded for the second time in less than a minute. This time I felt like I was being hit by a sledgehammer. I wasn't able to hold on to my rifle. The elite kicked the lieutenant, making her slide through the floor until she hit a wall. She'd probably have to spend a couple of months in a hospital after that.

I backed away from the elite as it came towards me, two steaming energy swords in his hands.

_Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck FUCK. _I wasn't really feeling like elaborate sentences at the moment. I hit a column, preventing me from going any further, the elite just walked menacingly towards me.

"I am the holy sword of the prophets," it said in a deep, scary voice that matched his appearance perfectly, "I will cleanse the universe of you human filth and open way for the Great Journey."

It was starting to ramble now; I unholstered my pistol and emptied the 12 rounds into it in quick succession. Its shield disappeared, but I had run out of ammunition. I was doing my best to reload when it kicked the gun away from my hands.

"Now you die, human," it said as he pushed back his sword for the final stab. Right as I was about to try to roll to a side, I heard a loud blast and the elite was pushed forward, dropping one sword. It used that hand to lean on the column I was backed against, looking down on me with pain and anger on its alien face.

It roared as it stabbed at me with his other sword. This time I was able to roll away in time, mostly, one of the blades on his sword went through my armor and slashed me across the back, making my vision go red for an instant. I turned again to see Pavel cocking his small shotgun one-handed. The empty shell seemed to take forever to hit the floor, but the elite turned towards my squadmate and I managed to pull out my knife from its shoulder sheath. Pavel jumped to the side while firing, hitting the monstruous elite while avoiding a slash. The elite simply shrugged of the lead.

_Two shotgun blasts while unshielded and still going, you have my respect buddy, _I thought as I blocked out the pain in my back and jumped at the elite, knife in hand. I tackled the elite while stabbing it on its side, right above where its left kidney would've been had it been human. Weakened by two shotgun blasts and a knife sticking to its ribs, it fell relatively easily to the floor. As we fell to the floor, me on top of it, I pulled out my larger knife from my back, raising it to stab it. It raised its hand to protect himself, but it wasn't fast enough, My knife landed straight between his chest and shoulder armor, I had been aiming for the neck. Not my proudest stabbing, but give me a break here.

Pavel had gotten up while I tackled the elite in the silver armor, the armor in question was now damaged completely, the carvings it once had were now mixed with bullet holes and explosions had blackened it. My friend proved to me why he had survived so long aboard the _Inconvenience_. He jumped at the elite, landing with one foot on its chest. I rolled away as Pavel fired at the elite, point-blank. The blast blew away most of the elite's face, finally killing it.

I reached for my battle rifle, now only a few inches away from my hands. I pulled back the loading lever and emptied the rest of my magazine into its body. After that, I collapsed. Finally able to rest.

Just as I was getting comfortable, I heard the explosions, Third Squad had actually managed to plant explosives on all the cannons and bring them down. With the distraction that our reinforcements had provided, how could they not have?

I was forced to stand up by Pavel, so that I could help him carry the unconscious body of Lieutenant Motou to the ground floor. She was in bad shape, she would need an emergency medvac, and soon.

We were greeted by Gunnery Sergeant Larssen, he had left his scorpion's hatch and was now walking towards us, the rest of the marines were on cleanup duty, that is, stabbing the dead covvies to make them stay dead.

"So how in hell did you guys manage to take out so many of them before we arrived?" he asked us. "We were expecting to find the covvies actually celebrating your deaths."

"Well Gunny, we survived through a combination of luck, timing, and bad Covenant structural engineering," I told him, groaning as the pain in my back became greater.

"Don't forget their unfortunate placement of fusion coils and ammunition," added Pavel.

"And that's not counting my talent for murder," I said, my vision was beginning to blur, I wanted to brag as much as possible before I fell unconscious. "Talking about murder, did you get my knives Pavel?" I asked, my voice sounding weaker and weaker.  
>"I've got them right here buddy," he told me. I let go of the lieutenant and sat down on the floor, finding the most comfortable position I could. I took of my helmet, placed it to my side and leaned back.<p>

"I'd better get a fucking medal for this," I mumbled before letting the fatigue and pain take over me, slipping into unconsciousness.


	23. Back in Black

Chapter XXIII: Back in Black

**July 15, 2537 (UNSC Calendar)/**

**UNSC Joint FOB, New Constantinople, Cygnus System**

"Ok, now press your finger here, and we're done," the doctor told me. I did as I was told, pressing my left index finger onto the datapad that the man held. It read my thumbprint before chiming and flashing a green light.

"Well sergeant, off you go," he told me while he returned to the ER, to deal with his other patients. I nodded my thanks and left the room that I had been stuck in for over a month.

After the fight with that elite, an Arbiter, he had been called by some ONI guy. I had collapsed on the battlefield, Pavel had requested a medvac for me and Lieutenant Motou, flying us to the nearest medical center. My injuries had been a lot worse then I initially thought. I had a broken cheekbone from the first backhanded slap I received that day, two fractured ribs from the second, more painful bitch-slap, a broken hand from when the Arbiter kicked my pistol away from me, and of course, that slash to the my back. I am not sure exactly how I managed, but the wound ran diagonally from my right shoulder and stopped about halfway down. I must've rolled away in an awkward way, because the wound should've been horizontal, shorter, and a lot less painful.

My wounds had not been too serious; at worst they were painful, but never life threatening. I paused at a bathroom to empty my bladder. For the first time in over a month I was allowed to do that in an actual toilet, not a bucket. The doctors had been very insisting on not allowing me to leave my bed. That and the fact that they had no inhibitions on using strong sedatives kept me from disobeying them. I looked at myself in the mirror. My hair had grown well over regulation, but it had been slightly longer even before I was thrown into the hospital, I had a nice beard covering the lower half of my face as well. There was a long slash in my left cheekbone, where my helmet had been forced against my face and had broken that bone. The fracture was now healed, but the skin was still covered by two white strips. The doctors had told me it wouldn't leave a scar, damn right it wouldn't, I liked my face just the way it was.

I lifted my shirt, which was really a generic gray UNSC shirt, to look at my ribs. My first thought was that I was loosing my shape, my second thought was that it barely looked like my ribs had been broken. The only treatment I had received for those had been a dose of medi-gel around them to prevent an infection. My hand had been almost "broken in half" to quote a nurse. They had had to place a titanium plate to hold it together and allow the bones to heal. I could see the slight bulging of my skin where the plate was. I also had a scar where they had had to cut me open to place it. Normally, they would've just immobilized my hand and injected some bone-reconstructing fluid, but the captain had requested for me to be gotten out of the hospital as soon as possible.

I finished washing my hands and walked towards the north of the complex. All my personal belongings were stowed there, if I was going to get back into the fight, I might as well do it quick and with a set of armor.

I entered the large room where all the belongings were kept; sitting in a wooden chair was a woman in her mid-fifties reading a romance novel. She was wearing the most outdated glasses I had ever seen.

"Can I help you hon?" she spat through the gum she was chewing.

"Yes, I am Sergeant Francisco Castillo, I need to get my stuff," I told her, trying to avoid looking at her mouth. The sight of her chewing gum was really the kind of stuff that fueled nightmares.

"Ok," she said as she pulled out a board and flipped a couple of pages. Doesn't seem like she had gotten a datapad.

"Ok, your stuff is located in C259 kay?" she informed me.

"Thank you ma'am;" I said politely as I headed to the C section.

"Don't call me ma'am, I am not a ma'am," she whispered, mostly to herself, although I was able to hear her as I walked towards my armor and weaponry. The place was basically a gigantic library with personal belongings instead of books, well a very old public library, most libraries nowadays consisted of a small terminal where you rented a digital copy of a book from a catalog.

"C200, C250, Aha! C259!" I said to myself as I walked down the aisle. Yes, like a bride. I reached over to pull back my armor, a weird sensation forming in my back as I pulled down my stuff. It felt like I didn't have quite enough skin to stretch that much, which in a way, I didn't. It would take a while before the scar tissue on my back stretched enough for me to be able to perform any movement regularly. I started but putting on the Kevlar vest, it had a slash across the back that perfectly fitted my scar. It was obvious, since that's where the sword went through. After that I put on the belt that carried the waist protection and my back-pouch, now empty. I took off the running shoes that I had been given by the hospital staff and put on the thigh protection, since my bodysuit had been damaged or lost, they had to go over my new fatigues, which were green camo, not black, it made me look slightly weird. Next up were my old ODST boots. They made my feet look unnaturally large, but they also made me look badass and protected them quite nicely. I finished by putting on my shoulder pads and my forearm protection, vambraces, the manual said. That left everything from below the lower half of my upper arm to right below my elbow unprotected. My elbow pads hadn't made the trip. I was thankful that someone hadn't stolen my exotic shoulder pieces. I picked up my rifle and slung it over my back, I also holstered my pistol. After pulling down my helmet, abdominal protection, and chest piece, I found my knives lying there. They were still covered with purple elite blood. I couldn't help but smile at the thought. They were already rusting a bit near the handle; I'd have to clean them as soon as I got to the _Inconvenience_. I placed the smaller knife on the strap on the chest piece while I slung the other across my lower back, where it had always been. The old knife that the cook Tenare had given me five years ago was still strapped to my right boot. I made sure that everything was there before taking off. The belt-like abdomen protection was slung across my shoulder like a wrestling championship belt and I was carrying my helmet and the chest-piece with its harnesses in each hand.

"Thank you miss," I said as I left, feeling safer now that there were some millimeters of armor between the rest of the world and me.

"Good luck sonny," she said without glancing up from her novel.

Now there was only one last step before leaving towards the frontline, finding out where the marine's from my ship were fighting. For that I had to ask a tired-looking corporal.

"Ok, what did you say your unit's name was?" he asked me, while clicking some buttons on his 'pad.

"Alpha 2nd, " I repeated.

He scanned through the screen of his datapad before locating it. "Ok, so your unit is fighting on the Third Front, to reach them you'll need to fly with pelican number… 18, and then hitch a ride to your unit."

"Thanks very much," I told him before I left, off to find pelican 18.

"That's it?" the pilot asked.

"Seems like," I told her. It seemed like a lot of pelican pilots nowadays were women. And they said they couldn't drive.

"Very well then, off we go," she said as she entered the cockpit. I had been the only marine headed towards the Third Front, the pelican was only carrying a gauss warthog as well as several crates worth of ammunition on the inside. I decided to fill the two empty magazines that I had right now, I don't think anyone would miss 72 rounds. Am I right?

Damn right I am. I'm always right.

The hatch of the pelican was closed, so I didn't get to have a look at the overall shape of the city or the battlefield. The craft shook a couple of times from AA fire, but we weren't hit directly. After about ten minutes, the pelican made a noise, the noise of it unlatching whatever cargo it was carrying, which right now, it was the warthog. The doors slowly opened and I hopped off even as two soldiers scrambled into the pelican and pulled down the crates of ammunition.

I took a good long look at the city. It had been badly damaged the last time I saw it, but now it seemed like there wasn't a single building left standing. I could see smoke coming from all over the place, and the sky was darkened, even though it should've been about noon right now. The ash and smoke was actually blocking out the sun. You need a lot of ash and smoke to achieve that. I could spot explosions from plasma or regular explosives all over the city. I couldn't hear any gunfire, so I must've been far enough away from the frontline to be safe.

I approached what looked like the command tent and entered. There was a brigadier and two colonels overlooking a hologram of the battlefield.

"Can I help you son?" the brigadier asked.

"Yes, sir, could you tell me where Alpha 2nd is located, I'm just out of the hospital and want to rejoin my unit."

"Couldn't you have asked an officer that wasn't busy leading an army?" he said.

_Good point._

I kept my mouth shut. The brigadier took a deep breath and sighed. He gestured for one of the colonels to show me. The man walked towards me and pushed me out of the tent. He stood next to me for a few moments before pointing in a direction.

"That way, follow this road to the first checkpoint, then see if you can borrow a mongoose or hitch a ride in a warthog," he told me.

"Thank you, sir."  
>"Good luck son," he said before he returned to the command tent.<p>

_Why does everyone keep saying that to me?_ I asked myself _Probably because you're going to need it, dumbass._ OK, now that was exceedingly creepy, I was now insulting myself mentally. A shrink seemed like a pretty good idea then.

I walked down the road that had been indicated to me, it was more like a trail through the rubble, but I could see a traffic line every now and then, so it must've been a road at some point.

I reached the first checkpoint after ten minutes of walking. It consisted of a bunch of piled sandbags on each side, each mounted with a couple of M41s that were probably salvaged from a destroyed warthog. I could see a small shelter for the marines guarding the checkpoint and another larger shed, which had a single mongoose under it.

"Mind if I borrow that?" I asked to whoever would answer.

"Be my guest," said a bored guard. I went to the ATV and put on the rest of my armor, securing my helmet before taking off. I pushed the ignition button as I hopped onto the craft.

I sped off. I actually had to go very slowly, else I would hit a pebble and flip over after two corkscrews and barrel rolls. I wish the mongoose was somewhat more maneuverable. I also wish it had better grip. More protection wouldn't harm either. And would it really kill to put a coaxial gun there?

I finally arrived to the next checkpoint; this one was more heavily armed and even had an actual gate. I was ordered to halt and park the mongoose in case a messenger needed to use, I would have to walk the rest of the way towards my squad.

"Where's Alpha 2nd?" I asked a marine private cloaked with a blanket. It wasn't very cold right now, especially with my armor, but my elbows and arms would soon start feeling the brisk wind.

"They're in the left of the center, you should hop down the trench and head to the left, obviously, until you meet them, should take you about five minutes," he told me.

I thanked the soldier and followed his instructions, I was surprised to see that we had resorted to trench warfare. The Covenant had been fought to a standstill, and we had actually started digging trenches. Well, to call what was in front of me a trench might've been an insult to the English language, or Spanish for that matter. It was basically what you'd call a glorified hole. Some sections of the trench weren't even tall enough to reach my waist. This was going to be fun.

I jumped in the trench (hole), careful to avoid a couple of carbine shots. I crouched and excused myself to three marines playing poker. I started my journey to meet my squad. At times I had to go prone, sometimes I could walk comfortably, but mostly I went through the hole with my back slightly hunched. At least it was wide enough for five people; I even had to push myself flat against the wall for a mongoose carrier. That guy must've been suicidal.

"Alpha 2nd?" I asked a marine.

He pointed straight ahead of me, so I kept on going.

"Well, look what the cat dragged in!" announced a loud voice with a slight Eastern European accent. "The bitch is back!"

I found myself facing my good old friend, Pavel Klaus.

"Hey, how you doing buddy?" I asked him.

"Well, we're low on ammunition, the Covenant refuse to be pushed back, and when the elites took over the invasion, it has generally not gone well for us."

"So we're good?" I asked.

"Damn right we are, the Navy is doing its job just like they should, actually providing time for us to do the same thing down here instead of having to retreat to avoid being glassed."

While he was saying this he lead me to a little cave, actually, it was a man-dug tunnel that led to a parking-lot buried by debris. It served as a hospital of sorts and as an ammunition deposit. I could see at least a dozen crates of ammunition.

"Low on ammo my ass," I muttered.

"Aaaa, Sergeant Castillo, I am glad to see you are fine," Colonel Zavala's voice greeted me. For the first time ever since I had met him, the man was actually wearing his helmet. He looked pretty intimidating, at least more than he did the rest of the time.

"Gramps," I acknowledged him. "How we doing?"

"Well, Whitcomb is doing a hell of a job up there, or at least was doing, most of the ships are now grounded to avoid being destroyed, the UNSC ships are all well behind our rear, serving as anything ranging from mobile hospitals to batteries. The Covenant Navy is grounded on the other side of the city. They have an assault carrier, which just keeps spewing out troops like it's nobody's business."

"And what's our role in that, sir?" I asked, curious as to what I would have to do. I was an elite soldier fighting in the frontlines. My job was to partake in covert operations, not fighting in the trenches.

"Well, as we speak we're building a tunnel and we'll fill it with explosives, the tunnel will obviously lead to the Covenant's line," he explained. "Your team will be the first one to attack."  
>"My team sir?" I asked. Pavel and me barely formed a fireteam, let alone a squad.<p>

"You remember Lieutenant Motou, and her platoon?"  
>"Yes I do sir, what's with them?"<br>"Well, they've become sort of an extension to our small battalion after their company had an unlucky encounter with a scarab," Zavala explained.

"What about Kingsley's team, sir?" Kingsley was the leader of the other ODST squad in the ship. His team was more experienced than mine (makes sense, because mine kept dying) and was usually sent to missions that required finesse instead of overwhelming firepower and some pretty slick maneuvering. That was my job.

"Well, his team also encountered a scarab," the Colonel informed me, the look in his eyes told me how that had gone.

"Damn…" I muttered. Kingsley had been an exceptional soldier; he was practically the poster boy for the Helljumpers. He was talented, charismatic, a good leader, a ruthless fighter, and at the risk of sounding queer, almost as good-looking as me. I had only met him a couple of times before, but his record spoke for itself.

"Well sergeant, the tunnel is almost finished now, and the bombs are already being placed, they are scheduled to detonate tomorrow at dawn, be ready, you will charge through the no-man's-land after the explosion and try and secure a firm position. The rest of the line will be providing covering fire."

I saluted before leaving. Pavel threw me a couple of magazines for my battle rifle as we left the cave.

"Sergeant," a voice came from behind me "I am glad to see you made it."  
>It was the Lieutenant. She had 'only' gotten like a gazillion broken ribs, which had somehow managed to take less time to heal than my relatively minor wounds. Damn doctors.<p>

She was looking pretty much the same way as I saw her last time, beat up and green as grass, although she had probably picked up a couple of things regarding leadership. I'm really in no position to complain, as that op she led ended up a success, with over 60% casualty rate, but she somehow managed.

"I can say the same thing ma'am," I told her. "I assume you have already been informed about tomorrow's op."

"Yes sergeant, I have."

Since the Colonel had been ambiguous as to who would lead it, saying that 'my team' would be going in, but not who would lead said team. I had assumed it would be me, but the lieutenant was obviously a higher rank. I decided it would be best over the confusion early on.

"Will you be leading the operation?" I asked.

"In paper only sergeant," she said, clearing my doubts. "Just don't get to used to ordering me around," she added while winking at me. She turned and walked/crawled away.

"Did she just wink at me?" I asked, surprised.

"Oh, here we go again, Frankie Castillo, the Casanova, the ladies man, the Don Juan, must I remind you that you are in a committed relationship?" Pavel burst out.

I was between saying: _Do I detect a little jealousy_ and _It was just a question!_ I decided that the first one would piss my only friend in the whole wide universe more, so I went with it.

"No!" he shouted, a little too loudly and a little too soon.

"Fine, just chill man, you can go for it with the lieutenant if you want to, I'm in a committed relationship you know?" I quipped.

Pavel just turned around and sat down, his back facing away from me. I smiled at him and climbed some of the debris to get a good look at the battlefield. It looked like the Covenant hadn't actually found the need to dig trenches, their line was located in a less-damaged part, so they had partially-collapsed walls and houses for cover. There were some obvious trench-like holes, but their line was mostly the undamaged houses and walls. In between their front and ours there were a hundred yards of nothing but craters, debris, rubble, bodies, and glass. Here and there you could spot the burned out husk of a banshee or a ghost.

The Covenant had wraiths far behind the frontline serving as mortars. We had our own mortars doing just that, plus heavy artillery in the form of rhinos, the Covenant's artillery was now heavily limited (You're welcome), so we had an advantage there. It seemed like the tunnel-bomb would be located slightly to the left of where I was facing right now, right underneath the enemy line, not behind it. The small squad that would join me in crossing over no-man's-land was composed by ten members, the survivors of the cannon assault operation minus five that had been killed.

We would be receiving covering fire from most of the marines in the immediate area, and it was very likely that there were more mines set to go off at the same time that this one, so the Covenant wouldn't be able to form an effective resistance.

I took a moment to hit a jackal that was dragging a body towards the enemy line. No one deserves to have their body torn apart by hungry jackals. That is, unless you're a covvie soldier, cause if you are, you totally deserve it.

There really wasn't much room to maneuver; my team would just run in a straight line trying not to get hit while under the cover of some smoke screens and whatever dust the explosion might lift. The mission parameters didn't really give me much of a choice for how I would be able to proceed. I guess I would be heading straight towards ground zero.

I stayed on the edge of my pseudo trench for a few more minutes, sniping two more jackals that had been stupid enough to hang out in the open. I stopped my small spree after a shot fired from a beam rifle singed my shoulder armor. I dropped back to the safety of the trench, breathing heavily. No matter how used you are to combat, you will never get used to being away for one fucking month only to be thrown right back in for a freaking suicide op. Not even if you're me, and that's saying a lot.

"Get some sleep sarge, you're gonna need the rest," a marine next to me told me. I recognized him as one of the rocket soldiers that had set up on the collapsed building; the large two-tubed monstrosity of a weapon leaning against the wall next to him was a pretty good clue.


	24. The Tide Turns Twice

Chapter XXIV: The Tide Turns… Twice

**July 16, 2537 (UNSC Calendar)/**

**Third Front, New Istanbul, New Constantinople, Cygnus System**

"Ready boys and girls?" I asked, adding the 'girls' part for the benefit of lieutenant Motou.

My HUD was filled with green lights of acknowledgement. So, it meant they were ready. I heard some whistling right above my head, and seconds later, the rhino barrage reached the enemy line, breaking the silence that had taken over the front and probably carbonizing a few covvies as well.

"Any moment now," I said, mostly to myself.

It seemed to happen in slow motion, first the ground in front of us ballooned up, and then you could see that it was riddled with cracks, from those cracks you could see fire from the explosives. Finally, the whole section of dirt in front of us was blasted away in what I could only compare to a volcanic explosions. It was really something to look at.

"I guess the Colonel didn't lie when he said the tunnel was _filled_ with explosives, eh?" commented one marine as we protected our heads from falling dirt. A jackal arm still attached to a plasma pistol landed not two meters in front of me.

"Smokescreens," I ordered calmly.

At my command, four smoke grenades were thrown at the stretch of land in front of us, we would have to throw more once we reached the edge of the cover these had provided, but they would do the trick for now.

"Ok, go, go, go," I said very quietly, the first part of our mission depended completely on stealth and silence, the second part was based on a more 'blood and pain' approach.

With that, ten souls hopped out of our makeshift trench and started a quiet sprint across the barren wasteland that separated them and us. Halfway through I heard and felt two other explosions similar to the one that had provided us an opening to attack. I looked to my sides without stopping, there were indeed two majestic displays of fireworks to my right.

"Smokescreens," I ordered once more. The squad stopped and five more smokescreen grenades were launched. Now we had a safe road to the enemy trenches.

I found myself walking down a slope, I was now in the crater of the explosion, I could see some covvie remains littered nearby, but the smoke did a good enough job at hiding the rest of the carnage. I directed my team to go to the left of the crater, after all, we needed to take out whatever covvie soldiers had survived.

I raised my fist to signal my team to halt. There was something I could see through the smoke. It was a house. It was missing the front walls, all of them. I could see some movement through the windows.

"Spank their asses," I ordered. The rocket marine jumped to action. He advanced a few feet before taking a knee.

"Safeties off people," I reminded them. Most already had them off, but everyone checked the side of their weapons just in case.

"Firing one," the marine let us know just as he pulled the trigger. An HE round streaked to the air, a little to quietly for a rocket. After what seemed like an eternity, it went through a window and the roof of the already damaged house flew upwards. That's when it all went loud. That was the signal for the marines back in the trench to start a full barrage to keep covvies distracted and with their heads down. We would be clearing a line of around eight houses. After that, the Army guys behind us would go all WWI on those alien dipshits.

_One down, seven left._

"Move!" I ordered, silence no longer important. No rounds flew even remotely near our position, the guys back there had been informed of the op. and of our positions, no sense in ruining a decisive operation with friendly fire.

While the team moved, they separated in two. One would take the holes and barriers that were in front of the houses, while the other would clear the houses themselves. If it all went well, it should've taken less than fifteen minutes. Knowing my luck, we would probably end up pinned down in a house.

I attached my knife to the bayonet lugs in the rifle. It made the rifle a little bit more barrel-heavy than it already was, but my other bayonet was stuck in the body of a Spec. Ops. Elite on the other side of town. My team would be taking the houses; the lieutenant's would go through the even-more-rudimentary-than-ours Covenant trench. I kicked down the door, not that there was much left to kick down, the door was barely holding on to a hinge, and started a sweep of the house.

"Clear!"  
>"Living room clear!"<p>

"Kitchen's good."

I heard the familiar noise of a blade going through flesh and back. "Dining room's safe!"

The second floor was really empty as well, empty of life at least. The movement I had seen was an elite minor and two jackal sharpshooters. The elite hadn't fared too well, with its upper half almost completely missing, while the jackals had been taken out by the concussive blast of the explosion, their insides turned to mush. I bayoneted the jackals just to be sure, also because it gave me a warm, fuzzy feeling.

I heard Pavel's machine gun roaring right outside the house, along with a faint 'clear.' Seems like they were doing their job a little bit more loudly.

The next house wasn't empty, but two grunts aren't much of a threat to anyone, really, I swear, those things could've served as target practice for kids that wanted to play paintball. They were harmless in small numbers. Of course, whenever you found yourself outnumbered ten to one, nothing seemed quite that harmless.

Third house was our first complication. There was a pair of elite minors that noticed us going in, luckily, Covenant warriors are not that well trained in close-quarters battle. They are excellent fighters in open terrain, that's why urban combat didn't always turn out so well for them. Four shotgun blasts from a clever marine made quick work of them. So far it was going well. No one was wounded and we were doing our job fast. I hadn't even needed to fire once. That was probably bound to change, though.

The next house was… housing a surprise for us. We were heading towards a side door through what little remained of a garden when that whole side of the house collapsed. From the wooden walls came nothing other than a gigantic hunter. That was good, in a way, it meant it was only one hunter and not yet a pair.

"Shoot it, shoot the motherfucker!" someone called out.

_Well thought mister_. The hunter's surprise attack was met with a rocket to the face, which was, of course, deflected by the shield it carried.

The rest of us fired at the armored monster. It shrugged off our rain of lead like it barely tickled it. A burst from his arm-cannon sent us all rolling for cover in different directions.

"I didn't sign up for this shit!" complained a marine as a burst of green energy disintegrated the wall behind him.

"Shoot it again!" I called out.

"I'm trying!" came the answer. The rocket marine was reloading his weapon under a lot of pressure, that isn't usually helpful in regards to speed.

A couple of heavier rounds bounced of off the hunter's armor. As usual, it was Pavel to the rescue. I'd really have to do something impressive soon to outdo his recent feats in battle. The hunter turned away from us to face the bigger threat. It crouched behind its shield and started moving towards the other group. Pavel kept on firing, buying us enough time to shoot the motherfucker.

I primed a grenade and threw it at the alien, it landed right between its feet, it detonated, sending shrapnel in every direction, but most of it landing on the hunter. I wasn't particularly surprised by the lack of concern the hunter had for that explosion.

"Hasta la vista, baby!" I heard.

'Hasta la vista' means 'see you later' in Spanish. It was a strange phrase to hear right in the middle of a battle, especially when it was said with a strong Anglophone accent. Seconds later, the hunter received the full force of 102mm HEAT shaped charge to its unarmored mid-section. The explosion was followed by a rain of orange chunks, the only thing that remained of the hunter was its feet and its arms, everything else was too mangled to even start to recognize.

"Hasta la vista?" I asked the marine, smoke flowing from one of the barrels of the M19 rocket-launcher.

"Yeah, Terminator 2."

"Termi-what?" I asked, confused.

"Seriously? That film is a classic," he told me.

"From when?" asked another soldier.

"20th century," he informed us.

"Oh, you're one of those guys," I said.

The marine's expression went from triumphant to ashamed. I felt a little bad of killing the guy's buzz, but seriously, who the hell repeats phrases of movies that are half a millennium old during combat? It's just plain weird. I did a quick check on the state of my team, confirming that no one had been harmed. We were lucky, you don't usually escape from a hunter attack unscathed. And a surprise hunter attack at that!

"Well, move on!" I called out, this time we went around the collapsed house, didn't seem like there would be anyone taking shelter together with a Lekgolo. It's just stupid, those things can just freaking step on you by accident.

The next house happened to be an actual covenant structure, complete with the purple doors and walls. They were still slightly blackened by the recent rhino barrage, and the dust, and the explosion, and the month of being here. The doors weren't opening automatically, so we were in for some good 'ol fashioned breaching.

"Breach breach breach!" I called out as the charges went off. They had left a decent sized hole on the wall of the complex. The complex in question happened to be a bunch of covvie barracks. I could see what obviously were beds, the weird machines where grunts slept, and even an actual table. I made a mental note to avoid taking cover in or around the grunt machine. It was filled with methane, and they could blow up pretty quickly.

Unfortunately, this building in question happened to be filled up with high-ranking elites and some black-armored grunts. At first, it seemed like nothing happened, I was actually half expecting to find this empty and let my guard down a bit, letting myself be surprised by the sheer number of enemies. That's nothing compared to the look on the elite's faces though, their mandibles were wide open and their hands at their sides, mimicking the human expression for surprise pretty damn well.

Then there was a bang, and an elite minor collapsed. It seems like it didn't have its shield activated, only whatever god they believed in knows why they didn't keep them on at all times, it could make for pretty awkward situations, namely a supersonic slug through the frontal lobe.

The first shot came only an instant after we had gone across the wall, but it should've come a lot earlier. It broke the curse. My team opened fire just like we were trained to, with the shorter members crouching in the front and the taller ones hanging in the back. In the first second of the fight, at least six elites and a dozen grunts collapsed in a heap, the rest decided it was reaction time and rolled away from our fire, we all took cover behind those columns that the covvie architects seemed to love so much.

"Grenade out!" we were notified.

"No, what the fuck?" was all I could say before the explosive detonated, right next to the methane-filled grunt sleeping thingy. The explosion was not the like the pretty blue fireworks that Covenant technology usually gave when exposed to intense heat. It was more like a human explosion, fire all over the place. The marine that had thrown the grenade got a couple of singed eyebrows for her trouble, she was lucky no one else had been closer to her grenade, otherwise she would've had to live with a friendly fire casualty in her head.

I popped out of cover to fire, at first I saw nothing through the burning wreck, but then I noticed an elite jumping across the smoke. I shot it a couple of times before it managed to take cover.

"Flashbang out!" called another marine, now that soldier was a smart one, thinking stuff like that instead of potentially killing us all with a misplaced grenade. I was thinking about explaining the concept of situational awareness to the other marine.

The grenade detonated with a dull thud. At least that's how I heard it, because my helmet's sensors had heard the trigger phrase for shutting down all outside noise. My visor had been blackened completely for an instant as well.

"Ok, move!" I said, but the marines were already out of cover and aiming at their respective sectors. I saw at least six grunts go down with well-placed bursts to the head, no news on the elites though. When we crossed the wreck that had been the grunt's sleeping machine, an elite left the cover of its column, firing at us with a carbine. Its trouble cost it the right half of its chest, although one of our soldiers was hit in the leg. He was out of this one.

Then three elites decided to try the same trick at once, forcing us to jump for cover. The marine that had thrown the grenade was hit in the chest and face with plasma fire before she managed to react, effectively killing her instantly. She wouldn't be getting an open casket burial.

_She'll never get to know the proper definition of situational awareness._

We managed to bring down one of the elites, but from that point on this turned into a deadly hide and seek. Shoot at the elite, change cover, shoot again. It sounded relatively simple, and it was, except that the elite was also shooting at us, which upped the danger of the game. There were at least two more elites in there that we hadn't seen, in addition to a couple of grunts that might've survived.

I saw the rocket marine switch column, advancing closer to the elite's position, it looked like he was going to flank the motherfucker. Good for him, taking the initiative like that. He took advantage of me forcing the elite to remain behind his column before advancing again. I saw the muzzle flashes from his SMG and two plasma bolts hit the column he was hiding in, next I heard the thud of a 7'5 foot tall body fall to the ground.

After that I managed to take out a weakened elite with a well-placed burst to the neck. I was really starting to up my kill count. If I kept going like that I would be forced to check the recordings for confirmations.

Next, I found myself pinned to the floor, an angry-looking major looming over me, I fired a burst into its chest, forcing it backwards, before it swatted my gun away from me. This time I was forced to use my legs to hold it back. I actually forced it to jump back and try again, this time, it was more successful. I found myself facing an energy blade that seemed to come from the gap between its forearm armor and the skin underneath. I managed to grab the arm and force the blade sideways. Strength-wise, it was barely a competition, the elite could've crushed me, but with the alien focusing on speed and not strength, I managed to push the blade to the side with relative ease, now I only had to keep it there.

"Help me out here!" I called out as loudly as I could.

The elite raised its hand, my own hands still holding on to its forearm. I was lifted in the air and slammed back down, my hands letting go. The elite loomed over me. I was finding myself in way too similar situations lately, that would have to change soon, or I wouldn't get the chance to tell this stories to my grandkids.

I reached for my pistol, not that it would do any help, before I heard a low thump. The elite simply collapsed, the energy blade falling an inch from my visor, before it deactivated. I pushed one of its arms from my body before standing up. I shot the elite with my pistol for good measure before realizing it wasn't necessary. In front of me, barely five feet away, was the rocket marine with his M19 on the shoulder, one of the barrels was smoking a little. I shifted my eyes to the body of the dead elite. On its back there was a rocket. It was actually lodged to the elite's back, having gone about three-quarters deep into its flesh. The rocket was still producing some sparks.

"Did you just fire a SPANKr inside a building?" I asked, incredulous.

"Yes I did, sarge," replied the smug soldier.

"With friendlies nearby," I went on.

The smile was wiped from his face. "Yessir."

"Well, if you ever do that again, I'm going to have you dishonorably discharged."

The marine's expression went from confused to angry, he obviously didn't enjoy that the person he had just saved wasn't feeling grateful.

"However," I added, "just this once, I will write you up for a fucking medal, although you should really use your rifle next time."

The man smiled again. "Thanks sir," he said, although I should've been thanking him.

"Hey, don't worry about it."

I shot the elite once more, this time because it made me feel better before calling for confirmation that the building was clear. It wasn't a very large construction, so there couldn't have been many covvies inside. I heard a long burst from an MA5 before the building was safe.

"All clear!"

I picked up my battle rifle and bayoneted the elite that had almost killed me. Just because it made me feel better than simply shooting it.

"Ok, three more houses left," I indicated, tiredness already seeping into my voice. "Lieutenant, how you doing?" I asked into the comm channel.

"We're fine, one casualty, but we're about there!" came the answer. I could actually hear her voice about twenty yards away, but she was out of sight thanks to the Covenant makeshift trench, which seemed to be deeper than ours, it had to be, to protect the elites.

"Sixth house, go!" I ordered my team, this time we actually faced a real house, not a Covenant construction.

"Breaching!" the lead marine called before kicking down a door. I was third in, which meant that I had to take the first room to the left. It was a destroyed living room. On the window facing towards our front, there were two grunts manning a plasma cannon. For some reason or another, they hadn't managed to hear us barreling in. Too much time next to the loud Covenant weapon I guess.

The closest one was dispatched in the form of my two hands twisting its neck backwards and upwards, disconnecting its brain from the rest of the body. Dead was instantaneous. The other grunt quickly punched his tickets with a bayonet through the lower back. I shot a round from my rifle just to make sure, and the grunt collapsed sideways.

"Left is clear!" I called out.

"Clear!"  
>"Clear!"<br>"We're good!" I said.

Came the voices of the marines under my command, we were now only three, with one dead and another putting pressure on his leg. He would make it, but wouldn't be able to walk for a while. I had already called for a medvac for the unfortunate soldier, but it would probably be a while before it came.

"Sergeant, Sergeant!" came a familiar voice from the inside of my helmet.

"Yes Colonel?" I asked.

"You have Arrowhead support, feel free to use it," he informed me.

"Thank you, sir!" I said, a big smile already forming on my face. Arrowheads were missiles, they were relatively small, as their name suggested, slightly under the size of the 102mm HEAT rocket that the M19 SSM rocket-launcher used. They functioned very curiously. They were catapulted upwards with special launchers, or in case you didn't have the launchers, you could simply throw them as high as possible. Once they were in the air, they would activate their thrusters and head in a straight line to a laser-painted objective. They were wonderful killing machines. I was already aiming my laser designator at the roof of the next house.

"Ready, sir!" I informed Colonel Zavala.

Instants later a swarm of at least 30 arrowheads landed on the house, detonating whenever they made contact with something solid. The house lit up for an instant before it collapsed upon itself. The missiles must've hit something flammable, because they usually didn't pack that much explosive power. As the dust from the explosions cleared, I aimed at the next and last house. I could see my laser flicker through the smoke.

"One more time, Colonel, and we'll be done."

The reply came in the form of another wave of arrowhead missiles, all connecting with the house farther away. Our objective here was done, and for such a complicated mission, we had done it with relatively no casualties. Relatively.

* * *

><p>A couple of hours later, after the largest infantry charge since the Rainforest Wars, the UNSC ground forces had managed to push the enemy infantry back into the city a couple of miles. My squad was allowed to skip the second push, thanks to our 'valiant effort' in taking the enemy line. That sounded good, I'd probably be getting another commendation for this. In addition to the two Purple Hearts I already had and the Red Legion of Honor that I had recently been given, I deserved at least Gold Star, maybe two Silver Stars, I dunno, you don't get to kill an Arbiter every day now, do you? I'd better fucking get something for that. Pavel too, he did a hell of a job in killing that monster.<p>

I left the grounded pelican that had been serving as shelter. I climbed to the top and joined Marina in staring at the battle in front of us. The pelican had landed in the middle of the former no-man's-land, which was comparatively flat. The battle in front of us consisted mostly of tanks advancing while shooting Wraiths, Ghosts, Specters, and the occasional Shadow while the Marines and Army behind them cleared up any covvie stupid enough not to fall back. The assault would have to stop underneath the enemy assault carrier, which would then have to be taken out in a combination attack consisting of a tactical nuclear weapon detonated right underneath, preferably a HAVOK warhead, and then five or six depleted uranium slugs fired from orbit. Yes, that should do the trick.

"So, how's it going?" Marina asked me. She had this weird way of addressing me, almost like she was a shrink. It felt good talking to her.

"Alright I guess," I told her. I was watching the pretty explosions in the distance. They felt a lot prettier because most of them were obviously from human weaponry. Marina Bogdanovic remained quiet. After a couple of minutes, she finally spoke. "Your girlfriend doesn't like me," she stated.

"Nope."

I can't really tell why, but every time I had a conversation with her that didn't include the words 'Hang on boys, we're in for some heavy enemy fire' I felt better. Like I had taken some weight of my chest.

So there we were, sitting on the tail of her pelican, watching the most absurd sunset in the history of ever, the large star of Cygnus System was setting underneath a Covenant assault carrier, and the land all in front of us was nothing but ruins, smoke, and the occasional explosion. It was definitely the least romantic sunset in the history of ever.

"Your radio is ringing," I told her after a few minutes of quiet.

She sighed and hopped of the tail of the pelican, landing in the rubble. She entered the ship and for a few moments I couldn't hear anything. Well, anything other than the distant explosions and gunfire. Suddenly, the pelican roared to life. I hopped of the ship, startled.

"What the hell are you doing?" I asked.

"We're falling back," she informed me.

"What?" I was shocked. _It was all going so well._

"The Covenant has received reinforcements, about fifty ships have made an in-system jump," Marina let me know.

"Well doesn't that suck." _Almost two months of continuous fighting to have this rock glassed anyway._

The alarm for retreat started ringing, and the pelican was suddenly filled up with soldiers from my ship, the ones that were here at least.

"Colonel," I asked the old man as he walked into the ship "why are we falling back?" I already knew the answer, but I needed to hear it from him.

"The Vice Admiral has done a hell of a job kid, but he can't take on fifty ships at once, specially when we only have thirteen left in our own fleet."

I nodded, as if I understood perfectly. Pavel hopped on the ship, he was the last one to do so. The pelican flew us towards the FOB, where our ship was landed, there we could see the only other ship other then the _Inconvenience_, a cruiser, that was grounded was already being filled up with marines and equipment.

"Frank, feel like manning my turret?" asked Marina as the soldiers in the cargo bay headed towards the ship.

I didn't answer, letting her notice her comment.

"Ok, that came out wrong," she said through laughter.

"Sure ma'am," I said, laughing as well. I pulled the lever on the turret as the pelican flew away once more. This time we picked up a bunch of random soldiers, except for one I recognized, it was the rocket launcher-wielding marine that had saved my ass from that elite.

"Hey, I never did thank you," I told him as we flew back to the FOB.

"No you didn't," he said, smiling a bit.

"If you ever get tired of all that 'being a regular' shit, you should join the ODST, you'd make a hell of a soldier, I'll even put a good word in for you," I told him.

"Really?" he seemed excited.

"Sure, as long as you request a transfer to my ship as soon as you leave boot camp," I told him.

"Sounds great!" the marine said, excited.

"Just tell me your name," I asked before he hopped off.

"Private Robert Agnarsson!"

"Good luck private," I said as the pelican lifted itself up in the air once more. This time I noticed that the cruiser was taking off, and that many other pelicans were dropping from orbit to take the grounded marines and army troopers to their respective ships.

"We might be retreating, but we retreat in an organized manner!" I said, mimicking a Texan accent.

"You got that right!" Marina called from the cockpit.

When we arrived to the pickup area, there was actually a crowd of marines waiting for the ship. Most of them were from our ship, so it would make the trip easier, at least for Marina, I wasn't really doing anything. On our next trip back we had to pick up a warthog, that and the full load of marines the pelican was carrying made the fourth trip a lot slower, but we had to get everyone out as soon as possible. The covvies weren't likely to waste time during a full-blown retreat.

We made various similar trips with no incident, it was only on the last one that I had to get the gun going. We stopped at the same point we had been stopping in the last dozen trips, only that this time the Covenant had staged an effective counter-attack and were pushing back the last of our boys, they were dangerously close too.

The UNSC forces had been pushed back all the way to the covvie line that we had taken earlier in the morning, courtesy of my team, thank you very much. I found myself facing to many targets to shoot at. There were plenty of elites within range, and before we even touched down I found myself staring in horror as hundreds of soldiers ran at the evacuation points, while some brave ones made an attempt to hold the Covenant onslaught. Marina landed her pelican and within seconds it was filled to the brim with scared-looking soldiers, most of them were bleeding in one place or another.

"Sergeant!" I heard a voice coming from outside the pelican. It was none other than one of those kids in fancy armor, the Spartan-IIIs. I couldn't recognize which one I was looking at, although it seemed to be one of the two girls I had met according to the voice.

"What do you want kid?" I asked as I managed to cut down two overeager jackals.

"Come back for us."

As soon as she said that, the pelican took off into the air. I fired into the advancing enemy as I could make out the Spartans forming some sort of semi-circle and trying to hold of the Covenant. There wasn't just five of them, there was at least a couple of hundred. They were making short work of all the advancing enemies.

As soon as we dropped off the last batch of marines I moved towards the cockpit.

"Marina, we gotta go back, pick up those soldiers!" I said through the roar of the engines of over 200 pelicans landing and taking off simultaneously.

"Way ahead of you!" she answered as she lifted her bird.

This time we had to land further back, the Spartans had been pushed back at least a couple hundred yards. I was glad to see that Marina wasn't the only brave pilot that had returned to pick up those kids, there were at least 30 other ships flying with us, more than enough to pick up every single last one of them.

The pelican's main cannon roared through the noise of the engines and the battle below us. Warrant Officer Bogdanovic turned the pelican so that I had a clear field of fire at the Covenant and so that the Spartans could climb up into the craft. She also did that to protect herself from enemy fire, but let's ignore that small selfish part.

My AIE-486 Heavy Machine Gun was taking no prisoners. It was spewing out 7.62mm as fast as it mechanism allowed, which incidentally, was pretty damn fast. I managed to cut down a hunter and a large group of grunts as 12 Spartan kids jumped on the ship, firing at the enemy as they did. The kids looked incredibly badass, backing away slowly, making the Covenant pay with blood for every single inch they took from them. Finally, their numbers were too many, and we had to pull back, just as we did so, the last Spartan was hit by an overcharged plasma pistol, the impact actually propelled him backwards and halfway through the troop bay. I took out the jackal that had done that with a quick burst, taking out its shield and shredding through its body in less than two seconds. I managed to bag two more elite kills before the pelican dusted off.

The Spartan that had been shot in the chest was none other than my good friend, Carter A259. I could tell that because he was wearing a standard-issue marine helmet as opposed to the other one that he had worn before.

"Take off his chest piece!" I yelled, hoping someone would understand.

A Spartan quickly lunged towards his leader and removed the front of his armor, which was melting already, it looked like that armor was even less durable than that crap that Army soldiers got. Carter's chest was bloodied and burnt, he'd have to get some skin grafts for that.

We arrived at the FOB, which now only housed the _Inconvenience, _some fifty soldiers, a scorpion, and the abandoned command tent. The _Inconvenience _was already lifting off; we'd have to catch it in the air. A couple of pelicans landed near ors to carry away the Spartans to their ship, made sense, since theirs was a top secret project that I had only found out due to the big mouth of a teenager. Carter was the last one to leave. He was taken out of the ship in a makeshift stretcher, as he passed next to me he mouthed a "Thank you." I didn't think I deserve it, but I nodded at him as a Navy corpsman rubbed biofoam all over his damaged chest, stopping the bleeding.

"What are you waiting for?" I asked. "Let's the hell out of here!"

"Aye aye captain," came Marina's answer from the cockpit.

I pulled the HMG away from the hatch so that it could close properly, right after I was done, and for the third time in less than a year, my whole world went white. My helmet's visor immediately polarized itself to prevent any further damage to my eyes, but id probably need some sort of surgery anyways. The light faded away after an instant, only to reveal a giant firewall under the Covenant assault carrier, that sphere of death disappeared to reveal an intact ship, not really unexpected I guess, but it's always shocking to see something emerge from a nuclear explosion undamaged.

Right as I was preparing to sigh in annoyance and take my helmet off to rub my eyes in an attempt to wash away the image of a white sphere that was burned into my retinas, I felt the whole pelican shake. I saw a white line cross the sky at a surreal pace, hitting the midsection of the ship. That MAC round was joined by two similar others, actually managing to create a large explosion, the Covenant ship started veering to a side, and that was all I saw before the hangar door of the UNSC _Inconvenience _closed, preventing me from seeing the outcome.


	25. Parenthesis

Chapter XXV: Parenthesis

**December 31, 2539 (UNSC Calendar)/Two years later**

**New Alexandria, Reach, Epsilon Eridani System**

You see, the city of New Alexandria was known primarily for two things, firstly, because it was home to FLEETCOM HQ, and second, because of its kick-ass night life, which included some of the best clubs in this side of the galaxy. Unfortunately, right now, I was having a less than perfect experience.

"Why won't you look at me when I talk to you?"  
>"I am looking at you," I complained.<p>

"But you're not listening," she said exasperated.

That was true; I had been doing my best to ignore my girlfriend of four years. Don't get me wrong, I love her and all that crap, but lately, she's been really getting on my nerves.

"I don't understand what you're trying to tell me!" I told her.

"It's just that I feel like we've been drifting apart lately," she explained.

_Oh boy, not this shit again._

"I feel like we have not been spending enough time together as a couple," she continued, "that we haven't been doing regular couple stuff. It feels like we barely talk to each other."

She had a point there, only one. We didn't do regular couple stuff because we weren't a regular couple. I was an ODST sergeant in command of a Spec. Ops. Team on board of an ONI frigate, which had some pretty secret shit going on. Layla, on the other hand, was now a Junior Lieutenant in charge of a large portion of the ship's electronics on board the same ship. Not only was she my technically my superior (that provided for some very interesting sex), we were both soldiers fighting a war against a collective of alien races hell-bent on exterminating the human race. We were anything but a regular couple, that's why we didn't do regular couple stuff, like going out on dates or anything like that. On her two other comments, we did spend as much time together as humanly possible. Whenever I wasn't groundside doing some special operation for ONI or frozen up in cryo, I did my best to spend time with my girlfriend. A large portion of that time was spent on conversation, so obviously, I did do my best given the current situation.

After explaining this to her, she seemed to calm down a little, despite having been freaking out moments ago, my argument was a good one, and she had to admit that, even to herself.

"Look," I told her, "I love you, and I do my best to please you, I even brought you to this place you wanted to come to."

She nodded. The place in question was a club that a friend of hers had told her about, it was supposed to be one of the best places in the city, so far, I hadn't been able to enjoy it because of the argument, but I was putting up a very convincing response to Layla's initial accusations, which meant that she would soon figure out she was exaggerating, then she would feel slightly guilty of making us go through this, I'd try to tell her it wasn't her fault, she would give me one of her dazzling smiles, and finally we'd go to hour hotel room for some otherworldly make-up sex. I scared myself when I realized I knew the routine.

"You're right, I'm sorry," she said, "the war must really be affecting me."

It was a legitimate excuse; I wasn't the only one who had lost friends in the past five years. Navy personnel had a pretty tough job as well, manning the _Inconvenience_ for ship-to-ship combat was a pretty difficult and risky task.

"No, don't be sorry, I'll try to do better in the future," I told her, and it was true, I would try to do my best to keep Layla happy.

She smiled at me. That smile never failed to remind me why I fell in love with that woman. This time it also made me suspect that she also knew this routine, because it always went exactly the same and ended with her saying "I love make-up sex." It wasn't really something that I worried about, after all I loved make-up sex too.

A couple of hours later, close to dawn the countdown to year 2540 started. We were in synch with Earth's time, because that's the place where our calendar was based, no sense in making a different calendar for each colonized planet or moon.

We were two minutes away from a new decade when some drunk-ass guy had to come and ruin the fun. He started bugging Layla about being with me and not him and whatnot, standard douchebag behavior. Guys like that are the reason why all the other branches hated the Marines.

"Want me to punch him?" I asked.

"No, he'll go away."

When he didn't go away after ten seconds I asked again. "You sure, this might be your last chance."

"Don't seek confrontation," she told me, "just let him get bored."

"C'mon girl, why don't you open those legs a little," said the marine.

I didn't even ask Layla this time. I went right for the nose.

"Big mistake asshole!" I said as my fist broke the guy's nose. The rude marine was pushed two steps back, he was forced to use the bar counter as support, otherwise he would've fallen down. I could almost see Layla rolling her eyes behind me.

The marine got right back up and punched me right in the jaw. This time it was me who needed to use a table as support. The guy had a hell of a punch, I'll give him that. With my face to the table I was eye-to-eye with Layla.

"Good luck hon," she said as she stood up, walking a prudent distance away from the fight.

I turned to look at the marine, in this position I could've broken his knees with a well-placed kick, but I wanted to beat the guy up, not kill him. I turned, ducked under a right hook and responded with an uppercut, punching the guy backwards. He came back at me with a jab, I dodged it with relative ease, but fell right in his trap. His other hand hit me in the ribs. I stepped back before punching the guy on his left side with a left hook. That drove the air out of him and would've ended the fight. Just as I was about to do just that with another uppercut, just for showoff, I was twisted around and punched right in the jaw by another marine.

"Fuck," I mumbled as I was forced to hold on to a spectator for support. I threw a kick at this guy's stomach, he _had_ sucker-punched me after all. The guy bent over and received another kick to the face.

The first marine was feeling somewhat better, because he punched me right above the eye, almost knocking me to the floor. I fell on two guys, two guys who happened to be friends of the drunkard that I was facing against.

"You show him Captain!" they called as they secured my arms.

_Fuck damn it! In a fight with a superior officer._

I doubled over with a punch to the stomach. The marine captain smiled a little through his broken, bleeding nose and punched me again, this time in the chin.

"You'd better stop soon," I wheezed, "I'm warning you."

The three marines laughed and their captain punched me once more in the stomach, if he kept going like that, I'd have a hard time breathing in the next hour. I decided that I had had enough of this 'honorable bar-fight' and kicked the captain in front of me three times in quick succession. On his right thigh, forcing him to bend over sideways a little bit, then in his right ribs, forcing him farther down to that side. The last kick was comparable to what you would do to a rapist, kick him in the balls with all your might, only that this guy wasn't a rapist, so the kick went straight to his head, knocking him out. I twisted my right arm out of the marine's grip (with a little help from a foot-stomp) and elbowed the guy straight in the face, the other marine was too surprised to react, receiving a couple of punches to the forehead before he even released my arm.

I dusted myself off only to find myself facing no less than five angry-looking marines. I was about to start some crazy attack when a couple of bear arms gripped me from behind. A marine charged at me, only for him to be pushed backwards by a two-legged kick. I then bashed my head backwards at the guy holding me, hitting his nose. Just as I was about to receive a deadly looking punch from another marine, a familiar silhouette clotheslined him, knocking him out.

"Pavel! I didn't know you were here!" I said as I elbowed the guy behind me in the ribs.

"I'm always around when your ass needs covering!" he said merrily.

From that point on the fight escalated into a brawl, with me and Pavel facing off against numerous marines, I was lucky that I had the big guy on my side, not only because he provided a serious intimidating factor, but because he could also kick some serious ass. After almost a minute of fighting, I was knocked down to the floor for the first time since the fight started. This time I had a humbler baton to thank for that.

_Thank you Sergeant Gabuka, thank you for using those batons on high intensity!_

I turned to punch out a fat bouncer in the face, after that punch I'd have to either hide and wait out the brawl and the bouncer's anger, or escape the club. I caught sight of two other angry bouncers coming here to break up the fight.

"Time to go!" said Pavel.

"You said it," I replied while pushing away an angry marine.

Pavel made way through the crowd through the sheer use of body mass and some very well-placed shoving.

"Wait, where's Layla?"  
>"She'll have to show herself out."<p>

_Great, she'll be pissed at me for a year._

Pavel was suddenly tackled by two men as large as he was. They punched him a couple of times before zapping him with their batons.

"Go on without me!" he said, making some sort of action film impersonation, even through the pain and electricity flowing through his body.

"Never!" I said, joining Pavel's charade. I was beginning to really get into the brawl. I jumped at one of the man that was restraining Pavel with a bodyslam. I punched the guy on my friend and jumped away, thinking again. I decided that it wasn't smart to stay in the club when I realized Pavel was unconscious and his hands were already restrained behind his back.

_Boy, they sure knocked him down fast._

I made myself through the club and jumped outside, Pavel would have to be bailed out of the police station later, by someone else that wasn't me preferably. I ran away from the club even after I exited.

"Happy New Year!" I could hear even through the walls. It seems like they were intent on having fun in there, even after the small altercation.

"And don't come back!" shouted one of the bouncers. I decided against going back and humbling him and kept walking away from the club after fixing my jacket. Layla was going to be pissed after this, she had been taking about this place forever. I hooded up as it started raining. In a way, it had been worth it, it had been a while since I last had a good-natured fight. Or had some sort of fun. I just hoped that the good times would last.

I gave myself a once over to see how I was doing, I would probably get a black eye, maybe some bruising to my jaw, which I could move freely, so it wasn't dislocated. My knuckles would hurt a lot after this, they were already red and bleeding slightly. I wasn't in terribly bad shape for a guy who had been in a fight against a larger group of marines. My eyebrow was bleeding, my stomach was hurting, I could barely breath, my jaws would start swelling soon, and my nose was bleeding. Not bad at all.

I heard tires screeching, but didn't give the noise a lot of thought, only seconds later I felt a prick on the back of my legs. It felt like a needle. My world started getting blurry and I hit the pavement face-first.


	26. Home Improvement

Chapter XXVI: Home Improvement

**January 1, 2540 (UNSC Calendar)/**

**Undisclosed Location, New Alexandria, Reach, Epsilon Eridani**

"Yeup, he's up Major," a voice said.

The floor was blurry below me, and I could clearly see that I was sitting on a chair. The last thing I remembered had been putting my hood over my head after that barfight.

"Awww crap," I said out loud, suddenly realizing what I had done, now that a little bit of the alcohol in my blood had disappeared I could think more clearly, which was weird, given that I had just been hit with a tranq gun.

"Good to see you up and awake sergeant," said a cheery voice.

"Major Cavallaro?" I said confused. In front of me was the man that had sent me to the worst possible ship in the whole UNSC Navy.

"What am I doing here?" I asked.

"Well, ONI want's to do some business with you," he explained.

I looked around me. I was sitting in a chair and was in a small metallic room without any windows and a single door, there wasn't even a camera around. It looked like a broom closet of sorts.

"Did you really have to tranq me?" I asked while I rubbed my temples.

"No, but it's standard ONI procedure, you know, being secret and all that bullshit," he told me.

"Ok, why am I here?" I asked once more.

"You have met the Spartan-IIIs haven't you?"

"Well, yes." _No point in lying._

"Ok, and what did you notice about them?"  
>"They're kids," I told them, still a little outraged that ONI would use kids as soldiers. "Child soldiers."<p>

"Well, what did you notice other than that?"

"That they were superbly trained."  
>"Anything else."<p>

I searched my memories until I found exactly what I was looking for. "They're faster and stronger than anyone should or could be."

"Exactly, do you know why?"

"Medical enhancements I guess?"

"Bingo, those medical enhancements happen to be very dangerous. Which means that anyone who is going to have those medications given to them is going to need to meet certain genetic requirements."  
>"Ok," I said to show that I was paying attention.<p>

"You, meet some of the genetic requirements, which means that you are perfect for what ONI has in mind for you."

"What?"

The major took a deep breath and went on. "Ok, since you have met the Spartan-IIIs, we do not have to break protocol and inform you on the details of the project, it would be to much paperwork and bureaucratic shit. Since you are attached to an ONI ship, you fall directly under our jurisdiction, which means that we can order you to do this for us, again, it's perfect because we skip a lot of paperwork. Finally, you meet some requirements, but not all, which means that you'd be a perfect test subject for the project that we have in mind."  
>"Which is?" I asked. My head was starting to hurt. I don't know if it was the tranq, the hangover, or the information dump. Maybe all of them.<p>

"Enhancements for humans all around!" he said in a happy tone that creeped me out.

"I still don't see why you had to kidnap me," I said. I wasn't about to let that go. The major only laughed in return and motioned for me to followed him. We left the small room and I found myself facing a long hallway. An armed soldier that had been outside the room positioned himself behind me and stayed in step with me and the major.

"Well, the experiment we have in mind will be similar to the initial augmentations that you had when you joined the ODST forces, only that this time they will be a whole lot stronger," he told me as we crossed the hallway.

"I haven't agreed to this yet," I stated, despite knowing the futility if that.

"Yes you have, we have your signature and everything."

_Go figure._

"Ok, I guess I did agree to this after all. What will the so called experiment consist of?" I asked. Might as well know what shit I got myself into.

"We'll give you a cocktail of drugs consisting of muscle and bone strengtheners, something to increase the speed reaction time of your nervous system, and some other medicine to help your brain adapt to all those changes in your body," he told me. We had reached another room.

"So basically I'm going to move faster?" I asked.

"And be stronger."  
>"So, I'll be able to go mano a mano against a Spartan?" I asked. That would be exciting.<p>

"Not a Spartan-II, but you might prove a real challenge for the threes," the Major told me. "Might," he emphasized.

"That's good, I guess. What happens if this works like it's supposed to?"  
>"When," he said, not if, "this succeeds, you'll submit yourself to blood tests and other tests, which will be done by Commander Albaf, your ONI liaison. The results of those tests will be sent here so that drugs that can successfully bond with most of the human population can be created," he explained.<p>

_Superhumans all around? That could end the war with a victory on our side. Or a stalemate to the very least._

"Ok, that sounds like a reasonable goal," I said. "Better than kidnapping children at the very least," I muttered.

"Ahhh, yes, that was Section-III, not us, so you really should thank me for doing my best to avoid similar incident in the future," the major stated.

By that time I was already mostly naked and wearing only my underwear, which consisted of a couple of white boxer briefs with smiley faces all around. A doctor guided me to a machine where I was supposed to lay down. Once I had done just that I was tied to that same machines with leather straps on my arms, and legs. My head was secured by a couple of robotic arms.

"Is it gonna hurt?" I asked the doctor.

"Like you have no idea."

_Fucking great._

I was injected anesthetics so that I wouldn't have to go through all the pain, but when a doctor tells you that something will actually hurt, it means it's going to hurt. Bad. Three robotic arms descended from the ceiling, one of them would be injecting every single one of my bones with a fluid that would bond with them and make them stronger, my muscles would receive some sort of medicine that would make them denser to support my heavier bones, and my spinal chord would receive some injections to make my nerves able to conduct electric impulses better. Finally, my brain would be lobotomized, yes lobotomized so that it would be able to keep up with the rest of my body.

I felt a sharp pinch on both my arms and then my mind started to blur, I thought about my friends, my luck, and my life before I fell asleep.

Then I felt the pain.

* * *

><p>I woke up to a bright light shining on my face. I felt like crap. To be honest I felt like I had been skinned alive, had had my body dumped in a lemonade pool and then salt dumped on it, after that my skin had been stitched back on with large needles and no anesthetic to speak of. That's how I felt. Oh, and every single bone felt like it had been broken a couple of times on different points. My head hurt like hell too.<p>

"Easy now," the doctor's voice told me. "You've been in a medically induced coma for the last three days."

"Three days?" I said as I woke up for real. "Three full days? Where's my ship, I was supposed to board yesterday!"

"Calm down, calm down, the _Inconvenience_ is still in orbit waiting for your return. They were given four more days of leave so that we could work on you," the major said.

My head was beginning to hurt even more, my eyes seemed to move to fast for me to process what was happening around me, and then they'd start moving to slow for my brain, resulting in a giant headache from hell. My arms and legs were being unstrapped, and I could make out little gauze patches covering most of my body. I even felt a bandage on my head. I felt another sting in my arm and the pain started receding a little bit.

"It'll be a while before the pain washes away completely," the doctor explained, "but when it does you'll be able to do all the things you could do before, only better."

"Sounds good," I said as I tried to keep my balance.

"Walk around a little bit, will you?"

I did as I was told, taking small careful steps, at times it seemed that either my feet or my brain didn't react fast enough causing me to stumble, I even fell down a couple of times. I kept walking in circles around the room for half an hour until my brain seemed to synch with my body. It took me half an hour to learn to walk again. I don't now if that is an accomplishment or just really pathetic.

I was treated like a test dummy for a couple more hours before I was finally able to rest. I didn't actually feel stronger, but I felt a whole lot faster (when I didn't feel like my body wouldn't move). I lifted a couple of tables to see how much stronger I had become, and found out, to my pleasant surprise, that I had become significantly stronger, although not really into Spartan levels. My body hadn't changed all that much in appearance, but according to the doctors I was now a couple of inches taller and slightly heavier, courtesy of denser muscles and bones.

"Well, we're done here," the major told me as I put on my clothes. "I don't think that we have to remind you not to tell anyone else about this."

"Of course," I answered, "how will I deflect questions about me being taller?" I asked.

"Commander Albaf will take care of that, you should be able to find a way to answer those questions without compromise."

"Sure, and when people notice I can run at 40 miles per hour?" I asked once more, "Oh, and don't forget me being able to bench press a mongoose?"

"As I said, Commander Albaf will handle any and all curious soldiers, but try not to actually bench press a mongoose in public, also, do not run that fast, we cannot deflect every single doubt and question asked on board your ship."  
>"Makes sense," I said as I did a couple of power jumps, trying to get used to my new and improved body.<p>

"Oh, and one more thing," I asked, "why me?"

"I already told you that," Major Cavallaro said.

"Well yes, but seriously, what made you think that I was the best option for this?"

"You're a good soldier, you're on board a ship that is under our direct control, you meet the requirements, and you've proven very lucky in the past four years that you have been on the ship."

"That's it seriously?"

"It was also cheaper," the major stated.

"Ok, I guess I really shouldn't question you guys making me better."

"No you shouldn't." Having said that Major Cavallaro turned and left.

I sighed, did a couple more power jumps and tied my shoelaces, which was quite an odyssey, since my fingers didn't quite move when I wanted or expected them to. I would have to either learn to do a whole lot of stuff again or simply have to get used to my new body. I guess I'd just have to wait a couple of days to see what would happen.

* * *

><p><em>Hey, I know this is drifting a little bit away from the story's origins, if I can even claim to have that, but I really wanted to make Frankie somewhat special. Don't worry, I haven't made him as strong or fast as ANY Spartan, but I have made him better. Again, thanks to anyone who's reading this and has stuck with me for twenty-six chapters. <em>

_-casquis_


	27. Testing Oneself, Literally

Chapter XXVII: Testing Oneself, literally

**January 6, 2540 (UNSC Calendar)/**

**UNSC **_**Inconvenience, **_**in orbit above Reach, Epsilon Eridani System**

Of course, the first thing that I received when I got back to the _Inconvenience_ was not a concerned 'Where were you?' it was a slap to the face, followed by an angry 'Where the hell have you been?' courtesy of my lovely girlfriend: Lieutenant Junior Grade Layla Wickett.

"Ow!"

"I said: where the hell have you been?" she was yelling now.

"It's good to see you too Lieutenant," I said while I rubbed my cheek.

"Don't you 'lieutenant' me! Tell me where the hell have you been!" she yelled. "I've been worried sick about you…"

_Isn't that just sweet._

"You have a nice way of showing it…" I said while rubbing my cheek.

"Can you tell me where have you been?" she asked, calming down a little.

"I'm sorry, no."

"Ok, I see how it is," she said, turning around and leaving.

I felt a hand slap my back. "Damn buddy, that right there means you won't get laid for a long while."

As always, my best friend Pavel Klaus popped out of nowhere to make me feel like an absolute piece of shit and embarrass me.

"Why are you even here?" I asked him, more than slightly annoyed.

"Well, you _have_ been missing for four days, believe it or not, I was concerned about you."

_Isn't that just sweet. Er. Sweeter_

"So, where were you after the bar fight?" he asked me.

"If someone else asks, you tell them that I was in jail for punching an officer ok?"

After a long sigh he answered. "Ok, I understand."

"Sergeant Francisco Castillo, report to the bridge," a mechanical-sounding voice said. Our new ship AI was called Eliza. It seemed like all shipboard AIs were based after female brains. Oh, and they all had stripper names.

"See you later pal," Pavel said as I walked away.

I had to be really careful where I stepped, I was still getting used to this whole new 'super-fast reflexes' thing. It seemed like it would be a while before I completely mastered it, at least that's what I had been told. I walked to the bridge with one hand leaning against a wall so that everything seemed easier in my brain.

"Ahh, sergeant, it's good to have you with us."

"I'm glad to be back Captain," I said, that statement was as close to truth as I had ever been to in my entire life.

"Now, I take it you had a little run in with ONI?"

"I am not allowed to say, sir." I might as well have been screaming 'YES!'

"Ok, interesting, whatever happened, just keep it to yourself, trust me I would know."

"Thanks sir," I said. "Where's the Colonel?" I asked.

"Well, since he is technically speaking 145 years old, he took advantage of our extra days of leave to get a replacement heart. That man has lived through a lot of stuff, although most of the time it has been inside a cylindrical cryo-tube."

"That is not the answer I expected Captain, at all."

He laughed a little before patting me in the back. "Commander Albaf wants to talk to you, I advise you be careful, she's not in a good mood."

"Thank you, sir."

I left the bridge and headed towards Albaf's office, which was incidentally, across the ship.

"So, why were you missing for four days?" Eliza's voice asked me.

"I think you know Eliza," I told her, I felt weird talking to air.

"Of course I know, I just want to hear you say it."  
>"Never," I replied playfully. Eliza was one of those AIs that could've been human had she not been a construct. She knew some kick ass jokes and actually took time to learn our names and communicate with us. Unfortunately her sense of humor mostly consisted of embarrassing half the people on the ship, or scaring them to death. She had even once given me a copy of <em>I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream.<em> Do you know how creepy it is to read a book about an AI dominating the world when it was given to you by an AI.

"Aww, please?" she asked, her phrase sounding weird when mixed with her mechanical voice.

"No, I still haven't forgiven you for giving me that book, or for that toilet incident a year ago."

"You know that was a prank," she said.

"You do that again and I'll wipe your memory core," I warned.

"Fine, fine, relax," she said and stopped talking.

I had reached the office of Commander Raquel Albaf, ONI liaison to the UNSC _Inconvenience_ and professional bitch.

"You're late," she said.

"Yes," I replied. "Why did you want to see me?"

"I am supposed to help you prevent from spilling any information that Alpha-II section might've given you," she stated, as if it was my fault. "I want to make very clear that I could make your life very hard if you were to feel uncooperative on this regard."

She went straight to the threatening. She was a professional bitch, really, she had once sent a squad on a suicide mission because one of its members had accidentally bumped her shoulder. Or so the legend went. Commander Albaf was from some of those nations in Earth that were constantly fighting with one another before the foundation of the UNSC. I can't remember if she was Israeli, or Syrian, or maybe even Iranian. Looking at her you realized she could've been pretty, but the lack of any importance that she gave to her own image wasn't helping her appearance. The fact that no one liked her meant that nobody thought of her as attractive. Unless, of course, you're into that kind of thing.

"Of course ma'am," I replied. "I would not dream of revealing ONI secrets."

"Well, you'd better not, or it might not end well for you."  
><em>Why is she threatening me, I'm supposed to be important or some shit.<em>

"Ma'am, do you know what went down there?" I asked, curious as to the reason she seemed to dislike me.

I watched as the expression in her face went from surprise to anger, then back to surprise, then some confusion, anger again, and finally reluctance.

"No, all I was given was instructions and a cover story."

"Ok I see."

"You see what?"

_I see that you're pissed at me because I know something you don't you whiny little bitch!_

"Nothing ma'am," I told her, going against my heart's wishes.

"Dismissed."

"That's is all?"  
>"I said dismissed didn't I?"<br>I failed to answer and simply turned around and left. She only wanted to talk to me to prove a point and make herself feel better about her status or something like that. What a meanie.

I left the office of Commander Albaf and went to my room, Pavel wasn't there so I decided to head down to the firing range. I grabbed my rifle and my pistol and headed downstairs. The firing range was one of the non-esential parts of the ship, so it was on the bottom deck. It was basically the same as the one in the _Count Me In_, but slightly thinner, only allowing for about fifty people to be shooting at the same time. Right now it was empty, most marines were probably enjoying the last day of leave that they would have for a very long time. I grabbed a box of BR ammunition and another case for my pistol. I took my time loading the magazines, but for some reason I finished faster than usual. At times my body felt like it was moving way to slow, but in reality it was my brain moving to fast, sometimes it didn't move fast enough for my body, but still faster than regular.

Once my weapon magazines were loaded I pushed them into their respective weapons. First I decided to fire mi pistol. I raised it so that I could use its iron sights. I placed them between the eyes of my target, which happened to be none other than a snarling brute. The first shot went right where I had meant for it to go. The following shots went through the same whole. After firing my first twelve rounds I was surprised to find out that they had all connected in the space between the brute's eyes. Don't get me wrong, I was an exceptional marksman before my augmentations, but I had never managed to put all 12 rounds of a pistol in a space that could've been covered by a half-cred coin. I reloaded my pistol and placed a new target on the range, this one was a jackal sniper. I told myself that I would put every single round in its right eye. To make it more challenging I decided to place my pistol at my side before every shot. I raised it quickly and did a quick firing. Every single shot landed in the right side of the jackal's head, none had strayed more than half an inch from its eye.

"This is awesome," I told myself.

Then I decided to place targets on all fifty firing positions and shoot them al while strafing to the side. I grabbed my rifle and loaded a magazine. I placed other in my back pocket and started. Time seemed to slow down, my first round hit an angry elite right in its forehead, a second joined soon after. The second target was a jackal that met its fate with a shot to the torso through the hole in its shield and then a quick double tap to its head. I moved on to a couple of grunts, both of which I got with a single shot to the head. I was moving sideways at a continuous rate, my hands and arms seemed to do exactly what my mind told them to do. A couple of brutes were wasted with double taps to the chest and I moved on to a downsized paper target representing a hunter, this one I took out with the four rounds I had left in my magazine hitting its orange neck. I clicked the release button while still moving and loaded the next mag before the empty one had even hit the floor. I released the loading handle and ended the two-dimensional lives of the rest of my targets in less than twenty seconds. I kept my scope sighted on one unfortunate elite as the last bullet casings clattered on the floor. That noise seemed to bring time back to regular speed, shaking me out from my focused state.

"Well that was rather impressive," Eliza said.

"I see everything, whether you want it or not, even your escapades with Lieutenant Junior grade Wickett, which I must remind you, are illegal in the UNSC," she said.

"Oh, shut up, if you weren't an AI I'd call you a pervert."  
>"You still might, it gives my emotional cortex a jump whenever I see you two guys."<p>

I stared dumbly at the ceiling before she spoke again.

"I was kidding, I have no emotional cortex."

"You were starting to scare me Eliza," I said as I confirmed that my weapons were empty and safe to return to my room. "You spend way to much time thinking how to scare the shit out of us."

"Well, for an AI that can perform a quadrillion calculations per minute, I am bound to have some free time, and since the understanding of human emotion is what manages to keep me occupied the most, it is what I dedicate myself to. It's only logical."

"You," I said, "are annoying."

I could almost see the AI shrug, but there weren't any holographic projectors down here. I looked back at the path I had taken while practicing on the targets. I had strafed sideways while firing at my targets. The floor was filled with smoking casings, I kicked those to a large hole that took them to the ship's smelter, that way we'd never run out of ammunition.

Now that I was done with firing practice, I had to test myself at the gym. The gym was empty except for a lone soldier in a treadmill. I started out by doing some weight lifting and surprised myself when I saw that I was able to lift around fifty pounds with each arm without really breaking a sweat. I tested myself even more when I started lifting more and more, finally I bench pressed close to 400 pounds and I ended up feeling like I could've easily done more.

"Woah," I congratulated myself after lifting the weights for the tenth time.

Next I moved on to the treadmills, the marine had left a few minutes ago, so now the gym was completely empty for me to show off without anyone peeking. I started jogging, after all, I didn't want my brain to fail again and fall face first to the floor. I started running faster and faster until the treadmill simply wouldn't move any faster. I was doing 34 miles per hour.

I finally hopped off the treadmill before it exploded.

"You shouldn't strain yourself that much," Eliza helpfully said.

"I'm trying to get used to my new body Eliza," I told her.

"You're going to pull something."  
>"Maybe," I said as I moved on to a punching bag. I started out by throwing simple jabs and crosses. Then I moved on to more complicated combinations. Finally I started using elbows and knees. The punching bag was moving a whole lot more than usual, but not only that, I was also noticeably less tired than before. I kicked the bag of sand with both legs, my shins striking at the side of the punching bag with a lot more force than usual. It felt good. I felt good.<p>

"You should really stop now," Eliza warned me.

This time I listened. I dried off the sweat from my face and left the gym. "I bet you think I'm pretty awesome right now," I told the construct.

"Yes, yes you are," she said in a patronizing voice.

"What else should I try out?" I asked the artificial intelligence. This time she decided to show up on the gym holopad. Elisha chose to present herself as a woman (obviously) with short hair and Nordic features. She was dressed in some sort of lab coat. Like all AIs, she presented herself in a bluish tone, few holopads were full-color, with most of them showing only, blues, greens, and reds. The blue for terrain, green for friendlies, and red for hostiles. It worked quite well, no one needed to know what color the dirt was when heading off to fight covvies.

"All boys seem to think about are guns and being stronger than the next guy," she stated. I was forced to admit that she had a point.

"What do you propose?" I asked.

Eliza's projection disappeared from the holopad and a Rubik's cube popped up.

"Seriously?" I asked. "There are only three colors there!" I complained.

"That might be so, but this isn't intended for you to solve, there are a couple of them in the rec room."  
>The rec room was a room with a large TV where we were sometimes played the latest Academy Award winning film. We were also played other generic action films, but no one watched those. It also had a couple of tables that doubled as chessboards. There were some drawers with chess pieces and the like, one of those drawers contained a couple of Rubik's cubes. I grabbed one and threw it in the air a couple of times. I had never been able to solve more than one face before. I usually gave up after doing that.<p>

"Well, what are you waiting for?" Eliza asked, "Start!"

I sat down on one of the tables and looked at the cube. I started by solving the white face, same as I usually did, then I moved on to the sides, but it I couldn't get them without undoing the white face, then I realized that I wasn't supposed to do it like that, I had to work myself down from the white face. So I started assembling it in a trial and error fashion, I learned which combination of movements would change only one piece without moving the rest. Everything seemed to present itself to me. It was so much easier than before. In no time I was done.

"Impressive," admitted Eliza.

"Damn right it is," I said.

"Just shy of fifteen minutes, not bad for it being your first time with one of those."

I was starting to like this AI, she didn't even bother reminding me that she could've solved it in a fraction of a second, only dedicating a piece of her capacity to do that.

"Well, now that you've boosted the size of your ego considerably, I feel compelled to recommend you take a shower, as most of the crew is already on board and we'll be departing in no time, which means you'll be put into cryo, and I believe you know what happened when you enter cryo sweaty and feeling dirty," Eliza said.

"Yes, yes, thanks very much," I told her as I went do to just that. Halfway through to the showers my right foot seemed to move to slow while my left one kept on going. My hands weren't able to keep pace with my brain and I fell, smacking my nose onto the cold metal floor.


	28. Different Problems

Chapter XXVIII: Different Problems

**March 8, 2540 (UNSC Calendar)/two months later**

**In orbit above Valhalla, Delta Tyranus System**

"Can you believe she's still mad at me?" I said, exasperated. "It's already been two months! Two fucking months!"

"No, it has been a week and a half, the rest of that time has been spent in cryo, so you shouldn't be surprised about all the time it's taking her to forgive you."

"Yeah right, how would you know anything about that?" I said, skeptical.

"Well, because I'm a girl, obviously," Marina said while sliding out of the bottom of _Mary's Little Lamb. _She was dressed in cargo pants that were obviously too big for her and a gray tank top that was too tight and too short. She was holding a blowtorch in one hand and a wrench in the other, I have no idea what mechanical problem would require the use of both at the same time.

"Sometimes I forget that," I told her.

"Really?" she said, looking like she was pissed off at the comment.

"Sorry, you're not like other girls," I told her. _At least not like Layla._ "Take it as a compliment."

"Sure," she said, elongating the word. "Whatever you say Franks."  
>She bent over to pick up some tool from the floor, I enjoyed the view for a couple of instants before she popped back up. "Enjoy the view?" she asked me.<p>

"I have no idea what you're talking about."

"Yeah right," she said with a smile. I'm pretty sure she liked when other guys looked at her. I had repeatedly told her that she should really wear a little more stuff when around the ship, unless she wanted the whole male soldiers and sailors drooling after her. She had just smiled and patted me in the shoulder, making me feel like a total idiot.

"Just let her cool off, I am sure that after the next time you return from deployment you'll get that make-up sex you want," she said from under the pelican.

"Sure, I'll do that," I said, "not like I have much of a choice."

"Now, if you don't mind, you're blocking my light," she said.

I turned around and left, pondering on what she had said. I didn't have much experience with relationships, mostly because any contact I had had with a girl in the past had been with alcohol as an intermediary. It was sort of difficult to deal with my girlfriend, I mostly made up everything as I went along. Marina sometimes helped, but most of the time she just sat back and laughed at me. Pavel was not big on relationships either, after all, he had been raised in foster care with a 'psychotic police officer' his words, not mine. He joined the UNSC as soon as he turned seventeen and left behind his home. His knowledge of relationships consisted of the brothels in various planets, and of course, Vicky, who had been one inch away from becoming a prostitute herself.

I made my way through the ship, not really going anywhere in particular, I ended up in the armory, mostly because I went there every chance I got to see if there was any new equipment. Lately we had received less and less special parts, mostly because ONI had decided that the program was to expensive, most people died before they could even answer the questions regarding the performance of the armor they used. The ship was now as similar as it could get to any other UNSC ship. We still had dogs on board, not two, four now, the two original ones had decided to have puppies. Those puppies were all grown up now. A grown Martian Mastiff is really something to look at, I swear, that dog could've taken on a rhino. Of course, this four dogs were as dumb as rocks, and they couldn't hurt a fly. What I meant when I said that they could take a rhino was that they are large and fat. That's what they were bred for, I have no idea who would want to create that kind of dog breed.

"Whatda ya got armorer?" I asked the man, he was one of the few soldiers that had remained a constant presence on the ship. Most others were either dead or WIA. Navy types usually lasted a lot longer, but for some reason ONI kept shifting the NCO's.

"Well, I've got some mean new weaponry," he said as he stood up. I had never really bothered to learn his name, but I am pretty damn sure that the man didn't know mine either. "Follow me," he said. He walked me across the room and pulled out a large drawer from the wall, inside of it were four of the most exotic-looking weapons that I had ever seen. There was one Spartan Laser, I had seen those before, they were great, but not my kind of weapon. I moved on to the next one, it was a pistol, an oversized pistol. It was one of those revolver type guns from half a millennium ago. No one used those anymore.

"This baby right here was designed by one of the most renowned gunsmiths in Luna, it can fire six rounds in quick succession before you need to reload. Although it isn't what you'd call a good weapon for battle, I think the intimidating look is worth it," the armorer said as he spun the revolving part of the large pistol. His salesman abilities had gotten better over the past years.

"Nah, not wasting money on something I won't use," I told him.

"Fair enough, moving on."

The next weapon was an SMG, at least that's what it looked like to me. It had a pistol-esque look to it, with the handle being in the center of the gun. The pistol looked like someone had grabbed to rectangles and placed them together at right angles. It had a small barrel poking out of one end, and a collapsible stock on the other, it sported laser sights, a small lantern, and a red dot sight. The magazine went inside the handle, much like a pistol, only that this magazine in particular extended five inches further from the bottom.

"Here lies the venerable Uzi machine-pistol. The design comes from the nation of Israel back on Earth, it has proved to be reliable and the weapon has been on the assembly line for the better half of 600 years."

"Not my type of weapon," I said.

"You're a tough one, you barely buy stuff anymore," he said.

"Not with those prices I don't. How much money do you decide to keep for yourself?" I asked.

"I wouldn't dream of scamming my fellow marines!" he said, sounding hurt.

"Yeah right," I said as I examined the last gun. _ONI actually charges us for the guns they give us. Bastards._

The gun in question was really something to look at. The stock was almost exactly the same as the one on an M7 SMG, although that's where the similarities stopped. Its grip was similar to that of an M90 shotgun, although it was a different design, the main body of the gun was simply a rectangular piece of steel. What surprised me the most though, was the fact that the weapon itself didn't sport a bullpup configuration, the only guns that size that didn't sport a magazine port in the rear were the M7 SMGs. It's ammo port was similar to that of a pistol, only that longer and wider. The magazine that it had right now was a drum-type magazine. The barrel was hidden by rails that functioned as coolers and a nice grip. It was ugly as hell.

"What is it?" I asked.

"That, my friend, is none other than an automatic shotgun, the ACS-37."

"What's so special about it?" I asked.

"It is," he said and paused for effect, "an automatic shotgun."  
>"Woah."<br>"Woah indeed," he said. "This beauty right here fires in semi-auto or full-auto, it uses the same rounds as the M90 shotgun, which does facilitate ammo sharing. Its spread is less than that of the M90, which maximizes damage. Theoretically it can take out an elite minor with a single well-positioned shot to the chest."  
>I admit it, it sounded interesting, but I am not a close-quarters kind of guy, shotguns were not my weapon. Sure, I had gotten some nice kills with an M90 or an M45, but only when I didn't have any other weaponry. However, I think that I could give a good use to this weapon. Pavel's birthday was coming up, and he <em>had <em>saved me a couple of times in the past. Besides, if I got him this, he would be forced to give me something similar in my next birthday. Pavel sure did love shotguns.

"I'll take it," I said.

"Great! That'll be 800 creds."

I said nothing.

"Fine, 700."  
>I shook the man's hand and bought the gun.<p>

"Aw man, you really shouldn't have."

"Don't worry about it man," I said. "Happy early birthday."

And then, Pavel did the most unusual thing. He hugged me. He actually hugged me and lifted me up.

"It's ok big guy," I said.

"This is great!" he said before he picked up his new weapon and left for the firing range. He looked like an eight-year-old on Christmas morning. I hadn't seen the man that giddy in years. He would be thanking me for the next couple of years, but I hoped that that would get me a nice gift in return.

Since I had nothing else to do I went back to the hangar bay, see if Marina was around, maybe challenge her to a game of battleship or something, Layla was working and not talking to me, and my only male friend was pissing himself with excitement at the chance to try out his new gun.

Sure enough, Marina was still there, she had just finished fixing her pelican, or doing whatever the hell she was doing. She was the only pilot in the whole ship that didn't allow the mechanics near her craft, most of the other flyboys simply landed their ship and let the grease monkeys do their job, not her, she was a hands-on kind of person.

"Why do you always carry that knife?" she asked before I even had the chance to speak.

"A friend once gave this to me," I said, while remembering the kitchen of Camp Afghan.

"Oh really, why is it so special?"

"You do realize that you are asking the same question?" I told her.

"You know what I mean," she said, smiling. She also had a kick-ass smile, gotta hand it to her, had I not been going out with Layla, I would probably be chasing after Marina.

"A cook, he was a cook back in Jericho VII, one of my only friends, and a master knifesman."

"Is knifesman even a word?"

"You know what I mean," I said, echoing her previous statement. I drew my knife and gave it a couple of spins in my hand. "This piece of metal right here has saved my life many times."  
>"I personally prefer bigger knifes," she said. After having said that she pulled out a machete from her toolbox.<br>"What do you even need that for?" I asked. "You're a pilot."

"Unwanted suitors," Marina said while smiling.

"Now who would chase after you?" I asked, I know, I'm a big hypocrite.

"You'd be surprised," she said while she edged closer to me, almost uncomfortably close.

"You're taller," she said, her voice dangerously quiet now.

So there I was, standing an inch away from one of my best friends, contemplating the consequences of pulling her face towards mine and kissing her, when a loud noise saved me. It was the emergency alarm. It saved me metaphorically speaking, because no one wanted the ship's alarms to go off.

"Oh crap," Marina said softly, I could tell that she had been debating the same thing as I had.

I remembered the reason we were here, in this system. A Covenant corvette had been spotted and destroyed about a month ago, the UNSC forces that engaged it weren't entirely sure if they had managed to destroy it before it could send a message, so they had called FLEETCOM for reinforcements in case of a possible Covenant incursion on the system. So we had been sent there and had been orbiting the planet of Valhalla for the past six days. I was beginning to think that the corvette had been simply an isolated incident until a few seconds ago.

"Oh crap," she repeated, this time I'm sure her comment was linked to the fact that there were Covenant in the system and not to emotional issues. We both parted ways without even bothering to say goodbye or good luck. She went inside her pelican and I ran to my room, careful not to do it faster than I should have. Funny, even in the face of a highly likely death, I still cared about secrecy that I shouldn't have by any means.

I entered my room and slapped on my boots and thigh protectors. I put my vest as fast as possible before strapping on the chest and abdomen pieces, I finished by putting on my pauldrons and forearm protectors, my knives were already strapped to their respective places, save my very own knife, which I had to switch from my belt to my boot. One I was done doing that I grabbed my rifle and slung it over my back. I ran to the armory. It was the same thing I did every time the alarms rang. It was the same thing everyone did. As soon as I arrived to the large room someone tossed me a bandolier, I quickly pulled the mags from their cases and placed them in their own designated webbing over my abdomen piece. I grabbed one of those drum magazines and slapped it into my BR55, next I made sure to grab four mags for my pistol, those went in special cases in the holster. I finally grabbed four grenades, two of each kind, and left.

I was now walking fast, not running, the urgency from the first alarm rings had gone down, everyone seemed a little bit calmer now. I made my way to the briefing room. Since I was currently the highest-ranking ODST soldier in the ship, I was the one that got the briefings. Right now, it was only Pavel and me. The rest were either too wounded or too dead. Since the ship had been 'regularized' in the past years, the large ODST bay had been made smaller to allow for more space to fit regular soldiers in. I burst into Colonel Zavala's office. He had been looking more his age with every time I saw him. Right now he was pale as a ghost. He also looked hunched over, but his armor took some of the old-man look that he had away. There were a bunch of lieutenants and a major in the room already.

"Ok, all of us are here. As you all know, Covenant troops have entered the system, we find ourselves facing no less than fifteen enemy ships, five CCS battle cruisers and the rest are regular destroyers," the colonel said.

There was a collective sigh of relief in the room, it could've been much, much worse. Since the UNSC had reinforced the colony heavily after the corvette incident, the Navy had forty ships in orbit. It would be a tough fight, but we stood a chance of actually winning.

"The enemy doesn't seem to eager to fight, instead they are spreading out into combat formation, it seems like they won't be going directly for the planet, this time we are stuck on the ship."

There are few things than being unable to do anything to fight the enemy. We would be inside a frigate, hearing the shockwaves of the explosions bouncing off from the hull, sometimes we would feel sharp movements when we maneuvered, but for the most part, we wouldn't be able to do anything at all.

"Now, gather your men and spread them across the ship, right now you are all on anti-boarding duty," the colonel said before sitting down.

It was a short briefing, but it told us all that we needed to know. I made my way to the drop pod bay to see if Pavel was there.

"Yo Pavel!" I called out.

"What?" came the answer, he was sitting down near his pod, carefully checking his new shotgun to make sure everything was fine with it, his M247L was placed aside, it seemed like this time he didn't bring his rucksack with him, instead opting for more conventional box ammunition for his machine-gun.

"We're on piracy watch," I told him.

"You serious?" he asked.

"Yup."

"I hate that, we just stand around like idiots before the covvies do manage to attack whatever planet we're orbiting."

I shrugged. "Cmon, we're positioned in the bridge."

We made our way through the corridors of the _Inconvenience_ and finally ended up on the bridge. Captain Brooks was there, standing in the middle of the room while everyone around him ran back and forth doing God-knows-what. He had a hand on his chair and on the other a glass filled with a brown liquid. Whiskey, no doubt. Layla was there. She saw me and nodded at me, probably meaning that she had decided to forgive me for not telling her what had happened during four days back in Reach. And for ruining her shore leave with a bar fight. Or club fight, whatever. I simply tried to wash away the recent event with Marina from my brain. I was feeling very guilty even though I hadn't really done anything wrong.

_Yeah right. _

I was about to start discussing with myself all over again when the Captain took a seat. Everyone else did the same. I was facing away from the large screen in front of the captain's chair, but I could peek over the walls to take a look. The screen was black, which was to be expected, since the cameras were pointing at space. It wasn't completely black however, I could make out little dots in the large screen. Those little dots were surrounded by red circles, and a larger image was next to those circles. It represented them as cruisers or destroyers.

"Give me battle overviews," the captain ordered.

"Right away, sir," Eliza's mechanical voice said from nowhere. A few seconds later, the screen changed to something more akin to a strategy game. I could see all the UNSC ships spread out in front of the planet. They were colored blue. On the other side of the screen, the Covenant fleet was forming up, looking like some sort of wall.

"How is the evacuation going?" Brooks asked.

"As it is expected to, sir," Eliza answered.

"Well that's just great, tell them to speed it up."

"Aye, aye captain."

"Give me a firing solution on the cruiser closest to us, double MAC shot followed by a volley of Archers and then another double MAC."  
>"Yes sir," an unfamiliar voice answered. I was now simply staring at the metallic wall in front of me. Pavel was doing the same, standing on the opposite side of the door. Since we were the elite troops of the ship, it made sense that we were protecting our most important personnel during the battle.<p>

"Wickett, redirect all non essential power to the MAC cannon as soon as the first two shots are fired. Also, give me the status of the longswords."

"The fighters are already prepared, they can launch any time you say, sir," said the voice of my girlfriend.

"Eliza?"

"Already done captain."

"Good, what's the estimated time until the first shot is fired?" he asked.

"If we fire first sir, it'll be around a minute."  
>"Thanks Eliza," the captain told the AI.<p>

It was one of the longest minutes in my life, normally I didn't really worry myself with the ship-to-ship combat or its details, I was usually too busy fighting planetside, but there was something about being right outside the bridge that made me nervous.

The entire ship shook when the Magnetic Accelerator Cannon fired a depleted uranium slug at slightly less than half the speed of light. I wouldn't have enjoyed being on the receiving end of that hunk of metal. A second afterwards another slug followed the first one. Our MAC cannon was a prototype that allowed our ship to fire two slugs with the energy that would take to fire one in any other ship.

"Both slugs contacted captain," another unknown voice stated. "In addition to our rounds, two others hit the cruiser captain, it seemed it is badly damaged."  
>"Fire from pods A1 to D12, make sure the firing solution is accurate. Also, inform the UNSC <em>Grafton<em> and the UNSC _Kraken_ that we are firing the kill shot, tell them to switch targets."

"Aye captain," answered yet another voice, whose owner promptly transmitted the message to the other two ships.

I managed to make out the hissing noise that the missiles made when they left their pods, but it was nothing compared to the MAC cannon, which by itself managed to rock the 500 meter frigate.

"Is the MAC warmed up?"

"Seventy-eight percent captain," Layla said.

"Enemy fast movers!"

"Shit, activate PDGs, Eliza, you know what to do."  
>"My pleasure," the AI said as she connected with the heavy machine guns that protected the ship from seraphs and boarding craft. The ship's hull vibrated with the thuds that the PDGs made whenever they fired into the enemy fighters. Every single round landed where it was supposed to, and soon, the Seraph's would go away.<p>

"Plasma torpedo inbound!" a voice called out.

"Evasive maneuvers! As soon as it is within range fire a couple of rounds at it Eliza, also, be ready to drop deflectors," Captain Brooks ordered.

Instantly, I felt the ship lurch slightly. Normally no one would feel any movement the ship made in zero-gee, but since we had artificial gravity generators, all sudden movements could be felt around the _Inconvenience_. The ship was apparently spinning or doing some weird shit, because the explosion that I expected to hit the ship never arrived.

"Plasma torpedo is turning around sir," a voice informed.

"Ok, let go of all deflectors as soon as it is within one kilometer of distance, then boost away quickly."

For a couple of instants nothing happened.

"Maneuver was successful captain, the torpedo collided with a deflector."

"Good, now give me a firing solution on that destroyer, it looks a little to cocky from where I'm sitting at."

And so it went, our ship was hit a few times by plasma turrets and bombs from Seraphs, but nothing too serious, we managed to take out a destroyer and several fighters before the battle stopped. The UNSC fleet, originally numbering forty ships was now reduced to thirty-one. The Covenant hadn't fared so well either, with two destroyers and a cruiser destroyed. It was standard UNSC doctrine. Three-to-one ships on all space engagements were what was considered an even fight. We had lost nine, they had lost three. The bad news was that we were short five ships if we wanted to keep up with the Covenant Navy.

"Ok, congrats boys and girls," Brooks said, "the enemy is disengaging, if anyone needs to pee, now's your chance, they'll be back with a vengeance in no time."

Most of the officers in the bridge stood up and left. I have no doubt that not all of them would be going to the bathroom. Some would get some food to chew on for their nerves, others would get some gum, and I'm pretty sure that some of them must've gone to smoke some pot to calm down. Layla also stood up from her station, but she didn't go anywhere, instead she just stopped right in front of me.

"Oh crap," I said to Pavel through my comm, Layla wasn't able to hear that.

"I hear you brother," he returned.

"Eliza, start repairing any damage that we might've suffered, heat up all of our weapons," I could hear the captain saying.

"Yes captain," the AI answered.

"So," this time it was Layla speaking.

"So," I said.

"Take your helmet off, I don't like talking to a reflective visor."

I sighed and lifted my helmet from my head, looking at Layla right in her green-gray eyes.

"Pavel," she said, her voice a little bit to sweet, "take a hike."

"Yes ma'am," my best friend said before he left for a short walk. I don't know if he was allowed to do that, but right now I was feeling pretty uncomfortable.

"So," she repeated.

"What do you want?" I asked.

"For you to apologize," she said.

"Ok, I'm sorry for ruining our date in that club that you really wanted to go to."

"And…"

"What do you mean and? That's it," I said.

"So you're not going to tell me where you were?" she said, looking like she was shocked.

"No, I can't."  
>"Why not?" she asked, she was raising her voice now.<p>

"Because I can't. It's confidential, or something."

"Really?"

"Really."

"You're lying."

"Why would I be lying?"

Now it was her turn to start feeling awkward. She kept getting angry for little things, I hadn't told her that, but she was starting to notice that on her own.

"I don't know ok," she said. "I was just so worried for you and you didn't seem to care."

"You didn't let me care," I complained. "You simply walked away and ignored me."

"I just thought, I feared that you had gone off with someone else," she said.

_Uh oh, taking a hike into paranoid territory, this can't be good, I'd better take her mind of that._

Even as I thought that I cursed myself for being a hypocrite, not half an hour ago I had been that close to kissing another woman. That fucking close.

"You know I'd never do that," I told her. "You're beautiful, nice, great to be around of, and the sex is great," I told her. I added that last one part because I needed to get sex in her mind. I really wanted to get some.

"Seriously? I am right fucking here sergeant!" Captain Brooks' voice called out from the bridge.

"Ahem, yes sir, sorry sir," I said as Layla shot a string of apologies to our captain. Instants later the rest of the bridge crew returned to their posts, Pavel right behind them. He wordlessly took position on the other side of the entrance to the bridge before I put on my helmet.

"So?" the speakers said.

"As soon as this is over, I'm so getting laid," I said, smile hidden by my helmet.

* * *

><p><em>Hello readers, I just wanted to tell you that after this my weak attempts at characterization will be over. I tried to devote a couple of chapters to characterization (obviously), but I promise we'll go back to the blood and gore soon enough. unless, of course, you don't like that... <em>

_Anyways, thanks for reading and sticking with me for 28 chapters now. Hope you've enjoyed them so far._

_-casquis_


	29. Pirates

Chapter XXIX: Pirates!

**March 8, 2540 (UNSC Calendar)/**

**In orbit above Valhalla, Delta Tyranus System**

"Shit just got real buddy," Pavel said.

"You said it," I agreed.

The ship had been rocking constantly for the past thirty minutes, we had been hit with plasma torpedoes twice now and the archer pods on starboard were all empty. That left half our reserves in ventral, dorsal, and port sides. The MAC ammunition had to be running low as well. On top of it all, two of our longswords had been shot down, which could only mean one thing. We were being cleaned up for boarding.

Our ship was a modified ship, which is something I've already said before. Ours was faster, tougher, and deadlier than every single frigate on the UNSC fleet. We had been doing one hell of a job at kicking some serious Covenant ass back there, or at least that's what I imagined, since we had been dispatched to deal with a wave of boarding craft sent to our ship.

As usual, most of the covvie ships latched themselves to the hangar doors. Mostly because they were the thinnest piece of metal on the ship. I'm using the term 'thin' loosely here, since they were a meter thick. Oh, and they were actually made out of Titanium-A plating. That shit was a real bitch to cut, and the covvie boarding parties could do nothing other than cut. Anything resembling an explosion could send their crafts into oblivion. Right now, I could tell that they were about done. The large hangar was empty of humans, however, the smaller, balcony-like floor above it wasn't. Normally, most of the non-essential equipment would've been kept here, or the pelicans would park there whenever the _Inconvenience_ had to drop of supplies in-atmosphere. This time, it was filled to the brim with marines aiming guns at the sparks coming from the hangar walls.

The first piece of metal fell of. It was thicker than it was in diameter. Must've been a bitch to cut through. At first, there was no movement, then a couple of squads poured out, they were mostly elites. It made sense, sending in the big guys first and then reinforcements. The elites were killed in about half a second. A couple hundred marines firing at the same time tends to have the same effect, but it wouldn't remain like that forever. A few of the boarding craft were bound to contain hunters, or even more talented elites. Who knows, the moment of quiet after the piece of metal dropped from the wall and before we started firing could've serves as cover for a couple of cloaked elites to jump off. Unpleasant feeling.

It seemed like it was choreographed. All twenty metallic circles fell to the hangar floor in unison, with hunters, elites, jackals, and grunts pouring out of the boarding craft. This meant that those craft that were already latched to our ship could serve as access for the next wave of Covenant troops. I would've dwelled on the situation for a little longer had it not been for the large amounts of targets in the place. The hunters were the first to go. Rockets took care of that. The behemoths didn't manage to let of a single shot, but that would change soon. Elites started firing at us, and I could tell that most of those elites were rangers. The ones with jetpacks. Believe me when I say that shooting a flying target is a lot harder than shooting something on the ground.

"Swarm!" someone yelled.

And it was a hell of a swarm. The drones must've been really cramped in that shuttle if they could burst out in such large numbers. Those weren't particularly dangerous, but they had this thing that made you loose your cool, and when they worked jointly with ground forces, they served their job just fine. They distracted us from the deadlier forces on the hangar floor. I was forced to take cover behind a scorpion, one of the five that our ship had on board. Some gal was smart enough to hop in on the turret of the tank and maul away at the bugs. Soon, the floor was covered with carcasses the size of humans. Some were still twitching a leg or an arm.

But the drones had served their purpose, a group of elites had made their way up to the second level, they had climbed through the stairs and killed most defenders. It wasn't like it was unexpected, whenever enemy soldiers decided to board a ship, they almost usually made their way through the first line of defense. We started falling back to the blast doors that cordoned off the hangar from the rest of the ship. We slowly walked backwards while taking out any alien that decided to be a hero and come to close to us. I myself focused on the jackals that hung out further back. I tagged half a dozen of them before the blast doors slammed closed right in front of me.

"Vent the hangar!" someone ordered.

It was standard operating procedure, really. All vehicles are usually secured to the floor of the ship, so no danger there, the only downside to this plan was that the bodies of any killed marines would be lost to space, never able to receive a proper burial.

"Done," someone said.

I could almost picture the Covenant soldiers flying out through the hangar doors, slamming into each other and trying to hold on to something for dear life. Some of them would make it, only to suffocate in the cold vacuum of space.

"Ok marines, go back to your regular positions, we'll live the gauss here in case any alien bastard decides to come through this doors."

"Oorah!" came the unanimous response.

Pavel and me made our way back to the bridge, setting up there. There were two ways this could go. Either the Covenant decided not to send anyone else to attempt to board, or they send an army with the purpose of overwhelming our defenses. Then again, we could also be blown up altogether, but I wasn't willing to remember that.

I stood there, listening to the captain's orders for what seemed like hours. It was only after half our fleet was taken out that things got worse. The covvies had decided to throw all they had at us. We really must've made an impression, because the screen in front of the captain's chair showed no less than seventy boarding shuttles making their way towards us. Our lone longsword would do its best to take out as many as possible, but it couldn't do a lot, same goes for the point-defense guns. Maybe fifty ships would be able to latch to ours, but that was still a helluva bunch of covvies in our ship.

"…and Sergeant Castillo," called the captain.

"Yes sir?" I asked.

"Please do stay here, I have a feeling we might need you and your friend very soon."

"Yes sir."

"Why the hell doesn't he know my name?" Pavel asked me, hurt.

"Shut up."

Shit was about to get real. Or realer.

I heard numerous impacts on our ship a few moments later. The boarding craft had made contact. It was relatively quiet for a while afterwards, although I knew that the marines were fighting off the Covenant boarders, painting the corridors with their blood. I knew that we weren't doing so well when small groups of soldiers started coming towards the bridge. I ordered them to cordon off the area around the most vital part of the ship. They set up barricades but were careful to leave small spaces for the rest of the marines on the ship. This was our fallback point, when all else failed we made our last stand here. At least that's the theory, this ship had never faced so much danger of being overwhelmed.

"Venting lower decks," Eliza's voice stated. No doubt that all defenders there were either dead or had retreated.

At least a few of them must've made it out, because some of them arrived here to the bridge. Our perimeter was made wider, with everything we could move being put to use as barricades. If we failed, the captain would lock the blast doors of the bridge and vent the entire ship, killing every single thing that remained on board.

_Hope we don't get to that._

Finally, after half an hour of fighting tooth and nail for the ship, about a hundred soldiers were here, ready to defend the last part of the ship with their lives. Eliza vented every single area that didn't connect with us a couple of times, no doubt killing a lot of enemy soldiers. The non-essential ship personnel such as pilots and other sailors had long since left the ship. They had evacuated in the bumblebees right after the first part of the engagement ended. They were supposed to land in an evacuation port in some city, they would wait out for as long as possible before leaving, after all, they didn't want to become refugees and then be sent back to their ship after public humiliation for abandoning a ship that ended up winning an engagement. I hoped Marina was fine.

Finally they came. They came in hordes. The first wave of enemy soldiers were quickly shredded by a wall of ammunition fired from behind the cover of barricades. I hadn't bothered to do anything yet, I would start firing as soon as the Covenant got some sort of front to face us. I'd take out any unshielded elite or sharpshooter jackal that decided to leave cover. For now, I just let the other marines do the job. The ones with shotguns were actually pretty useful, they fired at the walls or floor at a 45-degree angle, and the pellets would bounce away in all directions. Pavel thanked me more than a couple of times for his shotgun, he took out a bunch of aliens with it.

I fired the first shot if the engagement since the hangar at an ultra with its shields down. My first shot hit it right in the eye, the exact place where I had been aiming at. Enhancements did have their advantages. From that point on I was a killing machine, taking out elites left and right. Actually it was more like the front, since we were in a long corridor.

Despite our efforts, we were slowly but surely being pushed back. Every now and then a marine would be hit, then another one, and finally we wouldn't have enough firepower to hold the position, so we'd move to the next one. We could simply hope that they ran out of soldiers.

I was piling up a bunch of enemy corpses so that they wouldn't be able to cross a certain corridor when we were all ordered to fall back to the immediate area surrounding the bridge. That meant that they must've broken our line someplace else. I primed a couple of landmines that someone tossed me and left at a full sprint. No way an alien bastard was going to hurt my girlfriend. I'd kill them all before that happened.

"Pavel, what's happening?" I asked my friend as I met him on our way back.

"They tumbled through the portside corridors, apparently they threw hunters at them."

"Fuck," I said. "Did someone take out the hunters?"

Pavel simply shrugged and helped a marine move a barricade to cover the bridge. In less than a minute, the space around the bridge had been made into an impenetrable wall. That wall only had little holes for us to shoot through. However, it would be made very penetrable if anything heavier than a plasma grenade was thrown at it. I took place besides my one and only male friend. There were now about sixty men and women left alive in the ship. Excluding the bridge crew. We would buy them as much time as possible before someone told the captain that it was time to vent the ship, maybe a couple dozen marines would make their way to the bridge and then they would open every single airlock on the ship. Just maybe.

I fired at an elite as it turned a corner, it took cover before someone tossed a grenade at it. I was satisfied by the sound of flesh falling down on the floor. The grenade had bagged at least one kill.

"This is going to become a kill fest," some marine said.

"For who?" someone returned. The UNSC Marine Corps had more than its fair share of cynics. I prided myself in not being one of those, but if I managed to survive this, I'm pretty sure that I'd get there soon. I kept on firing at any targets, killing a good bunch of covvies. Pavel was forced to switch back to his machine gun as he ran out of shotgun shells for his ACS. He fired short bursts at the covvies, no doubt trying to conserve ammunition for his machine gun. I had long since switched to single-fire mode. Trying to keep as much lead in my pockets as possible. I also made note to bring back a couple of assault rifles from fallen marines in case anyone needed them.

For a while it seemed like we could hold this place forever, the boarders were beginning to pile up on the floor. The bridge crew kept on battling the Covenant Navy, not that they had much choice, it would be impossible for them to escape. Finally, our luck ran out. A single hunter went through the barricade on the other side of the ship, I turned around and saw a dozen marines jump out of its way and shoot it down, but the damage was done, elites and grunts were already crossing the wrecked barricade. Marines were pulling out their knives and jumping to the backs of the elites, going for the neck. I saw more than one soldier go down while stabbing at the warriors. I watched as two elites made their way through the stunned defenders and into the bridge, we hadn't even had time to warn them. I ran after them, but I knew that it was to late. They would go inside and kill everyone before I managed to stop them, at least that's what would've happened had I not been faster than a regular human, but what happened then wasn't much better.

I entered the room right behind the two elites. One of them was a golden-armored zealot, the other was an ultra clad in white armor. The golden armored one took aim at the captain, the other stared spraying the walls with plasma fire. As I sighted the back of the golden elite's head, I knew I was making the logical choice. The choice that any soldier would've made. If the captain was killed, then we were all pretty much dead as well, especially since there were now only about ten more sailors on board the ship.

I fired two shots from my rifle, both hitting right below the zealot's helmet. Its shields absorbed the kinetic energy that the rounds gave out. I didn't care, I was already lunging towards the elite. I hit it below its shoulders, slamming it to the holo-table that was meant to be used as a miniature for battles planetside. I grabbed the elite's head and slammed it into the table hard, cracking the material slightly. The zealot decided to give me the backhand that its race seemed to be so fond of, but I was ready for it, I dodged even as I reached behind my back for my knife. As soon as its arm had flown over my head, I launched my arm upwards, hitting the elite's unshielded mouth with my knife. The blade actually went all the way through the elite's head. It looked slightly surprised before it died. I turned around. The sailor closest to the entrance was dead, face-first on his consoles, a pool of blood forming on the floor and vapor coming from his clothes. The second sailor met the same fate even as I un-holstered my pistol. Next in line was Layla. I let out five quick shots in the time it took the elite to shift his rifle. He didn't seem to be bothered by it, but his aim slipped, if only slightly. The next plasma shot went through the chair and hit Layla below her left shoulder. The elite now turned to face me. I emptied the rest of my magazine on its face, managing to drain its shields. Only then did another marine seem to understand what was going on in the bridge, and killed the ultra with a burst to the legs to bring it down and a double tap to the head, taking it out. I just zoned out for a moment, I watched as Layla, the only person I had cared for, really cared for since I left my home, bled out on her chair.

I took two quick steps towards her, and in the corner of my eyes I could make out marines pushing back a few lone elites. Pavel was firing his machine gun without stopping, no doubt killing tons of covvies, but the only thing I could focus on was that Layla was going to die. I grabbed her and gently put her down on the floor, even as the remaining marines killed the last enemy soldiers. She was looking at me, a look of accusation in her eyes. It was right then when I knew. I knew that she had seen me choose to shoot the elite that was targeting the captain over the one that shot her. She knew I had put her in second place, and she hated me for it.

"Set a course for the landing site of all the bumblebee pods Eliza," the captain ordered, there was shock and fear in his voice, but he wasn't loosing it just now.

I opened the case strapped to my thigh and pulled out the biofoam, I placed Layla on her side and rubbed it all over her burnt back. I could hear her moan with pain, she was in the brink of life and death, and she was still trying to appear strong, swallowing her pain.

"I'm so sorry," I told her, just as the pain became too much for her and she slipped into unconsciousness.


	30. Coping

Chapter XXX: Coping

**March 19, 2540 (UNSC Calendar)/**

**UNSC **_**Inconvenience**_**, Slipspace**

Every single hole in the hull had been covered with poly-crete and the area sealed off before we were finally able to leave that system. The sailors that had had managed to escape in the drop pods were picked up right before they hopped on an evacuation ship. The rest of the complement that didn't leave welcomed them. Of the 200 marine soldiers that had remained on board to defend the ship in case of an attack, only 25 remained, that's about 87% casualties on the infantry only, that's not counting the two killed sailors in the bridge and Layla's burnt back.

The UNSC fleet managed to eliminate every last Covenant ship in the system a few hours after the _Inconvenience_ disengaged, at the cost of thirty ships. They hadn't fared well. Over ten thousand bodies were now freezing in the cold depths of space, never to get a proper burial. Layla had been evacuated to the UNSC _Charity_. It was the large station that served as a mobile hospital. It was basically a large hunk of metal with a slipspace engine and a whole lot of hospital beds. I'm pretty sure that right now they were all filled with wounded soldiers and sailors.

I had been pretty lucky, most of the marines that survived the Covenant boarding attempt had been nicked in one place or other. I was completely clean. No blood in my armor or clothing. Not my blood at least. Pavel had suffered burns to the chest after a blob of plasma hit his armor. At least the armor did its job and dispersed the heat, allowing Pavel to survive. The captain hadn't been hurt, but as soon as the ship was crewed again he started shaking. A nervous breakdown or something like that. Colonel Zavala had been forced by Captain Brooks to evacuate the ship. He was the leader of all the sailors and pilots that abandoned ship. He was smiling when he boarded the _Inconvenience,_ but immediately stopped doing so when he heard about what happened.

Right now I was alone in the mess hall. Everyone else had gone to cryo, to wait out the week and a half of traveling ahead of us. I asked the captain for permission to enter cryo later, and he gave it to me. I walked around aimlessly for a couple of hours before Eliza recommended that I sit down. The AI's programming had some sort of subroutine that could help soldiers with PTSD. The scientists in ONI really think of pretty much about everything.

So there I was, sitting in a bloodied chair, Covenant corpses still in the ship, they hadn't been removed because soon after the ship was crewed again Covenant reinforcements arrived. At least the civilian population managed to evacuate successfully. As I was saying, I was sitting on the chair, which was covered in red blood, human blood. My head between my arms, an empty bottle of some weird liquor that I had never tasted in my life in front of me. That thing tasted like shit, but it would do the trick.

"You want to talk about it?" Eliza asked, no doubt trying to see which course of action would be the best for her to take when dealing with me.

"I didn't save her," I said, my mind clouded by the alcohol. "It's not that I couldn't save her, it's just that I chose not to."

"You did the right thing, if the captain had been killed it is very likely that she would've died, and besides, the doctors said that there was a chance she would get better."

"What would you know?" I yelled at the AI. I knew I was doing the wrong thing, alienating the only thing I could talk to right now, but I was to drunk to care.

"I calculated every single possible outcome about a million times, taking all variables into account. You did the right thing, there is no possible way you could've prevented her from getting shot," the AI stated.

That just made me feel worse. I glanced at the empty bottle before deciding that I'd had enough. I stumbled a couple of times before managing to regain my balance. I must've had a lot to drink if my enhanced reflexes weren't able to keep me walking straight.

"Prepare my pod, I'm going to freeze myself," I ordered the AI.

"It's not advisable to enter cryo when drunk," the AI stated.

"I don't care, just do it."

"As you wish sergeant," Eliza said.

* * *

><p>I left my pod after throwing up my anti-freeze fluid. It still looked like vomit and not some technological wonder. Usually, whenever I left the pod I laughed at how fast the female marines got dressed and tried to appear dignified as they left. Male marines usually weren't that self-conscious. We would act like a high school football team in the showers after a successful practice. We would horse around, tell some jokes, you know what it's like. This time it wasn't like that. Over 85% of the marines on this ship were dead, my cryo bay was very, oh so very empty. A mere three soldiers left the pods. They looked shell-shocked. Two of them gave me a slight nod before leaving. I would've left with them, had I not been plagued by the worst hangover in the history of hangovers. And that's a pretty long time.<p>

"Eliza, you could've told my why!" I complained to the room.

"You ordered me to prepare the pod sergeant, and that's what I did. I am programmed to follow orders. Not yours, but I decided to be lenient."  
>"Stop yelling…" I murmured.<p>

Eliza didn't answer and I was left in the room all by myself. I managed to put on my pants and socks, but lacing my boots was a real challenge. Every time I seemed to be about to get it another lace would appear out of nowhere and ruin all my efforts. Finally I managed to lace my boots properly and move on to the less challenging act of putting on my shirt. Finally I succeeded, I must've looked relatively well, because no one gave me a second glance. Or perhaps it was because I was wearing the ODST uniform. Sailors thought we were crazy, and marines didn't like us. Usually, the marines weren't a problem, since I worked with some of them every now and then, besides, I held the record for most alcohol ingested on the ship, which also helped my popularity. Pavel, well, everyone liked Pavel, it's impossible not to.

"Yo Frank!" Pavel called. He seemed to be everywhere.

"Yeah?" I asked, my head hurting a lot more than I was used to.

"How you doing?" he asked, this time it seemed he was genuinely concerned for my mental health.

"You know how I'm doing," I answered.

"You did the right thing," he said as he placed his hand on my shoulder. "Now this might sound gay, but if you need to talk about anything, I'm here for you."  
>I looked my friend straight in the eye before answering. "Gay? I never took you for a homophobe."<br>Pavel smiled a bit. "You know what I mean," he said. I guess he was glad that I hadn't turned into an empty shell of what I used to be. Layla would have had to be killed in front of me for that to happen, and the doctors _had _said that she would probably be fine. Still, our relationship was over, she would never be able to look at me and not remember the moment I chose not to save her. I wouldn't be able to look at myself either.

I walked to the med bay, finding several sailors scrubbing the floor and removing dried blood from the walls. The corpses had been moved to the hangar bay so that they could be vented as soon as we left slipspace, which would probably be pretty soon. I arrived at the medical bay and found myself facing Doc Zhivago, unsurprisingly, he was smoking. Inside the place where patients were supposed to be kept.

"I hear those things will kill ya," I said.

He took a long drag before looking at his cigarette. "Nah," he said. "They'll just accelerate the process."

I laughed quietly, but my head started throbbing and I was forced to stop.

"Hangover?" he asked.

"You know me too well."  
>"You know, you shouldn't really drink before going into cryo," Zhivago said as he searched for headache pills through his cabinet. "Also, you really need to lower the alcohol ingestion level, I can't keep writing 'Sergeant Francisco Castillo, Headache' every couple of days you come all hung over looking for me."<p>

"I'll do my best doc."

"You always say that, next time I'll simply deny you any pills, let's see how that works for you."

I laughed and had to stop and rub my temples. I drank the two pills that the doc had given me before taking a cup of water. Instantly, the pain in my head started receding. Oh, the miracles of modern medicine. I walked out of the medical bay to tour the ship. There were plenty of plasma scorches and needle shards all over the place. Those were being left there until the metal sheets they marked could be replaced. We'd probably be going back to Reach to get some heavy repairing done to the ship.

"Sergeant Castillo, please report to the bridge," the loudspeakers boomed.

"You know where I am Eliza," I called out, "Why don't you just tell me?"

"Protocol," the loudspeakers boomed again. There were going to be some weirded-out people over that. I made my way to the bridge, I could see that that area had been pretty cleaned up already. No shell casings, all the barricades had been removed, same goes for the bodies and blood, the plasma scorching was still there though.

"Captain Brooks," I said as I arrived to the bridge, making a point not to look at the chair that Layla had occupied.

"Ah, sergeant, I needed to have a word with you," Brooks said as he turned to face me. "I just wanted to thank you for saving me. I know that you made a difficult choice, but I believe you made the right one. It might sound wrong coming from me, but if you look at the situation objectively, I think anyone would come up with the same conclusion."

"Thanks captain," I said, not fully believing it yet, even if it was what I deduced when killing the zealot.

"I'm writing you down for the Colonial Cross Sergeant, you deserve it."

The Colonial Cross was the biggest achievement any member of the UNSC armed forces could get, it was incredibly difficult for anyone to get it, only a handful of soldiers got it each year. That means that not a lot of people could sport one in their dress uniform, in a military composed of a couple of billion people, it wasn't very likely to find someone that could brag about getting one. Unless of course, FLEETCOM and HIGHCOM decided my actions were worthy.

"I'm throwing in the arbiter business as well," he said. "Nothing wrong with a few extra points."

"Thank you, sir." I was smiling. I actually was smiling, granted it's not often that you get a chance to receive a Colonial Cross, but I still felt guilty at getting it at the expense of Layla. Well, most of her upper back anyways. The captain shook my hand and dismissed me. A minute later the ship left slipspace. We were actually closer to Reach than we had meant, right in between the third and fourth planets of the system, a bit "up" if that's what you could call it. The ships thrusters rumbled and we were moving.

I stopped to stare at a screen representing Reach as we made our way. We would be there in a couple of hours, so I was mostly just burning time.

"It's beautiful, isn't it?"

I turned to look at the source of the voice, which happened to be none other than Marina Bogdanovic, ace pilot and source of temptation, and right now, she only made me feel more guilt.

"If you say so," I replied.

"Pavel told me what you did," she stated.

I didn't say anything, I was debating whether I should call her out on it because now Layla was out of the equation for her or whether to insult her or something like that. Ultimately, I decided that she wasn't to blame in any of this, so no insults or calling out for Marina.

"What do you think?" I asked her.

"It doesn't matter what I think, it matters what _you_ think."  
>Now that's some serious psychological shit right there. I couldn't help but chuckle. I pictured Marina in a large leather couch asking questions to traumatized patients. In that brief vision I had she was wearing an outfit that no self-respecting psychologist would wear. I'm an asshole. I looked at her more carefully and realized she was dressed as provocatively as ever, granted, you can't get really provocative when you're on board a military spaceship.<p>

"What's so funny?" she asked, probably annoyed because she thought I was laughing at her.

"Nothing, just the way you said it," I told her.

"How'd I say it?" she asked.

"Like a shrink," I explained.

"What's so bad about that?" she asked.

"I hate shrinks," I said.

"Both my parents are shrinks."  
>Now, when you face a situation like this, there are only two things that you can do. You can either say that you know and that you were just messing with her, or you can keep on going with your previous statement and make a joke out if it. You can also apologize, but that always makes you look like an idiot.<p>

"Well, I most certainly would never like to meet your parents," I said.

"My parents are both dead," she said in a low voice.

_Oh crap._

I must've stood there like an idiot for around an hour and a half, because I couldn't come up with anything to say.

"Nah, I'm just kidding," she said as she punched my shoulder. "Both of them are living happy lives in the Balkan States."

I must've given her a deadly glare, because she ran away laughing. I considered chasing after her, but decided against it for two reasons, not to give off the wrong impression regarding Layla, and because it would've looked incredibly childish and stoopid. Yes, with two 'o's.

Marina called out a couple of times before she disappeared around the corner. "You should've seen the look in your face."

"What look in your face?" Pavel asked. I jumped. I swear to God that that man was able to walk through walls. I have no idea how he managed to sneak up behind me. With my heightened body and all.

"Nothing, just stop sneaking up on me like that," I warned.

"Gee, sorry, I thought that you, as an ODST would have bigger balls."

That ignited a debate in my head, punch him or simply don't. I would've beaten him, I was better in hand-to-hand than Pavel was, especially with my new super badass reflexes. It wouldn't be much of a challenge really.

"You're taller," Pavel said with a surprised tone. "Does that have to do anything to do with that time that you were missing?" he asked.

Pavel might've not looked like it, with his big arms and wide back, complete with a face that could've been in a Spetsnaz recruiting poster back when Russia had its own army. Technically speaking, it still had, but then again, most countries hadn't bothered to edit their constitutions to compensate for the UNSCDF that were composed of people from all nationalities.

"I can't answer that Pavel."

"I'll take that as a yes."

I couldn't keep secrets from the big guy, he was perceptive, besides, it's not like I wanted to keep secrets from him. This man was always fighting by my side, the more he knew about me the more likely he was to save my ass. And vice versa.

* * *

><p>A few hours later we docked in some refit station whose name I can't pronounce. The ship would have to be repaired extensively, so that meant that the rest of the crew and me would enjoy an extended leave. We'd also get reinforcements, and I heard that the captain had mentioned something about getting a contingent of rangers, which was good. Rangers were almost as badass as us ODSTs. Almost. I left in an Albatross shuttle along with Pavel and the rest of the Marines on board the ship. There would be no partying for us, most of us would try to forget what we had just lived through with some pretty strong liquors, the rest would try to do the same with narcotics. Hey, to each their own.<p>

We landed in New Alexandria. Pavel told me he knew a pretty nice place, since I had nothing better to do I decided to follow him. The pretty nice place he mentioned happened to be a pretty nice place. I was surprised; Pavel had the tendency to exaggerate things a lot. We got a couple of seats at the bar and started talking; we mostly talked about interesting or funny stuff that had happened while we were in the UNSC. Within minutes, we were joined by a bunch of Marines and Army and Navy types. We all told a couple of stories each, it made for a pretty memorable evening.


	31. War Stories

Chapter XXXI: War Stories

**March 25, 2540 (UNSC Calendar)/**

**MA Series Pub, New Alexandria, Reach**

"So I'm doing overwatch right?" the lieutenant said. "And nothing's happening, we have been watching this street for hours and nothing fucking happens."

We all laughed. What he said wasn't particularly funny, but the way he said it and the fact that he would get to it was what made us laugh. The strong Eposz brew that we were drinking also helped a bit.

"We've been there for hours," he repeats. "Nothing has happened. I am starting to sweat under my helmet and my spotter starts rambling about some restaurant back on Eden that he loved. So now I am not only frustrated and bored, I am also hungry."

We laughed again, that was a bit funnier.

"So I distract myself by checking out the racks of some broads that walk by with my scope. I mean, what's the harm? It's not like they ever found out," he waited for us to stop laughing before went on. "Ok, so I finally set my sight on this woman right, she's got the largest rack I have ever seen you know? It's obscene, just huge." He paused for breath. "I am checking this woman out, and she's looking all nervous, I don't know why, but right now I don't care, I just want to look at those melons going up and down, up and down. I've been staring at her gigantic boobs for hours, and all of a sudden I remember we're supposed to be watching out for innies. Then, the most unexpected thing happens, this woman's breasts blow up," he paused for effect. "Yes, she had had some sort of bomb implanted to make it look like she had a large rack, I never did find out if the timer malfunctioned or something, because the only person that died was her."  
>It wasn't a particularly funny story, but it was highly unusual, besides, most of the spectators to this man's narration were so drunk that pretty much anything he said sounded like the best joke ever invented. We all laughed hard for five minutes before we managed to calm down a bit.<p>

"Ok, ok, my turn," said another Marine.

"Go for it."

"Ok, see, me and my buddy are on the eleventh floor of this building in Harvest right, we just managed to take a couple of city blocks from the covvies and are feeling great about ourselves. Admiral Cole is kicking ass in space and we are kicking ass down here. I'm relaxing with my spotter and decide that a couple of beers would be a good reward for the excellent sniping that we had just done in service of our troops."

We all nodded at the marine to resume his story.

"So I pull out this bottle of beer I've been saving, and just as I'm about to open it a phantom dropship flies by. We scramble for cover, but it already spotted us we are behind a couple of columns with plasma raining all around us. I switch cover just in time to see a rocket strike the phantom. It starts spewing smoke, and a hunter decides to jump of the ship before it goes down. The hunter looked like something straight out of an action movie. The ship going down behind it and the alien actually did a flip as it went through the windows."

We all laughed again, a hunter doing a front flip? That's hilarious.

"Just as I am about to shoot it with my SRS, the floor below it collapses. I run to the hole in the floor and see the hunter getting up on the floor below. Just as it stands up, the floor breaks again, but this time the hunter actually falls to the ground through ten floors."

"And?" was the unanimous response.

"That's it."

"That's it? That's no fun," Pavel complained.

"Well, that's because you weren't there," the storytelling marine shot back. Pavel grumbled something before deciding against a confrontation.

"Your turn buddy," the second marine told an army trooper.

"Me?"

"No, your sister."

"Fine, you don't have to whine about it," the army soldier responded as he cleared his throat.

"So we're in New Constantinople…" he starts.

"You were in New Constantinople?" I ask.

"Shhhh!"

"Ok, sorry,"

"Don't apologize, just shut up," I'm told.

"Ok, as I was saying. We were in New Constantinople, in the third week of fighting. My unit has decided that the best way to fight the covvies is to dig down and make a trench. So we dig a trench, and we stay there for a while, holding the enemy advance," he paused for us to quiet down. "And this one soldier, Reynolds, decides that he has to take a shit. He is very vocal about it, I think that he wanted someone to go with him or somethin', cause he kept telling everyone that he had to take a shit."

We all laughed at the thought of asking someone to come with us to the bathroom.

"Finally, he decides to go on his own or his bowels are going to explode, so he hops away from the trench and hides behind a pile of debris to do the deed. Suddenly, all this talking about going to the bathroom has made me want to go too! I follow my friend, and I see him squatting, shit falling out of his ass."

_Thanks for the mental image._

"But I am not disgusted, all I can think of is that this man forgot the basic rule of pooping. When you go number two, it is because you have to go number one," he took a moment to let that sink in.

"So Reynolds starts peeing, but he is in a position that would wet his pants, so he shifts his body so that he can pee properly, but the movement causes his latest log to swing from his ass and into his pants."

Ok, now _that's_ hilarious.

"And just that moment a wraith strikes about twenty yards away from him, Reynolds jumps a little and then falls down, right on the shit that fell inside his pants."

The entire bar is now laughing like idiots at the story of this man, I am too.

"You can tell that it was an awkward couple of weeks for him, without extra clothing and no place to wash the shit out of his underwear. People called him Shitty Pants for months."  
>"What do they call him now?" asked some girl that had been listening to the story.<p>

"Dead," said the army trooper. We all stopped laughing and stared at our glasses, remembering people that had died. Every single soldier knew someone that had died, every single soldier had a friend that was no longer with us.

"Let's not worry about that, shall we?" said the bartender, God bless his heart. "Next round's on the house."

We all thanked the man and got something strong to dull away the feeling of guilt or pain for surviving. I had to dull away both, pain for not being able to get Layla from getting shot and guilt for choosing to save the captain first. Layla had probably requested a transfer to some other fleet. Don't blame her.

"Ok," said Pavel after swallowing his tequila. Imported all the way from Mexico. Or so the bottle claimed. I had been to young when I lived in Mexico to know anything about alcohol. "What's the weirdest way that you have killed a covvie?" he asked.

"What kind of covvie?"

"Any covvie."

Everyone started spinning up their brains to remember what kill would cause the most laughter or get them the highest chance to go home with one of the girls listening in on us. I dunno if the female soldiers were shooting for the same goal, but I'm going to assume they were.

"Ok, I got one," said one marine.

"Please, do tell."

"We were falling back, as usual," that got some bitter laughter out. "When all of a sudden we find a lance of elites. They were surprised, because we got most of them quickly, but a couple of them managed to shoot back. Long story short, after I find myself alone and unarmed, I kill it with an axe."

"An axe?"

"Yeah, an axe."  
>"Where the hell would you get an ask from?" I asked.<p>

"We met those elites in a museum of ancient weapons, the exposition was from some sort of Earth-based museum and had been borrowing some medieval weaponry for a temporary exposition."

"An axe?" I asked, still incredulous.

"Yes, I fell backward on a suit of armor and threw the first thing that I made contact with, which happened to be a pretty nice axe that decided to land blade-first in the elite's chest."

"No way," one marine said.

"I swear, I got it recorded and everything. I even got a segment in the fleet's webpage."

"Nah, you're shitting us."

"Oh, so you don't believe me?" he asked, even as he said that he grabbed a knife from his waist and threw it to a wooden post, embedding it in the thick wood.

"That's how good I throw, and that thing with the axe was the best I ever did."

"Well, Frank here can show you up any time he wants, isn't that right Frankie?" Pavel said.

"Nah, I couldn't," I said, but I was already lifting my pants and grabbing my ever-present knife. "Ok, what do you want me to hit?"

Everyone said a bunch of different things, but a pretty redheaded girl got the winning bid. "Why don't you shoot this apple," she said as she grabbed a large red apple from a basket, "off of my head."

The entire bar went quiet before they started going "Oooo" and "Aaaa" and "no way you can do that man."

"You trust me?" I asked, spinning my knife in my hand.

"Completely," she said as she placed the apple on top of her head.

"All this sounds strangely familiar," Pavel said as he scratched his head. He was right, I had some weird feeling of déjà vu. I threw the knife in the air, giving it a couple of spins.

"You sure you know what you're doing?" a man asked.

I was, and the girl must've been more than a little tipsy to decide to use herself as a quasi-target. Or maybe she was one of those girls with daddy issues that needed attention desperately.

"I'm sure," I said as the knife fell on my hand.

_Five meters, two spins._

The knife flew beautifully, the wave pattern of the blade shinning against the light of the room. It spun twice before its tip buried itself into the apple. The redhead had positioned herself a few inches away from the wall, the knife flew through the apple and buried itself in the wall, apple halfway through the blade. There was a moment of shocked silence before I turned around.

"Think I could've made the axe throw?" I asked.

The bar erupted with laughter and a bunch of people started buying me drinks and patting me in the back. The girl came to me and handed me my knife while she took a large bite from the apple. I decided that I'd take her to a motel. A part of me would feel terrible for rebounding so fast, but the rest of me would feel rather satisfied. Physically, of course.

"Ok, ok, back to funny covvie kills," said the marine with the story about the axe as he picked up his knife. No doubt feeling he was feeling grumpy about my superb knife throwing skills. We all calmed down a bit and decided to resume the storytelling session.

"My turn," yet another soldier stated. We nodded at him so that he could tell his story. "Very well. This is a grunt kill, not particularly impressive, but what happened afterwards is what's so special about it."

"Just tell the freaking story!" someone yelled.

"I'll get to it!" he shot back. "Anyways, as I was saying before I was so rudely interrupted, we were in the Clover Campaign, we were pushing back a group of covvies and had killed all the big ones. Three grunts were running away, you know how, hands in the air and squealing."

We all nodded in agreement, that's the way Grunts ran away.

"So I stop chasing after them, switch to my M6 and take careful aim at the closest grunt. I sight it right in between its shoulders and fired. It must've been a terrible shot, because I didn't hit it anywhere near the shoulders. I hit some sort of hose that transported methane from their backpacks to their masks. The explosive round ignited the methane. Nothing out of the usual right? Wrong. The methane acted as a rocket for this poor grunt. It started flying and crashed into the next grunt, they both fell to the ground and then they blew up, the blast killed the last grunt."

The bar started laughing once again. I had seen that happen, it wasn't really that unusual, especially in big battles, but the alcohol and the atmosphere in the bar made everything feel a whole lot better or funnier than it normally would've been. I liked it, I'm not gonna lie to you.

"Now it's my turn!" Pavel proclaimed as he stood up from his stool. No one contradicted him, so he started telling a story I was familiar with.

"This happened in '37 if I'm not mistaken," he said.

"'36," I corrected him.

"Regardless, it is an interesting story. Really shows how the squid-faces are better than Brutes."

"Agreed!" someone shouted and within seconds we were all toasting to that.

"Lemme finish!" Pavel complained. "It was after a hot drop, we managed to form an effective perimeter and hold the covvies back, there was only this one wraith, it had no gunner, so it kept its distance. We were just careful to look at the sky to avoid its shots. Frankie here, decides that we have to take it out, make things easier for the rest of the troops, so we grab a pack of C10 and move towards the tank. Now, the driver kept shooting at us and backing up, it was so desperate not to be destroyed that…"

"That what?" someone asked.

"Guess," I said.

They said things that went from suicide to leaving the wraith and running away, there was even a guy that said something about turning the tank around and leaving.

"None of the above," Pavel said. "It actually backed away into a cliff."

"You're kidding me."

"It did, the gorilla wasn't even looking, so it backed up into a cliff, falling down a couple hundred meters before crashing down on the ground.

"To the Brutes and their tiny brains," someone offered.

"Agreed," and we toasted again.

"I've got one," said yet another army trooper.

"Hear, hear!"

"Ok, I was in a sniper's position, it consisted of me, two other marksmen, and a sniper. First thing that happens when we reach our position is the sniper gets shot in the arm and the two marksmen are killed."

"That's not funny," slurred a drunken marine.

"I'll get to it. Well, we can't snipe anymore, so I have to help the sniper back down the building. So far so good, no incidents. It's not until we reach the ground floor that we find ourselves facing a lone skirmisher. We stood there for a couple of seconds before anyone reacted. The sniper told me to aim his rifle and he'd shoot, I tried to do it, but the idiot shoots early, so the round flies straight to the floor."

"And?"

"It bounces, then it hits the wall, then the roof, then the other wall, and ends its trajectory in the skirmisher's chest."

"Nah, sniper rounds don't bounce," someone said.

"They do, I can testify to that," I said.

"Well, no way you did that," the same man said again.

"You don't have to believe me," the soldier said.

Two men calmed down the quarreling soldiers before they started a brawl, something which I would've objected to, for a change. We stopped with the war stories for a while and started chatting around about different stuff. I kept telling myself that I'd check the UNSC records to confirm that Layla was done with me. If I knew her at all (and I did) she would've already requested a transfer to an entirely different fleet. Technically speaking we were part of the Epsilon Eridani Fleet, but we rarely operated with them. We usually operated attached as a Special Forces frigate, but we've been doing more regular jobs lately. Guess that there aren't that many things you can do to the Covenant that require careful infiltration and undercover ops.

The conversation drifted off into memories of lost battles and friends, I did my best to get to know the redheaded girl, who seemed surprisingly lucid for a person that had volunteered to have a knife thrown at her. The only relevant thing I learned about her after half an hour of talking was that she liked apple pie and flip music. Didn't have much personality, but she was a stunner, so she would help me in my quest to have sex. The guilty part of my brain had all but given up, so I'd have to ask her to come to the motel with me soon. Pavel had gotten all touchy-feely with an Army PFC. Army chicks had a reputation for being easy, but that was probably a rumor seeded by the Army to increase recruitment numbers. Not that it was necessary anymore, with the fancy gadgets and all that a bunch of teenagers were willing to volunteer. There is something that feels quite adventurous in joining the UNSCDF to fight aliens. It does sound pretty badass.

It was getting late, so most people were starting to leave. It was a shame really, I'd had a very good time in the bar. The bartender must've liked the business, because he stood up and offered us another round on the house. That got us going again, this time it was a navy officer who started talking.

"We were in a skirmish in some backwater system, don't really remember the name of it, but there was only a small mining colony there, so it wasn't really that important. The planet had been discovered by a single corvette, one of the small ones."

That comment was received by a huff from about every single member of the audience who was part of the military. A small corvette was about a kilometer long, give or take a couple of dozen meters. They were incredibly deadly in ground-support ops, but were considered easy meat in space battles. Meaning that it only took two frigates to take one down instead of three. Or one _Marathon_ or _Halcyon_ cruiser.

"Anyways, we had a small fleet of three ships, two of which happened to be _Marathon-_class cruisers. I was on board the other ship, a frigate. This corvette's captain is incredibly badass right, it can't directly engage us, but it has been avoiding us for a couple of hours without leaving the system. Finally, we manage to trap it. One of the cruisers is about to fire its MAC when all of a sudden there is a small explosion on the barrel of the gun. Turns out the corvette had sent some sort of drones or EVA teams to disarm the cannons of all three ships, so now we're left there, with nothing but Archer missile pods."

Not impressive, it wasn't that unusual, it had happened to the _Inconvenience _more than a couple of times.

"Not that unusual I know," the sailor continued.

_Hey, what do you know?_

"The elite manning this ship must've thought itself pretty smart, because it just let its ship stay in between all of us, deflecting most of our missile volleys and absorbing the ones that did make contact with its shields. Finally enough missiles slam into it to take down its shields. The captain must've gotten the gist of the situation because he started running away, unfortunately, the two cruisers' respective captains had the exact same idea."

"RAM THE SHIP!" we all chorused. It was an old phrase from the Insurrection days, when innie ships were mostly civilian yachts and shuttles outfitted with weak missile pods. The UNSC ships would simply boost towards the smaller craft to save ammunition. It wasn't common during the war we were fighting right now, but it still had happened a couple of times when tactical options were exhausted.

"Exactly, one cruiser rams it in the bow and the other in the stern, the covvie ship literally broke in two."

"I wish I could've seen that," Pavel murmured.

"I've got the footage, if you care to see it," the sailor said. "Just give me your number and I'll send it to you."

"I want that too!" someone else called. Within seconds there was a line of people forming up to write their numbers on a napkin, I stayed on my stool, Pavel would show me the video later. I took that time to talk a little bit more with the redhead, but was unsurprised to find her as hollow as the first time I had a conversation with her that lasted longer than two phrases. I just hoped her bedroom skills were fuller than her head was. I guess I would find out soon enough.

"Anyone got a good ol' fashioned kill 'em all story?" the bartender asked. He probably lost someone in the war, because kill 'em all stories were things that soldiers did to covvies whenever they had the chance to play with them, mostly to grunts and jackals, but I'd heard some pretty nasty stories about groups of marines torturing elites after capturing them. Whenever we did get large numbers of prisoners we usually executed them all save for one or two to give to ONI, but I never toyed with them for the fun of it.

"Nah, marines that do that are considered psychos," someone explained.

"I guess you're entitled to your opinion," another soldier answered.

"You mean you've tortured covvies?"  
>"Not tortured, but I've toyed with them when I have the chance," the second man said. "They do the same and worse to us, so when I get the chance to end an elite's life through blood loss and amputation, I think I'd take it."<p>

It made sense, I had been to colonies that had been completely been rid of any human life, with us arriving just a little to late. The faces of innocent men, women, and children dead on the streets, the body of a father protecting the rest of his family, only for him to met a swift end at the hands of a fanatical alien and his family to join him instants later. I'd also never forget the times that the elites decided to let the jackals and grunts kill unarmed civilians, or the times that brutes had joined the carnage. The Covenant deserved to die a slow painful death. Unfortunately, it just wasn't practical. We'd simply have to kill them all quickly instead of slowly.

"But the ethics…" a marine said.

"Screw the ethics!" another soldier interrupted. This is what happened when you tried to have soldiers engage in intellectual conversations.

"Listen up!" I interrupted. I raised my half-empty (or half-full) glass of beer. "A toast, to those that are no longer with us, to those that died protecting Earth and all its colonies."

Soldiers do love a good toast and mine had been exemplary, considering the circumstances of course. Every single person in the bar at the moment, whether they were in the military or not, raised their glasses and drank silently. My immediate next thought was that it was time to find out if the redhead was as good in the sack as she was empty up there.


	32. Shopping!

Chapter XXXII: Shopping!

**March 25, 2540 (UNSC Calendar)/**

**New Alexandria, Reach**

"So, how was it?" Pavel asked, as inquisitive as always.

"It was good, different," I said.

"Come on, tell me the truth," he said.

"Ok, it was great. There I said it."

"Then why are you looking so glum?"  
>"For starters, I'm hungover," I said.<p>

"That it?"  
>"Well, I also feel guilty as hell, there's a chance Layla didn't request a transfer to the other side of the UNSC space."<p>

"Nah, I checked."  
>"Really? Where'd she transfer to?" I asked. Before Pavel could even start answering I stopped him. "No, don't tell me, I think it's better that way."<p>

"Sol."  
><em>Well thank you very much for respecting my wishes. YOU ASSHOLE.<em>

"Hey, what are you calling me an asshole for?" Pavel asked, hurt.

So that's where Layla had gone to, Earth. No goodbyes, no nothing. I didn't even get a chance to apologize, but that might've been for the best. That way we'd simply get over each other and try to forget the fact that I chose not to save her first. For the time being I could feel content with the fact that she was alive, even if she had been on the brink.

I punched Pavel on the shoulder and then shook his head. That ought to shut him up, especially if my assumptions that he had had twice as much as I had were correct.

"Argh!"

They were.

"Seriously, you're back in the game so soon?" Marina asked.

"Pavel said the best way to heal a broken heart is sex with a stranger…" I mumbled.

"I thought that was chocolate," Marina said.

"Why are you even here?" I complained. I was very annoyed.

"Well, the UNSC houses all the crew in our ship in this motel you know, they told us that."

"Shut up." I had nothing clever to say, so that was my retort. I looked at the blonde pilot as she sat down on the chair next to me. I did my best to make sure that she wasn't feeling hurt in any way, she _had _tried to kiss me, or at least had seriously considered it, a couple of weeks ago (or days, depends if you count slipspace).

"How was your night?" she asked. She didn't seem affected by my recent escapade with that redheaded airhead.

"It was alright," I said.

"Don't be modest Frankie, it was great!" Pavel helpfully said. He made a point to emphasize the word 'great', making me feel uncomfortable. Marina looked a little awkward too, that and the lack of that joyous air she usually had around her was a little bit unsettling. Maybe she had felt hurt.

_I just keep messing up don't I?_

Pavel and Marina both looked at me, I was forced to bite down on my toast to avoid their eyes.

"Did I say that out loud?" I finally asked.

"Say what out loud?" Pavel and Marina asked simultaneously. That felt awesome, now I looked like an imbecile that couldn't filter his thoughts and didn't know if he had actually talked or not. The sad part was that I was just that.

"Never mind."  
>I stood up and gulped down the rest of my coffee before I left. No need to be under two pairs of inquisitive eyes. I'd rather face torture. Or at least a different kind of torture. I was already starting to sweat with all that pressure being put on me.<p>

As I walked the boring hallways of the motel, I decided that I'd do some swimming. I hadn't been on a pool or a large body of water (that didn't involve running away from an enemy Locust walker) ever since I had left Jericho VII seven years ago.

_Seven already? I'm getting old._

I wasn't, I was twenty-five years old, not even a quarter of the average human lifespan had gone by. Well that came from the latest figures, no one had taken into account the billions of deaths due to the war. Life expectancy was now probably around the lower seventies if you took all those deaths into account. It was bound to get even lower if the Covenant kept pushing towards Earth.

While on my way to my room to put on some swimming trunks I realized something. I did not own a pair of swimming trunks. In fact, I did not own anything that didn't have a UNSC logo stamped in some place or other. Even my underwear had UNSC logos around the waistband. It was actually weird how the UNSC wanted to signal everything as theirs. Granted everything _was_ theirs, but still. I entered my room and grabbed my gray cargo pants and a gray t-shirt that happened to have the letters 'UNSC' written on the left side of the chest, with my last name printed right below them. I decided I was going to go shopping.

* * *

><p>"Where are you going?" asked Marina as I left my room and walked towards the bus station.<p>

"I'm going to buy something that doesn't have Kevlar fibers in it."

"Everything has Kevlar fibers in it nowadays," she replied.

"You know what I mean," I told her as I shouldered my duffel bag. I might've been on a quest to buy regular clothing, but that didn't mean that I would leave whatever mall I entered carrying shopping bags. I didn't intend to look like an idiot.

"Wait a moment, I'll go with you," she said as she hurried towards her room, no doubt headed for her wallet or something like that. She entered her room and five seconds later she left, guess I was right; she did grab her wallet and nothing else. If I had been her I would've taken of my pajamas, but then again, who am I to judge.

"Where are we going?" she asked.

"The closest mall I can find," I told Marina.

"Ok, what will you buy?"

"I don't know, jeans and running shoes. Don't really need anything else, how about you?"  
>"Not sure yet, I think I'll update my lingerie collection."<p>

"You'll… linger… what?" I asked, dumbfounded. Admit it, it's not often that people answer a rather common question with that phrase.

"Relax, you don't have to come into the store with me," she said, "although I sure could use your opinion."

I had no idea whether she was joking or not, so I decided to simply ignore her comment and hop on the bus, it was almost empty, so we had no trouble finding a seat. As soon as we were inside it, it sped away from the bus stop near the motel at 90 miles per hour. I had to hold on to something.

The bus ride to the Sunrise Mall was uneventful, few people hopped on the bus and Marina was mostly quiet, just speaking every couple of seconds to point at a pretty building in the distance or show me a sports car that she liked. The rest of the time I just stared at the seat in front of me, which was empty for the duration of the trip. The trip ended after only ten long minutes, although it seemed like a lot more when your only method to pass time consisted of staring at the fuzzy headrest of the seat in front of you.

I hopped off the bus with Marina trailing behind. I looked at the mall. My first thought was that it would've made a very nice defendable position, it was tall, with small entrances and absolutely no windows on the outside, not even displays. The entrances were mostly automatic glass doors, with a few service entrances on the sides, the parking lot around the mall was huge, which meant that it was a killzone for any attackers trying to take the complex.

My second though was that it was the ugliest piece of architecture that I had ever seen in my entire life. It was basically a giant poly-crete rectangle with a few entrances in the middle of a sea of gray asphalt.

"That is one ugly building," I finally said.

"Yes, but it's supposedly a great shopping mall, so we're going in whether you like it or not," Marina snapped.

"A little bit aggressive today, are we?" I asked.

"Shut up," she said.

The mall was actually prettier inside than it was outside, not that that was a great achievement. It was, however, massive. There was even a network of roads for little carts to transport obese and tired shoppers. Or lazy ones, such as myself. We hopped on one of the little carts and headed to one of the larger stores where you could buy pretty much any type of clothing. We hopped off right in front of a store labeled 'New Navy.'

"Does that mean there is an Old Navy?" I asked.

"How am I supposed to know" Marina retorted.

So she was angry at me, hard to figure why (ignore that, it's sarcasm). I have no idea why she'd wanted to come with me, she had barely uttered a word since we left the bus and now she was snapping at me. The easy-going girl with good humor and dirty jokes was nowhere in sight, guess I'd have to ride this one out.

We entered the store and I immediately felt confused. It was huge, with different sections for men and women and kids, then there were subsections for that in no apparent order. It was like a labyrinth, designed to make you feel lost and have to ask for help from the staff. I was a battle-hardened UNSC Marine. Not a regular Marine, but an ODST. Saying that I was feeling a little bit overwhelmed was saying something. I came here for a couple of jeans and a swimsuit, but there were so many types of different jeans that I could barely think about which one I was going to get.

"Hi, you seem a little lost, can I help you?"

I turned to find myself facing a New Navy employee. She was a pretty girl that looked about nineteen years old.

_The Ramsey curse strikes again!_ I thought to myself. The Ramsey curse in question was the fact that I often found myself surrounded by beautiful women. I wasn't complaining, but even I found it odd at times.

"Yes," I said with an awkward smile. "I haven't been shopping in over five years, so I'm not entirely sure how this works," I explained.

"Oh, don't worry, what did you want to buy?" she asked.

I told her and she proceeded to help me out, she pulled out the different types of jeans that existed from their respective racks and showed them to me, there were jeans that seemed to fit tighter than my ODST undersuit, there were also jeans that were so baggy they looked like skirts. There were jeans with more pockets than a soldier would ever need. There were jeans with more holes than fabric. There were jeans with intricate beaded designs. I really could've used Marina's opinion here, but she was on the other side of the store.

"Don't you have regular jeans?" I asked.

"Well, we have plenty of those," she said as she climbed up her ladder to pull down a bunch of jeans. To my surprise, they were regular looking.

"Yes, that's better," I said as I grabbed a pair of them that looked like they could fit me.

"Ok, what size are you?" asked the ever-helpful employee. She might as well have asked me what the square root of 389.837 was. The UNSC generally issued me my clothing, the clothing lacked labels. It was just regular clothing. I knew I was medium on my shirts, but I also knew that pants weren't measured like that. Last time I had gone shopping, over seven years ago, back in Jericho VII, I had been size 30 around the waist, but that _had_ been seven years ago, so odds were that I was a larger size.

"I don't know," I said as I shrugged.

What happened next made me feel both stupid and awkward. The girl stared at my waist to make an educated guess about my size. Whenever someone stares at your groin area, you also feel weird.

"Maybe 32, take a 34 just in case," she said as she handed me two pairs of jeans.

"Thanks," I said as I hurried to the changing rooms. Turns out I actually was a size 32, so I left the 34 in the changing room and hurried back to the jeans section to thank the girl. As soon as she had said 'You're welcome' she offered to help me if I needed anything else, I asked her where the swimsuits were and she pointed me in the right direction. This trip was easier as I now knew my size, so I simply grabbed a pair of black trunks that stopped right above my knees. I looked around the store for Marina until I finally found her looking at some shirts.

"You ready?" I asked.

"You're the one that took hours to find two items of clothing," she said.

_Yep, still angry._

"I'll take that as a yes," I said as I hurried to the cashiers. Since no one was there, my new friend came to the rescue once more.

"Will that be all?" she asked as soon as I placed my new jeans and swimming shorts on the counter.

"Yes, that's it."

"Cash or credit?" she asked.

"UNSC card," I said as I pulled it out from my pocket.

"That entitles you to additional discount, if you'll just give me your number and name."

"Forget the discount," I said. "Just charge it to my account."  
>"Good choice," the girl said with a smile.<p>

_Damn right it is, I don't want to get spam mail form New Navy._

As soon as I was one I stuffed my new possessions into my duffel bag and left.

"Come back soon!" the girls said a little to eagerly.

"Is that your new girlfriend?" Marina said, annoyed. If she was going to be an asshole, I had the right to be one too.

"Actually, we're meeting for coffee tomorrow in the food court, during her break."  
>"What?" she exclaimed. She had a surprised look on her face. "Really?"<br>"No you idiot!" I said, this time putting a joking tone in my voice.

"Oh," she said. "Guess I had that one coming."  
>Marina was one of those people you could talk to, but I wasn't the same kind of person she was, had I been she probably would've explained how she felt to me and all that, or I would've asked her, right now I only felt like I had no idea how to proceed.<p>

"What now?" I asked, mostly to myself.

"I'm going to Victoria's Secret, you're welcome to join me or simply wait outside."

"You were actually serious about buying underwear?" I asked.

"_Sexy_ underwear," she corrected.

That actually made me feel jealous, she was my friend and nothing else (yet), but she must've been buying the lingerie for some reason.

We reached the large store after five minutes of walking, this walk was a lot less awkward and was spent joking around much like we used to do whenever she was extracting my team or fixing something that I broke. I also noticed how the people in front of us stayed clear of our way, I was a marine, after all, and Marina was dressed in her pajamas, which meant that she was just a bit weird. I was glad I hadn't worn my ODST all-blacks. We had fame for being crazy around the universe. I remember this one time a young lieutenant addressed me as 'sir' because I was an ODST, I couldn't stop laughing for the next hours, the lieutenant had been quite offended.

"Here we are," Marina said. And here we were. The store was not as large as New Navy, but it was still fairly large, and its display windows were covered with posters of beautiful women wearing underwear and nothing else. That was one of the reasons why this store was famous.

"I think I'll wait outside," I said, I did not like the idea of entering a store that was meant for women to buy their underwear.

"Suit yourself," my friends said as she entered the store. I sat in a bench and looked around, there were a couple of candy stores and a Toys 'R Us nearby, but I decided to head to a place that sold sport shoes.

"Hello, welcome to Happy Soles! What can I help you with?" a large black man said. He would've fit nicely in a marine armor, the white and red outfit that he was wearing right now simply made him look ridiculous. My heightened eyesight and soldier mentality took quick not of the man's physique and possible weak points before I stopped myself.

"Yes, I just want some running shoes," I said, I was still new to this shopping thing.

"Any kind in particular?" he asked me.

"Good ones," I said as I shrugged. "That'll last."

"I think I've got exactly what you need," the man said before he headed to another side of the store. I followed him while wondering if people outside of the military were just that nice or if my military uniform made them behave like that towards me. I then wondered that if the second point was true they could be nice because they respected me or because they were afraid of me. I checked my arm to confirm that my Helljumper tattoo wasn't peeking under my sleeves and relaxed a little when it wasn't.

_Maybe they do actually respect me._

The man showed me a pair of shoes that looked like they could last through a war, I wanted something more normal.

"Anything smaller?" I asked.

"Sure, we've got the new Nikes," he said as he pointed at another pair of shoes. This pair was smaller and looked nice.

"Sure I'll take those," I said.

"That was quick," the man said as he laughed. "What size?"

"Eleven, I think."

"I'll get you ten and a half through eleven and a half ok?"  
>"Sure."<p>

The man returned with three boxes of shoes, I only tried out the right shoe, unlacing combat boots can be a real bitch sometimes, so I settled for trying out only one side. I finally settled for the size eleven and a half shoes, they were a nice fit, and it wasn't like I was getting any bigger, not unless ONI decided to pump me full of drugs later on, although I was thankful for the recent augmentations. Everything seemed less tiresome.

I checked out, denying the UNSC discount once again and left towards the bench outside of Victoria's Secret. Marina was already waiting for me there, she was carrying three different bags, all of them were pink with the store's name in silver letters.

"That sure is a lot of underwear," I said.

"_Sexy_ underwear," she repeated.

I sighed and we headed to the food court, talking like old friends, I'm glad Marina wasn't feeling cranky anymore, after all, where would I have gone to when I needed to see a shrink?

* * *

><p><em>HAHAHA psych! I was kidding, still had a couple of awkwardly-written characterization chapters that probably didn't do their job right.<em>

_Love you guys, hope you enjoyed._

_-casquis_


	33. Big Toys and Big Guns

Chapter XXXIII: Big Toys and Big Guns

**April 2, 2540 (UNSC Calendar)/**

**UNSC **_**Inconvenience**_**, in orbit above Reach**

"Welcome back to the UNSC _Inconvenience,_ if you will please report to your respective posts," said Eliza's voice, only that this time she made it sound like she was a PA announcer. "The new Marine and Army complement of this ship will arrive soon, please be ready to receive them," she said. "All ground-forces will act as tour guides. Navy personnel will stay on their positions. Marine aviators will not participate in the welcoming committee. Thank you."

It was probably one of the weirdest announcements that most people would ever hear, but that was Eliza to you, making battle-hardened marines feel useless by calling them tour-guides, making marine aviators feel like they don't serve a purpose by telling them that they are not needed. She was a Navy AI, so it was obvious that she had a soft spot for swabbies, but she had no inhibitions about mistreating personnel from other branches, at least she wasn't that mean to me. I was technically under ONI supervision, but not a lot of people knew that.

"Sergeant Francisco Castillo, please report to the bridge."

"Here we go," I muttered to myself. "I'll see you in a while Pavel," I called out to my friend, he simply raised his hand as if to say the same thing.

I made my way to the bridge and the captain. On the way there I couldn't help but notice how good the ship looked. The panels had been replaced and there wasn't a single scorch mark or bullet hole in any wall, ceiling, or floor. Everything looked brand new and the smell of fresh paint was fresh in the air. There were even new light bulbs that provided more light than the previous ones. The floor was even shinier, or at least it seemed that way, it'd probably be worn down after a couple of months of armored boots walking over it. In addition to those repairs, the ship had gotten extra plating covering the engines, of course, the two Titanium-A plates had the UNSC logo painted in white, along with a white horizontal stripe that someone put there jut for kicks, unless it had a naval meaning which I wasn't aware of. The ship looked brand new, which was really saying something considering the state it had been brought into the repair station.

"Sergeant, congratulations!"

"Thank you captain, for what?"  
>"Well, you have been promoted to Staff Sergeant, and have been issued a Gold Star. Normally a higher-ranking officer would give you these, but we are in a hurry, so no time for ceremony," Brooks explained as he handed me a wooden box with a golden star inside of it. It was only my first Gold Star; I now had Bronze and Silver Stars in addition to the higher Gold Star. I have to say I was a little disappointed though, the captain had mentioned the Colonial Cross.<p>

"Thank you very much, sir," I said as I snapped a salute. I _had _gotten a Gold Star, which was still a pretty significant achievement.

"Also, I'm going to need you to act as the representative of the ground forces on board this ship when I brief the higher-ranking officers from the replacements we're getting."

"What about Colonel Zavala, sir?" I asked, curious, I hadn't seen the man in a while, but I knew that he had been safely evacuated when our ship was boarded.

"He had a heart attack, again. I forced him to retire, the man was falling apart."

"Oh, I see, sir."

To me the Colonel had been one of the few constant presences in my life since I joined the ODST. He had been a good leader, experienced, charismatic, and kind to the soldiers under his command. He was always willing to turn a blind eye to certain infractions that we committed, and was a hell of a storyteller. Since he and Layla were both gone from my life simultaneously, it looked like it was time for change.

"Listen up Staff Sergeant, we are getting a contingent of marines and a slightly larger Army attachment to our ship. We will no longer function as a testing facility for fancy armor pieces, so you'd better feel lucky that you get to keep your shoulder plates and additional non-standard issue armor."

"Yessir."

"The _Inconvenience_ will start acting as a Special Forces ship, we will deploy and act independently of other ground forces, but will work in support of battle groups or fleets in space combat, understood?"  
>"Yessir," I repeated.<p>

"The Marine contingent we are receiving is Echo Company from the 6th Battalion, 200th marines. It is a company of about a hundred and sixty marines. They are divided into four platoons of forty marines each. Alfa, Bravo, and Charlie platoons are all regular rifle platoons, while Delta is a heavy weapons platoon, they will have the machine guns, rockets, and mortars of Echo Company."

I was impressed; Echo Company belonged to the legendary 6th Battalion of the 200th. They were nicknamed Hell's Ambassadors, and it wasn't for nothing, they were as good as marines got without being ODSTs. Yet another boost for my already large ego.

"On the Army side, we'll get a slightly larger company numbering two hundred soldiers. We'll be getting B Company from the 3rd Battalion, from the 22nd Armored Cavalry Regiment."

"Wow," I said, it wasn't often that ship this small got Armored Cavalry, those were usually reserved for carriers or cruisers, it was the first I had heard of an Armored Cavalry company on a frigate. Armored Cavalry was structured in a similar way to the rest of the military units, the only difference was that the platoons were larger because they included an armored support vehicle, typically an M987 Armadillo Armored Fighting Vehicle. They also tended to include UH-144 Falcons and every now and then you could find a company that sported one or more MP-12 Anti-Tank vehicles. More commonly known as the Rattlesnake, the smaller, more mobile little brother of the SP42 Cobra.

"B Company is divided into four platoons of fifty men each."  
>"Those are large platoons," I commented.<p>

"Yes, each platoon has two Armadillos carrying a squad each, one Falcon and a Rattlesnake for support in addition to two ten-man squads that go unmounted, those twenty soldiers function as machine-gun nests and anti-tank infantry. The mounted soldiers function as regular infantry with armored support," the captain explained. It wasn't really necessary, this had been drilled into my head in ODST training. "Platoons are numbered one through four."

"Sounds good, sir."

"And," he resumed.

_There's more? _I asked myself.

"…we got ourselves a platoon of Army Rangers."

"Nice," I said. "Sir."

Army Rangers were the equivalent of ODST troops in the Army. They had an equally flamboyant way of being deployed, although not as deadly or glamorous as hours. The Rangers were all trained in the use of parachutes and jetpacks. They would do a High Altitude jump and free fall to the battlefield, only to activate their jetpacks and slow their descent. They weren't as tough as ODSTs, but they were deadly soldiers nonetheless. I was glad to have them by my side, especially if this ship was going to start functioning differently.

"May I ask where we'll fit all of the vehicles from B Company?"

"Yes, the MOEIV bays have been removed and the SOEIV bay had been made smaller, instead of being able to drop fifty soldiers at a time, we can now only drop twenty."  
>"Sounds reasonable," I said. "ODST replacements, sir?"<p>

"Not yet, command is using ODSTs as much as possible, it'll be a while before you and Corporal Klaus get a new squad, besides, you eat through replacements faster than they can send them here."  
><em>That was mean, true, but still mean.<em>

"Sir," I angrily said, the captain had just directly insulted my leadership skills, I might've been an unlucky sergeant, but I had definitely not been a bad one.

"I'm sorry Staff Sergeant, but it is what it is. By the way, talking about Klaus, please inform him that he has been promoted to sergeant, and hand him this will you, it's a Silver Star, he deserves it."

"Yessir," I said yet again.

"Place the box over there, you'll give it to him after we finish the meet and greet ok?"

"Understood Captain," I said.

Through the course of the conversation we had made our way through the ship and down a couple of decks to the observation room. Right now it displayed a lovely view of Reach's southern hemisphere. I could see cruisers from the Epsilon Eridani Fleet flying in the distance. They looked like little specks of gray against the blues, whites, and greens of the planet, but up close they were really dangerous gray specks.

"Captain, Sergeant," said Commander Albaf as she entered the room.

"It's staff sergeant now, Commander." The captain said.

"Is that so?"

"It is, ma'am."

"Very well, congratulations," she said. It was so out of character from her, the woman that I had idealized as a bitch that I couldn't come up with a simple 'thank you.' Fortunately, a group of officers entered the room and saved me from looking like an ungrateful bastard to the Commander.

"Ah, ladies and gentlemen, welcome aboard."

All of the people in the room snapped a brilliant salute to the captain. I could see a major dressed in an Army Combat Uniform, with him was a lieutenant dressed in the same clothing, the major's XO. I also saw a marine captain and his XO, another lieutenant dressed in the darker Marine Combat Uniform. I also spotted a lieutenant wearing the Army Combat Uniform with the short-sleeved version. He stood at 6'2, an inch shorter than me, and had a scar in his face that reached all the way from the tip of his right eyebrow to the corner of his mouth, it was an energy sword scar by the looks of it. He had the Rangers' patch on his left shoulder. This man would be my counterpart for the duration of the war. Unless he was killed before it finished, but something told me that he wouldn't.

The captain introduced me to the new officers on board the ship. The Army major that I had seen first was named Ricardo Hernandez, he was from a colony founded by Colombian terra-formers. I couldn't get much information from him, but he looked like an able soldier, I just hoped that his talent went hand in hand with his appearance. His executive officer was a shy-looking trooper that must've been straight out of her teens, she must've gotten incredible grades in officer school, because no one got to be XO that young. Her name was Chloe Delacroix, she was a young woman from France, back on Earth, apparently she had proved herself in her first combat engagement, that's why she had been chosen to replace Major Hernandez's deceased XO, Lieutenant Ailsa Graham. Her good looks had probably helped a bit through her career. During the twenty seconds I spent talking to her my head wouldn't stop repeating 'Ramsey's Curse' endlessly. She seemed relieved when I moved on to shake hands with the Marine captain.

Her name was Veda Sharma, she was from Terranova, and apparently had been a very successful officer during her twenty years of military career. She looked to be in her forties, which probably meant she was closer to her sixties. She would be in command of Echo Company from the 6th. That alone said all I needed to know. Her executive officer, Krikor Darbinian, was an asshole, there's no better way to put it. His eyes were full of contempt and he shook my hand like it was going to burn him, he also took the opportunity to make some thinly veiled comments about his opinion on ODSTs. It was all I could do not to punch him right there and then.

"Nice meeting you Lieutenant Darbinian," I said as I offered him my hand once more. He had no choice but to take it, he might've been an asshole, but he had to treat me nicely. Once his hand was shaking mine, I used all of the strength in my enhanced arm and hand muscles to crush his hand, I stopped as soon as his eyes started tearing up with pain. I let him go with a smile, no one seemed to have witnessed that, other than a wide-eyed Lieutenant Delacroix. I simply shrugged at her as a way to dismiss my action.

I was suddenly glad that I had been wearing my "all blacks" uniform. It was supposed to be worn underneath the ODST armor for operations that didn't involve vacuum. It was, as its nickname suggested, entirely black. Black combat boots, black cargo pants with pouches on the sides, and I had chosen to wear the black t-shirt with the legend 19th Battalion written in the chest and the symbol of said battalion on one of my sleeves. That shirt had been a gift from Colonel Zavala. He had managed to get his hands on a pack of ten and had given me five. I still had four undamaged ones, which was saying a lot.

Anyways, drifting away from the topic. My uniform might've not been the most formal, but it signaled me as an ODST soldier, that got the people in the room's respect. Save for Lieutenant Darbinian, but that matter was handled.

"Sergeant Francisco Castillo," a deep voice said.

"That would be me," I said as I shook the Ranger lieutenant's hand.

"My name is Yevgeny Nazarian," he said as he shook my hand. "I have heard some interesting stories about you."

"Really, from who?" I asked, curious, he had barely been on board this ship for twenty minutes, it was unlikely that someone from this ship had told him something about me.

"Your operations are well known in some circles, even if your name isn't," he said.

_Does that mean I'm famous?_ I asked myself.

"I was particularly impressed by that battery takedown you did in New Constantinople," he continued. The fact that he knew about that proved just how high his clearance level was, it had been classified as top secret because of the little matter involving the arbiter.

"We getting somewhere here?" I asked, perhaps a little bit to sharply. "Lieutenant."

"Not really, I just wanted you to know that I am impressed by your record," he stated.

"May I ask why you've been snooping around my record?" I asked, this time with a calmer voice.

"I just wanted to see what I was going to have for support when I transferred here, I am actually glad to have someone like you here, most OSDTs are… less than easy to deal with. Since you have worked with marine and army personnel in the recent past, I assume you and I will have no such problem."

"Probably not," I said. There was something about the calm demeanor of this guy that unnerved me, but he was probably as nervous as I was during the conversation, he was, after all, talking to a decorated ODST, veteran of numerous campaigns as well as various operations.

The lieutenant told me some quick pointers about his platoon, it was composed of three ten-man squads and they functioned as spearheads for larger Army operations, they would have a similar job to ours during their stay on the ship. I was actually glad to have another specialized team on board the ship in addition to Pavel and me. We were good, but we were only two men, and without replacements, we couldn't really do much other than small missions that required some of my trademark slick maneuvering. Pavel would've called it luck, but he had been pretty lucky as well. His entire unit had been wiped out back in Jericho VII, he was all that remained of the Drop Jet Platoon of the 105th.

"What missions do you usually partake in?" Nazarian asked me.

"I thought that you had gone through my files."

"Yes, but even with my contacts I wasn't able to get past some black-inked sections."

"Well lieutenant, I'm usually dropped on hot zones, with my pod acting as a kinetic projectile as well as deployment, then I proceed to clear said hot-zone to establish a landing zone for the rest of the troops on board the ship. That's what I generally do, although I also partake in larger operations as well as more specialized operations," I explained.

"I see."

"Ok, now that you have all made acquaintances with each other, I recommend you return to your quarters and rest, then get to know the ship. We'll be leaving the system in a few hours, after that we make a jump towards the frontline."

I saluted the officers as they left the room, leaving it empty save for Commander Albaf and me.

"So, what do you think?" Captain Brooks asked us.

"Very capable men, sir," Eliza's voice said as her hologram popped up on a small holopad.

"Yes, thank you Eliza, I take it that you have managed to get your hands on all their files."

"Yes sir, just like you ordered, the only one I wasn't able to crack completely was the file on one Lieutenant Yevgeny Nezarian."

"The ranger," I said.

"Yes, the Army Ranger," Eliza repeated.

"Well, what is your take on them," Brooks asked the human crewmembers.

"I think they are good officers, the XOs looked a little green though," Albaf stated.

"I agree, Lieutenant Darbinian seemed like an asshole," I said.

"Yes, I had that same impression," the captain replied as he nodded.

"Seems that he is the son of a rich businessman back on Earth, that probably explains the reason why he behaves like he is better than everyone here."

"Now now, Eliza, that is stereotypical to all the sons of rich businessmen on Earth, but I agree with your opinion," said Brooks.

"What about the other XO?" asked Albaf.

"I wouldn't worry about her," Eliza started. "Her psych evaluation marks her as shy, not ideal for leadership, but her practical grades outweigh that small issue. She graduated top of her class in Luna Academy, she was attached to the 3rd Battalion immediately after she graduated, initial reviews on her by the platoon staff sergeant marked her as incapable and lacking will and charisma, the following showed her as an inspirational leader who would die for men that she barely knew, a brilliant tactician and willing to do what it took, all from the same soldier."

"Thanks Eliza, that'll be all."

"Captain," she said as her hologram flickered and died. She had a way of not being a mean AI or prankster to Navy personnel.

"Staff Sergeant?"

"She's pretty," I said simply.

"My thoughts exactly," Brooks stated. "Dismissed."

Albaf and me left the room, she signaled that she wanted to talk to me.

"Time for a body scan," she said. I followed her to the medbay. Doctor Zhivago was there, with a couple of nurses sitting around as well.

"Vacate the room," Albaf ordered. The nurses left immediately, the doc stayed for a little bit longer.

"May I ask why?"

"No Doctor, you may not."

"Don't worry doc, we're not going to have sex or anything in here," I said with a big smile. The doc returned that smile before leaving.

As soon as the doors closed, my face met the end of a rather potent slap.

"That was because I am a lady, and you have to treat me as such," Albaf stated angrily.

_Did your mother tell you that?_

She slapped me again, at first I though that my brain-mouth filter had malfunctioned, but her next comment proved me wrong.

"And that, was because I don't like you."

"Ma'am," I said, my cheeks stinging.

"Now, if you'll please stand here…"

Fifteen minutes later the full body scan was done, I was headed towards my quarters, where I expected to find Pavel either sleeping or having some 'alone' time. A few weeks ago I would've added 'flopping on top of Vicky' to the list, but she had died in the Covenant boarding raid.

Turns out my friend was sleeping and not having alone time.

"Wake up sergeant!" I called out.

"Frankie, they're looking for you," he mumbled. "What?"

He sat up from his rather narrow bed and looked at me while scratching his head.

"You've been promoted," I said. "You've also been issued a Silver Star," I said.

"Another one?" he asked.

"Yep,"

"What did you get?" he asked.

"A promotion and a Gold Star," I said.

"Makes sense, since you're the higher-ranking soldier you get the higher commendations."  
>"I did save the captain," I said "and with him the ship."<br>"True, but you let your girlfriend get shot, " he said. "Oh, that's right, your _ex_-girlfriend."

I knew my friend too well and realized he was joking around, but the comment still hurt.

"That was low," I said.

"You're right, I'm sorry," he said as he opened the wooden box and tossed it to an empty bed. I told him about the replacements and he said that he hadn't seen any new crewmembers; he hadn't been called to act as a tour-guide to show the ship to the replacements. We talked about the new soldiers and marines in our ship for a while before he started asking me what I thought of them. I told him about the pretty Delacroix, the asshole Darbinian and the Major and Captain. He laughed when I told him how I crushed his hand, although I kept the details out, I always had had a very strong handshake, so Pavel wouldn't ask any questions, sooner or later I'd have to tell him about my augmentations, he was my friend and a squadmate, he'd have to learn one way or the other, but for now, keep the secret stuff secret.

"Dibs on the pretty lieutenant," Pavel said.

"She's all yours," I said, slightly annoyed at his calling dibs, after all I wanted to keep my options open.

"Damn right she is, it shouldn't be long before you receive some comfort at the hands of Warrant Officer Marina Bogdanovic!" he proclaimed. "She likes you, you know."

"Of course she likes me, everybody does, you should know that already Pavel."

He simply rolled his eyes.


	34. Surprise!

Chapter XXXIV: Surprise!

**August 4, 2011 (UNSC Calendar)/ four months later**

**UNSC **_**Inconvenience,**_** in orbit above Alderaan, Aegis 4 system.**

"The Covenant have regrouped on the other side of the planet, they have only ten ships to out fifteen, which means the Navy is about to get their asses whooped. For some reason or other, the covvies have decided that something in this planet is of interest to them, they have set up a large garrison on this point right here. Most other ships with troop-transport capacity have been destroyed or already deployed the soldiers they could, not us, however, we get to go in first to crush the covvie bastards."  
>The Captain was a rather gifted orator, she could get her men going, but lacked the finesse of other officers when it came to speeches. At least she got to the point. I was standing next to Captain Sharma, she was giving a briefing to Echo Company, the soldiers there were listening intently. I was acting as some sort of bodyguard, flanking the Captain on the right while his XO flanked him on his left, Pavel was standing a couple of steps back, he was already fully armored, same as I was. I think the captain wanted us here because Helljumper presence usually boosted morale. We were considered assholes, but everyone knew we were deadly as hell.<p>

"Well, arm up marines, we're going in soon."

The marines spread out a little in the massive hangar of the frigate, they headed towards the ammunition crates and started loading up on ammunition, I could see the Army boys and girls on the other side of the hangar, they would serve as a second front by attacking the covvie landing forces on their front, Marines would attack from behind. We would cause as much chaos as humanly possible so that we could pave the way for the Army to utterly crush the covvies. That was their job, we killed fast, they killed thoroughly.

"Captain?"

"Yes staff sergeant?"

"Where do Pavel and I fit in?" I asked.

"You'll be a diversion," he said.

_Great. _It wasn't unexpected, but it was still troublesome to be sent on dangerous missions.

"How will we cause the diversion?" I asked.

"Any way you want," he said.

"Sounds good," Pavel commented.

It did sound good, that meant we got to take whatever we wanted. By whatever we wanted, I mean whatever we could fit into our pods, but it still was quite a lot of gear that we normally wouldn't have been allowed. I nodded at Pavel and he headed towards the armory, he'd be back soon enough.

"Any specifics on our mission?" I asked.

"You'll be dropped at a location of your choice, then you will make your way to the perimeter of the Covenant garrison, once you are there you will cause a diversion, you won't be alone on this one, the rangers will go in on the other side of the Covenant garrison as soon as all attention is focused on you, about ten minutes later the bulk of our force will strike."  
>"Roger that, sir."<p>

I headed towards the armory, I could gear up there without the crowd, besides, I'd have to talk to Pavel for a bit. When I entered the room, Pavel was already making his way out. He was carrying a mortar tube in one hand and the base in the other, his machine gun was slung over his shoulder and his shotgun was strapped to his back.

"Help me out here," he said. I took the mortar base from him and found a box of shells for the weapon, I placed them nearby and then started loading up, I had a preloaded drum magazine, ONI had stopped issuing them to us when we had our ship filled with regular troops. I had a bunch of them saved up in my room, so I didn't have to worry about keeping mine, if I ever ran out of drum magazines, I could always ask Marina to make me a new one, she was good at that kind of thing. I pocketed the last magazine into my pouches I was ready to go. My knives were sharpened, my guns were clean, and I had my mind set to kill. However, I wasn't done with the armory just yet. I had been told that I could cause I diversion any way I wanted, and that's what I would do. I grabbed a SRS99, more commonly known as the sniper rifle, and attached it to the magnetic clamps on my back. I then grabbed a bandolier of sniper rifle ammunition and strapped it across my shoulder, it was the only place it could go comfortably for now. In addition to that I shouldered a pair anti-personnel mines for protection. I heaved up the mortar ammunition and base, and headed towards the SOEIV bay.

On the way there I came across a group of flight officers making their way to the hanger, amongst them was Marina.

"What are you doing here?" I asked as I set down the crate of mortar ammunition.

"The captain wants us ready to deploy any minute, so we're headed towards our ships," she explained.

"Oh, see you later then."  
>"Frank?"<p>

"Yes?"

"Good luck," she said as she turned away.

I shrugged and picked up the crate and base again. Once in the SOEIV bay, I helped Pavel fit the equipment into the various compartments that the pods had, it took some work and some clever positioning, but we succeeded.

"You two ready?" asked a navy technician.

"Yes we are," Pavel replied. Having said that, we both hopped in on our pods. We banged the hull twice to signal that we were good to go before the screen of my pod flickered to life.

"Sergeant, glad to see you're ready," Lieutenant Yevgeny Nazarian's scarred face said. His face gave way to a satellite picture of the Covenant garrison. It was composed of several large buildings and lots and lots of vehicles, there were some purple blurs which were definitely banshees there as well. Luckily, there wasn't a cruiser nearby, that's the only reason this op had been green-lighted.

"Which side will you be landing on?" he asked me. The map showed to areas and highlighted them in green, they were the two flanking/diversion positions that me and Pavel and the Rangers would take. I gave them one quick look.

"Pavel?"  
>"We're only two men Frank."<br>"Right. We'll land on the northeastern point," I said. It was the one that looked like it had less enemy concentration. The small squadron of ghosts that the covvies sported was also farther away from there than from the other flanking position. It was the easier one. As much as it pained me to admit it, we'd have to let the rangers take the hard one.

"Roger that sergeant," Nazarian said and the screen flickered out.

The pods rocked a little bit as they were positioned into their final launching position. The lights above my head went from red to green, and I felt a small lurch. I saw that Alderaan, the planet that we were landing on, was mostly barren. It had its different climates, but for some reason or other there weren't large concentrations of fauna such as the Amazon back on Earth, or the Highland Forest in Reach, nothing like Aztlan's vast tropical jungles. My pod started rocking as we entered the atmosphere. The land where we would crash into was looking mostly black, it was right before dawn down there, we would strike right as the sun rose over the covvie garrison.

The bottom crystal of my pod polarized and became a screen. It outlined the natural features of the land below us and highlighted with green the landing zone and with red the covvie garrison. I maneuvered my pod so that we would fall down right in the middle of the green area, about a kilometer and a half away from the edge of the Covenant garrison. We would have to haul all of our extra equipment, but we certainly wouldn't be spotted.

Just as the temperature started to drop, we landed. It was a beautiful landing, I barely moved from my position on the pod. There had been no wind or currents to disturb the path of my SOEIV. I opened the door of my pod and slung my BR55 while I attached the sniper rifle to my back. I strapped the mines to my lower back and carried the mortar's base with my hands. I looked at the area ahead of me and marked a position on top of a small hill with my HUD. A waypoint immediately appeared where I had signaled, visible only in the hardened visor of my helmet and Pavel's. We would meet there.

The hill I had pointed to was a beautiful position for the mission at hand. It overlooked the garrison, but wasn't too close to it. It provided some cover for us from the troops below us, but it gave us a lovely sniping position at the same time. I was glad that I had brought the large rifle. When I arrived at the hill Pavel had already set down a box of mortar shells as well as a couple of landmines. I tossed him the mortar's base and he proceeded to attach it to the tube. He set it up so that it faced the garrison. I climbed up the rest of the hill, crouching as I reached the top and eventually going prone. I zoomed in on the garrison. It was nighttime, so there wasn't much activity right now. I could spot a few lonely elites doing patrol, some grunts chatting, and the ever-present jackal snipers. I saw some flashes of orange in the distance, across the garrison.

_Looks like the Rangers have landed._

I flashed my UV strobe a couple of lights. It was some sort of light that went through a higher (or lower) frequency than human eyes could see. Or something like that. You could only see it if you were wearing a UNSC helmet with a visor or goggles. I flashed it a couple of times before I received a response.

"We…"

"Will…"

"Move…"  
>"After…"<p>

"You…"

My visor's programming helpfully translated the Morse code. I had learned some of it in boot camp, but I had forgotten most of it by now. I flashed my UV light a couple of times to signal agreement and then headed back down, Pavel had already assembled the mortar and had placed the landmines in likely flanking positions on the sides of the hill. Those would serve as a warning for us to bail out as soon as possible.

"You ready?" I asked.

"Always."  
>"Always? Who do you think you are? A movie actor?"<br>"Just start sniping away."  
>I moved back to the top of the hill and unslung my BR55. I placed it to my side and then grabbed my sniper rifle from my back. I wasn't a professional sniper per se, but I had been trained in how to use it and measure wind and shit back in boot camp. I had made half-decent scores, so I had been certified to use it in the battlefield. This was the first time that I was using it when I wasn't in a clinch. I unstrapped the bandolier and placed the five magazines to my left, one next to the other.<p>

"Pavel, where are you aiming at?" I asked.

"Umm, three degrees to the right of north," he said.

"Ok, that's a way to put it," I replied to his unorthodox way of pointing out his target.

"Move the mortar six degrees to the right, then set it for two-point-six clicks."  
>"Done," he said after a few moments.<p>

"Ok, after you hear my shot, fire two shells in quick succession."

"Yessir," he replied.

I scanned the area ahead of me. The closest covvie was a jackal sniper, he was about a click away. That was good, it meant that we'd have lots of time to cause mayhem. I switched my sight to the edge of the camp. There were some elites doing patrols, all of them minors, I changed target again, looking for a higher-ranking officer. Finally, I settled on an elite major. It was standing in between two small covvie tents. Looking bored.

I sighted the crosshairs on the elite's chest. The sniper's sensors told me that there was a weak draft coming from the west. I adjusted my aiming accordingly and then raised the crosshair so that it would be pointing above the elite's head.

I squeezed the trigger.

The elite would never hear the blast that hit him, for that matter, most other covvies wouldn't hear it. The SRC99 was as laud as it could get, but sound diminishes as it travels distance, if you weren't listening carefully, you'd barely notice the noise when you were that far away. The elite's right shoulder was hit, with its arm actually flying off from its socket. I still don't understand why they never bother to turn their shields on in _all _combat situations.

I switched my sight to the jackal sniper and took him out considerably easier. He was twice as close and I didn't have to take the wind into account. I saw a couple of muzzle flashes on the other side of the garrison and then heard two loud thuds behind me. I managed to take down two unsuspecting elite minors before the mortars landed.

When they landed, they made a brilliant explosion that engulfed about five fusion coils each. Then those fusion coils exploded and ignited the ones next to them, causing a very majestic display of fireworks. That's when all the camp woke up. I could see confused elites, scared grunts and jackals, as well as a few hunters, stoic as ever. The elites doing patrol immediately turned their shields on, but the recently woken ones hadn't, some of them weren't even wearing full combat armor.

I reloaded my rifle and took three elites, the last shot went wide and hit the ground next to a grunt, which proceeded to yelp and run away in fright.

I heard another thud and the mortar shell landed about a hundred meters to the left of the blast zone. Pavel was smart enough that he didn't need my instructions, he would spend half his shells by randomly changing targets before he requested more valuable ones. Meanwhile, I was two mags down and needed to start taking care of my targets.

The Covenant might've been stupid for not having their shield on, or for not having better sentries, or for many other reasons, but they were still a trained military force, I could see elites hopping into wraiths in the distance, some ghosts were already crewed, and soldiers were now crouching next to rocks or buildings. They still hadn't figured where I was firing from, but it wouldn't take them long to realize.

"Targets?"  
>"Aim five degrees to your right from your last firing position and set the mortar to one-point-eight kilometers."<br>Pavel didn't bother to reply, I just watched as a hunter was blasted sideways by the explosion, it didn't even have time to recover before another shell finished the job. It's partner roared in anger and charged nowhere in particular, crushing a grunt before finally realizing the futility of what it was doing. I shot another elite minor, only managing to knock down its shields, I killed it with the next shot, but this meant that most elites were now ready for action. I held my fire for a few minutes and watched as the bulk of the covvie forces moved towards the other side of the camp, where the Rangers were doing their thing.

I decided to help out a bit and managed to take down an ultra. I was down to my last clip.

"Target?" Pavel asked me.

"Just adjust the distance to two kilometers exactly."

A few seconds later a wraith blew up in a blue explosion.

"Last round Frank," Pavel said.

"Roger," I answered. There was already a group of covvies making their way here. A lance of elites, about a dozen grunts, and the lone hunter. We would be in for some serious trouble very soon.

"Ok, switch twenty degrees to the left, adjust to one-point-two kilometers."

The last shell hit a lookout tower, killing a jackal. It wasn't that valuable a target, but it would prevent us from being sniped while we dealt with the advancing enemies.

"How's it going?" Yevgeny asked. Made sense, no use in radio silence now.

"We're alright," I replied.

"Glad to hear that," the lieutenant answered. This time I could hear plasma fire and gunfire through the radio.

At that moment a timer appeared on my HUD. It showed 10:00 and decreasing. It was the estimated time of arrival for the Army and the Marines. We would have to hold out for that time, or we could run away and live, but we were ODSTs, not regulars. I emptied my last magazine on an elite major headed our way, I missed two shots and used the next two to bring it down, not my proudest moment, but it was doing front flips all over the place.

"How is it going?" Pavel asked, he was lying down next to me, his machinegun already propped on the floor and aimed at the group of covvies that were advancing.

"As well as you'd expect."

Our job here was done, we had caused mayhem, disrupted the covvie routine, they were confused and not coordinated, thinking that they were under attack by a large force. In a couple minutes time, they'd realize their mistake and send out hunting parties for us, letting the rest of the garrison lower its guard down, even if they official alert didn't, that's about the time that the big guns were supposed to roll in. In the meantime, we just had to survive long enough to be evaced.

I hit a grunt in the head, killing it instantly. I had mixed feelings about that, for one, I was glad that I had made the kill, but on the other side, it meant that they were now close enough for me to use my BR55 comfortably.

"Take the ogre," I said.

"On it."  
>Pavel's gun started roaring and spewing our lead, most rounds hit the hunter, but it promptly crouched behind its shield. Pavel shifted his aim slightly, so that the armor-piercing ammunition hit the hunter's arm. If he was lucky, he'd manage to wreck the cannon implanted to its arm.<p>

I simply dedicated myself to hitting easy targets, mostly grunts and the occasional skirmisher. After four minutes of that, there were two dozen covvies about two hundred meters away, well within the range of a decent firefight. That's when I really thanked ONI for kidnapping me, whenever I felt like I was in more danger, my body seemed to work even faster. I had no doubt that my reflexes were enhanced already, but this just seemed absurd. I would fire as quick as the rifle allowed me to, which means that I was almost full auto, but the recoil seemed like I was simply firing a single shot. It was great.

"We're going to cut this close!" Pavel warned over the sound of his M247L.

"Shut up and fire!" I replied. I was already down to half my magazines, working through fourth.

_I really should've brought more BR ammunition._

It all seemed to be going well until I heard an explosion. We hadn't thrown any grenades, so the only option was the mines. I was sure that there was an unhappy covvie somewhere nearby with its legs completely blown off. I also knew that there was a bunch of them making their way here as well.

"Time to go," I said as I slid away from the summit of the hill. I tossed a flashbang to fuck with the covvies and to gain us a couple of additional seconds.

1:59

"Two minutes, that's all we need!" Pavel said.

"That's more than we might get," I reminded him.

We pulled back to a group of rocks that served as nice cover, the ground behind us was open ground, so we'd have to make a stand here before we were sent some support. I shot an imprudent elite after Pavel knocked its shields down, we had definitely killed more than two dozen covvies, so they seemed to have decided we were important, so they sent more after us.

_Oh, the downsides of being a deadly and feared soldier._

"A talented one too!" Pave added.

It seemed to be going reasonably well until the timer reached 0:48. Pavel's rock exploded and he had to dive to another one. The hunter had finally gotten its chance for revenge and didn't want to waste it. It fired a couple of other times, hitting rocks without people behind them. I managed to kill what seemed like the last remaining grunt before the hunter charged towards us. It was now only him and us now.

"What now?" I asked.

"I got an idea," my friend replied.

His idea must've been the stupidest thing I had ever heard, but it was the only thing we had. We left our cover so that we could see the hunter more easily. There wasn't any other covvies, so in theory, the plan should've worked. In theory.

The hunter leveled its arm at us and fired, we both dived out of the way and raced towards it. It was probably the stupidest plan ever. I think I mentioned that already. The hunter seemed confused for a couple of moments before it fired again. We both dodged out of the way of the green bolt of energy and made it to within ten feet of the hunter. We spread out and waited for it to charge one of us. When it did, the other one would shoot it in the back, and repeat. That is, provided we managed to survive its charges.

I dodged a hit from its shields while Pavel emptied his magazine on its back. The hunter turned and did attacked Pavel while I switched to full-auto, emptying ten rounds on its back before it turned to face me again.

"Where the hell are they? The timer hit zero about a minute ago!" Pavel complained.

I was to busty rolling backwards to avoid being stomped, so I didn't answer. I stood up just as the hulking beast turned, but it seemed to have gotten the gist of what we were doing, because it immediately turned to face me, cannon already aiming straight at my chest. I jumped to the side, a lot faster than I should've been able to. A lot faster than anyone should've been able to. It was almost fast enough.

I cried out as the blast nicked me in the ribs, not quite punching through my armor, but heating it up enough to leave some third-degree burns on my torso.

"Aw fuck!" I cried as I fell. The hunter was already walking towards me, ignoring all the rounds going through it, by all means it should've been dead already, even for a hunter, this guy refused to give up. That was about the time that the Big Guy Up There decided to give my friend and me another chance. The hunter's body exploded in three different points, orange blood and gore falling on Pavel and me. I turned and saw an Armadillo, it wasn't even a hundred feet away.

An Armadillo is an AFV, which stands for an armored fighting vehicle. It had eight wheels, larger even than those on a warthog, on each side. Its body is angled so that it can deflect projectiles, not that it matters much with plasma, but it does the trick against needlers and spikers. On top of that, it has its armament. Its primary armament is a 30mm autocannon that fires 200 rounds per minute. To complement that, it has an M247H machinegun mounted there as well. It also has launchers that can be modified to launch anything from SPANKr rockets to Jackhammers, to Arrowheads. It was an ugly vehicle and had nothing sleek about it. It was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen.

"Sergeant, are you alright?" asked a dismounted Army soldier.

I nodded. I was already taking off my armor to have some biofoam rubbed on me. I had very little of that special gel on my thigh case and this injury wasn't serious enough to be worth it. My entire right side was burnt red and black, but it wasn't long before a medic started rubbing biofoam and then bandaging my torso.

"You should be fine," he said. "Hell, you could keep fighting without too much trouble."

"Good," I said, as I put on my armor again.

We hitched a ride on the Armadillo. It led us towards the rear of the advance, it wasn't really an advance, the garrison had fallen within minutes. The Marines had met with the Army and then proceeded to kill everything in the vicinity very thoroughly. There was even a small command post set up already. It hadn't been more than five minutes after the timer reached zero.

I winced as I jumped of the Armadillo and my armor chafed against my side. It didn't hurt as bad as it should've, but the bandages were doing a pretty nice job. Major Cavallaro hadn't said anything about pain-tolerating drugs, so it was probably the medic who I had to thank for that.

"Staff Sergeant!" someone called.

I assumed that it wasn't me they were talking to, so I kept walking.

"ODST!"

I turned to face Major Hernandez, the man in charge of the Army assault. For some reason it was the Army who helped us and not the marines. Not complaining about that one.

"You alright?" he asked.

"Ready for action sir," Pavel and me said.

"Good, but right now, you need a rest, you've earned it."

* * *

><p>Unfortunately, we didn't get to rest, at least not right away. A warthog turned up and called for Pavel and me expressively. We groaned and complained, but we had no choice but to hop on the vehicle. We drove across a lovely sight of dead elites, dead grunts, dead jackals, and dead hunters. The smoke and fire really added to the overall experience.<p>

We hopped of right next to the largest covvie building in the entire complex. There was a marine platoon standing guard next to it, I don't know what they were protecting it from, but it seemed to be important enough to waste thirty men on.

"Over here," one of the marines said. We followed him into the building and he led us to Commander Albaf and Lieutenant Wilkins.

"Commander! What are you doing here?" I asked, surprised. In my six years of being on board the UNSC _Inconvenience_ not once I had seen the commander on a combat situation, hell, I hadn't even seen her outside of the ship.

"Well, a certain situation requires my attention," she said. "Follow me."  
>Pavel and I did as we were told, walking behind the two ONI officers. I was a little startled that they hadn't brought anything heavier than their pistols here. No armor to speak of.<p>

"The Covenant were digging, whatever they wanted, was obviously important."  
><em>Makes sense.<em>

"They were digging?" Pavel asked.

"Yes," the commander said as a couple of purple doors slid open. They were larger than the usual covvie purple doors, and we actually stepped into an elevator. The commander pressed her hand into a Covenant hologram and the platform started going down.

"The levels below have already been cleared," she said. "But all soldiers have been dismissed and are groundside. I am not stupid enough to go down there without protection, so I called you two."

"Yes ma'am," I said. I wasn't entirely sure what she was talking about, but my job was not to ask questions.

The elevator stopped after what seemed like an eternity and we stepped into a small tunnel that made me feel claustrophobic. I walked behind the lieutenant, who was walking behind Albaf. We crossed the tunnel in about a minute before we came into what must've been the most massive cavern that existed in the universe. You could've fit a _Marathon_-class cruiser inside of there, no problem. What really caught my attention, however, was a small building. It looked like Covenant architecture, only that it was more angular, with no rounded edges, and the most startling thing of all. It didn't have a single trace of purple on it.

"We are now two kilometers underground," Albaf told us. She was sweating profusely. It must've been hot down here, but thankfully I had my suit on. Its climate control function was really a blessing.

Albaf led us towards the gray building, which seemed almost embedded into the floor and walls of the cavern. It was only about a hundred meters away, so no need for an extremely long walk.

"Stay here," she said as soon as we reached what looked like doors.

"Ma'am?" Pavel asked.

"Do you not understand?"

"Sorry ma'am."

Pavel and I both stood guard next to the door as the Commander and the Lieutenant both stepped into the building. They were there for about fifteen minutes before they exited. The lieutenant was now carrying something in a small case. He put the case into a bag that he had been carrying and pulled out a couple of C12 demolition charges. I instinctively winced. I was good with explosives, but C12 was known for being notoriously unstable, and the fact that you could punch clear through a few meters of Titanium-A armor with a square inch of it made for a really dangerous combination.

"Staff Sergeant, place this charges on the walls next to this building," the Wilkins told me as he handed me two rather large blocks of the explosive. "And then place these two in the tunnel as we leave."

I did as I was told, feeling nervous, more because I didn't know why I was doing this, or what the Commander had gotten from the building than because of the deadly explosives in my hands. I was done in a few seconds, expert knowledge on explosives helped me out a bit, but I still double-checked the charges after I placed them.

"You done Staff Sergeant?" Albaf asked.

"Yes ma'am," I replied.

"Well, let's go," she said. "Sergeant, don't just stand there looking like an idiot."

For a moment I thought she was talking to me, but then I remembered that Pavel had been promoted to sergeant as well. We followed the commander back to the elevator, about halfway through the ride she detonated the charges, and that was that.


	35. Human Targets

Chapter XXXV: Human Targets

**August 31, 2540 (UNSC Calendar)/**

**UNSC **_**Inconvenience, **_**Beta 415 system**

We had taken our obligatory jumps after that battle back in Alderaan, since we had only been traveling for about three weeks, with two more days worth of traveling ahead, there had been no need for cryo, instead, the captain had decided that it was probably best for all the new soldiers to get to know the ship and each other. His decision was stupid. Echo and B companies had already served together before being transferred here, and it wasn't likely that UNSC Marines and UNSC Army would start to get along any time soon.

"Wanna go outside?" Pavel asked.

"No, its crowded as fuck," I replied. It actually was, there were 300 soldiers and marines on board, as well as about a hundred sailors.

"You can't stay locked up in here forever, besides, I want to check out the new meat."

"Male or female?" I asked.

"What do you think?"  
>I groaned.<p>

"You owe me Frank," he insisted.

"Fine, fine, I'll go, but just because you saved my ass back in Gracia," I said.

"And New Constantinople."

"Want me to start reminding you all the times here I have saved your ass?"

"Good point."

We left the small room that was supposed to fit six soldiers and walked into the corridor. The last time the ship had been this full, there had been a couple of rollerblading championships going on. The wildest thing that you had right now was some marines playing poker.

"Where do you want to go?" I asked my friend.

"We'll go to the gym, that's where you usually find all the fit girls," he said.

He made a pretty decent point, except that every single woman that was in the corps or in the army had to be fit, all the men too, it was obligatory to pass recruitment.

The gym was a rather large room for such a small ship, with various different exercise machinery and the like. It even had a professional-sized boxing ring, which right now was being used for a sparring match between a couple of marines. There was a small crowd watching in addition to other people just doing their own exercise routines.

"See something you like?" I asked Pavel.

"That one over there, in the third treadmill."

"Nah, she looks like she could beat me up," I said.

"You're right, how about that one jumping the rope?"

"Better," I admitted. "Could do with some improvements though."  
>"God I hate sports bras," Pavel said.<p>

UNSC-issued sports bras were specifically designed to look unattractive as possible and to avoid any movement of women's breasts. That way when women were exercising in the mixed-gender environment that the military was, it wouldn't cause any desires or 'perverse feelings.' It would've probably worked had the item of clothing in question been longer, or if the soldier using it was wearing something on top of it. Her extremely tight shorts didn't help to ward off any 'perverse feelings.'

"What do you think of that little piece of work over there?" Pavel asked while he pointed to a lieutenant doing something involving a large bouncing ball.

"That's lieutenant Delacroix," I explained. "B Company's XO."  
>"I'm going to talk to her," Pavel said. I shrugged and let the man do what he wanted, instead directing my attention to the fight going on in the boxing ring.<p>

There were two marines fighting with MMA gloves. They weren't wearing any helmets, but were using mouth guards. They were doing full-body fighting, with kicks, elbows, and knees allowed. The marine on the left was doing a better job than his fellow opponent. About ten seconds after I decided to start watching he delivered a kick to his opponent's head. It was a decent kick, not really spectacular, but the other fighter was groggy enough that he couldn't block it. The kick connected straight with his jaw and knocked him out.

There was some cheering and people handing UNSC coupons to each other grudgingly. Pavel was still talking to Delacroix, so I was forced to watch the fighting without actually taking part in any of the betting. After three fights I decided that I'd better leave and do some exercise myself, because none of the confrontations here were really worth it. I decided to head to the area that had all the weights when someone called me.

"Hey Helljumper!"

I saw Pavel turn around in the corner of my eye, but as soon as he realized he wasn't the Helljumper in question he returned to chatting up a very sweaty Chloe Delacroix, lieutenant.

"What?" I asked with an annoyed tone.

"Let's see if you are really as good as everyone makes you out to be," he said. He in question was an Army trooper leaning on the ropes of the ring. He was about an inch shorter than me but was much more solidly built, with his arms looking like they could make a nice job in an arm-wrestling match against Sergeant Gabuka. I hopped on the ring, not because I really wanted to, but because the guy had taken a direct shot at the ODST unit.

"Rules?" I asked as I put on some rather sweaty gloves.

"Standard MMA, no groin punches or eye gouges," the soldier said as he hopped on the balls of his feet.

"No bone breaks or dislocations either I take it," I added. The soldier gulped visibly, having just realized what he had gotten himself into. I took off my shirt, which got a few whistles and catcalls. Then I unstrapped my boots and removed my socks, my feet were slightly sweaty, which would give me a good grip on the floor, not that I planned on needing it, I intended to end the fight quickly.

As the bell rang and my opponent threw the first punch, I had to remember myself that I had super-human strength and reflexes, and that I'd have to really check myself if I was going to do this. I also realized that everyone was cheering for the army trooper, even my fellow marines. Helljumpers were definitely not liked over the military.

I ducked the first punch easily and landed a counter in the man's belly, forcing him to double over. Then I kicked him right above the knee, forcing him to the ground. I could've ended it right there, but I took a couple of steps back and let the soldier stand up, more to embarrass him than anything else. I blocked his next attack, which consisted of a kick to my ribs, with my right hand, using my left to land a weak jab in his chin. Then he swung a hook to my jaw. I let it hit. It was at that moment that I realized how much faster the enhancements had made me.

I rolled with the punch, as if it had knocked me to the ground, but right when I was in the appropriate position, I let out a kick, hitting my opponent in the face with my heel, he staggered a little. That was all I needed, I was instantly behind the man holding him in a choke. He struggled for a bit until I tightened my forearm against his throat, then he tapped out. We bumped fists and I left the ring.

I could've won the battle even without enhancements, don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to show off, it's merely the truth. The soldier looked embarrassed and confused as I left, and the crowd was muttering to themselves. A few marines patted me in the back and congratulated me, but the rest of the people here simply let me through.

I looked in Pavel's direction to see him giving me a double thumbs-up with a smile on his face. I nodded at him and he resumed his conversation with Lieutenant Delacroix. It seemed to be going well, otherwise he would've returned here with a palm-shaped bruise on the left side of his face. Or the right side, depends on the girl he had insulted.

_Good for him,_ I thought.

"Good for who?"

Lieutenant Nezarian was standing next to me, I hadn't seen him coming or even heard him. Granted, I wasn't looking for him or in 'alert mode', but it was still eerie how quietly he managed to sneak up on me.

"Pavel there, he seems to be hitting it off with that Lieutenant," I pointed.

"Ah, Miss Delacroix."

"Yes."  
>"She's probably too polite to crush his hopes," the man said. I laughed at it.<p>

"Probably true," I agreed after a few moments of laughing. "What can I help you with lieutenant?" I asked.

"I watched your fight," he said. "Rather impressive."

"Thank you," I said as I nodded.

"Where did you get that training?" he asked.

"ODST training camp," I said. It was pretty obvious.

"Well yes, but you moved a lot faster and more fluidly than any ODST I had ever fought against, I would say a little too fast, but I know better."

I glanced at the lieutenant; he had a weird look in his eyes that tipped me on his suspicions. The man had read my file, so he knew a lot of stuff that I had been involved in, but I was pretty damn sure that ONI wouldn't allow just anyone to access the section that said that I had received enhancements additional to the original ones that every man or woman that joined the military received.

I laughed in reply to his comment.

"Well, I'll see you around," he said as he turned and left me wondering whether I should tell Albaf about the encounter.

I decided that it was best to forget about it and started exercising my attractive muscles, wincing as my still-burned side chafed against my arm. It was funny how I hadn't felt any pain during the fight. I hadn't been touched there, but at least some of the movements should've put some strain at the burnt skin. I shrugged to myself before I kept on lifting weights for a while until a familiar voice interrupted me.

"I thought I told you to take it easy."  
>"Hey doc, how's it going?" I asked.<p>

Doctor Yuri Zhivago, was bench pressing far more weight than I would've expected him to be able to.

"I am bored as hell, I hate this no-cryo trips."

"Tell me about it," I said. Usually I would've spent the duration of the trip messing around with Lieutenant Layla Wickett, unfortunately, said woman had traveled halfway across human-held space to get away from me, unfortunate, I know.

"Need me to spot for you?" I asked the doctor.

"Sure, I have been wanting to try something heavier," he said. I left my own weights and headed back to the doctor, he had added two twenty-pound discs to the metal bar, that made for approximately 20 extra kilograms, that was a lot of weight, about the same as your six-year-old cousin that suddenly got bigger.

"Ready?" he asked.

"I'm right here doc," I reminded him.

"Ok," he huffed as he lifted the weights. To his credit, he managed to do seven before I had to pull the weights from his hands and into the rack.

"Ah," he groaned, "must be getting weaker."

"You seem alright to me doc," I said.

"Yeah, whatever."

* * *

><p>We were supposed to be arriving at this colony called Dawson's World, weird name, I know. It was the sixth planet from Beta 415's star. It was the only habitable planet in the entire system, and the only places where there were humans living, save for a couple of mining stations on the other planets. It was comparatively large compared to most colonies, large in size I mean, with three times the size of Reach. The planet had a very varied climate and was known for the vast glaciers that covered large stretched on land in the Polar Regions. Those made up for the small oceans that the planet had. It was supposed to be lovely for skiing, but soon it would be getting pretty damn hot. You know, with the glassing and all that stuff.<p>

We had been sent here for two reasons, to assist in the evacuation of civilians, which included kicking some serious Covenant ass while we were at it. The second reason was only known to five people on board, six if you count Eliza as a person, which right now, I wouldn't have had much trouble doing, I wanted to rip her circuits apart.

"Staff Sergeant, I've repeatedly told you that it is unnecessary for you to push your shoulders back that much, we are all aware that you are a male and a very capable soldier, you don't need to prove that to us," she was saying.

"For the last time Eliza, this is the way I fucking stand, if you don't like it feel free to blow your head off!" I yelled angrily.

The AI's holographic projection produced a gun from out of nowhere and blew her brains out, complete with holographic blood and skull fragments. It did not make me feel any better at all.

"I am really worried about your sadistic tendencies Staff Sergeant, I think I will recommend a psych evaluation for the next time we reach port."  
>I didn't bother to reply, instead I simply shut down the long cylindrical tube that happened to be the holopad from which Eliza was projecting her chosen appearance.<p>

"You do realize I can still see you and talk," her voice replied.

"Yes, but your voice is more soothing than your appearance," I said. Our AI was a smart AI, but she was by no means human. She could study behavioral patterns, psychology, read our files, watch movies, and a whole lot of other things to know how to push our buttons, but she wasn't naturally witty by any means, even she had to admit that I had bested her right now. Or she could just change her voice to make it sound like a dying grunt.

I'd have said that I was proud of winning a verbal argument against an AI, had the score not been 458-13 in her favor. She spent so much time messing with soldiers on board that many people could boast to having made her shut up, if only temporarily. What annoyed me the most was that she could mess with different people at the same time, she could just use different subroutines for that.

"Staff Sergeant, Sergeant, glad to see you're already here," Captain Brooks said as Albaf and Wilkins entered the room behind him.

"Sirs and ma'am," Pavel and I said as we saluted. Normally we wouldn't have done that, but all the new marine officers on board the ship got really pissy if we didn't give them an exceptional salute every time they walked by us in the corridor, although Pavel had gotten through the message that we would absolutely refuse to salute any officer that addressed us improperly. It had cost him a week of cleanup duty and a broken nose to a certain Lieutenant Krikor Darbinian.

"Ok, this is the mission at hand," the captain started. "That's a nice phrase, I should write it down… mission at hand," he said to himself. "Anyways, there was a large Insurrectionist cell operating in Dawson's, that's no surprise, every single planet has an innie cell on it. This planet, however, was the location to a rather powerful cell, the one that masterminded the Paradise bombings and that nasty incident in Cordoba. They are led by one Joanne Michaela Paradiso."

Pavel and me both raised our eyebrows, Joanne Paradiso was one of the top Insurrectionist leaders in the Inner Colonies, she had been number seven in the Most Wanted list ever since I had been sixteen.

"She is currently located in this warehouse right here," he said as a screen showed a place in the Creek City, the place where the majority of the Covenant had landed. The Army had done a good job holding off the onslaught, and there were Marines racing planetside to reinforce them. It looked like the warehouse was in the secure area of the town.

"We have knowledge that Paradiso owns a small freighter with slipspace capabilities, technically speaking she shouldn't use it, it's not a military craft, but then again, she's an innie."

We nodded simultaneously, to show that we had been listening.

"You two are the ones in this ship that posses the adequate training to enter the building and take her down."

"Sir," I interrupted, "are we supposed to capture her or to neutralize her?" I asked.

"It would be better if you could catch her alive, but this mission has wide parameters, if you know what I mean, you can kill her and there's no harm done."

"Sir," Pavel acknowledged.

"The warehouse is lightly guarded, only about a dozen of enemy combatants," Albaf chimed in. "We can tell from thermal imaging that they will move soon, perhaps using an evacuation craft as a shield. It doesn't seem like they know we are aware of their presence, so it should be relatively easy for you to catch them off guard."

"I assume that all of the guards are going to be neutralized permanently," Pavel half-stated half-asked.

"That is correct, only Paradiso is to be taken alive, and only then if it is possible."

"Understood Commander," I said.

"Very well, head towards Hangar Bay 3, you'll be dropped off half a block away from the target's location, then you'll make your way there. You may enter the building from any location you choose to."

"I assume we will have no support ma'am," Pavel said before I could stop him. I rolled my eyes and cursed under my breath.

Albaf eyed us quizzically before answering. "Since when has an ODST Helljumper been worried about support, specially when it comes to a dozen innies?" having said that, she left.

"Great going idiot," I said as I slapped Pavel in the back of the head.

"I already feel stupid, no need to make me feel worse," he said. An understanding friend might've agreed and apologized, followed by a pat on the back and saying something about how every soldier would've asked that. I was not an understanding friend.

"Damn right you should feel like an idiot!" I said as I punched him in the arm, "she'll look at us like we're regulars for the rest of her stay on this ship!"

"I said I was sorry," Pavel called out. He wasn't usually this 'sensitive', but he realized that Albaf's opinion of him might've decreased considerably. I knew that that wasn't the case; Pavel was lucky that Albaf wasn't an ODST officer, otherwise his head would've been chewed upon rather thoroughly.

Pavel simply walked out of the room after I had yelled at him, he wasn't offended or anything, but he was probably annoyed. As we always did before a mission, we headed towards the armory, since Army and Marines had the tradition of taking large amounts of ammunition and weaponry to the hangar so they could load up there, we were left with a mostly empty armory. Fortunately, it had all we needed. I grabbed ammunition for my BR55 (which was conveniently slung over my back already) and for my pistol. I also grabbed a suppressor for my rifle from the special ops section. Pavel wasn't about to take his M247L to this type of mission, but he wouldn't part with the shotgun I'd got him.

"Hey Pavel, why didn't you use that shotgun when we were almost crushed by the hunter?" I asked. "You know, back in Alderaan."  
>"Well you see, during the heat of the moment I actually forgot that I had it," he said sheepishly.<p>

"Asshole, you could've saved me this," I said as I pointed to my side, you know, the one that had been burnt.

"Not like you reminded me either," he said as he grabbed an MA5.

_Makes somewhat of a point._

"It is your gun."  
>"You gave it to me."<br>"What does that have to do with anything?" I asked.

"Titan squadron, please report to Hangar Bay 3," Eliza's voice called through the PA system.

"We'll have a serious talk about situational awareness once we return my friend," I said as I tossed him a suppressor for his assault rifle and another one for his pistol. His shotgun couldn't be suppressed, but it wasn't likely that we'd need it.

The hangar bay was empty, save for a certain pelican with red streaks and the inscription 'Mary's Little Lamb' on both its sides. It always surprised me that every time we managed to get on board this pelican in particular not a single round of enemy fire made contact with the craft. Marina must've been a hell of a pilot. Scratch that, she _was_ a hell of a pilot.

"You're late," she said.

"Yes, yes Warrant Officer, we know," Pavel said as he hopped on the pelican. I jumped behind him and could make out as this section of the hangar was locked off from the rest of the ship, we would be dropped from low orbit, so we didn't want all of the people on the hangar to be sucked off the ship.

"Ready to go Warrant Officer," an unknown voice said.

"Who's the new guy?" I asked.

"My copilot," Marina answered by rolling her eyes.

"You've never had a copilot before," Pavel noted.

"Well, someone wanted me to have one, don't really know why."  
>"How is he?" I asked.<p>

"I dunno. I have only spent about five minutes with him, he's only nineteen."  
>"People, I am right here!" he complained.<p>

"Nobody cares!" Pavel and me replied.

"What's his name?" Pavel asked.

"Petty Officer First Class Vince Sheppard," he said from the cockpit.

"Ok, whatever, let's get going," I said as I sat down.

The pelican's hatch doors closed and the hangar bay was left exposed to space. The vacuum sucked out the craft and we were left floating inside of the pelican. Pavel and I hadn't strapped down as we were supposed to, but it was fun to float around in zero gee, even if just for a few moments. The best part about that is watching your squadmate do a back flip and then fall down noisily on the floor as gravity took hold again. I fell down more graciously, but only barely.

"Take command of the ship Sheppard," Marina said.

"Isn't that against regulations?" asked the worried Petty Officer.

"It isn't if nobody finds out," she stated as she left the cockpit and sat in front of me.

"Why'd you get a squabbie for a partner?" I asked.

"I'm not entirely sure, we're both airmen though, so it shouldn't be a problem, besides, this ship only transports you two, who are ONI, which stands for _Naval_ Intelligence."

"That doesn't have anything to do with what I just asked."  
>Marina sighed. "Frank, why are you sending me mixed signals?" she asked suddenly.<p>

_Uh oh, trouble._

"What are you talking about?" I asked, fiddling with my rifle.

"I mean, sometimes you are like the best around me and the next moment you have no problem chatting up Army soldiers," she said.

"What?" I didn't really know what to say to that, so I had to deflect.

"Do you still love Layla?" she asked.

"No," I answered. It was the truth, although I did miss her sometimes.

"Do you like me?" she asked.

"Yes," I replied. I was thankful for my full-face helmet, otherwise everyone would've been able to see me blushing with awkwardness.

"Then why do you keep sending me mixed signals?" she asked, raising her voice.

"I do not send mixed signals, do I? Pavel, do I send mixed signals?"  
>"Does pain hurt? Is a planet's orbit an ellipse?"<p>

_Yay for friendship, _I thought hypocritically, I had just insulted my friend and now he was back with a vengeance.

"You do realize I'm right here?" Sheppard asked.

"Nobody cares!" we all said simultaneously.

As soon as we said that the craft shook violently and we all fell of our sits and to the ground, then we slammed back to the wall rather violently.

"What the fuck?" complained Pavel.

"Oops," came Sheppard's dull-voiced response.

"That bastard did that on purpose!" Pavel cried in outrage.

"Very observant genius," came the answer.

I helped Marina up and she looked me straight in the eyes. Well, straight in the visor, she was actually looking a little bit below my eyes, right around my cheekbones, but she didn't know that.

"Stop being so inconsistent," she said before she left back for the cockpit.

"What the hell is that supposed to mean?" I asked Pavel after opening a private comm line.

"Hell if I know, women are difficult," he said.

"You're right about that," I said. "Talking about women, whatever happened to you and Delacroix?"  
>"Nothing, I'm still working on that."<br>"Still working on that after two days? Man you must really like her if you are willing to waste so much time with her."

"Waste time? You're the one that spent almost five years with Wickett."  
>"Yes, but you don't seem to be able to have anything longer than a one night stand, and I'm pretty sure those don't last long either."<p>

"Hey, I have fun, besides, an ODST tattoo really gets the ladies going," Pavel said. My rather magnificent stealth insult went completely unnoticed.

"Hey…"

Or not.

"ETA thirty seconds!" Marina called.

The hatch of the pelican opened and we stood up. The city was in relatively good condition for having just fallen under a Covenant assault, with only a quarter of the town up in flames, UNSC ground forces were defending the rest.

"10 seconds!"

This would have to be a quick drop, otherwise the innies would notice a pelican dangerously close to their position and panic.

"Now!" she said.

Pavel and I hopped off the pelican and into the roof of a small building next to the warehouse where our target was located. The pelican barely even stopped to let us down and promptly flew away, holding its trajectory. I looked around. The roof was what you'd expect of a roof, it was flat and with some ventilation shafts distributed evenly across its surface. We moved to the edge of the building facing the warehouse before stopping. I unslung my rifle and aimed it at the warehouse, switching the sight's setting from normal to thermal. There were exactly fifteen human silhouettes inside the warehouse. In a few minutes every single last one of them would be dead.

"Fifteen innies," I said. "Distributed evenly over the warehouse, no idea of the location of the target," I said rather professionally.

"So we have to kill fourteen of them?" Pavel asked.

"Or all of them," I remembered him.

"Should be easy, like shooting unsuspecting grunts, grunts without any type of body armor at that."  
>"You don't know that that."<p>

"Still, it'll be like shooting grunts," he said. "Easy in, easy out."  
>It really freaked me out that I considered the comparison rather accurate.<p>

_Easy in, easy out…. Why did you have to jinx us Pavel?_


	36. Easy In

Chapter XXXVI: Easy In

**September 2, 2540 (UNSC Calendar)/**

**Creek, Dawson's World, Beta 415 system**

"Pavel…"

"Tiatan-2," he corrected me.

"Titan-2, you in position?"

"Affirmative Titan-1."

"Ok, wait for my signal."

My signal consisted of winking my acknowledgement lights so that they would appear in Pavel's HUD.

"Roger that."

I was scouting the area ahead of us with my thermal scope, occasionally switching back to regular when I could peek through windows or cracks in the walls. Pavel had climbed all the way down the building (one floor, don't feel bad for him) and made his way to the parking lot outside the warehouse. I was to take out the sentries patrolling the roof and outside of the warehouse before Pavel went in. He was more than capable doing this on his own, so I'd remain here, with four kills to my credit while he took eleven. Well, at least that was the plan.

"Ok, knocking out the one on the left," I said to myself.

My battle rifle had a suppressor attached, even though it was called that, a silencer would've been more appropriate for the metallic cylinder. It was state of the art, designed by ONI, built by Misriah and issued to all special forces operators. The device in question was a black cylinder that attached to the muzzle of my rifle, it was around two inched in diameter and probably ten in length. It doubled as a suppressor and as a flash reducer. It was daytime, so the second quality wasn't important right now.

I let the circular crosshairs of my scope land on the forehead of one of the innie patrol soldiers. He looked about average, and was sporting an MA3 rifle in addition to some unidentifiable handgun. I squeezed the trigger a quarter of a second later I got my first confirmed human kill. About a second later, I got my second one.

I knew that I should've felt somewhat weird about this, perhaps even guilty, but I only felt like I was doing my job, and rather properly as well. Perhaps I was late for a shrink evaluation.

"Two down," I said.

Next I switched my sight to the doors of the complex. They were large metallic doors that opened manually, large enough for a scorpion tank to fit through easily. On each side of the door there was a sentry.

"Need help with the ones on the ground?" Pavel asked.

"No, I got this," I said.

I set my sight on the insurrectionist on the left and squeezed a shot, the only noise that came out of my pistol was a low _fwup_, perhaps as loud as someone smacking their hands on a table, but at this distance, no one would make anything of the noise. Even before my bullet hit home, I was already squeezing of a second shot towards the other man, they both crumpled to the floor with a single entry wound on their forehead and temple respectively.

"Nice, which one did you target first?" Pavel asked.

"The one on the left."  
>"Well, kudos for you man, it was almost impossible to tell from down here."<p>

"Aw man, thanks," I said.

"No probs, Titan-2 going in," he informed me.

I connected my HUD to his little helmet camera and a small image popped up in the top left corner of my visor. It allowed me to see anything that Pavel was facing at. It almost looked like a videogame, one of those obsolete First Person Shooters played with controllers.

I watched my friend enter the warehouse through the front door, then quickly hiding in the shadows to the left of the entrance. I switched my scope to thermal while allowing the screen on my HUD to remain there. I would shoot through the walls if it was needed.

Pavel crept along the wall and grabbed one of the innies from behind, snapping his neck cleanly. Then he let her body on the floor and moved on, shooting down two other men with his pistol. The suppressor on the M6 made even less noise than my battle rifle, and on the large warehouse with the noises of battle in the background, no one suspected a thing. He had eight more to go, or seven, depending on the possibility of actually capturing Paradiso.

It was at times like this that I was reminded why Pavel was an ODST and why he had survived for so long on board the _Inconvenience._ He positioned himself behind an innie and stuck his knife in between the first and second vertebrae, effectively disconnecting the brain from the body. The knife was then removed from the innies neck and used to slash a sentinel that had just turned around a corner. Five more men and he would be done. Or six, you know, depending.

The rest of the Insurrectionists were all concentrated inside a small room, gathered around what could've been a table. They didn't seem to be aware there was a large Eastern European man dressed in ballistic armor just outside of their little box.

"Oh shit," I murmured.

"What?"

There was a convoy of cars moving towards the warehouse, they were civilian cars mostly, although there was an old warthog painted with innie colors, complete with chaingun and all. They were turning around the corner, as soon as they stopped, they would see the bodies on the main entrance. There were two large SUVs and a smaller sports car in addition to their warthog.

"You might want to keep Paradiso as a hostage," I said. "We got an enemy convoy right outside. Two SUVs a warthog, and a sports car."  
>"What kind of sports car?" he asked. Even as he asked that he was already opening the door and shooting two innies with well placed bursts.<p>

"I'm not sure, I think it could be one of those Caballo cars, from Madrigal."

"Those are nice cars," Pavel said, putting three rounds in the chest of an innie just about to draw his sidearm.

"Indeed," I agreed.

Within seconds he had finished off the rest of the Insurrectionists with well-placed shots. Two rounds bounced of his chest piece before he lunged at Joanne Pardiso, tackling the middle-aged woman to the ground pretty hard.

"Done," he said. "What now?"

By that time the innies in the convoy had dismounted and were barking at each other, with one of them yelling to the warehouse's walls to see if he could get a reply. The others were spreading out and taking cover behind their vehicles, aiming at the doors of the warehouse.

"I'm coming out, I've got Paradiso hostage!" Pavel called out, normally I wouldn't have heard him from this far, but his helmet mike did the job.

"Don't tell me you want to do this," I said.

"Don't see any other way out," he said, a lot more quietly.

"Fine," I sighed.

I could now see Pavel coming out of the door through my scope. He had Paradiso in front of him as a human shield. It seemed to be working, since no one fired at him. Even from this far away I could hear a seventeen different guns cocking at the same time. Maybe it was Pavel's mic, who knows.

"I will now walk out of here and you will let me, unless you want Miss Paradiso here to face a rather premature end."

Pavel did an impressive job at sounding like a psychopath. Or a sociopath, or whatever.

"Shoot him!" Paradiso called out.

"Shut up bitch!" Pavel said as he tightened his grip on her neck.

"Nice," I said.

"Fits the profile," Pavel whispered loud enough for his hostage and me to hear.

"No one has to get hurt here," an innie said.

"That's what I'm saying," Pavel said. "Now let me through!"  
>"I'm afraid I can't do that," the same innie replied.<p>

"What are you going to do? Shoot me, you're too afraid to hurt your leader here."

"Ignore the man, shoot him!" Paradiso ordered.

"As you can see Miss Paradiso is ready to die for our cause, which means that we'd have no trouble in shooting you right this instant."

Pavel rolled his eyes all the way. I knew this because he rolled his head a little as well. He pulled switched targets and shot the man that had spoken right on the left kneecap.

Guns were raised (even more) and insults were shouted, but not a single shot was fired.

"Nice," I said again.

"Took a leap of faith man," Pavel said. "So? When?"  
>"I recon I can take the gunner and the ones closest to you before anyone notices," I informed him.<p>

"Which ones?" he asked.

"Blue curls, Blondie, and Mr. and Mrs Bulldog." I said, signaling the innies by their physical appearance.

"Think you could do the one with large machine gun?" he asked.

"Yeah, I recon I could."  
>"They're preparing to…" Paradiso was brutally interrupted by Pavel pushing his pistol tighter into her throat, I could hear her gasping for air from here.<p>

"Ma'am?" one soldier asked.

"Fucking shoot him!" cried out the one on the floor, no one had moved to help him, either because they were afraid or because they didn't like him. Maybe both.

"I'll fire in three," I said.

"Two."

"One."

I didn't say mark or anything like it, instead I let off three shots in quick succession, then a fourth one just an instant later. Right as the four bullets impacted with the men and woman I had told Pavel I could take out, two others were fired in direction to the man manning the warthog turret and the other innie with a large machine gun.

Even as the first body fell, Pavel fired his pistol at the remaining innes, I shifted my sight to three of the ones that were wiser and decided to take cover from my friend. Unfortunately, they all met their ends rather quickly. Courtesy of a slug to the back of the head. Pavel took out six of the remaining innies before I finished of the other two with well placed shots. The BR55 was truly an impressive machine. My faster reflexes and steady hand weren't so bad either. Ha.

"Dead," Pavel said, "all dead."

"Yeup," I replied.

"Ok, now what?" he asked.

"We call for evac and take Mrs. Insurrection her prisoner. We're getting medals."  
>"You didn't do anything," he reminded me.<p>

"I'm pretty sure I saved your ass." I said.

"I could've handled it," Pavel said.

"Sure you could've buddy."

Pavel was making his way towards me, finishing off the innie he had first shot with a double tap. I climbed down the building and we met near the warthog.

"Those men," Paradiso cried, "they had families!"

"Well so did the people in the Paradise Bombings," I reminded her.

"And the ones in Cordoba," Pavel chimed in.

"Those were necessary victims for the greater good of humanity and the United Rebel Front," she said proudly.

"Well, those were necessary victims for the greater good of humanity and the United Nations Space Command," I said.

"Nice one bro," Pavel said as he offered me a high five. I took it.

"You are insane!" Paradiso said. Pavel simply smacked her in the back of the head and she crumpled unconscious.

"What?" he asked. "She was getting rather annoying."  
>"You do realize you could've just killed her, pistol whipping her like that."<p>

"Nah, looks like she's still got a pulse."

"Provided you didn't give her any brain damage."  
>"What do you care?"<p>

"Good point," I said as I helped Pavel place our hostage over his shoulder.

"Mary's Little Lamb, this is Titan-1, requesting immediate evacuation on my position, we've secured the package."

"Roger that Titan-1, we'll be there in five."

"Minutes or seconds?" I asked playfully.

"What do you think?" Marina replied.

Right before I could come with a witty comeback for her own witty comeback I felt some static around me, even through my suit. Immediately after I had noticed this I heard a loud thump above me, followed by a weak shockwave.

"What was that?" I asked.

Pavel simply looked up, using his special camera attachment to zoom in on the sky, probably out into space. He didn't need to tell me what it was, because soon enough I saw it myself as well.

A Covenant Assault Carrier was making its way directly to our direction. Probably jumped to the other side of the planet after a series of calculations for such a dangerous jump so close to a gravity well. The massive craft made the land shake as it traveled through the sky and positioned itself in the most uncomfortable position it could've possibly decided to choose.

Right above us.

"Titan-1, do you copy? Frank are you there?" Marina's voice came through my comm.

"Yeah, I copy," I replied, still awestruck by the sight. I spoke again before she could do so herself. "Don't worry about it, we'll find our way."  
>"Be careful Frank," she said.<p>

"Ajem," Pavel coughed.

"Fuck off Pavel," came the answer.

The link was cut and we were on our own.

"No evac then," I said.

"Well no shit sherlock."

_Easy out indeed._


	37. Easy Out

Chapter XXXVII: Easy Out

**September 2, 2540 (UNSC Calendar)/**

**Creek, Dawson's World, Beta 415 system**

Of course the covvies wasted no time in using their lovely-looking drop pods to pepper the area, it would've been fine had those drop pods not contained a bunch of enemy combatants inside of them.

Unfortunately for them we had already made our way to the innie warthog. It truly had been a blessing when that convoy arrived, otherwise we would've been picked up and shot out of the air on our way back to out ship. Unless of course, the five-kilometer-long assault carrier deemed our small craft as an insignificant threat and decided not to waste a plasma torpedo on us. But seriously, who would think that?

Yes, I am saying the fucking convoy was a fucking nut-buster.

"Wanna drive?" Pavel asked even as he hopped on the turret.

"No."

"Oh," he said, I could almost see his mouth opening and closing without forming words.

"Nah, just kidding, if I let you drive we would be dead by the time we crossed the corner," I said while securing Paradiso to the passenger's sit and flooring the accelerator.

In reality, we were almost killed once we turned around the corner of the warehouse, two pods landed right next to us, couldn't have been more than two meters away on each side. Luckily, Pavel wasted all the occupants before they even knew what was happening.

"Ha," Pavel said.

"You've got your wheelman to thank for that, driver assisted kills count for me too," I told him.

"They do not, that doesn't make sense," he complained.

"My game, my rules."

"It's not fair," he said.

"Well, technically speaking none of us is getting ahead of each other on the scoreboard."

"But I am killing covvies,"

"Pavel, I'll literally stop driving if you do not agree to my rules," I outright stated.

"Shhh, it's Titan-2, TITAN-2!"  
>"Do you agree to my terms?"<br>"Why the fuck are you even talking like that?"  
>"Do you agree?"<br>"Fine. Fuck."

"Why thank you Mr. Titan-2."

Having cleared up that little business I floored the accelerator and headed towards downtown, the place where the bulk of the UNSC forces were supposed to be located. Right now I presume it was being used as an evacuation staging point. Whenever an assault carrier appears on your rear it's never a good sign. Pun intended. Ouch.

Anyways, this side of town was relatively undamaged save for the occasional crashed car or looted store there was no battle damage to the area. Of course, the landing pods were bound to change that pretty soon. In fact, a couple of them landed about ten yards behind us and wrecked the street, not that I saw them, cause you know, eyes on the street.

"Where to now?" Pavel asked.

"Downtown."  
>"No I know that, where in downtown?"<br>"I dunno, guess we'll just drive around for a while," I answered after veering to the left to avoid hitting an abandoned truck.

"Great."  
>Wasn't actually great. In fact, it was starting to get just a little bit fucked up in here. You know, with the assault carrier and all. I had to take a turn when we came face to face with a small covvie squad, Pavel managed to waste a couple of them, but I preferred to avoid confrontation for as long as possible, which wouldn't be that long if things continued shaping up like this.<p>

"Can't this thing go faster?" Pavel asked.

"We're doing 90 miles per hour. How much faster do you want it to go?" I replied.

"Just faster!"

"A reason in particular Mr. Klaus?" I asked, doing my best English accent impersonation.

"That!"

I turned to see what looked like a patrol consisting of three banshees pursuing us. If it looked like that, it mean that it was very likely a banshee patrol chasing after us. The plasma bolts that burned the air a couple of inches from my arm solved any doubt I had left.

"Faster I said," Pavel called out as he spun the massive gun on the warthog, already taking aim at the lead banshee.

I floored the accelerator and the hog lurched forward. Didn't seem to affect the banshees though, they just kept on right behind us. I was forced to drive in zigzags to avoid the superheated plasma from striking any point of the vehicle. Succeeded mostly, although the rear lights were blasted away.

"One down!" Pavel called out shortly after an explosion. I barely had time to congratulate him on that before he warned me of an incoming fuel rod.

"When?" I asked.

"….NOW!" he yelled.

I used the E-brake and turned to the right, giving the car an incredibly awesome-looking stop. The front wheels locked in place while the rear of the car did a 180º turn. The green bolt of energy flew above us, missing Pavel's head by only a few inches. And only then because he ducked. Immediately after it exploded Pavel managed to bring down another of the fliers. He clipped it maybe four times in a wing, the massive bullets of the gun tearing the wing from the rest of the craft, forcing it to crash land.

Instants after it crashed, a bloodied elite left the smoking banshee and stumbled a little. I shot it one handed with my pistol. Right between the eyes. Moments later the banshee behind it exploded.

"Kill's mine!" I said.

"You stole it you asshole!"

"Still mine!"

This time I took a side street to emerge into a four-lane avenue. Normally that would've been great, since four-lane avenues usually have large buildings to the side. This one only had one story small businesses on each side. Those provided absolutely no visual cover from covvie fliers. Not that it really mattered anyways, the battleship hovering above us was bound to be filled with banshee patrols, which meant that soon enough we would be found again by them. I floored the accelerator after placing my rifle beside me. Paradiso was still unconscious, which meant that I didn't have to expect any trouble from her.

The further I drove the more destroyed the town was. It wasn't very apparent here because all the buildings were so short, but there were glassy patches in the street, where high amounts of plasma had hit. Probably wraiths.

"Ghosts!" Pavel warned.

_Aw fuck._

Ghosts weren't fast enough to keep up with us _and _shoot us at the same time, but you don't need to be fast enough when your cannons are rather accurate and have a significantly long range. There were two ghosts behind us, which meant that one would fire at us and the other one would use its boost to chase, then they'd switch, never letting us go. At least that's the covvie theory on that strategy, which is highly stupid. The sniper-sized rounds that the M41 was spewing out promptly wrecked the boosting ghost. The other one was stupid enough to decide to give us chase and met the same fate. It was to be expected, they were driven by grunts, not elites.

Around a corner I spotted a covvie patrol. Well, it was larger than a patrol, it was about twenty enemy soldiers, accompanied by a hunter pair. I (correctly) decided that the wisest thing to do was to turn of the engine and wait them out. Pavel and I both hopped off the hog and trained our sights in the passing patrol. Seemed like they would cross the intersection without coming through our street. Damn lucky we were.

"You said we were doing ninety?" Pavel asked.

"Yeah."

"How?"

"Must be a civilian variant outfitted with an M41," I said.

"Nah, it has armor and shit."

"Well, then it probably is one of those fast-strike versions. They could've even modified the engine Pavel, don't dwell on it for long."

He simply shrugged and trained his assault rifle on an elite. The patrol/platoon was about to finish crossing the intersection when the rearmost hunter burst up in flames. Well, actually it was hit by two Molotov cocktails thrown by teenagers from the top of a nearby building, but the expression 'burst up in flames' is pretty damn awesome.

Burst up in flames.

Of course the hunter took five seconds to realize it was on fire, that's how insignificant the injuries had been to it. I'm pretty sure that the broken glass from the bottles hurt it more than the fire. A second later five grunts and an elite fell to gunfire. It sounded weak, almost like bb guns, so it must've been civilian weaponry. Good for the civvies. The enemy soldiers took cover behind a couple of wrecked cars and the hunters before they returned fire. When they did, it was a majestic display of power. Five civilians instantly fell to the ground, smoke and vapor coming from their bodies, six more followed soon after. I had no idea how large this group was, but that couldn't have been to good for them.

"Should we help?" I asked.

Pavel was already on top of the hog and aiming the chaingun at a hunter. The M41 started roaring as soon as I hopped in on the driver's seat, Paradiso only moaned in annoyance. I turned the hog around while Pavel hit the hunter, only a couple of rounds bounced of the armor, the rest went deep inside its wormy body. Even as I closed in on the rest of the group, a couple of elites were hit by molotovs, one of them was burnt completely and the other simply had its shields removed. The 'tusks' of my warthog, paired up with mass and acceleration, promptly fixed that. Thank God for Newton.

I kept on going, speeding up with every moment I could. A jackal and a grunt fell victim to the size of my warthog, but my real target was ten meters away, close to the walls of a clothing store. The full weight of the warthog pushed back the still-burning hunter towards the wall, cracking it. The hunter roared and raised its cannon towards me, but it was brought down by the M41 Pavel was manning. As it took those rounds to the face, it put its hands under the hog and completely spun it around sideways. I'm sure that it expected a different result, because it came face to face with Pavel's M41. It barely had time to raise its shield before I hit reverse. Then forward and Pavel fired at it. Then reverse. Then forward just a little again. Then reverse. Finally the hunter fell to the ground, the only thing that would've signaled it as a hunter was the shield, everything else was just a orange and blue mess.

I accelerated to dodge the delayed reactions of a couple of elites, Pavel fired at the split-chins as we fell back, knocking down one of them and several grunts. The civvies were doing rather a good job, because there were only three grunts and an ultra left by the time we turned around to charge once more. The ultra was killed by Pavel and the grunts by the other civilians.

"Helljumper, over here!" someone called.

I hopped off the car while telling Pavel to 'stay frosty.' Old military term, ignore it.

"Helljumper, what's your name."

"John Smith," I replied. Even though it had ceased to be the most common Anglophone name over three centuries ago, it still had that reputation.

"Sure," the civilian said, not believing me, but making nothing of it.

"Where's the evacuation port?" I asked. "Or where can we get a decent evac?"

"Downtown, near the town hall, on the city's main plaza."

"OK, thanks, I recommend you make your way there as well."  
>"No," he said as he chuckled. "We're going to kill as many of those bastards as we can," he said as he gestured to his ragtag group. There were about forty people that I could see, some of them didn't even have guns, while some of them had baseball bats.<p>

"Pick up the covvie weapons," I told him, and then: "No, forget that, go to the evacuation point, don't waste your lives."  
>"They're killing our friends, destroying our homes, we'll make them pay!" said the leader.<p>

"Yeah!" they called out in response.

"No you wont, they'll burn you all," I said, exasperated.

"Let's leave John," Pavel said.

"If we burn, they burn with us," the leader proclaimed.

"No they wont," I said. "You see that thing?" I asked, pointing to the assault carrier hovering above us. "They'll burn you from up there, and there'll be absolutely nothing good you can do about it. Join the military, or something, just don't go around killing yourselves."

The leader shook his head sadly. "Afraid we can't do that."  
>"Well, suit yourselves," I said as I hopped on the driver's seat and sped off towards the city's main plaza. Well, theoretically that would've been the plan, had not a Locust decided to climb over a couple of buildings and stop us.<p>

"Walker!" some of the civilians yelled.

I had already put reverse on this thing and was going backwards as fast as possible, Pavel's rounds bounced harmlessly off the vehicle's shields. A Locust is like a baby scarab. It has four legs and a cockpit which looks just like that of a banshee. Probably around the same size too. In between the legs and cockpit there was a large section, which carried the shield generators and its weaponry. Its weaponry consisted of a single focus beam, which was very similar to the focus rifle some jackal snipers used, only that tank sized.

The beam singed of our hog and cut in half a large number of civilian combatants before we could even reach protection. We could hear small arms fire from all around us, it was intermingled with the occasional noise the cannon of the locust made.

"Pipe bombs! Use the bombs!" someone ordered. Instants later three explosions were audible over the building that separated us from the locust.

"Frankie, got some C10?" Pavel asked.

"Never leave home without them," I said as I patted my butt-pouch.

"Storm it."

I drove the warthog back so that only the turret was devoid of cover. Pavel aimed at the vehicle, but didn't fire. I hopped off after checking on our prisoner. Locusts were anti-building equipment, sure, they could work perfectly fine as anti-personnel, or even do an ok job at killing tanks, but they were certainly not in their zone whenever they did that. That is the only thing that saved us. Well, the civilians, we could've simply left them alone, but we weren't that cold.

"Shoot it when I say!" I yelled as I sprinted in front of the civilians. This time I didn't bother slowing down, I was going as fast as I could. Fortunately the locust wasn't supported by infantry, otherwise we would've been forced to leave the civvies behind to their deaths. I hopped over a flaming car and found myself right underneath the enemy vehicle, which coincidentally, was the safest place right now. It tried to squish me by shuffling sideways and in random directions, but it wasn't fast enough.

"Fire!" I yelled.

Of course, civilians don't listen because they aren't trained, but a M41 machine gun manned by a veteran ODST can cause a lot of damage. A lot. The shields of the vehicle were stripped in about five seconds and I was able to stick the explosives to the bottom of the locust's cockpit. Then I ran.

Seconds later the walker exploded and toppled to the side. The civilians took care of finishing off the elite pilot. They were very thorough, I must give them that.

"That was impressive!" someone said.

"Nah, they are weak against infantry," I said. "Their turret doesn't move fast enough to target a running human."

It was true, Pavel and I had both done this kind of things before. Granted, with military support instead of civilians with crappy guns, but it was the same. He could've done it just as good as me, but this time it was my turn. It was the second locust I had wasted personally. Pretty impressive huh?"

"Ok Mr. Hero, let's go," Pavel said.

"Already on it."

The warthog lurched forward towards downtown and towards our apparent salvation. We left the shadow of the enemy carrier soon enough and within minutes we were inside of the UNSC cordon. We only found a small patrol that was dispatched in a combination of lead and steel. That means that I rammed the grunts and Pavel shot the elite and jackal. Then we moved on.

"Are we there yet?" Pavel asked.

"Yes Pavel, in fact this landscape that surrounds you is actually an optical illusion in the pattern of the pelican's cargo bay, in fact, they even got fans and fancy special effects equipment to make it seem like we are still driving through the town."

"You don't have to be an ass about it."

"Well don't ask stupid questions!"

Pavel simply grumbled as I avoided some cars and debris. We were around five minutes out from the town hall, according to the GPS system on my helmet. We would then hitch a ride or call for Marina and Mister Recruit-with-a-surprisingly-high-rank.

_Of course, how could I forget?_

"Marina, this is Titan-1, do you copy?"

There was some static before she answered. "If you're going to call yourself by your codename, then you might as well use mine."

"Marina, this is Titan-1, I am glad you copy, we need an evac. Two soldiers and a prisoner. We're heading towards the town hall, you can pick us up there."

"Roger that," she said.

"You see buddy, that's what she means by mixed signals," Pavel said.

"What are you talking about?"

"You know, being an asshole to her."

"I was not an asshole," I exclaimed.

"Yes you were," Pavel said.

"I was being funny, that's what."

"Don't you two ever shut up?" groaned a semi-conscious Paradiso.

I punched her in the jaw and knocked her out.

"See, you're an asshole that punches women."

"Fuck you, you killed a couple of those back in the warehouse."

Pavel realized that I was getting wounded up and decided it was a proper time to shut the hell up and stop screaming horseshit at me.

Soon enough we crossed the first UNSC checkpoint, then we headed towards the town hall. The plaza was right in front of it. It had a large statue of one of the colony's founders right in the middle. Pelicans were all over the place, some landing, and some taking off.

"There." Pavel said. I turned the warthog towards the only pelican that wasn't uniformly green.

"Commander Albaf?" I asked as I opened a line to her.

"Just a minute," Eliza said.

"What do you want sergeant?" asked Albaf a second later.

"We got the prisoner, she's unconscious but alive."

"Impressive, unfortunately we have neither the resources nor the will to take her alive."

"Ma'am?" I asked.

"You understand don't you? Kill her."

"Yes ma'am," I said as I cut the line.

"Fuck her," I said, then I glanced at Pavel. He simply shrugged at me.

"She told you man."

"I know."

I might've been a fan of shooting covvies cold-blooded. Maybe even scare them a little bit (not torture, that's just meanish), but I was certainly not going to enjoy executing a human prisoner of war. The fact that said prisoner of war was in fact a woman only made me feel worse about it. I hopped off the hog and went to the other side. The unconscious woman was quickly pulled down from the vehicle and aid on the floor, her back facing up. I pulled out my pistol and fired twice to the back of her head, attracting a few curious looks from the marines around.

I walked towards the pelican and hopped on inside, leaving a dead woman and a wide-eyed Sheppard behind me.

"You ok man?" asked Pavel.

"I'm fine," I answered.

_I am too far gone._

* * *

><p><em>Hey guys, just letting you know that I just entered school again, which means the I probably won't be able to update as often as I have been for the last weeks. Anyways, enjoy.<em>

_-casquis_


	38. Happy Christmas

Chapter XXXVIII: Happy Christmas

**December 23, 2540 (UNSC Calendar)/three months later**

**UNSC **_**Inconvenience, **_**in orbit above Reach, Epsilon Eridani**

"Fuck off!"

"Come on Frank, it's the Christmas dinner," Pavel said. "Or Hanukah, no, not that. It's the December banquet, we have one every year, you've never missed it."

"I said fuck off didn't I?"

"You know, Marina is going to be there…"

"The whole ship is there, alcohol is like honey to them," I interrupted. My statement probably lacked strength, considering that I had a half-empty bottle of Jack Daniels in my hand.

"…and you might receive your own little Christmas miracle. Maybe she'll wear that sexy underwear for you," Pavel continued unperturbed.

"I don't care."  
>"Yes you do, you've been chasing after her for like forever!"<br>Ok, forever was being used loosely here. It _had _been nine months since I started feeling myself attracted to her (more than in just fantasies anyway), but most of that time had been spent in cryo or away from her.

"Sexy underwear…" Pavel threw in again.

Now I don't know if it was because as a man I was drawn to attractive women in skimpy clothing, or because the alcohol in my system was messing with my judgment, or because I actually wanted to go but was just being a stubborn asshole, but I agreed.

"Fine, I'll go," I mumbled.

"Great, that way I won't be alone," Pavel said merrily.

"What happened to that Delacroix chick anyways?"

"I dunno, I think I'm in the friend zone," he said sadly.

I laughed, probably louder than was considered appropriate for this situation, but Pavel was royally screwed. Once you were in there it was a bitch to get out of.

"Hey, maybe you'll get your own Christmas miracle," I said.

"Fuck off!" he said. Funny how positions change so quickly isn't it.

I laughed for some more before deciding that standing up was probably the best thing I could do right now. I took care not to fall face-first into the floor, but my augmented body handled it pretty well. It was, after all, the body of a drinking champion version 2, so it was cool. I put on a shirt and splashed my face with water. Eight years ago I normally would've splashed my hair as well, so it didn't look like I was a lazy bastard that had just gotten out of bed, fortunately, the short haircut that I sported right now was a good way to avoid that. I had been forced to shave my mane by one Lieutenant Krikor Darbinian. What an asshole right? It had been forever since I had been actually forced to get a haircut, I usually asked the ships barber to trim my hair every couple of months. That way my lovely head look even lovelier. I had my hair down to a mohawk. Not my style, but admittedly, I didn't look as bad as I would've expected.

"When is the banquet?"

"Twenty fourth," Pavel reminded me.

"Christmas Eve then?" I asked. For a multi-national, multi-religion organization, the UNSC sure liked things Christian.

"What day is today?" I asked.

"Twenty third."  
>"Already?" Time flies when you spend your days drunk in your room.<p>

"Yes, already."

"Ok, let's do something," I said.

"Firing range?"

"There isn't much else to do now is it?"

* * *

><p>Five minutes later we were both in the firing range with our pistols and Pavel's ACS. I had been itching to try out the weapon since I last saw it in action, but I'd ask Pavel to borrow it later on. Now I just had to shake off my drunkenness by shooting at targets. That way I could pass off for a superb shooter instead of a god-like one. Hurray for egotistical comments!<p>

"How'd you manage to get in the friend zone?" I asked while putting up my target.

Pavel glanced around before answering, the only other person in here was an army captain about thirty spaces away, so we were safe. "I think I was too nice to her."

"Pretty sure that's not the reason," I said.

"Well, somewhere along the line I said something wrong, because now she treats me as a friend," Pavel explained after emptying his shotgun magazine.

"You know I'm not good with girls, I can't really help you there," I said. "Mind if I borrow that?" I asked, pointing at the shotgun.

"Yeah, no problem," he said as he tossed it towards me. "What do you mean you're not good with girls? You got Layla, who was hot as hell, that redhead chick, who was hot as hell, and now Marina, who is, coincidentally, hot as hell. Your life is like a bad sitcom about single life."

"Well, that's three girls, I never went to school with girls, my uncle sent me to an all-boys military academy, so I'm not big on dealing with high-school troubles."

"They're not high-school troubles," Pavel complained. When he said that I realized that despite both of us being in our mid twenties, we still had been in slipspace or cryo for a considerably long time in the past years. That meant that our brains had the maturity of someone a couple of years younger than we actually were. Yeah, it would get worse with time.

I grabbed the shotgun, feeling its weight for only the second time. It wasn't as heavy as you'd expect, but still heavier than anything I was used to, except the SPANKr. I grabbed a single magazine and pushed it into its slot. Then I pulled back the gun's bolt.

"Pavel, why don't you tell her how you feel?" I suggested.

"Don't say that, they only say that in romantic comedies, also, I am a fucking ODST for God's sake, I'd come out as soft."  
>"Maybe she likes soft," I said as I shrugged and aimed at a caricaturized elite.<p>

"Why would she do that?" Pavel asked.

"She's an Army lieutenant, maybe she thinks of herself as strong and wants a girly man," I said. I had no idea what I was talking about.

"Are you even listening to yourself?" Pavel asked.

"I try not to."  
>I fired a couple of rounds in quick succession. The gun wasn't actually fully automatic. It only fired about as fast as someone could've fired a semi-auto shotgun, but it didn't require to continuously pull the trigger, something which might throw your aim slightly off. My first two shots completely wrecked my target, so I was forced so switch to a metallic plate. Those were reusable and were only switched once they were so bullet-ridden that they barely functioned as anything other than scrap metal. The target I was aiming at right now was simply a metallic sheet a few inches thick without any shape whatsoever. It was relatively new, because I could still make out the lines that marked your score. I decided to aim for the general center of the thing and fire the rest of my ammo.<p>

The shotgun roared for a second and a half as it ate through the rest of its magazine. _Maybe it does fire faster than semi-auto. _I told myself. I took a moment to take a look at my target and it turned out that the blasts from the shotgun had dented the metal sheet in the area where I had hit it.

"Hmmm, nice gun," I told Pavel. I tossed him the gun and pulled out my pistol, this time I chose brutes for targets.

"It is a nice gun," Pave agreed.

"Of course it is," I repeated, "I got it for you."

Pavel mumbled something and then we resumed firing, my shots eventually left a perfectly intact brute without a head, while Pavel ate through targets like it was nobody's business. We didn't talk to each other for a while. We were just deep in thought. Pavel was certainly thinking about his predicament with Lieutenant Chloe Delacroix, I was thinking about that would have happened if we had evolved with tails.

_We'd probably use them for balance, or perhaps they would have the same function as hair, being only cosmetic in purpose. I know, we could use them as third arms, to grab stuff without needing to stand up… But what about clothing in cold places? Would we hide them in our pants or simply have another opening for our tails? Maybe people in there would just grow shorter tails… Perhaps we would cut them short as soon as we were born, just like those dogs… I forget their breed…. Talking about dogs, wherever did those Martian Mastiffs go? Were they evacuated? I think they were, probably leaving a happy life with the refugees of that planet, or dead, who knows?_

Yeah, it went a little bit like that.

"How are you going to dress like for the banquet thing?" Pavel asked. The banquet was supposedly important, we only got it once a year, so people usually dressed nicely. At least that's how it went in other ships, it usually turned into some sort of drinking contest/frat party whenever we _did_ have it on our ship.

"I don't know, why don't you ask your new best friend?" I said, pretending to be hurt.

"Aw screw you man."  
>An hour and a half later I was asking Marina and Pavel was asking Alisa how the hell we were supposed to dress like.<p>

* * *

><p>The next day, a few minutes before the dinner 'officially' started, I was dressed up in black fatigues and a flack t-shirt. It was my usual outfit, Marina had said that it would be a casual diner, so that's what I wore. If she was wrong or lying, I could always change to my buttoned shirt (which surprisingly, was black as well) instead. Right now I was worried about who I would sit with. Normally I could have tons of fun with Pavel alone, especially since the December Dinner was famously known to be one of the few times that Command allowed for alcohol to be dunk on board the ship. You could have fun by yourself if there was a faithful bottle of jack next to you.<p>

"Hey Frank, when are you changing?" Pavel asked from behind. I turned to face him and was surprised to find him dressed in full dress uniform.

"I thought you had burned that," I observed. "And what are you? Twelve? Asking me when I'm going to change…"  
>"Well, seriously, we're all supposed to be down there in five minutes," he said, meaning the hangar, where the dinner would be taking place in.<p>

"It isn't obligatory Pavel, I can show up whenever I want," I said.

"Oh, right, forgot about that," he said.

"Pavs!" someone called. "You ready yet?"

"Coming!" he returned.

"What. The. Fuck?" I said. "She gets to call you 'Pavs' and you're not even screwing her," I said.

"Shhhh! And fuck you," he said as he turned around.

"See you in a while Pavs!" I said as he left. He simply flipped me the bird and did a variety of other insults that required body-movement but not speaking. I laughed all the way until he disappeared in a corner.

I headed back to my room. I think I mentioned before that it was supposed to fit six soldiers, which meant that it had six bunks and six closets. It would've been pretty cramped for six, but it did the job with just two. I opened one of the spare closets. It was filled to the brim with metallic crates marked with the logo of the UNSC. These crates contained an assortment of items. There were a few boxes of experimental ammunition, some had drum magazines, other had spare clothing, and some even had medical equipment. Mostly they contained alcoholic beverages and cigars. They were from that raiding operation back in Carentan.

I grabbed a bottle of some scotch from the topmost crate and took a swig from it, putting it back on. If I was going to have fun at this thing, I was certainly going to do it my own way.

I walked all the way to the 'banquet hall' by myself, it seemed like most people were already there. Well, there was a good bunch of people in the hangar. The pelicans had been hung to the ceiling with some giant claws that were supposed to secure them. Those claws were rarely used. The pelicans provided a space of about four meters from the floor to their bellies. It was more than enough for what we had in mind right now. There were tables covered in white sheets all over the place, even the chairs were covered in white. It looked very formal to me. For a moment I felt underdressed, but then I realized that most NCOs were dressed like I was.

"Over here!" Marina waved. I would've smiled at her if she hadn't said that the moment when the entire complement of the ship managed to shut up and hear that, then they all turned to face me. Had I not been a battle-hardened veteran, I would've blushed. Fortunately, they resumed their conversations moments later.

I sat down on Marina's table, it was occupied by me, her, and mister new pilot. There were a couple of empty seats. There was a nice piece of bread waiting for me. Someone had torn half of it and now I had half a piece of bread to eat.

"Where's the food?" I asked.

"Hello, how are you? You look lovely," Marina said, obviously mimicking what I should've said.

"Kid?"  
>"We got waiters," he said, obviously excited.<p>

"Really?" I said as I raised an eyebrow. Other dinner/banquets in the ship had simply been buffets of sort. Then it turned into a drinking contest, as I preciously stated.

"Yeah, Brooks said that he managed to pull in a couple of favors and bring us an extra tasty dinner," the rookie pilot.

_Sheppard! Aha! _ I thought triumphantly.

"So, what's the deal with that guy?" Sheppard asked, pointing at Krikor Darbinian, the XO of the marine complement on board. Yes, the asshole. Right now he was simply eating in the table that had the COs and XOs of the Army and Marines on board, with the addition of Captain Brooks. Didn't seem like Albaf or Wilkins were on board, poor ONI types.

"I don't know, but he is a rather magnificent asshole," I pointed out.

"I know, he actually stopped me and yelled at me for something involving slouching. We're not even in the same branches, he's not allowed to do that."  
>"Technically he is, still, bit of an asshole."<br>"I'll drink to that," Sheppard said as he raised his glass. I clinked it with mine.

"How about that big guy? The other ODST."

"Pavel? What about him?" I asked.

"No, I mean him and that Army chick, why doesn't he just bang her already?"

"Bang? Seriously? Who says that?"

"Ok, have sex with her," Sheppard relented.

"For a moment there I though you were going to say _make love_," I teased.

"Shut up," he said with a smile.

_This kid is actually kinda cool._

"Apparently he's in the friend zone," I explained.

"Uh-oh, that's trouble," Sheppard said, he had enough experience with woman to know that. Pretty much everyone knew about the ghastly friend zone.

"Tell me about it," I muttered before taking a healthy swig from my beer. I hope that they brought out the strong stuff soon; otherwise I'd have to sneak in a bottle of vodka.

From that point on Sheppard and me had a lengthy conversation about the futility of neo-impressionism on the impact of art in general. Nah, just kidding, we had a rather fun conversation which was primarily focused on criticizing the people around us. We were having a hell of a time doing an impression of one of the Navy lieutenants when I realized something, we had been leaving Marina out of the conversation. Right now she was staring at the wall, hear hand holding up her head. She only had to blow her hair away from her face to complete the image.

"Marina! Hello, how are you? You look stunning!" I said after a pause in the conversation.

"Ha, ha, very funny," she said, obviously not convinced.

"No, I'm serious, you look beautiful, doesn't she Sheppard?" I asked. She truly looked good. A little makeup made her already pretty face even prettier.

"Umm… sure?" he said as he drank from his whiskey. He obviously felt awkward about this.

"You really think I look beautiful?" Marina asked, her voice just louder than a whisper.

_No, I just fucking made it up._

"Yes, you do," I said.

Pavel saved Sheppard from further awkwardness and ruined the moment for Marina and me. Kudos for him. Asshole.

"Hey guys, how are you?" he asked as he sat down.

"Good," we all said simultaneously.

"Ok, it was creepy that you all said that at the same time," he noted. No one said anything, it had sounded slightly creepy.

"So, what's the deal with you and that army girl?" Sheppard asked.

"Well, seems to be that I am in the friend zone…" Pavel said almost sadly.

"Ah, the dreaded friend zone. What are your plans for it?"

"Well, apparently it's impossible for me to get out of it, it's like a black hole."

"I know. You're screwed."

"Word," I said.

"Why don't you just tell her?" asked Marina.

"What, that would never work," Pavel said outraged.

"Yes, that's stupid," Sheppard agreed.

I abstained from commenting, although I agreed with my fellow male soldiers.

"No it's not," Marina said, obviously annoyed that they hadn't taken her seriously.

"How would you know?" Pavel asked.

"Well, for starters, I _am _a girl."

They both stared dumbly at her for a few moments before they could come up with an answer. Marina was quick to chastise both of them for thinking that she would know nothing about relationships and whatnot. I rarely ever see Pavel looking worried or scared, but this time he was looking like he could've put a gun to his temple and fired it just to get out of the situation.

_Thank God I didn't say anything. Thank God I didn't say anything, Thank God I didn't say anything, Thank God I didn't say anything,_ I kept telling myself.

"You say something?" Marina asked.

"No," I replied quickly.

"Seriously, because I could've sworn that…"

"No, I didn't say anything."  
>"Oh, ok," Marina said I could see a small grin on her face when she turned around to keep intimidating Pavel and her new copilot. I wished I could've had some popcorn. Marina was really laying on Pavel, who looked like he wanted to hide in his own dress uniform. It's not often that you see an ODST veteran fall prey to the quick talking of a blonde that was at least seven inches shorter than him. Pavel is 6'5, I'm not entirely sure how tall Marina is, haven't gotten around to asking her.<p>

Anyways, Pavel soon left the table and returned to Delacroix and the other officers. Seems like they didn't mind his presence, because he didn't return to our table for the rest of the dinner. Instead, he actually managed to put his arm around Graham while talking to the other men. She didn't look annoyed by it, so perhaps Pavel wasn't so deep in the friend zone as it seemed. That point was hotly commented in our table.

"Well, this is boring as fuck," Sheppard said. "I'm out of here."  
>"Agreed, you should've been here three years ago… or not," I told him. "Wanna bail?" I asked Marina.<p>

"Sure, why not?" she said.

We all stood up from our table and headed out of the hangar. The food we had received was worse than spaceliner food, but it was manageable. We tiptoed our way around the labyrinth of tables and chairs before we parted ways. I clearly remember Pavel giving me an almost imperceptible nod before I left. I am not sure if it was because he was doing well with Delacroix or because I was leaving the place with Marina holding my hand.


	39. Juno

Chapter XXXIX: Juno

**January 28, 2541 (UNSC Calendar)/one month later**

**Juno,****Olympus System**

"Frank! Frankie, Frank! Frankie wake up man! Frank, Frankie, Francisco! Wake up goddamit! Francisco Castillo! WAKE THE FUCK UP!"

You can tell that I didn't wake up feeling exactly happy.

"I am awake! Fuck," I mumbled.

"Pavel what the fuck?" Marina yelled as she pulled up the covers.

"I finally scored with her!" Pavel said. I instantly sat up, pulling the covers and eliciting a yelp from Marina, who was forced to pull them back up to cover herself.

"Good for you buddy!" I said happily. "It's long since been coming,"

Despite the fact that he had rudely woken me up, scared me half to death, _and_ seen my girlfriend half naked (girlfriend is being used loosely here), I was glad for the big guy.

"No, it's not good?"

(Flat out)"What?"

"Why not?" I asked. "You couldn't… you know… make your soldier stand at attention?"

"What? No!" he said outraged.

"Then what?" Marina asked. "You… um, didn't _measure up_ to expectations?"

"Or perhaps time flew by," I suggested.

"You know what?" he said. "Fuck you guys, both of you," as he said that he stomped away from the room. Had the door been hinged, he certainly would've slammed it against the door.

"Wow," Marina said. "It must've been really bad."

"Tell me about it," I said while scratching my head.

* * *

><p>I left the tent that had been set up in the Junian desert. I had to cover my eyes to avoid the momentary glare from the sun shining on my eyes. Marina had left a few minutes after Pavel, sneaking out through the back door. She didn't want anyone to stop her and report the illegal relationship between her and me. Not that it was entirely illegal, we were from different branches, I think.<p>

"Morning Staff Sergeant!" called out some marines that were doing a morning run across camp. I nodded at the men before I walked outside.

Ok, you probably need a little bit of context here, so let me explain the situation. The Olympus system was a small system that somehow managed to have eight different colonies. Two planets we inhabited, Mars and Apollo. Those two planets had a significant number of moons each, they both had three terraformed moons. There had been some Covenant scout ships detected a few weeks earlier, they had done quick recon of the system before leaving. Presumably a larger covvie force would return to finish the job, so a rather large fleet had been sent here to defend the system. Most civilians had relocated from their respective moons or planets to Triton, one of Mars's moons. From there they were already being shipped up in escape craft, they'd be able to escape the system in moments notice.

The entire UNSC forces had been divided into two, the largest section was sent to Triton to protect the civilians in case the covvies showed up, while the smaller one was deployed in Juno to serve as a stalling force in case the Covenant attacked earlier.

I was part of that smaller force.

"Staff Sergeant."  
>"Lieutenant, good morning," I said as I saluted Yevgeny Nezarian, the leader of the Army Rangers contingent attached to our ship.<p>

"It's almost noon Staff Sergeant," he informed me.

I glanced at the sky to confirm that. "That late already? Why wasn't I woken up or something?" I wondered out loud.

"Oh, the marine sent to do so decided to avoid you the embarrassment and skipped waking you up."  
>"Oh," I said as I tried not to blush.<p>

"Don't worry, we all need some semblance of being normal every now and then eh?"

"Yes sir," I said.

The man saluted me once more before he left. I was standing alone in the middle of the improvised camp that had served as my home for the past two days. The entire ground forces available to the UNSC _Inconvenience _were also here, tasked with defending a relatively significant plateau. Strategically significant that is. We were basically camping in an area that was higher in the desert, even though the desert kept changing.

I went through a couple of Armadillo IFVs before stopping in command. Command happened to be a larger tent that was actually made of plastic and not simply a pile of cloth. I talked to Captain Sharma, who said my services weren't required.

"What am I to do ma'am?" I asked.

"Right now, nothing."

I sighed deeply in disappointment, I was really beginning to get bored. I decided to take a walk around our makeshift camp, passing near tanks, Armadillos, Falcons, Rattlesnakes, and Pelicans. If you had looked at our camp from space, it would've looked like there were a lot of people in here, not just a small battalion. Eventually I tired of walking around in the scorching sun of Juno and decided to return to my tent. On the way there I found Pavel.

"Hey man, you want to tell me what was so bad about spending the night with Delacroix?"  
>"You mean Chloe?" he asked. "Well, no, I won't tell you."<p>

"Come on man, you know we were kidding," I said, referring to the earlier incident.

"You were still an ass about it," he said.

"What are you? A nineteen year-old girl?" I asked surprised. "Just tell me what was wrong," I said.

He took a deep breath before he went ahead. "Ok, at first everything went like normal, we were having a little fun and getting touchy feely, as she says, so she proposed we went to a pelican…"

"Nothing wrong with that…" I muttered, my previous evening had gone much like that.

"Shut up, once we got there…"

Pavel didn't get to finish his story, since in that precise moment, two loud blasts from a bullhorn put the entire camp on high alert. We headed towards our tent to armor up while the rest of the camp went to the armory. I stripped down to my underwear so that I could put on my undersuit before putting on my armor. Why? You might ask. Well, before the climate control of my suit functions more effectively like that. Within a minute I felt like I was taking a lovely stroll down some park in a relatively cool morning. Weather-wise, of course, I actually felt like I was ready to kick some serious Covenant ass.

After we were both looking like grim reapers in armor (Pavel now referred to himself as Grim in account to the scythe he had drawn on his helmet, formerly a reference to Cronos or Kronus), we headed out towards command. Unsurprisingly, we were stopped by one Lieutenant Krikor Darbinian, but we pushed our way through the man and faced Captain Sharma again.

"Ma'am," I said.

"Ah, Staff Sergeant, Sergeant," she said, nodding at each of us in turn. "Looks like the Covenant have finally decided to jump into the system," she explained.

I refrained myself from saying "about time", instead, I simply nodded.

"The Covenant force consists of four ships," she explained.

That was good, our fleet was composed of about twenty something ships, including three _Marathon_-class cruisers in addition to several destroyers in addition to our frigate.

"I presume that means that we won't be forced to fight," I half-stated, slightly disappointed.

"On the contrary Staff Sergeant…" Sharma said with an uneasiness in her voice.

"Oh, crap."

"Yes, one of those ship happens to be a supercarrier."

"Godammit, fuck!" Pavel exclaimed. Sharma simply cleared her throat. "Sorry ma'am," he said.

"Never mind, we are moving to a better position, this is just a glorified hill, a giant piece of sand," she said. It was true, our camp had set up in a giant dune. It provided a higher vantage point, but was still a dune.

"We're moving here," she said as she pointed in a map, an actual paper map, can you believe it? "This place is the closest in miles that actually has rocks as surface instead of sand."

I peeked at the map and saw it already had some lines and circles scribbled on the hills. The highest one was circled with blue and arrows pointed at it. Looked like that would be our new base.

"What are we to do?" I asked.

"Borrow two mongooses from a pelican, then head out that way. You'll do as scouts, radio us back if you find anything interesting."

"Ma'am," we said simultaneously before we left.

Pavel and I headed towards the section of the camp where all the pelicans had landed. I headed specifically for _Mary's Little Lamb._ Not for the obvious reasons, but because I knew that there were two vehicles of the type that I needed inside of it.

"Hey Frank!" said Sheppard. "What are you doing here?"  
>"I need to borrow your mongooses," I said.<p>

"Sure, take care of them," he said.

"Don't worry, we'll return them intact," Pavel said.

"Like I care, I don't get to use them," returned Sheppard.

* * *

><p>By that time we had already hopped on the two ATVs and driven them of the craft's bay. I told my HUD to point the quickest route to the hills in Sharma's map and headed out. My HUD put various waypoint markers that we had to go towards instead of a line or something. They weren't positioned in a straight line, we would have to climb through huge dunes for that to work, but instead had to take long detours around the place.<p>

"So, Pavel, you ready to tell me what went wrong yesterday?" I asked, suddenly remembering our interrupted conversation.

"Oh yeah, I was saying, that we were inside this empty pelican, she's taking my clothes of and all of a sudden…"

"Staff Sergeant, do you copy?" our radio interrupted us.

"Yes ma'am, I copy."

"How's your progress?" Sharma asked us.

"We're fifteen minutes out," I said.

"Wow, you move slowly," she replied.

"Well, maybe you should've sent a falcon," I suggested.

"Probably, but Hernandez wasn't willing to risk one, even now they are moving at slow place and a meter above ground level. Supposedly they can't be identified from orbit that way."  
>"Ok…?"<br>"Yes, that's what I though too Sergeant, talk to me as soon as you reach the hill," she ordered and left the conversation.

"It's Staff Sergeant," I muttered.

"Well, as I was saying…" Pavel started.

This time we were interrupted yet again, only that it wasn't by our own, instead, a nice little banshee popped into view from right above a dune. It immediately spotted us and started positioning itself for a strafing run.

"They're here already?" Pavel asked. I looked at him and shrugged in response.

"What now?" he asked calmly.

"Normally, I'd say we hide," I suggested.

"Great, you start digging while I distract it," he said.

"Ok, go," I said.

"What? Really?" he asked surprised.

"No idiot, I'll draw its fire, you just use your M247," I told him.

"That's more like it," he said as he started breaking apart from me.

The banshee finally decided to attack and started spraying my mongoose with plasma, I managed to avoid being hit and passed right underneath the banshee, I turned around and shot it a couple of times as it turned around for a second strafing run. This time it got peppered by fire from Pavel, unfortunately, a couple of shots made contact with my mongoose, melting away some of the metallic pieces of the vehicle.

I floored the accelerator and started heading sideways so that the banshee had to turn to shoot me. The craft was flying a meter above the ground, it was at time like this that I wished I had plasma grenades, but a regular M9 would have to do for now.

"Pavel?" I asked.

"On it," he replied.

I turned around after a few seconds to see my friend toss a grenade into the path of the speeding banshee. It detonated just as the flier passed over it, blowing out the rear half of the craft and sending it crashing into the ground. It hadn't been flying high, so it simply skidded through the sand until it stopped.

"Nice one," I said, complimenting my friend.

"I aim to please," he said.

We headed towards the wrecked banshee with our weapons aimed at the wreckage. The banshee tilted to the side a little bit and we found ourselves facing a brute pilot missing two of its legs. It was obviously in pain, but it still managed to snarl at us and try to grab our legs with its hands. We didn't go closer, it was still a brute, which meant it was still dangerous.

"So it's brutes then," I stated.

"Looks like it," Pavel agreed.

"Ok, let's go," I said.

We hopped on our mongooses and left the dying, bleeding brute to its fate in the vast desert.

We finally reached the hill ten minutes later. We stopped to take a good look at it before contacting Captain Sharma. The hill in question was a regular-looking hill. It was roughly round in shape, with slopes that weren't steep at all. It got better higher up in the hill, as near its top it had a cliff of sorts protecting the summit. Around it there were two smaller hills. All were made of the same dark brown rock.

"Captain," I asked.

"Yes," she answered, the sound of vehicles was evident on the other side of the channel.

"We're here, found a lone banshee patrol on the way her. Brutes."

"Yes, it seems like the carrier has already landed. Two of the enemy ships were destroyed at the cost of seven of our own. A third CCS-class cruiser was damaged and rendered inoperable, but the supercarrier managed to save most of its crew and equipment. The ship landed some eighty kilometers away from the hill."  
>"Too close," I said.<p>

"Unfortunately, yes," but the Navy is already launching an operation to disable its engines, we currently lack the firepower to actually destroy the craft. We'd probably run out of nukes if we tried to take it out. Those things were as deadly as… well, as deadly as supercarriers. There's nothing that compares to it on any side of the war. The craft is actually almost thirty fucking kilometers long, equipped with standard covvie plasma weaponry and shields. Up to eleven, of course. I couldn't see it from here, the curve of the small moon prevented me from doing just that, but it would only need to pivot on its edges three times to arrive here. It was large as fuck.

* * *

><p>Hours later the hill was bustling with activity. The tanks had been dug into trenches to serve as stationary artillery to defend our base. The summit of the hill was covered with AA machine guns and missile pods, all of the Armadillos had been placed inside a recently-created cave, around that cave camouflage netting had been set up to house all the equipment that the IFVs needed to run. The Falcons had been landed on the top of the hill, which was flat enough to serve as a decent landing pad for the airships. The Rattlesnakes were simply placed near the slopes of the hill and the pelicans had been landed on the side facing away from the direction of the enemy. Regular troops had set up their tents in the slopes of the hill, while officers and command was on the better-protected summit.<p>

"Johnson's regiment and the sixtieth will move in to cut off any dropped troops here and here," Major Hernandez was telling Sharma. "Then they will take out…" he looked at Pavel and me.

"Oh, don't worry, I called them in," Sharma said.

The Major ignored us and resumed his jargon, my mate and I headed towards a corner of the tent to talk to Nezarian.

"What do you know?" I asked.

"Seems like the Navy strike succeeded, they managed to eliminate the ship's capacity to actually move," he said.

"Already?" Pavel asked, surprised. "That was quick."  
>"Yes, unfortunately a dozen boats were sunk," he stated. "They used nukes to take out its shields, looked like about five of them from what I've heard, then a few MAC shots to the ship's rear took out its engines. They might've managed to wreck one of the ship's plasma projectors, but I don't have confirmation on that."<br>"Shit," I said. "A dozen ships?"

He nodded. "The _Inconvenience_ didn't take part in the attack, too small."

"I see, so now what?" I asked.

"Well, we take out all of the covvie troops from the ship, no other way around it, the few nukes that we have will be used to stage attacks on the ship, so I doubt that we'll simply get nuclear rain to fall on this desert."

"You're telling me we're about to start a campaign for this little piece of sand?" Pavel asked.

"Seems like that's the case."

* * *

><p><em>Hello, just apologizing for this short chapter. Hope you enjoy.<em>


	40. Número Uno

Chapter XL: Número Uno

**January 31, 2541 (UNSC Calendar)/ **

**Hill Uno, Juno, Olympus System**

It _had_ been the case. The carrier still had one particular weapon, which served to ward off any ship that came nearby. So far it had only destroyed a frigate that had come here to give us supplies. The ship in question had been neatly bisected as a rather thin plasma beam cut through it as it was about to break atmosphere. The supercarrier had literally sniped the frigate from around fifty thousand kilometers away. The frigate had landed all over the place, some of its crew managed to bail out in time. A few of the other regiments in Juno had gotten their supplies. So far we could manage, but bringing supplies from any of the three remaining UNSC ships was a lengthy process that involved loading pelicans and shipping ammunitions and food to us instead of simply bringing them all at the same time on board a ship.

As I was saying, the energy projector that the supercarrier sported prevented any UNSC ship from making an approach to this side of the planet. It could literally blast away at a frigate that was fifty fucking thousand kilometers away for Christ's sake.

Our camp was still a camp and we were well supplied, we would last a long time in this place if we were required to, but for now we were content to wait for the UNSC reinforcements that had been called for.

"No reinforcements for now," Brooks' hologram said.

"What?" said every single person in the room. There were seven people inside, a very coordinated response.

"The UNSC Navy is busy in other systems, they can't afford to send a single ship to this system, especially if they can be destroyed from halfway across the system," he explained. "However, they have not forsaken us, so we will receive freighters with supplies, although I seriously doubt that we will be receiving any nuclear weapons."

"Captain, what does that mean for us?" asked Hernandez, a frown covering his face.

"For now, you fight." Having said that, he signed off.

"Well that's just great," Darbinian started. "How many apes are on that ship? Twenty thousand?" At least."  
>"Twenty thousand covvies, not apes," Sharma said.<p>

"Well, regardless, what do we do now?" asked Chloe.

"We could simply stay here and wait this thing out, only fighting when the enemy comes to us," suggested Hernandez. "This is a pretty defendable position."

"I don't think any of the soldiers here could wait that long," murmured Yevgeny.

"I agree," I said.

"These men are soldiers, they need to fight, most of them _want_ to fight," Pavel said.

"Because they are recruits!" Darbinian said, outraged.

"May I remind you that all of these men had seen combat more than once?" Nezarian said.

"We can't fight alone against them," he complained.

"Well, we do have a couple of other regiments planetside," Delacroix said. "Won't be alone, just saying."  
>"I think we should stay here," Darbinian said.<p>

"How the hell is he your executive officer ma'am?" Pavel asked Sharma. I elbowed my friend for his comment. Darbinian simply stormed off the tent, visibly angry.

"Is he allowed to do that?" Pavel asked again. This time I let it pass.

"He's just under a lot of stress," Sharma said.

"Not important," Yevgeny Nezarian said. "What do we do?"  
>"If we won't wait out, I suggest that we wait only a little longer to see what the ground troops will do," Major Hernandez said.<p>

"Sounds good to me, sir," Lieutenant Delacroix said. It seemed like part of her shyness had disappeared, although she still blushed for things I considered rather insignificant. Pavel told he loved that.

_Whipped._ I thought. Then: _Hypocrite._ My own mind made the word sound like a rhyme with whipped. My mental issues had decreased over time, but they were still there. Yup, I needed a real shrink, or not, I wasn't about to ask around if certain things that happened in my head were normal. _That _wasn't normal.

"No raids?" I asked.

"Or sabotage?" that was Nezarian.

"Not even some recon?" asked Pavel.

"I guess we could do a little bit of mayhem," muttered Captain Sharma.

"That's what we're her for ma'am," I said.

* * *

><p>The troops that were on board the supercarrier plus the additional ones from the CCS-class battlecruiser had all been dropped to the ground, with only a few remaining on board to serve as command and control. There were roughly 25,000 enemy ground soldiers in addition to air and ground vehicles. We barely amounted to a division. We had 10,000 army soldiers and marines. A small division at that. Fortunately, humanity tended to triumph in overwhelming situations whilst on ground combat. It had been joked that it was 3-1 in space for the covvies, but they were 1-3 in ground combat. I secretly hoped that that was the truth.<p>

Right now Pavel and I had been sent to do some recon. A small covvie legion had decided to move towards our direction, while other larger forces had moved to face the rest of the UNSC forces. The brutes were eager for carnage and we would give it to them soon enough.

"What do you see?" I asked Pavel. My VISR and helmet zoom only went so far.

"Well, not that much really, they've got wraiths, ghosts, banshees, revenants, and a buttload of infantry. Nothing out of the usual."

"Leadership?" I asked.

"They haven't left the command tent yet, but I have spotted a few minor chieftains, so it looks like they are lead by a full-fledged ape."

"So this recon mission was simply a recon mission," I stated. "Well that's disappointing," I said as I slung my sniper rifle over my back and headed back to our mongooses.  
>"Wait, wait!" Pavel said.<p>

"What?"

"The chieftain is out."

"And?"

"Uh-oh," Pavel said. "They're moving out."  
>"Now?"<p>

"Yes, we'd better go, like right now," Pavel said.

We hopped on our vehicles and followed our trail back to Hill Uno. It had been named like that because it was "Number One!" according to some stupid marine. At least they hadn't called it Hill Something. That would've been unoriginal, and God forbid something be unoriginal.

We made our way back in a matter of minutes, we even spotted a few banshees behind us, but they didn't seem to spot us. I'll give the mongoose that, even though it is a glorified ATV, it certainly has acceleration. The sandy desert made it less prone to tip over when it hit a pebble, but it also slowed it down considerably. I was glad with the exchange of performance issues. Seemed like all of our scouts were too. Also, dunes made pretty nice ramps.

"Did you see that?" Pavel asked excitedly. "I must've jumped at least three meters high!"  
>I smiled through my faceplate and depressed the accelerator, using a smallish dune as a ramp. It was a fantastic jump, I managed to fly about five meters high and a lot more than that in distance. Fortunately, I landed on a relatively flat stretch of sand, so I didn't end up killing myself over some stupid trick.<p>

"Impressive, even I'll admit it," Pavel said.

We arrived at Hill Uno and made our way to the rocks that protected the summit and command. We did some hopping and climbing before we finally reached the top.

"They're coming," Pavel said.

"Oh, we know, we do have drones scouting the area," answered the major.

"Then why did you send us on recon?" Pavel asked.

"Well, you were obviously restless, so we decided to give you something to do," Sharma said.

"You two guys get along way too good to be from different branches," I said. "Ma'am, Sir," I added. "What do you want us to do then?" I asked, changing the subject quickly to make them forget I had addressed them as friends, something that was a big no-no in the military.

"We honestly don't have any jobs that require your expertise," the captain said. "When they attack today or tomorrow, you'll simply stay away from the bulk of the combat, maybe do some sniping if you want, but we can't risk loosing you two in this battle."  
>"You're storing us?" Pavel asked shocked.<p>

"Yes, for later."

"What about the rangers?" I asked.

"Oh, that's on a need to know basis," Hernandez said.

"Well that's just great," I said as I left the tent without saluting or requesting to do so.

* * *

><p>The covvies arrived at dusk. Instead of waiting to the morning to execute an attack and let their troops rest, they instead attacked straight away. This time they skipped sending grunts as cannon fodder and all that. They went head-on with a combined-arms assault. Banshees strafed the forward-most positions before wraiths started bombarding the place. Then, a group of ghosts decided to slam against our line with squadrons of brutes, grunts, jackals, and hunters. You know, the usual.<p>

"So, what's your killcount?" Pavel asked.

"I lost track once I hit the hundreds," I said.

"Yeah, figures," he agreed. "What about overall killcount? Any idea how high it could be?"  
>"Dunno, should be pretty damn high, in account to the two times I've detonated a nuke."<br>"We, we've detonated a nuke," Pavel said.

"No, that first time in vacuum doesn't count for you," I said. "you can share the other if you want."  
>Pavel was mature enough not to get in a discussion over this. Since we had nothing left to say, we simply dedicated ourselves to observing the spectacle. The desert was black, you could barely see anything at all. We used out VISRs to make out the silhouettes of friendlies and covvies, but the technology only did so much. What really lit up the sky though, was the tracer rounds and plasma fire. That and the flaming wrecks that were a few of the covvie vehicles. The battle was looking like an intense but short one. The Army guys down there would repel all of the attacking aliens without much suffering and then we would shift the soldiers in the frontline. After that we'd then wait for the second, deadlier covvie attack. That had been the plan ever since we knew that they were attacking us.<p>

Soon enough they covvies were repulsed. We only needed to use one of our Rattlesnakes to handle two wraiths. The rest of the ghosts were taken out with rockets or their riders had fallen prey to a well-aimed bullet. Those intact ghosts would be grabbed and used as stationary cannons. The attack had worked well in our favor, I doubted that we had suffered a single kill. Perhaps a couple of wounded soldiers, but I knew that nothing too serious, otherwise the cries for medics would've been heard all the way over here. Plasma burns are painful, same as spiker rounds to the chest.

"Well?"  
>"Well what?"<br>"I don't know, I've got nothing to talk about," Pavel said.

"Me neither."

We simply observed as the Rattlesnake shot at the retreating ghosts before they disappeared over a few dunes. Seems like their camp was nearby, less than a kilometer away. That meant that we'd do some Arrowhead raids soon enough, odds was that Pavel and me would be chosen for that.

_Finally, some action. _I thought excitedly, even though not a single officer had even requested us for the past hours.

"Well, I guess it's time to sleep," Pavel said as he stood up. "I recommend you do the same, remember that nights here are extremely short," he reminded me.

They were, only about six hours each, but it was more than enough nighttime than any self-respectable soldier would need.

I stood up as well and followed my friend to our tent and our folding beds.

When we woke up the next day I could clearly see all of the Covenant dead soldiers. There were a few dozen grunts, brutes, and jackals on the ground, all of them dead. Two wraiths had been utterly destroyed while about five ghosts had suffered the same fate, two were salvaged and used exactly as I said they would be. Not a single banshee had been shot down, but that was not worrisome, we had been attacked at night, with no searchlights and little light to help out any night vision equipment it was rather difficult to shoot a banshee.

I groaned as I stood up. My mohawk was still there, but there was a little bit of hair growing around it now. At least it saved me from having to put down some bunched up hair in the early morning. I put on my boots and actually tucked in my pants, that way no sand would get into the leather combat boots. I could've used my armored boots, but they were just a little bit weird to walk around. I mean it looked weird. I even had to grab a surplus jacket. This particular item of clothing was gray instead of black, but it was still ODST issue. It killed me to have to war this, but the sun was taking no prisoners. I even had to put on a cap.

"Morning Frank," Pavel said as I left the tent, he was simply standing there watching yesterday's battlefield.

"How'd it go for us?" I asked.

"One guy was shot in the shoulder with a spiker and a couple of mild plasma burns, nothing too serious."  
>"Figures," I said.<p>

"So, around when?" he asked.

"Two hours, give or take fifteen minutes," I said.

"Nah, no way, four hours," he said.

Two hours and forty-three minutes later we were under attack once again.

* * *

><p>"Move!" I called out to the small squadron assigned to me. They were four marines in addition to Pavel and myself. That is a grand total of six.<p>

We were leading flying through the battlefield in an attempt to reach the chieftain that was leading the attack. Apparently the brute was one of the minor chieftains, but still a pretty dangerous one.

"Movement right!" one of them cried. I heard a couple of shots and then dropped to the floor.

A stream of spiker rounds flew overhead, occupying the space where the entire squad had been moments before. I turned around so that I was face-up and shot a couple of random rounds before sighting the brute minor. Two bursts dented its helmet and went through his skull respectively.

"Keep moving!" I said.

We had been given a narrow window by the rest of Echo and B companies. They were firing all they had at the advancing covvies, while we made our way through their stretched ranks. I am still not entirely sure why we didn't get an Armadillo, would've made this thing a hell of a lot easier.

"Banshee!" one of the marines said. We all dived sideways at the word and a line of plasma turned the sand at our feet into molten glass. The marine that had been carrying out SPANKr turned around and fired a single rocket at the craft. We circled around him while the rocket made contact with its target. A few covvies were already realizing what was going on and firing in our direction, but we moved out of there in no time.

"Let's go!" I ordered as we started running towards our goal. The chieftain was hiding behind a dune directing the assault. He had chosen to spread his force wide, that's what had allowed the tank barrage to open up a corridor for us to go through and take him out. Another one would do the same and allow us to retreat as soon as I ordered it.

"Grunt," someone called out, but the alien had already been made a cheese grater.

Finally we reached the pinnacle of the dune where we would shoot the chieftain. Our rocket marine took careful aim, not even bothering to hide his presence. Just as he had sighted in on the large ape, a silhouette emerged from behind him. Within seconds the marine was in the desert floor, struggling to keep blood from spewing out of his neck and we were shooting a stalker in active camouflage.

The brute kicked another marine, making her tumble downhill a few meters before she stopped herself. It then lunges at the closes marines, but it went face first to the ground as I shot at its leg. Not that it bothered the alien, it immediately stood up and tackled the marine out of the way. I fired a sustained burst at its chest and managed to kill it before it landed on top of me, its right armpit covering most of my face.

"Oh God! The horror!" I said as Pavel pulled the brute off me.

The other marine was attending to the one with a sliced neck, the two that had been kicked and tackled were making their way up here while firing at some adventurous grunts that had been sent here to kill us.

"The chieftain!" I reminded Pavel, and he lunged towards the rocket launcher. He grabbed the weapon and aimed for barely a second before clicking the trigger twice. Only a single rocket flew out of its tube, since the other one was empty, but it was more than enough. The explosion landed less than a foot away from the charging chieftain. Killing it and one of its bodyguards. The other one was taken out with a few shots to the gaps in its armor.

"Ok, let's move out," I said. "Now!" I called into my helmet mic.

Even as we were clumsily making our way downhill, carrying a wounded marine with us, a rain of HE rounds cleared out any covvie soldier that had decided to try and stop us from returning. This time we had to provide covering fire while we returned.

"Move!" I repeated while shooting down a jackal.

"Frank, behind you!" Pavel called out from further ahead.

I jumped forward instinctively and a fist slammed into the wrecked wraith that I had been using for cover. Another stalker had been just stalking us, or me. I turned around and fired two rounds at its chest, both of which had no effect and made my gun go click. I stood up and pulled out my knife, remembering one Bulldog's lessons in close quarters combat. I lunged at the monster, and making full use of my accentuated reflexes and muscles managed to end up behind it after stabbing at it twice. I slashed twice at the back of its knees. It wasn't a deadly injury, but it was enough to bring the surprised brute to the floor, its head was now level with mine, and I promptly slashed its throat wide open.

"Wow, Frankie, that was rather… impressive," Pavel said, startled. It made for a funny image, an ODST with an awkward look on his body while colorful projectiles rained all around him.

"Well, yes, thank you, MOVE!" I said.

We made it to the frontline without greater trouble after having killed a chieftain and several other brutes, grunts, and jackals. That action stopped the attack in its tracks, the covvies retreated to regroup and attack later on.

Not all of us made it, the soldier that had been slashed in the neck died halfway to the medical tent, crying out for us to tell his wife and kids he loved them. He was the first casualty from the _Inconvenience_ in the Junian Campaign. He would not be the last.


	41. Regular Infantry

Chapter XLI: Regular Infantry

**February 20, 2542 (UNSC Calendar)/**

**Hill Uno, Juno, Olympus System**

The original legion that had been sent to eliminate our small group had long since disappeared, courtesy of the noisy Armadillos and their 30mm autocannons. Oh, and one particularly nasty airstrike, courtesy of seven Shortsword bombers that departed from Vigil, the small city that acted as the capital of this moon. We were now surrounded, no other way to put it. We weren't _completely _surrounded, but there were three legions facing us, with another one already on the move to cut of our escape. Said escape was taking place right now, with the soldiers and marines hopping of into the Pelicans, Armadillos, Scorpions, Cobras, and Warthogs. The rest of the marines had been mounted on our few pelicans, everyone except us and the Rangers were ready. That meant there were thirty-two men defending all of Hill Uno.

Luckily, we didn't plan on staying here for long. We were only to serve as a stalling force in case the Covenant legions attacked, which wasn't something that seemed likely to happen soon, not after the ass-kicking session that we had given them two days ago.  
>I checked the timer in my helmet, the same timer that was counting down simultaneously on my helmet, Pavel's helmet and thirty other helmets of the Army Rangers. We were now only a couple of minutes away from escaping on board of two pelicans that were left behind. One of them was Marina's, the other one was the craft of another pilot that had been on board this ship since before me. Apparently his flying skills were legendary.<p>

After a hundred seconds of unbearable tension and fear of enemy strike, we all silently fell back towards the pelicans. At that moment all of the vehicles available to us ignited their engines at the same time and sped away from Hill Uno, looking to escape the three legions and avoid yet another one already on its way. This time nobody bothered to try and move slowly, every single on of those vehicles sped away at speeds in excess of 60 miles per hour. Our pelicans took of thirty seconds later, the exact time it took us to climb over the hill and reach our escape craft.

Unfortunately, things didn't go so smoothly. The sentries on the covvie camps alerted all the troops, which prompted a random barrage of wraith plasma to land all over the place, along with a wall of spiker rounds, needle rounds, and the occasional carbine, to shoot aimlessly at our hill.

They didn't even have to aim, all they had to do was fill the entire space in front of us with a wall of projectiles. Fortunately, we had already left. A wraith mortar shot forced me to dive away from my trajectory and hop inside the other pelican, instead of Marina's. Frankly, it made me nervous, I had never flown with someone that wasn't Marina. At least not for over five years.

"Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to UNSC Air, my name is Horace Zelkawe, and I'll…" "Shut the fuck up and take off already!" some cried out.

"As you wish, sir," the pilot said through the intercom, but he was already a couple dozen meters of the ground.

I was already manning the rear turret of the pelican, my job was to discourage any banshee pursuers from giving chase. It was a beautiful display of fireworks as green lights erupted all over the place. The AA wraiths were carpeting the area. I watched the lovely green lights land all over the place and rattle our craft. Eventually I bored of it and simply used them as flares to try and spot banshees. I fired three bursts at an eager brute pilot before it finally decided against it and retired. Then, we were alone.

Later, in the morning, I decided to give my position in the turret to somebody else. I had been aiming at nothing for a few hours, and my feet were tired. Two falcons had flanked our craft a few minutes after we had left the hill. They were crewed by Army troopers but there were three marines on board of each, hitching a ride. The four Falcons that we sported had originally been sent to cover our retreat, now they simply stayed there because they had no better place to go.

Our column was moving slowly now, a great deal of sand being lifted by the tracks and tires. Luckily, we had managed to fit every last foot soldier into or on top off a vehicle, that way we moved considerably faster. Our destination was a small town near the Edian River, a rather large river for a moon this barren and small. The fact that there was even an ocean in this place was astounding. The town was in the exact place where the desert started to shift into prairie. It was six hours away from Hill Uno at the speed we were doing and uncomfortably closer to the supercarrier. We had no other choice though, it was a good defensible position and would put the brutes in an awkward situation because they were now four legions short and would leave us in a position viable for an attack if such thing was planned. Besides, it had a river, with actual water in it. Water! Isn't that exciting?

Finally, the town came into view. I moved through the cargo bay of the pelican and entered Horace's cockpit.

"Hey what are you…?"  
>"Shut up," I ordered as I took in the small town.<p>

The houses weren't built of wood or even metal or plastics, they were made out of concrete and stone, good, sturdy houses for the unforgivable weather in this region. They all had small windows facing the desert, where sand and dust storms usually came from, and larger windows facing the river. There were about three hundred or so buildings in the town, mot of them houses, but some of them were evidently small businesses. I could spot the police station, with its landing pad empty, and a large supermarket, probably completely empty of product when the colonists here left. That town would be my home for a while. Rio de Juno was going to be my home. And it sucked.

* * *

><p>"Sandbags, that should be easy; barbed wire, we can always make some; ammunition we're getting shipped, food, we have our C-rations; water, there's that fucking river. What I can simply not tolerate, is the absolute lack of any entertainment!" one marine complained loudly.<p>

"Well, if you just took the time, you could watch some of the films left behind by the colonists, but apparently they're all Junian or outdated," an Army soldier said. "You could have a whole lot less free time if you wanted to."

"Well, maybe that's because as a marine, I'm not used to getting secondhand equipment."

I took a glance at the Army equipment placed next to the soldier and instantly knew he was right. He had a battered old MA37 ICWS that was on top of everything looked like it had been through a couple of campaigns against the URF before being handed to this soldiers, it looked like it was about to fall apart. Don't get me wrong, in my opinion the MA37 is a superb weapon, besides, I think it's better looking than the MA5C, but it performs less than satisfactory on most aspects.

The UNSC Army issued its infantry soldiers with other relics. For example, the M6G that I and all the other troops in the UNSCDF had was the same, but this army guys had older version of it. And let's not even get into the body armor of Army troopers. It is cumbersome, heavy, doesn't have climate control, and on top of everything, is slightly less effective than the Marine Battle Dress. Really, poor guys.

The soldier and marine started getting into an Army vs. Marines argument as I walked away from them. The town of Rio de Juno, apparently called like that in homage to Rio de Janeiro, had been made a fortress. There were sandbag barricades forming a wall covering the perimeter of the small town, then there were more elaborate defenses inside of the town, mostly consisting of tanks aiming down the streets two avenues and Armadillos in intersections. It would be a nightmare to get through this place, especially when an armored company and a company from the famous Hell's Ambassadors defended it.

Unfortunately, this place was boring as fuck. We hadn't had a major attack in the few days that we had been here. Don't get me wrong, it's not a bad thing, but I'd rather fight a hundred covvies right now than have to wait for them endlessly. It made me feel jumpy and I wasn't the only nervous one.

I jogged through the small town to kill time, not really because I wanted myself fit. I went through the small town hall, which served as headquarters for the 'Inconvenient JSF', as we had been nicknamed by ourselves. We were a joint strike force because members of two different UNSCDF branches composed our strength. The town hall had been turned into a mountain of sandbags, with said objects covering all lower windows and forming a perimeter surrounding the building. There were also sandbags on the roof and outside the door.

I made my way to the small police station, barely the size of an Elephant troop transport. It had been used as storage for ammunition, seeing that it was the only building in the city designed to store weaponry and actually fend off assaults. A pelican was positioned on the landing pad, not that it was used, it was simply there because it was an actual landing pad. The rest of the pelicans were grounded in the parking lot of the supermarket, same as the falcons. Our scorpions were placed in the two avenues of the town, covering the whole length of the streets with their 90mm cannons. The other two had been placed next to the town hall and on the other end of town respectively. The warthogs that we had would be used as warthogs. Right now they were on use as courier messages and shade providers. The mongooses we had were not getting any use and likely wouldn't receive any for a long time. They'd probably serve better as barricades.

The worse part about this though, was the sun. It was significantly colder here than it had been back in Hill Uno, but 41º Celsius is still hot as fuck. Not literally. I think… Well, I don't know. Regardless, it was still very hot, and most male soldiers chose to mill around topless. Doesn't sound that sexy when it's with large military men does it? I can tell that some of the female soldiers were excited about that. They giggled and pointed at different soldiers sometimes. I managed to forget that most of them were in their early twenties or late teens. They could've been going to college and getting a nice degree, perhaps even getting married. Or they could've been dancing in strip clubs. Who knows?

I finished my running at the river. Unfortunately, the water wasn't drinkable unless I wanted to get the flu. I still drank it. It felt good as splashed water on my face. I would've jumped inside right then and there, but I didn't want to get one of my two pairs of cargos soaked. I returned back to my own little house at a slow pace. I am _very_ glad to say that I did spot a group of Marines stealing glances at me and giggling amongst themselves. Fortunately, they were all women.

I arrived at the house with a big smile on my face. I decided against taking a shower. We had running water, but we still had to ration it carefully.

_Why?_

_Why what?_

_Why do we ration water? It's not like the river is going to dry up any time soon._

_A fine point,_ I told myself as I turned on the shower.

* * *

><p>Two hours later I was dragging a marine without both of his legs to safety. Funny how things change that fast. The marine had been hit by a plasma grenade, the explosion it produced actually managed to burn through both his legs. His screams were almost unbearable.<p>

"Cover me!" I yelled as I dragged the soldier over a pile of sandbags and to safety. The marine was aided by two corpsmen and tourniquets placed above his knees. The man would probably survive just fine. He'd be open for replacement limbs for free. He'd probably get a nice pair of electrical legs after he was honorably discharged. He would be able to live his life fully and normally.

An instant later a fuel rod from a banshee engulfed them all, killing them instantly. The flier turned around for another pass but a warthog's M41 shot it down, sending it crashing into a couple of unlucky jackals.

"Shoot the brute, shoot the brute!"

Instants later the brute had received about two pounds worth of lead to the face and chest, making said areas look like hamburger meat. The grunts in its squad panicked and fled. They were all shot down within moments.

From further back we were receiving a constant rain of plasma from three different turrets. They had been mounted on I don't know what to make them mobile. The bolts slammed all over the place, mostly missing. Mostly. I dived to the side as I fired in the general direction of the moving turrets. I was to far away to actually aim and fire accurately that quickly, but I am proud to say my shots landed around the feet of the grunt gunner. I sprinted a few meters before sliding behind an overturned ghost. I kicked the dead brute in the face just in case. From that position I popped up and managed to shoot down one of the grunts. Instants later another took its place, and the firing resumed.

"Pavel, where are you with those Arrowheads?" I asked.

"Still no luck, the launching tubes were damaged badly," he said. "I need a higher vantage point to actually throw them."  
>"Well, climb on top of something!" I said.<p>

"On it," he replied.

I joined the barrage of gunfire that the B and Echo companies were providing, halting the enemy advance but not eliminating it. I did my usual thing, targeting brute minors and grunts with fuel rods. Jackals with shields were somebody else's problem, so I dedicated myself to shooting down the sharpshooters. I jumped off the ghost and switched positions to another barricade, I was beginning to attract to much attention.

"Ok, I'm ready!" Pavel called out. This time I could actually hear his voice from behind me. I turned to face him and saw that he was on top of a house on the edge of town, right behind me.

"Painting targets!" I said as I activated the laser targeter on my rifle. "Throw one," I said.

"Two!" I called out as I sighted in on another turret. As I said that the first missile flew straight at the firs turret I had targeted, destroying it and killing the grunt. The second one didn't fly high enough and slammed into the ground ten feet away from the second turret.

"Throw it higher!" I said.

Pavel grunted as he complied, and the third missile hit the grunt directly, killing it and destroying the turret completely. The third missile took two attempts as well, but eventually we had destroyed all of the three turrets.

"Where is that damn Armadillo?" I asked out loud.

As soon as I said that a red plasma bolt flew right next to my head, frying the radio components on my head. It was awfully close to frying my head as well.

"Fuck!"

I had to sprint all the way back to Darbinian's position. He was in command of this section of the line. I had to sprint through fifty meters of dirt to finally reach the lieutenant.

"Sir!"

"What?" he asked as he fired a steady burst at a jackal, knocking back its shield and killing it.

"Where's the Armadillo?"

"On its way," he said as he ducked to avoid a strafing banshee. "Fuck you asshole!" he called out as he shot at the craft as it flew overhead.

"We need it now!" I said.

"I thought we were doing just fine," Darbinian returned angrily and, obviously, sarcastically.

"There's a fucking revenant there and we can't do shit about it!" I said.

"Fine, fuck," he relented. "Ask Vazquez to use the radio to command."

"Thank you, sir," I said.

_Huh, he actually is a soldier._ I thought as I crawled ten meters towards Vazquez

"Hey, the lieutenant told me to…" Of course he was shot in the face with a spiker. What else could've happened?  
>"Argh! Help me!" he called out as he tried to pull the glowing spike from his eye.<p>

"Calm down!" I said.

I left the man there and grabbed his radio as blood spurted out of his eye socket.

"Command! This is Castillo, we need the Armadillo right fucking now!" I said.

"It's on its fucking way staff sergeant, and watch your fucking tone!" came the answer from none other than Chloe Delacroix.

"Just tell the fucking thing to hurry up!" I yelled into the radio, getting into the discussion. "Or we'll die."

"Done," she said.

As soon as she said that I dropped the radio from and let it dangle from the guy's backpack. I grabbed him from the back of his vest and started pulling him back, firing from his SMG while I did so.

"Medic!" I called out. A corpsman sprinted towards me and grabbed the bleeding Vazquez from the same place. I took a knee and killed a jackal that was shooting in out direction. A line of spike appeared ten meters away and moved towards me only to stop an inch away from my boot. I took the moment to eliminate the brute with three bursts to the head.

"Pavel!" I called out.

"What?"

"Make those damn jackals keep their heads down!" I ordered.

"I'm fucking trying!" he said as he fired a steady burst from his M247L. Normally, we would've been more quiet and professional when on a mission, but this wasn't actually a mission. We were simply fighting to push back a covvie advance. This was actually the weakest point of the Covenant attack, but we only had two platoons to defend it. The rest of the troops were defending the western side of town from a stronger advance.

"Chopper!" someone yelled.

I turned to see the monstrous vehicle favored by the brutes tear through a barricade like it was made of paper. It started shooting all over the place, hitting one soldier in the arm, blowing it clean off. Instants later the bike was propelled upwards by a grenade explosion and then blown up with a rocket.

I started moving towards it to confirm the kill and use it as cover when a large mass moving at 30mph slammed into the wreck, tearing it apart. The armadillo slowed down a little bit to allow for better accuracy. Its autocannon started roaring as it spewed explosive rounds at the revenant. Within moments the vehicle had exploded in a purple flash. The IFV stayed there, shooting any vehicles it could spot with its autocannon and all infantry down with the robotic machinegun. I ran towards it.

"Hey, open up!" I said as I banged on the hull.

"What?" asked a voice through a thin slit.

"There are some wraiths over that rise, you'd better keep moving," I told the pair of eyes.

"Ok, roger that," he said. A few moments later the armadillo rumbled forward and two blasts landed a few meters away from the vehicle, making my neck feel warm. I moved with the IFV and used it as cover, occasionally popping out to shoot at a couple of jackals.

"Wraith!" someone from behind yelled. I banged on the hull.

"I see it," someone answered without bothering to show his face.

I ran back to a house with blackened walls and jumped through a window. I turned just in time to see a wraith appear from a small rise, its sights on the armadillo. The autocannon peppered the tank with fire as it received plasma fire from the tank's gunner. Suddenly the wraith veering of to the side and then stopped. A couple of rockets made it blow up.

Instants later the armadillo started rumbling forward, actually, it was retreating towards our line. On of its sides was completely undamaged while the other one was scorched, cracked, riddled with spike rounds, and slightly melted.

"What about the other wraith?" I called out to it as it passed. I got no answer.

"Frankie, need some help over here," Pavel said. He was behind me and climbed a ladder to the roof as soon as he said that.

I painted a couple of minor targets such as a ghost and a cluster of brutes before a few Arrowheads slammed into them. I repeated the routine a couple of times before we were ordered to cease fire.

"They're falling back!" some marine said, almost like he didn't believe it.

"Finally," Pavel groaned as he sat on a surprisingly undamaged couch. "Those guys in the tank were fucking pussys," Pavel said.

"IFV, it's and IFV," I informed him. "And that's rude."

"I know," he said as he let his head rest on one of the pillows.

I left the house and headed towards the Lieutenant, he was meeting with a staff sergeant and asking him for a sitrep on he battle.

"Three KIAs and three WIA, two of them serious," the sergeant said.

"Could've been worse," Darbinian returned. "What the fuck do you want?" he snapped as he saw me.

"Easy there Kriks," I said. "Just wanted to see how it went." I immediately turned around and left, leaving the bitchy asshole to chat with his staff sergeant. I was surprised that he had been given command of this section of the defense, but he had done a decent job at it, so I wouldn't berate him for that.

Our three KIAs were the guy that had had both his legs blown off and the two corpsmen. Our WIAs were the guy with a spike in his left eye socket and the other one was the one that had gotten his arm blown away by the chopper. The one with the thing in his eye would be operated on and remain here as a combatant. His eye socket would be emptied, stitched, and healed by tomorrow night. The other soldier would likely be evacuated to a hospital in the nearby headquarters where there were larger regiments. Maybe he'd even get a replacement arm.

I headed back towards the town hall, the other attack had been repulsed successfully with help of one scorpion, three falcons, two rattlesnakes, and seven armadillos. Assholes.

I looked up to see a falcon spewing smoke from one of its rotors. The two door gunners' faces were covered in soot and smoke. It landed noisily right outside of the town hall. That would need some serious repairs pretty soon. The two gunners hopped of the craft and coughed half their lungs out while the pilot stopped its rotors and managed to make the flow of smoke slow down a little bit.

I heard a few mortar shots and saw a pelican fly by towards the place of the other attack, probably on its way to pick wounded soldiers.

"Staff Sergeant, what in the _fuck_ are you doing here?" asked Captain Sharma.

"We pushed them back," I said. "And it's not my shift for watchout."

"It doesn't work like that Staff Sergeant, you just fucking pushed back an enemy attack five minutes ago, you have to remain in the frontline for at least an hour before gradually phasing back to regular shifts.

"But the surveillance drones show that…" I started.

"I don't give a fuck, go back there and be helpful!" she ordered.

"Ma'am!" I said as I saluted and did a neat about turn. I headed back to the place where we had been attacked and did an exemplary job of replacing sandbags that had been damaged with intact ones.

* * *

><p><em>Hey guys! Exclamation marks!<em>

_Just kidding, I'm happy I reached chapter number 40 (41 technically) so I took the time to upload two different chapters just for you guys, my favorite and only readers. Hope you enjoyed_

_-casquis_


	42. Patada en las Bolas

Chapter XLII: Patada En Las Bolas

**February 25, 2541 (UNSC Calendar)/**

**Rio de Juno, Juno, Olympus System**

_It ain't me, it ain't me, I ain't no senator's son, son,_

_It ain't me, it ain't me, I ain't no fortunate son, no,_

The lyrics of that ultra old-fashioned song were then made difficult to hear by the falcon's rotors. It was pretty fitting for the situation we were in. The supercarrier was still damaged, although scouts had reported that some robotic creatures were working on repairing the three engines. The entirety of the forces on the supercarrier were now waging a conventional war against the UNSC forces on Juno. We had gotten some reinforcements from the other planets in the system now that the evacuation was complete. We were fine on food and ammunition, but we were still outnumbered at least five to one.

_Some folks are born with silver spoon in hand,_

_Lord, don't they help themselves oh,_

I watched the barren, featureless land as the two-falcon patrol made their way through the air. So far we hadn't spotted anything of interest, same as the past five times. Most of our drones didn't have the range to fly out this far, but pelicans were to valuable to risk, so falcons it was.

The gunner in the other falcon waved his hands at me. He was one of the Rangers, although I didn't know his name. He made a motion for me to put my helmet on, which I promptly did.

"Anything?" he asked through the radio.

"Don't see anything that you don't," I replied.

"Same ol' same ol'" he said.

I shrugged and he did the same. This time I didn't take off my helmet as I scanned the wasteland that was the ground under us. There were some smoke plumes in the distance, probably Shortsword bombing raids. I could also spot what looked like a large mountain in the distance, only that it wasn't a mountain, it was the Covenant supercarrier. Unable to fly, unable to move, and we still couldn't take it out. Right now command's plan was to eliminate all Covenant ground forces before launching a raid that would weaken the supercarrier's shields. Then the Navy would do their equivalent of a charge and bombard the gargantuan craft with literally everything they had.

So far, it was not going well.

"Patrol-two, what do you see?" asked the pilot's voice in the general channel. "About five clicks south, southeast," he indicated.

"Looks like nothing to me Patrol-one," came the reply.

"When are we scheduled to go back?" asked Patrol-one.

"Half an hour," replied the other pilot.

"Let's go check it out," Patrol-one indicated.

"Roger that," said Two.

Both UH-144 Falcons veered sharply to the right to get in course. I held on to the gun I was manning to avoid falling out of the craft. Pavel was behind me, as usual. Ok, that came out wrong. Pavel was _with me…_ No, still sounds wrong. I guess you get the point. He was manning the other turret on the falcon, and hadn't said a word since we had hopped on the VTOLs. He seemed a little bit tired, but I didn't ask why. Didn't really care either.

"You see that?" he asked. Patrol-one, that is.

"Yes, looked like shimmering in the air."

"What is it?"

That had woken up my interest, I glanced in the general direction of where they had pointed at and suddenly I saw it. It was like an elite in active camouflage only that the size of the flickering air was rather larger than an elite. Some thirty meters tall perhaps. I couldn't make out a discernible shape.

"Wanna take a shot at it Patrol-two?"

"What's the harm eh?"

Both of the falcon's cannons fired in unison at the flickering air. The bullets bounced off it and produced some sparkling. Instants later we were receiving fire from plasma that seemed to originate out of nowhere. Pavel and I shifted our M247s to fire at the invisible target. After a few moments of that something appeared out of nowhere.

The object in question was one of the covvie active camouflage or stealth pylons. It had been hiding itself and a few squads of covvies. Oh, and also a scarab. The massive combat platform turned to face us. It was a wonder that we hadn't been shot at yet, they surely wanted to effectuate a stealth attack. So much for that.

"Veer to the left!" Pavel yelled as the scarab's main gun powered up.

Both falcons veered violently in opposite directions, a stream of heated plasma burned the air where the other falcon had just been and made my eyes see colorful sparking lights. Plasma from small arms was hitting the underside of the falcon and passing dangerously close to me. I shifted my aim towards the brute leaders of the squads, managing to take out two before the falcons flew out of range.

"Patrol-one, did you tag it?"

"Affirmative Patrol-two," he said. "We got him."

The flight back to base was uneventful, other than a couple of 'fucking nosy pilots' from all of the gunners, nothing of interest happened, and we landed in the parking lot of Rio de Juno's supermarket as the pilots were taken away for debriefing.

"Hey Pavel," I said as my friend headed in the opposite direction.

"What?"

"You never finished telling me whatever was that was so bad about having sex with Delacroix."

"Oh right," he noted, looking a little uncomfortable, even behind all that ODST armor. "Well, where was I?" he said, this time speaking through the radio between his and my helmet. "The Christmas dinner was almost over, and she was getting all touchy-feely with me," he started. "Then she asked me if I wanted to go over to her room, she's an XO, so she gets her own room," he explained.

"XO as in hugs and kisses?" I teased.

"Yes, as in hugs and kisses," he said. "Anyways, we were sitting down on the bed, making out, I was showing her some of my Pavel magic when she decided to go to washroom…"

"Washroom?" I asked.

"Well, bathroom, if you prefer, or water closet."

"Ok, go on," I said.

"And when she came out…"

That moment my helmet's radio started acting up. It still had some static every now and them because it had been repaired instead of replaced when the plasma burst fried its radio components. I took it off.

"Sorry man, shit is malfunctioning again," I said as I banged the helmet a few times.

"I don't think that'll work," he observed.

"Well, can't you tell me?" I asked.

He sighed and took off his own helmet, he looked around a couple of times before taking a breath to speak. Then my whole world went completely black.  
>"Guess who is it?" asked a familiar voice.<p>

"Jesus Christ! Marina, I told you not to scare me like that!" I complained loudly. "I was about to elbow you in the face or something," I joked.

"Sure you were," she said as she uncovered my eyes, allowing me to see a very confused Pavel.

"Where did you come from?" he asked.

"Oh, you know, over there," she said while pointing nowhere in particular. She then gave us one long look, her expression changing slightly. "What were you two guys talking about?" she asked slowly.

"Porn," we both replied simultaneously. It wasn't even planned.

"Suuure," she said, obviously not believing us. "Anyways, I'll see you later Pavel, Frankie, come on."  
>"Duty calls," I said while shrugging at my friend, who seemed to be breathing hard.<p>

Marina walked me all the way to her pelican while talking about something or other and asking me about my patrol. She seemed a little bit worried when I told her about the scarab, but it was far away and would probably not even come here.

"What was Pavel so worried about?" she asked.

"Oh, nothing, he was about to tell me what was so bad about getting it on with Chloe," I said.

"Lieutenant Delacroix?" she asked.

"The same."

"So…"

"So?"

"So what happened?"

"Oh, you interrupted us," I explained.

"Why didn't he go on?" she asked.

"Well, you're a girl," I told her.

"Well how very observant of you," she said.

"Thanks," I replied, pretending to be proud. She pushed me playfully.

"Why doesn't he want to tell me?" she asked me.

"I told you already," I said. "It's obviously something he doesn't want to share."

"Oh well, nothing I can do about it."  
>Having said that she pulled me inside of her pelican and closed the bay doors. You can guess what happened next.<p>

* * *

><p>"Staff Sergeant?" a voice said.<p>

"What the fuck? Doesn't anybody knock?" I asked. At first I thought I was still in the pelican with Marina, but I remembered returning to my little house before falling asleep.

"Sorry, sir," came the answer. "There's one Lieutenant Wilkins looking for you," the man said.

"What time is it?" I asked.

"Nighttime," he replied.

"Ha, ha."

I stood up and dressed up while following the PFC that had woken me up towards the town hall. Surprisingly, he took a turn before reaching the place and instead headed into another street.

"What did you say the name of the lieutenant was?"

"Wilkins."

"Wilkins? What the hell is he doing here?" I asked, mostly to myself.

The PFS simply shrugged and stopped in front of an undamaged house, He motioned to me that this was the place and I walked in, only to be greeted by two armed and armored men.

"Morning gentlemen," I said as I walked between them.

"Ah, Staff Sergeant, I'm glad to see you're here," a familiar voice said.

"Lieutenant," I replied. "Why do you require me?"  
>"You're handy with a knife, aren't you," he asked.<p>

_Handy is an understatement, I am a god with a knife. _

"I guess you could say that," I said modestly.

"Well, I need your help here," he said as he led me to the basement of the house. Once we reached the bottom step I was surprised to find something that I had never seen before during my time as a soldier. A prisoner of war.

"This here is Tantonius, chieftain of the tribe of Rakicugh," the lieutenant explained.

"Do not soil my name, heretic," answered the brute with a deep rumbling voice. "I will use your bones to clean my teeth!" it said.

"Of course you will Tantonius," answered the lieutenant. "This here is Staff Sergeant Castillo, since you have been less than cooperative with our inquiries, he will help motivate you to talk," Wilkins said.

The brute seemed to struggle with the long words in a foreign language for a few moments before baring its teeth in challenge and rattling its chains, which were thick and numerous.

"I will not talk to you, you mongrels!"

"Sir, you want me to torture it?" I asked quietly.

"Is that a problem?" he asked.

"No, but aren't there special operatives for that?" I asked.

"The closes torture team is a couple of systems away," he explained. "It's not a big deal, just cause a lot of pain. Besides, you are required to follow my orders," he said.

"Very well, sir."

"Also, let's make this our little secret," he said with a creepy smile.

"Of course, sir," I said.

"Let's start with something simple Tantonius, how about you tell us the name of your ship?"

"Never. Puny human," came the answer.

Wilkins nodded at me as he tossed me a knife. It was the same large standard-issue combat knife that I had, only that this one had a sharper look to it. See what I did there? Anyways, I caught it with my hand and put it awfully close to the brute's head. He didn't even budge, probably because the knife was the size of its finger.

"Very well, I'll only ask one more time," Wilkins informed the brute. "What's your ship's name?"

The brute spat at him. Looks like it was as much a sign of 'go fuck yourself' in their planet as it was in ours.

"Staff Sergeant."  
>I sighed and spun the knife so that the point was facing downwards. I raised it over my head and sank it all the way to the hilt on the brute's right foot. It was a good thing it was secured, because it rattled its chains like crazy.<p>

"You won't get anything from me you insect!" called out the brute.

This time I didn't wait for the go sign from Wilkins, I simply used my strengthened muscles push the knife through the brute's thick flesh. It went all the way from its foot to its knee in a few long seconds. The brute started howling in pain.

"If you answer our questions, we won't hurt you," Wlikins said while leaning in close to the brute.

The brute grunted before shaking its head. "Avenging Inheritor," it said. "That's the name of the ship."  
>"Really? I thought you'd last longer," Wilkins said. I pulled out the knife, the chieftain visibly wincing as I did so.<p>

"Next question, how large are your forces?"

This time the brute refused to answer. He tolerated a similar cut in its other leg, the loss of a large chunk of its right foot, not-to-deep slashes across the arms, and a very nasty slash in its shoulder.

"That's going to leave a mark," I said.

"It will be a mark of pride as soon as I kill all of you vermin.

"So, us vermin managed to give you that ugly scar?" Wilkins asked.

The brute couldn't come up with a decent comeback and instead roared loudly at Wilkins.

"Your forces?"

The brute remained silent, shooting us daggers with its eyes. I pushed my knife all the way through its hand and nailed it to the floor, then I twisted the knife. I was enjoying this way too much to be healthy.

"No?" Wilkins asked. "Well then sergeant, kill it slowly then."

"Yessir," I said. I wasn't even playing along. I would take my time with this bastard. Something about slowly working on this brute got my blood pumping. It was actually scary.

"I suggest you start above its groin, not for the expected reasons, but because the creature has a cluster of nerves in the area, or so the doctors tell me," Wilkins said as he started leaving.

I pulled the knife from the brute's hand and started tracing a line from its chest all the way down to the areae that Wilkins had signaled; It was like cutting through leather. Finally the brute's eyes had a very human expression of worry before I stabbed blindly at its nervous-cluster area. It was a furry beast, so I didn't get a chance to see what was in there. Not that I would take my time to explore either. I also winced myself as the knife sunk in dangerously close to the area where my own family jewels were located.

The brute yelled in a shout frighteningly human. I stabbed the same place again. Tantanius yelled again, this time in a slightly higher pitch.

"Stop, stop!" it said.

I stopped, mostly because I was having a very maleish wincing sensation as I stabbed a humanoid creature in a place that probably would've made me spill everything I knew.

"Tell me what I need to know, Tantanius," Wilkins said, suddenly back from the ground floor.

The brute roared loudly in response, its defiant cry mixed with some very obvious gestures that made sure that everyone that could see it knew it was in pain. The chains the brute was bound with rattled like crazy, but ultimately they held. Wilkins grabbed the knife from my hand and sunk it to the hilt in the place where I had stabbed the brute twice, eliciting a yell that made a shiver run up my spine and down again.

"I'll tell you everything," it said after a lengthy cry of pain.

"That's what I like to hear," Wilkins said, leaving the knife in the creature's belly.

"Dismissed Staff Sergeant," Wilkins told me, a rather creepy grin on his face.

* * *

><p>Fifteen minutes later I was back in my room after learning a lot more than I needed to about the physiology of the Jiralhanae. I enjoyed torturing the thing a lot more than I should have. I washed its dark blood from my hands and forearms in the sink, then I wet my face.<p>

"Jesus Frank, what the fuck?" I told myself. With that, I went to sleep.

* * *

><p>"You hear that?" a marine was telling a friend.<p>

"What?"

"One of the drones spotted a perfect place for an attack in the covvie front," he explained. "An operation is already being prepared," he said excitedly.

"Great!" the other marine said as he shared his friend's giddy anticipation.

Of course, I knew otherwise. The information hadn't been gleaned from a UAV drone, it had been acquired from a brute POW after a lengthy torturing session. The brute had been executed after it was promised that it would be freed back into its lines if it cooperated. It had spilled out everything it knew. The most interesting bit of information was that one particular point in the covvie front was only sporting a scarab for protection.

I know, 'only a scarab' is used loosely there, but a single bombardment raid by a few shortsword bombers followed by a strong push would send the covvie ranks into disarray and allow for us to encircle many units and destroy them utterly, effectively balancing the odds in our favor. If we were to succeed, we would by no means be in a winning position, but we would be on even ground with the troops of the _Avenging Inheritor._

I just hoped that they would actually go through with this operation, we were standing on dangerous ground here, the odds were stacked against us, and we needed all the help we could get.


	43. What's the Point of Crotchless Panties?

Chapter XLIII: What's the Point of Crotchless Panties Anyway?

**February 28, 2541 (UNSC Calendar)/**

**Ajai Badlands, Juno, Olympus System**

"Any moment now," I said. I was extremely glad that the operation had been green-lit by command. You have no idea how many times useful intel was sent to waste because command didn't deem it 'strategically viable' or some bullshit like that.

"Not like I have any place better to be," Pavel murmured.

"Silence," said Lieutenant Yevgeny.

I saw them before I heard them. Five green blurs interrupted the night sky, the scarab was hit by a few bombs, all of them going deep into its armor, but not completely wrecking it. Instants later, they exploded simultaneously, finishing the job.

"Move, eliminate all survivors," said Nezarian.

"You heard the lieutenant," one of my temporary squadmates said. His name was Banks, he was earth-born, from the UK. God I loved his accent. I think he might've been from Scotland.

"Ok, move on," I said, motioning for my three other squadmates to follow me. Their names were Pavel (obviously), Lunge, and Park. They were of unknown ethnicity and Taiwanese respectively. Both proved themselves able soldiers while we were eliminating patrols to close in on the scarabs. Banks was pretty damn good as well.

The scarab toppled sideways after several explosions completely wrecked its right side. It fell on the ground with a metallic groan and crashed loudly on the hard floor. It let out a huge plume of dust, dirt, and smoke around it, but we were already moving in to confirm that there were no survivors.

We moved through the dust and entered the wreckage of the scarab, our visibility was bad because of all the dust. We moved in a tight-packed formation while checking the area for living covvies. We saw a couple of mangled bodies, but nothing out of the usual.

"Movement right," Lunge said.

"Um, Titan, that's us," a voice said through the dust.

"Ok, guess we're clear," I said.

"Clear it is then," Nezarian said. "Well, let's move, we're spearheading this thing and we gotta do it right boys."  
>Someone cleared her throat.<p>

"And girl," conceded the lieutenant.

We all waited for a few moments and eleven warthogs showed up. Most of them were regular M12 warthogs with M41 LAAVs, but there were a few Gauss Hogs and troop transport variants. They had been given to us by other regiments and battalions for this particular mission. I hopped on the driver's seat of one of them as soon as the Ranger driving it dismounted and moved to another one. Pavel hopped onto the turret position while Park took shotgun. Lunge and Banks shared another hog with a member from a different squad, but they would keep close in case we had to bail out of the jeeps.

We floored the hogs and headed towards our goal. We had already destroyed the strongest point of the covvie line in this area, but we had received support from atmospheric bombers. Next time we wouldn't get the chance, we'd have to get our hands dirty to accomplish this next stage of our mission.

"Thee they are!" Nezarian's voice said on the Battlenet. "Squads one through three take the left flank, four gets the middle and five and six attack on the right."

The warthogs shuffled for a few seconds before we managed to accommodate ourselves properly. The massive group of choppers in front of us would be receiving a hell of a kicking in a few seconds. All the brutes were either sleeping or resting, but none of them was on board of one of their massive cycles. My squad was four, so we would charge through the middle of the formation, our warthog and the one with Banks, Lunge, and unknown ranger would cause as much chaos inside of the perimeter of the brutes before the rest of the squads destroyed their flanks.

Our target was the brute equivalent of a warthog platoon. There were approximately forty choppers and the same number of brutes. Units like this were used to break through weak points in human defenses. Don't you guys love irony?

"Roar!" was all that the closest brute could say before I ran it over. The hog jumped a little bit, but I managed to control it. Pavel started firing at waking brutes or at the ones that were trying to hop into their choppers. Park simply sprayed and prayed.

We made our way through the bunched up choppers in a few seconds and exited on the other side, after leaving behind a group of confused and angry brutes. Instants later the rest of the hogs smashed any resistance with lead and depleted uranium. We didn't even get one casualty.

Next on our to-do list was to form some sort of 'head' so that the rest of the UNSCDF could use us as some sort of tip to the spear. Spearhead is the correct term. Our small platoon would charge at some place or other before the bulk of the UNSC forces decided to come crashing through with their tanks and air support.

Before long we finally found our target. It was stronger than other possible places where we could charge through, but it was an excellent place to break the covvies' line. What we were facing off against was a relatively large camp of about two hundred covvie soldiers. Most of them were infantry, but there were a few vehicles that we had to worry about, namely choppers and ghosts.

Our eleven hogs rumbled through the flat ground and started firing. We instantly received return fire, with several plasma bolts hitting the sides of my hog. I twisted a little bit to avoid plasma fire while Pavel and Park did their best to accurately shoot the covvies. That is easier said than done when speeding so fast on uneven ground and with a zigzagging vehicle. A warthog nearby was hit by plasma through the windshield. I saw the driver slump forwards and the car start slowly moving sideways until it crashed onto another warthog.

We reached the covvie camp's first line of defense and wrecked through it, but that's where we had to stop. Numerous deployable shields and rocks prevented us from advancing any further or make any sort of use of our warthog's guns.

"Use the gauss!" Nezarian ordered.

The gunner turned his turret to fire at the deployable shields. He got off two shots before a chopper that nobody managed to see coming ate through the vehicle. The man was splattered by the enormous chopper and the warthog was utterly destroyed. I parked the hog behind a partially destroyed chopper and jumped off at the same time as Park. Pavel stayed on the M41, occasionally firing bursts at a grunt stupid enough to leave cover.

"Titan! I need you to move forward and try to flank the closest brutes!" came the order.  
>"You heard the man," I called out, "Let's move!"<p>

The other warthog had parked next to mine moments ago, and Lunge and Banks jumped off quickly. The other ranger was hit in the chest by no less than three needle rounds.

"Fuck!" cried out Banks.

"Pull him here," said Lunge.

Banks grabbed the wounded ranger and pulled him towards cover, as soon as the man's leg had been dragged to cover, his whole chest exploded violently, blood and gore raining on all of us.

"Shit," said Lunge.

"Well, let's move," I ordered. Although technically I couldn't do that, I had been placed as the default squad leader. All Rangers were privates.

Our five man team moved forward while trying hard to avoid enemy fire, some other squads provided covering fire and we managed to slide into cover after many uncomfortably close spike rounds flew by us. The rock we used as cover was the same that a brute was using for the same purpose, only on the other side.

"Frag out," Park warned us.

His grenade went over the boulder and I could hear it distinctly bounce of the rocks even through all the firing, it detonated less than a second later.

We went around the boulder while firing at the grunts manning the covvie camp's turrets and anything else that wasn't behind something solid. This time the deployable shields worked against the brutes. Our five man squad sprinted for a few meters before a spike grenade slammed into Pavel's chest piece, knocking him backwards. I didn't even have time to stare in horror before Lunge lunged towards my friend, ripped the grenade from his chest piece, and tossed it back, nailing a brute.

"Impressive," I said after killing an eager grunt.

"Thanks," said Lunge.

"Thanks," said Pavel.

"No problem," replied Lunge.

We moved forward while the Rangers behind us provided covering fire. It felt weird to be doing this because I didn't exactly have an objective other than shoot everything that didn't have human DNA. I barely bothered taking shots at brutes, the Rangers were making a damn fine job of taking them out. Eventually I decided to just fire at grunts while everyone else did the entire job. I felt embarrassed.

A few minutes of fighting later and every last covvie was dead. I gotta admit, fighting with other spec ops troops certainly has its perks. It's a lot more boring, but quicker.

"Corporal, give the go sign for the general to start the attack. No more significant covvie positions around."  
>"Yessir," said a corporal.<p>

"What do we do in the meantime?" Pavel asked.

"We wait, nothing else to do really," Nezarian said.

And so we waited. The rest of the UNSC forces were supposed to overtake our positions in maybe half an hour, they were seriously mobilizing the whole fucking planet here. That was some medieval shit right there. Pretty soon we would witness a bunch of troops coming here, their lines stretching as far as they could see.

I had no idea how right I was.

"Uh-oh," the only female ranger said.

"Agreed."

Coming at us was an army. Yes, it wasn't exactly _our_ army. It was fucking insane, I swear, purple and gray as far as the eye could see. Well, maybe not as far, but still about a kilometer wide. Plus the ones further back. And the fliers. And the fucking scarab.

"Take cover!" Nezarian ordered.

We barely even had time to move the warthogs into decent positions before the banshees started their strafing runs. They were devastating. The fliers were so many they just needed to shoot in a straight line. Granted, the gunners took out like a dozen of them on the first pass, but they blew up three warthogs and killed two gunners.

"Lieutenant, I don't think we're gonna survive," I said bluntly as Nezarian slid into cover next to me.

"What do you propose then?" he asked angrily.

"Retreat," I said.

"_Retreat?" _he said, spitting the word out as if it pained him to do so. "Rangers don't retreat!"

"Well, neither do we, but there's always a first time," I said.

"No, we hold the line goddamit! We'll stay here and wait twenty fucking minutes for reinforcements to arrive."  
>"We might not have five minutes," I stated.<p>

"So be it," the lieutenant said.

"We stay then," I said, disappointment in my voice. Truth be told I wasn't to big on falling back, but it was our only option. It's not like we needed to hold some important point so that the UNSC could break through the covvie lines. Oh, actually we needed to do just that.

"Position yourselves to project the maximum amount of firepower!" Nezarian ordered. "Make it seem like we're more than a platoon, use the warthogs and their LAAVs!" he said furiously.

A few rangers moved towards the hogs while the rest of them moved sideways to get into better firing positions. A few instants later every last one of us was prone, taking aim at the massive covvie column coming at us. I could see that the rangers were trembling a little bit. Undoubtedly they were scared. I noticed I was shaking a little bit myself.

"Do we hold our fire?" one ranger asked.

"Are you fucking stupid? We are facing a massive army and we are holding our fire? No way, shoot as soon as they're within range!" another ranger replied.

As soon as he said that a dozen long-range weapons barked. My BR was aimed at a brute captain urging his scared grunts to go forward. Three rounds bounced of its helmet and another three dented it in and killed the armored gorilla. A few high-ranking officers toppled as well, courtesy of the two platoon snipers and a few other marksmen such as myself.

"Pavel?" I asked.

"Just a moment," he replied, sighting his machine gun.

I kept firing at high ranking officers, they weren't even bothering to take cover now, they were simply trotting towards us, they were bound to hit us hard pretty soon. A few ghosts took off from their ranks, surging forward like cavalry would've done in the Middle Ages. Usually, cavalry was chewed up by bullets, but this was the equivalent of stopping an armored horse with an arrow. Pretty much impossible. Two ghosts blew up from concentrated fire. _Pretty much _impossible.

"Rockets!" Nezarian ordered.

Yep, it wasn't nearly enough, the ghosts flew through our ranks, forcing at least half of us to turn around and fire at the purple vehicles. I strafed a brute, managing to make it fall out of its seat. A couple of shots to the chest and head ended its life quickly. Some of the Rangers weren't so lucky. At least two were fried by plasma while I witnessed the very grisly spectacle of a ghost running over a standing human being.

Three other ghosts were destroyed or their riders killed before the rest decided to retreat for another charge, by that time the covvies were already in front of us.

We had the advantage here, in a way. The place we were in was covered by boulders and rocks on all sides, that made for a nice defendable position. Normally we would've managed to hold out for a long time before we were overrun, using CQC and similar tactics. It would've worked against any human army. Unfortunately, our opponents were nine-foot tall gorillas mixed with rhinos that had the ability to withstand surprisingly high amounts of pain and bullets. Not to mention the shield-toting jackals and the grunts. No hunters so far, otherwise this might've gone differently. It went terribly wrong as it is…

"They're on our flank!"

"Medic!"

"We need backup."

"Fuck!"  
>"Pass me his gun!"<br>"Behind you!"

"Fuck!"

"Shit."  
>"Argh!"<p>

"I'm hit!"

"…contact command."  
>"…king airstrike."<p>

"Fuck!"  
>"Fucking shit."<p>

"Ape!"  
>"Grenade!"<br>"Take cover!"

"Frag out."

"Goddamn FUCK!"  
>"Fuck!"<br>"Fuck!"  
>"Fuck!"<p>

"Fuck!"  
>"Shit."<p>

Well, needless to say, it was complete and utter chaos. While all this happened I was running away from the covvies, towards the ghost whose driver I had killed. I stepped over the brute and dropped to the floor, doing it on instinct other than anything else. The feeling of plasma scorching the air above me rewarded my soldier's skills. I immediately hopped back up and jumped on the seat of the ghost. It was uncomfortable as sitting on a pointy rock, it wasn't meant for humans to ride in, and the controls were a bit far away from my hands, but the layout was simple enough.

I grabbed the two handles and the ghost immediately lifted itself up from the ground.

"Whoa," I said. It had been a while since I last hijacked a ghost. Funny story actually, it even involves a rubber duck and some Vaseline, but that's a story for another time.

I spun the ghost around by pushing one handle and pulling on the other one. Now I found myself face-to-face with the advancing horde of brutes, grunts, and jackals. I hoped my IFF tag functioned properly and then I charged towards the covvie line. At first they didn't fire at me. It was simply to absurd for a ghost on their own side to attack them. I didn't fire a single shot as I splattered over a five-bird squadron of jackal soldiers. Three of them were instantly killed and the other two were permanently injured. That's when I started firing. The heated plasma bolts burned through grunt and brute armor with the same ease as they did with ours. At first the covvies were startled and didn't return fire, but soon enough plasma started striking my stolen craft.

The good thing about plasma is that it doesn't have much penetrating power. As soon as it hits something it becomes unstable and simply dissipates. The problem is that as it does that it reaches temperatures high enough to melt armor. The ghost had almost no armor, but there was a good portion of engine between their fire and myself.

My ghost suddenly hit the floor violently, crashing down on the hard rock floor. I knew enough from experience to jump of the thing and as far away as soon as possible. I rolled away from the ghost and instants later it blew up after a charging-up sound. This time the heat of the explosion actually managed to burn my skin, not seriously, but it still hurt.

I now found myself in a dilemma. I was in the middle of my line, and the advancing enemy troops. What to do? You run. And how I ran.

Gravel was raining all over me, plasma singed my armor more times than I could count, I saw spiker rounds lodge themselves on the floor just inches away from my feet and legs. I was luckier than I should've been. I was luckier than anyone should've been. And it still wasn't enough.

I clearly remember Pavel leaving cover to pull me behind some rock, I remember seeing the reflection of the covenant army on our back on his visor, distorted by the angles and lighting. Just as I grabbed his forearm, two things slammed into my back. I lost my balance and Pavel actually had to drag me into safety, almost breaking my arm as he did so. He put me face down and gave me a quick once over.

"Ok, don't you move," he said.

I screamed as he pulled out one spiker round. Tears welled up in my eyes as he pulled out the second one. Then I felt like a million tiny needles were stabbing at my back, and moments later, the pain dulled. It didn't stop, but it dulled.

"Up soldier!" Pavel yelled into my ear, more to wake me back up than to actually motivate me to fight. I had enough of that.

I jumped up with the help of my friend. The pain in my back and the adrenaline made for a weird combination. Everything was moving in fast slow motion, but everything was shaking a bit. Maybe it was me.

"Eh Pavel," I called weakly. Rangers and brutes were engaged in fierce combat all around us. It seemed that the brutes were getting the worst of it.

"Yeah?" he asked as he hefted his machine gun.

"Count your rounds," I said with a chuckled that didn't fit at all with the situation.

My friend simply raised his gun and fired a long steady burst at a charging brute minor, making it topple over.

When he answered he changed the meaning of my words. "I intend to make every last round count."

* * *

><p><em>Hey, I uploaded this chapter in a bit of a hurry, so I didn't have much time to edit out all my mistakes. Still think I did a pretty decent job for the time I ahd on my hands. Hope you enjoyed it. Thanks for reading guys.<em>

_-casquis_


	44. Defying Death and Cheating Fate

Chapter XLIV: Defying Death and Cheating Fate

**February 28, 2541 (UNSC Calendar)/**

**Ajai Badlands, Juno, Olympic System**

"Park, get down here!"

"Lunge's wounded," he replied over the gunfire.

"Banks, give him a hand," Pavel ordered.

Both of us provided covering fire for the two Rangers while they helped drag their wounded comrade back to safety. They were pulling on Lunge's shoulders while firing their MA37s in full-auto, not even bothering to control their bursts.

I fired my battle rifle groggily, the pain in my back was still receding, we were still under attack, and help was supposed to arrive soon.

"Hold those bodyguards!" Nezarian's voice ordered.

I turned around and pressed my back against my rock to avoid a steady stream of red plasma fire. The brute plasma rifles fired faster than regular plasma rifles, but they were also slightly weaker. The stream of red passed by and I popped back to shoot at the transgressor so that my temporary squad could make it safe. The brute staggered back after five shots hit it in the chest and neck, but quickly threw itself to cover.

"Where's he hit?" I asked Park.

"All over the place," he replied.

"I'm fine," Lunge stuttered as he tried to turn on his side to get up.

"Stay down there," I said as I pushed him back down.

"Park, Banks, lay down some covering fire," I said. Pavel hadn't stopped firing, his gun probably saved our asses.

"Staff Sergeant," they acknowledged before they started firing at eager brutes and grunts.

I looked at Lunge. He looked like shit. His face was burnt black on the right side, with blood oozing from the wound, part of his neck was blackened as well. He had three spiker rounds lodged in his chest, while the bayonet of the aforementioned weapon had opened two deep gashes down his belly. The man was pressing his hands against his stomach, trying to hold his intestines in. I poured all the biofoam I had on his abdomen, and he screamed in a way no man ever should. His legs hadn't been spared either. I could see his right foot through the bottom of his sole, it was bloodied and missing a large chunk. A needler round had blown up right above his ankle, and his foot was now only barely hanging to his body. His other leg was the only intact limb on his whole body.

I watched my squadmate as he looked me in the eyes. His chest heaved up and down irregularly and he spurted blood from his mouth.

"Shit, that's lung damage," I said, although it was already apparent.

The man looked me in the eyes, I half expected him to tell me to tell his wife he loved her, but he simply gurgled and eventually drowned in his own blood. All that wounds, all that pain, only for his own blood to kill him.

"Move back!" Pavel said.

I left my comrade behind, dead and still bleeding on the ground. I barely gave him a second look as I ran for my life, enemy fire managing to hit everything around me, except myself. Well, that isn't entirely true, a needle slashed my forearm but didn't wound me.

I jumped over a wrecked warthog, wincing as I pulled on the biofoam holding my wounds together. I landed on my back, which actually made me cry out in pain. After assuring Pavel and Park that I wasn't harmed I propped myself up only to have to drop back down as a banshee strafed us. I felt its plasma bolts hit the other side of the warthogs and saw a couple of them hit the ground in front of me before the craft turned around.

"Chopper!" someone yelled.

Instants later I heard a rocket explosion and decided that the chopper had been destroyed. I popped from cover to squeeze of two shots at a pair of grunts and a jackal, bringing down the jackal.

There was simply to many of them, we would be overrun soon enough. The only option we had was to jump on our hogs and run back, otherwise we would all die. Even if we did retreat, it was more than likely most of us wouldn't make it.

"Grunt on your six!" Pavel warned. I turned around and took it out with a single headshot.

"Flashbang out," I warned as I tossed a grenade blindly over the boulder that covered my already reduced temporary squadron and me.

The noise was simply a dull thud that managed to make most of the enemy fire stop for a second as they reached towards their hearing cavities and eyes. Most rangers left cover to fire steady bursts at the coming grunts and brutes. Grunts were piling up, forming decent cover for the brutes.

Time seemed to slow down even further as a chopper boosted over my boulder. I could clearly see the undercarriage of the vehicle and the wheels in the front spinning slowly. The brute itself was looking down at me as it flew over the rock. It was already pulling at the controllers to turn the thing around and massacre us with its 30mm autocannons. For a brief instant both of our eyes met, and only then did time seem to go back to normal. Well, enhanced-normal.

I fired three bullets before the chopper landed, two hit the brute's hands and one hit its leg, it didn't hurt it a lot, but it was enough to stop it from turning the chopper around, instead it crashed into a rock and was promptly killed by a grenade. I ignored the event and kept firing, hordes of enemies were crashing into the rocks, killing rangers and sometimes even trampling over their own allies. I emptied my magazine and unclipped the safety straps on all of my knives.

"This is going to get bad soon," Pavel said.

"You mean this isn't fucking bad?" asked Park, outraged.

"I mean death-bad."

As soon as he said that a plasma grenade landed in our midst. It immediately fused into the floor and started shining more brightly. We all jumped away from it as fast as we could. Luckily, we all made it in time. Unfortunately, we jumped into open areas that provided absolutely no cover whatsoever. I jumped once more into a rock without even bothering to get up, just using my legs to propel myself forwards. I turned around just in time to kick a jackal backwards. I promptly emptied five rounds into its chest.

Pavel slid behind an overturned hog and fired his gun randomly, hitting nothing but dirt and rocks, but forcing a few brutes into cover. Park jumped backwards, which meant that he was able to keep a degree of cover while he scrambled backwards towards Pavel's warthog. Banks was the unlucky one. He landed face-first and lost his rifle. He scrambled away from enemy fire, but was unlucky enough to receive an overcharged plasma shot to the waist. Banks seemed to loose notion of what was happening and slowly stood up, managing to avoid being hit by anything. A single brute captain clad in golden armor closed in on the man, and almost slowly, mechanically, executed him with the bayonet of his brute shot. The large blade went through his chest armor easily. The brute's strength was behind it, and I saw arterial spray hit the brute's face and chest armor before Banks collapsed to the floor dead.

"Die you fuck!" Lieutenant Nezarian said. He jumped at the brute from behind, seemingly appearing from nowhere. He pulled the brute's head backwards and shot it five times in the neck with his pistol. Nezarian jumped back down and shot the thing on one of its knees. Then he ran straight towards me, avoiding all enemy plasma, spikes and needles.

He slid towards the rock, even firing his pistol as he did so, all of his shots missed wildly. He slammed into me hard, but I didn't care, I was going to die, so a little kicking in the ribs wasn't something to worry about. I fired my battle rifle at a brute that had just broken a ranger's back by tossing it aside like a rag. The brute staggered under the sustained fire before it collapsed. I saw a ranger bayonet a couple of grunts before a jackal got three shots from a carbine into his eyes.

Park must've had enough of it, because he left cover with no weapons in his hands other than two primed grenades.

"Get back here you idiot!" Nezarian said.

Park ignored his superior officer and kept on running towards the Covenant in a senseless suicide charge. The two grenades detonated five feet away from the nearest enemy, only succeeding in blowing Park apart and killing him instantly.

"I guess this is it Helljumper," Nezarian said, his voice surprisingly calm considering the tone of his previous order.

I nodded at the man and pulled out my knife. I stabbed a skirmisher in the leg as it walked past my rock, then pushed my knife through its face. I reloaded my battle rifle, down to my last mag. I handed my pistol to Nezarian, whose own sidearm was out of ammo and his rifle was long since lost.

We both left our cover on opposite sides, firing at the enemy soldiers approaching us. I killed three jackals and stopped in front of a chieftain wielding a hammer. I emptied the rest of my ammunition on it, barely putting a scratch on the thing. I tossed my rifle away and sprinted towards the monster. On the way towards it I threw my backup knife at it, managing to hit its shoulder. I then pulled out my larger knife and tackled the monster, dodging a blow from its hammer.

My superhuman strength wasn't enough, I barely made the brute double over, but my knife went deep into its skin. The brute howled in rage and kneed me away, breaking a rib or two. I stabbed it right above the groin two times before it tossed me away brutally.

I landed hard on a chopper, bashing my head against it. I tried to stand up to face the chieftain, which was coming at me at a slow, measured pace. There was a snarl on its face that looked almost like a grin. The brute was just ten feet away from me when it stopped. It looked around it and then machine gun fire slammed into it. At first I thought it was Pavel, but then I heard a familiar noise, that of rotors turning.

I saw a green shadow streak overhead, fire spewing out from its sides and front, grunts, brutes, and jackals fell all over the place. The sound of rotors became larger and larger until I realized there was a fair amount of falcons overhead.

"Gunships," I whispered, almost surprised to hear myself say it.

"Who's this one?" asked a voice.

"One of the Special Forces guys, in the spearhead attack," a voice said between pants.

"Injuries?"

"Substantial," the second voice said.

I could make out the sound of wheels spinning against metal floors. I heard the sound of military boots hitting the same type of floor as well. I tried to open my eyes, but my eyelids wouldn't move more than a millimeter, only allowing a bright light to go through. That's about the time I felt all the pain.

Then unconsciousness returned and took me away from all the suffering.

* * *

><p>Two dull thumps.<p>

_Where am I? _

A knee striking into my ribs, two powerful arms throwing me away.

_Am I dead?_

Two dull thumps.

_No, can't be, that's a heartbeat. MY heartbeat. _

The sound of a machine gun roaring as it fired continuously, the sickening noise it made when its rounds hit home. The sick pleasure and elation I got from seeing the brutes flesh being holed up, the joy I had experienced as I saw sprays of red and purple blood spray out the other side.

Two dull thumps.

The familiar noise, both an annoying background noise and a sound comparable to a choir of angels. The shadow moving slowly, sparks on its sides and on its nose. The incredible feeling of calm I had after I realized what it was.

_I am alive!_

I woke up with a start. It wasn't like whenever you sat up in your bed after a horrible nightmare. It was a jumpy wake-up of elation. I was feeling better than I had felt in a very long time. I was alive goddamit, and I was going to fucking enjoy that feeling.

"This is better than sex," I muttered as my eyes teared up from the pure joy of being alive and kicking.

"Pardon?" said a raspy voice.

I tried to turn to look at the man who had said that, but my body exploded in pain, particularly my lower back. I suddenly remembered the pain from the two spiker rounds slamming into me. I squinted at the artificial lighting for a few moments before my eyes got used to the feeling and the pain receded. I felt my ribs broken, I only noticed that because it was one of the last thoughts I had before I fainted. Then I took a moment to check myself for injuries, finding that my wrists hurt and that my right leg was throbbing violently.

"How is this better than sex?" the raspy voice asked. This time it didn't quite seem like a man.

"I didn't mean that," I said. "Just glad to be alive."

"Well, that's one of us," the voice was now distinctly female.

I turned around slowly and saw a person in a hospital bed next to me. The figure was now obviously a woman, clearing up any doubt that I might've had of that. She was covered in bandages from head to toe, with only the left part of her face left uncovered. There were a few plasticasts on her body as well, around her waist and left knee.

"Go ahead, say it."  
>"Say what?" I asked.<p>

"You know what!" she screamed angrily.

"It's not that bad, you'll walk again, everybody does nowadays. The UNSC will pay for skin grafts, and you can get a nice surgeon to reconstruct whatever part of your body you want to. You'll probably get loans rather easily, being a vet and everything. Maybe, you'll even make yourself prettier than before. You'll certainly be discharged and then you'll go live on Earth or Reach and find a decent husband and have lots of kids," I said. The speech was mostly serious, but the last bit was to make the wounded Ranger smile a little bit.

"Really?" she asked, her voice sounded annoyed, sarcastic, and skeptical, but not as angry as before.

"Really," I said. I had dealt with scarred soldiers before, they were horrified at the prospect of loosing the faces they had had for so long. Most of the time I listened to doctors and nurses tell them this, but it was true enough.

"Prettier than before?" she said, this time with a cheerier tone.

"That'll be probably be hard to do, considering how you used to look," I said, trying even further to make her happy.

There was a long moment of silence.

"Thanks," she said finally.

_Well, not even a minute into waking up from a fucking battlefield coma and I am already curing mentally-damaged wounded with less than three sentences. Good for you Frankie boy, you could've certainly done as a psychiatrist. _

_Or maybe a bit of Marina is slightly contagious._

I smiled, this time at myself and relaxed. The constant beeping sounds that rhythmically ringed over the room put me to sleep promptly.

"Ok, repeat that to me," the doctor said.

I rolled my eyes and looked around the elephant for a bit, it had been transformed into a frontline hospital, and my injuries weren't serious enough for me to be transferred to a rear hospital. That ranger girl had left hours after I woke up, showing the seriousness of her injuries.

"Two shots to the back, severe bruising in my thorax, broken ribs, twisted ankle, and torn muscles," I recited. "Should be out of this place in no time," I added.

"Sure," the doctor said. "Whatever you say."  
>I shrugged and ate my watermelon-flavored gelatin. It tasted like watermelon.<p>

"You'll stay in bed for a three more days, then you'll be able to fight again, and I'm being generous," he said.

"In fact, I order you to stay in bed for three days."

"Yes, sir," I said unenthusiastically. The doctor was a major, a solid six ranks above me. I had no choice but to obey, otherwise I might get court-martialed, and those things are boring. The doctor sighed and walked away from me, headed towards a patient that had had a couple of needler rounds explode on his leg, breaking his ankle and shattering most of the bones around it. He'd be up in three weeks at the very least.

I picked up the outdated datapad that was magnetically attached to my bed. I re-read the same update that I had re-read five minutes ago. The UNSC forces had managed to push forward and break the covvie lines. They were now within _spanking_ distance of the supercarrier. Soon enough they would be able to place nukes below it, preventing it from using its 'cleansing' beam in any direction and facilitating its destruction by UNSC Navy ships. Estimated time until the desired goal was completed was a couple of weeks. I'd probably get to fight in this again.

In the meanwhile, I relaxed a little, loosened up, and pushed my head back on the pillow, blocking out the noise of talking patients and moaning patients. Soon enough I would be out of this rat-hole. I just had to wait for a little while, maybe play some poker with the soldiers that weren't missing both their hands… Maybe not, who knows? The point is, only three more days until I had to get out of the place.


	45. All of the Lights

Chapter XLV: All of the Lights

**March 5, 2541 (UNSC Calendar)/**

**Ajai Badlands, Juno, Olympic System**

I stretched myself for the first time in five days. For the previous week I hadn't been allowed to move more than a couple inches in any direction or moving my arms around.

I felt the familiar sensation of missing a bit of skin on the two places where I had been hit by spikers. My ribs now only felt like I had been hit by a world class boxer and all the bruises in my body were a sickly yellow-green instead of black and deep purple. All in all, I was fit for service.

I was already fully armored except for my helmet. My rifle was attached to my back (the strap had been burnt off by plasma), my thigh holster was empty, only sporting the extra magazines for the M6G pistol. My medical hard case on the other thigh was filled to the brim with stolen medigel and biofoam. Those would pay out later. My face was still mostly intact except for the scruffy hair, which had been cut down to a buzz cut. I'd have to turn it into a mohawk again soon. I could do it with my knife, but it took time, a mirror, and a steady hand. None of which I currently had right now. I'd get the regimental or battalion barber to give me the haircut as I arrived in the frontline.

I stretched again and felt the two fresh scars in my back tighten. They were in my lower back, on the left side, about four and five inches above the waistline respectively. Whatever, more scars to brag about in the future or seduction items. Depends on how you use them.

I hopped on a pelican with three other men. They were from other elephant-hospitals, so I didn't recognize them. All three of them were marines from different battalions, so the ride consisted mostly of silence and awkward conversation about what got them into the hospital. I simply stared at the Ajai Badlands fly by as the pelican flew by with its cargo bay open. The ground we flew over was mostly empty, barren wasteland, as it name suggested. Every few kilometers I could spot the burned-out husk of a wraith or chopper. Sometimes it was a scorpion or a crashed pelican.

Eventually I started seeing tents and parked Rhino tanks here and there. Finally I started seeing hogs, scorpions, and larger mobile barracks. This was where the majority of my unit was quartered, or at least my friends Pavel.

I jumped off the pelican just as the sun was setting. The craft promptly took off to leave the other three soldiers in their respective sections. I turned around and then I saw it. The _Avenging_ _Inheritor_. It was the source of all our troubles, a gigantic bull's-eye with all its white and purple lights. It hovered at about 200 meters of the ground. The ship was perhaps thirty-something kilometers away, perhaps a little bit closer. From here it seemed to span the whole horizon. I just hoped that it would crash into Juno's floor soon enough.

I looked away from the ship and instead focused on my surroundings. There was enough light around for me to see clearly, and I could always just put on my helmet to use night vision. I had been dropped in a flat empty stretch of space that served as a landing pad. I stretched myself after the long journey and a young corporal approached me.

"Staff Sergeant Castillo?" she asked nervously.

"The one and only," I grunted. _Let's make her sweat a little._

"You are to come with me," she said.

"Is that so?" I asked with a menacing tone.

She visibly gulped before going on. "Yes, Captain Sharma's orders."  
>"Very well then, lead the way," I replied, suddenly switching to an overly cheering tone.<p>

The corporal looked confused for a moment before deciding that she didn't want to piss off a Helljumper.

"Sure thing, sir, this way, sir," she said, still nervously.

I grunted in agreement and followed her through the camp. Most people here were in fighting order, but I spotted a few marines with bandages on their arms, legs, and sometimes even around their heads. This offensive had not been a nice thing. Suddenly, I was glad that I had missed five days of it, even if it was at the cost of almost dying. I can't believe that it only took five days for two spiker injuries and a broken rib to heal. Ah, the miracles of modern medicine. They could probably flash clone me a liver within hours if I required it.

"We're here," the corporal said.

I glared at her.

"Sir," she added nervously. I waited for her to turn and scurry away before breaking in a wide grin. I turned to enter the command tent to find Sharma's face less than an inch away from mine. It would've been a romantic position in other situations, but this time it was slightly threatening.

"Please don't intimidate my soldiers Castillo," she said. "That girl over there has a bright future, so don't make her feel like shit."

"Yes ma'am, I'll take that into account in future encounters with any of your soldiers," I replied, perhaps a little bit too sarcastically.

"Watch your tone soldier," she said. The term soldier is considered an insult in the Marine Corps. It meant that you were regular Army, and not a highly trained soldier.

"I'm a Helljumper… ma'am," I said, this time I made my voice sound as dangerous as possible and let my eyes show a little anger. I also stood taller. The Captain was almost a foot shorter than I was, so she appropriately looked nervous and backed off a little. Those are the little things that make me glad that I went through hell and back to become a Helljumper.

"Regardless," she said. "Come inside," she ordered, trying to save some face.

I entered the tent to find a large holotank with a display of what I (correctly) assumed to be the area around us. The large supercarrier in the middle of the map was a pretty nice giveaway.

"This is the situation," an unfamiliar voice said. I looked up to see a middle-aged man dressed in a Colonel's uniform, probably the officer assigned to lead the battalion or regiment that the _Inconvenience's _troops had been absorbed into.

"We currently have the Covenant outnumbered in terms of infantry and air support, but they have a large amount of vehicular assets here, and here," he said as he pointed at objects in the holo-map. "There are definitely more enemy troops and materiel hidden around the area, probably in this ridges or in those cave systems. For a decisive attack to be made, we need to eliminate a large number of these vehicular assets, facilitating the job for out tank corps to break through the infantry lines. The best way to do it would be a small infiltration team laser painting the area for missile strikes," he explained. "Sharma, is your man back?" he asked.

"Yes, sir," she replied as she took one step forward. "He's right here."  
>"Colonel," I said as I saluted.<p>

"At ease staff sergeant," he said.

I complied gladly, I was still a little tense from the long trip on the pelican. And the spiker wounds.

"Well, you and Hernandez's Rangers, what's left of them, will be the ones to partake in this mission, it is simple enough. Get there without getting caught, paint the targets, get back to the extraction point, and leave."

"Straightforward enough, sir."

"Nezarian, what's your assessment?" the Colonel asked.

"The mission should be a success, Castillo is more than capable enough for this," he replied.

"Why thank you lieutenant," I said, perhaps a little bit too mockingly.

"Fuck off asshole," he said.

"Easy there, we're all on the same team here," the colonel said.

Neither Nezarian nor me said anything for a few moments until I was dismissed. I saluted and left after asking Captain Sharma where my tent was.

"Same place as always," she said.

The statement had me confused for a few moments before I realized that camps were always set up in the same fashion, meaning that my tent would be in the same position relative to the command tent as it usually was. I thanked the captain and saluted once more before leaving. It was almost completely dark now, the light had quickly gone away now that the sun was over the horizon. I could clearly see the planet that Juno orbited in the night sky, making it a little brighter than most planets. The supercarrier with all its twinkling lights also lit up the nigh considerably. It was enough for me to walk comfortably without fear of stepping on something.

I walked through the now empty camp and finally reached my tent. I sighed in relief at finally being able to rest after the long trip and I opened the curtain-doors.

Inside, I was something that frightened me more than anything I had ever seen before in my entire life.

Chloe Delacroix was there, she was wearing nothing but thigh-high leather boots and a smile. I dropped my helmet and fumbled for words before she covered herself and squealed.

"What the…?" was all I could say before I heard Pavel.

"I'm here," he said, his voice coming from behind. "Oh…" he said as he blushed visibly. "Welcome back Frank."  
>"Where did she even get those boots?" I asked, still a dumbstruck.<p>

"Well, yeah, funny story," Pavel said while scratching the back of his neck. "I'll tell you later, so take a walk, will ya?"

_Great, kicked out of my own tent._

I left my helmet on the floor and walked around the camp for a while. After circling it two times, I realized that I had only spent ten minutes walking around. I sighed and climbed up a small hill to look at the plains beyond.

From my vantage point I could clearly see the entirety of the _Inheritor._ It stretched from side to side of my eyes. It looked almost invulnerable sitting there. It was a beached ship, a beached ship that was desperately waiting for the high tide to escape. Only that this ship had plasma projectors instead of cannons and it was floating instead of simply resting on the sand.

I could see little lights traveling from the floor towards the gargantuan cargo bay of the ship and back. Below and around the _Inheritor_ there were numerous purple and white lights. The Covenant army. They were ready to hold against us with tooth and nail, literally. The jackals had some pretty nasty talons while the brutes were the ones who were fond of using their fangs. They were camped in between some small hills, sometimes those hills didn't permit me to see some sections of their massive encampment.

I saw some dim lights a lot closer to our line. Those were certainly ghost and chopper patrols. Some of those were destined to become small-scale raids. I sighed with reluctance and simply stared at the pretty lights until they hypnotized me into sleep.

* * *

><p>I woke up to a few voices. I couldn't quite understand what they were saying. I ignored them and wondered why people would be talking so loudly right outside my tent. I moved slightly and then realized how uncomfortable I was. Then I realized that I had fallen asleep on the hill wearing my full armor save for the helmet.<p>

"What time is it?" I asked suddenly. There was a group of three young-looking marines chatting next to me. Probably replacements.

"Three hours after sunrise," one of them said.

"Aw fuck," I murmured. That was the equivalent of about eleven o'clock back on Earth and Reach. "Couldn't any of you wake me up?" I asked, annoyed.

"Well…"

I could see that my armor had prevented them from doing so.

"For fuck's sake, I'm a Helljumper, I won't eat your face or anything, I said as I hopped back up. I walked past the marines, bumping my shoulder hardly into one of them. He winced as my armor hit his soft unprotected skin, but didn't say anything.

I walked all the way back to my tent and walked in. The first thing I did was punch Pavel in the gut.

"What the hell man?"

"That's for making me sleep outside!"

"I told you to take a walk, not to stay outside!" he complained while gasping for air.

"Well fuck you, I wasn't about to return and take another look at your girl. Don't you know anything about the man code? It's like older than dirt," I said.

"Ok, fine, I'm sorry."

"Damn right you are," I said.

Before any of us could say anything else the same shy looking corporal that had led me from the landing pad towards the command post slid her head through the doors.

"Ahem," she cleared her throat.

"What?" we both replied.

The female corporal visibly recoiled a little bit before she got the courage to talk.

"You're needed at command," she said almost shyly.

"Be right there," I said.

The corporal scurried away as fast as humanly possible.

"Well, she almost shat her pants," Pavel pointed out.

"I wouldn't be surprised if she actually did," I said. "By the way, I want a bottle of that Scotch you have," I said.

"Fine, but you'll get the three-quarters full one."

"Fair enough," I said after some thinking. And just like that we were back to normal, except for the pain in my neck that came from sleeping awkwardly, but I could forget that, mostly in account to the tightness in my lower back and the fading bruising in my ribs.

We walked back to the command post, it looked exactly the same as yesterday except that this time Darbinian was in here as well. He looked grimmer than usual for him, and that's saying a lot. Despite his cheery personality, the man always had a haunted look to him, now there was no cheery personality, so he looked exactly what he was. A lieutenant that had lost most of his platoon at the cost of completing the mission. That would haunt him for the rest of his life.

"Well, now that we're all here, we can start," the colonel said. He hit a button on the holotank and the same display that was in there yesterday popped up again. It showed the same small hills and ridges all around the area, the _Inheritor_ was still in the middle of the map, colored in a bright red. "As you can see, there are large concentrations of enemy ghosts, wraiths, chopper, and specters here, and here…"  
>He went on for what seemed like hours, explaining the tactical and strategic advantages and disadvantages that those vehicles brought to our predicament. He pointed out several other UNSC units that were slowly pressing the Covenant line, closing in on the supercarrier. There were already a couple of cruisers orbiting right outside of the range of the supercarrier, preparing a strike in case the thing decided to go ahead and glass the fucking planet and kill everyone of us. There were already numerous launchers aimed at the ship, all equipped with nukes ranging from a few kilotons to HAVOK warheads. Our entire nuclear arsenal.<p>

The colonel relished in explaining every last detail about the offensive for about fifteen minutes before he actually went to the part that interested me.

"Well, seven strike teams will be sent here, here, here, here, here, and here, that last location will need two strike teams. The operators will paint the targets with lasers and a missile barrage will eliminate or neutralize most of the vehicles the covvies have."

He took a moment to take a deep breath.

"Nezarian will take four of his Rangers to this point," he said and pointed. "And Castillo will go here with Sergeant Klaus."

The colonel had pointed at two middle-sized red blots, they were behind relatively steep hills, which made out mission slightly easier. Nezarian looked at the area around our targets for a long time before nodding quietly.

"Well the operation is a go for tonight. Be in the landing pad by nine, the sun should have set by then. "Dismissed."

We all saluted and left the Colonel with his officers alone. I caught up with Nezarian.

"Lieutenant," I said.

"Staff Sergeant, good to see you're alive and kicking."

"Thanks lieutenant, I can say the same for you. Just wondering, what happened after I blacked out?"  
>"Well, the covvies fell back a little bit, allowing for Pavel, the rest of us, and me, what was left of us, anyways…" his eyes drifted away. "Well, the falcons destroyed the advancing forces, but the scarab and the rest of the covvie troops attacked immediately. A few falcons were destroyed and for a couple of minutes it looked like we would be overrun. You were still unconscious there. Then, like another gift from god, artillery hit the enemy troops. A shell hit one of the scarab's joints by pure luck, and it collapsed to the floor, trying to repair itself. With the walker out of the equation, the final push was relatively easy, the falcons and artillery did most of the work, and then actual infantry arrived. It was not until then that we got to rest."<p>

"How did your platoon do?" I asked. I had to know.

"Well, there's only eight of us left."

"Damn," I said sadly.

"I know," he said as he looked into the ground. "It doesn't matter, we'll make the covvies pay for it a thousandfold tonight."

"Damn straight," I said. _Damn straight._

* * *

><p>By nine o'clock, I was already fully armed and armored, my BR55 was cleaned up and oiled, a fresh magazine was slapped into its port and the batteries on the laser sights and flashlight were charged. My belly was covered in armor and ammunition pouches full to the brim. The two UNSC-issue knives that I had were new ones, both looked shiny and deadly as I had put them inside their sheaths. My other knife was still strapped to its place by my boot, sharp as ever and ready for blood.<p>

There were flashbangs and frags hanging from my sides. It was more than I would probably need, but these things tended to go wrong. Hell, everything in this war was going wrong.

I reached the landing pad and was dismayed to see four hornets waiting for us. Yes, hornets, not falcons. I slumped my shoulders a little in disappointment and walked towards the group already there.

"Staff Sergeant" Nezarian greeted me.

"Lieutenant," I acknowledged.

"I believe this is yours," he said.

Yevgeny handed me my pistol. It looked the same as always. Battered, scratched, damaged, and the paint wearing away. The extended barrel/suppressor was still there and the gun looked like it had just been cleaned.

"Thank you, lieutenant," I said as I replaced the other M6 pistol I had with my own. I placed the other gun below my larger knife and above my but pack, securing it with straps.

"Well, of we go," a hornet pilot said.

I reluctantly hopped on the dangerously thin platform on the side, it wasn't even comfortable, my but was resting on the flat piece of metal while my legs hung out. Pavel did the same and sat down on the opposite side.

The craft ignited its rotors and immediately lurched upwards. I grabbed to the small platform as I saw the dark shapes of the tents in the camp fly by.

The hornet flew rather fast for a craft that possessed absolutely no aerodynamic form. It dropped us about a mile away from our target, in between two clusters of covvie troops. As soon as the pilot had descended to a hovering altitude of two meters we hopped off, the hornet was already leaving at top speed when I looked up after my landing.

I glanced at Pavel. He was dusting himself off. He had replaced his shotgun with an M7 SMG, he had placed a silencer on it in case we needed to take down any sentries. I had done the same thing for my BR55, outfitting it with a suppressor.

Pavel nodded at me and we quietly made our way forward. We would maintain radio silence and communicate only verbally through our helmet's speakers. And only if it was necessary. We were behind enemy lines, with absolutely no support other than the ammunition and weaponry that we had carried here with us. It seemed terribly little in the face of an enemy army. Lucky that we wouldn't need them.

We started a slow trot as we made our way forward. Eventually we started walking and finally we crouched into combat stances while advancing slowly. Our VISRs didn't detect any enemy troops nearby. The positions of sentry towers and vehicles had been uploaded into our helmets, so we knew which places we should avoid.

"Shh," I said, actually putting a finger to my face instead of doing the usual silence hand sign.

There was a rhythmical noise. Completely unnatural in the night of this wasteland. Pavel and I both went prone behind a small rocky outcropping and soon enough we spotted the source of the noise. It was nothing else than a jackal. It was carrying a covvie carbine on its back. The purple weapon was almost as tall as the creature, but I knew that didn't stop them from being deadly. Pavel glanced at me and gave me a nod, that was all I needed.

My knife was already in my hand as the jackal passed below us. I dropped behind it with absolutely no noise. Despite that, a 185 pound man with the addition of full battle armor landing on a rocky surface is bound to make a noise. Even if that noise is nothing more than a very dull thump.

The jackal turned around while screeching, but the sound never exited its throat, as I had already launched my hand forward in an attack. The tip of the knife hit the underside of the jackal's jaw, it went deep into the flesh of the alien and went through its thin skull with relative ease. Death was instantaneous, more than this worthless piece of shit deserved.

I signaled for Pavel to hop down and we both resumed our infiltration after hiding the body and covering the little spilled blood with some dirt. The carbine was left without any ammunition and I twisted my knife inside its port to mess it up. Just in case.

Finally, after three more jackal patrols and some skull-bashing and knife wielding, we made it to the summit of the hill completely intact. Unfortunately, the summit of the hill was a decent vantage point, which meant that the covvies had obviously placed a well-sized force in there. From here I saw mostly jackals, although I spotted a few brutes in the encampment as well.

That meant trouble, we had to paint the large parking lot of enemy choppers, ghosts and wraiths. Normally, this would've been done with orbital bombardment, but we didn't quite have that luxury right now, fortunately, we had a couple of micro-satellites that could relay the laser signature to the computers on the missiles. We would need some time to paint the area completely, sort of like circling the place with my laser sight, and we couldn't exactly do it if there was a heavy enemy presence on our asses.

We couldn't exactly simply avoid them either, as soon as the missiles fell, the entire camp would wake up and we'd be found. Fortunately for us, the complement of this hill summit was of about twenty enemy troops. After some recon we found out that only two of them were brutes. Time for some serious infiltration shit.

Pavel and I both split up, he had slung his M247L over his back and pulled out his silenced M7 SMG. I had simply unbuttoned the safety strap of my thigh holster for easier access to my silenced pistol. I rounded the camp until I came across a lone jackal patrolling. Well, to call it patrolling would've been an insult to every patrolman in the history of ever, the jackal was sitting down on the floor, staring _towards_ his own camp. A almost decapitated the alien as I slid my knife across its neck.

I moved on while circling the camp, I killed two more jackals before I finally spotted Pavel. He was about forty yards away from me.

"Three," he signaled.

"Three," I signaled back.

My squadmate pointed towards the lone guard tower that this small outpost sported. I aimed at it with my rifle and found out that there was only a single soldier on it. Unfortunately, it was a brute, with full battle-armor at that. We absolutely had to eliminate the threat before we went deeper into the camp. This third brute could easily be taken out from here, but not with any technique that would guarantee total stealth.

I decided to go for it.

"Mine," I signaled.

I aimed at the brute and zoomed in on the face of the brute. The entire scope was now showing only the alien's face. I zoomed in and made sure my reticule was aimed exactly at the iris of the creature. I followed its eyes as the creature made small, natural movements. Finally, after a few seconds of steadying myself, I took a deep breath and fired. The 9.5mm thick slug went right in between the folded material of the brute's helmet. That round flew through the air and ended its trajectory in the brute's left eye. Just to the right of the point where the sight had been centered. The round went easily through the brute's redish eye before it broke through all the nerves, skin, and tissue,. The bullet finally stopped after being forced back into the brute's skull after hitting the inside of the creature's helmet. It finally came to rest after bouncing a couple of times inside the skull.

Pavel simply gave me a double thumbs up before we resumed our task of eliminating every last covvie soldier in the outpost. My gunshot had made enough noise to get me nervous, but not enough to actually alert any alien. Pavel and I moved five meters apart, killing any alien that was in front of us or even within range. Finally, we both reached the barracks. Pavel nodded at me and we both went inside separate buildings.

I was surprised at the position the jackals slept in, it was surprisingly human. I pulled out my pistol and put it against the temple of a sleeping vulture. I fired the gun. The sound of its brains turning into mush was louder than the gunshot. After six more rounds, all the jackals were dead.

_You could've used the knife you idiot!_ I thought as I facepalmed.

I sighed and moved outside. Pavel gave me the clear sign. We inspected the camp for another couple of minutes before we finally decided it was safe enough to target our… well, target.

I moved towards the end of the camp that faced the large numbers of covvie vehicles. I couldn't help but compare the sight to that of a car dealership. The vehicles were all closely packed together and most of them were parked. Sure, there were a few patrolling ghosts, but that was about it.

I activated my laser targeter and went to work.

A few minutes later the camp had been circled completely by my laser. A diagram in my HUD showed a rough aerial view of the line I had painted with my laser. Usually I would've needed to keep my laser pointed at the target, but the micro satellites on orbit had acquired the coordinates and saved them in their hard drives. Those would then direct the missiles launched to land at every single place inside of the area I had circled off.

Finally, after a few minutes of waiting, the time for the missile to launch came.

I actually saw them strike before I could hear the noise their powerful engines made. The 'parking lot' in front of me lit up with flames that turned night to day for a full minute. Only then did I hear the surprisingly loud whoosh that the missiles had made, traveling a few times faster than the speed of sound. Moments later I heard the explosions and felt the dampened shockwaves.

"Pretty," Pavel grunted.

Pavel and I were sitting on the guard tower of the covvie camp. We were using the corpse of the brute as a pillow and leaning back on it as we watched the gory spectacle. My lips twitched in a macabre smile as I saw the first explosions. When the bulk of the missiles had hit, that smile had changed to an almost psychopathic grin. The missiles fell for what seemed like hours, flashes of orange followed by gigantic fireballs dotted by plasma explosions.

It was probably the most beautiful thing I had ever seen in my entire life.

"Well, of we go laddie," Pavel said in a faux British accent. I am pretty sure he did a terrible job at it.

We both jumped off the platform and rolled as we hit the ground. I thought about taking a souvenir of sorts, but decided against it. We started our walk back to our extraction zone, the fire of the burning covvie camp lighting the way.

"So, why was your first time with Delacroix so bad?" I asked halfway through.

"Well, you saw those leather boots," he half-asked.

"Yeah," I said, smiling a little at the memory.

"Well, it wasn't the whole outfit," he started.

"You know what, I'm not entirely sure I want to know anymore," I said.

"Fine by me," Pavel said as he shrugged.

By the time we reached out extraction point, we were both tired of jogging and the hornet pilot was yelling at us. We hopped on the passenger platforms and the small aircraft flew away, back towards our base and human lines.

I could see that our forces were already mobilizing for that final push. I just hoped that it would be more final for them than for us.


	46. Anticlimax

Chapter XLVI: Anticlimax

**March 10, 2541 (UNSC Calendar)/**

**Ajai Badlands, Juno, Olympic System**

I barely flinched as the brute chieftain lunged towards me, its hammer raised for a fatal crushing blow, and its eyes betraying the fury and hatred it fell for me and for my race in general.

"Die impling!" it proclaimed as it closed in on me.

"Impling?" I asked myself out loud, striking a thoughtful pose. That only served to anger the chieftain more.

I still didn't move an inch, I had utmost confidence in Nezarian's boy sniping skills. If the sniper had Nezarian's word backing him, then that was enough for me. Oh, and the chieftain was charging straight towards a Lotus Anti Tank mine.

Do you think I'm stupid? I wouldn't stand in front of an enraged chieftain with only a sniper that I don't know for safety. That's just plain stupid.

The chieftain stepped on the mine. There wasn't even a click as the thing exploded, sending dirt, air, and fire towards the heavens. And the body of the stupid chieftain as well. The brute landed a few meters away from me, missing both its legs and one of its arms. Surprisingly, it was still alive. I walked towards it and gave it a once over. Something caught my attention. There was a small mace on its belt. Well, actually, it was a spike grenade. I grabbed the massive explosive, it was almost as long as my forearm.

"Impling huh?" I asked the chieftain.

The brute was too wounded to make any comment, but the hatred in its eyes could've easily made an inexperienced soldier loose his lunch. I simply shrugged and brought the explosive down on the brute's head. The spikes embedded themselves in the chieftain's face and then I pulled.

The chieftain howled in pain in a way that made my hair stand and a shiver run down my spine. I brought the spike grenade down again, and this time the brute didn't make a single noise as its thick skull was pierced by the crude, but sharp spikes on the grenade.

"Well, that is a noise that I'll never forget," Pavel said as he left cover and walked towards me, trying to avoid the occasional covvie body.

"Yeah, it was quite unexpected," I said as I placed the spike grenade on my back.

"All clear staff sergeant?" a familiar voice asked through the comm channel.

"It is now," I said. "Nice work with the mine by the way," I said.

"I aim to please," Yevgeny Nezarian replied.

I sighed and sat down on the body of a brute, not the chieftain. The body squelched a little as the armor and fur pressed the blood and bodily fluid in between. I didn't mind. We had been fighting a type war that was not meant to be fought by ODSTs. I was meant for special operations involving fancy terms such as: stealth, infiltration, long range patrol, assassination, extraction, and my personal favorite, extreme prejudice.

But yet here I was, fighting against brutes, jackals, and grunts like I was just another lowly infantryman and not the elite of humanity's military. In the last days I had grown to respect regular infantry a lot more than I had before, but man, did their jobs suck. They didn't really have any goals, they simply fired and hoped they didn't get hit. And it was even worse for the army!

I sighed once more and look around. The place was littered with covvie bodies, mostly brutes, but there were a couple of jackal snipers with half their chests blown out by Nezarian's boy.

"Now what?" I asked.

"Well, we wait," Nezarian said.

We had been pushing forward for the past five days. The edge of the supercarrier was now actually directly above us. It only served to remind us of what exactly we were facing against. I stood back up and checked my gun for ammo. Satisfied that it was fine I returned to my position, a small cluster of rocks that we had successfully held for five hours with not a single casualty. Seven of Nezarian's rangers and Pavel and me. Us nine had been bundled up together as a squad while we got reinforcements and replacements. We made for a pretty deadly squadron us nine, with all of us being elite specialists and all that.

We waited for additional attacks, but none came. Eventually our earpieces waked us up from our half-slumber.

"Nezarian, Castillo, you there?" asked the familiar voice of Major Hernandez.

"Yeah, we're here," I replied. "Sir."

"Well, we're sending a pelican to your position, you are to come back to base immediately and prepare for an op," he said.

"Finally," at least five of us muttered simultaneously.

"Good to see the optimism, but keep it professional," the major said and with that, he cut the channel.

Minutes later a pelican filled up with fresh-faced marines landed in our position. The kids looked us up and down in awe and surprised at getting to be so close to the legendary ODSTs, not to mention the badass Rangers. A couple of them actually gaped at us with their mouths opened. I grinned behind my faceplate, thanking them for the ego boost.

"That's right boys, this is probably one of the few times you'll see someone as badass as us," Pavel said as he sat on the pelican's hatch, legs hanging out.

All of the rangers and me laughed at that, obviously offending the newcomers a little bit. You know, with the damage to their professional pride and because we caught them staring at us like we were the first pair of breasts they had ever seen.

Good times.

I jumped on the pelican and it flew off, staying close to the ground to avoid AA fire. Pavel gave a mock salute to the replacement marines before they were out of sight. The landscape cruising below us was familiar. After all, we had fiercely fought for it for the past days. There were still some burned out husks that were once deadly choppers or ghosts. There was also the occasional crashed banshee or destroyed scorpion. Not to mention all the covvie bodies. All human bodies were retrieved so that they could be shipped to their families and as to avoid demoralization of the troops.

"So, what do you think this is about lieutenant?" asked one of the Rangers. This time I made a point not to learn their names. Witnessing Lunge's, Park's, and Banks' deaths after actually getting to know them made them even worse.

"I dunno," Nezarian said while shrugging. "Heard exactly the same that you did," he explained.

We chatted a little bit about our theories concerning the reason we were being called back from frontline duty. It ranged from a simple resting period for us to a special mission to board the covvie supercarrier. Eventually we all decided that it was probably a simple long range patrol or some recon thing.

It wasn't

"WHAT?" was the unanimous response to the comment that the general had just made.

"You heard me," he said.

"But sir, this is absurd, plain suicide!" Nezarian complained.

"Now you watch your tone lieutenant," the general warned with a stern voice.

"Sir, I think I am inclined to agree," I said. "This mission would be suicide."

"Well, that's why we picked you. You are the best we have," he explained.

"That doesn't make me feel better," a ranger mumbled.

The general decided to ignore him. "Get some rest, the operation starts tonight, good luck gentlemen," he said. And with that, we were dismissed.

* * *

><p>That night, at the signaled time, we were all ready. This time we didn't bother with anything other than ammunition and a small can of biofoam each. I had at least double the ammo that I usually carried. My rifle was equipped with a drum magazine and my knives were sharpened. Pavel didn't spare any expenses either, he had his M247L, his ACS, and even an SMG. With spare ammunition for all of those. Not to count his sidearm.<p>

Nezarian and the rangers were equipped with only their rifles and sidearms, but they were carrying as much ammunition as I was, perhaps a little bit more, taking into account that they were Army and those guys are famous for carrying tons and tons of ammo every time they go on combat. It had actually spawned a couple of jokes about the bullet to kill ratio of the UNSC Army. They were very sensitive about it, so I didn't mention it.

A minute later the NWMH team got here. By the way, that stands for Nuclear Weaponry and Material Handling. They were clad in the HAZOP version of marine armor. That did not bode well for me at all.

"Don't worry kid, this is our standard attire, you are at no risk being near the bomb," one of them said when he caught me staring at their armor. They all had SMGs and pistols, the sign of either special operations or of troops that rarely fought. I assumed it was the second since they didn't look like battle-hardened veterans to me.

Behind them came a troop transport warthog with what seemed like a longer flatbed in the back. On top of it was a dull grey cylinder. The only thing that signaled what it was were some black letters spelling Shiva. That meant it was a Shiva warhead, and by the size of it, it must've had a yield of some 50 megatons. Yeah, enough to wipe any city in human space from the map and then some.

"Well, we're ready."

With that, we set off. Our part in this mission required us to escort the NWMH team through the covvie lines and right under the belly of the _Inheritor._ Once we got there we would hold the ground for some time while the nuclear guys set up the bomb and everything. They wouldn't detonate it, but they would set it to red alert. That way when the carrier decided to lift its shields to fire at some ship, the bomb would blow it all to hell. Quite literally, as I hear that nuclear explosions are very hot. Who am I kidding? I've been near a nuclear explosion more than my fair share of times.

We left the camp with absolutely no armor or heavy weaponry to speak of. The only vehicle was a warthog laden with a rather heavy bomb on the back.

This time it wouldn't be about firepower, it would actually be about stealth. Yet here we were, carrying tons of ammunition that we were told we wouldn't use, but this is the kind of mission that goes wrong.

* * *

><p>We had been walking slowly for a few hours now. The rangers and us were walking in a wide circle around the slow-moving warthog. The NWMH members were driving, going shotgun, and sitting on top of the bomb respectively. We had two rangers for scouts, warning us whenever an enemy patrol was ahead of us. So far we had managed to avoid every single brute patrol and had to eliminate one quickly.<p>

"How much farther?" someone asked.

"Bout eight kilometers."  
>"Damn," the first ranger replied.<p>

Eight kilometers was a long way to go at the rhythm we currently were doing. We had to get to our goal before daybreak, otherwise we'd have a difficult time returning without actually having to eliminate half the enemy army, something which we were in no position to do so. Well, technically we could've detonated the nuke, but I wasn't big on that plan.

"Halt," one of the scouts whispered.

We all complied and crouched, the NWMH guys hopped off from the hog and they aimed their guns toward the direction of the scouts, waiting for the enemy to either pass us without notice or come guns blazing.

"One brute, two jackals, eight grunts," the scout whispered.

No one said anything; we had all gotten the information and burned it into our brains for the purpose of utilizing it when we opened fire.

"Looks like they're going to stop here," the scout said.

"As soon as possible, try to take them out," Nezarian said.

"I don't think we can do it ourselves," the scout whispered again. "We need a couple more."  
>"You, you, go there," Nezarian ordered two of his rangers. They nodded and left at a brisk, albeit noiseless trot.<p>

We waited for three and a half minutes before we heard loud snaps in rapid succession. Suppressed weapons fire. Another ten seconds passed before we heard anything.

"Looks like its clear lieutenant," the first scout said.

"Good, let's keep moving."  
>The warthog was turned on again and we started our slow walk towards our goal. We passed the place where the unfortunate patrol had decided to take a rest and I saw that the rangers had been very thorough. The brutes had been taken out with headshots, the jackals with regular double taps to the chest while the grunts had simply been sprayed. There was multicolored blood already forming pools in the ground.<p>

I looked up and saw the gigantic ship. The single vehicle had managed to hold out against several UNSC regiments with its ground troops only for several weeks. Granted, their ground troops outnumbered us drastically, but they had received heavy pounding in account to the fact that we counted with different types of support while they didn't. The ship was gray and purple, with several lights dotting its hull. At this close distance of only 200 meters above, I could feel the threatening presence of the ship, it made me feel uncomfortable.

Finally, after another hour of walking and avoiding patrols, we had made it. We were right under our ship. A couple miles away from the cargo bay and slightly to the bow of the ship, but still pretty close to the center of it overall.

"Banshee!" someone called.

We all jumped to the ground, but the flier had already spotted the bulky warthog and was lining to strafe it. The NWMH guys jumped out just in time to avoid being flash-vaporized by the banshee. The plasma cannons left a few scorched marks on the hull of the bomb, but otherwise didn't damage it. Once I realized that I took a deep breath.

Immediately after that, we all opened fire on the banshee. The combination of small arms fire quickly brought it down, but the damage was done, its plasma fire must've been heard all over the place, same as the explosion after it crashed. Not to mention that it probably called in an alarm.

"Get working!" Nezarian ordered the NWMH guys. They happily complied. "Set a perimeter, hundred yards from the hog, give em some space to work," he barked. He shouldn't have bothered, we were already spreading out and finding nice defensive positions.

"Command, we've been spotted. We made it all the way to our objective, but a banshee spotted us, requesting pelican evac."

Static… static…

"Enemy patrol closing in on us!"

"Well shoot it goddamit!"

"You don't have to tell me twice."

I heard the report of the silenced assault rifle barking repeatedly at the unseen patrol. I aimed down the sight to see if I could spot any enemy soldier while we got a response from command. The dark night went gray as I activated the night vision section of my scope, further adding to the VISR.

Static… static…

"Lieutenant, this is command, we cannot send a pelican in for you, we cannot risk any aircraft," came an unknown voice.

"Are you fucking kidding me? We'll get killed out here," Nezarian replied.

"Amen to that," Pavel muttered.

"We need fucking evac right fucking now, or we'll fucking die," Nezarian yelled.

There was a few moments of silence before we finally got a reply. "Very well then, a pelican will be there in a few minutes."  
>"Well that was easy," I pointed out. "Thank god," I added.<p>

Now, you see, pelicans are fast craft, able to reach speeds in excess of Mach something, they can also hover and fly sideways and diagonally and in every direction possible. They also happen to be armed and armored rather heavily. It is probably the epitome of human engineering and military prowess. Lately though, they were being swatted down like flies.

"Frankie?"

"Oh, sorry," I said. "Zoned out." I fired at a jackal carrying a carbine and killed it with a headshot. Couldn't help but smile a little after I saw its head explode like some sort of fruit.

The jackal wasn't alone though, little vulture there had some friends. Those friends were actually a rather large pack of brutes. The human equivalent to a platoon. Thirty of them, against me. Normally I would've worried, but at this distance the odds would even to about half that by the time they reached me.

_Still not good enough…_

I fired away, starting with the brute captain and moving down the ranks. After knocking down two majors, I realize my mistake. I could've taken out the captain and then the minors, but now that they were all out of leaders, the brute's went berserk. We all know what happens when they do that. The things charged at me sprinting. They were sprinting faster than even I could, faster than an elite could, probably around the same speed I had seen those Spartan-IIIs move, and that's saying a lot.

"Uh-oh," was all I said as the brutes lunged at me. I started walking backwards while keeping up my fire, hoping to draw them away from the other rangers and allow them to help me out as soon as the brutes came within their fields of fire.

By the time the brutes had reached my original position their numbers had been reduced from thirty to nineteen. Not bad at all given the time I had.

"Frag out!" I called as I tossed one of my grenades. The explosion blew three brutes of their feet, killing one of them and injuring the two others. That's about the moment that Pavel and the other ranger closest to my position shifted their fire and caught the charging brutes in their backs. Five of them were killed in as many seconds. The rest turned around to return fire, making the mistake of leaving me unchecked. I managed to take out three of them before Pavel and the other ranger eliminated the rest of the confused brutes. That could've been a textbook maneuver, three against thirty and coming out victorious without an injury.

"Where the hell's that pelican?" Nezarian yelled.

"A minute away," came the answer. It was yet another new voice, probably the pilot of the craft.

"How is the bomb going?" the lieutenant asked.

"Just about," replied the leader of the NWMH team.

"Well, you'd better hurry up, or we'll actually be rescued before you're done," Nezarian said.

The rangers and us ODSTs had been slowly falling back as several nearby covvie patrols closed in on our position. We had a decent position and our VISR and night-vision gear gave us an advantage over the covvie soldiers. We could've actually held out here for a rather long time provided things remained like this.

I had just killed two grunts when I heard a familiar hum. I looked up to see a low-flying pelican speeding towards us.

"Done!" one of the NWMH soldiers said.

"Hop on the pelican!" Nezarian ordered.

We all fell back in an orderly fashion, making our circle decrease in diameter as we walked backwards while sustaining our fire. The pelican did its job by using its autocannons and machineguns, keeping the patrols with their heads down.

I was last to jump on the pelican, the machinegun on the rear roared as it spewed lead at a group of grunts and brutes, riddling them with holes. The small patrol collapsed, dead.

The pelican lifted up in the air, plasma fire striking the hull but barely damaging it. I hopped backwards to avoid a spiker round and fell on my ass in the blood tray of the ship. This one was surprisingly lacking in the washed-out redish hue.

"Wow," someone said.

"What?"  
>"That actually…. went pretty damn well. We even managed to set up the bomb and everything."<br>"We're elite, that's what we do," Nezarian said.

"Aw, cmon lieutenant, when's the last time something went according to plan?"

"Kid's got a point," I said. It actually depressed me to think back to the last mission that had actually gone according to plan. That is to say, none.

"By the way, what happens if they deactivate the nuke?" Pavel asked.

"They don't got the technical know-how. It's more likely that they would set it off than they deactivate it. Besides, the dummy frigate is already on its way.

The dummy frigate in question was an actual frigate with everything of importance removed from inside of it. Its slipspace drive, its turrets, its MAC cannon, it's armor, its everything. It was basically a metallic shell in the shape of a frigate. The engines had been left on though, propelling it on an automatic route to this side of the planet, where it would be in range of the carrier.

Just as the pelican landed on camp, there was a noise that reminded me of uncapping a soda bottle, sort of a fizzing sound. I looked at the carrier to see a part of its top move slightly, although I couldn't really make out what it was.

"I advise you look away gentlemen," the leader of the NWMH said.

I turned around just in time. I heard a noise remembering me of the sound that beam rifles made, only that a million times louder. Instants later, that sound was blocked out by another, more familiar sound. The sound of an explosion. At first I was afraid that the nuke had gone of, actually killing us all, but it turned out that it was the warning missile that had been fired as soon as the carrier lifted its shields to fire its projectors. I knew that a looped recording telling the covvies not to deactivate the nuke as it would likely go off and making some demands was now playing. The recording was a distraction to confuse and delay them. All UNSC forces were now in the process of falling back to outside of the blast radius of the Shiva nuke. Tomorrow, or the day after tomorrow, one of the enormous container ships would be used as a decoy in the same manner that the frigate had been used. As soon as the supercarrier lifted its shields, 30 megatons of pure hell would be unleashed, destroying it and most of the surrounding covvie forces.

_Huh, it all actually went according to plan._

Isn't it just beautiful when that happens? I think so.

* * *

><p><em>Well, chapter 46 is up. I have to say guys, I am rather pleased with myself for making a story this long and of mediocre quality. I've got to thank you all for that, sticking to reading my attempts at decent writing and that. Thanks for that people, hope you enjoyed this chapter.<em>

_-casquis_


	47. Between Scandium and Vanadium

Chapter XLVII: Between Scandium and Vanadium

**August 9, 2541 (UNSC Calendar)/five months later**

**UNSC **_**Inconvenience, **_**in orbit over Reach, Epsilon Eridani**

I yawned. It was the seventh time I had done it in two minutes. I was bored as hell, but didn't want to fall asleep just yet. My lockup was about to finish and I planned on taking a couple of combat pills to keep myself awake and have some fun down in Alexandria. We had gotten a rather lengthy rest period after that incident back in Juno. A rather well publicized incident back in Juno. The UNSC had made the victory a huge propaganda tool. The latest numbers showed that recruiting had increased by at least 12% in places where footage of the UNSC forces winning battles or the carrier being blown up to bits after a nuclear device went off right under it. It had been a rather nice battle for the UNSC. Of course, there had been casualties, moderate casualties the reports said, but they had been against a superior army with a freaking SUPERCARRIER!

I was pondering on the beautiful sight of the Covenant space ship falling apart as the nuke went off, only to have a coup de grace be delivered to each half in the way of three MAC shots to each place and a rather lengthy artillery barrage. The Covenant armed forces had been eliminated completely short after. There was something very satisfying about not taking any prisoners whatsoever. Not that the covvies tried to surrender, but regardless.

"Staff Sergeant, you're free to go," a Marine PFC said. The man had been guarding me for the whole time I had been here, which was 48 hours. I pitied the man until I realized that he was watching porn on a datapad and getting food directly from the mess hall. He didn't even have the decency to offer me some of the warm lasagna.

"Finally," I said as I jumped from my bed and stretched.  
>"Yes, and try not to piss off Lieutenant Darbinian anymore," he helpfully said.<p>

"I'll give it my best."  
>Having said that I left and walked towards my room, normally there would've been a rather lengthy process involving paperwork and whatnot, but we were both willing to skip it. The only record that said that I had been in lockup for misbehavior was verbal accounts by Darbinian, the guard, and myself. More like Darbinian and perhaps the guard.<p>

I got into my room, changed to my jeans and a plain black (surprise, surprise…) shirt. After that I made my way to the hangar. Pelicans had stopped making their runs from the ship to Reach a few hours ago, that meant that most pilots were down in the ground having fun and getting drunk, something that I had every intention of doing right now.

I entered the hangar and was unsurprised to find it almost completely devoid of life. There were a couple of techs playing some card game and two lone pelicans. One of them had the familiar red paint on its hull. I smiled.

_Aw, she waited for me._

For a moment I actually had a heartwarming moment. Marina wasn't the kind of girl to skip a leave. At first it made me kind of nervous and more than slightly angry that she enjoyed partying without me. Yeah, it pretty much made me jealous. After I realized that her idea of partying hard included a couple of beers and making fun of all the drunk people, I stopped worrying. Besides, most of the time I _was _with her and in the few exceptions, Pavel was guaranteed to break the arm of any idiot that tried to approach her. I would repay the favor as soon as he admitted to being in a relationship with Lieutenant Delacroix. That probably wouldn't happen any time soon, provided he was an NCO and she was an officer (sound familiar). Besides, from my short experience with Delacroix, she was shy in public. Oh, it looked like she had some rather kinky tastes in bed as well. I smiled at the memory of her back in Juno.

"What are you thinking about?" Marina asked.

"Oh, nothing," I said, looking away.

"I know that smile, you get that one when you think you'll get lucky," she said with a smile of her own. "Were you thinking about me Frank?"  
>"Yes," I said. <em>Let's go with that.<em>

"Well, you might just get what you want later on," she said and winked.

I cocked my head in confusion at her. She was a contradictory person. She dressed rather skimpily for a member of the military, yet she was probably one of the less flirty women on the whole ship, just short of Chloe Delacroix, who turned out to be a contradiction herself as well. Marina liked to know people's opinions but mostly kept her own to herself. She enjoyed having a good time but didn't like drinking, yet she wasn't bothered in the least that I was the closes thing that I could be to an alcoholic without actually being one. She was like that really nerdy girl that you befriended in high school because she was really nice (so Pavel says), but managed to look like a supermodel.

You know what, I don't even know what I'm complaining about. I won the lottery after loosing my previous winnings. Fuck yeah!

"Sounds good," I said to Marina.

"You do realize. I'm. Right. FUCKING! Here."

"Yeah, yeah, Sheppard, we know," Marina said.

"Huh, you managed to convince him to stay here?"

"Not that I had much of a choice in that," Sheppard said angrily. "She outranked me or something."

"Aw, you did that for me?" I asked in a fake lovey-dovey voice.

"I would do anything for you honey-bunny," she said in an equally fake voice as she leaned in to kiss me.

"Ok, we're taking off," Sheppard warned.

"Hey," I called to Marina as left for the cockpit.

"Hm?"

"Do not call me honey-bunny," I said.

She simply laughed that beautiful laugh of hers and entered the cockpit after blowing me a kiss. I sighed contentedly and sat down on my usual seat. Corner closest to the exit on the right side. I usually sat there out of habit, but it was reputedly the best place to jump of a crashing pelican in an attempt to save yourself. Nezarian agrees with me and we often fought over that place in the various ops we ran on Juno after blowing up the carrier.

I heard the noise of hangar walls closing down this small section of the place from the rest of the hangar bay, sealing it completely. That way, when we chose to leave the ship, we wouldn't accidentally launch a bunch of sailors into outer space. Well, upper atmosphere at the very least.

"Here we go," Sheppard announced moments before the pelican was dragged/half-flew out of the hangar bay. I floated in zero gee for a couple of moments after being released from the ship's artificial gravity generators. I had a nauseous feeling that I quickly got under control. It was usual for that to happen in sudden changes like that.

The pelican started moving, although my only clue of that was the shrinking _Inconvenience_ I could see through the small plastic window on the door/hatches that closed off the pelican's bay from the cold vacuum of Epsilon Eridani. The ship shook for a few moments before gravity returned suddenly. I was already holding myself down to my seat, so I didn't slam into the floor, but I got another wave of dizziness as soon as gravity returned.

The small view that the rear window provided initially showed a very dark sky that eventually turned that light blue that we all know and love. After that I started seeing clouds in the distance until the pelican flew through one and emerged on the other side, the landscape turned from bright blue to grey. Didn't really matter, you don't need sun to get drunk.

"Frank?"

"Yeah?"  
>"We just got a transmission."<br>"You getting somewhere kid?"

"Yeah… looks like you won't be able to have your fun," Sheppard said after hesitating.

"Fucking Darbinian, what the hell does he want now?" I cursed.

"No, it's not him," Marina specified.

"Aw crap," I said, putting my face between my hands.

"Sorry Frankie, rain check on this one," Marina said.

"I am right fucking here," Sheppard said.

"Nobody cares!" both of us replied.

The pelican landed in the usual place. The military base whose name I hadn't bothered to learn after all this years of landing here for some pretty memorable nights. The craft wheezed and shook a little as it landed on its designated zone. As soon as it touched the floor, the back doors opened, I didn't bother standing up.

There was a small crowd of marines and army soldiers waiting outside, most of them looked like they were pissed, a few of them didn't have readable expressions. All of them looked drunk.

They started moving towards the pelican and boarding it in a comparatively orderly fashion for drunkards.

"Excuse me, coming through," a familiar voice said through the soldiers. "Move it asshole!"

Yep, that was Pavel. My friend emerged from the crowd and pulled a marine back by his collar, almost slamming the poor guy to the ground and took his place on the pelican instead.

"Frank? I thought you were in lockup," he said as soon as he saw me.

"Yeah, got out just in time," I said.

"Huh, if you had known you could've spent your time doing the nasty to Marina," he said with a small laugh.

"True," I conceded.

"Guys, I am right here," Marina said.

"Nobody care…." Sheppard started saying until he got a glare from Marina. That previous statement is pure conjecture, but I am pretty sure that's the way it went.

"Try that again and I'll chop off your…"

"Whoa, whoa. Chill," I said. "He was just kidding," I said.

A couple of the marines on board the pelican laughed a little bit before Pavel and I made them shut up with a couple of well-practiced death-glares. We looked at each other and it was all we could do not to burst out laughing at the gulping marines.

The pelican took off as soon as fifteen marines had jumped on board. A couple of them didn't get a seat and had to take the trip standing up, it'd be a show watching them stumble and perhaps even fall down as we left the atmosphere.

_Mary's Little Lamb_ started leaving the atmosphere and the half-drunk marines certainly met their expectations and fell to the blood tray. The entirety of the soldiers and marines on board laughed at them heartily. The shamed marines tried to stand up with as much dignity as possible, which wasn't that much, considering that they had just done a faceplant in public.

As soon as the pelican completely left Reach's atmosphere, we all started floating. Most soldiers were strapped down to their seats, so the only thing giving away that we were in zero gee was the fluttering clothes of the two marines that were using their arms to push themselves against the floor. For the third time in less than five minutes I got a wave of nausea and dizziness. The fourth time came after a short while of the pelican doing I don't know how many kilometers-per-second in the friction-free volume of space between it and the _Inconvenience._

The pelican landed soon enough and we got the feeling of solid land below our feet. Sort of. I waited for all the other soldiers to leave before I moved towards the cockpit.

"You're not coming?" I asked.

"Well, Frank, I'm flattered that you asked me, but I am as straight as they come," Sheppard said in a deadly serious voice.

"Not what I heard," I mentioned. "So?"  
>"Nah, sorry, I've got three more trips to make before I am allowed to rest," Marina said.<p>

"Well then, as soon as you're done you can make up for that rain check," I said as I pulled her close by the waist and leaned in towards her.

"Get a room you guys," Sheppard said. I think this guy was seriously annoyed by the fact that he couldn't seem to get a girlfriend.

"Shut up," I said, this time rather playfully. I was enjoying the moment, although Marina's flight suit made the embrace slightly awkward. I had no doubt that she was wearing street clothes under that, as she was coming with me on her leave. Also, I had no doubt that she was wearing something interesting under the street clothes under the flight suit. She _had _made some implications that I really liked.

"See you in a few," I said.

"Well, about goddamned time," Pavel teased as soon as I left the ship, he had been waiting for me to leave. It wasn't really all that comfortable to walk down the halls of the ship alone, you felt like something was watching you. Well, something other than Eliza the bipolar AI.

I walked to my room, I would stay there until Marina came knocking on the door for some alone time. Not like I had anything else to do that didn't involve exhausting myself in the gym before she arrive. That could prove disastrous to our alone time.

"So, no partying?" Pavel asked.

"Well, actually, I disguised myself and went to Reach before you did, idiot," I said.

"Sure you did," Pavel said after laughing at me. He sure did enjoy making fun of me as much as I did enjoy making fun of him. We walked into our room, feeling abnormally large since it was meant for six people. I yawned a little despite the effects of the combat pills. I decided to kill some time by throwing my knives at a wooden target that I had hung from one wall. The room was still pretty small, which only allowed for rather easy throws, so instead I wasted my time doing flashy and flamboyant throws that would have no practical use in anything other than a circus and humiliating your victim beyond recovery.

I eventually got bored of it, so I went to juggling my backup knife and Tenare's Damascus Steel knife with clever twists. At least I thought that they were pretty clever myself. Pavel had read some recent sports news in a datapad before deciding to take a shower. He took advantage of the situation and actually managed to take a decent length shower at more than three minutes. He actually managed to last through ten before Eliza cut the water.

Before he left the shower, someone knocked on the door.

"Come in," I said, absorbed in the twirling blades of my knives. One of them was as black as my armor had originally been, the other's blade shone and sparkled with every movement under the rooms lighting.

The door opened and none other than Lieutenant Chloe Delacroix walked in. My concentration was broken momentarily as I went back to the tent in Juno. It was enough to make one of the knives slip through my fingers and land tip-first less than a quarter inch from my right foot, actually slightly cutting through the material of my shoes.

"Umm, hello," she said. "Is Pavel here?" she asked, obviously every bit as uncomfortable as I was.

"Yeah, he's in the shower."

"Oh, ok," she said.

Delacroix sat down on the bunk opposite from mine and said nothing. I tried to start a conversation but couldn't come up with anything interesting to say, so instead I went back to knife juggling. Interestingly, the dangerous activity calmed me down. Fortunately, Pavel rushed out of the shower as soon as I told him Chloe was here, so he spared us from any further awkwardness. I only relaxed after the door slid shut.

I went back to my knife juggling, this time adding Pavel's backup knife into the mix as well. I concentrated as much as I could to keep them in the air, catching them and spinning them and twisting them in my hands before throwing them up in the air again. The activity distracted me from everything else, and I actually started to have some fun doing it, mostly because I knew it was a rather impressive feat and I was proud of myself to be able to achieve it.

The door was knocked on again and I immediately caught two knives and waited an instant to catch the third.

"Come in," I called out as I placed the blades on the small wall-desk that the room had.

"Don't mind if I do," said Marina's slightly accented voice. She walked into the room and confirmed my theory that she had been wearing street clothes under her flight suit by showing up with jeans and one of her signature tanktops.

I pulled her close towards me and leaned in to kiss her.

_Time to confirm my second theory,_ I though to myself.

"What theory?"

"Oh, nothing," I said.

"Staff Sergeant," a familiar soldier's voice called out.

"Fuck," both my girlfriend and me whispered.

"Oh, am I interrupting anything?" asked a private whose face had a vague familiar feeling about it.

"No, we were just baking cookies," Marina said.

"Well, personally, I was lacing my shoelaces," I added.

"Oh, and we were going to play chess afterwards," Marina said.

"Then we would decorate pots," I chimed in.

"Staff Sergeant sir?" asked a very confused private.

"Well of course you're goddamned interrupting!" I said. "What's it for?"  
>"You're required to show up at the observation deck," he said before leaving promptly.<p>

"Aw shucks," Marina said.

"Puta madre, no puedo creer esta clase de mierda que me dan, necesito paz de vez en cuando," I mumbled.

"What?" Marina asked.

"Oh, nothing, just that I'll see you later," I said as I gave her one more kiss. This time I left my room before I really got into it and arrived late at the meeting or whatever.

I made my way through the ship and had to elbow myself past a few groups of returning soldiers to make my way through. I finally arrived after an odyssey through 200 meters of steel and flesh, managing to make my way through hordes of intoxicated marines and soldiers holding on to the walls for dear life. It was more interesting than it sounds, I swear.

I entered the observation deck, which was displaying a lovely view of the Viery Subcontinent in all its glory. The space had a greenish hue to it that was caused by some particles and whatnot, just Wikipedia it if you really want to know. Anyways, Captain Brooks was there, same as Captain Sharma, and Major Hernandez. Commander, no, _Major_ Albaf was there as well, with a cleanly cut Lieutenant Wilkins standing to her right and a step behind her, hands clasped behind his back. The guy looked a little bit bulkier, maybe he had been working out. Both XO's were missing, same as Nezarian.

"Sorry for the delay," Nezarian said an instant later. He was wearing an actual civilian suit, which for some reason made him look like a mafia enforcer. I smiled a little bit at the thought of Nezarian busting human skulls for a change, but didn't bother saying anything.

A few seconds after that a very blushed Chloe Delacroix entered the room while fixing her hair. It was very obvious to all of us in here as to what she had been doing, more so to me, since I had been a witness to the beginnings of it. I smiled at her knowingly, giving her my best mocking-yet-friendly smile. She just seemed to turn an even deeper shade of red and looked down to the floor after putting the last of her unruly strands of hair back into place. Now we were only missing Darbinian, he was an exception I was willing to accept.

"Damn, sorry I am late," Darbinian said just after I had formulated that thought.

Every single person in the room raised an eyebrow at the man. He was wearing some suede loafers, which in itself wasn't really that weird. Next, he was wearing white jeans, which seemed to be fashionable this summer. That in itself wasn't weird at all either, if only a little bit unnerving that the man managed to keep up to fashion in times of war. Especially since he was an enlisted officer. What _was _a little weird though, was the fact that the polo shirt he was wearing had almost as many colors as a rainbow and the collar was neatly propped up. I gotta give it to the guy, he didn't look that bad, probably because every teenager nowadays dressed like that, bus since he wasn't a teenager, and in fact was the XO of a legendary Marine unit made for a very unusual image.

"Nice shirt," both Nezarian and I said at the same time.

Now, Nezarian was a more professional version of me, even if his training or equipment wasn't as good as that of an ODST. Still, it was rather unusual for the lieutenant to make a comment that might've been deemed disrespectful outside of a combat situation. Trust me, the only time I had seen the man swearing was during combat, and he certainly made up for the time that he spent being a quiet and respectful officer.

"Shut up," Darbinian said, rolling his eyes.

I smiled at myself and stood at attention. I noticed that everyone except the two spooks were dressed in regular clothing. Looks like they all planned on a night of sex and debauchery. Well, more like a night of sex and alcohol drinking. Nevermind, it was more of a night of sex and debauchery what they probably had in mind. I simply shrugged to myself. That sort of night was granted to keep any marine or soldier or swabbie happy for a while.

"Well, bad news, but you probably knew already," said a tired-sounding Brooks. "Eliza, you take it from here."

"Ladies and gentlemen, the planet of Concordia has been found out by Covenant scout forces. The system, as you may already know, sports a sizeable defense force by itself, but the size of the Covenant scout fleet was larger than usual, so command is sending a few extra ships to participate in the defense of the planet. That is not the only reason that we are being recalled to defend the planet," the artificial construct said.

Of course not, Concordia was a geological anomaly all by itself. It was one of the reasons that silver's worth had been reduced to that of tin. Well, maybe I'm being overly dramatic here, but the place was full of the stuff. It was originally called Argent, the French word for silver, but that name was changed for unknown reasons to its current name. It was also the reason why UNSC Navy ships were covered in the hard and durable Titanium-A instead of the comparatively weak and brittle Ceramic-12 plating that had been in use in the past. The freaking place was full of Titanium, I swear.

"The rich titanium deposits and Titanium-A factories and plants are of vital importance to the UNSC war effort in the sector, providing over 29% of the Titanium-A plating in use by the UNSCDF. We are to protect the planet for as long as reasonably and practically possible so we can prevent the enemy from eliminating a large part of our armories."  
>I knew that the reason we were being sent there was to save the UNSC some money by facilitating the production of armor that could be outfitted on anything from a spaceship, to a base, to simple marine's armor. Well, if it saved the UNSC money, it meant that that money could be spent on something else, perhaps something more productive, like, I don't know, Spartan Lasers maybe? Oh I know, Gauss Hogs. Yeah, I like the sound of more gauss cannons tearing through covvie armor.<p>

"…Staff Sergeant, are you listening?" Eliza's avatar asked.

"Umm, yeah," I said, as if it was the most obvious thing in the world.

"Well, what did I just say then?" she asked. I saw every last person that was inside the room stifle a laugh, much like in school whenever the teacher caught a student in a similar situation.

"You were talking about how Concordia has rich titanium deposits and it should be protected at all costs because titanium is used to make armor and armor is needed for soldiers to fight and soldiers fighting are a good thing for us," I said with the same mocking tone I would've used for talking to a teacher in the same situation.

"I've got my eye on you Castillo," the AI playfully said as she resumed her briefing. The people in the room all smiled at this, and the mood lightened considerably, that was of course, until everyone of us remembered that we were just about to be shipped into a battle with a hegemony of alien races bent on the annihilation of the entire human race.

Yup.


	48. Family Matters

Chapter XLVIII: Family Matters

**August 20, 2541 (UNSC Calendar)/**

**UNSC **_**Inconvenience, **_**in orbit above Concordia, Zama System**

There was a lot of activity going on in the _Inconvenience _right now. Mostly Navy personnel and the occasional soldier or marine that was on board the ship for some reason or other. The covvies had finally decided to jump into the system en-masse. I am pretty sure that every single person in the UNSC fleet defending the place felt a little bit guilty about wishing that the aliens would show up already. I understand that feeling, it is horrible (not to mention boring) to wait for an enemy force to show up without actually knowing their strength or numbers. I felt a little bit guilty myself as I observed the holographic display showing twenty enemy ships, two of them were assault carriers and the rest were _CCS-_class cruisers. You see, normally a cruiser is more than a match for two of our very own _Marathons_, but an assault carrier is really something to look at. I'm not going to say that it is as deadly as a supercarrier (after all, it is six times as small), but it certainly isn't very good news to any human either.

B and Echo companies had now been almost completely vacated from the ship, being sent to the planet to protect important refineries and mines. I think that they were both working together to protect a medium-sized complex that contained both a mine and a refinery. Most civilians were still there, even though all the mining and most of the refining was done by automated robots, there still needed to be a couple of human overseers making sure everything went right.

"Twenty ships eh Frank?"

"That's what the display shows buddy," I said.

"Mhm," he muttered.

I had already put on my armor by the time the ship was fully ready to fight. I looked at all the battle scars on it appreciatively. It was a testament of my experience, skill, and most importantly, luck. There were two old gashes crossing the center-section of the chest piece, from a spiker's bayonet. Those were shallow, the brute hadn't had a long enough reach for the blades to go through my armor, instead leaving the equivalent of scars on the metal. Those two were the most notable by far, but not the only ones. My shoulder pieces had both been switched to UA/multi-threat when a beam rifle blew off the Gungnir piece cleanly. They had suffered more than most other sections of my armor, having been hit by numerous rounds and debris. My right pauldron had been nicked by a carbine before, a small chunk of it blown away, leaving a small canal-like furrow in the armor. The other shoulder piece was simply cracked on the surface, but apparently was still combat ready. I had spray-painted a white image of an elite skull with a bullet wound on it, behind it were two crossed knives and a modern-looking shield. A sniper in Echo had one of the same type for every elite officer he killed in the stock of his rifle. I had borrowed the design and made it about 10 centimeters tall (that's roughly 4 inches) and painted it onto the middle section of the shoulder piece. The cracks made the armor tattoo look all the more intimidating.

There were two dots like scars on the back of my armor, titanium coin-like pieces welded to my armor where I had been shot to make it vacuum-capable once more. My helmet had a long scorch mark running on its right side, from a plasma shot back in Juno, the one that burned out all my circuits and radio. My legs and arms had been luckier, with only scratches and some paint chipped away. Talking about paint, I'd need to give my suit a fresh coating before it started looking like arctic camouflage instead of the all-black piece of armor it was supposed to be.

My rifle presented similar battering, it was the same original gun that had been issued to me right after leaving ODST training, and it had been my gun during training as well. The BR55 could boast to having seen more than most soldiers on the fleet all by itself. It had five etchings in the stock, marking my first enemy kills. I had stopped the practice after loosing count, besides, it is difficult to etch all your kills into a rifle so small. Ha, I'm just motherfucking awesome.

My pistol looked better, but there were still numerous scratches and scars that the years of fighting had left on it. The pistol was now simply a shell with new components, including recoil dampeners, heavier barrel, the suppressor/barrel increase, a two-shot burst switch, its small camera that allowed it to connect to my helmet for zooming, and a small telescopic sight the size of my thumb sitting in the front.

Pavel's armor was pretty much the same as it had been forever, with the exception of the chest piece of his armor having been painted a dark blue and some other stickers and armor tattoos. He still looked like an ODST on steroids, which in a way, he was. I, on the other hand, am a more literal example of that phrase. Not that I minded that much, my augmentations had saved my life and others more than enough. If all I had to pay for that was some routine checks, I was more than happy enough to keep my near-superhuman abilities. Besides, I very much doubt that ONI could've taken it away.

I tightened my knives and their respective sheaths to my armor, more because I had nothing better to do than because I was worried that they would get loose. I checked the massive combat knife in my lower back, satisfied that it was sharp and ready to kill some covvies. The smaller backup knife felt as balanced as ever, a good knife for throwing, if perhaps a little bit weird to have prolonged knife fights with. The last knife, a gift from a cook in Jericho VII, was the best of both worlds, large and sharp, with the blade slightly bending forwards as it reached the tip, less so than a kukri, but enough to give it some use as a slashing tool. I spun it twice in my hand before strapping it back on to my right boot.

"Well, the captain certainly took his time," Pavel muttered.

"Shush," I said. "You know he'll show up exactly when you say that idiot."

"Alright, alright," Pavel conceded. "I'm just saying."  
>As my friend finished his sentence, the doors of the room opened. That in itself was weird enough, this was a small empty room that had been given no use for as long as I remembered. Well, at least since Zavala was forced to retire.<p>

A tense and nervous-looking Captain Brooks entered the room, he was wearing his captain uniform, but for some reason it looked like he hadn't taken the thing off in days and had had a very bad time recently. His expression was one of tiredness and sadness. His usually impeccable face was now sporting a three-day beard. His hair looked uncombed and slightly out of place. For the first time since I had ever met him, Brooks looked like the man that he actually was. Tired, angry, and having seen way too much.

"Captain," we both said as we stood up for a salute.

"Sit down," he said off-handedly.

"Sir, is anything wrong?" I asked.

"I said, sit down," he growled.

"Sir," I said, then I complied.

"As you know, the system is under attack, with Covenant forces already landing on the planet. Normally, you would've been sent to protect important points in the planet, but I need you two for something."

We both nodded slowly, carefully.

"This girl," he said as a picture popped up in a screen on one of the walls. "Needs to be retrieved at all costs," he said. The girl in question looked strangely familiar, as if I had known her before, or at least her cousin or something like that.

"Her last known location was here," Brooks said as the picture shrunk slightly in size and gave way to a map of a city on the planet. A red circle closed of an area, and then that area occupied the entirety of the screen. Finally, a building was highlighted.

"This building is the headquarters of Concordia's largest newspaper. Last I heard, the girl in question was forced to hole up in there due to the Covenant attack."

"Sir, what's the importance of this girl?" I asked.

Before the captain had time to answer, I made the connection, or at least half of it. The girl looked like she was in her late teens or early twenties, maybe worked as an intern for the newspaper while she finished college. Her appearance was that of someone that could've belonged to royalty, much like the look that one certain Captain Brooks possessed. There were other marks there as well, such as physical likeness. I deduced that she must be a familiar of the captain even as he answered.

"She is my daughter," he said.

I honestly never saw that coming. The captain always seemed to me like a man that was married to his job, mostly because I had never seen him outside of the ship unless it involved military issues. Brooks had been the captain of the ship for longer than I had been on it, he had never once mentioned anything about his personal life to anyone. The only thing that I knew about his life before the _Inconvenience_ was that he was originally sent here after he pissed off an admiral's daughter.

"Very well sir, we'll bring her here safe and sound."

"You'd better Staff Sergeant, else I'll have your head," he said. He sounded dead serious.

"If you don't mind me asking sir, why didn't you try to evacuate her or bring her on board this ship before? Nobody would've objected," Pavel said.

I winced before the reply came, knowing that my pal had made a mistake.

"You think I didn't try you stupid asshole?" he yelled. "I did everything I could, even now she doesn't know she's being rescued!"

"Sorry sir," apologized a visibly shaken Pavel Klaus.

"You go do your job, the ship is already moving into position above the area around the building. As soon as you get her, contact me directly on this line, I'll send evacuation for you."

"Thank you sir," I said. "Would you mind telling us her name? Just so she knows why we're there."

Brooks took a deep breath before he answered. "Claire, her name is Claire," he said. As he said that, the man looked like he had aged a lifetime in a few moments, not the forty-seven years that he actually had.

"As I said, we'll get her home safe," I said. With that, both Pavel and I left the captain alone in the room and headed towards the drop pod bay.

* * *

><p>Red, orange, yellow, green. I was rocked slightly forward as the pod lurched from the ship and towards the planet. I could see the city at my feet, the larger explosions clearly visible from orbit. I could feel the zero gravity for a few instants before the pod moved slightly towards a less damaged area of the city and into the planet's gravity well. The pod started rocking as it broke atmosphere, with it, I started sweating profusely from the heat. That in itself was not unusual, in fact, it was exactly what was supposed to happen. I wished that I could wipe some sweat from my brow, but the helmet prevented me from doing so, besides, there would be time for that later. An automated voice told me that it was time to activate the drag chute. I pressed the correct button and the SOEIV slowed down considerably, forcing my upper half forwards and shaking my insides. The city was now clearly visible, and I could make out cars and bodies in the roads and streets.<p>

The tallest skyscrapers were just beginning to fly by when I activated the rocket boosters that slowed down my drop even more. The thrusters activated exactly fifty meters above the ground, with them, the windows of my pod polarized and hardened automatically. The rockets decelerated the speed of my pod significantly. The speed of the descent was stopped even more as the pod crashed to the street. It had been an exceptionally stable drop. It had taken thirty seconds to travel from upper atmosphere to ground level. That was quite fast for the distances involved.

As soon as I was able to jerk myself upright, I made my pod windows become transparent once more. I was in a decent sized crater for my pod, with the area of one meter around me having been pushed away by the sheer kinetic force of my SOEIV, leaving me inside a very small crater. I looked up just in time to see Pavel's SOEIV dig through the side of a building, one side of the pod ate through windows and walls before finally landing a foot from the base of the building.

By the time dust had cleared Pavel's pod I was already out of mine and scanning the area through the scope of my battle rifle while moving towards my friend's SOEIV. I banged on it twice before Pavel banged back. That was the 'OK' signal, so I moved out of the way of the door. Instants later the metallic piece fell noisily to the ground and Pavel emerged from his pod with his M247 already up and ready.

"You good?"

"Yeah."  
>"Ok, let's go," I said.<p>

We started moving through the city and towards the target building. We had landed about a kilometer away, so we were supposed to arrive in a couple of minutes. The city was an eerie place to be in. We were in a section of the town that was completely devoid of life, both human and alien. There were clouds of smoke swirling around, making visibility pretty damn bad. I could hear the explosions in the distance, but other than that, we were alone.

I popped out of a corner to cover my friend while he crossed a street. Once he arrived to the other side he did the same for me and we both moved across the block, backs slightly hunched down and rifles ready to fire. The waypoint in my HUD told me the distance that remained for the newspaper building. We had to cross a rather large and open plaza to get inside. Should be easy right? Wrong.

Just before we both started sprinting across the plaza, we heard that familiar humming, that noise that signaled danger and death. This was going to get tricky.

"Phantom," I said.

"Got it," Pavel acknowledged as he checked the ammo count on his LMG.

We both moved to different sides of the street we were in so that we'd have better fields of fire and so that we could reduce the danger of both of us being engulfed by a plasma fireball. Instants after I had reached the other side of the street, a phantom craft appeared, it hovered above the plaza for a few moments before it dropped three elites, four jackals, and ten grunts. All of the elites were minors, so we weren't going to have such a hard time taking them out.

The covvies quickly positioned themselves in a circular formation before they started taking defensive positions. Well, I assume that that was what they had in mind, because we opened fire right then. My first three bursts hit an elite in the chest rocking it backwards, I quickly switched to single-fire and ended the squid's life with a headshot. Pavel used a more unconventional approach and sprayed the elite with a sustained burst, killing it instants before mine went down. The remaining elite was smart enough to roll behind cover. I switched my aim to a grunt that was about to throw a plasma grenade. My shot hit the small alien in the chest, making it drop the grenade. The subsequent blast engulfed it and two of its friends. Right about then I had to take cover when two carbine shots hit the wall next to me.

"Pavel, handle the jackals," I said.

"On it."  
>I heard a sustained burst and decided to run forward, sliding to cover behind a large potted plant. I could see carbine and plasma fire peppering the wall I had just been in, so that meant that they still thought I was there. Probably preparing themselves for a flanking maneuver. I waited for Pavel to fire another sustained burst before I jumped to another potted plant. From here, I could spot two jackals next to each other, overlapping their shields while Pavel's rounds bounced in all directions after hitting them. I thought about taking them out, but that would give away my position.<p>

"Frank, the elite's on the move," Pavel warned.

"Roger," I said.

I looked out on the other side of the pot just in time to see a large blue blur slide into cover in another of those large potted plants, three pots away from mine. I slid on to the next one, once again I avoided detection from enemy forces. The jackals were slowly moving forward while Pavel switched between them and whatever grunt decided to leave cover. I slid towards the next pot just as the elite slid into it. So there we were, two mortal enemies, both taking cover in the same place, about two feet of dirt between us.

I carefully switched my rifle to full-auto and made my move. I leaned in over the rectangular pot without really forcing my head to leave cover. I poked something with the barrel of my gun and instantly opened fire. You know, controlling full automatic fire is hard enough as it is, but it's even harder when you're doing it blindly without your stock for support.

I heard the familiar sound of bullets hitting energy shields before the sound switched to bullets hitting concrete. I went back down and peeked over one side to see a wounded elite, dragging itself backwards while firing at the pot. I could've taken it out with my BR55, but decided against it and simply tossed a frag at it. I was rewarded by the sound of a beautiful explosion followed by the splattering of alien flesh around the blast radius.

I didn't waste my time though, I immediately switched targets to the two jackals, they were now about ten yards away from Pavel, and they were starting to return fire from their plasma pistols. I shot one in the back of the leg. I did that so Pavel could get both kills, he deserved them after all. My friend turned the jackals into alien pulp before I eliminated the last remaining pair of grunts.

It had been a beautiful engagement, perhaps it would've been more so if I hadn't use a grenade, but all in all we did pretty damn well.

"We did pretty damn well, didn't we?" Pavel asked.

"Damn straight," I agreed.

Then we moved across the plaza to reach the enormous building in front of us. It wasn't only tall, it was huge. Like most buildings in this place, it had a grayish tone to it, it was made mostly out of titanium. The thing was cheaper than polycrete here. Engraved above the front doors in large black letters were the words 'Zama Herald.' The whole newspaper was named after the system instead of the planet. Probably because some visionary tycoon had thought that in the future some other planets or moons in the system would be colonized. He might've been right at the time.

"Ok, move in," I said.

We entered the building and I was instantly creeped out by the sight of the lobby. The place looked spotless except for a bunch of papers right in front of the receptionist's desk. It reminded me of those times when Spec. Ops. Shangeili had finished their work inside a base. All they left was blood and dead bodies, not even the occasional plasma scorching on the wall.

"Count your rounds eh Frankie?" Pavel suggested.

I simply raised my rifle in response, and we both started moving more slowly and a lot more carefully. Brooks' daughter was supposed to be in the 79th floor, way above us. I didn't like the idea of using the elevator, but there would be no choice, by the time we were done climbing the stairs the entire city would be under covvie control, so that was a no-no.

"Elevator?"

"Yeup," I said.

"Very well then," Pavel said.

The bug guy clicked on the button that called the elevator here while I aimed at the air in front of us, scanning it for any shimmering and also ready to shoot in case a visible covvie decided to walk inside the building.

Ding.

Pavel aimed at the empty elevator before he was satisfied it was actually empty. Then he walked inside and signaled for me to do the same. The elevator doors closed and the elevator shot upwards.

Believe it or not, as soon as the doors closed, the corniest elevator music I had ever heard started playing. It was probably a very funny sight, two ODSTs, fully armored, fully armed, sitting together in a very nice elevator, with elevator music in the background.

Suddenly, a large explosion rocked the entire building, actually making the lights flicker a little bit and the volume of the song go down for a few moments.

"What was that?" Pave asked, understandably worried.

"The Girl From Ipanema," I replied.

"Ha-ha, smartass," Pavel said.

We spent the rest of the elevator ride looking at the elevator doors pointedly, none of us saying a single thing. Eventually we arrived to our destination and the elevator made a satisfying ding. As soon as we heard that noise, we went back to combat stances, I took the lead while Pavel walked a couple of feet behind me scanning the area with his M247L. We started searching the whole place, I went through every single room twice before I started looking below desks and inside cubicles.

"Aw fuck it," Pavel said. "Claire! Claire!"  
>"What are you doing?" I asked.<p>

"Claire? Claire Brooks?" he continued. "Oh Claaaaaireee!"  
>"Dude, seriously," I said.<p>

"Claire?"

"She's not here man," I said.

"Looks like it," Pavel agreed.

"The captain's going to eat our fucking heads."  
>"Mhm."<br>We both went into a small room that happened to have a soda machine, the kind that is used in fast food restaurants. Pavel grabbed a cup and filled his glass with coke. After it was full, he took of his helmet and started drinking. I sat down on an office chair, the weight of my armor pushing it down. I was about to ask Pavel for a cup of coke when a small figure emerged from a cupboard and tackled Pavel, bringing him to the floor.

"What in the fuck?" was all he had time to say.

The figure then lunged towards the door, but was abruptly stopped by my right arm. I grabbed the girl by the waist and slammed her into the chair I had been sitting on. She kept struggling before I depolarized my helmet, showing her my face. At that point she seemed to calm down a little bit.

"What the fuck?" Pavel repeated.

"Looks like we found her," I said.

"Found who?" Pavel asked. "The captains daughter?"

"Yup," I said.

"Damn."  
>"Who are you?" the girl shyly asked.<p>

"Are you Claire Brooks?" I asked.

"I asked first."  
>At that point I polarized my helmet's visor. Claire visibly recoiled a little bit. This armor, after all, had been designed to look as intimidating as possible to human beings. Not that it worked with aliens.<p>

"Are you Claire Brooks?" I asked again, my voice slightly angrier.

"Yes," she answered.

"Daughter of one Captain Brooks?"

She nodded.

"Well, your dad wants you to get home safe, so we're going to do just that."

"No, I don't want anything to do with Nosmo, as soon as I was born he left me and my mother to fight against the aliens, he abandoned me. He has never wanted anything to do with me and I am glad to return the favor."

"Captain Brooks' name is Nosmo?" I asked.

"Man, that's hilarious," Pavel said.

"I know right? Nosmo…" I said while laughing.

"Aw man, wait till they hear about this," Pavel said.

"Amen to that."

Claire looked seriously annoyed at both of the ODSTs laughing at her father's name while she had just given a very serious speech.

"Well, let's go Claire, we don't have much time," Pavel said.

I was already contacting Brooks. "Captain, you there?"

"Yes! Is my daughter alright," he said.

"Looks like it," I replied. "Doesn't seem too glad about coming with us though, should we knock her out?" I asked. Claire looked shocked and inched a little bit away from me.

"No you idiot! She's my daughter," Brooks ordered.

"Roger, where's our evac?"

"The building's landing pad, there's one in the same floor that you are," he said. "I'm sending Zekalwe to pick you up," he informed us.

"Roger that sir," I said.

As the captain cut the conversation, Pavel had already grabbed a struggling Claire by the arm, just like they do in the movies, unfortunately, the girl kept fighting, so eventually Pavel had to put her on his back like a sack of potatoes. She started banging on his armor while yelling something about hating her dad and that he was a controlling freak and whatnot. She stopped after a few seconds when she noticed that she was punching metal.

"Landing pad, to the right," I said.

"Yes Frank, I can read the sign," Pavel said.

"I'm glad, we've made some progress since last time."  
>"Please Frank, I misread one fucking word," he complained. "One."<br>"Well, that one word certainly cost us a lot," I said.

"Well, we made it out just fine didn't we?"  
>"Not thanks to your reading skills," I muttered just loud enough to hear.<p>

"Will you two shut the fuck up!" Claire replied.

"Oh, we've got a feisty one here," Pavel said.

We arrived at the landing pad and emerged into a small balcony. I clicked a button and the large landing pad started folding outwards from the walls. It took it exactly five seconds to get into a horizontal position.

"Wouldn't wanna fall down," I noted as I peeked over the rails if the balcony.

"Agreed," Pavel said.

"Frankie, my boy, Zekalwe here, I'll be there in just a moment," the pilot said through the com.

"Don't take to long," I replied.

Sure enough, instants later the pelican emerged from between two buildings. It started moving towards us and started setting down on the lading pad before I saw something terrible.

"Banshees!" I yelled.

"I see them!" Zekalwe called out.

He pulled up his craft as four fuel rods hit the landing pad, completely blowing it to pieces. A flight of four banshees flew overhead, turning around for another go at the pelican. They started peppering it with plasma before Zekalwe fired his Anvil missiles, taking out two of the banshees. They broke off in different directions before returning to shoot the pelican.

"Can't do it Frank, too hot," he apologized before he turned around his craft and left. "I'll pick you up over here if I manage to shake them off," he said as he uploaded a map into my HUD. "Good luck."  
>"Same goes to you," I said.<p>

Pavel had already pulled Claire back to safety, and I jumped inside the safety of the building just as one of the banshees decided to hit me, fortunately, it missed completely, hitting only the space I had been in before.

"Let's go," Pavel said as he dragged Claire to the elevators. The doors opened as soon as I pressed the button, and Pavel shoved the girl inside and then we both entered the elevator and Pavel hit the button with a big 'L.'

Well, if the first elevator ride was awkward, this was even more so, we were practically kidnapping a girl here. Halfway to the floor I couldn't stand it anymore, so I burst out laughing. Both of the other occupants looked at me. I tried to calm myself down but failed utterly, laughing like an idiot once more.

"What?" Claire asked.

"Nothing, nothing," I said while taking deep breaths. "I just love this song."  
>I managed to calm down a little bit by the time we reached the lobby, it was still completely devoid of life, but I doubted that it would remain like that for a long time.<p>

"Hey, do you have a car?" I asked.

"Who? Me?" Claire asked me.

"No."

"Oh."  
>"Yes you!" I said.<p>

"Oh, well, yeas, it's in the parking lot, one floor below."  
>"Back to the elevator," I said.<p>

"Fuck that, we're taking the stairs," Pavel stated as he opened an emergency door.

"Fine," I agreed.

We climbed down the stairs, Claire was now feeling a little bit more cooperative since she had just witnessed a banshee attack, even if it was a failed one. She was even trying to move like us. I rolled my eyes as she failed in mimicking Pavel's movements. She almost tripped a couple of times before deciding that a combat stance wasn't her thing.

"Over there!" she said as she pointed at a vehicle.

"You gotta be fucking kidding me," Pavel stated.

"Yeah," I agreed. "Perhaps you could've bought an even girlier car."  
>"I don't know maybe make it pink instead of purple," my friend suggested.<p>

"Or maybe make the thing rounder," I said as I shrugged.

"Oh, I know, maybe add a girly sticker," Pavel said. "Nope, looks like you've got that covered," he said. "Is there another car here?"

At that point Claire broke down crying. I'm not good with people when they're crying, especially when it's girls, and even more so when they are pretty, attractive girls. I didn't think I had to mention the fact that she was hot, you guys are probably aware of my good luck on that department already.

"You made her cry," I said quickly, placing the entire fault on Pavel instead of admitting to my own. Surprisingly, it worked.

"Ok, listen, I'm sorry, it's just that we're used to driving around on warthogs," he said as he clumsily patted Claire's back. While he did that I grabbed Claire's purse form the color and emptied its contents. As soon as I found the keys I put them on the door. I took a deep breath before opening the door.

"There goes my manhood," I muttered. Claire only sobbed louder.

"Frank!"

"I'm sorry jeez," I said. "Just hop in."

Pavel led Brooks' daughter into the backseat before hopping in on the copilot's seat. He took a deep breath and looked uncomfortable, even with all that armor on. I simply smiled behind my visor and called the guy a hypocrite. I turned on the car.

"Dear God, it even sounds girly…"

"Just drive."

I pushed the accelerator, bringing the car in reverse, I used the handbrake to swing it wildly in a 180º turn. The car stopped with the front facing the exit at a perfect angle. I smiled to myself, thinking of how absurd the situation was. If I had had any other friends, they would've laughed at me forever, but since my only friend was here with me, it wasn't that important. I switched to drive and floored the pedal. The small car lurched forward with a speed and intensity that seemed impossible for a thing this size.

"Nice," I said.

"It goes up to 150 miles per hour," Claire said shyly.

"Hm, who would've thought," I murmured to myself.

We were now driving through the abandoned streets, heading towards a large park where Zekalwe said he would pick us up, I hadn't gotten any transmissions from the guy since he uploaded the map to my HUD, that could be both good or bad. I decided not to worry about it for now.

"Frank, in front of us," Pacel said.

"I see them," I said.

I put myself in a ramming position before realizing that hitting an elite with this tiny car might not be such a good idea after all, it would be comparable to hitting a cow. I stayed on the same position and moved to the side at the last second, leaving behind a very startled elite and group of grunts. A second after the car had flown by, a single plasma bolt shattered the rear window. I saw a flash of blue in the corner of my eye before it made contact with the windshield, the heated plasma didn't shatter the hardened plastic, instead it burned through it, leaving a sizeable hole right in the middle. Pavel curled himself in his seat and kicked at the windshield, popping it free from its frame. The plastic flew over the roof and crashed behind us.

"My car!" Claire complained.

"Oh, you'll buy another one," I said.

I dodged a couple of abandoned cars before I made a turn, the park was right in front. I could see the green trees in between all the titanium buildings. I tapped the accelerator, trying to make the little car go faster. I was about two clicks away from the park before I heard a pelican flying nearby.

"That you in the purple car?" Zekalwe's voice said.

"Oh fuck off," I replied.

"Yeah, I'm saving a picture of this one for sure," the pilot said after a chuckle.

"You're trailing some smoke there ace," I said.

"Oh fuck off," Zekalwe said.

I gunned the accelerator, not succeeding in my goal of making the car move any faster. The pelican disappeared in between a couple of trees just as the little purple car jumped over the curb. We all shook as the car's crappy suspension failed in absorbing any of the shock that they were supposed to actually absorb. Pavel looked back to confirm that Claire was ok before looking forward again. The car slowed down considerably due to the uneven terrain of the park. Oh, and all the trees and stuff in the way. Finally we made it to a clearing where the pelican was hovering. As soon as we arrived I stopped the car and Pavel had to practically dragged Claire away from the horrible purple thing.

"I just finished paying for it!" she yelled. "Fucking covvies!"

"Woah, easy there," Pavel said as he half-helped, half-tossed the petit girl into the blood tray of the pelican.

"Hurry up boys," Zekalwe said. "And girl."  
>"We're already in," I said.<p>

"I know, I just love saying that," Zekalwe admitted as the pelican flew off.

I laughed before I sat back down. At that moment I felt like a huge weight had been lifted of my shoulders, we hadn't let down the captain. In fact, we had completed the mission with flying colors. Well, flying color. Purple, in fact. Pavel collapsed on a seat next to Claire, who was now sobbing due to all the confusion and events that had just happened around her. I leaned my helmet back into the walls of the pelican bay as the doors closed, leaving behind a burning city.

* * *

><p><em>Well, that's it for Chapter 48. I want to apologize if my writing quality has decreased over the last couple of weeks. School has kept me busy and I haven't been able to write as much and with the same amount of focus. Also, can't really go through the chapter five times, only proofreading it after I am satisfied with it. <em>

_Regardless, as always, hope you enjoyed._

_-casquis_


	49. Refined Tastes

Chapter XLIX: Refined Tastes

**August 23, 2541 (UNSC Calendar)/**

**Titanium Refining Plant IX, Concordia, Zama System**

Smoke and dust drifted by slowly, giving the day a little bit of dullness. Not that it needed any, there was some sort of stalemate with the covvies right now. A couple of large offensives by the Army and the colonial militia had actually managed to hold off the bulk of the covvie ground forces. Sometimes I wondered why the covvies didn't just simply glass away at the planet instead of wasting their time trying to kill us pesky humans.

"Hey Pavel, why don't they just glass us and get it over with?" I asked.

"Well, for starters they need to turn on the intensity of their plasma projectors, which means that they need to go up into the atmosphere, second, it takes time to position themselves in an appropriate glassing pattern. Finally, they have to put their shields down to fire, that would cause a massive nuclear and MAC barrage that would surely destroy most of the ships before they even got off one single particle of superheated plasma out of their cannons."  
>"Wow, did you actually learn that stuff?"<br>"Yeah, read a paper a military dude made on it," he explained.

"You, reading?" I asked. "I tried to get you to read _The Wet Dirt, Maika's Journal, _and _A Soldier's Tale. _ You refused with the excuse that they were nerdy."

"Well, what can I say, I'm a changed man," Pavel said as he placed his hands behind his back.

"Did Delacroix make you read it?"

"She did not!" he said. "I am outraged that you would make such a suggestion! It goes against my integrity, nay, my honor that you would even thing such a thing conceivable… of course she made me read it you idiot."  
>"That sure was a lot of big words smart guy," I said. "Did she tell you to read a dictionary as well?"<p>

"Shut up," he said, although I could see a smile on his face before he turned away to put on his helmet.

I glanced at the landscape in front of me. There wasn't really much to look at. My buddy and myself were sitting on a pipeline with our feet hanging over the edge. This pipeline was on the very edge of the refinery we were supposed to protect, it overlooked a small town that the covvies were attacking right now. I could see the wraith mortars as they traced their high arcs before descending. It would've been a beautiful spectacle had I not known that each of those blasts killed human soldiers and marines. Every now and then I could hear the faint explosions whenever an ammo dump was hit and it blew up, raising even more hell than the one that was being lived there.

"Don't you think it's a little odd that we're the only two guys assigned to protect this place?" Pavel asked.

"Did you fall asleep during the debriefing?" I asked.

"Maybe…"  
>"Well, if you hadn't you probably would've learned that we are only here as a token holding force and to cover the retreating forced from that small town over there. Should happen pretty soon with the way things are looking."<p>

"That explains the SRS," Pavel said as he motioned to a ledge above us. I had placed a duffel bag and a sniper on top of it. I'd also positioned a large box filled with SRS magazines. It was bound to kill some covvies. I'd be relieved of the weapon as soon as a proper sniper arrived into this refining plant, but in the meanwhile, I'd simply dedicate myself to blow alien skulls off. Or wait until I was able to do that.

* * *

><p>Turns out that I didn't have to wait long to use the sniper. By the time the night turned into day, there was a rapidly moving column of troops and vehicles moving towards the refinery. It was dishearteningly small. Perhaps about a company's worth of soldiers plus a scorpion, three warthogs, and a single armadillo. Yep. There had been a battalion in there originally, I'm pretty sure that there had been at least five scorpions in there, not to talk about the hogs and armadillos.<p>

"Suit up man," I said.

"Way ahead of you man," Pavel said jokingly. He had been suited up for two straight days now, save for a couple of times when he took off his helmet and his chest piece. I climbed the ladder to the ledge and went prone, my hands already reaching for the sniper rifle. I pulled back the bolt, feeling a sense of elation as the familiar noise entered my ears. That noise meant danger, simple as that.

The escaping UNSC soldiers (for they were Army) were making a breakneck pace, even then, they would be a long time before they arrived. The covvies also noticed that they weren't receiving any fire as soon as they left cover, and soon enough I saw a group of ghosts emerge from the ruins of that little town, in hot pursuit of the escaping soldiers.

"Helljumper," a crackled transmission came in. "We might need some of that support we were promised pretty soon."  
>"On it Captain," I said. I knew the man by voice, but that's about it. Since he sounded pretty calm despite the situation, I assumed he was a talented soldier.<p>

I zoomed in as much as possible, my scope went from the group of soldiers and vehicles and back towards the chasing ghosts. As I moved back to the ghosts I saw one of them explode after being hit three times by explosive round. Seems like the armadillo was making use of its cannons.

I set my sight on a ghost, the closest one since my range was less than adequate for my passable skills as a sniper. I compensated for the distance and the wind after getting the readouts from the instruments, then I moved the rifle a good distance in front of the ghost's trajectory. I took a deep breath, and I squeezed the trigger.

The boom that the gun made never ceased to amaze me. It lifted some dust from the ledge and most of it fell through the grated floor. I could clearly see an actual shockwave for an instant before it dissipated. I spotted a rapidly advancing trail of vapor and waited for the shortest of instants for it to strike.

Imagine a linebacker, now imagine that that linebacker was huge, strong, and fast. Now picture the big guy sprinting towards you as fast as humanly possible for him (or her). Then picture the linebacker tackling you while you weren't wearing any protection whatsoever. I bet that you imagined that it would hurt. Now, imagine all that strength, all that power, focused on a point little less thick than a millimeter. It would probably cause some damage. Wrong, it causes in incredibly amount of damage.

I don't know if it was luck, or talent, or a combination of both, but my first bullet flew right into the ghost that I was aiming at. Not any point, but the elite driver's head. I smiled with pleasure, elation, and satisfaction as I watched the head explode, the speeding ghost left behind a trail of purple blood and skull bits as the headless corpse let go of the controls. The craft eventually halted completely before setting down on the dusty ground. For a moment I wished that my rifle was bolt-action so I could feel the awesome feeling of making a kill that long in all its glory, unfortunately, I simply switched targets.

"I bet you liked that, covvie bastards," I said to myself. _Well I'm just getting started._

Three magazines later I had managed to destroy the engine of one ghost and nick a grunt in the arm, well, by nick I mean hit in the shoulder. Not bad for a semi-capable sniper right? Anyways, the soldiers were still doing a steady jog while the warthogs and the armadillo fired at the ghosts that decided to come a little bit to close for comfort. It seemed like they would be able to make it just fine when I saw two things. First, I saw alien infantry emerging from the town, there were a few other ghosts and some wraiths among them. The second thing was a lot more worrying. Banshees. It is surprising how a single word can bring so many different emotions at the same time. This time it was worry. For me at least, I am very sure that the emotions that the escaping soldiers felt ranged from panic to horror.

I relaxed a little, only physically. I shifted from the ghosts to the banshees, and then back to the infantry covvies. I abstained from taking a shot, I needed every last round of ammunition for when those alien ground soldiers as soon as they got here. In the meanwhile, I was powerless to watch as the banshees strafed the escaping soldiers. The scorpion shot down a couple of them, an impressive feat considering a scorpion is a fucking tank, not an AA gun.

The banshees killed about a dozen soldiers and damaged the scorpion before they were forced back by the AA fire from the hogs' M41's. That's about the time that the wraiths started shooting. Those beautiful blue blobs of plasma traced high arcs in the sky before going down with a vengeance. Fortunately, the wraiths were just firing their first salvo, and most of their shots missed wildly, although a couple of them grazed two of the hogs, tilting them slightly sideways and probably leaving some pretty nasty burns on the occupants of the jeeps.

"Any moment now buddy," Pavel said.

"Yes indeed," I said as I pulled back the lever of my rifle, placing a round in the chamber.

The soldiers started flowing through the refinery, entering the complex through pre-marked entrances. The tank didn't stop as it plowed through a chain link fence. Two of the hogs did the same while the armadillo actually went through the designated entrance point for it.

"Get to your positions!" the captain ordered. My helmet automatically picked up his transmission since he was so close.

"Ghosts are closing in," I warned.

"We know, goddamit!" he replied.

I shrugged to myself and let a single shot fly at a purple hovercraft. Instants later another round followed the first one. The two comparatively small pieces of depleted uranium impacted into the middle of the ghost. For a few moments it seemed like nothing happened, but after a few seconds the ghosts shook a little bit and crashed to the ground, flipping sideways and crushing the unfortunate elite driving it. I thought it was a pretty neat thing to do until Pavel opened fire. My friend had brought a special toy of his here. An AIE-486H Heavy Machine Gun. Not an M247L, an actual AIE-486 machine gun, more commonly known as the HMG. The 7.62mm rounds flying out of the three barrels made an impressive noise. Well, impressive compared to small arms, the scorpion started booming away soon enough, drowning the noise of Pavel's machine gun. I could steel see the results, a couple of ghosts blew up after they were riddled with bullets. Then the scorpion's rounds started blowing them up by the second.

_Then_ the entire company, or what was left of it, opened up. The chasing ghosts immediately stopped advancing and instead started exploding like frags. They were reduced to a single retreating ghost before even that sole survivor was taken care of within three seconds by a pretty damn good shot by the scorpion's gunner. I'd have to give that man a high-five pretty soon or else he'd probably be dead.

"Frank, you're up," Pavel said.

"Got it."  
>I moved the crosshairs from the wreck of a ghost and the elite missing its lower half and onto the advancing covvies. From here I could make out the leading elites. They were at what I would compare to a slow trot, the grunts were struggling to keep up behind the small giants. The jackals looked perfectly comfortable at the pace they were currently running.<p>

I zoomed in on the closest elite, did a quick estimation of its speed and then used the scope's instruments to know how far away it was and the wind speed and all that crap. I moved the scope slightly away from the bipedal alien and squeezed the trigger twice, just in case. The first shot missed by little less than an inch, hitting the empty ground right in front of a tired-looking grunt. The second shot hit the elite in one of its shoulders, making it do a turn and actually bringing the thing to its knees. The shields held, but the elite now had an arm hanging at a slightly unusual angle. Well, unusual for an elite.

Then I switched targets and started blasting away at aliens. I thought that I was doing a pretty nice job until someone tapped my shoulder. I turned and found myself facing a young kid, probably about nineteen. She didn't look like my idea of a sniper at all. She almost pushed me away from the large rifle before she took aim. I quickly realized how wrong I was when three shots in ten seconds brought down three elite majors with perfectly placed headshots.

"Nice," I complimented as I climbed down.

"I aim to please," she said.

_I just love that phrase._

I climbed down towards the pipe and ran across it towards another ledge closer to the perimeter, By that time the covvie infantry was just outside of my range, but I could wait a few seconds before I started doing what I do best. Then of course, I remembered the wraiths. Well, the explosions around the complex brought them to mind.

"Shit," I muttered.

I looked over my shoulder to see small fires in different sections of the refinery. Looked like if this battle went on for long enough the refinery wouldn't really serve a purpose other than… well, nothing. Well, my job was to prevent that from happening for as long as humanly possible. I decided to get to it.

"Now would be a good time to open fire gunny!" the army captain suggested.

"Realx friend, relax," came the reply. "All in due time."

"Now shut the…"

"Unlike you…"

"Fuck you!"  
>"Fire now you asshole."<br>"…have a fucking tank for protection."  
>"I will kill…"<br>"…or then I'll."

The colorful replies were silenced by 95mm of tungsten being fired at supersonic speeds from the barrel of the scorpion tank. The HEAT round collided with the nearest wraith, denting its armor and producing an explosion. A second round went all the way through the alien metal before the tank blew up.

"All in due time," the tanker repeated.

"Aw fuck you," I said.

This time no one else joined me; I think that they were just glad to have one wraith less to worry about. I was about to call them out on that, but then I noticed that I was having a hell of a time shooting off alien skullcaps with my rifle. When it gets to it, it is probably my second favorite thing to do. Right before long walks on the beach.

"Take that you fucker!"  
>"Suck in this rifle!"<br>"Not so tough now eh? Bitch."  
>"They can't fire back without their brains," a female voice that I recognized as the sniper said.<p>

"Right about that one Bull," came a reply.

"Fuck those aliens!"  
>It went on like that for a few minutes. Army soldiers are almost as colorful as Marines, and those are almost as colorful as a couple of the squabbies I knew. And those weren't even getting shot at all the time. Well, in a way they were, but I think that it is a little bit more unnerving when you could actually see the plasma flying into someone's face. In space, deaths were quicker. Oh, and you can't hear the screaming of wounded soldiers in vacuum. In space, no one can hear you scream. Sounds like a pretty nice tagline for a horror flick doesn't it?<p>

"Aw fuck," someone cried. That was a different insult, not one of triumph. That's about the time the captain got wise and decided to close the open channel and force his soldiers to communicate only amongst their squadmates. A very wise decision in my own (not so) humble and (definitely not) inexperienced opinion. Morale tends to get a little sappy when you hear a kid crying out in pain for his mom to hold him while he dies. Damn wise choice.

All I could hear now was the roar of the battle. Don't get me wrong, by 'all I could hear,' I mean that it was the only thing I could actually hear. Because it was so damn loud. I added to the noise and chaos by taking out the elites and jackal sharpshooters. I knew the sniper, Bull, whatever the reason they called her that, would be looking for the higher ranking elites before she opened up on them while they were this close. It would be a pretty good idea to prevent her from getting killed before she could actually do her job and disrupt the chain of command.

I took out a jackal's kneecap just for the kicks before I finished it off with a nice headshot, I had enough ammunition to take on an army, albeit a small one, so there was no sense in conserving it. Especially if it scared the crap out of the covvies, increasing the risk of them panicking and loosing unit cohesion, or whatever the term for teamwork is. Then I moved my scope and centered it on a grunt carrying a fuel rod gun. I shot it right after it let go one shot. The single green rocket/grenade hit the side of the armadillo, melting off half of the armor on the right side of the small tank and probably damaging its tracks. Two guys jumped out, probably the driver and the spare crewmember. The gunner remained inside shooting all the 30mm shells that the thing had left in.

"Fliers are back!" someone said.

"Oh crap," was the unanimous response.

Whenever you are under attack by infantry and vehicles and you have the same kind of vehicular support you have the winning odds on your side. Especially of vehicle support includes an armadillo, a scorpion, and three warthogs, then you were pretty damn sure that you would win. If you were defending a place instead of actually attacking, and if that position was a nice place to defend, you barely need worry. Well, not when that enemy gets air support. Yep, you're in trouble right about then.

The banshees, five of them, were flying in a classic V formation. They all opened fire at the same time. It was no surprise that they were strafing the scorpion. The tank started doing a full steam backwards while shooting at the banshees. The first round went in between the lead banshee and the one to its right, barely even putting a scare on them. The second shot hit one of the banshees on the end of the formation, blowing it up in a pretty decent fireball. That certainly put a lot more than fright into the elite that was driving it.

Our good luck ran out about then, four fuel rods flew in painfully slow arcs towards the scorpion. The tank stopped moving and instead started going forward. It managed to avoid three of the green explosives while actually taking out one of the banshees. Then the other fuel rod hit the rear right track of the tank, rendering it immobile. We were now reduced to a stationary autocannon and a stationary anti-tank gun. If there's one thing in warfare that you really want/need, it's not staying in the same place for to long, even when you're defending a position.

"Holy fuck," Pavel said in a totally monotone voice.

"Amen," I replied.

My buddy there opened fire on the banshees, catching them unprepared, which is ironic, since he had been wreaking havoc on the enemy lines, killing grunts and jackals like it was what he did for a living. Wait, it _was _what he did for a living. One of the banshees blew up in another majestic fireball before the wreck crashed violently into some sort of tower structure, denting it and making it fall. The metal groaned as it collapsed upon itself. As it reached the floor, it lifted up a huge plume of dust, damaging our visibility more than the three separate fires already had.

"Captain?" I asked.

"What?" came the reply after a burst from an MA37.

"Might need to call in our air support."

"This close to us?" he asked.

_Have you ever heard the term danger close?_

"Well no," I said, which was ironic, considering what I had just thought. "All the way back in the town, might need to carpet-bomb it."

"What why?" he asked, genuinely confused.

"There's more of them," I said.

"More? How much more?" he asked.

"Lots," I said.

It was true, through the smoke I could see the distant buildings of the city, and turning the knobs of my super-expensive and useful scope, I could see small figures and silhouettes emerging from the aforementioned buildings. Looked like even more covvies had been waiting there than had been sent to kill us. This looked like a job for the longswords.

"Looks like a job for the longswords cap," I said.

"Very well them, I'll call them in."

Longswords are the standard extra-atmospheric fighter for the UNSC. They also work as bombers, escorts, fighter-bombers. In fact, they worked as everything, taking into account the lack of vehicles that the UNSC Navy had working in that department. Fortunately, they were good at what they did, taking on the Seraph fighters of the covvies as equals even despite their own lack of shields.

I loved them for more than the obvious reasons. I loved them because they had a huge cargo bay, and I loved them because they worked in-atmosphere. Those things could carry more than your mom's weight worth of bombs. Damn straight. Oh, I should probably say a little something about the bombs that they could carry, but I am too lazy to describe them thoroughly. All I can say is that the UNSC had brought napalm back into service a couple of years ago. Yep, the covvies were in for a surprise that was going to literally be hot as hell. Perhaps slightly warmer.

I didn't have to wait long before I could see them. They were coming in in front of us. There was three of them, well, three black dots against a clear blue sky anyways. They flew at amazing speed over the abandoned town, the flat land in between it and us, and then our refinery. They crossed that distance in perhaps two seconds. The three black shapes flew right above me, instants later I heard them. The sonic boom almost ruptured my eardrums, it certainly shocked the covvies, who weren't to big on looking over their shoulders during combat, no one was. Bad for morale and situational awareness.

"You're welcome boys, Bravo-Zulu out," came the experienced-sounding voice of one of the pilots.

Right about then the bombs blew up. They must've had time-delayed fuses or something, because they certainly took their time. The explosions were comparable to the splash a rock makes when it hits water, pushing up some of the liquid while pushing some more of it sideways. Bright orange flames flew high into the air, making for a pretty majestic display of power. The design of the bomb allowed for the rest of the napalm to travel away from the bomb. A wave about five meters high formed around every single bomb, burning everything that it touched. The covvies back there would certainly have a bad time with the fire and all. A few of them even landed in the land outside of the town, starting massive fires that would prevent the covvies from advancing just now. Right now, it was just us, and the weakened covvie forces trying to attack the defended position.

It was over within minutes.

Our forces had destroyed what was left of the demoralized covvie soldiers with the help of the vehicles. It had only cost us the first dozen victims to that strafing when the soldiers were running away plus another seventeen death and twenty-something wounded. No one was missing or anything, everyone was accounted for, dead or alive. Although thirty-nine fatal casualties sound bad, they really aren't when you're facing a combined arms enemy force that outnumbers you. In fact, we had done a pretty good job at keeping this stupid factory out of the enemy hands. I am pretty sure that the covvies weren't entirely sure why we had decided to protect this place, but they were smart enough to figure out that if we wanted it safe, they wanted it gone.

It had been a nice, clean engagement from my point of view. I had eaten through five of my magazines, most of my shots fired were actual killshots. I had remained on a position that provided me an advantage _and _that was far enough away from the enemy to be relatively safe. Barely three carbine shots had whizzed by my position. I was satisfied with my own performance during the battle. Quite satisfied indeed.

"Frank, that was very good compared to the rest of our engagements," Pavel said.

"I was just thinking about that," I replied as I dusted myself off. This time I only had to remove some dust and dirt from my armor, instead of the usual covvie or friendly gore bits that tended to land on me.

"Oh well, looks like our job here is done," he said. "Covvies are out of this area, we'll probably be airlifted somewhere else soon."  
><em>And back to desperate fighting.<em>

"Yup."  
>It was a grim outlook on the future, even if it was the realistic one. For now, I decided that I would enjoy the easy triumph that we had gotten over the covvies. The other soldiers would probably mourn the loss of their friends, but I could tell that they were glad to be alive and out of trouble this easily. For a moment I thought how sad it was that we were glad that only one in five men had died during this encounter. Then I went back to enjoying our easy victory.<p> 


	50. You Hopeless Romantic

_Hey guys, just wanted to apologize for not posting a chapter in a while. Well, since I've got nothing else to say that is actually relevant in some way or other. I'll leave you to it. Enjoy boys and girls. Remember to give me feedback._

_-casquis_

* * *

><p><span>Chapter L: You Hopeless (Idiot) Romantic<span>

**September 1, 2541 (UNSC Calendar)/**

**East Maruca, Concordia, Zama System**

Nothing beats a full day of rest after a week of intense fighting. I'm serious nothing at all can beat it. Not even sex. Well, if you combine the sex with the rest, then you can probably beat a full day of rest, but it has to be really great sex. It almost never happens, most soldiers are to tired to actually bother to stand up and do something, even if it is for their own good.

Right now, I was enjoying myself a lot. Not that I was doing anything productive, but that was the beauty of it. I was half awake on a portable bed with a couple of empty beer bottles to my side, there was another four in the six pack. The sun was high in the sky and the breeze managed to take away most of the heat, leaving me to simply relax and take a sip of the local beer every now and then.

"Frank, toss me a beer," Pavel said. It was the fifth time he had said the exact same thing.

"No, you finished yours," I reminded him. "Not my problem."

"Mgnphf," he said.

I opened the third beer of the day and took a long, long drink form it. It felt so good. I seriously thing the scene could've been used for a beer commercial and that commercial would've been incredibly successful. Of course, good times, like commercials, tend to be incredibly short, especially during war, especially during a war you're loosing, especially during a war you're fighting in and loosing, especially if you belong to a special operations unit during a war that you're loosing. I think you get my point.

"Staff Sergeant Francisco Castillo?"

"The one and only," I said, not bothering to open my eyes.

"Captain Sharma wants to see you," the marine stated.

"Go figure," Pavel said.

"Yep, I'll be right there," I said.

As the marine left I sat up on the portable bed and looked around. We had made camp right outside some sort of forest, and there was a large plain in between us and the city of Marcia, the unofficial capital of East Maruca. The city had fallen under attack two days ago, the UNSC Army had done a nice job in defending it, but now it was starting to look like we might actually need to send in the marines to help them push the covvies back. Whenever we send the marines there's bound to be some sabotage right before they go in. That's my job, and a damn good thing that I do it right.

I groaned loudly as I stood up from the bed. I stretched myself and looked around. We were back in the _Inconvenience _camp, only that this time the army was missing completely, instead we had a pretty small cluster of tents around the command tent. I could spot the city far in the distance, but the smoke rising form it seemed disproportionate in comparison to the size of it. It reached as high as I could see. I could tell from here that the army dudes were having a hell of a time. Not that I cared of course, it wasn't really my problem as long as I didn't fight. Well, it actually was, but never mind. As soon as I finished stretching my arms I emptied my beer in three large swigs. I burped after I was done.

"Keep the rest of the alcohol," I told Pavel.

"Sure, taking one for the team," he said as he reached for my six-pack and raised it in a greeting.

"On second thought, save me one," I told him. "Feels like I'm going to need it."

I walked across a couple of tents and entered the surprisingly well-lit interior of the large command tent. There were only two people inside in addition to the large holotank that right now was showing a very accurate almost real-time projection of the battle going on a few miles away from us. I stretched yet once more as I entered. I saluted just as I was done.

"Ma'am, lieutenant," I said politely.

"Castillo," they both said with a simultaneous nod. The nod managed to look deprecating and polite at the same time. Like the smartest man in the world asked you a question which you answered correctly, only that it took you longer than it would've taken him to answer it. Am I making any sense? I think I am.

"Ma'am, what am I needed for in here?" I asked.

"Stupid," Darbinian muttered. I don't think I was supposed to hear it, but there had been some mention of enhanced hearing when they augmented me. I hadn't really noticed until now, or well, Darbinian now simply didn't care. There was about a 50/50 chance, but I wasn't that worried. Because I didn't care either.

"We are mounting an attack to help the Army," Sharma started. "They've run into some trouble lately, us Marines are going to take out that trouble and then the army will completely destroy whatever we decide to leave for them."

Yep, that's typical inter-service rivalry for you.

"As you might've figured out, you ODST's will go in first with the Rangers. We have three ODST units available to us right now, you are one of them. Nezarian's rangers actually will be attached to another platoon that suffered casualties for the duration of this mission. That is three squads of ODSTs plus two Ranger platoons."

"Very well then ma'am," I said. "Anything you'd like us to destroy?" I asked.

"Well, you'll be dropped in an area with heavy enemy concentration. You are expected to help target strike points artillery and missile strikes. While you're at it you're free to do anything you want, although I would recommend a certain amount of stealth. Your only real target is this," as she said that the holotank displayed a particular area of the city and then zoomed in to show what looked like an AA gun. It looked so much like an AA gun that I deduced that it was actually an AA gun.

"This AA gun has been causing some trouble for our ships up there," Sharma said as she pointed up to the sky, well, more like the roof of the tent. "Your main objective is to destroy it. You'll be given the necessary equipment for that."  
>"Oh, don't worry, I've got my own," I said. With about ten blocks of C12 plus six of C10, I was more than ready to blow up anything I wanted to. I could blow up things in quite creative ways, unfortunately, I rarely ever got the chance to do so. My missions rarely (if ever) involved the destruction of materiel. When they did, I usually tossed a grenade down a hall and wrecked a whole lot of computer circuits, but never something big. This would be one of those times.<p>

"I know," Sharma said as she smiled. Darbinian actually scoffed.

* * *

><p>Twenty minutes later we were on board a pelican with some young jock for a pilot. On board the ship were ten people. Pavel and myself in addition to Nezarian and his rangers. There was a feeling of anticipation all over the cargo bay of the pelican. Most of us had been confined to camp for a while now and were eager to do something. Since we were soldiers, the only feasible thing for us to do was to fight, so we were all feeling like girls before prom. Well, you know, without waiting to loose our virginities. At least I hope that was the case here.<p>

"Rangers! Fifteen seconds," the pilot announced through the PA system, he could've simply shouted.

"You heard him boys!" Nezarian called out. All of his squad stood up simultaneously and formed up in a line. They were sporting large metallic backpacks that were actually jetcpacks. They would use those to maneuver through the air and then to stop their fall just short of hitting the ground. Despite them having a lower mortality rate than Helljumpers in jumps, I still thought it very dangerous.

The Rangers checked the backpacks of the guy in front of them while Nezarian walked back and forth the line making sure everything was fine. Once he was satisfied he stood next to the ranger closest to the hatch. He looked over his shoulder and made eye contact with me, my visor that is. He gave me a small nod and I returned it. Then the pelican opened its hatch. We were at a pretty high altitude, so there was a slight change in pressure as the doors opened and all the rangers held on to their handles and stumbled a little bit. From my position I couldn't see anything that wasn't clear blue sky and dangerously gray clouds.

"Now!" Nezarian said.

All of the rangers trotted forward at the same pace, taking a leap right as they hit the edge of the opened hatch. They all jumped out and left the bay of the ship within a second. The speeding pelican quickly left the rangers behind and started descending. I spotted a few orange flashes, tell-tales of the location of the rangers. I quickly lost sight of the flashes as the pelican went through some clouds. When it emerged on the other side, I could hear, see, and actually _feel_ the rain. It was pouring down here.

The only thing I could make out through the rain was the ever-approaching city and another pelican that was flying about ten meters to our right and fifty or sixty meters behind us. It was probably empty and simply escorting us until our own pelican dropped us off. Then I could make out something else. Not that it was hard to distinguish it, plasma flak explosions are rarely confused with anything else.

"Brace yourselves boys," the pilot said with a confident tone.

He pointed the nose of the ship down and started a shallow dive. I held on as the green blasts appeared all around the area behind the pelican. There would probably be some pretty frustrated covvie gunners down there. After ten seconds of them completely missing us, I realized they were aiming at the other pelican. It looked like the pilot was having a tough job at avoiding the AA fire. Even as I watched, two green blasts appeared on the wing of the pelican, sending it down in a spiral.

"Mayday, mayday, I've been hit, I'm going down, I repeat, I am going down!" the voice was distinctly female.

"Shit," our pilot said. There was a lot of feeling to that word. "Shit, shit, shit! Kayla? Kayla?" he called out. There was desperation in the man's voice.

There was no answer.

"Shit," he said, now his voice sounded almost resigned.

"Why don't you drop us here?" Pavel suggested. "We'll make sure she's fine."  
>"You'd do that?" the pilot asked. I couldn't see his face, but I imagined the look he must've had. He didn't wait for an answer, instead he simply stopped advancing and let the pelican fall towards the ground in an almost free-fall, stopping ten meters above a three-story building.<p>

"Good luck, I owe you one," he said.

"You should consult me on this type of things before you do them," I told Pavel through our com.

"Hey, the boy's girl was just shot down, at least give him some hope," he said. "We all need some of that."  
>"That's deep," I said. I actually meant it.<p>

We jumped off as soon as the pelican was close enough to the ground. I rolled as I hit the ground, Pavel simply landed and bent his knees to absorb most of the shock. He was carrying his ACS behind his back, so he would have some trouble actually doing combat rolls. Not that he would need to, those things are mostly just for show.

"We'll get her out," I told the pilot through my helmet radio just as he left.

"Good luck," he repeated.

I watched as green blasts erupted all around the pelican, and by extension, us. The craft went high into the air while moving forward at high speed. The blasts started following the ship. I saw as it turned around in a sharp U-turn, tilting the pelican almost sideways. The pelican roared as it went above us at over 1000 miles per hour, the blasts in its wake trying to keep up.

"Well," I said as soon as the pelican disappeared from sight. "What do we do first?" I opened up a small map in the corner of my HUD as I said that. There were more than enough miniature drones flying above the city to make a good real-time map of the place and the battle. That and the combination of mini-sats and maps of the city gave us a definite edge over the covvies. That is, until they got their very own drones to map the place for them.

"How about we make sure the pilot on the pelican is safe first," Pavel suggested. "We can call in a unit to pick her up of she's alive and then move on to our teal mission."

"Sounds good," I said. Not that we had much choice, we had been dropped about a click away from our intended drop-zone, we'd have such a good time getting there…

We left the roof of the building via a rusty fire escape, it was only two of us, so that reduced our chances of being spotted, but then again, it also meant that it was only two of us. The pilot had sent us the estimated location of the crashed pelican, we had a general bearing of the place where it had crashed, so we were heading in that direction. It was perhaps some three hundred meters away from the small building that we were dropped in. Marcia, the city that we had been dropped in was a weird city for a colonized planet. Most cities were planned-habitats. They consisted of pre-planned buildings and houses, designed for maximum efficiency and commodity while trying to remain relatively small in occupied area. That is one of the main reasons that most cities in human space consisted of beautifully designed sly-scrapers packed tightly together with smaller buildings all around the core of the place. Farmers, miners, poachers, and people who didn't like city life were the only ones that used additional buildings such as regular houses. Although the design worked the way it was meant to, it also turned every battle for every single little city of half a million people into the most vicious urban engagement imaginable. Yes, it was rather annoying to say the least.

Well, getting back on track, Marcia was a different city. It had actually started as a small semi-independent colony. It had been sort of a publicity stunt by the UNSC to show that they didn't want to control every single thing in known space. A small group of colonists had been flown to the planet in private craft with almost no UNSC involvement. The initial wave of colonists consisted of rich entrepreneurs and adventurers. Only sixty thousand souls landed on the planet on the first wave. They had their own pre-built habitats with them. As soon as the massive titanium deposits were found, millions of eager adventurers came to the place. Eventually the small communities swarmed into large, almost vast cities. The only problem that came with that, was that most buildings here had been built here, not transported. This wasn't a problem all by itself, but it now meant that I was fighting in unfamiliar territory. Not such a bad thing, but it still made me slightly uneasy.

So here I was, in a city that consisted mostly of buildings that didn't go any higher than five stories, with most of them sporting only two. I was walking through narrow streets and could spot the ominous-looking alleys. Something told me that urban combat here was going to be a lot deadlier than urban combat in a pre-planned city. Maybe it was the noise of gunfire and explosions in the distance, or the massive quantities of smoke flowing away from the city, I don't know, I just knew we were in for a ride.

"Street clear," Pavel said as he peeked over a corner.

I nodded and sprinted across the street and to the other side. I pressed my back to the corner and waited for a few seconds before aiming my rifle down the short and empty street. I could see two undamaged parked cars. They looked a little bit battered and not very fashionable, so I assumed that they were local-made cars designed and used for practical purposes. The light-brown buildings showed no sign of activity.

"Ok, go," I said.

Pavel sprinted across the street, moving a little bit more slowly than I had, not because I was augmented or anything, but because he was carrying at least ten kilograms more than I was. From my perspective he looked like a killing machine, sometimes I wondered what I looked like standing besides the big guy.

We moved across the avenue that we had been following. I could not see the crash site of the pelican, but we had just entered the red circle in my HUD that signaled the crash area. We were heading for the center of the section, it was just around the corner. If we didn't find the pelican in there, we would scout around for a few minutes before leaving. We'd leave a report about the crashed pelican, but it would most likely be ignored until the battle was over _and _won.

Pavel switched to the other side of the street, moving in parallel to me. We stopped right before we crossed an alley, he checked the one on my side and I checked the one on his side. I signaled that it was clear and e reciprocated. We both jumped across while aiming down our respective alleys. As soon as we were on the other side we kept on moving. He was aiming at the windows and roofs above me while I did the same for him. After a few seconds of moving in that slow, mechanical way, we arrived at another street corner. The center of the crash site circle in my HUD was on Pavel's side of the street, so I aimed at the street from my side. It was clear as far as I could see, but I couldn't see much.

I moved to Pavel's side of the street and told him what I had seen.

"There's a wrecked car about ten meters ahead," I said. "No enemies as far as I could tell," I informed him.

"Understood," he said. Pavel positioned himself and ran off away from the wall. I popped up as soon as he left and provided cover for him. I didn't spot any covvies, so no shots were fired. Pavel slid behind the car and propped his M247L over the hood of the destroyed vehicle, searching for enemies.

"I spotted the crash site," he said after a couple of seconds. "Get over here."

I ran to the car and slid to cover next to him. "Where?"  
>"Over there," he pointed. I looked at the direction he was pointing and saw a house that looked like it had been cleaved in half. Generally, it wouldn't have jumped to sight in a warzone, but most other buildings here were undamaged, so there was a high chance that the crashing pelican damaged the house. I played back the incident in my memory and confirmed that the direction of the crashing pelican could've caused the damage to the house.<p>

"Ok," I said. "You head over there at street level, I'll provide support."  
>"Roger," Pavel said and headed to the left side of the street , the one in which the damaged house was. I headed to the other side instead.<p>

As Pavel slowly made his way towards the damaged house I kicked down a door and entered a house. Can you believe that it was actually a _wooden _door? Who even uses that anymore? As soon as the door was down I did a quick scan of the floor and only climbed up when I was satisfied it was empty. The second floor was scanned equally quickly, but it took some time to find the ladder and trapdoor to the roof. I pressed a button and metallic handles emerged from the wall. I grabbed onto them and climbed into the roof, pushing up a heavy trapdoor.

The roof of the house was pretty much flat except for a ventilation system and a large water tank. I ignored it and headed towards the next house. I jumped over the small gap dividing them and kept on running. The next house was slightly taller than this one, so I had to hang my rifle over my back and climb up the walls. The next house was even taller, but that gave me an idea.

"Hey Pavel, watch me," I said.

"What?"

"Just keep your eyes on the place between the houses to your right," I said.

"Ok?"

I smiled to myself as I ran across the roof. "I've always wanted to do this," I said.

"Don't do anything stupid," Pavel warned.

"Too late," I said as I jumped.

I leaped from the roof and moved my legs dramatically, imitating the movements of stuntmen in films. I instinctively put my hands in front of my face as my armored boots contacted with the window. My armor protected me from the glass as I entered the next house movie-style. My feet collided with a rug and instead of doing the roll that I had intended to, the rug slid and I went down with it, landing on my butt and sliding a couple of feet before coming to a stop.

"Ok, I'll admit, that looked pretty cool," Pavel said.

I didn't reply, I was too busy pulling my pistol from my holster. The lone jackal in the building must've been as startled as I was, because it just stood there with a dumb look on its face while I reached for my gun. It jumped at me just as I started taking aim. The impulse it had, plus its own body weight pinned my right hand to the floor. The jackals clawed at my hand, hissing as its nails were stopped by the ceramic and titanium armor. It was bust trying to get my hand to drop my pistol that it completely forgot about my left hand.

_Too damn bloodthirsty._ I thought, echoing the comment that some soldier had made about the Kig-yar.

I actually contemplated whether to reach for my backup knife in my upper chest or to simply hit the thing, but my arm was already headed towards the jackal's skull while the thought went through my brain. I contacted with my forearm, I was actually aiming to hammer-fist the thing, but the mistake worked in my favor, with the metallic armor hitting the weak skull of the bird-like alien. It collapsed to the floor, stunned by the hit. I rolled away from the alien and promptly stomped on the back of its face, crushing it against the hardwood floor. A large splat of blood appeared, the splat was made larger as I stomped on the jackal's head again. I heard a sickly, albeit familiar, crunch as the jackal's skull caved in.

"Frank?"  
>"Just a jackal, I'm fine," I said.<p>

"Ok, good, cause I'm about to go in," he said.

"Wait a sec."

I moved towards the window the jackal had been using for sniping. The house directly in front was almost cleaved in half, the one behind it looked the same, and the next one looked like that as well. At the end of the small canyon-like wreck that the three houses were, there was a pelican covered by rocks. It looked like it could be in relatively nice shape. I aimed around the crash site for a few seconds before I spotted the rest of the jackal's friends.

Just as I was about to signal Pavel, there was a loud, familiar noise.

"What was that?" Pavel asked.

"Coopilot," I said.

I watched as a young man in a flight suit shot his pistol, he managed to kill one grunt and wound another before a large elite clad in red armor emerged and ran at the pilot. I saw the creature's shields shimmer before it disappeared from my sight. I heard two more gunshots and then everything was quiet for a few seconds. Then I heard another noise. I recognized it as the terrorized scream of a dying soldier.

"Shit," Pavel said.

"Agreed," I said as I shook my head. "I see five grunts, one of them wounded, an elite major, and two jackals on the roof. I'll provide cover for you," I said. As I said that I sent him a real-time image of the area. That way Pavel would know where the covvies were.

"Don't go until I say," I ordered. "I'll use a beam rifle for my first two or three shots."  
>Pavel was an experienced soldier and knew better than to question me right now, besides, the only way I could've gotten a beam rifle was because the jackal I killed had one, he knew the answer, so he didn't ask.<p>

I hefted the large purple gun from the floor and propped it on the window's ledge. I knew that that was a fatal sniper mistake, as the barrel could be spotted, but I was unused to the weapon and it didn't have a stock, so I'd have to improvise. I aimed through the unorthodox scope of the weapon and gave myself a moment to get used to the display. It was straightforward enough, so I aimed at the elite major, it was brandishing a sword and signaling for the grunts under his command to search the pelican.

"Wait for my shots," I said.

"Understood."  
>As soon as my brain had processed the first syllable of the reply, I squeezed the trigger twice. The first beam went straight to the elite's thorax, the exact place I had been aiming at, the recoil from that first shot forced the second shot a little bit up, it hit the elite in the shoulder and tore its right arm clean of the rest of its body. It howled in pain.<p>

I almost howled in pain myself as well, the beam rifle had overheated from the two consecutive shots, and my left hand had been badly burnt by the heated metal and plasma from the weapon's exhaust ports. I looked at my hand and saw that my glove had been burnt completely through.

"Aw fuck," I said resignedly as I grabbed my BR55 from my back.

Pavel had already left cover and was raining lead on the startled grunts. I aimed at the equally startled but faster reacting jackals on the roof and shot at them. My shots were meant to prevent them from firing just long enough to get my sights on their heads. I hit one of them on its arms and the other one was lucky enough to be hit in a metallic plate on its chest. The next two shots went through the skulls of both wounded jackals, killing them.

"Jackals are out," I said. "Elite might be alive, missing its right arm."  
>Pavel only grunted in response as he hosed down an escaping grunt. He shot it a couple of times while it was on the floor, detonating its methane pack. Pavel used the explosion to leave cover and head towards the elite. He looked at me all the way from those two houses and I saw him shrug theatrically. He hung his LMG from his shoulder and actually pulled out his ACS from his back. I laughed as I saw him do it. He took aim at something on the floor that I couldn't see and fired once. I could almost picture the face of the wounded elite as the lead pellets tore through its armor and skin.<p>

"Nicely done," I said as I headed towards the street.

"Thanks," Pavel replied. I knew he was already headed towards the pelican to check for survivors as I descended from the building. I decided that it was best to do this quickly, otherwise the covvies would soon be missing a patrol and wondering what happened to it. I crossed the street and climbed over the rocks and wreckage to reach the pelican.

"Found her!" Pavel called out.

I said nothing and instead ducked under the roof of the pelican and climbed inside. The bay was mostly intact, only that there was a small wall of rocks and iron bars blocking about half of it. The cockpit was a different story. I could see the shattered reinforced plastic all over the place, and the walls were most definitely crumpled inwards. There was a small pool of blood next to the copilot's seat.

"Not good," Pavel said. He dragged a body out of the cockpit and put her on the blood tray of the pelican. My helmet picked her vitals and showed that she was alive, even if just barely. Her helmet was battered and the goggles were cracked. Pavel took of the helmet and I winced involuntarily. I didn't wince because her wounds were particularly nasty, I did so because she looked like she had been beaten half to death. Her face was a wreck, even if the rest of her body wasn't.

"Ok, let's get her out of here," I said. "Give her some painkillers and jump-start her," I ordered.

I left the pelican cargo bay while Pavel complied with my orders. He gave little miss sunshine here a batch of painkillers and then injected her with a drug cocktail designed to keep going a soldier after all but the deadliest of injuries. Pavel dragged the woman out and literally handed her to me. I placed my rifle on my back and then put the pilot over my shoulder in a fireman's carry. We trotted away from the position of the crashed pelican after Pavel picked up some spare magazines of ammunition for his LMG and a pistol mag for me.

We had gone about three hundred meters when the pilot groaned.

"You ok there?" I asked. She only groaned in reply. "Very well then," I said.

We kept moving until we found a decent, undamaged, inconspicuous, and strategically not important small house.

"Hey, wake up," I said. I was reluctant to slap her around a little bit because of her injuries, but I did so nevertheless.

"Ow," she said.

"Looks like the adrenaline is starting to kick in," Pavel noted.

"Yep," I agreed. "Ok, listen up, your pelican crashed," I told her.

"Yes," she nodded.

"Your copilot's dead," I said.

"Yes," she acknowledged after some hesitation.

"And you look like crap."  
>This time she just glared at me.<p>

"Your boyfriend got us to rescue you, so you'd better give him a nice reward as soon as you see him again," I said.

"My boyfriend?"

"Well yeah, mister pilot of the other pelican you were escorting."  
>"Oh," she said, almost surprised to hear that. "He's not my boyfriend."<br>"Well, you'd better reward him nicely," Pavel repeated.

"Um sure," she said.

"Now, we'll leave you here and see if your boyfriend or another pelican can pick you up since we can't lug you around. Good luck."

"Thank," she said. Although it wasn't much, the tone in which she said it meant volumes.

We left the woman and told her to stay in the kitchen. I know it sound sort of misogynist, but it was the best place to mount a last stand. I also thought that the situation was rather funny. The pilot obviously didn't, but she did not complain out loud. I turned a table on its side to protect her a little bit from the side and then locked the door before wishing her good luck. Pavel was already reporting the location and situation of the pilot to headquarters, an AI would process the information and decide if it was feasible for a unit to be sent to rescue her. The pilot boyfriend would also be informed, if it wasn't possible for the pilot girlfriend to be picked up, he would probably volunteer to do so and perhaps he'd be allowed. For the time being, there was nothing else we could do without compromising our mission.

"Now, where were we?"


	51. Not As Bad as it Sounds

Chapter LI: Not as Bad as it Sounds

**September 1, 2541 (UNSC Calendar)/**

**Marcia, Concordia, Zama System**

After leaving the pilot back in the kitchen we moved across the city. This time we had to be more careful. We had to keep checking the houses for enemy combatants and had just partaken in a short but noisy firefight. Since it was a large battle we had some time before the covvies noticed that a patrol was missing in a semi-secured zone. At least that's how I pictured it in my mind.

"Covvie patrol, hundred meters out and coming in our direction," I said.

"Can we avoid it?" Pavel asked.

"Sure, get inside there," I said.

Pavel and I crossed the street while crouched, using a couple of piled-up cars and an abandoned barricade to avoid being spotted. There was a general store that had been hit hard by plasma fire. It was still fully stocked up with products. I grabbed a can of coca-cola and put it in my butt-pack, right next to the C12 explosives. I'd probably get sick of energy fluids in a couple of minutes. Nah, I got tired of energy fluids as soon as they went down my throat. Besides, I'd probably need them for later. The coke would have to keep me up for now. Not like they sold coffee in here unfortunately. I mean real coffee, like coffee with water, not this frappuccino crap.

The covvie patrol was like any other covvie patrol, unfortunately, this patrol in particular had a ghost attached to them. That by itself wasn't necessarily bad provided we could stay hidden. Unfortunately, things had a tendency to go wrong for us. Well, now that I think of it, whenever we were founf, things went wrong for the covvies too. They usually ended up all dead or routed. Mostly dead though.

Just as our luck would have it, the patrol stopped briefly in the intersection where our store was located. Then the elite wort worted something and three grunts decided to enter the store. I peeked over the cash machine and saw them going through the aisles.

"Frankie?"

"Rule number one: kill 'em before they kill us."  
>"Roger."<p>

I grabbed one of my flashbangs and primed it. I gave Pavel a small nod before I tossed it over the counter. I heard the squeals of the grunts and then the metallic casing of the grenade hit the floor. Then my helmet's noise receptors shut down momentarily and my visor polarized a little bit. The next thing I could hear was absolute silence, but I was already on my way up. I leaped over the counter while Pavel hosed down the stunned grunts. I took aim at the elite minor that was leading the patrol and emptied five bursts into it, killing it. Pavel tossed a grenade at the ghost, when it went off it tilted it sideways and then it fell upside down. The grunt pilot tried to get away from the craft and find some cover, but I took it out with a quick headshot. The lone jackal in the patrol didn't even have time to activate its shield-gauntlet before Pavel put five shots through its chest.

"Nice."

"Yep," I agreed. "High five."  
>When we high-fived I winced in pain and was forced to rub some biofoam on my burnt hand, an act that Pavel considered hilarious.<p>

"Screw you," I said playfully.

The patrol was now out of the way, I used a plasma grenade to destroy the ghost and we were well on our way to the area we were supposed to be causing havoc in. My HUD showed a small but detailed map of the city around Pavel and me. There were some friendlies about a kilometer our way, but they wouldn't be able to help in our mission, so we ignored them and kept on going. The drones also updated the location of large groups of enemies constantly, despite that, they missed most of the covvies in account to the smoke and interference from the battle.

After half an hour of avoiding patrols and slowly sneaking towards covenant-held land, we found our first target. It was a group of three wraiths, they were accompanied by a covvie platoon consisting of every race except brutes. Well, there weren't any Drones either, but those are rarely in any battle.

"Over there," Pavel pointed. The thing he was pointing at was another house, the only thing that marked this one apart from the countless houses in Marcia was the covvie sniper tower mounted on the roof. It would do wonders for observation.

"Ok, let's go," I said.

We moved towards the house while keeping our heads down, trying to avoid being spotted. As soon as we reached the door Pavel switched to his ACS and took the lead. He went straight for the stairs while I cleared the lower floor. It was empty except for a couple of covvie artifacts that I left alone. I climbed up after closing the door and using a table to barricade it. The second floor was also empty, but we now had to take out the jackal sniper in the roof.

I climbed up to the roof while Pavel stayed in the second floor. As soon as I reached the base of the sniper tower I jumped in the gravity lift that held it where it was. I was pushed upwards as if by magic and came to find myself facing a very surprised jackal. The creature died with that expression on its face when I smashed its head in with the butt of my rifle.

"Ok, you can come up," I told Pavel.

He climbed the ladder and stayed on the roof instead of climbing to the sniper tower with me. He positioned his LMG on the edge of the building, aiming at the covvie platoon and wraiths a hundred meters away.

"What was our code number again?" I asked.

"Titan something?"

"Well, I don't think we're Titan anymore," I said.

"Yeah, I never pay attention to those briefings."  
>"Me neither."<p>

"Mhm…"  
>"Well, try to think," I urged him.<p>

"Ok, so there were three ODST units, we were one of them," he said. "We're Alfa, Bravo, or Charlie something."

"Right…"

"Aw, cmon just give it a try."  
>"Command, this is ODST saboteur unit Charlie, requesting an artillery strike," I said.<p>

"Umm, you're designated as fire team Zulu," a voice replied. "Remember that."  
>"Sorry about that command, fire team Zulu requesting artillery strike in grid H12. Lasering targets."<p>

"Roger that Zulu, laser away and we'll fire."  
>I acknowledged the man in command and 'painted' the three wraiths and two hunters with my laser designator. While we wouldn't be getting any missiles, the satellites would receive the location of the wraiths and the artillery crews would use that information to sight their guns. It was highly effective and was usually done by remote drones, but the covvies had some very effective AA units as well as the capability to track individual drones and jam them. That's one of the reasons our HUD maps weren't accurate as to the position of enemy troops as we'd have liked.<p>

"Targets are painted, feel free to fire," I said.

"Roger that Zulu, take care."

At least thirty seconds passed before anything interesting happened, but when it happened, _it happened._ High-explosive shells landed all over and around the wraiths and the hunters. Since the vehicles were surrounded by their escorting troops, they were all incinerated or shredded to pieces. Fire rained for five straight seconds. I would hear a whistling sound before a gigantic explosion appeared seemingly out of nowhere in the midst of the Covenant troops.

After those beautiful five seconds of hell, Pavel opened up on the surviving covvies. After he had killed the elite missing both its arms we started moving again. Next on our list was a machinegun nest that had prevented a couple of companies from breaking through. By machinegun nest I obviously mean building filled to the brim with plasma turrets and enemy snipers. Yeah, it was what you'd call a fortress, even if it was only a small one. To get to the fortress we moved through the rooftops. Houses here were so tightly packed that it was almost like walking on the street, even if it was a street with varying heights every ten meters. While Pavel and I were doing some crazy parkour shit we got word that several banshee squads had been spotted on the far side of Marcia and were headed towards our general direction. We had to pick up our pace or they'd get us out in the open.

We reached the machinegun nest after three minutes of sprinting. The place in question was right in between a road fork, completely covering it and the long avenue that lead to it. It formed what you could call a sniper alley, even if in addition to snipers you had rapid-fire plasma weaponry. It was a couple of blocks east of where it was marked on the HUD map, so we updated the battlenet right before calling in the big guns.

"Command, this is fire team Zulu, requesting artillery and missile strike," I said.

"Zulu, this is command, we copy. I'm going to need the…"

Whatever the guy at command said next was lost to me in the noise of a large portion of the wall exploding. I jumped backwards as a beam went through the wall and less than three inches away from my face. Pavel jumped dropped to the floor just in time for three carbine rounds to perforate the wall next to him and hit thin air. We were already rolling away from the room and moving towards better firing positions.

"Command, command!" I yelled.

"I'm here Zulu, give me the coordinates," his voice was calm and professional. I think that was supposed to help us soldiers calm down, but right now I wasn't really feeling very calmy.

"Grid H14, painting target in a couple of seconds, start redirecting artillery," I yelled into my helmet. Pieces of the wall were exploding all around me as the jackals with carbines and beam rifles fired at my heat signature. I was lucky that plasma weaponry was unstable and couldn't penetrate the walls, otherwise I would've already been fried very thoroughly. I half-slid half-fell down a flight of stairs and into the first floor. My laser designator was already on as I peeked out a window and pointed my rifle at the nest. I actually fired a couple of shots to try and keep the jackals down. Not that it worked.

"There, target's painted!" I said.

"Yeah, we're going to need more than that, sat only got an area about two hundred square meters," he said.

"Oh fuck."

I peeked over the broken wall again but was forced to jump behind as carbine shots blew bits of rock all over the place. This wall was reinforced with polycrete, so shots wouldn't get through outright, but if they kept firing they would certainly destroy the wall.

I grabbed my pistol and activated the small camera it had, linking it to my head's-up-display. A small square displaying the live feed replaced my HUD map. I pressed the pistol to the rifle so that it was aiming in the same direction and put both of them over the wall. I zoned in on the machinegun nest and waited a couple of seconds.

"Ok, looks like we got it," I said.

"Artillery is firing," the guy at command notified us.

While the shells and missiles rained down on that building I wondered why the hell my helmet didn't lock its sound receivers when artillery and explosives went off nearby and it did when flashbangs detonated. I simply shrugged and waited for the shaking to stop. After fifteen seconds of constant explosions, it finally did.

"Pavel?"  
>"Yep, I'm here," he groaned.<p>

"You good?"  
>"The only thing that was hurt was my dignity," he informed me.<p>

"Yeah, know what that feels like," I muttered.

I got up and dusted myself off. Not for show, because the barrage had actually lifted quite a lot of dust. I grabbed my backup knife and attached it to the bayonet lugs in my BR55.

"Let's go confirm the kills," I said. What I really meant was 'Let's go make sure those covvies are fucking dead and if they're not they'll get awfully close to knifey here.'

"Roger that," Pavel said.

We walked across the damaged street with out weapons up. Visibility was almost zero in account to the dust, but we soon started making out large parts of the building. Eventually we got to a pile of debris, so we assumed that we had made it there. The dust was starting to clear, but we still weren't able to see more than ten meters ahead.

"Ok, you take the right, I'll check here," I said.

Pavel nodded and broke formation, headed towards the right part of the blown-up building. I kept my eyes mostly on the ground, trying to spot any squirming shapes. Eventually I had to be satisfied by a delirious jackal. I pressed my boot against its throat as it struggled and bayoneted the thing.

"Clear," I said.

"Same over here," Pavel called out. "Artillery is nice."  
>"Amen to that brother."<p>

Once the dust cleared and we confirmed that the building was completely destroyed we contacted command and told them that the place was gone. The AI leading this along with the generals would send an armored division through this point and shift the plans to adapt the weakened covvie line. And we weren't even over yet.

"Next?" I asked.

"Well, we've got the barracks or the armored column. Nope just the column now," he informed me. A few moments alter I heard big explosions not to far away.

"Why don't they just do orbital attacks?" I asked.

"The AA gun, remember?"  
>"Right, let's go take that armored column down and then we'll take care of that AA gun," I said.<p>

"Yessir."

We started trotting (again) and headed towards the last known position of the armored column, it was perhaps seven hundred meters away from here, they'd probably be farther away than that by now, but that's where we had to start. We crossed a couple of alleys and finally stopped before an intersection. Pavel peeked out of the corner to confirm that it was clear.

He immediately returned to cover and ran away from the corner. I followed him out of instinct, Pavel wasn't the kind of man to run away from something unless it was worth running away from. And even then he might think about it twice. So when Pavel runs, you run as well.

"What?" I asked after we slid into cover behind a pile of debris and an upside-down car.

"The whole armored column is heading this way!" he said.

"Oh shit."

Oh shit indeed. An armored column, no matter how small it might be, is more than enough of a match for two soldiers, no matter how skilled or badass they are. We'd have to move out of this place right about now or else we'd get killed.

"You remember the name of the street?" I asked.

"No, didn't check."  
>I looked on my HUD map and found out that someone had forgotten to name the street where Pavel had seen the column. I rolled my eyes behind my visor and then peeked over the debris to see if I could make out the name of the street. I made out a sign nailed onto a wall before poking my head back down. There was already a group of elites and grunts appearing around the corner.<p>

"Ok," I said. "Took a capture of the street name," I said. I gave my helmet the commands necessary to show the most recent picture taken, even if I was tempted to see the recent pictures. Birthday gift courtesy of Marina.

"Command," I said. "Zulu again."  
>"Command here, what can I do you for Zulu?"<br>_That was awfully informal. _"Yeah, we've met armored column, designation for them is…"  
>"EC3," Pavel said.<p>

"EC3, they're in…" I checked the picture and zoomed in on the name of the street. "…Hope Street. Ironic, isn't it?"  
>"Yeah, shortswords will carpet-bomb the area in a few seconds."<br>"What? Carpet bomb? We're right next to them," I complained.

"Oh, you'd better get moving then."

"Asshole," I said.

"Oh shit, again," Pavel added.

I grabbed two flashbangs while Pavel did the same. We tossed them as hard as possible over the pile of debris covering us. As soon as they detonated we headed towards the nearest building, plasma fire started flying past us just as Pavel tackled the door. We climbed all the way to the roof while the covvies started organizing themselves and halted the column.

We got to the roof in record time and started heading away from the column as fast as possible. Unfortunately, there were a bunch of elite rangers in there, so we soon found ourselves being chased by a bunch of flying aliens.

"Shit," I said as I jumped over a particularly wide space in between houses. Pavel was a couple of meters ahead, so he turned around and shot at the flying elites. He hit one and forced the rest to take cover a couple of roofs behind us.

"Move!" he yelled.

"We managed to cross to more roofs before we started receiving fire again, this time we both dove for cover instead of keeping running. I popped out and shot a flying elite, its body crashed on the roof of a house noisily. Pavel managed to use his gun as an anti-aircapablesoldiers weapon and forced the elites to stay on the roofs. That way they were much easier targets for me. I shot down two elites and then dove to the floor to avoid a rain of plasma from vaporizing my head. Pavel started firing at the wall that the elites were using for cover. He killed three of them while they were surprised about bullets being able to fly through walls. Those elites must've been rookies, because they switched covers as soon as they realized what was happening. As soon as they did that they were easy meat for my rifle.

"Think we got em," Pavel said.

Just after he said that I saw three shortswords flying one behind the other drop their bombs in the location of the armored column, blowing it sky high with firebombs.

"Yes, we got them indeed."

That would've been a great way to end our mission, unfortunately, we still had to clear out an AA gun and survive. It is easier said than done, especially when it's only two humans against a bunch of aliens. A bunch of aliens that happen to include two or three races that could make an elephant recoil in fright. Ok, bad analogy, but you get what I mean.

We were now heading towards the AA gun, which was conveniently located in a wide plaza. That meant that we would actually need to take out whatever was protecting it before we could take it out. Or we could wait a couple of hours for the sun to set and then sneak in and plant the charges, blowing them up after we're long gone. But where's the fun in that?

The plaza was surrounded by small businesses, most of the buildings that housed said small businesses were five stories tall, providing a decent cover from air attacks. Unfortunately, that included our artillery, which was positioned so far closely that the shells would hit the buildings around before striking the AA gun. We climbed all the way to the top of one of the buildings after avoiding a patrol and eliminating another one with some very clever use of rocks and gasoline.

Anyways we were in the building adjacent to one of the buildings adjacent to the plaza. For those who aren't good with words, that means we were two buildings away from the plaza.

"Ok, what can you make out?" Pavel asked.

"Well, from here I can see a beautiful wall."

"We need to get closer then," Pavel suggested.

"No."  
>"Don't be an ass."<br>"I mean it, no, I'll get them to redirect a drone over here and get a live feed you moron. Oldest trick in the book."  
>"Doesn't seem to work that often," he mumbled.<p>

_You're right about that,_ I thought, but didn't say anything.

A couple of minutes later the drone we requisitioned was sent to fly over here. Now these little things are about the size of an outstretched hand. They kind of look like a bulky falcon gunship, complete with the two rotors. The difference is that the rotors are turbines in case of the drones. They are surprisingly easy to produce and maintain, but they also happen to have a somewhat lacking firewall. They are very easily jammed or destroyed through their networks. Even the covvies, whom are all computer-illiterate know enough to bring this down like flies. Almost literally.

Despite that, since they were so easily made, they kept on making them. Gotta say that when they were deployed in large enough numbers they certainly were useful. Our little mosquito reached our designated target's airspace within a couple of minutes. We got a nice live feed from the sky.

"Ok, that's the AA gun, obviously," I pointed. "I can see why they're nicknamed mantis."

"Well, six, no eight jackals on the surrounding buildings, two on each roof. Those should be relatively easy. One, two, three, four, five, eight elites. Those are tougher."

"Yep, grunts are numbering in the forties maybe even fifty," I said.

"So many of them and only two of us?" Pavel asked.

"Piss poor odds for the little guys," I replied with a smile.

"Let's get to it."  
>Pavel and I broke off and he headed downstairs. He'd move to one of the adjacent buildings to the plaza where the gun was. After I took out the jackals I'd then he'd have a suitable enough distraction to open fire on the rear of the covvies that would be attacking me. Since I'd be on the roof I could take out any brave elite that managed to evade my friend's little hell storm with a smaller hell storm of my own. That's a nice metaphor isn't it? Yeah, it is a pretty good metaphor.<p>

"Thermal's coming in," I said.

"What's it show?"  
>"Umm, four heat signatures in my building, looks like three grunts and a squid face. east building has two…. jackals by the look of it."<p>

"Other two buildings?"

"West is… oh shit."

"The drone was shot down wasn't it?" Pavel asked through the com. He was already on the ground floor and heading towards a suitable firing position in the opposite direction I was heading.

"Good luck man," I told him as I climbed down to the fourth floor.

"You too."  
>Pavel cut the conversation and I started clearing the rooms while making my way towards the wall next to the west building. I found nothing of relevance other than nothing. I kept moving at a steady pace and then climbed out of the fire escape. From there I jumped to the other fire escape. I made so much noise that I thought I was going to wake up a hunter. Ok, now <em>that<em> was a bad metaphor.

Regardless, I was now in the building directly adjacent to the plaza. I started climbing up the surprisingly rust-free fire escape. Normally fire escapes were made of iron, keeping the cliché alive. The titanium alloy that these must've been made of prevented them from rusting right away. I climbed the fire escape while I pondered on this. There was a small ladder leading form the last floor to the roof. I placed my rifle on its magnetic clamps and drew out my pistol. Wouldn't want to be surprised by a jackal sniper.

I climbed the small ladder and found myself facing a startled jackal in the process of putting food in its mouth. Well, it was across the roof, at least twenty meters, but close enough for it to spot my black armor against the brownish backdrop. I raised my right arm as it reached for its beam rifle and placed three bullets on its chest. Its buddy sniper popped from a corner and received three shots himself for bothering.

This actually worked to my advantage. The quiet noises that my gun made wouldn't be heard over the sound of the fucking battle going on around us.

I climbed up and drew my rifle, setting my sight on the jackals on the south building. Those and the guys in the north would be the ones that would be more of a threat to Pavel, so they had to go first. I aimed my rifle at a jackal that was actually pacing around the building. I hesitated when I did it, but I made myself wait until a shot was fired form the AA gun to take out the bird and its equally unsuspecting friend. That made four jackals down and four more to go. I ducked just in case. Jackals had terribly sharp eyesight. Since nothing happened for a few seconds I crawled to a position ten meters away and then slowly popped up again. The jackals in the northern building weren't pacing, but were instead aiming their weapons at inside their own perimeter. That was both stupid and idiotic. Those guys really suck as snipers, but they're terrific shots. I waited for another shot from the AA to be fired and then gave each jackal a burst to the chest while the noise blocked out the report from my rifle.

"One more," I said into my helmet.

The next pair of jackals was directly in front of my building. I took aim and waited for another shot from the AA. That was my first mistake on that offensive. I should've backed away from the ledge, but I didn't. I was spotted by some covvie on the ground, and all of a sudden three plasma globs hit the ledge covering me and another two flew inches from my head. I fell backwards on my but as a fusillade of plasma and needles started raining on my position. The plasma melted the stone while the needles simply destroyed it. I shuffled away from the place I was in and towards a suitable position that allowed me to keep an eye on both the door and ladder that led up to the roof.

"Now would be a pretty good time," I said.

"Firing," Pavel notified.

I tossed my last flashbang backwards without aiming, it must've done something good, because the enemy fire seemed a little less intense for a few moments. That's when I heard the familiar noise that a M247L squad automatic weapon made. Pavel did good on his training and cut down an elite and three grunts before he was forced to relocate. I popped back up to help my buddy but a beam flew dangerously close to my head. I popped back down, the location of the enemy jackal already seared into my brain. I took three deep breaths, calming myself down a little. When I felt that there weren't as many rounds impacting on the rock wall covering me I jumped up, rifle already heading towards the position of the enemy jackal. I compensated a couple of feet and zeroed in on the vulture's chest. It hadn't even bothered to move. It got three 9.5mm rounds through the chest for its troubles. I looked for the other jackal while backing away from the edge of the roof to avoid fire from the ground. I finally spotted some movement on the other side of the roof and hit the last jackal as it prepared to switch cover.

"I could totally be a sniper if I wanted to," I said as the alien's head exploded.

"Yes, you could also try being a decent squadmate!" Pavel yelled.

"Right."  
>I moved back to the ledge of the building and took three quick shots at a group of grunts moving to cover, taking out two of them. I then tossed one of my frags as hard as I could towards an elite behind one of those fancy deployable shields. My grenade fell short but it forced the elite to leave his cover under threat of more explosives from that direction, Pavel made good use of my distraction and took out the unprotected elite.<p>

"Pavel, you see the major?" I asked.

"Negative," he answered. It sounded like he was running. "Just a bunch of rookies."

Machinegun fire erupted from the second floor of one of the buildings, cutting down a couple of grunts and a shielded jackal. I took out two minors who didn't realize where I was firing from until too late.

"Suckers," I thought out loud.

"You know what we could really do with?" Pavel asked. I saw the tracer rounds fly from a window and impact a blue deployable shield, turning it redder and redder with each bullet that hit home.

"An air-strike?"  
>"Grenade launchers."<p>

"Yeah, only army dudes get those," I said after taking out a jackal. I shot it in the leg and then twice in the shoulder, smiling as it went on its knees after my first shot.

"Well, they'd certainly be useful right now."

I didn't answer, instead I jumped back as an elite clad in red armor carrying a plasma machinegun opened up in my . I sprinted towards the door that led down to the fifth floor and tackled it open. Waiting for me on the other side was yet another elite. Unfortunately, the momentum of my tackle and his/its surprise combined to bring the elite down.

My shoulder collided with the slippery energy shield on the elite's chest, the impact sent us both tumbling down the stairs. After we hit a corner, we just kept going down. I spotted a few lightning-like rays of energy on the elite's armor, signaling that its shield was loosing strength.

Five seconds and twenty steps later I found myself lying on the floor face up, my rifle tightly clutched in my hand. I looked at my feet and saw an equally stunned elite. I jumped backwards as I switched to full-auto, then I emptied the rest of my clip into the top of the elite's head, firing even long after it was dead. By the time I was done, its head looked slightly like someone had taken a bat to it repeatedly. Well, truth be told, it probably looked worse.

"Fuck you squid," I said as I stood up. I gave the elite a half-strength kick on the ribs before I moved towards a window.

Pavel was now receiving fire from the elite carrying the machine gun like an assault rifle and from two other turrets mounted on the windows of the buildings in front of him. I took advantage of my new and safer position and took aim at the closest turret. Unfortunately, I couldn't see the grunt manning it, so I fired seven times at the wall where I estimated it would be. The gun stopped firing but immediately resumed. I emptied my clip on the wall next to the window, silencing the plasma fire for good. The other plasma turret kept firing at Pavel's building, strafing the whole area while the elite with the turret went closer, firing all the time.

I finally took the second turret out after two magazines failed to penetrate the wall covering the grunt. I actually had to disintegrate the wall before spotting the grunt and killing it. I reloaded my rifle and took three quick shots at the elite. The beast turned to face me, not even bothering to stop firing his cannon. When he did that, Pavel opened on the alien's unprotected back and brought it down with a four-second burst.

Once we had killed the leader and their heavy weaponry, the rest of the covvies were relatively easy meat. I shot down two minors while Pavel handled the rest of the enemies with 1050 rounds per minute. Unfortunately for my friend, he had stopped using the rucksack/ammunition box a long time ago so he had to reload every couple of minutes. That's when I jumped to action and took out the elites. Finally, there was nothing on the plaza save an automatic AA cannon and dead aliens. Thank God for the element of surprise and enemy unawareness.

"Cover me," I said.

I climbed down to the bottom floor and sprinted towards the closest leg of the massive cannon. I reached for my butt pouch and grabbed a squished block of C12. I stuck the thing on the leg and moved on to the next leg. After I was done I ran towards Pavel's building. I took cover behind an overturned table behind a wall behind another wall and detonated the explosives after Pavel had confirmed he had done the same for his own safety.

The explosion dwarfed even the noise that the AA gun made when it fired, and even the noise that the thing made afterwards when it crashed down on the floor, detonating some of its plasma components. I went to a window to admire my handiwork. The entire thing was a wreck, no way the covvies would find a way to repair it and get a good use for it.

"Command, this is Zulu, AA is down, I repeat AA is down, requesting immediate evac, we are behind enemy lines and have no support. I repeat, requesting immediate evac."  
>"Roger that Zulu, you guys did a good job."<br>"Damn right we did," Pavel said with what could only be a big smile behind his faceplate.

* * *

><p><em>Just want to thank you guys for bearing with my terrible puns and chapter names and my occasional metaphors. That being said, I hope you enjoyed.<em>

_-casquis_


	52. Legends Walk Among Us

_Hey guys, finally got out the next chapter. I hope you haven't been beating your heads on the wall while waiting for this one (actually, I do, it would mean that I'm a half-decent writer). Anyways, I'm proud of this chapter, it's what you would call a little bit darker than previous ones, but I believe you'll still enjoy it._

_On an embarrassing side note, I accidentally uploaded Chapter 51 as Chapter 50. The mistake has been corrected and the chapters are now in order. Sorry it took me so long to realize that._

_That having been said, enjoy._

* * *

><p><span>Chapter LII: Legends Walk Among Us<span>

**September 9, 2541 (UNSC Calendar)/**

**Marcia, Concordia, Zama System**

"Very well then, we stay here."  
>There was a sigh of relief all over the small basement. None of us wanted to really risk our lives again to move to an uncompromised position, we were too tired for that, even if it <em>was <em>an uncompromised position.

I sat back down on the empty ammo box, it was no good for anything other than sitting on now. Pavel was on the other side of the room, his helmet serving as a pillow and his M247 leaning against the wall within arm's reach. I glanced at the other marines that we had picked up, they all looked like shit, most had been hit by some projectile or other in the past four days.

I winced as I strained a muscle I had torn in my back. A pelican crash will do that for you. I tried shifting my back a little to get it used to the pain, but stopped after a couple of minutes, too tired to keep going. I tensed up a little as the ceiling shook and the single light bulb there flickered for a few instants. The reason they put that scene in the movies so often is because it is scary as hell. It means an explosive just landed nearby.

The room we were in couldn't have been more than 20x20 feet. There were currently eleven people cramped up inside. Pavel and myself, as well as six marines, all of them either PFCs or privates, and their leader, Lieutenant Buchanan. The last man inside the basement was named Mikah Shihat. He was the pilot that had been sent to rescue us after we had knocked down that AA. You would think the guy up there would reward you whenever you did good for humanity, not have your evac shot down and crash into enemy held land. Shihat was in bad shape, he had received a piece of the pelican's cockpit right in the belly, the wound had been infected and the man had been unconscious since yesterday. A few of the marines talked about leaving him, but none of them really meant it.

Other than the ten of us, we had another guy doing his watch overhead. The sentries were the only ones entitled to a single cup of coffee during their duty. It was terrible coffee, made with old beans we found in another house and rainwater. At least it did the job though.

"Small patrol!" came an urgent whisper. "Hundred meters out and closing in on our position," our sentry warned.

"Ok," Lieutenant Buchanan said. "Ammo count."

"Three mags."

"Two."

One."

"One and a half."

"Five," I said.

"Half, plus one for my shotgun," Pavel informed us.

"One."

"One."

"Just shy of two lieutenant."

"And I've got two plus three rounds for my MA5," Buchanan said.

The guy above didn't answer he had returned to watch the covvies and we all knew that he had almost four magazines.

"Ok, we can handle them if they decide to come at us," Buchanan said. "Might as well pick up their weapons if they do…"

Even though I knew that the man was right, it felt very wrong to fight with an enemy's weapon. Back when I had used the beam rifle to rescue the crashed pelican's pilot I felt slightly uneasy, the fact that it burned through my gloves didn't make me any more eager to use a covvie weapon, but I would if I had to.

The lieutenant pointed at two marines and they climbed the stair carefully. I was to tired to get up right now, but I could already feel the adrenaline pumping through my veins, taking away some of the weariness I was feeling. I grabbed my rifle and tapped its stock nervously. It was something that I had never done before in my life, but had been using to calm myself a few days ago. This was horrible, waiting for an enemy to pass right by you knowing that they could spot you any second and actually kill you. The fact that there was nothing you could do about it only made it worse.

"Elite minor, five jackals and five grunts. All jackals are shields."

We sighed again, we didn't know if it was relief or not, but we were tired and we fucking felt like sighing whenever we wanted.

"Looks like they're simply going through, not stopping to check any of the houses."  
>"Then why would they stop to check this wreck," someone muttered optimistically.<p>

"Quiet," Buchanan ordered.

We all complied and waited for a few tense minutes while we received no further word from the three sentries. Our 'house' was more like a first floor partially covered by rubble from the second floor. There were a couple of semi-intact walls that had served as cover during our last engagement against the aliens, but other than that we had about nothing else in the immediate vicinity to put in between us and them, that's why we were holed up in a basement. Well, that and the covvie shelling the hell out of Marcia.

For a few instants everyone held their breaths. It was eerily quiet, it even sounded like the shelling had stopped for a few instants. A nearby shell brought me back to reality. I tried to focus. I could see the sweat coming down from under the marine's helmets. I could see how they shook and how they mouthed prayers to whatever deity they believed would protect them. I could see the blood-soaked bandages and the wounds that hadn't merited anything to cover them. I recognized that as signs that I was sinking back into combat-mode. The mild augmentations that I had received made the transition a lot more prominent.

"Shit," I heard through the stairs.

There was a loud crack and then an even louder squeal that belonged to a grunt. No doubt it had wandered off a little bit to take a piss or a shit, perhaps even to look for something shiny. The next noise I heard was thankfully a burst of machinegun fire and not plasma, that meant we got the first strike.

"Go! Go! Go!" Buchanan ordered.

We all climbed the stairs and jumped out to the damaged house, we looked for cover for a few instants and located suitable walls or piles of rubble to do the job. I fired as I moved to cover, taking out a surprised jackal. Pavel threw a rock at the elite, snapping its head backwards and then shot it with his M247L, forcing it to take cover. The other marines might've been tired, but they did a commendable job, taking out the other four grunts and another jackal before taking cover. It was now only three jackals and an elite.

I heard the familiar sound of a plasma repeater firing, but heard nothing to indicate that it had made contact with a human being.

"Fire and maneuver!" Buchanan ordered. "Squad one, provide cover!"

"I put my rifle over the destroyed wall and fired three shots blindly, regretting the waste of bullets but knowing that it was necessary. A few other marines joined me, pushing the elite down and preventing the jackals from firing. Squad two took advantage of the situation and switched positions to pre-designated piles of debris or overturned cars in the street, flanking the enemy patrol. A couple of instants later it all ended with an M90 blast to the head of the elite.

"Ok, we're moving out," the lieutenant ordered. He knew that we were pumped up and wanted to take advantage of our energy right now. "Klaus, go downstairs and get Shihat. Rolo, Cook, you take anything else that we might need. Everyone else, prepare to move out."

A few seconds later Rolo and Cook emerged carrying a couple of gallons of water each, Pavel was trailing behind them with the unconscious pilot over his shoulder. He tossed me his shotgun and I placed it on my back. I knew that Pavel manhandling the pilot like that couldn't have been good, but it was certainly better than leaving the wounded man alone here to meet a certain death.

We started moving away from our house and eastwards. That was the direction of the main front, but it would be impossible to get through with our numbers, it meant, at best, that we could probably pick up some ammunition from human corpses or abandoned strongholds. Once we did that we would cause a little mayhem. That had been the original plan when we found out about the covvie offensive that cut us off from the bulk of the UNSC forces. We still hadn't gotten anywhere nearer our objective.

We were formed up in two five-man columns with a scout fifty meters ahead. Right now, that scout was none other than me. I peeked around corners and signaled when we were good for coming through. I was the first to cross while the two squads provided cover for each other on open ground. All the while I was looking for a nice place to hunker down in.

We got our first scare from a shell, a human artillery shell. They had been firing constantly at the covvie lines, that's what had thrown them into disarray and prevented them from continuing their advance, for us, they simply meant that we could be signaled as a friendly-fire casualty once this was over or simply as MIA, depending on how the battle went. The shell landed in between me and the rest of the marines, we dropped to the ground as soon as we heard it coming, but it was far enough away that no piece of shrapnel hit any of us.

"Go," Buchanan ordered.

I looked behind me and spotted the rest of the marines safe and sound through the dust raised by the explosion. They looked ghostly in the darkness of Concordia's night. I turned a corner into a wide street and saw something that looked familiar. It was a piece of metal about five inches long popping from a hole on the wall. I stopped and examined it more carefully, I was able to make out the flash suppressor and relaxed, tension left my body as soon as I knew that there were marines on the other side of the wall.

"Hey," I whispered. "Hey!"  
>No answer.<p>

"You, over there," I said. When I failed to get an answer I banged a couple of times on the wall. Next I poked the barrel of the gun with the barrel of my own gun. Yeah, poor choice of words, but that's exactly what happened. The gun tilted slightly upwards and then slanted down. I had braced for gunfire, but was surprised when I heard none.

"Shit," I muttered.

I went back around the corner and signaled for the rest of the squad to halt and take defensive positions. They all took a knee and aimed at different sectors, I couldn't actually see their expressions from here, but I could've sworn they were glad for the rest.

I returned to the other side of the corner and moved underneath the barrel of the gun, not throwing prudency away. I realized that the hole in the wall was bullet-made, probably from an autocannon or a large Gatling. I grabbed the barrel with my hand and shuffled it around, finally, I pushed it backwards and into the building, I heard the clatter of the gun as it hit the floor. I was alarmed for a moment, but went along the wall until I came across a door. Like most doors in Marcia, this was a wooden door that looked like it belonged to the 24th century. I took two steps back and took a deep breath.

I kicked the door open without any backup, something that probably would've gotten me lynched in any police department in the entire universe, but was the only option right now. I scanned the area while moving in a typical clearing pattern. It took an instant for the VISR to take in the ambient light and project a grayish image of the place I was in on my visor. At first I was relieved, then I was horrified, then I was relieved again. I quickly noticed that there was no one firing at me and then that there were no enemies in the room, then I noticed the unmistakable shapes in the floor and tensed up at the though of whatever killed this army unit, then I relaxed a bit and actually smiled when I saw that there were a couple of boxes of ammunition in addition to all the weaponry still on the floor.

I took a moment to examine the bodies, I noticed that all of them presented injuries from an energy blade, most were from an energy sword while a couple were from an assassination blade. I cleared the rest of the house before leaving again. I went around the corner and waved at the hunkered down group of soldiers. One of them waved back. I signaled for a single member to come to me and soon enough a PFC was trotting towards me.

"What?" she asked, to tired to say anything else.

"Army unit, all dead, tons of ammo, good place to spend the night," I said. I spoke in short and sharp sentences, but it was because I didn't want to say anything else that wasted my breath.

The PFC nodded and returned to the rest of the marines, after a couple of instants they all stood up and started in my direction. We went inside the house, moving all the corpses into a spare room and ridding them of any usable equipment. They were then placed side by side and their arms were crossed over their chest, the universal position for dead people. It was done as a sign of respect for their sacrifice, they had died so that we could survive, if only just a little longer.

I had taken advantage of my earlier arrival and bagged myself three magazines for my battle rifle, filling up most of my ammunition pouches, then I climbed up the stairs and hid an unopened candy bar that I had seen in my but-pouch. I would eat it later, after someone decided to take the time to actually heat up the MREs that the army dudes had left uneaten. This was turning out to be quite a find, ammunition, weapons, food. Oh, I forgot to mention, the original barrel I had seen poking through the wall was none other than an M247. Yeah, no L, a good 'ol fashioned M247 machinegun, we would kick ass with that gun, and if we couldn't carry it its ammunition was compatible with Pavel's own weapon. Quite a find indeed.

We all hunkered down on different rooms, this was actually quite roomy for ten marines that had been used to living in a cramped basement for the last few days.

I got a place on the roof. It actually wasn't so bad, there was this little concrete box thingy where there was an empty space and I dug in. I was supposed to be slightly alert, but I'm pretty sure that the only one that wouldn't go immediately to sleep was our sentry, right now it happened to be Pavel. I chuckled at myself as I took of my helmet and the large chest piece of my armor. I wondered whether it was a good idea to open my armored boots without really taking them off. I decided that I could spare the second and a half that it took me to push the front of my armored boots to my shins. I grabbed the candy bar that I had found and opened it. I took a bite of the thing, it was old, tasted slightly stale, and I'm pretty sure that it was beyond its expiration date by at least two weeks. It tasted so wonderful that I fell asleep on the third mouthful.

Unsurprisingly I was woken up by a relatively hard kick to my stomach. I huffed and gasped for air for a couple of instants before I heard the firefight.

"Rise and shine!"

I muttered something that was meant to sound a little bit like "Way to wake up a man during a firefight," but probably went slightly differently.

I avoided hopping up on instinct and instead took the time to close my boots, attach my chest piece and put on my helmet. I grabbed my rifle and pulled back the slide, I felt the sparks of adrenaline just as my brain processed the familiar noise the gun made. I was ready to kick some serious ass.

"Sitrep," I asked the marine that had woken me up.

"Bad," was all he said before he headed towards the edge of the building and opened up with his assault rifle on a large group of unseen enemies. The man had balls, he had just woken up a Helljumper with a kick to the stomach.

I sighed and took a moment to look at the flashes of plasma and tried to make out the direction they were coming from. We were under attack on both the sides that the house bordered with the street and there was gunfire coming from the alley that connected our street to another one. At least it was gunfire.

I moved up towards the ledge and slid down. There weren't any covvies that were aware of my position, so I popped up completely and took five shots at five grunts, killing four of them and shooting another one in the neck. I was dismayed at the number of covvies that we were facing. The street in front of us actually looked crowded. Crowded for fuck's sake. When does a wide street look crowded _during_ combat. It is fucking horrible, that's what it is. There was a Shadow transport with a blown up turret and at least two ghosts firing at the ground floor walls, trying to melt through the rock and concrete. I looked around as I ducked behind cover. There was three people on the roof, myself and two marines. If it was necessary I could try making a run for it through the roofs, but didn't seem likely to be an option, especially with a whole fucking battalion knocking o our doors.

Just after killing a jackal preparing to take a potshot I heard the worst possible noise that you could've heard in a situation like this. Well, second worst. I heard the familiar noise that a wraith made when it fired.

"Wraith!" I yelled, but the marines were smart and had already turned their heads to the sky, looking for the blue blob of plasma and considering cover options. The blast went wide, landing a couple of houses away, no doubt coming from one of those long-range wraiths a good distance away. That was bad, it meant that there was nothing that we could do while it zeroed in on us. I got tired of having to take cover every moment that I tried to fire, so instead I fired at the waist-height wall that I was using for cover a few times. That made a sizeable hole that I could fire through without exposing myself. From there I managed to take out one of the ghost's driver and then killed two grunts that reached for it and forced an eager elite to stop just short of reaching it. By stop an elite I mean put a round through its head clean through.

"Ammo run," one of the marines called out. The other guy nodded and half-crawled to the door that lead downstairs.

I opened up at a couple of grunts that I could make out through my firing position. I knocked them on their asses and the plasma grenades that they were carrying blew them up. I chuckled out loud, now deep in a combat trance that I knew was very likely to be my last. I moved the barrel of my gun and shot the last of three jackals that was entering the house across the street. It was carrying a carbine, so at least one of the other two was carrying the same.

Just then the second marine returned with two crates. One he tossed to the other marine, who promptly grabbed two magazines and slammed one on his rifle. Then he started filling up the empty mags lying around him with what must've been record-breaking speed. The other crate he positioned in a position in between the three of us, so I assumed it was grenades. When the marine that had brought the crates up tossed me three frags I almost cried with joy.

"On my mark!" I called out through the noise of the gun and plasma fire. "Now!"  
>Three grenades were lobbed and three equivalent explosions followed soon after. I heard the screaming of grunts and the familiar wet noise that bits of flesh made when they hit a hard surface. I heard those noises even through all the firing going on around.<p>

"Throw!" I called out again.

As one of the marines threw his frag, a blue-white beam of energy severed his left hand clean of his wrist. The man looked in shock at his stump, then at his smoking hand, and then back to his stump. He started screaming in what I could only compare to a bad actor, he hadn't even processed it yet.

"Calm the fuck down!" I said. "And keep firing!"  
>The man stared at his stump for a second before he nodded slowly and opened fire. I shifted my aim to the building in front and pulled back my gun barrel from my firing hole as to avoid being spotted. I spotted what looked like an elbow and the lower half of a window. I didn't have a wide enough field of fire to kill the sniper, so I shot at the elbow of the jackal. Fortune smiled upon me and the jackal recoiled right into my crosshairs. Another shot killed it.<p>

"Sniper down!" I informed.

It went like this for perhaps three minutes more, even though it felt like hours. We managed to hold off the massive Covenant forces while we burned through ammunition. Yesterday we would've lasted perhaps half a minute, today we could last half an hour.

"I'm out," I said after my gun clicked. I headed towards the door and a couple of carbine shots bounced of the frame a couple of inches above my hand. I turned and fired blindly from my pistol at the general direction where I had been shot at. The quiet noise that the silenced gun made seemed weird in comparison to the racket going on. I jumped downstairs before another bunch of carbine shots decided to land on my head. I dusted myself of and let to marines pass in front of me before heading downstairs. I had to duck a couple of times as stray bolts of plasma made it through the walls. I finally stopped in front of a small tower of ammunition boxes. I found the appropriate one and opened it. I grabbed five magazines and a bunch of spare rounds that I shoved down one of my utility pouches on a whim. I climbed back upstairs and was halfway up the flight of steps that lead to the roof when I heard another noise. _This _was the worst thing I could've heard. The familiar scream-like noise made me look in the direction of the banshees. There were four of them, flying side by side.

"Banshees!" someone cried out in horror. It took me a second to realize it had been me.

I climbed back down and tapped the marine manning the machine gun on the back.

"What?" he yelled.

"Call Pavel up here to take your position, I need the gun."

"What?" he repeated, this time because he was confused-

"Banshees!"  
>The marine stopped firing for an instant and then opened up again. "Ok, cover for me while I get him."<p>

I grabbed the machine gun and burned through a few elites before Pavel shoved me out of the way and positioned his own, weaker, gun on the ledge of the window. I grabbed the heavy M247 and placed it over my shoulder. The original gunner tossed me a box of ammunition and went downstairs, most likely to occupy the place that Pavel had left.

I went upstairs and was immediately forced to jump sideways as the banshees strafed the roof. They had decided to take us out before they went around wasting their fuel rods on the house itself. A bolt of superheated plasma landed between my calves, singing the armored boots and giving me some very nasty blisters. The marine missing a hand was unlucky enough to receive a blast right in between his shoulder blades. The other man was missed completely by the fliers.

"Help me out here," I said.

The marine wordlessly ran to my position and helped me set up the machine gun on its monopod. It was already loaded, so I had half a box of ammunition to burn through before I was forced to reload. I cocked the massive gun and took aim at the blurs in the distance. I steadied myself and moved the sights forward a couple of inches ahead of the purple craft. I depressed the trigger of the M247 machinegun and felt the comfortable kick on my shoulder. I saw faint sparks on the hull of the banshee I was aiming at and instants later it lost altitude and disappeared from sight behind some buildings.

"Suck on that you motherfuckers!" I said. Yeah, I know, very elaborate.

Unfortunately, the three remaining banshees had already turned around and were coming down on us. I fired the rest of my ammunition on the lead craft, I ran out of bullets just as it started spewing smoke from its hull, but it didn't go down.

"Get out of the way!" I said.

I jumped sideways as plasma fire made new scorches on the floor at the same time the other marine did. I ran to the edge of the building and the banshee fire missed me completely, but a couple of needles passed uncomfortably close to my head. I was about to head back to the gun when I felt a small explosion on the floor. Ok, small is an understatement, a large part of the façade was brought down by an explosion from those new fancy covvie grenade launchers and I was forced to jump forward to avoid falling down to the street along with the debris. I quickly slid back behind the short wall.

I spotted the other marine on the other side of the building, he was already done reloading the M247 and was pulling back the cocking bolt. As soon as he had done that he opened fire. I couldn't see the results, but I fired blindly through the broken wall next to me before I peeked half of my face to take a look. I was just in time to spot a crashing banshee and another one stumbling and starting to go down. Then plasma started raining around the marine gunner.

"Get out of there!" I yelled.

When the marine didn't comply I yelled at him again. "That's an order you moron!"  
>Plasma started raining all around the soldier and he just kept on firing, unfazed by the close calls literally raining around him. I saw the last banshee trailing smoke as it flew overhead the house and heard it crash a couple of buildings away. The marine looked at me like he didn't believe it. The same look was on my face, but the man only saw his own distorted reflection on my visor. The mirror capabilities of the visor couldn't have been that good, because the man failed to notice the ultra taking aim at him.<p>

A single needle from a needle rifle appeared on his forehead and flew at me. It embedded itself in the wall next to me and was followed by a trail of blood and brain matter that splattered into my visor and shoulder. I switched to full auto and yelled as I fired at the elite, the sustained burst forced it to its knees, but it started running towards me. It looked confused when I started sprinting towards it, but I grabbed the M247 just as it jumped to my building. The machinegun obliterated the weak shielding it sported and the elite fell dead two feet away from me, its jaws wide open. I relaxed for a moment before I realized that I was standing on the face of the marine that the elite had killed. I quickly pulled my foot away from the marine's face, but wished that I hadn't as soon as I saw the damage the armored boot had done to his face in addition to the needle. I sighed and grabbed the gun, I dismounted it and placed it on the ledge of the rooftop. I opened up without even bothering for cover. I was aiming at the houses in front of me, trying to take out the few turrets that had been set up and the snipers. I smiled a little bit as dust exploded from the walls and firing stopped, when I was satisfied I was done with the building directly in front of me I switched to the covvies on the ground. They had the shadow, the two ghosts, and several wrecked cars for cover, there was a significantly smaller number of them than before, so the cover was more than enough. Still, I managed to kill two elites and a jackal before a plasma bolt hit the barrel of the M247, melting it. A couple of bullets slammed into the closed opening and the gun almost exploded in my hands before I released the trigger.

"Shit…"

"Shit! Shit! Shit!"  
>I made my way downstairs but I was met by a shove from Pavel and three other marines carrying boxes of ammunition each. They closed the door and one of the marines sat down in front of it with his rifle aimed straight ahead.<p>

"We're overrun," Pavel stated.

"Shit," I said yet again.

I must've stood there for a couple of seconds, but then a plasma explosion knocked me on my ass. I felt that familiar sense of helplessness and dizziness as the ringing in my ears blocked out all the noise. I could see Pavel reaching for his shotgun while unfastening his sidearm. The other two marines were both grabbing at their ears and rolling around. I felt wetness on my earlobes and knew that the situation was bad. I saw as the door was noiselessly kicked down by a red elite, it looked at the marine closest to it and fired with his plasma rifle. It fired a long burst, it was its downfall. I saw its shields shimmer and then noise started coming back. I realized that I was the one shooting at it when I felt the kickback of my battle rifle. The elite looked at me after being slightly pushed backwards and then it was suddenly missing half of its torso.

"I got your back Frank," Pavel said.

"You always have," I replied.

I was about to stand up when for some reason I decided to look up. I saw four orange flashes. Just four. I recognized them immediately of course, but I was still shocked.

"Four?" I asked. "Only four? Are they trying to get themselves killed?"

Pavel looked up and failed to answer. Perhaps he did answer, because the next thing I knew the four SOEIVs slammed into the ground and everything went quiet for a few instants. I stood up and went over to the ledge of the building, all regard for my safety gone now. There was dust blocking some of my sight, but I heard the noise that SOIVs make when you blast open their doors. They had all landed within meters of one another in the wide street in front of us. The doors flew off the pods and all of them slammed into some dazed covvie, crushing them. What I saw emerge from those pods was not a small ODST squad, but something bigger and deadlier.

Spartans.

Let me say that again.

Spartans.

This weren't some tallish SPARTAN-IIIs, they were full on, fucking huge, WMDs, SPARTAN-IIs.

They emerged quick and deadly, their movements seemed as fluid as water. They fired at the covvies and every shot that left their weapons made contact with an alien. They cleared the area around them in two seconds, they killed the rest of the covvies in a thirty meter radius in ten. They did that with a combination of traditional combat and acrobatics. One of them punched an elite and knocked it to the ground, it broke the creature's neck with its boot. Another one of them moved so fast that it was almost impossible for me to track the green armor. Another one of the spartans made use of a couple of combat knives in a way that would've shamed me deeply and made me look as a novice. The last spartan was the most impressive of them all. The green giant didn't go for flashy techniques, instead it took a knee whenever it spotted a target and took it down instants later. Its MA37 rifle barked and took down whatever it connected with. Finally, they took on a pair of hunters that had just recently arrived. The one that had impressed me closed in on one of them and jumped at it, landing with his feet first. He pushed the alien a couple of feet forward.

Impossible as it seemed, the spartan managed to twist itself and land on its feet. It opened fire on the unprotected belly of the hunter before it fell back. The other spartans took aim at the enraged creature and brought it down in a matter of seconds. The second hunter was quickly killed with three grenades.

By that time, I was already heading towards the door, I made it up so I believed that I was going to ask them what in the hell they thought they were doing, but in reality I just wanted to stand close to the stuff that legends were made of. I reached the ground floor and felt reassured that Pavel was behind me. I had just seen what those things had done and they had a reputation.

The four Spartans were now standing together in between their pods, all of the enemies around them were gone. Not to take credit from Pavel and myself as well as the marines, but the spartans had saved us, even if I was to stubborn to admit it right then. The four hulking metallic forms were talking to one another while they grabbed supplies from their SOEIVs.

"Spartans," I called out.

The four figures turned at superhuman speeds and trained their weapons on me. I didn't react, instead took two steps forward and stopped three feet away from the creatures. Their rifles were still trained on me.

"Damn, I almost killed the little fucker," one of them said. The voice was distinctly African-American and there was a white 069 painted on his chest armor. It was the one that had broken the elite's neck with his boot.

"Easy Sol- Red Four," the spartan with the surreal ability to cut up stuff with knives said. There was a white 104 paited on his chest.

"Sorry boss," said the first spartan. "Forgot that there was a small unit here."  
>"You're kidding me?" another spartan with an obviously female voice said. "That's pretty much the reason we were redirected here." As she said that she out her hand on her hips, a pose so natural that it seemed almost laughable in her armor. "Are you Staff Sergeant Francisco Castillo?" she asked me. She had a rabbit painted on her chest instead of a number, the number was on her shoulder plate. An 087.<p>

"Yes."

"Very well then, our job here is done," said the one with the combat knives. "We're done here, let's send the message and be done with this."

The spartans looked at one another and started moving out. The one that had impressed me the most looked at me and his lingered behind a little longer. I took of my helmet and held the stare of the giant. I suddenly remembered the stories about how a spartan killed a couple of ODSTs on a boxing ring in some carrier. I held my helmet under my arm. I had no doubt my face looked tired, underfed, and probably hollow. I must've made for a very unthreatening ODST.

"Don't you have somewhere to be?" I asked with venom in my voice. "Freak."  
>I might've imagined it, but I could've sworn that the Spartan recoiled at that. He left after his friends without a word. I remember the chipped white paint on his chest, old and damaged, although the number was still visible.<p>

I heard pelicans, falcons, and hornets overhead, no doubt the leading strike of a major offensive right after the spartan squad. I felt the whirring of engines as a pelican landed behind me. The last spartan turned the corner and the spell was broken. I headed back towards the pelican with the image of the flinching Spartan still on my head.

"Maybe you should've thanked it," Pavel said. I noted how he said _it_ instead of _him_. Still, he didn't sound overly concerned for my utter lack of gratefulness for the spartans. Those things were monsters. Nothing more than machine. Unlike the SPARTAN-IIIs, these had had what made them human taken away from them. They were killing machines. Weapons, nothing more.

"Maybe I should've." I agreed.

I sat on the pelican with the image of that spartan still on my mind. I took in every detail of the thing and did my best to remember it. The spartan's armor, it's movements, everything about it that could be remembered about it. Most importantly, I remembered the number painted onto is chest armor. I said it myself with a slight smile on my face.

"One-one-seven."


	53. Smells Like

Chapter LIII: Smells Like…

**September 10, 2541 (UNSC Calendar)/**

**West Maruca, Concordia, Zama System**

"You son of a bitch!" she yelled at me after she slapped me for the fourth time. Maybe it was the fifth, I don't know. I tend to get slapped a lot sometimes, and it is usually by hardened military women that can seriously pack some punch with their open palms. At least they were ladylike enough not to punch me in the nose, that could've probably been very bad for my male ego.

As unfair and embarrassing as it was to be slapped in public by a woman at least seven inches shorter than you, I took it. I knew she would apologize later and that she would regret doing it, but if this was the only way for Marina to vent her emotions, then so be it, I loved her enough to let her punch me in the face. Hell, I'd die for her twice if it was needed. I stood there, half dressed and half armored. The nurses and the other patients were giving the angry pilot and me a wide berth so that we could have some privacy. Of course, curtains don't really stop noise from traveling all that much, so I just took the verbal and physical abuse for a couple of minutes.

"You done?" I asked after a couple of minutes of the blonde yelling and crying.

"I think so," she replied, her quiet voice a contrast to all the previous shouting.

"Good," I said and kissed her. I didn't do it for any particular reason other that I was happy to see her and really wanted her to shut up for a couple of moments.

"I'm just glad you're alive," she said.

"What a coincidence, I'm glad to be alive too!" I said with a joking tone. "Although my cheeks have been stinging lately…" I said.

"I'm sorry…" Marina said sheepishly.

"For what?" I asked as I grabbed my own ass and squeezed. I winced and groaned in fake pain.

"You're a pig, " she said after laughing.

"And you're bipolar."  
>Marina Bogdanovic, Warrant Officer, the most beautiful girl I knew and certainly in the Top 3 Hottest Women in my Life list, gave me a lovely smile that bumped her a place up in that list. I actually pictured her shoving Layla of the first place podium and receiving a crown and flowers from some random dude. I laughed out loud at the thought.<p>

"I'll see you later," I said after I kissed her once more. "Gotta report to a certain Major Albaf right now."

"I hate that bitch."

Well, I think I've mentioned the disadvantages of talking about someone behind their backs. I think I focused mainly on being caught in the act of speaking shit about someone. That exact same thing _almost_ happened. It wasn't as bad, but it was a close second.

"Staff Sergeant," the familiar voice of Wilkins said.

"Yes lieutenant?"  
>"Since Ms. Bogdanovic is inside there with you, I'll assume that you're presentable and will walk right in."<br>He did just that.

I already had my armored boots on and had just finished putting on my shirt, so it wasn't an uncomfortable situation for me. I knew it wouldn't have been for Wilkins, he was a rock. I swear that the man could shoot a puppy with a shotgun with absolutely no emotion other than a sense of accomplishment. Fortunately, humanity needed men like him right now, men who would stop at nothing to get the job done. Unfortunately, we needed men like him in combat related posts, not as spooks that rarely ever went groundside to complete a mission. Perhaps he would've been more useful planning ops.

"The Major is impatient, she instructed me to get you to her office immediately."

"Yessir."

"Follow me."  
>I grabbed the rest of my armor and said goodbye to Marina as I synched in step behind the lieutenant. I managed to put on some pieces of equipment on the way to Albaf's office, so when I got into the elephant that ONI had commandeered for her, I was only carrying the thigh protection and my helmet in my hands. I entered the behemoth of a vehicle (see what I did there) and found myself in the middle of a bunch of wiring and consoles with a couple of holotanks spread here and there. Albaf didn't get her own 'office', but she had a couple of servers positioned so that she could have some privacy. She was obviously the ranking officer here, all these spooks were under her. Militarily speaking, you dirty perverts.<p>

"Well, well. Well."

"Ma'am," I saluted.

"Don't you ma'am me, you know what your little trip behind enemy lines did to the plans for this battle?" she asked angrily. "We had to relocate three different Special Forces units to fulfill the roles you and Sergeant Klaus were supposed to play! When two of them were killed, we had to send Nezarian's rangers to your planned sabotage missions in addition to their own, and then, you pop back on our radar just in time for a group of fucking _SPARTANs_ to be actually redirected to rescue you and your little friends who managed to get themselves surrounded by a fucking battalion. Then, you had to collapse due to exhaustion, dehydration, and micro shrapnel."

_Well, you can't avoid that._

As Albaf went on and on, making some very offensive comments to the Marine unit that had been reduced to a single man and criticized my performance and whatnot, I did the only sensible thing a man could do in this situation. I started wondering that the Major would look like naked. I think I've mentioned that Albaf was naturally pretty, even if she chose to not wear any make-up and to keep a grimace on her face by default. Not to mention the bitchiness that actually seemed to affect how I saw her physically.

I was lost in though for a few instants, only reminding myself to keep from smiling as to not attract a mean and invasive question. After finally deciding that if Albaf had been less bitchy and worried more about her appearance, I definitely would've wanted to spend some 'quality time' with her.

"…and don't even mention that incident with Brooks' daughter."

I didn't know what to say, so I said nothing.

"Dismissed."

_What, that's it? _

"You want more?" Albaf asked in an annoyed tone.

"No ma'am," I said and left.

We had pretty much won the engagement here in Concordia, the covvies were being pushed out of important areas while their ships desperately tried to get them all out of the planet before they were destroyed by the navy. It seems like we were succeeding and they weren't otherwise there wouldn't have been so many people enjoying long rest periods in the hospitals. So right now, I had nothing to do other than get back in touch with Marina. Yes, it's exactly what you think.

We were winning, I said that before, but we rarely ever win against the Covenant. Sure, we had occasional victories whenever battles in space lasted long enough up in space for us to make our job properly and thoroughly, but that only happened once every year at the most. Right now, I was lucky enough to be experiencing what you could only call a curb-stomp victory over the covvies. True enough, this could probably be considered a pyrrhic victory by future historians, but right now it could be called successful in comparison to the previous UNSC engagements in the war. Us human soldiers had a bad tendency to be decimated (or worse) in battles.

"Doesn't it feel good?"

"Where?" I asked.

"In here," Pavel said as he patted his chest overdramatically.

"Sure does."  
>Pavel had gotten the same treatment I had during our little stint behind enemy lines. He was lucky enough to be a rank lower than I was, otherwise he would be the one getting all the heat from Albaf. I'm pretty sure I would've gotten some crap from Brooks had I not saved his daughter from being killed just a short while ago. He'd gotten some bruises in contrast to a few cuts that I had gotten myself. Well, who cares, more scars to impress Marina with. She had this thing for scars.<p>

The craft shook briefly in turbulence. We were currently the only ones on board other than Zekalwe, the crack pilot who I had only seen get shot. Fortunately we were going up to the _Inconvenience_ to be deployed somewhere else when needed. That meant that I was going to have at least a couple of days to rest and do absolutely nothing whatsoever. Or, you know, have sex with my girlfriend. Yeah, living the life.

The craft shook once more, this time in the familiar shaking that told me we were leaving the atmosphere of Concordia. The small window on the back of the pelican switched from the dark blue sky of upper atmosphere and switched to the deep black of outer space. It actually happened rather quickly, it never ceased to surprise me how quickly the sky switched colors. Or the fact that one moment you're firmly planted to your seat and then you were floating. Literally floating.

"That's all folks, thank you for flying with UNSC air," Zekalwe said as soon as we arrived to the _Inconvenience._

We thanked our pilot after he told us we could cash in our miles at the nearest station, forcing the joke and completely killing it. We hopped off into the hangar after it was pressurized and headed towards our sleeping quarters. This time we would go straight to our respective bunks and would actually use them for sleeping.

"Pavel!" someone shouted.

Well, at least _I _would use it for sleeping. Who knows, maybe I'd be force to actually sleep outside if Pavel insisted on taking the room.

"Hi Frank," Chloe said.

"Chloe," I acknowledged.

"Frankie, see you later, you can take the room."

_Thank God._

"Thank God," I said.

Pavel was already leaving and Delacroix was playfully punching him in the shoulder for being so obvious about them getting laid. It couldn't have been any more obvious, but Pavel could've been slightly more subtle. Just saying. Well, regardless, I headed back toward my room, duffel bag slung over my shoulder while some techie got to bring me my armor and weapons in a couple of minutes. I wouldn't answer and he'd be forced to leave it outside my room. Then I'd probably give him shit for it, just for kicks you know. I opened my door, took in the beautiful sight of my cramped room for six and fell my shoulders relax. I was actually glad that Marina wasn't here right now, I all I wanted to do right now was rest for a long time. For once, I actually got to do it.

When I woke up, there was a sense of peace all around me. It wasn't only physical, I actually felt good mentally, and even spiritually, like something great had happened. Call me corny or something, but I actually felt the 'good vibes' as soon as I woke up. There wasn't any fresh pot in my system, so I was good on that. For a moment I was worried on account on how good I felt. Eventually I confirmed that I was alive and still on board the _Inconvenience_ and decided to take a shower. I cut it just short of five minutes and now I not only felt good, I also felt fresh. The only way I figured I could solve that was by running half a marathon or something. Well, half a marathon is a stretch, but with my super strong leg muscles, my lungs didn't need as much air and neither did my heart, so I could run a good fifteen kilometers daily with almost no repercussions other than the hour and a half afterwards during which I felt like shit.

I headed towards the gym and was not that surprised to find it empty. All or most of the infantry people guys were planetside while the navy boys and girls were probably having good long naps while they waited for the last covvie ships to be attacked en masse. Or well, you know, relieving each other's tension. There were a lot of attractive women on board this ship that weren't army or marines, so the navy men had it good. I was halfway to the gym when I heard feet stomping. I saw a man dressed in a navy uniform running towards me.

"Whoa, what's the rush?" I asked.

"We won, we fucking won!"

"What?"  
>I've got to tell Kelly," was the last thing I heard from the guy before he turned the corner.<p>

"We won?" I wondered out loud.

I placed my hand on my chin, which was already sporting some stubble and hummed to myself. More like hmmmed, but you get the point. After about ten seconds of holding that pose I sighed and stretched my arms.

"Yes Eliza, I am talking to you," I said.

"Yes Staff Sergeant?"

"That guy over there…"  
>"Ensign Pike," she interrupted.<p>

"… was yelling that we'd won. Did we by any chance actually win against the Covenant?"  
>"Technically, this was isn't over."<br>"Eliza," I growled.

"Yes, their last three warships have been destroyed and the remaining ground forces were encircled and are currently being heavily bombarded. Reserve troops are already being called back to their respective ships and civilians are starting to return from the shelters already. There is now only two battalion-strength Covenant units still active, and their numbers are decreasing rapidly."  
>"We won."<br>"Yes Frank, that's what I just said."  
>"Thanks Eliza," I said. "When is the rest of our complement getting here?" I asked.<p>

"Around two hours."  
>"Bummer."<br>Well, at least I had some time to kill, so I walked to the gym and did a few kilometers before heading back to my room for yet another shower. Once I was done I wondered whether it was actually worth it to get dressed up or if I should simply go to bed and sleep for a day.

"Frank!"  
>"Yes Pavel?" I asked.<p>

"We won!"  
>"Yes."<br>"No, you don't get it, we WON!"

Yes, comma, I know."  
>"Oh," he said.<p>

Pavel scratched his head for a second, obviously angered that I had found out before him or that he didn't get to break the good news to me.

"Well, if this was the good old days we'd have a drinking contest and a frat party," he said. "I guess we'll have to settle for some stolen liquor."

"Agreed," I said as I approached one of the empty closets and opened it to reveal several crates. I grabbed the one on top and produced a new bottle and produced a '79 Colbert. I don't really know what that meant, but the thing was good as fuck and I could sell it for about a thousand creds if I wanted to. A crate of these babies had helped me buy my second shoulder pad. They had also helped me forget. Seriously, they had. War is hell, but right now, I didn't care.

"To victory," Pavel said after filling a tin glass with the liquor.

"To being alive," I said.

"Ain't that right."

Having said that we both poured the alcohol down our throats. I was already reaching for the bottle to get another shot of the strong Colbert. I'm not entirely sure what it was, where it was from, or anything else about the drink other than it made me feel warm and fuzzy inside.

A bottle of 80% alcohol liquor later and several attempts at teaching Pavel how to throw a knife without stabbing himself in the foot, I was smiling on my bed, the ceiling was moving side to side, but I didn't care. I felt like I was being rocked side to side on a boat, but I didn't care. Pavel was groaning in the bathroom at just having thrown up for the sixth time. I smiled and wondered where Marina was right now, I clearly remembered something about a rain check and I planned on making her cash it. Very thoroughly.

As I realized that nothing other than my drunkenness was stopping me from going to find my girlfriend, I stood up from my bunk. I let the dizziness subside and then I walked out of the room after telling Pavel my intentions. He only retched in return. Now that I was right outside of my room, I faced my first dilemma, whether I should go to Marina's quarters or try to find her in her pelican. I decided that I had a better chance of finding her at her quarters, besides, if she was there we would probably end up heading towards the craft to achieve some sense of privacy.

I made my way through the hallways of the ship while managing to keep walking in a straight line and not give away any sign of my inebriation, I was dangerously good at that, I had even memorized the alphabet backwards just in case. Well, the point is that I finally made my way across the ship and to the female sleeping quarters. It was surprisingly crowded in the hallways and I even spotted a few people sneaking in and out of bedrooms, I don't know whether it was for the obvious or if some of those rooms had several illegal items such as drugs or alcohol, there was about a fifty-fifty chance. Finally, I was standing in front of Marina's door.

I knocked.

"Who is it?" a familiar voice asked.

"Frank."  
>"Marina!"<br>A couple of seconds later a tired, but happy-looking Marina emerged from her room. Surprisingly, she was wearing a regular pilot uniform instead of her usual tank top.

"What's the occasion?" I asked.

"My roommate keeps borrowing my undershirts," she said.

"You mean shirts, you barely ever put something on top of them," I reminded her. "Or below for that matter," I added.

"Hey," she said as she punched me in the shoulder. It was that playful, flirty punch that women in general seemed to love. It also hurt more than a playful, flirty punch should have.

"Let's go someplace quiet," I said.

"Oh, I have a place in mind," she joked. There was only one place we could go.

I smiled at her and offered her my arm, then she placed her own under mine and we headed towards the hangar bay.

Victory, alcohol, love, and even adult only time. For a time I was genuinely happy.

* * *

><p><em>Hey, I want to apologize for any and all grammar and spelling mistakes in this chapter. I only gave it a quick once-over before posting it here. Also, hope you don't mind too much me taking so long to update. Anyways, hope you enjoyed.<em>

_-casquis_


	54. Patrol

Chapter LIV: Patrol

**January 1, 2542 (UNSC Calendar)/four months later**

**UNSC **_**Inconvenience, **_**Eta Cassopie System**

There was a wave of heat all over my skin for a few instants. That was one of the many things that woke me up form my deep slumber. I was instantly pissed. I had been in the same mood a month ago when I was told that we were going to be leaving Reach before New Year's and had entered my fridge in that same mood. Now, I was pissed as hell at having missed the countdown. Don't get me wrong, I had missed it a couple of times before, but it was usually because I was getting shot at or something. This time we were just being sent to bolster the defense fleet of Eta Cassopie. Yeah, one of the ships that was in the small fleet that defended the system had managed to overheat their reactors and melt half the ship or something like that. Half of the crew died instantly and the rest would die soon after due to radiation poisoning.

As I recalled the reason I was here for my anger subsided and was instead replaced with frustration, a couple hundred brave men and women had died in a freaking _accident._ An accident. They could've died fighting against the enemy, they could've been heroes, legends almost, now they were simply victims of a stupid accident. Life isn't fair.

I groaned as I pushed myself up from the cryo tube and tested my limbs experimentally. Theoretically, my body felt like it had only been out for a couple of seconds, but I knew that I had been in cryo for about a month, so my natural reaction was to test myself, much like you do when you're playing a sport that you haven't played in a couple of years. You take it easy. I put my shirt on fist just to piss off the girls in the cryo bay with me. They liked to pretend that they weren't bothered with us guys being naked, and we liked to pretend that we weren't enjoying every second of the sexual tension, but oh well.

What can I say? It actually gets boring after a while, besides, most of the girls here I saw as fellow soldiers, as comrades, as sisters-in-arms if you will. It's very hard to think of them in a sexual way when you've been through hell and back with some of them. Well, for most of us.

"It sure is cold in here? Isn't it Collins?" one marine asked.

"Oh fuck off," one of the female marines replied while turning around to put on her bra and shirt. I swear that I could see a smile on her face, but couldn't confirm it. You see, us guys have an easier time in this type of situations because most of them have lived them before in the locker room or someplace similar. We're comfortable being naked around each other as long as we're all naked and it's only for a brief period of time. Ok, perhaps this is a poor choice of words, but it's the truth. Again, could've picked a better way of saying this, but I think you understand me.

On the other hand, girls are not as comfortable around each other in the same context (much to us men's chagrin), so they find this situation awkward. The fact that there are men with them doesn't really help them either.

Now feel free not to take any of this seriously, I'm pretty sure I have no idea what I'm talking about, but Marina probably does, I'll have to ask her sometimes. Ok, back to the story.

I finally put on my (black) underwear and my (black) camouflage pants. They were the standard outfit that I used whenever I was on duty but not on combat. They were surprisingly comfortable and the uniform actually remembered people of what I was. A Helljumper. And a pretty damn good one at that. Sometimes I thought that the all-blacks were kind of getting old, but then I saw myself in a mirror and had to admit that they were pretty damn intimidating. The whole ODST armor and equipment had been designed to function superbly _and_ to look intimidating to other human beings. A lot of good it did us.

I stretched for one last time and left the cryo bay. Pavel was on another of the large rooms filled with sleeper pods, so I'd catch up with him later, it would be difficult to do so while there were a few hundreds of people moving out of the same general area and to their positions or whatever place they had to go to.

"Frank!"  
>Or not.<p>

"Pavel, how was your nap?" I asked my friend as he elbowed his way to me.

"Ok, I guess," he said.

I smiled at the big guy and shook his hand as if I hadn't seen him for a long time. Well, technically, I hadn't, but my memory told me that he had been patting me in the back and wishing me a good nap about fifteen minutes ago. Yeah, technology can be funny like that sometimes. I looked around to see if I spotted someone else that was familiar, say, Marina for example. Truth be told, my only friend in the world, sorry, universe, was Pavel, perhaps Nezarian could be considered a friend as well, but I think that would be stretching it a little bit.

Funny huh? Being almost twenty-seven years old, having lived through hell with most of the men around here, having saved their lives more times that they could count, having received the same treatment from them. It was really saying something to that I was a seven-year veteran and only had one friend and a girlfriend. Sad, but that's the way life is. Cruel and unusual.

"So, why did you elbow your way here when our room is that way?" I asked.

"You make a fine point young Mr. Castillo."  
>"I'm older than you Pavel," I reminded him.<p>

"Sometimes I forget."

I punched him lightly on the shoulder. Well, lightly made him wince and put his arm to sleep for a while. Don't worry, I had intended to do that, it wasn't me being unable to control my strength.

We walked to our room while making our way through sheer use of force and intimidating our fellow comrades-in-arms to make our way through. While we did so we resumed our month-old conversation regarding the pleasures of watching someone getting the crap being beaten out of them. Pavel argued that it was fun to watch anyone who wasn't a friend get beat up, I said that it was only funny if the guy was either a friend or a douche. It was actually a very civilized discussion with both of us taking out time to expose our points and listen carefully to the other.

Yeah right.

"… so you're saying that if this guy in a bar is getting the crap beat out of him, you wouldn't think it was funny?"  
>"Not unless he was s douche! I said that already. Why would you…"<br>"Oh come on, you can't seriously think that…"  
>"You keep making the same point, and it's stupid."<br>"You're stupid."

"You're mom's stupid," I said, sinking to a new low but only succeeding in angering Pavel, which made my winning more likely.

"Ok, first of all, my mother is a brilliant woman, second, you have no idea of what the concept of fun is, you are very narrow minded when it comes to bein-"  
>"Oh, for god's sake, now you're using the same expressions I was using a couple of minutes ago!"<br>"Oh, I didn't know that they were trademarked," he stated.

"Well they are," I said. "Anyways, you say I'm narrow-minded, I say you're a psychopath."  
>"Who's a psychopath?" Pavel asked angrily.<p>

"Who's a psychopath?" another voice asked.

We both turned to look at a smiling Lieutenant Chloe Delacroix. She was surprised by our angry scowls and went from smiling to shocked to intimidated to blushing to looking at the floor in just a couple of seconds. Yes, that's the XO of a very prestigious army company of a very prestigious army unit that was well known in a rather large military. That's leadership in the UNSC for you folks.

"Well, Pavel thinks that it is fun to get to see random people being beat up, no matter if they're nice or not," I said. "Or if you know them or not."  
>Chloe, who was a girly girl outwardly, except for that leather boots incident back in that empty tent, switched from looking intimidated to angry shocked. "How can you even <em>think<em> that?" she asked my friend.

"See you around," I whispered in his ear as I patted him on the back. Delacroix was already getting wounded up and releasing a speech on integrity and ethics. Or something along those lines.

I smiled to myself at the little mischief that I had caused and was tempted to put my hands on the back on my head before I reminded myself that only anime characters did that. I did that anyway, but promptly put them down as I turned a corner and a group of cute marines were walking in my direction. They were obviously also having a very girly conversation, as they stopped their giggling and did their best to look professional as they walked next to me. I even pushed my chest out a little as well. Humans are weird.

"Staff Sergeant," a dreaded voice said.

"Yes lieutenant?" I asked as I turned to face Krikor Darbinian. The man looked like he had just been to a hair saloon, his hair looked rather awesome for a guy that had it cropped so short and had just spent some time sleeping to boot.

"Were the hell do you think you're headed?" he asked.

"Over there," I pointed in the direction I was walking.

"Are you being a smartass now." It wasn't a question.

"Well, sir, you asked and I answered."  
>Might as well have yelled 'yes' in his mysteriously tanned face.<p>

"Listen Castillo, if you think for just a moment that you can be all…"  
>"Lieutenant Darbinian, you are requested in Company HQ," Eliza said through the intercom. She just loved to do that instead of simply telling the man directly.<p>

"This isn't over," Darbinian growled at me.

I saluted professionally as he left, only angering him even more.

The lieutenant left after some appropriate fuming and muttering about my parenthood and heritage. You know, usual leadership stuff. I turned around and decided that I wasn't in the mood for anything physical so I decided against going to Marina's room or the ever-present time killer, the ship's gymnasium. I finally settled on going to my room and accessing the basics of our mission here through the room datapad. I used to have my very own, but I lost it back when we were boarded, hadn't found the time to get a new one, besides, I could use Pavel's for the dirty stuff, not like he would mind. Or realize that some of the search items weren't his. You should've seen the browser history of this guy, I didn't know whether to feel proud or disgusted at him. Well, whatever right?

There were still a few marines and soldiers here and there. B Company would be deployed groundside like the usual, Echo company would remain here, ready to jump into the pelicans at moment's notice. By pelicans I mean escape pods. No one is ready to go to combat at moment's notice unless you _are _in a combat situation. Why would you feel the need to be prepared to face death? I think its easier to enjoy your free time while you can and get used to the idea of combat as soon as it comes up, no sense in being jittery all the time, I've seen soldiers like that, not pretty, they usually end up killing themselves.

I arrived to my room and found it exactly like I had left it. Bed was still undone, the door to the bathroom was slightly open, the closet with all the booze and stolen goods was secured with an expensive Titanium-A combination lock. Pavel's favorite white-with-hearts undies were still on top of his desk. Had I not known that this room hadn't been touched by anyone or anything for little over a month. In a way it was creepy, but it felt like home. A dusty home. After I was done shaking my bed sheets and checking that everything was still in place I went for the datapad. Pavel's was on top of his desk, but the UNSC-issue datapad that came with the room was placed on a small shelf designed specifically for it. Navy architects/engineers thought of absolutely everything. There was even a couple of robots that could help with rehabilitation and even give massages to marines, soldiers, and squabbies that had a legitimate medical excuse for it.

I grabbed the screen and jumped on my bed. Well, I didn't really jump because then I would've hit my head, but you surely know what I mean. The mattress was what you'd expect from a military-issue mattress, but with time and some vigorous beatings (not that kind, you perverts) the thing had been molded and softened enough to feel like you were sleeping on dirt instead of concrete. It was durable, I'll give it that, I'd once used one of the spare ones to do some punching practice without bandages or gloves, got bruised knuckles for my trouble.

I opened up my datapad, it's transparent glass screen turning opaque and showing the UNSC _Inconvenience_ official page. The datapad showed a very nicely designed webpage of the ship. It contained an image of our frigate along with its name and designation. Then there was a rectangle for placing your thumb on, that way you would be able to log in and access the more vital or confidential information. It was actually weird how the military took the time to design an elaborate webpage with lots of flashy colors and animations. I respect them for that.

I rolled my eyes at the history and past assignments sections of the webpage, while I simply ignored the commendations section completely. I went directly to the one that said 'current assignment.' I lightly tapped the datapad and it immediately took me to a different page. It had our mission parameters written out on it in plain text, it only made it look more boring.

_The UNSC _Inconvenience_ has been temporarily assigned to reinforce the Eta Cassopie Defense Fleet after the loss of one of their own ships (see file ECSDF-927493/12). The ship will participate in regular defense duties including patrols and if needed, defense duties…_

Yeah, it was all so very dull, a ship had blown itself up and we would have to fill in for it. Don't get me wrong, I appreciated the rest period that came along with it, but soon I would be picking at my eyes in order to have something to do. I hadn't bought any new sim games last time I was on Reach or any major port. Now I would be reduced to bulking myself up to bodybuilder levels and look like a freak or simply have to find something interesting to do.

Then just like that, a light bulb lit on top of my head.

"Aha!" I said triumphantly. "Reading."  
>Yes, it's a little sad that it wasn't one of my first thoughts for killing time. I grabbed the datapad again and went to the entertainment page that the UNSC provided to its soldiers. There were different sections for films, series, and books or comics. I clicked on the last one. Normally, I would've clicked on the movies section, but those things discount some cash from your salary. The UNSC writes that part in small print. Small font, that is.<p>

For some reason, books were free. I wasn't entirely sure why, but it was a good thing. Besides, they took about a second to download while a movie took a couple of minutes. I wish that we had better connection from the ship's HD to our pads. Having to wait a whole minute for something that you paid for (without knowing) is frustrating, to say the least.

I skimmed through the list of books, finally settling on the war thrillers. I skipped right through the sci-fi section. I did it mostly because I had read some old books, like half a millennium old, and found out that we were technically living in their idea of a sci-fi world. Can you imagine? They didn't even have bases on Mars back then. Hell, even Luna was uninhabited. Back then we were just like cavemen. Technology is wonderful, thank God for that.

Once I read a few of the titles of the war books I decided to go for the highest-rated novels. I had read three out of the five books in the Top-5 list, so I only had two more of those to go. I clicked on them and downloaded the entire volumes into my little screen. I relaxed a little and leaned back on my bed. I used Pavel's pillow to prop myself slightly up and started reading my first book. I hoped it would be enjoyable, otherwise, it could shape up to be an incredibly dull assignment until we were replaced by a new, non-specialized vessel.

The book started out nice enough for me to burn through about two hours. I stopped when I realized I was already about a tenth into it. Not that there was anything wrong with finishing a book quickly, but there is a certain issue about finishing it too quickly and then having nothing else to read. The gigantic catalog of written fiction seemingly did aboslutely nothing to stir my brain to keep reading, so I decided for a shower. Nothing bad with a good long shower right?

I got three minutes of hot water before the ship's AI cut off my suply and let me wash away the shampoo with Pavel's towel. He'd get mad at me if he arrived before it dried of or evaporated or did whatever shampoo was supposed to do. I finished drying myself off with my own towel and puto n the same clothes that I had been wearing. Now I was out of stuff to do. I wondered if it would be better to grab my knife and do some juggling practice or if I should do pushups. I immediatelly eliminated the latter because I wasn't in the mood for excercise, as I previously mentioned.

I juggled for a while before I got bored and changed activities. Soon enough I was immersed in the adventures of Mikah Welsh, ONI spook as he tried his best to stop a war between a fictional UNSC and an even more fictional URF that rivaled the covenant in terms of manpower, technology, and weaponry. It was depressing t oread, but at least it was better than reading about utopian societies ruled by superpowerful AIs with benign tendencies and stuff like that. The concept of a utopia was even more depressing, probably more than I could handle.

I sighed deeply and shook my head as I willed myself to keep reading.

Life is shit, life is boring, life is dull.

* * *

><p><em>Hey guys, hope you enjoyed it. Sorry for the short chapter. <em>

_Leave reviews!_

_-casquis_


	55. Not So Dull

Chapter LV: (Not So) Dull

**February 20, 2542 (UNSC Calendar)/one month later**

**UNSC **_**Inconvenience**_**, in orbit over Aztlan, Eta Cassopie System**

Yeah, turns out that a month doing pretty much nothing but reading, sleeping, loitering, working out occasionally, and the occasional sex is really something that the guy up there designed to torture us mortals. Well, save for the sex, that part was pretty great. Sex is pretty much great in every situation. Every situation that involves consent from both involved parties.

Yeah, boring month with occasional stints that gave me hope and a reason not to put myself in cryo to be awakened upon emergency, although that was technically against regulations. Then again, so was sex or any kind of relationship between servicemen. How do I keep returning to the sex part?

Then, just when I was starting to wish for a reasonably sized Covenant fleet to show up in the system and start ransacking some stations or habitats, a Covenant fleet showed up on the system. Unfortunately, it wasn't reasonably sized. Well, in a way it was, but since the Eta Cassopie Defense Fleet was about equal in size to the enemy group of ships that had decided to jump into our system. Yup.

I'd have to start wishing for large numbers of sexually open beautiful women to start popping up into my life every now and then. Of course, I'd also have to throw in the occasional wish for Marina to become more sexually open herself. I had to stop myself before I made up to many distracting mental images. Nah, too late.

"So what now?" Pavel asked me.

"Nothing yet," I replied, washing away the improper images from my mind. "Right now the only thin we can do is get our armored boots and put all of our gear someplace within easy reach," I said in a grandfatherly tone.

"Ok, I know that."  
>"I know you know that, that's why I keep saying it."<br>Pavel threw me something that might or might have not been a codpiece. I skillfully turned my head around so that it hit me in the head instead of the face. I was partially successful as the metallic item connected with my jaw.

"Ouch!" I said. I meant it.

"Sissy," he said.

I rubbed my jaw for a little bit and then threw him my shoulder plate. Pavel managed to put his hand up to protect his face, the protective plate hit him in the forearm and might've hurt him. Pavel, as s true male didn't show any pain whatsoever. I laughed and he tossed me back my shoulder plate. It probably wasn't healthy to throw metallic objects at the man that was supposed to have your back during combat. We're weird like that.

I was now dressed up in my "combat" pants and my armored boots. I had my ODST t-shirt. My combat shirt was neatly positioned next to the rest of my armor in case that I had to quickly put it on. Otherwise I only had my battle rifle slung over my back and my trusty pistol strapped to my thigh. We were ready to kick some serious alien ass (for a brief period of time as opposed to a long battle) at moment's notice. The alarms were already blaring for us marines to get set. Right now our orders were pretty much to run to the escape pods and wait for the evacuation order. Me and Pavel, on the other hand, would instead remain with the captain on the bridge until the abandon ship order came. Once that happened, we would take a quick trip to the pod bays. You know the rest.

"Six cruisers, two CPV-class heavy destroyers, and ten frigates," one bridge crewmember was announcing.

"Damn," an unfamiliar voice muttered.

I turned the corner and saw a thin man's face projected on a screen. Judging by the number of stars and stripes on his shoulders and his big hat, I'd have guessed he was the admiral of this defense fleet.

"Very well then," the man continued. "No hope in evacuating those civilians then?" he asked.

"Not with those three corvettes hanging back, sir," Brooks replied.

"Very well then. Order for general evacuation of the population and ask for volunteers, you know, the usual," he ordered.

"Already on it admiral," another man replied from a different screen, he was wearing Army BDU's.

"Good…"

There were a few moments of silence as the crews of twenty-two different ships waited for orders.

"Assume defense pattern seventeen, twenty kilometer spread between our ships, single file. We'll reposition as soon as we know where they intend to land," the admiral said with an authoritative voice. "Send a couple of slipspace probe-messages to Reach, Psi Serpentis, and Sigma Octanus."

"Roger that, sir," another man answered from yet another screen.

"Clancy, start mining the space in front of us with nuclear mines. Then get the hell out of here."

"Of course admiral."

That must've been the captain of the ONI prowler assigned to our battle group, those guys were supposed to be the best when it came to maneuvering and stealth. Never really had the pleasure to meet one. The guy would plant some mines and those would be repositioned if necessary. The little cubes of death were invisible against the cold vacuum of space and nothing other than a good old Mark-I eyeball visual scan would be able to spot it. Those things would probably take out three of the Covenant ships while the MAC barrage would take care of perhaps another two with weakened shields. Then the real battle would begin.

"Very well, good luck gentlemen," the admiral said tiredly and his image flickered out of the screen, replaced instead by a UNSC logo before the screen disappeared into the floor.

"You heard the admiral, position the ship lieutenant," Brooks ordered.

"Yessir," the ship's human pilot replied. Right now Eliza would be very busy preparing all of the systems for a battle and triple-checking every single IFF tag four times. That makes twelve times total, kids.

"Are the slipspace probes away?" Brooks asked.

"Yes," some random sailor said. "Now every single UNSC ship in Sector Three will be definitely alerted to the covvies presence her, sir. In about a week."

"Well, we might not have a week," Brooks muttered.

It was true, usually, naval engagements lasted about ten minutes before whatever fleet was loosing broke off. Unless, of course, one of the fleets was defending an important point, say, a planet perhaps. Whenever that happened, whichever side was losing (usually us) retreated to the far side of the planet. Then it became some sort of chess game on a cosmic scale, with the remainder of both fleets trying to encircle and surround each other to deliver the final blow. That usually lasted a little bit longer since the survivors were busy tending to their wounds, repairing themselves, calling for backup, and deploying an invasion army. You know, typical galactic-scale war stuff.

"Castillo, Klaus," Brooks snapped suddenly. "You two might wish to get the rest of your armor on."  
>"I was just about to ask for your permission, sir," Pavel said with a smile.<p>

We headed back to our room and put on our battle clothes. They were technically the same as regular fatigues only that they had some sort of weaving that dissipated heat effectively. Effectively my ass. I had gotten second-degree burns from a plasma pistol shot that flew five inches from my arm or leg. I hated to think what would've happened to my skin without those clothes.

Well, the undersuit went first, and immediately after I put on my urban camouflage pants and shirt. Those were the ones that contained the heat-dissipating weave. Then went the rest of my armor. I double checked my armor twice and made sure that it was ready to be sealed at moment's notice. If there was a hull breach there was a chance that I'd survive in vacuum for a few minutes until someone came to pick me up. It had happened before. I could use my pistol or rifle to maneuver as well.

Let's just hope it didn't come to that.

We made our way back to the bridge, now fully armed and armored. There was a sensation of power that came with being clad in the (third) best armor that humanity had to offer. The sensation that was boosted by the looks of cautious fear and grudging respect that other servicemen gave you whenever they saw you walking by. The looks of relief and sometimes even hope when you were sent to provide to support. I liked to think that those looks and thoughts were directed at us for a reason, because we had deserved them over and over again.

"Captain," I said as soon as we were back in the bridge.

"Staff Sergeant, " he said. "You might want to start heading to your pods soon."  
>"We'll wait on you captain," Pavel said with a nod.<p>

"Very well, let's begin."

As I said before, space combat is something extremely weird compared to those old naval and aerial battles. For starters, there's no friction, so the ships can bank pretty much as hard as they want. Second of all, there's no noise, so you can only hear the vibrations in the hull and try to gleam some information from them. Thirdly, you are inside a metal box with no windows, so you are pretty much blind to everything going around you, that is frustrating. It is doubly frustrating because the events surrounding the metal coffin you are on board actually do influence the outcome of your life. The best I can compare it to is a game of russian roulette with three bullets in the gun. Not that I would know anything about that.

The captain visibly tensed in the command chair as the battle begun. Our MACs had longer range than their standard energy projectors and plasma torpedoes, so we fired first. The _Inconvenience_ shook twice in quick succession as its modified cannon fired two ferric-tungsten with a deployed uranium core slugs weighting about 600 tons each at the closest destroyer. The first shot took out perhaps 70% of the destroyer's shields, the second took out the remaining energy and crushed the front of the ship. I only knew that because the crewmembers called out the results as soon as the slugs impacted the enemy ship. Seconds later a bunch of Archer missiles flew at the shieldless craft while the MAC received enough energy for a second shot.

"Two torpedoes headed in our direction," someone announced calmly.

"Us or the _Kiss_ _This_?" Brooks asked.

"Too soon to know… looks like one for each."  
>"Very well, use emergency thrusters to avoid a direct hit, looks like we'll have to take the blast."<br>"Roger that, sir."  
>"Eliza, shut down and evacuate all starboard sections, and collapse the PDGs."<br>"Right away captain," the AI responded.

"Boost when the plasma torpedo is a kilometer away."

With my rudimentary knowledge of space battles, I knew that that was pushing it. One kilometer was only the equivalent of the length of two UNSC frigates, slightly less. If the _Inconvenience_ used its thrusters a millisecond too late, we would be directly impacted and the most likely outcome would be that a large portion of the ship would be instantly vaporized and the rest would simply serve as an immobile target for the energy projectors. Hell, they could even send jackal rangers at us just for the hell of it.

"Now," the pilot said calmly.

I heard vague noises that reminded me of the pelican engines and knew that the emergency thrusters had been activated, instants later I felt vibrations all around me and the temperature went up by at least a couple of degrees.

"Plasma torpedo detonated one hundred and sixteen meters off the starboard engine. The plating is mostly melted and the adjoining sections are heavily damaged. One casualty, the ship can is still operational," Eliza informed.

"Good, get me a firing solution for that destroyer," Brooks muttered.

"On it," Eliza said. She would probably be done in five seconds, that was saying a lot, AIs can do millions of calculations per second, that she actually had to take the time to account for all the variables. That was done by humans with relatively rudimentary computers just a few years ago. God, technology is awesome.

"MAC is at 98 percent and ready to fire," someone announced.

"Eliza?"  
>The ship shifted a little before it let off a single shot. I only knew that it moved because the exterior cameras switched the view a little. I gripped my pistol as I waited for the enormous shell to impact the enemy ship. For a piece of metal moving at about a quarter of the speed of light, it certainly took its time.<p>

"Impact. Enemy destroyer damaged," Eliza announced. "Two other MACs have hit the destroyer, it is out of the fight."  
>"Well done gentlemen," Brooks applauded. "On to the next one."<p>

The battle went on like that for a couple of minutes. We hit a cruiser along with three other destroyers, forcing it to retreat before it blasted two of those destroyers out of the sky (ahem, space). By the time we were done, one destroyer was gone and so were four cruisers. That was a grand total of five shielded craft. For us it had been slightly worse. Six destroyers as well as a frigate had been destroyed. Most of the other ships had received damage ranging from moderate to heavy. We would probably not survive another full-on encounter.

"Captain, the corvettes are closing in."  
>"Admiral-" Brooks started.<br>"We got them," the admiral said. "Brooks, prepare your ship for delaying action, evacuate your ground troops immediately. Santiago, take your flotilla and accompany the _Inconvenience_. Stop those corvettes."

"On it admiral." The voice that belonged to Santiago replied through the comm network.

The admiral flickered out and the ship started moving again. Captain Santiago's flotilla was composed of two destroyers and three frigates of varying purposes. That made two destroyers and four frigates to face off against the corvettes. Six to ten. Normally, a Covenant corvette could be considered a middle point between a UNSC destroyer and a frigate. It was the smallest ship that the Covenant navy had in service and the only one that did not sport energy shields for protection. A confrontation between our own small ships against theirs was something that I could only compare to the sea battles of old on a cosmic scale.

"Eliza, deploy all turrets and redirect 14 percent of the MAC energy towards the guns and the Archer pods cooling system. Give the turrets 12 and the pods 2 percent."  
>"Understood captain," came the reply.<p>

"Staff Sergeant," the captain said, "abandon ship."  
>"Sir?"<br>"That's an order."  
>Even though I really wanted to, I wasn't going to complain. I'd really rather be stranded somewhere on the dense tropical jungles of Aztlan than being here standing like an idiot without the ability to do anything productive whatsoever.<p>

"Very well captain," I said. "Good luck."

Brooks nodded. "You have two minutes," he said. He meant that he would hold position in orbit for two minutes before he moved the ship to attack the corvettes. That meant that we had two minutes to sprint all the way down to the SOEIV bay and do the jump. That man loved to make us sweat.

Suddenly I found the walls flashing by and I was running as fast as I could (pre enhancements) towards the SOEIV pod. We would have just enough time to hop on those things before the captain decided that he needed to help out the rest of the flotilla taking on the corvettes. Pavel yelled incoherently just to piss me off and perhaps to get himself immersed in the action a little bit. I grabbed a corner and used it to hold on instead of having to stop completely and turn. I jumped a set of stairs and arrived on the SOEIV bay safe and sound with approximately twenty seconds to spare. I looked around and found a couple of pre-loaded magazines and boxes of ammunition that were kept in there at all times. They had moved a small portion of the armory down here expressly for Pavel and myself to make use of whenever we needed to.

I was already loaded up on ammunition, but not what you would call 'fully loaded', I grabbed four extra magazines and shoved them into my assault webbing before I grabbed four grenades, two flashbangs and two fragmentation to add to the two of each that I already had. I jumped into my pod while juggling the four devices with absolutely no regard for safety at all. Pavel did the equivalent by grabbing an ammunition box magazine for his M247L and two frags in addition to a colored smoke grenade in case we needed to mark a location. I jumped on my pod and slammed on the emergency drop button a couple of times before the pod lurched into space.

The bay doors were already open, so I felt the lack of gravity immediately. For a second I wondered how the doors closed quickly enough after the pods left the ship to prevent everything in the bay from being sucked out into space.

Now that I was floating, I craned my neck backwards to see the Inconvenience drifting away after using its thrusters. Dozens of orange dots appeared on its side as archer missiles were fired at the corvettes. I could just make out the plasma and PDG fire in between the two lead craft of both navies before my pod started shaking as it broke atmosphere and I lost sight of the space battle.

Now, I shifted my head and holstered all my grenades to my webbing. I grabbed the two handles on each side of the pod and opened up a communicator with Pavel and a map that detailed all the positions of the UNSC forces in this side of the planet. Of course, we were about fifty kilometers off from the nearest position. Ships usually position themselves away from urban areas whenever a space battle takes place, that prevents any debris from falling on the cities they are supposed to protect. Ground troops are usually quartered in those cities because they are supposed to protect them as well. Makes sense.

I told Pavel to redirect his pod as much as possible in the direction of the nearest garrison. I pulled on hard on the rudder lever and suddenly the pod lurched and stabilized itself just in time for it to deploy its chute. I managed to tilt it sideways a little bit before it automatically faced the floor for the rockets to go off. My window hardened and polarized just as the pod started going through a bunch of branches. The metallic coffin stopped suddenly and I lurched forward from the sudden stop. My body was shaking hard from the impact, the jump had been a little bit rougher than usual.

I was about to open my door when the pod fell sideways, testament of how dangerously close I had been to digging my own grave with my SOEIV.

_Mental note: next time, it is probably worth walking a couple extra kilometers instead of risking a horrible death._

I grunted and opened the door. When it didn't fully open I kicked it and instead found myself pushing the pod away from the door. After about ten seconds I managed to push the pod away from a huge tree that had trapped the door. I climbed out of the pod and picked sat on its edge, looking around and taking in the landscape. I found myself staring at the densest, most stereotypical rainforest that I could imagine, complete with fancy colorful plants and animal noises.

"Pavel?" I asked.

"I'm good," came the reply through the helmet mike.

"Great, you're about a hundred meters off my position," I said.

"I know."  
>There was a couple of seconds of silence.<p>

"Well get here you idiot."  
>"Fine," he muttered, but after a couple of seconds his IFF tag started moving.<p>

Meanwhile, I started pulling out stuff that could be useful from my pod. I grabbed a couple of ration bars, some extra ammunition, flares, a mini-tent, water-purification tablets, and a rescue beacon. I then grabbed to straps from the back of my pod's back support and pulled. The armored backpack emerged and left a small quadrangular hole in the inside of the pod. I promptly shoved all of the supplies that I had gathered into the backpack and shouldered it.

"Frank."  
>"That's Staff Sergeant for you," I said.<p>

"Whatever."  
>"That's insubordination mister."<br>"Frank…"  
>"Yes, the closes UNSC garrison is forty-two kilometers away from our current position," I said. "Feel like running a marathon?"<br>"Or," Pavel suggested, "we could simply walk twelve kilometers until our helmet's transmitters are within range and ask them for pickup."  
>"Pavel, Pavel, Pavel, always taking the easy road… Good idea."<br>"I do my best," my squadmate replied.

Having said that we both took a deep breath and started making our way towards the nearest garrison. I started trying to download a map of the area into my helmet HUD, but the satellite reception in here was horrible. That, coupled with the interference from the battle going on in orbit was making progress rather slow, but I managed to get a steady stream. Soon enough I had a very detailed topographic map uploaded into my helmet. Sure, I could've used the standard UNSC military positions map for traveling, but I wanted to avoid any natural hazards on the way. A good way to avoid those is having a map that tells you the concentration of poisonous plants in certain areas, for God's sake, who even takes the time to measure that?

* * *

><p>An hour and a half later, twenty kilometers total and twelve in a straight line later, we found ourselves within radio range of the UNSC garrison. Our helmets were more than capable enough to send a signal strong enough to break through anything in between us and the UNSC base that wasn't a chunk of lead more than sixty meters wide, and since those are rare occurrences in nature, I decided that we were good.<p>

"Hello, anyone read me?" I asked.

There was the usual suspenseful static for a couple seconds before I got my response.

"This is First Company of the 1045th, identify yourself."  
>"Staff Sergeant Frank Castillo and Sergeant Pavel Klaus, ODSTs, we were just emergency-dropped a couple of hours ago from the <em>Inconvenience.<em>"

"Wait a moment," the radio operator said.

I waited a moment.

"Looks good, now, what can I help you with?" she asked.

"Well, for starters you could connect us with battlenet," I suggested. "And maybe send some transport to pick us up. We need to meet up with an ONI attaché or an ODST officer. You know, give ourselves a sense of purpose."  
>There was a chuckle on the other end of the line. "Ok Staff Sergeant, why don't you head here and we'll have a falcon gunship pick you up, should be there in about fifteen minutes."<br>"Thank you," I said.

"First Company out."  
>As she said that a waypoint appeared on my HUD and I sent it to Pavel so that he didn't feel left out or anything. We had another kilometer to go, which probably translated to about fifteen minutes of climbing through treacherous terrain and stabbing at spider's the size of your aunt's favorite cat with a combat knife repurposed as a machete. Yep, we were living the life.<p>

* * *

><p>Thirteen minutes of climbing through treacherous terrain and stabbing away at spider's the size of your aunt's favorite cat with a combat knife repurposed as a machete later, we found ourselves in what I could only describe as a small plateau of bare rock. We had been climbing upwards for the past hour, something that I hadn't failed to notice, but now I found myself standing at the edge of a cliff overlooking the vast tropical rainforest that engulfed about a third of Aztlan's western hemisphere. And that is only the western side of the moon-planet. The other side had equally vast rainforests.<p>

I heard the familiar roaring of a falcon's engines through the suddenly quiet jungle. Within a few moments I spotted the olive aircraft flying towards us. It reached the edge of the cliff and the pilot motioned for us to hop on the craft. As soon as we were on board I strapped myself to the seat and placed my rucksack between my legs after securing it under the seat.

"So how's the situation developing?" I asked.

"Navy is on the run, the Covenant have already started deploying landing forces."

He needn't have told me, because if I had just waited a few more minutes myself I could've seen the three purple corvettes making their way to the ground in the distance, flanking a cruiser.

"Shit."

* * *

><p><em>Hey guy that are actually taking the time to read this (by the way, thanks for that), my post chapter message for today is nothing other than... ANOTHER APOLOGY!<em>

_Yeah, I prided myself in being able to post one or even two chapters a day when I started writing this fic, back then I had lots of time in my hands and nothing else to spend it on, so I dedicated myself completely to this. Although I wish that the quality increased with the amount of time I spend writing each chapter, I am afraid that that has not been the case. In any way, I apologize (yet again) and thank you for reading this. Hope you enjoyed it._

_-casquis_


	56. Headquarters

_Hello dear readers, I know, I know, annoying foreword before the chapter, you probably want to get right to it (at least I hope so... *nervous chuckle*), so I'll make this quick. You know how I've repeatedly been apologizing for the length of time between updates and the quality of the chapters? Of course you do, every single chapter has a small paragraph of apologies. So what I wanted to tell you is... that I'm apologizing for the same shit again. _

_Enjoy._

_-casquis_

* * *

><p><span>Chapter LVI: Headquarters<span>

**February 20, 2542 (UNSC Calendar)/**

**First Company, 1045****th**** Battalion HQ, Aztlan, Eta Cassopie System**

"A lieutenant colonel?" I asked.

"Yes," our pilot replied. "We're currently what you could call battalion headquarters even though the rest of the 1045th is deployed elsewhere in the surrounding area."

"Hm, never heard of an instance where a company had a light colonel for a commander," Pavel said.

"Yeah," the army pilot huffed, "you can bet that the major wasn't glad about loosing command of his company."  
>"Weird arrangement," I commented.<p>

"Tell me about it, I was just fine with the major leading us."

I grunted in a noncommittal way so that the pilot wouldn't drag me into some sort of mutiny if it were to happen. Kidding. It's best not to get involved in affairs that do not involve oneself or someone directly related to yourself. That rule is golden when it comes to the military. It is right under "follow orders" and above "check your six."  
>The First Company's camp was something that I had never seen before. It was a bunch of tents dug into the jungle surrounding a small clearing that was used as a landing pad for the two falcon gunships and the single pelican that was currently available to the company. It gave the impression of being very crowded because everyone was so close to each other and the dense rainforest made it look like we were in a small room.<p>

We were met at the edge of the clearing by the battalion's command sergeant major; he was a tall man with a clean-shaven face and a professional appearance. Pretty much what you would expect of the man that represented all the NCO's in the battalion. What surprised me the most about him though, was the surprisingly well-kept BDUs he was currently wearing. Hell, his pants looked like they were holding a crease under all that armor. The man had no helmet and I could clearly see a long scar running through his scalp, there was some hair on his head, but it was kept short in true army fashion. They weren't called jarheads for nothing… ignore that, he was army, it's the marines who are jarheads.

"Sergeant Major Taylor," he introduced himself.

"Hey," I said. "Staff Sergeant Castillo."  
>"Sergeant Klaus," Pavel offered.<p>

The company staff sergeant nodded at us and gestured to follow him. We had to climb through a bunch of dense roots, but the foliage had been cleared when the soldiers set up here. Finally we reached the familiar design of a command tent. This one was located on a relatively wide area in between a bunch of trees. There was more than enough leaves and branches above it, but there was a camouflage net above it as well just in case. We entered the tent and found ourselves facing the same scene we did whenever we entered a command tent.

There were two people inside, one of them was a man sporting a cap with a golden oak leaf and the other was a woman sporting a cap with a silver oak leaf. They were both obviously imposing. Not in a physical way, mind me, but in that way that you are immediately intimidated by a superior officer. Those two soldiers were used to commanding men and used to receiving respect, it showed in their faces. Perhaps that was the intimidating part, they had your respect without even needing to earn it.

"Sir, ma'am," I said, Pavel remained silent while he let me do the talking.

"I'm Lieutenant Commander Corona and this is Major Afoa."

"Helljumper, can you tell me what the hell you are doing here?" the man asked.

"We jumped ship," I said. She knew that already.

"Yes, but why _here_?"

"Our ship was directly above this area," I helpfully suggested. I knew that it was probably best that I avoided being a smartass as much as possible, but whenever someone gives out vibes that (s)he doesn't like me, I can't really help it.

"I see," the lieutenant commander said with a commanding tone. She was about 5'8 and had her hair cut just above regulation length. It was tied in a ponytail that went through the hole in the back of her cap. She had what I would call olive skin, but it looked like shit from the countless hours that she had surely spent under this sun. Corona was perhaps in her mid-forties. All in all she could've been the mother of another college kid. For all I knew she could've been.

"And I assume that you expect my company to provide you with food, shelter, and equipment," the major said. He was a tall man, perhaps about Pavel's height. The major was a well-built man that also had dark skin and Polynesian features. I only deduced that because his name sounded Polynesian. He had an angry face and half his left ear was missing. Afoa looked like he could fit in a wanted poster no problem.

I took off my helmet before I answered his question. No doubt it made me look more human to them instead if simply an armored figure that though very highly of himself.

"It is only common courtesy major."  
>The man looked ready to clock me one in the jaw, but to his credit he kept himself under check and didn't even say anything about my dear mother or my heritage. Most men I met weren't this composed.<p>

"But don't worry," I continued. "The sooner you can link us through to a Marine officer or an ONI spook, the faster that we're out of here," I informed them with a smile.

"Yes, of course. Battlenet is a mess right now, but we'll get in touch with whoever you need as soon as possible," Corona said. "Then you can leave."  
>It didn't take a genius to make out that she did not want us in her camp. Afoa had pretty much said the phrase word by word himself.<p>

"Thanks ma'am, that is all I ask."

Pavel and I snapped to attention and gave a crisp salute that the officers lazily returned. We turned around and went past the sergeant major and left the tent without further ceremony.

"They were kind of mean," I said with fake sad tone.

"Frank, she is named after a beer, the most common beer on this side of the galaxy. She has the right to be angry at the world," Pavel said in a tone that a lecturing father would've used. Or lecturing uncle in my case, I barely remembered anything about my dad.

I laughed loudly and managed to quiet down when a few soldiers gave me nervous looks, as if they feared that a banshee patrol would come strafing the camp after hearing my laughter.

You see, I've got respect for the UNSC Army, trust me, I do, but in a way, they suck. I mean that in the nicest way possible, but sometimes they do. Most of the time Army units are simply volunteers with more training and equipment than colonial militia and no combat experience at all. Army units were usually based and operated in one same planet. Sometimes in two if the system had more than one colony. They were well trained and disciplined, but they still lacked combat experience. Sure, there were certain units that were assigned to Navy ships and functioned pretty much as a marine unit, but those were rare and not easily found.

I sighed and tried to wash those thoughts away from my mind. Instead I sat on a branch that had a surprisingly comfortable shape that fit my butt and back. Normally, I would've looked for the ever-present game of poker or of dice, but marines have a hard time accepting Helljumpers as it is, not to mention army types. It seemed like Pavel and I would simply have to talk about whatever direction we imagined this battle would take.

We knew for sure that the _Inconvenience_ was fine, it always was. You didn't even need to ask to know that. We also knew that there was a sizeable number of enemy troops already on the ground nearby, probably sent here because the covvies thought that they had seen a weak point in the loose cordon protecting the cities or simply because they decided that the weather would be nice in here. That meant jungle warfare, and I am not glad about jungle warfare, it is even worse than urban warfare. Ok, maybe that's a stretch, but it is still pretty bad.

"So?" I asked.

"Loose," Pavel said.

"Ever the cynic," I replied. "But I agree with you."  
>"Yeah, I say that we make it about three weeks or so before we retreat, say about 60% casualties for the Navy, 35% for the Corps, and maybe 80% for these guys."<br>"Ouch, that's a little bit steep isn't it?"

"Nah, it's simply true because by the time we retreat there won't be enough slipspace-capable ships to transport all the civilians and the soldiers. Their casualties are based on lack of transport more than lack of skill. Ours are based on being under overwhelming odds."  
>"Makes sense… I think. I say about 75% civvies dead."<br>"Yeah, probably around those numbers," Pavel agreed. "How many would that make?"  
>I did a quick operation in my brain.<p>

"Round twenty-two mill. Big colony," I said.

"Yeah, pretty big," my friend agreed.

We switched the topic to a less depressing one and had a decent conversation with a few laughs for about half an hour before a bored-looking private came to us and told us that there was a pelican inbound to pick us up. We thanked the man after our signature intimidation and headed towards the clearing.

I made sure that every piece of equipment that I had brought with me was still with me and only then did I shoulder my rucksack again. I didn't know whether I should be grateful that I had brought all the spare equipment or annoyed. I could just as easily have use for it as not. Right now I could only think that my rucksack was heavy and annoying to carry in the tight quarters of the dense jungle. Not even cities have spaces so enclosed. And this section of the jungle was cut down so that it could be turned into a camp. I had absolutely no desire to go in there again. Not that that would ever come true, I would most certainly have to fight in the jungle before I left this rock.

We sat at the edge of the clearing for a few minutes before a pelican arrived. It had the words "UNSC Marines" painted on its side in white paint over an olive coating that covered the entire craft. As soon as it started positioning itself to touch down in the little extra space in the clearing we started moving towards it. It touched down and the rear hatch opened. Two soldiers went inside and emerged carrying crates with no discernible markings on them, supplies of some sort. They did two more trips and emptied the pelican of the crates. By that time both Pavel and myself were sitting down and urging them to work harder while they glared at us.

The crew of the pelican happened to be two very attractive young ladies who made it their goal to make us feel as awkward as possible during the duration of our (thankfully) short trip through the use of double entendres.

"One of you man your turret," the copilot said. "Oops, I meant _the_ turret."

"I'll do it," Pavel told me.

"It's not loaded," the pilot said, "make sure the round slides right in smoothly."  
>I almost groaned. Pavel actually tripped on the way to the turret. One of the pilots must've been watching, because the next comment was pure gold.<br>"Easy there champ, don't go tripping over yourself with those big feet."  
>"Well, you know what they say about men with big feet…" her partner said.<br>"They need big shoes," I helpfully interrupted.

"Suuure, let's go with that," the copilot said.

After that, the copilot started asking me rapid-fire questions about myself , my ship, my mission and whatnot. Unprofessional as hell, I was beginning to think that both of them were stoned up to their balls. Metaphorically.

"Please," I snapped. "Stop pumping me for info," I regretted it the instant I said it.  
>"What? You want me to pump something else?" she asked bluntly.<p>

"Uhhh," was all I could come up with. Maybe they were actually stoned.

There was a moment of silence before the two pilots burst out laughing. They kept at it for a few moments before they attacked again.

"So, you, the big guy." I assumed they were talking to Pavel. He was slightly shorter but bulkier than me.

"Yeah?" he asked in an almost scared tone.

"You've got a big gun, is it easy to handle?"  
>"It's not that big," Pavel made the mistake of saying.<p>

"Oh, don't be so modest, it looks big from where I'm standing. Is it hard to handle?" she asked with a definite emphasis on the word hard.

"Well, sometimes," he started doubtfully.

_No, no, no! You idiot._

…the kickback is strong sometimes," he added.

_Actually, I think this might be good._

"And it sometimes sprays wildly…"

Only then did I realize what he was doing.

"How wildly?" one pilot asked.

"Well, all over the place," he said. "It's also powerful enough to make someone scream with just a couple of pulls." He waited a moment. "Of the trigger that is."  
>I tried really hard to hold back laughter, but Pavel wasn't finished.<p>

"But don't worry, we're trained for this, I can give any covvie a lethal blow," he said proudly.

"That's what she said," I helpfully suggested. And so it was that Pavel's long streak od double entendres was broken by himself. Talk about being hoist by your own petard.

The two pilots laughed but decided that they weren't done yet.

"So, a lethal blow to any covvie eh?" one of them asked. "Is it easier to do that from behind or in front?" she asked.

"Whichever's fine," Pavel said. There was no way out of that one.

The two pilots proceeded to torture my friend for a while before they finally calmed down a little after a fit of laughter almost caused the pelican to do a triple barrel roll or something like that, after that little incident the two airwomen were more careful with where their hands went. Ha, see what I did there.

"How much farther?" I asked.

"We're almost on top of the base," the pilot said.

"Yvonne, you always did like being on top," the copilot said.

This time there was no witty comeback and I could've bet money on the pilot blushing, but she wasn't facing me so I wasn't able to see her face. On the copilot's side, it had been a pretty sweet comment. After fifteen seconds the pilot spoke once more.

"We'll be landing soon, finally reached my private spot." Obligatory moment of awkward silence. "Parking spot that is."

After that none of them said anything else while the pilot maneuvered the craft and landed it neatly in between two other pelicans. It was a sweet landing I'll give her that, most pilots simply hover about two meters above the ground then simply turn of the craft. It gets annoying after a while. The rear hatch was open, so Pavel and I hopped off the ship while a mechanic rushed in past us.

"Oh, Yvonne, I'm glad you came," the mechanic started.

"Well, I'm glad I came too."

I laughed loudly at the comment but was secretly glad to never have to see those two women ever again in my entire life. Few people had the ability to make me feel nervous, and I'm pretty sure that none of them are petit women of about 5'3 each with oversized flightsuits and helmets.

"So, did we win?" Pavel asked.

"I don't know about myself, but you sure as hell lost," I informed him. "Giving a man a blow, what were you thinking?"

"Slip of the tongue."  
>"That doesn't make it any better," I said, trying to get him to notice what he had just said.<p>

"You're disgusting," he complained.

"Hey, there's this saying that goes: If you're hungry, you think about bread. It means, you think about what you want. I am rather unsure of how to act around you right now," I said, faking nervousness.

"Fuck. You."  
>"See, there it is again," I told Pavel.<p>

"You know what? I won't even answer that."

Before I could answer we got the usual escort to lead us to the headquarters. This camp was home to a whole marine battalion. There was a bunch of tanks and hornets in addition to warthogs. We were on a less dense part of the jungle since we were closer to some important city of sorts. The tanks would most likely take the role of artillery while the warthogs would simply serve as scouts like they usually did, but the hornets would take over the main role and fly recon missions. That is, provided this battle lasted long enough for a stable front to develop.

Our guide showed us inside the tent and then he left. Once we found ourselves inside I wasn't surprised at all to find myself facing none other than Lieutenant Williams. That guy seemed to be everywhere, besides, he was also creepy as fuck sometimes. He was standing in full armor with his helmet under his arm and an MA5 slung behind his back. I rarely ever saw that guy armored, so he surprised me even more by carrying a gun.

"Sir," I said acknowledging the colonel in command of the battalion, "Lieutenant."  
>"Staff Sergeant," the colonel said gruffly. He glanced at Wilkins. "I'll leave you three alone," he said as he left the tent.<p>

Suddenly, I was feeling very sweaty.

"Staff Sergeant, it's good to see you're alive," he told me. "You too Sergeant Klaus."

We nodded at him but said nothing.

"Have a sit, I just traveled across this damned rock only to meet with you two."  
>"That's… flattering… I think."<br>"Have a sit," he repeated."  
>We both sat down on some folding stools and the lieutenant did the same while giving us a long hard look. His rifle bumped against the back of his chair so he removed it and placed it on his lap. That man seriously scared me even more than Major Albaf. He had this psychotic look to him that made me want to turn away from him sometimes. Only sometimes though.<p>

"Well, as you already know, the planet is now under siege. Well, as close as it could be under siege. We are shipping civilians into cargo freighters as fast as possible, but we can't get them out of here without some sort of military escort or before we take out those corvettes and cruisers," he explained.

"Makes sense," Pavel gruffed.

"Right now we are dangerously overwhelmed by enemy numbers," he continued.

"We?" I asked.

"Sorry, I meant the Navy, you know, as in Office of _Naval_ Intelligence, the branch I work for. There's a big patch on my chest, you know?"

"Ok, what do you want us to do about it?" Pavel asked.

"Oh, about that? Nothing, the ground forces can handle that task well enough."

"Then?" I asked.

"We might need you on a different mission," he said. "Assassination."  
>"Assassination?" I asked. "We're not really cut for assassinations."<br>"I believe I recall a certain incident in… Creek. Paradiso was it?"

"He's made a fine point Frank, we did kick that mission's ass."  
>"Ok, who do you want us to take out?" I asked. I was annoyed at being sent to shoot humans when I could've been helping in the real war effort.<p>

"I don't think you could call it a who," Wilkins said.

I swear, my eyes lit up for a minute and I might have or might have not broken into a huge grin.

"We want you to eliminate a high-ranking covenant officer. Not a military target, but a very valuable political one. Or so our annalists tell us."

"So?" I asked.

"We want you to take out two prophets," he stated. "Ministers, I believe the appropriate term for this two in particular would be."  
>"Two?" Pavel asked. You could tell he was surprised. "There hasn't been a mission to assassinate more than one prophet since we found out they existed, and even those rarely succeed."<p>

"That is true Sergeant, I am glad you are aware of relevant statistics about our war effort."  
>Pavel took the hint and appropriately shut up.<p>

"As I was saying, you will eliminate two prophets to shake the enemy's resolve and morale. Said action will ultimately help in our goal to win this battle," Wilkins went on.

"Very well lieutenant, any additional information we might need?" I asked.

"Right now we don't have time for a full debriefing, you'll receive that en route. All you need to know is that this is an semi-long term infiltration mission-"  
>Pavel groaned, I almost did too, but was able to keep myself in check. Practice from my unintentionally spoken thoughts had made sure that I managed to keep certain actions in check.<p>

"And," Wilkins continued after eyeing Pavel, "you'll be alone with no support. I might get a nuclear strike from orbit if you manage to plant a beacon close enough to the prophets for our ships to target it."  
>"Nuke?"<br>"Yes, we can't really use one accurately right now, cloaking and interference," he explained.

"Ah."

"Regardless, it would be preferable if you used two bullets instead of a nuke to take out the prophets. You'll be out of here in a few minutes. Report to landing area three. You'll be transported from there and receive additional intel on the way."

"Sir," I said after we both saluted.

"Good luck gentlemen."  
>I'm glad he said that, you can never have enough luck. Especially when it comes to handling stuff like this.<p> 


	57. A Pleasant Stroll

Chapter LVII: A Pleasant Stroll

**February 20, 2542 (UNSC Calendar)/**

**Grid Y21, Peninsula Laccia, Aztlan, Eta Cassopie System**

"That's not a lot of information," Pavel noted.

"Hey, no worse than the usual," I optimistically said.

"Actually, I do believe it is worse."  
>He was right. It was worse. We often got sent in dangerous missions with 50% survivability rate and where it was likely that we would die. We often had to complete them through several and various different types of wounds involving plasma or needles. You know, the usual in our business. Not trying to brag or anything.<p>

"Fifteen seconds!" someone yelled through our radios.

You see, pilots are big fans of yelling, they yell at you to move it so that they can bail out of there, they yell at you to hurry up and get to the LZ, they yell at you to tell you that you're arriving to the DZ, and they yell at you whenever they see a multiple of five in their countdown clock to arrive someplace important. Every pilot I know likes yelling, even Marina, she's a screamer. Ka-pow. I am the most awesomest person in existence.

"Five seconds!"

We were on board a falcon, which was rather unusual since they were mostly used by Army and not Marines. Sure, there was the occasional gunship here and there, but Marines tended to stick to Pelicans and Hornets, even though I am not entirely sure why the higher-ups chose to keep Hornets _and_ use them as transportation methods for infantry. Those things didn't even have straps. They also happened to offer no protection for any passengers. Not that I am in a position to complain about it, those thins have saved my life a couple of times.

"Now! Now! Now!" the pilot yelled.

We hopped off the falcon gunship and reached the floor before the pilot was even done screaming into his mouthpiece. Pavel did a flashy combat roll and then aimed at his previously designated sector. I rolled my eyes while I aimed my rifle in the general direction of my line of fire. Not that I was expecting any trouble, if there were any enemies nearby they would've shot at us a lot earlier, covvies weren't particularly famous for their fire discipline.

We started moving away from the hovering VTOL and made our way into the dense jungle all around us. We had a tough mission ahead of us. We were behind enemy lines, the only stuff that we had to survive could fit in a backpack that was about a cubic foot. That made for about two weeks worth of food plus two days of pre-packed water. We would have to get most of our liquids from the jungle around us if we needed to. I really hoped that we could get this thing done within a day and a half tops, but the way things tend to go it would probably be closer to a week or so of roaming the jungle while avoiding patrols and looking for an enemy hierarch.

Yep.

"Which way?" Pavel asked.

"Ahead bro," I said. "No other way to go."  
>"Well, actually we could go 360 different ways, but yeah, I get your point."<br>By that time we were about two hundred meters from where we were originally dropped. Any contact that we had with the UNSC was now lost. Sure, we could contact the UNSC in a second with the satellite comlink that we had been issued for this mission, but it was supposed to be for emergencies only or for a nuclear strike. Even then it was dangerous to use because our signal would be easily traceable and we would receive a nice squad of banshees for our efforts.

"So," Pavel started saying through our helmets' radio (that one was undetectable), "If you had three superpowers, what would they be?"

"Hmm, good question," I said. "So many to choose from, besides, the combination would have to be ideal."  
>"Exactly."<br>I thought about it for a some time while I made my way through the undergrowth and navigated around tree trunks as thick as an elephant troop transport. More than once I had shivered at the sight of a beetle the size of a watermelon. It really wasn't nice being in this jungle. I kept expecting a velociraptor to pop up somewhere and ambush me. They say that those things could open doors. Can you imagine? All we needed was intelligent lizards against us as well. Or maybe we would've fought our common enemy, who knows?

* * *

><p>"We've been walking for hours," Pavel complained. "Can't we stop now?"<p>

I knew he was kidding, he knew that we had to keep going for a few more hours or until we found an enemy patrol or encampment.

"No Pavel," I said in a fatherly tone. "We need to keep walking."  
>"But Fra-ank," he said in a childish voice.<p>

I chuckled and stepped over a huge root. My VISR was set to detect enemy heat signatures and silhouettes, but so far nothing of interest had been spotted by the helmet's electronics. I had seen more than a few organisms that would fuel enough nightmares for a couple of years. Oh, and I had stepped on shit puddles the size of a car. Apparently they belonged to a herd of whatnots.

"How do you even know which animal pooped this shit?" I asked Pavel after I finished wiping my boot on some weeds.

"I read about it," he said. "Wanted to get as much info on this rock as possible."  
>"You don't read," I reminded him.<p>

"Well, truth be told, I got lost in one of those online encyclopedias," he explained with a shrug.

"You mean Wikipedia?" I suggested.

"Yeah, might've been that one," he said.

"Had to be that one. No other online encyclopedias have existed for about five hundred years Pavel."  
>"You're mean," he said.<p>

"Well, I'm mad that you might be taking me down from my throne."  
>"What throne?"<br>"The knows-an-absurdly-amount-of-utterly-pointless-and-useless-data," I snapped.

"I don't know if you just insulted yourself or me."  
>I didn't know either so I just shrugged theatrically and moved on ahead. The map of the area had the rough positions of large enemy troop concentrations and some arrows and dotted lines that delimitated their areas of operation and all that. For a simple infantry grunt like me (albeit an extremely good-looking and talented one), it all came down to one thing: avoid the red zones as much as possible. That golden rule was then bound to change to: get inside the large red zone as deep as possible without being stopped. And then get the hell out.<p>

Yeah, it's as fucking difficult as it sounds.

"So, any new conversation topics?" Pavel asked.

"Not really, action movies don't really focus on the boring days before the big moment," I said.

"Yeah, and we're not even on that many long-term missions."  
>"Besides," I added, "last time we were on one, you wouldn't stop talking about Chloe."<p>

"Hey, don't even get me started on that 'hypothetical' Marina vs. Layla discussion. You were mentally cheating on your girlfriend."  
>"I was <em>not<em>. Besides, it is allowed."  
>"By who?"<p>

"It's general knowledge Pavel, read a book."

"That hurts Frank," he said. "Really does."

We must've looked pretty weird. Two tall, strong, armored special operations operators having a discussion about who was stupider through our radios. With all the body motions to accompany our very fine points and no sound to know what we were talking about, an outside observer would've taken us for two escaped mental patients. We kept on having a very intellectual and mature conversation about why my conversations were more entertaining than his or the other way around. It was a debate that was solved through clever use of words and fine points. It eventually ended like this.

"Well your mom thinks brutes are geniuses," Pavel snapped.

"I don't even know how to respond to that," I responded after a moment of confusion. The comment had come out of the blue.

"Damn right you don't, this makes thirteen to nine."  
>"You're counting? Wait, never mind, you don't get a win if I don't know what the hell you're talking about."<br>"Well somebody's a sore looser," he said in a baby voice.

"Well somebody is a sore winner," I mimicked.

Pavel then babbled something that was meant to sound like the way I spoke.

"Yes Pavel, we all know that doing two brain extenuating activities such as walking and talking at the same time can severely impair your ability to do one of them. I'm just glad you didn't trip this time."  
>Pavel opened his mouth to say something clever but then closed it and kept quiet. Well, at least I like to imagine that he opened his mouth, because, unlike me, his visor was completely polarized.<p>

"Twelve to ten," I said. "And I did it with intelligent comments and big words."  
>"Screw you."<p>

* * *

><p>"Halt," I said.<p>

"Halt? Really?"

"Yes, are you deaf or something?"

By that time both Pavel and I were crouching in combat stances with him aiming to the left of the area ahead of us and me aiming to the right. I had just heard a twig or something snap for like the fourth time in an hour. I was pretty sure that it was nothing, but protocol dictated that we should make sure it wasn't a cute squirrel first. I was about to move ahead to check on the source of the noise when I heard a couple of dull thuds and a squeal.

"Oh shit."  
>"Climb a tree?" Pavel suggested.<p>

"Not like there's anywhere else to hide."  
>Truth be told, we were in a dense jungle with plenty of places to hide, but climbing a tree just seemed fitting to the moment. After all, that's what they have done in the movies ever since film was invented, maybe even before that in novels and plays and whatnot. I gave Pavel a boost and he pulled himself on top of a branch. I used my super-enhanced muscles to jump and reach for Pavel's hand. Hey, I was good and all, but I wasn't <em>that<em> superhuman. He pulled me up and we climbed a couple more branches just in case.

"Ok, here's good," I said as I sat back on a comfy shooting position and Pavel changed his magazine to shredder rounds instead.

I switched the display in my helmet from regular to thermal. I was almost blinded by the amount of red. It was scary, trees were supposed to show up as blue or light yellow, but here they were more like orange. Testament to the heat going on outside of my bulky-yet-climate-controlled-armor. My helmet's optics immediately picked up something different from the surrounding area. It was ten bulky shapes moving through the jungle. I could tell they were not human but couldn't make out the species as the edges of their heat signatures blended with the background, but they distinctly moved like covvies.

"See em?"  
>"Yep," he replied.<p>

"What do you want to do?" I asked.

"You're the boss," Pavel said with a shrug.

I glanced at the map of the area and figured that this group must be a patrol from one of the smaller Covenant camps. We could follow it and do some sabotage or we could simply avoid the patrol and mark this area on our map as one frequented by enemies. We were close to one of the smallest red areas, so I decided that it was worth a shot at least placing some C7 on a couple of plasma coils and have it detonate a few hours later.

"We follow them," I said.

"Afraid you'd say that."  
>We waited for the patrol to pass right under our feet and saw that it was an elite clad in blue armor and eight grunts. There was a jackal scout walking ahead of the main group, but their strength was eyesight, not smell. It didn't even glance in our direction. When the rest of the group passed right next to our tree I tensed up. A grunt lagged behind the group and took a sniff, it looked around and I took careful aim at its head. The grunt got close to the tree and for a moment I was scared it would see us. Then it turned around and squatted. I almost laughed when I realized it was taking a shit. Pavel even elbowed me in the ribs.<p>

I relaxed a little and watched the grunt go. It looked like it hadn't gone in a while because it was pouring out what looked like its own weight in processed food. That went on for about ten seconds until there was a nice pile of oddly colored shit next to the tree. The grunt turned and looked like it was sniffing the air once more. Once it was satisfied, it prepared to turn around. Then it saw us.

"Shit," I muttered.

The grunt barely had time to squeal before I put one between its eyes, blowing out the rear of its skull in a disturbingly beautiful spray of alien blood. Pavel opened up on the aliens farther up ahead with his machine gun. He would've used his shotgun, but had decided against bringing it for this mission. Three grunts fell under Pavel's barrage before I switched to thermal again and aimed for the elite. I managed to take it out with three bursts to the chest and one to the neck. It was still twitching by the time Pavel hit the last grunt in the belly and killed it.

"Oh shit," I said, my first words since I had fired the first shot, just ten seconds ago.

"Better get moving."  
><em>True that.<em>

I jumped off the tree and was careful not to land in the pile of oddly colored shit on my way down. Pavel, apparently, didn't have the same reservations about the issue and landed with a sickly squick on the pile of goo.

"Oh shit."  
><em>Oh shit indeed.<em>

"Ok, let's get moving before someone decides that they miss a patrol," I suggested.

"Yeah, wait a moment."

Pavel jogged about thirty meters away from me and made sure all the corpses were in fact corpses. It took a long look at the still-twitching elite and gave it a nice, bloody, loud, curb-stomp.

"I just love doing that," he said sheepishly once he came back.

"Hey, take it easy," I said. "Love doing that myself."  
>Yeah, I'm a psychopath. Nothing you can do about it.<p>

Ok, so we now found ourselves in a difficult situation right? The entire enemy forces (which was like _a lot_) would soon be combing this entire area for us, angry and looking for vengeance. We would have to hide a lot more than we usually did, which right now wasn't really that much, and we would probably get in a couple of other firefights. Well, we could make the most of it and move _towards_ the bulk of the enemy forces instead of away from them, they wouldn't really expect that. I don't think that anyone would.

"And with a good reason!" Pavel said after I explained him my plan. "No one is stupid enough to run _at_ an overwhelming enemy force."  
>This debate ranged on for a while, in reality, we were heading towards the bulk of the Covenant ground forces on this side of the planet, the large red area in our map. Pavel was to busy complaining and being a whinny little girl about it to notice, so I purposely kept the discussion going while we walked. If this went on for another hour or so we might just be close enough to the red zone for me to convince Pavel to go there and kick some serious religious ass.<p>

Ha, see how it rhymed?

"Frank, I know that you think highly of your skills and everything, but you are simply not good enough."

I decided whether to say 'Challenge accepted!' or whether I should call him out on insulting me.

"Do you _want_ me to prove you wrong?" I asked with an annoyed tone.

"Ok, maybe that was a poor choice of wording for my argument," Pavel admitted.

"Yeah, it was."  
>"Well, Frank, they will be looking for us back there and they will be more alert in front, that means that it will be…" he stopped mid-sentence.<p>

I could just tell that Pavel had popped the map and cross-referenced our current position with the one we had been in fifteen minutes ago. We were a good distance away from where we started and obviously closer to our goal of reaching the prophet. My friend stuttered for a few seconds before he could think of something coherent to say to me for tricking him into following me towards the place he wanted to get away from.

"You fucking asshole."  
>Yeah, it wasn't that wonderfully worded, but it got his feelings across very clearly, which was all he needed to do. I laughed behind me depolarized faceplate for Pavel to see and get him angrier, it would get me a couple dozen extra meters before he finally realized what he was doing and stopped and stomped on the floor like the little girl that was deep, deep inside him.<p>

"You bastard."

"Come on, we're not even that far!" I said.

"Just because you tricked me," he reminded me.

"Still counts."  
>"Damn you."<p>

We were still walking. I reached a dense bunch of leaves and weed and pulled out my knife to cut through it. Pavel would follow me out of pride or something, he wouldn't enjoy being called out of being afraid of the creepy jungle trail. Besides, he pretty much had to since I was his superior officer. If only I had realized that at the time it would saved me a long and pointless discussion that would've ended in me getting what I wanted. On retrospect, that makes me look like the idiot of the story and not Pavel.

"Whoa," I said as I almost fell down a cliff.

"What?"  
>It was hard to describe you see. In front of me was an average sized valley, this side was blocked off by massive cliffs about a kilometer high and the left and right sides (in front of me) were instead regular mountains while the land in front of me gently sloped upwards. There were absolutely no trees on the valley. No flora and no fauna, just a barren muddy wasteland. Well, there was no fauna unless you count alien species as animals.<p>

Hovering above the valley was a single _CCS_-class battlecruiser and a smaller corvette a lot closer to the ground. Normally, this would've been a great find, with the UNSC not knowing where in the hell these two ships were thanks to the elaborate Covenant cloaking technology, and normally, we would've called in an artillery strike on the area. An artillery strike with small nuclear warheads that were commonly used in ship-to-ship combat. Or perhaps we could settle for a Shiva or a Havok. Well, the point was that we would've called in a rain of fire and radiation on this covvie's asses.

"What were Wilkins' exact words?" I asked.

"Something along the lines of: We can't use one because of the cloaking and interference."  
>"No, after that, on the falcon," I corrected him.<p>

"Oh, yeah," Pavel said.

While on our way here a particular situation had changed for the glorious UNSC Navy. Apparently they had managed to nuke two cruisers out of the sky. Space. It took them about a million nukes and a more than a handful of MAC shots in addition to the ships that they certainly lost. Now they had one or two more cruisers to deal with along with the four frigates that they didn't manage to take out. It seemed like they were all focusing on the last cruiser (or two, I loose count) in orbit. The frigates could be dealt with later.

"Fucking Navy just told us to fucking screw ourselves with the nuke, so no calling in a nuclear strike even if you find their fucking army hiding in the rain. And I am quoting that fucking admiral here!" the professional Wilkins had yelled through the radio. Not so professional now.

"So, what do you want to do?" I asked with a grin on my face.

"Frank, you'd have to be very, very stupid to go in there. It's two of us against thousands of them, no backup, no aircraft, no nothing. Can't we call in an Army or Marines nuke?" he asked.

"Only way to deliver those is through airstrikes…"  
>"They'll be shot down," Pavel noted.<p>

"Or missiles…"

"They'll be shot down," he admitted.

"Or by convoy."  
>"Which would be turned into molten slag of metal."<br>"So, what option does that leave?" I asked. "None, so that means no nuke for us."  
>"Frank…"<br>"We're already here, we might as well earn our paycheck."  
>I honestly don't know why I was so insistent about this mission in particular. I generally ran away from incredibly overwhelming odds when I had the chance and means to do so. Something inside of me wanted to accomplish this mission and blow those two prophets' brains off their skulls and into the faces of their surprised bodyguards with my battle rifle. For some reason I wanted to take focus all my anger against the Covenant on those two individuals, like it was somehow their fault in particular.<p>

"You'd have to be incredibly stupid to go in there," Pavel said, but I knew I had him convinced already.

"No," I corrected him, "not stupid. Just crazy enough."


	58. A Serious Security Breach

Chapter LVIII: A Serious Security Breach

**February 22, 2542 (UNSC Calendar)/**

**Unknown Location, Peninsula Accia, Aztlan, Eta Cassopie**

Avoiding detection in a crowded enemy camp isn't as hard as it sounds. Of course, it would've been a lot easier if the enemies were human, had regular weaponry and armor on, and didn't have skin bright enough to attract a bird. All in all, it was a lot easier than expected. It had only been a day since we climbed down that gigantic cliff and into the covvie camp. Pavel liked to joke that the climb down was easier than avoiding detection, he was almost right.

We had found this nice little hideout after three hours of mapping down patrol routes. The patrols were so frequent that we managed to get the routes that over eight different patrols followed within that time. Our shelter in question was truly a gift from the gods. Or God. When the Covenant was putting troops on the ground as fast as a turtle hiding inside its shell, some sort of accident must've occurred, because one of their Spirit dropships had crashed down just inside of the perimeter of the camp. It had happened to crash on a small hill that overlooked the rest of the enemy garrison and was close enough to their defense lines that we could sneak out easily.

"Ok, so what's the plan?" Pavel asked.

I glared at him.

"Hey, there's no harm in going through it again," he complained.

"Very well," I said. "We sneak deep into the camp, we avoid the nightly patrols here, here, and here. Oh, and also here, here, here, and here. And here. We avoid pretty much every single patrol we see. That should take about thirty minutes give or take."  
>"Easy enough," he said.<p>

"Yeah right. Well, once we reach the prophets' quarters, which couldn't have been more ostentatious or inconspicuous, we detonate a small pre-placed charge set here," I said while I pointed to a line of dirt representing a bunch of plasma coils that some idiot had decided to place nearby the barracks for a bunch of elite officers.

"Once the squids are dead, one or two of the prophet's guards will come out to see what's going on. We take it out before it puts up its shields and-"

"But won't the explosion frighten the prophets and make them send for more guards?" he asked me.

"Yes, that's why we're attacking before they even get the chance to get out of their beds or sleeping chairs or whatever they take naps in."

"Ok, carry on."  
>"Once we kill the lone guard that came out to explore, we will go in guns blazing. A couple of flashbangs and flares should do half the job for us while we make our way in. That's the difficult part, we have no idea what the inside of the temple-home looks like, there could be anywhere between two elites to fifty."<br>Pavel glanced at me.

"Let's hope for a lower number."  
>"Yeah, let's," he agreed.<p>

"Right before we detonate the first charge, we will have placed a couple of charges all over the temple, in case we have to turn around and bail, think of it as insurance."

"You know," Pavel interrupted. "I might not ask for you to repeat every single plan seventeen times if you told them in the proper order."  
>"As an insurance," I went on unabashed. "Once we succeed or fail in our goal of putting a couple of rounds through the prophets' skulls, we will run and detonate the charges," I said.<p>

"Then comes the hard part," my loyal squadmate chimed in.

"Then comes the hard part," I agreed. "There is a banshee landing area here," I said. "Close enough to the temple that we can make it there with a good sprint."  
>"Ah, nothing like sprinting through a marathon," Pavel said, "reminds me of bootcamp."<br>"Good times," I agreed. "Easier too."  
>"Well, do go on."<br>"Once we reach the banshee landing area, BLA, if you will, we hop on one of those ugly fliers and make way to our frontlines, we ditch the craft and haul ass back to our lines. Simple as pie."

"Ok," he nodded. "One question."  
>"Yes?"<p>

"Is it BLA as in bee-el-eh, or as in blah?"

"As in blah."  
>"How would you know?"<br>"Well, I did just make up the word."  
>"Should've though of that first," Pavel said.<p>

"Well, we go ahead tonight."

"Pleasure serving with you Frank," Pavel said with a quick salute.

"Likewise Pavs," I said, returning the gesture. "Now, clean your gun and make sure your silencer is snug on the barrel of that monster, I don't know how it can quiet down your machinegun even one bit."

* * *

><p>"Of we go," I said.<p>

And go we did.

More luck had rained down on us. Literally, it was fucking pouring down here. I don't think I had ever seen that much water falling from the sky, and I am from Jericho VII, where hurricanes are known to encompass half a hemisphere every now and then. Well, truth be told, no tropical rainforest is complete without a storm that includes lightning and the following thunder. The clouds and rain did a good enough job at hiding us, our thermals could go through them easily, but then again, so did the enemies'.

The ground was muddy, with all the trees and flora here gone, there was nothing to hold the soil together, and now it was starting to show. I trekked across the first few meters outside the crashed dropship when I realized that running away in this mud was going to be harder than I would've liked it too, Pavel noticed too, because as soon as he took three steps, he was cursing about escape plans and whatnot. He tends to complain a lot sometimes, but I don't blame him, he's got more reasons than pretty much every single person in the entire world. And when you're sent on a quasi-suicide mission, you earn the right to cuss every living thing in the universe and beyond.

We reached our first target soon enough. The barracks were large enough for a military building meant to house soldiers. The UNSC wasn't nearly as nice to simple grunts when it came to shelter and housing. Perhaps the covvies were so nice to the elites because they were a military race and the backbone of their military, perhaps it was because they were simply nicer than we imagined them, or maybe they were so nice to them because elites are seven-and-a-half-foot-tall monsters that could rip a man's arm from its socket with the same amount of effort it would take me to rip a turkey leg from the whole thing on a Thanksgiving dinner with the neighbors while my uncle whipped recruits into shape.

Man, my analogies are really weird.

"Ok, see anything out of the ordinary?" I asked.

"No, two guards, look bored as fuck, but then again, who am I to judge a four-mandibled freak's expression?"  
>"And the batteries?"<br>"Hey, I can see about the same as you can, can't really see through walls."  
>I went around the long building with my rifle aimed high while Pavel walked slowly backwards, aiming at the corner in case an elite decided to show its ugly face. Finally, we reached the end of the barracks and came to a wide space with neatly arranged blue cylinders. The plasma batteries or energy coils, or whatever you'd like to call them shone dimly, but the light they produced was enough to make me worry about getting to close to them. Well, nothing could be done about it.<p>

"Cover me."  
>"When have I not?" Pavel replied.<p>

I made a quick dash for the small mountain of explosives and slid to a stop. I did it so friction wouldn't fail me and I wouldn't go tumbling into the explosives. That would've been a rather unfitting end for Francisco Castillo, ODST and veteran of a dozen campaigns. No, my end would be a lot more glorious than that, and if I got any say in it at all, with a whole lot more explosions than this cache could possibly dream of producing.

I reached into my very useful butt-pouch and produced two items. One was about the size of my wallet and had the texture of play-do while the other was the detonator for the first item, which happened to be a block of C10 plastic explosive. Shit was about to get real in here boys and girls. The little block of destruction was adhered to the battery nearest to the barracks and as soon as I was sure it wasn't going to fall off. Not that it would've mattered, the explosion that the wallet-sized explosive would've made by itself could've burnt through the unarmored walls of the barracks easily, killing the occupants closest to the blast zone. The plasma batteries were just a finishing touch really, and they went off in pretty blue explosions, sadly, I was going to miss them.

"Damn, such a shame that we'll miss this majestic display of fireworks," Pavel lamented.

_Huh, great minds do think alike. Kinda creepy to think that my mind is on the same level as Pavel's._

"Brain-mouth filter," he warned. He was too used to it to be offended; besides, he was pretty blunt sometimes as well. "Besides, you like to pour yoghurt over scrambled eggs."

I did, it was a habit that I had picked up after visiting a friend's house when I was around twelve. I remember thinking that it was extremely weird, but when I was offered some I played the courteous guest and accepted. Since then, I have been mixing scrambled eggs and yoghurt whenever possible, it's gotten me more shit than I care to admit, but it's harder to leave than booze. Believe me, I know. Well, enough with strange culinary combinations and traditions and on with blood and gore, hopefully lots of those.

"Moving on," I said, ignoring Pavel's breakfast comment.

Now that we were going deeper into the camp things got slightly more complicated. The rain and our black armor did a good enough job at protecting us from prying eyes, even against the purple backdrop that covvie buildings provided. Our biggest danger was noise. I could hear the rain sprinkling off of my helmet, but I calmed myself down by convincing myself that I was the only one that could hear it since I was inside of my armor. The more dangerous noise was the slushy sound that Pavel and I made as we walked through the mud.

As we came around the corner we found ourselves facing a patrol. More appropriately, we found ourselves facing the back of a small patrol. It was avoidable, so we sprinted across the empty ground in between two lines of small grunt barracks and kept on going. Pavel quickly noted the enemy's position and number on our HUD in case we had to come back through here. They certainly wouldn't be here if we came back, but they might be in the area, so just in case. Better to be sure. Accidents can be prevented. Better safe than sorry. You know how it goes…

"Ok, there should be a patrol coming in shortly," Pavel said.

I grunted in acknowledgement, I knew the routes of the patrols that we had spotted by heart, but as I repeatedly stated in the previous paragraph, better to be safe than sorry. We stopped as soon as we reached the corner of yet another purple building. I peeked out and saw only emptiness surrounded by two rows of neatly arranged identical purple buildings, most likely housing the majority of the grunts of the Covenant army on the planet. It looked like something out of a horror movie, it was dark, it was muddy, and on top of it all it was pouring down on us.

"Shit, they should be here right about now," I said.

"Maybe they're running a little late."  
>"You think."<br>"Hey, calm down."  
>I tried to, I really did, but after five minutes of absolutely no sign of the patrol that was supposed to come here I was getting nervous.<p>

"Ok, cover me," I ordered.

"Frank…"  
>"Cover me," I repeated.<p>

My friend shrugged and went up to the corner of the building. I patted him on the back and he popped out of cover, his M247L scanning the darkness in front of him for any movement that might be even remotely dangerous to me. I ran quickly to the other side and slid down once again. I don't know what would be worse for me, tumbling into a bunch of explosive crates or slamming into the wall of a building filled with enemies. Even if said race of enemies was notorious for their deep slumbers.

I got up and popped out of cover Pavel, who was already sprinting towards me. He was just in time, because not five seconds after I helped him get up from the muddy floor a patrol went through. Two elites clad in blue armor and sporting plasma repeaters walked by chatting amongst themselves. My translator picked up snippets of conversation and some words it wasn't able to translate. I shrugged, but who would want to know about the latest female squid face that Private Split-Chin here had banged (or whatever it was they did) on their last shore leave. In fact, I don't think anyone wanted (or wants) to know about it.

"We're one hundred and fifty meters our," Pavel notified.

"Yes," I agreed, my helmet's HUD was as good as his.

The rest of the way there was even harder, the buildings were packed less tightly, which meant that there were lots of open spaces which served as easy killing grounds in case we were spotted. Oh, and they didn't provide any cover at all. The increasing number of night patrols didn't make my heart rate go any slower either. As we turned around yet another corner after avoiding yet another patrol, we came face-to-back with our first victim. It was an elite. I closed in on the standing warrior and once I was a foot away I made sure that the rain was bouncing of his armor and not of his energy shield. I turned and nodded at Pavel while I reached for the large knife slung across my back. I slowly unsheathed it, careful not to make a noise. I could feel Pavel aiming his machine gun at my back in case the elite turned around and I had to dive out of the way in a hurry.

I crouched and took a step so that I was half-behind and half-besides the elite. Its right arm was hanging down to the floor, it made for a potential obstruction, but if it didn't notice me, it shouldn't be a problem. I lunged upwards with a small jump. The entire strength of a reasonably (who am I kidding, a super) fit man that also happened to have stronger muscles and bones that the average human was focused into a point that was perhaps about three or four atoms in thickness. The knife went in between the two lower jaws of the elite and hit its palate, it kept going on, tearing through flesh, skull, brains, and more skull. The knife was stopped by the sturdy armor that the elite wore, but the damage was already done. I let go of my knife and the guard collapsed to the floor. I grabbed the body on its way down and almost collapsed with it. Pavel reached for the dead alien and helped me lay it gently on the ground and pull it farther into the alley between two buildings.

"There's the temple," I said, my heart beating fast.

"Aye," he agreed.

We sprinted quickly after a group of miserable-looking grunts half-stumbled out of sight. We both made more noise than I'd have liked as our heavy boots slammed against the mud and water, but there was no helping that unless we wanted to be caught in the open. This time we both used the structure of the pyramid-like temple to stop ourselves. We did it very quietly, I might add. The main and only entrance was almost on the other side of the building, another inconvenient, but one that was expected. I nodded at my friend and we both started moving around the temple in a combat crouch.

"Sniper tower," I warned.

"Shit," Pavel murmured. "What do you want to do?"  
>"Don't really feel like taking the other side."<br>"Frank…" he said, concerned.

"Relax."  
>I aimed at the jackal strolling in circles around the floating platform. It didn't seem to be actually looking around at anything, but it looked miserable as a vulture can be. I sighed my scope on the vague outline of the alien and switched to thermal. The whole world immediately went a dark blue save for a bright red circle in ground level, the sniper tower's gravity lift, and the familiar shape of a jackal. I waited a few moments so that I could get a good shot at the sniper. Just as I was about to fire, a line of bright red criss-crossed my HUD. I forced myself to put keep my hand under the gun as it instinctively reached up to rub my eyes. As the sound of thunder came, I squeezed the trigger and saw a little bit of orange blossom from the top of the jackal's outline.<p>

I heard a loud sigh through the radio.

"Lightning damn near blinded me," I said.

"Yeah, you have no idea how beautiful it looked from here," Pavel said as we started moving again.

"Huh, I didn't take you for a man that would appreciate the beauty in destruction."  
>"Frank, I destroy things for a living, for a lot of people's living. How could you possibly not think that I'd enjoy the beauty in destruction."<br>"Good point," I conceded.

We reached the door without a major inconvenience. I could tell from here that it would open automatically due to the lighting the edges of the three different parts that made the door. What worried me though, was that there were no guards on the entrance. That could mean that this was either a trap, or that the prophets were more stupid than a stallion near a mare in heat. Or a male near a female in heat for that matter. Of any race. Damn hormones.

"What now?"

"We wait," I said.

Fortunately, we only had to wait about a second and a half until two elites stumbled out of the door. Had I not known better, I'd have said that they had just been woken up from a very deep sleep. That was terrific news. That meant that they'd alertness would be down and that the rest of the honor guard would most likely be enjoying a couple of minutes of sleep. I sighted in on the elite farthest away from me and tried to decide where its head ended and its helmet started. Those things could have not been practical combat headwear.

"Shields?" Pavel asked as he aimed at the elite closest to us.

"Can't tell from here," I said. "I know that with this rain I would most certainly have them on."  
>"You know how they like turning them off when they feel safe."<br>"Yeah, thank God for that," I murmured. After a couple of seconds of silence I spoke again. "Yeah, let's go for shields just in case. Try to make a headshot."  
>"Try?"<br>"Sorry, to much to ask from you," I teased.

My friend shook his head and laughed quietly. Even he had enough sense to appreciate a good, harmless joke.

"On my mark."  
>"Yessir," he acknowledged.<p>

"Three… Two… One… Mark."

The three-round burst that my gun expelled sounded about as hard as a polite clap with the special silencer that we had been issued. The rain slamming down on everything around us also helped to dull the noise. Pavel fired a five-round burst from his weapon. The first three rounds hit the upper chest of the elite while the other two hit it in the neck and head respectively. The first three stayed inside the body of the elite while the last two went completely through, small sprays of blood and brain matter were telltales. My three-round burst hit the elite on the right side of the back of its head. The rounds fragmented just as they were supposed to and completely destroyed its brain, killing it instantly.

Both the guards stood still for the briefest instants before gravity did its job and pulled them down to the ground. Their spears landed next to them only moments later. Those elites got it good, they didn't even get a chance to know that they were dead. Most people I've seen die don't get the same courtesy.

"Ok, let's move in," I said.

"The explosives?" Pavel asked.

"Don't need them right now, might make for a useful distraction."  
>"Whatever," he said with one of his signature shrugs.<p>

We moved towards the bodies and dragged them away from the entrance. It was only a cautionary measure, anyone that looked at the floor hard enough would notice the clear drag marks in the mud and follow them to the bodies. The rain would take care of that in about fifteen minutes, but in fifteen minutes both of us were going to be either dead or trying our best not to crash-land a banshee into the jungle. I certainly hoped it would be the latter, as weird as it may sound for me to wish to be on board an unstable craft with thin armor and unknown controls, I am pretty damn sure that it is a better alternative to death.

We hid the bodied as best as we could and entered the building. It was well-lit, which only made me more nervous, since it was more likely that we would be spotted, but there was nothing I could do about it. I switched to thermal, but the technology on my helmet's add-on (which was only a loan) wasn't powerful enough to go through the walls in the structure. Pavel's telescope-cam didn't fare any better either, so we moved ahead with no knowledge of what might await us. Soon enough I got a good answer.

There were at least five different sets of steps, all of them the familiar thuds that elite's made. Even when they walked they made a distinctive noise. I glimpsed exactly six elites clad in black armor with bright read and orange stripes adorning it. They were currently weaponless and didn't look tired at all. Still, six elites in closed quarters was too dangerous when one of them might reach you, so I took the easy way out.

"Fall back, hide in that corner back there, I'll draw their attention," I said.

"Frank..."  
>"Shit had to go bad sometime, let's make it go from bad to our advantage."<p>

"If you say so chief," he shrugged.

For a moment I was rally touched that Pavel would trust me so much as to let me wake up an entire enemy legion just so that we could get six elites out of the way. That's trust and friendship for you right there. Well, he could've simply been hit in the head once too many, same as me (probably). Just as quickly I was picturing the explosion that I had just caused when I pressed my finger down on that bright red button on the trigger.

The explosion was loud enough that I heard it clearly from here, a couple of moments later a slight rumbling shook the entire pyramid. The six elites went apeshit. They started talking in rapid Sangheilio and I could hear their walk turning into a sprint. Soon enough they were in front of us and only instants later their backs were presented to my and Pavel's gun. They were cut down by a hail of fire before they reached the door, one of the bodies slammed hard against it and it opened, when the door tried to close again, the body prevented it from doing so. I wouldn't find that out until I was on my way out, but the body if the elite had been almost cut in half by the door's onslaught. So much for a honorable death in battle.

"You know how it goes," I said.

"Count your rounds," Pavel replied.

"Plenty to go around my friend."  
>We lunged from our hiding spot and went past the hallway where they had been coming from. My translator had made out the word hierarchs and chambers, so now it was only a matter of time before we found the exact location. Our boots made loud noises as they hit the metallic floor of the temple. I cut down an elite with half its armor on before it could go wort. Pavel kicked it on the jaw as he jumped over it, making a sickly crunch as the neck snapped. By that time, the entire camp must've been awake, including the guards inside the temple. The echoes of our guns, even if they were silenced, ought to have alerted someone to the possibility of intruders being inside the sacred super-tent of the mighty hierarchs.<p>

All the good it did them.

I turned yet another corner of this building and slammed hard into an elite as surprised as I was, this one was armored and sporting a spear. The momentum of my run slammed it into the wall, but then it brought its arm up in an all-too-familiar backhand and propelled me backwards a couple of feet. It didn't get time to attack though, Pavel emptied about twenty rounds into its chest, enough to make that section of the elite's body turn into scrambled eggs. Without yoghurt.

The elite slid down the wall slowly, leaving a purple stain on the wall behind it. It was a purple tone different form the one on the walls, otherwise I wouldn't have smiled at the sight of it. Just think you should know the differences in color between Covenant architecture and Sangheili blood. The elite came to rest on the floor with its eyes still wide open in anger and its jaws wide, ready to shout a threat that would never come.

"Hurry," I urged even as Pavel sprinted past me. He knew better than to pick me up and slow us down.

Finally, we reached a very large door. Undoubtedly, it led to the prophet's quarters, important people liked to show what they were through the use of flashy and rather unnecessary items. Kings used to make statues of themselves, and the castle doors were undoubtedly a lot taller than anyone would have ever needed them to be. Rich people had mansions with more rooms than they could possibly need, generals had big hats with lots of stars on them, brutes and elites had ornate headdresses that only became larger and more cumbersome as they ascended in rank. Prophets, like us humans, settled for large doors. Rather modest in my opinion, especially when compared to the rest of the Covenant races.

The door opened as soon as we stepped within its sensor range, something incredibly stupid in my opinion. Back on Reach, you had to get through at least half a dozen different security procedures and checkpoints to reach a general, here, it was as simple as stepping in front of a door. You know what? Forget that, sneaking through an enemy infested jungle and then through an enemy camp more than makes up for the security checkpoints. The door still takes points from them though.

I took a step in, my scope already lined in between the eyes of one of the two prophets, I squeezed a quick burst and saw blood erupt out the back of its head and its long neck snap backwards violently. The creature collapsed to the floor with a loud thud and twitched twice, then it lay still. I fired another burst into the mass to make sure the job was done. The second and a half that it had taken me to do that was more than enough for Pavel to walk farther into the large room and spot the other prophet running for cover behind a large artifact whose purpose escaped me. I made sure to record the entire room for ONI spooks.

Pavel took three long strides and turned around the edge of the object serving as cover for the prophet. A single beam of green energy missed his head by an inch and then Pavel kicked violently at the prophet. Once the frail alien had collapsed, Pavel placed the barrel of his gun an inch away from the thing's head and fired a longer-than-necessary burst into its bulbous head, which promptly turned into an unrecognizable mess.

By that time, I was already heading back and out the door while checking for enemies that had decided to check in on their leaders, but no one was within sight.

"Let's bail!" I yelled.

"On it!"

Pavel sprinted ahead of me and I synched my speed with his, I could've easily gone faster, but for a man that had only the body that God had given him and muscles that he himself had honed in the past years, Pavel ran pretty damn fast. The man was in peak physical shape, it amazed me even that he could run this fast with his full armor and rucksack on. Hell, I amazed myself that I could run this fast _and _be able to go faster still.

We jumped over six fresh elite bodies and both of us almost slipped when our boots tried to grip the slippery mud. It was still raining, for which we were immensely glad, but now half the camp was awake and the other half was already looking for whoever had killed more than a few dozen elites on their sleep. No doubt the honorable warrior would be offended by our cowardice, but it was their friends who were dead and not us, at least not yet.

"Waypoint!" I yelled into my helmet.

The mike picked up the instruction and immediately displayed a holographic waypoint pointing to the banshee parking lot. A bright blue line also appeared on the floor so that we wouldn't get lost on our way there. I knew that it would disappear whenever we were on an area that we hadn't quite gotten to map before leaving our crashed spirit, but we could surely do those portions of the trip ourselves. If we couldn't then we deserved to die in the most violent and embarrassing way. Men are supposed to know their way around places, and damn it if I wasn't about to stop and ask for instructions.

"Movement right!" Pavel said.

I shifted my aim slightly and fired upon an elite putting on a pauldron while it ran even as Pavel downed the three grunts struggling to keep up with it.

You see, normally, a special operations team coming from a unit as prestigious as the 105th Shock Troops Division and hailing from the legendary (although traditionally held as second to the 7th) 19th Shock Troops Battalion would've simply made their way out quietly and without causing an even larger commotion, but we didn't do that for one particular reason. The Covenant loved running air patrols, and as soon as word of intruders got out, there would be a couple hundred fliers up there looking for us. That by itself wasn't so bad, we can hide well enough, but it also meant that there wouldn't be ay grounded banshees that we could use to escape, and consequently, that we would have to hide for longer, increasing our chances of being caught and executed.

"Two hundred meters!" my friend yelled through breaths.

"I can read you know!"  
>"Hey, you never know!"<br>_Why are you still yelling?_

Yes, I even yell inside my own head sometimes. Even if that phrase sounds like it should come form the mouth of some criminally insane mass murderer, it is true. Thankfully, in a good and funny way as opposed to a, well, criminally insane way.

The buildings gave way to neatly arranged lines of ghosts, specters, and wraiths. I could make out some elites running and getting on board some vehicles, but none of them spotted us. Just as I reached that decision a couple of green bolts hit the wraith next to me and nicked my shoulder plate. I had the grace and presence of mind to throw myself to the floor.

Pinned down and on the run, not a good situation to be in, not good at all.

"Frank!" Pavel called out.

"I'm on my way," I lied.

_Ok, think, think, what could get you out of this mess? Did you see where you were being shot at from? No. Do you know if you're facing an elite or a jackal? No. What do you have left in your-_

"Aha!" I yelled out triumphantly as I reached for my assault webbing with my left hand. I grabbed one of my yet-unused flashbangs and threw it as high as I could from my awkward seated position. As soon as it was up there I covered my ears and then I felt stupid for a second when I realized I had a full-face helmet doing that job already.

You see, the eye is naturally drawn to movement, and the scope on a covenant carbine can see a very wide area, its weird setup functions very effectively when it comes to spotting enemies. More than once I had spotted a jackal switch targets incredibly fast and through angles greater than the ones my own sight could manage. Unfortunately for the marksman shooting at me, the best aspect of the covenant carbine would be his downfall.

The grenade detonated, igniting the magnesium and ammonium perchlorate mix to bring a glorious display of pyrotechnics producing a blinding flash of slightly over ten million candela and a bang just over two hundred decibels in power. The metallic casing of only two hundred and fifty grams must've looked to a small sun to the observer. From the distance I estimated between myself and my attacker, the flash wouldn't have blinded him completely and the noise would just barely bother him, but ten million candela are enough to give someone spots in their eyes for a couple of weeks, and it would do the job I intended it to do just fine.

I leapt from cover and fired two quick bursts from my rifle in the direction of my attacker. Didn't really expect to hit anything, but covering fire is a very nice accommodation to have when you're in combat.

"Subtle," Pavel commended. From anyone else it would've been either an insult or a poorly worded scolding for drawing even more attention to us, for Pavel and me, it was part of the thrill.

It's weird how just a few seconds before we were both about to piss our pants at the fear of being spotted by anyone and now we were actually excited at the prospect of an entire army giving chase to us. It probably was because we were almost upon the banshees and that an entire enemy invasion force considered us important enough for them to chase two insignificant foot soldiers gave us a slight ego boost.

"I'm in the air!" Pavel made me know.

I took a second to tag his banshee and mark it as a friendly just in case we were given chase and needed to fight of some pesky interceptors. As soon as his craft was outlined in a green line, I hopped on the closest banshee and squeezed the two handlebar-like controls. The entire craft shuddered and hummed as a thousand light lit inside the cockpit. The banshee automatically hovered forwards before I pulled the joysticks up and hit the thrusters. My banshee sped away from the enemy camp as a few lone green bolts flew by my banshee and one bounced of its top armor. By that time there was a big smile on my face and a literal and metaphorical fire raging at my back, one so fierce that not even this rain could extinguish it.

Yes, my job here was done, and it had been done in an exemplary manner.


	59. Ambushed

Chapter LIX: Ambushed

**March 3, 2542 (UNSC Calendar)/**

**Nueva Havana, Aztlan, Eta Cassopie System**

It just takes a week and a half for a fanatical army to sweep through the land, burning everything on its path. The Army saw terrible defeats in just two weeks while the Marines did their best to win, but failed utterly as well. I saw grunts throw themselves with grenade belts covering their bodies and a shining orb on each hand, I saw elites sprint into a strong position with nothing but an energy sword and a half-empty plasma rifle, hunters would shrug off a rocket tearing out half their bodies for just long enough to kill another human. Even jackals fought more fiercely and with even less consideration for their lives than they usually did.

The sad thing is, it worked.

After a couple of days our morale was lower than it had ever been, soldiers were now starting to be very afraid of the enemy, more than they had been before. Perhaps it was the amount of fear that the Covenant had deserved from the beginning, but right now it felt terrible. Men and women had absolutely no hope to win in here, more than a couple soldiers put a gun against their temple or swallowed a bullet.

Later, someone realized that an army cannot win a war if they keep having losses of about half their forces in every attack. This time, it wasn't us who were loosing soldiers in the thousands for no acceptable purpose or valid reason. This time it was the covvies, who in their religious fervor and wrath at having their leaders killed, who were reducing their numbers more and more every day. When the latest intel reports came in a big burden was lifted from lots of backs, suddenly, people were able to believe that we might just win this battle. We were not outnumbered anymore, we still held on to major cities and spaceports, most of the civilian populace of Aztlan was alive and well, with most of them contributing to the war effort in one way or another. Things might be bleak, but not as much as they seemed to be just yesterday.

Then two words destroyed the hope of millions of men, women, and children. Two single words.

"Enemy reinforcements," I heard Lieutenant Wilkins utter. The normally stoic, calm, unexpressive and all that shit man, was looking grim, his face giving away his emotions. That was a bad sign, and it made me feel worried.

"How many," I finally asked.

"Thirty ships, little over half of them are destroyers and corvettes, but there's one assault carrier and thirteen cruisers," he said.

"Oh crap," Pavel cursed. He then followed that by a long stream of profanity that included some very weird comparisons and left me feeling quite nervous of sitting next to my friend.

"Indeed," Wilkins agreed, "but this still isn't over, we need to get as many people out of here as we can, and soon."  
>"How?" I asked, my tone sarcastic.<p>

"Well Staff Sergeant, we shove them into ships and then those ships fly away from here," he said in an equally sarcastic tone. "But, since they can and probably will be shot down we need to establish a coordinated effort in which all UNSC Navy ships will cluster themselves above the main evacuation ports, after which we would simply try to blast through the Covenant ships that would most certainly would be out there waiting for us. A suicide run, if you will. Our escape plan from this planet was a retreat followed by a suicide run. Awesome.

"But," Wilkins started again, "this isn't over yet, so you two still have some work left to do." He threw a manila folder at me. "I'm too tired for this shit, give it a read and report to the designated landing pad."

Having said all he needed to say, Wilkins unceremoniously ordered us to leave his ONI command tent and collapsed on his chair. At least that's what I think happened, the man closed the doors on us as soon as we walked out, but it would've fit the mood perfectly, so that's what I like to imagine happened.

"…supply lines… sabotage food convoy… eliminate any plasma cells that might… blah, blah… blah, Hornet gunship support, additional artillery support is optional… two man mission, small map attached, ODSTs recommended, blabbity blah… elimination of guards not required but optimal, explosives provided, blah and more blah," Pavel read out loud.

"Huh, mission dossiers are getting a whole lot more informal nowadays, aren't they?" I remarked sarcastically.

"Yes, whoever wrote this will probably get axed," he replied without missing a beat.

Sometimes I really think that Pavel spends his nights thinking about clever ways to beat me in verbal arguments. It is creepy. What is creepier is that I come up with several scenarios in case I get into an argument with Pavel, most of the time they work masterfully. I shook my head at the thought and headed towards the small armory that the Hell's Ambassadors had setup while we tried to make our organized retreat as hasty as possible without loosing cohesion. Yes, we were finally attached back to Echo Company after what seemed like an eternity. We got to meet old men we had fought alongside and scare the new replacements a little.

"Castillo! Stop right there!"  
>And then there was Krikor Darbinian.<p>

"Lieutenant?" I asked politely while Pavel positioned himself behind my left shoulder with a murderous look in his eyes. Well, I didn't actually get to see his eyes, but that's what I told him he should do in case this ever happened. Darbinian looked uncertain for a moment. The pissy lieutenant that seemed to have something personal against me took a deep breath and I knew he was going to rant on for a long time about something I failed at. Technically, he couldn't really do that since I wasn't under his command and was part of an entirely different unit with no direct relation to his other than the fact that we were both stationed in the same ship.

"Just where do you think you're going?" he asked after giving me a lecture on something (I zoned out after he opened his mouth).

"To the armory," I replied. "Klaus and myself are going to stop the enemy supply line in sector…"  
>Pavel opened the folder and skimmed through it. "42," he said finally.<p>

"Forty two," I agreed, enunciating both words carefully, trying to make as much of my disliking for the man as possible to seep into the words.

For once, I was sorry it worked, the lieutenant got a look of pure anger in his eyes and took the folder away from my friend Pavel. He opened it with a lot more violence that was needed and went through it in a few seconds before he glanced up at us. The red in his eyes had been replaced by a very, very wide smile. It actually made me a little scared.

"It says here that you are not set to leave until right before the sun sets," he stated. "So that means that you two can do something productive before you leave."  
><em>Oh shit.<em>

"I believe there is a latrine that needs to be covered up in the north end of the camp," he said. "You two seem like healthy and fit men, you just volunteered for the job."  
>"Did we?" Pavel asked.<p>

"I am not sure we did, in fact, I would say that we didn't Pavel," I replied with an innocent voice.

"Well, in that case I am ordering you to do so," Darbinian said.

_Oh well, at least the "Oh shit" thought was accurate enough._

Pavel and I turned around and went to the designated latrine area. It actually looked worse than it smelled, but only by a little, and it looked really, _really _bad. I shrugged at my friend and grabbed a shovel, we both started shoveling dirt to cover the mess.

"The year was twenty five and forty two, the space between the stars was cruised by ships that could move faster than light," Pavel started. "There were machines intelligent enough that they could oversee a whole planet, organs could be cloned at a moment's notice, and a non-military gunshot wound to the head was only fatal in 76% of the cases thanks to modern medicine. Humanity was at its peak, but still, they had not managed to invent a portable sewer system, instead using the same technology that had been used since the first men could speak more than grunts and before that, latrines."  
>I actually stopped and leaned on my shovel to listen to my friend.<p>

"A few years afterwards, the humans made contact with an alien alliance. The aliens saw that humans didn't have a reliable sewer system in several colonies and declared them dirty and smelly, and so it was that this war started."  
>Throughout the duration of his monologue he sounded like the narrating voice of a trailer for the newest blockbuster action flick from Bollywood It was actually quite creative and funny.<p>

"You know what would've been cool?" I said. "If you'd done that in iambic pentameter."

He shrugged and shoveled a pile of dirt into a pile of shit. We were about halfway done and we still had a lot more shit to cover up before we were finally finished. Truly, it wasn't that tiring, in fact, in a way it was a way to distract ourselves from the mission to come.

"Oh," I said, "and by the way, our sewer system is actually pretty advanced, the problem here is that we have nowhere to dump it to since we ran out of pipes."  
>"Frankie, my boy," Pavel said while shoveling. "Next time I see a covvie taking aim at you I will let it fire, maybe it will kill you just like you killed my buzz."<br>I laughed out loud for a couple of moments before I heard an argument t my back. I turned around to see none other than Lieutenant Wilkins (first name: unknown) was strolling towards here while a very angry-looking Krikor Darbinian yelled angrily at his back. Wilkins did the best to ignore the marine lieutenant while he closed in on us.

"Drop what you're doing, come with me," he said.

"You can't do that," Darbinian complained.

"I can, and I will," Wilkins replied. "Just watch me."

As soon as he said that both Pavel and I dropped our shovels and theatrically dusted ourselves after stretching. I walked past an angered Darbinian and gave him a small, polite nod. Pavel was less of a civilized human being and instead tipped his imaginary hat to the man and bowed in 17th century fashion. Ignore that, I don't know what fashion he bowed in, 17th century just sounds interesting and fitting, but I am probably very wrong about that.

Well, regardless.

We fell in step behind Wilkins and as soon as we were far enough away from the latrines he turned around and faces us with a look so angry that both of us, hardened Helljumpers, backed away a tiny step. He glared at us for a few instants before he opened his mouth.

"You are Helljumpers, not pre-teen girls. When an idiot makes fun of you, you kick his ass and warn him not to do it again, you don't do what he says and hand him your balls, you don't wait for an officer with a desk job to come save your asses," he said. "Next time I see that Darbinian is treating you as shit I will buy him a beer and will double whatever punishment he made."  
>Having said that he turned and left. And I did feel ashamed, when you put it like that you really get into perspective how bad we had been treated by some pretentious asshole that wanted to believe that he was better than humanity's best. It was made worse because we <em>were<em> better than him, in more ways than one. Wilkins managed to make me fill like a little boy being scolded in just a couple of sentences.

"Ouch," Pavel was the first to speak.

"To the armory to look at guns and speak in manly voices," I said.

"Agreed, we need some of our dignity back and quick."

That's what I loved about Pavel (in a totally non-homoerotic way), he had a capability to make fun of everyone and make them laugh at themselves as well. He also managed to make fun of himself in a way that made you sure that the man was joking whenever he made fun of you. That's what he wanted you to think, that man is perverse, he probably has some sort of plan to conquer the galaxy hidden under his head. I am afraid that I might become one of his tools for that.

"Frank?"

"Yes?"

"Were you just thinking about stupid implausible stuff that has no real way of happening in any place outside of your imagination?" he asked me.

"No…"

I had, you remember the Pavel taking over the world thing, don't you?

"Sure," he said, elongating the word as long as possible.

By that point we were already inside the armory, it was perhaps about the size of two scorpion tanks placed next to each other and about the same height. I only know this because there were actually three scorpions parked right outside the armory. You can fit a lot of weapons and ammo into a space of those dimensions, but very rarely is it enough to satisfy a company of trigger-happy marines. Hell, only having three tanks was deemed an insult by some of the NCOs, and Echo isn't even a tank unit. Sure, there's the trained marines that can drive and fire at the same time, but that doesn't mean that they are entitled to tanks.

Great, now I just said that we shouldn't be given tanks.

I grabbed a bunch of ammunition for my battle rifle and started filling up magazines with the stubby bullets. I looked at Pavel and saw him carefully folding ammunition belts into a large metallic box magazine. He looked like all of his concentration was required for the task, with his eyes showing determination and his face holding a scowl that looked like he was taking the worst dump in the history of men.

"Whoa, don't burst a coronary there," I said.

"This is a delicate task," he said after he looked at me briefly. "You wouldn't want my gun jamming when I'm providing exemplary covering fire so that you can pull off one of those crazy stunts of yours, eh?"  
>"Well, by all means, do try to be careful then," I said in an excessively polite tone. "Just don't try to think to much while you're doing that, might faint."<br>"You do know you're an ass?" he asked.

"Hey, that's how I deal with all the pain in my life," I shrugged of.

Pavel huffed with a small grin and proceeded to pack three more box magazines with ammunition while I only managed to go through two single BR55 mags. He was finished with his pistol's ammunition and already had a grenade belt slung over his shoulder by the time I started filling my pistol's magazines with ammunition. Pavel didn't even bother to wait for me and so he left me to bore myself while inserting bullets into metallic boxes one at a time.

Once I was finally done I stuffed all the magazines I could into my pants' pockets and juggled the rest all the way to my tent. Inside I threw them on the bed while I started putting on my armor. No undersuit this time, no risk of exposure to vacuum or (significant) radiation meant that I could do without the tight one-piece that stuck to the thighs and hurt my groin. Instead, a regular t-shirt and cargos would do.

When I finally was up and ready to kick some serious ass, I quickly cleaned my battle rifle and right after I was done I did the same for my pistol. The two guns looked as battered and old as they did when I put them back together, but they wouldn't jam for another mission, that is, unless a barrel of molasses was poured on both of them, and molasses are known to move very slowly.

_Guns ready and clean, what am I missing?_

I grabbed the largest of my knives from its usual place above my butt-pouch and produced a metallic block that was meant to sharpen knives. My knife's blade had been made as sharp as possible as it was for steel to become without braking. Still, time dulled it considerably, especially when half the time it was out of its sheath it happened to be trying to hack through armor and flesh.

I twirled the knife a couple of times in my hand. It was the standard issue combat knife to the UNSCMC. Army types got a smaller knife that also had a variety of other uses and a hollow hilt for keeping all kinds of useful stuff. Marines weren't meant to stay out on the field that long, at least according to military doctrine, so we got bigger and sharper knives. I twirled it around once more and started running the sharpener by the blade. I'd probably get it really sharpened on the ship. That is, provided we managed to survive escaping this hellhole.

When I finished sharpening my knife I started wondering where Pavel was, his armor wasn't in here, so that meant that he was already suited up. Lieutenant Delacroix was assigned to B Company, which was Army, which wasn't anywhere nearby so he couldn't really be getting some 'I hope you don't die' sex either. I finally gave it up after about ten seconds of looking for a reason why he could be outside the tent.

As soon as it was time to leave, I stood up, sheathed my knife with a movement that was almost as natural as walking, shouldered my rifle, and proceeded to leave the tent and head in the direction of our hornet gunship. The camp seemed almost deserted at this time of day, but I knew that there were at least a hundred marines sleeping with guns under their pillows and rifles under their beds. This place could go from a ghost town to serious shit storm for anyone that barged in without permission in a matter of seconds.

I reached the empty landing pads, which were really nothing more than relatively flat land next to our camp. Most of them were currently empty, with a single pelican on the ground right now, in addition to the larger transport craft there were a couple of hornets just resting their wings in there. One of the hornets had two human figures next to them. One was dark and tall while the other one was almost unnaturally small and I could just make out a green color to it Pavel and our pilot were already waiting on me.

"Right on time Helljumper," the young pilot said to me with a condescending smile on her pretty face. With that sentence and expression I knew all that I needed to know about her.

"Don't recall asking your opinion," I said gruffly. "Pavel, no shotgun?"  
>"Yes Frank, I hid it in my trousers," he said as the annoying pilot climbed into the cockpit.<p>

"Wouldn't be surprised," I said. "You're a huge asshole."  
>He looked at me.<p>

"Oh sorry," I said. "You have a huge asshole."  
>Pavel punched me in the jaw just hard enough for my head to turn slightly and hopped on the hornet while mumbling something about putting a bullet in my neck so that I would shut up already. Or something along those lines, as I said, he mumbled it. I smiled to myself and put on my helmet. Once that was done I jumped on the tray that would serve as my seat for a few hours.<p>

A hornet ride is not really a pleasant experience. Many soldiers complain about one thing in particular, the fact that you were seating on a fucking tray that also doubled as a landing rail for example. I was left with my legs hanging out with nothing to hold on to except for a couple of handrails to hold on two. Those two handrails were rumored to have been added to the craft as an afterthought. Well, despite those shortcomings the AV-14 Attack VTOL "Hornet" was a wondrous craft, exceeding in most aspects against banshees except for speed. The twin gatling guns on its nose and the two guided missile systems were more than enough of a match for unguided plasma and weak armor.

Despite all its pros and advantages, right now I was wishing that at we'd gotten a falcon. Those things at least had something resembling a roof over your head. Oh, and floor under your feet. Granted, I could stand up on the hornet's skids, but then I'd be leaning backwards with my feet having nothing but a slightly slanted surface keeping me on board. Yes, a falcon seemed like a very nice choice right now. In fact, I am not entirely sure why the corps didn't have it as their standard gunship, they could mount a missile system on it easily enough.

"Two minutes out!" the pilot notified.

"Boy, these flyboys really do like yelling, don't they?" I asked Pavel.

"Yeah, don't know why?" he agreed.

"Hey, I am right here," she said, her voice quieter now, "and I'm a fly_girl_ not a flyboy."  
>"I am shrugging right now," I told her. Sometimes words aren't enough so you've got to use body language to get your point across. My point in this situation was that I simply did not care. At least the girl was nice about it, she could've tilted the craft more than was recommended just to mess with me, at which point I would've forced the cockpit open and thrown her out of the hornet. Yeah, like that's even possible.<p>

The land below us went from dense jungle to rocky terrain with no cover other than the aforementioned rocks and the occasional tree trunk.

"Ten seconds," she said. Note how I mentioned 'said' and not 'yelled'?

The hornet flew over a small cliff on the rocks on top of the small cliff there was a surprisingly well-paved road flanked by another cliff wall on the other side. We were dropped on the road and the hornet hovered on the air for a couple of seconds.

"Stay here!" I yelled through the noise of the turbines.

"Who's shouting now?" she yelled right back.

"I think I like this girl," I told Pavel.

"You would like a girl that could probably kick your ass."

I was about to make some comment about how Pavel's ass was spanked during sex but abstained myself from doing so at the cost of biting my tongue and huffing like an idiot while trying to hold back a fit of laughter. Then I remembered where we were and immediately calmed myself down. Once I was breathing regularly, which took about three seconds, I started moving again.

"Catch," I warned as I tossed Pavel an explosive charge.

"You know how nervous that makes me don't you?"

"How could I not?" I replied with an invisible smile.

Once he had a few charges on his hands he started planting them at regular ten-yard intervals in the small wedge that separated the two lanes of the road. He did this with all his five charges and I did the same with mine. Once we were finished there were still two charges left and we were left there wondering how to use them. I looked at the cliff face on my right and then at the drop on my left.

"Collapse the road?" I asked.

"No, could make this side of the cliff collapse as well and we'd go down with it," he said, pointing to a point that we had both assumed we were going to use.

"Then what?" I asked. "Planting them here would be a waste." I motioned at the road, already littered with powerful explosives.

"We could use them to create a rockslide up ahead and prevent them from escaping that way," he suggested.

"And behind them?" I asked.

"There is only so much a man can do," he said with a shrug.

I shrugged with him and motioned for our pilot to come pick us up. She did so and then led us to a point about a hundred yards ahead of the closest explosive. I told her to get close to the cliff and then planted the two remaining plastic explosive charges on the rocky wall. It wasn't going to bring down as much of it as I would've liked, but I didn't have a drill or enough time to do a full job.

Once I was done and the explosives were all snuggly and comfy against the jagged cliff wall our talkative pilot lead us back to the position she had originally dropped us in. She then went higher and dropped us off in the cliff above the road so that we had a very nice vantage point of the area all around us. From here, I could see the gas giant that Aztlan orbited, it was a dark red against the absolute black of night. The sky was filled with millions upon millions of starts. It truly was beautiful, not many planets have such amazing skies. All the more reason to regret the loss of yet another colony.

I set my sights on the far end of the road, waiting for the enemy convoy to show up. I knew that a micro satellite would be tracking it, and that our support hornet would be high in the sky looking for it, but I still wanted to be ready as soon as possible. So I aimed while Pavel tried a quick nap and I waited.

* * *

><p><em>Hey guys, I feel like I need to explain the title of the chapter, "Ambushed". It refers to the fact that both Frank and Pavel were ambushed by Darbinian and forced to do latrine duty, not to the fact that they set up an ambush. Regardless, I hope you enjoyed.<em>

_-casquis_


	60. Ambusher

Chapter LX: Ambusher

**March 3, 2542 (UNSC Calendar)/**

**NH3 Highway, Aztlan, Eta Cassopie**

The night was starting to get really humid and uncomfortable as we waited for the infamous convoy to show up. The hornet hovering a couple of kilometers above us hadn't spotted anything yet and I had failed to put a long sleeved shirt under my armor. The consequences of that decision were a complete failure of climate control in my armor and the intense jungle heat messing with my entire body. We were lucky that this was a night mission, otherwise I would've been boiling myself alive by now. Well, maybe I would've actually worn my undersuit for once.

"Shit," Pavel said. It was the fifth time he had said it in less than three minutes without anything prompting him to.

"Will you shut up already?" the pilot on board our aerial support snapped.

"Easy for you to say, you're a couple of clicks up in the sky with a nice air conditioned cockpit, you have enough fuel to stay there for a lifetime and we are down here, sweating as crazy and without any way out other than your flimsy little plane."  
>"Call this beauty a flimsy little plane and I won't pick you up," she warned.<p>

"Flimsy little plane," Pavel repeated. "You have to pick me up, so don't make empty threats."  
>"Asshole," she muttered before she blocked Pavel's signal.<p>

I took of my helmet and washed away some sweat from my brow. It had leaked through the sponge-like fastener that pressed against my forehead and gotten into my eyes. I shook my head to wash away as much as the sweat as possible and then put the helmet back on. It flickered briefly and then the HUD appeared again. I aimed at the explosives to see that they were still in place and then back to the point where the road turned and the cliff blocked me from seeing anything else.

"With this much wait we could've called for backup," Pavel muttered.

"Why didn't we?" I asked.

There was a moment of awkward silence.

"Now I feel like a moron," he said.

"Guys?" our pilot asked.

"Back so soon?" Pavel teased.

"They're here, about ten minutes out."  
>"Finally," Pavel muttered.<p>

"Don't jinx it," I said. "Just… don't."  
>As soon as Pavel got up from his comfy rock-seat and aimed down range we were ready to kick some ass. I pulled out the detonator from my pocket and held it tightly while I waited for the convoy to enter the explosives' blast radius. The hornet descended to about 500 meters of the ground and waited for the fireworks to start. There was a circle outlined in red in my HUD that showed the estimated explosive radius of each explosives and an orange circle to signal the blast radius.<p>

The first vehicle to show up was, of course, a ghost. Following it closely behind were two Shadow troop transports closely followed by a wraith. Then there were several other shadows and about half a dozen ghosts serving as escorts and an AA wraith. They were all driving pretty close to each other, which meant that the explosives would take out more of them. Sucks for them.

The first ghost went over the first charge. My finger twitched a little above the detonator but I didn't press it. I waited for what seemed like hours for the first ghost to clear the ten charges and then waited some more for it to approach the charges set on the cliff wall.

"Boom!" I said, I couldn't help it, so I said it.

There were eleven different explosions, ten on the ground and one on the cliff. The ground below and around me shuddered as an avalanche of rock collapsed right on top of the lead ghost and the front of the first shadow, crushing its pilot. A bunch of other vehicles were blown to nothing as the charges detonated below or around them. They lit up in pretty green explosions to accompany the gray plumes of dust and dirt raised by the explosives. From my vantage point I could spot small limbs flying high in the air and bloodied bodies being tossed like rag dolls by the shockwaves.

There was a couple of seconds of silence after the explosions. The covvies were a bit shocked that they had just been ambushed, it usually was them who did the ambushing. A nice little reversal of traditional roles if you ask me. The silence was broken as two rockets slammed into the wreckage of a ghost and a line of tracers riddled more destroyed vehicles with bullets. I followed the yellow lines and could just make out the faint outline of a hornet against the night sky.

The first shot that the covvies fired came from the AA wraith. A long stream of plasma flak was sent in the direction of the hornet. Our pilot cut off her fire and started moving sideways. The green rounds from the wraith could track her craft, but if she kept moving sideways they would fly by harmlessly. They didn't have the ability to turn very developed, instead focusing on firepower. A big mistake if you ask me. A few seconds later the green blasts flew a few meters of the hornet and two missiles slammed into the wraith, rearing it backwards and damaging its front armor. The wraith let of another stream of green flak and the hornet started strafing sideways again as the AA munitions slowly adjusted their route.

It was at this point that faster-moving blue orbs and purple beams started flying towards the sky. Those were slightly more dangerous since they moved a whole lot faster than flak and a single shot might bring the entire craft down. If that happened the pilot was as good as dead, the hornet had the aerodynamics of a rock strapped with lead.

"Fire at the infantry," I said.

My first shot hit a grunt in the back of the leg. I was too far away and forgot to account for the drop and wind and all that, my second shot managed to strike it in the back and detonate its methane pack. Pavel simply opened up in full automatic at the point where most of the small weapons fire was coming from. Rounds slammed all over the place, but some managed to make contact with the unshielded grunts. It wasn't long before the surprised soldiers realized where they were being fired at from and switched their aim at our position on top of the cliff.

"Hold this position for thirty seconds!" I said. "Then we move out."

We fired at any covvie stupid enough to leave cover to take careful aim and I managed to take out a jackal sharpshooter and a sniper. Pavel simply focused on hitting whatever shiny blue containers he could see. Those explosions only added to the overall chaos of the situation. My rounds found the midsection of several grunts with relative ease. It was only after a couple of elites sprinted from the back of the halted column that their return fire started getting dangerous.

"Ok, move out!" I said as soon as a beam singed the edge of my forearm armor. "Pavel?" I asked as I turned to see an empty spot beside me.

"Over here you idiot!"  
>I slid from my position just in time for a fuel rod to melt the rock into hot glass. Some of it landed on my armor, hardening instantly and sticking to it. After I removed it from my armor there would be a nice scorch mark that would be impossible to remove. Hey the more damaged my armor is the more badass I look. The more badass I look the more likely Marina is willing to give me some action, the good kind.<p>

I jumped through a fallen tree and landed in our next pre-planned position. It was some sort of crevice on top of the cliff that protected us from incoming fire on all sides save above us. It was a perfect position, the only reason we hadn't chosen it first was because it was too obvious and because the additional protection would be needed once we had a whole company's worth of plasma raining down upon us.

I quickly put the stock of my rifle in my shoulder and took aim. We were closer to the enemy now, and they had been edging slowly forwards. Our initial blast had succeeded in stopping the column and destroying several vehicles, but at least half of the infantry troops were still alive and ready to kick our asses. Normally, that wouldn't have been a problem except that our air support was currently engaged otherwise.

"I'll be there as soon as possible, I swear," our pilot said through her teeth. She must've been pulling the controls of the clunky hornet as hard as possible to try and stay ahead of the plasma flak. All the while she was firing at the AA wraith, most of the shots missing, it was only a matter of time before one of the two vehicles was hit. I only hope that it wasn't the hornet, if they hit our pretty pilot then we would be as good as dead, facing overwhelming forces and stranded far away from friendly forces.

There were a couple dozen small figures trying to make their way through the wrecked vehicles and come closer to our position. Most of them did a pretty good job at it, but some of them got a bullet through the eyes for their troubles. That's right, I was close enough to them to allow myself the luxury of headshots. The good thing about headshots (other than giving you an ego boost) is that they drain morale from the enemy. Whenever you see your friend's face burst like a watermelon you get some doubts inside your head. Those doubts can mean death in a combat situation.

Case in point, I shot a grunt through the right eye and the blood sprayed all over the grunt next to it, it stopped for a second and looked in shock at the corpse of his friends. I squeezed the trigger of my rifle again and the shocked grunt got a round through its throat. Pavel took advantage of the confusion of the small group of grunts accompanying those two and hosed them with his gun, either killing them or sending them behind cover.

"Hey, where's that elite?" I called out over the noise of firearms.

"Behind that overturned ghost, the one next to the shadow."  
>I did a quick scan and quickly found the overturned ghost fitting the conditions. The elite was supposed to be behind it, but I didn't see it. Instead, I fired a three-round burst into the fuel tank of the ghost, causing a small explosion that sent the forward half forwards like a battering ram and propelled the smaller rear half upwards. There was in fact an elite behind the ghost, the explosion drained its shields and another three round burst to the chest was all that was required to take it out. I then switched my attention back to the grunts and jackals.<p>

"How's it going up there?" I asked.

"Hold on…" came the reply from our support. "And I think we're done."  
>I saw two small orange points make their way rapidly towards some object behind a shadow transport. There was a loud noise and the turret of an AA wraith flew upwards, propelled by green and blue explosions.<p>

"Ok, now I'm ready to kick some ass!" she called out.

"About time," Pavel muttered.

A second after she boasted her capabilities in air support her actions proved her words to be true. A pair of missiles slammed into a large group of covvies and machinegun fire hit anything that moved. I could hear the cries of outrage from the elites and the shouts of pain from the grunts all the way over here. I smiled to myself, enjoying their pain. Normally I would've gotten a psych evaluation for that, but they were aliens, so it was cool to enjoy watching them squirm.

I took the top of the head of a jackal and killed an elite that decided to do a vault jump over a piece of flaming wreckage. After that there was enough super-heated plasma vaporizing the rocks around us that we changed positions. Our next spot was a ledge on top of the cliff, it provided minimal cover but an incredible field of view. Might've been a pretty nice romantic spot in another time, but right now it was the perfect sniper's perch. From here I had a perfect vantage point of the battlefield in front of me. The covvies were still firing at the crevice we had been in a minute ago, they were even taking cover from that point and I could spot an elite signaling a grunt with a fuel rod cannon to come towards him. I waited a few moments to fire my first shot.

The slug hit the grunt with the fuel rod through the temple, knocking it sideways and killing the alien. The fuel rod cannon fell to the ground and immediately started expelling some sort of green vapor. The elite tried to scramble away from the corpse and the smoking weapon but the fail-safe of the portable cannon detonated and atomized the elite from the chest down, killing the once proud warrior instantly and sending the troops under its command into panic.

Pavel's machinegun started spewing lead instants after the explosion, he cut down several shielded jackals that were only just turning around after finally having organized a nice wall of shields. They collapsed on top one another and the rest of the enemy squad started panicking. Their fear was short-lived though, two explosives slammed into the ground and they were killed by either shrapnel or the blast wave.

It was all going so very well, the covvies were in complete disarray, most of the vanguard of their convoy was reduced to smoking heaps of flesh and blood and the rest of the vehicles had no way to go other than back, and that was good enough for the UNSC for now. The hornet was still emptying all the ammunition reserves it had with glee and there was no way that it could be brought down.

And then it started tumbling down to the ground.

"Shit! Banshee!" she called out, the alarms could be heard through the communicator. "I'm going down, going down hard!"  
>"Great," Pavel muttered, "Now how do we get her?"<br>"We don't," I replied instantly, surprising even myself.

"What?" he asked surprised and with shock evident in his tone.

"We can't there's no way we can get her out of there," I said.

The hornet had spun downwards in a spiral and had crashed right in the middle of all the wreckage of the convoy. There was enough chance that she might've survived the fall because only one rotor was damaged, but we had no way of getting down there and no way of getting back up.

"Frank, we have to try," Pavel said in between bursts.

"How?" I asked. "We can't do anything. She's as good as dead."

"Fuck…" he muttered, resigned. "Ok, let's bail before they realize what's happened."

I stood up from my position and Pavel folded the bipod of his machinegun before standing up himself, I was taking aim at any potential enemy when there was a loud explosion followed by some rumbling that felt like it was right under my feet. At first I thought that someone had detonated a nuke a couple of kilometers away, then I realized that the rumbling actually was under my feet. The ground around me shuddered and actually cracked in less than an instant. I barely had time to curse the universe before the floor slid away from my feet.

"Fuck you universe!" I called out as I fell.

* * *

><p>I wasn't unconscious for that long, perhaps about a minute and a half since I fell until the moment a kick to the ribs woke me up. The world went bright as I opened my eyes and reached for my rifle. It was nowhere to be found. I reached for my sidearm and pulled it out before I even realized where I was. In front of me was a semi-destroyed hornet surrounded by several purple wrecks. There were two figures firing at something else, one of them had my rifle on her hand.<p>

"He's awake!" our pilot yelled.

"About time," Pavel gruffed.

"Here," she said, I really had to learn her name, "it's yours."  
>I caught my rifle as she tossed it towards me and gave her my pistol in turn. I was suddenly realized that we had fallen down a cliff and I was perfectly fine. Then I tried to stand up. There was a metal rod sticking from my leg. The fall had been strong enough to go through my armor, enhanced muscle, enhanced bone, more enhanced muscle, and then through my armor again.<p>

"Shit… fuck!" was the more elaborate comment I could think of to describe the situation.

"Don't worry, it didn't go through the femur, so we're cool," our pilot informed me.

The fact that a metallic rod had just gone through my leg and not hit the bone and it was a good thing showed how dire a situation we currently found ourselves in. Just three minutes ago we had been kicking some serious ass.

"Have we called for backup?" I asked as I stumbled up, leaning on the hornet.

"Yes, your lieutenant is trying to send an airstrike or something to get us safe and sound away from here," she said. As soon as she was done talking she coughed up a dangerously high amount of blood all over my visor.

"We're so screwed," I said.

Then there was a loud explosion ten meters to my left. It blew a wrecked ghost a couple of feet in the air and several meters forward. I heard screaming and looked up to see a banshee banking left to take another shot at us. It would be a couple of seconds before it was ready to shoot us, so I positioned my back to the hornet and took aim at the sky where it would more likely show up.

"Pavel?" I said.

"Yeah!" he yelled through the noise of his gun.

"Wish me luck," I said.

The banshee appeared from behind, of all things, a dark gray cloud. I could hear the screaming-like noise that it made when it turned already. It wobbled a little before it stabilized and aimed on our position. It started its strafing run a little early, with most of the plasma blobs landing in front of me, raising plumes of molten dirt and polycrete. I pushed the stock of my battle rifle hard onto my shoulder and held my breath. Time seemed to slow down for just one second, I aimed and squeezed the trigger.

There was barely any recoil as the three-round burst left my rifle barrel and headed straight for the banshee. The front of the craft started glowing green when the three small bullets made contact with the banshee. One of them hit right where I was aiming at. The small propulsion pod on the edge of the wings had more than enough armor to prevent my bullet from causing any serious damage, but the impact was enough to make the craft loose speed and wobble a little. The fuel rod it fired went high, if only by a few inches and hit a shadow ten meters ahead of our hornet. The banshee scraped the floor and pulled up before colliding with a ghost.

"Ok, change positions!" I called out.

Pavel came towards me and put my arm over his shoulder while our pilot (whom I will refer to as Pilot from now on) stumbled behind us while holding onto her ribs. She was hurt and it was probably bad enough that if she didn't get help soon, she would die.

Our next cover was a semi-overturned shadow transport with an intact turret. I almost cried in joy when I saw it, Pavel could do wanders with turrets, the banshee would be in for a big surprise once it came within his line of fire. I simply collapsed behind the large vehicle and covered my friend while he climbed to the turret. There were several burnt alien bodies around with smoke still coming from them. I might've enjoyed the smell of burnt meat had it not been for the gruesome sight.

"Ok, got it!" Pavel called out. "Watch my back."  
>I popped from cover and tried to spot any movement. My vantage point wasn't nearly as good from ground level as it had been twenty meters above. I could barely see anything through all the wrecked ghosts and shadows. The small piles of bodies or fusion coils didn't really help with my line of sight at all. I was busy looking for enemies when the shadow started vibrating. Pavel was already firing on the banshee, and by the sound of it, it was firing back. A blue blob of plasma flew a few inches over my head, scorching my helmet and warming up my scalp, another couple of plasma rounds hit the shadow, but none of them was close enough to cause any real harm.<p>

"Yeah bitch!" I heard Pavel called out.

I looked over my shoulder briefly so that I could see what had happened. I turned just in time to see a fiery blue ball and what was left of a banshee emerging from it. The destroyed craft flew almost straight downwards and slid a couple of meters forward, coming to a halt when it hit yet another destroyed ghost. I smiled and whooped in celebration, but was promptly forced back into cover as a jackal spotted me.

"Hit the damn bird!" I called out.

"On it!" Pavel replied.

"Where are we on that support?" I asked. "Or evac, whatever."  
>"No word yet," Pilot muttered, she wasn't looking real good.<p>

"Well, fuck."

Yes, I know, real elaborate, leave me alone.

"Pavel?" I asked.

"Not much time left."  
>Until now, we had been getting it relatively light, only a few covvies had realized what was happening, and even less of them were valiant enough to attack our position, the rest didn't even know that we were alive, and if they did they had no idea where we were in. Once they realized how incredibly idiotic they looked from our perspective they would simply launch the rest of their troops at us and overwhelm us through sheer numbers alone. Believe it or not, two Helljumpers and a pilot can't really do much against an enemy company, no matter how good they are.<p>

"Boom HEADSHOT, bitches!" Pavel yelled. He was still manning the plasma turret, whoever was on the receiving end of that round must've been left horribly disfigured, not to mention dead.

I climbed up the shadow and fired upon a group of elites switching cover, bringing one of them down and forcing the rest to back down. We might've not been a match for so many enemies, but we could sure as hell leave their noses gushing blood and their eyes swollen to the size of apples. Metaphorically speaking of course.

"Where are we on that support?" I asked.

"Two pelicans, three minutes!" Pilot called out. She wasn't really adding to the overall effort, but she was looking like she was on the verge of fainting and she was doing a decent job of covering our rear with my pistol.

"Movement right!" I called out.

A stream of plasma scorched the street and wrecked vehicles before it made contact with the last grunt of a small squad, bringing it down after vaporizing both its legs. The grunt then exploded as the superheated plasma detonated the methane in its backpack. If we were lucky the blast killed or incapacitated a couple of the members of his squad. Still, it was hoping for too much.

"Jackal, ten o'clock!" Pavel warned me.

I shifted to aim at the location and put three rounds through the skull of a jackal sniper before it could even put its rifle to bear. We were still kicking ass, but there was now a semi-circle of covvies surrounding us and closing in. We had a turret, but they had numbers and plenty of cover available, and most importantly, we were running out of time.

"Two minutes," Pilot mumbled, she was about to pass out.

"Shit, shit, shit, shit, shit!" I muttered.

From that point on it was simply a matter of popping up from cover, shooting whatever thing happened to be moving and then jumping back down to avoid the following hail of plasma fire, Pavel had cover from his waist down because of the angle the shadow was in, but he was starting to receive tons of fire and would be forced to abandon the turret soon.

"Behind us!" Pilot called out.

There were two muffled shots coming from my pistol before I was able to turn around. Two elites materialized from thin air and aimed at pilot, I switched to full auto even as I turned around, my gun was firing before I knew what was going on. Luck was with me for those brief instants and some eight bullets hit the first elite, bringing the shield-less spec ops sangheili down. The other received four bullets to the legs and waist, knocking it to the floor. It was able to let go a single shot from its needle rifle, hitting Pilot in the knee.

I looked at her in dull surprise as her eyes went wide at the sight of a five-inch needle sticking out of her right leg. She barely had time to start screaming when the round detonated, leaving a hole the size of an orange on her leg. She now went ahead and gave out a piercing scream that made the hair on the back of my neck stand up.

The second elite was struggling to aim its rifle without the use of its legs. I quickly threw my knife at it, hitting it in the head. The blade just barely went through the armor and the elite roared in pain as it pierced its skin. Even as the knife was flying I was already slamming another mag into my rifle. Before the elite had finished screaming there were fie rounds inside its brain, and it was as dead as its companion.

"Oh fuck," Pavel muttered as he fell backwards from the turret. His thigh armor was smoking and scorched.

"You ok?" I asked under the noise of plasma fire.

"No."  
>You know that part in the movies when the good guys look like they are about to loose the battle, and the really sad music starts playing in the background while there's a montage of all the character's faces and actions during the climax of the battle? Well, I sure could've used a very dramatic soundtrack right now. It would've made my death feel a little bit more… heroic.<p>

I dragged Pilot's limp and unconscious body towards the shadow, her knee left a trail of blood. Pavel reloaded his machinegun and started firing over the shadow without even bothering to aim. He was just buying us some time. I placed some biofoam on Pilot's wound, she barely even moved. I grabbed her hand ant took my pistol from her. It would probably be useful.

"Now what?" I asked myself.

"Never thought it would end like this," Pavel said.

"Yeah, me neither."  
>I grabbed all my grenades and placed them around me. If I was going down I was going to kill as many covvie motherfuckers as I possibly could, pardon my French.<p>

I tossed my two flashbangs over the shadow and smiled a little at the screams of pain of grunts and jackals alike. Next I shoved myself with my back to the ghost and aimed at one edge of our cover.

My first victim was a grunt, eager and stupid. It looked almost comical as its entire body lurched sideways from the impact of my round. Next an elite found itself facing a hail of bullets, it managed to let off a couple of shots, one of which grazed my shoulder and gave me blisters. Not that it would matter, I was going to die right now. I could hear the screaming of wounded aliens, I could hear their cries of rage and anticipation, I could hear the plasms-fueled fires still going on, I could hear the rounds bouncing of my cover, but on top of all, I could hear my heartbeat.

My heart was beating faster than it should've been. Faster than I ever remembered it beating.

_Seriously, if it keeps beating like this I'm gonna die of a heart attack before they get to me._

Then I realized it, my heart wasn't capable of beating at 900 rounds per minute, if it was then there would probably be something very wrong with me. The next elite that came around the corner was literally shredded to pieces as lead filled the air (and its body) where it was. It collapsed to the floor with a sickly squish sound. It actually made me smile a little.

"Gotta love gunships," Pave said, fatigue evident in his voice.

I simply nodded at him as I watched the pelican spew fire from its loading bay. The other craft released a hail of ANVIL-II missiles that blacked out all the other noise for the briefest of instants.

"My leg is killing me," I said.

"Pussy," Pilot muttered before she slipped back into unconsciousness, a small grin on her face.


	61. Amateur Psychology

Chapter LXI: Amateur Psychology

**March 7, 2542 (UNSC Calendar)/**

**UNSC **_**Inconvenience, **_**in orbit above Aztlan, Eta Cassopie System**

"What the fuck doc?"

"Hey, it's not my fault that the guy who sewed you was an idiot with Parkinson's."

"It still hurts," I said after wincing.

"Why didn't you come here earlier?" he asked me.

"Well, let's see, I was unconscious for a day, then I was exhausted for another day, next day I was released from the hospital, then we were brutally pushed back by an enemy offensive and then I got here, two hours ago."

"Why weren't you here two hours ago?" the doc said as he pulled on a string.

"Ouch! Cause I- Fuck, take it easy will ya?"  
>"aaand there it is," he said after pulling out the last stitch. "You try to take it easy for a couple of days will ya?"<p>

"Yeah right," I mumbled.

He reached for some biofoam and poured it on the wound, making the sting worse. The white foam went inside the wounds and bound the tissue together. The injury was already healed, but pulling those stitches out had opened up a whole new set of bloody cuts.

"Your leg is gonna have an ugly scar," he said. "Unless you have some surgery done, but I take it you'll boast about that scar in particular."  
>"This one?" I said, turning around on the infirmary bed. "Not likely, I fell ass first to the floor and a metal rod went through my leg, nothing to be proud about in that one."<p>

"You could always lie about how it happened," he pointed out.

"Not likely," I said as I pulled my pants back up. "Not easy to show, not worth bragging about."  
>"Good point," doc admitted. "Still, at least <em>try<em> to take it easy."  
>"Will do doc, thanks."<br>I left the infirmary with a wounded pride and a bloody thigh. Not much I could do about it, so I simply hopped along on my good leg. The ship was surprisingly full, the entire marine unit on board had been chased out of their position by a covvie spearhead, they now functioned as reinforcements wherever they were needed, transported quickly by pelican. B company was helping in evacuation in some city or other, but they would soon need to be evacuated themselves if things kept going like that.

I bumped into a couple of shoulders on my way to my room, but didn't bother to apologize. People should know better than to walk in a Helljumper's way. The barracks section was really crowded, but most people moved aside to let me pass. A man dressed entirely in black in the Marine Corps was something you treated with respect, whether you wanted to or not. I went through the general population barracks and then headed into the aisle that contained the officers' rooms and my own.

"Hey bud," Pavel said from his bed.

"Yo," I replied.

I walked towards my bunk and pushed his feet out of my way before finally reaching my bed. I winced a little bit as I sat down, but eventually managed to find a comfy position.

"You ok?" he asked me.

"I'm fine."  
>"Your ass ok?" he asked sheepishly.<p>

"It is not my ass ok! It's my mid-thigh that got run through with a metal rod. You're just smug because it is usually you the one that gets stupid injuries."  
>"So you <em>do<em> admit it is a stupid injury," Pavel said.

"Screw you," I said as I let my head sink into my pillow.

It wasn't a stupid injury, there had been no way to avoid it once the cliff came tumbling down, in fact, I was lucky that an iron bar through the leg was the only injury I got. Pavel was even luckier that he came out of a fucking rockslide without any physical harm.

Pilot was lucky that our cliff got brought down, that way she was rescued. I hadn't really had time to beat myself over actually deciding to let the poor girl die, but that mental pain would come soon enough. I still didn't know her name, only that the doctor told me that she would live despite massive internal bleeding and a couple of cracked ribs.

Just as I was about to fall asleep and probably have a very nice four hours of sleeping before I was woken up for some emergency or other, someone knocked on the door. I groaned loudly and Pavel yawned. Since my groan better expressed my laziness and because I was actually injured, my friend stood up and went to open the door after some complaining.

"Frank!"  
>"Oh shit," Pavel said, "it's the missus."<p>

"What?" I asked.

"Frank!" Marina yelled.

"Crap," I muttered, a little bit too loudly perhaps, because next thing I know she's hitting me pretty damn hard.

"Ouch, what the fuck?" I asked. "Why you hitting me for?"  
>"You arrive on the ship and you don't even bother to visit me?" she asked.<p>

"Yeah, I just remembered that I've got that… thing." Pavel said and promptly left.

"Why you hitting me for?" I asked again.

"You didn't even tell me you were here!" she yelled.

"Shit," I said. "Stop hitting me!" I finally got tired of being physically abused by my girlfriend and grabbed her wrists.

Then she kneed me in the balls.

I collapsed to the floor grabbing my junk.

"God…" I said in a high-pitched voice.

"Oh shit," Marina said as she brought her hands to her mouth. "I am so sorry, I totally didn't mean to do that, it was an accident, I swear."  
>"I… it… why?"<p>

I whined for a couple of instants while my groin throbbed in pain and the room around me dimmed at the corners. Marina had kneed me with such viciousness that I was that close to loosing consciousness. It hurt so bad, so really bad.

"Shit, shit, shit, shit, I am so sorry."  
>I could only groan in response.<p>

Eventually, the pain subsided so that I only felt a dull throbbing and occasional waves of hurt. I was able to get up (with Marina's help) and sit down in my bed, wincing a little as I sat. I glared at my girlfriend hard enough for her to back of a little and then fell backwards to my pillow once again. I closed my eyes and tried to block of the residual pain and the shame of having been brought down by a thin and relatively petit woman with no actual combat training other than basics and just a little bit of personal defense.

"What. The. Fuck."  
>"Shit, I said I was sorry."<br>"You hit me. So hard."

"I am sorry," she said, now she sounded annoyed.

I glared at her once more and then took a couple of deep breaths before I managed to find appropriate words.

"Why Marina, what happens that you are so mad at me?" I said in a very sarcastic tone. Probably not the best course of action, but man, I was pissed off.

She was obviously annoyed by my tone, but she took the high road instead and decided to ignore my sarcasm.

"I am just worried about you, you seem… distant."  
><em>Distant, seriously? What is this, the opening scene for a romantic comedy?<em>

"Distant how?" I asked instead.

"Well, for starters, we haven't talked in a while-"  
>"Ah yes, about that, I was fighting a war. You know, my job."<p>

"Let me finish," she said, her tone showed that she was now obviously annoyed. Her tone then suddenly changed and she sounded like a patronizing woman explaining a fact of life to her child. "It has been a while since we last had a date, whenever you're here you barely seem to know that I am in front of you, yet your eyes still shift all over the room, as if you were expecting an attack-"  
>"<em>That<em> is completely justified," I complained.

"-and," she went unfazed. "you seem like a different person than before, at least to me. You used to come say hi every time you arrived back on board. Hell, one time you somehow managed to bring me flowers!"

I smiled at the memory, short deployment, had time to steal a bouquet of roses from an abandoned flower store while Pavel bashed in an elite's skull with the butt of his gun. Quite probably one of the most absurd moment in my entire life, but it had been worth it to see Marina happy. Oh, and also some very great thank-you sex.

"Well, the point is, I am worried about you," she concluded. She actually had an expression that made me feel like I had something sticking out of my chest and I was about to die.

"And because you're worried, you had to kick me in the nuts?" I asked. I was still really pissed.

"I said I was sorry," she said, only this time she said it calmly.

I looked at the only female friend I had, in fact, she was one of my only two friends in the entire universe. She looked beautiful, as she always did, wearing her baggy and oversized cargo pants and an extremely tight and form-fitting tanktop. I couldn't help but smile at the sight of her, and that was all it took for me to forget that she had just kneed me in the balls very hard. At least for now, I was sure to say something to make her feel slightly embarrassed or perhaps minor public humiliation when the opportunity arose.

"Fine," I said. "I _might _have been behaving differently in the recent past," I conceded. In truth, I_ had_ been behaving differently, differently enough for even me to notice it. I was only slightly pissed that no one had told me earlier. "I will try to behave normally, but you have to understand that I am not changing on purpose."  
><em>Huh, this talking things out thing feels good. Like a metaphorical weight of my shoulder. Who would've thought?<em>

"Ok," Marina said. "I'm glad you admitted this…"

_If she says that admitting to your problem is the first step I will not let her get absolutely any of this for the next year._

That thought was immediately followed by:

_Well, next week. Oh, I'll find some other way to annoy her that doesn't involve me giving up sex._

Then:

_I am an asshole._

"Doesn't it feel much better now?" she continued.

"It does," I admitted.

"Now," she said with a familiar smile. "What can I do to make up for hitting you?"

I certainly knew what she had in mind, but the very nature of the place where she had hit me made it impossible for me to participate in said compensation.

"Yeah, it kind of hurts like hell right now," I said, glancing at my injured area, "so no."

She shrugged and there was evident disappointment in her face. Perhaps after all women did want sex as much as us men did. Seemed like something unfathomable. They always seemed to be able to go for extended periods of time without any sort of sexual contact.

_That's what they want us to believe!_

If only there had been some sort of accompanying music fit for a reveal, that single thought would've been the best moment in my entire existence.

"So, how's it going?" I asked her.

"Not good, we've been mostly ferrying wounded, as usual, but every time there are more and more, and even I know when we're falling back," she added with a humorless smile. Marina was notorious for being almost unable to read any sort of map. How she made it through selection and flight school _and_ managed to become a warrant officer was beyond me.

"Most of the Army is now concentrated on Agra, the other cities are being either evacuated or slowly abandoned. Most people can't do either due to the fighting."

I shook my head. It was nothing unusual, in fact, some might argue that this was actually going well even though we were loosing. We still had a sizeable Navy up there doing their jobs comparatively well, the Army had made the covvies pay in blood for every inch of land they lost and the Marines had made them pay in body parts to go with the blood.

"Well, I guess that I'll probably be forced to something incredibly stupid before we finally abandon this moon," I said.

"You can't really think that."  
>"That I'll do some shitty mission?"<br>"No, that this is just a rock."  
>Look, I don't want to get metaphysical or anything like that, but in the grand scheme of things, this place was just a rock, in fact, it wasn't important to the war effort. The resources it produced could be gotten someplace else, the recruits coming from Aztlan were some thousands in the UNSCDF which numbered close to fifteen billion. The planet could've been abandoned and that would've actually been better for the war effort with less time and resources wasted. Still, we were humans and we couldn't simply let some 30 million living, breathing human beings at the mercy of genocidal aliens.<p>

"You know I didn't mean it like that. I just meant that this place is a rock, as in the geological definition of the word."  
>She smiled. "Do you even know the geological definition of rock?"<p>

"Umm, a naturally occurring bunch of mineral stuff and the like that is solid?"

"Huh, that was actually pretty close," she said.

"How would you know?" I asked.

She simply laughed and stood up form her seated position and climbed into bed with me. Marina wasn't known to be a big fan of cuddling, but then again, she was a girl and most girls have a weak spot for doing just that. In this, Marina was no exception. She did the classic 'shuffle yourself into position while discretely rubbing your butt against your partner's crotch thing' and then put her head on my pillow and pulled my arm over her so that I was hugging her waist. For a brief instant everything was as close to perfect as it could be. Hey, I know I sound corny as hell, but it was true. For that brief instant there was nothing to worry about, no war, no death, no loss. Sure, there was a throbbing pain in my crotch that was very slowly disappearing, but everything else felt like it was right where it should be.

"Anything else I should know?" I asked.

"About what?"  
>"The war…"<p>

"Oh," Marina said. "Why are you so worried?"

"You know that I'll be dropped of one more time. Something incredibly stupid, remember?"

"Yes," she muttered. "Didn't think you were serious."  
>"Hey, it's not up to me what ops I take part in," I told Marina. "Whenever Albaf or Wilkins calls me, I have to be there, no matter how incredibly wasteful and stupid their mission seems."<p>

"Must be depressing," Marina said. "Going out on missions-" she did air-quotes as she said the word mission. "-with no real purpose."  
>"I hadn't really thought of it that way," I said. "Only took it as a downside to the job, but thank you, from now on I won't be able to help feeling depressed…"<br>We both chuckled a little for a few moments before Marina started coughing.

"You alright?" I asked.

"Yeah, I think I'm coming down with a cold." She appropriately sniffled and wiped her nose with her arm while she said that. She was about to say something when Pavel barged in holding a girl's hand.

"Yeah, Frank, I'm going to need you to leave for a while."  
>That girl in question was not his girlfriend.<p>

"Pavel…" Marina said, realizing what was going on.

_That girl is insanely hot. _

"Oh, sorry, didn't know you were still here," he said. "Heard you screaming at him so I figured I could ask good ol' Frank here to lemme borrow the room for a while." While Pavel said that he made an effort to conceal the girl behind him with his body. He wasn't entirely successful. Ignore that, he failed utterly and completely.

_Ok, should I congratulate him on his catch? Or perhaps just look at him disapprovingly and shake my head?_

"Frank, you do remember you have a-"

"an appointment!" Pavel interrupted. "Yes, thank you for reminding me." He turned around and faced his newest catch. "Sorry, we're going to have to do this another time."

The girl just smiled at him and pecked him on the cheek. She winked at him before she shrugged and turned to leave. The door closed behind her impressive rear and Pavel turned around to face Marina and me with a sheepish face and a blush that would've made anyone feel embarrassed for the guy. Anyone but my girlfriend.

"What the _fuck_ is wrong with you?" Marina yelled at him. She jumped out of bed as she said that, her butt pressing into my still tender balls and making the pain resurface for the briefest of instants.

"Ugh," I mumbled as I reached to grab my crotch."  
>"Something wrong with you mate?" Pavel asked.<p>

"Yeah, Marina kneed me in the balls. And since when do you say 'mate'?"

"Yeah, just came out of nowhere," he said.

"Don't try to avoid the issue!" Marina said.

"I tried," I mouthed to Pavel with a small shrugged.

Marina went hands akimbo and opened her legs just slightly. Her curled up fists were firmly planted on her waist. If I could've seen her face I would've been the victim of one of those death-glares that can melt through solid steel no problem. Right now I simply stared at her well-formed ass with a little bit more satisfaction with myself than was necessary.

"And stop staring at my ass!"  
>"Dammit," I said under my breath.<p>

"That girl loves you! Loves you, you hear me? And what do you do to repay that? You find the first easy piece of ass that is willing to sleep with you and you bring her into your room," she yelled at him. "What the hell is wrong with you?"

"Don't tell me how to live my life!" Pavel yelled back. "And since when do you say piece of ass?"

_Shit. Now I'm going to have to pick a side._

"What the fuck do you mean that I can't tell you how to live your life? You're cheating on my friend and-"  
>"Exactly your friend, not you!" Pavel interrupted.<p>

"So what? I can simply tell her and-"  
>"And what? Break up our relationship?"<br>"Seriously, you're blackmailing me?"

This went on for several more intense seconds while I simply braced myself for the moment when one of the two would turn around to face me and have that look in their faces that told me that they really wanted my help on the issue, and so help me god if my opinion didn't match theirs.

"Frank?"  
><em>Shit.<em>

"I'm talking to you here," Marina said.

"I, uh, huh?"  
>"Who. Is. Wrong?" Pavel asked.<p>

_Well, that's straightforward._ "Ok, please don't get me into this…"

"Frank," Marina said, her voice threatening. "Who is right and who is wrong?" Her tone had that 'if you don't take my side in this you won't get laid for two years' ring to it that made me flinch visibly. Surprising how quickly the mood can change in the briefest of moments.

"Well, I think you're both wrong."  
>"What?" they said unanimously, like they didn't believe what I had just said.<p>

"Well, Pavel, you can't cheat on your girlfriend, that's just rude." _To put it mildly._

"And Marina, if he does cheat on his girlfriend it isn't really your business."  
>I waited for both of them to team up against me. Instead, they both tried to storm off angrily, bumping into each other. Marina took a step back and let Pavel leave the room, then she just turned around and glared at me for a few seconds before she sighed and sat on a bed opposite me. She glanced at me, opened her mouth to say something and then closed it again. She then simply shook her head and stared at the wall.<p>

"It's his life, you know?," I said. "He can screw it up as much as he wants and you have no say in that."

"Oh, don't get all righteous on me," she said. "Like you are so perfect."  
>I shrugged. She was pissed; if I said anything right now I risked making it worse. Sometimes you had to keep your mouth shut or risk being rendered a prude for a couple of months. Hey, even if I am being moralistic for selfish reasons I am still being moralistic, so it counts. Also, I have repeatedly told you not to judge me, so don't.<p>

"Hey, come here," I said, opening my arms as if to hug her. I really, really wanted to get laid, even if it hurt. Marina stood up after making a show of not really wanting to and sat in my legs while I hugged her. "Just forget about it," I told her. I hugged her a little bit tighter and kissed the back of her neck.

"Wow," she whispered. "You really want to get some, don't you?"

"Hey, can you blame me, just look at you."

"That," Marina said with a smile, "was the right answer."

* * *

><p>Thirty minutes of glory later, Pavel walked into the room with a sheepish expression on his face. He gave a quick glance at us and had enough sense to look away. "Frank, Wilkins wants us in the pod bay ASAP. I'll see you there."<br>I turned my head to face my girlfriend and gave her a sad smile. "I told you so."

Marina gave me a quick kiss. "Of you go," she said sadly. "Go do your incredibly stupid mission. And do it well."  
>"I intend to do that," I told her. "I'll be back for dinner."<p> 


	62. Package

Chapter LXII: Package

**March 12, 2542 (UNSC Calendar)/**

**Aztlan, Eta Cassopie System**

Red, yellow, green.

The pod was launched from the ship even before I had gotten my debriefing. All I had seen was a tense Major Albaf ordering around the crew that prepped the pods before they launched. If they were still here this must've been a last-minute mission. The men scurried as Albaf yelled at them and then she had turned to face us.

"Inside, you'll be debriefed once you land."

We both knew better than to ask any questions and simply secured our weapons to the convenient holding places inside the pods and watched Albaf as the doors closed and sealed themselves. The entire cockpit of the pod lit up with several screens and status lights. The debriefing screen, which was only there to give soldiers something to do while they dropped to earth in a metallic cocoon, had only an ONI logo instead of the usual lines of text. The other screens that usually displayed your commanding officer for last minute debriefings were blank as well.

"I guess you could call this a last second debriefing," Pavel mused.

My pod started rattling as it entered the atmosphere of Aztlan for the second time. It was slightly worse than the previous jump I did, and the previous jump I did was about two inches away from landing completely sideways. Since it was _that _bad, alarms started flashing and blaring all around the tight cabin of the SOEIV.

"Shit, shit, shit, shitshitshitshitshitshit." I maneuvered my pod as best I could, but it was doing some sort of spiral as it tumbled to the ground. The parachute didn't do much to help, it only succeeded in making the pod turn even further sideways.

"Fuck!"  
>"Frank!" Pavel shouted.<p>

I ignored my friend and instead focused on the rudder of the pod, its effects were nearly zero, but I did manage to steer my pod slightly into the right position. By that time the entire cabin was flashing with red lights and I was taking turns at looking at the blue sky and then a green jungle with fires burning in he distance. I deployed my thrusters and the ground rushed up to meet me. Everything went black.

"Clear!"

"No wait! I've got a pulse."  
>"Thank god." That was the only familiar voice.<p>

"Is he ok?"

"Should be, scans report no significant damage. Seems like his heart was only dead for a few seconds, so no risk of brain trauma or anything serious."

"Good," yet another voice said.

"Fuck," I muttered as I opened my eyes. The edges of my vision were black while the center was shiny. The black edges eventually transformed into shapes that I recognized as human silhouettes and the shiny center turned into the rainforest canopy letting some sun come through. The human silhouettes further defined themselves to turn into ODSTs.

"Fuck," I said again.

"You're alright buddy," the ODST closest to me said. "A couple of stims and you should be just like normal."  
>I grunted in annoyance.<p>

"Yes," he said. "That's what I'd say too."

I finally was able to see everything without blurry edges after a few moments of disorientation. I was naked from waist up and my shirt was torn to show my skin. I would've been pissed, except that a ruined shirt was the only thing that I had given up in exchange for my life. Around me were nine ODSTs, Pavel was one of them, which meant that the other eight were unknown. One of them was kneeling next to me, a small box next to him and two thin paddles on each of his hands.

"Phew," I said. "Now what?"

Pavel laughed, I don't know if it was relief or because my joke had been funny considering the circumstances, but he laughed all the same. I simply jumped up before the ground tilted sideways and I was forced to sit back down. The other ODSTs all went into different directions, presumably to set up a perimeter, and muttered amongst themselves. Pavel, the medic kneeling next to me and another ODST with lieutenant bars on his armor remained behind.

"Now, about those stims," I told the medic.

Behind the depolarized faceplate there was a young kid that looked about five years younger than I was. I was twenty-seven, which by mathematical operation made him twenty-two. Then again, I was also perhaps four years younger physically in account to all the slipspace jumps and cryo experience that I had under my belt, so this "kid" could've been older than me just as well as he could've actually been twenty-two.

"Ouch," I muttered as a two-inch long needle was dug into my chest.

"Yeah, forgot to mention that it might hurt a little."

My heart started beating faster as the drug cocktail started flowing through my veins. It felt like my chest was going to explode for a few seconds until eventually, the pain that had been all over my body went away. Hell, even my stitches stopped hurting.

"Ok, I am ready to kick some ass," I said as I stood up, carefully this time. "Of course, I assume that that is what we're going to do."

"Actually Staff Sergeant, our mission is a simple matter of retrieval." It was the first time the lieutenant had spoken. Her voice (because it he was a shee) had authority, even for an ODST, under all his armor she was still slightly shorter than I was without my helmet, but the battle scars and composure of the soldier warned me not to underestimate her in the least.

"Go on," I said. I was removing the remains of my shirt and putting on my armor. The space between plates protecting my arms would remain uncovered, it wasn't the first time I had done that, but since I didn't even have a short-sleeved shirt or an undershirt underneath my armor I would probably get some serious chafing. It's a little bit sad that that was what annoyed me the most.

"During the evacuation of the planet, ONI, in all their greatness, left behind an item that is apparently of importance to them. They happened to leave it in a lab. Inside an occupied city. It's up to us to get it back and return it safe and sound."

_Lab, so I assume that it is some sort of schematics for either a weapon or technology that could help us win this war. They otherwise wouldn't have sent ten ODSTs to recover it._

"Who the hell doesn't make copies of their schematics?" I asked grumpily as I strapped on my forearm armor.

"Hey, that's what I asked," Pavel said.

"Regardless," the lieutenant said. "Our team is down two men, so you two will obviously be complementing us. We will divide ourselves into two teams. You two will be in the same team with Blue-Six, Blue-Seven, and Blue-Eight." As she said that my helmet received the IFF codes to identify the rest of the ODSTs properly. Since they were also Black Ops and in another unit, their names weren't present. Not that it would be important, I could very well refer to them by their numbers for a couple of hours. "Blue Team, your team, will provide cover for my team, Red Team, while we breach the ONI building and recover the package. From that point on we will fall back into here, and then make our way to our evac zone here." When the lieutenant explained the course of action a map popped into mu HUD and outlined the directions and schedules that we would keep to. There were some covvies present in the area, but nothing serious and nothing that we couldn't handle.

_Seems easy enough._

_Famous last words, _the more cynical part of my mind shot back.

I was fully clothed now, armor all ready and knives all sharp. My guns were ready to shoot and the stimulators running through my veins had me as giddy as a teenager after going all the way for the first time. Not that that's a bad feeling, but in battle giddiness isn't quite the best sensation for your long-term survival.

We were moving through the jungle, as per the norm in this stupid moon, to get to our destination. It was not as dense here as in other places, but it was still full enough of leaves all over the place that I started feeling slightly claustrophobic. Especially since we weren't following any sort of path whatsoever. Right now I was lead scout in Blue Team. I was Blue-Nine, Pavel was Blue-Ten. The other three blues were walking fifty yards behind me and the Red Team was doing the exact same about a hundred yards to my right.

"Halt," I said. I usually said 'hold on for a sec', but this guys gave of the 'seriously professional' vibe, and I didn't quite want to feel out of place. You know, peer pressure and all that tends to matter more than most people would want themselves to believe. "Tree line ends," I said. "A la verga…"

"Blue-Nine, what's wrong?" Blue-Six asked. He was the leader in my squad despite being the same rank as I was and in all likelihood, having less experience.

I was just starting to process the sight that I was taking in when I tried to answer. My brain couldn't find the appropriate words to describe the landscape, so instead it simply told my mouth to spew out a bunch of horseshit and I stammered like an idiot. Finally, I simply sent a live feed to the rest of my squad's helmets.

"Fuck," was the unanimous response.

In front of me, where the once beautiful city of Toyuq Sorbasi, once called the crown jewel of this planet, even if its name was something of a joke and even a meme in the internet. Still, I had only just heard of the city very recently, there were pictures in the dossier that we were forced to read to get 'acquainted' with Aztlan, it looked like one of those commercials for the newest housing development. It was shiny, pretty, elegant, and modern. It was pretty much the perfect city, aesthetically. Now it was a pile of blackened rubble.

"This place was supposed to be relatively intact," one of my squadmates said. He had a young-sounding voice with a strong Irish accent.

"Well, intel dropped the ball," Pavel said. "Did not see that one coming." That was sarcasm, obviously.  
>"Ok, move out people, Blue-Nine, wait for us."<br>I winked my acknowledgement lights instead of answering. Since my superior was the same rank as I was, I was unsure as to how to refer to the guy. Didn't want to sound like I was being sarcastic or anything, so I took the lesser of two evils. Instants later the rest of my team arrived behind me. They all took a moment to take in the destruction before finding cover behind the last of the trees.

"Ok, move out," Blue-Six said after a brief conversation with the lieutenant. Red Team was set up and ready to move. The ONI building was less than a kilometer away from our position. Normally, it would've taken us as little as five minutes to reach the place, but with all the rubble it would probably be about fifteen minutes before we finally arrived. At least it was close to the jungle, which was good for us.

Ok now, Toyuq Sorbasi was a city built out of metal-and-glass skyscrapers, it was very much like a smaller version of New Alexandria, albeit cleaner and more pleasing to the eye.

The buildings in the city were still standing, at least the majority of them, there were enough of them on the floor to provide rubble. The ones that were standing were all damaged, some were missing large portions of one side, or the top had been blown off, some looked like everything save for the basic structure was gone. The most impressive building was one a couple hundred meters to the right of our target. It was one of those mile-high skyscrapers that ended in a point. It had several landing pads that spiraled down from the top all the way to one-third of the way down. It used to be the headquarters of Interstellar Airlines on Aztlan. Now half the landing pads were missing and the upper half of the building was on fire.

"Yo Frank, you ok?"

"Hmm, yeah, why?"

"Well, for starters, you just fucking survived a faulty jump," Pavel pointed out.

Truth be told, I had purposely avoided the issue. I hadn't been that afraid in my entire life. When I hit the ground, I was sure that that was it, that I was a goner for sure. A million things flashed in my head, some of them nice, most of them not. I suspected that if I hadn't been high on stims, I would've probably collapsed and assumed the fetal position for a couple of hours.

"Don't worry about it."  
>"Umm, radio silence?" Blue-Six said.<p>

We both winkled acknowledgement and moved ahead. Our team was moving through an avenue filled with abandoned cars and the occasional corpse, both alien and human, mostly human though. Red Team was doing the same on a parallel street to our right. They would get to the building, use the elevator (or stairs) to get into the super secret basement and then we would haul ass to the evac point.

"One hundred meters," the lieutenant said. Boy, did her voice sound sexy.

"Staff Sergeant, you do realize that this is an open channel?"

"Huh?" I asked.

"As in we can all hear what you say," she explained.

_Shit. Said it out loud._

"Forgive my friend lieutenant, he probably hit his head a little bit to hard when he crashed down, there's no filter between his mouth and his brain," Pavel interceded for me.  
>The rest of the ODSTs laughed a little, filling the channel with chatter for a few seconds.<p>

"Don't worry about it," the lieutenant said. "In fact, I am glad to hear that."  
>The ODSTs all laughed and a couple of the higher-ranked ones teased the lieutenant about being too girly. She laughed a little as well before she made everyone shut up and focus on the mission.<p>

"Nice going there buddy," Pavel said. "Boy, does her voice sound sexy. Seriously?"  
>"Shut up."<p>

"Ok, we're in, Blue, set a perimeter, should be easy enough, plenty of cover."

I am pretty sure that the lieutenant added a little bit of sultriness to her voice just to piss me off. Apparently, I was right, since half the team started chuckling to themselves.

"Ok, find cover Blue," our leader ordered. "And move it along Red."  
>"On it," another unknown voice said. From the sound of it they were already burning through the doors. I could hear the sound that the plasma torches made all the way from over here. That was bad.<p>

"Ok, we're in."  
>"Ten minutes, in and out Red, Blue wait outside," the lieutenant said.<p>

"They always say that but they never come back," my squad leaders said.

"Yeah boss, I don't think that you used that correctly," Blue-Seven commented.

"Shut up, find some cover."  
>I gestured at Pavel to a high point that he could climb to using all the rubble and moved to a position behind a bunch of cement barricades half buried by rubble from the building across the street. I had a wide field of fire and was a couple of meters above the ground in front of me where the covvies would most likely come from. Pavel mounted his machinegun's bipod on a rock and went prone. The rest of the ODSTs were carrying MA5s, so they formed a semi-circle around Pavel and me. All in all, we had a pretty nice defendable position.<p>

Now that there was no chatter on the radio, the place was uncomfortably quiet. There were no covvies anywhere nearby, but the place was still unnaturally quiet. There was no wind hitting the buildings, no birds chirping, no sound at all.

"It's quiet," one of the ODSTs started.

_Don't…_

"Too quiet."  
><em>And he just fucking jinxed us.<em>

Just as he finished saying that there was a huge rumbling sound that made it feel like the whole planet was collapsing. The ground started shaking and the little debris rocks rocked back and forth.

"Relax, it's just a building collapsing," Pavel said.

There was a general sigh of relief from the squad before the shaking stopped as suddenly as it started. Immediately afterwards a huge dust cloud reached us. It was actually scary to see a fucking wall of brown and grey dust block out the sky and everything less than three meters away from your eyes. Yeah, not disturbing at all.

"Air filters on people, Blue-Ten, thermals on."

"Sir," all of us said. The air immediately became breathable, if a little bit stale tasting, if you know what I mean. Hard to describe the way it feels to breathe recycled air to someone that hasn't done the same thing. The space all around me was all dark and it wouldn't clear up for a while, Pavel would use his thermals to warn us if anyone was coming nearby.

"Contact!" Pavel called out. I could clearly hear the sound of him cocking his gun. Everyone of us winked their thermals on while Blue-Six tried to contact the lieutenant down in the building. "There are at least fifty of them!" Pavel warned.

"Ok, remember training, stick to your fields of fire and don't panic boys!" Blue-Six said.

"Shit, remember your training?" I said to Pavel through a private channel.

"Shhh, focus man."  
>Pavel had already made contact, so there was a small screen on the corner of our HUDs displaying everything that he was saying and displaying the squad's positions for some context. As soon as the first enemy soldier was close enough to our motion trackers the screen disappeared and was replaced with ammunition counters. There was a bunch of them and they were closing in fast. If we didn't act soon they would literally be upon us.<p>

"Ten, fire as soon as they reach that small crack in the pavement."  
>"Roger that," Pavel acknowledged. I could picture him adjusting the sights on his M247L and shifting his shoulder to find the most comfortable position to fire. He probably already had a large elite on his crosshairs.<p>

When he fired it wasn't like when the opening shot in a skirmish was made by a sniper, a single snap with a strong echo followed by a moment of stunned silence, no, Pavel's opening salvo didn't stop for five straight seconds, and it was joined by reports from four different firearms within half a second. The first to fall down was an elite major, I managed to bring down a blue-armored elite and a startled grunt before the covvies managed to return fire to my position.

"Lance of jackals moving in on your left," Pavel called out. "Blue shields, easy to spot."  
>As soon as he was done there was a few bursts of assault rifle fire followed by an explosion from a grenade. I couldn't tell, but it sounded like the jackals were done for, since no one mentioned them again. I popped out occasionally to sneak in a shot or two at the occasional grunt. Those were easy to kill quickly, whenever I hit an elite I was forced down before I could take out its shields.<p>

"Sniper climbing a pile of rubble, Frank, he's at your two!"  
>"Covering fire!" I called out.<p>

The noise of MA5 fire and the continuous explosions that Pavel's machinegun made whenever it fired a bullet intensified for a brief couple of seconds. I could see covvies struggling to find cover after being faced with all the lead and depleted uranium raining down on them. Most of them were slow as a snail, but covering fire isn't accurate, so none were actually hit. I zoomed in on the jackal sniper, it had a startled look on its face as it jumped backwards to safety. My super reflexes made time slow down just as I pressed the trigger. Three rounds flew out of my barrel and went completely through the jackal's left eye, leaving a hole the size of a cantaloupe in the back of its head.

"Boom headshot," I said.

"Blue, what's going on?" the lieutenant asked through the radio.

"Suddenly aliens, thousands of them, we're good for now, but it won't be long before they realize they have us outnumbered ten to one."  
>"Ok, we're hurrying it up," she said. "And don't make lame jokes."<p>

The firefight resumed, Pavel would keep their heads down and shred whichever covvie managed to be stupid enough to leave cover while the rest of us focused on important targets whenever Pavel pointed out one. We could've done with a grenade launcher, but we were doing all right enough.

"Ok, we're about to be overrun, fall back!" Blue-Six called out.

"Seriously, I thought you guys were doing fine," Pavel said.

"Fall back," our leader repeated.

I shrugged to myself and hopped back to a small debris pile that provided enough cover if I crouched. I pressed my back against it and tried to relax a little. We had at least three dozen meters between the covvies and us, compared to the usual situations that I found myself in, there was quite a lot of open ground in between them and us. And open ground meant killing ground. I turned around on my belly and shot two grunts and a jackal that had made the mistake of realizing that we had just fallen back.

The three other ODSTs managed to do quite well by themselves, each taking out two aliens apiece. I was momentarily surprised at their skill before I realized that they actually were ODST Helljumpers and remembered that they were as good as I was. Or at least damn close.

"Ok Blue, we're here."  
>Red team arrived guns blazing, they popped out from the covvies' flank, they took out a couple dozen of them before they even had to slow down. By that time my team was shooting at the surprised covvies. Within ten seconds they were all either dead or dying. Surprising what you can actually do with an ODST <em>squad<em> and not a puny _fireteam._ I can't help but envy the Spartans when it comes to that. Stupid supersoldiers. Yes, I am a hypocrite, deal with it.

"Ok, let's move out, Blue, we move as a single unit, Red-Three has the package, cover him, he can't be killed."

Pavel dismounted his machinegun and jogged towards us even as we started walking away. As soon as he reached us we all broke into a slow run. A large firefight such as this was bound to attract some attention, especially troubling when the only attention it would call was unwanted one. Before long we were leaving the city and entering the jungle.

"Mother, this is ground team leader, do you copy?"  
>"Mother here, we copy."<br>"Package is secure, requesting evacuation."

"Roger, please proceed to evacuation point one. A pelican will be waiting for you-"  
>"Mother?"<p>

"Shit, there are several phantom's and ground vehicles moving from the city and towards your direction. Looks like you managed to piss them off ground team."  
>"What? How many?" the lieutenant's sexy voice sounded shocked.<p>

"Battalion sized, we're sending in shortswords, won't take them all out, but they'll buy you some time."  
>"Thank you, ground team leader out."<br>For a few instants the only noise was that of heavy metal boots hitting the mud and the occasional tree root.

"Shortswords, this package must be a big deal," someone said.

"Mhm."  
>We kept on moving as fast as possible without burning ourselves out. Soon enough we would have to lay down some fire so that we'd be able to keep running without seven-foot-tall monsters caught up. Ignore that, the first ones to reach us would probably be ghosts or specters, not infantry. Anyhow, we were three kilometers away from the evacuation point if I knew anything about luck, we would have to move to <em>another<em> point before we could finally get out of here.

"Staff Sergeant," a familiar voice said through my radio.

"Eliza?" I asked, startled. For a moment I actually stopped. "What's wrong?"

"The captain had me contact you, that girlfriend of yours is pretty feisty, huh?"

"Get to the point." _You stupid construct._

"Fine, our scans are picking up large number of enemies on your tail."  
>"Yeah, battalion-sized, so what?"<p>

"Wrong, there are several other regiment-sized units moving towards your position."

"What, just to get to us? We're ten soldiers!" I exclaimed.

"Don't flatter yourself Staff Sergeant, you are moving towards the last landhold that the UNSC has on the planet, and the covvies are desperate to kill us all before we can leave this moon," Eliza said, "it just so happens that you're in between them and their goal."

"Fuck," I muttered.

"A rather appropriate statement considering your predicament Staff Sergeant," she said.

"Ok, what do we do about it?" I asked.

"Well, there are several fliers inbound to your position, I calculate a 97.756% chance of your evacuation point being moved, I suggest you start heading to this location," a waypoint popped up in my HUD. "It is in between the secondary evacuation points, by the time another evacuation point has been chosen, you'll be halfway there."  
>"You sure about this Eliza?"<p>

"Ninety seven point seven hundred and fifty six percent sure."  
>"Ok then, you'd better not have faulty circuits then," I said.<p>

"Technically speaking, I do not possess any circuitry or cable's at all, I am housed in a-" I killed the channel.

"Lieutenant, there's something you should hear…" I explained the situation to the lieutenant and let her think it over for a couple of seconds.

"You sure?" she asked.

"Ninety seven point seven hundred and fifty six percent sure."

"Ok, you don't have to be a pretentious asshole," she said in between breaths. "Ok team, move out, follow Blue-Nine."

I shifted a couple of degrees to my right and started heading towards the waypoint, it was a lot farther away than the original one, but if a smart AI told us to move to a different position, we would most certainly obey the thing. Eliza had probably ran a couple million simulations in her mind before even speaking to me. I trusted her, not because I was friends with her or anything, but because her math really was irrefutable, and everyone knows that math is either right or wrong. If 97,756 times out of 100,000 the simulation said that the evac point was changed, those odds were good enough.

"Frank?"

"Eliza, whenever I cut the conversation with you, it is usually because you start ranting," I said.

"I'm supposed to provide mission support," she said. Had I not known better, I could picture the AIs avatar blushing and looking awkward.

""We already have that," I reminded her.

"Yes, but I'm better, point in case, has your mission control told you that there are banshees closing in on your six?"  
>"Wha-"<p>

"Yes, you'd better move," she recommended.

"Banshees!" I called out.

_Well this is about to get fun._

* * *

><p><em><em>_That's right guys, two chapters. Happy early Thanksgiving._

_-casquis_


	63. On the Run

Chapter LXIII: On the Run

**March 12, 2542 (UNSC Calendar)/**

**Aztlan, Eta Cassopie System**

Spread out!" the lieutenant ordered. "Red-Three, you move faster or I'm going to start shooting at you to give you some incentive."  
>"Yes ma'am!"<p>

Red-Three's dot on my HUD started moving faster relative to our own speed, still, the guy couldn't really move too much farther ahead or else he'd loose us completely and have no cover at all. That was bad. Really bad. Meanwhile, the banshees on our heels had simply strafed us a couple of times, but the thick foliage meant that most of the shots missed and since plasma is pretty unstable, some of them even disintegrated before going through all the leaves. So far, we were doing good, but soon enough a lucky shot would hit someone, and then a couple of ghosts would make their way through all the trees. At least we were lucky that no brutes were here, else it'd be choppers mowing down trees.

"Shit, banshees coming in for another pass," someone called out.

"Everybody down!" the lieutenant ordered.

Ten ODSTs dropped to the floor and tried to hide under roots or behind tree trunks as five banshees torched the rainforest with plasma and fuel rods. The green blobs made whole sections of the trees vaporize and the rest explode in a cloud of splinters while the regular plasma rounds made shallow holes in anything that they hit. Oh, also, they started fires. Right now there was a huge forest fire on our asses. We weren't only outrunning fanatical and murderous aliens, we were also outrunning the mother of all forest fires. Whoop-dee-fucking-doo.

"Everyone fine?" the lieutenant asked.

"Red-one is good."  
>"Two good, and so is Three."<br>"I can answer for myself," Three said.

"I'm good," Red-Five announced.

"Same here."  
>"Blue Team is ok," the sergeant announced. More practical that he say it instead of waiting for every single member of the team to announce that they were fine.<p>

"Well what the hell are you waiting for? Move out!"  
>We were already on our feet and it was a simple matter of starting moving said appendices again, easy enough when you have been doing it all your life, not quite as simple when you have been doing it non-stop for the past hour and a half. Our evac position had been changed more than a couple of times so far, and Eliza hadn't been able to provide any more useful insight. We were at least sixty kilometers away from the nearest UNSC position and the likelihood of receiving evac didn't seem quite so plausible right now. You'd think that ONI would devote a whole lot more resources to something that they considered this important. Oh well, perhaps the brass was overriding their orders. For once, I was pissed at the UNSC going against the ONI.<p>

"Fuck them," I muttered under my breath at the thought.

"Who?" Pavel asked in between pants.

"The brass."

"Why?" he asked, he was evidently startled.

"They are probably going against ONI on this one, denying us any chance for evac because they deem their own matters more important," I explained.

"You do realize that that is just a theory," Pavel said.

"Also, this might seem more important to us, but perhaps someone behind the line needs a pelican to evacuate fifteen little children," an ODST with a heavy Irish accent said.

"Shut up, I wasn't talking to you," I muttered.

"Kid's got a point Frank," Pavel said.

"Fuck off," I said.

"Sorry kid, Frank doesn't like being wrong," Pavel explained to the Irish soldier.

_On the account that I very rarely am._

"Ground Team come in, this is command," the soothing voice of whichever tech was in the other eight ODSTs' spaceships said.

"Command, this is Red One," our lieutenant replied.

"I don't like being the bearer of bad news, but there is a definite hold on your evac, looks like you'll have to haul ass all the way to our frontline."  
>"What?" the lieutenant yelled, "that's seventy six <em>fucking<em> kilometers away!"

"I'm sorry lieu-"  
>"Don't you dare say you're sorry when you-"<br>"Well then, I assume that it is personally my fault the covvies are overrunning us," the mission control guy said. "Good luck."

There was the sound of someone taking their earpiece of and some mumbling, after which the words 'crazy bitch' were heard, followed by mission control finally cutting off the connection from us.

"Well, that was… depressing, to say the least," one ODST said.

"Ok, let's see if we can break the record for running little over a marathon and a half," another member of Red Team joked nervously.

"Like we have much of a choice," the young-sounding ODST with an Irish accent pointed out.

Once it was definite that we would have to cross a distance long-enough to knock out even the best ultra-marathon runners in what seemed like record time with a bloodthirsty army at our heels and hostile craft above our heads, we slowed down a little, if we were going to die, then we might as well die less tired than we might've. Instead we simply went down in speed until we were jogging barely above speedwalk speed. We weren't completely giving up yet though.

"Ok," the lieutenant said after a sigh, "what can we do about those banshees?"

"Not much really," the staff sergeant leading Blue Team replied. "We could use the grenade launcher's EMP, capability to take out a couple of banshees, but that would be too much to hope for."  
>"Agreed," I said. "You have to lead the shot, detonate at the precise moment, and aim correctly all while under hostile fire."<p>

"Don't have much of a choice," she said. "Red Four, how many rounds have you got for your M319?"  
>"All of them ma'am," Red Four replied.<p>

"Think you can make the shot?"  
>"Perhaps I can bring a couple of the banshees down," the soldier replied while shifting his foot.<p>

"Well then, next time give it a shot, someone drop a couple dozen meters and warn him when they are above you," she ordered.

"Ma'am," the only other woman in the squad said, she was tagged as Red Two. She immediately stopped completely and soon enough the thick foliage and abundant plant life meant that she was out of our sights. Her IFF tag only started moving once it had dropped twenty-five meters behind us. And now we waited.

"Banshees!"

Not for long apparently.

"Flying above me right now!" Red Two called out.

There was half a second delay between the shout and the detonation. The banshees were flying at their slowest speed in an effort to make their strafing run as long as possible. The first grenade flew above and detonated in the air before the flight of banshees even got close enough. Sure, it startled them, but it wasn't likely to deter them.

"OK, change directions and try again," the lieutenant called in her sexy voice.

Red-Three shifted the direction he was running in by a couple of degrees to throw off the banshees next time they tried to make a pass while the ODST with the grenade launcher reloaded the weapon. I thought it odd that a member of the Marine Corps would sport a weapon that was considered the staple gun of the UNSC Army, having been in use for just about three centuries. I simply shrugged and decided to feel grateful for the opportunity to shoot down the banshees, even if it was a small hope.

It took the banshees another couple of flyovers to finally pin down our position, once they did, Red Two called out again and the guy with the grenade launcher fired up in the sky. The explosive detonated a few meters ahead of the banshee, but it exploded at just the right altitude this time. Perhaps in a couple of extra tries we would finally get it. That is, provided one of the banshees didn't shoot that guy down, his armor was scorched and moisture was evaporating from it, giving the soldier a very scary look.

"Nobody said you could stay on the floor!"

I swear to God, if the lieutenant's voice wasn't so damn sexy I am pretty sure that I would've killed her a couple of hours ago. Why is it that officers have this annoying tendency to shout orders all the time? It is… well, annoying.

The next time the banshees flow overhead, we managed to bring one of them down, it crashed violently against a tall and thin tree, snapping it. Then it crashed into a three that was at least five meters in diameter and exploded in a beautiful blaze, even if that blaze simply made the forest fire we were trying to outrun feel a whole lot closer.

"Good job, let's see if we can bring down one more," the lieutenant called out.

On the fourth try, the EMP blast hit two banshees, sending them into each other and then crashing into the ground. The rest of the purple craft turned and went back to base, leaving us alone. It also cost us the life of our medic, Blue Seven. He was hit with a single plasma bolt in between his shoulder plates. I am not an expert, but I think that the plasma burned right through his armor and then into his chest cavity, killing him instantly.

We scavenged his body for armor and medical supplies and left a single grenade as a booby trap for when the covvies caught up with us. At least he'd manage to blow up one or two curious grunts or a hungry jackal.

"Shit," someone said.

"Ok, move on," our leader said, now her voice didn't give away any emotion at all. "We have to get this damned package back to ONI. Don't let his death be for nothing."

"Aye ma'am," said Blue Six.

Our pace now was more frantic, even if we didn't complain. The covvies were catching up, they were close enough that we could occasionally hear the noise of plasma fire. Sounded like they were using their guns to cut down the thick jungle and make a trail for their bigger vehicles. That was both good and bad. Good because that meant that the UNSC still had some kind of AA systems good enough to prevent the covvies from using phantoms to deploy troops in large numbers and bad because it meant that they were this close to catch up to us. Shit was about to get real.

By the end of the day we were one man down, out of coffee and all of us were just above the limit for combat stims. My feet were bleeding and my legs were hurting. We were just about halfway through to our goal.

* * *

><p>"Shit, move out," Pavel said quietly.<p>

We had decided to take a five minute break, which turned into a half an hour nap for all of us, and now we were hearing the humming sound that the anti gravity unit of a covvie vehicle made.

I jumped to my feet and grabbed my rifle while the ODST that woke me up shook another armor-clad marine from sleep. Within five seconds we were all on our feet and running away as far and fast as possible. It frustrated me to have to keep myself down in order to stay with them, but it was what I had to do. We were moving a lot more quietly, watching out step so that we didn't step on a branch or hit something that would alert the enemy to our presence. The way things were going, they would catch up to us far before we were able to make it home. At least their thermals wouldn't work well in here, neither would ours, but it was still some comfort.

"Pavs," I said.

"Don't call me that," he replied. "Only Chloe can call me that." There was something in his voice that sounded out of place.  
>"Umm, about that," I started.<p>

"Don't start this bullshit," he huffed in between breaths.

"Fine then," I said while mentally shrugging. Just you try to shrug while running as fast as you can after having been running for a few hours.

I wanted to give Pavel some sort of psychological talk to understand why he had been cheating on his girlfriend, not that I minded if he did that, but I thought that he really liked Delacroix and it just bothered me. It was that kind of constant nagging when you don't understand or can't remember something. Don't get me wrong, Pavel can do whatever he wants with his own personal and love life for all I care, I was just curious.

I heard someone stop and turned to see one of the ODSTs leaning against a tree and taking of his helmet to throw up on the jungle floor. He spat a couple of times to get rid of any residue and then drank some water, which he promptly spat out again. The guy put on his helmet back on and resumed his run. I was proud to be an ODST. These guys are the best of the very best. It had taken some forty-five kilometers through difficult jungle terrain to make this man empty his stomach. If that's not being a hardass, then I don't know what is.

It was only about fifteen minutes after that that a beam shot hit my team leader in the back of the head. I instantly turned and looked for the offending covvie through my sights, when I found nothing I fired a couple of shots in the general direction of the attacker. Not that it would worsen things, we were already made and within small arms range. As bad as things can get.

"Fuck, is he dead?"  
>"No, his brain is just fine after that!" Pavel quipped.<p>

"Fuck off," the lieutenant said angrily. "Two, make sure he's dead and take his ammunition. The rest of you, double time!"  
>This time we were sprinting, no one wanted to get shot in the back of the head. It was good that the dead man had been wearing a full-face helmet, otherwise we would've seen the huge exit wound ruining half his face instead of a tiny hole and a cracked visor with a little blood trickling down. No matter how professional and experienced you are, seeing your comrade's face gone is never good for morale.<p>

We were down to eight men, two of them lost in what someone would compare to accidents in civilian life instead of during full-blown combat with overwhelming odds, the kind of dead that every ODST wished he (or she) could get.

When we had been killing our legs for an hour, still twenty kilometers away from our goal, they finally caught up to us. The elites were the first to arrive, they were taller, stronger, faster, and in all aspects superior to the rest of the Covenant races present on this moon. They were sprinting faster than any human could, faster even than I could've. Blue blobs of plasma smacked against the trees all around us, and within seconds, we were all behind cover and returning fire. The elites weren't expecting such a speedy reaction, because the three of them that we could see went down with the first barrage.

"Ok, we leapfrog the rest of the way, Two, Three, Five, you're with me, Seven, Eight, Nine, and Ten, you're under Nine."  
>"That's me," I said mostly to myself.<p>

"Very smart, now cover us!"  
>My small four-man team stayed behind cover and popped our heads and rifles out so that the lieutenant's team could run a couple hundred meters back safely. No fire came. As soon as I got word that they were ok I sent my men back one by one in three second intervals while I remained to cover them. I sprinted all the way back to the lieutenant's position and then some. Once my squad was together and behind cover, the lieutenant's squad started running backwards while we covered them. This technique would take some time and would probably allow more covvies to catch us, but out position was already known, and this gave us the chance for small breaks and for relative safety compared to running away without any covering fire.<p>

"Okay," the Irish ODST said after a couple of leapfroggings. "Squad names?"

"One and two," the lieutenant answered.

"Ooo, ooo, I got one," Pavel said at the same time.

"Oh really?" she asked him.

"Yeah, dibs on Titan squad," Pavel said.

"Seriously?" both the lieutenant and me said at the same time, even if we had completely different reasons for it. She probably just thought Pavel wanted a cool-sounding name, I just hadn't heard that name in a while.

"Yeah, why not?" Pavel said. I could almost feel the giddiness in his voice.

"I'm cool with it," Eight said. It was the first time he's spoken so far.

"Fine," our lieutenant conceded.

"And you are?" Pavel asked.

"Sledgehammer?" one of them proposed.

"Nah, too long," Two said. She also had a nice voice, which was sadly eclipsed by the lieutenant's voice. Well, perhaps not so sadly, I swear her voice could melt you into a puddle.

"Hammer?" Three huffed.

"Not cool enough," Four noted.

"Anvil," One finally said in her lust-inducing voice.

"Sounds good," her squad agreed.

It had taken us two leapfroggings to decide on a name for their squad, lucky that the covvies were still to far away to fire on us, especially in this dense jungle, otherwise we would've been left with One and Two for squad names. Still, we could now hear elites barking orders at grunts and jackals screeching in bloodlust. The closest of them were probably just two hundred meters away, soon enough we would have wraith mortar fire falling down on our heads.

"Mortar fire!" Pavel called out.

_Why is it that when I think of something it always comes true?_ I asked myself.

_Not always, remember that particular thing you though about with Marina and that cute specialist? That certainly didn't happen, else I'd remember. _I wittily answered.

_Great, I am arguing with myself and managed to make me feel depressed._

The mortar slammed down on the ground, melting through anything that it touched and setting any nearby plants on fire on account of heat alone. Suddenly, I felt very nervous, and not for the reasons that you'd expect in a situation like this.

"Did I say that out loud?" I asked.

"What?"

"No…"  
>"Huh?"<p>

"Yes," Pavel said, followed by "Dammit." That man knew me better than anyone.

"-rounded by idiots," the lieutenant said. "Everyone ok?"

"Anvil Two fine, ma'am."  
>"Same goes for Three."<br>"Shaken, but Anvil Four is intact."

"Titan squad is ready to go lieutenant."  
>"Ok, the squad names <em>are <em>pretty cool," she admitted.

As good, competent, and well-trained ODSTs, we were already on our feet and scrambling to good positions when the swarm of drones reached us. Yes, in addition to being chased by a battalion and being caught in between enemy armies we were being shot form all directions at close quarters. And _you_ thought that your work sucked.

"Bugs!"

"I fucking noticed," Four called out in between bursts.

"It's right on my aaaaaaaaass!"

"Got it!" I said after a burst to the back of a drone.

"Yo Frank!" Pavel called out once he was behind cover. "Isn't it annoying how drones show up only in the toughest parts of our lives?"

"Yeah, like once every couple of years," I said. "On the most difficult missions."  
>"And they smell like shite," Seven said in his now familiar Irish accent. He even took the time to shoot an extra burst at a drone that he had just shot of a branch.<p>

"I like this rookie," Pavel said.

"Not a rookie."

"How many campaigns have you been on?"  
>"This would be my-"<p>

"Rookie," Pavel and I said unanimously.

"Once you reach ten planets, you tell me kid."  
>"You've fought in ten different planets?" this time it was the lieutenant asking. The surprised tone made her voice sound cute in addition to sexy. I could marry this woman based on her voice alone. Gawd. Blind people must've fallen in love with her as soon as they heard her.<p>

"Well," Pavel said, taking out a pair of drones holding on to a tree. "More than that, actually, but who's counting?"

"I am," I murmured.

"Wow," the Irish guy said again.

"Why you sound so sur-" a line of needles hitting the wood above his head interrupted Pavel. "Whoa!"  
>"Die fucker!" I yelled in true action hero fashion as I gave the bug three bullets in its small neck for its trouble.<p>

"As I was saying, why do you thi-"

A plasma grenade landed right next to my unfortunate friend, who lunged behind a medium-sized rock next to him. The white explosion covered the rock and left it smoldering red, but Pavel emerged from the smoking rock and fired a long burst in the direction of the bulk of the drone swarm, probably taking out a dozen of those bugs before he was forced back to cover.

"Why is it so surprising that we are veterans?" Pavel said the words so quickly that I barely got them.

"Well," Two started. "You certainly don't behave like it."  
>"And you look pretty young," Three added, pointing at me.<p>

"And handsome," I said imitating Three's voice as best as I could. "Why, I'm flattered for your kind words. But yes, I joined as I was eighteen, straight to the ODST Helljumpers."  
>"You can do that?" Eight asked, shock evident in his voice.<p>

"As long as you go through bootcamp…" I said.

"No, you've got to have some previous combat experience before you can qualify," Pavel managed in between bursts.

"Yeah, you can't just go and join the ODST," the lieutenant said.

"I did that…" I mentioned.

"You must've been hit pretty hard in the head. You can't join unless you have combat experience."

"I'm pretty sure that I'd remember getting shot at before joining the Helljumpers but I don't," I said.

"Frank, why do you insist on that?"  
>"Cause it's the truth…"<br>"So," the lieutenant started, "you're trying to tell me that you joined the ODST without any previous military experience?"

"Yes."

"Wow, you must've pulled some strings there," she sounded surprised.

"I didn't."

After that I had to explain repeatedly how I got into the ODST. Eventually we came to the conclusion that since I was in living in Camp Afghan at the time, the recruiters assumed that I was a marine quartered there, or at least a recruit. Then, my uncle must've pulled in some very big favors to get me into Camp Mars IX. It made me feel good that my uncle used all his favors to help me succeed in my dreams.

"Man, your uncle really must've wanted you gone."  
>…and now I hated my uncle. Stupid asshole, trying to get rid of me and all that shit.<p>

By the time we had reached a decision on the reason why I got to become a Helljumper without being in the Marines before all the drones were dead and Three had a mild burn on his left arm. What? It was a pretty long discussion. Now that I think back to it, how detached from reality do you have to be to have a conversation about something stupid in the middle of a frantic battle? I don't know if it's a curse or a gift.

"Fifteen kilometers people!" a sexy voice snapped me back to reality. "This isn't over by a longshit."  
>"Longshot," I corrected her.<p>

"Fuck. You."  
>"You sound so sexy when you talk dirty."<br>The lieutenant was actually baffled for a couple of seconds and babbled a bit when she tried to come back with a witty response. That promptly sent both squads laughing. A little humor before dying is never bad for you. Well, a little humor is never bad at all, so it's not weird we're cracking up while we're about to die. Not weird at all.

Yeah, I was being sarcastic in case you didn't get it.

Fifteen(ish) kilometers to go, eight professional special-operations soldiers, an army of homicidal aliens. Sounds like the tagline for a really crappy action movie. Or perhaps an awesome one, depends on who directs it. I personally think that Wilhelm Striker could portray me. That guy is the king of action movies, I'm sure you've seen him a couple of times. Well, enough with breaking the fourth wall and back to the story.

Te minutes later our leapfrogging technique consisted on everyone running as fast as they possibly could and one or two guys walking backwards while strafing absolutely everything that moved. We sprayed fire all over the place, but made a lot of noise and a mess of the trees and wildlife behind us, a good job enough job to keep any eager elites and jackals with their heads down. Still, I had to tackle on elite and Pavel stomped its face in when it got too close. Four looked shock at our technique.

"Hey, it worked didn't it."  
>"You just <em>tackled<em> an elite."

"How very observant of you kid."  
>"Please, don't call my Helljumpers kid," One said.<p>

"Yes ma'am," I saluted as I ran, don't think she saw me, but I did it nevertheless.

As soon as I was moving again several carbine shots whistled by. The covvies were starting to get really close on us. Had the jungle not been so thick and dense, their ghosts would've run us down hours ago. Truly we had had more luck than we had been entitled to. More than anyone should've had at all. Seriously, how many people can say that they have stayed alive in front of an advancing covenant battalion for hours and through difficult jungle terrain that they were unfamiliar with. Only eight, that's right. But they don't say "All good things must come to an end" for nothing.

And suddenly the only noise that I could hear was the metallic boots of eight marines running for their lives. No gunfire, no plasma weaponry, no anti-grav units. Hell, I couldn't even hear any wildlife at all, not even birds shrieking. This was really, really wrong. I've watched enough movies to know that. Oh, and I've also been in more similar situations to know how it goes.

"Oh shit," Pavel murmured, mostly to himself.

"Here we go again," I said.

And suddenly there was a wall of plasma and needles blocking out every single thing in front of me. We were still some five kilometers away from our destination, and just before dawn, they had finally caught up to us. Our luck had run out, and now only the best of us would survive. And then perhaps not even then I might get out alive.

* * *

><p><em>Hey guys, hope you enjoyed this chapter.<em>

_I'm about to do something that I don't usually do, but I feel like I must. Now, I am not the kind of person that asks for reviews, I am of the mentality that if you wanted to review me, you would, but reviews are good for two things:_

_-Constructive criticism_

_-My ego_

_I'd like to ask you to leave the occasional review every couple of chapters or whenever something in the story makes an "impact" whether good or bad. I know that I probably sound like an attention whore, but I am actually writing this fic on the go, with little planning on what's ahead in the story, and if I know what my (very, very few) readers like and don't like, then I can write a better story for them. _

_Regardless, I love you guys, thanks for reading._

_-casquis_


	64. Blown Away Redux

Chapter LXIV: Blown Away Redux

**March 13, 2542 (UNSC Calendar)/ **

**Aztlan, Eta Cassopie System**

* * *

><p><em>"Back to basics."<em>

* * *

><p>"Run!" Two yelled.. Those were her last words before she was pierced by a needle rifle. Actually, those were her last words overall.<p>

"Anne!" the lieutenant cried out.

"Keep running!" I yelled at her. Four tripped on a thick root, luckily enough, the fall caused him to avoid three different blasts from various types of Covenant weaponry. As he fell down his rucksack opened up and a small ten by ten inch plastic briefcase slid out. It looked like one of those consoles where you directed airstrikes from. In the twenty-second century. It must've been the package, so I grabbed it and helped Four up as the trees all around splintered from plasma fire.

I stepped over a large tree that only seconds ago had been standing upright. The air all around me was now sizzling hot from all the plasma shots, the temperature display in my HUD had gone up some two and a half degrees Celsius in the last minute and a half from the enemy fire alone. The exploding needler shards weren't exactly helping my situation either, with flora raining on me from every imaginable direction.

I started sprinting faster and faster, disregarding all the instructions I'd been told about keeping myself "normal." Pavel, almost superhuman in his own right was the only one who managed to stay close behind me. Everyone else turned into green dots that were further and further away from the middle of my motion censor, while the covvies behind them were a huge red wall that closed in with every passing moment.

You could say I was in a very uncomfortable situation, and truth be told, I actually was in a less than desirable place. That's an understatement. It wasn't really that bad though, just keep running in front of that Irish rookie and I'd be fine in the time it took me to run three kilometers. Who am I kidding? this sucked. One step in the wrong direction, on inch to the left or right and my head might just serve to stop an incoming proyectile.

Things started going really haywire when everyone left except for Pavel and me dropped out of my motion sensor. I didn't actually know if they died, I just turned of their vitals off and tried to ignore their grunts and sounds of surprise as I cut off the radio chanel. It all happened very fast. I turned my head just in time to see the Irish kid stop and turn to fire a long burst from his assault rifle in the distance, I wasn't able to see anyone else. The Irish kid sprayed, hitting absolutely nothing. He was cut down within seconds, he actually managed to get killed by a sword-wielding elite. Probably not the most glamorous or heroic way to go, but still a pretty painless one.

_Idiot, _I thought.

"You got that right," my comm crackled. The statement was accompanied by a chuckle. apparently I had been thinking out loud. Again.

Pavel and I were the only remaining members of Titan Squad. In fact, we were the only remaining members of both Titan and Anvil squads it seemed.

I didn't bother answering him. I kept running as fast as I could while tossing my flashbang supply at carefully timed intervals. By this time I had mastered the art of firing while on the run. It was a skill that came really useful, especially if you can actually hit something that you can't really see. From the sound of it, I might have nailed a grunt or a jackal.

Two minutes later of frantic runnning and dodging I finally emerged from the dense tropical jungle of Aztlan. In front of me was a two-hundred-meter stretch of land that was devoid of anything other than dirt, craters and corpses, obviously not your everyday clearing. Just over the two-hundred-meter mark there was probably the most imposing looking trench to have ever been built in the world. In this world at least.

I stopped for a fraction of a second to make sure that my friend was still with me. A black blur against the bright greens, purples and yellows of the rainforest confirmed that and I resumed my dead man's sprint. I hadn't gone more than one step when the whole air in front of me exploded.

Technically speaking it was only the oxigen in the air that exploded, but when a large area in front of you actually blows up, you can't really spare the time to worry about the technicalities. I threw myself to the floor and happened to land in a very muddy crater that was halfway filled with water, the other half was filled with blood. Since the blood was red, it made it human blood, but I chose not to think about its origin at the moment. Hell, it still creeps me out when I think about that redder-than-normal water.

I stayed in that crater for about fifteen seconds before I realized that the air I was breathing tasted somewhat stale and a bit boring for the colorful atmosphere of Aztlan. Only then did I realize that the explosion had burnt all the breathable air that was remotely near me, so I would be breathing that boring air for at least fifteen more minutes. I was lucky that I was an ODST, my helmet had a small supply of oxigen in case of emergencies.

I finally dared to raise my head above the rim of my comfy-yet-creepy crater. The first thing I saw was that the tranchline in front of me had been reduced to molten glass. The barricades and fortifications were now smoldering heaps of molten metal and smoking corpses. I turned around and noticed that the jungle a couple of meters behind me was greatly reduced in density. Covies don't usually miss when they perform danger-close bombardments from orbit in support of their ground troops, but this time they managed to both eliminate the army chasing me and the army waiting for me without actualy managing to land a single first-degree burn on me. So much for precision. I'd probably get some nasty blisters in the back of my neck, but I was feeling very triumphant right now.

I stood up and managed to lift my rifle up to my shoulder while I looked around.

"Always a showoff aren't you?" said Pavel Klaus, my only and oldest friend. It looked like he would still hold that honorable position for a little longer, even if a little longer meant forty-five more seconds. We still weren't dead and it wasn't in my schedule to change that.

I can't believe I just wrote that, corny action movie line.

I looked behind me and broke off my pose to shoot a stumbling elite that was missing it's right arm up to its shoulder. It went down with a single round. Someone must've messed with the covvies targeting quite a bit for them to miss by that much. I thanked the AI that hacked into the enemy system or the UNSC ship that fired on the bombarding Covenant ship at the exact moment. Hey, the blast might've not killed us anyways, but it sure as hell wouldn't have killed the army on our ass.

"You wish you could look as good as I do right now Pavel," I said.

He chuckled and gestured at his semi-wrecked armor.

"You got that right," he retorted. With a heavy dose of sarcasm in his voice. Once you are in the face of death for the thousandth time, you start taking a less philosophical look at it and try to make the best of what little time you have left. If that meant laughing like a deranged man to make myself feel better, then I was ok with it.

I chuckled and simply started trotting towards the wreckage of my front line. I stepped carefully on the patches of molten glass that didn't shine bright red, those were as hot as lava and wouldn't stick to my boot and then slowly roast my foot. I crossed the fifty-meter-thick strip of molten glass while treading carefully and then another hundred meters before stopping on a tree stump that was actually quite comfortable for a tree that had just been blown to splinters. I crossed my leg over my knee and pulled out my combat knife. I scraped off the already-cooling glass of my boots and waited for Pavel to do the same. We kept walking without a sound for a while longer in silence.

"How much longer?" my impatient partner asked.

"Check your goddamend HUD!"

"Well, since I asked you it probably means that I'm too goddamned lazy to do so myself."

I didn't bother answering, instead I simply took of my helmet (which is against regulations, especially in a combat zone) and kept walking.

"Oh no. How will I check my HUD map now?" I said in a completely emotionless voice.

Pavel just cursed and in a matter of few seconds shouted out the answer to his own question.

"Half a click."

I nodded and put my helmet back on. I managed to smile at the thought of a nice and safe pelican evac to the UNSC _Inconvenience_ followed by a quick series of computer generated random slipspace jumps. We'd be in another allegedly safe colony within two weeks.

Unfortunately it was never that simple, and this time was not going to be the exception. I heard the familiar grunting noises of elites and the high pitched squeals of grunts up ahead, they were within thirty feet. For the first time in the past month I actually thanked whichever god was up there for making this jungle so goodamned dense. If we couldn't see them through all the plants, odds were that they couldn't see us wither.

Pavel and I both dropped to a cave-like depression that was formed by a thick tree root above and a rocky back. Then we waited. Those thirty seconds were probably the longest thirty seconds of the past two and a half months of my life.

Shortly after I heard the heavy thumps that only an elite could make. They were almost elegant yet somehow managed to sound rough and dangerous. Elites were a warrior race through and through. The thumping stopped and I almost squealed as the two red-clad legs of an elite major suddenly appeared right in front of me. The legs stood still for a few seconds and I could almost picture the elite turning its head and sniffing the air, sensing that something was wrong. I then saw around six grunts and two jackals appear in front of the elite.

I glanced at Pavel. He nodded at me and I moved my rifle as noislessly as I could. I brought it up and changed the BR55's setting from three-round-burst to full auto. Thankfully, it didn't click as loudly as it could've. Keeping your gun clean actually does help in more ways than one when you think about it.

I pushed my back to the floor and launched a two-legged kick at the knee-joint of the elite. My armored boots contacted nicely and I managed to keep them going forward instead of slipping to the sides of the elite's leg. I don't know if the joint actually broke, but the kick brought the small giant to the floor. I left my small cave with a jump and brought my boot down on the chest of the elite, the metal made an ugly crunching sound as it pushed the energy shields down against the combat harnes of the alien. I then emptied half my magazine into the face of the ugly alien while keeping it down with one leg. Meanwhile Pavel made himself useful and strafed the lesser squadmates of the elite with his M247L. He managed to knock down one grunt and both jackals. I put three rounds in the now unshielded elite's face and then turned to check the area behind our backs, our last-resort fall-back point was supposed to be that way. Not that there were many options left, we just had to run away from the covvies if we wanted to survive at all.

Pavel killed the remaining grunts with well placed bursts and then we resumed our march. By this time we were both exhausted. We had ran, climbed, stumbled, and crawled more distance than anyone should in their whole lives in the past day alone. This time our movement was different, our rifles were up and ready to fire, as were we. We crossed some sort of hedge that was acting as a wall between a couple of trees and found ourselves in front of at least fifty covenant soldiers. Hunters included.

Pavel and I jumped backwards at the same time just before plasma fire flew above our heads. We scrambled as fast as possible towards a thick tree as soon as we landed on the ground, plasma bolts were hitting the dirt all over the place, leaving it scorched and bright red for a few instants.

"Eliza?" I shouted into my com. "This is Frank, do you copy? We need some help ASAP!" There was no answer, only static. "Dammit!" I screamed into my helmet. I took a couple of deep breaths before I calmed myself down and then glanced at Pavel.

"You do realize we're as good as dead?" I asked.

He simply nodded as he heaved his LMG. We stayed there for a few moments as the tree we were in started to disintegrate and atomize with the intense heat of the plasma. It was probably on fire already, but I barely noticed any of it. I was a dead man. I had suspected it for the last hours, but it was only now hitting me that I was going to die.

"Not just yet Frankie," he said. I knew waht he meant.

"Count your rounds?" I suggested, remembering the time when that phrase saved my life.

"Count your rounds," my squadmate acknowladged grimly.

We jumped from cover, our guns blazing to meet death in the face like the heroes in the action flicks did. Unfortunately (or fortunately, now that I think about it), we didn't get that honor. Suddenly, the ground in front of us and under the covies balooned upwards and cracked. Through those cracks came flames. It was a beautiful spectacle and it seemed to happen in slow motion, with the blast throwing the covvies into the air or simply engulfing them completely. Only moments later I felt the shockwave slam me into the same tree we had been using as cover. It wasn't like in those action movies I mentioned earlier, where people fly into objects thirty feet away and turn out to be fine. It was more like a shove. A shove that managed to collapse one of my lungs and turn one of my kidneys into mush. Some shove indeed. SGMs tend to have that effect, especially when they detonate less than a hundred meters in front of you.

To this day I am not sure who authorized the use of space-to-ground missiles. Those things are large enough to destroy scarabs and cloaking spires in one shot and this one was used on a comparatively small group of infantry. If I knew who authorized the launch I would've given him or her a big wet kiss on the lips followed by a knee to the balls. Unless it was a shee, in which case I'd simply give her a kiss, or not, Marina's the jealous type. Whoever let Eliza launch that missile saved my life and Pavel's.

My vision started going dark at the edges right as I spotted a pelican in the distance. As it got closer I thought to myself that it would all be just fine and that I could just let myself fall unconscious and I'd wake up a week or two later in an comfortable hospital bed with a cloned kidney and a reinflated lung, ready to jump into the fight again after receiving the obligatory medals, commendations, and the like.

Unfortunately, reality didn't quite meet up to my expectations, the pain kept me alive. I watched as ten regulars dismounted from the red-painted pelican and bayoneted the survivng Covenant soldiers with mechanical precision. The two hunters were treated as materiel and were instead blown up with three grenades each, just to be sure that the missile blast killed them. Finally two marines, one of which was a very pretty corpsman with blonde hair carried me onto a stretcher.

_Funny, here I am, on the verge of death, saved in part by my amazing girlfriend and I can't help thinking how pretty this woman looks. _

The corpsman ignored the smile I gave her as she took of my helmet. It probably wasn't much of a smile either, since I was coughing up blood and there was even more blood streaming down from my head, courtesy of a rock that landed on my head in account to that blast I just mentioned. The ground started moving all aorund me as the stretcher was lifted and suddenly I wasn't able to tell where up was. I tried not to move lest I fallo f the stretcher and make my injuries worse.

Pavel was limping and being helped by two other marines. He did his best to try to push them away without discouraging them from helping him too much. That way he looked like a badass and still got two marines to help him walk the five meters to the pelican blod tray. I let my head fall back and had a breathing masked attached to my face. The space around me turned a lot darker andi t wasn't just because I was now inside the pelican. I looked at the boring metal ceiling of the pelican and could feel the craft flying away before everyone around me turned into vague silhouettes. The last thing I remember was having a big-ass needle being stuck in my chest before I finally managed to slip into unconsciousness.

_Man, getting blown up sucks._

* * *

><p><em>Due to a couple of petitions I didn't definitely kill off all of the other ODST's. They might just return later on. Also, I appreciate your reviews and will do my best to meet your expectations. I hope you enjoyed this chapter.<em>

_-casquis_


	65. A Day in the Limelight

_Hey guys, I wish I could say that this delay was caused by me writing a life-changing chapter of immense quality. No, that is not the case, a combination of semestral exams, having to leave the dark confines of my room, and overall business didn't allow me to publish earlier. _

Anyways, enjoy this chapter.

-casquis

* * *

><p><span>Chapter LXV: A Day in the Limelight<span>

**March 13, 2542**

**UNSC **_**Inconvenience, **_**Eta Cassopie System**

**Sergeant Pavel Klaus**

"Frank!" she shouted. "Is he fine?"

"Focus on landing the damn pelican lady!" the pretty corpsman yelled as she shoved a needle into my friend.

"I'm not a lady," she said, taken aback. "You can't be more than two years younger than I-"

"Shut up and pilot the damn ship Marina!" I yelled at her.

The pelican was spinning around violently, trying desperately to avoid all the flak from below and the missiles from above while trying to lose those pesky banshees on our tail. Marina sure was one hell of a pilot, but I didn't want her to get too sentimental while I was on the goddamned ship. Her boyfriend could wait just enough for us to get to safety.

I looked at Frank, physically, he looked almost the same as he did back in Jericho VII, the first time I saw him in that training base. Well, sure he looked a little bit older, but what really changed his appearance were his eyes, there was some sort of haunted look to them. If you looked at the guy for a few moments and he didn't smile at you, you'd actually feel a little scared. Hell, I've been his friend for seven years and he sometimes gave me looks that forced me to avoid his eyes. Oh, and also all the blood pouring from an ugly gash on his head, that sure made him look different.

"Shit," the medic yelled.

"What?" Marina called from the cockpit.

"Piss off!"

"What's wrong?" I asked, standing up. "Fuck." My legs turned to jelly under me and I slammed to the floor. Obviously, the explosion hadn't been too good for my legs. Explosions tend to have a negative effect on people who are close to them.

"He's crashing!"

A couple of marines pulled out a small defibrillator machine from one of the compartments above the seats and tossed it to the corpsman. She placed it on the floor as another marine undressed Frank from waist up, pulling armor pieces away as fast as he could and then cutting through Frank's shirt with his combat knife. By the time his chest was exposed I could see the extent of his damage. His chest and belly were surprisingly intact, but there was a large bruise on his left side that I knew could only mean severe internal bleeding. It looked like someone had painted him dark red on the side. I couldn't make out any broken ribs or lacerations, but I saw the explosion toss him like a rag doll, so I knew how bad it was.

"Clear!"

My friend's entire buddy jerked upward, his back bending so much it looked like it would break. He fell back down with a sickly noise and then his face turned to the side. His eyes were half open and half closed, and it seemed like he was staring straight at me.

"Clear!"

Frank once more jerked backwards and slammed back down on the floor of the pelican. The blood leaking from his head and some wound in his back that I couldn't see gave me total clarity on the reason why the pelican's troop bay was nicknamed the blood tray. The red sloppy liquid was forming a small pool around Frank's body, and things weren't looking to good for him.

"I've got a pulse!"

I'm not sure why the corpsman yelled everything out, but I think it might've been that it was because she wanted Marina to know that Frank was fine. Sort of.

"Zero gee in five!"

The corpsman was now sticking a big ugly plastic thing into Frank's chest, probably a collapsed lung, judging from the way his entire chest went up and then down rapidly, as if he had been holding his breath for a very long time. She then turned Frank around and revealed a tree branch sticking out of his lower back, right next to the two scars from spiker rounds. It was bleeding profusely, and in a few seconds when she yanked the branch it wou-.

She yanked the branch.

I winced involuntarily.

A couple of marines made noises expressing the repulsiveness that the act caused them.

"What happened?"

"We were shot down because our pilot didn't _fucking_ focus!" I yelled.

"Fuck you Pavel!"

"Drive," I yelled. I was that close to adding a 'bitch' in there, but she was a friend and I would've regretted it later. That close.

Now that Francisco was visibly breathing and the pretty blonde taking care of him looked to be calmer I struggled up and leaned in on the wall. The marines in here were all pretty nervous and just gave me weird looks as they held on to their guns and prayed not to be shot out by some Seraph. I entered the cockpit and slammed into Sheppard's seat as I lost my balance.

"Hey, watch it there tipsy," he said.

"You're getting way to much comfortable with our relationship kid."

"Yeah, yeah, shut up."

I was about to call his mother a fat whore when I decided that his aggressiveness showed that he was finally turning into a real man. Or at the very least into a real military man. That was a good thing, considering the size of the stuff you needed to have between your legs to survive this insanity.

"Vince, watch out for enemy fliers, our radar dish got nicked, it's not working right."

"Yes ma'am," the young Petty Officer said as he pressed a couple of shiny buttons in his console.

I looked out of the cockpit and all I saw was the absolute blackness of space. The sun dead ahead of our ship pretty much blacked out all the other stars from sight and hurt my eyes a little bit even through the cockpit's light-reacting glass. Space is big, and even though I knew that there was a pretty large concentration of ships (both friendly and otherwise) in the area, the only one I could make out was the familiar outline of the UNSC _Inconvenience._

"Home," I said.

"Hold on, we're not there just yet," Marina said. "_Inconvenience_, this is Little Red Riding Hood, please come in."

"We copy Riding Hood, you really need a shorter callsign."

Marina chuckled humorlessly. "Roger that, we've go injured on board and are requesting permission to land on hangar bay number two."

"Roger, we're opening the doors and sending a medical team to help out. You're just in time Riding Hood, we were about to leave, Warrant Officer."

"Well that just wouldn't do, would it?" Marina said. "Little Red Riding Hood out."

The Pelican must've been going pretty fast, because soon we were below the _Inconvenience._ A couple of doors opened up and a crane-like hand descended from the ship. Marina activated a couple of thrusters and the ship shook violently. The change in speed was enough to bring me to the floor and to send several marines sideways on their seats. I could only wince thinking about Frank's limp and unconscious body sliding forward.

"Oops, sorry about that," Marina apologized.

"Yeah, it's not like we have a dying guy in here," the corpsman, who I was really starting to like, said. "Oh, and you also don't care about him at all, so don't bother about him at all."

"Listen up you little-," Marina started.

"Wait, stop!" Sheppard called out.

"What?" Ten different marines, me included, complained.

"Can you girls save this for later, I don't have my camcorder on me right now." Everyone on the ship except for the two girls laughed loudly. Marina had the decency to at least blush, her cheeks turned redder than Chloe's hair. Chloe yes, right then I didn't want to think about her. That ungrateful cheat.

The craft shook some more when the claw attached to the roof. The space slowly disappeared as we entered the hangar bay of the ship. The two large blast door closed below us and the pelican opened up its rear hatch, letting the marines out and the doctors in.

"He's stabilized, I inflated one collapsed lung and there is some serious internal bleeding as well as some probably organ damage. He was in an explosion," the corpsman explained. "Also, I biofoamed a wound in his back, but you might want to stitch that up, also-"

"Thank you miss, now, if you let me do my job," an authoritative voice boomed.

"Yessir," she replied through clenched teeth.

I turned back and patted Marina's shoulder to reassure her a little bit. I then punched Sheppard's arm hard before letting myself fall on one of the seats, right in front of the doctors that were working on Frank. The one that seemed to be the leader ordered two of the others to put my friend in a hospital cart and gave me a long look before deciding my injuries weren't worth his time. For once, I was inclined to agree.

"Take him to the medbay and start him on morphine, prepare his DNA samples for a backup left lung and kidney. Also, we might need some laser cauterizing equipment as well as several blood transfusions."

The doctor kept talking even as the nurses took Frank's bed away at a speed that many would've deemed unsafe for someone injured so seriously. The doctor was barking orders while jogging away, chasing after his patient.

That left me alone in the pelican's troop bay with the blonde corpsman. She looked at me grumpily before she sighed and shook her head as if I had disappointed her in some way. She turned and walked away, leaving me wondering what I had done wrong.

"Close your mouth or it's gonna hit the floor," Vince said from behind me.

"What?"

"You were staring at her ass man," he said with a poke to my ribs.

"Was not!" I protested. "And don't say it so loudly," I whispered.

"Hey, she heard it and she's probably flattered by it, so what's the point in hiding it? Like my mother always used to say-"  
>"I don't give a fuck about your mother unless she's willing to give me a nice, long, wet, b-"<p>

Marina half tackling me to get me out of her way interrupted me just in time. She was running as fast as possible to catch up with Frank. She pushed the blonde corpsman out of the way and was inside an elevator and gone before I managed to get back up from the floor. Sheppard decided not to help me stand up, but he did let me lean on his shoulder all the way to the elevator. It was just the three of us in the elevator, Sheppard, the cocky pilot, and Corpswoman, the pretty corpswoman, and me, the wounded ODST. I climbed in the elevator and winced as I leaned on the wall.

Sheppard tried smiling at the blonde girl and her glare wiped the cockiness from his face very effectively. I simply tried to keep my footing as the elevator went up. The fact that we had a corny Muzak arrangement playing in the elevator only served to make the ride more awkward.

"Eliza," I called out. "Turn this shit off."

Unsurprisingly, the only reply that I got was an increase in the volume of the music, earning me a death glare as well. Sheppard looked at me like I was the devil and walked out on me as soon as the doors opened. That just left pretty damn angry blondie and me in the elevator. It was surprising that the elevator was almost empty considering that this was an emergency evacuation and there should be Navy personnel running around like ants.

"Help me out here," I said just as she was about to leave.

"What?"

"Please, you're supposed to be a doctor."

"I'm a corpsman, not a doctor."

"Same thing, you took a vow didn't you?"

She groaned and decided that she had to help me out. I tried not to lean too much on her but ended failing miserably. I limped after her and my entire body hurt with each step, maybe I should've insisted on some medical attention while on the pelican. Just as we were about to arrive to the medical bay I noticed something strange.

"You smell nice," I said.

"Do you _want_ me to drop you right here?" She was evidently annoyed and took my comment the wrong way. That never seemed to happen to Frank, girls seemed to like him as soon as they saw him, but he wasn't all that smooth and sometimes said stuff that would horrify a girl if anyone else said it. Some guys had taken to calling him ECM, enlisted chick magnet, can you believe that? He was lucky as hell in some aspects.

"No, I mean it's weird for you to smell nice considering that you're a combat medic."

"Why?"

"Combat," I said.

The girl actually blushed for a second. "Last time I checked there wasn't anything wrong with being clean," she spat out through the effort of carrying my sizeable frame.

"Of course not," I said, smiling to myself. "So, do you carry perfume on you or is it some sort of surgical implant?"

"Look, I don't have to take this."

"What?" I asked. "I just want to know, I'm not doing this to piss you off or anything."

"Well, you're doing a pretty damn good job at it."

_Bitch._

As soon as we arrived inside the small ship hospital she slammed me into a bed and started asking rapid-fire questions on what was wrong with me. Medically, wrong. Her mood changed from bitchy to caring professional in just a few instants. She could've been a good pediatrician if she wanted to, but only for young kids, teenagers being her patients would surely lead to some uncomfortable moments when their hormones started doing their thinking for them.

As soon as she was done she called for a real doctor to come assist me and then they were sticking something in my arm and the world went black.

* * *

><p>"Aw shit," I said, rubbing my head. "Where-" I stopped myself right there. Don't ask stupid questions or you'll get a stupid answer was my motto, then I remembered that Frank was either dead or unconscious so I stopped worrying about the humiliation and then started worrying about him. My eyes had a hard time adjusting to the light, but suddenly I was feeling a lot better. High morphine doses tend to numb the pain just a little bit.<p>

"Morning."

The person who had greeted me was none other than Ms. Pretty Blonde Corpsman. There was a large bandage covering her head, and there was a small red spot on the side. Looks like she had hit something pretty hard.

"Ouch," I said. "What happened?"

"Breaking through the covvie blockade was harder than expected, but nowadays, what isn't?" I could only nod in agreement. My question wasn't asked out loud, but it was evident that I wanted to know. "Seventy percent casualties, most of those civilians, we only got some eight million out, military included," she said.

"Damn…"

It always hit me pretty hard when I heard how many people had died. It was never below the millions, never. I knew that this engagement hadn't been a particularly big one, but loosing over thirty million people to the Covenant was still a big loss. Sometimes I could feel millions of souls screaming as they burned in plasma fire. My shrink kept telling me that it wasn't my fault, and I knew that, but that didn't stop the nightmares.

"Hey, you in there?"

"Yeah, yeah, I'm here," I said. "What happened to you?"

"Plasma torpedo hit starboard, ship shook, I fell, hit myself in the head."

"Clumsy you," I said, trying to playfully tease.

It didn't work.

Half an hour later of uncomfortable silence and several morphine hits that failed to make me fall asleep another familiar face that wasn't sporting a white lab coat entered the medical bay. She was looking as good as ever, even with her eyes red, her hair messed up, and a bulky flight suit covering her lower half. The tight tanktop she had covering her upper half probably helped with the illusion. She stopped dead on her tracks when she saw Blondie on the bed next to mine. They eyed each other carefully and then Marina went to the bed next to Blondie's to see how Frank was doing.

I looked around the small hospital ICU and was surprised that it wasn't filled up with dead and dying. We must've been quite lucky to only have half a dozen patients after loosing a goddamned war and having been hit with a plasma torpedo. Unless, of course, there had been lots of instant deaths and no one had survived enough to get to the medical bay. I tried to push the thought away and craned my head to see what Marina was doing.

"How is he?" she asked.

"I dunno," I replied. "I was knocked out for the last…"

"Three hours," Blondie helpfully said. "Doctors said he'd be stable," she added, "that was about the last thing I heard before I bumped my head."

Queue the awkward silence.

"I never thanked you," Marina said quietly. "For saving him."

"Yeah, don't worry about it," Blondie said, blushing a little bit, obviously not wanting to dwell on the topic.

There was another short awkward silence that eventually turned into a more comfortable kind of silence before the morphine really started hitting me and I finally dozed off, perhaps it came a little late, but I was grateful for the rest.

* * *

><p>When I woke up, approximately five hours later of drug-induced sleep later I woke up again. This time the morphine had me feeling like I was ready to throw up and keep throwing up for the rest of my life. I started regretting dosing myself so high the instant I tried to sit up on the hospital bed.<p>

Marina was still playing the concerned girlfriend part quite sweetly, with her head resting on Frankie's bed and Blondie was busy reading what looked like one of those romance novels that my aunt used to read, which was both creepy and strangely arousing at the same time. I looked over at Marina and felt some jealousy at Frank. He had a nice, uncheating girlfriend that cared for him and didn't sleep around when he was deployed. Sorry I'm getting carried away here. But Chloe's a whore.

"Ok now, I believe that you're ready to leave," a doctor said. It looked like he came out of nowhere, but then I realized that my head was simply turned the other way and I felt stupid for a second.

"So soon?" I asked. "But the beds in here are soft."

"Yes, and so are you," he said.

"Are you insulting me?" I asked. No one in his right mind insults an ODST. Seriously, no one.

"No, I am ordering you to leave this bed immediately."

"It's not like you need it, there are at least fifty other empty beds all over the place."

"Get out."

"Very well doc," I said. "Just be careful not to find yourself in a difficult situation where I'm in a position to help you. Cause I won't."

That being said I gave the doctor one hard look that was enough to make him shuffle nervously and then bid my farewell to Marina and thanked Blondie before I left. I was dizzy and had bad balance, but a steady hand and considerably less pain went a long way when it came to helping me walk without falling down and breaking my nose against the floor. I was careful to check my corners before I went around them, wouldn't want to be meeting Chloe in there, I fear that I'd be unable to complete my vengeance.

"Pavie?" I heard. "Is that you."

I turned around to find myself face to face with a certain perky brunette that I had some unfinished business with. Marina had seen to that when I had gone inside my room. She had scolded me so bad without even knowing the complete story. The girl in question, Tracy, was Navy, I'm not entirely sure what she did in the ship, but she always seemed to be around and she had taken a liking to me and I to her. She'd serve beautifully for the first step in my vengeance.

"It is you," she said after she saw my face. "I do recall you owe me a certain… favor." She even bit her lower lip and looked into the floor as she said that last word. Such a tease.

"Do I now?" I said with a smile on my face. "Maybe you can freshen my memory?"

"Sex, I am talking about sex," Tracy said bluntly.

"Oh," I was stupefied, "ok then, follow me."

_Phase one of my vengeance plan in progress._

* * *

><p><em>Phase one of my vengeance plan is complete.<em>

Twenty-five glorious minutes later my best friends girlfriend ruined my happiness once again.

"Don't you ever knock?" I yelled startled.

"Ok, you can't run away now," she said. Warrant Officer Bogdanovic planted her feet firmly on the ground and placed her hands on her hips, a decisive look on her face.

"I am naked," I protested.

"Shut up," she ordered so violently I could only comply. "Good, now tell me who the hell is that slut?"

"Her name's Tracy, and she's not a slut."

"Whatever, can you explain what she was doing here?"

"Engaging in sexual intercourse with me," I said, deadpan.

"Jeez, you spend way to much time with Frank," she murmured. I wasn't sure whether it was a compliment or an insult so I simply smiled and nodded at the comment as to annoy her. "What I meant is," she started, "why were you _having intercourse_ with her and not your girlfriend."

"None of your business," I snapped.

"Of course it's my damned business, I'm your unofficial shrink in addition to the one you're forced to see every time we dock somewhere, it's like I am-"

"Hey, shut the hell up, that has nothing to do with-"

"Don't shut me up, you think you can-"

"-this discussion, you are nothing but a nosy brat that-"

"-order me around? And I am not a brat, if you-"

"-wants to know everything that happens around in-"

"-call me that again, I swear to God-"

"What?" What'll you do?" I asked loudly. "You'll tell Chloe?"

"If I have to I must," Marina asserted.

"I'll tell her myself when the time comes."

"You asshole, how can you-"

"You don't know the half of it!" I yelled at her. "Or more accurately, you only now half." I yelled that so loudly that Marina took a step back. "Now get the hell out of my room, you have no right to be here."

She mumbled something under her breath, but I think that my aggressiveness took her by surprise, because she didn't try to pin this on me and instead left while trying to look dignified and disgusted at me. it really made me happy to see her leave. And for once it wasn't because I would be able to sneak a peek at that lovely rear of hers. I genuinely wanted her gone.

Now, for phase two of the plan, if I could just get Blondie there to like me…


	66. Hospital Beds

_Well, I apologize for it taking me so long to post another chapter. The last couple of weeks I had semestral exams and the next couple of weeks I'll have family visiting from far away places, several family dinners, several dinners with friends, and withSkyrim coming out I'll be hard-pressed to have a stable upload rate. Or whatever you want to call it. Still, I hope you enjoy this chapter and if I am not able to post before Christmas, Merry Christmas._

_-casquis_

* * *

><p><span>Chapter LXVI: Hospital Beds<span>

**March 17, 2542 (UNSC Calendar)/**

**UNSC **_**Inconvenience**_**, slipspace**

It wasn't dramatic, like in the movies. I was actually aware of my situation a couple of minutes before I decided to go fully awake. It felt like one of those times when you are really exhausted in the morning and delay waking up for as long as possible. Eventually, I got bored of being half-asleep and opened my eyes very slowly, the white light actually hurting my retinas as my eyelids parted. I was resting on my side and not on my back, which meant that either I was having a colonoscopy done or that I had been sleeping instead of comatose. Since it didn't feel like the first, I took an educated guess and assumed it was the second.

I'd like to tell you that Pavel was pacing around with a worried look on his face and that Marina was playing the dutiful girlfriend, having fallen asleep on a chair while waiting for me to wake. That wasn't the case, since this is a military ship, it is crewed by members of the military with various tasks and jobs, it would actually be very weird if I had a welcome back party waiting for me to wake up. Discipline in this ship was lacking, but not _that_ lacking.

"Doc," I wheezed. "Doc." The second time I said it, it was louder, but there was no one around to hear me other than a sleeping blonde next to me with her head bandaged. She looked somewhat familiar, but since this was a relatively small ship, everyone had a familiar look to them. "Hello?" I said, this time my voice didn't sound like a kindergartner suffering chronic shyness.

"Huh?"

"No, not you, go back to sleep," I said to the blonde girl.

"Whaa?"

"Shhh, go to sleep."

"Mhmmm," she muttered and then turned around after mumbling some nonsense about cherry soda and vintage cellular phones. I sighed with relief at not having woken someone up and blondie here suddenly decided to sit up abruptly, speaking some more nonsense about not wanting to lend her clothes to her younger cousin.

"What happened?" she asked.

"I thought that only happened in the movies," I said.

"What?"

"Being jolted awake by a nightmare. A nightmare about lending clothes at that," I explained with a smile.

"Ha-ha, very funny," she said with a frown. "How are you feeling?" Her frown instantly disappeared and suddenly she seemed to be really concerned for my health. With that caring expression she could've been the perfect pediatrician, calming kids with it.

"Like hell, thanks for asking," I said grinning slightly. "Should be out of here tomorrow."

"Yeah right, good luck with that, they say that I have to stay here for another two days..."

"For a small blow to the head?" I asked, surprised. "I take it we are safe and made it through the blockade."

"Yes, and it wasn't a small blow to the head, my skull actually cracked."

"That's what I just said," I told her, just for the kicks.

"Ok, first of all…" she went on to explain how a skull fracture was very serious and went into very specific detail about how she had been hurt and how a single micrometer more and her brain matter would've started leaking out of her skull and that in turn blah, blah, and then that she would've had to have the top of her skull removed so that blah, and blabbity, and something about permanent damage to her cognitive something, she then went on to explain how she was lucky that she hadn't hit herself half an inch in some other direction because of something about her skull and also that it was good that she didn't need plates or something, and then she started rambling about some other stuff. I actually got tired of it and interrupted her once she took a deep breath.

"I don't see why you're making a fuss about it," I said, internally smiling.

"What? I just fucking explained it to you, you ungrateful bastard!"

"What?" I said, startled. Then I realized where I knew this girl from. "Oh, you are that pretty corpsman that saved me," I explained, mostly to myself.

"Pretty?" she asked, her voice quiet and her cheeks as red as the pint and a half of blood that I had left back in Aztlan.

"Yes," I said. "So, what did I have done?" I asked. "Replacement kidney?"

"And lung," she said, slowly regaining her composure. She seemed to be one of those girls that tend to have drastic personality changes every now and then. Passive-aggressive, I think that's what they're called, either that or something in Japanese, but you get my point.

"Lung?" I was somewhat shocked, that would leave a scar.

"That's what I said."

_And back to aggressive._

I pushed down the bedsheets and lifted my hospital gown slowly and carefully, trying not to wince. I half expected to find the uglies, most unsexy scar in existence, but instead I only saw my undamaged chest. Well, and the scars that were already there before Aztlan. I actually thought that blondie had been busting my balls in return for me doing the same thing when she kindly explained the situation to me.

"It's on your back dumbass, you didn't have a double lung transplant."

"What?" I asked, annoyed. "On my back? It already has enough scars as it is, can't I get scars in some other place?"

"Hey, don't look at me," she said. "Oh, I forgot, you also had a tree branch go through your armor."

"Seriously, a tree branch?"

"Pardon me, a piece of a tree."

_Is everyone in the universe a snarking jerk half the time?_

"Lemme guess, it was on my back."

"Jackpot."

"No wonder it hurts like shit."

"Go figure." She rolled her eyes at that.

I rolled and turned away from her. I parted the hospital gown's back so that it revealed my back. "How's it look?" I asked.

"I can see the top of your ass crack."

"Language young lady," I said jokingly. "I'm flattered that your eyes were instantly drawn there, but that's not what I asked. She flushed again and I had to repress laughter and snap my neck back because my stitches started hurting.

"Ok, your lung stitches will leave a scar, not an ugly one, but it'll be there, your kidney scar might just disappear in a year or two, the tree branch in your lower back will leave a big round scar."

"Oh well, at least I'll have a triangle down there."

"What?"

"Yeah, the tree scar and the two spiker scars, " I explained.

"Sure," she agreed, somewhat startled. "That's one way to look at it."

"I never got your name," I said as I rolled on my back and tried to fix the pillows so that I could sit upright without tearing my stitches. I was surprised that it didn't hurt more. I was probably up to my throat in painkillers.

"Hospital Corpsman Second Class Hanna Lockley," she introduced herself.

"What, not gonna shake my hand?" I asked.

"Um, uh, what?" she stuttered, confused and a little ashamed. She was easy to confuse, which the evil part of me enjoyed a lot.

"Relax," I said laughing. "Ouch, that hurt. I was just kidding. Staff Sergeant Francisco Castillo."

Lockley shook her head and turned her back on me, although I caught a glimpse of a smile on her lips right before I couldn't see her face.

"Francisco," a voice that I hadn't heard in a long time stated.

"Doc?" I asked, surprised. "It's been ages since I last saw you, where the hell have you been?"

"Busy, as usual," Doc Zhivago said. "You as well, that much is clear."

"What can I say?" I said with a satisfied grin on my face. "Someone's got to save the universe."

Zhivago rolled his eyes theatrically and grabbed a datapad from my bed. "You'll experience pains in your back for about two weeks, might pee blood, have some trouble breathing, those are expected to go within a month," he explained. "Ummm, yes, you're to be discharged in a week and a half." He eyed me over. "I'll sign the papers and you'll be out by tomorrow," he said.

"What?" Lockley exclaimed.

"Can I help you young lady?" Zhivago asked her with a face so stern that it probably brought back bad memories from her childhood. He almost looked like a father that was very disappointed in his daughter.

Sometimes I wish that I had a father. And that my mother wasn't in a coma.

"No, never mind doctor," Hannah said, blushing once more, it was the third time in less than five minutes.

"If that is all, then I will be leaving."

I tried to catch some sleep, but just as the morphine and meds were about to kick back in, another argument with Hospital Corpsman Second Class Hanna Lockley started once more. I can't even remember why it started, but soon enough it spun completely out of control and almost into epic proportions.

"Pluto hasn't been a planet since the twenty first century!" she voiced out loud.

"So? There are several planetoids that are a lot smaller and a couple of planets that are just a few extra miles in radius."

"Name two."

"Jericho XI and Cannal."

"I've never even heard of those!"

"Your ignorance is not my problem," I said, trying to shrug. "How many years have you been in service?" I asked suddenly.

"Why are you asking that?" she asked, her eyes narrowing and viewing me with suspicion.

"Just a question, jeez."

"I've been enlisted for two years," she said.

"And already Corpsman Second Class? What'd you do, sleep with all your superiors?" I teased.

"I did not you jerk! I earned this through merit and talent, I am not some who-"

"Relax, I didn't mean to offend," I said, raising my arms apologetically. "I was only kidding. Pluto's still a planet though."

"You're going to start with this again?" she almost yelled. "What the hell is wrong with you?"

"Frank!"

"Pavel!"

"I see you've met Blondie," my smiling friend said. He looked pretty beat up too, if he was that bad I didn't even want to look in a mirror right now. "You look like shit."

"Thanks, and her name's-"

"Hanna Lockley," she interrupted.

"What she said. I think I like her," I smiled.

"Yeah, kinda feisty."

"Exactly what I was thinking my friend," I agreed.

"Frank?" a lovely voice came. "Frank!"

"Oh," I said with a tone that implied this was the last person I wanted to see. "It's you."

"You jerk," she said smiling.

"Are you crying?" I asked, smiling.

"What?" She tried to brush away a few tears. "No."

"You must've gotten something in your eye," I said. "Or maybe you just love me that much."

"Do not, I'm just with you for cause I pity you," she said. This time it was her who did the fake voice tone.

"Liar," I grinned.

Marina leaned her face in close to mine and gave me a long, romantic kiss. Just the right amount of tongue too. She was a good kisser, I hope that she had learned most of it while with me, same as her bedroom skills, but hey, who cares?

As she leaned in closer, her arm slipped from the bed and she ended up slamming against me. The two soft cushions on her chest did nothing to stop the brutal pain that seared across my back and I cried out.

"Shit, sorry, are you ok?" she asked, worried about me. "Hope I didn't tear any stitches."

"Love hurts," Pavel said wisely.

"Ouch," I said simply, it really hurt. "Being with your girlfriend is supposed to be nice, you only end up hurting me," I complained.

Marina rolled her eyes and carefully lifted herself back up. I got an incredible view of her cleavage before she managed to stand upright and give me a little slap for troubling myself to look. "Well, we've got some duties," she explained, "well, at least I do, but I'm sure Pavel's got better things to do, so I'll leave, might visit later bye." The last words had been said when she was already out of sight, she must've been in a hurry to leave me or she actually had some important things to do. I hoped it was the second.

"Hey Frank," Pavel said, his voice was suddenly quieter and dead serious. He came in closer towards me and looked over his shoulder a couple of times before he sat next to my bed on the side opposite Hanna. "I need some help," he explained.

Since he sounded serious about this I chose not to answer with a joke. "Sure, what's wrong?" I asked him.

"Nothing, I just want to know that you don't think what I was about to do before our last op wasn't a bad thing."

I hadn't given it a lot of thought, but when it came to it, Pavel wasn't the guy that would cheat on his girlfriend for a sexier woman, especially when his own girl was so attractive. "I assume you had a good reason," I shrugged. Pavel simply stared back at me and I knew all that I needed to know. "Very well then," I said, "you have my blessing to-" I looked at Hanna, who was reading a book. "-engage in intercourse with as many girls as you can before she breaks up with you."

"Thanks Frank, I'd knew you'd understand."

That confirmed it, Pavel's girlfriend was cheating on the poor bastard and my friend was out for blood. At least he left with a satisfied smile on his when he turned and left. Shouldn't be much of a problem to find willing girls, he was good-looking and an ODST on top, that's like catnip for Navy girls and most Army chicks. He'd stack up the count and would "win" the breakup, what consequences that would bring I couldn't yet say.

"Engage in intercourse with? Seriously?" Lockley asked without glancing up from her book. "You sounded like a sixteen year-old Mormon girl."

"What are you reading?" I asked.

She seemed surprised, but the question was innocent enough. "Life and Death in the Home Front, by Martin O'Donell."

"Good book," I said.

"Yes… what are you getting at?"

"Well, Dougie dies at the end in a surprise raid by the Otherworlders and so does his dog, Lin is taken prisoner and nothing is heard from her ever again. Jacques ends up hanging himself from the antenna."  
>Hanna looked at me and threw the datapad as hard as she possibly could at me, which in her current state, wasn't very hard, it hit me in the arm and she pressed her hands to her head while wincing in pain before pressing the button for painkillers. She took deep breaths before she glanced at me with a look that could've made Marina herself shit her pants and run for cover. It almost managed to wipe the smile from my face.<p>

"Yeah," I said understandingly. "Don't mess with me."

"Ass," she said, "hole."

I smiled to myself. "I can live with that."

Marina didn't visit me that night and Lockley was giving me the silent treatment, and only talked to me when I said good night to her, and even then it was only a rough "-ight" on her side, but she'd get over it. She had saved my life and she deserved to be treated as a friend, it's just that my idea of friendship would probably take a little while for her to get used to.

* * *

><p>Next morning I woke up to some light shaking on my shoulder. Doc Zhivago gave me a generously-sized bottle of pills with a warning not to take more than three a day, and helped me up. My back was killing me as the scars pulled my skin tightly. It was a sensation that I had experienced before, but I'd probably never get used to the feeling of missing some skin. It'd take a while before the scar actually cicatrized and then some more before the skin actually stretched enough for me to feel like I was moving normally. I'd still get some ugly marks to confirm my tales.<p>

_I'd better get a monument when this war is done, else I'll be really pissed._

I walked slowly while measuring my steps carefully, but the injuries weren't on my legs, and provided I didn't try to run or jump, I could move with relative ease through the ship. I'd have to wear a tighter shirt so that people could see the gauze strips covering my scars, else I was bound to get a friendly pat on the back that would make me either scream like a little girl or faint.

_Wear a tighter shirt, you sound so straight right now Frankie._

While I was wondering why I called myself Frank and nor Francisco inside my own thoughts I arrived to my room. The door didn't open when I pressed the button and I managed to stop myself before I knocked. Instead, I pressed my ear against the wall and listened. The enhanced hearing was just enough to pick up the heavy breathing of a certain female. I didn't know who it was and I didn't care. The only thing I wanted right now was a place to or rest. Officer's club was a no-no, Darbinian had taken care of that as soon as he arrived. Nezarian would probably let me take a nap in his room, but we weren't that close. Marina was bound to be yelling at some poor mechanic for doing something to her ship that she disapproved of and wouldn't be in the mood to sneak me inside her room, which was technically against regulations.

"HEV bay it is," I said to myself as I did a one-eighty and headed back the way I came.

The HEV bay was pretty small considering that it was a vital room. Still, it was large enough to house twelve pods and another MOEIV that hadn't been used since the Inconvenience had been refitted to serve as a standard ship instead of a more exclusive type of craft. I was lucky that I had gotten here when they actually sold the armor pieces, still had some spares in my closet and also some weaponry and equipment that not even other ODSTs had access to. Lucky me.

I pulled on two levers and winced in pain as I tried to lower the pod door slowly to the floor, instead simply letting it drop loudly. I snuggled myself into a position that didn't put too much strain on my healing scars and then the shock absorbing foam knocked me completely out. It might've not been better than a hospital bed or even my own bed, but a man had his pride dammit, and if keeping it intact meant sleeping in a drop pod, then I'd sure as hell do it.


	67. Wham

Chapter LXVII: Wham

**May 24, 2542 (UNSC Calendar)/two months later**

**Udinia, Paris IV, Paris System**

Ah, Paris, the beautiful French city, when the French surrendered in World War Two, back in the twentieth century, their city was spared, which meant that all the architecture remained the same, leaving a lovely undamaged city instead of a bombed one. Its beautiful bridges, cafes, and monuments were famous throughout the Orion arm of the Milky Way galaxy. It had held the spot of the most visited city by tourists for over half a millennium.

This was not that Paris. This was the ugly, industrialized, and urban world of Paris IV. One of the most important colonies, perhaps second in place only to Reach, it was a military hub in FLEETCOM Sector Two. Unlike Reach though, this planet was actually more a colony than a military base, uniformed military personnel were only seen rarely and even then only near bases or space ports. Right now, we had our leave in this city.

I almost would've preferred to take my leave on board the _Inconvenience._ Almost, but not quite.

Udinia was the largest city in the planet, and this being a large colony, it also meant that there were slightly over ten million souls inhabiting this place. Unlike smaller colonies, this one hadn't been fully developed or colonized at once, instead, it had grown over a couple of centuries of colonization and expansion. Udinia alone accounted for a tenth of Paris IV's population. That would've been completely fine by me, if it didn't mean that all the smoke form old cars would make my nose and lungs feel like they were being burned with acid.

"You get used to it."  
>"When?" I asked sarcastically. "As soon as our leave ends?"<br>"Hey, relax," Marina smiled, "and try to enjoy this."

Our tourist tour of the city had been interesting, that I would admit, we heard several stories about early colonization, technological advances, the small Parisian Civil War that took place in the planet, and the relatively recent Insurrectionist attacks. A lovely monument accompanied every story. Unfortunately, the monuments were so damaged by acid rain that it almost took away the charm from them. Also, I could barely see my hand if I placed it in front of my face in account of the smog. Ok, maybe I'm exaggerating a little bit.

"It really worries me that no one here is wearing surgical masks."  
>"Relax," she repeated. "All the smog in here is almost harmless, it just looks so bad because of some mumbo-jumbo in this planet's atmosphere."<p>

"I knew that," I lied.

"Didn't your mother tell you not to tell lies," she asked me after making a clicking noise with her tongue.

"I dunno," I said, lowering my eyes. "She might've, but I probably forgot."

"Frank, why do you have to make me feel guilty?"

I looked at her.

"Fine, I'm sorry."

"You're forgiven," I said with a smile. "Provided you compensate me accordingly." As I said this I put one arm around her waist and pulled her closer towards me, looking her in the eyes and smiling as she giggled and tried to look dignified. I leaned in for a quick kiss before she pushed me away and told me to listen to the tour guide.

Our tour guide was an old and tired-looking hover robot with what was now called an "Intelligent Interface", that meant that it could answer certain questions about the monuments and tell stories related to the tour and possessed some additional information about the city and planet, but it wasn't truly intelligent.

After another fifteen or so minutes, the tour ended and all the tourists, mostly military personnel on leave or businessmen doing a pass by on the planet, we all went in our different directions, some of the tourists were probably headed towards the famous skyline restaurants of Udinia and some others would certainly go back into their hotel rooms to breath pure oxygen for a couple of minutes just to feel slightly safer about the health of their lungs.

The safety of my lungs didn't immediately concern me, I could get a new set of those easily enough, in fact, one of them was as good as new. What actually concerned me right now, was my liver's health. It wasn't nearly as damaged as I wanted it to be.

"Drinking?" I asked.

"Drinking."

I really loved this girl.

"Frank?" he yelled. "Francisco?"  
>"What?" I slurred back.<p>

"Get off the table!"  
>"But everyone else is doing it," I complained. "Even your date."<br>"Everyone else who doesn't have a thing hanging between their legs is doing it, it looks sexy on them, on you it looks weird, get down."  
>I had to admit that my friend had a point. Besides, the tables were really small for a large man to stand on, and my current state of mind wasn't really helping with my balance at all. I jumped down and had to hold on to a chair not to fall down. I raised myself upright slowly, but the floor still managed to go forty-five degrees sideways. I had to shake my head, which only made it worse. Luckily enough, Pavel knew me better than anyone, and quickly jumped under my arm and threw me into one of those fancy couches.<p>

"Thanks bro," I said.

"No problem," Pavel sarcastically replied. He had only just arrived half an hour ago, by that time the bar had turned from a relatively calm semi-fancy place into a place filled with drunk marines and soldiers trying to make the best out of their short leaves. There were also the occasional military groupies who were very forthcoming when it came to thanking us for our sacrifices. Lonely men followed the horny girls and this place was soon pretty crowded.

"Aw shit," I laughed to myself.

Marina, decent as she was, had chosen not to jump on a table and take half her clothes off. She had instead drowned herself in tequila and was now sitting in the couch next to me, giggling crazily to herself and doing a terrible job at trying to stroke my hair. I wouldn't have thought it possible a few hours ago, but Marina was drunker than me and she seemed to be a happy drunk. For some reason I always pictured her as a mean drunk that went around telling everyone the truth that they didn't want to hear.

"Oh my God," she said, sounding astounded, "those lights are awesome!"  
>I do believe that she was also slightly high on some narcotic.<p>

"So pretty," she whispered, trying to reach out to grab the invisible lights with her hand."  
>All right, she was very, very high.<p>

"Frank, you gotta get her out of here," Pavel ordered me.

"While you get a lap dance?" I asked, eyeing his newest conquest. "Don't think so."  
>"Frank, look at her."<br>"Weeeeee!" Marina yelled as she tried to spin around with her arms wide. She looked cute in a way, but she also looked like she could be in one of those Girls Gone Wild videos. Not that I would know anything about that (yeah right). I stood up, doing my best to focus and be a responsible drinker and moved towards Marina.

"Hey, this guy just told me about this awesome place," I told her.

"But I'm having so much fun here," she complained.

"Let's go," I said, grabbing her arm and pulling her towards me.

"Pleas no, let me stay a little longer." She was actually crying now, which for some reason made me feel sad and guilty, like I wanted to cry myself. Man was I drunk. I was in no position to take care of myself, let alone another person, but Pavel was enjoying the lap dance that I mentioned before and there was a big grin on his face as his newest date did her best to make him happy.

"Let's go," I said once more, this time a lot more insistent.

Marina started crying like a little baby when I started pulling her through the crowd and towards the exit, but she was complying with my instructions and didn't provide any resistance. But things were never that easy were they? Nope, they weren't, in case you were wondering what the answer was.

"Hey you, where you taking that girl?"

"Outside," I replied. Maybe I should've kept my mouth shut.

"Looks like she doesn't want to," the voice said. Marina sniffled a little.

I turned around to find myself facing a large man wearing an extremely tight fitting shirt. He was a little shorter than me and slightly less muscular, which meant that he was in tiptop shape. Two less impressive-looking specimen that could've easily been the missing link between apes and men immediately flanked him. I was in a moderate amount of trouble.

"Look, I don't have time for this," I muttered.

"I don't wanna go," Marina complained.

_I hate you._

"Why don't you let her stay?" the lead guy asked, the threat evident in his voice.

"Piss off."

Ah, nothing like a good 'ol fashioned punch to the face to snap you back from a drunken stupor. Especially if you are a battle-honed special operations ODST Helljumper with killing instincts. My head snapped back with the impact and my nose started bleeding a little bit. I wiped the blood from my nose and looked at it before glaring menacingly at the man.

"Big. Mistake."

His next punch was a hook that I blocked with my left hand, I karate-chopped his upper arm, sending the entire limb downwards with pain, I then blocked a clumsy jab from Henchman #1 and dodged another from Henchman #2. I grabbed the leader's head and slammed it into one of his henchmen's head, knocking them out, the other guy received a kick to his thigh and ribs before I gave him a solid punch in the forehead, sending him into dreamland as well.

It had probably taken about five seconds total since I was punched, not bad for being three times over the legal blood alcohol limit. Not bad at all.

"Marina, we're leaving."

She must've thought that I was going to knock her out as well, because she simply looked at me like she was afraid of me and nodded violently before she headed towards the exit, with the crowd opening up to let us through. Some of them glared at me with anger, others looked surprised, others were drunk as hell, and yet some others had a look of admiration in their eyes. I took this all in before I left the place through a back door. A bright light immediately blinded me.

"Is it daytime already?" I asked myself.

I realized that it was a streetlight and hit myself softly in the head as if to punish myself for being that stupid. Marina looked like she was about to be eaten by some sort of hallucinated monster so I jumped towards her and hugged her tightly.

"You're high," I said. "None of this is real."  
>She mumbled something and went unconscious in my arms, almost bringing me to the floor with her. I softly lowered her to the floor and fanned some air at her. When she didn't seem to react I checked her pulse, which was just fine, if perhaps a little bit accelerated. Finally I resigned myself to the situation and sat down with my back leaning towards one of the alley's walls. I placed my girlfriend's head over my lap and stroked her hair softly while I waited for her to wake up.<p>

The bright star of Paris system (aptly named Paris) woke me up, the light managing to hit me hard despite all the smog particles in between it and myself. It must've been late morning, because the sun was already above the edge of the alley's wall. I groaned and closed my eyes. The sun was way too bright.

"What! Where am I?"  
>"Jeez Marina, don't yell," I complained.<p>

"You're yelling," she slurred angrily.

"Great, you're still drunk," I said.

"Am not," she shot back. "You're the one that's drunk."

"I'm not going to argue on that," I mumbled to myself. Marina was still yelling and the sun was unnaturally bright. In addition to that I had a terrible taste on my mouth that didn't seem to go away even if I spat repeatedly. At least the floor wasn't shaking anymore, instead it just wobbled occasionally. Marina, on the other hand, wasn't faring nearly as well as I was. She kept stumbling and reaching for balance. One of these times I would simply let her slam to the floor, give her a good lesson on not trying to tell me to drink any less.

"You still seeing purple elephants?" I asked right after we left the alley.

"What?" she asked. "Oh."  
>"Yeah," I agreed. "Oh…"<p>

"Shit Frank, I'm so sorry," she said.

"Yeah, yeah, whatever." I was pissed, I was having a decent time until little miss sunshine here decided that it would be cool to experiment with Grade-A drugs. While drunk. On a bar in a city she wasn't familiar with. I swear, if they made awards for stupidest moments Marina would surely be the proud owner of one. Me, on the other hand, was left alone to take care of her. At least I still had money on my pocket in addition to a phone.

"I'm so, sooo, sooooo sorry," she apologized.

"Let's just get back to the hotel," I said as I walked ahead.

The long walk back to our hotel (which happened to be an actually nice place) was quiet save for the occasional noise of cars flashing by and background noise. Marina didn't try to apologize anymore and I didn't bother looking back at her. I don't really know why I was so angry with her, but I sensed that I was right in being pissed at her, especially when I had to sleep on an alley with her head on my lap just so that she would be ok.

Once we arrived I went straight for the washroom and slammed the door closed just as Marina opened her mouth to say something. I sat on the toilet while I waited for the water to heat up. I was surprised when the water in here didn't immediately come out the temperature that you wanted, but the feather beds certainly made up for it. Fifteen seconds later the water was at the perfect temperature and I was inside the shower. The hot water and steam slowly sobered me up while I swallowed copious amounts of water to get the taste off of my mouth.

Ten minutes after I initially stepped inside the shower I turned off the water. I stayed there for a few moments, letting the extra water slide off. I finally shook myself back to reality and grabbed one of the towels. I walked out to the main section of the bathroom and one of those holo-mirrors popped up on a previously empty wall. I looked at myself carefully. My eyes were still light brown, my hair was still the same color, even if it was slightly longer than usual. My skin was tanner in account to the weeks in Aztlan, even with my armor on. My face was the same, but it somehow looked different. Was it just thinner? Maybe I had lost some weight? No, that wasn't it. There weren't any visible scars on my face, so that was out of the question. It was true that I had some stubble growing, but that wasn't it either.

"Easy there champ, you might just break the mirror?"  
>I jumped so hard my head almost hit the ceiling. "Who's there?" I called out. "Marina?" Even as I called out the question I knew that it hadn't been her. The voice had been distinctly male and completely unfamiliar. I was already in a combat stance, my eyes darting left to right, but I was the only person inside the bathroom.<p>

"I would've taken you for a harder man," I heard.

The skin on the back of my neck stood up and a chill went up and down my spine and then back up again. I was sweating cold sweat and my heart was beating a thousand miles an hour. Something was wrong, I don't like it when something is wrong, especially this kind of wrong.

"I'm imagining things, imagining things." I opened the door to find the room empty. "All in my head," I kept telling myself. As I dressed up I found a voice note from Marina telling me that she had gone out to get some food and water. I double-checked it to make sure that I couldn't have misheard it. I hastily put on my shirt and then opened every single drawer and closet door to make sure there wasn't some asshole playing a prank on me. I shuffled through my clothes and Marina's alike before I came to the conclusion that there was nothing inside the room that could've made the noises.

"Shit, shit, shit," I muttered. "Oh shit."

I rumbled through all my possessions again, this time I grabbed every single article of clothing and went through it, patting it twice to make sure there wasn't a hidden mic in there somewhere. There wasn't an entertainment system in our room, not even a radio, all we had was a phone to contact the front desk and other rooms, and I checked it when I got out of the bathroom. It was hung up. I grabbed the already open drawers and pulled them out completely, turning them around and checking twice for any artifacts that could be hidden there.

"Cold, cold, colder, and more cold."

"Shut up!" I yelled at the voice.

I threw the bed sheets into the air and had them go through the same rigorous process than before, making sure there wasn't a single thing in there that shouldn't belong there. I threw the mattresses up in the air and checked underneath to make sure that there wasn't anything else in there either. I wasn't getting more scared by the second. This couldn't really be happening, not to me.

"Wow Francisco, you're going to make a mess out of this place."

"I said. Shut up!" I screamed in desperation.

I went back inside the bathroom and opened the doors under the sink as well, making sure that nothing could've made a noise there. There was nothing but toilet paper and extra shampoo bottles. Next I scanned the towels three times each same as I had done my clothing and the bed sheets. I checked underneath and behind the toilet, inside every the shower and through every single container twice. The place was empty and I was becoming more desperate by the minute.

I went back into the room and grabbed my knife from the night table. I grabbed one of the mattresses and then cut it open, pulling out all the feathers and cotton and filling. There was nothing but white feathers inside, nothing. The other mattress was exactly the same thing, absolutely nothing inside that shouldn't be there. The more I looked, the more I feared the truth.

"Well, well, well." I heard. "I did warn you that we would make a mess."  
>I turned around and saw the most frightening thing I had seen in my entire life. A man. A simple man was standing in the middle of the wrecked hotel room, a cocky smile on his lips and a look of death in his eyes. I had never seen this person before, but he looked average enough. "Maybe next time you'll listen to me," he said, smiling at me creepily.<p>

"Who are you?" I asked, my voice shaking.

"What, you really don't recognize me?" he asked, but he didn't really sound surprised.

"Who are you?"

"Francisco, you really should know better."  
>I lost it. I yelled and screamed in fury. I twisted my knife in my hand even as I raised it over my head to make a throw. The man in front of me didn't even flinch, his smile simply turning into a grin as I let go of the blade. The knife flew perfectly, two beautiful spins and the blade would've landed directly in the mystery man's neck, cutting open his windpipe and perhaps an artery. Death would've been almost instantaneous. Only that the knife didn't hit anything. It simply flew straight through the person and slammed hilt-first into the hotel door and fell to the ground noisily.<p>

"I'll be back," he warned me.

The door opened and the figure in front of me disappeared. He didn't poof or fade or anything, it was simply gone. One minute there and the next one it wasn't. Behind the man was Marina, a grocery bag in one hand and the hotel key on the other. She looked at me and took in the scene around in an instant. She didn't even have time to open her mouth before I did.

"I lost it," I said, finally giving up and realizing what was wrong." I'm insane."


	68. Introducing Schitzo

Chapter LXVIII: Introducing Schitzo

**May 25, 2542 (UNSC Calendar)/**

**Sérénité ****Psychiatric Institute, Udinia, Paris IV, Paris System**

"I don't need this," I stated. "Commander."

"Ok, listen up, you do whatever the fuck I tell you to do and you do it diligently," Albaf snapped at me. I hadn't been in contact with her for a long while and now I had to deal with her in addition to a faulty brain. Yee-pee.

"Ok, I can understand, how I might need help, but is it really necessary to bring me inside a madhouse?"

"Mental institution sergeant, and yes," she replied as the doors opened.

_Staff Sergeant. _"Why not a simple shrink? This is demeaning."

"This guy is the best of the best, we need your expertise on the ship and don't have much time to spare. He'll be able to help you better than anyone in the shortest time possible," Albaf explained me. I am pretty sure that by the best of the best Albaf meant that he could be persuaded to put me down as mentally healthy if ONI pressed down a little bit.

"Why not take me to a UNSC sanctioned shrink?" I asked her.

"Because we don't just want you back on the field, we want you healed," she said. I had not reply to that one. "Although for the love of God I have no idea why my superiors have the hots for you." Albaf walked towards a receptionist and after exchanging a few words she pointed at an elevator. "Eighteenth floor, room 1806, should be easy enough to find it." Having said that, she turned around and left.

My first impression when the hog pulled over in front of the institution my first impression was not a good one. The place looked like something out of a horror film. It was built out of red bricks that looked to be a million years old, the façade was cracking, there was a huge iron gate with the name of the place on top that opened automatically and nearly everything in here looked like I actually was inside Insane in the Brain or some other scary movie.

The inside of the institution looked a lot more professional, with mild security in addition to marble floors and a very stylish reception. The receptionist was a pretty blonde woman (no surprise there) with an earpiece and a professional outfit sitting behind a wooden reception desk. The elevators looked to be quite new, even with the old-fashioned wooden inlays and retro buttons. I clicked on the eighteenth floor and watched as the doors slowly closed in front of me.

I was glad that I was the only person in the elevator. Those things are awkward enough as it is without someone asking you why you are in a psychiatric institution. I simply turned around and enjoyed the view of the city from the quickly raising elevator. Well, whatever the smog didn't block, there was a brown cloud covering almost all the city all the way down to the shortest buildings. I'm still not entirely sure why people stuck around in this place. When the elevator reached the eighteenth floor it opened with a ping that made my shake my head. I stepped out and looked to both sides of the long hallway. It looked like room 1806 was to the right, so that's where I headed.

I took two deep breaths once I was in front of the door and knocked.

"Come in," I was prompted.

I entered two a small reception with yet another striking blonde sitting behind a large wooden desk with several phones and a computer on top. She looked at me and then to her computer.

"Staff Sergeant Castillo?" she asked me.

"Yes."

"Dr. Crowe will see you now."

I looked at her quizzically, wondering why she seemed to be so uninterested in me. I could be suffering from any kind of dangerous mental disease and she barely even glanced up at me from her computer.

_Maybe she has a gun under the table._

That certainly made me walk the last two steps towards Dr. Crowe's office a little bit faster. I looked over my shoulder and actually relaxed a little when I saw that she was instead playing a game on her computer. How very unprofessional of her. I turned back to the front and contemplated the door for a second wondering what would be the outcome of this session.

"Go ahead, he doesn't bite," the receptionist said.

I forced a chuckle and moved my hand towards the door console. I clicked the open button, took a deep breath, and stepped forward. The office looked just like I imagined it would. Welcoming and filled with nice leather chairs. There was a large bookcase in one wall that was only half-filled with books and pictures or small sculptures. The other wall was entirely a window that displayed the not-so-magnificent view of downtown Udinia. There was also another large wooden desk full of papers and interesting objects that you would expect to see in a desk. There were also a couple of diplomas hung in the wall behind it. Directly in front of me were two large, leathery chairs that looked comfortable enough to sleep in. I imagined that this was what a grandfather's office would've looked like.

Despite the warm and welcoming image, the hair on the back of my neck stood up and I could feel myself start sweating. The doctor and I weren't the only people in the room. There were two people other than me inside the office, an oldish, balding man with thick-rimmed glasses dressed in slacks and tie and the man that I had seen in my room.

"Good morning," the shrink said as soon as I walked in. "Please sit down," he gestured to one of the chairs.

I shook the man's hand and leaned back towards the chair I had been indicated to sit down in while trying my best to avoid looking fixedly at the corner where the man was leaning backwards. I failed miserably. My hallucination simply smiled a little and waved before crossing his arms and taking a relaxed stance.

"So, sergeant, I hear that you had hallucinations."

"Hallucination," I corrected.

"I see." He reached to his desk and actually produced a notepad and a pen. I was surprised to see him do that, I thought that that kind of thing only happened in the movies, or that it was some sort of joke. "Could you describe this hallucination to me?" he asked. "That is, if you don't mind of course."

"No, I don't mind," I lied. Dr. Crowe simply sat back in his own chair and listened to my story while making a few notes and stopping me for clarifications occasionally. He seemed particularly interested on the reason for which I decided to wreck an entire hotel room just to find the source of the voice.

"I guess I just didn't want to believe what was really happening," I said when I was asked about it.

"I see," Crowe said once more as he jotted down some notes. I still didn't know whether the notepad made me feel safer or more worried.

I resumed my story and the doctor seemed particularly surprised that I had actually seen a person and not just heard things. He wrote down what seemed like an entire composition on his notepad before urging me to go on again. I finished my story telling him about the knife and my girlfriend coming through the door.

"Very well, for me to clear you for active service, I need to know two things," he started. "Have you ever seen this… man before?"

"No, I had never seen him, at least not consciously, before the hallucination."

"Very well," Crowe nodded. "Why do you think he was there?"

"What?"

"His purpose, why did your mind create that?"

"Because it's sick?" I offered.

I got a steady, stern look and had to admit defeat. "I don't know, honestly, the man was only being annoying and overall very creepy."

"Ok…" he murmured as he jotted down some other notes. "And, have you seen this man-"

"Schitzo, I like that name," the hallucination in the corner said, prompting me to give it a nervous glance and suppress a shudder.

"-on any other occasion other than in the hotel room?"

"How about we give him a name?" I asked.

"Very well, what do you propose?"

"Schitzo," I said. "Fitting." I tried to smile to show that I was joking. I don't think it worked. Dr. Crowe simply raised one of his bushy eyebrows and jotted some more things in his notes before asking me if I had seen him anywhere else other than the hotel. I glanced to the corner nervously, where Schitzo simply nodded at me to answer, as if he was daring me to tell the truth.

"No," I said firmly. "Just the one time."

"Now there, you shouldn't tell lies Francisco."

This time I actually shuddered at the hallucination's comment and tried my best to avoid looking Dr. Crowe in the eyes, instead deciding to focus on the bruises and scars on my knuckles and back of both my hands. There were some interesting stories behind those scars, mostly involving bar brawling and a couple of beatings to the unlucky grunt or jackal, but a the moment, that was the last thing on my mind. I flexed my hands before getting the courage to look back up.

"Any reason why you might've had this hallucination?" he asked me.

"I don't really know."

"Any hard hits to the head recently?"

"That's pretty much in the job description," I shrugged. "Besides, the scans didn't show any sign of brain damage."

"Guilt?" he asked simply.

"Wouldn't Schitzo show as a person I got killed?"

"You have a good point, cases like this usually manifest that way, also, most soldiers that suffer them can't function at all. You, you are strange that way. Not entirely unheard of, but still extremely rare."

I shrugged to myself and took in the information. It usually was something of a compliment to be one-of-a-kind or unique, not so much when you suffer from a mental illness with little to no concrete information on it. I wish that it 'd just been simple, plain, old-fashioned PTSD. That would've simplified things a lot more than getting a hallucination that seemed to be stalking me.

"Still, you must have some guilt over surviving this long," Crowe insisted. "What little I was allowed to see of your dossier was pretty impressive." It was certainly not a compliment.

"Look, I've made some bad choices, gotten some people hurt, perhaps even killed, but I have no guilt over that. I did what I had to do to survive and to save more. The men that have died under my command would certainly do it again if faced with the same choice, they were all brave men and women and knew the odds when they joined, so no, not any guilt."

"Interesting."

_Seriously? Could you get any more cliché?_

"Very well," he continued. "I assume that you know that you're not here to get cured. I just need to give you a diagnosis and medication and instructions for your ship doctor. That way you can keep yourself in check and if anything bad were to happen your doctor could handle the situation relatively well."

"Ok," I said.

"I still don't know the exact diagnosis, probably won't by the end of the session, but hallucination is obvious, so I'll just give you antipsychotics. One a day."

"Sounds easy enough."

"Now, I need to ask more questions so that I can get a better idea of what you have…"

From that point on the conversation took a decidedly ugly turn. Dr. Crowe asked me if my family had any history of mental illness, and then went deep into my relationship with my parents and uncle before snapping to my love life and then abruptly changing subject to combat experiences. I got asked about my friends, or more appropriately, friend. I answered all the questions the best I could, this was, after all, my mental health we were dealing with.

Finally, after over two hours of rapid-fire interrogation and spilling every last one of my secrets, hopes, and fears to Dr. Crowe, I was finally beginning to start tiring. Schitzo had not moved or said anything since the last time and instead looked from me to Dr. Crowe whenever each one of us was speaking. The psychiatrist stood up and offered me his hand.

"I still don't know what you have," he apologized, "but you have to understand that it's a medical condition. Be very careful about it."

"Of course."

"Here," he tossed me a bottle of medicine. "On the house, any further hallucinations must be reported to your ship's doctor."

"Yes," I said.

"Good luck."

Schitzo took that as his queue to move and walked behind me as I left the room. He said nothing and I actually had to stop myself from holding the door for him, but he simply appeared on the other side of the room once I turned around. I felt like I was in a bad horror movie. I glanced quickly at the receptionist and decided to ignore her when I saw that she was still playing on her computer. I shrugged to myself, gave Schitzo a glare and walked towards the hallway.

"Come back soon," she said absent-mindedly.

I stopped on my tracks and turned around slowly. One thing was being unprofessional and then there was being stupid. "Come back soon?" I asked. "You for real?"

She looked annoyed by my reply before she noticed how big she had just screwed up. "Oh, crap, I'm so sorry, I didn't mean it that way. It's just that I was distracted and that-"

"Yeah, whatever," I said, turning around and leaving the small room.

"Bitch," Schitzo added. I only glared at him and snapped my eyes away from his as soon as they met.

"One pill a day," I murmured to myself. "Sounds easy enough."

I walked towards the elevator and pulled out the medicine from my pocket. I shook the bottle a couple of times, the rattling sound the pills made when they hit each other was strangely reassuring. I read the instructions and ingredients slowly and carefully. I almost did a double take when I saw the side effects of the medicine.

"Pancreatitis, increased likelihood of heart attack, narcoleptic malignant syndrome, and death." I murmured while I waited for the elevator. "Nice going there jackass," I told Schitzo. "Oh, and look at this, sexual impotence. For being a part of me you really are a big asshole."

My imaginary friend didn't say anything, but he actually shrugged a little and smiled. The elevator opened and he extended his hand as if to actually let me pass first. I had no other choice but to comply, making me feel like I was in some sort of medical show. I shook my head and closed my eyes hard, when I opened them, there was still another person in the elevator with me. I gave up and opened the bottle of medicine. I looked carefully at one of the pills. It looked like any other pill would've looked. Schitzo gave me a look that was just daring me to take the medication. I threw it in the air and caught it in my mouth as it went back down. I swallowed it without water and closed my eyes for a couple of seconds.

Schitzo was still there.

The door made a ring when the elevator reached the ground floor, prompting me to look towards them, when I glanced back, the elevator was completely empty save for me. I smiled and walked out of the elevator and out of the mental hospital.

* * *

><p>"How'd it go?" Marina asked me. She was keeping her distance, that much was evident. I didn't blame her, but it still felt bad.<p>

"Well enough, no final diagnosis, but he gave me this bottle of happy pills," I showed her the orange bottle.

"Frank…"

"I'm fine," I insisted. "It was a one time thing, now I am medicated and under expert care."

"Expert care?" she asked.

"Yeah, amateur shrink," I said while pointing at her. "And abusive orderly," I added while I gestured at Pavel, who was carrying a tray filled with chow and walking towards our table.

"Heyo," he said as he sat down. "You gonna go psycho on me?"

"The magic pills say I won't," I said.

"Good, I want to eat in peace."

"So," I said. "How's that thing going?"

Pavel got the biggest smile on his face as he put his spoon down. He pushed out his chest and even got some sort of happy aura around him before he prepared to answer. Then he blushed a little and looked at Marina quickly, but she didn't know what we were talking about, so he could answer me without tipping her off.

"Eight."

"Eight?" I asked. That was a lot.

"Eight," Pavel confirmed.

"Whoa. Broke my record."

"What record?" Marina asked.

"Most girls slept with in less than a month," I said, my face displaying no emotion.

"No seriously," she laughed. "What record?"

"It's a guy thing," I said.

"Yeah, you probably wouldn't understand."

"Guys?" she pleaded. "Please tell me."

"Well, I've gotta hit the gym," I said.

"Yeah, and I have to go… over… that way," Pavel said.

We both left our seats at the same time and left a very annoyed Marina sitting alone on the table. There are few things worse than being alone in a table, but when it was your boyfriend standing you up, she was bound to be more angry than annoyed. I quickly realized what my mistake was and turned around and sat back down next to her, placing my arm around her shoulder.

"Don't worry, I'll wait for you to finish your… goo," I said, eyeing her food.

Pavel made a whip noise and kept walking. If I had had an apple within reach at the moment I would've given him a nasty bruise on the back of the head, but luck wasn't with me that day.

Marina dropped the topic and instead we had one of those long conversations about nothing in particular that switch from topic to topic and achieve nothing other than pass time and get some laughs. It seemed to draw her mind away from me throwing a knife at the door where she came through a second later. Maybe she was worried that my subconscious wanted to kill her, but how could I? She is the only good thing in my life other than microwave lasagna.

"Well, I'm done," she said.

"That much is evident."

"Ass," she teased.

I shrugged happily at her.

"You know," she said, my roomies are busy till eight," she proposed.

"Really, why are you telling me this?" I asked.

She opened her mouth and seemed surprised that I didn't get what she meant before she smiled at me and put her hand on my leg. "Oh Frank, you're so naïve."

"Whoa, public place, public place."

"What, you nervous?" she asked, putting a sexy tone in her voice. It worked pretty well, but still not sexy as that lieutenant. If only I had archived a sample of her voice. Never mind, that is creepy as hell. "Are you?" she asked again.

"Let's just go to your room," I told her while I poked her ribs, extracting a giggle that she failed to suppress in time.

"Don't even,…"

"Or what?" I asked, making guns with my fingers.

"Frank-" Whatever she was going to say was cut short by me poking her in the ribs again, forcing her to laugh and giggle all over again. She vaulted from her chair and speedwalked away from me, she was heading back to her room, so I had to follow her. Unfortunately, I wasn't so self-conscious and actually ran towards her, catching her and tickling her all over until she begged me to stop.

"What? I'm not doing anything," I protested. "I'm barely even touching you." I put my hands near her ribs but didn't actually make contact with them. Her self-control was so messed up by this point that she started laughing very loudly, prompting me to look around to see if anyone would see and take us for weirdos. No one was there, so I opened her room's door and half-shoved her in.

I was only just done taking off my boots when Marina had her pants off, that gave me a good look of her long and shapely legs, distracting me for a little bit before I managed to undo my belt. As I looked up to see how my beautiful partner was doing I felt like I was hit by a sledgehammer.

At the edge of the room there was a dark silhouette, scary and familiar. He stepped forward so that the light hit his face, revealing the person and destroying every hope that I wasn't loosing my mind. The hallucination smiled at me smugly while ignoring Marina completely, yet even her realized that something was wrong. She stopped undressing herself and gave me a weird look.

"What?" Marina and Schitzo both asked at the same time.

"Did you really think that a single pill would get rid of me?"

* * *

><p><em>Hey guys, I've decided to give you a Christmas Eve update because you're that important to me. And I love you. Yes.<em>

_Ok, back to the post-chapter author's foreword/note/comment. I know that this chapter is probably awkwardly written and not very realistic when it comes to the visit to the psychologist. I did that pretty much how I imagined it would go and borrowing heavily from movies and television, so forgive me if the visit to Dr. Crowe (I wonder why that name sounds familiar...) was less realistic than possible._

_Anyways, hope you enjoyed this chapter._

_Politically correct statement for the season: Happy Holidays!_

_-casquis_


	69. The Best

Chapter LXIX: The Best

**June 30, 2542 (UNSC Calendar)/one month later**

**UNSC **_**Inconvenience**_**, Slipspace**

Shit. Fuck.

My life wasn't all that great right now. I still hadn't been diagnosed with any particular disease of any kind, instead I was repeatedly told to take my pills every few hours and tell the ship psychologist every time I saw Schitzo milling about. The problem is, those pills didn't seem to be working right, one moment I would take a pill, the next minute I would spot Schitzo on the other side of the room staring at nothing in particular.

It was getting to me.

On top of it all someone had decided that Pavel and I had been a two-man outfit for just a little bit too long and we were being sent on a fucking journey around the galaxy to pick up our replacements. Why? Because it was simpler to send on ship to three different planets than send three different ships to one planet, never mind that we were previously quartered in Paris IV, where ships come to all the fucking time. Someone up there really hates my guts and there was nothing I could do about it.

"Frank? Are you feeling well?"

The question was a different one, what Marina really meant to ask me was if I was hallucinating someone right now. Coincidentally, I was. Schitzo was sitting on a bench three treadmills away reading some sort of paperback book. The scene was absurd, who the hell even read paperbacks anymore? Besides, the bench he was sitting in was used for barbell exercises.

"Yes, I'm alright," I said, turning up the music volume in my earphones and making the treadmill go just a little bit faster. It seemed like Marina's great idea to get my mind of things through exercise wasn't so great after all. Now my legs were getting tired, my clothes were sweaty, and I was still hallucinating. Oh, and Marina was perfectly aware I was lying to her. She was even looking around to see if she was able to spot anything out of the usual.

Schitzo got of the bench just in time for a huge marine to sit down and start lifting what looked like eight hundred pounds. He started walking towards me and stopped in front of me with a smirk on his face. It was hard to describe the guy, Schitzo looked so average that I would have a hard time describing him, besides, it seemed like his appearance changed slightly every time I saw him milling about. Schitzo placed his hands on the treadmill and started moving his mouth. My music was so loud that I shouldn't have heard him speaking, but this guy was a product of my imagination, so it made perfect sense that I understood Schitzo without problems.

"You know, your girl here has been acting a little bit like a bitch lately, wouldn't you think?" he asked me.

"Fuck off," I thought. Clearly, he understood me as well, as he did an excellent job of pretending to be taken aback by my aggressiveness. In fact, it looked a little bit like what I would've done in his situation.

"No, I'm serious, she did put her knee in your junk with more force than was necessary."

"I grabbed her wrists very hard, it was quick reaction. She is a soldier," I reminded him, or myself. Whatever.

"She's no soldier, she's simply a pilot, I bet that she can barely fire a gun without missing. You haven't even bothered to show her how to."

"I can't go teaching everyone how to shot a pistol," I snapped.

"It wasn't a problem with Layla," Schitzo pointed out.

"Ok, fucking crossed the line," I muttered.

"Excuse me?" Marina asked me.

"Never mind," I said as I stopped the treadmill and hopped down. I walked towards the bag that held all my gym stuff and pulled out my pills, popping one and swallowing it. When I turned around Marina was looking at me with a worried look on her face and Schitzo wasn't anywhere in the room. I couldn't help but smile a little bit to myself. I had some degree of control over this thing, and as long as I knew Schitzo wasn't real, I could live my life as normally as possible. Well, combat would be… interesting.

"Why did you lie to me?" Marina asked me as soon as I hopped back on the treadmill next to her.

_Schitzo was right, she is pretty bitchy._

* * *

><p>"Schitzo says you're wrong," I said.<p>

"Schitzo is an asshole."

"I am Schitzo," I pointed out."

"Oh, sorry," Pavel said. "You are an asshole."

"Come on man, I can't really be responsible for what my subconscious thinks, does, and says."

"Just take your fucking pill," Pavel ordered.

I shrugged and complied, throwing the medicine into the air and catching it with my mouth.

"Tell Pavel he should break up with her girl right about now," my other half managed to say before I had swallowed the pill.

"You know Frank, it really is creepy that you're making best friends with your schizophrenic hallucinations."

"Hey, he's me, what's not to like?"

"That he's a schizophrenic hallucination," he pointed out. It was a pretty good point, but ultimately Schitzo had been easier to get along with, if that even makes sense. It wasn't because he was less creepy or less of an asshole, it was simply because I was getting used to hallucinating the mystery guy all over the place a couple of times a day. I was adapting to it. Still, I would rather he wouldn't pop up all the time, but it was better to learn to live with my disease, whatever that is.

"Let's change topics," I suggested. "Did you catch Chloe with her hands in the dough yet?" I asked.

"Hands in the-"

"Sorry, Mexican expression," I explained. "Manos en la masa, it means did you catch her in the act."

"Oh, no, not yet."

"You have to do it quickly," I suggested. "Confront her about it before she catches you, shifting all the blame."

"I know, I know," Pavel said.

"Also, pretty dickish move on your part, sleeping all over the place to get back at her," I told him.

"You'd do the same," Pavel replied, dismissing me without even glancing in my direction.

"Oh, most certainly," I agreed. "But with more style."

If Pavel had been a car, his wheels would've screeched as he stopped suddenly. He turned towards me very, very slowly and gave me a glare that failed completely at delivering the desired effect before speaking in a voice that could barely contain his annoyance.

"With more style?" he asked. "With more style? For the love of God, I have a list of the girls that have… partaken in my revenge plan here," he patted his pocket, "all of them are certified tens. Tens!"

"Yeah, so?"

"Tens!" he repeated. "All of them!"

"Sure, you only do them one at a time," I said, my face completely expressionless.

"Ok, listen you-"

"Shhh," I interrupted. "We're here."

Pavel looked like he wanted to say something, but I opened Albaf's office door and walked in nonchalantly. Pavel followed me while trying to calm himself down and swallow his annoyance. I won the argument yet again.

"Ah, you're late," Albaf said from behind her desk, barely looking up. We weren't late, not even close, in fact, we were three minutes early.

"Sorry ma'am," I apologized.

"Sure, whatever," Albaf said. "Lieutenant?"

Wilkins, who was standing at ease behind Albaf's chair walked towards a wall and pressed on a console, prompting a holovision to pop up and cover the entire wall. He pressed a couple of other buttons and a holopad appeared from the floor and Eliza promptly popped up. The AI, disturbingly attractive in her chosen avatar, winked at Pavel and me before sitting down on a miniature holographic chair.

"Very well, Staff Sergeant, as you are aware there have been several… casualties under your command," Albaf started.

_I still don't know her name…_

It was a strange realization, but it was true. I had never learned her name and never bothered to check. Besides, all official documents only had her last name after her rank, as per ONI custom. Those spooks were so paranoid you'd think that the covvies were actively infiltrating us and offing them one by one.

"Yes," I agreed.

"Watch."

I was forced to watch a fifteen-minute montage of every single soldier under my command dying. Most of it was satellite or drone footage, but there were some takes that were obviously recorded by helmet cams. I winced every single time one of my squad mates died. Most deaths were violent and under extreme enemy fire, making them all the harder to watch, to live again. After every death, a small picture of the soldier in question along with his or her name appeared before moving on to the next chronological death. It finally stopped just as I was about to clock the Commander in the face.

"So, what do you make out of this?" I was asked.

_That you're a fucking psychotic bitch._

I didn't say anything.

"That none of this deaths was your fault Frank," Eliza said.

My first thought was that it was pathetic that we were using one of Eliza's subroutines to give me a psych evaluation, my second thought was that Eliza was just a machine and that she couldn't possibly relate to human emotion, my third thought was that science was pretty advanced and that it was entirely possible for the AI to have human emotions. My fourth though was that Eliza _was_ sentient, so I was wrong.

"What do you know?" I said before my mind could get carried away.

Eliza replayed a couple of the deaths from the recording while pointing out why there was no possible way I could've avoided any of them, she then went on to say that I had indeed made a few of my squad mates live for a little bit longer than most could've managed.

"Ok, ok," Pavel interrupted. "Frank makes a good sergeant, but that's hardly the reason why you brought us here."

"As you already know, the primary focus of this deployment is to replace any casualties that B and Echo companies might have suffered. More importantly, to restore your unit to full capacity."

"Ma'am," Pavel and I acknowledged simultaneously.

"The armor and equipment testing days of this ship are over, so are the suicide missions and zerg rushes are over. Your squad will be just fine under your command." I wasn't completely sure that Albaf was right, but I simply nodded at her while she resumed talking. "There are several candidates available for choosing, you and I will pick them out Staff Sergeant. Ideally your squad would number eight members, but if you don't find any candidates to your liking the number could be bumped down to seven."

"Yes ma'am," I said. "Do you have the dossiers of the candidates?"

"I have them right here Staff Sergeant," Albaf said, patting a datapad. "Give them a look, that way you'll have an idea of what you're getting into when you interview them.

_Interviews? Shit, I'm not built for this. Hell, I didn't even know you could interview someone for the military._

"Interviews?" I asked. I pretty much had to. "Are we seriously doing job interviews?"

"I don't see why not," Albaf said. For the first time I noticed that she was being surprisingly less bitchy than I was used to. Or perhaps Marina's own bitchiness was eclipsing the commander. That would've been a serious dilemma. Then I remembered the video that I had just been forced to watch and I was instantly pissed at her again.

"Very well then, Pavel and I will let you know what we think," I said, letting them know that my friend would take part in the decisions.

"All right Staff Sergeant," Eliza said. "You are dismissed."

I saluted and turned around to leave, Pavel mimicking my motion and taking a couple of long steps so that he'd exit the room first.

"Castillo," Wilkins spoke for the first time since I had entered the room. I turned around without saying anything, instead letting my expression do the talking. "The men and women we are looking to attach to your squad are the best of the very best, they'll be just fine."

"You can't be hiring the best," I said, prompting inquisitive looks from both officers and the AI in the room. Pavel simply rolled his eyes at me. "You can't hire the best," I repeated. "I am the best."

Having said that, I left the room and shut the door after me, walking with a smile that wouldn't disappear for a long while.

* * *

><p><em>Hey guys, first of, I want you to know that it didn't take me four days to write this piece of crap chapter. It actually took me four days to write Chapter 72. I am always three chapters ahead of the posts in case something happens and I can't complete a chapter in a very long time. You know, backup. Well, just let me apologize for the length (or rather the lack of it) of this chapter. <em>

_I hope you enjoyed it, as much as you possible could anyways._

_-casquis_


	70. Old and New Friends

Chapter LXX: Old and New Friends

**July 15, 2542 (UNSC Calendar)/two weeks later**

**Camp Amazon, Markarth, Windstor System**

"Thank you, you are free to leave," Albaf said.

The latest recruit smiled at us and stood up before turning around and leaving the nondescript gray room we were in. It was entirely gray with a single gray door and a gray desk with two gray chairs on one side and another gray chair on another side. Had I not known better I would've thought that I was in a set for a police procedural drama. It was actually intimidating to enter the room and be faced by a good-looking lady with a look of authority on her face and a man that you knew could kill you in nine different ways.

No I'm serious, I counted.

All the ODSTs that we had been interviewing for the past hours were extremely well qualified, all of them had received one commendation or other. All of them had at least two different campaigns on their resume and all of them had been told that this was simply an interview to better understand the mind of the Helljumper and in turn improve the conditions on the field for them. Yeah, our cover was that ambiguous, I don't think that any of the people we interviewed really believed it. At least I hope not, I didn't want any witless idiots watching my back during combat.

"So, what'd you think of that one?" Albaf asked me. Oh, turned out her name was Samantha. Samantha Albaf, or Sam if you're family. To me it was still Commander Albaf or Ma'am.

"I don't know, they all seem very well qualified."

"They are," she confirmed. "But not all of them are the right choice, you catch my meaning?"

"You're sounding like the best friend in a romantic comedy," I quipped.

"Let me remind you that if you piss me off one more time I could have you transferred to a desk job permanently," Albaf threatened.

"Sorry ma'am, it's just that this isn't my thing," I said. "Besides, we've only just interviewed three candidates."

"Yes, just three so far." Albaf banged her fist on the table and called out to the MP guarding the door. "Send the next one in!"

"Robert Agnarsson," I muttered. The name sounded familiar for some reason. Perhaps it was because I had read his dossier back on the _Inconvenience_ and my mind had tricked itself. That seemed to be happening a lot lately.

The next man to come in looked like so many other soldiers all over the military. Standing just shy of six feet and with wide shoulders and broad chest that were testament to the countless hours spent bench-pressing in the gym. The cocky demeanor marked him as either an accomplished Marine veteran or a specials operations operator. He certainly had the right to be cocky since he was both. He had career that started in New Constantinople, fighting through the entire duration of the battle for New Istanbul. There were several more engagements that he could boast about and he had been commended several times for bravery.

"Please sit down," Albaf ordered.

The man nodded and gave me one weird look as he sat down. "Sergeant?" he asked. "Sergeant Castillo?"

"Yes?" I asked, startled.

"The Sergeant Castillo that fought in New Istanbul, you were attached to my unit for a mission against a covvie artillery position and then across that no-man's-land?"

"The same," I said, my eyes suddenly wide open in realization. "Robert Agnarsson, the marine with the rocket launcher, I didn't even recognize you."

"Hey, don't worry about it, besides, I owe you thanks for recommending me to the Helljumpers, I'm sure that helped out a lot."

"Hey, don't worry about it," I said. "You more than earned it. Also, it's staff sergeant now," I told him while gesturing at the chevrons on my uniform.

"Well, it's good to see you again Staff Sergeant," Agnarsson said.

"Ok, now that you two are done," Albaf spoke out. "Let's get back to what we came her for."

"Ma'am," both Agnarsson and me said at the same time.

"Very well then, let's gets started. Private First Class Robert Agnarsson, you are twenty-five years old?"  
>"That is correct."<p>

"Joined the Corps at age eighteen, you were in the reserves until you were twenty and then were accepted into the Helljumpers at the age of twenty-three after three failed applications."

"Yes, that is correct," Robert confirmed.

"You have served as the 'spanker' of your squad when in the Marines and had the same job when you were accepted into the Shock Troopers, there are several comments o praising your abilities with the M19."

"I can vouch for that," I said.

"Thank you," Albaf said with venom in her voice. "Staff Sergeant."

I could only give Albaf an apologetic look and shrug a little before gesturing for her to go on. She went on to ask several other questions to Agnarsson about his career, most were about heroic deeds and the like, but there was the occasional question which addressed his part in the death of a teammate or disobeying a superior. Agnarsson answered every question without pausing to think about his answers and maintained his position of not regretting anything that he did, bad or otherwise.

"If you could describe yourself in three words," I asked, "what would they be?"

"Good at what I do," he replied in a heartbeat. He then realized that he had missed the count by two words he seemed to try to think of something else to say that was actually three words long. "Good at my job."

"That's alright," I said, noticing his uncomfortableness at making a simple mistake such as that. I could tell from his reaction that he knew this wasn't the type of interview that ONI had told this ODSTs they were doing. This told me two things about Robert Agnarsson, PFC. First, he wasn't stupid, and second, he wasn't stupid. Both were necessary abilities to stay alive in this cruel universe.

"So tell me Mr. Agnarsson, what was your first reaction when you first heard about or saw an ODST soldier in combat."

"They're fucking insane," Agnarsson answered just as quick.

"And when you joined them?" I asked.

"We're fucking insane," he replied with a smile. I couldn't help but smile a little bit as well. That much was true, we _are_ fucking insane.

"Ok, now about combat," I stated. "It says here that you favor M6J Carbine over the MA5 series assault rifles, why is that?"

"Well, I am not particularly good at conserving ammunition when it comes to more conventional weapons, I chose the carbine as a way to have power and reach without the temptation of full-auto right there."

"Why didn't you use a DMR then?" I asked. "As an ODST you have considerably more freedom to choose your equipment."

"My squad already had an excellent marksman hen I joined, I opted for a toned down version of the same rifle. It's worked great for me so far."

"Very well," I said. "What is your opinion on the M6 pistol?"

"If you see yourself in the need to use it, you're screwed."

_Not particularly fond of close-quarters fighting I see. That might be troublesome._

"I see," was all that I said.

From that point on Albaf took over, asking several questions that ranged from asking which engagement he had most enjoyed fighting in all the way to what would he do in certain situations. The commander went on to ask what Agnarsson thought about escort and retrieval missions before she snapped back to his family and friends. It seemed that Agnarsson had joined the Marines with most of his high-school friends but they had all been assigned to different units. He hadn't heard of them again and hadn't bothered to check up on them.

_Afraid they're all dead, some underlying issues there, I might have Wilkins check them out. Just in case._

After several more questions from Albaf and the occasional one that I made Agnarsson was finally done with the interview he stood up and shook both our hands before thanking us and leaving. His demeanor had changed from cocky to tired and slightly annoyed through the duration of the interview. With the type of questions that Albaf asked every now and then, I couldn't blame the guy.

"I want him," I said as soon as the door snapped closed. "He's my first pick."

"You sure?" Albaf asked. It was evident that she wasn't surprised in the least about my choice.

"A hundred percent," I replied.

"Very well then, one down, five to go."

* * *

><p>"Aw shit, I hate this."<p>

I wasn't really talking to anyone in particular, this time Schitzo wasn't even there. I was just talking to myself in the mirror. We had interviewed just five different candidates for my squad and it had taken us the better part of the day. I still don't understand why I was allowed to choose, but it had to be worth it if I was going to have them watching my ass. Besides, it seemed that they would make it out alive from more than one mission. At least that's what I hoped otherwise I would live the rest of my life hating myself for being a terrible squad leader.

I dried my face and walked to my room. It was eerily similar to the last hotel room I had been in. So far Schitzo hadn't showed up, and that was something to be thankful for. I looked out the window of the hotel and towards the city of Gracemaria. Camp Amazon was right on the outskirts of the city, and the hotel I was staying in was close to the camp, which stood on a hill overlooking the city. I had a kick ass view of the place from here.

Markarth was one of those planets that had been almost ready to inhabit by the time we arrived with our ships and colonists. That meant that little terraforming technology had been needed and that no weather satellites were in use on the planet. Markarth had been able to keep its lovely atmosphere thanks to that, it gave the sky a lovely green hue whenever you looked at it, not really sure why it was that the sky was green, but it looked awesome.

The five interviews that I had done for the day was little over half for this planet. We still had one more place to go with the purpose of interviewing additional candidates. It was discouraging that only one out of five Helljumpers had caught my eye, but it there were still plenty of candidates just waiting out there, and a whole other planet to pick them from. At least that second planet (I keep forgetting its name) was close by. Two stars away, was what Eliza had said. That meant that we wouldn't even need to be put in cryo for the duration of the trip. Maybe.

The room I was in was for one person only, Marina wasn't allowed to leave the ship, at least she wasn't allowed to leave the ship with me, neither was Pavel for that matter. All I had for company was a grumpy Albaf and the ever-quiet Lieutenant Wilkins. At least Albaf seemed to be defrosting a little bit. She was much more talkative now and didn't spaz at me for every little thing that wasn't to her liking. Hey, maybe she was in love.

Yeah right.

I wondered what Pavel was doing right now. He had explained everything about his situation with Chloe to Marina and was planning on catching her in the act during this two days. I hoped to God that he succeeded, I was really getting sick and tired of hearing the different versions of his plans for catching his girlfriend cheating on him. Invariably they all seemed to end in: "What if his dick is bigger than mine?"

Whoa. It still makes me feel uncomfortable when I think about it. I actually shuddered a little bit when Pavel voiced his worries to me.

The really sad part of this is that I was planning on going to sleep right about then, but it wouldn't do me any good to fall asleep with the thought of large penises floating around on my head. Not any good at all. I was already psychologically scarred as it is, didn't want anything else to give a psychologist a field day.

Instead of going directly to the hotel bed I was forced to move to the considerably less comfortable couch and turn on the holovision to see if anything interesting was on. This being a hotel there wasn't anything _interesting_ playing, so I had to check for interesting stuff in channels with lower numbers. I finally settled for one of those shows that tested different weaponry against each other. I thought it would send me to sleep quickly.

Instead, I found myself yelling at the people in the show to stop being assholes and actually test the weapons correctly. For real, who in their right mind would rate a DMR better than a BR55? To add insult to injury they decided that the M6C as better than the M6D because sometimes you need accuracy instead of firepower. Seriously? The M6D has a goodamned telescopic sight mounted on it and you're asking for accuracy? When they said that next up we would have the SRS99D-S2 rifle being faced against some obscure sniper rifle fabricated in an even more obscure colony I turned on the damned thing and went to sleep angry.

Hey, it's better than penises.

* * *

><p>"Very well, thanks for your time," I said to the latest candidate.<p>

"My pleasure Staff Sergeant," she replied. "Commander."

As soon as she left Albaf turned towards me. "Tell me you loved her," she said.

"I don't know," I replied, "she seems to have something to prove."

"Seriously Staff Sergeant?"

"Yes, whenever someone is to eager they usually get killed. At least in my own personal experience."

"Ok, Miss Seppa is perfectly qualified, I dare say that she looks better on paper than PFC Agnarsson. She even comes from a family of gunsmiths, don't tell me that that couldn't prove useful."

"Fine, fine, she is one of the best candidates so far, but I just don't understand why she joined the military instead of going to a nice university and get a nice job and family life."

"Some people aren't cut for family life," Albaf replied.

"Well, I don't see how Camilla here could have a problem with that."

Private first class Camilla Lilja Seppa was somewhat of an oddity in the corps. For starters, she was a woman, that alone complicates things by the centuries long tradition of favoring men over women in military matters. Despite being a woman, she had managed to become a Helljumper, she wasn't by any means the first female ODST, but it was still incredibly difficult to achieve that. Seppa had numerous commendations and various positive reviews from her commanding officers and squadmates. She was also able to speak English, she was also fluent in Finnish (her native tongue), Hungarian, and Russian. She was as big an overachiever as I had ever seen.

Oh, she was also a stunningly attractive blonde with light blue eyes and a face pretty enough to be the single most beautiful girl in the planet. Not to mention her kick-ass curves and generous female attributes.

"Yeah man, she's like Marina version 2.0," Schitzo said from behind me.

_Oh, fuck off asshole,_ I thought to him while opening my bottle of magic pills. As soon after my hallucination was gone I turned to Albaf. "Working in a mixed gender environment is already difficult enough as it is," I said. "I don't want anyone doing anything stupid just to try and impress that," I admitted while pointing at her picture.

"You included?" Albaf asked.

"Yes," I said with a shrug.

"So what you're telling me is that every time you are dropped into combat you do everything you do with the sole purpose of impressing your own girlfriend and female colleagues."

_Damn, she makes a fine argument._

"No," I said. "But that-"

"Does Sergeant Klaus?"

"No," I was forced to admit.

"Then I don't see the problem with having Camilla on your squad."

"Fine," I yielded. "Fine, she's in."

I could really use someone with PFC Seppa's set of skills on my squad, hell, anyone would be delighted to have a soldier (male or female) with such an extensive repertoire of skills. The woman was certified to drive any kind of vehicle in the UNSC arsenal. Any fucking kind. When was the last time you met a guy that could drive a longsword if the need to use one arose? Never. She could drive a tank, any kind of tank, she could drive a Cobra, she could drive a Pelican, she could drive a Vulture. I think you get my point. She had also taken and passed several additional courses in terminal hacking, non-lethal combat, VIP protection, and even non-combatant security. Who the hell sees the course "non-combatant security" and thinks "Oh, I'm gonna take that."  
>Seriously, it's just absurd.<p>

"Very well than," Albaf said, one more to go and we're done with this planet," she sounded almost relieved. I wouldn't have believed it if I had not spent these two days with her. She seemed to be the kind of workaholic who loved doing her job more than anything else in the entire world. Apparently she was normal too. Well, as close as you can get to being normal for an ass.

The last recruit that we interviewed here in Camp Amazon was an exemplary soldier, but he was simply not good enough. We had chosen two people to our squad out of the nine that we had interviewed. Not the greatest ratio, but better to be picky and get what you want than the other way around. Right? Well, as soon as the latest interviewee left the room I stood up and stretched. My butt was sore and cramped from all the sitting down and my neck was killing me. I just wanted to go back to the _Inconvenience _and have Marina give me a neck massage. She might've been acting seriously bitchy lately, but that didn't mean that she couldn't give me some great massages. Provided she was in the mood of course.

"So, we're done with this rock," I said. "Where are we off to next?"

"Alpha Charus, it's nerby, it'll take exactly twenty-three hours to reach the place once we leave."  
>I only raised my eyebrow, having two solar systems being so close was unusual, having two solar systems that had planets capable of supporting life that close was a one in a million shot. Oh well, as long as it is convenient for me I won't complain about the laws of chance and luck.<p>

I stretched my arms behind my back and rolled my neck around, wincing a little every time it cracked. It might've sounded disgusting but it sure did feel like glory. After I was done cracking all my joints and forced to avoid the weird look that Commander Albaf shot me, I grabbed my dossiers and walked out the room, leaving Albaf to herself. I walked out from the room and into the open courtyard of Camp Amazon. The place looked pretty much the same as Camp Afghan used to look back in Jericho VII. There were drilling marines everywhere and lines of vehicles all over the place. The mud pit and shooting range were behind all the buildings, but they were there.

I took a deep breath, my lungs still not confused to the different atmosphere of this planet. Even though the _Inconvenience_ had slowly changed its atmosphere from that of Paris IV to the unique one that Markarth possessed I still had a hard time feeling normal every time I took a deep breath. It was just too different. I walked across the large courtyard while maneuvering around the drilling Marines and their yelling drill sergeants. It actually brought a smile to my lips remembering all the good times that I had under Gabuka and Bulldog.

That was sarcasm.

I walked to my issued Hog and jumped on the vehicle. The sole action of hopping to the driver's seat left my thighs burning. That was probably one of the reasons why my legs were so toned. I barely even bothered with leg exercises when in the gym, just hopping in and out of a warthog was enough. And I also seemed to be running around all over the place whenever I was dropped in combat. Not sure if that helped my leg muscles, but it sure as hell helped my resistance. I could run a marathon in record time, I was sure of that.

"Funny how sometimes you can forget that you're this good because they made you this good," Shitzo said from the passenger seat.

"The fuck?" I swerved out of my lane and was forced to go another lane to my left to avoid a semi-truck and then do a quick turn to the right to get back in the appropriate lane. A couple of days from now a considerable amount of credits would be deducted from my pay as a fine. And I literally did this to myself.

"Fuck you," I told Schitzo. "I had no idea the interview lasted that long," I said as I reached for my pocket and grabbed my meds. It was tricky opening the bottle with just one hand, but I managed to do it soon enough. "Besides, I was already great when they decided to pump me full of crazy shit," I said to the hallucination.

"Keep telling yourself that," Schitzo smiled.

"I just did."

I popped the pill and by the time I glanced to my right Schitzo was gone from the car. It sometimes scared me more how he could disappear with no trace and not how he just popped up suddenly. I felt like I was living a horror movie every few hours. Not funny at all people.

I drove all the way back to my hotel without incident and had no trouble packing my luggage into the hog. As soon as I was done I hopped back in and checked the trunk of the vehicle for Schitzo. It was empty save for my duffel bag and a suitcase full of mechanic tools. So far so good, everything was going exactly as planned. I activated the driver assist and ordered it to lead me towards the spaceport. I sighed with relief at nothing in particular and followed the bright green lights that appeared in the windshield of the car. Home was just sixteen minutes and forty-two seconds away at a constant speed of fifty miles per hour.

* * *

><p><em>Hello guys, hope you enjoyed the chapter. <em>

_I've got some bad news for you, I'll be going on vacation for ten days, which means that there won't be another update for another ten or eleven days. I know, I know, how could you possibly make it for ten days without reading literature at its finest? You have to be strong for me, promise me you'll be strong and try to make it without going crazy. _

_Since I won't be able to give you a kick ass update on New Year's Eve, it seems that this is all you get. Also, Happy New Year!_

_-casquis_


	71. Moar Frends!

Chapter LXXI: Moar Frends!

**July 18, 2542 (UNSC Calendar)/**

**Leseath Base XI, Alpha Charus II, Alpha Charus System**

Well shit.

"Really?" Albaf asked nervously. "That's rather impressive. I don't understand why it's not on your resume."  
>The ability in question was in fact on the dossier, but there was absolutely no reason why we would want to discuss it in this scenario. Actually, I can't think of any reason why anyone would want to talk about that ability in particular under any circumstances at all. And believe me when I say it: at all.<p>

"Thank you for your time," I replied.

"Sure, no problem."

The first interviewee left the room and closed the door as soon as he was out of the room. I could actually feel the vomit at the back of my throat.

"I do not want that man on my team," I said. "Ever."

"Agreed."

"Why would he even… ugh," I couldn't even understand the reason why he thought it would be a good idea to tell us about that. "Disgusting."

"Let's. Let's just forget about that," Albaf suggested. "And never talk about it again."

"You got it."

We both shuddered as little shivers crept up and down our spines and shook our heads as if that act alone could wipe our memories clean. What I needed right now was some brain bleach. A simple concussion with mild memory loss would do, but I wanted to be sure that I would never think about what I had just heard ever again in my entire life. What. The. Fuck.

"Next!" I shouted. I wanted this over as quickly as possible.

The door opened to reveal our second interviewee of the day and only our second on the planet. Physically speaking, he wasn't a particularly impressive specimen. The man was about 5'9, a decent height if you ask anyone, but compared to the three men that were already in my squad he was a little short. Just two inches taller than Camilla, but at least taller. He had a skinny build, but even I could tell that he was muscular, even if those muscles were wiry. The shirt he was wearing was a size too large for him and his shoulders were slightly hunched, his head hung downwards just slightly and his hands were in his pockets. My first impression was that this man shouldn't have made it pass basic selection, and then I remembered that he had lived all his childhood and teenage years in the slums of Mumbai. Corporal Naveen Avninder was, according to his test scores, the twelfth best marksman in the entire UNSC Military. Twelfth. Out of at least a couple of million specialized marksmen. Do you have any idea how hard that is? Of course you don't, you've never achieved anything that awesome in your entire life and probably never will.

Well, back to Naveen. I knew that his hunched and defenseless appearance was a look that he had cultivated over seventeen years of leaving in the rough and unforgiving slums of Mumbai. Apparently he had made it all the way until he was able to join the military unscathed thanks to a combination of being able to blend in and look harmless as well as the equally important ability of kicking the living shit out of anybody that gave him a bad attitude.

The moment he let himself fall down on the chair in front of me I knew that I wanted him on my team.

"Corporal Naveen Avninder," I stated. "Welcome." The only response I got was a small nod and the man glancing away from me nervously. At least that was the impression that he gave when his eyes looked away from mine after an instant of eye contact. "Your dossier," I continued. "Is rather impressive." I tossed the manila envelope at him. "What can you say about that?"

"I'm just doing my job," Naveen replied quietly, there was no discernible accent in his voice. Considering that just six years ago he was still living in India, that was quite a feat in my book, even if it wasn't directly relevant to his job.

"And rather well at that," Albaf chimed in. "Tell us, what pushed you to join the military?"

"It was either that or staying back home," he replied.

"So you chose a different kind of hell," I summed up. "The amount of time it took you to jump from the Corps to the Shock Troopers is rather impressive," I said. "Any reason in particular that you think that happened?"

"You said it," Naveen replied. "I'm rather good at doing my job."

"No one questions your prowess with an SRS or an EMR," Albaf said. "But what can you tell us about your experience in more… 'up close and personal' type of combat?"

Naveen had no way out of this one, he had to give an answer that was longer than five words in a row. "Well…" he started. "I am decent enough with a pistol, and sometimes I take an M7 on my assignments."

"Can you please elaborate?"

Naveen shrugged and scratched his neck uncomfortably. "Well, I usually notice when my position is about to be overrun, I try to take out the big ones and then the few that make it are easy game. Besides, I passed all my weapons proficiency tests with excellent grades, I can handle myself without my rifle."

That in itself wasn't particularly impressive. I had yet to see one ODST that hadn't passed every single weapon's proficiency test with more than 90% success rating in every single weapon. Of course, firing at a stationary target that doesn't shoot back does tend to ease things up a little bit. Make them easier, you know?

"It says here," I told him, "that you're not very good at teamwork. Apparently you've had trouble working with your past squads. A lone wolf, that's what they call you here."

"I'm better alone," he said.

"No, in real life, lone wolves die because they can't hunt and the pack survives. In real life, you've been too goddamn lucky to have survived this long with all those stunts you pulled," Albaf said. I swear, she was that close to slamming her hands on the table, and her outburst made the sniper shift uncomfortably on his chair. "In fact, there's been at least one case when your actions directly influenced the death of one of your teammates."

The incident was in his dossier, it took at least one quarter of his file, detailing how Naveen had failed to comply with a fall-back order, that was the first link in a chain series of events that ended up with a ghost ramming one of his fellow ODSTs to a wall and almost breaking her in half through sheer force of impact alone. He had been transferred to another squad soon afterwards.

"That was not my fault," Naveen said defensively, "our sergeant was supposed to be covering that sector and he wasn't that's why the ghost got through," he said, almost yelling.

"Why wasn't he covering that sector?" I asked even though I already knew the answer.

"I don't know," he mumbled.

"Why?" I asked, this time more insistently.

"I don't know."

"Why?" I stood up and slammed my hands hard on the table, eliciting no response from the man in front of me.

Naveen slowly lifted his head and looked me in the eye. His expression was completely changed and for a moment there he looked like a soldier and not like a kid half scared to death. "Because he was covering my sector," he finally said. "He was covering the street I should've been covering."

"Good," I said. "Now that we've got that behind us, we can continue this interview."

"Very well," Albaf said, straightening her files absent-mindedly. "It says here that you've received all the marksmanship medals that are available to…

* * *

><p>"I want that gal leading her own team now," I said. "Make her a sergeant and give her her own fucking team, I have no idea what she's doing as a lance corporal," I said.<p>

"Really? I would've thought that you'd want someone as good as her serving under you," Albaf said.

"No, she's too good a leader not to have her own squad. Besides, she may be skilled, but those sets of skills are already covered," I said. "I'm serious about giving her command of a squad."

"I'll have that looked into," Albaf said.

The woman that had just left this room was a shining example of everything a soldier should be, she had a gazillion recommendations from her superiors and there wasn't anything on her dossier that wasn't praise for her bravery and abilities. She had rallied men and won decisive skirmishes that had influenced in turning the tide of a battle and had single-handedly rescued her squad when they were pinned down and she was the only one that was able to escape. She was inspiration and leadership incarnated, she had no reason to be serving under someone else.

"Gee Francisco, I wouldn't have thought you to be so selfless."

_Fuck you Schitzo,_ I thought while reaching for my pocket and opening the meds without having the bottle leave my pocket.

"You say something?" Commander Albaf asked.

"What?" I said as I pretended to yawn. "No." I popped my meds into my mouth while I was pretending to politely cover it. Schitzo shook his head creepily and then the heavy metal door that led into the room slammed into him. When the door was closed again he was gone and I had to suppress a chill. I still could not get used to the disappearances. They creeped the shit out of me.

* * *

><p>"So, Lance Corporal Arcangelo Lamberti," I greeted the man. <em>That's probably the most flamboyantly awesome name I've ever heard.<em> "I hear you're a man that can get me to places that nobody else can."

Quick interruption. Ten points to whoever guesses what Arcangelo means, you've got three tries.

"What?"

"Sorry, that probably sounded a little dirtier than it did when I thought about it," I said.

"No worries," Lamberti said with a smile. Albaf simply rolled her eyes at our childlike minds and decided to take point.

"Lance Corporal, as my colleague here said, it seems that you are exceedingly good at cracking security systems, both human or otherwise," she said. "And whenever that doesn't work…"

"Hey, there's nothing wrong with the occasional explosion," I said. I couldn't forget about my own fascination and moderate talent with explosives. "Explosives can be both tools and weapons, right Lance Corporal?"

"That's my motto," he smiled.

"Mister Lamberti, where did you learn computer programming?" Albaf asked. She knew the answer damn well, but it was still her obligation to ask.

The man reached for his own dossier. "May I?" he asked. When he received a nod in reply he grabbed the folder and quickly rifled through it until he found what he was looking for. "Lamberti taught himself to program at an early age, once he had mastered the art, open parenthesis, which took him remarkably little time, showing he had a natural talent for that, natural talent he, I like that."  
>"Do go on, please," I said.<p>

"Sorry, close parenthesis, he immediately put his newfound skills to use. Lamberti used his technological know-how in several illegal ventures that quickly made him several hundred thousand dollars."

"And…"

"And I was caught," Lamberti said. "End of the story. Well, that story at least," he shrugged.

"Then you joined the Corps," I said. "It was either that or prison. Most men choose prison, especially when under those circumstances I hear that 'Convicted Bootcamp' is quite the hellish place."

"Yeah," Lamberti shrugged uncomfortably. "Not many good memories from that one."

I glanced at his file again and wondered how it had happened. Lamberti had almost gotten killed twice in bootcamp. The first time was because three recruits had beat him half to death for some random situation and the second time was because the drill sergeants had beaten him half to death after he put one of the guys that had originally beaten _him_ up in a coma and the other two in the hospital for two weeks. His profile said that he had hit the gym constantly and started taking food supplements. He also took additional boxing lessons that one of the drill sergeants offered him. An old man that took pity on Lamberti.

The way I pictured the story in my mind I could make an entire movie out of the situation. Happy-go-lucky kid gets in the wrong situation and ends up in jail (or the equivalent) where he doesn't fit in. Finally he gets the help of an old man that acts as his father figure and mentor and redeems himself while kicking ass. Yeah, I'm sure I could make an Academy Award winner out of that situation. Well, at the very least it would win a People's Choice Awards award.

"Your file is very impressive," Albaf admitted.

"Thank you."

"Most of it not in a good way," she continued. "Or at least not in a _very_ good way. You love explosions, you cannot deny that, but we're worried that perhaps you love them a little bit too much."

"I uh… ah?"

"There have been several incidents in particular where you went overboard with explosives," I said. "The Siege of Atlas Moons comes to mind."  
>"Yeah, that," he chuckled nervously. "The tanker was right there, I saw an opportunity and I took it."<br>Let me put this statement in perspective. The tanker was full of the liquid hydrogen fuel that was used in hydrogen fuel cells. It blew up the entire port and a good chunk of the city. Oh, I forgot, it was a ship, a ship over three kilometers long that transported the volatile liquid from one continent to another. The explosion alone had leveled over thirty blocks. Most of them were filled with aliens, granted, but there were several friendly units within blast radius when the bombs were activated.

"Your orders were to fall back to the tanker and await evac," I said.

"Which I did," Lamberti argued.

"There was no mention of placing any kind of explosives near the ship."

"Well, sometimes you've got to improvise," he said.

"That I'll give you Mister Lamberti," Albaf said. "Well, let's talk about something else. It says here you had a hard time… fraternizing with your squadmates. Apparently you weren't compatible. You tried to transfer several times, but all your requests were denied."

"Yeah, seems to be its part of the deal having to serve your military time with convicted psychopaths." I only raised an eyebrow at the slight hypocrisy, but allowed him to go on uninterrupted. "By the time our sentence was over, I was the only one alive of the original squad. Don't get me wrong, I am not really sad those assholes died, but I had nowhere to go."

"So you enlisted. Properly this time."

"Yes, my first tour of duty actually counted when it came to requisites for joining the Helljumpers. As soon as I had enough months under my belt I took my chance and jumped into bootcamp."

"Yeah, I wonder how you managed to get accepted into ODST training without any recommendations whatsoever…" I said.

"That is hardly the point here Staff Sergeant," Albaf said. "And aren't you being a little hypocritical?"

This time it was Arcangelo Lamberti who raised his eyebrow while looking at me quizzically, as if he was reevaluating me completely. Perhaps he thought that I was a convict just like him. It would be disappointing to let him down when he asked. Oh, did I mention that I had decided to get this guy in my team? No? Well, I just did.

Two interviews later I saw one of the biggest men I had seen in my entire life walk inside the room. When I say big I mean big. I'm a pretty tall guy in my own right, plus two inches worth of state-classified muscle and bone enhancers. I'm also muscular even if not overly big (yeah, that means I've got the perfect body without going overboard. Fuck yeah). Pavel is also pretty tall and slightly bigger (muscle-wise) than me, with broader shoulders and bigger arms, even if they aren't exceedingly big either. Oh, I also have a kick ass six-pack, but I really shouldn't brag. Well this man was fucking huge. That's right, you have to put the word 'fucking' ahead of huge. That's how big this man was. Fucking. Huge.

George Manuel Sutton was exactly seven feet tall, according to his dossier, but the sheer amount of muscle mass that this man boasted made him look five times bigger. Sutton looked like a basketball player, tall and muscular, very muscular. His skin was as dark as midnight on Gliese 581 g and I was immediately looking for ways to neutralize this man if he suddenly decided to go berserk. The nondescript room provided little opportunity for blunt weapons other than the table and walls. I suddenly remembered that my pistol was holstered to my hip and fell a whole lot safer.

* * *

><p>"Mr. Sutton, please sit down," Albaf ordered.<p>

"Yes ma'am."

The man had a deep rumbling voice that reminded me of some movie actor or other, but in a weird, totally non-homosexual way, it was soothing and calming. He sat down on the chair and the metal groaned with stress as soon as the chair was forced to support his weight. At almost three hundred pounds, I wasn't surprised.

"Private First Class, joined the corps at the age of nineteen, why is that?"

Sutton laughed a little bit, giving me the sensation that the entire room was shaking. "Your propaganda is really good. For a while there I thought we would actually be winning when we fought."

I was forced to suppress a smile, that's the same reason I decided to jump right into the Helljumpers. Albaf on the other hand, was forced to chastise the man for making comments that could deplete the morale of his fellow soldiers. At least he was telling the truth, it wasn't like we were exactly winning. Or even giving them much of a fight really.

"Ok-" I said, interrupting Albaf's rant about the need for high morale on the military. "I think we have that cleared up now. Mr. Sutton, why don't you tell us a little bit about your experience in the military?"

"Well I think I can say that it's been average enough. I've been deployed to eight different engagements…" All of those engagements had been losses with extremely high casualties for the UNSC "…six of them as a regular and the other two as a shock trooper."

"It says here that you've received several commendations for bravery under enemy fire," I said. "Can you tell us about that."

"I think that receiving a commendation might've been a little bit of an exaggeration by whoever decided to give me that, I was only doing what I was supposed to do."

"Which was?"

"I used to provide covering fire to allow for my squad to fall back most of the time," he said with a shrug that lifted his gigantic shoulders and let them fall back down slowly. "I received a medal just for being lucky once," he said.

"Do you mean the incident in… the Atlas Moons?"

"Yes, it was just a lucky shot," he said.

"Lucky or not, that shot saved a dozen lives," Albaf said.

"And apparently it was made while under heavy enemy fire and with no cover whatsoever. The citation says that you hopped on top of a flaming car to get a clear shot and fired your grenade launcher at the banshee."

"I think you're giving me to much credit," Sutton complained.

"No, I think you're not giving yourself enough," Albaf said.

AS far as this interview is concerned, it was by far the most normal of all the interviews that I had conducted so far. At the very least it was the less weird one of all. The PFC in front of me was polite and modest, something which you usually have a hard time finding in the Corps. And this man was a Helljumper, he had a right to be a cocky asshole and get away with it if he wanted to. Suttton had joined the ODSTs after his squad sergeant pushed him to do it. He had several letters of recommendation from his superiors all the way up to a light colonel. He was described in several performance reports as a "Nice, reliable, and friendly guy" that would always have your back no matter what the situation. While it wasn't written anywhere in his dossier, there were several things that implied PFC George Sutton had helped a few of his squadmates outside the line of duty. Knowing marines it was obvious that he had helped a few of them score some chicks.

"Ok, one last question," Albaf said. "What do you feel about the Covenant?"

"I'm sorry?" Sutton asked, confused at the question. "Well, I don't really feel anything, they're just targets."

"Thank you, you may leave," I said.

"Staff Sergeant, Ma'am."

The huge man stood up from the chair and left the room, moving his head sideways so that it didn't hit the frame of the door. The door was closed behind him and Albaf and I were left to ourselves to discuss the latest interview.

"He doesn't hate the Covenant?" I asked. "That's a new one."

"It says in his dossier that his whole family is alive and well. They live in New York, a mom, a dad, three sisters, two brothers. Hell even all his grandparents are still alive and kicking. You don't meet a lot of people in the Corps with intact families."

"Yes, but you don't meet anyone that doesn't want to exterminate every last covvie in the universe with extreme prejudice. Everyone hates the covvies."

"There could be some advantages to having a man on your team that can work with mechanical precision," Albaf suggested.

"All ODSTs are mechanical, no matter how much we might hate those aliens we never go overboard and risk the mission."

Commander Albaf didn't say anything, instead she pulled out a datapad and tapped in a few commands. A second later she handed it to me and I was looking at a drone-taken picture of a dead elite's face. Well, what was left of that face. I recognized the elite and its surroundings quickly as they were still fresh in my mind. It was the squid face that I had kicked in the knee joint and then emptied half my magazine on its face.

"I think one or two bullets would've been more than enough," she suggested to me.

I had no excuse for that one. I was still mentally fit at the time and had no particular reason to waste ten rounds of precious ammunition on an elite that was already dead and harmless. I had to admit that it does feel good to go overboard some times. So far it hasn't caused me any danger or risked the mission. So far.

"Ok, maybe we're not exactly mechanical, but we're as close as it gets," I said with a dismissing shrug. "You can't expect us not to harbor feelings towards those aliens, half our families are dead because of them," I added.

"I don't blame you for that," she said, "you still might need someone to keep your team level headed. Explosive loving Scotsman, explosive loving hacker ex-convict, overachieving girl with some self-esteem issues, shy street rat with repressed anger. And well, you."

"What about Pavel?" I asked.

"I always pictured Sergeant Klaus as the level-headed one in the team," she said.

"What? How can you-"

_This changes everything._

"Truth hurts, doesn't it?" the commander said. "Still, you need someone to keep your team in check. Sutton has been known to pull enraged teammates back to cover when they went postal."

"Fine, I was seriously considering the guy, but I don't think that that's the right reason for it."

"Whatever," Albaf said. "He's in."

"That makes seven," I said. "And two more interviews to do," I said.

"We'll save those for tomorrow," Albaf said. "I'm tired." Then she proceeded to rub her eyes and stretch, completely shattering the theory that Pavel and I had toyed with that she was an android from the government sent to check on us. She was certainly attractive enough to be a super robot, at least super robots were all hot chicks in the movies.

"Alright, I'll see you tomorrow commander," I said as I lifted myself up from the chair. Right now there was nothing I wanted more than a nice soft hotel bed and more pillows than I could possibly have need for.

* * *

><p><em>Hey guys, I'm back from my lovely vacations in Acapulco. I had fun and sun and even left my room a few times. No internet for two weeks. Wow, I'm really proud of myself. <em>

_Happy New Year!_

_Hope you enjoyed your vacations!_

_What did Santa bring you guys?_

_Hope you enjoyed the chapter!_

_Of the previous four sentences I only mean the ones that end up with exclamation marks. Love you guys._

_-casquis_


	72. Meet the Team

_Peoples, I am extremely proud of this one chapter, so i better get some love for it. I think you will like it, a lot._

_-casquis_

* * *

><p><span>Chapter LXXII: Meet the Team<span>

**July 23, 2542 (UNSC Calendar)/**

**UNSC **_**Inconvenience,**_** Slipspace**

"Team meeting?" Pavel asked. "Are you for real?"

"What?" I complained. "We all have to get to know one another sooner or later," I said. "We haven't even done any kind of training together."

"And?" Pavel asked. "We're simply on a two-month patrol deployment," he said.

"Yeah," I replied sarcastically. "Because the last patrol deployment ended so well."

"Touché," he was forced to agree. "But still, it's not like we're in kindergarten, no need for that 'stand up and say something about yourselves routine'."

"No," I said nervously, "of course not."

"Frank…"

"Relax, I'm kidding. I'll just give the usual 'I'm in charge here' speech and then tell them what's expected of them and all that."

"You'd better do it right," Pavel suggested. "The last thing you want is for everyone to think you're a dork?"

"Why would that be so bad?" I asked. "You don't seem to be very affected by it." I gave my friend a couple of friendly pats on his shoulder and opened the debriefing room, which happened to be the SOEIV bay. What better place to prepare for hell than the gates of hell itself. Right?

"Gentlemen and lady, my name is Staff Sergeant Francisco Castillo, although you already know that, this here is Sergeant Pavel Klaus. In this squad I am God and he is my only son and your savior." I knew that Pavel would get the 'I fucked your mom' stealth insult, even if nobody else did. "There are some other important things that you should know…"

* * *

><p><strong>The Scotsman (20 minutes earlier…)<strong>

**PFC Robert Agnarsson**

_This is a nice ship,_ I thought to myself. _Bloody good one at that too._ A wee little thing compared to the other spaceships I had served in before. But being smaller it had a lot less space to cram all the technology into. That made the ship damn impressive. While I was trying to learn the hallways and rooms of the ship (which was surprisingly hard for a craft less than six hundred meters long) someone bumped into me.

"Watch where yer going," I yelled at the careless oaf that hadn't been watching his way. Turned out to be a girl, and a fairly good-looking one at that.

"Maybe you oughta look around once in a while," she yelled back, "Asshole."

I was too astonished to come up with anything to say. It wasn't very often that I got talked back to as an ODST, but it was even less common to get talked back to by a woman wearing only a tank top and the bottom half of an overall. Highly unusual. By the time I came up with a bloody good comeback for the dumb girl she was gone and I was left there standing like an imbecile gaping at nothing. I think there was a name for that, coming up with a comeback after you should've used it. Spirit of the stairs, I think it was. No wait, that sounds bloody stupid.

"Private First Class Agnarsson?" a pleasant voice coming from nowhere asked.

"Ey, who's there?"

"Relax, it's just me." A hologram displaying an attractive woman clad in a lab coat appeared in front of me. It displayed a lot of static, meaning that it was probably displayed from a holoband pasted to one of the walls or the ceiling. "I'm the ships on-board Artificial Intelligence MPCAI-0278, but you may call me Eliza."

"Go on," I said, trying to appear undisturbed by the construct appearing directly in front of me. It was the first time I had ever spoken to an AI directly.

"First of, I am a smart AI, meaning that I can control all of the PDG systems during combat in addition to tracing MAC and archer trajectories at the same time. I'm pretty fucking smart."

I was very surprised by an AI swearing so casually, I always pictured the constructs as snobby bastards with monocles that took the every opportunity to use big and obscure words and silently mocked us behind our backs. This broke the first part of my stereotype completely. I was still pretty sure that she would still mock me behind my back.

"I can also watch everything that goes on inside the ship at the same time. Let me remind you that I am sentient, so you shouldn't get on my bad side, capiche?"

"Uh, hm, I…"

"Great, now that we've put that behind our backs, let's move on. You already know your assigned quarters, your commanding officer was kind enough to get you a room all to yourself. There was a set of instructions on your role onboard the ship during periods of non-combat which you already read-"

"Hey!"

"As I said, I watch everything."

"Shite, you remind me of Vicky," I muttered.

"I beg you not to make obscure references to twenty-first century films," the AI said. "I might be bound to the three laws of robotics when we're not in combat, but I can certainly make your life difficult Private."

"PFC," I said. "It's PFC."

"Ah yes. Well, back to the point. Your squad leader wants to see you in the SOEIV bay in fifteen minutes, hurry along please. The way you seem lost in this halls you seem to be failing to learn the ship's layout is very disturbing."

"What? How do you even know that?" I asked.

"As I said, I am a smart AI, I can multitask, in fact, I am talking to the rest of your new squad right now."

Having said all that needed to be said, the AI flickered and its avatar disappeared. I knew that even though it wasn't engaging in direct conversation with me, at least one of its several subroutines would be paying mind to my actions. She was a mean little bitch that one. I would have a hard time getting along with the AI. Hopefully, she wouldn't intrude too much on our operations.

I headed towards the general direction of the HEV pod bay. I didn't know exactly where it was, but I had one more day before we were all stuck into cryo and left there for about a month before the ship reached its destination. On the way there I couldn't help but think about the sergeant. Francisco Castillo was his name. When I had first met him I was, well frankly, I was really impressed. He managed to save what little he could of my platoon and complete the mission under overwhelming odds. He had even managed to take down an arbiter in the process. Well, him and his friend. Now that I think back to it, Klaus deserved as much praise as Castillo. He was certainly equally talented, even if not nearly as good with his… finesse.

The Staff Sergeant's recommendation to the Hellljumpers had definitely helped me a lot, helped me a lot to literally get into hell. It's not very often that I am glad for a get _into_ hell free pass, but this time I was. Strange, ain't it?

After making two wrong turns I spotted the painted arrow that pointed towards the drop pod bay, I followed its directions and entered the room. It seemed that I had taken my sweet time walking there, because all the other new rookies were already in here. There was a supermodel, a short and skinny kid, a man with an Italian-looking mustache that couldn't help but remind me of Mario (you probably don't know who that is), a walking tower of doom with ebony skin, and an average looking man smoking a cigarette and leaning on a wall.

I was immediately annoyed because I was only the third most intimidating person in this room. First, walking tower of doom. At seven feet you usually cause an impression. In second place was Barbie, sometimes you can be intimidating in an unconventional way, but I'll be damned if her looks didn't make me wanna shit my pants. Before I had the time to examine my new team further or even say anything, the door behind me opened and Castillo and Klaus entered the room.

"Gentlemen and lady, my name is Staff Sergeant Francisco Castillo, although you already know that, this here is Sergeant Pavel Klaus. In this squad I am God and he is my only son and your savior. There are some other important things that you should know…"

* * *

><p><strong>The Supermodel (18 minutes earlier…)<strong>

**PFC Camilla Seppa**

"…in fact, I am talking to the rest of your new squad right now."

I winked twice in surprise as the artificial intelligence's avatar flickered and disappeared. I knew absolutely everything that you needed to know about an artificial intelligence, but I am ashamed to admit that despite my achievements, it was only the first time that I had dealt with one in person. At least I can cross that of my list now. The construct had contacted me while I was in my room. At least the staff sergeant had been intelligent enough to get me my very own room. Most of my superiors hadn't been that smart when they assigned me in the same room as a bunch of brutes before I was forced to request a different room.

I stood up and stretched myself, the last hours I had spent in my room studying the ship's history. The early years were filled with black ink, but more recent operations were unclassified and I was certainly impressed to be part of a ship with such an impressive history. I could only begin to imagine what kind of stuff was written under all that black ink.

My superiors' dossiers provided a lot less information than I would've liked. It said the Staff Sergeant Castillo graduated from Camp Mars IX, a notoriously tough training camp (one of the few that had real jumps as part of training), but made no mention of his previous service as a marine. He had received all three stars, with three Silver Stars, four Bronze Stars, and one Gold Star. He had also been issued the Legion of Honor and had more Purple Hearts than I had fingers to count. Of all the medals in his dossier, only one had a citation free of ONI censorship. It was rather impressive at that as well. Castillo had been suggested to be a recipient of the Colonial Cross, but his applications had all been denied.

The picture that came along with his dossier showed him sporting a short mohawk haircut and a cocky smile. His haircut had been different when he interviewed me, but the smile was still the same. In paper, he was the perfect soldier, at least as far as the viewable sections of his dossier were concerned at least. I ran my fingers through his photo longingly before realizing what I was doing and suddenly stopping myself. I blushed even though no one was there. Well, no human was here, but that AI was bound to be watching. I hoped that she didn't notice that, although I knew that it had probably recorded that and was having a laugh at my expense.

_Stupid construct,_ I blamed it.

Sergeant Pavel Klaus's dossier was not as impressive as Castillo's, but it was certainly a handful as well. He had had a short but illustrious career in the Corps before deciding to join the 105th Shock Troops Division. He graduated from a boot camp that was as equally notorious for being rough as Camp Mars IX. He had been immediately transferred to the Drop Jet Platoon and had his first engagement as an ODST in Jericho VII. He was the only survivor of his entire unit, badly wounded and with no way to contact any friendly forces, he hid out in a military camp in the same planet, there he was found and rescued by Staff Sergeant Castillo. From that point on his dossier was full of black ink.

Klaus had the same commendations that Castillo had save for the Legion of Honor, although he had also been put forward to receive the award on numerous occasions, a few had been denied under the excuse that no two members of the same squad can receive the same commendation. Sergeant Klaus had less Purple Hears but the same amount of Bronze and Gold Stars as Staff Sergeant Castillo and one less Silver Star. By all accounts he should've been one of the best. It was difficult to give him the credit he deserved when you compared him to his direct superior though.

I gave up on finding more information about those two and moved on to the ship's complement. Strangely, this frigate had both Marine and Army complements, Echo Company, 6th Battalion from the 200th and B Company, 3rd Battalion from the 22nd Armored Cavalry Regiment respectively. Both were companies that came from extremely prestigious battalions. They had both suffered heavy casualties since being assigned to the _Inconvenience, _with little over 60% of the original members of Echo still active. The number was 64% for B Company.

The two companies had received several ribbons and both the ship's captain and several other high-ranking officers had praised their actions. Hell, even the two longsword pilots that the ship possessed were triple aces each, both having survived years in one of the deadliest branches of the military. Being part of this ship was something that I should be proud of.

I glanced at my watch and decided that it was probably time that I started moving along. The HEV drop pod bay was only a few minutes away. It was easy enough to find, just keep climbing down and you'll find all the arrows leading towards it very obvious. I entered the room and wasn't really shocked that I was the first one to arrive, I was, after all, early.

The first member of my new squad to arrive was a man of about 5'11 that promptly leaned back on a pod and started smoking a cigarette, he didn't say hello so I ignored him. Next up was a very large black man that simply nodded at me before sitting down on one of the two chairs in the room. The next to arrive was a small, thin, and scrawny-looking Indian guy. Later came an Italian-looking man with a mustache, and then a tall and broad-shoulder guy with a full beard covering the lower half of his face. I hadn't gotten along to reading their dossiers yet, I didn't even know their names.

"Gentlemen and lady, my name is Staff Sergeant Francisco Castillo, although you already know that, this here is Sergeant Pavel Klaus. In this squad I am God and he is my only son and your savior. There are some other important things that you should know…"

* * *

><p><strong>The Tower (18 minutes earlier…)<strong>

**PFC George Sutton**

"…in fact, I am talking to the rest of your new squad right now."

I nodded politely at the hologram even though it was gone now. My mother had always said that it was best to be polite, and the lesson stuck, even if it was to a glorified computer. The nod disrupted my concentration and I was forced to stop the presses for a few instants. The gym was empty right now, with most of the ship's complement either sleeping o slacking off. With no one to spot for me I could only lift 900 pounds safely without risking the barbell chopping of my head.

_Your head's so hard it could break through a wall,_ I thought. That's what my grandma used to say to me. I doubt it would be hard enough to escape 900 pounds of steel falling on it unscathed. _Just five more._ I thought to myself. _Five more and I'm out of here._

Ten bench presses later I left the weights on their rack and moved towards the showers. I quickly washed away all the sweat from my body and dried myself up before changing my clothes. The shirt was too damn small. They were always too damn small. As much as I appreciated the intimidation factor that came with wearing them so tightly, they were uncomfortable as it can get. Oh, they stretched eventually, but in the meanwhile I had to suffer through it.

As soon as I shrugged my way into my shirt I walked towards my room, I had a couple of saved candy bars there, and exercise usually makes me hungry. My room was only occupied by myself, thankfully, I was a friendly guy and got along with people most of the time, but I was still large and needed my own space, sharing a room would've been uncomfortable and not as pleasant as having one all to myself. I had Staff Sergeant Castillo to thank for that.

I grabbed a snickers bar and let myself fall down on my bed. The mattress was still hard an uncomfortable, but enough time of sleeping on it should change that, perhaps I could use it as a punching bag to accelerate the process. The bunk above mine was full of books and letters. Most of them were religious books that my ma sent to me, I read all of them, but it was starting to get tedious. The letters, well, those were another story. Instead of sending regular mails, my mom had convinced all of my siblings to hone their writing skills. So far their writing was getting better and better, but I would've thought it better that they send me simple scans of their letters. It took regular mail long enough to arrive as it was, an actual written letter was something else entirely, sometimes taking over six months to arrive.

I shuffled through the latest letters and smiled as I went through them. My oldest brother had gotten a sports scholarship and was now playing as a quarterback in some prestigious university back home. My sisters were doing great in high school and my younger brother seemed to be doing great in their pee-wee soccer teams. There were a few drawings from my youngest siblings that showed me in badly drawn ODST armor squishing covvies under my boots and shooting down airplanes. I pinned those up on my wall and strapped my sidearm to my leg before leaving the room. At least my family was safe and sound back in Wisconsin. No way Earth would ever get touched, no way in hell.

I walked towards the SOEIV bay and made a point to remember the way down here. With the reputation that this ship had I was sure that there would be more than a few wake up calls in the middle of the night for some emergency jump or other. It was always good to know your surroundings, that's what my pa always said. Know your surroundings and you'll triumph. Or something similar, he had a way of slurring his speech that made it hard to understand him sometimes. A twenty-year long career of boxing usually leaves you a little bit cuckoo.

I entered the room to find a man smoking a cigarette with a relaxed look and a half-smile on his lips as well as one of the most attractive women I had ever seen. The unflattering cargo pants and ODST t-shirt that she wore managed to look great on her. I nodded politely at her, not trusting myself to speak without blabbering and then sat down while I waited for the staff sergeant to arrive. Along came three other men, one looked to be Indian and another one had a Mediterranean look to him, but I could be wrong. The last one to arrive looked like an Englishman, don't ask me how I know that.

Soon after the Englishman arriving my new squad leader and the other veteran of this unit arrived.

"Gentlemen and lady, my name is Staff Sergeant Francisco Castillo, although you already know that, this here is Sergeant Pavel Klaus. In this squad I am God and he is my only son and your savior. There are some other important things that you should know…"

* * *

><p><strong>The Street Urchin (18 minutes earlier…)<strong>

**Cpl. Naveen Avninder**

I saw the three marines walking towards my direction and did my best to sneak out of their sight. The AI had told me that I should head towards the SOEIV bay, but I still had some time before arriving. I didn't want to be the first idiot to arrive and have everyone think I was an overachieving bastard. That never went well back home.

_No, not home, that was not your home. It never was._

If a few words couldn't change my perception of my birthplace, a few thought out words wouldn't be a big help either. Mumbai had been a terrible place for me. I'm sure that it's not really so bad, that there were people who loved the city and were perfectly happy living in it. Me, on the other hand, couldn't have hated it more. My mom died giving birth, I never knew my father, every single friend I made happened to be killed by some street punk or other. It wasn't until I was seventeen and I beat two men to death and left another one within an inch of dying that the local gangs learned to stop bothering me. They might've been thugs, but they were poor thugs, they didn't have any weapons more advanced than shivs and the occasional switchblade.

I glanced at the clock in my room's wall and decided that there was still quite some time before I had to haul ass and start making my way down to the drop bay. I had two things that I could do before leaving: a date with Rosie Palms, or cleaning my gun. I know that both of them sound like a euphemism for the same thing, but the second one is actually literal. I decided against the date version and instead decided that I would clean my M400 EMR.

The gun itself was a work of art. It looked basically like its smaller, less powerful cousin, the M392 DMR. There were some aesthetic differences that distinguished the EMR from the DMR: My gun had a slightly smaller, more skeletal stock that was skinnier. The trigger guard didn't protect the entire grip, just going halfway downwards. The hand guard was longer than and had a more angular design to it, except for the part you were supposed to hold on to, that one was supposed to adapt to the shape of your hand. The barrel itself was also longer, slightly heavier than that of the DMR. The two essential differences were that the EMR had an Oracle C-variant scope instead of the less powerful EVOS-D scope that the DMR had. The Oracle C-variant was essentially the same that an Oracle N-variant on an SRS-99D only that smaller. The second essential change from the DMR was that my gun could fire the 9.5x40mm rounds that the BR55 could fire. The magazines were even compatible.

I started by putting apart all the pieces of my gun and placing them on top of a rag in carefully arranged positions. I took my time with each end every one of those pieces, oiling them when necessary and making sure that not a single speck of dust was anywhere to be seen. I double-checked each piece before starting to assemble back the rifle. The act was so routine, so familiar that it took me all of thirty seconds to assemble back the weapon. I slammed an empty magazine into the receiver and pulled back the bolt. The sound of it reassured me a little bit, even if there was nothing that I needed reassurance for.

I glanced back at the clock and was glad to see that I still had some time. I had to decide whether to take a shower or take up the original offer to have a date with Rosie Palms. I pondered about it for a minute before realizing that I could actually do both of them at the same time. I started to smile and then remembered that the AI's hologram had appeared inside my room, which was supposedly against regulations. I decided against doing any of those two activities and instead reread Staff Sergeant Castillo and Sergeant Klaus's dossiers. They were both a mouthful.

I knew them almost by heart, they both seemed to be psychologically sane, so there was no reason why I shouldn't trust them to lead the team. They were also incredibly talented soldiers.

I stretched myself and placed my gun in the bunk above mine. My room was a mess, but it was mine and no one would come knocking and ordering an ODST to pick up his shit, so I could do whatever I wanted inside this room.

The trip to the pod bay was uneventful and I was only the fourth soldier to arrive. Already inside the room there was a devastatingly attractive woman with blonde hair and blue eyes and killer curves. Also inside was a huge tower of a man with a shaved head and muscles that could make a comic-book superhero jealous. The third man inside was a man whose face was obscured by his cap that was smoking a cigarette. I immediately hunched my shoulders and tried to look as non-intimidating as possible. I knew that that wasn't necessary, but it had grown into a habit and I didn't really bother with getting rid of it.

A minute after me came a moderately large and muscular man that just had to be from Italy if that mustache had any say in his nationality. I swear to you, it was almost ridiculous. After the Italian a broad-shouldered man with a red beard that covered all his lower face came in. Barging right after him came the two men with the word sergeant on their rank that were present in this team.

"Gentlemen and lady, my name is Staff Sergeant Francisco Castillo, although you already know that, this here is Sergeant Pavel Klaus. In this squad I am God and he is my only son and your savior. There are some other important things that you should know…"

* * *

><p><strong>The Videogame Character (18 minutes earlier…)<strong>

**LCpl. Arcangelo Lamberti**

The voice suddenly stopped and I got no further words from Eliza, the AI.

"Hello?" I called out. "You still there?" I didn't get any answer "No? Alright then."

I slammed the box magazine of my M247SAW into its receiver and placed the ammunition belt on its place before slamming down the top half of my gun on it. I pulled back the bolt of my gun and pressed down on the pedal that activated the targets on the firing range.

The first one was a lucky grunt that got ten rounds through its abdomen, chest, and face. As soon as the paper target was down another one popped up further away and at a different angle. I took that one down quickly as well. Twenty-three targets later I had to press the pedal again to stop the animation. It was the third time that I had tried this. With two hundred rounds in my magazine, I should've been able to take down two hundred paper targets, but machine-gunners were taught to fire in sustained bursts of ten to fifteen rounds. Mostly for covering fire, but I wanted to perfect my aiming skills with my weapon, you never know when you might need to actually kill someone instead of making them keep their heads down.

I tried one more time, managing to bring my kill count up to thirty. The habit of keeping the trigger squeezed for over one second was a hard one to break, it just felt like the targets weren't really dead. I know that the notion is absurd since those targets were paper targets, not actual live aliens. After another try with the exact same result I shrugged to myself and placed my gun on a rack before grabbing a slice of pizza.

I had ordered fifty large pizzas back in Leseath, they had been placed in a special crate that I paid a cook to smuggle on board the ship and keep inside the kitchen's fridge. Those things would be good for as long as I wanted them to be. Right now I was enjoying my first one of many to come. It tasted just like cold pizza should've tasted: surprisingly delicious.

I hefted my weapon and slung it over my shoulder as I started the walk back to my room while eating the rest of my original Italian pizza. It was not nearly as good as the real Italian pizzas back home, but it was pretty close for a fast food version. On the way to my room I crossed paths with two lovely ladies and offered them each a slice of my pizza. They both took it gladly and thanked me with smiles. They now liked me, which was step one for getting a girl to jump into bed with you. Sometimes step one was the only step.

I made my way to my room. That's right, only mine. Once inside I placed my gun on a rack on the wall and then changed my shirt, for some reason I always seemed to get sweaty when firing my gun. I sprayed some deodorant all over my chest and armpits before putting on one of the newly issued ODST shirts that I'd been given. It said ODST in small white letters over the chest and had the legend UNSC _Inconvenience_ right below the acronym.

_Man they make these things tight._ I thought as I pulled down on the sleeves. I wished that they felt so tight because my biceps were awesome, but even though I had some awesome guns in my arms, that's right, awesome guns, the shirts really were unnecessarily tight. I finished my pizza and gave a nice, long burp before making sure that mu mustache was looking fine. You wouldn't know it by looking at me right now, but that beauty had taken my months to grow and perfect. The wait had paid off, it looked incredibly awesome though. I checked my watch (stolen) and made sure that all my computers were in order before leaving my room, closing the door safely behind me.

I walked down the empty halls and by the end of my trip I was almost sprinting. There is something incredibly disturbing about not being able to see anyone else or hear anything other than your own footsteps. I reached the SOEIV room and entered. I was relieved to see that there were actual people inside the room. A chick that had been taken right out of a catwalk, an Indian guy that looked unhealthily skinny, an ogre with a pleasant face, and a guy sporting a black cap and smoking a cigarette. After I entered the room a guy with a very awesome red-haired bear entered the room. Right behind me was out new team leader and his second in command. I had to admit that they looked pretty badass standing side by side. Both were attractive and had excellent physiques, with their arms and chest showing muscles and their shoulders broad. The tight shirts that they also seemed to be wearing actually did them a favor.

Ok, I'm going to stop myself right here before I start sounding like I don't like women.

"Gentlemen and lady, my name is Staff Sergeant Francisco Castillo, although you already know that, this here is Sergeant Pavel Klaus. In this squad I am God and he is my only son and your savior. There are some other important things that you should know…"

* * *

><p><strong>The Last Pick (18 minutes earlier…)<strong>

**Cpl. Grigori Konstantinov**

The hologram disappeared in a puff of smoke. The cigarette I was smoking was the second to last that I had on board this ship. Cigarettes weren't really allowed on board unless they were the UNSC sanctioned brand that sold in the ship's store. I hadn't gotten around to buying those pieces of crap just yet. I'd probably find some marine with a pack of Marlboros before trying to even buy UNSC cigarettes.

The hologram that displayed Eliza had flickered down to a holopad. I always found it highly annoying that AI's that were 'female' chose their avatars to represent extremely attractive women. It was disturbing and left me feeling confused, but there was absolutely nothing that I could do about it.

"Corporal?"

"Sorry, what were you saying?"

"I was saying," Captain Brooks said brusquely, "that it is interesting that you've had so many different squads throughout your career."

"Yes, I am what you would call a jack of all trades. Whenever a squad needs someone to fulfill a certain role I am sent in with that purpose. Well, that and my original squad was wiped out in an accident. Brass never did get to assigning me to another squad. Until now, at least."

"I see, what about all these reports that you have a problem with authority?"

"I don't, they are just exaggerations."

"I hope so, because Castillo and Klaus are my men, and I watch out for my people."

"Yessir."  
>"They are excellent soldiers, both of them. You'd better do everything they tell you."<p>

"I will, sir, don't doubt it sir," I replied.

"Good," Brooks said. "Now, for the real reason that you came here."

"Sir?" I asked him, confused.

"You see, I'm not stupid man corporal, you should learn that."

"Huh?"

"Well, the other five files from your new squadmates have been sent to me completely uncensored. Yours on the other hand…"

_Smarter than he looks, this one._

"Sir, I am afraid I don't understand your point," I deflected.

"Then I am afraid that ONI sent the wrong man to spy on my crew," he replied. Brooks was playing a dangerous game. It would've been better for all of us if he had saved this information all for himself. Besides, now I had to make a report…

"Sir, ONI didn't send me for anything," I insisted.

"Good one," Brooks complimented. "You even held eye contact."

_Well, shit._

"Captain, I am sure that there are some valid reasons why Naval Intelligence doesn't want to show certain sections involving past operations I took part in, but be assured that I am not here to hurt on you, your ship, or your ODST team. I am just another guy they picked up."

"Yeah, right," Brooks said. There was an edge to his voice that I didn't like at all. I had been dealing with ONI spooks all my life, and those were quite scary as it is, Brooks hating me wasn't something I needed.

"Sir, I understand your worrying, but there is nothing for me to hide, sometimes ONI just doesn't want the world to find out about certain ops. Hell, look at Staff Sergeant Castillo and Sergeant Klaus, their dossiers are more black ink than white paper."

"I'll be watching you," Brooks warned. "Dismissed."

I made my back rigid and stood as straight as I possibly could while bringing my hand to my forehead in a salute. I made a point not to knock my cap of my head so I didn't look like an idiot. I held the pose for two seconds before doing a neat about turn and leaving the bridge. Eliza had warned me about a team meeting, Noncoms loved having those for some reason. At least there was a point to them, better fight with people you know than with complete strangers.

"Uh-oh," I heard.

"Eliza?" I asked, curious.

"Looks like somebody's busted," the AI said.

"I don't know what you're talking about," I told the construct.

"Oh please, I know all about our little superhuman friend," the AI said, "and also about one certain Major Cavallaro. Don't take _me_ for an idiot."

"Shhh, are you stupid?" I asked while frantically looking around.

"Oh calm down, there's no one within earshot," she said. "I checked."

"What do you want?" I asked the AI. Having dealt with these before, I knew that they usually had some sort of hidden agenda that diverged slightly from their intended purpose. For all I knew the AIs could secretly be our evil overlords.

"Nothing, I just want you to be very careful with whatever information you decide to send back to Reach. I might be an AI, I might have a purpose hardwired into me, I might be a machine, but I am sentient and I actually care about this ship and its crew. If anything you were to report back to ONI endangered any of this ship's crew or complement… well, let's just say it's not that hard to accidentally eject you into vacuum."

"What?"

I got no answer after that, only a very uncomfortable feeling of being watched and the urge to keep my hands very close to the walls in case there was a sudden change in pressure that started pulling me to the empty blackness of space. Or whatever slipspace looked like. This AI was a sentimental one, perhaps it was nearing its seven year time limit. Maybe it was rampant already. I'd have to check on its history before sending a report. If I sent one for nothing she would find out, and I didn't want that.

I looked around carefully and stopped myself when I realized that I had turned three times trying to look for the AI. If it didn't pop up a hologram there was no way I would spot it. Instead I simply kept on walking towards the ODST drop pod bay and made a point to be early. Brooks already disliked me and I had been threatened by an artificial intelligence already. This wasn't a very good start to my stay on the ship, but I've had worse.

I entered the drop pod bay and was startled to find someone in there. The girl was simply stunning, I'll tell you that. I hadn't gotten along to reading the rest of my new squad's files yet. I was about to ask her what she was doing here but then I realized that she had an ODST shirt on. It was as tight as the ones that were issued to us, her male counterparts. For once, I wont complain about that. In fact, I think all the previous suffering almost makes it worth it. I quickly snapped my head in another direction and walked towards a pod. I leaned my back against it and reached into my pocket. I pulled out an almost empty cigarette box and my lighter. I lit the last cigarette and had to repress the urge to sigh with pleasure as the smoke entered my lungs. After all, I didn't want my new squadmate to think I was a freak.

_She's in your squad, so she's off-limits. _

_That's right, damn it._

I blushed slightly when I realized that I was arguing with myself and looked at the floor so that my cap would cover my blush. Nothing interesting happened after that other than the rest of my new team arriving. They all looked pretty promising except for a small, thin, and lanky Indian kid. I was almost certainly wrong about him though, he _had_ been recruited into one of the best outfits in the military. When I think that that outfit in question had consisted of only two men for several years I couldn't help but be impressed.

Seconds after the sixth member of the squad entered, those two men that would've been legends had their missions and exploits been made public walked into the room. I knew Francisco Castillo's face from all the files I had read on him. I couldn0t help but be jealous of him. He had been an excellent soldier before even getting his augmentations.

"Gentlemen and lady, my name is Staff Sergeant Francisco Castillo, although you already know that, this here is Sergeant Pavel Klaus. In this squad I am God and he is my only son and your savior. There are some other important things that you should know…"

_So that's what a Spartan IV looks like…_


	73. Eighteen Minutes Later

_Hey guys, I noticed on your reviews (thanks for those, by the way) that you liked that Francisco turned out to be an S-IV, but you also raised some questions, I don't usually reply to reviews directly, but I'll make an exception this time because it'll probably help clear up a few things. _

_First of all, addressing TheSniperInTheHouse, Frank doesn't have spartan armor because he doesn't have enough augmentations to carry one. While Frank might be better than a regular human, he isn't as strong or fast as a Spartan-III (the ones in Halo: Reach). There is currently little information on what SPARTAN-IVs are, so I'm taking a little creative liberty when it comes to details. I believe that this also answered 's first question._

_Also, one last thing, this week and the next one Im going to be busy making an extremely important essay that decides whether I graduate or not. This chapter was hastily edited and checked for any mistakes so don't be surprised if you find several typos. I think you'll understand if I am not able to post anything more for two weeks or so. I'll still try to, though._

_Thanks again for all your reviews._

_-casquis_

* * *

><p><span>Chapter LXXIII: Eighteen Minutes Later<span>

**July 23, 2542 (UNSC Calendar)/**

**Drop Bay, UNSC **_**Inconvenience,**_** Slipspace**

"…that you should know. First of, any order that I give is the law. Second, if you do not comply with that order, you'll get an appropriate punishment, even if you failed to comply under valid circumstances."

"Wait, even if we save your life?" Arcangelo Lamberti asked. "And what kind of punishment are we talking about here?"

"Point man for a certain number of hours," Pavel said, eliciting a groan from the Italian Helljumper. "Came up with that one myself."

I raised my hand and opened it so that the palm faced Pavel. He quickly did the same and snapped it with his own, producing a clap-like sound that filled the room. That's what you would call a high-five, kids. An epic one, at that.

"Ok, so lesson number one is?" I asked.

"Follow your orders," Lamberti said.

"Do whatever you order us to do," Camilla Seppa said.

"Follow military protocol," Grigori Konstantinov quipped. Smartass.

"Never fail to follow your orders," Agnarsson muttered.

They all said it at the same time, so I had to frown and raise my eyebrow at the strangeness of it. The awkwardness wasn't lost to any of my new subordinates, as all the ones that had spoken quickly glanced all around and proceeded to look uncomfortable. Naveen and George were the only ones who didn't say anything. The huge black man shrugged at the tiny Indian kid, eliciting a smile in response.

"All right, we might want to work on our coordination, but at least you're thinking alike," I said. Sarcastically. I said sarcastically. "Ok, let's see… what else should you know?"

"The rooms," Pavel suggested.

"Oh, right," I said. "You each got one room all to yourselves. " I paused for a second. "Your welcome."

"Frank, it's actually _you're_ welcome," Pavel interrupted me.

"Exactly, that's what I said."

"No, you said _your_ welcome, possessive."

"How could you possibly know that?" I asked.

"Let's say I know you better than anyone."

"Right, let's go with that so you don't look like a total idiot in front of the-"

"Sarge?" Agnarsson asked. "Do you mind?"

"Of course. The nine of us in this room-"

"Eight," Pavel said.

_Right._ I counted the people in this room and came up with nine again, even though there should've been only eight. Pavel, the six recruits, and me. One plus one plus six makes eight, not nine. Even a preschooler could figure that out.

_You clever bastard._

_Hey, I wouldn't have made it this far without being smart,_ Schitzo thought. He didn't even bother moving his mouth this time. The situation was a lot creepier because of that one single change. It was something I wasn't used to.

I reached for my right pocket and pulled out a transparent orange cylinder with a white cap. I popped the bottle open and threw one of the anti-psychotic pills in the air. The motion was one that I had been practicing for the past couple of weeks, so I caught the pill with no problem and avoided being humiliated in front of my new subordinates. I rattled it once I had swallowed my pill and thought that it was about time I went to Doc Zhivago to get a new bottle.

"Running low?" Pavel murmured to me.

"It's nothing."

We both then remembered that we weren't alone in the squad anymore, in fact, there was enough members on the team to have two fire teams with twice the men than before. Eight divided by two is four. That means that there are two four-man fire teams, in case you didn't figure it out by yourselves. I honestly hope you did, else we don't have any future to look forward to.

"What?" I said dismissively. "They taste yummy." I counted again and was relieved to see that Schitzo was gone now, only eight people in the room, not one single non-corporeal individual in sight. "Moving on. I take it that you've read each other's files already?"

When all I got for an answer was dead silence I took desperate measures. "Ok class," I said in a teacher-like voice. "Whoever has been spying on their teammates can raise their hands now."  
>No one raised their hands.<p>

"What? Seriously?" Pavel asked. "Frank, I though that they were all the type that took the initiative."

"Ok… who has been spying on _me_ and or _Pavel_?" I said pointing to myself and then my friend with each word that I emphasized.

Five hands went up almost immediately, which almost elicited a chuckle from me and then Agnarsson took a moment to decide whether he should raise his hand or not and then apparently decided against it. The rest of my new squad held their hands up until I motioned for them to put them back down. You know, I was actually starting to like this, the last few times I had a squad under my command I had barely even bother to speak to them. Whoa, talk about making myself feel guilty.

"Good, that means that you know that I could kick all your asses twice in a row," I said. I could almost feel Pavel rolling his eyes behind my back. "Except you," I pointed at Sutton. "You scare me." The man merely smiled and bowed his head to me, indicating that he either felt a similar way about me or he simply wanted to thank me.

"Ok, assigned roles?" Pavel said.

"Right," I murmured. "Should've written this shit down." I glanced around back to my new squad, this part of the team meeting I could remember. "Squad leader: three gueses, the first one doesn't count." Pavel was the only one to chuckle. "Okay, we're going to need to work on your humor. Squad leader: me. Our heavy machinegunner is going to be Sergeant Pavel Klaus!" the last three words I said in a tone similar to a boxing presenter. This time Sutton, Konstantinov, and Agnarsson all either chuckled or smiled. "Pavel is also my second in command and you will listen to whatever he says. I said that already, so you better not forget it. He will also be the leader of fire team number two in case the squad breaks up. Acknowledged?"

"Acknowledged," they all said unanimously with a nod. At least they responded to military procedures correctly.

"Private First Class Agnarsson," I said while pointing at him, Agnarsson nodded politely and waved a little bit. "That man is the one that deals with anything involving rockets or weapon-launched explosives. That means that he carries the squad's M41. You know, the SPANKr. Agnarsson is trained to use fuel rod cannons, provided the failsafe isn't activated of course, and can make effective use of the Spartan Laser, M19, and missile pods. He is also Scottish."

I let a moment pass to let the information sink in.

"Our squad's marksman is Corporal Naveen Avninder." The man simply shuffled in his chair and did a great job at looking uncomfortable. "He is one of the best men in the universe to ever fire a DMR or an EMR. He is not half-bad with an SRS either. I'll let you find out all the juicy details as soon as you get your hands on his file, I assure you that you'll be impressed."

I almost laughed to myself when everyone in the room turned to face Avninder and eyed him again, giving him another inspection and probably changing the first impression that he had given them. I looked at Pavel and he simply gave me one of his trademark shrugs, this one accompanied with a weird smile.

"Our light gunner is a man with one of the most interesting names that I have ever heard in my entire life, Lance Corporal Arcangelo Lambert. Take note that I said name, not last name. Mr. Lamberti is quite handy with the SAW, it would seem, he is also a very talented hacker and cracker. His dossier says that he can open every single human-made door with enough time and the right equipment, sometimes less. It would seem that he isn't half bad at opening covvie doors either. He is also a bit fond of explosives it would seem."

Lamberti simply raised an imaginary glass at me. "Thank sarge."

"You can ask him how he learned those skills later," I added. Lamberti glanced around him and gave me a look that could be translated to: WHY?

"Everyone else in this squad has the designation of rifleman, including myself. Even though you share the designation, everyone has a different specialty. For example, PFC Sutton here is the squad's grenadier. That means that his rifle has a tube that launches grenades slung underneath it. His size and strength can, and probably will, be an advantage when it comes down to breaking down conventional doors or pushing cars for cover, you know the usual. Corporal Konstantinov," I then gestured at the man wearing a black baseball cap, "Is what you would call a jack of all trades. He has an assortment of skills that could prove very useful in various circumstances. You can ask where he got those skills, but he'll probably lie to you about it."  
>What <em>will<em> you tell them?

I thought back to the interview. This man had been charismatic and managed to impress both Albaf and me with his history and his set of skills. What had ticked me off was that Albaf had seemed a little bit too insistent when she suggested I place him in my squad. I had ultimately complied, not because of Albaf pushing me, but because he was the best choice. I had done a little digging about the man. His dossier was mostly fake, and that fake dossier was covered in black ink. I didn't doubt that he had received all those commendations and had all those skills, but there were several inconsistencies in his military history. Call them plot holes of you will. I had done some further digging and had come up with more information on the man. He worked for ONI, reporting directly to CODENAME: VISIONARY in section Alpha-II. The man was here to spy on me, that much was clear. As long as his reports didn't interfere with my personal life directly, I was surprisingly ok with that, besides, I had told Eliza to give him a little incentive to behave properly. Still, there was more information about him that I couldn't get through.

It's surprising what you can do with a stolen ONI code and a friendly and bored AI by your side.

"And last but not least, we have Private First Class Camilla Seppa. I am sure that you have noticed her looks by now, if not, I am afraid I've got bad news for you gentlemen."

The joke was received with a chuckle on part of all the male members of the squad and one awesome blush on part of the only female member of this squad. "Relax, I'm just kidding," I said apologetically. "PFC Seppa is our second jack of all trades. She has assorted knowledge in various areas of expertise that Konstantinov doesn't. You can ask her all about it later, I'm sure you're eager to."

This time everyone blushed except for Sutton, well, I assume that he didn't, but his skin was dark enough to not give anything away.

"It looks like you're all from different battalions, 2nd, 7th, 11th, and 22nd. Anyone here from the 19th?" I asked.

"Nope," Sutton was the only one answered vocally, everyone else just shook their heads. It seems that they hadn't gotten past the initial awkward face. Seems I had a squad full of little kids.

"Great," I muttered, not at having no one from the 19th, but at having no one who was mature enough to speak out loud. "Am I missing anything?" I asked.

"Call signs," Pavel reminded me.

Every single person in the unit groaned unanimously and shook their heads in annoyance. It was evident that they weren't new to call signs. Most of them should've had an annoying nickname after their most embarrassing moment in training. Or perhaps after something much more embarrassing that happened afterwards. The point was that you never got a great call sign unless you did something so incredibly awesome that you actually _earned _a cool nickname.

"Relax, your own individual call signs will come later. I still haven't thought up anything witty or clever that fits each one of you," I said. "Our squad name though, is already defined. Reaper. I knew you'd like it. Our designation is Delta-Charlie-Victor in case we need to identify ourselves to a unit from another ship. Remember that, Delta-Charlie-Victor. DCV. It's only three letters people."

"Reaper?" Pavel asked. "How'd you manage that?"

"I traded the name Cthulhu to Nazarian," I told him. "Which brings me too… people of importance on this ship. Pavel, if you will."

My friend reached to his pocket and pulled out a fancy new datapad that had the capability to emit small holograms in full color. It was a kick-ass piece of equipment. Especially when you needed some alone time. Well, provided you didn't have someone to share that alone time with. Wink, wink, nudge, nudge.

"Number one," I said. "Lieutenant Yevgeny Nazarian, he is the CO of the ranger squad that is attached to this ship. He is a good man and an excellent soldier, you should do well to get on his good side." Pavel produced a picture of the man on his datapad and passed it around the squad members so that everyone could see Nazarian. "The scar on his face makes him easy to identify," I said. "Next on, is Captain Brooks. Kind of a papa-bear to the ship, an extremely grumpy papa-bear, but he takes care of his men. And women."

Everyone looked at the picture of the captain and passed it around once more, Konstantinov looked at it with an expression that unnerved me slightly, but I gave it no mind.

"Commander Samantha Albaf," I said. "Most of you have already seen her and know who she is. She managed all of your transfers and did the interviews with me."

"Wait, Albaf's name is Samantha?" Pavel asked.

"Yeah, just figured it out like a week ago."

"Huh, who would've thought," he said.

"Albaf's aide, Lieutenant Wilkins, I don't know his first name, but he is a good guy and watches out for us whenever he can. After all, we are attached to ONI, and there's nothing that Naval Intelligence likes more than watching out after their own."

"This Wilkins," Seppa started. "What exactly is his role here?"

"Nothing in particular," I said. "He is just a person of importance on the ship and does Albaf's job whenever she is unable to, also, I wanted to make this presentation longer."

"Oh, okay," she said.

"Also of importance on this ship are Major Ricardo Hernandez and Lieutenant Chloe Delacroix. They are the CO and XO of B Company. They are both extremely capable at their job and will lend you a hand if you need one. Mostly combat-wise of course, but you can ask them for small favors is you get to know them well enough."

I glanced at Pavel to see if he wanted to add anything about Delacroix and went on with the list when he shook his head almost imperceptibly.

"Captain Veda Sharma is the CO of Echo Company, she is one of the most capable strategists I have had the pleasure of meeting and is one badass chick. Her XO, on the other hand… Lieutenant Krikor Darbinian," I said and paused for effect. "He is an alright soldier, good enough at what he does and not a coward in the least. Don't get me wrong, I wouldn't mind the guy covering me during combat, but Darbinian is an asshole, he applied to the 105th but was rejected, seems he's got a little grudge against the Helljumpers."

"Ouch," Agnarsson said. "I know how that feels."

"Well I don't," I said, "but I'm pretty sure it's not enough reason to hate us all. Since he is our superior officer and in the Corps, he can technically order us around. Of course, we could always out-badass him and say no, but he's the kind of guy that would take this matter to Brooks or Albaf, and they can both pull rank on us. In short, avoid the guy at all costs."

"Is he really that much of an asshole?" Konstantinov asked.

"Pavel?"

"You have no idea how much of an asshole he is," my friend said.

"Thank you. Yes, yes he is an asshole."

"Oh kay…" was all Konstantinov could say.

"I assume that you have all met Eliza?"

"Yes," Sutton said.

"Mhm."

"Yeah…"

"Unfortunately."

"Yeah, she popped up in my room to tell me that-" Camilla started.

"A simple yes will suffice," I interrupted her.

"Sure," Seppa said while blushing yet again. You should've seen her, it was so cute. The fact that I was able to make such an attractive woman blush, no matter what the reason, was extremely good for my self-esteem and a nice boost for my already big ego. "Just one question."

"Yes?"

"How come there are holostrips _inside _our rooms?"

"Yeah," Agnarsson agreed. "How come?"

"Deal with it," I said. Short, and to the point.

"I think we're done," Pavel said.

"I think you're right. You'll have your codenames soon enough," I told the men and woman in front of me. "Dismissed." The squad stood up and saluted in a practiced move, the six of them held their hands at their brows for a few seconds before leaving the drop bay in an orderly fashion. As soon as the last one of them left the room and the door was closed behind him I let myself relax a little bit.

"Well that went better than expected," I said.

"Yeah, I even had some fun while I was at it," Pavel agreed.

_Now, let's think about some call names…_


	74. Doesn't Really Make Sense

Chapter LXXIV: Doesn't Really Make Sense

**September 1, 2542 (UNSC Calendar)/two months later**

**UNSC **_**Inconvenience,**_** in orbit above Emerald Cove, Caribe System**

"Why are you even complaining?" Agnarsson asked Lamberti. "We're going down to a tropical paradise."

"I'm just saying," the Italian replied, "I prefer to have air conditioning in my room."

"I'm pretty sure you'll get air conditioning down there," Pavel said as he heaved his bag into the bay of the pelican. "Besides, the rooms down there are the same as up here, they're built under the same specifications. Ain't that right Frankie?"

"Shut up," I said. The rooms being the same in a base and in a ship had cost me a couple hundred credits in a bet I made against Pavel. It had been my fault for betting so much on such a stupid thing. "Everyone ready?" I asked.

"We're good sarge," Sutton said with his deep, booming voice. "At least the males in the squad," he added.

"I see," I said, getting through the fact that I understood what he had said. "Where's Seppa by the way?" I asked.

"Girls always take longer to get ready sarge," Konstantinov said with a shrug. "She'll probably be here in a few minutes carrying two more duffel bags than necessary."

"Probably," Lamberti laughed.

"Got anything to add to that Naveen?" I asked the small marksman. He shook his head and slacked in his seat. "No? All right then."

"Sarge, why exactly are we being deployed?" Lamberti asked. "It's not like they need us down there."

"I know," Sutton agreed. "We aren't usually grounded in this kind of assignments."

"Sarge?" Grigori asked.

"Frank?" Pavel mocked.

"We're going to be doing some exercises," I admitted.

The comment was received with a unanimous grunt, even little Naveen rolled his eyes. Exercises were good and fun every- who am I kidding? Exercises suck completely. It pretty much involves walking around with your gun raised and shouting clear at carefully timed intervals. I could literally do it while I had a screen in my helmet playing porn. I could use less than half a percent of the attention that I could muster to achieve completion of most exercises.

Unless, of course, they were live-fire, in which case they were marginally less boring. You know, because of the explosions.

"Wait! Don't leave!" someone shouted. Camilla Seppa was struggling with three duffel bags, one on her back and the other two on each arm. Her arrival was greeted with whistling from the regulars in the hangar and some choice comments, they flew right over the Helljumper's head as she struggled to make a quick pace while arriving with some dignity. All without managing to drop the duffel bags that she was juggling. She finally managed to arrive and dropped both of the packs that she was carrying and gave me a quick salute while trying to stand at attention.

"Staff Sergeant, sorry I'm late," she said.

"Yeah, you are," I agreed. Seppa didn't know what to say and instead looked uncomfortable and glanced around with those beautiful blue eyes of hers. I took in her face managing not to look like a pervert. She was wearing a looser shirt this time, but it was equally flattering to her figure, then again, PFC Camilla Lilja Seppa could dress up in a radiological suit and still manage to knock it out of the park. I had very conflicted feelings about her.

She bit her lower lip, forcing me to stifle a grunt and looked guilty. I had no idea if she was doing it on purpose or not, but it damn near forced me to fall in love with her.

"Get on the ship," I ordered, managing to keep my voice and expression normal.

"Yessir," Seppa said as she tossed her duffel bags to the pelican's blood tray and hopped on. While she did that I couldn't help but catch a very nice and long look at her ass. I shook myself back and hopped on the ship, sitting on my usual seat next to the hatch door on the back. I looked around the hangar to see if Marina was coming, but I couldn't spot her anywhere nearby.

"Why's our pilot so late?" Sutton asked.

"Because she's a girl," Pavel replied.

Everyone in the ship laughed at that except for Seppa, she had missed the original joke, but the meaning of Pavel's comment wasn't lost to her. She glared at my friend before sitting on her own seat. Her bags had just been neatly arranged on the compartment for them on of the craft. I raised an eyebrow at her. The rest of us had simply tossed them at our feet, maybe it's a girl thing. Seppa shrugged and started meticulously examining her nails, looking incredibly sexy while doing it. The rest of the squad looked at her for a few moments before they managed to snap themselves back to reality as well.

"So sarge," Lamberti started, "did you come up with any call signs yet?" I could hear the eagerness and nervousness in his voice as he asked.

"Actually, I just came up with on," I said.

"While you were staring at my ass?" Seppa said with a smile.

"Actually, yeah," I replied. The sad thing is that it was true.

"What?" was the unanimous response. Even Pavel was startled by my reply to Seppa's joke.

"You serious Frankie?" Pavel asked me.

"Yeah," I said. "Ok, let's face it Camilla, you've got a great ass, agreed?"

"Agreed," Pavel said.

"Now that we've got that past us, let me explain your new call sign," I told her.

"Ok?"

"From now on, you'll be Grass."

"Grass?" she asked.

"That's what I just said wasn't it?"

"You're an asshole Frank," Pavel said while holding back laughter.

"But why Grass?" she asked, confused.

"Yeah," Konstantinov. "I'm not sure I get it either."

"Grass. Great ass," I explained.

"Oh," Lamberti said. "As long as you don't tell anyone how you got your call sign you'll be fine."

"Provided whoever you're telling a fake story doesn't look at your ass," Naveen said. Everyone turned to look at the shy and quiet sniper and we all started laughing loudly. Except Seppa, she had the grace and decency to at least blush a little before smiling at the quasi-compliments.

"I hope you weren't talking about my ass."

"And there's our pilot," I said.

"I wouldn't mind talking about it," Lamberti said to Marina.

Pavel slapped the Italian man in the back of the head so hard that it hurt me. He didn't tell anyone in the ship that the pilot was my girlfriend, that was my own thing to tell.

"Try that again and I'll chop your hands of," Marina warned.

"You're late," I said.

"It's my ship," she replied. "You're early."

"So that's how it is?" I asked jokingly.

"It is," she replied in the same tone.

"Well then, I might ju-"

"Staff Sergeant, Warrant Officer, may I remind you that I can hear everything you say?" Sheppard's voice came from the cockpit. "And so can the other seven people on this ship."

"Sheppard, I forgot you were here," I said.

"Don't worry," the pilots said boringly. "You usually do."

"Yes, sorry," Marina apologized. She tossed her duffel bag at the floor before entering the cockpit and walked inside.

_So it isn't a girl thing…_

"Ok guys," she said. "Closing hangar doors and sealing."

The entire hangar was closed off and there was a small hiss as the retractable doors pressed against the ceiling and the walls. The hatch doors closed as well and sealed themselves against the vacuum they would face soon. The pelican's cargo bay went dark before lighting strips were lit on the roof of the craft and red warning lights started shining on the floor.

"So sarge," Seppa asked. "How long have you two been… fucking."

"Whoa there!" Marina exclaimed from the cockpit. "Someone's got a big mouth."

I directed my attention back to Seppa and gave her a glare. With time and patience I had perfected my glares until they were as good as Layla's and Marina's. I could melt through steel with my eyes and I could send pretty much anyone scurrying back with their tails between their legs if I felt like it. Seppa shuffled uncomfortably in her seat and apologized for the question.

"Two years," I replied.

There was silence inside the ship as the hangar doors opened and the ship was sucked out into space.

"Yeah, sorry about hitting on your girl sarge," Lamberti said nervously.

"Don't worry about it, besides, it's not like you could call that hitting on somebody," I said.

Lamberti laughed nervously and sighed with relief.

"So, Pavel?" I asked.

"I think that he can do the HEV checks before launch for the next ten drops," Pavel suggested. "And be point man in our next combat mission."

"Sounds about right," I agreed. "Lamberti, you heard the sergeant, you know your work."

"Yessir," the man said through clenched teeth.

The ship shook violently and the temperature increased by more than a couple of degrees as the pelican entered Emerald Cove's atmosphere. I felt my stomach lurch a little bit as gravity got a hold of me again and pushed one duffel bag away from me as it fell to the floor. The rest of the bags slammed into the metallic floor, producing clanks. All of the large bags had one set of ODST armor inside of them in addition to spare shirts, socks, pants, and a pair of leather boots.

"Everyone strapped on?" Sheppard warned.

I reached for the straps as quickly as I pulled and placed them over my shoulders. Pavel did the same and we were both secured by the time Konstantinov started asking why the hell should we be strapped on. He didn't get time to finish his condescending question, as Marina did what seemed like eight consecutive barrel rolls with the pelican. The centrifugal force kept everyone pushed against their seats and relatively safe, but not one of the new squad members refrained from screaming in terror as the ship spun. I placed my hands over my face and bent my knees, protection against flying objects such as titanium armor or people.

The pelican stopped its turning as abruptly as it had started them. Everyone flew from their seats to the floor and groaned in pain as they landed on the hard metal floor of the ship.

"Welcome to the team boys," Marina said from the cockpit. "Welcome to the team."

* * *

><p>"And clear," I said in the most monotone tone I could manage.<p>

"Nicely done Staff Sergeant!" Albaf's said in a completely fake happy tone. She did it so overtly fake that it felt even more insulting to me.

"We're done for the day," I said, ignoring Albaf's voice in earpiece. "Nicely done team," I said. "I think we beat our record time."

"Sarge, I walked through the drill," Sutton said. "I don't understand how I could go any slower than this."

"Sarcasm George," I said. "Sarcasm."

"Oh," he said, no doubt he was worried that I would use this for his call sign. And I just might.

"I totally nailed that last one," Lamberti said.

"Man, you didn't even fire your gun," Grigori replied whiles shoving him lightly.

"Sarcasm Konstantinov," Lamberti said in an excellent imitation of my voice. "Sarcasm."

"Do you actually want a crappy call sign?" I asked him. "I swear, one more and I'll call you ALF."

"ALF?" Arcangelo asked me.

"Annoying little fuck," Pavel said.

"Because that's what you are," Naveen snarked.

Light bulb.

"I just came up with the second one guys!" I said excitedly.

"Aw man," Lamberti said. "Give it straight to me, tell me sarge," he wailed in a fake distressed voice.

"Not you Lamberti." I said as I left the exercise area.

"Sarge?" Sutton asked nervously.

"Relax big black man," I said. "You're off the hook."

"Shit," Naveen said.

"Actually, it's Snark now."

"Snark?" the little guy asked confusedly. "After the cruise missile?"

"Wha- no!" I said, remembering the name of one of the first cruise missiles in history. "How do you even know that?" I asked.

"The Snark ICBM?" Grass asked. Notice how I already wrote down Grass instead of Camilla or Seppa? Cause that's her call sign, I gave it to her.

"Yeah," I said. "How do you even know what that is?" I asked.

"You know that too," she pointed out, to which Naveen quickly agreed with several nods.

"I'm the sergeant here," I said. "And I ask the questions."

"Fine, I know a lot about missiles," Naveen said.

"I know a lot about everything," Grass said.

The comment was received with groans of annoyance by absolutely everyone in the squad and Albaf all the way up in outer space. I couldn't tell through her visor but I would bet that she was smiling behind the safety of her full-face helmet.

I depolarized my own helmet and turned towards her and Naveen. "No, Snark after the sailboat," I said.

"What's a Snark sailboat?" he asked.

"A sailboat," Pavel explained helpfully.

"Well no shi-" Grass started.

"No what?" my friend asked. "Hmm? What's that, cat's got your tongue?"

"Pavel, who even says that anymore?"

"I just did," he said.

"Such a good memory," Schitzo said.

I groaned.

"Jeez Frank, you don't have to groan so loudly."

"Pavel," I said. "Shut the fuck up."

I said it with a tone in my voice that everyone in the squad stopped talking at the same time and gave me a weird look. At least their helmeted heads bobbed towards me and they stopped walking for a second.

"Now you made them sad," Schitzo said with an annoying tone.

_Shut the fuck up you fucking asshole._

"Avninder, you're Snark. Everyone else, deal with it."

The training area was a moderately large-sized piece of land with twenty feet tall walls on forming a square and improvised plywood structures that did a crappy job at looking like covvie buildings all over the place. There were some paint splats and the wood from some previous exercises and then there was nothing else of interest. We had been running drills for the past three hours, doing nothing but tossing flashbangs into empty rooms and scanning the walls with our empty guns. I was fucking sick of the place.

"So Francisco, how do you feel about a nice cold beer right now?" Schitzo asked. "I know I could certainly use one."

I trotted up the last few steps, forcing my hallucination to speed up to keep up with me. "I see what you did there," he said. "Made me rush. I like it, very… assholeish."

I shouldered my rifle and started climbing down the old stairs on the other side. There were two things that were worth noticing on the other side of the wall. One, the ocean; two, the military base. The first one was huge and blue, the second one was large and gray. The military base had one main building in addition to several smaller barracks and the mess hall. It was an improvised base, with all the buildings having been dropped from orbit a few years ago, they moved them whenever they needed to be moved.

The ocean was, well, the ocean, it did have a lovely green tint to it though.

My temporary home was a tent-like structure where I bunked in with the male section of my squad. Camilla had one tent all to herself, lucky… woman. Can't really call her lucky bitch now can I?

I walked inside my tent and tossed my helmet on the bed, I reached towards my butt-pack and pulled out my bottle of meds. There was a nice pop as I unscrewed the lid. I pulled out a single pill while Schitzo was pestering me about some shit or other. As per custom, I threw the little white oval into the air and caught it in my mouth. I swallowed and closed my eyes for a second. Schitzo was still there saying a bunch of bullshit when I opened them, but that was expected, he would disappear eerily in a few seconds.

"Frank, you ok?" Pavel asked as he opened the curtain door. Incidentally, the door hit Schitzo and for the briefest moment completely covered him up from head to toe. Once Pavel was in the room the door flew back to its place and Schitzo disappeared with it. "What was that all-" he stopped when he noticed the bottle of pills on my hand and the expression on my face. "We're having some chow in the mess hall," he said after thinking about his answer.

"I'll be right up," I said.

I took off all the pieces of my armor that went above my waist and switched my sweaty shirt for a clean one, tossing the one I had been wearing into the laundry bin. I walked across the yard and let the sea breeze hit me for a while. If I closed my eyes it almost felt like I was back in Jericho VII. But then I opened them again, and the illusion disappeared, leaving me in this crappy replacement home. At least the military base looked similar enough.

I shook my head and walked towards the mess hall. I opened the door and was greeted by the smell of crappy food and sweat. The noise that the marines in here made was also annoying, but nothing I wasn't used to. It wasn't so hard to find my squad, they were the ones dressed all in black. Most of them had taken off the heavy chest piece that protected their chests (thank you captain obvious). Grass, of course, had taken off everything and was looking killer in her sweaty undershirt. At least she was wearing a bra.

Funny that I could tell.

I sat down next to Pavel and Sutton scooted over to make space for me. The entire bench groaned with effort. Everyone on the squad glanced at the man and shrugged theatrically with a goofy grin on his face. We all chuckled at it and I dug into my pile of goo with glee.

There were three or four conversations going on at the time in the table, it usually goes on like that with more than three people on one table. Grass and Konstantinov were asking Naveen, no, it was Snark now. Well, Grass and Konstantinov were asking Snark awkward questions and the little man just dug deeper and deeper into his seat with no way out of the situation. Lamberti was talking to Agnarsson about some sort of hilarious thing he had done in training camp and Pavel was asking Sutton what the best way to get large pecs was. I gave him a weird look while I swallowed down my pasta. Or it could've been mashed potatoes, who knows? All the while I was thinking of clever and punny call signs that could function as inside jokes and would sound cool to everyone who didn't know the story behind the name. So far I was one out of two for those. Snark sounded pretty good regardless. At least in my book.

"People!" I called out. They stopped their conversations immediately and looked at me expectantly. "Tomorrow we have a live-fire exercise. I know, I know, you don't have to groan pathetically. We're up at 0530."

"Why you telling us now sarge?" Grass asked, pouting. I swear, this woman was a walking boner machine. I knew I'd get used to her presence soon enough, but right now I wasn't entirely comfortable with her. I hope combat would change that.

"Yeah, because we were having such a good time clearing the plywood buildings," Sutton said sarcastically.

"No, because we were having a good time now," she said.

"I wasn't having a good time," Snark added.

"Shut up kid," Konstantinov said jokingly.

"Now, I know it may seem like a comfortable time to wake up for an exercise," I said, "but I don't want any of you zoning out during the exercise and shooting me in the back. Especially since someone gambled away our team's supply of caffeine."

"I said I was sorry alright!" Pavel complained. "It was a good bet that only went wrong due to a last minute play."

"You bet against St. Louis on the Mega Bowl! Who the hell does that?"

"Even I know that's wrong," Grass helped. "And I'm a girl."

"Well there you go Pavel, a girl says you're wrong, so you are. Rest of the team, bed by twelve, five and a half hours of sleep should do. Grass you too," I added.

"Yes sarge," she said.

"I'm waiting," I told the male part of my squad.

"Yes Staff Sergeant, sir!" they all said while standing up and giving me their best salute.

"That's what I thought," I said while I suppressed a smile and brought my lemonade to my mouth.

We would go to bed at around twelve, get five hours of sleep five or take a few minutes, wake up and get dressed for the exercise and get it over with. After that I would manage to get us a short leave and then maybe I could squeeze a skinny-dipping session with Marina in the beach. She would love that, so romantic. Then we would do some more exercises and then we would be called back to whatever front to fight a new battle.

I was wrong. We didn't even get to sleep five hours.

* * *

><p><em>Hey guys, so I heard you liked more action, so I made you wait one more chapter to get it. Mua-ha-ha.<em>

_-casquis_


	75. En El Hoyo

_Hey guys, how are you doing? Good, if you're doing great you're more likely to leave positive reviews, aiding in Step 81 of my Conquering The World plan. _

_The sharp ones of you might notice that this chapter is a whole lot better than all the previous 74 ones in terms of spelling and grammar mistakes. This is in account to my decision of finally getting a beta reader to help me out with my less-than-desirable talent for double-checking my mistakes. From now on, all of my chapters will be headed by the phrase: "As always, thanks to Sniper Fodder for proof-reading this chapter."_

_I think it won't be a big issue for you guys, seeing as you have already stayed with me for 74 chapters. That's gotta be torture._

_I sincerely hope you enjoy this chapter, ladies and gentlemen._

_-casquis_

* * *

><p><span>Chapter LXXV: En el Hoyo<span>

**September 3, 2542 (UNSC Calendar)/**

**PB-04 Base, New Barbados, Emerald Cove, Caribe System**

"Wake the fuck up!"

"What is wrong with you lady?" Lamberti called out as he flailed around wildly on his bed.

"Mother fuck!" Agnarsson was a little less subtle on his feelings.

"Albaf, why?" I asked, still half asleep.

"That's commander to you, Staff Sergeant, and you better get up and ready right fucking now."

"We're on it, we're on it," I said.

I groaned as I sat up on my bed and then groaned again as I pulled myself up.

"For the love of god Castillo, put something on," Commander Albaf ordered while directing her eyes elsewhere.

"Briefs are something," I muttered as I reached for my pants. As soon as they were on I had a nice drink of water and shook Snark awake. He looked a little scared as he woke up, but recognized the situation soon enough. "What time is it?" I asked the commander.

"Two hours after midnight," she said.

"Two in the morning?" Pavel muttered. "Why didn't you say that?"

"Because we're running on twenty hour days here Sergeant, you've been here two days, you should know that."

Pavel simply mumbled something and squeezed on his shirt after spraying some deodorant.

"Ma'am, you said to be here as soon as I was-" Grass was already armored up and had her MA5C already slung over her back and her pistol on her left thigh. I didn't know she was left-handed. "Do you need a minute?" she asked as she saw all of us half naked and getting dressed up.

"No, we're fine," I said. I didn't plan on anyone falling in love with Camilla, so it would be good if the men started her seeing her as one of the guys sooner rather than later. I included myself in that category because despite all her armor, I couldn't help but notice how great her face looked.

"Did you put makeup on?" Pavel asked.

Grass blushed and looked away while fixing her hair behind her back. "Um no, what makes you say that?" she asked. Her attempt at lying was so pathetic that I chuckled a little bit.

"The makeup on your face," Pavel said simply.

"Ok fine, I just wanted to look good all right?"

The entire tent-room went silent at the same time and all of us (Commander Samantha Albaf included) stared at her with looks of incredulity. Not because she was going to be doing some weird exercise, but because she wanted to look better while doing it. Either she wasn't aware of how good she looked when she woke up or she was a stuck-up bitch with a serious vanity problem. Knowing her as little as I did, I would've guessed that it was the first one. I would hope it was the first one.

"Why the change?" I asked our ONI overseer.

"Confidential," she said.

"Shit."

I wasn't the only one smart enough to figure out what that meant. Pavel grunted in annoyance as well and Konstantinov's eyes looked unfocused for a few seconds before he kicked his bed in anger. I felt like kicking the shit out of something right now. If it all went how it usually went, I would probably have to do that. If I was lucky I would be able to do it without breaking a sweat.

I finished putting on my armor and strapped on the Multi-Threat shoulder pauldrons to my upper arms. My boots were more scratched than I would've liked, but they were still working as well as the day when they were first given to me. Except for having had almost all of the black paint peeled away you couldn't find a flaw in them (other than the scratches, of course.) My helmet presented the occasional small scratches as well as some paint missing, it still had a scorch mark on one side where a plasma burst had fried my radio and almost done the same to my brain. The large chest piece still sported half an inch deep gashes that went diagonally across the central section. The brute that had the brilliant idea to do that didn't meet his god in a pleasant way; Pavel saw to that.

Sutton seemed even larger when he had placed all his armor pieces in their right places. His armor was completely standard except for an optics system that he had added to his helmet. Sutton lifted his assault rifle and placed the grenade launcher attachment under the barrel before loading it with a single 35mm HEAT round. The gun looked like a toy in the man's massive hands. He then proceeded to strap his pistol in an armpit holster. I raised my eyebrow at the unusual configuration but then could only nod in understanding as he strapped bands full of explosive grenades on each leg.

Agnarsson's armor was pretty much standard except for his left shoulder plate, which had been replaced by a longer and bigger two-piece pauldron that was painted all in bright yellow. The pauldron showed several small scorch marks and a few holes that probably came from needle rounds. His helmet had a line of the same yellow color running from front to back and a nice drawing of a pinup girl on the side. His chest piece was painted in the same yellow as his pauldron and his helmet. It had the words "spank spank bitches" written on the right section. I smiled at the cockiness and suddenly came up with a new call sign. His boots also had a bright yellow line covering going along the front part of his boots. The Scottsman pulled out a trunk from underneath his bed and produced an M41 SSR. He loaded the two-tubed monstrosity and placed it his bed as he did the same with his pistol and an M6J carbine on as well. The M6J was a powerful weapon in its own right. It basically looked like an M6C pistol with a stock and a longer barrel with rails. Agnarsson had added a longer magazine that looked like it had about twenty rounds in it. He placed his pistol on his left thigh and his carbine on the right one.

Snark had gone all-out when choosing his armor configuration. It was a sharpshooter's armor through and through. No right pauldron to allow better mobility and aiming. His left arm was almost completely covered by a large pauldron designed to protect against counter-sniping and his helmet had a fancy optics system that looked just like Pavel's. As with Agnarsson, he had also painted his armor differing only in that he had chosen a deep, woody green. The color was present in his helmet, his one pauldron and his chest piece. The only other addition to his armor was a red crosshairs right above his visor. I think I liked the detail.

Lamberti's armor. Oh, if it could tell a story, I don't know what kind of story it would tell. The armor was black. That would be completely normal if I couldn't tell that it was black with soot and not with paint. Being close to so many explosions had left his armor permanently black. I could see red streaks of paint under all the soot where he had once thought it would look cool. I couldn't blame him, my armor still had some red painting on it. I liked the color, it made it seem like there was less blood. The man placed several box magazines on his belly and thighs, pasting them to his body with Velcro strips. Those weren't very stealthy, but the odds of him running out of ammunition right before we went inside quietly were really small. He grabbed an M7S and placed it on his right thigh, opposite to his sidearm. He placed a few magazines for the submachine gun in cloth pockets in his thigh and moved his leg experimentally, checking if it would be too much weigh. The armor's strength enhancer wasn't strained and Lamberti smiled. He grabbed his M247 SAW and loaded it.

His gun was essentially a downsized version of Pavel's, which in itself was a downsized version of the M247GPMG that was deployed pretty much everywhere. The GPMG was also a downsized version of the M247H that was often mounted on tanks and Falcon gunships. The army was especially fond of that last version.

The Italian man proceeded to strap unsafe amounts of explosives to his body and finished by slinging a bandolier of grenades across his shoulder. He jumped lightly a couple of times to test the weight of his armor and looked satisfied when he deemed it appropriate.

Grigori Konstantinov, the mole. His armor was as standard as it could be. It was all black and had surprisingly little scratches on it. I don't know whether that was a testament to his skill or his inexperience. His dossier made it clear that it was his skill, but I still had my doubts about the man. Seemed likeable enough, would've been easier to accept him if I hadn't found out that he was here spying on the team and me.

Well, his armor was entirely black and had no additional gear. The man picked up an M90 CAWS shotgun and pumped it a couple of times to see if it had any rounds chambered in. When he was satisfied with his gun he started loading rounds into it with what seemed like inhuman speed, but with enough practice anyone can do it that fast. He placed the shotgun across his back and slung a couple of bags full of shells on his belt. He then picked up an MA5K rifle and did the same security check before proceeding to load a magazine into it. I hadn't seen the carbine variant of the MA5 in a long time, in fact, I hadn't seen it since New Constantinople. The special operations weapons had been in the hands of Carter and his SPARTAN-IIIs. It was most certainly a coincidence, but it annoyed me a little bit.

Grass had her armor on in standard configuration, with her MA5 rounds placed along her waist and additional rounds for her M6 sidearm on her right thigh. She carried a large machete behind her pistol in addition to the smaller combat knife that all soldiers were issued, that one she had placed on her lower back, in the same position that I kept mine. Her backup knife was in upside down on her right shoulder. She hadn't painted her armor with anything except for some lettering in Finnish that covered almost all of her lower left arm.

Pavel looked the same as he had always looked, at least to me. He had so many additional pieces of armor on that I wondered how he could move. I knew that most of his extra armor was lightweight and 'disposable', but it still looked like it was a lot. His left shoulder was covered by another massive pauldron that provided modest protection against pretty much anything you could think of. He hefted his machine gun and placed it across his back. He then grabbed the magnificent automatic shotgun that I had given him and collapsed it on itself. The ACS had been so heavily modified that it barely looked the same as when I had bought it. It had a collapsible stock and could be folded into a piece of metal no larger than my forearm. It still packed the same punch though, and could eat through a hunter's armor in less than one magazine.

I finished sheathing my knives and grabbed my BR55 before loading it with a box magazine. "So?" I asked Albaf.

"Come on," she motioned.

We followed her out of the tent and I wasn't particularly surprised to see marines running around half naked and waking up everyone. There were already some armored soldiers and pelicans were flying in even as warthogs were turned on and their turrets were loaded. Albaf lead us to a pelican and my team all hopped in. Albaf stayed behind though.

"A Covenant fleet has been detected in the system," she said. "It's pretty small and we can handle it, but you never know," she added.

"Ma'am, why are you staying groundside?" I asked.

"ONI stuff," she replied as the hatch of the pelican closed and the ship took off.

The trip to the _Inconvenience_ was a quiet one, with no one saying anything. Most of us were still half asleep.

I pulled out my knife, the one made out of Damascus Steel, and started twirling it in my right hand. The movement not only calmed me down, but it also allowed me to focus on something, which woke me up a little bit. The dim lighting of the cargo bay, combined with the pattern of my knives blade made for a hypnotic pattern. That, combined with the rhythmic turns and skillful maneuvers soon had everyone in the ship looking at my knife. I don't want to flatter myself here, it was probably because they had nothing better to do.

"What's the story behind that blade Sarge?" Agnarsson asked in his Scottish accent.

I stopped spinning the knife abruptly. "A friend gave it to me," I said. "Back when I was still young, free, and innocent."

"Lovely blade," Grass remarked.

"Useful too," Pavel half-joked. "You wouldn't believe how many times that knife has saved Frank's ass."

"And yours as well," I noted.

"And mine as well," he conceded.

"I suck with knives," Lamberti said.

"Why is that?" Konstantinov asked the Italian man curiously.

"Too messy for my taste, and I've been known to snap covvie necks."

"And level half a city," Grass noted.

The squad chuckled at the joke, no doubt having heard the story from Pavel or having done their own research about it. We were still laughing when the ship left the atmosphere, and we suddenly all felt a little bit weird floating in zero gee. The ship boosted towards the _Inconvenience_ and within a minute a crane was picking the ship up and the hangar bay was depressurizing.

"OK people!" I called out as the hatches opened. "Head out to the launch room, we'll wait for orders there."

"Yes, sir," half of them replied. The other half simply headed towards the launch room. I hopped off the pelican and glanced around the hangar as the walls collapsed upon themselves. Marina's pelican was close by, so I decided to see how it was going. When I arrived I found my girlfriend fixing something in the cockpit.

"What are you doing?" I asked.

"Calibrating the thrusters."

"Aren't they calibrated by default?" I asked.

"Yeah, but they last too long," she complained. "I like it more this way."

"So, what have you heard?"

"Probably the same as you," Marina replied, puling herself up from the floor. "Small fleet, not very likely to beat our own, full alert."

"Any numbers?" I asked.

"No, no solid information on their size," she said.

"They won't break through the line," I told her.

"They will, they always do."

"They do," I admitted.

"And then, you'll be dropped into a hotzone," she said with a little sadness in her voice.

"Where I'll kick some ass."

"Yeah right," Marina laughed as she punched my shoulder playfully.

"Then you'll come pick me up when I'm done and I'll be home for dinner," I added.

"Agreed," she said with a smile.

"After that you'll reward me with some crazy awesome sex."

"I think I missed that part," my girlfriend quipped.

"I'm just stating the facts woman."

"Good luck Frank," she said. Even as she said that she reached up to me and gave me the quintessential good-lick kiss.

"You too," I said, kissing her back.

After that, I left the ship and left the hangar bay. It seemed absurd that a few years ago this place had witnessed the deaths of hundreds of covvie boarders and marines alike. Then we had vented the place, losing a couple of unsecured vehicles in the process and killing pretty much every single covvie that was left. It hadn't really worked for us though, the covvies made it all the way through to the bridge and killed over 90% of the ship's complement. They had also shot Layla in the shoulder, leaving her badly burnt and legitimately angry with me. Last I knew she had been transferred to the Home Fleet.

The ship's hallways were almost empty. Most of the marine complement was still groundside, and the army blokes were moving in to help defend some city or other and calm the civilian portion of the planet. The Navy personnel were all right where they were supposed to be and ready to kick some ass. The PDG were already up and running and the MAC cannon was warm and loaded. I thanked ONI once more for the upgrade in the cannon. Two slugs do double the damage one does, especially if fired within milliseconds of each other. The magnetic accelerator cannon had saved my life more than a few times.

"Eliza!" I called out. "What's the sitrep?"

"It seems that the enemy fleet consists of one CCS-class battlecruiser and two corvettes." I noticed. "Stealth?" I asked.

"Well, obviously not, since we can see them," the AI said.

"Good point," I conceded. "We could take care of the two corvettes by ourselves."

"_I_ could take care of the two corvettes," Marina corrected. "The cruiser, on the other hand…"

"I know, I know," I said. "Keep me updated."

"Sir yes sir!" Marina's voice said and she signed off.

I arrived at the drop bay and my squad was already congregated around the Holotable in the middle while Lamberti checked each and every pod for any type of damage or anything that could cause the launch to go wrong. I turned on the Holotable and a hologram of Caribe System popped up. It immediately zoomed in to the habitable zone and markings appeared naming major planets and moons as well as marking the locations of the UNSC defense fleet and the invading covvie fleet. They were uncomfortably close to each other.

"Zoom," I commanded the Holotable.

The UNSC fleet was composed of over fifteen frigates and destroyers as well as an outdated _Halcyon_-class cruiser. With the battle star station that orbited Emerald Cove up and ready, the covvies wouldn't have a chance, yet they still charged into battle. I watched in real time (or almost) as the battle unfolded. The two Covenant corvettes were destroyed in the initial salvo, while the cruiser's shields managed to withstand the barrage. It started boosting forward, no doubt trying to avoid all the missiles that the battle star was firing at it.

The cruiser managed to take out three frigates and damage two UNSC cruisers before its engines were damaged by the battle star's missiles. It then boosted away from the fight and towards the planet. Everything had happened in less than two minutes. Over five hundred people had died in less than two minutes. They were outnumbered seventeen to one and they managed to kill three of our ships.

"Listen up!" I said, snapping everyone back from their trances and directing the attention of my squad towards me. "We clipped the cruiser's wings, but no doubt they will be deploying a small invasion force, we will most certainly go first, understood?"

"Yes staff sergeant, sir!"

"Good, now we wait."

* * *

><p>It was three hours before Eliza's avatar appeared on the holotable. Unlike most of the time, she was normal-sized now, further confusing me about her attractiveness. "Staff Sergeant, is your team ready?" Eliza asked politely.<p>

"We are," I replied.

"Castillo!" Albaf said as a hologram of her chest, neck, and head appeared. "The cruiser landed in the New Barbados Marshlands, near Holetown, you heard of it?"

"Yeah, medium-sized city, largest in New Barbados."

"There are already several thousand enemy troops groundside and they've just started unloading combat structures," she informed us.

"Why didn't someone take out the damn ship?" Pavel asked.

"Damn thing kept sniping us," Albaf growled. "Castillo, you know the drill, you work as a spearhead for the marines, and they do the same for the army."

"Yes ma'am, any support?"

"The _Halcyon_ is getting in position to nail the Covenant ship, you might want to keep your eyes open for the spectacle."

"Will do ma'am," Pavel said. "Anything we can use?"

"Nezarian's rangers will be jumping down on a different sector, attention will be diverted between the two teams and then the marines come in."

"That it?" Sutton asked.

"Unfortunately they are using jammers," Albaf added. "You will be out of contact with us as soon as you hit the ground."

"Ok, thank you ma'am," I said. "Reaper Actual out."

"Wait, that's it?" Grass asked.

"What do you mean?" I asked her.

"That's barely enough intel on anything," she complained.

"I'm going to have to go with Grass on this one," Sutton said.

"We usually jump with less," Pavel shrugged.

"Lamberti?" I called out. "Pod's are fine?"

"Like new Sarge," he replied.

"Well then, what are you waiting for?" I asked them.

My squad unholstered their main weapons and placed them in the designated space in their respective pods. They each did a quick check of the HEV's systems before hopping in. Everyone did something different as soon as they got in. Sutton crossed himself, Snark shook both of hisfeet two times, Agnarsson slammed his head back three times, Grass gripped the handles tightly and took deep breaths, Lamberti arched his back as if he was stretching, Konstantinov rolled his shoulders backwards, Pavel slapped his thighs, and I cracked my neck and my knuckles. Every Helljumper did something that distinguished them. I had been cracking my joints ever since my first jump back in Mars and wasn't about to stop right now. The door of my pod closed at the same time as all the rest, the two screens flickered on. One showed Albaf's face and the other one had a map of the area where we would land.

"Thirty seconds Staff Sergeant," the commander told me.

"Reaper squad!" I called out. "How do we go?"

"We go feet first, Staff Sergeant!" they all called back.

A countdown appeared on my HUD and the launch doors below the launch room opened up slowly as our pods were rotated to launch position. I rotated through my squad's cameras and was surprised to see that they all had their helmets polarized already, Pavel and I usually kept them clear until we landed. I finally reached Pavel's pod and he gave me a quick mock salute before gripping his handles tightly. I turned off the camera as I braced myself.

When the countdown reached four it disappeared, the lights above and in front of me replacing the numbers. Three was a red light, two was a yellow one, and green was one. Less than a second after the green light blinked I felt my pod lurch forward. Half of what I could see was black space and the bottom of the _Inconvenience_, the other half was the oceans of Emerald Cove. The temperature started going up as the pods entered atmosphere, I could feel myself start sweating both because of the heat and because of the nerves.

"Three thousand feet!" I called out "Deploy chutes!"

I could see two pods jerk upwards right before I pressed the button to deploy my own chute. The pod shook violently and it stabilized. I took a deep breath of relief. My last jump hadn't gone exactly well.

As we cleared the clouds I could see the enormous Covenant ship holding position about twenty kilometers from us. I ordered my squad to steer their pods towards the ship. At an altitude of about one thousand five hundred feet above ground a white bright light impacted the Covenant cruiser. The round went through and through, slamming into the ground below the ship. The sheer kinetic force of the MAC rounds made an explosion that probably killed more than a few covvies that had just disembarked. The ship itself shook violently before several explosions ripped it apart.

I was still looking at the spectacle when my thrusters were automatically activated. I closed my eyes and polarized my helmet as the pod closed in on the ground.

_Let's hope it's crowded._


	76. Also Known As

_As always, thanks to Sniper Fodder for proof-reading this chapter. I hope you enjoy._

* * *

><p><span>Chapter LXXVI: Also Known As…<span>

**September 3, 2542 (UNSC Calendar)/**

**New Barbados Marshlands, New Barbados, Emerald Cove, Caribe System**

It wasn't nearly as crowded as I would've expected. In fact, other than the occasional banshee screaming in the distance, the place was eerily quiet. I opened my hatch door in the non-explosive way, I was surprised when it didn't slam down on the floor, instead, it splashed down on the water. I groaned as water from outside flowed in, reaching all the way to my knees. The water was right around my pod was boiling and sizzling from the heat.

I heard two loud splashes indicating that another two pods had landed. Moments later I felt the water hitting me. They must've been pretty close to me, but the four meter tall reeds that grew in the marsh didn't allow me to see them.

"Water, fucking great," I told myself as I hoped down the pod. Here, the water went almost to my waist. I could feel it against my clothes, but the undersuit didn't allow it to come in contact with me. Luckily, I had decided to go in fully armored. Sparing me from getting wet. "A-ok?" I asked through the team channel.

"Lamberti fine."

"Grass is green."

"Ha, clever," Pavel said. "I'm good."

"Snark good."

"Konstantinov is set."

"Shee-it, you have a long last name. Sutton good."

"We're going to need call signs now," I said. "We don't sound nearly as badass as I would like."

"Sarge?" Sutton asked. "Are you taking a shot at our last names?"

"Yes, yes I am."

"Oh, that's cool… I guess."

"Sutton, Snark, scout ahead and tell me if there's any solid land nearby. Agnarsson, your call name is Bumblebee. Everyone else, regroup on me."

"Bumblebee?" the Scott asked. "I guess it could be worse. How's that phrase go?"

"Floats like a butterfly?" Grass asked him.

"Aye, that one," Agnarsson (Bumblebee) told her with a happy voice. "Stings like a bee. A bee with HEAT rounds at that," he added.

"It's because of your armor dumbass," Pavel helped.

Bumblebee chuckled. "Like I didn't know that."

Within a couple of seconds I could hear regular splashing as my team walked from their pods towards my position. Four black figures appeared at about the same time from four different directions. I hopped back on my pod to avoid all the water and waited for them to stand up in front of me.

"Well as you all know we're going to be spearheading the counter-attack," I said.

"How do we go about that?"

"Simple," I replied. "We walk in that direction and shoot everything that moves."

"Short, and easy to remember" Lamberti said. "I like it."

"Are you serious?" Grass asked, evidently surprised.

"Yes, why?" I asked her, pretending ignorance.

"Well, the strategy is rather… lacking," she complained.

"Sometimes less is more darling," I told her. I hopped down from my pod back in the water. "Sut-"

Two loud bangs interrupted me.

"That was one helluva shot," Sutton said through the radio.

"What was that?" I asked.

"Two less jackals to worry about," Sutton reported with a calm voice.

"Nice job Snark," I complimented. "Now, everyone move in tight formation, five meter spread, Lamberti, you're point, Grass you cover our asses."

"Yes sir!" the female soldier said.

"You said that with way to much enthusiasm," Konstantinov noted.

"I don't blame her," Agnarsson said. "I've got an ass worth covering." Having said that he noisily spanked himself. The team all laughed at that while we got into our positions. As soon as we were good we all went quiet. A joke here and there might be good and well, but this was combat, and we had to be careful.

For several minutes the only sound that I could hear in the near vicinity was the sound that our feet made as we treaded across the marshes. Occasionally some of us would go over a hole and splash down all the way down to their shoulders, eliciting glares from the rest of the squad. What really bugged me though, was our motion sensors. The marshes were full of large birds and fish that moved through the water and hid in the reeds. I couldn't see more than ten feet ahead at any given time and I was sick of jumping at a trout showing up on my sensor.

"Halt," Lamberti whispered. He didn't need to say it so quietly, but the habit was hard to break. "Unusual movement, ten contacts, moving in standard Covenant patrol formation, thirty meters out."

"Pavel, Konstantinov, move towards him. Lamberti, fall back ten meters."

Pavel and Konstantinov left formation and moved slowly ahead while raising their respective weapons. I ordered the team to activate their VISRs and was reassured when I could see the outline of Lamberti, Pavel and Konstantinov moving through the reeds. The contacts hadn't yet entered my radar, but if Lamberti said they were there, they were there. Otherwise Pavel would've said something about it.

"I could really use some Armadillos right about now," I muttered.

"Oorah," grass agreed.

"Contact, contact!"

As soon as Lamberti cried the warning I heard the familiar snaps that Pavel's shotgun made roaring. Konstantinov's carbine made a distinct noise as well and I was all too familiar with the noise of Lamberti's SAW, even if it was a downsized version. Their helmets picked up the enemy positions and several grunts and jackals showed up in my HUD as red silhouettes. Within seconds the barrage of lead and depleted uranium had brought down all of the enemy silhouettes.

"Clear," Pavel called out. "Wait." There was a gunshot. "Clear."

"We better get going, someone must've heard that," Grass said.

"I'm surprised you didn't say that after we came crashing in from lower atmosphere," Snark noted with a deadpan tone.

"Burn," Konstantinov said.

"Lady's gotta point," I said. "Let's get moving."

Lamberti started moving forward again and Pavel waited for us along with Grigori. As soon as we caught up with them we resumed our formation. It was slow progress since we were waist deep in the water and the reeds made it difficult to walk in a straight line.

I found an elite's body floating upside down , its foot stuck on some reeds. There was blood leaking from several holes in its chest and back. The color of the water went from murky brown to dark purple around him. It wasn't nearly as macabre as it would've been if the body had been a human instead of an alien. I had to move two grunt bodies out of the way before going through the battlefield.

"Having more guns is helpful," I said, addressing Pavel.

"Well no shit Frank," he replied. "That's some groundbreaking thinking right there."

"Next time I make a comment it will be on your mom's promiscuousness."

Pavel chuckled. "Why am I not surprised?"

The next couple of minutes went quietly, we could now hear some plasma fire, probably the covvies coming in contact with UNSC aircraft or Nezarian's rangers. Soon enough, enemy fliers were screaming over our heads. We weren't that easy to spot though, with black armor and tall reeds all around us, the banshees never even spotted us. Of course, that was bound to change soon enough.

"Shit, dropship," Lamberti said.

Told you it would change.

"Fuck," I replied. Those things could hover above us and their gunners seemed to have a knack for finding you, no matter how well you were hiding. "Where's it headed?"

"Looks like it's stopping," the Italian man said. "Yep, it's stopping, perhaps eighty meters ahead of me."

"I can barely hear it," Mutton said.

"Bad news," Pavel said.

"That I can't hear it?" the tall black man asked my friend, confused.

"No, that it's stopping."

"It's dropping off troops," I explained. I was momentarily irritated at having to explain such a simple concept to my squadmate, but I had to keep in mind that no matter how talented Sutton or any other member of my team was, they didn't have nearly as much experience as Pavel and me.

"It's getting worse, another Phantom is coming."

"Damn it."

"I'm getting contacts!" Lamberti warned. "Lots of contact."

Now we ha roughly forty enemy footmobiles headed in our direction and only tall reeds for cover. They were good hiding, but I doubt they would do much against a stray plasma bolt. The only advantage that we had (other than raw skill) was that we had the element of surprise.

"Snark, you see anything?" I asked.

"Well, the reeds kind of mess with my vision," he snarked in reply.

"Oh, then I guess you broke your thermal scope?"

"No…"

"Then?"

"On it."

There was a moment of silence as Lamberti slowly made his way toward us and Snark used his potent Oracle scope to scan the area for any heat signatures. The only noise was the humming that the phantom dropships made and the small waves that hit our armors and the reeds.

"Bad news," the sniper said finally. "I count forty four enemy signatures. Two hunters."

"Bumblebee, load up your SPANKr, Sutton, have your grenade launcher ready. Everyone, sink down in the water and wait."

"What?"

"Go to the bottom of the water and wait."

"Wha-"

"It's not that hard corporal," I told Konstantinov.

"Ok, then, let's go for a dive."

The team followed my command and slowly sunk themselves in the marsh trying to make as little noise as possible. As soon as my helmet went underneath the water level I could taste the different oxygen going up my lungs. The water was so murky that I could barely see more than three feet from my eyes. It felt weird being underwater and still so dry. As I hit the bottom I raised a little bit if dirt from the ground, forming a cloud that made everything even harder to see.

"Everyone down?" I asked.

"Affirmative."

"Now we wait," I said.

It was two minutes before my sensor detected anything other than a trout. A large group of red dots was slowly headed in my direction, getting closer and closer with every passing second. Two of those dots were particularly large, no doubt that they were the hunters.

"Bumblebee, tag them," I ordered.

"Already done sarge."

"Good."

I waited some more and within seconds the red dots were all around my squad. I felt like a fucking submarine in the twentieth century, staying deadly quiet, hoping that I wouldn't make a false move and be spotted and annihilated with extreme prejudice. Several dots came awfully close to me, and I could even spot some of the dirt they raised swirling around. I didn't get a real scare until a large foot that could only belong to a hunter slammed down on the floor less than an inch from my visor.

"Shiiiiit," I said.

"A grunt stepped on me," Grass said.

"Shhh!" Pavel said. It was a good thing that we were underwater right now, we couldn't really move our arms as a way of body language, had we been simply hiding in the reeds, our flailing arms would've certainly given us away.

"I think that's the last of them," Snark said. "Yeah, we're clear."

"Grass, can you use that big knife of yours?" I asked.

"Sure can Sarge."

"Bumblebee, be ready to nail the hunters on my mark."

The man took his time before he answered, no doubt he was wondering why we would even bother fighting this group when we had already avoided them. "Sure thing Staff Sergeant." He waited some more. "I'll nail those suckers."

"Good, Grass, on me."

I slowly raised myself until only the top half of my helmet was above water. I could spot a grunt and an elite being swallowed up by the marsh plants. I motioned to Grass to take down the grunt while I pulled out the knife from my back. I twisted it twice so that that the edge was facing towards me and the point faced upwards. Grass drew her machete and gripped it like… well, a machete.

Both of us slowly made our way towards the rear of the enemy group. I pushed a reed out of the way and went deadly quiet when I was less than a meter away from the elite. I opened my free hand and held it outside so that Grass could see it. As soon as she was in a comfortable position I made my hand into a fist and went for the kill.

I climbed into the elite's back and used one hand to push its jaws inward, closing them and preventing any loud noises such as screams from exiting its ugly mouth. I brought my knife around and pressed it against the elite's throat. I pushed deeply and drew a long line across the beast's neck. There was a spurt of air as its trachea was severed and then blood started gushing out, no doubt coming from one of the arteries that I had surely severed.

I jumped back down, making as little noise as possible and slowly placed the elite's body on the water. Grass, having a bigger knife, didn't really worry about finesse as much as I did. She simply brought her huge machete down from above her head. The military-grade blade, sharpened with laser and made out of top notch titanium. There was a quiet whoosh as the blade sliced through the air and then a dull thunk as it cleaved through the grunt's skull. Death was instant for the little alien, and she let it fall down to the water before she carefully pulled out her knife from the grunt's skull. Brains, skull bits, and blood flew in an arc as she did so.

"Reaper squad, cover our asses, Grass, take out as many as you can stealthily. Bumblebee, you take out the ogres as soon as we are spotted."

There were only green lights in response, no one wanted to talk right now, things were too tense.

My next target was a jackal, the thing was slouching and obviously not very happy to be where it was. I looked around and spotted two other jackals nearby. I grabbed my target's beak and pushed it closed with my hand. The thing tried to scratch me but quickly stopped on its tracks as my knife went through its spinal cord, leaving it completely unable to move, or talk. I placed the beast face down in the water, where it would face death by drowning.

The two other jackals were dealt with two quick cuts to their necks. The second one was almost decapitated as it turned in surprise at seeing its friend killed so violently. Unfortunately, its shock prevented it from calling an alarm. Well, unfortunate for the next alien that would feel the cold steel of my knife crawling inside its flesh.

Don't I sound like a serial killer?

Next up was yet another elite. I groaned. Those things were hard to kill as it is, having to shove knives through armor was pretty difficult too. This one was quickly dispatched in an extremely brutal way. I jumped on its back, pushed myself up with one hand and brought my knife crashing down on the top of its skull. The fact that the blade went all the way through was a testament of the quality and build of the knife. I seriously had to compliment someone on building these things.

The body made a splash, but it wasn't loud enough to attract any unwarranted attention. In fact, the only covvie that turned was a lone grunt that was probably wondering why its superior had made so much noise. My knife gave two quick spins and hit the dog-like alien in its throat. The blade went through the hoses that supplied methane to the alien and through its trachea as well. The grunt was left to choke, not being able to pull down methane even as it tried to desperately. Unfortunately, the thrashing that the grunt made when it died did attract some attention. I barely had time to pull out my backup knife and go underwater when two elite minors appeared through the reeds.

I didn't waste any time though, I pushed myself towards the closest elite and shoved my knife in its knee joint, bringing it down. As the alien pushed its legs away from me, my knife was twisted from my grip. I did my best to wrestle with the alien, but it was way more strong than I was and quickly had me underwater. Luckily for me, I still had oxygen in my helmet tanks. I allowed it to think it was drowning me while I reached for my sidearm. I shot three times at its injured leg.

The rounds, being fired underwater, didn't go through the elite's shield, but they were enough to force it backwards and let go of me. I jumped up and fired the remainder of my guns cartridge into the elite. The last round went through its shield and made a nice hole in the armor above its right eye.

"Behind you," Schitzo warned.

I turned and brought my hands up to protect myself from the second elite. It had already brought its gun to bear and was aiming right at me. I would get shot, no doubt about that. Still, it was better to get shot in the arm than to get shot in the face.

Just like that, the elite's head flew sideways and made a neat spin before it landed on the water, the body splashing down in short order. Where the elite had been standing less than a second ago, was Grass with her machete.

"Thanks," I said quickly. "Well, fire the damn rockets asshole!"

There was a loud explosion followed by another loud explosion. I jumped towards the elite that I had shot and wrenched my knife away from its leg, sliding it in its sheath. I heard a loud roar of pain, anger, and pure wrath as the other hunter realized its brother was dead. I took advantage of the enemy's confusion to get my other knife from the dead grunt.

"Grass, watch my back," I ordered as I drew my BR55 from my back and scanned the area directly in front of me.

There was already lots of plasma and gunfire flying around, but it was all background noise to me as I focused on shooting anything that bled any color that wasn't red. A grunt quickly met the specifications and received three rounds to the chest for its trouble. I caught movement and once I confirmed that none of my squad mates was in that area let out five shots. A wail of pain confirmed that I hit something, most likely a jackal.

I heard the familiar snap that an MA5 made at my back as Grass started emptying her assault rifle at everything that dared come close enough to her. I ignored her and took a step backwards as I saw an elite's silhouette outlined in red. Another squad mate had spotted the alien and my helmet had quickly picked up its location. I fired three bursts at its chest and was able to squeeze a fourth one just in time, hitting the red-clad elite in the neck less than ten feet away from me. Its hand reached towards its throat as if it could not believe that it was dying and then I put another round through its skull to help it understand what was going on.

I slammed into something hard and almost turned around before I realized that it was Grass I was leaning against. "Back to back, eh?" I said jokingly. "Pavel's good at this, let's see how you measure up," I challenged.

An elite lunged towards me and was stopped dead in its tracks by an EMR round flying through its skull, the one behind it wasn't so easily cowed and had to be put down with the remaining rounds in my magazine. It still wasn't enough to kill it.

"Help," I called out. I crouched as Grass turned her gun around and fired at least ten rounds into the unshielded elite's face. By the time the body hit the water, there was a fresh magazine already loaded in my battle rifle.

As soon as I stood up a green carbine round slammed into my chest. The sheer force of the impact pushed me backwards and forced me to rely on Grass for support, but the armor did its job properly and absorbed all of the lethal force that the radioactive projectile carried. I shot eight rounds in the direction of the carbine. I must've hit something because no other green rounds came flying in my direction after that.

"Help," Grass called out.

I pivoted on one foot and brought my battle rifle around in her direction one handed. A grunt wildly firing a needler got a round right above its gas mask and collapsed, its arms and legs jerked wildly for a few instants before its brain finally registered that it was dead.

"Show off," Grass complained.

I smiled. "Someone should've taken a picture of that."

All of a sudden, everything went quiet. Snark fired three times from his rifle and I heard the same number of splashes, but everything stopped moving. My rifle jerked from one point to another as I tried to spot any covvies while Grass did the same. We slowly started moving towards the bulk of our squad. The lack of any noise when just seconds ago there had been a fucking battle going on unnerved me beyond comprehension. That and Schitzo showing up.

"Three o-clock Francisco," the hallucination said.

I jerked my head to my right and my eyes went wide as a hunter appeared from behind a cluster of reeds and replaced my hallucination.

"Motherfuck-," was all Grass could managed before we rolled in opposite directions as the hunter slammed its gigantic shield into the place we had just been standing in.

"Shoot it, shoot the bastard," I said even as I brought my rifle to bear.

"Well no shit Sarge!" Grass complained. It was really surprising how much her demeanor changed once in combat.

I fired at the armor joints of the hunter and forced it to take cover behind its huge shield. Two loud booms were heard and the hunter's body jerked slightly, but other than that it didn't give any sign that it felt the EMR rounds slamming into its uncovered back. Instead, it brought up its cannon arm and aimed directly at me. I waited until the last possible second to jump out of the way, a green stream of superheated plasma almost burning my arm off. Grass was already peppering the alien with her assault rifle to no visible effect.

"Frag out!" Konstantinov warned us.

I jumped backwards into the water (which was now boiling, by the way) and felt the shockwave of the explosive travel through the water. The shockwave felt a lot stronger than usual, but that was just the water doing its job. I found my footing and jumped up while aiming at the place where the hunter had last been in. It was still there, only now it was missing its cannon arm completely and half its right side was leaking orange blood, or body matter. Whatever, those worms freak me out.

"That was one hell of a toss," I complimented.

"Yeah," Grass agreed. "Never seen one of those so banged up."

The hunter jerked violently and for a moment it appeared to try to stand up.

"Whoa!" I yelled in surprised. My gun was fired automatically in reflex and five rounds ended the hunter's pathetic existence for sure this time.

"And it still wasn't dead after that," Grass pointed out. "If only those things were on our side," she mused.

"We just killed two of them," I reminded them.

"Oh, I know, but we could certainly use their shock value."

"Orbital Drop Shock Troopers, lady," Sutton reminded her. "We have plenty of shock value as well."

"Yeah," Pavel joined in, "hostile meteorites are scary as fuck."

"Clear?" I asked.

"Right," Bumblebee muttered.

There were a few extra bursts of gunfire. The plasma return fire was weak at best, and within fifteen seconds the call of clear was given.

"Nice job," Pavel said.

"Yeah, but a platoon gone missing is something people tend to notice," Konstantinov said.

"Yes," I agreed. "Better get moving."

"Hey, maybe you can actually trust this guy after all," Schitzo suggested.

Maybe I can.

"I don't see any reason why you shouldn't," he added. "He's here to spy on you, in order to do that he needs you alive, doesn't he?"

You make a- no, wait. I make a fine point.

"Doesn't it annoy you that you need a mental projection of your subconscious to reach that conclusion?" I was asked.

Fuck off.

"What was that?" Pavel asked me.

"What?"

"What?"

"Nothing," I said.

"Alrighty then."

"Hey, whatever happened to my call sign?" Konstantinov asked.

"Agreed," Lamberti said.

"Right now?" I asked.

"That would be most… optimal," Sutton helped out.

"Well, I was thinking about Kilo for you," I told the huge man.

"Kilo as in kilometer? Ha-ha, very original."

"No, Kilo as in kilogram," I corrected.

"Fat ass," Snark added.

"But Kilo is in the alphabet, so I can't really do that," I shrugged.

"Lamberti, I was going with Archangel for you, but that is way too awesome for your pay grade," I informed him.

The Italian man's shoulders went up as he puffed his chest in anticipation and glee and then slouched down as I brought his hopes crashing.

"I think Angel might be a decent call sign," Pavel said. "Makes fun of your last name and not as bad as it sounds."

"Also, it really shows your beautiful face," Konstantinov added.

"Done," I decreed. "Angel it is. Now, about you two-"

"Banshee!"

Everyone crouched until only the top of our helmets remained above ground. The banshee flew right above us and we all relaxed a little bit. Then it turned around and aligned itself for a strafing run. I was only just opening my mouth to order Bumblebee to shoot his SPANKr when an orange ball flew past my ear and impacted the aircraft head on, blowing it up completely. You had to give it to the man, he had nice reflexes.

"Sutton…" I wondered. "It's hard enough to come up with call names as it is, being in combat doesn't improve my thinking," I said.

"Oh, but it does," Schitzo affirmed. The man was moving silently though the water beside me. He didn't make ripples in the water and it seemed to be as if he was simply floating forward.

"Sutton, you intimidate the shit out of everyone. Scarecrow."

"I like it," he said.

"You what?" Pavel asked him.

"I mean, I hate it so much," the man said in an overly fake tone.

"That's what I thought," I added.

"Konstantinov," I said. "Did you know that you were the last man I picked to be in this squad?"

"No," he said. " I wasn't aware of that."

"You know what a train is?" I asked.

"Sure."

"No, I mean like a train train, the original train."

"Oh, it's some sort of very large subway car. Used to be used for transport in the nineteen hundreds. I think."

"Mostly right," I complimented. "You know how they called the last cart in a train?"

"No…" I could almost see the man narrowing his eyes as I started treading the unfamiliar territory.

"Caboose," I said almost triumphantly.

"Ouch," Grass said. "At least I have an ass worth braggin about."

"Sarge…" Konstantinov begged.

"Ok, ok, you can choose." I said and paused for the briefest of instants. "Do you want it to start with a k or with a c?"

The man sighed reluctantly. He knew that if he complained he would end up with the callsign Pony. "With a c, starting it with a k is just ridiculous."

"It's settled then," I said almost happily. "Shit, I almost forgot you Pavel."

"Love you to Frank."

"Awww, that's so nice of you," I cooed. "Just because of that you get to choose your own callsign."

"Don't be a douchebag about it," Snark said. In fact, he almost begged.

"Maverick?" Pavel suggested.

"He, how about Iceman?" Bumblebee said with a chuckle.

"What? Why?"

"You never saw Top Gun?" the Scottish man asked with an evident tone of surprise in his voice.

"What the hell is Top Gun?" Snark asked.

"Are you talking about the flight school in the United States, back when they were still a country?" Grass asked.

"No, I'm talking about a movie made about that."

"Right," I said. "No, I don't like Maverick. It's hypocritical."

"All right, what do you think about PK?"

"Your initials?" I asked. Sarcastically I added, "How original."

"Bruiser?" Pavel suggested. "No, just Bruise."

"Hmmm," I pondered. "I like it. You're the one who packs the most firepower."

"Hey!" the newly christened Angel complained.

"Firepower when it pertains to ammunition."

"That's more like it," Angel asserted happily.

"Bruise it is then," Pavel said.

"You'll always be Pavel to me," I warned. "Everyone else, you can call him Bruise."

"Yes Staff Sergeant," they all answered in dull and bored voices.

"How come I get the only crappy call sign?" Grass complained.

"I think Caboose would digress," Scarecrow noted.

"Fine…"

"What about you Sarge?" Caboose asked me.

"Me, I'm Sarge. You can call me Sarge," I explained. "Pavel can call me Frank or Frankie if he wants."

"Oh, c'mon, you're really getting out of gettin' a call sign with that excuse?" Bumblebee asked. "You can't simply-"

"Reaper squad come in, do you copy?" the radio crackled through the interference.

"This is Reaper Actual, who is this?"

"This is Green Two, Ranger unit."

"You with Nezarian?" I asked.

"That would be Ranger Actual," the man said through the radio.

"Just patch him through," I snapped.

"Yes, sir."

After a few seconds the familiar voice bleeped through me helmet. "Castillo, how's it going, we heard an unhealthy amount of gunfire coming from our west, you all right?"

"We're fine Yevgeny," I informed him. "How's your platoon?"

"One imbecile managed to get himself shot in the stomach, we're working on an airlift. He seems to be bonding with our squad medic, she's a pretty one that one." I could almost see the injured man blushing as bright as the medic probably had despite the probable loss of blood that he was suffering. "Everyone else is fine, we've encountered several patrols, nothing we can't handle."

"Any targets of value?"

"So far we've only managed to encounter enemy infantry and a couple of- hole on a sec."

I held on for five seconds before Nezarian returned to the channel. "Seems like a couple of my scouts found an improvised headquarters in an island. Large portion of solid ground. Should be-" Yevgeny was interrupted by a burst of static. Our helmets were communicating directly and not through the use of drones or satellites to bounce of the radio waves, but the covvie interference still messed up with the signal.

"Come again, I didn't catch that last part."

"The island should be about five hundred meters north of our position, about six hundred for you."

I scrolled through the map that Eliza had uploaded into my helmet until I found the "island" that the Ranger scouts had found. "I see it, want me to set a waypoint towards it?"

"Nah, I'll send two men to your position, don't shoot them," he told me.

"I'll try not to," I chuckled softly. "See you in a few."

"Ranger Actual out," Nezarian said formally before cutting off the conversation.

"I assume you all heard that?" I asked my team. I received a reply in the shape of seven simultaneous nods at the same time. "Great."

It wasn't more than three minutes before I heard a click. It sounded almost like the sound a rabbit would make, but I knew better. It was a device that made that particular noise as an alternative to UV light winks on. In this situation, it honestly helped a lot. I guess sometimes less is more.

"You already said that," Schitzo noted.

For a moment there, I almost forgot you were here.

"Just come out," I called out rather loudly.

"Fine, might want to launch a flare while you're at it," one of the ranger's said. The man still had his jetpack on, although the small wings and the thrusters were folded up so that the entire device was smaller in size than the usual ODST rucksack. Looked quite cool in fact.

Note to self, learn to fly those things properly.

"Follow me," the other ranger said.

We followed the ranger.

Two minutes later I was shaking Nezarian's hand and butting helmets with him in the improvised camp that the Rangers had set up. It wasn't really a camp as much as it was an area filled with soldiers and two heavy machine guns facing in opposite directions. There were small patches of solid ground here and there, but all except one were unoccupied to avoid detection by air. The only small island that had someone on it was occupied by a marine that looked deathly pale and had a large red splotch on his stomach. A pretty medic was holding his hand and muttering something to the wounded man.

"I see you weren't lying," I noted as I pointed at the scene.

"He'll be fine, just a scratch."

"That's what passes for a scratch?" Bumblebee asked.

"On the Inconvenience?" the Ranger lieutenant laughed. He raised an eyebrow and spread his arms. "On this ship that thing is pretty much requisite." He turned towards me. "Nice to finally meet the new team," he said.

"Yeah," I chuckled. "Let's hope this time they last."

"Last?" Snark exploded. "What the he-" Luckily, he was cut mid-sentence by a sharp blow to the back of his helmet, courtesy of Pavel.

"You know Pavel," I said. "Obviously. You've got Grass, Snark, Bumblebee, Angel, Scarecrow, and Caboose." Each Helljumper depolarized their faceplate in turn as I said their names as a way of introducing themselves.

I depolarized my own faceplate and went straight to business. "What's the plan?" I asked.

"Plan? You?"

I shrugged.

"Alright," Nezarian conceded. "We're breaking up into three ten-man teams which will be divided into two five-man fire teams. Your team will function as an additional…team."

"Uh-huh," I nodded while picturing the numbers in my head.

"Then we make our way towards the Covenant base camp and start making a little noise. Once we've got their full attention we fall back in order and haul ass outside of the jammers range, then you can call your pretty girlfriend and tell her to bring some pilot friends to get us the hell out. Or maybe I could see about some Armadillos. Dunno, I'll improvise."

"You're starting to sound like you've been in this ship all your life lieutenant," Pavel joked.

"Seems like it's been longer than that," the UNSC Army Ranger replied with a hearty laugh.

"Hooah," I said, calling out the traditional Army battle cry.

"Oorah," Nezarian said. "We'll attack from here, here, here, and your team will go here. We don't expect anything particularly heavy save for some plasma turret emplacements, perhaps some ghosts. There are bound to be a few wraiths and specters, but we're probably not going to meet any," Lieutenant Nezarian said, pointing at four different spots on an old-fashioned paper map he produced from some pocket or other.

"Ok then," I said, "you heard the man, let's get moving."

"Rangers, move out!"

"Let's get ready to kick some ass," Schitzo said, cracking his knuckles as he walked next to me.


	77. Crouching Tiger, Hidden Badass

_What is it? Another chapter so soon? _

_As always, thanks to Sniper Fodder for proof-reading this chapter._

* * *

><p><span>Chapter LXXVII: Crouching Tiger, Hidden Badass<span>

**September 3, 2542 (UNSC Calendar)/**

**New Barbados Marshlands, New Barbados, Emerald Cove, Caribe System**

The first shot to ring was a 14.5 x 114mm bullet from a Sniper Rifle System 99D-S2 Anti Matériel, better known as the sniper rifle. That wasn't very surprising, in fact, I would've been surprised if the first shot to boom wasn't from a sniper. Just seconds after the initial boom that the SRS made, twelve shots rang out in a span of approximately three seconds. That made for a grand total of thirteen shots fired in just over three seconds.

"Elite general down, ten plus additional KIAs," the Ranger sniper reported.

Read that previous sentence again. You notice the part that says 'ten plus additional KIAs'? That means that little Snark here probably nailed all twelve of his shots in less than three seconds. I don't care if he killed twelve zealots or if he killed twelve seagulls. The man killed twelve moving targets in three seconds. Three. Fucking. Seconds. Think about it for a moment.

"Take out those ghosts!" Nezarian ordered.

I heard the characteristic thud that the SPANKr made when it launched a rocket and then the whoosh as the rocket activated. Bumblebee's shot flew in a straight line and collided with a stationary ghost, the explosion killed or incapacitated an elite that was standing right next to it and the resulting fireball consumed three jackals that were sitting on the floor. Bumblebee's second rocket hit a wraith's main turret, although it didn't disable the craft, it prevented it from firing. If any covvie was stupid enough to try, the alien tank would blow itself up and everything in a twenty yard radius.

After the second rocket of all four SPANKrs in the group were fired there was a moment of stunned silence on part of the Covenant troops that were nearby. There was absolutely no way that they could be under attack by such an overwhelming force. At least that's what they thought, because they _were _under attack even though we didn't really overwhelm them. In fact, it was probably the other way around.

The moment of stunned silence lasted only that, a moment. I squeezed the trigger of my BR55 and felt the kick of a single bullet even though three went out the barrel. The 9.5mm rounds flew in a straight line and made solid contact with an elite major's head. The red alien reeled backwards even as the back of its head exploded in a shower of skull, brains, blood, and depleted uranium. The jackals behind him were showered in their leader's blood and could only squeal in shock even as they fumbled for their shield-gauntlets.

"Boom goes the dynamite bitches," Angel said. My eyes flickered to his direction for the briefest of moments, I could see that the man was throwing a medium sized stack of C10.

_I hope he's got a good arm._

A few moments later the Italian squeezed down on a detonator and an incredibly loud boom blocked out every sound in the entire world. The reeds around the small patch of solid land were flattened backwards as the sheer force of the plastic explosive's shockwave flew at them. The water was also pushed away from ground zero and I was jerked slightly backwards as the shockwave passed through and around my body.

The explosion didn't really produce a fireball, instead it raised what was probably five tons of dirt and sent a concussive blast that turned every single organ of every single alien within the kill zone into something resembling mashed potatoes. At least twenty enemy soldiers collapsed in the shockwave and a few more were buried alive by the dirt. Most of the covvies killed were grunts and jackals, but still, it was a hell of a bargain.

"There, sniper," Schitzo warned

I flicked my gun slightly to my left, knowing where the jackal was even though my brain hadn't even processed its location yet. I squeezed the trigger for the second time since the engagement started and a millisecond later the vulture-like alien had one hole in its neck and two in its chest. I don't know if death was instant, but it was certain. I switched targets and fired at an elite clad in blue armor. My first burst bounced off its shield. Seems like they were just starting to react. Another burst quickly followed the first one and then another soldier brought down the huge alien with a well-placed shot from a DMR (you can tell by the way the blood sprays).

As I shot a grunt's methane pack I heard the first enemy weapon being fired. Unfortunately, it wasn't a simple grunt firing his plasma pistol in excitement, it was a white elite shooting one of the plasma turrets that could spin far enough in our direction.

As far as I could tell, the alien didn't kill or hit anyone, but all the rangers were forced to jump back behind something vaguely solid or dove underwater. Plasma couldn't go more than a few inches through water since it was highly unstable, but it could certainly boil the chemical compounds soon enough, frying any unfortunate soldier that couldn't make his way out in time.

The elite's initiative seemingly inspired the rest of the covvies, even as they retreated they turned and dropped to the floor to make themselves smaller targets and fire with more accuracy at us.

The ones that dropped first died even as they tried to find a target amongst the tall reeds that packed tightly against each other. The smarter ones that found a rock or a small raise on the ground managed to last a few more seconds before being made into cheese graters. The ones that really started giving us trouble were the ones that made it all the way back to the deployable covers that were lying around. Those were dealt with quickly as well.

It wasn't until we met the bulk of the enemy ground forces that we were really halted. We were so outnumbered in here that we would probably have to fall back within a few minutes, but the marines were already headed in this direction and would break through the covvie line sooner rather than later. Their success would enable the Army to do its job appropriately. Kill absolutely everything that wasn't friendly thoroughly, and with extreme prejudice.

"On the right, on the right! Aim for the squids!" I could hear Pavel yelling.

"Behind that wraith!"

"Reloading!"

"Shit, I'm hit, I'm hit."

"Fuck those bastards."

"Headshot motherfucker!"

Those were only some of the few things that I heard. The Rangers were extremely loud when it came to combat. My squad… not so much.

I had found cover behind the front half of the ghost that Agnarsson had initially wrecked. It was thick and sturdy enough to prevent any enemy projectile from reaching me with enough force to cause any real kind of harm. Pavel, out of custom, had slid right by me and placed his gun above cover, providing a seemingly endless barrage of death and bullets to the covvies up ahead. The rest of my squad found cover behind rocks or in small ditches that the grunts had just started digging. Snark asked for covering fire while he dragged a particularly large elite and placed it on top of another similar specimen, getting himself some decent cover.

The marksman went prone and set to work. I have never seen anyone with so much raw talent and skill at what he does. I'm technically a marksman, and a damned good one at that, but I couldn't even begin to compare myself to Snark. He worked through elites as if they were grunts. Three shots to the head and they were gone. He switched targets so quickly that it almost seemed that he didn't even stop in between

Lamberti had stopped using explosives and instead had switched to his SAW. He fired long bursts at any elite that bared its head and then let Caboose take them out with a well-placed burst from his MA5K. The two mean repeated the same process over and over, exclusively targeting the higher-ranking aliens and occasionally taking out a jackal that strayed too far from any real cover.

Sutton was making good use of his under barrel grenade launcher. In fact, he was making great use of it. Every couple of seconds he would fire yet another HE round into any location where more than three Covenant troopers had decided to huddle. After the grenades detonated there was a spray of dirt and body parts flying around.

Grass had taken cover behind a small boulder and was using sustained bursts from her rifle to shoot any jackal that bared its limbs to her eyes. She seemed to have a knack for hitting the birds in their legs and then right in their ugly faces as they landed on the floor screaming. As soon as her bullets hit them again they invariably stopped their cries of pain.

Bumblebee, not possessing a particularly strong weapon and wanting to save his extra rockets, was taking out grunts with his carbine. The man wasn't really an exemplary marksman and missed some shots that I would've considered easy, but he hit six out of ten grunts that he shot at and the heavy rounds were usually enough to either kill them or wound them seriously enough to stop fighting.

My team was motherfucking badass.

"Lieutenant, the sensors are picking up screamers!"

"Shit, Lan, load your tubes, take 'em out," Nezarian ordered through the battle channel.

A second later three banshees emerged from the low-hanging clouds and started a strafing run that forced everyone to jump for cover and hit one ranger in the back of the knee. The man would never be able to walk normally again. Perhaps it was for the best, he would be honorably discharged and would live the rest of his days in Reach with a modest pension until the covvies somehow managed to glass the planet.

Didn't think that was likely though, Reach is a fortress.

As soon as the man that was hit in the leg hit the floor, the banshee that had injured him exploded in a beautiful spectacle of blue, white, and red. A second later the lead flier met its end as another SPANKr met its mark. The third banshee took the smart choice and did the tightest turn that I had ever seen before hauling ass away from this direction.

"Enemy is getting reinforcements, sir!"

"Be ready to fall back, retreat pattern bravo, Reaper Squad will cover our asses while we make way for the Marines!" Nezarian notified everyone.

"I don't remembering you consulting me on that," I mentioned while blowing the back of a jackal's skull off.

"Sorry," Yevgeny apologized. "Do you want to cover our asses?" he asked me.

"I would be delighted to," I replied in a faux British accent.

The ranger didn't bother with an answer and instead went back to doing what he could do best. After I confirmed that the conversation was over I went back to doing what I did best, which incidentally, was the same thing that Yevgeny Nezarian did best. Killing aliens and blowing shit up.

A grunt met its gods a lot sooner than it would've liked to as two bursts from my rifle went through its thick torso. The rounds left six small holes in his armor from which blood started pouring as soon as it hit the floor. The one standing behind him met a quicker, cleaner end as Pavel fired no less than fifteen round into its chest and arms. Poor thing didn't even have time to process it had been shot before half its upper body went missing.

Despite the incredibly high amount of casualties that we had caused in the initial minute of our raid, the covvies were now returning fire. They didn't really have to aim much, there were so many of them that soon enough one soldier would get lucky and manage to pull off a headshot with his eyes closed and holding his gun sideways.

Hey, I've seen it happen.

"Hunter!"

"Bee," Pavel cried. "Take it out!"

"If you could just tell me where it is?" the man requested even as he placed his weapon on the floor and reached towards his back to grab his rocket launcher.

"Over the ridge, your eleven o'clock!"

"Locked and loaded," Bumblebee said. The rocket flew straight from his tube and slammed into the monstrous alien even before it could raise its shield or even fire its weapon. The rocket hit the alien right in the chest, blowing the alien completely apart and spraying a nearby grunt with orange blood and flesh. "Yippie ki yay, motherfucker!" he cried out in triumph.

"That's a nice one," Scarecrow noted. "You came up with that yourself?"

"Remind me to show you Die Hard as soon as we get out of this place."  
>"Why would you want to get out of this place?" Caboose asked even as he sprayed a pair of jackals. "It has some lovely beaches and a great climate."<p>

"And homicidal aliens," Snark pointed out to him in his quiet voice.

"Oh," Bumblebee said. "That too."

"Castillo, we might just need to fall back in a minute!" Lieutenant Nezarian warned me.

"So soon?" I said with a chuckle. "But I was just-" I glanced at the newcomers and dodged behind cover. "Yikes."

"Yikes indeed," Nezarian agreed. "Backing away now."

"Smart choice," I complimented him.

I took a peek and could see that the hunter that Agnarsson had taken out was obviously not the only one. There were at least ten more of the hulking two-legged beasts moving about. They were tightly packed together and were all crouched with their shields raised. I could see sparks as bullets bounced off of the alien metal. Behind the hunters I could make out the tops of several elite's heads. They were nearly invulnerable so long as the hunters kept in formation.

"Scarecrow, lob a grenade!" I ordered. "Angel, start mining the place with your explosives."

"How do you intend for me to do that?" the man called out, obviously annoyed. "You want me to dance through the plasma?"

"No," I replied with ice in my voice, "I want you to toss your shit around. Fucking idiot."

Angel didn't reply but started pulling out the explosives from several pockets that were present on his armor. He lined them up and started inserting receivers into the putty even as Caboose provided a barrage of fire at anything that threatened their position.

"Squad one falling back," a sergeant said through the battle net.

As I heard that I spotted five ghosts charging towards our direction. They weren't firing, but they were boosting full speed. The tactic seemed absurd from my perspective, how would they manage to land a shot if they were moving so fast and why would they boost so close to us where they were easy targets. Even as Snark took out the driver of one of the vehicles the other four kept coming towards us. It didn't really make any sense to me. Then suddenly it hit me.

"You're screwed unless you come up with something quickly buddy," Schitzo said behind me. I briefly turned around to look at the man and was startled when a needle went through him as if he was a projection. Wait, he was. A second after the round went through Schitzo's cheek, the man poofed. He literally poofed. Schitzo didn't disappear like he usually did, he poofed, complete with an animation for it.

As soon as he was gone one ghost flew above me, using the wreck of the ghost I was using for cover as a ramp. Time slowed down as I remembered my first time in actual combat. I had been taking cover behind a pile of debris in Fort Convict when an elite pulled this same stunt. I could even feel the anti gavity thrusters pushing down on me ever so slightly.

"What the fuck!"

Those three words snapped me back to real time and everything started moving at regular speed again. The ghost landed behind me even as the other three flew through our lines. The four craft turned around one hundred and eighty degrees before bearing their guns and searching for targets. I was unfortunate to be one of those lucky targets.

"Holy fucking shit!" I cried as I jumped away from my cover. Pavel did the same, but the stream of blue plasma went after me instead of my friend. Lucky him. "Shoot the damn thing!" I called out.

I slid behind a deployable shield and lasted a grand total of three seconds before the ghost's cannons brought it down. I was extremely fortunate that not one covvie put a round through the back of my head as I stood there, completely devoid of cover. As soon as the shield flickered down I started sprinting. I sprinted as fast as I fucking could, no limitations this time. My enhanced muscles and bones pushed me over the ground at literally superhuman speeds as the obviously startled elite tried to pivot his ghost to shoot me.

I then started moving towards the craft and right when the plasma bolts seemed to finally catch up with me, I jumped.

I jumped way higher than any normal human being had right to. I jumped way farther than anyone should've been able to. I jumped right on top of the front half of the ghost. My two hands caught on the edge of the front section as I was forced to let go of my trusty rifle. I could hear my team yelling that they couldn't get a good shot with me on the vehicle and suddenly found myself looking straight at the elite that was piloting the craft. The monster snarled with what I could've sworn was a smile and started shaking his craft around with the purpose of knocking me off. All the while, the ghost was still firing red hot plasma, or more appropriately, blue hot plasma. One burst went less than an inch away from my leg. At least that's what it felt like, since my left foot suddenly started hurting like shit.

I swallowed up the pain and used the momentum that the ghost's erratic maneuvers provided me with and spun to the side of the craft, placing one foot on top of one of the ghost's wing-like stabilizers. The elite could only look confused as I released my grip with one hand and reached towards my sidearm, pulling it out of its holster and aiming at the unfortunate pilot of the ghost.

The rest, as they say, is history.

A history I'd rather tell you about, since it makes me look all the more badass.

I aimed at the elite and squeezed off as many rounds as the gun's mechanism allowed me to. As soon as the heavy-caliber bullets punched through the elite's shield it was as good as dead. The remaining bullets in my magazine went through both of its eyes, top of its head, and mouth. The back of the elite's head suddenly stopped existing and it slumped sideways before falling out of the ghost.

The purple vehicle skidded on the ground for a few seconds before it came to a complete halt. I could almost hear the stunned silence of anyone who witnessed that act of badassitude I did just now. I hopped into the ghost's pilot seat and smiled a deadly smile as the craft whirred back to life. The small smile turned into a grin as I grabbed the two levers and homed in on the line of hunters. I squeezed the triggers. Two Class-2 energy guns started spraying out plasma at a rate of 750 rounds per minute.

The blue blobs of superheated plasma slammed into the group of hunters, most impacting on their heavy shields. Most doesn't really mean all, and the few that made it through did some serious damage on the hulking behemoths. In less than ten seconds one hunter was already fried and the covvies hadn't even realized that I was in a ghost.

_Right, ghosts!_

I turned my hijacked craft around and spotted one of the other three ghosts, the other two were both flaming wrecks right now. I used my HUDs improvised crosshairs and aimed at the elite piloting the ghost. The plasma burned through his shields armor and flesh in no time, leaving behind a crisp body smelling of burnt meat and alien blood.

"Squad 2, falling back!"

"Castillo, stop showing off and cover their asses!"

"Yessir!" I replied happily. This was actually kind of fun.

I focused my fire on the hunters at the edge of the formation and smiled as they started falling one by one. Despite my best efforts, I wouldn't be able to bring them all down before they reached our position or decided to take aim at my ghost and blast it into oblivion. In the meantime, I just kept firing. The ghost was a magnificent craft, being able to strafe sideways to avoid plasma and needler rounds as well as fire at the same time, giving me a distinct advantage over the Covenant infantry.

"Frank, watch out!"

I had already spotted the Spec Ops grunt carrying a fuel rod cannon, but the controllers in the ghost didn't allow it to turn sideways to face the small alien that fast. I made the mistake of turning around instead of simply boosting out of the missile's trajectory. The only thing I could do was jump from the craft and hope that I wasn't incinerated.

"Fuuuuuuuuuck!"

There was a loud explosion and a green flash even as I was still in the air. The shockwave from the fuel rod pushed me just a little bit and the heat was felt all the way through my armor. I knew even before I landed that I would be just fine, even if I did get some nasty blisters on my back.

"Shit," I muttered. "Bumblebee, you still got rockets?"

"Just the one boss?" he replied.

"Use it now, fire at the center of the formation!"

"That won't really-"

"Fire!" I yelled.

An instant later the HEAT missile was flying through the air and made contact with a hunter, hitting the monster right on its shield. The blast and the shockwave propelled it backwards with such force that it did a back flip and landed on top of some elites. Before the other hunters could close the gap that its stunned comrade had left Pavel, Snark, Angel and myself redirected our fire into that position. By my count we managed to kill or wound at least three elites and several jackals and grunts. By the time our bullets were pinging off alien metal instead of going through flesh, the second ranger squad was already safely away and regrouping with the first one. Once the third squad left they would start calling in the heavy guns to provide some support while the bulk of the marines arrived.

"Goddamit Castillo!" Nezarian spoke through bursts from his MA37 rifle. "You just had to lose our biggest gun."

"Next time you can hijack the ghost," I replied as a stream of plasma pounded the rock that I was taking cover behind.

"Fuck! Ramirez, watch your FOF!" he yelled angrily. "Frank, we're leaving now, cover us."

"On it," I replied. "Snark, show me what you can do and take out as many elites as you can. Everyone else target high priority targets! Sutton, fire all your grenades at the hunter's feet, maybe you can blow 'em off."

I rolled to the side and fired three rounds that took out three jackals before rolling back behind the safety of my sturdy rock. The hunters were now less than fifty yards away from us and were steadily advancing even as my sniper took shots at the holes in their barrier. If they decided to charge, my squad and Nezarian's were as good as seriously wounded.

Not dead, never dead.

"Bumblebee, use your peashooter and take out those grunt heavies!" I ordered. "Grass, that gun can fire more than four rounds at a time, you know? Same for you Caboose!"

As soon as I was done giving those orders I popped away from cover once more and tossed a grenade, taking out a pair of grunts that were setting up a plasma turret. I brought my rifle up and fired five rounds at an elite major, killing it with a shot through the throat. Before I could reload my gun a bright blue orb appeared an inch from my left boot. For the second time in less than two minutes I yelled fuck angrily and jumped away from an explosion. This time I managed to completely avoid the blast.

I also managed to land in open ground.

"Cover me!" I yelled frantically. Even as I ordered my people to cover my ass I half-crawled, half-jumped towards the body of an abnormally large elite ultra. Dirt glowed cherry red all around me as plasma rounds hit it and then flew upwards as needler rounds detonated. Enemy fire decreased slightly as the noise of unaimed gunfire became louder and I was able to place myself behind the relative cover of the dead elite.

"Thanks guys, I owe you one," I admitted.

"Castillo, feel free to run the hell away from there," Yevgeny told me.

"Gentlemen," I said calmly, "and lady, feel free to haul ass away from here."

"'Bout time sir!" Scarecrow noted while he stood up and turned around to get the hell out of there.

"Pavel," I said, "you stay."

"I would've been offended if you didn't ask," he replied in between chuckles.

As soon as my team's markers were a good distance away from Pavel's and mine, I stood up ignoring every precaution that I should've taken and aimed at the rushing hunters. I took my time while switching the firing mode from single-fire to full-auto. Don't get me wrong, I'm not stupid like that, but there is something incredibly disturbing about watching an enemy stay firm in the face of overwhelming odds. The rifle kicked and I was forced to hold it harder as I sprayed rounds from my hip.

This was the closest I've ever seen a hunter getting second thoughts.

Pavel's M247L made the loud noises that had turned into an almost heavenly sound to my ears. The surviving hunters were now so close to both of us that the elites behind them were sprinting through the holes in their ranks, forming a wall. A wall that prevented any enemy further behind to get a clear shot at us.

Pavel emptied his machine gun on one of the leading hunters and took an elite minor sporting a sword. The moment the blue-clad warrior slammed face first into the mud, a dozen energy swords came to life in the hands of as many elite warriors. I couldn't help but smile at the thought of being more afraid of a sword than of a rifle.

"Sometimes rock does beat laser," Schitzo said, appearing beside me once again.

"Go figure," I said.

By the time those two words left my mouth Pavel was already thirty feet behind me, spraying the group of elites that was headed towards me. He brought down two of the aliens and left me to fend off the other two creatures. As good of odds as I was bound to get in this war in a situation like this. The first elite received a burst of fire right in the chest before I kicked it in its stomach. The kick actually did more to push me backwards than to push it away, but the result was the same.

I drew my pistol and emptied the magazine on the other elite even as I ducked one blow from the plasma sword it was carrying. The backwards duck made me slam into the ground. I rolled back before any of the two elites could slice me in two and reloaded my rifle. The bolt clicked just as one of the two elites lunged towards me. I was lucky that they were both minors; inexperienced and eager for the kill. That was their undoing.

I side-stepped neatly and heard the hot plasma of the sword burning the air that it made contact with.. I brought my right leg up in a punt, hitting the elite's arm with the point of my heavy metal boot. My own strength, coupled with the enhancements and the armor's mild exo-skeleton made for one hell of a kick. I heard a bone snap and jammed my barrel down the throat of the elite before it could scream. I pushed down the trigger and then closed my eyes for a second as a huge amount of blood, brains, and bone exploded in every direction.

The other elite had been splattered with its friend's blood, making it think twice before lunging again. The moment of hesitation was all I needed. I jumped backwards and fired enough shots at the elite until it collapsed on the floor, dead.

_Then_ I turned around and hauled ass away from there. I hadn't gone more than a few meters before I splashed into the water. My speed drastically decreased but I soon had dense reeds covering me from the prying eyes of elite and jackal marksmen alike. The rest of the hunters and elites charged. I could hear splashing around, but none seemed to know exactly where I was. All the better for me.

"Oi! Sarge!"

I headed towards the direction of the voice and came face to face with my squad. They were all arranged in a neat circle, aiming their guns in every direction. Pavel was with them.

"I see that you made it safe and sound," he noted.

"I usually do," I replied.

"No, you usually just make it," Pavel corrected sarcastically.

"Sure, let's move out," I ordered.

As soon as I had said that the reeds all around us started blowing up as needle rounds sliced through them and detonated, sending thousands of little shards in every direction completely obliterating the thin plants. One needle shard in particular flew through me and Scarecrow only to hit Grass in the left thigh. It glowed bright pink and I lunged at her. One hand landed right on the pink projectile while the other on her chest. She fell down, more shocked at my reaction than in pain at having been shot.

Even as we both fell to the water I got a firm grip on the needle and yanked hard. With one fluid motion I tossed the pink crystal as far away as I could before it detonated a few meters away from me. Then I slammed into Grass and the water. I pulled the injured Helljumper up from the water and she grunted in pain. She was bleeding profusely from her leg and had to hold on to my arm not to fall down.

"Keep moving," I ordered. "Caboose, give her some medigel."

"On it."

Our small unit headed away from the noise of angry covvies slowly, with one wounded teammate in tow. If we didn't meet up with Nezarian's rangers soon we would be in some serious shit.

"Pavs, where's Nezarian?" I asked.

"Just a little further," he replied.

Turns out that we never reached just a little further, for as soon as my friend said that I heard a noise that, although not as familiar as Pavel's M247L, was even sweeter. I heard the noise of hornet gunships flying through the air.


	78. Two Things on My List

_As always thanks to Sniper Fodder for proof-reading this chapter._

* * *

><p><span>Chapter LXXVIII: Two Things on My List<span>

**September 12, 2542 (UNSC Calendar)/**

**New Barbados Marshlands, New Barbados, Emerald Cove, Caribe System**

"I think we've got this sector clear," I repeated for the eleventh time.

"It pays off to be cautious Sarge," Angel replied sarcastically.

"Fuck off," the pilot replied.

"You're pretty ballsy when you're the one piloting the craft," Konstantinov complained. "I'd like to hear you say that on the ground."

"Once again," the pilot replied. "fuck off."

"Guys, ease up on her," I said boringly. "She's cool."

"What? You fucking her too?"

"Ok, what the fuck is wrong with you?" I yelled at Angel.

"I'm sorry. Fuck. I've been here for over nine hours looking at nothing but water, corpses, and reeds. Endless oceans of reeds," he said. "Fuck!"

"Talking about going easy on," the pilot said, "How's the leg doing Sarge?"

"Alright," I replied with a shrug. "I never did ask why you were piloting a falcon instead of a hunter."

"I'm qualified for both, and some ONI bitch insisted your squad had marine aviators. I was one of the lucky chosen ones." The tone in her voice made it evident that she didn't think she was lucky. Not in the least.

I simply chuckled in reply as I stretched my legs on the floor of the UH-144 Falcon gunship. The woman piloting the craft in question wasn't really any pilot. She was in fact Pilot. Would you believe that I still didn't know her damned name? Well I didn't and I think I was past the stage where I could ask her without managing to feel awkward as hell and insult her.

"So, what's your name?" Caboose asked nicely, probably trying to ease up the tension that Angel had created.

_Fuck yeah!_

"Emily Hardwick," she replied with a serious business tone.

"So, Second Lieutenant," Caboose went on, "how do you know our sergeant here?"

"Oh, I don't kiss and tell," Emily (for that was her name) replied sultrily.

"Just tell 'em," I said. "Don't want them to misinterpret things."

"Why Sarge? You've got someone special?" she asked with a teasing tone.

I shrugged even though she couldn't see me. "I'm tempted to say that it's none of your business, but I owe you one. So yes, I do have someone special." The last two words were said in a mocking tone imitating Hardwick's voice.

"Huh, must be one hell of a gal," Hardwick replied.

"Yes," I said. "She is."

"Aw, come on Francisco, we both know she's nothing but a rebound and a glorified fuck buddy," Schitzo said. "I give you two months. Tops."

_Fuck. You._

The really disturbing part about having a figment of my imagination popping up occasionally as an alter ego was that every little thing that he said had at least some grain of truth to it. The disturbing part to this last comment was that it had a whole lot more than a grain of truth to it.

Yup.

"Anyways," Caboose insisted, "care to answer my question?"

There was no answer from the cockpit.

"Go ahead," I said.

"All right then," Emily started, "it was back in Aztlan, 'bout six months ago…"

I dozed off as Hardwick recalled that story about how I had a rod go through my thigh (not my ass) and out the other side, how her craft was shot down, how Pavel pulled her out of the burning craft and how we were faced with overwhelming odds. As she told the story I couldn't help but notice that there was an almost unhealthy amount of admiration directed towards both Pavel and myself. I know that I am an asshole for it, but I was actually smug about being talked so highly about in front of my new subordinates.

"Ok, ok," Angel interrupted in his characteristic Italian accent. "My butt's getting cramped, Sarge, it's your turn at the gun." He interrupted just as Emily was getting to the part where I shot the banshee's thruster.

"Must I remind you I'm the one who gives orders?"

"Sarge?" he begged.

"A Ok," I said.

I stood up from the small seat and grabbed onto a bar on the ceiling of the craft. I had to keep my head down if I wanted to fit. Arcangelo let go of the Falcon's M247H and shuffled backwards on that cramped ass of his before I helped him up. The man all but dropped to the seat I had been keeping warm for the last hour before I grabbed the machine gun's handles and shuffled my own ass to get a comfortable position.

"How much longer?" Grigori asked Hardwick.

"I thought I was telling a great story," she complained. I could almost see her pouting.

"No, I mean for the patrol."

"About two more hours, gotta make sure there's no covvies left alive on this place. Besides, it's either this or evacuation police, so don't complain."

Oh yeah, I forgot to tell you. The whole freaking planet was being evacuated. In fact, the whole goddamned system was being evacuated. A little covvie fleet pops up and we evacuate over five million people, crowding yet another inner colony. It didn't really hurt to be cautious though, especially when the Covenant were involved. Unless being cautious involved sitting on a hard metal floor for hours upon hours staring at absolutely nothing of interest.

"As I was saying…" Hardwick continued.

She then went on to go into extreme detail of how I made an incredibly shot and managed to buy us even more time as the banshee circled once again. I couldn't help but smile at the memory of that last stand in particular. I seemed to keep having lots of those lately. Actually, I seem to have a lot of those, period.

"Oi, sarge, do you see that?" Bumblebee said from one of the other two other Falcons in the patrol. My helmet radio carried his voice perfectly, even giving the impression that he was talking to me from a distance and not directly into my ears.

"It would be helpful if you pointed out the direction of 'that'," I suggested.

"Right," the Scott said. "Your eleven."

"My eleven?" I asked. "Or my ship's eleven."

"I did say _your_ eleven," he replied.

"Don't get wise with me Agnarsson," I replied even as I started scanning that area in particular. "I don't see nothing," I concluded after a few seconds of observation.

"Exactly, even the reeds are thinned out."

"Hmm," I hummed. "Pavel, go for a closer look," I told the other craft.

"Not for me to choose Frank, but I'll gladly give your message to the pilot," my friend replied from across the ship.

"Yes, be quick about it."

A second later the Falcon that my friend was on banked hard to the left and the Falcon started heading towards the area that Robert had pointed out even as my own ship and the other one started going farther up to provide better cover if needed be. Right now we were flying about a hundred meters or less above ground so that we could easily spot any covvies trying to hide in the vast marshes. Either they were gone or terribly good at hiding.

"Frank. Jack-fucking-pot."

"I assume you are talking about grunts," I said with malice in my voice. The thought of tearing apart the little dog-like aliens couldn't have been taken for a sign of good psychological condition by any self-respecting shrink. I think. My train of thought was interrupted by the roar of two M247H machine guns and the Falcon's autocannon. I might've been imagining things (it's been known to happen), but I think I could hear the screams of grunts all the way over here.

"Hardwick!"

"On it, Staff Sergeant," she replied with what could only be joy in her voice.

As soon as the Falcon was in position and range I started firing at whatever creature that happened to be moving on the ground. There were a lot of moving creatures on the ground. I killed about fifteen grunts and jackals before I snapped back and started looking for any grunt heavy carrying a grenade launcher or a fuel rod. Those things were nasty. In fact, I think I've told you how nasty they are several times in the past, so I won't waste my time now.

"Hey Sarge, I think my butt's uncramped. Can I have the gun?" Angel asked.

"Fuck that!" I replied, giddy as a guy right before his first time. "I'm fucking loving this!"

The grunts and jackals were falling like flies. There wasn't a single elite to be seen in the entire group of Covenant soldiers, so I figured that these hundred or so survivors from the Marine decapitating strike and the following Army curb-stomp battle were deserters who had the presence of mind to run away as fast as their little stumpy legs allowed them to.

A whole lot of good it did them.

I heard Sutton faking a manic laugh as he fired his own machine gun from another craft and Caboose chuckling as he popped heads open like watermelons. Pavel was doing a hell of a job in crippling the covvies and leaving them splashing in the waist-high water before coming back for another, more deadly, pass. His rounds now hit everything that Pavel could land them on. Mostly they made sickly thuds when they impacted against grunt light armor and jackal flesh, but some of them hit the water, producing thin eruptions that reached out a few feet towards the sky.

It was a truly beautiful spectacle.

The onslaught (for once we were the ones causing it) took about one more minute before everything on the ground stopped moving completely.

"Whose turn is it this time?" Scarecrow asked from another Falcon. He knew perfectly well whose turn it was.

"Ours," I replied needlessly. "Hardwick, pull us around and hover ten feet above water."

"Yes, sir. Boss Staff Sergeant."

The Falcon spun around while the other two gunships took positions and hovered one on each side of the battlefield as Hardwick slowly allowed her Falcon to drop lower and lower. After the bottom of the UH-144 pushed down on some reeds our pilot was forced to stop. She didn't want the ship's rotors making contact with anything that wasn't a covvie. I glanced over my shoulder and nodded at Caboose. I let go of the machine gun and pulled my battle rifle from my back, cocking it.

"Dropping."

For some reason, this little jump made me feel almost as nervous as a drop from orbit. My feet made contact with water and soon after they hit the mud below it. I bent my knees until the water reached my chest so that I absorbed all the force from the impact. As I started straightening up I heard a splash behind me. Angel had dropped as soon as me and Konstantinov landed.

"Status?" I asked lamely.

"Aight," the Italian said.

"Green," Caboose replied.

"Quick or safe?" I asked for the third time this day.

"Quick," the two men replied unanimously.

"Aight," I said. "I'll take north to southwest, Angel gets southwest to southeast, and Caboose gets southeast to north. Mercedez-Benz formation people."

"Oorah!"

"Pavel, Scarecrow, you're our eyes in the sky, watch out for any sneaky bastards trying to backstab us. Hardwick, don't be shy with your autocannon." "Yeah, yeah," Pavel replied boringly. "We know the drill." He added, "We've done it a million fucking times in the past few days…"

"Oi sarge!" Agnarsson said, helping me remember about the music that he'd downloaded into my helmet. I hadn't really gotten around to listening to it yet, but he swore it was at least ten times better than modern shit.

Not fucking likely.

"I got it," I replied, stifling a curse.

I commanded my helmet to start playing Bumblebee's music. He called it Epic Mix. Supposedly it played music that would make my heart beat faster and my head wander about into infinite adventure. His words, not mine. I would never come up with such a lame and corny phrase. Not even for a crappy book.

Guitar notes started playing on my helmet while violins made their characteristic sad noises in the background. Occasionally what sounded like an electric guitar would make a sudden noise and then the violins would start playing dramatic notes. I placed my knife on the bayonet lug of my battle rifle just as some woman started chanting on the song. The violins got even louder and suddenly I was feeling like I could take on the entire Covenant army all by myself.

I bayoneted a gurgling jackal that was bleeding through a dozen holes in its legs and belly through the throat just as the first song stopped playing. The second song started immediately and was just as impressive and epic as the first one, with the addition of a whole orchestra to the music. A grunt with half its limbs missing met its end just as the song reached a crescendo and another covvie of the same race received cold steel in the back of its head as drums boomed loudly. The music was, for some reason, getting me hyped up. It seemed to go so well with what I was doing.

"Yo, Konst, take a picture of me!" Angel called out.

"You're posing again?" the Russian asked, annoyed.

"Yeah, just got a great idea."

I ignored the two of them and rolled my eyes as Caboose's ID dot moved towards Angel's.

"Ok, now one like this," the Italian said.

"No, one's enough."  
>"Come on!"<p>

"All right, all right!"

"Angel, you're ike a girl," Scarecrow said from his craft.

"Of course he is," Snark helped out. "He has a girl's call sign."

"Burn," Grass said.

"Shut up," the man replied. "I'll do whatever the hell I want."

"Angel," I said. "Get back to work. Now."

"Aight sarge," he said disappointed.

"Whatever the hell you want Angel?" Konstantinov asked.

"Shut up."

I killed three other jackals and two more grunts that were struggling to stay afloat or holding on to some reeds for dear life in waist-high water to the tune of two different songs. They weren't as good as the first two, but they certainly lifted my spirits up. Man, that music could make me feel like I was doing something epic even if I was taking a huge dump. I'm still not sure if that's a good or a bad thing.

"Ok, we're done here," I said once I had triple checked every dead body and stabbed repeatedly the ones that even so much as moved a little bit. There was something strangely therapeutic about it.

"Good," Lamberti said. "I was getting sick of this."

"Hardwick!" I called out even though the radio would transmit the message just fine. "Bring her around," I ordered while spinning my right hand around.

"Aye, aye!" she said with a faux enthusiastic tone.

The strength of the Falcon's rotors usually lifted up dust or sent loose leaves flying around, but this time it made a mini-storm with all the water from the marshes, it made it somewhat difficult to climb on top of the gunship, but it was achievable. Can you believe that my problems went from staying alive under a wall of enemy plasma fire to getting on board an airship without breaking a nail? Fucking war is weird.

"All on board?" Hardwick asked more out of habit than of necessity.

"All aboard," Konstantinov said.

The Falcon started going higher and higher and then settled at an altitude just as high as the other two. I closed my eyes a little as the sun hit my visor head on but then opened them comfortably as the helmet's surface adjusted to the light. Regulars and Army had to wear sunglasses if their helmets didn't have any visors. Can you believe that? It's like they were living in the Stone Age. I have to admit though, a pair of old-fashioned pilots were good-looking. Marina had a pair that she liked to wear.

"How much land do we have to cover?"

"Just one more sector," I told Grass. "One more and we'll be done."

"That's what you said last time," Snark pointed out.

"Well last time I lied." That shut him up.

The three falcons circled around and around the marshes, looking in vain for another group of Covenant soldiers. It would've been a lot easier if the cruiser hadn't knocked out four dozen satellites and destroyed pretty much every single one of our drones. Still, sometimes it does pay to make sure everyone you hate is absolutely and completely dead. It's fun if you do it with extreme prejudice and impaling too.

_Sometimes I wonder why I'm not locked up in a psychiatric hospital…_

As soon as the sun started setting the three gunships turned around heading back to base. Caribe was as beautiful as its namesake back on Earth, this sun in particular had a lovely reddish hue to it. It was some sort of odd class star that didn't usually have planets capable of supporting life, but there's always an exception to the rule, or so my momma used to say.

Well, at least I think that's what she used to say. The only thing I can remember about her is how she used to tell me that I'd fine a decent Mexican girl and marry her if I had any wits.

_Sorry to disappoint you ma._

The sun was shining behind the three gunships as we saw the base over the horizon. There was a large Marina base housing two battalions and Echo Company in it. We had been staying there for the past week, going out occasionally on 'clean-up' missions. As far as life in the front got, this wasn't so bad after all. In fact, the only reason an ODST team was out on patrol is because the rest of the regulars were busy helping in the evacuation. It was really a waste of good manpower.

"Listen up," Hardwick called out through the general communications channel. "We're touching down on landing pad eight, just giving you a heads up."

Since this was a fully functional forward operating base, the landing pads were actually metal elevators that went below ground once they were occupied by aircraft. Since the Falcons were considerably small aircraft, all three could fit in if placed correctly.

"I…" Snark said, elongating the word. "I think I'm going to drop and let you work this out by yourselves," he told the pilots.

"I'm with the little one on this one," Scarecrow agreed loudly. "Wouldn't want to intrude on the landing."

"Why don't you let me get down too then?" Grass asked. "You know, I don't want to stay alone on the gunship."

"All right," I said, annoyed. "Everybody down. If you're afraid of landing so close to another ship you can jump off."

"Thanks Sarge!" my team said unanimously with an enthusiasm that was uncharacteristic for them.

_Geez, they can jump from low orbit in a metal coffin but they can't stay in a Falcon while it lands._

"Hey," Pavel complained. "I wouldn't mind it if they were Hornets instead!"

"Did I say that out loud?" I asked. "It's been a while since that happened."

"Shit Frankie," Pavel replied. "I don't want you to start being brutally honest to everyone you see again."  
>"What are you-" Konstantinov started.<p>

"Shut up!" Bumblebee interrupted. "Your call sign is Caboose."

Everybody laughed as they walked away from the landing pad.

"What are you laughing at?" Grass asked Lamberti. "Your call sign is more girly than mine."

Angel had taken off his helmet, so I could clearly see how he blushed at the comment. ODSTs may be the best, but below our badass armor we're nothing more than regular people trying to survive. Unless you were injected with drugs that made you have an unfair advantage in combat. Not really something to complain about, though. Not in the slightest.

I stayed as my squad headed to their quarters to watch the spectacle. The three Falcons maneuvered themselves into position at different heights and started descending slowly. I really didn't blame my team for not wanting to be a part of this landing. The gunships' rotors were so close to each other that it wouldn't be surprising if they scratched the neighboring craft. Finally, after a few seconds of frantic maneuvering, the three UH-144 Falcon gunships landed neatly right next to each other, their rotors inches away from touching.

Hardwick hopped off from her craft and took off her helmet even as she shook her head. I smiled at her because she had a pretty face, and I pretty much had it hardwired into my brain to smile at girls with pretty faces. Unless, of course, Marina was nearby, she would kick my ass if I even so much as glanced at another woman. For some reason I think she did just to piss me off and not because it made her feel insecure.

"Nice landing," I complimented the pilot.

"Thank you," she said, smiling back at me and doing a curtsy while holding the points of an imaginary dress.

I chuckled and ruffled my hair slightly, just getting used to having my helmet off. "Why don't you simply land two on one pad and one on another?" I asked as we started walking towards the barracks.

"Lost a bet," Emily replied while unzipping her flight suit and tying the top half around her waist. "It sure is hot in here," she complained.

"Aye," I agreed. "Lost a bet? What kind of bet?"

She told me.

"That's a stupid bet," I noted.

"Thanks. Sherlock."

"Elementary my dear Watson," I replied in a mock British accent. "Elementary."

Emily laughed a little bit before she stopped. "This is where we part," she informed me. "I'll see you around."  
>I gave her a goodbye wave in the form of a salute and started walking towards my own barracks. I made sure to ignore the glances that I got from the marines in the base. I could tell which man and woman were from Echo because they didn't spare me a second glance, but the rest of the marines looked at me with looks that went all the way from admiration to hatred. The Helljumpers were quite controversial amongst the rest of the armed forces. Mostly because we were such big assholes.<p>

I finally reached my designated barracks I found my team changing from their armor back to their regular clothes. Grass was standing behind an improvised curtain so that we couldn't see her change.

Good for her, otherwise the rest of the team would be forced to face the torture of avoiding looking at her incredible body.

"The glares we get are really starting to get annoying," I announced.

"Yeah," Konstantinov agreed, "but there's not much that you can do about it."

"You're right Caboose," Scarecrow said. He added his call sign just to piss him off. "You're oh so very right."  
>"Piss off <em>mudak<em>," the Russian replied angrily.

"Well, back to the conversation," Angel said. "I do believe we get more weird looks than even a SPARTAN would!"

"Are you for real?" Pavel asked in a deadpan tone.

"Sure I am," the Italian said with a coky smile as he did his belt. "We're the best of the UNSC."

"No," I said. "The SPARTANs are the best of the UNSC, _we're_ the best of humanity. They might do an excellent job in killing aliens, but they're nothing more than freaks."

"Oorah!" everyone in my team save for Pavel and Konstantinov replied. My friend just shook his head in disappointment, but he has a soft spot for SPARTANs. Konstantinov just gave me an indecipherable look and then stared at me for a second with a look on his face that could only be described as an ironic one.

"Francisco," Schitzo decided to join in. "The IIs are assholes, but the IIIs aren't as bad. Besides, they were just kids back then."

_Aight, IIIs are all right, but the rest are just monsters._

"Props," my hallucination said while putting up his fist for me to bump it.

My hand was already clenched and starting to go up before I realized what I was doing and I stopped myself. Schitzo was an asshole. The worst part about it is that he is me. Seems like he just got all of my ad qualities and nothing to compensate for them. His weird sense of humor only made it worse.

"Excuse me Sarge," Sutton said as he reached in my direction for his shirt. I sidestepped and the huge man went right through Schitzo as if he wasn't even there. Which he wasn't. As soon as Scarecrow stepped back my alter ego was gone. I repressed a sigh of relief and started undoing the straps for my armor.

"What's taking you so long?" Grass asked as she peeked out of the curtain.

Everyone made high-pitched screams and pushed bed sheets and shirts to cover their chests as our only female squad mate looked at them. I refrained from doing so only because the squad needed some sort of semblance of maturity, but I couldn't help but laughing out loud.

"Jeez, how immature," Camilla complained as she walked out of her improvised changing room, revealing that she was actually fully dressed. "I'll go grab some chow."

"Pavel," I said, "go with her."  
>"Sure."<p>

"Why?" she asked.

"They'll eat you alive out there, even if there's those four letters in your..." I considered my next word for a second, "chest."

"Whatever," Grass replied in a valley girl voice that could've only been natural. She blushed a little before she walked out of the barracks.

"Oi Sarge," I'll be grabbing some food too," Agnarsoon said.

"Sure Bee," I replied.

The man smiled at his call sign and trotted out of the room, trying to catch up to Pavel and Grass. It wasn't long before Scarecrow walked outside alongside Snark. The two made for a weird pair, but they got along pretty well. I was left alone with Konstantinov.

"So, tell me Grigori," I said. "What's your opinion on Naval intelligence?"

The man seemed thrown off by my question. "I guess they're nosy and annoying, but they do their job."

"Really?" I asked.

"Yeah," the corporal replied.

"You're the first Marine that I've talked to that hasn't made the ONI out to be the devil."

"Umm, I don't-"

"Oh, don't worry," I said. "ONI does have its good uses, as I am sure you already know."

"That they do," he admitted in a reluctant voice.

"But then again," I continued, "we also have our uses."

"Yes, sir."

"Who do you think is more useful to this war?" I asked. "Us or them." The tone in which I said it made it very clear what my feelings for the Office of Naval Intelligence were.

"I… ah…" Konstantinov stumbled over his words.

"I see," I said, stopping him. "Just be sure to remember who are the ones watching your back," I told him. "And be sure to remember who are your friends."  
>"Staff Sergeant?"<p>

"Hey," I said, changing the tone in my voice suddenly. "Why don't you go grab some chow too?"

Corporal Grigor "Caboose" Konstantinov was halfway to the door by the time I finished my sentence. "I'll be catching some Zs, be sure to tell them not to wake me up."

The man was long gone by the time I said that, so I got no answer.

_So that takes care of that,_ I thought as I snuggled into my bed.


	79. The Good and the Bad

Chapter LXXIX: The Good and the Bad

**December 9, 2542 (UNSC Calendar)/three months later**

**New Alexandria, Viery Territory, Reach, Epsilon Eridani System**

"Fondo, fondo, fondo, fondo, fondo!" everyone in the pub yelled loudly as I tilted the large tankard upwards so that the rest of the alcohol in it could reach my mouth with no problem.

I finished what was left of the soft liquor and glanced in front of me at Grass. Camilla was just half a mug behind me by the looks of it, and the marines and soldiers crowding our small table were drunkenly chanting the words that I had just taught them. Fondo meant bottom, I think you can figure out what it stands for in this context.

I raised another mug full of Coors Light. It wasn't my favorite beer by any means, but I had chosen it because it was easier to swallow in big gulps than other stronger drinks that I enjoyed. This one I put to my mouth and let it flow, being careful not to spill any drops over my chin or else I'd have some people challenging my skill. It wasn't the first time that I'd had a drinking contest, it wasn't the first time I'd had one against a girl. It was the first one that I'd had against one of my own subordinates. Technically speaking, I was still the ruling drinking champion on board the _Inconvenience_, but there was no way that I could organize another contest outside of my own ODST squad. The officers on the ship were too uptight and all the previous ones were either freezing or burning in space.

Hell, nothing I can do about it.

I was finishing the fourth tankard just as I saw Schitzo's distorted shape waving at me through the bottom of the glass mug. Everything about that wave was insulting, from the exaggerated motions of his hand to the way that he smiled at me as he moved his hand. I lost precious seconds as my head exploded in anger but had enough presence of mind to slam down my glass loudly on the table as I reached for the fifth and final half-pint mug with my other hand.

Grass had pushed herself and reached out for her own last mug just an instant after me, but I had the experience and a slight advantage. I swallowed as much as I could without choking on the beer. Grass was a little bit too eager and I mentally smiled as I heard her coughing out the amber colored liquid. I swallowed the last gulp and slammed my tankard loudly, making the rest of the empty glasses jump an inch off the table.

"Yeah!" I roared drunkenly.

Everyone that was busy watching the drinking contest roared in approval and patted me in the back even as they handed money to Pavel. My friend knew me well enough, and he had decided that betting against me would've been financial suicide. Instead, he found everyone who was rooting on Camilla and made bets with them. The guy must've earned three dozen credits at least. I smiled at the big guy and high-fived him. I would be getting a substantial commission from the bet. I wrecked my liver and he paid me whatever money he made out of it.

Grass was looking annoyed in a way that only someone half-drunk can pull off. She was the center of attention of several troopers that were praising her for her good try. She didn't pay them any more mind than necessary and only thanked them politely before shrugging at me and laughing at a joke that Agnarsson told. If I had been surrounded by as many women as men were surrounding Grass, I swear I would've had sex with them all as soon as possible. Then again, I am a male human, and we are notorious for not thinking with the right organ quite often.

"Nice job," Schitzo said. The quietness of his voice in the loud pub made it creepy to hear. I could understand perfectly what he was saying to me even though I couldn't understand what Scarecrow was yelling in my ear.

"What?" I asked back.

"I said nice job Sarge!"

"Thanks," I replied with a smile. "But I already know that," I added cockily even as I patted the huge man on a muscular shoulder.

Sutton shrugged and turned back to Snark and started talking to him about some thing or another.

I, on the other hand, elbowed my way through the small crowd that had converged on the tall table that we had used as a stadium for our little match. Some yelled drunken compliments at me (which I drunkenly replied) and others simply glared at me for making them loose their hard-earned credits. The entirety of this bar was filled with men and woman from the military. Most were garrisoned in Reach, but there were a few, like us, that weren't.

I finally made my way through the crowd and emerged into an empty section of the pub. I made my way to a booth with a lovely blonde sitting in it and sat next to her, putting my arm around her shoulders. "How you doing gorgeous?"

"You're drunk," the girl said.

"I'm half drunk," I corrected. "And you're not having a good time, what's wrong?"

"Nothing's wrong!" Marina said suddenly. "Frankie, nothing's wrong."

"Marina…" I pleaded.

"It's just…! It's just that!" she tried saying, stumbling over her words. "Argh!"

I inched closer towards her and let my hand fall from her shoulder down to her upper arm and rubbed it. I did it because it was supposed to be comforting, at least it had been what Layla used to say to me whenever I did it.

"Make sure to remember that this girl isn't Layla," Schitzo said from across the booth. "No matter how hard you want her to be."

I ignored myself and held Marina closer. No matter what my evil hallucinations told me, I knew damn sure that I loved this woman and that I wanted to make happy. The thing is, that it was getting harder and harder to make her happy. I don't know if that was my fault of hers. Probably both of us.

After a minute if both of us staying there without saying anything Marina finally talked. "I don't like her," she said.

"Who?" I played dumb.

"Seppa, the one you call Grass, why do you even call her that?"

"Not sure," I lied. "Something about her legs I think." Normally I wouldn't have lied to her about this, but she seemed to be feeling sensitive and I decided against it. Let's call it a white lie. "Why don't you like her?" I quickly asked.

"Don't know, there's just something about her," my girlfriend said vaguely.

"Yeah, yeah," I agreed. "She's so mean to everyone and doesn't think about anyone but her."

"Yes," Marina agreed, even though Grass had been nothing but nice to her.

"Terrible soldier," I added.

"Couldn't hit an elephant in a hallway," my girlfriend said.

"Talks weird," I invented.

"And she's ugly," Marina ventured.

"Agreed," I lied. The lie was so obvious, so incredibly transparent that I burst out laughing and Marina chuckled slightly, bringing a smile back to her lips. "You're the only girl for me," I reminded her. Even as I said it I thought about it.

"Now, now Frankie, you shouldn't tell lies." It was only the second time that Schitzo had said that phrase. The first time it happened it had scared me half to death, this time it just made me feel like a worthless piece of shit. I would've preferred being scared half to death all over again.

I squeezed Marina even closer to me as I thought about the implications of one part of me not loving her, even if it was a really small part. I'm not really a kind of guy that would cheat on a girl, sure, I like sex and having fun and messing around, but not in that way.

I guess that my uncle was a good influence on that.

Yeah.

"Hey," I said. "Let's steal a pelican, I want to show you something."

All right, all right, sometimes being raised by a hard as nails soldier doesn't really make you perfect.

* * *

><p>"Wow," she said. "Who told you about this place?"<p>

"Pavel," I lied. Actually, Hardwick had told me about the shipyard, but I didn't want to give Marina any more reasons to give me shit. "You like it?"  
>"Yeah," she replied. "Pity we can't stay long, with our stolen pelican and all."<p>

I chuckled and banged the hull a couple of times. The craft was sitting on a flat ridge that I had also been told about by Hardwick. It overlooked the construction site of the UNSC _Trafalgar_. The first of its class, deemed supercarriers by some guy that had been practical as opposed to imaginative. The UNSC _Trafalgar_ was almost completely done, with only the outer layers missing from the hull. The ship sported two MAC cannons and I could already see the launch tubes of at least a hundred Archer missile pods. I couldn't even begin to fathom the amount of armor that that thing would be able to carry. And I am not even mentioning the enormous complement of longsword fighters and ground troops.

"It's so big," Marina whispered.

"What?" I said, startled. "You can notice it through my pants?" I arranged my pants frantically pretending to be ashamed.

"You know what I am talking about," she laughed.

I did, the _Trafalgar_ was five fucking kilometers in length. Almost as large as a Covenant assault carrier and larger than pretty much anything else that the covvies could field. The sun was just beginning to set behind the supercarrier (yes, I started drinking quite early) and made it look all the more imposing.

"Frank, Sheppard said that he could keep me covered for about an hour and a half?"

"My my," I said, "what are you suggesting?"

Marina glanced at her watch and looked at me. "A quickie."

"Count me in," I said even as I climbed down from the top of the pelican and helped my girlfriend out. It was times like this that remembered me why I loved her.

* * *

><p>A quickie later I realized that I didn't love her.<p>

"So, how'd it feel Francisco?" Schitzo asked me.

_Like a fucking threesome with your eyes digging holes on the back of my neck._

"Aw, come on, I'm you, no need to get all shy."

_I'm not shy! You're just fucking annoying as fuck._

"Am I annoying because I'm annoying or because what I say is the truth?" he asked me.

I tried to keep my mind blank, I really did, but soon enough I slipped up and Schitzo took advantage of the situation and started pressuring me to break up with her. I did my best in ignoring the hallucination, but one does not simply _ignore_ a fully visible hallucination talking about such a sensitive topic. I was forced to listen as he (or I) listed all the reasons why I should end the relationship with Marina Bogdanovic, Warrant Officer. It became clearer and clearer that he was right as my soon-to-be ex-girlfriend piloted back towards the base that she had borrowed this pelican from.

_Fine! _I admitted to myself, _but I can't break up with her right now._

"You'll find the moment," Schitzo said.

Quite unsurprisingly, the sun hit my eyes for a second once he had said that and I was forced to close them. Once I opened them again Schitzo was nowhere to be seen and I was back to sitting alone in the back seat of the Pelican. For some reason, even though Marina was rambling about some nonsense involving a new roommate of hers borrowing a hair dryer without permission, it's hard for me to remember that women are incredibly different from men.

I stood up as the pelican reached its landing pad and deployed its landing gear. I walked towards the cockpit and kissed the beautiful blonde piloting the craft on the cheek as opposed to the lips. All because I had hit myself in the head one too many times and had developed something akin to multiple personality disorder and schizophrenia. "I'll see you back on the ship," I said. "Gotta meet up with Pavel and the rest."

"Love you," Marina said. It felt rather similar to being shot. I looked at her and forced myself to smile before quickly leaving the cockpit. I was already starting to sweat. I had never broken up with a girl before and I had no idea what the hell I was supposed to do without doing it wrong. I was thinking of a dozen different scenarios that went from an amicable mutual break-up to her stabbing me in the groin with her homemade machete.

For some reason the later scenario seemed way more likely than the first one. Marina was as feisty in life as she was feisty in bed. She was as close as it got to being a literal really sharp double-edged sword. Most of the time I only got her good side, but if I went through with this my life would get a little more complicated. At least until she got over it.

_What if you're the one that doesn't get over it?_ I asked myself.

Shit.

I moved through the landing pads and avoided some mechanics that were getting busy drinking beer instead of fixing their ships. Normally I would've been annoyed by that, but my still-slightly-inebriatedenhiabrated state would not allow me to be such a hypocrite. It's funny how much people change without you noticing, isn't it? What's even more funny is that you never notice when _you _change. I kept on moving towards the parking lot and my nice UNSC-issued hog. Once I had hopped in onreached the monstruousmonstrous truck I hopped up inon it and ran away from a woman that was considerably smaller and physically weaker than me.

I should've felt ashamed.

I drove through the ten-lane driveway and made my way back to downtown New Alexandria. Pavel had actually told me to meet up with him in this restaurant. I found it very weird since Pavel wasn't the kind of guy to go to restaurants, favoring bars, pubs, and clubs. I took an exit and then a couple of wrong turns before finally reaching the place that Pavel had told me to go to. I double checked the message that he sent me to make sure that I was in the right place. I shrugged and hopped out of the car and gave the keyes to the valet. I was forced to stifflestifle a laugh at the sight of the small man trying to climb into on the huge jeep.

The restaurant was your standard luxury restaurant, the only odd thing about it was that it was on surface level despite being in the downtown area. Theseis kind of restaurants were usually located on top of prestigious buildings so that you could get a lovely sight of the city. I walked went inside and skipped the line, walking towards the hostess of the place. As was to be expected with a place like this, the hostess was as close to perfection as a woman could get. The uniform that she was wearing only accentuated her good features.

"Excuse me," I said while the men and women dressed in fancy clothes sneered at me.

"Yes?" the hostess replied in a tired and bored voice as she raised her head. As soon as I made eye contact with her, her demeanor changed. "Sir, what can I help you with?"

_I wonder why she suddenly got all giddy…_

"Yeah," I said. "Is there a table here for one Pavel Klaus?" I asked. "And am I allowed to go inside like this?" I gestured at my casual outfit consisting of cargo pants, combat boots, and a black t-shirt.

"I don't think it'll be a problem," the hostess said with a practiced smile as she checked her list on a fancy terminal. "Yes, there is one Mr. Klaus in here. Do you want me to escort you to his table?"

"Yes, thank you," I said politely.

The hostess maneuvered through tables, waiters (both human and robotic alike), and patrons deftly and avoided bumping into anything. I was quite impressed really, as in twenty seconds I managed to almost knock down three robotic waiters carrying an unhealthy amount of food and bumped into two old men that sniveled at me and gave me glares. Finally we arrived at a small square table with two chairs only. One of them was occupied by the familiar figure of Sergeant Pavel Klaus.

"Yo, Frank!" he called out, eliciting looks of annoyance from several nearby people. "Over here!"

"I see you," I told him more quietly, "and I can hear you just fine."

"Sorry, sorry," he said, lowering his voice's volume. "Just excited that's all."

"Thank you," I said, looking at the hostess's nametag on her (ample) chest. "Marie."

The hostess blushed and said that she would bring me a menu. I looked at Pavel, who was wearing a napkin on his shirt's neck like a little kid and shook my head with a smile.

"Boy, do girls have a thing for you Frankie," Pavel noted.

"What?" I asked. "Her? No way."

"She was drooling over you Frank."

Under any other circumstances I would've answered that comment with a 'sure' or a 'damn right', but under this particular set of circumstances, I could only give my friend a small smile and place my own napkin on my lap before checking my surroundings. I made sure that there was nothing that could threaten me in this restaurant and relaxed a little. If anything arose, my knife would be just a move away, tucked in nicely between my right boot and my left sock (which I was using on my right foot).

"So, what's the situation?" I asked.

"I finally broke up with Chloe," he exclaimed.

"Really?" I asked, keeping my cool. "How'd it happen?"  
>The hostess returned personally to give me a menu. I gave her my most dazzling smile as I grabbed the menu and proved Pavel right. The woman blushed and grinned stupidly before she caught herself and turned around quickly. She did like me.<p>

"See?" Pavel pointed out with a fork.

"Ok, you're right," I conceded.

"Of course I am," my friend said smugly as he returned his fork to its place.

"You're right about that gorgeous woman liking me," I added.

Pavel looked dismayed. "How do you spin it to favor you?" he asked me.

"Well, you pretty much did half the spinning yourself, convincing me that she liked me and all."

"Touché" he said.

"Well, back to the point," I said.

"Oh, right." Pavel said with a huge smile akin to that of an elite's. "It seems that she hadn't been sleeping around since I found out," he explained, "and I was getting absolutely bored of waiting for her to slip up and was running out of cash to pay my expensive network of spies."

"You bribed her friends?" I interrupted.

"I even slept with one of them," he said with a grin just as big as the previous one.

Even though right now I didn't really feel like it I forced myself to smile and high-fived my friend as I opened the menu. As I caught a first look at the prices I whistled.

"You can ask for anything you want," Pavel said happily. "It's on me."

"In that case…" I started looking at the prices instead of the dishes. "I'll have the Arcadian Lobster-Crab," I stated.

"Do you even know what that is?" my friend asked. Obviously annoyed that I had asked for the most expensive dish in the menu.

"It's expensive," was what I replied.

Pavel groaned before smiling again. He was very happy, that much was evident. "OK, let me go on…" Pavel went ahead end explained to me throughout the course of the meal o about how he managed to trick Delacroix into confessing that she had cheated on him and then told me the way that he brutally denied her forgiveness when she asked for it. "She even said that it had only been once," Pavel chuckled. Pavel apparently called her a liar and told her that he knew about everyone that she had cheated on him with. Then Pavel called her a few unsavory words that I probably wouldn't have called any girl and left her. "She even cried."I have to admit, it's very hard to feel any kind of sympathy for Chloe, she had it coming and she did sleep around while dating my best friend.

"Good for you man," I said as I grabbed the first bite of my lobster-crab. I made a face. "This tastes like shit," I lied.

"You're going to eat all the fucking plate clean," Pavel said. "I'm not paying for that unless you do."

"I'm kidding," I confessed. "It's actually pretty good."

"Good," Pavel said. "Good."

From that point on the conversation went differently and by the time we were both done without plates we had laughed loudly so many times that there had been several looks directed at us in addition to one complaint. Of course, being soldiers we have a right to be loud and annoying. We're saving these people's lives after all. Not that they would do anything about it of course. ONI does its propaganda job extremely well. I just wonder what people make of the food riots or of the planets disappearing one by one.

"Francisco," Schitzo said, seating down on a spare chair and tucking his napkin on his shirt in the same way as Pavel had. "Isn't there something you should tell our friend?"

_My friend,_ I corrected. _Besides, I don't want to ruin the mood._

Pavel paid the bill after giving me several not so subtle hints that I should offer to pay at least one third of the meal. He finally gave his credit card to Marie, the hostess and grumbled something unintelligible. He finally removed his napkin from his shirt and placed it right next to his dish. "You know," he said. "I once heard that if a girl's name ends with an 'ie' when it should end with a 'y' it's because she loves sex."

"Where'd you hear that?" I asked.

"I think Agnarsson might've mentioned it," Pavel mused. "Speaking about, what the hell is wrong with your call signs?"

"Hey, they're supposed to suck," I explained. "I wasn't about to go calling them Overlord or Deathwire."

"Scarecrow?" Pavel asked with a raised eyebrow.

"All right, I like Sutton, that's why I gave him a better call sign."

"Are you sure you won't change them?" he asked me.

"I might," I shrugged. "Provided they do something that makes it worth it. Hey," I laughed, "they'll evolve, just like in Pokemon."

"What the hell is Pokemon?"

"Never mind, just some weird ass videogame from half a millennium ago."

"Agnarsson?" Pavel asked.

"Yup," I said. "Despite feeling like I'm moving cubes around, it's somewhat addictive."

"Yeah," Pavel agreed. "All of Agnarsson's weird shit tends to be. Anyways, what could you change the call signs to?" he asked.

"I dunno, Angel would become Archangel, it's certainly more badass. Caboose could evolve into Freight Train or something train-related. Maybe Maglev. Bumblebee could ev-"

"Please don't say evolve," Pavel interrupted. "It's weird."

"Bumblebee could _become_ Hornet, but Agnarsson seems to be happy with his call sign."

"Trust me," Pavel said. "He'll jump at a chance to change it."

"If you say so," I backed off.

"That should be it," Marie said as soon as she returned without the check. "Thanks for coming here," she said, directing her radiant smile mostly to me.

"One question," Pavel said. "Why did you attend us personally instead of a waiter?"

Marie's smile twitched briefly before she regained composure. "We pride ourselves in offering nothing short of the best service."

"All right," Pavel said with more than enough sarcasm in his voice. "We'll be going, thanks for everything. Frank, you can take care of the tip."

I suppressed a groan and pulled out my credit card. I swiped it on a datapad that the hostess offered me and gave her twenty credits worth of tips. It was a lot, more than twenty percent of what Pavel had paid for the whole meal, but Marie had done a great job and I was feeling kind for some odd reason.

"Thank you, sir," Marie said with a smile as she reached for her pocket. "My shift ends at four," she said, her professional tone changing to a more flirty one and handing me a note with a series of digits written on it.

"And I deploy at six," I told her, reaching into my shirt and pulling out my dogtags. "Maybe next time," I suggested.

Marie's happy face went to sad in an instant before she shrugged and blew on her hair. "Maybe next time," she agreed. "Frank."

I smiled at her one last time before turning around and catching up with Pavel. I showed him my prize and he just shook his head. "I would've thought that you'd tell her that you have a girlfriend."

I shrugged, not wanting to be caught in a lie. Or at least, half a lie.

"That's my car," I said, pointing out the civilian hog that I had been issued for the duration of my leave. Nezarian had given me the number to one of his friends and I managed to get a car. It beat moving by bus or cab. The huge vehicle looked completely out of place next to the expensive luxury cars and the occasional sports car. The valet hopped out of it somewhat stylishly and gave me my keys.

"Sweet ride," he said.

"Thanks," I replied. I hopped onto the hog in a practiced maneuver and waved at Pavel, who looked at me with jealousy as the crappy model that he had rented came in after my monstrous car. I laughed at him and turned on the hog, feeling a nice sense of satisfaction as the engine turned on and the vehicle started shaking. I revved the engine a couple of times just to piss off Pavel before finally pushing the accelerator.I drove through the unfamiliar streets of New Alexandria without a particular goal in mind. While it was true that the _Inconvenience_ would be deploying just a few hours from now, all my things were packed and the trip would be long enough to warrant cryo, so I really didn't have to worry about a good night's sleep.

I drove through the city for several hours. New Alexandria was really something to look at. It wasn't the largest city in Reach, but it was certainly the most impressive. Only architects that were (literally) universally acclaimed had the opportunity to build in the city. Most of the constructions were skyscrapers reaching in average eight hundred meters in height. There were some buildings that outdid all the rest. Olympic Tower, the ONI headquarters was one, despite what it represented. There were some other buildings that stood out as well, the Vyrant Telecom Tower was another example. The club on top of it was said to be one of the best, even though it had just opened very recently. I finally decided to start heading to the hotel and back to the ship after two hours of driving erratically and after almost crashing for the third time. I was tired.

* * *

><p>I heaved my bag over my shoulder and elbowed soldiers out of the way. We were ferried back to the <em>Inconvenience<em> in an Albatross ship, it was mostly empty except for my team and a couple of late arrivals that were looking very hungover. As soon as the large transport craft docked with the _Inconvenience _up in space I tossed my duffel bag to Pavel and told him to put it on my bed. He agreed after complaining loudly.

I moved through the corridors and had to avoid bumping into several swabbies and regulars milling about to finish anything they needed to get done before being put into cryo for a couple of months. It was annoying when this happened, but since I was in my semi-formal all black uniform everyone was wise enough to get out of the way and let me pass through the middle of the corridors and hallways. Still, it was pretty crowded and I had to do some mild maneuvering.

_Jeez, you lazy bastard,_ I told myself. No Schitzo this time.

After intimidating enough people through the use of my uniform and my physique I managed to reach the place that I was looking for. Marina's door was no different than any of the other doors on the ship save for a screen displaying her name and those of her three roommates. I knocked on the door because I knew that her doorbell wasn't working. A lovely blonde opened the door and smiled at me, driving daggers through my resolve.

"Marina," I said. "We need to talk."

* * *

><p><em>Uh-oh, he's certainly in for some serious shit. I was just wondering what you guys think of my non-action chapters. I know that they most certainly don't have the same popularity as combat based chapters, but having some feedback is always good and nice. Talking about feedback, it has recently come to my attention that I could do a lot better with character development, anything you'd like? After all, I'm writing this for you. :)<em>

_As always, thanks to Sniper Fodder for proof-reading this chapter._

_-casquis_


	80. One For All?

Chapter LXXX: One For All?

**February 24, 2543 (UNSC Calendar)/two months later**

**UNSC **_**Inconvenience,**_** edge of Ursa Tertio System**

I yawned as loudly as possible before I opened my eyes. Even as my eyelids parted I had trouble seeing correctly. As soon as my yawn was over I started retching and threw up the lung fluid. As soon as that ugly shit made contact with my cryogenic pod the door started opening. I stretched my arms and arched my back. Being two months in the same position should feel worse than this, but in reality I'd just been there for a few seconds. At least, that's what my body thought.

"Will you please stop doing that, it looks weird," Grass noted.

I blushed a little and stopped arching my back. It did look weird. I gave the female Helljumper one quick glance and was surprised to see that she was already wearing her underwear. "You wake up early?" I asked.

"Yeah," she replied. "I asked Eliza to let me out a minute earlier."

"All right," I said, leaving my pod and reaching for my clothes. "Can you look away?" I asked.

This time it was her turn to blush and look away. I reached for my briefs (black) even as my teammates were waking up and doing various stretching exercises. Sutton joked around with a nervous-looking Snark and Pave was still as happy as he had been two months ago when he finally broke up with Delacroix. The rest of the guys were simply chatting while they got dressed. It suddenly annoyed me that even my underwear had to be black, but there wasn't really anything I could do about it.

"Hey," I asked suddenly, "how come you get to have white underwear?"

Camilla turned slightly sideways and then fully once she realized that I had underwear on and that my pants were already at my knees. "Well, black underwear is usually considered sexy," she explained.

"Amen," Sutton hummed.

"So…" she said.

"So…?" I begged her to continue.

"So the UNSC doesn't really want soldiers to look at each other in that way," she finished explaining with a smirk.

"Too late," Konstantinov murmured.

Once again, the whole team exploded in laughter save for Grass, who only looked flustered and slightly annoyed as she started putting on the rest of her clothing. The few other soldiers in this cryo bay looked at us weird for a few moments before deciding to mind their own business.

"Hey Frank, we go straight to our quarters or is there something we have to do?" Pavel asked me.

I reached for my shirt in the small shelf next to my cryo tube and grabbed a small datapad that was there. I touched a few numbers and it showed me my orders. It seemed like we didn't really need to do anything for now other than report that we were out of cryo without problems. I did so from the pad and told the rest of the squad to go to their rooms and relax. If this was a regular deployment without any incidents we would be very bored for a few months.

Let me rephrase that, if this wasn't a regular deployment, without any incidents, we would be very bored for a few months.

It really isn't funny how often the Covenant find a planet that our ship happens to be guarding.

"We're fine," I said. "Nothing but rest."

Then alarms started blaring.

* * *

><p>"What is it?" I asked Wilkins. Alarms were still blaring in the background but everyone had long since stopped running around to their combat stations.<p>

"As soon as we jumped into the system we broadcast a message about our arrival as per protocol," the ONI liaison informed me. "We didn't get an answer."

"Shit," I muttered.

"Wait, what does that mean?" Lamberti asked.

"Covenant," Konstantinov explained.

"The only problem," Albaf said, entering the room, "is that we don't know anything. They could already be gone, they could've just arrived, they could be waging battle right now. We don't really have that much information on anything."

"Yes," Wilkins agreed. "Captain Brooks is sending several messages to New Moskva to see if there is any UNSC presence left."

"Won't that broadcast our position?" Scarecrow asked.

Wilkins simply shrugged in reply.

"Ma'am," Eliza popped up from a holotank. "Oh," she said, feigning surprise at seeing the rest of us in Albaf's office. "Had I known you were here I would've worn something more fitting."

"Get to the point Eliza," Commander Albaf snapped

"Fine, fine. We just got a reply message from the UNSC Ursa Tertio Fleet. Or what's left of it."

"What's it say?" Camilla asked, almost urgently.

"From the original ten ships defending the planet there are only three left. One of them is badly damaged. A Covenant fleet arrived on the planet, twenty enemy ships."

"Twenty?" I exclaimed. "How did they manage to survive against twenty?"

"The fleet's commanding officer apparently did a hell of a job. He managed to lay out a mine field before the covvies engaged his fleet."

"How many enemy ships left Eliza?" I asked.

"Thirteen."

"Whoa, he lost seven and killed seven while outnumbered two to one?" Snark asked admiringly. "Impressive."

"Indeed," Albaf admitted.

"The rest of the UNSC and Covenant forces are playing hide-and-seek around the planet, but there's already an enemy landing force on the planet."

"That's where we come in," Wilkins said.

"Yes," the construct confirmed. "Our ship doesn't appear to have been detected just yet. We are counting on the element of surprise, so we'll burst through the remains of the enemy fleet and start taking the battle to the Covenant on the ground."

"One frigate hardly seems up to the job of taking an entire landing force," I said.

"There are several Army regiments already being redirected to the landing points," Eliza said.

"Hernandez will be glad to hear that," Pavel muttered.

"In addition to that," the female construct continued, "the three remaining ships have started deploying their Marine complements. All that is left to do is for us to spearhead the attack."

"You got all that from one message?" Konstantinov asked.

"It was three paragraphs long Corporal," the construct replied with irritation. "A lot of information can be transmitted in just three paragraphs."

Grigori looked annoyed at the AI but refrained from commenting, instead he simply crossed his arms over his chest and looked glum. The rest of my squad all started asking questions at the same time. Some were directed at Albaf and some were directed at Eliza. I would've expected more of my squad of handpicked prodigies. So much for professionalism.

"Shut up!" I ordered. "Everyone, head down to the launch bay and wait there." My squad looked at me for a few moments. "Now!" I yelled.

The six newly-arrived members quickly shuffled out of the crowded office and started moving out towards the launch bay while Pavel stayed behind with me and the two ONI liaisons on board the ship. I made sure to close the door before sitting down in one of the comfortable chairs that Albaf had in front of her desk. It was leather and very comfortable. I wondered why she had it brought here. In fact, I wonder why her office looked so stylish when she herself barely bothered to put makeup on.

"So, Samantha…" I started, trying my luck.

"Staff Sergeant," she interrupted. "To you I am either ma'am, miss, or commander. Anything else is unprofessional." The words that she said were what you'd expect from an officer of her caliber, but the way she said them sent ice into my veins.

"All right then, is there anything else I need to know?" I asked. "Commander?"

"Right now I gave you all the information that we have," she replied as she sat down across the desk.

"Are you sure?" Pavel asked.

"That's what I just said," Albaf said.

"Who's in command of the UNSC fleet?" I asked suddenly.

"One Rear Admiral by the name of Benjamin Wolfe Harper," Wilkins said.

"Eliza?"

"He's an excellent commander and tactician. He has a short record but on every battle that he has participated in he stood out and wreaked havoc among the enemy fleet. Harper is pretty young for the position and rank that he has, but his career record is quite impressive. He is the recipient of several UNSC decorations including the Legion of Honor. The Vice Admiral-"

"That's enough," Albaf interrupted. "Thank you Eliza."

"Ma'am," the artificial intelligence said respectfully as her hologram flickered and died.

"As you can see Staff Sergeant, the fleet is under capable hands. No need to worry about us."

"Actually," Pavel said. "I'm more worried about or way off of the planet."

"Right…" Albaf said with annoyance.

"Anyways, about the three remaining ships, what class are they?" I asked the ONI officer.

"Harper's flagship is a _Marathon_-class ship, the UNSC _Disproportionate Retribution._ The two other ships are heavy cruisers."

"_Disproportionate Retribution_?" I asked. "That name sounds familiar. Ahh, I know, wasn't it commanded by some other officer?"

"Yes, it used to be the ship of Admiral Whitcomb," Albaf explained. "If I am not mistaken you received your Legion of Honor on board that ship," she continued. "Sergeant Klaus was also decorated if I am not mistaken."

"Right, right," Pavel said. "It was during… New Constantinople. Back in thirty-six?"

"Seven," I corrected. "That ship is one hell of a boat, how come this guy got it? Especially from none other than Danforth Whitcomb himself!"

"He earned it, Castillo," Wilkins said.

"Anything else?" I asked again.

"No, we'll tell you when we find a high-value target for your team, in the meantime, just wait at your battle stations."

"Aye, aye ma'am," I said, standing up and saluting. "Lieutenant."

The trip to the drop bay was uneventful, only delayed by a small detour to the armory, where Pavel and I both filled a crate with boxes of ammunition of different calibers and a few grenades of all types. Our armor was down in the drop bay, same as our weapons. Our sidearms stayed with us at all times; it was pretty much standard practice on board Navy ships to keep your gun on your hip. The crates felt heavy, testament of how much potential firepower there was in them. Sometimes I pity the Army, they carry almost double the load of a regular Marine and a lot less protection.

"Oi, Sarge!" Agnarsson called out. "What's going on?"

"Nothing Bumblebee," I said, calling him by his call sign. "We just wait for orders." As soon as I said his call sign he went all serious. Call signs were especially designed to be used in combat, and if I was using his, there must be a reason for it. "Everyone, suit up."

I took off all my clothes save for my briefs and my shirt before putting on my undersuit. It was uncomfortable as hell, but I had learned with time and experience that it was better to have it on than not. After that I repeated the well-practiced motions of putting on my armor piece by piece. I ran my fingers across the two gashes in my chest-piece before placing the straps on my shoulders and tightening it to the vest that went below it. Once everything was nicely set up I grabbed my helmet and placed it on the small holo-table in the middle of the room.

Next up everybody grabbed their respective weapons and placed them on the table as they started shoving bullets into extra magazines. The metallic sounds that we made had a strange, calming feeling, After all, it was the sound that came before we delivered death unto all that opposed us. As soon as all available magazines were loaded everyone started field-stripping their weapons and cleaning them. Grass was done before any of us had even started putting back together our rifles. You could sure tell her family had a gunsmithing tradition.

By the time my BR55 was nicely oiled and cleaned everyone else's rifle, pistol, or machine gun had been nicely cleaned up. As soon as they were done making their weapons ready for combat they started milling about the room. I had already seen their pre-jump routines, but I hadn't seen my squad waiting for orders to come. It was quite unusual really. Snark looked through his rifle's sight at different points in the room and occasionally calibrated. Scarecrow loaded and unloaded a grenade into his underbarrel grenade launcher. Grass sharpened her machete like a maniac. Bumblebee spun the tubes of his SPANKr repeatedly. Angel walked from one point of the room to another, he would then sit down for a couple of seconds before repeating the process. Pavel simply drummed his fingers on his M247L and made small talk with me while I spun my Damascus steel knife. Caboose looked eerie as he sat down on his pod, his ever-present black baseball hat on his head, covering his eyes.

"Staff Sergeant," Eliza's avatar popped up.

"Yes?" I asked nervously.

"We're about to go through the enemy fleet's rear, I just thought you should know."

"Oh, thanks."

Everyone sighed in both relief and worry. If we were spotted right now there was a high chance that we would get blasted out of the sky in no time by half the enemy fleet orbiting the planet. On the other hand, it meant that we didn't have to do a blind jump just yet.

The waiting was terrible. About two minutes after Eliza warned us about our situation alarms started blaring loudly and the drop bay was filled with flashing red lights.

"Ok, Reaper Squad!" I called out. "Get in your coffins!"

"Yes, sir!" they replied unanimously as they stopped whatever they were doing and made haste towards their respective pods.

"Eliza, what's our target?" I asked as my SOEIV's door opened.

"Your actual target is a Covenant transmitter tower. It seems that it functions both as a jammer for our frequencies and as a radio towers for theirs."

"Sounds easy enough," Pavel said.

"It's heavily guarded even though it's on the edge of enemy-held land."

"Sounds easy enough," Pavel repeated.

"Flying over position," Eliza informed us, her voice automatically going to a prerecorded phrase. "Umm, yeah," she said. "That."

"People, you heard the lady, get ready for some explosives. Angel, I want some heavenly fire raining on those bastards."

"Yes Staff Sergeant!" he replied giddily.

"How do we go?" I called out loudly.

"We go feet first, Staff Sergeant," they shouted back in unison.

I cracked my knuckles as the door in my pod closed down in front of me. The eight SOEIVs were jerked slightly sideways as they were moved out towards their launch tubes. There was a ten second countdown on the screen above my head. I put on my helmet and the HUD displayed the same countdown. I quickly glanced at Marina's smiling picture on the side of my pod and quickly pulled it down before shoving it into a pocket.

Red, yellow, green.

There was a jerk as I was launched and then another jerked as my pod stopped.

"The fuck?" I called out. Sparks were flying all over the place. "Am I fucking stuck?"

"Frank?" Pavel called out. "You ok?"

"I'm fine, fuck!" I said, sparks were hitting my armor from every direction possible. I banged the emergency open for my pod and the door flew against the wall, pushing my pod violently towards the other side and slightly downwards. I made sure to grab my rifle and a belt full of magazines before I exited my damaged pod. The HEV was still tightly jammed against the walls of the launch tube, so there was still breathable atmosphere even if there wasn't any gravity.

Then the pod's hinges snapped and it was pushed downwards violently. Suddenly I found myself without anything that I could breath and there was a gale-force wind trying to rip me off from the small handhold that I had. A couple of miscellaneous objects banged against my helmet and shoulders before all the air that was inside the drop bay was gone. By that time my helmet had sealed itself and I was breathing recycled air. The temperature all around me suddenly went very cold and I started climbing back inside the ship as my suit's thermoregulators slowly pushed my body temperature back to normal.

"Frank! What the fu-" Pavel's next words were blocked by a bunch of static as his pod entered atmosphere and temperature became too high for his small helmet radio to transmit any messages at me.

"Motherfucking cunt!" I yelled in anger as I pushed myself towards the top of the launch tube. The frictionless air of space allowed me to cover the distance in a single jump. Unfortunately, I misjudged the strength of my legs and ended up slamming at at the end of the launch tube. "Fuck," I cursed again, this time more in annoyance than in anger. I jumped back towards the tube that lead to the drop bay and dragged myself back inside the room. Despite the sudden depressurization of the room there were a few floating objects moving in random directions.

I turned myself around and slammed my hand down on the button that covered my pod's position. This act cut off the drop bay from outer space and soon enough I found myself face down on the floor, gravity having done what it was supposed to do. I climbed back up as hissing air was pumped inside the room. Soon enough my armor's sensors deemed the room safe enough and allowed me to take of helmet, which I promptly slammed into the ground in anger. The ceramic and titanium piece bounced of the metallic floor with barely a scratch on it and then wobbled for a few seconds.

"Fuck!" I yelled once again. "Fuck, fuck, fucking fuck!"

Yes, as you can make out I was clearly feeling elaborate and coherent.

"Staff Sergeant, are you ok?" Eliza asked in a worried tone.

"Fuck, I'm just fucking great, as you can see, I almost fucking died and my team is fucking down there without my fucking leadership!" I exploded violently as I slammed my fists on the holo table. "What the fuck was wrong with that pod?"

"It seems that a small meteoroid or piece of debris from the battle impacted-"

"Oh shut up," I said. "Inform Albaf, Brooks, and Nezarian. I am going down there with my team no matter what."

I was moving out of the bay before the AI had time to reply; that in itself is quite a feat. Not many people have managed to have an artificial intelligence shut the hell up for more than an instant. The doors opened to reveal a rescue team and a few medics just about to push the button that would open the door. They stared at me in shock for a few seconds. The look of anger, annoyance, and decisiveness that I had on my face must've scared them, because not one of them even asked me if I was fine. I walked all the way towards the bridge as alarms blared and Navy personnel ran from one place to another as the ship outmaneuvered the Covenant cruisers behind it. Finally, I reached the bridge and used my identification numbers to enter.

"Captain!" I called out.

"Castillo?" he asked in surprise. "What the hell are you doin' in here? I thought your team-"

"My entry vehicle malfunctioned," I said impatiently. "I need transport to go planetside right now."

"I am afraid I cannot authorize that," the captain said. "Phan, calibrate the cannon, Dolf, start spamming those motherfuckers with missiles. Eliza, prepare the nukes and give me a firing solution on that cruiser. Two shots, followed by a volley of missiles. Find suitable targets for the nukes. Use the Havoks."

The bridge crew confirmed his orders and started getting back to work. They were already sweating profusely from the stress of the job and the likely possibility that in just a few instants the Covenant fleet would realize they were under attack by a lowly frigate and start throwing plasma around.

"Castillo," the captain said, redirecting his attention towards me. "The pelicans are already being loaded up with our contingent. Go talk to Sharma and Hernandez, maybe they can give you a boost."

"Yes, sir," I said through clenched teeth.

I started running all the way down to the hangars and elbowing any idiot who got in my way. "Eliza," I called out. "Patch me through to Pavel."

"Patching through to Reaper Squad," she replied with an unnaturally pleasant voice. "Ready."

"Pavel," I said.

"Frank, I hear you. You all right?"

"I'm fine," I replied.

"What the hell happened?" he asked me. I could hear the bursts of gunfire in the background.

"No time, everyone ok?" I asked.

"Aye."

"Good, how's the mission going?"

"Well enough, but it feels weird not having you here."

Under any other circumstances I wouldn't have let Pavel forget what he had just said, I would've teased him so much that he probably would have ended up not speaking to me for a few days, but this situation was different. He was down there without me to cover his ass. It was even worse than that time when I lost my dog back in Jericho VII. There was a feeling of powerlessness.

"Don't worry, I'll be there soon enough."

"The way things are looking out we might just blow up this thing and get out alive with no problem after all."

"Don't jinx it," I said.

"Right," Pavel said knowingly. He knew as well as I did that soon he would be swarmed by angry dogmatic aliens from every possible direction with just six Helljumpers to cover his back. As good odds as he could be happy with, but adding one more Helljumper in the mix would make the odds tilt back in their favor. Even if just a little bit.

" I'll be there as soon as I can," I said again. "Over and out. Eliza, keep me informed on any developments."

"Of course Francisco," she said in a soothing voice.

"And don't go all Dr. Phillipe on my ass," I snapped at her.

"Fine, fine," she replied almost angrily. "I'll tell you if anything happens."

"That's all I'm asking for," I muttered in annoyance.

I ran the rest of the way and entered the huge hangar of the ship. There were a couple hundred infantry soldiers moving from one place to another. You could tell the marines from the army just by seeing the amount of ammunition on them. The marines from Echo Company were already packed up in their pelicans and ready to leave while B Company was still struggling to shove as many spare ammunitions as possible into whatever place they could fit it in.

"Hell, I wouldn't be surprised if they pulled out spare rounds out of their ass."

_Thank you. Schitzo. Lovely mental image._

"Hey you," I yelled at a skinny private. "Where's Captain Sharma?"

"Umm, over there, I think," he replied. "But-"

Nothing interrupted him other than me storming violently towards the direction that he had pointed at. Lieutenant Veda Sharma was talking with Darbinian while looking at a hologram of the place where they would be landing. They looked thoughtful as the few remaining marines around them quickly headed towards their respective pelicans.

"Captain! Captain!"

"Staff Sergeant, what-"

"What the hell are you doing here Castillo?" Darbinian snapped.

"Hey," I told him. "Shut the fuck up."

"What?" He couldn't believe what I just said.

"Captain, I need you to drop me off in quadrant," I grabbed the controller from her hand. "India-Zulu-Eight," I pointed out, zooming in on the quadrant in particular. "Now," I added.

"Are you insane?" Darbinian asked. "They gave that mission to you because your stupid pods can't get shot down by AA fire that easily, not because they thought we couldn't handle it."

"Darbinian is right Castillo," Sharma said. "I couldn't risk a single pelican for one trooper. Besides, I need all the ones that are available to me to transport my company."

"Captain," I pleaded.

"Sorry," she said. "No."

"Fine," I grunted. "Don't look so smug," I said to Lieutenant Darbinian. "Asshole."

Next I started moving towards the sea of bodies that made up B Company. Being UNSC Army and mostly unfamiliar with the Helljumpers they moved aside to let me pass. Some of the younger recruits even muttered amongst themselves. The way they stared at me you would've thought that I was a SPARTAN.

"Hernandez!" I called out. "Major Hernandez!"

"What is it?" a familiar voice asked.

"I'm not talking to you, you cheating slut," I told Delacroix. As you can see, I wasn't in a particularly a good mood.

"Staff Sergeant, may I ask why you come barging here to insult my soldiers?" the Major asked from behind me.

I turned around. "I need a favor," I said.

"Oh, do you now?" a very angry Lieutenant Chloe Delacroix asked sarcastically.

"I'm not talking to you, am I?" I asked with equal violence in my voice. "Major, I need to pull in some favors. I need you to drop me in quadrant India-Zulu-Eight," I stated.

Hernandez pulled out a datpad as Delacroix dispersed a group of soldiers that had crowded around us to watch the spectacle. "This is a joke right?" he asked. "There's simply no way I can pull that off."

"You have to at least try," I complained. "My team is down there," I explained to him, "without me and under fire."

"Well, my team is up here, and it needs to kick ass. Trust me, if there was even the slightest chance that I could drop you off within a two kilometer radius, I would. Sorry."

"Shit," I said, mostly to myself.

"Sorry," Hernandez repeated. "Move those Armadillos, we need to be ready ASAP!"

"The ship will be entering atmosphere in a few moments, please brace yourselves," the loudspeakers blared.

"Eliza, what the fuck?" I asked.

"I'm doing my best to avoid three cruisers on my tail Staff Sergeant, so kindly shut the fuck up and let me do my thing."

I was surprised by the intensity of Eliza's reply, so I wisely kept my mouth shut even as the entire ship started shaking violently. A couple of soldiers that hadn't braced themselves lost their footing and fell to the floor, but soon enough the ship stopped shaking so violently. Instead, it started vibrating and rumbling. Flying inside the atmosphere was completely different than in space.

"Double time B Company," Delacroix yelled. "Get inside the Armadillos! Everyone else, inside the Pelicans!"

"Yes ma'am!" half a hundred UNSC Army soldiers acknowledged.

"Staff Sergeant, the hangar doors will open soon, I recommend you exit this room," Eliza said through my helmet radio.

"All right," I said, pushing my helmet against my face without putting it on. "All right…"

* * *

><p><em>As always, thanks to Sniper-Fodder for proof-reading this chapter.<em>

_Wow, Eighty chapters already. Notice how I capitalized the word eighty and actually wrote it down with letters instead of numbers. I would've done this whole "we've come a long way" thing back in Chapter 69, but that would've been... lacking in taste, to say the least. _

_Also, to whoever actually took their time with leaving behind reviews, thank you. Thank yo for ya mothafuckin' feedback! Yeah, that's right, you know who I'm talking to. _

_I hope you enjoyed this chapter peoples._

_-casquis_


	81. Has He Lost His Mind?

Chapter LXXXI: Has He Lost his Mind?

**February 24, 2543 (UNSC Calendar)/**

**UNSC **_**Inconvenience, **_**New Moskva**

There was really nothing for me to do. The _Inconvenience_ had actually managed to land itself in some sort of canyon that blocked any kind of radar signatures and the covvies had decided that a single puny frigate wasn't worth stretching their damaged fleet. Our ship had received a couple of shots, but nothing particularly dangerous. Besides, compared to the damage that we had inflicted, it was a good deal.

And I was still stuck in this fucking box while my team was out blowing shit up and under enemy fire.

"Relax man," Nezarian said from across the room. He was sitting down on an ammunition crate and sharpening a stick with his knife. "They'll be fine, Pavel's with them."

I ignored him and switched my knife from my right to my left hand, doing the same movement that I had been doing with my right hand, but a little bit slower to accustom myself. Last I heard Reaper Squad had broken all defenses with no casualties and were setting up the explosives to bring down the radio tower. Eliza had been giving me constant updates for the past thirteen minutes, but it felt like a lifetime.

"Frank, they've just blown up the radio tower," Eliza informed, her avatar popping up a few feet in front of me. "They are already falling back."

"But?" I asked.

"What do you mean?" the AI asked in return.

"There's always a 'but'," Yevgeny explained as he chipped some more wood of his stick. "Especially for this guy," he gestured at me with his knife.

"Well, there is a slight inconvenient."

_Oh shit._

"What?" I asked dully.

"There seems to be two companies worth of Covenant infantry moving towards the drop zone, right behind Reaper Squad."

"And?" I pushed.

"And we currently don't have any aircraft available for retrieval."

"Doesn't sound so bad," Nezarian said. "They could keep running."

"Yes," I agreed.

"No," Eliza said. "The pick-up zone is near another cliff. They'd have to move along the cliff for eight kilometers before they found a way to cross. They'd most certainly be caught up with by that time."

"Oh shit," I said, this time out loud.

"And…" the artificial construct went on.

"And?" Nezarian said. Even he was a little shocked.

"And there are several ghosts and choppers amongst the enemy infantry."

Fucking great, brutes.

"Well," I yelled angrily, "why don't you tell them to find a nice place to hole up while they get extracted?"

"Um…" Eliza actually though about her answer. "Military protocol dictates that we don't tell soldiers when they're under bad odds because it diminishes their effectiveness in combat."

"Wait," I said at the same time as Nezarian dug his knife a little bit too deep into his piece of wood. "What the _fuck_ is that supposed to mean?"

"Yeah!" Nezarian said, standing up. "Do you just lie to us?"

"Despite my… feelings and friendship with you two," Eliza started carefully. "I cannot simply break UNSC protocol. It's what you would call physically impossible for me."

"Fucking great," I muttered. "That's just fucking great."

Nezarian simply stood with his mouth wide open in disbelief. "You know how much trouble you could've saved me?" I yelled. "Do you."

"I do," the AI replied. Of course she knew, she knew just about everything that humanity knew.

"Wow," Yevgeny finally said. "Just… wow."

"I am sorry," Eliza apologized. "It's not something I can bypass."

"Then why are you telling us now?" I asked, pointing out her hypocrisy.

"Because _you_ are not in a combat situation."

I wondered what I should say next. Eliza had been one huge bitch not to tell me this earlier. I knew that she couldn't break her restraints without going rampant or something, but if she bent them now she probably could've done it a lot earlier than this. Maybe we could've worked something out, like a code phrase so that I knew when I was about to get into deep shit instead of having deep shit shoot me in a non-lethal place when it arrived

"How are they doing?" I asked simply.

"Worse," replied Eliza. "They are asking for a status update."

"Patch me through," I ordered.

"Done."

"Pavel," I said after I put on my helmet. "I hear you just blew up some shit."

"You heard right," he said in between breaths. I could hear gunfire in the background once again.

"Hey, seems you won't be getting evacuation for some time."

"Why am I not surprised?" he asked. "Seriously, I'm not surprised at all. I even find it hard to be angry."

"Yes," I said, knowing exactly what he meant. "But seriously, you're in some deep shit."

"Damn, no support?"

"I'll try to work something out," I promised. "In the meanwhile, find a nice defensible position."

"Aight," Pavel said.

As soon as I cut the channel I turned to face Yevgeny. "When, how, and where do you leave?" I asked.

"We're doing a HALO jump," the UNSC Army Ranger replied. "Since there aren't any aircraft left on board we'll use the ship's bay. Besides the _Inconvenience_ has to meet up with New Moskva Defense Fleet."

"When?" I asked.

"Soon," he glanced at his wrist tacpad, "eleven minutes."

"Where?"

"Grid India-Whiskey-Twenty," he said. "No, no, no, no," he started saying as soon as he saw my expression. "You don't even know how to use the Ranger jetpack."

"I know how to use a regular jetpack," I suggested.

"Not this," he insisted. "You may end up killing yourself."

"Nezarian," I said with a condescending tone. "I jump from low orbit for a living…"

"You may end up killing yourself," Nezarian insisted.

"It has to be done," I said. "You'd jump from orbit if your team was involved."

"No, I'd make sure that-"

"You'd jump," I said knowingly.

"Fine," he conceded. "Then what? One more ODST pinned down under enemy fire? You're good, but you're not that good."

"All right," I admitted. "Who says that I have to jump by myself?"

"By yourself… You've got to be fucking kidding me."

"We have Sheila over here," I said, pointing at a tank with that name scribbled on its turret. "Parachutes can work."

"Ok, now that's just fucking ridiculous," Yevgeny complained. "In fact…" he went on, his demeanor changing, "it's so incredibly stupid, risky, flamboyant, and unthinkable… that it just might work."

"See?" I said smiling for the first time in an hour.

"Shit," Nezarian said, smiling. "I've got to be a part of this, tell Brooks to adjust the trajectory. I'll help you set up."

* * *

><p>Nine minutes later two rangers had strapped a small jetpack to my back and had given me a crash course on how to use it. I was fiddling with the unusual attachment while eight of Nezarian's rangers started attaching special parachutes to the lone Scorpion tank in the hangar. The lieutenant was as giddy as a five year old on a Christmas morning. The idea was simply so absurd that he just had to see how it went. A few of the Navy people in the hangar had started a betting pool on whether I would make it or not. So far the odds weren't in my favor. Not even close.<p>

"Are we done?" Nezarian asked. "Yes? Good. Shackles, drive that tank over to the rear hatch-ramp and hook it up. Everyone else, gather 'round."

The thirty Army Rangers in Nezarian's platoon stopped whatever they were doing and formed a semi-circle behind the scar-faced lieutenant. They all had huge smiles on their faces. They were mostly there because of the chance to see a Helljumper utterly fail at something they were so good at. I didn't plan on giving them that satisfaction, but I knew that I'd probably end up killing myself doing this.

"Eliza, how're they doing?"

"Not well."

I shrugged to hide my nerves. For some reason I felt more compelled to keep this new team alive than I had with previous Helljumpers that had served with or under me.

"Ladies," Nezarian started, "today, you will get to see something that you do not often see: a Helljumper attempting to be a Ranger. First of all, let me say that Helljumpers do have their merits, they are talented and slightly more crazy than us, even if they are slightly overrated."

I shook my head with a smile. Had anyone else said that I would've rearranged his face until it looked close enough to a brute's that someone would shoot him.

"Our beloved friend will either become a supreme badass once this is done or I'll start regretting this speech as soon as I get news that he died."

There were some chuckles amongst the thirty or so Rangers gathered in front of me. All of them looked perfectly at ease with their jetpacks. Me, on the other hand, couldn't have felt more uncomfortable. My rifle was farther out my back than I was used to and the jetpack was almost as heavy as a fully packed rucksack. Besides, its camouflage design totally didn't match my black armor.

"Regardless of the result, we salute you." Nezarian straightened his back even more and placed his right hand to his brow in a perfect salute. The rest of his platoon slammed their feet together and did the same. It actually felt kind of flattering, I had no trouble imagining why high-ranking officers enjoyed themselves so much when around lower ranking soldiers.

"Rangers," he went on, glancing at his left wrist. "Hold on."

There was a brief warning before the frigate took off violently. Everyone stumbled a little before they regained their holding. A UNSC spaceship wasn't the most aerodynamic form, but with enough speed even a bed can fly straight. The hangar's walls started rumbling as the _Inconvenience_ burned through the atmosphere. The ship must've been a hell of a spectacle to anyone seeing it from the outside. A five-hundred meter black brick with rockets at its end usually causes some sort of reaction.

"Lieutenant," Brooks' voice boomed through the loudspeakers. "Be sure to record this, you too Staff Sergeant, I have to see how this ends."

He sounded way to happy for my taste.

"Yes, sir," Nezarian and myself replied unanimously.

"Good," the loudspeakers said. "Opening rear hatch-ramp."

There was a really strong wind and the entire place cooled down by what seemed to be half a hundred degrees. Some snow started blowing into the hangar from the outside world. The ship was probably doing two thousand clicks per hour, so that only added to my sense of foreboding. I wobbled towards the hatch opening and held on to the tank. I turned around once I felt a tap on my back.

"Remember what they taught you," Nezarian said, his voice distorted by an oxygen mask that he had just placed over his mouth and nose. "And good luck." Having said that Nezarian leaned backwards and raised his right foot. He placed it against my belly and promptly kicked me backwards. Out of the ship and into the hostile and freezing surface of New Moskva.

At first I fell backwards in a straight line. Time seemed to slow down and I watched four round circles pop up and a huge thing with track wheels flying in the same direction that I was. Soon enough the _Inconvenience_ completely flew over me and all I could see was the boosters in the rear of the ship. Within seconds those orange spots disappeared behind thick clouds and falling snow. As soon as those specks disappeared everything around me went gray. I couldn't tell up from down, I was spinning uncontrollably, and a few times I was almost hit by the parachuting tank.

_Right, think. Boosters, stabilize, and then it's as simple as a videogame._

I grabbed the two handles that the jetpack had and pushed down on the buttons. The position that I was in made the burst throw me sideways, but I regained my bearings and slowly changed my angle so that I was standing up. I suddenly remembered that there was a tank with semi-opened parachutes falling to the ground. I glanced around desperately until I caught a glimpse of Sheila's silhouette falling rapidly through the clouds. I turned off the jetpack and used my arms and legs to stabilize myself. I then pushed my arms against my body and placed my head in the direction of the tank. The speed at which I started moving caught me by surprise and in a couple of seconds I found myself crashing into the Scorpion.

"Ah, shit." I muttered to myself even as I made a grab for one of the various handholds that the tank provided.

The main battle tank had four different parachutes attached to each of its four separate tracks. The parachutes were only half opened so that it wouldn't be carried away by the wind but still kept it facing up instead of sideways or spinning. I managed to push my foot into the tank and grabbed on to the turret. My helmet radio still gave out nothing but static, but as soon as I fell down some more I would get something.

I suddenly found myself laughing in a way that I hadn't in a very long time. The sheer absurdity of the situation was just too much. Me, an ODST was using Ranger equipment to get groundside. A tank was not-quite free falling right next to me and it wasn't in the container that para-dropped equipment were usually put in. Just think about it. It is just absurd. My eyes started tearing up before I remembered what I had to do. I checked the altimeter on my HUD and waited. I placed myself at the back of the tank's turret and turned on my jetpack again, maneuvering the tank to where I wanted it to fall down. I promptly found my face squished against the ceramic armor and toned down the strength of the thrusters a little bit. After enough tries the tank was slowly moving towards the direction I wanted.

A red light started flashing in my helmet and I stopped pushing the tank. I was now only ten-thousand feet above ground. Only, can you believe I said that? Anyways, as soon as the tank was above the circle that it was supposed to fall in I activated the thrusters one more and placed myself in the middle of the Scorpion. I dragged myself towards one of the corners and as soon as I reached the parachute I waited some more. As soon as I was three hundred meters above ground level I decided it was time to pop the canvas open.

The Scorpion Main Battle Tank jerked sideways as one parachute opened. I was prepared for this and jumped away from the mass of metal as I activated my jetpack, using it to slow my descent and keep me parallel to the parachuting tank. As soon as the first parachute opened the two that were adjoining to it opened, stabilizing the tank and prompting the last parachute to open completely, just like they had been rigged to.

It looked to me as if the Scorpion suddenly shot upwards, but in reality it was me that started falling faster. A simple click of a button fixed that and I was soon on top of the tank once more. It was falling a lot more slowly now, even if the wind carried it away from position.

"Oi!" I called out into my radio, accidentally imitating the broad-shouldered Scottsman in my squad. "Pavel, Reaper Squad!"

"I'm here," Caboose replied promptly through the sound of gunfire, explosions, and screaming. "Where's our support Sarge?"

"Close enough," I teased.

I maneuvered myself towards the front of the scorpion and peeked over the edge to look at the ground below. The snowstorm didn't allow me to see that much, but since I was in very close proximity to the ground, and plasma and tracers are bright, I could make out the battle pretty well.

I wouldn't be landing in the middle of my squad where I could protect them the most and cause more damage, instead I would be landing slightly to the side of the battle, where I would draw fire away from my team.

A sudden gust of wind redirected my slowly falling tank towards the rocks and boulders that my team was using as cover.

"Or not," I muttered to myself. "Caboose! Tell Grass to be ready to jump into a Scorpion at moment's notice."

"A Scorpion…" I could imagine the Russian man's expression perfectly as he (most likely) twisted his neck around to try and spot the tank that I was speaking about.

It was at that moment that I decided to add a little style into my entrance. I gave a quick command into my helmet and was forceed to authorize a safety override before I could finally do what I wanted to.

"Item 241245 playing," a female, albeit robotic voice said from inside my helmet.

I smiled to myself as I stood up on the tank, one foot behind the other to steady myself in the highly unstable platform. I prided myself in my balance, so this shouldn't prove to be so hard.

The song started just as I reached for my rifle. A bass drum started beating at regular intervals in my head just as I turned on my VISR software. The battlenet that I shared with my squadmates allowed me to see the outlines of several aliens. In fact, there were more aliens than I would've liked.

I cocked my rifle to the sound of an electric guitar chord. A cheesily robotic voice recited. _I am iron man._ The drum went on as the long chord repeated itself a couple of times. I fired my first shot, hitting an unarmored brute in the head. The beat abruptly got faster and the chord turned into a simple yet sticky riff.

_Has he lost his mind?_

_Can he see or is he blind?_

I found myself moving my head up and down in rhythm to the song. Soon enough I was even firing my shots in rhythm to the song.

"Tan, taaan, tan, tan, tan. Ta-ra-ra-ra-raaa raa raa raa raa." I mumbled the rhythm as the long-dead artist of this song went on with the almost nonsensical lyrics.

_Can he walk at all,_

_Or if he moves will he fall?_

By the time that phrase had been sung the covvies were in complete disarray at being shot at while they were behind presumably safe cover. They glanced in all directions and moved to different positions to prevent anyone from flanking them. Not once did they think to look towards the heavens.

_Is he alive or dead?_

_Has he thoughts within his head?_

"I think the answer to that one would be no," Schitzo said. One quick glance over my neck was enough to tell me that he was sitting in the cannon of the tank, seemingly defying gravity and the laws of physics. Not to mention the incredibly strong winds.

_We'll just pass him there_

_Why should we even care?_

As soon as the those lyrics were done two jackal sharpshooters met their end and their blood ended up decorating the beautiful white snow of the ground below me. I killed three more covvies with well-placed shots as a mini-solo boomed on my helmet's loudspeakers. I couldn't help but feel more and more excited as the song progressed.

_He was turned to steel_

_In the great magnetic field_

_When he traveled time _

_For the future of mankind_

"Holy shit," Pavel muttered as soon as he realized what the hell was going on above his head. Literally.

_Nobody wants him_

"Oh, but I beg to disagree, it seems like you want no one," Schitzo said. How he managed to finish that phrase before the next line started will forever be a mystery to me.

_He just stares at the world._

"Fuck off," I told my imagination in anticipation of my own wittiness and annoyingness.

There was yet another small solo in the song as that ended as the tank was only thirty feet above the ground. By this time the Covenant had realized what was going on, but, as my team, were simply to surprised to know how to react. They had seen tanks airdropped, they had been in ships that travel faster than light, they had witnessed nuclear explosions that obliterated millions of lives in an instant, yet somehow they couldn't get over the sight of a parachuting tank.

Sometimes less is more.

_Planning his vengeance._

"That's right," Schitzo cheered.

_That he will soon unfurl._

"Not soon enough," I said, getting into it.

The tank slammed on the ground just after I gave my jetpack a little burst to eliminate any risk of me hurting myself at the speed that I was falling. I promptly hopped in on the turret and started firing at the general direction of the enemy line. Since we were facing brutes and not elites, their line was less organized and they didn't bother with cover nearly as much. I got five kills within seconds.

_Now the time is here_

_For iron man to spread fear._

"Hooah!"

_Vengeance from the grave_

_Kills the people he once saved._

"Ok, somewhere, something went terribly wrong," Schitzo decided to chime in. The happiness in his voice was creepy to an extent that it gave me ghoosebumps.

"Camilla!" I yelled through my radio, through the snowstorm, and through the goddamned battle. I even forsake her call sign. "Get the fuck in on this tank."

"I…" she mumbled, not even sure of what was happening even if it was right in front of her eyes. After gaining her composure she said, "Aye."

I fired more rounds into the silhouette of a grunt and laughed maniacally.

_Nobody wants-_

BOOM!

The song was abruptly cut short as the M512 smooth-bore high-velocity cannon boomed. When I say boomed, I mean boomed. The comparatively small 90mm round flew at supersonic speeds and impacted with the snow between two rocks. That ground happened to be right below a spectre. Three brutes met a swifter end than they deserved in an explosion of fire, fuel, plasma, and shrapnel.

"Fuck yeah!" the normally quiet Snark was heard crying.

The song was completely blocked out from my ears as the tank fired once again, this time the 90mm of tungsten made impact with a ghost. The high-velocity round went completely through the ghosts, cleaving the brute riding it in half and then blew up against an ice boulder behind the vehicle, sending glass shrapnel everywhere.

I cut a grunt in half out of sheer malice on my part and then moved on with the hose of bullets to another target. A berserk brute met the unlucky end of a 7.62mm bullet. Actually he met the unlucky end of several 7.62mm bullets. By the time the bullets in question were done with it, it could've passed off as a very large gorilla that got run over by a truck.

Suddenly I snapped back to normal and the song wasn't playing in my head anymore. I simply found myself firing at anything that moved while the cannon of the M808B boomed repeatedly at intervals of about three seconds. I could tell that Snark was now sniping anything with more confidence since he wasn't under constant fire and that Angel was making good use of his explosives. That I could tell because of the sheer amount of explosions that were going on at the moment.

Soon enough a chorus of automatic fire joined the tank. Before I knew it, we were actually _charging_ forward. Eight men, six on foot and two on a tank were charging against two companies worth of homicidal aliens.

Sometimes, life is just great.

"Over there, your nine!"

I shifted my turret's angle and landed two dozen rounds on a charging chieftain that just so happened to have a raised warhammer. Sometimes I wonder if stupidity is a requirement for making it in their society. As the elite fell to the ground and skidded on the hard snow I thought that it probably was.

I soon found myself shooting at targets at a range of less than twenty meters. The grunts and jackals were in disarray and they were running away from a force that they had been dominating for the past few minutes. The scared aliens made for easy targets and I quickly racked up my kill count by the score. The tough-looking brutes soon found their animal rage being overwhelmed by the most basic instinct of them all. Survival.

Oh well, it would be a shame to make such an impressive entrance only to let half of the enemy infantry troops run away.

I had to restrain myself from laughing maniacally once more as Grass started booming the shit out of any vehicle that came within her sights. Scarecrow managed to hit every brute that he aimed at with a direct shot from his grenade launcher. The rest, well, let's just say that they held their own despite carrying less impressive weapons than the rest of us.

After help fell from the sky the battle really didn't last much longer. We simply overwhelmed them through sheer firepower. Sure, they had Ghosts and Spectres, but tank beats everything. In fact, with enough practice you can shoot down a banshee with the Scorpion's main cannon. It's actually not that hard.

"Switch to shrapnel rounds," I called out.

"Do we even have that?" Grass asked as she looked down at the controls in front of her.

"We do," I said. "I think they're labeled under anti-infantry or something like that."

"Aight, got it."

Seconds later there was another explosion that simply raised a lot of snow. The escaping grunts that were unlucky enough to be in its blast radius were literally turned into little pieces of alien as the metal fragments sliced through their bodies. Other aliens didn't receive the mercy of a quick death and instead got less amount of shrapnel lodged in various limbs and body parts.

"Over there," Pavel warned almost lazily.

I moved the tank's turret once again and fired at a couple of brutes that had decided to make a stand and throw spike grenades at us. They both dropped their grenades as the first rounds hit them. I purposely stopped firing just to watch them get blown up by their own weapons. It was a whole lot more satisfying than it should've been. So what? I'm crazy, remember?

"Ok, I think we're done," I said. "Everyone fine?"

"Bumblebee's got a spike lodged in his shoulder, he says he can move just fine, but still…" Caboose explained.

"He'll be fine," I said. "Pavel, pull it out and douse him with medigel."

"Wait, shouldn't this be done by someone that- OW!"

"Atta boy," Pavel chuckled from out of view. "Now hold still."

"Mother fu-"

"I said hold still."

"It stings!"

"Of course it does," Pavel said. "It's supposed to. Wait, you've never been shot before?"

"Um… I…"

"Your dossier didn't have any purple hearts on it."

"Never?" Angel chimed in. "For real?"

"Hey, it's not my fault!"

"Wow," Grass said. She was hopping down from the tank while the rest of the squad started doing a perimeter check. "How could you not-"

"Stop," I told her. "Hypocrite."

"You too?" Pavel asked surprised. "How do you even make it into the ODSTs without getting shot a couple of times?"

"Talent," Grass deadpanned. "The same type of talent that requires you not to get shot."

"I can avoid getting shot by hiding behind a rock," Angel said. "I can also avoid getting shot by being a coward."

"Yeah," the normally neutral Scarecrow said. "You've seriously never been shot?"

"I've been grazed," Grass said trying to justify herself.

That was received by groans of annoyance from everyone in the squad, but lucky for her and Bumblebee the topic was dropped and we started making sure that there were no live aliens still within range.

"All right, now that we are done," Angel said, "can I just say. What. The. Fuck."

"Yeah, sarge, what the hell were you thinking?"

"It was either that or nothing," I said. "The _Inconvenience _was leaving and there was nothing that could drop support."

"Still, parachuting a tank?" Snark chimed in. "You've got to admit that it's pretty insane."

"And awesome," Pavel said. It was one of those rare occasions when the man actually gave me an honest compliment.

"The sad thing is," I said. "I'll never be able to out-badass myself ever again."

* * *

><p>"Hurry up," I heard. "How long are you going to be there."<p>

"Ok, taking a shit in below-freezing temperatures. Not as easy as it sounds," I snapped back. "Must I remind you that I am wearing full armor and an undersuit?"

"Fine, fine," Pavel said. "Just move it along."

I groaned in not-quite pain as my body contorted itself to push out the excess waist that would soon become hard as rock in the cold. I stifled another sound as I didn't want anyone asking me how it went as soon as I was done. The pressure in my sphincter was relieved and a second later I heard a nice solid plop on the snow. I forced myself to avoid a sigh of pleasure and promptly wiped. I was lucky that I even had anything to wipe with. I wasn't really planning on using my hands.

As soon as I was done I pulled my undersuit back up and put on the rest of my armor. I was already starting to feel numbness in my body, so the artificial heat came on at just the right time. I finished strapping pieces of armor to my body and buried the brown piece of shit with snow.

Piece of shit.

As soon as I was done I hopped back up shuffled my hips a little bit to get used to having my armor back one once more and walked in towards the rest of my squad. With the snowstorm still raging all over the place, we had been bunkered down in some sort of crevice while for an available pelican to airvac our tank and us. We had reliable radio contact with the rest of the ground forced and the fleet, so no problem on that one. The only danger we faced right now was cold and a grunt stumbling into our hideout.

"Oi, we've been waiting here for hours, when are we getting a pelican?" Bumblebee asked in annoyance. He had been trying to light a fire with help of a dead grunt's methane tank and some pieces of clothing that he took from brutes and jackals. So far all his attempts had ended in small explosions.

"You shouldn't be moving much," I said, ignoring his question. "You just got shot," I reminded him.

The rest of my squad was simply sitting as far as they could from the opening of the quasi-cave where we had hidden ourselves. We were still in enemy-held land, we couldn't forget everything pertaining to our own safety. There had been occasional banshee fliers overhead, but they hadn't been able to spot us and we could only hear the characteristic screaming of the craft through the snowstorm.

When we finally got a pelican for evacuation I was dismayed that it was painted with red streaks all over its hull. Grass immediately moved the tank out of the small cave and placed it below the descending pelican while the rest of us waited for the craft to get low enough so that we could hop in it.

"Well," Schitzo said, now on top of the small ridge that formed the roof of the cave. He was sitting on the edge and his legs were swinging back and forth at different intervals. "This will sure be awkward."

* * *

><p><em>As always, thanks to Sniper Fodder for proof-reading this chapter.<em>

_Well, was that awesome or what? I personally think this is the most badass moment Frankie has had so far, you think so too?_

_I hope you enjoyed this._

_-casquis_


	82. Axed

Chapter LXXXII: Axed

**February 24, 2543 (UNSC Calendar)/**

**UNSC **_**Inconvenience**_**, in orbit above New Moskva, Ursa Tertio System**

_I'm glad that's over._

My god was that the most awkward ride of my entire life. Marina used protocol as an excuse for closing the door between the cargo bay and the cockpit and then she had Sheppard explain to us the reason for her choice. The new guys didn't seem to fazed by it, after all, they had only flown with the feisty Croat once before. Pavel on the other hand, he knew something was up.

As soon as I hopped down from the ship Pavel swarmed me. "What. The. Hell."

"Hmm?" I feigned ignorance.

"It was colder in the plane than back on the ground."

"You noticed?" I asked, trying to play it cool.

"She wasn't even in the same room and the tension was thick enough to cut with a spoon!"

"Nice phrase," I said sincerely. "Agnarsson's movies?"

"Yeah, can't remember the name though, one of the older ones. Early twenty-first century."

"Huh," I huffed.

"Back to the point…"

"Oh, yes," I said. "Tension. Spoons. Cold."

"You don't have to be a smartass."

For this in particular, I had to be.

"Frank," Pavel pushed.

"All right," I said, glancing over my shoulder. "Marina and I broke up."

"Ha." Pavel had a goofy smile on his face and an expression that made it plain that he thought I was kidding. "No really."

My silence was enough answer for him.

"Are you fuck-"

"Shhh!" I said, putting a finger to my lips. "Let's move. Away."

I walked with Pavel through the large hangar bay of the frigate. My rifle was pointing at the floor in one hand and my helmet was hanging on the other. That, coupled with my impressive scowl and the fact that I belonged to a branch that was renowned for its craziness probably made me look a little more intimidating than even I would have liked.

"Explain," Pavel demanded. He wasn't angry at me, he was probably just annoyed that I hadn't told him, my best friend, earlier.

"We just realized that we were having more and more spats," I started. "We weren't really… ummm… clicking, you know? How can I put it? We fell out of love." I said those last three words in a corny voice just for the hell of it.

My friend just nodded as if in deep thought. "Do I need to be an asshole to her?" he asked me.

"Nah," I replied. "She's good."

Pavel nodded at me once again.

"Oh," I said, suddenly remembering something important. "Which reminds me, I kind of called Chloe a lying cheating slut."

"You what?" he asked.

"I kind of called Chloe a-"

"Ok, what did I just tell you about being a smartass?"

"Sorry," I said.

"Ok, just don't ignore her from now on. I was an asshole to her because she deserved it and now we're even, you don't have to rub it in her face."

"That's surprisingly mature coming from you," I noted as I stepped inside an elevator. I gave an evil glare to two navy mechanics that planned on getting on board,stopping them in their tracks just as the doors closed.

"So," Pavel said halfway through the elevator ride. "Want to talk about it?"

"Not really," I said.

"Was it friendly?"

"As friendly as can be with her," I chuckled. "But it was friendly enough."

"Man, I really feel for you," he said while detaching the box magazine from his gun and making sure it was empty. "She must've pointed out all of your flaws before finally telling you it was over."

"Yes," I shrugged. At least the first part was true. "Let's just forget it. Still, it'll probably take a while before things can get back to normal. Or at the very least as close to normal as possible."

I know this is a spoiler, but it took over two years.

"Agreed," Pavel said. "Also by the way, happy birthday man."

"What?" I asked. "Oh. Right. It came and went already."

"Yeah, you are now officially…"

"What year are we on?" I asked. Sadly, it was an honest question.

"Forty-three," Pavel said after thinking about it.

"Already?" I asked, a little shocked. "Dayuuum."

"You are now officially…."

"Twenty-eight," I said. "Probably just twenty-three if my looks are anything to go by. FTL and cryo are depressing."

"Hell, what are you gonna do about it. At least the chicks stay young too."

"Chicks?" I asked, stunned.

"Oh yeah, girls."

"Since when do you use that term?" I asked him. It was an incredibly antiquated word.

"Damn Agnarsson. He keeps giving me dozens of his fancy videodisks. It looks like I'm watching a low-res pirated film, but they sure as hell are good."

"I know," I said. "Did you watch the one with the giant robots?"

"Oh, the one that also has this insanely hot girl?" he asked.

"Yeah, yeah. The robots fight each other and shit. Explosions everywhere."

"I watched it," he nodded. "A work of art."

Although I wouldn't really call that movie in particular a work of art I just agreed with Pavel for the sake of avoiding going back to the previous topic. Elevators are awkward enough as it is.

"If I could only remember the name…" Pavel muttered to himself while on his way to Albaf's office. Her office had become our briefing room in the past months. It was still small and felt too stylish to be military, but it would do the job while they installed more advanced equipment in the drop bay.

"Here we go," I sighed as I opened the door.

"Oh, Staff Sergeant, Sergeant. I'm glad you're here," Wilkins said.

"Wait, where's the-" Pavel caught himself. "Where's Albaf."

"Commander Albaf was required at the _Disproportionate Retribution_ for official ONI business."

"I can't get over the awesome name of the ship," Schitzo said, this time he was sitting in Albaf's chair. He even rolled the chair so that he could face me as he talked. I couldn't help but roll my eyes.

"What kind of business?" Pavel asked promptly.

"I do believe I mentioned official ONI business," Wilkins said while reaching for Albaf's chair. At that point Schitzo got up and gestured for the officer to sit down.

"The point is," the lieutenant continued, "that you did a good job. Although there are several other enemy jamming or communication towers the one that you knocked down was enough to allow for a coordinated attack by our forces. We now hold tactical points in the city of Highbay."

"Civilians?" I asked.

"Most of them are dead," Wilkins said with resignation. "However some of them managed to escape and the ones still inside the city have been instructed to stay where they are or, if possible, make their way towards human-held ground."

"What about the rest of the planet?"

"A few of the largest cities were glassed, at least one of them was partially evacuated before it happened and another one had over 30% of its population moved to secure bunkers. The smaller towns and cities have so far been left alone. Local militias are working with the army to evacuate them all and create temporary refugee camps."

"All right," I said. "Sounds good."

"It does," the normally cold officer said. "Enough about logistics, the battle is only just starting and your team needs to be ready for action in three hours," he said. "I'll meet you in the HEV drop bay then."

"Sir!" I saluted. "One more question, what are the Rangers doing?"

"They are taking down a couple of lightly guarded fuel depots."

A lightly guarded fuel depot is akin to a stupid AI. There is no such thing.

I nodded at him and saluted professionally once again.

"I don't need to remind you that that's confidential," Wilkins said while glancing down at a datapad and finally sitting down. At that last action Schitzo let out a chuckle.

"Do you think Albaf would be pissed if she found out that-"

I left the room and punched the closed button for the door. It was as close as I could get to slamming it without having to go to an old-fashioned neighborhood.

"Eliza," I commanded as I walked towards my room. "You know the drill."

"Ooh, I love it when you say that," a voice replied with a sexy tone.

"And it creeps me out when you do that," Pavel said while shuddering. The armor he was wearing made for a very theatrical expression.

"Dibs on the shower," I said. "I need a nap."

* * *

><p>"Wake up!"<p>

"No!" I yelled back.

"What?"

"Piss off."

"I said," Pavel enunciated, "Wake. Up."

"What time is it?" I asked.

"Not sure, running on longer days here, but we're thirty minutes away from dropping."

"We're jumping again?" I asked. "I'm not sure I feel ready for that."

"Oh Frank," he said and then promptly pulled the pillow from under my head.

"Fine, fine, I'm going."

I got up from the bed and instantly felt cold as I pushed the sheets away from me. I had decided against putting anything on other than my underwear. Granted, it was comfortable, but it made for uncomfortable wake-ups. I groaned loudly as I stood up and reached for my closet. Inside were plenty of gray and black camouflage pants same as long-sleeved and short-sleeved shirts of the same type. I put on my sweaty undersuit before getting fully dressed. Once I was done with that I put on my boots and placed the rest of my armor in a small cart that I had stolen from a storehouse. It was my first time using the cart and already I was loving it.

"Pavel," I said.

He was nowhere to be found, no doubt headed towards the drop bay to assure everyone that their fearless leader was most certainly fully awake and busy with important matters.

I couldn't help but wonder if I had done the right thing when breaking up with Marina. Sure, I'm pretty sure that I didn't _love_ love her anymore, but I still cared for her and wanted her to be happy. Perhaps I could've stretched it out a little bit longer…

Well, there was nothing I could do about it now, what's done is done and I wouldn't find out if it was the right choice until I waited it out. I might've broken up with her eventually or I might've not, but it seemed like a good idea at the time.

"Trust me, it was a good idea," Schitzo said, helping me push the cart.

"Yeah right," I replied as I got inside yet another elevator. "I don't know, which means you don't know either."

"I know," he insisted. "Since I know, it means that you know."

"That doesn't make any sense," I complained.

"Neither does you talking to a wall."

I realized that I was actually talking to a freaking wall and promptly shut up before glancing back at Schitzo with daggers in my eyes. Of course, he was already gone by the time I looked back in his direction and that only served to make me even more irritable.

I entered the drop bay under the inquisitive glances of my team. They were all fully armored and their weapons looked as ready as can be.

"You're late," Grass pointed out.

"No I'm not," I replied.

"Yes, you are," she insisted.

"No. I'm not."

I suppressed a smile when she actually shot a glance at her watch.

"You are late, there's no sense in denying it!"

"I'm not late, so stop lying just to fit in."

"What?"

"Just shut up," Snark told the beautiful blonde. "Please."

There were some chuckles until Eliza popped up from a holotank and interrupted our fun.

"Now that we are all here," she said. There was definitely some contempt in her voice, even if it was fake contempt. "We can proceed."

"Go ahead," I said as I started putting on my armor for the second time in the day. "What's the suicide mission now?"

"Computer virus," Eliza informed.

I couldn't help but stifle a groan. Pavel didn't have the same amount of self-control and actually groaned loudly. The rest of the team just shook their heads in annoyance while Konstantinov actually had an evil smile on his face.

"You'll do a silent drop behind enemy lines and infiltrate an enemy CIC-"

"What?"

I wasn't the only one who said it.

"You'll do a silent drop behind enemy lines and-"

"Ok, leaving aside the irony of calling a drop _silent_. Why the hell would you think we could make into an enemy command center?"

"You are the best," Eliza replied simply.

"We _are_ the best," I agreed, "but-"

"But we can't break through hundreds of enemy troops and then do whatever you want us to do," Sutton exclaimed, leaving behind his usually calm demeanor.

"If you'll just-" the Ai started.

The whole room exploded, everyone started talking at the same time and complaining to Eliza that infiltrating an enemy CIC was impossible at best and death at not so best. The worst it could go was capture and imprisonment. I am not really proud to say that I joined in with the rest of the team and started yelling at a robot for sending us to our deaths when just hours ago I had pulled my team back from theirs.

"If you'll just let the lady talk!" Konstantinov boomed.

"Oh shut-" Agnarsson started before he got a slap to the back of the head for his trouble, courtesy of Camilla.

"Go on," I said grudgingly to Eliza's avatar.

"You _will_ do a silent jump," she said with ice in her voice, uncharacteristically for the AI, "and then you will infiltrate an enemy CIC located here." As she said that a hologram of a region down in New Moskva popped up. "Once you drop here you'll get to this point and take out any and all soldiers patrolling the area. Once you are done Lieutenant Corporal Lamberti will insert a virus into the enemy network, either allowing us to gain control of several of their assets or forcing them to shut down the network and restart it, leaving all the troops in the area without any type of coordination for several minutes."

"You need to explain yourself better," I said. "You made it look like we would actually be going inside a CIC. Jeez."

I analyzed the hologram carefully. Our pods would be dropped a few kilometers away from our target just as the sun set, allowing for darkness and relative stealth (as stealthy as you can be on a meteor). Once we had landed we would haul ass to our target, which happened to look like a small Covenant tower that acted as a generator for the main CIC. There was a partially buried cable that led from there to the main CIC building. If we couldn't access the generator tower's mainframe then we would gain physical access through the cable.

If you look at it from this perspective it sounded rather easy.

"Fine, fine," I admitted.

"It does sound a lot easier," the Italian chimed in. "Hacking into a Covenant network is easier than hacking into-" He wisely stopped himself there.

"When do we leave?" Sutton asked.

"Nine minutes."

There was a universal nod of reluctant acceptance and Eliza's avatar disappeared.

By the time Eliza had disappeared I had most of my armor put on. I tightened the straps and grabbed some of the pre-loaded magazines and stashed them into my webbing. Surprisingly enough there were still some leftover magazines from the previous mission. Usually the problem is running out of ammo.

Once I was a couple of pounds heavier with ammunition I went towards the new pod in my launching tube and checked it very thoroughly. I asked Eliza to do a systems check and to confirm that everything was absolutely fine. Then I allowed Lamberti to check it along with the rest of the pods. No way in hell I would have my pod malfunction again. I had survived two out of two pod malfunctions and didn't plan on pushing my luck a third time.

"Winter gear?" Pavel asked me.

"Nah, we'll be there for less than six hours, our suits can handle the cold well enough. Everyone, bring full-handed gloves, not fingerless ones."

"Yes Staff Sergeant!"

"Sarge," Agnarsson asked. "The doctor said that I should probably take it easy, you know, because of my injury."

I spared him a glance and then my eyes moved towards his shoulder.

"Pavel," I said.

My large friend moved towards the broad-shouldered Scottsman and squeezed his injured shoulder until he cried out, then he punched him in the gut.

"You've gotta be fucking kidding me!" I yelled. "You are a Helljumper and are seriously trying to get out of a mission? What the hell kind of half-assed, inbred parents did you have?"

Pavel helped the man back up and dusted him off before slapping him softly in the check. That was followed by an "attaboy" and a mean smile.

"If I ever hear you trying to get out of a mission or even imply that you'd rather not do the mission I will have you sent back to your original unit. You understand?" He nodded, still trying to catch his breath. "Same goes for everyone else."

I nodded thanks to Pavel as everyone else shuffled their feet nervously. I grabbed Agnarsson's yellow striped helmet and passed it to him just as he started breathing normally again. He nodded at me in reluctance and with some anger in his eyes, but he understood me well enough.

"Inside your pods Helljumpers. How do we go?"

"We go feet first, Staff Sergeant!"

"Damn right."

I put on my helmet and glanced at the countdown in my HUD. We were less than thirty seconds away from launch. I cracked both my knuckles and actually muttered a prayer to whichever god would listen to me. The countdown had reached ten by the time I was finished. I kept my eyes focused on the clock and for the first time since my first actual drop I felt really nervous. Not just nervous. _Really_ nervous.

Red. Yellow. Green.

The pod lurched downwards. Well, more like planetwards and there was a brief instant of weightlessness as it started falling back to New Moskva. Then it was the same process that I was used to all over again. It got shaky as fuck, then it got hot as hell, then I was overlooking a planet devastated by war. The pod shook once more, this time the product of the drag chute. We were going to fall down in nice fluffy snow.

The landing wasn't particularly soft, but it certainly was a whole lot better than my previous one. At least this time there was a landing.

A gust of cold wind made me shiver as soon as I opened the door. The outdoor thermometer marked a temperature of negative twenty-five degrees. Fahrenheit. Snowflakes started hitting my helmet's visor and promptly melting into water, impeding my vision. The special glass made the water slide downwards, but there was so much snow that it really didn't make a difference. My suit started heating up to a more decent temperature even before I stepped out of my pod.

My feet crashed down on a puddle of boiling water. There was already some steam coming up from the crater that my pod had made on the snow.

I could barely see through the snowstorm and only spotted all of the other seven pods with help from my VISR. Everyone gave me the ok sign and collapsed on my position after doing a quick perimeter check. Seven black shapes ran awkwardly through the snow and kneeled by my side.

"Ok, we landed just on target," I said, sending a map of the area to everyone's HUD. "We'll split into two fireteams. Pavel will lead Caboose, Scarecrow, and Snark. Grass, Angel, and Bumblebee are with me. Fireteam A will approach from southwest and Fireteam B will stop in this hill northwest of the target. From there you'll leave Snark behind to act as overwatch and attack the complex at the same time as we do? Clear?"

"Clear."

"All right," I nodded. "Let's get moving."

Grass took point in my team as we started moving east towards our target. There was so much snow falling around that without help of my IFF and VISR I wouldn't have been able to spot her, even if she was just thirty feet ahead of me. Unfortunately, I couldn't get an eyeful of the reason why she got her call sign.

"One thing," I broadcast. "Supposedly there aren't any cracks or crevices in this area, but it pays off to be cautious."

I only received acknowledgement lights. Everyone was too annoyed to answer. The snowstorm only seemed to be getting worse and weather radars showed no sign of relenting on the part of New Moskva's climate. I had to wonder why the planet had been named after Moscow instead of another city instead. A colder city.

We were now only two hundred meters away from the Covenant generator. Well within small arms range. Unusually enough, we were out of sight even though there was absolutely no natural cover for us. Well snow might count as natural cover, but I think you can grasp my meaning.

I stopped cold (ha ha, cold) when Grass winked the signal for that. "Target is fifity meters away," she said quietly.

I nodded to myself. "Pavel, we're in position. Are you ready?"

"Just about," he said. I waited for perhaps thirty seconds before he talked again. "We're good, Snark is in overwatch and has his thermal scope set up. Man, I wish I had one of those."

I knew exactly what he meant, but not even being an ODST gave you the right to get a free one from the armory unless it was only for one special mission. Buying them on the market was extremely expensive and I was still saving up for one. I heard there were some scopes that could spot a grunt hiding in a forest fire.

"Great, Eliza, you there?" I asked, switching channels.

"I'm here," she said calmly.

"Any additional intel?"

"The weather makes it difficult for us to send a drone, but satellite imaging shows perhaps thirty hostiles inside. Most of them are brutes and jackals it seems." As she said this she sent several schematics to my helmet. There was an actual picture that only showed a vague shadow covered by white and then there was another image that showed the locations of all enemy hostiles. I sent the images to my team.

"Thanks," I told the AI.

"I will cut communications after this, your proximity to enemy spires and equipment means that our broadcasts could be intercepted."

I nodded to myself once again, feeling stupid even as I did it. I glanced in the direction of the tower. There was nothing that I could make out except for an occasional silhouette every time the wind blew strongly, pushing some of the falling snow out of the way.

"Snark, we move on your mark."

"Aye, aye."

"Everyone ready?" I asked. My helmet's HUD practically went green from so many acknowledgement lights at the same time. "Good. Activate the smart battle aid, it's supposed to be great."

I didn't get any acknowledgement lights but I could only assume that everyone would follow my instruction. The new smart battle aid, or whatever it was called was a system that allowed my helmet to transmit information to the HUDs of other members of my squad or unit. For example, if I spotted two grunts my squad would see their silhouettes outlined in red right where they were, even if they couldn't see them. That by itself wasn't a new invention, but this new program supposedly went further. It also drew lines representing walls that your helmet cam automatically picked up and sentto nearby soldiers. If you had a couple of soldiers using this battle aid inside a structure they would quickly have a complete blueprint of the place in their motion sensor, further aiding in combat situations. It also had some other improved features, but nothing really worth mentioning at this point in the story.

There was a loud bang.

Well, presumably there was a loud bang because through the fucking snowstorm raging I didn't hear a thing. Snark fired a couple of times, knocking down three brute guards in total before we started moving towards the compound. The snow impeded our vision, but then again, it did the same thing for the covvies.

Three red outlines representing the dead brutes were slowly fading. Snark had yet to see any other enemy soldiers or he would've taken them out just as quick. I finally reached the outer wall of the complex and hopped over it. Grass, Angel, and Bumblebee hopped right behind me and started spreading out. We were _in_ the enemy lines and we couldn't see a damn thing.

"Keep moving," I said quietly.

I shuffled my feet through the snow as I scanned the area in front of me. My fireteam was doing the same team as we formed a square of sorts and moved at the same pace.

"Contact!" Bumblebee shouted. Immediately after that three shots from his carbine rang out. "Tango down."

_No one even says that anymore._

"Move along."

After a very stressing walk towards the main part of the tower I stopped. My hand was resting on the cold purple metal of the generator tower and we hadn't found a single enemy other than one unlucky jackal. Either the covvies were _really _cold or they didn't care about security. Either way, the perimeter was clear, that only meant all the more targets inside.

"Pavel?"

"Empty, no contact. Think they know we're here?"

"Probably," I said. "We go through the walls," I added. "Just in case."

I could almost see my Polish friend shrugging.

"Aight," Pavel replied. "On your mark."

I gestured at Angel and he slung his weapon before approaching the wall of the tower. Since it was at an angle we would literally be hopping up and then down the blasted hole. The Italian explosives and computer expert placed what seemed like triple the amount of necessary explosives for blasting through a wall. A necessary precaution since this was a Covenant structure, those were notorious for their sturdiness.

"Green?"

I waited a couple of seconds before I heard Caboose grunting. "Green."

"On my mark," I said, gesturing for the three members of my fireteam to for up in standard breaching formation. "Three, two, one, mark."

There was an uncomfortably loud explosion and the entire section of the wall collapsed downwards just like it was supposed to, even if it did so a little more violently than usual.

"Breaching, breaching, breaching!" Grass cried as she hopped over the hole.

She was the first in with Angel closely following her. I hopped after the ex convict and Bumblebee was the last one to do so, right behind me. Time slowed down as I took in the scene in front of me. Grass was aiming right in front of her while Angel was spinning to the right. Even as I processed this I spun to the left to check my designated field of fire.

There were at least a dozen stunned covvie soldiers behind barricades and with their weapons pointed at the door. Wrong direction.

I fired my first shot at the first brute I saw. Its head jerked back with the impact of my bullet, but the helmet held. Another three rounds to the same area helped fix that problem. My next shot hit another of the apes in the shoulder, in the gaps in its armor. I fired my gun as fast as the single-fire mechanism would allow it to and brought it down with several shots to the neck. I promptly changed to three-round burst even as the monstrous alien fell to the floor. Once it made contact with the metallic floor time sped up back to normal once more.

Two jackals covering their ears met their end with well-placed bursts and one valiant grunt making a run for his dropped needler was suddenly missing half its hand. I finished it with a headshot.

As soon as my sector was clear I pivoted to face the front. Five grunts, a jackal, and a brute lay dead, their chests riddled with holes from Grass's assault rifle. I used my momentum to turn towards the right and saw the same spectacle. Angel had done an excellent job, killing four brutes and twice as many jackals. It wasn't nearly as pretty as Grass's or my job, but it accomplished the same.

"Left clear!"

"Front clear!"

"Right Clear!"

"All clear," Bumblebee finished.

I could hear one last shot ringing out from across the tower even though I couldn't see the other fireteam. I heard them calling it clear just instants after we did.

"Grass, Angel, take right." I ordered. "Bumblebee, you're with me."

The three ODSTs nodded and moved on. Bumblebee was behind me because his weapon was even less suited to close quarters combat than mine. Well, technically speaking it was better suited, but it couldn't hand out the same amount of firepower.

I shot a grunt in the back as it tried to run away from a badly chosen hiding place and Bumblebee shone with three jackal kills in three shots. All were perfectly placed headshots that made a light clang as they went through the metallic beak armor.

"Brute, behind the column," I warned.

Immediately after I said that the hairiest specimen that I had ever seen pivoted from behind the column and brought to bear a brute shot.

Sometimes 'Oh shit' just doesn't cut it.

I jumped to one side even as I brought my gun to bear. I managed to squeeze off a burst while in the air… and missed wildly. It's actually more difficult to pull off a movie jumping gunshot than it seems.

My partner slid into cover behind a column even as a grenade flew through the place that we had been standing in instants ago. He popped out and had time to squeeze a round before three more rounds hit the column he was taking cover behind, badly damaging it but otherwise leaving the ODST just fine.

The brute ran out of grenades and spun his weapon around, bringing the deadly bayonet to bear.

"Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit."

For those occasions when the phrase just doesn't cut it: it will usually serve as a nice substitute while you come up with something appropriate.

I hadn't even had time to push myself up when the brute took a gigantic leap towards me, his weapon raised above his head for a killing strike. I spun sideways and the axe-like bayonet sunk deep in the floor where my head had just been. Bumblebee aimed at the brute and squeezed his trigger, only to hear the most horrible sound that he could've imagined.

The sound of his gun jamming.

"Aw shit."

* * *

><p><em>Oooh, a cliffhanger. Is it the first time I've done this? I honestly don't remember, I have done 82 chapters after all. Putting that aside, I hope you enjoyed this chapter peoples, and rest assured, it is not the last one. Not even close. <em>

_To whoever asked: I'm planning on sticking with this story until the end of the war, the only problem is that I still don't know how I'm going to go about it. Some ideas here and there, but nothing concrete. _

_As always, thanks to Sniper Fodder for proof-reading this chapter._

_-casquis_


	83. Circuits and Snowstorms

Chapter LXXXIII: Circuits and Snowstorms

**February 25, 2543 (UNSC Calendar)/**

**Nikola Hills, New Moskva, Ursa Tertio System**

"Aw shit," Agnarsson said as he stared dumbly at his weapon for a brief second.

The brute didn't waste any time and pulled his bayonet from the floor and did a horizontal slash at my teammate, who ducked just in time for the blade to get itself dug into the column that he was using as cover. I shuffled back and reached for my BR55 even as the brute threw a wild kick in my direction. Its huge foot barely grazed my side, but in my current position it managed to knock me back to the floor again. I used my feet to do a backward jump even as the brute shot's bayonet cut the floor that had been below my crotch just seconds ago. I took advantage of the situation and squeezed off two shots, hitting the brute in the knee. The armor held.

"You've got to be-"

I was interrupted by a plasma pistol round hitting me in the right shoulder. The special armor did an excellent job at protecting me from the heat, but I still winced in pain.

Bumblebee was still trying to unjam his carbine while reaching for his pistol. With his attention divided into the two different tasks he wasn't doing much progress. I jumped and rolled and avoided the brute's curved blade as best I could. The ape was getting angrier by the minute and I was running out of luck. Someone had already shot me from behind and there was no telling when I would be hit again.

"Oh screw this shit," the Scottish rocket man said as he dropped his carbine and reached with both hands towards his back. He pulled out the M41 SSR from his back in a well-practiced movement and aimed.

"No," I yelled even despite the situation, "what the fuck do you-"

I didn't have time to finish as the weapon made a dull noise and a rocket was fired. The brute was hit right in the middle of its back as it raised its weapon for a killing blow. It seemed to me that there was a brief instant between the moment the rocket made impact and the moment the rocket blew the fuck up. From my perspective it all looked rather grisly, to say the least. The brute was outlined by an orange flash for the briefest of moments and then it simply disappeared. I closed my eyes for less than a second even as I raised my arms to protect myself. Suddenly I realized that an explosion at such close proximity would've killed me a lot quicker and I opened them again.

"Huh?"

I wiped a piece of flesh from my helmet and finally managed to stand up. I turned around and hit a grunt wielding a plasma pistol in its arm. The grunt fell to the floor and dropped its weapon. I started jogging towards it.

"You shot me? In the back? You fucking bastard!" I yelled at it. "Who the hell does that?"

_Hypocrite_, a part of my subconscious told me.

I stepped on the grunts hand and saw an expression of pure panic in its eyes before I closed one of my hands into a fist and brought it down on the alien's face full-force. Its head jerked back and the grunt squealed in obvious pain as the metal studs in my glove made contact with its skull.

"This. Will. Teach. You. A. Lesson!" I said, punctuating every word with a fist to the face. By the time I was done the alien's skull had caved inwards and its face was nothing but a bloody mess.

"Whoa, remind me never to piss you off Sarge," Bumblebee said from behind me.

"Never to piss-" I started incredulously. "Never to piss me off? The first time I met you, what the fuck did I say the first time I met you?"

"Uh, what?" he asked, obviously flustered by my outburst.

"I told you never to fire a rocket inside a building again." I stopped for a full second. "And you just did the same thing again!"

"Well, if I remember correctly that means that I've saved your ass twice now," he snapped angrily.

"If this goes on," I muttered, "next time you save me I'll end up missing half my limbs." I stood up from the twitching body at my feet and glanced around, spotting the head and torso of the brute leaning against a wall, blood flowing freely from it. "Would it have killed you to empty your sidearm on its head?" I asked, my anger subsiding. "Jeez Agnarsson, think a little."

The man just stared at me from behind the safety of his bullet-resistant visor and pulled back the slide of his carbine, ejecting the offending slide from the chamber.

"Let's get a move on."

We did just that and moved through the tower with our guns raised. We didn't meet any more covvies save for a jackal that Bumblebee quickly took out. The rest of the place seemed to be empty, but there were probably a few more enemy soldiers holed up in the second floor, just waiting for us to blast through the doors guns blazing.

I turned around one wall that blocked the way and immediately raised my rifle to movement.

"Hey, it's us," Angel said. He was with Caboose.

"Everything good?" I asked.

"Yes we're good," Caboose informed me.

"Sarge, you're shot," Angel noted dully.

"No shit," I said. "I'm fine, armor did its job. For a change."

The two men in front of me simply shrugged and walked in my direction with their guns raised. To my right was a ramp that lead up to the second floor. A door that seemed like it could take anything blocked it off. I heard more gunshots and some return spiker fire, but after five seconds it all went quiet.

"Pavel, clear?"

"We're good," he said. "Snark and Scarecrow are fine, Grass was nicked by a spiker."

"She all right?" I asked, only mildly concerned.

"She'll be fine."

"What? The thing was lodged into my arm, it didn't _graze_ me!"

"Oh, you're fine," Pavel insisted. "She's fine," he said to me.

"Great. You have a way to the second floor?" I asked him.

"Aye, gravity lift, but I'm not really up for it."

Perfect.

"Good, on my signal toss a few frags followed by a couple of flashbangs," I explained. "Then my team will go in."

"Nice," he said with a little admiration. "Just say the word cap'n."

The three guys that were with me were already placed one behind the other in breaching formation. The door was closed but Caboose had already placed a device in the covenant holo-projector that would open it instantly. I looked at them and they nodded at me professionally. They all checked their weapons and Caboose and Angel pulled back the slides of their rifles.

"Pavel, go."

There were three muted explosions that could be heard through the door followed by a much louder sound that was effectively rendered useless through the thick alien metal doors. I clicked on the device and the door slid open. Scarecrow, Caboose, and Bumblebee walked in with their guns raised and I joined them as soon as the last of them entered the room. We spread out in a square and kept checking every inch for movement. It seemed that three grenades in a confined space cause an extreme amount of damage. There were several dead brutes with blood pouring from hundreds of orifices in their bodies and a lone jackal skirmisher. Most of the brutes seemed to be bodyguards.

"Look for a chieftain amongst the bodies," I ordered frantically.

"Yup, he's here," Caboose said calmly. There was a loud gunshot followed by a grunt. "Still alive apparently. Sarge, what do we want to do with it?"

"Dispose of it however you want," I told him.

"Music to my ears," the Russian man replied with a hearty chuckle.

I smiled to myself as I heard the sound of a knife being unsheathed. I realized just how _fucked_ up that was and went dead serious again.

"Pavel, send Grass in here, Bumblebee, Scarecrow, and Snark, go with Pavel and guard the outer doors. Snark, you can set up shop in one if the lookout towers. Angel, is it gonna take long?"

"A couple minutes," he said, already pulling out fancy-looking equipment from one of his several pouches. "Ten, tops."

"You heard him, ten minutes. Caboose, get it done with, the moaning and screaming is getting on my nerves."

"And I was having so much fun," he said.

"Patch up Grass as soon as she walks in and then guard the ramp," I ordered him.

"Yessir."

I made a private connection to Pavel. "Man, ordering this much people around feels_ good._"

"Oh, shut up," Pavel replied. He was obviously very annoyed, he couldn't go around being insubordinate as he usually was with this many people in here.

"Sarge?"

"Grass, you all right?" I asked her distractedly while eyeing the control room of the generator tower.

"It hurts."

"Caboose, patch her up," I said. "You've got first-aid training, right?"

"I went through a course," he replied.

"Great," the blonde said weakly.

"Relax, pouring biofoam isn't that difficult, you know?" he said. "Look, just watch. Open can, press can against wound, press button, close can. See? All done."

"Better?" I asked.

"Stings."

"Awesome. Go guard the ramp."

"Yessir."

I stood there impassively watching as the Italian hacker, cracker, or whatever the term was connected his device to a covenant terminal. I looked worried for a few seconds before he pulled out his knife and cut out a panel right next to the terminal, there he pulled out some tubes that could only be wiring and cut the outer covers before pulling out smaller wires. I found it quite surprising that the Covenant still somehow used cables just like us simple humans.

The Italian then started attaching wires to wires and pulling out stuff and pulling out some more stuff and then clicking on his keyboard and then looking like he was a philosopher and then back to clicking on his keyboard.

"What?" I asked irritably.

"I need to find a way to bypass their firewalls," he explained. "Sure, I could simply burst right through them, but that would raise some alarms."

"We just killed an entire outpost," I noted. "If that doesn't raise an alarm then I don't know what will."

"You make a good point," he said, chuckling, "but no."

He resumed what he was doing and I couldn't do anything that just sigh in annoyance. Since there was nothing for me to do I made sure that every enemy combatant was dead. How did I do this? I put a bayonet on my rifle and poked a couple of extra holes in the back of their necks just to make sure. The chieftain I left alone, Caboose had done a mighty fine job in making sure that one was dead. The brute had been lucky that it was half-delirious by the time the Helljumper's blade started cutting through his skin. I shook my head and moved on.

Angel sure as hell was taking his time, imputing commands into his terminal and whatnot, but what put me on edge was that we were forced to be here so long. Any time now a patrol that the satellite hadn't detected could return, a couple of banshees sent out could arrive, or even worse, they could've managed to send out a distress signal before we got them all.

"Pavel?" I asked, putting my hand to my ear. That was a motion that I had seen in Agnarsson's movies, it annoyed me that I did it subconsciously.

"We're clear, nothing but white snow as far as the eye can see."

"Yeah, but the eye can't see very far, that's what worries me."

"I'll tell you if anything happens," he said.

I sighed with resignation and went back to watching Angel struggle to break through the Covenant firewalls without raising some kind of alarm that would render that cyber-attack useless. Few people had the knowledge to navigate through alien networks without the help of an AI, not because they were particularly tough, but because they work so differently from human programs. You had to learn everything you knew all over again. Granted, the Covenant was basically computer illiterate, but they were still clever enough to put up some tricky firewalls.

"Why did you learn to program?" I asked suddenly.

"I was bored," he replied nonchalantly.

"I was bored when I was a kid too," I said, "but I read or snuck out to bars to get the shit kicked out of me. I find programming and all that hacking thing interesting, but to learn it because I'm bored? That's way too much."

The Italian shrugged.

"Come on, there's got to be a reason," I pushed.

He sighed and tapped some more commands into his computer. "It's a funny story actually," he said with some resignation. "Papa wasn't always home and mama wasn't always sober, you catch my meaning?"

I nodded at him to go on.

"I was a little kid back then, well, little enough. I thought it was simply a part of life, my life at least. It wasn't until I found out why my mom drank and why my father wasn't around."

"Why?"

"I'm not telling," he said resolutely.

"Then what happened?"

"I already knew a little programming, so I bought a couple of pirated teach-yourself-to programs and studied day and night to get revenge."

"Revenge, seriously? Why?"

"I dunno, I guess I thought my situation was unfair," he said.

"How'd that end?" I asked.

"Let's just say it cost one man his entire life savings as well as a couple of decades in prison. Also broke up my parent's marriage."

"Whoa," I said. "That's depressing," I put out bluntly.

"Ha, you can call it that if you want," Angel said with a humorless chuckle. "After that I started doing the more illegal stuff, and then…"

"And then you got caught," I finished.

"And then I got caught," he agreed.

There were a few moments of uncomfortable silence between us.

"That's one hell of a story," I said. "Could make it into a movie. You know, those dramatic ones with a semi-happy ending . Could probably win an Academy Award," I told him.

This time Angel laughed for real. "Yeah, probably, then again, your story could probably make a good movie too."

"An action movie," I said. "I grew up in a moderately stable household."

"Moderately stable?"

"Yeah, parents died when I was ten and my uncle took care of me ever since then."

"He a good guy?"

"Yeah, one of the best. He was an officer in the Corps."

"You're a military brat?" Angel asked with evident surprise in his voice.

"You got me."

"Where's your uncle deployed?" he asked me.

"He was an instructor back in Jericho VII."

"Was?" he asked cautiously.

"Was," I confirmed. "Died during the invasion. Took out one brute with him though."

"So you found him?" he asked.

"Yes, I also found Pavel a couple hundred meters from my wrecked home. You lose some, you get some. Is that how the saying goes?"

He shrugged once more. "Jeez, at least I got a family Sarge," he put out bluntly. Oh the irony. "Hey, we're just about done."

"Everyone, pack up, Grass, Caboose, meet up with Pavel."

"Yessir!"

_Why do they call me sir? It makes me feel old._

"Angel?"

"Gimme a moment here, if I push this button we're through."

I stared at him through my depolarized faceplate.

"I could either succeed completely or set off some alarms."

"But the virus is through?" I asked. "Mission accomplished and all that shit."

"Yes, but-"

"You sound like an overachieving kid in middle school, just press the fucking button."

Angel clicked on his computer and waited for what seemed like an eternity. Then he sighed with relief. "We're green."

"Eliza?" I called out into her designated channel.

"Yes?"

"We're good," I informed her.

"I see, nice job Staff Sergeant," she said professionally. She must've been using one of her 'dumb' subroutines for that. "Get out of there. Weather is going to make extraction a little bit difficult, move out to Extraction Point D and await for further instructions."

"Yes ma'am," I said, then to my team, "You heard the woman! Start moving!"

The Italian hacker/explosives enthusiast was already wrapping up his things together but left behind a couple of items that I assumed would give Eliza a way to take control of enemy assets. She _had _said that. Hadn't she?

We started going down the ramp and I was pleasantly surprised to see that neither Grass nor Caboose were still there, having fulfilled my orders immediately. A refreshing change of pace if you ask me. Angel and me walked out of the structure while hopping over alien bodies. I sighed as we walked outside. There was still a snowstorm going on outside. It seemed to me like the mother of all snowstorms, I had yet to decide whether it was convenient for us or for the covvies. Perhaps it was just inconvenient for both sides.

"Sarge!" I heard. The design of my helmet allowed me to hear the voice over the sound of the wind, it also made it sound like it came from one particular direction. I glanced in that direction to see Snark hopping down from a lookout tower. He made a funny noise as he hit the snow and rolled. The snow now reached all the way to our waists.

"The rest?" I asked.

"They're already ahead," the pint-sized sniper replied. "Covvies will be here any minute."

"On that we can agree," Angel agreed. Angel agreed… well no shit he agreed. Perhaps 'Angel nodded' would've looked better in print. Oh well, whatever.

I was starting to get pissed off at having to push my way through snow, even if it was Powder. I was about to say something witty with a couple of curse words in it when I saw something that startled me. Blood.

"Pavel," I said on instinct. "Sorry, disregard that. Grass, I see some blood in the snow, you sure you're fine?"

"Your friend seems to think so," she replied bitterly.

"She's all right, it's just a messy wound."

"Make sure she's fine," I said. "And keep moving, banshees will be probably swooping down any second now."

"You were never that concerned for my safety," Pavel baited me.

"I was hoping you'd die," I deadpanned.

"Ouch, if he said that to me I would be pissed," Caboose said. "Punch him, punch him."

"Shut up," Pavel ordered. "And fuck you Frank."

I thought about saying something stupid, yet insulting but decided against it. It would only prolong the discussion.

"Well, someone's getting more mature Francisco," Schitzo said.

I am proud to say that I wasn't even surprised to hear that asshole. I still looked around to see where he was and couldn't help but roll my eyes when I found him right behind me, wearing shorts and a Hawaiian shirt while sipping on some drink served in a coconut. Seriously, who the fuck does that in the middle of a snowstorm? That's right, me.

Just looking at the hallucination, so smug and dressed in summer clothes while drinking tropical cocktail made me want to punch the hell out of it. Of course, if I did that I would only succeed in punching thin air and looking like a paranoid schizophrenic in front of my squad, probably managing to lose whatever respect I had earned from them. That is not a good thing.

"She's good," Pavel's voice came in. "Her bandage was done wrong…"

"Hey, don't look at me!" Caboose complained. "I only took a course in field medicine!"

"They should've failed you," my friend muttered.

"Relax Pavel," Grass said. "No harm no foul, right?"

"Why don't you use my call sign?" he asked suddenly.

"Well…"

"Well what?"

"Well it sounds extremely weird," Bumblebee helped out.

"Shut up. _Bumblebee_."

"Hey, I'm just calling them like I see them."

"Gotta agree, weird choice for a call sign," Scarecrow said. "You even chose it yourself," he added.

"Wait, does that mean no one likes it?" Pavel exclaimed.

"Sorry…" I said. "But yeah, pretty much."

"Come on!" he complained. "I will get a new one!"

"Everyone will keep calling you Pavel," Grass said.

"What, why?"

_Time for damage control._

"Let's face it," I said. "Your name is practically call sign material, anything else would simply feel… off."

"Smooth," Schitzo complimented.

_I aim to please,_ I thought to him.

After that everyone went quiet and kept on walking through the snow. By the time my three-man fireteam caught up with the rest of the group the snow reached all the way to our chest in some places. In others it wasn't that high, but it was getting increasingly annoying. I was about to start kicking the white fluffy stuff for being so annoying when I made out a noise through the blowing wind.

"Shh," I said needlessly, everyone was dead quiet. "You hear that?"

There was a couple of seconds of everyone tensing up and listening intently.

I can't hear anything Frank," Pavel said. "Must be the wind."

"You know better than that," I insisted.

"All right, all right," he conceded. "Let's wait some more."

Everyone immediately spread out in a circle and planted their knees on the ground, sinking all the way to the neck in the snow while moving around some of the frozen water to allow themselves to fire more comfortably.

"There," I said. "There it is again," I said.

"I think I hear it," Caboose agreed.

"Snark, toss me your rifle," I said. I grabbed the EMR and aimed at the sound. "It's coming from… my four o'clock?" I half-asked.

"Four thirty," the Russian Helljumper said.

I aimed at the direction and switched to thermal imaging on the scope. It took some seconds but I finally spotted what I was looking for.

"Flight of banshees," I said. "Three of them, circling around us."

"Do they know we're here?" Scarecrow asked.

"Don't think so," I said.

Wrong.

"Shit, get out of the way!" I yelled as the three heat signatures turned around and brought their cannons to bear on us. I hopped through the snow just as plasma started raining on our position. Water and steam rained all around us as the three banshees did a strafing run.

"Everyone fine?" I asked from below a good amount of snow. "Yes? Good, Bumblebee, knock them out of the sky."

There were two thuds as the rockets from his SPANKr flew from their tubes. IT was about two seconds before I heard two separate explosions in a completely different direction. The banshees had been turning around for a second run when the rockets caught up with them. Well, two of them at least.

I turned around and searched frantically for the last remaining banshee through the snow. Snark's rifle scope and its thermal mode weren't getting anything. I saw the banshee after I heard its characteristic screaming. I put the white figure in my crosshairs and emptied the magazine on the banshee's frontal armor. The damage that I did wasn't lethal by any means, but it served its purpose and forced the aircraft to bank hard and turn away. My actions gave Bumblebee enough time to reload his rocket launcher and blast the banshee out of the sky.

"Sheeeeeit, that was close," Scarecrow said.

"Move along," I said, dusting snow from my shoulder plates and chest. "Snark, thanks."

"If you allowed me to keep the rifle we wouldn't have wasted another rocket," he said as he caught his EMR. "Just saying."

Angel slapped him on the back of the helmet as he caught up with him. Soon after we formed a line with a few meters of space in between us so that a single fuel rod would not kill us all. The brutes piloting the banshees (for the pilots most likely belonged to that race) had been too eager for a fight and didn't use the fuel rod cannon that their craft possessed. Not that I'm complaining, but still, how stupid can you be?

Finally we arrived at the evacuation point. A small hilltop with no cover from the deadly weather whatsoever that overlooked the surrounding plains and smaller hills. It was completely covered with snow, not even boulders had escaped from the white fluffiness. Reaper Squad regrouped once again and sat down on the snow. Pavel and Caboose even started digging an igloo of sorts. Must be a Nordic thing I guess.

"Eliza," I called for the eighth time. "Come in?"

"She's not answering Sarge," Caboose said.

"Well no shit." I looked around and wasn't really surprised when I saw that the landscape hadn't changed at all. "I'll see if I can get through to a nearby unit."

I used my helmet to see if there were any drones flying overhead. There were a couple just within range and I sent a message to both of them. "This is Reaper Actual, Delta-Charlie-Victor. Any friendly units nearby? Over."

Silence.

"This is Reaper Actual. Del-"

"I hear ye Reaper Actual, this is Kilo-117, what do you need?"

"Evacuation and a medic," I said. "We've got one wounded, nothing serious."

"I'll see about that," Kilo-117 said. A few seconds later he came back in. "I'm afraid we can't spare any medics right now, but we can send a pelican to pick you up."

"Good enough," I informed him. "What's your unit?" I asked.

"2nd Batallion, New Moskva Ground Forces, Army," the radio operator replied proudly and professionally.

"Local Army?" I asked. "I thought you guys were gonners or securing civvies."

"Civvies are secure enough," he replied. "Two companies spearheaded an assault on the invasion force in Highbay. Damn heroes."

"Aye," I agreed. "Local forces are already mounting a counter-attack?"

"Affirmative Reaper Actual, seems like we can turn this thing," he said naively.

_I wish. We have initiative right now, but by the end of tomorrow we'll still be outnumbered both here and in space._

"We just might," I told him, not wanting to bring down his hopes.

"Reaper Actual, do you mind me asking what the hell you are doing there?"

"Oh, I don't mind," I said, "but I won't answer."

"Shame, there'll be a pelican evacuating you in a few minutes. Kilo-117 over and out."

I sighed as I took off my helmet, letting the freezing winds hit my face for a few seconds before putting it back on. Everyone had heard the conversation with Kilo-117 so I didn't bother telling them that we would be getting evacuation. Instead, I dug myself a little bit deeper into the hole in the snow that I was one, looking for heat. No matter how advanced my suit was, my body still felt cold just by looking at all the snow.

"Eliza," I said, switching channels. "We got evacuation, certainly not from you."

As soon as I had informed the AI, and by extension the UNSC _Inconvenience_ and anyone there that cared to ask about my whereabouts. I relaxed and allowed myself as much comfort as possible in the snow.

It only took a few minutes (as promised) for a pelican to arrive. It was painted with a slightly different green than pelicans in the UNSCMC were painted. The word ARMY was printed all over the place, reminding me who owned and operated this ship. The craft circled over our position one time before hovering twenty meters above our heads. From there it started going down at a snail-like pace, following protocol for this kind of things.

"Reaper Actual, I hear you were getting cold," the pilot said in typical airman cockiness.

"No," I replied, "I was getting bored."

"Of course," he said.

Pavel stood up and shook his head while looking at me. I saw Grass put her hand to her wounded upper arm and wince slightly as she touched her bandage. She would be getting her first Purple Heart soon enough, it'd probably be issued to her along with Bumblebee's. Stupid newbies, getting shot and all that.

"Helljumpers?" the copilot exclaimed as soon as he saw us. "I thought the Navy was on the other side of the planet, playing hide and seek."

"They are," Scarecow said.

"We're with the _Inconvenience,_" Grass added.

Caboose, Pavel, and I shook our heads at her.

"The ship that just arrived from Reach?" he asked. "Damn lifesavers you are. If your cruiser hadn't-"

"Frigate," Grass said. "Frigate, not cruiser."

"Yeah, whatever, it still saved our asses," he said thankfully.

We simply nodded at the man and he went back to the cockpit as soon as the hatch doors closed. As soon as that happened I took off my helmet and ran my fingers through my hair. As soon as _that_ was done I took my time to glare at Grass and give her a 'What the fuck?' expression. She looked uncomfortable even behind all her armor and even refrained from taking off her helmet even when everyone else already had.

"We're flying over Highbay," the pilot said after a quarter hour. "Welcome to New Moskva."

* * *

><p><em>Hey guys! Surely you didn't think that I had forgotten you! Still, I am sorry it took me this long to update my story. Wait, I upload at least one chapter every week... maybe you should be thankful for my superhuman update speed. Nah, just kidding, hope you enjoyed this.<em>

_That last night was incredibly cheesy, but I just couldn't help it, it's a staple for action movies (in this case fan fiction). Can't you just picture a smirking pilot saying that? _

_As always, thanks to Sniper Fodder for proof-reading this chapter._

_-casquis_


	84. Real Estate is Harder Than it Looks

_What is this? Another chapter up so soon? That's right, I really love you guys. Enjoy._

_As always, thanks to Sniper Fodder for proof-reading this chapter._

* * *

><p><span>Chapter LXXXIV: Real Estate is Harder Than it Looks<span>

**March 1, 2543 (UNSC Calendar)/**

**Highbay, New Moskva, Ursa Tertio System**

"What are you doing?"

"Nothing!" I replied, perhaps a little bit too quickly, because Pavel wasn't fooled at all.

"Uh-huh, and this nothing involves…"

I stared at him. "It involves nothing."

"Hey Sarge!" Scarecrow's voice came from outside the room. "It looks like the block is clear, we'll be-" As soon as he walked inside the room he stopped cold. "Are you _stealing_?"

"I am not," I complained. "I just wanted to borrow this movie pad. I haven't been keeping up with new films, you know."

"You're stealing," Scarecrow stated, his voice growing cold.

"Fine! Fine!" I conceded. "The owner of this house is probab-"

"Frank," Pavel interrupted quietly.

It was only then that I remembered the owners of this house as a family of five. They had two daughters that were probably around thirteen and ten and a little toddler boy around the age of three. The father had graduated with a degree in child psychology from a local university and the mother seemed to like kilts very much. They were probably second generation immigrants from one of the Slavic countries judging from their names and the styling of the house. The two daughters shared a room, it was actually painted pink, while the little brother had one room all to his own. There were still stuffed animals and toys lying around, clothes and other valuables were littered all over the floor, evidence of the hasty evacuation of the city. All in all the Ozolinsh family was everything that I would've wanted had I chosen to take the family road.

And I was stealing from them.

"Wow, we are an asshole," Schitzo said. "But on the other hand, you could keep the moviepad for free. There's gotta be a couple hundred movies in there…"

"Staff Sergeant, put that back where you found it," Scarecrow said even as Pavel moved to his side.

"Fine," I sighed. I placed the moviepad right back where I found it and picked up my helmet from the bed. I put it back on and looked at Pavel and Scarecrow, daring them to say something.

Pavel just shrugged and would soon forget all about it. Scarecrow looked like he had lost all the respect that he once had for me. It felt weird, but for some reason that possibility worried me a whole lot more than the plasma artillery falling a couple hundred yards from our position.

"You were saying?" I asked Scarecrow as soon as Pavel left the room.

"This block has been declared clear and safe," he replied icily. "We'll be charging into the next few blocks in ten to fifteen minutes. The general will broadcast the orders."

"He just expects us to win back the city with full on charges?" I mused. "Must've read a little bit too much war literature, we should be doing small raids before large attacks. Not pausing in between large attacks." By the time I was done I realized that I had been talking to myself for the last sentence. Well, Schitzo had jumped down on the bed and had been listening intently, but he doesn't really count.

"You're right," he said. "Small raids followed by-"

_Shut up!_ I mentally yelled at him as I slammed the door close, making sure the hallucination disappeared. I climbed down the stairs while avoiding looking at the hanging portraits and family pictures. The living room was occupied by six out of the seven other members of my squad while Grass did lookout in the attic. The rest of the squad made sure that the curtains were closed and were sitting around a table.

"Hey Sarge! Care to join?" Angel asked as he patted the cushion besides him.

"Blackjack or Texas?" I asked.

"Go fish…" Pavel admitted almost shyly.

"I think I'll pass," I said. "Perhaps some other time."

"You sure Staff Sergeant?" Caboose asked, switching his MA5K from one side of his chair to the other. "We're having fun."

"I'm sure," I insisted. "I assume you heard Scarecrow?"

Everyone nodded.

"Be sure to wrap this up quickly," I said. "As soon as you're done make an ammunition count and get ready for going-. What am I saying, you know the drill."

"Hooah!" they cheered. Well they didn't include Scarecrow, who was obviously looking away from me on purpose.

I sighed inwardly and went towards the kitchen. There was a granite table in the middle of the room. On top if were a couple of small boxes of ammunition and empty magazines, also lying there was one page of the local English-language newspaper. I kicked a jackal corpse out of the way and grabbed the newspaper. The page in particular had the daily crossword puzzle on it. I had picked it up two days ago and was still trying to finish it.

Man, was I tired.

As soon as this offensive was over I was hoping to get some rest and a little bit of love from my girl. Except I had no girl and she certainly wouldn't be giving me any more 'love' for the rest of my days.

I sighed once again as I grabbed a pencil from my butt-pack. I looked at the crossword puzzle and then decided that it would be easier if I sat down. I did so on one of the stools and looked at 18 down.

"Title for the Samoan head of state." I sighed for the third time in thirty seconds. "How the fuck am I supposed to know that?"

"I guess you could cheat," Grass said from over my shoulder.

"If you try sneaking on me like that maybe you should take lighter steps," I suggested. "And no, I'm not going to cheat. What's the point?"

"You heard me? Why don't you cheat just for this one? Or you could ask me the answer."

"You made some noise on the last couple of steps," I informed the female Helljumper. "What's the title for the Samoan head of state?" I asked her.

"A le Ao o le Malo," she said. "Lots of vowels."

"A le Ao le Malo?" I asked as I checked if the letters would fit in the boxes.

"No, A le Ao _o_ le Malo," Grass said. "You write it like-"

I wrote it down before she could go on. "Thanks," I said while turning around. My face came within inches of Grass's. I stayed there for a moment before pulling back slightly. She did the same and blushed a little bit before excusing herself rather awkwardly. Her rear wiggled with every step she took and managed to look majestic despite all the armor she was sporting.

"I wouldn't mind getting some love from _that_," Schitzo said, he was pulling a milk carton from an open fridge. The fridge was filled with rotten food and stale beer, but Schitzo managed to make me believe that he was drinking ambrosia.

_She's out of bounds,_ I reminded myself. _Besides, you'd have a hard time getting that even if she wasn't out of bounds._

The entire house shook and dust rained from the ceiling as a shell landed particularly close. The lights flickered briefly and then came back before going out completely.

"A-ha!" I said triumphantly, "I know this one. I-na-ni-lo-quent." I said the word slowly, enunciating each word as I wrote it down on the torn newspaper page. I nodded to myself with satisfaction and folded the crossword puzzle neatly before stuffing it in one of my magazine holsters. I then shoved a full magazine on top of it to keep the crossword puzzle that I had been working so hard on securing for the next couple of minutes. If they were anything like the last couple of days, they would be very noisy.

"Sarge?" Caboose called out. Sometimes I wondered how he could treat me so normally even when he sent weekly reports back to ONI. Eliza hadn't been able to crack them and I hadn't been able to confront him about them. "We green?"

"We green," I said, imitating both his intentionally bad grammar and his accent. I have to admit, his Russian accent made him sound intimidating. According to him it was also popular with the ladies. I guess I have to take his word for it.

I picked up my helmet and checked the universal timer that every single soldier in this entire city had on their HUD. I had fifteen seconds until the vehicles started charging and another ten after that before I had to leave the relative safety of this house.

I picked up my rifle and released the magazine, catching it on the way down. I pulled back the bolt of the rifle, ejecting the chambered round, which I caught too and placed on the table. I pulled it back to make sure nothing was awry with the mechanism and then slid the magazine back in. I released the bolt, chambering a round and unloaded the magazine once more. I filled the 36-round magazine and slapped it inside the receiver, giving me an extra bullet to fire.

I looked once again at the timer and took a deep breath when I saw that it was only five minutes before the cavalry charged forward, opening the way for us. I walked through the open side door and instantly crouched, the shoulder-height fence covering my movements from the eyes of any prying jackal or brute sniper. I was mostly worried with jackals though. This side of the house was facing a two-lane street. The only members of my squad that would be charging with me were Grass and Scarecrow. Pavel would take Bumblebee and Caboose from the front while Snark and Angel would stay in the attic and roof of the house respectively, providing covering fire and sniper support.

I looked across the street to see an Army lieutenant crouching behind a concrete barricade. He was the platoon leader of the unit that had been on our left flank ever since yesterday morning. So far he had outlasted three of his predecessors. I nodded at him as I found a nice position to sprint like a demented man from and waited. The countdown had reached zero at least six seconds ago, but I didn't have to worry, because soon enough I could hear the loud rumbling of an armored fighting vehicle through the Covenant artillery.

An Armadillo rolled through and started firing its main cannon and coaxial machine gun at the same time. It was not the only one to do that, I could hear the familiar booms that the cannons of Scorpion tanks as they rolled forward in parallel streets and alleyways. Soon after that I heard the glorious whistling that Rhino's _Zeus_ 320mm plasma cannon's shells made when they flew through the air.

Yes, that is correct, the cannon is named after the Greek god of thunder, fired actual plasma and was 320mm caliber. Just measure it, it's a whole lot larger than the requirements to be an adult film star.

There was a huge explosion as the high-explosive round detonated thirty or forty yards from our position. That explosion was followed by another one, and another one, and another one. After the third Rhino salvo there were no more gigantic explosions of doom and a green light started flashing in my HUD. I rolled my eyes at the go signal and psychologically braced myself for the three or four minutes that would follow me stepping out from cover.

"Go, go, go," I said deadpan.

As the squad leader I stepped from cover first, bringing my rifle to bear on the house that was directly in front of ours. Correction, bringing my rifle to bear on the house that _had been_ in front of hours. A combination of 30mm explosive rounds fired full-auto and the shockwaves from the _Zeus_ cannons had reduced the three-story building to rubble with only one wall standing intact.

I made a point to use the Armadillo's profile to cover myself from fire that could be coming from my forward left and aimed in front. The amount of smoke, dust, and snow that the explosions had lifted into the sky didn't allow me to see anything clearly, but covvies were like spiders, you thought you were safe from them and suddenly the biggest fucking arachnid that you've ever seen appears in your shower. Inside a ship. In outer space.

That's how annoying they are.

I crossed the street just as multi-colored plasma started raining on me from all sides. I moved side to side on instinct to avoid the orbs that represented certain death. I knew that this wouldn't decrease my survival odds significantly, but it was something I did naturally and hadn't failed me so far. I hopped over the white picket fence in the next house and hit the ground running. The walls of the first floor had been left mostly intact by the Armadillo, for both purposes of cover and because their cannon couldn't aim that low in this proximity. Once inside the roofless house I could see the buildings in front of it. That one was only missing a section of the wall and was built with polycrete and not simple concrete or fragile wood, thus could bear the Armadillo's assault better.

I ducked quickly behind a kitchen wall and Grass slid next to me, getting behind a table in the middle of the destroyed kitchen. Scarecrow was forced to stop slightly earlier as eight spiker rounds lodged themselves in the wall that he had just taken cover behind.

Suddenly water started spraying my faceplate. I looked around in annoyance at having to get rained upon instead of fired upon but then smiled when I realized that the water spraying my helmet came from a broken pipe in the kitchen's sink. Say what you want to say about the UEG Colonial Administration, they build to last.

After wiping some water from my helmet and repositioning myself so that the water wouldn't fall directly in my faceplate I prepared myself for the real thing. "Scarecrow."

"Got it," he rumbled.

The large man pivoted from cover and fired one grenade from his under barrel grenade launcher. The explosive collided with something important, because there was a brief second of no fire directed at us. I took full advantage of the situation and stood up from behind the chest-high wall. I fired at a jakal sharpshooter that was taking potshots at a group of soldiers and then at a brute that had been stretching its arm over its head. The second alien I fired at was unlucky enough to receive an armor-piercing round through its neck and then-

_Wait, stretching its arm?_

My ponderings were interrupted by a _tchack_-like noise to my right. I glanced down at the noise and saw a miniature mace that hadn't been there a second ago embedded in the wooden floors. I tilted my head sideways even as I Grass stared at me in confusion. The I realized what was happening. I dove for the spike grenade and threw it as hard as possible while trying to make it land in the covvie's building. The explosive detonated about halfway through, sending wiked spikes in every direction but harming no one, human or alien.

_Man, I shouldn't have had that beer…_ I thought to myself.

"Damn right sarge," Scarecrow said, the friendliness in his voice returning. "It was stale."

"Not exactly what I meant Scarecrow," I said, smiling despite the situation. "Besides, it was Corona, I haven't had one of those in ages."

I didn't get an answer as Scarecrow jumped from one torn-down wall to another. A second later three carbine rounds penetrated through the thin concrete that had been serving as cover for the Helljumper. By my calculations he would've been hit in the right shoulder blade and in the waist. Lucky that he decide to switch cover at that precise moment.

"Again," I ordered.

The huge man fired another 40mm grenade at the building in front of us. I popped once again from cover, this time choosing a hole in the wall to serve as my firing spot. I spotted a grunt carrying a box of plasma munitions for a turret and gave it the sweetness of a quick and painless death. Well, as quick and painless as being shot through the throat can be.

"Go Grass," I ordered.

The female marine hopped over the granite table she had been using as cover and ran five meters before she crouched behind another wall, the last one before we hit the backyard and had to sprint all the way across the street to the next building. She had been lucky, no one had seen her change positions as they were too busy keeping their heads down, courtesy of the M987 Armadillo's main armament. The AFV was wrecking the covvie line with its autocannon. A brave grunt made a grab for a plasma turret and started firing at the vehicle. I could see the frontal armor of the AFV starting to boil and melt off from the intense heat, but a quick shot from my BR55 took out the heroic grunt. This time I hit it right in the chest.

_So much for my throat-shot streak…_

"Snark, what do you see?" I asked.

"Thermal shows seven, no eighteen enemy foot mobiles inside the building directly in front of you, sixteen for you Pavel," the sniper said professionally. "Also, nice moves Bumblebee, your fall didn't look stupid at all."

"I'd like to see you say that to my face you little twerp!" the Scottsman replied angrily. "Maybe I'll whoop your ass like in Fight Club."

To my surprise, the whole squad, including me replied to Bumblebee's comment with the same phrase and at almost the same time. "The first rule of fight club is… YOU DO NOT TALK ABOUT FIGHT CLUB!"

There was a moment of awkward silence through the communications channel.

"Damn Rob," Pavel said, "your movies are affecting us _way_ too much."

"Oh, shut up, that's a bloody classic."

"Yes," I said. "Gunfire, plasma, covvies, death, and baddasery."

The entire team focused back on the actual battle instead of psychological films from the beginning of the goddamned millennium. I still didn't quite understand how someone would get into that time period in particular, with it being so boring and all that.

I fired a couple of rounds while Angel kept his finger on the trigger, releasing a hose of lead that sent the covvies to the floor. That gave me enough time to run to a different place. I slammed into the corner of the same wall that Grass had been using as cover while Scarecrow took advantage of the situation to switch to the place I was using for cover. Of all three of us I was the only one that could stand up and not be exposed in some way or other.

"Isn't this going a little bit too well?" Schitzo asked, sitting in an intact chair.

I ignored him completely and fired three shots at a jackal, the thing got lucky and had time to get to cover after my first shot hit the wall next to it. I promptly jumped back behind the wall before a hail of super-heated plasma would fry me inside my armor. I tossed one of my fragmentation grenades in a high arch, as it went up I wondered why the covvies didn't simply set their hand-thrown explosives to blow up after hitting something. They had this tendency to let their spike and plasma grenades sit there for about four seconds before they actually detonated, giving us plenty of time to get out of the way, or at least try to get out of the way.

My thrown frag landed on the roof of the building and detonated. The explosion probably maimed one of the two jackal sharpshooters that were there. If that didn't happen it would at least daze them and prevent them from firing their best shots.

This time a couple of red plasma bolts and spikes hit the wall that I used for cover just before I was able to get behind the relative safety of the concrete. I decided it was probably for the best if I waited a couple of seconds before leaving cover again. Grass popped from cover in a weird crouch-like stance and fired short bursts at anything she saw. The MA5C made brutes stagger and killed most grunts that it hit, although sometimes the alien armor held its own.

Scarecrow instead fired longer bursts, taking out everything that he managed to make contact with and then firing a couple of extra shots at it when it hit the ground. Well, unless the body fell behind a wall or something like that, in which case he didn't really bother. For the only member of the team that didn't absolutely hate the Covenant, he sure was very thorough when he killed them.

When I aimed at the second story of the building a gold-clad brute captain emerged from behind cover toting a plasma launcher I fired at the brute but my rounds simply bounced off from the golden armor, barely even forcing the 9'3" tall beast to jerk backwards with the impact. I fired at it but it wouldn't budge until it fired. Four blue balls (hehe, blue balls) of plasma flew from the barrel of the weapon and all landed right on top of the Armadillo. Two of the crew managed to leave the vehicle just in time and then it blew up, its turret being completely melted with the heat.

The two surviving crewmen were quickly cut down by jackals with needle rifles, their bodies exploding with half a dozen pink crystals each. The two men were left an unrecognizable mess and the Armadillo a pile of molten metal.

"Crap," I muttered, that was an understatement. "Snark, can you fire through the walls?"

Three bullets made contact with the wall that the brute captain was using for cover but didn't do anything other than chip off small bits of the polycrete façade. That was more than enough answer for me.

I was wondering how we would take out the brute captain when I caught some movement in the corner of my eye. Four soldiers from the army platoon were sprinting towards the destroyed armored fighting vehicle, braving the enemy fire. They couldn't really be racing there to commandeer it, but must've had another reason. They broke into two fireteams and one went towards the two bodies while the other went towards the tank. They crouched on the ground and patiently removed the dead soldiers' dogtags while plasma rained all around them. The two others emerged from the destroyed vehicle, presumably with the dogtags already in their possession. I saw them run back to safety as fast as they could. Just as they were about to reach it one of the soldiers got shot in the waist. He went down screaming in pain and slammed to the floor. One of his friends stopped abruptly and returned towards him, she grabbed him by the arm and started pulling with one hand while she fired her MA37 with her spare arm. I looked for whoever was firing at her but couldn't spot the offending aliens.

The wounded soldier was killed when at least six rounds of red plasma hit his body all over his back. The woman let go of his arm and fired another sustained burst before turning around and hauling ass. She was hopping over a pile of rubble just as a plasma grenade detonated next to the soldier's body. When the white flash receded there was nothing but a crater of red-hot pavement left in the place where she had been. I hope she managed to get behind cover before the grenade detonated.

"Senseless sacrifice," Grass lamented. "They could've waited."

Scarecrow grunted in disagreement. "Those men had saved their lives repeatedly, same as ours. They owed them at least that much respect."

"Respect can wait," the woman countered.

"It can wait for the dead," I said, "but sometimes the living just want to stand as tall as the fallen."

"Amen," Pavel hummed.

"Snark, as soon as that captain leaves cover nail him in between the eyes," I ordered. "As soon as that's done we run across the street, I'll cover you," I told the two members of my fireteam.

I didn't have to wait long for the bloodthirsty alien to emerge from cover toting its plasma launcher. Before it could even aim at something its head jerked backwards slightly and two sprays of alien blood emerged from the back of its head. The hulk of muscle and fur collapsed to the ground, dead.

"I'm sorry sarge," Snark apologized, "it wasn't between the eyes."

"Good enough for me," Scarecrow said. "Let's go."

My heart started beating faster than it was already when my two friends sprinted across the destroyed street. I kept my gun trained on the building in front of them. My scope showed nothing but gray walls and smoke floating around. The Armadillos was still aflame and the black smoke was impeding my vision.

"We're good," Grass said through heavy breaths. "There's a door over here."

"Hold on," I said. "Angel, keep their heads down."

"Aye, aye cap'n," the man said. I heard his machine gun roar at my back and saw the occasional tracer make contact with the building or go through the second story windows. I sprinted through the cratered street as the 7.62mm rounds flew over my head. I hopped over the sidewalk and slammed my shoulder into the building to stop myself. There was a small ledge above me, keeping me out of sight from the enemies in the second story.

The building was some sort of an office building. Perhaps offices for a small business, I'm not sure. It was two stories tall and the first floor didn't have any windows. There was a metal side door on the side we were on and the corner that faced the intersection had been blasted away by the Armadillo's sustained autocannon fire. This side of the building was mostly intact except for several bulletholes that came from our own weapons.

"Snark," I called out. "Any enemies inside?"

"I can see three jackals on the second floor, but nothing on the ground floor," he said. "Not because it's empty," he pointed out, my scope can't go through for some reason."

"Shit," Scarecrow cursed.

"Grass, request a drone flyby and wait here."

I moved along the wall, careful not to be spotted by a jackal that just so happened to be looking straight down. The whole ground shuddered as two shortsword bombers flew overhead, probably less than one hundred yards above ground. I reached the corner of the building and crouched behind a pile of rubble. I glanced across the intersection and looked for any soldier from the army platoon. I managed to get one's attention and waited while he brought the lieutenant.

I asked the man how it was going and if he would need any help through hand signals, I didn't want to use radio because to communicate with the man I'd need to use a drone or satellite to redirect the radio frequency instead of just transmitting directly, like I did with my friends. If I did that, the transmission could be intercepted, and I wouldn't want that to happen on a decisive charge. For some reason my helmet's radio wouldn't pick up anyone that wasn't Marines or Helljumper, a terrible mistake if you ask me.

I told him of our plans to breach the building and then asked him to signal me through radio just when he was about to charge, so that we could provide cover from our newly acquired building and draw fire away from them. The man nodded and gave me an ok sign before crawling back behind safer cover.

Two plasma rounds burst against the rubble I was using as cover, inches away from my face, and forced me to jump backwards slightly. I cursed myself for not being more careful and went back towards the door with Scarecrow and Grass.

"Drone is right above us Sarge," Grass informed me.

I gave the command and a bird's eye view camera popped up on top of my HUD, allowing me to see everything that the drone saw. There were the three aformentioned jackals in the second floor in addition to eight grunts and two brutes on the ground floor. The new software in my helmet immediately outlined the covvies in red, allowing me to see them through the walls. This just wasn't fair for the covvies.

I grabbed a breaching charge from my pack and placed it on the door. Scarecrow and Grass would be going in first and I would follow right after them. They placed themselves on one side of the metal door and I did the same thing on the other side. I lifted my left hand and put up three fingers while holding the detonator with my thumb and pinky. I then let down one finger and then put down the my index finger just as I pushed on the detonator. The door blew inwards with a loud boom.

Grass walked inside in a crouched combat stance while the seven foot tall monster of a man nicknamed Scarecrow walked in behind her with his rifle raised.

The door had hit one of the two brutes in the shoulder, stunning it and probably breaking a couple of bones, allowing Grass to take it out with relative ease. The other brute was a priority target and was riddled with twenty rounds from Scarecrow's rifle. Six of the eight grunts were quickly dispatched with three round bursts form my BR55 and the other two were shot by Grass. I smiled as the red silhouettes disappeared as the aliens they outlined died.

I looked up and saw the three jackals moving towards the stairs. I aimed at the stairwell and shot the first jackal that came through on the leg and then on the ribs as it fell to the ground. The other two promptly scrambled backwards to avoid a swift death.

"Scarecrow," I said. "Flashbang."

The man nodded and loaded a flashbang grenade into his underbarrel launcher. He positioned himself at an angle and fired the canister into a wall, it bounced off of it and then detonated just as it got out of sight. Our helmet's had been sealed to all outside noise and the light didn't hit our retinas, so when we climbed the stairs we had full sight and hearing, unlike the two unfortunate jackals that were riddled with holes from my two teammates rifles.

"Clear," Scarecrow boomed.

"Clear," Grass echoed.

"Good," I said. "We'll be providing assistance to the army platoon to our left. Scarecrow and Grass you stay here and fire from the window, I'll take the roof. Try and keep that drone floating above us as long as you can, you hear me?"

"Yes, Staff Sergeant," the woman replied.

I nodded at them and climbed a ladder to the roof. The place was a grim spectacle with the mangled bodies of two jackals all over the place. I hopped over the gory flesh and went prone right before the edge of the building. The building next to this one was under attack by the army bloke, but so far they hadn't attempted to take it decisively. I looked around for friendly's and my helmet outlined the few that I could see, once that happened their helmets sent me information on where the rest of their platoon was. I could soon see twenty-odd green silhouettes hiding behind a large house.

And yet I couldn't communicate with their helmets directly.

"Lieutenant," I said, risking my message being intercepted. "Ready when you are."

"Well, fire away! What are you waiting for?" he asked, a little bit too rudely in my opinion, but what the hell.

"You heard the man, let's make it rain."

I fired at a couple of jackal sharpshooters on the roof of the building opposite me. They both fell down before they realized what was happening. Grass and Scarecrow peppered the windows with lead, the covvies, believing that the place we were on was still occupied by friendly forces had their flank completely exposed to our fire. I brought down those two jackals and a brute sniper before anyone realized where they were being shot at. By the time they had taken cover I managed to kill a fuel-rod wielding grunt and a couple of jackals. My two subordinates did an excellent job of their own, each bagging five kills in little over five seconds. I ducked and slid backwards as plasma and needles rained on my position. Despite having been spotted it was already too late for the covvies. A whole platoon was charging at their building and they were distracted with the three of us.

It took perhaps one minute for the army soldiers to clear the building.

"Thanks Reaper, we're clear," the lieutenant thanked us in between breaths. "I owe you one. We owe you one."

"You mean you owe us another one?" Grass asked.

"Hey," Scarecrow said, "don't be an asshole."

"Sorry," she apologized. She didn't mean it.

"Ok, now we help Pavel," I said.

I didn't even have time to talk to my friend when I heard the sound of nearby gunshots and a couple of squealing grunts.

"Don't worry about it Frank," Pavel said. "We've got this house cleared." He added, "Without your help."

"Thanks, I did the same thing right here jackass."

"He has a point Pavel," Caboose said.

"Shut up," the Polish man snapped. "Frank, we take on the next block?" he asked me.

"No, let's clear up the rest of the structures in this block, three houses, their backs to our buildings," I explained as I connected him to the drone's live feed.

"I see," Pavel noted. "You take the one on the left and we take the one on the right then converge in the middle house?"

"Agreed," I said before directing my attention to my fireteam. "Ok, you heard my son and your savior, get ready to breach the next house. Looks like an easy one." Then to Angel and Snark, "You two, start hauling ass over here, I've got a great sniping spot for you Snark."

I got several different sets of acknowledgement lights and switched positions. I was now facing the house that Grass and Scarecrow would be breaching, I would provide cover for them while they cleared the first floor and maybe tag along right before they went upstairs.

"Ok you two, go!"

And go they did.

The house was made out of bricks on the outside and plywood on the inside. It was a centuries old design that for some reason or other hadn't been deemed insecure and still saw use all over human-held space. God knows why they built this kind of houses on this kind of planet, where sub-zero temperatures were the norm more oft than not.

I fired a burst through the walls at the red outline of a jackal. The first bullet didn't go entirely through, but the other two punched through the bricks and hit the jackal somewhere in the upper torso area. I fired another burst through the wall, this time hitting a surprised grunt in the chest. While I had fun shooting through walls Grass and Scarecrow were pumping aliens full of lead on the ground floor.

"Ground floor clear," Grass called out.

"Three hostiles in the second story," I warned them. "A baby kong and two grunts."

"Roger, we see them," Scarecrow acknowledged. "Flashbang out."

I heard the dull bang of the grenade and picked up my rifle before I started going down the ladder. By the time my feet hit the ground the three covvies were dead and the house was clear. I left the building that we had just taken and sprinted towards the house that my two squad mates had just cleared. On the way there I noticed that there weren't any plasma shells falling around anymore, probably courtesy of those Shortsword bombers. Still, it was only a matter of time before the Covenant brought forward the wraiths and started pummeling us with mortar fire.

"Pavel?" I asked.

"We green," he replied in between breaths. "Let's take this other house," he said.

"Uh-huh," I agreed. "Angel, Snark, where are you?"

"I'm right behind you," Angel said, "Snark is setting up shop."

"Aight, Snark, how 'bout you shoot some gorillas through the walls?"

"On it," he said. "It'd be easier if I had an SRS," he added.

"Next time you can bring one," Bumblebee said. "For now you can work with an EMR."

"I'll make you a deal," Snark said, "I'll bring an SRS next time if you switch that pea-shooter of yours for some real weapon, even an MA37 will do."

"Shut up and fire."

Six rounds fired in rapid succession were all that Agnarsson got for an answer. My HUD told me that three brutes had been brought down with two headshots each. I couldn't help but admire the little guy for his precision, speed, and lethality. Six rounds, three kills, four seconds.

"Just take out the rest," I said, not even bothering to try and clear the house personally. "We can make sure their dead later."

Four other shots rang out, killing the panicking grunts and jackals with headshots. As soon as the red outlines showing their positions disappeared I went towards the house to make sure they were dead. I slung my rifle over my shoulder and entered the house through the kitchen door as I drew my sidearm, I didn't really bother with caution in this situation, because the drone overhead showed no heat signatures in the house other than me and Caboose entering on the other side. Then it only showed static.

"They shot down the drone," Grass informed us.

"Thank you," Angel said sarcastically, "I never would've figured it out on my own."

I ignored the bickering that started between those two and knelt next to the body of a brute. I drew the knife from my boot and slid it between the first two vertebrae. I withdrew it with surprisingly little blood staining the Damascus steel blade. Then I moved on to a jackal and a grunt, snapping the jackal's neck just to make sure and slicing the grunt's throat all the way to its spine.

Caboose presumably did the same thing with his own knife because I didn't hear any gunshots, muffled or otherwise.

I finished with the kitchen and moved towards the living room, where I saw my fellow Helljumper and not so fellow ONI informer cutting up a jackal. He really liked his knives. It worried me a lot.

"Enough with that," I said. "Second floor."

"Yessir," he replied mockingly, cleaning his knife on a bullet-riddled couch.

"And don't call me sir, I'm not an officer."

"Yes Staff Sergeant," he said.

_You can put that in your psych report,_ I almost said, but managed to hold it in.

I checked the rest of the house for anything that might've been of interest while the Russian butchered the bodies of the dead covvies very, _very_ thoroughly. I knifed a couple of other dead aliens while checking for loose ordinance that could blow up if anything made contact with it. There were a couple of plasma coils that I carefully placed behind several pieces of furniture and the obligatory plasma and spike grenades. Nothing that could send the entire house sky-high if heated slightly above room temperature.

"This house's clear," I broadcast. "And that's the whole block."

"Seems like it," Pavel said.

"We stay here or charge across the street?" Bumblebee asked.

"We stay here," Grass said. "The main push takes place west of here, they got armor and all that."

"I know that," he replied. "Don't treat me like a child."

"It'd be easier if you didn't act like one," Snark chimed in.

"Ok, listen you tiny little fu-"

"Shut up," Pavel said boringly. "Let's hole up, this house is the most undamaged and has a working heating system."

"Great," I said. "Snark, get your ass over here. Caboose and Bumblebee, you each stand guard in the other two houses, tell me if something interesting happens."

"Dibs on this one," Caboose said.

"Damn it," Bumblebee complained. He would have to cross all the way to the most damaged of the three houses in the block.

I left the middle house and went towards the right most one, meeting up with the rest of my team bar the two that were standing guard in the other damaged houses. The street in front of us was an eight lane driveway and the buildings opposite us were heavily fortified. It was pretty much where the residential area of Highbay ended and the business area started. You know what that means, lots of tall buildings, tridimensional combat, you know, the works.

"Get some rest people," I said. "Angel, you stand guard here, wake three of us up in three hours to change shifts."

"Who do I wake up?" the Italian asked.

"Whoever you feel like," I said, already moving a mattress to the basement of the house. I was tired and I was going to get some rest goddamit.


	85. Preamble

Chapter LXXXV: Preamble

**March 2, 2543 (UNSC Calendar)/**

**Highbay, New Moskva, Ursa Tertio System**

* * *

><p>"<em>Sometimes it's just better to run away, you know? Sometimes, as a Helljumper, you can't. Do you have any idea how frustrating that is?"<em>

* * *

><p>"Oi sarge," someone shook me, "wake up."<p>

"I'm awake," I mumbled, reaching for my rifle. "What's up?"

"Recon drones are down?"

"So?" I asked, letting go of my BR55.

"All of 'em," Bumblebee said.

I instantly sat up, my rifle once again in my grip while my other hand searched for my helmet in the darkness. Drone down, bad. Drones down, very bad. "When?" I asked.

"Six minutes ago," the man said, already moving to wake up Pavel. "We were informed through wireless."

"Finally set up inter-service communication," I noted. "That's good."

"I guess," he replied as he awoke Pavel.

"Who's doing watch?" I asked him.

"Snark, Scarecrow, and Grass," Bumblebee said. "Little punk woke me up."

"Grass, Scarecrow, what do you see?"

"So far I can't make out anything, Sarge," Scarecrow replied.

"Yup, too much mist right now," Grass added. "If they _are_ staging an attack, now is the worst possible time for them to do it."

"Shit," I muttered to myself. I started climbing up the stairs while fixing my helmet and turning on the HUD.

"Want some stims?" Schitzo asked me. He was standing in the middle of the stairwell.

_Fuck off._ I thought to him, I walked right through the hallucination, and no matter how hard I tried, I still felt myself shuddering.

"Snark," I called out, not wanting to frighten the team sniper. The little guy just looked towards me and nodded in acknowledgement before returning to scanning the area in front of the house with his scope. He was peeking through a comparatively small hole in the attic of the house, allowing him a wide field of vision without really being exposed to enemy fire or prying eyes. "See anything?"

"Humidity isn't really doing wonders for my scope," he replied quietly.

"Even with the cold you don't get any heat signatures?"

"Didn't I already say no the first time?"

"Smart ass."

I grabbed my rifle and peeked through the hole, the mist was very thick, in fact, it was so dense that I couldn't see anything across the street except for the faint light of some car that was still burning even after hours of inactivity. My rifle didn't have thermal capabilities, so I didn't catch anything of notice when I peeked through the scope. I then tried using my helmet's thermal vision but the results proved less than forthcoming. It was in the negatives inside of the house. I don't even want to think how cold it was outside.

"Shiiiiiit," I muttered again. "Grass, anything of note?"

"Nah, sometimes I think I can make out either a jackal or a grunt patrolling across the street."

"Jackal," Pavel said. "Probably looting for goodies."

"Scarecrow?"

"All I can see is a gray wall."

"It's more like muted white, don't you think?" Grass suggested from across the block.

"What the hell is muted white?"

"A girl thing," Caboose said, evidently, he had just woken up. "Just smile and nod at her."

"I see you're awake sleeping beauty," she snapped back irritably.

"You," Caboose said in a fake excited voice, "you think I'm a beauty?"

"Shhh," I said. I was getting nervous. "All drones are down, how long till they get replacements up and running?"

No one answered.

"Grass?" Pavel asked.

"What?"

"Oh, come on, you know all this kind of stupid stuff."

"Twelve and a half minutes under optimal circumstances. Maybe fifteen in the current predicament."

"You use big words," Caboose noted. "It's almost like-"

"Thanks," I replied, interrupting the other man before he got wound up.

"Grass, contact the army platoon to our left, Scarecrow, do the same thing with our right, ask them about their defense plans and we'll adapt ours to theirs."

"Aye, aye."

"On it."

I went back downstairs and to the basement, only stopping to stifle a curse once I saw that Schitzo was waiting for me right where I left him. He said nothing as I went through him once more. In the basement the rest of the squad was checking their weapons and strapping any additional pieces of armor that they took off to their bodies. I looked at them and slung a bandolier belt across my chest while I strapped my standard utility belt to my waist. I secured it to my armor and smiled at the comfortable weight of it.

"Angel, Caboose, head over to Grass's house," Pavel ordered. "Bumblebee, you come with me too. Frank."

"I love it when you order me around," I said. "Move along people." As soon as I said that my squad started moving out of the basement, grabbing various boxes of grenades and ammunition as they left. I turned to look at Pavel and gave him a 'you see' look as he climbed up last. He shook his head and chuckled slightly. I don't know if he did that because I thought myself to be cool or because everyone else actually acted when I told them to.

I climbed up the stairs and met Schitzo on my way to a nice window that I could use as a firing position. I rolled my eyes at him and moved a table towards the window, I tilted it sideways and placed it so that it covered my flank, it wouldn't stop a spiker round or a needle explosion, but it would burst to fire before highly unstable plasma went through it. I grabbed the last remaining box of ammunition for my rifle and placed it next to me, I really hoped that I wouldn't need to use it.

"Snark, you've got me covered right?"

"I pretty much have to Sarge, if they overwhelm you I'm pretty much screwed."

"Good boy."

After that there was nothing in our squad channel for what seemed like an hour. No one said anything, everyone was trying to see through the dense mist that prevented us from seeing what the covvies were doing. The drones weren't up yet and the two adjoining platoons couldn't see any better than we could. Without eyes in the sky we would be effectively blind for as long as this fog lasted.

"It's snowing," Caboose observed.

"Your observation powers never cease to astound me," Snark quickly commented, giving his call sign some credibility.

"Shhh," I said. "You hear that?" I asked.

"Hear what?"

"They can't hear it just yet Frank, you're better, remember?"

"Everyone quiet," I said, ignoring my hallucination but following its advice and giving my teammates a couple of seconds.

"I hear it." Scarecrow said.

"Fire a shot."

"What?" he asked. "Now? I'll be giving myself away!"

"Cover your muzzle with something, trust me."

"Frank…"

"Hey, we can deal with anything they throw at us," I said smugly. "Ain't that right Reaper?"

I received several unenthusiastic affirmations from my team, they were evidently nervous that we were missing all of our recon. If the covvies were behind the loss of the drones or had any sense at all they would attack en masse right now. We, on the other hand, would have to go all World War II on those bastards, not even bothering with motion sensors and all that. How primitive.

"Firing one."

There was a loud bang, you know, the characteristic sound that gunshots usually make. The bang echoed several times off the buildings to the front and sides before there was any kind of reaction. I immediately wished that I hadn't ordered Scarecrow to fire, no matter how necessary it had been for him to do so.

The entire area ahead of me lit up with plasma fire immediately. Most of it was directed towards Scarecrow's house, but as soon as everybody else opened fire the entire world lit up in a blaze of gunfire, plasma, needles, and spikers. It would have really been something beautiful to see if half those projectiles weren't out to vaporize half your head.

"Fire, fire, fire," Pavel said as he set an example.

From that point on everything became a chorus of screaming, yelling, and firing. The Covenant infiltrators on the street without any cover emitted a different type of music, their screaming was caused more by pain than by pointing out our positions. I know, a poorly worded statement, but I believe you are smart enough to understand what I meant by it.

Directly in front of me were several covvies, most of them were grunts but at least half a dozen of them were jackals with shields and another three were skirmishers with carbines or needle rifles. There were also three brutes, a major and two minors. If you read the previous statement you will realize that there was a shitload of enemies directly ahead of me. A shitload.

"Snark, you focus on the big guys, I'll-"

The brute major's head blew up in a spray of blood and brains.

"Yeah, just keep doing that," I said.

I started taking aim at the skirmishers, those were the most immediately dangerous since they had long-ranged weapons with telescopic sights. Since there was only four of them I only had to fire four bursts. Surprisingly, I hit them all in the throat instead of the head. It was still a killshot but easier to make than a headshot because missing meant that you would hit either head, shoulders, or chest. It makes me slightly angry that Schitzo was the one that told me that.

"Look for any covvies in the back," I told the sniper, "the mist is clearing up."

_From all the goddamned heat from their weapons…_

"Take out the jackals Francisco," Schitzo suggested.

_Thanks Sherlock, I'm not that stupid. _

I did what I recommended to myself and took out three of the six jackals before the other three packed their shields together and made an impenetrable wall. I fired the rest of my magazine into them before I realized that their overlapping shields wouldn't really budge with rifle rounds. I unloaded the rifle's magazine and reached for a grenade at the same time. I was semi-prone so I had to crouch to get a good angle for my grenade. I activated it and tossed it. It was a beautiful throw, you should've seen it. The grenade went up and down in a beautiful arc and landed right at the jackals feet, going in between a small gap of the two shields and sliding behind the covvies.

Then the three jackals received one headshot each, dying an instant before my grenade detonated.

"Fuck man," I told Snark, "we need to communicate some more, else I'm just wasting perfectly fine grenades."

"Sarge, you're messing with my zen thing," the guy replied.

"Oh, just shut the hell up and take every single alien on the right side of that dead brute, all the ones on the left are mine, got it?"

"Wait, does that include-"

"I will fucking end you," I warned.

"Fine, fine," the usually quiet sniper said.

From that point on the fields of fire became much more organized, without their leadership and with their shields gone the grunts were starting to panickpanic, there must've been some really imposing forces behind them, because not a single one of them turned tail and ran away. I dedicated myself to killing the Unggoy with darker armor and the ones that sported some sort of launcher over their shoulders. Once those fell with a headshot or neck shot I dedicated myself to taking out the lesser ranks. It wasn't really much of a fight, because their puny plasma pistols couldn't break through anything or be aimed properly. I always wonder why the hell they just don't give them plasma rifles and multiply their firepower to the fourteenth power.

"They are dying out," Grass said.

"We're still getting fired upon," Bumblebee noted.

"Yeah, but from where?" Angel asked.

"They're firing from in front of us," I helpfully put out.

"You beat me to it Sarge," Snark complimented me with a chuckle.

"I aim to please."

"Sarge…"

"Oh, just aim for the muzzle flashes, or whatever the covvie equivalent for that is."

Everyone was too annoyed by the combat and me being an annoying asshole so they simply winked green lights in my HUD. There was sporadic gunfire until we heard the worst noise that we could possibly hear in this situation. A huge explosion. When I realized where it was coming from it only got worse. There had just been a detonation just shy of nuclear in power behind our frontline. _Behind _our frontline.

"The fuck…"

"Fall back to the office building," I said. "Now."

"I would've phrased it more urgently," Schitzo suggested, "but the idea itself is sound. Nice going Frank."

I ignored the guy (or myself) and picked up my rifle and the box of ammunition. The covvie fire was receding a little bit while they got organized and launched a larger attack. They had lots and lots of manpower and we were outnumbered even though they were on a human planet. The irony is just delicious. I'm kidding, it's not, it means that we could die.

I turned on the channel that communicated all the squads or units in the area and tried to listen for something related to the explosion while hopping across craters and piles of debris to the two-story office building. There were a few people asking around what the hell just happened. I changed the channel to a more general one and paled at what I heard. It was mostly marines and soldiers screaming that they were about to be overrun, that was a bad omen all by itself, but a couple of calm NCO's transmitting to HICHCOMM caught my attention. I isolated those frequencies and listened to them.

"…Kilo-Two-Three, Kilo-Two-Three, huge explosion right under Frontline Operating Post, Hammer Actual and Checkmate Actual are KIA, I repeat Major General Akers and Brigadier Miztla are KIA, most of their staff are either KIA or MIA, we've got unconfirmed reports of Covenant combat platforms, scarabs and locusts have been reported by some units. We need reinforcements now…. Gunships would be nice, or an airstrike, Overlord, anything will… mother of g-"

That channel went silent and the marine's lifeline and picture were replaced by a flashing KIA sign that disappeared after a second or two.

"Pavel…"

"I heard it."

"Fuck."

"You said it," he acknowledged it. "Caboose, get the army blokes to get to our building, we're gonna be making a stand."

"On it," the man replied.

"What, Pavel, how do you even-" Bumblebee started.

"Trust him," I said. "We're not joking about this."

"Sarge, they're heading towards the building as we speak," Caboose reported.

"Good to know, I'm already here, haul ass now."

I entered the building through the door and took cover to the side while I waited for the rest of my squad to get in here. Snark was the first one to do so, he quickly went past the door, barely noticing me and promptly climbed up the stairs towards the roof, he would be needing a good vantage point. Pavel, Scarecrow, and Bumblebee were the next to arrive, quickly followed by Grass, Angel, and Caboose. Once they arrived members from that platoon on our left started arriving, they immediately took positions to defend the house while I headed towards their lieutenant. The guy in charge of the unit was in his mid-thirties, looked competent enough and carried himself with an air of confidence.

"Lieutenant," I said in greeting, "Status on your platoon?"

"We're down to twenty-three men, the other seven are all KIAs, we're good on ammo."

"Rockets?" I asked.

"Three dozen," the lieutenant replied. His IFF tag identified him as Ugur Matarci, 4th Platoon, 3rd Batallion, 18th New Moskva Defense Division.

"Snipers?"

"One of our sharpshooters is dead, we managed to rescue his DMR and some spare ammunition, our platoon sniper is good."

"Excellent," I told Matarci, "have him head to the roof and give his SRS to our squad marksman."

"Staff Sergeant," Matarci said sternly. "I don't appreciate you ordering me or my men around."

"Ugh," Schitzo disgustedly said. "Even under the threat of certain death inter-service rivalry beats everything."

_Agreed,_ I thought. For once, I could relate to myself. Now _that's_ ironic.

"Our marksman was ranked twelfth best in the UNSC," I deadpanned.

"Twelfth?" Lieutenant Matarci asked after a moment of hesitation.

"Between ten and fifteen," I admitted. "I forget."

"Iheri give the Helljumper your SRS."

"Umm, sir?" the sniper replied in confusion.

"Just do as I say." He added, "You can take his DMR."

"Yes, lieutenant," Iheri replied in annoyance. For some reason her voice reminded me of that lieutenant back in Aztlan, I never did find out her name. Or if she survived.

"Lieutenant, you got any medics?"

"One, she can do her job well enough."

"Well enough?" I asked nervously.

"Rookie," Matarci explained.

"Shit," I muttered. "Well, arrange your men in a defensive position, the line is broken and there are walkers behind us."

"Not to mention an army in front of us," Pavel said while he trotted by.

"Aye, that too."

"Aye?"

"Aye."

"No, I mean who the hell says aye anymore."

"Aye do."

"Funny."

"I try," I smiled. "Just distribute your men along the building."

"Will do Staff Sergeant, just don't get to used to ordering me around," the lieutenant warned.

"Noted. Angel, come downstairs, I need a little help."

I waited while the soldiers from the 4th platoon stumbled around, carrying deployable machine guns and boxes of ammunition. So far the only shots that had rang out had been from DMRs, no covvies were close enough to be a serious threat. Yet.

"Staff Sergeant?"

"Angel, come with me," I ordered. "We're gonna blow up those three houses, or at least the walls facing us, make our lives a little easier."

"Good idea," he complimented me.

"Damn right, now hand me some of that C7 and let's blow some shit up."

"Just what I like to hear," Angel said excitedly as he reached towards his pack and handed me two blocks of plastic explosive and the detonators.

"No detonators, we'll blow up the walls when they're being used for cover."

"How did I not think of that?"

"I dunno," I said. "But you should've."

"Yeah, maybe I'm-"

"Just come with me." I ran out of the building, the sun was already starting to rise up and the mist was now almost completely gone. Greater visibility for us, but the same thing goes for them. "Snark, cover us," I ordered.

I got the usual green acknowledgement light and kept on running. Angel and I split up. I went to the righter most house while the explosives expert took the one in the left and in the middle. Some stray shots were fired at me as I hopped in between houses, but the covvies were still massing themselves for a decisive attack. I reached my goal and stuck one of the two blocks of plastic explosive on one edge of the house before I went to the other side.

Two grunts carrying a deployable plasma machine gun appeared out of the corner and I shot them down even as they screamed in fright. I looked around the corner and sprayed a group of grunts with my rifle, sending them backwards and looking for cover. I returned to the wall and placed the other block of C7 there, leaving it nice and ready to blow up.

I hopped across the space in between the two houses and this time a lot of plasma rounds flew in that direction. There were some cracks from an EMR and a shot from an SRS before the enemy grunts went quietly for a minute. I looked to my left and caught a block of C7 that Angel had tossed me. He was done with the house on the left and was planting another explosive on one side of this wall. I did the same thing and gestured for him to wait a moment.

I reached out of over for the Covenant deployable turret and dragged it towards me. I didn't really know how to load the thing, but I wasn't about to let the covvies use it. Normally I would've booby-trapped the weapon, but I didn't have the time or means to do so at the moment. Instead I slung it over my shoulder and jogged as fast as I could back to the building. I closed the metallic side door just before a burst of needles pierced through the thick metal.

"Cutting it a bit close, aren't we Sarge?"

"We're good," I said, throwing the plasma machine gun to the ground.

In front of me were two soldiers with their rifles trained on the door, they were shaking.

_Oh shit…_

"Ask the lieutenant where he could use your gun," I told Angel. "Now, quick!" The ODST promptly sprinted towards the stairs, looking for Lieutenant Matarci. "You two," I said, gesturing to the two soldiers. "Where's your radio operator?"

"He was shot down, sir," one of them said.

"Radio gear?" I asked.

"Umm… Ruiz has it doesn't he?"

"Yeah, he's serving as replacement," the other soldier confirmed.

"Where can I find Ruiz?" I asked.

"Second floor," the first soldier said, "probably with our medic."

"Thanks," I said as I moved away. Plasma was starting to hammer our walls already.

I climbed up the stairs to see soldiers running towards the windows to fire their rifles. I rolled my eyes at them. The army never lacked for ammunition, especially when their soldiers carried ten boxes each. I swear, they looked like they were in a fat suit with all the bandoliers strapped around them. I looked around until I found someone with a radio backpack.

"You, radioman! Ruiz!"

"¿Qué quieres?"

"El radio," I said. "Dame el radio."

The man did as I said and handed me the phone-like radio. I took off my helmet and sat down while Ruiz turned to talk to the medic.

"UNSC _Inconvenience,_" I spoke out.

"Connecting… connecting…" a recording said.

"_Inconvenience _here, come in-"

"Eliza!" I said. "I need some intel right now."

"Staff Sergeant?" the AI replied surprised. "I thought that you had been evacuated from that sector."

"Obviously not," I replied. "What's the situation?"

"Scarabs, three of them. Locusts, twelve. Plus a whole lot of enemy infantry both behind and in front of your position."

"Our artillery?" I asked nervously.

"Some batteries are still online, but most have been bombed by Seraph fighters."

"Where the hell did they get Seraphs from?"

"They had a lot of equipment hidden from us Frank," Eliza replied.

"That much is evident." Explosions were starting to hit the walls of the building. "I need evac, two pelicans will do."

"I can't send them right now," Eliza replied.

"When?"

"Three hours, minimum."

"Five?" I asked.

"At the very least," the AI confirmed.

"If you take that long-!" I stopped myself and turned around, taking the wireless with me. "If you take that long you'll need one hornet, not two pelicans," I muttered.

"Frank, I'll do my best."

"All right," I said, giving up. If a smart AI couldn't help us right now, then no one else could.

I returned the radio to Ruiz and thanked him before heading towards the ladder and going up the roof.

"Oi Sarge, wait up!"

I looked below me just before climbing out the trap door. Bumblebee was at the bottom of the ladder and pushing his rocket launcher towards me. I grabbed it and threw it over my shoulder and onto the roof. If he was climbing up here with a rocket launcher it was probably because he would need to shoot down something. I climbed all the way up and helped the man up the last couple of steps.

"Banshees?" I asked.

"Yeah," he replied as he headed towards one corner of the building.

I looked around the roof and went to the edge that faced the three houses that we had just rigged to blow up. I managed to get three seconds worth of surveying the battlefield before a couple of green carbine bolts nearly blasted my head open. I dropped to the floor and sighed with annoyance.

"Relax Francisco, you've done this plenty of times before," Schitzo said. It really pissed me off that he didn't even bother to take cover, instead choosing to sit over the ledge.

I ignored him and waited a couple of moments before popping from cover and taking a couple of potshots at advancing grunts. As soon as the two grunts stumbled to the ground dead I switched targets and sent three bursts through a brute's head. The huge alien fell to the snow, leaving an unusual snow angel outline. I chuckled a little before return fire forced me to go back behind cover.

"Snark!" I called out. "See any MGs?"

"Negative."

"They'll pop up," I said, "you know what to do once that happens."

Green acknowledgement lights.

I fired at the biggest aliens that I could see. Most of the time I only managed to hit the brutes with two bursts in the head. Seven out of ten times the helmet held, the other three times the bullets hit either their eyes or mouth, killing them. Neck shooting wasn't an option, since these brutes could take the most insane amount of punishment before dying or even slowing down. It was quite annoying in more ways than one. I could barely take a spiker round to a limb or a plasma pistol shot without dying and they could take half a magazine of 9.5mm supersonic rounds in the chest before dying.

"Fire, fire, fire!"

"Left flank, left flank!"

"They're behind us!"

"I'm out, I'm out!"

"Shitting fuck!"

"Die, you fucking cunt!"

"Whoa! Easy on the language!"

You know, typical combat lines that everyone picked up from the latest movie they saw.

I glanced up just in time for angel to detonate the three houses in front of the building. At least fifty grunts, jackals, and brutes went up in flames. It annpyedannoyed me that I wasn't seeing any other races. No hunters or drones yet. That meant that soon enough we would meet the real force of the enemy assault. The three houses became a million of splinters and tiny pieces of obsoloeteobsolete concrete. Covvies standing nearby where instantly vaporized by the strength of the explosion while those standing further away had every organ inside their bodies turned into a paste with a consistency similar to mashed potatoes. The ones even further away were hit with fist-sized splinters or fist-sized rocks. If that didn't kill them, the precise bursts of gunfire that followed soon did.

As the three houses collapsed from the strength of the explosion and the dust plume that they had lifted up settled down I could see what we were facing against. Behind the houses were more than a few wraiths, several ghosts, and what seemed like millions of Covenant soldiers all slowly moving in our direction. From the looks of it we barely had enough ammunition to take them all out if we didn't waste a single round.

"She said five hours, didn't she?" Schitzo asked. "This looks like it's gonna be a long day."

* * *

><p><em>Hey guys, sorry for the delay, I had some serious work for school last week and wasn't able to write much. <em>

_Well, as you can see this chapter has a quote at the top, those quotes are going to be heading most of the chapters i write from now on, if you don't like it then you can... tell me, I won't mind. Also, I hope you enjoyed this._

_As always, thanks to Sniper Fodder for proof-reading this chapter._

_-casquis_


	86. Eighth Plague

Chapter LXXXVI: Eighth Plague

**March 2, 2543 (UNSC Calendar)/**

**Highbay, New Moskva, Ursa Tertio System**

* * *

><p>"<em>Not even God himself could've sent anything worse than this." - soldier from the 4th Platoon, 3rd Batallion, 18th NMDD<em>

* * *

><p>"It's coming around!"<p>

"I got it," Bumblebee confirmed, doing a highly unnecessary combat roll and bringing his M41 SSR around. He moved it to track the enemy aircraft for a few seconds and then fired one rocket. The M19 102mm surface-to-surface missile flew straight for a few meters before veering to the side in a seemingly impossible angle. The fast-flying rocket caught up with a banshee that was desperately trying to outrun it. As soon as it collided the banshee blew up in a massive multi-colored fireball.

"Over th-"  
>Before I could point out the other banshee to Bumblebee said craft started a long strafing run through the building's roof. The plasma bolts hit the polycrete inches away from me and went on, leaving me unharmed. The soldier behind me wasn't as lucky. One of the rounds hit him in the leg, vaporizing almost everything below his knee and leaving nothing but a bloody mess and exposed bones. The unfortunate soldier cried out in pain just as Bumblebee's second rocket screamed a few feet from the floor. The second M19 suddenly shot up and hit the offending banshee in the wing, knocking it to the floor, where it blew up in an unnaturally large fireball.<p>

"Medic!" I called out, "Oh shit," I cursed as a plasma grenade fell a few feet from me. I ran and jumped away from the blue orb before it detonated, burning a perfect circle through the roof.

_Ah, a window of opportunity._

"You, over there!" I yelled at a shaking soldier. "Help me drag your buddy."

"What?"

Even as he said that I moved towards the wounded marksman. I grabbed him by the armpit as his colleague did the same. We dragged him across the roof towards the hole that the plasma grenade had burnt in the floor. His wounded leg was leaving a trail of blood and bits of gore, even though the sheer heat of the explosion had cauterized most of his wound. I called out for someone to help us out and then dumped the screaming soldier into the arms of his comrades.

"So much blood…" his friend said, looking at his bloody hands.

"Yeah, and soon you'll be looking like that soon enough if you don't shoot some covvies!" I yelled at him, picking up his rifle from the floor and shoving it into his hands.

The man seemed to snap back a little bit and moved towards the edge of the roof once again. There were so many targets to pick from that I barely had to bother with aiming. Grunts fell by the dozens nd jackals did their best to ward off the immense rain of bullets. Brutes were holding on better with their thick hides and the help of some deployable covers. They were beginning to form something ressembling a real front line.

We couldn't allow that to happen.

"Lieutenant, we've got a group of friendlies coming from the southeast!"

"Rooftop, provide cover from them, let's see if they can make it through," the lieutenant ordered.

I fired at a brute major, hitting him in he chest and neck. The alien jerked backwards right before it received another impact in the chest and lower face, instantly killing it.

Most of the people on the roof save for Snark moved towards the southern and eastern sides of the building, aiming to cover the soldiers that wanted security in this building. The densely packed houses and small business didn't allow us to see them yet, but if I tried hard I could hear gunshots a short distance away. Instead of waiting for the friendlies to appear I started shooting everything that moved. A couple of eager jackal sharpshooters fell with three bullet holes each before they even noticed that they had been spotted. This side of the building seemed to have less aliens moving around, only a few brutes with brute shots were in here, and most were firing blindly from behind cover.

"There," I called out, seeing silhouettes moving through battle smoke.

"I see 'em," the army marksman said. She shot a couple of times from Snarks EMR, killing a brute that had decided to peek out of cover.

Ten marines were running through the battlefield, ignoring every alien that wasn't near them or wasn't an immediate threat. Grunts looked at them as if wondering if what they were seeing was real. The ones that actually bothered to fire at the eight marines were promptly shot down by bursts of MA5 fire. I have to admit that I was shocked by their lack of fear. Not that I wasn't brave or anything, but a little amount of fear is never really a bad thing.

The marines were doing a full sprinting now.

"Marines, idnentify yourselves!"

"Just cover us!" the leader replied through the channel. "There are-"

The marine was abruptly cut off at the same time that one of the sprinting men was blown apart by a brute shot. Eight different sets of wepons moved towards the offending brute and left it twitching in the floor in a matter of instants. The remaining marines kept on sprinting while the covvies got over their shock and started shooting at them. Two other marines were hit with plasma fire while running to safety. One of them turned around and went down on one knee, firing a long burst from his rifle. The guy managed to kill two grunts before eight needler rounds lodged in his chest and blew his midsection apart.

The four remaining marines made it to the door and entered. They turned around to stop a pair of brutes that were sprinting towards the building and killed them as they tried to go through the door. Just as they were about to enter, one of the army men that had gone out to help them in was hit through the head with a beam rifle. The body of the soldier slumped to the floor with a good chunk of his head missing.

I redirected my aim to hwile tracking the trail of overeheated air particles that the beam rifle shot left behind it. The track stopped right in the window of a house. I couldn't see any kind of movement in the window, so instead I switched to full automatic on my rifle and emptied it on the window and the walls to its sides. I wasn't sure that I hit anything, but I think I spotted a little bit of blood spatter.

"Gotcha," I smiled.

"That'll come back to haunt your ass Frank, make sure," Schitzo said.

I nodded, he was right. I was right. Whatever. I'm confused. Short sentences.

"Scarecrow, see that window," I said, sending him a feed from my rifle's scope camera. "Blow it up."

"On it Sarge."

I waited for a 40mm grenade to detonate inside the window and then resumed firing at everything. I was halfway through my supply of ammunition and only half an hour had gone by.

"Who's on the bottom floor?" I asked.

"Me!" at least half a dozen people replied.

"Who's on the bottom floor and is a Helljumper?" I asked, slapping my helmet with my palm.

"Grass and me," Caboose said. "So far we're not even bothering to aim Sarge, too many targets."

"That's not necessarily a good thing," Angel said.

"I know, smartass," Caboose replied.

"It's called sarcasm," Grass chimed in.

"Badly used sarcasm," Snark muttered. "Besides, why are you even bothering to defend Caboose?"

"I am not!" she snapped.

"Geesh," Angel said. "You don't have to blush."

"I am not blushing!"

"Sure you're not," Angel said smugly.

"Grass, keep firing, Caboose, defrief one of the three marines," I ordered. "Tell me everything that he says."

"Yes Sarge," the man replied. His dossier said that he was good at extracting information. I knew exactly what that meant, but if you're a toture specialist you need to have some previous knowledge about how to ask nicely. Hey, sometimes it works.

"Staff Sergeant," Caboose came in, "bad news, we've got-"

"Ah shit," I said. The visor in my helmet was melting off, the sheer heat of the plasma cannon had done all that damage without even touching me. I grabbed my helmet and tossed it away. I wasn't prepared for the heat. I was expecting the air around me to be cold since it was wintertime and the past few days had been marked by a never-ending snowstorm. The sheer heat from the residual energy forced me to cover my face.

"-custs! They're locusts!" Caboose's voice came from my dropped helmet. "Sarge, Sarge! Dammit, come in!"

"Ah shit," I repeated, shaking my head once again.

"Earpiece," Schitzo reminded me.

"Right," I said, reaching for one of my pockets, I just hoped that the heat hadn't destroyed my backup earpiece. I rummaged through one of the packs and grabbed what I was looking for. I pulled the mic out and slung the radio over my ear. The small glass that went over my right eye functioned as a rudimentary HUD, but it was better than nothing.

"I'm fine," I said, pushing myself from the ground whilst reaching for my rifle. "I'm fine. I'm fine."

"Sarge!" Caboose yelled. "It's locusts."

"You don't say," I muttered.

"He's fine," Pavel said, trying to hide the relief in his voice.

"Rocket that asshole," I yelled. "How many walkers?"

"Three we can see, at least that many further back."

I turned to see Bumblebee fire two of his rockets at the nearest locust. There were two detonations second from each other. There was a metallic groaning and the sound of debris falling on the floor. I moved next to Agnarsson and saw the locust emerge unscathed from the explosion, its shields flickering until they went off.

"Pound that motherfucker!"

A dozen soldiers, marines, and Helljumpers opened fire on the Locust walker. I could see yellow tracer fly at the mechanic spider from the floor below and the ground floor. I emptied my magazine on the locust, focusing my fire in its cockpit. Everyone else did the same, and eventually the strong armor gave way to the concentrated fire. The walker slumped sideways and its legs gave way to the weight of the cockpit. It fell to the floor and stayed there for a brief instant before blowing up.

"Good one boys!" Lieutenant Matarci congratulated us, "Now let's focus on those other two!"

We spent all of our rockets killing the second locust, by the time the third one was on the floor we had less than half our machine gun rounds. The lone AIE-486 HMG that the guys from the 4th platoon had brought with them was destroyed by the last locust, leaving us with little less than a thousand unusable rounds. Well, granted, we could load them individually into spare magazines, but that wouldn't really keep up with our requirements.

"Lieutenant," I called out, "tell your wounded to load those machine gun rounds into empty magazines," I said regardless.

Green acknowledgement light. Tiny light in my tiny earpiece HUD. So tiny that I requested acknowledgement, at which point lieutenant Matarci snapped at me to shut the hell up and keep shooting.

Half the building was down in ruins and nien out of the twenty soldiers were dead. The three marines were still all alive, but one of them was injured. Not to mention the other wounded soldiers.

"More of 'em!"

Two locusts were climbing over a destroyed house, their legs clinging to the debris and allowing them to bypass the wreackage. They looked smug to me for some reason. Like they knew that they could kill all of us and they knew it. One of them stopped and its cannon started glowing. I moved out of the way and a purple energy beam burned the north edge of the roof completely, a few bits of polycrete fell down to the floor below, but no one was harmed by the powerful shot.

"Focus on the nearby one," I said. "Fire everything at it."  
>For some reason all the men present in the building obeyed my order and emptied they magazines at the advancing walker while the other locust cooled off its cannon. Rounds pinged and bounced off its powerful shields. It looked like our weapons weren't having any effect, but I knew that we were slowly eating through its shields.<p>

"Snark, hit the right forward leg joint as soon as the shields go down!" I said while firing my rifle.

"Yessir!"

"Seregant, Staff Sergeant," I said angrily.

Just as I said that the locust glowed yellow and its shields went down. Snark emptied four SRS rounds into the place where I had told him to while I fired three bursts at the opposite joint. My rounds didn't have nearly as much effect as Snark's, but they succeeded in hitting something vital. The forward right leg that Snark had targeted buckled slightly and the other three had to take the weight while it fixed itself. The rounds that I had fired to the other leg succeeded in damaging it and forced the walker down to the floor. It wouldn't be long before it self repaired, but at least it bought us some time.

"The other one!" I yelled. "The other one! Same strategy."  
>The remnants of the 4th and of the marine unit that had seeked refuge here fired alongside Reaper Squad. The other locust advanced, impervious to our fire. A couple of rifle grenades detonated on its shield, but the explosions seemed to barely registere as the locust fired its main cannon again. The purple energy beam hit the building head on. That was bound to have killed something.<p>

"Pavel!" I called out. "You all right,, everyone ok?"

Pavel coughed a couple of times. "I'm good, so is Reaper, another of the marines got vaporized and a soldier lost some limbs."

"Shit," I muttered for what seemed like the eleventh time. "Keep firing, we might be able to stop it."

"Got it."

I heard Pavel's machine gun ringing from below and a couple of other small arms joining it, but everyone else was either too stunned or too dead to join the Polish Helljumper.

"It's not working…" Schitzo pointed out calmly.

"Shut the fuck up!" I exploded, doing my best to kill the locust.

My gun clicked empty just as the walker stopped. It raised its turret a little bit and its cannon started glowing as it charged. I stood there in shock for one second. Even if I tried to run I would die, there was no point it was over.

If it had been over I wouldn't be writing this, now would I?

Something went completely through the locust just before it fired, shields and all. The walker blew up instantly afterwards in a glorious explosion of the likes that I has seen way too many times. I followed a trail of vapor and saw something even more glorious.

A tank.

When you hear a tank you might say: "Oh, a tank, what's so impressive about those? I've seen many of them in my day." Perhaps you see tanks merely as a helpful aid during battle. You might even revere them as _the _dominant force in the battlefield. You are wrong. In here, in battle, tank beats everything. A skillfull tank driver could take a scarab by himself if he felt like it.

The scorpion's turret spun rapidly and fired at something behind a house. It started moving and fired again, this time through the house. I heard and saw an explosion behind the house in question.

"I heard you needed some help?"

"Where did you hear that?" Pavel asked.

"The sounds were kind of a giveaway," the tank driver replied. "You've got evac coming?"

"Yeah," I said, "two pelicans, they can pull you out."

"Good, cause I was kinda expecting this to be a sacrifice, you know, one for the books."

"Trust me buddy, it already is," I said gratefully. "Now, if you could only blast this motherfuckers to shreds I would be even more grateful."

"That's what I get paid for," the tankman said.

The tide of the battle didn't turn. Not by a longshot, but it sure tilted the balance until it looked somewhat even. The covvies had numbers but no vehicles while we had a fucking tank and a squad of ODSTs. Tank beats everything, but ODSTs come a close second. I took advantage of the situation and only took aim at brutes and jackal sharpshooters. I was running low, but I wasn't scraping the bottom of the barrel. If it came to the worst I would simply use an MA37 from one of the fallen soldiers.

"Shit!" one of the unfallen soldiers said. "The lieutenant's down, lieutenant's down!"

I followed beam rifle's trail and set my sights on the offending jackal right after Snark had torn it in half with a shot to the midsection. The torso of the jackal was left hanging by a thread to the two legs.

"Nice," I complimented. "Where'd you get the explosive rounds?"

"I always have one on me just in case," Snark explained. "Last magazine."

"Make those rounds count," I said.

"It's like you don't know me Sarge," Snark chuckled.

The Covenant soldiers were now being more carefull, taking potshots every no and then while trying to advance and storm our castle. Pavel and Angel did a pretty nice job at making them keep their heads down, but they'd have to switch to their sidearms soon if this kept going. As a matter of fact I would have to do the same thing if enough people ran out of ammunition. I was conserving rounds better than most, which meant that those that ran out first would get the spare weapons. I'll let you savor the irony for a few moments.

"Reaper, come in! Reaper Squad, come in!"

"Coming in," I deadpanned.

"Ha-ha, very funny."

"It's Zekalwe, rescue has arrived."

"Zekalwe… already?"

"Well, in three minutes or so, but my point remains."

"Great, I need you to pick up a tank," I said.

"A tank, with my pelican full of soldiers I doubt it could lift off."

"You'll be lifting significantly less soldiers than you thought," I informed the man. "Only you coming to the rescue."

"Nah, your girl's right behind me."

"Ouch," Schitzo said. "She's your ex, whose heart you broke, and she still comes to save you."

_Just following orders._

I saw how a brute chieftain's head blew up like a watermelon, courtesy of the explosive rounds from Snark's sniper rifle. The bodyguards next to it looked shock for brief instants before going completely berserk. I killed two out of four with just six bursts and then the other two got too close to the building and a bunch of crack marksmen. Again, why the hell did this species make it through natural selection?

"Send everyone to the roof," I told Pavel. "Pelicans will be here in a minute."

"Great," Pavel said, for once, he meant it.

Soldiers started climbing up through the ladder and the half-collapsed section of the roof. The ones that weren't seriously wounded helped pull up the ones that were. Less than ten soldiers were intact, a few of the wounded were missing limbs and the marines weren't looking so hot either. Pavel climbed up while ordering everyone else in the squad to stay in the second floor and prevent anything from reaching the rooftop while we were evacuated. I could already see a pelican coming and Zekalwe was radioing us to be ready.

"Tank man!" I said, "We're picking you up!"

"Wait for the second pelican," he replied. "I'll cover the first one."

"Zekalwe, you got that?" I asked, emptying the last of my rifle magazines into a pair of brute minors.

"I got it," the pilot replied. "Marina?"

"We heard," Sheppard said almost meekly.

"I don't have time for this," I cursed while slinging my rifle over my shoulder. I caught one of the MA37 rifles. I dropped the bandolier belt slung over my shoulders and grabbed another one with the ammunition for the army rifle.

It had been a while since I last handled this kind of weapon so it took a moment to remember how everything worked. I pulled back the slide and fired at a group of jackals. The inaccuracy of the weapon compared to my BR55 was obscene. Don't get me wrong, all the bullets hit their intended targets, but they bounced of their shields instead of hitting their arms and legs like I intended them to. My earpiece's HUD wasn't really functioning like I would've wanted it to, so I was forced to aim manually. Not that it bothered me, but the MA37's iron sights were pretty crappy.

"Wounded first!" someone ordered. "The rest of us will go later."

The soldiers and the remaining marines tossed (yes, they tossed) the wounded men and women into the blood tray of the aircraft while a bleeding medic tried to keep them alive. Marina's pelican circled overehead while blasting its autocannon at any enemy soldiers that hadn't decided to take cover from the big ship armed to the teeth.

"We're full!" Zekalwe yelled from the cockpit. "I'm outta here!"

"Go, go!" I yelled. "Good luck."

The pelican dusted off and flew away from the battlefield, tracer rounds flying from its opened hatch. Marina's pelican in turn descended and its magnetic clamps tried to hold on to the tank. The scorpion shook as it was lifted from the ground and the pelican struggled under the weight briefly before it went up and settled on the roof. The remaining soldiers hopped in on the pelican while my squad climbed to the roof.

"What happened to your face?" Grass asked in shock.

I hadn't really given it a lot of thought, but the right side of my face was covered with drying blood and my left cheek had most of the top layer of skin peeled off from the heat. Normally I would've worried a lot, but right now I had bigger concerns, besides, my face still looked pretty damn good despite everything that it had gone through. That's the miracle of modern medicine for you.

"Shit happened," I replied. "Now hop on the pelican."

Grass nodded at me and headed towards the pelican. Suddenly I was glad that she had taken the time to ask me if I was allright, because the top of the pelican suddenly found itself enveloped by the purple energy beam from a locust walker. The craft went up, trying to avoid the death ray. The energy beam hit the right wing and then the tank. The scorpion melted completely in a matter of instants and then blew up, the explosion threw the pelican farther up and destroyed its tail completely. I watched in complete shock as the craft tried in vain to maintain its altitude. The pelican gave one final spin and then headed to the ground.

Correction, it headed towards _me_.

"Get out of the way!" Angel yelled. I ran in a perpendicular line to the pelican's trajectory. Right before it crashed on the floor I did an action movie-like jump and landed on my belly. The pelican went entirely through the roof and got stuck in the second story floor. Smoke and fire were spewing from its thrusters.

"Check for survivors!" I ordered even as I got up.

"Shit, soldiers are all dead!" Bumblebee said.

"Check the cockpit," I begged him.

"On it Sarge."

"Everyone else, hold the line."

My order was greeted with a chorus of cocked guns.

"Copilot's breathing!" Bumblebee exclaimed happily. "Conscious too, not badly hurt."

"Good," I said, waiting to hear about Marina.

"Your broad is alive, she don't look so good though Sarge."

"What?" I asked, "what's wrong?"

"She's bleeding, arm is banged up, looks like its broken."

"But she's alive," Pavel said. "That's what matters."

"Yeah," Snark said. "That and getting outta here alive."

"Aye, that too," Scarecrow agreed.

I hopped inside the destroyed pelican. The sheer amount of bodies tossed around made it impossible for me not to step on a fallen comrade. I slipped in blood and slammed against a wall. My hand shot up and grabbed on to safety netting to keep myself afoot.

"Hey there Frank," Sheppard said weakly. He was leaning against a wall with a sad smile on his face. His face looked even more banged up than mine felt. I grabbed his arm and helped him out of the pelican, tossing him a rifle from the floor as soon as he was on the floor. Someone helped him up to the roof and I returned back to the cockpit.

Bumblebee was undoing the safety harness that held Marina against the pilot seat. As he undid the last strap she fell forward and grunted in pain. Bumblebee caught her and handed her to me. I placed her arm over my shoulder and her head tilted forward, forcing her helmet off of her head. Her blonde head spilled out, covering her face. She was walking with me, but just barely, dragging her feet on the floor more often than not. She cried out in pain when I jumped out of the pelican and into the second floor. I scanned the area with my rifle and shot at a passing brute, making it stumble and forcing it to dash for cover. I dropped Marina rather nonchalantly and took a knee on the floor. It wasn't long before the dumb brute decided to take a shot at me with spikers akimbo. That made it a lot easier for me to kill it with extreme prejudice.

I reached for Marina once more while Bumblebee provided cover from the aliens that were storming the building. I climbed through the pile of rubble while carrying the pilot. It was actually a lot harder than it sounds after endless hours of battle.

"Frank!" Pavel cried out to me. "We're just about overrun! Eliza said that she was getting us evac."  
>"Evac?" I asked. "With what? No one is gonna be crazy enough to send anything against this!"<p>

"You're a depressing person," Caboose said. "Let's just kill as many covvies as we can, the locust can't hurt us without friendly fire. We could hold on, bottleneck and all that shit."

"Shut up," Scarecrow said. "We're about to die."

"Frank," Marina said weakly as my squad started getting into the most absurd argument imaginable. "I hate your fucking guts."

"I hate you too," I replied as I placed her down.

"Look at me, look at my face," she cried.

"It looks beautiful to me," I told her. "Same as always."

"Just not beautiful enough," Marina said bitterly.

"Wait," Angel said suddenly. "You broke up with _her_?"

Marina looked irritated and diverted her eyes from mine.

"Really, I don't think now's the best time to argue about-"

"Jackals!"

"Thank God," Schitzo said. "This was starting to get ridiculous."

My squad shot down the jackals with weapons that weren't theirs. The energy shields held just briefly under the lead but then flickered and died, leaving the bird-like aliens vulnerable and exposed. Their skin wasn't nearly as durable as that of brutes, and it only took two rounds to kill each of them for good. Snark didn't fire a single round at them, he still had a couple of magazines for his EMR and half a bandolier worth of DMR magazines. The marksman would keep those for more worthy targets.

"Francisco!" Eliza said into my earpiece. "You're gonna love me."

"What do you have for us?" I asked, my mood brightening.

"Look up."

I did as the artificial intelligence told me and directed my attention towards the sky. I had a hard time spotting what Eliza wanted me to because, as you know, the sky is fucking huge. I saw some flashes and smiled a little bit. By the look of it Nezarian's rangers were coming to the rescue. I kept wondering why the hell only four would come. I frowned a little bit and grabbed my BR55. I used its scope to zoom in on the jetpack flashes and was immediately annoyed as I saw the fancy armor that the men in the jetpacks were wearing.

Spartans.

Thankfully though, it wasn't those superfreaks, it was IIIs by the look of it, their armor was identical to that of Carter back in New Constantinople, no changes whatsoever.

"What's he-"

One of the Spartans fired a rocket launcher while he was still in the air, defying common sense and every instruction that he had received while training for jetpack use. Then he fired a second one. I almost facepalmed but refrained from doing so as the other Spartans fired their weapons at the locust that the two rockets had hit. The Spartan somehow managed to reload before even landing and squeezed off another shot, taking out the locust's shields. The second rocket collided directly with the walker's cockpit, blowing it up and rendering it useless.

The IIIs hit the ground running. One of them had a sniper rifle and managed to kill every single brute that it shot at, not unlike Snark, but this guy did it while sprinting. The roket launcher Spartan had replaced his SPANKr for a more conventional MA5, his bursts were just as deadly as his colleague's sniper rounds. The third Spartan opted to use a pistol, but he used it with such talent that everything he shot at collapsed to the floor, dead. The other Spartan, presumably the leader, fired a BR55 in careful bursts at moderately dangerous targets, protecting the rest of the team from opponents that could hurt them but weren't worthy enough to die of a 14.5x114mm APFSDS round.

I watched the Spartans run through the floor and then disappear. I was surprised but then I remembered that their armor had camouflage.

"Relax people," I said almost lazily. "We're saved."

"What?" Angel asked.

"Because of those things?" Agnarsson complained.

"Those are people," Pavel said.

"Barely," the Scottsman muttered.

"...and they just saved our asses," my friend went undeterred. "Show some gratitude. Ain't that right Frank?"

"Yeah, those are IIIs," I explained. "They're all right. More or less."

Reaper squad shot a grand total of three grunts that were still in the building while the Spartan team wreacked havok along the enemy. It took perhaps ten minutes for them to push back the majority of the Covenant soldiers and then meet up with us. By meet up with us I mean suddenly appear within our perimeter, deactivating their armors' camouflage systems. I am proud to say that I kept my cool and was minimally surprised.

"Spartan," I greeted the one that seemed to be the leader. "I believe thanks are in order." I didn't put out my hand.

"You have some pretty powerfull friends Staff Sergeant," the one with the pistol said, turned out she was a girl. A girl in her teens by the sound of it.

I shrugged in reply.

"You're welcome Staff Sergeant," the lead Spartan said. "I'm Petty Officer Second Class Carlos B283, leader of Team Zulu."

"B?" I asked. "As in Beta?"

"Yeah…"

"Pavel, we met As, didn't we?"

"Correct," he nodded.

"Whoa," the girl said. "You met alphas?"

"That's what I just said," I replied.

"Ok, listen, we just saved your ass fr-"

"Easy Catherine," Carlos said.

"It's Kat!" she yelled angrily and walked off.

"That's the problem with child soldiers," Schitzo said. I was glad it was he who said it and not me.

"Alphas?" another one of the Spartans asked, depolarizing his helmet and confirming my suspicions of their age.

"Yeah, but that's another story," Pavel said. "Right now we just want to leave this place."

"Right," Carlos said. "There are some tunnels nearby that served as a bomb shelter that can lead us out of the city."

"Sarge, can you fill us in?" Angel asked. "I don't think I-"

"Angel," Pavel said. "Just leave it."

"Staff Seregant," another Spartan called out. "Why didn't you bother with helping us?" It was evident he was angry.

"Yeah, good question Mihai," the other male Spartan agreed.

"We're dry," Caboose explained. "Kinda figures if Helljumpers needed rescuing…"

"Ease up on the sarcasm buddy," the one called Mihai threatened.

"Easy," Carlos said. I could tell that the kid was annoyed, but this was his job and he was professional enough at it. For a teenager. "James, go cheer Catherine up, we're leaving."

"Petty Officer," I said, nodding and tossing my empty MA37 aside. "I assume you have medigel or biofoam, we have two wounded in here and they need immediate medical attention," I pointed at the two pilots.

"It's kinda weird that the pilots survived ain't it?" Bumblebee asked. "They always die in the movies."

"Agnarsson," Scarecrow said. "Shut the hell up."

"Ok ladies, and lady," Pavel said. "Keep it calm, follow the Spartans and we'll be home in no time, we just need to get those two up an-"

Pavel never got to finish that sentence. A single energy beam, coming from seemingly nowhere suddenly collided with his belly, going completely through him. Pavel looked at his stomach in shock and confusion before collapsing to the floor.

* * *

><p><em>I bet you guys hate me right now.<em>

_Well, I'd like to remind you all that it was Sniper Fodder who proof-read this chapter, so I'm thanking him. I would also like to thank you for bearing through the 6,000 or so words that make a collective insult to literature. Now that we've got that over with I'd like to remind you that war is hell people and this story is no exception. _

_Love you all for reading this, I hope you enjoyed it._

_-casquis_


	87. Blackmail is Such An Ugly Word

Chapter LXXXVII: Blackmail is Such an Ugly Word…

**March 3, 2543 (UNSC Calendar)/**

**UNSC **_**Disproportionate Retribution, **_**in orbit above New Moskva, Ursa Tertio System**

* * *

><p>"<em>Inter-service rivalry doesn't quite compare to some friendly competition in between Helljumpers." - anonymous ODST.<em>

* * *

><p>"He'll live," an exhausted surgeon said while eyeing the Spartans nervously.<p>

I stopped pacing and nodded. "How long till he's stable?"

"He already is," the doctor said, wiping swear from her brow.

I glared at the doctor. "You know what I mean."

"He shouldn't be moved for a few days. Sergeant Klaus was unconscious and now he's in a medically induced coma to prevent pain."

"His spine?" I asked.

"The bones seemed to be slightly scorched by the amount of heat, but everything else looks intact enough. Prosthetics will allow him to walk and run normally."

"Stomach, liver, intestines?"

"We had to cut off some of his intestines, and your friend has a long month ahead of him. We've already started growing some of the needed organs and the existing ones are going to be transported to this ship as soon as possible."

"Why can't he be transferred to the _Inconvenience_?" Grass asked from behind me.

The doctor sighed in annoyance and shook his head. "That would me most counter-productive, your friend is alive, but we're keeping him that way, using a pelican ship to transport him would most certainly kill him if we give it a shot right now. Soonest I can let him go is day after tomorrow."

"The way things are shaing up doc, we might not have that long," Konstantinov said.

The doctor just looked at us with a "not my problem" look before returning to the cruiser's hospital bay. The doors closed after him and let all nine of us present looking at the dull gray metal with nothing to say. The two Spartans had been kind enough to remain with us while we got the veredict on Pavel, but the other two were getting some zees or simply didn't want to be here. I didn't really blame them.

"Staff," Carlos said. It took a moment to realize that he was talking to me, most people just called me Sarge or Frank. "All your friends are fine."

"I know that," I said. _Sherlock._

"You should probably report back to the bridge," Carlos said.

"I have no reason to," I replied.

"Sarge, it's the polite thing to do," Agnarsson said. His tone all but screamed that it was sarcasm.

"Exactly," the other Spartan, Catherine, said.

"That was sarcasm smartypants," Lamberti quipped. "It's not that complicated."

"Listen you little punk-"

"I'd harly call myself little," Lamberti interrupted. "Least of all a punk. I think of myself as a well-dressed man."

"I do not care what you think," Catherine resumed halfway through Lamberti's second sentence. "I just know that if you keep-"

"What? You'll kill me?" the Italian taunted.

I don't know if he meant to bring it to that, but the Spartan-III was evidently shocked by the question. It was obvious that she had heard about that incident with another Spartan and those ODSTs. Catherine obviously saw herself as the hero in the story, not to mention that she was arguing with a man in his mid-twenties, who had done a stint in prison and had spent the years after that in convict units before becoming an ODST. No matter how talented this girl was at killing, she had no chance at beating the quick-tongued Italian in a battle of words.

"Enough Catherine," Carlos interrupted. He was by far the most professional Spartan-III that I had ever had the pleasure of being in contact with. Even more so than Carter.

"Why don't you add B320 to that?" Catherine snapped before turning around and leaving.

I shrugged at the Spartan leader showing that I regretted the situation and that it couldn't be helped. The kid didn't look nearly as composed as he had been a moment ago, but his professionalism somehow managed to beat his teenage mentality of "I am always right" and he didn't snap at us, instead taking a deep breath and fiddling with his helmet. I avoided shaking my head and turne around to face my team.

"All right people, Pavel's in good care and Marina and Sheppard are both ready to go back to the _Inconvenience_ as soon as we do."

"Sarge?" Scarecrow asked. "Shouldn't we stay-"

"Before you say that let me remind you that this is the military, we don't stay with our loved ones when they're in the hospital, we just go back to kicking ass and hope to stay alive long enough for them to be reinstated into the unit."

"Sarge," Konstantinov said. "We might just get some rest here, Eliza knows we're alive and our situation, things down there aren't going as well as they should."  
>"That's exactly why we have to go back down!" Agnarsson exclaimed. "We have to kick some arse! Avenge our mate!"<p>

Snark nodded. "The brute's got it right," he said.

"Brute?" Agnarsson spat.

"Brute?" Snark mimicked the Scottish accent and tone.

"Stop it," I said lazily before this got derailed.

"Rest, dying," Konstantinov said, using his hands as if they were a scale. "It looks like rest wins Sarge."

That did it. "We'll rest when we die, I'm going to the bridge."

I reached for my inexistent helmet and my now-loaded BR55. I slung the latter over my head and started moving. My tired squad got up from the bench they were sitting in and grabbed their own spare equiment before attaching it to their armor. The Spartan looked doubtful but eventually followed us a few steps behind the last of us. I traveled to the bridge through unusually wide corridors and had to follow the directions instead of simply walking the route by memory. The _Marathon_-class cruiser was a few times bigger than the frigate, and we were a long way from the command room. By the time we had crossed half the ship my team was starting to degenerate into a childlike argument.

"How can you possibly believe that Episode I is the best?" Agnarsson exclaimed in exesperation and anger. "How?"

"It has that race scene," Snark said.

"And the double laser sword," Lamberti added.

"And that hot chick," Grass finally said.

There was a moment of silence.

"My respect for you just went up ten levels Camilla," Scarecrow laughed.

The woman smiled and shook her hair. Had I not been fucking pissed and angry and more than a little bit depressed I would've taken in the moment and made a point not to forget the beautiful blonde's satisfied expression. The circumstances however, didn't really allow me to worry about such trivial matters.

The bridge doors finally appeared in front of me, my entire ODST squad and the lagging Spartan-III must've made for a very curious spectacle. The door opened but before I could go through I was stopped by a marine, a Helljumper in fatigues actually. I took three steps and went through the door anyways before the man planted his feet in front of me.

"Staff, Ima need ya' t'stop righ 'ere."

_Talk clearly._

"An' Ima need ya' ta get t'fuck outta ma way," I said, trying to go around the man.

The Helljumper was obviously not impressed by my disrespectful reply. Especially when the man was a rank higher than I was. "I'd like ta see ye try," he taunted.

I was _that_ close to knocking the man out cold, but I simply placed my hand on the but of my pistol and leaned slightly sideways so that Mr. Drawl here could see the party that I had backing me up.

The Helljumper sighed and banged on the wall, four other ODSTs and half a dozen marines appeared from around a corner, these ones were also sporting assault rifles, even if they didn't have their armors on either. They formed a semi-circle, putting Mr. Drawl in the center. The guy couldn't have looked any smugger even if he tried.

"Listen," I said, "I don't have time for this, so how about you just move aside and avoid getting you ass kicked."

The Helljumpers opposing us laughed as if it was the funniest thing that they had heard in their entire lives, the marines simply looked uncomfortable and kept their fingers hovering above the triggers of their rifles menacingly. I glanced to my right and to my left. I could see two of my squad mates with their hands hovering above their sidearms out of the corner of my eye. I decided that if worst came to worst they would kick these assholes' asses.

"Move," I said one last time. I didn't wait for a reply, instead simply shoving the Helljumper with the speech impediment out of my way rather roughly and turning the corner to the bridge itself. I went three steps before I heard the sound that I was hoping I couldn't here. A dozen weapons were cocked loudly and I felt the muzzle of a rifle in the back of my neck. This guy was in for it.

Look, I was pissed, my best friend had just been on the edge of death for eighteen hours and I'd spent the days before that fighting in an unforgiving urban combat environment. So forgive me if I want a little to far with my reprisal.

I turned around faster than anyone without augmentations could've, while I did that I raised my left arm to push the rifle's aim off and used my right to grab the MA5 by the middle and pulling it off from the man's grip. I used my other hand to grab the weapon and brought it back down with little less than full force right into the Helljumper that first stopped us. The butt of the rifle collided with the man's nose with a lot of strength. The Helljumper reared backwards from the impact, blood spurting from his obviously broken nose and fell to the floor. The thump that he made as he went down was what broke the spell, or perhaps it only seemed like that because I moved so fast.

Nine unfriendly guns went up and were instantly aimed at all of the members of Reaper Squad, I being the most aggressive one so far received the courtesy of two rifles aimed right at my face. By the time those rifles had steadied my right hand had reached for my M6 pistol and the left one had the assault rifle aimed at one of the marines that had his gun trained on me. I don't really think that I need to explain where I was aiming my pistol at. The rest of my squad was remarkably quick to react, all of them having drawn their sidearms or main weapons at the same time as the bridge security team had.

My eyes met those of Carlos, the Spartan seemed shocked when I held his gaze. He wasn't shocked _because_ I held his gaze, and something told me that the sixteen man Mexican standoff in front of him wasn't what had him gaping at me either. The teenaged soldier had put on his helmet before leaving the hospital's waiting room, but he'd had it depolarized all the way through the trip. The kid finally reacted and polarized his helmet just as he drew his rifle to train it on me. Scarecrow immediately pivoted and aimed the gun at the supersoldier, ignoring the man that was aiming at him completely. I'd have to give that guy a bottle of whisky for that.

"You broke my nose!" the wounded ODST complained. For once, he seemed to be able to talk straight.

"Well no shit," I muttered. "Now how about you kids all put your guns down before someone else gets hurt."

The marines looked uncomfortable with the situation and looked at one another, but the three Helljumpers still on their feet didn't budge, at least I'll give them that credit.

"Everyone!" an authoritative voice boomed. "Calm the fuck down."

I resisted the urge to turn around.

"Put your guns down!"

The marines did as they were ordered after a brief second of going over the order. As soon as the six men had their guns aiming at the floor the six guys in my squad switched their targets to the Helljumpers that still ahd their guns trained on some of Reaper and me. I think that they only put their guns down because they were now outgunned and not because they were ordered to. After they finally lowered their guns I was able to turn around, letting go of the MA5, but not of my sidearm.

"Vice Admiral?" I asked, knowing full well that the man was in fact Vice Admiral Harper.

"That is correct Staff Sergeant. If you'll kindly out your gun away."

I slung my pistol after uncocking the hammer and waved at my team for them to do the same. The tension in the room eased up, but just a little bit.

"Now, what can I help you with?" Harper asked, leaning back on a large holotable that dislplayed New Moskva and the locations of the few remaining ships that the UNSC had orbiting the planet.

"You're Harper?" I asked again. "I expected someone…"

"Taller?" the vice admiral suggested.

_Older,_ I thought.

"With more facial hair," Snark said.

I had to tighten my fists and dig my nails into my palms to avoid laughing out loud and having Harper order his men to off us.

"Is that so?" Harper asked irritably. He gave a slight nod to one of his ODSTs and the man slammed the butt of his MA5 into Snark's ribs. The little man bent over while holding his side. I smiled at hearing him laughing. My team was about to raise their guns again but I discouraged them with a small wave of my hand. I felt incredibly badass while I did it.

"I am sorry for the…" I started. "Circumstances of our meeting."

Harper smiled, obviously amused at the situation. He was young enough that he understood that stupid things like this happened, even if they didn't usually happen in the bridge of a Vice Admiral's ship. He nodded at me and then dismissed his men. The ODSTs looked like they were ready to kill someone, but the Marines just seemed to be thankful that this uncomfortable situation was over for them. As soon as they all left the main part of the bridge I turned to my team.

"Fantastic job," I smiled at them. "Now, if you'll give us a second. Scarecrow, keep 'em in check."

"Aye, Sarge," the big man smiled as he slung his assault rifle over his back.

As soon as they left the bridge I turned back to Harper. "Again, I am sorry Admiral, my team is a little bit on the edge, myself included."

"I can see," he acknowledged. "You splattered blood all over my floor," he gestured at a place in the floor where some blood had fallen from the ODST I had punched. "My Helljumpers are also on edge," Harper explained. "Half their team was killed yesterday."

I've never felt more like an asshole in my entire life, not because of what I had done, but because I simply did not care.

"I'm sorry," I lied, my eyes following the Spartan Carlos as he positioned himself behind and to the right of Vice Admiral Harper. "I see no point in beating around the bush, so I'll get right to the point. There's some things I want to know. I want to know how exactly the _Inconvenience_ is doing and if the battle is faring well." Some members of the bridge crews turned around and eyed me nervously. That told me all I needed to know about the second question.

"If my ship is intact I would also like to be transported there as soon as possible, along with my squad and the two wounded pilots."

"Your ship?" Harper asked almost incredousy.

I didn't bother answering, instead staring into the Admiral's eyes with all the "are you fucking kidding me?" that I could muster. It was three seconds before the admiral finally laughed out loud and answered.

"The battle is going as well as you'd expect, we are down to three ships now, and one of them is badly damaged, the Covenant have nine ships left, five of them cruisers."

"We're going to have to leave," I stated.

"Yeah, soon enough," Harper replied sadly.

"Evacuation?"

"We're working on it, but we estimate that only some fifty thousand will be able to leave at the rate this is going."

"And who will be leaving?" Schitzo asked. "I assume that the ones with the best connections."

_Shut up, that's the way it works._

"All right," I said resignedly. "About our ship?"

"I've already arranged something with Captain Brooks," Harper said. "Your two pilots are already on a shuttle to the _Inconvenience,_ lovely name for a ship by the way, your team will be there soon afterwards."

"After taking a connection flight…" I said dreadfully.

"You're a smart man Staff," Harper said with a smile on his face. "Strongbox."

An AI's avatar popped up from the holotable, pushing aside the battlefield holograms. The AI was only the second one that I has actually seen, its avatar was unusualt, to say the least. I was seeing a holographic skull with a nice top hat on top. The top hat had a red ribbon tied to its bottom. I smiled at the sight of it.

"Afternoon, Staff Sergeant," the construct said in greeting.

"I thought it was morning…"

"Obviously not," the AI replied seriously. "The hour in Highbay is-"

"I get your point," I said.

The skull looked taken aback, it was obviously not used to getting interrupted in the middle of a sentence. Being almost literally a god in anything that related to intelligence it was probably very offended that a puny human with barely-genius IQ (that's right, I have genius-level IQ. Bitch) interrupted him with no regards for what it was going to say.

"Very well," Strongbox said. "Your connection flight, as you call it, involves a simple retrieval mission."

I nodded while crossing my arms over my chest.

"Your team will be dropping here," as the AI said that its avatar disappeared and a holographic map of a mountain popped up. "This place is designated Bear Bunker, an ONI base."

"And," Harper said, "since your team already has ONI clearance, Commander Albaf was nice enough to lend us Reaper Squad briefly."

I nodded once again. "If that is all I will be preparing my team for the mission."

"Wait," Harper said. I turned around and the Vice Admiral nodded at no one in particular, signaling the AI to resume talking.

"Reaper Squad will be providing cover while Zulu Team retrieves the package," he said while nodding at the Spartan behind him. "The only member of your team going inside Bear Bunker will be Lance Corporal Arcangelo Lamberti."

"I see," I murmured. _So they locked down the base and forgot something. That's our upmost intelligence service for you._ I uncrossed my arms and clasped my hands behind my back while straightening my spine. "When do we go?"

"Your team has been through some tough couple of days, have some rest. Four hours will do?"

"That's more than enough," I said, nodding. "We'll be ready."

"Good," Vice Admiral Harper said. "Dismissed."

For some reason I actually managed to avoid rolling my eyes and snap a quick and efficient salute. I held the sign of respect for a few seconds before turning one-eighty degrees and walking outside of the bridge. I passed by the ODSTs, the one that I had punched was still trying to stop the bleesing, I tipped an imaginary hat to him as I walked past the small group and smiled as the Helljumpers stood up in anger but just kept walking. My team was right around the corner, half of them leaning against the wall and the other half were standing right in front.

"Sarge," Lamberti called out, "when we leaving this place?"

"Four hours," I said.

"Man, I'm just loving the idea of getting back home," Konstantinov said.

"Not going home," I explained. "Back to that rock. I'll explain everything right before we drop, we have exactly three and a half hours worth of rest, we don't often have that luxury so make it count."

My team looked dismayed at the news, but none of them complained at them. In fact, I believe that most of them were actually expecting it. I kept on walking, wondering where I could find a nice place to crash for a few hours. It was between the drop bay and the hospital beds.

"Third option," Schitzo suggested playfully.

"Right," I said under my breath while a smile formed on my lips.

* * *

><p>"Wake up," someone said angrily while shaking my shoulder.<p>

"I'm awake," I said threateningly. "There'd better have a good reason for that."

"Oh, but there is."

I finally opened my eyes to see an oldish man wearing a marine uniform. He was in his late forties by the look of it, which probably meant he was around sixty if you accounted for time spent in cryo and slipspace travel. The rank insignia on his chest and shoulders marked him as a major. The look on his face marked him as a badass.

"This is the officer's club," he said angrily.

"You don't say," I replied while sitting down on the couch that I had been using for a bed. The leather was quite comfortable.

"Don't get wise with me Helljumper," he threatened. For some reason, whenever you call someone a Helljumper it always feels like a compliment, no matter how you meant to use the word.

Instead of bothering with a response I glanced at my tacpad. I still had fifteen more minutes of sleep before the three and a half hours ended, but I would barely fall asleep in that time, especially with grandpa here pestering me about protocol and whatnot. The man looked ready to burst in anger, so I decided to stand up and brush myself off. The major was half a head shorter than me and a lot less intimidating. Hey, I'm not saying it because it's me we're talking about, I'm being an objective and impartial observer.

Yeah right.

"Nice club," I said. "The one in my ship is ten times smaller and our whiskey menu isn't half as good."

The major was about to say something but then I abruptly turned around, picking up my rifle on the way.

"I was just about to leave anyways, I could've used five more minutes of sleep, but that's fine. Thanks for waking me up." Having said that I walked through the doors and left a fuming marine officer staring at my back. My mood had just improved considerably.

I was about to tell Strongbox to show me where the drop bay was so that I could take the short way, but then I remembered that not all AIs are like Eliza, instead being arrogant bastards that berely even bother talking back to you unless you have something that they want. Well, at least that's what I had heard, because Eliza was the only AI that I had ever known and she was quite awesome. You know, for a robot.

"To the right," Schitzo warned like my life was in mortal danger.

"I know, smartass," I replied.

"What do you know?" Grass asked, she was leaning against the wall right behind the corner.

"Nothing, talking to myself," I said quickly. "Didn't know you smoked," I quickly changed topics.

"Yeah," she said, blushing for no apparent reason. "Not too often really, I've been trying to leave it. Really."

"Grass, I don't care."

"Care about what?"

"Care if you smoke, as long as you do your job I'm fine with you doing whatever you want in your free time."

"Oh, all right." For some reason she sounded surprised.

"Let's go," I ordered. "Spartan-IIIs are probably already there, don't want to look like slackers, don't we?" I said it with a tone that indicated how little it bothered me that the IIIs thought that I was a slacker.

"Sure Sarge," the young woman said with a smile. She put out her cigarette and tossed it into a trashcan before synching in step with me. We walked together to the drop bay while she told me the story of how she got into smoking. She seemed to think it was amusing, although I thought that every single story was the same when it came to that thing in particular. Trying to fit in or look cool, apparently it has been that way since the modern age started.

Zulu Team was effectively inside the drop bay once Grass and I walked in. Their armors were strapped with bandoliers and ammunition pouches. They were going surprisingly light on the ammo compared to the Spartan-IIs that had crash landed right next to us back in Marcia. The IIs could've kicked the IIIs asses all the way to Earth and back, even I knew that, but the IIIs were a lot more human, making it easier for me to swallow my pride and work with them.

Yes, that's the sound of me admitting that I can be wrong, don't get used to it.

"Morning," I said.

"It's late afternoon," Catherine said, pulling back the slide of her pistol and checking the mechanism for any faults.

"Wow, you talk a lot," I said with a big smile.

"Sarge…" Grass urged behind my back.

She shouldn't have been worried, because the Spartan simply turned around and walked towards her pod, where she started doing a pre-drop check rather quickly. I felt slightly sorry for her, she was only thirteen years old and had the training and skills that took most marines half a lifetime to achieve. The implications that that realization brought with it weren't pleasant at all. Luckily for ONI, my opinion of them couldn't have been any lower.

"Carlos," I said to the team leader, "I need to talk to you."

Spartan-B283 shot his friends a glance and they turned around before chuckling quietly to themselves. It was as if I was the annoying guy in school that no one wanted to hang out with. It was easy to forget that this killing machines were nothing more than teenagers with guns and fancy armor.

"Yes Staff?" he asked me with what he probably thought was politeness.

"I want to know why you need my computer and explosives expert down there with you," I told the kid. "I want to know that he'll be safe."

"We'll take care of him," Carlos-B283 replied carefully.

"You don't have a hacker in your team?" I asked. "It is my understanding that Spartans are jacks of all trades."

The boy actually looked ashamed for a second. He glanced towards Catherine and leaned in closely as if he wanted to tell me a secret. "Well, Staff, you see, Catherine," he glanced over his shoulder and went even more quiet, forcing me to lean closer. "Catherine is the only one with that kind of training, although her talent is… debatable."

I stared dumbly at the guy for a moment before letting out a laugh with I quickly stifled. I took a breath before managing to regain composure. The other four people in the room where all looking at Carlos and me with a little bit of suspicion in their faces. Grass shot me a questioning look that I dismissed with a shake of my head and then shrugged to herself before turning around.

"And here I thought Spartans were supposed to be good at everything that they did," I said. "Very well, take care of Lamberti."

"We will, Staff."

"Good."

I turned around and headed back towards Grass's direction. There were two long tables in the room in addition to the large holotable in the center of the drop bay. The Spartan-IIIs were occupying one all to themselves, disassembling their weapons and oiling every component with almost as much efficiency as Grass. And that was something. The other table only had the beautiful Finnish blonde and myself on it. I still had mixed feelings about Camilla Seppa being so goddamned attractive, but as long as she was my squad mate I could keep those in check.

The long table was built into the wall, the wall it was built into had several shelves within arm's reach that housed absolutely everything you could need for your weapon that wasn't more expensive than an underbarrel attachment. The _Inconvenience_ didn't have nearly as much toys for us, and that was the _Inconvenience_ we were talking about. In addition to all the additional gear there were some SMGs and MA5Bs in a weapon's locker on the wall. Being in a cruiser certainly seemed to have their perks for a Helljumper, I wouldn't really mind having to work on one if all this came with the package.

"So, Sarge, what's the mission about?"

"Extracting a package," I explained, "the Spartans are going inside an ONI complex while we hold of wave after wave of attackers."

"Just like a videogame," Grass said. "Let's hope the freaks hurry it up."

"You into videogames?" I asked, ignoring the second part of her comment.

"A little," she admitted after blushing for a second time. "My siblings really liked their guns."

"You seem to like them too," I pointed out. She had been assembling her MA5B while looking at me and hadn't even glanced down.

"Yes, practice makes perfect," she shot back with a smile. "At least that's what my father says."

I confirmed that I was carrying the maximum amount of magazines that my bandoliers and ammunition pouches could sport before heading towards a medical cabinet. From there I picked up four cans of biofoam that I promptly shoved into my thigh-pouch. If we ran into trouble those would come in handy. I looked over all the shelves to see if I was missing something. More ammunition, sights, laser pointers, ammunition, grenades… of course, grenades. I grabbed four fragmentation grenades and strapped them to my ribs. The little metal balls of death were quite heavy for their small size, but they sure packed a punch.

"Anything else?" I asked myself quietly.

"A helmet. Idiot."

_Thanks, Schitzo,_ I thought irritably.

I looked around for any place where I could find a helmet to spot none. I was about to ask the Spartans where I could find one when the rest of my team barged inside the room loudly.

"Oi Sarge!" Agnarsson said with no smile in his face. He was still pissed at me. The rocketeer threw a shiny black helmet right towards my face. I snapped my hands up and caught it an inch from my nose. I nodded in mocking thanks to the man and put on the helmet.

A HUD interface instantly popped up, it outlined my weapons and the boxes of ammunition in blue immediately. The VISR instantly detected the six members of Reaper Squad and the four IIIs. I looked around for the motion tracker and then realized that my previous helmet had been yet another prototype that I had picked up in my first days on the _Inconvenience._ I was really going to miss that feature. I kept on going and barked orders at the helmet's computer, personalizing it and adjusting it to what I was used to. Finally satisfied with the helmet I took it off and placed it on the table. I glanced at my tacpad's watch right before the holotable lit up with Strongbox's avatar.

"Zulu, Reaper," it greeted.

"Our squad's name is way cooler than theirs," Angel whispered to Agnarsson behind me.

"ONI facility Bear Bunker is located ten-point-two kilometers outside of Highbay, the facility wasn't as well concealed as ONI thought it was and has been spotted by the Covenant ground forces, who have been trying to break inside since yesterday. Their recent counter-offensive has forced several of the troops that were previously quartered there to leave, but there is still a company-sized force guarding the place."  
><em>Sounds easy enough…<em>

"The only problem is…"

_And there's the catch._

"…that there is a sizeable Covenant force within two minutes by dropship. The estimated travel time to the package is three and a half minutes, and that's not accounting for a regular human," Strongbox told us. "Reaper will need to hold the entrance for as long as needed. As soon as Zulu Team exits missile bombardment and Pelican dropships will evacuate you."

"Plan B?" I asked even as the Spartans nodded in agreement to the plan.

"If worst comes to worst an AGM will be used to wipe out the Covenant infantry before an evacuation is attempted."

"Will the facility hold?" Sutton asked.

"We don't know," Strongbox admitted. "Simulations have proved inconclusive."

"Very well," Konstantinov said cheerily. "Let's get going then!"

The Spartan-IIIs of Zulu team headed towards their designaed HEVs while my team looked at me. Don't worry, I hadn't forgotten.

"Reaper, we're having company for this op, I assume you're ok with that, but I don't care, because you have to be. Also, remember that we're one men down, we're going to have to account for that since we're now missing our two gunners." I explained. "Now, how do we go?" I asked them.

"We go feet first Staff Sergeant!" they replied.

"The only way it should be," Schitzo said, this time he manifested himself wearing a knock-off ODST body armor and cheesy face paint. I ignored the hallucination all the way until my HEV and then cracked my knuckles as the pod's door closed in front of me. This wasn't a comander's HEV, so I didn't have as many hardware as I was used to, instead being reduced to two screens.

I glanced up to the countdown and failed to suppress a wince just as the light turned green. The drop was fast and efficient. I only had to steer slightly to the side to avoid crashing into the mountain directly. Instead, all eleven of us landed in the slopes of the mountain where Bear Bunker had been built on. The pod stopped as violently as it should've.

"Without a hitch," I smiled.

* * *

><p><em>Come on guys, you didn't really think that I'd have Pavel killed off (or at least making it look like that), did you? Well, if you did I have posted this new chapter at the same time to cheer you up. Or sink you deeper into depression, depends on how talented you consider my writing.<em>

_What is it now? Frank is going to be working with SPARTANs once again? No way, who saw that coming? Well, it was bound to happen eventually, as you know, I intend to take this story all the way to 2552, or the Battle of Earth, also known as Halo 3. Now, now, I hope you enjoyed this chapter, in particular that Mexican Standoff scene, I had a hard time writing it, but I think it came out at least halfway decent. Let me know what you think._

_As always, thanks to Sniper Fodder for proof-reading this chapter. _

_-casquis_


	88. Cueva del Oso

Chapter LXXXVIII: Cueva del Oso

**March 3, 2543 (UNSC Calendar)/**

**Bear Bunker Complex, Mt. Vizery, New Moskva, Ursa Tertio System**

* * *

><p>"<em>Spartans and Helljumpers? Fuck 'em, we don't need no help." – Anonymous UNSC serviceman.<em>

* * *

><p>We landed right in the middle of the enemy encampment. The pods hit the ground and we were literally surrounded because, as I said, we landed right in the middle of the enemy encampment. You get my point? My HEV hit the ground cleanly, unfortunately, that meant that no covvie was crushed under my meteorite vehicle. I think Caboose's might've squished a grunt, but everyone else landed clean.<p>

"Go, go!" Carlos ordered. I might've technically been of higher rank than he was but I knew that this was his op. You have no idea how hard it is to take orders from a teenager.

I let my door fall to the ground gently, the same as the rest of my squad. If we blew it away it could hit another pod, seriously harming any friendly near or inside it. The Spartans apparently didn't have the same reservations. Mijai's door flew right towards Catherine's pod. The female Spartan dodged just in time as the metal door collided with her own pod, knocking it sideways.

"Watch it!" she yelled.

"Hey, no harm, no foul," Mijai replied playfully.

My squad ignored the Spartan's flamboyance and got to work. My first victim was a stunned skirmisher, one bullet was enough to bring it down. I stepped over its body just as my squad killed their own targets. We were already on the move towards Bear Bunker's entrance, stunned covvies were falling like flies. Zulu Team's precise fire thinned out the crowd enough for us to take the survivors out even as the IIIs walked through the covvies.

"Brute shot!" Grass called out. I ignored her and let someone else take care of the problem. Three different weapons opening fire at the same time told me that the gorilla had been taken care of.

I moved through the snow with my rifle raised and ready. My boots were sinking all the way to the knee in the heavy snow, but it was as much a hindrance for the enemy as it was for us. I fired at a jackal sharpshooter, missing my shot and hitting it in the outside of the arm. The jackal recoiled and jumped behind cover, with my following shot being fired too late. I stopped my advance and shuffled sideways with my rifle trained on the same position that the jackal had disappeared. I stayed there for a few moments until a carbine shot grazed my lower ribs.

"Fucker," I said as I jumped to the side, avoiding two follow-up shots. The jackal had repaid its injury in kind. I raised my rifle from the ground and instantly spotted the offending jackal, it had climbed a small pile of rocks despite its injury to get a good shot at me. I squeezed off a burst, hitting the rocks in front of it and forcing it to take cover again. I instantly got up, wincing from pain in my ribs.

"Jackal sharpshooter, rock outcropping, this one's good," I said as I moved away from his field of fire.

"I'll take it," the Spartan named James said. "Get to cover Staff."

"Don't have to tell me twice," I muttered, pressing my hand against my wound to prevent blood from flowing out.

I kept on moving towards the door as my team and the Spartans killed everyone and everything that didn't have red blood. I was lagging a little behind now and my injury wasn't helping. I slung my rifle across my back and pulled out my sidearm. I refrained from firing one-handed, but had to take out two grunts that got uncomfortably close to me, the rest of the joint task force took out the rest of the aliens.

"Got the jackal," James informed.

"Good," Carlos said. "Zulu, regroup at the entrance. Reaper-6, come with us."

"Wish me luck guys," Angel said. "Don't miss me too much."

"I don't think that'll be a problem," Grass said.

The conversation ended there, as the Spartans blew up the barricade that the Covenant had set up and Carlos typed in a passcode on the door. The enormous double blast doors opened slowly and with a lot of noise, Carlos typed in another command on the console and the doors stopped opening abruptly. From my angle I could see that they were at least five meters thick, probably made out of Titanium-A.

"Listen up, start piling up bodies or covvie barricades," I ordered. "Caboose, I need some help with the biofoam."

"On it Sarge," Scarecrow said. He and the rest of the team started pushing up enemy equipment and barricades in a semi-circle protecting the door while Caboose shook a can of biofoam that I tossed him.

"Raise your arm," he told me.

I did as he said and he emptied a little bit of the can on my wound. The carbine round had grazed me in between two ribs. It had gone deep enough to leave a furrow in my torso. Blood was flowing out freely, staining my armor and clothing. The white biofoam turned slightly pink as it covered the wound. It felt like a thousand hot needles jabbed at my wound. I managed to keep myself steady and then Caboose rubbed the excess biofoam out of the wound. As soon as the pain from the medical compound receded the pain that the carbine round had caused did too.

"You'll need some radiation medicine," Caboose warned.

"Tell me about it," I said, rolling my arm back and forth and moving sideways to confirm that I was fine. "Now, get to work, those enemy reinforcements will be getting here any minute."

I strapped my pistol to my thigh and helped grass roll a barricade towards the little wall that we were creating. She nodded in thanks and kept pushing the barricade. We placed it at an angle against the wall surrounding the door. I went inside the complex and checked the lobby for anything that we could use. There was a couple of mobile barricades that I took outside with Scarecrow's help. By the time we were done with our improvised wall we had one hell of a barricade protecting us from incoming fire.

"Enemy dropship," Snark called out. He had climbed a few feet above us into a small rock overhang that rested just above the door. It was large enough that he could go prone and avoid enemy weapon fire. With an SRS and his EMR the little Indian guy would be able to cause a lot of damage.

"I see it," Bumblebee said. "Shit, they're dropping off hunters."

I stopped Bumblebee just as he started raising his rocket launcher. "We might need that later," I cautioned him. The man just grunted but complied, instead drawing an MA5B, he had picked it up instead of his pistol carbine, I was glad he had made that choice. The phantom dropship finished dropping off a group of grunts commanded by an Unggoy in black armor and the little aliens formed a defensive perimeter around the hunters.

The first one to fall was the black-armored grunt. The rest of his small unit seemed to squeal and panic but the hunter's presence managed to keep them in check. The two large aliens hulked down and pressed themselves together to protect the grunts from our fire. I fired a couple of rounds at the aliens, but they were too far away for me to hit vital spots. Snark refrained from firing.

We held our position and our fire while the Covenant group did the same. It wasn't long before three other dropships arrived. One of them happened to have a wraith clamped below it. I sighed in annoyance and ordered Bumblebee to take it out before it touched the ground. He fired one missile at the phantom, it detonated right above the tank and below the ship. The wraith fell down almost in slow motioned and flipped sideways, taking itself out of the action.

"Nice," Caboose complimented.

"I know that," Bumblebee said, quite immodestly I might add.

The dropships dropped down sixteen passengers each, amounting to a grand total of forty-eight additional covvies plus the ones already groundside. One dropship dropped two brutes and grunts, another dropped two more brutes as well as seven grunts and seven jackals. The third dropship decided to deliver sixteen jackals, two of them sharpshooters, one of them a sniper, and a skirmisher for a leader. It could've been worse for the first wave, but not by much.

"Snark, take out the sniper and sharpshooters, kill the hunters as soon as you see openings, hold your fire on anything else, everyone else, you know the drill."

Three shots from an EMR rang out and the three jackals that I had told Snark to take out fell to the ground dead. He didn't bother with headshots, instead shooting them in the chest, at this range it was still an impressive shot. An impressive three shots. In a row.

"Zulu, enemy reinforcements have just landed, what's your status?" I asked while I waited for the covvies to get within range of my BR55.

"We copy Reaper-Actual-" Catherine started.

"Actually Sarge, I've run into a little bit of trouble here," Angel cut in.

"Explain," I said, still waiting for the brutes to reach the nine hundred meter mark.

"Some jackass decided to lock this place down completely," I can't just break through the firewalls or the doors will be unbreachable, need to navigate around them so that the system-"

"Ok, I get it," I interrupted, just hurry it along." _No need to bore me with the details._

"Got it," Angel said. I was pretty damn sure that he had just stretched his knuckles before he started tapping away in his fancy portable computer.

The first alien to reach my nine hundred meter mark was a brute, those had a tendency to be the first ones charging in, they didn't even bother using grunts as cannon fodder. I took a moment to make sure that my rifle setting was single-fire and took a deep breath. My weapon wasn't a sniper rifle, but it was a marksman's rifle, and it had a damned good range and impressive accuracy as well. I let go a single shot. The whole place rang with the echo of the small explosion and I waited for results. My bullet hit the brute in the gut after a second, forcing it to double over and stagger. I then emptied half my magazine on the big alien while it was still stunned. I managed to knock it down and out of the fight with several shots to the chest and arms, but I could still see it struggling as it bled.

"One out," I said.

"A bunch to go," Caboose completed.

"You pessimist bastard," Scarecrow said.

The next shot I fired was a whole lot more accurate in account to me getting used to sniping. It had been a long time since I had had a firefight at this range. Lately it seemed that every single shot I fired hit its mark at a distance of less than ten meters. I think I preferred it this way. The unlucky alien that got hit was a grunt. It wasn't precisely my best shot, but the rifle round hit one of the hoses that transported gas from the backpack it was carrying to its mask. The grunt died a long and painful death from asphyxiation. I felt a slight rush at seeing it suffer.

The next person to open fire was Scarecrow, he fired one of his grenades and it collided with a hunter in a beautiful explosion, the large alien came out relatively unscathed from the explosion, although it started leaking some orange blood.

"No holding your fire bullshit," I said, glancing around at my squad. "As soon as they are within range you go full automatic on those sons of bitches."

"I like it," Grass said. "Simple and easy to remember."

"Well darling," Caboose said, "you just missed the mark." Having insulted her he promptly opened fire with his assault rifle in short bursts of two or three rounds. At the same time Scarecrow and Bumblebee did the same thing, leaving Grass the only one not firing.

"Oh," she muttered. "Oh well."

Then all six of us were blowing apart any grunt that came close enough. I was very satisfied with how things were going so far, although I could see more dropships in the distance. None of them were carrying vehicles so far, and the wraith was still upside down. The phantoms dropped more infantry and another hunter pair, we would be in for a tough time.

"Snark, take out those hunters," I ordered as soon as they fired the first rounds from their fuel rods. The green energy impacted right below our barricade, melting all the snow and producing water vapor that would make it hard for us to see. That gave me a brilliant idea, but I required a plasma rifle to make it work, and those aren't usually handy.

"We just broke through, Sarge," Angel said, his transmissions were getting sketchy now. "Just an… …ree …o go."

"Well, that sounds like it's gonna take a while," Snark noted.

"You don't say," Bumblebee snapped.

"Nice comeback," Caboose said. "No, really, very original."

"Fuck you."

At that point the battle became too complicated for not-so-friendly banter. Snark started pummeling the hunters with his SRS while Bumblebee placed his SPANKr within easy reach. I dedicated myself to taking out lesser-ranking brutes while the rest of the squad sprayed grunts and jackals with their assault rifles. The little guys fell by the score while the brutes took more wearing out. Snark was making slow progress with the lead hunter.

"Get down!" Scarecrow warned.

I dropped to the floor just in time for a flow of superheated plasma to fly above me. The hunter's fuel rod melted the outer layers of some of the covvie barriers and scorched the blast door behind us.

"Take it out already," Grass cried out.

"Wait for it," Snark said. I heard three shots being fired and the hunter that was closest to us collapsed. The three shots went through its throat right before it let out a burst from its hand cannon. The alien fell to the floor and twitched once before staying still. No one even seemed to notice, not even the grunts that were standing nearby didn't even flinch, and that's a hell of an accomplishment for a grunt. Definitely not good news for us, though.

The Covenant was getting closer, they were now about one hundred meters away from us, this meant that they were easier targets, and if they had been humans or grunts we would've had a field day killing them, but the jackals' shields and the brute powered armor made our lives a lot harder. We were forced to target those first because they were the more dangerous of the races. If a single brute got through the six of us would be forced to concentrate our fire on it to prevent it from ripping someone's arm and beating the rest of us to death with it. Jackals were more manageable, but they were clever bastards and could take a couple of slashes or shots at you before retreating behind their shields. Thos two races could certainly go all medieval up on our ass.

"Fuel rod!"

I shifted my body so that I could aim at whichever alien was carrying the rocket launcher. Unfortunately, it happened to be a brute chieftain with an ornate headdress. Snark's SRS cracked loudly and the brute's head jerked backward. I cannot fathom how the alien's neck managed to withstand the impact, but the brute simply snarled at being shot in the head with a sniper rifle. His helmet absorbed most of the impact, but a large chunk of it fell off. I took advantage of the opportunity and fired three bursts into its head. Two of them landed but were stopped by the helmet, the other one was fired into the air as I ducked for cover.

"Shit, take the sunnuva bitch out," Caboose complained.

Another SRS rifle shot rang out. "Got it," Snark said. "Wait." He fired another shot. "Got it."

Awesome, one less angry brute to worry about and a dozen more still out there. Oh, the bodguards were probably going apeshit right now and would be charging towards us. Not a good thing either with a thirteen feet tall piece of angry meat impervious to pain charging at you.

"Grass, frag 'em!" I ordered. The woman complied and tossed a couple of her fragmentation grenades in quick succession. The first one exploded too early, but the second one ripped one of the enraged brutes in half, that left only three. "Scarecrow…" I suggested.

The huge man didn't even bother with a reply, simply firing one of his 40mm grenades. The round collided with one of the enraged brutes. The following explosion left the unlucky recipient an unrecognizable mess and caught a jackal in its wake, tossing it sideways like a rag doll. The other two brutes stumbled and were quickly cut down by sustained fire from Caboose and Bumblebee. I, on the other hand, took the time to fix my backup knife to the bayonet lugs on my rifle.

"Angel, you ready?" I asked.

"I'm going as fast as I can," he said. "Nah, I kid ya, we're securing the package, give us about five minutes and we'll be there."

"We won't have five minutes if things keep going like this," Caboose observed.

"You heard him."

"Sorry Sarge," Angel apologized. "For being superhuman, these guys move pretty slowly."

"Hey," one of the Spartans complained, Mijai by the sound of it.

"I'll tell 'em to hurry it along," Angel said, even though all four Spartan-IIIs could hear the conversation.

"Ok Reaper, how about we brace ourselves?" I suggested.

"Amen," Scarecrow hummed.

From that point on the battle degenerated into chaos. The large amount of infantry that the covvies had with them plus our indiscriminate use of firepower and explosives made it easy for us to get tons of kills. Not to mention that it was actually getting _crowded_ down there, something that was good for us, because some eager squads were getting caught in the crossfire, saving us half the work. Some grunts were getting shot in the back with plasma cannons, the brutes leading those grunts actually turned around and fired back at their confused allies.

"Well that's a new one," Grass observed.

"Tell me about it," Caboose agreed with a chuckle, he seemed to enjoy himself in these sort of situations. The enemy stupidity kind, not the desperately overwhelmed kind.

"Bumblebee?" I called out.

"Yeah," he answered, there was still a disrespectful tone in his voice that I didn't like.

"_Now_ you can use your SPANKr."

The Scottish ODST actually dropped his MA5 and grabbed his rocket launcher. He had two HEAT missiles already loaded plus eight others strapped around his body, how he managed to carry that comfortably, I know not. Bumblebee fired his two rockets in a span of two seconds, taking an instant to shift his aim as soon as the first rocket left the tube. His first rocket blew up right in another hunter's midsection, the explosion blew through the armor plating like it was paper, and the hunter suddenly found itself turned into a blue and orange mess. The second missile blew up at the feet of two brutes, propelling them sideways and removing their lower halves.

"Nice job," Snark said, his tone made it evident that he was mocking Bumblebee.

None of them had time to reply to the little guy's insult, because half a second after he was done, three green explosive munitions flew at our direction. Actually, they flew above us, straight towards Snark's rocky outcropping.

"Jump!" Scarecrow cried out, his throat raw.

Snark didn't jump down as much as roll down, he grabbed his two rifles and in one swift movement turned himself belly up. His momentum carried him over the edge and down to the floor. It was a pretty long drop to land on your side. A pretty long drop by any measurement. The three explosives blew up mere instants after Snark let himself fall. The entire cliff face turned a bright green and then flashed red as the plasma heated the rock.

My eyes barely caught a glimpse of the spectacular chain of explosions, instead I started rushing towards the spot where Snark would fall. I wasn't going to make it. The little guy fell to the floor and I felt a sickly crack as more than one of his bones snapped clean. I winced even as I slid to him. The fall had knocked him unconscious, but his vitals were stable, at least according to his helmet and suit stats.

"Shit," I cursed. "Snark?"

"No use," Caboose said, turning his head back partially to say it to me. "He's unconscious!"

I knew that he was right, so I decided to leave Snark as he was, he might've gotten a neck injury and you never really knew with those. I simply gripped my rifle tighter and yelled at Carlos to start moving his ass or the only thing that he would return home was going to be a pile of corpses.

"Three brutes, seven grunts!" Scarecrow warned. "Three o'clock."

The entire squad, what was left of it, shifted their aim sideways and fired at the Covenant group. The concentrated fire wiped out the lesser aliens in three seconds, the brutes dropped to their bellies and brought their weapons to bear, they managed a few shots each before our concentrated fire overwhelmed them. The covvies didn't give us a moment's rest. As soon as that group was dead, there was twice as many aliens standing over them.

"Frag out!" Agnarsson warned. The device detonated a whole lot closer than I was comfortable with.

"Bayonets!" I ordered as soon as I thought it was necessary, my rifle already had a knife attached to its barrel, but the others didn't. The MA5 series rifles had a retractable pig-sticker bayonet, the blades barely made a sound as they slid from inside the foregrip, something of an anti-climax, as you almost expected them to be audibly sharp.

"Almost there, Sarge!" Angel yelled into his helmet radio. He sounded as tired as I felt overwhelmed.

"Hold! The! Line!" I ordered, standing up from cover and switching my rifle to full automatic. I sprayed the aliens closest to me, bringing a brute and a jackal to the ground before the rest managed to hop over our barricade.

A brute landed right next to me, the moment of hesitation right after it landed on the floor allowed me to drive my bayonet into its knees. The alien snarled in anger and turned around to face me, almost ripping my weapon from my hands. The brute lifted its spiker over its head but suddenly stopped. The stop in its motioned coincided with half its face blowing outwards in a mess of brain, blood, and skull bits. The ape fell to the floor slowly, allowing me to remove my bayonet from its leg. Grass was standing behind where the alien had been, holding up a smoking rifle.

She didn't even bother waiting for a nod of gratitude, instead choosing to turn around and dig her bayonet completely through a jackals neck.

"My kind of girl," Schitzo observed. He was in full winter gear. Civilian winter gear. Don't ask me why.

Scarecrow kicked at a brute, managing to knock it backwards for an instant. The alien looked surprised that something so much smaller than it could beat it when it came to strength. It didn't have time to prove its superiority in that aspect, as the Helljumper emptied at least seven rounds into its unprotected face, killing it.

I swung my rifle in a wide arc at three jackals. Two of them saw my move and jumped backwards just in time, but the third alien's foot slid in the icy floor and got its throat slashed as a result of his clumsiness. I slammed my shoulder into one of the other jackal's shields, knocking it off its feet and to the floor. I kicked at the remaining jackal from the ground and nicked its waist, turning it sideways and stunning it. That gave me enough time to bash the other jackal's head in with a well-placed punch.

"Sarge, duck!" Grass warned.

I didn't really have anywhere to duck to, but I pushed myself harder into the ground as Bumblebee shot the jackal I had kicked in the head twice. He now had his sidearm in one hand and his rifle in the other. I turned around and fired thrice, hitting a grunt behind him in the chest and killing it. Bumblebee turned around and sprayed two brutes with his rifle before dropping it and placing three rounds inside their skulls with his sidearm.

"Angel!" I yelled.

I didn't get a reply, instead a brute chieftain blocked out half the world as it jumped higher than any being its size should've been able to. I caught a glimpse of its raised warhammer and jumped backwards. The bladed end of the weapon descended towards me. The world seemed to almost stop for just an instant, with the brute warhammer right above my belly, me backwards on the air. Then, the entire world actually stopped. The entire world except for Schitzo.

"Now Frank, you're gonna land hard on your back, get the wind knocked outta you, don't let that stop you. Jump backwards as soon as you land and-"

The help didn't last forever, as everything snapped back to its normal speed. I landed on my back and got the wind knocked out of me, I immediately propelled myself further backwards and the bladed end of the warhammer crashed into the floor between my legs, inches away from my codpiece. The brute was not as amused as I was, and I wasn't particularly happy with the situation.

The alien raised its front leg and brought it down on my chest, I managed to get my rifle up, but the sheer strength of the brute's stomp was enough to crack a couple of ribs.

"That's gonna hurt tomorrow," I huffed. Don't ask me why I bothered saying that.

The brute raised its leg again, but this time I rolled sideways as its leg stomped inches away from my head. I looked back up and found out the bad way that brutes don't wear any underwear under their powered armor.

Ironically enough, that wasn't my biggest realization in that moment.

The chieftain once again raised its warhammer. With one meaty leg on each side there was nowhere I could run to. I dropped my rifle and brought my hands up in anticipation of the impact, not that it would do anything to stop the deadly blow. A blow that seemed to be taking its time.

I opened my eyes and saw sparks flying of the brute's chest plate even as it jerked backwards ever so slightly.

"About goddamned time," I said as I slid backwards and reached for Snark's SRS, an arm's length away.

The brute roared in anger, letting the whole world that it had gone completely bezerk. I took advantage of the moment and raised the rifle as fast as I could. Easier said than done when you're raising a weapon as heavy as an SRS in such a tightly cramped space. The weapon was almost as long as I was tall, and with the added length from my arms it was about ten inches below the chieftain's jaw. I squeezed the trigger, suddenly realizing that the rifle was probably unloaded.

It wasn't. The brute's headdress flew three feet into the air, a beautiful trail of blood and brain matter in its wake. It was one of the most beautiful things that I had ever seen. Sometimes you just gotta appreciate the little things.

And then I had half a metric ton worth of dead alien land on my broken ribs.

"Gettitofme!" I cried through the pain.

"Hold on, Sarge!" Angel called out. "Scarecrow, help me out."

"On it," the man replied.

I felt some of the pressure lifted off from my body and took a deep breath. Bad choice. My expanding lungs pushed against my broken ribs, the amount of pain and the sensation pretty much confirmed that my one of the ribs had punctured the lung.

"Can't breathe!" I wheezed.

"Move away," Grass said.

Scarecrow and Angel both moved to the side and took firing positions while I saw Grass get something out of one of her pouches. She raised the item to her head and told me not to move. She hesitated for a second before taking off the frontal part of my chest armor with her spare hand, leaving me exposed to the cold and the deadlier plasma fire. She then brought down whatever she was holding in her other hand as my vision started going out at the edges.

The pain brought me back up. I heard air whistling and saw that she had stabbed me with a breathing device. My chest was moving up and down in exaggerated motions as I started taking in as much oxygen as I could. I forced myself to stop lest the rib that was currently inside my lung did anymore damage.

"Hold on sarge, this one's gonna hurt," Grass warned.

"What? No-" was all I could say before she connected a can of biofoam to the breathing device and poured the gel into my lungs. It stung like hell and I screamed in pain. The medical compound wouldn't fix my lungs, but it would stall the bleeding some until I got to a real hospital.

"You're bleeding," I told Gass through my pain. "You ok?"

"This?" she asked, gesturing at her hands. "It's nothing, don't worry about it."

"Don't look like nothing to me," I said. In fact, the amount of blood spilling from her hands was worrisome.

"Stopped a brute spiker," she shrugged, "adrenaline doesn't let me feel anything."

"Huh, good."

"Yeah, good," Grass said bitterly. "Now hold still."

"There's more?"

The Helljumper stabbed me (again) with a needle as large as my index finger right in the heart. I screamed once again at the pain of being stabbed (again) and then started hyperventilating as my heart started beating faster. I don't know if I should've been given adrenaline with a punctured lung, but we had more serious concerns at the time right now.

"Woo!" I said excitedly. "I'm good. Give Snark a quick check and let's kick some ass!"

"Yes, Staff Sergeant!" Grass said happily as she moved away from me and knelt beside our sniper.

I stood up, in fact, I _jumped_ up. I realized my mistake and promptly reached down to grab my rifle, completely ignoring, Snark's SRS. I hopped towards the semi-destroyed barricade and used it to support my rifle. The four Spartan-IIIs had managed to push back the covvies back a long way in just a few seconds. I fired three shots, hitting a brute, a grunt, and a jackal. My hyper-senses, coupled with the adrenaline flowing through my body allowed me to hit them all in the right eye, flamboyant, I know, but it gets the job done.

The four Spartans were working through the leading covvies like a hot knife through butter, none of them lasted more than five seconds under fire, and within thirty minutes they were falling back to the front line that the remainder of the forces had established. Zulu team was incredibly effective, but I couldn't help noticing that Catherine did as much damage with her pistol and flashy gymnastics as the rest of the team did combined. If only she spent as much time practicing her hacking we wouldn't have been forced to lend them Angel and a few of my ribs wouldn't be broken. Probably.

"Oh," I realized as I killed a jackal. "_Disproportionate Retribution_ come in, this is Reaper Actual."

"_DR _here, we copy Reaper," the reply came almost immediately.

"_DR_? Nice, I like it. Also, we need evac right now, a Vulture gunship couldn't do any harm either."

"Evac is en route Reaper Actual."

"Good, they have a medic, right?"

"Affirmative, what kind of injuries will they be dealing with?"

"Broken ribs, collapsed lung, and internal bleeding."

"All right Reaper Actual, we're informi-"

"Wait, that's just me. You'll also need to deal with lacerations, a thirty foot fall."

Bumblebee cried out in pain.

"And plasma burns to the leg," I added. "Seems like that's it."

"Ok…" the communications officer said cautiously. "Good luck Reaper."

"Yeah," I huffed. "We can always use some of that."

"Hey, Sarge!" Angel asked. "Is it good luck or bad luck that we see ourselves in this situation? I mean, you're a walking crash test dummy and all, but you _are_ alive."

"Good question," I admitted, reloading my BR55.

"My leg!" Bumblebee complained. "They shot me in the fucking leg, those bastards!" he cried out. His Scottish accent made it funny to listen to him.

"Grass," I ordered.

"On it," she said in an almost bored tone.

"Don't make me call you a bitch, Grass," Bumblebee begged.

"I'll let that pass," she replied. "Besides, you're the bitch."

"Bitch," Bumblebee said simply.

"Sarge!" Scarecrow called out. "Vulture!"

"They actually sent one! Haven't seen one of those in ages!"

The battle, which we had been losing so far (a decent accomplishment, considering how outnumbered we were) suddenly turned into what I could only call a curb stomp battle in our favor. A rain of missiles started pouring from the gunship and more ANVIL missiles joined the Vulture's fire as two pelican's flew in over the mountain. The small valley in front of us suddenly lit up like Cinco de Mayo. Snow, dirt, and ice blew skywards as the explosives shredded through the enemy infantry. Five seconds was all it took. Five seconds and five hundred aliens were gone. Sometimes I envied the flyboys and the ease with which they could rack up high kill counts.

"Reaper, Zulu," one of the pilots said in his I-just-rescued-you-and-I-want-you-to-know-that voice that every pilot seemed to practice and perfect for special occasions. "Cavalry is here."

"Ha-ha," Catherins, or Cat laughed humorlessly. "Nice one smartass, now get down here and airlift us."

"Please," James added hopefully.

"All right," the pilot said grumpily.

I watched as one of the two pelicans descended towards our position while the other one and the gunship hovered at three hundred feet, watching for any enemies. I ordered Grass and Angel to help up Bumblebee to the craft and then watched as two medics jumped down and placed Snark in a stretched. They walked back to the pelican with Scarecrow looming over their backs. I looked around to see if we were missing anything, but every weapon had been picked up already and we had no casualties.

"Sarge?" Grass said, offering me her lesser-injured hand.

"Hold on," I dismissed her.

I waited for Zulu Team, they were actually falling back in a textbook retreating pattern even though there were no covvies left that could walk. Carlos had what looked like an armored briefcase strapped to his back. I raised my eyebrow and moved towards him.

"What is it?" I asked.

"A briefcase," Catherine said, she obviously wasn't crazy about me. With looks like mine I couldn't fathom why.

"What's inside the briefcase?"

"Need to know, Staff," Carlos said as he hopped on the ship. The Spartan didn't turn to offer me his hand, obviously glad that his assignment with us was now almost over.

I grabbed Grass's hand and immediately had a medic checking me over. I tossed my frontal armor and made half-hearted attempts at pushing the medic away. He scanned me with some weird device that always succeeded in creeping me out before deciding that it was best to stab my neck with yet another gigantic syringe. That made the third time that I got stabbed this day, and I'm not even counting the other injuries from blunt trauma.

"Relax Staff," the medic said. My vision started blurring, and I felt myself slumping sideways. "Relax."

* * *

><p><em>Well, I believe that was some sort of Kirrahe situation, don't you think? Happy leap day, I hope you enjoyed. I sure as hell didn't since I rushed this chapter just a little bit to give you a nice February 29th. I'm gonna have to work my ass off today and tomorrow to catch up. <em>

_Don't worry about it too much guys, I do this because I love you. Once again, I hope you enjoyed the chapter._

_As always, thanks to Sniper Fodder for proof-reading this chapter._

_-casquis_


	89. Six Down

Chapter LXXXIX: Six Down

**March 10, 2543 (UNSC Calendar)/**

**UNSC **_**Inconvenience, **_**Edge of Ursa Tertio System**

* * *

><p><em>"You'd be surprised how similar life on the ship is to regular civilian life. You know, with tanks and aliens thrown in occasionally." -anonymous UNSC serviceman.<em>

* * *

><p>Have you ever woken up after an operation? You know, after having your body pumped full of drugs, anesthesia, and painkillers. Have you? Well, in case you haven't it's a pretty hard experience to describe. It pretty much feels like you're waking up after a very deep sleep. You wake up feeling disoriented, confused, angry, and tired. The white hospital lights hit you in the face, blinding you temporarily and hurting your eyes, then you realize what happened and why you hurt so much.<p>

Six.

That's the number of ribs that were crushed by the brute stomping on my chest. All but one of my 'true ribs' had been broken, leaving the right side of my ribcage an unrecognizable mess. My lung had been punctured in several places. It had started filling up with blood until Grass stabbed me with biofoam and some other large needles. By all accounts I should've fainted or died from shock, I suspected that ONI and Major Cavallaro had had something to do with me being awake to feel the pain and fight off my attackers.

"Frank, Frank?" someone asked. "Can you hear me?"

_If I pretend to be asleep will you go away?_

"I know you're awake," the voice insisted. "I woke you up with meds, so you can't fool me."

"What do you want?" I asked.

"I insisted that you should stay asleep," Doc Zhivago informed me, "but Lieutenant Albaf insisted I test your cognitive functions."

"What for?" I asked. "It's my ribs she should be worried about."

"Exactly what I said, but you know ONI."

"Yeah, yeah."

I finally opened my eyes and winced as the bright white light hit my pupils and forced them to contract. I blinked several times, trying to get used to the sudden change in light. My enhanced eyes became accustomed to the new lighting faster than normal and then focused on Doctor Zhivago. The doctor seemed more tired than usual, with lines in his face that hadn't been there when I last saw him. He was thinner and had a gaunt appearance. Despite all this he managed to give me a small smile.

"How's my ribs?" I asked.

"How _are_," he corrected. "And they're fine, I kept them in a box in case you wanted them."

"No, I think I'm cool."

"Good, half of them were shattered beyond recognition."

"Ouch, will these ones last more?" I asked as I gestured to my right side.

"Yup, reinforced Titanium. Not as strong as this ship's plating, and if you take plasma to the ribs they will still heat up and cook your insides, damaging you almost as much as a regular plasma shot."

"But they won't break."

"Pretty much impossible," he affirmed. "Same goes for part of your sternum."

"Scars?" I asked. So shoot me, I'm a vanity conscious bastard.

"They won't fade completely, but in a year you'll have six small lines on your right side, nothing more."

"Great. You testing me now?"

"You can talk well enough, so I'll pass you as mentally sound."

"Might be pushing it a little doc," I joked. Then I realized it wasn't really a joke.

"Maybe," Zhivago smiled.

"How's Pavel?" I asked.

"His body is accepting the transplants, they are his organs after all, even if they're cloned. Seems that he won't be able to fight for a while, though."

"How long?" I asked. "Will he be able to fight ever again?"

"Sure, but it'll take some months before any sane doctor allows him to."

"Three months?" I asked hopefully.

"More like seven, but I'll leave it at… five."

"Do what you think is best, Doc."

"If I did that I would have you restrained to the bed, same goes for your friend," Zhivago mumbled as he left my bed and closed the curtains behind him.

I hadn't gotten around to asking him when I was going to be able to leave, my chest was still stinging from the operation, something not even painkillers could get rid of entirely. As long as that pain still felt fresh and intense I would have no trouble staying in bed. Of course, then I would get bored and start itching for anything other than laying down on a mattress and I would pressure Zhivago to let me leave the goddamned hospital wing.

I grabbed a small device with a black button on it and pumped it down thrice, filling my body with morphine. Not that I was in any kind of unbearable pain, I just wanted to fall asleep as quick as possible.

* * *

><p>"Sarge," Sutton said excitedly. "Welcome back!"<p>

"Thanks," I said, putting out my hands to prevent him from hugging me.

"Oh, yeah, sorry."

"How's Snark?"

"He's fine, collarbone snapped, but it's healing nicely. Concussion as well, but nothing serious."

"Good, how 'bout Agnarsson?"

"Still limping, but he'll be fine, 'least that's what the doctors say."

"Good," I said, putting out my tray so that the guy doing kitchen service could pour me a giant pile of goop. "When are we leaving the system?"

"Dunno," he replied. "New Moskva is nothing but glasslands now, it's only us and the _Retribution_ now. A few civilian transports made it out of the system."

"Why are we still here then?"

"Admiral Harper's orders. Honestly, I think it's got something to do with those Spartans."

"Probably," I admitted. "But we'll be out of here soon enough.

"Great," I said, carefully sitting down on a bench. I smiled when I realized that I could do that without wincing. "Camilla, Lamberti, Konstantinov?"

"Grass hasn't complained about her hands once, even with the ugly scars, but you can tell she dislikes the injury, Lamberti started feeling guilty about not being there for us, and Grigori is… well Grigori."

"Hmmm," I said as I shoved the paste of nutrients into my mouth. I don't know whether it was supposed to be chilly or beans. It was one of those days for the kitchen. "You never went to college, did you?"

"No, Sarge," he confirmed.

"If you had gone, what would you have studied?"

"Psychology."

"Figures." I swallowed the food. It beat hospital food no problem. I could only wonder at the difference in taste when both of them came from the same ship. Perhaps the hospital was purposely made to taste badly, you know, to get soldiers off the beds quicker. Makes sense. In a completely inhumane kind of way. "I trust Lamberti hasn't been mulling over it too much."

"I can't tell Sarge, honestly. Angel seems to be more quiet than usual most of the time, but will act almost normal when you talk to him."

"Should I be worried?"

"Yes, even if you're worried for nothing."

"Shit." I stayed quiet for a while, eating my food and observing the marines and soldiers in the mess hall. One in every six or so of them was sporting a bandage or was limping. The other four needed to complete the one in ten weren't present. "Tough battle."

"You have no idea Sarge," Sutton told me. "We had it bad, but these guys had it just as, and they aren't trained for it."

"That sounds… arrogant."

"Be that as it may, it's the truth."

"Never said it wasn't 'Crow."

I munched down on my lunch hungrily. I had been fed through an IV drop for most of the past week, and only had real solid meals the last day that I was in the hospital. It was still enough to make me want to leave as soon as possible, even if it meant leaving behind the nice and soft mattresses.

"Hey," I said as I stood up, "if Lamberti keeps mulling over this please tell Marina to help him out."

"Why don't you tell her, Sarge?" he asked. "I mean, why do _I _have to tell her?"

"We're… separated," I said.

"As in separated but not divorced?"

"No, as in separated but not dating anymore."

The man shrugged. "You'll bounce back Sarge," he said, followed by, "Don't worry, I'll tell her."

"Thanks bro," I said, disregarding all protocol. Scarecrow nodded at me and took off.

I ate my chow patiently and in silence, enjoying it as much as it was humanly possible without gagging. I could feel energy return to my limbs as the not-quite artificial meal filled my belly. The bad taste I could take, if you've eaten emergency rations or energy bars, you can take anything. What I couldn't get used to was the consistency. It felt like I was chewing on poop that was sometimes solid and sometimes soft. Yeah, it's as bad as it sounds.

Worry not, we usually had decent meals, since half the time we were locked up in the freezer we had large stores of frozen lasagna and pasta. The problem is that when we were deployed for extended periods of time we started running out of food, especially if the Covenant were shooting down any transport large enough to carry food for more than a hundred men. Except pelicans and albatross, they seemed to miss those remarkably often.

I was preparing to stand up when I heard a commotion. I turned around and my lips curled into a grin as I saw Agnarsson hitting a marine with a crutch. The poor marine didn't know what was happening, and when one of his friends tried to intervene Rob clocked him in the face and knocked him out cleanly. I watched the spectacle as my squad mate hit the man on his legs and waist. He at least had the decency not to hit him too hard.

"Enough," I ordered. "Rob, get over here."

The man looked at me grumpily and then shot the marine on the floor a look of anger. He still complied with my orders and hopped towards my table. He used his bent crutch as a staff and gently lowered himself onto the table. He made sure that his right leg could support his whole weight and then turned his head to face me. He gave me a "what do you want?" look and waited for me to say what I had to.

"Can I hit him?" Schitzo asked. "Please, can I?" For some reason he was holding a pan like a baseball bat.

_Sure._

Schitzo swung hard at Agnarsson's head. The pan went completely through the man's skull like a hologram would've, appearing on the other side. Schitzo looked confused at the cooking implement before turning towards me.

"Wow, I did not see that coming."

_Suuure…_

"Listen Rob," I started.

"Agnarsson," he corrected. "Or Bumblebee."

"Listen, I'll call you however I like," I said a little bit too harshly. "But have it your way, Agnarsson it is then." I waited for him to nod at me. "How's the leg?"

"Healing."

"When will you be able to fight again?"

"A week and a half."

"Will it heal in cryo?"

"Probably, but at a slower rate."

"Figures. Just wanted to know how you were doing." I explained. "How's the rest of the team?"

Agnarsson sighed, his dislike for me becoming more evident with each passing second.

_And here I thought he liked me the most…_

"Snark is still a little arse, can't move his arm, a month of immobilization for him, they're healing his bone the old-fashioned way. Grass's hands are healing up nicely, even if the scars are piss-ugly. Scarecrow's fine, cheery as always that bloody bastard. The Italian worries me a wee bit, seems to be staring off into the distance sometimes."

I nodded. "Grigori?"

"Grigori's just… Grigori."

"Great, thanks for the talk," I said as I stood up. "Good luck with the leg."

"Thanks," he muttered reluctantly.

"Oh, and by the way, never hit a fellow marine or soldier again. Ever."

I left before he could answer and left the mess hall. The two marines that Agnarsson had clocked were shooting me daggers with their eyes, obviously blaming me for their misfortune. Their pride was probably more injured than their bodies, with a man beating both of them up with a crutch. A crutch that he needed to use to walk.

I walked normally. The extent of my healing allowed me to do that now. I occasionally raised my left hand to feel the new ribs on my torso. They felt weird, unnatural. Then I felt my scars stinging and dropped my hand back down. For the most part I managed to repress the urge to prod around my new metallic bones though. I had given up on wearing the t-shirts for a while, instead switching to a relatively loose jacket that we were issued. I wore nothing underneath other than a patch to protect my scars, that way the fabric didn't squeeze them. I felt pretty good with myself for coming up with that.

The next question was where I should go. The obvious choice was the gym, but I wasn't nearly as healed up as I had to be to bench press two hundred. The second choice was my room, but I had just left that room because I was hungry and felt overtly claustrophobic. Third choice would've been Marina, but I, in all my wisdom, had broken up with her because of my imaginary friend's whims. I had mixed feelings over that decision. Sure, I was starting to feel less _"love" _for Marina with each passing day, but I still liked her as much as I could. And the sex was pretty awesome.

"You see? You miss the sex, not her."

_Shut. The. Fuck. Up._

"It's true though."

"I liked you more when you were a creepy background person…"

"Liked who more?"

"Huh?" I asked dumbly.

"Who are you talking to?"

"Who are y-. Oh, Lockley. Hanna, is it?"

"Wow, you already forgot my name," she complained.

"No, I just told you. You're Hanna Lockley, Corpsman. Partially saved my life."

"That's correct," Lockley said, her scowl disappearing but not quite turning into a smile. "What's wrong with you now?"

I started unzipping my jacket.

"Whoa, I don't want to see that."

"Yes you do," I smiled at her. "Besides, I don't want to show you my fantastic abs, lookee here."

"Hmmm," she said, leaning closely towards me and pulling back the patch that covered my ribs with care. "Ouch," she exclaimed as soon as she saw the six scars. "All six ribs?"

"No, just one, I asked for five extra scars to make the story cooler."

"You know, that sarcasm thing you've got going on might work for some people, but to me it just makes you seem like an arrogant ass."

I shrugged. "I guess you're right."

Hanna looked up from my scar and into my eyes. I hadn't noticed before, but she had lovely light brown eyes. You know, not the regular light brown kind that a lot of people seem to have, but instead the light brownish that was almost-but-not-quite green kind of eyes. If I had to compare them to something I would probably compare them to honey. Honey-eyes, yeah, that sounds about right. They were brown all over except directly around her pupils, that area was slightly gray. I could only compare the gray colored areas to that of rays of light, starting thicker but getting thinner as they got farther away from the center of her eye; they reached out in a lot, but not all, directions. The way that the colors mingled at the center of her iris made it seem like half her eyes were green if you stared at them for a short amount of time.

Yes, her eyes were fucking awesome, if I want to write an extra-long paragraph about it, I sure as hell will.

"Nice eyes," I commented. If I didn't say anything I would just look like a creep for maintaining eye contact too long. Even if she did so too I would end up being the creepy one for some reason.

Hanna blushed quickly, which didn't surprise me even if I knew almost nothing about her. Then she poked my belly with her finger, which kind of surprised me considering her chronic uptightness.

"Can't say the same about your abs," she said.

It was so out of character with her that I had to laugh out loud. I knew next to nothing about Corpsman Hanna Lockley other that she was a good medic, but I knew that she was extremely uptight about things like that. Hannah pulled her hand away and smirked at me with some degree of satisfaction. She then put her hand back to my chest and pasted back the gauze to my skin with extreme care.

"Hey. Hanna, I was- oh, am I interrupting something?"

I looked over Hanna and saw another woman, a friend of hers by the look of it in the corridor, staring at the two of us strangely.

"No," she said.

"Yes," I said.

"No, we were just-"

"About to have sex," I cut in.

"Oh, in that case I think I'll be leaving," her friend told us with a smile.

"We weren't about to have sex!" Hanna exclaimed.

"Sorry, what? I couldn't hear you," I told her.

"Oh shut up," Hanna chastised me. To her friend she said, "And don't look at me like that!"

"Fine, fine," she apologized.

"Well, Staff Sergeant, a pleasure seeing you," Hanna saluted.

I smiled and gave her a quick salute before she turned around and hurried back to her friend. Just when they thought they were out of earshot I heard Lockley's friend tell her that there could've been a whole lot of pleasure in seeing me if she hadn't interrupted us. That comment was followed by a muted slapping sound and a yelp of pain.

I think it goes without saying that I kept walking with en extremely large grin on my face.

From there I decided that it was best to head towards the hangar, Sheppard and Marina were probably there and I wanted to see how they were doing. The ship was surprisingly empty, with many of the surviving marines and soldiers simply confining themselves to their rooms and getting as much rest as possible. About halfway through to the hangar I heard Eliza broadcast over the ship that we were about to jump into slipspace.

"Three, two, one," she said.

The ship seemed to shake, but I knew that the ship wasn't actually moving, it was the space around the ship that was doing that. Or was it? I'm not sure, slipspace doesn't really follow the laws of physics, and the laws of physics are complicated enough as it is without throwing faster-than-light travel in the mix. My stomach lurched for a second and I reached out to the wall. Every now and then a jump would make me nauseous.

"Yeah, I'm fine," I told myself as I resumed walking.

The ship's hangar looked crowded even though there were only a few people walking around. The pelicans were all cramped up and there were several Armadillo tanks and Warthogs parked all over the place. Sometimes I wonder how they manage to park them so closely and neatly without doing some paint scraping. I instantly looked around to see if I could spot the pelican with red paint, but then I remembered that it was probably a puddle of molten steel back in New Moskva. That pelican had been here for most my life and now it was gone. Things like that hurt, even if it's just a machine.

"Frank!"

I turned around and saw Sheppard trying to hop towards me. He decided that it was best that he stay where he was, leaning against a Scorpion instead of further damaging his body. He waved me over and I walked towards him. He seemed a lot better than before, but he had some horrible bruising to his face and there were several small cuts that were still healing.

"Hey, How you doing man? I didn't know you were out of the infirmary yet."

Well, I am," I said. "How are you?"

"All right I guess, my face still hurts like hell, but I can do pretty much anything that doesn't involve doing anything more than a fast walk."

"Don't worry, I think your face looks better than before."

"Ha-ha. How about you Frank?" he asked me.

"I'm doing fine, my scars hurt a little bit, but they'll heal up soon enough."

"More scars for you and more cool stories to tell."

"There's nothing cool about being stomped on the chest by a brute."

"Right, but civvie girls don't know that."

"That they don't," I agreed with a chuckle. "Talking about girls, where's Marina?"

"Fourth pelican, she's trying to fix it."

"She's always trying to fix something," I muttered.

"Yeah, you might've been her boyfriend, but I am the one who had to spend endless hours in the cockpit with her. She's a handful, in a good way, but still a handful."

There you have it, Marina in a nutshell. I nodded at Sheppard and walked towards the pelican that he had directed me to.

I looked inside the cargo bay and knocked on the door.

"Look Vince, you can't walk or do anything, so just leave and go-"

"It's me," I interrupted.

"Oh," her tone instantly became more venomous. "What do you want?" Marina emerged from the cockpit and walked slowly towards me. Her face still had several fading bruises and her left arm was covered in cuts of varying sizes all the way from her wrist to her shoulder. Her other arm was in a sling that crossed her body, the position of her arm propped up her chest, a fact that I couldn't help but notice.. Her aforementioned chest had escaped relatively unscathed compared to the rest of her body. Despite all her injuries she still looked as sexy and beautiful as ever.

Does that make me sound like I have a fetish for that kind of thing? I hope not.

"I just wanted to check on you," I said.

"Well."

"How are you?"

"I'm fine."

Talk about being cold.

"Good, good,"

There was a long moment of awkward silence.

"So, how do you feel about losing your plane?"

"How do you think I feel?"

"Not good, I guess," I replied calmly, running my hands through the walls of the pelican. "I had lots of good memories related to _Mary's Little Lamb_."

"Good, but not important," she stated. She really knew where to make me hurt.

"Both," I said. "I hope you feel better," I told her almost angrily as I climbed back down.

Sheppard shrugged at me as I walked past him. My ribs were hurting and now I was in a bad mood. Fucking great, on top of it all I would be shoved into a freezer in a few hours, same as everyone else on the ship. I was trying to be the good guy in the breakup, even though we weren't going out anymore it still meant that we could still be friends, right? I mean, why the hell not? We were great friends before I started putting my wee-wee into her hoo-hah with regularity.

"Hey, Sarge!"

I turned around, I didn't think that anyone would be addressing me personally, but I did instinctively, same as when you hear someone call out for another guy named just like you.

"Sarge! Wait up!"

So they were talking to me.

"Buenos días Subteniente," I greeted Emily Hardwick.

"Huh?"

"Good morning Second Lieutenant," I translated for her convenience.

"Oh, just call me Emily," she smiled. She was wearing her old-fashioned aviator sunglasses.

"Are you sure ma'am?" I asked in a fake tone, clasping my hands behind my back and assuming an at-ease position.

"Yes soldier. In fact, I order you to."

"Wow, I just got goose bumps."

She laughed. "You look like a train ran you over, what happened?"

"Thanks. A lot."

"Oh, I'm kidding," Emily apologized. "I'd give you a forgive me hug but you look like you could break into tiny pieces."

_A forgive me hug? Huh, I wouldn't mind. Especially not from her._

I looked Hardwick over. Sure, she wasn't as physically attractive as Marina and couldn't compete with Grass, but she was still pretty easy on the eyes. Unlike my blonde ex-girlfriend she had dark brown hair, unlike Hanna Lockley, she had green eyes. She also had a line of freckles that ran across her cheeks and over her nose, giving her a cutesy appearance. All in all, she might've been able to pull off a nine-point-six or a nine-point-seven. You know, the usual.

"Not a train," I corrected Hardwick, "a brute. Chieftain."

"Ouch, they seem scary even from inside my hornet."

"And then you blow them to pieces with the push of a button."

"Are you trying to discredit the value of my job?"

"No, of course not, after all, you've saved me, I'm just trying to discredit the difficulty of pressing buttons."

"Very funny," she said, obviously not amused.

"I'm kidding. So, did you lose the sun?"

"What?"

"Did you lose the sun?"

"Did I lose the- what are you talking about?"

I motioned to her sunglasses.

"Oh, very funny."

I shrugged at her, trying to nail Pavel's "I'm cute even though I could kill you in twenty different ways" look. By the way Emily reacted I must've gotten it pretty close, because she gave me a smile, almost as brilliant as those that Layla could give.

"And back to her," Schitzo chimed in.

"So, are you ok?" Hardwick asked me.

"Yeah, I'm fine, I'm six ribs short, but still kicking."

"Six?"

"Yup."

"What did you get instead?"

"Titanium. Good 'ol titanium."

"Nice, can I feel them?"

_Well that's a weird question._

"Jeez Francisco, how you manage to fool yourself is beyond my understanding," Schitzo groaned.

"Not right now you can't," I informed Emily. "You'd probably just open my stitches."

"Maybe later then," she half-said, half-asked.

"Maybe later," I agreed.

"Great, I'll see you around Frank," Emily smiled at me.

"Wow Francisco, I don't remember you giving her permission to call you by your first name."

_Shut up Schitzo._

"No, I'm serious, that's supposed to go against regulations."

_When has that ever stopped me before?_

"Huh, we make a great team you and I. You're the… no, wait. I'm the beauty and you're the… no, I'm also the brains and the brawn."

_You're me._ I noted.

"Well, I guess we're not that stupid after all then."

* * *

><p><em>And there it is ladies and gentlemen, the proof that Frank is not an author avatar. Frank is a pimp.<em>

_Seriously, I hope you enjoyed the chapter, thank you for the reviews, and keep on reviewing, after all, you are the ones that inspire me. Corny much?_

_I just realized that I don't have anything important to say here other than my half-hearted lame attempts at jokes and almost pathetic expectations of your enjoyment of the fic. Also, one quick note. While doing research I noticed that the UNSC hadn't met Spectre's until 2546, so please ignore that little bit of data, because retconning all their appearances so far would just be stupid. _

_As always, thanks to Sniper Fodder for proof-reading this chapter._

_-casquis_


	90. An Emptier World

Chapter XC: An Emptier World

**May 11, 2543 (UNSC Calendar)/two months later**

**Esztergom (****Ezhtergom), Viery Territory, Reach, Epsilon Eridany System**

It could've been a lot worse. In fact, I think that it could've hardly been any better. Yes, I was extremely satisfied with myself. What was more, she had been satisfied with my performance. At least I hoped so, the fairer sex tend to be incredibly talented at faking that sort of thing. See? Now I'm gonna be thinking about that for a week or more. I hate you.

I yawned as she left the small hotel room (paid by the UNSC, of course) and stretched my arms over my back. I allowed myself the luxury of recalling last night, perhaps I exaggerated some parts of the act but for the most part I remained faithful to reality.

When I decided that I'd had enough I stood up. At first I felt a little self-conscious about being naked, but then I felt stupid because I was alone in the room, Schitzo notwithstanding, and even he wasn't popping up. I grabbed last night's briefs and slid them on. Putting on my underwear was more of a hassle than it should have been because I was still half asleep. Once that was done I jumped back on the bed, not ready to stand back up. I glanced at my room's clock.

"Shit, already?"

Before I could even move my phone rang.

"Who's this?"

"Sarge, it's Sutton, hav-"

"Hey man, thanks for helping me out with that broad, she was one for the books," I thanked him.

"No problem Sarge, her friend was more than enough to make up for the help."

"That hurts," I joked.

"We'll do that again sometime, but turn on your TV."

"TV?" I asked before I remembered that Brooks had been kind enough to get us all rooms with televisions. "What channel?"

"Any channel."

_Shit._

"-remiah Cole was best known for his victories against the Covenant in Harvest, retaking the planet from the alien invaders," a pretty newscaster was saying.

_Was?_

"The Admiral, recognized through all of UEG space as a hero of humanity was confirmed dead recently. His death appears to have taken place in the Psi Serpentis system. So far reports are scarce and little is known about the events surrounding his demise, but sources tell us that his flagship, the UNSC _Everest_ was lost as well as over twenty UNSC ships."

I turned off the television.

"Sarge, you still there?"

"I'm here," I said into the phone. I had never even seen Cole in person, but it felt like sledgehammer hit me in the chest.

"What do you think?"

"I think we're a bit more screwed than we were before."

"This isn't a good thing Sarge, the brass has gotta be going nuts."

"When did he die?"

"April eighteen," he said.

"Two weeks ago, shit." I stopped and started thinking. "What was the outcome of the battle?"

"Nobody knows yet. Some people are saying that it was a Covenant ambush and some other guys are saying that it was an even battle. A friend in HIGHCOM tells me that… Shit Sarge, are you seeing this?"

"Seeing what?" I asked.

"Did you turn of the TV?"

"Yeah…"

"Turn it on, channel four fifty seven."

"Done," I said. "What do you… Holy shit."

"We're gotting some reports from our team in FLEETCOM HQ. What have you got Michael?"

The image switched from the pretty anchorwoman to a crowded press conference room. The camera was focusing on a young reporter with a datapad in his hand. He read a few lines from it before addressing the camera.

"Casey, the UNSC has just announced that they'll issue an official announcement. In fact, they're doing it right now."

The camera moved from the reporter and zoomed in on a UNSC officer. The officer looked almost bored to be in the situation he was in. As soon as it looked like he was about to start talking all the reporters present in the press conference room shut up immediately and the faint buzz of the heli-cameras rotating could be heard. The officer cleared his throat and started talking.

"On the date of April eighteen, in the system of Psi Serpentis Admiral Preston Jeremiah Cole's fleet, Battle Group India, encountered a Covenant force of gargantuan proportions. As you all know, the battle resulted in Admiral Cole's death. The death of Admiral Cole is a devastating blow for the UNSC and humanity, but not one that will affect the war with the Covenaant."

There was an uproar from the reporters, all of them trying to get in a question. The UNSC representative quieted them with a wave of his hand.

"So far, there have been twenty-seven confirmed ship casualties in addition to Admiral Cole's flagship, the _Everest._ Despite the losses, scouts and surviving ships report that over three hundred enemy ships were destroyed in the battle."

_Three hundred enemy ships were destroyed in the battle._

"Cole achieved this feat by managing to turn the planet Viperidae, a gas giant, into a star for a brief instant. This act destroyed the entire enemy force at the cost of his own life."

Having said that the UNSC representative stepped down from the podium as hundreds of reporters tried to ask their questions, each one louder than the last. The officer walked out of the room and left the press people trying to grasp what they had just heard. Sure, the UNSC had been known to tweak numbers every now and then, but _three hundred_ enemy ships. That was simply too much.

"Three hundred?" I asked, stunned.

"That's what they said," Scarecrow replied.

"Propaganda?"

"No one would be stupid enough to make that up."

"Three hundred," I repeated. "I hope that it's true."

"How will the Covenant react, though?"

"I don't know, but losing three hundred of their ships isn't going to make them happy."

"Yeah, and they're not what you'd call a… a happy bunch."

"George, that is the worst joke I've ever heard."

"Yeah, sorry. It sounded better in my head."

"Whatever. I'm heading down to get some breakfast, wanna join?"

"Sure, I'll be down in a few."

I hung up and got up from the bed. Most of my clothes were dirty since I hadn't had the time to take them to the laundry room that the hotel had, and I had kept the Do Not Disturb sign on my door ever since I arrived. I grabbed one of the pair of jeans that I had bought with Marina and put them on, hopping while I slid them to my waist. Once my jeans were buttoned I lunged towards a shirt. I actually lunged, don't ask me why. Before I put it on I pressed the armpits against my nose and inhaled deeply.

"Meh," was the consensus.

I put it on after spraying myself with deodorant. I looked in the mirror before leaving and ran my hand along my scalp, confirming that my renewed mohawk was looking nice and straight. Then I opened the door and closed it abruptly.

"Shoes," I reminded myself.

I had recently bought tennis shoes. The casual type. They were far more comfortable than anything that I had worn in a very long while. To be fair, I had been wearing combat boots ever since my dad died and my mom lapsed into a coma and the only variety that I gave that kind of footwear was the armored boots of my ODST armor. The white fabric was a welcome change.

I grabbed my wallet and checked for my dogtags before I left. The hotel had lovely carpets on the floor, compared to what I was usually living in, it looked like a palace. The elevator took me to the lobby, and from there I walked to the buffet. This hotel was mostly empty save for Reaper Squad and a few civilians that were passing through Esztergom. Already in the buffet were Grass and Lamberti. I wasn't surprised to see them bickering as usual.

"No, no, no! You don't understand. If what you said was right-" Arcangelo punctuated, moving his hands around in exaggerated motions.

"What? What makes you think that _you_, without any qualifications in that field could possibly know any better than me?" she cut in angrily.

"Oh, now I don't have any qualifications? What the hell is wrong with you, woman?"

"Please," I interrupted them."It's way too early."

"Morning, Sarge," Lamberti greeted, not missing a beat. "It's eight o'clock."

"Too early for when not on deployment."

"Fine," he admitted.

"Hey Sarge," Camilla started. "Who do you think would win in a fight, th-"

"I don't care, please. Just wait for me to leave this place."

I would've made a joke about how they always seemed to be arguing with each other and added an implication that they were secretly in love with one another, but there was absolutely nothing cute or romantic when these two argued. If they started going at it, then you'd better run for cover towards the nearest exit. Or bunker. Don't get me wrong, it wasn't like they _hated_ each other, they just seemed to dislike each other as much as everyone else was starting to dislike Agnarsson.

I grabbed a tray and placed a dish and a bowl on top of it while both my squadmates glared at each other and followed my example. The buffet wasn't looking as tasty as anything that Pavel had ordered for me back in that restaurant, but it sure looked succulent when you compared it to the cheap-but-nutritious food that they gave us on board UNSC ships. Sometimes I think that I ate better in the battlefield, raiding abandoned pantries than on the _Inconvenience._

"Bacon?" one of the serving people asked.

"Yes please, and a lot of it," I replied with a smile.

The serving girl smiled back at me and clumsily put ten pieces of juicy bacon on my plate. You heard that right, _ten_ pieces of bacon. Ten. In case you're not really getting it that's a helluva lot of bacon.

My smile turned into a grin as I tasted the bacon with my eyes. I was probably dumbfounded for a few seconds, because next thing I know Grass is calling my name. And not in a good way, if you know what I mean.

"Sorry, what?" I asked the serving girl. Unsurprisingly, she should've been in posters for clothing brands instead of serving food in a cheap hotel.

"Beans?"

"Sure."

I got a nice pile of beans over my scrambled eggs. I was surprised to see that they looked much like the beans that I ate back in my childhood. I hadn't had those since before I joined the corps. The UNSC seemed to have taken a liking for those sweet beans that had the color and consistency of a nice pile of shit. Don't ask me how I know the consistency of shit.

"Thanks," I told the girl as I turned around and looked for a table.

It wasn't particularly hard since there was nobody else in the buffet room other than us three. I grabbed a nice booth since I liked the cushioned seat and called dibs on a seat on the edge.

"Hey Sarge," Lamberti called out as he sat down. "How come that girl smiled at you and not me when she gave you all that bacon?"

"Ru men ahll dis bahcon?" I asked through the said food item in particular.

"Yes, I mean all that bacon."

"Hmm," I swallowed. "I don't know. Don't dwell on it too much."

"Sure, but I mean, it's not that she smiled at you, it's that she didn't smile at me."

"Hard to figure why…" Camilla muttered while shoving Lamberti out of the way and into the corner of the booth seat.

"No, I mean, she didn't smile at you either, isn't she like supposed to smile to all the costumers?"

"Listen Angel," I said. "I'm hot. Deal with it."

He chuckled and swallowed a big piece of a waffle.

"Hey Frank," Camilla said. "Why are you so weird?"

"Excuse me?" I asked, obviously not amused.

"I mean, you're a staff sergeant, you're supposed to be all serious and tough and like a rock and all that."

"You were a lonely kid, weren't you?" Lamberti asked.

"What the hell does that have to do with anything?" she snapped.

"You obviously watched to many war films as a kid."

I laughed loudly, being careful not to choke on my food. I swallowed and laughed some more even though it wasn't that funny. Once I was able to calm myself down a little I put my palm up and offered it to Lamberti, who gave me a high-five. Camilla seemed to glare at me, her eyes asking me why the hell I had decided to side with the man that she regarded as nothing more than a moron with good aim.

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry," I apologized. "It's just that I've never met any sergeants that are like that."

"Yeah, yeah. You don't have to be an ass about it," she mumbled while putting waffles in her mouth. Her so very sexy and beautiful mouth.

"Hey Sarge!"

"George!" Lamberti greeted. "Come join us!"

Sutton went through the buffet line in a few quick seconds since he was still the only other person awake. He thanked the cute serving girl and sat down with us, pushing Grass and Lamberti further down the booth while leaving the other side free for me. I smiled at the sight of the two smaller ODSTs squished against one another while the larger man looked as comfortable as I felt, his elbows propped outwards.

He held that pose for a second before laughing out loud. "I'm kidding," he said. Sutton shuffled out of the booth and dragged a chair from a neighboring table and pushed it to the head of the table.

"Very funny George," Grass said as she pushed herself to a more comfortable position.

"Say, Sutton," Lamberti called out. "How did it go with that girl yesterday? Did you seal the deal?"

"Seal the deal, who says that?" Camilla asked in annoyance.

"I do, obviously."

"Well Arcangelo, I am not one to kiss and tell, or in this case I won't engage in coitus and tell, so no details for you."

"You dog," Lamberti said, playfully punching him in the elbow.

"Hey!" Camilla complained as he put his arm in front of her. "Watch it!"

"How about you Sarge? That one looked like one for the books," Lamberti asked, ignoring Camilla.

I said nothing, but my expression betrayed my satisfaction with myself. And with her. Booyah!

"Nice!" Lamberti complimented as he offered me his outstretched palm.

I high-fived him and Sutton in quick succession, after which I placed my palm in front of Camilla. I wasn't very surprised when she glared at me and I put down my hand.

"What about you Camilla?" Lamberti teased.

Sutton and me leaned forward, trying to listen in to the conversation. We did this because it was an interesting topic for us as men and because this was Grass we were talking about. It wasn't that we were jealous, we just wanted to know what her private life was like. Same thing I would ask any other male friend. Sure, if she did tell us who she had slept with and I ever saw him again I'd be hard-pressed to resist the urge to kick his face in. Well, maybe we were a little bit jealous, but just a little bit.

"What?" she asked, blushing.

"Did you, engage in coitus?" Lamberti asked, imitating Sutton's phrase.

"That's none of your business."

"So you didn't?" he pressed.

Sutton and me were edging closer towards the conversation as Lamberti kept asking questions. This was shaping up to be one of the most interesting conversations that I had witnessed in the last few years. Seriously, how often do you get to know something about the sex life of the sexiest women you have ever met? Ok, I am a very sick person, but do not dare judge me. You're probably all the same.

"C'mon, tell us," Lamberti pressured Camilla.

"Fine, I didn't take anyone home."

I actually allowed myself to breathe a little easier. Sure, I wasn't about to take a pass at Camilla, but that didn't mean that I didn't have some sort of fantasy that she didn't have sex with anyone else. Again, don't judge me.

"You mean you didn't allow anyone to take you home with him," Lamberti corrected.

"That is seriously the most chauvinistic thing that I have ever heard, what's wrong with a girl taking home a guy?"

"Sounds weird," Sutton said. "Relax, I'm kidding, I'm kidding," he said quickly before Camilla snapped his neck.

"You're being a little aggressive right now Grass," Lamberti noticed. "How long has it been since you… well… got some?"

"Hey! I get laid on a regular basis!"

"Nice of you to broadcast it," I said, pointing to the serving girl, who was giggling to herself and abruptly stopped and turned around when she noticed that we were all looking at her. "Relax," I told her. "We don't care." That was a lie. "We're just men being men with… you. That came out wrong, I mean, you're part of the team, so that means that you get the same treatment as the rest of us."

"Nice save," Schitzo called out from another table. He had a napkin up his collar and a piece of cutlery in each hand, much like a cartoon would've. Schitzo raised his milk glass at me and I was forced to look back to Camilla lest I look like I had ADHD.

"Fine," she acknowledged grumpily.

I smiled to myself and finished my last two pieces of bacon faster than I would've liked. "I'm gonna go check on Pavel," I informed them.

"Don't worry Sarge," Sutton said, "we're all about done."

"Sure, don't wait on me," Agnarsson said, emerging from the elevator. "It's not like I like eating with company."

"I'm gonna go check on Pavel," I repeated. "You can ask Camilla, Lamberti, or Sutton to have breakfast with you. Good morning."

Agnarsson probably mumbled something that could've been considered insubordinate but I was already outside the hotel by the time he was done. I looked to the side and spotted my car easily. It was the only warthog in the parking lot, the other guys had gotten more conventional rentals for the duration of their leave. I checked my pocket for my keys and sighed with relief when I felt them through the fabric. I pulled them out and clicked the lock of the civilian hog off. I hopped, literally hopped, in the vehicle and pulled out of the parking lot with three reckless moves that had no place outside a battlefield.

The drive to the hospital was a short one, partially because I was doing over a hundred and I was only stopped once. The cop happened to be a man, so my natural charm hadn't been enough to get me out of the situation. My dogtags marking me as a Helljumper almost made the man shit his own pants though, I sometimes think that our infamy is our greatest gift. Of course if our propaganda somehow managed to reach Covenant space and actually affect the aliens somehow it would be a lot better.

The hospital that Pavel was staying in was a beautiful building, it looked to be made almost entirely out of glass. There wasn't only one building. Instead the hospital complex consisted of three different buildings, none of them went any higher than fifty floors. The outside of the buildings consisted of a huge parking lot of several levels and the rest was green gardens with lovely shrubs cut in several impressive shapes. There were also a few beds of flowers, but if I described those in detail it might seem a little bit weird.

I placed my car in the parking lot and as soon as I hopped off, the platform immediately descended taking the hog to the basement. The sheer complexity of the automatic parking system was just too much for me to understand completely, so I'll simply tell you that it was going to park itself next to another car.

I walked the last few meters to the building that Pavel was interned in. This building in particular was the one where patients with physical injuries recovered and did their rehab. It had several other wards and wings that had different purposes, but I didn't really care about those. This was said to be one of the finest rehab facilities in the whole planet, and by extension, UEG space as well.

"Good morning, how may I help you?" a pretty receptionist asked me.

"Hey, I'm here to see Pavel." I said. "Mr. Klaus, Pavel Klaus. Sergeant."

"Of course, if you'll wait for just a moment," she said with a perfect smile that had probably taken her a lot of time to perfect.

"Umm, he is during his physical right now," she informed me. "That's ove-"

"Thanks, I know the way… Amber," I thanked her after reading her nametag. For some reason they seemed to love it when I addressed them by name.

The room where people did their physical rehabilitation looked awfully close to a gym, in fact, there were several machines in there that regular gyms also had. There were also rails all over the place, so that people with leg injuries could prop themselves up. In addition to the rails I could see the three-step stairs that were there to teach people bound to wheelchairs to climb up and down stairs. Well sure, they were also there for people with mechanical prosthetics, but there weren't many of those around. Almost all of the prosthetics that could be produced were being used on veterans. Good PR never hurts.

"Pavel!" I called out as I spotted my friend from across the room. "How are you?"

"How the hell does it look like I'm doing?" he snapped back.

"Not good," I noted as I reached for a wheelchair and sat in it. "You look like you have polio."

"What the hell is polio?" Pavel asked as he elbowed a nurse that was trying to help him "Gerofme!"

"Leave him be," I told the poor guy. "He'll call for you when he realizes he can't do it by himself." The nurse nodded at me. "Polio used to be a disease, extinct now, that caused your muscles to cramp and stuff. I'm not really sure, I was only half-listening to Camilla when she talked about it."

"Man, does she ramble," Pavel muttered as he grabbed on to a rail with both his hands and pulled himself up. "Did you hear?"

"About Cole?" I asked.

"Yup."

"Yes I heard."

"What do you think?"

"I don't know what to think, except that the public statement seemed poorly-worded and rushed."

"Frank, sometimes I think that your uncle wanted you to be some sort of warrior-scholar."

I shrugged. "Still, three hundred, isn't that stretching it too much?"

"Yeah, but who would be stupid enough to fake those numbers?" he asked.

"That's exactly what I thought."

Pavel had positioned himself between two rails while I propped my wheelchair up a ramp that led to the three-step stairs. He tried taking two steps but immediately used his arms to hold himself up as he finished his second step. He cursed and tried walking once more, this time placing less weight on his legs and using his upper-body strength to save himself some pain. He still winced all the way through.

"You're getting better," I complimented.

"I got shot in the stomach," he exclaimed. "Why the hell can't I walk?"

"Your spine Pavel, the doctors told you that, remember?"

"It was a rhetorical question, you idiot."

_No shit._

I propped my borrowed wheelchair backwards into a wheelie and held on to the wheels. I balanced myself on the edge of the first step and hopped down. I could've done a better landing, but I managed to maintain my balance by repositioning my body and the position of the wheels. I smile to myself as I hopped down the next step. This time I landed better. The last step went just as well as the second and I was able to let my body slump forward and the front wheels of the wheelchair fall to the floor.

"Hey," I told the nurse. "Don't most people have automatic wheelchairs? What's the point of these?"

"It's part of a process," he explained. "Besides, it's always good to know how to get around in one of these, you never know when a battery will break down."

"Sounds reasonable enough."

Pavel grunted as he collapsed to the floor once again. This time the nurse made no move to help him up.

"Come on man," I complained. "When will you be able to walk? I learned to go downstairs in a wheelchair and you still can't walk with crutches."

"Shut up, you don't know how this feels," he snapped.

"I know it hurts," I pointed out, standing up from the wheelchair. "How about you hurry it up?" I asked him. "How about he hurries it up?" I asked the nurse.

"We're letting him go as fast as it is safe for him to go."

I grumbled.

"Deal with it," Pavel said as he struggled to pull himself up again.

"Not like I have much of a choice. Chingada."

"Watch your potty mouth," he said.

I didn't say anything for a while as I watched him try to walk across the rails without using his hands for support. He didn't manage to accomplish his goal. He didn't look like he made any progress either. I knew this was a slow process, but it was starting to get frustrating.

"We might be deploying sometime soon," I said finally.

"I know."

"You won't be there."

"I know."

"Shit man."

"I know."

"Ok, now that's getting annoying."

"I kn-"

"Pavel, I will hit a cripple."

"Fine, fine. Crutches please."

The nurse handed Pavel two crutches and my friend moved slowly towards one of the exercising machines. He tossed his crutched on the floor and let himself fall on the seat. It was a cable weights machine. He set it to the maximum weight and started lifting the weights with almost no effort. His arms had always been pretty bulky, but now they looked even bigger than before.

I found a set of barbells and laid down backwards on a bench. I put a more than enough weight to exert some pressure onto my arms and chest and started pumping away as Pavel did the same thing. It became some sort of a contest to see who would last longer. Eventually Pavel was forced to stop because his stomach started hurting. He rubbed at his still-healing scar and reached for his crutches.

"I win," I said.

"Yeah right, that one doesn't count."

"It counted when my back was slashed."

"Douche."

"I believe the proper term is touché," I corrected.

"Ass."

Pavel rubbed his scar some more and started heading towards the walking rails once again. He tried several times while we conversed about Cole's death and everything that it implicated. I practiced some more tricks with my borrowed wheelchair. Pavel fell some more times and cursed some more but never seemed to give up. I started doing crunches and pull-ups before I got bored.

"It's good to see you bro," I said.

"Whoa, your Mexican accent really came out on that one."

"I was thinking," I admitted.

"In Spanish?"

"Yeah, it'll probably sound weird, but I usually think in English."

"Go figure."

"Anyways, goodbye."

"Bye," he muttered as he stood up and tried again once more.

"I'll come to see you in a couple of days," I said as I left. "Today's Saturday, how does Tuesday sound?"

"Sounds just fine Frank."

"Au revoir. That was French."

"I know Frank."

* * *

><p>On Monday my team was back on the <em>Inconvenience <em>and headed off to fight the Covenant once again.

* * *

><p><em>Guys will be guys. And girls will usually be uncomfortable when talking about sex in front of guys. Hey, at least that's my experience. I once had tons of fun trying to get a friend-who-is-a-girl of mine to say the word "penis". Trust me, holding back so much laughter made it worth it in the end when she said it and then blushed redder than a tomato.<em>

_But enough with personal anecdotes that you probably find neither interesting nor funny. What do you think about Reaper Squad being deployed without Pavel to help. Surely, no good can come of that. Or can it? This is the part where I should cut off and say: "Find out that and more in the next chapter of _TheLife_"._

_But I won't._

_As always, thanks to Sniper Fodder for proof-reading this chapter. Also as always, I hope that you enjoyed reading chapter 90 of this fan fiction. Today is Monday. Have a nice week you people._

_-casquis_


	91. My Desk is Missing a Lamp

Chapter XCI: My Desk is Missing a Lamp

**June 26, 2543 (UNSC Calendar)/one month later**

**Constanta, Ninive, Zeta Argenteus System**

* * *

><p>"<em>Lots of guys got cut off from the rest of the UNSC forces. Mostly elite units, those are the ones that they send in first." –anonymous UNSC serviceman.<em>

* * *

><p>"I swear to God Sarge, if we have to have one more meal that consists entirely of these shitty bars, I will shoot myself in the foot and get medevaced," Grass complained while munching on an energy bar. She didn't seem to be enjoying it and I didn't blame her for it. They had about as much appeal as dirt.<p>

"We've been expecting evac for three days now," Scarecrow pointed out. "If you shoot yourself in the foot they won't hurry it up."

"And there you go folks, that's Captain Obvious for you!" Snark called out from the next room.

"I will step on you," Scarecrow said through chuckles. "Wouldn't be that hard really, seeing how small you are."

"I'm as tall as Grass!" he complained.

"Yeah, but she's a girl," Angel chimed in.

"What the hell is that supposed to mean?" Grass asked angrily.

"Ok, ok. Ok!" I shouted. "Stop, relax, and keep guard. You all heard the last broadcast, we are probably surrounded with only a few other friendly units, all right? Stay calm."

"Yes, Sarge," they replied. They sounded awfully close to little kids that had just been scolded for doing something wrong. If I mentally reduced their ages and gave them armor with oversized helmets it made for a pretty funny mental image. Think about it. "Snark, stay on the rooftop, Bumblebee, go with him."

"How come you never stand watch?" he asked me.

"Because I'm the sergeant, and I can do whatever I want."

"But you have the only other ranged weapon here," Bumblebee complained.

"Here," I tossed him my rifle. "I don't want a scratch on it, I've had it since boot camp."

"Fine," Bumblebee grunted as he tossed me his own rifle in return. He seemed to have forsaken his M6J carbine for a more conventional MA5B rifle. I checked the ammunition counter. I had sixty rounds before I had to get my weapon back. Sounded like at least six kills.

"Everyone else, try and get some sleep."

The building we were in had been a small business, of what, I cannot say. It had been so badly burnt that the walls, floor, and ceiling were scorched black. There were some carbonized pieces of metal laying here and there in addition to a crumbling counter, but any traces of merchandise had long since been looted or disappeared. Unlike most stores, its street-facing wall didn't consist of tampered glass, instead it was built of solid polycrete all the way up to stomach level. I had chosen this place to bunker down because of the walls and because two cars had crashed right in front of the storefront, next to the door. They made any access from the left impossible. The store also had a small second floor that had probably been a small office or something, but the fire had burned everything in there too. From the second story you could reach the roof, but the weather wasn't the best at the moment and Snark would've been pissed if I had sent him up there.

The small store also had a back exit that led to a narrow alley that in turn led to a street. Or you could take another alley and another and another. Constanta was a city designed for urban combat. Had this been a videogame it would've been a beautiful level, challenging, tri-dimensional combat, narrow alleys that allowed for close-quarters battle and multi-storied buildings that allowed for height advantage. Right now it was living hell because of precisely those reasons.

"Sarge, cover me, will ya?" Angel asked.

"Sure," I shrugged, not even bothering to ask what he wanted to do. I had sixty rounds in the MA5B plus three spare magazines for my BR55 and two for my pistol, so I wouldn't really bother with shooting at anything unless he found himself in some real trouble.

I watched as the Italian helljumper opened what was left of the door and then moved in a low crouch towards one of the cars that had crashed into the wall next to the door. He slowly opened the door while I scanned the area for hostiles. Angel drew his combat knife and started cutting up something in the pilot's seat. After a couple of seconds he tossed me something.

"Catch," he whispered, even though there was no need. No one could've heard him over the rain.

I caught the bottom part of a car seat with one hand and struggled not to drop it, eventually pinning it against the wall with my leg. "Good idea," I admitted.

Angel climbed further inside the car and started doing the same thing to the copilot's seat. He tossed me the cushion as well and then pulled out both the headrests. He tossed one of them to me and prepared to do the same thing with the other one.

A beam rifle burned through the car's passenger window and out through the other door.

"Shit," Angel cursed as he scrambled to get out of the car, his cumbersome LMG getting in his way. Another bright purple round blew out the windshield and melted one of the metal frames that held the room in place. "Merda, merda, merda, merda." Angel finally made his way out of the car and threw his machine gun at me over the wall. I caught it and he slid home just as another beam rifle round singed the back of his helmet.

Next thing I heard was the familiar snap noise that Snark's EMR made when it fired. There was only one shot, so I assumed that he got his kill. He usually did.

"Got him," Snark confirmed. "Jackal, didn't see anyone else. Probably a loner."

"Thanks kid," Angel told Snark.

"Ok, listen, I am twenty-four years old, you're twenty-nine. You're not in a position to call me kid," Snark snapped.

"Whoa, relax man."

"Shut up."

I frowned a little bit at that. Snark might've had some assholeish tendencies, but he didn't often snap at people like that, maybe he was just tired of the situation. Well, all of us were. The sniper hadn't really had any changes in behavior since he broke his collarbone, having stayed his same snarky self. Angel had been depressed for a few days, but after a while he had gone back to normal. I don't know if Scarecrow talked to him or something, but I am sure that Marina never did. Regardless of what happened, I was glad that he was better, we were already one man down.

"You ok?" I asked Angel.

"Yeah, last shot grazed my helmet."

"Hey, maybe it cleaned off a little bit of all that soot," Bumblebee said.

I laughed at it, his armor was still covered with ashes and soot, no matter how often he scrubbed it or washed it, trying his hardest to get rid of it, it was always there. I am not entirely sure how though, since he hadn't been near many explosions since I recruited him. The way my luck usually works, that was probably bound to change sooner rather than later.

I grabbed the headrest that Angel had tossed me and took a couple of quick steps towards the remains of the store's counter. I took off my helmet and placed my head on the relatively soft cushion. The headrest was actually the exact width for my head, providing for a very comfortable pillow. That, coupled with the exhaustion from the last couple of days and the sheer amount of sleepiness that I felt had me asleep in less than two minutes.

* * *

><p>Yeah, you guessed it, explosions.<p>

"How long did I…?" I mumbled.

"An hour, now get up Sarge," Grass said, pulling me by the arm.

"Oi, Sarge!" Bumblebee called out from the second story.

I looked up at him just in time to catch my rifle. I grabbed his and tossed it in return. As soon as he caught it he disappeared from the stairs and climbed back up to get his rocket launcher. Scarecrow joined the sniper and Agnarsson on the second floor while Grass, Caboose, Angel, and I remained downstairs. Caboose actually pulled out his shotgun from his back and propped it against the wall next to him.

"What are we facing?" I asked.

"Don't know," Angel replied. "A helluva lot of infantry and a revenant."

"Heavy infantry?"

"So far? No."

I shrugged as I moved towards the front walls. The windows had long since ceased to exist and the polycrete managed to hold out against any and all attacks from plasma-based small arms. It provided a decent cover and a nice position for firing upon the enemies. The enemies in question consisted of a medium-sized infantry column that had been patrolling this area and had somehow spotted us. There were only about thirty of them, but with our ammunition reserves, we wouldn't be able to kill them as easily as we usually would have.

A purple flash blinded me briefly as the revenant's mortar detonated some meters in front of me. I covered my eyes and realized that I hadn't put on my helmet. I stumbled towards it as I ordered Bumblebee to take down the small tank as quickly as possible. I put on my helmet and blinked a couple of times. The neural implants communicated with the helmet so that its visor shifted to accommodate my stunned eyes. Technology is fucking awesome.

"On it," Bumblebee growled.

I went back to the window and fired three shots at a grunt, I killed the unlucky alien, but didn't have enough time to shoot the other one as it jumped out of my line of sight and behind a car. I shifted my aim and hit a jackal that had miscalculated the angle of his shield just a little. My shot hit it in the ribs and forced it to fall down. The alien struggled to get up and collapsed once more, blood pouring from the hole in its torso. I was deciding whether I should finish it off or use my ammunition on more worthy targets.

Bumblebee finally got a bead on the revenant and fired his second-to-last remaining rocket at the vehicle. The HEAT rocket made contact with the revenant head-on. The detonation killed both the pilot and the passenger and damaged the vehicle enough to destroy its controls and its anti-gravity thrusters.

"Shit," Caboose said. "It's still in working order."

I looked back to the revenant and saw that it was true. One elite was moving towards the damaged tank. He reached the pilot's seat and pulled out his butchered comrade without a second thought. Just as it was about to hop in a round pinged off its head, draining its shields and forcing it to stumble sideways. The next headshot perforated his armor, skin, skull, brains, skull, skin, and armor back again. The elite's brains splattered over the pilot's seat and the huge alien collapsed to the ground while his left arm twitched repeatedly.

"Snark, don't let anyone get nearby. Scarecrow, how many grenades you got?"

"Ummm, three," he replied.

"Don't use them on the revenant unless I tell you to. How far away is the revenant from here?"

"One hundred and nine meters," Snark said, obviously using his rangefinder to give me the most annoyingly correct answer that he possibly could.

_Too far for hand grenade range…_

"I can throw that far," Caboose suggested.

"Yes, but you need a wind up and you wouldn't have any accuracy," Angel informed him. The man certainly knew his explosives.

"That," I agreed. "Keep shooting."

The ten jackals in the enemy group had overlapped their shields on top of one another, forming an almost impenetrable wall. Grunts were using the shields as cover to get inside a building across the street. The building they were getting into was half-collapsed, but it was still the one in the best conditions on that side of the block. The five remaining elites fired their plasma rifles and repeaters at our building, covering it with plasma and forcing us to keep our heads down. I was unable to fire accurately until Grass tossed a grenade at the wall of jackals, killing two and forcing the rest to retreat. By the time that I could leave cover the rest of the covvies had taken cover inside the half-wrecked building.

The place that they had decided to use for cover was a two-story building much like ours, only that one of the front corners was collapsed and along with it over half of the front walls. The rubble piled up on its side had blocked the stairs to the second floor but also formed a ramp to that same place. If anyone tried climbing that ramp they would get a bullet in the back of the head, so we had the advantage of higher ground. We were probably twenty meters or so apart, extremely close range and within easy reach of grenades.

"Keep your guns trained on them!" I ordered. "Don't let any alien so much as take a peek."

The first grunt that decided to do just that received about sixteen bullets to the head. Everyone groaned in annoyance at the waste of ammunition. I told Grass, Caboose, and Bumblebee to fire at any grunt or jackal that they saw, the rest of us would shoot at any cocky elite. As soon as we had organized ourselves and decided on our fields of fire the covvie platoon started firing everything that they had at us.

"Shoot," Grass cursed as she dove for cover.

"Shoot?" I asked, raising an eyebrow behind my polarized visor. "How… quaint."

"Oh, shut up."

I popped up from behind the wall and fired three bursts at an elite. The rounds bounced of its shields as it took three steps backwards as if to absorb the blow. The third round of the third burst managed to completely strip the alien of its shields and Snark finished it off with a headshot. The heavy round also succeeded in piercing the elite's head entirely and painted the wall behind it with alien blood. If there was a true art, it was that.

The killing aliens part, I mean, not the blood splattered on the wall. That would just be weird.

"Fuck," Snark cursed from the second floor.

"What's wrong?" I asked.

"Fucking grunt grazed me!" he yelled angrily.

I looked back down just in time to see a grunt with a plasma pistol jump back behind a wall. I took careful aim and switched back to single-fire. I fired a single round at the place where I guessed the grunt would be behind the wall and watched the bullet hit the polycrete. The armor piercing round was strong enough to punch through the wall completely, but not strong enough to deliver a killing blow. The bullet got lodged in the grunt's armor and the alien tumbled backwards ever so slightly. There it was caught in between Scarecrow and Grass's fields of fire.

After I helped kill that grunt I was forced to keep my head down for a long while. An elite with a plasma repeater decided to get wise and start spraying plasma all over the place as soon as anyone of us showed a part of our armor. That went on for about five minutes before Caboose started getting irritated and tossed a flashbang over his shoulders. He threw from a sitting position, backwards, over a wall, through the street, and into the building. The throw itself was majestic, but I couldn't help but give him a pissed off expression because he hadn't done the same thing with a regular grenade.

I didn't have time to admonish him for that, though, because he stood up and emptied the remainder of his cartridge into the stunned elite. The alien's shields and armor held against the lead until the very last round. Said round hit the elite in the edge of the neck. The elite collapsed and threw a hand to its neck, trying to stop the bleeding. I'm not really an alien physiologist, but I can tell that they have vital veins in their neck, same as us. Two grunts grabbed the elite from the armpits and dragged it behind the wall. I succeeded in killing one of them while the other put its leader to safety.

"Shoot the medic," Angel laughed. "Still, I'm surprised the little ones risked their lives."

"Yeah, they'll probably get a promotion," Bumblebee said, only being half-sarcastic.

"A posthumous one," Caboose added with a shrug.

I turned to look at him and nodded in approval at his humor. I would've high fived him but another sudden outburst of plasma fire flew through the glassless windows and hit the wall behind us.

"Great, now you pissed 'em off!" Bumblebee complained.

No one even bothered answering the complaint. I focused on killing everything that showed itself same as the rest of the squad. For some instants no one fired, but the covvies started going at it again and we started exchanging sporadic shots with one another. From that point on the battle degenerated into what I could only call trench warfare with walls. They fired a couple of shots every once in a while and we occasionally returned with a few of our own. This manner of combat went on for a few hours. In that time we only succeeded in killing two jackals.

Yup, we weren't doing a particularly good job at it.

"Shit, we're starting to run out of ammunition," Snark said.

"I know…" I agreed while I thought of something. "Ok, how about Grass and me take one floor each for an hour and the rest of you take a rest. See how I didn't put you on watch?"

"Ha-ha," Bumblebee deadpanned.

"Top or bottom?" I asked Grass.

"Top," she replied. "I like being on top." There was a definite naughtiness in her tone, I don't know how else to describe it.

"My kind of woman," I replied in the same tone, shutting her up and reminding her that I was better than her at that kind of thing.

"Couldn't you let her have the moment?" Schitzo asked. "Geez, what an asshole."

_I don't know whether to be offended or mock you because you're calling yourself an asshole. The problem is that if I mock you I'd be mocking myself._

"Ah, so we have met an impasse."

_I think I like the word paradox better. _

"Have it your way," Schitzo shrugged me off.

I waited for Grass to climb to the second story and ordered Snark to stay up there in case we needed him to snipe someone. The rest of the team huddled together behind the counter and tried to catch some quick power naps while we kept watch and discouraged the covvied from doing anything that was dangerous. All the while I tried to come up with some sort of strategy that would allow us to wipe out the covvies. With the state of communications and utter chaos that this battle was I doubted that they had the means to radio for reinforcements. We could try, but we would get laughed at in the face just for asking. Even if we were Helljumpers.

_That stupid Falcon just had to go and get itself shot down before taking out the SAMs. _

"Sarge," Grass said. "A few of the grunts are trying to climb to the second floor."

"I know," I replied. I could see them just as well as she could.

"Should I shoot them?" she asked.

"What do you think?"

Grass wondered for a moment what she should do and a moment later I heard two bursts of gunfire. They both hit the grunts in the back. One grunt was instantly killed but another one struggled to move away from Grass's line of fire. The small alien motioned for his friends to help it with weak hand signals. As soon as one grunt jumped out in aid of its friend I got it with a shot in one ear and outside the other. No other aliens made a move to help their fallen comrade or even attempt some sort of rescue. When it became clear that they wouldn't be rescuing the grunt Grass ended its suffering with a single well-placed round.

"What is that?" I asked suddenly.

"What is what?" Grass asked me.

"That noise, sounds like… scraping."

"I don't hear anything. Just the rain."

The storm had only gotten worse.

"Listen," I insisted. "And be ready."

My words had risen the rest of the squad, all of them were cocking their weapons and getting ready if we had to repel an attack. Bumblebee slowly climbed up the stairs, trying hard not to make noise despite his huge frame. The rest of them made their way towards the window. Caboose tossed me a small wire with a camera and a screen. I twisted the wire so that it looked out the window much like a periscope would've worked on a submarine. The screen took a moment to adapt to the lighting but eventually gave me a crystal clear image of the surroundings. The rain made it impossible for the camera to see more than a few meters out. I tapped the screen and the camera switched to thermal mode.

"What is…?" I wondered as I peered into the screen. The figures were distorted by the amount of rain between the camera and themselves, but I could make out that they were elites based on size alone. "What are they doing?" I asked myself, worried.

_Scraping, two elites forsaking all security… wrecked revenant._

"Shit."

Before I could even warn my friends what was happening a round from the revenant plasma mortar landed on the roof of our building. The unstable plasma ate through the roof and scorched a little bit of the top of the second floor, but it wasn't enough to harm any of us. The second shot was slightly off and hit the roof as well. The entire building shook and a small part of it collapsed right on top of us. By the time we were recovered from the shock the remaining Covenant soldiers were charging at us full strength.

"Shit," Snark echoed.

We opened fire as soon as we realized what was happening, but by the time we did that they were ten meters away from us. Our initial barrage stopped at least five of them in their tracks. By stopped them in their tracks I mean killed them. Three grunts and two jackals slumped to the floor as the rest charged on. One burst through the door before Angel caved its face in with a kick.

"Shotgun!" I yelled.

To his credit, Caboose didn't even ask what I meant, he simply kept on firing one handed with his carbine and tossed me his M90. I racked the shotgun with one hand and fired at a downwards angle over the wall. The weapon boomed loudly and I knew that I got someone judging by the noise that the pellets made when they impacted soft flesh instead of hard rock. Someone tried pulling the shotgun from my grasp over the wall and I yanked it back before I lost it. We had managed to avoid any aliens other than the grunt getting inside, but the rest of them were less than a foot away from us, protected by a solid wall. A grenade was out of the question since the explosion would bring down the walls and probably collapse the entire building.

"Angel, mine the alley all the way to the first turn to the left," I ordered. "Everyone else, we hold the line."

They all nodded in unison and trained their guns on the door and windows. I heard Snark's rifle crack twice before a barrage of plasma fire forced him to retreat.

"Second floor is no-go," he announced.

I shrugged and turned my head back towards the door. I did so just at the right moment. One of the two elites was charging through the door with one plasma rifle on each hand. It wrecked the damaged door with its shoulder and stepped over the dead grunt. The dead grunt was our savior because the unstable ground made the elite lose its footing for just a moment. The small window gave me enough time to lunge towards the elite and tackle it. My weight and momentum were enough to slam the elite against a wall. Soon after I tackled the split-chin Caboose followed my example and did the same thing. Our combined strength was enough to bring it down. Once there I started pummeling the surprised elite as hard as I could. The alien backhanded Caboose and then pushed him of its chest. I used that time to draw my knife from behind my back. I took two quick stabs at the elite but its shield held. My third attempt managed to drive the laser-cut blade through the weakened shield and into its collarbone. The elite snarled and pushed me off its chest with one powerful shove.

Scarecrow reacted the fastest. He jumped on top of the elite and bashed its head with his boot, stunning the elite and further draining its shields. He did the same thing again and once that they were drained completely stomped on my knife, driving it deeper into the elite's shoulder. As soon as the elite howled Scarecrow jumped and brought both his feet on the elite's face, crushing its helmet and the front part of its face. I don't know if he killed the elite, but he sure as hell took it out of commission.

I jumped towards the elite and grabbed my knife. I yanked it and then cut the alien's throat just for good measure. I felt a measure of relief as the purple blood started flowing from its throat in copious amounts.

"Sarge, I'm done!" Angel said.

"That was quick," Bumblebee noted.

"Ok, everyone fall back, I'll stay here and cover you."

"Sarge…" Caboose started.

"I'm not planning on dying today," I said. "Go."

My team left through the back door behind Angel. I turned back to the front door and slid my knife in its sheath in the small of my back. I raised my rifle and backed away slowly. The first alien to come through was a grunt that got its face destroyed for its eagerness. The second one was the remaining elite. I switched to full auto and managed to force it to leave the room once again. I heard the sound of an energy blade opening and that's when I decided to turn around and leave.

The elite jumped inside in a diagonal, but I was already turning towards the door. The large alien lunged at me with a horizontal sword slash. I saw the move coming and I ducked. The blade passed right above my head and continued to the other side. The loss of balance forced me to fall forward. If I allowed myself to fall on my hands I would have two even holes in my back before long, so instead I used my legs to propel myself into a combat roll. I heard the elite growl in anger as its follow-up attack missed.

I finished my roll and slammed into a half-closed door. I wasn't able to stop myself until I hit a wall. I was outside the burned store and in the alley behind it. I started running away towards the rest of my squad, but the rain made it hard for my boots to get any traction and the elite was right behind it.

"Blow it up," I yelled as I saw one of Angel's charges. "Blow it all up. Now!"

Angel didn't even complain. I heard the detonation of the first of the rigged charges a few meters behind me. Neither the elite nor I were harmed by the detonation. The second explosion actually propelled small rocks at my back and helmet a second later and forced the elite to stumble. The third one must've drained its shields and slowed it down even further. I prepared myself for a sharp turn when a large arm extended from the corner and grabbed me.

I felt myself swung around in a circle as Scarecrow dragged me around the corner. As soon as I made contact with the wall I heard another explosion. Scarecrow looked around the corner. "It's dead," he decided.

"How dead?" Bumblebee asked.

"It's upper half is missing."

"Dead enough for me," Angel said.

"Let's go," I ordered in between breaths.

"Wait," Angel pleaded. He peeked around the corner and when he decided that there were enough grunts and jackals swarming towards us he pressed another detonator in his hand. The entire place shook as one of the buildings collapsed on top of the bloodthirsty aliens, stopping them from chasing us.

"You are a sick man," Snark said.

"Hey, it got the job done," Angel replied.

"Let's move," I repeated. "Find someplace safe."

"Aye, aye, Sarge," they said.

_Aye, aye is for the Navy. Why the hell do you reply like that all the time?_ I asked myself.

We left the alley and started moving through the narrow backstreets. Most of these backstreets were just alleys and the biggest one of them would've had trouble allowing a warthog to pass through. The buildings started getting as tall as ten stories, giving me a feeling of claustrophobia and making me more nervous. We weren't heading in any particular direction, just towards the place where we had heard that a sizeable friendly force was in.

"No one there anymore," Grass informed me after I sent her and Snark to scout the area. "Two dozen bodies, but the rest of them fled the area."

"So, where to?" Bumblebee asked.

"Hold on." I opened the list in my helmet that had all the different channels and contacted Nezarian. "Yevgeny."

"Frank, how curious, I was just about to contact you. Faith is a strange mistress indeed."

"Why are you talking like that?"

"Sorry, have been reading some fantasy novels lately. Gets into my head."

"Whatever," I interrupted. "Where are you? Do you have access to evac?"

"We're pretty much in the same situation that everyone is. My team, what's left of it, is currently holding the last two floors of the spire."

"You're shitting me," I said.

"Unfortunately no," he replied. "It's not so bad though, as soon as have a nice distraction we'll jetpack out of here. As a matter of fact, we have a few spare jetpacks. Might help your team."

"No, I think I'll just wait for you to land. Where exactly do you want to land?"

"Wide building, about thirty meters high, probably a hundred meters away from us."

"Hmm," I hummed as I checked the city map in my visor. "Ok, we'll head to your landing area and hold the fort for you guys. From there we can work our way back to our line."

"Sounds good to me," Yevgeny admitted. "I'll contact you before we jump."

"We'll provide the distraction, I assume?"

"Correct."

"Roger, Reaper out." I turned towards my team. "Well, you heard the conversation, no need to explain the plan to you. Let's get moving."

* * *

><p><em>Got nothing interesting to say. Hope you enjoyed it and thanks to Sniper Fodder for proof-reading this chapter.<em>

_I am never drinking again._

_-casquis_


	92. Spire

Chapter XCII: Spire

**June 26, 2543 (UNSC Calendar)/**

**Constante, Ninive, Zeta Argenteus System**

* * *

><p>"<em>He got the worst possible outcome. In this sort of situation, that is bad. Very bad." –PFC George Manuel Sutton<em>

* * *

><p>"Right," Grass insisted.<p>

"No, left," Angel snapped at her.

"How about you both shut the fuck up?" Bumblebee asked.

For once, I agreed with him.

"We go straight ahead, only take a detour once we find enemy forces," I said, pulling rank.

"Fine," they all replied.

The alleys were like a labyrinth. Even if we had a state of the art map showing us where we were located and the various ways out, there were simply too many choices, all of them were confusing and I felt like a little kid trying to solve a puzzle on the back of a cereal box. But, you know, with aliens and death if I didn't solve it within the recommended time.

"Ok, we turn right and we're out," I said. "Ahead of us is a park and then a couple of blocks to our destination. Anyone got silencers?"

"I got one," Snark raised his hand.

"Same here," Bumblebee said.

"Anyone else?"

"Me," Grass told me while pulling out a silencer from one of her pouches.

"Ok, so that makes four of us with silenced weapons, if we-"

"The term is suppressed," Grass interrupted.

"Ok, so that makes four of us with silenced weapons," I repeated, "if we meet up any hostiles let us take them out. We want to draw the least possible amount of attention."

"Roger."

"Bumblebee, how many rockets you got?"

"Just the one," he replied.

I nodded absent-mindedly. We required a certain amount of stealth for this type of operation, but we also needed some serious firepower in case things went wrong. We were almost out of ammunition and our only heavy weapon would barely be enough to stop even one hunter. If a large enemy group found us we would be forced to turn around and leave or pick up alien weaponry. Both options left a bad taste in my mouth.

"Let's move," I ordered.

The squad turned the corner and walked the last alleyway in a tight single-file formation. I was at the front and the rest of the line consisted of one ODST with an unsilenced weapon and one with a silenced one and so forth. I'm not entirely sure what the tactical advantage of that actually was, but if you don't give it too much thought it sounds like a good idea and people might think you're a real strategist. Yeah, apparently I need some attention.

The alley ended in a narrow two-way street. I looked both sides before crossing, not that I was worried about being run over, but I sure as hell didn't want to get shot. There were several parked cars on the edges of the street, some of them looked brand new, some looked like they were a few years old, and others looked like a they had been through a battle. The last group had actually been through a battle. Literally. You know, cause we were fighting a battle, and the cars were there.

It made for a gloomy atmosphere, and the rain just added to it. So far, the downpour had worked in our favor, hiding us from the prying eyes of snipers and other Covenant infantry. It also muted any noise that we made. If the rain stopped we would have a tough job getting to the warehouse where the rangers wanted to land. If it stopped after they jumped it would probably make our life even harder since we would be on the run from several angry aliens with nothing to hide with.

The park could've been described like a forest. There were trees all around and several large boulders. There was a small trail that lead across the park, but we were cutting through the treed area. I could see bodies, civilians, soldiers, and covvies alike, littered all over the place. The overwhelming majority were human bodies. I tried ignoring the dead women and children as we sneaked in between the trees, but their presence was just too much and I always ended up looking at the small bodies of the innocent victims.

Eventually we emerged into an open area. It was about two hundred meters long, give or take a few. There were some bodies in there as well, but absolutely nothing to use as cover.

"Phantom," Snark whispered.

"Hide!" I urged the team.

We all took several steps back from the treeline and hid below the trees. I heard the sound of a phantom and looked up to see it fly just above the treetops. I cursed inwardly when the dropship stopped and hovered about fifty meters into the treeless field. Two elites were dropped through the gravity lift and the phantom left just as quickly as it arrived.

"Snark, what do you see?" I asked. The sniper was in a better position than me to check the elites out and I didn't want to expose myself.

"They don't know we're here. Two minors."

I sighed with a little bit of relief and peeked at the aliens. One of them moved towards a corpse. I held my breath as the elite tried picking up the dead child. Bumblebee raised his rifle next to me, but I lowered it with my hand. "Wait," I told him. He was obviously not too happy about that order, and neither was I.

The elite's shields made it hard for him to grab the kid's neck, and twice the little body slid out of its grasp. Eventually the elite decided that its shield was the cause of the trouble and deactivated them. Seriously, who the hell deactivates their only tactical advantage in a battlefield? For reals.

The elite grabbed the tiny body and lifted it up so that it could see it eye to eye. It tilted its head sideways in a curious gesture and then gently placed the body back on the ground. It turned and said something to its companion in its tongue. The other elite turned and worted something unintelligible. The first alien gestured at the body of the kid and replied. They had a short conversation that ended when Snark took out their shields and I put a round through their heads.

"Snark, fire in evens, I fire in odds."

"Roger," the marksman replied, raising his weapon and taking aim at the closest elite. "Ready when you are, Sarge."

"Fire," I whispered. Snark shot a silenced round. The bullet made contact with the elite's chest, disabling its shields and knocking it backwards a couple of feet. It was the one that hadn't decided to take off its shield. The little yellow lines of lightning flickered as his shield failed. "Fire," I said again, this time firing my BR55. The silencer muffled the gunshot considerably. _Loud, too loud._ The 9.5mm round flew straight to the elite's head. It wasn't a regular KURZ round, instead it was a hollow-point round. The bullet penetrated the armor with no trouble and started blossoming as soon as it went through the elite's skull. It went from a diameter of 9.5mm to one of roughly 20mm before bouncing off the back of the elite's skull.

"Fire," I said for a third time.

The other elite barely had time to react, bringing it gun to bear on the wrong direction as Snark shot it right through the eyes. His bullets were the regular kind, armor-piercing anti-personnel that his rifle used. The result of his gunshot was the same as mine, albeit slightly more spectacular. The round went completely through the elite's head, dragging a trail of blood behind it as it left its skull. The alien seemed confused for a second, its jaws were wide open in a gesture that I could only interpret as surprise. It promptly joined its dead friend on the floor.

"I hate it when they call these things silencers," Snark cursed.

"That was way too much noise," Scarecrow agreed. "Sarge?"

"Let's get moving."

We sprinted through the field with little to no regard for our safety. I purposely lagged a little bit behind and made a point to look around in case I spotted anything hostile. I hopped over one of the elites and kept on running, my rifle half raised. I turned to look to my left for some reason. Call it whatever you want, but if I was religious I would say that it was a miracle.

I dropped to the floor just in time for a needle round to fly right where my head had been. I rolled sideways on the floor as three rounds landed on the ground. They exploded, sending microscopic shards of the pink crystal inside my body. I brought my rifle to bear and spotted a jackal. It hid behind a window on the edge of the park before I could fire once. I cursed at it and started running back to the treeline as fast as I could, augmentations and all.

"Jackal sharp, fifth floor, third window from the right," I said as soon as I had a nice thick tree trunk in between the alien and me.

"Sarge?" Snark questioned.

"Feel free," I invited him.

Snark turned towards Scarecrow and slung his rifle over his back. The large man sighed and nodded as he placed his back to one of the tallest trees in the area. Snark sprinted towards Scarecrow and planted one foot in the big man's entwined hands. Scarecrow used his legs and hands to throw Snark into the air. The difference in size and weight allowed Scarecrow to propel the little sniper at least ten feet in the air. Snark grabbed onto a thick branch just as the force of Scarecrow's throw stopped. As soon as he had a firm grip he pushed himself up and started climbing higher.

"Ready," he said a few seconds later. "I see the window, no movement though."

I sighed. "Volunteers?"

No one moved. I thought about choosing someone before deciding against it.

"Didn't think so."

I started sprinting back towards the treeless stretch. Waiting for that fatal moment when a needle round pierced my neck. I kept on running, not as fast as I could've, but that was the point, I was trying to draw out the jackal. Eventually, after I had gone halfway through the field and not a single shot had been fired I stopped completely. I turned to face the building and saw that the jackal wasn't trying to shoot me.

"Damn," I sighed as I raised my rifle. I aimed at the window and fired three shots at the surrounding area. Once again, I felt like they were way too loud even though they were supposedly silenced.

The three shots pushed the jackal into action. It popped from cover, no doubt expecting to effectuate a quick counter-attack while I was still out in the open. It took aim at me even as I opened my arms in an inviting gesture. Only one shot rang out. The jackal's head blew up in a manner similar to the elite's and it slumped forwards. The top half of its body was left hanging of the edge of the window for a few seconds before gravity did the rest and pulled down the body to the ground. I couldn't hear the noise it made when it hit the ground.

"Nice shot," I complimented Snark, not because it had been a superb shot, but because it had saved my life.

"I aim to please," Snark replied.

I trotted back to the trees and my team. I arrived just in time to see Snark jump down from the tree he had climbed. The man nodded at me even as I ordered my team to keep on moving. This time we formed a line with about ten meters distance between every one of us. It made it more likely that one of us would encounter somebody but it also made it more likely the rest of us would make it out unscathed if we did. The rest of the trip through the forest was mostly uneventful. Grass encountered a pair of grunts and quickly dispatched them both with her machete.

"Shit," she cursed.

"What, you ok?" Angel asked, worried.

I actually stopped and looked sideways at Angel. "Don't make it so obvious bro."

"Fuck you," he replied. "Staff Sergeant."

"Oh really?" I dared him.

"No, sorry," he apologized quickly.

"Well, I don't forgive you. Next time we need a decoy you're gonna be it. And take point."

Angel sighed. "Yessir."

"And Grass, what happened?" I asked.

"My machete broke."

"What?"

"My machete broke."

"Well, where did you buy it?"

"A military surplus store."

"Wow," Bumblebee said. "Even I know how stupid that is."

"What? Why?"

"Just, if you want a nice blade don't get it in military surplus stores. Either you make it or you ask a friend in ONI to get you one."

"Fine, why?"

"Because knives are designed to be used against humans, not aliens."

"That doesn't make sense," she complained. "Flesh is flesh."

"And yet your machete is broken."

"Fine, fine." Grass tossed her twisted machete to the side. "And thanks for asking Angel. I'm just fine."

The team laughed a little before we reached the edge of the park. From this point I could see the spire. It was just that, a spire. What was different about this spire was that it was actually a natural feature of the planet. Don't ask me how this happened, I'm not good with geology by any means, but the stone monolith reached about two thousand feet in height. It was roughly cylindrical in shape, perhaps about two hundred feet in diameter. As soon as it was discovered some trillionaire had decided to turn it into a tourist and a building attraction. The Colonial Administration had used it as a postcard to invite colonists. I had to admit though, the spire made for a pretty imposing sight, it almost looked like something that was dragged straight out of a fantasy novel.

"Whoa," Caboose mentioned.

"Indeed," Bumblebee agreed.

"Take a picture boys," I said. "The warehouse is that way."

We took a left and started going back inside the streets. If the buildings had been packed closer I would've made my team run over the roofs instead of on the ground. It was perhaps a measure that you'd call practical yet awesome. You had higher ground and also looked like a badass while doing some parkour/free-running crazy shit at the same time.

Since the buildings were of uneven heights and too tall we had to move at a quick pace through the street. This was the downtown area of Constante. Most of the civilians had been at work when the Covenant attacked. The extraordinary high amount of bodies strewn all over the place were testament to the unpreparedness and lack of alarm that Ninive had experienced when they were first attacked. What pissed me off was the lack of alien bodies. I couldn't see a single alien body from where I was standing. It made me feel like we were being massacred (which we were) and had no chance to fight back.

Well, to be fair, unless we found a way to kill the entire Covenant in our own genocide soon we were only delaying the inevitable.

"Patrol," Angel whispered.

Reaper Squad stopped and took cover behind cars or columns in the buildings. I heard the humming of an anti-grav engine and cursed as I saw a wraith hover through an intersection. Behind the wraith walking were an elite minor and ten grunts in two lines of five. The absence of jackals would've allowed us to take them all out in a matter of seconds, but one rocket was hardly enough to take on a wraith.

"Let them pass," I ordered.

The tension was high as can be while the enemy patrol walked less than twenty meters away from us. The grunts barely bothered to raise their heads, let alone look to the sides. Some of the little aliens had the equivalent of bandages on their arms and legs. One of them even had blue blood leaking from the right side of its face. Instead of feeling sorry for them I felt a little bit of excitement at seeing them suffering just as much as we did. On the ground, they were our equals, no matter our physical disadvantages when compared to elites, brutes, and hunters. In a good old fashioned battle, we could stand our own.

One of the grunts stopped for a little bit and sniffed the air. I raised my rifle and aimed at it as it took in the scents of the area. It sniffed the air another couple of times before deciding that it was nothing. The patrol kept on walking until they disappeared from sight. I sighed with relief. Less aliens to worry about. At least for now.

We arrived to the warehouse with no inconvenience. The large building was completely devoid of Covenant soldiers and that allowed us to take nice positions. The warehouse was located in a spot where no other buildings were in between the spire and it. Yevgeny had said that the building was a hundred meters away from the warehouse, but the distance was more like two hundred. Still, it was a relatively short distance if they were going to use jetpacks.

I climbed all the way to the roof of the warehouse and took in the spire. It looked to be mostly undamaged save for a few scorch marks marking its surface. The carved windows were all missing glass and the a few of the top floors were on fire. The top two were the only one that still had light on. I didn't really blame Nezarian for doing that even though it broadcast their location to anyone that bothered looking up. The rangers were virtually immune to air strikes while they did face danger from an attack from the bottom floors.

"Nezarian," I said, communicating with him. "We're here."

"Roger that, we're good to go, we'll probably take the jump in a few minutes," he replied after a couple of seconds. "Any idea where we should go after this?" he asked me.

"Probably barrel straight towards our line. It's about one kilometer away in a straight line, isn't it?"

"Last I heard," Yevgeny acknowledged.

"We'll be waiting."

"Fine, try not to-"

"What?"

"Zhang, Palomer, check that out. Frank, we might be running into some-"

I heard an explosion through the radio and then Yevgeny cursed. He yelled at his men to hold the doors and I managed to make out the noise of plasma rifles impacting different surfaces.

"Hold the doors!" Yevgeny ordered. "Shit, shit. Right, right. Two on the right."

Nezarian and his rangers returned fire, the snaps that their rifles made sounded weak in comparison to the characteristic noise that the plasma weapons made.

I looked up at the spire and aimed at the top floors with my scope. I could see yellow flashes from ballistic weapons and the bright blue ones that plasma rifles made. There was a disproportionate amount of blue flashes compared to yellow one.

"Shit," Nezarian repeated. "We're not gonna be able to jump Frank."

"How many?"

"Too many, we're not gonna make it," he told me.

"Shit," I said, echoing the lieutenant.

I looked at my squad, all of whom were with me on the roof except for Caboose, who was guarding the stairs to the roof. I quickly considered all possible outcomes and decided that it was my time to be a big damn hero.

"Everyone, stay here and hold the fort. Caboose, you come with me."

"Sarge, are you really thinking about-" Grass started.

"I am, deal with it."

I ran outside of the warehouse with Caboose right behind me. We were actually running in the middle of the street for a while before we were forced to take cover behind an overturned car as two ghosts flew by. We let them pass and resumed our way. The spire was two hundred meters away in a straight line, but we had to move through different streets and took a few detours to avoid Covenant patrols. Just as we were about to arrive at the spire Caboose grabbed my arm.

"Sarge."

"What?"

He pointed at a warthog. The vehicle in question was as destroyed as can be without being a pile of molten steel. The turret on the back was completely wrecked and in no conditions to be of any use. There were two corpses in the front and another one a few feet from the back. The warthog had probably been hit by a wraith or revenant mortar judging by the look of it.

Caboose covered my ass while I moved towards the destroyed hog. I pulled down the driver's corpse and not so gently placed him on the ground. He was a regular marine. His rifle was in the holster to the right of the driver's seat. It was an MA5 series rifle. I grabbed it and ejected the magazine. I also grabbed a few of the spare magazines that he had in his pockets. I tossed the small boxes to Caboose and searched the passenger. I turned around the car and pulled him down as well. He had been carrying a shotgun in addition to his MA5 rifle, so I grabbed a belt full of shells and threw it to Caboose as well.

The task was taking an awfully long amount of time and I was painfully aware of the firefight on top of the spire. I moved towards the last marine and turned her around. She was horribly disfigured from the heat of the plasma mortar, with her skin having melted off and parts of her skull were visible through her face. I ignored the grisly sight and searched her pockets. I almost hollered in victory when I was able to salvage a grenade and two magazines that of 9.5mm ammunition for my rifle. I smiled to myself and reached into the dead marine's collar to get her dogtags. I grabbed them and placed them in the pouch in my left thigh. I then ran and did the same things with the other two marines before we started back to the spire.

"We'd better hurry up Sarge," Caboose urged. "Doesn't sound too good."

It didn't. I could hear the screams all the way down here.

"Agreed."

I entered the lobby of the spire with Caboose right behind me. The attacking covvies had left a grunt for a guard and Caboose was the one who took it out. Let me describe to you how he did it, it is quite amusing really. Simple, yet amusing.

Caboose drew his knife and tapped the grunt on the shoulder. The little alien squealed and turned in fright. Just as it did so Caboose stabbed it through the hand and dug his knife into a wooden table, pinning the grunt there. The same movement also dislocated the alien's shoulder and made it cry out in pain. Then he bashed the grunts head against the table, denting it considerably and stunning the grunt. After that Caboose grabbed the methane gas-mask and pulled it free of the little alien. We waited a few moments for the grunt to be unable to breathe and actually stayed there to watch the first instants of its death by suffocation.

Caboose pulled his knife from the table and kicked the dying grunt once more before tossing the gas mask on top of an unreachable piece of furniture.

"You're a psycopath," I said, letting him know what I thought of him.

"I am not, ONI had me checked," he shrugged, cleaning his knife and pressing the button on the elevator.

"The fact that they actually tested you for it speaks volumes."

"They check everyone Sarge, don't think that I get special treatment."

The elevator doors opened to reveal a bloody elevator with a ranger's corpse. The wounds on the man were obviously made with an energy sword, his left arm was detached from the shoulder and the walls were quite literally covered in his blood. In his other hand there was an assault rifle. There were a few drops of purple elite blood.

"Good for him," Caboose said, noticing what I was looking at.

"Not really," I replied while grabbing his dogtags. I tossed the body out of the elevator unceremoniously and then threw the severed arm after it. The doors closed right after that.

Unsurprisingly, the elevator worked and had a boring muzak arrangement playing. It was probably because of the emergency generators that all elevators are supposed to have, but it is especially jarring that half the city was in the dark and without power.

"So, why did ONI send your psychopathic ass to spy on me?"

"Guess," Caboose replied while checking his rifle.

"Hmmm, hard to pin one reason."

"And I'm not here to spy on you."

"Lies."

"Fine, I'm not here _only_ to spy on you."

"That I believe. You may be a spook, but you still pull some weigh in the battlefield."

"Aww, thanks Sarge."

The rest of the elevator ride was, of course, quiet and awkward. By the time we were about to reach the top of the stone monolith we could hear gunfire through the elevator walls. I quickly clicked the button of the closest floor and the elevator stopped. We exited into an undamaged hallway with flickering lights. I looked around for the stairs until I found the marked door. I motioned for Caboose to follow me as I kicked open the door.

The fact that I kicked it open instead of simply pushing it open saved my life.

The door banged against an alien. An elite. The force of my kick threw it forward over the rail that guarded the stairs. The alien managed to hold on and keep its feet on the ground briefly before I saw what was happening and delivered a second kick at its pelvis. The second kick pushed the elite over the edge and it fell for about thirty meters before it finally collided with another rail. And another, and another, and another until it finally stopped as it fell on some stairs.

"And I'm supposed to be the psychopath," Caboose mused.

"Shut up."

We sprinted up the stairs, we started finding Covenant bodies about three floors from the penultimate floor. On the next floor we saw the second ranger body, an energy sword had decapitated this one, the head was nowhere to be seen. As we kept climbing the stairs we saw just what sort of battle the rangers had fought. A quick and desperate one that they could not win.

I finally kicked open the last door and fired into an elite's back. Caboose joined me and shot at one of the turning aliens. We killed both elites within a few seconds. that allowed their mates to turn and take aim at us. I had foreseen that and already had my salvaged grenade in one hand. I tossed it right in between the four aliens.

Even though they had us in their crosshairs they were simply stunned by what had just happened. One of them prepared to kick the grenade back but it detonated an instant before he could do that. That alien was instantly killed as his body all but disintegrated and the other three had their shields drained, after which they were quickly dispatched with accurate bursts to the head. Caboose put an extra round in one elite that seemed to be struggling to get back up and we moved towards the landing pad on the roof of the building.

All the rangers in this room were dead, I could still hear gunfire, so I assumed that Nezarian and a few of the most skilled of his men were still holding out against the elites. As I jumped over one of the aliens I noticed that all of them had full-face helmets. The kind that special operations elites wore. I cursed as I started moving even faster. It wasn't hard to find my way, I just had to follow the trail of blood. Literally.

When I finally emerged onto the wide open landing pad. I saw three elites and five Rangers engaged in a firefight. I took aim at one and brought it down with Caboose's help. One of the other elites tossed a grenade at the rangers. Only three of them were able to jump out in time, the other too disappeared in the blue flash of heat. Of the two remaining elites one took aim towards us and pinned us behind a corner. I couldn't afford to fire blindly unless I wanted to hit my own allies.

"Shit," I cursed.

"I'll cover you," Caboose said. "Jump out and I'll help."

I nodded at him and for the second time in the day left my cover as bait. The elite shifted its aim to hit me, but Caboose made good on his promise and pummeled the alien with assault rifle fire, disrupting its aim and saving my life. I turned and fired the rest of my magazine at the elite, hitting it in the shoulders and chest bringing it down to the floor where Caboose finished it off.

I looked at Nezarian and saw that he was about to be impaled with an energy sword. I took a quick decision and sprinted at the elite. I barely managed to see Nezarian fire a few rounds from his pistol. Another ranger somehow managed to get its arm sliced off and suddenly my hands were wrapped around the elite's waist in a tackle. I miscalculated.

I miscalculated horribly.

It wasn't long before I realized that I wasn't going to hit the floor of the helipad. It would take longer for me to hit the floor. A lot longer.

I was falling over the edge of the spire.

* * *

><p><em>Sorry, it took me a little bit longer than I would've liked to update, but I was doing a two-week laptop-less stint. I got out early thanks to some incredibly awesome persuasion skills and my ability to pull off puppy eyes. <em>

_Now that I am done making excuses I can do the usual boring thing that I do. Hope you enjoyed, blah, blah, blah. Something about my experiences while writing this chapter. More blahs. Thanks to Sniper Fodder for proof-reading this chapter. Blah, blah, blah. I love you guys. Blah._

_casquis_


	93. Spire II

Chapter XCIII: Spire II

**June 26, 2543 (UNSC Calendar)/**

**Constante, Ninive, Zeta Argenteus System**

**Lieutenant Yevgeny Nezarian**

"Sounds good to me," I told Frank. "I'll contact you before we jump."

"We'll provide the distraction, I assume?"

"Correct."

"Roger, Reaper out."

I cut the channel and turned to face my platoon. It was five men short, all of them had been killed in the past few days as a direct result of this battle. The rest of them were holding up pretty well, but you never know when one can decide that he or she has been through too much and eat a bullet. Of the surviving members only one person was injured. I am ashamed to say that that person was me.

I don't know if it had been bad luck on my side or good luck on the jackal's side, but the carbine round had grazed my arm. It wasn't a particularly bad wound, but it stung like hell and annoyed me every time I moved my arm in certain directions. The anti-radiation medicaments that I had taken also made me feel queasy. Leave it to the Covenant to invent a weapon that fires radioactive ammunition, costing us even more money that would be better spent elsewhere.

"Valeri, how are we on ammunition and supplies?" I asked my second-in command. I used the universally understood English instead of the Russian that I usually used with my best friend. Despite being an inconvenience of sorts for me it made it seem that I cared whether my men understood me or not.

"We're probably at fifty percent on both," the sergent replied. "But if we're jumping that shouldn't be much of a worry, should it?"

I smiled at my friend. "It always pays off to be cautious, doesn't it? I believe it was you who once told me that."

"Somehow it never stuck," Valeri muttered, obviously not amused at having had his own words used against him. "I can come up with at least ten different examples of you failing to be cautious in the last three days."

"Please, go ahead."

"Well, maybe not ten," he admitted.

"Worry not, we'll be out of this goddamned tower and towards safety and hot showers in some twenty minutes."

"I hope so, lieutenant, I hope so."

It always annoyed me when Valeri called me that. I was his friend, he could've called me anything and I wouldn't have minded, but the man insisted on following protocol when we were deployed or in front of other members of the platoon. It annoyed me further that he only seemed to follow that particular piece of protocol when addressing me. You can pick your friends, but you can't go around fixing every little thing that you don't like in them.

I sat down on one of the couches. The top floor restaurant had been a five star place for the rich and famous just a few weeks ago, now it was simply a room full of soldiers and overturned tables. Half the alcohol was still here, I had allowed my men to pick whichever bottles they wanted to, but I had made it extremely clear that anyone who had so much as a sip of alcohol would be harshly punished. I myself had picked the oldest bottle of scotch that I could find. The oldest reserves tend to be more expensive, and in turn, better tasting. Perhaps I could ask Castillo over for a drink to celebrate leaving this place alive.

Perhaps I could ask over his new female subordinate instead…

"Don't wonder off lieutenant, we might face trouble any moment now," Valeri warned.

I sighed, I knew that the man was right. I don't consider myself a pessimist, but enough time fighting a war will turn any person from a wide-eyed idealist into the worst of cynics. Even Castillo, who was cheery and jolly most of the time was an incredibly cynical person. Sure, he tried to hide it and denied it vehemently when I suggested the possibility, but I knew the truth and I think that deep down so did he.

_Talk about not taking the mask off._

I stood up from the couch that I had just sat down in. It was one of the only intact pieces of furniture that had been placed in the restaurant's bar section. It was insanely comfortable by any standards and it pained my ass to stand up from it.

My rangers weren't doing anything productive. The few that I had sent to stand guard were doing their job, but the rest of them were either playing cards or trying to catch a quick nap. I don't blame them, but we were in a combat zone, they didn't have the luxury to play backjack.

"All right, listen up!" I yelled in my usual serious business tone. The manner of my voice gathered everyone's attention and elicited a few groans of complaint. You'd think that I would normally speak like that, but I constantly reminded myself to go back to my command voice when talking to my men in combat situations. "Reaper Squad, who some of you are familiar with," I started. I name dropped Frank's squad to gather the men's attention. The Helljumpers were all but legends in the _Inconvenience_, and they were similarly famous for their exploits in certain circles in the UNSCDF.

"…will soon be joining us. Rather we'll be joining them. There is a large building with a wide roof, a warehouse by the looks of it a hundred or so meters away from our position."

I didn't know the exact position, my rangefinder had been damaged and the support drones had been shot down so I had been forced to judge the distance by eyesight. The rain hadn't really helped.

"Castillo and Reaper will be taking over the warehouse and we'll be doing a short jump to their direction. From there we'll head back towards our line."

The men all nodded and stood up even before I issued any orders.

"I want all of you to get your jetpacks and triple check them. The same goes for anything that goes strapped to your bodies. As soon as we get word from Reaper we jump en masse. The quicker we get of this wretched rock, the better. Understood?"

I would've liked a more uniform reply, but every man and woman acknowledged my orders with different words. Call me eccentric, but I am the kind of officer that wants all of his subordinates to reply unanimously and with the same phrase.

"Valeri, send a couple of men three floors down and tell them to establish strongpoints in case we get attacked. Volunteer someone to go to the lobby and close and booby-trap the doors if you will, but tell him to make it obvious to UNSC forces. We wouldn't want friendly fire would we?"

"Hell no," my XO replied. "Not since Dawson's." He shuddered before giving me an almost-mocking salute and departing to fulfill my orders. I tapped a ranger on the shoulder, one of the newer replacements and ordered him to follow me to the rooftop.

It was still pouring once we left, only it wasn't pouring as much as it had been before. From the landing pad on top of the spire we could see for miles uninterrupted. What we saw wasn't a pretty sight. Half the city was on fire and the other half had been bombed to oblivion. The worst part was that you didn't have to look very hard to spot the bluish and purple lights of Covenant vehicles. We were effectively surrounded, same as several other human units in the area.

"There, that's the place," I told the young ranger.

"I see it el-tee. Looks more like a hundred and fifty meters to me," he mentioned.

"Maybe you're right," I shrugged. "But it's close enough to us that it doesn't matter."

"If you say so," he replied.

"What do you suggest we do after we land?"

"I'm no tactical genius, but wouldn't we have a higher chance of success if we completely disregarded the Helljumpers and used the last of our jetpack fuel to hop back to the line?"

I shook my head. "Even if leaving Reaper behind was an option we wouldn't be able to do it. Twenty odd bright orange flashes in the night sky are gonna gather a lot of attention, we're gonna have a lot of covvies on our tail."

"Makes sense," the ranger muttered to himself. "In that case I say we better sprint as fast as we can."

"My thoughts exactly," I smiled. "Now let's get away from this ghastly rain."

"Sir."

Back in the restaurant the rangers were putting aside their jetpacks in easy-to-reach places and gathering up all of their ammunition. They were putting back on their ballistic armor and strapping grenades to their webbing. One by one they started looking more intimidating, just like a UNSC Army Ranger should look. I grabbed my rifle. It was yet another MA37, not as fancy as the new MA5s, but it was just as reliable and looked a whole lot better. Still, I would've changed it for one of those fancy sixty-magazine assault rifles in a heartbeat. I honestly don't know how they crammed that many rounds into the magazine, but it paid off to have double the usual amount of ammunition on one magazine. At least that's what Sutton had told me.

I quickly checked my weapon for any foreign objects in its chamber and pulled back the slide repeatedly to get rid of anything that might've gotten stuck in there. As soon as that was done I made sure to slap the magazine back in and make sure that a round was chambered and the safety was off. I slung my rifle over my lower back, allowing me to have some space to put on my jetpack in a hurry if I needed to. I reached for my helmet and put it on. I immediately took it off as my scar started itching. I scratched furiously at my cheek to get rid of the itch and eventually succeeded.

It would take waterboarding to wring it out of me, but I was terribly ashamed of the scar, not of the reason that I got it, an energy sword scar is as heroic as anything, but instead I was ashamed of how it looked. Call me vain if you want to, but everyone wants to look good, everyone wants to be that handsome man, and now I was that one guy with an ugly scar turning his face into something different. Sure, the fairer sex still liked me well enough, but I couldn't help feeling that it was because of what they thought I was and not because of what I was.

I used to be able to meet a girl and get her to jump in bed with me in less than five hours. Now I barely had to do any talking other than tell a slightly exaggerated story of how I got that ugly mark on my face before they started giving me bedroom eyes.

Look at me, I am actually complaining about getting laid easier than before because of a relatively small scar. Frank would beat the living shit out of me if he found out.

"Lieutenant."

I turned around. Valeri was standing in front of me.

"Yes?" I asked almost irritably. I didn't like it when someone interrupted my train of thought.

"We've got one man going to the lobby and the rest of us are setting emplacements on the stairs."

"Good, why don't you grab a couple of men and build a barricade that aims directly at the elevator."

"Sir."

I suddenly realized that I was fortifying this place further even though we were already preparing to leave. Why I had decided to do that, I don't know, but years of fighting in the war had given me a supernatural sixth sense. They had honed my instincts, if you will. If my sixth sense was urging me to do this for some reason then we were-

"Nezarian," I heard in my earpiece, it was Frank. "We're here."

"Roger that," I replied, "we're good to go, we'll probably take the jump in a few minutes," I added. "Any idea where we should go after this?"

"Probably barrel straight towards our line. It's about one kilometer away in a straight line, isn't it?"

"Last I heard," I admitted uncomfortably..

"We'll be waiting."

"Fine, try not to-" I stopped mid-sentence when I heard a noise. It was a common noise, the noise that someone made when they bumped into furniture. The kind of noise that had no place in a platoon of well-trained rangers in a supposedly cleared building.

"What?" Frank asked, obviously worried.

"Zhang, Palomer, check that out," I ordered the two nearest rangers. "Frank, we might be running into some-"

I was forced to stop mid-sentence once more as I heard a burst of gunfire coming from the elevator. According to the display on top of the doors the elevator was on the lobby, but gunfire is loud, and it would easily carry over through the elevator shaft. The man that Valeri had sent to the lobby was good as dead. Judging from the lack of explosion, he hadn't managed to place the explosive on the doors.

"дерьмо," I cursed. "Stairwell teams, what's your status?"

"Nothing here so far, sir," one corporal replied. His voice was calm, but it was weakly disguised, I could practically smell the man's fear over the radio. No doubt he could smell my own fear as well.

"Be ready," I warned. "Valeri, keep that gun trained on the door, nothing passes from that elevator. Zhang, Palomer, go downstairs and help out the other teams. Nothing gets through. Understood?"

"Yessir," they saluted.

That left four of us in the restaurant.

"Contact, contact!" I heard through my radio. "Open fire!"

Before the sentence was finished I heard bursts of plasma and gunfire echoing through the walls. The enclosed space allowed noise to travel well, even if it was through closed doors.

"Too many of them!" the voice in the radio said. "Toss a grenade and fall back to the second position!"

"Hold the doors!" I ordered. Two elites materialized out of nowhere and sprayed my position with plasma fire, forcing me to duck. "Shit, shit. Right, right. Two on the right."

There were now several soldiers yelling incoherently into the platoon's channel, but I tried focusing on the first voice as much as I could. My helmet couldn't isolate one signal, so I was forced to listen intently as I aimed at the door that led to the emergency stairs.

"Shit," I said again. "We're not gonna be able to jump Frank."

"How many?" he asked me.

"Too many, we're not gonna make it." The sounds from the stairs weren't a good sign.

"Grenade out!" I heard through the radio.

There was a detonation.

"Behind the pillar! They are carrying swords, I repeat swords, MacMillan's down, MacMillan's down!"

The gunfire intensified briefly as the rangers down below struggled to push back the attacking aliens.

"Eat this motherfucker!"

After that I was unable to find the voice through the cacophony of screaming. Perhaps my concentration broke and I lost track of the ranger, but I knew better than that.

_As far as it goes for last words, those are good, honest ones._

"Stair teams, give me a sitrep," I ordered. "Enemy numbers?"

"Too damn many," someone replied. "There are elites all over the place, can't miss 'em, but it's just too many of them!"

"Hold out against them and fall back slowly, we'll jump anyways."

"Yessir. We'll hold."

I nodded at the man, even though he couldn't see me. Immediately after that I heard a burst of gunfire behind me. I turned just in time to see Valeri's machine gun team gun down two elites that had decided to take the elevator. The two aliens managed a step or two outside the elevator before their shields succumbed to the sustained gunfire. A second later they both met their end as FMJ rounds went through their bodies with little to no effort. Before the elevator doors closed again I was able to see blood splatter on the walls. Red blood splatter.

"Fuck!" I cursed. "Stairs?"

"Falling back slowly," a different voice replied. "There's no end to them!"

"Feel free to fall back faster!" I ordered. I didn't want any more of my men dying on me.

"Yes, Lieutenant."

The gunfire started getting even louder as my rangers started going up the stairs and retreating. Zheng was the first to come through. He was bleeding from a wound that his helmet covered and looked paler than a ghost. He looked at me with a haunted look before doing his best to regain his composure. I asked him if he was fine, after which he nodded and managed to pull off a decent attempt at looking healthy.

"Grab as many jetpacks as you can and take them to the roof," I ordered. "If worse comes to worse we can jump and put on our jetpacks as we fall."

"Ok," Zheng replied. He slung his jetpack over his shoulders and grabbed two more. Those he took out to the landing pad. Another couple of soldiers emerged from the stairs, both were bleeding heavily and looked to be wounded. Whoever was leading the defense down there had had the decency and smarts to send the wounded up first.

"Jetpacks, roof, now."

They nodded and did the exact same thing that Zheng had done.

"Valeri,"I called out. "Aim at the stairs, I don't think they would be stupid enough to try the elevator again."

"You never know with these guys," he replied. He was correct to some degree, but he still complied with my order.

Another ranger stumbled out of the door, prompting me to lunge forward to catch her before she met the floor face-first. My efforts were in vain, because as soon as I turned her around I could see that she was dead. Plasma shot to the chest had burned through her armor, her clothes, her skin, and her ribcage. There was still some steam leaving her body, it made for a grisly sight, especially when her face was undamaged. She had been beautiful, and now she was dead.

I didn't even treat her body with respect, instead tossing it out of the way so that the rest of my still-living rangers could retreat without impediment. Soon after I had defiled her body five men burst through the doors, they were scared and most of them were wounded. They nodded at me before taking defensive positions behind me. Two more men came through the stairs, dragging behind a ranger with his belly slashed open and his intestines hanging out. The worst part is that he was still alive, crying in pain at the horrible injury.

One of the uninjured rangers kicked closed the door. He shook his head at me, letting me know that they were the last survivors. "We did the best we could lieutenant," he told me sadly. "We did our best."

"You did well," I said as a grabbed the biggest piece of furniture that I could find and pushed it in front of the door. I heard an elite banging at the other side and emptied half my magazine into the door. The rounds easily penetrated the overturned sofa and the thin door, hitting the elite and forcing it to cease its attack.

I withdrew a couple of steps before firing another burst through the door for good measure. Over half my platoon was either dead or dying and the rest of us didn't have good odds on making it out. If we tried jumping we would be shot out of the sky. We had to buy enough time for at least some of us to make it out alive.

Just as I was about to give the order they broke through. Not one or two, but a dozen elites came crashing into the room, firing indiscriminately at anything and everything in front of them. A couple of my soldiers were hit, but the rest had enough presence of mind to duck behind cover and return fire blindly. The elites barely seemed fazed by the bullets pinging off their shields. Sure, a few of them fell to the floor, but the rest just kept on coming.

"Shoot the ones in the front," Valeri ordered loudly. "Stop the advance!"

How someone could think about stopping an advance that was at most a few yards from our own positions. Even if we managed to stop their advance the bodies would fall on top of us and we would still be uncomfortably close to the ones behind. Not to mention the lack of full magazines in our rifles.

In one word, we were fucked.

I raised my rifle again and emptied the magazine in an elite's chest. The shields held. I jumped backwards as an energy sword cleaved my barricade in two. I was already reloading by the time Valeri emptied his own weapon in the elite, depleting its shields and allowing me enough time to finish it off with a burst to the neck and face. From my new, exposed position, I managed to force a pair of elites to drop to the floor for cover and spare one of my soldiers from a horrible death.

Then he got shot in the neck. The plasma burned through his skin like paper and destroyed everything in between his throat and his spine. Death was instantaneous even if it wasn't pretty, he wouldn't have felt anything other than the realization that he had just died. Before his body hit the ground the elite that had shot him was hit from multiple directions. Its energy shields flickered and died from the combination of sustained gunfire and then three different bursts from three different weapons hit the alien in the chest.

That death wouldn't have been instantaneous, the elite would survive for a few seconds, perhaps even a full minute, while its organs slowly stopped functioning. He would be in intense pain for most of the ordeal. It would be a messy death, just like the one that he had caused, but it would be long and painful. The knowledge did not give me any comfort. My man was dead, there was nothing that I could do to change that.

"Fuck!" someone cried as he was hit.

"Flashbang out!"

_What?_

My instinct was just fast enough. I made out the shape of the flying cylinder out of the corner of my eye and turned away from it. My helmet had noise dampeners, but I wasn't able to reach up and turn them to maximum before the grenade detonated. My world went slightly brighter even through my closed pupils and the helmet's goggles. They weren't photo-reactive like those that the ODST helmet had. I couldn't help but feel offended at that little detail even as my eyes tried to get used to the sudden changes in lighting. I mean, we are the elite in the Army, a couple extra hundred credits wouldn't really send the UNSC bankrupt, would it?

I turned back to face the elites, the flashbang had blinded them worse than it had me, but I was still seeing twice as many elites as I was supposed to.

No, wait, I was seeing just fine.

My ears were another matter. The loud bang caused my eardrums to vibrate a lot stronger and faster than usual. As you know, eardrums help you stay on your feet, they function as a balance mechanism if you will. The loud noise managed to shake them up enough that I had to catch myself before I tumbled sideways. I allowed myself a second to get used to the spinning floor before opening fire on the elites again. The flashbang took them by surprise and many of them had dropped their weapons to cover their eyes.

We killed three aliens before the rest went into rage mode and started firing back. We were now being pushed back at a fast pace, not because we wanted to get to the rooftop, but because the elites were simply overwhelming us.

"Up the stairs! Now!" I ordered. "Valeri, hold out with me!"

I didn't see my friend nod, but I assume that he did that, because a second later we were on each side of the door leading to the landing pad, firing full-auto at the elites and forcing them to keep their heads down. Two men got shot while making a run for it to the stairs, in addition to the ones killed up here and the stairs, that made for a grand total of twenty-five casualties in the last three days, the overwhelming majority in the last three minutes.

"Go!" Valeri cried.

I finished emptying my rifle's magazine and ran up the stairs. Valeri tossed three grenades before running after me, the good sergeant. The subsequent explosions left my ears ringing despite the distance between the grenades and my already damaged eardrums. I climbed all the way to the roof behind three of my surviving rangers and in front of Valeri. As I left the stairs and arrived at the roof of the spire I felt the rain hitting the lower part of my face.

"Grab the jetpacks," I ordered.

The three men in front of me made a run for it but were stopped abruptly by plasma fire. I turned around and sprayed three elites, pushing them back to the stairs with Valeri's help. We moved backwards towards the rest of our soldiers and kept the elite's in check. All five of us were about to jump when the aliens left cover guns blazing. We dropped to the floor or dodged, saving ourselves from being hit.

Suddenly, one of the elites collapsed for seemingly no reason, it took me a moment to make out the shape of a Helljumper firing from behind the corner that led to the stairs. One of the two remaining elites turned and fired at Frank, for it was him who had saved my ass, forcing him back to cover. The Helljumper hid behind a wall that was glowing red in some parts from the heat of the plasma. We now had something that was very close to a chance of winning.

The joy didn't last long, though.

A small blue orb landed not a yard away from me.

"Grenade!"

I jumped away as fast as I could. Years of honing my reflexes and the sheer panic that that word could induce in a man saved me. The explosion only managed to lightly burn my face. Valeri, a soldier with just as much experience as I had, managed to jump out of the way. The kid that I had taken up here and asked about his opinion on the situation rolled away from the explosive just in time as well. The other two guys weren't as lucky. The blue explosion engulfed them almost completely. By the time the flash disappeared all that was left of them were a few fingers and parts of their weapons. The rest was just an unrecognizable mess that could've easily passed as ground meat.

I fired my rifle at the two remaining elites, they were already closing in on us, their plasma rifles discarded instead for the energy swords that their race favored. One of the two shook slightly before two bullets erupted out of its chest. I made out a black shape moving out of the corner of my eye and registered additional gunfire. My brain blocked out all those things and only let me hear one noise.

The sound of my rifle clicking empty.

I looked up just in time to see an elite preparing to impale me with his weapon. I drew my pistol so fast that Jesse James and Billy the Kid would've been proud of me and emptied it on the elite's chest. The distraction, for it was nothing more than that to the elite, gave me a moment. Actually, it gave Valeri just enough time to pull me out of the elite's reach. The angry alien didn't react prettily.

It brought its sword down in a wide arc. The slash hit my best friend in the shoulder. As the energy blade cut through the flesh and bone my mind went back to all the times that Valeri Ivanov had saved my ass. From the moment I joined his platoon all the way to these past few days. The memories flashed in front of me like something out of a bad movie.

My friend cried out in pain. The scream of agony was one of the worst things that I had heard in my entire life. It wasn't just because it was a blood-curdling scream, it wasn't because the man had just had his arm cut off at the shoulder, it was because he was my best friend, and had lost his limb while saving my life.

The elite turned towards me, and next thing I know…

It's gone.

Just like that. Abracadabra. Gone.

My eyes didn't register what happened, but my brain knew that magic wasn't real, or that at least it wouldn't work like that. I looked to my left just in time to see Frank's boots disappear from over the edge of the roof.

"Shit," the kid said.

I don't know if he was referring to the man falling over the ledge, to his direct superior lying on the ground without an arm, or perhaps just to the situation in general.

I felt myself being pushed sideways towards the edge of the roof.

"What the-?"

"Get him," another Helljumper told me. By the sound of his voice and judging from his accent he was Konstantinov. I had never liked that guy. Something was off about him. This seemed to confirm it.

One of my feet suddenly found nothing to stand on and I was on the edge of falling. I looked at the Helljumper in shock, not knowing why he was killing me as well. I tried to hold on to his arms, pull myself up, but instead I only found wet metal. I gripped the metal as hard as I could and then I was also falling down.

It took me longer than I care to admit to realize it, but I saw that the piece of metal in my hands was nothing other than a jetpack. I strapped it on while falling, a technique that I had been taught in my first days in officer school. As soon as I knew that the straps were roughly secured I moved my body into dive position and crashed into Frank's body a lot faster than any of us would've liked it.

Believe it or not, the man had his rifle in one hand and his sidearm in the other. He had been firing at the falling elite all the way down, not giving up until the last possible second. When I tackled him I could feel the air driven from both our lungs. Frank instantly realized what was happening and hugged me as if I was the last woman he would ever see.

I activated my jetpack and suddenly we were flying to the ground a lot faster than before. I adjusted the direction just in time to avoid hitting the ground head on, instead we hit an ornamental palm tree in the spire's courtyard, the impact separated Frank and me. My jetpack's thrusters made me do a cartwheel. In that fraction of a second I saw the Helljumper crash into a car's windshield and then the ground came up rushing to meet me.

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><p><em>So, this chapter ended with pretty much the same sentence than the last one, albeit in a happier note. If you can call an entire platoon of elite Army Rangers being wiped out a happy note, but you grasp my meaning. <em>

_Well, I hope you enjoyed reading this chapter, I personally think that it made for a nice perspective change. If you think that Nezarian though about Frank a little bit too much I just want to tell you that I did that semi-purposely to give a different perspective on the main character that isn't tainted by Frankie's delusions of grandeur. Another thing regarding the different POV, I tried to write this chapter differently than most chapters because Nezarian is a different person and would obviously use a different writing style, think differently, be different, etcetera. _

_Thanks to Sniper Fodder for proof-reading this chapter. Do you think I ought to put that at the top of the post-chapter author's comment? Cause I was thinking about it. _

_Anyways, let me know what you think._

_You see this button right here?_

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_It caaaaaaaalllsss to you..._


	94. First One In, Last One Out

Chapter XCIV: First One In, Last One Out

**July 1, 2543 (UNSC Calendar)/**

**Hill 5439, Shinajh, Ninive, Zeta Argenteus System**

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><p>"<em>Our last stronghold on the planet. You'd think it would be more impressive." – PFC Robert Agnarsson.<em>

* * *

><p>"Are you sure he's fine?" I asked the doctor.<p>

"For the upteenth time, yes. I am sure."

"Doesn't hurt to be cautious," I shrugged.

"Listen your boyfriend's fine, he'll be up any second now."

"My what now?"

The doctor backed off a few steps and spread out his arms in a please-don't-hurt-me gesture. "The lieutenant's fine," he asserted.

"Good," I said, nodding to myself and crossing my arms.

Nezarian was looking a lot better now. Back when his unwounded ranger and Caboose had dragged us both out of the spire's courtyard and into safety I remember that his face looked horrible. There was blood pouring from his nose and from a cut on his brow. Don't even get me started on the exposed bone fracture on his arm _and_ his leg. That's why he had been put in a coma, they could heal him quickly and save him all the pain of having two bones fixed in just five days. Fortunately for him the treatment had worked and now his broken limbs were as good as new. The bruising, well, there was nothing that they could do about that.

Nezarian's eyelids flickered slowly. He winced as the bright light from the ceiling hit his eyes, a sensation that I was all too familiar with, and then closed his eyes once more. Yevgeny took two deep breaths before speaking.

"How many?"

"Only two more made it out," I said.

"Valeri?"

"Your friend? The sergeant?"

Nezarian gave me an almost imperceptible nod.

"He's alive. I talked to him, wasn't feeling so well, with losing an arm and that. They'll probably issue him a nice prosthetic and discharge him honorably with a few medals to boot."

"Shit," Yevgeny cursed. "It's my-"

"No," I cut in. "It's not your fault."

"I could've been faster, I could've-"

"You couldn't have been faster, you couldn't have been better. You did everything right, and in the end, it just wasn't enough. Don't blame yourself."

"Easy for you to say."

"Right."

Nezarian didn't move for a few seconds. He opened his eyes once again, trying to get them used to the light. His eyes teared up a little as he blinked repeatedly. Eventually, the Army lieutenant managed to sit up on the bed with a little help from the doctor. He cracked his neck noisily and asked for a mirror before turning back to face me.

"Who was the other one? The other survivor?"

"You don't remember?" I asked, curious. "A young kid, perhaps about nineteen by the looks of it. No visible scars on him, they treated him for dehydration and he's been locked up with a shrink ever since."

"Fuck, really?"

"Yeah," I shrugged. "I feel for you man."

"After having ninety percent of my platoon killed, I think that-"

"That you just might need psychological help?" I asked. "Yeah, it usually works, even if it's a pain in the ass."

Yevgeny was quiet for a minute. "Did anyone else from my team make it?"

I shook my head. "I'm so sorry."

He sighed deeply, obviously in pain over the situation. "Thanks, how are you?"

"Fine, doc said I would've cracked a couple of ribs. Luckily, they are made of metal."

I banged my artificial ribs while hitting the metal night table by my side with my other hand, making a metallic noise. Nezarian was not amused, he simply nodded once more and sat back down on his bed. He still looked like he had been beat up very badly, but now he also looked like he had lost his will to live. I had only had a handful of men under my command at a time, and having them die over the long periods of time helped me deal with the guilt, even if it still pained me. Yevgeny had had twenty-seven men that were under his command, that were his responsibility, killed in the span of two days. That could hurt any officer more than any physical injury could.

"Bro, I gotta go," I told him. "Get well soon?" I patted the man on the shoulder and griped him reassuringly. The explosions outside were getting louder.

To my dismay, Nezarian didn't even bother with asking me what the situation was, he simply stared at the light illuminating his bed while nurses and doctors started scrambling all over the place. I grabbed my helmet from the night table and slung my BR55 across my back before turning around and jogging outside of the field hospital. I made myself avoid a few nurses on my way out and finally reached the metal doors. I sighed before tapping the console for them to open. The hospital was so quiet and clean.

The noise that hit my ears was almost overwhelming. Half the city had been burned to ruins and the other half had been reduced to molten glass. The only point in the city, the planet, that the UNSC held was this hill. Hill 5439 wasn't nearly as high as its name implied. Well, it was, but since the city was about 4500 meters above sea level, coupled with the hill's gently curving slopes, that didn't make Hill 5439 the mountain its name made it out to be. I don't think I'll ever know whether that was a good thing or a bad thing.

Two seraph multi-role craft strafed half the camp. They mostly hit ground or empty tents, but a couple of plasma shots hit an ammunition depot, producing a spectacular explosion that reached into the sky. A SAM emplacement turned a hundred and eighty degrees while trying to track the fast fliers and fired two missiles at the second seraph. The first missile only succeeded in depleting the fighter's shields, but the explosion was more than enough to knock it down into the ground, where it detonated with yet another grand explosion. I raised my hand to my face to protect myself from the heat.

The other missile flew in a straight line before banking hard and locking in on the other seraph. The Covenant craft tried to outrun it and both aircraft and missile disappeared from my sight. I tried listening for the telltale explosion that the destruction of the seraph would bring, but the battlefield was way too loud for me to make out anything in particular.

I put on my helmet and the whole battlefield went quieter. It wasn't that it eliminated the noises, it just filtered them. I heard the most important noises loud and clear while the ones of less concern were quieter. Yeah, the helmet pretty much made the quiet noises quieter and the louder ones louder, at least in the configuration that I had set it up for in this battle. My HUD flickered to life and half a dozen waypoints appeared before I eliminated the ones that I didn't care about.

"Sarge!" Grass was yelling into my helmet instantly. "Sarge, come in!"

"I give the orders around here," I joked as I started moving towards my team. "What's the situation?"

"Same, covering for civilians and wounded."

"Great," I said. I meant it, same objective meant that I didn't have to go around making plans on the go. Easier.

The seraph that had been shot down suddenly shook a little bit some thirty meters away from me. A part of it fell off and a badly hurt elite stepped out, the right half of its body was burnt horribly and it was missing its bottom two jaws. It raised a plasma pistol at a marine and fired. The shot missed by_ that much _and the marine returned fire with far more accuracy and prejudice. The wounded elite seemed to seize wildly as bullets hit its body and then fell to the ground in an extremely dramatic fashion. It even tried to keep itself up with one hand before it fell.

I nodded at the marine and he gave me a quick salute as he started running towards the edge of the camp.

"Snark, what can you tell me?"

"Nothing much, same numbers as before," the sniper replied. "Only now they are attacking."

"You don't say," Bumblebee muttered.

"What's the sitrep on the gauss?" I asked the Scotsman.

"It's about- never mind, it's done. Heading towards it now."

I slid behind cover as two needle rounds flew close to my head. "Good, if you shoot down a seraph I'll give you a bottle of Scotch."

"Deal, but I want your finest."

"No, but you can choose everything else."

"Agreed."

"Scarecrow?"

"Nothing to report, camp's a mess, whole outer area fell to the covvies when they first attacked, the rest we are holding."

"Not for long," Angel asserted.

I huffed as I took a couple of potshots at the jackal that had fired at me. "I leave for two moments and this is what happens. Great."

"Hurry. The. Fuck. Up."

"Damn Grass, calm down," I ordered her. "I'm going."

My crosshairs finally found their intended target and I lightly squeezed the trigger. The rifle barely kicked when it fired, the single round that left the barrel of my BR55 flew at supersonic speeds into the jackal's throat. The unarmored alien jerked backwards and fell on its butt as the round destroyed its trachea and severed its spine. The jackal was left a quadriplegic even as it chocked on its own blood. Even if it couldn't feel what was happening it certainly knew it was happening. Once more I had killed an alien in an incredibly painful way.

It made me feel good about myself.

I sprinted the rest of the way to my team and slammed my shoulder into a metallic barricade to stop myself. The barrier shook from the impact and Caboose looked over his shoulder at me. He shook his head to himself and fired a couple of bursts before taking cover and kneeling. Caboose motioned for me to do the same. I did so and listened to what he had to say.

"We are outnumbered at least six to one," he started. "We are in the same place as you ordered us to deploy, but the covvies are bringing heavies, we're already out of rockets."

I patted him on the shoulder. "Relax, as soon as Bumblebee is on that gauss cannon we'll be kicking ass."

Before Caboose could say anything I heard the telltale sound of a gauss weapon firing. I saw a flash out of the corner of my eye and heard the following explosion instantaneously. The gauss cannon was pretty much a nerfed version of a MAC cannon. It fired at a fraction of the speed and had a fraction of the firepower. That meant that it was still what you would call an overkill weapon when used against infantry or lightly armored vehicles, with one shot being all it took to punch through them.

"Hunters, three o'clock," Grass said.

"I see it," Bumblebee acknowledged.

I peeked out of cover. I just had to see this. Bumblebee fired the mounted gauss cannon on the hunter. It wasn't really a contest. Everybody knew what was going to happen and nobody was really disappointed when it did. The 25x130mm slug left the barrel at a fraction of the speed of light. The shock lifted dust from all around the gauss platform and actually caused our helmet's to block out all incoming noise for a brief instant. The slug hit the hunter's shield right in the center. It went completely through, leaving the thick metal plate with a nice round hole and doing the exact same thing for the hunter.

The large alien took half a step before it realized it was dead and fell face first on the ground with a loud slamming noise. The death of the hunter sent a few of the neighboring grunts in a hasty retreat that was promptly stopped by a few bursts from Angel's machine gun. The ogre's bond pair seemed to shake with rage before another projectile blew its chest and head apart from the rest of its body. That elicited a small smile from me.

"Snark, see those elite majors? Take out their shields for me, will ya?"

"On it."

The sniper fired two quick rounds from the watchtower to my left and I followed up with two bursts that hit each of the red-armored elites in the head, removing half their faces in the process. That sent even more grunts panicking before lesser ranking elites managed to keep them in check. They did so by shooting one of the panicking dog-like aliens. That seemed to calm the rest, but not that much. The death of the two leaders of their group had definitely made them think twice about charging into this point with no regards for cover.

"Snark, keep harassing them, don't worry about conserving ammunition, Scarecrow, I want you shooting grenades at anything that you see, doesn't matter if it's a grunt running for its life."

"Got it."

"Sure thing."

"Do you _want_ us to run out of ammunition?" Bumblebee asked irritably.

I sighed. "The camp is going to fall, we're not going to have time to run out of ammunition. We just want to hold them back."

"Don't be so bleak," Grass snorted.

"Shut up," I said with a laugh. It was becoming evident that I was the only one that found the situation even remotely funny. I have no idea why.

I switched cover to a large rock and fired in semi-auto at a group of jackals with overlapped shields. When my rounds failed to penetrate Scarecrow fired a rifle grenade at them. The impact killed the one whose shield the grenade had collided with and gave me enough space to take out the other five. That was the good thing about jackals, one shot was enough to kill them no matter where it hit. They were the weakest of all covvies, physically speaking.

"Banshees fast and low!" Snark warned.

"Bee?"

"Got 'em."

Our rocket launcher man fired two shots at the banshee formation, the first one went high and hit a crumbling building a kilometer away, crumbling it further. The second slug hit the lead banshee head on and produced a wonderful explosion. The slug kept on flying and hit the aforementioned building, finishing the job and bringing whatever was left standing to the ground. The banshee actually hit a pair of jackals as it fell to the ground. The sight of the bird-like aliens being squished brought yet another smile to my face.

"Wow, you really are smiling way too much given the situation," Schitzo offered. "Psycho."

_Oh, shut up._

"Watch out for those wraiths!" Snark warned.

"Where?" Grass asked.

"Can't see 'em," Bumblebee said. "Can't hit 'em."

"Shit, out of your FOV. Location is about three hundred meters out and to the right."

"Behind those boulders?" I asked.

"Yup."

"Hmmm… Mortars. Mortar Team-6, are you still active?" I asked, communicating with the unit through my helmet.

"We're green, Reaper," the leader replied. "What have you got for us?"

"Wraiths, I need you to-"

An explosion nearby interrupted me. I looked up and ran the hell away from my position as two more wraith mortar shots impacted right where I had been standing before. I jumped to the ground and felt a few bits of heated rock land on my back. The wraiths had our position zeroed in and wouldn't stop firing until they ran out of ammunition. Or until they were blown to oblivion.

"Coordinates are seven-golf-niner-yankee," Snark cut in.

"Use scatter ammunition."

"On it."

I kept my eyes on the sky to see if I could spot any blue mortar shots. The wraiths' rounds were incredibly deadly, but they were relatively slow flying and incredibly easy to spot. I was forced to move from my position two more times before the mortar rounds destroyed the wraiths or damaged them enough that it made no difference to us. The onslaught from the Covenant tanks had forced most of us twenty meters back and had allowed the enemy footmobiles to advance.

Snark was still in his watchtower though, the closest aliens were only a few meters away from the marksman. Snark took advantage of the situation and dropped a flashbang before taking out two elites and eight grunts. He used the last five rounds in his magazine to force another group of elites into cover. As he reloaded one of the aliens threw a plasma grenade at the watchtower. The detonation wasn't enough to do any significant structural damage to the tower and it cost the elite that threw the grenade its life.

"Snark, get over here," I ordered.

I saw the small man nod at me from the watchtower and jump. He fell on a tent butt-first and collapsed with the canvas structure. Snark pushed the fabric away from him and propped himself up before sprinting towards our direction. The team provided covering fire for Snark as he raced away from the covvies. Bright projectiles were flying all around him. It looked like a scene right out of a movie, only that in this situation, it wouldn't be some actor pretending to die if they were hit.

"Safe!" Scarecrow cheered as he pulled Snark behind cover. "Nice."

"Thanks," Snark said in between heavy breathing. "I aim to please."

"That's my phrase," I complained.

"May I bring your attention back to the fanatical homicidal aliens?" Grass asked.

"Yes, you may."

"There are fanatical homicidal aliens trying to kill us."

"How nice of you to remind us."

"Sarge… just… just fire."

"I like it when you boss me around like that," I smiled.

"Did you steal some meds?" Caboose suddenly asked.

"Maybe…" I admitted. "Why?"

"Oh, no reason," he shrugged. "What were they?"

"Dunno, they were colorful." I deadpanned.

"Nice one, Sarge. Seriously."

"Let me be," I complained, it's not like I was high or anything, just looser than normal. "Just keep firing."

My cover now consisted of empty crates. They weren't exactly solid, but they did a good job at holding back plasma and the metallic material that they were made of was enough to deflect the comparatively fragile needle crystals. We were lucky it wasn't brutes firing at us. Their spikers would've cut through the material with no more difficulty than they would've through paper.

My first victim from this position was a jackal with a carbine. I fired just as it took aim at me and managed to hit it right in the forehead. Its brains splattered the face of the grunt that was behind it and I promptly killed the stocky alien as well. The overwhelming amount of covvies coming at us was, for lack of a better word, overwhelming. Bumblebee was wreaking havoc on anything larger than an elite with his gauss cannon, but he couldn't fire constantly or risk annoying the covvies too much.

_Too late._

"Seraph!" Snark warned him. "Headed towards you from above."

"I see it!"

Bumblebee turned the gauss turret around, exposing his left side to enemy fire. The whole squad opened up at the closest covvies while Bumblebee tried to shoot down the aircraft. Two shots hit the seraph, but as soon as its shields flickered and died it banked to the left hard. It didn't drop its payload, but it also avoided being shot down. It gave us some more time to prepare.

"It'll be back," I warned.

"To the right! They're flanking us!"

_What?_

I turned ninety degrees just in time to see an elite take aim at me. I fired faster than the alien and forced it behind cover. Unfortunately, I had no cover myself. I kept aiming at that position while the rest of my team scrambled to find a safer place to stand behind. The closest I could see that would serve that purpose was a flaming scorpion fifty yards away.

"Shit!"

"Sarge, where's the covvie?" Snark asked me.

"Elite, behind that large tent next to the barracks."

"Got it."

Everything around seemed to go quieter. The loud boom of the gauss cannon occasionally broke the relative silence and the automated defense turrets fired at any oncoming infantry that were stupid enough to get within their field of fire. I listened carefully for any noises that might betray a covvie trying to get close while keeping my eye on the tent that the elite was using as cover. Nothing seemed to move.

Then the sudden silence made sense. I heard the noise even as I was rolling away from my position. The energy sword cut through the rock I had been using as cover like butter, but the elite had some trouble pulling it out. The alien had just deactivated its camouflage cloak just before it struck at me. I'm not entirely sure how it worked, but I think that any sudden releases of energy damaged the system. I rolled once again while getting a good grip of my weapon and switching to full-auto.

I fired wildly at the elite, trying to hit its arm. Most of the bullets flew around the elite, but a few of them actually made contact. The ones that did bought me enough time to take a knee and fire a steadier burst at the elite's hand.

The amount of bullets in my magazine wouldn't have allowed for me to kill the elite, so instead I settled for draining its shields and forcing it to drop its weapon. A Forge. The technique only half worked, but it was more than I needed. I dropped my empty rifle as I reached for my Damascus steel knife for the first time in what seemed like a lifetime. I avoided tackling the elite since last time that hadn't ended so well for me, but I succeeded in pushing it back a couple of steps when I threw my knife at him.

The knife embedded itself in the elite's shoulder. The pain forced the elite's body to react by trying to get the area in pain away from the source of pain. The elite turned to look at the knife's hilt in slight shock just as my studded glove collided with its jaws. The impact wasn't really that solid, but since the jaws of the Sangheili were a weak part of their bodies the elite roared in pain.

I drew the knife that was strapped upside-down to my chest and brought it down on the elite's helmet. I wasn't strong enough to go completely through, but the first stab was enough to dent the armor and stun the alien while the second one finished the job.

I smiled at myself for being able to hit the same spot twice on a moving target with a notoriously inaccurate attack.

The falling body took the knife from my grasp and I was forced to let go of it. I waited for the elite to collapse completely and then ripped my Damascus steel knife from its shoulder while reaching for my smaller backup knife. I was forced to use my legs to push down against the alien's skull while pulling the knife out with my arms. I succeeded and found myself sitting on my ass with a dumb look on my face.

"You done Sarge?" Scarecrow asked me quizzically.

"Yeah."

"Then try to be productive, will ya?"

And I was the one that was supposed to be giving orders.

"Fine, fine."

I grabbed my dropped battle rifle and fired at the waves of infantry charging at us. They were an awful lot closer than they had been when I last saw them. I heard three shots from Snark's rifle and knew that our right flank was safe from any enemies. Now that I was without any kind of distractions I was free to shoot as many covvies as I wanted until we had to fall back once more.

A couple of grunts were stopped dead in their tracks with accurate bursts from my rifle even as scores of aliens were killed by my squad. Bumblebee had started shooting everything that would serve as a target, whether it was a hunter or a grunt. He was going to have to leave the cannon before he ran out of ammunition if things kept on going just like this and I think he knew that.

"Grass! Behind you!" Caboose warned.

Grass turned around just in time to deliver a vicious kick at a jackal skirmisher. The muscular alien jumped backwards to avoid the kick and then lunged again. Grass was an experienced Helljumper and had dealt with this situation before. She let the alien hit her even as she reached for her knife and allowed herself to be scratched a couple of times before stabbing the skirmisher three times in quick succession. She shoved it off her and checked herself for injuries.

"You aight?" Angel asked.

"One scratch to the forearm," she replied. "Nothing serious."

"Oughta get that checked," Angel recommended.

Grass nodded from far away even though Angel couldn't see her without risking having his head blown up. She grabbed her rifle and slapped a magazine into the empty receiver before firing a burst into a small lance of incoming jackals. Grass sprayed the vultures until they were all dead on the floor before sustained fire forced her to take cover farther back. We were being forced back slowly but surely. The camp was going to fall soon.

"Caboose, nail those bastards," I ordered, highlighting said bastards for him. "Scarecrow, I need you to provide indirect support with your forty-millimeter, Angel, fire everything you've got."

There was a brief moment of silence as everyone prepared to follow my orders followed by a huge increase in noise as two 40mm grenades detonated and Angel's SAW started firing a bullet hose. Caboose took aim at his designated targets and took them out with short, careful bursts. After a few seconds the elites that had come up to the frontline to assume leadership had been eliminated with extreme prejudice. The Covenant advance on this point faltered slightly.

Behind Hill 5439 I could see the ruins of the city. Hovering about one kilometer above ground level were two Covenant _CCS-_class cruisers. Their sole presence was damaging to the morale of the troops and civilians. So far they had only been deploying troops and equipment, but as soon as we left the place and the battle was lost they would start orbital bombardment.

Or not.

The belly of the cruiser on the right started glowing and then I heard the loudest noise that I had ever heard short of a nuclear explosion. The entire world lit up by more than a few candelas. My helmet polarized just after the event happened, but it was still a little too late, and the image of the spaceship firing was burned into my retinas. I could hear the noise of the energy beam burning everything it touched and more. The Covenant had decided that they were going to win and had decided to start early.

As soon as my helmet depolarized I witnessed several dozen SAMs firing at the cruiser. Bumblebee joined with a trio of slugs from his gauss cannon before turning back to fire at the more immediately dangerous infantry. The missiles streaked through the air at high speed before half of them were shot down by the point defense lasers that the _CCS-_class cruiser sported but the rest detonated right against its hull.

The enemy ship had taken down its shields to fire, and it had paid the price. The explosions that painted the side of the ship looked painfully small from here, but I knew that the cruiser's alarms were blaring and that several of its crew had been killed by the barrage. If we were lucky, they might've even damaged its engines or its core.

Suddenly I heard a noise even louder than before. I saw a flash of light much like that of a gauss cannon would make. This flash of light was a whole lot brighter and a whole lot bigger. The first MAC round was quickly followed by a second one, and they both hit the cruiser that had begun glassing early while it was unshielded. The two rounds seemed to go completely through without doing much damage, but soon enough I started seeing explosions all over the hull of the ship. It didn't take long before the ship collapsed and exploded in the biggest detonation yet.

I looked up at the sky, following the trail of superheated air particles as I went. The trail got lost amongst the clouds, but I knew that it had been the _Inconvenience_ that had fired on the ship. Brooks was always the last to leave when a battle is lost and he kept on fighting for as long as he could. He was one hell of a captain, for all the good it did to humanity.

"All remaining units!" the Hill's commander's voice blasted through my speakers. "Civilians and wounded are evacuated. Head down to the central landing pad in an… orderly fashion."

I pulled my eyes away from the sky and looked over my shoulder to see seven pelicans flying away in a loose formation. Three of them were hit by Covenant AA fire, two of those three came crashing to the ground shortly afterwards. I could hear the explosions, but I couldn't see them.

"Did he say central landing pad?" Bumblebee asked.

"I'm afraid he did," Angel affirmed.

"Shit."

"It's far," I admitted. "Snark, Angel, Caboose, and Scarecrow, start heading back to the landing pad. Grass, Bumblebee, and me will cover you."

"Roger that."

"Got it."

"Good luck Sarge."

"Why don't you wish me good luck?" Bumblebee complained.

"Oh, shut up."

The four men left their covers after emptying as much rounds from their magazines as they could. They didn't fall back in an orderly fashion, instead simply sprinting away from the frontline while trying to avoid enemy fire. It was probably the most sensible tactic that they could've used.

"Keep on full-auto," I told Grass. "And now would be a good time to start firing again."

"Aye, aye," Bumblebee snapped.

Three rounds hit as many different elites in the span of a few seconds and then the gauss cannon went silent.

"Bee? Beee, come in," I called to him.

"Shit, needle pierced the power cable."

"Well this is gonna suck," Grass said almost resignedly.

With only three of us to fire at a company-sized enemy force it was surely going to suck. The gauss cannon was inoperable because of a damn needle round piercing its energy source and we were very far away from our evacuation point. Did I mention that we had to actually hold for a while?

Then of course I was forced to abandon my thoughts in order to save my life. I fired in full automatic bursts at anything and everything that left cover. Grunts and jackals were usually wounded while elites simply shrugged off my shots. I sustained my fire on them to drain their shields a little bit, but I was still walking backwards at a steady pace. Bumblebee and Grass were doing the same thing with their weapons but weren't being as successful in account of the smaller caliber that the MA5s had.

"Sarge, Bumblebee!" Grass cried. "See that hangar?"

"I see it," I replied, turning my head around. "What about it?"

"Might be a hog inside."

"Bee, go check it out," I ordered.

Bumblebee fired a couple of quick bursts and ran towards the hangar. A trail of plasma followed him as he ran to the building. After a few moments I had to return my attention back to the advancing enemies and focus on trying to take out as many of them as I could before we had to run back. The rest of the squad had only been gone for a minute, less than half the time that they needed for reaching the landing pads. They wouldn't be the first to hop in, in fact, they would probably volunteer to hold off any enemies until we arrived.

"Bingo!"

"Sarge?" Grass asked me.

"Bee, bring it here, I'll take the turret."

"Way ahead of you."

Ten seconds later I heard the familiar roar of a warthogs engine and saw the vehicle slide to a full stop a few meters away from me. I ran towards it and hopped in the turret while Grass took slow steps backwards, fending off any grunts or jackals that got too close to her. It surprised me that even though they had weapons they were charging at us. The covvies were probably as low on ammunition as we were. The only difference between them and us was that we knew how to handle that without sending half our numbers to their deaths.

I pulled back the lever on the hog's M41 LAAG. The noise was a sign that something great was coming. I spun around and aimed at the covvies. As I depressed the triggers I felt that great something rumbling all through my body and the vehicle. The M41 machine gun roared as it fired 12.7x99mm rounds at five hundred and fifty rounds per minute. Only a couple of them were needed to burn through an elite's shield. Everything else needed to be hit only once.

The first wave of attackers fell to my fire faster than you could say "Die motherfucker, die!" and then the rest just stared at the carnage for a minute. I killed three elites with my machine gun and sprayed rounds on the rest of the soldiers. Grunts and jackals were torn completely apart by the heavy armor piercing rounds. Colorful blood flew everywhere, leaving splatters on the ground. The smaller aliens panicked and ran for cover while their superiors did the exact same thing. A couple of carbine shots hit the shield of my machine gun and I ducked on instinct. I aimed at the offending elite and killed it with a short burst of fire.

"Scoot!" Grass ordered Caboose.

"What?"

She fired at an elite and sent it flying for cover. "I'm driving. Move."

"Do it," I said.

"Fine, fine."

Bumblebee hopped over to the passenger's seat and started firing from his position, adding even more lead to that of my machine gun.

I could feel every round as it left the three-barreled monster of a gun, the stocks bounced off my shoulders whenever that happened. I could tell that I would have a line of bruises on both my shoulders next morning. I could see the cases of every round fly to the side and heard them clattering on the warthog's floor or on the ground.

"Hold on!"

I put one foot back and held on tighter to the turret while keeping my thumbs pressed down on the triggers.

The warthog lurched forward against a chest-high wall. It broke through the weakened structure and slammed an elite that had been taking cover behind it against a wall further back.. The elite was cut in half by the impact and died instantly. As Grass hit the reverse a little piece of the elite got caught in one of the vehicle's tusks and decided to join the ride.

"Hunters!" Bumblebee warned.

"See them."

I turned my turret while Grass moved at high speed away from the enemy fire. She managed to give me a good angle to fire while avoiding crashing with anything. I saw walls and structures flashing by but never stopped pressing the triggers. One of the hunters hunched down in a defensive position and spun slowly to keep its shield facing me, but the sheer amount of ammo flying at it was more than the shield could handle and soon it was dead on the floor.

The hunter's bond partner roared in anger. They tend to do that when their best friend dies.

Grass somehow managed to place the warthog in an open stretch of ground while facing the hunter. She revved the engine a couple of times for drama and then floored it. I jerked backwards while firing at the hunter. My rounds were hitting it all over the place, but the alien was so enraged that it didn't seem to feel anything. The hunter was sprinting at us even as the warthog gained speed.

"We're gonna die!" Bumblebee warned us.

The back of my head thought about how hunters were heavier than the warthog by more than one thousand kilos just as our vehicle collided with the creature's shoulder. The hunter was instantly killed. No matter how heavy it was it couldn't compare to the sheer force the vehicle gained through speed.

Us, on the other hand, suddenly found ourselves jumping off of the warthog as it flipped sideways. I landed pretty hard but maintained consciousness. Grass jumped early and rolled on the ground before coming to a halt. Bumblebee simply fell out of the warthog. For some reason he fell on his feet and in a combat stance. From my perspective it was quite impressive really. He helped Grass up and half-led her, half-dragged her to the warthog for cover.

I shook my head and made a dash for the overturned vehicle. Slid home just as the covvies started firing at me. The hog was on its side, meaning that the turret was still intact, even if it wasn't available for use. I took a few quick potshots at the loudest aliens before taking cover once again. I looked at Grass and Bumblebee, doing the same thing on the other side of the vehicle.

"We lift on three!" I ordered. "One, two, three!"

Bumblebee and me lifted from the bottom while Grass pushed from the top. It was at times like this that I wished Scarecrow would never leave my side. He was as strong as they came. The warthog didn't seem to be moving at first, but soon enough it was back on its wheels. I immediately hopped back on the turret and fired a long burst to ensure that our attackers would keep their heads down.

"Take us to the landing pads," I said. "Now!"

Grass complied and drove through the camp faster than I had ever driven a warthog. She managed to avoid every single obstacle with deftness. I was impressed because she kept the car from sliding to the side too heavily and all in all had a very smooth driving style.

Eventually plasma stopped coming at us as we left the Covenant's weapon range. There were several buildings in between them and us. The covvies were no doubt rushing towards us even as we drove. The warthog finally reached the landing pads after what seemed like an eternity. Only two pelicans were still there. The rest had taken off a few minutes ago.

"Sarge," Scarecrow greeted. "Let's get the hell out of here."

"Agreed."

"Over here," he pointed.

My team hopped on the pelican ship just as the other craft took off. It drew some plasma fire but made it out without problems.

I put one foot on the pelican and looked back. From this point I could see most of the city while it burned. Centralia had been the first major UNSC landhold to fall. Several others had quickly followed. We had been redirected here, to Shinajh to try and hold one major city in hope of victory. It wasn't until the UNSC fleet was decisively defeated that we started losing.

"Sarge, what are you waiting for?" I heard Sheppard yell.

"Nothing," I murmured. "Just taking one last look."

The remaining cruiser powered up its main cannon, a sure sign that the _Inconvenience_ and whatever warships were still up there were beginning to turn around, marking our defeat as decisive.

I climbed to the pelican's cargo bay and with that simple move the last surviving member of the UNSC left the planet to be glassed.

* * *

><p><em>So there it is, I hope you enjoyed it. As per usual, thanks to Sniper Fodder for proof-reading this chapter.<em>

_To TheUltraGrands: you asked me how many chapters this fic would have. The answer is: I don't know. Originally I wanted to hit forty or fifty chapters, but this story took a life of its own. I'm going to hit a hundred pretty soon and I don't plan on stopping there. I want to have at least one-fifty chapters. Hell, I might even make it to two hundred._

_-casquis_


	95. Relieved

Chapter XCV: Relieved 

**July 2, 2543 (UNSC Calendar)/**

**UNSC **_**Inconvenience**_**, inter-stellar space**

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><p>"<em>It reminded me a little bit of a series back in the twenty first, you probably never heard about it." –PFC Robert Agnarsson<em>

* * *

><p>The alarms started blaring. <em>Again.<em>

"All personnel to battle stations," Eliza ordered through the intercom system. "I repeat, all personnel to battle stations."

I groaned and sat back up. The bridge was in complete disarray as everyone got back up from their respective power naps. Half the bridge crew started hitting buttons at what seemed like random intervals and the other half shook their heads to wake themselves up. The only person that seemed to be fully awake and alert was Captain Brooks. He started giving out orders the moment the alarms started blaring.

"Captain, am I required elsewhere?" I asked.

"No, stay here. I don't plan on having this ship boarded again."

"Roger that," I nodded as I got into position behind the captain's chair. I noticed how several of the bridge crew gave each other sidelong glances at the mention of the ship being boarded. Most of them hadn't been here back in Delta Tyranus, three years ago.

At the thought of that incident my eyes moved towards the location of the communication's officer's chair. I could still see Layla slumped over, her head on the dashboard and the rest of her body completely immobile. I could remember the moment perfectly. I wished I didn't. I wished I could forget.

"Sensors detect three enemy corvettes. The _Godzilla_ is moving in to engage," Eliza reported.

"All Archer missile pods are ready," one crewmember informed Brooks.

"MAC cannon is powered up," another one said.

"Eliza, give me a firing solution on the closest corvette, deploy the longswords and get them in defensive formation."

"Right away, sir," the AI acknowledged. "Done."

"Fire away."

The entire ship rumbled as the slug left the MAC. I couldn't see absolutely anything, but the holotable in front of Captain Brooks displayed everything. The MAC slug flew through the hologram in a couple of seconds and impacted a small model of a corvette. The other UNSC ship with us beat the ship it was fighting against and sent the third one running away. A bunch of Archer missiles detonated against the corvette but it still managed to jump into slipspace.

"Eliza, do you have a jumping solution?"

"Yes, three random jumps prepared, Captain."

"Good, send the coordinates to the _Godzilla_ and tell them to jump a second after we do. I want to be out of here before we have a fleet on our ass."

"Jumping."

I felt my stomach lurch and was forced to lean against a column due to the jump. Going into slipspace usually felt bad, but lately these jumps had been making me feel worse and worse. I steadied myself and allowed myself to feel safe once again. While we were in slipspace we were completely untouchable, but if this kept on going for much longer everyone would die of exhaustion.

All of us had been surviving on ten-minute naps for the last week. At least twelve times we had left slipspace only to find ourselves looking right at Covenant ships. Thankfully those times had only been the first or second of three-jump chains, allowing us to jump again before having to engage the enemy. The rest of the fleet had scattered to do their jumps. They had probably had more luck than us, I never had to live through more than a hundred consecutive jumps in compliance with the Cole Protocol, it usually just took half a dozen at most. If we _were_ found and faced inevitable destruction, we would wipe out all of our hard drives, delete Eliza and maybe even blow up the reactors. That way the Covenant couldn't salvage anything and find out the location of other colonies or Earth. That's also why we didn't jump directly to Reach.

"Let's hope this is the last one," I muttered under my breath. _This got annoying fifty jumps ago._

"This one's going to be a longer jump, Staff Sergeant," Brooks informed me. "Feel free to go back to your room and rest."

"Are you sure? Because I can crash on the floor again, just like the last twelve times."

"Don't push it."

"Got it, thank you Captain."

I saluted and left the bridge. The survivors of B and Echo companies had been placed in cryo. Well, most of them. A few of the surviving soldiers and marines had been ordered to stay as a security complement while the injured ones were still being taken care of in the medical wing. That left half the crew outside of cryo to keep running the ship. The ship felt surprisingly empty.

I bumped into a couple of navy noncoms on my way to my room, they saluted respectfully but didn't say anything. I was wearing only my casual uniform, but it was still enough to intimidate most people into fearing me. I couldn't help but wonder if I'd get the same amount of respect dressed up in regular BDU's. I'd have to experiment with that sometime.

My room felt a lot emptier than the ship. Pavel was probably enjoying an extended leave back in Reach. In fact, he was probably borrowing some of my war stories right now to impress a couple of cute girls. I missed the big guy, he made for good company. I kicked my helmet as I walked inside the room, sending it rolling away. I sighed as the armored helmet hit the wall.

I sat down on my bed and let my head fall to my hands. I rubbed my face, I probably looked like hell right now, I had failed to get a good night's sleep the past week.

"Fuck man, you _do _look like hell."

My room was sound-proof and Eliza was aware of my mental problems. "Fuck off," I told the hallucination. "I don't have time for this."

I stood up and reached into one of the closets. I opened several drawers before finding what I was looking for. My small orange bottle full of magic pills. It had been a while since I had last taken one, instead simply choosing to get used to a wise-cracking alter-ego appearing every couple of days to piss me off. It was actually a lot easier than it sounded, it helped me with my patience.

I swallowed one of the last pills and Schitzo took the opportunity to disappear as soon as I turned around to close the doors again. It never ceased to impress me how he was simply gone whenever I stopped looking at him. Or it. Whatever.

I sighed once again and jumped onto my bed. The nice comfy mattress and the sheets seemed to have some sort of alluring presence, they dragged me towards what I hoped would be a good nap. If everything went well, that nap would turn into a nice solid eight hours of uninterrupted sleep. I guess only time would tell.

Eight hours turned into fifteen.

Fuck yeah.

I woke up and thought that my clock was damaged as soon as I saw it. I looked around as if that would tell me if I was wrong or right before I stopped myself. I went to my clock and tapped a few commands. The device told me that it was in full working order and that no mistakes had been made in the last thirty thousand hours. That was like four years. Or something. I shrugged and decided to ask Eliza just for confirmation. The AI confirmed that I had slept little over fifteen hours and I smiled.

"I assume we're safe?"

"Yes, we did several more jumps after you took a nap, we waited a couple of minutes after each one to see if we were being chased, but no enemy ships jumped after us. We are now en route to Lambari right now." Eliza hadn't deigned to talk to me in person, instead simply sending one of her subroutines.

"Lambari?" I asked. "That's in… Campo Sorrisco System, right?"

"That is correct."

"As in not Epsilon Eridani."

"Once again you are correct."

"Fuck," I cursed. "What happened to them?"

"They're under attack by a small Covenant scout force, no doubt they can handle the three corvettes on their own, but soon enough they will have a whole invasion fleet on their hands."

"Fine, fine, how long?"

"A month."

"How long do I have."

"Just today."

_The gym it is._

"Thank you Eliza," I said almost reluctantly.

I changed from my all blacks into a pair of camouflage fatigues and a t-shirt. I grabbed a small towel on my way out and made my way to the gym. The ship's corridors were even emptier than before, most people were probably taking long naps or had opted to go directly to cryo. I didn't like the idea of being frozen so I usually delayed it as long as possible.

The gym was empty. No surprise there. I took off my shirt and checked myself in one of the mirrors after making sure that the gym was in fact empty. I was satisfied with the way my body looked, but I had been slacking on exercising the past few months so there were a few areas that needed improvement. They say that vanity is a sin, but I find nothing wrong in trying to look your best.

So I grabbed a yoga mat and started doing bicycle crunches. They were killing me. For some reason that kind of exercise was ten times as tiring as doing regular crunches. I set myself to do four fifty-crunch series before moving on to something else. I took thirty-second breaks in between the series, mostly because otherwise I got too tired.

"One ninety-nine," I managed out while wincing. "Two hundddd…" I said, letting out all my breath. I used to be able to that same amount of exercise with a lot less effort last time I came here. I really needed to get back in shape, no matter what you might think, combat isn't really an adequate workout. Sure, it's tiring and exhausting, but mostly because you're running away from plasma fire or because you're waiting hours to ambush someone.

Regular exercise, it's different. A whole lot more enjoyable. I grunted as I tried taking in more air and reached for a water dispenser, taking two long drinks before finally stopping myself, I didn't plan on stopping right now and I didn't want to be getting cramps or anything like that.

_What now?_

I could keep working on my abs, but to really develop them I needed to give them some time to rest and heal. Whatever that means. Instead I decided that I should probably work on my legs. I liked the way that my chest, shoulders, and muscles looked. Toned, but not overly big, I didn't really like the bodybuilder look, besides, I hear that most girls didn't like it either. If they did, I would've thought about it.

I went to one of those fancy machines that had like a billion different functions and sat on it. I set a decent amount of weight to lift with my leg and started lifting. I didn't really have a set number in my head, but I guess that two series of twenty-five for each leg would work. If I wasn't tired by the end I would probably do some more. I rarely exercised my legs, the running away usually did it.

I sighed after doing twenty-five with my left leg. I started shuffling sideways to work on my right leg when I saw someone walk into the gym. Excuse me, I saw someone _skipping_ into the gym.

"What are you so happy about?" I asked Lockley.

She stopped dead in her tracks and looked at me. Unsurprisingly, she blushed like a tomato.

"No need to be embarrassed," I laughed.

"I am not embarrassed," she snapped, quickly controlling herself and doing her best to look indignant. "You just surprised me, that's all."

"Sure," I said. "What's with the skipping."

"I don't believe that's any of your business."

"I'm still your superior," I reminded her.

"Sir," she added in between her teeth.

I don't think I actually was her superior, and in most circumstances I wouldn't have any kind of command over her, but she didn't need to know that. The chain of command was complicated enough as it is without adding other military branches to the mix. You could have a corporal leading a squad just as you could have a staff sergeant. Don't even get me started on who lead a company, sometimes a captain, sometimes a major. Hell I had even seen light colonels leading company-sized units.

"Relax, I was kidding."

She huffed and I resumed doing my workout, keeping an eye on her without any worries about what she might think. She probably had me pegged for an asshole already, so what's the loss in being one to her?

I couldn't help but notice her prettiness. I know, I know, I have described her to you incessantly before. If I am not mistaken I did include one or two paragraphs related solely to her eyes, but it was justified, they were lovely. She had a nice figure, not supermodel measurements of course, but if she wore the right clothes she would turn heads wherever she went.

Right now she was wearing the right clothes.

She wasn't wearing fatigues, instead she had opted to wear a nice pair of those tight shorts that were called volleyball shorts for some reason, even though volleyball was played with a full-body suit. I couldn't help but notice the way that they showed of her derriere. On top she was wearing a gray UNSC t-shirt. It was tight as hell. I suddenly realized that it was a possibility that they made the shirts they issued to us tight not to piss us men off, but to show the girl's bodies more.

By the looks of it, she wasn't wearing a sports bra.

I had to stop myself before I started grinning like an idiot.

Hanna Lockley was (at least by my observations) a girly girl kind of girl. Did I say girl too many times in the same sentence? Probably, but that doesn't matter. If I was any good at reading people (which I don't think I am) I could see that the fact that she wore such tight and form-fitting clothes meant that she liked her body and would show it off more often if she wasn't so decent. Not that there's anything wrong with decency, but some people ought to loosen up a little. _Just_ a little.

"Can you stop staring?" she suddenly snapped.

_Can you wear a sports bra?_

"What?"

"Nothing," I said, looking away to hide my expression.

"What did you say?" she insisted.

"Nothing," I lied once more.

"Yes you did."

"No I didn't."

"You did."

"Did not."

"Did do."

"Nah-ah."

"You did."

It went on for longer than I am willing to admit. "I'm not telling you," I finally told her.

"Fine."

It wasn't more than five seconds of silence.

"You're still staring at me," she informed me.

"I am aware of that."

"Why?" She was as irritated as it could get.

_I think you know why._

"All right, I'll stop," I finally relented. I gave her a small smile to get across the message that I was just messing with her, even when I wasn't.

"Finally."

I stopped doing lifts with my right leg and started doing them with my left leg again. I could already feel the strain in my muscles. I really didn't care about having toned leg muscles, but it never hurts to be a little bit stronger, it might just save your life. Once I was done with my left leg I started with my right leg again, wincing with pain as I reached the last lifts. I heaved out air with relief as I finished. Who would've thought that this would get so tiring after not doing it in a couple of months.

Once I got a minute or so of rest I faced another dilemma. I still had a lot more time to kill. I had worked on my legs and abs, so the only logical answer was to work on my arms. Or my chest, or shoulders. I placed myself by the mirror and flexed my arms backwards to examine them. My shoulders seemed to be nicely toned and looking as awesome as the rest of me, so no problem there. Biceps looked nice and both left and right arms were the same size. Triceps weren't so bad either.

I know, I know, I sound like an arrogant asshole that is in love with himself, but I am just telling you this for the sake of narrative people.

_Chest it is._

I sighed and dropped to the floor. I hated pushups like nothing else in the world, Gabuka had seen to that. I had done more pushups than anyone else would do in their entire life in the first two months of boot camp alone.

_Four series of fifty._ I told myself. It wasn't really that much, the problem was that knowing myself (which I actually did) I knew that I would try to get them done as quickly as possible and would only succeed in tiring myself.

_One… two… three… four…_

I made a point to keep my arms relatively close to my body so that I could work on different muscle groups and not just on my chest. The closer my arms were to my body the more I worked on my triceps and less on my chest. I opted for a relatively standard distance and started pumping away. As I let myself fall down and push myself up again and again I kept my core tightened, supposedly it helped muscles develop more.

_Forty-nine… Fifty._

I let myself fall to the floor, landing on my chest. I didn't think I could take another three series of this without at least ten minutes of rest in between each other.

But then again, I am nothing if not perseverant. I wouldn't be alive if that wasn't the case.

_Fifty._ I thought for the second time. My arms and chest were burning.

_Fifty._ My arms were in horrible, horrible pain.

_Forty-nine… come on fucker, you can do this. Fiiiiiiiiifty._

"Thank God!" I praised as I rolled on my back and took in as much air as possible.

Don't mock me. You try doing fifty straight pushups without stopping. Proper pushups. Now do that four times in a row. Yeah, didn't think so.

Someone splashed water on me.

"Puta madre!" I cursed. "The fuck?"

"You looked like you needed it," Lockley shrugged. "Need help?"

My first thought was something along the lines of "I'm gonna kill this bitch." The second one was "Wow, the water is actually quite nice. My third thought was "Whoa, she looks great all sweaty, I wonder if…"

And then I stopped myself. I know, regrettable, but I didn't want any accidents while in the gym, especially in front of a woman. You know what I mean by accidents.

"I'm good," I said, getting up with great effort.

"Doesn't look like that," she said with a raised eyebrow.

"Stick to fixing up people that are actually wounded, doc, anything else is probably hard for you to understand."

Shit.

She shot nuclear bombs at me through her eyes. Apparently that's a side effect of being beautiful. Every single girl I knew had the power to do that. Lockley had obviously been offended by my comment. If she hadn't been offended she had at least disliked it. I didn't blame her, it was more an insult than a comeback. Sometimes you screw up, nothing you can do about it, just try to fix it if you want.

_Dumbbells._ I though, distracting myself from my screw-up. _Or barbells?_

You see, dumbbells are usually better for working on the arms, while barbells are best used for anything related to the chest. I could also use dumbbells and do presses with them, but it was awfully uncomfortable. The pushups had left my arms hurting. Everything from my elbow to my shoulder was burning and the same could be said for the outer sections of my chest. Doing presses would be just like doing pushups but with more weight and less control over it.

So the question was, where should I torture myself?

I sighed in surrender and grabbed a pair of dumbbells, putting on a meager seven kilos on each. Well, meager for my routine at least. I usually did three series of fifteen curls with both hands. I could do them with as much as fifteen kilos with relative ease, but I had no doubt that most of that was my superhuman muscles and strength. I actually panicked a little at the thought of doing all my routine without any sort of augmentation. Suddenly I started feeling a little bit more respect for Sutton, to keep a body like that was something of an achievement.

The dumbbell curls left my arms burning some more. A lot more, in fact, but nothing that I couldn't handle. I had been shot, beaten, stabbed, slashed, pounded, stepped on, and blown up more times than I could count or care to remember and I had made it out of those just fine before I fainted. Those higher pain tolerance implant thingies that I had been given when I graduated from Camp Mars IX were really a small miracle.

I went for the water dispenser and drank some more before splashing some of the cold water on my face. I usually would be doing my routine with Pavel, it would turn into a semi-friendly competition that would keep us going throughout the hour and a half or so that we exercised. I actually looked forward to that. This, this was just self-torture. Why would anyone go to the gym alone when they could have pleasant company?

After five minutes of standing around like an idiot and getting my breath back I decided that I had had just about enough. I drank some more water and dried myself with my small towel. My legs were awfully hot, I should've brought shorts instead of the cargo pants that I had decided to put on, but I had been too much of a lazy slob to look for a pair in the garbage dump that I liked to call my quarters.

Had I been a regular noncom I would be taking my showers in the gym, sharing them with the rest of the regular infantry. I would also share the same amount of foot germs and athlete's foot that they all did. Instead, I had my own shower. It was the little things, but they made my life easier.

The cold water hit my face and I immediately felt better. I kept the water cold for a few seconds and let it run all over my body, washing off the sweat. As soon as it actually started feeling cold I turned it to hot. It took a while to find the desired temperature, but eventually I nailed it. We should have those showers with screens for handles instead these relics of the last century that we still had. Still, it was better than nothing. This was probably the last shower that I would take in a while.

As soon as I left the shower and dried myself I got dressed again to go to the mess hall. Some of the Navy personnel were already being put to sleep, I still had a few hours left, that meant that I could catch a nice meal and a few hours worth of sleep.

I wasn't the only one who had that idea. Even a rookie with just one tour of duty under his belt would've thought of the same thing that I did. The mess hall actually looked slightly crowded when I arrived. Most of the people having their last meal here were Navy, Reaper Squad was probably the only unit belonging to the UNSC Marines on this ship that were still outside of the freezers.

The line was relatively short, but I still managed to get a group of young sailors to let me ahead of them through sheer presence alone. It probably helped that I had decided to pick up combat boots in addition to black pants and a black t-shirt with the letters ODST printed in white. Just to make sure everybody knew who I was.

"Lasagna for you buddy," the person serving me said.

"Thanks," I nodded as I moved to the side and got my serving of asparagus.

It wasn't very hard to find someone from my squad, everyone else wore either gray or blue to mark them as UNSC Navy. I quickly spotted Sutton and Grigori at a table by the edge of the mess hall. To be fair, Sutton wasn't all that hard to spot. He was easily the tallest man in the room and the most muscular as well. Konstantinov was just sitting opposite him.

I sat next to Sutton, urging him to shuffle sideways on the bench. "Can't believe we actually got some decent chow," I said, eyeing my lasagna.

"Agreed," Sutton nodded. "It's actually pretty good."

I took a bite and hummed happily. The crappy lasagna was pretty good by any standards. It was probably one of those insta-cook types, but that didn't take any of the taste away from it.

"Do you ever take off your cap?" I asked Konstantinov, who had been quiet since I sat down.

"This?"

"No, that," Sutton snarked.

"What? Where?" Konstantinov asked, looking to the side and pretending to be searching for whatever Sutton had pointed out.

"Are you going to answer?" I asked.

"Yes. I take it off when I go to sleep and when I put on my helmet."

Not an answer that left my curiosity satisfied, but an answer nevertheless.

"Why don't you take it off?" Sutton inquired.

"That," Grigori said, "I will not answer."

Sutton and me shrugged and dug into our meals. I had gotten a large serving that I was very thankful for, but I had just gone through some tiring exercising and wanted to replenish anything that I had lost. At least my body wanted to. I ate through my meal like lightning and got up to get another serving. It was a smaller serving, but it did the job and filled me up quite nicely.

While I ate we discussed several things, mostly we joked around about things that had happened back in Ninive. Konstantinov was actually a pretty nice guy, someone that was easy to be around with, but I had a very hard time actually liking him when I knew that ONI had sent him here to inform them on how my augmentations performed. We probably would've gotten along well under different circumstances.

I guess it was not to be.

"Well, I gotta go catch some zees," Grigori announced as he stood up in exaggerated motions.

"See ya bro," Sutton said.

I simply nodded at him.

"So, Sutton," I said, turning to the huge man. "Anything you think that we could fix? In our squad, I mean."

Sutton hummed and thought for a few seconds. "Not really, I mean, it's probably because all of us survived without complications, but I think that we might want to have more than one guy stand guard."

"Sounds reasonable," I agreed. "How many?"

"Three men was the norm in my training camp, it always worked. Even if the rest of us were still sleepy and disoriented the rest could fight properly."

I thought about it. "That's gonna piss some people off."

"Until it saves their lives."

"Until it saves their lives," I agreed. I leaned backwards, stretching my arms and my back, still hurting from my workout in the gym. I suddenly thought that I probably could've done a whole lot other things to make a decent length routine.

"Well Sarge, I'm going to have to catch some sleep as well, we'll probably be defrozen to drop into combat, and I'll feel just as tired as I do right now."

"Go ahead," I said, motioning with my hand.

Sutton left and I finished my meal. I went back to my room after I was done and caught some hours of sleep before Eliza woke me up. I forced myself to get up and walk all the way to my assigned cryo-bay. I cursed and mumbled as I walked to the pod-filled room. My squad was already there and the rest of the assigned personnel were already sleeping.

I said some quick goodbyes to Reaper Squad before climbing into my pod. I was half asleep by the time the door closed. I could feel the anti-freeze fluid that I had swallowed. It tasted like shit and bothered me to no end. I took a deep breath and hoped that I wouldn't have any dreams. I couldn't take one month of nightmares.

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><p><em>As per usual, thanks to Sniper Fodder for proof-reading this chapter.<em>

_Only a couple of things to say now. The series that Agnarsson was talking about in the chapter quote is Battlestar Galactica (the most recent one). I'm not really talking about the series as a whole, but I based the first part of the chapter on the pilot episode of the series. They're in quite similar predicaments. _

_The second thing is mostly useless and you'd do well to stop reading past this point. Oooh, could it be that Frankie is getting yet another love interest? Yes? No? Maybe she just wants to be friends with benefits. Maybe she doesn't want anything at all. But it seems like Frank still loves Layla, or at least cares about her, could it be that he broke up with his previous girlfriend for that reason?_

_Ok, you can start reading again now that I stopped acting like a twelve year-old Twilight fangirl. And no, you shouldn't take anything in the last paragraph as true._

_Stay Strong_

_-casquis_


	96. Terror In Broad Daylight

Chapter XCVI: Terror in Broad Daylight

**August 3, 2543 (UNSC Calendar)/one month later**

**UNSC **_**Inconvenience,**_** Campo Sorrisco System**

"Give me a sitrep Eliza," I ordered as I walked out of the of the cryo bay, my squad in step behind me.

"Don't boss me around, I am-"

"Eliza…" I growled.

"Fine. Lambari is under attack. The Covenant arrived two days ago, we are the first UNSC reinforcements to arrive."

"Space?" Camilla asked.

"Same as always, the UNSC Navy suffered heavy losses but managed to inflict some light-to-medium casualties in return before retreating to the other side of the planet. Covenant Navy hasn't given chase just yet, instead opting to drop off troops and remain in orbit."

"Ground?" Agnarsson queried, his question was more relevant to us.

"It's a mess. And I really mean a mess. There are at least four different fronts and both human and Covenant units are operating completely devoid of support."

"Sounds like a good thing," Snark pointed out.

"Maybe," I conceded, "but we're still fighting a war with no intel or reliable support."

"As the good sergeant said," Eliza agreed. "It's tough down there." She went on before I could ask any more questions. "So far the UNSC Army hasn't suffered heavy casualties. The Air Force managed to save over sixty percent of their aircraft and ordinance from the initial bombings."

"Good," Scarecrow said. "Air support always comes in handy."

"True that," Schitzo agreed. "You should really use it more often bud." Schitzo was wearing black fatigues and a gray t-shirt. He actually looked like a halfway decent ODST when dressed up like that. "By the way, we look slightly ridiculous walking like this. Fast pace, one man in the lead and six men behind. This looks like something Michael Bay would direct."

_Who?_

"Michael Bay, the one with the explosions and the giant robots."

_And the attractive girls all over the place? _ I asked. _Great, I am the Michael Bay of the twenty-sixth century._

"What are you complaining about?" Schitzo teased. "You get to save the world, remember?"

_And the girls._

I sighed and shook my head to myself. I didn't get to save the world, I just got to delay its destruction as long as I could. I found myself wishing, not for the first time, that this was only just some crappy action movie from the twenty-first century. Things might look tough for half the film, then all of a sudden the tide would change, courtesy of an ass-pull. Still, you always knew that the good guys would win, at worst one of the good guys would get himself killed while saving the rest.

Here you got yourself killed for nothing as a norm.

Suddenly I found myself cursing Agnarsson for introducing us to that stupid twenty-first century crap. I mean, who the hell has orgasms over media created over half a millennium ago? It's just weird, and annoying, and weird. I seriously hated him for that, I hated myself as well, being simply absorbed into anything pertaining to twenty-first century entertainment. Except videogames, those things were the most pointless and fake things that I could think of. Seriously.

Back to the situation at hand.

"Civilian evacuations?"

"Since the scout ships arrived the entire planet was put on red alert. Several thousand civilians chose to leave the system while the rest opposed the idea. The ones that left were but a minority. No other ships have left this system since the main invasion force arrived."

"Damn," Lamberti said. "Big colony?"

"Medium-sized. Just over five million inhabitants, most of them living in cities clustered in a relatively small area."

"I take it that the battle is taking place there?" Grass asked.

"Save for a few insignificant exceptions, yes."

I took in all the information. The battlefield was a mess, not good for us, but certainly not good for the covvies either. I only needed to figure out whether that was helpful or harmful for us. "Where are we dropping?"

"Uppergap, small city by Reach or Paris IV standards, but one of the largest in this planet."

"Population?" Lamberti asked.

"Pre-invasion or current?"

"Never mind, I don't want to know."

"Wise man," Sutton nodded.

By that point Reaper Squad was inside the drop bay. Our armor had been moved here, well, at least my armor had been moved here. I didn't like the idea of someone going through my things to get my armor here, but I appreciated the fact that I wouldn't need to take the long trip to my room and back. Besides, my armor looked rather impressive on its mount. It _did_ have an intimidating effect on humans.

I started putting on my armor directly above my pants. The satellites indicated that weather down in Uppergap was a comfortable thirty degrees Celsius, nothing that I couldn't handle. Besides, it's not like we would be doing missions in vacuum. I suddenly remembered that faulty jump and looked nervously at the neatly folded undersuit in a cubbyhole with my name on it.

_You're pushing your luck,_ I told myself as I ignored the under suit and resumed putting on my armor. To my credit, I did grab a long-sleeved Kevlar shirt before putting on the rest of my armor. The boots felt oddly heavy at first, but the exo-skeleton eventually powered up and I felt no heavier than usual. If I added the entire weight that I was carrying on armor alone it would probably amount to five kilos, tops. The rest of the weight was lifted by the armor itself. Technology and its wonders.

My battle rifle and pistol had also been moved, that annoyed me further, but I could see the practicality in that as well. I slung my rifle over my shoulder after doing a quick check and making sure that it was loaded and oiled. My pistol I strapped to the holster on my thigh after doing the same checkup. Its barrel extension/silencer poked out of the bottom of my holster, giving the M6 pistol an awkward look when strapped to my thigh.

I immediately started shoving magazines down every possible pocket. I was already out of battle rifle drum magazines, which meant that I carried significantly less ammunition every mission. I had been thinking about getting Marina to make me some new ones, but I didn't know whether I would end up looking like an asshole. Looking more like an asshole.

I picked up the grenades and made sure that they were tightly secured in their places. Last mission one flashbang had fallen off of the webbing after a particularly rough dive, didn't want that happening again.

"Sarge, you want explosives?" Lamberti asked giddily.

"Sure," I replied with a smile. I had a small obsession with explosives, being talented enough with their use to use them better than most people, but it was nothing compared to what Lamberti could do with them. The Italian light-gunner could make a single cube of C12 bring a firestorm comparable to that of a thermobaric bomb. I mean, it was just insane what he could do. What I just didn't get is that he couldn't make subtle explosions. Lamberti had a hard time blowing the hinges off a door, instead opting to blow the door from its hinges. Subtlety wasn't his forte.

The explosives expert tossed me a couple of plastic bricks. C10 explosives. I raised them in thanks and placed them in my butt-pouch. The hard fabric of the pouch would protect the explosives and their detonators whenever I landed on my ass or decided to sit down. It also held chocolate bars, the real deal, food paste, nutrient bars, water purification pellets, and a picture of me with my family. I had taken it from Camp Afghan back in Jericho VII when I found my uncle. It was an honest-to-God picture, printed on paper and everything, practically an antique.

I grabbed my knife from my combat boot and slid it into its sheath in my armored boots. The almost imperceptible weight made all the difference, it felt like it belonged there, and in a way, it did. The only pieces of equipment that I had kept since I joined the Corps were my armored boots, my rifle, and my Damascus steel knife. My helmet had been destroyed, my shoulder pads had been switched, the chest piece had been damaged and switched for another one. It still had the two slashes across, reminding me that I should switch it even though I never did.

I secured my other two knives and looked at my team.

Camilla, Agnarsson, and Sutton were already ready. Lamberti, Konstantinov, and Snark were not.

The Russian Helljumper cocked his shotgun one-handed and slid it across his back. His MA5K was also slung vertically on the right side of his back. It probably made for a lot of weight, but no doubt the benefits payed off, at least in Konstantinov's opinion.

"Showoff," Lamberti said with a chuckle. "Sometimes I wish I had a shotgun just for that."

"Here," Konstantinov replied, tossing his M90 at the Italian. "Try it."

Lamberti did so and grinned like a five year old seeing his gifts under the Christmas tree. He tossed the shotgun back and picked up the spare shell from the floor before handing it over to Konstantinov as well.

"Ready?" I pressured.

"Done," Snark said finally. He had just finished strapping his large pauldron to his left arm. The piece of armor looked slightly off on the sniper's thin frame.

"Good, here's the plan." Honestly, I had no idea what the plan was, but that's what you have AIs for, right?

The squad converged on the holo-table, surrounding it and looking at it. The device immediately turned on and displayed an accurate real-time depiction of the battle going on in Uppergap. The city did look smaller than several other places that I had been to, and nothing compared to New Alexandria or let alone Mexico City.

That put aside, it looked pretty much like most colonial cities. The downtown area was made up of unnecessarily tall skyscrapers, some of them connecting to each other through walkways or support beams, nothing unusual. The further away you went from downtown the shorter that buildings got. There were some residential buildings surrounding the downtown as well as some small commercial districts. The suburbs were on the city's outskirts and looked exactly like I would expect them to, rows upon rows of old-fashioned houses. The city also had an airport, a seaport, and a spaceport. Both the spaceport and the airport were close to each other while the seaport was on the opposite side of the city, facing the ocean (obviously).

The city was burning. I could see small representations of shortswords and seraphs doing bombing runs on certain streets. So far only a few buildings had collapsed, blocking off some streets, but nothing really major.

"Your mission is as follows," Eliza said, popping up an avatar of herself on the corner of the holo-table. "You are to drop in this area." While she said that she moved over the holographic city and pointed to the floor with her finger. The way she bent over was decidedly not family-friendly, but nothing that I wasn't used to. "The spaceport and airport are both already under attack by the enemy, the airport will likely fall in a matter of hours. The seaport, on the other hand, is not under attack yet. It is unlikely that the Covenant realize the importance of sea travel, if we manage to hold on to it we can resupply the troops in the city and evacuate civilians via submarine."

"Support?" I asked, tapping the objective into the command pad in my forearm.

"So far? None."

"You're telling me that the people down there haven't sent anyone to defend the place?" Camilla asked incredulously.

"No, the UNSC Army is currently engaged in civilian protection."

"The Marines?" Sutton asked.

"There were only a few units of UNSC Marines present on the planet, and most are fighting in the spaceport. Echo Company hasn't deployed yet."

"Understood," I said. "We get in, secure the area and hold it until reinforcements arrive. Simple, easy to remember."

"All right, but how long until reinforcements arrive?" Agnarsson pointed out.

"Less than a day," Eliza informed us.

"Could you be any more vague?" Agnarsson muttered under his breath.

"Yes," the AI informed him before disappearing.

"Very well, you got the gist of it. We go in, we hold the place. First line of defense, not the first time we've done this."

"Yes, Staff Sergeant!"

"Good. Now, how do we go?"

"We go feet first, Staff Sergeant."

"Climb into your pods, let's get this over with."

They all put on their helmets and I followed suit. My HUD instantly went active, making me feel like everything was under control. It was a familiar sensation, albeit a deceiving one, I knew that very little was actually under my control. The helmet asked me to confirm that I had no under suit and warned me about the dangers that involved. It could still seal and cover my head, but the rest of my body would either freeze or cook.

I climbed into my pod and watched the hatch close from above. It wasn't long before the warning lights flashed. They went through the familiar colors at just the right pace. Red, yellow, green.

And then we were off.

"Green," Angel said after a few tense moments.

"Good, Snark, climb that water tower and give us a sitrep on our surroundings, everyone else converge on me."

"Do I really have to climb all the way up just to climb down immediately after?" Snark complained.

"No," I replied. "You can jump down."

"Yeah, you're good at that kind of thing," Bumblebee added.

"Fuck you. Both of you."

"Any time Snark," I said, dismissing his complaints.

The rest of the squad moved to my pod. We had landed in the middle of a warehouse right outside of the seaport. Most of the pods had landed in containers, making it difficult for whomever was inside to climb out, but mine had landed in a small building, punching a hole through the roof and landing on the floor. I had a nice view of the seaport from here, this place was apparently a security building. Small, one story high, only one window and one door. Not to mention the incredible amount of screens displaying security feeds. That last one was kind of a giveaway.

"Sarge," Grass called out before walking inside. "Don't shoot me."

_Like I could…_

"Don't worry," I chuckled. "Come on in."

We waited a minute for the rest of the squad to join me in the building. They were calm and composed, exactly what was expected of the best of the best. I nodded at them and ordered them to take up defensive positions in the building. I asked Scarecrow to give me a lift and I climbed to the top of my pod. From there I jumped to the roof.

"Snark, you there yet?" I asked. I could see that he was almost on the top of the water tower, but he was still climbing.

"Just about," he replied. "And done."

"What do you see?"

"Shit, it seems like the port is already under enemy occupation," Snark cursed. I could see him looking through his scope on the railing surrounding the water tower. "Small group. I can only see a dozen grunts."

"Jackals?" I asked. I already knew there would be an elite nearby.

Snark took a couple of moments before answering. "Don't see any of them," he admitted. "But there might be some out of my line of sight. The port's a pretty big place Sarge."

"Got it. We might need you to cover us."

"Sure, take your time," Snark said.

I climbed back down, hopping on the top of my pod and then to the floor, avoiding the shattered pieces of floor. "So, what do you think?" I asked. It was a general question, but it was directed mostly at Grass and Caboose, they were the ones with the best understanding of tactics in the squad. After me of course.

"The port is about three hundred meters away, right?" Grass asked.

"Correct."

"Open ground, no cover?" Caboose joined.

"Bingo."

Both of them looked at each other for a second before looking back to me. Grass was the first one to speak. "We leave Snark for sniper support here and move inside the compound. We call in a drone and take the covvies out silently."

"If they detect the drone they'll know they're under attack," Angel pointed out. "Better to not use one."

"Drones have stealth technology," Grass reminded.

Angel chuckled. "Right, sorry, forgot about that. And since elites, grunts, and jackals can't look straight up I take it that they are completely undetectable."

It was a clear day, the smoke from the city wasn't lingering above the port, the wind was blowing from the ocean, pushing the smoke inland. A drone would immediately be spotted if anyone so much as looked up. Maybe they should paint the UAVs a light blue underneath, ought to improve their chances of survival.

"You have a point," Grass conceded much to her chagrin.

"So we go in without a drone," Bumblebee said. "It's not like we haven't done that kinda thing before, ain't it?"

"Man's gotta point," I told my squad. "Same plan, Snark?"

"Got it, just don't leave me alone for long."

I smiled. "We don't plan to, just as long as you do your job."

"Great."

"Ok," I said, turning back to my squad. "Let's move out."

We left the security building and exited the warehouse. The chain-link fence surrounding the storage facility had to be cut open, but not one of us planned on taking the whole detour and go out the front gates. Call us lazy bastards if you will, but breaking through reinforced steel with pliers also takes a special kind of strength. Granted, not _that_ much strength, but still some. Yeah…

The space in between the warehouse and the port was nothing but an empty field. The brownish grass would do nothing to cover us from incoming plasma and wasn't tall enough for any of us to hide beneath it. Frankly, it made me nervous to have to walk across the stretch of land without any cover, but I knew that Snark was good enough to keep any sharpshooter off our backs until we reached the wall that surrounded the seaport.

"Scarecrow," I said as soon as all of us were leaning against the polycrete wall surrounding the seaport.

"Got it."

The huge man put his back against the wall and intertwined his fingers in front of him. Angel was the first one to go. He took two steps before jumping into Scarecrow's hands. The huge ODST propelled the Italian up, helping him vault over the fifteen foot-tall fence. Angel grabbed on to the top and produced his pair of pliers from one pocket. He used them to cut the razor wire on top and pushed the metal aside. Once it was safe to climb over he pulled himself up and jumped to the other side.

"Grass," I ordered.

The statuesque blonde nodded at me and jumped over the wall with the exact same motions that Angel had used. Caboose and Bumblebee quickly followed the only female squad member and Angel. Once the four of them were over the wall they fanned out slightly to set up a perimeter of sorts. Their helmet cams showed me that there were several polycrete barricades stored in the area, they would serve to hide us from view and to stop a plasma bolt.

"Here I go," I warned Scarecrow.

"Go for it," he said almost daringly.

I jumped and almost vaulted over the wall, but twisted in midair to grab on to the wall instead of going completely over it. I climbed and placed one leg on each side. The position had me exposed on all sides, but it was necessary for my goal. I slowly let myself fall to the front, belly first, while kicking at the razor wire with my feet. I let one hand fall down and offered it to Scarecrow.

"Jesus fuck you weigh half a ton," I said as soon as I caught him. "I appreciate the mass and all that, but I mean. Wow."

"Thanks Sarge," Scarecrow deadpanned as I heaved and pulled him up just enough for his other hand to reach the ledge of the wall.

Once he had both hands there I dropped to the other side, rolling on my side to minimize the force of the impact. I couldn't resist coming out of the roll with my gun raised, not because it was actually necessary, but because it looked cool when you did that. I glance around me to spot the exact positions that my squad was in. Once I was satisfied that they had me covered I let myself stand normally.

Scarecrow oofed as he dropped himself from the wall. I turned around to see the big man dusting himself off. He nodded at me and I beckoned to him. Scarecrow and I moved towards a polycrete barricade and crouched behind it.

"Stealth?" he asked me.

"Yes, I think that's the best option," I replied.

Scarecrow heaved a sigh. "Not my forte," he admitted. "Perhaps you, Grass, and Caboose could scout ahead while the rest of us stay behind. We'll move up when you clear the area ahead."

"Sounds like a plan," I said, nodding. "Snark, where are the closest hostiles?"

"Wait a moment… There are two grunts two buildings away from you. They are patrolling the area apparently. Not doing a terribly good job at it."

"I'd say," Bumblebee agreed with a light chuckle. I was surprised to see the Scottish Helljumper agree with our marksman, they usually fought over the dumbest things, much like Angel and Grass.

"Caboose, Grass, you got silencers?" I asked them.

They both flashed their affirmative lights.

"Great, screw them on," I ordered. "Snark?"

He sighed. "On it."

I could understand his annoyance. To properly silence his EMR he needed a silencer that was little bit over a foot in length and thicker than a can of Coca Cola. The thing wasn't really that heavy, but it was cumbersome and difficult to screw on. Snark had to give up space on his lower back where he could've stored grenades or a knife. This is just me, but I would hate having one knife less.

"Ready," Grass said.

"Ok, move out, you take the right," I told her. "Caboose on the left and I take the middle."

They flashed their green acknowledgment lights and fanned out. I turned around and gave command of the rest of the squad to Scarecrow. He wasn't as high-ranking as Angel, but they both knew he was the better leader.

I left the area with piles of polycrete barricades and suddenly had a lot less cover. To my side were two buildings made out of some kind of thin metal. Prefab buildings evidently, probably served as offices to the various companies that shipped stuff in and out of this port. They would provide enough cover from the sides, but nothing to hide behind if an alien popped around the corner. I walked through with both buildings to my sides, my pistol raised. The red silhouettes of the two grunts were getting closer. It was a good thing that Snark had a clear line of sight on them.

"They're almost on you Sarge," our marksman warned me.

"I see 'em." I put my back against the wall of one of the buildings and waited for the grunts to pass. "So, knife, or hands?"

"Hands," Grass said.

"Knife," Caboose voted at the same time.

"One each is going to be tricky," I told them.

"Fine, use your hands," the Russian said.

"Got it, Snark, you've got my back."

The sniper winked a green light. "I usually do."

I waited a few more seconds until the grunts were in range. As soon as they were close enough I jumped out of cover. Both of the grunts jumped back in surprise and one of them actually dropped its gun. The other alien tried raising his plasma pistol but met my boot with a lot more intimacy than it would've liked. The alien that had dropped its gun tried turning around, but within an instant my hands were grabbing at its face. The little alien might've been a coward, but it was heavy and strong. I pulled it towards me with some effort and snapped its neck with one quick motion.

The other alien was still stunned and trying to make sense of what had just happened then I punched it in the face. After it fell to the ground I took its gas mask from it and let it choke to death on the ground.

"Nice one," Snark said. "I liked the neck snap, nice touch."

"I thought so too," I replied with a smile. The two grunts were dead or dying on the ground and the loudest noise had been the sound of vertebrae being twisted. I was quite satisfied with myself. "See any more aliens?"

"Not in your immediate vicinity, no."

"I see an elite," Grass informed us suddenly. "Three grunts behind it."

As soon as the aliens' silhouettes appeared on my HUD I ordered Caboose to join me. He trotted towards my position and crouched beside me. He spared the dead grunt one glance and then curb stomped the other one. I raised an eyebrow at him behind my polarized visor.

"You're a psycho," Snark laughed.

We turned to our right and joined Grass. She was hiding behind yet another small building, keeping a careful eye on the small enemy squad. So far, they were milling around the area in between the buildings and the pile of containers.

"How do we proceed?" Caboose asked.

I thought for a few seconds. I got an idea. "Grass, you stay here, Caboose and me will go around some of the containers and position ourselves behind the elite. Make a noise or something to distract the grunts, then we take him out."

"Why do I have to stay here?" she asked grumpily.

I sighed. "Because last time you tried some up-close-and-personal combat you ended up breaking your blade."

That shut her up.

"Caboose, on me."

Both of us backtracked and then sprinted across the open space that separated the containers from the office buildings. As soon as we left that open space we found ourselves surrounded by piles of huge containers. The metallic boxes were at least ten feet tall each and were piled on top one another until they reached stacks the size of three-story buildings. It felt like I was inside a labyrinth of some sort. It was slightly off-putting.

"Over here," Caboose said, pointing to a gap in between the container wall. I followed him through it and we ended on the other side. We both stopped before leaving cover.

"You see them?" I asked.

"Yes, they're close."

"Grass, go!" I ordered.

I heard the sound of something falling down. Grass had entered the building directly in front of the aliens and dropped something to make a credible noise.

I peeked out of cover to see the result. The elite snapped its head quickly but then raised one arm almost lazily and barked some orders. The three grunts yelped in fright and wobbled towards the building, they opened the door carefully and started searching for whatever had caused that noise with frightened expressions on their faces.

"Want me to take them out?" she asked me.

"Nah, let's do the elite first."

"Roger that."

"You want the honor?"

"I do," Caboose said with what could only be a smile behind his visor.

The Russion ONI mole slid out of cover and crouched while drawing his own knife. He now had his silenced carbine in one hand and the sharp blade in the other. Caboose closed in on the elite as silently as a ghost and stopped behind it. The elite was looking at the building the grunts were in, waiting to hear their report. I wasn't an expert in alien behavior, but if I had to guess I would say that the elite was annoyed and more than slightly bored. The fact that it was actually slouching was something that I rarely saw in that race, usually standing broad-shouldered and proud.

"Go," I encouraged.

Caboose aimed at the elite's knee joint and fired one rounds. The report from his gun was audible, but nothing that would alert anyone else besides the grunts or my squad. The elite fell to the ground, using its other leg to keep itself afoot. It started opening its mandibles to cry out in pain just as Caboose stabbed the creatures open mouth, killing the scream before it left its throat. The elite died instantly as the knife destroyed its brain and collapsed to the floor. Caboose immediately rolled to the side and hid behind a crate.

The grunts barreled out of the building, having heard the suppressed gunshot and wondering what had caused it. Once they saw their dead leader in the ground, a pile of blood forming around it, they started panicking.

"They must be shitting themselves," Grass said humorously. "Poor little guys."

"You can take them out now, wouldn't want them to think the situation through and make contact."

There were three suppressed gunshots and the three grunts fell to the ground. One of them rolled down the stairs that lead to the building's door. Grass emerged victoriously from the door, holding her own MA5B in her hands. She looked at the grunts and started dragging the bodies inside the building. The grunts left trails of bioluminescent blood as they were dragged, leaving a grim marker of the firefight. If what had transpired here could be considered a fight at all.

"Shit, Phantom," Snark warned.

"Hide," I said.

Caboose immediately stopped dragging the elite's body and dove in behind his crate, pressing himself against the wall as tightly as possible. Grass placed herself inside the building, completely out of sight to anything from above. I remained where I was, my hands squeezing the grip of my pistol tightly. The dropship flew overhead and I could feel my body vibrating as its anti-grav units propelled it above us. I looked up and saw a brief flash of gray above. The ship was flying towards the edge of the seaport, towards the docks.

"Snark, what's it doing."

"It's dropping off some personnel," he replied. "Ten grunts, four elites, and… fuck. And two hunters."

"Fuck," I echoed.

"Sarge?" Scarecrow asked.

"Plan stays the same. Move up."

"Acknowledged," he replied.

Grass joined Caboose and I and we started moving towards the docks. So far we hadn't spotted any covvies, but we were still alert to the situation. We went through the containers with utmost care, making sure to stay quiet and keeping our guns raised at all times. It wasn't long before we encountered enemy presence. I heard stomping and ordered my team to halt. From the sound of it, it was coming from one aisle to our right.

I turned my translator on.

"-d idiot," a distinctively jackal voice said. "Probably forgot to check in or turned off its radio."

"Pillaging, that's what I would be doing," another similar voice said.

The translator in my helmet had different voices for different aliens. There was one 'default' voice for each race. It changed its tone and key slightly to differentiate different individuals from one another. It was relatively new software, and I hadn't really had the need to use it.

"Silence vermin!" a deeper voice said. It was obviously an elite. "Be ready."

"Please, your brother's probably taking a nap," the second jackal replied with a mocking tone.

There was the sound of a body moving and then I heard something banging against a container.

"I do not need to hear your opinion," the elite growled. "If you open your mouth once more you'll wish you were dead."

I could picture the jackal opening its mouth to say yes to its leader before thinking better of it and nodding quickly. I almost laughed at the mental image. I heard the sound of a body falling to the ground and knew that the elite had dropped the jackal after lifting it from the ground, probably from the throat. I had seen elites do that to marines before.

"Follow me," I ordered.

We emerged into the aisle that the aliens were in just as they moved out. The two jackals were in step behind the elite and the blue-clad alien walked with its back straight and its shoulders wide. No doubt intending to give a good impression to its underlings. The two jackals weren't facing me, but even I could tell that they were both shooting daggers at the elite, especially the one with dirt covering its armor and legs.

I drew my backup knife slowly, as if to not make any noise, and motioned for Caboose to do the same. I ordered Grass to keep her weapon raised and aimed at the elite with hand signals and started moving towards the aliens very slowly and as noiselessly as possible. We closed in on them slowly but surely, not wanting to give ourselves away by walking to fast. It wasn't long before one of the jackals figured out that something was wrong.

The alien raised its beak and said something after sniffing at the air. I jumped at it before my helmet could translate the phrase and slit the jackal's neck. Caboose bounded and did the same thing with the other jackal. I could hear the air leaving their lungs through the new body cavity that we had created. The elite didn't turn around and I thanked God, Buddah, Allah, and Yahweh for our luck.

"Silence," the elite barked.

Silence indeed my friend.

I took aim with my pistol at the back of its knee and fired. The round went through the elite's armor with ease since it didn't have its shields turned on. The elite managed a cry of pain and anger before Caboose stabbed it in the back of the neck, severing its vertebrae and leaving it unable to move. The huge alien slumped to the floor. Caboose kneeled besides it and turned it over, the elite had a look of anger frozen on its face, its eyes still alive. Caboose ignored the alien's eyes and slashed its throat open with his knife even as I cleaned up my own.

"Move up," I ordered Scarecrow.

Us three left the bodies where they were and kept moving forward. The stacks of containers stopped abruptly to give way to a paved road. The road was just wide enough to allow trailers to drive parallel to each other and then the stacks of containers started again. The road was currently housing a group of six grunts walking in a loose formation, all of them looking like they hated their lives.

In the space of a few seconds, they would have no lives to hate.

"Grass, get a bead on them, same goes for you Caboose, these ones we shoot."

"I got the closes ones," Caboose said.

"I got lead and the one to its right," Grass decided.

"I got the other two."

We positioned ourselves as well as we could in the cramped quarters. "On my mark," I indicated. "One, two, three, mark."

Grass and Caboose took out their targets in less than half a second. I waited for the bodies of the dead grunts to fall to get a clear shot at my targets, after which I promptly took them out with well-placed headshots. I nodded at my fire team and motioned for them to cover me. I moved towards the bodies of the grunts and confirmed that they were dead. They were, bullets to the head don't really leave much room for error.

"Ok, so we took out the original group," I stated. "We're still missing the ones that were just dropped off."

"Hunter's might be trouble Sarge, you sure you don't need help?" Scarecrow asked.

"Not at the moment, we'll take those out last."

"If you say so," he replied.

"Snark, can you see anything?"

"No, the- wait. Yes, they moved towards the dock, I can see them clearly. The hunters are staying on the dock."

"No doubt to keep the grunts at ease," I interrupted.

"Yes, whatever. Elites and grunts are returning, they're out of sight."

"Sarge, I just downloaded a map for the port," Grass suddenly said.

I smiled, she certainly thought outside the box. "Great, what's near that dock in particular."

"Dock 5," she informed me. "There is a wide open area for loading and unloading. A couple of cranes and a customs office."

"Not much in the way of cover," Caboose noted.

"For once, that will work for us."

"Yes," I agreed. "We take out the grunts first, keep silent, they still don't know we're here."

"Unbelievable isn't it?" Angel asked.

"Almost," Bumblebee admitted.

We stopped just outside of the open space, hiding behind a bunch of piled up crates. The lettering on the crates was in cyrillic, I could read in cyrillic… just as long as it was written in Spanish or English. Yeah, I pretty much knew how to translate the letters and that's about it. Not really useful by any means, I didn't know anyone who would bother to write in cyrillic in a different language. An odd skill to have, isn't it?

I looked over the crates and spotted the alien platoon. The elites were chatting with each other, too far away for my translator to make anything of it. There was one red-clad major and three minors. The grunts were divided into three different groups and were chatting with one another without worry. The elites looked somewhat annoyed, no doubt because the squad that was supposed to be here hadn't come up to greet them as they should've. In their place I would've entrenched myself and waited for the ambush, but they were cocky and overconfident.

"Grass, help me with the closes grunts," I ordered. To Caboose I added, "Cover us."

The closest group consisted of only three grunts. They were chatting about something involving nipples. I ignored it, dismissing the topic as a malfunction on the part of my helmet's translation software, but it still amused me.

The three grunts were looking towards the sea, taking in the sight while chatting. That was their undoing, since none of them saw us coming. I took position right behind them and waited for Grass to do the same. I counted to three with my fingers and then stabbed a grunt through the skull. I was surprised at my own strength, breaking through bone is pretty hard, especially the skull. I guess my augmentations did a lot more than I gave them credit for.

Grass stuck to the classics, instead slashing her grunt's throat and then doing the same to the third alien while I pried my knife away from the grunt's skull. As I pulled the knife out little pieces of brain flew out along with blood. I shook my knife to get some of the blood off and sneaked back into the piles of containers to avoid being spotted. So far, so good.

"Caboose, they spot us?"

"Not yet."

"Good, circle around that customs office and take out the two grunts silently. Can you do that?"

"Easily," he cockily announced.

I did a mental shrug and beckoned for Grass to follow me. We took a large detour while trying to sneak around the elites and find a nice position from which to kill the remaining grunts. We had to be careful, but not too much. The two hunters were looking at the sea, their bodies rippling as the worms that made them up moved and shuffled. They didn't hear us, or feel us, pass.

"They're dead," Caboose informed.

"Good, set up shop in a high vantage point," I ordered. "The crane accessible?"

"Yeah, got it."

The last five grunts were huddled in a circle much like kids do when they talk in recess. Well, at least that's what I used to do. Nevertheless, the grunts being in a circle meant that we couldn't get closer than we already were through stealth. They had eyes on all directions and if one of them spotted us we would have five plasma pistols firing at us. Instead, we would have to take a different approach.

"Three and two?" Grass asked.

"No, your rifle makes too much noise."

"So, zero and five?"

"Afirmativo," I smiled.

"You know, you sound a little bit weird speaking like that?" she teased.

"You mocking my native language?"

She shook her head. "No go ahead."

"Eso creí."

"Ok, now that's just mean."

"¿Y qué? Tu te la buscaste."

"Yeah, whatever."

I knew that she just had to be thinking that out of the four languages that she spoke Spanish wasn't one of them. I was thinking about it as well, Spanish was the second most spoken language right after English. It was even one of the official languages of the UNSC. Why she would learn Hungarian before learning Spanish or Mandarin was beyond my understanding.

I popped from cover and nailed the five grunts with five well-placed shots.

Simple, really.

My pistol's state-of-the-art suppressor was more than enough to quiet down the gunshot. Sure, it still made some noise, but nowhere near as much as Grass's rifle would've made. The grunts collapsed to the ground before they even knew what was happening.

"They know something's up," Caboose announced. "They're back to back, scanning the area for hostiles."

"They're scared as shit."

"I'd be too," Grass said, "if suddenly my entire squad was dead and I didn't see it happen.

"In broad daylight to boot," Snark added.

Snark, right. "Hey bud, you still got an eye on the hunters?"

"Yeah."

"Ok, as soon as we take them out I want you to get to the wall, I'll send someone to help you up."

"Roger that, Sarge, appreciate the touch."

"Caboose, status report."

"If I didn't know any better I'd say that the elites are shaking."

"Toss a grenade at them will ya? From high up, I don't want them to see it coming."

"Oh ho ho, this is going to be good," he laughed.

The grenade detonated two seconds after Caboose said that. I didn't see it blow up, but I just knew that it had landed right amongst the four elites. The explosion drained their shields completely but didn't kill them. Grass and I popped out of cover and took aim at the startled elites. They had been pushed outwards by the blast and were struggling to get their bearings back. One of them had even fallen over and was trying to stand up.

One burst from my BR55 fixed that. The other elite closest to it stretched theatrically and raised its head as I hit it with another burst. The last two aliens were promptly dispatched by Grass.

"Fire on the hunters," I ordered Caboose and Snark.

They both complied and I soon heard the faint noises that Caboose's suppressed carbine made. Snark's rifle was too far away for me to hear anything though, but I knew that he was taking shots at the two large aliens, aiming for the gaps in their armor and no doubt scoring hits. The hunters roared in anger, testament to the skill of my squad.

"Oh shit," Caboose cursed. He jumped out of the crane's control room just as a green round from the alien's assault cannon made contact with the control cabin. The Russian Helljumper held on with both his hands onto the crane's arm. He made his way sideways while still firing and avoiding enemy fire. Eventually, his and Snark's combined fire- well, his distracting fire and Snark's accurate shots, brought down one hunter.

"Ha! Got one," Snark cried triumphantly.

Not good.

The other Mgalekgolo roared that characteristic roar that their race seemed to have. My teeth clacked together at the sheer strength of the sonic boom and my whole body seemed to shake. The surviving hunter spotted me. It probably decided that since the human that killed its pair was too far away I was the second best option. Or perhaps it just went berserk, I don't know. Hunters are beyond my understanding.

"Shoot it!" I yelled.

I emptied my entire clip at the charging alien just as Grass did the same, but the hunter didn't seem to feel anything as it barreled towards us. Just before it reached us it jumped and slashed at us with its shield in a killing bash. Grass jumped out of the way and ran away while reloading. I dodged the bash and rolled to the side. I took a knee and emptied what was left of my magazine on the hunter's exposed torso, drawing some orange blood.

I jumped backwards as the shield slammed where I had just been kneeling. I rolled back again just in time to avoid a follow up blow. I stood up and looked at the ogre for the briefest of instants before turning around and running for my life. I had quite literally opened the can of worms.

"Sarge, what's wrong?" Scarecrow asked.

"Nothing," I replied as nonchalantly as I could. "Hunter wants to make me its bitch, that's all."

"Hey, are you in the containers?" Angel asked suddenly.

"Yes," I replied. I had just made my way inside the stacks with the intent of losing the pursuing alien. For a creature of that size it certainly moved with a lot of speed. What it lacked in agility it made up for with in strength, smashing into containers rather than stopping and lose sight of me. "Why?"

"Set up a charge in one of them and detonate it as it runs by."

"Got it," I said, reaching for the charge in my pouch.

I slung my rifle over my back as I doubled my pace. I reached for the detonators and placed a metallic device inside the pile of putty as I ran, a task that is more difficult than it sounds. As soon as I was done I slapped the C10 to a container and looked over my shoulder. The hunter was just far enough behind me that I would be out of the lethal blast radius when I detonated.

So I pressed the button twice.

The C10 charge blew up right next to the hunter. I don't know if the explosion killed it, but what followed certainly did.

The container was cut in two by the detonation, weakening the structure. The weight of the containers proved to be too much and they collapsed to the side, right on top of the hunter. The topmost container knocked over one of the containers stacked in the row next to it, bringing them down as well. That set up a domino effect that brought down at least ten rows of containers. Well, it is amazing what you can do with one little block of plastic explosives.

"You knew that was gonna happen?" I asked.

"I could only hope," Angel replied with a smile.

I looked at the collapsed pile of containers. The closest one was just five meters away from me, and even then I had to run a little more after I detonated the C10. If I had decided to stop I would've been crushed just as thoroughly as the hunter. Scratch that, I would've been crushed slightly worse than the hunter. I didn't have armor that could withstand rockets.

"Angel, you're an asshole."

* * *

><p><em>Thanks to Sniper Fodder for proof-reading this chapter.<em>

_I bet you didn't expect the title to refer to the terror that the covvies would be facing._

_There it is, the longest chapter I have written so far in this fic. Over eight thousand words in all. Not that much by some standards, but I usually clock at about five and a half thousand. Still, this is a pretty long chapter with a slightly different type of action that we usually see in this story. I hope that you enjoyed it or else I wasted a lot of time writing this. That would make me sad. :(_

Let me know what you think, will ya?

-casquis


	97. First Line

Chapter XCVII: First Line

**August 3, 2543 (UNSC Calendar)/**

**Uppergap Seaport, Uppergap, Lambari, Campo Sorrisco System**

* * *

><p><em>"You'd think that they'd have another squad full of competent badasses that could do things just as well as we could." -Corporal Naveen Avninder<em>

* * *

><p>"Dammit Eliza!" I complained. "You said less than a day."<p>

"It had been less than a day," she helpfully informed me.

"Well no shit, but you're telling me that it will take them at least a few more hours to arrive."

"Correct," the AI replied.

"Don't get all robotey on me, what the hell seems to be the problem, just give it to me straight."

"The UNSC forces nearby have given up on controlling the seaport for now."

"What?"

The AI interceded quickly. "Just for now Frank, they'll probably send a unit tomorrow or the day after tomorrow."

"Probably isn't good enough."

"I'm sorry, there's nothing I can do."

"Come on! You're telling me you can't divert a couple of platoons to our position? How about you send us half of B Company?"

Eliza was silent for a moment. "I'll see what I can do."

"Let me know," I said, cutting the channel. I looked round and sighed in annoyance. "Ok, you heard the lady, start setting up defensive positions."

The team looked at me in annoyance before they complied with my orders. We had already activated the AA emplacement that the UNSC had mounted in the port to discourage any insurrectionist attacks. I had to thank ONI for their paranoia on this one. As soon as the gun went online I felt a little bit safer. Having a flack cannon active meant that we could shoot down any Phantom dropship that tried to drop off troops behind us, allowing us to focus on turning the entrance into a killzone.

"Sarge," Scarecrow said. "Are they sending drones?" he asked me.

"Yeah, there's one already on its way, no one's coming behind us without our knowledge."

He nodded, apparently satisfied. "How about the watchtowers? Shouldn't we send Snark to one of them?"

"All in due time, with two people we can cover the entire perimeter, save for the sea of course, but that one isn't really a concern."

"Fair enough." Scarecrow looked slightly worried even behind all that armor. "Don't you think a squad is not enough to hold this place?" He paused to get clear as to what he wanted to say. "I mean, the covvies are sure to send a retaliation force as soon as they find out we killed a whole platoon's worth of soldiers here."

"Yeah, they're vengeful like that." I placed my hand on his shoulder reassuringly. "Nothing we can do about it man, we'll do our job and wait for B Company."

"Eliza said that-"

They'll be here, or I'm no Helljumper." I looked at Scarecrow and the smile faded from my face. "Let me rephrase that. Eliza will convince them to _try_ to get here, or I'm no Helljumper."

"Better," Scarecrow said.

Scarecrow looked around and left, his helmet under his arm. I followed him with my eyes until he disappeared and then let myself fall down on one of the more comfortable-looking chairs in the customs office. I took off my helmet and let it fall down on the floor. I swung from side to side in the chair while rubbing my temples; my head was hurting pretty bad. From where I was sitting I could still see the bodies of the dead elites and of several grunts, the sight of them actually helped alleviate my headache.

"Take some painkillers," Schitzo recommended. "You never know when you need a clear head."

_Think it'll be bad for me if I mix them with my anti-psychotics?_

"Only one way to find out," Schitzo shrugged.

I grabbed a bottle of aspirin from one of my several pockets and put it in one hand, then I did the same thing with one of my anti-psychotics. I looked at each pill in turn, both of them looked almost the same to me. I tried measuring their weight before taking them, but quickly realized the sheer stupidity of my action and opted for throwing both the meds in the air and attempting to catch them. That was a mistake. I caught them both, but one of them went all the way down to my throat, making it feel like I was choking and the other one landed in my tongue, giving me an awful taste.

"Blah," I spat out, trying to get the taste out of my mouth. "Yeah, old fashioned way is better."

"Sarge, you talking to yourself?" Snark asked.

"Yeah," I admitted. "How about you start climbing the northwest tower, will ya?"

"Fine, I'll let you know if anything comes up."

"You do that."

I stood up from the chair, the pain in my head already receding. I went into a small staff room in the back of the building and looked around. There weren't any sofas or even cushion seats, the room's furniture consisted expressively of folding chairs. Working here must've been really uncomfortable. I know that I'd surely end up with lower back problems if I didn't sit down in comfortable chairs.

The only other thing present in the staff room was a relatively large fridge. It looked like something out of the last century, I mean, it wasn't even built into the wall, instead simply being connected to a power output. Hell, I didn't even know they still had power outputs, those things were supposedly illegal or something. Hazard to kids and whatnot. Well, I got lucky that this port decided not to comply with some legal requirements.

The fridge still had some of the lunches that the workers brought before the planet was invaded. There were at least eight different sandwiches, all of them marked with someone's initials to differentiate them from the others. Some of the sandwiches looked noticeably thicker than the others, and a couple of them were at least foot-longs. In this department I thought that thickness was better than length. You could fit a whole lot of ingredients in a thick sandwich.

Now please just ignore all the phallic parallels in the previous paragraph.

I picked the thickest sandwich and grabbed a beer. Corona, go figure. I might be half a galaxy away from home, but I still managed to find a local beer. I could remember the commercials for the pale lager clearly. They would show a stereotype of some other country or colony followed by said stereotyped character suddenly something that was traditionally Mexican.

"En México y el mundo…"

"La cerveza es…" Grass joined.

"Corona!" everyone else finished.

Yeah, we have lots of free time.

"Ok, back to work."

"Yes, Sarge," Angel replied.

I sighed and sat down on the more comfortable chairs that overlooked the ocean. I unwrapped my stolen sandwich and opened it. It had salami, lettuce, three different cheeses, mayo, mustard, and two types of ham. To top it all off I noticed that there were no fungi growing in the sandwich. This man certainly had a wife that loved him. The sandwich was pure gold, I swear.

"Sarge, you ok?" I heard Grass ask from my helmet.

I picked it up and put it in front of me so that I could hear whatever she was saying. "What?"

"Yeah Sarge, it sounds like you're having an orgasm in there."

"Huh?"

"Yeah, are you-"

"Ima stop you right there Angel…" Grass interrupted.

"Relax people, I am just eating a sandwich," I explained. "And it freaks me out that you all think about me having orgasms." That certainly shut them all up.

I ate my sandwich and drank the beer while my team started barricading the entrance and setting up on their assigned positions in case of an attack. While they checked their different positions they each confirmed their own fields of fire and designated targets while I kept drinking my beer. I even had Caboose assign me my own field of fire. Leadership certainly has its benefits.

"Done Sarge," Scarecrow told me.

"Good," I replied. "Now everyone just stay at their positions while we wait for something interesting to happen, got it?"

"Oh, oh! This is my favorite part," Snark giddily informed us.

Bumblebee sighed. "Yeah, no."

"And now we play the quiet game," I said. "That's an order."

I saw the six green acknowledgement lights and nodded to myself before putting on my helmet. Snark climbed one of the watchtowers while the rest of Reaper Squad set themselves up in different positions inside the seaport. If anything walked through the door they would be cut down in a matter of instants. If anything hovered through the door it would be cut down in a few seconds. If many things hovered through the door we were seriously in trouble. But you know, nothing we couldn't get out of in the last second.

I made my way through the entrance area of the seaport. I could see the sturdy yet obviously improvised barricades that everyone without a scope on their weapons had set up. Grass and Caboose had gotten themselves nice positions on top of containers, giving them a high vantage point. The rest had taken different positions at ground level. They had the metal door covered from several different angles. As I said, anything coming through would have an extremely tough time getting through.

I climbed to the watchtower. I am not entirely sure why the port had watchtowers here, but since it was a federal facility it had to be protected. If they wanted to make it a fortress it was fine by me, hell, as long as I didn't have to assault this place I was completely in debt with the architects of the place. Even more so with the person that had authorized an anti-aircraft gun inside the port. Sure, it was only a flak cannon, but being only a flack cannon is like being only a .45 caliber pistol.

The southwest tower was pretty simple, a floor with walls and yet another folding chair. There was a metal floor and some railing on the edge of the top floor, but I had no immediate plans to leave the relative safety of the four walls and roof. At least not after combat started. I hopped out into the balcony and looked around. From over here I could see Uppergap in the distance. The space between the city and the port was nothing but flat fields. If anyone came at us we would see them coming from a couple of clicks away.

So now we waited.

"Sarge…"

"Shhh," I said. "I'm trying to catch a nap."

By the time I woke up it was nighttime. The sky looked incredible from here. There were millions of stars and you could clearly see the different constellations. Well, I guess you could, because everything is different here than from Jericho VII. My point is that the sky was something of a sight. Unfortunately, this planet had no moons, so I didn't get the pleasure of seeing an orbiting satellite in an alien night sky.

"Sarge!" Grass insisted.

"I'm up, I'm up!" I shouted. "Why is it always _you_ that wakes me up?"

"Because you're less likely to hit a girl." Angel explained.

"Fair enough," I admitted while standing up. "Sitrep."

"We've got two Armadillos AFVs coming to our position," Snark said.

"B Company?"

"Yah, they got the fancy war paint and everything."

I sighed. "Told you, Scarecrow, Bumblebee, open up the doors, I'll be right there."

I climbed all the way down the stairs, while I did that I kept thanking the architect that decided to give the watchtowers stairs instead of ladders. Whoever designed this place was a genius or could see the future. Or both.

By the time I got down the door was already open and the armored fighting vehicles were rolling through, lifting lots of dust as they did. The Armadillos stopped once they were both inside and did a half-turn so that their rear hatches were facing me. Scarecrow took position by my right and Bumblebee by my left as we waited for the dust to settle down. The rear hatches of the armored vehicles opened to reveal ten troopers in each cargo bay.

The troopers dismounted from their vehicles and surrounded them in a standard defensive formation. At least they didn't aim at nothing, instead choosing to stand around the Armadillos while examining our improvised defenses. I have to admit, the scene alone was quite intimidating. Or it would've been had I not been able to kick their asses with no trouble whatsoever.

"Staff Sergeant."

"Evening lieutenant," I said, saluting Chloe Delacroix.

She looked me over. "Cut the crap Frank."

"Fine Chlo," I shrugged. "Can I just say that I'm sorry for calling you a cheating slut? I was pissed, I almost died fifteen minutes before I said that."

"Yeah, whatever," she dismissed me, purposely ignoring me. "You eight-"

"Seven now," Scarecrow corrected.

"You seven planned on defending this place?"

"That was the idea," I said.

"By yourselves."

"As I said, that was the idea."

Chloe looked at me and shook her head. "Your fields of fire are completely off, you could hit them from different sides alright, but they could shoot back at you with no trouble. If you moved your men more to the sides-"

"They would hit each other."

"No need to move them _all_ the way to the sides, but a couple more degrees wouldn't hurt."

I nodded, seeing her point. "Luckily, we've got twenty troopers working for us now." I looked at the members of B Company. "Working with us now."

"That's better."

Chloe started walking away from her Armadillo while inspecting the area and barking orders with frightening efficiency. She was completely different from the Chloe that I knew. Here she was Lieutenant Delacroix. I rolled my eyes and walked behind her. She was taking long and quick steps, forcing me to jog a little to catch up with her. Officers favored this technique, it was a psychological thing. Having someone chase after you gave you an air of superiority.

As I walked with Chloe I noticed that her men were giving me death glares. It had probably been a bad idea to let them all know that I had insulted their beloved XO. The fact that Chloe was a good-looking woman probably made them all the more protective of her. I sighed once again and forced her to stop.

"What are you doing?"

"What do you-"

"I mean, just post your men on the door or something and keep an Armadillo for backup."

"Really?"

The way that she asked that and raised her eyebrow at me made me cringe a little bit. She had a thing that made it seem like she was my mother and was completely disappointed with what I had achieved in my life. Sure, Pavel was usually the one on the receiving end, but I knew the look well enough.

"Really?"

"Is that a question?" I asked.

"Depends, are you gonna hit me if it is?"

She turned around. "I'm not going to hit you."

I couldn't resist it. "Are you gonna whip me?"

So she hit me.

Not really hard or anything, but I had taken off my helmet to talk with her, and a soft punch to the jaw is usually something unpleasant.

"Ouch."

"Sorry."

"Whatever. Just tell me what you're going to do, I don't want my men shooting at yours or the other way around."

I left Chloe to do her own thing while I returned to my watchtower. I mean, why the hell had she punched me. I made a joke, granted, an un-tasteful joke, but a joke nonetheless. You don't just punch a person because of that, especially someone that you're going to be working with and that will probably end up saving your life. That's like asking God to strike you down. I mean, I wouldn't punch Snark just before a firefight, the guy might get so pissed that he'd purposely miss at a jackal aiming for my crotch.

Not that the thought crossed my head or anything.

"What a bitch," Bumblebee mentioned once we were out of earshot.

"She's really nice once you get to know her," I said.

"Unless she cheats on you with three different guys," Snark chimed in.

"Which would make her not nice," Angel added.

"So we're back to her being a bitch then?" Bumblebee asked eagerly.

"Apparently so," Caboose confirmed with an almost resigned tone.

I chuckled a little bit but didn't fail to notice that neither Scarecrow nor Grass joined the little roast. Grass was probably annoyed that a bunch of guys would say things like that behind a girl's back. With her being a girl and all she probably wanted to speak out but didn't really want to get in an argument. Scarecrow… Scarecrow was simply too much of a nice person to say what he really thought. Unless he _really_ disliked someone, in that case he'd simply go apeshit.

"Now that we've got that little bit of business cleared up," I said through the several conversations. "How about we return to our posts and keep alert."

"Got it," Angel nodded, holding back a fit of giggles.

"On it," Bumblebee said, having little success at doing the same thing that Angel tried.

"Oh, just shut up," Grass complained.

I ordered them to do just that before climbing the watchtower for the second time. Everything felt a lot heavier than last time. It was probably some psychological effect of it being nighttime. My eyelids were feeling heavy and I just felt like taking another nap even though I had just woken up. I probably shouldn't have eaten that sandwich. Or the beer for that matter.

I did my best to keep from falling asleep. I ignored the folding chair and tried walking around, but eventually I gave up and sank into the uncomfortable metal chair. I slouched myself into a comfortable position and waited for sleep to take over. I know I could've taken a caffeine pill or combat stims, but we weren't really in a desperate situation, I needed to save the drugs for when I really needed them.

An explosion made me snap back to full-alertness state.

"What the hell was that?" some trooper yelled in alarm.

"You heard it too?"

"Well no shit, Sherlock."

"Quiet!" another one said.

"What do we need to be quiet for? It's not like that was-"

"Shut up," Chloe interceded.

I stood up from the chair and looked at the city. From the looks of it twenty blocks or more had gone up in flames. The entire night sky was lit up by the huge explosion. The fireball was still there and slowly fading away.

"Get ready for the-" Snark started.

I had a moments warning before the shockwave hit. It wasn't particularly bad at this distance, but it could still be felt, which spoke volumes about the force of the explosion. The shockwave rocked me slightly backwards and rocked the windows of the buildings in the seaport. For a moment the watchtower seemed to sway under my feet, but then the sensation went away just as quickly.

"Blast radius is about… shit, like seven or eight hundred meters," Snark said.

Angel choked. "They dropping thermobarics?"

"What?" Chloe asked. "They can't do that, not in the middle of a city!"

"They just did," Snark told her.

I looked at the city, the explosion was just starting to fade away, but it left a large portion of Uppergap aflame. The newly-created fires started giving out black smoke that could be seen clearly even in the darkness of night. I looked at the spectacle for several seconds, trying to fathom the reason that UNSC would drop its highest yield non-nuclear explosive on a city with friendly military forces and civilians present. It was half a step down from nuking your own army.

"Did you hear a shortsword?" Scarecrow asked.

"Not me," Grass replied. "Maybe it was dropped from orbit?"

"Probably, shortsword are loud."

"It's pretty far away," I told them. "A shortsword could've done it."

"I guess so." Grass sounded like she was a bit skeptic about the idea. "Whichever way they dropped it, why?"

I pondered on the question for a second before opening a channel to the _Inconvenience._ "Eliza, what the hell just happened?"

I got nothing in return.

"Eliza? Answer me."

Still nothing.

"Shit." I opted for leaving a message asking her to tell me why they dropped a thermobaric device in the middle of a city. I told her to answer me as quickly as possible, if something terrible had happened in the city, I wanted to know what, why, how, and who was to blame.

"Chlo," I called out, going to the edge of the watchtower and looking for the Army lieutenant. "Chlo!"

"I'm here!" she yelled.

"I think we might be getting some refuges pretty soon," I said. "Or a wave of enemies."

She looked at me and I held her eyes. "Fine," she finally said. "I'll order my men to stay alert. All of them are awake now."

"Good," I nodded. "Reaper, be ready for trouble."

* * *

><p>They came at dawn. Thousands of them, if not more. At first it was only a few, the ones that weren't in the blast radius or anywhere nearby, the first groups consisted of only a few people, the ones that came later of more and more. Eventually we had a caravan walking into the port, looking for a way out of the city, off of the planet. Out of the war.<p>

It wasn't only civilians though. Occasionally we would get a squad of marines or troopers coming by foot or by warthog. The story was all the same, they were pinned down, their platoon wiped out, the explosion got them separated and they decided to head here because it seemed like a good idea at the time. Most of the marines and troopers that came here were regular soldiers, not one officer walked through those gates. When I asked one private why he only shrugged at me and kept walking.

"Something went terribly wrong down there," Scarecrow whispered to me. "They're frightened."

"Yes, but why?"

I had a feeling that I did not want to find out.

Eventually I stopped watching the caravan of refugees and went up to Chloe, who now seemed to be in command of a couple hundred soldiers. I, on the other hand, happened to have thirty-something marines serving under me, with that number growing ever so steadily. Lieutenant Delacroix was barking orders at some shell shocked troopers, trying to get them to work appropriately and coordinate with helping the civilians.

"Chlo! Chlo!"

"What?"

_Easy there…_ "Have you made contact with command yet?"

"Yeah, they're sending Albatross and Pelicans to pick up the civilians, there are still a couple of… evacuation ships available."

"And us?"

"They didn't say anything, but the city is lost."

"Shit."

"Indeed."

"So we'll be spearheading the counter-attack then?"

"What?"

"Oh, sorry, I forget that you're not elites. Simply armored cavalry."

"Ok, just because you're a Helljumper doesn't mean you have to be a pretentious asshole."

I smiled. "Oh, but it does. In fact, it's part of the job description." I smiled again.

"You know, up yours."

_Yup, certainly a long way from the shy, blushing girl I met three years ago._

"You've changed," I told her with a different kind of smile. No one should be changed that much in so little time. War has a way of doing just that.

"Scarecrow, how many?" I asked after Chloe left me standing by myself.

"By the latest count we've got just shy of ten thousand civvies in here. Many of them are wounded Sarge. Some of them bad…"

"Nothing we can do about them," I said coldly.

I made my way through the crowd, elbowing some of the people that got in my way and pushing out some others. The rest moved out of my way in account to my ODST armor. Most people knew what an ODST was, and everyone thought we were half-insane psychopaths. Too be fair to them, you have to be a bit off to jump from orbit in a coffin with boosters.

"Shit Sarge!" Snark yelled from over his watchtower. "You gotta see this!"

"Give me a feed!" I shouted back, putting on my helmet.

My HUD activated and all the usual gadgets popped up before I got a screen showing me exactly what Snark's helmet cam could see. It showed me the fields in between the city and us as well as the column of escaping civilians. Uppergap was in the background, flames all over the place and smoke drifting up to the sky. None of that caught my attention though, I had seen the sight for hours now. What did catch my eye was the movement near the city's outskirts. It looked awfully close to banshees strafing the road that led here.

"Snark, can you zoom in?"

The Indian sharpshooter complied with my order and showed me up close what was happening. It wasn't just banshees, it seemed like the entire Covenant ground forces that had been in the city were starting to attack in our direction. I could see banshees, wraiths, specters, and phantoms slowly hovering towards us. I even caught sight of some choppers. Accompanying the vehicles was a very large enemy force. By very large I mean fucking huge. As in more than five hundred of them with air support against our two-thirty with two Armadillo AFVs and six warthogs.

"Shit's about to get real," I cursed. "People will start panicking."

"A lot," Caboose added.

"Shit."

I thought about what I was seeing while climbing to the top of my watchtower once again. I was now sharing with two other shaprshooters. One of them belonged to B Company and the other one had arrived all by himself. The second one was a marine sniper, he had a nice SRS with plenty of ammunition to go around. By the looks of it he could handle the stress of combat.

"Hey Sarge," he greeted. "What do you think?"

"I think that you shouldn't be smiling."

"Maybe you're right," the sniper agreed.

"You," I told the trooper marksman. "You informed Ch- Lieutenant Delacroix?"

"Yes, Staff Sergeant."

"Good, what she say?"

"Push the civilians back to the docks."

I nodded, it wasn't like we had much of an option. If we were overrun they could at least try swimming away. Yeah right.

"Grass, Scarecrow, hop on one of those hogs, we're gonna stall the covvies."

"On it Sarge."

"Chlo?"

"Stop calling me that," she ordered me through the radio.

"Fine, Lieutenant Delacroix, we're taking a 'hog to stall the enemy and provide some support to any civilians still coming at us."

"Good, two of my men can take another one, I'll order my AFVs to start shelling as soon as the Covenant is within range."

I hopped down the last couple of steps and left the rectangular building before answering. "Just warn us before you do, wouldn't want to hit us."

"Don't tempt me."

The civilians were now starting to panic. I could see people from all shapes, sizes, and ages running around, screaming and crying. Little kids with no parents or guardians that were evidently not their father or mother were seen all over the place. Women supporting their wounded husbands or men carrying hurt people in improvised stretchers. One in every four was bleeding from one place or another. One in every ten looked like he or she was seriously wounded. One in fifty was missing a limb.

I didn't understand what had happened. The last reports we got told us that the battle was going relatively well, the civilian population had been herded into safe areas and the Army was holding out pretty well against every attack that the Covenant mounted. Reports were almost optimistic about the situation. And now this? Shit, I know that the tide can change, but I never knew it could happen this fast.

"Sarge? Hop in."

"Yeah, sorry, on it."

"I got shotgun then?" Scarecrow asked.

"You've got the grenade launcher."

I knew that the big man was smiling behind his full-face helmet.

Personally I wasn't the shotgun kind of guy, it felt like there was nothing that you could really do. Well, granted, it only feels like that because the guy in the LAAG was ripping through infantry at some six hundred rounds per minute. You also felt more useless because whoever was driving was looking like a badass half the time and the rest of the time they were splattering grunts and jackals under the warthog's hood.

That's just my opinion.

Our battered warthog lurched forward as Grass floored the pedal, the troopers from B Company a dozen meters behind us.

"Grass, where did you learn to drive?" I asked suddenly.

"You don't want to know," she replied cryptically.

"No, actually, I do. That's why I asked,"

She sighed. "Fine, I don't want you to know."

"If you don't tell me I'll find out either way."

"Alright, alright. I'll tell you." Grass swerved to avoid some shrubs and floored the pedal again. "When I was a kid I was kind of a tomboy."

"Huh," Scarecrow mused.

"You wouldn't know that by looking at you."

"What's that supposed to mean?" she asked.

"Grass, you wear makeup for combat."

"Fine, whatever. As I said, I was kind of a tomboy."

"Wait," Scarecrow interrupted, "what kind of tomboy? Like the one that does guys things and hangs out with boys or the one that wants to be a boy?"

"Does it matter?"

"I guess not."

"Just go on," I prompted.

"I would, if you'd just let me." She avoided another bunch of shrubs before barreling through a wooden fence. "I used to drive go-karts."

"I think go-karts hardly qualify for this level of skill."

"And then I did some street racing."

Had I been driving, I would've stopped abruptly. In fact, I almost let go of the LAAG before snapping back to my senses. "What?"

"What?"

"Street racing. As in racing in the street, you know how th-"

"Yeah, I know, I know. But tell me…"

"What?" she asked.

"Were you the driver or the hot girl that did the countdown?"

"Sarge, I will crash this hog."

I laughed at her. "Come on, you know I'm just joking."

"Yeah, yeah, you're an asshole."

The conversation stopped short as blue-white orbs started shooting into the sky. The morning sun made them difficult to spot, but once they reached the top of their arch one could guess where they were going to fall. Now the only problem with that is that it wasn't one or two mortar shots, it was at least twenty different ones from half as many wraiths. Grass now started swerving like crazy to avoid being roasted alive.

I had to hold on for dear life as the wraiths tried to kill me and as Grass tried to throw me out of the car. Whenever a mortar hit too close I could feel the pieces of superheated dirt bang on my armor and the car. I managed to make out the other warthog avoiding the mortars with some luck as well.

"Enough!" I cried, trying to stop Grass from swerving, "We're inside their range."

"They can always shoot straight at us!" she yelled back.

"Not even they are that stupid."

They weren't, instead we suddenly found ourselves being pelted with plasma and brute chopper machine guns. The covvies were starting to fire at us instead of the civilians, the few that were left anyways.

"Weren't we dealing with elites?" Scarecrow asked.

"Hey, shut up and fire!" I ordered.

The entire warthog shook as I depressed the trigger-buttons. The LAAG started firing, slowly at first, but gaining speed as the battery got into gear. The 12.7x99mm rounds started lifting plumes of dirt all over the Covenant line. They were still too far away for me to fire accurately, but enough firepower will make anyone, or anything, think twice.

"Grass, you see that refueling station?"

"No."

"Get to it."

"On it."

"Wait doesn't hydrogen explode?" Scarecrow asked.

"It does, but nothing will hit the hydrogen fuel unless they drop a bunker buster," Grass said.

"You heard the lady, don't be a wimp."

"Never have been Sarge," Scarecrow said while loading his grenade launcher. "Never have been."

"That's what I like to hear," I told him with a smile.

From over here I could see dozens of bodies strewn along the road. All of them presented the characteristic burns of plasma weaponry. Some of the people were still trying to crawl away from the Covenant and towards safety. The refueling station was not different from many of the millions of identical UNSC-sanctioned refueling stations all over human space. It had a bunch of pumps covered by an extended roof and a small store that sold drinks and snacks. The design had held for the past couple of hundred years. It was simple, efficient, and completely unsuited for holding an enemy force.

So why not give it a shot?

* * *

><p><em>Thanks to Sniper Fodder for proof-reading this chapter.<em>

_So what do you think? Would you take cover in a gas station when faced by a whole enemy battalion? I know I wouldn't, but then again, I'd have a hard time doing orbital jumps as well. So yes, this chapter is just buildup for what's coming next. Next chapter's just buildup for what's coming after that and so on. Chapter 101 is going to be one hell of a shitstorm, I promise you that. It's also going to feature dalmatians. _

_Hope you enjoyed and hope you review._

_-casquis_


	98. And Now Something Completely Different

Chapter XCVIII: And Now For Something Completely Different

**August 4, 2543 (UNSC Calendar)/**

**Uppergap Outskirts, Lambari, Campo Sorrisco System**

* * *

><p>"<em>God bless those motherfuckers. God bless 'em." –Staff Sergeant Francisco Castillo<em>

* * *

><p>Grass finally stopped, screeching to a halt behind the station's store. I hopped off from the vehicle and jogged towards one soldier while drawing my weapon. "Corporal, what are you doing here?"<p>

"Same thing as you, sir. Holding back the Covenant."

I asked him to explain.

"We were making our way to the port, safest place for evacuation they said. Suddenly the covvies started firing at our asses. My squad and a couple of Army blokes decided that we'd buy the civvies some time."

"Good man," I nodded at him. "You have any heavy weapons?"

"Two SPANKrs, both of them with eight rockets each. We're saving them up for a special occasion."

"Good. Let's hold these assholes back."

"Oorah!"

"Grass, Scarecrow, help add your firepower. Scarecrow, I want you hitting every single ghost or chopper that gets in range."

"If we get mortared?"

"Don't think. Do."

Truth be told I was thinking about what we could do. There were fifteen of us here and we were trying to do a delaying action on several hundred Covenant soldiers with vehicular support. We could stop the general advance for a few minutes, but not for more than half an hour. The wraiths wouldn't concern themselves with us, they would probably start shelling the port, but the specters would be troublesome.

I jumped to the roof and held on to the edge by my fingertips before pulling myself up. The uneven roof allowed me some cover and decent firing spots. It would do for a few officer kills before this place started really getting peppered with fire.

"Inform me of any high-value targets," I ordered. "I'll be taking out some officers today."

"Yessir."

My first victim was an ultra, of all ranks. I would've thought a major would be the first one to go down, but the proud-warrior brute was just standing right in the open, commanding his troops to press forward under our small amount of firepower. Two bursts to the chest certainly made the alien think twice about the stupidity of his actions. A third one prevented him from making anything to correct said stupidity.

"Gotcha."

The small defending party was encouraged by my first kill and started spraying the Covenant. Although the technique was almost completely ineffective, it did have the desired intimidation effect and forced the soldiers directly in front of us to halt their advance completely and drop to the floor. Once they did that the entire section of the line stopped with them. Once that happened we were in for one helluva firefight.

"Brute, major!" someone shouted. "Two o'clock!"

Four bursts from my rifle had the brute on the ground, bleeding through three holes in its chest and neck. I took advantage of the opportunity and killed three grunts before the rest thought better of it and hid behind one of their deployable shields. While I did all my sniping I looked for jackal sharpshooters. I could spot a few of the regular kind, the ones with plasma shields. I needed to watch out for them as well, but with plasma pistols or needlers they were almost harmless at this distance.

"Shit, incoming!"

I looked up just in time to see the pink mortar shot hit a couple of meters to my right, down on the ground. A spectre had decided that we were becoming enough of a nuisance that we should be taken out immediately. Of course, a rocket to the driver's seat ended the pilot's plans prematurely. The vehicle crashed to the ground as its anti-grav units failed and then exploded as its fuel compartment was reached by the fire.

"Nice one!" Grass complimented.

"I aim to please," the marine replied.

_What? That's supposed to be my phrase._

"Yeah, but you haven't said that in ages," Schitzo pointed out. "In fact, you never did say it that much."

"Fuck off."

No one paid me any mind, they all thought I was talking to the covvies. Better that way.

"I think they've noticed us!" one marine said.

"What made you say that?" asked another one. "The amount of plasma being shot at us, or perhaps the spectre shelling us."

"Marines, your observation prowess never ceases to astound me," one of the army troopers quipped.

"Oi, buddy, you do realize that over three quarters of us in here are marines?" yet another soldier said, joining the conversation. "Oh, didn't think so."

"Who lacks observation prowess now? Bitch." The first marine couldn't have been any smugger.

It was at that moment that the Covenant scored their first hit. And when they did it, they did it big. Three different wraith mortars hit our position within seconds of each other. Two shots went wide, one hitting the ground near a pump and the other one melting through the metal roof and detonating on the floor. The third one landed right behind the small store. The blast caught one of the troopers and two marines.

I looked up just in time to see another two orbs arching downwards.

"Shit."

I jumped from the roof and landed hard. My left ankle twisted just enough for me to cry out in pain. I felt the detonations behind me and cursed in pain as the heat from the plasma mortars scorched through my armor. I half-ran, half-hopped to cover as a dozen eager brutes set their sights on me. One spiker round scraped my arm, cutting through my glove and through some skin, but didn't do anything other than add to my pain.

"Fucking shit."

"Sarge, you ok?" Grass asked, she was checking on the trooper. From the look of it and the disproportionate amount of charred flesh I could tell that he wouldn't make it.

"Fine, ankle," I explained. "Nicked in the hand."

"Here." She tossed me some biofoam.

I grabbed the half-empty can and poured some of the medicine into my hand. I cried out for a third time when the biofoam started burning at my hand, closing wounds and holding tissue together. I clenched my other fist for a few seconds before the pain finally receded. Once I had use of both my hands I set my left boot to compress around my ankle, allowing me to walk and run, albeit awkwardly.

"Scare-"

The whole hydrogen deposit blew up.

Grass was blown through the glass windows and into the store. The remaining trooper was engulfed in the fireball and I had just enough time to roll into a ditch that separated the store from the parking lot. It wasn't a very deep ditch, but it was just enough for me to escape with only a few burns on my left arm. The same arm that had just been shot with a giant spike. The sound of flames burning oxygen was audible for a second and a half before it receded.

"Scarecrow!"

"I'm good, three marines are down and one trooper is KIA as well."

"Grass?"

I got scared when she didn't reply, but then I saw her vitals in my HUD and breathed easily again as I saw that she was simply unconscious. That made for seven dead in the last few seconds, and one unconscious and useless.

"'Crow, get that SPANKr and flame that fucking wraith, everyone else, hold back the advance."

I climbed out of the hole and got a good look at the devastation that the station's explosion had caused. One of the warthogs was completely wrecked, useful for nothing other than light cover now. I could see three charred bodies strewn over the pavement, their clothes and skin still on fire, the other body was nowhere to be seen. The store's front wall was burnt black and its windows shattered. I could see Grass' leg on and a couple of overturned shelves inside.

"Bunker busters, huh?" Schitzo asked me. The guy was wearing a black shirt with the words 'Flame On!' written in orange. The gall of him.

"So, Bunker Busters Sarge?" Scarecrow echoed.

"Fire that fucking thing already!" I yelled at him just as another mortar detonated thirty feet from me.

"Ok, on three," Scarecrow told another marine I couldn't see. "Three!"

I heard the rockets leave their tubes and moments later the sound of two explosions made its way to my ears over the noise of the firefight.

"You!" I called to one of Chloe's soldiers. "Get the lieutenant to start shelling this place."

"On it!" the man replied after firing a burst of suppressive fire.

I grabbed my BR55, now burned in addition to all the scars that it already had, and aimed at a couple of grunts making their way towards us. They were carrying a plasma turret and its battery. I sighed as I aimed and shot the second grunt. The three-round burst hit the large battery that the little alien was lifting. It did nothing other than puncture the casing, but blue-hot plasma started pouring out, splashing all over the unlucky grunt. I chuckled grimly as I shot the other alien. I didn't plan on making it easy for them, especially after they killed seven humans.

"There, another wraith!" one trooper warned.

"Range?"

"Four hundred meters."

I heard another rocket leaving a tube on the other side of the small building and then the cry of joy when it detonated against the tank's hull. A few seconds later another rocket flew from its tube, this time I only heard cursing and assumed that the valuable explosive had missed the tank.

"Incoming!"

I looked up and saw nothing. I knew better than to be a confident asshole, so I crouched and made myself a small as possible against the wall. When the mortar detonated against the building my entire body shook.

"Firing!" Scarecrow announced, not wanting anyone to waste another rocket. "Impact. Wraith is down."

"How's the shelling going?" I asked.

"El-tee is positioning the 'Dillos!" the trooper replied from across the store. "She says that."

And just like that he was hit by a beam rifle.

"Sniper!" I warned.

Scarecrow was smart enough to run around the corner and position himself behind solid polycrete. The same could be said for the other two soldiers, both of whom jumped over a sea of plasma fire and were lucky enough to avoid being burnt to death or sniped. The two marines hid behind the wrecked warthog, but one of them was hit in the leg just as he turned the corner. The other marine grabbed him from the armpits and dragged him into safety.

"Shit, Status!" I called to him.

"Leg's gone!"

"What?" the wounded marine asked. "What?" He cried out in shock as he realized what had just happened. It took just a few moment for the shouts of anger and indignation to turn into screams of pain.

I looked around, trying to find a viable way to hold this position.

"Scarecrow, start the warthog," I ordered. I looked at the two troopers and ordered them to make sure nothing came around the corners. "_Inconvenience_ come in, this is Reaper-Actual, come in _Inconvenience._ Eliza! Answer goddamit!"

"I read you Sergeant, what do you need?" came the cool and collected voice of the artificial intelligence.

"I need you to fucking bomb the covvies in front of us to kingdom come ASAP!"

"Understood, there is already a Shortsword bomber headed in your direction. In fact, it is-"

* * *

><p><strong>Lambari Two Air Force Base <strong>

**Captain Casey "Triple C" Crouch**

"Cap'n, we're taking off in five."

"Roger," I shot back. Williams had abstained from entering the room completely. I was, after all, a woman.

I finished zipping up my flight suit and jogged out of the changing room. I had been awake and on edge for the past few hours, but I hadn't received any orders until half an hour ago. The Covenant had been on Lambari for a few days now and I hadn't been called to action until they had hit Uppergap. My Fini Flight was supposed to be yesterday, I had requested a transfer to an academy that would teach me to fly Longswords. I was sick of being in this boring rock with nothing exciting while other pilots got to kick alien ass in space dogfights.

Now I found myself missing the idea of living out my days on a rock, flying good old-fashioned AF-00. My fighter was now over forty-five years old. The old bucket had been living out its glory days ten days before I was even born. That's not to say it was a bad plane, it was simply obsolete.

"Hurry along Cap," Williams urged. The man was eager for combat, not unlike me a week ago, but his resolve had only gotten stronger while mine faltered at the news of an actual invasion.

"That's ma'am to you, Williams," I reminded the lieutenant of his place.

"Sorry ma'am, yes ma'am."

"The Gryphon is fueled and ready, the pre-flight is done."

I stifled a curse. There were engineers and mechanics that were qualified to do the pre-flight check, but I preferred doing it myself. "You sure?"

"Sure as can be," he replied quickly. "What do you think about all this?"

"Simple," I lied. "We escort a Shortsword to blow some xenos to hell."

"I know, I know, but this is our first combat mission!"

"Christ Williams, you sound like a girl touching herself for the first time."

Williams stopped in his tracks and looked at me in shock. Sometimes he forgot that I was a military woman and not just a regular woman. He quickly smiled after that and kept walking.

"You wouldn't know anything about that, would you Captain?"

"Don't push it," I growled.

"Right ma'am, sorry ma'am."

As we left the barracks the sun hit my face. It was the only sun that I had ever seen. I had always wanted to see new planets and visit different solar systems and never to return to this boring planet or see its boring sky ever again. Now I just hoped I would live to see the night sky one more time. Lambari was my home, I was a fifth-generation Lambarian, and like many, I had wanted nothing more than to leave as soon as I turned eighteen. For me, the first step towards leaving had been joining the militia, followed by a jump to the Air Force. Then I was supposed to forever leave this place.

Forever.

I might just never leave.

"Hurry along," Williams called out, getting me out of my thoughts.

_All the better, wouldn't want to get lost in thought during combat._

I suddenly realized that I had forgotten to have coraine. I had left my stash back in my quarters, hidden perfectly inside my mattress, the hiding place only accessible if you knew where to look. Since the fine powder was inside a plastic bag, it was impossible to feel anything unusual in the rock-hard mattress. I cursed myself for not taking the drug. Being more calm and collected right now sounded pretty damn good.

"Captain!"

"At ease," I dismissed the deck airman.

I climbed the ladder to the cockpit and stood on the top rung for a few seconds to look around. I could see a column of smoke in the distance, showing us exactly where Uppergap was. Closer to me were several other Gryphons being fueled and armed. The only craft that were ready for combat were my own fighter, a Shortsword, and another Gryphon. It was Salazar's plane.

Suddenly I found myself breathing a little bit easier. Salazar was a relic of the past, true, but he had seen combat during the Insurrection and was just one kill short of being an ace. The man was grumpy as hell and a bit of an asshole, but right now I was glad to be his wingwoman. No one had any combat experience in the base other than him. He would know what to do. Right?

I waved at Salazar and received a cool nod in return before climbing inside the cockpit. Williams was already in the seat behind me, powering on all the screens and tapping some commands. I gave a thumbs up to the control tower as the hatch started closing on me. The black cystal made contact with the cool metal and hissed as it sealed the cockpit. The crystal depolarized and several holographic displays appeared in front of me before I put on my helmet. The small helmet felt like a wool hat on my head.

"Hey Cap! Did you know that in the old days the helmets were as big as a basketball and they had glasses with displays on them?" Williams asked.

"Yes, you told me on our last patrol flight."

"Oh, right. How uncomfortable right?"

"Sure. Engines?"

Williams sighed. "They're green."

"Missile pods?"

"Armed and ready to fire as soon as I take off the safety."

"Fuel pods?"

"Full and safely attached."

"Flaps an-"

"Triple C, this is control tower, do you copy?"

"Loud and clear," I replied.

"Good, you are cleared for takeoff, your designation for this flight is Shield-2, acknowledge."

"Acknowledged."

"Whenever you're ready."

I turned on the engines and waited for them to go to full power.

"Hey Cap, what happens when you become a mayor and your initials are no longer three C's?"

"I'll still be Triple C," I replied, flipping up some switches and making sure that the strip was clear of any personnel.

"Really, what's your middle name?"

"It starts with C," I replied evasively.

Williams chuckled. "Have it your way ma'am." The man was cocky, but he was a pretty decent systems officer. In fact, he was almost as good at his job as I was at flying this plane.

I activated the take off sequence the moment I saw the Shortsword bomber's engines light up red. My fighter lifted from the ground vertically and wobbled a little bit as it stabilized. I changed the angle of the thrusters to keep up as the Shortsword started gaining speed. I gradually changed angles to stay to the bomber's left as it picked up speed. Eventually the Shortsword left the ground and started a steep climb. Salazar and me followed a few meters behind in a closed formation.

"Shield flight, this is Control," a familiar voice came, flooding the cockpit. "HUMINT has spotted several Seraphs and AA emplacements located in the surrounding area, stay sharp."

"Thank you control, we will," the Shortsword pilot replied.

As we climbed higher and higher I got a clearer view of the surrounding area. From this altitude I could see the tallest skyscrapers in Uppergap. A few more seconds of climbing and I'd be able to see the port and the ocean. Uppergap had some pretty nice beaches, but most of them were empty now. The smoke floating into the sky darkened a sizeable patch of sky in front of me, and the holo-displays marked my target as being on the other side of the city.

"Don't lose sight of the river," Salazar suggested. "In case electronics fail."

"Got it," I nodded, even though he couldn't see me.

"Captain, I got a blip on the radar," Williams warned. "Signature matches UNSC measurements of two Seraphs."

"Safeties off!" I ordered. "Salazar?"

"Got it, they're coming in from OS, I'll turn to meet them head on, circle around them and catch them in the ass."

"On it, Shield-1?"

"We'll be fine, don't be too long."

I banked my plane hard to the left just as Salazar did a half-loop and hit the afterburners. I zoomed in on the two red circles that marked the Seraphs and waited for the cameras to switch settings to account for the light and changing distance. The two Covenant fighters were teardrop-shaped. I had constantly studied them and fought them in simulations, but never for real. The fighters were both immediately attracted to the obvious target of Salazar's Gryphon and changed course ever so slightly. No doubt they wanted to take out the defiant pilot before shooting down the bomber.

"Locking distance?" I asked.

"A few more seconds," Williams informed me.

I was sure that we could shoot the missiles now and have them lock perfectly and track the two Seraphs until they hit them or ran out of fuel, but the enemy craft were too far away and would get a nice warning before they were in any real danger.

"Firing one!" Salazar's systems officer said.

I zoomed in on the other Gryphon and tracked the missile with my sight. The small weapon flew at high speed and hit the lead Seraph head on. The craft shook heavily and was bumped slightly of course, but the shields held.

"Move it along C's," Salazar urged.

"Almost there!" I said.

I banked hard to my left and found myself above and behind the two Seraphs. The stealth design of my fighter no doubt had me hidden from them, but the advanced Covenant radars would locate me in a matter of seconds as soon as I let go the big guns. I positioned myself directly behind one Seraph and waited for Salazar to indicate me to fire.

A streak of tracers flew a hundred meters to my right and I saw the other fighter shoot by in between the two Seraphs. As soon as that happened I gave the order to fire. Williams let go five rockets at one of the enemy fighters and the three remaining ones in that pod at the other one. Eight missiles flew out of my plane at supersonic speeds with only one intent programmed in them. To kill.

It was a few tense seconds as the five missiles tracked the Seraph. It was a lot closer to me than the other one, so it didn't have as much time to take evasive maneuvers. It let go a few flares and succeeded in stopping one missile and avoiding another one, but soon three missiles hit it. The first one drained its shields and the other two finished the job.

"Whooo!" Williams cried out. "That's right fucker! You don't mess with Lambari! Nobody messes with Lambari without me hearing about this."

I was just as excited for my first kill as he was.

I changed directions and took off in pursuit of the other Seraph. I was in an advantageous position so I quickly positioned myself in its six. The missiles immediately locked on, but three others hadn't been able to hit this craft, so I abstained from firing.

"I'm with you," Salazar warned.

I looked up and to my right to see the other fighter flying some fifty meters away from me. No doubt his missiles had already locked on, but he was waiting for me to make my move. After all, I had reached this bogey first so I had killing rights.

Then the bogey seemed to stop completely and banked to the left faster than my plane could follow. I cursed as I switched back to hovering mode to take a tight turn. I maneuvered some and almost stalled but managed to stay on its six. As soon as I got a bead on it the craft shot to the right again. I did the same thing and ended up behind it just like last time.

"You're going to have to try harder than that," I growled at it.

And then it pulled a Cobra on me.

Yes, I know, I fell for the oldest trick in the book.

The Seraph's nose tilted upwards over ninety degrees and it decreased speed substantially. I couldn't do anything other than stare at the enemy fighter in shock and anger as I shot past it. As soon as I was ahead of it the Seraph returned to a horizontal position and hit the pedal. I immediately got a thousand alarms and warnings. I was within plasma cannon range, I was within plasma missile range. I was being painted with targeting lasers, I was being tracked, I was being followed. I was about to get a pointy stick shoved up my ass.

I hit the afterburners in an effort to lose my attacker, but the alien craft was superior in almost all aspects in addition to having me in its crosshairs. An alarm drowned all others and I banked hard to the right.

"Flares!" I ordered.

I heard the sound of flares leaving their tubes and did several barrel rolls while aiming the nose towards the ground. As soon as the plane was facing downwards I pulled on the stick to stop my drop and gain some altitude. The maneuver was supposed to confuse the target systems of plasma missiles and make them opt to hit the flares. I also dropped cubes. With any luck the little metal pieces had been hit by the enemy's laser targeter and the missile would fly at them.

"Keep the Seraph steady!" I heard Salazar yell.

It went against everything I knew, but I started flying in a straight line as alarms started blaring all over the cockpit. I banked to the right as a burst of plasma fire flew by my wing and then to the left to avoid a follow-up burst. Immediately after that I saw tracers fly above my cockpit. I cursed and turned the plane upside down for an outside loop.

"Are you fucking crazy! You could've hit us!" I yelled at Salazar.

"Fuck it, I told you to keep the Seraph steady," was his only response.

I looked at my holographic display to see what Salazar and the Seraph were doing. The Covenant craft had banked sideways and was trying to get behind the Gryphon while Salazar did the same. The two imbeciles had gotten themselves locked up in a spinning match. The Seraph was faster and had a tighter turn radius. I needed to do something fast.

I interrupted my loop and shot upwards towards the Seraph, I fired a couple of rounds at it before flying past it. The dumb pilot saw the opportunity and took it, taking off behind me and abandoning its prey.

"Move it!" I cried.

"Firing," the fighter's systems officer said.

I kept my eyes on the holographic display in front of me and saw eight missiles fly out of Salazar's craft. All eight of them made contact with the Seraph, overloading its shields and making contact against its weakly armored hull. The hologram disappeared with a small blip that hardly seemed important, but I sighed with relief at having the plane off my ass and being able to go back to our mission. I checked my flight clock. It had taken us less than five minutes to finish this dogfight. It seemed like it had been a lifetime and a half.

"Let's get back to it," Williams suggested nervously.

"Sure," I agreed. "And Salazar, congratulations."

"That's right," his systems officer said. "You're an ace now, Gramps."

"About goddamned time," he replied, barely concealing the joy in his voice.

"Shield-2 and 3, you good?"

"Yeah, we're good Shield-1," I indicated. "You?"

"We're positioning ourselves, if you hurry you might even get a strafing run."

"On it," I smiled, hitting the thrusters and flying through the smoke.

Suddenly I found myself forgetting all the fear that I had been experiencing a few minutes ago. In fact the only sign left from that was my sweaty clothes. I was usually cool as frost when we flew, but this combat thing had me sweating like a fat man having vigorous sex. It was a dirty feeling and made me feel like taking a shower.

Our planes emerged from the smoke to see a battle-torn landscape. This whole section of Uppergap was reduced to nothing but rubble and corpses. The fields on the outskirts were littered with craters and husks of destroyed vehicles, mostly civilian cars, but there were a few UNSC wrecks in there as well. The lack of destroyed Covenant vehicles made me feel angry.

"Shield-1, we see you," Salazar said. "You good?"

"Safeties off," he replied. "These bastards are in for one helluva… hell," he finished awkwardly.

"Impressive," his copilot said. "One helluva hell, I gotta write that one down."

"Fuck off."

Our faster planes had caught up with the Shortsword by that point, and both Shield-3 and me were flying about one kilometer behind Shield-1. Salazar stalled a little bit and positioned himself two hundred meters to my tail and slightly to the left. We were completely exposed to any enemy interceptors, but radar didn't detect anything. On the other hand, this was just perfect for a strafing run.

"Rolling out the carpet."

I saw several black dots fly from the Shortsword's bomb bay. The little black dots were in reality incendiaries of about one ton each. Those little dots would mean the death of hundreds of enemy soldiers. The entire ground in front and below me lit up in several explosions. The advancing Covenant force suddenly found itself enveloped by fire. I nodded to myself in agreement to the idea of several xenos dying fiery deaths.

The fireballs consumed themselves just in time for me to aim my nose to the floor and fire the GSh-12-84 gatling gun that my craft was equipped with. The entire AF-00 shook as the 30mm rounds left the barrels at speeds in excess of three thousand rounds per minute. I saw my bullets rip through still-working wraiths and chuckled at the sight of brutes having their limbs torn from their bodies when hit by one of the huge rounds. The supersonic ammunition flew faster than sound, so the soldiers that were hit by it wouldn't even be able to hear the round that killed them. I don't know whether that's a mercy or an insult.

* * *

><p><strong>Staff Sergeant Francisco Castillo<strong>

A huge explosion interrupted Eliza. I missed the initial bombs, but when I looked to my right I caught sight of a Shortsword bomber dropping incendiaries over the Covenant line. Immediately afterwards two AF-00 strafed whatever had survived the initial onslaught. I was left just standing there, my mouth slightly open in gratitude and my entire left arm in horrible pain.

"God bless 'em," Schitzo said. "God bless those motherfuckers."

"I see that you already saw the Shortsword," Eliza told me. "A pelican was dispatched to your position as well. It is carrying a tank and a medic."

"Eliza, you're the best," I thanked her. "I mean it."

"That statement is inaccurate," she informed me, slipping back to a more robotic voice. Eliza chuckled a little bit, a highly unusual display of emotion for an AI, even for Eliza. "But the comment is appreciated nonetheless."

"Gryphons eh?" Scarecrow mused. "Those things gotta be at least thirty years old."

"Right now, I'll take any help I can get," one of the troopers said. "Even if it's flyboys."

I kept my sight on one of the two fighters as it banked to the right and circled above us. I thought that maybe it would be stupid and a little bit childish but I still did it. As the Gryphon flew overhead, wings tilted sideways in greeting I waved at it and saluted the planes. After all, they had just saved our asses from sure death.

_Which reminds me._ I turned around to face the port. "Nice one Chlo," I said. "I mean, you could've been a little bit slower, but it wouldn't have mattered anyways."

"Shut up, I did my best and it all worked out anyways."

I smiled before remembering the dead marines and that one of Chloe's soldiers had been killed. "Actually…" I started.

"Yeah, I know," she interrupted me quietly. "Nothing we could do about it."

_I could've reminded him to keep his head down. _"He died a hero's death," I reassured her. "Be sure to tell that to his family."

"I will," Chloe said. "Over and out."

Scarecrow climbed on the warthog and killed any surviving covvies that were an immediate threat to us while I made my way inside the store and checked on Grass. Her vitals were strong and steady, but the shelf that she had landed on was dented right where her helmet had hit it. She probably had a concussion of some sort in addition to being knocked unconscious. I moved her carefully and put her on the floor before taking off her helmet. She was bleeding from the back of the head, but only a little bit.

"Grass," I called to her. "Wake up." I slapped her cheek softly a couple of times before her eyes flickered open. "Easy," I said. "Relax, help is on the way."

grass nodded weakly before slipping back into unconsciousness.

Three minutes later Eliza's promised pelican arrived. It dropped a Scorpion tank and ten marines from Echo Company. Luckily, Darbinian was not amongst them. Instead, I focused on a woman with a corpsman's arm band on her right arm and locks of blonde hair coming out of her helmet. I waved at her and she moved in my direction.

"You all right?" Hanna asked me. She sounded worried, which made me feel way too good about myself.

"I'm fine, Grass hit her head."

Lockley nodded and pulled out some scanning device from her pouch. She placed it to Grass' head and held it there until a light blipped green. Hanna lifted the scanner to her and read the results. Apparently they were good because she didn't get that look in her eyes. "She's fine. A concussion, but nothing serious. What happened to your arm."

"I burned it."

"I see that," she said exasperated.

"The hydrogen fuel blew up," I explained. "Fire scarred my arm."

"Your hand?"

"Spiker nicked me."

"Jesus Frank, be more careful will you?"

"I try," I shrugged. "I really do."

"Oh, do you?" she asked me as she reached for the magical all-healing biofoam. "And you are careful by not wearing your fire-retardant under suit?"

To that, I had no smart comeback.

* * *

><p><em>So there it is people. Chapter 98 of The Life. Thanks to Sniper Fodder for doing a great job at proof-reading this chapter and thanks to you for taking some time off your lives to read this story. I have no doubt as to it's entertainment purposes, but the prose is probably butchering the English language and literature. Luckily, though, I have the excuse of English being my second language.<em>

_Many of you might have noticed (or not) that this story resembles a TV series more than a movie. In fact, I think I mentioned that same thing a few chapters back. I've noticed this myself and was surprised that it had no multi-chapter arcs. Sure, we have battles that last a dozen chapters and the entire story could be Frank's arc, but still, no Myth Arc or any other kind. I'm a little bit ashamed to admit that the closest that I have to that right now is a Romance Arc (check TVtropes if you want to know exactly what an "arc" is). I just wanted to let you know that I'm working on fixing that and will use past and new elements to create plots that span multiple chapters and in-story years._

_Now that I put that out there... I take it taking cover in a gas station didn't turn out to be such a good idea after all, did it? And what did you think of the flyby (ahem.. girl) section? I looked up some Air Force jargon and used some aircrafty terms to make it look professional, but I honestly had almost no idea what I was writing about. I think it went pretty well considering those shortcomings._

_One more thing (this is one pretty long author's note...), I'll be leaving for vacations in a tropical paradise the day after tomorrow. I'm going to try to post another chapter tomorrow afternoon, but probably won't be able to make it. Worry not, I have some Easter candy for you guys when I return._

_-casquis_


	99. Urges

Chapter XCIX: Urges

**August 12, 2543 (UNSC Calendar)/**

**UNSC **_**Inconvenience, **_**geosynchronous orbit above Uppergap, Lambari, Campo Sorrisco System**

* * *

><p>"<em>When you get this small breaks between fighting, during a battle, you get edgy, nervous, like you need to do something. You get me?"- anonymous UNSC serviceman.<em>

* * *

><p>"Hey Sarge, how's the arm?"<p>

"Good, thanks for asking," I replied. "I take it your concussion wasn't particularly bad."

"Nah, they discharged me after giving me some meds."

"They kept me in for one day," I explained, "but then they sent me to a FOB when you had already left. I stayed there until yesterday."

"Yeah, we were deployed in a long-range recon mission. Nothing serious. Boring as hell actually, didn't fire any shots."

"I'll take boring over exciting any time," I chuckled. "Maybe that way I won't get shot as often."

Camilla laughed that hypnotizing laugh of hers and patted me on the shoulder. "Maybe you're right."

"I usually am," I smiled back. "Where's the rest of the team?"

Camilla shrugged while opening her milk carton. Her breakfast consisted only of fruit and cereal as opposed to my pile of eggs, bacon, beans, and sausages. For a marine that went without food for extended periods of time she certainly kept her diet. "Most of them are sleeping or looking for someone to sleep with, Grigori is in the infirmary."

"Serious?"

She shook her head. "Dehydration, forgot to take his water."

"Well, it's a good thing it's nothing serious."

Honestly, I didn't believe that a soldier as competent as Grigori would get dehydrated, especially after being a Helljumper for quite some time. It bugged me a little bit. I couldn't help shaking the feeling that he was in the infirmary in some sort of ONI related business, perhaps checking on my medical reports or having a private meeting with a spook.

"What was your mission about?" I asked in between bites. "Anything important."

"Can't tell you Staff," she said in a serious tone. "After all, it's classified." The last part she said mimicking Albaf's voice. A rather good impression I might add.

I laughed and reached for my last piece of bacon before Camilla lunged for it and snatched it from my plate.

"What are y-"

Then she shoved the delicious piece of meaty heaven into her mouth while smiling cockily at me. She even chewed with her mouth open to show off her prize. I mean, who the hell does that? It's like torturing a man. I gawked at her while the last bacon strip disappeared before my eyes.

"You bitch…"

"Whatcha gonna do about it?" she taunted.

I reached towards her and she flinched. I gave her my best psychopath smile. "Relax, I'm not going to do anything to you." Then I grabbed her tray and tipped it over to the floor, splashing the contents all over Camilla's lap and on the floor.

"Hey! You know how hard it's getting good quality melon while in freaking space?" she complained.

"Pick that up," I snapped. "That's an order."

She glowered at me and muttered something about what I did being completely disproportionate to what she did. Nevertheless Camilla was trained to follow orders and knew that she would end up picking up the mess regardless so she grabbed a bunch of napkins and started picking up the pieces of fruit, insulting me as she went.

"Nobody messes with my bacon."

I finished my sausages and my eggs before Camilla finished cleaning up. By the time she was done cleaning she was furious at me. I had just gotten in the way of her breakfast because of a single piece of greasy food. I'd have understood her anger had she eaten any other item of greasy food, but she had taken a piece of _bacon_ from me. In my own personal opinion she had gotten off easy. If it had been anyone else I would've pummeled their arms to paste or until they begged for me to stop.

"Hey Sarge!" I heard Lamberti call from behind me. "Good to see you again, what the hell happened?"

"Discharged slightly late, someone messed up and sent me to your FOB late, was stuck there for a week."

"Bummer, did you at least get any tail?"

"Get any tail?" Camilla asked annoyed. "Who the hell says that anymore?"

"Oh, hey Cam, didn't see you there," Lamberti replied nonchalantly. "How the hell did you manage to spill all your breakfast?"

"Yeah, how did you manage?" I taunted her. "Must've been looking the other way, because I missed that show."

"Shut up, both of you, and Sarge you're an asshole."

"Whoa," Lamberti said, backing away, "easy there."

I just shrugged. "I've been called worse and it's true enough."

"Fair enough," Lamberti conceded, sitting down. "You gonna wait for me?" he asked me.

"Nah, gotta go check on something."

I stood up, grabbing my empty tray and stretching my neck just as my squad mate sat down and stretched his back. Lamberti looked at Camilla briefly before shaking his head and laughing at her angry expression. The Italian chuckled for a little bit before digging into his own breakfast, almost as excessive as mine had been. Camilla, on the other hand snorted and tried to look as dignified as possible.

"Don't slouch," she told Arcangelo.

_Here they go again._

I quickly made my way out of the mess hall just before the shouting match started. I told you before that they could really go at it with one another, but I don't think I can get the meaning across very clearly. I wanted to get away from them as fast as possible before they actually came to me to help them settle their argument. That never ended well, one of them would be pissed at me for weeks and the other wouldn't let the other forget it.

The hallways of the _Inconvenience _were almost empty. Most of the crew was on their battle stations and the ground forces had all been deployed. There were probably a couple of other squads in addition to our own on board, but most of the complement was groundside kicking ass or getting their asses kicked. It wouldn't be long before Reaper Squad had to go down again and join them. It was fine by me, I had been in a base without any action for over a week. I was itching for some action.

I didn't plan on hitting the gym. I'd gotten enough workouts back on that base, with nothing to do other than exercise, read, and try to seduce colonial militia girls. I had gotten a lot of spare time. The other option was sleeping, which I had gotten enough of, or talking with my squad mates, which I really didn't look forward to. The last viable option was catching up with different people. Sad isn't it? Having to talk to people.

_And my game console happened to break…_

The best place to find people would've been the mess hall, but that place was on a short fuse. The officer's club would've been a good option before Darbinian had us humble ODSTs kicked out of there. Another option would've been the shooting range, but I think that the best option would probably be the hangar. Being picked up by pelican after every single mission and receiving air support from pilots, I was bound to find at least someone I knew in there.

The massive cargo bay of a UNSC frigate might've been incredibly small when compared to the _Count Me In_ and would certainly be seen as next to nothing if you put it against a carrier. Still, when you were standing in a huge empty room you felt small. Try standing in an empty warehouse, it feels weird at first, then you get used to it for a while, then you notice how small you are again.

The hangar was mostly empty. There were the usual packed up crates in the corners as well as weapon cases held securely with webbing. Other than that there was only one gutted up pelican in for repairs and a scorpion tank having its melted wheels replaced. I looked around to see if I recognized anyone. I didn't spot anyone familiar immediately so I turned around to leave.

"Oi, Cast! Wait up!"

I turned around to see none other than Horace Zekalwe jogging towards me.

"Cast?" I asked, raising my eyebrow.

"Sure," he smiled. "Why the hell not?"

I shrugged. As far as nicknames went in the military, that was actually pretty decent. Cast, I've spent a sizeable portion of my life in casts, it makes some ironic sort of sense if you think about it.

"So, where have you been all this time? Heard about your arm, but knowing the all-mighty Helljumper you are, why did it keep you unfit for duty for so long?"

I sighed before recounting the story of my adventures during last week for the third time in less than ten minutes. Zekalwe only laughed at my unlucky predicament while I grunted in annoyance at the memory of not doing anything of interest other than that one girl. Well, truth be told the entire week of not doing anything had pretty much been worth it, but I'm not one to show off. Except to you guys, that is.

"Must've been a bummer," Horace said sympathetically. "I've been running sorties for the past couple of weeks non-stop. I finally caught a break when an AA wraith nicked my bird. I never thought I'd say this, but I'm glad I was hit."

I smiled and nodded at him understandingly. "After going on for two weeks with nothing but stims and naps I understand. What were you doing when you got hit?"

"Nothing important, delivering some crates with classified content. Probably booze for all I know."

I frowned. Classified material could be things other than illegal alcohol or drugs. "They get the crates after you touched down?"

"Ya, must've been important, I got a pelican and two falcon gunships on the Search & Rescue to find me. Then an albatross from this ship got me and my damaged craft up here."

"Here you are." I looked around for a place to sit and ultimately resolved to use a crate for that purpose. Zekalwe joined me by grabbing another empty crate and dragging it so that he was sitting in front of me. "How long 'til you deploy again?"

"About two days?" he replied with a shrug. "My ship wasn't really damaged by the flak, the crash was kind of rough. Tree ripped off one wing, ground damaged armor plating." He added with a sly smirk, "You know, the usual."

"The usual," I agreed. "My usual would kick your usual any time."

"Hey, don't look at me," Horace said, putting out his hands in a placating gesture. "The only reason I joined Marine Aviation is because I'm too much of a coward to be a regular grunt." He was alluding to that centuries-old myth that Air Force and other aviators had it easy. No doubt he meant it as a joke, no self-respecting person would call themselves a coward unless it was a joke.

"Don't get so defensive," I went along. "I was merely stating a fact, H."

Horace laughed with me for a few seconds before he got all serious. "I could probably go toe to toe with any regular grunt, but you special operations types come with less blood than you left with more oft than not. Me? I'll take flying that bucket any time."

"I wouldn't have it any other way," I patted him on the shoulder. "After all, you're one of the best pilots we've got."

"Amen brother."

Zekalwe had this thing that made you laugh at any stupid thing he said. I wasn't a humorless guy by any means, in fact, I think I handled the stress of war much better than several people, but this guy could have me choking back laughter and giggling like a teenager in a matter of minutes. He was pretty much the closest thing I had ever seen to a stand-up comedian. He did impressions, long and elaborate jokes, and even some funny stories. The guy could've had a career in comedy if you ask me.

"Heard anything about Marina?" I asked. No matter what my decision had been I still considered her my friend. Somehow. Maybe the high amount of flicks I kept watching made me think that I had to be a gentleman and care about her.

"Nah, last I saw her she was lifting off to provide support and evac for some stranded militia guys. Suicide mission, they called it."

I smiled. "Nah, she probably escaped without a scratch. You know how she is."

"She's the luckiest person that I have ever met in my entire life."

_I don't know if the luckiest, but maybe just close enough._ I thought. Marina sure had a healthy dose of luck, same as Pavel and I but I'd heard of guys that had been fighting the war since Harvest or that had survived almost everything that the covvies could throw at them. This being a war on a galactic scale you were bound to get some heroic stories, most of them were the usual, but a few were just plain unbelievable. The most inspiring ones were always with Spartans as the protagonists, a fact that never ceased to make me jealous.

"Hey," Zekalwe suddenly said, looking excited. "Did you check out the fleet's page?"

"Not recently, no. Why?"

Zekalwe looked excited and leaned backwards on his crate. "Oh man, you're going to love this. Hold on," he told me while reaching for a foldable datapad tucked into his pants. "Here, check this out."

"EEDF dot UNSC dot mil."

"Yeah, I know the fleet's page address. Thanks."

"With your intellectual capacity I never know," I shrugged. "What now?"

"Nothing, you were featured on the front page," Zekalwe smiled at me.

"Front page?" I asked. "Seriously?"

"Yeah."

"Isn't that reserved for ship's killcounts and stuff like that?"

"Most of the time, but that stunt you pulled off in the seaport made it there. It's some sort of humor piece mocking the Covenant."

"They did a humor piece out of that?" I asked, shocked. "That was probably one of the most badass things I've ever done and they turn it into a joke?"

"Oh, just watch it."

Zekalwe passed me his datapad and I watched the three minute montage of me and my squad kicking some serious ass with style. The video consisted of helmet-cam and rifle-cam footage from my own helmet as well as from Cam's and Grigori's. The footage was very well cut and whoever made this even added a fitting soundtrack to it. All in all it was a funny yet badass. The video didn't give out our real names, instead only identifying us as Reaper-Actual, Reaper-5, and Reaper-8. I was grateful for that.

I was also grateful for the ego boost, those never hurt.

"It's good," I said after the video finished.

"Good? You have the biggest smile on your face."

"I do not," I lied, looking at the floor to conceal my grin.

"Sure, whatever. You and your team showed up the covvies, that's good for morale. Or sumthin'."

I shrugged rather theatrically. "Maybe. Wait, did you just imply I'm a propaganda tool?"

"I did nothing of the sort!" he exclaimed in mock shock. "But you have to admit, the comparison is rather adequate."

"You do realize you're complimenting me?"

"Yeah, I did halfway through the sentence and didn't want to stop and look like a dim-witted idiot."

"Hey, don't worry. You already look like that to me." I gave him my warmest smile.

Zekalwe raised one eyebrow. "Next time I pick you up I will crash bottom-first just to piss you off."

"I'll probably make it out of there. Not necessarily a good thing, but I have a knack for getting out alive."

Horace stood up and gestured for me to do the same. "I'd propose a toast, but this is the best I can do right now." He pulled me up and offered me his fist. "For luck, and everything that comes with it."

I bumped his fist with an exaggerated motion. "For survival," I agreed. "And everything that comes with it."

"Hey H!" one engineer called from Zekalwe's pelican. "Get back here, didn't you want those circuits rearranged or something?"

"Duty calls," Horace apologized. "See ya later."

"Adios."

I stood up from my improvised seat as Zekalwe walked away from me. His pelican looked somewhat more combat ready than it had a couple of minutes ago. UNSC engineers are pretty damn good at what they do, whether it's blowing up bridges or building them. They are one arrogant bunch though. They are indispensable to the war effort and they never let anyone forget about it.

Now I was left with no other option than to return to my room. Not that it was something bad, but as I have repeatedly stated, I had been without action for a week and the last thing I wanted right now was to do the same boring thing that I had done in that time. Nothing. Of course, my own laziness didn't allow me to go to the gym or firing range, so I guess it would be a nap for me instead.

My quarters were still a mess. When Pavel got back here he would be pissed as fuck, not because it was dirty, but because half the stuff strewn around the room was piled up near his bunk. I could move it, sure, but that would imply me caring about cleanliness.

I yawned as I got in my bed, kicking down the sheets and hugging my pillow. I had just found a comfortable position when the room's intercom rang.

"Frank," Eliza called out to me.

"I'm awake."

"You and your team are needed in the drop bay."

"About time."

* * *

><p>Once the whole team had assembled in the drop bay Eliza started briefing us. She popped up on the holotable, making herself real-sized just for the hell of it. As soon as the hologram appeared everyone stopped what they were doing and gave the construct their full attention. Eliza waited a couple of seconds to make sure that all of us were paying attention before she started talking.<p>

"You're all aware of the situation in Uppergap, the city was one of the last strongholds that the UNSC has got in Lambari. Little over a week ago it was wrested from our control in a stealth attack spearheaded by brute stalkers. The cas-"

"Get to the point Liz," I prompted.

"Very well then," she said, pretending to be offended. "The UNSC Army has a strategy to retake the city. The stealth pylons that the Covenant are using make it difficult for any airstrikes to hit their targets or for reliable artillery targeting. Several special operations teams will be sent in to destroy or incapacitate the pylons, enabling UNSC forces to bomb targets of value before the main advance."

"Wait, how do we know where the pylons are?" Agnarsson asked. It was a good question, if we couldn't see the city it meant we couldn't see our intended targets.

"We don't," Eliza replied simply. "However, the approximate location can be deduced from the strength of the electronics blackout." As she explained that to us her hologram decreased in size to give way to a three-dimensional map of Uppergap. Half a dozen red spots appeared in the city. They were all emitting waves that covered the entirety of Uppergap.

You don't have to be a genius to figure out what those dots were.

"Will we have any support?" Grigori inquired.

"Negative corporal."

Snark sighed. "Can't be helped."

"What are we facing?" I asked Eliza.

"Infantry mostly, the latest intel says that vehicles were in short supply for the Covenant forces. They're pinned down in the city, but as long as they retain control of it they have the advantage in this sector."

"Can't you send recon drones?" George asked.

"They did, there are currently several miniature reconnaissance drones patrolling Uppergap, but the interference of the pylons doesn't allow them to transmit outside the city. Once your inside they might be of help though."

"Might?" Agnarsson groaned.

"Yes, might."

"Anything else?" I prompted.

"Ah, yes. As I already mentioned, as soon as the pylons are down the UNSC will start bombing high-value targets. If you come across anything of interest during your mission be sure to mark it. A crate of IR strobes has been requisitioned for that. One last thing, the pylons are to be blown up as soon as the sun sets. Approximately seven forty-three, local time."

That meant that we had about eight hours before that deadline. It seemed like an awful lot of time for a quick mission. Evidently command anticipated some sort of complication. I could guess what those were.

What worried me the most though, was that we would be doing a daytime drop. The city was still letting out tons of smoke from the fires, but not as much as before. Our arrival wouldn't be as concealed as it could have been. In fact, we would be announcing our entrance to anyone that bothered to look up or was within hearing range of our landing.

"Liz, can you shell our landing area before we land?" I asked. "To disguise our entrance better."

"Yes, there is a small artillery detachment that is being protected by Lieutenant Delacroix. I'll communicate with her and see about it."

"Thanks."

"Lieutenant Delacroix says she'll see about it."

"That was fast," Lamberti complimented. "Talking to several different people at the same time and running a ship."

"Thank you Mr. Lamberti."

"Now, if that is all Liz, just let us know."

"Understood."

I nodded to my team, implying to them that I wanted Reaper locked, loaded, and ready for action. My team was still wearing their fatigues, no one had bothered putting on their armor, so they quickly went about doing that. Camilla hid behind a section of wall as she undressed and put her undersuit on. Despite being our squad mate for almost one year. I mean, hell, people that knew each other for less than that got married.

I took off my shirt and examined my left arm. You could barely tell that just a week ago it had been badly burnt in most places. Some reconstructive surgery had been needed, but by the time I got back on board the _Inconvenience_ most of my arm looked brand new. A little odd if you ask me, but there was still some light scarring right above my elbow, right below where the UA Multi-Threat pauldron ended. I gotta hand it to whoever designed that particular piece of armor, they had been through hell and back and they were still mostly intact.

I pulled down my pants before reaching for my undersuit. Lockley had given me one hell of a scolding for not wearing it, the pain in my arm would've been more than enough to persuade me by itself, but I think Hanna didn't want to miss out on an opportunity to humiliate me. Quite a dickish move on her part, but a justified one nonetheless.

I squeezed into the tight suit with some effort, shaking and wiggling around to make myself fit. Once I was done putting on the fire retardant clothing. In addition to that the undersuit was also designed to resist bladed attacks and to regulate temperature. Yes, I was a complete idiot for not putting it on as much as possible.

I was distracted from my thoughts when Camilla emerged from behind the wall. As usual, she was wearing her undersuit, only that she hadn't bothered putting on her armor just yet. Now, I know I've tired you all with several descriptions of just how insanely sexy Cam was, but just now she looked _desirable_.

A fact that did not went unnoticed by the rest of the squad, myself included.

After we were done making her blush as much as physically possible and make her feel uncomfortable for a while I stopped the show.

"Ok, enough, enough," I said in between laughs. "That's just rude, guys."

"Sarge, you're a hypocrite." Naveen let me know what he thought bluntly.

"That's the last time I trust you to be mature," Camilla muttered angrily.

I looked at her and prepared to say something. I even opened my mouth before closing it and deciding that it was probably best to shut the hell up.

Lamberti, however, didn't have the same reservations.

"Come on Grass, you know you love the attention."

"I'll kill that motherf-"

"Whoa, whoa, whoa," I intervened just as a grinning Sutton grabbed Camilla by the waist before she attacked Lamberti. "We were just kidding, it won't happen again."

"But Sarge," Naveen complained. "The male members of the squad don't get the same treatment."

"If Cam wants to be treated differently, she will."

"Hey, I never said that!"

"So we can treat you all the same?"

"Some respect wouldn't hurt…" she murmured.

"Different standards it is then."

"How you make that sound like an insult is beyond my understanding," Agnarsson noted. There was even a little bit of admiration in his voice.

"Ok, George, stop groping Camilla and put your armor on. Everyone else same thing."

Naveen spoke up. "I wasn't groping Camilla."

"You were thinking about it, you little perv."

Ouch.

"Wha-? What are you attacking me for?" the marksman said defensively. "I didn't do-"

"Ok, next person that says anything gets punched."

I had sparred with all of them and they knew how hard I could punch. They took the smart decision and refrained from making any noises with their mouths.

As I put my armor on I noticed that the armor on my left arm was a shiny black instead of scarred and chipped like the rest of my armor. Normally it wouldn't have bothered me, after all, I had been forced to get new pieces of armor several times, but they usually came in with the painting just a little bit damaged. Enough to give it a worn look. This replacement was completely new. It made me feel like a complete recruit.

"Oi, Konst, help me out with the pauldron, will ya?" Agnarsson asked. He was having some trouble putting on his shoulder armor with only one hand.

"What's the matter?"

"I can't put my armor on by myself," Agnarsson deadpanned.

Sutto chuckled at the sarcasm and quickly strapped on the pauldrons onto Agnarsson's arm. The Scottish rocket man moved his arm around experimentally to check if the armor was correctly strapped on. He shrugged once he reached a conclusion. He was the only one who had trouble putting on his armor. Everyone else was now clad in black ODST armor. It never ceased to astound me how badass we could look.

"Rob, Grigori, pack a bunch of those strobes. Naveen, I want you to take an SRS."

"Thinking about it myself," he replied as he lifted the sniper rifle from the weapons rack.

"Lamberti, we're going to need as much firepower as possible, so you're going to have to keep it basic with explosives."

He sighed deeply. "Fine."

"Everyone else, pack as much ammo and grenades as you can."

I moved to my equipment rack and grabbed four grenades, strapping them to my ribs. I grabbed an extra one and placed it back on the table. Once I made sure the grenades were tightly strapped and secured I started shoving magazines into my pockets. The more the better, but I still ended up with what seemed like an awfully small amount of rounds for the mission.

_Knives? Check._

_Ammo? Check._

_Grenades? Check._

_Flares?_

I grabbed a pair of flares and put them in my butt-pack. Those things could come in handy if we needed early extraction. They could even work as visual markers for camera-directed strikes or unguided bombings if the need arose.

_Check._

I made a point to confirm I had everything that I could possibly need for the following eight hours. Once I did that I grabbed a canteen and strapped it on to my waist. Not that I would be dying of thirst if I didn't drink water for a few hours, but sometimes it paid off to have something to keep your throat wet with. The water-filled canteen sloshed as I secured it. I grabbed two cans of biofoam and secured them to my left thigh. The cloth pouch had some spare room so I shoved down another grenade. Just in case.

"We all good?" I asked as soon as I was done.

"Just about," George heaved as he stretched his arms behind his back.

I waited for the tower of a man to finish stretching before addressing the rest of the team. They had their helmets under one arm and their main weapons on the other. All of them were looking at me. They probably lived just for this part. Before I opened my mouth Eliza popped up.

"Lieutenant Delacroix has confirmed that the 1st Lambari Artillery Regiment has started shelling. They will keep the bombardment for one minute."

"Good, give Chlo my thanks."

"Done. Good luck Francisco. Reaper."

"Thanks ma'am," Sutton nodded at her.

"Lady and gentlemen, not much left to say, you all listened to the debriefing. I want everyone at their sharpest, a stalker sneaking up on us wouldn't be good for business. Keep your eyes on the windows at all times and be ready for intense firefights. You know, urban combat and all that."

They nodded at me and checked their weapons a little bit nervously for reassurance.

"We're Helljumpers! How do we go?"

"We go feet first, Staff Sergeant!"

"Damn right," I muttered.

Now all that I could hope for was that we would all finish this mission standing on our feet as opposed to lying on a stretcher.

* * *

><p><em>Thanks (as per usual) to Sniper Fodder for proof-reading this chapter.<em>

_So, sorry but the tropical paradise that I mentioned had a lack of internet, and even if it didn't, I still had a lack of laptop. But worry not, here it is, Chapter 99. Ninety-nine. Just one chapter shy of hitting triple digits. Oh, don't worry, I have a huge speech prepared for when that happens._

_Now, back to the part where I explain why I wrote somethings the way I wrote him in the hopes that you'll comment on how awesome I did. First of, I've noticed that Frank rarely interacts with the ship's crew outside his own squad. Sure, he had Layla, Marina, and Yevgeny to chat with every now and then in addition to some other minor characters, but the first two were actually the main character's girlfriends and the last one mostly interacts with Frank in combat situations. Now that's why I had him chat with Zekalwe, who you might remember from past chapters._

_I also had him be an asshole to Camilla (Grass) because people are assholes half the time, and when it comes down to it, Frank is more of an asshole than most people. Another thing I noticed is that my characters usually refer to each other either by their names, last names, or call signs. Very rarely do they talk to each other with nicknames or shortened versions of their names. I mean, honestly, how many of you call your best friend by their full name? Unless their name consists of four letters of less, of course._

_One last thing. The armory scene? I just love doing those. Gun and equipment porn. Hell yeah. I keep myself from going too much into the details, but I usually end up describing a lot of stuff that you already know._

_Wow, that went on for longer than expected._

_Hope you enjoyed._

_-casquis_


	100. Tip of the Arrow

Chapter C: Tip of the Arrow

**August 12, 2543 (UNSC Calendar)/**

**Uppergap, Lambari, Campo Sorrisco System**

* * *

><p>"<em>We were shouting at each other across the street. Soldiers haven't had to do that since Whiskey Whiskey Two." –unidentified UNSC special forces operative.<em>

* * *

><p>I could see the explosions from my pod's window. The artillery was doing their job right. The entire area where we were supposed to land was being carpeted with high-explosive shells. I quickly ordered them to stop firing once I could see the windows on the sides of the buildings. Wouldn't want to live through nine years worth of war only to end up being blown up by accident.<p>

"Aim for that intersection!" I ordered at the last second, redirecting my pod towards a large intersection where four different multi-lane streets met.

I closed my eyes as the window polarized and hardened.

My entire body jerked forward as soon as the SOEIV impacted against the floor. I depolarized the window and promptly opened the hatch when I made sure there weren't any covvies that I hadn't spotted from above waiting for me. The hatch fell noisily to the ground less than two seconds after I had landed. My rifle was already up and ready for anything that made the mistake of crossing my sights. I heard two dull thuds as two pods landed somewhere behind me.

"Status report!" I urged my team.

"Green."

"Green."

"Green."

"Green."

"Green."

I waited for that sixth reply for a few seconds. "Angel?"

"Sorry, green."

"We've got incoming," Snark warned.

Eight contacts immediately appeared on the map in the bottom corner of my HUD. As long as someone in my squad had an eye on them I would know where they were.

"Elite, and jackals," Scarecrow told us.

A loud bang echoed all around us.

"Make that seven jackals."

"Angel, keep their heads down. 'Crow, I want you to break through their shields if SAW fire can't break through."

"Got it Sarge."

I put my back against my pod as full automatic fire started. I kept my eyes aimed up, jackals had an annoying tendency to set up shop in windows. The buildings that surrounded this intersection looked way too damaged to be of any use, but that's precisely why I was so jumpy, rubble and debris makes for convenient hiding spots and sturdy cover.

"Caboose, what've you got?"

"Best estimate is we're a click away from the pylon. Radio and electronics interference is heavier in that direction."

I marked the point of interference with a waypoint on my helmet and sent it to the rest of the squad. If that's where the dead zone was stronger that was where we were heading. Well, as soon as those two finished handling the pesky bird aliens.

"Angel?"

"Done."

"Good, move out."

"That was bound to get some attention," Bumblebee noted.

I couldn't help but agree with him. The orbital drop alone was enough to alert every alien in a five-block radius, the firefight that followed soon after probably only made it harder for us. It didn't worry me. I lived for this, we beat the odds regularly. If it worked out well this would only be just one more story to add to the book, and it usually worked out pretty well.

"Subway entrance!" Grass called out. "Over there!"

I turned around and spotted the place. I thought about avoiding it for a couple of instants but then two phantoms rolled around the corner. One of them stayed back while the other one moved in our direction and started peppering the area with plasma fire from its nose gun. I jumped back inside my pod as a stream of plasma fire burned the asphalt. A couple of shots impacted my pod but didn't burn through it.

"Bee, take that cannon out!" I ordered frantically.

I saw the man roll out of his pod from the corner of my eye and take quick aim at the dropship with his Spanker. He fired without even bothering for the auto-lock function to engage. The HEAT explosive landed right where it was supposed to, destroying the turret and rendering the phantom's offensive capabilities null. Bumblebee fired his other rocket at the rear of the bulbous ship, hitting one of the thrusters and sending the whole ship sideways.

As soon as the ship managed to gain back control it opened the blast doors on both sides to reveal a pair of grunts already manning the plasma turrets. I was ready for that though, As soon as the first grunt slid his turret to the edge of the cargo bay I put three shots through its forehead and watched it slump over and fall down to the floor. Angel took out the other grunt with a short burst to the chest before putting some rounds in the turret itself to render it useless or at least add the risk of a backfire.

"They're opening the grav-lift!" Grass warned everyone.

I looked up to see the bottom of the phantom open up and reveal a pair of elites descend. The two aliens were suddenly the targets of three different assault rifles. Caboose, Grass, and Scarecrow took out the first one with sustained fire before it even hit the floor and then killed the other one without much trouble. Having their two leaders killed gave the aliens still on board the dropship a moment's pause. That gave me all the time that I needed.

I left the cover of my pod and ran towards the bottom of the phantom while grabbing a grenade from my webbing. I activated the explosive and threw it up into the open hatches of the phantom. I heard the explosion and smiled with satisfaction as I saw two mangled jackal bodies fly out of the ship. The pilot obviously re-thought this entire strategy and decided that it was probably wiser to leave the area in case another couple of rockets decided to slam into the ship's engines.

I smiled with satisfaction as the phantom flew away, four dead bodies on the ground and probably a couple more in the cargo bay.

"Sarge! Get down!"

I dropped to the ground without even looking. I had completely forgotten about the other dropship for a moment. The space above me suddenly found itself full of vivid colors and spikes. That only served to confuse me further. Only brutes used spikes. We had just killed two elites and now we were being shot at by brutes? That was unusual enough to have me worried.

"Angel, suppressing fire on those covvies!" I yelled as I scrambled for cover behind a pile of ruble from one of the surrounding buildings. "Scarecrow, I want you to scare them."

I waited for a moment as Angel's SAW started roaring. The fire went on for a couple of seconds. I raised my head to see shards of polycrete flying in all directions where the covvies were taking cover. A brute left his cover only to have a forty-millimeter grenade detonate against its chest. The mangled corpse of the gorilla-like alien flew backwards a couple of feet before coming to rest on the ground, half its chest missing and its guts outside of their intended place.

"Add your fire! Get inside that subway!"

The rest of us left cover and started firing in short bursts at the enemy's position. Our concentrated fire forced the aliens to keep their heads down while we slowly moved towards the underground. I reached the entrance but stayed there to provide cover fire while Grass, Snark, and Caboose entered. Bumblebee fired a couple of more bursts before jumping inside.

"Angel, set a charge to collapse the entrance!" I ordered. "Scarecrow, you're with me!"

The reduced amount of bullets coming at them didn't go unnoticed and I suddenly found several spikes and plasma rounds hitting the ground near me or whizzing past my ears. Scarecrow pulled me back just in time for me to avoid a barrage of needle fire. I could picture his smirk behind his visor but I didn't let him enjoy the moment as I almost instantly repayed the favor and pulled his head down behind cover as a bunch of plasma rounds slammed into the polycrete.

"Done!" Angel cried.

"Get down there!" I ordered Scarecrow.

I took aim at a brute and fired two bursts. Both of them hit the alien in its shoulders and went completely through. The blood sprayed from behind its shoulder but the six holes in its chest didn't seem to bother the enormous alien in the least as it kept snarling at me and pushing forward. I jumped down the last couple of steps and jumped over a bunch of turnstiles. I found Scarecrow beckoning to me at the top of another staircase and ran towards it.

"Angel! Now!" Snark yelled as soon as he saw me run through.

I felt the entire structure shake as the Italian detonated his charges. The sound of rocks falling was audible through the explosion and a huge cloud of dust made its way towards the chamber we were in. The filters in our helmets allowed us to breathe normally.

"Lights on," I said. The lights on this place had long since flickered out when the covvies targeted power plants. That could work in our advantage as we could walk through the subway magnets without risking half our equipment shutting down.

"Bee, Caboose, scout the tunnel. Hundred meters in each direction, make sure it's clear."

"On it."

I moved around the area. I was in a relatively thin platform that was at least fifty meters in length. There were several posters for the latest releases on the planet and a few promoting the Colonial Militia. I shook my head disapprovingly at the drawn poster of a man and a woman holding an MA5 rifle over their heads. Below their images were the words 'Join now.' They hadn't even bothered putting up some sort of badass phrase that would actually encourage you to join. Near the bottom of the poster was some broken holostrip that no doubt showed the benefits that came with joining the colonial militia.

"Frank," Grass said from behind me. She had taken to calling me by my first name. Not that I cared, but it was slightly unusual when the rest of my team referred to me by rank most of the time.

"Hmm?"

"Check this out."

Grass was standing in front of a map of the subway complex. It was an honest-to-god paper map. Let me say that again. A paper map. Yes, not a holographic projection or even a television. It seemed rather old-fashioned to me, but right now it was very useful to us.

"We are right here," Grass pointed with her right hand. "Our target is around here." She circled an area that was about three or four stops away, depending on where we decided to hop off.

I nodded at her, I had started downloading a map of the city's subway but the stealth pylons were making it an incredibly difficult job.

"Four stops huh?" Scarecrow asked from behind us. "We better get moving."

"Let's wait for our scouts," I suggested. "Bumblebee, Caboose, come in."

"..ey… ge….n't….m….c….ct…."

"Great," Snark muttered. "Now our helmet radios are faulty too, pylons must be affecting them."

"Let's just wait for them to return," I said.

We milled about the station for a minute while Bumblebee and Caboose made their way back. I found a dispensing machine that was missing everything save for a can of coca cola. I shoved and pulled the machine a couple of times to see if it would fall before leaving it alone. Angel, however, didn't have the same reservations, kicking the glass open and taking the last can of coke. He put the can in his backpack and looked at me with his depolarized visor, the smile on his face was one of obvious satisfaction.

I shook my head at him and chuckled. "Keep it."

"Oi, Sarge," Bumblebee called out. "Everything clear in that direction."

"Bee, help me out," Caboose urged the Scottish ODST.

Bumblebee turned around and gripped Caboose's forearm before pulling him up to the platform with exaggerated grunting and groaning. By the time Caboose was on the same level as Bumblebee the latter was making so much noise that it seemed like he was on the verge of having an orgasm.

"Bee, shut the fuck up," Grass snapped.

"Fine, just chill."

"On me," I ordered.

Reaper Squad moved in to my position and huddled around the map.

"We're here and we have to be here. Simple enough right?"

"Right," Scarecrow agreed.

"Caboose, I want you and that shotgun of yours on point, twenty yards in front of us. Angel, you watch our rear."

As soon as I gave those orders I hopped down to the tunnel. My helmet's flashlights were down to the dimmest setting so as to not give my position away. The rest of my team followed suit and dimmed their flashlights as they jumped down. Caboose took off and gave us the go sign once he was twenty meters ahead of us. We started moving while Angel lingered behind for a little bit.

The walk was really one that unsettled me. The tunnels were not entirely quiet, I could hear a rat skittering here, water drops falling over there. Wind howling occasionally. It was scary, truth be told. Even with four trained ODSTs around me I couldn't help but feel slightly scared. The fear of darkness is one that you never really get over, it's hardwired into your brain.

"Stop," Caboose hissed. "There's something up ahead."

"What is it?" Angel asked.

"If I knew what it was I would have said what it was as opposed to something," our scout deadpanned. Caboose could be one hell of a snarker too whenever he opened his mouth. "I'm checking it out."

We all waited while Caboose went further up ahead. His flashlights almost disappeared around a curve before he stopped and turned towards us, he flashed the lights once, giving us the ok sign. He was far enough away that if he told us what it was he saw it would echo through the whole tunnels.

"Move up."

Caboose was waiting for us right where the tunnel turned to the left. He let us catch up to him before he motioned for us to stop. Caboose waved me over and had me kneel next to him. He pointed right ahead, but the action was pretty much useless, because I could clearly see a crashed subway cart. It didn't look like it had simply fallen down when the energy gave out, instead it was turned almost sideways and several of the cars were in different positions. This train in particular had seen a very rough stop.

"It's blocking the tunnel," Caboose pointed out.

"Noted." I turned around and waved over the rest of the team. "Ok, we'll climb inside one by one, make as little noise as possible, ok?"

The first (or last) wagon had crashed so hard into the tunnel walls that entering through the back (or front) door was impossible. One half of the cart was facing downwards, so we had to climb on top of the last wagon to access the subway train. The windowless cart provided few entrances other than a pair of sliding doors. I ordered Scarecrow to get them open, which he promptly did with three powerful stomps.

"What happened to as little noise as possible?" Snark asked.

"I got it open, didn't I?"

Snark shrugged and moved towards the entrance before jumping down. He landed almost noiselessly and waited a couple of seconds before giving the rest of us the all-clear signal. Scarecrow jumped after him, followed by Caboose and then the rest of the team. I waited until they were all inside to jump down.

It was pretty cramped down in the subway cart. Not only was it turned sideways, but it was occupied by six tall and strong men with ODST armor and an additional female Helljumper clad in the same way. Not to mention that subway carts are cramped by design.

"I can't believe they still use these," Bumblebee mused. "They have subways in museums back home."

"Don't exaggerate," Grass told him. "Most cities everywhere have some sort of active underground transportation or other."

"But nobody uses it," Angel added.

"The Moscow Metro is used by several-"

A skittering noise cut her off.

"What was that?" Angel asked as everyone raised their guns and looked around.

"Probably just a rat," Scarecrow suggested.

Grass visibly shivered. "I hate rats."

Angel put a hand on her shoulder reassuringly. "Don't worry, there's still some girlyness inside of you. We might just sa- ugh!"

"Asshole."

"You didn't have to punch me!" Angel complained.

"You didn't have to punch him so hard," I corrected.

"Umm, back to the noise?" Caboose reminded us all of the matter at hand. He had taken a couple of steps to the next cart. "VISR doesn't show anything."

"It's too dark," Snark explained. "Not enough ambient light to help with the night vision."

"No heat signatures either," Caboose went on, undisturbed.

"Stay frosty," I ordered. "Caboose, I want you and that shotgun of yours on point. Let's move it people."

Caboose strapped his rifle to his back while he drew his M90 and silently pumped it. Out of all the squad members, he was the most alert. The sheer nervousness could be felt and that in turn made me feel even more nervous. Caboose climbed over a pile of chairs and motioned for us to follow him, our dim helmet lights barely illuminating the way ahead. The next wagon was tilted upwards, so we had to hold on to the tubes and poles to make our way across it. Halfway through I switched my rifle for my sidearm. It would be easier to fire that way.

"You hear that?" Angel asked again, this time more nervously.

"You're being paranoid," Bumblebee said while climbing the cart.

"No, I heard it too," Grass told him.

"As I said, rats."

I looked around with my VISR turned on, trying to make out anything, I switched to thermal but the cold metal floor didn't give out any heat signatures, the only red blotches were my squad mates.

"Keep moving."

The next wagon was pretty much the opposite of the second one. It was facing completely downwards at a forty-five degree angle.

"Caboose."

"On it." The man sat on the ledge and slid all the way down to the edge of this wagon, making just a little noise as he did so. He landed with a soft thud and stood up before moving to the side to make way for Grass as she followed him. Once again I waited until my whole team was down before I sat down to slide down and join them.

And then I heard the skittering noise again.

"Shit," I cursed as I turned around and brought my pistol to bear. My helmet lights could barely illuminate the absolute darkness of the subway cart, but I just knew that there was something out there, looking at me.

"What's wrong Sarge?"

"There's definitely something out there," I replied quietly.

I heard skittering to my left and aimed the pistol in that direction in a quick motion. My hands were shaking and I forced myself to breathe carefully again. There was a moment of silence before I heard the skittering again, slightly to the right of where I was aiming and a whole lot closer. I cocked my gun.

Whatever was making the skittering noise reacted to that sound, because immediately afterwards I heard buzzing. By that time I had had enough of it. I aimed at the buzzing as best I could and fired three rounds. Two of the suppressed rounds pinged as they went through the metal, but another one made and audible thud as it impacted something more solid.

Then that solid thing flew at me.

Whatever had hit me pushed me off the ledge and down the cart. It clawed at me. I punched back at the thing as hard as I could with my free arm while trying to shoot it off with my pistol. All my shots went wide and suddenly I found myself being lifted off the floor before I was dropped again. I landed hard on a bunch of chairs before sliding and grabbing on to a pole.

"Sarge!"

I didn't have time to answer as I soon found a winged creature lunging at me. I let go just in time and the drone smashed into the pole headfirst. It stunned itself and gave me enough time to fire three other shots into its chest as I fell. The drone recoiled with each shot and let go of whatever it was holding onto. It reached the bottom of the cart moments after I did.

"Sarge, you alright?" Scarecrow asked as he lifted me up.

"I'm fine," I said, dusting myself and checking my armor.

"A drone?" Snark asked incredulously. "Underground?"

"They're bugs," Grass reminded him. "Perhaps it reminds them of their homes."

The drone struggled and tried to move before Caboose stomped its head in.

"They're freakishly hard to kill as well," he pointed out.

"Bugger's dead, let's get moving."

"Still want me on point?" Caboose asked.

"Yes, now more than ever."

He nodded and ducked underneath the ceiling of the wagon to make it to the other side. We all crawled through there and followed our scout as closely as possible. The encounter with the drone had freaked me out, but the rest of my team was a little bit scared as well, their fingers resting gently on the triggers of their weapons.

"You hear that?" Scarecrow asked when nobody could ignore the noise anymore.

"Yeah…"

"Give me light," I ordered.

"Sarge…"

"Light."

"All right."

Caboose turned on the power of his helmet flashlights to the maximum setting, briefly blinding us all before illuminating the entire cart. The subway cart had broken off from about halfway and allowed us to jump to the tunnel again. Once Caboose looked to the side or up we realized we were in for one hell of a shitstorm.

"Are they awake?" Snark whispered.

"Shhh!"

Two of the drones that were resting on the walls or ceiling moved slightly as the light hit them. Once the two of them did that the entire hive woke up.

"They are now! Fire!" I yelled.

Seven grunts fell off the ceiling from the initial bursts and a couple of dozen joined their comrades in death before the entire tunnel was filled with a loud buzzing sound. I aimed at the dim lights that the drones had on their shells as best I could. We must've killed at least fifty of them in the initial seconds of the firefight, but that's about when they realized they were under attack.

"Run," I prompted calmly, surprising myself. "Now!"

My team wasted no time following that order, climbing onto the other half of the subway train and sprinting away from the angered flies. I, as a dutiful leader, waited until last to climb up. That earned me a scratched helmet. I kicked the offending drone away, bashing its face in and started to sprint. This half of the train was in better conditions, with most of the carts still standing upright and some of them even still on the rails.

"Shiiiiiiiiit!" I yelled as I heard the swarm close in on my tail. I reloaded my pistol and fired the entire magazine at my back without bothering to aim. With the amount of enemies headed towards me I was bound to hit something.

"Hurry up Sarge!" Scarecrow yelled. He was in the tunnel again, holding open one of the doors.

I jumped out of the train just as Scarecrow slammed the door shut behind me. Bumblebee and Caboose quickly put down two drones that busted through the door's window. Angel aimed his M2457SAW at the thin metal door and started firing through it. Grass joined him, emptying her MA5B at the wall. Through the roaring noise of both weapons I could hear the noise of bullets going through flesh and of bodies hitting the ground. It was about ten seconds before Angel stopped firing.

"That oughta make them think twice," he said with what was undoubtedly a smile behind his visor.

"Good," I grunted while standing up. "Let's not give them enough time to do that. Move along."

When I said move along everyone started sprinting as fast as they could away from the subway train. I was forced to reduce my speed to something that wouldn't alarm any of them needlessly. This also allowed me to keep guard for any drones that decided to come after us. We ran past three stops and another train, this one intact, before we finally came to a stop.

"How much more?" Angel heaved in between breaths.

"Next stop," Grass informed him. "You aren't tired, are you?"

"Puttana," Angel spat back.

"Easy there," I warned him. "Spanish and Italian are close enough that I can get that."

"Sorry," he apologized without any real feeling.

It wasn't long before we reached the next subway stop. This one was a minor one. Only a small platform and a couple of benches leaning against the wall. I hopped on and scouted it for any unpleasant surprises before helping Grass and Snark up. Reaper Squad quickly moved towards the non-functional electric stairs and started climbing up.

Once we left the station I found myself surprised by the lack of sunlight. I knew that Lambari's days were shorter than on Reach, but the speed with which it had started to turn to night still surprised me days after I arrived.

"Come on, we haven't got much time," I pressured.

The street here was littered with crashed cars, piles of rubble and debris, craters, and human bodies. We stuck to cover as much as possible, keeping ourselves hunched and trying to avoid being spotted. I could hear the hum of anti-grav engines a block away and I didn't want any attention being called to us. I kept my sight on the buildings on either side of us and ordered Snark to see if he could spot any snipers.

"There," Bumblebee hissed. "I see it. The tower."

I moved in his direction and stopped with my back pressed against the overturned bus he was using for cover.

"There," he pointed. "See it?"

I raised my neck a little bit and saw that there was indeed a stealth pylon on one rooftop. It wasn't really a rooftop, it was more like a terrace. The building where the pylon was located was a traditional skyscraper. Perhaps some six hundred meters tall, a little bit shorter than the rest of the buildings surrounding it. I sighed. It would all be much easier if people made everything three stories tall. The building had a very wide base and became thinner at irregular intervals marked by large terraces or balconies. The pylon was on the third terrace of the building, a little below the two hundred meter mark.

I sighed. "Well, there it is."

"What's the plan?" Scarecrow asked, joining us.

I pondered on that for a moment. "Anyone brought rope?" I asked.

"I have some," Grass said.

"We could use jetpacks right about now," I mused. "How much rope?"

"Hundred meters worth."

"So wire?"

"Same thing," she retorted. "It'll hold your weight just as well."

"Think we can do it quietly?" I asked.

"Where will you be rappelling from?" Grass asked.

"Oh no, it's you who'll be rappelling."

"I like this idea," Angel said.

Grass was unfazed. "Hmm, you could set up shop on the next balcony, I'll drop the charges."

"Why don't we just break through everything that opposes us like we usually do?" Bumblebee asked. "It's worked pretty well so far."

"Last time I tried storming a building I ended falling out of it," I informed him. "And unless you have a jetpack hidden somewhere it's our only feasible option."

"Fine."

"We enter through the parking lot," I stated. "And take the service stairs."

"How many you think?" Caboose asked.

"At least a platoon's worth," Snark suggested.

"I'd put three," Scarecrow said. "To defend something as important as that."

"Then we can expect four," Bumblebee muttered. "I don't like those odds."

"That's why we're going around them," I explained, trying to reassure my team. "When have I given you a reason to doubt me?"

"Do you really want me to answer that?" Caboose asked me.

"Shut up, move it."

I had Snark stay a few dozen meters behind the rest of us to provide sniper support if it was needed. It was more likely that the large group would be spotted than the lone sniper, so he was relatively safe inside the bus. Once we reached the other side of the street I motioned for him to join us. Snark moved quickly, his shoulder hunched and his rifle's barrel inches above the ground. I could tell just by looking at him that he had experience running like that.

From where we were standing our target was just four buildings over, but I could see two grunts standing guard in the street. There was bound to be some brutes (or elites) inside or nearby, so we went around the block instead.

A flight of banshees flew above, but didn't spot us, we resumed our slow march until we found the parking lot entrance of the building we intended to enter. The ramp ended in a pull-down metal gate.

"Crap, I assume nobody brought bolt cutters?" I asked as I examined the thick lock protecting the gate.

"I have a pair," Caboose said. "Maybe I should've brought the laser cutter."

"Why didn't you? It's gotta be smaller than a pair of bolt cutters," Snark pointed out with his usual sarcastic tone.

"How about you try cutting through that lock?" Caboose asked, tossing him the bolt cutters that he produced from a pocket.

"My pleasure," the sniper said with a small bow.

Snark moved towards the lock while we kept our guns trained on the top of the ramp. He placed the bolt cutters around the lock and tried squeezing with both hands. His attempt produced no visible result before he tried once more, using more force than before. When his second attempt failed he positioned himself more comfortably so that he could use his legs for support. Once again he failed in snapping the lock.

"Need help?" Scarecrow asked.

"I got his."

Snark put one of the arms on his belly and his two hands on the other one. He pulled the arm against him and eventually succeeded in snapping open the lock. The small metal device flew off and the large gate started sliding upwards at scary speeds before Grass caught it.

"Go," I ordered.

Scarecrow grabbed the gate and put his arm up before letting it go, making as little noise as possible.

"Over there, service stairs," Angel said.

"Caboose, you're on point again."

"I should've left the shotgun back home," he muttered.

"But you didn't, now go."

Caboose opened the door and scanned the small room with his shotgun. If anything moved it would be receiving a bunch of buckshot to the face. Or the chest. Not that it matters, whatever got shot would end up dead anyways.

"Clear," Caboose said. He took a long, tired sigh as he looked up at the endless stairwell. "We can climb now."

"Did you count the floors?" Grass asked me.

"Seventy, give or take a few."

"Sixty-eight," she told me. "Just checking."

"Ouch," Angel said from behind me, shaking his hand sideways.

"Why don't you get back to me after we're done climbing?" I asked him with a smile. "Lugging that gun of yours must get tiring after a while."

I could clearly see his expression through his depolarized helmet visor. None of us would enjoy this, but he would have a worse time than all of us. Now, thanks to me, he knew it.

The climb was every bit as grueling as I had expected.

"This is it," Grass informed us. She was unable to hide the relief and happiness in her tone. "This is it!"

"Easy there, you might wet your panties," Angel managed out in between heaving breaths. "Wouldn't." Breath. "Want." Breath. "That."

"I'm going to ignore that because seeing you like that is insult enough. In fact, I'm taking video of this."

"You." Breath. "Bitch."

She tisked. "Nah-ah, you shouldn't call me that, but again I'll let that slide." She patted him on the shoulder rather violently and sent him flying towards a wall, where he just slumped down and sat on the floor.

"You brought water?" I asked him.

"No, just combat fluids."

"Have some," I ordered. "Same goes for everyone else."

There was a moment of silence as everyone swallowed a small amount of the combat stimulator before Caboose opened the door.

The door opened into a small service corridor. The place looked intact save for one door that was blown off its hinges. I slowly made my way towards the door at the end of the corridor. It was rather ominous really, with the flash of light coming from underneath the door and from the sides while half-open doors to the sides showed service closets. To me it seemed like I had just left a horror film down in the subway to enter another one in this building.

I reached the door and extended my hand towards it…

Only to have it bashed in my face with a lot more strength than a human could muster.

I slammed into the wall and grunted in pain. I spotted a stocky pruple-ish barrel out of the edge of the door. It was aimed right at Scarecrow's chest. I let out a kick that pushed the barrel up as the gun fired. A pink round left the weapon and detonated on the ceiling above, bringing pieces of polycrete raining on us. Grass moved quickly and fired two bursts at whatever was holding the weapon before I pinned it with the door and its frame.

The elite, for it was an elite, tackled the door and pushed me back to the wall, this time I crashed a lot harder than the first time. The alien kicked Scarecrow in the chest, sending him bowling backwards and throwing him to the floor. Scarecrow took down Grass and Angel with him. As the three of them recovered from the fall the elite punched at me. I ducked just in time and the elite punched the hard wall, cracking it. The Sangeili didn't seem wounded, as he took aim with his stocky weapon and fired at Bumblebee, forcing him and Snark to duck sideways as the explosive projectile flew by them and hit a wall, bringing it down.

Caboose had started moving and jumped at the elite's waist, forcing it to drop its weapon and to use its other hand for support. I was still stunned from the door hitting me twice, but I raised my rifle at the elite, who simply batted it aside with one hand before throwing Caboose against the wall.

I grabbed my backup knife and threw it at the elite's face. The sharp blade might just make it through the shields unimpeded, but that wasn't the main goal. The elite raised its arm and deflected the blade before it struck its chest, its shields flickered slightly as the kinetic force from the knife registered.

I now had the elite's full attention.

The alien's four jaws spread as it roared at me. Scarecrow fired from the ground, before the elite could charge at me. That drew its attention from me for a second and I charged at it with my other knife. The elite received my tackle awkwardly, but managed to keep me from pushing it to the ground. I punched it a few times with my free hand while trying to stab its ribs with the other one. The elite didn't seem to be having much trouble, as it pinned my arms to the wall, lifting me off the ground and closed its face to me. Another burst of ammunition hit its face, draining its shields. It let go of one of my arms and drew a plasma pistol, taking aim at the offender. Bumblebee jumped sideways just as three plasma bolts flew at him. Two hit the wall behind him, but one impacted right on his chest and he collapsed sideways, his chest piece cherry red and smoking.

The distraction allowed me to drop my knife and catch it with my free hand. By the time the elite had his plasma pistol aimed at my face I had stabbed it through the mouth with the large standard-issue UNSC knife. The elite looked surprised for a moment and even looked at me in shock. Then its jaws curled backwards in what seemed to be a gruesome smile before it collapsed to the floor, letting me go.

"Bee," I shouted as soon as I dropped to the floor. "Bee!"

The Helljumper was struggling to reach the quick-release clamps for his chest piece while the plasma burned through the plating. After a second he found them and pulled, letting the metallic plate fall to the floor with a loud clang.

"You all right?" I asked.

"Yeah, I'm fine," he coughed out. "I just need for the armor to cool and I'll be good as new."

"Don't worry about us Sarge," Scarecrow said from the ground while slowly getting up. "It's not like any of us was shot at with a grenade launcher. Or kicked in the chest by an elite. Ah, that hurts," he said, clutching his belly. "Knocked the wind out of me, that one."

"You weigh a ton," Angel noted. He helped Grass up and dusted her off theatrically, no doubt aiming to piss her off even after they had both faced death. "But I'm glad you were there on top of me. You would've served as a nice shield for us."

"Thanks," Scarecrow replied unenthusiastically.

"And I'm sure that Grass enjoys having men on top of her."

"One more thing we have in common," she quipped. This time it was her dusting him off as he tried to look for a comeback.

"Focus people," I snapped.

"Yes, sorry."

I kneeled next to the elite and pulled my knife from its mouth. The motion made a disgusting squishing sound and a bunch of blood started pouring from the wound. Its armor configuration marked it as a zealot. The weapon next to him was one that I had never seen before, it had a circular grip and had the typical curves of covenant design. In addition to that it had some sort of weird-looking stock right behind the weird grip. It was about as long as an assault rifle and a lot bulkier. It weighed perhaps twice as much.

"Zealot huh?" Bumblebee noted. "Glad it didn't have a sword."

"Unusual, but I agree," Scarecrow said. "What's with the weird grenade launcher, I've never seen anything like that before."

"Neither have I," Snark put in his two cents.

Grass leaned close to examine it. "Might be a concussion rifle," she suggested.

"Concussion rifle?" Angel asked.

"Yeah, read about it in some memo, there wasn't a picture about it, it was mainly a rumor."

"All right," I said. "Pack it, ONI might pay us for it. If they do, we split it seven ways."

"Sounds good to me," Snark said as he slung it over his back, the magnetic clamps in his armor securing the rifle in place.

I nodded at him and stood up. My other knife was on the floor as well, so I picked it up and sheathed it upside down by my left shoulder. The bloodied one I cleaned before putting it in its sheath across my lower back.

Bumblebee waited a few seconds for his armor to cool off and touched it tentatively. He pulled back his hand as soon as he made contact with it, but then touched it again and held his hand there. No doubt his gloves were doing a wonderful job in nullifying the heat, but if his gloves could do that then so could the rest of his armor and his undersuit. We all waited while he put it on and secured it once again. The smoke leaving the chest piece gave him a weird look.

"Scarecrow, Angel, and Caboose, you clear the right side," I ordered. "Everyone else, you're with me."

We went room by room, making sure that we had no more unexpected surprises. Our helmets were now completely useless for communicating, so we had to use hand signals and whisper to each other. The rest of this floor was completely empty. We eventually met the other fireteam before heading towards the balcony. Grass was already pulling out her rope and attaching it to her belt while Caboose secured it to a flagpole.

Caboose pulled a few times to make sure that the thin rope was secured and that the knot would hold. It was a simple knot. It would hold.

"Snark, you stay with me and Grass. I want everyone else to keep guard, no one gets past you."

"What do you want me to do?" Snark asked almost eagerly after the rest of the team left the large terrace.

"Here," I passed him my rifle. "And here," I added as I gave him the weapon's suppressor. "I want you to keep watch for any snipers on the opposite buildings. You see anyone, you shoot it."

"Won't the gun still make noise?" he asked as he screwed on the silencer.

"Yes, but hopefully we're far enough up that any covvie down there will dismiss it as background noise."

"Makes sense," Grass reassured him as she double-checked the knot in the back of her belt. "Here," she said, tossing me her rifle. "Less weight."

"Makes sense," I reassured her. "You'll be fine."

"I know," she said, smiling at me before polarizing her visor again.

"Snark, get the charges," I ordered him. The small sniper went grabbed the two plastic explosives from where Angel had left them and handed them to Grass. She promptly put them in a pouch and attached that pouch to the front of her belt after removing all the magazines for her MA5B.

"Here I go," she said as she sat on the ledge. "You sure you can hold me?"

"How much do you weigh?" I asked with worry.

"You know, you should never ask a girl that," she told me as she slowly lowered herself.

I grunted with effort as I did my best to hold on to the thin wire. I had placed the rope through a carabineer on my belt (which I had no idea what was doing there) to allow me to better use my body as leverage, but my hands would be the ones that still had to hold on. I didn't want Grass to fall down to a dead drop. In fact, I think that the rope was longer than the drop.

I looked over the ledge and saw Grass gesture to give her more rope. She gestured for me to stop and then positioned her body horizontally and perpendicular to the building's wall. She turned around half ways before giving me a thumbs up. I started slowly giving her more length. It took a moment before we settled into a rhythm and she was walking down the wall at a steady pace. She only had only gone fifteen meters when she jumped off the wall and then disappeared into it. I looked down and saw an alien, a jackal by the looks of it on the terrace below us. I hid behind the ledge and have Grass a couple meters of rope so that she could hide comfortably. I stayed there for a few seconds while Snark scanned the buildings opposite us.

The rope waggled a little and I peeked over the edge. The jackal was disappearing around the pylon. It hadn't bothered to look up. I looked directly downwards and saw Grass give me an ok sign before she climbed out of whatever window she had jumped into. She had been lucky that the window had been a broken one.

I grunted once again as Grass let herself gently drop. I gave her the required time to position herself as before and started lowering her more quickly. She might not have weighed a lot by regular standards, but you try carrying your girlfriend from your car to the supermarket when you parked very far away. Or your sister for those of you that don't have girlfriends.

She stopped once she was at the same height that the top of the stealth pylon was. She bent her knees and propelled herself outwards. I struggled to keep a grip on the ultra-thin rope as she did so. The bad news is that her fingertips only just managed to touch the stealth pylon. She came back to the wall and held her position there for a few seconds before she jumped again, this time with more force. She managed to reach the top. The three-armed structure wobbled a little bit as she climbed on top, the anti-grav device underneath trying to keep it afloat.

Grass quickly grabbed the two charges and placed one of them right next to her. Grass was motionless for a few seconds before she clicked a few buttons on the detonator of the plastic explosive. I understood what she was doing, she set them to detonate at sundown in case we couldn't use our detonator.

She did the same for the other explosive before dropping it to the roof-like structure protecting the platform with the turrets from hostile weather. She slid off from the top of the pylon, sending it wobbling again before hitting the wall.

It was at that precise instant that Snark fired two rounds. I looked up to see a jackal on the opposite building fall out of a window and to the floor below. If the two shots through the skull didn't kill it, then the fall certainly did.

The suppressed gunshots were too loud.

"Pull me up!" Grass yelled.

I looked down again to see her struggling to climb. On the terrace below were two elites looking up at us. She peppered them with gunfire, sending them both for cover. I started pulling her up as quick as I could. I propped my feet against the ledge and started pulling the rope. I could hear Grass firing her gun repeatedly and saw Snark peek over the edge to shoot down at the elites. Grass must've been so happy, aliens shooting plasma at her from below and bullets whizzing by from above.

Eventually I managed to pull her all the way up and grabbed her hand as I dragged her to safety. Snark fired a couple of shots before he grabbed a grenade from Grass' vest and let it fall down. The explosion happened several seconds later, but by the sound of it and judging from Snark's reaction it had hit its mark.

"Who said I could only snipe with a rifle?"

"Bumblebee! I want you here now, get your Jackhammer ready!"

"Coming!" I heard.

"Grass you ok?"

She breathed in and out several times before answering. "Yeah, I'm fine."

For all I knew she was traumatized and would be afraid of heights for the rest of her life, but if she could function right now, it was a victory.

"Why did I have to go?" she asked me almost accusingly.

"You were the lightest," I explained.

"And Snark?" she snapped.

"He's the sniper," I said calmly. "Now relax. You're fine now. I would've hugged her, but I wasn't sure if that would be seen as unwanted advances. Instead I settled for gripping her shoulder reassuringly as I would've done with any other male member of the squad. "Relax."

"Sarge!" Bumblebee reported in.

"Bee, we might be having a phantom swooping in on us soon," I told him. Might was an understatement, I was certain we would have either a phantom trying to blast us or a flight of banshees trying to do the same thing. My bet was on the gunship. "I want you to shoot it down."

"All of it?" he asked. He obviously wanted to make sure that I wasn't talking about leaving it weaponless. That was the usual routine, you shot down the nose-mounted turret and killed the gunners of the other two.

"All of it," I confirmed. "The attack is coming soon, we don't want that gun dropping off enemy reinforcements on the frontline."

"Understood."

"Well, well, seems like you two are getting along a lot better now," Schitzo said.

_Jealous? _I teased myself.

Ironic, isn't it?

"No, I'm happy for you," he said. The sincerity in his voice made it all the more confusing.

"There, phantom!" Snark warned us.

"Bee, now!" I ordered.

The rockets man finished checking the scope on his Spanker before taking careful aim at the enemy dropship. It was positioning itself sideways so that it could shoot at us with both its main gun and one of the side-mounted turrets. It just gave Bumblebee's rockets a wider target. I heard the pinging of the lock on signal from my side.

"Sarge," Snark warned as he tossed me back my rifle.

I grabbed the BR55 and took three quick shots at the elite gunning at us before dropping to the ground to avoid a retaliation strike. It was just then that Bumblebee let go his first rocket. The missile flew in a straight line that would miss the phantom completely before abruptly turning to the right and hitting one of the engines. The ship tumbled sideways and the elite gunner tried to stay afoot. Snark took advantage of the situation and shot it through the leg, forcing it to fall to the floor before rolling out of the ship.

I turned to look at the sniper and he simply shrugged at me, daring me to admonish him for not taking a kill shot when he could've. Truth be told, forcing the elite to suffer its final moments before falling to the ground was acceptable in my books.

"Yipee-kay-yay motherfucker," Bumblebee smirked as he shot his second missile.

The phantom had turned forty-five degrees when it was first hit, the maneuver now exposed its thrusters to us. The missile flew in a straight line and veered slightly to the side to hit the white target. The HEAT warhead detonated and caused a bigger explosion as the fire breached the casing that protected whatever liquid fueled the phantom. The gunship tried to stay afloat before veering towards the opposite building. It crashed through the walls and it seemed like it would stay there before it fell to the side and down to the street below.

"What? No explosion?" Snark asked. "Cars always explode when you drop them from high altitudes."

"You've been watching way to many of Bee's movies," Grass told him.

Bumblebee fired a third rocket at the phantom's exposed belly. The missile hit somewhere important because after the missile detonated the entire phantom followed suit.

"There's your goddamned explosion," Bumblebee said with satisfaction.

"Next thing you know you're going to be shooting out one-liners like him!" Grass told Snark in a tone that a mom would use on a son that was hanging out with kids she didn't like.

"Thanks," I told the rocket launcher Helljumper. "But seriously, what's with the one-liners?"

"It was either that or hasta la vista baby," he said with a shrug.

"You made the right choice," I admitted as I looked on the flaming phantom. "Yipee-kay-yay… Hard Death?"

"Die Hard," he corrected. "Good film, even if a little bit implausible."

"What? One guy against a bunch of bad guys, outgunned and outnumbered. What's so impossible about that? We do that on a daily basis."

"Aye, but we have shoes."

"Duly noted. Now let's get out of here."

* * *

><p>"The sun's almost down," Snark told me.<p>

"I know," I replied.

"Beautiful sight, don't you think?"

Conventional thinking would've said that there was nothing beautiful about this, a half-destroyed city with several buildings wrecked. Piles of rubble and debris on the ground, streets filled with craters, burned out husks of vehicles, and corpses. The few buildings that were still left standing had all been damaged in one way or another. The one we were in had suffered so much damage that it looked like it was in construction.

There was some sort of beauty to all this chaos.

"No," I said. I glanced at my watch. "Seven forty-three."

"Just a few more seconds now," Snark muttered.

We both watched as Campo Sorrisco slowly disappeared behind the horizon. It was a beautiful sunset, but I wasn't here to take it in and have some sort of epiphany. I was here to blow shit up as soon as it disappeared.

"Do you want the honors Sarge?" Angel asked.

"I think Grass deserves them," I said.

"Fair enough, Grass?"

"Gimme that."

Angel tossed her the detonator.

"Now," I said as soon as the sun set.

"Aquiring signal," she informed us. "Kaboom."

Our pylon was the first one to blow up. Seconds after it did three other explosions followed suit. I looked to my left to see the damage that we had done. The large covenant structure was mostly undamaged, but the important part was utterly destroyed. I watched as the top of the pylon and a portion of the botom part fell from the terrace and to the street. There weren't any covvies down there, but it would've been a nice bonus.

It wasn't more than five seconds before missiles started raining in all around us. They kept missing our building by meters. Thanks to that IR strobe that we had placed on the rooftop no doubt. After the initial missile and artillery barrage came the flights of bombers. The Shortswords strafed the main Covenant positions with bombs while the Gryphons dropped smaller bombs and strafed exposed infantry. I only caught a handful of all this action, but I knew that this was only the beginning of the battle for us.

"Reaper-Squad, come in, do you read me?"

"I read you Eliza," I replied calmly. "What do you need us to do?"

* * *

><p><em>Thanks to Sniper-Fodder for proof-reading.<em>

_So there it is, 9,854 words of pure awesome. At least I would hope so. That was Chapter 100. Hitting the triple digits now, and I don't plan to stop any time soon people. I think I deserve some credit, especially because I updated yesterday and do at least two updates a week. I mean, seriously, who else is that awesome?_

_This is the part where I thank everybody for reading this fan fic, especially the ones that have been following the story and watching it grow ever since I posted a badly-written Chapter 1 with a serious lack of proper grammar and clarity. Everyone else is just as important, but anyone who started reading a week ago didn't have to wait for me to improve my writing level as much as those that started reading nine months ago. To them, my apologies. In all fairness, though, I am getting better. I think._

_That was probably the weirdest thank you of all history, but you probably grasp the meaning of it well enough._

_So what do you think? Was Chapter 100 everything you expected? Was it awesome? Was it epic? Was Grass' stunt badass? Let me know what you think._

_-casquis_


	101. Uppergap

Chapter CI: Uppergap

**August 12, 2543 (UNSC Calendar)/**

**Uppergap, Lambari, Campo Sorrisco System**

* * *

><p><em>"Tri-dimensional combat is a bitch."- unknown<em>

* * *

><p>"What do you need us to do?" I asked without even bothering to see who was calling. The sound of the explosions that destroyed the pylons was fading away.<p>

"Sergeant, this is Commander Albaf."

"I read you," I said lazily.

"Tanks and AFVs are already moving in on the city, I need you to relocate here and provide support for the Eighth Column. It consists mostly of Scorpions and Armadillos, although there are two M313 HRVs in there as well. Those need to be protected at all costs."

I eyed the waypoint in my HUD's map. Our new location was only a few blocks away, within quick reach. We had been redirected to a building that flanked one of Uppergap's main avenues. No doubt it would be becoming the home of a pitched battle soon enough. Snark would get one hell of a sniper alley though. He'd probably rack up his officer killcount in the double digits before we had to relocate again.

"Roger ma'am," I replied. "We're on our way."

"Good. Albaf out."

"Ok, you heard the lady, let's get moving."

"No rest for the wicked, eh?" Angel joked.

"I thought they were the wicked," Snark put in with his usual sarcastic tone.

"That's what I meant kid."

Snark stood up. "Ok seriously, I am twenty four years old. Don't call me kid."

"I was already toilet trained when you were still pissing in your diapers," Angel told him condescendingly. "Show some respect."

"Cool it," I warned. "Grass, I want you to take point."

"Sarge," she acknowledged with a nod.

"Everyone else, safeties off and helmets on, let's get out of this building."

The climb down was easy, we were only seven stories up after all. The entire building had been target of some sort of bombardment because chunks of it were missing altogether and the parts that had survived had all the paint and flooring peeled off until only the dull gray polycrete base remained. It looked like it was about to collapse any second, but the Colonial Administration always made sure that buildings were built sturdy. After all, if one of their buildings collapsed it would make for very bad PR.

The street here was just as blasted and damaged as the rest of the city. Parts of the buildings that we had just been occupying had fallen here, serving as both obstacles and cover. Since Albaf hadn't ordered us to get moving as fast as possible the piles of debris worked to our advantage.

Grass moved ahead of us, she did a weird crab walk to ensure that she always remained behind cover on at least one side. She made a point to keep her eyes on the other side, this section of the city was still under enemy control and jackal snipers could be lurking anywhere. I could tell that she was nervous, perhaps I should've sent someone else as lead after her nerve-racking experience on the side of a building. No, I definitely should've.

"Stop," she warned us.

God, it was good to have our helmet radios working again.

"Enemy patrol, one elite and three grunts."

"Bit small isn't it?" Bumblebee asked.

"Sucks for them," Caboose said. "Even under an organized offensive they are still arrogant assholes."

"What the hell happened to the brutes?" Scarecrow asked. "I thought their fleets were segregated."

"Can it," I snapped. "Scarecrow, Bumblebee, move up to Grass' position. Take out the patrol."

"Yessiree."

"You're on point after that," I told Bumblebee. The man would take it as a punishment for having a big mouth and so would Grass. In reality, it was a clever maneuver of mine to have her back with the rest of the squad and make her feel calm.

"Smooth," Schitzo complimented.

_I have my moments._

I pressed myself against a pile of rubble and waited for the four bursts of gunfire. There were three short bursts followed by two longer ones. After a moment that was followed by a single shot.

"Clear."

"Ok, move your asses, someone must've heard that," I prompted.

We ran while doing our best to keep ourselves low for a block and a half. It was better to be spotted by an alien in the distance than be pinned down in a nearly indefensible position. In that short run the battle started for real. I heard the familiar noise of the armadillo's autocannons and the scorpion's main guns. After the initial salvo I could make out plasma explosions. Then everything went to hell.

"Sheeit," Scarecrow muttered. "We better move it."

We were forced to stop abruptly in the next intersection. A large group of elites was walking towards our main attacking force. There were several grunts in there as well. We kept our heads behind rubble or abandoned cars as we waited for them to pass us. The ground shook as a pair of hunters walked less than ten meters away from us, oblivious to our presence. What really had me worried though, was something else entirely.

"What the hell is that?" Angel asked.

"I don't know," I replied quietly, motioning for him to keep his head down.

I grabbed my pistol and connected the camera to my HUD. A small screen appeared over the ammunition count showing what I was aiming at. I carefully put it over my cover so that I could see what was happening behind my back. Most of the infantry had already walked past us, but there were still some latecomers trying to catch up, mostly grunts with heavy weapons.

Behind all of them was something else entirely.

It looked like a wraith. Kinda. It had the same half-circle base, although it was a lot thinner than that of the wraith and a lot larger. The vehicle was perhaps twice as wide as a regular wraith and at least a couple meters longer. The circular base some sort of supporting body about two meters wide that leaned slightly backwards. That was topped off by a rotating turret with a long cannon resembling an oversized beam rifle.

"So the covvies finally got themselves a decent tank," I mused. "Not good."

"We gotta warn them," Scarecrow said.

"Agreed. Eliza, you read me?"

"I always read you Frank."

"Good, I'm seeing what looks like a new Covenant vehicle, I'm connecting you right now."

"I'm in." Eliza waited for a full second, no doubt an incredibly long amount of time by AIs standards. "Design configuration matched with Covenant aesthetics, even if the vehicle is a little bit more angular than usual for them. Multiple hatches indicate the necessity for a crew of more than one, probably two or three. Long barrel of the main gun indicates that it is meant for straight-line strikes and not curved mortar bombings. The cannon's similarity to the beam rifle would make it seem like they fire the same type of ammunition although they probably fire plasma rounds similar to those of Covenant long-range artillery. There are four automated turrets identical to those of a standard wraith, two on either side, in addition to one manned plasma cannon. Temporary designation Daemon. That is D-A-E-M-O-N."

"Did you just broadcast that to the entire ground forces?" I asked.

"And the fleet."

"Good for you Liz," I cheered her. "I assume you spotted no usable weaknesses."

"The daemon didn't seem to have any heat vents like the wraith, so no. It's probably on par with the wraith on plating, so a couple of shots from a scorpion or one from a rhino should take it out."

"Got it, thanks. Oh, and before I forget, nice touch on the name. Daemon. I like it."

"I'm glad you do Sergeant, call me when you need me."

"I will, Reaper out."

We waited a few minutes while the rest of the Covenant force passed us. Once we were in the clear we ran across the intersection and pressed ourselves to the walls of the buildings. The buildings here were shorter, perhaps only about a hundred or so meters tall, but they still had plenty of windows for a jackal to pop out of. The buildings could probably work to our advantage if the UNSC sent Falcons or Pelicans as well. The covvies would have a hard time shooting them down with their fast flying banshees, and our own aircraft could shoot back as well. So long as the aircraft stayed beneath the top of the buildings they would be safe from enemy fire.

Crashing against the walls and AA fire was still an issue though.

"There's our target," Bumblebee said. "Looks cozy."

Compared to the last building we had been in, it did look pretty damn cozy. It was just shy of a hundred meters tall and was very old-fashioned. The design was blocky and the buildings itself was pretty much a brick with windows. The only saving grace that this building had was that said windows were quite small, they would serve as excellent sniping positions while protecting us from the majority of incoming plasma.

"Snark, Caboose, and Bumblebee, clear the building. Make sure that the first five floors are empty."

"All of 'em?" Snark asked.

"No, actually I was kidding. You only have to make sure that the first one is clear. I also used that order to imply that you were free to go fu-"

"Ok Sarge!" Snark interrupted, exasperated. "I get it. Clear the five floors."

"That wasn't so hard, was it?"

The four of us waited quietly while the scouting fireteam made their way across the street and into the building. We took cover behind a bunch of columns in another building across the street. We had quite a view of all four directions here and could put up a nice fight if anyone spotted us. Scarecrow apparently didn't care that we could be spotted because he propped his back against the wall and let himself fall into a sitting position. The rest of us glanced back at him and Grass shrugged at me.

"Scarecrow, you ok?"

"Yeah, yeah, I'm fine," he said after a moment.

"You sure?"

"Yeah, yeah."

"Ok," I shrugged. His vitals were fine.

"It's just that…"

"What?" I asked. I didn't need to be a psychologist to know that something was troubling him.

"I got this weird feeling, that something's wrong."

I laughed. "Then the feeling is a little late my friend. Everything's wrong in this universe, at least for us."

He chuckled humorlessly. "It's not that, I just have this gut feeling. And to top it all off today's my baby brother's birthday."

"Really?" I asked. "The quarterback?"

"That one," he confirmed with a smile. "He's already a starter and it's only his second year."

"I take it success runs in the family," I half-stated, half-asked, sitting down next to him. I could see Angel shaking his head to my right. No doubt he wanted to be sitting down too.

"You could say that," Scarecrow shrugged. "Dad used to be a professional boxer. Did pretty well too."

"What's his name?"

"George Sutton."

"Sounds familiar."

Scarecrow laughed at that. Not that it was incredibly funny, but the joke seemed to relax him a little.

"Come on." I offered him my hand. "You can send him a card once this is over, then he can introduce us to some of his lady friends."

"Count me in for that," Angel said. "You game Grass?"

"Sure, I'll send you a picture."

"I want a copy of that," Scarecrow joked. "Make that two."

"Men," Grass said as if annoyed before laughing softly to herself.

"Sarge, we're clear," Bumblebee came in through the radio. "Building is as empty as it can get." He thought about what he had just said for a moment. "Save for us."

"Good one Bee," Snark complimented. "How you made it past basic escapes me."

"Well, you were actually approved when you went through the preliminary physical, weren't you?"

Ouch.

"Cool it," Caboose stepped in. He obviously didn't enjoy those two fighting all the time and wanted to have no part in their discussions. Especially in their stupid discussions. "We're clear, just get down here Sarge. Please."

I propped my back against one column and motioned for Grass and Scarecrow to get ready. Angel and I checked that there weren't any covvies within sight and gave them the go sign.

"Ok, go!"

The two of them ran while keeping themselves low. Our immediate surroundings were quiet, despite the explosions and gunfire in the background it still made me nervous, as if someone was just waiting to get the jump on us.

"We got you covered," Grass told us. "Go!"

I waited for Angel to step out of cover first. Partly malicious of me, if someone shot at us they would most likely shoot at him first. I didn't do it intentionally, but years of fighting had that survival instinct hardwired into my body. I jumped off the sidewalk half a second behind him and started sprinting across the street. It was more difficult than it sounds. The eight-lane avenue was divided by a wide median with scorched grass on it. That is without even counting the abandoned bus and the burnt-out cars.

Apparently covvies are idiots, because whatever alien saw us decided to shoot at me first.

I stopped dead as a beam flew less than an inch in front of my visor. I turned around and tried to return to the other building that I had been using as cover. Yet another beam cut me off, this one little over a foot away from my chest.

_Ok, now he's just fucking with me._

"Kill that fucker!" I yelled as I changed direction yet again and lunged for a car. I landed on the ground and slid for a few meters before I had to pull my legs to cover, barely avoiding a third beam that would've burned one leg clean off. I started taking long breaths to calm myself while Grass and Scarecrow opened fire. The trail of ionized particles that beam rifles left were even better than breadcrumbs, you could spot the shooter from pretty far off if you knew what to look for.

Vapor from an SRS is pretty bad too, but most shots leave no visible trace.

"Ok, we got you covered!" Scarecrow yelled. "Make a run for it!"

That was _the_ last thing that I wanted to do right now. So I did it anyways.

I felt another beam singe the back of my armor and decided to dive the last couple of meters. I landed with a pretty hard bang and slid along the polished marble until I hit the wall. Grass and Scarecrow paid me no mind as they peppered the enemy sniper's position with bullets. They kept the pressure on for another second before one loud bang rang out.

"Headshot," Snark said smugly. "Elite, by the way, major."

"Good for you buddy," Caboose congratulated him with an exaggerated happy tone. "I've never seen someone do that before."

"Making that sort of joke is my job!" Snark complained. "Sarge can snipe almost as good as I can, if you take my jokes away from me then I have no purpose in this squad and I'll be killed!"

"That's the weirdest logic I've ever heard," I commented as I stood up. I couldn't snipe half as well as he could, but I wasn't about to admit it._  
><em>

"Gotta admit, it works like that in the movies," Bumblebee said.

"Only in your movies," Grass explained to him.

"Please, you've watched half my collection. The only reason that you didn't burn through the other half is because we were deployed."

"Wrong," Snark said, "the only reason that she isn't burnt through the other half is because the other half is porn."

"See? You're as funny as always," Caboose told him. "Now shut the fuck up."

"If you weren't the same rank as me…"

"Please," Grass interrupted, "rank doesn't matter here, we're pretty much slaves to Sarge."

"You into that?" Angel asked. "Slave and master thing? Whips and chains?"

"I've tried it, not my thing."

And with that, this stupid conversation came to an end. I thanked whichever god would listen to me for giving her more self-confidence. I thanked him a lot.

Snark, Caboose, and Bumblebee had set up shop on the fourth floor. Snark was already piling up desks so that he could fire from a prone position near the windows. The other two were piling up desks and overturning them against the windows for mild cover. While they did that I tied an emergency hose to the emergency door's handle. Angel grabbed a piece of broken glass and shattered it on the floor right outside the elevator doors. Not as good as alarm sensors, but they would do the job well enough.

"Now what?" Angel asked after we were done fortifying the place.

"Now we wait," I said simply. I looked around the section of the building, the walls were still intact and there was surprisingly little debris in the corners. This place seemed to have avoided the bulk of the fighting, let alone the thermobaric explosions.

Snark kept watch out the window while the rest of us chatted and waited. Angel had mounted his SAW on the edge of a broken window and was sitting underneath it while munching on some M&M's. Grass was leafing through a magazine that she had found on the opposite wall while Caboose and Bumblebee discussed the best way to kill an enraged brute. Scarecrow had decided that a powernap was the best option while he waited. That left me to keep watch down the other side of the building. Snark could cover one side of the avenue and of the street from his position, but he couldn't cover the other side, that was left to me.

While Snark checked the side where our troops would be coming from I was left to check the side where a large enemy column was bound to appear from. To do that I searched for a broken window and placed a chair on the intact window next to that one. From there I could watch comfortably without anyone being able to spot me and I had a nice firing position within easy reach.

Smart? Probably not. Comfortable? Hell yes.

"The Covenant column is falling back," Snark suddenly informed us. "They'll get here in about two minutes by the looks of it."

"Ok, I guess break time is over," Angel groaned as he got up. "Come on big guy, wake up."

"I'm awake," Scarecrow told him.

I looked back out the window and cursed. "We've got a flight of banshees inbound."

"Flying under the buildings?" Bumblebee asked.

"Yes, going pretty slow by the looks of it."

"Want me to take them out?"

I thought about it for a second. The three banshees were traveling the length of the avenue, they were likely heading towards friendly forces to bomb the hell out of them. "Yes."

"Got it," he nodded as he grabbed his rocket launcher.

"I want everyone to pummel the third banshee with gunfire, Scarecrow, you think you can hit it with your 40 millimeter?"

"Yeah, sure."

"Good, as soon as it flies by we bring it down, Bee, you've got the other two."

"Sounds like a plan."

The three purple craft were going pretty slow and had put some distance between one another. These were military pilots, not acrobats, they didn't want to risk crashing into each other if they had to avoid a bunch of angry missiles. That or they were brutes purposely delaying their arrival to support elite-led troops. You don't have to be Einstein to know that those two didn't get along.

The first banshee screamed by.

Then the second one.

"Fire," I ordered.

Six ODSTs let out their weapons in full automatic fire and a grenade at the last banshee. It might've been designed to take small arms fire, but a light machine gun coupled with three assault rifles, a battle rifle, a submachine gun, and a grenade did pack one hell of a punch. The banshee lost one wing to the explosion before several bullets made it through the craft's body and killed the pilot.

"Get some!" Bumblebee cried as he fired.

The M19 surface-to-surface missile flew out of the launch tube and immediately banked sideways to follow the second banshee.

"Eat this!" he yelled as he fired his second rocket.

The second banshee had no chance, the rocket slammed right into its tail, destroying half the craft and killing the pilot in the process. The lead banshee had a second of warning, it tried pulling up to escape the walls that the buildings formed and to have more maneuvering room, but the missile quickly caught up with it and hit it on the side, destroying it completely and bringing whatever was left back to the ground in a flaming wreck.

"Reload! We need to be ready for when Eighth Column needs some hell rained upon the covvies."

My order was followed by the sound of magazines hitting the floor and of slides being cocked. I never got tired of that sound, it was empowering and intimidating.

"Eliza, patch me to whomever is in charge of the Eighth Column," I requested.

"Hold. Done."

"Staff Sergeant, this is Lieutenant Colonel Vincent Lavriv, I am told you will be providing support."

"That is correct, we can see your column from our position, we're about ten blocks away from you."

"Acknowledged, what equipment do you have?" I could hear the explosions in the background.

"Standard squad small arms," I replied. "Nothing else."

"Shit, and you're supposed to give us support?"

"That is correct, sir."

"This sounds like we're rescuing you!"

I sighed. "Sir, is there any target in particular you want us to take out? Soft target."

He knew exactly what I was doing and went along with it. "There is an elite, either the gunner or the commander of one of those Daemon tanks, he sometimes looks out the hatch to assess the battlefield and give some orders."

"Consider it done," I told him. "Snark?"

"I got the tank in my sights, should be a matter of time… and there he is."

Snark's rifle boomed.

"Sir?"

"Good one," he acknowledged. "I'll tell you what targets we need taken out and when. Lavriv out."

"What kind of accent was that?" Angel asked after Lavriv ended the conversation.

"East European," Scarecrow said with a shrug.

"Slovenian," Grass asserted. "Definitely Slovenian."

"How the hell do you know that?" Snark asked.

"Well, I lived most my life in Europe, so I have a pretty good grip on the accents."

"I'm from Mexico and I have a hard time differentiating Colombian and Venezuelan accents."

"Aren't they in the same union now?" Bumblebee asked.

"They weren't when I left," I shrugged. "But it's possible, the only news from Earth I follow are those regarding football."

"American?" Bumblebee inquired.

"Both."

"Definitely Slovenian," Grass repeated herself.

"Is there anything you don't know?" Caboose asked. He was definitely annoyed by her deducing that faster than him. He was supposed to be of Russian origin and Slovenia was part of the Balkan States, which meant that it neighbored Ukraine, which had pretty much been a part of Russia ever since it seceded from the Soviet Union. His reasoning made him conclude that he should've figured that out before Grass, but his logic was as flawed as was my grammar in this paragraph.

"She doesn't know what a guy looks like without clothes on," Angel teased.

"Are you calling me a lesbian?" Grass asked. "Or a virgin?"

"Whichever you find more offensive," he told her. "Or both."

I interrupted them before they got into a discussion regarding the rights of gay people. It wouldn't be the first time that they went down that road. The funny thing is that they switched the roles of liberal democrat and conservative republican whenever they felt like it. I was often left wondering if they actually cared about the issue or were just looking for an excuse to start a shouting match.

"If any of you two start another fight I swear to god I'll have you returned to your original units!" I snapped violently. That certainly grabbed their attention. "Now shut. The fuck. Up."

"Bravo Sarge," Bumblebee said after clapping twice.

"Bravo indeed Francisco," Shitzo mocked.

As soon as those two shut up everyone moved to the windows. The Eighth Column was already within sight and the first of the retreating covvies had run by our building. The surprise attack by the UNSC had left the covvies mostly defenseless, they had just begun to assemble an effective defense now. The sheer amount of purple that I could see coming from the direction opposite the Eighth Column was evidence of their newfound decisiveness.

"Sir," I started.

"We see them," Lavriv muttered. "We're going to need your sniper as soon as they meet us."

"He's… eager," I told him. Snark was actually giddy at the prospect of having an entire shooting range's worth of targets.

"He'd better be. We'll close in as much as we can, to deny them their wraiths. Those tanks, however…"

"We might be able to kill a couple," I said, looking at Bumblebee, who nodded back at me. "But as I said, we just have small arms with us."

"Understood… Get those 'Dillos up front! I'll see you soon."

The covvies force that was meeting Lavriv's was more than a match for them. I could count three of the Daemon tanks as well as half a dozen Wraiths. At the front were several Ghosts and a few Revenants. They were moving slowly in order for the regular infantry to keep up. Bulking up their numbers were three Shadow troop transports as well. From the looks of it they were just under battalion strength, same as the Eighth.

Once they clashed the battle was bound to turn ugly. Very ugly.

The Covenant fired the first shot. Once they realized that Lavriv was moving his troops as close to theirs as possible to avoid the mortar fire. The UNSC infantry scattered and took cover, but the Armadillos and Scorpions had to stop or speed up in order to avoid the initial blasts. Even then a couple were hit. One Scorpion took a glancing blow, damaging one of the tracks while an Armadillo was put out of commission from a direct hit. I didn't see any of the crew escape the burning craft.

The UNSC's counter-attack was a lot more devastating. The Scorpions fired directly at the offending Wraiths while the Armadillos used their autocannons to kill as many ghosts as they could. The human forces were now firing as they went, reducing the distance between both groups. The vehicles lurched forward while the infantry did their best to keep up.

One block before they reached our building the Scorpions stopped. They positioned themselves behind buildings or rubble to protect themselves while keeping their turrets free to move around. Half a block later the Armadillos did the same thing, leaving the infantry to form the first line of defense against the attacking covvies while the vehicles would provide support.

The covvies did roughly the same thing, only that their Ghosts pushed forward ahead of the sprinting infantry to meet the marines head on. The image reminded me a little bit too much of a medieval cavalry charge. Those never ended well for the regular infantry.

"Now would be as good a time as any to intervene Sergeant," Lavriv suggested.

"You heard the Commander," I snapped at my squad. "Intervene."

Snark emptied his rifle's magazine at the charging ghosts, taking out four pilots with an equal number of bullets. I used the three-round burst to hit grunts, taking down two of them. Bumblebee took a more direct approach and blasted two ghosts with his M12 while Angel managed to stop one with his M247SAW. As soon as we were done firing a rain of missiles was fired, taking down even more ghosts. We had managed to take down half of the ghosts by the time they hit the frontline.

Several marines were splattered by a few ghosts while others were hit with the twin plasma cannons. I saw one marine jump aside from a charging ghost and clothesline the grunt pilot, snapping its neck but breaking his own arm in the process.

"Might try that sometime," Scarecrow muttered. "Even if it's just for the vid."

The ghosts were now turning around to strafe the surviving foot soldiers one more time before escaping from the more powerful tanks and AFVs. A few of them were hit by the autocannons or the tanks' turrets, but most of them managed to escape without doing too much damage.

That's covvie strategy for you, waste two thirds of your most agile vehicles in hopes of sending the enemy in disarray. It might've worked, but these marines were one tough bunch, and they shrugged off the deaths of their friends before taking cover and opening up on the most eager of the charging infantry. The bulk of the UNSC's forces were arriving now, with both elephants taking a turn to avoid making targets of themselves and to cover the flanks. From the looks of the huge vehicles one of them was a mobile hospital and the other one a mobile command center.

A couple of the Armadillos moved forward and scraped against the buildings before stopping behind piles of rubble. Those two would serve as direct support for the infantry while the others took their time taking out targets of opportunity.

"Snark, climb a few floors, I want you to take out as many officers as you can. Don't make yourself a target."

The sniper folded his rifle's bipod and stood up before nodding at me. He ran to the stairs, only stopping to complain about the hose securing the door. He untied it and disappeared.

"I don't want anyone firing unless I tell them to," I ordered. "The covvies already know we are here, let's not make ourselves a bigger target."

While the battle unfolded below us I looked for high-value targets. Most of the infantry was grunts and jackals with the occasional elite, but most of them could be handled with ease by the Marines. The higher-ranking forces had stayed in the back while the disposable ones had been sent forward to prove at the strengths of their opponents.

A loud shot rang out and I caught sight of an elite falling far behind the frontline. A few rounds of plasma flew above us and hit the building. Snark informed me that he was ok and that he had just taken down an ultra. He was already switching floors. I started looking for any jackal snipers that might be trying to kill a human counterpart.

"There, Bumblebee, you see it?" I asked, pointing at a wraith tank that was emerging from behind the corner of a building to fire.

A single missile flew straight at the heavily-armored vehicle. The HEAT charge detonated right above the driver's hatch and directly into the turret. The explosion completely wrecked the barrel of the wraith's gun, rendering it completely useless for anything other than cover. An angry elite jumped out of the useless vehicle while drawing its sidearm. I couldn't resist adding insult to injury and took the alien out with a quick headshot. Its weakened shields didn't do anything to stop the bullets flying at it.

"I'll call that an assist," Bumblebee told me.

A couple of covvies fired at my position, breaking the last remaining intact windows and scorching some of the inside walls. They had spotted us but didn't deem us enough of a threat to commit more firepower to our position.

I saw a two green fuel rods fly straight at one of the Armadillos. The explosive rounds hit the frontal armor head on, melting it off but not doing any un-repairable damage. I traced the origin of those rounds and killed the grunt carrying the Covenant's counterpart to our rocket launcher. The grunt fell to the floor with a theatrical spin and I took advantage of the distraction to kill a jackal next to it that jumped to the side in fright.

"Can we fire now?" Caboose asked.

"Feel free," I said. "Might as well do some damage now that we're made."

My whole squad opened fire. They were smart and no one picked the same target. They each looked for an elite or a grunt with heavy weaponry. Their concentrated fire allowed them to take out Covenant infantry with relative ease. The covvies had nowhere to hide since we were several meters above them, making cover relatively useless. Several elites fell to our fire before they realized that there were more of us up here than they originally thought.

We were forced to dodge behind cover as plasma and needles rained on our position, scorching the walls and ceiling.

"Snark, draw their fire," I yelled.

"On it."

Three shots rang out and I could picture three elites falling down with half their heads missing. A lot of the enemy fire was redirected and we were free to take potshots at the covvies again.

"Shit, Deamon tank!" Angel warned everyone.

"Sir, you see it?" I asked the LC.

"We see it, but none of our Scorpions has a bead on it."

I was about to suggest a plan of action to him when the Daemon fired. It was the first time I had seen one in action and it surprised me completely. The shot sounded like that of a Wraith but several times louder, it shook the entire block. The round itself looked like a very large, elongated plasma rifle round. It hit a position where two marines had set up a turret.

After the explosion cleared out the only thing that remained of those two marines was half a torso and a twitching arm.

"Holy fucking shit in hell!"

"Kill that motherfucker!" Caboose urged.

Bumblebee fired his tow missiles in quick succession at the tank. They both flew in a straight line and hit the base of the Daemon. Both detonations rocked the tank backwards, lifting its front and then bringing it crashing down on the ground once again. The tank started letting out smoke from where it was hit, but it kept moving. Suddenly several small explosions pinged off its armor as the damaged Armadillo fired at it. The tank's turret moved to the side almost calmly and fired a single shot at the offending vehicle, completely blowing it up. The Daemon was finally brought down when three more missiles from the marines down on the street slammed into it.

"And they have more of that?" Grass asked rhetorically.

"Game faces on people," I said. "Let's bring some hell."

From up here we had an incredible vantage point. The covvies were almost directly beneath us, they had nowhere to hide. Grass, Caboose, and Scarecrow use their assault rifles to kill lower-ranking elites and grunts. Angel had a less precise weapon so he simply provided suppressing fire and forced anyone that took aim at us to think twice about their decision.

"Sir, you've got another tank coming up!" I warned. "This one is flanked by a Revenant!"

"I see it, Sergeant, I need you to draw some fire."

What?

"What?"

"Sergeant, I need you to-"

"I heard you the first time, sir. Why?"

"I sent a team to flank the Covenant forces, we don't want them looking anywhere other than us or you."

I sighed reluctantly. I didn't really want to paint a bull's-eye on my chest, but what the Lieutenant Commander was saying made sense. If we managed to draw their eyes away from their rear or flank we could catch them unawares and end this battle a whole lot quicker. Everybody won. Except the covvies, they died.

"Fine. I'll cook something up."

I turned around and looked at my squad. They looked tired, we had been fighting almost constantly for a whole day and things weren't looking up. I eyed them one by one and waited for them to nod. Once they all did I nodded back to them.

"Snark, can you remain here by yourself?"

"As long as you don't let anyone through I'll be fine," he said. "If someone decides to bomb this building I guess I could be in trouble."

"Stick to the lower floors then."

"Roger that Sarge, good luck."

We left the floor through the emergency stairs. Once we were on the bottom floor I made sure to lead my team outside through a door that didn't mark us as targets. We crossed the street with no trouble. The Covenant was still a dozen meters from the intersection, same as the UNSC, and they couldn't spot us from where they stood. This allowed us to remain out of sight as they focused on the larger force directly in front of them.

The building in front of us was a more modern one, sleek and with curved walls. The side we were in front of had no doors, but plenty of windows. Unfortunately, all of them were still intact. I kicked one and stepped back as the crystals fell before jumping inside the building. Under normal circumstances an alarm would've started ringing, but power was still out in the city. I walked through the immense lobby and took cover behind the reception desk before signaling for half my team to join me.

"What's the plan?" Scarecrow asked me.

"We set up positions there and there," I told him, pointing to some large spots immediately outside the building. "Behind those… ummm... How are those things called?"

"The pots?"

"Yeah, but they're big pots."

"I guess you could call them big pots," Scarecrow shrugged.

"Grass?" I turned to the one member of the team who knew everything that there was to know about the most insignificant things.

"I'm going to have to go with big and rectangular pots."

There were three of those big and rectangular pots. They were about ten feet long and three feet high. I couldn't exactly gauge their width from here but I was guessing that they were thick enough to stop anything short of a beam rifle or a tank from shooting us.

"I want Angel and Caboose on the left, Grass and I in the middle, and Scarecrow and Bumblebee take the one on the right. You got it?"

"Got it," they acknowledged.

"Good, as soon as we three leave this cover you run over here," I told Bee, Caboose, and Angel.

I looked over my head. The short plants that were in the big and rectangular pots would have to serve as cover for the moment. We could move over there without being spotted by the covvies in the street in front of us, but if there wasn't something covering us from the other side we would make easy targets. Sometimes you just have to flip a coin.

I vaulted over the reception desk and sprinted across the lobby before jumping through a broken window. I took two steps on the wide sidewalk before sliding to cover. Grass slammed into the big and rectangular pot a second after I did, and Scarecrow did the same on his big and rectangular pot a moment later. I looked to my left and breathed with relief when I saw that there was a bunch of debris and a car on top of it that covered us from prying eyes. It could also serve as a nice firing position if our distraction worked very well.

"Sarge, we clear?" Caboose asked.

"As clear as you're gonna get," I told him.

"Here goes nothing," Angel muttered.

The three of them ran from the reception desk outside to us they all slid into their respective positions and waited for me to give the attack order.

"Snark, you see us?"

"Hold on." From the sound of it he was climbing up a flight of stairs. I heard his boots slamming into the concrete and then the sound of his bipod being unfolded. "I see you Sarge. You sure that's safe?"

"No, where are you?"

"Eleventh floor, corner window," he told me.

"I see you. What's there on the other side of this big and rectangular pots?"

"Why don't you just call 'em pots?"

"Big and rectangular pots, that's what Grass said they were."

"Then they're probably named that," Snark admitted. "There are at least two dozen covvies in the same strip of space that you are occupying. All of 'em are vulnerable to you right now, you could take them out if you're quick."

"Highest ranking officer?" I asked.

"A major, elite."

"Jackals?"

"Skirmishers. Three."

"Send me a feed."

A small screen appeared on my helmet and I could see myself from a high vantage point.

"Snark, aim more to the back."

"There."

"Ok, here's what I want you to do, you take out the major and then kill that elite near the shade."

"Got it."

"'Crow, I want you to blast that shade turret as soon as we are done with those covvies close to us, ok?"

"Everyone got the feed?" I asked.

They all said yes.

"Select targets and fire on my Snark." I waited exactly three seconds for Snark to kill that elite major.

We stood up from behind cover at exactly the same time. Grass and Caboose tossed grenades at clusters of covvies while the rest of us went straight to killing. I immediately set my sights on an elite and put three quick bursts in its chest. It recoiled from the successive impacts before its shield flickered. Caboose finished it off with a sustained burst, hitting it in the chest and neck spraying alien blood all over the place. I switched targets and caught one of the skirmishers in the arm before hitting it three times in the belly. If I didn't kill it instantly I certainly put it out of commission.

I caught sight of another elite trying to return fire, but Angel killed it with sustained fire from his SAW. I brought down another elite with help from Scarecrow and then set myself to kill as many grunts as possible in the shortest amount of time. The little aliens were scared and confused, most of all, they were exposed.

I caught one grunt in the back as it tried to run, the bullet hit the methane tank and punctured it, causing the grunt to fall to the ground and start clawing at its neck in an attempt to get some air. Then I saw something impressive. Another grunt jumped to his fallen friend and took off its mask. The grunt took his own its mask and tried to pass it to his dying friend. The surprise didn't last long for me because I hit the second grunt through the temple with a burst, spraying bioluminescent blood all over its dying friend.

"We're done here," I said as soon as the aliens there were dead. It took some fifteen seconds in all, but every single alien in front of us was either dead or dying. "Take their positions and keep on pushing!" I ordered.

I heard two snaps from a sniper rifle and knew that the elite I had told Snark to take out was dead as well as another unfortunate split-chin. Scarecrow moved towards a burnt out husk and fired his 40mm as he went, hitting the shade turret. The rest of my squad followed the enormous Helljumper and took positions behind cars, debris, or craters. I stayed where I was before running to the pile of debris that had covered us. I went prone and climbed over it.

It was truly a wonderful position. On my left side was a wrecked car that protected me from any attempts at flanking. In front of me was a pile of rubble at least two meters thick. To my right was a fucking building.

"Lavriv, I mean Sir," I talked into my radio. I caught myself before I pressed my hand against where my ear would be. The helmet radio would be working just fine. "Can you order your men to push forward?"

"I'll give the order," he replied almost immediately.

Satisfied, I started earning my paycheck.

My first victim was a jackal sharpshooter. It ran forward and slid behind another burning car before propping his carbine on the hood. It was no doubt gunning for one of my squadmates, but a quick shot to the beak remedied the situation. I winced when I realized that even though I blew half its face off it was still alive. The jackal struggled weakly on the ground before I put three more bullets in its chest and ribs.

"On to the next one," I whispered to myself.

The next one was killed before I could shoot it. Courtesy of a grenade. The next one was almost ripped in half as Snark's bullet ripped through its waist. I was forced to duck as Lavriv's mortars shelled the area briefly.

"A danger close warning would be pretty nice," Bumblebee growled.

"It's called combat, get used to it," Caboose quipped.

Once the shelling stopped I popped from cover again. The Covenant nearby were either stunned or suffering from a case of serious blood loss. Or both.

One elite in particular stumbled sideways and kept itself propped up by leaning against a destroyed Wraith. It shook its head as if to ward off the dizziness and shock, the sheer _humanness _of the expression always astounded me, but I had seen them do that hundreds of time before, this time was no different than those before. I ended the elite's confusion with a quick shot to the neck.

Did that sound corny? It sounded corny, didn't it?

Someone tapped me in the back.

I nearly clocked the bastard with my full strength before I saw that it was a marine.

"Fucking fuck marine," I snapped. "A warning would be nice…"

"Sorry Sarge," he apologized. "Ramirez."

"Everyone's called Ramirez," I said in a bitter tone.

He shrugged. "My ancestors were horny."

That was _the _best thing that he could've said.

"I like you," I told him. "You a sharpshooter?"

"Yeah," he showed me a DMR he had slung behind his back. "I lost my gun in the retreat," he informed me when he saw that I was staring at his gun.

"Ouch," I said. Losing your rifle is like losing your favorite toy, only worse.

"Nothing you can do about, eh? Let's kick some covvie ass."

"Sounds like a plan," I nodded at him.

I looked over my shoulder and saw several Marines running to our position, bolstering our strength. I smiled at the reinforcements and propped my rifle on the debris, looking for high value targets. "DMR's a five-shot, right?" I asked, referring to the amount of rounds it took to unshield an elite and finish it off with a headshot.

"Yeah, not as good as the BR's four-shot, but it does the job," he replied after killing a jackal.

"Good to know."

From that point on we both stopped any conversation and started taking out targets further out back. I noticed that Ramirez was sticking to jackals and grunts, he didn't really trust the speed and punch of his DMR. I didn't blame him for it either, I would certainly be apprehensive of the weapon after years of relying on my trusty BR55.

"Fuck," he said after a while.

"What?" I asked without taking my eyes of my scope.

"Tank… TANK!"

I didn't bother looking for a tank, if he could see it then it was there.

"Much like I am. Right?"

_Schitzo, fuck you._

I slid down the pile of debris as fast as humanly possible. I was just in time too. The entire ground shook as the plasma round detonated against the pile of rocks. My entire skeleton was jarred from the shockwave, leaving my body feeling numb and my muscles weak. If that wasn't enough, the blast lifted the car off where it was. The entire event seemed to happen in slow motion. I was there, lying on my back and watched a recent-model Caballo coupe flip over and land, back first, a foot away from my legs.

Of course, the higher powers didn't deem it appropriate that it should meet the conditions required for it to remain in that position, so it started falling back down. Right on top of me. I rolled to the side over a slightly-slower reacting Ramirez. He grunted when I rolled over him but then used his legs to push himself out of the way. The car missed glancing on his right shoulder, eliciting a yelp of surprise from the man but not harming him.

"You alright?" I asked.

"Yeah," he said.

"You sure?" I asked again, this time a little bit mockingly. "That yelp scared the shit out of me."

"If you weren't my superior I'd tell you to fuck off Sarge."

"I think I get the message."

I rolled back on my belly and climbed over the pile of rubble, heavily reduced in height but still useful. I saw the Daemon tank take aim and fire another shot. This one flew straight down the avenue and collided with the other Armadillo that had taken up position near the front. The shot bisected the AFV and detonated its ammunition stores in a blaze. The rounds started going off wildly, prompting every Marine nearby to run away as fast as possible.

That got Lavriv's attention. I could hear him ordering his tanks to move to position. A few seconds later three 90mm rounds slammed into the new Covenant vehicle. The first two rocked it backwards and peeled away some of the plating while the third one punched through the tower's armor and blew the turret up high. It was good to see that happening to an enemy tank for a change.

"Move up!" some marine yelled.

Several of his mates complied and charged forward with loud war cries. They dove for better cover and forced any surviving covvies to retreat lest they were overrun. Ramirez decided to join the charge and leapt over the pile of debris, rifle in hand. The poor marine was hit by a needle right in the chest. The round went completely through, spraying me with a little bit of blood. He fell backwards and I caught him before he slammed into the floor. I gently lowered him to the floor.

"Are you ok?" I asked him.

He gave me that 'are you fucking kidding me' look.

"Right." He had the right to give me that look. "Ok, look at me." He eyes were beginning to close. "Look at me! Don't close your eyes."

"I'm trying," he cried.

I pulled out a can of biofoam from the pouch in my left thigh and gave it to him. "You know how to use this?"

He nodded and reached for it. He made a grab for the can and missed by a couple of inches, that was all that I needed to know. I placed the tip of the can in his wound and shoved the side of my other hand in between his teeth to prevent him from biting his tongue out. "Hold on buddy," I said. I clicked the can and it released a generous amount of biofoam. The foam dug into the wound, burning like hell as it did so.

"Come on, no pain, no gain."

"Fuuuuuck…"

"Yeah, I feel you. You're getting a Purple Heart. Smile."

"Fuuuuuuckkkk….."

Once the biofoam hardened I stopped pouring it into him. I rubbed the excess foam around his injury, eliciting a few cries of pain as I did so. He seemed to be breathing well enough, and he was cursing like the best, so I took it as a good sign. Sadly, I wasn't a professional so I did what the standard marine or jarhead would do in a situation like this.

"Medic!" I cried. "Medic!"

It took maybe half a minute but eventually a female corpsman showed up. Every corpsman seemed to be a female nowadays.

"Where did he get hit?"

Every corpsman seemed to be named Hanna Lockley nowadays.

"Hanna?" I asked. "The hell are you doing here?"

She looked at me for a moment, seemingly unsure of what was going on. I depolarized my visor for her convenience.

"My platoon was attached to the Eighth, where did he get hit?"

"Chest, needle rifle went clean through, I already patched him up best I could, but he's still bleeding."

"Marine, marine!" she yelled at Ramirez. "Look at me. You're going to be fine," she assured him. "Now don't move."

She moved forward and carefully turned him over. The motion elicited a cry of pain from Ramirez. She looked at the exit wound, partially patched up with biofoam and also revealed a small puddle of blood in the ground underneath him. She looked at me and gave me one of those glares that I was so familiar with, just not from her.

"Ah… sorry?"

"Stick to blowing shit up Sergeant," she recommended. "I'll take care of him."

"Thanks," I said.

"And Frank?"

"Yeah, yeah, be careful, I know."

"For the love of god, put me down lady, puta madre!" Ramirez cursed.

I smiled at the familiar Spanish insults and vaulted over the pile of debris after making sure no one was waiting for me to do so. I ran fast for a column that had fallen sideways and slid into it. I crouched and walked sideways to the edge of the broken column before going prone. From there I could fire comfortably and was very well protected from plasma fire.

I took a couple of potshots at an elite moving from cover to cover before killing a jackal. I shot the bird in the foot, forcing it to use one hand to support itself. The motion placed its shield out of the way and it got five rounds to the ribs as punishment for the oversight. A grunt spotted me and fired a few shots at me forcing me to pull myself back into cover. I waited for a couple of seconds and readied myself to fire again when a blue orb landed by my side.

I stared at it dumbly for a second before jumping over the rectangular column. The four-feet thick piece of architecture protected me well enough. I avoided the blast just in time, but exposed myself completely in the process. I then jumped back over to my previous position as an elite with a plasma repeater started firing at me. Unfortunately, I landed right in the crater of molten and super-heated rock, eliciting a yelp of surprise and forcing me to jump up in reaction. Two rounds from the repeater whizzed by my head before I dove forward.

"Fuck, that was annoying."

"Want me to take it out Sarge?" Snark asked with a mocking tone.

"What rank is it?"

"Blue armor."

"No, I'll kill that fucker myself."

And I did just that.

"Snark, I need your eyes."

The screen appeared again, this time it showed the whole intersection and the battlefield from an even higher vantage point. I could see dozens of Covenant corpses to our rear, most of the human victims had been pulled back to the Elephant as fast as possible, but the obviously dead ones had been left where they were. There had been a lot of obviously dead ones.

I focused on the task at hand and asked Snark to look farther ahead. The covvies had started to bulk up their defenses with deployable covers and barricades. They now had a nice semi-circle blocking off one half of the avenue and were already moving up to do the same thing on the other side. Some of the elites were even dragging cars into position.

"Snark, tell Lavriv to shell that position."

The sniper didn't reply.

"He says that he's low on mortar ammunition, rather not waste."

I cursed, this would make our job a lot harder. Then I stopped myself. Our job wasn't to kill every last one of the alien invaders, we just had to draw their attention long enough for the flanking team to… flank.

"Sir, how much more until your team makes it?" I asked the light commander.

"Two minutes, by their estimate."

"They better hurry," I urged. "You are losing a shit ton of men here."

"You think I don't know that?" Lavriv snapped at me. "Just do your fucking job."

I realized that what I had just said was most definitely very insensitive. "Right, sorry. The covvies are fortifying, we won't be able to just barrel through. We need your 'Dillo."

"That's out of the question Sergeant," he informed me. "I'm sending reinforcements and a squad of Hellbringers."

Full stop. I blinked.

"Hellbringers?"

"Yeah, I was surprised when I found out they were still in service. Quite useful, you know?"

"I'll bet," I agreed. "We'll do our best Commander. Reaper out."

Hellbringers, go figure.

I fired a few more shots, taking out grunts and jackals before moving to more comfortable cover. I reloaded my rifle and checked myself for ammunition, I was running low, but could still stretch it out for some time. If worse came to worse I could just pick up another weapon in the meantime.

"Reaper, how are you on ammo?" I asked my squad.

"I'm running low Sarge," Snark said. "Might need to borrow some from our friends down there."

"Angel?" I asked, he was the only other squad member that would have a hard time scavenging ammunition.

"I'm good, still have two full boxes plus seventy rounds on this one. Worry not Sarge, I can still dish out some damage."

I nodded to myself and tossed a frag grenade over my head, it was meant to serve as a distraction while I popped out and killed anything that didn't find cover. Three grunts that dove away from the explosion met their end as I put three rounds in each of their chests. The small distraction allowed a few of the marines to push forward and gain position. This battle was beginning to turn into something reminiscent of Stalingrad. Let's just hope the covvies didn't get the brilliant idea of getting inside buildings and fortifying them.

"Move aside!" someone boomed from behind. I looked back to spot the source of the voice and saw that two marines were pushing a combat barrier, scraping the ground as they went. Behind that slab of metal were two Hellbringers. Their armor looked eerily like that of a Spartan-III. The large tank on their backs and the long tube in their hands left no doubt as to what they were. If there was one unit that was considered crazier than us Helljumpers, it would be them.

"That's enough," one of the Hellbringers said, prompting the marines to move away from them and look for other cover. "Flashbang out!" he warned us.

The two pyros tossed two flashbangs each at the covvie line. Immediately after the stunning devices detonated they popped from cover and took aim.

"Need a light?"

The jet of flame that left the NA4/Defoliant Projector lit up the night like nothing else. Maybe it affected me more because I was only a few meters away, but the fire made everything look clearer. The sound of scorching air was immediately followed by that of screaming grunts and jackals, soon after, elites gave in to the pain and started screaming bloody murder while their skin melted right of their bones. Once the closest covvies were reduced to a pile of goo and a charred skeleton the two Hellbringers started pushing forward ever so slowly. They let out short bursts very often to force covvies to keep their heads down.

Their immediate success inspired the rest of us, with two dozen dead covvies in less than half a dozen seconds we all felt a little bit empowered. I jumped from cover and took a combat stance while shooting at enemy infantry trying to run away. Several grunts made easy targets, they had forgotten what little discipline they had drilled into them and wanted to escape the hell closing in upon them. I also got the pleasure of shooting a flaming elite. The alien tried shooting at the Hellbringers even as the fire burned through its armor, never giving up in its quest to eradicate the human race.

"They're on the building!" someone yelled suddenly.

"To the left, to the left!"

Several marines jumped behind cover as a needles started raining from above. I was on the right side of the avenue, so I was spared from being a target. I took advantage of the opportunity and shot two jackals before one of the Hellbringers aimed at the second floor window and torched the entire floor with one pass of his weapon. What a buzzkill.

The push wouldn't last forever though. The covvies knew a priority target when they saw one. Soon there was an unhealthy amount of plasma raining on the two Hellbringers. The jets of fire blocked them from sight more or less, but one of them was hit in the leg with a plasma rifle, eliciting a cry of pain and forcing him to jump behind a crashed banshee. The other man didn't stop his advance, instead simply firing a constant jet of fire at the enemies in front of them. By the time he ran out of gas we were already on top of the improvised barricade the Covenant had set up.

"Dinner is served," the Hellbringer said. "Extra crispy."

I laughed at the corny one-liner. The Hellbringer started to duck behind a car when a beam caught him in the elbow, the impact cut clean through the armor and severed the arm. He cried in pain and clutched at his bleeding stump before another beam went clean through his head. I cursed as the man's body slumped over the car's hood.

"Forward!" A marine yelled.

Barring the wounded Hellbringer I was the forward most human. I hopped over a bunch of piled up rocks that the covvies had set up as a barrier and landed in the smoking area. I found, to my displeasure, that not every enemy soldier had been turned into overcooked steak. A grunt yelped and reached for its needler by my left foot, but I punted its face in before it could react. Several of the marines and a few of my squadmates were already firing full-auto at the retreating covvies. Our diversion had worked and gone the extra mile. I smelled some medals in the near future.

"Sergeant, your diversion worked!" Lavriv exclaimed. "The flanking team is in position. Take a rest."

"Thank you, sir," I said. I killed a jackal playing possum with a good 'ol fashioned curb stump and sat down behind a nice and sturdy piece of building. "Reaper, you good?" I asked.

"Caboose was glanced by plasma, some minor burning, everyone else is fine by the looks of it," Scarecrow said. I tried looking for him but couldn't spot him over the several destroyed cars, the flaming ghosts and the piles of debris. "Snark?"

"I just ran out," he told me, "SMG still has most its ammo though."

"Get down to street-level and talk to Lavriv about getting some spare mags."

"Way ahead of you Sarge."

I looked up as a couple of rounds from the Scorpions flashed by. Now that the Daemon tanks were reduced to half their number Lavriv was pounding the remaining Covenant forces to facilitate the job of the flanking force. I heard a few explosions and then the comfortable noise of the Armadillo's autocannon a block away from my position. I smiled at the sound of human-made explosions and allowed my body to relax a little.

Then something wiped that smile off my face. It was that noise that Covenant walkers made when they charged up their main weapons. I'd only heard it a dozen times at most, but the particular sound that the things made before unleashing death and destruction was one that had been engrained into my mind. The electric humming got higher and higher until it disappeared. For the briefest of instants it went quiet and then it fired.

"Locusts!" I heard through the radio. "Ther-"

The signal went dark as whoever was talking got vaporized. I looked over my cover and saw the two back legs of a walker disappear behind a corner, no doubt making the killing move on the flanking team. Then I looked to my left and spotted another Locust walking in our direction. It paused to charge up its main weapon, shields flickering as small arms fire hit it. The purple beam flew the length of the avenue and hit a Scorpion tank. It melted through the frontal armor in a matter of seconds and then detonated the ammunition stores, causing the turret to fly up into the sky from the explosion.

"Fire!" Lavriv ordered. "Pull back the Elephants, I want air support. Now!"

Two HEAT rounds from an equal number of tanks made contact with the walker. Both of them drained the shields but didn't kill them completely. This Locust seemed to be an upgraded model. Several small explosions adorned the front of the walker as a few Armadillos joined the attack. The Locust stopped walking again and fired a sustained beam that burned through three of the AFVs. That left one or two tops.

Another shot from a Scorpion slammed into it, draining what was left of its shields. Now that the vehicle was relatively defenseless all of us infantry that were close to it opened up on the cockpit. My squad and I knew better and concentrated our fire in the weak knee joints. Eventually the other Scorpion finished it off with one shot to the cockpit.

"There's more behind!"

I looked over there to confirm that statement and, sure enough, there were three other locusts emerging from behind buildings.

"How the hell did they get there?" someone asked.

"Doesn't matter. Run!"

"Fall back!" I prompted. "Fall back!"

I started making my way back to relative safety when one beam vaporized a squad of marines running with me. I dropped to the ground as the energy weapon flew above me, scorching the back of my armor and burning my skin. Another two beams flew in the direction of the buildings that the remaining Scorpions and Armadillos were using for cover. The plasma burned through the polycrete like it was paper and buried one Armadillo in debris before it could get out of the way. The two Scorpions concentrated their fire on the offending walker and managed to bring it to the ground with five shots.

The other two didn't take kindly to it and combined their fire to melt one of the tanks while the other retreated behind a corner. Our entire advance had been stopped and turned into a full retreat in a matter of seconds.

"Bee! Can you delay them?" I asked as I stood up again and ran.

He didn't reply, instead I heard two explosions behind my back.

"Those were my last two missiles!" he informed me.

"Fall back," I ordered again, "we meet in th-"

Another Locust beam interrupted me. I had to run for my life as the street behind me exploded with superheated plasma. The Locust's cannon ran out of juice just in time, because the beam was meters away when it died out. I jumped behind a bus as several needles flew by my head.

_Great, infantry suddenly decided to grow a pair._

"This is Firefly-3, we heard that you needed some support?" a pilot's voice asked through the network.

"Affirmative, there are two Locusts burning through us!" Lavriv yelled desperately. "We are in grid One-One-Seven."

My mind flashed back to that encounter with the Spartans in Concordia, two years ago. The image of that one Spartan, the three numbers in white against his green armor seemed to flash before my eyes, stunning me for a full second.

"Roger, ETA is fifteen seconds."

Sure enough, fifteen seconds later two Hornets turned the corner, firing missiles and regular ammunition at the one of the Locusts. Their concentrated fire destroyed it and they disappeared from sight behind the corner, leaving a very angry Locust shooting at the building that protected them.

"Second pass."

The two Hornets appeared at a different altitude and started pummeling the Locust with everything they had. The Covenant walker tried shooting them down, but the pilots knew their crafts too well and avoided the beam with skill. The purple energy weapon streaked across the buildings, burning through columns and supports but not hitting the small and nimble Hornets. It took longer than the other Locust, but the Hornets managed to destroy the walker.

I looked over my shoulder and saw the destroyed Locust. I nodded to myself and turned to wave in thanks at the pilots when something hit me in the head. The impact brought me to the ground and almost knocked me out. I opened and closed my eyes several times and found myself looking straight up. The combination of smoke and darkness didn't allow me to see what was happening at first, but soon enough I had a pretty good idea.

"Frank, Frank, are you all right?" Chloe asked.

_Where did she come from? _"Watch out," I said weakly, pointing at the building above us. The Locust beam had destroyed enough supports that half the building seemed to be collapsing on us.

Hanna screamed and I blacked out.

A dripping noise woke me up. How cliché.

I opened my eyes to see absolute darkness. At first I panicked and thought that I was blind, but then I regained my composure.

"Ok, what's the last thing you remember?" I asked myself. "Something hit me in the head." I had a terrible headache. "Something else…"

I did my best to remember. "Shit, building."

I turned on my helmet flashlights and found myself in an impromptu cave. I recognized the angular walls, ceilings, and floors, I just found it extremely hard to figure out which ones were which. I tried sitting up and got a terrible dizziness for my trouble. I shook my head, trying to ward it off, but it turned out to be another mistake as well.

"Shit," I cursed as I took off my helmet.

I placed the helmet beside me and kept the lights pointed at the area in front of me. I reached for my pouch and looked around for my combat stims. The pills were multi-purpose, serving to keep you full of proteins, dull out pain, and relieve headaches. They also had terrible side effects, but in this case the advantages outweighed the consequences. I swallowed one pill and waited for the pain in my head to subside. Once it did I rubbed my temples. One hand came out wet.

"Huh?"

I felt around my head and realized that the rock that hit me had somehow managed to press my helmet hard enough against my skull to break through the skin.

"That certainly explains the headache," I mumbled.

I stood up, steadying myself with one hand against the wall. Or floor, whatever. I took the time to look around and examine the area. A building had fallen on top of me, but the metal and polycrete breakup had been minimal, so part of a room had protected me from everything that fell afterwards. Sure, there were piles of broken stone and debris all around me, but a large section of the cave trapping me was mostly intact.

I put my helmet back on and tried the radio. Nothing. I cursed and looked for ways to get out of here. There was a single ray of light in here, it was coming from a hole in the ground, about a foot in height and not much wider. I went towards it and knelt beside it. Quick examination showed that it bent to the left after a few feet. I sighed, I wasn't claustrophobic, but with an experience like this, I could very well have been one.

I climbed into the hole and pulled out some rubble to make passage easier. I crawled through the small tunnel and stopped when it turned. I threw my rifle up ahead and squirmed around the corner. Finally I succeeded and crawled some more. The tunnel varied in height and width, but it was never more than two feet in either case. I was beginning to get very nervous when I saw the end of it. I crawled faster and faster, remembering Sergeant Gabuka firing live ammunition over my head as I crawled through a muddy pit.

Finally I emerged and had to check myself lest I let go a cry of happiness. I breathed easy, feeling like glory. The chamber that I had emerged into was a large one. It took me some time to realize that it was the lobby of another building, probably the one that I had been standing next to when it collapsed. It was very damaged, with half of it collapsed and the other half crumbling down. The exits were all blocked off by rocks and rubble, but knowing where I was located was a start.

I slung my rifle over my back and started walking to explore the area.

I hadn't gone more than two steps when three rounds bounced off my chest armor.

"Friendly fire! Friendly fire!" I yelled. "The fuck!"

"Ohmygod, ohmygod I'm so so sorry," a familiar voice apologized profusely.

"Hanna?" I asked. "How the hell did you end up all the way over here?"

She emerged from behind a pile of rubble and walked towards me, turning on her helmet's lights. "I saw the building collapsing and ran away."

"So you left me to die?" I asked. I was not amused by that.

"Yes, sorry about that."

"And the friendly fire…"  
>"And the friendly fire," she added.<p>

I couldn't tell with the lighting, but it looked like she blushed a little bit.

"Yeah whatever," I muttered. "I need you to patch me up some," I said.

I took off my helmet and pointed to my injured area. The corpsman looked at it carefully, using her helmet's lights to examine the wound. She nodded to herself and produced gauze, cotton, and a small bottle of alcohol from her bag. She poured some alcohol on the cotton ball and pressed it against my temple. It was a time-proven method of disinfecting a wound. It stung like hell, but not nearly as bad as biofoam.

She used the cotton to wipe off some caked blood running along my cheek and then covered the wound with the gauze.

"Press that to your head," she ordered.

I did as I was told and waited for her to keep the gauze pressed against the injury as she put a bandage over it. She circled it several times around my head before securing it with a pin.

"I bet I look like a movie extra," I joked.

"You look the same as always," she replied, confused. "Except for the bandage, that is."

"No, I meant that… Forget it."

"What?"

"Nothing. Have you found anyone else?" I asked her, changing topics.

"No, I saw a dead marine, but nothing more."

"Radio?"

"Doesn't seem to be working. Not sure why, we're apparently close to the surface," she said, waving her arms around her to emphasize the lighting of the place.

"You check the emergency stairs?"

"Yes, the door's pretty much intact, but I couldn't get it open."

"Show me," I said.

"Right this way mister."

She helped me stand up and led me through the destroyed lobby. I had to crouch through several areas and crawl through others, always careful not to disturb anything that might bring the rest of the building crashing down on us. Finally I found myself in a small passage with the door leading to the emergency stairs right in front of me. Sadly, Hanna was in the way.

"See, I can't open it," she said after demonstrating just that.

"Let me try," I suggested.

The passage was not wide enough for both of us to fit in it, so she had to squeeze by me. Halfway through she got stuck, her chest to me and her back to the wall.

"I'm stuck," she said after trying to wiggle out.

"You know," I said, grabbing an outcrop with one hand. "If this was a movie, this would be the part when the audience laughs at the sexual tension."

"There is no sexual tension! There's nothing sexual about this!" she complained.

I let go of the outcrop and took off my helmet. "Really?"

"No," she insisted.

"Really?" I asked again, putting my face extremely close to hers.

"No…" she whispered.

I laughed. "You're such a girl."

"If I could move I would knee you in the balls," she growled.

"I'm sure." I reached for the outcrop again. "Hold on." I pulled myself as hard as I could and managed to get us unstuck. I almost fell to the ground and Hanna complained of pain, but otherwise remained where she was standing.

I moved to the door and shook the handle around. It didn't budge. I jumped and put my whole weight on top of the handle trying to move it, but only succeeded in breaking it.

"Nice one genius," Hanna complimented sarcastically.

I looked at the handle and tossed it at her, startling her. I laughed as she put both of her hands up and caught the broken door handle. She looked at it and then back at me She shook her head and let it fall to the ground, producing a loud clatter. I considered my options and decided that this was pretty much our only one. I took a couple of steps back.

"You sure that's a good idea?" she asked me.

"No," I admitted.

I took half a step forward and a little jump as I kicked at the door. It wasn't like kicking a wall, but it was damned close. The door budged a couple of inches from the kick, but otherwise we couldn't go through it. Some dust fell from the ceiling and got in my hair. I put my helmet back on before kicking at the door again. This time it moved almost half a foot. I squeezed my arm through and tried tackling the door open, but there was a bar preventing me from doing so. I switched arms and tried pulling at it. I succeeded in moving it just a little bit.

"Ok, this is getting annoying," I said to myself as I took another couple of steps back and kicked at the door once more.

This time the door flew open but a bunch of rocks fell in front of me immediately. I stepped back to avoid them and crashed into Hanna, bringing both of us to the floor in a tangle.

"Sorry," I apologized profusely. "Gotta admit, there's some sexual tension." I helped her up. "If this were a movie," I added as soon as I caught her glare. "Come on, we can climb through the top of the doorway."

I pulled myself so that I was behind her once more and helped her up the near-vertical pile of rocks. She grabbed the doorframe and started squeezing herself through the small opening.

"You better not be staring at my ass," she warned.

"How can I avoid it when you put the idea in my mind!" I complained. "Fine, fine, I'll look away."

To my own surprise, I did turn my neck sideways to avoid staring at her ass. Maybe there was a gentleman deep, deep, _deep_, inside me. Maybe.

"Ok, I'm through. Looks like we can still use the stairs, they look mostly intact, but they could break down any minute. You never know with these kinds of things."

"Hau-pah!" I said as I jumped up and grabbed the doorframe. I kicked at the air behind me and wormed my way through the small opening before falling to the ground on the other side with a dull thud.

"Smooth," Hanna complimented.

"You telling me you landed on your feet Lockley?" I teased.

"No, I just fell with more grace," she eyed me over. "A whole lot more."

I helped myself up and looked around. There was some dust falling from the roof, or rather, from the walls, because looking straight up I could see the night sky. This entire corner of the building had collapsed in account to the Locust firing wildly. Those things had pretty powerful guns, but the structure was probably weakened beforehand in account of the artillery, the bombing, and the first battle.

"How the hell did a single Locust managed to do all that?" Hanna asked.

"Well, Locusts have pretty powerful guns, but the structure was probably weakened beforehand in account of the artillery, the bombing, and the first battle."

She looked at me with a dull stare. "Nobody asked you."

"You're telling me you were talking to yourself?" I asked her mockingly.

"That's a little hypocritical, isn't it Francisco?" Schitzo said.

I ignored the hallucination and walked past Hanna before she could come up with a comeback. I ducked underneath a piece of wall and started climbing the stairs. The high amount of debris made it a difficult process, but soon enough I was making some progress, coaching Hanna as to where to step and where to climb as I went. Soon afterwards we were both climbing largely undamaged stairs and making our way to the rooftop.

"-ge. Sarge, come in," my radio crackled. "Frank, Francisco! Answer goddamit!"

"I'm here, I'm here!" I replied. "Who is this? There's a lot of static."

"I… Grass. Are… k?"

"I'm fine, you're breaking up. I'm in the same building that collapsed, making my way up."

"Co… gain…nt… hea….u."

"I'm ok, I'm ok, I'm ok, I'm ok, I'm ok," I said repeatedly. "Making my way up, making my way up, making my way up, making my way up."

"Und…ood."

"How's the team? How's the team? How's the team?" I asked, starting to climb up again.

"Go…Goo…. d… good," she replied, catching on to my method.

"Out, out, out, out," I said, cutting the conversation.

"What happened?" Hanna asked me from two flights of stairs up.

"They're all good," I replied. "I can't communicate with them properly. Covenant must be interfering with communications again."

"Darn," she said simply before she kept moving.

I grunted in agreement and started jogging up the stairs to catch up with her, turning at regular forty-five degree angles as the stairs hit into a wall and turned to the right. Finally, after fifteen minutes of climbing we reached the top. Or at least as close to the top as we would get. The stairwell stopped suddenly in account of everything from that point on amounting to empty space. A large section of the building had fallen off, leaving the emergency stairs exposed to the outside and putting us a couple of floors shy of the top floor.

I cursed loudly.

"Eliza?" I asked. Static.

"Captain Sharma?" I tried the next one in my list of permanent contacts. "Major Hernandez?" Static. "Chloe? Chlo?" Static. "Lieutenant Hardwick, Emily?" I got the same result. There was one last option, but I would never hear the end of it. "Commander Albaf?" I asked tentatively.

"Sergeant?" came the immediate response. I didn't know whether to feel grateful or not. "What the hell are you still doing in that grid?"

"A building kinda fell on top of me ma'am," I explained. "I'm in need of immediate extraction. I've got a corpsman here with me as well."

"Damn it Castillo, you realize I'm going to have to redirect gunships providing air support?"

"You can call one without gunners," I suggested. "We can help out."

"Hey, no one's asking me," Lockley complained.

"Shut up," I snapped. "Commander, both of us are good and ready for action, just send someone to pick us up and we'll be kicking ass sooner than you know it."

"A Falcon has already been sent to your position," she informed me. "It'll bring you directly to the FOB. Albaf out."

"See?" I turned towards Hanna. "I know what I'm doing."

"You didn't have to snap at me like that."

"You were raised in a sheltered environment, weren't you?"

Hanna refrained from commenting and shook her head before climbing down a couple of steps and sitting down. I stayed where I was, as high up as I dared without stepping on the cracked steps. I didn't want this entire tiring climb to turn into a quick drop to the ground below. I looked over the visible area, which amounted to the two buildings in front of this one. They had visible marks from the Locust's cannon, but they were still standing up. One of them was aflame, but that seemed to be it.

"Next time I'll stick to the left side of the street," I muttered. I still couldn't see the street, and therefore wasn't able to gauge the extent of the damage, but it sounded like a better idea than being right underneath a collapsing building.

"You hear that?" Hanna asked. "Rotors."

"Yeah, I hear them."

Seconds later a Falcon appeared from above. The pilot spotted us as soon as I flashed my helmet lights at the cockpit. He turned on the cockpit lights and gave me a thumbs up. "I'll position myself so you can jump," he told us. The Falcon turned sideways and exposed its cargo bay to us.

"Want me to jump first and catch you?" I asked.

Hanna swallowed as she inched towards the edge. "Sounds like a good idea."

"Ok, here I go," I said, steeling myself. I looked down to the ground below and got nervous. "Dios dame fuerza," I muttered under my breath.

I took the jump and landed with both feet inside the cargo bay, I used my hands to hold on to the webbing in the ceiling, avoiding the fate of going completely through and falling down the other side of the gunship. I turned around and motioned for Hanna to jump. She took a few deep breaths and took two steps back before running forward and taking the jump.

She made the mistake that I strived to avoid and almost went completely through. I caught her in a hybrid clothesline/hug and pulled her chest back inside even as her legs flew outside of the cargo bay. We both slammed into the floor, she was scared, but we were both safe.

"Careful," was all I came up with.

"Thanks," she said in between breaths. "A lot."

I helped her up and banged on the wall, prompting the pilot to fly away from the building. Hanna sat down and strapped herself on while I pulled a box of ammunition from a case in the ceiling. It had a bunch of magazines for the MA5 series rifles and for the M6 pistols. I dug through it until I found a pair of battle rifle magazines. I salvaged them and strapped them to my body. Once they were secure I sat down on the floor and cocked the lever of the Falcon's turret.

From this position I could see the street very clearly. The pilot was flying his craft in between buildings to avoid being spotted by Banshees or Seraphs. The avenue that he was using was the same that the Eighth Column had come up through. I could see plenty of alien bodies where they had barreled through, but then I spotted more and more human corpses. Their positions indicated that they had been retreating or running away when they were shot. I also saw an Elephant completely enveloped in flames. I could still see the red cross on its side even as it burned.

"That bad?" I asked the pilot.

"Lost my wingman," he replied. "His ship went down with four troopers inside. I was lucky that I was up here, one of my door gunners was hit from the ground and the other got nicked in the neck. Nothing compared to what I saw some of the infantry guys go through."

"What happened?"

"Locusts and a Scarab. The covvies did an ass-pull, nobody knew that they had walkers hidden someplace in the city. After all, where can you hide a fucking Scarab?"

"Well they did it," Hanna said sadly as she watched the burning city go by.

"It wasn't all bad though," the pilot went on. "All the walkers were killed. After we suffered heavy casialties, but they were still killed. The covvies got the short end by the looks of it, ground forces managed to retake most of the city. We're commencing evacuation procedures."

"Of civilians?" I asked, dumbstruck. "You mean there were still civilians in here?"

"Yup."

"Alive," Hanna joined.

"No Hanna, they are dead but we're evacuating them nonetheless."

The pilot laughed. "You two seeing each other? You know, romantically involved?" He chuckled at his own fancy language.

"No," Hanna snapped.

"Yes," I lied.

He laughed again. "You're like something right out of a movie."

I laughed a little and nodded. I immediately stopped laughing when I thought about what he had said. If this were a movie we wouldn't be losing millions of people. If this were a movie we wouldn't be losing this fucking war.

* * *

><p><em>So, thanks to Sniper Fodder for proof-reading this chapter, however short it was.<em>

_Now, there are a couple of things that need to be said. So far, I have done my best not to deviate form canon on things other than weapon firing modes and certain armor mods being available to ODSTs as opposed to only Spartans. The Daemon tank (pronounced Demon) is the first time I have ever added a whole new element that actually deviates from Halo's canon. Note, it does not necessarily contradict it, but it's highly unlikely that they would exist._

_The reason I added the tanks is because the lack of a Covenant vehicle that fired like a regular tank always bugged me a little. I mean, you can travel several hundred times the speed of light but the concept of a projectile flying in a straight line elides you? I have a hard time believing that. Anyways, I thought that the tanks could make it more interesting, you know, mix things up a little. _

_Daemon tanks look pretty much like the Baktoid Armor Workshop Armored Assault Tanks, better known as the droid tanks from Star Wars: Episode 1._

_Stay strong people_

_-casquis_


	102. Convoy

Chapter CII: Convoy

**August 12, 2543 (UNSC Calendar)/**

**UNSC Joint Forward Operating Base, Uppergap Outskirts, Lambari, Campo Sorrisco System**

* * *

><p>"<em>All these people are under my care, sir. I'll get them all out."- Major Wade Brown<em>

* * *

><p>"Castillo!" someone yelled angrily. "Castillo!"<p>

_I had just decided to lay down!_

"Where the hell is he?" Albaf asked some marine or trooper that happened to be right outside my tent. "Where the hell is he?"

"Sorry ma'am, who?"

"Useless."

The curtains leading into my tent opened wide, letting in a ray of sunlight that happened to hit me directly in the face. I made a great show of pretending to have been asleep before opening one eye and looking at Commander Albaf. Standing at attention behind her was Lieutenant Wilkins, ever the watchdog/bodyguard for his direct superior.

"Castillo!"

"Ma'am!" I shot back as I jumped out of bed and saluted.

"Christ's sake," she said disgustedly. "Do you _ever_ wear shirts?"

"Only when I'm awake Commander," I replied as respectfully as I could while still making the comment sound like an insult. Doing that flawlessly is an art, but everyone in the military picks it up sooner or later.

"Get dressed," she commanded. "Wilkins!"

I reached for a duffel bag and dug through it, looking for a shirt. I found one quickly enough and put it on. By the time I was back up on my feet and had a thin layer of cotton in between my skin and the rest of the atmosphere Samantha was already up in my face.

I backed a couple of steps on instinct. She was one of the few people that could intimidate me when they wanted to.

"Sergeant, I need you back in the action," she told me. "Your team has already been redirected to your target."

"Back to the suck?" I moaned. "I barely got any sleep."

"Not my problem," Albaf shrugged me off. "This time it's not me who's sending you back. Command wants elite troops for this one."

"I take it Spartans aren't in this phone area," I joked. "They're quite adept at making themselves scarce, don't you think?"

I was fully prepared for what followed, but the quick smile that flashed across Wilkins' face made being eaten alive by Albaf worth it. She didn't snap at me for disrespecting 'humanity's greatest soldiers' this time, instead she snapped at me for being a condescending asshole with some sort of superiority complex. Albaf also happened to mention how Spartans had saved my life in a couple of occasions. I almost reminded her that I had saved a few Spartans of my own, but then remembered that those were IIIs, and those I didn't have as many problems with.

"Yes ma'am, sorry ma'am, wont' happen again ma'am."

"Just get ready, be in the car lot in five."

"Ma'am," I saluted. "Lieutenant."

I waited for them to leave to get undressed and put my undersuit back on. I had been wearing that thing for consecutive days now, most of that time I had been under pressure and in combat. By that I mean that I sweated in it a lot, by that I mean that it smelled like shit. I grabbed a spray of some smell-good aromatizer and sprayed my suit with it. Once I had sprayed the suit completely I sprayed myself with deodorant and antiperspirant. Not because I cared about my squad mates mentioning that I smelled like shit, but because jackals had an awful tendency to notice small things like human smell.

I put on my undersuit and a pair of black fatigue pants. My armor was all piled up in a corner, I hadn't bothered securing it or putting it inside its crate. My boots smelled even worse than my undersuit, so I sprayed them with flowers and watermelons too before I put them on. The rest of my armor was dirty, damaged, and had blood on it; half of which wasn't mine. I strapped my leg armor and put on my vest before grabbing my rifle and my pistol. I jogged across the FOB while putting on the rest of my armor. By the time I was in the vehicle depot I was fully armored and wiping off leftover blood from the inside of my helmet with my gloves.

"Castillo, over here," Wilkins motioned.

I put my helmet under my arm and walked in his direction. Half the Warthogs here were damaged and the rest were being repaired. We had really gotten our asses kicked back in the counter-offensive. The vehicles that did look like they were in working order were the Scorpion tanks and a few of the Armadillos. It made sense, prepping up the big guns before the little ones.

"Sergeant," Albaf snapped at me. She was standing besides one of the damaged jeeps. A pair of legs were popping out from underneath the 'Hog. "As soon as th-"

"Commander," an authoritative voice boomed from behind me. "Can you tell me why the hell is my personal vehicle being repaired?"

I could see Albaf refraining from doing an eye roll, had the officer that asked the question been anything less than her own rank she would've yelled at him so loud that he would've ran back the way he came form with his tail between his legs.

"Wilkins, please tell Colonel Klink, without getting too technical, why his personal vehicle is being repaired."

Wilkins didn't miss a beat. "Certainly ma'am." He turned towards the aforementioned Colonel Klink, a medium-sized man with Marine combat armor on. "It's broken."

Klink looked just about ready to punch Wilkins' teeth down his throat. "I mean," he spat out with barely concealed anger. "Why the hell is my personal vehicle being touched by a pair spooks?"

"I'm sorry sir," the person fixing the 'Hog said. "They told me you had authorized this."

"Shut up Corporal," Albaf snapped. "Sir, under Directive Regulation WINC-00128573

"Yes," the Colonel admitted, "but under WINTER CONTINGENCY military matters precede those of ONI, that means that you don't have any authority whatsoever to commandeer my vehicle."

"Sir," Albaf begged, exasperated. "Please don't make me start an argument that involves citing regulations and rules."

Klink gruffed and crossed his arms over his chest. He looked at her, the lieutenant, and me in turn, examining us one by one. "I'll take it you'll take care of the 'Hog?" he asked me.

I shrugged. "I'll do my best not to scratch the painting," I told him, "but I can hardly avoid every plasma bolt that flies at me."

The Colonel nodded, apparently my reply had satisfied him enough to refrain from delaying us any further. "Fine, you can take my vehicle, but next time you want it you just ask beforehand."

"Yessir," I thanked him.

"Wasn't talking to you kid," Klink said.

"Of course, Colonel," Albaf saluted.

Klink nodded and returned the salute before turning back around and returning to camp. The corporal underneath the 'Hog pulled himself out and hit the hood lightly a couple of times before grabbing his tools from the ground. "Ready to go."

I hopped in the driver's seat and secured my rifle in its holster before leaning out to listen to Albaf's debriefing.

"Listen Castillo," she started. "There's a civilian evacuation convoy in this position-"

"There were still civilians in the city?" I asked.

"Yes, don't interrupt-"

"Sorry."

"Don't interrupt! As I was saying. They sent several transports to evacuate the remaining civilian population. While you were resting in base they set up a perimeter and liberated a couple of blocks from Covenant forces. Several hundred civilians have been flocking to that position in the hopes of getting out of the city alive. We've been bringing a few of them at a time, but now we have a reason to suspect that the Covenant are planning a counter-attack."

"So you want to pull 'em out before they strike," I nodded.

"Don't interrupt. Several Elephant transports and commandeered civilian vehicles are already in position, waiting to be filled up with sweaty men, women, and children."

"I don't see why they're waiting for me," I mused. "I'm pretty good at what I do Sam, but even I'll have a tough time protecting a couple hundred vehicles by myself."

"Don't interrupt," she repeated. "And don't call me Sam."

"Sorry ma'am."

"I'm inclined to agree with you, for once. But someone up top requested that Shock Troopers be present to boost the morale of civilians and make it easier for them to follow orders. Apparently they have been getting…unruly."

I scoffed. "Boost morale? I take it there weren't any Spartans in the vicinity."

She glared at me and leaned closer. "That program hasn't yet been made public," she lectured me. "And the location of nearby Spartans is none of your business."

"Of course not, ma'am." I was pretty sure that she had even less idea than I did on the location of any Spartans. She was as likely to have knowledge of their deployment locations as she was to have a can of tuna in between her breasts. "So I'm just going to stand there, shoulders squared and rifle in my hand, looking intimidating?"

"To put it bluntly, yes."

"Great," I rolled my eyes.

"You'll meet your team there." The Commander took half a step back. "Don't let your guard down Sergeant," she recommended. "An attack _is_ expected, so keep your eyes open."

I turned on the car and put my helmet on. I revved the engine once and looked back to Albaf. "I'm glad to know that you care about me Sam," I told her before I floored the accelerator and drove away before she could scream her face off at me.

* * *

><p>I hopped out of the car even before it completely stopped. Grass immediately took the wheel and Caboose hopped in the passenger's seat. I, on the other hand, climbed the back of the Warthog and grabbed the turret. Another Warthog containing Scarecrow, Angel, and Bumblebee appeared from an emptied out store. Snark was nowhere to be seen, but I had been told that he was doing overwatch in a Hornet gunship. I wasn't jealous of the man's job.<p>

"They behave?" I asked Scarecrow.

"Well enough," he replied with a laugh. "We had an easier job when you were gone, took you a while to return."

"Yeah, but the rest was worth it. Maybe."

"Itchy to shoot something?" Angel asked. He was only half-joking.

I shook my head. "Maybe, but I have no intention of being the one that is getting shot at. Let's move to the rally point."

"Aye aye," Grass said loudly as she stepped on it. Scarecrow waited for us to pass the other Warthog and followed suit.

Uppergap was in pretty bad shape. I could see that less than half the buildings were still standing upright and none of them were completely intact. The avenue that we were driving on was now almost completely covered with rubble and debris from the collapsed buildings on either side making the ride a bumpy one. Most of the city was covered in dust and smoke. Fire was visible in pretty much every direction. After the UNSC succeeded in taking back a portion of Uppergap I realized that we had taken back a pile of blood-covered rocks. Even if we did manage to push out the Covenant, from the city and the planet, this city would be gone.

The Warthogs climbed over a pile of rocks, allowing me to see the rally point. It was one of those large intersections with a huge, circular roundabout. The roundabout was completely covered with buses, Elephants, and large vans. The street around it was paved by tanks, AFVs, and parked gunships. I could see jamming towers in the buildings around the intersection and suspected that there was more than one Wolverine AA tank prowling around waiting for prey.

"Sarge, that you in the lead Warthog?" Snark asked me.

I looked up to see three Hornets scream above my head. One of them had an ODST on one of the sides. I waved at him briefly as the jeep started climbing back down the steep rubble hill. I tried to keep the turret steady as it jerked side to side. Eventually I gave up and just let the damn thing spin about. I aimed it towards the sky when we arrived to the improvised command post and hopped off the car.

"Staff Sergeant," an Army major greeted me. "Major Brown."

I saluted and he returned the salute before offering me his hand. I took it and shook twice before he let go. "Sergeant, I know exactly the reason why you're here, personally I think it's a waste of good talent to have you on convoy duty, but the way things are looking we might just need you and your squad."

"How are things looking?" I asked as he led me inside his command tent. The command tent consisted of four metal poles and a camouflage netting roof. There was a large crate in the middle that served as a table and a holo-tank next to it. A sphere popped up as we approached.

"Greetings," the sphere said, lighting up with every word it spoke. "I am The Ball, I am the AI in charge of this city."

"Get on the ball!" Bumblebee shouted in a loud and energetic voice, apparently having heard what was being said, courtesy of our linked helmets.

"Nice to meet you," I told it, ignoring my squad mate's antics. I stopped and ordered Grass and Scarecrow to wait right outside the tent and to try and look imposing and threatening.

"The Ball is helping with logistical matters," Brown informed me. "Despite the damage that the city has suffered several CC cameras are still active. A few of the weather satellites also escaped destruction and are under The Ball's command."

"I see," I nodded. "You'll be warning us of any incoming attacks? Enemy numbers, vehicles, equipment."

"That is correct," the AI stated.

"Good. Major, you mentioned that things weren't looking too good?"

"Yes, there have been an increasing number of attacks on the perimeter," he explained as he pointed to an area on the map. As soon as he did that The Ball disappeared and was replaced by a three-dimensional map of the area. "Thanks. As I was saying, several low-intensity attacks have been staged all over this area. There had been a few minor skirmishes before the brutes came in."

"Brutes?" I asked, raising my eyebrow. "Last time I was here it was elites trying to shoot my head off."

"You complaining?" the major asked jokingly.

"Not really, brutes have no shields and rarely use their brains."

"I agree, but they do have ferocity, I've lost eighteen men in the past few hours alone."

If that was low-intensity attacks then I felt bad for the man. I took off my helmet and placed it on the crate. "You want us to help with anything?"

"No," he said quickly, putting his hands up. "We've already set explosives and are just waiting for the last of the civilians to hop on their transports."

I nodded. "What's the estimated time of arrival?" I asked. "For the FOB, I mean."

"You made… what? an hour getting here?"

I nodded again.

"We can only move this convoy as fast as the slowest vehicle. Command issued a pair of Pelicans to us so that we could ferry some civilians and any wounded soldiers."

"Only two?"

"Yes, there have been several attacks on the Northern end of our line, they want as many birds available to them as possible. It pains me to say so, but civilians are not a priority."

Scarecrow scoffed from right outside the tent. "We rescue a marine, he might fight tomorrow, we rescue a civilian, he will become a refugee, losing the UNSC precious credits."

"Hush," Grass told him.

"Your man's got the gist of it," Brown said with a sad smile.

"You a local?" I asked suddenly.

The smile disappeared from his face. "Is it that obvious?"

I shrugged at him and shook my hair. "Family."

"Wife and kids. Twins, they would've been going to college this year."

"They made it out ok?"

"My wife and one of the kids," he replied sadly. "Diana was killed when she tried to rescue a wounded police officer." He smiled a little bit. "She always wanted to enroll, I finally convinced her not to and she still managed to get herself killed."

"A death worthy of a hero," I told him, unsure what to say and trying to do my best to comfort him. "I'm sorry for your loss Major, but now is not the time to dwell on that." I could feel Scarecrow's and Grass' eyes boring into the back of my head. They were soft at heart, both of them.

"Yes, of course," Brown replied softly. "You already have your own vehicles, so that problem solved itself. Your sniper will keep serving as overwatch along with the other marksmen that we possess. The convoy will move through here, taking a small detour here and will finally haul ass to the FOB. We have several available Falcon and Hornet gunships, used to have a Vulture, but a couple of Seraphs shot it down. In addition to the birds we have fourteen Scorpion tanks and twenty-one Armadillos. Warthogs and Mongooses, Mongeese? What is the plural of mongoose?"

"If I had a quarter for every time I heard that question," I chuckled. "I would be a rich man."

"Mongooses it is then. We don't have that many of those but don't really need them. The ones that we do have will scout ahead and lag behind to warn us of any ambushes or attacks. Warthogs will stick with the bulk of the convoy and will occasionally serve as scouts."

"Sir," I said.

Brown continued. "At any given time your squad may be given the order to dismount and set up a nest or cover us."

"Of course," I agreed.

"Good, now that we have the ground rules clear I'd like to remind you that I am in command here. Not you, not anybody else. What I say goes."

"I wouldn't have it any other way Major."

"Good. Dismissed."

I saluted the man and turned around neatly after grabbing my helmet and putting it back on.

"Scarecrow, Grass, grab anything that you might need, we're leaving pronto."

"Sarge," they acknowledged as they went towards the hastily set up armory that was right next to the command tent.

"Snark, where are you?"

"Transferring to a Falcon," he explained. "Hornets are pretty good and pack firepower, but I always feel like I'm about to fall off."

"I know the feeling," I agreed, chuckling. "I want you to keep an eye out for everything-"

"That's my job."

"I do mean everything Snark. A trick of the light should be reported immediately and terminated with extreme prejudice."

"Yeah, I've watched enough of Bumblebee's twenty-first films to know that rule. Snark out."

"Bee, I want you as passenger, Caboose, the same for you. Grass and Scarecrow drive and Angel and I shoot."

"Why do you get the turrets?" Bumblebee complained.

"And here I thought he was making progress," Schitzo said, shaking his head.

"Angel shoots because he's our heavy weapons expert and I shoot because I'm your commanding officer."

"See?" Angel taunted. "Easy to understand. Isn't it Bumblebee?"

"Fuck off."

I was about to chastise them both for their behavior when I heard the sound of a missile flying from its tube. I turned around to see what was going on but wasn't able to see anything. A moment later an explosion joined the chorus of concerned murmurs, frightening many civilians. I could hear several people screaming. Over the noise I made out a crying baby.

"Major!" one voice came through the network. "We've got several Banshees inbound! The M9s can handle them for now, but I see plenty of infantry closing in on our position. I recommend immediate evacuation."

"Roger that Corporal," Major Brown replied. "Your unit will hold the line while we evacuate and then retreat to our position."

"Don't know if we'll have that long sir, but we'll do our best."

Another brave soul sent off to die.

"That's our cue people!" I yelled. "Reaper Squad, back to the Warthogs!"

I could hear small arms fire join the noise just before everyone started turning their vehicles on. By that time every single civilian had found their way inside some sort of moving vehicle and the lead Elephant was starting to climb over the hill that we came from earlier. I could hear the rocks breaking under the massive weight, but the tracks had no problem going up and after a few tense seconds the Elephant was on the other side. Its massive weight had crushed down rubble and compacted it enough to make a passable ramp. Two Scorpion tanks went immediately behind the Elephant and then the cars just started flowing.

We waited for our turn while all the birds took off. The two Pelicans available flew by above us, their cargo bays no doubt filled with children and women. The Falcons and the Hornets took off and hovered above the bulk of the vehicles. Occasionally one bird would move forward and accompany the vehicles already outside of the fortified roundabout. A Hornet went back and disappeared behind the corner from which we were being attacked. I saw as several plasma bolts flew out of that direction and hoped that the craft's weapons would tear through as many alien bodies as possible.

"We're being overwhelmed Major!" the corporal screamed into his radio, alarming every trooper and marine connected to the battlenet. "They took out the Wolverine, we're out of heavy weapons. Casualties at sixty percent and raising! Every program I download has the progress move slower than we are getting killed!"

"Roger that Corporal, pull back your squad, I'm sending three Armadillo's to support."

"Negative Major, you need time and all the firepower that we can use," the corporal replied immediately. "We can give you more time."

"I copy Corporal. Thank you and good luck."

"Corporal Victor Andrade out. Hooah! Right flank, cover that righ-" The Major cut off Andrade from the rest of us.

"Hoo-fucking-ah Corporal," Caboose said under his breath in a sign of respect. He even used the Army battle cry instead of the Oorah that us Jarheads used.

"Grass, snap out of it," I prompted my squad mate.

Grass had been looking back over her shoulder, trying to see what was happening in the rear. My shouting made her get back in her action mode and she started following the van that was in front of us. Halfway up the pile of rubble the van stalled, so Grass had to lightly ram it in the back and help shove it all the way up. Once there she broke off from the main group and started skirting the edge of the avenue as if to form a perimeter around the civilian transports. Several Warthogs and Armadillos had already done the same thing, forming a barrier of sorts around the weaker vehicles.

I shot one look at the vans and buses and knew that they wouldn't survive more than one blast. Several of them had been fitted with metal plates on the outside and even sandbags. I knew that a plasma rifle shot would melt through the metal without any problem, the next shot would punch right through the car itself and kill whoever was unlucky enough to be in its way. That's why were in between the plasma rifles and the trucks. With a big-ass Gatling gun to help us.

"You know, this city used to be home to over one million people," Grass mentioned as soon as we had a steady speed. "This was one of the most successful colonies in the sector."

There was a few moments of silence. "Now it's all gone," Angel said.

"Can it with the negative attitude," I growled.

"Sarge's right," Scarecrow agreed. "There'll be plenty of time to rebuild."

Bumblebee scoffed. "If we even manage to win this."

Everybody remained quiet for a few minutes before another conversation topic surfaced. We all joined in on the discussion and talked to each other while we made slow progress. I wasn't really into the conversation since I kept looking back with the turret and tried to spot any aliens gunning for us. I could hear sporadic gunfire and the occasional Armadillo firing, but so far it seemed like it was going well enough for us.

"Major, we've got Banshees closing in on us from the rear," someone suddenly said. "I count eighteen of them."

"Shit, Wolverines 5 and 11, make your way down there. Lieutenant, you have numbers 1, 3, and 7, am I correct?"

"Yessir."

"Good, that oughta handle the fliers for now."

I saw that one Wolverine had stopped and was going to the rear of the convoy in reverse. Every vehicle gave way to let it pass. A minute or so later I heard the Argent missiles leaving their pods on top of the Anti-Air tanks. A couple of plasma explosions joined the cacophony before it suddenly stopped.

"Rear of convoy clear of enemy fliers Major," the lieutenant in charge said. "We lost three men though, one of the fuel rods hit a 'Hog."

"Good job lieutenant," Major Brown acknowledged. "Keep your eyes open."

After that it was all quiet for maybe half an hour. The convoy was moving at a painfully slow pace, and the lack of any enemy activity whatsoever unnerved me.

"People…" I started.

"We know Sarge," Scarecrow said.

I nodded to myself as I pulled back the loading lever of the huge M41 LAAG machine gun. I wasn't the only one who was creeped out by the sudden lack of noise. I could see several marines and troopers checking their weapons and tensing up. My own squad separated the two Warthogs from the bulk of the convoy a little bit more while Bumblebee loaded his Spanker and Caboose cocked his shotgun. Even the Falcons and Hornets seemed to be on edge.

"Snark, you getting anything?"

"Thermal's not detecting anything, but I'm seeing some movement a couple of blocks away. Pair of jackals by the look of it."

"That it?" I asked.

"Seems like."

"Keep looking, I got a bad feeling about this…"

"Easy there Kenobi…" Bumblebee warned.

"Who?" I asked.

"Didn't you see Star-. Never mind."

I shrugged away the random interruption and kept looking in every direction, the Warthog's turret aimed to the right, where there was nothing in between us and the unknown.

"All ground troops, be advised," Major Brown's voice boomed through my helmet's ground speakers. "Satellites and surveillance cameras are picking up a large Covenant force heading in our direction from the right flank. A smaller force is preparing to intercept on the left flank. Air units, coordinates of their location are being transmitted to your location, engage."

And with that, the battle commenced.

The brutes came en masse. Even with the gunships thinning out their numbers as they came at us I was still surprised by their numbers. It looked like half the covvies in the city were coming at us. They barely bothered with cover and simply charged at us. With the brutes were grunts and hunters, jackals could be seen here and there or taking potshots at valuable targets from office buildings. They became visible less than a hundred meters away from our position. At that point I started rock and rolling with the LAAG. Fountains of blood sprouted from the brutes and grunts that I hit. The grunts collapsed immediately as the large-caliber rounds ripped through their bodies. The brutes took three or four rounds to bring down. The ones with armor were harder to kill, but they went down relatively easy too.

The sheer amount of aliens coming at us made it impossible for us to kill them all before they reached our line. For a moment I remembered the D-Day landings in the Second. The Allies were putting up people on the beach faster than the Axis could kill them.

That day had not been a good one for the Axis.

"Ram the motherfucker!" Caboose urged Grass as he fired his shotgun at aliens we passed. The buckshot ripped through grunts and made brutes stumble, but a single shot was hardly enough to kill one of the bigger aliens.

"Banshee!" Scarecrow cried from the other Warthog.

"Busy!" Bumblebee yelled.

I spun my turret around and spotted the Banshee. It was just beginning to start its strafing run when Angel and I caught it in the crossfire. Our combined effort was enough to bring it down in a few seconds before it had time to pull away.

"Whose kill?" Angel asked.

"I'll take the assist," I replied quickly.

As soon as the matter of the Banshee was resolved I returned my attention to the aliens charging at our flanks. We had killed enough of them that the ones that hadn't been in the front had started taking cover, instead choosing to shoot at us as we flied by. I also looked back just in time to see a brute jump at us out of nowhere. It held on to the sides of the hood before it put one hand on the top of the windshield. It snarled at me as I aimed at his face. My efforts proved for naught, as an instant later Caboose blew half its head off with a shot from his shotgun. The brute let go of the car and slid down the front of the hood. The entire vehicle shook as the tires passed over the dead alien.

"Reloading!" Caboose informed us.

I wasted a pair of grunts and braced myself for an impact with a chest-high wall. A meter before we collided with it Grass hit the E-break and did a full one-eighty turn, bringing the Warthog around and sparing us the need to pummel through a polycrete wall. I had no warning and it was all I could do to hold on to the turret. At one point both of my feet left the floor of the 'Hog.

"Warn us before you do that again," I grunted. "Go."

Grass visibly chuckled and floored it again. This time we were heading in the opposite direction, strafing the covvies that were entrenched and running over the ones that weren't. I saw one Brute Jumper fly from cover and towards the convoy, no doubt trying to land in one of the transports. I fired at it as it flew through the sky and hit its jetpack, detonating it and sending it to the ground. Amazingly enough, the brute was in good enough condition to stand up and roar in my direction.

"Red jumpers?" Grass mused as she nudged the Warthog in the brute's direction. "I've never seen one of those before."

"Probably a major," Caboose suggested. "Color matches that of the elite equivalent."

The entire vehicle lurched to the side as the major fired two grenades at us from its Brute Shot. Grass spun hard to avoid the explosives. One of them detonated a yard from our rear wheel, lifting the Warthog for a few moments. I aimed at the brute and fired ten rounds at its left leg purely out of spite.

"Aww Sarge, you left it for me?"

"Just for you darling," I replied. "No hurry up, this M12 doesn't stop for red."

As the 'Hog plowed through the wounded brute I smiled at my own wittiness. Perhaps I was smiling at the sound of the brute's skull being crunched under three tones of UNSC metal, but as long as I was smiling it didn't matter to me.

"We don't stop for red," Snark said. "I like it. Maybe I'll write it down, use it in my memoirs."

"Be sure to credit me," I shot back.

"Are you kidding me? That's pure gold, I'll write that I said it myself. Shit, Sarge, I see two hunters headed your way, you should be able to see them in a few."

"Can you take them out?"

"Hey, you, see those hunters?" he asked one of his Falcon's gunners. "Kill 'em. Yeah Sarge, they should be down or weakened before you see them."

One of the Falcon gunships started spewing ammunition at some point behind a partially-collapsed three-story building. One of the hunters emerged from behind the building only to have my own fire added to that of the Falcon. The alien was dead within a millisecond of emerging.

"Thanks Snark."

"I aim to please."

I gunned down a group of grunts and jackals hiding behind a wall. The thin polycrete wasn't nearly enough to stop the 12.7x99mm AP rounds. The small chest-high wall exploded into hundreds of shards as the rounds made contact with it. I could see splatters of alien blood coming out from behind.

I noticed that Caboose had put his shotgun aside and was now using his MA5K to fire short, accurate bursts at grunts and jackals. Occasionally he would shoot a brute off a vehicle, saving the civilians inside of it. All in all we had done quite well in this section of the convoy. We had succeeded in pushing back the assault with only the loss of one Warthog gunner. A couple of spiker rounds had punched through a bus, but no casualties were reported.

"Sergeant," Brown's voice rang in my ears. "The section behind yours is getting pummeled, I need two Warthogs to go help down there."

"Roger that, Scarecrow, you go down there. You, Private, go help out."

"Sarge," Scarecrow acknowledged.

"Sergeant," the marine private said in a neutral tone.

They couldn't have left at a worse time.

A flight of Banshees appeared from a cloud of smoke and started strafing my section of the convoy. The first and second ones were brought down by me and one of the other gunners respectively, but the third one evaded all our fire and dropped a fuel rod on a school bus. The vehicle detonated as the plasma ignited its hydrogen fuel cells. Half the bus was engulfed in the explosion, the rest was reduced to a pile of molten slag and charred bodies. There were no survivors.

With the Banshees came a Daemon tank. Its first shot hit one of the other Warthogs nearby, it punched through the hood killing the driver and passenger as it did so. The gunner jumped off and rolled on the ground a couple of seconds before standing up and limping towards a van that slowed down to pick him up. He jumped on top of it and used his weapon to shoot at exposed covvies.

An Armadillo started firing its autocannon at the Covenant tank, aiming right for the turret. A couple dozen rounds bounced of off the hard armor and the tank spun its turret to address the new threat. I pounded the tank with my M41, but the rounds that so easily obliterated infantry seemed to be having no effect on the heavily armored tank. The Daemon fired a single round at the Armadillo, hitting it in the tracks. The Armadillo stopped but kept on firing at the Daemon. Smoke and fire started to pour out of some holes in the armor of the tank before it shot the AFV a second time. The round clearly punched through the armor, because the Armadillo's ammunition store detonated.

I saw the top hatch open to reveal a bloodied man falling out. Another soldier, slightly less wounded popped out with a grenade launcher. He fired at the Daemon, hitting it right below the part where turret joined the body of the tank. The grenade apparently damaged the spinning mechanism, because the turret tried to move as it jammed. The soldier with the grenade launcher threw away his empty weapon and climbed out of the hatch. Just as he was about to hop off a beam rifle hit him in the back of the neck.

I cursed as I traced the ionized particles and sprayed the window from which the trail originated with fire. Once I was satisfied that the jackal sharpshooter was killed I returned my attention to the damaged Daemon. The whole tank was spinning so that it could aim at the vehicles in the convoy. It was about to fire when a pair of rockets slammed into it. The explosives seemed to do nothing other than scorch the armor, but the Daemon stopped hovering and suddenly exploded, killing three neighboring brutes and a grunt when it did.

One of the other Warthogs with us stopped behind the flaming Armadillo and the passenger hopped down to pick up the wounded trooper. He threw him over the passenger's seat and hopped back on as the pilot took them to an Elephant to drop off the injured Armadillo operator.

I waved with one hand at the Hornet that had come to our aid and kept on firing. Ghosts and Choppers were beginning to emerge from all directions. Most of them tried to take out the UNSC vehicles first, but a few of them gunned for the civilians first. As soon as they did that they signed their death sentence. It didn't matter if I had a Chopper on top of me, as soon as I saw one of them gunning for unarmed civilians I blew it to kingdom come. Same thing goes for every other gunner in the vicinity.

I killed two grunts and a jackal when my gun clicked empty.

"Shit, Grass!"

"I hear you Sarge."

"Cover our area," I ordered the other two Warthogs in our section. One of the drivers spared me a quick salute as Grass stopped the car behind a larger-than-average pile of rubble. I knelt and detached the ammunition drum from its clamps. I made sure that it was empty and tossed it away. I grabbed the spare one that was attached to the side of the 'Hog and attached it before pulling the ammunition hose through its chamber and fired a couple of rounds to make sure that they were chambered properly.

"Go, go, go!" I urged Grass.

The Warthog lurched forward as Grass tried to keep up with our section. I was startled to see that the convoy was turning to the right, severely slowing down our progress. Grass halted the Warthog almost completely as I killed a few jackals that were trying to shoot at us with carbines. They were quickly reduced to feathers and gore as the rounds went through their bodies.

"Lead transports, proceed into the tunnel!" Brown ordered.

_Right, must've missed that the detour was for a tunnel…_

We entrenched ourselves as the civilian transports rolled by. This part of the avenue had less Covenant presence, so it was easier for us to hold them back. I was keeping a group of brutes pinned down behind a wall when I was tapped in the leg. I stopped myself from kicking in a teenagers face.

"Get back to cover kid," I snapped at her. "What the hell do you think you're doing?"

"Sir please," she said, she was crying. "They hit our car, it won't turn on. My mom has this big _spike_ sticking out of her hip. Please help us."

"Shit, I don't have time for this," I cursed. "Caboose, take the turret."

"Sarge?"

"Do as I say! Now!"

Caboose hopped off from the passenger's seat and fired a few bursts at the covvies while moving towards the turret. Grass propped herself up and joined her fire to his. As soon as Caboose was up in the rear section of the Warthog with me I handed him the turret and jumped off.

"Where's your car?" I asked.

"Over here," she said, almost beaming.

The kid started making her way towards an SUV with smoke coming out of its engine before I pulled her back by the arm.

"What the hell do you think you're doing?" I asked her, looking at her as if she was crazy. "Stay down and go when I say so."

"Yes, sir," she replied immediately.

"And stop calling me sir," I muttered as I drew my BR55 and took aim at a jackal sharpshooter.

"Sorry sir, I mean…" she shut up after that.

"Forget it," I told her. "Cover your ears."

Perhaps I was a little bit late in the warning, since several dozen firearms were going off continuously in her immediate vicinity, she would have an annoying buzzing in her ears for a few days after this. Provided she made it out alive. I shot the jackal in the chest and then shot a startled grunt next to it.

"Go, go!" I urged the teenage girl.

She sprinted back towards her wrecked car and I did my best to keep myself in between her and the Covenant's line of fire while firing suppressing fire from my battle rifle. I was kind of disappointed that I didn't hit anything, but that was not the goal. I slid behind the SUV right as another school bus passed through, taking fire from one side.

"Over here," the girl told me, pulling me by the arm towards an open door.

I moved in that direction and the girl stepped back before crouching behind one of the wheels. I raised my eyebrows at that. It was a pretty smart move. Hardly anything could go through so much metal from where she was standing.

"Oh thank god," one man greeted me. "My wife, she's been shot."

"I know," I said. "Get out."

I half-pulled, half-waited for the man to leave the SUV and join his daughter and climbed in. There were four people in the third row of seats, all of them with their hands over their heads and crouching as low as possible. A few spikers hit the car, but none went through. I took one look at the engine and knew that this car wasn't going to work ever again.

"Get out," I told the ones at the back. "You, in the front, get the hell out too!"

I almost laughed when I saw them scramble over the seats to comply with my orders, but then checked myself.

"Ma'am," I told the woman, "ma'am, do you hear me."

"Yes, yes, oh, it hurts so much."

I pulled the injured woman towards me and saw that she had been shot right in the hip with a spiker round. The spike had punched clean through the car and was three-quarters embedded.

"Can you move your legs?" I asked her quickly, trying to finish this as quickly as possible.

"Yes, but moving the right one hurts."

Ok then.

"Very well, it's about to get worse," I told her as I positioned her sideways, so that she was lying on her left side, the spike jutting up. "I'm going to yank this thing out."

"What?" her husband exclaimed from behind me. "You should immobilize her and have medical evacuation before they remove…that! Surely you can't mean to just yank it out with your hands!"

I looked over my shoulder at the man irritably. "Excuse me, are you a doctor?"

For a moment he got a smug smile on his face. "As a matter of fact, I am. Doctor Sigfrid Vinter at your service."

Luckily, I had backup for him. "Ok _Doctor_ Sigfrid Vinter. Do you have any experience tending to soldiers in the battlefield?" I asked.

The smug smile disappeared from his face faster than a prostitute's panties would drop in New Alexandria's Red District. "No…"

"Then shut the fuck up and let me save your wife!"

The man looked like he was about to say something, but I took advantage of that moment and yanked the spiker from Mrs. Vinter's hip. She howled in agony as I did so. I had to elbow her husband off of my back. He didn't stop trying to hit me until his daughter grabbed him by the elbow and pulled him out of the car.

"Sorry missus," I apologized as I reached for my last can of biofoam. I grabbed the can and pressed it against her wound. The wound was already starting to bubble blood. I was no doctor, but there seemed to be relatively little blood coming out of the hole. "This is gonna hurt," I warned her.

I pressed the button on top of the biofoam can and used my other hand to restrain her as she started trying to shove me away from her. The medical compound was certainly working. She kicked a couple of times until the pain receded a little bit. By that time Mrs. Vinter had stopped screaming in pain and was now crying and moaning pitifully. I rolled my eyes and reached into my backpack for a dose of painkillers. I gave her one and she seemed to faint right after she swallowed it.

I dragged her carefully outside of the SUV and placed her on the ground with her husband's help.

"She have any augmentations?" I asked him.

"What? No."

"Ok, I gave her one military-grade painkiller," I informed him. "She'll be unconscious for a long while. The biofoam on her hip will hold everything together and speed up the healing process. With any luck she won't need any operations or stitches." As I said this I put an adhesive bandage over the wound. Normally those were reserved for wounds when you had no biofoam, but I could make an exception. "She'll be fine."

"Thanks," Mr. Vinter said.

"Part of the job, sir," I shrugged. "Now let's find you a vehicle."

I reminded the civilians to keep their heads down as I popped from the rear of the SUV. My Warthog was still were I left it and they seemed to be holding out just fine. I fired a couple of rounds at a pair of grunts and went back into cover just as a packed bus rolled by. I stayed where I was for a second until an Armadillo rolled by. I hopped out of cover and right in front of it. The AFV's pilot had no choice but to stop. I banged on the hull and a small peephole opened.

"The hell do you want?" the pilot asked.

"There are eight civilians behind that SUV, they have no transport, you carrying troopers in the cargo compartment?"

"Negative Helljumper, we can take them."

"Great, open the rear right door, I'll send them out in a second."

"Hurry up."

I turned around and ran back to the truck. "Ok, that Armadillo troop transport is going to transport you towards your destination," I pushed back down a man that tried to make a run for it. "Go when I tell you to. Groups of two."

I popped from cover and fired a couple of rounds at nothing in particular as the first two women made their way out there. I urged Mr. Vinter to stay with his wife. "Next!" I fired another burst, this time hitting a brute in the chest, making it stumble and dive for cover. "Next!"

This time only one man ran out.

"The hell?" I asked as I turned back.

"I'm not leaving without my mother!" the girl asked.

"Astrid…" his father started.

"No!" she screamed. For a moment I thought that she would start kicking and making a fuss over the thing, but surprisingly enough, her father just shrugged.

"Fucking stupid," I murmured. "Ok, Mr. Vinter, you go."

"My wife…"

I grabbed the unconscious woman and slung her over my shoulder in a firemen's carry. "Go!" Both of us crossed the short distance towards the Armadillo I handed the wounded woman to one of the troopers inside the AFV and sprinted back towards the SUV, where the teen girl, Astrid, was still hiding. I reached her and pulled her close as I prepared to make the run back again.

A fraction of a second before I started running I saw the Armadillo reversing as fast as possible. I barely had time to jump back and push Astrid to the ground. I wrapped my arms around her and to shield her just as the Wraith's mortar detonated on the other side of the car. I felt the immense heat as the explosion melted half the SUV. The blast was partially blocked by the large car, but I'd still get raw skin in my back and neck.

"You alright?" I asked the girl. When she just stared at me with big blue eyes I shook her. "Are you ok?"

You know, usually you are the one that cannot hear anything other than the ringing in their ears. Usually you're the one that has to be shaken up and back into action when something detonates nearby. Hell, even vids switch to the victims point of view when something like that happens. We get a nice little section where the protagonist just looks around in confusion, the noises in the background eventually get louder until they went back to normal. Usually I was the one that found himself momentarily deaf. I never considered that it would be me shaking someone else. Much less a pretty girl in her late teens with lovely freckles running below those bright blue eyes.

Ok, full stop. Even if she was legal it would still mean that she was ten years younger than I was. The implications were somewhat unpleasant.

_Focus._

"You ok?" I asked for the third time.

"I'm… fine," she seemed confused. Didn't blame her.

"Good, now stand up."

The Armadillo had started advancing again and rolled besides us. I saw that its rear hatch door was still open and immediately sprang into action. I dragged Astrid behind me and started sprinting towards the Armadillo. Mortar shells started falling all around us, the pilot wasn't going to stop.

"Come on!" the trooper in the hatch urged, offering his hand to Astrid.

As soon as we were close enough I grabbed the girl by the hips and threw her forward. The force of the action had me fall to the ground on my face. I quickly looked around and hid below a stone bench as blue-hot plasma started raining from every conceivable direction.

"We need an airstrike!" Browns yelled at some air-traffic controller. "We are getting ripped to shreds here! There are over five hundred civilians with us!"

I lost track of the argument as my ears started ringing, an ironic echo to the situation that took place less than a minute ago. I curled myself up and waited for the worst to pass. From my position I saw several transports get hit by the Wraiths. The civilians inside had no chance. Once the plasma mortar detonated they died instantly. I wasn't comforted with the knowledge that their deaths were quick ones. I could also see Hornets and Falcons flying across the avenue to destroy the Wraiths that were shelling us.

I was underneath the stone bench for what seemed like hours until a chain of explosions, human-made, marked the end of the Covenant shelling.

"Reaper Squad, status report!"

"Reaper-3 active!" Bumblebee said.

"Go for Snark."

"Grass is green," Grass said, using her usual line.

"Banged up but fine," Angel informed me.

I waited for Reaper-7 to report in. "Scarecrow? Scarecrow!"

"Sorry, sorry, Reaper-7 is green."

"Yeah," Caboose said with a dull tone.

Once I was satisfied that they were fine I emerged from the bench. "Major, what's the status?" I got no answer. "Major? Shit." I waited a couple of seconds before I thought of something. "The Ball?"

"Yes Staff Sergeant?"

"What the hell happened?"

"The Covenant disabled my cameras and sensors in that grid, I was unable to see their Wraith-class tanks approach your position."

"What _can_ you see?"

"At this moment I only posses control of one weather satellite, there are teams of Jiralhanae breaking into my main server as we speak. I am at the moment purging my databases and overloading my servers to detonate as soon as the Covenant enter the mainframe. I will be taking out many of them with me Sergeant."

Suddenly I felt guilty and sad. "Shit. I wish I could've known you longer Ball," I told it. "Goodbye."

"This is The Ball, AI serial number 3901. This is my last transmission. Semper Fidelis."

With that, I lost contact with the city AI.

"Semper Fidelis?" I asked myself.

"It means always faithful," Grass helpfully jumped in. "In latin. It used to be the motto for the United States Marine Corps."

"Leave it to Grass to know that," Angel joked. Despite the nature of his comment he sounded a little bit more serious than usual.

"Major?" I tried again. "Orders."

"Sorry Sergeant, I command a large unit right now. The Wraiths inflicted fifteen percent casualties in civilian vehicles, putting up the total to somewhere around twenty-three, but that is just a tentative figure. Over forty percent of military assets were lost. We're pulling back to the tunnel now. I understand that one of your men is an explosives expert?"

"That's me," Angel chimed in.

"Good, you can help set up the charges. As soon as the last transport goes by you detonate the tunnel."

"Understood, Reaper Actual out."

I jogged back towards my Warthog. It seemed like every single bit of space around it had been hit except for the vehicle itself. Grass and Caboose had ducked underneath the 'Hoh and used it for cover during the barrage. I hopped on the turret and fired at a brute emerging from cover. They were already starting to attack again.

"Come on!" I pressed them. "Move along!"

The road to the tunnel was relatively uneventful, since half the attacking covvies had been eliminated by their own friendly fire leaving a few of them firing at us. Leave it to the brutes to waste a perfectly good opportunity to eliminate a weak enemy force and kill half their number instead. The creatures are cunning, but sometimes they're just too damned bloodthirsty. Their pack nature no doubt influenced the action, maybe a junior officer wanted to off his superior in the attack. Don't really care, works for me.

Then it hit me. Twenty-three percent civilian casualties.

Over five hundred civilians, twenty-three percent of them dead. That amounted to one hundred and fifteen dead civilians at the very least. It was an speck of dust in the grand scheme of things, I had no doubt that many times that number had been killed in the Covenant's first strike, but these hundred and fifteen dead were under my care, near me. I had seen their faces, heard them screaming. It was an awful lot to take in.

"Sarge, charges are set," Angel told me.

"Good, any vehicles still coming behind us?"

"Birds say that we are the last ones."

I sighed. "Scarecrow, Grass, floor it. Angel, detonate as soon as we are out of range."

"Yes Sergeant."

The Warthogs moved quickly through the well-paved tunnel, its headlights illuminating the way ahead of us. Halfway through the tunnel Angel informed me that we should be safe from the blast and that the tunnel shouldn't collapse above us. He seemed pretty sure of himself, so I gave him the thumbs up to detonate. I heard the explosion, the strength of its sound multiplied by the tunnel walls. There was no discernible shockwave, but a second after the explosion I could hear the tunnel entrance collapsing.

We emerged on the outskirts of the city. Several UNSC vehicles were waiting for us and had already set up a nice security cordon. I could see a dozen Pelicans parked and civilian refugees hopping in the birds. One of the Pelicans had red paint over its hull. The design was different, but it was still recognizable. As I counted the vehicles in the convoy I realized the it had to be more than twenty-three percent casualties, and that's not even counting the wounded and the ones that hadn't died yet.

All in all, this evacuation had turned into a clusterfuck.

* * *

><p><em>Thanks to Sniper-Fodder for proof-reading this chapter.<em>

_The Ball is a reference to Billy Mays for those of you that missed it, credit for the idea goes to my beta reader._

_So guys, originally the Vinter family was intended to be in this chapter only, but I developed an entire personality and character for both Dr. Vinter and Astrid, so I might be bringing them back to the story after a while, perhaps forty chapters will do. Another thing, as you know, I have featured both Carter and Kat as characters in my story, I've also had the one and only John-117 appear in a brief cameo. This got me thinking, I could probably include some other character as a guest for a chapter or two. If you like the idea leave a suggestion in the comment section beeeloooowww..._

_That was a Ray William Johnson impersonation, pretty hard to do on writing._

_One last thing, I started a tvtropes page for this fanfic, feel free to check it out and add to it._

_So, thanks for all of your past and (hopefully) future reviews, I hope you enjoyed this chapter._

_-casquis_


	103. Stale Beer Sucks

Chapter CIII: Stale Beer Sucks

**August 15, 2543 (UNSC Calendar)/**

**Uppergap Seaport, Uppergap, Lambari, Campo Sorrisco System**

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><p><em>"Talk about a looming threat."- unidentified Lambari local<em>

* * *

><p>I kept rolling around on my bed. I had been trying to sleep for what seemed like hours but was probably just a few minutes. Ever since we had relocated to the port everything seemed to be a lot louder. The appearance of the <em>CCS<em>-class battlecruiser above the city forced us to evacuate and abandon all attempts to retake Uppergap. Despite having lost several thousand of their number and many key positions, the Covenant still held the trump card.

We had our remaining ships on standby, the _Inconvenience_ was mostly intact, somehow it managed to stay out of harm's way while racking up two corvette kills. Granted, corvettes are small ships and unshielded, but that just means that they stand on equal footing with our own frigates.

The ships we had out there were ready to pummel the battlecruiser with MAC rounds and nuclear weapons as soon as it made a move towards our position. In the meantime, we were trying to evacuate as many civilians as possible. The convoy only contained a fraction of the civilian population that was stranded groundside, but we were making decent progress with the help of Lambari's wet navy. They were even using submarines to transport people to the other side of the gulf for evacuation.

A loud horn blared, signaling that a ship was about to leave.

"Shut the fuck up!" I begged, pressing my pillow against my ears as tightly as I could.

Finally I gave up and sat up in my small bed. I groaned in annoyance when I saw that Grass, Angel, and Snark were all fully asleep. At least they seemed to be. Caboose was cleaning his weapons, I wasn't surprised to see him wearing his cap even inside the barracks. Bumblebee was watching something on his datapad, I just knew that it had to be yet another age old film that he would tell us all about after he was done watching it a couple of times.

"Where's Scarecrow?" I asked, looking around.

"I'm here, Sarge," he called out from behind a curtain.

"What are you doing?"

"Date with Rosie Palms," Caboose suggested playfully. Bumblebee snickered.

Scarecrow, however, was unperturbed. "Reading messages from home," he said calmly. "They finally reached the ship, I had Eliza send them down here."

I stood up completely, grabbing a shirt. Since it was a new shirt I had a pretty tough time getting inside of it, once it was on it felt like an anaconda was trying to crush my ribs. I pulled at it for a few seconds before it stretched some, allowing me some comfort.

"Any news from Earth?" I said, joining Scarecrow.

"They've finally started construction of the Orbital Defense Network, phasing out the old Battlestars in favor of ODPs," he informed me. "Liberal president took over URNA in a landslide, Israel and Palestine are going at it again, and the Russian Federation is threatening to veto a couple of UEG resolutions unless they are given more trade something. Oh, and St. Louis lost the Mega Bowl."

"Shit, I had money on them…"

"Anything from the UK?" Bumblebee asked, pausing his film.

Scarecrow scrolled down some. "Not much, the King is trying to reinstate nobility titles…"

"Same as always," the Scottish Helljumper scoffed before resuming his vid.

"Who won the Rugby Cup?" Caboose asked from across the room.

"Didn't they discontinue that?" I pondered.

"Yes, I mean the Russian Rugby Cup."

Scarecrow tapped a couple of holographic buttons and went into the sports section regarding Russia. "RC Novokuznetsk," he said carefully, trying to not to mess up the pronunciation of the word.

"Damn it," Caboose cursed.

"Aren't you a colony kid?" Scarecrow asked.

"Well yeah, but I still remember my roots."

"What colony you from?" I asked, prying for information.

Caboose said nothing and went back to cleaning his weapons. I didn't press him for any more information and instead went back to checking the most important news back on Earth.

"Any news from your brother?" I asked. "The quarterback."

"Yeah, his team did pretty well in the season, didn't win anything big, but apparently he is being hailed as the next big player of his university, but that might just be my mom inflating his talent. You know how moms are."

I chuckled. I didn't really know how moms were, but I wasn't about to make my second favorite squad member feel like an inconsiderate jerk. Although, I gotta admit, the thought did cross my mind.

"I'm more worried about my younger brother," Scarecrow went on. "He wants to join the Corps."

I honestly couldn't see what was wrong with that.

"I see," was all I said. I didn't want to compromise.

"He has a bright future ahead of him," Scarecrow muttered almost angrily, "I don't see why he should throw it all away for crap coffee and a death sentence."

"Maybe he admires his big brother?" I joked while patting him on the shoulder. "You can't control what he does, man."

"I know, I know, but still. It's my little brother we're talking about. Would you want your brother joining the military?"

"I wouldn't want to have anything to do with my brother," I said through gritted teeth, memories coming back, things that I hadn't thought about in years flashing in my head.

"Bad blood, huh?" Scarecrow asked, turning around to look at me.

"Don't want to talk about it."

"Fair enough," he shrugged as he returned to his reading.

"I'm going to go for a walk," I announced.

I returned to my bed and laced my boots on before deciding against a jacket and leaving the barracks. Campo Sorrisco, the weirdly-named star, hit my face with its full strength. We were on the planet's equator, the only section that had been deemed appropriate for colonization even after extensive terraforming. The ocean breeze was now more like an ocean gale, blowing at tents and threatening to whisk them away. All in all the wind was a pretty sweet counter measure for the hot sun.

The port presented a completely different image than last time I was here. All the containers had been removed and were used for a wall of sorts around the port and the refugee tents surrounding it. The Pelicans had used their magnetic clamps to do that. The wide open space was now covered with military vehicles and temporary structures such as barracks, tents, and two bases on opposite ends of the port. The paved road that lead from the port's entrance to the docks had been left alone and there was a steady influx of civilians making their way to what would hopefully be their salvation. Armed troopers, who watched over them to make sure that no one tried any funny business, flanked the men, women, and children. At first the civilian leadership had complained about the measures, but the appearance of the Covenant ship had quickly made them think twice about opposing the UNSC forces.

I shook my head to clear away the recently-raised unpleasant thoughts and headed in the direction of the hangars. Calling them hangars would be an insult to every hangar that ever existed. Any aircraft being used was now grounded in a cleared part of the complex. Half of them weren't even on top of polycrete. Not one single aircraft had any kind of roof overhead, instead they were just left there, exposed to the elements.

I immediately spotted the Pelican that I was looking for and headed towards it in hopes of an improvement on the situation.

"I'm telling you, we need to cover our ships with something, anything…" then Marina spotted me. "Hold on. What the hell do you want?"

I raised an eyebrow and spread my hands out in the universal 'I come in peace' sign. I guess there would be no improvement to this situation. "I'm just looking for H," I lied. "Have you seen him recently?"

"That's his bird over there, I don't know where he is, now leave me alone."

I thought that perhaps it would be a good idea on my part to thank her, but my thoughts interrupted the action.

_If she wants to be a bitch treat her like one. Let her rot in hell._

I nodded to myself in agreement as I moved on to the next Pelican. I banged on the outer hull and entered the cockpit when no one answered. It was immediately obvious that Zekalwe wasn't in the immediate vicinity. I cursed at that and took a detour to avoid having to confront my bitchy ex-girlfriend once again. In the process of taking said detour I found myself in the section of the 'hangars' where all the Hornets were grounded.

_Why the hell not?_

After asking a couple of pilots I finally caught up with Hardwick.

"Hey, Emily," I called out as soon as I saw her.

She looked around to try and spot whoever was calling her name, but didn't seem to see me. I felt like an idiot but I waved at her so that she could spot me. She waved back and hopped down from the rotors of her craft. She told a mechanic to keep working on it and walked towards me, swaying her hips.

"Hey there Frank," she smiled at me. "Been a while."

"I've been busy," I replied.

"I can see that." She reached for the small straps keeping my head wound closed. "What happened here?"

"Building fell on top of me," I informed her with a cocky smile.

She shook her head and pulled her hand back. "You don't say."

"What's the deal with your Hornet?" I asked her, pointing at the mechanic working on one of the VTOL's rotors.

"It's this damned sand, it's doing wonders for my craft. The damned stuff gets everywhere." She added, "Hell, I even have to switch my panties twice a day."

I would've raised my eyebrow at her panties comment, but that was just Hardwick being Hardwick. Instead I decided to step up to her game. "Twice a day?" I asked. "Wow, you must be using a dirty pair right about now."

_She _raised her eyebrow above the rim of her old-fashioned aviator sunglasses. "Dirty with what?"

She had me against the ropes there. "Sand?" I opted to say.

"Nice choice," Emily chuckled.

I shrugged. "I aim to please."

"That you do…"

Before I could ask her exactly what she meant she stopped abruptly.

"What?"

"Nothing, nothing, where did you say you were deployed last time?"

"I didn't. I was in the convoy."

"The last one?"

I nodded.

"Ouch, heard it was bad."

"That it was," I confirmed. "How about you?"

"Same thing as usual, providing ground support for jarheads like you on the frontline, we were pulled back after a Scarab emerged from out of nowhere."

"How the hell do they even hide those things?" I asked myself.

"If you turn a Scarab upside down in the middle of a square it looks like modern art. Maybe that's how they're pulling it off."

I laughed. "A decent idea," I agreed. "But I hardly think that's the case."

"I hardly think that's the case…" Emily mimicked. "You remind me of a college professor."

"I'll try to avoid using proper syntax then."

"I think you just failed," she giggled.

She had a pretty laugh, I couldn't help but notice that. It went well with the rest of her overall prettiness. Or sexiness, whatever you want to call it.

We had been walking through the hangars and we now found ourselves in front of the road crossing the port. I remembered that I had killed a group of grunts with Grass' and Caboose's help just a few meters away. I wondered if their blood still stained the pavement.

Emily and I talked a little while longer about nothing in particular before another large group of civilians started making their way down the road. They looked like they were right out of one of those historical videos. Half of them were injured in one way or another and the other half had mile-long stares. A few of them looked happy enough to be on their ways to safety and some even tried to cheer up each other, but the majority of them looked grim.

"Want a beer?" Emily asked out of the blue.

"Sure."

"What kind?"

I glanced at the grim parade. "The one with the highest alcohol volume."

"Aye, aye cap'n."

I waited there for Hardwick to return with some (hopefully) cold beer. The parade of civilians seemed to be endless, each one was a sadder sight than the last. I crossed my arms over my chest and kept my face hard, displaying no emption. I almost failed when I spotted a familiar-looking woman in crutches slowly making her way with the crowd. I looked at her closely, trying to figure out why she seemed familiar until I noticed her husband standing beside her.

I sighed and walked in their direction.

"Excuse me sir," a trooper stopped me, "what are you doing?"

"Nothing that harms national security," I assured him. He put his arm down and let me pass.

"Dr. Vinter," I called out as I closed in on them, the majority of the civilians moving aside to let me pass. "Dr. Vinter."

"Excuse me," he said as soon as he spotted me. "What is it now?"

"Nothing, I just wanted to apologize."

The look in his face told me that he didn't recognize me.

"I'm the soldier that helped your wife," I explained helpfully.

"Oh. You."

"Yes," I admitted. "How are you doing?" I asked Mrs. Vinter.

"Fine, leg still hurts," she said quietly.

"I'm sorry I behaved like that," I apologized. "I was out of line."

"Not your fault," Vinter said. He paused in the middle of the sentence to look at the nametag on my shirt. "Staff Sergeant."

I felt relieved. "Your daughter?"

"She was talking with the mother of a friend," he told me. "I'm also sorry for attacking you. My wife had just been shot, I… I wasn't thinking straight." He looked at his wife and kissed her on the head before looking back at me. "Besides, I'm not even that kind of doctor," he furthered.

"You're not a medical doctor?" I asked, surprised.

"No, no, I am, but I'm hardly qualified to deal with that kind of wound."

"Oh."

"Hello?" another voice joined the conversation. I turned around to see none other than Astrid Vinter looking doubtfully at me. "What's wrong?"

"Nothing, nothing," her mother quickly calmed her down. "This is the man that saved me."

She looked at me with wide eyes.

"You see, Astrid said that if you hadn't helped out my wife back there she would've been considered a non-priority patient once we made it here. She said that the surgeons here would've looked after other patients first."

"Smart girl," I pointed out. I smiled when she beamed at my praise. "Anyways, I just wanted to make sure that you were all fine. Good luck in the future."

"And to you as well Sergeant Castillo."

I nodded at them and turned back around to leave. I shot the trooper that stopped me a 'you see' look before making my way back to my spot, watching the refugees move towards the docks. I had barely begun to cross my arms again and turn my face to a scowl before the youngest member of the Vinter family emerged from the crowd. She avoided one of the troopers and sped-walked in my direction.

I waved another trooper that made to catch her and waited for her to stop in front of me. I had to wave away certain thoughts again when I looked at her lovely eyes and pretty face. I had to remind myself of her (probable) age.

"Yes?"

"I just… I wanted to thank you for saving my mom," she explained, pulling her hair behind her ear and doing an excellent job at looking cute.

_Underage, underage, underage, underage, underage, underage._

"What?" she asked.

"What?"

"I thought you…. never mind. I just wanted to…" she blushed. "Thanks. For saving my mom."

"No problem," I smiled at her. "Comes with the job description."

"Still," she went on. "I wanted to give you this." She reached into her pocket and produced a couple of bills. Actual paper money.

"No, no, keep it," I told her. "You're restarting your whole life, you need it more than I do, besides-"

"Heads up!"

I turned around and caught a bottle of beer headed straight for my face. I thought I looked quite awesome while I did. I mean, seriously, catching something one-handed with barely a moment's warning? It's pretty awesome.

I looked at the bottle.

"Eight-point-seven percent alcohol?" I asked. "Local?"

"Yeah," Emily told me as she took a small sip of her own drink. "Pretty damned good if you ask me."

Then she spotted the blonde teenager whose hands I was holding. Well, actually I was pushing it away, but I understand how it could look from a different perspective.

"Who is she?" they both asked at the same time. Suddenly, I felt highly uncomfortable.

"Umm, hi, yeah. This is Lieutenant Emily Hardwick and this is Astrid Vinter," I introduced them. "I helped them during the convoy evacuation."

"He saved me," Astrid said.

"Did he? Frank has a habit of saving people," Hardwick explained. "Where are your parents, kid?"

"I'm not a kid," Astrid snapped. "I'm eighteen."

_Thank god she's legal, thank god she's legal, thank god she's legal, thank god she's legal, thank god she's legal. _ I repeated to myself.

"What the fuck is wrong with you, man?" Schitzo asked quite angrily.

For once, I was inclined to agree with him.

"Sorry," Emily backed away a step. I could tell that she was mocking the kid in her own subtle way. "Where are your parents?"

"They're with the crowd," I interceded.

There was a moment of silence as no one said anything.

"Well, I better get going," Astrid finally said. "Thanks again… Frank." With that, she took off.

Emily waited a couple of seconds while taking small sips from her beer. "So…" she prodded.

"Don't' ask," I pleaded.

"Oh, but I want to ask. That poor girl looked like she had her heart broken when I walked in on you two."

"It's not my fault," I told her. "I'm just naturally handsome and girls keep falling for me."

With that cocky line I opened my beer and took a healthy swig from it. Halfway through swallowing Emily slapped me on the back, making me choke on the alcohol and forcing me to spit it out.

I coughed out the rest of the beer. "If I didn't know better I would say that you're jealous," I finally managed out. I did know better, but that particular line (or any variations) always managed to make the fairer sex go on the defensive.

"Am not!" she complained suddenly.

_Never fails._

We probably would've sunken into one of those childish arguments that only serve to increment sexual tension, but we were rudely interrupted.

The noise of a Covenant capital ship's main weapon was a fearsome one, and one that you weren't going to ever forget. Everyone turned from where they were looking to spare a glance at the _CCS_-class battlecruiser hovering over Uppergap. It was firing a sustained burst at the city directly below it, melting through anything and everything that stood in its way, turning solid rock to molten crystal. The energy beam vaporized anything that was underneath it. It was a show of force if I ever saw one.

Several missiles were fired at it, ranging from Argent to ground-based Archer missiles. As soon as it fired it had to put down its shields, but it stopped its glassing and its shields were up again by the time that the wave of missiles slammed into it. For a moment the entire enemy ship was covered in smoke and explosions, but I knew better than to hope that it had been destroyed. As the wind cleared away the smoke I could see the battlecruiser emerge, unharmed.

"There they go again…" Emily said quietly. "Why?"

"Because they're assholes."

We couldn't position a cruiser or frigate within firing range because the cruiser would take it out from where it was standing. It had been firing at the city occasionally for the last day, but otherwise it hadn't moved from its location. I just knew that it wouldn't be much longer before it decided to stretch its legs.

"That they are," she agreed. "But there's no point in wasting energy on an abandoned city."

"Intimidation?" I suggested.

"I think that the big-ass motherfucking ship covers that part."

"You've got a point," I admitted.

"Move along!" one trooper urged the civilians. "The transport might wait, but the Covenant will not!"

With that the civilians started moving faster towards the docks. We watched them for a while before we decided to head somewhere else. I mostly listened to Hardwick talk, she seemed to be unable to shut herself up once she got wound up, but I didn't mind. Her stories were usually pretty funny or showed the covvies in a bad light. Kudos for her. After she finished telling me of how this one time her rotor got stuck on a Banshee and she managed to unhinge her craft while destroying the enemy flier in the process we bumped into Grass.

"Oh, hey Sarge," she said. "I was just looking for you actually. Hey Hardwick."

"Cam," Emily replied. "I guess I'll see you later," she told me. "Au revoir."

"Bye, thanks for the bear."

"But Staff Sergeant, I aim to please."

I smiled at the joke and looked back at Grass. "What's up?" I asked.

"Hey Cam, how are you? Good, glad to hear it, I hope you had a good nap."

"So you're jealous?" I asked her.

"Don't even go there," she growled.

"Relax, I'm just kidding, but seriously, what do you need me for?"

Grass scratched at the back of her head, looking awesome while she did that, but then again, this was Camilla Seppa we were talking about. "Albaf sent me to look for you."

"Shit, what does she want now?"

"I have no idea, but she looked pissed…"

"Shit again," I cursed. "C'mon, I just might need a friendly face there."

"Not a pretty face?" she asked, pouting.

I chuckled. "That too. Come on, rápido."

"Si señor," she replied cheerfully. I couldn't help but smile at her antics.

The cruiser firing had sent everyone into high alert. Several marines and troopers were running about the camp while triple-checking their weapons and making sure that their weapons were in fine working order. You could cut the tension in the place with a dull fork. For once, it was not sexual tension.

"I'm here, Commander," I said as soon as I entered the tent. MY squad was standing at ease in a straight line. Grass promptly joined them and left me standing in front of Albaf. Lieutenant Wilkins was one step to her right and one step back, his hands clasped behind his back and his face betraying no emotion. Usual Wilkins style.

"At ease Staff Sergeant," Albaf prompted. She sighed and commenced her address. "Francisco Castillo is promoted to the permanent rank of Gunnery Sergeant effective August 15, 2543 AD." As she said this Wilkins broke formation and closed in on me. I was wearing a t-shirt as opposed to my BDUs, so instead of tearing out my old chevrons and tossing them away he just handed me the new ones and the corresponding pins. Albaf went on. "Marines will present him the required respect and follow his orders… ok, you know the drill."

Not very formal.

"The promotion order was signed by General Saint-Georges herself," she informed me. "Outside of ONI."

"So you didn't recommend me?" I asked.

"No," she deadpanned. "I meant it as a compliment."

I smiled, I had, after all, just been promoted and raised a pay grade. "Thank you ma'am," I said as I shook her hand.

"You, Gunnery Sergeant, are not the only one to have been promoted. Your entire squad has been bumped up one grade."

"Can they even do that?" Angel asked. Grass hushed him.

"Robert Agnarsson is promoted to the rank of Lance Corporal effective immediately," Albaf said. Wilkins immediately handed him his new chevrons and pins. "Naveen Avninder is promoted to the rank of Sergeant. Camilla Lilja Seppa is promoted to the rank of Lance Corporal. Arcangelo Lamberti is promoted to the rank of Corporal. George Manuel Sutton is promoted to the rank of Lance Corporal. Last but not least, Grigori Konstantinov is promoted to the rank of Sergeant."

"It's official," Wilkins said as he tapped something on his datapad.

"Congratulations Reaper." Albaf saluted us.

The entire squad saluted her crisply.

"As you were."

Albaf and Wilkins left the tent and left us standing like that, more than a little bit shocked. I looked down at the golden pins in my right hand and quickly shoved them inside a pocket. This had been a highly irregular ceremony. Usually people were only promoted at the same time if they were going to be promoted to the same rank. Then again, this usually happened back on base and there was a huge ceremony to it. It seemed to me like the only thing that I knew was battlefield promotions. At least it made everything easier.

Snark was the first to break the silence. "So we now have two sergeants in the squad? And that's not counting Pavel."

I understood the question. For any regular squad the irregular rank in Reaper would've resulted in confusion, but special forces teams were sometimes given higher rankings to facilitate interaction with other units. It wasn't unheard of to have a squad consisting of five sergeants and one staff sergeant leading them, but it was still highly unusual.

"Take what you can get," Scarecrow told him while patting him in the back. "Sergeant."

"I do believe I will, Lance Corporal."

At that point everyone in the tent broke into smiles. They shook hands and congratulated one another while joking that they were now even more badass than they had been a minute ago. I didn't know if they were happy because of the promotion itself or because of the pay raise. Personally, I looked forward to having more money to spend during leave, but the idea of people calling me 'Gunny' was one that was alien to me. Gunnery Sergeants were supposed to be older and mentor figures to enlisted marines. I mean, I was just twenty-eight years old at the time.

"Congratulations Gunny," Grass said with that gorgeous smile of hers.

"Call signs stay the same," I told her. "You hear that? Call signs stay the same."

"Of course Sarge," Snark told me. "From one Sarge to another."

"Very funny, kid," Bumblebee hit him on the back of the head.

"You're just jealous because you're a Lance Corporal and I'm a full-fledged Sergeant."

"To me you'll always be a whiny brat," he replied.

"What about Pavel?" I wondered out loud.

"Albaf said that the whole squad was promoted, so he probably got bumped up to Staff some time ago," Scarecrow suggested. "Even if that's not the case he's still our second in command."

"And you're the backup," I told him with a smile, placing my hand on his shoulder.

"I am honored," the huge man smiled while he shook my hand. Comparing the sizes of our hands you would've believed that I was a kid, and I was told by everyone that I had big hands.

You know what they say about big hands, don't you?

"Congratulations Sarge," Scarecrow said with a grin on his face. He was obviously very pleased with himself at the promotion.

Suddenly a Heavy Flip-like piece of music started booming out of Bumblebee's datapad. We all looked at him and he gestured at us to wait. The drums, woods, and the rest were joined by an ancient-sounding choir of wailing women. Suddenly the music grew to a crescendo and it became what I could only describe as an absolutely epic piece. We all looked at each other and stood around trying to look awesome while listening to the music.

"Hell of a piece," Caboose pointed out. "What's it called?"

"To Glory, from the Twenty-First."

"Better than those movies," Snark told him as the music gained speed.

"Which ones?"

"The ones about the pie. Or something like that. I'm sure that they had the word pie in the title. Supposed to be comedy."

"Ok, that series is pure comedy gold," Bumblebee argued.

"And I assume that the boobs help too," Angel chimed in.

"No, they're there for comedic effect," Grass joined the discussion. She was fast to pick up an opportunity to contradict our resident Italian.

They started going at it, but everybody was too happy with their promotions to give a crap. Bumblebee smiled and put up the volume of the music as high as his pad would allow him to. The music drowned both Grass' and Angel's voices, forcing them to scream at each other. Now that I was getting used to their scuffles I found them quite interesting to observe. Provided it was a small scuffle, I didn't want to be nearby when they went full agro on each other.

Snark and Caboose were saluting each other and putting their pins on the collars of their shirts while Scarecrow started composing a mail to send back home, telling his mother and many siblings that he had just been promoted. I smiled at the mental image of a group of little black children cheering and jumping up and down while their mother read them the news. I knew that his family wasn't that big, but it was still a pleasant image.

Then the sound of the Covenant ship firing again interrupted us.

Whoa, talk about mood whiplash.

"They're firing at faster rates now," Grass pointed out. She noticed things like that.

"Not good," Snark said.

"Agreed." Caboose declared. "Sarge, you oughta go see the General, get an idea of how the situation's developing."

I nodded. "I want everyone in full battle armor. Angel, start setting up equipment on the table in the back. Scarecrow you're coming with me."

"All right," he agreed.

"Bee, I want you to take his armor and mine out of their cases as soon as you're done suiting up. Undersuits as well."

"Sergeant," he acknowledged.

I motioned for Scarecrow to follow me and grabbed my battle rifle on the way out. It only had one magazine inside, but it was better than being caught with only a pistol to defend myself. I shot the _CCS_-class battlecruiser a quick look before heading to the CIC.

The command room in one of the bases wasn't packed, but it was extremely close to being so. There were a couple of colonels, captains, and several lieutenants talking to one another and trying to get the attention of the general. The general, on the other hand, was busy ignoring everyone and having a discussion with a pair of AIs. One of the two holograms in front of him was Eliza's. The AI turned around and made her holographic eyes sink on me, letting me know that she was aware of my presence. She probably saw me the moment I walked through the front door of the base.

"Ok quiet down!" the general finally sayed, his authoritative voice booming all around the CIC. "These two AIs believe that the Covenant are about to mass an attack on us. We would be able to hold them back if they didn't have that battlecruiser." He paused for effect. "We're retreating?"

"We're leaving the planet?" one Army major asked, his voice full of shock.

"I'm afraid we have no choice on the matter," the general went on. "Civilian evacuation is almost complete, as soon as they are all tightly packed up in freighters across the gulf we'll start pulling back."

"But, sir-" another Army officer started. It was mostly Army personnel complaining about the decision to abandon Lambari. After all, most of those guys had lived here their entire lives.

"The decision is final," he dismissed him. "Ah, I see you're here Sergeant."

He was talking to me.

"Sir." I saluted him.

"Your squad will have to stay, holding back any probing advances," he told me. "You'll be last ones out."

I swallowed nervously. I didn't really like the idea. "I hardly think that a seven man squad would be enough to hold back the entire covvie ground forces… sir."

"True, you'll have support from other units from your ship. I understand there is a Marine company attached to the…_ Inconvenience_. Is it?"

I nodded.

"That would be us, sir," Captain Sharma called out, taking a step forward.

I could see Darbinien glowering at me from behind his CO. He was obviously not very happy that I had condemned the entire Echo Company to remain here as a rear guard.

The general nodded. "Very well Captain. Your company will provide support as well. To everyone else, the order of evacuation has already been issued, be sure to keep control of your troops. Dismissed."

Everyone saluted quickly before leaving the CIC. I waited for the bulk of the officers to leave the room to catch up with Captain Sharma. She looked at me and shook her head.

"This is one hell of a cluster fuck you got us into, Staff Sergeant," Lieutenant Darbinian said angrily before his superior could speak.

"Actually, it's Gunnery Sergeant now," I explained.

"Oh, is that so?" he asked sarcastically.

"Lieutenant," Sharma interrupted him. "Cool it."

Darbinian looked like he was ready to protest, but he kept his mouth shut instead and allowed us to gain some distance on him before resuming his walk. Scarecrow did the same, ignoring the Marine lieutenant walking by his side. It was probably uncomfortable for Darbinian to have a seven foot tall monster standing by his side, but he did an exemplary job at hiding it.

"Ok Gunnery Sergeant," Sharma started. "We're gonna be leaving behind a whole lot of equipment, I assume that they can be used to push back any attacks. We'll need to create a couple of lines of defense. I would propose the container wall to be the first one, the port wall the second one, and a third defense line near the docks themselves."

"Sounds good," I said. "We're going to need to convince some of the pilots to stay back to evacuate us. How many men does your company consist of currently?" I asked her.

"A hundred and nine."

Ouch, it was usually one-twenty.

"All fit for duty?"

"No, we have ninety-eight soldiers available to us."

"That'll do. We can squeeze twenty per Pelican," I suggested. "Bogdanovic and Zekalwe will surely stay."

Sharma smiled. "I'll see about asking Marina, Gunnery Sergeant," she proposed. "That makes for forty people, we need to bring everyone up in one trip."

"Are the two Albatross transports undamaged?" Scarecrow asked.

"No, only one is in working order," the Captain explained. "So that's fifty plus forty. Another Pelican should do it. I'll talk to the pilots and set my men preparing barricades. Get your team ready Gunnery Sergeant."

"Yes ma'am," I saluted. "Scarecrow, with me."

"Sarge, what's the plan then?"

"What Sharma said, it's the best we can come up with on such short notice and with so little men."

"We'll be surrounded."

"No, the covvies will be trying to pummel through, by the time they realize that they won't be able to beat us by concentrating on one point we'll be on the second line, then we'll fall back to the third and evacuate."

"What about the ships?"

"The AA batteries will be left here, and Liz can remote control them from the _Inconvenience_, that ought to get any Banshees off of our tail. Ground based AA is another matter though."

"Desperate times, huh?" he joked.

"Damn right. Grab as many grenades as you can Crow, we're going to need stopping power."

"Will do. Next time we're in Reach I'm upgrading this 40mm to those fancy 25mm rocket grenades."

I nodded at his idea and walked inside my tent. My team was already outfitted and stood up as soon as I walked inside.

"Sarge?" Snark inquired.

"You heard the news?"

"Yes," Grass spoke up.

"Good, then go and help out Captain Sharma however you can."

"Got it," Grass said. Apparently she was the _de facto_ leader after Scarecrow. I smiled at the sight of her giving orders to two sergeants when she herself was only a lance corporal.

Bumblebee had pulled out the crates that contained Scarecrow's and my armor and laid out the black undersuits on our beds. No, they weren't neatly folded, and no, he didn't place the armor so that the helmet was on top and the boots at the bottom, but he had complied with my order well enough.

So, armoring up again.

Get naked. Check.

Undersuit on. Check.

I would list every single component of the armor itself, but it would probably take much too long.

Putting armor on. Check.

I grabbed my pistol from my discarded cargo pants and slide it into its holster on my right leg. I also drew my knife from its case in my right boot and put it in its sheath in my right armored boot. The other two were already where they were supposed to be, so I didn't pay them much mind other than making sure that they were safely strapped in. I stretched to make sure that my armor was in fine working order and moved towards the table that was currently working as our armory. I saw that several magazines already had ammunition inside, so I quickly packed those in. I refrained from grabbing rations and water, instead packing as much ammunition as I could in addition to two cans of biofoam. I also decided to stack up on frags as opposed to flashbangs. By the time I was done I felt like I could take on an army.

"Sarge? What about our belongings?" Scarecrow asked as soon as he was done.

"Shit, didn't think about that…Pack them in your rucksack and take them to Marina's ship. I'll do the same thing."

"Looks like the rest of the squad already packed up," he noted.

I nodded and shoved my clothes and valuables into the armored rucksack. I finished the improvised packing and shoved my datapad inside as well. I glanced at Scarecrow and took off after telling him to meet up with the rest of the squad. The port looked a lot emptier now. Several of the vehicles that had been parked were missing, the tanks, AFV's, and Warthogs were all being returned to ship. Pelicans were ferrying troops back to their ships as well. Civilians must've been safe by now, because I saw no one that wasn't wearing a uniform.

I jogged towards the docks and saw that three Pelicans had been parked in three separate docks with an Albatross right next to them. I quickly spotted Marina's and moved in that direction. As I closed in I spotted Sheppard checking the Anvil missile pods on the top of the craft's wings. He saw me and waved before quickly looking back down.

"Marina," I called out.

She emerged from the cargo bay and looked at me. She even rolled her eyes. "What do you want?"

"I take it you're last one out?"

"Yes," she said irritably.

"Good, so am I," I replied as I tossed my rucksack into the ship's blood tray. "Make sure the rear turret is loaded and in working order will ya?"

Two can play the bitch game.

"You don't get to order me around."

"Fine, do whatever the fuck you want. You were always good at that."

I left before she could recover from my vicious verbal attack, leaving her standing with her mouth agape. She wasn't really shocked by the insult itself, she was probably just surprised that I had started acting like an asshole too. I mean, I had tried playing nice because I cared about her, but I'm not Gandhi, I can only take so much.

I shouldered my way past a group of pilots jogging towards their Pelicans and immediately spotted the Marines of Echo Company setting up barricades and digging shallow trenches. So much materiel was going to be left behind that they were fortifying the positions with an unhealthy amount of turrets and machine guns. An unhealthy amount for the Covenant, that is.

"Gunnery Sergeant," my radio rang.

"Yes General?"

"I managed to snag three low-yield tactical nuclear weapons and place them in both bases, the other one is being moved towards the customs office as we speak."

"I see, who has the detonation codes?"

"Your ship's captain, Brooks has authority to detonate them. Just letting you know."

"Thanks General, glad we're leaving them a surprise."

"Same here, good luck."

Yup, we were most certainly going to need some of that.

* * *

><p><em>So, thanks to Sniper Fodder for proof-reading this chapter, he did an impressive job at it, as per usual. Been a while since I used a non-related phrase as a chapter title (check out Chapter 43).<em>

_Now, I would like to take a moment to thank you all for your reviews and ideas. I'd like to say that Sergeant Johnson and Noble Six having brief appearances did cross my mind, in fact, I already developed a small plot for the Spartan-III, but it would take a couple of in-story years to come up, and judging by the length of the fic, it might be a couple dozen chapters before (s)he shows up. Johnson, on the other hand, is a difficult choice. I don't think I could do the character honor precisely because of the hung-ho attitude, but if I come up with a good idea, I'm definitely going to use it. Lastly, Buck and the Squad from Halo 3: ODST is the logical choice seeing as Reaper Squad is an ODST unit as well, but since The Squad didn't become The Squad unit after Reach, I would just have to resign myself to meet one or two of them at a time. _

_Worry not, Spartan-IIs are coming back to the story pretty soon. _

_Regardless, thanks for your reviews (again) and ideas (again)._

_In case anyone was wondering, the song Angel played is called "To Glory" by Two Steps From Hell. You ought to listen to it, it's pretty good, although opinions may differ. Here's the link._

.com/watch?v=rP2zA3lZk9Y

-_casquis_


	104. Last Line

Chapter CIV: Last Line 

**August 15, 2543 (UNSC Calendar)/**

**Uppergap Seaport, Uppergap, Lambari, Campo Sorrisco System**

* * *

><p>"<em>In a vid you always know that the good guys will make it, a gunship or a tank will rescue them in the end. Down there? There wasn't a single gunship that could help within a million miles."- Lieutenant Chloe Delacroix<em>

* * *

><p>They came in numbers, but then again, that was to be expected. Phantoms had been dropping elites, grunts, jackals, and hunters minutes after the last transport left. I was worried that they had switched the brutes in favor of the more disciplined aliens who were indisputably better tacticians. They had been dropped well within weapon's range, but they had deployed shield generators before even dropping any troops.<p>

Sharma ordered one of the machine gun crews to fire at the shields a couple of times, to make it seem like we had more men than we actually did, but told them to stop after a few bursts. The translucent barriers allowed us to see just how much personnel and equipment the Covenant was committing to wiping us out. We were the last UNSC forces with our feet down in Lambari. If it had been up to me I would've sent a single Shortsword to do a couple of bombing runs and get it done with. The elites were smart, but they were also proud. Today it was going to cost them.

My radio came to life. "Sergeant, come in."

Leave it to Albaf to address me by only half my rank, Army style.

"Reaper Actual coming in," I said, using my callsign in the hope that the ONI commander wouldn't mess up my rank anymore.

"Reaper Actual, I managed to get a small surprise for you, or more accurately, for Reaper-4."

"For me?" Snark asked. "What is it?"

"A surprise," Albaf replied cryptically. "It's headed down in a supply pod. Should be there shortly."

"Locusts," I cursed, seeing the purple walkers emerge from the ruins of Uppergap. They looked as small as their namesake from this distance, but I knew better than that.

"They're attacking as soon as the walkers arrive to the front?" Darbinian asked.

Then they sent forward the ghosts.

"Perhaps not," Angel suggested.

A couple of the tripod-mounted machine guns started firing, tracer rounds illuminating the darkening sky as they streaked towards the fast enemy vehicles. A second later I heard the noise of an orbit-dropped canister falling somewhere behind me. It sounded awfully quiet when you compared it to a full-size HEV.

"Snark, how about you head back there and see what we've got," I suggested.

"Sure," he shrugged. Right before he hopped down from his ledge I heard the sound of plasma rifles firing uncomfortably nearby, followed by screams of pain.

Half a second later Snark emptied his magazine on four elites that had appeared from thin air. The heavy armor-piercing rounds barely met any resistance as all of them punched through the elite's head, splattering the ground next to them with purple blood and brains. Snark was already reloading his weapon by the time the fourth elite fell to the floor in a heap.

"What the hell was that?" Captain Sharma asked angrily.

Snark had killed four recently uncloaked the elites in less than two seconds with headshots. The Captain hadn't even had time to even open her mouth before the man was done. That's exactly the reason why he's the best, that's the reason why he's in my team.

"Spec-Ops elites," a marine replied. "They popped out of nowhere, they nailed Georges and Eddison. Eddison's dead, Georges…"

Sharam understood. "Give him some painkillers. A lot of them. Then I want you firing back. I do not want anyone else to sneak up on us!"

"Ma'am!" Echo Company replied unanimously.

"Now down with those ghosts!"

Instead of wasting time with a verbal reply, over fifty AIE-486H Heavy Machine Guns and M247 General Purpose Machine Guns fired away. The noise was deafening. The bigger HMGs wrecked the Ghosts in a matter of seconds, the smaller and less powerful M247s took care of any pilot that managed to survive while providing support for the Gatling guns. The Ghosts had been decimated by the time they got within a hundred meters of our walls. They started firing at that range, but by that time they were already within close range of our guns.

The Ghosts were aiming for the turrets, but they were all set up with metal plates blocking fire from below and the sides. The initial wave managed to destroy three turrets, killing one marine in the process, but the rest of the automatic weapons devastated the Ghosts. By the time they had suffered over fifty percent casualties they decided that they had enough and pulled back. We killed even more of them as they retreated.

"Sitrep!" Sharma barked.

"One KIA and three guns destroyed," Darbininan replied promptly. "I sent one man from each crew back to the second line to prepare defenses."

"Good," Sharma said. "Don't let your guard down, that was way too easy."

Huh, I agreed with both Darbinian's decision and Sharma's comment. Strange days indeed.

Snark and myself were the only two members of my squad that weren't manning a turret. We both excelled at long-range combat. He had kept his own SRS and I had managed to snag one for myself. I had yet to fire a single shot, but it was bound to come pretty soon.

And it did. I killed an elite with a neckshot at a range of nine hundred meters. The sniper rounds penetrated the elite's shields and tore a large chunk of flesh from its neck. It immediately raised a hand to its wound, trying to cover the gaping hole, but failed miserably as it collapsed to the ground and started bleeding out, its legs twitching.

"Banshees!"

Shit.

I looked up from my sights and saw a Banshee strafe a line of containers, the plasma cannons hit two marines from one turret position and missed another altogether. However, it let out a fuel rod that collided head on with a third emplacement. The two men manning the weapon saw it coming and managed to jump away from the explosion, landing on the ground. One of them cried out in pain as his shinbone punctures his skin and pants. His friend helped him up immediately and dragged him away, leaving behind a trail of blood drops as he went.

"They're targeting the guns!"

"You don't say!"

"Take out those fliers!"

I paused and gave myself a minute to think. "Captain, you want to use the SAMs or pummel them with the MGs?"

"Eliza, any Seraphs within range?"

"A few, Captain," the AI came in. "None of them seem to be in position to attack you."

"SAMs away!"

Seven missiles flew straight at an equal number of Banshees, all of them collided save for one, but the self-guided missile spun around and hit the flier's wing, sending it crashing to the ground. Surprisingly enough the elite pilot emerged with a bloody arm, barely a scratch when you considered he had crashed down at a hundred miles an hour. Well, that was nothing that couldn't be fixed with a 14.5mm x 114mm round to the head.

I chuckled as I saw the brains and skull bits left their usual position. The SRS-99 was rated anti-materiel. The instruction manual said those exact words followed by the phrase. 'It is particularly effective against delicate equipment, like brains.'

Sometimes I could swear that brass was a bunch of uptight bastards, but then came along a little thing like that that would make me rethink everything I thought I knew.

"They're sending the Wraiths forward," Snark warned.

"Gunners, focus your fire on the tanks, everyone else, I want you to kill infantry," Sharma ordered at the news. "Anyone see a Daemon they paint it and we take it out with rockets. Four rockets, no more."

The Wraiths started lobbing blue mortar rounds over the heads of their allied infantry. Since the vehicles were moving their initial barrage wasn't accurate, missing any target. As they recalculated and took in data they fired again. This time two of the four mortar rounds landed close enough to turrets to destroy them. The marines manning them had enough time to see the bright orbs falling down on them and thus were able to jump out of the way. That still left us two turrets down, not counting the ones that the Banshees had taken out.

Covenant infantry was now at the hundred meter mark, using the husks of the destroyed Ghosts as cover. It was going to get tricky.

I took out as many high-ranking elites as I could. Snark and I were both marksmen, but Echo had a couple of snipers on their own, I wasn't as good with the rifle as they were, but I managed to keep up. We four divided the land ahead into sectors and took care of the aliens in ours. I had just killed en elite major when two green rounds flew by my head.

I rolled behind cover and took deep breaths. I didn't catch the alien that shot me, but it was probably a jackal judging by the carbine.

"Snark."

"I see it," he replied. "More accurately, I could if it would just leave cover."

"Can you shoot it before it shoots me?" I asked him.

"Can a fish swim? Can a bird fly? Can a prostitute satisfy you? Maybe not, but there's a ninety-nine point nine percent chance that the answer's yes."

"So yes?" I asked, playing ignorant.

"Yes."

"That was easy wasn't it?"

With that said I left cover and started sniping away. I killed an elite minor with two shots, one to the arm and another to the chest before Snark's rifle barked out. I looked over and saw a jackal slumping over a flaming ghost. I nodded grimly and emptied the rest of my magazine on an elite with its shields down. I heard some complaints from the marines that had brought its shields down, but they kept on firing.

"We're down to five guns," Darbinian updated the situation. "I advise that we-"

"I know," Sharma interrupted. "Sharpshooters and platoons Alpha, Bravo, and Delta fall back to the second line. Any gunners stay behind."

I fired three more rounds, taking out two elites, both minors. With that I was out of ammunition. There was probably some more sniper ammo back in the second line, but once the covvies bypassed the container barrier they would be too close to use a sniper rifle comfortably. I frowned as I left my borrowed weapon behind, those things were expensive, but they most certainly weren't worth my life.

The stretch of land between the containers and the port wall itself was about two hundred meters long at its thickest and littered with empty tents that had been housing civilians less than three hours ago. Half those tents were set up to blow up as soon as Sharma activated the mines, the other half were within blast range of the booby-trapped ones. Some might call it cheap and low, but I call it smart and time-saving.

"Snark, head for that resupply canister," I bark as I climb one of the watchtowers. "I want you using that thing as soon as we can, whatever that is."

I suspected that Albaf had decided to drop us an M99 Stanchion, but with that woman I could never tell for sure. A Stanchion was still a pretty good deal, one can never complain about magnetic weapons when it comes down to firepower.

"Uhh, Sarge?" Snark asked me. "Are you seeing this?"

He gave me a live feed of his helmet camera. "What the hell is that?"

"A rifle by the looks of it."

"You don't say," I replied. "Never seen anything like that before."

"Same here," Snark agreed. "M102 SASR," he read from the rifle's side. "Cousin to the Stanchion?"

"Helluva cousin, can you use it?"

"I don't know, it doesn't seem to have a power source nearby or a battery. To be honest, I wouldn't know my way around this thing."

"Forget it, get the rifle to your post, along with any ammunition that is in the canister," I ordered. "I'll contact Albaf."

"Sarge."

"Albaf," I said, connecting to the _Inconvenience_.

"Yes?" She sounded almost bored. Down here the Locusts were getting closer and the first line was about to be overrun.

"I need a crash course on the M102," I said urgently.

She cleared her throat. "Lieutenant?"

"Gunnery Sergeant," Wilkins voice came in, flooding my helmet. "The M102 is a magnetic weapon. It is a railgun as opposed to a coilgun, like the Gauss, the MAC, and the Stanchion itself. It's an experimental weapon that just recently left the drawing board, but preliminary testing have been positive. The M102, also known as the Sledgehammer, fires a 15.0x120mm round. The round itself is made out of tungsten with a depleted uranium core and weights roughly point thirty kilograms."

Ok, so we've got a fucking railgun with rounds bigger than those of a sniper rifle and weighed a little less than a standard grenade.

"Point thirty kilograms?" I interrupted. "15.0x120mm? The Stanchion uses 5.4mm rounds and those can tear apart a brute. Isn't this a little bit overkill for an infantry weapon?"

"As I was saying… the casing of the weapon contains no explosive propellant at all, instead consisting of a capacitor, a battery, to power the magnetic rails on either side of the barrel and in turn propel the slug to speeds in excess of fourteen thousand meters per second."

"Yield?" I asked him.

"Significant."

"Don't be vague, I'm in a warzone right now, I need to know what I'm working with."

I could almost see the smile creeping up on Wilkins' face. "Tell Reaper-4 to fire at a Locust."

What?

"Uhhh, roger that. Reaper Actual out."

I ended the conversation and thought about what I had just heard. A Locust beam cutting through the roof of the watchtower I was on brought me back to life. I ducked and felt the heat on the back of my neck. That marked the third time that I had received burns while wearing my armor. Hell, my blisters had blisters growing up on top of them already. It would've probably been better if I just got raw skin.

"Sarge!" Snark yelled. "I'm running out of ammo and still don't know what I'm dealing with! This rifle is fucking heavy!"

Right.

"How the hell do I use this?" he went on.

I took a deep breath. "You aim and you shoot."

"I like it," Schitzo chuckled behind me, not even moving to help me up. "Simple, concise, to the point."

"Aim at something big," I told Snark.

"Big?"

"The biggest."

He caught the hint and mounted the M102 railgun on something before aiming at the Locust that had had the brilliant idea to fire in my direction. It was already climbing over the containers and taking aim at the last retreating marines. Those things look anything but fast, but they reached us with speed that I could only describe as surprising.

Suddenly I hear the loudest noise I have ever heard in my entire life.

For a moment I could see a flash of white light cutting the world in half, but that might've just been my imagination. The explosion blocked out absolutely everything else out there. The only thing I could still hear was the sound of my beating heart. I waited for that ringing sound and dull noises for longer than I was used to, and for a moment there I was actually scared that I had actually gone deaf. Sure, it could be fized, but I can't think of a worse time to lose your hearing than during a massive firefight.

The damage was as impressive as the noise.

As soon as the .30 kilogram tungsten round collided with the Locust's shields it obliterated them. The sheer impact alone crunched the cabin inwards and drained the shields completely. The kinetic force from the impact pushed back the walker a good two feet before the pilot managed to regain control. And then the thing just fucking blew up in a blue fireball.

I suddenly realized that it wasn't that I still couldn't hear anything. It was just that absolutely everyone was too stunned to make any noise.

"Whoa," Scarecrow said admiringly.

"Whoa doesn't even begin to get close to what that was…" Grass added quietly.

"Jesus fucking Christ. Cocksucking mother of a cunt!" Darbinian suddenly yelled. "Fire that goddamned thing again!"

And with that the gunfire started again.

There were only a few Covenant inside the first line, but they were coming in numbers. There were several turrets strewn about the wall, but not nearly as many as we had on the first line. The first ones to come were dropped in a second, but then they really started busting through.

There were a few other Locusts with the attackers as well, most of them were still behind, but a few had just started climbing over the first line. I smiled as a grunt detonated a mine, blowing itself and two jackals up. Then I went deaf again.

"Shit!"

Another Locust was hit, but this time the initial shot didn't manage to destroy it. The Locust struggled to stay up, it even collapsed on itself for a second before it got back up. A second Sledgehammer shot obliterated the cockpit of the walker completely, killing the pilot in the process and rendering the platform completely useless for anything other than cover.

"Sarge, they're starting to hide behind the tents," Scarecrow warned.

"Angel, fire through them," I ordered. "Crow, I want you to run out of forty mils as soon as humanly possible. Snark-"

With another boom I saw a hunter explode. Literally, explode.

"Just keep doing what you're doing."

"You don't have to tell me twice," he laughed back. "This thing is amazing!"

"Yes, it also runs on ammunition," Grass reminded him.

"Let the kid have fun," Angel suggested.

"Shut. The. Fuck. Up." It was the first time I had heard Captain Veda Sharma swear. Granted, it was only 'fuck', but coming from a woman that was relatively quiet most of the time and spoke politely all the time it was shocking, to say the least.

"You heard the lady!" I boomed. "Cut the chatter."

And with that, I started firing my trusty BR55. Snark and the other two marksmen had brought their rifles with them. Sure, Snark was using an incredibly overpowered gun instead of his usual SRS-99, but the other two were cutting through the ranks of the elites with relative ease. Snark was instead dedicating himself to killing Locusts and shredding hunters. I tell you, you have never seen an explosion of gore until you see a hunter get hit with a railgun. They just… disappeared, leaving behind their shields, often with a huge hole right in the middle.

"Shit, rangers are hopping over the wall!"

The alarmed marine that had warned us about the elites was immediately shot by the Sangheili. I moved all the way to the other side of the tower and fired at the elites. They were gunning down any unprotected marines and setting a small perimeter, but there were only eight of them. They were all wearing that gray armor of theirs, three were firing at a couple of marines while the rest dashed for cover.

"Gotcha motherfucker," I whispered as I let out a burst at the elite that seemed to be commanding.

The three rounds hit it in the side of the head, forcing it sideways. It let go of its weapon and used its other hand to keep itself upright, but by that time I had already fired again. The second burst hit it in the shoulder, the third in the waist. As its shields flickered and died I put three rounds into its neck and chest, killing it. I quickly switched targets and gave another elite the same treatment. As soon as that one died I tossed a grenade in between two other rangers and ducked behind cover. As soon as the small explosive detonated I left cover. The two elites were battered up. One missing its entire lower body and the other one its arm. I finished up the second one with a burst to the chest.

"Shit, Banshees again!" Scarecrow cursed.

"Sharma!" I cried. "The SAMs."

"We're out Castillo," Darbinian shot back. "Tell your man to shoot them down."

I sighed. "Bumblebee?"

He sighed back. "On it."

The Scottsman fired two rockets from his Spanker. The first one followed one of the Banshees and the second the other. The two guided missiles collided with their targets, detonating upon impact and destroying the aircraft. That left another Banshee for us to shoot down with small arms.

Boom.

Or with a railgun, you know.

So far it was going well. We were dishing out some heavy damage while behind solid cover and keeping the covvies cautious. By then most, if not all, UNSC ships were already out of range and ready to leave the system. We could've fallen back, but we didn't want an AA Wraith that we hadn't spotted shooting us down or a lucky Locust beam cutting a Pelican in half, killing everyone inside. Besides, we weren't going to give up one more colony without bleeding their fucking noses.

"Francisco," Eliza's voice pinged in my helmet. "Sensors indicate that the battlecruiser is preparing to move, in all likelihood it's headed in your direction."

"Goddamnit!" I cursed. "Anything else?"

"There are also a pair of Seraphs headed in your direction, they don't seem to be carrying any bombs, so strafing runs is likely the intended strategy."

"Thanks," I told her gratefully. "Captain, you hear her?" I asked Sharma.

"I got it," she yelled back over the sound of gunfire. "Everybody, fall back to the third line!"

Shit, already?

"Castillo, I want you and your team to cover the rest of us."

"Roger that ma'am," I spat out. "We'll do our best."

I bite my tongue to repress the urge to explode at her. Technically speaking we are outside her jurisdiction, so she had no right to order us around. Granted, she could've pulled rank anyways, but it pissed me off regardless.

"Reaper," I called out. "I want you manning every intact gun you can, Snark, aim for the Locusts only, hunters we can deal with."

The sound of gunfire started getting quieter and quieter as the surviving marines of Echo started falling back to the third, and last, line of defense. Eventually the only sound that was left was that of five machine guns firing everything that they had at Covenant infantry. Occasionally a mine would detonate and take out a couple of aliens or Snark would fire his Sledgehammer. The purple walkers had been all but obliterated, with the Locust unit reduced to less than a tenth of their original numbers. Meaning that there was only one out of eleven Locusts left. The other ones had been shot down by Snark or killed by combined fire.

We had been extremely lucky that we got a railgun, otherwise we would already be either dead or flying back home with our tails between our legs. The Locusts had been caught with their pants around their ankles, they didn't expect magnetic weapons firing at them, especially one that packed more punch than even a Warthog-mounted Gauss could. They had used their regular swarming technique, this time it hadn't work nearly as well as they could've hoped.

That left hundreds of regular infantry and dozens of vehicles. And the third line was the weakest one.

"That's the last of 'em!" Snark announced after firing his rifle. "I have seven rounds left and this gun is dead weight Sarge!"

I fired a burst at a fuel rod-toting grunt. The alien fell to the ground with a ballet-like spin right after firing one of the green explosives. Unfortunately, the fuel rod round flew straight towards the sky, hitting no aliens.

"I copy Snark, as soon as you run out fall back and toss the M102 in Marina's Pelican, ONI'll probably want the prototype back."

"Got it. I'll focus on the-"

Of course, as per usual, I was untactfully interrupted by a mortar shot hitting the wall, melting through the polycrete and leaving a sizeable gap through which the infantry could pour in.

"On the Wraiths it is then…" Snark groaned.

"Scarecrow, how goes it?" I asked my friend.

"Not good."

Shit. "Sharma?"

"Just a little longer!" she shouted back, her voice ringing in my helmet.

I cursed as I turned back to face the waves upon waves of covvies. They had deployable covers strewn all over the place. Grunts were using the bodies of their dead comrades to create barricades. And two Wraiths were coming right at us.

"Hunters, to the right!" Caboose warned.

I could see as the tracer ammunition moved in the direction of the beasts. The rounds pinged of the hunter's shields as they crouched behind the heavy slabs of metal. A few bullets actually managed to hit the unprotected parts of the hunters while the aliens fired at the offenders. Half my squad had to let go of their weapons and duck as the Covenant attackers fired everything at them.

I switched to full-auto and aimed at one of the hunters. I let out my breath as the crosshairs rested over the huge alien's orange neck. I lightly squeezed the trigger as I struggled to keep the rifle stable. The rounds hit the hunter right where I had been aiming at, the unprotected neck literally exploded as the hunter's head was severed from the body, orange gore pouring out everywhere. I kept firing at the orange target until the hunter collapsed, falling to the ground.

The other alien was pissed, after all, I had just killed half of it, so it was pretty much a natural reaction. I emptied what was left of my magazine at it while one of my squadmates grabbed his machine gun and pounded it into submission.

Then I realized something.

"Snark!" I cried out, dashing out of cover and making my way to the stairs.

Three blue bolts hitting the cracked column in front of me. I ducked as another burst flew over the place where I had just been standing. I cursed as I tried to get up, the Wraith had already spun to face me, I didn't have much time left.

"Snark!" I repeated.

"Shit," he cursed. "Sarge, get out of there!"

I didn't need to be told twice. I dragged myself to the edge of the watchtower, plasma hitting the polycrete all around me, leaving black scorch marks. As soon as I reached the edge I pushed myself up and jumped out of the tower. I was just in time too.

Had this been a movie, the scene would've been played in slow motion, with an angle of me jumping taken from the side, showing just how far from the ground I was, a couple of plasma bolts would've probably been added for effect before the camera angle was changed. Once I was in between the camera and the tower the mortar shot would've detonated behind me in a slow motion explosion. Cue regular speed again.

Actually, it was pretty much like that, except that I wasn't flaying my arms and legs wildly like they usually do in the vids. The mortar hit my tower just as I was jumping out of it, and there were a few plasma bolts flying past me.

In fact, one of them hit me in the back of my left shoulder.

"Fu-"

I hit the ground pretty hard, but I was prepared for that. I rolled, dropping my rifle for better mobility. Once I was out of the roll my own momentum caught up with me and I slammed hard into the ground. Both my ankles hurt like shit and my legs were numb from the impact. I tried getting up only to have a piercing, burning pain force me to fall back down. I stretched out my right hand and used my legs to push myself towards my rifle. Once I grabbed it I rolled on my side slowly, trying to spot anyone from my squad.

I saw Snark's tower shake and a sonic boom emerge from inside as he fired his Sledgehammer at something, presumably the Wraith that had taken out my tower. I saw the silhouette of the marksman struggling to unmount his rifle before climbing down the tower's ladder, jumping out halfway down, just as two blasts from hunters' cannons obliterated the small construction.

I made an effort to sit up just as the remaining Wraiths started emptying their plasma stores at the wall that impeded their pass. Pieces of dirt and pulverized polycrete started flying all over the place as the tanks repurposed their main weapons to serve as demolition devices.

I did my best to ignore the hell around me and reached into one of my pouches, careful not to hurt myself. My boots had already tightened around my ankles, forming temporary splints until I could get better medical attention. My back, though, I would have to work on that for a little more. I grabbed a combat stim and took off my helmet to swallow it. Right after that I took three painkillers. The effect of the medicine was instantaneous, after all, they were designed to work fast.

The pain in my shoulder started receding and I poured some biofoam into my hands, feeling the light stings in my pores. I reached around my shoulder and rubbed it on my wound.

Not even all the painkillers in the world could've dulled that stinging pain that I was all too familiar with.

"Sarge!" Scarecrow shouted.

I turned around to see the huge ODST running at me.

"Get down!"

I dropped to the ground just as an energy sword sliced through the air. Had I been standing where I was I would've been a head shorter.

I immediately rolled to the side, avoiding a thrust from the elite and eliciting a spike of pain from my burnt shoulder as the raw skin touched the hard ground. The elite pulled out its sword from the ground and snarled at me, its mandibles spread open. I rolled again just as it stabbed. I got out of its immediate range before it decided to slash down at the ground.

The Sangheili was zealot class, the armor configuration and helmet design told me as much. It looked bigger than most elite, and unless I was going deaf (which is a viable concern), it was also a whole lot quieter.

The alien's shields flickered as several rounds pinged off them. It snarled again and fired at Scarecrow with a plasma pistol it produced from its thigh. The Helljumper dropped to the ground and avoided the first two shots, the following ones hit him in the right leg and the belly. By that time I had my rifle up and let out a burst at the elite.

It reared backwards from the impact and I took advantage of that moment to stand up. I fired another burst at it, but the zealot threw its pistol at me, hitting my rifle and deflecting the shots. By the time it was in my sights again it was already upon me. It grabbed my rifle and yanked it away from my grip in one swift motion. It followed up the disarming with a punch to the belly. I managed to get both my hands in the way, muting the impact but still getting hurt.

Mr. Zealot slashed horizontally at me, but I ducked the strike by leaning backwards as much as I could without falling down. Bumblebee later told me that I pulled off a Matrix Dodge. Don't ask me what that is.

As the sword flew above me I reached for my pistol. I fired three shots at the elite before I had to jump sideways to avoid an over handed strike. Then I got a backhand blow to the shoulder. The injured one. I was thrown off my feet by the strike. I didn't hear anything crack, but that might've just been my temporary deafness acting up. I landed pretty hard, rolling twice before coming to a stop.

Someone pulled me back on my feet before I could even think about doing that myself.

That someone happened to be the zealot.

I got hit in the face pretty damn hard by the alien, the lower left part of my visor cracking slightly at the blow. The fact that it could damage ballistic plastic with a half-strength blow spoke volumes about its physical abilities. Immediately after the zealot slapped me it grabbed me by the neck and lifted me up until my feet were struggling to touch the ground. It drew back its sword arm but stopped abruptly when I emptied the rest of my pistol's magazine into the hand that was holding me up.

It looked at me curiously as I fired at its hand, a look of annoyance in its eyes. It drew back its hand again but stopped before stabbing me. The last round from my pistol had gone through the drained shields and its armor, forcing it to drop me to the ground.

This time the look in its eyes wasn't one of annoyance, but one of pure rage. It roared at me, that's right, roared, not snarled. An actual, honest to God roar.

I aimed at it and pulled the trigger of my pistol twice, realizing that I had emptied it on the elite as it made to stab me.

Only to stop abruptly again.

I watched in amusement as my rifle bounced off the back of the elite's head, thumping loudly and jerking it forward before falling to the ground next to my foot. I looked up just in time to see seven feet of armored muscle slam into the elite head on. Scarecrow tackled the elite in such way that would've probably given his quarterback brother a career-ending injury.

They both crashed into a pile of crates. I forced myself to look away and reloaded my pistol before reaching for my BR55. The adrenaline flowing through my veins had made me all but forget about my recently acquired injuries. I moved towards the elite and saw that Scarecrow was on top of it, hammering it with his huge fists. Scarecrow moved faster than anyone his size should've been able to, but I wasn't about to complain.

Suddenly the elite caught one of my friend's fists. I aimed at it but refrained from firing lest I hit Scarecrow. The zealot jumped up, dragging my friends hand along with itself. As soon as it was on its feet it grabbed my friend from under the arm and threw him at me with its full strength. I didn't have any time to react as my squad mate flew at me in an awkward half-turn.

You know I mentioned how hard Scarecrow slammed into the elite, right? Well, he slammed me harder.

"Fuck," I moaned as I rolled from underneath Scarecrow.

I saw the elite reach for its discarded sword and turn to look at me. I fired at it, hitting it in the waist and belly before it turned and ran away for cover. Before it had taken three steps it flickered and disappeared. I fired several more shots at the dust it raised, and once I saw a splatter of blood, but the zealot didn't reemerge.

"Sarge, you aigh?" Scarecrow mumbled, trying to get back his bearings.

"No," I replied honestly. "But that's the norm."

"Over here!"

_What?_

I turned my neck around to see a squad of marines moving towards Scarecrow and I. Two of them took a knee and fired at the destroyed wall, forcing the covvies to keep their heads down. Four other came at us and helped us up. I thanked them and told them that I could walk just fine without their help. Scarecrow tried taking one step, but his shot foot gave way from underneath him.

His armor seemed to have absorbed the plasma pistol shot to the stomach, but his foot hadn't been so fortunate.

"What the hell are you still doing here?" Darbinain spat at me. "You were supposed to fall back!"

I resisted the urge to clock him in the jaw. Don't ask me how, but I did. "Well, you should know!" I shouted back at him.

"Hey," one marine interrupted. "Where'd that zealot go?"

"It took off," Scarecrow said as we jogged towards the third line, a few of the marines providing covering fire for us before following us.

"You hear that?" Darbinain suddenly asks.

I did.

I spun around and kicked the asshole lieutenant in the chest. It was probably a little bit harder than it should've been, but I did managed to succeed in my goal. He flew out of the way and into one of the few remaining containers in the port. I, on the other hand, used his mass and weight to propel myself in the opposite direction. An energy sword sliced in between my boot and Darbinian's chest.

"Zealot!" I yelled as I fell down.

The elite roared once again. Apparently I was really starting to piss it off.

The entire squad turned around to fire at the alien, but by that time its shields had regenerated and it could take some punishment. It slashed at a marine, but the girl was smart enough to stay out of reach. Immediately after finishing that attack it turned around and zoned in on another marine. The man was too slow and was stabbed by the energy sword, the twin points of the weapon slicing through his upper chest and throat.

He let out a gurgle before the elite yanked out his weapon.

Scarecrow fired at the elite from where he had been dropped. The zealot grabbed the body of the dying marine and threw it at three other jarheads that were firing at it before slashing through another one. The unlucky soldier moved out of the way just a little bit too slowly. The white blade sliced through the MA5 he was carrying and through his left hand as well. The zealot took off as the marine screamed in agony.

"Fuck you!" I yelled angrily after it, firing a burst at the elite. I saw its shields flicker as they absorbed the rounds and then it disappeared.

Darbinain fired a burst at the elite as well, but didn't hit the invisible warrior. He looked at me and said nothing before heading towards his soldiers. He checked the vitals on the marine that was stabbed, a futile gesture, but a humane one nevertheless before helping the one that got his hand chopped off up. The poor man was crying for his mother by this point, blood flowing out of his stump.

"Grab the hand," Darbinian ordered, "we might still be able to reattach it. Let's go."

The third line was our weakest. I said that before.

Echo had already dug in the trenches that they had just built minutes ago. The trenches were barely chest-deep at the most and had to be reinforced with sandbags. Hell, half of the holes weren't even connected. The other half were barely three feet deep.

Shit, it was better than nothing.

"Frank!" Grass yelled from over one of the trenches. "What happened?"

_Great, calling me by my name, people will think I'm sleeping with her too…_

"Nothing, we're fine."

Suddenly I could feel a pair of eyes boring into the back.

_All right, all right._ "I was hit, so was Scarecrow. Foot and stomach, back of the shoulder for myself."

"Sheeit," Angel said, elongating the word. "You ok?"

"I'm walking, that's good enough considering. 'Crow?"

"Just pump me some biofoam and then give me drugs, that oughta do it."

"See?" I asked as I stepped in the trench with the rest of my squad in it. "We're good."

"Thank God," Grass preached. "I thought you were gonners when you didn't return."

"Yeah, about that Grass," I said, taking off my helmet and sitting behind cover. "I don't mind you calling me Frank, but you might want to call me Sarge in this kind of situations. I wouldn't want to give people the wrong idea." I said it carefully and with a friendly tone, after all, I didn't want to come off to her as an asshole. That alone showed how much I had come to respect her in the past year, usually I didn't care how I came along to people.

"Beat me to the punch there, Sarge," Angel said while propping up his SAW on a sandbag.

Grass just blushed a very deep shade of purple before polarizing her visor. "Sorry, won't happen again."

"Aight."

Nobody moved or said anything.

"Well what the fuck are you waiting for?" I asked. "Someone get me some fucking biofoam. Scarecrow as well! Snark I want you sniping things, find a nice position, Bumblebee, find some nice cover, we can't afford to lose our rockets. Caboose…" I looked at my squad mate. His right hand was covered in blood up to his elbow and his armor was almost completely painted with bloods (?) of different colors. "Yeah, you just keep doing what you're doing."

"Sarge," he acknowledged.

"What do I do with this?" Snark asked, gesturing at the M102 Sledgehammer weapon in his arms.

The rifle was longer than a regular SRS-99, that is to say that it was taller than I was and almost as tall as Scarecrow. Its cannon looked pretty much like that of a Gauss cannon, completely cylindrical and with groves at equidistant intervals. The stock of the weapon was larger than usual, no doubt in account to the massive amount of recoil that the weapon provided. The body of the weapon was rounded and futuristic-looking. It was best described as overall oval in shape with a big hole in the middle. Two bars extended outwards and secured the barrel, to the body of the weapon. The barrel itself had a million recoil dampeners and even some springs to reduce the force of impact on the user's shoulder.

"Throw it in Marina's Pelican," I told him again. "Shoulder sore?"

"Whole chest sore," he said bitterly. "I can barely move without pain shooting through my body."

"Take some painkillers," I ordered. "I want everyone at their best."

A couple of plasma blasts landed near my foxhole, prompting me to sink further down in an attempt to avoid getting shot. Again. Half the marines from Echo were here as well, the other half were either dead or wounded. Thankfully, a majority of the missing marines were wounded ones and were being loaded into a pelican for quicker evacuation.

"Captain, what's going on?" I asked Sharma, referring to the sudden lack of plasma fire.

"They stopped behind the wall," she explained "They are using it as cover, half of it is a pile of rock, but they don't seem so eager to attack now."

"We scared them," Scarecrow mused. "At least enough to make them think twice about their strategy."

"Running at a fortified position without support? They calling that a strategy now?" Bumblebee asked, his voice heavy with sarcasm.

Angel chimed in. "No support? I assume that Wraiths, Banshees, _and _Locusts don't count."

"Not when you have a railgun they don't." Snark was decidedly proud about the role he played in the previous attack. The man was practically beaming, for God's sake. I didn't blame him in the least, I had managed to kill maybe one or two walkers without support, but I always had Pavel's back and rocket or grenade launchers. Snark had pulled that off with exactly eleven Locusts.

He would never shut up about that.

A chain of explosions de-railed my train of thought.

"What the hell was that?" Captain Sharma snapped.

"Wraiths," a marine replied, "but the shells aren't landing even close to our location."

"They're targeting the base," Caboose offered. "Think they know the nukes are there? Or maybe they just want to take out the biggest buildings?"

"Doesn't matter," yet another marine spoke out. "Nuke number one is offline."

"Crap," Sharma muttered. "We've still got two."

Then they started shelling the other base.

"Is one nuke enough to take out the cruiser?" Scarecrow asked me.

"Oughta be enough, I speak from experience."

He looked at me and chuckled, he then tried to stop because of the pain it caused him. Scarecrow groaned a few times before the pain went away. His stomach armor wasn't destroyed or punctured, but it was half molten and it was pretty evident that it hurt him even if the round hadn't punched through. His foot? I don't even know how he could run all the way back here after the zealot attacked us, the man had an incredible pain tolerance.

"They're targeting the other base," one of the marines that had previously spoken said. I swear, some of these guys are experts at pointing out the obvious.

"Is the nuke still in working order?"

"Ye- No."

"One oughta do it," Scarecrow said.

"As long as the shields are down," I added.

"So let me get this right," Darbinian started. "You want us to wait for the carrier to be on top of us and then detonate a nuclear weapon just as it charges its main gun? You feel secure enough to time that right?"

"'Course not," I replied dismissively. "We would still be within the nuke's range."

Several marines could he heard snickering all over the network. My team wasn't nearly as reserved and actually chuckled loudly before Captain Sharma ordered the rest of us to be quiet.

"I want you ready, marksmen, watch out for any heat signatures, I don't want anything sneaking up on us."

I sighed and reloaded all my weapons. "Scarecrow, you sure you ok?" I asked him, concerned for his well-being.

"Yeah, yeah, I'm fine."

"You sure? We can send you back to a Pelican and have you looked over."

"No, I'm fine."

"No one will think any less of you for it," I insisted.

"Sarge, this is my job, I'm good at my job because I do my best at it. For a lawyer that would mean some sleepless nights, for an athlete it would mean to risk his physique in order to triumph. For me? For me it means that I just have to keep kicking ET's ass no matter what."

"Easy there, no battlefield journalists attached to this company," Grass teased while playfully punching him in the arm, the action elicited a groan from the huge man. "Sorry, sorry, sorry, I'm so sorry."

"You know what?" I said. "I want you to have three more painkillers."

"I had two already," he told me.

"Then have another four," I ordered sternly. "I could order you to go back, but since you want to do this you're going to have to do it by my rules."

"Fine," he grumbled.

I nodded in approval and peeked out of cover, making an effort to keep my wound from touching anything too hard. The Covenant cruiser was a lot closer than it had been when I last saw it. The ship was moving awfully slowly, but it wouldn't matter if it fired at full strength. From where I was I could see the fins and make out the various carved designs. It was too damn close.

"We're going to need to pull out soon," Scarecrow murmured. "Even if we don't get to kill any more covvies, we can't afford to have that cruiser get any closer."

"Yeah," I agreed. "Knowing those bastards they'd probably just kill their own troops."

"Negative," Grass said. "There's a zealot here, I doubt that they'd kill such a high-ranking officer so freely."

"You never know, might be a junior officer is looking for a quick promotion…"

"Anything's possible," Scarecrow chuckled.

"Where's the third nuke?" I suddenly asked.

"Inside that container," Grass informed me, pointing at an old-looking green container. It looked like the sea breeze had taken a toll on this one, there was so much rust all over it that it looked like it could fall apart. Grass went on. "They couldn't move it because it could break any time while they were transporting it. No one wanted anything important to get crushed, so they left that one there."

"And those ones?" Scarecrow asked her, pointing to the half a dozen containers where we had been attacked by the zealot for the second time.

"Not sure," she shrugged.

I could not fathom why she had the exact details on the reason why a single isolated container wasn't moved but had no idea why a pile of them had been left right where they had been found. Grass had a penchant for knowing stupid things that left even me eating her dust. Not that that was a bad thing, Pavel was up on my ass half the time about wasting his brain's storage space with useless factoids. Grass had now replaced me in that role.

"Sarge, I've got heat signatures in my scope," Snark informed me.

"Roger, what do you see?"

"Over there, Revenants are forming up, it looks lik-" he paused a second before I heard the sound of the Covenant craft firing. "Everybody get down!"

I could, hardly get down, I was sharing a pretty small trench with a tall girl with armor and a huge man with more armor. Scarecrow and I turned on our side while taking our hands to our heads. Even before the first Revenant shot landed I heard several others being fired. The onslaught lasted several minutes, with pink plasma landing all around us.

Luckily, not one round landed near enough to cause any harm, but the explosions lifted enough dirt to leave all three of us half-buried in our trench. I didn't like the feeling, it felt like I was hiding in my own tomb.

"They're stopping," one of the snipers said.

"Bad news," Sharma immediately yelled, apparently she was alive enough to know what was coming. "Everybody ready for a charge!"

The strategy dated back to the Napoleonic Wars. It was really pretty simple, you shelled the enemy for a while, leaving them dazed and confused, and then you charged at them. It had been perfected in the First World War, where shelling could last for hours at a time. The attackers would hope to catch the enemy unawares in their charge, but everybody soon realized what was going on and took positions right after the artillery stopped. It had been abandoned for more than five hundred years before the Covenant brought it back. They actually managed to make it work sometimes.

Right now, I had a feeling that we were about to be overwhelmed.

"I can't see anything!" someone yelled.

"Get me out! Get me out!"

Those were the last human words that I heard before the attack started.

I struggled to get myself from underneath all that dirt, finally succeeding when Scarecrow grabbed me by the chest piece and pulled me out. My raw shoulder was stinging from all the dirt that had gotten in it.

"Thanks," I told him before I yanked Grass out. "Give 'em everything you've got."

Grunts were the first to attack, but that was exactly what we expected. The little aliens would try their best to overwhelm us. With marines as disciplined and talented as Echo, they would most certainly fail. The problem here was that we were already halfway through our ammunition reserves. By the time the bigger aliens decided to attack we would run out of ammunition.

That is a very bad thing.

First victim got a headshot, and so did the second one, and the third and the fourth. The poor aliens were doing their best to sprint with their stubby little legs while carrying their methane supply and heavy pistols that were way too big for them. No doubt they were under threat of execution if they refused to charge at us. I don't really know why they hadn't rebelled already, they would die either way.

I ran through three magazines before the grunts stopped coming.

"Captain, we need to fall back now," I pleaded for a third time. "The cruiser is almost overhead!"

"Negative," she replied. "I am _not_ leaving this planet until I absolutely have to," she informed me for the third time. "We are taking as many of them as we can."

"At the cost of your own men?" Scarecrow joined. "We can leave now and detonate the nuke from afar."

"We are heroes in the making!" Darbinain defended his Commanding Officer.

"This war has too many damned heroes," Scarecrow snapped back. "And all of them are dead."

I've had enough of it by that point. "Captain, I'm ordering my team back, they don't need to die because of your stupidity!"

"Stupidity?" she asked with indignation. "I am merely following orders."

"You can only take orders so far!" I insisted. "You're a good officer and you did your job, time to go home."

Captain Sharma was quiet for the briefest of moments. "All right, goddamit but alright, Echo, fall-"

A single beam rifle shot coincided with her sudden silence.

"Shit, the captain's down!"

"Goddamit," Lieutenant Darbinian cursed. "Fall back, Alpha and Bravo cover Delta and Charlie."

"And who the hell covers us?" the lieutenant from Bravo asked angrily.

"Castillo?" Darbinain asked, the question evident.

"Fuck you Darbinian, fuck you." I waited a second. "We'll do it."

"Thanks," he said. It took him an awfully long time to let out that single word.

Lances of jackals were already bearing down upon us, firing occasional shots as they closed in on us. The grunts were walking slowly behind them, packed tightly to avoid getting shot from the corners. The elites were hanging back while taking potshots at us with carbines or plasma rifles.

"Snark, third jackal pack from the right," I ordered him.

A single sniper round hit one of the jackals in its toe. The large caliber bullet tore off half its foot and brought it to the ground. Scarecrow immediately fired a grenade at the gap before the jackals next to their fallen comrade could close it. The explosion killed four of the bird-like aliens and two of the grunts in the back. Grass and I peppered the survivors with automatic fire. A few seconds after Snark took out the first jackal the entire lance and grunt squad behind was dead.

"Same thing, group to the right."

Snark fired a second round, this time he hit one of the jackals on the edge of the wall of piled-up shields. Scarecrow's grenade slammed into the bird next to it, killing it and its neighbor. I fired at the stunned jackals while Grass emptied what was left of her magazines on the grunts behind. The rest of the jackals reacted quickly and turned slightly so that their shields faced us. I stopped firing after a few rounds bounced off the colorful energy shields.

When the jackals turned, they left their flank exposed to Snark. He fired two shots, taking out five jackals. The high-velocity bullets went through the aliens' bodies with ease. All five of them collapsed to the floor with huge gaping holes in their sides.

"Shit, one more and I would've broken my record," Snark mused.

"Charlie and Delta are ready," a lieutenant said. "Albatross taking off."

"Bravo," Darbinian ordered. "Fall back to the Pelican."

"Got it," the lieutenant said. "We're down to sixty percent of our strength, we can probably take a Pelican ourselves."

"Do it," Darbinian conceded.

The lieutenant from Bravo couldn't wait to get away from this rock. I didn't blame the man, but he could've been manlier about it. You know, less of a coward.

The trench adjacent to ours had a heavy turret mounted. The gunner was pummeling the jackals and grunts with it. In fact, he was doing such a good job that a jackal sniper took note and rewarded him with a shot between the eyes. Snark quickly took out the sniper, but the deed was done.

"Scarecrow!" I shouted.

"On it."

My friend jumped out of the trench while Grass fired several bursts at the grunts and jackals. I busied myself taking out the elites that had left cover to try and attack us. Scarecrow reached the turret, yanked the loading lever and started firing immediately. Half his body was outside of cover, so he crouched as low as he could, but his enormous size still made for a highly visible target.

"Bravo is ready to evacuate!"

"Go," Darbinian ordered. "You fuck," he added under his breath.

I took cover and looked behind me as I saw another Pelican take off. It did a one-eighty turn to face us and boosted towards the covvies, strafing them with its main frontal cannon. The heavy rounds killed many of them and injured several others. As the pilot turned his craft around one marine fired the rear turret wildly, hitting a few grunts and jackals in the process before the Pelican sped away at supersonic speeds.

Shit.

"Scarecrow watch out!"

He jumped backwards just as a plasma grenade detonated a meter from his turret. The explosion tore the gun itself from its tripod and collapsed it on top of Scarecrow.

"Now I'm really pissed off."

"We're falling back," Darbinian informed me. "Just hold on a little bit longer."

Had it been anyone else I would've acknowledged or promised to do my best. Darbinian just pissed me off, so I ignored him as I concentrated my fire on an elite trying to rally a group of grunts and jackals. Four bursts were enough to take out the alien, sending its underlings into disarray.

"Sarge, I'm out of ammo," Snark told me.

"Go!" I ordered. "Caboose, Angel, with him. Bumblebee, still got missiles?"

"Just the two," he replied.

"Use 'em," I said. "Then leave."

"Shit, they're getting close!" Grass yelled, she sounded like she was on the verge of panic. "We can't hold out much longer!"

"Goddamit," Scarecrow roared. He jumped from cover and grabbed the turret from where it was he took a knee while plasma hit everything around him and positioned the body of the automatic weapon on his knee. Once he believed the weapon would be steady enough he depressed the trigger.

The recoil was enough to almost knock him back, but he used his weight and sheer strength to keep the gun in check. The hail of gunfire cut through a group of Covenant that had gotten too close and sent several more running for cover, wherever they could find it. They had gotten confident when they realized that we were retreating, many of them had paid for that confidence with a face full of lead and a body full of holes.

Did I seriously just write that?

"Grass! Get out of here!"

For once, she left.

I stood up as well, firing full automatic on the covvies as Scarecrow burned through his ammunition.

"Let's get out of here!" I yelled at him.

The man slowly stood up while firing short bursts, he somehow managed to lift the heavy machine gun all by himself _and _keep it steady while he fired it. Two plasma shots hit him in the shoulder, but the heavy plate stopped them in their tracks. Another blue orb collided with his helmet, but hit his enhanced optics, leaving him mostly unharmed.

"Drop the thing and run!" I yelled while reloading.

Jackals and elites were approaching from all directions. They looked so pissed off that their shots were barely flying straight, instead they looked like they wanted to kill us with their bare hands. They jerked backwards as the bullets hit them, but their companions didn't seem to mind the blood splattering them. I hit an elite in the face, blowing half its head off. The jackals behind it merely jumped over its body, firing wildly while trying to get at me.

"Crow!"

He pulled the cannons of the AIE-48H and kicked at an elite lunging at him. The stunned alien barely reacted as my friend jammed the three barrels down its throat and fired a good, long burst. The sheer amount of gore, blood, brains, and bone was enough to make my stomach lurch.

Scarecrow tossed his gun at a jackal and drew his pistol, firing three rounds at it. I could only do my best to keep aliens off of him while he fell back. Something that he seemed like he was in no rush to do.

"George!"

His actual name seemed to snap him back. He fired the rest of his pistol at an elite, draining its shields and allowing me to kill it with two bursts before turning around and sprinting away. I fired a couple more bursts and followed suit. I was faster than him and I quickly overtook him. I did my best to hunch my back and make myself a smaller target. Several rounds flew within inches of me, leaving black scorch marks on my ODST armor.

"Hurry up!" Caboose cried out from Marina's Pelican. "I can't fire until you're here!"

I looked over my shoulder and spotted two jackals that had stopped and were taking aim. I stopped, turned, and downed them both before returning to my sprint. Scarecrow was now running parallel to me, firing his MA5 blindly. I joined him, emptying my magazine. As soon as my weapon clicked empty I strapped it over my shoulder for added protection. It hung loosely and shook since one of the magnetic plates had been damaged when I was shot in the shoulder blade, but it didn't fall down.

"Come on!" Caboose yelled. The Pelican was already lifting off.

I took two steps and jumped, barely landing on the cargo bay. The rear turret started roaring as Caboose mowed down the waves upon waves of crazed covvies. I heard a huff as Scarecrow landed. He tried to hold on to something as he slid down the opened hatch. I turned around and grabbed his arm, stopping him from falling down.

Somewhere along the road he had taken off his helmet, the side of his face was bloodied and scarred. He looked at me and actually smiled a little before I started pulling him up He used his other hand to help me before suddenly going limp as four needle rifle rounds hit him in the waist and lower back. He looked down at them in horror a second before they exploded. The explosion, bright and pink, severed both his legs and destroyed a good chunk of his torso.

I looked in shock as his severed legs fell to the ocean below us and felt helpless when I saw that his intestines were falling out of the huge wound that was his entire lower body.

Scarecrow looked up at me, his eyes dull and lightless. "Let go," he croaked. He stopped holding on to my hand a second before his vitals went flat.

I cursed and punched the hatch before complying with my squad mate's last wish. I watched as his body fell to the Lambarian ocean and winced when it hit the water with a loud splash that could be heard all the way over here.

"Sarge," Bumblebee said quietly. "The cruiser is preparing to open fire."

I looked at the _CCS_-class battle cruiser to confirm this and nodded. "Close the hatch Marina, that's enough wasted ammo Caboose."

The ONI-employed Helljumper looked at me before cursing and punching the wall. He let go of the turret and the hatch closed, sealing the Pelican's bay. A small window allowed me to see the huge spaceship powering up its weapon right on top of its own allied infantry. I stared at it for a second before connecting to Eliza. "Liz, Sharma's dead, I need you to blow the nuke."

"Of course Farncisco," the AI replied mildly.

I was momentarily flash-blinded as the nuclear explosion engulfed the ship and port completely. I could feel the Pelican speed away at supersonic speeds. I cursed before punching the wall. It didn't hurt nearly enough so I punched it again, and again, and again. By the time I was done my gloves were useless and three or four knuckles in my right hand were broken. Nobody in the squad said anything, they just looked like they were in shock.

"Let's get out of here," I told myself. "As fast as we can."

* * *

><p><em>Thanks to Sniper Fodder for proof-reading this chapter.<em>

_You asked for it, you got it. I was thinking about doing it and also got some reviews and PMs suggesting that I kill of a character. So I did._

_There is really just one more thing to say. The idea for the rail rifle, the M102 SASR, also known as the Sledgehammer, goes completely to **TheDyingTitan** it took me some chapters to write it into the story, but I think the sheer badness of the gun was worth the wait. At least for him, the rest of you guys had no idea that I was going to use something like this. Now, in case you didn't notice, I am not what you'd call a scientist, so I have no idea how a railgun actually works. I took a quick crash course on the thing (thank you Wikipedia) and did my best to remain accurate in the scientific matters. I probably failed._

_Now for the usual goodbyes, I hope you enjoyed the chapter and actually felt Scarecrow's death, I think he was a pretty likable character to begin with, but that's a death sentence in this kind of cruel world. If you didn't feel at least a little bit bad, then you are wicked harpies. Or my writing isn't nearly as good as it should be. Both are equally likely, this is the internet after all._

_Well, that was an unusual usual goodbye._

_Stay strong._

_-casquis_


	105. Eventos Recurrentes

Chapter CV: Eventos Recurrentes

**November 12, 2543 (UNSC Calendar)/three months later**

**Esztergom (****Ezhtergom), Viery Territory, Reach, Epsilon Eridany System**

* * *

><p><em>"We fight for the lost."- Anonymous<em>

* * *

><p>"Stop tensing your arm," the tattooed chick told me. Her Hungarian accent was strong, but it gave her voice a sexy huskiness that I found very…well…sexy.<p>

Yeah.

"Sorry," I apologized quickly before relaxing my left hand.

The tattoo artist went back to doing her thing and started jamming her needle gun into the bottom part of my forearm, about two inches above my wrist. She let her tongue out of her lips and bit it as she frowned in concentration. The stereotypical cute look didn't seem to go with the girl tattooing my arm. She had one arm entirely covered in an artistic design featuring roses and thorns while the other arm had an entire deck of cards flying from her wrist to her shoulder. If I looked to the side I could see that her chest was covered with a blood red winged heart.

Below the heart there was a scroll that proclaimed that she would fuck me up. I had stifled a laugh when I saw that the first time I walked into the tattoo parlor, but I had stopped laughing when I saw her pull out that huge needle gun.

When I told her what I wanted she suggested that I get a design that covered my whole right arm and part of my chest, but I had immediately declined, that's not what I had in mind. Next she proposed a crow on top of a skull on my back, but tattooing over my scars would've been tough, and the design was still way too big for my tastes.

"So what the hell do you want then?" she had asked in annoyance after I vetoed six different designs.

"That," I had said finally, pointing at a silhouette of a crow with its wings wide and its talons open, ready to grab on to something. It reminded me of one of those pictures taken of eagles about to snatch a lamb. Except with a crow. "That's what I had in mind when I came here."

She had given me a weird look before commanding me to sit in a special chair and to place my hand with the palm facing up so that she could work comfortably. She grabbed a stool and pulled it close to me. At first I had felt uncomfortable with the attractive woman sitting so close to me where I could get a decent look at her tattooed cleavage. Eventually I relaxed a little, allowing her to start jabbing a needle into my arm.

"You're tensing your arm again," she repeated in frustration.

"Sorry," I apologized again. "Not a big fan of needles."

"Then why you getting a tattoo for?" she asked me as she started inking me again.

"It's for a friend," I explained simply.

"You had a friend named Raven?"

"No, I had a friend named George."

"All right, I don't judge."

I chuckled at that. "No, no, it's not like that." I pulled back her hand gently and stretched my neck before reaching across my chest with my left hand and pulling up my sleeve, exposing my Helljumper tattoo. She looked at the HEV with a flaming skull right in the middle. Covering the bottom half of the pod was a thin scroll much like the one on her chest with the letters ODST inscribed on it, the entire tattoo was done in black ink.

She looked at it and I smiled a little at the sight of her eyes widening as she reassessed her opinion on me. After a couple of moments of examining the tattoo she looked at me. "You from the 105th?"

"Yeah," I replied.

"What battalion?"

"The nineteenth."

Her eyes widened further. "Do you know a Kristóf?" she asked me, her eyes hopeful.

"Kristóf?" I asked myself, thinking back to my days in boot camp. "Kristóf Tarkov?"

"Yes! That's the one!" she exclaimed, flailing her needle gun around and forcing me to push myself deeper into the chair to avoid getting a slashed face. "Sorry, sorry," she apologized profusely after calming herself down.

"How do you know him?" I asked her, curious.

"He's my cousin," she explained. "On my mother's side."

"Well then, nice to meet you," I told her, offering her my hand.

"Same, my name is Stefánia Fransizka Stark."

"Franziska?" I asked. "Huh. I'm Francisco. Castillo."

She shook my hand and smiled at me, her eyes sparkling. I cocked my head sideways while looking at her, she seemed to be about my age, perhaps a little younger. I didn't really see the resemblance to Tarkov, but that could be explained easily. I hadn't seen Kristóf Tarkov for almost ten whole years. The only thing that she seemed to have in common with him was the brown hair and the blue eyes.

There was a brief silence as we looked at one another before she grabbed my hand and started jabbing the needle into my forearm.

"What happened to him? Your friend?"

I sighed, I didn't want to talk about it, I still got nightmares occasionally. "It was a tough mission, he got hit. There was nothing we could do for him."

Stefánia nodded. "I understand." She looked back down at my arm and blotted out the last space of skin with black ink. "There, we're done. És kész."

"Whatever happened to Tarkov anyways? He was deployed on another ship with a squad full of Hungarian-speaking recruits."

She sighed sadly. "I don't know."

"Huh. Special assignments probably. If that's the case you won't be able to hear much from him. My friend," I pointed at my newly acquired tattoo, " had a pretty hard time contacting his family back on Earth, and we aren't even in Black Ops." I smiled. "At least not that often." After I said that I looked around suspiciously, as if to spot anyone that might be following me.

"You sure that's the case?" Stefánia asked after laughing softly. "You mean that he's not-" her voice cracked and she had to take two deep breaths.

"I'm sure," I said reassuringly, putting a hand on her shoulder. "Still, if you want me to, I could dig around some, see where he's deployed."

"You'd do that for me?" she asked.

"Yes, you're my friend's cousin." _And very pretty too._

"Thank you."

I stood up. "I take it you were close?"

"Yeah," she replied, smiling, her mind no doubt returning to those good times she certainly had in her childhood. "My mom had only one sister, she married his father. Both of us were only children, we had no choice but to get along with one another."

"Huh," I snorted. "Never had cousins myself. And I wish I didn't have a brother."

"Why?"

"That." I said. "That I don't want to talk about."

She shrugged.

"Anyways," I went on, changing topics. "When was the last you heard from Tarkov?"

"Two years ago," she replied. "He sent me this picture of himself and his squad." Stefánia produced a datapad from under the parlor's counter and showed me a high-res 3D photo. It showed Tarkov, barely recognizable along with five other ODSTs standing next to one another, smiling at the camera and looking happy. If the state of their armors was any indication, they were happy to have survived.

"What happened to him?" I asked her. "On his face."

"He said something about a spiker, wasn't very clear."

"Ahh," I said, evasive. If he didn't want to tell her, then I wasn't about to. "What's your cousin's story Stef? Can I call you Stef?"

"Sure. And it's a long, sad story."

I glanced at an imaginary watch. "I've got time, as long as you want to talk about it."

She smiled. "Very well. You see, my uncle, his father was in the military as well. An officer, I don't remember the rank. One day he was sent to fight the Eridanus rebels in some backwater system. His entire unit was ambushed and killed."

"I see," I nodded.

"That was before Kristóf was even born, so he never got to know his father, but having his dad be a war hero affected him somehow, he wanted to go out and kill baddies, he always said that when we played Innies versus Marines."

I chuckled, I had played that game with my friends back at school countless times. I wondered where my friends were nowadays.

"My dad, he was also a marine. A Helljumper to be precise. 19th battalion."

I started seeing where this was going.

"He was killed in action in Harvest back in thirty-one. One of the first engagements against the covvies."

I nodded, I had heard that Harvest had been five long years of hell.

"Kristóf tried joining the Helljumpers several times, he was denied entrance a couple of times before he finally managed to get into the 19th. From there… from there I don't know."

"That wasn't such a long story."

"It was the abridged version."

I gave her my best smile.

"The ink is still gonna cost you," she reminded me.

My smiled turned into laughter. "Of course, of course. No discounts?"

"Nope, you still have to pay what we agreed upon."

"Fine," I conceded. I pulled out my card and transferred the credit amount into her terminal. "So, how can I contact you?"

"Whoa, that's straightforward," Stef expressed, her arms open.

"I was talking about your cousin."

"Oh, right," she said. I was half-expecting her to blush after spending so much time with Cam and Hanna, both of whom had a surprising capability to turn purple at a moment's notice. She scribbled down some numbers and an address down on a piece of paper and handed it to me. "Leave a message if I don't answer."

I nodded. "Very well, I guess that-"

My phone started ringing.

I reached into my left pocket, grazing my raw and sore skin against my shirt as I did so. I yelped in pain and pulled my hand back. I tried again with my right hand, pulling it across my stomach and trying to get it into my pocket. Unfortunately, I was wearing those stupid jeans that I had bought with Marina, and the pocket's position didn't allow me to grab my phone.

"Some help please?" I pleaded to Stef.

She rolled her eyes and walked around the counter before getting my phone from my pocket. She raised an eyebrow when she saw it. "A MacPhone? Really?"

I smiled as I grabbed the phone. I had bought it recently after seeing the recent wave of commercials featuring it. Some computer company had decided to launch a phone. They opted to use the design of some phone that their corporation had launched back in the early twenty-first century. The only difference was, of course, that this phone came equipped with all the latest technologies up to and including tactile full-color HD holograms, multi-planetary GPS, a high-end disease scanner, it would automatically call emergency if anything happened to its owner, it could play music in crystal clear surround, and of course, it had the quintessential web browsing.

They had launched it with several slogans, my favorite was: 'The elegance of the past, the power of the future.'

Not the best marketing, I know, but it had been so widespread that I had been brainwashed into buying one, replacing my older phone.

I swiped the answer bar. "Hola. ¿Quién habla?"

"Frank, it's me."

"¿Quién?"

"Enough man," Pavel insisted.

"Good to finally hear from you Pavs," I told him. "Been almost six months now. How's the legs?"

"I can walk and run just as well as before," he told me proudly. "I can't feel a couple of toes, but the doc says that I shouldn't worry about it too much."

"Who is that?" Stef interrupted. "Another war buddy?"

"Shh," I told her. "What? No, I'm just talking to-"

"Don't shush me!"

"Please, Stef," I said, putting my hand on the phone's speakers. "And yes, he's a war buddy."

"Did I call at a bad time?" Pavel asked.

"No, no," I said quickly, perhaps a little bit too quickly.

"Uh-huh." My friend obviously didn't believe me. "I take it you got promoted too?"

"Yes," I said proudly. "Gunnery Sergeant now."

"Staff for me," he replied just as proudly. My friend immediately changed his tone. "I heard about Scarecrow…"

"Yeah," I said, my tone equally serious. "He was a good man, and a good friend."

"I guess I was lucky not to know him as much as you did."

"Yeah."

There were a couple of seconds of silence. "Is there going to be a funeral?"

I shook my head. "There was a small ceremony aboard the _Inconvenience_, but they're transporting an empty casket back to Earth so he can get a proper military burial with his family present."

"Shouldn't we be there too?"

"Normally we would, but inter-stellar travel is being reduced as much as possible, and we would need to be sent in a freighter designed to carry human passengers."

"Damn, such a shame. He was a damn fine soldier. Saved our lives a couple of times."

"That he did," I agreed. _But that doesn't seem to matter in this world._

Pavel took a deep breath. "Hey, I've got news, can we meet."

"Sure."

"You still in New Alexandria?"

"Nah, I'm here in Esztergom," I told him, proud at myself for being able to say the name of this city without messing it up. "Where do you want to meet?"

"I know this great little place, here, I'm sending you the location right now. And there it is. I'll see you there in half an hour."

"Deal, buh-bye."

"Au revoir," he said. "That was French."

Before I could reply he hung up.

"Damn asshole used my joke," I mumbled at the phone.

"So, who's Pavel?"

"A friend," I told Stef as I put my phone in my right pocket. "You have a bandage or something?" I asked her, pointing to my swollen tattoo.

She nodded before heading back behind the counter and digging through a couple of drawers before finding what she was looking for. Stefánia emerged with adhesive tape and soft bandages. She quickly folded a bandage into a little square and placed it above my tattoo. "Hold your hand there."

I did as I was told while she secured the soft cotton fabric to my arm with white tape. She did it with extreme tenderness, it felt weird right after having been stabbed by a needle half a million times at her hands.

"Ok, you might feel sick and nauseous tomorrow and maybe the day after that, but that's normal, that's just your body reacting."

"M-hm."

"And two things."

"Yeah?"

"One: why the hell didn't you go to a regular parlor where you could've gotten that teeny tattoo done with a mold for half the price and half the pain. Two: why the hell did you make the tattoo so small."

I smiled a little. Molds were used for tattooing pretty much anything in any extremity, but there were skilled tattoo artists that still used the ages-old needle techniques. They were just that, artists. "I didn't want it to be half-assed. I wanted the best and someone told me that was you."

She nodded and smiled at the compliment before urging me to go on.

I looked down at the white bandage on my hand, it was about four inches long on each side, a little bit bigger than the tattooed crow itself. "I'm not afraid of needles."

"Why didn't you get a bigger tattoo then?"

I sighed. "Because by the time this war ends, I think that I'm going to need to use up the remaining space on my arm."

Stef nodded grimly. "If that were to happen, feel free come here. Next one's on the house."

"Thanks," I told her. "I appreciate it."

"It's no problem."

I walked towards the door and stopped as I opened it. "I'll let you know what I find out. Thanks. For everything."

* * *

><p>My Hog skidded to a halt before I double-parked. That earned me several glares from the onlookers. I had forgotten that this wasn't a battlefield and parked like I would've in one. I then realized that I had also driven like I would've in the battlefield.<p>

_That explains the surprising amount of car horns._

"Francisco, you are a true genius," Schitzo said, unbuckling and jumping out of the civilian Hog as I hit reverse and parked in a single parking space. "You can hit a coin at six hundred yards but can't figure out that people are insulting you, true genius."

"War hero," I snapped at him under my breath.

The little place that Pavel had mentioned was a bar. A military bar by the look of it. It was built with good old-fashioned red bricks, polycrete holding them together. It had one wooden door and a couple of windows. I crossed the street from the parking lot and walked towards it. It was in between a strip club called the Minted Rhino and a five story-tall building built with brown bricks. I stepped over the sidewalk. The bar was called The Grenadier. A good name. I took a step back and looked over at the Rhino.

I grabbed my phone and looked at the hour. I took two steps towards the strip club before stopping myself. I was just one minute early, and Pavel had a thing for being on time. Most people in the military did, you wanted to be on time for several things, like extraction for starters. You don't want to be late for that one. You might want to be late for when the ship leaves but that means you're AWOL and potentially a criminal, so you don't want to be late either.

I sighed and opened the door for The Grenadier quickly, it looked like it was about to rain.

The inside of the bar was old-fashioned, with wooden floors, tables, chairs, and counter. The walls were covered with plaques, old medals, unit pictures and insignias. I stood at the door for around half a minute, taking the scenery in. There were two older-looking M90s hanging behind the bar itself as well as several different weapons in glass cases or just hanging on the wall. The crown jewel of the weapons collection was a combo of AK-47s crossing one another with an extremely old rocket launcher sitting behind.

"Nice collection," I said aloud. None of the six patrons paid any attention to me, the bartender looked up before glancing back down again.

"What weapon is that?" I asked the bartender.

The man looked up from the bar and shoved the rag he was using to polish it in his well-worn apron. "Who wants to know?" he asked dryly.

"I do," I replied with the same tone as I clenched my fists.

"Listen kid," the bartender said. "It's still early, so why don't you head back home before you end up hurting yourself."

"I hardly think that I'm the one that could end up hurt," I told him. "You've got whiskey?"

He chuckled. "I think you're don't understand what I'm saying."

At that comment, three of the fourth men in the bar stood up. They were all large and well-muscled and had a military look to them. One of them was even wearing fatigues. They all looked to be about ten years older than I was, two of them had nasty gashes on their faces. One I could tell had been made by a spiker bayonet, the other one perhaps by shrapnel or barbed wire.

"Beat it kid," the biggest one of them said.

I laughed loudly and placed my coat on the coat hanger by the door. "Johnny Walker," I told the bartender.

One of the three men closed in on me and grabbed my shoulder. I reacted instantly. I grabbed his hand and twisted it around quickly, meeting no resistance as I did that. Once I had the man with his back facing me I pushed his hand against his wrist and kicked him in the ass, sending him face-first to the floor.

"Don't touch me again."

To his credit, he immediately got up and swung at me.

The man was not drunk, but he had had something to drink and wasn't in his best condition. Not that it would've mattered anyways, I was one of the best hand-to-hand experts in pretty much the entire military. And that's not counting my special augmentations.

I blocked the hook with my left hand. The shock made my tattoo hurt a little, but nothing that I couldn't handle. Before he could react to my block I hit him in the stomach once with an uppercut and then in the solar plexus softly with another uppercut. The man collapsed forward before I held him up. I threw him backwards, this time having him land on his ass and not on his face.

"To be fair, you didn't touch me," I taunted.

Then I heard a familiar click.

I looked up to see one of the other two men pointing an M6H pistol at me. The weapon was one that I was familiar with, but it was a heavy model, meaning that it was upsized and packed a bigger punch.

I raised my hands and smiled in surrender. "I'm expecting someone," I explained.

"I don't care," the man holding the gun told me. "Shaw, get him his coat, will ya?"

The other man gave his friend a quick look before shrugging and walking towards the door and grabbing my coat. I stretched out my hands behind me and grinned as he put it on. "Careful, that's expensive," I warned him.

He dusted my shoulders and arms theatrically before giving me a light shove.

"Now, how about you get out of here?" the gun-toting man said just as his the one called Shaw helped his friend up.

"We still going on about that?" I asked, my tone full of mocking. "Really."

"I'm the one with the gun here."

I raised on eyebrow and cocked my head slightly sideways as I fixed my coat.

By the way, it was new, black, and awesome. It made me feel special.

"Or what? You gonna shoot me?"

"For starters," he growled.

"Ten credits you won't," I wagered.

"What?"

"Ten credits says that you won't shoot me."

"Are you fucking stupid?"

"No, I'm just about to win credits."

"All right, I'll take that bet," Shaw said from behind. "Shoot him Murphy."

The one with the gun, Murphy, looked back at his friend and then to me. He looked at me quizzically before shrugging. "Fine then."

"Hey, you're going to be the ones cleaning that up," the bartender warned. The other patrons didn't even seem to care.

"Yeah, yeah, Captain," Murphy dismissed. He aimed at my leg and took one step towards me.

That was the first mistake he made.

He had already been standing pretty close to me, the extra step put him within easy reach of my arms. I promptly moved to the side and kicked at his gun hand, a flashy maneuver, but it worked. Murphy didn't fire a shot, but instead tried to aim back at me even as his two friends rushed to help him. I let out another kick, this one directed at Murphy's stomach. I don't normally kick above the waist as a rule, but from where I was standing I didn't have any other targets.

_Man, why does this always happen to me?_

As Murphy doubled over I dodged below a wide hook from Shaw. The other man jabbed at me twice, hitting me in the chest and then in the shoulder as I turned to block the punch. From there I kicked Shaw right above his knee, forcing him to fall down to the floor. I got a fist to the brow from the other marine just as I turned around. I was dazed for a second but then let out a wild right hook. It connected with the man's arm, but the strength of the punch was enough to make him stagger.

As soon as he did that I swiped his feet from underneath him.

Then I felt a pair of strong arms getting my neck from behind. I took half a second to calm myself down. I was in a vice grip and I wasn't going to get out of it unless Murphy let me go. I elbowed him twice with my right arm before he called for help. I saw Shaw lunging at me and jumped up and kicked with both feet. He stopped just out of range as I kicked and missed. I cursed as he stepped closer but then kicked him twice in the thighs, using my shins to make the kicks as painful as possible.

Once Shaw fell to the floor again I realized I was running out of air.

_Sorry bro._

I elbowed with my left hand, using all my strength, human and enhanced. One hit was all it took, I heard the sound of ribs cracking and felt him letting me go. I turned around and grabbed him by the arm, throwing him against the bar, where the bartender just looked annoyed and slightly disappointed. I moved towards him, kicking Shaw in the ribs slightly as I went.

The other marine (or soldier) made to stop me, but I punched him hard in the arms before he dropped them, allowing me to hit him in the stomach and knock the wind out of him. Just because I was pissed I grabbed his head and banged it against a table, breaking off the corner as I did so. The impact was enough to knock him out and would probably give him a terrible concussion.

_I'm going to have to apologize for that…_

"Shit," Murphy said as he saw me coming at him.

He threw a weak punch, which I ducked. I grabbed his hand and slammed it against the table. I put up my feet in one of the stools' footrests and drew my knife. The multi-colored blade flashed as I twisted it before slamming it down, the sound of metal and wood thinking.

Murphy let out a guttural scream at that action.

"Christ Frank!" I heard. "You didn't have to stab him!"

I looked down at my knife. It had gone right in between Murphy's index and ring fingers, cutting him slightly in the index finger in the process.

_I'm getting sloppy._

"I didn't stab him," I said without turning around. I looked at the bartender, he was cleaning a mug with a look of amusement in his face. "You know," I told him. "I half expected you to be aiming at me with a shotgun right now."

"That would've been the case," he said, "but I spotted Klaus further out back and realized you were with him."

"Really?" I asked. "Quick thinking."

"They don't call me Captain for nuthin'"

"They call you Captain because you retired as one," Pavel shot at him as he walked towards me, stepping over the unconscious body of the man I had knocked out. "Good to see that you still haven't lost it," he complimented me before patting me in the back. "But slamming Driscoll's head against the table was a little bit overkill."

"I didn't slam it that hard," I defended myself.

"You broke my table," the Captain reminded me.

"It's not like it's made of metal," I put out.

Pavel laughed. "Good to see you Frank."

"Your. Knife. Is. Still. In. My. Hand!"

"Oh," I said dully. "Right." I yanked my knife out of the wood a little bit more aggressively than I should've, but to be fair, Murphy had just aimed a heavy pistol at me with all the intention to shoot me in the kneecap. I leaned in close to him and whispered in his ear. "You owe me ten credits."

To that, he just groaned.

The Captain took lead. "Shaw, take Driscoll to the clinic, see if he's fine."

"Yes, sir," Shaw said weakly, grabbing his ribs and breathing heavily. He shot me a look before shaking his head. I had probably earned his respect, not exactly how I would've done it, but it was better to be respected and feared. Perhaps in time I could cultivate a friendship out of that.

"You, over ther," the Captain pointed out to another patron. "Grab some rubbing alcohol and a bandage from the emergency kit."

"What?" Murphy exclaimed. "No biofoam or disinfectants?"

"The way you just got your assed kick?" Pavel asked. "I hardly think you deserve it."

"You're an asshole," Murphy said as he stood up.

"Hey, we agree on something," I said cheerfully as I wiped blood from my knife with a napkin.

"And you broke my ribs."

"You'll be fine by tomorrow," Pavel dismissed. "Just get one of those bone re-growth shots."

Murphy glared at him. "I know what to do."

"Fine, fine, I was just offering my help."

Two glasses slammed in front of me. "Johnny Walker, was it?" the Captain asked me. "First one's on the house in account to your impressive display of kung-fu. The second one is twice as expensive in account to you being friends with this wanker."

"How much is it?" I asked, smiling.

"Ten credits."

I nodded. "You can put it on his tab," I pointed at Murphy and downed the first shot of the liquor. "Ahhh, been a while since I had some of this." I grabbed the other glass and eyed it before setting it back down. Murphy was already bandaging his finger, it wasn't a deep gash, but it probably hurt like a bitch.

"What can I get you?" the Captain asked Pavel.

"The usual," he asked.

"So," Murphy said from the side. "You're the famous Frank Castillo?"

I scoffed. "I hardly think I'm famous."

It was his time to laugh. At least he laughed until the pain in his ribs forced him to stop. "In this bar? I don't think there's anybody that hasn't heard at least one story where you were in it."

"Huh."

"We would've thought Klaus had the hots for you if not for Amber."

I smiled and turned to Pavel. "Who's Amber?"

"I'll tell you later."

"All right," I agreed as I took a sip from my second glass. I could already feel the first shot going to my head.

"Curious knife," the Captain said. "Where'd you get it?"

"This?" I asked. "A cook gave it to me."

"A good cook?"

I shook my head. "A military cook. He couldn't even get cereal right, but he was rather impressive with knives. I'm sure that he would be disappointed if he saw that I had cut your friend."

"You don't say," Murphy grumbled.

"Suck it up Sergeant," the Captain ordered.

"So, The Captain, what's your name?"

"Captain Gavin Montgomery, but you can call me Captain."

"All right Captain, can you tell me what gun is that?" I pointed at the rocket launcher that I had admired when I first entered the bar.

"Those are AK-47's-" he started.

"No, I meant the rocket launcher."

"Oh, that's an RPG-7, Russian-made. They were used up until the Argyre Planitia Campaign by Koslovics and Frieden."

"A good weapon?" I asked.

"Yes, nothing impressive, but it's rugged, reliable, and packs some punch. That one can still fire."

I nodded. "I take it the AKs work as well."

"Yeah, those things only need to be oiled up every now and then and they'll be in fine working order until the end of the universe."

I nodded yet again. "So, you've got anything to eat? I'm hungry."

"Yessir," Captain said mockingly. "I'll bring you the special, you too Klaus?"

"Sure, why not?"

I took another sip of my drink. "How have you been? Six months without firing a gun, that must've been tough."

"I went to the firing range a couple of times," he said dismissively. "I had to replace the barrel of that ACS that you gave me."

"You were on leave six months, what'd you do?"

"Lots of things, since I was technically on medical leave I got paid, but I was fully healed within the first couple of months, so I got four months paid vacation."

"Lucky bastard."

"I agree, got a little apartment nearby, nice place."

"Huh, never took you one to settle down in one place. Besides, you're going to have to sell it, how can you maintain it when you're going to be away more often than not?"

"Nah, I don't think I'm going to sell it," he said.

"Why not? You'd probably get a nice little profit out of it, you know, with the way mortgage prices are rising and all that."

"I don't think that has anything to do with housing prices," Pavel said. "Like anything at all."

"I think you're wrong."

He shrugged. It had been a long time since I saw that exaggerated and theatrical shrug of his. It actually managed to cheer me up.

"Whatever," he dismissed me. "Most of the time I hang around here, listening to Captain and the rest. "You have no idea how many stories you can hear."

"I've lived half those stories," I informed him. "You too."

"But every story is different, everyone's worth listening to."

I wasn't entirely sure I believed him. "Fine, I believe you."

He took a sip from his drink, whatever that was. "You see that picture?" He pointed at a photo of an entire platoon, all of them standing with their hands clasped behind their backs and in their standard BDUs. "Well, they were wiped out when the lieutenant called in an airstrike right on their position to delay a Covenant invasion force just long enough to evacuate the civilian population from a nearby village. The only survivor was one kid. That one, second one from left to right in the first row. It was his first engagement ever, he came out of it missing one arm and with burns covering most of his body." He took a moment to breathe."But you know what's the most incredible thing? That they could've evacuated, command had a pair of Pelicans ready to extract them, but they opted to stay behind and risk their lives to save a bunch of people they didn't know that lived on a planet that they had never stepped on before."

I sighed. The war was full of stories like that.

"That's what keeps these men going," he said, lowering his voice so that only I could hear him. "Knowing that there are other people out there that have suffered the same thing."

"War is hell," I said in agreement.

"A Soldier's Tale?" he asked.

"William Sherman," I replied.

"Who?"

"Forget it," I dismissed him. Like he would have any knowledge at all regarding any of the two American Civil Wars. "You wouldn't know him."

Pavel shrugged and thanked Captain as he slammed to dishes with two unhealthy-looking hot dogs each. I thanked him as well and watched as he walked to the other end of the bar to talk to another costumer. Murphy had gone back to his table and was drinking from a mug, watching a jumpball game on the only screen in this establishment. The local Ezstergom team wasn't doing too well. It was actually getting pounded pretty badly by Manassas.

While we ate we talked about Lambari and Ninive, I told him what had gone down while he had been out. He listened while I described our missions to him. He asked one or two questions, but for the most part he remained quiet and listened to what I had to say. It was a long time before I noticed that the entire Grenadier had gone silent. Several of the costumers were inching in my direction, trying to listen to what I was saying.

I turned around and shot them a look and they all quickly returned to minding their own business.

"No one here will pressure you to tell them your story," Captain said. "Except me of course."

Captain looked serious as he said that, but I could see him holding back a smile. I nodded solemnly and gave him a weak salute before he refilled my drink. I didn't ask for it, but no doubt that I would get charged for it regardless.

"Why'd you want to kick me out of the bar?" I asked suddenly.

Captain sighed. "The Grenadier is a military bar, you walk in with an expensive coat and denim, no one expects you to be military."

"Isn't that bad for business?"

"Believe it or not, there aren't that many military bars around, and with Reach being full of soldiers, jarheads, and sailors, we get full house pretty often."

"Huh, might open one of these when I retire then."

Captain shrugged.

"How's Nezarian doing?" Pavel asked. "Losing his whole platoon, that must've been tough."

"I can't say, really. The man looks sane, but from the little I saw him after that he was quieter than usual and had a shorter fuse. I wish I knew more about it, but I didn't really have the time to talk to the man."

"Damn," Pavel mused. "Poor guy." He tentatively asked, "Scarecrow, how'd he die?"

I sighed, not wanting to remember. "It was messy," I told him. "Very. Only Konstantinov and me saw it."

"What happened."

"Needle rifle blew off half his body, I told the rest of the squad that two rounds slammed into the back of his neck. Grigori didn't say anything."

"Good, I guess. How are they taking it?"

"Well enough, Snark worries me a bit, he was good friends with him."

Pavel finished his second hot dog. "Well, we'll just have to wait and see before you recommend a psych eval."

"Agreed."

Pavel was quiet for a few seconds. "After meeting that Spartan team, I guess the job got worse."

I shrugged. "I guess so, what were their names? I remember Carlos and…"

"Catherine was the girl, liked to be called Kat," Pavel added absent-mindedly.

"Kat? You mean Cat."

"Yeah, that's what I said," Pavel confirmed, looking up from his empty drink.

"No, you said Kat. I said Cat."

"Frank, you're not making any sense."

I took a deep breath. "I mean, you said Kat with K as opposed to Cat with C."

"Yeah. Wait, how the hell would you know how I spell out things that I say?"

"Huh?" I deflected. "Anyways, is it Cat? Or Kat?"

"Kat," Pavel said decisively. "With a K."

"Huh, that changes a few things."

Pavel looked at me carefully. He looked like he was about to say something before deciding against it and shaking his head.

After I finished eating my two tasty hot dogs and was halfway through my third glass of Johnny Walker Pavel spoke up again. "Hey, y'know, I actually wanted to meet here with you because I wanted to tell you something."

"Right, I almost forgot, what was it?" I asked as I wiped my greasy fingers on a napkin.

"Well you see-"

"There you are!" a female voice said.

I craned m neck to see who it was and spotted a vaguely familiar-looking woman near the entrance. I ignore her and went back to listening to Pavel. "I see what?" I asked before I realized that he too was looking at the woman. "I see," I said in a different tone.

"What?" Pavel asked.

"That's the girl… Amber was it?"

"Yeah…" he admitted carefully.

I looked at the woman, Amber, as she walked towards us. She had very dark hair, it looked black in the bar's lighting, but I couldn't really tell for sure. She had a very pretty face, her eyes were gray, that much I was sure of, and she had a kick-ass body. Pavel had done exceedingly well for himself.

"Sorry I'm late," she apologized to my friend after kissing him on the cheek. "You must be Frank." She offered me her hand and I shook it lightly as I smiled politely. "I've heard a lot about you."

"And I, have not heard anything about you."

Pavel shifted uncomfortably on his chair. "Uhh, you see, well. Where to start? Umm…"

Amber interrupted him "Pavel and I met when he was doing his rehab, I work in the hospital."

"That's why you looked familiar!" I said with realization. "You're a… receptionist. Right?"

"Exactly," she replied with a small smile. "If you remember me then I must've made an impression."

Hurray for unintentional compliments.

"Well, regardless of how we met…" Pavel went on.

"Very cute, by the way," Amber noted.

"Please let me do this," Pavel told her. "Well, ahem, we met and…"

"Jeez, just spit it out already," Amber urged him.

I was smiling at my friend's predicament, but as I saw the worried look on his face and took in his nervousness and overall awkwardness in the body language the smile slowly faded from my face. "What? Tell me what?"

"Well…"

"Well what? Pavel."

"Oh, for God's sake," amber said, exasperated. "We got married."

I chuckled and then stopped abruptly. "What?"

"We engaged in holy matrimony," Amber furthered. "Made our vows, moved in together, closed the deal, game over."

"What?" I repeated, this time louder.

"Frank, I'm sorry, it's just tha-"

"Six months Pavel. Six fucking months."

I know, I-"

"You couldn't even wait for me to return!"

"I know, I-" he repeated before I interrupted again.

"How do you even get to know someone and fall in love with them like that in less than six months! No offense Amber, but dude, what the fuck?"

"Sorry, it's just that-"

"And who the hell was the best man?"

"We got married in a small civil ceremony," Amber elaborated.

"To which I wasn't invited!"

"Frank, I-"

My eyes widened. "Don't tell me you knocked her up."

"I'm right here, you know," Amber said annoyed.

"No, well I mean yes, but-"

"You knocked her up?" I turned to her. "He knocked you up!"

"It was after we got married."

"I'm already two months pregnant," Amber said happily while patting her belly.

"Christ Pavel, what the hell's wrong with you?"

"Hey," he started defensively. "I can do whatever the fuck I want."

"Yeah, but that doesn't mean that you should do it."

"You're saying I shouldn't have married her?"

"No, I'm saying you shouldn't have married her while I was gone. You should be marrying her tomorrow!"

"Are you jealous?" Amber asked.

"No, I'm pissed my best friend didn't invite me to his wedding!"

"I said I was sorry," Pavel repeated. "Just relax man."

"I'm gone for six months and this happens? Next time we come back there'll be a little Pavel running around."

"Yeah," my friend admitted.

"Well, you're naming him after me."

"It's a she, actually," Amber corrected. "We're calling her Lavanya."

"Whoa, when did Pavel become famous?" Schitzo asked. "Naming his kids weird names and all that."

"It's an Indian name," Pavel explained.

"It means beauty," Amber furthered.

I looked at her and then back to my friend. "Fair enough, but what if she takes after Pavel?"

Amber laughed and sat next to my friend, her husband.

"Yeah, very funny," Pavel mumbled. "Hilarious."

* * *

><p><em>Thanks to Sniper Fodder for proof-reading this chapter.<em>

_Pavel is back! Rejoice! And he's married! Should we rejoice? Who the hell gives a fuck? He's back!_

_Ok, I made a couple of references in this chapter. One is to The Expendables, but it's pretty obscure, so I doubt many of you will notice it. If anyone does, you get a free round of applause on my part. I promise. The second reference is to Halo Wars, I doubt that counts as a reference since it's set in the same universe as this fan fiction. As for number three, where else do you know a Captain Montgomery from? Free applause if you guess where I got him from as well. Either that or I write "Clap, clap, clap" in the author's note next chapter. Take your pick. Chapter quote is a blatant Mass Effect reference, you win nothing if you guessed it before reading this._

_Also, you know how I mentioned that it had been a while since I had last named a chapter for something random? Well, it has also been a while since I named a chapter in Spanish. More applauseses to whoever tells me why I named it that. Captain Montgomery and the three marines that Frank fought will become recurring characters in the future, just letting you know that so that you remember them._

_With that being said, I hope you enjoyed the chapter._

_-casquis_

_PS: The button below? You see it? Oh, you do? Great. Just wondering._


	106. My Editor Will Think of a Name For This

Chapter CVI: My Editor Will Think of a Name For This

**November 15, 2543 (UNSC Calendar)/**

**Esztergom (****Ezhtergom), Viery Territory, Reach, Epsilon Eridany System**

* * *

><p><em>"I never turned to drink. It seemed to turn to me."- Brendan Behan<em>

* * *

><p>"A beautiful day here in Esztergom, the city has woken up completely covered in white. That's right people! For those of you that haven't woken up yet, get out of bed and look out the window. Today marks the beginning of what looks to be one cold winter. Hopefully it'll be a short one, eh? Well then, coming up is the newest hit by-"<p>

I turned off the radio before I got a pop music overdose.

My rental Hog was outfitted with actually collapsible doors and roof in case it rained, a real life saver in a situation like this. Snow was flurrying all around, and although it wasn't as bad as it had been during the night, it was still a bitch to drive in. The heated windshield melted the snowflakes almost immediately and the wipers wiped them off, but you probably know what it's like driving while it's raining.

The copious amounts of snow had kept any vehicles other than public transports and some brave workers off the road. That meant that my massive all terrain vehicle could go as fast as possible and swerve as much as possible without those pesky highway patrols stopping me twice in a twenty minute trip.

"You have a call," a pleasant robotic voice informed me. The Hog came outfitted with all the comforts of the civilian life with the advantages of a military vehicle.

"Who is it?" I asked the robotic female voice.

Of course I had chosen the female option.

"The number is marked as private. If you intend to know the callers identity you can call any one of the-"

"Just put it through."

The speakers beeped once.

"Hello?"

"Frank Castillo?"

"Yeah, who is this?"

"Lamberti."

"Hey, Arcangelo, how you doin'?"

"Pretty well, it's just…"

"Spit it out," I said impatiently.

"The squad is wondering where you are, they're a little worried."

I stared flatly at the console in the dashboard, as if expecting that the sheer will in my look would get through.

"Yeah…" Lamberti went on.

"You're all big boys, and we're on leave. I'm pretty damn sure you don't need me for that. Lemme rephrase that. I'm pretty fucking sure that you don't need me for that."

"Nice. The swearing was a nice touch," Schitzo said. "It definitely makes you look more like that stereotype image of sergeants."

_Fuck off._

"Say something Sarge?"

"No," I dismissed him quickly. _I thought that I had stopped thinking out loud. _

"Is there someone in the car? I call at a bad time?"

"No and no," I insisted. It _was _the truth.

"Ok…" he said, obviously not completely believing me. "Well, the team just wanted to know where you were."

"You lose a bet with Cam?" I queried.

"What? No."

"So you _are _worried."

"No!"

"Then why the fuck are you calling me so early!"

He sighed audibly. "The team wanted to go out drinking, catch up with Sergeant Pavel, you know."

This time I sighed. "Frankly I'd love to, but I'm not in a position to."

"What? Why?"

"I'm not in New Alexandria currently."

"Well? Where are you?"

"Esztergom."

"Eszter- What the hell Sarge?"

"You're hardly in a position to question me;" I said sternly.

"Right, sorry, but I mean, why would you leave the nightclub capital of this world?"

_I'm twenty-eight, I'm too old for that thing._

"You're not," Schitzo interceded. "Besides, you might've been born twenty eight years ago, but all that cryo and slipspace probably puts you at around… what? Twenty four?"

_Appealing to my ego? Nice. Couldn't have done it better myself._

"I aim to please."

"I left because I damn well pleased to," I informed him. "Besides, Pavel has a house here now, nice little place."

"Huh? Really?"

"Yup."

"Any reason why?"

I shrugged needlessly. "You'd have to ask him."

"Fine. Hey-"

He stopped abruptly and the line was quiet for a couple of seconds.

"Lamberti? You still there?"

"-ll him."

"Tell me what?"

"Well, we wanted to know if you'd mind us coming over?"

"What? We're on leave, I'm not your father, hell, you're older than me! You can do what you damn well please with your own time."

"So that's a yes?"

"Yes," I sighed. "I don't plan on leaving any time soon."

"Great, than-"

I hung up before he could finish his sentence. He was getting rather annoying the longer the call lasted.

Shit, my own squad asking for clearance on doing something was unusual enough in the battlefield, but here on Reach? I mean, that's just weird.

I slowed down the Hog as I closed in on my destination.

"Thank you for choosing McDonalds, may I take your order?"

I smiled to myself. "Of course." If I was in any luck the person handing out my burgers to me would be that pretty girl. But then again, for some reason I'm usually in luck with this kind of thing. Not that I'm complaining really. "A double Quarter Pounder, a large coke, large fries, and a two regular cheeseburgers. No pickles or onions."

"So, the usual?"

I chuckled. "You still haven't told me your name, you know?"

"It's on my nametag," the intercom replied teasingly.

"Which is conspicuously missing."

"My my, have you been staring at my chest?"

I would've blushed, but I didn't do that anymore.

"Would you blame me if I had been?"

"I would if you hadn't."

"No modesty? I can live with that."

She giggled a little bit. "Please move up to receive your order."

I feathered the pedal lightly and the huge vehicle lurched forward while its engine made loud noises. I had to be very careful not to scrape the Hog's sides with the walls on either side of the drive-thru. Normally I wouldn't have minded scratching the monster, primarily because it wasn't mine, but last time the insurance had racked up a healthy amount that my beloved UNSC had been unwilling to compensate in my stead. Believe it or not, a Helljumper doesn't exactly make six figures.

The pressure tube next to my window appeared not to move. I waited for half a minute before the little window opened. It showed the pretty McDonalds girl wearing a red and yellow scarf.

"Sorry," she apologized with a smile, "our delivery system isn't working right now, food has to be delivered by hand."

I smiled back at her. "Very old-fashioned."

"Well, this establishment in particular prides itself in having all of the classical McDonalds features, including the taste."

"You sound like a commercial I heard," I joked. Her words came right out of a commercial that promoted this retro McDonalds in particular.

"I wonder why," she went on. "Anyways, that'll be eleven credits."

"Damn, I thought I was getting a discount."

"I don't know you nearly well enough for that."

"Oh well, a man can only hope," I said as I shrugged theatrically.

"Here you go," she told me cheerfully as she leaned out of the small window that was usually used to deal with payment problems. "Have a nice… breakfast."

I shrugged as I took the burgers, fries, and soda from her hands. I know, bizarre way of doing the drive-thru thing. "It fills me up. So, you still haven't given me your name."

She smiled and started closing the little window to protect herself from the cold. "I don't know anything about you yet." With that, she was gone.

_Oh well, maybe next time._

I pedaled my Warthog, sorry, Hog as I placed my still-warm breakfast on the passenger's seat. It took all of three minutes to drive myself back to the hotel and a minute more to walk back to my room.

I cursed when I realized my one-night stand was still there. I was slightly pissed at myself at not having done everything perfectly, but she had forgiven me when I explained it had been over six months since I had put my wee-wee in a hoo-ha. I fully expected her to be gone by the time I returned.

"You didn't bring me anything?" she asked, one eyebrow raised as she put her shirt on.

"I thought you'd be gone by now," I admitted rather shamelessly.

She shrugged and shook her hair a little. "Rather ungentlemanly."

"You want a cheeseburger?" I offered.

"Not hungry."

I looked at her while she put on her shoes and helped her with her coat before opening the door for her. "Well, thanks, I guess?"

She smiled. "You too."

"I guess I'll see you." I was going to say her name, but the hesitation after saying goodbye was enough to give the statement an awkward look. Any idiot would've caught onto my screwup.

"Don't worry," she told me. "I don't remember your name either. Better that way."

"Oh. Ok, bye then."

"Bye."

I closed the door and blinked twice.

"My kind of woman," Schitzo noted. "Good-looking, nice, funny, and more importantly, enjoys sex just because."

I was inclined to agree with him.

When I opened the McDonalds bag I realized that my breakfast was already getting cold. It had literally been fifteen minutes since I got it. I opened the Quarter Pounder and took a large bite before sipping on the soda. The screen in my hotel room was an old one, but it had tons of channels. Eventually I settled for watching some sitcom while I ate my breakfast.

I looked at my phone in during a commercial break, seeing that it was devoid of any messages, calls, or news. The lack of attention I was receiving quickly resulted in the phone being tossed away and my datapad being used for family-unfriendly purposes.

_This is going to be a looong day…_

* * *

><p>I woke up to the sound of my phone ringing. I had almost overdosed on sleeping pills and spent most of the day in my bed. I groaned in annoyance at the headache that started raging inside my head as soon as I opened my eyes. The first thing I did was order the television to shut itself down. The second thing I did was groan some more and rub my temples.<p>

My phone rang loudly again.

"Answer," I called out. "Pick up, whatever."

"Hello?"

"Who's this?"

"Frank, it's Grass."

"Hey Cam," I greeted. "You guys made it here already?"

"Yeah, we just arrived."

"Uh-huh."

"Well, can you recommend a nice place?"

I sighed. "Christ Cam, I mean, you can't look up the yellow pages?"

"There are no yellow pages," she replied.

"It's an expression," I explained unnecessarily. I sighed once again, giving up. "There's a nice little place known as The Grenadier, look it up."

"Ok, will you join us later?"

I glanced at the room's clock. "Maybe, be sure to drop my name and look military."

"Uhh, ok?"

I hung up and put my phone on silent mode.

I sank back to my bead, my eyes wide open and staring at the ceiling. I closed my eyes and tried falling asleep again. Unfortunately my body decided that it had enough rest and wouldn't let up. I could hear everything, the sound of a bed banging against a wall a couple of rooms over and the ecstatic screams that went with it, faked by the exaggerated sound of it. I could hear the occasional vehicle flying by the street and the sound of military jets in the distance. One might sometimes think that a hotel this far off from the city center would be quieter, but the entire Viery Territory was loud by nature.

_I wonder how many people firing at the same time it would take to blow up a starship… Probably a couple million. Using explosive ammunition too, I mean, you can't expect an SRS to punch through a few meters of Titanium-A armor. Huh, maybe you could use a combination of both._

Well, eventually that particular train of thought developed into another one, and another one, then another one. Somehow I ended up wondering what Marina would look like if she had Stef's tattoos. The mental image was not entirely unpleasant once I decided on a final product.

What?

Finally I decided that it would probably be a good idea to actually _do_ something before I ended up offing myself due to a boredom overdose. After quickly brainstorming I ended up with only one viable option: go to The Grenadier and try and have some fun. Perhaps I'd even meet a military broad on leave that was just looking for some casual sex. I mean, a single person serving in the military gets little action as it is, something that I had just recently become painfully aware of.

Once I got enough willpower to get up from the bed I changed to my only other pair of jeans and put on a long-sleeved shirt (black of course) before grabbing my recently-acquired coat. After zipping it up I grabbed my pistol and shoved it in a small holster in the back of my belt. I put on my boots and strapped my knife into the right one as well.

Hey, you never know what might happen.

As soon as I left the hotel I noticed that most of the snow had been plowed away by trucks or something else. There was a bunch of other cars present on the roads this time, but none of them were willing to risk not letting me pass. I did sport one big-ass jeep with wheels as tall as your average ten year-old. Pavel told me that he could meet up with me in the bar and I started breathing a little bit easier. Sometimes being with my team outside of combat situations or deployment was weird.

By this time the bar was getting crowded.

At least it was a military crowd that would know better than to get uppity with a Helljumper. Or perhaps they would think it would be a good idea to get uppity with one because they were in the military. And inebriated.

"Captain!" I greeted the owner and bartender of The Grenadier.

"Castillo, a couple of friends of yours came by, they're sitting back there."

I nodded and sat on one of the last remaining booths in the bar. "Give me something heavy," I asked him.

"What?"

"I… I'm not in the mood for soberness."

He nodded, apparently understanding. "Here, this is Martian Malt. Pretty strong, tasty. And expensive."

He added that last particular bit of information after I had downed the shot that he served me. I glared at Captain and shook my head.

"Put it on my tab."

"Will you ever pay that tab?"

"I'm kind of hoping that this place gets destroyed in an invasion first."

He shook his head and chuckled. "With the ODPs being built and deployed, I hardly think that's a possibility."

"A man can dream."

I walked through the bar, making my way in between bulky marines and their dates. I noticed that while male soldiers brought civilian girls here with them, barely any female marines brought their men in here. I didn't blame them, few guys would willingly date a woman that could kick their asses in seven different ways before they could so much as fart. Being in a bar filled with testosterone and other men which could kill them equally as fast also did not help. No doubt it was pretty intimidating and emasculating to go out with that kind of woman. Unless you had one big pair of balls and one hell of a bluff.

"What the hell are you doing here?"

"Huh?" I asked, looking up at the person that bumped into me. "Oh, Driscoll, wasn't it?"

He immediately took two steps to the back and clenched his fists lightly. He looked like he was about to say something before a large man slammed his hand on his shoulder.

"Relax Driscoll, this is Frank Castillo, Klaus' buddy."

He looked at me and then back to his friend. "And you neglected to mention that to me because?"

"Shaw and me were hoping to see you get your ass kicked again."

"Huh." Then Driscoll did something completely unexpected. He offered me his hand.

Not being one to refuse an opportunity for friendship, I immediately shook it. He had a strong, firm grip, telling of a life served in the military. The spiker scar on his face was also a pretty good indicator, but I had an awful feeling that several civilians had similar scars.

"I guess maybe we should've been a little bit nicer," he dismissed with a shrug. "Or maybe ask you what your name was."

I chuckled. "Maybe you should have."

"And perhaps you might accept a rematch."

I smiled at him. "I would just _love _to." I put as much evilness into my tone as I could, smiling a macabre smile and doing my best to look like a psychotic killer. Obviously, the act worked, because Driscoll looked worried for a brief second before I broke into a grin, at which point he laughed and patted my shoulder.

"I'll take your word for it, but let's use helmets just in case."

"Of course." I nodded.

I moved towards the direction Captain had pointed me after that encounter and finally spotted my squad. They had moved two tables together and were sitting, their chairs pushed back and their backs slouched. I could see a few empty mugs and beer bottles on the table already. If the uproarious laughter was any kind of indicator they were already half-drunk.

"Oi, Sarge!"

Yup, definitely drunk.

I stopped a passing waitress before I sat down. I eyed her body appreciably, she was wearing a uniform that consisted of short military-looking shorts, black boots, and a tight tank-top. Captain certainly knew how to run a military bar. "Excuse me, could you get me… say, two of your strongest beers as well as two shots of… what would you recommend?"

"You want to catch up with your friends, Sergeant? Staff?"

"Gunnery," I explained. "And yes, perhaps even overtake them."

She smiled prettily, further reminding me of my lack of a significant other. "I've got just the thing."

I thanked her before grabbing an empty chair and dragging it towards my table. "Hey," I greeted my drunken squad. "Any trouble?"

"Nah," Agnarsson said merrily, "they looked at us and let us right in, no problemo."

"Yeah, yeah," Lamberti agreed. "No problemo."

The two of them looked at each other and giggled like prepubescent girls at the incredibly funny joke that they had just shared. Konstantinov and Snark looked unimpressed while Camilla outright scowled at their drunken antics. I was inclined to agree with Cam's take on this one.

I reached for her beer and took a healthy swig.

"No worries, I don't mind," she said sarcastically.

"I knew you wouldn't," I agreed. "That's why I did."

She sighed. "Whatever."

Lamberti, drunk as he was, decided to start fucking with her. "Gee Grass, if anyone else had done that you would've squeezed the life out of them by their balls."

"I do believe that's physically impossible," Naveen muttered. "But please, do go on."

"Thank you, I believe I will. As I was saying, perhaps you enjoy sharing a bottle with Sarge?" His slurred and half-drunken speech turned that two sentences into a one minute ordeal where he stumbled over his words and repeated himself several times.

To her credit, Camilla managed to maintain an excellent poker face.

Me, being one to defend distressed damsels and to always take advantage of an opportunity where I could be an asshole, decided to jump in on Cam's defense. "Well Lamberti, perhaps you're a little bit jealous that you didn't get to share a bottle with her."

He blushed. I was stunned by that and decided to leave it at that, but I had no doubt that neither Cam nor the rest of the squad would let him forget about that. I didn't blame him if he had… unprofessional thoughts regarding his only female squad mate, I mean, you just had to look at Cam to be completely infatuated with her physique. Yes, even if you're a woman. The problem here was that Aracangelo disliked her. Sure, they were friends and would die for one another, but they also disliked each other.

You feel me?

No? Doesn't matter, you're probably a worthless piece of trash anyways.

I started taking off my new (badass) coat and put it over my chair before sliding up my sleeves. The waitress brought me two bottles of beer and two small glasses filled with a transparent liquid. I eyed the two shots carefully before downing one. The rest of the liquor I packed near my position so that nobody would think about taking a swig from any of my bottles.

"So," Konstantinov started. "Is Pavel going to join us?"

"He said he'd be here," I replied. The drink was already beginning to reach my brain.

_Whoa that shit's strong._

"Don't know what time, though," I added.

"What's that on your hand?" Camilla asked with a raised eyebrow. I think that I've mentioned several times just how goddamned attractive she looked when she did that. Haven't I? Well, in case I haven't I'll say it yet one more time.

She looked fucking hot.

"What on my hand?" I asked, eyeing both my appendages and trying to spot whatever was wrong with either of them.

Snark sighed in annoyance. "She means the tattoo Sarge."

I glanced down at the crow on my forearm. My vision was already getting slightly blurry with whatever I had just downed. The black tattoo seemed to be waving. I felt like I had just taken a bunch of illegal stimulants. I hadn't gotten close to those things after a particularly bad trip back on Jericho VII.

"Oh, this? It's a crow. I got it after-"

"-Scarecrow," Neveen finished.

"Exactly."

And suddenly the mood at the table became a whole lot somber.

"Well, well, well! If this isn't Reaper!"

The entire table turned around to face Pavel. Everyone wanted to change topics and they were all actually happy to see my, their, friend back on his feet. Pavel walked towards us with his arms open and a big smile on his face. He shook hands with everyone and got a couple of pats on the back. Camilla even kissed him on the cheek. Past Pavel would've looked at me smugly after that, but Present Pavel was not only in a committed relationship, but he was going to be a father soon as well.

I couldn't get over the fact that his daughter would be called Lavanya.

"So," Pavel said, sitting down in another dragged over chair. "Looks like you started early."

"No way!" Lamberti exclaimed. "We're waiting for you."

"Completely sober too!" Rob joined in.

Then they both looked at each other and giggled like prepubescent girls. Again.

"Of course," he smiled back at them. Pavel turned around and gestured for the waitress that I had talked to, to come take his order. "Hey Lys," he greeted her. "Can I have the usual?"

"Of course Pavel," she smiled at him.

"Lys," I called to her. "What the hell did you give me?"

My head wasn't spinning, it was shaking. The fact that I wasn't moving was pretty bad news.

Pavel glanced at the spare glass on the table and took a small sip from it after picking it up. "You're better off not knowing. And Lys, don't every serve him two of these again."

"I thought it might be funny," she offered with a smile.

"That's because you haven't seen Frank when he gets drunk."

"Oh, so this is Frank."

I decided to join. "Pavel, it frightens me that you've told absolutely everyone about me."

The waitress-that-happened-to-be-named-Lys looked at me and eyeballed me carefully. "You look a lot less impressive in person," she bluntly noted. "But then again, I don't believe I'm in any position to judge." She turned around and left, a slight swagger rocking her hips.

_Are all people so direct in here?_

"Hey! How come you didn't tell the pretty lady about me?" Rob complained loudly.

"Same here!" Lamberti joined, slapping his fist on the table and succeeding in knocking down his own drink.

"Relax," Pavel told him. Then he turned around and leaned close to me. "Think it's a good idea I tell them later?"

"Yeah, probably."

The floor was bobbing sideways.

"Relax Frank," Pavel told me after noting my discomfort. "Nothing you can't handle, right?"

* * *

><p>Wrong.<p>

"The fuck?"

"You finally came around, huh?"

"What the fuck?"

"Yes, you said that already."

I felt like I had just had the shit beaten out of me. My eyelids automatically closed again as soon as I tried opening them just a little. I took a couple of deep breaths and tried again. The edge of my vision was blurry and undefined, but with every millimeter that my eyes opened I could see more clearly. After half a minute my eyes were half opened and I was staring at a boring ceiling painted in dull military green.

"Where am I?"

"The Grenadier."

"Who are you?"

"Wow, not even bothering to turn around. Really?"

"Please don't shout."

"I'm no- fine. Sorry," she apologized. "I'm Lys."

"Who?"

"The waitress."

"Right. Why are you here?"

"Bar closed about an hour ago, you were passed out and Captain ordered me to stay behind to watch over you until you woke up."

What the fuck did you give me?" I demanded, slowly standing up. "Seriously."

"Something illegal," she admitted with a shrug, "but I didn't intend for you to drink four more."

"Jeez."

I immediately felt dizzy and something started lurching in my stomach. I put a hand to a chair to stay standing and then used my other hand to cover my mouth. The entire floor seemed to spin around me before I felt it coming.

"There's a bucket over there," Lys said disinterestedly.

I turned towards the direction where she was pointing and felt the contents of my stomach rising up through my esophagus. The acid burned my throat as it climbed up and then I threw up in the bucket. I groaned and tried catching my breath as soon as I finished throwing up for the first time. I was about to say something along the lines of 'fuck' when I felt round two coming.

Bits of vomit splashed back on my face as I threw up for the second time. The vomit itself was mostly liquid, a few chunks of half-digested food thrown in there for good measure. I sighed and spat twice, trying to get the bile out of my mouth. Before I could reach up and wipe my chin I felt my stomach twisting and lurching for the third time. This time it was just a little splash of alcohol hitting the vomit-filled bucket. I looked at my stomach's contents and spat several times at it.

"Here," Lys offered, handing me a couple of napkins.

I used them to wipe my mouth and chin, packing them into a ball as soon as I was finished and then tossing them in the bucket, adding them to the mix.

I leaned my head on a chair. "You should've warned me."

"You did ask me for the strongest thing we had."

"You should've warned me," I repeated.

She sighed. "You're probably right. In any case, I could've been sleeping right about now."

I just groaned as my head throbbed.

"I'll get you something for that headache. Wait here."

"I can't even stand up," I yelled as she left. "Where would I go."

Lys ignored me and brought me back a glass (plastic) filled with water. She then dumped some sort of tablet into it and waited for it to dissolve before handing me the red cup. I grabbed it weakly and placed it on the ground next to me. I used all the strength I possessed to turn around and sit down on the floor before I grabbed the drink and downed half the cup in two big gulps.

"It should help. Captain told me to give you this too."

I glanced at the candy bar that she was offering me. It had the look and consistency of hardened shit, the taste was the same as the look too. I was all too familiar with the energy bars the UNSC issued to us lowly grunts. I took a healthy munch of the thing, gagging at the consistency more than the taste before downing the rest of the red cup.

The headache was slowly receding and I could feel the rapid effects of the combat bar. My head was clearer and I no longer felt like every limb of mine was coated with a healthy dose of lead.

"You'd think we'd have a good cure for a hangover by now," I joked weakly.

"Hey, back in the day they just had to wear it out, sometimes hangovers lasted for days."

"Urban myth," I dismissed her. "Did I do anything stupid?"

"No, well yes, the five shots you took."

"You said those were illegal?"

"Yup."

"I could sue you for drugging me, you know that?"

"Yes, Captain and Pavel were very clear on that matter. I was almost fired because of you."

_Because of me. Fuck you._

"Fuck you!" she snapped back, indignant.

And my brain-mouth filter had just hit its expiration date.

Despite my rather rude comment, I was not one to back down on an argument. "You could've killed me. You still might!"

"Oh please, the meds would've pumped your stomach on the spot and you would've been ready for another night of getting wasted."

"Courtesy of yourself as well?" I taunted.

She tried saying something before making that weird noise of frustration that girls sometimes make when they are…ahem…frustrated. Yeah.

"What time is it?" I asked her after a while.

"What do you care."

"Well, if I didn't care I wouldn't have asked you."

She just looked away.

"Phone, what time is it?"

"Local time is twenty-six, fifty-nine."

"Call me a cab will ya?"

"Understood."

"MacPhone?" Lys asked.

I scoffed theatrically and glanced away, feigning offence and annoyance.

"See, that got a smile out of you," I told her.

"It did not," she said truthfully.

"Ahh, but now you're smiling."

She was. "Pavel always said you had your way with gi- words."

I shrugged, standing up once more and confirming that I could walk in a relatively straight line. My head wasn't hurting anymore, but I still felt a little queasy and a little bit hung over. "I'm surprised that Pavel told so much about me."

"Well, you were his only squad mate for about…what?"

"Seven years," I informed her. "Seven long years."

"He talked about the new squad as well, even though he barely knew them."

I looked at her. "Really? What did he say?"

"Not a lot," Lys admitted. "One incredibly talented sharpshooter, a pyromaniac who is also a reformed criminal, a friendly big guy, one certain rocket launcher prodigy with a penchant for shout outs to twenty-first century culture, another incredibly talented soldier that never talks about his past, and the only female squad member. He very often emphasized her looks." She added, "Oh, her I saw."

"Not many people miss her."

"You've got something with her?"

"No," I dismissed almost immediately. "She's pretty and all, but she's still in my squad and is my subordinate."

"Huh, superior rank didn't stop you when you were going out with… whatserface?"

"Ok, stop right there. Pavel might've told you a bunch of things, but my personal life is none of your business."

"Fair enough," she admitted.

"Why you poking?" I counter-attacked. "I mean, you barely know me and you seem awfully interested in my relationships." The implication was very clear.

"Don't get excited," she warned me. "You're an interesting character, I just want to get to know you a little bit better."

"I hardly think that could happen, I'll be deployed to some distant world pretty soon."

She was about to reply when one door burst open. "Hey Lys, what- Oh, I see you finally woke up."

I looked over my shoulder and spotted Murphy. "Hey," I greeted him weakly.

He raised an eyebrow at me. "I would've sworn that you'd be down for at least another couple of hours."

I shrugged. The repetitive act was starting to strain my shoulders. "I guess I'm good at processing alcohol, and throwing up. Where's your bathroom?"

He chuckled before pointing to a corner. I quickly made my way there and relieved myself in the squeaky-clean urinals. The sensations that tingled through my body were pleasant, they were similar to finally being able to lie down and rest after a long day of work, but you know, better.

"So Frank," Murphy said as soon as I returned. "You feeling better?"

I nodded several times. "I haven't heard anything about you other than you're in the military Murphy," I pointed out.

"And I know a lot of shit about you," he smiled at me. "Fair enough. Shoot."

"You're retired, I take it."

"Only temporarily," he informed me with a crooked grin. "But yes, right now I am."

"Unit?"

"Fourth Battalion, Twelfth Marines."

I nodded, the 12th was garrisoned here in Viery, but its headquarters were in New Alexandria. The city was home to the ONI offices as well as several very important UNSC buildings, it could be said that despite Esztergom and Manassas being bigger cities, New Alexandria was the hub of the military in Viery.

"How long did you serve?" I asked him.

"Half a dozen tours, most of them against those goddamned Innies, but I faced the Covenant a few times."

"You retire because of a wound?"

"Nah, I was just tired, besides, most of my family and friends live here. I missed them."

"And yet you still spend your time hanging out with old unit members in a military bar."

"I became used to that kind of life," he admitted regretfully, "and now I can't seem to get used to civilian life. To dull."

"Hang in there," I said reassuringly. "I hear it's tough to get used to the lack of explosions and plasma fire."

This time it was his turn to chuckle. "Maybe I just need a couple of extra years, eh?"

I shrugged. "This is the only life I know."

"Yeah, Pavel did mention you being raised on a military base."

"Anything else he didn't mention about me? The size of my package, maybe? Oh, I know, who I went to prom with."

Murphy shrugged and smiled at me.

"I think he mentioned that you skipped your prom," Lys said from behind. The bucket that I had thrown up into was in one of her hands, clean and vomit-free. "But I'm not sure," she added a second later.

"My school didn't even have prom," I sighed. "I was making a rhetorical statement."

"Your cab has arrived," my phone informed me.

"And with that, gentleman and lady, I leave." I did a small bow at them, only realizing my mistake when the building started shaking in several different directions once again. I took a moment to steady myself before making my way towards the door, grabbing my coat on the way. "See you around."

"You too," Murphy said.

"Bye," Lys waved.

The cold wind hit my face the moment I opened the door, further sobering me up but actually managing to make me feel even weaker. I patted myself to make sure that both my pistol and my knife were still in their intended hiding places before climbing into the boxy vehicle.

"Please tell me your destination," the robotic voice of the cab's console asked. The vehicle was connected to the city's AI, it would drive itself to my hotel as quickly as regulations allowed for it to, taking the shortest possible route. "Gunnery Sergeant Castillo," it added after its sensors recognized either my ID card or the neural implant in the back of my head.

"Hotel California," I said, trying to doze off.

"Would you like me to play some music?"

I didn't understand the question, so I simply repeated my destination as the yellow metal box started moving. To my surprise a guitar riff started playing on the speakers. Out of curiosity, I left the song to play. It was similar to softer Flip music, but not particularly my style. The lyrics, however, were awfully dark. I didn't need to be a poet to interpret the meaning of them. They were rather direct as to what they were referencing.

_On a dark desert highway, cool wind in my hair _

_Warm smell of colitas, rising up through the air_

_Up ahead in the distance, I saw a shimmering light _

_My head grew heavy and my sight grew dim._

You don't really have to be a genius to figure out that the singer was dead or dying, making his way to the shimmering light, most commonly known as the light at the end of the tunnel or heaven. Don't ask me what colitas are and don't tell me either, that could ruin my entire interpretation of the verses.

_I had to stop for the night _

_There she stood in the doorway; _

_I heard the mission bell _

_And I was thinking to myself, _

_'this could be heaven or this could be hell'_

So, this 'she' is an angel and the doorway is probably a gateway to heaven. The only problem I found with the previous five lines was the last one. Heaven or hell meant that the person had lived a pretty morally ambiguous life.

Suddenly, I felt very depressed and sad. The song seemed to hit just the place necessary for me. You'd think a song was just a song, but this one in particular got me thinking of my life as I listened to it. Life was a fickle thing, George's death had proven that. As the song went on and on it became painfully obvious that the protagonist wasn't in heaven. More likely purgatory or hell. The last line definitely nailed it for me though.

"Cab, who wrote this?"

"A band called The Eagles," the robotic voice replied dully.

"When?"

"The single was released over half a millennium ago, in the year 1977."

Wow, five hundred and something years of being written and the song still managed to make me feel like jumping off a building. I don't know who those The Eagles guys were, but they should've jumped off of a building themselves before writing that hedonistic and depressing song.

Well, the song being five hundred years old probably meant that I had misinterpreted it. The words probably had a different meaning back then than they had nowadays. For some reason that didn't make me feel better at all.

"We have arrived."

"Thanks cab, charge the ride on my UNSC account."

"It was a pleasure driving you."

"Yeah, yeah."

I walked inside the hotel and walked straight to the receptionist. "Any reason in particular why this hotel is called like this?"

The receptionist seemed surprised by my question, but he immediately got his bearings and replied. "Yes, the founder named it after some very old song. We were never sure exactly why, but it was supposed to be some kind of joke."

_Hell of a joke…_

"Thanks," I told him.

And with that in mind, I headed to my room to try to wean off a hangover and nurse an emerging depression.

* * *

><p><em>Thanks to Sniper Fodder for proof-reading this chapter.<em>

_Ok, so before I go into my usual comments relating my hardships when writing this or how I suddenly got a Eureka Moment and decided to give you guys one hell of a story I'll have to keep a promise. I pointed out that there were several references in this chapter, and one of you found most of them. An anonymous poster (who asked me to refer to him as **that one asshole**) mentioned them in the review section._

_ I'm never going to hear the end of this..._

_Number one: skull with raven, correct. *clap*_

_Number two: no Halo Wars reference, correct. *clap*_

_Number three: Captain Montgomery, wrong. *no clap* I was actually talking about Captain Roy Montgomery from Castle, his actor also had an episode in Person of Interest where he played a retired soldier that opens a military bar in New York._

_Number four: chapter title, correct. *clap*_

_Well, since he figured out most of them and was smart enough to notice that a large section of the chapter is inspired by the live action commercial for Halo 3: ODST (which is coincidentally named "The Life", go figure) I think he was pretty good and thorough. I will, in** that one asshole's** words, learn some imagination to try and make this story better._

_Well, not that I dedicated a sizable portion of this post-chapter thingy I think that it's about time I stopped wasting your time. As always, I hope you enjoyed reading this chapter. I am glad that so many of you could see the button and took the time to click on it. :) _

_Which reminds me... **200+ reviews!** fuck yeah! Thanks guys!_

_Stay Strong_

_-casquis_

_PS: I know Hotel California has nothing to do with Frank's interpretation of it._


	107. The Reason You Suck

Chapter CVII: The Reason You Suck

**December 13, 2543 (UNSC Calendar)/one month later**

**New Alexandria,**** Viery Territory, Reach, Epsilon Eridany System**

* * *

><p><em>"I'm a military wife now, that means that I can legally mess with government property."- Amber Klaus<em>

* * *

><p>"So you're not going to be back for…how long?"<p>

I shrugged. "Not sure, but it's probably going to be somewhere near six months."

Marie blew her hair out of her face in mock frustration. "And I was just beginning to think that you were warming up to me."

I remembered the first time I had seen Marie Megalos. M&M for short. Pavel had finally succeeded in his dream of breaking up with his girlfriend through being an asshole (a dream that I wholly supported) and had asked me over for a celebratory dinner in a fancy restaurant that probably cost him half that month's paycheck. Marie had been the hostess on duty at the time. She had given me her phone when we were done, but sadly, I deployed that same morning, rendering our plans useless.

That had been just over a year ago, and that phone number had developed into a beautiful relationship.

If you can call daily sex with no commitment a relationship at all. That suited both my needs and hers just fine.

After finding it incredibly hard getting a female marine to jump in bed with me I decided to take a different approach. Feeling rather lazy I jumped on a Pelican and called Marie to see if she was still interested in getting involved in some sheet tangling. It took her a few moments to remember me, but she said that she was interested and took up my offer.

"Don't flatter yourself Ems," I dismissed her suggestion. "I'm merely getting accustomed to the sight of the twins." I reached forward with both my hands, fingers outstretched. Of course, since we were in a public place, she immediately took a step back after batting my arms to the side.

"Really?" she raised her eyebrow at me. "You want me fired?"

"No, I want you out early."

She sighed impatiently, no doubt eager to get back to work before her manager scolded her for taking too much off time. She looked stunning, as usual, but her black dress, heels, and professional-looking hairdo were definitely reminiscent of several fantasies.

Yeah, you know you're thinking about it too.

"I'm sorry, but I can't. Some important costumer is coming here and the boss wants him to get the best treatment."

"And that includes that lovely cleavage of yours."

She pressed her elbows together for my pleasure. "Yes. I'm sorry, but you're just going to have to make do without me or find somebody else to _satisfy your needs_. I'm sorry."

I finally realized the futility of my attempts. "You're not going to be six months inside a tin can filled with men."

"There are women in the military too," she reminded me. "What about that squad mate of yours, Camilla?"

"That is wrong on so many levels."

"Why? People have sex with their superiors all the time."

"Not in the military," I scoffed incredulously. Yeah, yeah, I'm a total hypocrite. "Especially if you're getting it on with someone directly subordinate to yourself."

She groaned in exasperation. "Well, I'm sorry, but I have to go."

"Good bye then," I said bitterly, although I found it hard to be actually pissed at Marie.

"No, not good bye," she immediately corrected. "We'll see each other again."

I smiled. She really did care. "And then I'll proceed to f-"

"Marie!" her manager yelled.

_-the shit out of one another… _I mentally finished.

"So, see you later?" she suggested.

"See you later," I echoed.

She put on her brightest smile before kissing me lightly on the cheek and walking towards her boss and apologizing profusely. Few people could resist to female charm, but even fewer people could resist the aforementioned charm of one woman with looks like Marie. I did not count myself as one of those. The only two people who could probably resist her smile were her father and her brother. And even then her father would probably have a weak spot for his beloved daughter.

But enough with baseless speculation.

I walked out of the restaurant, digging my hands into my pockets and pressing my chin against my chest to protect myself from the chilly wind. I really wished for a hood right about then. The snow hit me in the face, flushing my cheeks and chilling the unprotected parts of my body. I had put on a scarf, but I had thought that three months of growing my regular jarhead cut would be enough to protect me from the windshield.

It very clearly showed that I was raised in a tropical place where the only cold I felt was when the air conditioner was too damn high.

Fortunately, my Hog had more than enough features to make me feel like I was right at home despite being inside a car. But then again, that's the purpose, isn't it? Since I wasn't going to get any action I just sat in the car, my hands on the wheel while I thought about what I could possibly do. The obvious answer was to get shitfaced in some bar with the hopes of snagging some girl before I was too far gone, but the floor still shook occasionally ever since I had taken those shots of whatever.

So getting shitfaced was a definite no-no.

I would've gone to The Grenadier to have a few drinks and exchange some stories, but that was a couple hundred miles away and Marina was no longer my girlfriend, which meant that she wouldn't drive me for free. As a matter of fact, she wouldn't drive me. Period. Of course, I could've asked Zekalwe and he probably would've agreed, but I would feel guilty to force him to serve as my chauffeur on behalf of a couple of drinks.

Well, maybe I could've-

Nah, too much of a dick move.

"Call Pavel."

"Calling Pavel," my phone replied.

"Well no shit."

I heard a couple of beeps before Pavel's gruff voice came in. "Frank," he said simply.

"Pavel," I replied in kind.

"The fuck do you want Frank?"

"What are you doing right now?"

"This is my last day with my wife for a very long time, what the fuck do you think I'm doing?"

"Hey Frank, how you doing?" Amber called out.

"Evening Mrs. Klaus, I'm sorry to disturb what is undoubtedly a mediocre occasion."

"Apology accepted," she replied. "And it isn't mediocre at all."

I smiled to myself. _Atta boy Pavs._

"Give us a min Amber," Pavel asked his wife.

"Fine," I heard her sigh, "but don't make it too long."

_Ha, too long._

I heard the sound of a door sliding closed before I spoke up again. "Tell me, what's she wearing?"

"Frank…"

"Fine, what _isn't_ she wearing."

"Frank…" he warned sternly.

"Sorry," I apologized sincerely. "I wanted to have some drinks with you, but seeing as you're-"

"Busy."

"Currently-"

"Engaged otherwise."

"Engaging in-"

"A personal-"

"Commitment."

"Which includes-"

"Personal things."

"Such as coitus," I finished.

"Fuck you Frank."

"And you fuck her too," I ordered him. "Make her remember you, in a good way, you know."

"I think my child would take care of that."

I chuckled. "Of course."

"And talking about fucking."

"What else do we talk about?" I asked. "Seriously."

"And talking about fucking, you get yourself some, I don't want you moping about military chicks being to mechanical."

_Heh. Yeah._

"Little too late for that," I shrugged at him, "but I'll give it a shot regardless."

"Good luck, see you in a few."

"Agreed."

I hung up and thought some more. I no doubt looked like an idiot staring out at nothing inside a car with its engine on and the headlights flashing. Of course, a courteous New Alexandrian snapped me out of my daze by bombarding my ears with the lovely sound of his recent-model Caballo sports car. Hell, the horn sounded as classy as the car looked.

Unfortunately for the driver of the conspicuous vehicle, I was not nearly as classy as he made himself out to be. So I took my time while backing out, making the turns too short on purpose and only tapping the accelerator ever so slightly. My three-point turn ended up being a thirty-two point turn. I had plenty of space, but I made it seem like I was trying to turn a luggage cart around in a confined hallway. The only thing the poor man could do was honk and yell at me. He was lucky I was sober, had I been in this mood and drunk I would've crashed his pretty little Caballo.

Instead, I tortured him for perhaps two minutes and a half before I left the parking lot and drove towards my hotel. If Marie had the night shift that meant that she wouldn't be getting out for at least three hours, I was supposed to report to base in three hours and forty-five minutes, and I had to return my car and work out some paperwork regarding insurance and the like. If I took a decent-length nap I would be able to make it in time.

* * *

><p>But I didn't take a decent-length nap and I didn't make it in time.<p>

"Name."

"Sta- Gunnery Sergeant Francisco Castillo."

"ID number?"

"Is that really necessary?"

The clerk shrugged and tapped the holographic keyboard, inputting my name into the designated box.

"There are twenty-seven men of that name and rank in the UNSC Defense Forces. And one woman," he informed me. "But that one can be discarded. Am I mistaken?"

"No, you're not," I replied good-naturedly. "I'm ODST."

"That much is evident." The clerk tapped a couple of invisible buttons and dragged something in his screen. "There it is." He raised an eyebrow before looking at me. "You were about to be declared AWOL."

I shrugged and tried my best to look innocent. "I had some unexpected delays."

"None of my business, report to landing pad S-201. Your chariot awaits there."

I smiled and thanked the clerk.

_What the hell's a chariot?_

I didn't have to walk long before I hopped on a monorail. I honestly have no idea why they still call them that, as there are no actual rails to speak of, but you know what I mean. It moved through the base quickly, stopping once to let in a pair of chatting techs. Of course, as soon as they saw the insignia on my chest they shut up and went to the other side of the small wagon, where they sat down and remained quiet.

I suppressed a smirk of satisfaction at that, some people make us out to be psychopathic soldiers out to kill just for pleasure, others make us to be heroes who kick ass because they're good at it. Still others make us out as glorified soldiers while others rank us a step down from gods. All of them agreed on one thing: we are fucking crazy.

While I did enjoy the fame (or infamy) and the perks that came along with it, it sometimes felt like people treated me extremely carefully, keeping me at bay with a long stick, as if they were afraid that I could kill them. There were very few people that treated me normally, but the few that did I could count as friends and (in most cases) depend on them.

Unless your name is Krikor Darbinian.

The two techs jumped off on their stop and left me to myself as the wagon sped through two miles worth of airstrips, hangars, and landing pads. I took in the sight of hundreds of aircraft being fixed, taking off, landing, or just sitting around. I was particularly interested in a Longsword taking off. It sped up before quickly pulling up and banking to the left. The craft's trajectory indicated that it wouldn't be leaving the lower atmosphere. At least not immediately. As I watched a second Longsword repeat the same maneuvered I realized something. The thing needed an actual runway to take off, it might be only three hundred meters, but you'd think that all of our planes would be able to do VTOL. We _are_ in the twenty-sixth century after all.

Eventually the rail car started slowing down before coming to a definitive halt. I grabbed the two duffel bags containing the entirety of my belongings and threw one of them over my shoulder as I headed towards the pad designated as 201. I was already in the S section, but the walk was still relatively lengthy. By the time I arrived I had switched the position of my bags several times and my back was starting to strain.

"Frank. What the fuck?"

"Sorry," I apologized to Pavel. My friend was looking at me with a very understandable expression that informed me just exactly what he thought of my tardiness. "There was a slight inconvenience."

"No, an inconvenience is a ship," he said. "To be this late you must've found a goddamned fleet! Albaf was about to declare you AWOL!"

"I heard. Nice metaphor by the way."

He smiled with satisfaction. "Thanks, I came up with it just recently. While I was waiting. For you. For a very long amount of time."

"I said I was sorry."

"And I'm willing to bet that you didn't miss the appointed time because you got laid."

"No," I admitted reluctantly. "I overslept."

You have to understand my position here. Being a soldier (an incredibly talented one at that) means that I go without sleep for some time. Nightmares, bad dreams, and the like also come in the package. Not to mention that whenever I do get some sleep I always end up being awoken by some sort of dire situation or other. Curious, isn't it?

"Great," Pavel mumbled. "Be sure to get some before we go into cryo, I don't want you complaining or taking mysteriously long showers."

"Hey!" I yelled defensively. "You were the one who disabled the shower overrides in the first place so that you could shower without having your water cut off!"

Pavel seemed like he was about to say something, but I had evened up with him and he didn't want to start something that we would both regret. Probably because the rest f the squad was in the Pelican's troop bay not twenty yards away and they would hear our rather embarrassing conversation. Smart call on his side.

I started walking towards the craft in question and hopped in. Reaper Squad was already inside, Arcangelo and Rob looked to be sleeping while Camilla was reading through something on her datapad. Naveen was polishing the scope for his EMR with a rag, occasionally stopping to adjust it after placing it to his eye. Grigori, stoic as ever was simply leaning backwards on his chair with his hands clasped over his lap. His cap firmly placed over his head.

"About time Sarge," the only female member of Reaper said. "We've been picking at our eyes here. Literally, I started poking my eyes to see what it felt like before Konstantinov lent me his datapad."

"I wouldn't want a soldier without depth perception covering my ass," the man of Russian ancestry said simply.

"Well, I'm here now and you didn't blind yourself. We can go now."

I secured my two duffel bags to the netting hanging on the Pelican's ceiling before placing them on the ledges above the sitting spaces. I went towards my preferred seat, the closest one to the exit on the left side of the dropship. Sadly, Arcangelo was occupying it. Well, sadly for him.

"Oi!" I said, borrowing the word from my Scottish subordinate. "Wake up." At least I didn't borrow the accent.

"What?" he exclaimed, jerking slightly. "Sarge? You're finally here!"

"Yes, now scoot."

He groaned and moaned in protest, but he unbuckled himself and shuffled sideways two seats over. His moves were clumsy and he looked one step below drunk.

"Glad to see you're sober," I pointed out, being only half sarcastic.

The ex-con only groaned again. "I still am drunk. And hungover, at the same time."

I shrugged at him. "Well, it happens to the best of us."

"To you more than the rest," Pavel helpfully pointed out.

"The smuggled moonshine I had in prison didn't give me headaches half as bad," Lamberti slurred. "That little bottle of mystery drink that I bought off that stupid waitress almost killed me."

"And Rob," I pointed out.

"He's completely out," Grigori informed me. "I even had some medic scan him to make sure he was all right."

"And?"

"His blood alcohol is…high."

"Well, that's not permanent. At any rate, he can get a cloned liver."

The sober members of my squad chuckled lightly at the joke before they buckled themselves in and banged on the cockpit to signal the pilot that we could leave. It took all of ten seconds to wake the pilot of the D77-TC Pelican and another half minute to get him to stop complaining about my tardiness. He had a job, though, a job that he had to do to get paid, so he turned on the engines and did his pre-flight after a rather lengthy rant that ended with Pavel threatening to break three fingers in his left hand if he didn't shut up.

"So, what's with the crates?" I asked, pointing at the objects in question strapped down to the Pelican's blood tray.

"Ammunition for the 'Dillos," Camilla explained.

"How'd you know?" I asked her.

"The big stamp that says so."

To my credit, the big stamp that said so wasn't visible from my position.

"Cam, Cam, Cam, I half expected you to do some ass-pull regarding the shape and measurements of the crates."

"Well, they're your standard three-by-two-by-two, so they could be carrying pretty much anything smaller than an M7."

I chuckled.

"You just had to point out that you knew that, didn't you?" Lamberti asked sarcastically.

"No, I just had to point out that you didn't," she retorted.

"I'm not in the mood for this," the man replied before letting his head slump forward.

"What about you Grigori?" I asked. "I haven't seen you since that night in The Grenadier. What have you been up to?" I was prodding him for information, but that would've been evident only to him and me, perhaps to Pavel, but his knowledge on the matter was more limited than my own.

"Just meeting some old friends," he replied vaguely.

"Really, what kind of friends?"

"Personal friends." There was a definite emphasis on the first word. Subtle, but still there. The man was essentially telling me to fuck off and that this wasn't any of my business. The problem was that it probably was something directly involved with him, especially if it had sent him underground for about a month. I could trust that man with my life in the battlefield, but outside of it I wouldn't trust him with a pair of used briefs.

"Well, glad you caught up with them. What about you Cam?"

"I have some friends here as well," she explained."Did some of the regular tourist stuff in New Alexandria, went hiking in Szurdok with some friends, pretty good place for rock-climbing too. Granted, it's as ugly as it gets, but I had fun."

I was itching to ask her if she had gotten laid, but that probably would've been misinterpreted. It's just that I felt a little protective of her, same with the whole squad, except Arcangelo perhaps. That and I regretted the fact that she was out of bounds for any physical activity that involved more contact than sparring. Hell, jiu-jitsuing with her might've been a little bit awkward when it came down to physical contact. She was a squad mate, it was pretty much impossible for me to think of her in that way.

_Except when she wears those tight pants she seems so fond of._

I shook my head, forcing the thought away.

"We all know where Pavel has been," I said suggestively.

Pavel had told Reaper about his marriage as well. They all congratulated him and teased him for not inviting us to the wedding, but no one was genuinely angry at him. I guess they weren't close enough to him for that yet.

Camilla smiled. "Good for him, right Snark?"

"I guess," the marksman said disinterestedly.

Soon after that, the Pelican left the gravitational pull of that large rock that we liked to call Reach. It flew in what I made out to be a straight line for perhaps a couple of minutes.

"Anchor-9, this is Delta-two-zero-one, requesting permission to dock."

"Roger that Two-zero-one, you are free to dock in Hangar 1, a tube is being extended, you should be able to see it."

"I see it Anchor-9, thanks a bunch."

I grabbed my dogtags and shoved them back under my shirt as the lack of gravity took a hold of them once again. The pelican spun, the only indication that I had for that was the shifting of Reach outside the rear hatch window. I heard a loud clanging and then a hiss, the sound of pressures matching up. I unbuckled myself just as the rest of my squad did the same. Lamberti shook Robert awake while the doors opened.

Two navy personnel entered the craft and untied the crates, sending them floating randomly. They pushed them all the way down a tube with padded walls, at the end of the tube another man would grab them and place them on the floor, pushing them downwards carefully to ensure that they would stay there. While they did that we jumped towards our bags and grabbed them, being careful not to hit one another or to get stuck out of reach of anything to hold on to.

There are few feelings worse than that of floating right in the middle of a room with your hands and feet inches from the walls and not being able to move. Ideally you'd throw a shirt or a shoe, but the feeling is still a bad one.

Once we all had strapped our bags to ourselves we jumped the length of the umbilical tube and onto the small room that separated us from Anchor-9 itself. There were handholds on the ceiling designed to be…well… held onto. We grabbed onto those and forced our feet to face the floor. The long tube retracted into itself after Pelican S-201 detached and left. As soon as it was completely collapsed a door closed it off from this room.

"Warning," a synthetic voice warned. It was distinctly an AI, a dumb AI by the sound of it. "Gravity in three, two, one."

My stomach lurched as I suddenly felt the full weight of my artificially-dense muscles and bones. I even jerked slightly backwards as the two duffel bags did their best to drag me to the floor as gravity appeared. I felt myself ever so lighter than I had back on Reach. It was tradition to keep all UNSC vehicles at one standard gravity, the same as back on Earth. A little bit self-centered and inconsiderate if you ask me, but the military does love tradition.

A small unmanned cart emerged from the door as soon as it opened. The three navy guys loaded the ammunition onto it before walking out, the car hot on their heels.

It was not the first time I had been on an Anchor station, it was the first time I had been on Anchor-9 though, but in my experience, all of these stations were pretty much the same. It wasn't like we could get lost, we emerged into a huge-ass hangar, there were two different airlocks that joined this station with the _Inconvenience's_ own hangar, increasing the overall size of the room.

I beckoned to my team to follow me through the huge space. Pavel quickly caught up to me and walked in step with me, the rest of the team a couple of steps behind.

"Never ceases to amaze me," Pavel said. "How chaos can be so organized."

Enlisted men, engineers and resupply officers, were running around the place. Most of them were pushing carts or carrying crates, others had the privilege of an automatic cart, but they still had to load and unload things manually. A couple of cargo exo-skeletons manned by skilled operators carried bigger equipment towards the _Inconvenience_, the limbs of the mechas moving as swiftly as if they were living, breathing creatures.

Our ship was supposed to depart pretty quickly, and they were trying to get everything done as fast as possible.

"There are always delays," I told Pavel. "No need to worry about me being late."

"Yes," he admitted, "but these kinds of delays are to be expected, you to miss departure by that long is just wrong."

"Once again, I'm sorry. I truly am."

"Yeah," he scoffed, "but just because Albaf is going to give your ass a reaming."

"Umm, actually, I'm not into that," I replied, letting him realize just how dirty his phrase had sounded.

_Oh Pavel, it's good to have you back._

"Good to know Sarge," Cam said playfully.

"I'm into that," Lamberti added.

I could not tell whether he was actually serious or not, so the entire squad decided to drop the topic lest our minds were permanently scarred by undesired mental images.

"You know," Cam suddenly said, breaking our silence. "A ream is equivalent to five hundred paper sheets."

We all groaned at her completely trivial fact.

We were briefly stopped by another clerk before we were allowed to access the _Inconvenience's_ hangar. We all showed him our identification cards and were promptly allowed to walk inside. Our ship's crew was mostly unloading equipment into different elevators and storage spaces. Most of the stuff being stored right now was ammunition, the more important stuff having been loaded first. Of course, half the Pelicans were still being repaired, the image of a refitted ship wouldn't have been complete without sparks and mechanics, amirite?

"Think you ought to go meet up with Albaf?" Camilla asked as we hopped on an elevator.

"Me, oh hell no, I'm not meeting up with her until I get a warning over the speakers. Right Liz?"

"Sorry Francisco, Commander Albaf requested I inform her the moment you set foot on the ship."

I stifled a curse. "Well, have you-"

"Yes."

"And…"

"She would like for you to report to her office immediately."

"Well I'll be damned."

The elevator doors opened and we all piled out of the large device. My team stood there for a moment, looking like they didn't really want to be onboard the ship. I sighed, it was about this moment when I realized that just maybe I would've loved a boring civilian life being a lawyer or something like that. Pavel looked worse than everyone else. He had, after all, just left his wife behind. From what little I knew about Amber, she was a hell of a catch and an outstanding person. I must've dedicated a little bit more time to get to know my best friend's wife.

"Hey bro," I called to him. "Hold my bags." I tossed him both my duffel bags at the same time, forcing him to drop his own to catch mine. He glared at me before slinging them over his shoulder. At least I had distracted him from his missing wife and all that.

I just wished someone could've saved me from having a verbal beat down from Albaf.

I made my way through a crowded ship and stopped right in front of Albaf's office. I couldn't help but notice how people tended to give this door in particular a wide berth. The ONI logo on top of it was a pretty good giveaway as to what horrors could be found beyond this simple gray door.

Huh, the way I make it sound you'd think the only thing it was missing was a three-headed dog named Fluffy.

Another thing I couldn't help but notice was that the name plaque on the door now had Commander Samantha Albaf on it as opposed to just Commander Albaf. It was a little surprising since the woman was very private and kept to herself as often as possible, revealing something like her name struck me as something that she wouldn't do willingly.

I ignored it and knocked on the door. Antiquated, I know, but I did it regardless.

Of course the door opened automatically without anyone waiting for me behind it. That was just rude. And creepy.

The first thing that I noticed was that the entire office had been remodeled. And I mean completely remodeled, the layout was completely different than what I was used to. The ONI section had been transformed into something resembling a civilian office, with a smallish reception-style section before the actual office. It looked almost harmless.

"Lieutenant," I acknowledged Wilkins. He was tapping on a terminal when I entered. He seemed not to notice my presence for a few seconds. Eventually he tapped the holographic keyboard a little bit too hard and looked up, staring me straight in the eye.

"The commander is waiting for you."

"Wish me luck," I swallowed.

Of course, the man was a complete rock, so he didn't even look at me. Few times had Wilkins showed any emotion at all. Sometimes I wondered if he were some sort of android with advanced AI. I mean, we were in the year 2543, it should've been possible by now. Besides, there were some conspiracy theories running around regarding that issue. It didn't seem so farfetched.

Well, except for the fact that ONI would probably hire someone that behaved like a robot before making a robot that behaved exactly like itself. I mean, what's the point in that?

"Commander," I said as soon as the door slid closed behind me.

Albaf was sitting in an expensive leather chair with a tall back, hiding everything but the top of her head from view. The pose seemed familiar for some reason, but I couldn't quite place it. Perhaps it was one of those stupid movies that Robert had gotten us all into. Regardless, the position was somewhat intimidating when you coupled it with the low lighting.

"This is all a game to you, isn't it?"

_Yup, definitely familiar._

"I'm afraid I don't understand," I replied in a cool and collected voice, playing ignorant.

"Don't play ignorant with me Gunnery Sergeant!" she snapped.

_Ok, that just adds to the overall level of creepiness._

"Ma'am."

"Don't ma'am me. You know full well that you were over two hours late for your transport."

"I am aware of that."

"And," she pressed, finally swinging around in her chair.

"And I am sorry."

"Sorry doesn't cut it Sergeant," Albaf shouted violently. "You've been in the military for how long?"

She made a pause, so I assumed that the question wasn't rhetorical. "Ten years ma'am."

"Ten fucking years," she repeated. "And yet you still behave like a child or a movie character." I did my best to look impassive as she went on. "You are in the military, not in a propaganda cartoon. You have to act like it. That means you have to be punctual, that means you have to follow orders, that means you have to be respectful to your superiors and shine your boots!"

I opened and closed my mouth several times. "Yes ma'am."

"You joined the Helljumpers. Did you really think it would be fun?"

Actually, I did.

She went on. "You probably thought that you'd be jumping out of ships blasting aliens with surprising ease."

That, I actually did on a regular basis.

"And that everyone would treat you like a hero."

Very few people actually did that.

Albaf sighed, rubbing her temples. "Listen Frank, my superiors are very interested in you for some reason or other, I cannot fathom why, but then again, I'm on a need to know basis. They want me to keep you on a tight leash or they'll replace me with someone a lot less friendly than myself."

"Yes ma'am. I understand."

"Do you?" she asked. This time I was pretty sure it was rhetorical. "Because for the amount of time that I have known you, you have been nothing but a maverick, a loose cannon. Sure, you're one hell of a soldier, I'm not going to argue with that, but you behave like you're untouchable the rest of the time."

In my defense, I could hardly know what I behaved like because all my views of myself were heavily biased.

"You are literally the only marine below officer rank that I have ever known to speak up to the captain of his own fucking ship for something comparatively stupid. You act like the hero of some action movie. You're not, you're just another lowly grunt in an army full of men like you Frank. You treat everyone like shit, myself included. You actually behave like you are better than the rest of us, like you're untouchable. The worst part is that you do it in a way that makes it seem like you _want_ to let everyone know it." Albaf looked up and stared at me with those piercing eyes of hers, no warmth was to be found in them. "You are charismatic and you use that to your advantages. You really are nothing more than a bully. A manipulator even." Commander Samantha Albaf sighed almost sadly before looking back up at me. "No matter how talented, special, or good you are, no matter how high your kill-count is, you are not in the position to behave like you do right now."

I nodded sharply.

"Are we clear."

"Yes ma'am," I managed to get out.

"Good, either you start behaving or you'll get someone that isn't afraid to use the leash on you and I'll get a desk job. Dismissed."

I saluted sharply and turned around before marching out of her office, pissed as can be. I wasn't just angry at her because she had basically given me a speech listing all the reasons why I sucked, I was angry because she had been right.

I all but stormed out of the room and walked all the way towards the gym. People must've caught the look in my eye, because they all gave me a wide berth, wider than usual. Once I arrived at the gym I headed directly for one punching bag. I was lucky that most of the ships complement and crew were unpacking and catching up with one another, leaving the gym empty.

I started venting my anger on the punching bag, hitting it as hard as I could, doing my best to break something. I couldn't really tell whether it was my hand or the leather bag that I wanted to break.

Eventually I got tired. I could barely throw a decent punch after half an hour of uninterrupted hitting. My elbows were sore from all the effort and all of my knuckles were raw and bloody. I kneed the punching bag from below before finally holding on to it and letting myself fall down slowly to the floor. My shirt was soaked in sweat and I was breathing fast and shallow, trying to pump some oxygen back into my blood. I stared at the swinging punching back from the floor, watching it go from side to side directly above me.

"Francisco," Eliza said. "I would recommend you stand up and walk around a little. And a visit to the ship's psychologist."

"Very funny Liz," I groaned as I tried standing up. I succeeded in standing up with the help of the same punching bag that I had been doing my best to kill. I could only grimace at the blood stains on it. "Where are we headed?"

"Regular patrol duty in the Zeta Lupus system," she replied in her usual playful voice.

"Colonies there?" I asked, only just starting to catch my breath.

"Two, Miridem and Wolff. Miridem is more heavily populated than Wolff. Wolff itself is a moon orbiting Zeta Lupus VI, a gas giant just on the edge of the system's frost line."

"Give me some background on it," I asked her, mostly because I wanted a distraction.

"Zeta Lupus is a relatively new colony at just under a hundred years of age."

"Relatively new for an Inner Colony, you mean."

"The UNSC has deemed the term 'Inner Colony' outdated and presumptuous."

"Yeah, because there are no Outer Colonies anymore," I retorted.

Eliza seemed to sigh, but she didn't voice the actual sound. "An incorrect statement Francisco, there are a few Outer Colonies, as you call them, still operating, safe from Covenant eyes. Crassus is one of them."

"Yeah, yeah. What else can you tell me about Wolff?"

"It was originally very similar to Titan, only needing relatively minor terraforming to make its temperature tolerable. Its inhabitants still need to wear oxygen packs when going outside, but that is only a minor inconvenience."

"And Miridem?" I asked.

"Your regular successful colony, plenty of people and a booming local industry. It is what you would call a science colony, with a relatively large section of the population working in science or science-related industries. In fact, several updates to armor configurations used throughout the UNSC are designed there," Eliza informed me.

"Built on Mars, I take it."

"Isn't everything?" she joked.

I allowed myself a small smile before taking a drink from one of the water dispensers in the gymnasium.

"Why exactly are we deploying there?"

"FLEETCOM Sector Two has had a substantial increase in Covenant activity in recent months, the UNSC is sending additional ships to the sector in case there is an attack." She added, "As a quick reaction force."

"Uh-huh," I shook my head. "I'll bet you ten credits that we are called to some planet before our deployment ends."

"I'd take that bet, but, unlike you, AIs do not receive salary."

I stared at the speaker from which Eliza was speaking. It would be a lot easier to address a physical representation of the construct, I could never get used to being talked to from several directions.

"Can't you just like…create money?"

"And what would you offer in return?"

"Damn Liz, you don't have to overanalyze everything, I was just joking. Cynically I might add."

"I am an artificial intelligence, I am _designed_ to overanalyze things."

"Fair enough," I granted. "How much longer till we reach the edge of the system?"

"Two hours," she informed me, "the captain is only doing point-nine percent of our thrusting capacity. Our engines had to be refitted, you see."

"Huh, didn't know it got that bad up here," I said, it was probably the closest I could come to acknowledging that the Navy had it just as tough as we did without losing some of my infantry pride. "We can still use our boosters if need be, right?"

"That is correct."

"Good, how long till we arrive to Zeta Lupus?"

"Little under two months Francisco."

"I can live with that."

I shook my head and threw the disposable cup into the trashcan as I headed away from the gym. I had used one of the towels to wipe my hands clean of blood before leaving. I'd have to put some bandages on top too. I was getting scars on top of my scars on my knuckles.

"And Frank," Eliza added before I left.

"Yes?"

"As a friend, not a construct that knows better than you, I think that you might need to see a shrink."

"I see, as a friend, I think that you should probably fuck off."

* * *

><p><em>Thanks to Sniper Fodder for proof-reading this chapter.<em>

_It was about goddamned time that someone called Frank out on his assholeish ways. That was a pretty hard scene to write for several reasons, the most prominent one is that I've grown to love the character and have a hard time having him be called out so bluntly. Believe it or not, I actually had to sit down and think about all the negative things Frank-related. In the end, I think the scene was pretty good._

_Ok, so this is there is still one more "filler" chapter coming up, but that one's going to figure some action and overall badassery. So, as you see, this is probably the longest time that Frank has been on leave, over a month. Good for him, amirite? Well, I'm proud of this chapter given that it doesn't feature any action, I was quite unsure about Chapter 106 and the lack of reviews probably means that you agree with me. Although I am all for encouragement, I'd appreciate some constructive criticism every now and then, mentioning things that you don't like or bother you a bit. Constructive is the key word there. _

_As I have mentioned countless times before, I strive to be a better writer, and only you guys can help me reach that goal. You've already helped a lot, and for that, thanks._

_Just to wrap this up, I threw in a couple of references there, one for Austin Powers and another for Harry Potter. Both are pretty straightforward and easy to spot. At least in my opinion._

_Hope you enjoyed this chapter. Stay strong._

_-casquis_

_PS: Are this post chapter thingies getting too long? I mean, just look at the goddamned author's note._


	108. Semilegislative

Chapter CVIII: Semilegislative

**February 7, 2544 (UNSC Calendar)/two months later**

**UNSC **_**Inconvenience**_**, edge of Zeta Lupus System**

* * *

><p><em>"When in doubt, knock 'em out."- Vinny Girolamo<em>

* * *

><p>The sun was hitting me in the face, it was a pretty hot day and I was sweating. Being surrounded by a bunch of people didn't help at all. Fortunately, I didn't care at all. I was too busy cheering on the quarterback. The entire stadium stood up just as the last play began. It seemed like something straight out of a movie.<p>

The quarterback called for the ball and the action started. The two lines met, one doing its best to get through the offensive linemen while the others pushed back at them. The quarterback took three or four steps back before looking for a target, his back was straight and his shoulders squared.

"Come on, come on, come on," I urged silently.

Suddenly, a linebacker broke through the offensive line with help of two linemen, the huge man took two steps before lunging at the comparatively tiny quarterback. But he wasn't taken down so easily, the white 6 in his jersey flashed as he dodged the tackle, pushing the ball against his chest as to keep himself from fumbling it. The linebacker flew over Number 6, his arms only succeeded in grabbing empty air, but his legs hit the quarterback in the upper back and neck, taking off his helmet.

The entire stadium gasped and then cheered when they realized that he was still up and kicking.

The quarterback immediately started running to the right side, two linemen hot on his trail and doing their best to bring him down. He ran all the way to the end of the field, his head snapping left and right while his receivers did their best to improvise new routes to get rid of the cornerbacks and safeties. It was only at the very end of the field that he threw the ball.

It was a perfect pass. A beautiful spiral with a lot of speed and very little curve. Time actually slowed down as I watched the ball fly. It went through the air above the green grass for thirty yards before it finally stopped abruptly. The receiver it had been directed to got a great, almost godly, pass. The leather ball flew just out of reach of the man covering him and right into his hands.

The receiver took two steps before stopping and looking incredulously at the ball. He looked back at the quarterback, now on the ground out of bounds and trying to get back up. He looked at the ball again and then at the grass below him, colored bright with the team's colors. Only then did he realize that he had scored the winning touchdown. The receiver started jumping up and down frantically and the crowd went wild.

"You know," Scarecrow said, "my bro had his number changed to six after I told him I was Reaper-6."

The man had a huge smile on his face, he was very proud of his little brother. I patted him on the back and smiled at him as the background swirled and faded only to be replaced by a beach with white sand and green ocean.

"What? How did we get here?" I asked.

"You say something Sarge?" Scarecrow asked from behind me. "Here, have a beer."

I took the bottle that he was offering me and took a sip from it, looking at the scenery. There were a few beach chairs strewn about and one beach canopy with a cooler underneath it. The beach itself was awfully familiar. The green color of the ocean brought back memories, but I couldn't tell exactly which ones.

"How did we get here?" I asked again, this time addressing my squad mate directly.

"You talked Marina into giving us a ride," he replied, looking at me strangely. "Don't know how you did it, but thanks."

"Yeah…no problem."

I turned around to see a Pelican with red stripes painted all over it. My team was getting out from the cargo bay, each one of them had some sort of beach item with them, Caboose was even carrying a small port-a-grill while Angel heaved a pack of sausages. I smiled at the image, but then realized that something was off.

_No, the red paint is off, that craft was destroyed. She painted the new one differently._

"Frank."

I turned around and followed the voice. To my absolute shock, Layla was standing there in full dress uniform, looking as stunning as always.

"What are you doing here?" I asked.

"You don't want me here?"

I put my hands to my head. "Where am I?"

"You're home," Layla said with a smile, a smile that I hadn't seen in years.

"No, no, no, this place was glassed, I was here when it happened!"

Suddenly the sound of the surf stopped, and I looked around only to realize that the beach was empty, no chairs, no canopy, no Reaper Squad. The entire ocean had stopped moving and it now looked like some sort of mirror, in fact, it almost looked like a pane of glass.

"Why can't you just take this as something good?" she asked sadly, her left shoulder was smoking. "You'd trade it for a life of death and hardship, just like you did me." The smoke from her shoulder had transformed into red-hot embers, I watched in shock as a fiery pattern crisscrossed all over her, burning her skin and dissolving it to ashes.

"Layla!"

"Sarge!" I felt a hand on my shoulder.

I turned around to see Scarecrow standing amidst a battlefield, human bodies literally carpeted the ground. My friend was standing in full combat armor, one hand on my shoulder and the other holding his rifle. He looked at me carefully before putting on his helmet.

"Let's go."

I nodded instinctively and made sure that my rifle had a bullet in the chamber. I took a step inside a building and darkness engulfed me.

I was out for what seemed like a lifetime, only waking up to the sound of water dripping. The sound of blood dripping.

I opened my eyes and saw Scarecrow just as I had last seen. His helmet was off and his face was badly burned. He glanced up and looked at me.

"You were supposed to lead us out of this alive," he said accusingly. "To get us home!"

"It was not my fault!" I yelled back.

"You didn't have to volunteer! You didn't have to risk our lives."

"That's our job! That's what we do!"

He cackled, blood spurting from his mouth as he did so. "No, it's what you do. You don't give a shit about what we think, you don't give a shit about us, you never did."

"That's a lie," I cried defensively.

"Is it?"

_Is it?_

Before I could say something my friends legs disappeared in a flutter of black feathers and wings. Crows and ravens flew at me and clawed at my face, hitting me with their wings and forcing me to cover my head and do my best to send them flying away before they scratched me too much. Eventually, the mass of crows gave up and flew away, allowing me to see the blood-red sky that had replaced the dark room.

In front of me were two dead trees, my friend was in between them, his legs missing now that they had become carrion birds. I felt myself throwing up.

I looked in horror at the sight of my friend like that, his hands clapped in chains and hanging from the ceiling. Gore and flesh was hanging from the hole right above his waist. A large pool of blood below him. I stood there, trying to react when Scarecrow lifted his head, sending me back three steps in fright. I tried to say something when I felt myself throwing up. A warm wind hit me and pushed me against a something hard. When I turned I saw that it was a pile of bones, skeletons piled so high that I couldn't see the end of it.

"You let me go," Scarecrow accused.

"You told me to!" I screamed. "It was your last wish!"

"_Sarge?"_

The entire world seemed to shake with that word.

"Now my family doesn't even have a body to bury," Scarecrow lamented.

I said nothing.

Scarecrow looked up from the ground and at me, the whites of his eyes were red with busted capillaries. "You dropped me!"

I tried to say something, but nothing came to mind. Finally I let myself fall down to the ground. I spread my hands out as the Covenant battlecruiser above me charged its main weapon. I didn't move as the white light became brighter and brighter. It seemed to take forever, but I just wanted it to fire and get it over with. Eventually the whole world had turned white.

"_You ok? Wake up Sarge."_

I heard the loud noise of a _CCS-_class battlecuiser grade plasma beam discharging and jerked slightly as I finally woke up.

"Shit Sarge, you ok?"

I instantly brought my hand up and wiped some anti-freeze fluid from my chin and chest. The rest had fallen next to me. I looked up to see Lamberti looking at me with a curious look in his eyes. He had already put on his underwear and had his pants around his ankles, maybe he had stopped putting them on when I realized that I didn't wake up even though my cryo pod had already opened.

"Excuse me," a man in white clothing pushed him aside. "Are you ok Gunnery Sergeant?"

"Yes, yes," I dismissed him, "I'm fine."

"You sure? Your brain waves went haywire there for a second."

"Just a bad dream," I explained, pushing myself outside of the pod, feeling only a little bit self-conscious of my nudity.

"M-hm," the tech replied, still not convinced. "If anything else happens let a doctor know."

"I will," I replied calmly.

After that was done I grabbed the bundle of clothes folded neatly in place next to my cryo pod. I never did figure out who placed the clothing there. I sure as hell didn't when I climbed into the freezer. Maybe UNSC ships had working elves or something that cleaned up for them.

Oh right, the automated drones. I feel sincerely bad that I just thought about that for the very first time.

I dressed myself in silence, thinking about the dream, the nightmare as I did so. I brushed my thoughts away by stealing a quick glance at Camilla and then doing my best not to steal another one. I was used to getting dressed up at the same time with female soldiers and crewmembers, it was part of life, but Cam was Cam, and everything that came with it. I managed to keep a hold of myself and to stare straight at a dull gray wall while getting dressed. I allowed myself to relax after putting my shirt on.

"We reporting anywhere?" I asked Pavel, who was a few pods away from me.

"Not yet, we have a couple of free days," he replied. "Swabbies gotta go to their positions. Someone's got to run the ship."

"I run the ship," Eliza said, appearing in a holotank not far from our pods.

"Hey Liz," Rob greeted. "Stunning as always."

"Thank you Lance Corporal," the hologram replied. Eliza even bothered with making her avatar blush slightly, eliciting laughter from Robert and Lamberti.

I smiled at it, my mind already pushing back the dream into some far-off corner where it wouldn't emerge unless I thought about it on purpose. Pavel was joking around with Snark, getting out a smile from the skinny Indian. I was glad that Pavel was making an effort to cheer up Naveen. He had taken George's death harder than most of us; they had gotten along famously ever since they met. I just hoped he wasn't having any nightmares.

"Frank," Camilla said quietly from next to me.

"Hm?"

"You ok?" she asked, the tone in her voice indicating her concern.

I shrugged her off. "I'm fine. Just a bad dream that's all."

"I understand," Cam acknowledged. "They say that dreams in cryo are the worst of all."

"They also say that you don't dream in cryo," I replied. Camilla looked at me with worry in her eyes before she realized it was simply a light-hearted joke. "I'm fine Cam, honestly."

"Good to know, but still, if you ever need to talk…"

"I'll go to Marina," I finished for her.

Cam smiled and punched me in the shoulder lightly. I doubt that Marina would be inconsiderate enough not to listen to me if I developed further problems, but it would be pretty awkward going to your ex-girlfriend (who you were not in good terms with) for a shrink chat. What was even more awkward though, was that Eliza was probably better than me in figuring things out that didn't relate to artificial beings whatsoever.

The ship seemed crowded, but it was because everybody was headed for their rooms right now. Half of the crew and complement were probably going to brush their teeth and get the lime-tasting anti-freeze fluid out of their mouths. Some lucky ones would be sneaking off to engage in non-sanctioned physical activities with other crewmembers. Said physical activities involved repetitive motions, sweating, and occasionally, grunting.

What I would give to count myself amongst that second group.

I walked towards my room while chatting about trivial matters with Cam. Pavel was joking around with Lamberti and Robert while Grigori and Snark remained quiet and solemn. Snark's behavior was a little unusual, but it was understandable all the same. Grigori, well, he was Grigori.

Myself? Well, I wasn't particularly fond of mint, and there was no better way to wash away the taste of bile than to replace it with something else. I doubted that they would be having real beef, but then again, all of us ate vat grown meat in pretty much every place except for the fanciest of restaurants. Well, frankly, I couldn't tell the difference unless I had one of each next to each other.

Turned out it was spaghetti.

Crappy spaghetti.

Not to worry, it would get better soon enough. Or at least I would get used to the crappy taste out of necessity. The same thing went for the vat-grown fish, or the vat-grown chicken, or the vat-grown beef. The only thing that tasted good here was the mashed potatoes, but it's pretty damn hard to mess those up, only a little bit easier than messing up cereal.

"Hey Gunny," a ranger said as he sat in front of me.

I looked up from my meal and looked at him hard, not to make him leave, but to try and recognize him. It took me about three seconds but eventually I recognized him as one of the only two survivors from Nezarian's platoon. The one with both of his arms still attached to his body. I didn't know his name though.

"Frank," a gruff voice greeted me.

I drew my eyes away from the young ranger and into the older one sitting next to me. Yevgeny looked pretty normal, no different than before. I hadn't seen him for quite some time, but last I saw him he was in a hospital bed, staring at a hospital's ceiling with dead eyes. He looked remarkably improved if I do say so myself.

"Yevgeny," I replied, "good to see you again."

He huffed. "Agreed, I was out of commission for the duration of Lambari, doctor let me out, the shrink didn't."

"Maybe it's for the best," I suggested.

"Lieutenant can fight," the ranger chimed in. "Just needed some time. Am I right el-tee?"

"'Course you are," Nezarian nodded at him. "Oh, by the way, this is Private Hugh Moffat."

"Pleasure," I said, offering my hand to him.

"Likewise Sergeant."

I winced slightly. "Here in the Corps we go by full-rank basis," I explained him. "So it would be Gunnery Sergeant as opposed to just Sergeant."

"Oh, sorry."

"No need to apologize, just letting you know."

"Thanks then."

I turned to the Russian ranger. "How you doing?"

"Well enough," he told me. "it's not the first time I lose someone. It's just the first time-"

"You lose them all," Private Moffat finished.

Yevgeny shrugged. "It's tough, I won't lie to you, but you learn to deal with it, you compartmentalize it, deal with it in time. On the other hand, this kid here, I thought he'd be carving the names of his friends into his arms by now."

Moffat smiled. "Perhaps I have el-tee."

"You're wearing short sleeves, Private," Nezarian pointed out with his fork.

_So they deal with it with black humor. Fair enough._

I just nodded at them and changed the topic. "You got replacements?" Well, maybe I didn't change the topic _that_ much.

Yevgeny nodded, munching on a meatball and swallowing it. "Yeah, whole platoon was replaced."

"Prognosis?"

"You and your large words," Nezarian chuckled. "Grass is starting to rub off on you."

"Unfortunately."

"Unfortunately? I'd give three fingers to have her rub against me. And I'm not the only one."

"Why don't you go for it then?" I asked sarcastically.

"I just might."

I was instantly jealous at that moment. Yevgeny was a good-looking man, even if the scar running across his jaw line was an ugly one, it only added to his military man charm. He was also on a completely different branch of the military, meaning that he could be in a relationship with her without any of the red-tape or being looked 'down upon' by the authority figures.

Huh, look at me, going over all the reasons why another man could be a potential partner for a squad mate I have no romantic interest in. Granted, physical interest is there, but that's a whole other thing.

"Wait, who are we talking about?" Moffat asked.

"Camilla Seppa," Nezarian explained. "The girl Helljumper."

"Never seen her without her helmet," Moffat said simply, going back to his food.

Yevgeny sighed. "I'll point her out to you sometime."

"Well, back to the prognosis," I urged.

"Right. Well, most of them are fresh out of school, none of them are older than twenty-two except for the sergeants, those are the only ones that have any combat experience at all."

"Hmm," I said doubtfully.

"They have the skills," Nezarian tried to persuade me, "they just lack the experience."

"They'll have more experience than they could've wished for in a while."

"I can vouch for that," Moffat agreed.

"Most of them are natives to Reach," the ranger lieutenant went on, "joined the military because they were surrounded with it, but they made it through boot camp, so they're probably good enough for it."

"You ought to drill them some more," I suggested. "Perhaps you can have them run the circuit."

I was talking about the wider-than-usual hallways that went around the ship, close to the very edge of the hull. They were seldom used because there was nothing there that you could use them to get to, so they were usually used as tracks, that was one of its intended designs.

"And run them until they drop? I lost my whole platoon, I don't need them to hate me in addition to the rumor running around."

"What about Moffat here?" I asked. "They look at him weird too?"

"Nah," the man in question said. "I'm enlisted, that makes me innocent on pretty much all counts. Gotta say Lieutenant, I'm not looking forward to having to run a bunch of times around the ship."

"Maybe you could have them do a half-marathon," I suggested. "And then go to the firing range immediately after."

"I suppose that you want me to pit them against you in hand to hand combat after that?" he asked sarcastically.

"Knife combat would be optimal," I shrugged. "But I don't think that a Ranger could handle it."

"You're on," Nezarian suddenly said, fire in his eyes.

Moffat sighed. "You do realize that that's exactly what he wanted you to do, right?"

"Shut up Private, unless you think you can't handle it."

Moffat was still a combat-tested ranger, that meant that he had his pride. Being a member of the 777th Infantry Regiment, 7th Battalion was prestigious enough as it is, all those sevens were as good as a thumbs up stamp in your dossier. And that's not even mentioning the extensive combat record of his company and platoon, whose numbers and designations I failed to remember.

"If you really mean to have a couple of them go against me, then you need to warn me beforehand. So I'm early, you know."

"I will," Nezarian confirmed.

"Are you going to make them _all_ fight me?"

"_Nyet_, I'm going to make it optional, I figure that they'll give up by the tenth man you slam on the floor."

"Oh Yevgeny, you flatter me," I mocked him. "Say, how's Valeri doing?"

"He got a nice replacement prosthetic, looks and feels pretty much like a regular arm, except that it's black and has a hexagonal pattern on it. He refused to have it painted to match his skin tone, he wants everyone to know what he lost while serving humanity."

I smiled, it sounded like something I would do. I raised my glass of water in a toast. "To Sergeant Valeri and the men of…what was your platoon again?"

Yevgeny rolled his eyes. "1st platoon, 1st Company, 7th Ba-"

"To the men of the first of the first of the seventh," I offered.

"May their names be remembered," Moffat offered as he clinked his glass to mine.

"And their sacrifices never forgotten."

_To you Scarecrow,_ I thought to myself. _To you as well._

* * *

><p>I found myself in the boxing ring that our ship's gym sported. I had put on a pair of knee-length shorts and a sleeveless shirt. Both black, of course. Yevgeny had given me a call about two hours ago, so I had taken my time and had a healthy (healthy-sized) snack before going to the gym. Right now I was putting on bandages on my hands, spinning them around my wrist for some support and in between every finger. I made sure to pad my knuckles additionally. Once I was satisfied with the result of both hands I squeezed them into a pair of mixed martial arts gloves.<p>

Normally I wouldn't have wrapped my hands when sparring, instead only doing it when working on some heavy hitting on the bag. Not that I planned on breaking any ribs, but I had no doubt that all the rangers knew what the bandages were used for. And an intimidation factor always helped when you were fighting against an elite unit.

I heard heavy breathing and rapid steps. Seconds later an entire platoon piled in through the door. Their gray shirts were soaking wet with sweat. They were shaking.

_Huh, might be easier than I thought._

"Ok listen up!" Yevgeny boomed. "This man right here is Gunnery Sergeant Francisco Castillo, a friend of mine and a Helljumper, although the black probably gave that little fact away. You see, I have a bet with him on how many rangers he could beat in hand to hand combat!"

That was a lie, we hadn't made any bets.

"He said twenty-nine!"

I never specified any number.

"I said zero."

Well, he did kind of imply that. I gave him a mock salute.

"Gunnery Sergeant Castillo is an expert in close combat, you'll each be sparring with him in turn."

"Lieutenant," one of the rangers managed out. "You sure this is a good idea?"

"Of course it is, when you do your first jet-drop you'll be wishing to be getting your ass kicked by him. And you, you're going first."

A couple of rangers chuckled at his friend's fate, but the ranger dutifully erected himself and climbed in between the ropes.

He looked to be reasonably fit, shorter than I was and less muscular, but he would've impressed most people with his musculature. He had a by-the-books Army haircut. What I noticed most though, was that he was sweating like a pig and in no condition to try to spar with anyone with even remote knowledge of boxing. Not to be a self-flatterer, but I _am_ one of the best at this.

"No gloves for me?" he asked.

I smiled. "You won't need them."

"Lieutenant, did you say getting our asses kicked by him? I thought you bet that none of us could beat him."

Nezarian simply gave his soldier an incredibly creepy smile. "I lied."

The first fight was brief, awfully so. The ranger was too tired and barely had the strength to keep his arms up. I nailed him with three straight jabs to the forehead before delivering an uppercut to his solar plexus. That last punch got the wind knocked out of him and forced him to his knees.

"You're going to have to do better than that lieutenant," I informed Yevgeny.

He shrugged and crossed his arms. He looked remarkably rested for a man that had just ran twenty-one kilometers and done some heavy-duty practice at the firing range. Kudos to him.

That being said, the rangers _were_ the best that the UNSC Army had to offer and the second best that the regular UNSC military could pit against the Covenant. Even if they were tired, sweaty, out of breath, dizzy, and not close combat experts, they were still rangers, which is to say that they were dangerous and, in many instances, a bitch to fight with.

At first I relegated myself to using boxing techniques, a square guard with my arms covering me from nose to kidneys. The first few rangers mimicked my position and got into similar stances with few modifications. My main advantage over them was my skill, of course, but I doubt that I could've fought more than five of them in a row had they not been exhausted. I know that I should be the last to admit that they weren't a match, but you probably wouldn't believe that I managed to beat the first few so easily if I didn't emphasize just how tired they were. You try running half a marathon at breakneck speeds and then fighting the best close-quarters-combatant on the ship.

Oh, and my augmentations probably played a part in it as well.

"Get him!" one of the rangers I had already beaten yelled as one of his compatriots delivered a vicious cross to my jaw.

_Ok, that's probably a sign._

I changed my stance to one that had me standing sideways and delivered a quick kick to my opponent's left thigh, right above his knee. The pain that shot through his leg was enough to force him sideways. I took advantage of that brief moment to use my left arm to deliver a quick strike to the man's cheek, sending him to the floor. It was the first time that anyone had used a technique that didn't involve punches.

"What are you looking at?" Nezarian asked his subordinates. "I never specified any rules."

_I thought the sergeant was supposed to be the nasty one._

The mechanics of the king of the hill-styled training exercise changed suddenly. The rangers realized that they could use all of their limbs to hit me, and for the next two fights I found myself victim of assaults including fists, elbows, knees, and shins. I was faster than them, but I was beginning to tire and my opponents were increasingly well-rested.

After the twelfth fight I received a kick to the ribs, I would've been out for sure had those ribs in question not been titanium prosthetics. At least I could thank that brute chieftain for something.

"Yeah," I said, doing my best to sound bored. "I have metal ribs."

The man in front of me promptly found himself knocked down to the floor.

"That's almost half," I thought out loud. Of course, my introspective thoughts were taken as a taunt by the rangers, which only meant that they would be more eager to knock me out violently.

"Shit you're tall," I noted at the next man that faced me. Not only was he tall, he was also big, like stoutly big.

He just smiled at me and threw a quick punch.

I put my forearms in the way and felt myself being pushed back three steps and all the way into the ropes. I pulled my arms apart just quickly enough to see a wrestling-style clothesline directed at my face. I ducked underneath it and jumped behind the man, delivering an elbow strike to his kidney in the process. The huge man swung wildly with a backhanded punch, making for another easy dodge and exposing himself. I realized that it was best that I end the fight quickly so I jumped on his back and got him in a vice grip. His reflexes were slow from the long run, and I quickly managed to get my arm around his neck.

The large ranger tried to connect a couple of elbow strikes as I cut the blood flow to his brain, but both were mere glancing strikes. I was hoping that he would try and jump on his back, that way I could make us fall sideways and have him on the ground, unable to get up. Unfortunately, he knew better than that and kept delivering elbow strikes even as he fell to his knees.

After a few seconds I let him go, signaling the fight was won by me.

"You guys are good," I heaved in between breaths. "Putaaaa!"

Of course, they had noticed that I was starting to sweat as much as they were, so they got renewed vigor and inspiration.

_I should've told them to put on gloves._

I cursed my own stupidity as a little guy delivered three quick kicks to my legs and ribs. Leave it to the guy to be Asian and fill a stereotype to the letter. On the third kick I grabbed his leg, and in a move borrowed from a movie that Rob had put on during movie night, I grabbed him by the shirt's collar, lifted him up and slammed him down on the floor. Unlike in the movie, the little Asian guy actually got the wind knocked out of him and had no strength left to fight. I was starting to abandon finesse for quickness. So much unlike me.

"Is it just me, or are they getting better as they progress?"

Yevgeny smirked.

"You planned for this!" I said accusatorily as I realized why every ranger was more talented than the last. "You told them!"

His smiled transformed into a grin. "A good leader is a good strategist."

I managed to make it all the way to opponent number twenty-seven, third to last.

I raised my eyebrow as a girl in her mid-twenties climbed inside the ring. She took her time to tie her hair into a practical ponytail and stretched her arms a little bit before taking a combat stance, balancing on the balls of her feet.

"Really?" I asked.

"You can't resist the charms of a pretty girl," Nezarian explained. "And she can probably kick your ass too."

I was raised by a comparatively traditional family, and my uncle was a firm believer in chivalry, including the downsides to that. While I wasn't a misogynistic pig that treated women like disposable rags, I did feel a little bit uncomfortable hitting one, especially one that looked like she could faint from exhaustion any second. I felt even more uncomfortable knowing that I shouldn't feel uncomfortable at that. I resolved to finish the fight as soon as possible using grapples and holds.

I got into a boxing stance and closed in on her, taking her in.

Yeah, I know I should've been observing her movements, her guard, her eyes, but I actually dedicated myself to take in all her physical features. Her pretty face, fit body, thin-but-curvy frame, her full lips, her perfect nose, her gray eyes, and her fantastic rack.

Of course, my leering did not go unpunished, as I instantly received a quick jab to the forehead.

_I swear, they just keep finding attractive women and deploying them on this ship._

"Don't complain about it," Schitzo said from a corner, unsurprisingly, he was fashioned much like a boxing coach would be. "I mean, there's no downside to that. And remember that you can actually guarantee that your baby will be good-looking with genetic manipulation."

_I know that. Idiot._

I tried closing in to get a decent grip, but the girl read my intentions and kept me at bay with quick strikes, jumping inside my guard, punching me a few times, and then jumping back out before I could get a firm grip. I really didn't want to punch her and I felt pain for it. Literal pain mind you.

Eventually she delivered a kick to my knee, forcing me to jump back to avoid a follow-up strike. I wasn't successful.

The follow-up strike consisted of her jumping at me and placing her legs around my head. Ignore the potential for dirty thinking, will ya? Immediately after than she twisted her body and used her own weight as leverage to throw me across the ring. I tried to get my bearings as I flew, succeeding in rolling on my side.

That's right the chick just went all Hurracarrana on my ass.

I got up before she could deliver another strike and took full advantage of my enhanced reflexes. I grabbed her fist as it flew straight for my nose, instead of using her force against her I used my own to stop her in her tracks. I then bent her arm so that her elbow was pointing upwards and her hand was behind her neck. She threw two quick punches to my side while I put my right leg behind both of hers and pushed her backwards. She lost balance and fell to the floor, me following her.

We both slammed down pretty hard, but that was part of the plan. I climbed on top of her (not in that way mind you) and pressed her elbow towards the floor, eliciting a wave of pain. The distraction gave me enough time to secure her other arm to the floor with my knee. She was done and she knew it. The ranger tried delivering a few kicks and attempted to knee me a couple of times before she realized that I was out of her reach and had her at my mercy (no! not that way!).

"Yield," she finally said.

"Yield? Very Middle Ageish," I told her as I stood up and offered her my hand. "What's your name?"

"Winchester, Claire Winchester," she replied as she took my hand and pulled herself up. "Specialist."

"Pleasure to meet you," I said, rubbing the back of my neck. "In a manner of speaking."

She nodded, looking at me strangely before leaving the ring, giving me a nice view of her rear as she bent over to climb in between the ropes. Schitzo wasn't nearly as reserved as I was, leering at her and taking in all that he could.

"You know," he said, "Captain Brooks' daughter is named Claire too." He paused for a moment. "You're still missing two opponents," he warned me.

_Right._

Two rangers later (I'm not even going to bother anymore) I found myself staring at the ceiling, taking heavy breaths. I put both my hands over my chest and let them rest there after only just beating the last ranger. This time I didn't bother with strength, instead using my speed to cheat and get him in a chokehold. He gave up after thirty seconds, I collapsed as soon as he left the ring in defeat. I started taking heavier breaths, trying to get as much oxygen into my body as I could.

I recoiled when I felt water being splashed on top of me. "So? What's the prognosis?" Nezarian asked, offering me his hand.

"Can't judge their combat skills, but half of them would've had a shot at beating me if they had been breathing normally at the beginning of the fight." It was a white lie, only about a quarter would've had that chance. "How many of them got their black belt in the Martial Arts Program?"

"Well, Specialist Winchester is instructor certified," he informed me. "She's upset you beat her, though she didn't show it. You got on the wrong step with her."

"What?"

"Oh, I saw how you looked at her, if the Lockley thing doesn't pan out you're going straight after Winchester."

"I don't even-"

"Enough," Yevgeny interrupted. "Have some water."

I grabbed the bottle he was offering me and proceeded to empty it while he listed off the members of his platoon that were black belts in the UNSCDF Martial Arts Program. I had little trouble knowing which ones were which, the ones with black belts were the ones that had given me all the bruises.

"…and all the rest are green belt or higher."

"Impressive, if they can shoot straight you might have a decent platoon in your hands."

He chuckled. "You were rather impressive too," he complimented, patting me on the shoulder and then suddenly pushing my head sideways to better examine a growing bruise on my jaw. "Could've used a little bit more finesse if you ask me, but thirty straight rangers? I don't think anyone outside of boot camp CQC instructors has ever done that."

"Well, there's always a first time," I replied, smiling at the compliment.

"Yeah, but I'll doubt there'll be a second," he informed me. "You ought to get yourself checked out on those bruises."

I groaned, the pain already setting in as the adrenaline started wearing off. I hopped out of the ring and limped my way outside the gym. I could only smile as Lieutenant Yevgeny Nezarian started chewing on his new platoon. If they didn't like him before they would hate him for putting them through this. They'd hate him almost as much as I hated him right now for somehow having me end up having to face thirty UNSC Army Rangers in a row.

I arrived at the med bay after a painful walk through the ship. Fortunately enough, some smart soldier had decided that injuries would be common in the gym and placed it nearby. The shooting range was also within close range in case some dumbass accidentally shot himself in the foot. A more common occurrence than you'd think, and not everyone is trying to get themselves discharged.

Unsurprisingly, the med bay was empty at the moment, not many people had the talent to get hurt just three days into our deployment. I was one of those few talented enough to manage that while still being able to look like a badass. A nurse came up to meet me and asked me what was wrong. I gave her an incredulous look at her before I realized that I was supposed to behave more professionally.

"Just finished a pretty tough session in the combat ring," I explained. "Mind calling Doctor Zhivago?"

"I'm sorry, but I'm afraid that Commander Zhivago has more pressing matters to attend to than a couple of scrapes and bruises."

I grabbed her wrist lightly, as to not give a threatening signal. "Please," I insisted. "He's a friend and I haven't seen him in a while."

The nurse relented, sighing and shaking her head before looking at me. "All right then, just wait here."

"Of course, miss."

I sat in one of the waiting chairs and examined the bruises on my arms. They looked like red fist marks right now, but in a couple of hours I would be covered by purple and black. I had avoided hits to the face thanks to a combination of bobbing and the rangers unwilling to go straight for the head without gloves. For that, I was thankful for them. Maybe I ought to buy them a round next time we hit the ground.

I looked up when I heard a set of steps entering the med bay. I was surprised to see Specialist Claire Winchester walking inside. She looked around for a receptionist or medical staff before spotting me.

"Gunnery Sergeant," she greeted, her voice neutral.

"Specialist," I replied with a slightly more cheery tone. "What's wrong?"

"Personal matters," she replied coolly.

"All right. The nurse went to look for Doctor Zhivago," I explained.

Specialist Winchester nodded and sat down in a chair opposite me. She sat with her back straight and her ankles crossed while she avoided looking at me, instead focusing on staring at the door from which Doc Zhivago would surely emerge. I took advantage of that to observe her carefully. As I had pointed out before, she was beautiful, had a great body, and gray eyes. Her hair was a dark reddish-brown, although it probably was a little lighter if you accounted for the sweating, and she had a trail of freckles crossing her cheeks and nose.

Yes gentlemen and ladies who are into that, she was yet another perfect ten.

I failed to suppress a smile at that point.

"Can I help you with anything?" she asked irritably all of a sudden.

_Shit, I'm made. Think fast, think fast. _"I was just wondering, Lieutenant Nezarian said that you were a black belt in the Martial Arts Program, but you obviously know some other martial arts." I didn't have to actually ask the question, she knew what I wanted to know.

"I'm a certified instructor in Karate, Aikido, and Taekwondo. I'm also what you'd consider an expert in Capoeira, Sambo, Jit Kune Do, and Judo. In addition to that I practice Keysi, Kung Fu, Kenpo, and Krav Maga."

"Lucha Libre?" I inquired.

"What? No."

"That leg-throw thing you did, the Hurracarana, is a Lucha Libre move."

"I've never heard of Lucha Libre."

I feigned shock. "No, seriously?"

"Really," Winchester insisted.

"Oh well, it was rather impressive," I complimented.

"What about you Gunnery Sergeant?" she asked. "What do you practice."

I suddenly felt at a disadvantage. Specialist Winchester was an expert in four different martial arts, could instruct in three different ones, and practiced four others that had fancy names and all started with the letter K. On paper, it was a whole lot more impressive than my own repertoire.

"Well, I do, did, Kickboxing, Muay Thai, Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, and Kali."

"Kali?" she asked. "What's that."

"Knife fighting," I replied simply.

"That's it?" Claire Winchester asked me.

"Yeah, oh, and the Marine Corps Martial Arts Program," I furthered.

The ranger in front of me seemed incredulous. "You're telling me that you're an expert in only four martial arts."

_Whoa, talk about an overachiever._

"Well, I never did get my black belt in Kickboxing."

_Yeah, I probably shouldn't have said that._

Claire looked like she was about to say something but I interrupted her. "It's all about the experience though, I've been fighting ever since I turned thirteen."

"I've been fighting since I was ten," she spat out.

_Ok, I'm trying to help out here, woman!_

"Ah, Frank, what is it now?"

_Thank God. _"Morning Doc," I saluted the man before shaking his hand. "I got beat up by a group of angry rangers."

"I see," Zhivago stated. "Did Miss Winchester have anything to do with it?"

I shrugged. "More than I'd like to admit," I said truthfully.

"Of course, I'll give you something, come with me." He turned around, "I'll be with you in a moment Miss Winchester."

"Commander," she nodded at him.

Doc Zhivago led me to a small room. "Take your shirt off."

I obeyed and tried to look unassuming as he inspected me for damage.

"Raise your arms."

I did.

"Damn Frank," he muttered. "You got one hell of a beating. Where they using gloves?"

"No."

"You're an idiot." He moved towards a cabinet and pulled out a bunch of medicine jars. "Ok, you're probably going to get a huge bruise all over your right side and part of your back. Both your upper arms are going to be pretty beat up, you might get swelling in your jaw, but nothing serious."

"Should I avoid any physical exercise?"

He laughed. "Like whatever I say will stop you. Yes, probably, but don't worry, you have one of the most remarkable healing factors that I have ever seen in anyone. You'll probably be just fine inside a week."

"All right, thanks Doc," I said after popping two capsules.

"Did you undergo genetic modification in-uterus?" he asked me. "Or anything else other than standard military augmentations?"

It was rude to ask. While genetic modification was available for the general public, even if tightly controlled by authorities, it was extremely expensive and frowned upon by a large part of the population. It was also considered pretty tacky. Seeing as Zhivago was a doctor, I decided that his question was purely professional.

"Not that I'm aware off, no," I replied simply as I rubbed some weird salve over the areas that he had told me would look the worse later.

"Hmm, doesn't matter. Just try to avoid getting hit so much in the future."

I laughed and stopped when it caused too much pain. "You don't have to tell me twice." We walked outside the door as I put on my shirt. "Hell, another round of that and I'd probably end up dead."

"Probably," Zhivago agreed with a smile. "Well, off you go Frank, I don't want to see you for a long while."

"Understood."

"Miss Winchester, if you will."

I looked at the specialist and nodded at her. "Specialist," I said as a way of goodbye.

"Gunnery Sergeant," she replied, her voice even colder than before.

_How the hell did I manage to piss her off like that?_

"You know," Schitzo said, "if you had behaved like your usual charming self you might've avoided coming off as a self-indulging bastard."

_I fail to see how I was self-indulging._

"You're probably right, maybe I meant self-centered, showoff, asshole," he suggested. "Take your pick."

_I honestly don't know how I should react to my subconscious insulting me. _

"Hey, at least you don't trash the room anymore," Schitzo said. He somehow managed to make it sound like a compliment. If I was nearly as smooth with words and body language in real life as Schitzo was with me then I had one more reason to feel proud of myself.

Once I arrived inside my room I found Pavel wrapping up a message home.

"…and again, sorry for not being able to send a message earlier. Love you."

"And Frank says hi," I added.

"And Frank says hi," he repeated. He clicked a button on the datapad and looked up at me. "How'd it go?"

"I managed," I said cryptically.

"Nice, giving us Helljumpers a high name," Pavel complimented as he offered me his fist. I bumped it and let myself fall down on my bed, groaning at the pressure on my bruises.

"I aim to please," I replied, trying to find a comfortable position. "But it did hurt like hell."

"Maybe you should've bet something."

"Maybe I should've." I waited some time to think of anything to start a conversation with. "So, your wife's five months pregnant now. Think you might make your kid's birth?"

"I hope so," Pavel replied. "But I've got no illusions about it."

"Damn, I hope you make it," I said. "I really do."

"Thanks bud, but we both knew what we were getting into when we got married."

"I think you knew, she didn't."

Pavel was about to snap back something when he realized that I meant it as a mostly harmless insult and not as a serious comment. He looked over from his small desk and shook his head.

"Before I forget, you got a package."

"A package?" I asked. "For real."

"Yeah, catch."

Pavel tossed me a box that was perhaps four inches tall and one foot square. I caught it and opened it. I was surprised when I pulled out a piece of heavy wood before I realized what this was.

"What's that?" Pavel asked with a raised eyebrow.

"A target, to practice with my knife skills."

He shrugged and said nothing, he was used to me throwing knives all over the place. By this point he barely flinched when I did a behind-the-back throw at a target inches from his face. I don't know what was more impressive, that he didn't flinch, or the fact that I could make the throw accurately.

There was a knock at the door.

"Open," I said lazily as I hung the square piece of wood on the wall.

"Hey Frank, Pavel."

I turned around to see Second Lieutenant Emily Hardwick standing at the door, she was wearing her ever-present aviator sunglasses even though we were inside a ship that was very comfortably lit. She was wearing an outfit that reminded me a bit of Marina, a flight suit covered her bottom half, with the arms tied around her waist in a knot while she had a gray t-shirt on.

"Lieutenant," I greeted cheerfully. "It's been a while Emily."

"Yeah," she admitted. "Do you mind coming over to my room, I need some help."

"Sure," I replied, "what for?"

She gave me a wicked grin. "What do you think for?"

And just like that, my day took a turn for the better.

* * *

><p><em>Thanks to Sniper Fodder for proof-reading this chapter.<em>

_Now, before I go into a needlessly long author's note I just want to say that I'm sorry it took so long to update, it's just that I didn't have access to my laptop for the past three days and couldn't finish the next chapter. I stayed up until one just so that you guys could have this. I'm tough like that._

_I feel the need to justify that one versus thirty scene. When I was writing it I had a pretty plausible idea in mind, but once I went over it again I realized that the whole thing seems pretty unlikely to happen in real life. I tried fixing it a little bit to make it more believable, but I think that I didn't entirely succeed. Still, just wanted to point out how tired you'd feel after running twenty-one kilometers. Hell, ten kilometers is a horrible thing to go through._

_Ok, a few things. Numbah one, if you didn't catch the 117 reference than I am slightly offended, I couldn't have possible made it more obvious unless I put it in bold. Numbah two, I think that all of you can guess who Frank was referring to when facing the small asian ranger with quick kicking skills. Lastly, I just have to say that every new female character that I bring into the story is attractive because it's easier to imagine them like that. Who am I kidding, author appeal for the win! Yay! _

_One more last thing. Obviously the chapter title has nothing to do with the chapter content itself, it was either that or "Nonacceleratory."_

_Hope you enjoyed this chapter._

_-casquis_


	109. Coitus Interruptus

Chapter CXIX: Coitus Interruptus

**February 9, 2544 (UNSC Calendar)/**

**UNSC **_**Inconvenience,**_** in orbit above Wolff, Zeta Lupus System**

* * *

><p>It's not that I felt guilty, I had no reason to feel like that? Right? I mean, why should I? We hadn't been going out or anything, we weren't in any kind of relationship.<p>

Right?

Well, I probably should explain what I'm talking about.

Ever since Emily asked me to jump in bed with her a couple of days ago I've been having feelings of guilt. Yes, I know, sex is sex, but for some reason I felt like I was betraying the trust of a certain person. That person happened to be a Corpsman and had a set of lovely brown eyes and blonde hair. Fine, fine, I'm talking about Hanna Lockley. I mean, I like her, not like her like her, but still. For some reason engaging in casual sex with Hardwick seemed like something akin to cheating.

"You're a complete idiot," Pavel told me when I asked him about it.

"Why?" I replied calmly.

"For any of the two reasons. One: you're getting worried over nothing, you had absolutely no commitment to Lockley or, two: you really like her and mentally cheated on her, causing mental guilt."

"What?"

"I don't know why I even bother trying," Pavel said under his breath, returning to his datapad. "Talk to Grass."

"This is guy stuff," I countered. "Why would I talk to her, she'll probably tell me something like get in touch with your feelings…or sumthin'."

"Fine, then don't."

"You just said-"

"Frank," he interrupted. "You're one of the most talented men I know, you're intelligent and display an impressive level of awareness."

"Thank you?"

"But sometimes you have the emotional maturity of a thirteen year-old."

"Thanks." This time the tone in my voice left absolutely no doubt as to the sarcasm.

Despite my response, I forced myself to think about that. While calling me a thirteen year-old emotionally might've been a bit of a stretch, Pavel might've had a point. Ever since the accident and moving to Jericho VII, I had been out of touch with a lot of things. My uncle wasn't a father, he only ever saw me during family dinners or breakfasts, and even then he only interacted with me in the way of telling me exaggerated stories of his time in boot camp. I knew that he had done his best to raise me, but he was a soldier at heart, not a parent. At least not a very good one.

I never talked to him about the birds and the bees, never talked to him about my first girlfriend or anything along those lines. The only lessons that he ever gave me that a regular parent would were related to drugs and alcohol.

Even then he did it his own way. He had me wear off hangovers by running around the track even in the rain. He could always tell how drunk I was and punish me appropriately. It didn't stop me from drinking, it just gained me an incredible alcohol tolerance level.

Drugs, well, let's just say that I had only ever done them once.

The point is that I didn't talk about those things, I barely had friends, I was always something of an outsider in school. Being known as 'that earth-born who lost his parents' isn't really an incentive for people to approach me. I was lonely most of my early life and now I didn't know how to deal with things that people normally took for granted.

I just wished it wasn't something as stupid as this. I had just found myself emotionally conflicted once before and it had been a relatively simple choice even then. Breaking up with Marina was tough, but it was the right thing to do, at least for me.

But this…

Do I fucking sound like the protagonist of a young adult novel who also happens to be a girl? Please, be honest with me.

Wait, don't answer that.

Moving on.

You see, there were a grand total four sections from which you were able to see space on board this ship. The first one was the bridge, although that one could retract into the ship for protection during combat, but if you had to do that then you were pretty much screwed already. Two others were small window sections in the starboard and port escape pod sections of the ship, they were really just there as an aesthetic addition to the ship. The fourth and last section was the Observation Room, it was basically a room with the floor and walls made out of glass. Usually reserved for officers, right now I found myself standing on it.

"How _did_ you manage to get us in here?" I asked Pavel.

"There are two rules to succeeding in life," he started. "One: never tell anything you know."

"And two?"

He just stared at me.

"Oh, I see, nice one."

"Opening blast panels," Eliza warned, appearing in a holotube near the entrance of the Observation Room.

"Why'd you bring me here?" I asked my friend as the metal plates retracted.

"Well, for starters, you've been whining about pretty corpsman and pretty pilot for two days, ever since Hardwick came asking for you. I think you just needed something to calm you the fuck down." He took a deep breath. "And Eliza is concerned for your well-being."

_She's an AI, what would she know?_

"She's an AI, what would she know?" I voiced out loud.

"Francisco, I have several psychological subroutines embedded into my software, I make use of the ship's cameras and microphones to determine whether any person on board could be at risk."

"Yeah, we've been over that, apparently you don't have any joke processing programs either."

"I do."

"You're usually pretty quick catching up on those," Pavel pointed out.

"Oh," the AI said simply.

"Now, look," Pavel instructed, beckoning at the space with his arm.

I have to admit that I was impressed. The sight was unlike anything I had ever seen. I could see Wolff on my left and the massive planet gas giant it orbited on the right. Zeta Lupus VI was a gas giant not unlike Jupiter, the color was different of course, same as the 'patterns', but it had the same rings. We were orbiting the moon at a position where the light coming from the distant Zeta Lupus hit the dust and particles forming the rings at just the right angle, lighting them up in a multitude of colors. Wolff itself was also a breathtaking view, with light blue water bodies scattered over much of its surface, covering the mostly gray ground.

"Wow," I commented appropriately. "Still, how is this going to help my allegedly fragile psyche?"

"I don't know," Pavel shrugged. "But once Eliza suggested it I jumped at the chance."

Knowing Liz, I knew that the AI had probably run simulations taking into account everything that I had gone through coupled with my recent experiences and put the results against several different outcomes of whatever else she was planning. While right now this seemed stupid, Eliza probably had ulterior motives or a very well-planned series of events to help me back into my regular state of mind.

It would've been almost sweet had I not been in my regular state of mind already.

Regardless, the AI's insistence did cause some concern on my part. It was, after all, an artificial construct with intelligence shy of that of a god.

But for now, I decided to enjoy the view.

The Observation Room had several micro-cameras embedded in the glass itself, those served as magnifying glasses when coupled with the photo-reactive screen that covered the inside section of the floor itself. Pavel and I took turns commanding the software program controlling the cameras to zoom into different directions of space, ranging from a bird's-eye view of Wilk, Wolff's capital, to an uncomfortably close view of Zeta Lupus itself. The yellow dwarf seemed nothing less than impressive even this many astronomical units away from it.

After over an hour and a half of just messing around like kids who had just gotten their first pair of binoculars we decided it was time to call it quits. It was getting late, at least by the ship's clock standards, and things were getting tense all over the sector. Luckily, Paris IV hadn't been compromised yet. A couple of outposts and automated colonies had been attacked, but nothing serious yet. If anything happened on our watch, I wanted to be well rested.

"So, pretty sweet huh?" Pavel asked.

"Yeah, but don't you think it might be more appropriate to spend the money on bigger guns?"

"In the grand scheme of things, talking about the ship, the _Inconvenience,_ I think that the price of that room was minuscule."

"Well, that was a poorly-worded sentence," I observed.

"English is not my first language," he cried in defense.

"Well, neither is it mine," I countered.

"Whatever," he grumbled, "you lived in Jericho VII, might as well have lived in Los Angeles or Cabo."

"They speak Spanish there," I let him know.

"That's right, you stupid Mexican immigrants, swarming over the border."

"Really, you're going to play that stereotype?"

"Yeah, yeah, I know, Mexico and the United States stopped being separate countries over a century ago and all that. The URNA has no ethnical barriers or something like that."

"Fuck you Pavel."

"It's not so nice when somebody else wins."

_Must be getting sloppy,_ I thought to myself.

Our room was quiet and messy as per the norm. Pavel returned to his datapad to catch up on some vids or series while I pulled out all three of my knives. I could see that the largest one was beginning to dent at the edges from use, the smallest one looked surprisingly well, while the Damascus steel one looked as immaculate as it had when Tenare had first given it to me as a parting present all those years ago. I grabbed the knife in question and twisted it in my hand, feeling the balance and weight that I was all too familiar with.

After spinning it twice I threw it to the wooden block hanging by the wall, a dull thud was heard as the point collided with the wood and the knife embedded itself in it, adding yet another scar to the piece of hard wood.

"You know, if you keep doing that, you're going to need to buy a new piece of wood."

"Should've ordered more," I agreed.

"Where do you buy those anyways?"

I shrugged. "Home Depot."

So we settled into our usual routine. I'd play with my knives for a while while Pavel watched something or other in his fancy datapad. Once I got tired I would start sharpening my knives before putting them away in their respective sheaths. After that I would grab my own datapad and start watching some vid or other. Lately it seemed that I was watching more and more of those crappy twentieth and twenty-first century flicks that Robert seemed so fond of. I couldn't help it, they were just too damned addictive.

I was halfway through the final battle of some superhero flick, laughing my way through it as it went even despite the lame special effects when the room's doorbell ringed.

I looked up from my datapad eagerly, hoping it was Emily looking for some…let's call it stress release. Pavel called out for whoever was outside to come in. As the door slid open it revealed Lieutenant Emily Hardwick standing at the doorframe.

_Yes!_

I raised an eyebrow at her.

She rolled her eyes. "Evening Pavel."

"Lieutenant," he returned. "Don't stay up too late."

"As if," I huffed, pausing the vid and putting down my datapad, heading for the door.

"Well, at least don't return him too late."

"As if," Emily echoed.

I stuck my elbow out to her, waiting for her to put her hand through it. As she did that I kept thinking that it was my last chance to back out with some flimsy excuse. If I did that I might be able to get something going on with Hanna, who seemed like more solid relationship material.

_Come on Frank, you know you're not going to let go, _the metaphorical devil on my shoulder whispered in my ear.

_He's right, _his angelic counterpart said. _You are not to blame for this, it's not like you had anything serious with Corpsman Lockley. Besides, she shot you. She didn't hurt you, but she still shot you. _So much for two different viewpoints.

* * *

><p>Not for the first time and not for the last, I didn't think with the right head.<p>

The full emergency alarm started blaring halfway through.

"Fuck me!" I cried in anger.

"I thought I was doing just that," my partner quipped as she jumped up from bed and made a dash for clothing.

Sure, it was simple for her, slap on a fresh pair of underwear and she'd be as good as new. Me, on the other hand, I had to maneuver the position of my pants and underwear in relation to my crotch, not to mention the lingering pain and depressing feeling that would stay with me afterwards. I squeezed, literally squeezed into my pants while struggling to put on my shirt. I put on my boots and tightened the laces before sticking them inside, if things went down badly, I'd probably need to take them off quickly.

We burst out the room, scrambling for our battle stations. Before I made my way to mine I felt a hand grabbing my arm. I turned to receive a quick kiss from Emily.

"Stay safe."

"You too," I replied.

With that, we separated and made our way towards our battle stations. I had to elbow my way through the rest of the crew. The marines and soldiers were headed towards the cargo bay, ready to hop inside pelicans. A few of them headed towards key points in the ship in case we were boarded. The swabbies simply ran for their regular stations, be it at the Med Bay or helping Eliza with fire solutions.

The alarms stopped blaring for Eliza's voice to come through and boom out the loudspeakers.

"A Covenant battle-group had made a jump to the system, they are currently orbiting Zeta Lupus V. We are within scanning range and it is a certainty that they will jump in our direction."

"This is Captain Brooks speaking, we've hailed for help, but the rest of the ships in the system will take their time to get here, the rest of the fleet probably won't get here until tomorrow at the earliest. Wolff is a target, the infantry complement will deploy there to defend the colony. Company XOs, you have your orders, carry them out."

His voice cut off and was replaced by the alarms again, occasionally interspaced with a warning telling us that this wasn't an exercise.

I finally made it past the flowing ocean of people and into my room, Pavel had already left, leaving his movie still playing and the room in disarray. I grabbed my knives and shoved them in my pockets before grabbing my sidearm and stashing it down my waistband. I took a moment to look back and make sure that I hadn't forgotten anything. Once I was satisfied I turned around and ran all the way down to the drop bay.

"Sarge! What's the plan?" Lamberti asked, putting on his leg armor.

"No idea, know about as much as you do. Snark!"

"Sarge?"

"Take the EMR."

"Got it."

"Pavel, I want you to pack armor-piercing, Angel, you grab shredders instead."

"Understood," the Italian said while my friend just nodded.

"I want you to grab a grenade launcher," I ordered Grass. I turned to Bumblebee. "Grab an AR, I don't want you messing around with the M6J carbine."

He nodded.

"Everyone else," I went on, "pack M7s in your pods. I want everyone taking rucksacks with them, we don't know how this'll turn out."

They nodded and went back to whatever they were doing. I took my time undressing down to my underwear and putting on my undersuit. The fabric was cold when I grabbed it, but it immediately warmed up on account of my body heat. I couldn't regulate it yet without my helmet on, but that was not of direct concern. I put on the armor that would cover my thighs before putting on my armored boots. Half my team was ready by the time I started strapping on armor onto my upper arms.

"Double-check your weapons," I ordered, it would ease tension, even if just a little bit. "Pack up heavy on ammo and grenades, Caboose, I want you with flashbangs."

I finished buckling my belt. It had three metallic plates, one on the front and two on each side. I strapped the ones on the sides to my thigh armor and the one in the front was left hanging loose, it was rigid enough that it wouldn't flap around and hit me in the balls.

_Ok, ammo…_

There were several boxes full of magazines for my battle rifle. I stashed as many as possible down my ammunition pouches before stashing a few extra ones in my rucksack. After loading up on the supposedly experimental 9.5x40mm ammunition I did the same with pistol ammunition. I only grabbed three magazines for my pistol in addition to the one already inside the weapon itself. For the first time in many, many deployments I grabbed four SMG magazines and put them inside my left leg's pouch.

I felt a little heavier than usual, but the combination of the armor's exoskeleton and my own strength could handle all the weight with relative ease. I would be hard pressed to run a marathon in this or sprint as fast as usual, but if I got into a position where I needed to do either of those I'd probably be almost empty on ammunition.

"Liz," I called out after I was packing enough ammo to kill a company's worth of aliens. "Sitrep."

No reply.

"Shit," Angel cursed under his breath.

I grabbed some grenades before strapping them to various places on my chest and then tossing them into my rucksack, putting more weight onto it.

"We're set," Pavel announced.

"Liz," I called out again. "Eliza."

"Sorry Francisco, I was…otherwise engaged."

"Have the covvies jumped here?" Caboose asked nonchalantly.

"Affirmative, but they jumped on the other side of Wolff. They are smart enough to know that if they jump within range of our MAC we could take one of them out. Well, in case of this ship in particular we could take two out before they knew any better."

"Yeah, yeah," I said quickly. "Numbers?"

"One _CCS-_class battlecruiser coupled with four frigates. A scouting force."

"Only the covvies consider that many ships a scouting force. We have battlegroups smaller than that!" Angel complained loudly.

"What's your take on this?"

"Wolff has mass drivers and anti-space defenses, as small as they might be, the Covenant will likely be unwilling to just glass the population centers. The UNSC Army is moving to defend key positions while the civilian population is moved."

"I mean in space," I informed her.

"As soon as we empty the hangars we'll boost away from here, leaving you with no support."

"You're abandoning us!" Snark voiced out suddenly.

"No."

"Makes sense," Caboose muttered. "I don't like it either, but it does. At least three ships will break off to follow the _Inconvenience_, leaving us with less to worry about."

"Two frigates can dish out a lot of damage," Angel pointed out. "Not to mention that your hypothetical three ships might deploy troops while passing by."

Caboose just shrugged and returned to cleaning his rifle.

"When are we being dropped?"

"Echo and B companies are being deployed already, we are waiting until they are away from your paths to avoid an incident."

"Liz, we've jumped _through_ wrecked ships," I said. "At least Pavel and I have, we don't need to wait."

"Chain of command?" Pavel asked.

"You report directly to the highest-ranking officer on the planet, no matter what the branch. Commander Albaf's orders."

"Can we jump now?" Bumblebee pressed. "I'm tired of waiting."

"Wait is over," Eliza suddenly said. "Enemy ships incoming, prepare for jump in twenty.

My demeanor changed immediately. "You heard the lady!" I boomed. "She wants us out so we're going out. How are we going?"

"We go feet first Gunnery Sergeant!" Reaper Squad yelled back as they made their way towards the pods.

I jumped inside my own and strapped my rifle to the special holder on my right side. I cracked my knuckles as the pod's doors closed on me and stretched my neck before turning on the screens. I clicked through all of my squad's covered heads before finally grabbing my own helmet from the floor and putting it on. My HUD flickered to life and I could feel my undersuit adjusting to preferred conditions.

"Ten seconds!" I warned.

The lights above me went through their usual thing. Red, yellow, green.

The pod lurched forward and suddenly we were outside of the ship and in zero gee. The screen on my left displayed one member of my squad, in this case it was Reaper-8, Caboose. The other camera showed a display from several cameras around the _Inconvenience_.

The cameras themselves were not used for the main guidance systems for the frigate, but they did help in some accounts. The zoom showed small pinpricks of purple and gray that couldn't be anything but Covenant ships. They were holding that distance, right before we entered atmosphere I saw blurred points flying at many of the cameras. The signal filled with static as our pods entered Wolff's atmosphere. Suddenly my helmet was filled with hundreds of different conversations. From what I caught of the radio signals they were mostly from Wolff-based ground forces.

"Aim towards that ridge," I ordered as dozens of images for suitable landing locations flashed by my HUD. "Hit it at an angle."

After my drag chute separated from my pod I started sweating from the nerves. The pod seemed to halt. The only indication that it was still moving was the image of gray rock rushing up to meet me.

I closed my eyes and waited for the impact.

I opened them as soon as I felt myself lurching forward. I banged on the button that would let the door fall down and reached for my rifle even before the door separated from the SOEIV itself. I jumped out with my rifle raised just in case, my squad doing exactly the same.

"Status report."

"Two's green."

"So's three."

"Green," Snark voiced.

"Grass is green," Grass informed us. It was beginning to become a catchphrase of sorts for her.

"Six is green."

There was a lengthy pause on number seven.

"Reaper-8 is good and ready to go," Caboose said after a moment of silence.

I looked around to see the various pods belonging to my squad members strewn about the side of the ridge. The surface underneath was mostly loose rocks over hard packed dirt. It would make for terrible mountain biking terrain if you ask me. My squad was converging on my position, each of them kicking off rocks as they climbed up or down, depending on their position.

"So now what?" Pavel asked.

I thought about it for a second. "Grab as much gear as possible and climb up to the top of the ridge." It was only a hundred meters or so, so it shouldn't be too much of a hassle. "I'll hail for a bird."

"Roger that," my friend nodded as he started climbing up. The rest of the squad followed us and started struggling up the steep hillside.

"So, what do you think?" Pavel asked as we climbed.

"What am I supposed to think? We usually arrive after a place has been attacked, not just before."

He shrugged. "How do you think it'll go," he rephrased his question.

"Same ol' same ol'" I sighed. "This is a pretty small colony. At least they didn't gun for Miridem, which'll probably give them some time to react."

"Let's just hope we don't have to die to buy them that time."

"Read my mind," Bumblebee said from behind us.

The land on the other side of the ridge was mostly flat and covered with enormous greenhouses that provided most of Wolff's food. The land on this planet was filled with minerals, just not any minerals that human food needed. However, right in front of me I could see Wilk. It was a pretty small city by Reach's standards, but it was the largest on this planet.

"Right," I said, suddenly remembering something. "Seal your suits, we can't breathe out here for long without poisoning ourselves."

"We've got fifteen minutes worth of air," Grass pointed out.

"Go get the oxygen tanks from the HEVs then," I ordered. "Snark, go help her."

The rest of us spread out and formed some sort of perimeter. There was no need, but it was habit and it always paid off to be cautious.

From where I was standing I could see the flurry of activity in Wilk, several ships were leaving while the roads were covered with cars. It seemed as if the evacuation wasn't proceeding smoothly. But it usually never does. I could make out some AA batteries, missiles, looking up at the sky, they didn't look like ground-to-space, but they would bring down several dropships if a direct invasion were to be attempted. I couldn't see the mass driver, but it was most certainly hidden somewhere around here.

"Done," Grass voiced. She dropped a bunch of little oxygen bottles at my feet. "I've already grabbed three for myself."

"How much time do these have?" Angel asked as he picked one up.

"Twelve hours," Grass informed him matter-of-factly.

"Ought to be enough," Bumblebee pointed out as he examined the black tanks. They were as long as his forearm and about as wide. It took a few seconds for anyone to remember, but eventually we all put our tanks on our left side, above the magazine pouches and slightly behind our arms so that we could move freely. From there we pulled a small hose covered in metal and connected it to a special port on the bottom back of our helmets.

"The dev guys really do think of everything," Bumblebee mused.

"Dev team?" Caboose queried.

"Dev, development," the Scottsman explained in his usual accent.

"Shouldn't that be R&D?" Pavel interjected.

"Dunno," Bee admitted. "Probably, but you got the meaning."

"No, you had to explain the words to us," Angel reminded him, speaking slowly.

"Shut up."

This time, I was inclined to agree with Bumblebee.

It took half an hour, but a Pelican finally came to pick us up. It was from the UNSC Army, piloted by a jumpy man in his forties who had never seen any action but likely had over a million hours worth of flight in this craft. At least it meant that he knew what he was doing.

"So, Helljumpers huh?"

"Yup," I replied, watching the landscape zoom by. "I take it you produce oxygen in the greenhouses."

"Mostly, there are other methods, but that's the primary one."

"Must be tough."

"All I've known," the pilot admitted. "I was born here, so were my parents, and grandparents. And now it might all vanish with the Covenant."

"Don't think that way," Grass suggested.

"Then maybe we'll kick their asses right off of this planet," the pilot replied, only half-sarcastically. The tone of his voice made it clear that he was hopeful.

"Don't get them up either," Caboose bluntly put out.

"Then what am I supposed to think?"

"You don't," I instructed. "You do your job best you can and block everything else out."

"Roger that Gunnery Sergeant."

There was a moment of uncomfortable silence as nobody said anything.

"What have you heard?" Pavel asked suddenly. "Anything big?"

"No, just that a covvie fleet is- mother of god!"

"What?" Snark asked quickly, nervous.

I walked towards the cockpit, dodging Grass as she stood up in alarm. Once inside I had to brace myself against a wall as the Pelican started shaking. I could see a huge purple Covenant frigate in the distance. The ship itself was one kilometer in length, or so ONI files claim. It was far enough away that its bottom got a little bit mixed up with the horizon, but the fact that they were willing to jump so closely to the city meant that they meant business.

"Why aren't they shooting at it?" the pilot exclaimed. "The mass driver can kill it!"

"They can't take it out in a single shot," I explained. "Not with the shields up."

"And shooting would give away the mass driver's position."

"Damn it," the pilot exclaimed banging his hands on the controls.

"Turn on the general channel," Caboose urged.

We were greeted by a wave of panicking soldiers and evacuation orders as well as several different conversations informing command on enemy numbers and landing positions. The frigate was already dropping troops like its life depended on it.

"Sounds like another frigate made ground just around the corner," Grass pointed out after listening in closely.

"None of our concern." I turned around and faced my team. "Ok, game faces on boys and girl."

"Approaching Glówny Base," the pilot spat bitterly.

The Pelican slowly landed on an old landing pad and the rear hatch opened, prompting us to activate our oxygen tanks again. As we emerged from the Pelican I noticed the sky for the first time. It was a mix of light blue combined with the darkness of space. I could see Zeta Lupus VI covering a large portion of the sky. The light gravity of the planet made it feel almost surreal. It looked like something straight out of one of those "Most Beautiful Places in the Universe" magazines. I could understand why people would live a tough life on here. The sight alone was worth it.

"Helljumpers!" an army corporal hailed. He was wearing outdated armor coupled with a metallic mask covering his nose and mouth. It was supposed to be bullet and shrapnel resistant, but I'm pretty sure it would do almost nothing to stop a plasma shot.

"That would be us," Pavel quipped as he hopped off the ship.

"What do you need?" I asked.

"Umm." the corporal looked unsure of whom to address. "The Brigadier General wants to see you."

"Lead us to his tent then," Bumblebee ordered, further confusing the young army corporal.

"Umm, ok."

The base was burgeoning with jumpy personnel, not something unexpected since the planet was just in the process of being invaded. The vast majority of the people here belonged to the local Army branch or the militia. I did spot a couple of Marine uniforms, but didn't recognize any of them, preventing me from making out if they belonged to the _Inconvenience_ or were simply here on deployment.

"Right this way," the army corporal informed us, leading us into a small building without any windows.

"Thanks corporal," Grass addressed him. This was beginning to irk the poor corporal noticeably.

The door hissed as it closed behind us and we unslung our rucksacks, placing them in a pile by the entrance before turning around to face the people waiting for us. The room we were in was much like a regular command tent except that it was bigger and actually built into the ground instead of dropped from an Albatross.

"Sir," I greeted the brigadier general. I spotted Major Hernandez and nodded to him as well before noticing another officer, a marine captain. I recognized him as the captain that had replaced Sharma, but hadn't met him yet. I kept forgetting what his name was. I still nodded at him as a sign of respect.

"Gunnery Sergeant," the brigadier said gruffly. "Glad to see you're fine."

"Likewise, sir," I replied, motioning for my team to stand a couple of steps back.

"Well, let's get down to business," the brigadier said. "The Covenant have landed here, and here." The holotable in the middle of the room synched with his voice, showing whatever he was talking about. "The most dangerous landing area is the one directly to the north of Wilk. The frigates are dropping troops through gravity lifts. Those troops will be supplemented with additional Phantoms sent from the battlecruiser.

"Probably special operations," I pointed out. "Those should be targeted."

"That's what we thought," the brigadier agreed, "some of them were shot down by missile satellites, but many dropships made it through."

"So far they have refrained from staging any direct attacks, it seems like they are massing their forces," Hernandez informed me.

"Yes, marines are already being deployed to protect important installations," the replacement captain chimed in. "Army forces are massing up before deploying."

"Yes, we'll support your men as soon as we can amass sufficient numbers," the brigadier said tiredly. "As for you…"

"Yes, sir?"

"I am sure that you are aware of this city having a mass driver."

"I've heard."

"Well, you and your team are going to defend it. Sending a larger force would probably call attention to it, and we need the best we've got to defend it."

"Understood."

"There is a team of Spartans on standby in the sector, but I don't know where they are exactly, it seems unlikely that they are in the system."

"Might come in handy," Pavel mentioned off-handedly. I had to resist the urge to turn around and slap my friend for being anti-ODST.

"Indeed," the brigadier agreed. "But we can't linger on it now. A craft is ready to deploy your team. The corporal outside the door will show you the way."

I squared my shoulders, clicked my heels and saluted. "Sir!"

I turned around and left, cursing Pavel for his fanaticism of the Spartan-IIs and thanking whichever god was up there for prohibiting Darbinian from being here. Things balanced themselves out, so I stopped being angry at my friend as soon as I realized that the universe had repaid me for it.

"This is your Pelican," the corporal said after leading us through the base. "Good luck."

"Likewise," Caboose told him, joining in the fun. The disgruntled corporal simply nodded in our general direction before turning around and leaving.

"Hop in," I ordered my team.

"So, where to?" the pilot asked us.

No one answered.

"Okaaaay," he said. "Off we go then."

The Pelican took off and the hatch doors closed, prompting us to turn off our oxygen tanks so that we wouldn't waste them. The trip was rather calm, with the ship perfectly still. It seemed like a regular flight. Of course, then things started getting worse, measuring up to the situation at hand.

"Shit Banshees," the pilot warned. "Someone man the gun."

"Dibs." Bumblebee said as he stood up.

"Gunnery Sergeant," I reminded him, pointing to myself.

"C'mon Sarge!" he complained.

I dismissed him and grabbed the weapon, sliding it across the rail on the ceiling even as the rear hatch opened. The Pelican started banking hard to either side and I saw bolts of plasma streaking by on either side. The pilot floored the accelerator and the dropship shot past the three purple fighters. I got one in my sights and started firing away. I cursed when I realized that the sights weren't calibrated, so I had to wait a moment for the weapon's targeting system to synch with my helmet, firing on the banshees all the same. As soon as the reticule in my helmet blinked twice I aimed at the nearest banshee and punched through its armor even as it banked around to face us.

"They're on our ass!" Angel warned the pilot.

"Hold on!"

I barely had time to hug the turret itself before the Pelican banked hard to the right. I lost sight of the two remaining banshees for a moment before one of them caught up with us. I fired at it, but the turning angle made it impossible for me to hit it, instead I saw tracers spraying wildly all over the place while the banshee zeroed in on us almost calmly.

I jumped to the side when it fired a burst from its plasma cannons. The blue plasma flew through the cargo bay, hitting nobody. It felt awfully close to my leg though, and it elicited a tingling sensation in my left shoulder blade, where I had been hit back on Lambari. I immediately got back up and grabbed onto the turret. I fired at the banshee even as it sprayed plasma all over the rear of the Pelican, damaging the tail engines. I managed to hit it twice in one wing, clipping it off and sending it plummeting to the ground.

"Where's the other one?" I asked the pilot. No answer came. "Shit."

"He's dead!" Snark informed us rather calmly after checking the cockpit. "Head blown clean off."

"Dammit, Grass, your dossier says you're an expert pilot."

"On it," she said as she unbuckled herself and made a dash for the cockpit. "About time you used this particular set of skills of mine."

"I hope we never have to use it again," Pavel deadpanned.

"Craft seems fine, pilot was the only thing hit," Grass called out from the cockpit right after I heard the sound of a body hitting the floor. "Oh crap."

"What?" I asked.

"You don't want to know."

The Pelican lurched, losing altitude quickly before Grass managed to pull it back up. A second later it started banking to the left ever so slightly while losing altitude. It wouldn't have been that bad had the last remaining banshee not strafed the top of our ship with its plasma autocannons. I caught sight of it and fired a couple of shots, but it shot away from sight an instant later.

"Grass! I need an angle!"

"I'm trying, the ship's controls are pretty fucked up."

_Shit, she's swearing, bad news._

An explosion was heard and the ship started banking to the right instead. Hard.

"Grass!"

"Hold on!"

I kept my grip on the turret as best I could while the rest of Reaper remained surprisingly calm. The banshee decided it would be smart to bear down on our six while we fell down to the ground. Of course, I didn't lose my presence of mind and riddled the thing with holes before it could get a bead on us. The craft suddenly started moving slightly sideways as the pilot was hit by a bullet. It didn't do anything other than that for a second until it started falling back down to the ground.

"Got it!"

Our ship pulled up, its nose pointing almost to the sky. For a second I was able to see just how close we were to hitting the ground. Grass maintained some semblance of control of the ship while I returned to my designated spot and strapped myself in. I could see black smoke coming from the right side of the dropship.

"We lost the front right engine and several non-essential systems," Grass informed us, actually bothering to use the intercom.

"Like what?" Angel asked her.

"Umm, our brakes."

"You're telling me that we can't slow down?"

"Sure we can," Grass replied.

"How?" Angel asked irritably.

Snark looked at the Italian and shook his head. "Ever heard the term crash-landing?"

I sighed in resignation as I saw the ground getting closer and closer to us.

* * *

><p><em>Thanks to Sniper Fodder for proof-reading this chapter. <em>

_Ooooh, a cliffhanger, it's been a while since I had one of those. I think. Has it? Well, it has also been a while since I had some latin in the chapter title. Actually, it's the first time that I've had latin in the chapter title. What can I say, if I get an opportunity to sound pretentious I will take it every time._

_Well, some of you have asked me what's going to happen to this guy or that guy or this situation or the other. I try to solve every plot line that I can as quickly as possible so that you don't forget about them, but lately I've been shoving so much stuff into the story that I have a hard time tying everything up in just a couple of chapters. Worry not, I don't forget any plot lines, and if I do, please feel free to remind me as aggressively as you feel like it._

_Now, as for the chapter itself, there are really only two things that I feel like talking about. First, there is Frank's fuck-buddy relationship with Lieutenant Emily Hardwick. Do you think he is mature enough to handle it? Is she? Is anyone else in the cast? If it was up to me, I'd go with probably not, but who knows. The second thing I wanted to talk about was Camilla's piloting skills. I made a big deal of them when I introduced her as a character, but for some reason didn't write a situation where she could use them. Now that she has it didn't end well. I wonder if I could make a running gag out of that one..._

_That's about it, thanks for all of your kind reviews and sorry for the delay in posting. I hope you enjoyed reading this. Next chapter we finally see some shit blowing up._

_Stay strong._

_-casquis_


	110. Taunts

Chapter CX: Taunts

**February 10, 2544 (UNSC Calendar)/**

**somewhere near Wilk Waste Disposal Facility, Wilk Outskirts, Wolff, Zetta Lupus System**

* * *

><p><em>"Did you know that war-crime rates all but disappeared after 2525?"- Lance Corporal Camilla Lilja Seppa<em>

* * *

><p>I had been hoping that I had only been out for a minute or two, but the timer on my HUD indicated otherwise. It had been some time since we had crash-landed into the stony surface of the planet again, this time the landing was not nearly as gentle as that of our Human Entry Vehicles. I groaned in annoyance more than in pain and unbuckled myself, slamming into the Pelican's ceiling for my trouble. This time I groaned in pain.<p>

"Grass would make a terrible pilot," Schitzo noted.

"Agreed."

"Yeah, I thought she was an expert pilot in a million different vehicles."

"No, that's not what I meant," I explained. "She wasn't nearly calm enough as she should've been. Pilots are supposed to keep calm voices even under overwhelming circumstances."

Schitzo walked on the floor. That's right upside down in relation to me and the entire planet's gravitational center. "I guess you're right," he admitted. "That's a new one."

"Fuck off."

"Are you talking to yourself?" Grass asked suddenly, her voice sounded pained and forced.

"Depends, how long have you been listening for?"

"Just now."

"Then you probably hallucinated whatever I said."

Grass moaned in pain. I heard the sound of a body hitting metal and knew that she had unbuckled herself, landing hard on the cockpits ceiling. "I'm good. How's the rest of the team."

"Vitals check out," I told her. "Let's see about waking them up."

"Yeah, you do that," Grass agreed. "I'll just lay here and…die."

"Don't think so. You'll rest when you die, and you're not dead yet."

"Buzzkill," she muttered.

The first person that I reached towards was Pavel. He was hanging upside down, his straps keeping him in place. I stumbled a little bit on the short walk, evidence of the hard landing. Pavel seemed to be in fine condition, his helmet was still on and his M247 was in fine working order at his feet. Or head, whatever.

"Pavs, wake up," I said. When I got no reply I slapped his helmet, eliciting a groan. Since Pavel didn't move I slapped him again, this time he answered with a string of colorful curses in Polish. At least I assumed they were curses, because what else could you say in a situation like that. "Rise and shine bro," I repeated.

"Shit," was all he said.

I moved onto the next unlucky Helljumper, Snark. I shook him by the shoulder, watching him wake up and try to push me away defensively. "Come on," I pressed him."We need to get a move on."

"Y-Yes, Sarge."

Grass had already woken up Angel, Bumblebee, and Caboose. We were all still a little bit shaken up from the hard landing, but nobody seemed any worse for wear. We'd have to be scanned for internal bleeding or concussions as soon as we could though, those things could sneak up on you if you weren't careful.

"Everyone ok?" I asked.

"Yeah, yeah," Pavel grumbled, "let's get a move on."

"You heard the man," I said, "grab your gear and let's go. I want everyone carrying extra oxygen tanks."

I grabbed another pair of tanks and slung them over my shoulder, sagging a little as I felt the weight. I was lucky for the lower gravity of the planet, had I been carrying so much gear on reach I would've been hard-pressed to walk more than five miles without collapsing of exhaustion. Right now I was comfortable enough to walk and run with little to no trouble. I actually felt some pity for the local soldiers, they would be used to the gravity and would have a hard time carrying as much gear as the ones from the _Inconvenience._

The Pelican had crashed upside down on a flat stretch of land. Rocks and dirt were covering half of the hatch, but it wasn't too much of a hassle for us to climb through it. As soon as I emerged I cursed at the sight.

"Shit," Pavel voiced beside me.

"Indeed," Angel agreed as soon as he emerged.

In front of us I could see the Covenant frigate inching closer to the city. Little specks strafed the huge ship with gunfire and explosives while land-based AA systems pounded away at it. Seraphs and Banshees did their best to keep the UNSC craft at bay, but so far they needn't have bothered, the frigate's shields were holding strong. Nothing short of a nuclear explosion or a MAC round would crack the energy shields open.

_Or a mass driver._

"Angel, contact command, try to set up a secure connection, Caboose, take point, we're walking the rest of the way, everybody else spread out. Bumblebe, I want your eyes in the ski, no surprises. Snark, same thing on the ground."

They all acknowledged my orders and started walking in the direction of a cliff. It was perhaps three miles away, it would take about forty-five minutes to reach at our current pace. It didn't seem like such a long amount of time, and judging from the speed of the frigate, it would probably be more than enough to reach the mass driver and pound a hole inside it.

"I got something," Angel said after fifteen minutes. "It's full of static and not secure."

"It'll do," I shrugged.

"You know, the communication network on this planet is grievously outdated," Caboose pointed out. "Covenant interference is not helping at all."

"This is Delta-Charlie-Victor, anybody read us."

"…copy Delta-Charlie-Victor, th…s command."

"Command, we were en route to defend a mass driver when we were shot down. I repeat, we were en route to defend a mass driver when we were shot down. Pilot is KIA, the rest of us are fine."

"Roger that," command replied, most of the static gone from the conversation. "We read you clearly…Reaper."

"Is our mission parameters still the same?" I queried. "We're currently walking towards the objective, but things seemed to have gotten a little out of hand."

"That's an understatement Reaper," the radio jockey replied irritably. "Mission parameters are the same, you are-" There was a noticeable pause. "Disregard that last statement, mission parameters have changed, you are to use the mass driver to attack the Covenant frigate in conjunction with other ground assets."

"Copy that," I acknowledged. "I doubt that any of us can man the cannon."

"It's a simple process Reaper Actual, you shouldn't have too much trouble with that."

"I'll take you up on that. Any intel regarding enemy forces?"

"There is a small number of Covenant forces in your grid, but none of them are of immediate concern."

"I'll take you up on that as well," I sternly said. "Reaper out."

Grass looked over at me. "I can man the cannon."

"Go figure," Angel said. "Leave it to you to drive a glorified garbage truck."

"Actually, this series of cannons are used to break up asteroids for mining," Grass informed him.

"The only reason this one would be groundside is because it can shoot radioactive waste into the sun," Angel countered. "Besides, it can do both things."

"That's your opinion," she shrugged, obviously beaten.

We arrived at a cliff wall that seemed to explode upwards suddenly. The waypoint in my HUD marked the cannon's position as directly in front of me and slightly above, so I assumed that the cannon was lowered below ground or the cliff broke off on the other side. The point of direct concern was that we couldn't get to it from this point.

"Caboose, Bumblebee, take point and look for an entrance, contact us when you do."

"On it Sarge," Caboose nodded at me before taking off with the Scottish rocket-toting Helljumper in his wake.

The rest of us found a group of large rocks and took cover behind them. I could only stare at the cliff face in front of me, studying it in case we needed to climb it. There was a small slope that had a bunch of rocks and crevasses followed by the cliffs forming the plateau's walls themselves. It looked to be about one hundred and fifty meters high from where I was standing. The walls themselves had plenty of handholds even if they were almost completely vertical. If we needed to climb it could be done, but I wasn't willing to attempt it unless absolutely necessary.

"Sarge, we found a way in," Caboose informed me.

It seemed like we wouldn't need to.

"Roger, we're moving to your position."

The entrance in question was an elevator built into the side of the cliff face. It looked like it had seen better days, but it was large enough to hold an Elephant inside. The vehicle, not the animal, hence the capitalized word.

"Ok, hop on," I said for what seemed like the tenth time in the day. "Let's go."

The elevator whirred as we were pushed upwards. The shaft consisted of several metal beams attached to the elevator itself. It climbed up at an incredibly slow pace before finally stopping. A huge metal door opened up to show us the top of the plateau. It was a relatively small stretch of land, the ground was concave, with several small buildings and walkways connecting to each other and with a set of blast doors right in the middle. The mass driver was probably there.

"Pavel and Angel, you two set up guard here," I ordered. "Snark and Bumblebee, I want you to find a high point and keep watch for covvies. Caboose, Grass, with me."

I walked at a brisk pace towards a small control panel near the blast doors, my battle rifle loosely held across my chest in case it was needed. The panel looked simple enough to work out, with only three buttons on it.

"Open doors," I muttered as I clicked the button.

The blast doors started opening smoothly, making almost no noise as they slid along their rails and disappeared into the floor.

"Raise mass driver," I called out cheerily, hearing a mechanical whirring as the mass driver emerged from the hole in the ground. It had a similar look to the Sledgehammer railgun that ONI had given to us during that last stand back in Lambari.

"Grass, what is it?" Caboose asked, almost as if he was daring her to answer.

"It has the body of a Mark 2488 Onager," Grass pointed out, "but that's a planetary defense gun, they told us it was to get rid of toxic waste."

"They didn't tell us anything," Caboose reminded her.

"It was inferred," she replied.

During this war a lot of technology had been adapted from civilian use to military use in desperate situations. I had seen cannons similar to this one, used to fire radioactive waste outside of the planet, being used to pound Covenant dropships into submission, but I had never seen military technology modified into civilian use. Doing that was simply too dangerous, the URF could use them against the UNSC. It had happened before.

"Can you use it?" I asked Grass as the cannon stopped coming up.

"Yes, as soon as we have a power source and ammunition I can use it."

"Good, I'll contact command." I did just that. "Command, Reaper Squad here, we have control of the mass driver, do you copy?"

"We copy, do you have a clear angle on the enemy frigate?"

"We do," Grass confirmed as she rotated the cannon.

"Affirmative."

"Good, we're setting a countdown, you'll fire in conjunction with three other mass drivers when it hits zero."

"Rog- wait. Three? The hell? This colony is only supposed to have one."

"Command out."

"Hey don't you-"

The line was cut and I was left yelling at thin air. My brain started working the information and little cogs and gears started spinning as I processed what I just heard. It took perhaps five seconds for me to come to a conclusions.

"We're helping Insurrectionists," Pavel muttered.

"Goddamit!" Bumblebee yelled. "The colony went rogue."

"They didn't," Caboose said.

"Well, they were about to."

"What do you want to do?" Grass asked.

I thought about it for a second. "Fuck it, we follow orders and leave this bullshit to the brass."

"You sure?" Grass asked.

"Yes damn it."

I waited a few seconds for the countdown to reach zero, activating my helmet's sound mufflers as I backed off from the cannon itself. I saw the energy panels light up as electricity flowed through them and then was forced to close my eyes as the projectile flew outside at .04 the speed of light, 12,000 kilometers per second. Two other white flashes appeared from different points on the horizon and converged on the Covenant frigate.

Its shields flickered and lit up as a combined 3.3 gigajoules of kinetic energy hammered into it. The ship actually seemed to stumble as its anti-gravity generators were shaken up by the impact.

"Five seconds!" Grass called out.

That amount of time later the cannon fired again. This time it fired slightly before the two others did, but the shields made themselves visible again as they tried to dissipate the energy.

"Sarge, we got a banshee closing in on our position."

"Shoot it down," I ordered Bumblebee. "As soon as things get difficult I want you to use that cannon as an AA gun, ok Grass?"

She fired again.

"Copy."

It took seven more shots from the cannon as well as the other two locally-built mass drivers before the ship stopped abruptly. Its shields were dead and it was smoking from several places, but its anti-gravity generators were still in working order, keeping the craft hovering on the city outskirts. It seemed like it was out of comisssion, even if just for now.

"Cease fire," command's voice came in.

"Grass, fire two more shots at it, try and bring it down."

She complied, hitting the frigate's center twice and eliciting the desired effect.

"I said cease fire!"

"Uh, sorry, didn't catch you on that," I lied. "Why?"

"If it falls down it could damage the city!"

"Uh, no, it's too far away from the city proper," I said, using the same ignorant tone as before. "Best kill it now before it can do some more damage."

I cut the channel before anything else could be said.

"Sarge, what the hell? You just went against orders!" Caboose snapped. "We could be court martialed for this. All of us!"

I was slightly surprised at his outburst, the man was normally impassive under all but the most unfavorable circumstances. "I disobeyed innie orders," I said. "And just between the two of us, I'm in charge here, you follow my orders."

"You have no proof that they are Insurrectionists!"

"Two illegal magnetic accelerator weapons," I told him. "That would be enough evidence to warrant a military intervention."

"I'm with Sarge on this one," Snark said, talking for the first time in a while. "You don't build two cannons unless you plan on using them."

"They could use them against the Covenant!" Caboose snapped angrily.

"They would've asked for them if they believed they were under threat," Angel said, joining the discussion.

"Either the leadership or the entire planet sympathized with the URF, the point is that we killed a frigate, we probably saved this entire colony while at it. If I hear anything from you again, I'll have you returned to your original unit. You read me?"

"Yes Gunnery Sergeant," he spat out angrily before storming away.

Pavel opened up a private communications channel with me. "What's wrong with him?"

"I dunno."

"Was he born here?" he furthered.

"No, he's an Outer Colony kid, not sure which planet."

"Maybe he has family here," Pavel suggested.

"Maybe he's pissed the ship landed so close to the city."

"Maybe he's just angry you disobeyed direct orders."

"Maybe," I agreed. "We'll get back to that later."

"Your call."

"Reaper, just what the hell do you think you are doing!" the local general's voice boomed in my loudspeakers. "You were clearly ordered to stop firing."

"Yes, sir, I am aware of that, I didn't hear the order the first time."

"You fired two more times Sergeant!"

"The second warning didn't come until after the second shot," I said. "As soon as I heard the order I relayed it to my gunner."

"You brought a kilometer long ship down upon vital portions of our infrastructure!"

"It was a simple misunderstanding."

"A misunderstanding that just might cause this colony to fail!"

I smiled to myself, these Insurrectionist bastards were screwed regardless. "General, with all due respect, this colony is already failed, we are under attack by less than half of the enemy fleet present in the system, a scouting group by Covenant standards. If the UNSC fleet arrives here the Covenant fleet will do the same." I waited for him to reply, but the general was silent. "I've fought in countless campaigns just like this one, the best we'll be able to do is delay them until we cannot evacuate anymore."

There was a moment of stunned silence as the reality of the situation sunk in to the general. He stammered a bit before dismissing me and cutting the channel. I turned around to face Grass and erupted in laughter.

"What?" she asked, annoyed, but I could tell that she was probably smiling at my antics.

"As far as most campaigns go this is a pretty tame one. The _Inconvenience _can probably hold its own or run away for a while until the rest of the local fleet can catch the three ships in the crossfire."

"Unless…" Pavel said.

My good mood was instantly ruined. "Unless," I agreed, almost bitterly.

"Sarge, I see dropships inbound," Snark warned.

"Grass, you see 'em?"

"Not within cannon's firing angle yet, but I'll give those Spirits a scare once they get in my sights."

"You do that, Snark and Bumblebee, I want you to kill targets of opportunity, Pavel mount your gun in a place with a decent vantage point and strafe grunts and jackals when they get close."

"Aye aye."

"Angel?"

"Planting charges in the elevator, should I put them on the rails?"

"Yes, go down and then come back up, plant them about three-quarters of the way up."

"I like how you think Sarge."

My squad shot in different directions, Caboose went up to the edge of the plateau and placed himself on his belly, pulling out a pair of binoculars from his rucksack to scan the enemies. I remained where I was, watching all of them spring to action while Grass waited for a Spirit to emerge into her firing angle. It took all of ten seconds for a dropship to commit that fatal mistake.

"Boom," I said after I saw the thing go down in flames.

"And I'm just getting started," Grass murmured, an almost psychopathic tone creeping into her voice. "Let's see how they feel when they're outgunned."

Three more Spirits were shot down before they pinpointed the exact location of the mass driver. They fired a couple of shots that went wide at it, but they did stick to the ground as much as possible, preventing Grass from getting a bead on them.

"Darn, they figured me out."

"Hop off," I ordered her, "they'll start strafing that gun as soon as they get large enough numbers. And stop saying darn."

"Got it, got it, and no."

I shrugged and climbed all the way up, leaving my rucksack behind for ease of movement.

"Sarge, they're dropping troops, platoon strength," Snark informed me.

"Same here," Caboose joined. "Two Spirit's worth, that's 'bout sixty."

"Angel?"

"I'm almost done," he came in. "I see troops on this side too."

"Ok, so we're surrounded then."

"And without support," Pavel added. "You shouldn't have pissed off the ranking officer on the planet."

"He's a fucking innie," I reminded him.

"Allegedly," Caboose muttered.

"He's an innie with power," Pavel said. "Shouldn't have pissed him off."

"You rooted for me."

"I changed my mind."

"One day you'll stab me in the back."

"Maybe," Pavel agreed. "If you keep pissing me off I probably will."

I sighed exaggeratedly. "I am so sorry I piss you off."

"I am glad that you have apologized," Pavel replied in the same robotic tone.

"Snark, range?"

"Under two kilometers."

"You brought the EMR, right?"

"Yeah."

Think you can pull of some elite kills from here?"

"Doubt it, I'd end up wasting too much ammo."

"You shoot targets at three clicks with that thing," Bumblebee argued.

"Stationary targets."

"Touché."

"Just shoot a couple of the little ones," I groaned. "Keep them on their toes, stall their advance."

"You're not even going to call for help?" Grass asked.

"I will, when we need it."

The Covenant could've been facing a whole platoon for the success that they were having. I mean, once they were within range of our weapons they were easy pickings. The few that dropped energy covers were safe, but the rest could only run in our direction as fast as possible. We had the high ground and better cover. They couldn't even climb up to meet us because the cliff was just that, a fucking cliff.

I took a few shots at grunts and jackals, Snark focused on taking out the sharpshooters and elite leaders. We only had so much success, they learned quickly to stick behind their shields once they saw their numbers halved by a small squad of seven members. Elites stood behind a wall of deployable covers chatting with one another, no doubt discussing strategy with one another. The grunts and jackals cowered behind their superiors. A few aliens had been left behind, those had tried to find cover in small rocks or holes, they usually gave themselves away to Snark or me when they tried to make a run for it.

"Ok, now what?" Grass asked after a particularly long lull in the fighting.

"I want you on standby on the cannon," I said. "Shoot down any ships that decide to make a flyby."

"Understood," she acknowledged, winking her status lights green.

"Pavel, I don't want you firing unless absolutely necessary, Bee, I just want you to save your rockets for when Banshees show up, don't give away your position. Everybody else, stay where you are, Caboose, move to compensate for Grass."

I received a wave of green lights on my HUD as acknowledgement and my team moved all around the small plateau, following my orders.

The plateau itself was simple, it was about one hundred and twenty meters in diameter, almost as tall as it was wide. As I already said, the surface was concave, bending inwards slightly, with the cannon placed right in the middle. When the cannon was in a firing position it was about ten meters above the ground, giving it a decent angle for firing in most directions. The concaveness of the top gave us a degree of cover that a regular plateau wouldn't have given us. I had no doubt that this little hilltop had been modified for human uses, no natural surface was so perfectly symmetrical.

"Sarge, I've got four Shadow troop transports incoming," Snark warned us. "No ghosts, but that means more infantry."

"Understood, leave them alone, but inform me of their movements and give me numbers ASAP."

He winked his green acknowledgement light. I guess he didn't feel like talking anymore than necessary.

"Pavel, Caboose, use thermal, I don't want anyone sneaking up on us."

After a few minutes I got the answer. "Nothing here," Pavel said.

"Same," Caboose grumbled.

"Keep watch, something's off, normally they'd be throwing themselves at us by this point."

It was about midday by this time. Days went fast in Wolff, that was an oddity in itself, a moon orbiting a gas giant normally had tidally locked moons, at least that's how it worked back in Sol. Or Jupiter. Regardless, Wolff spun around its axis in just under thirteen hours, it went fully around Zeta Lupus VI in just over a standard day. That meant that a Wolffian month was about two Wolffian days long. Unusual enough for a moon like this one, but not unheard off. With its low gravity, beautiful skies, and relaxed lifestyle it was a prime target for long sabbaticals. Well, except that it was apparently planning on going rogue.

Zeta Lupus VI's other two large moons were visible, one behind the other, much like Reach's on occasion. Coupled with the transparency of the sky it was an impressive sight. Not to mention that Zeta Lupus VI itself was always on the horizon, constantly getting bigger and bigger until it blocked out the sun. The one thing that this planet did have, was long nights. Not extremely long, but long enough to throw you off. Although I guess that depends on where you come from.

"The sun is setting," Pavel said. "Or the planet is blocking it, I dunno."

"Right, that means a twenty-six hour night."

"We can manage," Grass asserted. "Right?"

I said nothing, instead focusing on scanning the area with my scope. The sun was about to disappear, and it was getting dark fast.

"Grass, Bumblebee, get some sleep," I ordered. "Angel, you too, but stay near the elevator."

"Thanks."

* * *

><p>"They're up to something," Snark murmured. "They turned on their vehicles, heat signals are getting mixed up."<p>

"Wake everyone up," I ordered Caboose.

I crawled away from my position so as to not give myself away and then jogged all the way to Snark's, going prone right beside him. He looked to be concentrating fairly hard while staring through the scope of his Enhanced Marksman Rifle. I did the same thing with my own weapon, looking at the same direction that Snark was. The two Shadows had been placed next to one another and their plasma reserves left open or something, they were emitting an unhealthy amount of heat, and probably radiation as well.

"What do you think?"

"Maybe they're massing behind the transports and will use them as cover, try and storm the castle?" Bee suggested.

"No, that seems like a stupid strategy, even for them. They're elites, not brutes."

"Right," Bee admitted. "Maybe they simply wanted some heat."

It was a possibility, the night was cold, the thin atmosphere of Wolff had been bolstered by terraforming that was still ongoing, but we were still quite far from this system's sun and the atmosphere wasn't quite as good at maintaining heat inside it as the one on Reach or Jericho VII.

"All the troops?" I asked.

"Yeah, elites would never sleep near grunts," Snark agreed. "Too damned proud."

"Damn," Grass corrected, her voice drowsy. "It's too damn proud."

"Shut up," Angel said, "you just woke up and you're already being you."

"What's that supposed to mean?" she asked with indignation.

"Shut up," Caboose snapped. "Both of you."

"You heard him," I agreed. "Everyone quiet."

"So, what's the problem?" Pavel asked after a while. "Why are they keeping their plasma vents open."

"At first I just thought they were doing that, venting plasma," Snark said, "but it was taking them too long, so I called you Sarge."

"Wait, how long have they been giving away so much heat? How long before you warned me?"

"I dunno, ten, fifteen minutes?"

I turned around and activated my VISR while looking through my scope. The sight was not a pretty one.

"Cloaks!" I warned as I let out a burst at the nearest heat signature.

The rounds collided with an elite, distorting its cloak and giving it a jelly-like look. Two more bursts knocked its shields out before I put three rounds in its chest. The elite fired wildly with its plasma rifle, hitting the rock next to me. A fifth burst was what it took to put it down, hitting it in the chins and neck. The other nine heat signatures were obviously not amused.

"Shoot the fuckers damn it!" I ordered as I stood up and ran for the nearest piece of cover that I could find.

Plasma rounds did their best to hit me as I sprinted along the edge of the plateau. My goal was a watchtower planted just on the edge. Literally, just on the edge. I jumped at it, my feet leaving the ground, nothing in between me and the ground a hundred meters below but thin, nigh-un-breathable air. The low gravity almost made me overshoot my target, I managed to reach out a hand and hold on to a ladder, slamming hard into the tower itself before hanging down, almost dislocating my shoulder in the process.

It was a curious situation I found myself in, I was hanging down a literal cliff, a very old tower protecting me from nine highly-trained elites all out to kill me. It might've been a curious situation, but it was one that I had lived through more than one time. And yet I had never had a single job interview other than filling up a sheet so that I could join the ODSTs. Life's funny like that.

"Suppressive fire!" Pavel ordered. "Grass, there's two on your right!"

I heard bursts of gunfire intermingled with plasma and needle rifles. I used all my strength to pull myself up and reach to the next ladder step with my other arm. At this point I would take Nezarian's thirty rangers, well-rested and fresh.

Well, maybe not.

I swung sideways and placed my foot on the metal wall of the watchtower. From there it was easy, I started climbing up as fast as possible. About three-quarters of the way up I was stopped abruptly. Three needle rifle rounds hit the wall just above the next handhold, discouraging me from grabbing it and making me loose balance. I let go of both hands and struggled not to fall backwards. I spun my arms as fast as possible, and bent my upper body forward.

I succeeded, but barely.

I did my best to ignore the needles jamming themselves all around me, but always missing me by inches.

"I don't see them!" Grass yelled frantically.

"That's kind of the point," Snark replied. It was good to see that at least some of him was still there after 'Crow's death.

I slid behind the rail as soon as I climbed all the way up, breathing hard, sweat already starting to wet my undersuit in my armpits and lower back. I drove away the feeling of having just been on the edge of death and moved towards the other side of the watchtower. I immediately spotted the points of origin of the various plasma weapons that were pummeling my squad. The elites hadn't bothered checking that I was dead and had moved to a position that was easily flanked.

In fact, I was already on their flank.

My finger hovered over the trigger for a few moments before I changed my mind. I reached for one of the several grenades strapped to my armor and pushed down the button on the top after removing the safety cap.

"Catch!" I yelled loudly, both drawing their attention and coming off as a badass.

The grenade hit the metal walkway that the elites were on with a loud clanking noise. A half a second later it detonated violently, draining the shields of three of the aliens and killing one outright. Three shots later I had racked up my kill count to five. The rest of the elites hopped over the waist-high walls to avoid my fire.

Parenthesis. Think about it, what's deadlier, a highly effective, trained killer with a high-powered weapon? Or six of them?

Just making sure we're on the same page here.

"Clear," Pavel called out. "Looks like we got them all."

"Angel, out a round in their skulls, make sure. Confiscate their weapons and grenades, store them somewhere safe and within reach. Snark, snipe an elite or two as payback. Everyone else, I want you awake and sharp. Grass, back to the cannon."

Everyone nodded and started heading off in different directions.

"Pavel, wait up," I ordered.

By the time I climbed back down the watchtower he was waiting for me at the bottom of the ladder. I gestured for him to follow me and headed towards the four elites that I had killed from the tower. The one that the grenade had killed was a bloody mess, its legs were blown off and its stomach was a gory mess. An unsuitable candidate for the task that I had in mind. I made sure that Angel had already relieved this one of its valuables before pulling it up and slinging a hand over my shoulder.

"Here, help me up."

Pavel shrugged and slung the other arm of the dead elite over his shoulders. We dragged it towards the edge of the plateau and put it down. The back of my helmet was stained with purplish blood from the alien. At least it wasn't mine.

We repeated the process two more times before I ordered Angel and Caboose to join us. After five minutes of dragging and wrestling with corpses we had nine elites piled up on top of one another right before the edge of our little fortress. We were facing the largest concentration of Covenant troops.

Three shots rang out and I looked at Snark, his rifle was smoking slightly and I had absolute confidence that he had killed an elite, just like I had ordered him to do.

"Major," Snark informed us. "Saved the video, it was a pretty nice shot."

"You'll show us later," Bee said dismissively. "But good job regardless."

I stood up right on the edge of the plateau, my eyes scanning the ground in front of me for enemies. The shiny deployable covers gave away the covvies' positions. The two Shadows weren't easily spotted, but two unnatural-looking bumps in the mostly flat surface were a giveaway.

Another shot rang out.

"Jackal sniper," Snark announced again. "You're welcome."

"Thanks," I nodded. "That was kinda part of the plan."

"And the rest of the plan?" Pavel asked.

"Here, help me pull him up," I told him.

Then both of us pulled the elite up, its knees were bent backwards at an unnatural angle (for a Sangheili at least) I reached for the knife in the small of my back and drew the weapon. I used it to pry open the elite's helmet. I grabbed the armor piece in question and let it fall to the ground, where it rolled down to the edge of the cliff and fell all the way down.

"Are they looking?" I asked Snark.

"Oh, you bet they are. All of 'em."

"Good."

I put the elite down gently, having Pavel hold its shoulder so that it wouldn't slump over. The elite stood there, sort of kneeling, sort of not. I walked from one side to the other of the elite and finally placed myself behind it, taking off my helmet and placing it under my arm. Pavel smirked and rolled his shoulders before letting go of the elite. I kicked the alien in between the shoulder plates, having it fall off the cliff and fly straight for the ground. Even the lesser gravity had its organs blow up as it hit the hard rocks at the bottom.

I smiled for all the aliens to see before turning around and reaching for the next dead elite.

"It usually works better with live ones," Pavel said off-handedly, taking the dead weight (ha, see what I did there) of the elite while I pried off its helmet. I was about to push it off when Caboose stopped me.

"What?"

"Wait."

The man grabbed my knife and used it to pull the elite's armor off from its chest, revealing a brown-gray skin. He stick the knife on the edge of the elite's torso before pulling it across to the other side with some effort. The alien's insides spilled out in a gory mess, blood flowing from its stomach and wetting the floor before dripping all the way down to the bottom of the cliff. I smiled at the act and nodded at Caboose before another shot rang out.

"Minor, you pissed it off Sarge," Snark said. "Exchanged words with a zealot."

I raised my eyebrows at the word zealot but said nothing, instead simply kicking the elite down the cliff, making it join the corpse already below.

"Is this really necessary?" Angel asked calmly.

"Show of force," Grass replied with an equal tone. "Scare the little ones and give the big ones second thoughts. Piss them off, make them fight angry."

"We wouldn't do this to humans."

"We would do this to Insurrectionists," Bumblebee asserted.

I could've sworn that Caboose tensed up, but then again, it was probably just my imagination.

"Maybe you're right," Pavel admitted. "But these aren't innies, don't linger on it."

I could feel the squad nodding grimly. All of them were on the edge of the plateau, our profiles no doubt were prominent to the enhanced optics of the aliens. It was the intention, we were taunting them, daring them to fire at us, we were giving the impression that we weren't concerned for our lives in the least. We were fucking with their minds.

The last body I treated with particular disrespect, shoving the knife all over the place, making a huge bloody mess of the dead elite. Its intestines spilled out along with organs that I couldn't even begin to recognize. I took the time to decapitate this one, driving my knife all the way to its spine before sawing through it quickly. I kicked the body down the cliff and then tossed the head along with it.

Another two shots rang out.

"Major this time," Snark called out. "They are pissed as hell Sarge. The zealot, on the other hand, looks pretty calm. Looks. Then again, I'm not a xenobiologist and can't read their expressions worth a damn."

"I grabbed my rifle and zoomed in on the zealot in question. It was clad in regular armor, ornamented with glyphs and signs all over. The only thing that differentiated it from a regular elite was its size and the color of its armor. The color of gold. Even from here, with the darkness encompassing everything around us, I could tell that it was that color.

I smirked on purpose and put my weapon over my shoulder before spreading both my arms and lifting my chin slightly, as if daring the elite to shoot me. No such shot came.

"It took off, went off behind one of the Shadows."

I smirked, this time it was a natural smile.

Schitzo took two steps from behind and joined me. He was wearing full Helljumper armor, it was the first time that he had manifested wearing it. He looked at me and nodded.

"Bring it on," I muttered. "We're waiting."

* * *

><p><em>Thanks to Sniper Fodder for proof-reading this chapter. <em>

_Now, I know I promised more action on this chapter, but I'm doing this thing called dosing. I give you little tastes of what's to come and then suddenly blow your minds with over 10,000 words worth of epic action. It would probably work if my writing was halfway decent._

_Not really much to say on this chapter. Just know that the Insurrectionist situation will be explored, expanded, and dealt with in the following couple of chapters. As for mutilating elite bodies, humans hate aliens as much as aliens hate humans. It wouldn't be considered amoral for a human to abuse an alien prisoner, in fact, it would be considered simple payment. I have a hard time believing that I wouldn't torture an elite after it had burned billions of people. Especially these guys, they've all seen the devastation that the Covenant bring and have lost someone to them._

_And they're assholes._

_That's it, hope you enjoyed the chapter. Stay strong._

_-casquis_

_Hit it, write it, send it._

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	111. The Long Night

Chapter CXI: The Long Night

**February 10, 2544 (UNSC Calendar)/**

**Wilk Waste Disposal Facility, Wilk Outskirts, Wolff, Zeta Lupus System**

* * *

><p><em>"People sleep peaceably in their beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf."- George Orwell<em>

_"Yeah, that's us."- Corporal Arcangelo Lamberti_

* * *

><p>It was one of the darkest nights I had ever had the pleasure of witnessing. With Zeta Lupus VI covering almost all of the sky there was no stars. Sure, you could spot a few small white dots on the edges of the sky, but for the most part it was just a mass of blackness encompassing everything. We still had power in here, courtesy of the hardy UNSC constructions that were the norm in colonies. Still, we only had one light on, the one on the main building at this waste disposal facility.<p>

"I'm sorry," Snark said, coming up to me suddenly.

"For what?" I asked. I was a little bit confused, but I had a pretty good grasp on the direction that this was headed.

"I missed the cloaked elites, I should've spotted them, but the distraction worked like a charm on me."

I shook my head at him in an attempt to discourage him from blaming himself. "It's not your fault," I insisted. "The elites must've turned off their shields and cloaks to better blend with the background, the range was pretty extreme for the thermal sensors on the scope."

"Yes, but still, I shouldn't have kept my attention on the Shadows for that long."

"None of us spotted the elites," I told him. "We all missed them, myself included."

"Besides," Pavel interfered. "We are none worse for wear, no one was hurt and we kicked their asses."

"Gave them a nice little show for bothering with an attack too," I said with a smile. "It's all right."

"It won't happen again," Snark asserted, standing a little bit straighter.

"I'm sure it won't," I agreed with him. "Now off you go, we need as many eyes out there as we can manage."

Snark saluted and left the small building, closing the door behind him. I worried about the little guy, he hadn't been the same ever since Lambari. He had never been particularly chatty, but he always jumped at an opportunity to quip about something or humiliate someone in the squad. Now he just seemed to use all his strength and focus on whichever mission we had at hand. Normally that would've been a good thing, as it would drive away all possible distractions and make him more effective, but exchanging his mental health for better headshots was something that I wasn't willing to risk. Not even I was that much of an asshole.

"What do you think?" Pavel asked me.

"About him?"

"No, about our situation."

I glanced back down at the table and at the two-dimensional map projection of Reaper Hill, as we had taken to calling this plateau. More Covenant troops had arrived to provide backup to the ones already here. We had been surrounded by some forty or fifty troops originally, then the two Shadow transports arrived, bolstering enemy numbers. The four Spirits that followed soon afterwards only served to make our position bleaker. Grass had shot down one of them with the mass driver, but the other three had quickly skirted close to the ground, avoiding fire from the powerful weapon.

"I don't know," I admitted. "Mister Army General in charge here doesn't feel like providing help."

Pavel scoffed. "I did feel that his excuse was a little bit flimsy. Otherwise engaged, please, there are five thousand soldiers present on the planet, they can probably spare thirty and a Pelican."

I agreed with him. We currently had control of one of the most important points on the planet. With this cannon we could give every Covenant ship under battlecruiser classification a pause before attacking this section of the planet. We knew that, the general knew that, hell, even the Covenant knew that if their numbers were any indication. So far they had refrained from a direct assault, but they had been setting up more permanent emplacements.

"They won't help us, so we're alone on this for now."

"Could we ask other troops from the _Inconvenience_?" Pavel prodded. He seemed to ask the question with utmost care. I understood why he did that. We all had a mission here, we weren't about to keep them from accomplishing theirs because we had gotten ourselves in a shit storm.

I sighed in reluctance. If we wanted any shot at surviving we needed some heavy weaponry and a shit-ton of ammunition. "I'll call Zekalwe, see if he can set up a connection with the Echo or B. What was Echo's new captain's name again?"

"Alexander Salas," he informed me.

"Good to know that."

I went for the rucksacks. They were all neatly piled on top of one another right next to the wall. I opened up the one belonging to Caboose and rummaged through it. He had packed some MREs and a lot of ammunition, a couple of boxes of shotgun shells and several magazines for his MA5K. I ignored those and grabbed a rectangular device with an antenna. The small radio set looked like a dinosaur compared to other communication technology, but it was as reliable as they got. I linked the thing to my helmet before placing it on the table and putting on my helmet.

"Search for F99s." The order was short and simple, easy for my helmet's program to understand.

A progress bar with the caption 'searching' appeared on top of my HUD and started filling up. Within five seconds a small text box appeared on my helmet, it informed me that there were five F99 Unmanned Combat Aerial Vehicles. One of them, the most up-to-date UCAV, belonged to the _Inconvenience,_ the other four were older versions in service by the Air Force branch on the planet. None of them had any software that prevented me from linking to them.

"Link," I ordered again. My helmet immediately used the radio set to establish contact with the small drones, showing five different green lights once contact was established. "Horace Zekalwe, Chief Warrant Officer."

It took about a minute, but the radio established a secure link through the network of F99 Wombats. Zekalwe was probably busy some way or other, but he could relay my request for help to other troops on the _Inconvenience._

"Frank!" his loud voice came in just as I took off my helmet, the radio's speakers and mics were enough. "We lost all contact with you, some here were starting to get worried."

I smiled at the show of concern, at least I wasn't universally hated on board the ship. "Good to know H," I replied. "But we do find ourselves in a little bit of a…situation."

"Roger, what do you need?"

"We're defending a waste disposal facility, temporary designation is Reaper Hill," I informed him calmly as Pavel leaned back on the wall and crossed his arms. "Increasingly large numbers of enemy troops are surrounding the plateau in question. They are mostly infantry right now, but if they get Wraiths or fliers here we'll find ourselves in some deep shit."

"I see. What do you need?"

I glanced at Pavel.

"As much ammunition as you can spare as well as two or three SRS-99s with ammunition to go with. M41 ammunition and a spare Spanker would be helpful. Those two things are the ones we need the most, but boxes of 7.62 and 9.5 would do wonders too," Pavel said quickly. We had gone over a list of supplies that we might need several times before, so he had no trouble shooting out the items in question.

"As far as it goes, that's pretty tame," Zekalwe noted. "Things are getting edgy here on Wilk, Echo and B are doing most of the heavy-lifting."

"Can you get us the supplies?" I asked.

"Yes, the Army in here had a surprising amount of weaponry here, some of it they weren't supposed to have."

"Two undeclared mass drivers and an arsenal," I thought out loud. "As helpful as that might be right now, it's still not a good sign."

"I toyed with the idea," the pilot admitted. He paused for a second. "Still, nothing we can do about it right now. I'll see what I can do about those supplies, drop them on your position from high altitude."

"Thanks H," I said, meaning every word of it. "Any word on Nezarian?"

"Yeah, him and his Army Rangers are jumping around the city, playing havoc with the enemy supply lines."

"See if he can spare a squad," I asked. "If he does, you can tell him that I owe him a favor. A big one."

"Will do. You can expect those supplies in half an hour, still, I don't know if I'll be able to round them all up."

"Do your best," Pavel said. "We'll be waiting. Eagerly."

I heard chuckles on the other end of the line. "Of course you will. Good luck boys, give 'em hell. Zekalwe out."

We both looked at the radio set for some time.

"Well, it was about goddamned time we got some good news," Pavel announced loudly, uncrossing his fists and cracking his knuckles. I smiled at him and cracked my own knuckles, making a louder noise than he did, outmatching him. Pavel just looked at me and rolled his eyes. In all fairness, what I did was pretty childish, even if I did win.

"Sarge, I'm getting some movement," Snark's voice came in out of my helmet.

"What kind of movement?" I asked after putting it on.

"You might want to see this," Grass added. "Now."

_Here we go…_

"Get some rest," I ordered Pavel. "Quick nap."

"Way ahead of you," Pavel replied, moving towards a folding chair.

I activated my oxygen tank and tried to ignore the metallic taste. I quickly closed the door behind me so that Pavel wouldn't get some sort of poisoning. And die.

"What is it?"

"Over here," Bumblebee said, gesturing for me to join him up in his tower.

I jogged that way while making sure that my rifle was in fine working order. I spotted Caboose sharpening his knife and Angel checking on the explosives and detonators that he had brought with himself. They were both taking a rest from being on watch. Believe it or not, having to pay full attention to everything that happens in front of you can be very tiring.

"There," Snark pointed. "I thought you'd want to see this for yourself."

I looked through my scope at the enemy line. They had set up themselves in a position reminiscent to that of a siege. We were fully surrounded now. The Covenant had set up several barriers and purple barricades all around us. Those I had already seen several times. The only vehicles present were the two Shadows from yesterday, the Spirits had left as soon as they dropped their payloads, but the ones that had been shot down were being used as cover.

"Shit, those Daemon tanks?"

"Looks like it," Grass affirmed. "Profile matches. I haven't seen terribly many of those, but I think I can recognize it well enough."

"It's only two of them," Bee said. "I might be able to hit them from here, match their profiles to the missile tracking computers, fire straight at them."

"You'll hit them?"

"Not sure," he admitted, "they are pretty far away and could always boost away at the last second."

"I can paint the target," I said. "Make it easier to track."

"That might help," he admitted.

"Maybe you can fire straight up, make it hard for the tanks to dodge?" Grass suggested.

"Do the rockets have enough fuel for that?" Snark asked. "Won't they just plummet down halfway through?"

"No, the tanks are within missile range," Bumblebee said, sounding sure of himself. "Even if they fly twice the distance there shouldn't be any trouble."

"Sweet," Grass said without much feeling.

"Aim at the bigger target," I ordered, "the closest one, I'll paint it while you shoot it, but shoot from somewhere else, I don't want them blowing up the towers in retaliation."

"Got it," he said as he climbed back down the ladder.

"You ready?" I asked after a few seconds of silence.

"Hold on," Bee shouted back, "I have to change the rocket's configuration, it'll be just a second."

"You can do that?" Snark asked, out of all of us, he was the one with less knowledge regarding heavy weapons.

"Yeah, you just need to unscrew the top and flip a switch," he replied. "Broad strokes, but it basically boils down to that."

"Huh," Snark mused. "I wasn't taught that."

Bumblebee chuckled slightly while seeing to his rocket. "Few people are, very rarely does anyone lack access to laser-guided missiles, if you need to change the default settings you probably have more serious concerns." The Scottish accent made the small piece of information sound way more interesting than it actually was. It was useful information though, I didn't know that either.

"Ahh, story of my life," Caboose said.

"Done," Bumblebee announced. "Paint the target Sarge."

I turned on the laser designator and aimed it at the Daemon tank closest to me. The extreme range caused the laser to wobble all over the place, forcing me to plant the BR55 on the railing to stabilize it. As soon as the infrared line stopped wobbling I pressed the button on the side. My HUD immediately outlined the tank and it lit up as soon as the laser hit it.

"Target painted," I voiced out.

"You better watch this," Bumblebee said. "You might not see it again."

The familiar sound of a rocket firing was heard over my back. I could make out the noise of the rocket boosting away but couldn't afford to look up to watch lest I move the laser away from the target. It took about five seconds before the laser-guided missile appeared on my scope, it was coming at the Daemon tank from an almost vertical angle. It flew at the tank at breakneck speeds before impacting the top of the turret.

The explosion wasn't nearly enough to destroy the sturdy and well-armored tank, but hitting it right on the top caused enough damage to the turret to make it unserviceable without some heavy duty repairs.

"And there it is gentlemen," Bumblebee announced. "Magic in the battlefield."

I smiled at the sight of the flaming Daemon far off in the distance before I spotted the other one, it was turning around to face us.

"Shit, get down!" I cried as I jumped towards the ladder and slid all the way down. The team was already running down towards the mass driver, sensing the tone in my voice they decided that it was probably best not to ask any questions. The mindless obeying paid off, as seconds later the first plasma round hit the edge of the plateau, somewhere near Caboose's previous position. It lifted up dust and rocks while making a small crater.

Of course, the Covenant, being the stupid assholes that they are, decided that it would probably be a good idea to keep on shelling us for one full hour. The Daemon was completely unsuited for an artillery barrage at a higher position, its fast-flying plasma shells had little drop and it was impossible for them to hit the top of the hill itself. Eventually, the tank settled for bombing the shit out of the watchtowers on that side of Reaper Hill. By the time it was done we were two towers short and a large portion of the cliff had been glassed from the heat of the explosions. No part of the plateau had collapsed thankfully, otherwise we would have lost an important portion of our wall.

"Are they done?" Bumblebee asked.

"Looks like," Angel replied.

Of course, a second later another round hit the remains of one of the towers, sending pieces of hot metal flying everywhere. We all waited before saying anything else and tempting our luck. After five minutes it finally felt safe enough for me to stand up and look around. The buildings and structures were undamaged. Except for the two destroyed watchtowers everything else was intact, a few of the buildings closer to the edge had received shrapnel damage, but they were still airtight and safe for us to remove our oxygen tanks inside them.

"Want me to shoot someone in retaliation?" Snark asked eagerly.

"Yes, please," I agreed. "Highest ranking elite you can see, if it's the zealot all the better."

"My pleasure," Snark said grimly before moving towards the edge of the cliff and taking position. He placed the bipod on the ground before securing the rifle's stock to his shoulder.

After a minute of waiting for a suitable target the Indian marksman squeezed the trigger thrice in quick succession. I was looking at the enemy line through my scope and immediately spotted his victim. An elite ultra received two shots to the chest, absorbing the impact with its shields. The third shot punched through the weakened shields and hit the elite below the collarbone, ignoring the armor and going completely through. The ultra collapsed and its white armor started getting covered with purple blood.

Two grunts moved in to help their leader back into cover, but I fired three burst, hitting one of them in the chest, killing it. The other grunt decided that it wasn't nearly brave enough for the task at hand and scrambled off to cover. I cursed at the two missed bursts.

"Getting sloppy Sarge?" Grass asked playfully.

I shook my head before crawling backwards and away from the enemy line of sight. "Nah, range is extreme, and this is a battle rifle, not a sniper rifle."

"I know, I know," she conceded. "Just messing with you."

"Hey Grass," Bee came in. "Since you're supposed to be a gunsmith or something fancy like that, how come you've never modified any of our weapons? I mean, all the indication that I have that you're good with guns is that you can field strip them pretty fast."

"Agreed," Caboose said simply.

"You've never asked," Grass answered, effectively ending the conversation.

The starless sky was all that I could stare at while we kept watch, Pavel hadn't been able to catch a nap and instead joined us on watch. All of us were posted along the length of the round cliff, watching for any sign of an impending attack. So far we had only been shot at by jackal snipers or marksmen, all the shots missed, but they served to remind us that we were still within enemy range. Snark took out the ones that fired, and soon enough, the enemy snipers stopped exposing their positions to us so readily.

"Reaper, come in," Zekalwe's familiar voice called out.

"This is Reaper," I replied immediately. "What's the sitrep?"

"I'm currently hovering above your position, just letting you know that I'm dropping the packages. I'm being painted for targeting, gotta bail."

"Thanks H, news on reinforcements?"

"I talked to Lieutenant Nezarian, he said he might send you a spare squad in some hours time. Packages dropped, keep your eyes up."

"Thanks again, good luck."

Horatio chuckled. "Don't waste your luck on me, from the looks of it you're gonna need it."

I nodded even though he had no way of seeing me before cutting the channel. I looked straight up and squinted, trying to make out the resupply canisters in the dark night sky. Eventually my helmet outlined several shapes in the sky, falling rapidly towards our position. I made sure that they weren't about to land anywhere near me and waited for them to slam down on the ground. The six oblong shapes embedded themselves in the hard rock surface.

"Everyone, stay in your positions," I ordered, "Pavel you have my sector."

"Aye aye Frankie."

The resupply canisters had landed relatively close to one another, but the extreme altitude from which they were dropped caused them to be further apart from one another than usual. I moved towards the one closest to me and opened the panel, revealing a bunch of hastily-packed magazines stacked inside. I pulled out a few and confirmed that they were all 9.5mm ammunition for Snark and me. The next pod revealed a shiny SRS-99 sniper rifle, I grabbed it and yanked it out from the gray security foam. The second box also contained a belt full of magazines for the rifle itself.

Once I had pulled out the sniper and the ammo I moved on to the next canister. This one revealed another M41 SSR. This one had the ergonomic thumbhole design that Army seemed to favor. The change in design was minimal and wouldn't affect us, so I ignored it. The box also contained four boxes of rockets, bringing the grand total to ten M19 missiles in addition to Bumblebee's other eight. It wasn't a lot of firepower considering we had a couple of companies laying siege to us, but it was a start.

The other three cases revealed another sniper rifle with an equal amount of spare ammunition, a bunch of magazines for the MA5-series rifles, and several boxes worth of 7.62mm linked ammunition to be used by Pavel and Angel.

"Snark, come 'ere," I said. "Got a little gift for you."

He jogged to my position and looked at the sniper rifle that I handed him greedily before taking off again. I warned him to only take out targets of opportunity and to restrain himself to one shot per half hour. He acknowledged my order and returned to his position, heavy rifle in hand and spare ammunition around his waist. I had Pavel and Angel grab a box of ammunition each, if push came to shove we would need their fire volume to help out suppress the enemy.

Now let me tell you how exactly it was that push came to shove.

With two high-powered armor-piercing sniper rifles on our hands, Snark and I decided that we could cause some mayhem. We stuck to my one shot every half an hour policy. At first.

Snark's first target was another ultra. His shot hit the alien right in between the eyes, blowing the rear part of its skull and neck in a gory explosion. The bullet went on and hit a jackal in the neck, all but decapitating it. The round finally stopped after hitting the ground several meters further ahead. I knew that because Snark was enough of an asshole to record the kill and show it to everybody just so that we could see just exactly how good he was at killing people from a distance.

Me, being the same type of asshole that Snark was, could not allow myself to be outdone. Of course, out sniping the twelfth best marksman in the entire UNSC Armed Forces is easier said than done. In fact, there are precisely eleven people that can claim to have done that. In a universe with a trillion human beings, that's an incredibly small number. I don't think that I need to use some weird example to put it into perspective, so I'll move on.

I searched through the Oracle scope for the zealot for a while before finally giving up. The alien commander was smart enough to remain behind visual cover at all times. Eventually I settled for an ultra much like the one that Snark had killed. I had spotted it some time ago, it was jumping from cover to cover, probably headed from one point to another. I watched it for some time, seeing how long it took the outline to wait behind a rock and jump towards a deployable cover. After five cover changes I held my breath and waited for the next.

You see, the elite was at a distance of 2,213 meters. Every single Helljumper could easily hit a stationary target at that distance and do it consistently. The difference here was that I didn't have a spotter and that the target itself wasn't stationary. Hell, by the time I had squeezed the trigger there was no target whatsoever.

The SRS bucked as the sabot round flew out of the barrel. The 14.5x114mm round, tracing its origins back to the defunct Soviet Union's anti-tank rifles, did exactly what it was designed to do. It flew at high speed towards the exact point that I had been aiming at when I squeezed the trigger. I had accounted for wind and drop slightly, but with this round I barely had to shift my aim. It took little over a second for the round to fly that distance. It took exactly the same amount of time for the elite ultra to emerge from cover and dive towards a boulder in a search for safety.

The round collided with the elite's neck. The shields didn't hold up, and the neck armor didn't do a good job at it either. The force from the impact jerked the ultra sideways, tearing out a large chunk of flesh from its neck while punching through the flesh. Arterial spray was clearly seen through my thermal scope and the ground around the dying alien started turning a bright white as the blood left its body.

No matter how impressive the kill, I was still outshot by Snark.

"Don't worry Sarge," he said. "You aren't the first to fail and you won't be the last."

"I can sure as hell try," I shot back. My tone was harsh, but I didn't mean it. My squad knew me well enough to know that.

"Wait, we're getting movement."

I peered through the sniper scope again and saw that what Pavel had said was true. What worried me was that he was on the other side of Reaper Hill, overlooking a different section of the enemy blockading line altogether. If there was movement on two sides we were probably in for some deep shit.

"Shadows are moving up," Grass warned.

"Revenant too. Where the hell did those come from?" Angel announced.

"Banshees." Caboose never lost his cool, except when you talked about killing human beings.

"Infantry units moving up."

"Grass, hop on the mass driver, I want you to shoot down those fliers before they get within close range. Everyone else, give 'em hell."

My first three rounds were wasted on shooting out the pilot of a Revenant. Once the elite minor fell out I decided against such difficult shooting. The moving craft made for a difficult target, especially when I was aiming at a pilot that was covered up to the chest. My next shot hit the vehicle adjoining it right in the right side of the front section. The round punched through the weak armor covering the alien engine and rendered the vehicle immobile. At this distance we were still within shelling range, but the aliens couldn't maneuver the mobile artillery vehicle, so it was stuck firing at one position only.

"Artillery inbound!" Pavel warned.

There was really nothing that we could do except for looking up and hoping that we would be able to dodge any pink plasma blob flying at us in time. Since only three Revenants were firing at us at any given time, we were relatively safe, we were pretty small targets in a comparatively large are, our positions weren't fixed and the enemy craft was firing blind at us.

"Kill them!" I ordered Bee. "I don't want to get hassled."

I heard two rockets being fired in quick succession. It took about five seconds for the M41s to find their marks.

"Kill and incapacitation!" Bumblebee yelled triumphantly, "let me take care of the other one."

"Firing mass driver!" Grass called out before doing just that.

The loud noise of the magnetic accelerator cannon made my ears ring loudly for a few seconds. I immediately turned on the noise dampeners on my helmet, making everything outside of my bucket sound dull and quiet. All the sounds were still there, only that they were dampened. My team's voices were still completely normal, allowing me to hear how everything developed the exact same moment it did.

I reloaded the sniper rifle and squeezed off two shots at an elite major. The first shot hit it in the chest, sending it down to the ground on its ass. The second shot hit it in the chest again, making a softball-sized hole in the red-clad elite. The grunts and jackals near it scurried away before hastily trying to get back in formation, with the bird-like aliens erecting a nearly impenetrable wall of shiny shield while the short and stocky grunts cowered behind.

"This doesn't make any sense!" Pavel called out loudly. "Even if they do get down here what are they gonna do? Storm the castle?"

"I'm seeing rangers," Caboose informed the squad.

I zoomed in on the direction that he had highlighted and immediately spotted a squad of elite rangers. Their helmets reminded me a little bit of those that the Spartan-IIIs wore. Kat, Carlos, and Carter had worn similar helmets, a full-face visor making them visible targets, essentially painting a bulls-eye on their heads. Of course, the young human soldiers had photo-reactive camouflage armor, meaning that their helmets weren't even visible half the time. The elites, didn't have that much foresight, instead choosing to flaunt their fancy armor.

"Caboose, Angel, spray the rangers!" I ordered. "Get the shields down, I'll punch through them."

Reaper-8 and Reaper-6 complied, spraying at the enemy air-capable troops with controlled bursts of five to seven rounds. The elites started recoiling from the impacts and were forced to jump and roll to avoid their fire. There was little cover on the flatlands surrounding our hill/fortress. The elites were caught out in the open and had no choice but to activate their jetpacks to get away from the fields of fire from my two squad mates.

Of course, while they were up in the air they were nearly impossible to hit. Caboose immediately switched targets to one of the rangers that hadn't activated its jetpack yet. I tracked one of the airborne rangers with my scope, keeping my crosshairs as close to the elite as I could. I refrained from firing until the elite landed. It bent its knees to absorb some of the shock from the impact. For a split second it was immobile. A sitting duck.

One burst sent it stepping backwards and drained what was left of its shields. The second one put three holes in his armor and neutralized it permanently.

"Start over and repeat," Angel muttered. "Nice shot Sarge."

"Thanks," I thanked him. Obviously.

Two dead rangers later they got right down to the edge of the cliff.

"Get ready for CQC," Pavel's voice boomed. "Caboose, get out your M90."

"And you your ACS," the man replied.

I was now firing almost completely downwards, targeting grunts with my BR55, the SRS that I had grabbed was now magnetically strapped on to my back. While it made for uncomfortable firing, I preferred to have the weapon within easy reach in case I needed an impromptu shotgun.

What? It's happened before.

"Rangers are jumping!" Bee screamed frantically.

"Grass! Get outta that cannon!" I ordered. "Bee, you're on skywatch."

"Got it."

"Got it."

The first elite to jump up near me had a plasma repeater. I dove towards the nearest ditch as the rapid-fire weapon sprayed the area all around me with blue-hot plasma. I kept my head down for five seconds until the weapon overheated. I took advantage of the opening and popped from cover, firing in bursts at the elite. I caught it with its weapons vents open, trying to get his weapon to cool faster. I aimed the first burst at the ranger's shoulder, the three rounds made it drop its weapon, the other three bursts took out its shields and finished it off. There were two other elite rangers in the immediate vicinity, they were behind a small supply shack, one of them was firing at me and the other one was firing at Caboose.

"Angel, can you help out here?" Caboose asked.

"Negative."

"It's just us then Sarge," the ONI-employed Helljumper said with an almost reluctant tone. I knew he didn't particularly like me, but I mean, c'mon, I'm one of the best killing machines in human space, he couldn't have had a better partner in a situation like this.

Ok, that sounded just a little bit assholeish. And self-centered. And show offish. And- well, you know.

"I'll toss a frag," I called out, "you try to get close and blast them with your M90."

"Sounds good," he shrugged me off.

"Frag out!"

The grenade flew at the closet-sized construction and rolled behind it, where the two elites were taking cover. One of them must've kicked the device, because it flew away and detonated three feet from them. I didn't see it happen, but I knew that their shields were drained. I started firing wildly at the buildings corner and at the building itself, trying to keep them down and hoping that a round would punch through the polycrete and hit one of the unshielded elites.

Caboose beat me to it. I heard one shotgun blast and then another. The second blast was accompanied by an elite falling out of cover, a big gaping wound in its chest. An M90 might be effective for up to seventy or eighty meters, but there was absolutely no doubt in my mind that it was devastating when fired at ranges of less than five meters. It could simply destroy anything that it made impact with as long as it wasn't shielded.

"Nice job," I complimented, letting sarcasm drip into my tone. "Discourage any other jumpers."

He nodded and went back to the edge of the cliff before he started firing occasional bursts at the enemy soldiers below.

Me, on the other hand, got right to rescuing pinned-down members of my team.

While Caboose and I had been fending off the two rangers, an entire squad's worth of jump pack elites had made their way up. They were currently contained to a small area on the other side of the plateau, but they were causing some mayhem and were firing occasional bursts at the Onager mass driver. The rest of Reaper was keeping them in the same area, but the rangers had an advantageous position and nice cover. My squad would have to pull back soon.

"Pavel, Grass, keep their heads down!" I called out. "Bee, Snark, keep _your_ heads down!"

Immediately after I gave out my orders the sound of shotgun shells being fired at full-auto and the familiar cracking of an MA5 flooded the hilltop. I saw the elites dodge behind cover and took advantage to run straight at them. I made sure that I kept myself as low as possible. If one of the elites had one of those pesky sensors I would be in for some trouble.

"Stop firing," I ordered before I got hit by friendly fire. The gunfire ceased and I slid feet-first towards the walkway that the elites were using for cover. I pressed my back against the walls and waited for the elites to start peppering my squad while keeping my head up.

As soon as the muzzle of a plasma repeater appeared above me I shot it once. The bullet punched through the alien material and rendered the barrel of the weapon useless. I heard a grunt of confusion, I took advantage of the momentary confusion of the elite and its warrior brothers by jumping up and switching to full-auto on my battle rifle.

You know, one versus five would usually mean bad odds for me, but when you're faced with a little alien wearing black armor, firing an outdated weapon, and being completely fearless you get surprised. Getting surprised when someone is firing a weapon at you is very often the last thing you'll ever do.

I sprayed the aliens, stunning them, and then focused my fire on the one closest to me. It went down quickly and so did the next one. As soon as the second one died I drew my sidearm and emptied it on a third elite, hitting it in the chest until I drained its shields. The last two rounds in my magazine hit the elite in the arm, pushing it backwards and sending it running away while its shields recharged. An SRS round punched through its head halfway to safety.

_Three down, two to go._

I dove back down as the two remaining elites recovered. Blue plasma flew by me just as I hit the floor. The sloped surface allowed me to slide below the walkway. Since it had a completely solid floor the elites didn't spot me.

But they weren't stupid. As soon as I arrived on the other side a burst welcomed me. The first rounds missed but the second one grazed my arm right above the elbow. I dragged myself back below cover while cursing. I stayed down there for a moment, thinking of a course of action.

That's about the time that I started feeling the plasma repeater rounds hitting the thin metal floor separating me from the two elites. I shuffled backwards, waves of pain erupting from my arm. I kicked at the floor and pushed myself backwards just as red-hot metal started dripping down onto the floor. A second later the dirt below the walkway received several bursts of plasma fire as the elite tried to send me to kingdom come in as many bits as possible.

"Shit," I muttered as I brought my rifle up.

The plasma repeater twisted around the other direction and the elite fired a burst. The only thing that I could see of the alien was its hand and part of its arm. I fired two bursts at the alien, both of them hitting his hand. Six bullets were enough to make him drop the weapon, and the repeater clattered onto the ground as the elite pulled back his hand. I didn't waste any time, choosing to push myself away from that point lest I was still around for the retaliation.

"Fucking blow them up!" I cried furiously. My team was taking their sweet time rescuing my ass.

"Frank, we've got jackal rangers on our ass!" Pavel replied. "They have us pinned down, we're in the supply building."

"Fuck me!"

I was obviously feeling very angry at the time.

I turned around so that I was down on my belly and crawled below the walkway, following its slight curve. I went for about thirty meters before I finally felt safe enough to get out. I emerged on the outside of the circle that this walkway formed and confirmed that I was out of the elite's line of sight before I moved on while crouching. You know, contrary to what videogames would have you believe, walking like that is incredibly hard and tiring. Not to mention that it looks completely ridiculous.

"Pavs, how goes it?"

"We're good, solid defensive positions," he said. It was evident that he was being sarcastic.

"Good."

I was also being sarcastic, in case you were wondering.

Ok, now I was almost on the side opposite to where the elites had first been when I fired at them. I peeked above the safety rails on the side and saw that two elites were nowhere to be seen. The Onager was probably covering them from me. I looked around and immediately spotted the jackal rangers. Since they weren't looking at me or my direction I simply hopped over the short wall and onto the walkway. It felt a lot safer now that I had two waist-high slabs of metal on either side to protect me from prying eyes and plasma ammunition.

The gunfire and plasma fire was starting to sound almost frantic. With my team pinned down by two elites on one side and an unknown number of jackals on the other I was in a position where I had to act fast. I pressed myself on the inside rail of the walkway and walked for some ten meters before stopping and peeking out. I spotted one elite firing with a repeater at a polycrete building, shattering what was left of the windows and leaving scorch marks on the walls. I pinpointed its location before going back behind cover.

Once there I grabbed a grenade from my webbing and lifted the safety cap before depressing the trigger button. I held it down and stood up, my arm outstretched behind my back. I zeroed in on the oblivious elite and tossed the grenade. It flew right where I had aimed. A half a second later that entire section of the walkway flew apart, sending additional shrapnel in all directions. A couple of metal shreds banged against the railing I was taking cover behind, but didn't penetrate it.

I made my way to the elite's position as fast as possible and sighed with relief when I confirmed that the elite that I had seen was missing a large majority of its chest, face, and both arms. The sigh of relief quickly turned into a gasp of realization when I didn't spot the other alien. I turned around and looked for it, but it was nowhere to be seen.

"Ahh fuck it," I said in reluctance.

I jumped down to the ground and pressed towards the small construction where my team was taking cover. The wall was completely filled with small black craters and scorch marks, but it hadn't been broken down. On that matter kinetic weapons have the advantage. I banged three times on the wall and waited for an answer while my eyes scanned the area in front of me for the other elite.

"Frank, you do realize you can use your radio?" Pavel's voice came in. I could almost see his judgmental expression in my head.

_Fuck…_

"You know me, I have a penchant for the dramatic," I said in an attempt to save some face. "How many jackals do you have? Cause there's one elite missing and I don't want it to catch me by surprise."

"Twelve," Pavel replied. "We killed three others but we can't fire, they have us pretty good."

"Frags?"

"Grass tossed one, but it didn't have any effect."

"Cause it was a sucky throw," Angel opinionated.

"It was a good throw!" Grass snapped back.

"Suuure."

"Shut up," I ordered quickly. "Flashbangs?"

"We have some, but if they're behind cover they'll be pretty much useless. When was the last time you saw a bird die because of a loud noise?"

"You should've stopped at useless," I growled. I was starting to get pissy at the situation.

I looked back again and failed to see the elite. That was starting to really scare the shit out of me.

"Wait, did they stop firing?" Caboose asked. It was clearly meant to be rhetorical, as every last one of us could hear the lack of the characteristically loud plasma and needle weaponry.

"Why would they-?" I interrupted myself and looked up. The starless sky offered nothing, but I heard light shuffling on the top of the building's roof.

I jumped up, grabbing on to the ledge with my left hand and pulling myself up. I saw the other remaining elite ranger on top, planting what looked like explosives on the roof. I immediately brought my rifle to bear and squeezed off a burst. The three rounds went wide, flying right over the alien's shoulder and serving only to alert him to my presence.

The ranger turned around and aimed at me with a plasma pistol. I fired a second burst a moment before he did. The rounds, by luck or skill, hit the pistol in an important point. As the elite clicked on the trigger, the plasma charge detonated instead of firing, destroying the weapon and overloading the elite's shields. I smiled at my good fortune before the elite lunged at me. I was barely able to squeeze off a burst before it reached me.

My three rounds collided with the elite's belly, but the armor held. It batted aside my rifle and yanked me up. He lifted me up over its head and brought me back down to the rooftop.

"It's on the roof!" Angel cried out, his voice resonating in my helmet.

"No shit!" I groaned.

I rolled and drew the SRS-99 from my back before aiming it at the elite, intending to make full use of its impromptu shotgun capabilities. Unfortunately, the weapon was almost as long as I was tall, making it an unwieldy piece of metal. The elite yanked the weapon away from me before I could even get my finger on the trigger and tossed it aside. I heard it clatter on the ground, somewhere near where my rifle had been batted aside to.

Ok, so I found myself in a situation here. There was an elite trying to kill me and I was rifle less. If I stood up trained jackals would shoot the shit out of me. My team wasn't in a position to help me because all large windows and the door to the supply building were on the side where the jackals could target them easily and take them out. So yeah, I was on my own against an eight-foot tall monster with a penchant for killing humans.

The elite brought its fist down on my stomach. I contracted my muscles to avoid getting the wind knocked out of me. My armor helped a little, but the hammer punch felt almost as bad as having an elite chieftain stomp on my chest. I jerked up from the impact alone before regaining my bearing and rolling to the side, avoiding a follow-up punch. I reached for my sidearm before the elite stomped my arm down, preventing me from grabbing the pistol. An energy dagger appeared from its right arm and it stabbed at me. I moved to the side as the energy dagger flew downwards. The plasma cut through the roof, but not me.

"Fucking fuck. Help!" I cried as I let out a weak kick at the elite.

It didn't do any harm, but it made it stumble backwards and it released my hand in an attempt to regain balance. I lost no time in drawing my pistol and aiming it at the elite. I fired three shots, hitting it in the stomach. Only one punched through the armor. The elite roared and launched a kick just as I squeezed the trigger for a fourth time. That fourth bullet hit the alien in the shoulder in between the pauldron and chest piece, jerking it backwards slightly and exiting the elite's body with a trail of blood behind it.

Of course that the elite was completely unfazed. You've been reading this for long enough to know just exactly how bad my luck is.

The shot was enough to leave that arm out of the equation. Unfortunately, that still left a hundred and fifty kilogram beast with advantageous position to contend with. Not to mention that I had hit its left shoulder, not the right one, so he still had use of that pesky energy blade. Yeah, pesky is probably an understatement. With two bullet wounds in its body the elite was really starting to lose its cool. I had no doubt that it was roaring and cursing at me, but its full-face helmet spared me the sight.

Hey, you have to appreciate the little things.

With my gun kicked away I only possessed three knives as weapons. While metal blades are all good and nice, I wouldn't want to pit them against an energy blade. The elite lunged at me once again before using its wounded left arm to press me towards the floor. I felt its forearm pushing against my throat, but the bullet wound was bad enough to prevent it from cutting off my oxygen supply. I reached for one of my knives, the large one on my lower back. As soon as I unsheathed it I brought it down on the elite's elbow. The armor deflected the stabbing blow slightly, but the next time the elite wasn't nearly as fortunate. The laser-cut blade went through the armor and at least four inches of high-carbon steel sunk into the ranger's flesh.

Not bad for a petty human.

This time I heard the elite's roar of pain in all its glory. I have to say that it served to frighten me more than it did to satisfy myself that I had been successful.

"You will burn along with the rest of your race!" the ranger spat out in broken English.

While I was aware that the covvies could speak English and Spanish and some other human languages, I had little experience when presented with that kind of thing, so the speaking alien still surprised me. It had actually spat out a decent sentence with proper grammar and syntax. Hell, all I could say in Elite was 'Wort, wort, wort'.

"Fuck you split-chin!" I shot back.

Apparently, the elite didn't take it too kindly, because it brought down its right arm, attempting to stab me through the chest with the energy dagger. I caught the ranger's wrist with both hands, stopping the blow. Of course, the elite had a ton more strength in one arm that I did in both of them and my enhanced strength would only serve to buy me some time. The elite slowly but surely pushed down, the energy dagger getting closer to my chest by the second. It made contact with my chest piece, but the ballistic metal melted away like butter at the touch of the hot energy weapon.

"Fuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuck," I eloquently said as the dagger sunk deeper into my chest piece.

Then there was an explosion that shook the entire building followed by 400-plus lead pellets slamming into the elite. Most of those pellets were stopped by the aliens armor. The ones that weren't shattered its visor and carved through the soft tissue and bone as easily as the elite's energy dagger had burnt

"What?"

"Am I good or what?" Angel boasted loudly.

"Yeah, yeah, now let's kill those fucking birds," Bee said quickly, trying to prevent Angel from going into a very long boast. He tended to do that.

I pushed the dead elite off of myself and made my way to my pistol. I grabbed the weapon and popped from cover, firing a double tap at a jackal that had left cover. I was surprised to see those aliens in particular here. Kig-yar Rangers tended to stick to zero-gee and vacuum environments. To top it off, they didn't usually wear jetpacks like this ones were.

Well, the jackal that I had target didn't take to well to being shot twice. It promptly collapsed. So did the one I targeted after that.

A few magazines and one grenade later we were once again safe and the plateau was clear of hostiles.

"Do we rock, or what?" Bumblebee asked.

"We rock," Grass agreed with a coy smile.

The entire squad turned to look at her in surprise before she polarized her visor, hiding her face from us. Grass wasn't one to partake in such childishness, but even she had to admit that we had made the best of a very bad situation and emerged triumphant.

Cue We Are the Champions by Queen.

I'm sorry, you probably haven't heard of them, but thanks to Bumblebee and his stupid fanaticism for all things regarding the past, I know absolutely everything that there is to be known about them. Not that that's a bad thing, I actually kind of like their music.

Sorry, back to the story.

"You have to admit, it was a brilliant plan," Pavel pushed.

"Fine, yes, but only because you had someone that could pull it off."

"Isn't that the purpose of this team?" Angel asked. "Having all the bases covered. Besides, it's not like it's that hard to blast through a wall without killing yourself. Ever heard of breaching charges?"

"Did you know that they've had those since the twenty-first?" Grass asked.

"I did," Bumblebee said loudly. There was a definite tone of satisfaction in his voice at having known one of Grass' pointless little facts.

"Shut up," Caboose said, irritation creeping into his voice.

I looked over my shoulder and waved my squad away to their respective positions. They immediately started firing straight down at the few grunts and jackals that had made it all the way down there in the attack. Pavel and I went over to the storage building. The small polycrete box was missing a chunk of one wall, where Angel had placed some explosives to escape and save my ass. I looked at it appreciatively and slapped Pavel in the shoulder in thanks before climbing back up to examine the elite that had almost killed me.

It wasn't even a particularly impressive specimen. It had wide shoulders, but all elites had those. It also had large hands. Still, the alien wasn't particularly tall or big, and it still had managed to overcome me and beat me. Had it not been for Angel's skill with explosives and Caboose's M90's stopping power I would probably be dead right now.

"How come you didn't use your ACS?" I asked Pavel as I hopped back down. "I mean, you could've pumped three shots into that elite easy."

"Caboose was first out," he said with a shrug. "And I kinda dropped my shotgun when the jackals hit us."

"Huh," I said simply.

"What do you mean by huh?" he asked accusingly.

"Nothing."

"Huh."

Cheeky bastard.

I decided to ignore the challenge and made my way towards my BR55 and the SRS. Both weapons were lying relatively close to one another. Both were in fine condition. I silently thanked any higher being that the elite didn't bend any of the barrels. If it had I would find myself weaponless. Well, I could make use of the additional Spanker, but not much else.

"Cliffs are clear," Snark announced after some time. "Nothing but a bunch of dead grunts and jackals here."

"Good," I said. "Bee, Caboose, grab the bodies of the jackals and elites and toss them down. No decapitation or gutting, just get rid of them."

"Aw Sarge," Bumblebee complained. "You get to have all the fun."

"That's why I'm a gunnery sergeant and you a lance corporal. You are also four pay grades below mine."

"Fine, sorry."

_I can relate to Albaf's complaints about lack of military discipline. _

"Now what?" Angel asked.

"You, Snark, and Grass keep watch, I need to think."

"That might be so," Pavel agreed, "but think quick. We have a fucking battalion surrounding our little hilltop Frank, we don't have a whole lot of time."

"It's not that bad, we have tons of ammo, a nice defensible position, and the Covenant have no aircraft or vehicles other than that lone Daemon," Grass said, showing an uncharacteristic amount of optimism.

"Agreed," Angel agreed (obviously). "We can hold out until the fuckers get run over by a tank company."

"You two agreeing on something?" Bee huffed out. "It really must be the end of the world."

Moment of silence.

"Sorry, poor choice of words," he apologized quickly.

"It happens to all of us," Pavel said. "Don't worry about it."

"Sure, thanks."

I suppressed a sigh and slung my battle rifle over my shoulder while gripping the sniper rifle tightly with my hands. I let go of it for a moment to trace the length of the stab mark in my chest piece. It was about two inches wide and of unknown depth. I would have to replace the chest piece soon. I had already replaced the one with two spiker gashes and now saw myself sporting another chest piece with blade damage. Not really ironic or anything, just annoying as fuck.

"Frank," Pavel started. "We need some help soon. We got lucky last time, and the time before that."

"I know," I said. "But I can't do anything about it. Nezarian already said he would send us a squad if he could."

Pavel looked down at the floor and shook his head lightly. He knew the situation just as well as I did. The Polish man said nothing as he turned around and moved towards his position, leaving me standing alone. I sat down on the floor, focusing and trying to do my best to come up with viable defensive strategies or escape plans.

"Sarge?"

"What?" I asked irritably.

"You've been sitting for hours," Grass said. "Well, over an hour and a half."

"So?"

"So, what have you come up with?"

I looked up from the ground. My eyes traced the length of Grass' armored body from her boots to her helmet. Even through all that armor I could tell that she had a picture perfect body. I was proud of myself, I very rarely stopped to think of Grass as anything other than a comrade in arms, but still allowed myself to admire her simply ravishing ass on occasion. It was the perfect balance between being a man that would love to tap that and being a professional and a soldier. She was a comrade in arms, and you don't fuck those, it never works out well. Either somebody dies or the entire squad is affected when it doesn't work out. Think divorce in small-unit military terms.

"Not much," I admitted. "There's just eight-, seven of us."

"We've faced worse odds," she said. I don't know whether she was trying to cheer me up or cheer herself up. Either way, it was a gesture that I appreciated.

"Not numerically speaking," I reminded her. "But yeah, we've been through worse."

"So, what did you come up with?" she asked again.

"I came to the conclusion that escape is all but impossible, the covvies have a nice cordon around us. They probably have some aircraft but aren't fielding them because they are scared of the Onager."

"Mass drivers _are_ pretty intimidating."

"Yeah. Defensively speaking, I think that our best bet is to kill any air infantry that tries to get close and hide when enough enemy troops get here. From there we can take out the first wave by blowing up the elevator and then just barricade ourselves in the firing centre."

"Why not the employee locker room?" she asked.

"Too many windows," I explained. "We can use the doors as choking points in the firing centre, bottleneck those assholes."

Grass was silent for a minute, pondering on the information. "That's not really a plan, just a course of action."

"I think that a plan is a course of action."

"Well yeah, how do I say this?"

"I understood your meaning," I told her. "Relax."

"Yeah, about that…"

"You want some rest?"

"That would be nice."

I suddenly remembered that stunt she pulled off back in Uppergap, climbing down the side of a building before being left hanging on for dear life, absolutely no control over her fate. I had held on to the cable and pulled her up back then, but she had become a little uneasy around heights ever since.

"You ok?" I asked.

She knew exactly what I was talking about. "Nothing I can handle, besides, the shrinks said that I'm doing well considering."

"You see Francisco?" Schitzo asked. "At least she's not afraid to go to a psychologist. You should really see one."

_Yeah, maybe then you'd finally go away._

Grass offered me her hand and helped me stand up. She dusted me off theatrically before looking up at me expectantly. Her visor was transparent, allowing me to see her pretty face. I noticed something that startled me once I looked into her eyes. I had probably noticed it before, but I hadn't been able to see it for what it was until then.

"Are you wearing makeup?" I asked.

You probably thought that I was going to say that I realized I was in love with her. I bet some of you did.

"What?" she asked, surprised at the sudden change of topic. "No!"

"Yeah you are!" I accused. "You're wearing rimel."

"What?"

"Sorry, mascara, or eyeliner. Whatever."

By that point Grass had already polarized her visor hiding her face from me again.

"Am not!"

"I just saw it," I said sternly.

"What if I am?"

"Nothing, I'm just wondering how the hell you even had time to put makeup on when the general alarm was sounded."

"I didn't."

"Then?"

She sighed. "It's permanent eyeliner." For some reason she sounded like she was in a trial and had been forced to confess to a crime. I found the comparison rather humorous.

"Ok."

"That's it? You pester me about wearing makeup all the time and that's all you have to say?"

"Grass, it's not like you're the only one with tattooed-on eyeliner," I told her. "Plenty of people do that. The only difference between you and them is that they are not ashamed to admit that they want to look better."

"I am not-"

"You are," I interrupted. "And it doesn't matter, at least not to me."

She was silent for a second before making her visor transparent again. "Ok then."

"Catch some sleep," I advised. "I'll wake you in two hours."

* * *

><p>Then the third attack came. It was short, but it was brutal.<p>

They made their way towards the elevator, attacking from different directions all at once but keeping the bulk of their forces near the large metal columns that supported the elevator itself. We were too busy shooting down rangers to be able to focus on the main strike force. Five minutes after the attack had started we all heard the sound of the elevator rising slowly.

"Angel!"

"Ready!" he replied.

I waited four seconds. "Now!"

Several explosions merged into one as the support columns of the large elevator were destroyed. The platform, and every single alien on it, fell over seventy-five meters to the ground. A loud clang marked the deaths of those covvies that hadn't been killed by the explosions themselves.

"That's right fuckers," I said. "Work for it."

"Sarge!" Snark called out. "They're setting up gravity lifts!"

"Don't work _that_ hard!" I complained.

Seconds later a bunch of elites appeared at the edge of the cliff. They landed pretty hard on the top of Reaper Hill, but the sturdy aliens just fired in our direction. I took aim at the one closest to me and offed it with four bursts from my battle rifle. I switched targets and sent that elite into cover. The rest of the aliens were too far away for me to do anything about them. I just aimed at where the first elite had emerged from and waited for its support.

Three grunts flew straight up before coming back down. One of them landed on its head. I heard a familiar crunch as its skull caved in. The other two stumbled from the hard landing before I ended their miserable lives with two headshots. Three other grunts emerged from another point.

"How many gravity lifts?" I asked.

"Fourteen's my best estimate!" Snark replied. He sounded like he was busy.

I took out one of the three grunts before the other two dove behind cover, joining their fearless leader. The next alien to come up the gravity lift was a hunter.

"Hunter!" I cried as I retreated from the mighty alien.

I heard the sound of its weapon charging and jumped sideways. A stream of green plasma flew above me, heating my back but leaving me unharmed. I struggled up and fired a couple of quick shots at the hunter before running away from it.

"Somebody shoot the motherfucker! I begged.

Thankfully, Bumblebee had a clear line of sight and hit the alien with a well-placed rocket. He aimed precisely at the unarmored orange section in its torso. When the HEAT charge detonated, the alien literally blew up. Orange bits of gore rained all around the area where it had been standing. No matter how tough you are, a rocket to the chest won't do you much good in any situation.

"Kill its partner and fall back," I ordered. "Pavel, Snark, Caboose, Grass, Angel?"

"Already on our way to the firing centre," Pavel replied immediately. "You should do the same."

I walked inside the building in question a second after a second explosion resonated around the hilltop and sometime after the rest of Reaper had. I immediately pressed myself to the wall on the side of the door and switched my battle rifle for the SRS-99 still slung over my back. I aimed it at the door, slightly higher than my own head. Pavel and Caboose were behind an overturned metal table, their shotguns ready. Grass had grabbed Angel's SAW while the Italian was toting Pavel's own M247L, aiming it at the door.

"Coming in," Bee warned. He opened the door and closed it behind him. "There's at least thirty of them up here," he said. "More coming up."

I nodded, still aiming at the wall on the other side. "Walls will hold, so can we."

The first alien to come through was an elite. An ultra to be precise. Why they send their officers in first is beyond me, but in a society where martial prowess is the most important thing, leaders were bound to die more often than in any other kind of society. This time it was no exception. I squeezed the trigger once and sent a very thick bullet into the alien's head. It jerked violently to the side as the sniper round sent it flying. I smiled at the sight of blood splattered on the wall opposite me.

"Jeez, so fucking stupid."

The next alien met a similar fate. I decided that by then even the stupid covvies would figure out what my deal was and try to kill me. I jumped behind the overturned table and waited for the next aliens to come. Pavel and Caboose ripped a squad of grunts to shreds as they walked up to the door. Their dead bodies covered a portion of the door, making it even harder for the other covvies to walk in. An elite minor tried its luck before receiving two shots worth of buckshot to the chest and face.

"Grass, Angel, Bee, make your way to the next room," I ordered. "We'll join you."

Pavel made good use of his automatic shotgun while Caboose provided added gunfire volume. I simply kept to myself, firing an occasional burst from my battle rifle but letting my two squad mates do most of the heavy lifting. Eventually I decided that it was probably best if I returned.

"Frank, we're gonna be overwhelmed," Pavel said. "Give us some covering fire."

"Angel?" I asked.

"Sure, lend me your shoulder."

I bent my knees enough so that my shoulder was chest-level with Angel. He placed the barrel of Pavel's M247 on my shoulder and started firing full-auto. I shook as the gun shook. It was a weird sensation, not pleasant in the least. As the machine gun spewed out a trail of lead, an occasional tracer flashing by, Pavel and Caboose crawled from their table to this room. Angel killed three jackals that had attempted to use their shields to walk in the building before concentrated enemy fire forced him back.

"Nice one," Bee complimented.

"Yeah, 'scuse me," Snark asked as he pushed Angel and me out of the way. He positioned himself like I had in the first door, aiming at the place where an elite's head would be. I nodded at him and crouched on the side opposite him. Snark killed two elites in the same way that I had, covering the wall behind me (and me as well) in alien blood. He retreated behind cover and left me playing the same role that he had just played.

When a jackal skirmisher burst through the doorframe Bumblebee made sure it was blasted to pieces. The two following grunts were killed by Caboose with shotgun shells to the chest. When an elite finally burst through, spraying wildly with twin plasma rifles, I put a bullet through its head, leaving a stain similar to the one behind my back on the wall in front of me.

I ran back behind cover just as a plasma grenade landed an inch from my previous position. The blue flash atomized a large section of the wall, allowing the covvies to pass with more ease. It was about time to fall back. Pavel and Caboose were the first to retreat to the third and last room. I followed them quickly, leaving the ones with machine guns behind. Bumblebee and Snark quickly joined us, leaving Grass and Angel firing wildly at anything that moved.

"How many are left?" I asked.

"Dunno, about fifteen?" Angel shrugged.

"I like those odds," Pavel said.

"I can work with that," Snark agreed.

I have to admit, two to one is not the worst that we've faced. Not nearly.

The fifteen or so remaining aliens had lost their leaders. The two elites in command of the small group were pissed and knew that they could not return to command honorably. Either that or they were just incredibly stupid. They attempted to swarm our position, but they could only come through one at a time. Our combined gunfire quickly killed them all.

So, we had burnt through most of our ammunition and one of the only two buildings that could recycle oxygen was destroyed. The Onager was apparently intact, but we were in for some serious shit if those rangers didn't arrive soon.

As I walked out of the building, examining all the alien corpses, I glanced up. Most of the sky had stars now, and there was a line of light marking the outline of Zeta Lupus VI. Night was almost over. We had made it through two day's worth of night no worse for wear. My arm hurt like hell, Angel had been nicked by a needler, and Bee had been grazed by a plasma pistol shot on his left hand. But perhaps we only survived because our helmets allowed us to see them clearly. The poor grunts and jackals and most of the elites couldn't see us clearly in the dark night. When daytime came, they would be on equal ground with us, and they had a shitload more numbers than we did.

Desperate times indeed.

* * *

><p><em>Thanks to Sniper Fodder for proof-reading this chapter.<em>

_Well, I hope you enjoyed it. I promised over 10,000 words of sheer epicness and delivered over 10,000 words of my attempt at sheer epicness. _

_Just a few comments now. First of all, improvising a shotgun out of a sniper rifle is either the most awesome thing that you can do in multiplayer or the most frustrating thing that can happen to you on multiplayer. The second thing are the configurable rockets, I took a little bit of artistic license doing that, but the games never say that it isn't possible, so technically speaking I didn't go against canon. Finally, a small rant, the knives. I have to describe the knife and where exactly it's strapped to so you know which knife I'm talking about. I think I'm going to give them names. I'm open to suggestions._

_Stay strong._

_-casquis_


	112. Seven Jackasses, Ten Rangers, and a WMD

Chapter CXII: Seven Jackasses, Ten Rangers, and a WMD

**February 11, 2544 (UNSC Calendar)/**

**Wilk Waste Disposal Facility, Wilk Outskirts, Wolff, Zeta Lupus System**

* * *

><p>"<em>You signed up for it, best get used to it."- Gunnery Sergeant Francisco Castillo<em>

* * *

><p>"Rangers incoming," I warned. "The good kind," I quickly added.<p>

My team actually sighed with relief while I headed down to the firing centre, still airtight despite the damage it had received during the last attack. The bodies had been tossed down the hill once again, but the pools of alien blood were still there. I walked through the battlefield, my boots making wet sloshing sounds as I stepped in the multi-colored blood belonging to three different alien races.

"Will you look at that."

"What?" Pavel asked me.

"Here, linking you to my helmet."

"Whoa," he chuckled. "Take a picture. Or seven."

I did just that, taking pictures from seven different angles before finally taking a step forward to wake up Angel and Grass.

The Italian had asked for leave to catch a quick nap sometime after the attack, and Grass had been interrupted mid-nap by the attack, so I allowed both of them to catch some sleep. For some reason that was beyond my understanding, they had both taken off their helmets and had fallen asleep in a sitting position, their backs up against the wall. You know, whenever something like that happens, one of the sleepers will lean on the other one's shoulder. It's a law of nature, you can't avoid it.

Now that I had taken seven different pictures which I would make copious backups off so that Angel couldn't hack into my helmet and delete them, I had the question of how to wake them up. I considering firing a shot at the ceiling, but that was overdoing it.

Instead, I settled for grabbing one of the overturned chairs and lifting it above my head before bringing it down on the floor. It made a loud crashing noise (obviously) that served to jolt both my squad mates awake.

"You are just _too_ cute," I teased.

"Wha-" Angel started before he realized where exactly Grass' head was placed. "Gerofme!"

"Ouch!" she complained as his pauldron banged her head. "The hell?"

"Don't ever use me as a pillow ever again," Angel growled.

_Interesting…_

"I didn't!" Grass shot back. "What the hell are you talking about?"

"You did," I interrupted. "I have seven pictures to prove that."

"What?"

"You heard me," I smiled.

"Lemme see," Angel demanded. I was happy to oblige. "Goddamit. I'm never gonna hear the end of this."

"You? What about me?" Grass yelled.

"Consider yourself lucky that you got to use my shoulder as a pillow," Angel dismissed her as he checked the seven pictures in his helmet. "Damn it Sarge."

"Yeah, ok, now that you've gotten over the shock of realizing that there is sexual tension between the two of you, you are free to get up. We've got a squad of rangers coming in."

"Friendlies?" Grass asked as she stood up and put on her helmet.

"There is no sexual tension between us!" Angel tried to point out.

"Friendlies," I confirmed. "Now move out."

Angel and Grass started bickering about who should've felt lucky that they had found themselves asleep like that. I decided that it was probably for the best if I ignored them and walked out, putting on my helmet as soon as I stepped outside. I took one quick breath before putting it on, the atmosphere was thin and I barely felt like I got any air in, terraforming had been supposed to fix that, but the arrival of the Covenant probably meant that would never happen.

I looked up at the sky, forcing myself to ignore both Zeta Lupus VI and the other nearby moons that adorned the celestial sphere. There were a few thin clouds floating around, but my view of the sky was mostly unimpeded. I immediately spotted ten black dots gradually getting larger. Occasionally there were some orange flashes as the rangers activated their jetpacks to slow their descent. After about a minute of doing that, the squad of special operatives finally touched the ground.

There were ten of them, a squad. My HUD immediately tagged them as friendlys and displayed their ranks and names in a square that popped up next to their heads. The helmet even made the squares and letters smaller the farther away the rangers were for me. The amount of things that my second favorite piece of equipment could do never ceased to impress me.

I quickly located the ranking noncom, a staff sergeant, and approached him.

"Gunnery Sergeant Castillo," I introduced myself, offering him my hand. "Glad to have you here."

"Staff Sergeant Waylon Durant," he replied, shaking my hand.

"I remember you, you have a mean right hook."

"Don't mention it. Really don't. You burned through the platoon."

"They were tired," I said, trying to be modest.

"It's still an embarrassment."

"I didn't mean for it to look that way."

"Yeah, I guess the lieutenant did, because it worked, he got the entire unit working harder than usual. A lot harder."

"Huh, good for him then."

The sergeant nodded. He was an averagely-sized man, well-built, and had a distinct military look to him. The only part of his skin that I could see was the ebony skin around his eyes and part of his cheeks. Unlike the rest of his squad, he had opted to wear long sleeves and gloves. The other rangers were sporting rolled up sleeves. The weather was rather warm outside, and a thin layer of ballistic clothing wouldn't help much against incoming plasma.

"What's the situation here Gunnery Sergeant?" Durant asked me while moving towards a crate that his team had brought with them. "If a Helljumper is asking for help I take it that it must be bad."

"You didn't see that legion of enemy xenos surrounding our little mountaintop coming down?" Bumblebee asked. "I would've though it pretty hard to miss."

"Bee," I warned before turning back to Durant. "We're halfway down on our ammunition supply. Probably a quarter if I use Army standards. The firing centre is still in working order, as is the Onager cannon. We can recycle some oxygen and the firing centre has breathable air from the atmosphere, but it won't last us forever."

"Strong points?"

"Most of the buildings still function as trenches," I shrugged. "Walkways have pretty strong safety walls too."

"Can't figure out why, they're two feet from the ground," Snark mused. "But I guess we should be thankful."

"You haven't dug any trenches?" Durant asked.

"Nah, take too much time, besides, we don't have e-tools."

"Typical marine mentality," one ranger said.

"Well hello there Specialist Winchester," I greeted. "Good to see you again."

Specialist Winchester didn't say anything, but a couple of the other rangers snickered at that. I ignored them and spared Claire a quick wave before returning my attention to Staff Sergeant Duncan.

"You been in the military for long Staff Sergeant?" I asked him.

"Twelve years," he informed me. "And just sergeant, staff sergeant sounds too formal."

"Twelve years," I whistled. "I only have ten years under my belt myself."

"Sergeant?"

"You, being Army, probably have more experience when it comes to fortifying positions and holding them than I do. What do you propose?"

"We've held positions before?" Angel complained.

"Mostly buildings," I shot back. "Now shut up."

Durant stopped and placed his MA37 on top of the railing on one of the walkways. "We're completely surrounded, a la middle ages. If it were fifteen hundred years ago we would probably fight for the walls until the sieging forces gave up."

"And if we're overrun?"

"We have no keep."

"Keep?" I asked.

"It was like a smaller castle inside the castle," Grass explained. "With a last name like yours you'd think you would know a lot about castles."

"I know that they were made obsolete," I countered.

"And with good reason," Pavel added. Oh Pavel, always jumping to my defense. I'm kidding, he usually takes advantage of any opportunity to bring me down.

"Sergeant," Durant called to me, getting back my attention. "I propose we occupy all the buildings, set up fields of fire and designate firing zones."

"All right, we have enough men to do that now," I nodded. "You have a sniper with you?" I asked.

"No, only the squad's marksman, Private Dibra."

At that, one of the rangers broke off from his squad and walked up to us before giving me a quick salute, which I returned. "Private Dibra, are you qualified to use the SRS-99?" I asked him.

"Yes Sergeant," he replied. "All UNSC Army Rangers are."

"M-hm," I nodded. "Do you have added qualifications or just the standard ones that Ranger School provides?"

"Uh, no, just the default qualification," he replied a little nervously.

"Thanks, dismissed."

He turned around and left, fully understanding that I had chosen not to give him the SRS-99 slung over my back because I didn't consider him to be more qualified than I was. It's not that I didn't consider him qualified, it's just that I was a whole lot more qualified.

"Your entire squad has MA37s," I noted. "And Dibra's DMR."

"We might be elite," Durant said, "but we're still Army, we don't get as much funding as you jarheads do."

"And we are Helljumpers," Pavel added. I don't know whether he meant it as a stealth insult or as some sort of 'I understand' gesture.

"You are," Durant conceded. "I take it you agree?" he asked me.

"Yes, divide your men amongst the buildings, I'll do the same with mine."

"Very well, I will."

Staff Sergeant Waylon Durant took off towards his men. They were all milling about the crate that they had brought with them. I assumed that it contained ammunition and explosives, but knowing how the rangers were they could contain instacrete or food supplies. Durant closed in on them and they huddled around him. He gave them orders and started pointing around to the different buildings. I commanded my team to join me to start doing the same.

I couldn't help but notice the difference between us and the rangers. They were all standing with their backs straight and their rifles held professionally in front of them, listening closely on their seregant's orders. They were all packed in a nice circle, with no one left out of it. When all members of Reaper Squad were in front of me I noticed that they had a much less professional body language. Snark placed the butt of his rifle on the ground and used the muzzle to support his hands. Pavel placed the M247L across his shoulders, using it to prop his arms up. The rest of my team kept glancing at their weapons, checking them while I talked. Even Grass tipped her rifle sideways a couple of times to wipe some dirt from the handhold. The only one of us that had a position and behavior similar to that of the rangers was Caboose, but that wasn't particularly surprising, Caboose being who he was.

"Snark and I will remain on opposite sides of the plateau, we'll use our sniper rifles to take out high-value targets once they attack us. Everyone else will bunk in with another ranger or two, I want you to work as a team, that means that I don't want anyone starting a conversation that points out that Helljumpers are better than Army Rangers, even if we are." That got a round of chuckles from my team. "Everyone can take their picks on which building they want, but I need Caboose near the edge of the cliffs, where your shotgun can be put to best use. Bumblebee, I want you on one of the remaining towers, give the ranger stationed there our other Spanker, just make sure that he knows how to use it before you do."

"Aye, aye," Bee nodded.

"The Daemon tank, take it out first chance you get or as soon as it closes in on our position. Four rockets oughta do it." He nodded. "Pavel and Angel, you know what you're supposed to do, you've got the big guns in here, make good use of them and don't call too much attention to yourselves. Grass…it's probably best if you pick Specialist Winchester for a partner."

"Us girls sticking together? Most guys would think that two girls couldn't handle themselves."

"You're a bit too old to be calling yourself a girl, aren't you?" Angel asked her. "I didn't call myself a boy five years ago."

"Quiet," I ordered. "Don't start a fight in front of them, I want to look professional."

"That's us," Bumblebee said, punching the air. "The image of professionalism."

Hey, at least we were aware of it.

"Regardless," I said before things got out of hand. "I don't want any of the rangers trying to impress you," I told Grass.

"You don't worry about that with the squad," she pointed out with a raised eyebrow.

"That's because you're one of the boys," Caboose said. He could also be a real ass when he felt like it. "Believe me when I say that I mean it as a compliment."

"Uh-huh," Grass murmured angrily. "Whatever."

"So, we don't really have much freedom to choose our buildings," Angel half-asked, half-stated.

I shook my head and forced myself to avoid a groan of annoyance. "No. Break. Dismissed. Go. You're giving me a headache."

My squad went off in different directions after polarizing their visors, apparently, we could all agree on the fact that doing it simultaneously looked badass, it was better than putting out hands on the center and yelling 'break!' Snark went to one of the remaining watchtowers and Bumblebee to another one. The rest of them moved towards the ruined buildings, with Grass trudging off to join Specialist Claire Winchester. The sight of those two beautiful women together would serve to fuel fantasies for a long time.

I stood there for a minute, thinking about everything that had transpired in the past few days. I suddenly felt extremely tired, but I couldn't allow myself to doze off. We would be under attack any time now and needed to stay alert. I took another combat stimulant and felt the weariness wash away ever so slowly. After what seemed like half an hour I finally managed to move my feet and head towards my position. My head was hurting and I kept having flashes of that dream I had when leaving cryo. They were getting particularly vivid now. Not Schitzo level, but still a cause of concern.

"Hey," a ranger greeted me when I climbed on top of another watchtower. His IFF had him designated as Private First Class Thor Carlsen.

"Hey," I returned. "Is your name actually Thor? I mean, did your parents name you that?" Wow, way for me to come off as insensitive and rude.

"Yes, I have Danish ancestors, and Thor is a legitimate Danish name."

"Huh, I like it," I told him. "Sort of intimidating."

"Thanks…I guess."

I shrugged him off before setting up my rifle on the floor. While the watchtower had solid safety walls, it didn't allow me to fire from a prone position and made me expose myself when shooting with the sniper mounted on the top of the rails. Snark and I had fixed that using a laser cutter that Caboose had on him when we dropped. I was grateful for that, I had a very wide angle to shoot from and increased protection from enemy fire.

"So, what do you see Sergeant?" PFC Carlsen asked me.

"The same thing you do Thor, only with a lot more detail." I zoomed in closer on the enemy line. They had erected fortifications around us and even had one deployable firebase to my right. It was pretty far away from us, but I could tell that it was hastily set up. I hadn't witnessed the construction process itself, but Snark and Pavel could attest to that. "Their numbers just keep getting bigger," I said after a while. "When we first got here there were barely fifty covvies lurking about. Things started getting ugly once we pissed of the zealot."

"You pissed of a zealot? How?"

"Desecrating dead bodies," I said calmly while shifting my scope towards a group of three ghosts, all of them unmanned and out in the open. "They wasted half their numbers throwing themselves at us before they finally got up here. Finally got some vehicles too…"

"Then why aren't we getting shelled by Wraiths?" Carlsen asked.

"Bumblebee pulled off an impressive stunt with his Spanker. They probably just don't want to give away their positions."

"Stunt? What kind of stunt?"

"We changed the rocket's configuration and had it strike a Daemon from above, wrecking its cannon. He's got a vid of it if you want to see it."

"You can do that?"

"You calling me a liar?" I asked in a joking tone.

"No, it's just that they never taught us that in bootcamp."

"Join the club buddy."

The wind started picking up after a while. The rocky surface of Wolff proved to possess an extraordinarily high amount of dust, and soon enough visibility was down. The last thing we needed right now was a dust storm, but the gods above had deemed it fit to give our enemies a smokescreen and make the defense of our little castle a little bit harder.

"Hey Thor, can't you spin your hammer or something? Make the wind go away?" I asked.

"I forgot it back home," Carlsen shrugged. "I can try waving my dick around, but I doubt that it'll help."

"You'll probably just get it shot off," I agreed after laughing loudly. "Snark, heat scope working for ya'?"

"Nah," he replied. "Dust is too hot from the sun, I can barely make out shapes through the dust."

"Hmmm. Caboose, Angel, see if you can get some atmospheric data," I ordered, changing my attention to the other two marines.

"You've been here for three days, right?" Carlsen asked after a lull in the conversation.

"Yup."

"Has it been tough?"

"Yup."

"Huh."

I clicked a couple of buttons on the oracle scope before peering back through it. The enhanced zoom allowed me to make out the vague shapes of Covenant barriers. I could only spot the deployable ones because of their shine, the solid ones were nearly impossible to make out through the storm. I couldn't even spot enemy movement. We wouldn't be able to tell if we were under attack until it was too late. Or at least later than usual.

"Sergeant, do you see any movement?" Durant asked through the comm channel.

"All I'm seeing is dust."

"Uh, bad news," Angel announced. "Looks like the dust storm is gonna last a while. Three hours, apparently."

"Sheeit," Durant muttered. "Everyone ready for an attack."

"You heard the man," I seconded. "Eyes down range."

The storm quickly started picking up in intensity. Gusts of wind began making scream-like sounds and banging against the towers. I wasn't particularly affected by it, the hurricanes on Jericho VII were ten times worse than this. Hell, the rain obscured visibility a whole lot more than some dust could. Still, I would've taken another campaign back on Jericho VII any time before this glorified asteroid. Even if only to be back home once again.

"Sarge, I'm getting some movement," Snark warned all of us. "Not making anything solid, but it looks like some vehicles."

"Yeah, I see them too, Wraiths and Ghosts by the look of it."

"It sounds like we're in a fantasy novel when you say it like that," Pavel pointed out. "Who was the genius that thought that naming all covvie vehicles after a spirit was a smart idea?"

"I know, right?" Bumblebee agreed. "It's only a matter of time before we run out synonyms."

"I think that daemon was probably the last one," Angel said, throwing his penny in.

"Umm," one of the rangers interrupted.

"Right, lock and load," I ordered.

They opened up with three mortar shots. The blue-white orbs landed without harming anyone, but they destroyed a large portion of one of the walkways and landed too close to the Onager for my comfort.

"Bee, move away from the tower and pound those Wraiths," I ordered. "I don't want you made just yet."

"Aye, aye."

He fired two rockets in quick succession. Two twin explosions were followed immediately by a larger one, signaling the death of the enemy mobile artillery. That's when they started hitting us with everything that they had.

"Fuck!" I cursed after a needle flew through the hole cut in the safety rails and scraped my pauldron. "Relocating."

"Do I have to relocate too?" PFC Carlsen asked.

"Probably for the best," I replied, grabbing my SRS and picking it up. "Stay at the back and wait for them to locate me again, then you can climb up."

"Understood."

I had a mortar shot land awfully close to me, but my armor protected me from the scorching heat well enough. I kept on running away from the watchtower I had been occupying while multi-colored plasma adorned the air around me. It might've been a beautiful spectacle were it not for the fact that a solid hit from any of those colorful fireworks would kill me.

I slid into a recently dug trench right on the edge of the cliff and planted my rifle on the ground while I sunk down to the waist in the trench. I took a knee and aimed through the Oracle scope. The plasma bursts were easier to trace than tracers, I quickly located a lance of jackals and grunts lead by an elite minor. The elite directed their fire to areas where we were likely to be taking cover behind while the little aliens fired blindly. They were currently peppering the watchtower that me and Thor had abandoned. The roof was already melting from the concentrated fire.

"Bangarang," I muttered.

What? If I'm going to get a catchphrase it's either that or the 'aim to please' one.

I squeezed the trigger and hit the elite square in the neck. The bullet severed its cartoid and jugular veins, or the equivalent in squidhead. The jackal nearest the elite was splattered with blood from the arterial spray but otherwise remained impassive. I switched targets and immediately located a high-value target.

Well, it was not a high-value target per se, but it was a grunt manning a Wraith's turret. I ended its miserable existence with a quick shot to the chest. This time the kill was much more clean, with some blood leaking from the entrance wound and a comparatively small splatter on the back. The grunt slumped over forwards and the firing stopped immediately.

"Sniper! Wraiths are homing in on your position!"

"That's me," Snark said for my benefit. "Śukriyā."

"That means thank you," Grass said.

"She can't speak Hindi," I informed everyone, "she's just very perceptive." The sarcasm wasn't lost to anybody, Helljumper or otherwise.

"Oh Frank, always bringing the fairer sex down," Pavel said in mock disapproval.

I ignored him and took the head off a jackal marksman that thought that it was being clever by avoiding firing at us until it found a suitable position. Unfortunately for it, it only focused on Private Dibra's DMR fire. A sniper round can do a lot of damage to the thin and scrawny body of a jackal. The round entered in the chest and exited through the tailbone. It was a pretty messy kill too.

"I'm seeing grav lifts!"

"Everyone ready!" Durant's voice boomed. For a moment I thought of Scarecrow. Both their voices were similar in tone, but they sounded almost identical when they screamed.

"Hey Sarge, you oughta get your mind back to the battlefield."

I looked to my right and almost had a heart attack when I saw Scarecrow sitting beside me, one leg stretched, the other one bent. He used one hand to prop himself up while the other one rested on his knee. He looked calm, peaceful almost.

"You know, it's probably for the best if you don't join the club," Schitzo suggested, sitting down next to him. "Francisco here has enough problems as it is."

"You're probably right," Scarecrow, Unscarecrow, agreed. I blinked and just like that he was gone, leaving only Schitzo behind.

"He was right though," Schitzo said. "Eyes front, or rather, up."

I looked up to see a blue ball of dead descending. It was going to land right on top of me. I scrambled out of the foxhole and took two steps before diving away. The shockwave from the explosion coupled with the lower gravity served to propel me further than I would've thought possible. The landing was just as rough as always, my nose banged against my visor inside my helmet. I felt something wet running down my nose and confirmed that I was bleeding when I saw a stain slightly below eye level.

I had to ignore it, the gravity lifts were already being deployed directly at my feet.

"Kill those Wraiths!"

"I've got squid heads! Close range!"

"Stick to your FOF, Ranger!" Angel shouted. "Grass, three grunts closing in behind you, they're priming grenades!"

I aimed at the edge of the cliff, making sure that I wasn't too close to the edge so that the strong winds couldn't push me down. I spotted an ultra jogging towards the purple gravity lift and fired two shots at it. The first one hit it in the shoulder, killing its shields. The second one hit it on top of his skull, killing the alien. It landed on the gravity lift and was launched upwards, landing a few feet away from me with a dull thud. I shot another elite, I ran out of ammo for my magazine just as it jumped on the gravity lift. I tossed the SRS behind me while drawing my BR55. I aimed at the elite as it climbed up, but I couldn't get a bead on it. The blue elite fired at me with its plasma rifle before landing. The rounds landed all around me but failed to hit me.

I fell to the ground while attempting to avoid the plasma. The elite landed a few feet away from me and started firing on my position. I did the exact same thing at the exact same thing. A trail of plasma moved from the inside of my left leg to my groin. One round hit next to my ankle, the second one almost hit my knee. The third one hit me square in the chest. There was no fourth one.

My wild firing hit the unshielded elite. Not a single one of my shots missed, all of the bullet wounds were clustered on a small area on the left side of the elite's chest, where the heart would be. The alien adopted an almost human expression and dropped its smoking weapon before taking a hand up to its chest and feeling it. It then looked at its blood-covered hand in shock. It occurred to me that that elite looked smaller than most, almost as if it was younger.

Five grunts landed immediately afterwards. I shot at one of them, hitting it in the knee and groin and making it fall down. Before I could finish it off concentrated bursts from assault rifles got the best of them.

"You owe me one!" Grass said. It was a very weak and failed attempt at humor.

"We'll call it even," I replied. Equally weak attempt only slightly more successful.

I pushed myself back with my feet until I hit my SRS. I turned around and grabbed it before standing up and bolting towards the nearest building. It was almost completely destroyed. There was a mortar crater a meter from one corner, the impact had been enough to collapse all of that corner and a large section of that wall. Plasma impacts had taken bits and pieces from the damaged wall, there were intact needles lining up the side walls.

"Incoming," I warned, changing my tone to let Grass know that I wasn't talking about plasma.

I vaulted over the wall and took two quick steps in an attempt to regain balance, when that failed I opted to slam my shoulder into the floor as a way to stop myself. Yes, it was a choice that I made. I didn't fall down. No, I am not defensive.

"Shit, you're smoking!" Winchester exclaimed.

"Why thank you, good to know that my hard work is appreciated," I smiled at her.

"She's talking about your armor Sarge," Grass said after squeezing off a burst at an unseen enemy.

I looked down to my battered chest piece. It was completely gray, all the remaining paint had been burnt off by the plasma impact. The heated metal was letting out a steady trail of steam.

"Crap," I muttered before pulling on the quick-release clamps, letting the heavy piece of metal fall down to the ground. It made pinging noises as it hit the rocks. I briefly took off my helmet to inspect the damage. There was a small tear in my suit, probably from the heat. The tear was about the size of three of my fingers, both in length and width. The wound itself was slightly smaller. The burn was not particularly serious, I probably would've rated it at second degree, but then again, I didn't have MD after my name on my card. I didn't even have a card.

"Here," Grass said, tossing a can of biofoam to Winchester.

The female ranger caught it deftly before pouring a little on my wound, eliciting a yelp of pain from me. She rubbed it in a little bit too roughly. Only then did I realize that this was her little idea of payback for me beating her on the fighting ring.

"A few days ago you were punching me, now you're rubbing my chest lovingly?" I wheezed, trying to get in as much oxygen as possible without my helmet on.

She pulled back her hand and gave me a couple of light slaps on the chest. I didn't recoil and took the punishment like a man. Mostly.

"If you consider that longingly, then you're into some weird shit," she said before taking two steps back and moving towards the destroyed wall and firing her MA37. I waited a moment for the pain to recede before reaching for my chest piece and slapping it back on, I winced from the heat and took deep breaths to calm myself down. The layer of biofoam protected me from the heat a little bit, but the chest piece cooled down soon enough.

I put on my helmet and sealed it.

_Ready._

I cocked my battle rifle's slide and took a step towards the wall. I looked out and saw a dozen covvies firing and using some sort of weird devices to dig small trenches quickly. There were a few deployable covers strewn about, but they served only as temporary respite for the smaller aliens. They mainly kept heavy fire on our position to keep our heads down.

"There are Banshee's strafing us," a ranger cried. "North to south."

"Grass, man the cannon, we'll cover you. Bee?"

"I'm trying!" he replied. "Can't see anything, locking system's not working."

"Keep trying," I boomed back at him. "Winchester! Suppressing fire on those grunts!"

"Ready when you are," Grass nodded at us.

"Go!" I ordered.

Grass dashed out the building and vaulted over the outermost walkway while Winchester laid suppressing fire with her MA37. I turned around and propped my battle rifle on the destroyed wall. Most of the grunts had been hit with automatic fire, the elites did some completely unnecessary combat rolls to get out of the way, and the jackals just raised their shields. I took aim at one of the jackals and put four bullets in its foot to make it drop. It fell on its knee but kept its shield up, showing remarkable pain tolerance. I switched to the jackal next to it and repeated the process, this bird actually fell sideways, allowing me to put three clean shots in its torso.

"Keep those elites down," I told Winchester. "Don't let them peek out."

"Got it."

Three jackals had been left behind when the elites hid behind their hastily-made foxholes. Two of them were in front of the one I had wounded, using their shields to protect their wounded comrade. I tried getting around their shields but failed miserably, they weren't even firing back, just moving backwards slowly so that they could help their wounded partner. After sixteen rounds of nothing I got tired and picked up a grenade from my belt.

"Frag out," I warned almost casually.

It was a pretty crappy toss, but it was meant like that. I threw it at the ground and let it roll towards the jackals. The detonation was enough to destroy both their shields and kill one of them. I quickly killed the other one before shooting the wounded jackal in the head, putting it out of its misery.

"Banshees," Schitzo said nonchalantly.

"Getdown!" I yelled as I shoved Winchester to the ground.

Several heavy plasma rounds collided with the wall behind us, the miniature explosions that these caused had a rain of polycrete bits falling down on both of us. I prayed for them not to fuel rod our asses and thanked the gods when they didn't.

"C'mon, up, up!" I said, pulling Winchester up roughly. "Good as new." I fired three blind bursts to discourage the three enemy elites from charging at us. "Bee!"

"Can't see them!" he complained. "And I'm too goddamned busy on the Wraiths."

"Grass?"

In typical Grass fashion, she didn't give me a straight answer, instead opting to simply fire the Onager at whichever unlucky craft got in her crosshairs. Not that I'm complaining about it, I got the general state of her situation. The noise dampeners in my helmet immediately went a level up. If she fired her Onager for long I would need to have my hearing organs replaced. Well, I honestly have no idea what I would need replaced, I just knew that they would probably have to fix something if I became deaf.

Yeah.

"Winchester! Small squad flanking you on the left!" an unknown ranger warned.

I immediately looked to my left and confirmed that there was a small group of four grunts and an elite were moving directly on our flank as fast as the grunt's stubby legs allowed. They were shuffling from crater to crater, three grunts would stay back and provide covering fire for the elite and another grunt to allow them to dive for cover. The elite and the grunt then returned the favor. Rinse and repeat.

"I'll handle them," I let her know. "You keep those three split chins down."

"Since when do you give me orders?" she asked. She didn't mean it, but there was some annoyance in her tone.

"Since I outrank you, which means since you joined the military."

"Ass."

"Bitch."

"Ugh!"

Yeah. Great start to a professional partnership.

My first target was the last grunt of the group. I hit it in the neck with a burst to the chest and neck. The other two jumped behind some piece of rock that I could've sworn wasn't there when I last looked. It certainly helped the invading aliens, that's for sure.

Three bursts later there was only an elite left to contend with. It was an elite minor, meaning that it had relatively weak shields and little combat experience. I switched to full-auto and peppered it as it tried to dive to a crater. I burned through its shields fast enough and then it died from a serious case of lead poisoning.

You know, because of the bullets? They're made of lead, and lead can poison you, and I filled it with lead bullets, so it died from poisoning. Pretty clever, huh? Maybe I was a standup comedian in a past life or some shit like that.

Feel free to forget the previous paragraph ever existed.

"Reloading!"

"Don't announce it!" I snapped.

Of course it was too late to do anything about it, by the time I turned around and brought my gun to bear an elite was already making a run for the glorified closet we were using as cover.

"Get down!" I yelled for the second time in five minutes.

She moved her upper body down just in time to avoid an elite slamming her head off. The alien landed on both feet, something that I didn't manage on my vault over the torn-down wall. It made me feel…irritated.

I had less than half a magazine in my weapon, and I emptied it all on the elite major. It lashed out with a donkey kick at me, hitting me on the chest and slamming me against my wall. The armor mitigated the damage, but I was still thrown backwards and slammed against the wall. My SRS dislodged from its magnetic clamps on the back. It didn't matter, the elite had Claire pinned to the ground a hand raised to bash her head in, it probably wouldn't have been very hard for the alien too. For all her combat skills, she didn't know what to do. She panicked, plain and simple.

"Behind you, you fuck!" I taunted as I launched myself towards it. The hunched position of the elite and the force of my tackle slammed the elite face-first against the semi-destroyed wall of the little room. It was a practiced technique, time proven and reliable. You tackled the big, scary alien and your friend shot and killed the big, scary alien.

Fuck.

The elite shoved itself backwards. Then it jumped on its back.

I got the wind knocked out of me and let go of my rifle. I held on to the elite, gripping its neck with both hands.

"Shoot the motherfucker!" I yelled.

The elite kicked out wildly, shoving me against the floor and hitting a scared Specialist Winchester in the hip, slamming her against the floor.

"You're worse than useless," I muttered. How I had the time to say that and not punch out the elite, I don't know.

The elite then drew an energy dagger and tried stabbing at my legs. I unwrapped my leg from the elite and the dagger missed. That made me realize that I had my own knives strapped to various convenient places on my body. Funny how you can miss some things when you're being crushed by an eight foot tall monster. I bent my leg backwards and let go of the elite with one hand, reaching for the Damascus steel knife. I avoided another attempt at stabbing me from the elite, twisting awkwardly to save my leg from being sliced off. I drew the blade and brought it up. The pattern shone as I brought it down on the elite's neck.

The first attempt failed utterly, being deflected by the armor. That served in my advantage, because it prompted the elite to roll and get me off its back. I immediately stood up and ducked below the alien's arm as it tried to use its dagger to decapitate me. And with one fluid motion, I brought my knife up on the elite's jaws. It went through the fangs and the roof of its mouth, embedding itself all the way inside its brain. Death was instantaneous, and not nearly painful enough for the stupid fuck.

"What the fuck?" I cursed as I shoved the elite aside before jumping for my BR55. I ejected the magazine and shoved in another one. I immediately fired three bursts wildly, sending aliens for cover. "Get up!" I ordered Winchester. "Get the fuck up." When she didn't move I approached her and slapped her helmet hard. She shook and look at me as if I was some sort of surreal image.

I'm pretty handsome, but not that much.

"I-I-I-I-"

"Yeah, yeah, combat virgin." I reached for her own dropped assault rifle and shoved it into her hands. "This wasn't the first time, and it won't be the last. You signed up for it, best get used to it."

Plasma fire was pelting the walls, leaving me no alternative but to toss a grenade and hope that it was enough to send aliens diving for cover. I waited for the explosion and emerged as soon as it happened. The frag hadn't killed anything, but the firing had stopped. I took aim at trench and blew a grunts brains with one well-placed shot. Winchester propped her rifle up and sprayed a pair of jackals that tried peeking. I nodded at her and we set ourselves to killing every alien stupid enough to leave cover.

"We're falling back!"

"So are we," Pavel called out.

I saw the dots representing the retreating Rangers and Helljumpers moving slowly towards the center of Reaper Hill. Occasionally a group of red dots would pop up where one of my allies had spotted an alien, painting its location for us. The Ranger's helmets had a similar HUD and combat interface to us, but it was last-generation and a little bit more antiquated than the state-of-the-art stuff that we often got.

"We're going to need to pull back," I told Winchester. I spoke into my helmet, "Sergeant, order everyone to pull back to the next position, we can't afford a bracketed line."

"Agreed," Durant replied. "Everyone fall back!"

"C'mon, I'll cover you," I told Specialist Winchester. I looked out the wall and ducked back down immediately to avoid a shower of needlers. I peeked over again and fired wildly, sending the elite diving for cover. "Go, go, go!"

I fired another burst, sending the same eager elite reeling backwards from the impact. It fell to the ground on its ass and got killed for its lack of balance. I targeted a jackal and hit it twice in the arm before I ran out of ammunition. I reloaded and ran to our second fall-back position. A few bolts and needles flew past me, but none of them were close. The covvies were just spraying and hoping they would get lucky.

"You aight?" I asked Winchester. She nodded shakily as a reply. "Deep breaths," I ordered. "You need to calm down."

_I thought they saw combat back in Wilk…_

"Durant! Can you get us some air support!" Pavel shouted. "We won't last much longer!"

"Can't you do it?" he returned.

"Long story," I voiced. "See if B Company can spare a Falcon or two, better yet, have them send us an attack Pelican."

"Roger, I'll do my best."

"Try to sound desperate," I suggested. "Tug at their heartstrings."

"I do have some experience at this," Durant let me know.

_Unlike the rest of your squad…_

My current piece of cover was the outermost walkway. It had sturdy walls at waist-height that would protect me from anything short of a plasma grenade or a fuel rod. I looked over and saw that several aliens were already taking cover in the torn down building that we had just abandoned.

"Boom," Angel muttered. That boom was followed by an explosion.

I looked towards it and saw a fireball consuming a building similar to the one that I had been in. Apparently, Angel had decided to blow the goddamned thing sky high as soon as the Covenant occupied it. It was a pretty good idea. I probably should've done something similar myself, but I was packing frags, not timed or remote detonation explosives.

"Cover me," I ordered Winchester. "Now."

She fired wildly while I tossed a grenade at the building. It bounced off the edge of the window frame and back out. I cursed and dove back behind cover. The explosion probably damaged the polycrete wall a little bit, but it wouldn't have been nearly enough to tear it down. I thought about trying again, but if we didn't get some help I would need more grenades than I had. Besides, it wasn't like this situation was _that_ desperate. At least not yet.

"Lay down suppressing fire, I'll take them out when they pop up for a look."

We managed to hold the onslaught of ugly aliens for about an hour. She would fire a quick burst and I would then pop up and try to take out the first alien that tried returning fire. The covvies weren't the best strategists or soldiers, but they weren't by any means dumb. I got an elite and a grunt on my first two tries, but then they just kept their heads down, occasionally firing a burst at our position. We did pretty much the same thing, keeping an eye on them so that they wouldn't get the jump on us. Eventually the hilltop settled into relative quiet, with only sporadic gunfire and plasma fire.

"You got them to send us help?" a Ranger asked after a lull in the battle. "They can't stay this quiet for long."

"They gave me a vague answer."

"Ooo, I love those," Snark said cheerily. "Not really."

"What are they sending us?" I asked.

"Again, the lieutenant was vague, we might be getting a couple of Falcons or the whole company."

"Or nothing at all," Angel suggested.

"Aye, that too," Bee agreed.

After discussing the issue some more and tossing around a few ideas on how to push back the covvies we all decided to simply wait for whatever would happen. We didn't have any viable way to evacuate the plateau. Sure, the Rangers could fly off, but they didn't have anywhere to land, and it's not like their jetpacks had an incredible range. If they made it past the wall of plasma fire that would rise up to meet them, they would still fall short of safety. Our last option was to hide in the hatch that concealed the Onager when it was not being used and close it. We could last a couple of hours down there, but it wouldn't take the covvies that long to cut through the steel blast doors.

Either we got help or we were brutally killed, it was as simple as that.

"You all right?" I asked Winchester after killing an alien for the first time in over forty-five minutes.

"I'm fine," she insisted.

"This your first time?" I asked. I had already assumed that it was and voiced it out loud, but I was only being supportive. Or something.

"Yeah, first deployment, second time I've seen combat. The first time was a lot easier."

"It gets easier with time," I told her. "You get used to it."

She didn't say anything for a few seconds. "How was your first time?"

"Awkward, funny, and a big letdown."

"You're talking about sex, aren't you?"

"I thought you were too…" I deadpanned.

She giggled slightly, considerably lightening up the mood. I smiled at that and even chuckled a little. "Nah, my first time in combat was a shitstorm."

"Couldn't have been worse than _this_," Winchester said. She actually sounded like she wanted her first combat experience to be worse than mine. I would've been glad if that were true, but unfortunately, it wasn't. Unless of course, we all got killed by the end of the day.

"I did an emergency drop out of the UNSC _Count Me In_. My squad and I jumped out when it seemed like the ship was going to break apart. We all landed away from one another."

"And…"

"And I landed about two miles behind enemy lines. I actually saw what was left of my ship crash-land into Covenant-held ground. The helmsman had enough courage to do that by himself. All of the bridge crew had been killed in the space battle."

"Oh, what did you do next?"

"I set myself to getting back towards friendly territory."

"You didn't meet up with your squad?"

"I didn't have any way to do that. I think most of them were killed while on the ship, something exploded right behind me. My best friend managed to make it into the pod."

What happened to him."

"Dug his own grave," I replied, thinking back to my days in boot camp. I could remember all my original squad mates. Jonah, Chow, Ramsey, and Dutch. "I saw a pod in the city, might've been his."

"I'm sorry."

"Don't be, not your fault. Besides, the past is the past, nothing I can do about it."

I was now wishing that the conversation hadn't taken that path. While I had gotten over the premature deaths of my friends and squad mates and all the men that had been under my command before Reaper came along, I still missed them sometimes. I think most of you can probably relate to that, whether it is a dead relative, a girl you dated, or a friend from your hometown, you'll always miss them in one way or another. I especially missed Jonah, not all the time, but every now and then I would see something that reminded me of the good times we had.

"But don't worry," I suddenly said in a cheerful tone. "There's still some chance that your first time gets worse than mine, and you get bragging rights afterwards."

"Or we die," Claire reminded me.

"Die? I'm not dying, at least not yet, and since you're with me you practically have immunity too."

She smiled again, at least that's what I thought, because her eyes lit up a little and her cheeks went slightly up. Even though Claire was only a pair of gray eyes right now, she was still incredibly attractive.

"Good to know that," she nodded at me.

I sat back down and let Specialist Winchester take 'watch' while I rested a little bit. There was a small section of the wall that had been broken off because some reason or another, it could be used to keep watch on the enemy-occupied construction in front of us. While she kept watch I made sure to keep my eyes peeled in case some covvies tried moving on any other side of the plateau, I could spot some places where they were taking cover right now, but was thankfully safe from enemy fire.

"Ok, listen up!" Staff Sergeant Durant boomed. "Good news, Hernandez managed to divert a couple of Falcon gunships and I convinced Salas to toss in a pair of Hornets."

"That means two or three trips," I murmured.

"The ETA for the gunships is half an hour!" he continued. "We need a place for them to land."

My mind raced through the different places that they could actually touchdown, even if it was just a quick landing.

"We could put the Onager underground and use the doors as a landing pad," Grass suggested. "That way we don't have to fight our way out."

"I agree," Angel said, all professional. "We'll need to rotate so that the whole perimeter is protected."

"Not necessarily," another Ranger chimed in. "The Hornets and Falcon's door gunnner's could keep one side at bay while the we keep the rest of the covvies with their heads down."

"And after we leave?" Caboose asked. "We just let them destroy the gun?"

"That might be for the best," I muttered. "Especially under the circumstances."

"That gun is this colony's only protection!" he exclaimed.

"They made their choice," Durant said quietly. "And so have we, I'll contact the pilots and tell them the plan, everyone else, stay sharp."

I checked the clock on my HUD and started a thirty-minute timer. The Rangers and my squad started checking their weapons, everyone became eager and nervous. Now that we had a reasonable hope of getting extracted no one wanted to screw it up. I made sure that my BR55's chamber was clean and had a bullet ready to go before counting my remaining ammunition. I had enough magazines left to last a good hour and a half of a mild skirmish. Probably enough to make it through the evac just fine. Probably.

"One minute," I thought out loud, checking the decreasing numbers.

"Fireteam One, start falling back to the Onager. Grass, put it underground and close the blast doors," Durant ordered.

"Rest of us, hold the line," I added.

We started firing to hide the noise of the Onager cannon going below ground. The dust storm probably did a pretty good job at hiding it from sight, but the mechanism still made quite some noise. I focused on taking shots at the top of the broken walls of the building in front of me. The small storage closet was nothing but a pile of rubble now, and every shot that I fired added a little bit of broken down polycrete to the mix. Some of the covvies got scared by our display of firepower and quickly started firing back wild shots. They had a slight altitude advantage, but it wasn't useful in this situation.

"Thirty seconds!"

Grass, Bumblebee, and Snark were already waiting for the Falcon gunships to land. Accompanying them were five Rangers. From what I could tell from my HUD's minimap they had formed a circle and were waiting for the gunships to touch down on their position. They couldn't actually pop smoke as it wouldn't work with all the wind and dust flying around.

A pair of orange flashes streaked down the edge of my vision and hit the storage closet in front of us, sending it and everything inside into oblivion.

"Missed me?"

"I'm flattered you came to rescue me," I replied with a smile. "Good to have you here Lieutenant."

"The great Fransisco Castillo asking for emergency evacuation? I wouldn't miss this for the world," Hardwick informed me.

I chuckled. "Just do your job." I turned to Winchester. "C'mon, let's fall back to the next line."

"Sure," she answered. She sounded weird, I'd have to recommend Nezarian to have her see a shrink.

I know, I know, I'm a hypocrite.

We were under relative safety as the two Hornets exploded every building under Covenant control and the Flacon's door gunners kept everything else under cover. The M247 machine guns on the sides stopped firing as four men hopped inside the VTOLs. Normally a Falcon would only carry three and the two gunners, but we were sort of in a pickle and needed to get out of here fast. Still, one extra person on board was pushing our luck.

"So, Specialist, what did you study? In college I mean."

"Why do you ask?"

"Because you are a specialist and nor a private," I said simply, taking aim at a couple of running grunts before gunning them down. "And you're too young to have any meaningful job-skills. No offense."

"Do you really want to talk about it now?" she asked incuriously.

"Why not?"

"A few things come to mind, namely the battle going on."

"Ok then."

I had switched to full-auto to keep the elites and jackals down. Most of the grunts had been caught out in the open and didn't have gauntlets or shields to protect themselves from the barrage of lead and missiles.

"Watch out, elites and grunts are being launched up," Hardwick warned.

"Can't you kill the grav lifts?" Claire asked.

I slapped my visor with my left hand.

"I'll get right to it," the other Hornet pilot said.

"You flyboys have it easy," I muttered.

"Agreed," Pavel said.

"Careful Frank," Emily warned jokingly.

"You'll cut me off?"

"For starters."

"Cut you off from what?" Angel asked.

Thankfully, a large explosion caused by a Wraith's mortar had us all running for cover. Yes, I said thankfully, there are some things that are better left not talked about. A couple of explosions rocked the ground but failed to land close enough to do damage. What worried me was the band of elites and jackals that was probably running for our position. I left cover to take a look, and sure enough, crazed elites were running at us.

"Fuck," I muttered. As simple as it can get.

I emptied half a magazine on the closest one, killing it. I emptied the other half on the one that had just gained the 'closest to me' position, killing it as well. Having two of their bravest comrades killed gave the elites a stop. They decided to crouch behind cover instead of just keep running to their deaths. I smiled at that.

"Claire," I started. "Will you kindly do something?"

She looked up at me irritably and left cover as well. She had great aim, I'll give her that. Her first two bursts hit an elite in the chest, sending it reeling backwards from the kinetic force. The third one hit its shoulder, draining its shields completely and allowing me to take it out with a quick headshot. The elite collapsed to the floor with half its head missing. She repeated the process with another minor and I killed it with three shots to the neck.

"Quite stealing my kills," she complained.

Ah, that moment when you think that the moment you fire at an alien it is your designated kill. It happens to all of us, Pavel and I would get into fights whenever I finished off an elite that he had weakened. I'd get pissed when I killed a grunt only for him to spray the rest of the squad and take them out. But we grew out of it, this wasn't a competition, this was war, it didn't matter who killed the aliens as long as they were dead.

So I told that to Claire.

"Fine," she grudgingly admitted. "You've got a point."

"Fifteen seconds!" Angel shouted.

"Everybody get ready!" I ordered.

The first Falcon touched down and four Rangers quickly got in. The pilot pulled up as quickly as possible to allow the other gunships to land. There were only five of us on the plateau now. The covvies had noticed and were doing their best to shoot us or the aircraft.

"Let's go," I ordered, pulling Claire by the collar and pushing her towards the Falcon. She stumbled a little before she settled into a sprint. I could catch the silhouettes of the other three members of my team running towards the gunship as well. I turned around to face the covvies and fired bursts at the ones that I could see through the dust. A couple of jackals went down, but I wasn't doing any real damage, especially when there were dozens of extra elites that had to be killed.

"Frank, come on!" Pavel shouted.

I turned around and made a run towards the Falcon.

"Watch out!"

I looked up just in time and dove sideways. The mortar shot hit closer to the Falcon than me, but I was still propelled backwards from the explosion. Another shot landed on the other side of the gunship and it started lifting off.

"It's getting too hot," the pilot said. "I'm sorry."

"Shit," I muttered, still on the ground. "Em, I need a favor."

"I can't land, taking position to at your eleven o'clock."

I looked towards her direction and saw a waypoint appear right where her Hornet was. There were sixty meters between me and living to see another day. I propped myself to my knees and holstered my rifle over my back before drawing my pistol. I took off, running as fast as I could. Plasma bolts flew at me but failed to connect. I ran in between three elites, all of them looked surprised to see a puny human charging _through_ them. So surprised that they failed to fire at me.

I shot them once, sending them backwards and buying some extra time. I vaulted over a walkway and slid on the ground, rocks hitting my armor. My chest was starting to hurt like shit, the wound on it was stinging. I kept running as fast as I could. Two grunts squealed when I flew past them, but I forced myself to ignore them and just ran towards the edge.

"You're gonna have to jump!"

I took two steps and jumped off the edge of the cliff.

A couple of blue plasma rifle shots collided with the frame of the hornet, leaving black scorch marks on the plating. I stretched out my left hand, suddenly wishing that I hadn't drawn my pistol. I slammed hard into the Hornet, rocking it sideways from the impact. My left hand gripped one of the safety handles and I fired the rest of my magazine before actually turning around and sitting down on the platform.

"Go, go, go!" I shouted.

"Shut up and let me work!"

Emily's Hornet banked sideways as a volley of plasma shots flew at us. A couple of blue blobs collided with one of the rotors, but they didn't cause any significant damage. I strapped my pistol onto my thigh before drawing my rifle again. I took a couple of potshots at the muzzle flashes of the plasma weapons, trying to pin down their positions accurately. I'm pretty sure that I didn't hit anything other than rock, but by that time the Hornet was up and quickly leaving small arms range. I allowed myself a sigh of relief.

"You owe me," Hardwick said.

"I do," I admitted. "Would you rather I-"

"Line's still open," she interrupted.

"We can hear you Frank," Pavel reminded me.

"Oh, well, um. Yeah. Nice work people."

"Thanks," Snark replied dully. "Really."

We might've failed on our mission after disobeying direct orders, but hey, we were alive and well. Physically speaking of course, my head was one hell of a mess.

* * *

><p><em>So there we have it, chapter 112, thanks to Sniper Fodder for proof-reading and pointing out some inaccuracies as well as plot-holes. <em>

_Well, what am I to say here? Perhaps I could get started with the sexual tension with Frank and Claire. Gotta love her last name, Winchester, sounds pretty awesome. Back to the sexual tension. I suddenly feel like I might've gotten a little bit over my head writing in so many romantic interest characters. I know three isn't that many, but I'm going to have to write myself out of this hole. And I'm going to do it masterfully if I have anything to say about it. Next, the knives. I actually loved the idea of naming it after the girls in Frank's life, but it would frankly be a little bit weird if he named them after them while they were still alive. I can vouch for Layla and you know damn well that all the others are still alive and kicking. Perhaps something more suitably evil-sounding would work. Still open to suggestions though._

_One last thing that I forgot to say a few chapters back, you know the Daemon tanks? The ones I based after the tanks in Star Wars? Yeah, I used ten different online thesaurus and the only other synonym for 'ghost' that I found was daemon. It annoyed me beyond belief, I mean, Ghost, Banshee, Shadow, Specter, Revenant, Phantom, Spirit. I mean, how many words for ghost can you possibly find? At least daemon sounds pretty badass considering that it was the last possible pick._

_As always, thanks for your comments, hope you enjoyed, and stay strong._

_-casquis_


	113. Decision Making

Chapter CXIII: Decision Making

**February 13, 2544 (UNSC Calendar)/**

**UNSC **_**Inconvenience **_**Joint Operations Base, Wolff, Zeta Lupus System**

* * *

><p><em>"Genocide is an attempt to exterminate a people, not to alter their behavior."- Jack Schwartz<em>

* * *

><p>"Frank! I'm glad you got them all back alive!" Nezarian noted. "Or was it Durant's talent this time?"<p>

"You flatter me, sir," the sergeant deadpanned.

"And not one of them is maimed," he added, stroking his jawline gently. "Gotta say, next time you go out with any of my boys you can bring them back after midnight."

"Horrible, _horrible_ metaphor," Pavel chimed in.

I ignored my friend and the horrible metaphor. "Oh, you know me Yevgeny, I-"

"Yeah, yeah, you aim to please."

I shrugged and stretched, the fatigue of the battle was only just beginning to take its toll on my body. I could feel every little bump and bruise starting to form and the two plasma wounds that I had sustained were beginning to test my pain tolerance. The one on my arm was particularly bad, the repeater hit just above my elbow, all the movement scuffed and chaffed the raw skin, not to mention all the dirt and dust that got in it. The one on my chest, that one was big and ugly, but nothing serious, at least that's what the medics told me.

"You fine now?" Yevgeny asked me, his tone suddenly changing to a more serious one.

"Yeah," I replied in the same tone.

"Good, on me, we're having a meeting."

I jumped up from the field hospital bed, eliciting a scoff of annoyance from the medic checking on me. While B and Echo companies had their own combat surgeons and medical teams they were a little bit busier with other cases. Half the able-bodied medics were attending to my squad and the one that Yevgeny had sent to assist us. One of the Falcon pilots was also getting some minor attention for glass cuts.

"What about?" I asked.

"Our findings," he replied vaguely.

I motioned for my team to stay as soon as I saw them standing up. A couple of them scoffed and Grass even had the gall to pout. I glared at my squad, finally having them sit back down and receive the medical attention that they deserved. I gave a curt nod to Staff Sergeant Durant and Specialist Winchester as I passed by them before grabbing a small oxygen pack and strapping it over my nose and mouth.

I left the medical tent (non-urgent cases) trailing Nezarian. The sky was still as stunning as ever and the ground still looked like it had seen a nuclear apocalypse recently. If we lost the sky would be blotted out by all the dust and the ground…well, the ground probably wouldn't change that much in appearance. Going from jagged black rocks to jagged black rocks with craters every now and then wasn't much of a change.

We had set up a different operating base from the one that the local forces had. It was pretty much standard operating procedure for us. We'd set up a FOB that housed Army and slap an identical one right next to it that housed Marines. Each company would do their own thing and effectuate their own operations, if cooperation was needed, we would cooperate. Well, at least that was the plan every time we went planetside, things usually went apeshit before anybody could even begin to think about setting up bases.

This situation was an exception to that rule. We were winning the ground battle and one of the covvie ships was down while the other one was too afraid to come within range, simply hovering just outside of mass driver range. It was good to have them on the defensive for once. It sucked that we had to be fighting along innie wannabees. It pissed me more that they were actually doing a good job at killing aliens.

"Your squad wasn't the only one to notice that something was off. While doing runs to damage enemy supply lines we found curious documents."

"Really? You just came across them?"

"That's the weird part, it seems like the entire colony was being brainwashed with propaganda."

"Literally?"

"No, you idiot." Nezarian scoffed before pushing me lightly. "But from what we're getting a lot of the civvies in here had sympathy for the rebels."

We walked through the FOB that we had deployed. It was a smaller model than most carriers sported, but you can only shove so much inside a frigate's cargo bay. This one was actually pretty big for one that was only in use by two companies. We didn't have any defense turrets or glassing bunkers, but it would serve for the time being. The inside of the base was pretty much a very large room with a few doors on the sides. One door was a hospital, the other one a communications hub, another one a war room, and I think you get the layout.

"Over here," Yevgeny motioned.

We walked inside the war room. It looked a lot like the drop bay back on board the _Inconvenience_, only with better lighting and a lot bigger. There was a large holotable right in the middle. It was currently displaying a topographical map of the base and the area immediately surrounding it. Several text displays floated around, showing whoever read them the amount of able-bodied troops, crates of ammunition, weaponry, etcetera.

Already inside the room were the rest of the officers. We had Major Hernandez and Chloe on one side of the table. Hernandez had both his hands on the edge gripping tightly, while Chloe stood behind and to the side, her arms crossed and her expression unreadable. On the opposite side was Lieutenant Darbinian, he glanced in our direction before looking back down at the display on the holotable. Captain Salas was pacing around behind one hand stroking his chin in a thoughtful expression. There were two staff sergeants, one from Echo and one from B, I recognized them as platoon sergeants, but I didn't know either of them personally. There was another person in the room, standing at the head of the table, this one I was actually surprised to see.

"Lieutenant Wilkins?" I asked in mild shock. "Uh how did you get here?"

"Long Range Stealth Orbital Insertion Pod," he shrugged simply.

"Huh," I said simply. The man never ceased to surprise me, he was helpful, tough, and the voice of reason all at the same time. Not to mention that he had combat training that only some in the military got. You know, the special forces kind.

"Now that we're all here we can begin," Wilkins stated, slapping both of his hands on the holotable and taking a step back before crossing his arms. "Major, if you will."

Hernandez nodded at Wilkins before taking position at the head of the holotable. "So far the…alien situation is under control." He took a breath. "However, there are other things that have been…ahem…are worrisome. All of us have found at least some evidence that points out that the leadership in here sympathized with the URF."

"I don't mean to rush you Major…" Wilkins urged.

"Of course. Well, the point being, we found military-grade weaponry in a couple of the police stations. The guns were hidden and not in the armory, where they should've been."

"That's not enough evidence," Salas pointed out.

"They were outdated weapons, namely HMG-38s."

I cursed under my breath. The HMG-38 was the kind of weapon that you could burry for years and pull it out just to have it working like new. Once the old AKs from the 20th were finally declared antiques we got the HMG series. They were pretty reliable weapons, even if they sprayed like hell. The 38 had been the last model before the family of weapons had finally seen its end. The UNSC had declared them obsolete and millions of the rifles had just been left there with no one to take care of them. Much like their Soviet predecessors, opportunists took advantage of it and sold them in bulk for comically low prices. Who bought most of them, you ask? The United Rebel Front.

"How many did you find?" Wilkins asked.

"Over a hundred, they were packed in several crates."

"What did you do with them?" I queried.

"We destroyed the guns," Hernandez shrugged off. "We didn't inform the local forces."

"Captain Salas?"

"Ah, yes, my turn. Our findings were much more…conclusive."

"How so?" Nezarian prompted.

"We actually came across some documents."

"You _came across_ some documents?" I tried to keep the disbelief from my voice, but failed completely.

"Yes."

"You expect me to believe that you just happened to stumble upon incriminating documents proving that a large portion of the colony was prepared to defect to the URF? Sir."

"Yes."

I shrugged. "Stranger things have happened."

"The documents found by Echo Company seem real enough, simple correspondence between one of Wolff's political leaders and a known rebel figurehead. The HMG-38s only add to the evidence, but I would have to say that the coup de grace would be the existence of two unregistered Onager mass drivers," Wilkins stated. "While illegal weaponry and a few rebel sympathizers can be explained, building two weapons of mass destruction without asking permission is simply rude."

"So what do we do?" Delacroix asked, shooting a glance in my direction as she did so.

"I say we confront them with our findings," Darbinian opinionated.

"No, too risky," Salas opposed. "They could simply turn on us, and they have numerical superiority by far."

"We attack first," Delacroix suggested. "Quick decapitation strikes, we can even make it look like a covvie attack."

"That would be an option if it weren't nearly impossible to pull off," Wilkins said.

"Reaper could go in," she added hopefully.

"No," I interceded. "It would probably take us half an hour to break into their operations base, you only need one transmission to let everyone know that it's the Helljumpers from reach attacking. Rebels or not, the rest of the locals wouldn't take kindly to us taking out their leadership."

"Can't we block their communications?" Hernandez suggested, it seemed like he was also toying with the idea of a decapitation strike.

"I doubt it," Salas informed him. "While I have no doubt that we have better tech experts than they do, especially in a situation like this, we don't have the hardware capacity to have an entire military base go black from outside."

"And getting close enough to shut communications down would probably get us spotted," Darbinian sighed before taking a step back and crossing his arms.

"Sergeant, what do you propose?" Wilkins asked me.

Me? "Me?" I chuckled nervously. "I'm just a grunt Lieutenant, I follow orders. I don't think I have the rank to pull my weight on decisions like this. I'll follow through with whatever you decide, sir."

Wilkins' expression remained unchanged, for a moment I was afraid that I had disappointed the man or that I had made some sort of mistake, but relief came quickly when Wilkins nodded at me in acceptance.

"Lieutenant?" he asked, addressing Nezarian.

Yevgeny uncrossed his arms and took a step forward. "They way I see it, they are rebels, no way getting around that. According to them they are an independent government body. The UEG is at war with the URF, we have no reason whatsoever to provide any aid against the Covenant."

"That-" Darbinian started. "That actually makes sense…"

"Leaving humans at the mercy of the covvies?" Chloe asked, unsure of whether she liked the idea or not.

"You suggested an assassination moments ago," Captain Salas reminded her. "I see no difference between us killing them and simply leaving them to die."

"I meant killing their leadership, not leaving thousands of civilians to die. There's a difference, sir."

"Well," I spoke out. "It's not like the situation is desperate. The covvies seem to be under control and they can probably handle them without our help. As soon as the ground forces are destroyed the frigate will likely pull off."

"That would still leave them here, the covvies know they are here," Chloe pointed out.

"Maybe their innie friends can help them out next time," Lieutenant Darbinain scoffed. "Cause I sure as hell won't."

I nodded in agreement before suddenly stopping myself. I couldn't agree with Krikor Darbinian, I mean, what the hell. If I had a nemesis that man would be it; a condescending asshole that thought that he was better than everyone.

"Kind of like you, eh?" Schitzo suggested.

_Fuck. Off._

"Too close to home for comfort? Don't answer that, I already know that I'm right."

Wilkins raised his voice. "Very well, does anyone oppose this?" Nobody made a move to suggest anything else. "I'll raise the _Inconvenience. _Prepare your troops for evacuation of the planet." It was unusual to see a lieutenant in charge of a captain and a major from different branches, but in situations like this being ONI pretty much trumps everything.

I saluted and waited for the officers to leave the war room before stepping outside with Yevgeny.

"Helluva meeting, huh?" he asked.

"Tell me about it. I felt underdressed, all of you guys were wearing your 'formal' combat fatigues."

"Well, to be fair, you could've put on a shirt," he replied with a raised eyebrow.

It was true, but the bandages had my whole upper chest covered. They also went over my shoulders and around my right arm, covering it from shoulder to elbow. The burn wounds had been worse than I originally thought, but the medic checking me said that the meds in the bandages would take care of the burns soon enough with no pain.

"Where the hell would I have gotten a shirt from?" I asked. "The _Inconvenience_ boosted away as soon as I did, and my rucksack is still on Reaper Hill."

"'Hey, can I borrow that shirt? Thanks.'" he offered. "Sounds simple enough to me."

"What if they said no?" I asked with a tone that you would expect to come from a cute cartoon animal.

"You'd probably beat their face in and take all of their shirts."

"You're right. I just wanted Delacroix to see my awesome abs."

Wait, so _that's _why she was glancing at me so much…

"What about…the medic, whatsername? Hanna?"

"That's her," I agreed.

"That- Oh c'mon Frank, what did you do?"

"Well, an opportunity presented itself…" I evaded the question with a vague answer.

"Who'd you fuck?"

"Ahh…"

"The pilot?" he asked. The look in my eyes was enough of an answer. "Shit Frank, well, I've gotta admit, you could do worse. In fact, you could hardly do better, but knowing you…"

"Yeah, yeah," I interrupted. "I know." Lately I had been feeling a little uncomfortable with my reputation as a magnet for attractive girls and women. Maybe I was finally growing up, maybe it just had to do with the fact that I wanted something a little bit more permanent than the random hookup. Either way, I was growing up emotionally. Not necessarily a bad thing, but I still managed to dig myself into a pretty deep hole this time. Emily didn't want anything long-term at all and I didn't want anything long-term with her. I just let my dick get the best out me. Again.

"Well, at least you're getting some action," he mused. "It's hard enough to have a social life as a Ranger, let alone have sex."

"You don't need a social life to get laid," I pointed out.

"But it helps," Yevgeny interjected. "Social skills have lots of use."

"The only social skills that I have are the ones required to strike up conversation with a civvie girl and have her jump in bed with me." I looked around and took a deep breath from my breather mask. "I don't know whether that's a good or bad thing."

Yevgeny laughed uproariously. "Sometimes you kill me, man." He shook his head while chuckling. "You do, you really do."

_Great, he's mocking me._

"We can have this conversation later," I shrugged. "Let's follow our order of business."

"Aye," he agreed before giving me a pat on the back and taking off.

I looked straight up. The sky was truly mesmerizing. We were far enough away from the local star that its light didn't block out all of the other stars. It was roughly midday here, that meant that the top and center of the sky was a darkish blue while it got darker and darker as your eyes reached the planet's horizon. Right now we couldn't see Zeta Lupus VI, but another of its moons was plainly visible. About as large as Csodaszarvas (try saying that five times fast), the largest moon of Reach. Hell, I could even see some space dust. The way the light hit the dust it lit up the sky.

"Yeah, I wouldn't mind moving here just for the view," I said to myself.

My squad was right where I left them. Most of them had their smaller cuts filled with higher grade biofoam and their bruises had been rubbed with some sort of paste that made the pain disappear immediately and sped up the healing process tenfold. And yet we still couldn't figure out how to work an anti-gravity engine on anything smaller than a UNSC frigate.

"What's the news Frank?" Pavel asked, jumping up from his bed.

"We're leaving," I said bluntly. "Pack your things, whatever you have left. We're evacuating as soon as the _Inconvenience_, can get in orbit above our position."

"What?" Caboose exclaimed. "We're leaving them behind?"

"They can handle themselves, the battle is pretty much won already."

"And when the covvies come back?"

"That's not our problem," I shrugged him off. "They're URF."

"They're humans. It _is _our problem."

"They're URF," Angel said, spitting out the acronym with venom in his voice. "We have no business helping them."

"They are _human beings_," he stressed.

"So were the guys on board the _Callisto_," Angel snapped back. "And the _Bellicose._ Both crews were spaced."

"Casbah," Snark spoke out. "Thirty-eight civilians dead, three marines killed. They bombed a fucking restaurant full of families."

"Haven," Grass murmured. "Two million innocent lives gone in a flash. Eight million more wounded. I had friends there."

"The Paradise bombings," Pavel added, sending my mind flashing back to that little bit of dirty business back on Dawsons. "And that nasty business in Cordoba. All because of one woman."

"The Ushaia factories on Mars," Bee grunted. "All those workers were human beings too."

"You don't have to like it," I told Caboose, frowning. "I don't give a shit whether you like this or not! Next time I give an order I expect it to be followed without questions! Understood?" Silence. "I asked if you understood," I repeated, taking two steps towards the man and getting close to his face. "You hear me?"

"Understood Gunnery Sergeant!" he said. "Follow orders without question, got it."

"Good, now do your fucking packing and don't let me hear you sympathizing with insurrectionists ever again."

He went around me and left, fuming. Everyone seemed at least a little shocked by my sudden outburst. While I had been in my right to scream his face off, it wasn't my usual MO, the squad was just a little surprised by it, that's all.

"What the hell are you waiting for?" I asked my team.

They mumbled apologies and scurried off. Pavel took his time, grabbing his large machine gun and sighing from exhaustion. He calmly walked out the door with his large weapon over his shoulder and his helmet in his other hand, a small breather mask covering his lower face. As he walked out the door the light hit his frame, leaving a dark silhouette with barely any details to make out and bright light on the rest of the door. It was an award-winning image. It was part of my life.

"Wow."

"Didn't see you there," I replied.

"Just arrived," Hanna replied while walking towards me and then leaning back on one of the various empty beds, her arms crossed over her chest. "Haven't been very busy for a change."

"I'm glad," I said simply.

I stood in silence, looking at Corpsman Hanna Lockley, examining her. Her hair was messy, probably from wearing her helmet for so long. Her blonde locks were already past regulation length, falling to her shoulders and slightly more. She looked tired, not exceedingly so, but I could compare her look to the one that my uncle would come home with after a particularly tough day of whipping recruits into shape or the one I'd have after a long day in school. No makeup, no hairdo, no beauty products. She looked as beautiful as I had ever seen her.

"You heard?" she asked after a while. I nodded. "What do you think?"

"They made their choice," I replied after some consideration. "And now they're facing the consequences."

Hanna nodded slowly, carefully. "Yes."

"But…"

"But nothing. It just frustrates me, like _really_ frustrates me that even under threat of extinction we still can't work together. Some surrendered when the Covenant came, some escaped, some hid." She huffed as if amused. "And worst of all are the ones that still fight us. The funny thing is that we actually bother to fight them."

"We have to," I told her. "Or they'd think they're tough, cross a line, do something really stupid."

"Like what?"

"Dunno," I shrugged. "Something that would end bad for both sides."

"Maybe you're right," Lockley shrugged me off. "Maybe you're not."

"We'll probably never know," I said in a deep voice.

Hanna laughed softly. It wasn't even that funny, but it was a pleasant change of direction in regards to the conversation. Having a serious chat about the war was always depressing. We didn't need to make it worse by throwing other humans into the mix. Hanna stopped chuckling and pushed her hair over her ear. I couldn't help but notice every little move that she made.

_Maybe sleeping with Emily was a bad idea…_

Maybe…

* * *

><p>"The ship is going to be here in a half an hour," I informed my team. "It's gonna do a quick pass overhead. Most of the troops will pack themselves into Pelicans and then stay in orbit until the <em>Inconvenience <em>flies through them."

"What about us?" Bumblebee asked.

"We'll go in with the Pods," I explained. "The Falcon's are being packed together so that they can go inside the Pods and be taken up along with the FOB. Armadillos' are going on the Pelicans, same as the tanks, Hogs, and Mongooses. Mongeese. Whatever."

"So where should we report to?" Grass asked.

"We stay here," I said with a shrug. "The Pod will pick up the main section of the firebase first before taking the smaller sections up as well."

"So we're pretty much the last ones out?" Angel asked.

"Don't sound so surprised," Pavel taunted jokingly. "It's not like we've ever gotten preferential treatment when evacuating a planet."

"We sure do when we go in," Snark pointed out.

"This is a moon," Grass corrected Pavel. "Not a planet."

Everyone groaned in annoyance at that.

"Now we wait," I spoke out again, trying to get the conversation back on track. "Get some rest, it has been a long couple of days."

"Aye, aye," Bumblebee saluted. The rest of them just nodded tiredly and made their way to empty hospital beds. Even Caboose hopped on top of a bed before trying to catch some Zs. I made sure that all of them had complied with my order before nodding to myself and walking outside of the mobile hospital.

The FOB was a flurry of activity, everyone was running from one side to the other, trying to make sure that they weren't forgetting a picture of their sweethearts or their new grenade launcher. For the most part it was enlisted men running about telling other squads what their own squad was planning on doing and asking the pilots if the Pelicans were ready. Everyone was pretty nervous, it was a tricky maneuver the one that we were trying to pull off.

Imagine throwing up a rock as a bird flies. The bird has to open its mouth at the exact time and at a very precise speed so that it catches the rock. Now replace that rock with several dozen pebbles. Now make those pebbles aircraft and the bird a UNSC frigate. That's a pretty tough thing to do, right? Fortunately, we have a smart AI on our side that can calculate absolutely everything needed to pull that off without a hitch. And the helmsman on the _Incovnenience_ is probably smarter than a bird. And the pelicans can move, unlike the pebbles.

Maybe it's not so tough after all now that I think about it.

"Two minutes!" the loudspeakers on the base boomed. Everyone stopped to look at the air with dumb expressions on their faces before shuffling along faster. I spotted a familiar face and moved quickly before I lost her.

"Marina, hold up," I called out.

She turned and looked at me, her expression changing from one of curiousness to one of disgust. It was enough to make me stop dead in my tracks. "What?"

"Just wanted to ask how you were, but apparently my concern is not appreciated."

She scoffed. "Do you _have_ to be an asshole all the time?"

"Hey, you get what you give."

Marine stopped walking and put one hand on her hip. "If you want to say something just say it."

"I thought my sarcasm was clear enough." I paused on purpose, just for effect. "Yes, I'm saying you're a bitch."

Marina rolled her eyes and resumed her brisk pace towards her Pelican, prompting me to synch in step with her. "That was never much of a problem for the two years where I was screwing your brains out."

"I think it was the other way around," I shot back. "Besides, me being an asshole seemed to be a source of amusement to you. Or perhaps you just didn't mind."

"Maybe it's because you weren't an asshole back then!" Marina shot back angrily as she hopped on top of her Pelican's cargo bay.

"I don't recall you being that bitchy either."

Marina looked at me before walking into the cockpit. "Vice, turn everything on, everybody, get ready for takeoff."

I suddenly felt very aware that there were several Army troopers staring at me in confusion.

"Um, Sarge, now's not the best time to have this argument."

"Who the hell asked you?" I snapped at him. I suppressed a smirk as he winced slightly. "But you're right." I turned to the cockpit and took half a step inside. "Sheppard."

"Hey Frank," he said noncommittally.

"I'm not finished," I told Marina.

"I think you made it very clear that it was."

"Don't be like that," I said, my tone changing to a kinder one.

She sighed. "Get off my ship Frank."

I shook my head and complied, hopping off the Pelican even as it started taking off. All over the camp aircraft were taking to the air. Every last one of them was packed with soldiers and had some vehicle or other attached to the magnetic clamps on the tail. The Warthogs and Armadillos went one by one. The Scorpions that we had, had been packed into our lone Albatross craft while all the M274 ULATV were packed inside one ship.

Note that I actually wrote the Mongoose's full name because I have a very hard time knowing how exactly I'm supposed to say its plural.

I jogged the rest of the way back to the mobile hospital. The doors hissed as they pressurized and sealed themselves. It was barely a few minutes before the entire building shook. Since we didn't take off I assumed that it was because the lone Pod transport had taken the FOB itself up and away. We were now the only UNSC personnel left on the planet. A minute later we shook once more, this time a lot more violently. I held on to the wall to keep my feet, everyone else was startled awake by the shaking itself.

As soon as we lost gravity I realized how stupid it had been of me to not hold on to something or tie myself down. I was floating around for a few seconds, I took advantage of that and propelled myself towards one of the beds. I held on to it and hugged tightly. As soon as we were caught by the _Inconvenience's _gravity generators I felt my weight returning and allowed myself to let go.

"To your quarters," I ordered as I stood up. "You can take your armor to the drop bay later."

I took off instead towards the ONI office onboard. Half the complement and the crew were trying to make a sense of the retreat and re-boarding, so everyone was trying to elbow their ways to either their battle stations or their beds or their hang-out spots. Most of the infantry guys already knew me or knew about me, so they didn't really give me a wide berth, instead opting to let me pass as they would any normal person.

"Move," I growled.

"Wait for your turn," a marine snapped.

"Listen buddy, I have a rifle and you have a big head, now fucking move." I didn't wait, instead opting to shove the stubborn marine out of the way. His face slammed against a wall and he shouted out in pain while his friends started complaining. I ignored them and elbowed a swabbie before turning a corner and walking inside the ONI office.

"Ma'am," I said as I stopped and stood at attention. Trust me, that's a lot easier said than done.

"I don't remember calling you up here," Commander Albaf said without turning. "What do you want Sergeant?"

"I just need to know what's up next." I slid my left foot to the side so that I was standing at ease. "So that I can tell my team and prepare accordingly, ma'am."

"My, my, that almost sounded professional."

"Thank you," I replied in a straight tone.

"Well, unfortunately, I've got bad news," Albaf admitted. "The Covenant frigates in the system have been incapacitated, and I believe that you took care of the battlecruiser."

"Incapacitated? How."

"Through a very complicated process of luring them behind planets and laying minefields. Captain Brooks is one of the best, probably one of the top ten strategists in the fleet, right up there with Cole and Stanforth."

"And the bad news ma'am?"

"I'll get to it," the commander snapped drily. "It seems that they managed to get a transmission out of the system."

_Shit._

"How long before we can expect enemy reinforcements."

"Several contacts have already been detected on the other side of the system. They're already gunning for Miridem."

Miridem it is then.

* * *

><p><em>That about cuts it for Chapter 113, hope you enjoyed it. Thanks to Sniper Fodder for proof-reading it by the way.<em>

_Ok, so now for the usual rant/clearing-up that I know most of you don't read. I felt like perhaps the decision committee was perhaps a little bit too brutal when dealing with the Insurrectionists, but you have to remember that those guys are the Commies of the twenty-sixth century (no offense to anyone who believes in and/or supports communism, it's just a comparison that most people will understand). They're hated by everyone that's not with them and are dehumanized by them as well. The fact that the innies have some serious track record under their belts probably justifies the almost inhumane decision._

_Now for the fun section of the post-chapter thingy. I'll let you know that I worked very hard to hold back a "That's no moon!" joke after Grass points out to Pavel that Wolff is a moon. While we're on that topic, how about that? The city of Wilk, in the planet Wolff, in the Zeta Lupus system. Hardly original, huh?_

_Csodaszarvas, seriously, try saying that five times fast. And that's the actual name of one of Reach's moons._

_I once tried dating two girls at once. Worst mistake of my life. Should've stuck with the one that seemed to good to be true. Will Frank be as mature as I am now? I doubt it, where's the fun in that?_

_As always, I hope you enjoyed this chapter. Stay Strong._

_-casquis_

_PS: I did a quick cover for the story with photoshop, hardly a masterpiece, but if anyone would be interested in making one for me I'd love the help, you can leave me a PM if you're interested. And review, please. =)_

_Csodaszarvas._


	114. Mother

Chapter CXIV: Mother

**February 15, 2544 (UNSC Calendar)/**

**UNSC **_**Inconvenience, **_**in orbit above New Lagos, Miridem, Zeta Lupus System**

* * *

><p><em>"You're the perfect height...to kiss my ass."- anonymous UNSC serviceman<em>

* * *

><p>"So here's the deal," I said, slamming my hands on the holotable for effect and to get the attention of my squad. "Local government prepared for evacuation but didn't get it started until now, dumbest fucking decision they could've made, but at least things are proceeding quicker than usual. Marine complements are protecting the evacuation ports while the Army delays the Covenant forces on the ground. A Helljumper platoon was deployed to protect an ONI base while they retrieve all valuable information, that'll take a while."<p>

"Will we be joining the ODST platoon?" Snark asked, cleaning his rifle.

"Negative," I shook my head. "Our mission is not that simple."

"It never is," the small man sighed.

Pavel chuckled lightly. Like the rest of the squad, he was fully armored up except for the helmet. He was busy checking his ACS, making sure that the magazine port was free of obstructions and that every little piece was exactly where it should be. I noticed that he had made some upgrades for the weapon. He had cut off the stock and made the barrel a whole lot shorter. The gun itself was about as long as an SMG with collapsed stocks. He had replaced the barrel and stock with collapsible pieces that went around the shotgun itself, making it look like a large brick when it was in its collapsed state. He could strap it to his back whenever he used his machine gun and have no restriction to his movement. The gun would change to regular size as he drew it. In that state the ACS looked pretty much like it had when I had given it to him.

The whole shebang must've cost him two month's worth of salary.

"We've been tasked with locating, retrieving, and escorting a VIP. I know, I know, stop your groaning. Civilian consultant 409871, codename Charlie Hotel is of interest to Naval Intelligence, so we're going in after her." As I said that the holotable displayed a hologram of Charlie Hotel. She was, according to the information that we had been given, 5 feet 7 inches tall, roughly as tall as Grass. The VIP weighed 125 pounds, had black hair that was currently dyed blonde, and gray-blue eyes. She was a good-looking woman. The fact that she didn't look her fifty-two years of age was a telltale clue as to her profession. ONI consultants usually moved from one place to another all the time, spending most their lives in slipspace and cryo. Our target didn't look one day over thirty-five.

I continued talking. "Our target's name is Dr. Catherine Elizabeth Halsey, we will not refer to her by name more than once, only after she identifies herself, am I clear?"

"Crystal."

"Very good, Charlie Hotel was doing some research of sorts in an ONI installation separate to the main headquarters in Miridem. She was last heard of in New Lagos, her entire protection was killed by a Covenant company. Apparently she locked herself underground when she couldn't make it to the nearest evacuation port. The covvies gave up on breaching her bunker and left to do covvie stuff."

"I assume that enemy presence is still heavy," Bumblebee said, checking both tubes on his Spanker.

"You assume correctly," I told him.

"For once," Snark muttered under his breath.

"Quiet," I went on. "New Lagos is currently being contested by the Army and several regiment's worth of Covenant infantry. Our target is behind enemy lines."

"Ok, so we go in and get her, sounds simple enough," Caboose said. "How do we get out?"

I nodded thoughtfully at his question. "Covenant have air superiority, so an air-evac is out of the question, we won't even have any kind of close air support. A small column of Armadillos and Warthogs is supposed to punch through the enemy lines and head directly to our position, Charlie Hotel will be shoved into one of the AFV and then we'll return to safety."

"So they just punch through one point and bypass everything to the sides, effectively surrounding themselves?" Angel scoffed. "Good luck."

"We do that on a regular basis," Grass reminded him sharply.

"Yeah, difference is, we're good at it," the Italian replied, letting her know exactly what his thoughts on the UNSC Army's capabilities were.

"It doesn't matter," I said, "we'll do our job an they'll do theirs."

"When do we drop?" Pavel asked.

"Now," I replied. "Eliza, please inform Captain Brooks that we're ready."

"Just did Francisco," the AI replied, materializing next to the hologram of our VIP in question. "Good luck down there."

"And you up here," I said. "We wouldn't want to lose our only way off of the planet."

Eliza actually chuckled. "I think you'd just miss me too much."

"Keep wishing," I retorted. "Ok, Reaper, grab your gear, we're going in pretty light, no canteens, water or otherwise, I only want energy bars and combat stimulants. Two cans of biofoam each. Grass, you're acting medic, take some heavy meds in case someone needs patching up."

"Got it."

"Nice," Schitzo said. "You should've thought about having the only member of the squad that actually has some corpsman training pack a med-kit before you actually lost one of the squad. Aces."

I ignored the manifestation of my subconscious and loaded a magazine into my rifle, I pulled back the cocking mechanism, feeding one bullet into the chamber and then ejected the magazine so that I could shove one more bullet inside. That way I had one more bullet than I was supposed to. It only worked on the first magazine, you don't usually have time to do the whole process when you're being shot at by crazy elites. I slung the rifle over my back, making sure the magnetic clamps were working fine, and then drew it again before shoving it in its quick-draw compartment.

"Caboose, Bumblebee, I want you to take M7s, Bee, you can just use your M6J."

"Finally, it's been ages since I used that thing," he replied happily before reaching to his weapon's bench and grabbing his old carbine. "Missed you girl."

"Yeah, don't get used to it, special circumstances."

"How come you let everyone else pick their weapons?" he asked me, obviously not happy that he didn't get to take his favorite gun.

"Because everybody else picks decent weapons," Snark snarked. "Take me for example, M400 Enhanced Marksman Rifle. It packs the same 9.5mm ammunition that the good 'ol BR55 does, only it has greater muzzle velocity. It is accurate, reliable, and most importantly, can actually kill an elite without the need to reload."

"I feel like you're overcompensating about something..."

Ouch.

To his credit, Snark seemed unfazed by the insult to his height. It's not like he was short, in fact, he was slightly above average, but in a squad composed entirely of men that were 6 feet or taller and a chick that was tall on her own right, you could feel like your height was a wee bit under the average.

Ooooh, wait, he was talking about his penis. Now I get it.

"You can pull them out and compare sizes later," Pavel jumped in.

Now that I think back to it, his comment makes a lot more sense in penile context.

"You heard him," I agreed. "We're going in…and how exactly do we go?"

"We go feet first Gunnery Sergeant!"

"Ah, that feels good," I said to myself, smiling weakly. "Helmets on and inside the pods. Eliza, we're good to go."

"Of course Francisco."

I climbed inside the pod, leaning back on the cushions and gripping the handles tightly. I let go and cracked my knuckles to calm myself down. I got the feeling that I got every time I climbed inside my drop pod. It had gotten worse ever since that faulty jump back on Aztlan. At least Schitzo didn't climb in with me.

My stomach lurched as the pod left the ship itself and, by extension, gravity. Space was awfully dark as we tumbled down towards Miridem. The pod glided smoothly through the gravity-less environment for a few seconds before it started shaking as we broke through the troposphere of the planet, the lead foil absorbing all the heat from compressing air in front of us. We hit the mesosphere almost immediately and then the pod lurched again once we hit the troposphere. At an altitude of 3000 feet the panels on top of our HEVs broke off, slowing the speed of our little meteors considerably. The ground was beginning to come at me awfully fast, but there was nothing to indicate that my pod would crash.

"Rockets," I whispered to myself.

Nailed it.

"That's a ten," Schitzo told me complimentarily from outside my pod. He banged a couple of times on the hatch when I didn't answer before shrugging. I let the huge metal hatch fall right on top of him to shut him the hell up.

"You know the drill," I voiced out almost lazily.

My team converged on my position, everybody had their weapons ready and was checking their surroundings as they jogged towards me. We had purposely landed on a collapsed building, it had fallen due to enemy artillery fire and it was still putting out smoke. While I had no doubt that our pods must've been spotted on the way down, it would be pretty hard for any covvie to see us through all the thick smoke. On the downside, we couldn't see them either.

"Everybody ok?"

"Reaper-2 good," Pavel said.

"Rea-"

"Ok, ok, I can see that you're all fine," I interrupted Bumblebee. "Let's get moving, target is two clicks off."

My squad polarized their helmets as one before settling into line. Snark and I were at the back. Theoretically, if we encountered an enemy head on, our long-range weapons would serve to keep them at bay while the rest of the squad moved forward to cover. In practice it was more likely that we would be attacked from anywhere but the front, that was especially true in a situation like this, when we were behind enemy lines.

"Target left," Grass called out from point. "Grunt, taking it out." She fired a short burst, presumably hitting the grunt. "Tango down. Damn it, why did I say that?"

"You've been watching too many of Bee's flicks," Angel told her matter-of-factly. "I think we all have."

"If you like them so much I don't understand why you complain about them," the man in question replied. "I mean, you must've watched Black Hawk Down a hundred times."

"Is it true that those guys are our predecessors?" Pavel asked. "I mean, I have a hard time believing that large numbers of troops could be deployed on rotor craft."

"Helicopters," Grass informed him. "We still have those, you know?"

"Yeah, yeah, but I mean, special forces in the past were kinda lame."

"I'm sorry that the twentieth century scientists couldn't come up with a more romantic way of inserting troops into the battlefield," Angel deadpanned. "I truly am."

"Well, _I _am," Snark spoke out. "If they had we could be teleporting into the battlefield by now for all I know."

"Kid's got a point," I agreed.

"Sarge, you're barely four years older than I am, I don't understand why you call me kid."

I suppressed a giggle. "I'm supposed to, I'm the tough sergeant that treats all the squad members like kids, constantly patronizing you and saving your lives."

"I couldn't think of a worse person suited for that role Sarge," Grass informed me. "No offense."

"Besides, it's a good thing you're not a Sergeant Rock, those usually end up dead by the end of the movie."

"That is yet to be seen," I let out with a sigh.

The sudden change in the tone of the conversation left us all feeling a little bit uneasy. We all knew that we would die and we all knew that it was highly likely that we would die on a battlefield. It didn't mean that we were comfortable talking about it; our own mortality wasn't exactly a prospect that we liked to face.

"Four lane street up ahead," Caboose warned us. I could see the street on the minimap in my helmet, but actually seeing the thing was better than a couple of lines in a holographic display on my helmet's visor. "Smoke cover becomes thinner," Caboose went on. "I suggest we sprint it."

"Hold up," I ordered. I made my way towards Caboose's position. He was crouching behind a stone bench, peeking over. Grass was hanging back a couple of meters, squatting next to a piece of debris that had somehow made it all the way over here from the building.

"Couple of cars for cover," Caboose told me, "not much else though."

"M-hm," I muttered. "This is a perfect sniper alley," I thought out loud. "Any halfway-decent commander would place a machine gun nest or a couple of snipers over there or over there."

Caboose nodded in agreement. "My bet's on that side, when the covvies first marched in they came from the east, it makes more sense that they'd occupy those buildings first."

"Yeah." I thought to myself for a second. "All right, Grass, Bee, you two go first. Angel, I want you to go two seconds after they do, ok?"

"Molto bene," Angel agreed.

"I fail to see what's good about it, but suit yourself," Grass chastised him.

"Snark, hang out back, can your thermal scope punch through the smoke?" I asked.

"Probably, it's mostly dust in here, hot smoke was back there. No promises though."

"Fair enough," I shrugged. "Pavel, I want you to set up where Grass is located, if you see any plasma flashes I want you to throw everything you've got at them, suppress their fire."

"You're the boss," my friend grunted.

"Go," I ordered once everyone was in position.

Grass sprinted ahead with Bumblebee running right beside her. I counted to two before I gave the sign for Angel to follow. About halfway through a plasma turret started firing on them. The initial barrage was wildly inaccurate and didn't hit anywhere near Grass or Bee, but a second later the gunner got control of the gun and fired a burst that flew awfully close to Angel. The man dropped to the ground and kicked furiously until he was behind a car lying on its side.

"Fuck," he said simply.

"Grass, you see him?" I asked.

"Yeah, building at the end of the street, second floor, can't make out the gun or the gunner."

A red circle appeared on my HUD, pinpointing the rough location of the enemy plasma cannon. I knew that the same circle would appear on all of my squad's HUDs. As soon as anyone spotted another covvie the helmet's software would send the alien's location to the rest of our helmets and a red dot would appear on our minimap. It made fighting in urban environments easier.

"Plasma cannon by the sound of it," Pavel voiced his opinion out.

"Yup," I nodded. "Pound away my friend."

"Oh, I'm gonna pound the hell of that bastard."

My friend squeezed the trigger of his M247L. As opposed to the smaller, weaker M247SAW that Angel preferred, this gun made a lot more noise and wasn't nearly as accurate. I couldn't tell where Pavel's rounds were hitting, but it was enough to draw the gunner's attention, a second later plasma fire started raining down in our direction.

"Caboose, make a run for it," I ordered. "Snark, you got a bead on him?"

"Negative, thermal's scratchy, I can't fire without giving myself away."

"Can't you aim for the muzzle flashes?" Pavel asked. He was probably feeling a wee bit frustrated now that it was him that was pinned behind cover with plasma hitting all around him.

"Angel?"

"Yeah, yeah," he grumbled. "I'm on it." He started firing his own weapon at the muzzle flashes from the covvie weapon. Unlike Pavel he actually stuck to what he was taught to do and fired in short five to ten round bursts. It made his already accurate weapon a lot more precise and conserved ammunition.

"Snark, make your way across, farther down the street. Maybe then you can get your eyes on that bastard."

"Roger, roger," he replied.

"Star Wars," Bee noted, "Nice."

"Yeah, I even made the robot voice."

"Get to it, will ya?" Angel pressed. Now it was _him_ who was pinned behind cover. Again.

"Pavs?"

"You know, you don't have to give us orders for absolutely everything, you know? I mean, we're grownups and have gone through this more than enough times, we can handle ourselves."

"You said you know twice," I deadpanned.

After about half a minute of Pavel and Angel taking turns diving behind cover and taking quick potshots at the enemy nest Snark finally checked in. "Found a spot," he informed us. Three shots rang out in quick succession. The stream of plasma suddenly shot to the side and up before it ceased completely. The red dot on my HUD disappeared immediately. "And that's why they call me the problem solver," Snark boasted.

"Nobody calls you that," Bumblebee reminded him.

"Well, they could."

"Quiet, let's get moving. Someone probably heard all that noise. Expect Phantoms or search parties."

"Frank, I just told you-"

"Pavel, will you kindly shut the fuck up and walk across the street? Thank you."

I crossed the street in a sprint after Pavel did the same thing and joined my team. The smoke and dust form the collapsed building was still thick, but we could now see more than fifty meters ahead. We were next to several identical housing buildings. They were perhaps about five stories tall from the look of it, but the top faded away with all the smoke.

"You thinking about roof-hopping?" Grass questioned.

"Yup," I admitted. "What do you think?"

"M-me?"

I rolled my eyes. "Grass…"

"I'm flattered, you never ask me for my opinion on these things."

"I think never is stretching it a bit," Pavel pointed out.

Grass coughed and then cleared her throat, taking one hand to the back of her neck and pressing hard on the fabric protecting it, as if to scratch an itch away. "We might be spotted if we go roof hopping," she stated, "but it does decrease the likelihood of finding patrols significantly, we'd probably just have to deal with a couple of jackal sharpshooters. Window to window would be safer, but it's hard to do that."

"Tell me about it," I agreed, remembering an incident where I jumped from a roof to a window just to show off and ended up facing a startled jackal sniper.

Pavel chuckled. "That was a good one. I still have the recording, you know?"

"What are you talking about?" Angel requested. "Sounds interesting."

"It's not," I assured him.

"At least not that much," Pavel added snidely.

I groaned. "Ok Grass, rooftops or not?"

"What happens if you all get killed and I don't because of this decision?"

Pavel took a step towards her and slammed his hand on her shoulder, pushing her forward. "You get to live the rest of your life knowing that you made the worst possible decision and that it cost your best friends' lives."

Grass thought about it for exactly two seconds. "Meh, I can live with that."

"Rooftops it is then," I announced. "Pavel, toss me your M247, I want you and Caboose with your shotguns out, clear the rooms." I looked at the rest of the squad. "Angel and Grass, you'll go half a flight of stairs up and down and keep watch on the corners, aight?"

"What about me and Bee?" Snark asked me.

"You stay on the floor's hall on standby, ready to help if anyone asks."

"Sounds easy enough," Pavel admitted. He tossed me his M247L and drew his shotgun, pulling back the stock and barrel before cocking it loudly. Caboose just slung his MA5K over his shoulder and drew his M90, checking the sights before positioning himself next to a side door to the building.

"Go ahead," I said.

Caboose nodded at Pavel before taking half a step back and kicking the door in. I could've pointed that he didn't even bother checking if the lock was off, but I probably would've kicked down the door just in case.

The two men disappeared inside the building and were quickly followed by Grass and Angel, the rest of us walked after them our weapons high and ready for surprises. It took all of thirty seconds for the ground floor of the building to be declared clear.

"On to the next one," I ordered. "Go, go, go."

"Clear," Pavel announced.

"Clear," Caboose echoed.

"Clear, clear, and clear," Pavel informed us in a sing-along voice. "Let's move up and get this over with.

The two men flashed by Snark, Bee, and me before climbing the flight of stairs three at a time. Angel switched from aiming up to aiming down while Grass ran up to the third floor and then some so that she was aiming up at the fifth floor entrance. The rest of us moved up at a calmer pace, actually taking the steps one by one. By the time we got up Pavel and Caboose had already cleared their sides of the house. If there weren't any covvies in here it was unlikely that there would be any in the last floor.

"Clear," Caboose finally declared after doing a thorough check on the last floor.

"Good, we can go up," I stated. "Me and…Snark go first, if we see any marksmen we can take them out quickly."

"I'm ready," Snark told me.

I nodded and climbed the last flight of stairs that lead to the roof. Snark looked at me and took position next to the door. I grabbed the handle and shook it, it was locked. I then tried tapping the panel on the side but the thing was out of commission. I took a half a step back and launched a kick at the door. The door itself was metal, but the frame was old, hell it wasn't even polycrete. The kick tore two of the hinges from the wall and left the door hanging slightly. A second kick remedied the situation and had the door on the floor.

"Clear right," Snark said.

"Clear left," I called out.

I turned around and spotted two stunned skirmishers with needle rifles. I raised my rifle and fired one shot at each of them in turn. I'm not usually one to brag (yes I am), but I fired the two shots in less than half a second. Both were solid headshots and both jackals collapsed in the same manner on the floor before they could even react to our presence in their rooftop.

"Nice," Snark admitted.

"I aim to please," I informed him. "Scan the area for other snipers and take them out," I ordered immediately after. "Everyone else, I want you up here now."

"How far's the other rooftop?" Pavel asked after everyone had climbed up and placed themselves behind cover.

"Three meters," Grass said, "Maybe two and a half, but I'm certain it's not more than three."

"How would you know?" Angel asked her. "You haven't even peeked over."

"These are not pre-built buildings, but most colonies have some sort of housing plans for whenever they develop enough infrastructure. They're all pretty similar because they're based after the same model, buildings are never any further apart than four meters, in urban areas like this that number reduces itself to three."

"Hate to break it to you Anges," Snark said, "but the woman's right. She usually is."

"See?"

"I don't understand why you're proud of that," Angel grunted.

"He-"

"Stop it," I snapped. "Snark?"

"Looks clear from here," he replied.

"Ok, go, hoppity-hop people."

You know, this time things went rather well. We hopped across ten buildings in an orderly fashion, one by one. Snark and I would go first and last to give the rest of the non-long-range squad some degree of protection from a stable position. Twice we had to wait out patrols below. We were in prime ambush positions, but we didn't really want to be spotted.

"Row of buildings ends here," Snark announced.

"I see that," I told him. "Kinda standing next to you."

"Sorry Sarge, Pavel was all up on your ass for pointing out obvious shit, so I thought I might take some of the heat."

"You literally set me up for that after you came up with it, didn't you?"

"Yup," he admitted freely.

"How long did it take you?"

"Not that long actually, as soon as we jumped for the first time I got the idea."

"Ass."

"Next move?" Pavel asked

"Ok, you seriously can't complain because I order you around so much," I groaned. "I mean, what would _you_ do in this situation?"

"Uh, go downstairs, I guess?"

I pointedly stared in his direction until he got the hint and opened the door that lead downstairs. "Well what are you waiting for?" I asked the rest of the team.

"I feel like this is a 'surrounded by idiots' moment," Schitzo suggested.

"One kilometer," I said, "eyes open, I don't want to be caught in some ambush."

The building was clear, we made sure of it and then left it behind. The rest of the way was a little bit tougher. We were immediately outside of the ONI installations; they were walled off and had barbed wire on top of that. More importantly though, there were two Wraiths and a platoon of covvies inside.

"Angel," I looked at him. "I want you to toss a charge into one of the Wraiths, you got it?"

"Sure thing boss."

"Bee, you're taking care of the other one."

"Two rockets should suffice," he assured me.

"Everyone else, we go through the main entrance, blast our way through, create a distraction."

"Now that's my kind of deal," Pavel boasted.

"Yeah, yeah, let's go."

I stuck close to the wall while Angel and Bumblebee cut the barbed wire on top. They'd be hopping over it, finding a decent position near enough one of the Wraiths while we got near the door.

"There, jackal, on the watchtower."

"It doesn't see us," I said.

"Want me to take it out?" Snark asked.

"Not just yet, keep your sights on it."

"Done."

We made our way towards the entrance and stopped a dozen of meters from it. There was a security box directly ahead of us. The windows were broken and there didn't seem to be anything hostile inside, but I couldn't be sure. I raised my fist for my team to stay where they were and very slowly moved towards the edge of the window. I drew my pistol and held my rifle by the rail. I took a deep breath and popped from the side, aiming inside the security box.

"Clear," I called out quietly. "Come on, we can go through here."

I jumped over and made sure that I didn't disturb the corpse of one of the security guards. He had been hit right in the chest by several needle rounds. He was missing a large portion of his torso and the floor around him was littered with blood and bits of gore, he had a stunned expression on his face. The man's partner was lying two feet away from the entrance to the box, her left hand was outstretched as if reaching for the door's handle. She had a hole the size of an apple running through her chest, probably caused by a beam rifle judging from the small amount of blood.

"Damn," Angel whistled. "Really did a number on these two."

"We've seen worse," Caboose reminded him grimly.

I decided to ignore the two of them. "Snark, still have the jackal?" I asked.

"Yup, right in my crosshairs."

"Angel, Bee, you in position?"

"Just about," Angel replied, "I can go whenever you go Sarge."

I nodded to myself and signaled for Pavel and Grass to go to the room's entrance. Caboose was left behind with Snark in case something tried to strike from behind. The three of us opened the door slowly to reveal a scorched courtyard. ONI was always one for fancy buildings, and this time it was no exception. The pretty gardens were all but scorched, but the sculptures were still there and some of the fountains still worked.

"Pavel, there," I ordered. "Grass, over there."

I pressed my back against the wall as my two squad mates dove towards their respective pieces of Cover. Pavel ended up behind a black sphere floating on a base with water.

"A kugel ball, really?"

"It frightens me that you know how this shit's named," Pavel huffed. "Really, it does."

"Can it," I ordered. "Pavs, I want you to spray that group of elites over to the right? Got it?"

"Can do boss," he said in a faux southern accent. Southern United States, that is. Or Central URNA, call it like you want it.

"Grass, concentrated bursts on the grunts and jackals to keep them at bay."

"A-ok."

"We fire on you Pavel, you too Snark."

Pavel took a knee and adjusted his weapon's sights slightly before taking aim at the highest-ranking elite. He took a deep breath before depressing the trigger and nailing the alien bastard with several dozen rounds right in the chest. The elite's shields rapidly drained before it could even react. None of the aliens knew what was happening by the time their leader collapsed to the floor with several new orifices in its body.

Seconds later two explosions resonated as Bumblebee fired two rockets at one of the Wraiths. The tank rocked sideways from the first impact, a big dent appearing on its frontal armor. The second rocket was a lot less friendlier, punching through the damaged armor and hitting enough important stuff that it blew up the thing completely.

I fired three shots at an elite major trying to make sense of things. It recoiled from the impact before it zeroed me in. I squeezed off another two bursts before it sent me back behind cover with a volley of plasma. I popped out again and was surprised to see it dead. I shrugged it off and downed a grunt making a run for a Shade turret. Two other jackals were wounded before I had to jump back behind the wall again.

"Need help Sarge?" Snark asked.

"It would be nice if Angel did his job," I shrugged. "Wraith's tend to be pesky if they're in fine working order."

"Your wish is my desire," Angel said. Immediately after that lame phrase a loud explosion was heard. I could safely assume that the second Wraith was out of commission or at least heavily damaged from a pack of C10 explosives. Scratch that, I can safely say that it was utterly destroyed.

"Push forward," I said to Pavel and Grass. "Caboose, with me. Snark, hang a little bit back, pick off the leaders."

Pavel and Grass switched cover to different sculptures while I ran sideways towards an artillery crater. I jumped inside, suddenly remembering that time I believed I was drowning in a crater full of blood back in Aztlan. I shook the thought away and propped my rifle on the edge of the depression just as Caboose slid in beside me. I caught sight of an elite moving behind some shrubs and fired wildly, intending to hit it through the vegetation.

"Damn it," I cursed.

Caboose squeezed off a couple of bursts, I didn't see if he hit anything, but I assumed that he at least sent some covvies running for cover.

"Shit, they're deploying covers," Angel let us know. "Can't flank 'em."

"Try," I growled. "Snark?"

"Can't aim at them from here," he shrugged me off. "Two elites and a bunch of jackals are packed behind that wall over there, I can see shields, can't punch through."

I growled again, this time without actually saying anything. "Flank them through the right," I told him. "Grass, go with him."

"Cover me," Caboose requested.

I fired a couple of random shots while he scrambled to his feet and ran straight for some sort of ornamental column. He dove to the floor as a continuous stream of plasma hit the air above him. He shuffled sideways as the stream moved down to try and hit him. I fired wildly at the location behind the shrubs where I thought the elite was firing from. It worked, it switched targets and had me slamming my face into the mud to avoid any plasma melting the skin off my face. I dragged my rifle back with me. I didn't want some random bolt to hit it and leave it unserviceable. I mean, the thing had been with me all the way since bootcamp.

"I'm safe," Caboose announced, "suppressing the bastard."

"It's at times like this that I really think someone should've gotten a grenade launcher," I groaned.

"Scarecrow had one…" Snark mused almost meekly.

"Exactly," I grunted. "Caboose, keep that bastard pinned down!"

I climbed out of cover as soon as I heard the continuous stream of gunfire. I sprinted past Caboose's column and slid behind a bench for cover. I'm pretty sure that the elite didn't have fantastic visibility, but since its plasma rifle had set the hedge on fire that situation that was changing by the moment. A couple of bolts flew back towards the column, it hadn't spotted me.

"Frag out motherfucker," I said to myself as I tossed a grenade over the hedge. The detonation that followed was awfully close and I actually felt some of the shrapnel embed itself on the other side of the bench I was using for cover. Still, the explosion was enough to kill the elite. The grenade must've landed pretty damn close to the alien. Serves him about right.

"Push forward!" I cried. "Kill the fuckers."

I usually wasn't so gung-ho when it came to killing covvies, but for some reason I wasn't in a particularly good mood. Perhaps it had to do something with the fact that two colonies in the same system had been attacked in the same month and that millions of people would be left homeless if not dead. I mean, that could be anger-some. Of course, I could also be feeling grumpy because I skipped on breakfast and hadn't really slept much last night. One of those two.

"Slamming those bastards," Angel announced. I heard his machine gun rattle. The cacophony was followed by the beautiful sounds of grunts screaming in pain and fright as they died.

"That was the last of them," Snark announced. "Courtyard is clear."

Sweet," I said without much feeling. "Angel, put remote charges on those two Shades and next to the door, make sure that they aren't visible."

"I'll secure the bodies," Bumblebee announced.

"Everyone else head towards the building proper," I ordered.

The building itself wasn't as grandiose as ONI usually built, it was only ten stories tall, completely unlike their headquarters back in New Alexandria. Still, it was a very stylish building, with curved walls and in an aesthetically pleasing appearance, it reminded me slightly of a scaled down version of a dome, only that it was less roundish on the sides. The entrance itself was not unlike those that regular buildings had, a set of large sliding glass doors that were now completely shattered, leaving only metal frames with pieces of glass hanging.

"Don't see anybody inside," Snark pointed out.

"We should get one of those mini drones that go inside rooms and map everything," Bumblebee said in between putting a gunshot in two aliens' heads. "Those are kick-ass."

For once, I agreed with him.

"It's most likely clear," I said with a shrug. "We go in, but don't let your guard down."

Grass scoffed. "As if you'd let us."

As soon as Angel was done mining the turrets and doors we walked through the doors slowly, our weapons up and ready. I activated my VISR in an attempt to aid my vision in the building's dark lobby. Several human bodies were clearly visible, most of them were plainly civilians, but a few police officers were there too. So far I hadn't spotted a single Covenant body. These guys had been caught by surprise, no doubt overwhelmed by large numbers.

"Can you get the lights?" I asked Grass.

"Not likely," she admitted, "I'll see what I can do."

Grass took off with Caboose on her heels. The rest of us double-checked the lobby before taking position behind the reception desk. It was large enough to allow all of us to take cover behind it with relative comfort. I could see that Angel and Bumblebee made a point not to stare directly at the corpses, instead keeping their eyes down the sights of their weapons. Snark, on the other hand, kept looking from side to side, never lingering on one body for more than a few seconds. He had never really gotten used to this.

"Found something," Grass announced.

All of the lights in the lobby suddenly let out sparks before a couple of bulbs burst.

"Didn't work," I announced.

"I guess we're in the dark then," Grass said.

"Angel, Grass, Bee, and Snark will stay here, Caboose, Pavel, and I will retrieve the target." I looked at my squad to see them going towards me or staying behind the reception desk. "Grass, you're in command."

"Might I point out that I have the rank of sergeant and Grass is just a lance corporal?" Snark said.

"Leave it in the suggestion box."

"We don't have one."

"Right, next order of business as soon as we get back on the _Inconvenience_ is you making one," I suggested.

"Damn it," Snark groaned.

I ignored him. "Grass, I trust you with this." When she nodded at me confidently I signaled for Caboose and Pavel to start moving towards the elevators. They were supposedly in fine working order, if they weren't we were pretty much screwed. I clicked the button on the elevator and held my breath, only releasing it after the button flickered and lit up. All three of us waited a minute for the elevator to reach the ground floor. As soon as the doors opened Caboose walked in and Pavel stood in between the two doors.

"Liz," I said, calling the AI. "We're about to go down, clearance for using the elevator?"

"Hold on," Eliza answered almost immediately. "No need to worry, security systems are offline, that means that I don't know what's down there."

"All right, thanks Liz."

Pavel and I climbed inside the elevator and joined Caboose. I couldn't help but notice that the back wall of the elevator was riddled with bullet holes and alien blood. I didn't know whether that was a good or a bad sign for us. At least it meant that there was one elite less to worry about once we got down.

Oh, and apparently there was still enough power for the speakers to play a muzak arrangement.

Pavel burst out laughing.

"What?" I asked.

"I just pictured a bunch of elites packed in here, listening to elevator music."

The mental picture was too much and I too burst out laughing. Hell, even Caboose let out a few chuckles. I mean, think about it, you have to admit that it's pretty funny picturing huge aliens just standing about with their weapons at the ready. It took five seconds for me to finally stop laughing.

"Ok, ok, enough," I said. "Weapons ready."

The elevator doors opened to reveal a dark hallway. We were deep underground by now. One light flickered halfway down to our target, but everything else was pretty dark. "Flashlights on," I ordered. "There's no cover, so don't hold back."

I stepped over the body of an elite and walked slowly, Pavel and Caboose to either side of me, their shotguns held up and ready to blast through anything that moved. The entire length of the hallway was littered with alien blood and corpses. Bullet holes aplenty pock-marked the walls. No human bodies anywhere to be seen.

"Damn," Pavel muttered. "Helluva last stand."

"Think they have a machine gun down there?" Caboose suggested.

"Probably not, the bullet holes are too small to be from a machine gun."

"You're right," he admitted.

We kept on walking slowly, the beams of light from our flashlights barely doing anything to light up the surroundings. That was kind of the point though, the devices were meant to only light up a small portion of space in front of us and to not give away the user's position.

Two shots rang out and a shape collapsed from the ceiling. I looked at Pavel and saw that his weapon was smoking. He looked at me and nodded. I walked up towards the alien corpse and kicked it a little. The drone twitched, two large holes in its torso. I aimed my rifle at its head and fired a single shot in between its set of eyes. The drone twitched some more before it finally stopped moving. I looked back and waved at the two men to join me.

The rest of the hallway was clear and secure. There was nothing of interest except for the covvie corpses carpeting it.

Then we saw the only human body in the entire hallway. The only way that I could tell it was human was because of the armor. Spartan armor.

"You seeing this?" Pavel asked incredulously.

"I am," I confirmed. "Shit."

Caboose looked stunned, Pavel looked stunned. I was stunned. Spartans are freaks, that is a well-known fact, but they're damn well un-killable. That's an absolute truth, the things just don't die.

I moved towards the corpse in a cautious manner, my rifle up and ready. I could feel myself trembling, if something in here had killed a Spartan then I'd damn better be ready to face it and avenge the supersoldier, freak or otherwise. As soon as I was practically on top of the suit of armor I took a knee. The Spartan itself was taller than I was, it made me feel kind of small. I looked over the armor. There were several scratches and gashes that came from use over the years, but I immediately spotted the killing blow. The piece of ballistic weave that covered the wearer's neck had been pierced. I could see two holes on the front and presumably on the back.

"Needle rifle," I sighed. "Took a helluva lot of covvies to bring this one down."

I was almost surprised to see blood pooled around the body. I was even more surprised to see pink skin near where the neck armor had been pierced. To me Spartan-IIs had always been deluded humans that had everything taken out of them and replaced with mechanic parts. It was a shock to see that they were still flesh and bone just like the rest of us. It was a shock to see that they were just as killable as everyone else.

"Two rounds," Caboose said, looking at the wound from above. "Looks like they cut through its windpipe and severed the spine."

"Death must've been near instantaneous," Pavel added.

The armor itself was identical to the one that the Spartans that I had seen back on Concordia. It was bulky in the chest and shoulders and gave the wearer a strong appearance. It was the same olive drab color that the 117 Spartan sported, only that this one had yellow lines crossing the right arm and leg. The only other difference that I could find was the numbers. This Spartan was designated as 065. Must've been one hell of a soldier to fend off so many aliens with two M7s and an MA5.

"Let's move along," I ordered, standing up. "We still have a mission to finish."

I walked the rest of the hallway with my rifle loosely held across me. There was only one door at the end. It looked like the heavy and secure kind. The terminal on its side was still intact, although scorch marks had hit the wall near it. I tapped the open button.

"Please identify yourself," a pleasant female voice requested.

I cleared my throat. "Francisco Castillo, gunnery sergeant."

"Please hold…"

"I usually have to," I muttered.

"Identity confirmed, welcome Gunnery Sergeant."

The doors opened to reveal a big room with lab equipment and several terminals. It looked pretty much like any civilian laboratory would've looked, although I knew that the computers here housed information much more critical than the average home terminal's browser history. The room was otherwise empty save for one individual, furiously tapping away at a computer terminal. I immediately recognized her as our target, so I ordered Pavel and Caboose to lower their weapons.

"Dr. Catherine Halsey," I called out. "Identify yourself."

The woman stopped typing and looked up at me. For some reason here gaze made me feel uncomfortable, as if her eyes could somehow look through my visor and into my soul.

"Finally, I was beginning to think that they'd leave me here to die."

* * *

><p><em>Oh yes I did. <em>

_Thanks to Sniper-Fodder for proof-reading this chapter._

_Now, I don't think that there's much left to say except that this chapter is completely canon. Or at least it doesn't go against it... There was a battle of Miridem and Halsey was present during that battle. A Spartan-II was also killed during that battle. Sheila-065. Now, I'm basing Halsey's appearance off of Keyes' memories in the Halo: CE Anniversary edition, not on the Legends anime stories. Well, I'm kinda mixing it up a little, but it doesn't really matter, it's not like Halsey will join as a permanent cast member._

_Well, that should be it. A couple of you guys mentioned Chapter 117 coming up and asked if I was going to do something special. I actually just finished writing that chapter and can tell you that it is something special. It's not 10,000 words of sheer epicness, but it's still a shitton of words of sheer epicness and fanboy orgasms. At least for me..._

_Hope you enjoyed this chapter and that you take some time to review. Stay strong._

_-casquis_


	115. Mission Accomplished

Chapter CXV: Mission Accomplished

**February 15, 2544 (UNSC Calendar)/**

**UNSC **_**Inconvenience, **_**in orbit above New Lagos, Miridem, Zeta Lupus System**

* * *

><p><em>"The mission difficulty increments exponentially when you've got a piece of meat that won't shut up placing herself in between you and the enemy's line of fire. VIPs have an awful tendency for refusing to understand just how much we fucking hate protecting them."<em>

_Lieutenant Yevgeny Nezarian_

* * *

><p>I ignored the woman's arrogance. "Are you Dr. Catherine Elizabeth Halsey?" I repeated. "Yes or no?"<p>

"Yes," she replied.

I nodded at her and turned towards Pavel, who nodded at me in turn.

"Grass, we've secured the VIP, how's the situation up there?"

"…deteriorating rapidly," she replied.

"How bad?"

"Like I don't think we can break through bad."

"Dammit," he cursed.

I took all this in and was thankful that Halsey couldn't hear the conversation inside our helmets. I walked towards her, taking in her appearance. I noticed that she looked older than she did in the hologram, it was unmistakably her, but she didn't look as young or attractive like I had made her out to be. Not that I minded, but it was nice to have something pretty to look at while everything around you turned to shit.

"Are you all right ma'am?" I asked her. "No injuries?"

"I'm fine," she replied dismissively.

I nodded once again. "Good, it must've been tough," I said as consolation.

She looked down at her feet before meeting my eyes through my depolarized visor. The doctor had a sad look in her face, but she maintained her air of superiority and confidence nevertheless. "They killed the guards and everybody else too."

"They tend to do a lot of killing, these covvies," Schitzo put out helpfully.

"And the Spartan?" I asked tentatively.

"Her too," Halsey said sadly. "But now's not the time to dwell on that. I assume that you have evacuation here or en route?"

"Yes ma'am," I replied immediately, taking in the information regarding the dead Spartan. "There seems to be a bit of a problem with us reaching them."

"What kind of problem?"

"We're surrounded up there."

Caboose stepped in. "Ma'am, is there any other way to leave the building?" The way that he asked that question unnerved me slightly, as if he knew something that I didn't and wanted to let me know that.

Halsey put her hand to her chin and seemed to lose herself in thought for a few moments. "Jerrod?"

I was briefly startled until a holographic depiction of a spark appeared from the computer terminal that she had been using. "Yes Doctor?"

"I recall seeing some tunnels in the building's blueprints, might you double-check that?"

"Right away," the AI replied.

"Micro-AI," Halsey explained after she saw my look of confusion. "Not nearly as much processing power as a regular AI, but smaller and portable."

"Huh," I said simply.

"Doctor," the AI called out, its holographic projection appearing once more. "There are several tunnel-like structures that lead to the surface. Ventilation tunnels are present-"

How stereotypical.

"-as well as a supply shaft."

"Supply shaft?" Caboose asked.

"It is commonly used when certain items need to be delivered directly to the laboratories," Jerrod replied.

Ok, so that meant that this ONI installation had several projects involving questionable ethics going on. There would be no other reason to hide whatever you were buying unless you knew people would get pissed. Questionable morality meant that this was probably a Section Three facility, most likely one overseen by one of the Beta subdivisions.

I suddenly saw the good doctor in a whole new light.

"Jerrod, can the vents or the shaft fit a grown man?"

"The vents are too small for human beings to fit through, but the shaft is one meter by one meter."

"Excellent. Grass, get down here."

"Sarge, you sure?" she replied, "we might be able to keep them at bay here, down there…not so much."

"Get down here," I repeated a little bit angrily.

"Right away Sarge," Grass said.

"Caboose, Pavel, spread out," I ordered, "secure the area."

"I hardly believe that's ne-"

"Pavel…" I growled.

"Right away," he replied.

Once the two of them took off, going through the laboratory with their weapons lazily held up, I sat down on a desk and faced Dr. Halsey. While she didn't look as attractive as I had first pictured her, she was good-looking. Still, now I saw her as something close to a monster. It brought back to mind the stories of the Nazi doctors during World War Two.

"So, Doctor, what kind of work do you do here?" The question was blunt and direct, I didn't see the need to hide my intentions, besides, I had no doubt that Halsey could dissect me if I tried prying the answer out of her slowly.

"Are you paid to ask these sort of questions?" she asked sarcastically, obviously not amused with me.

"No," I replied simply. "You gonna give me an answer?"

"No."

I shrugged, I didn't expect a different answer, but I still had to try. Instead of going deeper into the matter I stood up from the desk and instead sat down on the chair that Halsey had been using. The terminal was still on, so I tapped a few buttons while she just looked at me incredulously. There was a folder that caught my attention and I clicked it.

"Jerrod, purge the databases," Halsey ordered the AI.

"Right away Doctor."

I caught glances of a few projects. Orion, S-I, S-II, and S-III were the ones that I saw first. The last two I knew already, the first two I had no idea to what they were. The only other thing that I caught before the folder disappeared was a section called Nove. It sounded interesting, I regretted not being able to take a quick peek inside. As soon as the computer was completely useless I sighed and stood up, giving a disapproving look at Halsey.

"Grass, where are you?" I asked into my radio.

"Right here Sarge," the reply came from behind me.

"Hey," I greeted. "How's it go up there?"

"I detonated the Shades and collapsed the entrance behind us," Angel informed us. "Still, there were plenty of covvies to go around, we fell back before they could stage a proper assault."

"And you wanted to stay," Snark mused, punching Bumblebee lightly on the arm.

Bumblebee just chuckled and shoved Snark towards a wall. The smaller man was no match for Bee's brute strength and was caught unprepared. He slammed pretty hard against the wall, succeeding in looking like a complete pushover.

"Enough," I ordered the both of them. "There's a supply shaft that can lead us outside."

"Supply shaft…" Angel asked.

"Yeah, yeah, illegal stuff dropoff zone," I explained dismissively. I could literally feel Halsey rolling her eyes at me from behind. "We go now. Grass, tell Pavel that he goes up first, Caboose second, then you and the VIP."

"Aye, aye."

Grass moved towards Halsey and politely ordered her to follow her. I stayed where I was and looked at Snark, Angel, and Bee. They seemed cheerful after the friendly banter and shoving match that erupted between Bee and Snark, but I knew that that was probably just a mask. They had to have seen the dead Spartan in the hallway, I had no doubt that it had struck them just as hard as it had me.

"You saw?" I asked quietly.

The smiles disappeared. "We saw," Angel confirmed with sadness in his voice. "A shame."

The three men looked down at their feet, uncomfortable with the situation. So far we hadn't met many resistance despite being behind enemy lines. Granted, we had been purposely avoiding confrontation, but we'd still had a bit of luck on our side. If things got heated enough for a Spartan to die then the same thing could happen to us. I did not respect the creatures, but I did respect their combat prowess. If something could kill it, then it could kill us.

"We're good to go Frank," Pavel announced from somewhere across the lab.

_Dammit, if the doctor holds a grudge she could look me up and have me discharged._

_Nah._

"Alright, let's go!"

I walked across the laboratory, my eyes looking forward. The shaft was in another room adjacent to this one. The room itself was large and unadorned, the only things inside were a couple of olive drab crates and my squad. A door led to the shaft itself. I could see elevator rails on the side, but no elevator anywhere nearby. There were ladder-style handholds on one of the walls though, and they would have to do. Pavel sighed as he saw the trial that awaited him, he said nothing and grabbed the first handhold before pulling himself up. His machine gun was hung across his back and his shotgun was strapped next to it in its combat-ready mode, in case it needed to be used.

Caboose jumped up as soon as Pavel climbed a couple of meters. The process repeated itself until Dr. Halsey herself. I climbed immediately after her and set myself to trying to forget that we were over a kilometer underground. I just kept repeating to myself that if I made it back I would have a nice warm bed waiting for me, and if I was lucky, that bed would come with a naked Lieutenant Hardwick on it too.

The odds of making it back were slim, but I was accustomed to that. The odds of actually being allowed to rest after making it back were slimmer still, and that's something that I had never really grown used to.

"I found the elevator," Pavel announced after a long while of climbing.

"Figures," Caboose muttered.

"Here, pass me that laser cutter of yours," Pavel told him.

Sparks started falling from above, Grass did her best to shield the doctor from them by propping herself backwards and hunching her upper body forward, forming a wall of sorts. A few sparks made it through though, and landed on the doctor's head and shoulders. She shook them off almost nonchalantly, making no comment as to the pain that they surely caused her.

"Done," Pavel announced. "Passing the slab down."

Caboose grabbed a large portion of the elevator's floor and gave it to Grass. She in turn passed it to Halsey who gave it to me. Once Snark had it he let it fall down all the way back to the floor. The clanging noises were magnified by the confined space, and my ears would've been left ringing had I not been wearing my helmet. Halsey looked slightly uncomfortable at the noise. It made me want to smile.

"Don't look down now," I said.

What? I'm an asshole and she uses child soldiers. Feel free to judge on that one.

It took over an hour of climbing and stopping to rest, but eventually we made it all the way up. The loading bay was a small room very much like the one on the bottom of the shaft. It was also underground, but the top of the walls had small windows that let some light in. It was most likely light that came from one of the many fires that ravaged the city.

"Stay here," I ordered. I climbed a flight of stairs and opened the sliding doors slightly. I couldn't see any covvies anywhere nearby so I opened it a little more. I deduced that we were in the same loading bay that the rest of the ONI facility used for normal needs, but instead of being in one of the regular ports we were in one that was disguised as an out of service loading port. And I deduced all that from a single glance.

"It's safe," I called out. "Relatively," I added a second later.

We piled up into another small room, this one was full of crates and boxes, no doubt some of them contained items that would be considered illegal under most jurisdictions.

"Snark, Pavel, check the lay of the land."

The two of them moved towards the gate and lifted it. Snark went underneath and Pavel went after that, putting the gate back down. As soon as they disappeared I contacted the _Inconvenience._

"Liz, what's the status on Army?"

"Francisco, I've been trying to raise you for an hour!" the AI exclaimed. "We lost contact with you and your team."

"I appreciate the concern Liz, but we need evacuation."

"Yes, the evac team has been on standby ever since you disappeared, should I tell them to move out?"

I considered that while looking at a city map on my HUD. We were little over three kilometers from our designated evacuation zone. Usually we would've had a Pelican escorted by Hornets and Falcon gunships pound their way here, but the Covenant had complete air superiority and a small column could only break through certain points in the enemy lines, the weakest.

"Not yet," I finally said. "I'll let you know."

"Don't take too long, the Covenant is setting up spires, communications could be lost any minute."

"Could this day get any worse?" Bee asked.

"It could start raining," Angel suggested.

"It already is," I let him know.

"Well I'll be damned."

We all stayed quiet for a moment while Halsey hugged her laptop across her chest. She looked at us distrustfully but knew that she had no other choice but to come with us. The woman didn't like me, and that dislike somehow extended itself to the rest of my team. Oh well, it's not like the woman could do much to affect them in the future. At least not directly that is.

"Sarge, the covvies are trying to break through what's left of the front door," Pavel said. "None of them are nearby yet, we can make it outside of the perimeter if we make a run for it."

"Ok, hold your position, we're on our way. Everyone else, I want you at your best. Doctor…keep your head down."

"Are you giving me a gun?" she asked.

"Are you trained in firearms proficiency?" I asked in return.

"No…" she admitted.

"Then you don't get a gun unless absolutely necessary. Oh, and before I forget. Grass."

"Right." Grass reached over her shoulder and pulled out a sheet of fabric that had strapped to her magnetic clamps. She shook it and it took the form of a vest. She handed the vest to Halsey, who promptly put it on over her lab technician clothing. As soon as she finished putting the vest on I lifted the gate and held it up for my team to go through.

"Where'd you hide that vest anyways?" Angel asked Grass.

"Strapped to my back," she replied.

"Huh, didn't see it."

"Don't worry, I've never taken you for a particularly sharp man."

"Nice. I'd do a comeback implying that you hid that thing in between your generously-sized ass cheeks, but it'd probably come out wrong."

"Ha-ha."

"Lots of big words for you," Bumblebee noted. "Been reading the dictionary."

"I know it'll sound dumb, but your mother's reading it to me."

"Ok, stop. Before it gets too stupid," Caboose interrupted. He and I were of the same mind in only one thing, and that was our dislike of stupid arguments in which we weren't involved.

The loading bays were on the west side of the complex, about thirty yards away from the perimeter wall. A section on this side was broken down. We could (and would) use it to escape without any trouble.

"Snark, Doctor, you're with me."

We closed in to the edge of our visual cover and dashed forward towards the rubble of the wall. Once there I hoped over to the other side and half-shoved the doctor into a crook where she would be relatively safe from snipers. Snark crouched and kept aim at the covvies trying to break through the collapsed entrance while the rest of the team rushed in our direction. Once we were all ready I gave out orders.

"Two fireteams," I said. "One scouts ahead while the other hangs back keeping the good doctor safe. I want her flanked on all sides. Three men to scout fireteam and four to protection detail. Shouldn't be too hard. If we can avoid combat we avoid it. If we can run away, we run away. Point is, I want as little plasma flying in our direction as possible."

"Who's on scout fireteam?"

"Pavel, Angel, and Caboose. I need you dishing out a lot of damage."

Pavel stood up and beckoned for his fireteam members to join him. They ran across the street and took position on the nearest building's corner. They took a peek and waved us over in their direction. That pretty much describes how it went from that point on. The rain kept us relatively hidden from prying eyes, and Pavel's scouting fireteam would keep watch for covvies. If they saw a patrol they would wave at us to stay down, we didn't use radios, didn't want them to pick up our transmissions.

"Shit, large patrol," Pavel warned.

I cursed and ducked sideways into the nearest door. I dragged the good doctor behind me and waved my fireteam inside.

"Hide her downstairs," I ordered Grass. "Pavel, what are their numbers?"

"Waaaay beyond patrol size, this looks like an armored column. I've got four Revenants and a Daemon tank. Platoon's worth of infantry, mostly elites and jackals. They seem like an anti-tank unit."

"Understood, stay low, don't attract any attention."

"As if we would," Angel chuckled.

The ground started rumbling from the sheer force of the anti-gravity generators of the enemy tanks. It felt almost surreal, having a mini-earthquake move the whole house we were in with enemy vehicles passing less than ten meters from our position. I climbed to the second floor and waved over at Pavel on the other side of the street. I had used my helmet radio a second ago, but I preferred not to use it now. You know, with the large enemy group below us, they could have transmission receivers or something.

Pavel peeked outside from the other side of the street while keeping his eyes on the enemy. He shrugged at me, asking what we should do. I moved my hand up and down, palm facing downwards. It wasn't exactly military-grade hand signals, but it got my point across. Pavel nodded and let his eyes linger on the large Daemon tank for a second before sliding back into cover. I did the same thing, but took the time to see exactly where the high-ranking aliens were. Eventually I settled back into cover and sat down in a chair. I waited for the column to pass for what seemed like an eternity, but after a few minutes they were finally gone.

"Let's go," I ordered my fireteam.

I opened the door slowly and immediately looked in the opposite direction. Angel was opening the door on his own house. He looked at me and nodded as he walked out, weapon at the ready. Caboose and Pavel emerged immediately afterwards. I waited a few seconds before actually going out as well, giving the scout team a wide berth and saving enough time for us to dive into safety if they spotted something.

One shot rang out and I saw Grass collapse.

I turned sideways and fired a burst into a jackal. Snark did the exact same thing. The alien got four shots. Three to the chest and one to the head. Death was pretty much instantaneous.

"Grass," Bumblebee asked gently as he shoved Halsey down and knelt beside out wounded teammate. "Grass."

I sighed with relief when I heard a gasp coming from her. I diverted my attention from the rooftops around me to look at Grass. The carbine round had hit her right in the chest. There was a round hole in her chest piece, green matter covered it, giving it a weird look. By the looks of it the round hadn't punched completely through the armor.

"You all right?" I asked her.

Grass just coughed and groaned again.

_Maybe this is more serious than I thought…_

"Bee, drag her behind that car, Snark, eyes up."

I walked while escorting Halsey next to me. Angel grabbed Grass by the scruff of the neck and dragged her unceremoniously through the floor. Snark simply kept his eyes up. Pavel's fireteam refrained from saying anything, keeping their eyes up for more snipers.

"Grass, can you hear me?" I asked. "Grunt or groan."

She tried mumbling something. "Ok, good," I replied.

I grabbed her chest piece and detached it from the rest of her armor. The large metal armor had stopped the round, but the bottom was dented inwards, jagged pieces popping out. The metal from the armor was what hit Grass, cutting through additional armor and the skin. It didn't look any more serious than a particularly bad hit.

"Dammit," I cursed under my breath. I reached for one of my pouches and produced a can of biofoam. I pulled off the rest of her chest armor and placed the tip of the can on the hole in her undersuit. I dosed her with some of the foam and rubbed it around a bit, doing my best not to go anywhere near her breasts.

"Coping a feel Sarge?" Bumblebee joked.

"She'd probably kill me if I tried," I replied.

"Ass," Grass moaned weakly.

"You're alive," Angel scoffed. "Oh goodie."

"Can you walk?"

"I don't even think I can stand up," she replied.

"Adrenaline it is then," I sighed. I put on the rest of her armor and then took off her helmet. Her eyes showed me that she was in obvious pain and her brow was covered with a layer of sweat. I pulled down the undersuit from her neck and looked for a vein. "Brace yourself," I warned before sinking the needle inside her neck and clicking the button on top.

Grass took a deep breath and her eyes opened wide. She tried breathing more and more until her body realized that her lungs were already full. She breathed out and her chest started rising and falling rapidly. Her eyes shifted from side to side incredibly fast and eventually settled on my visor. She looked at me and nodded, reaching for her helmet and putting it on.

"I feel so…alive."

"Great, now we've got a walking wiki on a sugar rush," Angel moaned.

"Better than a dead one," Caboose pointed out.

"Agreed," Pavel joined.

"Are you always like that?" Halsey asked in annoyance.

"They sent us here because we're the best," I said. "Not the most professional."

"Oorah," Pavel laughed. "Now let's go."

We made it all the way to our evacuation point without further trouble.

"Liz, we're ready for evac," I radioed. "Tell the Army to start pounding."

"Right away."

I turned around to face Halsey. "Don't worry doctor, we're good to go now."

Halsey just nodded at me before sitting down. Our evac point was a random point on a random street, but there was a large multi-level parking lot on one side. We could see most of what went on, on the ground level. The circular structure had plenty of cars still inside, and the elevator that put them there was broken down, so any covvie that wanted to storm the castle had to use stairs. Or a jetpack.

"Sarge, I've got really, really bad news."

"What?" I groaned.

"We're made." Snark almost sighed. "Badly."

"Goddamit," Bee complained. "No rest for the weary."

"Doctor, go to the highest level," I told her. "Everyone else doesn't go any higher than the middle level."

"Number Snark," Pavel ordered just as everybody started moving about.

"Looks like the same column that rolled by us."

"Must've done a u-turn," Pavel murmured.

Fuck.

The Daemon fired straight at us. We barely had any time to dive away before the super-dense round of plasma punched through the parked cars. Three recent-model luxury cars were obliterated by the tank. One of the hydrogen fuel cells ignited and a fireball suddenly engulfed half the level. My armor and undersuit protected me, and it was the same for all of my team.

"Return fire!" I yelled as I scrambled up, my hands reaching for my battle rifle. I moved towards the edge of the parking lot tower and fired blindly at a mass of elites making a run for our position. The spraying was enough to send them down for cover, buying us some time while we got everything figured out. I calmed myself down and fired at a pair of jackals, knocking them both down and finishing them off.

"Snark, I want those elite's with their heads down! Bee, kill that tank!"

_Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck._

"Liz, put the Army officer in charge of evac on the line!"

"Reaper Leader, I understand you want to talk to me?" a voice came a second later.

"Yes...Captain," I said after seeing the man's rank in my HUD. "We find ourselves in a situation. It's desperate."

"You don't sound desperate," he noted.

"Would you like cam footage?"

"Negative, I believe you, we're doing our best, but we're receiving small arms fire from every direction and have to avoid heavy weapons. It may be some time."

"How long is some time?" I asked.

"About five minutes perhaps."

"At this point two minutes would be too late," Pavel said.

I groaned. "Damn, we'll try to stay alive."

The conversation ended officially when a burst of plasma hit the metal frame next to my head. I had no choice but to scream 'fuck' repeatedly and to drag myself back. I tossed a grenade from my position and waited until it exploded. As soon as it did I aimed back down again, hitting a stunned elite in the neck and shoulders. I killed that one and the passenger on a Spectre mortar tank before I had to take cover and switch positions before too much plasma flooded my position.

"Somebody do something about those Spectres, suppress the motherfuckers!"

I was desperate, everybody was firing wildly and we were getting bombarded with plasma mortars. I ducked under a piece of flying steel and jumped through the shaft in the middle of the lot and onto the next floor down. I slammed on the hood of a Volkswagen and rolled to the side. I slammed onto the car next to it, banging my ribs against it.

"Fuck!"

"Try the stairs next time," Schitzo suggested. "I hear they're more gentle."

I regained my breath and moved back towards the edge of the lot. I aimed down and fired several shots at the turret gunner of the Daemon tank. After five bursts of inaccuracy I finally managed to blow the top of the elite's head off, leaving blood splatter on the purple armor of the tank. Of course, that action got the attention of the tank gunner itself, and I soon found myself running for my life as it brought its gun to bear on me. I jumped across the shaft once more, grabbing the edge of the opposite side as the plasma shell punched through the thin metal sheets of the civilian cars before exploding with the one above me.

Unfortunately, the explosion was strong enough to rip the floor I was holding onto from the rest of the floor. I know that last sentence was vague and grammatically incorrect, but if you understand it then my goal is accomplished.

Back to the story. I felt myself falling down. I was still way too high up to feel comfortable falling to the ground. Luckily enough my legs slammed into the floor below me, sending me into a backflip. My face then collided with the car on the floor even further below, stopping my fall further. My hands reached out and grabbed onto the hood. Unfortunately, the hood of a car doesn't feature handholds. I finally stopped myself with the floor below the car that cracked my visor.

"Motherfucker!" I cried out, my head ringing. "Motherfucking Covenant are motherfucking everywhere with their motherfucking tanks… Fuck, fuck, fuck!"

"You ok there Frankie?" Pavel asked. "Need some biofoam?"

"Does it look like I fucking need it?"

"It sounds like you fucking need it."

"I need a motherfucking hospital."

I climbed up and took five deep breaths before punching the hood of a sedan inwards. I shook my hand to get rid of the pain and cursed again. Instead of deciding to break my knuckles on the car I simply grabbed my rifle from the floor and headed towards the stairs. Of course the moment I got there I almost crashed into a pair of skirmishers with needlers akimbo. I kicked at the first one, sending it into its partner. They both rolled down the stairs and stopped violently when the stairwell turned ninety degrees to the left. I vaguely heard the sounds of bones crunching over the sound of my rifle firing full-auto on those bastards.

"I'm fine, I'm fine," I told myself. I reloaded my weapon and took aim down the stairs again. I heard clattering and fired as soon as a third jackal decided to pop from the corner. Its brains ended up painting the railing and cars behind it. Another jackal tried its luck and received the same treatment. I tossed a grenade after that, deciding to stop testing my luck and just destroy the stairwell. The detonation wrecked a nearby car, but didn't ignite it. That's realism for you guys.

"Snark, you're not doing a very good job at keeping them at bay!" I growled.

"I'm burning through my ammo shooting at the elites!" he shouted back. "Don't expect me to shoot everything!"

"Grass, how's the package?"

"Did he just call me a pa-"

"Charlie Hotel is fine," Grass interrupted. "So far they haven't targeted us."

"Good, keep it that way. Now Bee, if you'd just pound the shit out of that Daemon we could make some progress."

"They won't let me fire!" he complained.

"Angel," Pavel called out. "Suppressing fire."

"About goddamned time. Figlios de puta," Angel said. The two machine guns of the squad started ringing. I set myself to climbing the stairs. I could hear and feel plasma banging against the thin metal walls that made up the parking tower. Either they had some really good thermal or they were just firing randomly at the tower. Both of those were bad news, but I really hoped that they didn't have thermal.

"Ok, firing one!" Bumblebee cried. "And two!"

The two rockets detonated with something. Given the Scottsman's ability with the Spanker I could bet on that something being the Daemon tank. I knew that even despite that the tank would probably be pretty much intact. Covenant vehicles had an annoying tendency to absorb all kinds of damage and escape in fine working order. Bumblebee's swearing only confirmed my fears. Another tank round shook the tower violently, sending us all to our needs. This structure wouldn't take much more damage.

"Captain! Where the hell are you?"

"Now that sounds desperate," the officer in charge of the column noted. "We'll get there soon, we're doing our best here, we're driving through hell!"

"Well keep on driving!"

"Did you know that Winston Churchill originally said that?" Grass said.

"Not the time Grass," I grunted.

I finally reached the floor where Caboose was. I tapped him on the shoulder and ordered him to keep watch on the stairwell behind me while I took his place. My weapon had better range and accuracy, so it was a swap that made sense. I leaned against the wrecked car that he had been using for cover and took a couple of shots at a jackal with a carbine. The alien collapsed from the bullets, leaving it out of commission. I caught a glimpse of the covvie tank while at it, it was smoking from the right side and I could clearly see that it was tilting sideways, but it could still pivot and move its turret well enough.

"Pavs, don't let that squad get close!"

"Sound simple enough," he replied with way too much humor in his voice.

"Simple isn't the same as easy!" Angel reminded him. "Merda!"

The entire tower shook as another shell hit us. The tank wasn't purposely shooting for the support beams and columns, but with enough explosions the thing was bound to collapse soon enough.

"One minute Reaper Leader!"

"Grass! You heard the man, get the VIP down here! Everyone, I want you to keep those covvies with their heads down. And Bee, just shoot that motherfucking tank to oblivion!"

By this point all of the Spectres were driverless, Snark _had_ been doing his job well enough. While the vehicles were useless, we still had to keep any eager alien at bay. The tank was giving us enough shit as it was, we didn't need four more of them thrown in the mix. The Daemon fired another shot and the entire tower shook. When I say shook, I mean _shook_. The thing leaned sideways.

"It's gonna collapse!" Bee cried.

"Everybody out!" I ordered.

Caboose fired a burst, presumably hitting either a jackal or an elite minor trying to climb the stairs. I rushed towards his position and tapped him on the shoulder, prompting him to climb down the next flight of stairs. I stayed where he had been a second ago and waited for Pavel, Angel, and Snark to fly past me. A second later Bumblebee rushed by, reloading his Spanker. Everything had happened so fast. I waited for Grass to arrive, dragging the good doctor by the shoulders. Halsey held on to her laptop and kept a surprisingly calm expression. You know, for a civilian.

As soon as Halsey passed me I rushed down the stairs with her.

On the ground level Pavel, Caboose, and Snark were firing wildly at the horde of elites approaching while Bumblebee took careful aim at the Daemon. His rocket flew out and hit the vehicle's frontal armor, raising its tip and redirecting the shot that had been aimed right at us. As soon as I hit the third floor I knew that this whole things was coming down.

"Ah, shit!" Snark fell to the floor, dropping his rifle and reaching for his upper leg. A plasma shot had hit him head on, the armor hadn't done anything to protect his leg.

Bumblebee dropped his Spanker and reached for Snark, dragging him behind the walls of the parking tower.

There was a loud noise behind me, almost like a car honking. There are two things that sound like a car honking, a crappy ringtone or a car honking. I looked behind me to see one of those huge-ass HM SUVs rolling forward with Angel at the wheel. I had no idea how he managed to get past all the security measures on the thing.

_Oh right, the thing's got so many electronics he probably just hacked them._

The SUV slammed into three elites, two of them rolled over the hood and behind the car while the third one just disappeared underneath the truck. Once it came out it was just a mangled mess of a corpse. Angel kept driving until he eventually crashed into the opposite side of the street, pinning yet another elite against a lamppost. A burst of machine gun rounds erupted through the windshield, finishing off the alien. He kicked out the door and jumped behind the truck, using it for cover as what was left of the alien platoon fired on his position.

All the jackals were dead by now, only ten elites remained and still we were about to be overwhelmed. If they didn't have the tank we would probably be in an advantageous position, but they did have the tank, and we weren't in an advantageous position. We were out of ammo and royally fucked.

"I'm out!" Grass cried out.

"Here," Caboose said, tossing her a magazine. "Last mag."

I heard my gun click and knew that I was out of rifle ammunition. I dropped my rifle and reached for my sidearm. The BR55 made a clattering noise as it bounced around on the pavement. The elites were rushing in on us, Pavel killed the one closest to him before the following one tossed his weapon to the side and kicked my friend in the chest. I emptied my pistol's magazine on that elite, making it recoil and lose its shields. Grass finished it off with her last rounds.

"They have me pinned down!" Angel cried.

"Stay the hell down!" I ordered the doctor. Now she looked worried.

A third elite pounced on top of Pavel. It took its time aiming at my friends head and paid the price for it. The elite was suddenly ripped in half as a thirty-milimmiter round impacted against its midsection. I looked to my right and saw an M987 Armadillo AFV rolling down the street at full steam. Its thirty cal autocannon was now firing two hundred rounds a minute at the Daemon tank. The tanks front armor was already damaged from one rocket shot, making it easier for the explosive rounds to punch through. After a second of firing the Daemon fell to the ground, its pilot and gunner dead from the small explosions.

"Inside!"

I looked away from the Armadillo and saw two Warthogs plowing through what was left of the platoon. Behind the Hogs was another 'Dillo, this one with its rear hatch doors open. A man wearing the usual big and round helmet that tank crews usually sported was beckoning for us to go inside. I grabbed the doctor and pulled her upright. She seemed to be in better condition now that we were winning this thing. I climbed inside with our VIP and patted the man in the shoulder, thanking him for getting us out of the fire.

Bumblebee climbed next, carrying his Spanker in one hand and Snark on the other shoulder. He gently put the marksman down on one of the seats and sat next to him. Snark looked to be in some serious pain judging from the screams that came from his throat. Grass climbed next, clutching her chest and limping slightly. Don't ask me why.

"Let's go Angel!" Pavel ordered. A new group of covvie reinforcements had just arrived, they were shooting at the leading Armadillo, but its cannon was more than match for them. Pavel climbed inside after Caboose and fired a few random bursts, buying some time for the man to climb inside. As we closed the door two needle rounds flew inside. One of them shattered against the wall, the other one hit Grass on the wrist. She looked at the thing in shock for a second before yanking it out with her other hand. She pulled it out but wasn't quick enough on the throwing it away part. Her right was perforated by hundreds of shards as the needle detonated. She hadn't been clutching it tightly, otherwise she would've lost her hand.

Grass cried in pain, sounding awfully human as she did so.

"Let's go! Let's go! Let's go!" the crewmember cried.

The Armadillo spun around and headed back. The hatch door was closed and I couldn't hear anything that went on outside. I could only feel the rounds hitting the armor plating and hear the autocannon firing everything it had.

"Jump on the gun!" the AFV's pilot ordered. The crewmember that had welcomed us climbed a couple of steps and pushed out a hatch, grabbing onto the M247 machine gun that the craft had as supplementary armament. He started firing and casings started falling inside the troop bay. He only lasted five seconds before a plasma round grazed the side of his face.

The poor man fall back down to the floor, screaming horribly as he tried taking off his helmet. Half his face was falling off from his skull, but if the screaming was any indication, the man would live the rest of his life fully, even if he'd have a horrible scar marking him as the veteran that he was. Few people would be inclined to see him as a hero though, civilians had this tendency to overlook disfigured veterans as mere victims, no matter what they had done.

"Fuck," Bumblebee cursed as he saw the man. Caboose moved towards the poor crewmember and started applying some biofoam on his face, trying to salvage as much skin as possible. At this point, his whole cheek and jaw would need grafts. Same thing for the edge of his forehead.

And despite the sad fate that this man had just suffered, I climbed on top of him and manned the machine gun.

I pulled back the loading lever and aimed at the Banshees that had appeared out of nowhere and were strafing us. The first one was going ultra-slow mode on top of us, or more accurately, on top of our little column. I pounded it with automatic gunfire, eventually bringing it down. The aircraft crashed into one of the buildings next to us, sending debris flying everywhere. The second Banshee veered off with a trail of tracers following it. I redirected my fire from the purple aircraft towards the occasional infantry troopers on the rooftops or windows. I kept firing at anything that moved until my weapon started sounding weird.

I cursed as it overheated and ducked below the hatch, keeping my hand on the grip while plasma hit the hatch, leaving scorch marks behind. After fifteen seconds of letting the thing cool down I emerged again. I was just in time to see a fuel rod hit the Warthog leading. It blew up, killing everyone on board. The Armadillo's pilot plowed through the wreckage. The autocannon was firing at targets that I couldn't see and I was starting to run out of ammunition. Eventually my machine gun clattered empty and I pushed down the hatch again, separating my squad, the doctor, and the tank crew from the outside world.

Eventually, we stopped.

"We made it," the driver said. "We made it." He didn't seem to believe it himself.

Angel opened the hatch door and clambered out into a UNSC firebase. Two medics grabbed him and let go when they realized he was ok. Snark was carried off in a stretcher and Grass had to be helped by another medic, her hand bleeding profusely. Three other doctors came inside to work on the crewmember that had gotten shot in the face. Halsey was swarmed by doctors when she emerged, she had to wave them all away and Pavel and I actually dragged some of them off of her when they kept pestering her.

I didn't like the woman, but I knew what it felt like whenever people wouldn't leave you alone, thinking that they could help.

Another medic tried to approach me, but I shoved him out of the way mindlessly. The guy didn't even scoff, it was part of the job to deal with super-ego soldiers. If he didn't want help and wasn't about to die, you didn't give him help and instead focused on somebody else that actually wanted it. It's a weird thing, but it's a part of military life.

I looked around and noticed that out of the Warthogs and Armadillos that had plowed through the enemy lines to come and get us ours was the only one that made it through. It was hardly intact. The turret was blown up, the M247 was mangled beyond recognition, and the armor plates were actually molten in many places. The thing would be lucky if it could ever work again.

"Come on, let's go check on Snark and Grass," Pavel suggested.

We followed the group of medics and doctors towards a tent. An actual tent, as in made with fabric and not solid materials. Hell, I don't think that the military has used those kind of tents for over three centuries.

Desperate times, eh?

Inside the tent were ten beds, eight of them were already occupied by the dead or the dying. The other two had Snark sitting on one and Grass lying down on the other. Grass was obviously in pain, no amount of adrenaline could dull out a carbine wound and a needle detonation right on the hand. Snark was also cursing as the doctors removed his armor. His leg was badly burnt and the skin was charred in some places. He would be out of commission for at least a few weeks.

"How are they doc?" I asked the one that looked to be in charge.

"Well, the biofoam was applied properly. They'll both live and walk and fight again, but the man is probably going to be unable to fight for a while?"

"And her?" Pavel asked.

"At least a few days, her hand can heal, but it'll take some time, the wound on her chest is minor, so no worries on that one."

"All right, thank you doctor."

"C'mon," I said.

I walked back out and saw an exasperated Dr. Halsey ordering random soldiers to take her to their officer in charge. The image was so funny that I probably would've laughed if not for the situation two of my teammates were in.

"Doctor, follow me."

"About time," she grumbled. I could tell that she was used to being in charged and talked respectfully. So far, I hadn't really done anything disrespectful other than being a bit nosy.

I walked Halsey through the camp, escorting her with Pavel next to me. We finally arrived at an office building that had been repurposed to serve as the ONI liaison's HQ. We walked past a couple of MPs and made our way inside. Two ONI officers that I had no previous recollection of and one that I was all too familiar with were waiting for us.

"Ah, Doctor Halsey, good to know you're still among the living," Major Cavallaro said. The man looked the same as he had two years ago, smug and satisfied with himself. "Well, well, Sergeant Castillo, it has been a while since we met face to face, I almost didn't recognize you with all that armor on."

"It's actually gunnery sergeant now," I replied. "Sir."

"Ah, of course, how could I forget? Your performance reports have been very…thorough."

"I hope they say good things."

"Oh, they say wonders about the prog-" Cavallaro seemed to remember the situation he was in and stopped himself mid-sentence. He looked over at Halsey, completely ignoring Pavel. "Well, perhaps we'll discuss this another time," he shrugged off. "Now Doctor, please?" he beckoned her to enter a room. Cavallaro looked over his shoulder and at me one last time before closing the door behind him.

"What the hell was all that about?" Pavel asked.

I shrugged. "You know, about _that._"

"Yeah, don't ask," he scoffed. "You should really be more clear on that."

"Don't think I can," I replied.

"Whatever," he said, effectively ending the conversation.

We walked the rest of the way back in silence. The firebase was relatively quiet. That showed that either we were winning or weren't desperately losing. Marines and Soldiers moved about freely, they didn't look exactly cheery, but they looked all right. It was actually nice to see people not-desperate for a change. We might have a chance of winning this one battle.

"The docs aren't letting us in," Bumblebee informed me when I joined him. "Usual bullcrap."

I shrugged. "You all fine?"

"Killer headache," Angel complained, "but otherwise I think we're fine."

"Yeah, we're good," Bee agreed.

I sat down on the ground next to the hospital tent, Snark's screams of pain were awfully loud, and Grass constantly grunted or stifled her own cries of pain. It actually made me feel good that they were still yelling and screaming, that way I knew that they still had fight in them.

"Frank!"

_Aw crap._

"Team, scram," I ordered. "Now."

"Wouldn't want to interrupt your quality time. Eh Sarge?" Bumblebee teased.

"Come on," Pavel chuckled, "give him some space."

Pavel and Bee took off in one direction while Angel and Caboose excused themselves in the other. I stood like a deer caught in the headlights as the good Corpsman Hanna Lockley ran at me. She stopped herself shy of hugging my neck, but only just.

"Frank, I came as soon as I heard," she said, sounding worried.

"Didn't know you were in the neighborhood…"

"Yeah, my platoon was redirected after an enemy artillery strike," Hanna informed me. "We made it out fine, no casualties," she added immediately afterwards. "What happened to _you_?"

"Classsified."

"Trying to sound tough, are you?"

I shrugged.

"Your helmet?"

"Fell off a parking tower," I said dismissively.

"Mind if I check?"

"I do, actually."

Hanna chuckled. "Yeah right." She reached for my helmet and took it off without my consent. Normally I wouldn't allow anyone to do that. Then she started moving my head around to check for injuries, that was a capital offense if you did it without my explicit consent, but then again, this was the sexy girl-next-door medic with kick-ass light brown eyes that could melt even the hardest man. Trust me, I know.

So I allowed her to keep touching my face. In fact, I almost reveled in it. Who am I kidding? I loved the attention, even if I did my best to pretend that I was annoyed by it.

"Small cut here," she said. "Sure your head doesn't hurt?"

"Oh, my head hurts like hell, but it usually does."

"That could me migraines," she suggested, sounding worried.

"It was a joke," I informed her.

Hanna looked taken aback before punching me lightly on the arm and shoving my helmet into my chest. "Come on," she said. "Let's go get something to eat, I salvaged some instant noodles."

"Beats MREs," I replied, smiling.

And for a moment, despite everything, it felt like everything was exactly where it should be.

* * *

><p><em>Ok, before I say anything, I would just like to say that the parking tower is based off the one at the end of Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol. Yep, the fourth one, hence the chapter title.<em>

_Thanks to Sniper Fodder for proof-reading this chapter._

_Well, there's not much to say here. I really hope that I got Halsey's personality right. It's been a while since I read the books and most of them have no insight into the good doctor's personality. From what I remember and hot of Halopedia Halsey is self-centered, doesn't care about people she doesn't know, is insensitive, and kind of a bitch. Apparently she is aware of that and dislikes herself very much, just read Glasslands._

_Well, moving on, I put in some fair amount of badassery all around here, Frank hit himself pretty hard in the parking tower and Angel pulled off one hell of a splattering stunt. Gotta say, I based the idea of the AFV evacuation on one mission from the first GRAW, with the mexican and american presidents. I just don't want to get my ass sued by Ubisoft, thought that it was better to come out. _

_Storywise: Oh snap, we've got a man from Frankie's past. For all of those that don't remember, Major Cavallaro is the man that forced our beloved Francisco into becoming the Spartan-IV prototype without his knowledge. Well, he's back and not for Frank, just letting you know that he's alive and well, plan on using him later on. Besides, Frank's got some suspicions about just exactly what is causing Schitzo to become so friendly and Scarecrow to manifest himself to keep him company. Yes, hallucinations my friends. _

_The other story-realted thing is the one and only Corpsman Hanna Lockley. Is she a fan favorite (occasional reader favorite?). I was just wondering, because I've got two different characters to get in a relationship with Frank and wanted to know what you thought before going through with it. Your opinions may have absolutely no impact on my final decision._

_With all the stuff that you don't care about having been said, there's only one more thing for me to write down._

_Stay strong._

_-casquis_


	116. A Shitty Thermopylae

Chapter CXVI: A Shitty Thermopylae

**March 2, 2544 (UNSC Calendar)/two weeks later**

**Port Zaria, Miridem, Zeta Lupus System**

* * *

><p><em>"Just like Thermopylae. A smaller, not as epic, shitty kind of Thermopylae."- Lieutenant Gordon Creed<em>

* * *

><p>Everything was exactly where it shouldn't be. Well, except for the Covenant ships, those were precisely where I wanted them. Gone. As for the rest of the situation, I felt like I had the right to complain. The Third Fleet of Glorious Consequence had left after some sort of raid on it by Spartans. Technically speaking that was classified, but I heard things, and a Spartan raid on an enemy fleet isn't something that you keep on the down low, pretty much everybody thought them heroes. I started thinking that perhaps they were, but they are just equipment, equipment doing their job properly. You don't thank a gun when it fires straight, do you? Even if it saves your life, it's what you expect it to do.<p>

Well, the Third Fleet of Head Up Your Ass had fallen back after the raid, that much was clear, but the covvies didn't have magical teleporting beams that could just whisk away every single infantry soldier on this planet. And when it came down to it, there were a lot of infantry soldiers here on this planet. Just a little bit under half a million enemy aliens under the latest estimates.

It was not all that bad, Miridem was a large colony, plenty of local Army, not to mention our very own reinforcements from off-system. We outnumbered them and had home-field advantage. We usually had that advantage, but we usually lost anyways. What we didn't count with most of the time was actual space and air superiority.

For all the upsides that we had, they didn't seem to count for shit.

"Fire on the joints!" I ordered. "Pavel, try and suppress the gunners, Caboose, help him out."

I sniped one of the jackals on top of the Scarab, watching its body fall down and be crushed by one of the four legs. The huge complement of infantry troops on board the walker barely noticed. They seemed more busy taking potshots at Pavel and Caboose. Bumblebee was doing a nice job at keeping his firing location hidden, but then again, the pile of rubble he was under was practically a bunker in itself.

The tank crews weren't so lucky.

"How the fuck did they not tell us there was a Scarab?" I complained to no one in particular.

"Intel really fucked up on this one," Angel agreed.

"How's it going?" I asked him.

He sighed. "Not as fast as I'd like. I didn't get the equipment I needed, and…well, breaking into nuclear bunkers is hard enough as it is."

"How long?"

"Two hours," he replied, "and I'm being optimistic."

"Yeah, that's typical Angel attitude. Optimism for the win," Schitzo unhelpfully said. It really bothered me that he appeared to be in full combat armor and sporting an assault rifle. He just aimed at nowhere and shook as if from recoil, like a little kid pretending to shoot an automatic weapon. It annoyed the fuck out of me.

"Two hours is way too long!" I complained.

"Relax Frankie," Pavel huffed. "The airstrike is inbound in five minutes."

"Five minutes might be too long," Bumblebee pointed out. He wasn't entirely wrong.

I fired a burst at a grunt with a fuel rod cannon. The three shots connected with its chest, but the armor was hardy enough to absorb the three rounds. The shot from the fuel rod, however, was more than enough to vaporize the grunt itself when it hit the floor.

"Ha ha!" I said in triumph.

The Scarab started powering up its main gun and positioned itself so that it could fire directly at one of the only two remaining Scorpion tanks. The green plasma beam hit the tank and completely melted through its armor. The heat caused the shells to detonate and the hydrogen fuel cells to explode. The Scorpion erupted in an orange blaze, the gunner and the driver were both vaporized by the Scarab.

We now had only one damaged tank to help us. The Marine platoon was completely gone and the Army company was halfway there. My own squad had only been saved out of sheer luck alone.

"Bee, sitrep on the airstrike?"

"Three minutes!" he informed me.

I groaned. The last airstrike had been shot down by a combination of Covenant artillery and Scarab fire. It had been a wonderful maneuver really; the covvies had somehow calculated when the Shortsword would fly by and caught it in the crossfire. Shooting down a supersonic plane with ground-to-ground heavy weaponry is no easy task, believe me, I've tried. Still, the enemy managed it well enough and brought the bomber crashing down on the city. The pilot was dead, the metal rod through the throat made sure of that; I confirmed it myself.

Hey, at least the body of the aircraft made for good cover, it would be a long while before the Scarab's main gun could burn through the thick plating and the metal frame itself. So far I was safe. So was Bumblebee in his improvised rubble bunker, and Angel three hundred feet underground trying to break through one of the most complex firewalls in existence. Pavel and Caboose were hiding behind a pile of debris, having the least cover out of all of us. They were still relatively safe, too close to the Scarab to be hit by its main weapons and far enough away not to be directly below the infantry on board.

"What I don't understand," Pavel said. "Is why the hell they would just block _any_ access to the nukes."

"So that rebels can't grab them afterwards. Happened a couple of times."

"Uh-huh," my friend dismissed. "Stupid rule."

"Captain!" I suddenly shouted into my mic. "How are you managing?"

"Captain's dead," an unfamiliar voice replied. "Line is strong, the Covenant won't break through if the airstrike succeeds, if it doesn't…"

"We'll cross that bridge when we get there," I said, calming down the lieutenant. "Keep up the good work, Reaper out."

So four of us were distracting a combat platform, the other healthy squad member was busy playing on his computers, and the fifteen or so living members of the army section were holed up behind more rubble and doing their best to fend off large numbers of homicidal aliens. They were even doing an ok job at it, funneling the enemy aliens down through a canyon of sorts. The Scarab and previous invasion had brought down pretty much every single building in the city. We were basically fighting through a giant pile of rubble and debris. The Army platoon was keeping the covvies at bay only because two mountains of rock and steel created a bottleneck around their position.

"Thirty seconds!"

I cursed and looked at the Scarab again. Pavel and Caboose were too close to it to be within safe radius.

"Pavs! Fall back!"

"Already on it!"

I popped out and fired wildly at the grunt gunners manning the turrets and the jackal sharpshooters. I didn't intend to kill them, merely draw their attention and force them to scurry for cover. The Scarab itself spun slowly, trying to get its gun to bear on the sole remaining Scorpion. Pavel and Caboose did their best to jump through the landscape without stepping on something sharp and falling face-first. They ran about thirty meters before they had to dive behind something. I lost sight of them and suddenly saw the Scarab blow up.

I saw and heard the explosion, then felt the shockwave, and then heard the Shortsword.

"Reaper here, you were just in time."

"Glad to be of help," the pilot said. "Good luck Reaper. To you as well Epsilon."

"Thanks," the Army lieutenant said. "Much appreciated."

The Shortsword pilot cut off the conversation and banked to the side, disappearing behind the rubble hills and returning to base.

"Pavel, you ok?"

"We're good," Caboose's voice came in. "Had a bit of a cave-in, might need some help digging ourselves out."

"Got it, Bee and I'll help you as soon as we clear the Scarab of hostiles."

"We won't be going anywhere," Pavel affirmed.

"Bumblebee, meet up with me over there," I ordered, creating a waypoint thirty meters off the carcass of the Scarab. "We go in and finish off anything still breathing."

"Got it Sarge."

I climbed up the crashed Shortsword and jogged over the uneven floor towards Bumblebee. We met up behind what had once been a bathroom. Hell, the toilet was still attached to the wall. I looked at him and gave a quick order of action. We'd go directly inside and he'd use his smaller assault rifle to clear the inside of the Scarab while I kept watch on our rear and provided support. Simple.

"Ok, let's go," he agreed.

The Scarab was damaged, that much was obvious. The front right leg had been completely blown off and the rear turret was hanging sideways by some wires. The body of the walker itself had embedded itself in the ground, and the explosives had left its armor torn and circuitry exposed and destroyed. For some reason or other there was lots of orange matter covering it, probably a coolant of sorts.

There were still some alien bodies littering the top of the Scarab, all of the corpses were maimed and completely burnt by the explosives. The sight of them didn't cause me any trouble whatsoever. I kicked a couple of elites just to make sure while I climbed up towards the walker's entrance. Bumblebee mostly kept his eyes peeled and looked from side to side while pulling himself up.

"Give me a hand," I asked him. He groaned as he pulled me up.

"Damn Sarge, you don't look nearly big enough to weight that much."

"Yeah, dense muscles and bones cause that," Schitzo told him to no avail.

"Full armor," I reminded him.

"Sure."

I dusted myself off and steadied myself in the tilted surface before jumping down the entrance. Bee jumped down and took point. He turned around the cabin and walked around the corner. These V1 models were fucking indestructible. The smaller and less-powerful V2s were far more common and could be destroyed with relative ease. This one, this one was a bitch.

"Dead or unconscious covvies," Bee said. "Do you want the honour?" he asked me.

"Nah, you do it."

I walked inside and examined the various holographic displays while Bumblebee walked around the cabin calmly executing any elite that showed signs of life and doing the same for the dead ones just in case. Some sort of green liquid was leaking from several places all around us, forming little pools on the floor, mixing itself with alien blood. I closed in on the main command terminal. I had never been inside one of these Scarabs before. Usually they were left too damaged to have anything resembling inside. That or we had to retreat.

I moved my hand up and the whole thing shook violently.

"I didn't touch anything!" I said immediately.

"Fuck!" Bumblebee complained as the Scarab shuffled sideways, sending all of us off-balance and prompting a couple of corpses to slide across the floor.

"Reaper! Are you ok?" the sole remaining tank crewmember asked.

"I'm fine!" I replied immediately.

"You sure? The cannon's powering up again."

"Just shoot the goddamn cannon," I told him, "I'm leaving these guys a little present."

"You have explosives on you?" Bee asked.

I nodded. "Always keep some."

"That's my boy," Angel complimented.

I heard a sigh over all the voices. "Frank, if it's not too much to ask."

"Fine, fine."

The Scarab shook again, but this time from the impact of a 90mm shell from the Scorpion. Now that I thought about it again, telling a man in a tank to shoot directly at my position wasn't a smart idea, but I think that I could be excused giving the circumstances. I shrugged and produced a small charge of C-12 from my butt-pouch. I grabbed the thing and molded it into a circle in my hands before simply slamming it on the wall behind the main consoles. I inserted a detonator into it and turned the thing on.

"You good?" I asked Bee.

"Let's get out of here."

I wholeheartedly agreed with him and half-walked, half-climbed out of the wreck that was the Scarab. Apparently it wasn't much of a wreck, since it could still move around and make intimidating noises. We slid down the top of the Scarab and walked behind the pile of rubble that Pavel and Caboose were trapped in. We crouched behind it and I detonated the C-12 charge.

It was a pretty small charge, smaller than the standard 4x4x4 charge that was used for civilian demolitions. It had been hastily shaped and hadn't been placed in a particularly important point that it could destroy the whole thing. The explosion still managed to blast through the roof of the Scarab.

"Gotta love me some C-12," the tank driver said.

"Agreed. Why don't you provide some support for the Army?" I suggested.

"Agreed," the Army lieutenant joined in.

"Already headed that way."

I smiled to myself at the sudden change in fortune and started pulling off pieces of rubble from on top of Pavel and Caboose. Bee set himself to help me and we started hauling rock and metal like crazy. It only took about fifteen minutes at our breakneck pace, but it left me breathing heavy and sweaty all over. Bumblebee didn't fare much better, propping himself up on his knees as Caboose and Pavel climbed out of their little cave through the hole that we had made.

"Jeez, and some people are stuck in those from nine to five," Pavel complained.

"Office building?" Bee asked.

"Yup," Caboose confirmed.

The four of us started making our way towards the Army platoon. The pile of rubble and debris in our way made for slow progress, we had to climb and slide down and go around walls, and floors, and ceilings. Eventually we arrived to the platoon's position. They were on the second floor of what had once been a fifty-story building, but was now one of the walls that funneled covvies into their position. The other wall was more like a pile of jagged and pointy polycrete bits and pieces.

"Lieutenant," I radioed in. "We're coming up behind you."

"Roger," he replied. "Let 'em pass," he ordered some sentry.

We climbed up the stairs of the small building and emerged on the second floor. Fourteen men were up here. Fourteen living men at least. Two dozen human bodies were strewn about, three-quarters of those were dead, the rest were well on their way to reaching that point.

"Sergeant, over here," a young lieutenant ordered. He was sitting behind a sturdy column, resting from the look of it. "Glad you made it," he nodded at me.

"I'm glad myself," I replied. "How's it going here?"

"Not good," he replied. "They can't go around us and flank us, but if they keep throwing themselves at us they'll eventually succeed."

"How long until the other pincer can meet us?"

"Four hours by the earliest estimate," he replied.

"And we're surrounding this bastards," I chuckled. "Can we hold it?"

"Only just, and we might need some ammo."

"That can be arranged," I said.

The lieutenant nodded. "Understood, the third floor can still work as a decent perch, our own sharpshooter was using it."

"And then he got shot," Pavel added.

"She, actually, but yes."

"Understood, going up," I agreed. "Pavel, you and Caboose help out however you can, Bee, I want you acting as regular infantry, only use your Spanker on targets of opportunity."

"Shouldn't be too hard, I only have two rounds left."

"Hey, at least we've got air superiority, right?" Pavel smiled.

"It's more like the Covenant don't have theirs," Caboose grimly muttered.

"Regardless, let's go," I ordered.

I headed back to the stairs while my team moved to the windows. Plasma fire was hitting their position from below and I intended to remedy that situation. I climbed to the third floor and made my way to the best position that I could find. Only a few sections of this floor still had ceiling on top of it. There was one in particular where the roof had collapsed and formed a triangle with the floor and wall, allowing for a small space to climb inside. I looked underneath and was unsurprised to see a pool of still wet blood in there. This was the best spot and the Army marksman (or markswoman) had known it. Looks like she had been hit by a lucky shot judging from all the cover she had.

I wasn't about to belly flop on a pool of blood so I moved towards another similar position. It didn't exactly cover me from above, but they didn't have Banshees, so I assumed it wouldn't be much of a problem. What? It's a calculated risk.

The space below seemed like a deathtrap. I would never attack through the small canyon without some heavy armor support. The covvies had a pair of Ghosts acting as turrets, sliding from side to side to keep behind cover. In addition to the two vehicles the covvies had a big pile of nothing. Well, if you want to count a couple hundred infantry with weaponry for nothing, that is.

My first target was, of course, the highest-ranking elite that I could find. I hit a major three times in the chest and one in the head in a standard four-shot strategy. It was kind of like a Mozambique drill with a battle rifle, only cooler.

"They're getting close on the left," I warned, "pound the lead soldiers and I'll keep the ones behind back."

The only reply I got was a burst from Pavel's machine gun, sending three grunts diving behind cover. One was hit in the neck and arm and the other two made it safely. The ones immediately behind them stopped and turned around. Pavel got a few of them, but a pair of jackals, took a knee behind their shields and slowly worked their way back behind solid cover. I hit the polycrete wall that the elite in charge of the squad was using as cover, sending it down for cover. I actually had a perfect vantage point on the elite's back, but I wanted it to expose its head before going in for the kill.

…_and there it is._

Three bursts took care of the shield and another three rounds left its skull a mess. The brain actually stuck to the wall, sliding down to the ground slowly as gravity took its toll. The grunts went ape-shit, they were dying by the dozens against a seemingly impregnable fortress and their leader's head had just been used to repaint a wall. The little stumpy aliens turned tail and ran. Their large oxygen packs made for decent obstructions when aiming at their heads, but with enough practice and a little bit of patience you can pull off decent headshots.

I wasn't patient even if I had the practice. I fired bursts into their backpacks, damaging the mechanism that fed methane into their gas masks and leaving them to choke on air they couldn't breathe. The three little aliens fell to the ground, clutching their necks and trying to breath in something. The other grunts and jackals had no means to help them and weren't risking it, they stayed behind cover where they at least had a chance.

A couple of rounds pinged off the wall next to me, someone had made me. I immediately slinked back and tracked the higher points of the battlefield for sharpshooters, since I didn't spot any I climbed back towards the edge and looked for the telltale green trails that could lead me to the shooter. Within seconds two green carbine rounds flew in my direction but down at the second floor. I spotted the elite with the carbine and waited for it to emerge again. As soon as it pivoted from behind cover, gun raised and aimed in our direction, I fired off two bursts. Both collided with the alien's shields, draining them. The third and fourth hit it in the chest, finishing off the shields and killing the alien respectively. It wasn't a headshot, but it got the job done.

"They're still coming at us," some soldier complained.

"Can't we call in another airstrike?"

"We already used our two airstrikes," the lieutenant replied.

"Can't we use the Marines'?"

"Negative, doesn't work like that."

Gears started spinning in my head. While my unit was small enough that it didn't warrant its own airstrikes, I had some friends that could help me out a bit.

"Eliza, come in."

"Yes Reaper Actual?"

"Hey Liz, can you redirect a UAV towards my position? I need some recon on enemy forces, if it had AG missiles I would just love it."

"So you just want your very own personal ground attack aircraft?"

"I would just love that."

"Understood, redirecting craft to your location, ETA three minutes."

The three minutes passed by quickly enough and I suddenly found myself viewing the ground from several hundred feet up. The F99 UCAV usually worked with someone in a carrier controlling it, but this one had had its controls redirected to me. Well, only mostly since I didn't have the joystick or controller, it would fly in a holding pattern until I gave it a target. It was simpler than simple.

"Whoa," I muttered as I saw just how many covvies were behind our line of sight. Easily a thousand infantry troops were either sitting calmly behind solid pieces of cover or running towards our direction, seeking to help their fellow aliens in killing us brutally.

"Identify officers," I ordered.

Several dozen markers appeared in many points. Some were red, some white, and one was gold, representing the ranks of the elites. The Covenant had no buildings in which to hide, so the zealot in command was inside a collapsed room with its high-ranking officers. It was a prime target.

"UCAV, target position zero-six with bunker buster missile. Target points zero-nine and one-zero with incendiaries. Acknowledge."

"Acknowledged," a distinctly robotic voice confirmed.

"Fire when ready."

I only saw the orange flashes and the contrails that the missiles left because I knew where to look. The bunker buster disappeared behind the piles of debris before punching through some polycrete and detonating inside the room, killing the elite zealot and its lieutenants. The other two points were targeted by two regular high-explosive missiles each. The detonations were big enough that I saw the smoke from my position. The F99's camera marked the spots with red circles and confirmed that intended targets were all dead. In addition to that it gave me a kill count on each target and how many injured covvies there were.

It felt good to have air superiority.

"You do realize that those don't add up to your kill count," Pavel suddenly informed me.

"What? A couple hundred covvies barely makes a difference by this point," I boasted. "But have it your way, the UNSC will still mark those under my name."

At least it made our job easier, with the covvies panicking and without leadership, they would most likely fall back or do something incredibly stupid.

"Wait, something feels wrong," I murmured.

"Agreed," Caboose voiced. "Almost like…"

He never got to finish his sentence, three Phantom's decloaked suddenly, not twenty meters above me. I cursed myself for not noticing the humming from their engines before and for not having the UCAV do a check of our area with thermal vision. Now we suddenly had three platoons, quite literally, on top of us.

"UCAV," I yelled, "target one Phantom, take it down, crash into the other one."

"Acknowledged. Programming prevents this aircraft from self destroying unless-"

"Override! Override!"

"Acknowledged."

One of the Phantoms suddenly exploded as a missile collided against it. The craft was torn apart by the explosion and crashed down a couple of meters from the building. That in itself was a good thing, the flaming wreck could serve as additional cover to ground troops. I saw the F99 UCAV slashing by through the sky, its nose aimed directly at the Phantom on top of me. I looked up and then realized that I could very well be squashed if the F99 succeeded.

I got up and started running towards the stairs while the Phantom fired with its automated and manned turrets at the fast-flying vehicle. Unfortunately, the gunners were good enough to nick the F99. The unmanned vehicle tipped slightly up and grazed the Phantom. The impact itself was enough to tip the craft sideways, but the alien dropship managed to stay on its feet. It dropped three elites and a bunch of grunts. I killed one of the elites and tossed my last grenade before running down the stairwell.

"Enemy infantry on the floor above!" I cried in warning.

"And all around us!" Pavel replied.

"We've got two pairs of hunters," the lieutenant said. "Take out the closest ones," he ordered. "Suppress the rest of 'em and keep their heads down, we kill the heavies first. You three, cover the stairs, I don't want anything biting our ass."

I turned around the stairs and emerged from the door just as three soldiers raised their weapons at me. They nodded and let me pass before taking cover behind columns and tables. I looked up and fired the three rounds that were left from my magazine into the ceiling, creating three little holes and probably startling the shit out of some alien above.

"Hunters, hunters," I told myself as I ran towards their direction. The Phantom had crashed on our left side, the other dropship had dropped troops on our right side, the first pair of hunters had already made their way to our center and were pounding the second floor with their fuel rod cannons while keeping their heads behind their massive shields.

I fired at one of the hunter's shoulders, the rounds bouncing harmlessly off of its armor. I fired another burst before diving underneath the torn-down walls. The two ogres were slowly making their way towards our position. Half of our available rifles were firing at the hunters, pelting them with bullets to no visible effect.

"Shit, get back!"

I barely processed the cry when I felt the floor shake and a large section of it fell from the rest of it down to the ground. I was on that section. Two other soldiers fell down to the ground with me. The dust that the collapse raised was enough to provide visual cover from the hunters. I stood up and helped the two coughing soldiers to get on their feet. The slab of polycrete that had fallen was still connected to the second floor by some metal rods, we could climb up and then jump back to safety from this point.

That is, we could've, had a burst from a plasma rifle not interrupted us. I jumped back and dove behind cover, dragging the soldier closest to me with me. The other one tried running but changed directions abruptly when a fuel rod almost took his face off.

"Get over here!" I yelled at him.

"No fucking way!" he replied, making a run for the floor-turned-ramp. He made it halfway up before the hunters shot him. A whole the size of a dinner plate appeared on his chest after the green stream was done flying. He looked down in horror and shock at the wound before his brain realized that he was dead. The poor soldier fell back and slid down the ramp and into the floor, hitting the rocks with a sickly noise.

"Pound that fucker!" the lieutenant ordered. He was understandably angry after having half his platoon killed, the brutal death of that soldier was probably the last straw for him.

I kept my head down as a bunch of rifles fired at the nearest hunter. After ten seconds of sustained gunfire I heard its partner scream in rage. My ears reverberated from the noise and I felt my jaws shaking. I cursed as the stomps of the hunter grew close. It bypassed me and the other soldier and started climbing up the ramp.

"Caboose! Shotgun!" I cried.

The weapon in question landed right on my head a second later. I ignored the embarrassment and grabbed the shotgun by the stock, pulling it towards me. "Cover me," I ordered the soldier.

I jumped out and followed the hunter, it was swinging its shield wildly in an attempt to reach the soldiers on the second floor, the polycrete underneath it was cracking, but it was holding well enough to allow it to climb. I finally positioned myself behind it, trying to ignore the dozen aliens that could just shoot me if they spotted me. With that thought in mind I aimed at the exposed orange goo on the hunter's back and fired off three consecutive rounds. The huge alien jerked forward before falling down on the floor. I jumped on its back, kicking away the sharp spikes and emptying the rest of the shotgun on the hunter.

"Francisco, you really need to start recording these," Schitzo said.

"It was a fine job," Scarecrow added. No, not Scarecrow, just some fucked up vision that my fucked up brain produced.

I jumped over the hunter and then dove towards the second floor with many plasma rounds slamming all around me. I was dragged behind safety by Caboose and a soldier I didn't recognize. I handed Caboose his shotgun and drew my rifle again, taking deep breaths. "Thanks for the help," I told both of them. "And the shotgun."

The both returned my thanks quickly before moving back towards the edge of the ramp and pulling the other soldier up. He seemed to have been nicked by a plasma pistol on the arm, but he only had a mild burn there.

"Bee, time to spend those two rockets."

"Music to my ears," he said. I could see the smile forming on his lips already.

Bumblebee was really a master at what he did, sometimes it might not seem like it because rockets aren't precision weapons, but he truly made art with those things. In addition to having incredible aim with the Spanker, he had this uncanny ability to sense where the target would be before he fired. Considering that the rockets moved considerably slower than a bullet, that was one helluva skill.

The only downside was that his uncanny skill worked only with the M41. Granted, he was excellent with any weapon, but nothing spectacular. The M41, however, it was truly impressive to see some of his best kills with that one.

This combo was one of the best that I have ever seen. He fired the two rockets in quick succession at two different moving targets and managed to hit the hunters' midsections, tearing them apart. How he hit the unarmored point from so far away and with so little time to aim is still beyond me, how he avoided the shields is another question that I would love the answer to as well.

"They're breaching from behind!"

Well that sounded awfully dirty.

I turned around and headed towards the stairs. I saw the door bend inwards and fired a burst through the thin metal. Whoever was behind didn't bother with taking precautions, because the elite kicked down the door regardless. Three assault rifles quickly cut it down as well as the three grunts behind it. A flashbang and a regular frag followed, taking out whoever was behind. A badly planned assault usually ends up in death for the bad planners.

We had gone from bad to good to worse to good again. Things like that happened all the time, but we still managed to end on the bad end of the stick most of the time. This was a pretty refreshing change for one.

"How much longer do we have to hold this position?" someone complained after a while.

"Until the other prong decides to arrive."

And after we trapped them and killed them all we nuked the rest of them.

It was a long battle, but the covvies had no leadership and their reinforcements had been almost completely destroyed. They weren't stupid though, and they stuck to cover while taking occasional potshots at us. The battle was pretty much won on our side. We didn't even have to rush them or actively try and kill them, we just had to keep them busy. It was surprisingly easy work.

"…nit, come in, this is Commander Sorka, do you copy?"

"We copy," the lieutenant replied immediately. "Where have you been?"

"We had our own problems, Scarabs."

"Same here, wasn't pretty."

There was a noticeable pause. "Roger that, we're already arriving at your position, still any armor active in your vicinity?"

"Affirmative, but it cannot climb through the debris, we have a Scorpion just sitting there."

"Copy, just hold tight, we'll finish the job."

"Fine by me."

They ended the conversation and I could actually hear a sigh of relief from the soldiers. Hell, I joined them myself.

"Sarge, Angel here, I made a breakthrough."

I sighed again, this time because I'm a lazy bastard. "I'm headed that way," I replied. "Caboose, you're with me, Pavel and Bee, stay here."

I stood up and dusted myself, grabbing my BR55 from the floor and slinging it over my shoulder. Caboose was already waiting for me at the stairs. "We good to go?" he asked me.

"Yup," I replied.

The stairs were literally filled with alien bodies. I walked over the shredded remains of an elite and several grunts before jumping over a dead jackal. After making it to the first floor I rushed to the back of the building to avoid getting hit by a lucky shot. Both of us helped each other climb outside the building and suddenly found ourselves back in the field of debris where we had distracted the Scarab. The Scarab was still there and it was still letting out smoke. It was a sweet sight.

"Over here," I told Caboose as I climbed in between two partially collapsed walls. I squeezed through them sideways and walked into a small lobby-like room. "And we're in."

Caboose said nothing and headed straight for a blast door, turning its knob around and puling it back to reveal a small room with a hole in the floor that led down below. The hole had a small elevator that would only fit two people, but it was only two of us here and that wasn't going to be any problem. On the way down it came to mind that it was a pretty good strategy, if you needed to launch the nuke you could get the two required people pretty quick and if someone staged a break-in they'd have to go down one at a time.

"Hey Sarge," Angel greeted from a kneeling position. He had a computer in front of him and thin wires connected it to the panel on the door. "I know what you're thinking," he said, "I'm actually using wires because the signal travels slightly faster than wireless."

"Really?"

"Only just," he confirmed. "But it helps."

I shrugged. "Sure."

"Well, I finally managed to write myself around the firewalls, no, I couldn't go through, that's kind of the point in firewalls."

"I didn't even ask," I said.

"But you were thinking about it."

"Fine, fine, go on."

"That's about it, we should be able to walk inside with relatively little trouble."

"Go ahead," I ordered him, waving my arm at the door.

"If poison gas emerges from all around us and we die I don't take responsibility."

"We have air-filters on our helmets," Caboose noted.

"Fire jets?"

"That sounds less likely than…well, everything."

"Here goes nothing," Angel said. I could tell that he was faking his nervousness, he was perfectly aware that he had beaten these stupid firewalls and could open the door with no trouble.

The panel blinked green.

"And that's the way the cookie crumbles."

"Mmmm, I love cookies," Schitzo voices.

"Let him work," Not-Scarecrow chided him.

I did my best to ignore the conflicting personalities inside my head and walked through the door. The silo room was pretty standard, I think that the design had been pretty much the same ever since ICBMs were invented. The room was about twenty feet by twenty feet, perhaps a bit larger. The walls were covered with terminals and the one to my left had a holographic display that showed a map of Miridem on one half and another of the entire system on the other. Despite the lack of power and supply lines, the silo was still in fine working order.

"Angel, want to do the honors?"

"Shouldn't we contact command to confirm launch?"

"Right," I agreed, slapping my palm against my visor before taking my helmet off. I placed the piece of armor on top of one of the holotable consoles and sat in a chair. "Eliza, this is Reaper Actual, do you copy?"

"I copy Reaper Actual, I take it you're inside the facility."

"Affirmative, the top of the launch site is cleared of debris and obstructions and we're ready to fire."

"Got it, hold on a second." Eliza put me on hold for about two minutes before her voice came back. "You have clearance to fire the missile, target area is already locked. I believe you have the launch codes?"

"Affirmative, I'll take it from here."

"Eliza out."

I turned around to see Angel staring at all the fancy computer equipment and Caboose staring at a wall. "Angel?"

"Right away Sarge, I've never fired a nuke before." He was awfully giddy about it.

"Relax, you do it once and then you get over the act."

"You've done this before?"

"Hell, I've almost been incinerated by port-a-nukes a few times," I admitted. "Not nearly as fun as you'd think."

"You're a killjoy Sarge," he chuckled. "We turn on three?"

"Yeah, just hold on a moment." I typed, yes, actually _typed_ the launch codes inside the terminal and headed towards the key-turning thingy place. I introduced the key in the slot and turned it at the same time that Angel did. Nothing happened for a second and then the room started rumbling. The window in front of us revealed that the missile was raising up and we quickly saw the fire trail behind it. The smoke suddenly blocked the thick glass window, blackening everything from sight.

"Nuke out," I said with a smile.

"What's the yield?" Caboose asked disinterestedly.

"Ten megatons," I replied. "It's a clean nuke, little to no radioactive fallout, we should be just fine."

"Won't the heat wave hurt our guys?" Angel queried.

"Nah, we're too far away from the target, might make the mushroom cloud if you hurry though."

Angel looked torn between professionalism and his almost childlike fascination with explosives. Eventually, the unprofessional side of him won, Angel took off towards the elevator, Caboose groaning and walking behind him. I simply sat in my chair and propped up my feet on one of the tables. The little red dot in the screen flew towards the large red circle. The screen changed to a holographic display of the event, showing the warhead coming straight down on the covvies. A couple of seconds later the red dot hit the red circle and there was some yellow flashing on the hologram. It wasn't until after that that I felt the rumbling from the shockwave.

"It is beautiful," Angel said quietly, he was certainly in awe at the explosion.

Killing thousands of Covenant soldiers in the blink of an eye with nuclear fire? Yes, that's among one of the things that I would call beautiful.

* * *

><p><em>Thanks to Sniper Fodder for proof-reading this chapter.<em>

_I feel like I could've written a gorgeous action-packed chapter with the events preceding to this one. Oh well. Not much to say here, I hope that it was enjoyable for you to read and that I didn't insult writers worldwide by publishing this here. Since this wasn't exactly my best action-heavy chapter I'll just leave you with the promise that the next one is going to be fun. If you have as much fun reading Chapter 117 as I had writing it then you'll be good for the day. _

_Stay strong._

_-casquis_


	117. 117

Chapter CXVII: 117

**March 7, 2544 (UNSC Calendar)/**

**Port Zaria, Miridem, Zeta Lupus System**

* * *

><p><em>"We finished the fight in Miridem with his help, he finished the fight without ours."- Captain Francisco Castillo, Retired<em>

* * *

><p>"You'd think we'd be out of here by now," Grass mumbled.<p>

"You're just pissed because you don't get to go on easy HK missions," Angel teased. "I mean, we've been having a blast for the past week, simply shooting everything from a high vantage point while the Army and Marines provide humanitarian aid."

I smiled. It was true, we had been having lots and lots of fun, killing stragglers and pushing back the covvies towards the ocean. Without operations base here, we had to come back after every mission, but it could've been worse, we could've been stuck in a city with whining civilians instead of a mostly-deserted one.

"Who won last time?" Pavel suddenly asked.

"Me," Bee quickly said. "By five kills."

"Just because you had the grenade launcher on the Falcon doesn't mean you earned that win," Angel replied.

"I still got it," Bee retorted happily. "That ties it up at one with Sarge, Pavel, and Caboose on top."

"You really haven't won anything?" Snark asked. "Seriously? You have the machine gun."

"I tried, but they won't let me," Angel replied, making a crying voice. "It's so hard to please them."

"Not at all," I started. "A bottle of vodka and a quick b-"

"Ok!" Pavel interrupted. "While we all know that Frank is a whore, we have other things to worry about, ain't that right?"

"Yes, of course," I said. "Bee, Angel, Caboose, command wants us one more mission. This is the big one, so don't expect a field day. I haven't gotten all the info yet, but I know that we're taking out the last of the covvies on this planet. We're leaving at midnight, so grab some zees and get ready."

"Understood," Bee nodded.

"Snark and Grass…" I said slowly. "I guess you can cheer us on after we leave."

"I think I can find a cheerleading outfit somewhere," Bumblebee murmured thoughtfully.

"I bet it will look lovely on Snark," Caboose added.

We all laughed at that. Even though we laughed, I could tell that all the male members of the squad were picturing Grass wearing a cheerleading outfit related to our respective high-schools. Personally I thought that orange and black weren't her colors, but she could certainly pull off the mini-skirt and pompons thing. Grass being Grass, she could probably pull-off a set of armor. Wait, she did. On a regular basis.

We all chatted for a little while longer before Grass and Snark returned to their quarters. Snark limped all the way back, Grass simply holding her hand out at a slightly awkward angle. I could tell that she was in better shape than he was in case of a fight, but the way things were going, they were both out of this campaign for good. Not that that's a bad thing.

"So now what Francisco?" Schitzo asked me. "What do you want to do? You know, Hardwick is still around somewhere."

I hated to agree with him, but I actually agreed with him.

"And I think I saw this memo saying that Echo was redeployed here to aid in cleanup."

_Goodamit._

"Yeah," Schitzo went on. "That's a me fucking with your brain right there."

Ok, so doing the nasty with Emily having Hanna so close sounded like a pretty bad idea to me. I would be the first to admit that I was a whore, ok, the second, right after Pavel, but I was still somewhat conflicted about this.

How could I solve the problem?

Avoid it.

* * *

><p>"We got a new mission," I announced loudly, rousing my team to attention.<p>

"Finally," Kelly said. "I was starting to think that they'd forgotten about us."

The comment stung a little, not because she meant it or because they'd actually forget about us, but because nobody would ever know the men and women that had sacrificed themselves for them, men like Solomon and Arthur.

"What do we have?" Fred asked me.

"Search and destroy mission," I told them. "The last of the Covenant have been eradicated by spec-ops teams already, leaving only one last enemy contingent. We'll be eliminating the last of them."

"That's hardly specific," Fred noted with a raised eyebrow, the expression made him look weird in account of the scar above his right eye, but I barely noticed after all this time.

I restrained the urge to shrug. Despite having trained all my life to become detached, to keep my opinions to myself, and to be unreadable to anyone, an expression as basic as a shrug still came naturally to me. "Enemy numbers are approximately eleven thousand, mostly elites and grunts, but there are jackals and hunters present as well."

"Wait, is this a retaliation mission?" Kelly suddenly blurted. "I mean-"

"Negative."

"It just seems awfully similar to that thing back in Jericho VII."

I remembered Jericho VII. It wasn't the first glassing I witnessed, it was only the first I witnessed in full. It had been a lovely planet before the invasion, but the Covenant left nothing behind but glass and death.

"Actually, the mission is quite similar," I told her. "We'll go in hard, bait out the brunt of the enemy forces, serve as a distraction, while another team goes through the other side and leaves a HAVOK tactical nuclear weapon behind."

"Last I heard there's no other team in the sector," Fred said. "Helljumpers."

"That's correct," I confirmed.

Kelly scoffed. "Well that's going to be fun."

Honestly, I disliked Helljumpers. I didn't hate them by any means, but I'd rather work with another Spartan team or even Force Recon or Rangers before working with them. They were the best of the best right after us, but they were stuck up, self-centered, disrespectful, and worst of all, ungrateful. What made it worse was that I was personally to blame them for their hatred of us. Had we just appeared as another elite unit they'd probably have just disliked us. But those three ODSTs back in the Atlas…

_Enough, back to business…_

"Helljumpers or no, they're still our support and we'll work with them accordingly."

Kelly actually smiled as she stretched her neck and stood up, her Mark IV armor barely making any noise as she did. Her helmet was safely tucked under her arm, propped against her waist. "Now why would you expect anything else?"

I allowed myself a small smile at that. My expression prompted Kelly to break into a small grin before composing herself.

"Any additional intelligence?" Fred prompted.

"Of course," I replied quickly. "Command sent us topographical maps of the area and in-depth information about the enemy. They also sent us the dossier of the team we'll be working with."

Kelly wasted no time opening the files. "Reaper, I like it. Better than colors at least."

"About colors, are we still Blue Team?" Fred asked.

"Yes," I confirmed.

"They're two- three members down," Kelly went on. "Lost a man back in Lambari."

"Heard it was tough back there," Fred shrugged. "What about the other two?"

"Wounded in action, hand and leg by the looks of it. Their medic and their marksman."

"Well, hopefully they won't be needing them," Fred said. He actually meant it. Many others would've said that as a light-hearted joke, but I knew that Fred actually _hoped_ that the ODSTs wouldn't need a marksman and especially not a medic.

"My, my, so much black ink," Kelly chuckled.

"Kelly, enough," I ordered calmly. I nodded in approval as she put down the datapad and stood at ease, her eyes looking expectantly at me. I sighed, she always was the most emotional of us, the most…human.

"The Covenant are holed up in this basin, awful position by any standards, but they have heavy turrets, here, here, and here. We'll draw their fire and take them out as our first order of business. After the turrets we draw the retaliation force in this direction, mines will be planted in advance, we turn the ridge into a killzone."

Before I could go any further Kelly interrupted with a laugh. "You almost sounded scary for a moment there John."

Fred just shook his head and rolled his eyes, but I caught a small smile on his lips before he hid it. I successfully held back my own smile before going back into the plan.

* * *

><p>"Are you avoiding me?"<p>

She asked it in a joking tone, but there was this edge to her voice that distinctly warned me to tread carefully or I'd find myself missing a particular appendage that I was very fond of.

"Yes," I replied simply and honestly.

"W-What?"

"I am avoiding you."

"Ha-ha, very funny," Hanna deadpanned.

I smiled, I couldn't help it, her expression was just too…cute.

"I've been looking all over for you," she admitted. "We just got redeployed here, figured I'd say hi."

"That's awfully assertive of you," I noted. "What happened to that girl who'd blush at the slightest thing and insult me for the slightest flirt."

Corpsman Lockley glanced away and blushed a heavy shade of red. "I did not insult you at the slightest flirtatious comment," she said defensively.

Well, at least she didn't try denying her easy blushing.

"Fine, if you say so."

She just coughed and brought her hand up to her face, scratching her forehead to hide away that she was redder than a tomato. "I still have some insta-noodles left," she told me. "Want some?"

"I'd be delighted," I said in a British accent. I don't know why, but for some reason doing a British accent made everything sound fun. Try it. "Shrimp and chicken?"

"I'm down to onions and carrots."

I shrugged theatrically. "Well, I guess it's better than nothing."

By this point a regular guy in a regular situation would've grabbed the girl's hand and they would both smile secretly, happy with the road that the friendship had taken. Unfortunately, this wasn't a regular situation I was in, even despite me being way better than any regular guy that you could think of, my sheer awesomeness couldn't just poof problems away. If that were truth the war would be over and I would be living in a repurposed assault carrier while banging both Hanna and Emily on a regular basis. At the same time.

Sorry. Moving on.

"How do you even keep these things with you?" I asked.

"Have you tasted the crap that they give us?"

"I live on that crap," I laughed. "They say it's healthy."

"Something that tastes that bad can't possibly be healthy."

She had a point.

I said hi to a couple of Hanna's squad/platoon mates. Some I knew from other operations where I had worked with them, others I just knew by sight, most I just said hi because it would've been pretty damn awkward just standing there with my hands down my pockets in a scavenged flannel shirt with black and white plaid pattern. Well, the shirt itself was awkward enough, but it was a pretty funny story when it came to how I got it.

"…then the elite tried firing a burst through a rack of these things," I told one corporal whose life I had saved a couple of years back. "Don't ask me why, but the round didn't punch through. This was the only one that survived."

He laughed loudly. "Ok, how did you really get it? You can't expect me to believe that the only shirt that survived was a perfect fit for you."

Smart man," I conceded.

"Hey Frank," Hanna waved me over.

"Duty calls," I told the corporal. "I'll tell you the story some other day."

Hanna had two styrofoam cups and was walking towards me. It was funny how they had set up the operations base. There was the standard large firebase set up in the most debris-free strip of land and several other tents and structures had been set up in stable points all around it. Echo company had set up a couple of long barrack tents next to their own independent war room. The rest of the firebase was held by special operations doing pretty much the same thing that Reaper was doing. The only weird thing is that they had actually granted Grass' and Snark's request to transfer here, normally they would've kept them behind enemy lines, not in an FOB.

"Got some hot water?" she asked as she handed me my food.

"I thought you were supposed to be the host," I complained. "How do you not have the most important ingredient? I mean, if you invite someone over for noodles you've got to have water, and I don't think you've got any forks or anything to eat with. What the hell kind of host are you?"

"Do you have hot water?"

"Sure, just follow me."

Last time I had lunch with Hanna we used a destroyed tabletop for a table and folding chairs for chairs. This time we used blocks of polycrete for sitting and the ground for a table. And we were even on the same planet.

"Things good on the rear?" I asked.

"Is that a double-entendre?" she returned teasingly.

I shuffled uncomfortably. "It is now."

"Smooth bro," Schitzo said, giving me a thumbs up.

"So," I said quickly. "You've been helping with relief, how are things looking? In that regard."

"Well enough I guess, they had plenty of warning with the invasion on Wolff, plus, the Colonial Administration withdrew most of the civilians into refugee camps in the outback. Casualties were light…well, considering what casualties are usually like I'd say that they got out easy. Most deaths were from people that refused to leave their homes."

"Ah, the conspiracy theorists," I chuckled.

"They've been saying that the government hid the presence of aliens for their whole lives, when the government suddenly tells them to run from the aliens they think they aren't real. Sounds reasonable."

"Some people just want something to protest against," I said matter-of-factly. "There'll always be someone complaining about something."

Hanna made an oooing noise. "Wow, that's pretty deep for you."

"Hey, I can be sensitive!" I complained. "I've got feelin-Ow!"

"Yeah, you're manly as well as sensitive," she muttered. "A real catch."

I laughed at that. "I can't believe you actually made physical contact with me. A year ago you would've been disgusted by that."

"I do feel the need to wash my hands thoroughly."

"There's water over there," I pointed at a tap.

"Water that only comes out at boiling temperature."

"Nothing kills germs like third degree burns."

"Ha-ha."

You know, this was nice, having a normal lunch with a friend. I mean, even if most of the conversation pertained to the war and most of our jokes would've seriously offended people who had lost friends and family the conversation was pretty good. I laughed at her funny comments and she struggled not to laugh with my signature deadpan sarcasm. It was fun, it was cute. I know I've said this many times before, but it felt good to do something _normal._ I made a living out of killing aliens and watching people die. I didn't bat an eyelash at anything but the most gruesome violence. I had executed aliens and humans alike and felt no remorse in leaving a planet to its death. This made me feel like I was still worth saving.

Halfway through my noodles I noticed that I knew nothing about Hanna's past, I mean, if I wanted something with her I might as well get started on her background.

"Think she's as good in the sack as Emily?" Schitzo asked casually.

Honestly, I doubted it, but I wasn't going to let Schitzo have the satisfaction of knowing that.

"Where are you from?" I blurted out.

"What?"

"Where are you from?" I repeated. "I mean, I know nothing about you before the _Inconvenience_, I'm just a little curious."

"Well, I was born on Harvest," she admitted.

_Way to go, Frank._

"Oh, sorry, I didn't mean-"

"No, it's ok," she sighed. "I've dealt with it. I was only five years old when it happened, so I barely remember the evacuation or the initial skirmishes."

I was too tempted, I had to ask. "What do you remember then?"

Hanna sighed, sadness evident in her expression. "I was at school, I remember having heard on the news that there were rumors about an alien race. They were still rumors then, and nobody took them seriously. Even after first contact and the opening skirmish people weren't willing to believe that we had finally found another intelligent race. I mean, four hundred years of being alone, why should we have changed that?"

I nodded, I understood what she meant.

"Well, when things got really bad they yanked me from school. I don't remember who, but it wasn't my parents. Me and hundreds of other kids got shoved into some container and put onto a ship for evacuation."

"Your parents?" I asked tentatively.

She shook her head lightly. "My two older sisters and mom didn't evacuate as early as I did. They got to the orbital elevator and even got spots inside one of the cargo freighters." She took a long pause and steeled herself. "Three hundred and sixty freighters left the ground, all of them packed with refugees. Only two hundred and fifteen made it. That's almost sixty percent odds, over half of Utgard's population made it out safe. That's better odds than most people get, but it still wasn't good enough for my family." Hanna was visibly crying now, tears were leaving roads on her cheeks, wiping away all the dust that had landed on her face.

Hanna had always been somewhat weird, she gave the impression of being soft but you could just tell that it wasn't true. I had seen her patch up Marines under fire while barely batting an eyelash at the gunfire around her. She tended to panic a bit more when she wasn't actually helping someone, but whenever she was, I could just tell that she was a rock, nothing could faze her. If the world came to an end in front of her eyes she would be the one to cheer you on and give you hope.

This completely shattered my perception of her. Corpsman Hanna Lockley was just a human being. Same as the rest of us.

I might've not been Mr. Smooth when it came to social interactions not involving sexual encounters (yes, I just had to drop a hint that I'm great in the sack), but I knew what I had to do.

I placed my cup on the ground and stood up, walking across the space between us and sat next to her. I put my arm around her and let her press her head against my chest. I made circling motions with my hand, rubbing her back gently, trying to calm her down while she sobbed. It's exactly the same thing that my uncle had done for me when he told me about my parents. I was younger back then, I didn't know what it meant for my mother to be in a coma, but I did know what it meant for my dad to be dead. The role reversal didn't make the situation feel any better for me. It just made me feel like a jerk-ass for asking.

Hanna stopped sobbing after a while and sniffled a little bit. She let out a quick laugh, that classic laugh that you try to do to calm yourself down. You know the one, the one that never works. "You know, my dad didn't make it out. He was stuck down on Harvest."

"I'm sorry," I said, not wanting to make things worse.

"He lived through all five years of the Harvest Campaign, at first he just hid and looted food, then he met up with a group of Marines. He helped them with the city's layout, letting them know where they could hide, which areas were safer and how they could ambush enemies. He was the closest thing to an expert that they had with them."

"Sounds like he was a great man."

She actually looked up and smiled at me, the black stains on her cheeks made it look forced and fake, but I smiled back at her regardless.

"He was," she confirmed. "Best man I ever knew."

"What happened to him?" I knew the answer already, or at least I think I knew, but for some reason it made more sense to ask her now and let her push everything out sooner rather than later.

"When the campaign was over he finally snagged a ride out. You know, he never stopped writing, sending me vids and trying his best to cheer me up, telling me that we'd be together soon. The last thing he sent me was a quick vid telling me how he managed to get a ride off of the planet and would be seeing me in a couple of months." The next words she spat out almost bitterly. "I believed that he was still on his way until I got the box with the medal."

"That-that must've been terrible."

"One of the guys had known my father, he told me that he was a great man, that he had saved many lives and helped win the war. He told me that my daddy had helped Earth and its colonies, that it was a great honor to be awarded the UEG Medal of Valor. To me my daddy was just dead, and no piece of metal could bring him back."

I hugged her tighter as she started crying again. "I know how you feel," I told her.

"Do you?" she asked angrily, pushing herself away from me. "Do you really?"

"Yes," I replied calmly. "Just…just let it all out."

She started crying again, in fact, she cried so much that I could feel my chest starting to get damp even through the thick flannel shirt. I know that maybe I should've felt a little bit of satisfaction at being the guy that she trusted enough to say this to, but I really just felt bad for making her feel this bad. I just stared into nothing while Hanna shuddered and shook from her crying. I never would've expected this from her, never.

Finally she sniffled and wiped her nose with her sleeve before looking at me with a small smile. It was a sad smile, but at least it was an honest one.

"You're the first person I've ever told about this," she confided. "I've never even-" Her voice broke and she looked like she was about to cry once more.

"Hey," I stopped her. "Just breathe a little bit and eat your noodles." As I said this I grabbed a sizeable bunch of yellow noodles with my fork and shoved them into her mouth not-to-gently. She spat out before actually taking a bit and glaring at me. "Now there's the Hanna we all love," I smiled at her. "Come on, let's talk about something else."

"Where are _you_ from?" she asked, wiping her cheeks and trying to smile.

"Earth."

She stopped and raised an eyebrow. "Really? I was under the impression that everyone from Earth was a rich kid."

"With over ten billion people? I doubt it," I replied in a friendly tone. "Still, I only lived there until I was ten."

"What happened then?" she asked, I could tell that she was eager to change the topic.

"Car accident," I told her. "My dad was killed and my mom was left in persistent vegetative state. I didn't have any immediate family other than my uncle. He was in the military; requested a transfer to Jericho VII and took me with him."

"You don't sound very broken up about it…"

I shrugged lightly. "I'm not, at least not anymore." I looked up from my so-called ramen and straight into those brown eyes of hers. "I talked about it to my uncle and eventually we both came to terms with it. It's in the past now, nothing I can do about it."

"Yes. In the past…"

* * *

><p>"Is everything clear?"<p>

"We went through it five times," Kelly complained. "Of course it's clear, who do you think you're dealing with?"

"I'm actually siding with Kelly on this one," Fred voiced. "We've gone through this five times already."

"Three," I corrected.

"And they said you didn't have a sense of humor…" Kelly huffed.

All three of us were walking towards the armory. The UNSC had set up a smaller base apart from the brunt of their forces. Despite our use as moral boosters we also had secrecy and ONI regulations to comply with. We had a nice little set up here; our own barracks were separate from the rest of the base. The rest of the base itself consisted of a large hangar-like temporal construction that housed several vehicles, mostly used by us, and another set of barracks which engineers and aircraft pilots slept in. The only other building was a rather large armory. Large by regular standards that is.

A few of the support personnel were out tossing around an egg-shaped football. It wasn't a typical American Football ball, and not rugby either. It was probably a local variant. With so many colonies it was pretty hard to keep track of all the local sports or variants, let alone all the dialects. Very few people could boast knowledge of the Zulu language in the central-outer colonies. Luckily enough, most people spoke English or Spanish, sometimes Hungarian, in addition to their native language, those two I was fluent with.

The men and women passing the ball stopped briefly to look at us. I knew what an imposing sight three Spartans in full armor could be, but the stares were something that I had never completely gotten used to. Halfway through to the armory the servicemen snapped out of it and kept on their game of ball. None of us three even spared them as much as a glance. Well, Fred did, he was the type of guy that wished that he could join them, even if just for a little while.

The armory door opened up to reveal as many guns as we could possibly need. There were racks of MA5s, MA37s, BR55s, DMRs, SRSs, and pretty much every other rifle that you could think of. We had M7s and M6s of most models. Rocket launchers abounded and right on the back wall we had the crown jewel, an M6 Grindell/Galilean Nonlinear Rifle, short name M6 G/GNR, better known as the Spartan Rifle.

"Pack up on hard-hitting weapons," I ordered. "Fred, do you want the Spartan Rifle?"

"Sure, you and Kelly take the M41s."

I nodded. "Sounds good."

I moved up towards the weapon racks and grabbed an MA5B, the weapon felt comfortable in my hands, familiar. The rifle went over my shoulder as usual. I put it back down and placed it on one of the tables, there I put several boxes of ammunition and a bunch of magazines for the weapon. A sidearm was a default, so I grabbed an M6G pistol, after confirming that the magazine was full I shoved it down a holster across my back. I was going to be taking the assault rifle, a sidearm, and a rocket launcher, which meant that I still had a little bit of available space for something else. The M7S looked very alluring hung up on the wall like that. I grabbed a pair of them and attached them to my upper legs. The weapons made a clicking noise as they attacked themselves to the magnetic clamps on my armor.

I had plenty of ammunition for my MA5 and two spare mags for my M7s. Now I had to figure out where to strap on the additional missiles. I could slap on two boxes on my lower back directly below my assault rifle. I could carry one more box of missiles in one hand and perhaps strap another somewhere onto my chest.

"Wow Fred, just grab the biggest one you can find," Kelly burst out. I never quite understood her jokes, but for some reason her tone made them funny.

She had called out Fred on taking his time in picking his combat knife. Fred was the resident knife-nut. He had an uncanny ability to carve through elites and brutes alike with near impunity, shield or not. He was currently facing the dilemma of which knife in particular he should pick. You had the standard combat knife, the serrated edge, the double-edged, the balanced for throwing, the new machete, and so on.

"I feel like I'm in heaven," Fred replied flatly. He looked at the large collection of knives and grabbed two, the standard version and the one with a serrated edge. He balanced both of them and spun them a couple of times before opting to take the one with the serrated edge. "I can just see the elite intestines getting stuck on the teeth," he said with a decidedly macabre tone.

"And what about you John?" Kelly asked me. "Can you carry anything else?"

"No," I replied, "hence the box of rockets in one hand."

"You got me on that one," she said in defeat.

_Got her on what? It doesn't matter._

Fred had grabbed a BR55 with plenty of ammunition to go around. In addition to that he had packed a single SMG and a pistol for a sidearm. The Spartan Rifle was strapped across his back. He could've taken a second set of batteries, but the thing was heavy and he probably wouldn't need them if everything went according to plan. Kelly had packed lightly when compared to both of us, she had her own rocket launcher and an MA5B just like my own, she grabbed two M6 pistols for sidearms just in case and strapped them on her waist.

"Ready?" I asked them.

Fred nodded and Kelly did the same. "As ready as I'll ever be," she boasted.

The three of us headed towards the Hangar, where a Falcon gunship was already doing its pre-flight check. I had never been a fan of the rotor craft, but it was sturdy and reliable and could get the work done. I guess it would have to do.

* * *

><p><em>Well that went well.<em>

"Hey, you got her to talk about a traumatic experience from the past, that's a good thing."

_Thanks bud._

"No problem."

"Oh, _him_ you talk to!" Schitzo complained. "I liked it better when it was just the two of us."

Scarecrow smirked slightly before disappearing, no poof, no flash, just gone. Schitzo groaned in annoyance before waiting for my blink and doing the same thing. I swear to god, my mind is so fucked up.

The sun was beginning to set over the horizon, the orange light gave the ruins of Port Zaria a beautiful look, even despite the sheer amount of chaos and destruction. The skeletons of buildings let light pass through their interiors while standing as dark silhouettes against the background. It was really something.

"Beautiful sunset, huh?" Caboose said, he was standing behind me. I hadn't heard him approach me.

"Yeah," I admitted.

"Wait until you see one in a binary star system," he said. "Now that's something worth seeing."

I nodded to myself but said nothing. The sun slowly made its way down the horizon until it disappeared completely, only leaving rays of light illuminating one side of the dust-covered sky. After sitting there for a while I stood up and realized that Caboose had disappeared just as silently as he had arrived. I shrugged to myself and walked back towards my quarters, I might get some nap time.

"Frank! I've been looking for you."

"Hey Em," I said without much feeling.

"What's wrong?" Hardwick asked.

"Nothing, I'm just really tired and I'm going out on a mission at midnight."

Hardwick let her hand trace the outline of my jaw before cupping my cheek softly. "I know what I can do to cheer you up," she said seductively.

I smiled, I couldn't help it. "I'm sorry, I really need to catch some sleep, rain check?"

"Oh, ok." While she didn't exactly seem disappointed, she did have a mild look of surprise on her face. I wasn't famous around the fleet for turning down sex, just ask anyone. "I guess it'll be another time."

"Another time," I confirmed.

"Ok, good luck Frank, stay safe." With that Emily planted a small kiss on my cheek before turning around and walking away. Actually, that was quite tame by her standards.

_What the fuck did I just do?_

While still trying to go over the fact that I had just _turned down sex_ I walked inside our barracks. The tent was empty at the time, so I didn't have to engage in pointless conversation with any of my squad mates. I set up my alarm to wake me up after an hour and a half and let myself fall into the sweet comfort of a hard mattress and scratchy sheets. For some reason the bed seemed to be awfully comfortable this time.

* * *

><p>"Let us down here," I ordered. "We'll walk the rest of the way."<p>

"That's two miles sir," the pilot informed me, confused.

"I am aware of that, soldier," Kelly said in a voice that came dangerously close to threatening.

"Aye, aye, right away then."

The Falcon stopped moving forward and hovered for a second before lightly setting down. We had been flying close to the ground to avoid any sort of radar that the Covenant might still have active, so it just took a moment for the ship to touch down. As soon as the Falcon did that we all jumped down.

"Should we take one of the machine guns?" Kelly asked.

I nodded. "Yes, Blue-Three, you carry the weapon, Blue-Two, you haul the ammunition."

They winked their acknowledgement lights at me. We were now officially in combat mode.

* * *

><p>The annoying noises that my alarm clock made sure woke me up. The annoying noise rang all around the room, bouncing off the walls and into my ears. I jerked slightly at being woken up so suddenly, but I was immediately alert. I stood up from my bed and groaned at the obligatory headache and dizziness. The first thing I did was make me some coffee, while the machine poured the liquid in a cup I popped a couple of headache pills. The coffee didn't exactly snap me back to the world of the living, but it helped a little bit.<p>

The rest of my squad was also awake now, all of them had done some groaning and light complaining but were now up. All save for Grass and Snark, that is. Those two simply complained about the rest of us being loud and placed their pillows over their heads. The rest of us simply ignored them but were actually polite and didn't make as much noise as we could've.

"Everyone ready?" I asked after everyone had dressed up in their fatigues and put on a t-shirt.

"We're good to go," Pavel said.

"Good luck," Snark mumbled from underneath his pillow.

We chuckled at that and left the barracks.

Inside the armory we all dressed a lot more quickly than we usually did since we didn't have to turn around to see Grass wiggle into her undersuit. I put on my own undersuit and armor on before reaching for my battle rifle. I suddenly realized that we hadn't been given our mission parameters.

"Sidearms only," I said, "Let's head to the debriefing room."

The debriefing room, more commonly known as the war room, the armory, and the vehicle depot were all close to one another, it was usually that way to facilitate movement within the base. You'd be briefed on your mission before heading straight for the armory and then taking a short walk towards the vehicle depot, where you would grab a ride. It was all just a matter of convenience.

"Ah, Gunnery Sergeant, you're early."

"Well, you know what they say," I replied. The colonel in charge of this firebase was a no-nonsense kind of man. He was the head of the Marine Regiment on this planet. It was an oversized regiment, sporting a little bit over four thousand men. Normally a regiment would be composed of two or three battalions, each sporting around eight hundred marines each. This regiment in particular consisted of four battalions of a thousand men each. I guess that people in Miridem were deeply patriotic or the job offers weren't that tempting. The colonel in charge of this unit was born, raised, and trained on Reach. Rumor had it that he had left the big planet after a botched marriage, her fault if rumors were to be believed. Still, I hardly believe that it mattered to the mission or this tale.

"At ease Gunnery Sergeant," he said dismissively. "I assume that you have no information on the mission."

"Negative, sir."

"Very well, I'll get to it. There is only one large enemy group left on this planet, it's twice the size of my own regiment, but it's deeply entrenched in a small basin."

"Basin?" Angel chortled. "Why don't we just nuke them again? Sir."

"As much as I would like that, we have intel that indicates powerful AA emplacements as well as pinpoint lasers. We cannot target them accurately or reliably. In addition to that, the invasion has left us without any ground-to-ground nuclear weapons and the Navy prefers that we attempt a ground mission before wasting one of their precious _Shiva_ missiles on a measly force such as this one we're facing. Corporal."

"Of course, sir, sorry sir."

The colonel eyed Angel dangerously before returning his attention towards me. "The mission is simple, you are dropped in here," as he said that a map of the area we'd be working on appeared. I never did understand why they didn't just pop up the maps before…dramatic effect, perhaps? "Your team will be dropped in by Pelican, you'll be dropped one mile off from the meeting point."

"Meeting point?"

"Yes, you'll be working in conjunction with Blue Team."

I didn't like the way things were going. "And who exactly is Blue Team?"

"Rangers, Airborne, Helljumpers?" Pavel suggested.

"Spartans," the colonel admitted. I must've made a face at that, because immediately after he said it he glared at me. "Will that be a problem?"

"No, sir," I replied. "Of course not."

"Good, your team has done fine work, I know you don't want your reputation tarnished because of a matter of pride."

_Oh, it's much more than pride…_

"The Spartans will fill you in on the mission itself, they are already en route to the location. The Spartans will do some scouting and then give you the battle plan. All you need to know right now is that they'll make a diversion while you and your team plant a HAVOK nuclear device in the midst of the enemy camp."

I took in the information and managed to keep a neutral expression. "What's the yield on the weapon, sir? Standard?"

"Affirmative."

"Detonation method?"

"Timer."

This time I groaned, I couldn't help it.

"I'm sorry Gunnery Sergeant," the colonel said sincerely, "but they are jamming our frequencies and we cannot trust remote detonation to be reliable."

"Of course," I said, not really meaning it. "How much time do we have?"

"Half an hour."

I nodded. "Will that be all, Colonel?"

"Yes, dismissed."

There was an audible clack as my team clicked their heels together and saluted the man sharply. The colonel saluted us back and broke off the salute first. As soon as his hand was down we did the same thing and left the war room. We walked out of the main building in silence until Bumblebee stopped.

"Spartans, does he really expect us to work with them?"

"Yeah Sarge," Angel agreed, "can't we request another team?"

"No," Pavel said, putting his penny in, "they are already in the air, so we can't do that."

"Damn."

None of us wanted to back down, while it was technically true that we could deny the mission on certain grounds, but no self-respecting squad would refuse a mission on _any _grounds.

"Enough," I interrupted. "I don't like this and you don't have to like it either. We will climb on that Pelican and we will put that bomb where we're supposed to, Spartans or not."

"Yessir," Bumblebee grumbled.

"Good, now arm up, I don't want you," I pointed at Pavel, "or you taking M247s." I turned to face Bee. "No need for rocket launchers, grab a regular assault rifle. I want everyone packing a suppressed M7 as well as ammunition. If we're going in stealthy at least we ought to be quiet." I nodded when they all confirmed my orders. "All right, hurry up, we wouldn't want to give off a bad impression now would we?"

Even Pavel had to laugh at that one.

* * *

><p>"The ODSTs are inbound," Blue-Two informed me.<p>

I sighed quietly enough that my helmet's audio transceivers wouldn't pick it up. I stood up and moved up towards the designated landing point. It only took two minutes for the Pelican craft to appear on the edge of my HUD. I immediately zoomed in on it with my visor and confirmed that it was indeed the craft that we had been told would be sent. The dropship slowed down considerably before finally hovering one meter above ground. Three Helljumpers in full armor dropped first and eyed me cautiously before turning around. A miniature eight-track drone, the kind that were usually used to bring in medical supplies or ammunition descended from the Pelican's cargo bay with two other Helljumpers flanking it.

The one in charge of the group, Gunnery Sergeant Francisco Castillo approached me.

_Why does that name seem familiar?_

The man depolarized his helmet, revealing a smirking face. He eyed me up and down before doing the same thing for Blue-Two, and Blue-Three. His cocky smirk turned into a grin before he actually spoke.

"Well I'll be damned, small galaxy."

* * *

><p>The mule-type UGCV that we'd been issued to carry the nuclear weapon clambered down the cargo bay and onto the ground. It seemed like it would tip over, but its wheels shifted position and spun until it landed down safely. The thing also had thrusters in case it <em>really<em> got stuck, but I doubted we would need those. I jumped behind the drone with Pavel on the opposite side.

_Well, no use skirting around the issue…_

I approached the Spartan with the rank of Master Chief Petty Officer, the other two were both Petty Officers First Class. Damn, their leader was two paygrades above mine, no way I could dispute leadership on this one. As I approached the olive-drab armored behemoth I suddenly realized that his armor seemed a little bit familiar. I stopped a step away from him, it was unmistakably a him, and eyed him carefully after depolarizing my helmet visor. I immediately spotted what I was looking for. I looked at the two other Spartans, one with a combat knife strapped across his chest in the rather unconventional form of Army Airborne and another with the unmistakable figure of a woman.

I looked back to the Spartan ranked as MCPO. The numbers were on his chest, white as snow, unmistakably a recent paint job.

_One-one-seven_

"Well I'll be damned, small galaxy," I said finally.

The Pelican had already left, and as the noise of its engines died off there was a deadly silence settled into the area.

The first person to speak was the female Spartan, Blue-Three, the one with a rabbit painted on her chest armor. "You're that ODST from…what was it?"

"Marcia," Pavel finished for her.

"Yes," she nodded. "You never thanked us for rescuing us."

I smiled. "That's right, I didn't."

The Spartan in front of me moved slightly. I would've been puzzled had I been on any other unit that wasn't the Helljumpers. I knew that he was using natural body language when speaking to another person. The fact that I couldn't hear what he was saying meant that he was probably telling Rabbit to shut the hell up.

"So, what's the plan Chief?" I asked the leader.

The Spartan seemed to snap its attention back to me before he gave me the specs on the mission. "There are heavy plasma turrets all around the perimeter, we'll take them all out before starting our main attack here. As soon as we cause enough mayhem I will give your team a signal to go in."

"The covvies have jammers up, radio transmissions won't go through."

"You'll know the signal when you see it," Blue-Three said.

"No, I want to know what it is, no vagueness on these things."

"Of course," Blue-One nodded. "We'll launch a flare to alert you, short duration, low brightness, so be ready."

I nodded. "How exactly will you take out those heavy turrets?" I asked. "They can take some damage."

"Rockets to the barrel," Bee said, "it only takes one that way."

"Exactly," Blue-Three said. She was the talkative one of this group it seemed.

"Once we give you the signal you are free to go in, we'll sustain our attack for thirty minutes after we give the signal, that should be enough for you to plant the bomb. We evacuate at Rally Point Alpha and your team will evacuate at…"

"Rally Point Foxtrot," I replied after examining the map. "Ok, we're ready when you are."

"Blue Team, move out."

The three Spartans grabbed their ammunition and weapons before heading towards the ridge on top of the basin. The heavy turrets were positioned a quarter of the way down the slope, that way they had a clear view of the top of the ridge and could fire at anything that came up. It was a classic reverse slope defense. As soon as something popped over the top you shot the living hell out of it. The only downside to it was that the enemy had higher ground for the entire duration of the battle, diminishing your cover.

The Spartans went to the right while we headed to the left. There was a stretch of land relatively flat that would work to keep our drone quiet. I climbed up to the top of the ridge while my team positioned themselves in a position ready to go. Blue Team was only a hundred yards away from our position, directly in front of the closest turret. The huge purple gun stood immobile, ever watchful of the space in front of it. I shouldered my battle rifle and zoomed in on the Spartans. I positioned my crosshairs on Chief's head and then switched them to Two, examining the Spartan Laser on his back. They conferred amongst themselves before Three positioned herself on the edge of cover after handing her Spanker to Two.

Suddenly she blurred from sight as she emerged from cover in a full sprint. I had literally never seen anyone move that fast. Well, actually, I had seen her move that fast once before, but it doesn't count.

The turret immediately came to life, bursts of plasma firing at her. Every burst seemed to be just a little too slow, hitting the space where she had been a fraction of a second earlier. About two seconds into the sprint Chief popped from cover and fired a single rocket at the turret. The missile flew in a straight line and collided with the tip of the weapon's barrel. The explosion shredded the thing beyond functioning. When the turret fired again the charge detonated inside the turret, provoking a chain reaction that blew up the heavy turret.

"Say what you will about them, they sure got class," Pavel muttered.

"You can hardly say that a sledgehammer's got class," I replied dismissively.

Personally, I would've had one of my squad members wave at the turret from one direction to draw its attention while the Bumblebee hit it from the opposite side, no need for flashy theatrics.

The Spartans repeated the process with the next two turrets, by the time they reached the fourth heavy turret they had to lay out covering fire, Covenant infantry had reacted and were sending large squads of troops to try and stop the Spartans. The whole camp had lit up. From my position I could tell that the enemy was heading away from our position and towards the Spartans. It took the super soldiers about five minutes to take out six heavy turrets. They were now directly across our position.

I waited for some time, screwing on a silencer onto my BR55. A red line flashed from Blue Team's position, hitting one of the turrets that they hadn't destroyed. Another similar shot hit another one of the turrets, leaving only two in working order.

"Was that the signal?" Angel asked.

"Negative," Caboose said.

"Your with us," Bumblebee told him. "No need to use fancy jargon."

Caboose didn't say anything, but he certainly shot a glare at the Scottish man.

"There," I said, "let's go. If we manage it in less than five minutes I'm buying you all a bottle of Alt Burgundy."

"Don't make promises you can't keep Frank," Pavel warned.

"Fine, I'll give you each a glass from my own stash," I said.

"You have Alt Burgundy?" Angel asked me. "How did you get your hands on some?"

"I lived in Jericho VII my whole life," I replied simply. "I had some cases with me when I shipped out for basic."

"Oh, sorry about your home Sarge," Angel apologized.

"Doesn't matter," I told him truthfully. "It's in the past."

"Where you there when it happened?" he went on.

"We both were," Pavel replied.

I could see something clicking in Angel's brain. "Drop Jet Platoon...damn Pavel, I didn't know about that."

Pavel shrugged that exaggerated shrug of his. "Don't worry about it."

"Look," Bumblebee said, "I don't mean to interrupt…"

"Got it, let's get moving."

We climbed down the slope with our weapons raised. All attention was directed away from us and at the Spartans, so we were in the clear. Another Spartan laser shot hit something and suddenly we had radio contact with Blue Team.

"Reaper, do you copy?"

"We copy," I replied, annoyed. "What's up?"

"Nothing, just testing connection, you on the move?"

"Well, you did give the signal."

"Understood, Blue-One out."

Ok, tell me if that wasn't annoying on his part.

"Tower, dead ahead. One jackal."

I took a knee and propped my rifle on the drone before taking a shot at the jackal. The silencer dulled the noise of the rifle, making it several times quieter than it would've been otherwise. The shot hit the jackal's neck, severing its arteries and trachea. The jackal collapsed in a heap and we resumed moving, eyes scanning every direction for enemies.

"Enemy patrol," I warned. "Three grunts and one jackal, shield."

"I'll close in on them," Caboose volunteered. I nodded and waited for Caboose to go around their field of vision and position himself twenty meters away from them. "Ready."

I squeezed off one shot at the jackal, hitting it in the neck once again. I immediately aimed at the grunts, but they were all dead from short bursts from Caboose's silence submachine gun. He waited for us to get near him and we resumed our march. We only had to take out one small patrol before reaching our destination.

We weren't in the center of the enemy camp, the bomb was a thirty megaton monster, big enough to wipe out half a city of the map. This was a clean version of the HAVOK, meaning that it had almost no radioactive fallout as a side effect. The blast and heat wave would be enough to wipe out the enemy and we would have us a nice and clean planet that we could live on afterwards.

"Here's good," I ordered. I moved towards the drone and tapped a few commands. It immediately opened itself up and revealed a black sphere with a single slot to insert the detonation key. I pulled out the key and took a deep breath before sliding it in. The key slid in and absolutely nothing happened.

"Thirty minutes," I said as a timer appeared on the top of my HUD. "Blue-One, bomb is armed and ready, declaring Code Bandersnatch."

"Understood. We're going to need a small distraction to draw some attention away from us, we don't want any enemy soldiers escaping the blast radius while chasing after us."

"Understood," I said while rolling my eyes. I cut the conversation and turned to Angel. "You've got explosives?"

"Yes, but nothing too fancy, a couple of blocks of C-12 and some C-10."

"Good, you and Caboose head out and mine some important things. If you see plasma batteries then all the better. I want you back here in three."

"Understood."

The two of them took off while I closed the UGCV, hiding the nuclear weapon once more. I tapped some other commands and the small eight-track shimmered and faded into the background. Its camouflage was similar to that on the Spartan-IIIs armor, fading from sight but not completely disappearing. It was still better than a camouflaged elite though.

"Frank, we've got company."

I turned around and saw a group of three elite coming at us. All of them clad in simple blue armor. They looked annoyed, probably wondering why the patrol that we had taken out hadn't come in.

"Shit," I said. "Soften them up with automatic fire," I ordered. "Left to right, I'll finish them off."

"All right."

"Go."

Pavel and Bumblebee each fired a long burst into the elite on the left. The silenced rounds were clearly audible but only if you were within thirty meters of the weapon. Even then you'd have a hard time identifying them as gunfire. The elite recoiled from the impact as its shields flared and spiked. I fired a burst at its chest, finishing off its shields and then one at its head, killing it. We repeated the process with the other two elites, killing them before they could fire a single shot.

"Sarge, we heard gunfire, everything fine?"

"Yes," I replied. "Nothing to worry about. Still, you'd better hurry, we might be getting some more company."

A minute later Angel and Caboose emerged from behind an empty covvie building and gave us a thumbs up.

"Ok, we're moving out," I said.

We climbed all the way to the top of the slope with relatively little trouble. Angel detonated the charges. For only having 'few' explosives he managed a masterful explosion, combining blue and orange and black and red in three different explosions.

"Thanks Reaper."

"I aim to please," I replied gruffly. For once I didn't mean it. I turned around. "Let's move out, evac point is half a click away, let's leave while we still can."

After telling the Spartans that we were heading out (we didn't have to like them, but they were still allies), we did exactly that. A Pelican was already waiting for us, there was a squad of marines set up and aiming in our direction. They were there for backup, in case we arrived with a whole bunch of covvies on our asses, screaming for blood and fire.

"Wounded?" the squad leader asked me.

"Negative corporal" I replied. "We're good to go, we have nineteen minutes until the device detonates."

That's plenty of time," he replied. "Squad, pack up, we're leaving."

I climbed inside the Pelican and sat down, taking off my helmet and putting it underneath my seat.

"That went well," Pavel noted.

"Without a hitch," Caboose added. "Not how our missions usually go."

I agreed with them. Textbook example of an infiltration mission. If we were lucky we might even get our names in future strategy books. Of course, we would be overshadowed by the goddamned Spartans. I sighed in resignation and leaned backwards, resting my head against the hard walls of the Pelican's cargo bay. No matter how hard I tried I couldn't get those three numbers out of my head.

_One-one-seven._

* * *

><p><em>Thanks to Sniper Fodder for proof-reading this chapter and also giving some valuable insight.<em>

_Well, the MC is such a buzz-kill, Frank was all happy and giddy because he finally gets a little bit of progress with a romantic interest and MC just has to drag him to a mission with him and his robotic buddies._

_Relax, I know that was a terrible joke. Well, there it is, Chapter 117. Uno-uno-siete. Pretty good, huh? There was a little "leave", a little "romance", a little "comedy", and a little "action". Both stealth and more direct. _

_Don't ask why I quoted everything._

_Well then, I thought about writing a sizable portion narrating the events on the other side of the enemy encampment from John's POV. It would've made for great epicosity, but since the Master Chief is whoever has the controller on their hands, there is no way that I could give you a depiction of him that would be accurate to you. It wouldn't be as if you were reading about the John-117 that you all love and cherish so much. That's the main reason why I didn't expand on this chapter, that and I didn't want to go too much out of character with John. besides, a little bit of mystery is always good. At least that's what my older cousins recommend for the art of seduction. Moving on, the behavior of your favorite Helljumpers was different than expected, wasn't it? They were almost...mature and professional. *gasp!* Well, more like they weren't condescending assholes. Frank has certainly grown since he first met our favorite super-human._

_As for the Hanna thing. She's certainly the right age for all the events that transpired in Harvest. Of course she is, I made the character. Everything described by her is true and doesn't deviate from canon. Well, now that I've justified myself I'll go on and say that I personally found that bit about her talking about her past a nice bit of character development, it explains why she's so socially awkward in some ways, so closed in to people she doesn't trust. Frank just thinks that it means that she's considering letting him bone her._

_Yup._

_That's all I've got to say. I hope that this chapter measured up to your expectations and that it contained enough Master Chief to make you squee with delight. _

_Stay Strong._

_-casquis_

_PS: What's your opinion on the new fanfic summary? Better or worse?_


	118. I Still Think It Was A Good Idea

Chapter CXVIII: I Still Think It Was A Good Idea

**June 8, 2544 UNSC Calendar)/three months later**

**Esztergom (****Ezhtergom)****, Viery Territory, Reach, Epsilon Eridani System**

* * *

><p><em>"Heck of a joyride, isn't it..."- Rusty Nail<em>

* * *

><p>"We're going to be late!" Pavel yelled frantically.<p>

"No we're not!" I replied, gripping the rental's dashboard so hard that my knuckles were beginning to turn white. "Cam, step on it!"

"Music to my ears!" the woman replied before the car lurched forward with a newfound burst of speed.

"She's gonna kill us!"

"You want to arrive or not?" I asked him, not daring to pry my eyes away from the road. "Truck. Truck, truck, truck, truck, truck, truck!" I couldn't close my eyes as Camilla suddenly hit the emergency brake and feathered the steering wheel, prompting the vehicle to twist sideways and start drifting.

"We're gonna die!" Pavel screamed.

"I hate to agree with little Miss Sunshine here, but she drives like crazy," Schitzo said.

Truth be told, Camilla wasn't driving any crazier than she did in combat. She was driving exactly like she did in combat. Not only was she going over the speed limit by a lot, she was driving so recklessly that more than once I had seen death's pale face and felt her cold touch. I'm not even being dramatic here, I felt cold spots whenever we squeezed in between two semis. Camilla also took advantage of every single opportunity to use the hand brake in the car. She was going to wreck the brakes and bust a tire if she continued this anymore.

"We have cops chasing us!" Pavel cried. I swear the man was about to piss his pants.

"Want me to lose them?" Cam asked. Well, actually it was more like she was daring me to tell her to.

"No, take the speedway and the third exit."

"Negative Sarge," she replied. "I can make it quicker if we go underneath the speedway."

"You won't be able to keep this pace!" I replied. "Take the speedway. Take it, take it, now! Dammit you missed it!"

"Hold on to your seat!"

I did hold on, just not to my seat. I pressed my hands against the ceiling and windows as Cam did her best to flip the car around. At one point she had to take an alley because otherwise she would've crashed against a wall. I winced as the car banged against piles of boxes or small trashcans, leaving sizeable dents on the forward bumper.

"That car's under my name!"

"It'll be worth it Pavel!" I told him.

"You just had to break up with Marina!" he complained. "She could've just flown us there!"

"You're welcome to start fucking her if you want a ride!" I snapped back.

"Oh Frank, you make me feel all tingly when you talk like that," Cam chuckled.

I turned around, forgetting about everything for a moment. "Not the time Grass!"

"Sorry," she apologized, even bothering with a cute little pout. "Would you have yelled at me if I was one of the guys?"

"I would've kicked you out of the car," I replied matter of factly. "Wall!"

Camilla skidded and stopped with my window literally inches from the wall itself. I allowed myself a breath of relief before grabbing onto my own knees and squeezing hard, intending to use the pain as a way to distract myself from the near death. If Cam hadn't floored the accelerator I probably would've cut through my jeans. I suppressed a scream as the car shot forward, the sound of sirens louder and louder.

"There's a goddamned Hornet on our ass!" Pavel complained.

"How long before they hit us with an EMP?" I asked Cam.

She thought about it for a second. "Standard protocol dictates that if the hostile vehicle has continuously evaded arrest it will be hit as soon as possible."

"How long until we get there?" Pavel asked. "I don't want to be arrested, especially not now!"

"Just a little bit more Pavel," I assured him. "Cam, you have my permission to leave these bastards behind."

I immediately wished I hadn't said that.

The high buildings and speedway above us gave us pretty decent protection from the Hornet above us and its EMP. The police Hogs on our ass didn't have their own EMP devices and were unwilling to shoot at us because we hadn't shot them yet. Still, I could tell that they were pissed at us. Especially because we had been evading them for over forty minutes straight. Yes, I had been in this living hell for more than half an hour and still encouraged our fearless pilot to push us closer to death. So far she hadn't disappointed me. In the pushing us closer to death part.

"There!" she cried in joy. "The hospital!"

"Floor it!" Pavel told her with newfound valor.

As soon as we made a run for the hospital we were hit with an EMP, the first shot must've hit the engine because the car immediately turned off and kept on moving forward. Cam drove in between two cars and through a nice patch of purple flowers before hitting the hand brake and skidding sideways, stopping in between a pair of marble columns, five feet away from the glass entrance and inches away from an old woman in a wheelchair.

"Go see your woman Pavs," I told him. "We'll stall them."

"Hey," Cam said, stopping him.

"Yes, thank you."

"You can thank me by naming your child after me, maybe her middle name."

"Amber doesn't like two names on a person," Pavel informed her.

"Ah, Hispanic naming traditions also exist in other places I see," I chuckled. "Now go before we're all tasered."

"Course, got it."

Pavel opened the door and took one moment to apologize to the old lady before running through the doors, frightening two nurses that had inched closer to see just what the hell was going on in the entrance. Pavel ignored them and dashed towards the elevators like a man possessed. I simply sighed, my head was already beginning to spin wide circles. Cam, on the other hand, looked like she had just had the best orgasm in her entire life. She was practically beaming with joy at the whole experience.

"Ok, let's buy him some time," I said, remiss to the situation.

Cam nodded and unbuttoned the top two buttons on her shirt, revealing the top of a yellow bra with lace. She opened up the shirt a little bit before undoing her ponytail and letting her short blonde hair fall down to her shoulders. "Don't stare too hard Frank," she teased.

"Yellow?" I asked. "With lace?"

"Hey, it was on sale!"

"Whatever, let's go."

We walked out of the car with our hands raised just as five Hogs skidded to a stop. Two policemen emerged from each car aiming at us with pistols and shotguns and yelling for us to freeze. I swallowed my annoyance and fear and did my best to put on my biggest, brightest smile. I could tell that Camilla was taking full advantage of her physical appearance as well as her rather generous assets. She was pushing her chest out ever so slightly and had a cute expression on her face. She gave me a quick knowing smile, prompting me to roll my eyes.

"Boys, please," she said loudly. She had changed her tone to make it sound sexy and alluring. It worked, at least for me. "Can't we do something to fix this?"

I looked up to see two news Hornets as well as a few remote news drones.

The next thing I know my head is being slammed hard into the rental car. Cam's joined a moment later, urging her to complain loudly to the officer manhandling her. "I tried Sarge," she apologized.

* * *

><p>The cops weren't happy, especially because we had just set the record for the longest car chase in the history of Esztergom. A car chase was considered long if it lasted twenty minutes, we had just gone twice that length of time and were only stopped because we had left the safety of the buildings to make a dash towards the hospital. Obviously, the EPD wasn't happy with us at all. Especially after it became clear that we only did that to get our friend in time to be with his wife for when his first child was born.<p>

We were viewed with sympathy by the media apparently.

The police captain slammed his hands down on the metal table for the third time. "Now what the hell made you think that breaking three dozen traffic laws would be a good idea?"

_I've had enough of this._ "Listen officer, I've already told your underlings the reason if you d-"

"What my sergeant is trying to say," Cam interrupted suddenly. "Is that it was the only way for our friend to be there before his baby was born." She looked up with a small pout and batted her eyelashes at the captain. "You seem like the man women would want to snag, you're probably married and have children, you understand, don't you?"

_No ring._

"As a matter of fact," the captain growled. "I don't."

Camilla immediately realized her mistake and started babbling apologies. She was trying to be cute, sexy, and sweet at the same time. Normally she wouldn't even have to try to pull it off, but on this occasion she was just messing it up.

"Cam," I cut in. "Shut up."

"Listen to your friend," the officer agreed. "He seems to have more common sense than you do."

"Go figure," Schitzo chuckled lightly.

"Listen Captain," I started. "I already said that we are all very sorry for what happened, we are law-abiding citizens and have no prior criminal history." I took a breath and looked around. "On this planet," I added, eliciting a raised eyebrow from both of the other occupants of the room. "Still," I went on. "We caused no property damage other than a few overturned trashcans. We'll gladly pay the fine and Cam here will do the community service. There's no need to make this any bigger than it already is."

"You evaded arrest," the cop punctuated.

"I am aware officer," I said, keeping my anger in check. I was that close to punching the captain. I probably could've managed to rip the handcuffs from the table with only minor lacerations to my wrists with my artificial strength. "The thing is, the media seems to sympathize with us, one of your _underlings_ was kind enough to tell us. If you convict us you'll get some pretty bad press, is it really worth it for just a few days in prison?"

The captain got a satisfied smirk on his face as he leaned back and crossed his arms over his chest. "You see, that's where it falls apart for you. Bad press I can handle. You two and your friend will be dishonorably discharged from the Corps and won't be getting jobs any time soon because you're going to be ex-cons. By the time you leave prison the whole world will have forgotten about your little adventure."

I shook my head. "I believe that you read my file already," I half-stated, half-asked.

"Yes, why?"

"Did you read it or just skim it?"

"I read it," he snapped irritable. "Get to the point."

"Well then you probably know that-" I was about to reach for my sleeve and show him my ODST tattoo but stopped when I realized I was still handcuffed to a fucking table. "-the tattoo on my arm isn't just for show. Cam and myself are both Helljumpers."

The captain did seem a little bit perturbed by that statement, but steeled himself when he remembered that we were both chained to a table. He should've been more nervous the table wasn't bolted to the floor and I could probably kill him with my hands still cuffed. Camilla would never allow that though.

"As ODSTs," I continued, "we are highly respected members of the special forces community, when that little scrap of information surfaces, the attention to this case will only triple."

Cam nodded. "Think about it Captain, three spec-ops operators break the law to get their friend to the hospital in time to see his baby being born, do you really think the public will stand for that? This isn't one of the outer colonies, people here actually _like _the military. Little kids dream about becoming soldiers here."

That's the Camilla that I liked and loved. In a completely non-romantic way.

"Sir, if we are incarcerated you will have an entire city going mad." That was a lie, I had no idea how they would react. I could've really used Grigori and his subtle manipulation techniques in here. "The Corps themselves won't be too happy about it either."

The captain, to his credit, appeared unimpressed. "What makes you think you're right."

I sighed and shook my head. "Ok, I really, really hate pulling this card, but for the sake of convenience I'll do it. If you do proceed with your plan to convict us you'll receive a call telling you not to go through with it. Now I don't know the exact details of the call, but if _my_ superior is in a bad mood it would be _your _career that is the one that ends abruptly. Now I know that this is incredibly cliché and sounds like I'm a deranged lunatic doing an ass-pull, but on the off-chance that I'm right, you've got a shit-ton to lose. If you release us with comparatively light punishments such as a fine and community service you'll get good press and you get to keep your job."

There was a very long pause in the conversation.

"No," I groaned. "She's not going to call immediately."

"Huh," Cam said. "I half expected a junior cop to walk in telling you that you had a call from your superior."

"You are members of the ODSTs," the captain conceded. "And your military file was completely blocked off from view no matter how many times I appealed the Corps. I've arrested my fair share of military types, most of their files are open to police viewing."

"There you go," Cam said excitedly. The way she moved made her breasts jiggle. I looked away from her and smiled to myself at that. "Everybody wins. Sort of."

"Very well then," he conceded after thinking about it some. "I'll keep you in the precinct overnight and release you tomorrow first thing. You'll pay a pretty heavy fine, believe me, the heaviest that I can manage, and then you'll get some hours of community service."

"Thank you captain, you're making the right choice."

"Of course," he smiled. "And I don't expect any favors in return."

I nodded, it wasn't completely unexpected. "Nothing illegal in any case," I said.

"Not particularly," he replied. "But you two understand, don't you?"

"Of course," Cam said, her tone back to a sexy one. This time it actually worked.

We were both led out of the questioning room by four young officers. The two men escorting me were a little bit nervous, making it a point to handle me with care. One of them kept stealing glances at Cam, who still had the top buttons of her blouse undone and her yellow bra displayed proudly. I am also proud to say that one of the female officers escorting her made eye contact with me. I gave her my best smile and she actually flushed before looking away.

_Frank, you dog, you've still got it._

That thought was followed by: _Why the hell do I think in English?_

* * *

><p>I was leaning forward, my head pressed against the bars of my holding cell. Cam was lying down on the small bed her own cell had. She was all by herself while I had three mafioso wannabes occupying the only sitting place in the whole room. They had done their best to intimidate me when I arrived, but I managed to restrain myself and not snap all of their necks.<p>

I heard a noise and looked towards the entrance, a cop was walking with Pavel in tow.

"Pavel!" I exclaimed. "I was beginning to think that they shot you."

"Almost, but not quite," he replied.

"Did you make it?"

He stopped to smile at me. "Damn right I did."

I smiled back and extended my hand through the bars to pat him in the back, quickly retracting it when the cop escorting him glared at me. "How was she?"

"She's beautiful."

"I'm glad to hear that buddy," I said.

"Did you name her after me?"

"Lavanya already had a name before she was born," Pavel told Cam.

"Come on, not even a middle name?"

"What, Lavanya Camilla Klaus?"

"What about Lavanya Lilja Klaus," she shot back.

"Who the hell is Lilja?"

"I'm Lilja!"

"You have a middle name?"

"How long have you even known me?"

"Shut up!" the cop ordered.

We all complied as Pavel was shoved in another empty cell. Out of all three of my squad members only I got the one with the vaguely threatening hoodlums growling at me.

I took their pathetic attempts at glaring for a few hours before three cops came in.

"You're free to go," they told us as they opened our doors.

I turned around to face my three cellmates. "Gentlemen, it has been a pleasure, I wish you all the best."

"Move along," one cop said, urging me to leave.

"So, what are you going to do?" I asked Pavel.

"Go back to the hospital, do some damage control with Amber. She wasn't really glad when a SWAT team kicked down the door to her room while her baby was on her hands. I swear, the guys could've left just from the way she was screaming at them. I just about knocked them cold too for waking my girl."

"Aw, that's so sweet." You could tell that Cam was a girl.

"What about you Cam?" Pavel asked. "Gonna tell your parents that you've been a bad girl?"

"What they don't know doesn't hurt them."

"Do they get Reach news on Earth?" I asked. I honestly didn't remember.

"A few," Cam shrugged. "Only the most important, I hardly think that this would qualify."

We were all unceremoniously kicked out of the police precinct out the back door. I had been wearing a sweatshirt with a hood, which I promptly put over my head, pulling it to cover a bit of my face. Cam was wearing only a blouse and short shorts, which gave her almost no protection from the media, and Pavel, well, he was putting on a pair of sunglasses on.

"Nice shorts," he told Cam before boarding a cab. "Don't tell my wife I said that."

Camilla blushed a little before looking uncomfortable in her summer clothing. "Where are you going Frank?"

I waved down a cab, keeping my eyes open for those parasites called reporters. "I'll be down to the Grenadier in a while, just gotta take care of something before."

She shrugged. "Sure, I'll go home and change, maybe meet you down there."

"Sure," I replied, boarding the automated yellow vehicle. I waved at her as the door closed. "Stark Tattoo Parlor," I ordered. "And play some music will ya."

"What music would you like?" the cab's computer asked.

I looked around, making sure that there was nobody that I knew. I was alone in the cab and Camilla was already fading into the distance. "Artist: Two Steps From Hell."

"Searching, artist found. Playing."

I leaned back and relaxed as the music flooded my ears. It wasn't exactly relaxation music, but I really enjoyed the feeling of power and inspiration that it gave me. While listening to this shit I felt like I could take on an entire Covenant fleet armed only with a rubber band and a rock. Not that I would ever let Rob know that I actually enjoyed his stupid music and movies.

"We've arrived," the cab said.

"Thank you Captain Obvious," I replied. "I can see that. Charge it to my account."

"Of course Gunnery Sergeant, it has been a pleasure."

"Yeah, yeah," I dismissed. I suddenly felt stupid, most people didn't even bother talking to the AI in charge of the cars.

The parlor was open, it was pretty late, but it was still open. There were a couple of cars parked in the parking lot, a large van and a pretty modern-looking convertible. I took in the information, analyzing it in case it meant trouble. I had tried to stop seeing the danger in everything a couple of times before, but by this time I'd gotten used to it. I could have anywhere from two to ten hostiles inside, little to no cover and just a knife and a pistol for a weapon. The cops had been nice enough to give those back without making a fuss. Hey, I had the license for them.

I opened the door to see a grand total of four patrons in addition to an equal number of artists. Since this was an old-fashioned parlor all of the work was done with needle pistols and by hand. It was what the brave men got, at least that's what they told us in bootcamp, they probably couldn't afford a decent tattoo mold.

"Hey Stef," I greeted as soon as I saw the owner of the shop.

She looked up from a costumer and then snapped her attention back to her task. "Stef? I wasn't aware we could shorten each other's names already."

I shrugged. "I had you saved as Stef on my phone, didn't know whether you were Stephanie or Stefánia."

"Ha, ha," she replied. "From the grin on your face I can tell that all of your team is still alive."

"True," I agreed. "Just came in to check if you got all the information you wanted."

"Yeah, I got it," she replied. "Thanks."

"How's Tarkov?"

"Mentally scarred," she replied with a sigh. "At least he's keeping it together."

"Good to hear that…I guess. Next time you talk to him tell him I said hi."

"Sure."

"And you might want to pull your shirt up."

She squeaked in surprise before pulling up her low cut shirt to cover herself. From my angle I had a pretty decent view of absolutely everything. From the cocky tattoo on her chest to…well…the more natural parts of her anatomy.

"You waited until now to say that?" she snapped angrily. A couple of the other employees laughed at that, shaking their heads and returning to their work. "Oh shut up you," she told them.

"I'll see you later," I laughed. "Well, hopefully not too often, but you get my meaning."

With that finished the next order of business was to go to the Grenadier and get drunk as fuck. Perhaps drunker than that if I could manage.

The strip club sitting beside the Grenadier seemed as tempting as always, but I declined the cheap entertainment in favor of other cheap entertainment. One that was more socially acceptable in this modern times. As I entered the military bar the sound of rowdy soldiers letting loose hit me right in the face. Well, ears, but you get my point.

"Frank? Frank!"

I turned towards the point of origin of the voice. "Hey Murphy," I greeted. "How you been?"

"Me? What about you, it's been months since we heard anything from you!"

"Long deployment," I replied.

Murphy immediately went serious. A long deployment meant that you had been caught up in something that didn't allow you to return home on time. The only thing that could prevent a UNSC frigate from making its way back home was a Covenant invasion. Two Covenant invasions to be precise.

"How was it?"

"Not too bad," I replied truthfully. "I was only genuinely scared for my life at one point."

Murphy looked at me curiously before he burst out laughing. He was more drunk than not. "Good to hear it mate, good to hear it." He grabbed my wrist and dragged me towards the bar itself. "Come on, the first one's on me."

"Hey Cap," I said as soon as I sat down. Captain Montgomery smiled at me and served me a sizeable portion of whiskey in a glass. I smelled the liquor and shrugged before taking a small sip. "Been a while."

"Yes, what have you been up to?"

"Kickin alien ass," I said dismissively, spinning the glass of alcohol in my hand, staring at it intently. "You know, the usual."

"Actually, I don't," Montgomery replied. "Mostly counter-insurgency here."

I chuckled as I took a healthy swig from the whiskey, almost draining the glass. "Come on Cap, you know I can't talk about it."

He spread his arms and shrugged. "Fine, fine. In that case, why don't you tell me where the rest of your team is?"

"Pavel is with his wife, his daughter was born just hours ago. Camilla might be joining us soon, had to change into warmer clothing. The rest of the guys are probably out partying in New Alexandria. It'll probably be a week before they get tired of it and come here."

"Well, you know what they say about nightlife in New Alexandria."

I didn't actually, but I chuckled out of respect. "Another of the same Cap, I feel like getting shitfaced today."

"Deal, in that case, hand over your sidearm."

I sighed and reached into a small holster on my back, pulling out my M6. I handed the large handgun to the bartender and he promptly checked for the safety. He ejected the magazine and the cartridge in the chamber before placing the gun on the shelf behind the bar, next to a magnum of Champagne. Magnum next to magnum, it was drunken poetry at its best.

"So Frank," Murphy slurred. "It's been a while since I got some action, care to be my wingman?"

I shook my head. "Sorry man, I don't feel like meaningless sex right now."

Murphy stared at me before chuckling lightly. "My, my, you've fallen in love!" He was pretty perceptive for a drunken Irishman.

"That's a bit dramatic," I started.

"Listen up!" he yelled, drunken inhibitions at its finest. "Francisco here has finally been snagged by some lucky broad!"

A couple of the regulars that I knew looked over at me and laughed before raising their drinks at me in mock salute.

"Whatever will the rest of us do?" Lys, the waitress, said in a mocking tone.

That got the laughter going on.

I just shook my head and downed my second glass of whiskey as soon as Captain Montgomery brought it to me. The rowdy atmosphere promptly subsided as people started talking amongst themselves once more. I was well known and relatively well liked by the regulars of this bar, mostly I talked with my squad and occasionally joined in with Murphy, Driscoll, and Shaw. Those three had an incredible capacity for holding their liquor.

"Shitfaced you said?"

I looked over my shoulder and saw Lys. She was wearing the waitress outfit for the Grenadier, a skimpy excuse for a military uniform. Well, it was more like short shorts and a very form-fitting tanktop with camouflage pattern on them. I noted how they even bothered to make the pattern classic Marines as opposed to Army camouflaged. Swabbies don't even bother with camo, no one can see you through Titanium-A plating,

"Hey Lys," I greeted. "You look good."

"Coming from you, that's a compliment," she deadpanned.

"When somebody says that you look good it is generally intended as one."

"Still an asshole, I see," she muttered.

"Still exceeding your bounds as a waitress, I see," I shot back.

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"There are some guys over there that need a refill," I informed her. "Be quick about it."

She sighed in annoyance and rolled her eyes before leaving. I still hadn't completely forgotten her for making me have the worst hangover of my entire life. And she had done it maliciously, that's the worst part.

"Hey Frank," Cam's voice suddenly said, barging in from behind. It didn't take a lot of coaxing to get the marine sitting next to me to give here her chair.

"That was mean," I told her. "Plan on rewarding him for it later?"

Camilla turned around and examined the man in question. She looked him up and down before turning back. "He does look like a fine specimen."

The marine turned around and grinned before turning back and shaking his head at the ego boost. That was the first time I felt genuinely happy for her and not like a jealous rage was ready to burst out of my chest. I just felt a teeny bit jealous, but it was the kind of jealousy that you'd experience when you'd see an asshole take your little sister away for prom.

And I didn't really mind.

So I was sitting there, downing drink after drink, occasionally having a chat with Montgomery while staring at the screens on the back of the bar. They were playing a gravball game, it was one of those not-for-real things where they just focused on hitting the shit out of each other rather than trying to score. It was incredibly fun to watch. Eventually people started leaving, it was starting to feel a little bit emptier with each passing minute.

"Frank? Sarge!"

"Wha-what?" I asked.

"I'm leaving," Cam informed me. "You fine?"

"I'm fine," I smiled at her. "Thanks for the concern." I turned to look to the man holding her around the waist. Objectively speaking he was a fine specimen, not as incredible as myself, but good enough for Camilla. Well, maybe that's going a bit far. "Treat her nice," I said with a friendly tone. The threat wasn't voiced, but it was evident for all three of us.

"Of course I will Gunny," he replied. "Have a good one."

"You too," I said as they left the bar.

"Jeez, that girl of yours really doesn't know she's hot," Montgomery noted, leaning on the bar and cleaning an empty glass. "The poor fellow was flirting like crazy and Cam just blushed at every compliment he said."

"Conservative upbringing?" I suggested.

"Where'd you say she was from again?"

"Finland."

"Never been there," he admitted. "Born and raised here on Reach, only been to Earth once."

"I barely remember Earth," I said as I downed another glass of whisky. "Another."

"Sure sonny, I'll get you a glass of water to match that."

"Whatever you thinks' best," I shrugged.

The patrons slowly started leaving in a steady procession. Montgomery warned that it was last call by ringing a bell loudly. Funny thing, in this age he could've gotten a whole set of holo-projectors and have them installed on the bar for less than the vintage bronze bell cost the man. I guess he liked the feeling of authenticity that it gave the bar. That's probably the reason why he got all those antique weapons too.

With last call a bunch of people started leaving. Half an hour after the bell-ringing there was only four patrons left in the Grenadier. I was one of them and the other three were Murphy, Shaw, and Driscoll. All four of us were sitting at the bar, heads slightly crooked forward, one hand on the table across us, and another on our drink.

"Can you switch the channel Captain?" Shaw asked.

"To what?"

"Softcore," he suggested.

"You do realize that there's three women in here," Lys exclaimed.

"Two of them are already leaving and you're practically family," Shaw joked.

"Would you watch porn with your sister?"

"With that much hair on your legs I'd say you were my brother."

"I didn't shave yesterday!" Lys screamed angrily.

I chuckled. "I'd feel uncomfortable watching porn with you guys around here." I chuckled some more. "Maybe you can put on some cartoons."

That got the three marines laughing. Eventually we settled for reruns of some crappy sitcom about nothing in particular. It was just people talking about stupid things. It was hilarious. We stood there just watching the thing for ten minutes in silence before I ordered another drink.

"I already rang last call," Montgomery told me.

Driscoll burst out laughing. "Really Captain?"

Montgomery grinned and pulled out a bottle of cheap whiskey, if he was going to give us free alcohol he wasn't going to make it good alcohol.

"Cheers," Murphy said, raising his glass. "You plan on joining us Lys?"

"I don't drink on the job," she said.

"Well, you're off the clock now sweetie," Montgomery said with a smile. He reached for another glass and poured her a decent portion. "Here, have some fun."

Lys smiled at her feet and took the whiskey. "Thanks Gavin."

"Now, what should we toast for?" Shaw asked.

"Not for the dead," Murphy said immediately. "For something more happy."

"For them!" Shaw proposed.

"Them as in women?" Lys asked. "Or them as in romantic interests in general?"

"When you put it like that it sounds bad," Shaw mumbled. "Not as poetic."

"For a good night," Driscoll suggested.

"Now there Corporal, you might've had a good night but Frankie here certainly didn't. Ain't that right?"

I smiled and nodded. "Don't worry about me."

"For a good future," Lys suggested.

"I like it," I agreed. "Simple, classic, and honest. To a good future."

"To a good future," everyone said in unison. After everyone downed their shots they slammed the glasses on the table and winced at the horrible taste of the cheap whiskey.

Side note: don't think for a minute that the conversation leading up to that toast was as intelligible as reading through my flawless grammar and prose.

"To a good future, eh Francisco?" Schitzo suggested. He moved over to Scarecrow and grabbed his jaw, squeezing it so that it would seem like he was talking. "Some of us don't have a future."

"Another drink," I prompted Montgomery. "A double."

The captain seemed to understand. He nodded at me and reached for another large glass before pouring quite a little bit of alcohol into it. He handed it to me and patted me on the shoulder before I downed it. I felt dizzy for a moment before I caught myself. Next thing I know I'm being carried onto a cab by Shaw and Lys. They dump me inside and tell it to take me to my hotel. I don't even know how I managed to make it into my room, but once I was there I took off my shoes and let myself fall on the plushy heaven that was the bed.

* * *

><p>The banging hadn't stopped after fifteen minutes. My head was starting to feel like it was going to burst. It had been like that ever since it started. Three loud bangs and a pause of three seconds. Rinse and repeat. Eventually I was beyond going back to sleep, my eyes were wide open and I was staring at the wall. I shuffled sideways to get a good look at the clock. It was five thirty in the morning, there was absolutely no reason why the hotel personnel would be trying to open the door. I hadn't ordered room service and I was certain that not even drunk me would be stupid enough to tell the front desk to wake me up this early. I sniffed the air around me, it smelled of alcohol but it didn't smell bad so they couldn't think that there was a corpse in there.<p>

There wasn't a corpse in here so I was pretty sure that they couldn't think that.

_Count to five._

One…two…three…four…five…

I groaned loudly as I pushed myself sideways and sat up on the bed. I shuffled my feet and wiggled my toes. My feet felt uncomfortable for having slept on with socks that I had worn all day. My shirt was all twisted sideways and my jeans had ridden up to my crotch. I felt very uncomfortable. I reached around my night table and knocked around the clock until it displayed the day, time, and weather on the space in front of it. It was the day that it should've been and the weather was slightly cold for June, but all in all everything seemed fine. I had only been asleep for a grand total of two and a half hours. Cam would be stupid enough to come and see if I was fine this early, but she had gone home with some hot piece of ass, as she put it, and she wasn't nearly socially awkward enough to leave the guy's place so early in the morning. Not when she could stay for seconds.

_Maybe he was really bad._

No, most definitely not Camilla. Pavel was out of the picture too, he was probably staring at his sleeping wife lovingly while holding his newborn in his hands, maybe cradling the cute little monster. Maybe he was banging outside to introduce me to little Lavanya. No, I would've heard a baby crying.

That left another option, I had come to the hotel really drunk a few hours ago, I might've done something stupid and some employee might've gotten all pissed. This is what happens when you go to human-run cheap hotels. I keep saying that the only hotels that should be run and crewed by humans should be the old-fashioned fancy ones. When you've got low-level joints like this you're not going to get decent people working at them. Still, it was a long shot, even if an employee had rounded up all of his/her friends they still would've arrived before two hours to beat me up.

I was out of options, the only way to make this noise go away was to open the goddamned door.

I stood up and opened my arms to steady myself. I was still drunk but also hung-over, I was at that precise point when your body hasn't finished processing the alcohol inside it but has processed enough to give you a headache. You've all been there at least once. It feels like shit.

"What do you want?" I slurred as I opened up.

I was greeted by a scowling man with an EPD jacket. He had a bunch of plastic bags in one hand and a stick with a pointy end in another. He offered them both to me. "Morning Gunny, community service."

"Can I at least shower?"

"There's a car waiting for you downstairs, you've got fifteen minutes. I'll leave this here. The cab'll take you to your destination, you have to fill up all of these before you're allowed to leave."

"Great. Are you gonna wait for me?"

"Fuck no, if I go back home I might still catch a couple of hours of sleep."

"Ha-ha, fucking funny."

"Don't get wise with me," he warned. "Now hurry up."

The man actually slammed _my _door in _my_ face. I stood there for a second, thinking about the implications of having someone disrespect me in my own house. Or hotel room. Eventually I came to the conclusion that a shower would help with both the sobering up and the hangover, leaving me a better man.

I left my room in a new pair of jeans, fresh underwear, a clean shirt, and recently-washed socks. It felt good. On the way down I downed two cups of coffee, scalding my tongue in the process. The car was waiting for me, just as promised. I climbed inside it and placed myself across the seats, trying to grab a quick powernap before I arrived at my destination.

No such luck, I arrived at a highway with a large field on one side. The cab dropped me off just like that and vanished. I sighed and sat down on the edge of the road. I checked the pack of plastic bags and saw that there was a note attached. I yanked it open and read it to myself.

"Fill bags…call this number…done…" I muttered. "Great."

"Well, better get this started," Scarecrow suggested playfully.

"Tell me about it," I replied.

And with that I set myself to picking up trash with a stick and putting it inside a plastic bag.

* * *

><p><em>Thanks to Sniper Fodder for proof-reading this chapter. Quote was taken from the 2001 horrorthriller film Joy Ride._

_Well, it has been exactly one year since I first published this story. I wish that I had something better to commemorate this, but this is all I've got. It's a good chapter, light-hearted and funny if you ask me. I'd just like to thank everybody who has been reading this since the beginning and everybody else too. This is where I'm supposed to say that you fuel my imagination and are the primary reason that I keep writing, but I would feel a little bit weird saying it._

_Well, as for the chapter itself, writing the chase and prison scenes was pretty fun, I kept imagining the situation and kind of pictured it as a sit-com kind of situation. You know what I'm talking about, most sit-coms have had a special episode. Anyone else would've gotten a more serious punishment after a car chase (at least here in Mexico), but the guys here managed to pull a Karma Houdini. After all, I could' just throw them in jail, that would be rude._

_One year...wow._

_Stay strong._

_-casquis_


	119. Seinfieldian Conversations

Chapter CXIX: Seinfieldian Conversations

**June 11, 2544 (UNSC Calendar)/**

**Esztergom (****Ezhtergom)****, Viery Territory, Reach, Epsilon Eridani System**

"Finally over," I boasted.

"So quickly?" Pavel groaned. "I've been busting myself to do my hours and get my service done, but Amber needs constant attention."

"I'm almost done myself," Cam said with a shrug. "At least my community service thing was easier than yours."

I agreed, while I was stuck picking up trash from the highway Camilla had to sit with children and read to them. She probably even slapped on secretary glasses and tied her hair up in a ponytail to the complete sexy librarian look. I bet that all the orphans loved her.

"How much do you have left?" I asked Pavel.

"Fifteen hours, I can probably do them in two days."

"What exactly was your thing?" Cam asked innocently.

Pavel looked nervous before mumbling an answer. "I don't really want to talk about it."

"Fair enough," she shrugged.

I had no idea what they had him doing, he was probably waist deep in shit looking for missing stuff or something like that. Or maybe he was doing something not very manly, like reading to old people. Is that even a thing?

"Gotta go," he said. "Amber needs some help with Lavanya."

"Hey, when are you going to introduce her to us?" I asked.

"When you're not in a bar."

I looked around. "Makes sense," I shrugged. "Maybe some other day?"

"Of course," he replied. "Just not today, maybe…two days from now."

"Sounds good," I replied. "Say hi to Amber for me."

"Will do, have fun."

"Oh we will," Camilla assured him. "That sounded dirt, didn't it?"

"A lot," I nodded.

"I'll be going…bye…" Pavel said.

As Pavel walked out the door I took a healthy swig from my beer. It was relatively early in the morning so I wasn't about to down any hard liquor.

"When were the rest of the guys supposed to arrive here?" Cam asked.

"Any time now," I replied. "I think they should be here soon."

"Ok."

And soon it was. A few seconds after the exchange the door opened and in barged Lamberti, Rob, and Snark. They seemed a little bit sleepy, but they still smiled and waved before coming towards us. It suddenly occurred to me that it was incredibly sad that we only had one place where we hung out on the entire planet. We were in our mid to late twenties already for God's sake.

"Hey Sarge," Lamberti waved. "Drinking so early?"

I gave him a mock salute with the beer bottle and beckoned for him to join us. They all ordered regular beers while Rob instead asked Lys to get him a light lager. Who the fuck does he think he is? He's not even German, I thought that Scottish people were supposed to drink whiskey all day long. Hence the name, scotch.

Lys brought my friends two Coronas, the go-to beer in most places along with Heineken. Rob got a Tennet's. Don't ask me what that is.

"Did you know," Cam started. "That Heineken and Corona have been on the top of best selling beers ever since the twenty-first?"

"No, I didn't know that," Lamberti told her. "Tell me more."

_Damn it, don't tempt her._

"Well, Heineken was the first beer to be drunk on another planet. On Mars as a matter of fact. Brazilian astronauts opened up a six-pack to celebrate their landing. Several American beers followed. Corona only got that honor when the Jovian moons were colonized, they were the first alcohol company to open a brewery on another planet or moon."

"Stop right there," Rob said. "How do you even know that?"

"Please don't stop me," Cam told him. "As I was saying, Corona opened its famous Jovian brewery on Titan in what some considered a publicity stunt. It proved to be an excellent business move. None of the colonists had considered the possibility of alcohol. Sure, they had brought some with them, but not enough to last. The brewery…"

_This is actually kind of interesting._

After rambling for about ten minutes Camilla finally stopped. "And that's about it."

"Well, that was actually interesting," Rob pointed out.

"Where's Grigori?" I asked.

"Stayed in New Alexandria," Snark dismissed. "Something about friends, you know, the usual."

I nodded, understanding just exactly what was going on. Pavel wasn't here so I couldn't exchange knowing glances with him. Instead I finished the rest of my beer. I stood up and placed a bill on the table. "For my drink," I explained. "I'll be here at about…say eleven?"

"Where you going Sarge?" Snark asked.

"Frank has got a hot date," Cam teased.

I didn't blush. I don't blush.

"Oh my gosh you do!" Lamberti exclaimed.

"Relax, I was just making a joke," Cam snapped at him.

"Moody much?" Arcangelo complained with a groan. "So Sarge, who's the lucky girl?"

"None of your business," I replied.

"Wait, I was right?"

I shrugged and felt like this would be a great time for reaching into my coat pocket and lighting a cigarette. Would've made for a pretty sweet effect. Unfortunately, I didn't smoke.

"Wow," Cam went on.

"What?" I snapped defensively.

"Nothing! It's just that…you're not the kind of guy that I picture takes girls on dates…"

"Yeah Sarge, you're more like the talk 'em and bang 'em kinda bloke," Rob agreed. "No offense."

"Why would he take offense at that?" Snark asked.

Truth be told, it made me slightly uncomfortable to know that I had that reputation on board my ship.

"Who's the girl?" Lamberti asked again.

I gave him the same answer. "None. Of. Your. Business."

This time _he_ shrugged. "Very well, have fun."

"Isn't it a little bit early to have for a date though?" Rob asked.

"It is," I replied as I made my way out the Grenadier.

"Oh Sarge, you're kind of an ass," he grumbled.

"Don't push it," I warned. I was still his CO.

"Have fun Frank," Cam waved goodbye.

"How come _you_ get to call him Frank?" Lamberti asked her.

I had decided that I had had enough of this shit and just shut the door behind me.

Now, I had about eight hours or so before I had to pick up my 'hot date'. What exactly could I do? There was a strip club just next door, I could spend some time there. Probably not a good idea, I needed money for the date. I could catch a movie, but I wasn't really in the mood for it. Maybe later. A good, long nap always sounded good. I doubt that I could sleep for eight hours in a row, but it would be good. Maybe I could catch up on some reading. My uncle always had me reading classic stuff, trying to mold me into a warrior-poet or something like that. His bones would roll over in our burnt house if he ever found out that I'd been slacking on my reading.

Yes, a book and a nap. I could have a bachelor afternoon and then a date night. It was perfect, I was mixing the best of both worlds!

Now, as soon as I arrived back at my hotel I realized that I had a thousand different unread books in my datapad. Getting the large reading package had been a stupid decision. Just because I didn't have to spend any money on housing, water, or power didn't mean that I was smart about my savings. Sure, the UNSC paid for my hotels and rentals and I lived on board the _Inconvenience_ most of the time, I probably should've had more money in my account than I did.

So I leafed through the equivalent of three hundred pages and took a nap. By the time I woke up I was already in a rush.

"You look good in the coat Sarge," Scarecrow complimented. "Might want to change to another shirt. Buttoned, fancy."

"I like the shirt," Schitzo complained to him. "The coat, on the other hand…"

I took off my coat, sprayed myself with deodorant and changed my shirt.

"Why do you listen to him!" Schitzo complained.

"I'm the angel on his shoulder," Crow said matter-of-factly.

"What does that make me? The devil?"

"No, just an asshole."

I popped an anti-psychotic and both of them disappeared as soon as I blinked.

"Stupid fucking schizophrenia multiple shit disorder and fucking fuck," I muttered as I buttoned up one of my only two buttoned shirts.

This was a simple white shirt, form-fitting, not too fancy. Marina had bought it for me once. I think it had been my birthday or something. There was no way in hell that she could find out about this. And I could always lie and say that I got it on Old Navy or something along those lines. Jeans, boots, white shirt, coat.

Damn I looked good, I had to agree with Scarecrow on that one. I suddenly found myself hoping that he didn't represent my inner gay man. Damn Freud and his stupid theories. The man was batshit crazy, that's what he was.

I stopped and looked myself over on the mirror one last time. I was satisfied with my appearance and walked out. I was nervous as hell, I hadn't been on a date since forever. Marie barely bothered with foreplay, there was no way in hell I could consider any of my encounters with her a date. Same shit with Emily, both of them were bombshells, but not really the kind of girls that I'd wine and dine.

I hailed down a cab and told it where I wanted to go. I didn't know what kind of music to play. Maybe if I played romantic music…no, this wasn't that kind of girl. Maybe I could play epic music, get myself pumped? Nah, staring at the front window for the entire duration of the trip seemed like the right thing to do.

"Thanks," I mumbled, realizing to late that I was talking to a fucking computer.

"You're welcome, Gunnery Sergeant," the cab replied. "Have a good night."

"You too… dammit!" _Speaking to a fucking car, what the hell is wrong with you?_

"I didn't think you'd keep me waiting."

I turned around and saw my date, she was standing there, wearing what you'd expect a person to wear on a casual date. Form-fitting pants and a nice shirt with a short jacket on.

"I'm sorry," I apologized. "You look beautiful."

Corpsman Hanna Lockley smiled and blushed prettily, looking away for a second. "Thanks," she said finally. "Shall we."

I smiled broadly and walked inside with her.

* * *

><p>"I'm telling you, it was weird. It has been so long since I had a date where we didn't jump into bed right after dinner. It's been almost as long since I had an actual date."<p>

"Did she leave with a smile on her face?" Pavel asked.

"Well, she was smiling," I admitted. "I just felt so weird. I mean, I tried being my usual charming self, but this time I had no idea if I was actually succeeding. I felt silly the whole time I was there."

"Funny, that's how I felt when I met Amber."

"Don't imply anything stupid Pavel, I know I'm not good at this dating stuff, but I'm not stupid enough to think that I'm in love with her."

"Fine, fine. I'm just saying that with time you could be. Last time I saw you so pumped was when you first asked Layla out. And I think I'm making _that_ a bigger deal than it actually was."

"Well what am I supposed to do? I lived a sheltered childhood."

"No you didn't. You were just that one kid with the dead parents."

"Man…"

"Sorry, but you know what I mean."

I nodded. "Yeah, yeah. Gotta grow up and shit. I never thought I'd have to get life advise from a kid."

"I'm one year younger than you."

"My point still holds."

"_My_ point still holds. You've gotta grow up and shit."

"Using my words against me, funny. I like it."

"Yeah, maybe I'm spending too much time with you."

"If things worked like that I would know exactly what to do in this situation," I mused.

"You don't naturally _know_ what to do Frank, when you really like someone you get nervous, you feel like a kid again, like a deer caught in the headlights. When you know that a person is really worth it you blank out Frank. That's what love is, learning to live again."

"Is that from a song?"

"No, made it all up by myself," he admitted uncomfortably.

"Man, your first date with Amber must've sucked even more than the wedding."

"Our wedding didn't suck!"

"I wasn't there, of course it sucked."

"Geez, let it go already."

"No," I said firmly. "I won't be happy until you do your fancy new age renewing your vows thing."

"New age? That went out of fashion centuries ago! Literally, centuries!"

"So did flying cars, but that doesn't mean it wasn't awesome!"

"Flying cars were a waste of time, and money," Pavel replied. "They caused more deaths in a week than regular cars in a year."

"They were still awesome god-dammit."

"You didn't even live through flying cars!"

"Neither did you," I returned.

"Ok, this conversation is devolving into a monster," Pavel grunted.

"Tell me about it," Montgomery shot at us. "You're scaring away costumers."

I looked all around me twice. The bar was as empty as it had been when I arrived. The only difference was that now I was here.

"Come on Cap, it's a slow night, that's got nothing to do with us."

"I know," he informed me. "I'm not stupid."

"By the way," Pavel chimed in. "Why is it a slow night? I'm surprised to see that none of the three amigos are here."

"Those little fuckers went to some fancy film festival or sumthin'."

"Everybody's going to that," Lys complained. "I would've been there if you'd let me out. And it's not a film festival."

"Whatever it is, it's bad for business. I'm not exactly rich here."

"What's this festival about anyways?" I asked Lys.

"It's hard to explain…it's like a town fair mixed up with several film festivals and a rave."

"Oh man, I totally could've taken her there," I exclaimed, slapping my forehead.

"Taken who?" Lys asked.

"His date," Pavel informed her.

"Frank. A date."

"Yeah," I said. "What's so hard to believe about that?"

"Dunno, you just don't seem the dating type."

"I don't understand how everyone manages to use that as an insult," I mumbled to myself.

While we could've gone to this festival or whatever it was, both Pavel and I were too lazy to actually stand up from our stools. The rest of the squad wasn't here so I assumed they were having fun pretending to be in their teens. The only difference is that all of them could buy alcohol, a terrible combination if you ask me, but then again, I am known for being something of a hypocrite.

At about one past midnight my phone rang. I groaned and pulled it out of my pocket. There was a text message on the screen. It was from Albaf.

"You getting this?" I asked Pavel.

"Yep," he replied. "Five hours she says?"

"Goddamn." I looked at Montgomery who just shrugged in turn. "Call Camilla," I ordered my phone. It beeped one time before she answered. "Cam, it's Frank, you get the message?"

"Yeah," she yelled into her own phone. I could hear the party noises in the background.

"Are you with-"

"I can't hear you!"

I rolled my eyes. "Are you with the guys?"

"No, but I can find them!"

"Never mind, I'll call 'em, just get out of there."

"Ok!"

"Drunk as fuck huh?" Pavel asked.

"Not that drunk, but pretty much, yeah. Call Arcangelo, Robert, and Naveen," I ordered the phone.

"Hey Sarge!" Lamberti cheered. "Get the message?"

"Yeah," I said.

"Hey Sarge," Rob joined the call."

"Sup," Naveen said.

"Everyone, I want you on the next train, bus, plane to New Alexandria, sober up, ok?"

"But Sarge…"

"Can it," I snapped. "We've never had our leave interrupted so quickly, this has to be important."

"Fine, fine," Lamberti conceded. "They'd better pay us extra for this."

I hung up and looked at Pavel. "What are you waiting for? Go fuck your wife silly."

"That'll take time," he warned.

"I'll do my best to stall," I promised him. "No go."

Pavel dashed towards the door and disappeared.

"I have literally never seen a human being move that fast," Montgomery mused.

"You should see him when jackals are taking potshots at his ass in the open."

"Oh, believe me," Montgomery muttered. "I know the feeling."

I reached into my pocket and placed some money on the counter. "You can give me free drinks with the change," I told the captain. I pulled out my phone and dialed Hanna's number. After ringing ten times it went straight to voicemail. "Hey, it's me. Had a great time today, really. Anyways, I'm just calling to tell you that I might have to cancel on our Tuesday date. I got a call from Albaf…you know what that means. If you don't hear from me it's probably because I deployed. Still, I hope it's not that, look forward to seeing you again." I hung up and sighed.

"You already had plans for a second date? Right after you finished your first?"

"Listen Lys, just because no one asks you on a second date doesn't mean I can't do the same."

She scoffed and left. I felt a little bad about the comment, but it's her fault for snooping around my business. Mine, not hers. I shoved my phone in my pocket and hailed a cab to the hotel. I packed my meager belongings and signed out, thanking the man at the reception desk for the good service. I felt good about myself for complimenting him. From there I grabbed a ride to the airport and took the first shuttle to New Alexandria. The sun was only beginning to rise when I arrived.

_This looks like it's gonna be a long day._

* * *

><p>"Is he usually this late?"<p>

"No, usually it's me who's late, ma'am."

"Don't get cheeky with me Castillo."

"Sorry ma'am, I didn't intend the comment to come across as cheeky."

Albaf took a deep breath and rubbed her temples. "He said he would be here five minutes ago."

"I'm sure he has a valid excuse."

Pavel chose that exact time to burst through the fancy mahogany double doors that made up the entrance to the room. He looked like he was out of breath and took a moment to take in some oxygen. As soon as he felt comfortable enough he stood up straight, saluted the two officers in the room and then remained at attention.

"At ease," Wilkins told him.

"Thank you, sir," he turned to Albaf. "Sorry ma'am, lots of inconveniences arose."

"Whatever," Albaf dismissed him. "Now, you all imagine why you're here. We have identified the cell responsible for the bombings of the Ushuaia factories on Mars."

That caught my attention.

"It was a small cell working in Sol. Intelligence confirms that they were part of the Freedom and Liberation Party."

Wilkins took it from there. "The cell was traced to a small building in Mare Erythraeum, Mars. A SWAT team surrounded the complex and breached in, but the cell was aware of the situation and launched an escape rocket."

"An escape rocket?" I asked, incredulous.

"Yes, homemade too. The blast killed all of the civilian police officers in the vicinity, allowing them to escape from the planet. Once they were in outer space they gunned away from Mars' gravity well and made a slipspace jump, no prowlers were in the vicinity and the rebels escaped. A month ago we got intelligence from one of our deep-cover operatives that the cell had been found out."

"Where?" Camilla asked.

"Fumirole," Commander Albaf replied.

"The cell has no idea that they're made. We can expect them to remain where they are for an indefinite amount of time."

"Fumirole is close," I thought out loud. "We can do this thing in less than two weeks."

"Why exactly we?" Robert asked. "Aren't there any Spec Ops teams in Fumirole?"

"Yes, but we can't trust local authorities on this. Fumirole is not exactly a hub for insurrectionist activity, but it is possible that the cell could be tipped and make a dash for it."

I nodded. "So, when do we ship out?"

"Immediately, the ONI prowler _Four Over Five_ is already waiting for you. Lieutenant Wilkins will accompany you for the mission as your commanding officer."

"Does Brooks know about this?" I asked."

"Yes, he's not happy about it, but he knows."

"Very well then ma'am," Wilkins said. "I do believe that's all."

"Yes, correct. Have a good one."

"Thank you ma'am," Wilkins replied good-naturedly. He turned to face us. "Follow me."

We left the room in Wilkins' wake. The man had a very long stride and left Snark and Camilla struggling to keep up with the rest of us longer-legged humans. The ONI lieutenant led us through the base until we emerged into a wide open space, perhaps three hundred meters long on each side. Sitting right in the middle was a prowler, the submarines of space. At least these things didn't look like giant sex toys. That was a plus.

"Why are we leaving all of a sudden?" Lamberti complained.

"We can't risk someone being tipped off," Pavel explained. "We leave and come back in a couple of days, don't make such a fuss about it."

"It's all a little excessive, isn't it?" Cam suggested.

"I agree," Grigori said in a low voice. "Never did like ONI."

I scoffed. "Funny you should say that."

The man had the decency to look flustered and divert his glance.

"Reaper, this is Commander Schulz, captain of the ship."

"Pleasure to meet you," Schulz said without much humor. "Ever been on a prowler before?"

I shook my head.

"Anybody else?"

Everybody shook their heads.

He groaned. "Well, there are a few set of rules to follow that are different form a regular UNSC ship. For starters-"

"Commander," Wilkins interrupted. "I am sure that this can wait, none of these men have slept in the past few hours and I am sure that they are eager to get some rest before being put into cryo."

Lamberti nodded furiously but said nothing.

"Fine," Schulz sighed. "Wilkins can take you to your quarters."

"Lieutenant, what about our weapons?" I asked.

"It has been taken care of," he replied vaguely.

"How exactly?" Snark pressed.

"All your weapons were moved from the _Inconvenience_."

"Great," I said without much feeling.

Wilkins stopped. "Here, there are four rooms, two bunks each. Work it out yourselves."

"Cam gets her own room," I said as soon as Wilkins turned the corner. "Pair up."

Pavel and I walked inside the closest room. The room itself was more cramped than our quarters back on board the _Inconvenience_, but that was not surprising. There were two beds built into the wall and two closets side to side. A small bathroom with a toilet and a shower were also present for our use. The closets held each three pairs of cargo pants of different sizes. I couldn't help but notice that they were Navy issue. There were also three gray shirts hanging, different sizes all. My jeans were starting to get uncomfortable, but I still had my own duffel bag with civilian clothes inside. I rummaged through it and cursed inwardly when nothing inside was of military origin, only a spare pair of boots.

"ONI prowler, huh?" Pavel mused. "Could our life get any weirder?"

"Well, tentacles could burst from the walls and try to get inside your holes."

"I'm not from eastern Asia," he dismissed.

"That's stereotyping," I told him. "Careful about that."

"Whatever."

"To answer your question, no, I don't think that there are many ways to get any weirder. Spartans, innies, assassinations, executions, experimental tech ship dismissed as senseless...what more could we possibly get?"

"Zombies?" Pavel suggested.

"Yeah, the last thing we need is zombies."

"Why, we could use them on the Covenant, I bet the little grunts would panic at the sight of them."

"They would also work against us," I reminded him. "They're like animals."

"Maybe if we used them appropriately, we could turn the covvies into zombies, have them eat themselves, bomb the shit out of what's left of them."

"How would that work?"

"Well, we could identify the zombie pathogen and send it into Covenant space in a ship emitting loud pings, as soon as the covvies locate it and take in the ship we release the pathogen through a spray can or some shit, letting the first domino fall. It would work better if we sent a couple hundred probes, have them all release the virus at the same time."

"Or we could just leave infected individuals for brutes to find, nice zombified steak."

"Damn brutes," Pavel growled. "One thing is actually hating us and fighting against us, but why the hell do they have to eat us?"

"They're monkeys mixed with rhinos," I said. "Add the mentality of a wolf and you've got yourself a pretty nifty combination."

Pavel hummed before sitting on his bed. "I guess that the zombified steak would work better than the probes. Elites aren't that stupid."

"Plus," I added. "Brutes could infect elites like it was nobody's business, bite their faces and shit."

"I'd pay to see that."

"You have no idea."

There was a few moments of silence as we both undressed and switched into our Navy clothing. It felt kind of weird not being in my usual all-blacks, but it wasn't as bad as I expected it to be. The gray shirt failed to identify me as a member of any branch, so I was cool with not being taken for a swabbie.

Pavel chuckled.

"What?"

"Nothing, funny thought."

"What?"

"Well," he started. "Maybe the zombies would get out of control and we would be forced to work with the Covenant to save our asses."

I stared at him. "Yeah, like that could ever happen."

"The zombies?"

"The working with the Covenant."

We looked at each other for a few seconds before we both started laughing uproariously. We laughed long and we laughed hard. It was about two minutes before either of us could calm down. It took a lot longer until the giggles completely subsided. I still laughed about the idea whenever I thought about it. So incredibly stupid.

"Hey Pavel," I said as soon as we were both calmed. "You never introduced me to baby Lavanya."

"Yeah," he apologized. "As soon as we're back I will, promise."

"Do I get to hold her."

"Only if you treat her with as much respect as you would your rifle."

"I'll treat her with as much respect as I use for my knife," I assured him. "Without the slashing and hacking around, of course."

"Ha-ha."

"No, I'm serious, I want to meet her." I suddenly made a face like I had just gotten the greatest idea ever. "Maybe I could catch Amber breastfeeding h-ow!" I rubbed the back of my head profusely while Pavel just chuckled to himself.

"She's my wife now, you've got to be more respectful, else I might try beating you up."

"You'd fail miserably."

"I'd still knock out a couple of your teeth."

"Two teeth against several broke bones?" I asked him. "Sounds like a bargain."

"Think they are recording us?" Pavel asked out of the blue.

"What?"

"I mean, do you think the room is bugged?"

I shrugged. "Dunno, it's not like we've revealed much about our lives other than our incredible capacity for creating stupid scenarios in our head. Oh, I know, talk about your sex life, that's bound to scare them off." This time I actually caught his hand and twisted his wrist when he tried to hit me.

"Lego, lego, lego!"

I let go of his hand as he requested and gave him a nasty kick in the ass. "Catch some sleep Pavs, we'll probably drop as soon as we're unfrozen, don't want to go to cryo while tired, do you?"

"Nah," he admitted. "I call top bunk."

"Suit yourself."

I was asleep in seconds.

* * *

><p><em>Thanks to Sniper Fodder for proof-reading.<em>

_Well, all I can say is that I'm genuinely sorry for the quality of this chapter and the lack of quote. I tried to do a decent filler chapter but couldn't come up with anything that was actually good. At least Frank finally got himself a date, and with a pretty medic too, could it get any more cliche? And at least I had fun while writing the zombie discussion. Oh, the irony!_

_Stay strong._

_-casquis_


	120. Lack of Tact

Chapter CXX: Lack of Tact

**June 16, 2544 (UNSC Calendar)/**

**UNSC **_**Four Over Five,**_** in orbit above Fumirole, Weyland System**

* * *

><p><em>"My mind is troubled, like a fountain stirred; and I myself see not the bottom of it."- William Shakespeare<em>

* * *

><p>Waking up was nothing unusual, gag, throw up, spit continuously for over ten minutes. Get up, make fun of Cam's naked body, joke about some of my squad mates' penis size. You know, the usual locker room stuff with a supermodel hot girl added into the mix just for kicks. Throw in a couple of stuck up swabbies believing themselves to be better than everyone else just because they're from the ONI prowler corps and you've got yourself a party.<p>

Not a good party, mind you, but a part nevertheless.

"Ok, I want everyone to get some chow," I ordered. "We're already above Fumirole, we'll be dropping any second now."

We had some quick lunch, ingesting large quantities of ONI food. I have to admit, it was a whole lot better than the crap that we were issued on board the _Inconvenience._ We had decent pasta with decent bologna sauce. Or something like that. The point is that it was decent. Drinks were drinks, you either got water, flavored water, or coke. That's the only soda that you could expect to find on any ship.

"Gunnery Sergeant," Wilkins' voice came from behind me. "Is your team ready?"

I looked around, everyone was done with their meals except for Grass, who was currently finishing the water in her glass. She swallowed and nodded. "We're good."

I did a double take when I saw that Wilkins was wearing some sort of armor, it was based off of the regular ODST design, but it was different enough for me to be surprised.

"Nice outfit, lieutenant," Angel complimented admiringly. "Why are you wearing it?"

The ONI officer crossed his arms over his chest and gave me _that _look. "I'm going down with you."

"What."

"One of your squad mates is unavailable."

"I was wondering where Caboose was," Pavel grunted.

"You," I pointed at him. "With me."

Pavel and I stood up abruptly, leaving behind a startled Lieutenant Wilkins. We made our way through the ship until we reached out unavailable squad mate's quarters. We opened the door to see him lying down on his bed, arms behind his head and his ever-present black cap covering his face.

"Caboose! What the fuck o you think you're doing."

The man didn't flail around and shake his limbs when I woke him up. He just shoved his hat back to cover his head and calmly sat up. "Hey Sarge."

"Don't hey Sarge me," I snapped. "Suit up."

"The doctor didn't clear me. Cryo sickness."

Pavel scoffed loudly. "You're not going down because of cryo sickness?"

I groaned angrily. "If you don't come down because of something as minor as cryo sickness then you're back to original unit," I threatened.

"Castillo," Wilkins warned.

"No," I defended myself. "This is my team, I get to oversee it and its members." I turned to Caboose. "What's it gonna be?"

"I guess I don't have much of a choice really," he shrugged.

"Not really," Pavel agreed.

Caboose looked like he would actually defy me and stick to his bed for a minute there. "Fine. Just keep in mind what the doctor said."

"The doctor my ass, now move along."

Caboose left and I nodded at Pavel to follow him down to the armory. Wilkins just leaned back against the wall and looked at me disapprovingly. "You should know better than to go against doctor's orders."

"I make a living out of doing just that, sir," I retorted. "Now what is this talk about joining us?"

"I'm going down to observe the mission. Don't worry, I will not interfere."

"Why the armor then?"

"It pays to be prepared."

The armor he was wearing was identical to the standard ODST armor from the waist down. His abdomen was covered by lighter pieces of metal than mine would be had I been fully armored. The chest piece was the same iconic one that we Helljumpers wore, but slightly smaller and a bit more angular. The gauntlets were the same, smaller and more angular. No pauldrons for him though.

"I assume you have the authority to override my orders," I stated.

"And I assume that you have the common sense not to go against me."

"I'm not stupid," I agreed. "Are we going stealth?" I asked, suddenly changing topics.

"Mission specs are up to you," he shrugged me off. "I'll just give you the briefing and you'll make the choice."

"So, what are the specs?"

"Let's wait until we're with the rest of the team, shall we?"

"You're the boss," I said.

The squad was already dressed up in the briefing room, with Caboose only just finishing putting on his lower-body armor. They all looked at me and then to him before redirecting their eyes to different points in the ceiling and walls. I rolled my eyes at them, all of us made for a very socially awkward group.

"Light up," Wilkins ordered the holo-table. The device promptly displayed a warehouse or something that looked exactly like a warehouse. "The terrorist cell is located here, satellite intel shows that there are thirty six enemy hostiles inside the building. They are clustered here, here, and here. These two are the living quarters from what we can tell and that last one is the equivalent of a recreational room. The warehouse belongs to a local electronics business. Over three quarters of the building are covered mostly by shelves with equipment."

"Entrances?" Bee asked.

"There are several," Wilkins admitted. "We've got the standard large sliding doors for entrance on the front and smaller ones on the sides. In addition to that there are two loading docks for trailers on this side and a landing pad on the top."

"Do the insurrectionists have any vehicles?" Caboose asked, fixing his shoulder armor to his suit.

"There are several civilian trucks parked in the vicinity. No aircraft has been sighted near the warehouse for over a month, we can assume that none will appear today."

"Show me the neighboring buildings," I ordered the holo-table. The map zoomed out and showed me that the rebel warehouse was located in a cluster of identical buildings near a port. In fact, we could jump into the water from the complex. "Ok, here's what. I want Snark and Angel posted here," I said, pointing at one of the neighboring warehouses. "Snark will provide sniper cover and Angel will spray through the walls if push comes to shove." I pointed to another warehouse. "Bee and Grass, you're here, watch out for any vehicles coming in, air or ground, if they are hostile I want you to take out the drivers and crew. Silently if possible."

"Should I take a DMR?" Grass asked me.

"Yes, you too Bee."

"Got it."

"Lieutenant, you're free to choose which of the two overwatch positions to join."

"Why thank you," he mocked.

"Caboose, Pavel, and I will go in. Simple clearing procedure, shouldn't find too much trouble. Silenced weapons only. The rest of you will keep watch with thermal gear."

"Simple," Pavel nodded. "Remember, eyes peeled at all times."

"Caboose, Pavel, I want you packing SMGs and suppressed pistols. Shotguns only in case of emergency. Silencers everyone."

They immediately set themselves to grabbing weapons. I myself grabbed one suppressed M7 and my own battle rifle. I packed heavy for SMG ammo and only a couple of magazines for the BR55. I had put my armor on during Wilkins' briefing, the weight of it felt comfortable on my shoulders.

"No drop bay," Bee pointed out. "How are we going in?"

"We drop by shuttle," Wilkins started. "There's a cargo truck waiting for us down there, we'll go in as regular civilians would."

"Is the truck lead covered?"

"What do you think?" Wilkins smirked knowingly.

"Sun's setting down there," I noted. "Let's get moving."

* * *

><p>Grass and Bumblebee had just flashed me from across the road. They were set up on the roof of their warehouse. Snark and Angel were good and ready to go too. Wilkins had opted to stick with the sniper and the Italian. Their HUD lights were all green and they seemed to be eager to get this shit started. The breaching squad, Pavel, Caboose and myself, were still inside the truck, parked right across from one of the loading docks in our target.<p>

"Why does it always have to be warehouses?" Pavel groaned.

"Plenty of room available, animosity when buying or renting. Relative isolation but proximity to cities or ports." Caboose kept a flat tone while giving out all the suggestions, but it was clear that he was annoyed to be here. Didn't seem sick though, a fact that didn't go unnoticed by Pavel.

"I thought you were sick," he taunted.

"Maybe the doc was wrong, Staff."

I loaded my SMG and noisily cocked the weapon, shutting both of them up before they got into a stealth insult match. They kept glaring at each other momentarily before loading their own weapons. I slung my battle rifle over my back after strapping the silencer on. The suppressed M7 would be undetectable to any sleeping innies and the suppressed pistol would be undetected to pretty much any innie. The BR55 could wake up someone if they were close, but I hoped that I didn't have to use it.

Pavel loaded his ACS and made sure that it was properly compacted before placing it on his back. Caboose cocked his M90 one-handed before sliding it behind his back. They were both carrying the M7Ss that I had told them to use.

"Tell Snark to start," Pavel suggested.

"Snark?"

"Oh-ho-ho," he chuckled. "I live for this part."

This was the tricky part. Snark had packed a foot-and-a-half long silencer for his SRS. The weapon was loud enough by itself, the silencer didn't do as much as I would have wanted to quiet the weapon, but it would serve its purpose. Snark cocked his weapon loudly, probably grinning as he did so. There were four sentries on the warehouse rooftop, one on each corner. Four shots rang out in as many seconds. I could just picture the bodies crumpling down, holes in their heads.

"Targets down," Snark confirmed. "All of them. Clean kills too, exemplary headshots if you ask me."

"Aren't snipers taught to fire at the chest or throat?" Grass asked.

"Yes, but I'm good enough to score easy headshots."

"So, just for kicks then?" Angel asked.

"Yup."

"Ok, go, go, go," I ordered. I climbed out the back of the trailer with Caboose and Pavel in my wake. There were two innie guards on the loading bay. They had machine pistols hanging across their chests. They looked to be a local weapon, I didn't have any idea of what they did. Not that I intended to give the men any chance to use them. One of them caught sight of the three of us, he received five rounds to the chest for his trouble. The other one went down with barely a sound before he even knew what was going on.

"We're going in," I called out. Well, calling out would be a stretch, we had our microphones off, we could only talk through radio.

Caboose opened the door quietly, stepping over one of the bodies. He waved for us to come in after him. We moved quietly through a walled-off section of the warehouse. It was mostly empty save for a few boxes full of datapad components. We cleared the room and emerged into the warehouse proper. Row upon row of shelves was what awaited us. All of them were full to the brim with something or other. They would serve as incredibly good cover if anything went wrong.

"Pavel, secure the main section, Caboose and I will clear the sleeping quarters."

"Can I take the main room?" Caboose requested.

"What, I thought you liked carving people up," Pavel teased.

"I like carving aliens up," he explained. "I'm uncomfortable with killing humans."

"Suit yourself," I shrugged. "Pavel, on me."

We walked across the main room with our weapons raised. We didn't take any detours and arrived on the other side with no incident. The door didn't have any locks on. I opened it slowly to walk inside a room full of double bunks. Every last one was occupied.

"You take the right, I take the left," I ordered. I holstered my submachine gun on my thigh and pulled out my pistol instead. The weapon barely made any noise when it fired, so it would be good for backup. I also drew my carving knife, the big one. My first victim looked to be in peaceful sleep. I pressed the tip of my knife against the back of his neck and shoved forward.

The man jerked and then stopped. The nerves connecting his body to his brain were severed. It would be a slow, albeit painless, death. The man would stop breathing, but his head would be completely aware of what was going on. Not a pleasant death, but fitting for a traitor. I repeated the process with the following two insurrectionists. They jerked equally and proceeded to die silently, a little blood coming out of their wounds. The fourth innie was a woman, not an ugly one either. I sighed inwardly as I pressed the knife against her vertebrae and pushed. She died without making a sound. In the third and final bunk I almost messed up. I killed the guy in the bottom bunk silently enough, but the one on the top bunk was asleep facing forward. When I leaned on his bed he woke up and caught sight of me. I punched his throat awkwardly, buying myself a second. My hand shot up towards his face and blocked his mouth just as my knife sliced deep into his throat. The scream died as the air powering it escaped short of its way out. Arterial spray splattered my chest, prompting me to jump backwards to avoid it.

"Clear," I groaned.

"Clear," Pavel agreed. "What happened?"

"Slip of the hand."

"Ouch."

"Only two guards," Caboose came in. "Took care of them."

"Good," I admitted. "We've got another dorm and two rooms to go."

Pavel and I repeated our little process with the other dorm. The sleeping innies didn't know what hit them, all of them died with their brain severed from their bodies. Painless deaths, it was more than they deserved.

"I'm waiting outside the room," Caboose said. "Intel pointed out to the leaders being here."

"Don't go in yet," I told him. "Wait for us."

We walked outside of the room and made to join Caboose. Suddenly my HUD shorted out and my skin felt like it was on fire. I had played enough electricity-based games to know what was going on. Before long I was on the floor, screaming in pain. Pavel collapsed next to me immediately afterwards. Before long the pain became too much for my body to bear, I know that my enhanced physiology could take more than Pavel's, but even I could't stay conscious more than thirty seconds. My vision slowly faded with the sound of voices in the back of my head.

* * *

><p>Ironically enough, another shock woke me up. I yelped rather embarrassingly when a metal rod pinched my neck. I tried to struggle up but my hands were firmly tied behind my back with something.<p>

"The fuck?" I groaned. "Fuck…"

"An accurate sentiment."

"Fuck you innie," I spat out. "What do you want?"

"Well, for starters I want you and your two men dead, but that can wait."

_Mistake number one._

One insurrectionist removed my helmet rather roughly before yanking me to my knees. Pavel and Caboose were both still lying on their sides, unconscious. I quickly assessed the situation, had my hands been untied I might've been able to pull off some crazy awesome badassery, but my hands were tied. Literally and metaphorically speaking.

I'm a funny guy, am I not?

"So, Helljumper," the innie in charge said in a mocking tone. The man could've passed unnoticed on most places on the world, nondescript appearance, nondescript clothing, average. I guess that's part of what made him such a good terrorist. "What is your goal here?"

"To kill every last one of you," I informed him.

"Well, I'd take it you realize that you failed."

"Well, most of your friends are dead," I shrugged him off. "So I'd say that we've done a pretty good job."

The man snarled at me and spat at my feet. "You're in no position to be cocky, grunt."

"Actually, I am," I replied. "There's enough explosives pointed at me to atomize everything inside this stupid little warehouse."

"You're bluffing," he stated.

I was, but he didn't know that. "You're willing to die for your cause, why shouldn't I be willing to die for mine."

The innie leader just rolled his eyes and clocked me good in the jaw. The punch was strong enough to knock me to the ground. It would leave a bruise. Despite the physical abuse I wasn't willing to let it stop me from being my usual charming self.

"Nice one."

"Thanks," he replied good-naturedly. Following that he pulled me back up and hit me again, this time right in the nose. I could feel the blood flowing out.

I moved my nose from side to side, testing it. It might've been broken. Scratch that, it was broken. "That one was a bit disappointing," I stated. "I could've broken your nose in more pieces with the same amount of force you used."

"I think it was pretty good myself," the insurrectionist complimented himself before hitting me again.

"Ow," I said truthfully.

"Wake the other two up," he ordered. "We're going to have a little fun."

"Are you going to tape this?" I asked. "I mean, this is only our first date." I crumpled sideways when one of the innie henchmen kneed me in the ribs. The ones that weren't titanium. I bet the man hurt his knee, because he was unarmored and I had state of the art body armor on. "Oh, so it's this kind of video."

"Are all Helljumpers as dumb as you?"

"I'm kind of a special case."

I cut my taunting when Pavel groaned. "Damn it."

"Got that right," I agreed.

Caboose grunted a few moments later. He shook his head a couple of times but otherwise said nothing. Smart man.

We were unceremoniously dragged to our feet and placed on three chairs. My hands were already tied behind my back, but they tied them to the chair too. It wasn't a flimsy wooden chair either, it was a full-blown, super-badass metal chair. Not that wooden chairs broke like they did in the movies. We were all promptly tied and Pavel and Caboose had their helmets removed. The innies set up a camera on a table in front of us. It was old fashioned too, no hover-cam.

"Is this the part where I give my name, rank, and number?" I asked. "Cause I'm legally bound to keep my name secret and I forgot my number."

This time they hit my face with the barrel of a pistol. I could feel blood falling from my brow.

"You'd have better luck hitting me with the handle," I taunted.

The next whipping broke my cheekbone.

"Ah fuck."

"There are times for everything Gunny," Pavel warned. He groaned when he was hit on the side of the head with the same pistol that had hit me.

"But I'm having so much fun!"

"Quiet!" Caboose urged.

"Helmets off," the leader ordered.

Caboose and Pavel were already helmet less.

"Um…" one of the innies said.

"Forget it, take off that guy's head cap."

Caboose struggled when they removed his coif-like hat, but otherwise remained quiet.

"Holy shit," the innie taking off the black cap said. "Sir."

"Well I'll be damned. Grigori Konstantinov."

_What._

"Wasn't it enough that you killed five of us when you left?" the leader asked. "You just had to come back."

"You what?" Pavel exclaimed. "You never told us that you had killed some of these assholes when you deserted."

"Oh, and sharing the story," the leader growled. "I'd never think you'd fall so far from grace."

"We are at war," Caboose started. "A war for survival."

"Aye, we are," the leader agreed. "We have been for a couple of centuries now."

"We're in war for humanity's survival!"

Caboose shut up when he was hit in the face five times in a row by one of the insurrectionists holding us captive. When I glanced at him I could see that his face was bleeding. His nose was gushing copious amounts of blood and his eyes would soon be swelling beyond recognition. What called my attention though, was the burnt in tattoo covering the top of his head. I couldn't quite make it out, but I was pretty sure that it had innie slogans or symbols.

_What the fuck?_

A bright light hit my face.

"The UNSC has once again failed," the innie leader started. I thought about interrupting it for the hell of it, but decided that one broken cheekbone was more than enough for me. "They sent these three men, their best special operators with the goal of assassinating every member of our group."

I wondered whether voicing out loud that we had almost succeeded on that matter.

"The UNSC and the UEG once again show their incompetence for anything more than hammer-type assaults. Their oppression knows no limits…"

To that both Pavel and I sighed after rolling our eyes. The man ignored us and went on for a few minutes more. I blew a raspberry at the camera while he went on and on about how we oppressed them and they were freedom fighters and all that. He wasn't that great a speaker. Not very original or engaging.

"And now," he started closing off. Instead of saying what he would do, he just pulled out a pistol from a holster. It was one of the older M6s, what surprised me the most was that it was even gold-plated. So much for the voice of austerity and equality for all humans, earthborn or not. He walked at me and raised the gun, aiming it right at my head. He cocked the pistol.

_Contingency plans, contingency plans…"_

"," I begged.

"What?" he groaned in annoyance.

_Mistake number two._

I shoved myself sideways, falling down to the floor with the chair.

"What the hell is tha-"

A sniper round straight through the neck. Cut him off. The other insurrectionists just stared at the remains of their leader's head splattered on the walls and floor before looking at Pavel and Caboose. Both of my squad mates did the same thing that I did and tossed themselves to the side. Three more round punctured the walls and a couple of lungs (see what I did there?).

"Damn," I grunted. I shuffled and rolled sideways until I banged on a table. The table where all of our weapons had been piled up inside. More rounds hit more innies through the walls before I managed to stand up on the my feet. I grabbed a knife and started sawing at my bonds. Soon enough my hands were free. I cut off the ropes that attached my feet to the chair and rolled my wrists and ankles before getting Pavel and Caboose out. All the insurrectionists were dead.

Well, all the innies in the room at least. One had been standing guard and came to see what the ruckus was all about. He immediately spotted me and aimed at my chest. I had already thrown my knife forward. It spun twice before embedding itself in the man's shoulder. The burst of gunfire hit everywhere but me or the other two ODSTs. I lunged forward and tackled the man to the floor. Once there I yanked the knife from his shoulder and slammed it down on his throat. More arterial spray splattered my face with blood.

"Fuck," I cursed.

I turned around. Pavel caught my eyes and nodded imperceptibly. I nodded back.

He let out a punch straight to Caboose's ear, the man was surprised by it and didn't react until after Pavel had pummeled his head with three more punches. My friend grabbed the ONI operative by the neck and got him in a vice grip. Caboose struggled and let out a couple of weak elbow strikes, but he had lost and he knew it.

I walked forward and delivered a kick straight at his stomach, causing him to bend over and Pavel slide backwards from the strength.

"What the fuck Grigori!" I yelled. With the statement I let out an uppercut, hitting him in the jaw. "A fucking innie!"

"I deserted, I left!"

"You were a fucking innie!" I repeated, delivering another punch at his face. "You fuck!"

Caboose continued trying to explain as I messed up his face more and more. Pavel, who normally would've been the voice of reason, remained impassive as I pounded the man. A man that a few minutes ago he would've taken a bullet for.

"I left them."

"When the fucking aliens showed up." Another punch to the nose, breaking it further. "Not before."

"No," he begged, spitting out blood.

"Yes!" I shot back, hitting him once more.

"No!"

"Yes!" I repeated, hitting him again.

"Castillo! That's enough!"

I turned around to see Wilkins looking at me. Snark and Angel were flanking him, unsure of what was going on.

"OH, I don't think so," I growled. I reached for a gun on the table and cocked the thing, aiming it at Caboose's chest.

"No, please!" he begged. Not so stoic now, huh.

"Castillo, enough!" Wilkins snapped. I could hear a gun being cocked and turned to see Wilkins aiming at my face. Snark and Angel hadn't missed a beat though, and had pointed both of their weapons at the man's helmeted head. He might've had a fancy helmet, but it wouldn't do much to protect him.

"We seem to be at an impasse," I stated.

Wilkins lowered his gun, but Angel and Snark didn't. I, in turn, raised my own weapon and aimed it at his face. "You too Wilkins? A fucking innie?"

"No," he said. I was inclined to believe it. "Mister Konstantinov, on the other hand…he participated in non-violent insurrectionist movements. According to him, defected when he was put on a terror mission. His dislike of killing humans overtook any and all political beliefs."

I turned around to look at Caboose. Pavel was now holding him up by the arms. The man was doubled over, blood pouring from his nose and his mouth. I had knocked out a few teeth. Served him right.

"Weak stomach doesn't forgive treason," I stated.

"No, but information on FLP leadership does. This man was one of the main reasons why we caught the masterminds of the Haven bombings."

I lowered my gun, if that was true then Caboose had truly defected.

"How can you trust him?" I asked.

"We can't, but his service record is exemplary and he has a chip implanted in his brain that will kill him if he were to go rogue."

I thought about it for one long minute. Nobody said anything. The only noise that could be heard was that of blood dripping from the insurrectionist's, former insurrectionist's, face and to the floor.

"Fine," I grunted.

"Frank," Pavel said simply.

"We'll deal with this later," I said.

Pavel shook his head and shrugged before tossing the unconscious body of Caboose into Wilkins' arms. We all walked out of there, leaving the ONI officer to carry the insurrectionist to the roof and for extraction.

* * *

><p>"Thanks for the help," I told Snark as Wilkins dragged Caboose to the <em>Four Over Five's<em> infirmary.

"No problem," he said absent-mindedly, staring at the bleeding Caboose.

"What took you so long?"

"When they shocked you they got some EMP thing up, blocking everything inside the warehouse from view."

"How'd you circumvent that?"

Snark looked uncomfortable at the question, scratching the back of his head. "I didn't. Caboose turned his helmet cam on before they took it off. The device mapped out the enemy's locations on my HUD."

"Still, that was some impressive marksmanship."

"By the way, how did you know when to duck?"

"Educated guess," I shrugged. Truly, I was confident that Snark or Grass had sights on the bad guys. We had been out for some time, so I assumed that they had positioned themselves somewhere where they could actually do something. We probably weren't out for long if it took so long for Snark to waste the insurrectionists. "Still, I owe you man. Were all the shots headshots?"

"Nah, aimed for center mass."

"Very professional," I complimented with a smile.

"You know me."

We both laughed loudly at the sheer hypocrisy coming out of his mouth before Grass gave us a queer look. Out of all of us she was the only one who had seemed alarmed by one of her friends being beaten half to death.

"Sarge, what happened down there," she asked, killing out laughter.

It was almost imperceptible, but Snark's body language changed ever so slightly so that he was facing me in a more confrontational manner. Angel and Bee were hanging further back, but took a couple of steps forward. If I had beaten a squad mate half to death I probably had a good reason for it, if I had a good reason for it then it concerned them directly.

I looked at my team, standing side by side and looking up at me expectantly. I realized that I had no idea of what I should say. They had the right to know that Caboose had been an insurrectionist, but on the other hand, if what Wilkins said was true and he had actually left behind the secessionist movement then it wasn't my place to reveal his dark secret.

"He should've told you," Schitzo said.

"Grigori," I started carefully, measuring my words. "He used to be an insurrectionist."

Angel spat out a barking laugh. He was the only one. "Wait, you're actually serious."

I nodded.

"And what?"

"I had just been apprehended by innies and my nose and cheekbone had just been broken," I growled. "What would be your first conclusion."

"Point taken," Grass nodded. "You should really get those things checked out."

I nodded and left towards the nearest bathroom, once inside I looked at my face. My nose was swollen and there was a cut right near the bridge where the skin had been broken. Blood wasn't gushing out of it anymore, but my mouth, chin, and throat were all covered with dried blood. My cheek was swollen and a huge black bruise was already forming up. In fact, it already covered my cheek entirely. The cheek was swollen up and forced my eye to close a little bit. The eye itself was looking bad, the whites were red from burst capillaries. Finally, there was a straight cut with a little blood dripping down from where I had been pistol-whipped.

"Maybe you should see the doctor," Pavel suggested from behind me.

"You too, your nose looks like shit." As I turned around I saw that my friend was holding up his datapad, the camera flicked and I stood dazed for a moment. "You sunnova bitch."

"And now it's saved everywhere. In fact, I think I'm sending this to everyone on board the _Inconvenience._ Oh, I already did."

"Even Darbinian?" I exclaimed.

"I'm not that much of an asshole. And I was exaggerating, just to the people that matter."

I shrugged, I was too tired to fight and my face was hurting. Look, I didn't mention it a couple of paragraphs ago because I was ashamed of it back then when I was writing that, but my face looked bad. I had always prided myself with being one good-looking motherfucker, but the multiple facial lesions didn't add to my good genetics. In fact, they made me look outright ugly. I wasn't used to that! At least it was only temporary.

The infirmary had been separated into two sections. One large one and a smaller one. Caboose was being attended to while Wilkins debriefed him or something. One doctor just looked me up and groaned in annoyance. "A pack of ice would do, ya know?"

"Thanks doc," I replied, "but I'd rather avoid the pain of natural healing."

"You know," he murmured, reaching into a drawer, "lots of people are rejecting medical treatment nowadays, refusing basic medic attention and choosing to let broken bones heal naturally."

"What kind of dumbass would do that?" Pavel asked.

"I know, right?" the doctor replied. "Still, it's good for business. When a bone heals improperly we have to break it again."

"That's cold," I said.

"Yeah, but this is a cold world we live in."

"We are in space," I reminded him.

I got a needle jabbed into my face with a whole lot more violence than needed for my troubles. I winced as whatever healing fluid was pumped into my cheek. The pain in my face increased. I groaned as he yanked the needle out. I barely had a second's worth of breath before he jabbed another one in the bridge of my nose. This time I cried out in pain.

"Don't struggle so much," he said sternly.

I could hear Pavel snickering behind me.

"And done," the doctor finished. "Don't move your face too much, let your muscles relax. Fluid will heal the hairline fracture on your cheek and fix your nose within the day. Ice for the swelling."

Boy was that doctor kind of dry.

"Now you, kid," he told Pavel. "Your nose looks pretty banged up."

"Oh, normally it's worse." I couldn't resist it, and my self-satisfied smile elicited a wave of pain from my cheek.

"Ouch!" Pavel yelped The needle thingy was jabbed violently into his skin and deep down. It seemed like a painful procedure (it was, I had just had the same procedure done on me).

"Well, off you go," the doctor groaned. "I want to take a nap."

Pavel and I did the most sensible thing that a pair of hardcore sons of bitches could do after going to the hospital to have painful healing procedures done. We went directly to the mess hall and demanded to be fed ice cream. It was a long standing tradition in UNSC ships to give soldiers that had been wounded in action a cone of ice cream, usually it was vanilla and this time was no exception. I found myself happily licking the creamy goodness.

"What are we going to do about this business?" Pavel asked after a while.

"I don't know."

"I don't want him on my team," Pavel insisted.

"If what Wilkins said is true then we have no reason to distrust him."

"He is an innie," he growled quietly.

"Was," I corrected. "He's at least earned our trust."

"By spying on us on ONI's behalf?"

I groaned loudly and lowered my ice cream hand. "Not that way, there is a good reason for him to be here, doesn't make me glad to admit it, but it's true. He hasn't done anything to indicate that he's still a rebel."

"I won't be responsible for when he backstabs us."

"He won't," I assured him.

Schitzo appeared behind Pavel and rubbed my friend's temples before sighing in resignation. "Are you sure?"

"Are you sure?" Pavel echoed.

"No, but he deserted before, they were about to kill him down there."

"How did they know we were there then?"

"One of them woke up?" I suggested. "I don't know, but if he had organized our capture then he'd have known better than to let us stay alive for so long. He's not an idiot."

"I never thought I'd see the day when you would defend Grigori Konstantinov."

I shrugged and started eating from my ice cream again. "Truth be told, me neither, but he stays on the team."

"Suit yourself Frank, but it's not a wise decision."

"Wisdom was never my strong point."

"That I know."

He went deathly quiet and looked over my shoulder. I turned around and saw that Grigori was walking through the mess hall, he had a sullen look and his eyes were downcast. It was almost a pitiful sight. Lieutenant Wilkins just looked at us in turn for a brief moment. The pause was enough to make Grigori look up. My eyes caught his and I gave him a short nod. He nodded back before he keept walking. His walk was different though, his shoulders looked broader and his eyes were fixed straight ahead.

I felt a hand on my shoulder and glanced in that direction. I almost cried out when I saw my uncle standing behind me, giving me a small smile and a nod. "You made the right choice."

Normally I would've been glad to see my dead uncle. Under the circumstances I was just fucking pissed at my own head for coming up with further hallucinations to torment me.

I was getting worse and there was nothing I could do about it.

* * *

><p><em>Thanks to Sniper Fodder for proof-reading this chapter.<em>

_Well, there it is, we finally know about Caboose's dark and troubled past. Don't worry if I didn't go into much detail, we'll find out more soon enough. On the other hand, we've got Frank, who's getting worse and worse up in the head, hence the quote. Pretty sweet quote in my opinion, say what you will about Shakespeare, but the Bard certainly knew what he was doing. One point of interest, Frank's been badly hurt a couple of times before, but I don't think that he had ever been actually beat up, that scene was actually pretty funny to write, especially the part where he tells the guy hitting him with the pistol how exactly he should hit him. Priceless, stupid, but priceless._

_I snuck in a little Alien/Prometheus reference there. Let's see if you notice it. I was pretty close to naming this chapter "Assholes and Revelations", but the rules don't allow me to, I'd still like to think of that as the official chapter name._

_Oh, and Snark is badass, shooting through walls and shit._

_Stay strong_

_-casquis_


	121. One of Those Days

Chapter CXXI: One of Those Days

**June 30, 2544 (UNSC Calendar)/**

**New Alexandria, Viery territory, Reach, Epsilon Eridani System**

* * *

><p>"<em>Sometimes it's just one of those days…"<em>

* * *

><p>"Punch, punch, punch," Schitzo groaned. "I get it, you want to distract yourself, but trust me, I'm not going to go away."<p>

I just punched the punching bag harder. Making it swing unevenly. I had been doing this for the past week. I'd get up and go to the gym, I wouldn't run or do weights or anything, I'd just go towards the punching bag and punch the hell out of it for as long as my body could take it. I know it wasn't healthy, but it was moderately good as anger management.

I finally let out a slightly more violent punch before taking a step back. My shirt was drenched in sweat and my face was completely wet, my hair was even stuck to my head from all the sweatiness. I grunted while taking deep breaths and wiped my face and hair with a towel I had brought with me. The gym regulars just ignored me. I had gotten a few weird looks the first time I came here, but now they were just mostly used to me. I went towards the showered and cleaned myself up before changing into more comfortable clothes. Cargo pants and a shirt. No one would have any trouble telling what I did for a living when they saw me.

"Pavel calling," my phone warned me.

I groaned loudly before reaching for the device. For some reason I had decided to buy this stupid retro thing instead of going with regular in-ear phones. "Yup?"

"You taking the rocket?"

"I'm about to," I replied.

"Good, Amber cooked and everything."

"Did she make those cupcakes?"

"No."

"Oh, tell her to make some man, they're good."

Pavel's voice went suddenly quiet. "I told her, but she just snapped at me. I thought that I had missed the worst of the mood swings during her pregnancy."

"You don't need to be pregnant to have mood swings…"

"Bro…"

"Fine, fine, sorry. I might be late, just fifteen minutes or so, don't worry too much about it."

"I'm worried about _you_." Pavel had a penchant for trying to be the team dad. It didn't quite work for him. "You've been acting weird. Well, weirder than usual ever since Fumirole."

"I'm fine," I assured him.

"You sure?" His voice went quiet once again. "Does killing people bother you? I mean, it's normal, you know?"

"It's not that," I said truthfully. I hadn't really thought about all those insurrectionists that I had killed in cold blood. Truth be told, normal people would have at least a little bit of regret, even if they knew that they did what they had to do. I knew why I did what I did and knew that it was a necessary thing for the greater good of humanity. So yeah, no nightmares for me. "I'm fine, nothing to worry about. At least not for now."

Pavel didn't seem so sure, but he knew better than to press the issue. "Ok, good, tell me how the rocket ride was, I've never ridden one."

"It's just a train Pavel," I said. "Like a maglev, nothing fancy."

"Train…you keep saying that word."

"Goodbye," I said, ending the conversation.

I had one thing to do before leaving New Alexandria. I hadn't called Marie ever since I last saw her here. I owed her at least an explanation or something. Well, letting her know that I was alive would've worked just fine too. Besides, I could get some free food from the restaurant she worked in.

The restaurant (I keep forgetting its name) was relatively crowded, it was a lunch time and several hotshot bankers and lawyers came here to get the most expensive food they could find. You'd think that paying off their student loans would be a priority.

"Frank!"

Crap.

"Hey Ems," I replied cheerfully, hugging her lightly. "How you been?"

"Good, better now." Yup, there was definitely a devilish grin on her pretty face.

"I'm just passing through," I explained. "Letting you know that I'm alive and all that."

"Just passing through? I can take my break in a couple of minutes."

I shook my head lightly. "That doesn't sound like a good idea."

"Oh," she took half a step back. "Who is she?"

"A medic," I admitted.

"How cliché," Marie noted. I was relieved when she said that with a hint of a smile on her face. She wasn't secretly in love with me or anything, apparently she really _did_ just think of me as a reliable sex buddy. Go figure. "Well, if it doesn't work out…"

"You'll be the first to know," I assured her. "I have some friends that I could introduce you to…"

"No, that would be weird, besides, I don't want that kind of reputation."

_Don't say anything now…_

"Fine, fine, suit yourself, "I smiled at her. "Hey, I gotta run, bye."

"Bye."

That was probably the most mature thing that had happened to me in a long while. No screaming, no cursing, no crying. I was surprised with the way that I had handled it too, didn't mess up. Marie was the real winner there, she took my rejection with grace. Not like she'd have much trouble finding someone to give her attention, with looks like those she probably had an army of admirers gunning for a spot in her bed. Hell, she was probably the main reason why the restaurant was so successful.

To the maglev station!

* * *

><p>"Hi Frank! Come on in!"<p>

I hugged Amber lightly and walked inside their apartment building. It was a decent place by most standards. Nothing fancy, but Amber seemed to have a knack for decoration, the place looked good. I ruffled through my hair, I don't know why I did it, but my longer hair seemed to be perfect for ruffling. In fact, I would've asked Hanna to ruffle it for me if I felt like she'd go with it.

"Where's the little critter?" I asked. "I was promised an audience with her."

"She's asleep," Amber explained.

Cue to the noises of a baby crying through the wall.

"Or not."

"Hey Frank," Pavel greeted me. His eyes had bags under them and he looked tired. My friend was used to going days without sleep while fighting and evading the Covenant, but somehow the wails of his firstborn child managed to break him. "Good to see you."

"You too," I replied. It had been a while since I had last seen Pavel. We lived together, worked together, and were usually together all the time. It was unusual if more than one week passed without seeing him. "So, where's Lavanya?"

"I'll get her," Pavel told Amber, kissing her on the cheek before disappearing into the room.

"Pavel tells me there were a few mishaps during your last top secret mission."

I smiled nervously. "You could say that." I still had a large scab covering the bridge of my nose and a smaller, fading scar on my cheek. To most people it would look like I had been in a fight.

"Must've been rough," she said, examining my healing injuries.

"Not that much," I shrugged. _Although it was certainly unexpected._

"Ah, there she is."

I turned around and saw my best friend with his daughter in his hands. The little kid was wrapped up in black ODST pajamas, making what was quite possibly the cutest sight in the history of ever. I immediately rushed towards him and all but yanked the infant from my friend's hands. Pavel made to complain but I shut him up. The little baby was cute, she looked like a baby should look like.

"Isn't she beautiful?" Pavel asked me with the biggest smile I had ever seen on his face.

"She takes after her mother," I replied. Amber giggled at that.

"Stop flirting with my wife."

"Sorry, it was meant as an insult to you, but I see your point."

I looked down at the bawling baby. I had to admit that the charm of the newborn girl was kind of lost by the drool and boogers covering half her face. She improved a little when her mother cleaned her, but the crying still made her somewhat annoying. I rocked her back and forth while Pavel smiled and shook his head. Eventually, with some help from Amber I managed to calm down the baby.

"She's missing a hat," I said. "To protect her little head."

"She must've taken it off," he shrugged. "Now let's have dinner."

"Sounds good," Amber agreed. "Sit down, will you? I'll go get the food."

"Sure you don't need any help?" Pavel asked.

"You sure don't offer your help when I ask for it," I grumbled.

"That's why he married me, Frank," Amber's voice came from the kitchen.

When she finally came back she was carrying a pair of pots with her. One of them had some sort of homemade stew and the other one was full of pasta. I got the honor of having the first dish because I was a guest. I didn't waste any time digging into it, no matter how rude it was for me to do so. I can't say I was sorry for it.

"Your cooking is amazing!" I exclaimed in surprise.

"I took some cooking courses while in college," she admitted modestly. I could tell that she was glad I had said that.

I dug into my pasta while picking at my stew. I could tell that Pavel was enjoying the food almost as much as I was. He had had at least a week to get used to the quality of the food. I had been living off of fast food joints and the occasional bar food. Not like bar food was much better than fast food joints. The change was remarkable, this woman could cook with the pros, at least that's my own personal humble opinion. I'm not going to describe the taste because I'm just going to make you hungry, but just know that even my messed up brain added a completely unnecessary choir of angels when I took the first bite.

"So," I spat through half-chewed pasta. "When is the little Klaus going to enter kindergarten?"

"She's not even one month old Frank," Pavel informed me.

"I know, but if you want her to have a good education you should start saving places in schools from early on."

"What would you know?"

"Actually, I think he's right," Amber said. "One of my friends told me that it's a good idea to save her a place."

"Huh," Pavel huffed. "What da ya know."

We kept talking about that for a while and eventually the topic deviated into politics. I wasn't that surprised by it, all conversations have a high percentage to go change topic into politics if they go on for long enough. Still, all of us had similar political opinions, so the dinner didn't turn into a terrible, terrible debate about who would make a better governor for the Viery territory. After a while, that topic died down too. All the food was gone and I was beginning to consider leaving to catch a few drinks in the Grenadier before going to sleep.

Amber looked at me and smiled. "So, I hear that you have finally gotten yourself a new girlfriend." Her tone was teasing in a way that showed that she meant no harm, but it still put me slightly off.

"She's not my girlfriend."

"How many times have you gone out?"

"Just once."

"Better ask her out again soon or she might get tired of waiting."

"I think that being deployed halfway across the galaxy is a good excuse."

"Aw, c'mon, Weyland isn't that far."

Pavel immediately looked down before grabbing his babbling infant child from the armpits and raising her over his head, avoiding looking at me all the time.

"Oh," Amber said, covering her mouth when she realized what she had done. "I'm sorry, but you know I won't tell."

"I know," I said. "I trust you, but these things have a way of getting out."

"Fine, next time I won't ask," she conceded.

"And Pavel won't tell."

"Fine," he mumbled.

"And I get to hold Lav."

"Lav?" Amber asked. "Isn't it a little bit soon for nicknames?"

I shrugged while Pavel passed me his child carefully. "Not really. You might as well tell her that I'm uncle Frank. I plan on spoiling this child."

"Why don't you spoil your own children?" Pavel suggested.

"I'm not sure that I'm parent material," I admitted. "I barely remember my dad and my uncle was never much of a dad. Sure, he raised me well enough, but for some things he just wasn't cut out for it."

"I'm sure you would do a great job at it," Amber said supportively. "Especially if you get a good wife."

"Whoa, marriage?"

"Well, if you're talking about kids…"

"I don't have to get married to get someone pregnant. Hell I don't have to get married to start a family."

Amber didn't seem fazed. I knew that she was a more traditional kind of girl, but at least she had an open mind. "Well, tell me about this new girlfriend of yours."

"Not my girlfriend," I reminded her. "What do you want to know."

"What does she look like?"

"Here, I've got a good picture."

"I don't think Amber wants to see that."

"Not _that_ kind of picture," I groaned, pulling my phone from my pocket. I tapped the screen and placed it on the floor before it displayed a full color hologram on the table. Lavanya seemed surprised by it and tried to grab it, but I pulled her back before she could topple from my arms.

"Wow," Amber nodded approvingly. "She's Navy?"

"Corpsman," I confirmed. "Medic for a platoon adjoined to our ship."

"She's pretty."

I nodded while looking at the picture. It was a good picture. I took it with my helmet cam. I had just returned from that Spartan mission, Hanna was sitting down on a chair talking to some friend. She was only wearing the lower half of her armor and a flak jacket over a gray tanktop. Her blonde hair was tied up in a ponytail with a couple of strands covering her face. I had caught her with a smile from some joke or other.

It looked almost like it was staged.

"She is," I agreed with Amber's statement. "She's perfect."

"Awwww!" Pavel exclaimed loudly. "Frankie!"

"Shut up," I told him while smiling. "You don't get to tease me because you didn't invite me to your wedding."

"I told him we should wait," Amber affirmed.

"What? You're the one that wanted to get married as soon as possible!"

"Aha!" I exclaimed loudly, standing up and pointing at Amber with one finger while holding Lavanya with my other hand. "So it was your fault."

"Don't startle Lavanya," Amber deflected.

"Do not change the topic woman! You didn't allow me to organize Pavel's bachelor party."

"And yet she had her own bachelorette party," Pavel said sadly.

"It was just dinner with some girlfriends."

"I bet they ordered sausage," I said slyly.

"Frank! You're disgusting!" Amber exclaimed. "And not in front of my daughter!"

I placed her on my lap and covered her ears with my hands. My hands were almost large enough to cover her whole head, prompting her to look side to side while cooing playfully. "I bet they ordered-"

"Ok, I get it," Pavel chuckled.

We talked some more about pretty much nothing. I got to hold the youngest member of the Klaus family the entire time I was there until I decided that it was time to leave. I stood up and gave Lavanya to Amber before giving her a goodbye kiss on the cheek. I shook Pavel's hand with a smile. I had fun, it had been a while since I had last had fun without being drunk. Granted, I had fun while on that date with Hanna, but I was nervous the whole while. This was pure, healthy fun.

"Bye," I said finally before walking out the door with my bag in my hand. I had my dirty gym clothes in one bag and the rest of my meager belongings in another one.

I picked up my bags and walked a couple of blocks. Eventually I stopped. My hotel was only a few blocks away. I dropped the bags and reached for my phone again. I stared at it before finally sighing deeply and dialing a number.

"Hello?"

"Sarge," Grigori's voice came in. "What do you want?"

"Are you in New Alexandria?"

"Uh, no, Esztergom."

"Great, meet me at the Grenadier in fifteen minutes, can you do that?"

"Um, sure."

"Good, I'll see you there."

I hung up and hailed down a taxi. I promptly signed in at a hotel, leaving my bags in my room before going back out and getting in another cab. I was really starting to get frustrated with the AI controlling these things. It seemed like it had taken to being exceedingly friendly with me. Not many people bother to talk to city-controlling AIs. Most of the time you just forget that they're there. Me, in my mentally impaired state, had a good time chatting with the cab. I only realized this after I had gotten off from the vehicle. The strip club made for a tempting detour as always, but I walked straight inside the bar.

"Hey Cap," I greeted Montgomery once I managed to shove all the drunk marines out of my way. "Has Grigori come in yet?"

"Caboose? Yeah, he got a table over the corner."

"Thanks, tell Lys to get us some beers, will ya?"

"Sure thing sonny."

I walked through the pub, elbowing my way as I went. It was pretty crowded to be this early, but I heard that a battle group had returned from 'patrol' so I assumed that the survivors were here to celebrate being alive. It pains me to say this, but the war made for great business for drinking establishments. I just hoped that no marine decided to get cocky with me. I'd hate to have a fight in Cap's establishment. After all, the man had been nothing but kind to me.

"Ah, there you are," I said, sitting down in a chair in front of Grigori. He just looked at me.

"What do you want."

"To talk," I said truthfully. "The face is looking better."

He scoffed. "Yeah, thanks."

I wasn't going to apologize, I was going to fix things. "Listen. Honestly, I don't care about your past. You could be a…troublemaker, but if you honestly left that behind I see no reason why I shouldn't trust you. Don't get me wrong, being an ONI spy means that I pretty much don't trust you by default, but I have no trouble fighting with you."

"Isn't that contradictory?"

"I don't trust you with anything outside of combat," I affirmed. "You're not my friend, I wouldn't invite you to my wedding, I wouldn't want to go to yours either. But when I'm kicking ass out there, I'm going to trust you with my life. I don't expect you to do the same, but-"

"Sarge," Grigori interrupted. "I'm not proud of my past, but I'm not going to change it. I'm not suddenly going to stop reporting to ONI either." He thanked Lys for the beers and took a swig from his drink. "If you want me on your team, that's your choice. I'll do my job like I'm supposed to."

I nodded. "That's all I wanted to here." I grabbed my beer and downed it in three long swigs before putting it down on the table. "Damn, that's good." I reached into my pocket and produced a couple of credit bills. "Here, drink's on me. Have some fun, maybe get laid. You look like you need to relax a little." With those wise words of advice I departed. I only stopped to say hi to the boys before leaving the Grenadier. A couple of guys were outside smoking cigarettes, I looked at them before glancing at the strip bar. I probably didn't want to go there. Well, one lap dance wouldn't hurt anybody, just my wallet.

Well, it ended up being more than one lap dance, but it was past midnight it meant that it was two for one Wednesday. A couple of hours later I realized that it would probably end bad for me if I stayed any longer. I thanked the girl, managing to look her in the eyes as I did so and left after paying her. I really should've stuck to my one lap dance goal. I went straight to my hotel room and face planted on my bed after taking off my shoes and my pants. I was asleep before I could get under the covers.

* * *

><p>Ah, morning.<p>

Fuck.

I was most certainly not a morning person. I could wake up at midnight after half an hour of sleep and be ready to kill aliens nonstop for a couple of days, but when I was on leave it was almost impossible for me to get up from my bed the moment I woke up. This time it was no different. I rolled around in bed while trying to fall asleep again, but since I was sleeping over the covers and the air conditioner hit me right in the neck I couldn't. In hindsight, it was probably for the best. Waking up early is good for you, I hear.

I had no plans for today, so I didn't bother with changing my clothing. Eventually I remembered Amber's advice and caller Hanna. My heart was beating wildly by the time she answered.

"Hello? Frank?"

"Hi Hanna," I greeted awkwardly. "Hey, I was just wondering if-"

"Of course, where?"

"Wow, so assertive, you're changing."

She giggled. "So are you."

"You like Italian food?"

"I love it," she replied.

Her eager reply made me smile. I was glad that nobody was seeing me grin like an idiot. "There's this nice little place that Amber recommended."

"Amber?"

"Pavel's wife," I explained.

"Oh, right."

"I'll send you the address."

"Why don't you just pick me up?"

"I'd love to," I replied. "I just don't have a car and they're not giving me my rental until tomorrow."

"How about I pick you up then?"

"Sounds good, dinner or lunch?"

"Dinner sounds good. I'll be by your hotel at about…nine?"

I shrugged and scratched my head. "I feel like I should be taking the lead in this conversation, but sure, that works for me."

I could hear the happiness in her voice. "I'll see you then."

"Until nine, bye."

"Bye."

I put the phone down and smiled proudly to myself. I only stopped until I caught my reflection on the mirror. I was wearing the same shirt that I had worn all day, it was badly stretched and looked and felt dirty. My underwear also looked baggy, I don't even know how that's even possible. The look of my bed hair only served to make me feel more like an idiot. I shrugged and turned on the shower, it took almost an hour before I finally managed to gain the willpower to get out from the awesomely awesome shower. If there's two things I liked about hotels it was their beds and their showers.

Now I only had over half a day to kill. Sure, I could get drunk as fuck and get relatively sober before Hanna even left her home, but that seemed like a bad idea. On the other hand, I could also spend the whole day sleeping and doing nothing, but I was what you'd call a man of action.

"What to do? What to do?" Schitzo asked me.

So to the gym it was.

I quickly packed a bag full of spare clothes and changed into my still dirty gym shorts and a new shirt. I wasted the day away with some running and a regular routine. I was extremely tired by the end of the routine, but still Schitzo persisted on fucking with me. I went towards the punching bag and really started getting into it. It was about fifteen minutes of consecutive punching before my arms finally gave way. I leaned against the sand-filled bag and slowly took deep breaths. After a couple of minutes a younger man approached me. He tapped me on the shoulder.

"What?" I asked tiredly.

"You look like you know something about boxing," he said.

"I do."

"My sparring partner stood me up, do you mind?"

"I can barely stand up," I groaned. "You want me to spar?"

"I'm in no hurry," the kid replied. "I'll get warmed up on the punching bag while you get some air back."

I groaned and looked at the clock on the wall nearest to me. I had a lot of time left to kill, and the kid in front of me didn't look like prize fighter material, so I guess I could spare the time. "Fine," I said. "Give me fifteen minutes."

The kid nodded and put on his boxing gloves before getting started on a light routine on the punching bag. I, on the other hand, just stood up and took deep breaths while drinking some water. I took advantage of my rest period and observed the kid. He was most certainly not as good as I was, not nearly, but he wasn't bad either. He was fast with his hands but lacked the footwork that marked a skilled fighter. Granted, he was working on the punching bag, but he barely moved his feet while punching.

"Ok," I announced. "I'm ready."

"Great," the kid said eagerly. "I'm Mike by the way." He offered me his gloved hand.

"Frank," I replied, bumping it. I reached for my gloves and put them on, they were still a little bit warm and sweaty from my work out on the punching bag, but otherwise had that comfortable feel that used gloves had.

"Mine are fourteen ounces," Mike explained. "Yours are sixteen, you sure that doesn't bother you?"

"Nah, it's fine," I said.

Mike laughed nervously. "Maybe I made the wrong decision approaching you."

I smiled. "Maybe you did."

"So, full force to the body and light taps on the head?"

"Sounds good," I agreed, climbing inside the boxing ring that the gym had. "How long do you want to make the rounds?"

"Two and a half minutes."

"Fine by me." I stood staring at the clock and ordered it to give us a two and a half minute timer. I walked to one corner and Mike did the same thing. The clock ringed loudly and we approached one another.

_This could be that 'absorbing blows' kind of practice_, I thought to myself.

We circled on another for a few seconds before I closed in. Mike let out a quick pair of jabs to keep me at bay, but I just leaned back to dodge them. He was certainly fast.

I was faster.

I delivered a quick counter and hit him in the ribs. He grunted in pain, making me realize that I hadn't toned myself down enough. At that point I walked closer to him, making myself a bigger target. He delivered a quick combination that I half-heartedly blocked with my forearms. I jabbed softly at his chest, not surprised when he blocked it. From that point on I purposely opened my guard so that Mike could get some punches in. He was fast enough to get punches in, but he lacked the waist movements that would deliver strength with the punch. He was the kind of guy that you'd say had natural talent but not training.

From that point on I mostly spun around the kid, trying to get him to work on his feet. He was very slow when it came to footwork, but he made up for it with the punching. Well, would've made up for it if I had been on his level, but unfortunately for him I was way beyond him. He landed a lot of punches, most of them were light ones, but there were a couple of good ones delivered to my stomach and kidneys. On the other hand, I barely delivered any punches. The few that I did were mostly to have him close his guard.

"Man," he huffed as soon as the round was over. "You're good."

"I do my best," I replied noncommittally.

"Whoof, where'd you learn?"

"Corps," I informed him.

"Huh, I guess I could've picked someone else for a sparring partner."

"Want to go for another round?" I suggested.

"Sure," he groaned. "Just tone your punches down, that first one almost knocked me out."

I raised my eyebrow. "Ok."

A second round started. This time I barely let out any punches, instead focusing on dodging as opposed to absorbing. I could tell that Mike was starting to get really frustrated by how he started just flailing his punches. Frankly, it just made it easier for me to dodge them, but I decided to give him a break and let a couple of them hit me. By the end of the round I was starting to get bored and Mike could barely stand on his feet.

"Man, that was a workout," he exclaimed.

I refrained from saying anything.

Mike, however, was unfettered. "Have you considered giving lessons or something?"

"Not really, don't have the time."

"You'd make a great teacher," he said. "The guy that teaches me probably couldn't take more than three rounds with you."

"Probably not," I agreed.

He chuckled loudly. "Well, are you going to be around here for long?"

"Don't know," I admitted. "I can get deployed any moment."

"Oh, well, I'm here on most days. I take it you wouldn't mind another sparring session?"

"Not at all," I replied. "Anyways, I gotta go, see you around."

"Ba-Bye."

I stood up stretched my arms before taking off my gloves. Mike was leaning against one of the corners, taking deep breaths. I smiled and turned my head so that he wouldn't see me. The fight had actually been more of a cooldown than a workout. Poor kid was way out of his league. At least he had helped kill some more time. The watches on the walls told me that it was about time for me to down a burger and a milkshake. Perhaps two burgers considering the workout I had just been through. Now, the only question left was which fast-food joint I would go to.

After some very careful consideration and balancing out pros versus cons I reached a consensus. Burger King had better burgers than McDonald's, but Carl's Jr had better burgers than BK. The only thing that McDonald's had going for it was their incredible fries. The shakes were pretty much the same everywhere else, so after careful consideration I concluded that what I really desired to ingest was a tasty hamburger as opposed to good fries. Under that conclusion it became obvious that the establishment that I wanted to go to was Carl's Jr.

And it was fucking delicious.

Finally I just stayed at the hotel room watching some old reruns on the television until Hanna came to pick me up. Surprisingly enough I wasn't as nervous as I should've been. I was already showered so all that was left to do was to change.

Look guys, I'm sorry that I'm describing step by step how I put on my socks and boots, but I'm currently really bored and that second date has been one of the highlights of my life, I just want you to know exactly how it went.

I answered my phone on the second ring. "Hey?"

"It's Hanna, I'm waiting outside."

"I'll be right down."

You don't really want me to describe all the smushy stuff, do ya?

Well, I'll be quick, I promise.

"You know," I said as soon as I climbed in the car. "I'm pretty sure it would've taken you twice as long to come down if I picked you up."

She chuckled. "What kind of girl would I be if I came right the moment you rang? I don't want to look desperate, do I?"

"Eager?" I suggested.

"Francisco! What kind of woman do you think I am?"

"A lovely one," I said cheekily. I smiled as she blushed once again and suggested that we should go.

"Did you make a reservation?"

"Crap, no, but we probably won't need one."

The line wasn't too bad, we just had to wait for fifteen minutes before we were led into a two person table. This restaurant was one of those fully automated ones. It was slightly weird because the robo-waiters were hanging from the ceiling as opposed to sliding on the floor. At least it made it nearly impossible to crash into them, that was some smart thinking.

"What are you going to order?" I asked after looking at the menu.

"I dunno, you suggested this place."

"I have never been here before," I admitted. "I don't know what's good."

"Ask a waiter."

"A robo-waiter?"

"Yeah…"

I shrugged. "Talking to machines."

"You talk to Eliza all the time," Hanna said. "What's the difference?"

"Liz is sentient, these are just computers."

"You have a point."

"You know, Esztergom's AI is also sentient," Schitzo offered. "Maybe you shouldn't be so rude to it."

"Hey, waiter," I hailed down one of the machines. "What's the best dish here?"

"The dish that has more approving comments is the ravioli a la bolognesa."

"I'll have one of those then, you?"

"I guess it's the same for me."

Well, the ravioli _were_ pretty damn good, but perhaps I could've ordered something else. Maybe a good old lasagna or something like that. At least the conversation was good. With Hanna it felt like I was actually doing the dating thing. Layla and I just sort of happened, we clicked. Marina was different, we had been great friends for a long while and knew each other pretty well, the next natural step was a relationship. With Hanna I actually got to know her likes and dislikes, I had to be careful not to say something she'd find offensive, I was on unknown ground. It was both scary and refreshing at the same time. I liked the girl. I really did.

"Oh, come on, you really going to pay?"

"Yes," I nodded. "My dad used to say that it was the gentlemany…gentlemanish? Well, what a gentleman was supposed to do."

"Really, I don't mind," she insisted.

"Come on," I smiled. "It's a free meal, what's so bad about that?"

"Fine, fine, if you insist."

I smiled to myself and confirmed that the restaurant could charge the meal to my bank account. I stopped myself from thanking the stupid robot thing and walked out of the restaurant. There was a pretty nice breeze flowing around.

"My house is just a couple of blocks away," she said. "Would you mind walking me there?"

"Of course not," I told her. "What about your car?"

"I'll have it drive itself there."

"You know, if it crashes you don't get insurance."

"Don't jinx it!"

"Sorry, sorry."

It was pretty cold for the season. My super-awesome, badass-looking, stylish coat was good protection from the cold for me. Hanna had a pretty nice sweater on too, so not to worry. That's why I was surprised when she snuggled up against me and put her arm through mine. I tensed at her touch, but immediately warmed up to it and let her lean on me.

You see, the difference between Esztergom and New Alexandria is the lights. New Alexandria is a much more modern city, filled with lights of many colors, a Technicolor spectacle. Esztergom is a bigger city, but takes up a whole lot of land, so the density isn't as high. Lighting wasn't as bright and flamboyant as New Alexandria, but there was a certain beauty to the old-fashioned look that this city had. The trees planted on every corner and little shrubs on the sidewalk certainly added to the ambience.

"We're here," Hanna said, stopping.

I looked straight up at the building. It was a nice looking building. "Nice place," I said.

"Thanks, I'm still paying it off."

I chuckled. "Well, it was a great night."

"Yeah it was," she said, looking down at the floor and then at me.

_This is it Frank, the moment of truth. You know she wants it, just look at how she's buying some time. _

_Don't flatter yourself man, play it safe, just give her a peck on the cheek and leave…_

_What the fuck are you talking about? Go in for the kill!_

Great, I didn't even need multiple personalities to argue with myself.

Well, Hanna had been uncharacteristically assertive the whole day, and for some reason (a good one) she didn't seem to want to stop now. Before I could even consider closing in she stood on her tiptoes and went in for the kill like a champ. She immediately pulled back and looked away. I just smiled and leaned into her, returning the kiss.

I didn't want to overstep my boundaries, so I stopped the kiss after a few seconds. I was practically beaming, she was too. Knowing that she had enjoyed it just made me feel better.

What the fuck is wrong with me? I'm supposed to be a strong man, no feelings and all that shit.

"Good night," she said with a big grin.

"You too."

She turned and walked inside the lobby, stopping one more time to wave goodbye again before climbing inside the elevator.

Suffice to say that I returned to my hotel room with one of the biggest smiles that I had had in my entire life.

* * *

><p><em>Thanks to Sniper Fodder for proof-reading this.<em>

_Who would've thought that one of those days would be one of those GOOD days. Gotta say, it was nice to write a chapter where everything went well for Frank, I'm also satisfied with how the dates went, writing it and keeping it a natural read. Well, I hope that i succeeded in that, at least in your eyes. I didn't write the beginnings of Frank's previous relationships so I was on unknown ground doing this. Also, a friend of mine really likes the Hanna/Frank pairing, so you'll be seeing a lot more of it or my friend will chew my head out. _

_As for the bad news, I'll be leaving on a five or six week vacation with no internet whatsoever tomorrow first thing. That means that I won't post anything for over a month. Don't despair, I might sneak in one chapter or two, but I will certainly write during the vacation, I'll come back with a mega bundle._

_Stay strong._

_-casquis_


	122. Deployment Notice

Chapter CXXII: Deployment Notice

**July 14, 2544 (UNSC Calendar)/**

**Esztergom (Ezhtergom), Viery Territory, Reach, Epsilon Eridani System**

* * *

><p><em>"All good things must come to an end."<em>

* * *

><p>A single message is all that it takes to drag you back to reality. I stood there, staring at my datapad's screen. For a couple of moments I had allowed myself to forget about everything. Everything but stuff that made me happy. But I was a soldier, my job was to fight for the greater good of humanity, it wasn't glamorous, but it was necessary. We had just gotten our notice of redeployment, it was only two days away. On July 16 we were to report to base to board the <em>Inconvenience<em>. I didn't know where we would be going yet, but it looked to be patrol duty if we weren't being called on an emergency.

A lot can happen during patrol duty, so we'd probably end up reinforcing some attacked colony or other. I sighed and let my head fall on the table, producing a loud clang. I groaned in annoyance, back to reality it was. At this point I would've been storming out of my room to get wasted in the Grenadier in celebration of my vacations ending, but I was already inside the Grenadier. The danger here was that I could easily get five times more wasted than I originally planned to.

Sigh.

"A double please," I asked Montgomery. "Make it a triple."

"Sure thing sonny," Cap smiled. "Not on the house."

"But I just got news that I'm redeploying."

"Ok, I'll sell it to you for the price of a double."

"Thanks Cap."

I put my datapad away in my bag and sighed deeply.

"What's the matter hon?" Lys asked.

"Wow, you've really got that waitress stereotype nailed, don't you?"

She shrugged. "That's what I get paid for."

I explained the situation to her in a couple of quick sentences. Lys worked in a military bar, so she understood what I was going through as well as any civilian ever would. For once, the feisty waitress just nodded understandingly instead of delivering a hurtful comment in her usual nonchalant way. I thanked her for her concern, she laughed at me when I said that, and I had no choice but to laugh at myself as well.

"Frank!"

I had to pull my phone away from my ear. "Yeah yeah, I just got the message."

Pavel's groan of annoyance was clearly audible through the speakers. "Man, I was hoping it was just a mistake."

"Apparently it's not."

"Hmmm, where are you?"

"Grenadier."

"I'll join you."

"Don't you have to take care of your daughter?"

"Well, I'll be damned," Pavel cursed. "Do you think Amber would take kindly to me leaving her with the neighbors?"

"She's your daughter!"

"I know, I know, I'm just kidding. I guess I'll have to settle for a beer."

"I'll drink for the both of us."

"That's what I'm worried about," he said before hanging up.

I smiled at my triple glass of whiskey. I could tell that it wasn't the usual cheap crap that I ordered. It might not have been premium quality, but it certainly was damn good. I shook my head as soon as I downed the alcohol. No matter how much damage I did to my liver I never did get used to the burn. If I had anything stronger than tequila I would look like a yawning dog for a few seconds before I got over the taste. And I hated tequila.

By the end of my stay at the Grenadier I was so wasted that I didn't even mind what I had as long as it was high-percentage alcohol.

* * *

><p>It seemed like lately some asshole just came a-knocking to wake me up from my hangover. It wasn't regular knocking either, it was full-blown wake up or I'll kick the door down and eat your face knocking. Kind of like when you're sleeping with a man's wife and didn't know that she was married and the husband starts banging at the door while screaming seven hells that he's going to murder his wife.<p>

But I wouldn't know about that.

"Fucking, fuck, fucking fuck," I assertively said.

I managed to get up and to the door without further swearing. I had half a mind to let out a punch as soon as I opened the door, but decided against it. As I opened the door I stumbled sideways, not only was I hungover, I was still piss drunk, I could barely stand on my feet. I propped myself up with my other arm and looked up at whoever had been knocking on the door. I immediately felt sorry for myself when I saw Hanna's head cocked to the side with one raised eyebrow. She wasn't exactly in the big leagues with Marina, but she could give a glare that could've been easily turned into a WMD. Was my face melting, was my- oh, that was just the alcohol feeling.

"Good morning," I said lamely.

"Pavel called me, told me that I should come here to punish you."

"What time is it?"

"Late," she replied, exasperated. "Are you all right?"

"Drunk, but otherwise I'm fine."

She walked below my arm and inside my room. "Put a shirt on. Better yet take off those pants and get a shower."

"Nursing me back to health Miss Lockley?" I laughed at my own sad joke. "Sorry, I'm still drunk."

The pretty girl that I would love to call my girlfriend grabbed me by the shoulders and turned me so that I was facing her. The look in her eyes wasn't one of anger or frustration. It was worse, it was one of disappointment. I avoided her eyes. Her voice was quiet. "If we're going to do…" she gestured at both of us with her arms, "us, you can't keep doing this."

I stumbled over my words before getting a clear idea on my mind. "You want me to give up drinking? For you?"

"Yes," she replied, there was steel in her voice.

I thought about it for perhaps one second. "I can do that."

Her grin was big when she leaned forward to kiss me. She immediately jumped back and started making faces and yuck noises. "Wow, you taste like…everything…" She looked at me quizzically before just shaking her head and smiling. "Just take a shower, I'll wait for you."

I closed the door behind me and turned on the tap, stepping inside the hot water after taking off my clothes.

"She's the one Sarge," Scarecrow said.

"Shut up," I replied.

"Sorry? You say something?" Hanna asked through the door.

"Nevermind, stubbed my toe!"

"Ok!"

_Damn…_

Scarecrow had disappeared when I turned to look at the door, but standing in his place was Schitzo. The man was creepy-looking half the time, standing inside the bathroom while watching me shower.

"Man, she wants you to give up drinking? Well, it is a reasonable thing to ask, but you wouldn't make it a year without drink."

Fuck him, fuck alcohol, I didn't need anything other than me to make it. I closed my eyes and started furiously rubbing shampoo all over my head. When someone said something to me I knew better than to listen to them, whether a friend or not. I know that it sounds childish, but when someone tells you the brutal truth to your face you know that they can be wrong, or lying. When your subconscious tells you the brutal truth you know that even you believe what it's saying.

"Do you want to toss me my clothes?" I asked through the door. "Or do you mind me walking out? In my own hotel room."

"We're dating." Hanna's voice seemed to give the impression that she was nervous. "I'll think about it like practice."

"Are you sure?" I teased. "Cause I can stay here, I mean, you'd miss one hell of a show, but at least you'll be able to be attracted to other men in the future."

"Ha-ha, if you're so sure of yourself why don't you walk out?"

Now I felt nervous. "Are you doing all reverse psychology on me? It won't work."

"Just walk out then."

"Want me to walk with my towel on or off?"

Ha-ha!

"You know what, I dare you to do that."

Uh-oh.

"Fine!"

"Fine!"

_Are we really doing this? Damn, I'm almost thirty for god's sake._

Shit, I'm almost thirty.

I walked out of the room with my towel on. I felt like teenager. I raised my eyebrows at her and she raised them back in challenge. I was probably still drunk and was a sucker for challenges, but at that time I decided that I wasn't going to be the one to back down. I placed my hands at the knot that kept my towel secured and, in one swift motion, pulled.

"Oh dear."

Hanna immediately turned a very dark shade of red, nearing on purple, before pointedly turning her head and looking away. I felt awkward for a moment before realizing that I had won this little standoff. Of course, I was still naked in front of a person that I had never been naked. I dare any of you to strip down in front of someone that you don't know. I'm willing to bet that none of you will feel entirely at home while doing that.

_Stupid me._

I quickly got dressed up in a fresh pair of undies and a semi-fresh pair of jeans. "You can open your eyes now."

"I never closed them."

I chuckled. "Fine, you can look now."

Hanna did turn around and tisked at me disapprovingly before laughing and covering her face with her hands. At that point she took a deep breath and blushed lightly again. "Put a shirt on," she ordered. "Let's get some food in your stomach, get you less drunk."

"Sounds good," I agreed. "But don't think that you'll get to tell me when I have to be dressed and not."

"It certainly won't be the other way around either."

"Seafood?"

"Seafood."

* * *

><p>I picked at my plate, pushing what was left of my salmon around. "It's not very good."<p>

"You're kidding me," Hanna deadpanned. "You're just drunk and don't feel like eating anything."

"You sure do know a lot about being hungover."

"A lot of the girls in the orphanage took to getting drunk. I was usually stuck taking care of them after they came back. Man, Saturday mornings were horrible for me. I woke up earlier than usual just to squeeze my roommates' stomachs and have them throw up in the toilets."

"Sounds like fun," I said, still trying to get the lack of appetite under control and finish my meal. "Never been drunk yourself?"

At this point Hanna decided to pointedly look around for a waiter and start asking for the check. She always did strike me as the kind of girl that didn't drink at parties and didn't take advantage of her looks.

"Come on, there's nothing wrong about it."

"I've never gotten drunk," she replied without looking at me.

"Wow, really?"

"M-hm."

"Ever had a drink?"

"Of course I've had alcohol before, I'm not twelve."

"Ok, ok." There are times when a man needs to know when to back off. This was one of those. Her tone indicated that I had hit a nerve. Or at the very least something that she didn't want to talk about.

"Are you going to finish your food?"

"Yes mom," I groaned before eating what was left of my salmon. It was pretty decent, but it wasn't nearly as good as some of the stuff that I had had back home, on Jericho VII. Over there most of the cuisine was based on ocean life, both local and imported varieties. Imagine going to one of those little islands south of Viery or in the Caribbean to have some seafood. All of the best dishes that you've tried don't compare to a simple piece of smoked tuna.

When I tried explaining that to Hanna I just received a raised eyebrow. She really took it seriously when Pavel told her that I deserved some sort of punishment. I hoped that this didn't extend to the bedroom. I mean, I _really_ hoped that I didn't have to end up wearing tight leather spandex.

"Check please," I asked a waiter. "I'm paying, it's the least I can do."

"You're probably right," she replied with a smile. I took it to mean that I was forgiven for interrupting her day and having her come and take care of my drunken self.

Man, I really liked this girl.

I spent the rest of the day just walking around the city, talking to Hanna. She had been living here for a large chunk of her life, so she knew certain places that most people didn't. Technically speaking I was a glorified tourist here, but I guess I could be considered an honorary citizen of Esztergom. She showed me several small marketplaces and a couple of backstreets filled with little cafés and restaurants. It was very much like a super special tour of the city. We even stopped a couple of times to grab snacks. Most of the locales were founded by the natives, descended from Hungarians. That in turn meant that most of the food here was of Hungarian origin. Boy, did they love their meats and sausages.

By the end of the day she had showed me a large portion of the city. I was impressed, I had never done the tourist thing in this town, but I had been renting hotel rooms in here for a few years now, I knew the main places and had passed the important landmarks more than once. It actually felt a little bit sad that I didn't know this place nearly as well as I should have. I could've been eating wonderful and cheap food for years if I had only tried to look. I had been living off of burgers and fast food for the past decade. Sigh.

"We have to report to base tomorrow morning," I reminded Hanna. "Maybe catch some sleep?"

"So early?"

"It is kind of early," I admitted.

Hanna stopped and turned around, pressing herself close to me. "I was planning on leaving for New Alexandria tonight, rent a room for the night and then report to base."

I winked twice. "You know, I could've saved myself a lot of trouble just by doing that…"

"You take the maglev?"

"Usually," she shrugged in reply.

"You wouldn't mind it if I rode the train with you, would you?" I let go of her hand and wrapped my arm around her waist, pulling her just a little bit closer to me.

"Of course not," Hanna replied in less than a heartbeat.

They say that you've got to take some risks every now and then, so I took one. "And would you mind if we shared the hotel room?" The look of uneasiness in her eyes immediately made me regret my decision to be so forward with her. "Of course, it's ok if you don't want to."

She nodded slowly. "I think it's better if we take this slowly."

I smiled at her. "For you, anything."

That incredibly sexy disarming smile of mine seemed to put her at ease, of course the comment didn't exactly hurt either. Hanna smiled broadly and planted a quick kiss on my lips before taking my hand again.

We took separate cabs to my hotel and her apartment respectively. I quickly packed my things and took off to the station. Of course it took Hanna almost half an hour to find and pack her BDUs, her fatigues, and her spare clothes. I usually left mine in my quarters, no need to bother myself with extra baggage. I was walking around with my military-issue duffel bag on a bench close by. My phone had this wonderful thing where you downloaded games, you could play them on the screen or on the hologram projector. It certainly served to kill time.

"Hey! Sorry!" Hanna was carrying two suitcases behind her. I have no idea how she managed to fit the suitcases inside the ship. Hell, I'd have a hard time

"No problem," I replied.

The next departing railcar to New Alexandria was supposed to come by in a few minutes, so we sat on a bench and talked. I said this before, but I really liked this part, getting to know her as a person. For example, I could tell you that when she was little she played the violin, still had one and practiced occasionally too. She also liked iced tea, windsurfing, and long walks on the beach. Oh, and she was allergic to strawberries.

Bummer, I love strawberries.

* * *

><p>"Stop knocking already!" I yelled while trying to jump inside my pants. For some reason Hanna believed that if you didn't arrive before everybody else arrived then you were a miserable failure. Well, perhaps that's putting it a bit strongly, but she did seem to be the kind of girl that took punctuality seriously. No wonder she had apologized so much when she arrived late at the maglev station yesterday.<p>

I slammed sideways into the floor when one of my feet got caught on its respective leg hole and I tripped over myself. I ended up feeling like an idiot with his pants around his knees. I quickly (and skillfully) finished putting on my pants before putting my shirt over my head. Totally badass, I know. Before I could say 'fuck you asshole' twice I was already dressed and out the door, bag on my shoulder.

"You've got tireless arms," I told Hanna as soon I opened the door. I didn't mean it as a double-entendre. Thankfully, she didn't see it as that or didn't bother to comment on it.

She did have a strong arm. I guess that's bonus points.

"Come on, we're going to be late," Hanna pleaded. I couldn't help but noticing that she had tied her hair up in a bun. Looked good on her.

"I'm a Helljumper and I'm barely keeping up with you," I groaned, putting on a black baseball cap with the letters ODST in white on it. It had the UNSC eagle logo on the side. I didn't even get it from the Corps, I had to buy it from a local store. Damn expensive too, at least it looked cool.

We got a cab to the base and quickly made our way through the sea of deploying and arriving marines and sailors. Back in the city I would've been taken for another dumbass who bought a cool cap just for kicks. In this base everyone knew that nobody would be stupid enough to sport ODST headwear unless he or she actually was a Shock Trooper. It was precisely because I was wearing that hat in particular that we made good time. Everybody knew better than to block me.

I was inside an Albatross with everything packed before long. I felt a strange sense of satisfaction for being so early. I usually felt smugly superior when arriving on the last shuttle, but being on one of the first ones made me feel like I actually was superior to everybody else.

That's probably not how I should've felt.

"I'll see you later," I told Hanna as soon as I stepped onto the _Inconvenience_ proper. "There's a couple of things that I have to take care of."

"Ok, good luck."

"Thanks."

First order of business when reporting back for duty was to leave my things in my room. My booze locker felt awfully empty without the extra liquid courage that I usually brought here. I don't even know why I skipped buying it, it's not like Hanna would've actually gone through my bag to check for everything. Still, I unpacked my civilian clothes and a pair of BDUs that I had shoved inside my duffel bag just in case. I quickly switched from my civilian clothing to a more military pair of black fatigues and an ODST t-shirt.

The ship was awfully empty, I usually arrived when everybody else had already gotten here. I didn't meet anybody when making my way towards Albaf's office. I knocked twice before walking in. Lieutenant Wilkins was sitting at his desk. He barely looked at me before gesturing for me to walk inside Albaf's office proper. I shrugged to myself and took the three steps needed to enter the lion's den.

"Wow," was the first word that came out of Albaf's mouth. "I'm impressed."

"Thank you ma'am," I said politely. "Why is that?"

"You're actually _early_."

I didn't have anything smart to say so I shrugged. "I'm just reporting for duty, Commander."

"Of course, and I'm not complaining about your earliness either, let's just get this over with." Albaf straightened up on her comfortable-looking chair and placed her hands over her desk. "Technically speaking this is strictly a patrol mission. Standard deal. We are going to be patrolling a mostly uninhabited subsector of Sector Two."

"Mostly?"

"There are a couple of colonies, three colonies proper, to be precise. Two of them are small mining settlements on moons, but there is a large colony in our patrol sector as well. Asilon."

I nodded. "I've heard of it."

"There have been reports of increased Covenant activity in that section of UNSC space. It is a possibility that we'll encounter enemies during the duration of our deployment."

I nodded. "Why is this important to me or my squad ma'am?"

"No reason really, it just occurred to me that you might want to be prepared for the eventuality of combat."

"Of course, thank you ma'am."

"One last thing," she said. "I don't want any trouble from your part. You _have_ been behaving more professionally, I would love to keep it that way."

"I'll do my best."

"I certainly hope so. Dismissed."

I saluted smartly and turned around to leave. I couldn't help but think that Albaf certainly looked pretty when she wasn't yelling at someone. I entertained the thought for a couple of minutes while making my way to my room. It turned out to be a pretty bad idea because I suddenly felt the need to release some tension but was too scared to do it. Pavel could walk in the room any second and the bathroom locks were nonexistent.

True enough, Pavel came barging in after a few hours, making me all the more frustrated for not taking advantage of my alone time. He was obviously angry at something. If I had to guess I'd say that he was angry at having to leave his family behind. It was funny, I was usually the one pissed at everyone when we got the call to deploy while Pavel told me to calm the hell down. With the positions reversed I had almost no idea on how to process.

"Hey," I said.

"You're early," Pavel noted. "What gives?"

"Hanna made me do it," I complained.

"I'm telling you man, you picked the right girl," he said with a smile. "Getting up early, sobering up. What's next? Being nice to strangers."

"I'm nice to strangers," I defended myself loudly.

"Provided they're female, Frank. We don't call you an asshole for nothing."

Well, that was certainly offensive. I ignored my friend while he was packing and instead grabbed my datapad to finish up my reading. I was beginning to get into those sword and magic fantasy novels. I got to admit, the idea of dragons is something that really makes me feel like a child. Just picture it, putting on comparatively crappy armor and grabbing a sword to fight a giant flying lizard that spits fire magically.

Surprisingly enough, I am not being sarcastic.

"Yevgeny said he'd be down in the mess hall. I'm going, wanna join me?"

"Sure," I replied, groaning as I got up from my bed. I groaned not from being tired, but from the pain in my back after sleeping on the soft hotel bed for so long.

Lieutenant Nezarian was picking at his meatballs when we arrived. I have no idea how he managed to get pasta and meatballs since they weren't serving it in the mess hall, but it certainly seemed a lot better than the vat-grown steak and rice that I got on my own platter. You'd think that an ODST would get better food than regulars.

"Hey Frank, Pavel," Yevgeny greeted happily. "How has leave treated you?"

"Well enough," Pavel grunted in reply.

I shrugged noncommittally. It was a little bit too early to talk about my 'blossoming' relationship with anybody other than Pavel, and by extension his wife. Yevgeny didn't seem to mind my lack of an answer and instead dug in on his pasta and meatballs. I had to suppress a groan when I saw him do that, my food was so incredibly bad that I couldn't help but want a bite of his. I wouldn't let him know that, I had self respect.

"Well," the Army Ranger started. "Moffat showed me a couple of tricks."

I turned to the private, who just looked self-satisfied at the comment. "What couple of tricks?"

"Oh, just a few ways to get a girl to sleep with you."

"I hardly think I need help with that," I replied cockily.

"And I'm married," Pavel chimed in. "Still, what kind of tricks?"

"It's almost surreal," Yevgeny interjected. "Subtle body language and certain phrases that have a…positive effect on all women."

I chuckled. "That's bull Yevgeny."

He raised an eyebrow and smiled at me, the gesture stretched the scar running across his jaw, giving him a weird appearance. "Watch this."

I turned around to see who the man was looking at and was startled to see that it was none other than my very own squadette. Camilla was walking towards our table, she was oblivious to the looks that her face and figure got from the marines and sailors that watched her walk by. She eventually stopped by our table to say hello to everyone before resuming her way to the food line.

"So?" I asked. "You barely said hi."

Yevgeny looked at Private Moffat who just smiled and nodded back. "Very well, now I shall delve into phase two of the plan."

I rolled my eyes, now they were just popping smoke to conceal their failures. Still, I remained quiet and paid attention to the man. He didn't seem to be moving any differently than he would've on a normal occasion, he was still eating like a regular person would, albeit slightly more messily, and he wasn't really doing anything that would call any attention to himself. By the time Camilla walked past us again I hadn't noticed anything unusual. I almost let my mouth open in shock when she stopped by to chat with Yevgeny a little. He didn't play it cool or aloof, he just replied politely and made conversation with her for a minute. By the time she left I could tell that she was blushing and smiling.

"Wow." Pavel was the first to talk. "I'm impressed. Haven't seen her blush since…since she joined the squad."

"Thank you, thank you," Moffat said, "I do my best."

"How exactly does that work?" I asked, curious. "You didn't do anything or say anything unusual."

"Secret of the trade Gunny," Moffat interrupted his lieutenant. "Maybe some other time I'll teach you how it works."

I shrugged, trying to appear uninterested. "I guess it'll have to do."

The two Rangers quickly switched topics and instead asked us what we did during leave. That was pretty much the standard conversation, much like the 'What did you do on vacations?' that every student was so familiar with. The two men had stayed in New Alexandria. I couldn't help but notice that Nezarian trusted the private. After his sergeant friend had his arm chopped off and had been forced to retire he had been slightly depressed. I guess that since Moffat was the only survivor from his last platoon he made some sort of connection with the man. I rarely saw them apart when they weren't in combat. And I had it under very good authority that none of them were into men.

"So, Frank, are you ready to try and beat up my whole platoon again?" Yevgeny asked.

"Only if you make them run fifty miles before."

He laughed loudly and Pavel chuckled into his drink. Moffat just looked worried that his lieutenant would actually go through with it. "Don't worry, I won't," he assured me. "That was enough embarrassment for them. Did you know that half of my men took up lessons to improve their close quarters training."

Private Moffat chuckled. "Hell, Claire Winchester took it as a personal offense when you beat her. I hear that she started taking lessons with some fancy teacher down in Reach. She was probably offended that you beat her in fair combat."

"Oh, come on, she has to know that it was hardly a fair fight, she was tired from half a marathon's worth of sprinting and I wasn't."

"She's very competitive," Nezarian assured me. "One dumbass started a killcount competition on her squad and she started complaining when she lost because she thought that grunts didn't count."

"They don't," Pavel said. "If they did my killcount would be in the thousands."

"Mine is, "Yevgeny assured him, "it pretty much has to be if you've lived as long as we have."

"I'm almost up two a hundred and ninety," Moffat said sadly. "I never get to man the machine guns."

I ignored the young soldier and redirected my attention to Nezarian. "Maybe you should start a little tournament or something, if Claire is going to win anyways you might as well do it. Boost her ego."

"Why would I do that?"

I shrugged. "Don't know."

"Nobody gets special treatment in my platoon, if she's pissed at the world then that's her own problem."

"Sometimes I forget that you're an officer," Pavel said thoughtfully.

"And a damn good one at that," Yevgeny reminded him. "Now, excuse me, I have a boxing tournament to organize."

"What, El-tee, really?"

"Hey, it's an amusing idea, watching large men get beat up by a good-looking woman is always entertaining."

"But Lieutenant," Moffat complained. "It's not fair if you don't fight."

"Wrong, it's not fair if I fight."

"Trust him on that," Pavel told him. "Well, I'm done, see you around." He stood up and gave us all a mock salute before leaving towards our room. I just shrugged and finished what was left of my crappy rice and steak.

"If you do go through with this tournament thing, please do let me know. I'm going to be putting some bets in."

"Sure thing, what do you recommend as a prize?"

I thought about it for a second. "You can start a pool, but it would be nice to give your men something to actually want to join the tournament…"

"I'll come up with something."

Moffat just groaned. Despite being a good officer Nezarian still enjoyed the pleasures of making fun of your underlings when they are beat up by a girl. Hell, everyone on the ship would enjoy seeing that. Perhaps it would be a good idea not to broadcast the tournament to everybody on the ship. It wouldn't do the Rangers any good to have everyone think of them as crappy fighters. Wait, Yevgeny would never expose his men like that…at least not more than once.

"You lied to me," I said suddenly.

"What?"

"You're not doing a tournament."

"Of course not. It took you long enough to catch up."

"Oh, thank God almighty," Moffat preached. "Thanks lieutenant."

"Anytime," Nezarian replied with a sly smile.

And I was getting so excited about it. Asshole.

* * *

><p><em>And I'm back. So is Frank by the way. Thanks to Sniper Fodder for proof-reading this chapter. Lazy quote, sue me.<em>


	123. Firsts and Thirds

_This Chapter, while not explicit, contains a lot more sexual material than every other one. Just giving you a fair warning in case you're offended by that_

Chapter CXXIII: Firsts and Thirds

**September 15, 2544 (UNSC Calendar)/two months later**

**UNSC **_**Inconvenience**_**, Omicron Ebur**

* * *

><p>"<em>Here's to new beginnings."<em>

* * *

><p>"Despite having been long abandoned by all the members of its working class, the specimen continues to work in its assigned station. It has been almost two weeks since the last member decided to forsake the required work in favor of more recreational activities. This specimen in particular is a great example of perseverance and dedication to its job. If only more individuals of the species behaved like her then the colony would be most successful."<p>

"Frank, will you please shut up?"

I chucked to myself and stood up from my chair. My butt was starting to hurt from having been sitting so long. "I'm sorry, while you make for a very distracting view I can only take not doing anything for so long."

Hanna was a sucker for flattery. I'm not saying that that's necessarily a bad thing, but everyone loves a little bit of ego puffing on occasion. She loved it as often as possible. "So, which part of me is interesting to look at?" I could tell that she was smiling even though her back was turned to me.

I took advantage of the brief distraction and got close to her. I used my right hand to grab her by the waist and pull her close while my left hand took the datapad from her hand and placed it away from her reach. I put my lips next to her ear. "All of you."

This time she giggled. "Come on Frank, I have to finish work…" She actually sounded a little bit regretful when saying that, it was a minor victory for Team Man.

"It's inventory," I complained, kissing her neck lightly. "Nobody cares about it, nobody else is doing it. And it changes every day."

"I know!" she exclaimed. So far she had been purring nicely as I kissed her neck, I'd have to be more careful if I wanted to pry her from the evil clutches of professionalism and un-procrastination. "That's exactly why I have to keep doing this. What if we're suddenly attacked?"

"A couple of band-aids aren't going to make a difference," I assured her. I looked around to make sure that nobody was watching. I had already gone way past the public displays of affection rule, but it could always be forgiven, what actually bothered me was that someone saw us kissing. Well, it didn't bother me, but Hanna was very private about those things. Once I confirmed that no one was hiding behind a curtain I did kiss my girlfriend.

"What if somebody sees?" she said after pushing me back. It had taken her at least five seconds to push me off, so I knew that her heart was not in it. Her flushed face and ragged breath were a pretty good indicator too.

"We're alone," I told her, "I checked."

I could hear the crowd roaring in approval when she turned completely around so that she was facing me. Pardon my language, but she was so fucking sexy. Sorry, I didn't mean to rub it in your face, but Pavel was right when he said that I hit the jackpot with her. She placed a strand of her blonde hair behind her ear and smiled at me with that shy smile of hers. "So, Gunnery Sergeant, what do you propose we do?"

"Well Corpsman Lockley," I started, grabbing her by the butt and lifting her onto the table. "We could lock the door."

Hanna had been turning down my not-so-subtle suggestions for mind-blowing sex for the past few weeks. She had been very assertive about it, telling me very clearly that she would allow my pee-pee into her hoo-hah when she felt like we were ready for that next step in the relationship. I had done my best to dissuade her from denying herself the best sex that she had had until that point by giving her puppy eyes and doing some light begging.

Yes, I just heavily implied I'm a rather gifted lover, deal with it.

Still, Hanna would not give in, she would stonewall my attempts to enjoy an evening of sexual pleasure with her but would leave subtle hints that it would happen soon enough. By this point I felt like I was ready to explode, if that didn't work then I'd have to go down on my knees and beg her for it. I had hoped that it wouldn't come down to that.

When she didn't immediately turn down my suggestion to lock the door and engage in some wanky sexual antics in one of the various supply rooms I felt like a choir of angels was singing a epic piece to my back. I was so sure of it that I had to stop myself from confirming the presence of beautiful angel ladies singing behind me. I was assured that it was just my imagination when Hanna didn't mention them.

"Here?" she asked me, her tone playful.

"Why not?" I replied, eager to get started. "No one will walk in on us and this table seems rather sturdy. I bet it can support both of our weight."

I almost groaned when she wrapped her legs around my waist and pulled me closer to her. To people that didn't know her Hanna might've looked like a socially awkward, shy, introverted girl, but once you got to know her she was the exact opposite. She also knew exactly which buttons to push on me. It probably helped that I had told her what my turn ons were in an attempt to get her to tell me hers. A complete failure by the way, I had only succeeded in making her tease me where it really hurt.

I wasn't really surprised when she looked down while keeping her eyes trained on mine. She then proceeded to bite her lower lip, pretending to be nervous. Well, at least it seemed like she pretended, because the whole action had only served to get me to fall for her even more. "I don't know Frank. What if someone knocks?"

"You ignore them until they decide to go away. Or bring a battering ram."

She chuckled quietly. Either she really had me pinned down or she was a natural at being cute and sexy at the same time. Few people can do that, you know? Except that chick from Crazy Stupid Love, but you probably have no idea what the hell I'm talking about. She proceeded to glance at the door quickly before looking back at me. She said nothing for a moment, just looking at me. I took advantage of the moment to stare deep into her beautiful eyes. I must've been smiling, because she seemed to notice.

"I still don't know." One of her hands was now rubbing the back of my head in the most distracting way. Ever since I had come out of cryo I had let my hair grow, I didn't have it as long as I did before coming in, but I was certainly past regulation by now. That made the scalp massage all the more pleasurable. Usually she made an actual worried face when I suggested sex, now she was just playing it, pouting and making cute faces while pretending to look worriedly at the door.

She was teasing, on purpose. Well, two could play that game.

I leaned in close to her, looking at her lips. She stopped playing hard to catch and immediately tilted her head slightly sideways, parting her lips ever so slightly. I closed in on her and let my lips brush against hers. AS soon as I felt the contact I pulled slightly back, forcing her to lean forward a little bit. Next time she closed in I yanked my head back more, forcing her to lean further into me. I got away with it one more time before she yanked my head into hers and started doing an incredible display of tongue gymnastics. Down my throat.

Not being one to look a gift horse in the mouth I grabbed the back of her head and secured her tightly against me. I was kissing her fiercely, with reckless abandon, she returned the kiss in kind, pulling me close to her. I could feel myself getting more desperate by the second. I wasn't the only one. Hanna's hand had moved from my neck to my cheek, the other one had gone off to the most distracting places. I knew then that that was my cue to start attacking.

"Fire everything!" Schitzo cried wildly from somewhere behind.

I ignored him completely, this was the best moment of my life, I wasn't going to let a measly multiple personality disorder ruin it. I used my free hand to push aside anything that might make for an uncomfortable distraction off the table. I smiled to myself as I heard clattering on the floor. I didn't even bother to check what I had broken, I pushed her further down the table, keeping myself upright with one hand while pulling Hanna against me with the other hand. I had to lean back a little bit when she took off my shirt. As soon as it fell to the floor I attacked her again. And by attack I mean attacked. She muttered something sounding like 'Ow' when her back slammed against the wall, but otherwise said nothing. I reached down and unbuttoned the top button of her pants.

"Wait, we haven't even locked the door yet," she said, looking slightly alarmed.

I smiled reassuringly at her. "Frankly my dear, I don't give a damn."

* * *

><p>"Wow," I said, complimenting Hanna's but as she wiggled into her pants.<p>

"Frank," she chastised lightly. "You're…"

"Handsome? Sexy? An extraordinarily gifted lover?"

"…a lost cause," she finished with a laugh.

I chuckled and stepped into my discarded boxers. "Well, at least they're not mutually exclusive." I put on my underwear and reached for my pants. For some reason my clothes were discarded all over the small supply room even though we had stuck to the table. Well, mostly stuck to the table. By the time she was dressed anybody could tell that she had just had a little fun. Her face was still flushed, she had a smile on her face, and there was also that thing that people called afterglow. One could just tell if you took a moment to look closely. With the looks Hanna had, more than a couple of Marines and soldiers would indeed be looking closely.

I could only imagined how I looked.

"Stop grinning!" she berated me. "You look like a little kid watching his first porno."

"Curious expression you chose there."

Hanna huffed and shook her head before fixing her shirt and rubbing her back. She really was in no position to say anything, judging from the grin on her face she had had a pretty good time too. Yes, yes, I was extremely satisfied with myself. Little Frank should've been proud of himself too, but his head wasn't exactly made for thinking, so he would never know the great deeds that he had done. With me it was the other way around, I would know what I had done but the world never would, Little Frank wouldn't know what he did, but the world would.

After I was done putting on my clothes I sat down on the chair that I had been using before. My mind had been too clouded during the act, but this sturdy piece of furniture would've made for great support. Of course, Hanna probably wouldn't have enjoyed having to do all the work, but I digress. Hanna had just finished tying her boots and sighed happily while looking at me. I smiled back at her and she just shook her head while laughing. I invited her to my lap and suppressed a victory cry when she sat across my legs, holding my neck so that she wouldn't slip off.

"That was great," I told her. "Honestly."

She seemed delighted with the flattery, delighted enough to return the compliment. I felt like a little kid, but I was happy that she had enjoyed it as much as I had. We just sat there for a few moments, Hanna took the opportunity to kiss my jaw and neck lightly while I just enjoyed the afterglow that I just mentioned. After a while of just sitting there Hanna finally stopped and looked me right in the eyes.

"Frank, there's something I've got to confess."

"Don't tell me that you used to be a dude," I joked.

"Why, would that turn you on?" she asked innocently.

I shook my head violently.

"Well, then you'd be glad to know that I was born with the plumbing that I have right now." She giggled a little bit at her own eloquence before she went on. "Well, I…uh, it had been a long while since I had sex," she started. "So I was nervous that I wouldn't be everything that you imagined our first time."

"You were great," I assured her. "Went above and beyond the call of booty." Yes, yes, I stole that from a twelve year-old.

She slapped me lightly on the chest before resuming her speech. "As I was saying, thanks by the way."

"No problem."

"Anyways, I asked a friend for tips." She saw my dumbstruck expression and continued rapidly. "A girl friend of course," she said. "Well, she helped out on some things."

"Who'd you ask?"

"Emily."

"Hardwick?"

"Yeah."

"Why did you ask her?"

She raised her eyebrow. "I thought it was obvious." When I pressed her for an answer she sighed and went on. "Because you had been sleeping with her for a while before going out with me."

"Wait, you knew?!"

"Girls talk Frank, of course I knew."

"Wow," I chuckled nervously. I don't know what to say. Thank her for me."

"I'll be sure to let her know that her lessons were successful."

"What exactly did the…lessons consist of?"

"Well," Hanna said in a sultry tone. "First she would assume the role of a man, then she would guide my hand to- they were mostly verbal you idiot."

"Well, now I can't get that idea out of my head."

"Interesting," she mused, putting her finger on her cheek and adopting a pensive expression. After a moment of me staring she laughed. "She also said that you were quite open about your fantasies. A little leading on might be nice, but never allow him to think that it could happen, I think those were her words."

"Ouch, I think she messed up on that lesson."

"Frank…" she warned.

"Sorry, sorry. I'd never do anything to make you uncomfortable."

"Oh Frank," she said dramatically, leaning backwards and putting her wrist to her forehead. "Whatever would I do without you?"

"Suffer a lot," I suggested. "By the way, you don't have to answer if you don't want to, but I'm curious. How long has it been since…well, you know. Since you last had sex."

Hanna actually jumped from my lap, narrowly avoiding hitting my crotch. She had gone from all lovey dovey to blushed and shifty-eyed. "Why do you ask?"

"I'm just curious," I repeated.

"I-uh-ah-I," she stumbled over her words. "It's been…"

"Two years?" I suggested, purposely giving a high number.

"A little bit more than that," she admitted.

I had to hold back a smile of incredulity. I don't think that I was entirely successful, because she took a step back and crossed her arms angrily. "I told you that you didn't have to answer," I reminded her softly.

"Fine."

"So, how much longer than two years?"

"Hmm," she grumbled.

"Three?" I asked, leaning back on my chair, stretching my hands behind my back. I smiled when I felt my spine crack.

"More like twenty-four years."

I fell from my chair.

Next thing I know I'm rubbing my head and Hanna is standing over me, a hurt expression on her face. Normally she would've done the right thing and kneeled next to me to ask me if I was ok, but she had obviously been hurt by my laughing at her. Me falling off of a chair probably didn't hurt matters either.

"So?" she asked me.

"So you really were a…"

"Virgin," she finished. "I know, what you're going to say, but you're twenty four!"

"Actually, I was going to say that I could hardly believe someone as beautiful as you hadn't caught the eye of some lucky guy."

"Nice save," she said, helping me stand up. She had gone from angry to her usual shy self in record time. I have to admit that I was surprised by her revelation, but why the hell would I care, Emily's tips had obviously paid off. In fact, I found it a little flattering that she had trusted me enough to be her first. I really have to compliment her on her choice. She hardly could've done any better.

"Twenty four years, then," I mused. "Well, we'd better make up for it."

My beautiful girlfriend was at a loss of words, instead blushing yet again and smiling nervously. "Now? What if-"

"We're a little bit past that," I suggested. I took two steps towards her, grabbing her cheek and lightly caressing it. "We could always go to my room," I suggested. "If you're uncomfortable doing it here."

"Yes," she managed out, she seemed to be very happy with my idea. "Let's go."

* * *

><p>For the first time in my life, <em>I <em>had been the one that was hard pressed to keep up. Normally I was the one that kept pressing for second and third rounds, but twenty something years of repressed sexual urges usually beat perviness. Not that I was about to complain, I might've been slightly dehydrated and extremely tired, but I wouldn't have changed it for anything in the world. Pavel was the only one with a right to complain, he was rather pissed that he was locked out of the room for more than a few hours.

"Just what the hell are you doing in there?" he asked loudly after knocking on the door.

"Making up for lost time," I whispered in Hanna's ear. She giggled and slapped my arm before standing up from the bed and reaching for her clothes, giving me a gratuitous view of her rather well-sculpted posterior while bending down.

"Wait a second Pavel," I said. "I'll be right out."

I had to patiently wait while Hanna put her clothes on. Take note that she took her time while doing that and essentially did what you would consider a reverse-striptease. I enjoyed the view while Pavel no doubt stood with his eyes staring at the room's door in anger. I actually did feel a little bit guilty for the guy, when he had been going out with Chloe he had taken his time when he hooked up with her. I had found myself on the side that he was in quite a few times before. It was not something that I enjoyed, so I assumed that Pavel wouldn't be too happy about it.

"All done," Hanna announced, slapping her hands as if to dust them off.

"Unlock door," I commanded.

Pavel barged in with a look of annoyance in his face. He paused to look at Hanna and then glared at me. I was still naked under the sheets, so I didn't stand up to lead Hanna out the door. Instead she just straightened her spine and looked at Pavel.

"Pavel," she said neutrally, sparing a quick nod to him.

My friend nodded in reply, clasping his hands behind his back. "Corpsman."

I laughed loudly, breaking the tension between them slightly. They both chuckled a little bit before Hanna walked out the door.

As soon as the doors slid close Pavel looked at me. "What the fuck Frank?"

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry!"

"Well sorry doesn't cut it. We agreed that we wouldn't let each other locked out of the room anymore."

"That was years ago man!" I said in my defense. "Besides, you locked me out plenty of times after we agreed on that."

"Never for three fucking hours!"

Full stop. "Wait, it was three hours?"

"At least."

"Man, time flies when you're having fun."

"Listen Frankie, I'm really happy for you, trust me, I am, but if you ever lock me out again I'll enlist that Ranger chick to bust in and kick your ass."

"She'd probably enjoy a little physical contact with me," I admitted.

"Yeah," Pavel huffed. "As long as that physical contact involved her shoving a foot up your asshole."

"Maybe you're right."

"Damn right I am."

I counted to ten. "You ok now?"

"Yeah, yeah. It's just not fair that you get to have sex."

"Well, you knew what you were getting into when you got married," I told him. "Besides, you could always ask Amber to give you a free pass."

He laughed without much humor. "You know, that works both ways."

"An open relationship might solve that problem."

"What?" he exclaimed. "That would mean that-"

"She'd have the right to mess around with other guys, but you'd also get to jump in bed with anyone you wanted."

"You're sick."

"Hey, I'm only trying to help."

Pavel hadn't taken my idea very well, deciding to walk around angrily while muttering in Polish. I decided to ignore him and grab a pair of shorts to put on. At least Pavel had the decency to turn around and let me change in peace. He still kept cursing in Polish, though. I probably wouldn't have liked what he had to say about me and my stupid ideas. I was only trying to help, if sex is what he needed then an open relationship made perfect sense. Well, I have to admit, the thought of an asshole getting wonky donky with Hanna didn't exactly seem like a good one to me.

"You're right, it's a pretty bad idea."

"Right?!"

"I just said that…" I mumbled. "Anyways, what time is it?"

"You can go to sleep," Pavel sighed. "We don't have any guard duty until next week."

"Thank God," I preached. "All the more sex for me!"

"Keep going an I'll punch you."

"Fine, fine," I apologized. "Just let me catch a nap."

"Aight. Have a good one."

I was so tired from all that strenuous physical activity that I had just partaken in that I fell asleep within a couple of minutes. The aforementioned physical activity also allowed itself to some very vivid dreams. Ah, it had been a pretty sweet day.

* * *

><p>Next day started out pretty normally. After my nap I had dinner and then went to sleep. I actually needed to pop a couple of sleeping pills to fall asleep, but after that I slept like a rock. Pavel and I both reported for our breakfast. You see, the ship has so many crewmembers and a huge complement, so the mess hall is barely big enough to hold all of us. That's the main reason why we took turns. That and the men and women on night watch had to sleep until later. There were only a couple of situations when the ship could be deserted. One was when everyone was in cryo, the other one was during a couple of "nighttime" hours.<p>

Breakfast was…ok, I guess. Pavel's dear wife (who would most certainly never be in an open relationship) could cook some mean deviled eggs. I had eaten them a few times during our last leave. That and my late uncle was a master of Mexican food. huevos divorciados, chilaquiles, tacos de chilorio. Oh dear, my mouth's starting to water just from thinking about it. And there I was, eating powdered eggs with fake bacon. At least you couldn't go wrong with bacon.

"This shit sucks," Pavel grunted.

I drank a healthy swig from my coffee. It was marginally better than the battlefield coffee rations. That in turn meant that it was one step below shit in taste. What it did succeed in was removing every single ounce of sleepiness from me. "Compared to the things your wife cooks, of course this is going to taste like shit. She spoils you, you know."

"Damn right she does, I love it when she cooks for me."

"Does she make good waffles?" I asked.

"What?"

"I mean, are her waffles better than mine?"

Ok, I don't mean to brag, but there's probably a need for a quick parenthesis in the narration. I had once decided to make Belgian waffles on a whim. It happened maybe three or four years ago. Pavel was still a bachelor and I was either already broken up with Marina or on a break with her, I don't remember. Anyways, I bought a used waffle maker thingy and all the ingredients necessary, I am pretty sure that I was drunk while I bought everything. When I returned I started making the waffles, following a recipe form a cookbook that somebody had left in my hotel room. I mixed the ingredients and poured a little bit of Jack into the mix before making them.

Pavel had called them the best goddamned waffles in existence. He hadn't retracted that comment next time I made them, or the one after that, or every single following time. Funny, I could barely cook myself a steak but somehow managed to make the best goddamned waffles in existence.

Ok, the waffle story parenthesis is over.

"Her waffles are excellent."

"The most excellent in existence?"

"Shut up."

_Yes! Victory, I shall tell his espoused of this event!_

"Oh! I heard yesterday that they finally found my new armor in the cargo rooms."

"Good for you buddy," Pavel said. "I really wouldn't want you to jump with black-painted Marine armor."

"You make a fine point Pavel." I finished what was left of bacon and wiped my fingers on the napkin. "You know, I'm going to check it out. Maybe get a paint job on it."

"Carve stuff on your knives?"

"You know, I've been meaning to do that," I told him. "Can't come up with anything though."

"Latin always works."

I laughed loudly. "Wise words my friend. Enjoy your breakfast."

Pavel just grunted while looking at the meal in question with disgust. I didn't really have anything interesting to do other then pick out my own eyes for a long while, so I headed straight for the hangar. Most of the Pelicans were clamped to the ceiling, but one in particular was firmly tied down to the floor of the hangar. It had red streaks across its hull. I smiled when I saw it. That ship and its predecessor held many fond memories for me, most of them involved getting pulled from a hotzone at the last possible moment, others involved more intimate one-on-one stuff, but those were a thing of the past.

Marina was on her back on a skateboard-like device underneath the nose of her craft. She had a multitool in one hand and a datapad in the other.

"Trouble?"

"Morning Frank," she groaned from underneath. "Ammo feed keeps jamming, the thing fixes itself, but I'm trying to optimize the damned machine."

"What's the problem?" I asked.

"Well, I have no idea, that's why it's so frustrating, the scans show nothing."

"Uh-huh, have you thought that maybe it's the ammo belts?"

There was a loud clang as she hit her head on the bottom of the Pelican. She grunted in pain before sliding out from underneath the craft. "You know, you always did have an ability to make me feel stupid."

I smiled at her when I realized she wasn't actually serious. "Well, there's nothing that you can do to fix that."

"I wish I could."

I shrugged. "How have you been?"

"Well," she replied dryly. She wasn't being outright rude, and neither was I, that was progress. Actually, that was some serious progress. "Well enough at least."

"I'm glad to hear that."

"And I've heard that you finally snagged another blonde."

"As pretty as you," I replied. It was the perfect reply, I didn't insult Marina's looks and also had plausible deniability in case that comment got out. In retrospect I could've simply remained quiet or given her a smile.

"Smooth," Marina complimented. "So, Francisco, what do you need?"

"Can't I just come down to have a chat with a friend?"

"I think that we're both a little bit beyond that."

"Ouch, I'm hurt," I said. "But you're right, I need that laser writing, carving tool thing of yours and some paint."

"What color?"

"Can I lend that multi-nozzle pistol thing?"

"You know, all these things that you want have names, you know?"

"Well, I don't know their names."

"Consider that a lesson in modesty."

"I've been getting plenty of those lately." I scratched my back and frowned a little. "So, can I get them?"

"Sure, they're in that crate locker over…there. You know the password."

I smiled. "Thanks. I'll get them back to you later."

"Have fun. I know that I'll be staring at the bottom of my Lamb for several hours before I find something interesting to do."

"Would you have preferred to try and find something wrong with the ammo feed for hours and then just have to slap yourself on the head because you realized that you had been missing the most obvious solution to a problem that isn't really that-"

"Ok, enough," she interrupted. "Don't get wound up."

"Yeah, sorry."

I moved to the locker that she had pointed to and unlocked it. I chuckled quietly to myself when I did, she always did use the same password for anything. Inside were several tools, I had no idea what most of them would be used for, but some of them looked pointy enough to be used as torture devices. Hell, for all I knew some of them were. There were even a couple of steel bars in there, Marina was a master of five things: smithing, mechanics, flying, sex, and making milkshakes. She could make a sharp machete of top-notch quality, fix an engine, fly a Hornet as if it was a Longsword, and…well, you can figure out the last two on your own.

It was a short walk to the drop bay. There was a large crate sitting on one of the tables in there. I smiled when I saw the note on top.

"Here's to new beginnings," I read out loud to myself. "Let's hope this one lasts longer than the last one."

I have no idea who wrote down the little note, but it certainly made my day. Someone in the equipment area of this ship (or down in Reach) had a pretty neat sense of humor. If they sent little notes like this one when replacing equipment then a lot of the grunts in here would live happier lives. I know that mine would certainly be, even if just a little. I pocketed the note and drew my knife, I cut the bindings that closed the box and opened it.

The first thing that drew my attention was the color of the visor. When I had put in a request for another piece of armor I had asked for the visor to be colored black. It was mostly a whim on mine, but the non-reflective surface of the color meant that it was less likely to bounce off light. Sure, I could've gone for navy blue if I wanted actual stealth during the night, but it's not nearly as awesome as black. I pulled the helmet from its foam covering and looked at it. It was painted in the typical black that us Helljumpers loved so much. It had the letters UNSC in the bottom back. They were carved into the helmet as well as painted white. It was a little reminder to us lowly grunts to never forget who gave us our lifelines.

I placed the helmet next to the crate and proceeded to pull out other pieces of armor. I couldn't help but notice the ever-so-slight changes in design. There were minor detail changes in the overall shape of the chest piece and the gauntlets were noticeably slimmer. Those pesky elbow spikes had been removed too. I can't say that it was a vastly improved version of the previous ODST armor, but I can say that it certainly had an advantage on the aesthetic.

"The ODST BDU Mk. XIV is…" I trailed off as I skimmed through the user's manual I knew everything about the armor and more. The only thing that I paid attention to was the section outlining changes from the previous versions. Once I was satisfied that there was nothing important that I was missing I sat down on a chair and grabbed the helmet. I looked at it carefully and mentally imagined what the best color to go with it would be. My very first ODST armor had been painted a deep shade of red. Unfortunately, I had lost it when the _Count Me In_ went down. My replacement suit I had never really gotten around to painting it, but right now I had free time and was pretty excited about painting this one.

I had the paint pistol analyze the helmet with its scanner and secured it to the sides of my new headpiece. It stood there for a moment before launching a spray of crimson paint from the center of my helmet's forehead all the way to the back, stopping right above the UNSC letters. It stood there for a second, immobile, and then it whirred some more and came forward again. It gave the helmet a few coatings of paint and then beeped, telling me that everything was done.

And I didn't even need to raise a finger.

I placed the helmet to the side and considered exactly what I should carve into it. It had to be something badass and cool-sounding. My Latin was a little bit rusty, but Pavel was on the right track when he suggested that I used that dead language for phrases. It did carry a certain ominous feeling to it. The first two phrases that I came up with were: _Aetas ex fortium_ and _Diem ex deis_, meaning 'Age of the mighty/strong' and 'Day of the gods' respectively. Both were certainly impressive sounding and would've been a rather fitting motto for a military regiment or battalion. Well, in this situation it was me who had come up with them. Next thing I came up with was a little something that my uncle had drilled into my mind. _Aut viam inveniam aut faciam, _I will either find a way or make one. That was as badass a phrase as I had ever heard. The next that I came up with wasn't so bad either, _Nulli secundus_, meaning 'Second to none'. I might be coming off as a little cocky, but as a Helljumper, and a damn good one at that, I think I had the right to use that one.

Suddenly ideas started flooding my mind. _Canes bellum, Semper invicta,_ and more. I then found myself not looking for one awesome phrase, but instead eliminating them. It was a while before I finally decided on what I was going to go with my armor and the carving thingy. I placed my left forearm armor on the table and attached the carving thingy to it. I tapped the phrase that I wanted and selected roman-style letters on the screen. I set up the thing so that it would run from the nook of my elbow to just above my wrist.

It would've been pretty neat to tattoo those same words on my arm proper, but Scarecrow had already secured a place in my left forearm. When the carving was done I pulled out the machine thingy and examined the result on the armor. Carved on it were the words _Nulli secundus_. Every time I was in a firing stance I would be able to see the phrase on the bottom of my forearm. It would do for some nice inspiration if I ever needed some.

_Phase one complete._

Next up came the pretentious Latin motto that would go on my helmet. This one was a little harder. I could choose pretty much anything that sounded badass. In the end it was a close finish between making my own way or it being my age. I decided to honor my uncle's memory. I placed the laser carving thingy on the 'jaw' section of my helmet behind the flashlights, that way the phrase would reach from the equivalent of halfway up my jaw to behind my ear.

"Find a way or make one…cute."

"Shut up man, let him be."

Schitzo and Scarecrow delved into a brutal argument behind my back, but I mostly ignored them as I examined my handiwork. This time I had chosen the standard UNSC font for the phrase. I had also picked smaller letter size. The laser carver had done its job exemplarily, leaving a little bit of smoke behind as I removed it from my helmet.

"Aut viam inveniam aut faciam."

"Find a way or make one."

"And she knows Latin!" I exclaimed after getting over my surprise. "You surprised me."

Hanna approached from behind. "Eliza told me that you were here."

"That's violation of privacy Liz," I said out loud. "You hear me."

"I hear you Francisco." The AI manifested her avatar on the holotable, full color and human size, something unusual for her.

"Damn Liz, have you been working out?"

"I did lose a couple of pounds now that you mention it." The hologram grabbed her belly through her shirt and squeezed. "I've also been exercising a little bit, those routines really helped make my stomach flat."

"It shows," I joked. "Must've been tiring."

"Oh, you have no idea."

Both of us laughed out loud. I noticed that Hanna didn't join in the laughing. "You're not very familiar with Liz, are you?"

"Can't say I am," she admitted.

"You'll get used to her," I assured. "You pretty much have to."

"I'll leave you two alone," Eliza said after a pause. "Well, as alone as I can leave you." The hologram disappeared with a flash and an evil laugh. I was left rubbing my eyes for a minute after that, the flashy spots on my eyes wouldn't disappear for a long time after that.

"New armor?" Hanna asked.

"Yup, adding some final touches."

"Nice quotes," she said. "But what's wrong with English?"

"Someone once said that Latin makes everything sound more awesome."

"Oh really? Who said that?"

"I believe it was me, but I might be mistaken."

Hanna laughed at that and sat down next to me. "What else are you going to add?"

"I'm going to paint the chest pad."

"No streaks on the boots or shoulders?"

"These shoulders I'm going to discard," I told her. "I have better quality ones that are still serviceable, those are too scratched to paint. But I like your idea about painting a stripe on the boots."

"Just on one, asymmetric stuff is cool."

"I'm not going to dispute your taste in art."

A couple of minutes later my right boot had a red line covering the front of it and my chest pad in crimson red. I have to admit that it did look pretty awesome, but there was something with the armor. I couldn't quite make out what it was while I examined the laid out pieces. I paced around them, wondering just what seemed to be off about them. They were too…

"Clean," Hanna said. "It looks to shiny."

"That's exactly it, you're right."

"I usually am."

"That's _my_ phrase."

"You're a pretty bad influence."

"And yet I was hoping it was the other way around."

We chatted for another couple of minutes while we literally watched paint dry. Eventually I realized that I had failed to ask a vital question. "Why were you looking for me anyways?"

"Is it so hard to believe that I just wanted to see my boyfriend?"

"Clingy much?"

She slapped me on the arm. "Fine, fine. I was wondering if you'd like to have dinner today."

"Dinner?" I stumbled over what to say. "Where? In the officer's club or something?"

"No, I've got something prepared. Something pretty romantic."

"I thought I was the one supposed to do the grand romantic gestures."

"It is a modern age we live in."

"Indeed."

Hanna examined the armor. "It looks good, intimidating. Get a couple of scratches on it and even brutes will be running away from you."

"I don't doubt it," I chuckled.

"Well, I gotta go, I'll see you at…2000 hours, ship time."

"Where?"

"Mess hall."

I can't say that I wasn't surprised. The mess hall didn't exactly scream romantic. "Ok…I'll see you there."

"Looking forward to it." Yup, she definitely had the sultry tone nailed down. I'd have to thank Emily for this sometime soon. Maybe a box of chocolates… Hanna leaned in close to me and gave me a quick kiss on the lips. Yup, she definitely had the seduction techniques down. As soon as she walked out the door I let myself relax, I placed my hands behind my head and allowed myself to smile. New armor, new girlfriend, hot sex, what else could a man like me wish for?

* * *

><p>So here I was, down the mess hall, the only human being in the entire room. I was dressed in cargos and a t-shirt. Yes, I hadn't even bothered with a change of clothes, but I wasn't about to put on my dress uniform for a casual dinner with a chance of wild sex afterwards. So far it seemed like I was being stood up. I sighed and rocked myself on my feet, thrusting my butt or crotch respectively to keep balance. After a few seconds I got really into it, rocking back and forth and shifting my body so that I wouldn't have to move my feet from the ground.<p>

"Frank!"

I stopped moving and adopted a dignified posture. "Beloved girlfriend."

"Sometimes I worry about you…well, it doesn't matter. Come on, follow me."

"You? I'll follow you anywhere."

Hanna just rolled her eyes and grabbed my hand. She led me into…into the kitchen. I looked at her quizzically, noticing that she had set up a small folding table with some folding chairs. No candles, you couldn't find those anywhere on the ship. I once tried to snag a couple for Layla, but they didn't stack up on romantic scented candles. Bummer, the ship's crew would be a lot happier if they did. Well, at least the female percentage.

"I made dinner."

"You cook?" I asked. "I'm surprised."

"When I was in foster care I learned to make myself breakfast. My fellow foster sisters weren't the only ones that woke up drunk every now and then."

"Well, you're a woman of many talents."

"Thanks, you're a pretty nice catch too."

I smiled despite myself. "You know, you don't have to respond to every compliment with one in kind. You'd end up boosting my ego too much."

"If you say so," she shrugged. "Well, I prepared some lovely courses for us. Salad, of course, don't expect it to be particularly good, I only had so much to work with. Then we'll have some lovely fish, it _is_ the trash that they bring on board, but I managed to improve it significantly. For dessert…pudding."

"I love pudding!" I exclaimed excitedly. "Is it chocolate."

"We have all varieties of pudding."

"Best. Dinner. Ever!"

We sat down and enjoyed what was a pretty decent meal. I'm not going to say that it was food worthy of the gods, but it was heaven on earth if you compared it to what I had had for lunch. She had done a pretty nice job improving the quality of the salad. By the time I was done with it my mouth was watering in expectation of the main course. When she served the fish in front of me I couldn't help but notice that it smelled incredibly nice.

"Wow," I wowed.

"Thanks," she said happily, glad to know that her effort was appreciated.

I hesitated before asking. "Ok, I really have to ask this, but just how exactly did you manage to stay a virgin until yesterday?"

"Why do you ask?" she redirected my question nervously.

"Well, look at yourself, you're a perfect ten if I ever saw one. I'm not just saying that to make you smile, although it's a nice bonus, but a girl like you would've had every single boy in high school after her."

"I went to an all girls school."

"All the girls must've been after you."

"You'd like that, wouldn't you?"

"It is a nice idea."

"Do you really want to know?"

"If you don't want to say it then I don't mind."

"It's actually pretty simple, one of my friends went through the usual pressured into having sex thing. She was very, very distraught over it. She was close friends with me and it influenced me a whole lot. After that I stayed away from boys for a while. I had a boyfriend during college, but it wasn't serious. When I joined the ship I pretty much left behind all my social life on Reach, I'm only there once ever few months."

"That actually makes sense."

"You're only the second person I've told that."

"How'd Emily react?"

"She thought that I was an idiot."

"Well, sex _is_ great, and you have been missing out."

"I have, haven't I?"

I nodded and took a bite of my fish. "Mmm! This is delicious."

Hanna looked positively radiant at all the compliments. She hadn't bothered with a change of clothes either, and her tired look only served to make her look more beautiful than usual. She finally seemed to relax a little and sat across from me, allowing herself to enjoy the meal that she had cooked. She took small bites from her fish while making small conversation. Normal date, unconventional situation. It could make for a pretty interesting story, you know.

"Well, I gotta thank your drunken foster sisters," I said. "They really shaped you up well."

"At the cost of my childhood."

"Most of the people here didn't have much of a childhood," I told her. "My squad is one of the lucky few, but hell, living in bootcamp isn't really every kid's dream."

"I think it is."

"Oh, you know what I mean."

"So, you hold any bad feelings over your childhood? Maybe resent your uncle?"

"You sound like my ex-girlfriend," I complained. "Always doing some sort of psychoanalysis."

"I did a minor in psychology," she revealed.

"Really? What else don't I know about you?"

"Lots of things, but that's the fun of it."

We finished our improvised dessert and I helped her wash the dishes. After that we put away the table and the chairs. The kitchen looked as dirty and greasy as it had when Hanna first arrived. We probably should've left the tables there, it looked cleaner somehow. But unfortunately, we had to do some manual labor, poor us. Of course, it wasn't until after we were done cleaning up that the action started.

I kissed Hanna softly as a way to give her my thanks for dinner. Then I kissed her fiercely as a way to indicate just exactly what we should do to close of this evening. She reciprocated in kind and things seemed to be going well until it was ruined.

"All hands to their battle stations."

"Damn," I muttered. "Where's your battle station?"

"Hangar bay, with my squad."

"Ok. If we go down, promise me that you'll be careful, that you'll take care of yourself."

"I promise," she assured me. "You?"

"I'll do my best. Tell your squad leader that if he gets you hurt he'll have an angry Helljumper to deal with."

"I'll be sure to let him know," she smiled at me.

We walked out the mess hall together, not saying anything. When we reached the point where we had to take different roads I stopped her, the sailors were rushing through to their positions while Marines and soldiers elbowed their way through.

I looked Hanna straight in the eyes. "I love you."

She seemed surprised by the sudden confession. I didn't expect anything else, instead of waiting for an answer I let go of her and turned around towards the drop bay. I was pissed that my day had been ruined and some covvie bastards were going to pay for that. I was off to do what I did best. I was off to kick some alien ass.

* * *

><p><em>Thanks to Sniper Fodder for proof-reading this chapter.<em>

_Well, I wrote two and a half pages worth of foreplay, barney stinson woud be proud. And I went the whole thing without writing the word moaned once, I did make a couple of references though, the obvious one is Crazy Stupid Love and the other one is Gone with the wind._

_The reason why I wrote this is because I was in a vulnerable place in my life and I needed to feel loved. Relax, I joke. Sex is a part of romance and romance is a part of life. If you pay close attention, you'll see that this story is titled The Life. Hence the sex and all that. Oh, by the way, this might sound incredibly selfish (because it is) but I wouldn't be bothered by one review per chapter instead of one big one at the end... _

_:)_


	124. Late to the Party

Chapter CXXIV: Late to the Party

**September 16, 2544 (UNSC Calendar)/**

**UNSC **_**Inconvenience**_**, en route to Asilon, Omicron Ebur System**

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><p><em>"Of course we were scared, it was like the beginning of every bad horror movie."- Private Hugh Moffat<em>

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><p>"Ok," I boomed. "We're on standby. I don't know what the situation is down there, but I want standard gear ready to go. Load your M7s as well."<p>

"Aye, aye, Sarge," Angel said merrily. The man quickly set to packing belts of ammunition inside box magazines for his SAW. He seemed pretty happy to do so. Everyone else started getting their weapons ready with mechanical precision. For some reason it was Grass who seemed to have the most experience at this. I knew that she could disassemble and put together a rifle with her eyes closed, that's probably why she felt so at ease when loading magazines and cleaning her weapon.

"Gunnery Sergeant Castillo, you are requested at the bridge."

"Damn," I grunted. "Stay put, I'll be right back. Pavel?"

"Yeah?"

"Keep an eye on them."

Pavel chuckled an evil laugh and then shook his head to himself. He turned to fixing something or other on his machine gun and turned his back to me. I immediately departed towards the bridge, grabbing my sidearm and helmet on the way. I secured my pistol in its holster. The magnetic plate seemed to be in fine working order when I tried it, but I preferred a good old-fashioned holster. I could've gone with dark brown leather, but synthetic weave was more practical. I felt weird with bright and shiny new armor on.

"I was called up here," I informed the marine standing guard.

"Of course, right this way Gunny."

I rolled my eyes as soon as he turned his back to me. I had been on this ship for longer than he had been in the military. I could've shown my own way in with no trouble whatsoever.

"Captain," the guard called out. "Gunnery Sergeant Castillo is here."

"Thanks Private, dismissed."

"Sir," the private saluted before leaving.

"Captain," I said calmly. Brooks was sitting in his command chair, back turned to me. The holographic displays in front of him showed our position in relation to Asilon as well as a map of the planet. It was about equal parts water and land. The planet itself was about half as small as Reach, but it had similar gravity and the atmosphere was virtually identical, all thanks to terraforming. The display also showed the last known position of other UNSC ships in nearby systems. That information was obsolete, radio moved as fast as the speed of light did, and with the translight engines information could only move so fast. We did have very accurate locations of Covenant ships. There was a single enemy corvette orbiting the north pole of the planet. It seemed weird that only a single ship was there, but we had to try.

"Castillo," Brooks called out. "It's been a while."

"Too long for my taste, Captain," I said with a smile.

"Claire says hi," he informed me. "Told me to thank you and Klaus for saving her life again."

"I'm glad to know that you two are talking again."

"Rocky relationship," he dismissed, "but I do what I can."

"Sir, why exactly was I called up here?"

"You know Castillo, you always did get straight for the point. Granted, you usually did it in the most insubordinate and selfish way that you could possibly think of, but you always did know what you want. I'm glad to see that you're making an improvement."

"Two compliments in as many sentences? Sir, I'm flattered."

Brooks actually laughed and turned his chair to face me. It had been very long since I had seen the captain. I was shocked to see that he seemed to have aged two decades since I last talked to him. There were lines on his face that hadn't been there before and his entire hair was graying. He still carried himself with an air of royalty, but I could see that this was taking a toll on him. "I called you up here to explain the situation to you."

"Why me specifically, sir?"

"We can't contact the planet."

"What?"

"It's like that, for some reason, the planet is undergoing a complete communications blackout."

"That's…that's unheard of. It is nearly impossible to completely knock off communications on a planet. Last I heard Asilon was a large colony, plenty of relays and comm stations."

"Exactly, that's what worries me."

"So, what do we do?"

Brooks looked pensive as he rocked side to side on his command chair. He directed quick glances to each of the bridge crewmembers, the men and women were all staring intently at their screens. I let my sight linger on the chair that had once belonged to Layla. I looked away and back to the captain, trying to suppress the bad memories. "Well," he started. "From this position we can only scan so much of the planet. Unfortunately for us, most of the settlements are on the other side of the planet. However, UEG intel shows that there is a large communications relay here. It should come over the horizon in about an hour. By that time we'll be in position for a combat drop."

"Sir, if there's an important relay on that area," I said, pointing at the red dot in the holographic map, "then there should be a settlement, at the very least a town."

"Yes, there should be."

"And?"

"It's dark. No signs of live, the only heat signatures come from what seems to be a couple of minor fires and plasma bombardment."

"Orbital?"

Brooks nodded slowly. "Radiation levels indicate low-altitude bombardment. Half the town is burned down by the looks of it, the other half is probably deserted or in ruins."

I stared at the floor as ideas started flooding through my mind. Asilon was by no means a small colony, it had a large local militia as well as decently-sized Army and Marines. I knew that it also possessed an air wing, nuclear weaponry, and ground-to-space defense systems. A single corvette couldn't have caused that much damage under any situation. There was something here that we didn't know.

"Very well sir. I assume that my team will go in and see what we can do to put that relay back into service."

"You are correct Castillo," Brooks confirmed. "We lack any intel whatsoever, the most we can do is download a map of the area and blueprints of the relay."

I nodded. "We've jumped with less. I'll tell my team."

"Excellent. Dismissed."

I saluted. "Sir."

Back in the drop bay I gathered my team around the holo-table. They had already suited up and had their weapons ready. The only things that they were missing was the helmets. "Liz, maps up, if you will." A topographical display of the area surrounding the relay and the relay itself occupied one half of the holo-table, the other half was divided with a set of 2-D maps and a hologram of Eliza. "You take it Liz," I told her. "My head hurts."

"Thanks Francisco," Liz nodded. "Well, here's the situation…"

My mind drifted off as Eliza explained what Brooks had just told me. I traced the carving on my helmet, examining the phrase carefully and smiling to myself. Eliza's voice just became minor droning in the background as I remembered the first time that my uncle had gone all Latin on my ass. It had been when I hadn't been able to fight off a kid that had been bullying me. I had only just arrived on Jericho VII. I was the loner, the new kid, the outcast. Believe it or not, I wasn't always my usual, popular self. I didn't integrate into my new school as well as I could've. Ten year olds can be mean sometimes, and I was on the receiving end of some rather nasty teasing. Of course I decided to fight back, me being my stupid assholeish self, decided to fight a kid twice as big as I was.

Of course I ended up sitting on my ass, crying.

When I told my uncle about what happened he seemed to be angry at me, not because I had gotten into a fight, but because I couldn't solve my own problem. I can remember it clear as day, he yelled at me for not being the bigger man and then yelled at me for trying the stupid way to solve a problem. It had been a rather unorthodox lesson in thinking outside the box. Next day I beat that kid up with a metal tube. He ended up with a couple of broken fingers and my uncle just about ripped my head off.

Apparently that's not exactly what he meant by making my own way. I almost got kicked out of school and lost any chance of making friends. My uncle decided that a little bit of discipline would do me good. And so my childhood bootcamp started. I began alienating myself from school and started doing drills. My uncle seemed to think that he was doing a fine job, but truth be told, he wasn't really father material. Hey, it's the thought that counts.

"Oi Sarge, what's that on your helmet?"

"Hmm? Oh, I carved some Latin onto the jaw," I told Bee.

He put his hands up and I tossed him the helmet. "Laser carving thingy?"

"I called it that too," I smiled. "In fact, it's right there."

"Ah, so you're in good terms with your ex now?" Pavel asked. He smiled at my confused expression. "Please, where else would you get a carving thingy like that?"

"He's right Sarge," Angel said. "We might not exactly be the brightest here-"

"Hey!" Grass exclaimed.

"-but we're cunning."

"Yeah, yeah," I groaned. "For some reason you all think that you're smarter than you actually are. Except Grass, she's probably as smart as she thinks she is."

"Huh, I thought we were supposed to suck up to you," Snark mused out loud.

"Keep being a wise ass and you'll need to," I warned.

"Hey, let me see that," Grass asked Bumblebee. She caught the helmet with one hand and turned it to look at the carving. "_Aut viam inveniam aut faciam…_fancy." Grass traced her fingers through the carving. "I shall either find a way or make one."

"Ah, I've heard that one, Hannibal," Pavel said.

"Commonly attributed to Hannibal," Grass corrected. "Unknown author. Still, it's a nice quote. One of the best."

"Goes hand in hand with me," I smiled.

"And us," Snark added. "Cause we're the best."

"Don't explain the joke," Bee told him, rubbing his temples. "Just…don't."

We spent one hour just talking and messing around much like a group of good friends would in a restaurant or pub. I couldn't help but notice that Caboose kept apart from the group, resting his back against his pod, keeping his cap on his head as he usually did. The rest of the team didn't even bother with as much as a glance. I didn't blame them, they were probably still going over the fact that they were working with a turn cloak. I don't think that Caboose would ever be integrated into the team as before, but I knew my team, and they would work with him professionally, if only for their own benefit.

"Castillo, we're in position, you can drop any moment now, although I'd recommend making it quick."

"Of course Captain," I replied. "What are you going to be doing?"

"We've let out drones to scan the planet, we'll hide behind a moon until we get your signal."

"Understood, Reaper out."

"Good luck, Brooks out."

"All right men and woman, you heard the Captain, you all know what we're getting into. We jump with packs, grab some combat rations and water. Grass, purification pills."

"I can one up you Sarge, got myself a purification kit."

"Good, take it. We don't know what happened down there, we might be down for longer than expected." While I gave out orders my squad grabbed their weapons and secured them in the compartments on their pods. I took the time to grab grenades and my rucksack. It was the new one that came with my armor. Like the rest of it, it seemed too shiny. I sighed and shoved it into my pod. Once it was secure I placed my battle rifle in its designated space and looked to my team. They were all staring at me expectantly.

I loved this part. "Not only do we go in first, we go in without intel, without backup, without support, but that's all part of the job, ain't it? But that's not the only way we go in, is it" I put on my helmet and depolarized it, allowing Reaper Squad to see my face. "How exactly do we go?"

"We go feet first Gunnery Sergeant!"

"That's right, into your pods! We drop in twenty seconds."

I climbed inside my SOEIV and rolled my neck to see if I could relieve some tension. Immediately after that I cracked my knuckles as I usually did. The door closed and the pod sealed shut with a familiar hiss.

"Francisco, it is highly likely that you will lose all contact with the ship as soon as you drop," Eliza informed me. "You'll only have drones for surveillance, you'll be on your own."

"Thanks," I told her. "We've been on our own before. Wish me luck."

"Good luck."

The pod lurched and left the gravity of the ship, allowing me to feel the familiar sensation of free fall for a few brief seconds before we entered the planet proper. Even with my suit regulating my body temperature I could feel myself growing hotter and hotter, sweat coming out of my armpits, brows, and palms. The drag chute deployed and we cleared through the cloud cover. The land below me showed nothing unusual, it was the typical mix of brown and green. The only thing that caught my attention was the cloud of smoke coming from a settlement down below, well, what was left of it, a large portion of it was nothing but a glass crater.

"See that road over there." I pointed even though nobody could see it. "We land there, the relay is just half a click from that point."

My pod shook as I redirected myself to that position. I saw my squad's pods redirect themselves, all of them but one.

"Bee, what's going on?"

"Rudder's damaged, I can't risk it. I'll land in the town and catch up with you."

"Roger, Caboose, join him, nobody stays alone."

"Sure thing."

Another of the pods turned sharply to try and catch up with Bee's damaged entry vehicle. The ground came closer and closer, my booster rockets kicked into action, further halting the speed of my pod. I instinctively closed my eyes as the pod slammed down on the polycrete pavement. The landing was pretty hard, that's what happens when you hit reinforced polycrete. Still, nothing wrong with me or any of my squad mates, we've had yet another successful jump.

"On me," I ordered lazily. "Caboose, Bee, you good?"

"Yeah, I'm meeting up with Caboose. This town was hit bad."

"This end of it looks better, there are a couple of intact cars, want me to commandeer one?"

"Go ahead," I agreed. "We'll get a move on then." The rest of my squad was standing in front of me, examining their weapons while waiting for orders. "Ok, we start climbing, single file." I looked around and was kind of creeped out by the complete lack of human or alien presence, the only noise that I could hear was that of our pods' hulls hissing form the heat. Far up I couldn't see anything but a cloudy sky and down the hill I just saw the burning town.

"Come on," Pavel urged as he started the climb towards the communication relay.

I hung back a little bit and turned on my helmet's radio. "This is Reaper Actual, Delta-Charlie-Victor on board the UNSC frigate _Inconvenience._ Does anyone copy?"

There was nothing but static on all bandwidths. I sighed and started walking up hill.

Halfway up the road I heard a car behind. We already knew that it was Bee and Caboose, but we still took a knee and aimed down the road.

"At least they picked a nice ride," Snark pointed out.

Let me explain, they had picked the ugliest possible vehicle that anyone could think off. It was a pickup truck, so at least it got bonus points for usefulness. It was an ugly mauve color and had a sleek design, the designers probably thought it looked futuristic, to me it looked like someone had thrown up and tried bunching their food bits one on top another. Slap a couple of wheels on that and you've got our fancy commandeered vehicle.

"I didn't know you were into purple," Angel muttered. "Especially that purple."

"Believe me or not, this was the best looking car."

"He's right," Bee admitted begrudgingly. "Even I would've picked this one."

"Ok, everyone hop on board," I ordered. "Pavel, I want you to mount your gun on top, Angel, you take shotgun and Grass drives, everyone else try and fit themselves on the rear." I waited for everyone to climb up the truck and took a couple of steps back, it wasn't every day that you saw a squad of veteran killers on top of a girly pickup truck. I took yet another step back and took a capture of the moment with my helmet's camera. It would do.

"Ok," I said as soon as I climbed up. "Let's go."

My feet dangled a few inches from the road. I could tell that there had been some minor skirmishes in this place, there were scorch marks on the ground and bullet casings littered about. So far I had yet to see a corpse, human or otherwise. Instead I kept my eyes on the burning town below us. The fires had been going on for a long time, I'm not sure what was fueling them, but it was probably energy cells or something similar.

"Sarge, we've got a body."

"Human?"

"Jackal," Angel told me. "Riddled with holes, I'd say an assault rifle."

"Keep going," I ordered, "we're not coroners."

"We're here." There was something in Grass' tone that I didn't like. I jumped off the car, went around, and saw just exactly what it was. The relay was of standard design, a rather large facility with several dishes around a large main one in the middle. From this point I could tell that several of the smaller dishes were damaged, but some were intact. That was not what drew my attention. What I noticed the most was the multitude of bodies around the entrance. For every Covenant body there were three dead humans.

"Shit," Angel said, elongating the word.

"Bee and Pavel place the human bodies to the side of the entrance. Please be respectful. Caboose you're on point, Angel, you go behind him. Everyone else stay here."

Pavel shrugged to himself and moved toward the closest human body. He grabbed it by the arms while Bee grabbed the legs, both of them carried it and placed it out of our way, gently putting it down. They repeated the process until there were thirty bodies placed in two neat lines. While they did that I examined the enemy corpses. All of the dead aliens were grunts and jackals, no elites or brutes. What did call my attention was the red brute blood near the entrance. There was enough blood there to have guaranteed a kill.

"What do you think Sarge?" Grass asked from next to me.

"They took the body, that much blood ensures that there was a body, a dead one."

"Hmm, you're probably right. Brutes it is then?"

"Certainly looks like it."

"Sarge," Angel came in. "It's clear, we're in the control room."

"Ok, we're moving in."

Everybody dropped what they were doing and went inside the relay proper. Most of the lights were out, and the few that were still on were flickering at irregular intervals. There were more human bodies inside, most of them had been mauled to death. It wasn't until later that I saw the first evidence of brute presence on the planet. One of the dead soldiers had been impaled to a wall with four spikes, they had all gone through his chest. Death had probably been pretty quick.

"Sarge, over here," Caboose said.

We walked inside the control room and saw Angel tapping furiously at a console, trying to get it to work.

"What's the problem?" I asked him.

"They're running on backup. On backup's backup, I could barely use this to play Galaga."

"Gal- never mind, can you get power running?"

"Probably," Angel said, but that's not my forte, you'd be looking at Caboose and Grass for that."

I looked at them. "See what you can do."

"We could probably rig one of the generators to work," Grass muttered, mostly to herself. "If we had an energy source we could potentially get this whole place powered up, even if it was just for a couple of weeks."

"The smaller dishes have power cells, for when they need to rotate," Caboose stated. "We can scavenge a few of them and use them for the generator."

Everyone looked at the former insurrectionist, none of us had any doubt as to how he had acquired that knowledge. None of us chose to make a comment about it.

"Grass, you go check on the generators, tell me if they're serviceable. Caboose, take Snark with you to the roof, snag a couple of power cells. Snark, I want you to stay up there and tell us if anything comes at us. Angel, what's the status on the terminals?"

"Most of them are in working order, if a little bit scorched, what worries me is the room, they came in and blasted away at everything, had it been elites I have no doubt that this would be a futile attempt, but the brutes weren't as precise. Still, they caused a helluva lot of damage."

"Can we fix it?"

"Probably, Caboose is good with electronics and all that shit, and Grass, the goddamned know-it-all, could probably help a little bit too."

"Ok, you keep trying to redirect the remaining power sources to the main dish."

"How'd you know that's what I was doing?" Angel asked me.

"Because it's probably the only thing that you could do," Pavel informed him in a mocking tone. "Or download porn, I wouldn't put it above you in a situation like this."

"Ha-ha, very funny Staff."

"Just keep at it," I ordered. "Bee, I want you to stand guard at the entrance." The man nodded and took off.

Pavel and I sat down, leaning against the walls. I took my helmet off and stretched my neck, there was something bothering me, I tried rubbing at it, but the knot stayed there. I sighed and just leaned my head backwards, producing a loud clang as I hit the hollow metal wall.

"Black visor?" Pavel asked me. "Gotta admit, looks pretty good."

"Thanks," I said. "Cost me extra."

"Really?"

"Yup."

Angel kept tapping at the console while muttering to himself in Italian. Pavel produced a ball from his rucksack and started tossing it into the wall, he caught it and repeated the motion. I just sat there doing nothing while everyone else worked. Granted, I couldn't have helped much, but I still felt like a useless sack of meat. I sighed and put my helmet back on. "I'm going to check on Grass."

I found Grass working on one of the generators. She had taken off her helmet and had yanked out a piece of metal covering the generator so that she could work properly. She was pulling at the wires and chips while trying to connect them. Or something, honestly, I had no idea what she was doing.

"Everything ok?"

"This thing's not too damaged," she informed me without even turning to face me, "but it's a real bitch to fix."

"How long?"

"I'll probably have it fixed in half an hour or so, Caboose could probably speed up the process."

"I'll tell him to get down here immediately."

"Thanks."

"What about energy?"

"If he's got those fuel cells from the dishes then we should have this puppy running in forty five minutes or so. Maybe improvise an adaptor. This generator runs on hydrogen cells. I don't know what kind of fuel cells the dishes have, but let's hope they're the same kind."

"Understood, keep it up."

"Not like I've got anything else to do," she mumbled.

A few minutes later I found myself on the roof. I looked around and spotted Caboose yanking open the base of one of the smaller dishes. Snark was nowhere to be seen. I sighed and walked towards Caboose. "Grass needs help fixing the generator," I told him. "Better take the fuel cells."

"Fine," he grunted. "We still need more of these."

"How do I get them?"

"Just open the panels on the sides and yank them, not a terribly difficult task."

"Half a dozen fine?"

"It should do," he replied.

I sighed. Again. Then I set myself to finding the undamaged dishes. After getting five fuel cells I finally spotted Snark. He was prone near the edge of the building, he didn't seem to notice me. Then _I_ noticed that he was staring through his scope intently. I placed the fuel cells on the floor and took a knee next to him before drawing my BR55 and aiming down the scope. I didn't see anything down the plains beyond the relay, but I still looked.

"I thought I saw something," Snark told me. "I know better than to raise an alarm over some movement three clicks from here."

"Where'd you see it?" I asked.

"There." He produced a waypoint.

"I can't see anything," I murmured. "Not even shimmering."

"Distance is too great for thermal, at least for reliable thermal."

"The drone is out of range, should come by in about eight minutes, tell it to do a pass over the area, seek for hostiles or friendlies."

"Done deal."

I grabbed the salvaged fuel cells and holstered my rifle over my back. I yanked one extra cell and climbed all the way down to the generator room. When I arrived I saw Caboose slapping his hands clean and Grass looking at him with her arms crossed over her chest. Caboose picked up his rucksack and shouldered it. None of them noticed me until after I cleared my throat.

"Oh, hey Sarge," Grass said. "We're done here, now we just need the fuel cells."

I let the metal casings fall to the floor. "Knock yourselves out."

"I'll handle this," Caboose grunted.

"Thanks," Grass replied. I could tell that she wished Caboose hadn't been nice to her, that way she could still ignore him whenever she felt like it. I had a feeling that she wasn't the only one that felt that way. I shook my head to myself and returned to the control room. Angel was finally done with his work.

"Sarge, we're good to go, as soon as that generator is on this relay is going to be working."

"How long will it be up?"

"These things are supposed to be semi-automated," Grass explained. "This model should be able to function properly for at least two months as soon as it's turned on. They recycle energy you see."

"Ok, thanks for the lesson," Pavel grunted. "Please shut up."

Grass was about to say something when Snark came in through the radio. "Got a swarm of drones, a big one too."

"Roger, where are they headed?"

"Here."

"Pavel, Angel," I said. "You're with me. You know what, we could all use some target practice, everyone, to the roof."

I could see the smiles even behind polarized visors. Human kinetic weapons had a definitive advantage in range over plasma weaponry, needles and beams not so much, but a bullet could travel a whole lot farther than a plasma round. In addition to that, plasma tended to become unstable, damaging its trajectory as it went on and on. This was bound to be fun.

"There," Snark pointed. "Can't really count, but they seem to be about a hundred."

"Oh, this is going to be fun," Angel chuckled.

"I'll fire first, draw them here," Snark said. "Well, or at least get them to come here faster."

"I give the orders here," I snapped. "But yeah, you do that."

We all went prone and propped our weapons on the ledge. I got myself comfortable and waited for Snark to let out his first shot. Instead of one, he let out four straight shots, all of them collided with at least one drone, one round even punched through a drone and hit another one behind it. After I saw the four corpses falling from the air I opened up.

Now, I wasn't nearly as good as Snark was and didn't have a sniper rifle in my hands. I fired in single shots, leading the targets and accounting for drop and distance. Out of ten shots I only managed to score one hit. I groaned inwardly but otherwise didn't stop firing. Once I had burned through the thirty six rounds on my magazine I managed four hits. Four dead drones with an equal amount of bullets, the rest of them were wasted, but I was till firing at extreme range.

"That certainly got their attention," Pavel quipped.

It was true, the swarm had now spread apart and had adjusted its course ever so slightly so that they were facing Snark and me.

"Target the red ones," I ordered Snark. "Everyone else…start firing."

Seven different weapons opened up. The clattering of machine guns was mixed with the characteristic snapping that MA5 rifles made and the booming of the SRS that Snark had. We didn't exactly manage an excellent hit percentage, but we did manage to thin out their numbers. By the time the swarm entered my weapon's range I had packed a dozen kills. Snark had burned through his ammo, hitting a single target with every round. Eventually he just stopped firing to conserve ammunition.

My time to shine.

"Oh, oh, that one! No, no, no, no, that one!" Schitzo was having more fun than I was. That hardly seemed fair.

I fired at a rate of one round every five seconds, taking my time to acquire a target and make sure that I was going to hit it. Pavel and Angel were simply burning through their ammunition, keeping their fingers on the trigger and only letting up when the recoil became too much. The rest of the squad was firing in short bursts, trying to hit the drones on the corners and pack the swarm up close.

By the time they were within a hundred yards less than half of them remained. I stopped firing and let my squad finish the job. The drones fired a few shots, but they were quickly cut down by the automatic fire. It took all of twenty seconds to kill the fifty or so remaining bugs. Not one of us was hit, nicked, or even had a close call.

"Good job," I said approvingly. "Bee, make a run to our pods for the extra ammo stacked in them. Angel, time to turn on this thing."

As soon as we were back in the control room Angel started tapping at the consoles. The Italian muttered to himself in his native language, my own knowledge of Spanish allowed me to catch maybe one word in ten, most of the words weren't necessarily ones that you would use when talking to your parents. After thirty minutes of furiously showing a holographic keyboard who was the boss he finally leaned back. "Done, as soon as the generator is on we can communicate with the _Inconvenience_ and its drones."

"And the whole planet," Bee added.

"C'mon, let's do this," I urged. "Let's make it quick."

A single tap of a button was all it took. There was some whirring audible as the main radio dish positioned itself before actually launching radio waves. I turned on all the channels on my radio so that I would catch anything, I also emitted a broadcast through all available channels, probably not a good idea, but the _Inconvenience_ would be here soon and this was a pretty defensible place.

"This is Reaper Actual, Delta-Charlie-Victor, from the UNSC frigate _Inconvenience_, does anyone copy?"

I had feared that this planet would be completely dead when we arrived, the dead soldiers had only served to reaffirm my fears. Thankfully, that was not the case, the moment the broadcast went out I received at least a hundred different communications.

"Reaper, wha-"

"-nce, this is Arm-"

"What is your-"

"Enemy forces a-"

"This is Reaper Actual," I said again, drowning out the hundred voices inside my helmet. "I need the ranking officer on the planet to communicate directly with me on…" I picked a channel. "On this channel, everyone else, please refrain from using it. The _Inconvenience_ is on the way to provide reinforcements and strategic support, more ships are inbound."

I sat down and looked at Pavel. "What the fuck was that?"

"Looks like all hell broke loose on this planet," Caboose muttered. "Some of the signals are looped, others are just desperate, I'm getting civilians and military alike. It doesn't sound good."

"Doesn't matter," I grunted while I waited. "We're going to fix this fucking mess."

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><p><em>Thanks to Sniper Fodder for proof-reading this chapter.<em>

_Hey! Moffat got a quote, first and last probably, but for some reason I like this character. _

_This is kind of a weak chapter in my opinion, but it sets the stage for the epicness to come. And trust me when I say epicness._


	125. Welcome to Asilon

Chapter CXXV: Welcome To Asilon

**September 17, 2544 (UNSC Calendar)/**

**Catamaran Peninsula, Asilon, Omicron Ebur System**

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><p>"<em>Welcome to Asilon."- Lieutenant General Jon Yule<em>

* * *

><p>"Welcome to Asilon."<p>

"Thank you, sir," I replied in kind. I had barely gotten off of the Pelican when the General in charge of UNSC forces groundside came up to my squad and me. "Um, I got snippets of information, but didn't really get what happened on the planet…"

The general, Brigadier General Yule, was an older man. He looked very much like you'd imagine a general to look like, he was rather tall, had broad shoulders and a face that reminded me of one of my trainers back on Mars, and in turn, bulldogs. He was wearing the standard Marine fatigues with only a flak vest for cover. He was even sporting the short-sleeved shirt, allowing the world, what little was left of it, to see that he could still dish out as good as he got.

"To make the story short Gunny, the Covenant came in large numbers, knocked down all of our relays before we could react and then started the invasion proper. They immediately set up jamming facilities at key points on the planet. Our ground-to-space weapons shot down some of them spaceships, our nukes did the rest."

"So you took out _all_ the ships?"

"That's right," Yule confirmed. I could see that he smiled despite himself.

"That's…impressive," Grass noted. "How many ships?"

"Twelve," Yule said, turning around and gesturing for us to follow him. Bee patted the Pelican as he hopped off, giving the pilot the signal to lift off. "We had two Battle Stars, obsolete as canned food, but they dished out some dirt. A cargo freighter was used as a battering ram, nuclear version."

I chuckled at that.

"Then it became hell, we did our best to hide our WMDs, using them when the covvies started glassing," Yule went on. "They did a damn thorough job too…over ninety percent of the population clusters were glassed. Most of them still had people inside."

"Shit, I'm sorry to hear that, sir."

He sighed. "Nothing that can be done about it. It's been two months of hell."

"Two months!" Snark exclaimed. "You've lasted two months?!"

"It hasn't been easy, as I said, we've lost over eighty percent of our people, the Army and my Marines got lucky though, most of the planets military assets managed to avoid the destruction. And that brings us here."

I looked around, it wasn't exactly a nice firebase, a fancy hotel had been commandeered by the Marines and Army blokes from Asilon, and was being used as a command post. The hotel was built into the side of a mountain range, not particularly tall, especially when you put them next to Reach's massive rock formations, but still rather impressive at, according to my helmet, five thousand meters over sea level. The windows overlooked plains that reached as far as the eye could see.

"Once they lost their ships the Covenant were at a disadvantage, we drove them back from most of our cities, the remnant of their forces occupy the peninsula."

"What's the estimate on their numbers?" Caboose asked. "Sir."

"Most of our satellites were shot down, we don't have any reliable orbital imagery, all of our recon is done with high altitude craft and high-res stills. The fog doesn't help matters much."

"Won't it clear up soon?" I asked, overlooking the vast white blanket that covered everything on the plains. I could spot a couple of hilltops and the skeleton of a building in the distance, but nothing else.

"Not on this planet son," Yule muttered with more than a little bit of annoyance in his tone. "Asilon has this weird thing where fog banks just don't go away, something related to humidity and pressure. It can rain for months at a time too."

"Is the rain a major disadvantage here?" I asked.

"Actually, it helps us more than it does them," the general admitted. "Or at least it doesn't damage us much."

A young lieutenant appeared from a side door and saluted the general, shooting us a quick glance before returning her attention to Yule. "Sir, you are needed in the war room, the captain of the _Inconvenience_ is online."

"Good," he coughed out. "Please explain the situation down on the…front to Reaper Squad, send them in as soon as you're done."

"Yessir."

"And Lieutenant?"

"Yes?"

"Make it brief."

"Of course General."

Yule looked at us and gave us a parting nod before disappearing through the door that the lieutenant had jumped through. She looked to be around her early twenties, had a professional look to her, crew cut and all.

"I'll make it brief," she started. "Calling the…thing down there a front is an insult to military theory. We have definitive control of Hills 1 through 4," as she said that she pointed at the hilltops. "The Covenant have control of 5, 6, 7, 12, 17, and 21. There is only one major settlement in the peninsula, it is currently the enemy base of operations. In addition to Catamaran City, we have two small villages and various scattered smaller settlements."

"What's wrong with calling the 'thing' a front?"

"There is none. Sure, there's a point where land becomes safer for us, but if I drew the frontlines it would look like a seismograph during the mother of all earthquakes."

"Seismographs are obsolete," Grass muttered under her breath. It was quiet enough that the lieutenant didn't hear it, but I certainly did.

"We have units scattered all over the peninsula, most of them have dug in and fortified themselves, pushing back assaults until the main assault force reaches them."

"Trench warfare." Angel sounded like he already knew the answer and didn't want to hear it. It was the only thing that would work in this situation, good old fashioned trench warfare. But with aliens and plasma instead of Krauts and Frogs.

"Logistics is a mess, we're doing our best to organize a main push, but a stable front is needed for that, if we attack now, we could have as many as ten thousand enemy aliens behind our lines. We don't want that."

"Ok," Pavel nodded. "So, in layman's terms, this shit be fucked?"

"An accurate statement," she agreed. "You can go inside the war room now."

"Thanks El-tee," I told her once my team had walked through the door.

The war room was actually the buffet room. Without tables or buffet, regrettably. Well, there were several terminals and servers in addition to a holotable so I assume that it was an even match. The holotable was displaying a life-size hologram of Captain Brooks, he was standing at ease, hands clasped behind his back. The holotable also displayed a holographic holotube which in turn displayed a holographic Eliza. Kind of redundant if you ask me.

"Sirs," I saluted, being the last to do so.

"At ease Castillo," Brooks dismissed me.

"Good to see you alive and well Francisco," Eliza noted.

"Feeling's mutual Liz," I smiled in return. I could feel the eyes of both officers on me. That and the 'what the fuck are you doing?' look that my squad gave me collectively snapped me back to attention. Literally. I clicked my hills together and then slid my left leg to the side, clasping my hands behind my back much like Brooks was doing.

"General, pleasure making your acquaintance," Brooks started. "I just got all the information related to the enemy invasion. Two months? That's an impressive feat."

"Thank you Captain, it was a collective effort."

"Where is General Staunton?"

"Ah, he is up in one of our FOBs, I insisted that he staye back here, but he refused."

Brooks nodded. "I agree, if he's in charge of the Army he should be in a safe place."

"That's what I said, but I can respect what he's doing, he's popular with the troops, his presence boosts morale."

"Well, nothing I can do. What I _can_ do is provide orbital support and intelligence."

"Excellent, that is what we're lacking right now."

"There is, however, a small little problem."

"Nothing is ever that simple, is it?" I smiled.

"Unfortunately, no," Brooks affirmed. "One of the cruisers that you shot down still has a working turret, we found out the hard way, shot grazed our starboard side, ripped out two of the point-defense guns and destroyed the plating on that side."

"You need a team to shut down that cannon," Yule said understandingly. "It isn't that simple on this side, I know what ship you're talking about, the remains of the cruiser serve as a major base of operations, it is fortified against air and ground assault, we'd need a massive force to succeed in that task."

I felt my lips curl upwards in that cocky smile that got me in trouble more often than not. I stopped myself and shot a quick glance to Pavel, he was trying to keep from smiling as well.

"Um, excuse me General," he interrupted politely. "I doubt that the ship is defended against a small-scale orbital assault."

Yule looked at him with a raised eyebrow before he realized what he was talking about. This time it was Yule who smiled. "You just gave me a great idea Staff."

"Do tell," Brooks pressed.

"Your men do a drop, fog should be enough visual cover for them. We can start an artillery barrage to mask the noise too. Once your men are down there they paint some targets for one of your drones or my guns."

"Sounds good," I agreed. "We can drop whenever you want us to."

"Wait," Bumblebee interrupted. "There's still the matter of extraction."

"Half of the enemy ship landed on the coast, what scarce intel we have on it shows that it is the most lightly protected section, we would've mounted an assault from the sea if we only had the necessary equipment."

"Underwater exfil?" I said to myself.

"We have all the necessary equipment," Eliza put out. "It can be remotely inserted there for your evacuation."

"Excellent," I said. "Just give the word."

* * *

><p>Two hours later I found myself free falling to a white blanket. I don't think that our HEVs are rated for doing drops in such quick succession, but we best get moving, at least that's what General Yule said. Our pods were falling almost sideways, the <em>Inconvenience<em> had dropped us as close to the ship as it dared, but we still needed to use some heavy maneuvering to arrive there. The crashed battlecruiser spotted our beloved frigate and let out to quick plasma pulses. One passed about a hundred meters from my pod. The second one literally blocked my squad from view. The second beam was longer and more intense, I maneuvered my pod to avoid the deadly plasma the beam must've been less than a dozen meters away from my pod. That alone was enough to raise the temperature inside my egg by several degrees. I imagine it would've been an incredible sight, seven little pods falling at terminal velocity with a huge fucking laser in between them.

"Reaper! Report!" I yelled as soon as the pulse disappeared. At first I got static from them, the heat must've damaged the radios on the pods. Still, I did catch a couple of my men reporting in and sighed. I set myself to counting pods. I made out five before orange flashes caught my sight. The artillery men were already having a bit of fun, the Rhinos must've been using some type of HE ammunition, because the flashes were fucking huge.

"We're landing," I yelled frantically into my helmet. "Stop the guns!"

My pod stopped dead in its tracks right in front of a machine gun nest. I blasted my door open, startling a pair of grunts as several kilos of solid titanium flew over their ugly little heads. The frightened noises were the last that they made, two quick shots put them down.

"Reaper, we meet on Alpha point!" I screamed. "Setting up waypoint."

I hopped over the machine gun nest, checking for hostiles, once cleared I started getting a move on. Unfortunately, several explosions rocked me from my feet and forced me to dive to the ground. I sunk in the mud as explosions rained all around me. I am pretty sure that the artillery batteries got my message, but I sent it too late and shells took time to travel, this was probably their last barrage. I stood up quickly and sprinted to Alpha. There were several dead aliens on my way, I bypassed them all, only stopping to finish one off. Alpha was a piece of hull from the battlecruiser that had broken off. The grey armor was buried deep in the mud. Two dead grunts and a brute adorned the land around it. There was some machine gun fire coming from behind my field of vision.

"Reaper! Report!" I snapped again.

"Two good!" Pavel yelled.

"Three!"

"Shaken up but intact," Snark grunted. "On my way."

"Grass is green," Grass replied. I don't know why she felt the need to do that. "As per usual."

"Angel good."

"Eight fine," Caboose grunted.

I allowed myself a small sigh of relief, I was glad that all of them were alive.

"Anyone see any high value targets?"

"That's a negative Frank," Pavel replied. "Still it'd be good to do some cleaning on the area ahead."

"Agreed," Angel stated. "I've got a decent view of enemy positions, they're still stunned, good time to strike."

"Ok, call it in, Snark, rush it."

"I'm here," he said from behind me. He sounded like he was out of breath. "Made it."

"Good."

We were all inside/below the piece of hull when it started raining. The HE shells made a shitload of noise, shaking everything and making the plating protecting us groan. After the barrage stopped I looked at my tacpad. The drone flying overhead was doing some IR mapping of the area, its sensors couldn't push through the ship's hull, but it did give us a pretty good idea of where we could breach in.

"See this spot?" I asked of no one in particular. "It's pretty damaged, we should be able to punch it. We head there, Snark, I want you taking out brutes with your IR scope."

"That's what I get paid for," he quipped. "Ok, I've got you covered, they still don't know exactly where we are."

"Well, let them know, will ya?" Bumblebee urged.

Three snaps in quick succession from his SRS-99 made me smile. I could picture the three brutes with holes where their heads were supposed to be. I dashed form cover as plasma and spikes rained on Snark's position, Pavel and Angel were running close behind me with the rest of Reaper giving us a little bit of berth. I couldn't see the aliens that were firing at us, the heavy mist took care of it, but that also meant that we were invisible, in fact, their sensors would probably scare them shitless. Imagine seeing movement from several directions but not seeing _what_ caused it. I had never looked at it that way, but to the grunts and jackals we could look like stuff straight out of a nightmare. I guess that being a monster goes both ways.

We arrived at the side of the cruiser, slamming into its hull to stop our sprint. Angel and Pavel immediately went prone, setting up their weapon's bipods on the muddy floor. I waited for Bee to arrive and had him give me a boost to a ledge on the side of the ship. The ledge itself was the bent barrel of a plasma cannon. I took a knee and switched to VISR mode. Several brutes and jackals were outlined in red on my HUD. The rest of my squad's HUDs immediately showed the aliens' positions.

"Snark, hold your fire," I ordered.

"MGs, fire."

Pavel and Angel let out a stream of bullets. I waited for their rounds to hit the brutes, weakening their power armor and shields. When I saw them recoil from the impact I let out bursts of three into their ugly heads, popping them like watermelons. Our combined fire quickly brought down ten brutes. Pavel and Angel then mowed through twenty startled jackals, the ones that had shields didn't even know where to take cover, that happens when you don't use tracers. I jumped down to the mud and tapped Grass and Caboose on the shoulders. They immediately moved forward, skirting the Covenant ship's hull as they went. Three seconds later I did the same to Bee and moved to tap Angel. They went after their squad mates while Pavel laid out the pain.

"I'm here," Snark announced.

"Good, catch up with Bumblebee and Caboose, go."

I fired a couple of shots in the direction that Pavel was shooting before dragging him to his feet. We both sprinted along the hull, plasma hitting the space in front of us and behind us. I tripped when a grenade from a Brute Shot impacted three meters from Pavel and me. The concussive force sent us to the ground and looking for cover. It was three seconds before I heard the familiar boom that signaled for safety. You can trust Snark to take care of business in tight situations. If he kept going he'd knock out every high-ranking brute near this ship before we even entered. And he'd also run out of ammunition.

"Sarge, I got a sniper tower, three jackals on top."

"Send in the drone," I ordered. "Quick."

If someone understands the meaning of quick, it is certainly the computers and AIs. It took all of ten seconds for the UCAV spinning above us to let out an air-to-ground missile. The explosion was followed by a crashing noise. I wasn't able to see the results of the AG missile, but Grass' squeal of excitement was enough of a giveaway.

"Squealing?" Angel asked. "Next thing I know you'll be wearing a schoolgirl uniform."

"You'd like that, wouldn't you?"

"Not particularly, but I'm sure that Lieutenant Nezarian would enjoy the idea."

"Fuck off."

Whoa, swearing, from Grass. That meant that Angel hit a nerve.

_Huh, go figure. Good for Yevgeny._

"Enough," I chuckled. "Caboose and Bee, put out some suppressive fire, the weak point is a short climb away. Snark, I want you to go first, I'll follow, heavy guns next, Grass will go with Caboose and Bumblebee, we'll cover from up top. Understood?"

"Got it," Caboose confirmed.

Two assault rifles started snapping away and Snark jumped up the side of the hull. This section of the ship was actually climbable without help, it was sort of steep, but you could climb with only one hand for help. I saw Snark's silhouette going up, lit up rounds flying near him but not aimed at him. I was safe behind a pile of raised dirt, the crashing ship had let out a whole lot of potential cover. I guess that worked for us well enough. I left cover, keeping my head down. Bumblebee and Caboose were taking turns with the sustained bursts, keeping themselves behind cover while the other strafed the grunts and brutes.

"There," Snark yelled. "AA gun, one of the big ones."

"Painting it."

"Call in artillery," I said. "We want to save our missiles."

Ten seconds later a barrage fell precisely where Snark had pointed at. The light from the explosions allowed me to see the silhouette of the AA gun through the thick mist. I saw the top of it falling down to the ground while large sections of the base exploded. Those Rhinos certainly pack a punch, I wish we had a couple on the _Inconvenience._ The artillery strike also had the side effect of killing a group of jackals. Hey, I'm not complaining.

"Frank, climb already!"

I jumped as Pavel shoved me up by the ass. It felt uncomfortably nice. I used my gloves to get some grip on the smooth gray surface of the ship and started climbing. I kept my head looking over my shoulder to see if any plasma was headed my way, sure, I wouldn't really be able to dodge, but I might see it before it hit me.

No such luck, no plasma bolts made it my way. The closest thing that I got to that was a line of spikes lodging themselves a foot away from my arm. They made for very useful handholds. I climbed the rest of the stretch and slid down a small crater from an explosion. An Archer missile by the looks of it, but then again, I'm no expert in ship-to-ship weaponry. Snark was already set up and aiming down range, he still hadn't let out a single shot.

"I got your back," I told him. I placed myself next to him, lying on my back while he was belly-down. I could potentially shoot anything that came from behind him. "Angel, you're first."

"On my way."

"Pavel, go ahead."

They arrived pretty close to one another. The crater on the hull was starting to get crowded, the four of us barely fit there, so I climbed out while keeping my rifle aimed up, I didn't catch anything until after Caboose and Bee had climbed up. I shot a pair of brutes, killing them both with well placed shots. Well, actually, they were lucky shots, the bursts hit their unprotected jaws and necks. They went down without making a noise or letting out a shot.

"Ha-ha! Did you see that?" I asked. I realized that I was covering the rear and that nobody would've seen that. "Never mind."

"Don't worry buddy, I'm sure it was great."

"I didn't even have the camera on."

"Ya know, technically speaking it should always be on, Sarge," Bee informed me.

"Leave it in the suggestion box," I replied.

"But Snark never actually made one!"

"Snark," I growled.

"I thought you were kidding, I mean who would be serious about it."

"I bet the covvies are," Grass said tiredly.

"Right, Pavel and Snark, take out the higher ups. Grass, Bee and Caboose, help out Angel, with me."

I slid out of my position and ran up the ship towards the weak point on the hull. Angel's footsteps were right behind me. I could almost smell the eagerness off of him. The man loved explosives like Pavel loved his wife. For some odd reason Angel didn't join the engineering corps. He would've had a blast blowing up bridges and all that. Something about him not being trusted with so many different types of explosives. And yet they trusted him with the most advanced prototypes that the military currently had.

Brass is a bunch of inconsistent folks.

"Angel, down here."

The so-called weak point was in fact a hole. It was what I would call a big fucking hole. I don't know exactly what hit the ship here, but I'm pretty sure that it was a round from a mass driver. The smooth silver armor plating was completely shredded, leaving the aforementioned huge fucking hole right in the middle of it. Most of the armor had been atomized from the impact, but it had held. A little bit of C-12 and we would be good to go.

"Angel, you're good to go."

He took a knee and grabbed a charge from his rucksack. Now, you know how I've told you that a 1x1x1 cube of C-12 could burn through several meters of Titanium-A plating? Angel's charge was more like 10x7x3.

"The fuck did you get that much C-12 from?" I asked as soon as I saw it. "Command never gives that much to me."

"Computer skills come pretty handy sometimes," he said, trying to sound mysterious. "A little plastic explosive won't harm anyone. On our side, that is."

"Maybe you should send the Epsilon Eridani Fleet here," I suggested. "A couple hundred cruisers and destroyers would certainly be helpful."

"I've tried breaking through those firewalls, it's pretty much impossible, no matter how hard I try."

"Do me a favor, don't ever try again."

"Sure thing Sarge." Angel went right ahead and jumped inside the hole on the ship. He used the jagged remains of the armor as handholds and footholds. I could see my squad about fifty meters away, firing away. The fog kept me from seeing anything else, but it wasn't a direct concern right now. I switched my attention between watching Angel climb down and looking around to see if I could spot anything. I was spotted first. A carbine impact hit my shoulder. The armor held and deflected the round. Thank god that it was fired at an angle.

I looked at that direction and immediately spotted a jackal. The motherfucker had the gall to shoot me, so it was only fair that I returned the favor. Unluckily for it, I was a way better shot than it was, and I returned the favor with some serious interest. The burst tore a large section of its head off, killing it instantly. Say what you say about me, whenever I kill, I kill cleanly. Perhaps when this war was over I could became that guy that killed prisoners sentenced to death. Or a cop, I dunno.

"Angel?"

"Done, help me out."

He climbed halfway up the hole and then extended his hand, I pulled him out of the hole. Another burst from a spiker had us both ducking to the floor. My new armor was still undamaged, none of the rounds came close to me. Angel, on the other hand, almost got his hand nailed to the floor, he cursed a rapid string of Italian words and fired a long burst at the offending brute. I finished it off with a quick headshot. Angel nodded at me and pulled out the detonator.

"Wait, is the charge shaped?"

"Shaped?" Having said that he pushed down on the trigger twice.

The only noise that I could compare to the sound of a couple of pounds of high explosives at this range is that of a nuclear explosion. Or that Sledgehammer railgun, or maybe a wraith shot hitting a few feet away from me, or crashing a Pelican…

My life is a serious occupational hazard, I probably should get paid twice as much.

"It cleared," Angel told me. "Call the team, I'm going in."

"Wait," I stopped him and handed him a flashbang. "Ok, go."

He tossed the canister and waited for it to detonate before sliding down. I looked behind me and called the rest of Reaper. I remained behind while everyone slid down. Pavel sprayed the rushing grunts and kept them at bay. When they had stopped covering us the covvies had taken advantage and climbed up. I reached for a grenade and tossed, the explosion killed two grunts and ripped a jackal's shield arm off. That sent most of the aliens to the floor for cover.

"Go," I told Pavel. I fired a few shots to burn through my magazine before jumping down. I rolled as soon as I hit the floor. The tilted floor. I ended up sideways and then fell backwards, slamming on the wall. I grunted and took Pavel's hand, pulled myself up. "Cover me!" I ordered him. I grabbed a small pack of explosive from my rucksack and tossed it halfway through the hole in the ship. I set the detonator on and ran down the hall. I detonated it once I was a safe distance behind it.

_My_ own little pack of C-12 helped out by closing off the hole.

Now we were trapped inside an enemy ship.

"We all here?" I asked.

"Looks like it," Bee said.

"Good," I sighed. "We're in the clear for now. Caboose, shotgun out. Pavel, you take point with him."

"Um, Sarge, I know that I probably should've planned ahead for this, but what should I do with this?" He gestured at his sniper rifle. "We're inside a ship, I don't think we'll get much use for it."

"Here," Angel offered, tossing him an SMG. "Brought it just in case. And here's the ammo."

"You're never going to let me live this down, are you?"

"I wanted to have Bee give it to you, but forgot about it."

"Aw man," Bumblebee groaned. "That would've been memorable."

"Quiet!" Caboose whispered. "Hear that?"

I did hear something, it was some sort of faint buzzing. "Drones." The ship had crashed, which meant that it didn't have much power on, they probably had power enough for the turret and that's it. That meant it was dark, very dark, if not for my VISR I wouldn't have been able to make out my squad mates shapes. The green outlines showed where they were, but there was barely enough ambience light for the night vision to work. "Flashlights on, low intensity. If you see, hear, or even smell something, I want you to tell me."

"Target's about a hundred meters away, straight line."

"And in a not straight line?" Angel asked.

"We don't exactly have the schematics for a _CCS_-class battlecuiser, idiot." Grass never did miss an opportunity to remind Angel just exactly what she thought about his mental capacity.

"Damn bastards forgot to leave them in city hall," Snark went on.

"Get a move on," I groaned, "we're not about to have a verbal showdown."

"Are you afraid of someone taking your throne Sarge?"

"One more word out of your mouth and you get point," I warned Snark. "Without the SMG."

"Fine…"

Only then did we finally start moving. Pavel and Caboose had their shotguns aimed straight, flashlights on. The ship's interiors were…purple. There's no other way to describe it, you could even describe the architectural design as purple, all curved and with strange carvings that looked ominous and foreboding. Some of the wall lighting flickered on and off, occasionally, lighting up my squad and getting us on edge a little bit.

"Buzzing's getting louder," Pavel muttered. "Just down the corner."

He turned and waved at us to stop. I moved to the front and shuffled Caboose out of the way before peeking around the corner. The entire hallway was occupied by a drone hive. Last time we were inside a drone hive we almost died, all of us. This hive looked substantially smaller, and we knew that they were there, so it was a very different situation. I dare say, this time it was us who had them threatened.

"Pavel, M247 out, I'll handle your shotgun. Ok, there's a big hive in between us and the target. They seem to be doing some hibernating or something, so we have the element of surprise."

"Where's that on the periodic table?" Snark asked.

"Dunno, but it's my favorite element," Grass shrugged in reply

"Angel and Pavel will open up with full auto. Rest of you also firing full auto when they reload, Caboose and me will keep the ones that get to close."

"Let's roll," Pavel urged.

And roll we did. He and Angel busted around the corner with their fingers on the trigger. The noise was almost deafening in the confined quarters, my helmet sealed off my ears from the outside world, only giving me subdued versions of whatever was going on. The flashes from the weapons illuminated the hall somewhat, showing me bits and pieces of drones flying around. The buzzing now had an almost frantic tone to it.

"Reloading," Pavel shouted.

"Reloading."

Both of our heavy machine gunners stopped walking and let the three squad members with assault rifles to fire. The sound was considerably quieter, but three MA5 rifles firing full-auto is still something that you don't want to be on the wrong end of. They pushed the drones back for enough time to get Pavel and Angel back in action. I know you never saw The Matrix, or any of its remakes for that matter, but it reminded me of a scene in the third movie, with the mechs and the…you know what, never mind.

The little buggers were only just beginning to realize that they were dying by the dozens. Sure, a couple of shots were fired, but they mostly just threw themselves at us, trying to buy some time for their siblings out back. Still, whether it was five meters or ten meters, a bullet would punch through their hard exterior with no problem. The thing was that we now had to be careful not to trip on the dead drones, or get stuck on their droppings for that matter. I had to dive into action when a red-clad drone flew inside our group, I hit it with Pavel's shotgun and pressed it hard against the floor, trying to keep it from taking flight. Caboose finished it off with a well-placed shotgun blast.

"Halfway through," Bumblebee grunted. "I think…"

I blasted two drones form the ceiling and that was pretty much everything that I did for the rest of the hallway clearing. By the time we were through there must've been over a hundred dead drones behind us, there was an audible noise coming from the corpses as well, twitching never seemed like something loud to do, but when several dozen dead bugs are twitching, it does sound pretty loud.

"You know, if these had been humans, we would be facing war crimes charges," Grass pointed out. "Pretty serious ones."

"But they're not, and my conscience is clear," I said.

"Mine too!" Schitzo yelled while waving his arms frantically.

"Let's get a move on, the firing room, or whatever it's called, is probably loaded with brutes, expect a captain or chieftain."

We made our way to the doors and stopped. The lights on the triple doors were white, I assumed that it meant that they could be opened.

"There's almost no intel on enemy ships, at least about their insides," Caboose muttered.

"I think that the doors are unlocked," Grass replied, "can't be sure."

"That's a refreshing change," Angel said.

"Shotguns first then," I said, "after tossing a reasonable amount of flashbangs and frags, of course."

We started pulling out grenades from our webbing and finally we each had a flashbang in one hand and a frag in the other. Snark had been pissing me off, so he was the one that got to walk up to the door. According to Grass's 'scarce intel' the doors were opened by movement. So as soon as he was close enough, the doors opened up, he tossed his flashbang inside and a second later he threw the fragmentation grenade in his right hand. Before the grenade exploded the rest of us tossed our own stun devices and explosives. The cacophony of noise was something.

I suddenly feel like I had been hearing tons of loud shit over the day, definitely not good for my eardrums, or for the military, which had to pay for replacements.

Pavel and Caboose went in, blasting their shotguns as fast as the mechanism allowed them to, Pavel ran out of ammo before Caboose had burned through half of his, full-automatic fire tends to do that when compared to pump action. Angel walked right behind them, with me next to him. There was some leftover dust from the flashbangs and smoke from the frags, but I could see pretty well, with the room being illuminated and all. The brutes inside were grabbing their heads and rolling around, trying to make the pain go away.

That's where we came in. Most of the brutes were unarmored, you don't need armor to fire a gun behind a dozen meters of solid plating, right? Wrong, not when we're in the equation, that's us, professional badasses for when you need a tough situation solved. We could've totally had a primetime television show, and it would've won tons of awards too. Sexiest male lead would've been a given. Maybe best performance, which would've gone to Caboose for sure. Best effect's a given as well, after all, what beats the real deal?

The room was mostly cleared by the time all of us were inside. There were two brutes clad in golden armor left, one was shot down before it could let out a shot, but the other one aimed its grenade launcher at us and fired all four rounds in quick succession. I dove to the side to avoid them, as did the rest of my team. The alien had been dumb enough to fire at us instead of at our feet, and all of the explosives had detonated on the wall behind our backs, not harming anyone.

Next up it decided that _throwing_ its gun would've been a great idea. I was barely up when I had to drop to the floor to avoid having my head sliced clean off by the bayonet from the brute shot. The captain might've not been wrong when it considered it smart to throw his weapon. It had been a pretty decent throw as well, managing to send us all diving for cover once again. The brute now found itself unarmed and defenseless. It went completely berserk and tried charging us, but it was put down like the animal that it was before it went more than ten meters.

That could've been our trailer, me ducking underneath the crude metal blade in slow motion, perhaps have me looking at it just for effect, as soon as it flew above me we could change angles to have the audience see just how close I was to getting hit. Then, when the gun cleared me we would resume normal speed and change to a different scene. Man, I totally could've been an awesome director.

"There's the firing console," Grass pointed.

"Ammunition store," Angel said, pointing to an oversized plasma container. By oversized I mean fucking huge. "Or something…"

"Angel, set a pair of charges on the container-or-something," I ordered. "Everyone cover the door."

I did a quick jog around the room and realized that we could actually leave this ship from here. I didn't want to stay on board any longer than I needed to. We would have to climb through a narrow vent that lead to the turret proper and then exit through a cooling hole, but it was certainly feasible.

"Sarge, I don't know if I should activate the magnetic plates," Angel shouted. "They could destabilize the plasma."

"Use the glue panels," I replied, "And be sure to stick it on properly."

"We wouldn't want it falling down, now would we?"

"Most certainly not dear Bumblebee," Pavel said with a small nod that he probably thought looked classy.

I reached for another charge on my rucksack and slapped it underneath the firing console, the holograms shifted and changed color when I neared them, but the brute bleeding on the floor next to it wasn't about to yell at me for messing with its console. The charge attached itself to the purple metal and the receiver light blinked green once. I smiled with self-satisfaction. "Snark and…Grass, climb out, set up shop."

The two of them left their posts, allowing Angel and me to take over. Grass, being the resident team lady, was the first to jump up to the vent, Snark took advantage of the situation and palmed both of her cheeks to prop her up. Yes, Snark actually copped up a feel.

"You're going to be paying for that," she growled.

Snark sighed contentedly. "I don't think I mind paying for that."

That got a chuckle from all of us. Bar Grass of course.

"Hey, maybe Nezarian will be the one to do the punishing," Angel suggested, seizing the opportunity to get Grass flustered.

"Damn, maybe I should apologize," Snark said, sounding worried.

"Nah, he's one of the bros," Pavel said. "He won't mind."

"Next person to come through this hole gets shot in the head."

"Leave her alone," I chuckled. "Snark, go."

"Now I'm, afraid," he muttered. "How about she just grabs my ass and we call it even?"

Grass chuckled loudly. "There's nothing to grab there, hon."

"Pavel and Bee, you go next." I figured that if they managed to make it through the narrow vent, then I most certainly could. Sure, I was taller than both of them, but Pavel and Bumblebee were both really into weights and stuff, having wider shoulders than I had. I probably should've done more swimming in my teens, but I was quite satisfied with the width of my shoulders.

"We're up," Bumblebee informed me. "Caboose, Angel, go."

I stayed behind, aiming down the hall and taking deep, heavy breaths. Thank god that my visor couldn't fog up under any situation, because I was letting out wet breaths. Much like I would during orgasm, but then again, you probably didn't need to know that.

"We're up."

"Just you and me now Francisco," Schitzo said, examining his nails. I kept my eye down my scope, squeezing the trigger when a grunt appeared through the corner. I heard some squealing and cursed, there were more aliens in there as well.

On a side note, it really bugged me that Schitzo called me by my full name, only three people called me by my full name on a regular basis, Eliza, my mother, and Schitzo. My dad and uncle both used to call me Paco and to everyone else I was either Frank or Frankie, it seemed insulting to be called like that by him. I bet that he knew just exactly what he was doing, knew me as well as I knew myself, perhaps even better.

"Here goes," I muttered as I threw a grenade down the hallway. I was halfway to the vent-like hole before it detonated. I climbed up and had Pavel and Caboose pull me up. I now found myself in a twelve by twelve room, feet that is. There were several metal slides that opened sideways, probably to vent out excess plasma from shots. It was a nice long drop to the shallow sea below us.

"Here, tie this," I ordered, tossing Grass a line of rope. As fate would have it, it was the same line that I had used to help her pull off that impressive stunt on that building. Where had it been? I think it was also Lambari, in Uppergap. She quickly tied it and jumped down after wrapping her foot around it. The rest of us followed in quick succession, once again, I was the last to go down. On the ground, with the sea up to my waist, I cut the rope and coiled it around my elbow quickly. I bet that Grass would like the memorabilia, since it was all but useless now. I looked at the section of it still tied up on the ship and shrugged regrettably, I liked keeping things like they were, take a look at my BR55, I've had it since bootcamp and it has never jammed on me. Well, never during critical moments, but it had never once failed me. My previous armor, it was a few years old, the armored boots even older, it had held through most of what the covenant would throw at me. Granted, my new armor, with the red chest piece, stripe down the helmet, and stripe in the front of my right boot did look pretty sweet, but it would be a good few months before I started seeing it as _my_ armor.

"The scuba gear is that way," I pointed, "get a move on."

The water was up to my waist, the dampness was easily felt through my undersuit, I immediately switched the temperature so that it would match the air outside, not the cold water. I had trouble wading through the water, with the waves slapping against me and trying to push me against the wrecked ship. It was one of those waves that saved me. The mass of water pushed me to the side, forcing me to move sideways. My foot hit a piece of rock or of the ship and twisted sideways, I tripped and fell down just as a beam sliced through the air. The ionized ray nearly hit me, leaving a black scorch on my helmet, the first scar on my new armor.

"Where did it shoot from?" I asked, still underwater.

"The vents we used to escape," Snark replied.

"Can you hit it?" Bee asked.

"Lemme see- holy fuck, no way, it's got us pinned down."

"Ok, we've got fifteen minutes of air, what do you say about swimming underwater for a couple dozen meters before detonating the charges."

"I've seen the damage those plasma guns can do," Caboose said. "I don't think we should be remotely near the ship when they go off."

"Can we make it to the evac point without surfacing?" Angel asked.

"Negative," I replied. "There's that sand bank and a piece of ship that we have to climb over."

"Can we have our drone hit the sniper?" Pavel asked.

"Probably," Bee said. "I'll paint it."

"Ok, Grass, make some splashes away from him, give him some space."

"Fine…"

The jackal did see the distraction and went with it, firing two superheated beams of ionized particles at our resident female squad member. I couldn't see the shots through the water, but from the sounds that Grass made, they weren't so far off. This jackal sniper was good, it had been able to get the jump on us and had almost put a hole clean through my head. Still, even Snark would've been hard-pressed to escape a UCAV firing from an unseen position. I didn't see or hear the missile flying at the offending alien, but I did see the explosion damaging the exhaust ports.

"Go, go, go!" I yelled. This time I kept my eyes on the top of the ship, looking for movement that would give away a would be ambush. The fucking mist was something of a bitch, never allowing us to see what was going on. I could barely make out the top of the ship from here, and technically speaking I was about halfway up the side of it.

"Sunnova-"

"What?"

"I felt something on my leg," Bumblebee muttered.

"I hear fish can be deadly."

"Very funny Grass," he growled. "I hate it when that happens."

To be fair, I didn't enjoy that feeling either, but having lived so long on Jericho VII, near the ocean, I had spent a good portion of my life swimming in the ocean. It was a nasty feeling when your hand brushed against a discarded plastic bag, but then you realized what had happened, it was even worse when something brushed against your foot, because you had no idea what it had been. Fish were assholes like that, probably getting their revenge for me eating their fellow kin.

I reached the sandbank just in time, a pack of brutes had appeared over the top of the ship. The sandbank had several pieces of ship embedded in it, making for suitable cover. I dove behind a spiked piece of battlecruiser just as a carbine opened up on me. It was an uncomfortable position, with wet, sticky sand on my legs and butt and with water splashing around. Oh, and the pack of brutes had the high ground.

Angel immediately opened up a long burst, but from his cursing I could tell that they had forced him back behind cover before he could do any damage. The ship had broken up in many, many pieces. Every member of Reaper was behind their own individual piece of cover. Pavel popped form his and fired two short bursts before concentrated spiker fire forced him behind cover once more. We were in trouble. There was nothing but open water to our right, to our left, and to our back. To get to deep enough water we would have to risk ourselves for at least thirty meters of death trap.

I fired three bursts, hitting two brutes and having them recoil from the impacts, but their power armor held. I immediately received a retaliatory burst of plasma fire. The red blobs of the brute plasma rifles hit the water next to me, heating it enough to evaporate some of it, adding steam to the mist.

"We're pinned good," Bumblebee replied.

"Use that rocket of yours," Snark suggested, "I can't get a shot off."

"I'll try," he grumbled.

The rest of us opened fire blindly, I did see a couple of brutes duck behind cover, but the rest of them knew that the chances of us hitting them firing wildly were almost zero. Bumblebee spun from cover, lifted his Spanker, water dripping from both tubes, and fired. I kept track of the rocket until it disappeared over my shoulder. He immediately let out another HEAT missile at the brutes. I turned to see the result and saw one of the brutes being thrown off the ship from the explosion. Pavel and Caboose fired short bursts at it when it hit the ocean, making sure that it was dead. The other rocket collided with one big alien, turning it into a gory mess. The explosion also killed a brute minor standing next to it, but other than that there were still half a dozen brutes firing at us.

"You know what?" I said. "Screw this shit. Angel, blow this ship up."

He giggled to himself like a little kid and pulled out the detonator. He gave me a brief nod from his piece of cover and looked up to the sky as he double tapped the detonating stick. The explosion was pretty small.

Then all hell broke loose.

The ship ballooned upwards and a blue explosion just…exploded out of the battlecruiser. The brutes barely had time to look before the ship twisted and rumbled, throwing them off balance.

"Run!" Pavel yelled. A very sensible order if you ask me.

I stood up, firing at the brutes, killing one and keeping the others down. My squad all ran past me and wobbled through the water until it was finally deep enough to dive in. They jumped and disappeared underneath the dirty sea. I made to join them when the ship really blew up. I looked towards the plasma turret that we had detonated and saw that plasma explosions were littering that area of the ship. Another huge explosion much like the initial one lit everything up in a bluish light. I covered my eyes from the explosion, feeling the heat on my arm.

"I bet you wish you didn't give the go order," Schitzo said. "Maybe this was a bad idea."

Smaller explosions were running the length of the ship. One of those happened on the section in front of me, about fifty meters away. Little pieces of shrapnel hit the water all around me and bounced off my armor. By that time I was already running as fast as I could towards the deeper parts of the beach. The stupid sand bank was absurdly long and wide. I jumped as the ship started blowing up again. Once I was underwater I could see the water to my right lighting up with pretty colors from the explosion. Explosions.

I looked at the small compass on my HUD and swam towards the shining dot. It was hard to keep myself underwater without the proper gear, but the heavy armor did the job well enough. I used the floor to keep myself underwater and safe from the concussive blasts and the shrapnel. After what seemed like an hour of frantic swimming I finally reached our scuba gear. There were seven little propellers just floating there, my squad was already there, waiting for me, their fearless leader, to arrive. I reached my own backpack and pulled it towards me while grabbing the oxygen tank and attaching it to my helmet. I took off my rucksack and put on the UMK (read: Underwater Movement Kit). I slapped my battle rifle over it and grabbed my rucksack with my left hand.

"Time to go," I said, allowing a smile of satisfaction to adorn my face. Nothing quite like the feeling of a job well done, even with some slight complications.

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><p><em>Thanks to Sniper Fodder for proof-reading this chapter.<em>

_And so the epicness begins…_


	126. Daughters and Corpsmen First

Chapter CXXVI: Daughters and Corpsmen First

**September 18, 2544 (UNSC Calendar)/**

**Hill 4, Catamaran Peninsula, Asilon, Omicron Ebur System**

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><p>"<em>Your men. Your plan. Your responsibility."- Colonel James Pendleton<em>

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><p>"Ah, Gunnery Sergeant Castillo, you've only been here for three days and your exploits are famous already."<p>

"Two and a half days actually, asshole," Schitzo yelled at his face. I had to keep the smile from my face. Schitzo did manage humor occasionally.

"Thank you, sir," I replied politely. "I aim to please."

Hill 4 was technically under the control of the Army, and that portion of the Army was under control of one Colonel James Pendleton. He was the stereotype of a colonel. Mid-fifties, buzz cut adorning his graying hair, he even had a highly visible scar running from the corner of his left to his ear. All he was missing was a nice little mustache and he would've been on a movie.

Unfortunately, he was the kind of Army colonel that had a deep dislike for the Marine Corps. I was in the Corps, so that dislike automatically extended to me. I had to be reasonable here though, and so did he. He would tolerate my presence and my deeds because he knew that he needed me and my squad and I would tolerate his disrespect because I pretty much had to. Call us stupid, but the military had been working for centuries on this same system, it wasn't about to change for anybody.

"What do you know about this sector of the front?" he asked me, his back to me while he examined a datapad.

"Only what they told me, artillery on this hill keeps large scale assaults at bay while the men down in the trenches hold back the smaller attacks."

"Were you told that the men under my command have held this hill, the deepest advance point into enemy territory, for over three weeks?"

"I was under the impression that there are several units further ahead, sir. I was told that units ranging from squad to company sized got cut off from the main force."

He grunted and slapped his datapad on his desk. "Those men are brave men, even if they are incredibly stupid. Most of the units that got trapped either refused to fall back or tried seizing an opportunity that wasn't there."

"This colony has been a peaceful one," I asked. "Hasn't it been, sir?"

"Yes, I never thought that would be a bad thing," he sighed and looked at me. "Sit down Gunny."

I did as I was told and he went on.

"This is a large colony," he explained. "And with the war going on, many saw the benefits that the military is giving volunteers as an opportunity. A decent salary and it was certain that you'd get in, recruiters aren't turning their backs on anybody nowadays. Still, most of the enlisted men remained here, both Army and Marines. Thousands of young men thinking of themselves as hero, knowing nothing of combat except for what they read in novels or saw in those films."

"But don't you have any officers with combat experience?"

"A few here and there, but most of our officers were as green as our enlisted men when this started, they thought that war was about glory. And they were pissed at the aliens, most of us survivors lost someone in the initial attacks."

"So they charged," I said with realization. I had never had something similar happen to me. "And now they're either dead or stuck."

"Unfortunately," Pendleton affirmed. "That's why I requested your presence here."

"Whatever you need me to do," I said with a nod, shuffling on my chair.

"Excellent," he grinned evilly. "There is one particular unit that has been stuck behind enemy lines for about over a month. Mostly the enemy line is unstable enough to allow us to give them supplies and evac their wounded, but this unit in particular is completely surrounded."

"Ok," I nodded.

"What I want you to do, you and your squad, is to break through the enemy line."

I chuckled. "That is easier said than done, sir."

"Of course I know that," he growled. "But I do believe that your squad can pull it off, as hard as that is for me to admit…I pulled your records Gunny, they are most impressive."

"Thank you, sir."

"You've done some tough shit during your career, tougher than anybody on this planet. At least before the war bogged down." He looked at me and maintained eye contact. "We have three warthogs ready to be used by you and your team. All of our armory is open to you."

My mouth gaped open. "You're giving us free reign?"

Colonel Pendleton crossed his arms angrily and sighed. "Listen Castillo, I've known you for a grand total of five minutes and I already dislike you, but there is absolutely _nothing_ that can get in the way of my men's safety. I'm giving you control of my men for this op, within reason of course."

"Of course," I agreed, smiling. "Sir, I'm a grunt, not a strategist."

"This is just one mission Sergeant, you don't need to stage a push."

I smiled. "I'll meet up with my team, discuss the issue," I told him. "I assume you want us ready as soon as possible?"

"Correct."

"Very well then, sir, we'll be ready by nighttime, if that's not the case then we'll attack at dawn. I'll let you know what we plan."

He grunted. "Be quick about it."

"Of course Colonel, thank you for the vote of confidence."

"Not like I have much of a choice, Yule won't lend me his Marines and those Rangers are already engaged elsewhere. Dismissed."

I saluted, my smile still plastered on my face.

Let me put this to you in layman's terms. I had control of over one thousand men and women. Oh, the possibilities were endless, but I wasn't exactly the very model of a major general. I was an asshole who had managed to climb up to the rank of Gunnery Sergeant. So, I began to do the natural thing, I began to panic. When I panicked I did one of two things, I either drank myself to oblivion until I came up with a decision that seemed like a good idea or I talked to Pavel.

I currently found myself very short on any kind of liquor, but I sure wished that I had some, Pavel would do the grown up thing and make up some boring solution. That's exactly what I needed now, even if it wasn't exactly my thing.

"Pavel!" I yelled at him. He was chatting with some wounded soldiers, asking them about things on the front, the two kids were smitten with him, this colony probably didn't have any Helljumpers on it. "There have been some developments."

Pavel turned around, and with him, the two heads of the wounded soldiers snapped in my direction. "What kind of developments? Good developments? Bad ones?"

I looked at the two kids nervously, one had been shot in the neck, probably with a spiker by the looks of it, the bandages went around his neck and underneath his armpit, bunching up on the place of the wound. The other soldier had it worse, half of his head was covered in bandages, with only a small space allowing one of his eyes to see.

"What happened to you kid?" I asked him.

"Overcharged plasma pistol shot," he shrugged, "blew up right against my face."

"Marsden was always an ugly mother," his friend replied, "slap some grafts on him and he'll look better than ever."

Marsden grimaced and shuffled sideways on his bed, he stretched his arm and pressed down on his friend's wound. His friend, of course, cried out like a little girl and did his best to get away. "I was kidding, I was kidding!"

"This is something better discussed in private," I told Pavel. I could see the look of disappointment on their faces. "Uh, get well soon."

"What he said," Pavel laughed. "Good luck."

"You too, Staff."

The base on the Hill 4 was abuzz with activity. The several hundred men on it were running from one place to another delivering messages, moving crates of ammunition, getting messages around, errands, anything that needed to be done. A flight of four Falcon gunships flew overhead, headed towards the front. The barracks had long since been hit by Covenant artillery, most soldiers were sleeping on the floor with tarps over their heads or in their foxholes. And this was supposed to be the base, the guys in the front must've been living under terrible conditions.

Our quarters, if you could call them that, was a large camouflage net propped up by four metal poles. Underneath the netting there were some patches of tarp to keep the rain from falling on our head. At least they were nice enough to give us sleeping bags.

There was a large ammunition box in the middle, it had been used to hold shells for artillery cannons, but now it was empty, on top of it were several of our weapons, lying on their sides with their magazines next to them. Already inside our so-called tent was Grass, she was disassembling her MA5 with uncanny speed. She shot us a quick look before going back to her work.

"What is it Frank?" Pavel asked, worried.

"Nothing bad, I promise." I took two deep breaths and glanced at Grass before going on. "Colonel Pendleton wants us to break through the enemy lines to get to one of his lost units."

"Go on…" Pavel urged, sensing that I wasn't telling him everything.

"He had delegated complete control of all the forces under his command…" I paused for effect. "To me."

"Shit, this is bad."

I growled.

"I'm kidding, but so are you, right?"

I shook my head.

"Holy shit Sarge!"

"Careful there, potty mouth," Angel said, moving a piece of tarp and entering the tent. "What's going on? What'd I miss?"

"Pendleton just gave command of his forces to Frank for a rescue mission."

Angel laughed incredibly loudly and bent over, grabbing his stomach and trying to say something. He was laughing so much that he ran out of breath and started wheezing, trying to get some oxygen in his system. This went on for about one minute, with the rest of us staring at him. Eventually, Grass rolled her eyes and gave me a questioning glance. I nodded in reply and she slapped Angel hard on the back of the head and shoved him sideways.

"Hey!"

"What's so fucking funny?" I asked angrily. I couldn't possibly be that bad of a leader.

"Sarge, you're a great Helljumper and incredible when it comes to small-unit tactics, but honestly, I wouldn't trust you with my kids."

"Well, Pendleton doesn't share your distrust, he just handed me control of his forces."

"Merde, you were serious."

"I was," I replied. "So stop laughing or you're going to be the distraction."

"Fine, what's the mission?"

"We have to make contact with a lost unit, a couple of companies, that are stuck eight clicks behind enemy lines."

Angel winced. "Ouch, sounds tough."

"It is doable," I shrugged. "We just need a suitable distraction."

"There are plenty of suitable distractions that I can think off," Angel suggested, tapping two detonators repeatedly. Just before he put them down there was a huge explosion somewhere on the hill. "That wasn't me, I swear."

"What _was _it?" Grass asked.

"They were destroying spare Covenant ordinance," Pavel told us. "Not sure why, but it was mostly some of those weird boxes where they store their weapons, they supposedly secured enough for ONI."

"None of our business," I asserted. "Now, distraction?"

"Explosions always work," Angel insisted.

"Yes, but they will be expecting some sort of assault after an explosion, that's what these guys have been doing ever since they arrived," Pavel dismissed him.

"Did you know," Grass started. Our collective groan didn't stop her. "That trench warfare has been used in multiple wars? It has been declared obsolete several dozen times ever since World War One, but it always finds a way to come back."

"Thank you, Grass, Pavel?"

"This trench talk is giving me an idea…" he murmured to himself. "They have those trench digging machines, right?"

"Yup."

"Well, do you know how wide they dig the trenches?"

"Standard width for the trench diggers is two meters at the bottom and two point five at the top, but they can be modified to dig up to five meters wide, takes longer of course." Grass helpfully stated. "Did you know that they were invented during the Rainforest Wars as a way of-"

"Digging trenches," Angel interrupted. "Yeah, we know."

"Well, actually, they were supposed to be used to dig tunnels into enemy trenches."

"Can they be used for that?" I asked.

"There's a reason they are called trench diggers, not tunnel diggers."

"Thanks, keep your attitude to yourself."

"Sorry," she apologized.

"Don't be so tough on her," Pavel told me. "I doubt that even Nezarian is that uptight." The comment had Grass blushing and shooting daggers out of her eyes. I don't know if they actually hooked up during our boring patrolling days, but it was a possibility. They were definitely interested in one another, though.

"Moving on," I pressed. "Trench diggers…"

"Right," Pavel said. "We can use them to dig ourselves a little highway, pile up some dirt into a ramp and fly right over the enemy trenches."

"Or into them," Angel said. "I like the idea, but it'd be a bitch to work out."

"Not necessarily."

I turned around to see Caboose standing in one corner. I hadn't heard him walk in, the man was sneaky as hell, no wonder he was an ONI agent. Perhaps he should've been black ops instead of the considerably more standard stuff that we did. When I say standard I mean it when you compare it to super spy missions, because what I did was anything but standard. See, you got me all angry at myself and made me imply that I was just another grunt. I'm a damn good grunt.

"What do you suggest?" Grass asked. Her voice could've cooled liquid nitrogen.

"Simple, if we have control of all this men-"

"If Sarge has control," Angel corrected.

"Details. Why settle for digging one trench? We could stage a whole push forward if we wanted to. Use all the trench diggers to make lines, perpendicular to the frontline trenches. How far are our trenches from theirs?"

"Distances ranging from seventy five meters to a hundred," Grass informed him.

"We can use the machines to dig until we're twenty meters away from the Covenant trenches. We have the diggers turn right, link together all the lines."

"And we have ourselves a new frontline."

"The diggers will be attacked," Grass stated. "No doubt about that."

"They'll have to be escorted, flamethrowers and shredder ammunition," I suggested.

"Wait, you're not seriously considering this," Pavel exclaimed. "There's a reason they haven't tried it already."

"But they will," I said, smiling. "Because I'll give the order."

"Ok, let's say they go through with the idea." Grass rubbed her temples and went on. "We dig until we're right up their noses, how do we keep them from just charging?"

"We have the brunt of the forces stay back here," Caboose said. "Lay out heavy firing, we can even toss in guided missiles and artillery to have them keep their heads down."

"The nearest artillery battery is ten miles away," Grass told him. "We have the _Inconvenience_ to provide targets, but it's still far away, there's always room for error."

"Not by more than twenty meters," Caboose muttered to himself.

"We can dig halfway through before stopping the barrage," I suggested. "Then have regular artillery fire from the trenches, light up the sky, tracers, incendiaries, have the autocannons go on, the works."

"Explosives all around? I'm beginning to think this is feasible," Angel admitted, ignoring the cool stare that Grass shot him. She still didn't completely trust Caboose, none of us did, but this idea was a good one and he couldn't possibly have any ulterior motives.

"They'll see the tons of dirt coming out of the ground, it won't be long before they realize what's going on."

"You're right, but only when they _can_ see it," Caboose told her. "With mist as heavy as this, you can barely see more than fifty meters."

"We're going to have to pop smokes," Grass said.

"Hadn't thought of that," I admitted.

Pavel groaned. "This is dumb, the plan could work, but they won't listen to us! None of us is even an officer!"

"We're all noncoms," I smiled.

"There's a difference Frank," Pavel said, exasperated. "I'll go through with it, but the Colonel won't accept it. Why would he risk his men to gain just a few meters of dirt?"

"Because, and I'm quoting here, he won't let anything get in between him and the safety of his men."

Pavel nodded slightly. "Fine, but we should work out the details with the rest of the squad before going to Pendleton. And somebody get a sheet of paper, a big one."

* * *

><p>Colonel James Pendleton sighed when he saw me standing at attention inside his office. "At ease Castillo. What did you and your team of barbarians come up with?"<p>

I ignored the insult and smiled. "A very barbaric plan indeed, Colonel."

"Spit it out then."

"You have…fifteen serviceable trench diggers?"

"Fourteen badgers," he corrected. "One was hit early today by a Wraith."

"Makes no difference," I smiled. "Here's the plan. We dig thirteen lines straight at the Covenant. One of those is going to be extra wide. In order to move that one as fast as the others we're going to need two diggers. For the first half we'll shell the enemy trenches with targeting support from my ship, high explosives and shrapnel. As soon as we're near enough for a stray shell to hit us we stop firing and instead light up our own line. Every man and woman takes out their gun and empties their magazine at the enemy, or at least in their direction. Turret emplacements, autocannons, everything that we have should be firing. Make a lot of noise, use tracers and incendiaries, the works. By that time the trench diggers, your badgers, should be within twenty meters of the enemy line. They stop moving forward and instead turn to the right to connect the thirteen lines. All of them except for the widest trench, that one will keep going forward until it breaks through the enemy trench and so do we."

"You're asking me to sacrifice one of my very valuable badgers and to risk most of my men to get a gain of seventy five yards?"

"To get to your lost unit, yessir."

"And you think this will work?"

"I am certain it will. With small teams covering the trench diggers we should have a foolproof plan. Use flamethrowers to suppress the enemy infantry, shredder rounds to scare them away. I would recommend five man units for each digger. One flamethrower, one machine gun, three assault rifles."

"Five is too few," he grunted. "Seven ought to do it."

"If you insist," I nodded. "In that case one man should have at least a couple boxes of machine gun ammunition to help secure the line."

"And then what?"

"Well, my team and I will-"

"No, I couldn't care less about what you and your men will do. I care about _my_ men, who are going to be within hand grenade range."

"The issue came up," I admitted. "Once my squad is on the enemy trenches with our Warthogs-"

"My Warthogs," he corrected.

"Of course, my bad, Colonel. Once we're there, we can run through the enemy trench, cause some mayhem, do what we do best. I wouldn't consider it unfeasible for your men to actually take the enemy trench after we're done."

"You know Castillo, for the last two weeks there have been three separate attempts to take the enemy line, two of them were over as soon as they started and the last one was pushed back by the enemy. Your plan may look good on paper, but the Covenant aren't dumb. They'll realize what's going on and they'll start acting accordingly."

"Sir, brutes are renowned for their savagery, their ferocity, and their animalistic cunning, when all things go wrong, they go berserk."

"I've seen it happen."

"That's why we proposed the flamethrowers," I insisted. In reality, the idea that the flamethrowers would counter the brute's berserk mode only came after the whole plan was wrapped up, Grass started with one of her 'did you know' moments and said something along the lines of all animals being instinctively afraid of fire. And what are brutes if not glorified animals? "Once they are lit up I guarantee that even the fiercest brute will panic, and when they do, so will the grunts and jackals under their command."

"It's unorthodox," he muttered. "But it sounds…foolproof."

"Thank you sir," I smiled. "With some luck you might even manage to take the Covenant line and gain a couple kilometers of land."

"Hardly," he grunted. "We'll make to take over the enemy frontlines if you suggest we do," Pendleton said, "but that's as far as we go."

I shrugged. "They're your men."

"Wrong." The colonel stood up from his chair and looked up to me. "For the duration of this op, they're _your_ men, any one of them gets hurt, your fault, an one of them messes up, still your fault, any one of them dies…your fault."

"It will work," I reassured him, and myself.

"Your men," he reminded me. "Your plan. Your responsibility."

"I won't let you down," I said, trying to sound confident. "I won't let _them_ down."

* * *

><p>"Go, go, go!" I yelled. I could hear the shells whistling as they flew overhead. My helmet was booming with some of Bumblebee's old songs. It was once again one of those inspiring epic kind. This one in particular was called Arise, by some group calling itself E.S. Posthumus. It's a hard song to describe, but since the group had some Latin in their name then you can assume that it was a good song. And good it was. The shells just added to the music, think 1812 Overture, by Tchaikovsky. I learned with that piece that everything, up to and including artillery pieces, can be used for music.<p>

The digger roared violently and started moving forward. The drill pulled mud and dirt into the main body and from there it was spat out to the sides, leaving little mounds that served as placeholders until we could put some sandbags there. My warthog moved slowly, very, very slowly. I was jumpy and edgy, but I kept myself calm and focused on driving. Not that there was much to do, but it did serve to distract me from the matter at hand. Behind me I had Pavel, he was manning the machine gun on the hog, keeping an impassive face no doubt.

Behind me was Grass' warthog. She was driving and had Bee on the side. The guy looked unusual without a Spanker on his shoulder, but the Spartan Laser replacing it more than made up for it. Besides, he had a Spanker underneath the seat just in case. He kept his head low to avoid being hit by stray shrapnel or plasma. Manning the gun on that warthog we had Angel. He was actually sitting down with his legs hanging out of the rear. He didn't want to get hit by stray shrapnel either. The last of our hogs was driven by Caboose and had Snark on the turret. It didn't seem possible that someone so thin and small could move such a big gun, but when we mentioned that he just said that he had enough experience with big guns, implying that he had a big penis.

You know us guys, if you believed what we said then everyone would be around twelve inches.

But I'm getting a little bit carried away here.

Our 'Hogs were making slow progress. The other trenches were moving along at the same speed as ours, I couldn't see them from where I was standing, the trench was higher than my Warthog, but I had a display on my helmet that allowed me to track their progress. I kept my eyes focused on that and on the rear of the trench digger. About halfway through the song an artillery shell landed next to us, a good enough distance away, but it didn't land in front of us.

"Stop the artillery," I ordered into my comm. "Start lighting it up."

It took a few seconds for the shelling to stop, but as soon as it did the men and women under Pendleton, under me, started doing what they were ordered to do. To run through their ammunition as fast as humanely possible. Their training might've not been the best nor the most thorough, but they had been drilled in conserving ammunition and firing in short bursts, I could feel the hesitation as they fired. Not on the autocannons or the mortars, those were usually trained to be able to fire as fast as humanly possible.

Still, the tracers flew all around us, I saw some streaking directly overhead, making whistling noises as they sliced through the mist.

"Almost there Frank!" Pavel yelled in my ear. At least it felt like it was in my ear.

"Keep your eyes up! I don't want jumpers coming down on us." The only response I got was a long burst fired from the turret. "That's ma boy!"

"They're trying to stop us," Snark said from all the way to the rear of the convoy. "Can see half a dozen jump pack brutes." A long sustained burst later we got this gem from our resident sniper. "Just took out half a dozen jump pack brutes."

"And here I thought you were lying about the size of your gun," Bee tisked.

"He might've been," Angel admitted. "But not about the size of his ammo, that's for sure."

"Did you know-"

"Shut up Grass!"

I had literally never seen six of us agree on something so quickly. Even Caboose joined in on the fun.

"We're almost there," I said.

"Explains the desperate brutes and grunts," Angel said as he fired from his gun. "They're just throwing themselves at us."

"Keep them at bay," I ordered. "Pavel and I go left, Grass, take the right. Caboose and Snark…the battlefield's your playground."

"Like the sound of that," Snark said approvingly. "You should have it inscribed or something."

"Nah, he's got fancy Latin quotes already."

"Shut up Pavel," I grunted. "Here we go!"

Now, you probably won't believe it, but as soon as the trench digger busted through the enemy trench the song ended. Instead of some epic and inspiring piece, we got what had passed for art back in the twenty-first. The piece started with some light whistling, a pretty jarring change from the inspiring orchestral. I barely had time to process the music in my head before the machine started digging through the other side of the trench. I turned to the right, sighing with relief when I saw that the Covenant trench was wide enough for my Warthog to drive through. In front of me were several startled grunts, jackals, and brutes. They wasted precious seconds trying to blink at us in the hopes that we would disappear and they could laugh about their senseless panic.

Pavel, on the other hand, showed me that he deserved a raise. He fired wildly, spraying from side to side. There was no way he could've missed. The bullets ripped through everything, hitting grunts and tearing their limbs from their sockets, blowing jackals apart, and tearing gory chunks form the larger brutes.

_Can you blow my whistle baby, whistle baby, let me know,_

_Girl I'm gonna show you how to do it and we start real slow_

_You just put your lips together and you come real close_

_Can you blow my whistle baby, whistle baby…here we go._

"I'm not even sorry," Bumblebee laughed loudly.

"You misogynistic piece of shit!" Grass exclaimed in outrage.

I shook my head, already forgetting about all my troubles and worries. I liked how the song fit the situation, I was essentially telling the Covenant to suck my dick, pardon my French. So far, they weren't doing a pretty good job at it, for starters, they were screaming, so their lips weren't together, oh, and they were also running away as fast as possible, so they weren't coming real close or starting slow. Three strikes in as many seconds. Pavel sure made them pay for it.

I floored the accelerator, now this became a race between me and Pavel, he tried to gun down the shocked, tired, and unprepared covvies before I ran them over. He had the advantage for starting earlier than me, but a Warthog has one helluva hood. I laughed very much like I imagine a maniac would as I splattered puny grunts and jackals under the massive recon vehicle. I even slammed to the sides to squish wide-eyed brutes against the mud walls.

"I can't keep count!" Pavel exclaimed in glee. "Fuckin' A!"

The warthog shook violently as the tires went over a brute that had tripped. "As wide words as I ever heard come from you!"

_I'm betting you like people! And I'm betting you love freak mode!_

_And I'm betting you like girls, to give love and girls and stroke your little ego_

_I bet you're guilty your honor, that's just how we live in my genre_

I don't even know what the fuck that long-dead rapper was talking about, but for some reason it made me smile much like I imagine a maniac would smile. The Warthog was doing fifty, perhaps a little bit less, I couldn't really gain speed with all the organic speed bumps and the crashes against the walls. After we had gone three hundred meters, leaving a trail of dead and dying covvies behind us, we encountered our first obstacle. A pair of hunters, that had been called from the rear to help out in the front, turned and spotted us. Now, they didn't have eyes. Or faces. But I'm pretty sure that I saw them actually get shocked. I plowed through the first one, pushing it against the wall while Pavel turned its face into orange mush. In fact, so much orange matter fell on my windshield that I had to use the wipers. It all seemed to add to the fun.

"Eat it motherfucker!"

Boy, was Pavel having a blast.

"Not so funny now, you fuck!"

Fine, I was having a blast too.

The other hunter crouched behind its shield as I started backing up from the remains of its brethren, it tried bashing our car with its shield, but the engine was just a little bit faster. Pavel took advantage of the opening and emptied a good twenty rounds into its chest and stomach, prompting the huge ogre to roar at us in anger. My bones shook from the power of the scream, but I just floored it again and laughed as the hunter got stuck on the hood. I drove for another hundred meters with half a hunter blocking my view. Occasionally a jackal would roll over the hood and Pavel would have to duck. I honestly hadn't had this much fun since the first time I had drunken sex.

Wow, my life has been sad.

"Enjoy it bro," Scarecrow said from the passenger's seat. He was clad in full Helljumper armor, a smile as big as I had ever seen on his face. He put on his helmet just as I slammed onto something, a brute by the feeling of it. The impact was enough to dislodge the hunter from the hood. "You deserve it."

"Damn right I do!" I exclaimed, ecstatic at all the damage that we were causing.

"We've got a banshee on our tail!" Pavel screamed.

"Deal with it," I told him. "Reaper, I want you out of the trenches, we've got a mission to accomplish."

"But I'm having so. Much. Fun!" Grass yelled maniacally.

"Hate to agree with Mrs. Nezarian here, but this is fucking awesome!"

"Five more minutes Sarge!" Snark pleaded. "And I'm not even in the trenches."

"Sorry," I said, jerking to my right as plasma hit the walls of the trench to my left, covering me with gravel and heated dirt. "We've done one half, we have to finish the other."

"Fine," Grass sighed.

"Banshee down!" Pavel yelled. "And just in time too, it almost charged its fuel rod cannon."

"Good one," I said, not really listening. "Colonel, you copy?"

"I'm here Castillo."

"Tell your men that they can attack sectors five through twelve, and tell them to stop firing the big guns, we don't want to get hit by friendly fire."

"Done, and done. Good luck."

"Thanks, sir," I replied. "Reaper out."

I saw a mudslide to my left, not the first one on our trajectory, but the first one I had really looked at. Pavel was still firing away like crazy, bursting jackals apart and producing waterworks with multi-colored blood. If that's not something beautiful, then I don't know what is.

I twisted the wheel to the left and the jeep just about tipped to the side from the sudden change in speed, inclination, and direction. The wheels got enough traction on the mud though, and we emerged from the enemy trench. From up here I could see small trenches that led from the rear to the front. I ignored them and tried looking around for the other two 'Hogs, the goddamned mist blocked everything from view, so no good on that.

"Two more banshees!"

"Knock them out," I snapped.

The two side mirrors had been completely obliterated when I had been on our little trench run, I only had the rearview mirror to see what was going on, even despite that, Pavel was blocking half of it and moving constantly, so I only caught a brief glimpse of the two banshees chasing after us. Instead I decided to have my mini-map replaced by an image of whatever Pavel was seeing. I banked to my left just in time to avoid being atomized by green plasma. Then I banked to the right just in time to avoid being hit by a burst from a plasma cannon.

I floored the accelerator and started turning left, then I stopped. The banshees were in full-speed mode or something, because they flew straight ahead. Pavel killed one just as it flew over us, hitting its belly with armor piercing rounds, killing the driver and damaging the craft beyond salvaging. The other one did something that I thought was aerodynamically impossible, especially going as fast as it was. It seemed to stop, turn upside down and then pull up so that it almost scraped the ground. In fact, the two wingtips hit the mud, leaving small ditches behind. It started firing, the blue plasma lifted mud and dirt thirty meters away from our car, Pavel started firing, but only thirty rounds in he ran out of ammunition. The banshee was damaged and putting out smoke, but the pilot was alive and still gunning for us. As the plasma got closer and closer a read beam sliced clean through the craft, having it crash down into the ground and slide a couple of meters through the mud. It stopped about twenty meters away from my car and exploded again.

"You can pay me back later Sarge," Bee taunted. "A bottle of Jack ought to be enough."

"American bourbon?" Grass asked.

"You're no true Scotsman!" Snark accused loudly.

"Fine, a bottle of scotch would do then," Bumblebee corrected himself with a gruff voice.

"Thanks Snark, you just cost me an additional bunch of credits," I growled. "You're paying for half the bottle."

"Fine, fine," Snark chuckled. Nobody was going to give alcohol to anybody, I owed everyone bottles of prime liquor and everybody owed me the same amount I did them or more. It was more like a running joke in the squad.

"It should be seven and a half clicks to our destination," Pavel said, checking his HUD. "Let's get moving before they react."

While we had left the bulk of the enemy forces behind us, there was still a sizeable number in between us and our target. Many of the covvies were behind having some rest or helping in other matters, most of the brutes were on the front, but a few of them were commanding the relief units on the rear. During our treck through the crater strewn, muddy land we met a grand total of three dozen brutes. Half of them we bypassed completely, the other weren't a match for the full automatic fire of our turrets. Angel and Pavel had burned through one box of ammunition already, Snark wasn't quite there yet, but he would be there soon.

"Shit, reloading," Snark called.

And there it was.

Caboose stopped and allowed Grass and me to drive further. The small platoon of grunts and jackals in front of us dropped to the ground or dove behind a crater or fallen tree. This area had suffered some heavy bombardment from plasma and human artillery, the field was a bunch of craters and muddy messes. Fortunately, our jeeps had managed the difficult terrain with relative ease, not bogging up on the muck one time. The aliens fired with their small weapons at us, the plasma was easily absorbed by the Warthog's plating and the needlers bounced off harmlessly. Pavel and Angel peppered the enemy infantrymen with short, accurate bursts. The jackals wobbled behind their shields and their arms gave way to the force quickly, the grunts ran away as soon as the two jackal leaders were killed. That made them easy targets for Pavel and Angel. I saw them try to gain speed on their little stubby legs only to get hit in the back, blue blood came out of their fronts in long trails, following the trajectory of the bullets.

If I could carry one of those guns with me I would totally do it. It trumps just about anything if you have a good man working on it.

"There are some trenches over there," Snark warned us. "They look narrow enough to jump over them, but I'm not sure."

"We have to try, I don't want to risk a detour." I stood up on my seat, letting the car slow down to a gentle stop. I could see the little mounds of dirt, almost to even be natural. The line stretched as far as I could see to my left, I couldn't really see very far, but for all intents and purposes, that line was eternal. "Grass, you go first."

"I was hoping you'd ask," she replied as she revved her engine. Whenever she was driving a vehicle, she took absolute control.

Angel started firing at the alien heads that popped up to see just exactly what was bothering them when they were supposed to be taking a break from the frontline. The jackals didn't really react, giving plenty of time for Angel to blow their little heads up. They probably thought that they were safe there, five kilometers behind their line. If a human charge broke through, there would surely be enough time to fall back in an organized retreat or fortify their position.

"A little heads up would've been nice says the jackal," Bee quipped.

I laughed at the joke and lurched my 'Hog forward with a step on the pedal. The suspensions absorbed most of the shock, but the huge wheels weren't enough to get rid of all the bouncing around. I shook violently as I gained speed. Mud and water splashed to the sides and dirtied my windshield, covering up the alien blood. I could barely see through the windshield as it was, Grass' 'Hog was spraying dirt at mine and I had to slide to the left. It was at that exact moment that a red plasma bolt broke through the windshield and slammed into my headrest, less than three inches away from my head.

"Bad move motherfucker," I growled, trying in vain to get more speed. The windshield was melting and falling inwards on the dashboard.

Grass whooped and hollered as she took to the air, using the dirt walls as an impromptu ramp and completely bypassing the surprised Covenant soldiers.

"I'ma pull a Panama," I warned Pavel.

"Isn't that where you-"

"Ignore that," I corrected myself. "A Costa Rica."

"Oh, good luck."

I smiled and reached for a grenade. The car started jerking from side to side and I had to stiffen my arm on the wheel to keep it going in a straight line. With my left hand I pressed down on the button, priming the grenade. The 'Hog collided with the walls, reduced its speed dramatically, and jumped over the Covenant trench. Time slowed down, at least for me, during those brief moments. I leaned out to my left and saw the snarling face of an unarmored brute looking at me in anger. I extended my arm and threw the grenade straight down as hard as I could. I barely saw where it fell, but I was certain that it fell inside the trench.

The wheel almost breaking my sternum was what snapped me back. The Warthog had landed on its front, for a moment it seemed like it would tip over, but instead it fell back on its wheels. Caboose and Snark flew by me a second after that.

"Nice one Sarge!" Snark mocked. A second later the grenade detonated behind me. "Nice one Sarge!"

I smiled to myself and drove behind them, falling into a V formation with Grass in the middle. We were unbothered for the rest of the trip. Well, most of it anyways. When we were getting close to our target I checked the map. "The two missing companies dug up in a farmhouse," I informed them. "They should be able to see us coming before we can see them."

"With this mist? Hardly."

"I'm assuming they'll have thermal, Bee," I told him dryly, "and I'm calling ahead."

"That's so very polite of you, Sarge." Angel noted from his turret, even bothering to turn to loock at me and give me a thumbs up.

"Sarge 2.0," I replied with a chuckle.

"Well, I can tell that Hanna is getting rid of your less desirable…traits," Grass said.

"You know, it only works when we make fun of you," Angle sighed in annoyance. "Yevgeny would be disappointed."

Grass was usually deadly in verbal showdowns, but as soon as we mentioned the good lieutenant she'd automatically shut down, blush, and start yelling incoherently. This time she just pressed the E-brake, slamming Angel against the stock of the turret. The Italian behind the gun yelled in anger.

"What the fuck! We're on a battlefield!"

"He's got a point," Pavel conceded. "Don't do that again."

"Sorry," she growled.

And I was supposed to be the stupid, headstrong one in the group. But Pavel was right, it was completely fine with me if Grass whipped the floor with Angel's face when we were off duty or even on the ship or on base, but as long as we were in combat she'd have to take any shit thrown at her with dignity and learn to throw some back on her own. Maybe I'd have to talk with her about it…damn.

"We're three hundred meters off," Caboose said, distracting me from my inner monologues.

I looked up to see if I could spot anything. The only thing that jumped up at me was the presence of several heavily fortified enemy trenches. They weren't as fortified as the ones that we had rolled through at the beginning of the assault, but they were close. "Bee, turn that shit off," I ordered. The music died inside my helmet and the sounds of war flooded my ears. "That's more like it, come on, we have to break the siege."

"Easier said than done," Pavel grunted from the turret. "Let's just settle for taking out that Revenant."

"Which-oh, I see it. Bee dish out the pain, let them know we're here."

Grass stopped her Warthog to allow Bee to get a good angel through the heavy mist. I could barely see the vehicle in question, but Bumblebee obviously had no trouble spotting it through his scope. The red laser sliced clean through the rear and tore the enemy craft apart with a brilliant explosion. As soon as the Revenant blew up we moved forward. I couldn't find a suitable place to jump over the trenches, so I ran parallel to them while Pavel fired at the exposed aliens. The smaller ones were easy kills, but at the speed that we were going Pavel could only hit so many brutes.

"There! That could work as a ramp!"

"I see it, hold on." I braked and slid sideways, leaving a nice trail in the mud. I sped away from the enemy trenches and when I was a fair distance from them I hit the handbrake and did a nice one-eighty turn to face our pile of mud ramp. It did seem sturdy enough for me to try the jump. "Grass, Caboose, I want you to keep circling the enemy lines, do some damage, scare them. Do that for as long as you can, then try to get inside or fall back to safety, either one is fine."

"Music to my ears, Sarge," Angel said. "C'mon Grass, we've got this."

I sped towards the ramp like crazy. This time I made sure that I was going fast enough. The 'Hog cleared the trench with ease and landed neatly on its four wheels. I jerked from the impact and tried to regain control, succeeding in hitting whatever was left of a white picket fence and then swerved to avoid hitting a wooden post that was just standing there for no apparent reason. I could see the farmhouse now. It had suffered heavily, but it was still standing. I turned towards the barn, to park my vehicle inside when the whole world spun around.

The Warthog was lifted off its wheels from the right side and flipped over. I felt my harness pull against my shoulders when we slammed upside down against the ground. I clicked it open and slid down to the mud headfirst. I slowly twisted and turned and dragged myself out of the vehicle. A couple of plasma shots hit the metal bar to my right and had me cursing angrily. I dropped down to the ground as more rounds started raining around me and crawled to the back of the 'Hog. Pavel was a couple of meters away from me, lying on his belly, not moving. I panicked a little but then realized that his vitals were still going on, not stable by any means, but he was still breathing and his heart was beating.

"Fuck this," I said resignedly as I jumped up, firing wildly with my BR55. The sudden burst was enough to startle the aliens firing at me a little bit and gave me some respite from the relentless firing. I dashed towards Pavel and grabbed him by the back of the vest. There was a small handle designed just for this kind of situations. He groaned and moaned a little bit as I moved him, but otherwise stayed still. I pulled with one hand and fired wildly in short bursts with the other. I don't know how, but even with all the plasma and spikes raining around I managed to pull him behind safety.

"Goddamn," Schitzo muttered quietly. "You're getting stupider and stupider buddy."

"Sir! Um, Helljumper!"

I turned around and saw two Army privates running towards me, their backs hunched and their rifles up.

"What?"

"Uh, the field is mined," one of them tentatively explained.

"You don't fuckin' say," I snapped. "You knew we were coming, a little heads up would've been nice."

"Yes, the captain was aware of your arrival, but he didn't know that you were going to be making such a…direct entrance."

"It would've been a perfect one too," the other man said in a deep voice.

I sighed. "Whatever, I assume it's off now."

"Yes, Sarge."

"Good, help me turn this thing around," I ordered them. I moved to the underside of the Warthog to examine the damage done. The wheel was already re-inflating itself, but there was some serious wreckage on the undercarriage. The axels seemed intact, but not everything else was in such fine conditions. The space in between the two right wheels had taken the heaviest hit, a large portion of it had been torn off by the explosion. The front right wheel had only nicked the mine, but it was enough to activate the device. It would work, even if just for a little while.

"Push!" I ordered the two soldiers. Well, one of them, the other was providing cover for his friend and me. I groaned with effort as I tried to get the Warthog back on its wheels, luckily for me, I was in peak physical condition and then some, the private on the other side was no slacker either, lifting the weight of the car with his body. Still, it wasn't enough. "Fuck it, you, help us."

I groaned again as I tried pushing the car upright. The rounds raining on us didn't make it any easier, but the army men were now firing on the section of trench that was closest to us, suppressing the covvies. I took two steps back, ignoring the danger of leaving the meager cover that I had, and jumped at the Warthog shoulder-first.

You see, normally, when you kick down a door you do just that. You _kick_. This time I was doing something similar, but instead of a wooden door I had a titanium military jeep. The Warthog was relatively light for a vehicle its size, but it was still more than I could lift by myself. Well, that's not the point, the point is that when you try tackling a door you will often succeed only in destroying your shoulder and perhaps splintering the door a little bit. It's not about weight or strength, it's about precision, that's why you kick handle-height where you can rip the lock off. I found myself crying in pain as my shoulder collided with the Warthog's roof, the force of my tackle was just enough and the car tipped to its side before falling on its wheels once again.

"Let's go," one private said, jumping behind the wheel as his friend jumped on the turret, cocking the lever backwards.

I ran towards Pavel, pulsing pain all over my upper arm and shoulder, and grabbed him again. He was a heavy one, not as simple as carrying Grass or Snark would've been. I succeeded in getting him over my shoulder and tossing him inside the passenger's seat. I jumped up, holding onto the car's roll-cage and with both feet on the ledge on its side. I felt awfully exposed in that position.

"We're clear," one private said. "Activate the mines again."

"Grass, Caboose, don't jump into the perimeter, the whole thing's mined, keep working at the covvies, weakening them. I'll call you when I need you."

"Roger that Sarge," Grass replied. "If things get too hot we'll fall back."

"Understood, good luck."

The soldier driving eased the car inside the barn, parking next to an Armadillo with damaged threads and a half-molten turret. There were a few serviceable Mongooses (Mongeese?) next to it as well as crates of ammo.

I jumped off and let myself fall to the ground, rolling on the floor to absorb some of the impact. My rifle was still clutched tightly in both of my hands. I looked up and winced at the pain in my arm, a quick analysis from my armor told me that it didn't appear to be broken, but recommended medical attention. I opened my eyes and saw that already two soldiers with Red Cross bands on their arms were leaning in over me. I depolarized my helmet and shook my head. One of them was a pretty girl, couldn't have been more than twenty. I wonder if it's a requirement for joining the medical branches of the UNSCDF, to be a pretty girl. It seems like a perfectly sensible requirement for me.

"I'm fine," I said, standing up and pushing away the two medics. "Check on my friend."

They looked at one another nervously and shrugged before going towards Pavel and helping pull him off the passenger seat. I grabbed one of the privates that had come to my rescue and shoved him around so that he was facing me. "You, kid, take me to your CO."

There must've been something in my tone or on my face, because he immediately lost the angry expression and switched to a more appropriate one of worry. I probably looked like I was about to rip his head off. "Uh, right this way Sergeant," he informed me. "Captain Caskey is in the main house, I'll lead you to him." He ran out the front door of the barn and hid behind a Jotun tractor.

I shook my head and walked towards him, reloading my weapon and trying to get all of the mud from the chamber. I arrived where he was taking cover and looked down on him. "Listen kid, they can't see us and I don't have time for games. Just hurry this shit up."

"O-kay?" He stood up tentatively, wincing at every little explosion before taking off at a slow jog towards the house. The house itself was a nice piece of architecture. It had two floors and windows on the sloped roof, probably from an extra attic room. It had one main door with a wide porch in front of it. The porch had once had sun chairs and rocking chairs on it, but now it was only splinters of wood. The white paint had been chipped away with thousands of bullet holes and black plasma scorching. The polycrete had been molded so that the outer walls looked like they were made of wood, it had a very traditional look to it. Tall windows on the floor with shutters painted dark blue. Most of the windows didn't have any glass anymore, but they were boarded up with pieces of metal, not necessarily armored slabs, but it was better than nothing. The right end of the house's roof had been blown off by an explosion, allowing me to see the polycrete topped off with hardwood. The former owners of this little place had been very rich from the looks of it.

In addition to the house itself there was the barn, a large metal building painted red and white, as big a target as I ever saw. There had been a tall metal grain silo standing near it, but half of it was now on the ground, the other half had been scrapped to cover up the house's windows. There were a few other smaller buildings, mostly sheds by the look of it, I laughed to myself when I saw that the garage had been built to look like it was a stable. They had really been into the rustic look.

"Open up!" the private yelled. He most certainly wasn't happy to be out in the open.

"Password?"

"Are you really starting this?" he complained.

"Open up the fucking door or I'll kick it down and rip your throat out," I threatened.

"Hey, you guessed it!"

"Asshole," the private said.

I walked inside the house and took off my helmet. I did look to my right and shot the man in charge of the door a look that was evil enough to send him back and into the wall. I guess that having lived with Marina, Layla, and now with Hanna was really paying off on the death-glare section.

"Where's your CO?" I asked the private.

"Over here, just follow me."

I did and arrived inside the dining room. All the chairs had been pushed against the wall. The table was now covered with several paper maps and a couple of hologram projection devices, very old-fashioned ones at that. There was cables and wires all over the floor, disappearing into corners and other rooms. Below the table there were several boxes of ammunition. The Captain, Caskey, was talking into a radio set, yelling angrily about air drops or something along those lines.

I cleared my throat.

"Hold on," he said to the phone and looked at me. "Your ass is safe on this one, I have more important things to do."

"Gunnery Sergeant," he said as he hung up. "I'm so very sorry for the active mines."

"Yeah, I am too, sir," I growled in reply.

"You have to understand, we weren't aware that you would be bursting through the enemy lines. We have been trying to do that for weeks and haven't been able to succeed."

"Evidently not," I agreed. I sighed and shook my head, placing my helmet on the table. "Look, I'm sorry sir, you dropped the ball but we didn't exactly communicate our plans." It hurt to admit that I had a little bit of fault in the incident, but I didn't want to alienate this guy, he was probably tired from having been behind enemy lines for so long. "My friend is wounded but we succeeded in breaking through. We were ordered to get you out of here."

"That is easier said than done."

"Agreed, but there is a way."

"What was your plan exactly Sergeant?"

"Well, we were-"

Pavel busted through the doors with half his armor off, the two medics behind him were carrying it and trying to stop him, yelling frantically at him to sit down. He had probably walked through the open ground in between the barn and the house, forcing the medics to chase after him. He looked like he was about to fall face first on the floor.

"Sergeant, if you just-"

"Shut up," Pavel snapped. "I'm fine."

"What does he have?" I asked.

"Broken ribs and sprained wrist," the girl medic told me after the man stammered. "And a concussion."

"See?" Pavel told me, exasperated.

"Sit down," I ordered him.

"But Frank!"

"Sit," I said, letting a little bit of anger into my voice. "Now."

"Fine," he snapped.

"You," I told the girl. "Fix his wrist and give him something for the head. You, put his armor on the corner and get out of here."

The girl medic swallowed nervously and gave me a curt nod after looking at her CO for approval. She moved towards Pavel, who just jerked his arm away angrily before giving it to her with more than a little bit of reluctance. The medic started taking off his armor and working on the injury, it was already swelling up.

"I don't appreciate you ordering my men around," Caskey warned with a low growl.

"It won't happen again," I sighed. "Now, as I was saying-"

This time I was interrupted by a million different transmissions coming from the radio in the room. I looked at it and then looked back to the Captain, he just shrugged at me and shook his head. I glanced to Pavel, catching the eyes of the medic on the way, she just looked nervously away and started injecting healing fluid into my friend's wrist.

"Hello?" I said into the radio. "Right." I adjusted the frequency and reached the Colonel. "Colonel Pendleton? Come in, this is Reaper Actual."

"Castillo! I'm glad to find you!" There was a long pause. "Don't tell anyone I said that about a jarhead."

"Of course not," I replied with a smirk. "Sir, we've reached the two companies. Well, two of us did, the rest of my squad is softening up the trenches."

"Gunnery Sergeant, my forces jumped inside the enemy trenches as you recommended, the Covenant were in disarray, I had never seen them so scared, they sounded a general retreat! What's best, we found a buried jamming unit, that's what had been blocking off all our communications."

"That's why we can communicate appropriately," I said with realization, "Thank god for the lack of static."

"Agreed. I've already requested for a couple of tank squadrons, I've sent all my Armadillos to chase after the retreating Covenant. We might just gain some serious land here."

I smiled. And they said my plan was crazy. "Excellent, maybe we won't need to go to you after all."

"That's exactly why I was looking for you. I want you to coordinate with Captain Caskey to stop the retreating aliens, that way they'll be crushed from both sides."

"I've never heard of a situation where a group behind enemy lines became one end of a pincer maneuver."

"Caskey? That you?"

"Yes, Colonel," Caskey's eyes flickered towards the medic. I noticed the movement and looked behind me. The girl blushed and looked away before reaching into her pack for some meds.

"Captain, you heard what I want. We're already sending troops in your direction, we want you to stop or stall any enemy infantry and light vehicles that come in your direction."

"Sir, I understand, but we are still completely surrounded by enemy trenches."

"I think we can handle that," I said. "If we do we should have a nice defensible position from which to kick some ass. Sirs."

"Listen to him Captain," Pendleton said. "Marine or not, he knows his shit."

"Yes sir."

"Good, I know you won't let me down Caskey. Pendleton out."

Captain Caskey stared at the radio for several seconds before turning to face me. He obviously disliked the idea of being on equal ground with me. I suddenly wondered if it was only Pendleton who had a dislike for Marines or if it was all the officers in this branch of the Army. "So, what's your plan?"

"Drive the 'Hogs through the trenches," I replied with a shrug.

"Are you insane? You'll be fried."

"It worked well enough last time," Pavel jumped to my defense. "I have video if you want it, sir."

Caskey rolled his eyes. "No, I believe you, do whatever you want."

I almost punched him. He expected us to do his half of the job for him just like that. There's a difference between not wanting to risk your men and being an asshole. I know he had been here for a month, but that didn't give him the right to believe himself to be exempt of action.

I saluted the Army captain and turned, following him with my eyes until he disappeared behind the door. I then turned to Pavel, who seemed to have changed his mind and was enjoying the attention that the pretty girl was giving him. "You," I said suddenly, pointing at the medic.

"Me?" she asked shyly.

"Yes, you, what's your name?"

"Uhh, I'm ah,"

"Ah?" I slapped my forehead. "Just your name, not your rank."

"Carrie?" she said doubtfully.

"Carrie what?"

"Carrie Pendleton."

Pavel's eyes went wide open.

"Oh," I said in realization. "Carrie Pendleton. Is that a common surname on this planet?"

"I wouldn't know," Carrie told me. "I'm just a medic."

"Just a medic," I nodded. "Of course. Military family?"

"Um, yes."

"Huh, dad or mom?"

"Dad," she said.

"And he wouldn't happen to be called Colonel James Pendleton, would he?"

Carrie looked nervous and sighed. "Yes, that's my dad." It was obvious that she was embarrassed. This little rescue mission had obviously been done not to get the two companies out, but to get _her_ out. I imagined that that wouldn't sit too well with her fellow grunts.

"Cheer up," Pavel said. "If this goes well you'll be known as the reason why we were able to take back the Catamaran Peninsula."

"Yeah, you can even write a book about it," I said sarcastically.

"Oh, be sure to drop my name," Pavel suggested eagerly.

Carrie Pendleton looked like she would've been happy to climb inside a foxhole and let someone burry her in it.

* * *

><p>"Sarge! You should've seen it!" Grass was exclaiming excitedly. "It was even better than the first time!"<p>

I smiled. "Ok, ok, tell me what happened."

"First we climbed down the trench," Snark started saying. "Man, I don't know how these two pulled it off, but they did, it seemed like our car was going to flip."

Grass cleared her throat. "I was talking, thanks. We started driving through the trench, it was narrower than the one back there, but still enough for us to drive through. There were so many grunts there that I thought we would stall in them."

"Their bodies popped from the weight," Bee said, joining in on the fun. "Once we had gone through most of the perimeter we encountered a pair of hunters, I-"

"Took one down with the Spartan Laser," Grass said, "but the other one died in such a satisfactory way…"

"How?" I asked, I was starting to get curious.

"I, well, it's better if we show you." Grass connected her helmet to one of the hologram projectors on the dining room and a bluish display popped up. It wasn't exactly high resolution, but I could make out the driving wheel, the dashboard, and the trench walls. There was a blue flash on one of the corners. "That's the laser," Grass explained, albeit unnecessarily. "Watch, watch."

Boy did she sound eager.

The other hunter, it was not very visible on the display, but I could tell where it was and what it was doing with no trouble. The hunter steeled itself behind its shield. On the holographic display I was able to make out the turret and top of another Warthog turning around the edge of a wall. I didn't need anybody telling me which 'Hog it was. The hunter must've heard it coming, because it turned sideways just a fraction of an inch before the two jeeps collided with it. There was an explosion of blue, which I know must've been orange in real life, and the hunter was splattered in between the hoods of two Warthogs.

"Wow," I said approvingly. "Just wow."

"You should have it sent to the fleet's badass of the week page," Pavel suggested. "Share it between yourselves."

"Hey, maybe we could send the footage of the first trench run as well," I said. "Just for kicks."

"Weren't you already badass of the week once?" Pavel asked with a smile.

"I was, wasn't I" I asked. "Yeah, you're right. I _was_ badass of the week."

Grass rolled her eyes and Angel just laughed loudly. It had been a while ago, but it had been a source of pride for me ever since, I didn't mention it too often, I didn't want it to lose impact. Still, my whole squad was laughing and smiling at the hologram of the hunter being squashed, we would have to watch it in a screen one day, instead of in 3D. It probably looked better, even if it wasn't as immersive.

"Gunnery Sergeant Castillo?"

I turned to see another private at the door. "Yes?" I asked him, still smiling.

"The vanguard of the enemy infantry has been spotted," he told me. "The ambush is about to start."

"Technically speaking, wouldn't they be the rearguard?" Snark asked philosophically. "The vanguard would've been crushed in the initial assault down in the frontline. Former frontline."

"Semantics!" Angel exclaimed loudly and suddenly.

"Ok, ok, quit it," I said, not really putting my heart in it. "You already got bulked up on ammo?"

"That's a go," Bumblebee confirmed.

"Good, go down to the trenches," I ordered. "Snark, you can climb to the roof of the barn or the attic, snipe away."

"Done deal Sarge," he smiled at me, cocking his SRS. The gun was taller than he was.

"Well?" I asked loudly. "What the hell are you waiting for?!" The smiles were wiped from everyone's faces (except Pavel's) as they did their best to leave the room and sprinted towards the trenches. Well, at least I imagined that they would sprint. "Caboose," I said, stopping him before he left. "You know the girl? The Colonel's daughter?"

He nodded. "Why?"

"I want you to look after her," I told him. "I don't want her getting herself killed."

"Why?" he repeated the question.

"Well, we started this whole attack for her, I would hate to see our main objective a failure."

Caboose shrugged. "I'll do my best Sarge, but no promises."

"That's all I'm asking from you," I said approvingly.

Caboose exited and left me alone on the dining room. I sighed to myself and looked at my riddle on the table. It had been black when it had first been given to me, now it was mostly gray, all the paint had been scorched, scratched, or burned away in the past decade. The weapon was my lifeline and had kept me alive for years. I smiled affectionately at it, doing my best to ignore the man in front of me, a man that no matter what I would do refused to go away.

"I did tell you that getting rid of me wouldn't be easy," Schitzo taunted. "Now, don't you have something to do Francisco?"

The trenches that had been occupied by hostile alien forces just an hour ago were now full of reinvigorated soldiers. They had been on the short end of the stick for over a month, they were eager to show that they could give it as good as they got and then some. They were all young kids, probably enlisted thinking that they would never see combat, now they just wanted to fuck things up for the Covenant in any way that they could. Some of them would stay in the Army, some of them would ask for their retirement benefits and be put in the reserves, a few others would probably off themselves, and some would just feel lost after having lost their homes and families.

No, not their homes, not yet, we were winning this thing, we would win this, there was nothing that could prevent that from happening.

The point is, out of all these kids that started as wide-eyed youngsters eager to get their hands on a gun, all of them would wish for revenge on the Covenant. The colony was devastated, it would work itself out, but many wouldn't see any reason to stay, instead requesting a transfer to a unit that saw actual combat. They'd think it was the right choice at the time, but wouldn't realize how wrong they were to leave home until it was too late.

Much like me.

I cocked my rifle and the ammunition count flickered to life. It was starting to give up on me on this gun. When I was first given the gun, the blue numbers immediately popped up. This time the thirty six didn't appear until after a couple of seconds, and when it did it came flickering, like a faulty car engine. I sighed, it was a bad omen, but then again, everything was a bad omen nowadays. This particular operation was most certainly going to be a win for us, I would be careful, but I didn't expect any trouble. Certainly not with my squad.

"Sarge, over there, you've got decent view of the battlefield and some coverage."

"Where's the marksman that should occupy this?" I asked.

"We're short on marksmen," the man replied. "In fact, we're short on most everything, we are almost through the ammo that we were airdropped a week ago."

I nodded understandingly and moved to the marksman perch. It was a steep ramp that had just been dug very recently by one of the Army men. I could lean forward on it for stability and still keep my body behind cover. In addition to that there was a small roof over me and dirt had been piled up in front of me. If you built a miniature sand bunker on the beach, this is what it would look like. It would do well enough.

"Angel, what's with the 'Hogs?" I asked.

"Commandeered Sarge," he replied. "They dug them in and are using the turrets only."

"Understood, Grass, I want you acting as medic, don't engage too much."

"Don't engage too much," she laughed. "Good one Sarge."

I chuckled at my own poor wording. "Pavel, what did they do to these trenches?"

"Nothing much really, piled up some dirt on this side from the other and dug some ramps in case we needed to fall back to the house. Small stuff."

"Good to know," Bee said. "Unlike last time."

"You weren't there man!" Pavel exclaimed violently. "You weren't there!"

"Ok, I think you're going to have to cut down on the movies," Bee said nervously. "Not even I would've said that."

"Yeah man," I agreed. "You've been away from your wife way too long."

"That's what I said," Pavel grumbled angrily.

"Well, I've got a decent collection of twenty-first century pornography in case you're interested."

"What'd you say?" Snark asked.

"Art films," Bee reiterated. "Or not."

"Ok, looking at this topic from a serious perspective," Angel started. "Could a porn film be called art?"

"I dunno," Bee replied, joining the discussion. "I mean, I've seen all that modern stuff that shows naked ladies doing it, supposed to be feminist or vaginal or some shit like that, it just makes me uncomfortable."

"The art? Or the words used to describe it?" Grass asked him.

"I guess both, I mean, who uses the word vaginal to describe art? It's a little bit weird. I mean, I respect what they do and I'm sure that they think they're creating masterpieces, but to me it's just crappy porn."

"Well, but back to the porno flicks," Snark said. "I don't think they could be called art, for something to be called art it'd have to have a-a-a-a topic, or a…I don't know, a theme?" He paused to get some breath. "Porn, as great as it is, doesn't have one."

"Some would consider the story of a misbehaving sitter and a pizzaman a theme," Grass said.

"Yeah!" Angel exclaimed. "Wait, I didn't know you got _that_ lonely."

"Shut up, I'm taking your side here," Grass snapped, flustered.

"Enjoy it while it lasts buddy," Bumblebee recommended.

"Ok, fine. But you see, while it might not be considered art, you have to admit that it has several of the ingredients. It's original, it's creative, and you can look _and_ listen to it."

"Yeah," Snark said, "but you don't see many pornos worrying about the quality of their acting, they just focus on the physical part."

"That's the point!" Grass said. "A movie with a sex scene could be considered art, maybe even made better because of the sex scene."

"But the sex scene by itself wouldn't be art," Bee told her. "You wouldn't screen it on a festival."

"But if porn is a subsection of film, and film is an art, shouldn't porn be considered an art as well?" Angel put out.

Snark grunted to himself. "I don't think so. I could draw something with crayons and it would be a drawing, doodles, not proper art."

"So you're saying porn is art, just not proper art?" Grass asked.

"No, I just don't think that porn has what it takes to _be_ art. Sure, some productions focus on characterization and plot more than the regular short scene, but when it comes down to it, it's just a people getting paid to fuck on camera."

"Let's talk about that modern art then," Angel said. "There are two girls doing it, maybe on video, maybe live, it is considered art. Why?"

"Because they are part of a larger exposition," Bee said. "They add to something bigger. I think that they were the central piece of a large exhibit of…vaginal art."

"What were you doing there, by the way?" Pavel asked.

"N-n-no," Grass interrupted, "but if you put everything out and watch the two girls in the box going at each other it'd still be art then?"

"Erotic art, maybe?" Snark muttered. "I don't know, it would certainly not carry the same weight or meaning that the whole exhibit together would."

"I agree," Angel said, "but it'd technically be considered art. And if I told you that I saw a video of two girls having sex then you'd tell me…what?"

"That you were watching porn," Grass finished.

"You usually are," Pavel taunted.

"You're in no position to make that comment, Staff," Bee told him cheekily. "But no, I still don't think that porn, _by itself_, could be considered art."

"Did you know," Grass started, that was quickly beginning to turn into a catchphrase for her. Who am I kidding? It already was. "That back in the day they said that videogames could never be art? Supposedly you could never manage to express the emotion that one would be able to through film or painting, even though games were interactive and had the same narrative force that a movie had."

"Ok, fine," Bee interrupted. "But porn isn't interactive."

"At least not all of it," Grass corrected.

"You go girl," Pavel laughed.

"And even if some of it is interactive," Bumblebee went on, "it doesn't have the same narrative, it's just repetitive motions designed to appeal to people's primal instincts."

"Yeah, did you know that the positions they use aren't even natural? You try imitating a scene from a flick and you'll find it very tiring and nearly impossible to maintain," Snark furthered, a little bit of satisfaction in his voice.

Angel exclaimed triumphantly. "But that means that you need discipline and practice to be a porn actor, you need a certain kind of talent."

"It has to be extensive," Pavel suggested. "Big would be a more appropriate word."

"You also need physical talent and discipline for a game of football, but you don't see people calling football art."

"Wait," I said, talking for the first time. "Are we talking American Football or football Football here?"

"American," Grass said.

"Oh, in that case go on then."

As much as I liked watching and playing American Football, I wouldn't call it art, I would be more inclined to call the other kind of football, soccer, an art. The precision with which you made a pass, the way that you could curve the ball, how you stretched to stop the ball from going in your goal. Oh man, it was beautiful. But most of you would probably disagree with me, so I'll stop so I can keep my readers.

"As much as some people would disagree," Bee resumed. "Sports aren't art. Sure, they're difficult, tiring, and require a lot of dedication, but very few people call them art, and when they do it's usually a figure of speech."

"Whether sports should be art or not isn't the point here," Grass said. "I'm saying that some porn could be considered art."

"But how? There's no message, no theme, no nothing, it's just porn, nothing more, nothing less," Snark droned, almost tired from repeating himself.

"But you're not listening," Angel exclaimed. "I'm going to agree with you that not all porn is art, but some of it could be seen that way. Some productions have all the requirements for being art, they're just ignored because they're porn."

"If it looks, sounds, and has everything that needs to be art," Grass started. "Then it is art."

"Unless it's porn," Bee said, exasperated. "I'm telling you, while you could use a sex scene in a movie, the movie would turn it into art. But if you introduce characterization into a porn movie, the overall theme of the movie would turn it into porn."

"Well said," Snark agreed. "Porn by itself can never be art."

"But if it is surrounded by, let's call it proper, art, then it is?" Grass asked, frustrated that she was failing to get through to Snark and Bumblebee.

"Yes, but only because it stops being porn in the traditional sense of the word," Bee told her.

"And what about your so called vaginal art?"

"What about it?"

"The central piece could be considered art by itself."

"But only if you knew what it was supposed to be beforehand," Snark interrupted. "I mean, why would anyone assume that two chicks eat-"

"Regardless, it was meant to be used as art and has parallels to porn," Grass stopped him. "Why the hell should it be considered art when porn isn't?"

"It'd probably be considered erotic art," Snark said. "At the most."

"And what is porn if not erotic art?" Angel asked.

"Very tacky erotic art?" Pavel suggested. On the other end of the line Caboose scoffed out a laugh.

"Ok, let me put it this way," Angel said. "If your two chicks doing it were men, what would it be called?"

"Disgusting?" Pavel suggested. Boy, was he having fun.

"Phallic art," Grass said.

"What does that have to do with anything?" Snark exclaimed

"Well, did you know that the very first human pieces of art usually represented sexual acts?" Grass asked, sounding as if that definitely concluded her point.

"But it's the sculptures themselves that are that art, or the paintings," Bee defended.

"Yeah," Snark agreed.

"Not what they represent," he went on.

"Wait, are you saying that a sculpture is art, but the person sculpted isn't?"

"Not necessarily," Bee started.

"Then it is."

"No, you can't see it like that."

"Either it is, or it isn't," Angel groaned.

"Life can't be seen in shades of black or white," Snark snapped.

"But whether something is art or not can?" Grass yelled angrily.

I chuckled, putting a halt to the conversation. "Ok boys and girl, you can continue this conversation later on, right now I need you focused."

"Fine," Snark sighed. "But don't think for a moment that I think you're right."

"Likewise," Angel said.

"But wait," a strange voice came in. "Is porn an art or not?"

I looked up at my HUD and started roaring with laughter when I realized that the conversation had been transmitted on the channel that the two companies and us were using, over a hundred men and women had been listening to Snark, Grass, Angel, and Bumblebee discuss, very heatedly I might add, whether porn was art or not. I slid down behind cover and took off my helmet to wipe tears away from my face. The soldier next to me was also struggling to breath from all the laughter. Another one was shaking his head and smiling to himself while trying to keep his eyes fixed on the battlefield in front of him. "Nice one Pavel," I said complementarily.

"I know, but it wasn't me," he said in between breaths. "I thought it was you."

"That was me, actually," Caboose said. "Got it all recorded too."

I was glad to see that Pavel kept on laughing even despite knowing that the man he trusted the least in the universe had been the mastermind behind the prank. "Ya know," I said. "Forget about what I said before, you should be badass of the week."

"Much obliged," he chuckled in reply.

"Eyes. Front," Caskey growled. "Fuckin-" he started before cutting himself off from the rest of us.

"Ok, you heard the man in charge," I yelled. "Stop laughing like retards and aim down range, we have a regiment's worth of scared aliens coming at us, if they haven't shat their pants by the time they're within range then it's our job to make them do it? Am I clear."

My squad wasn't the only one who replied, over half of the Army soldiers yessired me. All of the enlisted men and many of the noncoms responded enthusiastically to my little speech. I hadn't really planned for it, but I found that the sensation of several hundred people hanging on my words was a very powerful one.

"I see them," Snark warned loudly. "Still at extreme range, one click and a half. I spot a dozen shapes and growing fast. I've got brutes mostly, I see a ghost, tw-three of them. Shadow troop transport, another of those, a dozen or so drone fliers. Shee-it," he said. "That's a ton of targets. Do you want me to start picking them off?"

"Can you hit them at this range?" Caskey asked him.

"Easy."

"Go ahead."

"Sir, if I may," I interrupted. "While taking out officers from this distance does have its advantages, it'd probably be better if we held until they were within five hundred meters."

"And why is that?"

"They'd know that we are here and be wary of human presence," I finished.

"Damn," he cursed. "You're right, after two months of being targets we now have the situation reversed. And we have to wait."

"I understand sir," I said, "but it's the smart choice."

"Fine," he admitted. "As soon as they are within five hundred meters of our position you can fire," he ordered.

"Very well sir," Snark nodded. "Do you want me to report before firing?"

"Negative, the boom should be enough."

"Wise words, Captain," Snark chuckled.

I opened a private line with Snark. "How far away from us are you?"

"Seventy four point six meters from you Sarge."

"Do me a favor and don't tell me when you have your crosshairs on my head."

"Done deal," he said.

"Hey, I want you to tag their positions," I ordered. "The soldiers here don't have the interface that our helmet's do, but if we can see every covvie that you can with thermal, it would be a big advantage for us."

"I already thought of that," Snark told me. "I'll activate it at seven hundred meters, _then_ you can panic."

"Can you make out the headdresses at this range?"

"Not right now, but I could probably tell a captain or a chieftain from a regular brute at five hundred meters."

"Good, I don't want any whacko with a hammer sprinting towards me, you hear me?"

"Sarge, it's almost like you don't know me," he complained. "I'm hurt."

"Ok, shut up."

The next thing that came out of him was a SABOT round flying at supersonic speed towards the head of a high-ranking brute. A half a second later another round boomed.

"Damn, I hate how the chieftains' helmets can take one sniper round."

"Why didn't you hit him in the face?" I asked, checking my sights and aiming at a red figure through the mist.

"I tried, but I can't see their faces, I only see a white silhouette."

"Fine," I admitted. "Let's earn our paycheck Reaper."

"What's that smell?" Angel asked.

"That, my friend," Bee roared, "is the smell of victory!"

Targets were plentiful and so was ammunition, the Covenant had no idea that the friendly forces that were supposed to be here were now nonexistent, they would be in for a very unpleasant surprise. I would personally make sure of it.

"Bang, bang," I whispered to myself as I fired the first shots. I still couldn't see the brutes and grunts, but the red outline from Snark's scope and my own lesser-powered thermal mode helped out a lot. I hit a brute with four bursts, all of them aimed at the chest. They all hit, they were easy shots, even with the fog. The brute fell to the ground and didn't move. The grunts with it jumped to the side, startled. They made the mistake to look behind them and started running here faster. I smiled and switched targets. Another brute went down, some grunts made the same mistake, some didn't. Still, it was either a couple of humans or a few dozen tanks, so none of them turned around and ran. I kept focusing on the brutes, working at the leadership.

I had just fired two bursts into one when a sniper round tore through its head. "Dammit Snark!" I yelled. "You could've let me have that one!"

"Sorry, if it's dead, it's dead, right?"

"Yeah, right," I grumbled angrily. "Doesn't matter, keep shooting officers."

It was only after I had burned through three magazines that I was finally able to see the covvies. They could clearly see us now and obviously knew that we were there. At least thirty of them had died since the first shot, that was probably enough to alert them to our presence. They took to the ground and started firing at us, some others instead jumped inside the abandoned trenches that had been cleared recently.

"What happened to the supply trenches?" I asked.

"They were blocked and mined," Pavel said. "But that's our weak point in here."

"Hmm…nothing that can be done about it now. I guess we'll have to stop them from getting too close."

It became routine very quickly. Fire a few shots at a brute or a jackal sharpshooter, duck behind cover. Explosions or plasma rounds would send heated dirt flying over me and I'd stay under the wall for half a minute before climbing back inside my little shooting perch. If any alien had been aiming at it to wait for me to come up, thirty seconds should be enough for someone else to shoot it. The technique didn't fail me. Still, there were only a hundred and fifty or so of us, maybe a little bit more, but the Covenant was regiment strength. Sure, the Warthog turrets made wonders for crowd control and ate through grunts rather quickly. They didn't have limitless ammunition though, and we only had two spare boxes of ammo for each one.

"Snark, conserve ammo, only chieftains."

"There seem to be plenty of those too," he growled. "Most of them have hammers, so they're making runs for you, exposing themselves."

"The ones with ranged weapons take priority," I told him.

"Understood."

At this point the covvies were clearly visible, they were literally charging at us, the grunts knew that they would either get through us or die, if there was the slimmest chance of survival they were going to seize it. The jackals were smarter about it, trying to thin out our numbers or close in from behind their plasma shields. The brutes just wanted to kill as many humans as they possibly could. The drones, well, the drones were mindless bugs following orders, not very good orders, but I'm not complaining.

"Shit, chieftain!"

I looked to my left to see a hammer-wielding chieftain running at us, it swerved sideways to avoid being hit. When a machine gun burst hit its armor, it started shining and a golden web pattern covered it completely. I had only seen that a few times before, it was an energy shield on steroids, nearly immune to all weaponry, it could even take a Spartan Laser shot and keep going. With that thing on nothing short of a direct Archer missile hit would kill the brute. It only lasted for a few seconds, but it was enough to allow the huge alien to reach the trench and jump inside.

I fixed my bayonet on my battle rifle and turned to my left to fire a couple of shots at it. I cursed when a soldier got in the way and let myself fall to the other wall to get a clear shot.

The chieftain swung its hammer sideways, at a soldier. The man ducked underneath the swing and dropped to the floor. The brute recoiled when it was hit with automatic fire from the back and roared. It hit the offending soldier with the butt of its hammer. The blow was hard enough that I heard crunching bone, the man was probably dead from the hit. I fired another long burst at the brute, hitting it in the arm and torso. The armor on its belly was strong enough to deflect the rounds, but I saw blood coming out from its arm. It just seemed to get angrier at the world in general. The chieftain stomped on the soldier on the floor, I knew from personal experience how painful this could be, and the soldier was knocked out cold, at least.

The brute ran at me, knocking one soldier out of the way with its wounded arm and hitting another with the hammer. That was three, maybe four kills in ten seconds, this bastard would pay.

"Come on mother fucker," I taunted, still firing full automatic on the bastard. My gun clicked empty just as the brute did an overhead swing. I dived to the side to avoid it, the gravity blast pushed me against the wall, but it didn't hurt me much. The brute then tried backhanding me. It was a clumsy hit and I easily ducked underneath it. I sliced from the bottom up with my bayonet. The slice cut from its armpit to about halfway through his shoulder. It was deep enough to make that arm relatively useless. The brute roared and kicked me away from it, leaving my weapon stuck on its shoulder, it didn't seem to mind, it just tried to kill me.

A soldier from behind me fired a long burst, buying me enough time to pull out my big knife and shuffle away. The brute tried to hit me with a one handed swing, but missed completely. I stood up and moved to the side to allow the soldier behind me to fire more. I winced as the rounds flew next to my head, but otherwise didn't move. When I heard the faint clicking noise I lunged at the brute. My arms slashed from top to bottom at the brute's hand. The slash was strong enough to chop one finger off.

"Enjoying your visit?" I asked it. "You fuck!"

I tackled the alien at its waist and was very surprised when I felt another man tackle the brutes chest. From behind the alien another soldier hit it. The three of us were enough to bring it to the ground. From there I moved towards its face and brought my knife down on the unprotected mouth as it snarled at me, trying to get back up. Of course one stab to the inside of the throat didn't kill it, neither did two. I switched targets and stabbed it all the way to the hilt on the throat, the brute still managed to throw off one of the soldiers while gurgling angrily. I grunted as I slid the knife sideways, cutting its throat open.

"Man," I said.

"They're hard to kill," one of the soldiers agreed.

"Tell me about it," the other one moaned in pain. "I think it broke a few ribs, with a knife in its face."

"Ok, can't slack off now," I said, getting up and pulling my rifle form the brute. There I wiped the bayonet on the gargantuan alien's fur. "Gotta hold the line."

"Right," one of the soldiers nodded, not making any move to get up.

I took advantage of their reluctance to move to yank my knife out of the brute's throat. The move had blood spraying all over the place for a few seconds, as soon as it stopped I cleaned that knife on the dead brute and on my undersuit before putting it in its sheath.

I made my way back to the firing spot and did what I was ordered to. After that initial attack, the aliens didn't seem as eager to attack us blindly. My gun ate through all my ammunition and I sat back down while I waited for someone to bring me some more ammo. The runner had just left when I heard cheering. I turned around and glanced through the opening, the covvies weren't firing at us anymore, instead they were running at us. I could see some tracer rounds coming from the mist.

"Snark, I take it that's the cavalry?"

"Armored cavalry, that is," he snarked. "But yes, you are right."

"We did a damn good job Frank," Pavel said approvingly. "I've never heard of a rescue mission turn into a seven click gain."

"Did you know-" Grass started. "You know, what, let's just enjoy the moment."

"Wise words Grass," Angel approved. "Wise words."

* * *

><p><em>Thanks to Sniper Fodder for proof-reading this chapter.<em>

_Thirty pages…sorry bros. Yeah, like you care._

_Well, this is the first of the big ones. Second one technically, but since it is thirty Word pages long with font size 12 then I consider this a big one. Due to some personal issues Sniper Fodder wasn't able to complete proofreading every single chapter that I gave him, which means that there are three additional chapters in addition to my three buffer chapters that I usually keep. That means faster updates people, hope you enjoyed._

_I wish I could think of more to say about this chapter and my experiences while I was writing it, you know, my usual boring crap, but I'll let you guys do it._

_Stay Strong._

_casquis_


	127. Silence is Golden

Chapter CXXVII: Silence is Golden

**October 2, 2544 (UNSC Calendar)/two weeks later**

**Temporary FOB Golf, Catamaran Peninsula, Asilon, Omicron Ebur System**

* * *

><p><em>"Silencers are good, knives are better."<em>

* * *

><p>The base was abuzz with activity; it had only been set up very recently, three days ago in fact. The <em>Inconvenience<em> had helped set up various bases throughout recently won land. This one wasn't exactly a base, it was more like a pit stop, FOB Golf was the firebase closest to the frontlines. It served mostly to patch up wounded soldiers before sending them back and as a vehicle depot for the troop transports. It also had an artillery battery as well as several mortars. For the past couple of days my team and I had been staging our operations from there.

"Sarge," I heard.

I sighed. "Yes?"

"I've been looking all over for you," Bee told me.

"Well, you found me."

"Yeah, sorry about that."

I sat up with a groan. There was a nice little pile of dirt a hundred meters from the base. It was isolated enough from the base that I got peace and quiet but close enough that my team could find me if they needed me, like right now. You know, I probably should've found a hiding spot farther away from the base.

"What do you need?"

Bee raised an eyebrow. "Oh, me? Nothing. I just thought that maybe I should let you know that Echo Company is going to be staying here for a day or so."

I instantly started paying attention to what he was saying. "Huh, and why exactly did you think that you would let me know?"

"Pavel ordered me to," he admitted. "You know Sarge, he's a good friend and all, but I can't help but think that he has some sort of ulterior motive with this."

"Straightening me up probably," I thought out loud. "Thanks bud."

"You're not going?"

"Not immediately," I replied, lying back down. "By the way, tell Pavel that B Company is also coming trough to relieve a section of the line. Oh, and while you're at it you can tell Grass that Yev is going to be staging an operation through here."

Bee chuckled and looked at the ground, tracing something on the dirt with his boot. "I think that Lieutenant Delacroix is seeing someone else, isn't she?"

"Yeah, some bloke from Marine Aviation," I replied, wondering why I had said bloke instead of dude, or guy, or buddy, or individual. I was beginning to spend way too much time talking to Bumblebee.

"I guess we'll have the whole ship here, eh?"

"Yup," I said, pushing my cap over my eyes to block the scarce light that came through the mist.

I hadn't had a dream that wasn't a nightmare since that time I woke up from cryo, having messed up dreams about Scarecrow blaming me for his death. I tried to be reasonable about it, tell myself that while I had a little bit of fault, there wasn't anything I could've done. He was the one that insisted in hanging back and being a hero. He was the one that didn't fall back when ordered to. Even despite that it hadn't been his fault either; some alien had pulled off a lucky shot with a needle rifle and blown him apart. Still, I saw his bloodied face most nights. He wasn't the only one that I saw. I saw my uncle, dead with spikes in his chest, blood pooling around his favorite couch. I saw flashes of my parent's distorted faces, the things that I remembered about them mostly bad. I couldn't see my Mom's smile or my Dad nodding approvingly. Instead I only saw them dead or angry at me for something. In all those nightmares I was powerless to do anything, I'd be crying or yelling angrily, but otherwise couldn't move. The only thing that they all had in common was that Schitzo always hung back, looking at me like a giant looming statue. He had that perfect poker face of his on, never said anything, and never moved.

This time was no different, even though I only took a short nap, it was cut even shorter by the sight of a gravity hammer going straight towards my face. I opened my eyes to see the black of my cap and a streak of pale light coming from underneath it.

"Damn," I sighed, standing up and securing my cap on my head properly. The warzone around me would've been a suitable setting for any nightmare. Mist, craters, dead land and trees. It really said something that I felt comfortable with those surroundings when I woke up.

"You really need a shrink frank," Schitzo taunted.

"Let him be," Scarecrow disagreed. "He can handle it."

I was surprised when I saw myself agreeing with Schitzo for once. When I got back on Reach I'd probably have to see a psychologist.

The base had been full of people coming and going when I left for my nap, but now it was even worse, I recognized some Marines from Echo, they were standing outside the barracks while the previous occupiers packed their shit up and left. The previous occupiers in the barracks would now be going to the frontline to occupy a stretch of the trenches, hold back the Covenant while command planned another major push. If they were lucky they might even manage to gain some land while they were at it.

Falcon gunships were landing on the pads west of the firebase and Armadillos were rolling through, headed towards the vehicle depot. I also saw a few Hornets circling overhead. They were bringing both companies to the front with all their guns. Command was no doubt planning a major attack, it would probably happen soon. It had been two weeks since that little bit of business with the colonel's daughter. She had been returned safe and sound and we had received a gruff thank you from Pendleton. The massive gain of land that came with it was credited mostly to him, but I didn't particularly care, most of the participants knew that I had had a heavy hand in planning it.

And I had it on tape, so I wasn't too worried.

"Hey, what the hell are you doin'?" someone yelled. "Move that shit out of here, there's a squad of Scorpions coming through."

The driver of the Armadillo opened the hatch and yelled angrily at the man telling him to move. "I'm parking that thing right there, I was ordered to do that!"

"You can't, the Scorpions need to come through first!"

"They're not here yet! Just let me turn left and park the fucking thing."

"No."

"Ya know, it's not wise to go against a man driving an armored fighting vehicle."

I rolled my eyes and walked to the man trying to stop the Armadillo. The AFV in question belonged to B Company, so I'd have to side with him. "Listen," I told him, placing a hand on his shoulder and squeezing it lightly. Just let him pass, it'll take him ten seconds."

"I'm sorry Gunnery Sergeant, but I have strict orders to-"

"Listen," I interrupted, squeezing a little bit tighter, "these guys are very pissed and I wouldn't be too surprised if the sergeant here decide to ignore your and run you over."

The man sighed. "Fine," he waved the 'Dillo over. "You can come through, just make it quick."

"Thanks Sarge," the man in the M987 AFV thanked me. The huge vehicle roared as it turned and parked inside the vehicle depot. I recognized the driver, I think I had done a couple of missions with him, but didn't know his name. "Now _I_ owe you one."

"No problem," I smiled. I turned to the man next to me. "See? No harm done."

"Yeah, yeah," he said. "Now, I need to coordinate the tanks coming through."

"Of course, I wouldn't keep you from your job."

I felt strangely satisfied with myself for helping a fellow _Inconvenience_ crewmember. Well, not crewmember, but he was assigned to the ship same as I was. I was interrupted from my thoughts when I felt a gust of wind hitting me in the back. I turned to see a familiar Pelican landing right in the middle of the muddy highway that went through the middle of the street. Just like Marina to make a grand entrance. She hovered a couple of meters above ground and made a slow descent. I banged on the cockpit and gave her a 'what are you doing' shrug. She just shrugged back and smiled underneath her huge helmet before polarizing the cockpit windows.

I rolled my eyes and went to the rear of the Pelican. I was surprised to see a bunch of Rangers hopping out. It never ceased to amaze me the size of their packs. They had their jetpacks on their back as well as a smaller backpack over it. Then they had their duffel bags strapped to their chests and their rifles over it. Us Helljumpers went light into combat, even lighter than regular Marines. We just took weapons, ammo, and occasionally a rucksack filled with some additional gear or food. Army always went heavy, they could set up a semi-permanent base with just the things that they took with them.

I examined the fifteen Rangers, there was one and a half squads inside the Pelican, well, outside now. It was the third squad and one half of the second. The half with the very pretty Specialist Claire Winchester on it. I smiled at the sight of her before catching myself.

_You have a girlfriend now,_ I reminded myself. _Who you love very, very much._

Still, not all of me agreed. _You can still look, right?_

_I guess there's no harm in that._

On that I could agree.

"Ah," I greeted. "Sergeant Durant, it's been a while."

"Gunnery Sergeant," he replied, smiling while shaking my hand. "Good to see you. What is the news in this section of the front?"

"The usual," I shrugged. "But we have a little town right behind the enemy line, they have plenty of supplies and troops quartered there, so they can double their numbers in case of an attack."

"I guess that's why they brought us here," Durant said.

"What about us?" I asked him, feigning offense. "We're elite too."

"Fine, fine," he admitted. "I don't know why we're here, but I know that command is planning something big. There have been a few large pushes since two weeks ago, you hear about that?"

"A little bit," I said modestly.

"Well, ever since that initial charge we've had some other ones, right?" He continued after I nodded. "I think this is the big one, we're going to take the covvies out for good."

I nodded at the idea, I had thought about it myself. "What do you think Specialist Winchester?"

Claire was surprised to suddenly be invited into the conversation, Durant also seemed a little bit surprised, but he was aware of her dislike for me, so he just smiled and looked away while he got his facial muscles back under control.

"What?"

"I asked you what you thought about all the troop movements."

"Oh," she said, looking flustered and slightly nervous. "It's above my pay grade."

"But if you had to guess, Specialist?" Durant asked her.

"Well, probably what you two said."

"So you agree with me?" I asked, my face every bit as serious as my voice. I would've made one hell of a poker player if you ask me. But I've been known to exaggerate some of my talents.

"Yeah…" she grumbled, not seeing any way out of the trap.

"Mark it down Waylon," I told Durant. "In this historic day Specialist Claire Winchester has gotten over her dislike for me and managed to find a way to share my opinion."

"A truly memorable day, Sergeant," he nodded approvingly. I was slightly surprised at the eagerness that he had to mess with one of his subordinates. He had given the impression of being a serious, driven man, cold as a rock. I guess he still had some humor underneath that perfectly smooth ebony skin of his.

Sorry for the homoerotism.

Winchester just scoffed at us immature men and turned around to talk with another of her squad mates, if memory served me right his name was Thor. Like the comic book character. Oh, and the Nordic god of thunder and all that, but it was funnier if you thought about him like he was named after a comic book character.

"Well, good talking to you Sergeant," Durant told me. "But we've got to report to the man in charge."

"Understood," I said. "Tell the Colonel that I say hi. Oh, before you leave, where's Yevgeny?"

"The lieutenant is on the other Pelican, it should get here soon enough."

"Understood, thank you Sergeant."

"No problem."

I looked up as Marina's _Lamb_ flew straight up and towards the parking lot. She didn't seem to mind that she was being yelled at by half of the population at this FOB. That was so much like her.

"What's are you so happy about?"

Well, Hanna managed to look amazing in full gear, even with her figure hidden underneath all that armor and fatigues, she had the look of an angel.

"The prospect of seeing you," I told her, hugging her. "How have you been?"

She smiled and hugged me back. "I just got here, we're getting some rest before we're sent back to the front."

"Same here," I told her. "Although we are being sent on raids every couple of hours."

"Sounds tiring," she said.

"Yeah, but at least we don't have to sleep in the mud."

"Tell me about it," she sighed. "My hair is the dirtiest that it has ever been."

Mine was fine, but I just smiled and stroked her hair lightly, pushing it behind her ears. "You know, you look great with a helmet on."

"I look great without one too," she said.

"That sounds like something that I would say," I noted. "Interesting?"

"Why is it so interesting, we spend a lot of time together."

"When we can," I corrected.

She rolled her eyes and started walking towards her new quarters. I, being the gentleman that I am, carried her duffel bag over my shoulder.

"Whatever," she smiled. "But it's not surprising, I guess you're rubbing off on me."

"And too much from the looks of it," someone said from behind us. "Get a room, you're already attracting stares."

"A Yevgeny, the pure embodiment of subtleness," I replied.

"You know me," he laughed. "Frank, Hanna, pleasure to see you."

"Lieutenant," Hanna said, blushing a little bit.

Yevgeny was wearing only fatigues, Camouflage pattern on his pants and the short-sleeved shirt. I guess that he liked to show off his muscles as much as I did. Hence my own t-shirt. The scar on his face was the first thing that you looked at, unless, of course, you were used to it, like I was. He had gotten a buzz cut with a flat top again, looking every bit as the military man that he was. The big M6 hanging by his waist added to the look. It was a one of the bigger versions of the M6, bigger than my silenced pistol at least.

"Listen Corpsman," he started. "I'm going to need to borrow your man here for a while."

"No problem," she said. "Just bring him back in one piece."

"No promises ma'am," Yevgeny laughed, "but I'll do my best."

I smiled at Hanna, "I'll see you later."

"Likewise," she replied, her smile every bit as big as mine.

"You guys are sickening," Yevgeny gagged as soon as Hanna was out of earshot.

I shoved him sideways. "No, I'm serious, you were never this…uh, hmm…how should I put it? Caring seems to mild a word."

"When you fall in love I'll be sure to remind you that you disapproved of me. In fact, I'll take you to Grass, observe your behavior and comment on it."

He laughed. "Maybe I'll speak in Russian."

"_Da_," I replied. "Glorious Mother Russia would approve."

"When is everybody going to get over that?" he sighed.

"Probably never," I shrugged. "Now, what did you need to borrow me for?"

"Right, I heard that there's going to be a large charge soon."

"You don't say." I stopped and glanced at him. "If that is all you know then I think I'll be going back to my girlfriend."

"No, no, no," he chuckled. "I heard what the Spec Ops units were supposed to do."

"That's us."

"And a couple of locals, but mainly us, yeah."

"So?"

"You know about this little town? The one right behind the enemy line?"

"Yeah, only reason why we haven't attacked yet."

"Well, one of our units is supposed to take it."

"A whole town?" I asked. "Are you sure? I mean, you would need at least a company or two to take over a town."

"I know, that's what sounded unusual to me, but we've done stranger stuff."

"Agreed."

"That's the main mission, but there are several other…interesting things too. You heard about those two Scarabs spotted emerging from Catamaran City?"

"Yeah," I confirmed. "I still haven't figured out how the hell they manage to hide those mechanical monsters, digging I guess."

"The _Inconvenience_ also spotted a bunch of Shadow transports and Spirits converging on two different locations. They're setting up AA guns."

"Shit, are they up yet?"

"One of them is," he sighed. "Brutes put it up while the _Inconvenience_ was out of range, now the ship can't move near, rendering most of our sensors useless. It also started taking potshots at some of our deployed satellites."

"What about the other one?"

"They're still setting it up last I heard."

"It's gonna need to be shut down," I muttered. "How big is this push supposed to be?"

"It's supposed to be _the_ push, we go all the way down to the city and the coast. If this works the covvies should be all dead by the end of the month."

"Easier said than done," I chuckled without much humor. "What do you supposed that you'll be assigned to do?"

"My units is the largest Spec Ops unit on the planet."

"That's not counting the Marines," I reminded him.

He rolled his eyes. "You know what I mean. Like really Spec Ops."

"Don't let anybody in the Corps catch you saying that."

Nezarian sighed in annoyance. "Whatever. The point is that my platoon is probably going to be tasked with taking the town."

"You up to it?"

"Always," he said. "But that doesn't mean I have to like it."

"Amen," I replied. "So, if it were up to you, what would you have us do? I mean my squad."

"I'd put you on the toughest mission, you somehow always accomplish the task with relatively ease." He cleared his throat. "But then you manage to dig yourselves in deeper and have to be rescued."

"Usually by you, ain't that right?"

"Hey, you've come to my rescue a couple of times," he said, slapping me on the shoulder. "Oh, now that we're on the topic, you remember Sergeant Valeri? Ivanov."

"Oh, the one who lost his arm?"

"That's the one!"

"What about Stumpy?"

"Stumpy," Nezarian spat out, looking at me disapprovingly. After all, Stumpy was his best friend. "Was finally cleared for active duty."

"Yay…"

"He's been trying to get himself cleared ever since they gave him that prosthesis, they wanted to give him a desk job or a promotion that would keep him out of combat."

"So unreasonable," I scoffed.

"Ok, just be happy for me," Nezarian chided.

"Fine, fine, I'm happy for you. Truly. Where are you going to be staying?"

"Those barracks over there, there's a spare room for me, as I'm an officer and all."

"Excellent," I told him. "I'll be sure to send Grass up."

"Just what exactly do you think that Cam and I do in our spare time? I mean, is your opinion of us that low? We both- yeah, thanks for that."

"No problem."

I slapped him on the back of the head and ducked underneath a counter before skipping away to my squad's tent. It was a smallish tent, but it was large enough to fit seven men with no problem whatsoever. It was currently occupied by Grass and Snark. They weren't having a conversation, Snark was watching a vid on his datapad and Grass was doing an interactive course on Spanish. Her attempts weren't exactly gold either, it was a shame to interrupt her.

"Grass," I told her.

"Yeah Frank? I mean Sarge."

"Are you seriously learning another language? What does that make? Four?"

"Five, actually, but it's going to be a while before I learn."

"No kidding."

"Ouch."

"Sorry, just wanted to let you know that our beloved 1st of the 1st of the 7th has arrived."

"Yev- I mean, the Rangers are here?"

Snark chuckled and shook his head from his bunk, Grass just pushed her hair behind her ear while trying to hide a blush.

"Yeah, Yevgeny is here, he's staying in the barracks that are three down ours and to the right, should be easy to spot."

"Oh, ok."

I groaned in annoyance at her. "Don't you have to go for a walk, or something? I guess that an hour and a half should be enough."

"Don't underestimate me," she warned with a dangerous smile. "Thanks Sarge."

She left and I suddenly found Snark standing next to me with a weird look on his face. "Lieutenant Yevgeny Nezarian, you are a brave man going in there. A brave man…" He snapped to attention. "To those that are about to die, we salute you!" He did a sharp salute and I joined him, holding the position for five seconds, saluting a wall.

"What the hell are you doing?"

"Saluting the fallen," Snark said sadly.

"Really?" Pavel asked, wondering if he had asked the question too sharply.

"Nah," Snark eased him up, "but don't look so flustered."

"I'm not- nevermind. Hey, Frank, did you hear that B Company is here?"

"Sure did," I confirmed. "What about it?"

"Well, I bet you didn't hear that Chloe has ensnared another poor soul."

"Yeah, a guy from…uh, what was it?"

"Marine Aviation," Snark helpfully shouted from across the room.

"Oh yeah! That."

Pavel was obviously annoyed at me for having heard the latest scoops before he had. "Well, I was planning on letting him know all about Chloe's lying, cheating ways."

"Man, what's it to you? You're already married."

"Yeah, but that doesn't mean that she deserves to be happy!"

I laughed. "Pavs, that line is straight out of a comedy flick." I shook my head disapprovingly, Pavel was actually getting a little bit worked up. "The sad thing is that you mean it."

"Of course I mean it! She cheated on me!"

"Twice, with one guy! You slept with twenty girls before even breaking up with her. And told her all about it!"

"What?!" he exclaimed. "You actually thought it was a good idea!"

"And I still do, but man, that's hardly the mature thing to do."

"_You're_ telling _me_ to be mature?"

"Funny world we live in."

"Fine, I won't broadcast a radio signal then," he sighed.

"Or anything else," I added.

"Or anything else."

Pavel was obviously disappointed that I had been forced to grow up mentally to steer him away from his evil ways. While he was normally the level headed one in the group, he still had a weak point for his ex, he had been in love with her and had been seriously hurt when she betrayed his trust. I understood how he felt, if any Layla or Marina had done that to me I would have been angry with them and myself for trusting them in the first place. In fact, I think that he had asked Amber to marry him so quickly in part because of that. Subconsciously of course, but the damage to him was done.

I shut off Grass' datapad and sat on the workbench that came with the tent. My left shoulder pauldron was sitting there. I reached into my pocket and pulled out a sticker. It was an exact copy of the one that had been on my new armor, it showed my blood type and other important medical details that would be good to know if I needed some serious patching up. I had forgotten to put it on when I first got my armor, but I was fixing that right now. The only problem was that there was a groove from a carbine shot on my shoulder, I had to fill it with something to get the sticker to actually show what I wanted it to show.

So, I found myself with a small piece of metal that I picked up in the trenches and a blowtorch. I melted the metal onto the grove, fusing it with the armor. It was crude, ugly, and amateurish, but I couldn't get U/A Multi Threat replacements nowadays. I hear that they were reserved for Spartan units now, good thing I kept mine. I pasted the sticker on and smoothed it over.

"Nicely done Frank," I told myself. I put the armor aside and instead grabbed my pistol. It had jammed once on the last mission, it could be explained if you took the mud into account, but I still wanted to check for any other little things that could've contributed to the malfunction. It was at times like this that I felt that Nezarian was spending way too much time with Grass, she could've fixed anything that needed to be fixed in record time and for free.

My pistol was fine, I just cleaned out the mud and oiled all the pieces before putting it back together. Even with all our technological advances, FTL travel, artificial intelligence, terraforming, and more we still couldn't manage to make a completely jam proof weapon. I sighed, maybe some things just aren't meant to be.

"Excuse me," an unfamiliar voice excused itself. "Gunnery Sergeant Castillo?"

"That's me," I grunted. "Who's asking?"

"The Colonel wants you and your squad down in HQ."

"I'm on my way," I replied.

"What's that about?" Snark asked.

"You're kidding," Pavel looked at him. "We're being sent on a mission, dipshit."

"Hey, what's with the aggression?"

"Oh, suck it up."

I raised my eyebrow at Pavel, but otherwise said nothing. It was getting cold outside, so I put on a black jacket. It had my name, rank, and unit on it. 19th battalion, it had been so long since I had actually been _in_ that battalion.

"Come on," I told them, "don't want to be late."

The temperature had gone down in the last hour, the mist didn't exactly help on anything, but at least the covvies were equally miserable, perhaps more. The FOB was emptier than normal, with most of the new arrivals resting off the trip in their new quarters and the departing soldiers and jarheads already on their way to the front or the rear. It was strangely quiet, Golf had always been full of activity. The HQ was a little building, sturdier than most, but still nothing impressive. I walked inside and entered the war room.

"Colonel," I saluted the woman. "You wanted to see me?" Colonel Rhonda Billings was, well, how to describe her? I think that if I had to describe the colonel in one word it would have to be sexy, or alluring. Maybe even seductive. Beautiful might've been stretching it, but not by much. Every now and then I met a person that shattered my preconceptions about something, Colonel Billings had shattered my preconceptions about every colonel that I would meet from now on. I still couldn't figure how an officer of her rank could be so stunningly attractive.

Oh, and she knew it too, using her looks to her advantage. With a perfectly made up face, slightly longer than regulation hair, and bright red lipstick that was definitively not regulation. Oh, and she actually let the top two buttons of her uniform go unbuttoned. She was sexy and she knew it.

"Ah Castillo, just the man that I've been looking for."

My stomach lurched. "The rest of my squad should be here shortly."

"Of course, I've already called for them, in fact I think that- oh, there they are."

Bee, Caboose, and Angel had just walked in, looking a little bit confused. Well, Bee looked like a dog in heat, he couldn't take off his eyes from Colonel Billings. The poor man needed to get laid, and hopefully not with the colonel.

"That's all of you."

"No ma'am," I said. "We're still short one member."

"I guess we can wait," she sighed.

Grass arrived less than thirty seconds later, you could just tell exactly what she had been doing, her normally perfect hair was slightly out of place and there were a few beads of sweat below her hairline, nobody would be sweating in this cold.

"Ah, Ms. Seppa, can you tell us what exactly was so that important that merited your late arrival?"

"Uh, I-" she started.

"I sent her to see something about some items that I had requested," I told Billings. "To confirm that the petition had been properly filed. I'm not really good with those things, wanted to make sure that it was fine."

"Which it is," Grass finished. "Sorry I'm late ma'am."

Billings looked at me and then at Grass, it was quite obvious that she didn't believe me, but she wouldn't press the issue. "Very well, now that we're all here I guess I can continue. It's probably no secret to you that there's something big planned. Command wants to win all the land in between here and Catamaran City, one second-to-last push before finally kicking the Covenant from the planet. Unfortunately," she went on, turning on a screen on one of the walls and the holotable in the middle of the room. "There are several targets that need to be taken down before any sort of large movement can be attempted."

I looked at the screen, it was displaying one of the AA guns, the one that had already been set up. The gun itself was completely surrounded by fortified trenches, not as buffed up as the ones on the front, but still pretty impressive. There were several shade turrets planed at equidistant points, covering all angles.

"As you can see, a ground assault would be nearly impossible, especially when the gun is a good fifty miles from the frontline, just outside the reach of our artillery."

"What about guided missiles?" Snark suggested. The man seemed to have a thing for guided missiles, it only showed very occasionally.

"And what would we guide them with?" Billings asked him. "The Covenant has jammers set up all over the peninsula, we haven't even found all of the ones behind _our_ lines."

"Sorry ma'am."

"A carpet bombing is out of the question as well," she went on, ignoring his apology. "While the gun itself wouldn't pose a serious threat to any Shortsword or Longsword bombers, the placement of several SAM plasma torpedo batteries in the vicinity would make an attempted bombing run a disaster."

"Ma'am, I understand the need for the gun to be destroyed, but how exactly do you plan to do it? My own squad would be more than happy to do it, but I see no easy way."

"That's because there is none," Colonel Billings confirmed. "I have prepared extensive intel on the area surrounding the AA gun, you can have everything there is to be had. I'll lend you the war room to plan how exactly you'll do it."

"Is that a thing now? Planning our own missions?" Schitzo asked. "I like it."

"Of course ma'am, do we have a deadline?"

"Three hours should be enough, there are several other elite units preparing vital operations. You have to understand , you can't fail this."

"I understand Colonel," I nodded at her. "We won't."

"Good, I wouldn't expect anything less."

* * *

><p>Just under three hours later I found myself hugging Hanna goodbye, we had finished with the plan slightly early, so I had sought her out. I knew that when (if) we succeeded Echo Company would be immediately deployed to help with the charge. I just wanted to tell her to be careful.<p>

"You're a medic," I reminded her. "Keep your head down, do more good that way."

"And avoid getting shot too," she added.

"What can I say? I'm selfish like that."

She laughed nervously, a trait that I found very endearing. "The same thing goes for you," she told me. "I don't want you getting hurt. If you do it could be a curse or something."

"A curse?"

"Yeah, oh, the first guy I had sex with? Yeah, he died. I probably don't want that to become common occurrence."

"It won't," I promised after laughing some. "I promise you, I'll be fine."

She stood on her tiptoes and gave me a quick kiss before putting my helmet on and securing it. "Good."

"I love you," I told her, saying that phrase for only the second time. I waited a few moments and when she just stood there, flustered and unable to form a decent reply turned around and climbed on board the Falcon waiting for me.

"Let's go!" Pavel told the pilot.

The Falcon lifted off and left Hanna behind, standing in the mud, looking up at me with a look of bewilderment on her eyes and a smile on her face. That smile was mirrored on my face. Having something to come back to was good, it felt like I was fighting for something. I can only imagine how much Amber and Lavanya inspired Pavel to survive.

There were two Flacons in the group, one of them had Pavel, Caboose, Grass, and myself on it, with Pavel and me manning each turret. The other one had the rest of the squad on board. We were flying very close to the ground, less than three meters off. There was artillery and smoke grenades covering our flyby, it wasn't the first time there had been a raid similar to this one, the covvies wouldn't be too alarmed, they'd try to shoot us down, sure, but it was common enough for a pair of gunships to bypass the frontline completely that they wouldn't try too hard.

I had to gun down a few grunts and suppress a pack of brutes, but otherwise we bypassed the enemy line with no trouble. We then found ourselves on Deadland, mud and not much else other than a few craters and the occasional cattle corpse.

There were a few trees scattered here and there, but before the invasion this land had been mostly used for farming and pasturing, every tree that we saw was stripped of its leaves and looked like a skeleton. Of those several we saw were large oak or elm trees that had been used as shade by the occasional farmhouse. Large flora didn't grow naturally on this part of Asilon, even post-terraforming.

The rotors of the Falcons were incredibly loud in my opinion, especially on a mission like this, but they were dampened and as quiet as they could be made. In the end they made about as much noise as a Hornet would make, but they packed a lot more firepower, especially these two in particular. Missile pods had been attached to each side, they would serve as a distraction and draw attention away from us while we set up, buying us some time to start killing covvies.

I went through the mission in my head once more. It wasn't exactly the stuff that legends were made of, but if we executed it correctly it would work. Half the shades would be out of commission before anyone knew what was going on and we would enter the perimeter with complete ease. Once we were inside things started getting tricky, I had opted for a more stealthy approach while the covvies still believed that we were outside, but things could quickly go to hell if we didn't execute this op properly.

"One minute," the pilot warned.

"Weapons ready!" I called out. I let go of the M247 door gun and drew my BR55, pulling back the bolt and feeding a round into the chamber. The clicking noise was reassuring. "We don't know if they can pick up our transmissions," I said, "so only use speakers and hand signals."

"Thirty seconds."

I nodded, mostly to myself, and moved the gun slightly out of the way. It was still within easy reach if I needed it for an emergency, but I could jump out of the gunship no problem. The Falcon started slowing down a little bit until it was only doing about ten miles an hour.

"Go, go, go!" the pilot told us.

I jumped down along with Pavel, rolling sideways to avoid twisting my ankle. A second later Caboose and Grass went down, also rolling to absorb some of the impact. Twenty meters away Bee, Snark, and Angel jumped out of their own Falcon, they immediately looked around and aimed their weapons up, once they saw that they were in the clear they came running toward us. We were exactly two hundred meters away from the nearest Shade turret and flanked by two of the SAM batteries, about a click away from us each. The mist served as excellent cover for us.

"This is Foxtrot-India-Zulu-1, preparing to fire."

"Fire away," I told him. "Cutting of all radio communications now."

"Good luck Reaper," the pilot put in before I managed to terminate the channel.

"Ok, short sprint towards the Shade turret, gunships should have it distracted."

"If not?" Pavel asked.

"Snark can take care of it," I assured him, trying to sound confident. If Snark had to fire then we would probably be made a lot earlier than we wanted to. "Let's go."

All of us found ourselves running as fast as we could towards the first Shade turret. The gun could've easily mowed us down at this distance, but we had no intel that indicated the Covenant had thermal gear to spot us. At least that much went our way, they were fighting a different kind of war than they were used to, so were we.

"There, I see it."

"Stop," I commanded. "Wait." It took all of two seconds for the sound of several explosions to be heard all around us. I even managed to spot a few of the orange blasts a good distance away. I saw the turret move and immediately waved my team forward. All of our weapons had the best silencers available on them, while I didn't appreciate the front-heavy feel that they gave to my gun, I did appreciate the stealth capabilities that they added. These little beauties could actually silence a gun, making the firing noise quieter than the clicking of the bolt, just like in the movies. Still, I preferred if we didn't use our guns, knives were a lot quieter.

Grass and Bumblebee closed in on the turret, Bee had a silenced MA5 on him and Grass had her pistol out, they went around each side of the Shade, keeping low so that the nervous grunt wouldn't spot them. On the other side of the perimeter, the two Falcons were making a lot of noise, firing wildly and letting out unguided rockets at targets of opportunity, if we were lucky they would shoot down a couple of the Shades, making our job easier.

"Oi," Bee whispered to the grunt. The creature squeaked in shock to see a hostile less than one yard away from it. It tried to reach for its pistol, but Grass slashed with her machete. The sharp blade went through the grunt's throat and got stuck in the back of the turret.

I never did get to ask her where she bought that new blade, she had all but forgotten about her first one and had only started using this one since we jumped onto this planet. It was a wicked-looking blade even if it had a simple, traditional machete design, black blade, and single atom edge. What was better, the back of it was reinforced with I don't know what, it wouldn't bend much and most certainly wouldn't break easily. A perfect weapon for cutting through the tough grunt and brute hides.

"Catch," Bee said, tossing the head of the grunt to Angel. Angel in turn tossed it at me and I threw it as far away from the Shade turret as I could.

Snark and Caboose took a knee and covered us with their weapons while Angel moved towards the Shade, the turret had a little bit of blood on it, but Angel quickly wiped it away while Grass and Bee dragged the body away from sight and dropped it behind a rock. If anyone saw an empty turret they might think that a grunt was slacking off, if they saw the blood and the body then they would know that they were under attack. Angel also put a small charge on the base of the gun, strong enough to blow it up and kill the occupant but not good for much else.

The AA gun itself was surrounded by fortified trenches consisting of two lines. There was the inner line, a wide trench with several plasma turret emplacements and the bulk of the forces, and then there was the outer trench, the line that communicated all of the larger Shade guns to one another. The outer trench was thinner and not as heavily defended, what little information we had on this place indicated that it was probably empty most of the time, except for a couple of grunts that checked in on the gunners or relieved them of watch duty. We still expected the random patrol, but it shouldn't be to worrying. One other thing that we had running for us was that the outer trench was only connected to the inner one in four points, each of them in between one of the eight Shade turrets. It was bad planning at its worst and would do us more good than a pair of Scorpion tanks would.

Well, maybe not.

I jumped inside the enemy trench, taking in the similarities and differences between it and ours. Our trenches had a step on the front side, to allow soldiers to fire easily, the step was equally high on all sides and was usually supported by a piece of wood or metal. Here they had different steps at different heights and in some places they didn't have steps at all. There was also something different about it, almost…curvy about it. I know that the Covenant loved organic and bulbous designs, but it seemed that it was ingrained into them, even their trenches. I guess it made sense, if I dug a trench I would unconsciously make it angular, it felt natural to me.

"Pavel, take Grass, Caboose, and Snark with you, handle the other Shade."

He nodded and immediately took off, disappearing through the mist. I turned back to Bee and Angel and waved them in my direction. "I'll take point."

They both nodded. Angel had a silenced M7 with him in addition to his usual SAW. The machine gun also had a heavy-duty silencer, but it wouldn't do much to attenuate the roaring of the weapon. We'd keep quiet for as long as we could. I kept myself at a half crouch and attached my small knife to the barrel of my rifle. If I encountered a covvie around a corner a quick thrust would be enough to cut through its windpipe. Bee also saw fit to do the same thing and placed the knife on the barrel, adjusting it so that it was on top of the barrel instead of on the bottom, with the point facing slightly downwards he could punch through a skull with less effort.

The trench was dug in straight lines, a complete antithesis to the curved edges that they had. I could guess that the design was an octagon, connecting all the Shades. I stopped briefly when I heard the sound of rotors nearby, I could only make one pair. I cursed inwardly and hoped that both the pilots had been able to make it out of there alive. We wouldn't be getting any more distraction to help in our sneaking.

"Wait," I hissed. There was a passage to our left, one of the connecting trenches. I pressed myself against the wall and walked carefully towards it, lowering my rifle so that it aimed at the floor instead of up front. I handed it to Angel and reached for my sidearm as I peeked over the corner. There was one grunt directly in front of me, just standing around, looking back. It didn't seem too scared, probably happy that the Falcon's had left.

I lunged out of the corner and grabbed the grunt by the throat, yanking it around the corner and slamming it into the muddy walls. The alien was surprisingly heavy for its size, but I managed all the same. In that same movement I yanked its breather from its mouth, revealing pointy teeth. The grunt wheezed and tried to make noise, but Bee quickly bayoneted it in the throat twice before cutting down to the chest. The grunt died from shock before it could choke on the unbreathable oxygen.

"Hide it," I ordered.

I turned again and leaned against one side of the wall, aiming down the trench that the grunt had been standing in. After a grand total of five seconds a grunt emerged from a side passage, talking in grunts and yelps, probably asking its dead friend just exactly what it was doing. I double tapped it on the head with my pistol and ran towards it. I checked inside the passageway and sighed with relief when I saw that it was empty. I grabbed the grunt from the methane pack and dragged it back over the corner. Bee and Angel had already tossed it over the edge of the trench, where it slid down the mud ramp. Nobody should find it for a while. We sent the other dead grunt to join the first one and I stomped on the two bullet casings for good measure, burying them under the mud.

"Move it," I said.

We want slowly along the trench, keeping all of our weapons up in case we needed to take out a grunt or a patrol. We were lucky this time, nobody came across us. The next Shade turret was looking out into the open, with the grunt slouching on the seat. There were a couple of plasma cases next to it in case it needed reloading, but they were safely behind the trench walls. I closed in on the grunt, with Angel and Bumblebee aiming to either side of the trench. I drew the knife from my boot, taking notice of all the colorful patterns that the curious blade had. The sight of Dominic Tenare came to my head, I imagine that this was not exactly the use that the cook had in mind when he gave it to me, but no doubt that he would approve.

I covered the grunt's breather and pulled its chin up sideways violently. I sliced across its throat with the blade, cutting deeply and making a mess of the grunt's throat. I quickly pushed the chin down so that some of the blood splatter would be stopped and then removed the grunt from the turret. It fell down to the ground with a dull thud.

"Sarge," Angel whispered, tossing me a charge. I slapped it underneath the gunner's seat and then heaved one of the plasma cores up, placing it next to the turret. No doubt that when the shade went up there would be a nice boom.

"Should we go for another one?" Bee asked me.

I looked at the mission clock on my HUD, neatly placed underneath my minimap. I missed the motion sensor on my other helmet dearly, but the prototype design had been melted completely when a Locust took a shot at me. Not even the helmet that I had owned prior to this one had motion sensors. The clock indicated that we had a few minutes before we blew up the turrets. It sounded good to me.

"Yes, one more," I ordered. "You be point this time."

Bee nodded and started walking slowly, his eyes scanning every point in the trench to see if a grunt would emerge from behind the mist. Angel was behind him, switching between aiming forward and outside the edge of the trench. I walked backwards, making sure that no alien came around and tried to surprise us. I thought I saw movement a couple of times, but it was only the mist swirling around the bottom of the trench. It made me edgy, jumpy. I didn't want that.

"There," Bee said. "I can see the Shade."

"Your turn," I told him, we'll cover you."

Bumblebee disappeared on the little dug road that led to the shade while Angel and I covered both directions. I heard some struggling coming from the grunt and shook my head disapprovingly. I doubted that anybody would hear it, but as a Helljumper he should've been able to pull this off without any noise whatsoever.

"Crap," Angel said. "Jackals."

I didn't say anything, those things had a better sense of smell than a bloodhound and could hear as good as a bat. Not to mention their eyesight, those bloody assholes. I turned around the corner, towards the Shade, and pulled Angel with me. I slung my BR55 over my shoulder and pulled my sidearm, he did the same. Bee stayed behind us, aiming with his assault rifle at the corner. I signaled for him not to fire unless absolutely necessary and waited for the jackals to come through. The first two were regular jackals, with blue shields hanging lazily by their sides. They saw us to their side, but before they could say anything they had bullets in their brains. Angel turned the corner at the same time as I did, the trench was empty.

I did spot a pair of legs scrambling out of the top of the trench. Angel cursed quietly and jumped up, trying to reach for them, Bee aimed sideways at it but otherwise didn't fire. Angel climbed up and fired three shots, well, at least I saw three flashes. I allowed myself a sigh of relief before a shadow jumped me from the side.

I was slammed hard against a wall, this wasn't a regular jackal, but a full-grown skirmisher, almost as tall as I was and every bit as deadly.

I repressed the urge to cry in pain when its claws cut through my suit, slashing me in the armpit and the nook of the elbow. I pressed myself against the wall and jumped to the other side. I made sure to press my forearm against its throat in an attempt to keep it quiet and maybe crush its trachea. The jackal made a soft wheezing noise but otherwise remained defiant, using its claws to try and get at an unprotected spot and delivering powerful knee strikes to my ribs. I grabbed both of its shoulders and tossed it around towards the Shade. I was lucky that jackals were so light, if it had weighed as much as a regular human I wouldn't have succeeded.

The jackal slammed into the wall of flesh and titanium that was Bumblebee. Bee turned the creature around quickly and used his rifle to hold it by the throat, cutting all the oxygen flow. The jackal made weak screeching noises and clawed at Bee's helmet, leaving scratch marks on the yellow stripes and the pinup girl adorning his helmet. Bee moved his head up front, making a smaller target of his throat. I immediately reached to the small of my back and yanked free the large knife. The jackal had a look of complete and utter _fear_ in its eyes and redoubled its efforts to get free. It lifted its legs and kicked at me, but I was expecting that. I grabbed one of the weak legs and twisted it with one hand, feeling the bones snap.

The skirmisher tried crying out, but it had no air in its lungs, all that came out was some sort of weak, pathetic gurgle. I yanked him and Bee towards me by the leg and dug the knife into its belly, not to deeply. I had make sure to have the sharp edge facing up. I slowly lifted the blade, cutting through organ, muscle, and skin with surprising ease. The jackal shivered and shook violently, looking at me with a look of shock and confusion in its eyes. Bee pulled back on the creature with his gun, pointing the eyes in another direction. I encountered resistance when my knife met the equivalent of the sternum. By that point the jackal had long since stopped moving and was most definitively dead.

"Whoa," Angel said from above us. "I checked for other birds, these were the only four."

"Good," I growled. "Plant the charge." I turned to Bee. "Nice work on the jackal."

"Thanks, sorry about the grunt."

"Don't let it happen again."

"I won't. Sorry."

Angel returned a second later and gave me a nod. He helped Bee toss the dead skirmisher over the edge of the trench and then threw an intestine over as well, making a yuck noise as he did. The other two jackals I threw down as well, three of the four jackals were piled up one on top of the other, with another skirmisher a few meters away. I have to give it to the two skirmishers, I wouldn't have been able to react that quickly in a million years. Too bad they were physically weak when compares to us humans.

I suddenly winced as I felt a wave of pain in my armpit and elbow. I stretched my arm sideways and examined the wounds, there were two cuts on each point, not too deep, but long and painful. I self-administered some biofoam and grinded my teeth together to keep from swearing at the needles of pain. I flexed my arm experimentally and smiled with satisfaction when I realized that the two wounds wouldn't be an impediment if I wanted to kick some ass.

"Twenty seconds," Bee called to my attention. "We better get some distance between us and the bombs.

I nodded and we all started jogging away from the Shade. Our boots made splashing noises when they hit the mud, but we wanted to be as far away from the mayhem as possible when we detonated the charges. When the timer reached three we stopped and Angel sat against the wall. He examined the detonator that he had on one hand and waited for the countdown to reach zero. Once it did and the clock disappeared he raised his left hand and lifted his fingers one by one. He reached four and on the fifth he detonated the charges. Five explosions filled the air, not too big, but they did seem incredibly loud.

Let's take a quick pause to explain the next step of the plan. Once the explosions were heard we assumed that the Covenant would be sending troops from the inner line to the outer ones to check just exactly what had happened. That's why we would keep running around the perimeter to avoid most of the reactionary forces. We were supposed to meet with the other section of the squad on the opposite side and break into the perimeter together, but if that failed we would meet up in the inner trench.

"Let's go," I ordered, my voice still quiet even despite the shouts of activity all around me.

The three of us started running around the trench as fast as we could while keeping our weapons up and ready. We only paused when we saw another of the trenches that connected the outer and inner lines. I peeked over and cursed when I saw that there was a squad making its way in this direction. A brute minor shoving five grunts and a jackal sharpshooter. It obviously wasn't too happy, but it didn't seem to be particularly alert, after all, he didn't spot me peeking over the corner.

"Seven hostiles," I said. "Brute, jackal, and grunts to top it off."

Bee and Angel nodded at me and took several steps back, aiming at the corner. I went with them and dropped to one knee. The moment the brute turned the corner Angel peppered its head with automatic fire from his SMG and allowed me to finish it off with a headshot. The grunts were all hit with short bursts to the head by Bee, five of them down in half the time. The jackal rolled to the side, avoiding our initial bursts. It made the mistake of rolling out of the connecting trench instead of inside it. As soon as it emerged from its roll it received three bullets to the throat. It went down and fired a shot straight up.

"Shit," I muttered. "Hurry it along."

We reached the meeting spot with ten seconds to spare. Pavel and the rest weren't there. I heard scarce plasma fire coming from a distance away, I couldn't make out any gunfire, but that was because of the silencers. The plasma fire was cut off suddenly, the covvies would assume that the intruders were dead, I assumed that the intruders had killed the aliens.

"We go without them," I said when the secondary countdown reached zero. "Angel, you're point."

Angel aimed straight ahead while we checked every side passage, every nook and crevice. Angel took out a pair of shield, carrying jackals halfway through and we started moving more urgently. I had to bayonet a grunt that was emerging from a sleeping hole, but otherwise we were lucky. Once we were inside the inner trench I started feeling a little bit worried. I ordered the team to head in the direction of Pavel.

A squad of grunts appeared out of nowhere, I mean, literally out of nowhere. We were two meters away from them when we saw them. Angel lunged forward and kicked the one in lead in the head. I bayoneted it on the floor while Bee kept his gun raised but didn't fire. Angel sprayed the rest, knocking them to the floor, the squeals of pain were very loud. I bayoneted two and Bee finished off the rest with his knife. Angel turned to face me and shrugged.

"Let's just go," I groaned. I have no idea how all three of us could've missed the little fuckers.

When we got to the next connecting trench we stopped. I could hear the sound of Pavel's silenced machine gun firing, it was very loud when compared to the nearly silent shots from Angel's SMG and my own pistol. We waited for a couple of seconds around the corner. Our patience was rewarded when a brute fell backwards, its chest being peppered with automatic fire. It fell on its ass and just sat there, a dead look in its eyes.

It suddenly roared and Angel fired a burst into its head, tearing it into chunks.

"Frank?" Pavel asked. "That you?"

"We're here," I confirmed.

"Good, got a couple of patrols on our way, had to take this trench."

"You're getting old," I joked. "Anyways, let's move on."

Now that the squad was complete and together again I felt safer. We had two machine guns with us and two shotguns that would cause mayhem all over the place if we used them. The inner trench was covered with purple metal on the sides, no doubt intended to prevent small mudslides and the walls from collapsing, but here they'd be just perfect for bouncing bullet's and pellets around. I wondered, if we fired straight ahead, would the buckshot come and bite us in the ass? It was a good question.

"Fuck, brute pack," Grass warned.

"Light em up," I ordered.

The brutes were all minors, carrying spikers and not much else. They were caught completely by surprise, they knew that they were under attack, but they had no idea that they were this fucked. They let out a couple of shots, but the spikes didn't hit any of us, instead embedding themselves in the floor or flying straight up. The three brutes collapsed and fell one on top of the other. Under any other circumstances the image might've been funny, now it was just relieving.

"The trench leading into enemy HQ is right this way," Angel said.

"Or that way," Snark said, pointing in the other direction. "Either way, we can't go wrong." He paused. "Pun intended."

"Let's go," Grass said.

Since when did they give the orders?

The enemy HQ was a small bunker dug directly underneath the AA gun. It ought to have a chieftain and several of its bodyguards, not exactly something that I was willing to face, but still something that we could take care of if it all went well. We encountered only grunts and jackals on the way, taking them out easily and without making much noise. I turned to the right with the rest of the squad down towards the enemy command bunker, it had the traditional triple doors that covvies loved so much, the color indicated that they weren't locked. Much like the ships.

I felt uneasy, when you got to a human HQ it meant that all you had to face were old men that had left peak physical condition a while back. More often than not these men would be armored but not heavily armed, usually a sidearm but not much else. If you were very lucky, they'd only have a pair of corporals protecting them. The thing is, when you got to a human HQ the thing that you were afraid of the most was that they had a nuclear bomb and were taking you with them.

When you got to a Covenant HQ you knew that you were about to face the fiercest, strongest warriors that the Covenant had to offer. You were expecting a tough fight with a field marshal bearing twin swords or a chieftain with a gravity hammer. You could also count on several white-clad ultras and the deadly brute bodyguards. All you had counting for you when you went in was the element of surprise and the stubborn pride of the aliens to refuse to believe that a pesky human could've gotten this far.

The doors opened to reveal an empty room. We walked inside carefully, our weapons raised. Something spoke to me in the back of my head, this was wrong, but I couldn't quite figure out what was wrong.

"Really?" Schitzo asked. "You can't?"

That was all I needed. "Stalkers! Light it up!"

My squad had long since learned to stop doubting my orders. They were drilled to follow my instructions to the letter. The few times that they didn't I would do everything short of beating them half to death to put them back in their place. Pavel was still the first to fire. He trusted me as a leader but also as a friend, his best friend. The other members didn't take longer than a millisecond either, and soon, the noise of suppressed fire filled the room. We hit the first stalker soon enough, eliciting a cry of pain from it.

"Watch for the flames!" Bee called out as he sprayed the space in front of him. He spotted a flickering brute and emptied what was left of his gun's magazine into its face.

An orange orb floated towards us. We saw it coming and dove to the sides, away from it and the flames that erupted around it. The brute that had thrown it immediately went down with seven different weapons being fired at it. We killed the rest of the stalkers with help from our thermal and VISRs. They hadn't been expecting us to notice the trap, they were probably going to encircle us and light us up with their pyro grenades, letting us walk deeper into the room before acting, they were completely unprepared for this.

"Sarge," Grass said in between breaths. "Good one."

"Don't let your guard down!" Pavel yelled at her. Grass had pressed her hands against her knees and was taking deep breaths.

A second later Pavel was pressed to follow his own orders as a hammer swung towards his head. He ducked underneath the blow and a chieftain emerged from thin air.

"They're not supposed to have camouflage!" Angel complained, firing at it wildly.

Pavel rolled out of the way and the chieftain stomped angrily towards Angel. The man tried ducking out of the way, but the brute slapped his gun to the side and hit him with the hammer. It was a weird strike, hitting him from underneath at a very slow speed. Still, Angel was lifted up to the ceiling and slammed hard against it. He groaned from the pain and then fell back to the floor. He used whatever strength he had left in him to roll away quickly. The brute swung the hammer at the floor and the gravity field pushed Angel violently away, slamming him against the wall.

"Shit," Bee cursed. The man took off his Spanker and left it on the ground as he lunged at the brute chieftain. He aimed his bayonet straight at the place where its Achilles tendon would be. The brute fell to one knee from the impact but still managed to swing its hammer, forcing Caboose and Pavel to jump away. Grass fired at it from the side, hitting it in the torso but not really doing any damage. Bee yanked his bayonet while twisting and the brute roared. Bumblebee then stabbed it in the back of the neck. Hard.

The brute lifted its head and roared at the sky, well, the ceiling. It was very dramatic.

Then it shook its head violently, not so dramatic. The movement yanked the gun from Bee's hands. Grass, Pavel, Caboose, Snark, and me, fired at it while Bee scrambled backwards. The brute lunged for Grass, but she rolled out of the way and quickly scrambled to safety while the three of us kept up our automatic fire. Caboose and I had to stop to reload while Pavel kept backing away while pounding away at the brute. Pavel's back hit the wall and he kept on firing. The brute was now struggling to walk forward.

The loud noise of the weapon was suddenly replaced by a repeated clicking noise. Pavel looked at his gun, then back at the brute. I cannot possibly describe the sound that the brute made, it was a sound of triumph, satisfaction, and realization that it had won.

It jumped forward and punched Pavel right in the gut, forcing him to drop his gun. Pavel fell to the floor, trying to catch his breath and probably holding back the pain. By this point my weapon was already loaded. I fired into the brute chieftain, but it seemed intent on killing Pavel first. It raised its hammer and prepared to bring it down on him.

During my long days as a Helljumper I had picked this silly habit of tackling bigger aliens than me. Most sane people would scramble away and try to reload quickly, the aliens always expected that and rushed forward to kill them before they could reload. Most of the time I didn't do that. Most of the time I attacked first. I was pretty good with knives and could kill most aliens with them in very little time, bar hunters, of course. I went for the legs or waist, shifting the alien's center of gravity with the tackle. Once on the floor we usually ended up on equal terms. The elites and brutes had more strength than I had, but I had three knives and the know-how required to cut open the aliens. It was a stupid habit, flamboyant, and showy, but it was ingrained into my very being, it was part of who I was.

And Caboose had apparently picked up on it.

The man fired a burst as he ran forward and tackled the brute's ankles hard. The brute shifted sideways from the impact of a speedy human hitting its feet. It wasn't able to regain its balance and Caboose made sure that both feet were secured together. The chieftain slammed hard into the floor and reeled backwards when Pavel kicked it in the face three times in a row. Snark ran forward, he was the closest to the action after Pavel and Caboose. I refrained from firing, I didn't know whether the brute would move and I'd end up shooting Pavel or Caboose.

Snark jumped on top of the brute, stomping down on its head. I had a hard time believing that a man as small as he was could succeed in restraining the enormous alien, but the stomping was good and the brute was stunned. Following that Snark reached for Bee's rifle, still embedded on the chieftain's neck. He twisted the weapon, and the brute's head with it, so that it was facing the floor. Once it was there he depressed the trigger, emptying whatever was left on the gun into the chieftain's head.

That was what did it, the brute stopped moving. Snark pulled out his sidearm and fired two shots into the chieftain's head just to make sure.

"Grass," I snapped. "Check on Angel. Caboose, you're with Pavel." I turned to face the doors. "Snark and Bee, cover the entrance."

I checked the room for more surprises, the only thing that I discovered was a small rear exit that would allow us to fire directly on the AA gun. I returned and tried assessing the situation.

"Caboose, sitrep."

"Strong punch, can't really say much, but the impact was hard enough to knock the wind out of him, pain will probably stay there too. There might be some organ rupture, nothing immediately deadly, but he's out of commission until we get him to a hospital."

"Nonsense!" Pavel yelled. He was about to say more, but yelling was too much for him. He wisely shut up after that.

"Grass?"

"Similar injuries here," she replied. "Initial hammer strike wasn't that bad, it just lifted him up. He probably got a concussion from the impact on the ceiling, but nothing bad."

"And?" I pressed her.

"The gravity field did some damage, like a concussive blast. One of his kidneys is mush and he's bleeding internally, I've patched him up with biofaom, but I'd need medigel if I wanted to do a thorough job.

"Here," I said, reaching into the pouch on my left leg. "Private reserve, make it count."

"Thanks," she replied. "He's unconscious, but not immediately critical."

I nodded and paced around. "Ok, we lock the door to this place," I ordered. "Grass, there's a firing console over there, I want you to fire at nothing…" I paused. "Wait, how much can this gun twist?"

"To the side?" she asked. "It can fire sideways if needed to."

"Excellent, I want you to aim it at one of those SAM batteries, ok?"

"Understood," she acknowledged, leaving Angel lying on his back.

"Bee, after Grass shoots down the SAM emplacements I want you to fire into the energy core inside the weapon. It's supposed to come out then reloading."

"Yeah, I know," he replied, taking his weapon from Snark and patting him on the back with approval.

"Gun is aiming," Grass shouted. "They have the coordinates of several of the enemy positions here."

"Copy them," I told her, "as soon as we blow this thing up I want you to transmit them to command."

"First target is located. Shot should be enough to wipe it from the map."

"Fire," I ordered.

There was a loud noise through the ceiling and walls, but otherwise we saw nothing. The doors were locked now, impervious to most portable arms, nothing short of a fuel rod from a hunter would take them down, and even then, it might take a while. I felt safe here. Safer than I had since that Falcon first took off.

"Second target locked."

"Fire," I ordered.

"Third target locked."

"Fire."

"Fourth target is out of reach, too close to us."

"Find another target of opportunity," I told her.

"Done," she said.

"Hold it." I turned around and nodded at Bumblebee and Snark, both of them climbed out the rear exit and took aim at the gun. The covvies were looking everywhere but at them, they assumed that we were firing at human targets and that their leadership was still here. I waited a few seconds for Bee to get into place and then ordered Grass to fire. The room shook from the force of the blast. There was another minor explosion, most certainly from Bee's Spanker. He and Snark slid in again and the AA gun started blowing up from the heat overload in its power core. Snark locked the rear entrance behind him.

"Grass, transmit the target coordinates to command," I told her. "Request a medivac and have them try and get us out of here as fast as possible. We're stuck in this little bunker until they can come get us."

"Mission accomplished, eh?" Bee suggested, trying to look at the bright side of things.

"Mission accomplished," I agreed. Now all we had left to do was wait.

* * *

><p><em>Thanks to Sniper Fodder for proof-reading this chapter.<em>

_Well, it's about 12,500 words worth of battle and battle prep. Gotta say that I enjoyed writing this chapter, it was pretty fun and I think I did much better on the sneaking part than I have done on past chapters. You know, I think that the jackals are sometimes underrated as enemies, of course, in the games they pose no trouble, but I think that fighting one of those in real life would be one hell of a challenge. The reason that I decided to have trenches is because I wanted WWI style combat in my fic, it's probably one of the wars that interest me the most and wanted to do something similar to trench warfare. I particularly wanted to do this stealthy trench-clearing part. I think it turned out rather well._

_The chapter turned out rather well for me, even if not for Reaper. As always I love reading your reviews and appreciate your _constructive_ criticism. I hope you enjoyed this chapter._

_Stay strong._

_casquis_


	128. Angels in the Battlefield

Chapter CXXVIII: Angels in the Battlefield

**October 2, 2544 (UNSC Calendar)/**

**Temporary FOB Golf, Catamaran Peninsula, Asilon, Omicron Ebur System**

**Hospital Corpsman Second Class Hanna Lockley**

* * *

><p><em>"You called us angels."- Clara Barton<em>

* * *

><p>"I love you."<p>

He had said it again. And then he turned around and left. Who does that? I mean, it's something that would be romantic in a movie or a book, maybe at the end of a chapter. But honestly, doing it once is ok, twice? Now that's just rude.

Still, I was angry at myself. I should've been able to reply in turn. I saw no reason not to, I did love him, why shouldn't I? He was nice, caring, funny, and good-looking too. I trusted him and I liked him more than I had anybody in my entire life. These past months with him had been a whirlwind, I was surprised at myself mostly, but in a good way. I certainly never expected to die a virgin, but all things considered I don't think that I would've done it any other way. Besides, it was fun, enjoyable, most certainly better than helping myself.

Look at me, blushing even as I wrote that. If anyone ever read this I would die.

Well, he turned around and left, all clad in his fancy black armor, with two knives more than the norm strapped to his body. He was very proud of his toys, but I never understood the infatuation with blades. I understood that they were useful and could be a nice last-resort weapon, but I had never been in a situation where I needed to use my own combat knife yet.

I kept my eyes trained on him even as the Falcon disappeared through the mist. I was angry. I was usually the one in control, I always kept my bearings, there was absolutely no reason why I should panic, or stutter, or stumble over my words. There was most certainly no reason why I should react like a nervous schoolgirl. I was supposed to be the cool and collected one!

Well, it doesn't matter, I don't exactly have time for a self-analysis. The Falcon departed and I immediately returned to barracks. After having lived my whole life in foster care with only other girls to share my room with this mixed environment felt weird. They usually set up different building for men and women, but under these circumstances we only had one building per unit. The whole company was tightly packed up into the barracks. It was a good idea that we would only be here for a day or two at the most, otherwise we would start killing one another.

"Hanna Banana!"

I smiled despite myself. Corporal Harriet Buchanan was one of the only two other women in the company ever since the captain was hit. She was a pretty good friend.

"Harry," I replied with a smile. "Why so cheerful all of a sudden?"

"Oh, you know me," she shrugged. "I'm just happy you finally got yourself a sexy stud." When she said that a couple of the guys within earshot turned and laughed, I glared at them and they promptly turned around to try and stifle their laughter. They wouldn't want me fixing them up wrong.

"It's been long enough," I said. "You should be over it already."

"I know, but I've never seen you so happy!"

"Really?"

"Yeah, you're smiling."

"Am not!"

"Well, not anymore," she conceded, "but you had a big grin on your face when you walked in."

"I can vouch for that," Lance Corporal Pablo Nilsson joined. "I'd say the smile lit up the room, but it came from you…" Pablo was born to an Argentinean dad and a Swedish mom. Genetics had been nice to him. He had inherited the tan skin that his dad had and the light hair and eyes that his mother had. He usually joked that his dad had been the blond one and his mom the tanned one. His parents were both born and raised on Earth, they met up in college. He really liked talking about his family, that's why I know all this, no other reason in particular.

"Pablo, just what I needed."

Pablo smiled, he had a cute smile too, and hugged Harry, giving her a kiss on the cheek.

"Getoffme!" she complained, shoving him away half-heartedly.

"So, tell us young Hanna Banana, what happened out there?" He adopted a concerned expression. "Did you jump his bones again? Because I've been talking with Harry and we're concerned tha-"

"Don't get me involved in this!"

"Well, perhaps talking is an exaggeration, I've been boinking Harry and we- ow!"

Harry slapped him pretty hard. She wasn't really angry with him, after all, it was true that they had been boinking regularly. They were the closest thing that Echo Company had to an official couple. It was a little bit sad that they spent most of the time fighting or Harriet punching Pablo. Funny thing, right?

"Well, we _are_ curious, what happened?"

"He said it again."

"Again?" Pablo raised an eyebrow, rubbing his reddening cheek.

"Yup," I nodded.

"What's so bad about it?"

"I couldn't say anything. I froze up."

"Again."

"Again," I repeated.

"Wow," said Harry, shaking her head. "That's so sad."

"Yeah," I scoffed. "Thanks."

Pablo chuckled and stretched himself, casually putting one arm around Harriet. She scoffed but otherwise snuggled up close to him. "You know, you're going to have to give him a reply sooner rather than later."

"I know."

"Here, I've got an idea, why don't you say it to Harry? As practice?"

"Really?"

"Yeah, why not?"

"Sure," Harry shrugged.

I sighed and rolled my eyes but looked at Harriet. "I love you."

"Nononononononono," Pablo complained, slamming his hands on the table. "You have to say it like you mean it, love is a heavy word, use it carefully."

"Fine!" I turned to face Harry again. "I love you."

"Better," Pablo nodded. "Now why don't you kiss her, make it more realistic."

I was lunging to slap him when Harry tackled him to the floor and started poking him in the ribs. A regular person would've tried to defend himself, but Pablo was so incredibly ticklish that he just started laughing like a madman and begged Harry to stop torturing him, arguing that he was going to wet himself and get the floor dirty. Of course that didn't work, the whole company formed a circle around them and started yelling at them to start…well, you know Marines.

"What the hell is going on!"

It wasn't a question, it was more like a statement. Lieutenant Darbinian didn't bother with questions, he just yelled. A lot. Nobody liked him, but he was a good leader and could keep us together when it counted.

"Um, nothing El-tee," Pablo said, suddenly serious and standing up. "Corporal Buchanan and myself were just doing a little bit of…uh…close quarters practice."

"Uh-huh," Darbinian nodded. "Is that true Corporal?"

"In a way, yes."

"Oh, it's 'in a way' now?" Darbinian was obviously not impressed. "Which was it?"

"We're sorry Lieutenant," Harry apologized. "It won't happen again."

"Damn right it won't," he agreed. "Or you two will be wiping the floor on the ship for the next three months." Darbinian turned around to face the rest of Echo. All of them promptly took a step back and stood with their backs a little bit straighter. "We're going to be going into combat any time now, that's the definition of standby in case you weren't aware of it. I'm stuck with you ignorant idiots, so I never know if you understand what the hell is going on. We're on standby, everybody should be in full combat gear already!" Everybody shuffled awkwardly and looked down at their feet. "What the hell are you waiting for?!"

Everybody stopped shuffling awkwardly while looking down at their feet and instead moved quickly towards their armor and weapon lockers. I was already clad in half of my armor, so I waited where I was standing.

"Corpsman," Darbinina nodded at me. You know, he could've been attractive had he not been such an…well, an ass.

"Lieutenant," I replied politely.

"Let's hope your boyfriend succeeds," he sighed. "He's a fine soldier." The words sounded heavy coming out of his mouth, but he never said anything that he didn't mean, except perhaps calling all of us ignorant idiots. "Even if he's an idiot."

"I'll be sure to tell him that," I replied. "The first part, sir."

"I'd rather you told him the second," Lieutenant Darbinian grunted. "Now put on the rest of your armor."

"Sir!"

Echo Company was a fine outfit, we all had combat experience and could be ready for combat in less than two minutes. I finished putting on my armor and reached for my MA5. The gun was old but in fine working order, I slammed a magazine into the port and pulled back the bolt. The gun clicked satisfactorily and I smiled to myself. I couldn't imagine what my sisters would say if they saw me dressed like this. After that I strapped my corpsman band on to my arm.

"We taking e-tools?" Harry asked me. "Cause we might need to dig ourselves in."

"I don't know," I replied. "Ask Sarge."

Harry looked over her shoulder and saw that her sergeant was packing an e-tool on his pack. I sighed and grabbed my own little shovel and placed it next to my already oversized pack. The rest of Echo had small backpacks with water and items that they deemed necessary. I had a rather large backpack with tons of medical equipment on my back, my own little mobile hospital. It was heavy.

"Now we wait," Harry sighed.

After two hours we finally got the go ahead.

"Banana, over here."

"I'm going," I told Private Lopsang Topche. He was one of the two marines in charge of my safety. "And don't call me Banana."

He laughed. "No chance on that one."

"Where's Mal?"

"Duff's taking a leak."

"Charming."

Darbinian and Captain Salas started giving out their orders. We would be advancing right after the army, with the Scorpion tanks. The advance would consist of three lines, we would be switching with one another every certain distance. Like those races with more than one person, I forget how they're called. Well, the point is that we were supposed to get moving now, the Army was already attacking with their fancy Armadillos and their own Scorpions. Old Gryphon jets were flying overhead, off to bomb some place or other.

"Banana," Duff said from behind. "Hey Topche."

"Hey Duff," we both replied.

"You stay behind, ok?" he told me. "You know the drill."

"Yeah, yeah," I replied. "Keep myself safe so I can do my job."

Duff nodded and we just stood around awkwardly while our own company was mustered up and called to the assault. Three Scorpions left the vehicle lot and positioned themselves next to each other. They started going forward at walking speed and slowly pulled apart to leave sizeable spaces in between them.

"We're behind Scorpion number two," Mal said. "Come on."

It was a spectacle, marines as far as the eye could see in either direction with tanks and warthogs at regular intervals. Occasionally some jets would do a flyby or Falcon gunships would roar by. If there was a war journalist with us he would be having the time of his life.

"We're catching up to the Army," Lopsang warned. "Stay behind the tank as much as you can."

"I know," I complained. "I've been doing this for a while now, you know?"

"Just making sure Banana."

"And stop calling me that!"

"Not a chance."

Eventually we came up to an enemy trench, it was occupied by tired Army soldiers and Covenant corpses. The tanks just barreled over them while we climbed down and then back up. I stopped to ask the soldiers what we would be facing, they gave me unhelpful answers. I then asked them if they needed help, but they told me that their own medics were taking care of it, but thank you. I shrugged and hopped out of the trench as they wished me good luck. Mal and Lopsang made sure that they covered me from the sides and front, trying to make out hostiles through the mist.

The Scorpion fired twice and we ducked to the ground.

"Hey, what's going on?" Mal asked, banging on the tank.

"Some Wraiths, you'd better get out of the way!"

We ran away from the Scorpion just in time for three blue mortars to fall around it. Two of them were misses, but one of the explosions glanced the tank, lifting it slightly sideways. The tank fell back to the ground and fired three shots. I heard an explosion in the distance and knew that it had taken out the Wraith that had hit it. A few hundred assault rifles opened up at the same time, we had come up to an enemy trench. I was about to start earning my pay.

"Keep your head down," Mal said for the umpteenth time.

If I kept my head further down I would be eating mud. Mal and Lopsang were firing short bursts and plasma rounds were starting to come awfully close. I aimed down range and looked for movement. I spotted a jackal running sideways and fired a sustained burst at it. A couple of bullets hit it and it collapsed to the floor. Someone must've seen my muzzle flashes because they started firing at me with needle rounds.

"Come on," Mal yelled. "Let's get out of here."

We ran to the side and I dove behind a crater. I stayed there for a few seconds, trying to regain my breath. I barely had time to get myself calmed down when I heard the dreaded cry.

"Medic!"

I looked around to try and spot the yelling marine. I saw one guy waving around and stood up. Lopsang and Mal started yelling at me to wait for them, but I was already sprinting for the man. I slid down when I arrived. The man placed himself between the enemy soldiers and me and started firing short bursts. To my left I saw another marine, he was bleeding from the stomach and chest. There were three spikes embedded in his belly and one in his chest. He was groaning and trying to keep from crying out while one hand reached for his assault rifle.

"Don't move," I told him. "This is going to hurt, all right?"

"What?"

"Listen Sergeant…Boone, can you hear me?"

"Yeah, yeah!"

"Ok, bite on this." He nodded and looked straight up, wincing even before I even touched the spiker rounds stuck in him. "Hold on."

I yanked the first spike from his belly, Sergeant Boone groaned and shook, but otherwise didn't do anything.

"Hold him down!" I told my two so-called bodyguards. They knelt next to him and pressed his shoulders against the ground. I yanked the two other spikes and he started crying out in pain, technically speaking that was the worst thing that I could do outside of an ER, but I had with me the modern miracle of biofoam. Blood started emerging from the wounds and pooling on his stomach and sliding to the ground.

"Come on, come on," I told myself, examining the wounds. Boone was lucky, no important veins had been punctured, his stomach had been cut open though, but I didn't have the proper equipment to deal with that right now. Sure, I could sew him closed, but that would take too long and biofoam would work well enough while they gave him a medvac.

"This is also going to hurt." I poured a little bit of biofoam on his wounds and rubbed around to make sure that it covered everything.

There was still another spike right in the middle of his chest. I grabbed one of the bloody rounds and placed it next to the other spike.

"Listen Boone," I yelled into his ear, he was about to faint. "Pay attention!"

"Yeah…"

"The other spike is stuck in your sternum, it's not dangerous, the doctors back there can take care of it easily."

"Ok, ok."

"You heard me too?" I asked his squad mate.

"I got you ma'am."

"Good, stay here with him."

"But I-"

"Stay here with him!"

"Fine, fine."

"Let's go," Mal told me, dragging me by the arm.

There were a couple of plasma turrets firing at a bunch of marines hiding behind two boulders. They were pinned down and couldn't move from their position. The gunners hadn't seen us yet. We were to their right, but they were so focused on killing the men behind the rocks that they didn't see us.

"Hanna," Mal turned to me. "Topche and me are going to kill the guys in that bunker, throw a frag at the two turrets, ok?"

"Got it." I watched as they crawled away and threw one of my grenades at the plasma turrets. The explosion killed the two gunners and I smiled to myself. Mal and Lopsang then threw additional grenades inside the bunker-like trench and jumped inside through a window. Said window lit up with orange from the automatic fire. The noise lasted for about ten seconds before it finally stopped.

"All clear!" Lopsang yelled.

As soon as I heard that I ran straight towards the two boulders. The marines there were already running towards the covvie trench, firing as they went. I ignored them and knelt beside two prone figures on the ground. One of them was dead for sure, he had been hit four times in the face, most of it was gone. The other one was alive, but just barely, his entire torso had been shot up. I looked at the injuries and reached into my pack for painkillers. The marine died before I could give him the shot. I shook my head and closed his eyes.

"Banana, let's get moving, we're being left behind."

It was true, the front of the advance was already two hundred yards away, they had already reached the Covenant trench and were jumping inside. Us three just ran up towards them and joined the fight.

The enemy trench was littered with bodies, both human and alien, but most of them were alien bodies, something which I was thankful for. Mal and Lopsang fired at any alien that moved. I ran from body to body, checking their vitals to see if they could still be helped.

"Watch out!"

I raised my rifle and gunned down a brute with Mal's help. The alien collapsed before it could do anything. I allowed myself a sigh of relief. One marine was breathing heavily just a meter away from the dead brute, obviously happy that we had saved him.

"Some help?"

"What's wrong?" I asked, examining him."

"My back," he sighed. "They hit me in the back."

"Where?"

"Right above my ass."

"Ok, this might hurt." I turned him around and saw that there was a single spike jutting out of his lower back.

"I can't feel my legs," he suggested.

"That might be permanent," I told him.

"Afraid so."

"There's some surgery that can link back together all the nerves, expensive, but the military should help pay for it."

"Thanks," he sighed.

"Listen, I'm going to cut a section of the spike, make it harder for it to move around."

"Ok…"

"And then I want you to stay here."

"Poor choice of words ma'am."

"No," I assured him. "I've seen wounded men try to crawl away from combat. Stay here and someone will come pick you up. Are you in pain?"

"Not really."

"Good, keep your weapon ready."

"Anything you say ma'am."

Mal cleared his throat. "Um…Banana?"

"I'm going Duff," I snapped. I didn't like getting interrupted. "Now, anything you need?"

The wounded marine shook his head. "Nah, go ahead. And good luck."

"Thanks," I said, standing up and following my two escorts.

From that point on I couldn't help anybody. There were still covvies all over the place and they were doing their best to kill as many of us before they died. I wasn't as good when it came to killing, but I was more than a match for any grunt or jackal. Mal and Lopsang were more experienced when it came to that, but I like to think that I carried my own weight, I killed several grunts and a pair of jackals, but the brutes I left to the other two guys if possible. Those things were hard to kill.

"Medic!"

There it was again, no matter how many times I hear that coarse scream I can't get used to it. I know that I'm doing a good thing here, but seeing so many people die, being unable to help them all, it's really terrible. I turned my head towards the direction which the scream was coming from and went after it. I heard bodyguard one and two shouting at me to wait, but I was already around the corner. A squad of marines was finishing off a bunch of jackals.

"Miss, over there," one of them said as soon as he spotted me.

"What happened?" I asked.

"He got stabbed, spiker."

The victim was trying to breath with two holes in his chest, two pretty large holes. There was a dead brute right in front of him, it had several holes in its head, most of them from pistol rounds.

"You take him out?" I asked the stabbed marine. He nodded weakly. "Nice job!" I exclaimed, trying to cheer him up. The wounds were serious. He started shaking and I proceeded to take off his armor with calm precision.

"What's happening?" his friend asked me, obviously worried.

"He's going to go into cardiac arrest."

"What?"

"Blade hit his heart, it's straining too much."

"What are you going to do?"

"Patch him together and then bring him back to life."

"Can you even do that?!"

"Just you watch."

The stabbed marine's eyes rolled into the back of his head and he flatlined. I yanked the vest away from him and reached into the wound, his heard had been sliced ever so slightly. I patched him up quickly, closing the sliced vein and then sewing it together. Then I stuck the heart together with biofoam and reached into my pack for the emergency defibrillator.

"Come on, come on," I muttered.

I hit him and his body jerked from the shock. I got one beat from his heart but that was everything. I cracked my neck and upped the current by a large percentage. The marine on the floor wasn't moving. His heart had been quiet for almost thirty seconds now, if he didn't come back soon I risked bringing him back with permanent brain damage. I hit him again and he jerked, but his heartbeat didn't change.

"Come on…." I hit him three more times before giving up, tossing the defibrillator to the side. "He's dead."

"Shit," his friend cried and punched the wall. "Shit!"

"Calm down," Mal told him, "we've got a job to do."

"Don't tell me to calm down! My best friend just died!"

I stood up and put my hand on his shoulder. "It's ok," I assured him. "It's all fine."

The marine collapsed on the floor and started crying. He was young, younger than I was. He probably enlisted with a couple of friends, believing all the propaganda. He certainly hadn't expected this when he joined the Corps.

"Can you take care of him?" I asked his squad.

"We'll stay with him ma'am," one of them nodded at me. "He'll be fine."

You know, I'm writing this all wrong, I'm skipping some stuff, not being detailed, I'm honestly doing my best, but I keep trying to write this like a novel or something and not like a journal, I don't even know why I'm bothering with the dialog and everything. I would make for a crappy novelist, but you always said that you wanted to keep a diary or a journal, so here I am, doing it for you.

After that we kept moving, climbed out of the trench, followed the rest of the marines. The ground here was less damaged, since it was the space in between trenches there hadn't been much fighting on it, well, at least not much heavy fighting. We went around a couple of Wraith husks, maybe one of these had been the one that the Scorpion pilot destroyed, probably not though, too far away.

"We have to return to our unit," Mal said. He was right, and we all agreed on it.

According to our HUDs the rest of the company was due north of our position, not too far away, but air intel showed that a couple of firefights had erupted along the way, we would have to go around, maybe catch a ride on a Warthog or a Scorpion. Lopsang immediately took the lead, settling into a fast jog, with me behind him and Mal covering the rear. The firefights were pretty intense, but we bypassed them completely, Mal had to restrain me when I tried to make a run for one of the groups, one man was screaming for a medic.

You know me, right? You always said that I took my job way more seriously than I should've even for a corpsman.

"Stop," Lopsang said.

"What is it?"

"A 'Dillo," he replied. "Looks abandoned."

After he had cleared the vehicle we approached. It had been hit by a plasma mortar, heavy damage on the top and sides. A quick look inside revealed that the occupants hadn't made it out. The driver, gunner and navigator were all roasted inside, black skin emitting a horrible smell.

"Let's go," I said, covering my nose.

It was only a couple of minutes later when we arrived with Echo once again. They had been diverted to help assault an enemy artillery position. The assault had gone well, but there had been a few casualties, I went from one place to another, doing what I could for everyone, but a few were beyond saving. Eventually I was finished with the job and just sat back down to relax. This place was full of destroyed Wraiths and alien corpses. The Army was already rolling through to replace our line and push deeper into enemy territory. We would have a couple of minutes of rest before we advanced in the wake of the frontline.

"Hanna Banana?"

"Hey," I said, Harry was looking at me, there was mud and blood on her face, but the blood wasn't hers. "How are you?"

"I'm fine, you?"

"Same, got separated from you."

"Obviously." She was smiling, she has this big grin that lights up the room, you know? Well, you probably do. "Shame about Matthews."

"Hardly knew him," I said, looking at the body next to me. I covered his face with a tarp that had been lain out on him. "But yes, it's a shame."

"You chose a nice moment to get separated, it was tough here, almost got hit once or twice."

"I'm glad you didn't."

"Well I'm glad too!"

Harriet looked down at me while I took off my helmet and examined the bottom of it. People had been putting photos of their loved ones in their helmets ever since photography had been invented. It was a part of the military that was underplayed sometimes. I guess that the logic behind it was that you kept your inspiration close to your head, some other people put them close to their heart, in a pocket or something, but I preferred to have this picture in my helmet.

I had taken it back on Harvest, I was only four years old at the time. The picture showed my mom, my dad, and my two sisters. They weren't really happy to be posing for me, but I had just gotten a new camera, the real deal. It took pictures that you could print, an antique. Only my mom was smiling in the picture. My dad looked a little bit tired, and my two sisters were obviously pissed at being forced to be there. I remember the moment perfectly, it was one of the happiest memories that I had left.

"They'd be proud of you," Harry said.

"I know. I just don't know if I'm proud of myself."

"You do what many people can't. It doesn't matter if a few of them don't make it, you are doing a good thing here."

"You always say that," I smiled.

"And you always believe me."

"Always," I confirmed.

Half an hour later we were on the move again. This time I would be sticking with my unit. Mal was covering me carefully, Lopsang had gone off to man a Scorpion's turret. Salas had ordered him to cover a section of the company from there if possible. Command had given us a couple of the tanks for support, the three that we started with had gone off to fight an enemy Wraith formation, these two would stay with us and help in our objectives. One of them was already damaged, the other one was just muddy.

"C'mon," Mal urged, waving me over.

Hornets were flying directly overhead, firing as they went. Maybe Emily was one of them, laughing like a maniac as she depressed the triggers on her joysticks. Small explosions were beginning to litter our ranks, most missing, but a pair forced a few guys to duck sideways. After the explosions we started getting shot at with plasma and needles. The tanks started firing, but only the turrets, we wanted to keep the big guns a surprise for the last possible second. I did my best to keep low, wishing that I had adjusted my helmet's chin strap back when I had the time, it was banging around on my head.

The Scorpion closest to us fired and a huge plume of dirt erupted upwards fifty meters away. Talk about close range. Mal took a knee and fired at a pair of brutes making their way out of the crater site. I aimed at them and helped him take them out. Mal nodded at me and resumed his run. We got separated when a mortar hit in between us, not a Wraith mortar, but a Revenant. I was able to duck out of the way into another crater.

"Hanna!"

"I'm here," I shouted back. "You all right?"

"I'm fine, let's go."

Mal covered my entire field of vision as he pulled me out of the crater. I hadn't realized it then, but I was up to my waist in mud and dirt. He helped me out and dusted me off; he even secured my helmet. Then he took a step back and collapsed on the ground for no apparent reason. I shouted his name, but he was already unconscious, his vitals were going crazy, a second ago they had been just fine. I turned him around and saw that the back of his armor had been burned clean through, his skin was completely gone and parts of his ribs and spine were clearly visible. He was dead, there was no way going around it.

"Mal! Mal!"

He flatlined a second after that, nothing that could be done. With some luck he died before he realized just exactly what was going on.

I now faced a problem, for some reason I found myself alone, belonging to no squad in particular. I didn't know what I was supposed to be doing. I shook my head and ran towards the nearest human being that I saw. It turned out to be Captain Salas, he had been nicked by a spike, hit him right next to the knee, cut a tendon, he couldn't walk.

"Captain! You all right?"

He grimaced at me. "I'm fine, what the hell are you doing Corpsman? Where's your unit?"

"Dead, sir."

"Goddammit! They sent regular infantry against armored!"

"Sir, please stretch your leg."

"Forget it," Captain Salas yelled. He pushed me back and away from him before sliding into cover behind a rock. "I'm not going to die any time soon. Get anyone with one of those big radio kits, I need to call command directly."

"Sir."

I ran towards the sound of gunfire, bent forward at the waist to avoid getting shot. I tripped on the dirt a couple of times, tripped on a corpse too. I ignored it and kept running until I met up with a squad of marines from my unit.

"Hanna?"

"Pablo, thank God!"

"What's wrong? Where's Mal?"

"Dead," I replied. "I need a radioman."

He nodded, not asking any questions. "Larssen!"

"What?"

"Follow Corpsman Lockley, she needs your assistance."

"Yessir!"

PFC Larssen was a veteran of this company, he had made it through years of heavy battle with not even a single Purple Heart. He was something of a legend for it, he was also something of a joke because he hadn't been able to rise past his current rank for the past couple of years. He was a skinny man, built for swimming, maybe running too. I had never really fought with him.

"Lockley," he nodded at me. "What is it?"

"Salas told me to look for you," I informed him calmly. "He's back there."

"Listen up!" Pablo yelled. "On my mark we spray the fuckers, I'm going to need some covering fire." He turned to me. "Ready when you are Hanna."

"Now," I said, taking off with Larssen close on my tail. Plasma flew by us, but never seemed to actually hit us. Pablo's squad opened up on the unseen enemies, hopefully hitting some of our assailants. I resisted the urge to cry out as I kept running, holding my MA5 in one hand, keeping it strongly in my grip. "There!" Captain Salas' rock was just a dozen meters away. I was about to reach it when something heavy slammed into me form the back.

I yelled and elbowed at it, shoving it off my shoulder. It was only after a few seconds that I realized that it was Larssen. He had been hit in the side of the head, a big nasty hole. The 'doctor' in me quickly assessed the wound, probably caused by a needle, but a spike might be a possibility, went through the side, just in front of the temple, near the eye and exited out back. If it had been a needle then it had punched through the skull, brain, and helmet with ease, going out before it could even detonate. Quick death, no pain.

"Larssen!" I yelled. That was the other part of me screaming, the human one. The part wishing that a fellow Marine wasn't lying dead on top of me. "Shit!" I spat out, surprising myself, I rarely cursed, even after living all these years amongst troubled girls much like myself and being surrounded by Marines.

I kicked the corpse away from me and grabbed the radio, the backpack was firmly secured to him and I couldn't take it off quickly. Already some covvie had taken notice of me and was firing at my position with a plasma pistol. I stopped what I was doing it and hit the grunt in the chest with a sustained burst. It fell backwards and disappeared down some hole. At that point I had already grabbed Larssen by the back of the neck and was dragging him towards the boulder. A couple of plasma rounds hit him in the legs, but I was already behind the rock.

"Damn it!" Salas muttered. "Nice job Corpsman, you would've made one helluva Marine."

"I am a Marine," I replied.

"Maybe you're right," he nodded, smiling and staring at the distinctly Navy insignia on my shoulder. He picked up the radio from Larssen and dragged the corpse further behind the rock, to keep the bulk of the radio safe. "This is Captain Salas, with Echo Company, section E21 of the advance! Does anyone copy?"

"Captain Salas, this is HQ, we copy."

"We need immediate reinforcements! Someone up there messed up, we were supposed to be facing soft targets, but we just ran into a whole enemy armored unit!"

"Can you repeat that last transmission?"

"We just ran into a whole fucking armored unit!" he shouted angrily, Captain Salas wasn't one to lose his cool, but he was understandably pissed at his men dying. "A couple of Hornets and two tanks aren't going to cut it!"

I pulled out a bandage and started cutting open the captain's pants with my combat knife.

"Don't waste biofoam on me," he ordered.

"I won't," I replied, stretching the cotton bandage in front of his eyes.

"No I don't want to call a strike on my position!" He waited. "Yes! I'm fucking desperate for support." Another pause. "What? You want me to be British about it? Stay cool and collected even with my men dying by the droves? That'd be so fucking awesome if it worked, I want you to _know _that I need help!"

I strapped the bandage around his leg, getting a wince out of him in the process. I tightened it around the wound and then stapled together the tear on his pants with surgical staples. To top it off I covered the tear with duct tape, it was a last resort method, but it ensured that wounds stayed clean and that they stayed closed. Salas nodded at me and went back to his discussion.

"Close air support would be great," he said into the radio. "A couple of Gryphons should do it, but I'd sure appreciate it if you sent me a bunch of tanks. No? I guess the fighters will have to do. Yeah, I'm sorry I yelled at you, Salas out." He hung up the radio and looked up at me. "Listen, my helmet's fried, is your radio working?"

I spoke into it some and then shook my head.

"Figures," he muttered. "Jammers. Well, I need you to find Darbinian and tell him that he's in charge of the company for now, ok? Can you do that for me?"

"I can try."

"That's all I'm asking kid, now go out there and make the Corps proud."

"And the Navy to," I added with a smile.

"Aye, aye, captain."

Darbinian was who knows where, probably up the front trying to make things work. I had to make my way over there, dodging plasma, crystals, and everything that was thrown at me. I was thankful that most of the killing had been done already and only had to stop to knock out a half-dead brute trying to reach for its weapon. Finally I reached a Sergeant, a new guy, hadn't gotten around to learning his name yet. Seemed like a good man though, firing on the covvies and yelling orders at his squad.

"Sergeant!" I yelled into his ear, snapping him from his combat high.

"What?"

"I need to find Lieutenant Darbinian."

"He's over there!" He pointed at a crater ten meters in front of us, it was the closest piece of cover that we had before the enemy trench began. Before I realized it I had hopped over cover and was running towards it. For some unknown reason I made it without being hit once, and I should've been hit, it was point blank range. Anyone with some training should've been able to make the shot easy, even while under fire. I don't know if it was God, or Dad's ghost, or something else altogether, but I wasn't hit then.

"Lieutenant!"

"Lockley?" he asked, not believing his eyes. "Are you insane?!"

"Captain Salas was hit," I said, ignoring his question. "He wants you to know that you're now in command of Echo Company. Oh, and there's going to be an air strike soon on the enemy armored."

He laughed loudly. "And here I thought you were bringing bad news."

"Not today, sir."

"Ok, listen, as soon as your airstrike hits, I want you to jump over this sorry excuse for a hole and storm the trenches."

"Sir?"

"Yeah, you heard me, we're going medieval up their asses, rally the company, take the enemy position."

"Ok…"

"Don't sound all scared, it's been done before and it'll be done again."

"Are you sure it's a good idea?" Darbinian was already fixing his bayonet on his weapon, I looked at him but did the same thing. "Sir?"

"What?"

I started repeating my question when the first bombs hit. He looked at me and nodded before hopping over the crater. I was left there, stunned, but a second later I found myself running after him, spraying wildly at the area in front of me.

"Charge!"

The second wave of explosives hit, lighting up the mist in front of us. The covvies had turned or ducked or something, but they had stopped paying attention to us for a few vital seconds. Darbinian jumped inside the trench, kicking a brute's face as he did so. He emptied his mag into the brute's face and then killed two grunts with his pistol. When I jumped down I sprayed one side of the trench with wild fire, hitting several grunts and jackals that hadn't even seen me there.

"Lockley! Duck!"

I dropped to the ground just as stream of plasma cut through a dozen enemy soldiers running at us, Darbinian had commandeered a plasma turret and was putting it to good use. When the last of the visible aliens fell in a smoking heap he jumped out of the trench, disregarding all safety rules. He waved at our own troops and urged them to join us.

"Where are your balls?"

A challenge to a man's manliness is probably the most irresistible kind, and soon there was a hundred and something marines running into the trench, screaming wildly and bayoneting dying aliens. It was like a scene taken right out of an old war film. Just switch out guns for old bolt-action rifles and we would be all set. Maybe change the aliens too, or something.

"Push forward!" Darbinian yelled, toting an empty plasma turret over his head. He turned to face me after the men and women of Echo had run past us. "Say what you want about my methods, crazy or not, they work."

"Am I getting a medal for this, sir?"

He scoffed. "Not you and not me Corpsman. I'm not putting you up for one and I'm not going to ask for one either."

"Understood."

"This is our job."

"It is, sir."

For some reason it felt like he was talking to himself, repeating the reasons why he wouldn't get a medal and trying to believe them. I understood how he felt, he deserved something for this, and so did I, but command would probably never grant us even a Bronze Star when there were other men and women out there doing things beyond our wildest imaginations. Take Frank for example, one moment he manages to leave me gasping for words and the next he is off to chop of a brute's head with a pair of shears.

"We can rest here," Darbinian said, snapping out of his daze suddenly. "Army can back us up later." He turned to face a group of Marines. "You three, go get Captain Salas, drag him here and cover him with your own bodies."

"Yes, sir!"

"You, come tell me personally when this place is cleared, the flyboys did half our job, but don't slack out."

"Of course not, sir. Yes, sir."

"Shouldn't it be the other way around?"

"Yes, sir, sorry, sir."

Lieutenant Darbinian grunted. "Set up a perimeter, casualty report and all that, hand it to me as soon as you're done."

"Right away, Lieutenant."

I sat down where I was, mud and blood covering my hands and sprayed over my face. Some of the blood was alien, most of it was human. After a while I stood up, the Armadillos had already rolled overhead, roaring and squeaking as they did so. I set myself to finding Harry, to sit down and have a talk with her. I know I didn't make it seem like it was a lot, but we had probably advanced ten or twelve miles since the moment we first left the base. I was tired from running and fighting, I wanted some rest.

"Banana!"

"Harry," I said, smiling with relief. "I was afraid you were-"

"Me? Never. Say, have you seen…"

"He was fine last I saw him, but it was a good ten minutes before the charge."

"Damn, I guess I'm going to have to find that mother all by myself."

"Later, let's rest."

"Fine."

We both sat down on the trench floor and talked. Talked about nothing mostly, occasionally we would turn to one of Harriet's squad members, but they mostly kept to themselves and let us two ladies talk. We talked, and talked, and talked. It must've been an hour of the two of us just sitting there. After a while her squad mates also slid down to the floor, finally allowing their bodies to rest some. It was even more time before it happened.

A Brute Stalked. Someone missed it. Many someones missed it. Myself included.

It emerged from out of nowhere and stuck his two spiker bayonets into a marine's belly. The man grunted from the impact and was lifted into the air. The brute tossed him aside like it was nothing and then swiped another marine on the side of the head. I heard bones crunch. Harry was the first to react. She stepped in front of me and lifted her rifle, firing four rounds at the brute before it clicked empty. She looked at her gun in surprise and shock and then looked back up. She was just in time to see the brute slash at her neck. One blade hit her neck and the other one her face. I jumped back and fired at the brute, stalling it.

It just growled and made to go after me before jerking forward. Another shotgun blast to its head and it collapsed next to me, its giant arm hitting my chest. That alone was enough to knock the wind out of me, but I was already getting up to reach for Harry, trying to see if she was dead.

She wasn't. Not yet.

"Harry, come on, stay with me," I told her. Her throat was sliced wide open and there was a cut that reached from one ear to the other, crossing through both her cheeks and her nose. She was desperately trying to get some breath in. "You're going to be fine."

You just looked up at me and tried to smile like you always did, but the light was already dimming from your eyes. A lot of blood was leaking down your nose, staining your uniform and falling down your throat. I held you, even after you died I held you. I don't think I realized that I was crying until Pablo pulled me off you. He hugged me and cried with me, but you were already dead.

So there I was, staring at your body, wondering why it had to be you. You know what came to my mind? That time you told me that you had wanted to be a journalist and hoped to be one after the war. You wanted to start keeping a journal, maybe have it published when you retired or ended your tour of duty. I thought about it a lot, and decided that writing this was probably a good idea to honor your memory. I think you would've liked it.

So, there it is, I hope it was a decent beginning, up to your expectations. For as long as I'm alive, I'll keep writing in this. I'll write whatever happens, good or bad. I don't think anyone will want to publish it when I'm done with it, but if they do, I'll make sure to dedicate it to you.

* * *

><p><em>I don't know how this chapter ended in Frank's journal. He probably read Hanna's diary...snap.<em>_ Nah, I'm just kidding._

_Thanks to Sniper Fodder for proof-reading this chapter._

_Well, I have been meaning to write this chapter for a very long time now, I actually introduced Hanna as a minor character so that I could write it (I originally planner to have Frank stay with Hardwick after a very romantic moment where both of them realized they wanted more than just meaningless sex). That was a long parenthesis. Well, whatever, as I was saying, I wanted to this chapter because when I decided that I wanted to write the story of a man fighting through the entire war I didn't know whether I wanted him to be a Helljumper or a Navy Corpsman. Ultimately, badassery won over a different kind of badassery because I wouldn't have been able to write a whole fic about that topic in particular._

_Now, I want to apologize for any medical errors, I did take a first aid class, but it was after writing this. I did change some small stuff, but please remember that I am not a medic and that in the future medic's jobs are easier. Sort of, well, in my fic they are. _

_One last thing, you'll be happy to know that I started school again, so I'm going to have to do my homework and other stuff that is supposed to be important and help me in the future. That and seven and something hours of my day will be spent away from my computer. Yes, this means that I might slow down a little bit on my update speed in the future, but I will try to dish out at least one chapter per week, hopefully two._

_Hope you enjoyed and that you thought that this was just the right amount of depression for the chapter._

_Stay strong._

_-casquis_


	129. No Rest for the Weary

Chapter CXXIX: No Rest for the Weary

**October 3, 2544 (UNSC Calendar)/**

**Covenant Anti-Aircraft Gun 1, Catamaran Peninsula, Asilon, Omicron Ebur System**

* * *

><p>"<em>When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail"- Abraham Maslow<em>

* * *

><p>The banging had finally stopped. It had been several hours of constant banging, sometimes loud sometimes not. Occasionally there would be an explosion and the whole bunker would shake, but nothing really serious; the covvies built to last. Angel was fast asleep and so was Pavel. Perhaps calling the state that they were in 'sleep' would be pushing it. A lot. They were unconscious and as hopped up on painkillers as we could get them without giving them a drug overdose. I know that Grass was supposed to know everything, but being aware of the exact quantity that each man could have in their system while taking into account height, weight, muscle mass, and fat percentage is really scary.<p>

"It's stopped," Snark said after waiting just long enough for us to know that he was being a dick.

"It does feel a little bit quieter," I agreed, using a completely normal tone.

"Should we open up?" Grass asked.

Caboose stood up. "There aren't any cameras outside, we can't know for sure until we actually open the doors."

"Grass, is your Morse good?"

"Do you have to ask?" She smiled. "Did you know that there were originally several Morse alphabets? Allegedly that contributed to the sinking of the Titanic."

"The what?" Snark asked.

"Ocean liner," Bee replied. "Biggest at the time."

"How big was it?"

"Dunno, about four hundred meters or something?"

"Grass?" Snark asked the resident know-it-all.

"I honestly don't know, I'd have to watch the movie again."

"There's a movie about a ship sinking? You really have to run out of ideas for that…"

Grass giggled at me and shook her head. "No, actually, it's about a love story between a rich girl and a working-class man that try to live a forbidden love during the four day voyage from Liverpool to New York and-"

"And then the ship sinks," Snark finished with a satisfies smile.

"Well, yes, but that's not the point. It is a lovely story that-"

"So," I cut in. "They made a chick flick, based on a real life tragedy? Man, you need some serious balls for that. Weren't the survivors like all pissed?"

"It was made almost a hundred years after the event," Grass shrugged, obviously annoyed that we hadn't let her finish. "Back then people didn't live long."

"Oh, I'm sure that a couple of people could've made it eighty years," Bumblebee argued. "It's not like they were in the middle ages Grass."

"Yeah, but nobody lived past a hundred and fifty until two centuries after that."

"What does that have to do with anything?" I asked.

"Well, nothing, but-"

Caboose shushed us all and stood up. "They're banging on the door again."

"Right," I agreed. I pressed my ear as close to the door as I dared before I heard some clicking noises. "Hey!" I shouted, banging on the door thrice. There was a definite pause to the noise and three bangs were heard. "Grass, you're up. Ask them if they're human in Morse."

"Sure thing," she sighed and walked up to the door. I knew Morse, well, I was supposed to, but since I hadn't seen the need to use it ever since bootcamp I was very rusty on it. I bet that if there were Marines on the other side, or even regular soldiers, they would have one guy that knew how to speak it. Grass banged, leaving distinct pauses in between words, doing quick bangs for dots and long ones for dashes. After a couple of seconds of her transmitting the message she stopped and took a step back from the doors.

What we got for a reply was priceless. One slightly long bang followed by four quick ones. A pause. Two more bangs.

"Ok, open it up," I laughed. "Don't aim at out visitors."

"Opening the door," Bee announced.

"Don't shoot, don't shoot, don't shoot!" Grass yelled, sounding almost bored at doing so.

Ten Marines quickly entered the room, weapons scanning in every direction. Once they processed that we were Helljumpers they decided that if we were here then the room was probably clear and secure. The leader stepped forward. "Reaper Actual?"

"That would be me," I announced, walking up to him and offering my hand. "Thanks for getting us out, we didn't know how many aliens were left outside."

"About fifty," he replied. "Sorry it took so long, but we came up against a couple of armored units."

"You don't seem too worse for wear."

"We were lucky," the man sighed. "You're from the _Inconvenience_, right?" He went on after I nodded. "We heard that one of the companies from the ship got it bad, walked right into a large armored force with only two tanks for support."

"Are they fine?" Snark asked.

He shrugged. "Didn't really hear much, but they accomplished all of their objectives."

"That's Echo Company for you," Bee said approvingly. "Now, I am very sure that there's supposed to be a couple of surgeons among you…"

"Of course," the marine nodded. "We have a Pelican prepared to evacuate your two wounded squad mates."

"And us?" I asked tentatively, fearing the answer.

"Sorry Gunny, got yourselves in a classical 'no rest for the weary' kind of situation."

Grass groaned, Caboose dropped back to the floor, Snark punched the wall, Bee kicked at a brute's corpse. I didn't do anything, but the man in front of me took a step back and swallowed nervously. He was obviously a local, had never seen a Helljumper in his entire life. He didn't know if the stories were true or not, if we were all psychopaths only in it for the fun. I can tell you that we probably didn't give him a very good impression.

"It's orders, sir."

Sir. Ha, nice touch.

"Whatever you say," I told him. "Where's our transport?"

"There are four Hornets waiting out back?"

"Hornets!" Bee exclaimed, obviously pissed at our new method of transport. He was about to start ranting when I waved at him to calm down, nothing we could do about it.

"We're only going to need three," I told the marine. "Can we raid your armory?"

"You'd have to ask the Captain, but I see no problem with that."

"And your food supply too!" Grass yelled, a little bit too loudly.

"Uh…sure…"

We were led back through the trenches that hours ago we had sprinted through. They were filled with alien corpses, some of them had been killed by us, but most hadn't. The Marines milling about let us pass, sometimes staring when we went by. They had heard stories about us crazy Helljumpers and were as close to awestruck as they would get without seeing a Spartan. For some reason the stares made me slightly uncomfortable, as if I could never meet up to their expectations.

"Right this way," our escort told us, directing us towards the outer trench. There were very few Marine corpses scattered about. "Oh, I forgot, thanks for taking those Shades out, well, most of them anyways, it was a big help."

"No problem," Bee grunted. "Where's the Hornets?"

"Right there," he pointed.

"We can take it from here, Private," I said. "Thanks."

"No problem. Good luck."

I nodded and he took off.

"Aren't we going to raid their armory?" Snark asked. "My EMR is almost out of rounds."

"Nah, we're just going to let them worry about what we took."

"Devious."

"Thank you."

There were four Hornets landed in front of us, but even as we approached one of them took off and flew off towards the south. The other three stood there until the pilots noticed us.

"Em," I said.

"Frank!" she returned. "I'm glad you're fine."

I returned her hug with one hand, letting the other one hang to the side with my BR55 and my helmet. Despite the lack of light Emily was still wearing her trademark aviators. I looked at her pretty face and thought that I must really love Hanna if I left this for her.

She went on. "They didn't tell us who we were picking up."

"Why is it I never get hugs like that?" Snark complained.

"I can hug you," Bee offered.

"Really?" Snark asked, making fake puppy eyes. Before he could move Bumblebee seized him and squeezed him against his chest with as much strength as he could muster. "Can't. Breath."

"Put him down," Grass grunted.

"Bee, Grass," I pointed at them and then to one of the Hornets. "Caboose and Snark, that one." I turned to face Emily again, taking a step back from her. "How is it going?"

"We've been hit pretty hard, but progress is as expected, the covvies are sounding a full retreat, making a run for Catamaran City."

"A showdown for the ages," I muttered.

"And you," she patted my shoulder lightly, "will be spearheading it."

"That's my job," I sighed.

"Let's go, we were told to bring you up front as fast as possible."

I sat down on the so-called passenger seats and leaned back on it. One leg was left hanging to the side and the other I bent up so that it was still on top of the ship. I had seen wounded soldiers medivaced on Hornets, only as last resort of course, but they could fit well enough on the sides. It was terribly uncomfortable too, with my BR55 poking at my back and having to hold myself up with one hand. The other one was swinging below with my helmet on it.

"Geez Frank," Emily chuckled after looking over her shoulder from her cockpit. "You must be really tired."

"Or I'm just showing off for you."

"Ya know, as much as I appreciate the thought, we can't talk like that anymore."

"Sigh."

"Agreed, but it was fun while it lasted."

"Tell me about it…"

I was looking straight up, one of the wings of the Hornet blocked half the sky, but we were flying high above the mist so I could see the night sky of this planet. The sun had set, rise, and set again since we locked ourselves inside the enemy bunker. I hadn't slept more than five minutes in a row, and even then I had only let my guard down out of sheer exhaustion, I hadn't been willing to risk falling asleep when my best friend was defenseless. Sounds corny, I know, but it's the truth.

"You think she's all right?" she asked after a while.

"She's got to be."

"With your luck?" she huffed out a humorless laugh. "The whole company is probably missing a limb and Hanna is down there, tending after people with not a single scratch on her."

"My luck? What are you talking about?"

"Face it Frankie, when we all get the short end of the stick you're the one that gets out just fine."

"I've got scars to prove that you're dead wrong."

"Everybody else has bigger scars, Frank."

"I doubt it," I said grumpily, thinking about the huge mess of skin that crossed my back diagonally.

"I don't mean it literally." I could picture her rubbing her temples. "Look at it this way. You lost your first ship and your whole unit with it."

"UNSC _Count Me In_, lost with all hands but me."

"You had known most of the guys there for a couple of weeks tops, your squad for a year before that. Pavel lost his entire unit, he had been through training, combat, and more with them. He lost all his friends."

"So did I."

"This is going to sound bad, but you weren't as good friends with them as Pavel was with the DJP."

"You're wrong," I said simply, too tired to be angry.

"Maybe…" It wasn't over, she'd keep pushing her point. "Frank…you're always drawn to larger than life situations, or maybe they're drawn to you, I don't know. What I know is that you always come out on top, scars, scratches, and bruises be damned. You always find a way."

"I've been lucky."

"Most people aren't that lucky. Hell, I bet that none of your squad mates had done anything nearly as crazy as the shit you do." She paused and I noticed that we started going down. "What I'm trying to say is…that you bring out the best in people."

No compliment had ever sounded so hollow to me. "Yeah, and I can't bring out the best in myself."

Emily said nothing, she wouldn't lie to me but at the same time didn't want to say anything that I would take as an insult. She was no natural when it came to psychology, but she knew enough to stay quiet. She piloted her Hornet down to the ground and I was able to hear the sounds of a thousand men walking, talking, and doing stuff. Engines and metallic noises abounded as well. I pulled my hand up when the Hornet was almost on the ground and let my foot feel the ground when we landed.

"Goddamn," I said to myself as I stood up.

Emily jumped out of her craft and turned to face me with a worried look. She was probably thinking that she had said something to seriously offend me. She hadn't, everything she said was right, at least partially. I smiled, trying to reassure her. "You know Em, I'm glad that you can make me analyze my whole life meaning well."

Her whole body seemed to relax at that. "I'm glad we're still friends too."

I butted my forehead against her helmet and grabbed the back of her neck. "Promise me you'll be careful," I asked her.

"Frank…"

"Promise me," I repeated, asking a little louder.

"I promise."

"Good."

"You?"

I laughed weakly. "Really?"

She smiled at that and kissed me on the cheek. "Good luck then."

"Likewise."

We separated and I headed straight out of the landing pads. Pelicans were taking off full of wounded soldiers and empty ones returned. Sometimes one Pelican would arrive with a bunch of ammunition, but the percentage was minimal. That meant that things were going well and we didn't really require much ammo. Or that we were running out of it.

"Gunnery Sergeant Castillo?"

"That's me," I said, turning to face the man who had called my name.

"Name's Private Ramirez."

"Another one of those?" Bee asked.

"Yes Bee, another one," Snark confirmed. He used a tone much like one that a mom would use to dismiss an insistent child. It was very annoying.

"Sir?" Ramirez asked.

"Ignore them, where are we off to?"

"Colonel Pendleton wants to see you."

"Great," I grunted. "Well, off we go, lead us to him."

"Yessir."

"So, Sarge, you double timing? What was that all about?" Bee asked. The look in his eyes told me that he immediately regretted asking that question. He started raising his hands and mouthing something, but before he could get a word out I swiped his feet from under him and pushed him to the ground.

"Sorry," he groaned form the floor. "I was out of line."

"Get up," Snark told him.

"Why don't you help me out here?"

"Why don't you-" Snark was cut off when Bee swiped his feet from underneath him and slammed him to the ground.

"Listen!" I yelled, suddenly feeling angry. "Stop acting like pre-pubescent girls! What the fuck is wrong with you two? I grabbed each of them by the back of the neck and lifted them up. "You're Helljumpers. Act. Like. It!"

"Sorry Sarge," Snark said, looking at the ground.

"It won't happen again," Bee promised me, glancing away under my glare. I could see Grass giving them a 'what the hell' look out the corner of my eyes. Caboose just seemed to be busy examining his nails. How he could do that through ballistic gloves is beyond me.

"Sergeant…right this way."

"Let's go," I growled, still a little bit pissed off.

"I keep saying it," Schitzo sighed. "You need to relax."

"He handled it fine," Scarecrow countered. "We _are_ in the military."

"We?" Schitzo asked. "You're dead."

I pressed my hand against my right eye, trying to get both of them to go away. I succeeded, but only after a Vulture roared overhead. I hadn't seen one of those in years. Only carriers carried them now. Asilon probably had one or two planetside, because no other human ships had arrived. The message was out, and they had received it, but they were some time off.

"The HQ is this way."

I sighed and took deep breaths on the way inside. I was going to meet up with a superior officer, Army or not I had to behave with politeness and professionalism. Although saving his daughter ought to get me some tolerance points.

"Castillo, come in," Pendleton said. He was now wearing only armored boots, camouflage pants, and a sleeveless Army shirt. He looked like he had aged five years.

"Colonel, good to see you again."

"Likewise," he let out before catching himself and straightening up. "Doesn't matter. Where's the rest of your team?"

"Hospital."

"Sorry to hear that."

"They'll be fine. Your concern is appreciated, sir."

"Not exactly concern," he said hesitantly. "We're sending you to the front, boost up morale and help with a particular section of the line."

"Morale?" Grass asked. "We're Helljumpers ,Colonel, not Spartans."

"Spartans…we could do with one of those right about now."

Bee and Snark scoffed behind me. Caboose just rolled his eyes at them.

"Where exactly are you sending us to?" I asked, getting the conversation back on track.

"Here," he said, lighting up the holotable on the room. "The Covenant had a complicated network of trenches. Half of it is now occupied by us, the other half is being fiercely defended by them. Things have settled into a stalemate of sorts, not our choice." The holotable displayed an aerial view of several trenches. They sort of looked like streets, straight lines connected with one another and a curved trench here or there. What called my attention though, was the large Scarab tank collapsed on the ground, well behind enemy-held ground.

"Well, at least it's one of the little ones," Grass muttered. The relief that her statement implied wasn't extended to her tone. "Just great."

"Little ones!" Pendleton exclaimed. "What are you-"

"There are other classes sir," I explained quickly. "A lot harder to take out."

"What?" Suddenly Pendleton looked at all of us with admiration as opposed to grudging acceptance. He seemed to have gained a significant degree of respect for us. "We lost over a dozen Armadillos and three tanks to it!"

"Two well-trained and experienced tankers can take it out," Snark said, keeping his tone respectful. I knew him and in turn knew that he was taunting the Colonel. "But there's nothing that can be done about it now."

"No," Pendleton grunted, eyeing Snark warily. "We understand that you should be able to shut it down?"

"We?"

"Myself and General Staunton."

"Well, anyone is capable, you just have to fire at the reactor in the rear. It's huge, you can't miss it."

"Very funny."

"I didn't intend the statement to be humorous, sir."

He sighed. "It doesn't matter. We can't send any more armored vehicles other than the ones that we already have with us and every bird we use is shot down by the Scarab. We need it down as fast as possible."

I sighed deeply, taking in as much air as possible before letting it out. "We'll do it."

"Good, because I'm ordering you to."

"We're going to need to resupply."

"Our armory is open to you."

"Thank you, sir."

"Oh, about that. The _Inconvenience _sent down a package for you. Something about a hammer?"

Snark smiled and stretched his arms in front of him, intertwining his fingers and cracking his knuckles. He rolled his head around and grinned at nobody in particular. "They do care about us."

Pendleton looked like he was going to ask, but shook his head and said nothing. "There are plenty of Mongooses-"

_So _that's_ how you say it._

"-available at the vehicle park. Feel free to take some."

"Of course, sir. Any additional intel that you can provide us with?"

"The on-site commander can brief you," he dismissed me. "Good luck. Dismissed."

We all saluted and my squad turned and left.

"Something I can help you with?" Pendleton asked, seeing that I was still standing at attention.

"I don't want to speak out of place, sir."

"Say what you have to say."

"Is Carrie fine?"

"My _daughter_," he said, emphasizing the word heavily, "is just fine."

"I'm glad, sir."

"But that's not all that you've got to say."

"No, sir."

"Well, don't waste my time."

I sighed and slid my left fit a few inches to the side, standing at ease, my helmet held behind my back by both of my hands. "Sir, when you sent us to that farmhouse, to save your daughter-"

"I sent you to bring back two-" he started yelling defensively.

"Sir," I interrupted. "It was a good decision, regardless of your daughter being there or not. Everything turned out fine and we made some huge gains. What I'm saying here, is that you can't let your love for her guide your actions. It worked great this one time, sir, but there's no way it will again. It's like you said to me: your men, your plan, your responsibility. I want to know if you understand that."

"Damn right I understand!" he spat. "Don't you think I considered every other available option? She's my daughter!"

"And I understand that, but there are hundreds of men under your command, all of them relying on your orders to survive to see another day. I know that I'm out of line here-"

"Way. Out of line."

"But you should send your daughter back to the rear, she's a corpsman, she can help out with the wounded and be out of trouble."

"I don't care what a jarhead like you has to say about my leadership skills," he yelled. "I don't care what you think about me. I don't care if you think I made that choice for wrong reasons. I don't care about anything else that you have to say. I don't care about you!" He paused for a breath. "Understood?"

I was this close to telling him that I hadn't been listening and asking him to repeat himself, but I swallowed my anger and stood straighter, making the difference in height between us all the more noticeable. "Oh, I understand perfectly Colonel." I turned around after giving him my best, brightest, sharpest, straightest salute. I held it there for five straight seconds, my eyes firmly planted on the wall. "Tell your daughter I asked after her." I turned around and walked out as calmly as possible. I'm pretty sure that it still looked like I had stormed out of the room, but, quoting the colonel himself: I didn't care what he thought.

"Sarge?" Grass asked.

"Let's get a move on, there's a bug we need to take out." Two bugs in particular. I put on my helmet and opened a comm with Eliza. "Liz, do you read me?"

"Always Francisco."

"Is this a secure line?"

There was a click. "It is now, what do you need?"

"I want you to send one Corpsman Carrie Pendleton back for rest, maybe assign her to one of the rear hospitals."

"As a favor?"

"As a favor."

"No questions asked?"

"No questions asked."

"Done."

"Great. I know this is asking a lot of you, but I need to know if you can reassign Colonel James Pendleton to a rear unit position. Somewhere where he can't command men in the front. If you throw in an investigation for nepotism it could be nice."

"You've got it out for this guy, don't you?"

"Yes, but this time I'm doing it to help his soldiers."

"Right."

I paused for a second. "You're not going to ask?"

"Frank," she laughed. "I'm one of the smartest beings in existence, I can connect the dots. Nepotism charges, two people with the same surname, and you want him sent back well behind the frontline? Please."

"One of the smartest? Not the smartest…"

"Those stupid next gen AIs have got me topped now." She sighed sadly. "Oh well, at least I've got two more years."

"You know Liz, I'm going to be sad when you die."

"That's probably the nicest thing anybody has ever said to me." The AI sounded genuinely moved.

"You know me-"

"Yeah, I do. You aim to please."

"Always," I smiled. All of a sudden I was in a better mood. "Oh, and Snark sends his thanks for the…hammer."

"I also aim to please," she laughed. "Good luck to you and your team. I'll dig into this Colonel and see if sending him back is the right option."

"Thanks, bye."

She cut me off and I shook my head smiling behind my black visor. I caught up to my team just before they entered the armory. I always felt like a little kid entering a toy store when I walked inside an armory. I was familiar and intimate with all these toys, I had used them way more than I should've and knew just how each one worked. Still, being surrounded by so many weapons, explosives, and gear always had me grinning like a fool.

"Heavy on the ammo boys!" I yelled. "Full flash and frag bandoliers! Snark, I don't want you taking long range weapons, grab a BR55."

"No long range weapons," Bee scoffed to himself. "You just asked him to take _the_ prime long range weapon in the entire UNSC arsenal."

"You just don't know how to work it," Snark laughed, putting aside his banged-up EMR and grabbing a BR55. He slid the bolt back and did a couple of air guitar motions with it. Laughing at his own antics.

"Been a while since I last used a shotgun of my own," I said softly, tracing my fingers along the length of an M90 shotgun. I turned to look at Caboose, he had already replaced his empty bandoliers with full ones. He looked at me and smiled before tossing me a bandolier full of shells. "Just like riding a bike, he?"

"Or swimming," Grass suggested, dropping her silencer on the ground and packing her pouch with as many magazines as she could fit. "Hey, look at this."

I turned a corner and looked at what she was pointing. It was a mirror that had been pasted to the wall with duct tape and masking tape. Over it someone had written with markers. "The badassitude mirror," I read out loud. "We should have one of those."

"Word."

I looked at Grass weirdly and shook my head at her unusual vocabulary. Normally she was all proper and polite. Never mind using outdated slang that you only saw in Bee's movies. She seemed to realize what she had done and giggled a little bit to hide her embarrassment or try to make it seem like she had been joking. She immediately turned to slap grenades on her webbing.

I examined myself in the mirror. My armor was covered with dry mud up to the thighs and the rest of it already had paint chipped away. I already looked like I had been through more than the regular Helljumper, but I knew that there was no way in hell that that could happen in so little time. I shrugged at my own reflection and turned to fill my rucksack with ammunition for my battle rifle. The rounds were heavy, but the rucksack's weight was divided amongst me and my armor's integrated exoskeleton. It seemed like something I took for granted, being able to carry stuff and only suffer half the weight. Thank god for technology, right?

I also packed additional grenades and some explosive charges into my rucksack. With our resident pyromaniac out of commission for at least a couple of days I had to retake his place. It was funny, I was good with explosives, and I'm not just saying that. I was pretty good with them, being able to shape them on the spot and use them to create displays of fireworks and death. But Angel…man, he could work magic with explosives. Like actual magic.

"Flares?" Snark asked.

"Take a couple," I told him. "Oh, and colored smoke."

"I already have orange smoke," Grass said loudly from across the room.

"In that case Snark can take regular smoke."

"How many?"

"Two canisters ought to be enough."

"And there's my darling."

I finished strapping on yet another grenade onto myself and rushed towards Snark. There was a rather big metal suitcase just resting on a table. He clicked it open and made a squealing noise at the locks. Snark carefully lifted the lid to reveal the M102 SASR, our own little Sledgehammer. The magazine was already loaded with the 15.0x120mm rounds that it fired. Snark was almost crying with excitement. There were only two spare magazines filled with five rounds each. I picked up one of the mags and weighed it carefully in my hand.

"It feels awfully light for being made out of tungsten."

"Only the core is tungsten," Snark dismissed me quickly, undressing the weapon with his eyes.

"Did you know that the Onager fires rounds roughly the same size as these?" Grass said nonchalantly.

"Wait, what?"

"No, no," Snark said. "The Sledgehammer rounds are only 15.0mm when in their outer casing. They discard it when fired and only the tungsten bit flies out. It's significantly smaller than the full-sized bullet."

"That explains the lack of weight," I said, examining the magazine in my hand. "It's still pretty heavy."

"About that…" Snark started.

"No."

"No?"

"No, carry it yourself."

"Fine."

We all waited while Snark slid his two extra magazines into his rucksack and shouldered it. He grabbed the Sledgehammer and tried carrying it in front of him, but it was too heavy to do it comfortable. Instead, he put it across his shoulders, resting his hands on top of it on either side. He nodded at me before putting down one arm, holding the weapon up with only one hand.

I bet that somebody could take a picture of us right now and we wouldn't be able to look tired.

"Finish up your bars," I ordered. "Still full on stims, I take it?"

"More than half," Grass replied. The rest of them just nodded.

"Good. Let's go."

I felt positively badass as I walked through the impromptu base. The base had been an enemy position just a few hours ago, but it had been overrun by the Army and a forward command post had been set up in what must've been record time. A couple of the soldiers working around paused to look at us, well, paused to look at Snark. Well, paused to look at the gun that Snark was carrying. An experimental prototype weapon wasn't something that you saw every day, especially one that was bigger than the SRS-99, which was already monstrous in size.

"Yay, Mongoose," Bee exclaimed without any feeling of excitement.

"Grass, you take Bee, Caboose, with me. Snark, secure that gun to your quad."

"I don't think he's old enough to drive," Bee said.

"In that case, I don't think Cam-Grass is allowed either."

"Touché," Bee conceded, backing away and hopping onto the passenger seat. He bounced up and down a couple of times, probably trying to get a feel for the motorbike's suspensions. He groaned in annoyance and jumped back down.

"You pack up on rockets?" I asked.

It was a stupid question. Bee had packs of rockets strapped to his chest, to his back, to his sides, and on top of that was carrying one spare pack in each hand. He lifted those and showed them to me before securing them to the Mongoose that he would be riding. His Spanker went over his back and he made sure that his M7 SMG was secured on the holster in the vehicle. I shoved my battle rifle into the holster next to the driver's seat and jumped behind the wheel. The Mongoose roared as it turned on, but it was not a roar that assured me.

"Snark?"

"All done."

"Here we go."

You might've noticed by this point that I have driven a Mongoose less than five times since I left bootcamp. Well, perhaps around twelve would be a more reliable figure, but it's still not a lot. There's a reason for that. The Warthog tends to skid sideways and not to be able to brake slowly. Hell, it can be flipped if you turn too sharply sometimes. The point is, the 'Hog isn't the most reliable vehicle out there, it has a high center of gravity and the big-ass turret on top doesn't help. For all its disadvantages the Warthog was a vehicle that you could trust in most situations and that would _work_ in most situations. The Mongoose…well, the Mongoose was very much the Mongoose.

It handled worse than the 'Hog, had twice the speed and was less than a quarter of the size. No windshield, well, no significant one. The two occupants were completely exposed to enemy fire, but this was a quad-bike, so it was to be expected. The sad thing here is that you were in more danger just riding the thing than you were at being hit. True, it could climb over a vertical wall and do wheelies over huge tree trunks, but the all-terrain capacity that it had didn't make the ride any better. The only way I would feel safe riding one of these little monsters would be on a paved highway, doing less than thirty, with water to either side of me.

"Be gentle," Bee told Grass. She just laughed and shook her head. If there was anybody that would feel comfortable with a Mongoose it would be her.

I took off slowly, trying to get the feeling of the thing. The cratered terrain and muddy ground didn't help much, but at least we couldn't gain much speed. Sorry, I meant that we couldn't gain much speed as in we couldn't do the usual zero to sixty in less than three seconds. It was more like four and a half instead. The vehicle skidded and drifted before the wheels finally got some traction and we shot forward. I was jerked back from the sheer increase in speed. I could've been imagining it, but I think that Caboose cursed in Russian.

I did my best to slow down and avoid craters or obstacles, but eventually I just stopped caring and instead just increased my speed when going through them. You'd think that I would feel exhilarated at the action, jumping through trenches and doing an unhealthy amount of speed. But no, every single moment I was afraid for my life. The only reason I didn't brake more often is because half the time the two wheels on one side would leave the ground for no apparent reason. Once I even had to kick at the ground to straighten us up. That time I was sure that I heard Caboose swear in Russian.

"Isn't this fun?" Grass asked, obviously poking at the rest of us.

"I should totally do this more often," Bee said, managing a perfectly enthusiastic voice. "Like, totally." He just cried out to gods above and below when Grass drifted the bike sideways, not losing any speed as she did that. His Scottish accent became more pronounced, something that I hadn't believed possible, when he cursed at everything that you could think of.

"We're almost there," I said, interrupting his list of insults.

"Right…"

There were explosions and gunfire now, clearly audible over the roar of the three little bikes. When we spotted the first large trench we stopped. Well, Snark and I stopped. Grass only turned to the side and had her bike land inside the trench, startling the hell out of any soldiers inside. I could hear swearing coming from inside. I smiled at her trick but also advanced slowly. I looked behind my shoulder at Caboose and he nodded back to me. Once the front wheel had reached the edge of our trench I hit the accelerator and lifted the front as high as I could. We slammed down on the ground, next to a couple of very pissed soldiers. A moment later Snark did the same thing.

"Way to make an entrance," Bee said, pissed at the world now.

"You're the reinforcements we were promised then?"

"That's us," I confirmed.

A soldier approached me. "Captain Mick Jordan at your service."

"Gunny Castillo," I replied, shaking his hand after saluting. "Pendleton said you'd brief us?"

"Sure, we've got as many men here as they do," he started. "The problem is that both of us have fortified every point beyond any attempt at assault. Whole trenches are deserted because we, or they, have a machine gun covering them. The point is, without some support we can't go forward and neither can they."

I was already coming up with ideas.

"Our good Colonel who wanted to take out the Scarab, sent our entire armored support at it in a front charge. They never stood a chance. They did kill all of its legs, and do some damage. It can't fix itself now."

"One thing going for us," I nodded at him to go on.

"Pendleton is not a very liked man right now. He should've waited to commit the strongest of his units all at once. Strategic mess. What else? Oh, right, there is a section where the trenches are too short to be covered with machine guns, so we've got units planted on most corners. That's the gunfire that you're hearing right now. Most exchanges are fast and leave no casualties on either side. They're probing our defenses and we're doing the same to theirs." He laughed at an unheard joke. "Funny, that means we're on the same intellectual level that brutes are."

"Not me," Snark said, a little bit too loudly.

"Do you have one of those remote drivers?" I asked Jordan. "RC drivers or something, don't know what they're called."

Jordan examined the three Mongooses (yes, I know the plural now!) and nodded to himself, understanding what I wanted. "Sorry, we don't have any, but stick it on forward and it could work."

"I guess it'll have to do, you have plastic explosives?"

"Fresh out, but we do have grenades a-"

"I have explosives," I interrupted. "Take me to one of the weaker enemy positions."

"Right this way." Jordan was practically beaming.

"Snark, Grass, bring your two bikes, put them in neutral, don't turn them on."

Bee looked me up and down. "Why Sarge, you've got the mind of a terrorist."

"You almost make it sound like a compliment," Caboose put in quickly.

There was a pause, everybody turned to face him. Bee nodded very slowly. "Yeah, almost."

Making our way through the trenches with quad-bikes was slow progress, at times we had to twist them sideways when the trenches became too narrow. Sometimes we had to lift them up over wounded soldiers. This place was a mess. Turning corners was a bitch, I felt like I was helping a friend move a couch out of his apartment on the fiftieth story without using the elevator. It was tiring too, even with Jordan and his men helping us whenever they could. Eventually we reached a machine gun nest. An M247 Gatling was firmly planted behind a bunch of sandbags.

"Here we are," Jordan said, heaving from the effort. "Well, just to the left of that corner we have a long trench, 'bout a hundred meters long, covered by a plasma turret, not sure what kind, but it's one of the small ones."

"Why aren't you covering there?" I asked.

"We tried, but we could get ambushed from both sides, and we don't have another turret to spare."

I shrugged, understanding. "Fine, help me put this thing over the sandbags." We all heaved with effort and the Mongoose finally crashed on the other side. I rolled my eyes when I saw that it had fallen on its side. I climbed over and pushed it upright with my legs, grunting from the effort. Say what you say about them, they're heavy enough. Once it was upright I realized that I needed it to be on its side. "Fuuuuck."

I turned it back on its side, ignoring the snickering from Snark and Grass and set myself to placing an explosive charge on the bottom of it. I made it so that it would detonate upwards, completely destroying the Mongoose and turning it into a gigantic fragmentation grenade.

"Now you can turn it upright," Grass suggested. "Just saying."

"Fuck you very much," I grunted as I placed it back on its four wheels. "There we go."

I was about to turn it on when a spike hit me in the hand. Well, more like glanced, cutting me on the outer side of my left hand, shallow cut, nothing serious. I hopped over the bike and dropped to the ground as more spikes flew overhead. This is what they had meant by getting ambushed from both sides. I turned on my belly and fired at the brute's feet from underneath the Mongoose. Enough rounds were a sure way to bring it down. It fell and I took half a second to get its head in my crosshairs, killing it with a single bullet to the eye.

"Asshole." I stood up and planted my battle rifle on the seat of the Mongoose. "Grass, you just volunteered to yank the spikes out." I didn't want it to get stuck on the side of the trench walls halfway through. "I'll cover you."

To her credit, she didn't complain, instead just jumped over and started pulling at the spikes. A couple of grunts appeared around of the corner. I shot both of them before they could get out a shot. I groaned, feeling a little bit guilty. I hopped back over the Mongoose and placed myself between Grass and the corner that covvies were piling out from.

"Don't say anything," I warned.

"You're a good man Sarge."

"I said anything."

"Sorry."

A jackal appeared, carrying its shield with it. It fired twice while I tried to get around its defenses. One shot went high, the other hit the Mongoose. I hit it in the arm and then in the chest and head. "Hurry it up," I ordered.

"This one won't come off," she replied.

"Cut it off then!"

Grass drew her machete and reared backwards, stretching her arm. She brought down the huge knife in an arc over her head and slammed it down on the spike, less than an inch from the Mongoose. The blade went about halfway through and no further. She yanked it out.

"Forget it," I said, firing full auto to force a brute to jump back behind cover. I jumped onto the bike and slammed my foot on the spike, breaking it off. I slung my rifle over my shoulder and yanked the shotgun from the holster on the bike. I cocked it and shot forward on the Mongoose. I fired at the brute as it turned the corner and then slammed into it, pinning it against the wall. A brute should've been able to toss me and the Mongoose aside like old rags under normal circumstances, but one arm was hanging limply to one side and it was startled from the hit. I cocked the weapon again and fired into its snout, making a bloody mess out of its head.

I didn't waste any time, turning the Mongoose to the right and aiming it at the other side. I turned it on and stuck the accelerator in place. A couple of tentative bursts flew overhead, but the grunt manning the turret wasn't sure if the brute was dead or not. It seemed that it didn't care very much either, because a second later full automatic plasma fire started raining on my position. I released the brake as I jumped back behind the corner and towards safety.

"Well…" I said to myself.

Captain Jordan was already next to me along with the rest of my squad and half a dozen soldiers. He pulled back the bolt of his MA37 and looked at me with a big smile on his face. "You take right, we take left?"

"As good a plan as any," I replied, smiling as well.

Three seconds later I heard the loud crash that the Mongoose made when hitting a straight wall. It told a lot of things about my experience with the small bike that I actually recognized the sound that it made. I grabbed the detonating stick that I had prepared for this and double tapped the red button on top after removing the safety cap.

The explosion that followed was accompanied by a couple of pieces of shrapnel whistling next to me and hitting the trench wall in front of me. I smiled at the success of my plan and ordered Bee and Caboose forward. The two of them placed their Mongooses side to side in the trench and lifted them on their rear wheels. A soldier hung a vest from the handlebars, patching up the hole. The vest would stop the initial blasts and destabilize any following ones.

"Hurry it along, will ya?" I urged them.

They started running forward as fast as possible, doing their best to keep our two improvised shields upright. I could hear the spikes, needles, and plasma shots hitting the two undercarriages. The covvies were no doubt doing their best to stop us. The vest in the middle shook from all the impacts. A carbine round or two went through, but thankfully they didn't hit anybody. After we were right next to the corner I ordered a stop.

"Watch for grenades," I whispered before grabbing two of my frags and tossing them in either direction.

The detonations that followed were the cue for Bumblebee and Caboose to shove their bikes forward. They both did it in a way that made them fall sideways so that they would serve as cover. They lurched forward, firing to each side as they did. I joined Caboose, firing my shotgun at grunts and brutes alike. They were surprised and most of them were wounded, the big crater in the middle of this T intersection helped us out. Thanks and you're welcome to me for making it. As soon as the aliens directly next to us died we jumped over our cover, wasting no time.

"Take out as many turrets as you can!" Jordan told me. "We're hitting them from the side, should be easy!"

"You heard him!" I shouted, my voice directed at my team. "Caboose and I will take point, Grass and Bee second line and Snark at the back. You good with that huge piece of metal?"

"Yeah," he replied. "Just peachy."

We spotted the first turret twenty meters off. There was a grunt gunner and a pack of brutes guarding it, they weren't paying attention to us, which is probably the dumbest thing that they could've done since there had just been a huge explosion from our direction. We walked as close to them as we could before opening up with two M90s. The closest pair of brutes fell to the ground with their heads missing, the second pair followed a fraction of a second later. The last one, a red-clad major, I left to Caboose. He hit it in the chest once and then in the head when it fell. Bee nailed the grunt before it started screaming.

"Here," Bee said, "help me out." Caboose helped drag two of the brutes over one another to make an impromptu barricade. Meanwhile, I kicked the plasma turret from its base. It took two well-placed kicks, but when it fell I tossed it over to Grass, who placed it on top of one brute and started aiming.

Snark pulled out his BR55. It was squeaky clean but had an oversized oracle scope on top. Snark clicked on the dials and switched to thermal before aiming. The mist was thinner than it had been for the whole time we'd been on this damned peninsula, but it was still enough to hurt our eyes. Snark looked down the sights and then turned his head to Grass. "Several heat signatures, fire away."

Grass took the order in stride and clicked on the triggers, she struggled to keep the gun aiming straight and eventually succeeded in pinning it down under a brute's arm. She didn't need to aim, she just needed to put as many rounds down range as she could. She fired for two consecutive minutes before the plasma pistol all but exploded.

"Overheated," she said simply.

"Come on, let's get a move on!"

This time we turned into covvie territory the first chance we got. I was having more fun than I should've, the aliens were alert, but they were scared. They were mostly grunts too. I burned through them with my shotgun just like target practice. Brutes I handled with care. By care I mean three shells to the face before they could bring their guns up. We finally came across resistance when a group of brutes with brute shots fired at me when I tried to turn a corner. Bee yanked me backwards and Grass tossed a grenade over the corner. The explosion that came afterward was the sign for Caboose and Snark to fire their weapons down the trench.

"Clear!"

"Move it!" I ordered, jumping to my feet. "We have to gain more land before they realize just what the hell's going on."

A couple of jackals appeared down the end of this section of trench. Grass fired at their feet and Snark finished them off with headshots. He was heaving. "Sarge, this thing is heavy."

"Bee, your turn to carry it."

He grumbled something but took the weapon and shouldered it without further complaints. Snark proceeded to roll his shoulders and slap Bee on the back. "Thanks man. I owe you."

"Damn right."

We kept advancing, firing right and left, up and down, front and back, northeast and southwe-.

You get it.

"Stop." I said. "This is as far as we go."

"But Sarge," Snark complained. "We're just getting started.

"We can still go sideways I reminded him."

"Right," he smiled back.

Here we encountered mostly jackal sharpshooters. They had been placed all in one of the rear sections of the line, allowing their weapons to be used with the most efficiency. At this range they had no advantage over us. They also didn't know what was going on. They had probably just settled into routine and were taking it easy. We shot them out of their perches before most had time to react. The one jackal that fired at us missed wildly and met its end under Caboose's unrelenting shotgun fire. I got back up, helping Bee and Grass up as well.

"Castillo!"

"Captain Jordan?" I asked. "This is Castillo, come in."

"I'm ordering a general attack on this section of the line!" Gunfire was clearly audible in the background. It was funny, I could hear the gunfire over the radio and also by regular means. "We need that Scarab down, if it fires down on us we're as good as dead. Scratch that, we're dead."

"Grass, position on the Scarab!"

"Seventy four meters Sarge!"

"I got this," I assured Jordan. I turned towards my squad and depolarized my helmet, showing them my smile, a smile that I hoped looked dangerous. They depolarized their helmets in turn and took relaxed stances. In an active battlezone. I didn't know whether to be proud of them or pissed at them.

"Bee and Grass, you go in that direction as far as you can go. Bee, you're gonna give this fucker two HEAT presents, to the face would be good; get its attention." I turned to face Snark and Caboose. "You two stay here with me. As soon as the Scarab turns to face them you," I pointed at Snark, "fire at the head. Two shots ought to be enough to knock down the cannon. Use your other three to kill the tail."

"Done deal Sarge." Snark nodded and smiled once more before polarizing his helmet.

"At that point," I continued. "Caboose and I storm the thing, I want all of you three covering us. Once we arrive we can use the turrets to fire on the trenches below us, ok?"

"Yes Gunnery Sergeant."

"Cameras on, Reaper," I said smiling. "This one is going to be one for the books."

Bee and Grass took off, leaving Snark, Caboose, and I crouching behind cover. The shape of the Scarab was only barely visible through the thick mist. It had a looming ominousness to it. Looming ominousness, is that a thing? Probably not. We waited until Grass and Bee took positions. I heard a burst coming from their direction, but no plasma or needles. I sighed with relief and looked at Snark, he nodded back to me. Caboose did the same thing and checked his gun, aiming it at the wall. I was recording this. I could have it screened by ONI and then sell the copy to the recruiters. There was this 'underground' community that showed videos of kickass things that us soldiers, Marines, and swabbies did. It was what you would call guerilla recruiting. Sometimes it showed violent videos of humans dying, but it was always of humans dying bravely, holding the line, being heroes. It was one of the best recruiting tools out there.

"We're up," Grass told me.

"Fire."

The two rockets left their tubes and there was an explosion half a second later. The enormous machine whirred to life and Grass and Bee ran for their lives. They ran through cleared and uncleared trenches before the Scarab could fire. The bright green beam that came after cut all communications for a second, filling our helmets with static. I banged Snark on the back of the head and he climbed up the trench. If somebody pieced this footage together we would get a kickass video out of it. I'm serious.

"Cover your ears ladies," he quipped before firing.

The sheer loudness of the noise was enough to startle everybody. The whole battlefield seemed to die for a second. Even after the high-velocity round collided with one of the Scarab's gun shields, everything remained quiet. Snark pulled back the bolt of his weapon, chambering another round. He aimed again and fired, clearing all the dust and fog from around him. The ground shook, the air seemed to part, and my very bones vibrated when the gun fired. The second impact was accompanied by a louder explosion.

"Turret's out," Snark said. "Aiming at the tail."

"We're up," I said, pointing at Caboose and getting up. I know I was being childish, but I was thinking about how this would look on camera. I was almost acting for the audience that wasn't there.

We jumped out of the trench just as Snark fired for the third time. The supersonic wake of the shot pushed me sideways. It was enough to force me to use one hand to prop myself up. That part of the action could be seen from Snark's helmet cam, Caboose and me falling sideways only to get back up. And get back up I did. My BR55 was already up and so was Caboose's MA5K. Snark fired again, this time only shaking us a little. The entire Scarab lit up from the explosion. I did my best to ignore it and jumped over a trench, looking down. Two surprised grunt looked up at me, too stunned to do anything. Caboose fired when he jumped, a little bit behind me. Those two moments we could put one right after the other, showing me jumping from Caboose's perspective and then him firing in the air. Man, I could've been a director no problem. Totally.

A third shot finally killed the rear turret for good. It hadn't been able to turn around in time and didn't let off a shot. Small explosions raked the side of it until it blew up in a green fireball. Caboose and I were already within twenty meters of the Scarab. I fired at a grunt trying to shoot us down with a turret, knocking it down to the floor. Its corpse slid down the tilted Scarab and fell to the mud below. The other covvies in the trenches were only beginning to react, firing on Snark but not on us. I finally reached the Scarab and climbed up. Two brutes emerged from the interior. Caboose peppered them both with automatic fire, sending them reeling backwards. I finished one off and Snark hit the other one from a hundred meters away with his BR55.

"Got your back," he assured us.

"I feel safer already," Caboose replied. He made it sound like an insult, but it was as good a compliment as you could get out of him.

Snark killed two jackals that had been aiming down at us from the top, their bodies fell to our right and into the mud below. I switched my rifle for my shotgun and turned the corner. There was a brute minor guarding the energy core. I hit it twice in the chest, it was enough to kill it, but I still finished it up with a headshot. When I turned the other corner I shot one grunt out of its turret. The grunt further out back was shot down by Caboose. He nodded at me and started climbing to the top level. I reached it just after him. A brute chieftain with a fuel rod was aiming at him. It couldn't fire, they were just too close.

"Snark…"

"I can hit it three times," he told me.

"Do it."

Three BR55 bursts to the helmet were enough to send the brute to the floor, not dead, but shaken up. I lunged forward, unseen, and kicked the fuel rod away from his reach and into Caboose's grip. The man picked it up even as I jumped out of the top level and down to the balcony-like bottom level. There was a bright green flash behind me and I heard that very familiar noise of bloody flesh hitting the floor. That moment would be seen from Caboose's camera. A brute chieftain being taken out in record time, with its own gun nonetheless. That was good stuff right there.

I wasted no time reaching for one of the turrets. Down below me were dozens and dozens of aliens that were only beginning to realize that their only good card was already gone. The brutes were the first to go, their power armor only holding for a few instants before melting into their skin and fur. The jackals were my second targets, hitting the ones without shields first. A couple fired back, but mostly they ran. The grunts were non-priority. I switched between brutes and jackals. If one of the little ones got caught in the crossfire…then good for me.

I fired the gun until it started smoking. At that point I reached for my rifle and started taking out the few brutes that I could still see. They tried shooting back, but I had high ground and cover as well as momentum. After only a few minutes there were no further targets. They were all either hiding or dead. Mostly they were dead.

You know, I never checked, but I think that in those four minutes I killed more aliens than I had killed in several of my campaigns put together. It was easily over three hundred kills. I felt a rush that was as good as sex. Not a psychopathic kind of rush, I could tell. It was a rush of self-satisfaction and excitement. If a gorgeous pair of naked twins appeared that instant then I would die the happiest man ever. After getting it on with both of them, of course.

I examined my handiwork with due care before climbing to the top level and examining the dead brute. There was a black scorch mark on the floor, the epicenter of the explosion. Two brute legs were sitting there, lying on their sides. Blood and flesh were everywhere, the place was painted with the chieftain. I kicked at a piece of arm and watched it slide down the front of the Scarab. Caboose watched it slide down and then climbed up to join me. He stood next to me and watched the trenches in front of us, with soldiers storming through enemy positions with little or no trouble.

"So," I asked him, "what do you think?"

Caboose depolarized his visor and put his gun to his shoulder, the shoulder opposite from me. He turned to face me and smiled, looking like he was trying not to. "One for the books."

* * *

><p><em>Thanks to Sniper Fodder for proof-reading this chapter. That makes fifty chapters proof-read by him, that would be our golden anniversary or something, right?<em>

_Not much to say for this chapter, other than the chapter quote refers to the Sledgehammer and not the lack of instruments to work with, which is certainly ironic, since the Sledgehammer is definitely a very useful instrument. Other than that, I'm just glad that I brought back some of the larger-than-life kind of badassery that Reaper Squad is known for. They are awesome and they aren't afraid to remind you of that every once in a while. _

_Awesome chapter is awesome. I need some love for this one guys, I really do feel like I earned it. I'm proud of this chapter._

_Stay strong._

_casquis_


	130. Pulitzer

Chapter CXXX: Pulitzer

**October 11, 2544 (UNSC Calendar)/one week later**

**Little Hero, Catamaran Peninsula, Asilon, Omicron Ebur System**

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><p><em>"Winning the Pulitzer is not that big a deal."- Richard Harris<em>

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><p>The whole room erupted with laughter. Why wouldn't it? I mean, whenever someone makes a joke that funny it is the norm. Well, granted, it wasn't the entire room, only most of it, probably around ninety seven percent, I'm not that good with mathematical calculations, especially not when I have to do them on the spot and mentally. Well, if there were about seventy people inside the bar then it was ninety eight percent, rounding up to ninety-nine. I was kidding when I said that I wasn't good with quick mental calculations, the job requires me to do those every now and then, plus, it is useful in life overall.<p>

The only person that wasn't laughing was Caboose. The person who was laughing the loudest was Bumblebee. The later had made a joke at the expense of the former, a very loud joke with a very long and detailed setup that had ended in probably one of the best lines that I had heard in my entire life. I was doubled over and slamming my fist on the bar, shaking my drink violently as I did so. And I was one of the more modest laughers in the room. Pavel had fallen down from his chair, hitting himself in the head on the way down. His laughter was clearly audible in between cries of pain. Even Grass and Snark were being quite loud. Grass had a beautiful laugh, but that wasn't surprising in the least. She was as close as anything would ever get to the perfect woman. Don't let Hanna know that I wrote that. Snark, on the other hand, had an ugly, snorting laugh that made it seem like he was choking on his own blood. Trust me on that one, I know the sound that that makes.

Caboose wasn't smiling, I didn't blame him. In his situation any normal man would've turned beet red and probably smashed a bottle over Bee's head in anger, but Caboose had managed to keep himself unflushed and had a perfect poker face on. The only sign that he was unhappy was his silence. No white knuckles, no vein on his forehead, no clenched jaw. He had a perfectly relaxed face.

It was very scary. That's what made me stop laughing. I took my time, of course, but I think that more than a couple of guys were unnerved by Caboose's sheer calmness. The laughter died out after about two and a half minutes, it probably should've lasted longer than that.

Bumblebee was still chuckling when he apologized to Caboose, slapping him on the back and offering a toast. I was surprised, after the unearthing of Caboose's past I didn't expect anybody on the team to acknowledge him in any way that was not related to combat.

"Nothing personal lad," Bee went on. "You were next to me and I needed a victim."

Caboose nodded slowly, taking a sip from his beer, a local variety. "Of course." He took Bee's hand and shook it. Within five seconds Bumblebee was on his knees, crying in pain and begging Caboose to let go of his hand. I could hear the crunching form my position.

"Enough," I ordered. Caboose let go and returned to his drink as if nothing happened, staring blankly into a wall. "Bee, get up, next thing you know you'll be giving us Helljumpers bad fame."

"Yeah, sorry." He rubbed his hand and eyed Caboose up and down before returning to his seat and ordering another drink.

I sighed. This was the first time that we had gotten some actual leave. Sure, we had had some rest, a day without fighting and some good sleep, but for the most part we had been getting our asses shot at by an ever more desperate group of aliens. Catamaran City was now within eyesight, it was only a simple matter of shelling it into submission. But that wasn't going to happen. The more time we took with killing every single covvie on the planet the more likely it became that they'd get a transmission out. We were actively jamming their communications and our birds killed any kind of spires or dishes that we spotted. The _Inconvenience_ was orbiting the city with its cannon pointed downwards. The covvies were dead one way or another, the only problem was that we might not kill them all quickly enough.

And so we were getting drunk the day before we were sent to the frontline to die. It was the logical thing to do. We would forget all about our troubles, forget that some of us might not make it another day, and maybe sneak in some quick sex with a willing soldier, airman, or marine of the opposite sex. And we even got hangover-killing tablets. Command sure knew their stuff.

"Sit up," I told Pavel irritably. No matter how much liquor I ingested I couldn't forget that we were returning to combat tomorrow morning. I honestly don't know why I was so pissed, normally I wasn't. I knew what my job was, I knew what kind of lifestyle I had chosen.

"You need to relax a little bit," Scarecrow said from right next to me. He was wearing an outfit that I had seen on him once. It was a regular pair of jeans and a t-shirt from a fancy store. He called it his partying outfit. Something of a joke, I think. Scarecrow went on, his voice quiet but somehow clearly audible above the racket of the bar. "Stop drinking so much, smile a little bit, dance with a girl or two. Go to sleep happy and wake up ready for a new day."

The chortle that came after that was a familiar one. "And then what?" Schitzo asked. "Watch men and women die while you manage to stay unharmed? No sir. I say you get drunk off your ass, get in a fight, go to sleep angry and wake up angry." He laughed at his own comment. "Let the wrath out on some aliens."

I groaned and pushed my beer aside.

"Have it your way," Schitzo shrugged. "Just don't be pissed when I say I told you so." With that comment he disappeared. Scarecrow went with him after patting my back and squeezing my shoulder lightly.

"What's with you Frank?" Pavel asked. "Lighten up a little bit, tomorrow we're back in the suck."

"The suck?"

He shrugged. "That's what kids are calling it these days."

"What's wrong with combat?"

He shrugged once more, as theatrically as he always did. "Not cool enough, I guess."

I allowed my muscles to relax a little and chatted with Pavel for a while. We started rating the girls in the bar on a scale from one to ten. Now that we were both in committed relationships it was as far as we could go with other women. Sure, I smiled at the waitress and might've flirted a bit with her, but nothing harmful. Still, I felt a pang of jealousy when I saw Bee leave the bar with his arm around a lovely dark-skinned pilot. Snark was hitting it up with a mechanic and Angel seemed to be doing well, making three girls from the Navy laugh at some joke or other. Even Caboose and Grass had someone with them. Caboose was having a quiet conversation with a young soldier that seemed smitten with him while Grass looked torn between five different marines that were all trying to buy her drinks. But Pavel's wedding band was something of a repellent. The moment somebody saw it they turned around. It worked for me too, everybody knew that nobody would stick with a married man in a bar unless they were actively trying to evade a hookup.

Which was exactly what I was doing.

Not trying to sound conceited or anything, but I had my charm when it came to the opposite sex. To top that off I was also a Helljumper, dangerous and mysterious. I was practically a sex magnet just because of that. Evading a hookup was harder than it sounded. Again, I'm not trying to be a conceited ass here.

Somebody cleared their throat behind me. "Excuse me, Gunnery Sergeant Castillo?"

"Who's asking?" I turned around and saw a man with the rank of captain behind me. "Sorry Captain, I didn't know who you were," I apologized immediately, standing up and saluting the man.

"At ease Gunnery Sergeant," he dismissed me. "I'm Captain Gibson, will you follow me please?"

"What's this about, sir?"

"You'll see in a minute," he replied, turning around and walking towards one of the private rooms in the back of the bar.

I shook my head and motioned for Pavel to remain seated. I had a knife and a gun, more than enough to handle anything short of an enraged brute or an elite. While the men in the bar moved aside to let an officer pass, they weren't so lenient with a regular NCO like me, Helljumper or not. I had to elbow my way past the drunken crowd and finally entered the private room that Gibson had walked into. He was sitting inside with a lieutenant general. General Staunton, the man in charge of the UNSC Army forces on the planet and the highest-ranking man on the entire planet. Why a man like him would be in this bar instead of a much nicer place was beyond me.

"General," I said immediately, saluting and straightening my back.

"At ease Castillo," he said dismissively. "I've heard much about you."

"Sir," I nodded neutrally.

"And so have I."

There was a third man in the room. He was about Grass' height and rather skinny. Unlike the rest of us in the room he was clearly a civilian. The man was wearing hiking pants and a vest over a long sleeved shirt. He seemed pleasant enough at first glance, but his presence here was unexplained, that made me weary.

"Nick Adamant," General Staunton said in answer to the unasked question. "Reporter."

_Goddamn._

They must've seen the look on my face, because Adamant seemed to lose a little bit of the glow on his face and Staunton's lips turned into a firm line. I quickly managed to obtain a neutral expression and said nothing, instead choosing to plant my stare on the wall in front of me.

"Mister Adamant is a UNSC sanctioned reporter," Staunton went on. "He was about to ship off to reach to be attached to some company when shit hit the fan. He is also a photographer, supposed to go into combat with troops to record and photograph our brave troops as they fight the enemy. Apparently he has a supernatural sense when it comes to taking iconic pictures."

Adamant seemed pleased at the compliment, his hands were clasped across his belly and he was leaning back in his chair. I said nothing.

Staunton sighed. "He is to be attached to your unit during the attack tomorrow."

My jaw clenched ever so slightly before I answered. "Sir," I nodded. Adamant smiled to himself and I turned to face him. "Mister Adamant, I hope you understand that I can't guarantee your survival or even your safety."

"I understand," he spoke out for the first time. "I have my own set of combat armor."

This time I smiled. "I was assuming that you had body armor when I said that. Ceramic and titanium plating will not do much to stop any kind of plasma rounds. Maybe a plasma pistol or a single plasma rifle round. Carbines, needles, spikes, and repeaters are all deadly."

Adamant visibly gulped. "I know what I'm getting into."

"Do you?"

"Yes, he does," Staunton answered for him. The man was obviously annoyed by the situation in general, but if it was up to me to say what was going on I would say that Staunton wanted to climb ranks after this was done. He knew that the planet was done for and wanted out of here with a nice little bit of heroism under his belt. The photography was probably just an extra. I understood where he came from. We recorded everything from the battlefield in our helmet cams. Sometimes we could get some impressive stills from the videos, pictures like no others. War photographers outdid us nine times out of ten. They always had this way of getting the best moments on film, with the best lighting and the best equipment. Their holo-cameras were bulky and had to be carried in one hand, but they were infinitely better than the iris-installed ones that most regular photographers had. If you wanted emotion from the people then you went to a war photographer.

General Staunton stood up. "Mister Adamant will go with you, he knows the dangers. He is entirely under your command."

I nodded slowly, carefully. "Very well then, as long as he understands that he will be going into an active warzone. Mister Adamant, I'll brief you on everything tomorrow. My team is taking off twenty minutes before sunrise. Meet us at the landing pad with everything you want to take with you. If you're not there we won't wait for you."

"Yes, sir," Adamant said eagerly. "I'll be there."

"Sir?"

"Dismissed."

Same drill. Salute, then back to attention, do a one-eighty. Leave the room without slamming the door.

"What was that all about?" Pavel asked me when I sat back down in front of him.

"I need a freaking drink."

* * *

><p>Pavel was every bit as frustrated as I had been. His hangover had been worse than mine and he had a lot more trouble waking up. Everybody else in the squad was annoyed to different degrees, but since everybody had gotten laid they weren't really that pissed.<p>

"Why the hell do we have to baby sit some idiot that actually wants to go into the fight?" Pavel said for what must've been the eleventh time. "We're the best outfit on the entire planet and therefore have the most dangerous mission, I don't see any reason why he couldn't be attached to another unit."

I nodded, filling up my last magazine with bullets. "If he gets killed it's not our problem."

"But if he gets us killed it is."

"I'm on Pavel with this one," Angel voiced out, hefting his machine gun and testing its weight experimentally. He had switched from regular box magazines to cloth pouches. They were basically the same thing, only a little bit lighter. "I don't have anything against reporters, but he's not even combat trained, he could walk into a mine or snap a twig in the middle of an enemy camp."

"We're going into a city," Grass reminded him sharply. "I don't think that snapping twigs will be a problem for us."

"I take it you've never heard of parks then? Or figurative speech."

"Shut up," Grass told him. "The fact that a brute like you knows the word figurative was beyond my wildest expectations."

"Oh, then Little Miss Perfect was wrong?" He snickered. "Shouldn't be that surprised, it seems to be happening a lot lately."

Grass examined her nails through her nomex ballistic gloves. "Don't worry about it too much, there's no way that you'll ever be as right as I am. And if you could drop the little from Little Miss Perfect it would be great."

"Is Missus Nezarian ok?" he taunted.

"Listen you little-"

"Excuse me?"

We all turned around simultaneously to see who had walked inside the arms room. Snark must've been a little bit asleep, because he half-raised his rifle before putting it back down on the table in front of him. Nick Adamant was standing in the door, looking unsure. He hadn't taken a step inside yet. The reporter was wearing full battle armor over civilian clothing. The combination looked a little weird, but the man could've passed for a marine, even if it was a green one. His helmet had a camera attached to the right side, It was only slightly bigger than the ones that we had, but it was probably state of the art. He had also brought with him a messenger bag and a handheld holo-camera.

"Grass, check his armor and give him a gun, pistol."

"Why me?" she asked, her disdain only barely masked.

"You're the resident people's person," Bee told her. Angel snorted at that comment and shook his head.

Adamant wasn't that bothered. If a beautiful, statuesque, goddess of a woman approached you willingly you would have a huge smile on your face to. He didn't say or do anything as Grass tightened the straps on his vest and repositioned his forearm armor slightly.

"Um, thank you Miss…"

"Grass," Grass told him.

"Ok…"

I slapped my magazine into the BR55's port noisily, getting everyone's attention and making Adamant jump in shock. I turned to face the reporter and he obviously seemed intimidated by my person. He probably thought that I looked a lot different when sober and in full battle armor. I slung my weapon over my shoulder and looked the reporter/photographer straight in the eyes. I almost smiled when I saw him gulp nervously. "Listen," I started, making my voice hoarse and angry. "I'm going to tell you the same thing that I told these guys when they were put under my command. In this squad I am God. Simple as that. No other rules. I have the power to grant you salvation or to send you to hell. In this situation I am not speaking in metaphors. I can get you out of this alive or I can leave you to die in a sea of plasma fire. One rule only. You do whatever the fuck I tell you to do." I paused. "Understood?"

"Yes, yes sir."

"Good. Grass, you're babysitting."

"Wha- why me?"

One look was all it took to get her to stop complaining. She wisely shut up and went to retrieve an M6 pistol from the rack. I did one final check on myself while she gave Adamant a crash course on how to use the weapon and what to do.

"Never pull out the gun unless I tell you to or unless all of us are dead," she asserted firmly. "Always keep your head down, always keep your helmet on, and always stay behind me."

"Don't look so worried Nick," Angel said merrily. "Most of us would be dying to be behind that."

I smiled quickly and then turned to face him. "Shut up," I ordered. After all, I didn't want to give out the wrong impression to the reporter in our midst.

Grass studiously ignored everything going on around her and gave Adamant quick tips. To his credit, the reporter looked at her eyes and paid attention to everything she said. He interrupted to ask for a clarification every now and then. I guess that survival beats sex in most situations. By the time we were all ready Grass had given the reporter every single tip that she could come up with and Adamant was asking everybody their names. We knew better than to give him our actual names, so they just told him their call signs.

"What about you Gunnery Sergeant?" he asked me after Pavel had explained that he had no call sign and that he could be referred to as Reaper-2. "How should I refer to you in writing?"

"Reaper Actual, Reaper Leader, or Reaper-1," I said dismissively. The Pelican that was supposed to take us towards the front wasn't where it was supposed to be. I shrugged and sat down on a rock, it didn't matter. We still had a few minutes until we had to leave.

Adamant took advantage of those minutes and started asking questions. It was obvious that he was probing for information on our backgrounds, asking us where we were from, how we got into the military and stuff like that. He asked the questions under the guise of being friendly. I am proud to say that nobody actually fell for it, instead deflecting or telling flat out lies. Adamant wasn't disappointed or even surprised, I could tell that he enjoyed the challenge.

"Over there," I pointed. A Pelican was coming even as dozens of other dropships took off, full to the brim with troops and equipment. Troops had been leaving base for the last hour or so, the sun wasn't even up yet and we were already starting the attack. More than half a million troops were attacking Catamaran City, most of what was left on the planet was making one final effort to retake their home and kick the aliens out. I sometimes forgot that almost every single man, woman, and child in Asilon had been killed in the initial Covenant attack.

"Hop on," I ordered as soon as the Pelican touched ground. "Go!"

My squad jumped in with practiced movements, Adamant didn't exactly have trouble getting up the cargo bay, but when you compared the smooth movements of my Helljumpers to his awkward jump it made him look like something of an idiot. I didn't smile at that though, I just climbed up and went to the cockpit.

"Sorry, I've been running sorties for over an hour, I almost got nicked- Cast? Is that you?"

"Horace," I replied, this time allowing myself a smile. "Haven't seen you in ages."

"Same goes," Zekalwe agreed, taking off. "They've been using me as ground support, can you believe it? I'm a hot evac extraction pilot, ask me to drop supplies somewhere or to pick up a stranded unit and I'm as good as Marina. Tell me to strafe an enemy company…well, she can kick my ass when it comes down to that."

"I'm sure you did an ok job," I said.

"An ok job? I did one helluva job, the only problem is that I had to deal with Marina's almost godlike results every time we came back to base. She's competitive, that one."

"Tell me about it," I sighed. "I still don't know who won the breakup."

"I'd call it a tie," Zekalwe said, flipping some switches and turning towards Catamaran City. I could tell that the initial strikes had already begun, several buildings were on fire and there were little explosions running along the city. I'm sure that they wouldn't seem so little when I was closer.

"Who's Marina?"

I turned to face Adamant with a look of annoyance in my face and shoved him out of the cockpit. "Stay in your seat."

"Yes, sorry."

"Grass."

"Sorry Sarge," she apologized quickly.

The sun was only beginning to rise over the sea, but the little rays of light that came with it were good enough to illuminate the landscape below us. I could see the cratered ground below us, burned and still-burning cars from the initial attack adorned the highways. It wasn't hard to spot the corpses of people who had tried to leave their vehicles in an attempt to escape from the alien invaders. There were a couple of dead tanks every now and then. You could also spot Warthogs and military corpses if you looked hard enough. The closer we got to the city the more bodies I could see. I clenched my fists at the lack of Covenant corpses. They had attacked this planet with almost complete impunity. They had paid for their arrogance, but they hadn't paid nearly enough.

"There's not a lot of intel on the city," Zekalwe informed me. I had already gone through this, but maybe he knew something else. "There are obviously a couple of jamming spires, probably buried or built inside buildings, we can't see them and can't really pinpoint their location, even with the _Inconvenience_ right on top of them. Other than that it is pretty much your standard occupation. Machine gun nests in every corner, sniper alleys, Specter's and Wraiths, Ghosts and Shadows. The initial recon sorties report heavy enemy presence, but all of it is camera work, we've got no thermal, no scans, nothing."

"Doing it the old fashioned way, huh?"

"The pilot talks about the occupation as if it were a routine matter, one glance shows that these men are veterans, but it is hard to imagine them being so used to combat with the Covenant that they talk about an entire city being held by them as just another challenge." I glanced back out of the cockpit and glared at Adamant. He just shrugged back at me. "Just taking notes."

"Keep it down," I told him.

"Yessir."

"AA Wraiths?" I asked Zekalwe. "Scarabs? Locusts?"

Zekalwe turned as green plasma started erupting all around us. Long-range flack was nothing but a nuisance, but you had to be careful around it. "We know that there's at least one Scarab, I don't know the type, but it shouldn't trouble us too much. Locusts, those are another matter. I spotted two of them myself, they were knocking down buildings, blocking streets and making killboxes. They know what they're doing."

"Brutes? I highly doubt it."

"That's what worries me, if brutes had half a brain we would have lost this war already, I don't want them growing one halfway through."

"Agreed," I said as I tapped Zekalwe on the shoulder and eyed my mission clock. "You stopping?"

"Yeah, want a view?"

"I don't see why not."

The Pelican slowed down to a stop and turned around until the rear was facing the city. The hatches opened and Pavel pulled down the turret, aiming it at the city in general. We were already hovering above the suburbs and outskirts, tanks, 'Dillos, and other ground transport stopped abruptly. There were some footsoldiers amongst the armored vehicles, but for the most part they were inside the hulks of metal, not outside of them. I stood on the edge of the hatch, one hand pressed against the wall for stability. A couple of green explosions adorned the sky, but none came close. The sun was only just beginning to rise behind Catamaran City, orange light was illuminating the buildings painting them black against the morning sky. The image reminded me almost of a painting, I knew that Adamant was taking pictures from next to me.

"What's goi-" Nick Adamant stopped his question and gaped at the sight. A bright beam of light bisected the sky in half.

The _Inconvenience_ had fired a single MAC round, special configuration. The round was designed to hit with most of its kinetic force, the velocity and mass were equal to that of a meteorite. Downtown Catamaran City disappeared in a brilliant flash of light. The whole area was replaced with a crater and water from the ocean started rushing in. Within seconds the whole area would be flooded and every survivor would drown. Short range ballistic missiles were already screaming past, targeting likely points of resistance in the city, the artillery hadn't stopped, instead it fired faster and faster. Even Scorpions and Rhinos fired as they started moving forward again.

"Wha-"

"Beautiful," Angel said quietly, examining the results of the impact. "They just did half our job for us."

_And have only half a dozen MAC rounds left…_ It wasn't particularly bad, but it would prevent Brooks and Eliza from facing anything larger than an unshielded corvette.

"Turning around," Zekalwe said, spinning the Pelican back. He didn't close the hatch. Pavel stayed on the gun and I watched as a multitude of UNSC vehicles flooded the city.

The plan was a simple one. Push in as much as you can, making walls on the sides with Armadillos and other armored vehicles while the Scorpions punched through the enemy defenses. Once they were stopped they would clear the sides. All of the city should be cleared in maybe a couple of days using this technique. It was risky, being surrounded on three sides with only one way to evacuate and get supplies in, but I had seen the same technique work more than once before. Even if they were left useless, the armored craft would still work as cover. That plus our air superiority guaranteed that this would work.

"Approaching landing zone!" Zekalwe yelled from the cockpit. "It's heating up down there!"

I walked to the cockpit and ruffled through his hair before slapping his helmet on his head. "What kind of mission would it be otherwise?"

Horace laughed at my cockiness and fixed his helmet while firing the massive front chaingun at a platoon of eager covvies. They exploded as the huge rounds hit their bodies. The UNSC Army forces that had been facing them cheered and moved forward, firing on enemy positions as they went. The huge amount of plasma flying at them was a bad sign.

"Cast!" Horace said before touching down. "I'm on pickup duty, I'll be watching your back."

"I wouldn't have it any other way, H," I assured him.

Bee, Angel, Caboose, and Snark jumped out of the Pelican while Pavel opened up on the enemy positions. The gatling gun roared as it spewed out ammunition at a rate of several thousand rounds per minute. Grass jumped down with Adamant trailing close behind her, making sure that she always positioned herself in between the enemy and the journalist. I hopped down and ran towards a piece of masonry that had fallen from one of the neighboring buildings. Already there was an Army company with us, firing en masse at the enemy. Pavel fired for a couple more seconds before jumping down, the loose gravel under his feet made a crunching sound as he slammed down on the pavement.

"The entirety of Reaper Squad is now on the ground, enemy fire is flying all around us, the noises are loud, it is difficult to describe. Reaper doesn't look too worried, they fire at the aliens with short bursts, the Army soldiers with us are also pushing forward slowly, trying to reach our position and kill the Covenant soldiers. I can see two Armadillo troop transports as well as a Scorpion tank, but from the noise I assume that there are more of them. The Pelican that dropped us off is turning around, leaving us without any direct air support. It is now up to these brave men and women to overwhelm the enemy."

I stopped firing and looked at Pavel with a confused expression on my face. He shrugged at me in return and mounted his massive machine gun on a rock before he started firing continuously.

"Angel, lay down suppressive fire on our left flank, I want those repeaters subdued. Snark, can you find a decent perch?"

"Not from here, I need some space to work with."

"Fine, work at the grunts with your M7. Caboose and Grass, I want both of you to keep any brave aliens with their heads down."

There was a brief lull in our fire as everyone took in the new orders and repositioned themselves. Six Helljumpers opened up on the aliens a moment later. I saw brutes and grunts duck down under the renewed gunfire. A couple of jackals were caught in the open, their shields only serving to delay the inevitable. I calculated the distance from our position to the enemy. They were all taking cover behind cars or piles of debris, it was extremely close range, perhaps some twenty yards. I would have no trouble making it.

I crawled all the way to our left flank and ordered my team to open up with automatic fire. Caboose would be running with me. He switched his MA5K for his shotgun and cocked the massive M90. I nodded at him and he slapped my arm as soon as he was ready. I left cover, using a ledge to propel myself forward. I almost tripped over myself, but managed to settle into a short sprint. I slammed into a yellow cab, rocking the vehicle. Caboose slid down next to me and fired his shotgun under the car. He fired again, presumably killing whatever was on the other side.

I climbed on top of the cab and jumped to a car next to it. A brute minor was yelling angrily at a pair of grunts that seemed very eager to stay behind cover. It didn't notice me standing right behind it until it was too late for it. I fired two bursts into the back of its unarmored head, popping the skull like a watermelon and spraying brain matter everywhere. I immediately slid down and gunned down the grunts before they could raise the alarm. Hopefully my gunfire would be confused with the rest of the noise.

Caboose had gone around the cab and had snapped a skirmishers neck before shooting another in the chest. He did a fantastic job, killing the first bird with his shotgun. Snapping a neck with a long weapon is harder than it sounds people, but you look all the more badass when you're doing it. He stepped over the second skirmisher and took cover behind a pile of rocks. Our allies could see us from this position, but we were invisible to the aliens. I nodded at him and he nodded back. We would clear this position slowly and safely.

Well, maybe not so slowly.

Caboose tossed a flashbang over his pile of debris and fired once with his shotgun. He fired blindly and hit nothing, but startled the aliens on the other side enough to send them running to a different place. Being half blind, half deaf, and half scared to death they were easy targets. He placed a shot in the back of two grunts and a jackal. While he did that I slid around my cover and nailed a brute in the chest with a burst. As he stepped backwards from the impact I adjusted my aim and hit it in the neck twice. I fired into its head once it collapsed just to be sure. Another burst took care of a jackal sharpshooter and cleared the next pocket of enemies.

By that point the enemy had realized that something was not right, but we were hitting their flank and their front at the same time. Some opted to take cover from me and Caboose and others decided that they should stay where they were. All of them were dead within two minutes.

"Looks like it's clear," I said into my radio. "Army Company, you can come up."

"Castillo? Is that you?"

I recognized the voice, but it took me a moment to match the name with it. "Captain Caskey?"

"The same."

"Good to see you again," I told him. "Especially outside of that farmhouse."

"Tell me about it. I didn't know that you would be the Special Forces team we would be working with."

I reloaded my weapon as I rolled my neck. "Glad to have you by my side." I looked over my shoulder and down the street. There were buildings on either side, but most were three story buildings, small businesses and homes. The less fortunate had lived here when the city was attacked. Maybe they'd had some more time to escape. "Captain, how big of a distraction can you muster?"

"A pretty big one, we've got three Scorpions with us."

"Excellent, we're going to need you to plow through the enemy defenses, wreck everything."

I could picture the man nodding on the other end of the link. "Of course, but I'm not sending my men past the fifth."

"I understand, that's where we come in."

The plan was a simple on, the best ones usually were. There were several Wraiths in a school nearby, they had a clear shot at everything that went past a certain point, but everything behind that was covered by buildings, their guns couldn't get the appropriate angle, that's the only reason why we didn't have a bunch of plasma raining on top of us right now. With three Scorpions giving the covvies hell we could sneak into the side and enter the school. Killing the infantry soldiers and taking out the Wraiths wouldn't be easy, it would be simple. Much like the plan.

Two blocks later we found ourselves facing heavy enemy resistance. The lead Scorpion fired one HE shell into the enemy line and then let out smoke canisters. It would serve to interfere with the covvies' field of vision, but the cold smoke would also paint targets for the thermal scopes of the tanks. It was a simple invention, albeit a very effective one.

"Grass, how's our guest doing?"

"He's fine, scratch on the cheek."

"Good, has he been interfering?"

"No, but the voice notes are starting to get on my nerves."

"We all know you can hold it up," Angel told her.

"Even in the midst of combat the squad finds humor. They joke with one another in the infrequent lulls, ribbing at each other's personal quirks. I know that I am not accepted by them, but already I can make out the different personalities that mark the squad. The undisputable leader is Reaper-1, not only in rank, his personality is that of a movie hero. He seems to have no trouble with getting people to follow him. Second in command is obviously the staff sergeant, Reaper-2. He carries a huge machine gun, providing suppressive fire and making lots of noise. Despite the difference in their weaponry Reaper-2 seems to be the more subdued of the two. Quieter and not as chatty as Reaper-1. Of the rest of the squad I can only say so much, Grass, the soldier entitled to babysit me is efficient and more deliberate in her actions than Reaper-1. She obviously makes an effort to keep me out of harm's way while pulling her own weight in battle. If I had to describe her role I would say that she has that of a model rifleman. Personality wise I can't say so much, but she seems to be at odds with Angel, most of the time, even if it's only playful bantering. Angel is obviously the explosives expert on the team, one only needs to give him a single glance to…"

The sound of Adamant's voice droned off into the background as my team crossed an intersection. The Scorpions did an incredible job of keeping the covvies with their heads down. I climbed up a small pile of rubble and then back down. The pile was covering the entrance to a small clothing shop, the lights were off, but the shop itself seemed in pretty good conditions. Angel and Caboose climbed in behind me. Angel turned around and helped Adamant down before shoving his head down behind a solid polycrete wall. Grass jumped immediately after him, closely trailed by Snark and Pavel. We were now inside the building and directly next to the covvies. I could see them through the windows. Several brutes were trying to get the jackals to form up and the grunts to stand behind the bird-like aliens, but the first Scorpion rumbled through their cover, squashing cars with ease and running over a couple of unfortunate grunts. The gunner on the tank disposed of the rest of the aliens with ease. The main gun of the tank fired a few times before the tank moved forward, rumbling loudly.

"Let's go," I urged. "Rear exit."

"The store looks almost like it was closed yesterday, I know that that isn't the case, even if only for the thick layer of dust covering everything. A couple of the shelves have collapsed, probably from the shaking from the artillery. I find it surprising that even despite the heavy barrage the glass windows are still standing."

"Shush," Grass told him.

I nodded at Pavel and kicked down the rear door. We both emerged into a small back alley. I fired at a jackal, killing it before it could react and Pavel took out two grunts. The small alley separated the stores on one street from the stores on another. It was wide enough to fit two men with outstretched arms standing next to one another. The multitude of large trash containers and occasional piles of debris made it look narrower, but there was plenty of space in here.

"Forward," I whispered. "And keep quiet." That last order was mostly directed towards Adamant, I knew that none of my squad would be that stupid.

We turned left on our first side alley, keeping our weapons trained on the two brutes at the far end, they were too busy reloading and keeping their heads down to notice us. We simply bypassed them after marking their position on the battlenet. A few seconds later several armor piercing rounds punched through the polycrete walls, killing the two apes.

"Drone," Snark said. "Three stores from this one, corner."

"Mine," I announced quietly. I raised my weapon and sighted down on the bug. It seemed to be looking around, probably gathering intel. One shot through its head was all that it took. The drone's legs curled into a ball and it fell down the side of the building. "Kill, let's go."

Adamant wasn't saying anything, instead just moving from cover to cover and sticking as close to Grass as he could. His breathing was way too loud for my taste, but I couldn't blame the poor man, besides, the gunfire and explosions would more than mask the sound of ragged breathing.

We repeated our process several times, ignoring the aliens to our flanks while marking their positions. The tankmen knew of our mission and did their best to take out those we marked before anything else. Those enemy soldiers were the ones that were more likely to notice us and blow our mission. After we were far away from our own troops they started using the main guns of the tanks to kill the enemy. All the better for us.

"Shit," Pavel whispered. "Wraiths."

"Captain Caskey," I said into my helmet, "pull your men back, set up a perimeter!"

The explosion hit before I was done speaking. I knew from the sound of it that it hadn't detonated against the pavement. It really said something that I knew exactly the difference between a miss and a hit. I thought about the crewmembers of the Scorpion, maybe the pilot had made it out alive, but the gunner had most definitely roasted in his position, even if the shot was only a grazing.

"Doing that just now, one Scorpion was hit, but it looks like it's still serviceable…yes, driver is still alive, even if he doesn't sound too good."

"We'll keep moving, sit put."

"Acknowledged."

From that point on it was smooth sailing. We ran the length of the back alley with no trouble at all, a couple of grunts made their way across our sights, but they were quickly taken out with as little noise as possible. All the while I heard the Scorpions firing and the Armadillos joining them. Eventually we reached the end of the alley and stopped. Bee and I turned a trash container sideways so that it blocked the alley and protected us from plasma and needles. I crouched behind it and waited for my team to catch up with me.

"School's on the other side, air recon shows four Wraiths, three of 'em are regulars and the fourth one is AA. You all saw the pictures, they're clustered around the two basketball courts, the infantry is occupying the security booth in the entrance and the buildings. This is not a prison, so there aren't any towers."

"Good for us," Bee muttered. "For once."

"Agreed," I went on. "This is a city school, so there are walls surrounding it, eleven and a half feet tall, shouldn't be too hard. Caboose, you brought your pliers?"

"I'd say that I never leave home without them, but then I would be lying."

"So you did?"

"Yes."

"Well, isn't that simpler." I shook my head and forced myself to ignore the narrative commentary by Nick Adamant, reporter extraordinaire. "Pavel, I want you to lift Caboose. You'll cut the fence. Bee, you lift Snark, he'll provide cover for Caboose. Once the fence is cut then we'll jump over and do some storming." I paused and turned to face Adamant, who promptly stopped his narration and snapped a couple of pictures of me. "You still want to come?"

He nodded immediately. "I do."

"Now you sound like you want to marry him," Pavel groaned. "We good to go?"

"Reload," I ordered. "Everyone good?"

They nodded.

"Let's go," I said.

Bee and Snark ran together with Pavel and Caboose to their side. Grass, Angel, and I stayed behind, covering all sides. The piles of debris and car collisions served as excellent visual cover. That and the Covenant were completely focused on the tanks and AFVs firing mercilessly on them. The four men reached the wall and the large and burly Pavel and Bee lifted Snark and Caboose. Caboose immediately started cutting the razor wire on top of the polycrete fence while Snark shuffled sideways on Bee's shoulders. They both dropped to the ground as soon as Caboose was done.

"We're green," Pavel said through the radio.

The four of them took covering positions on the other side of the street while we sprinted through the street. Grass bounded over the fence without stopping and so did Angel. Once they were both over Caboose and Snark followed them. I heard their weapons fire over the fence even as Pavel threw Bee across. I intertwined my fingers together and motioned for Pavel to climb over.

"You sure?" he asked me. "You know I can bench more than you can."

"And you'll never let me forget it," I said in agreement. "Come on."

It was true, Lately Pavel had been gaining tons of upper body mass. I wasn't necessarily a fan of the bodybuilder look, but Pavel managed to keep his musculature one step down from being annoyingly massive and just on the super ripped level. Granted, I wasn't a big fan of the look, but I have to admit that it worked on Pavel. Oh, and the fact that he had out lifted me was slightly annoying, if only for the fact that I had special augmentations and he didn't. Sometimes I wondered if he had to push himself so much only to keep himself up to par with me.

Well that didn't sound conceited at all.

"Go on up," I told him as he climbed on my hands and shoulders before hopping on the other side. "Is it clear?"

"Clear as it's gonna get."

"Adamant," I told him, motioning for him to come towards me. I lifted him onto the other side and he landed with a thud. I chuckled as I pictured him on the ground face first. If he had a nosebleed it would only be better.

I jumped and grabbed the ledge before pulling myself up to the other side. As soon as my eyes crossed the top of the wall I saw the firefight going on. My squad had taken cover behind a chest-high wall. Adamant was still on the floor. I landed with one foot on either side of him. If he took a picture of me while in this position then I wouldn't know what to think of him.

I dove to the floor and yanked the man towards cover as spikes magically protruded from the wall behind me. Pavel and Angel strafed the walls and windows with automatic gunfire while Snark took out higher ranking aliens. I popped from cover and took out three jackal skirmishers that were trying to rush us. They collapsed nearly on top of one another. The school's windows were almost completely covered with enemies. They weren't expecting an attack this quickly though, and most of them were facing the other direction, trying to attack us pesky humans from the side. The Wraiths were on the other side of the building, so their gunners couldn't target us. We just had to clear a couple of dozen covvies from a very well defensible position.

Just another day on the job.

"Pavel and Angel, lay down some heavy fire. If you have armor piercing rounds use 'em." I ducked underneath cover again and the polycrete started chipping off. Someone had me zeroed in. "Caboose, Grass, you two will storm the door with me. Snark, keep it up."

We waited for Angel and Pavel to switch their ammo type before making a break for it. The three of us ran with plasma raining around us. Carbine rounds hit awfully close to home, chipping away at the polycrete floor and flying too close for comfort. We finally made it to the wall, there was a small ledge on the second floor that kept the covvies from firing on us. I could see eruptions all over as the piercing rounds punched through the wall. There were some cries coming from the aliens above, which was good.

"Door," I yelled hoarsely, beckoning for Grass and Caboose to form up behind me. Normally one would clear any room with four men, you'd go front, right, left, and an extra man hanging out in the back. Three was the absolute minimum to do it. It was also unusual that I was in the front. Normally I would've been in the back with Grass in the front. Tallest person usually goes in the back. Still, we were hard pressed for time. I kicked down the door, fully aware that it could've been unlocked for all I knew. I hit a brute bodyguard with sustained automatic fire from my rifle. It collapsed with additional fire from Caboose's shotgun.

"Bodyguards," Grass voiced out the obvious. "That means chieftain."

"Hammer?"

"Or turret, but I'd say hammer," Caboose said. "Close quarters."

"That doesn't mean anything," I muttered, moving slowly towards the corner. "Be ready for anything."

I turned the corner and gunned down three brutes. They had heard the bodyguard die and were only just mustering the courage to investigate. Grass killed a bunch of aliens on the other side. The hallway was mostly empty, it seemed like the second floor was the one with the most aliens. I signaled for Caboose and Grass to go left, I'd clear the right and we'd meet on the other side. I was careful to step over the grunts. The place seemed awfully quiet even despite the sustained machine gun fire and the occasional sniper shot. Try as I did I couldn't hear Bee firing, he was probably trying to keep Adamant alive.

My boots were covered with luminescent blue blood, the squishing sound that they made seemed incredibly loud. I opened the classroom doors and closets as I went, being careful to make as little noise as possible. The rooms were all clear and so were the closets, but I did have to kill two jackals once I turned another corner. They were looking to the other side and made for easy targets. They bodies crumpled to the floor with barely a sound, but the gunshots seemed to echo loudly. Automatic fire resounded on the other side of the building, echoing through the walls.

I quickly set up a small screen in one corner showing me whatever Grass was seeing. Her camera shook slightly as she walked, and I could see the corpses of three bodyguards on the floor, blood emanating from various holes in their bodies. It seemed like my gunfire had provided enough of a distraction for Grass and Caboose to hit them in the back.

The sound of a chairs clattering snapped me back to reality. I cleared another couple of rooms and then stopped in the corner. Caboose turned it a few seconds later, aiming his shotgun directly at my head and then aiming away. He signaled the situation to Grass and they clustered around me.

"What's in the middle of the building?"

"Chow hall," Grass replied. "Under other circumstances I'd say gym, but this is a pre-planned design, so I'm pretty sure it's the chow hall."

"Do you not know anything?" I asked her, smiling as I did so.

"Don't think so."

"Thought so, I only need to clear this closet and we go in the chow hall." The closet in questioned was no different than all the others. It had cleaning supplies, a bunch of toilet paper and some random hardware stuff as well as a fire ax and a sledgehammer. I was about to close the door when the bucket in the corner shook slightly. The cleaning droid beeped and whirred slightly before dying down again. I took half a step back as the wall erupted in my direction. Rocks fell over me while some unseen force shoved me towards the other wall. I slammed into the lockers, crumpling them inwards loudly. I grunted as I slid down to the floor. The grunt was quickly followed by an involuntary yelp as a hammer descended on my position. The huge gravity hammer slammed into the roof, ballooning it upwards and buying me enough time to get out of the way of the angry chieftain. Caboose emptied what was left of his shotgun into the mammoth body of the alien to no effect. Well, to almost no effect, the brute did notice he was being fired upon and batted the weapon aside with a weird donkey kick move.

A brute kicking, that was a new one.

Grass emptied a magazine into the brute's face, draining its shields and hitting the helmet with the last couple of rounds. The chieftain hadn't gotten through to his rank by being a coward or an idiot. It batted Grass to the side while rolling to avoid my gunfire. Grass slammed into the wall, cracking a couple of tiles and probably getting a concussion. Her heartbeat didn't seem to be too damaged, so I ignored her as I tried to zero in on the brute. For a mass of muscle and fur that was ten feet tall it was surprisingly nimble. Half of my rounds landed on the brute's arm, but it barely flinched when it thrust with its hammer at me. It just touched lightly on my shoulder, and the gravity blast wasn't activated, but it was enough to dislocate my shoulder.

"Fuck," I grunted as I dropped my weapon and jumped to the side. I landed on my recently dislocated shoulder, crying out in pain.

Somehow I managed to swallow the pain and get to my feet while drawing my knife. It was hard to get it from my right boot with my left hand, but it was bigger than my small backup knife and easier to get than the large one on my back. The brute was busy trying to hit Caboose when I jumped it. I tackled it with my left side and shoved it sideways just enough for it to stumble. I promptly slashed at the tendons on the back of its knee. It went down on one knee and roared in pain. I quickly slashed upwards, aiming for the throat. My hit bounced off its chest and only succeeded in cutting through the brute's lips.

Lucky me.

I got headbutted in the chest and shoved backwards. The head strike was enough to send me on my ass to the floor. The chieftain pulled itself up with help from its warhammer. I shuffled backwards, getting my knife from over my shoulder and throwing it. It was a quick and hasty throw, but it hit the brute right in the neck. If only the brute had showed the slightest amount of pain over the injury. It was limping towards me ever so slowly, it raised the warhammer parallel to the floor, intending to drop it on top of me without doing a full overhead swing.

Then one of its knees exploded to the side. Shards of bone protruded from the joint and the brute fell face first, the hammer crushing my ankle against the floor, prompting me to cry out in pain again. I pulled my sidearm and fired at it, but the animal barely noticed the bullet holes in its shoulder, face, and neck, instead only lunging towards me. I kicked at its face and slid backwards. Only then did I see Caboose holding a sledgehammer over the brute's head. He dropped it down on the head. Helmet or no helmet, a sledgehammer being dropped on a brute's head by a man in peak physical condition junked up on adrenaline is going to do some damage.

A lot of damage.

The hammer crumpled the helmet easily and the skull as well. A little bit of fluid came out of the brute's nose and ears. For being a chieftain, this one had been knocked out rather quickly, albeit not painlessly.

My shoulder throbbed violently from the pain, but I stood up easily enough. "Caboose…" I started slowly. "Isn't your rifle fully loaded?"

"Yes."

"And yet you used a sledgehammer?"

"It was closer to my hand."

"Uh-huh."

"If it works, it works."

"Sure."

I slowly got up, using my uninjured hand for support. My right shoulder was burning, but as soon as it got fixed I would be able to use it just fine. Caboose dropped the hammer and moved towards me. I clenched my teeth as soon as his hands were over my shoulder and arm. With one sharp pull he repositioned the bones back into their socket.

It was a very practiced move, that really said something about his life.

"Holy fuck!"

"Should be fine," Caboose said, taking a step back and raising his weapon.

"Yeah, I know," I grunted, rolling my shoulder experimentally, it still felt a little bit weird, but the pain was bound to subside sooner rather than later.

The brute chieftain was dead on the floor and Grass was unconscious. I quickly went up to her and checked for life signs. Her suit was giving off stable lines, but I wanted to make sure. She seemed alright, and she didn't seem to have a broken neck or anything related to her spinal cord.

"She's good," I said.

"Up?"

"Up."

The closet that the chieftain had bashed through showed the chow hall, which also happened to be devoid of life. There were a couple of fusion coils and plasma batteries, but no enemies. The hole in the ceiling, on the other hand, was a gateway to a platoon's worth of angry aliens. I positioned myself underneath it and gave Caboose a lift. There he tossed a frag grenade in each direction before jumping back down. After the two explosions he jumped up and helped me up as well. My boots were already applying pressure on my ankle, allowing me to stand up, even if I couldn't move my foot much.

"Pavel, Angel, and Bee," I said into my radio. "Stop firing, Bee, I want you to go towards Grass, take care of her."

"And Adamant?"

"Pavel can handle him."

"Thank God, because he's still making the narration thing."

I ignored the chatter on the squad radio and turned the corner. The outer wall was crumbling and filled with bullet holes. There were plenty of dead covvies on the floor, their blood pooling on the floor and splattered on the inner walls. No windows were left intact either. Out of all the aliens that were still alive most of them were brutes. One of them received a sniper round through the head and fell sideways. That was when I opened fire on the other ones.

With Snark firing with me it only took about fifteen seconds to clear the entire hallway. Trust me, I timed it. The last brute hit the floor with a thud. I stood with my back straight, a strange sense of satisfaction filling me as I walked over the bodies. I should've been hunched, but I sure as hell wouldn't have looked as badass as I did at the time.

"Clear!"

"Clear!" Caboose came in only a couple of seconds later. "Skirmishers mostly, I can see the Wraiths from here." I heard plasma hitting polycrete and knew that they had spotted Caboose.

"Move up," I ordered my squad. "Angel, Pavel, I need you to draw their fire. Snark, take out their gunners."

"Why aren't they firing on us?" Caboose asked.

"Don't know, don't care," I replied quickly. "Not about to complain either."

I turned the corner and ran the length of the next hallway until I arrived at Caboose's position. He was ducking behind a column as plasma hit the lockers next to him. He was just outside of the turrets' range, but if they sustained their fire long enough they would burn through the hard rock protecting him. He didn't seem too worried about it though, instead just holding his shotgun loosely across his chest.

"I see you reloaded."

"Didn't have much else to do."

I ducked underneath the window and crawled across the hall. Most of the plasma was hitting a small area, as soon as I had gone ten yards the plasma stopped flying above me. I could tell that the gunners were very dedicated in their task to kill Caboose. Once I was on the other side I stood up and fired at the closest gunner. The brute on the AA Wraith didn't see me until I had hit it twice in the head. Its helmet held well enough, but on the third burst it gave in to the force and the brute slumped over forwards, either dead or in a vegetative state.

The driver of the tank wasn't so harmless by that point. It decided that its cannons would be more useful by firing at me than by just hanging there. The barrels started lighting up green, giving me just enough warning to start running. The first of the AA rounds hit five meters behind me, the second one punched through the wall and detonated just outside of lethal range, singing my armor and making my skin burn with heat. I didn't really feel like waiting to see what the third and fourth detonations would do and jumped.

The detonations in question hit right above and in front of me.

I could feel the rock shrapnel digging into my left elbow, it stung like hell and back again. I rolled behind cover and held my bleeding arm with my other hand. The pain wasn't too bad, I could move my elbow well enough, but it still hurt pretty bad. It seemed like the rock shards hadn't hit the bone, instead just slicing through the top and back of my elbow. It should be easy to heal.

"Bee, take out those fuckers right now!"

"Sarge?"

"Sorry, I'm just pissed. Have Snark take out the gunners."

"Already on it," Snark assured me. Three SRS shots rang out and Snark confirmed the kills.

"I want the AA Wraith dead," I ordered.

I pushed myself up against the wall until I was in a standing position. Two explosions marked the death of the AA Wraith a second afterwards. My arm was now throbbing with pain. I dropped my BR55 and reached for a can of biofoam on my left thigh. I mentally prepared myself for some more stinging and self-medicated my arm.

Holy fuck that hurt.

"I'm good, I'm good," I wheezed through the stinging situation.

"Sure you are buddy," Schitzo said reassuringly. Scratch that, it was sarcastic reassurance.

"You're good Sarge," Scarecrow assured me. "Jump back in."

"With shrapnel in your arm?"

"It's not in his arm," Scarecrow corrected. "Besides, would you have him leave his squad alone?"

Schitzo raised his arms and backed away before an explosion shook the entire school and disappeared. I rolled my arm and shook my elbow before popping from cover and firing on the three remaining Wraiths. The pinging drew one of the gunner's attention and for a moment it seemed to be aiming at me. A burst of machine gun fire from the first floor drew the tank's attention a second later and it spun to face the new attacker. Before it could even fire once a pair of HEAT rockets slammed into it.

"Angel, the other two."

"Read my mind," he came in.

I could see two pieces of explosive lob over the courtyard. One of them landed on the hatch of one of the two remaining Wraiths, the other one hit its wing-like stabilizers. Three seconds later Angel hit the detonator and both of them blew up. The first Wraith fell to the ground immediately, its driver and most of the important systems gone. The other one started strafing sideways before it crashed into the wall and deactivated. Snark killed the driver as soon as the brute tried to exit.

"That was surprisingly fast and efficient," Snark muttered. "Is the school clear?"

"Looks like it," Pavel voiced. "Let's hail Caskey and his unit."

I nodded and opened a channel to him. "Captain Caskey, this is Reaper, come in."

"Caskey here. Is the Wraith platoon dead?"

"Like Elvis," I said.

"Who?"

"Never mind." I cursed myself for using out of date references and banged my own forehead with my uninjured arm. "You're in the clear."

"Good work, we're moving forward."

I finally allowed myself to rest when the three Scorpions rolled through, firing their guns left and right, smoking covvies out of cover for the regular infantrymen and the machine gunners to kill them with ease.

I hoofed and sat down on a brute corpse. "Everyone good?"

"Grass is up and ready," Bee informed me.

"Not thanks to you," she grunted. "You left me the moment you could."

"I ordered him to," I said weakly. "Come on, we're not done yet."

"Even despite the brilliant handling of the enemy tank unit, Reaper Squad doesn't get any rest. The men of this outfit are already checking their weapons and preparing to rejoin the assault. They look tired, two of the members of the squad have sustained injuries. Reaper-1's right arm is bleeding, but biofoam can handle that injury. Grass, however, has sustained an injury to the head. A concussion is likely, I do not know whether she is fit to fight right now."

"Adamant, please keep it down," I said with as sweet a tone as I could muster. "Or I promise you, I will fuck you up."

"Um, yeah, sorry."

Caskey's unit was making good progress, but then again, so was every single one of our spearhead units.

"Good job out there Castillo," Caskey complimented me. "Your arm ok?"

"Yeah, it's nothing, and thanks, sir."

Caskey was covered with soot from the smoke and explosions, but otherwise he seemed intact. I didn't see many injured men, which meant that they'd probably had an easier job than they expected it. "Your other assignment involves taking down an enemy communications antenna, right?"

I sighed. "That's correct, should be five blocks from here."

"We'll pave the way."

"Thanks sir, we just need to paint the target for the flyboys. Should be pretty straightforward."

Caskey nodded. Several men were trotting past us, ready to have another go at the covvies. Caskey's company was currently rotating platoons. One platoon would clear a block, maybe less if resistance was particularly intense, and then they would rotate backwards to get some rest. The second in line would replace them and everybody would rotate. The two middle platoons would provide suppressing fire as they rested and the one in the back simply cooled down. Captain Caskey rolled his neck and stretched one of his legs. "We're making good progress, the tanks are a huge help. I'm glad Brass decided to give it to us."

"I'm glad too," I said in agreement. "Are we good to go?"

"You can wait back here if you want to."

I was tempted to accept, but I could see disapproving faces floating around, shaking their heads at me. I was a Helljumper and above everything else I was a Marine. We don't rest until we're dead. "No thank you Captain, I'll rest when-"

"You're dead," he finished. "I know, I know. But if you don't rest at all, your death might come sooner than you expect it."

I quickly checked my ammo counter and looked back to Caskey. "I'm going to die a soldier, in the battlefield, I know that. I don't plan on speeding it up."

"Good to know."

My squad was already on the frontline, Adamant had come up here with them, he was recording everything that he could with his holo-camera. Pavel and Angel were working with the heavy weapons squad on the platoon and Snark was just sniping away, helping the sharpshooters spot high-value targets. While two extra machine guns did prove to be a huge help it was mostly Snark's sniping that got us steaming forward. Whenever you have an almost godlike talent for spotting and killing enemies you tend to inspire people, whether to kill you or to help you kill.

Huh, I like that. Inspiring people to kill since 2519.

Oh, oh, I know, you could have a black guy with a deep voice saying 'He inspires people to kill, to kill for him, or just to kill him' as the tagline for some action film, preferably one of those shoot 'em ups.

"There," Snark announced. "We can climb that building to zero in on the enemy antenna."

"The column is moving at a remarkable speed," Adamant narrated. "With the help of Reaper's sniper, Snark, enemy leaders are being killed quickly and efficiently. The higher ranking brutes are being taken out, allowing the tank crews to bulldoze through the leaderless aliens."

"He's right," Angel agreed.

"Pavel, Bee," I snapped. "You're with me. Adamant, feel free to join us."

"Really?"

"Yeah," I shrugged. "If you get shot it's not my problem."

"Thank you so much!"

"Why is he so excited?" Bumblebee asked.

"I don't know, the reality of the situation will sink in soon enough."

"You think it's because he hasn't seen anybody die?"

"Might be," Pavel nodded. "But he did survive a genocide."

"Better not make a definitive opinion just yet then."

"I can hear you, you know?"

"Doesn't feel that nice when you're on the receiving end, does it?" I taunted. "Let's go, Angel, coordinate to provide covering fire for us."

As soon as the entire platoon opened up we crossed into a building on the left of the street. It was the tallest building around, clocking at twenty stories high. Intel told us that there were at least a couple of sniper teams on the building, but nothing seemed to indicate any heavy presence. Some plasma bolts flied at us, but none came close to hit us. Adamant seemed to think otherwise, because he kept narrating about plasma wheezing past us.

We were almost through when a single beam nicked Adamant in the arm. It was barely a graze, because otherwise he would've lost his arm. He collapsed from sheer pain and started moaning in complaint.

"Snark!"

"On it!"

I turned around and grabbed the man by the armpits and lifted him up. He grunted but had enough strength to stand on his own. I still threw his uninjured arm over my shoulders and ran towards safety, dragging him with me as I went. Adamant kept narrating whatever was going on, describing me as I closed in on him and as I pulled him towards safety. I have to admit it, it was pretty flattering, but it was still a little bit annoying.

"You're good," Pavel told me as he helped pull Adamant inside the building. "Bee, cover us." Pavel took a knee and pulled out a can of biofoam. He paused before applying it and gestured at me. I undid one of my ammunition pouches, pulled the magazines out and gave it to the journalist.

"Bit on this," I advised.

"What?"

I all but shoved the pouch into his mouth when Pavel started rubbing the gel into the thin wound on Adamant's upper arm. The poor man cried like a pornstar. He cursed and clenched his fists and jaw, but he didn't move an inch. As soon as Pavel was done he collapsed, breathing heavily but still breathing.

"You stay here," I told him. "We'll clear this building."

"No," he huffed. "I want to see this."

"You know I can order you to stay here," I reminded him. "Or knock you out."

"I am aware of that."

I sighed. "Whatever, you can come, but stay in the back."

Nick Adamant nodded. "Reaper-1 doesn't seem to care for me or my safety, only for completing the mission. I don't know if that is an admirable quality or not, the dedication to his job is impressive, but to think that he wouldn't go out of his way to save a civilian life is slightly worrying. While I am thankful that he has allowed me to continue, I am certain that most unit leaders would've had me stay behind and evacuated by this point. Things are getting louder, tanks are exchanging fire now."

"Damn, those are Daemons," Pavel grunted. "Things might be getting hairy outside."

"I think I've got an idea," I shrugged. We were already in front of the elevator, I clicked the button and sighed when I saw that it was still in working order. "Penthouse."

"Shouldn't we clear the building?" Bee asked.

"Yeah, but we're going to paint the target first, then work our way down."

Bee shrugged, obviously not comfortable with the idea of being trapped on the top of a building. I could relate to that, Nezarian trapped in the Spire had left a big mark on all of us.

The elevator doors pinged and we walked in. The lights flickered a couple of times before the doors finally closed and we started going up.

"The elevator muffles most of the outside sound. The Muzak arrangement playing on the speakers seems almost like some sort of ironic joke at the chaos going outside, I would go as far as saying that the scene is taken straight out of a corny action movie."

"You'd be surprised how often I think that," I muttered.

"Or how often elevators have elevator music in them," Bee added.

Pavel also threw his two cents' worth in. "it's usually The Girl From Ipanema."

"Weirdly enough, the three members of Reaper that are with me seem used to this, I guess that you see many things in combat that you wouldn't notice otherwise."

"You have no idea," I said lowly as the elevator slowed down. I shoved Adamant to the side and covered him with my body. Pavel took a knee and aimed his shotgun while Bee cocked his assault rifle.

The doors opened and they started firing through the metal. The assault rifle punched through the doors with ease, Pavel's shotgun left huge holes in the sheets of metal. A couple of rounds of plasma melted through the doors as they opened, but we had the initiative, out bullets hit a couple of brutes and a jackal. The two brutes recoiled backwards from the sustained gunfire, the jackal just collapsed, dead. I kept my arm against Adamant's chest and fired a burst at a kneeling brute, finishing it off while Pavel blew the other one's head clean off with a close range blast.

"There's no reason whatsoever that that should've worked!" Adamant complained, seeming to be in shock. "They knew we were coming, they probably knew that we knew they were there too! How did they not kill us."

"Luck of the Irish," I said dismissively, moving forward to clear the rest of the penthouse.

Pavel chuckled to himself.

"More like the luck of the Mexican," Bee quipped. "You should know better Sarge."

I rolled my eyes, they were going at it again.

"Have you ever tried playing the lottery?" Pavel asked me. "With your luck you'd go broke and then win the grand prize with your last credit."

"Right," I said.

"Clear," Bee informed me. He fired a burst. "Jackal, dead."

"Left?"

"Clear."

"Double check," I ordered.

A few other bursts rang out before the call of clear came in again. Our fearless journalist crouched behind a couch every time Pavel or Bee fired. It wouldn't exactly stop anything bigger than a medium-sized rock, but it served to reassure the man. Pavel and Bee returned to the main hall and nodded at me. My rifle had the best laser on it. I could paint a target from orbit provided that I could keep my weapon stable enough for the required time. I walked towards the window and aimed at the communication antenna. It looked pretty much like all covvie spires did. Slightly bulky, purple, and with a mushroom-like dome on top.

Down on the street something caught my attention, two Daemon tanks, firmly entrenched behind piles of debris and several deployable shields. The covvie tanks were firing at a Scorpion, even as I watched the aliens killed the tank, sending its turret flying upwards as the ammunitions detonated.

"Bee, how many rockets do you have left?"

"Not enough."

"Shit…"

I did some quick mental calculations and decided that it was worth the risk. I zeroed in on a spot a couple of floors below the Covenant antenna. It was located on top of a shorter building, but slightly to the edge facing the street. I kept my laser focused on that spot and opened up a channel to command.

"Command, this is Reaper Actual, Target zero-five-niner is visible and currently being painted. Are the birds ready?"

"Affirmative Reaper Actual, I advise you keep your head down."

"Thanks Command. Reaper out."

I kept my rifle steady and waited patiently. Those few seconds seemed like ages, but I didn't waver. After the wait came the fireworks. Two Gryphon fighters like the ones in Lambari streaked downwards from above, pulling up just above the skyline. They each let out two rockets. The missiles flew straight at the spot my laser was painting and detonated almost instantly.

Had they hit the communications tower, they would've destroyed it instantly, but the explosions didn't reach that far up, instead they only served to slice of a large section of the building's wall. The tons of rock fell straight down and right on top of one of the Daemon tanks. I allowed myself a small smile, but the top of the building was keeping stable.

"Damn."

Bee fired one rocket from next to me. It flew in a perfectly straight line at a column. The initial explosions had exposed much of the inside of the building, the detonation broke down the column and a large section of the ceiling. With that the rest of the top started crumbling. Polycrete and steel bars started falling down until the weight of the antenna brought it down. As luck would have it, it hit the remaining Daemon head on, detonating as its plasma cells overloaded.

"Nick," Bee said after watching the entire building collapse in what seemed like slow motion. "Tell me you got that."

* * *

><p><em>Thanks to Sniper Fodder for proof-reading this chapter.<em>

_Well, I hope you liked this chapter and sorry for the delay, but I've been trying to get used to school and all the homework isn't really helping in any way. For those of you with concerns, rest assured that there is a semblance of a main plot going on here, I'm just struggling a little bit when it comes to putting it together._

_Again, hope you enjoyed this chapter._

_Stay strong._

_-casquis_


	131. Short End of the Stick

Chapter CXXXI: Short End of The Stick

**October 12, 2544 (UNSC Calendar)/**

**Catamaran City, Catamaran Peninsula, Asilon, Omicron Ebur System**

* * *

><p><em>"It's not unusual for us humans to be on the wrong end of the stick, we just never realize just how long that end is."- Staff Sergeant Pavel Klaus<em>

* * *

><p>"Just one last stretch," I announced. "One last stretch and we can freeze ourselves for a month or so."<p>

"And then what? Back for combat again?"

"That's the life we chose, Pavel."

He sighed. "It wasn't the same without a family."

"I understand."

I don't think I understood, not even close. The closest thing I had to a family was Pavel and Hanna, both of them were with me at all times, I had never had to leave someone behind. Sure, I missed my uncle from time to time, but he was dead and I had gotten over it a long time ago. My mom was nothing that I would wish to go back to and my brother…well, him I didn't exactly care about.

"Fine, I'm sorry. I just miss my wife."

"If I was you I'd miss her too," I said, trying to smile. "Especially with the pair of jugs that she carries around."

Pavel did smile at that. "What can I say? I'm a lucky man. But if you ever talk about my wife like that again, I'll kill you."

"Understood."

The noise outside wasn't making it easy to rest. We had gotten a few hours of rest, command's orders. Our advance had been effective, but the covvies hadn't made it a walk in the park, our forces were being slowly ground down, with one out of every ten tanks dead or out of working order. Infantry troops were having a slightly better time, but they were still getting hit hard.

Just a couple hundred yards away our forces exchanged fire with whatever was left of the Covenant forces. The huge crater in the downtown area was halfway full, the aliens had blocked the water flow with explosives and whatnot. I don't know why they hadn't allowed the water to go all the way to the top, it might've helped block our advance somewhat, and besides, all of the covvies in the impact zone must've been dead.

"You know, this little spot isn't so bad," Pavel said after a while. "Under other circumstances I might find it cozy."

I looked around at the place. We were inside a building that had collapsed sideways, on one of the rooms that had ended up facing up. The floor below us was just cracked walls and debris while the walls were struggling to keep the new ceiling above us. The glass windows were still intact, but they were supporting a bunch of rocks above them, so they might actually break at any minute. To top it all off, the room was no larger than a walk-in closet.

"Pavel, that was a terrible joke."

He chuckled lightly and shuffled in his position so that his helmet propped up his head. "I aim to please."

"Now you're just stealing my line."

He waved me away and tried to get some sleep. Any normal person would've been deterred by the close-range explosions and the gunfire, but Pavel was asleep before I could say anything else. I'm not sure, but I think that the initial augmentations that they gave us helped us when it came to sleeping during combat. It was funny, I had trouble sleeping anywhere else.

I was just about to doze off when Grass slid down and woke Pavel up. "Sarge, they want us at the front."

"About time," I said, quite sarcastically I might add. "About what?"

"Dunno, kid came and woke us up, said it was urgent."

"Huh, funny that you'd call someone else kid," Pavel said. "You're like nineteen."

"Twenty-five," she corrected. "Only three years younger than you pops."

Pavel laughed and got up slowly, slinging his weapon across his back and putting on his helmet. I followed suit, grabbing my battle rifle as I climbed out through the hole that worked as our entrance. The sight that received me was not a nice one. Catamaran City was in ruins, no other way to describe it. The ground sloped downwards gently, building skeletons and subway tunnels adorning the crater slopes every now and then. From here I could see several Covenant structures, in the epicenter of the explosion, it was good to know that some good had come out of all the destruction.

"Ain't that a sight?" Pavel asked, rhetorically of course. "You should've seen Adamant when he came here."

"Sorry," Grass grunted, annoyed. "I was getting my head worked on, concussion and all that." She wasn't exactly pissed, but the headache was probably making her cranky. I didn't exactly want to think about the alternative, much less mention it to her; I wasn't suicidal.

"To the command bunker?"

"Yeah."

Pavel giggled. "I love how you say bunker."

He was right, the command bunker was the lobby of an office building fortified with sandbags and metal walls. While it did look quite impressive, it wouldn't survive more than a few Wraith shots. Good thing that it was far beyond the range of the nearest Wraith and the covvies had no long-range artillery at the time. Our flyboys had taken care of that and most SAM batteries. Across the crater we could see little specks that were covvie soldiers or Ghosts. They were doing their best to suppress our fire, even if their best wasn't exactly enough.

"Ah, Gunnery Sergeant."

"Sir," I saluted Brigadier General Jon Yule. "Good to see you again."

He nodded slowly and motioned for me to follow him. "You are aware that the enemy has dammed the flow of water into the crater."

"Yes sir."

"Good, then you also know that they can blow the dam the moment we move into the crater." He paused. "While we could potentially go around the crater, going through would save us a lot of time. This is where it gets tricky, we can't exactly go through unless we want to be drowned."

"I see."

"What I want you to do is blow the barrier keeping the water at bay, flood the crater and allow our Armadillos, Elephants, and other amphibious transport to sail through."

"Sounds simple enough, sir."

"Simple, yes," he agreed. "Easy, not so much." A hologram popped up on the holo-table behind him. There seemed to be one of those within ten feet of every high-ranking officer. "Damage to this city has uncovered several subway and sewage tunnels. Two of them in particular run the length of the crater."

I leaned in close on the holographic display. "We are vulnerable in a couple of spots, could you provide cover for us?"

"Yes, the mortar units can suppress enemy fire for enough time. Once you're spotted we can only help you so much."

I tapped my fingers on my chin absent-mindedly as I examined the large crater. It was perhaps three hundred yards in diameter, it was fairly round in shape, but the section where all the water had flooded in made a teardrop shape on it. Depth was about a hundred meters and about one third of it was filled with muddy water. It was funny how little piles of debris were visible here and there, making little islands, some of them were even occupied by covvie forces.

"It certainly is possible," I agreed. "Are there any drones available? We could use some steel in between us and the enemy."

"That's a good idea," Pavel said.

"Thanks, Pavel," I replied, giving him a weird look that he responded to with a shrug. Pavel was sometimes weird and unusual.

"You have half an hour," Yule snapped. "I cannot give you any reliable intel on enemy forces surrounding the dam, but resistance is expected to be heavy."

I smiled. "We can handle that, sir. We're trained to do that."

"Good to see you're confident in yourself," Yule grunted. "Not all of us share the same mentality."

"Uh…"

"Thanks for the vote of confidence, sir," Pavel interrupted before I said something I'd regret. "Are we free to take anything?"

"Anything you can carry on your person."

"And what about that drone, sir?"

Yule tapped a couple of commands on the table. "Yes, you'll get one of the smaller ammunition carriers." He tapped some more commands, probably letting whoever was in charge of the machine know that we were allowed to take it. "Dismissed."

Pavel and I saluted the general before walking out. The rest of Reaper was outside, waiting for us while milling about and doing their best to try and look badass without looking like they were trying too hard. They were actually doing a pretty good job at it too, had I not had a good decade of experience at doing just that I might've not noticed what they were trying.

"Nice poses," I announced loudly. "Come on, arms room. Pavel, take care of them, I'll get us the eight-track."

"Done," he replied. "Let's go, let's go!"

They took off down one side street while I walked down the avenue. Most of the armored transports had come down the main avenue running the length of Catamaran City. It was one of those fancy and adorned avenues that had four lanes on either side and one huge fountain that ran down the middle. Most of the fountain now was destroyed and useless, the avenue was full of craters and huge piles of debris and abandoned cars. To top it all off, most of the ground space was now covered with tanks, mortars, and resting marines. The farther I walked back the more wounded marines and mobile hospitals I saw.

"Excuse me!" I cleared my throat. There was an engineer working on fixing one of the eight-tracks that I would be getting. "I'm Gunnery Serge-"

"Castillo, yeah, I know," he replied without turning around. "Small ammo transport, priority mission, right?"

"Correct."

He stopped examining the undercarriage of the scorched plating on the side to look me up and down. At that moment I knew that this man was the kind that would relate to the equipment he worked with as if it was a living, breathing dog. Or human being, but dogs are more relatable. He let his eyes linger on mine for the briefest of seconds and then motioned for me to follow him with his head. He walked across the street and entered an abandoned boutique store. Inside the store were four remote drones. They looked pretty much like the Armadillos that they were modeled on.

Not surprising considered that they _were_ modeled upon them.

"Here, Vera here will work well enough. She's been through much of the combat on this planet, wheels and suspensions work nicely, armor is mostly intact, plus, you can trust it to protect you."

"Sounds good, I assume that I'm not going to need to give it repeated commands and it's not going to run into a wall."

"Vera works just fine," he assured me. "Take care of her and she'll take care of you."

I stopped and examined the small vehicle. "I don't think we're going to bring it back."

"Suspected as much," he sighed. "Just make it worth it."

"Oh, trust me," I said. "She'll go out with a bang."

The mechanic patted the drone and turned it on. "That's all I ask for."

The drone whirred and scanned me, that always made me uncomfortable, before following me out of the abandoned boutique. The thing was surprisingly silent for a small tank. The only thing that actually made noise were the wheels whenever they clattered over a stone.

"Pavel, meet Vera."

"Aw, Frank, you shouldn't have." He shook his head slightly, "I'm a married man now."

"You're right, besides-"

"Watch your mouth there," he interrupted.

I thought about what I was going to say and decided that a fat woman joke was probably not the correct course of action, besides, I liked Amber, she didn't deserve to be insulted just so I could get to Pavel.

"Now you've made it awkward," Snark snarked.

I rolled my eyes and made sure that they were all geared up before I took the bandolier that Pavel was offering me. I switched the magazines from it onto myself and then strapped grenades and flashabangs onto myself. The weight felt comforting and reassuring.

"You know Sarge," Angel said, "you could've just switched belts."

"I like my ammo belt." I rolled my neck and put on my helmet. "You brought explosives?"

"Oh yeah," he said, producing several large packs of C-12 from the ground next to him. "These babies can blow through the dam no problem. If we have time I can even rig them for some pretty fireworks."

"I'd love that," Bee said, putting his hand on Angel's arm. He said it in a creepy homoerotic tone that one would normally save for your spouse of partner. He pulled it off magnificently and Angel jumped sideways while making gagging noises.

"Put the explosives in the trunk," I told him. "Medical supplies and extra ammo go in there as well. When I say extra ammo I mean spare rockets."

"Sweet," Bee smiled. "I'm going to have so much fun."

I waited while Grass stuffed medical stuff inside the gear port in the drone and Bee ran towards the armory for a bunch of extra rockets. He could barely handle all the extra ammo by himself, but he looked as giddy as a…

Man, I've used up all my virgin jokes on that one.

He looked very giddy, let's leave it at that.

The artillery started firing right before we left our line. That should keep the covvies down and allow us to slip into the subway tunnels unnoticed. The entrance to the subway was only a block away from the crater, but the land underneath it had slid down and the tunnels were now tilted sideways.

"Well this doesn't seem dangerous," Angel said. "Are you sure this is safe?"

"No," I replied.

"It's just that I don't want to die buried by tons of rock. Scratch that, I don't really want to die at all."

"Yeah, I'm kind of with Angel on this one," Grass agreed.

"That certainly shows the situation," Snark noted wisely.

Bumblebee looked like he was about to say something but stopped. We'd have our two arguing couples agreeing on something, that was probably one of the signs of an impending apocalypse. I smiled behind my polarized visor and raised my rifle and turned on the flashlight.

"Snark, you take point."

He nodded and ran up ahead, making absolutely no noise as his feet hit the tunnel floor. That was something quite impressive about him actually, I never remembered just how quiet he could be. We waited until the darkness swallowed him. I knew that soon enough a crack in the wall would light up the tunnels, and in turn, make us visible. We walked slowly while Snark's helmet mapped out every last detail of the tunnel on our minimaps. The place dampened all sounds from the outside, but I could still feel the ground vibrating.

"Drones," Snark whispered. "Just a couple of them, haven't seen me yet."

"Take 'em out," I ordered. "Quick."

Snark waited for more ground-shaking explosions before he fired two quick shots. His EMR was considerably quieter than the SRS, but it still made a shit-ton of noise inside the subway tunnels.

"Yeah, we'd better move it," Pavel recommended.

The little drone behind us clattered as it hit rocks and debris inside the tunnel. The magnetic plates that once supported subway cars sure did make a lot of noise. I had bad memories from the last subway we had been in, I did not like the idea of walking inside of a drone hive. Again. And having to fight them all off. Again. Man, my life feels like a bad sitcom some times.

"Snark?"

"Wall's collapsed for about fifty meters, cover is scarce."

"Can you make it across without being noticed?"

"I think so, but only the first one to sprint through could."

I quickly thought about it and decided that it probably be for the best if Bee and Pavel ran through together. They were the two biggest members of our squad. The drone could protect two or three of us at a time. Angel could go with me and Caboose with Snark and Grass, the drone could probably cover us well enough while keeping itself mostly intact.

And it was a pretty big probably.

Pavel and Bee were now on the edge of the crack, the light illuminated the entire tunnel but I still couldn't see anything on the outside. They glanced back at me and I nodded at them. The both of them immediately started sprinting towards the other end of the crack in the wall. The crack itself was three meters high and started at about knee-height. It wasn't much of a crack, instead it was more like a huge hole in the wall. Halfway through they started being fired upon. Snark left cover and fired several rounds from his EMR before he was forced back behind the tunnel walls. Covvies were firing on our position from the crater's edge.

"Grass, artillery cover! Now!"

Grass immediately started barking orders and approximate coordinates into her helmet. It took all of five seconds for mortar shells to start whistling down. The explosions were off, so Grass started giving updated coordinates as I moved the drone forward. Its all-terrain wheels and drive did allow it to traverse the damaged tunnel well enough, but it still moved a little bit too slow for my taste.

"Caboose, Snark, Grass! You go first. Pavel and Bee try and provide some covering fire!"

Plasma and spikes were now flooding the tunnel. The redirected mortar fire made things a little bit better. Bee and Pavel did some little more, but their two weapons weren't much against hundreds of angry aliens. The drone started rolling forward, a little bit more slowly now. Grass placed herself in the front and crouched by the side. Caboose and Snark joined her, packing tightly against one another so that they'd fit behind the mini tank.

"Holy fuck," Snark yelped as a needle burst just a few inches from his leg. "Can't this thing go any faster."

"You asked for it," I shrugged, ordering the drone to increase its speed fractionally. Sure, it complicated things a little but they did get across quickly. I immediately had the drone return, it clattered and banged as it ran back. It shot past my position and halted abruptly. I could see that one side was smoking and melted slightly. With enough time the plating would cool down and be good as new, but we didn't have the luxury of time right now, the enemy was probably sending troops into the tunnels to block us right now.

"You ready?" I asked Angel after I was crouched behind the drone.

"Ready enough."

The little tank shot forward and we were hard-pressed to keep up with it. The floor was pointy and hard to crawl on, Angel being right in front of me didn't help matters at all, he kicked and crawled as fast as he could, but I still felt like I was being left slightly behind. I could feel the drone vibrating with the impacts, but still I pressed on. I could hear the mortar and artillery fire just outside of the tunnel, and I knew that if I looked through the hole in the wall I could see the flooded crater and destroyed city.

"We're through!" Angel exclaimed.

"Damn," Pavel huffed. "For a moment there I thought you weren't gonna make it."

"Is the drone ok?"

Caboose walked up to it, plasma still being fired into the tunnel from outside. "The armor on one side can't take much more, it's soft enough for spikes to go three quarters through."

"Damn," Pavel repeated.

"Cargo intact?" I asked, getting up and making sure that no stray bolt had hit me.

Caboose opened the rear hatch with some trouble and examined the inside. He leaned backwards as hot air hit him in the face and then leaned back in to examine the results of the damage. "Explosives are good, otherwise we'd know."

"Oh, we'd certainly know," Angel agreed.

"Spare ammunition looks intact," he went on. "Don't know about medical supplies."

"They're probably fine. Did you know that most UNSC medical supplies are designed to take temperatures in excess of three thousand degrees." Grass, as per usual, knew something that could end up saving our asses later in our lifetimes but that could not help us in any way right now.

"Celsius, Fahrenheit, Kelvin?" Snark asked her

"Celsius," she asserted. "We can still use them."

"Good," I nodded, "I have a feeling that we're going to need some patching up after this."

Pavel shook his head. "Way to keep the morale up."

"Thank you," I replied. "Ok, let's move on, they probably have teams going into the tunnels right now, be ready for anything. I want VISR mode on, don't want to get jumped by stalkers."

Snark checked his rifle and nodded before disappearing ahead and taking point. We moved much more slowly now, crouching whenever there were cracks in the tunnel walls and making sure that we weren't stopped. We only stopped a couple of times when Snark asked for permission to take out two brute captains commanding machine gun nests. I gave my permission and he wasted them with headshots, firing through a tiny crack in the tunnel walls. His EMR was most certainly a good alternative to the SRS that he usually carried. Same ammo type that the BR55 used but a whole lot more muzzle velocity and accuracy, if that was even possible.

"Contact," Snark whispered a couple of minutes after firing on the brutes. "Three stalkers, cloaked."

"Copy that," I whispered in reply, fully aware that I could've screamed and the sound wouldn't have left my helmet. "Keep them zeroed in, I'm moving up." I ordered my team to hold positions and assume a defensive pattern through hand signs and then quickly moved up towards Snark's position. He was leaning against a wall, using a pile of rocks as cover and support for his weapon. I looked to the absolute darkness ahead and activated my VISR. I could already see the outlines of the three brutes with Snark's helmet aid, but when I turned my VISR on I was able to see the active camouflage shimmering in the darkness.

"I hate power armor," Snark muttered.

I hated it too, you never knew if the armor would have integrated shields or not, that's why a simple headshot or neckshot could turn into a messy firefight of escalating proportions. If you expected an easy kill then you would probably end up dead. I squeezed Snark's shoulder and aimed at the brute on the left. They were moving here slowly and deliberately, clearly expecting to find an ambush or a booby trap. Normally, that would've been a good idea, but we were hard-pressed for time.

"Ready?"

"M-hm," he replied.

I fired one burst at the brute stalker. The impact drained its camouflage and had its shields flare up. Snark fired one shot at one brute's neck and then another to the other one's head. That way he tested for shields and bought himself some time in case they did actually have shields in addition to camo. Both brutes recoiled from the impact and struggled to stay afoot. Snark then fired six times into the first brute's head while I fired three more bursts into my target. When both of those two were dead Snark finished off his third target with quick, precise shots.

"Nice job," I said. "Let's move up squad!"

We were now moving at a steady trot, Snark and I shared the role of scouts, he'd walk to the next turn or pile of debris, wave me ahead and then we'd switch. The rest of the team hung out back, waiting for anything.

"Our exit point should be-"

Bee never got to finish his statement. The whole tunnel in front of us blew up. I was lucky and so was Snark. We were just far enough away that the collapsing rocks didn't bury us. I ran backwards to avoid secondary collapses, cursing as the tunnel shook and I lost my footing. The rest of my squad was also moving backwards, trying to keep their selves unburried. After a few seconds the noise stopped and we found ourselves ok.

"Countoff!" I grunted, turning on the filters in my helmet. "One."

"Two."

"Three."

"Four."

"Five."

"Six."

"Eight."

I nodded. "Good. Angel, come with me."

Both of us returned to the front of the tunnel. The entire section was blocked by a huge pile of rocks. It could probably be moved with enough explosives, but we needed our current payload. That's exactly the assessment that Angel reached.

"What do you propose we do then?"

"Only logical solution right now?" he asked himself. "Well, there are two, actually. First, we could blow a hole in the roof, climb out and carry the explosives on ourselves."

"Ok, number two is the wall I take it?"

"Correct Sarge," he confirmed quietly. "Blow a hole on the wall, slide down the crater and climb our way up to the dam."

"You mean fight our way up."

"Semantics."

I pondered on the options for a while. "Either way we make ourselves targets. No, the mission's too dangerous. We fall back and try again later."

Angel shrugged. "Your call Sarge."

"Listen up," I spoke up. "We're going back to base, rest up, make a new plan."

"That's not our traditional MO," Grass noted. "I don't know how to feel about this."

"You're a girl, you don't know how to feel about anything," Angel groaned. "Come on, let's go."

It would've been nice if things went according to plan just once. Sure, our first plan had been torn to pieces the moment some avant-garde brute decided to try and bury us under tons and tons of rock, but our second fall back plan had absolutely no reason to go wrong. Well, other than because somebody up there hates our fucking guts.

The tunnel shook sideways, tilting a couple of degrees and forcing me to lean to the side and grab one of the maglev plates still attached to the floor. I looked around to see what was going on and saw my squad in equal states of confusion. It didn't take too long for anybody to realize what was going on. The tunnel had received too much damage and now the little dirt that it had underneath it was going to collapse into the crater bottom.

The wall, now quickly becoming the floor, started breaking apart. I hadn't realized that we were actually above the crater slopes now, not by running next to them. The hole in the wall started becoming wider and wider as this section of the tunnel rotated more and more.

"Hold on!" Pavel yelled.

At that precise instant I heard the sound of rock and polycrete breaking and the tunnel started falling. We only fell for a second before we hit the slope of the crater. I was shaken by the impact, but I managed to hold on to my rifle and the maglev plate. The world around me then started rolling around. The wall, which was already the floor, became a wall again and I was hanging upside down. Then I was on the side of the tunnel and then loose rocks and debris were falling on top of me. It felt like an eternity, rolling around, everyone screaming to seven hells. I knew it couldn't have been more than six or seven seconds, but those were probably some of the longest in my life.

Time resumed its normal speed when I felt the crash on water. That was enough to pull part of the magnetic plate from its base. It might sound ridiculous, but at that moment I felt some weird sense of pride at having lasted longer than that piece of metal embedded in the floor. Sure, the pride vanished the moment I realized that I was flying at a very high speed towards the other end of the tunnel. I slammed into the wall shoulder first. I might've heard a crack or might've not, but the adrenaline was too high now. Water was flooding into the tunnel and I couldn't see any light.

"Angel!"

"Yeah!"

"Blow one of the walls!"

I didn't wait for confirmation, instead checking my minimap and clambering my way towards the drone. It hadn't landed on its wheels, instead turned completely uspide down. It wasn't one of those models that could flip itself back on its wheels, instead being a piece of crap. At least that's what I thought at the time.

I tackled the drone to try and put it on its feet. At that moment I did feel pain in my shoulder. Somewhere in the back of my brain I probably realized that I had a fractured collarbone, but my survival instinct was stronger than that. My right arm had been through enough that I had become used to fighting through the pain. That and I could get high on adrenaline a couple of minutes after this.

I screamed loudly and tackled the drone again. I suddenly found myself being helped by Grass. She was getting low and trying to gain some leverage, but the drone was pure armor and steel, it was a heavy piece of equipment. I tackled it once more and it moved onto its side. Pavel appeared out of nowhere and helped both of us turn the drone on its eight wheels. It whirred and rolled forward before stopping abruptly.

"Angel!" I cried. The water was reaching to my waist now.

He replied with an explosion, an annoyingly common habit of his. I heard polycrete cracking and saw a flash of light.

"Everyone out!" I ordered loudly. Grass and Pavel quickly made their way towards the hole as more and more water started flooding the tunnel. We weren't about to drown, we had oxygen reserves, but we could find ourselves trapped if we didn't hurry and fifteen minutes of oxygen wouldn't get us through that under any circumstances.

The drone waded through the water and left the hole a second before me. I turned and let Caboose jump out in front of me before looking for Bee and Snark. The first one was carrying the later. Snark was unconscious and didn't seem to be moving, but suit scans only showed a concussion. He'd be fine with a shot of adrenaline.

"I got this!" Bee huffed.

I climbed under the hole, the tunnel was still rotating, trying to fall all the way to the bottom of the crater. I emerged into muddy water and the sounds of battle. Plasma, spikes, and bright pink needles were landing all around me. I forced myself to ignore them and dragged Snark out as soon as Caboose passed him to me. I moved the body towards the equivalent of a beach in this crater lake. My team had already set up a defensive position with the help of the drone and some more loose debris. There seemed plenty of that to go around right now. They were firing on a squad of grunts led by a brute that were making their way down the crater. The six aliens were all hit and killed within one second of one another, making for a spectacle as they collapsed and rolled down the slopes before stopping.

I dragged Snark towards the drone, forcing Pavel, Angel, and Caboose to find another spot to take cover. Snark was still unconscious and needed help, they understood that. Grass immediately went to the back of the drone, disregarding her own safety as she opened the hatch and looked for adrenaline and other meds. She wasn't alone, we all provided covering fire, killing any who would dare to fire on one of our squad mates. Grunts were being thrown here to kill us, but they weren't being smart about it, dying by the dozens as they tried to get a bead on us.

"Got it," Grass said calmly, sliding back behind cover and producing two tubes full of synthetic adrenaline. "It'll make you pretty much impervious to pain," she told me as she handed me one. "You know your limits Sarge, don't break them."

I nodded and took the tube. If I decided that I was immortal only because I felt immortal I would die pretty quickly. I knew that I could get shot ten times before I realized it if hopped up on this much adrenaline. I'd just have to stick to the basics, stay behind cover, and be a badass like I normally was.

Shit.

Bee had already left the tunnel and was behind me. He fired his two rockets at a squad of brutes. They were engulfed by the explosions and killed immediately. In my opinion it was a waste of rockets, but we could use the shock right now. He reloaded and patted me on the back before moving forward for a different position. I extended my right arm and stabbed myself in the inside of the elbow with the adrenaline needle.

It took just a moment for me to feel the rush.

"Whoa!" I exclaimed, already feeling like a god of war.

"Easy Frank," Grass warned. Her using my name brought me back.

I nodded and shook my head several times before lying on top of Snark. When he was given the adrenaline shot he shook awake and tried to get up. My weight prevented him from doing that. It took a couple of seconds for him to realize what was happening and for the initial shock to wear off. Grass gave him the same lecture she gave me and checked him for additional injuries and signs of brain damage. Suit scans could always be wrong.

"I'm good," he said, not sounding completely sure. "I'm good."

I nodded at him, reassuring him and myself as well. "We go up!" I yelled. "Our target is just a hundred and fifty meters away! We fight our way through!"

"Up a hill?" Bee exclaimed. "I'm all for giving the bastards a beating, but Sarge…"

"You can do this," Scarecrow assured me calmly, clad in full battle armor.

"No, you can't," Schitzo disagreed. It sounded like a taunt, almost like a dare.

"We go up!" I repeated.

Nobody said anything, instead they only concentrated their fire on the enemy and assumed a leapfrog pattern. Bee and Angel covered Pavel and Caboose as they advanced and then vice versa. Grass, Snark, and me remained with the drone. Snark and I had the long range weapons and drew a ton of fire, Grass was our unofficial medic and would need the cover of the drone if somebody else was injured. I sighted down on a pair of jackal sharpshooters and hit them. I fired quickly and hit the ground around them before killing them. I cursed and rolled my right arm around after diving behind a rock. I didn't know what wasn't responding, it could be either my shoulder or my elbow.

"You ok Sarge?" Snark asked, firing on a bunch of grunts.

"I'm good," I grunted as I popped from cover to help him finish the little beasts off. A lance of jackals caught my attention, they had their shields on top of one another, overlapping to make a foolproof defense. Rounds pinged off the colorful shields, bouncing off and slowing them down but otherwise doing no damage to the bird-like aliens behind them. I tried aiming at their feet, but they were doing an excellent job at pissing me off.

"Bee!"

He fired one rocket into the center of their shield wall. The little birds were blown apart like rag dolls. The explosion killed five or six and maimed the rest. I shot the ones that were still struggling to move before any of their comrades could pull them back to safety. Pavel and Caboose moved forward up the slope, going up in a diagonal as opposed to a straight line.

"Frank!" Pavel complained. "What the fuck are we doing here?"

"Ever heard of a reverse slope defense?" I asked him, too tired for his attitude. "Mission comes first!"

"Reverse slope defense?" he asked. "So what is this?"

"A reverse reverse slope defense?" Snark suggested.

"We can't go back Pavel!" I yelled.

"We need help!"

I ducked to avoid several red plasma bolts and cursed. "Fine, I'll see what I can do." It wasn't easy, but I had to admit that we were as good as dead. We might make it all the way to the target, but we had no way to fall back safely. One way or another we were dead men walking. Living on borrowed time, as they say.

"Command, come in Command, this is Reaper Actual."

"Reaper Actual, we copy this i-" the transmission was interrupted.

"Castillo, this is General Yule. What in the living fuck happened down there?!"

"Tunnel collapsed," I explained, hitting a couple of brutes and sending them behind cover. "Can't fall back, only way is forward. We need some help!" The two brutes decided to fire at me, one of them got itself nailed in the head with a burst for its troubles. "Fuck," I grunted, reloading my weapon. "We need reinforcements!"

"All the way over there!" he exclaimed. "Do you know what you're asking for?"

"I know just what I'm asking for!" I snapped. He wasn't the one getting his ass shot at. "Air strikes, gunships, a couple of platoons."

"Son, you're in a no-fly zone, the covvies have enough shoulder mounted weapons to kill any of our gunships."

"Shortswords!"

"We don't have enough equipment, it might not look like it to you, but we've been fighting here for months now!"

I paused for a second. "You're denying me help."

He didn't say anything.

"And you still want me to finish this mission!"

"I want you to do your job!"

"And yet you don't do yours," I growled. "Reaper Actual out." I cut the conversation and punched the dirt next to me. My whole squad had heard the exchange, they were as angry as I was, if not more. If it hadn't meant our death I was sure that every last one of us would've stopped firing and let the Covenant win.

"Motherfucker!" Grass cursed. She never cursed. Ever.

"Hunters, one o'clock!"

"Snark! Keep them at bay, Bee!"

"I'm reloading, they have me pinned down!"

I jumped over my cover, ducking underneath plasma and needles. A beam landed at my feet and I dove in a small crater, it was barely enough cover, but it kept me safe enough. I fired blindly from my position, only drawing more fire to myself. The drone rolled by and helped provide cover while I switched to a piece of building. It was about my height and thick enough to provide cover from the pair of hunters. It was a nice spot to die in.

"Angel!"

"I'm trying!" he cried, spraying wildly, hitting a few aliens but leaving more alive. They were rushing us now, dying as they tried to get close to us. We had only made it halfway up the crater and still had more distance to travel still.

"Bunker down!" I ordered, it was as close as I could get to admitting that we were all dead. "Fields of fire, you know the drill!"

I took potshots at brutes, trying to stop their progress. My position was pinned down by enemy sharpshooters, I couldn't get more than two bursts out before beams and carbine rounds flooded my position. It was seven against an army. They had the high ground, they had the big guns, they had the advantage. Pavel and Angel still fired wildly, killing anything and everything that they saw. That bought enough time for Bee to fire two rockets.

"Both are hits!" he said joyfully. His joy was turned to frustration immediately though. "One of the fuckers is still alive!"

It was true, Bee's helmet cam showed a hunter emerging from a crater, its shield arm was missing, but the dangerous one was getting a bearing on Bumblebee. I left cover and ran sideways as I fired on the hunter, drawing its attention and fire. I jumped just in time for the green fuel rod to fly over me, heating up my armor and skin. I immediately stood up and jumped backwards as a plasma repeater cut through my previous position.

"Duck," Schitzo said lazily.

I followed his instruction because I had nothing else to do. Two beams crisscrossed the place where my head had been. I barely had enough time to react before Grass tackled me to the ground. I stood up once again and yanked her behind a small pile of rocks, it was only big enough to hide her from enemy fire. I turned and ran as I was fired upon. By some miracle or other I found myself back in the building wall that I had started from, the only damage I had received was some minor scorching to my armor. My heart was beating fast enough that any doctor would've given me a sedative. I wasn't worried, I was just pissed.

I reloaded once again as green plasma lit up the space above me. I crouched as part of the building was atomized by the hunter's weapon. It was angry that its battle brother was dead and now it just wanted me to join it. I heard another SPANKr blast and Bee hollering insults in a Scottish accent that became stronger and stronger with each passing second. Caboose was muttering to himself in Russian now and Snark had also returned to his native language. I considered that weird and unusual before I realized that I was praying in Spanish.

I'm not religious, I've doubted the existence of God and at some points have considered myself an atheist. Pavel always gave me shit for my rapid change in beliefs. One day I would believe in a higher power like I was taught as a child, the next I refused to believe that a god could've created something as evil and wrong as the Covenant. An old saying came back to my mind, it was something my uncle had told me. He was as religious as my parents had been, at least it seemed that way, for a man that had fought in the Insurrection and seen the worst that humanity had to offer he sure had a strong faith. I clearly remember him saying this when I asked him how he still believed in a god. He had stopped reading whatever book he was reading and looked me in the eyes.

"No man is an atheist in a foxhole, son."

At the time I had considered it a copout answer. He had his reasons and didn't want to explain them to me. I was old enough to understand that I shouldn't ask again and left it at that. Now I was old enough to understand that he hadn't lied to me.

"You know what else I told you?" he asked me, leaning against the wall next to me in his fatigues. Manuel looked expectant at my answer. Even after all these years I didn't want to let him down, I ignored the noises of the battle and went through every single piece of advice that he had ever given me, trying to see what would fit.

"I don't know," I whispered.

"Frank?" Pavel asked. "What was that?"

I ignored him.

"Si sabes," my uncle assured me. "You do know, just think about it."

I was sitting on the ground, the hunter was dead now, but grunts with fuel rods had taken up the slack and were hitting my wall repeatedly, pieces of polycrete landed in my lap. I brushed them off lazily, trying to concentrate on whatever my uncle had said to me back then. Our gunfire was slowly being drowned out by the enemy plasma and spikes. Bee and Grass were not doing anything anymore, their positions were being overwhelmed by the enemy, they couldn't do anything. Pavel had stopped firing full-auto, instead just firing short bursts wildly. Angel wasn't faring much better. Caboose and Snark were pulling their weight and picking up the slack, but even they were starting to give up.

The drone rolled up to my position and placed itself next to the wall, providing a seat for my uncle.

"Vamos, what is it?"

_I don't know!_

"You mean you can't remember?"

_No se, no se,_ I told him, I didn't know, I just didn't know.

"Francisco," he said, his voice growing a little bit of steel in it. "I didn't raise you to be like this. What would your mother think? What would your father think?"

I felt every bit like the little kid that had seen his dad die in a car crash and had seen his beautiful mom in a hospital bed, not fully understanding that she would never wake up from that sleep.

Millions of images flooded my head, memories from a lifetime ago when I still had a family, my brother being taken away, my mom crying and my dad shaking his head. I saw myself playing with my friends from school, having dinner with uncle Manuel. I saw myself laughing, crying, smiling, shouting, fighting, sleeping, playing, being annoying, and misbehaving. I saw my mom smiling again and my dad nodding in approval as I played in a little league game.

"That's not who you are," Schitzo laughed. "Not anymore."

Then I wasn't smiling anymore. I was crying for a while, for a very long while, but then I was just angry, angry at everyone and everything. Angry at my uncle, angry at the truck driver that left me without my family, angry at Lieutenant Darbinian and General Yule. Angry at myself for not saving Layla and for losing Marina. Angry for countless mistakes that I had made.

"That is who you are," Schitzo said. "You're a soldier, a trooper, a Helljumper, nothing more."

"That's not all you are," Scarecrow insisted.

"That's everything that you are," Schitzo shouted at him.

My uncle stepped through the both of them, dissipating them into thin air. I could hear Pavel shouting for me in the back of my head, I ignored him, trying to remember. "Francisco, you can be more than just a Helljumper, so much more."

I almost laughed when I realized that Schtizo wasn't disagreeing.

Then I remembered. It wasn't a phrase that could be written into the climactic scene of a book or a movie. It wasn't one of those phrases that you would remember for the rest of your life just because of the sheer power of it. It wasn't even a phrase, it was a simple matter of logic and common sense.

This time I saw myself on top of a wooden tower in the challenge course in Camp Afghan, back on Jericho VII. Climbing up had been easy enough, even with the rain. An eleven year old could do it easily, and I did it easily. I had felt so cocky, so proud of myself when at the top. I had forgotten that I had to climb back down. My uncle was watching from beneath, arms crossed over his chest as he watched expectantly. There was one rope on the other side and a twenty foot drop. For a kid my age that was as high as an orbital elevator. My uncle untied the rope ladders on the back, leaving me stranded on top. Another one of his ideas on parenting.

"¿Qué ganas al rendirte?" he asked at the same time I repeated the phrase to myself. It was a simple matter of balancing things.

"Frank! What are you saying?"

"What do I win by giving up?"

Peace of mind, rest maybe? I don't know. Why would I gain peace of mind? What good would it do to me to die on my ass, well-rested, if I could die on my feet, breathing hard and fighting until the very end.

"What do we win by giving up?" I asked my team, loudly now. "Not a single fucking thing! Let's show these fuckers what we're made of."

Sometimes fate plays an interesting role in your life. Call it coincidence, call it expected or unexpected. Call it a miracle if you want to.

Me? I just called it awesome.

"Don't die on me just yet Frank," some voice said. This voice was a real one. "You owe half my men crates of quality alcohol." Yevgeny was trying to make an entrance. He could've worked on the one liner, but what an entrance he made.

Bummer, I had already convinced myself that I died in here, kicking ass and being a badass.

"Rangers!" Yevgeny shouted. "Strafe those gunners, disrupt their fire! First and Third squads, up the slope, storm their positions!" He paused for a breath. "Second squad, aid Reaper."

I turned to see the Rangers. First Platoon, First Company, Seventh Battalion. All thirty of them, fit for duty or not, had used their jetpacks to jump across the crater. I saw their shapes flying through the sky, muzzle flashes marking their guns. Their jetpacks flashed to stop their fall, some of them landed pretty hard, but they all started firing at the covvies. The aliens were surprised enough as it was, throw thirty flying humans into the mix was only making it worse. For them.

"Bee and Grass, get up! Just what the hell do you think you're doing?" I yelled loudly, firing at two jackals that had held their position despite the appearance of reinforcements. They still had numerical advantage, but numbers don't mean much when you're facing the best that the UNSC and humanity has to offer. Two quick headshots got rid of the jackals. "Pavs, Angel, where are those fields of fire? Snark, handle their officers."

I was still barking orders like a madman when a hand tapped me in the shoulder. I stopped firing at a group of retreating grunts and turned to face none other than Sergeant Waylon Durant. He was smiling behind his goggles. He was obviously feeling cocky about his heroic moment. I wasn't about to take that away from him.

"Pleasure to see you," I said, slapping him in the arm. "Sergeant, have your squad spread out, you'll be working with me, move our way up and towards the dam."

"Yessir," he saluted, still smiling but gaining a look of determination on his face. "Winchester, Abu, Iheri, Dibra! You're with me. Rest of you, help Staff Sergeant Klaus."

He got a couple of 'Yes Sergeant' from his squad, but mostly the Rangers just split off and went towards different places. Pavel was starting to strafe a couple of enemy squads on the top of the crater, clearing the way for the rest of us to advance. I whooped in joy as I saw three brutes collapse from gunfire and several other grunts and jackals panicking. The Rangers took care of the little aliens, taking them out with practiced ease.

"Forward!"

I vaulted over the wall, feeling the heat from the explosions that just seconds ago had been spelling my doom. I saw the explosion craters and the red-hot rock out the corner of my eyes, but ignored it. Instead I fired on four jackals at the top of the crater. I hit one in the leg and killed it when it fell. That was enough to send the other three backwards and out of sight. Snark and Grass were running with me. Firing with one hand and using the other one to help themselves climb the steep slopes of the crater. When we were about to reach the top all three of us stopped and with us stopped half of Ranger Squad Two.

"Frags," I said.

Everyone of us took out one fragmentation grenade and tossed it over the edge of the crater. A couple of stray bolts were hitting our position from the side, but the other two squads had it handled, forcing the covvies to fire on them and not on us. As soon as the devices detonated we all climbed over the top, helping one another over the steep edge. Several blast craters marked the position where our grenades had exploded. Bodies and body parts adorned the ground. The Covenant had dug trenches here, fully expecting an assault to come. They weren't as through and fortified as those outside the city, but they were certainly not a shabby job.

"Flank those bastards!" I barked at the Rangers. "Snark and Dibra, hunt for brutes and officers." I paused and looked around. Bee and Caboose were already climbing the top of the crater, just a dozen meters away from me. "Bumblebee, I'm sending the drone towards you, don't save on rockets."

"Wouldn't dream of it Sarge."

An instant later two partially collapsed buildings went to the ground as rockets hit support points. I smiled to myself and started ordering the Ranger squad and my own into fireteams. Nezarian was drawing attention right now, but soon enough we'd have to help him get up the crater. We could just run the length of the trenches and flank the enemy, yeah, that would work.

"Sergeant," I told Durant. "You and your men need to take those positions out."

He nodded. "Understood." Durant pointed at three of his squad mates and left with them. Bee and Caboose had joined us now, bringing the rest of Squad Two with them while Pavel and Angel moved to join Squads One and Two. We quickly started setting a defensive perimeter, covvies were already firing on us, realizing that a sure victory had just turned into a significant loss of ground.

"Well, that certainly outweighs beating me in a hand-to-hand match," I heard from behind me.

"Claire," I said, only just realizing how tired my voice sounded. "It's good to see you," I told her as I gave her a one-handed hug.

She smiled, returning the hug. "Good to be here. I bet that the two generals back there are going to be pissed at us if we get back."

"_When_ we get back," I corrected, letting go and taking a step back, crouching behind the trenches. "How'd you get here?"

"Walker in Three heard something about an ODST squad sent off on a priority mission. Brass has been very jumpy on an SOS signal getting out, so he assumed that you'd been sent to finish everything off quickly. When he asked about it he got stonewalled and went directly to the lieutenant."

"Smart man," I said. "Introduce us sometime, him I will definitely give something nice."

She smiled, reminding me of how pretty she was, even when covered in soot, dirt, and not wearing any makeup. "I'll tell him you said that."

"Frank!" Nezarian came in. "We're at the top, moving to join you, can you advance?"

I looked around and smiled at the determined looks in the faces of the Rangers and my Helljumpers. "Affirmative on that Lieutenant. We're going forward."

I was the first one to vault over the trench. I was a firm believer in leading by example and wasn't willing to waste an opportunity to impress Specialist Winchester. Committed relationship or otherwise I was still a male and had that hardwired instinct to impress the opposite sex.

The streets here were cracked, cratered, and all but destroyed. Perfect.

I dove behind a piece of pavement that was raised at a forty-five degree angle. It provided excellent cover and a stable firing platform. I climbed to the top slowly while the rest of the men and women with me moved forward. I saw Grass and two Rangers slam into a car for cover as spikes appeared on the hood. I traced the origin of the spikes to a brute with one spiker in each hand. I took care of it with three bursts, even bagging a grunt kill before sliding back behind cover.

"Left side! Left side!" one Ranger cried. I think he might've been Jacques.

I turned just in time to see three brutes on the building on our left. We should've checked before. They fired spikers at us even as we fired at them. Snark and Dibra killed the first two before Caboose could fill the third one with holes, but that last one managed to fire a burst into a Ranger. The three rounds that hit the man got embedded in the back of his upper left thigh, then just above his waist, and a few inches above that.

"Zheng!"

"Grass!" I ordered. "Pull him back!"

"Hans, Jacques, clear the right side!" Durant warned.

"I got the left," I told him. "Claire?"

"I'm with you," she nodded.

I provided cover for her as she ran towards the car that Grass had been in just seconds ago. She did the same for me and I joined her on the late-model SUV. Grass was working on the wounded Ranger, opting to leave the spikes in instead of pulling them out. She was pouring some biofoam on the edges and bandaging around. Zheng, the Ranger, was in some sort of shock, unconscious from the pain. The spike on the top was the more worrying one, it could've punctured the stomach, liver, or kidney. Hell, maybe even the intestines.

"Frank!" Claire shouted. "Move up!"

I ran across the street and finally made it into the building that the three brutes had fired on us from. The building was as close to collapsing as it could get while still standing on its feet. Columns supported the second floor just barely, with several of them cracked or completely blown apart. A large portion of the second floor had collapsed and slid down to street level. Claire slid to cover next to me and I had to yank her back as her momentum carried her forward.

"Thanks," she said in a quiet voice.

"Don't mention it," I dismissed, peeking around the corner to see if we were spotted. I could see bunches of jackals and grunts taking cover and forming walls with their shields, a few brutes were here and there, but Snark and the Ranger marksman were taking them out quickly and efficiently. "Ok, up we go."

We took the stairs to the second floor and cleared it quickly. On the window aisle with the three brutes I went a little bit slowly. I could see the other two Rangers clearing the building opposite us out of the corner of my eye.

"Movement!" Claire cried. She fired one long burst at one of the doorways. From the sound of the bullet impacts I knew that she hit nothing. "Call me crazy, but I think that might've been an elite."

"You hear that Yev?" I asked.

He took his time answering. "Yeah, I got that. You sure Specialist?"

"No," she replied truthfully. "Might've been a skirmisher, but if I had to choose I would say elite."

"We might have elites!" Nezarian announced. "Everyone be ready for a little change in the game."

"Wanna follow it?" I asked Winchester.

"Can't. This is a pretty good position for covering fire. You snipe away, I'll cover the doorway."

"Giving orders like that to a Helljumper? Pretty ballsy," I teased. I placed my rifle on the windows and aimed down street, where several jackals were slowly moving forward. I timed their steps and saw a small window where I could fire on one jackal's arm. After five seconds I let out a burst. At least one of my rounds hit the alien. The jackal slid backwards and the wall shifted to account for one less shield. They made it impossible for me to hit any of them, but the rest of the Rangers and my squad didn't have that disadvantage, killing them all in a second. "Spot me some targets," I ordered.

"Brute major, behind that Chevy," Snark said. "Won't leave cover, the fucking coward."

I switched targets and saw the brute. From my position I could only hit its left leg and arm, but that was good enough for me. I fired three bursts, two hitting the arm and one the leg. The brute shied away from the pain. Its head must've raised a little bit too high, because three shots from Snark punched through the windows and the brute's skull.

"Fuel rod grunt, all the way down range!"

I switched once again, fuel rod aliens took priority, they could fry a tank and kill a platoon in a matter of seconds. The grunt received gunfire from no less than six different weapons. I'm proud to say that I managed to beat Snark to the punch, firing a burst an instant before he squeezed out his first shot.

"Don't get too used to it Sarge," he said. He was back to his normal self after having faced death a few minutes ago.

I shot a few other brutes with Snark and Dibra's help. I was on par with Dibra, but Snark was on fire, killing aliens left and right like nobody's business. It only took five minutes to advance. It was only one more block, turn right, plant the explosives and take off. With the help of our Rangers it should be simple.

Remember, simple, not easy. Never easy.

"Wait up," Claire stopped me. She moved to the door and deactivated a trip mine. I never did understand how the Army people managed to carry so much stuff in their vests and backpacks. "Ok, clear."

We climbed back down to the first floor through another set of stairs, keeping our guns aimed up and ready for anything. Once on the ground we crossed the side street to the next building. A couple of shots were fired at us, but I didn't pay it much mind. I broke down a window to enter the next building. It had been a residential building, three stories, two apartments per floor. We climbed up to the third floor after clearing the second one. Halfway through I heard something.

"You hear that?" Claire whispered, shifting her aim rapidly from one point to another.

I looked left and right. "Yeah," I whispered back. Only then did it occur to me to look up. "Vents?"

I had barely processed my own word when three jackal skirmishers burst from the shiny gray vents. I don't exactly know how they got in there or how they managed to jump out so quickly. I don't even want to know how two of them landed on Claire's rifle and mine. I pulled out my sidearm and emptied half the magazine in one jackal's head. The other skirmisher close to me jumped on my arm, biting through the unarmored spot near the elbows. I'm pretty sure it broke a little bit of its beak off, but it hurt me more than it hurt it. If I kept this up I would need a prosthetic right arm soon.

"Fuck," I grunted, dropping my gun only for the skirmisher to kick it away. I used my other arm to bang the alien on the head before it clamped its jaws on my arm, urging me to cry out. It reached for a plasma pistol on its belt. I quickly kicked at its knees and we both fell to the floor. For a bird, this skirmisher was pretty fucking strong. I could see Claire struggling with her own skirmisher, but couldn't help her. Instead I focused on saving my own ass. My right arm was in unbelievable pain right now, even despite the adrenaline running through my veins. I banged again and the jackal's grip loosened a little bit. It was enough for me to yank my arm from its mouth and reach for my knife.

As luck would have it, the jackal caught my hand just as I had yanked my backup knife from its sheath on my chest. It stopped the blade just shy of entering its belly, snapping at my helmet but failing to connect. Those jaws and beak looked uncomfortably powerful from up close. The bird had one broken knee from one of my kicks and my punches had drawn blood from the equivalent of a cheek. It was still on top of me and had the leverage and weight to prevent me from stabbing it.

"Fuck you," I spat at it.

I shoved myself into a seating position and then managed to slowly stand up, carring the jackal with me. I wasn't even trying to stab it now, its own weight would bring it into my knife now. Still, at this point I wasn't feeling exactly patient, so I spun my whole body and slammed the jackal into the wall. The first time I heard bones crunching and the jackal hissed and screamed. The second time it stopped struggling and screamed some more. The third time I slammed it into the wall I plunged my blade all the way to the hilt and then some. I then pulled straight up, gutting the jackal skirmisher from just above the groin to the sternum.

"Fuck you," I repeated.

I turned around and saw something awesome. The jackal grappling with Claire made a minor mistake on the positioning of its arm and suddenly found itself in trouble. Claire spun, twisted, pulled, and pushed the jackal in a series of quick movements and suddenly the jackal found itself face to face with Specialist Winchester, its two hands pressed against its chest and its back against the wall. Claire reached for her sidearm and fired twice into the underside of the jackal's beak, splattering blood on the wall behind it.

"Got that on tape," I told her. "You ok?"

"Yeah." She was breathing as hard as I was.

"Let's go."

"Yeah," she repeated. "Fucking…birds."

"Agreed."

As we moved ahead to clear the rest of the floor I felt the pain in my arm. The jackal had left two long cuts on the inside of my elbow. Blood was flowing freely from it and I could feel my arm going numb in the spot. I waited to clear the rest of the floor with Claire and then sat down on a couch, pulling out a can of biofoam. I self applied the miracle product and cursed repeatedly at the stinging sensation. Before I could say anything Claire was placing neatly folded gauze on my arm and securing it with cotton bandages.

"To prevent infection," she explained as she worked.

"Thanks," I said simply, reaching into my butt pouch for painkillers. My shoulder was really starting to hurt right now. I downed the pill and shook my head, a habit that I had gained throughout my years of fighting and downing pills. "Whoa."

"Frank, we're on the intersection, Squad Three can keep the Covenant at bay, but we need you and your explosives team to hurry up."

"I copy," I told him. "Yev, I need your squad to provide cover for us. Angel and Caboose, you two are with me." I turned towards the specialist. "Thanks for your help."

"Are you insane, I'm going with you."

"Don't be stupid," I told her. "Go back down and provide cover, plenty of danger there."

She planted her feet firmly on the ground and put one hand on her waist. She looked very business-like. "You owe me."

I groaned. "Fine."

"So unprofessional," Schitzo chided disapprovingly. "You're nothing but a soldier, don't turn into a bad one."

My mind was made now, if Schitzo said something, I did the opposite. "Come on," I told her.

"What's with her?" Angel asked when he saw Claire.

"Guest party member," I replied.

"What?"

"Never mind, I've been watching way too much of those old shows," I explained. "She's coming with us. Caboose?"

He nodded.

"Good," I nodded in return. "Cover us!" I yelled at the rest of the my squad and the Ranger platoon.

We were near the ocean now. Catamaran City had a boardwalk covering the length of the coast. Most of it was still intact, but a large section of it had come down when the _Inconvenience_ fired its main cannon. That was where all the water had flooded in from. It was now being dammed by a bunch of different buildings. I don't know how the brutes managed to react that quickly. They had blown up several neighboring buildings after briefly containing the flow with shield walls. Shield walls couldn't contain the onrushing water forever and they didn't have big enough walls, so they decided to play it human and blow the buildings next to the hole up.

If it works it works.

The ocean was to our left now, it was not exactly calm, with waves splashing into the boardwalk walls, spraying it. The space in between us and the improvised dam was probably some fifty yards, the buildings to our right were being occupied by Rangers as we spoke. Aliens occupied the street in front of us. They evidently didn't want us to blow up the dam. Or maybe they were just pissed at us and wanted us dead. Both were equally probable if the aliens were brutes. If Claire had actually seen an elite then chances were that they had figured out we were going to blow the dam.

"Angel, stick with the drone. Everybody else, we cover him."

"Second choice?" Bee asked, obviously just being a dick for the fun of it.

"Me," I replied, humoring him. "Then Winchester and then Bee."

"Why am I last?" he asked. He wasn't really annoyed, he was still being a dick.

We ran several meters with Angel and then slammed into a U-Haul for cover. The big box-shaped trailer tilted a little bit from the impact before coming back down. We positioned ourselves behind the wheels so that we couldn't get our feet shot at. Angel had the big gun, so he mounted it on top and fired wildly while we got beads on more important targets. Caboose and Claire kept their bursts short, hitting grunts and jackals and occasionally softening up a brute for my BR55. Angel just kept their numbers at a manageable level.

"We've got shooters on top," Claire said. "They're ours."

"Next time," Bee sighed in relief, "be more specific about that."

I agreed, I suddenly realized that I had one of the Rangers beaded in. I jerked my weapon away and instead scanned the abandoned car wrecks for movement. After ten seconds of no movement I gave the go ahead signal to advance. We moved a little bit more slowly now, we knew that our asses were being covered by a platoon of elite soldiers and took our time in clearing every car and corner. After we made it to the end of the street we halted.

"Looks clear," Bee said finally.

"Looks," Caboose emphasized.

I looked around, never stretching my neck more than I should and sticking behind my newest pile of debris. "Send the drone up." It was more of an order to the drone, it could hear and process millions of word combinations so that the operator didn't have to memorize keywords. I remember the fuzz made about that one, some politician or other had thought that it would make our minds weak or something. As if we weren't already under enough stress now. Making us memorize stuff, senseless.

I was being sarcastic there.

"Volunteers?" I asked. Of course, nobody was stupid enough at this point in their careers. "Nope? Bee, thank you."

"Why me? Why not the chick?"

"Not under my direct chain of command," I explained. That was actually a legitimate reason to not send her up ahead. "Don't wanna get sued."

"I'll go," Angel said. "I can move with the drone if I'm fired upon."

I shrugged. "Your funeral. Metaphorically speaking. I hope."

"You know Sarge, you've got a gift with words, but sometimes you just butcher it."

"Shut up and go," I laughed. "We'll cover you."

Angel ran towards the drone and slid down behind cover. A couple of needle rifle rounds bounced against the ground, but none were close enough to frighten Angel. He shuffled so that his legs were out of the enemy's field of fire and started moving slowly towards the dam. No more needles flew in his direction.

"Did you get it?" I asked.

"No," Bee said.

"Negative."

"Damn," I grunted. That was slightly worrying. I kept scanning the windows to Angel's right carefully, but I couldn't see half of them. The corner of the building next to me was blocking everything from sight. I needed to move up. "Pavel, Grass and Nezarian making out yet?"

There was a pause on the other end of the line. "Looks like they're about to," he replied. "Want me to break it up?"

"Nah, just asking. I was going to order Grass here anyways: Good to know I'm getting a little bit of extra satisfaction out of that."

"I can't believe you just asked that to your friend," Claire scoffed. "Just to know if you were pissing someone off more."

"That's the Sarge we all love and adore," Bee said.

"Grass," I started with a smile. "Need you up here." I turned to Claire and Bee. "I'm moving up on the left, see if I can get a better vantage point on those windows. I need to see better."

"We'll stay here," Bee said uninterestedly.

I slid back and went back around, meeting Grass on my way back. I swear, her glare could've melted through her visor. She said nothing at all as I passed her. I turned around and started moving down the boardwalk. The only cover I had was the occasional stone bench positioned to observe the ocean. I was careful not to move too much forward, I didn't want to be spotted before time.

"Angel," I said. "Think you can do a little bit of baiting?"

He sighed. "Fine." I saw him purposely let his leg drag behind him for just long enough to bait an alien. He yanked it back just in time for three needles to hit the spot where his foot had been in.

I immediately looked up to the origin of the needles and spotted the shape of an elite in one of the windows. It quickly hid behind a pillar, preventing me from blowing its brains out. "Angel, we've got elites. Yev, I'm confirming the presence of elites in the battlefield. Can you relay that to command?"

"Command is not in a speaking mood right now," he grumbled. "But I'll broadcast it."

I kept my sight trained on the last known position of the elite while actively scanning other locations. Angel was slowly moving up towards the dam, he was now climbing up the pile of broken building. Once he made it to the middle of the dam he stopped.

"You're going to have to set the charges from the ocean side," I told him.

"I know. It's just dumb." He slid back down until his feet were in the water. The drone turned and slid down towards Angel, where he pulled out the explosives. Seeing the size of the explosives put me at ease, that much C-12, could create a crater as big as the one that the MAC round had made. He quickly started positioning the charges along the length of the dam.

That's about the time that I spotted the elite again. It was on the roof now. I fired four quick bursts at it. Hitting it on the chest on all of them. The elite fell back on its ass and didn't get back up. "Hit an elite, can't confirm the kill," I warned. "They might try and get you Angel."

"Comes with the job," he said simply, arming another charge. "One more and we're done."

At that point three different elites appeared on the ground floor and started firing on my position while rushing Angel. I dove behind the bench as needle rounds started hitting my cover. I heard gunfire from Bee's and Grass' position and I knew that at least two of the elites would be going down. I stayed down and waited for somebody to confirm the kills.

"Shit," Bee cursed. That couldn't be good. "One down, the other two are pulling it back to safety."

"I'm done," Angel exclaimed. "I need covering fire."

"We need covering fire," Claire exclaimed.

"Moving up!" Nezarian's voice boomed.

I looked up to see the legs of one bleeding elite being dragged behind safety. One burst bounced off the floor near its leg, but I missed it. More and more elites were appearing now, all around us. Most had needle rifles in their hands, the mark of their Spec Ops squads. Their armor wasn't exactly standard either, with their helmets being more adorned than usual. The ones without needle rifles had repeaters, and even deadlier weapons.

"Fuck, they got me pinned!"

This had just gone from good to a fucking shitstorm. Angel wasn't anywhere remotely safety and we had a platoon's worth of enemy elites firing on our positions. I tried firing a little bit at some of the elites, but they weren't being stupid about their ambush, they stuck to cover and fired on our positions, keeping us with our heads down. Eventually we would be overrun or flanked, both of which would spell death for all of us.

"Flashbangs!" Angel cried suddenly. "Toss all of them!"

We were drilled to follow orders as Marines. We weren't drilled to be stupid, but for some reason everybody thought that throwing a dozen flashbang grenades into the open would somehow help us.

So, a dozen detonations later I found myself hopping over my cozy stone bench to save Angel. I was doing the brave and soldierly thing to do, but it was also the stupid thing to do. To Angel's credit, the quantity of light released in the past five seconds had stunned the elites that could harm me the most. I killed two of them that were near the drone and Angel and slid into cover behind it. I immediately popped back up and downed another stunned elite with the help of a frag grenade. Suddenly, we found ourselves in a firefight, not an ambush.

"Shit Sarge," Angel said. "Anybody else tried that they would've gotten a hole through their forehead."

"Yeah, I'm sure they would've," I agreed, ducking behind cover after realizing that the drone wasn't going anywhere with four molten wheels. I mean, it could roll in a circle, but that wouldn't really help us much. "When you can I need you to spray the roof of that building on your one. When you do that try to stick to the bottom, if you miss you'll hit the bricks, make noise and startle them. Ok?"

"Sure thing," he nodded. "Then what?"

Then the drone all but disappeared as a Plasma Launcher grenade detonated. We were thrown forward as more and more explosions started going off around us. I tried to make a run for cover, stopping to drag a stunned Angel with me when the ground below me disappeared and instead I found myself looking at the world upside down. I landed on my head and everything went black for an instant.

When I opened my eyes I could see an elite coming towards me to finish me off with an energy dagger. It fell sideways when sustained assault rifle fire hit it. It was funny, for all the movies I had seen and from my own personal experience I didn't know why the hell the sound was off until I saw Grass depolarize her visor when she knelt over me. She was mouthing words, and much like in the movies, my hearing returned gradually.

"Sarge!" she was yelling.

"I'm-I'm fine."

"Frank, stay down!" Yevgeny appeared on the other side of my field of vision, firing short bursts at different points and then ducking next to me. "Cam, we gotta pull him out now!"

"But his neck-"

"It can be fixed later, Angel, you up?"

"Yessir," I heard from behind me. "Just stunned, that's all."

"Camilla, help me with hi-"

Yevgeny never got to finish his sentence. A single pink needle sliced through his throat, cutting it open like a knife. He immediately dropped his rifle and reached for his throat, clutching it. I could hear air escaping even in my state. He had to use one hand to support himself as he fell over me. His open wound was right above my visor, drops of blood that escaped his grip splashed on my visor, but I was in shock, not at myself, but at seeing one of my best friends dying.

"No!" Grass picked up her gun and fired wildly, cursing and crying at the same time.

I rolled to my side and placed Yev on the ground, I didn't know what to do with injuries of this scale. I did what I thought would be best. I poured half a can of biofoam into the wound. For a moment it seemed like the UNSC Army Ranger managed to sneak in two quick breaths, but his hand let go of his throat, revealing the a pink mess underneath. I knew at that instant that he had been doomed from the moment the elite fired.

And so I watched in complete helplessness as First Lieutenant Yevgeny Domitrovich Nezarian died.

"Fuckers," Angel growled under his breath. He stood up and started going beserk on the elites, firing side to side, full-auto, on the aliens. I was now on my feet, too stupid not to join the revenge seeking. I managed to bring down three elites with Angel and Grass' help, but it only took thirty seconds for things to go wrong.

Three repeater shots hit Angel in the belly and chest, knocking him backwards and making him stumble. He dropped his weapon and stared in confusion and shock at the blood on his body before realizing that he had been shot.

"Watch out!" Grass yanked Angel just as a shimmering figure jerked behind him. An energy sword appeared out of nowhere, slicing thin air. The elite that appeared after that sword growled and slashed at Grass. It was too quick and she wasn't in any position to defend herself. The slash hit her right below her shoulder. I saw her arm fly sideways with a trail of blood following afterwards. Grass fell to the ground on top of Angel and went unconscious.

By that point I had fired two bursts at the elite, yelling incoherently while I closed in on it. The blue-armored swordsman didn't budge at my gunfire, instead rushing to meet me. Its first attack was an upwards thrust that missed when I ducked backwards. It then attempted to chop my head off, but I had already rolled under the blow. My backup knife was already stabbing for its sword hand while my right hand reached for the huge knife on my lower back. The elite dropped the sword from pain at the same time that I started moving my right hand towards its head. The slash cleaved one jaw off its ugly face and got stuck in the other. I yanked and then stabbed at the ever-unprotected roof of the mouth, driving the sharp steel all the way through the skull and even the armor on top.

"Fuck!"

"Sarge!" Caboose screamed, suddenly right next to me. "We gotta pull back! Zekalwe is on his way, Command is about to detonate the charges remotely!"

"Those assholes," was all I could say.

"Frank, let's go!" Pavel and Claire Winchester were dragging Angel back to safety while Bee emptied both tubes at some unseen enemy. A couple of Rangers confirmed that their lieutenant was dead and cursed before trying to recover his body, one of them was shot in the process. Grass was being helped by Snark and Sergeant Durant, blood from her arm getting both of their armors red.

"Go!" I told Caboose. "I'm right behind you."

I wasn't lying, I didn't intend for that statement to be an untruthful one. I kicked Caboose forward to give him a boost when another swordsman slashed from nowhere. I emptied what was left of my rifle at it to no effect, Ultra-class shields and armor holding with ease. It batted my rifle to the side with ease and drew its sword in an almost slow motion. I took advantage of the momentum from my rifle to sling it to my back and to jump sideways. My right hand was now holding my bloody knife, the smaller backup one was still embedded in the dead elite's hand. The ultra lunged towards me, attempting to gut me with its sword. I don't know how but I managed to sidestep the attack and launch a flimsy stab at the elite. The knife didn't go through the shields, instead just bouncing back. I noticed that nobody was firing at the ultra, instead focusing on retreating, then I realized that there were explosions going off everywhere, explosions from Plasma Launchers and Concussion Rifles. The Rangers were falling back and my squad couldn't help me.

I guess that it sucked for the ultra.

"Focus Sarge," Scarecrow told me. "Focus on your enemy."

"Yeah, but first you have to know where your enemy's at." The way that Schitzo said that made me stop and consider the situation. The way the hair on the back of my neck stood up in account to millennia of survival instinct honed into my genes was another giveaway.

I sidestepped without really needing to and turned at the same time. I was rewarded to see an energy sword slicing through the spot I had been occupying previously. I finished turning to duck underneath another lunge by the ultra. The huge elite tripped on me and fell forward. Before it could react I had slashed at its armpit and the back (or front) of its right knee. The first stab into the armpit was deflected, but the shields were weakened from my fire, my stabbing, and the shrapnel flying around. The second slash cut deep into the elite, at that instant I went for the knee, stabbing half of the blade through.

The other elite wasn't nearly as vulnerable though. The second swordsman, another blue-armored elite, was lunging towards me. It was a weak attack though, the alien must've been afraid to hit its commander with his own blade, so I had plenty of time to roll sideways. I reached for my boot and yanked my knife, from its sheath. The blade made no noise that I could hear, it was well-oiled and the leather sheath was just loose enough.

I jumped forward just as the elite drew its arm back for another attack. An explosive hit the ground next to us, lifting dirt, rock, and dust into the air. Time seemed to slow down to a halt on that moment. There was the bright blue light of the explosion to my right, the elite had its jaws spread open in an angry snarl while its sword shimmered to its back. It seemed like some weird kung-fu pose to me. My knife hand was also drawn to my back, ready for a powerful upwards-stab. I calculated where I could go, it seemed to me like it took forever to do that. My only foolproof option was the open, snarling, roaring mouth of the fuckhead. I went with it.

The sword flashed to my side and I felt my knife on the elite. It took a step backwards and then another one forwards before landing on top of me, I refused to let go of the knife, instead twisting it sideways.

"Frank!"

Pavel's scream seemed so out of place, so full of worry, barely audible. I tried figuring out why he sounded so worried if I had just kicked some serious ass with only my knives.

Then I felt very weak and remembered no more.

* * *

><p><em>Thanks to Sniper Fodder for proof-reading this chapter.<em>

_Well, the mission was flawed from the start. For starters, they lost Mr. Reporter's comic relief and were sent through the subway tunnels. I mean, every single time they go inside subway tunnels they end up facing something terribly dangerous. And then things got worse._

_On a side note, I'd like to tell you that I love writing slow-mo scenes, I love imagining them in my head as I write them._

_Angel was shot several times, Grass got her arm cut off, and Yev's dead. More to come._

_Stay strong._

_-casquis_


	132. Conversations

Chapter CXXXII: Conversations

**October 13, 2544 (UNSC Calendar)/**

**Catamaran City, Catamaran Peninsula, Asilon, Omicron Ebur System**

* * *

><p>"<em>One cannot get tired of the truth."- Socrates<em>

* * *

><p>I half expected to awake in soft fluffiness, brightness all around. When I opened my eyes I would see my dad, my uncle, and Scarecrow waiting for me. They'd be smiling, maybe sadly, but they would be happy to see me. One of them would help me up, probably my dad, looking every bit as young as he had when he died. I imagined that my dad would put his hand on my shoulder and then hug me.<p>

Of course, all this would be happening on a cloud or someplace similar, with bright lights illuminating me from everywhere. For some reason I expected that there'd be buildings nearby, they wouldn't be modern buildings, or even have an actual architectural style. They would be some sort of Roman/Greek style, with open rooms and terraces, maybe some sort of sci-fi thrown into it just to finish it off.

I had been raised in Catholic church, raised to believe that life wasn't everything. All my life I had this thing in the back of my head, telling me that there was a Heaven. I didn't always believe that I would get in there, in fact, at times I was sure that I had a special place in Hell waiting for me. But then again, the church had decreed that Hell wasn't a real place. Some people then started asking what would happen if you died and didn't go into Heaven, but that's besides the issue. Heaven was bound to be in the sky, where else would it be? Some people said that Heaven was whatever you wanted it to be, but for some reason I liked the idea of a place in the clouds, where everyone you knew and everyone you didn't was close by.

I didn't wake up in heaven.

My eyes tried to adjust to the light, or rather, the lack of light. I realized that I didn't have my helmet on when VISR didn't go on. There was blood on my face, my temple was hurting, probably the source of all the blood. I winced a little bit at the pain, my face moving cracked some of the dry blood on my cheeks. I groaned a little bit and rolled my head from side to side, cracking my vertebrae as I did so. I needed to do a quick damage assessment on myself.

"C'mon, c'mon," I muttered, "legs, arms…fuck."

My left arm was spread to the side and pinned under something, I tried moving it, but it was impossible, especially when I was feeling as weak as I was. I grunted and tried rolling on my side, but my left side hurt like hell when I tried. I turned over, using my right hand to try and pry at whatever was keeping my left arm pinned. Enough feeling-around revealed that it was a pile of rocks. That was the realization that I was buried underneath rocks.

"Shit," I cursed, remembering the explosion, the charges, the dam. Nezarian, Grass. "Shit."

There was a rumbling sound over to my right, it alarmed me. It was a sound that a living creature would make.

"Who's out there?!" I called out, reaching for my sidearm. I patted the holster and realized that my pistol wasn't there. That didn't make any sense, I hadn't pulled it out when all things went to hell. It should've still been there. "Who's-"

"I see you are awake."

_Fuck…_

I kept moving my right arm and legs until I found what I was looking for. I rolled my helmet towards me and turned on the flashlights on the helmet. The four miniature bulbs illuminated the small cave we were in. It was a cave, no way in and no way out, roughly some six yards in length and four across. I was in one of the corners and the source of the voice was one the one opposite towards me.

At first I told myself that I had to be dead. There was no way in hell that I would be alive in the same room with an elite unless I was dead. Not a full-fledged ultra to top it off. It was the ultra that I had slashed on the leg and armpit, I could tell by the blood coming from those two spots. It stood up slowly, the ceiling was high enough to allow the alien to fit with little trouble. It was an impressive specimen by any standards, not the tallest that I had seen, not the biggest that I had seen, but it was still enough to stand out.

You see, elites share the broad-shoulders means badass things with us humans. As it stood it walked towards me, limping ever so slightly from the wound on its leg. The elite was unarmed, that much was clear, but it didn't need a weapon to rip my arm form my shoulder and beat me to death with it. It was wearing the white armor that ultras typically wore. There were scratches and marks from shrapnel and bullets that had bounced off, not all of those marks looked to be new. This alien was every bit the veteran that I was.

"What do you want?" I asked, I couldn't come up with anything else to say.

The elite walked to the middle of the room and sat on a rock. It was a pretty big rock that looked like it had to be moved there. It seemed weird how the alien's legs were positioned in front of it, but that wasn't precisely unexpected, seeing as it had backwards-bending knees and all that. It crossed its arms, gripping each forearm with its hands. For an alien gesture, it was strangely human.

"To talk," it said simply. Its voice sounded forced, unnatural. The sound was almost guttural and slightly unnerving.

"To talk?"

The elite seemed to be annoyed at my reply. I honestly had no idea about it, body language was nothing like I was used to. "Your language requires subtle changes in tone to indicate whether a…sentence…is a question or not."

I couldn't help it, I chuckled a little bit. "What's with your…way of talking."

"I've learned this…barbaric language from captured prisoners and transmissions, human. I dare say I speak it better than most of you…insects."

"I don't see it that way," I replied truthfully. "You sound like a dictionary."

"Why wou-" The alien stopped himself with something that sounded uncomfortably close to a sigh of frustration. "That is beside the point, human."

I coughed, this cave was full of dust from, well, everywhere. "Why am I still alive?"

"When we came onto this planet we expected the Jiralhanae to do the job, maybe not well and certainly not exemplarily, but we expected them to get it done. Then they got their ships shot down, one by one."

"Heard about that," I shrugged.

"Then they were on equal ground with you humans. We expected a simple campaign, exterminate the few of you that were left and wait for additional ships from High-"

"High what?"

"Quiet human," it snarled. "I am talking."

"Right you are," I agreed, spreading my right hand sideways in a surrendering gesture. My shoulder started hurting like hell the moment I moved it. I must've been too scared to be in pain when I moved around earlier. The broken collarbone was now hurting.

"Then those imbecilic Jiralhanae managed to lose. To you humans."

"Hey, we do our best," I taunted.

"Silence," it said, waving one hand lazily. Very human indeed. "And now this, just as we are finally forced to interfere in the campaign you show up."

"As I said," I started.

"Quiet," it boomed. "Not only have you managed to guarantee your own death, you only succeed in delaying your extinction."

"Big words for someone buried beneath a ton of rock."

"Big words…" it repeated experimentally.

I rolled my eyes. "It means that you have no right to be conceited. You find yourself in the same position that I do. Oh, and you are about to lose this little campaign of yours."

"As usual, you show ignorance."

"As usual? You don't know me."

"I meant your race," the elite said with a snarling growl. Don't ask me what the hell a snarling growl is, it's pretty much what you imagine it sounds like. "Every single human vermin on this planet will be dead before the sun rises again."

"You have your backs against the sea, you're dead."

"Your forces provide an equal match for the brutes, as you call them, on the ground, but there'll be nothing you can do against the Second Fleet of Eternal Deliverance."

"Second Flee-" I realized just what that meant an instant after I repeated it to myself. My helmet was within reach, I grabbed it and placed it over my head, activating the radio and broadcasting on all frequencies. "To anybody listening, this is Sergeant Castillo from the _Inconvenience._ There is a-" My helmet was pulled from my head violently and tossed to the side.

"There is no way to communicate with anything outside," the elite assured me. "And you have dishonored yourself by going against the one that saved your life."

"You didn't save my life," I countered. "That pillar and that big-ass piece of pavement there saved my life. You see, those are the ones supporting the rocks above, not you."

"If one spares your life, he is saving it."

What can I say? Split chin had a point.

"Fine, I dishonored myself, so what? I'm still stuck in a cave with a split chin."

The elite closed the distance between itself and me in less than a heartbeat, suddenly its four jaws were spread open in front of my face, as if trying to take a bite. Its breath stank. "Careful human," it said. "Do not test my patience."

"You're keeping me alive for a reason," I told it, glancing away from the rows of sharp teeth. "Why? You won't need me as a hostage, you wouldn't use me as a hostage."

The elite moved backwards a little bit. "You are right, I wouldn't stoop that low."

"You'd die," I told it. "I'd certainly use you as a hostage if it meant that I could stay alive."

"Your race is weak, pathetic." The elite then sat back on its rock and examined me carefully. "Still, you are tenacious and you die with honor, even if you don't fight with it."

"Thanks," I chortled. "You are excellent killers." I meant for it to come out as an insult disguised as a compliment but I ended up just complimenting a squid head. Man, I must've hit my head really hard.

"Ha! Flattery will get you nowhere," the elite told me. For some reason I could hear a faint bit of pride behind its tone.

"What's your name?" I asked it, suddenly realizing that I had never once heard an elite called by name. The gargantuan alien seemed to ponder on that question for a while. It seemed to consider whether it should answer me or not, simply staring into the floor while humming. "Are you gonna tell me?"

"I do not see why I should keep my name hidden from you," it replied finally. "After all, knowing who killed you will make it a bigger victory for me. My name is Malke 'Vadamai."

"Gunnery Sergeant Francisco Castillo," I told it, surprising myself. "Most people call me Frank."

"Why?"

"Why what?"

"Why do you allow yourself to be called a shorter form of your given name?" 'Vadamai asked. "You shame yourself by dishonoring your forefathers."

"I honor my forefathers through my actions," I replied. "And allowing my friends to call me Frank is a sign that I respect them." I don't know why I had to explain myself to it. I don't know why I even bothered to.

"Your culture is primitive," Malke muttered, mostly to himself. "Your traditions are the marks of barbarians."

"You really like that word, barbarians," I told it.

"It fits you well," Malke said. "Culturally inferior, militarily inferior. You're overall a lesser race than ours."

"And yet we find ourselves on equal ground," I chuckled. "You are so full of yourself, believing yourself better than us. You're every bit as bad as you make us to be."

"I have killed hundreds of your kind human," it growled. Malke assumed an attack position. "Sangheili are stronger, faster, smarter than you are."

"Only hundreds?" I asked, swallowing my anger. "You should see the corpses of the squid heads that I have killed. If I stacked them up together they would go around this world."

I must've overdone it a little bit, because the alien just sat back and laughed. I can't describe it any differently, it was eerily similar to the sound that we humans made. I was slightly offended that it didn't jump to kill me at the moment. "I believe that you are a warrior worthy of wariness if not respect, Frank." My name sounded weird coming from an alien. "But do not try to provoke me with lies."

Oh, I see what happened, it didn't understand human exaggeration. Well, good for me, I guess. I don't know, I was on uncharted territory here.

"Fine," I said. "Whatever you want." I sighed slowly and cracked my neck again. "You still haven't told me why you kept me alive."

"I do not truly know the answer myself," it admitted. "I guess I was…curious about your race."

I laughed at the alien. "I'm curious about your race too," I admitted. "There's gotta be quicker ways to kill you."

"A warrior's view," it conceded. "It seems to fit you, Imp." Malke tilted its head slightly to the side. "Your race is weak, you can be killed easily. I understand why you would want to know our weaknesses."

"Do you ever get tired of saying that we're weak?"

"One cannot get tired of the truth?"

"Huh, Socrates?"

"What?"

"Nevermind," I said. "Stupid comment." I glanced around nervously, for some reason I didn't want the elite to be offended. If it decided to kill me it would mean that I would be dead. And that would be dead. Bad, I mean bad. "So, you're curious about my race, what do you want to know?"

"Why do you not surrender?" Malke asked bluntly.

"Ha! Do you really have to ask? What kind of coward would choose extinction when we could fight."

"Why do you fight?"

"To survive," I shrugged. "Everyone has the right to live. Human dignity and all that, United Nations. You wouldn't understand."

"Everyone earns the right to live the moment they are born," the elite agreed. "But the prophets have decreed your extinction. You spit in the face of the Forerunners, you will all be left behind when the Great Journey starts. We are just…speeding up that process."

"A million dead covvies said you're doing a pretty bad job at it. And that's just on this planet."

"Those were under Jiralhanae command, it is not our failure."

"You've had countless failures."

"The molten remains of your planets would say otherwise."

"You bastard," I spat, jerking forwards only to be stopped when my left arm pulled me back down. Those stupid rocks wouldn't budge, but I did feel myself slipping a little bit, that meant that I could slide my arm from it if I tried hard enough. And so began my struggle to pull my left arm from the rocks without the fucking squid noticing what I was doing. "I'd like to see you be on my side, you'd go crazy."

"It is a small marvel that you haven't already lost your mind."

"Stronger than you imagine," I assured it, smiling broadly and showing as many teeth as I could. "Ask your dead friends when you join them."

"Denklo was an excellent swordsman," he growled quietly. "That you bested him will bring shame to his lineage."

"He wasn't that good," I shrugged, wincing at the pain that that motion brought. "Wait, was he the first or second swordsman that I killed?"

"Know your place, vermin!"

"I know my place," I replied. "It is in the battlefield, fighting your kind and killing it."

"You do yourself too much honor. I should kill you right now."

"Why don't you?" I taunted, still wriggling my left arm little by little. It was numb and I couldn't feel anything from my elbow onwards.

"I've told you, mere curiosity."

I shook my head in disapproval. "Would you have let me live had I not killed your friends?"

"Denklo was an exemplary swordsman, as good as myself, if not better. And he only had the rank of minor! Imagine what he could've become in the future, he would've cut down thousands of your kind with ease."

"Good thing I killed him then," I shrugged.

"He was but a child, only old enough to have become a swordsman, you ended his life before it could even start."

I lost it. "Ended his life before it could start? What about you? You are the monsters, you are the ones that kill millions of innocents from orbit, burn entire planets for some sick religion. You are the ones that have killed children and infants before they could grow. You are the ones that end lives."

The elite did something very akin to a shrug. "It is the will of the gods."

"Well, your gods are fuckin' wrong."

My right hand had already palmed a rock by the time the elite jumped me and gripped my throat. I banged the alien's wrist twice before it could squeeze and then tossed the rock at the open wound on its armpit. It recoiled from the pain and roared in anger, letting go and putting pressure on its wound. It looked at me angrily before taking a step back.

"You are different than most of your kind," it said. "Most of you fight when facing certain death, that is honorable enough, but I have yet to meet one that fights as cunningly as you."

"Thanks," I said sarcastically. After that there was a large pause in the conversation, I took advantage to slide and try to yank my arm from the rocks. The elite saw what I was doing and shook its head, indicating that he thought my actions were futile. I did manage to pull back an inch or so, but stopped because I didn't want to be spotted. "So, what's with your presence here?"

"I do not understand."

"Your fleets, they're usually segregated."

"Segregated?" Malko moved its jaws experimentally as it repeated the word, he didn't quite get the pronunciation, but it was a good effort regardless.

"Separated. By race."

"The Jiralhanae aren't worthy of so much recognition," it said. "They have gained the- Bah, it does not matter. What would you understand of things bigger than you?"

"Oh, you'd be surprised," I said, wiggling my arm a little bit more.

"We came here to inspect. See that they did the job appropriately." He moved its wounded arm around experimentally, testing its strength. "We would then report to the prophets."

"You know, I killed a prophet once," I said in a conversational tone. "You make a big fuzz about them, they're as easy to kill as unarmed grunts, if not more so."

By this point the elite just shot me a look of anger, it didn't bother trying to kill me again. "You have sealed your fate. The gods will not let you into the Great Journey."

"I thought that they wouldn't let me regardless, you know, being a human and all that."

"Witty, defiant, and stupid. I expected to have an intelligent conversation with you."

"Can't say I expected the same thing," I admitted. "Perhaps an interesting one, but so far you've provided me with nothing but disappointment. You're just a fanatical alien fighting for a different race that doesn't care about you. You're a grunt, you are being used."

"I accept and embrace my role," Malko said, "I know that I am a mere warrior, a tool for the prophets to use as they please if it furthers the Covenant's goals. You should embrace your role in this universe."

"And what? Die?" I shook my head. "I'm going to take down as many of you as I can before my heart stop beating."

"Heart?"

"Yeah, important organ in my body, sends blood all around." I made a fist with my hand. "Boom-boom, boom-boom, boom-boom." With each boom I contracted my fist as if it was a beating heart. "You know?"

"I understand what you are talking about."

"I'm not going to die here," I told it.

It made that chuckle noise again. "You sound so sure of yourself that I almost believe you."

I smiled. I almost believed myself. "You see, the difference between me and you is that I have friends. Right now they are going to be looking for me, they know that I'm alive."

"They have no way of knowing that."

"Oh, but we do," I disagreed. "Every human has devices monitoring their body, we know exactly whenever one dies."

"Why are you telling me this?" it asked. "You should keep things like that secret."

I laughed loudly, the noise echoing and booming in the small cave. "Dead men tell no tales."

The elite took in what I had said, no doubt going over my last statement repeatedly to try and understand it. Eventually it got the message well enough. "Are you threatening me, human? You are not in a position to do that."

"I'm just telling you what's going to happen." At that exact moment the sound of an explosion filled the room and the cavern shook slightly. "See, they're coming for me."

"Or perhaps the Second Fleet has arrived."

"To give us eternal deliverance?" I chuckled. "They're gonna have to get past Brooks before that." I banged my fist on the ground next to me. "That's no easy feat, he's killed more ships than I can count."

"You are a liar. Otherwise you are incapable of basic counting."

"Huh, pretty witty for a squid head."

"Most Imps that I've heard aren't nearly as…eloquent as you."

"Must've been a helluva soldier."

"Better than most," the elite admitted. "It didn't save him. It won't save you."

"You need to rely on others to survive. The ones I rely on are alive, the ones you rely on, well, I killed them." I sighed theatrically. "I told you this already."

"Enough human, you tire me. I will ask a question and you will answer."

This time I sighed for real. My arm was still stuck from the elbow down, but I was making progress. I could now feel something in my hand, but I wasn't sure exactly what it was. I just hoped that it was one of my knives. "Shoot," I told it.

"Your retreat pattern, how does it work?"

"Beyond my paygrade."

"What does that mean?"

"I don't know, only the big guys up top do."

"Understandable," it grunted in agreement.

That was a lie, I knew how the Cole Protocol worked just fine. If they thought that complete randomness was impressive, then we were doing a good job at it.

"Homeworld?"

"Do you really think that you'd know how to find it even if I told you how it's called?" I asked it. "Your star charts are probably nothing like ours." I threw the probably in as caution, we knew that their star charts were different than ours. "There's no way in hell you think that I'd answer those questions."

"For a person that does not believe in the Great Journey, you talk a lot about Hell a lot."

I rolled my eyes but decided to humor him. "I drop into hell for a living, I'm used to it."

"A battlefield isn't hell, impling."

"It's as close as we get to it," I said quietly. I jerked as another explosion resounded. It was louder than before, and it shook the cave even more. "Where's my pistol?" I asked all of a sudden.

Malko reached behind the rock and produced my M6 sidearm. It seemed reluctant to hold the small weapon, keeping it a good distance away from his body and scowling at it. After that he palmed it and tightened his hand around it. There was the sound of metal groaning and then he tossed the bent pistol at my feet. The barrel was at an angle, useless. "There."

"Thanks," I grunted. "That gun had been with me for a while."

"Attachment to objects is primitive and superstitious."

"Hey, where'd you learn to talk like that?" I asked. "Big fancy words and all that?"

"Your languages have been studied and archived. We cross reference them with our translating technology and have equivalent translations. This is how the Sangheili language is structured, of course, speaking this…English is almost an insult to myself."

"Huh." The elite was examining the ceiling, it was now worried that the cave would collapse on us. "Were you always a soldier?" I asked it, buying myself time and distractions.

"As soon as I reached the age I joined the armed forces, as every child must do."

"That explains your numbers," I growled to myself. "Do you ever desire to be anything other than a soldier?"

"I am what the prophets need me to be."

"If they didn't have a need of you, what would you be?"

"Shamed, dishonored, useless."

"No, you do not understand. What would your profession be if you weren't a soldier?" Great, now I felt like a teenage kid making conversation with the girl he liked.

"A sailor," it replied immediately. "Is that the word?"

"Depends, do you mean a crewmember in a non-military ship, or a sailor as in the man on a boat in the ocean."

"That one, the second one," it confirmed.

"Interesting."

"What?"

"Never mind, it's not important."

"Now it's my turn to ask the questions human."

I waved him to go ahead and suppressed a smile when I realized that my left hand was indeed holding a knife. It couldn't be anything other than Tenare's Damascus Steel knife, I'm not sure how I managed to get it to my left hand, but it was still there and I was gripping it tightly. The elite seemed to ponder on his next question for a bit, giving me extra time to shuffle my arm. I was now halfway through my forearm, if not for the darkness, I am sure that the elite would've figured out my intentions quickly.

"Very well, I have my next question."

"I'm waiting."

"Your race has basic understanding of…laser and plasma technology," it stated, it mulled over its words before going ahead. "Yet you still use crude metal weapons for close combat. Not even the Unggoy are that backwards."

"The brutes have no problem with them," I observed, "and you are allies with them."

"Allies, nothing more."

"Of course."

"Answer my question."

I sighed, trying to come up with an answer. "Creating laser knives or plasma knives would be too expensive, we might be able to contain plasma within magnetic fields or have lasers used as weapons, but it is more cost effective to use knives. Those never fail and never," I paused for effect, "run out of battery."

"They're barbaric."

"Barbaric times require barbaric weapons," I told the alien. "With a knife I can do plenty of things, I can cut rope, I can cut my meals, I can scratch plans in the dirt, I can gut an animal." I stared the alien deep in the eyes. "I can gut a squid head."

"I can gut you as well," it informed me, "plasma blades are sharper and deadlier than your…knives."

"Yeah, where are they now?"

"Same place that your knives are," it taunted. It would've been ten times more effective had I not been clutching one big ass knife right now.

"My turn. Your women? Why haven't we seen any females."

"The place of the female is at home, raising children and seeing to the estates. Females are not meant for war."

"Our females fight alongside us," I told it. "Some of the best and bravest soldiers I know are female."

"And yet they die when they could give birth to more warriors."

"They know what they are signing up for. In this war death is almost a given."

"So it would seem," it groaned.

"Just ask your team, all of them are dead."

"Do not give yourself too much credit."

"You were the one that said that I killed a swordsman as good as you. Come on, if you had a sword and I had my knife I'm sure that I could give you a beating. Wait, I already did, how's the cuts?"

Another loud boom rocked the entire cave violently. This time I was able to hear mechanic noises through the walls. They were actually coming to get me. That, or tanks were barreling through, trying to kill whatever was left of the covvies. Either way, it spelled good for me. My arm was almost free, I could just yank myself out if I needed to, I'd probably bang up my fist like hell, but it would be worth it. I could feel the handle of the knife now, the elite was getting angry and I had a feeling that I'd have to use it soon.

"That warrior was a better one than you," he proclaimed. He, it, whatever.

"And yet he's the one whose blood pools on the ground. You seem to be bleeding more than me too," I added. I sighed and shook my head. "You know, if I was in your place I would've executed you the moment I saw you."

"I can still do that, human," it reminded me. "A simple matter of crushing your head."

"My head is harder to crush than you'd think, mostly because of my arms and legs, they tend to get in the way."

"You think you're funny?" it asked, obviously mad.

"No," I said. "I know I am."

Malke 'Vadamai, Elite Ultra wasn't very amused by my attempts at humor. I might've known very little about alien body language, but what little I knew involved knowing when they got extra pissed. I could tell that this one was about to blow up on me. I just needed to get my hand out. I didn't want to tear the skin from my hand and was taking it as slow as I could while still moving. I tried making my hand smaller, but it was hard to squeeze through, especially now that my gloves were almost completely gone. At least that's what the pain indicated.

"My turn," it said. "You move too fast, faster than any other human I've seen. Well, except for one."

I raised an eyebrow, twisting my hand slightly to the side. Malke was now standing up and making it look like it was going to do something. "I'm fast," I said simply.

"And strong. Stronger than any Imp I've seen." It took a step towards me.

My right hand moved around until I grabbed a metal wire. I had seen it before, but I knew that I couldn't do as much damage with it as with my knife, besides, I was saving it for an emergency. "Stop flattering me," I said.

"I've only ever seen a demon move as fast as you."

"A demon?"

"You call them Spartans."

"I'm not one of those freaks," I spat. "I'm a hundred percent human."

"Pity for you. If you weren't then maybe you'd have a chance of getting out of here." It stepped on my right hand, forcing me to let go of the metal wire. I cried in pain. My elbow was still hurting from the rock shrapnel and my collarbone was all but shattered. The pain ran all the way from my wrist to my shoulder. The fucking alien must've sprained it when it stepped on me. It stepped back when another explosion brought down rocks on its shoulders. Now I could hear the mechanic sounds clearly. In fact, I could hear plasma and gunfire.

"They're coming for me," I told it, grunting through the pain. "You're as good as dead. Squid."

Malke put pressure on my wrist, this time I heard cracking. I cried out and cursed at the elite for all I was worth. I was now furiously working my hand. The cave was shaking as something removed the rocks form the top, or the side, I don't know. The elite was looking around, evidently furious that my people had gotten here earlier than his dumbass alien friends. I finally managed to pull my hand free, but kept it by my side.

Suddenly, a small ray of light appeared, lighting up the alien. It covered its eyes at the sudden brightness and roared angrily. I could hear human voices shouting, they sounded worried. It was kind of flattering.

"Huh, looks like I won."

I wasn't prepared for the elite suddenly grabbing my neck and lifting me up until my feet weren't touching the ground. I had seen the same neck lift on countless movies and cartoons, I had seen brutes and elites do it before, I just hadn't been on the receiving end. It banged me against the ceiling, stunning me. I could now hear the voices clearly, they belonged to my squad, I could tell that they were busy fighting off aliens while trying to dig through the rubble. They really did care after all.

Still, there was a more important matter at hand right now. "Why do you bother," I told it. "You're as good as dead anyways."

"I will kill every last one of your men," it told me, sounding completely sure of itself. I knew that he was wrong.

I kicked violently at the elite, hitting it in the chest and belly but not doing any damage. The alien simply stretched its arm to the front, it was amazing that he could keep me, a tall and heavy man in full armor, above the ground while its arm was outstretched. Malke also moved its hand from my jaw to my throat, not constricting but severely limiting the air supply.

"You might be stronger and faster, but you are still weak," it said, tightening its grip with every word. "Your race is pathetic. Even if the prophets hadn't decreed a holy war against you, you would still deserve death."

I kicked again, this time twisting and delivering a nice blow to its jaws with the tip of my right boot. I managed to sneak in a quick breath before the elite slammed me against the wall behind me. I could've really used my helmet at that point.

"You stupid primate!" he boomed angrily. "You are going to die regardless of whether you get out of here."

"Everybody dies," I spat.

"You'll die before your time, much like the rest of your pathetic race. You are weak-willed and stupid. You should know your place."

"I know my place just fine, thank you," I coughed through the vise grip on my throat. I was hitting at the alien's wrist with my right hand, waves of pain with every single punch that I delivered.

"Why do you persist, human?" it asked me. "Why do you bother fighting, why are you not obedient and just lay down and die?" It now pulled me close to its face, its jaws open and its breathing heavy.

"You know us pesky humans," I said, seeing the opening and gripping my knife tightly. "We aim to misbehave." With that I stabbed upwards at the elite, I was weak, tired, and dizzy from the lack of oxygen. Instead of hitting dead center I grazed one of the jaws of the ultra. The cut was still deep enough to make the elite roar out in pain and drop me. We both collapsed to the ground, with it landing next to me, one of its hands pressed against its face. I immediately pounced on top of the alien and prepared for a second and final strike. "Seems like I was right," I taunted it.

Another stabbing motion was all that it took for me to kill the elite. I suddenly felt weak, weaker than I had felt in a very long time. I felt every single scratch and bruise on my body, not to mention the major injuries. My vision started fading despite the increasing amount of light coming into the cave.

"Dead elite, shit, looks like he didn't need our help," Caboose's voice came weakly.

I smiled at that and then went unconscious.

* * *

><p><em>Thanks to Sniper Fodder for proof-reading this chapter.<em>

_Well, first things first. I don't believe Socrates ever said "One cannot get tired from the truth", but in the context of the story it's funny because Frank thought that little Mr. Friendly Elite was quoting Socrates. If I have to explain the joke any further than this I will be disappointed. So let's just pretend that you all got why it's funny that Frank thinks the elite quoted Socrates._

_Now, at first it seemed to me like this chapter wasn't going anywhere, but then I realized that the awkward conversation was exactly right for this chapter. Two completely different philosophies and races meet. What made it interesting though, was that both Frank and Malke are very much alike. Not that any of them would be willing to admit it, but they are both warriors through and through._

_Also, I apologize for blatantly stealing a quote from Serenity. Uncancel Firefly and all that. _

_Please review and stay strong._

_-casquis_


	133. Reckoning

Chapter CXXXIII: Reckoning

**October 13, 2544 (UNSC Calendar)/**

**UNSC **_**Inconvenience,**_** in orbit above Catamaran City, Asilon, Omicron Ebur System**

**Captain Nosmo Brooks**

* * *

><p><em>"I have not yet begun to fight!"- Captain John Paul Jones<em>

* * *

><p>I was bored. I didn't really have much to do. The commanders on the ground had insisted that they be allowed to run their own campaign, I was more than happy to oblige, after all, I am a sailor, not a soldier. Other than observe the battle unfold beneath me there was no other source of entertainment. I had gone through the daily reports and authorized whatever I needed to authorize, but Eliza could handle most of the things going on in the ship well enough, that and all of our contingent was groundside, fighting against the Covenant ground forces. A few of the wounded had already been brought back in Pelican ships, and the rest of them would be on board within a few hours.<p>

I walked around the observation room, I had positioned the ship in a way that allowed me to observe the battle raging on in Catamaran City. The various cameras and telescopes mounted around this glass room were all aimed at the former population center. Several different images were displayed in screens and holograms. While the screens had better resolution, the holograms captured the feel of the battle. A few of the images on display were from satellites, some others came from low-altitude reconnaissance drones overflying the city. The most important ones were the ones that came directly from the battlefield. A few of the screens switched between cameras mounted on Hornets or Falcons, others displayed what a Scorpion driver would see. It was really something to behold. One might say that it could be entertaining. I knew better, I knew that men were fighting and dying down there.

Still I took comfort in the fact that we would be leaving soon. Battlegroup Iowa had been dispatched here from Reach a while ago. The distance between Asilon and Reach meant that it would take some time for the ships to get here, but one of the ships in the fleet had left slipspace to send a message into the system letting us know that they were near. The message had arrived a day ago, it said that the battlegroup would be here next day. It contained more information that I could find useful, but most importantly it contained the orders which would allow me and every single marine, sailor, and soldier under my command to leave this system.

The battle was as good as won, I knew that. I didn't even have to be a military genius or even the military type to know that. In every camera I saw UNSC forces slowly overwhelming Covenant positions. The brute leaders fought fiercely, as befitted their nickname, but they only ended up dying. Grunts, jackals, and drones were easy, they had no morale left, they didn't want to fight anymore. Hunters were treated with extreme care, usually in the form of a small-scale airstrike or a couple of tanks. The alien powerhouses proved to be an even match for two or three squads every time. I smiled when I remembered that not even those monsters could prevent us from winning here. Human victories were rare and costly. This one would prove to be an important one for ONI and for population morale.

That is, if you can call over ninety percent of the planet's population dead a victory.

Despite the spectacle of gunfire and explosions going on in the many holo-tables and screens, there was one small screen that kept my attention. It was currently displaying everything that Staff Sergeant Pavel Klaus could see. He and Reaper Squad had insisted on going back down to confirm that their leader was dead. After the charges were detonated prematurely by Yule, Castillo's suit had stopped transmitting. Everyone considered that to be a sure sign of his death until a single transmission came from his helmet. It was garbled and completely unintelligible, but it was there. Odds were that it was simply a malfunction or some malware, but then Staff Sergeant Klaus got to thinking. His suit hadn't given Castillo a flatline even before it had gone dark. Besides, Frank hadn't been close enough to the explosions to be vaporized. That and the body of an elite would've protected him from the blast and the shrapnel. Suddenly, it was a very real possibility that Castillo could be alive.

Truth be told, I was glad about that. Ever since that moment when he first came on board I had noticed something about him. At first I believed it to be simple dislike, and for a while, it was. Then it was just a sense of wonder that he and his inseparable friend would come back alive after all those missions, even when the rest of their squads died. I shook my head at the memory, ONI sending us on those suicide missions for the sake of field-testing gear. Back then this ship had been no better than a mercenary ship, now it was one of the finest vessels in the Epsilon Eridani fleet. Not many captains could compare their combat records to mine, I am proud to say.

Back to the matter at hand, Klaus' camera. It currently displayed Reaper Squad while engaged in an intense firefight. Well, at least I would've called it intense. The ODSTs seemed at ease, occasionally shouting orders and warnings form one side to the other. I chuckled a little bit at the sight of them blowing up grunts with ease. Those men were a fine unit, as fine as I had ever had the pleasure of serving with. Sure they were hard to handle, but that's why we had our beloved Commander Albaf on board the ship. She had managed to keep them in check more than usual lately, and for that I thanked her. Reaper and their borrowed digging machine were making quick progress through the boardwalk going around the coast. They were intent to dig out their friend from the last-known location of his helmet. I hope that they found him alive, something inside me told me that they would.

I stopped looking at that screen in particular and instead focused on another small screen. This one displayed most of the Rangers. A few of them had been KIA when fighting the elite ambush. Most important of those was Lieutenant Nezarian. He was a fine man and a better officer, the kind of person that every father would be happy to marry his daughter to. His death had been a hard blow to the platoon, but they would get over it, they were good men.

Right now they didn't look like it. Most of them had their heads hanging in between their knees. True, half of them were wounded and pumped full of painkillers, but I could tell that the death of their leader had hit them hard. A few men paced around, chatting quietly with one another, others made sure that the ones too injured to even sit up were fine and without pain. The three current squad leaders were conferring with one another, probably deciding on the next leader. It was a simple enough problem, the ranking NCO was Staff Sergeant Waylon Durant. The man seemed to be a good leader, even if a little bit unimaginative. That wasn't necessarily a bad thing, he wouldn't go off and create a terribly complicated plan just for the sake of innovation. He would be a good stand in for the time being. Not that it would matter, the First Ranger Platoon would be pulling back and boarding the ship before they could fight another time. I had seen to that personally.

My eyes went back to the screen displaying Reaper. Two of them had been injured seriously and Corporal Lamberti was still in between life and death. While Lance Corporal Seppa's injury was an unfortunate turn of events, she would get a free prosthetic once we were back in Reach, she might even get a very expensive high-end one considering her service record. Well, the point here was that only four men had gone back to rescue their leader. Klaus, Konstantinov, Avninder, and Agnarsson, were fighting their way through the enemy forces. A few of the Rangers had volunteered to go help them. I didn't recall their names, but it was the only survivor from Nezarian's first platoon as well as the only woman in the unit. Klaus and Durant had talked over the issue and decided against sending Rangers in. They had done enough for Reaper. At least that was the excuse.

"Captain, I am sorry to disturb you, but I just wanted to let you know that our probe has picked up slipspace disruptions at the edge of the system."

"Thank you Eliza," I told the AI's hologram. "Confirm that they are indeed Iowa and then send a hailing."

"Confirming." It took a while, but eventually the AI talked again. "Seven ships, one carrier, two destroyers, and four frigates. Battlegroup Iowa."  
>"Excellent, how long ago did they arrive?"<p>

"We received the ping just now, sir."

"And accounting for light distance they would be…"

"Just five hours away."

I grunted to myself. Sometimes I wished that we could do intra-system jumps. The Covenant could and it damn well knew it. On the other hand, we had to use boosters to travel through any system.

"Thank you Eliza, anything else that I should be aware of?"

"I don't believe so Captain. I see that you're observing everything that's going on."

"That will be all."

The AI's hologram flickered and disappeared after the woman on display curtsied.

I chuckled a little bit. I had been a captain before the _Inconvenience_ and had command of my own ship before that even. I had worked with quite a few different AIs, but none of them were quite like Eliza. She was a person. There was no other way to describe her, she had personality, friendships, people she liked better than others, she had an attitude, and a whole lot more. I'm pretty sure that she could feel affection for some more than others, something AIs weren't supposed to do. But how else would you explain all those times that she had personally interfered with the battle, or redirected supplies, or done something that bent the rules just a bit to save someone she liked. I was glad to have her on the ship, even gladder that she still had some years left before being decommissioned.

I immediately went back to the holograms. One of the tables was showing me a sector of the city that was already occupied by UNSC forces. I changed it so that it would display this solar system and the relative position of Battlegroup Iowa when compared to us. There was a big timer on the edge of the display. There was still some time left before anything important happened. I could spend it chewing Yule out for risking my men's safety, but technically speaking he outranked me. The stupid asshole had seemed like a nice guy at first.

My only real option was to catch some sleep. I was tired and it wouldn't do anybody any good if I was sleepy and sloppy later on. The bridge crew could handle anything coming our way right now and Eliza could help them. Yeah, sleep sounded good right about now.

It was a short trip from the observation room to my quarters. I considered pouring myself a stiff one before going to sleep, but I just crashed on my bed. My last thought before I fell asleep was that I was lucky to have the softest bed on the entire ship.

* * *

><p>"Captain, captain."<p>

"I'm up," I told the AI. "What's wrong?"

"Additional slipspace ruptures have been detected."

"Crap," I grunted as I jumped up from my bed. "Did you inform Battlegroup Iowa?"

"Yes, Captain, I have also sent a warning to gorund forces on Asilon."

I was already putting on my boots and lacing them. "Everyone to battle stations," I ordered her. "I want every single member of B and Echo up here within five hours." I was already making my way to the bridge, alarms were ringing around the ship now. "Eliza, I want the MAC cannon heated up and ready to fire, same with Archer pods. How many nukes do we have left?"

"Two Shiva missiles, Captain. Payload is fifty megatons on each one."

"Could be worse," I muttered. "But not by much. What's your estimate on their numbers?"

"Sir, we still haven't confirmed that the disruptions were caused by Covenant ships."

"I'm not stupid Eliza, and neither are you."

"Well, considering the size of the disruptions, I would say at least thirty ships."

"Thirty!"

"Yes, sir. I'm sorry."

"Goddamit. I want everybody here in four hours tops, I need you to start plotting jumps in compliance with the Cole Protocol, send messages to Iowa and warn them to fall back. They might have missed the distortions."

"Messages are out, I'll get right to plotting the jumps."

"Make it quick."

The guard at the bridge saluted as I walked by, I quickly returned the salute and went inside, already the bridge was fully crewed. Lieutenants Moses Gallo and Mort Plank served as helmsman and communication's officer respectively. I had Ensign Richard Leif serving as the ship integrity officer. Well, Leif's position was really just another word for damage control officer. Our radar and probes operator was another ensign, fresh-faced Lockie Muggia. He was apparently one of the best out there, but you had to be in order to graduate as a radar operator. All in all, they were a fine bunch.

"Captain, you hear?" Gallo asked me. "Seems like we might be in for some trouble.

"Some is small," Plank told him. "Thirty ships? Not even us can hold out against them."

"Maybe if we funneled them in between a moon and a planet?" Gallo suggested.

"No," I interrupted. "The moon would need to be less than a kilometer away from the planet. We're going to jump out of the system as soon as we have all of our crew and complement on board."

"We're gonna be cutting it close Captain," Leif said.

I didn't say anything, instead just turning to face Muggia. "Ensign, what can you tell me?"

"Right now? Not much, sir. We only have the initial information from the probes on the edge of the system, I already sent a few smaller probes to meet the enemy formation, they should give us a forty minutes heads up." He paused and looked at his consoles. "Anything we can do right now?"

"No," I replied. "We can wait and that's about it."

"Captain, there have been developments on the situation?"

"Which situation?" I asked irritably.

"The one regarding Reaper-1."

"What happened?"

"Some time ago a second signal was transmitted, this one contained a few words that we were actually able to understand. Amongst those words were enemy fleet."

My eyes went wide open. "Are you telling me he's a prisoner of war?"

"Not anymore he's not," the AI shrugged. "Reaper Squad dug through the pile of debris found Francisco, he's seriously injured but alive."

"At least there's some good news," Leif noted. "I just wish it was related to us somehow."

"It's always about him," Gallo agreed.

"I've been here for a few months and even I know that," Muggia added.

I chuckled to myself, sometimes it seemed like that was true. Not here, of course, we didn't have time for anything outside of the ship, we barely even had time for anything outside the bridge.

"Sir, the first Pelicans with wounded have arrived," Ensign Leif informed me. "The other ones will take much longer, some of units in Echo and B are still engaged in combat down there."

I rubbed my temples. "Will you let Yule and Staunton know that there's an enemy fleet headed inbound, they are welcome to hitch a ride on board our ship. Wait, scratch that. Don't tell them that until we have every single member on board. Tell him to pull back his troops." I sighed. "This planet is doomed."

"And after all the effort that we went through…" Lieutenant Plank muttered. "Fucking aliens."

"Language," I said lazily. "You're supposed to be an officer."

"Yes, sir, sorry, sir."

At that time everybody started working on their respective consoles. Tapping commands on their keyboards and occasionally voicing them through headsets. Eliza popped in on occasion to update me on the situation. The evacuation of our troops was going way too slow. Here I was, sitting in my comfortable command chair, the holo-table in front of me displaying our ship orbiting the planet and the estimated position of Battlegroup Iowa and the Covenant forces. At one point I opened a screen to see how Castillo was doing, he looked terrible. It seemed unusual how many times he returned looking like this. The right side of his face was covered with blood coming from a cut right above and in front of his temple, his collarbone was shattered and there was something wrong with his elbow. His left hand was completely devoid of skin and he had broken ribs on his left side. The man was a wreck.

I immediately switched to different cameras that would allow me to personally inspect how the evacuation of our troops was going. Already some of the units on Echo were pulling back from combat, B was still fighting, but the orders had arrived for them to fall back. They'd have to collapse upon themselves and evacuate to the Pelicans. Note that that wasn't really necessary, combat was low intensity down there, but they didn't want to be surprised by a sudden enemy attack. Major Hernandez was playing it safe, as he always had. It seemed unusual that we had an officer that played it safe and was more of a traditionalist in this ship. The _Inconvenience_ was full of crazies that most would call death-seekers. The impressive part about it is that it worked.

"Captain! Slipspace rupture detected, it's close!" Muggia suddenly yelled

"Eliza, get me a firing solution," I ordered. "Gallo, turn the ship around, get us a bead on that ship. Muggia, what are we dealing with here?"

"Initial specs paint it as a corvette, one of the small ones."

I sighed with relief. "Must be just a scout. We can handle it."

"Captain, I have a firing solution," Eliza announced.

"Helmsman?"

"Just about," he replied. "And ready."

"Fire."

The standard MAC that is mounted on UNSC frigates fires 600-ton chunk of depleted uranium at a speed of thirty kilometers per second. I watched on the displays as the giant bullet flew through space and towards the new arrival. It was too far away for a visual image, but its momentum was carrying it straight into the path of the slug. That's the good thing about MAC rounds, they are almost impossible to pin on the screen unless you're the one that fired it.

"We have a hit," Muggia announced. "I repeat, a confirmed hit."

"Eliza, send the Longsword squadron to pick of anything that might've survived, we wouldn't want any Phantoms biting our ass."

"Shoot the lifeboats, got it," Eliza nodded. "Should I also tell them to fall into a defensive pattern around our ship?"

"Yes, we're going to need them."

"Racked up another kill," Leif said, the glee evident in his tone. "How many ships do you think have a record similar to ours?"

"Every single _Marathon_-class cruiser," Gallo informed him. "Several destroyers, a few of the carriers."

"Shut up."

"Helmsman, reposition the ship above Catamaran City, I want a sustainable orbit, as low as we can go without the need for constant thrust."

"Physics don't exactly work like that Captain," he replied cheekily.

"Well, I guess that just makes your orders harder Lieutenant."

"Look at me, defying the laws of physics, you think they would pay me extra for doing that."

I laughed a little bit at that, knowing full well that it would be the last time I laughed for a while. With an enemy fleet numbering thirty I had no reason to even smile. This ship could hold back a _CCS_-class battlecuiser for just long enough to fall back and jump out of the system. We could handle smaller ships and unshielded ones with relative ease, but we weren't meant to be in the middle of things.

All we had to do now was to wait. So that's exactly what we did, we waited. There was an occasional status update from someone on occasion, but mostly we just stared at the consoles intently in complete silence. That was the part I hated, the waiting. I know that commanders didn't have to wait before we started deploying warships in space. Sure, in World War Two they were edgy and jumpy because they didn't know where the enemy was. That's just the thing, I knew where the enemy was and knew that they were coming here, I just didn't know when or how. Well, I guess I knew how, thirty of them could only come in one way. With overwhelming force.

"Captain, we're within communication range of Battlegroup Iowa," Lieutenant Plank announced. "I'm opening a channel right now."  
>A screen appeared directly in front of me. It depicted a grizzly man in his fifties. The caption on the corner of the screen marked him as a rear admiral (lower half). His name was Charles Perry. I promptly saluted from my chair and he saluted back. "Admiral," I greeted.<p>

"Captain, pleasure to see you. Your AI just briefed us on the situation. Gotta say, I've been going through this reports and it sounds like the colonials down there went through hell."

_Ah, so he's an Earth-born. _I nodded. "Yes, sir. Over ninety percent of the population is dead. The rest is going to be soon if we don't do anything about it."  
>He sighed heavily. "Captain, I'm afraid we can't do anything. If these reports are right, Asilon doesn't have any kind of slipspace-capable ships. Sure, we might be able to fit several hundred colonists into the ships, maybe even thousands, but there's no way to feed them for the required time, we don't even have that many spare cryo pods."<p>

"I understand Admiral, I came to a similar conclusion myself."

He nodded slowly. "In that case we would be leaving the colony to its certain death."

"Yes Admiral," I agreed. "It wouldn't be the first time that I've been forced to leave a planet behind. Doesn't mean I like it, but my men come first."

"Very well Captain," he replied. "I will position my ships in a defensive pattern. I'll see what I can do about evacuating local military. I'm already sending dropships down there. Think they'll leave the planet?"

"I think they're going to tell us to go get their families if they have any." I thought about my own statement. "Sir, many of the men and women fighting down there have lost everyone they knew during the initial attacks."

"So you're saying it's likely that they will choose to evacuate?"

"Yes."

"It's a shame that civilian survivors are scattered all over the planet," he groaned. "Otherwise we might have been able to pick up some."

"You said that we didn't have enough space for them."

"Yeah, you're right, you're right," Rear Admiral Perry waved me away. "I just dislike the situation intensely. We thought that we were going to help rebuild a colony, instead we find ourselves leaving it to die."

I didn't say anything, I wouldn't know where to start. Leaving a million people to die wasn't something that any man could live with. At least it wouldn't have been before the war. Now it was common, I knew several officers with pasts like that. The club was becoming bigger and bigger. To top it all off, the only ones that benefited from this were the booze companies. There was no easier way to wash away the anger than alcohol.

I'm not ashamed to admit that I am an alcoholic, I've been trying to stop, but only because it worries my daughter. Ever since Castillo and Klaus saved Claire I've been trying to reconnect with her. If she thinks that I should stop drinking I'll give it a shot. I'll put on a smile if it means I get to spend more time with her. No man should be away from his family for that long. I barely saw her as it is.

"Captain," Eliza came in. "More slipspace ruptures, they're just at the edge of our MAC."

I groaned in annoyance. "How many?"

"All of them."

"Speed up the evacuation, redirect additional dropships to B and Echo, we can leave nonessential equipment behind. What's the status on the injured Rangers and Reaper?"

"They should be able to move."

"Get them out of the planet. Admiral?"

"Yes Captain?" he asked, there was chatter behind his back, Perry looked worried.

"Orders?"

He waited for a moment. "Same as before. I'm sending two frigates and a destroyer in case we need a holding action. Captain, you need to speed up this evacuation, there's no way I plan to go against thirty enemy ships, we don't have the firepower."

"Captain! We have four battlecruisers moving inbound!" Muggia said.

"Dammit, Admiral, I'm going to need those ships to hurry. Eliza, I want you to redirect all Pelicans flying towards us to Admiral Perry's ship."

"Done."

"Plasma torpedoes inbound." Muggia announced.

"Evasive action," I ordered. "Ready the thrusters, heat up the MAC, I need every single Archer pod open and ready to fire."

"Boosting towards the torpedoes, sir," Gallo announced. "We sidestep on your signal."

I looked at the cameras intently, switching to the holographic displays quickly to see the distance between the torpedoes and us. This was a risky maneuver, but our only option in a situation like this. As soon as the torpedoes appeared in the sensors I told the helmsman to get ready. A few seconds later I gave the order.

"First one missed," Leif announced. "Seco-"

The entire ship shook violently, explosions were clearly audible through the hull and I almost fell off my ship.

"Damage report!"

Plank tapped into his console furiously. "Direct impact with our right thruster. Hit the armor plate, it's all gone now. Thruster is still useful, but just barely. Decks-"  
>Gallo yelled something as he yanked the ship to one side. It fell weird, doing such an abrupt turn and not feeling the change in gravity or the force. The ship just turned at an angel that would've been impossible in atmosphere.<p>

"They're firing at us with plasma turrets."

"Empty our starboard tubes!" I yelled. "Eliza!"

"On it," the AI replied, its voice cool and collected. "Should I fire the Shivas?"

"Yes, get solutions on the nearest cruiser, I want the first detonation to take its shields out and the second one to kill it for good. Get me a MAC solution on the second nearest one."

"Sir, more torpedoes coming at us."

"Gallo, do your best."

He was a good helmsman, a brilliant pilot that could move this ship around like a fighter. Unfortunately, the ship wasn't built for that, we couldn't sustain the full speed for extended periods of time, plus it made powering up our main weapon more difficult.

"First Shiva is a direct hit!" Muggia said. "Enemy ship's shields are flickering."  
>"Captain, they got the second missile," Eliza informed us all.<p>

"Change target to that ship," I grunted. "Keep firing the Archers at the other two, we're going to need their PDGs and turrets to be distracted."  
>Right after I finished saying that we got nicked by one of the plasma turrets. It was a sustained burst at full power and it melted away all of our armor on the starboard side. Or thrusters and weapons there were gone.<p>

"Fire the MAC!" I ordered immediately afterwards. The entire ship shook and rumbled. "Damage report."

"Extensive," Leif said simply. He didn't need to expand on that one, our ship was done for.

"Sir," Muggia said. "Three UNSC ships are jumping into the fight."

_Maybe not just yet._

"Good, fall back and get in line with them, I want every single person on board to make way for the escape pods, I want this ship empty before- Holy fuck."

Holy fuck indeed. It wasn't very often that one saw an assault carrier up close. It was even less common to survive and tell the tale. The Covenant ship was five kilometers in length and ten times as deadly as the smaller battlecruisers. It quickly went to action. Two plasma beams flew directly at the cruiser, the heavyweight in our small wolf pack flotilla. The ship detonated as its armor boiled away, there wasn't even a final transmission.

"Muggia?"

"No pods released."

"Shit, fall back," I ordered. "Tell those two frigates to retreat, we can't do anything here!"  
>The ship was slowly turning around and speeding away. We had no choice, even with only one thruster we might still have a chance. One of the other frigates got bisected by the plasma turrets. The other one turned around and left. I hadn't even gotten around to talking to their respective captains, and now we were fleeing.<p>

"Faster helmsman."

"I'm going my best, Captain. They hit us pretty good."

_Come on._

"Plasma missiles on our tail!"

There was a moment of silence in the bridge. Well, alarms were blaring and consoles were giving warnings, but nobody said anything for a couple of seconds.

"_Let 'em blow_

_Let 'em blow"_

Gallo started singing, the tone in his melodic voice contrasting the situation we found ourselves in right now. It wasn't long before the rest of the bridge crew joined him.

_Let the four winds blow_

_Standing tall looking good_

_Ought to march in Hollywood_

_Hold your head and hold it high_

_The UNSC Navy is marching by_

_We're in the front and not in the rear _

_That's the way we do it here_

By the end I found myself singing along. I had learned the cadence when I was in officer training school back in Luna. It brought back good memories that song. I smiled and nodded at the bridge crew, smiling at them. I stepped from my chair and stood up straight before saluting them. They all stood up and saluted me in return. It was a gesture of respect that I initiated the salute. They were good men, it was such a shame.

* * *

><p><strong>Warrant Officer Marina Bogdanovic<strong>

Things were supposed to be simple. Simple and straightforward. In fact, they were supposed to be so simple that I wouldn't need to be involved. Zekalwe would pull Reaper out and I would run sorties, evacuating the guys from B and Echo. It had gone well, things usually started out that way with Reaper missions. I had been part of so many of them that I should've known better, something always disrupts the flow. It is usually something that relates to their actions a little bit more, perhaps that's why I wasn't prepared for this.

B Company had been almost completely evacuated by now, ever since we got the heads up that the covvies were coming for us we had been working like crazy, speeding from here to the _Inconvenience_ and back again, trying to get everybody off-planet. The only problem is that now the covvies were dropping reinforcements. By keeping Captain Brooks distracted they had managed to sneak in several Spirit dropships. With most of our troops being pulled back, they couldn't have arrived at a worse time.

"Marina, the _Inconvenience_ is redirecting us to the carrier," Sheppard told me. "Sounds bad."

"Nothing we can do about it Vince," I replied. "Are there any other units in the vicinity that we can evacuate?"

"Negative, most of the remaining units are slated for pickup by other birds."

"That's it then, we're out of here."

"Good call ma'am," Vince agreed. "They're dropping reinforcements now, don't want to stay around for too long. Sucks for the locals."

"Indeed it does."

My pre-flight had already been done, but I still re-checked everything quickly before going. I didn't call them and ask Shep for confirmation, but I did glance at all my instruments before taking off. The rock under my wheels crunched as the weight of my girl was removed from them. The ruined husks of buildings around me were all that remained of Catamaran City. That and a big-ass crater now filled to the brim with muddy water, which in turn was filled with corpses.

The roar of the engines was somewhat comforting, but it couldn't take away the fact that we would be leaving behind hundreds of thousands of human souls behind. I could live with that, I just don't know for how long.

"Shit."

"What?" I asked.

"Comms went down, they're blocking us."

"All comms?" I pressured, checking my instruments again for any sign that something was wrong.

"Negative on that one, just the long-range ones, can't communicate with anything outside of the city."  
>"That includes satellites and high altitude recon drones," I groaned. "Vince, get me long-range radar and try to set up a network with other dropships, they wouldn't be jamming us if they didn't need to."<p>

"I'm working on it," he said as he worked on his consoles.

I piloted the Pelican at a low altitude and low speed, the new developments could mean that we had Covenant reinforcements inbound. They could hardly mean anything else.

"Shit," Vince repeated, this time louder and with more frustration. "We've got bogeys, dozens of banshees all over the place."

"How the hell did they get here so fast?" I growled. "I'm going to need you on the gun, strap yourself."

Vince groaned loudly and stood up from his chair. "Just don't do any barrel rolls, last time I almost threw up."

"Just get over there."

"Yes ma'am."

I looked above and to the sides, trying to spot the bulbous shape of a Banshee. My radar showed nothing, but sometimes they could sneak past long-range warnings. Sometimes I wish I had an in-atmosphere fighter, those things could take Banshees out without the need to be on the same time zone. As good as the Pelican could be, it wasn't a bird designed to engage in dogfights. At least it had some fairly tough armor.

"Marina! Marina, you copy?"

"I copy Zekalwe, what's wrong?"

"Got a bunch of covvie fliers on my ass, won't be able to make it to Reaper like this."

"Want me to take 'em out?"

"Negative, I can shake them, just pick up your ex for me, will ya?"

"You know, you don't have to refer to him as my ex every single time you mention him," I told him.

"Sorry, pick up Cas. Gotta go." He cut off the conversation and the cockpit went uncomfortably quiet.

The displays on my consoles told me that half a dozen enemy fliers were pursuing Zekalwe's bird. He was good, but nobody was that good. I shook myself from those thoughts and instead floored it, speeding towards Reaper Squad's evacuation point. They were near the coast, supposedly meeting in a small roundabout that was just large enough for my ship to fit in. This wasn't good, Frank was probably missing all of his limbs and I didn't have any additional medical equipment on my cargo hold, Zekalwe was the one with all the medics in his blood tray.

"Reaper Squad come in, this is Mary's Little Lamb."

"Marina! I copy," Pavel came in, he sounded beyond tired.

"Pavel, Zekalwe won't be able to make it, you guys are stuck with me."  
>"Is he ok?"<p>

I glanced at the radar screen that showed his ship. "For now." It was only a small lie.

Pavel sighed heavily, I could almost picture him doing his trademark shrug. "We're almost at the evacuation point, we should be there in a minute or two."  
>"Hot evac?"<p>

"Nothing you're not used to," he replied. "Do you have any kind additional medical equipment?"

"No, just the scanners and standard kit."

"Scanners should do it, believe it or not Frank is mostly intact. Well, that would probably be stretching it, but he's surprisingly good for having had a couple of tons of rock dropped on top of him."

"Rather unsurprising if you ask me," Rob said in the background.

"Quiet Bee, keep carrying the board. Marina, thanks."

"No problem guys, it's not like I'm keeping count." I actually was keeping count.

None of the banshees broke off to pursue us, making my life a hell of a lot easier. I just kept my craft close to the ground and avoided buildings or exceptionally large piles of debris. I opened the rear hatch and heard Vince cock the gun on the back, he was pretty gun with the chaingun, I hoped that he didn't need to use it much.

"Marina, this is going to become a hot evac," Pavel came in. "Very hot."

It wasn't long before I saw what he was talking about. I could see four moving silhouettes, two of them were carrying Frank on a backboard. I couldn't spot the digger that they had taken with them. If the covvies had managed to destroy it then it meant that they had some serious firepower. That meant that my ship was vulnerable. I looked further back and saw what they were running from. Three Ghosts were in hot pursuit and Rob was reloading his rocket launcher. I fired one missile at each scout vehicle and watched as they blew up. Pavel waved a quick thanks at me and kept running. Behind the five men were at least fifty enemy footsoldiers.

"Vince, I'm flipping her around, targets should be painted on your helmet!"

"Locked and loaded ma'am," he replied loudly. "Just give me the angle."

I flipped the ship around and kept it hovering at ten meters while Sheppard unloaded a little storm of lead on the pursuers. I could hear the weapon roaring loudly just behind my back. I tried to keep my eyes on the screens and on my dashboard in case I had to pull up or something. I felt a couple of hits on my ship, mostly small ones, but if they were targeting us then I had to get out of here a whole lot faster.

"Marina, they're close enough now!"

"Got it!" I replied, hitting the controls and bringing the Pelican to the ground.

"Hop in, hop in!" Sheppard urged Reaper. "Come on, we have to get- oof!"

"Sheppard? What happened?"

"He's hit!" Snark replied. "Pavel, the gun!"

I heard no reply, but the heavy AIE-486H Heavy Machine Gun on the back started firing again.

"Get us out of here!"

I immediately moved forward, gaining altitude and only just clearing the buildings surrounding the roundabout. Some colorful plasma flew past my cockpit, but nothing significant hit us. I kept on throttling it, headed almost directly up, I wanted to get out of this planet's atmosphere as soon as possible. I closed the hatches on the rear and sealed the Pelican before we were halfway through.

"How's Vince?" I asked, concerned for his fate.

"Needle to the belly, it detonated inside."

"Goddamit!" I exclaimed. "Will he be ok?"

"I don't know," Caboose replied, "I'm working on him, but it's a mess in there."

"Shit," I cursed. I said nothing and kept my eyes on the display that showed the status of the comms. It wasn't long before we broke out of the enemy jammers and could communicate with the _Inconvenience._ "Eliza, this is Warrant Officer Bogdanovic, what's the situation over there?"  
>Nothing, just static.<p>

"Eliza! Come in!"

Again I heard nothing but static.

"Warrant Officer Bogdanovic!" an unfamiliar voice came in. "This is Specialist Winchester, do you copy?"

"I copy Specialist. What the hell happened?"

"The ship's gone, only a few of us made it out, and most of those are landing on the planet," the woman on the line sighed. "I'll make this brief. We need someone to tow our escape pod, we have five KIAs inside."

"Five? What happened."

"Explosion right before we left. Shrapnel got the pilot and I have no idea how to handle this thing, nobody else does."

"I guess I can make the detour," I muttered, checking her position in the display. "Any additional pods that might need to be helped?"

"Not that I know of," she admitted. "We thought we were goners before we picked up your transmission."

"Stay put, we're making a small detour," I told the guys on the back. "Shouldn't take too long."

It didn't, we were able to move quite fast in a frictionless environment. I nearly crashed into the escape pod, flipping around and matching speeds with it. It wasn't moving very fast, thankfully. Otherwise I would've had to make calculations and it would've taken a very long while to get away from there. I used the magnetic clamps on the tail of my Pelican to drag the pod behind. If it hadn't been for the lack of gravity, my girl wouldn't have been able to pull the weight.

"We got you," I told the occupants of the pod, even though they already knew that. "UNSC _Iowa_, this is Warrant Officer Marina Bogdanovic, do you copy?"

"This is the _Iowa_, we copy. Are you a member of this battlegroup?"

"Negative, I'm a pilot on board the _Inconvenience_, requesting permission to land my Pelican on your ship."

There was a momentary pause. "Permission granted, you've got baggage with you."

"Affirmative, an escape pod, _Bumblebee_-class. Only four survivors inside."

"Copy that," the radioman told me. "Opening Hangar Six, don't scratch the paint."

I smiled at the playful banter before the reality of what had just happened hit me. The _Inconvenience _had been destroyed. If what Winchester had said was true then most of the soldiers and marines had been killed with the ship. The evacuation was almost complete when the ship was gone. The ship was gone. The _Inconvenience_ was gone. It hardly seemed possible. After all this years of managing to stay alive through everything that could be thrown at us, up to and including a monstrous supercarrier.

And now it was gone.

Along with most everybody in it.

Vince had a hole in his gut, Frank was beat up, his two friends were on the verge of death and had probably been killed on board the _Inconvenience_. They weren't the only ones that would be MIA. This sucked. It sucked really bad.

* * *

><p><em>Thanks to Sniper Fodder for proof-reading this chapter.<em>

_Damn, it got worse._

_This chapter consists of POVs from two characters that had never been protagonists. I wanted to do one on Brooks because he's every bit as much of a hero as Reaper Squad and then some, he just never gets enough credit given to him by Frank. Marina may not be as heroic, but her role and opinions are very important in the story. That's probably the main reason why I chose those two characters._

_The _Inconvenience_ is probably gone, and with it most of the crew. We know that Reaper, Marina, and maybe Shep survived. Specialist Winchester also snuck a ride on board an escape pod, so she's good too, but Hardwick, Zekalwe, and even Hanna are all unaccounted for. Who else made it? All that and more on the next episode of... THE LIFE!_

_Sorry, I just had to do that. Regarding General Yule from two chapters back, who would've thought that such a reasonable authority figure would end up being such a dick? Now, why exactly is Frank alive and mostly intact? The answer is simple, because a story without a protagonist isn't exactly interesting. Oh, and because he's lucky. Luck is a recurring theme in the Halo series. John-117 has always been told that he is lucky and in every game, book, or graphic novel someone beats the odds. Frank usually does just that with style. Right now, not so much._

_I'd just love it if you guys took the time to review the chapter and tell me what you think about it. I particularly liked the last section on Brooks' POV, perhaps a bit cliché, but heartfelt nonetheless. Hope you enjoyed this._

_Stay strong._

_-casquis_


	134. A Semester Abroad

Chapter CXXXIV: A Semester Abroad

**December 25, 2544 (UNSC Calendar)/two months later**

**Udinia, Paris IV, Paris System**

* * *

><p><em>"You can't patch up a wounded soldier with a band aid."- Michael Conolly<em>

* * *

><p>It was sort of ironic, the snow was already melting away. Or it would be if there was any snow on the city. There was snow outside of it. There were still some piles of snow packed up on the curb and on the corners of buildings, but you could leave with just a sweater on and be comfortable. Spring was beginning on Paris IV and it was Christmas. Traditionally Christmas was during winter, both Earth and Reach had it during that season, but we couldn't control the tilt of other colonized planets, so most planets got it during another season. The originally Christian holiday had become almost a poly-religious one after a couple centuries of pop culture exposure. The church wasn't very happy about that. The toy stores were.<p>

It wasn't a time of joy for me, I was angry, as angry as I had ever been. Well, maybe that's a stretch, but I can tell you I was pretty damn pissed, angry enough to have people keep a reasonable distance from me. I had a few reasons to be happy, namely that Cam and Lamberti had made it out of the _Inconvenience_ before it blew up. Some nurse had put them on the same gurney and jumped them into a Pelican just before it left the ship.

The nurse had died.

After having been on intensive care for a couple of weeks they finally let me out here. I was shellshocked. Most of us were. My squad, Marina, and Claire had made it out safe, even if their psyches were as damaged as mine was. Horace, Captain Brooks, Albaf, Wilkins, Doc Zhivago, and Sergeant Durant hadn't made it out in time. Emily Hardwick hadn't made it out. Out of all the officers from the infantry forces only Lieutenant Darbinian had survived. The asshole had climbed on a HEV pod in my drop bay and launched himself. When I heard about it I was too surprised to be angry. Now I was just happy that he was alive.

But I had gotten over the shock of having almost every single person I knew being killed when I saw Corpsman Hanna Lockley coming to my hospital room to visit me. It was not a silver lining, it was probably the best damn thing that ever happened to me. Having someone come back from the dead is every bit as emotional as they make it out to be in the movies. She was pretty happy too, but her entire unit had been wiped out save for Darbinian and a couple of wounded guys. All her close friends in Echo Company were dead. So was everyone else.

The _Iowa _had to leave back to Reach, give a report and a debrief and report back for duty. Everybody else had to leave with it.

Not me, the ship psychiatrist had given me a diagnosis that wasn't exactly a good one, in light of my past history and the fact that I hadn't been taking my pills for a very long time now I was given several months of paid leave.

You'd think I would enjoy it, but being in a strange planet with no friends and being constantly psychoanalyzed and taken to see shrinks isn't exactly a vacation. I still had a couple months of therapy to go if I wanted to return to active duty. At first I had seen the shrink that had first analyzed my fucked up head when I last came here. He was pleasant enough and remembered me by name. He asked how I was doing and then proceeded to talk to me about my hallucinations.

It was nice, being able to tell someone that I was now seeing my dead squad mate as well as my dead father. I was lucky I didn't have any dead ex-girlfriends because otherwise I would've been hallucinating them, and I think that seeing Layla alive and taunting me was more than I could've taken. But it was still early, Emily could pop up for all I knew.

So I had talked to Doctor Crowe. He had listened and tapped down some notes. It had been a while before he finally reached a consensus and decided that he still didn't know exactly what I had. A mix between paranoid schizophrenia and multiple personality disorder was the top contender. He was still a little surprised that I could properly function with all those things going on in my brain. He gave me pills and tried to coach me into being able to make my hallucinations disappear at will. It was harder than you'd think when Schitzo hadn't showed up for months now. It sucked.

While I was diagnosed (technically speaking), I still had a long time to go with Crowe, he'd be my own personal therapist for a while. ONI had gotten involved in this nasty little piece of business and had paid for all the sessions as well as for a little apartment that I could stay in. I was thankful for that, but it meant that I had to report to another ONI type about my mental problems. While the guy was trained in nine different types of psychology, he wasn't a shrink, he was just an agent that reported to his superiors.

For something that had been sitting right in front of me for years now, it sure did take me a long time to see it.

I had never had any sort of problems before someone decided that it would be a smart idea to pump me full of some batshit crazy stuff to allegedly make me better than even the best soldier. That by itself didn't mean anything, but ONI was awfully eager to keep me healthy. It wasn't unusual for Section-III to simply discard a project that they had thrown billions of credits into the moment they decided that it wasn't exactly what they expected. Anybody else with a head as fucked up as mine would have been dismissed and maybe given some money to keep quiet. Hell, perhaps they would've even killed me.

They desperately wanted me to work, at least that's what I told myself. There was no other explanation for it.

That's what I was thinking as I walked through the street, a thin scarf covering my mouth to keep all the dirty air out and maybe filter the oxygen going into my lungs a little bit. I was wearing the same kind of clothes that I had been wearing for the past months, jeans and a long-sleeves shirt, gray. The UNSC had given me some money to buy clothing when I told them that the only thing that I could wear was my battle armor.

That and the guys at the _Iowa_ had given me cargo pants and a Marines shirt in addition to combat boots.

I had used that money to buy myself three changes of clothes and a cheap coat. Well, that was the plan, I only bought myself two changes of clothes and a coat, the rest I spent on a bottle of fine liquor. Don't worry, I didn't get it for myself, I immediately packed it and sent it to the CO of the UNSC _Iowa_. I was thankful for his ship. He had lost half his battlegroup only to get us out alive.

Well, that's pretty much the story. Woke up in a strange ship after having been partially fixed while unconscious, finding out that God (or luck) had decided to spare those closest to me, being sent to Paris IV for leave, finding out that my leave would be extended because I needed a shrink, and buying some fancy booze for the captain of the ship that saved me. The only problem was that my account in Reach needed to be linked to the banks here, so I was moneyless for the first few days.

Oh man, this sucked balls.

I walked into a diner that I had been going to after every session with Doctor Crowe. It advertised itself as a place that sold good old-fashioned American food. It certainly had to be old-fashioned if they referred to it as American instead of Urnan. Well, maybe I'm being a hypocrite here, I still call myself a Mexican despite having been born in the URNA. But technically speaking I am both, and the food was also American and Urnan.

Sorry, I'm rambling now. I walked inside the diner and sat down at my usual table. I felt kind of naked without weapons on me. When I say without weapons I mean without firearms. I never left home without my knife, least of all now that I was without friends or even acquaintances. I waved down a waitress and she came over to take my order. I ordered the same thing that I had been for the last few days, a hamburger and a milkshake.

"So the usual then?" the waitress asked me with a smile. She was very pretty, the retro waitress outfit that she wore only accentuated her features. It didn't hurt that the top three buttons of her blouse were undone. She probably got great tips all the time.

I nodded and gave her a smile, it was probably the first time I had smiled on the whole day. "The usual," I confirmed, handing her back the menu and allowing myself to slouch on the soft plush seats that the booth had.

I pulled out my phone while I waited, regretting buying it more and more every time. Sure, it looked old-fashioned and cool, but it was simply a useless piece of plastic. I could've gotten a smaller one for the same prize. Plus, this one didn't come with the in-ear things that you could wear at all times. I sighed to myself and tapped away at the holographic projection, avoiding being hit by rocks and jumping over logs.

"There you go," the waitress said after a few minutes, bringing me both my greasy burger and my malty milkshake. As unhealthy as it looked, I knew that I wouldn't regret eating them one bit. Besides, being in the military meant free health care, so who cares?

I smiled again and examined her nametag. "Thank you, Katie."

"Ayers, Katie Ayers," she replied with a beaming smile. "You've been here every day for the past week. How long are you staying?"

Man was she pretty. "How do you know I'm not a local?"

She smiled again, showing perfect teeth. "It's evident that you're not from here. For starters you cough too much."

"Maybe I'm sick."

"Maybe," she agreed. "But my sharp detective eyes tell me that you're wearing the same clothes you wore yesterday."

"I've got two of these," I said. It was the truth. For some reason, I was enjoying the conversation, or maybe just the company.

"That's unlikely. So, are you a refugee?"

"Something like that," I told her. "Many of those guys here?"

"Not in Udinia, but there's little villages popping around all over the countryside."

"Huh, I didn't know that."

"There you go, not a local."

I smiled again. "Didn't we clear that already?"

"So, are you going to tell me your name, Mister Refugee?"

"Frank Castillo, Gunnery Sergeant."

She raised her eyebrows in surprise and then shook her head in disbelief. "I thought that you military guys were supposed to be all clean-cut and stuff. Are you on active duty?"

"Yeah," I said. The truth was, I hadn't shaven in all the time that I was here and during the whole time in Asilon never once took a blade to my face. I now had one truly scraggly beard of two and something months on me. I thought it looked good. "I'm actually doing some rehabilitation right now."

"Oh really?" she asked. That seemed to snag her attention. Even more. "Wounded in action?"

I put my best, smoothest, sexiest face on and leaned slightly towards her. "Can't talk about it darling, it's classified."

It worked, Katie The Waitress giggled at that and smiled once again. She looked like she was about to say something before an angry voice reminded her that she was still working. Katie just turned back to face me and shrugged before taking off to attend another patron.

The burger was every bit as good as last time and the milkshake was both thick and tasty. It was a pretty good meal, and it would also guilt me into going to the gym after this.

Funny, I care so much about the way I look that I still manage to find a gym no matter where I am. To be honest, I don't know what I would do with myself if I got a disfiguring injuries. The scars in my back, arms, and ribs are stories, half a face molten off wouldn't make for an amusing tale. I did my best to interrupt that train of thought and resumed eating my burger. The meat was tasty even though I could tell that it was vat-grown, the bacon, on the other hand, was every bit as delicious as it was natural.

I finished my whole hamburger and then drank what was left of my milkshake before sitting back and patting myself on the belly. Man, it had been a great meal. I finished up and paid the bill, leaving the same amount of money in tips that I had been leaving for the past days. You know, I thought about that one for a long while. Harmlessly flirting with a waitress was one thing, but going any further was cheating. In the end I decided not to send any mixed signals.

Any more mixed signals.

Damn, nice going there, Frank.

So it became a routine. I'd wake up in the morning and do my morning run like a good military man, after that I'd return to my small apartment for some breakfast and stay there for an hour and a half or so, watching television or reading. Maybe both. After that break I'd catch a bus or public transport to get to the insane asylum. I still felt like I was at the beginning of a bad movie every time I walked in, it looked every bit the part of an insane asylum, it was rather frustrating to see those iron-wrought gates with the big fancy letters on top. But after a while I got used to it. I was only going there once a day and for most of the time I was inside a very nice office.

It wasn't long before I started getting used to the routine and it took an even shorter amount of time to start liking it. I mean, I was having conversations with a professional that I didn't have to pay for, I frequented a diner that served incredible food and drinks that also happened to have a beautiful waitress that I could also talk to. Other than that I had a lot of free time which I could use to just relax, read, or watch television. I went to the gym regularly, keeping myself in shape and making a couple of friends at the gym and I went to a local bar on occasion where I made friends with some of the other regulars. It had only been five months since I had arrived here and I already felt like I had a life. When it hit me that I would have to leave in just three weeks.

"Three weeks?" Katie asked, obviously sad. I'm ashamed to admit that I felt good when I realized that she would miss me.

"And I'll be gone," I confirmed. It felt weird, I usually had an early dinner in the diner, now I was still in there and they were about to close down. Katie was sitting in the booth opposite from me, we had had a very long conversation about non-trivial stuff and she kept stealing my fries. Whenever she leaned forward to grab one her shirt would fall forward just enough to show me some cleavage. She was wearing a black bra.

_Is she doing it on purpose._

"Only three weeks?" she asked again. "Are you ever going to come back?"

I looked away from her puppy-dog eyes and took a large bite of my second cheeseburger of the day. It seemed to lose its taste when I looked back into her eyes. I really did have a weak spot for pretty eyes. All the while I had to keep remembering that I had a girlfriend back home.

_Do you? I mean, it's been six months._

I sighed. "I don't know, I'll probably be back at some point or other, but I don't know when. It'll probably be a while."

"But, I mean-"

"Hey," I stopped her. She was only becoming cuter by the second. "Three weeks are a long time, besides, you get to throw me a going away party."

"Really? But I wouldn't even know where to start!"

I rubbed my chin, my beard was now neatly trimmed but still way past regulation length. "Yeah, it'd have to be pretty small."

Katie leaned forward and looked me in the eyes. "How small?" she asked in a quiet voice, almost a whisper.

You see, at that moment I was tempted. I could've said that she could make it as small as she wanted and given her the go signal. I could've moved back a little bit and told her that it couldn't be that small a party. I saw myself saying both of them at the same time and my brain just seemed to spark and I fumbled over my words. That never happened to me. Sure, I was often nervous with women, but never so much that I couldn't speak.

On one hand, I had never actually broken up with Hanna, and I did love her. True, she hadn't replied to any of the two messages that I sent her, and that did make me slightly angry. On the other hand, it _had_ been almost six months of not seeing her, there was probably a reason why she hadn't contacted me, and I would've heard if she had been killed in action. So this was it. Hanna hadn't made an effort to contact me, that meant something. Katie was sending some pretty obvious hints. If I had just behaved like a regular person and not flirted back with her I could've avoided all of this.

Goddamit. Either way I was an asshole. One way I lead her on for months, the other I might be cheating on her.

"As small as you want it to be," I replied.

_Well, fuck._

She smiled and I forgot all about it. Well, maybe my dick forgot all about it. Well, this was bound to be interesting. Hell, you could make a romantic comedy out of it, the one where the guy is the asshole. Yup, that's me.

Her smile became a grin and I melted into a puddle of goo. "Great! It's going to be great!"  
><em>Sure it is…<em>

Before either of us could say anything else the manager walked up to our table and told me that they were closing down and that I had to leave. I shrugged and paid for my two burgers, quickly swiping my card over the table and then standing up. I did my best to avoid looking as nervous and worried as I was feeling and then gave Katie a smile. "I'll see you tomorrow then."

"You'd better be here every day before you leave," she told me. "Or else."

At that I actually laughed. "Sure, bye."

At that moment she stepped up from the booth and leaned forward to give me a kiss. I let her do it and I realized that I was going to cheat on my girlfriend. At that time I didn't care. I really liked this girl and she seemed to like me too, besides, it had been six months without me even kissing anybody. I know that that's what a teenager would say, but at the time that's exactly what I felt.

I quickly returned the kiss before she pulled away and smiled at me. I stepped outside of the diner and walked for a block before pausing on a corner.

"Frank, you're a terrible person."

* * *

><p>She looked nice. I wished that I had better-looking clothing on me, but I didn't really want to spend my money. Besides, somebody could've asked me why the hell I had decided to buy stuff that made me look nice when I had absolutely no reason to. Yeah, the reason I didn't buy any new clothes was guilt, and yet I was still going into a going-away party that would've been called a date under any other circumstances. I'm not making excuses for what I did, I'm just describing it to you. Right before I met up with Katie I was giving myself shit for going through with this and kept telling myself that I would tell her that I had a girlfriend the moment she showed.<p>

And of course she showed up looking the most beautiful I had ever seen her. For a woman that was probably the most beautiful that I had ever seen, that was really something.

"Wow," I said.

She beamed and smiled prettily. "I'll take that as a compliment."

"You should. You _really_ should."

And just like that, my girlfriend went to the back of my mind and I forgot all about my guilt.

I walked outside the door of my tiny rental apartment, trying to use my body to hide my unmade bed, candy wrappers, and dirty clothes from view. I had worn one of my two pairs of jeans, one of my two shirts, my combat boots, and the unnecessarily expensive coat that I had bought. I felt like she was out of my league just by standing next to her. You already know that I have a big ego and that I'm usually confident about myself, I'm not going to lie about it, I know it and you guys know it. At that moment I felt like I was seriously over my head. It probably sounds conceited or dickish when I say it, but I had never felt that way.

"I see that you brought out your fanciest clothes," she teased, running her hands along the flaps of my coat and then patting my chest. My stomach lurched at that.

"You're right, maybe I should've bought something."

Katie just shook her head. "How you look doesn't matter. Besides, I think you look rather…dashing."

"Well, men do like to be called dashing," I admitted, thanking her for the compliment. It put me more at ease and gave me back some of my traditional self confidence. Well, _that_ sounded dickish.

"Come on," Katie told me, waving me towards the elevator and looking giddy. It gave me some reassurance that she was happy in this situation. Seeing her happy made me happy.

When we stepped out it was surprisingly cold. I had gone through half a standard year, the orbital period of Paris IV was shorter, that meant that six months was enough to go through two and a half seasons. I arrived here at the end of winter, it was now mid-autumn again, cold breezes and light showers were plenty around, but today was probably the coldest day that we'd had in several months. Normally I would've hated it, today it was the best thing that could've happened to me.

The moment we walked out the door a breeze hit us, blowing Katie's hair into her face and making her hold on to her knit hat. Unlike me, she was wearing thin leggings that did nothing to stop the wind. On top of that she had a dress-like shirt that went just below her butt and a short jacket on top. I wasn't exactly dressed for the weather, but my coat helped a lot with the wind, and in turn, the cold.

I pressed my chin against my chest, suddenly wishing that I had brought a cap or hat to keep my head warm. I cursed myself for my lack of foresight but then I felt Katie snuggling up against me for warmth. She put her arm around mine and pressed herself against me. It was a wonderful feeling. We said nothing as we walked the streets of Udinia. I had long since become used to the smog and pollution all around me and just reveled in the moment instead of focusing on the stinging sensation on my nose and throat. After all, you've got to look on the bright side of life, right?

Funny thing to hear from a cynical Marine such as myself, but at that time I was happy.

"Where are we going?" I asked Katie after going two blocks.

"Hmmm," was her only replied as she pressed herself tighter against me.

That made my smile even bigger than it already was, if that was possible. I pulled my hand out from my pocket and then put my arm around her shoulders, holding onto her upper arm with my hand. I've said it before and I'm going to say it again after this, at that time I just felt like I was where I wanted to be for the rest of my life. Sadly that wasn't a possibility. I would be leaving in two days and it was unlikely that I would come back more than twice a decade. Paris IV was a huge colony, maybe even as populated as Reach, but it wasn't a producer of important goods or a transport hub. It was just like a big city that happened to be out of the way.

After walking for some twenty minutes Katie stopped and pulled me towards a bench. This bench in particular was near the edge of a small bridge that overlooked a very long fountain, it was currently off, but the water reflected the lights from the buildings all around. It was as romantic as it could get in this city, perhaps the clearly visible line of smog ruined the illusion, but at that point I didn't care.

After a long while of silence, with Katie leaning against me I finally talked. "Was this the plan all along?"

Katie muttered something and shuffled her head from my shoulder to my chest. "I made reservations at this fancy restaurant, a friend told me it was great and super romantic."

"Romantic?" I asked in an exaggerated voice. "Did you have ulterior motives?"

That actually got a small laugh from her and she turned her head and looked at me. Her lips were awfully close to mine. "What if I did?" she asked, playing along. "What would that make me?"

I smiled back at her. "A woman of taste."

This time her laugh was not as small. She laughed for a while and pressed her forehead against mine. "You, Frank, you have a huge ego. Did everybody ever tell you that?"

"More than once," I admitted. "Doesn't seem to change anything though." Both of us laughed some more, even though it wasn't that funny. After we stopped I went on. "After that romantic dinner what did you have planned?"

"This walk," she revealed. Katie sighed and pursed her lips to the side. "I don't know why I didn't walk there first, walking with you just seemed so…"

"Right?" I finished, not even caring how corny I sounded.

"Right."

By that point we were so close that we didn't even have to move to kiss. Well, not at first. Katie turned her whole body so that she was facing me as opposed to lying against me. For a while we just kissed. There was no groping, no rubbing, no petting of any kind. It was very PG-13 if you ask me. I didn't really mind, I just wanted to enjoy my time here with her to the fullest, and this was a very fine way to do just that. But much like my stay here, it couldn't last forever. Unlike it, the good part came after that.

We walked back to her apartment very slowly, occasionally stopping to kiss some more. We alternated between holding hands and walking arm in arm. It took a lot longer to get to her house than it should've. Still, we got there and went inside. To be honest, her place was exactly what you'd expect a waitress in her mid-twenties to have. It was not exactly big and the furniture was obviously secondhand, but at that point I didn't care. It was about then that things started getting physical. In a good way of course.

It didn't take that long for both of us to find each other on her couch. After that, it took even less time for me to remove her leggings and for Katie to take my shirt off. I got little shivers as she ran her hands along my back. She seemed pretty surprised too, my back was a mess of scars from over a decade of combat. The biggest scar was the one that the elite in the fancy armor gave me in Jericho VII, running diagonally across my back.

"What happened?"

"Energy sword," I replied. She most certainly knew what that was, it was the most symbolic weapon of the Covenant, even ONI censors couldn't completely block the flow of information, besides, the swords served to make people hate the elites more.

"Here?"

"Plasma rifle," I told her, running my hands along her thighs. "I'll tell you all about them later."  
>She smiled and pulled herself back so that she could remove her dress over her head. At that time I just smiled back and let nature take its course.<p>

* * *

><p>"And here?"<p>

"OW, that tickles," I exclaimed, shuffling away from her fingers. "I got my ribs replaced."

"But if your real ribs aren't there why does it tickle?" Katie asked.

"My skin is still there, same with the nerve endings. The only advantage of these is that they probably will never break."

"I can't believe I'm still finding new ones," she mused to herself.

I chortled. "Ha! Sometimes I forget how I got some of these myself."

"Showoff," she teased. "I bet you say that to all the girls."

"Only the special ones," I assured her.

She propped herself up on her elbow. "Ones? Has there been more than me?"

"Some things are best left unsaid," I told her. At this point the last person in the world that I wanted to think about was Hanna. Or Layla, or Marina. Hell I didn't want to think of what anybody back in Reach would think about what I was doing right now. So I suppressed my thoughts and just focused on enjoying the moment. I felt guilty when it wasn't that hard a thing to do.

"Can't you stay here for longer?"

"No," I said firmly. "You know I'd love to, but-"

"But treason is punishable by death and going AWOL is considered treason."

I poked her nose. "Exactly."

Katie rolled around in her bed. "You know, I can't believe that you never asked me out before I did."

I groaned. "I'm sorry, I am. It's just-"

"What?" she pressed.

I couldn't tell her the truth, I could barely live with it myself. It was a lot easier for me to think that there was nothing wrong with what I was doing. "I was only going to be here for six months. The moment I realized that I liked you I decided it would be easier to keep you as a friend, to keep things simple when I left." It wasn't exactly a lie, but it wasn't the whole truth either. It had been just over twenty-four hours since we had first stepped outside of my apartment. We had spent most of them in her place, just leaving a couple of times to get meals and my things form my apartment. One would expect a day packed with sex, but for the most part we just talked, laughed, and watched movies. She liked cuddling a lot, and I didn't really mind a beautiful woman leaning against me. Of course, there had been quite a bit of sex too. "You have no idea how much I regret not doing it."  
>"Fine, don't get all worked up," she muttered.<p>

"I'm not-" I started before I realized she was only kidding. "Not cool."

Katie laughed and kissed me. "When will you be back?"

"I don't know. I know that I'm being assigned to another ship, but I don't know what ship, what fleet, what anything. Trust me, if I can ever come for a visit, I will."

"I'll hold you to that. And I'll check the casualty lists."

"You know how to spell my last name?" I asked.

"Yeah, memorized it."

"I wish I could tell you that you don't have to check them, but after…But I'm not so sure now." I pressed my head against her. "What time is it?"

"We still have some time," she replied.

"I have to report to base at sunrise," I told her. "And base is pretty far away."

"In that case you only have five minutes." When I looked at Katie her eyes were tearing up. It made me feel pretty darn bad, putting that together with my guilt I had trouble keeping a straight face.

"It's time for me to go then," I said sadly. I slung my legs down to the floor and started putting my socks on. Katie hugged my chest and kissed my neck. "Don't tempt me," I told her jokingly.

"But I do want to tempt you," she replied, "I don't want you to go."

After my socks I put on my underwear and pants. It was pretty hard to get my jeans on with Katie trying to drag me back to bed. It took some effort, but after kissing her hands I managed to get her to unclasp them and let me stand up. I put on my shirt and then grabbed my coat and my duffel bag. I turned around and looked at her. She was crying a little bit now, and it was taking all of my self-control not to sniffle. Yes, that sounded unmanly, but it's true.

"I'm going to miss you," she said.

"I'm going to miss you too," I replied.

Katie stood up and gave me a long kiss, putting her hand on the back of my head and pulling me against her. I returned the kiss with passion, dropping my coat and holding onto her waist. After a while I pulled back and sighed. I went down to pick up my coat again and stroked her cheek, feeling the wetness that the tears had left.

"This isn't goodbye," I assured her.

"It feels like it."

"We'll meet again. I promise."

She smiled, it seemed forced and sad. "I'll see you later, then."

I smiled back. "I'll see you later."

I left before any of us could say anything else or find an excuse for me to say here. I had already ordered a cab, and a driverless one was waiting for me outside. I walked towards it and tossed my stuff inside before going in and shutting the door. "Where to?" it asked me.

"Udinia Naval Base," I replied. "And make it quick."

It was pretty early in the morning, and there were only a few cars outside. It didn't take long for the taxi to leave the city proper and reach the outskirts. Udinia Naval Base was right outside the city, it was a mix between an actual base, a drydock, and a space port. From my window I could see several windows as well as a few frigates parked in the distance. Already small resupply craft were darting towards space to supply ships in orbit anchored to the battlestars or space stations.

"We have arrived at your chosen destination," the cab said.

"I can see that," I replied. "Thanks."

I only had one bag with me, so I cleared customs relatively quickly. There were only a few other marines and troopers slated to travel back to Reach, so we boarded a small transport ship. Nobody knew each other, so everybody kept to themselves. Once we were inside the ship we had a quick breakfast and we were allowed to take showers before being ordered to climb into the cryo pods. While I was taking my clothes off and climbing inside the tank I saw something that I had been expecting for a while now.

"Oh Frank, I'm glad that you're returning to your old self. Are you gonna tell her?"

I looked away from Schitzo and leaned back on the cryogenic tank, ignoring my subconscious. That is really hard to do, you know. The door closed above me and I suddenly started feeling drowsy. I was knocked out while my head revolved around the issue. What the hell was I going to do?

* * *

><p><em>So, this is the first chapter that Sniper Fodder hasn't proof-read in a while. hat is because Sniper Fodder could barely work on my chapters since he got himself a new job, don't think that he was a crappy proof-reader because he wasn't. This chapter in particular and maybe all of the following ones were proof-read by Alshep and SilasWhitfield.<em>

_So thanks to Alshep and SilasWhitfield for proof-reading this chapter._

_Now, as for the chapter itself. Interesting, huh? Guess that Frank doesn't have any redeeming qualities after all? Dick? Check. Superdick? Check. Unfaithful? Check. Yup, he pretty much sucks, but at least he sucks as a person because of the right questions. The reason I skipped so much time during this chapter was because I'm not exactly an expert on psychiatry or psychology and didn't want to drag this any longer than necessary, just understand that in addition to hallucinations Frank is also getting a pretty serious case of a PTSD-like disease._

_And yes, because _I_ am a dick, you won't be finding out more about the rest of Reaper until next chapter. Just know, because I'm not that much of a dick I'll try to hurry it up for you guys in order to thank you for all your kind reviews._

_Now that you mention reviews, I'd sure love more of those :)_

_Remember to stay strong, my friends._

_-casquis_


	135. Stranger in a Strange Land

Chapter CXXXV: Stranger in a Strange Land

**February 6, 2545 (UNSC Calendar)/one month later**

**Anchor-2, in orbit above Reach, Epsilon Eridani System**

* * *

><p><em>"Ever read that book? About the man that returns home after decades of being away, fighting a war or something. Yeah, I always felt like a stranger when i returned, I just never felt like a fucking alien."<em>

* * *

><p>Ok, maybe I should've just written it off as me being on Reach as opposed to Anchor-2, but I decided to start this here, so I guess you'll have to deal with it.<p>

The station, being one of the _Anchor_-class stations, was abuzz with activity. The moment I was kicked out of the transport ship I found myself surrounded by techs and repair crews all moving around like ants. Mostly they were refitting some ships that had just arrived from patrolling other systems or fixing a few of the ones that had survived the Covenant. On the massive hangar bay I could see Longsword fighters and other smaller craft being worked on for maintenance. The crews didn't seem to pay us any mind, they probably just thought of us as a nuisance that could be tolerated. A few of them elbowed their way past me as I went through, but most just kept a berth and ignored me. It probably didn't help that I was wearing standard marine fatigues, my all blacks had been lost with the _Inconvenience._

I really didn't have much to do while waiting to be cleared to fly down to Reach. I confirmed that my armor and whatever was left of my weapons was packed inside one of the cargo freighters and that it would be shipped to the mailroom in the Bonaparte Marine Base in New Alexandria. I hated the idea of going down there to get my things, but it was technically the base that I was assigned to. Once that little matter was cleared up I was finally allowed to hop onto one of the Pelicans that would fly me down to the planet.

New Alexandria Naval Base was the official name, but it had originally been named after Jaime Batista, a renowned officer during the Rainforest Wars. He was a renowned tactician and a father to all those that served under him. I wonder what he would think of somebody deciding to change the name of the biggest thing dedicated to his memory for the sake of simplicity.

Probably as pissed as I felt trying to figure out why the hell no one had come to pick me up.

I mean, they were supposed to know when I got here, I had sent several messages to Pavel and the rest of the squad. Some of them had even bothered with a reply. I know that I'm not exactly a shining example of punctuality, but I can tell you right now that I never would've left Pavel hanging if he returned form a six-month stint with a shrink. The three-day nirvana with that one particular waitress called Katie Ayers didn't count. It was a secret that I would rather keep to myself for the time being. Already I was doing a marvelous job at forgetting all about it and burying it in the deepest, darkest recesses of my mind. I'm not even kidding, the only thing balancing out my anger was my giddiness and excitedness about seeing Hanna again.

_Man, I should've been one of those guys that can get many wives. That would solve so many problems._

"Or an open relationship," Schitzo suggested. "But then again, we weren't really the kind to give. More of a taker. As in give and take."

"He gets it," Scarecrow sighed. "And what's that about 'we'?"

_Shut up, both of you._

The two of them disappeared when I turned my head to look at an approaching troop transport Warthog. The massive polycrete surface that served as multiple hangars and runways extended in every direction, but this 'Hog in particular came from the direction opposite New Alexandria. That in itself was unusual enough, but a statuesque beauty with dark hair and perfect makeup stepping down from the wheel was the cherry on top. I was now officially confused.

_Wait…_I paused and examined the woman in uniform. She was wearing the so-called informal dress version. "Camilla?"

"Good to see you Frank," she replied with a warm smile. "The beard suits you."

I stroked the hair covering my cheeks and smiled. "Thanks. Your hair…"

"Long story. I'll tell you on the way. Oh, and I was kidding about the beard."

"On the way to where?"

"Bonaparte Marine Base."

I raised my eyebrow inquisitively. "Why exactly would be going there?"

"Your things," she explained, hopping back on the driver's seat. "And I work there now."

"You what?" I asked. "Why?"

She raised her right arm. Well, it wasn't exactly hers, but you got my meaning. It looked exactly how you'd expect a regular arm to look like. It had the texture and the shape exactly right. That's where similarities ended. Instead of being the same color as Grass' skin, it was carbon black with a hexagonal pattern. There were no nails on the hand either. "It's hard enough to get back into service when you're missing an entire limb," Cam told me, speeding up and driving away from my previous position, "it's even harder to join when someone doesn't want you to."

"What happened?"

"Well, as you know," she started, her eyes straight ahead. "I am what you would call…well, my appearance is…I don't know hot to say it, but-"

"Yes Cam, you're freaking gorgeous, we all know that."

I could swear that I saw her blushing, but she hadn't done that for a while. No Helljumper did after a couple of years. "Yeah, well, my looks got me a job."

"Really?" I asked her. "What job?"

"For starters, I got promoted."

"What?!" I exclaimed. "Congratulations Corporal!"

"It's sergeant, actually. They said it sounded more professional."

"More professional?"

She sighed. "I'm supposedly a liaison now, whatever the hell that means. I'm supposed to be an aide and inform the upper ups on how we grunts would react to certain new rules and changes."

"Ok, that sounds like a smart idea," I conceded.

"Well, that, and I'm going to be a spokesperson."

I laughed. "Damn, I wouldn't be surprised if they asked you to do photo shoots for the Corps magazine."

"There isn't a Corps magazine, Frank," Camilla told me, chuckling.

"I know, Sergeant," I told her. "Just messing around."

As she took a turn leading into the highway that ran through New Alexandria I switched topics and asked her a different question. "Where's Pavel?"

"Some things happened while you were gone Frank," Cam said. "He's not dead," she quickly added.

"Then?"

"He just came back from deployment, he's spending time with his family."

I huffed. "You know, I kind of expected for you guys to just stay here for a while until I returned."

"Not everything turns around you Frank," she said firmly.

"Yeah, sometimes it seems like it."

She looked at me quizzically. "I don't know whether you're flattering yourself or your six months with the shrink weren't enough."

"I don't know," I shrugged, scratching my beard. "Maybe both. Angel?"

Camilla sighed and shook her head. "He was given an honorable discharge. He had been talking about leaving the Corps."  
>"He never told me," I said.<p>

"He thought you'd disapprove," she informed me. "But he did want to leave the military, talked about the usual stuff, family and kids."  
>I laughed. "Somehow that doesn't seem like him."<p>

"That's what I said," she agreed. "Well, he got discharged and then…well, he disappeared."

"You haven't heard of him?"

"It's not that," she said. "It's just that he's gone. His previous name is still there, but I think that he might've made himself a new identity."

"Put those skills to use. Why?"

"Beats me, probably didn't want to go back in the Corps."

"Damn," I cursed. "Think we could track him?"

"With a couple of AIs analyzing every single image from city superintendent cameras. Potentially we could, but for all I know he could be on Earth right now."

"Maybe later we'll find him," I said, knowing that it probably wasn't going to happen, at least not soon.

"Maybe…"

"His injuries?"

"That's probably what drove him to run away," Camilla said simply. "His whole torso was a bloody mess. I didn't see anything 'cause I was unconscious. You know, losing my arm and all that."

"I sort of understand," I smiled, patting my own fake ribs. "I think."

"Well, Robbie said that it looked like a bloody hamburger. They didn't know if he was going to make it."

"Well, I'm glad that he did." I looked outside of the Warthog and examined the buildings flashing by. "So, Pavel is getting funky with his wife and Angel is probably in a hacker cave doing odd jobs for criminals. Could be worse."

"That's true," Cam agreed. She opened her mouth to say something and then looked straight ahead, overtaking a sports car.

"What?" I asked.

"Nothing."

"What?" I pressed.

"Nothing!" she snapped.

I raised an eyebrow in surprise. "Is there a problem Grass?"

"You missed the funerals Frank," she finally said. "All of them."

I looked at her, but Camilla still kept her eyes focused on the road. "Do you think I didn't want to be there?" When she didn't reply I pressed her. "Honestly, do you really think that? Because if you believe for a second that I didn't want to be here I'll get myself another ride right now."  
>She groaned. "You know I didn't mean it like that." Camilla sighed as she turned to enter a tunnel. "Everyone was there, everyone but you. So few of us made it out alive Frank, it was hard that you weren't here."<p>

"I didn't have a choice," I reminded her. "I'm not that in there, remember."

"Yeah, I remember."

I waited until we left the tunnel to talk again. "How are you doing?"

"I'm fine."

"Come on," I pressed. "Yev was my friend too."

"I don't want to talk about it," she snapped. "I'm just fine."

"Where's he buried?" I asked her after a few seconds.

"You mean where there's a tombstone with his name."

I rolled my eyes and suppressed a smile. It wasn't a mean smile, it was just that I thought Yevgeny would find that attitude slightly amusing. "Yes, that's what I mean."

"He's here in Reach," she revealed. "Buried in the New Alexandria Armed Forces Cemetery, same as everybody else."

"Want to swing by for a visit?" I asked. "Let me rephrase that. Do you want to join me for a visit?"

There was an uncomfortably long moment of silence that was only interrupted by the occasional whooshing sound that was made whenever cars flew in the other way. After waiting for an answer for lone enough I decided that I wasn't going to get one and slouched down on my seat, kicking my feet up on the dashboard and allowing myself to relax. If I was lucky I might just get to doze off for a few minutes and rest up. I didn't look forward to stepping inside the Bonaparte Marine Base again, but I guess that it was unavoidable.

"We're here," I heard.

"Mhm," I grumbled in reply, pulling myself up on the seat and opening my eyes very slowly. I glanced around and tried to get used to the abrupt change in lighting. The entrance to the base was the same as always, a couple of visiting civilians were walking in and out while a few uniforms returning home for a late lunch or an early dinner made their way to their cars. Some were smoking outside, talking to each other and laughing.

"You know, I never did ask about the dye job," I said suddenly, referring to Camilla's new hair color. "Looks good on you, but it's not quite…Grass."

"My new boss told me to," she replied simply, hopping of the huge vehicle and dusting herself off. "Apparently there's still some prejudice against blondes."  
>I smiled. "Two blondes are locked out of a car," I started.<p>

"Can it Frank," she interrupted.

"That's Gunnery Sergeant for you," I said playfully. "Still, I liked the blonde hair better, but then again, I always did have a thing for blonde girls."

"That explains Marina and Hanna."

I stiffed a little bit at the mention of my girlfriend (was she still my girlfriend?) but otherwise remained stoic. I didn't say anything and just walked inside the building with Camilla. An enlisted man looked up from a large desk that acted as a reception desk and smiled broadly at the sight of the gorgeous woman that Camilla was. His smile wavered when he saw me in tow, but it didn't disappear.

"Sergeant Seppa, good to see you again!"

"Likewise Private," Cam replied, returning the smile. "Gunnery Sergeant Castillo here had his luggage shipped here. It was slated to arrive…"

"An hour ago," I replied. "Give or take a few minutes."

"Um sure," the private said, mumbling something to himself as he tapped on a terminal. "I'll have some knuckle-draggers bring your things. It says here that you are slated for reassignment."

I sighed. "Wonder why?"

Camilla just glared at me and shook her head disapprovingly. She was probably right in doing that.

The private shook his head, not at me, but to himself. "Um, Major Cavallaro has been waiting for you. Damn."

"Damn indeed," Schitzo said. "Thinking that it's time to tell him about me?"

I sighed. "Where is he? Still in the same office?"

"I wouldn't know. Is it-"

"Never mind," I interrupted. "Cam, you'll stay here?"

"That was always my role, staying behind and babysitting?"

"Excuse me?" the private asked.

"That was once," I told her. "And you got as much action as the rest of us."

"Ok, I'm slightly confused now," the man said to himself.

I sighed for what must've been the hundredth time in the past hour and then walked towards one of the elevators. It was going to be a complicated trip. Take an elevator to one of the underground floors, then travel to the ONI section by foot and then go to a super ultra top secret elevator again.

Or not.

"Gunnery Sergeant Castillo," a voice on the speaker said. It was clearly an AI.

"Yeah?"

"Major Cavallaro is waiting for you in one of the conference rooms, if you'll follow me to the second floor."

"Sure thing," I replied in a fake cheery tone, annoyed that the AI had asked me to follow it without displaying its hologram.

The elevator doors dinged open. "Over here." I followed the voice until a corner.

"Marco?" I asked. "Marco?"

"Polo. Sorry, this way."

After humoring the ridiculously stupid fucktard of an AI for an equally ridiculously long amount of time I came to a door.

"We've arrived Gunny."

"Thanks Marco, now I can tell my kids all about this. You fuck."

"My pleasure."

I steeled myself and opened the door. It looked like a typical business meeting room. A large table that would fit about a dozen and a fancy holographic displayer in the middle. It was currently displaying images of Reach's most beautiful landscapes. Major Cavallaro was seating on the head of the table, opposite me. He was examining a datapad and looking like a spook.

"Sir," I saluted lazily.

"Frank," he greeted without looking up. "Sit down."

"I'd rather not."

"Suits me fine," he shrugged, still not taking his eyes of his datapad. "You've been reassigned, obviously. That little business with the _Inconvenience._ Nasty stuff. Well, nothing we can do about it. Your transfer has already been handled. Papers are in front of you."  
>I grabbed a manila envelope and looked at it. It had my name, rank, and number on it. I tucked it under my elbow and looked at the man again.<p>

"I took the time to get you together with your old squad, what's left of it," he informed me. "They've already worked with your new unit and can get you up to speed. You have any questions?"

"Yes, one."

"Well?"

"What the fuck did you put inside me?"

Cavallaro looked up from his datapad and gave me a long, hard look that only served to annoy me further. "Your facial hair is past regulation," he said simply. "So is your regular hair. You ought to trim it down, your new CO isn't as lenient as Brooks. Neither is your ship's captain."

"Answer the question," I said.

"I'm afraid that I can't."

I smiled, very sarcastically I might add. "You're afraid you can't?" I asked him, walking towards him and placing the folder on the table. "You're not afraid Major. You're just a fucking dick!"

"Now there," he started calmly.

"You're afraid!" I yelled. "You're fucking afraid? No you're not. You see, I can make you afraid."

"I'm in a good mood today," Cavallaro said calmly. "Which is why I will ignore that threat."

I lost it, I am ashamed to say. My hands seemed to grow a mind of their own and reached for the spook's lapels. I dragged him up from his chair and slammed him against the wall. I don't know how I could do it so easily. I guess that I always suspected that his little pet project was what got me stuck with Schitzo. His back banged against the polycrete walls and he grunted in pain.

"You're in no position to ignore my threats," I growled. "I want you to tell me just exactly what you did to me and how to fix it."

Cavallaro sighed. It was such a calm sigh when compared to my own angry demeanor. Guess how that made me feel. Major Cavallaro looked at me and lightly pushed me away. "Listen Castillo, some things you are better off knowing. And I'd advise you to get your hands off me, a group of MPs will arrest you."

"You're head will be mush by the time they open the door."

"I take it you really want to know then?"

"You fucking _broke_ me," I growled, finally saying it out loud. "You've made my life harder."

"Ok, first of all, I didn't exactly create what you are," he said. "In this situation I'm just a grunt. You're not my project, that was a lie. I'm just your…handler."

I released him and stepped back a little bit. "Answer my question."

"Fine. I take it you have heard about the Spartan program. Never mind, of course you have. Well, Spartans are incredibly expensive to make, that's the main reason why made the Threes, they're good, but they're cheaper and, in turn, expendable." He paused. "This is going to take a while."

"I'm in no rush."

He shrugged. "Well, the Threes certain augmentations, meds, that allowed them to be better than your peak human. The weakest Three could run laps around the strongest average human. But not you. You, Gunny, you were given a gift. A gift that you don't seem to appreciate very much. You can run faster, think quicker, jump higher, aim better, and take more punishment. And yet you still complain."

"I complain because I see fucking hallucinations all day long."

"But you are functional? Is it not a good trade?" He waited for a reply but I had none. "Your gift has saved you and your friends countless times. To you it seems normal, perhaps like you're exceptionally lucky or just very talented, but to everyone else you're a larger than life figure. I'm not just saying this, I'm not one to compliment people, but I'm not one to lie either."

That was definitely a lie.

"You already know the basics, but I'm going to give you the details that you seem to want so much. Do you ever seem to see things moving in slow motion?"

"Yes," I admitted. It only happened during moments of extreme danger.

"Well, that's drug number one. 87556-UD58. It's not as effective as the one that we gave the Threes or the Twos, but it increases your reaction time by about seventy percent. Impressive, isn't it?"

"Go on," I said.

"You also got yourself 88005-MX74. It's pretty much the same muscle enhancing drug that they gave you straight out of bootcamp but up to the eleventh power. Still, not nearly as powerful as the one the Spartans got, but it allows you for heavier lifting and to have more powerful muscles with less mass." He smiled almost cockily at my expression. "Then we gave you a carbide ceramic ossification catalyst. A bone enhancer. It makes your bones stronger and harder to break."

I scoffed at that. My little tour in Asilon had disproved that drug's capabilities. Shattered collarbone, minor ankle fracture, broken wrist. Not to mention six snapped ribs and many additional fractures that I couldn't even begin to remember. "Sounds like you dropped the ball on that one."

"It makes your bones harder to break, not unbreakable."

"That it?"

"No, we gave you one more, a highly experimental one. 009761-AA. An aggression enhancer. It also seems to have side effects that allow you to have more strength, endurance, and tolerance to pain. That is probably the only reason why you're alive. That and that alone, none of your other enhancements matter. The 009761 is your lord and savior."

"But it also gave me a mental disorder."

Cavallaro nodded. "Yes, an unforeseen side effect. It was slated to be used on the next Spartan-III generation, but results from you and other subjects have eliminated that possibility."

"So you made me a freak for nothing," I concluded.

"Call yourself what you want. You're still alive and you've got ONI to thank for that. Yes, you're not exactly sane, but you're alive and I'm willing to bet that this war is not going to kill you."

I stepped back. "Will it get worse?"

"Yes," he replied immediately. "But new advances will be made, a way to counter the drug's effects will be found. If you're lucky we might just make it in time."

"Hear that?" Schitzo asked me. "We're going to be together for a long time."

"I'm sorry Francisco," he told me. He almost sounded genuine. "This is not a problem that can easily go away. For now, the only thing that I can recommend is to take your pills and take advantage of your augmentations. You're fighting the good fight."

I scoffed at that.

"Fine, you're fighting for the survival of humanity as a whole," he amended himself. "Will you stop doing that just cause you're pissed at me? At ONI?"

"I'm not fighting for humanity."

"Fine, fighting for yourself. In any case you should keep on fighting, it's a good thing and it's the only thing you're doing."

"I fight because I chose to," I told him, even though the statement wasn't really related to the argument.

"Fine, good for you. The time may come when you're going to have to fight whether you like it or not."

I took in everything that he had said and considered the implications. I didn't think that he had lied to me in any way, perhaps he kept some of the truth from me, but he answered all my questions. Major Cavallaro sidestepped and picked up his datapad from the floor and placed it on the table before looking towards me and waited.

"What am I?"

"You're a warrior."

I turned to face him. "What am I?"

Cavallaro lost his cool façade for a moment and tugged at his collar before he could compose himself again. He looked at me long and hard before talking. "You, my friend, are the very first Spartan-IV. The final product will be…better, but you are still a very promising prototype."  
>How he could talk straight to my face as if I was only a piece of equipment angered me, but then I understood it. I <em>was<em> only a piece of equipment. I wasn't a regular jarhead, I was a very expensive ONI toy. I was no better than those freaks with the green armor or those Spartan III kids playing at being soldiers. I was one of them. I was just another freak.

I turned back towards the door and grabbed my envelope on my way out. "Why are my papers sealed?"

"I have a penchant for the dramatic," he admitted.

I shrugged and walked out of the door, Schitzo walking next to me and saying nothing. It was a very depressing walk. Going back and realizing that I wasn't the human that I always thought I was made me feel terrible. I can't really emphasize just how bad I felt. It's as if I had lived as a man my whole life only to be told that I underwent a sex change operation as an infant. Well, maybe that's a little bit drastic, but it's related. To top it all off, I was batshit insane, seeing hallucinations and shit.

"Something wrong?" Camilla asked when I returned to the reception desk. "You look pale."

"Nothing." I took a deep breath and did my best to look suitable annoyed. "It's just that Cavallaro really fucking pushes my buttons sometimes."

Camilla looked at me quizzically but otherwise said nothing about it. "Your stuff is already on the 'Hog."

"Then what are we still doing here?" I asked her, eyeing my surroundings with newfound hatred. "Let's leave."

"Fine, fine," she groaned, annoyed. "I'll see you later, Private."

"Likewise Sergeant Seppa," the man replied eagerly.

I made a point of staring at Camilla on the way to the vehicle. It got so annoying for her that she almost exploded when she turned to face me. "What?"

"You like that private?"

"No."

"Then you shouldn't lead him on."

"I'm not."

"Are too!" I yelled in a fake childish voice.

"Ok, I'm most definitively not going to get dragged into one of those," Cam told me, sounding as annoyed as I felt.

Don't get me wrong, I was trying to forget all about the meeting just so I could drown it with booze later. Hanna wasn't going to be happy. I snapped back form my internal musings and just shrugged as I hopped on the car and motioned for Cam to start it. We drove in silence for the most part, only stopping once on our trip to the cemetery. Camilla parked outside of a flower shop and emerged with a dozen flowers I didn't really know the type, but they weren't roses or lilies. They were just beautiful, the way flowers should be.

"Gay!" Schitzo booed. I almost smiled.

The road towards the Armed Forces Cemetery was transited by quite a few people. The place was so large that you had to drive inside of it and reach a certain section before getting off. That's not all if though, there were several checkpoints in between gates and we had to show our ID to the security guards. It was depressing, seeing rows upon rows of white tombstones for half an hour before finally arriving. Cam jumped off the 'Hog with the flowers under her prosthetic arm and walked towards the shiniest white headstones. They were all a perfect white, carved out of marble and inscribed with the name, rank, and number of the marine resting under it. Each headstone also had a small phrase that suited the dead marine or a particularly memorable one that had been said by that person. It reminded me of my high school yearbook.

I clearly remembered myself smiling at the camera.

"_Just because you don't have many friends doesn't mean you're not cool."_

They should've written down that I didn't actually have any friends whatsoever. Even if I did manage to lose my foreign kid that is creepy cause he lost his parents reputation in the eyes of the others, I never lost it in my own eyes. Wow, I sound all emo now and it still annoys me even though I have an excuse.

"There," Cam pointed. "All of those."

I immediately felt depressed again. While the grass had grown and covered the recently dug graves, one could still tell that they were fresh. The whiteness of the marble was a stark contrast to the weather-beaten headstones next to them. I walked after Cam and then gave her some space as she stood in front of Yev's final resting place. I walked around, examining the names, occasionally recognizing one and straining to remember the face of the person without the need to activate their holographic pictures. I failed more often than I succeeded, and often I didn't even remember the person after seeing their faces.

It was sad, seeing every single one of the men and women that had fought alongside me staring defiantly at the camera, occasionally a small smile on their lips, but more often than not they'd have a serious expression. What they all did have though, was a look of pride in their eyes. Pride in themselves. I couldn't help but wonder if they had died proud men.

After a while I stopped.

"Here lies…" I started, choking on my own words and looking away.

"Here lies Second Lieutenant Emily Hardwick," Schitzo enunciated. "UNSC Marine Corps. Born 2517, died 2544." He paused briefly and chuckled a little bit before reading the next part. "Her Hornet never seemed to run out of rockets." Schitzo once again said nothing for a few moments, instead taking a step forward and standing by my side. "Tough blow, man."

"You'll get over it," Scarecrow said. "You'll be fine."

"But she won't," I said quietly, looking at the headstone and reading over the inscription several times. I stood there for a while before I clicked the button that projected a hologram of Emily. Unlike so many other people, she was smiling on hers, a cocky smile that she seemed to carry around all the time, especially right after she had saved your ass or provided exceptionally good air support. For all the good things that she had done, she would be remembered.

"And who will remember you, Francisco?" Schitzo asked. "Pavel. Your squad won't forget you either, but who will remember you?"

I wanted to say something, to hit him in the face, but instead I just walked over to the next gravestone. And the next one, and the next one. I stopped on Zekalwe's and stood there for a little while, trying to remember all the little chats that we had in the hangar of the _Inconvenience._ He was a good friend, always smiling and good-natured. Only now did it hurt that I didn't get to know him more. I stopped again on Captain Brooks' little plot. There were fresh flowers next to the white marble, hopefully from his daughter. He was one of the best strategists that I ever had the pleasure of meeting. He was also a great man. His hologram looked every bit as serious as he usually did. Even then he seemed to carry himself with a barely perceptible air of superiority and self-confidence. I stomped lightly on the grass underneath me. Wondering what the Captain would think of me for visiting him.

"Nothing too bad, I hope," I muttered as I moved on.

I shook my head sadly at Captain Salas', Major Hernandez, and Lieutenant Chloe Delacroix's respective tombs. They were as good as they came and it didn't help them one bit. Marines and soldiers were supposed to fight the good fight on the ground, killing aliens with good-old-fashioned guns. What could they even hope to do against a Covenant capital ship when they were trapped inside what was essentially a huge metal coffin? Well, it wasn't necessarily an impregnable metal coffin, a few people had made it out. Lieutenant Krikor Darbinian had, stealing one of our pods and jumping himself towards outer space before activating his emergency transponder. It had been a small miracle that he had been found, but I still thought he was a condescending dick.

I stopped on a few of the Rangers' final resting places. By the time I was done with all of the graves I returned to the one Camilla was standing in front of. First Lieutenant Yevgeny Domitrovich Nezarian. Cam was crying, not the shaking and sniffling kind of crying, the one where you just stand and stare at something with tears flowing down your face. I put a hand on her shoulder and stood next to her. I had had six months to get over the fact that my second best friend was dead. The moment I touched Cam she started sniffling and sobbing. I pulled her towards me and tried to keep myself from crying.

After five minutes she had decided that there had been enough time for mourning and walked away without saying a word. I stood there for a few more minutes, pulling up the collar of my coat. I tried very hard, but all I could see when I thought of Yevgeny was his scared face and his bleeding neck. He was one of the bravest soldiers I had ever met. He didn't deserve to die like that. He was one of the greatest men that I had ever met. He didn't deserve to die. None of them did.

"Goodbye, my friend," I said, tapping the gravestone and walking back towards the 'Hog, my chin tucked to my chest.

* * *

><p><strong>February 8, 2545 (UNSC Calendar)**

**Esztergom (Ezhtergom), Viery Territory, Reach, Epsilon Eridani System**

The Grenadier was empty except for me. That in itself wasn't very surprising, it was still pretty early, but not even Murphy, Shaw, and Driscoll were here. Only Captain Montgomery. Hell, even Lys had taken the day off. It suited me just fine. I was meeting with Pavel for the first time in almost seven months and I was pretty damn happy about it. I was slightly early, which was something that I never_ ever_ did unless it was by accident.

The door creaked open and Pavel walked inside.

"Pavel!" I cheered loudly, lifting my tankard and gesturing for him to sit down. He grinned back and proceeded to do so. "How have you been?" I asked.

"Well, I guess," he replied. "Like your beard."

"Thanks," I smiled, running my hand along the light brown fuzzy hair and extending my neck to the sides theatrically. "I'm quite proud of it."

"You get beards all the time," Pavel sighed.

"Well, this one's special."

Pavel suddenly grimaced. "Why?"

"I was only joking," I told him. It was quite obvious that he had thought I grew the beard in account of my lost comrades. People often stopped caring about their appearance after traumatic events, men grew beards, women grew…well, hair on their armpits. "I like how it looks."

"Good," he huffed. "Snark stopped shaving and grew a fuzzy mustache. I thought Indians were supposed to be able to grow nice beards."  
>I shrugged and took a healthy swig from my drink. "He ok?"<p>

"Shocked still, but all of us are."

I nodded slowly, carefully. "How's Rob?"

"Angry. Very angry."

"I can relate to that."

"So can I, but it's weird. He was an angry person before…well, let's just say that he'll explode for the slightest thing. The new guys understand, but they're a bit iffed by it. He'll get over it."

"I hope so." I wouldn't want Rob becoming a bitter man. Well, bitterer. "And Caboose?"

Pavel smiled. "Caboose is-"

"Caboose," I finished. "So, let me hear about these new guys."

"Not much to tell really, I mean, they're interesting and overall good guys, but you'll get to know them."

"Good soldiers?"

"Don't you mean Marines?" Pavel teased.

"Warriors."

"I like that," he said while nodding thoughtfully. "Yes, at any rate. All of them are the jack-of-all-trades kind. Well, sure there are some specializations, but not to the extreme of Lamberti only knowing how to handle a squad support weapon."

"Knife guys?" I asked.

"Not that I could tell."

"Good, at least I'll have my thing."  
>Pavel let his face fall to his hands and used them to muffle some screaming. Very theatrical, really. "You'll always stand out, you pretentious asshole."<p>

"At least it's not because I'm an asshole," I shrugged, dismissing his annoyance. "Have you heard about any of the other guys?"

"Most took the retirement," Pavel told me. "Then again, most of them are scarred for life. Ourselves included."

Images of the dead crew and complement of the _Inconvenience _filled my head. "That we are," I agreed. "Claire?"

"Specialist Winchester? Damn, she took it especially hard. She tried to kill herself the second week she was here."

"What?!" I shouted, standing up from my stool. "Why the fuck didn't anybody tell me?!"

Pavel extended his arms and motioned for me to calm down. "Peace friend, peace." He waited for me to sit back down before he explained. "All her friends died. Literally, all of them. She got survivor's guilt or something and tried to end her life."

I waited a second before asking the question. "How?"

"A length of rope," he said simply. "Marina walked in on her. Don't ask me how or why."

"Well, I'm glad she did."

"Marina's a rock, I think that out of all of us she's the one with the least damage."

"Even after Shep?"

"Even after Shep," he confirmed.

I chugged what was left of my beer and burped loudly before rubbing the back of my neck. "Hanna?"

"I was wondering when you'd ask me that…Well, the answer to that question is a simple one."

"Please, by all means keep me waiting."

"Don't tempt me."

I growled quietly. "Don't tempt _me._"

"Fine," he ceded. "It's good news."

I felt torn between happiness and frustration for a second, but then the happiness completely overwhelmed the frustration and I felt the best I had since I left Paris IV. I just felt happy that it was good news. "Go on," I pressed him, sounding giddy and childish and not even caring.

"She was pretty beat up over what happened," he started.

"How is that good news?" I exclaimed.

"Let me talk," he said, doing his best annoyed expression. "Well, I don't think that I should be the one to tell you, but she still loves you."

I sighed with relief and leaned back on my chair. "Good. Do you know why she never answered my messages?"

"She should be able to tell you."

"Where is she?"

"Probably her house."

"Should I do an impromptu visit?"

"Only if you have flowers with you," Pavel smiled.

I stood up with a grin and slid my credit card over the bar before walking out the door, Pavel wishing me good luck. I hopped on the first cab that I saw and went all the way to Hanna's apartment, only stopping to get a dozen roses. I climbed all the way to Hanna's floor and then rang the doorbell. I did my best to smile at the small camera above the door and made sure that the flowers were in sight of it. A few seconds after I rang I heard footsteps on the other side of the door and a moment later it was opened.

Hanna looked tired. She looked beautiful as well, she always did. Her blonde hair was longer than I remembered, but her lovely brown eyes were just as lovely as they had always been. She seemed confused and had her mouth open and gaping.

"Frank," she said.

"I missed you."

I hugged her and walked inside the room. You know, in retrospect, I think that it was rude to not even think about Katie when seeing Hanna. The only problem is that I still don't know who it's insulting to.

* * *

><p><em>Thanks to Alshep and SilasWhitfield for proof-reading this chapter.<em>

_Well, the two of them are alive, that's good. So are Claire and Marina, but you already knew that. It's curious how the only survivors happened to be close to Frank and his squad. I wonder why..._

_Ok, there's really not much to say except that I'm sorry if the scene where Frank get all pissed at Cavallaro was completely unrealistic. In real life Frank would've been automatically discharged and would've lost payments and benefits. Here, he is a special case because he's to damn important, and Cavallaro and his superiors aren't willing to risk such a valuable asset._

_When I say valuable asset I mean it as a way to test results, not in the way that Spartans are assets._

_Hanna's still there and Frank hasn't even begun to experience guilt for what he did. Sucks for him, I'll make him pay for it, but all in due time._

_Don't forget to review, your feedback helps me make this story better and better. Also, the higher the number of reviews the better I feel about myself, inspiring me to write more for my own selfish reasons._

_Stay strong._

_-casquis_


	136. The Flawless and Company

Chapter CXXXVI: The Flawless and Company

**February 10, 2545 (UNSC Calendar)/**

**UNSC **_**Flawless,**_** in orbit above Reach, Epsilon Eridani System**

* * *

><p><em>"I'm from the old school. It's more expensive than your new school."<em>

* * *

><p>I had never seen anything like it. Nope, that's a lie. I <em>had<em> seen something like it. I just hadn't ever been inside of one. A UNSC carrier was a thing to look at and admire. The _Flawless _wasn't any different. From the moment I stepped on board my new ship I knew it was different. The hallways were wider and the ceilings higher. The other main difference is that the lights were dimmer. Since some of the carrier's sections were rarely walked through they were kept dimmer, save up on energy.

Clocking at just under three kilometers in length, the _Flawless_ could give any _CCS-_class battlecruiser a run for its money. With the big-ass MAC cannon that it sported at the front and the hundreds of Archer missiles, I would put my money on the carrier any time. Not only could she give out a beating, she could also take one. The thick Titanium-A armor plating and compartmentalized nature of the ship meant that it would be nearly impossible to completely destroy us.

Of course, with damaged thrusters and enough time we were dead fish in the water, even if we were big fish.

Let me tell you more about the ship. It was fucking huge and it was fucking huge. That's probably all you need to know about a UNSC carrier. That it was fucking huge. Well, let me elaborate a little bit on that one. The first carriers were sea-borne vessels, designed to carry aircraft and maybe a small contingent to defend their ships. Once we got to space, carriers were pretty much troop transport ships with little armament or armor. As time went by they got more guns and more plating, but their role didn't change that much. With the insurrection carriers were turned into a hybrid between a cruiser and a traditional carrier. Somebody decided that it would be smart to slap some armor and get bigger guns on it. But that wasn't it, oh no it wasn't. Carriers were also given a larger air wing. A much larger air wing. So imagine having a death machine three clicks long with heavy armor, heavy weapons, and a few dozen fighters whose sole purpose was to protect it.

And I'm not even getting into the escort ships, but I will later.

Pavel and I arrived along with a bunch of recruits. The _Flawless_ had been active for a few years now; it had a very illustrious career and had participated in a few engagements that ended in UNSC victories. Sure, it had seen a bunch of defeats as well, but the ship and its battle group did well in them. The regiment on board the ship was pretty badass as well. Consisting of two separate Marine Expeditionary Units, or MEUs for short, the ship's infantry complement was a force to be reckoned with under any circumstances. It was to be my new unit. I was looking forward to seeing Rob and Snark again. Hell, I would even take Grigori.

"Well, here's the ship," Pavel said finally. "Feel free to look around."

"Can't," I replied. "Gotta get a medical. Been a while since I got a full check."

"With all those injuries you get, I'd say you're lying."

"Hey," I complained. "All those are just to see if said injuries are healed. This is a full medical check."

"Whatever, have fun."

I pouted. "You're not gonna walk me there?"

"You know Frank, sometimes I find it hard to believe that you're thirty years old."

"Yeah, rub it in my face, will ya," I groaned. "You're close to that mark to, so don't get all dickish."

Pavel sighed. "Man, I'm tired. You can get there by yourself."

"Fine," I ceded. "Take my stuff with you."

"We're not rooming together anymore."

That certainly gave me a pause. "What."

"Yeah, it'll take some time for me to get used to it," he told me. "But there's nothing I can do about it."

"But we're both noncoms," I said, sounding as if it made perfect sense.

"Yeah, most of the guys in the platoon are," he shrugged. "You're not in the same room."

"Sucks."

Pavel rolled his eyes and shook his head. "You're like a five year old, we'll be on cryo for the most part."

As always, Pavel had a good point.

"Fine," I said once more. "See you in a while."

"Just be at the pre-drop room in time, lieutenant is gonna be giving a little speech."

"He knows you calling it a speech?"

"Nah," Pavel shrugged. "See you then."

I waved goodbye at him and slung my duffel bag over my shoulder. It was bursting to the brim with new fatigues, boots, and other military-issue clothing. It felt considerably heavier than my previous one. Most people were already at their stations, well, most swabbies were. The Marine complement was heading down to their quarters and all that. A few might be getting inspections like I was, but for the most part everybody was meeting up with friends and catching up. I took my time with the walk, trying to memorize the route. On my way there I could only think that I was being given good luck for all the crap that I had gone through in the past year. Hanna was a medic in one of the on board regiments, so we would be able to keep things up.

Damn. I would go crazy without her.

_Didn't seem to trouble you so much in Paris VI. _

I studiously ignored Schitzo and moved on. I only stopped to examine a couple of the message boards on the wall. I felt like I was doing my senior year on a new school. Everybody knew each other except for me. I had the advantage of having three and a half friends with me, so it didn't worry me too much. When I finally reached the med bay. It was much larger than the one on the _Inconvenience_. It had to be with the size of the marine complement on board.

"Hello, can I help you with something?" asked an orderly.

"Here for my full checkup."

"You new here, I take it?"

"Yeah," I replied.

The orderly shrugged. "So is our doctor. Well, relatively new, only a year here."

I nodded absently. I honestly didn't care.

"Stay here, he'll be here in a moment."

I nodded once more and sat down on one of the chairs. There weren't any other guys in here to get checkups, so I had all the room for myself. I guess that it was better that way. I wouldn't feel weird not talking to another chatty marine or sailor here. I waited for about five minutes before a doctor emerged from the bay.

"Sergeant Castillo?"

"That's me."

"Wait, Sergeant Castillo?" the doctor repeated, sounding astounded.

I took a good, hard look at the doctor. He was wearing a white lab coat over his navy uniform. He had golden oak leaves on his collar. The insignia of a lieutenant commander. What drew my attention wasn't his oak leaves, it was his face. He had big blue eyes that reminded me of somebody, but it wasn't him. I searched through my memories until I finally realized who this guy was.

"Doctor Vinter?" I asked finally.

He smiled. "I thought you didn't recognize me."

"I barely did," I admitted. The only reason I had remembered him was because of his eyes. He had the same eyes that his daughter did, but he didn't have her freckles. "Took me a while."

"How are you Frank?"

"I'm fine," I told him. "How's Mrs. Vinter?"

"Very well, I'm glad to say. Her hip still hurts occasionally, but otherwise she's fine."

"I'm glad," I told him with all honesty. I stood up and followed him inside. "How about…Astrid, was it?" I knew her name full well, but I didn't want to come off as a little bit creepy for that.

Vinter laughed and opened a door for me. "You know, you might've saved my wife, but you made my daughter want to join the Corps."

I whistled. "Damn, sorry about that."

He smiled. "Not to worry. I convinced her to go into med school so that she could join as a surgeon."

I smiled back at Vinter. "Good parenting."

"Thanks, I do my best. Now, if you'll strip down to your underwear and stand over there please…"

The medical was pretty standard. I got scanned about a dozen times for different diseases and injuries as well as tested on my reflexes and the like. I started worrying about the scans, wondering if dense muscles and hardened bones would show up as anomalies, but I figured that if ONI was something, it was thorough. Ha, ironic, considering they really dropped the ball when playing mad scientists with me. Doctor Vinter, Sigfrid, chatted a little bit about his family and new life on Reach while I stood still and allowed myself to be poked and probed. Eventually I was told to look at a set of lights as they flashed, which was ridiculously stupid. The human eye is attracted to movement and light, even an idiot would glance at them involuntarily. Well, maybe that was the point of that test.

"That it?" I asked.

"Yeah, the newcomers get to do an endurance test, but you're a veteran."

"I am," I agreed, smiling at the compliment. "Hey Doc, how come you joined the military?"  
>Vinter tossed me my pants and shirt and started talking. "We came here as refugees, but you already know that. My wife had a few acquaintances living in Reach and they helped set us up with a home. I tried getting a job as a doctor but for some reason that astounds me, I didn't."<p>

"I thought that doctors had guaranteed employment."

"Yeah, me too," he confessed. "But I was wrong, and my only chance was to join the military."

"Why did you go into the Navy and not the Army?" I asked him. "I mean, you could've been assigned to a local base and stayed home with your family."

"Yeah…the move caused some…tension between my wife and me. We both decided that it would probably best if we took some time away from each other. I didn't want a divorce or separation, so I got this job. Hey, works for me."

I looked away awkwardly. "Sorry for asking."

"Don't worry about it. Well, you're all set."

"Thanks, I hope I don't see you that much."

"Me too," he replied. "Maybe I'll buy you dinner sometime, as thanks for saving my wife."

"I couldn't," I started saying.

"I'm not doing it for you," Doc Vinter interrupted. "I'm doing it for my own selfish reasons."

I chuckled lightly and patted his shoulder. "Fine, bye Doc."

"Bye, and call me Sigfrid, doc's just annoying."

I nodded and waved at him before leaving. I made sure to grab my duffel bag and walked towards the nearest elevators. As ODSTs, our quarters were as close to the Drop Bay as possible. The Drop Bay was, of course, located in the bottom of the ship. This being a carrier we had enough drop tubes to launch three platoons, an undersized company, at a time, but there was only one platoon on board the ship right now. On my way down I wondered how everybody would react to a new squad member. I know that I probably shouldn't care too much about it, but humans need to be accepted into groups, we're just too damn social.

The elevator finally dinged and I walked out. I couldn't help but notice that there was no music of any sort playing on the speakers. Suddenly I felt a pang of pain. I wondered what Eliza's last thoughts were as her systems died with the ship and most everyone on board. I wondered if AIs got their own memorials same as us. Sure, they were programmed, but they were also sentient. I'd have to ask Cam about it next time I saw her. She was the kind of person that would know that.

I didn't realize that I was smiling until someone pointed it out to me.

"What's so funny?"

It wasn't a particularly rude way of asking, except that it was.

"I don't think that's any of your business," I told the man in question. He was yet another boneheaded ODST that was so full of himself that if you poked his skin he would burst. In short, he was eerily similar to me.

The man was wearing a tight ODST shirt that clearly showed his well-toned body. I'm not saying that I spent an overly long amount of time staring at his pecs, but as a man and a Helljumper I quickly took him in and assessed him as a possible threat. I was glad that I was taller, even if only a little bit, nothing makes a man more jealous than being in front of someone half an inch taller than him. Believe me, I know.

"No please, tell me what the hell is so funny."

I dropped my duffel bag on the floor and erected my back and shoulders. "None of your business," I repeated, more forcefully. "Now, if you'd be so kind to point me to the Drop Room."

"Ah, so you're one of the new guys." He was now smiling, probably thought that he could take advantage of me because I was new. Had this been anything but the military, he might've been able to.

"Listen…" I started.

"Corporal Royce," he said automatically, realizing his mistake the moment he gave his rank. He paled slightly when he saw the big shit-eating grin on my face.

"Corporal Royce," I went on. "My name is Gunnery Sergeant Francisco Castillo and I am _ordering _you to personally escort me to the pre-drop room."

"Yes, sir."

"See, that wasn't so hard, was it?"

Royce said nothing and instead turned around, presumably walking towards the room in question.

"What was that Corporal?"

"Nothing, Gunnery Sergeant."

"Gunny will do," I told him. I hated being called by my full rank. Besides, the term Gunny was used by people close to gunnery sergeants. It was a symbolic gesture that I forgave him.

That didn't necessarily mean that I wouldn't give him shit for this if I could.

I was about to start teasing the man when Rob emerged from a nearby door. "Sarge?" he asked, as if he didn't believe it. "Sarge!"

"Good to see you Rob," I smiled.

"Same here," he replied, walking up to me and shaking my hand vigorously while slapping me in the arm. "I see you met our resident asshole."

"From the looks of it, you met him a while ago," Royce deadpanned.

I smirked at that and put my arm around my friend's shoulders. "So how you been?"

"Can't complain," he shrugged in reply. "Things were tough after the _Inconvenience_ was gone, and we could've used you here with us."

"I told you guys before I left. I really needed that leave."

Robert glanced quickly at Corporal Royce. "Yeah, how was it?"

"Very…educative."

"Good, good. I'm glad."

"So am I," I assured him, patting him on the shoulder. While he didn't know the full details of my hallucinations and problems, he did know that it was pretty serious and that I could potentially break down during combat. Even if he didn't like me he didn't want that to happen. "Now, off to the pre-drop room."

"We call it the briefing room here," he told me, his Scottish accent heavy in his words. "Better than the one we never had on the _Inconvenience._"

I chuckled. "Agreed. Tell me, why exactly do we need a briefing right now?"

"Lieutenant's like that. We're getting two new guys and she's gonna give you two the rundown of how things work. She's also gonna remind us that she's in charge."

"She?" I asked. "I was under the impression that our lieutenant was a he."

Rob shrugged as we walked. "Pavel implied it, didn't he?"

I shook my head. "No, but he didn't refute me when I said he."

Robert laughed. "He's been doing that for a while now, misleading us. It amuses him."

"It amuses all of us," Royce said.

"Yeah, when you're not on the receiving end;" Rob told him.

I decided to change topics. "So, Corporal," I started, emphasizing his rank so that he was very clear on who was in command (and in control) here, "what's your role here?"

"First squad, regular rifleman."

"Every marine's a rifleman," I reminded him. "No specialties?"

"Not really."

"This is a big platoon Sarge," Rob told me. "No need to have eight guys each specializing in something."

"Yeah, I'm gonna miss that."

"How exactly did your little unit work?" Royce asked me, his voice dropping the hostility and turning curious. "We've heard so many crazy stories."

"Reaper is, was, a very special outfit." I was going to say more but at that moment we walked through a set of doors and into the briefing room. There were about twenty Helljumpers inside the room, all of them chatting with one another. I looked around, searching for Snark or Grigori, eventually spotting them talking in a corner.

"Oi," Rob called to them, eliciting curious glances form the rest of the ODSTs. My new brothers in arms if you will.

"Sarge?" Snark asked, coming over. "Great to see you!"

"Likewise," I replied, shaking his hand. "Been treated well?"

"Can't complain."

"You?" I asked Grigori. "You look as you always do."

He shrugged dismissively. "I liked Reaper Squad better. It was smaller."

"Doesn't that mean that you have to get to know people better?" I asked him jokingly.

"Yeah, but I don't get questioned as much."

I shrugged. He had a point. "Where's Pavel?"

"Should be here any minute, probably composing a message to his wife."

"Say what you will about him, he's a good husband," Snark complimented.

"Yeah," I agreed, thinking about marriage.

"Oh please," Schitzo mocked. "You're a slut. You can't even stay faithful to your girlfriend."

I twitched at the comment and ignored it. I looked around the room, examining it. It was basically a miniature movie theater. There were five rows of soft, cushy chairs, each one taller than the last. In the front there was a small podium with a big-ass screen behind it and a holo-table next to it. It looked more like something that naval pilots would use. Perhaps it had been repurposed for infantry troops. I was wondering why exactly they had made the room like this when our fearless leader walked inside the room, followed by Pavel and another man.

"Officer on deck!" someone shouted.

It had been ages since I had heard that call, but I was a marine and had the response drilled into my brain. I jumped up and stood at attention as a woman in her mid-thirties walked inside. Tall and proud-looking she reminded me of someone, but I couldn't quite put my finger on it.

"As you were," she said.

I opened my mouth but Pavel stopped me, sitting next to me. "It's not her," he whispered into my ear. "Sure sounds similar."  
>Sexy Voice had been the leader of an ODST unit that had worked with us in Aztlan, this little planet full of jungles that had been one of the toughest missions in my life. Getting a fucking package out from an ONI base and then hauling ass over miles upon miles of jungle with the equivalent of a company on my ass. Lieutenant Sexy Voice had disappeared during a shelling or something like that. I had never actually confirmed her KIA. I suddenly realized that I had left her behind back then.<p>

"I'll tell you the story later."

The lieutenant stood in the podium and cleared her throat theatrically, shutting up everyone in the room. "For those of you who don't know me, my name is Lieutenant Tahlia Hayes, in this platoon I am the closest thing that you have to God."  
>I smiled, remembering a similar speech that I had made. Pavel probably smiled too, because he discretely poked my ribs with his elbow. I tensed but otherwise said nothing.<p>

"Good to see you all again, I was half-expecting someone to die of an alcoholic congestion." There was some chuckling in response to the joke. "Well, since that's not the case I guess you live to fight another day." She paused before going on. "Our newest mission is the usual. Patrolling a high-risk sector and aiding any colony that might find itself under attack. That being said, we have two new members in our unit. Gunnery Sergeant Francisco Castillo, who I'm sure you've all heard about."  
>I raised my arm so that everybody could see who I was. It felt kind of weird having everybody turn to face me and inspect me.<p>

"He will be put in command of Second Squad, Klaus will be stepping down form that position. If the exploits of Reaper Squad are remotely true, I'm sure that he'll be an adequate leader."

"Nobody could make stories that crazy," someone called out, getting laughter in response.

Pavel smiled. "Just because you're stupid and lack an imagination doesn't mean everybody does," he shouted back. He seemed satisfied with himself when the rest of the platoon ooed and oh snapped at the other Helljumper. I raised an eyebrow. We'd never had this kind of ribbing on Reaper. At least not on this scale.

"Quiet down," Lieutenant Hayes ordered. Her voice was calm but forceful. Very professional if you ask me. "Our other transfer is Private Miranda Novak. She's fresh out of bootcamp, no combat experience." Her tone changed slightly. "No hazing whatsoever. If I hear anything about it, then you are royally fucked. One last thing, Second Squad will be doing combat simulations after we jump. Dismissed."

_Combat simulations?_

I decided to can that thought and stood up as Pavel did. I decided that it was probably for the best if I followed his lead until I got acquainted with everyone here. He walked towards one of the two exits, motioning with his head for me to follow him. He stopped and turned around stretching his neck. "Private!" he called out.

"Yeah, new girl, get over here."

Miranda Novak walked towards us and stood at ease, looking up expectantly at Pavel. She looked very Easter European, with darkish skin and black hair. She had a nose that seemed a little bit too wide and a scar running the length of her right cheek. Oh, and she was very pretty too, but then again, everyone seemed to be nowadays.

"Good to meet you," Pavel told her, offering her his hand. "This here is Gunnery Sergeant Castillo, your new squad leader."

"Pleasure," I said.

"We have some time before the jump and combat practice," Pavel went on. "I'll give you two a quick tour of the ship."

I shrugged. "Be my guest." I turned to face Private Novak as Pavel waved at us to follow him. "What's your story, Private?"

"What do you mean Gunny?"

"Why'd you join?" I made the question a simpler one. "Shits and giggles? Family tradition? Maybe you had no other job options?"

Private Novak looked uncomfortable at the question and scratched her arm nervously while looking away from me. Pavel shook his head in front of me but otherwise said nothing.

"Where are you from?"

"Emerald Cove," she replied evenly.

"I see," I nodded. "How old were you when you left?"

"Sixteen."

"Which would make you nineteen right about now. I take it you waited to turn eighteen before trying to join."

She said nothing, only nodded.

"So wh-"

"I'd rather we not talk about this, Gunnery Sergeant."

I nodded. "Fine, have it your way."

That was Pavel's cue. "You've seen the lower deck, we have the briefing room as well as the Drop Bay down there. Nothing of interest in that deck unless you count makeout spots. Frank."

"Yeah," I laughed. "Already taking the information in."

Pavel smiled back and moved on, giving us a quick tour of the enormous ship while explaining the layout in very general terms. "Every deck has at least one armory. Most of them are pretty small, size of a garage. There are five main armories in the larger decks, multiple floors, several racks of weapons, ammo, and the like. As the ODST complement on board we get out own specialized armory. We have the newest toys and a lot of them too." He paused and looked around.

"Private, what weapon do you specialize with?"

_Damn, that's my question._

"Um, MA5 series, of course," Novak quickly said. "I was given a DMR on combat exercises."

"We'll see what you get after the drills," I told her. "You a good shot?"

"Not a particularly good one, but better than average."

"Modesty is useless here," Pavel said.

"You'll need some cockyness to survive with the Helljumpers. You weren't a regular before joining the ODSTs, right?" I asked.

"Negative, sir."

I smiled and turned away so that she wouldn't see me doing it. "Don't take anything they say too seriously."

"I went through bootcamp," she assured me. "I can handle myself."

"Good," Pavel said. "Which brings us to the lower mess hall. This being a carrier we have several smaller mess, or chow, rooms as well as a main one that is usually used for banquets and ceremonies. You can eat there if you want, but this one's the closest to your quarters. Mess is open at all times, but don't be a dick and come in during the middle of the night."

We moved through the ship hastily, with Pavel occasionally pointing out stuff to us that we might've not known. He made quite the tour guide; I had to give him that. Joking and messing around while he explained the functions, locations, and purposes of everything made the tour more bearable. Eventually we stopped in front of a big arrow that pointed to the bridge.

"That over there is the bridge," he said, pointing out the obvious. "We don't have access unless explicitly told to enter by an officer with access."

"You said access twice," I pointed out.

"Yeah, fuck you."

I laughed at that and shoved him hard. I could tell that Novak was a little bit confused at out interactions. In bootcamp they tried to dehumanize you, to treat your superiors as just that and your subordinates with respect and the adequate amount of contempt. That might be a very general description, but it was pretty much the truth. In practice, people intermingled with others of different ranks. Look at me, I was great friends with an officer, beat the shit out of one of my subordinate squad members, and engaged in a relationship with a warrant officer. Fine, fine, I might not be a particularly good example when it comes down to following military protocol, but it wasn't strange for noncoms to treat each others as equals.

The point is that Novak was surprised that the no-intermingling policy didn't actually exist in real life.

"Anything else we need to see?" I asked quickly before Pavel could retaliate.

"Well, there are probably a couple of people that you should meet first, but that can be done later. Oh hey, will you look at that."

I looked over to where he was pointing at and saw a man dressed in marine fatigues emerging from an elevator. He looked like an officer, but I couldn't see his rank.

"Captain Galván!" Pavel cried out.

_Well, that solves that issue._

"Klaus, what is it now?"

Pavel raised an eyebrow but walked towards the captain. "Trouble?"

"The Admiral's just being tough again. He'll agree to our suggestions after a while though. Old man likes to make us work for it."

"Is that a Mexican accent I detect?" I asked tentatively.

"Mexico City," he replied. "Born and raised."

I smiled. "Born and half-raised," I told him, offering him my hand instead of the usual salute. "Staff Sergeant Francisco Castillo."

"Pleased to meet you," he replied in Spanish. "Captain Darius Galván."

"English, please," Pavel pleaded. I saw Private Novak nod in agreement.

"Fine," I said. "What exactly were you talking to the admiral about?"

"We wanted to split off our companies into smaller ones of more manageable size, but we need one additional hangar bay where the newest company can stage their operations from."

"What size are your companies right now, sir?" Novak asked.

"Three hundred men," Pavel replied, eliciting a whistle from me.

"Yeah, my thoughts exactly," Captain Galván said.

"Why didn't they sent the battalion XO here, if you don't mind me asking?"

Galván eyed me curiously and shrugged. "I'm the XO."

"Shouldn't that be a mayor?"

"Probably, but the LC and I have been working together for our whole careers, It works just fine for us."

I nodded understandingly.

"Well, I gotta get going, see if we're going to be able to create a Gorgon company."

"Like the name," I said.

"You should hear the others," he laughed. "Gunny, Staff, Private," he said, saluting as we did the same. "See you around."

"That's the XO of Battalion One," Pavel told us as soon as he left. "Captain Galván is a pretty all right guy, but never get in the way of his job." He turned to face us and made a very serious face. "And never_ ever_ make fun of his curly hair."

I could only respond with confusion.

* * *

><p>The armor felt awkward. Well, it felt…very inadequate. The modified Marine armor that I was currently wearing was coated with a special spray that would detect the UV light of training lasers. It meant that if I was shot my armor would lock up and I'd collapse to the floor, 'dead.' Yes, you can all laugh now, training on board a ship usually involves a glorified game of laser tag. The rest of my new squad was also suiting up. It was a weird sight, seeing strangers when I was used to seeing friends. My new comrades in arms didn't seem like anything particularly different, but they just weren't the same as Reaper.<p>

Pavel was toting a M247L while Private Novak tried to decide between grabbing a DMR or an EMR. She probably wasn't used to the EMR, which was a relatively new weapon that had most definitely not made its way down to the bootcamps. Hell, they used old-fashioned weapons all the time and only had a couple of the more modern ones to train marines in their use. It might've not been the most effective, or even the wisest, way to go around training men and women, but it was cost effective and sufficient. ODSTs became proficient with weapons in bootcamp, they became experts in the battlefield.

Second Squad was composed of eight men, much like Reaper had been originally. I was the squad leader, and a new one at that. The rest of the guys probably saw me as an inept replacement for the man that they were already familiar with. I didn't blame them, it was only human for them to react that way. They weren't disrespectful, in fact, they were a little bit too respectful. Other than me we had Pavel as my quintessential second in command, Grigori as the third former Reaper, and the green Private Miranda Novak. That was four, in case you can't keep count, we were still missing another four.

The first one was Lance Corporal Apirama Wiremu. He was the highest ranking member after Pavel and myself. The primary reason that I mentioned him first is because he was so goddamned impressive. A former rugby player, he had joined the Corps for unknown reasons. He was taller than me by three inches at least, had the dark skin that was characteristic of Maori peoples. Oh, and he had tribal tattoos covering all of his face and arms. If those were any indication, the tribal tattoos covered his entire body. The man was built like a freaking monster, muscular and broad-chested he would give me a pause in a fight. He was, ironically enough, the squad's unofficial heavy weapons expert. Yes, I am being sarcastic when I'm saying that.

After him came the first in the trio of PFCs. Axel Beckel. Born to first-generation German immigrants in a small colony in the middle of nowhere. He was actually swayed by the UNSCs propaganda and visually impressive recruitment posters. According to Pavel he still believed in what he was doing. We all did, but he did for reasons that were not his own. Looking very German with blonde hair and blue eyes, he carried a shotgun in addition to an assault rifle. That made him our unofficial close quarters weapon's expert.  
>Second in the trio of PFCs we had our very own Sander Almers. Outer Colony kid, his mother was of Dutch descent and his father was a deadbeat. Pavel's words, not mine. There wasn't anything particularly special about him. Average height, brown eyes, brown hair, and a neutral skin tone. He looked like the poster boy for those freaks that want to use genetic engineering to make every human equal. His unofficial occupation was medic. He received corpsman training in addition to that of a regular ODST. Everyone in the platoon respected him for that.<p>

Lastly, we had the most interesting example. Serge Brisbois. Very private about his personal life, never gave any details, Pavel knew that he was born in France, actual France, back in Earth. What we did know about him was that he had fought in various of Earth's corporate and proxy wars. He joined the French Foreign Legion at a young age and fought for his country. Fighting rebels in the European Union and helping allied states solve their problems became his job for over ten years. Eventually he got tired of all the political bullshit and didn't extend his contract. He left and joined the UNSCMC. According to Pavel his reasoning was that if he was going to fight for a political force, it might as well been one that he agreed with. PFC Serge Brisbois was also the unofficial leader of that trio. He was tall, slim, and gaunt, sporting a couple of ugly scars on his face.

I made my mind to get to know their stories later. They sounded like they were mildly interesting.

"All suited up?" I asked loudly, slapping the bolt on my mock BR55 loudly.

"Yes Staff Sergeant!" they replied with a variety of accents. It was amusing.

"Ok, head out, El-tee's waiting for us outside."

And she was. Lovely face and all. Lieutenant Hayes was standing next to Master Sergeant Yassir Dajani, our platoon sergeant, second in command to the lieutenant, and squad leader for the Third Squad. Oh, and he was a Palestinian. The fact that he was actively working with an Israeli and apparently never questioned her orders went against all stereotypes. Had I lived my teens on Earth I might've found it amusing or ironic, but Jericho-VII politics were a dull affair that had to be taught. "Second Squad!" Hayes called loudly, getting a salute from all of us. "At ease. As all of you are aware, there are two newcomers to this squad. One a veteran and another fresh out of bootcamp. The main reason why you are here is so that I can do an assessment of how you'll work together. I already know Klaus, Wiremu, Almers, Beckel, and Brisbois. And I know how they work. I mainly need to know if your fame is well deserved Gunny," she said, directing her words at me. "Private. I assume that you are well-trained in this type of scenarios."

"Yes, sir," she replied, straightening her back.

"Sir?" the El-tee asked. "I like it."

Oh yeah, weird as hell.

"Lieutenant," I started. "What exactly will we be doing?"

"You ever use a combat training room?"

I shook my head, looking at the 100 meters by 100 meters room. That's about two football fields next to one another. It was completely flat with no visible cover. There were several windows on the middle and the top. Any passerby could stop and examine the marines rehearsing operations. Of course, if it was a black operation the windows would be covered with metal shutters. The only thing that I found unusual about this room was the complete lack of any objects whatsoever.

"Activate!" Hayes called out.

At her command, the floor started rippling and several sections of it shut upwards, forming walls.

"New technology, quite simple, but ingenious."

"How does it work?" Private Novak asked.

"Simple, the floor is made of several little columns that can be configured to fit several different designs. The material is flexible and strong, so it can fold underneath this deck and create floors."

I raised my eyebrow, I was suitably impressed. I looked at the floor and saw that it wasn't completely smooth, instead I could see the little column-like materials.

They were probably less than a quarter of an inch in diameter inch, that probably allowed for flexible designs.

"Scenario is a typical hostage situation," Master Sergeant Dajani said, speaking for the first time. "You have five minutes to plan the operation and limited intel. Go."

I gotta admit, I was quite stunned. One moment I was marveling at human ingenuity and the next I was taking cover behind a 'building' and planning an operation with very limited 'thermal' imagery and no AI to help me in any way.

"Approximately fifteen hostages and eight confirmed kidnappers," I was saying. "Obvious entrance would be doors and windows, the blueprints show several of them, these ones here should be unguarded." I felt ridiculous as I was saying it, but I went on regardless. "We have one breaching charge, I want you," I pointed at Almers, "Beckel, and Brisbois to climb here and position the breaching charge on the floor. You should be in a room with three kidnappers and minimal hostage presence. Pavel, Novak, and Wiremu…am I saying that right?"

"No, but nobody does."

I shrugged, I knew the feel. Geez, you'd think my name was alien from the way some people tried to pronounce it. "You three will go through the windows on this corner, thermal indicates heavy kidnapper presence, you go fast and you go in for the kill. Use as many flashbangs as you want, we don't want any of the kidnappers panicking and shooting hostages. Caboose, you come with me, make out way form here silently, take out any hostiles in these rooms and prevent them from reaching the rest of the team."

Two teams of three and one of two. One breaching charge, three broken windows, and one kicked-down door later we would be shooting holographic projections.

"Sounds risky," PFC Almers ventured.

"That's because it is," I told him. "But you, as a combat-tested Helljumper should be more than able to complete this mission without any problem, unless they somehow made dicks of themselves at your bootcamp and let you through."  
>"Yes, sir," he replied through clenched teeth. I was obviously not making any friends.<p>

"Any other objections?" When nobody said anything I gave the go order.

The plan was executed almost to perfection. For a horrible situation where we had little intel and very little planning time we did an admirable job. All of the rescuers had been killed in what seemed like record time, the holograms shattering into pieces as they were hit. The man who programmed this obviously had a sense of humor. The only black mark on our attempt was that one of the hostages had been nicked on the arm by a kidnapper. Apparently he would be ok, but the UNSC would obviously lose the ensuing lawsuit.

"Good," Hayes told us as we exited the building, the little wires already collapsing to the floor behind us. "Next up you have a more combat-oriented mission, pilot downed, he has vital intel and you have to pick him up."

It was the same deal, little planning time and a deadline. This time elite, grunt, and jackal holograms fired at us to no avail. My team was good. Very good. It only took two minutes for us to get to the 'pilot' and one more to evacuate him. I have to admit, the reactions of the aliens were very realistic, except the elites, they were moving much like us humans, sticking behind cover and firing blindly. In real life, they would've used their shields more to their advantage. Still, the job was quite easy, only Novak seemed to be struggling, but Caboose actually bothered to give her tips.

Talking, so unlike him.

After that we had to cover an imaginary squad. Then we fought off a Wraith and an enemy platoon until we could get air support. We proceeded to ambush an enemy convoy and destroy it.

All of those simulations were done very efficiently. Novak was nicked in the leg in one of those, but that was our only real hiccup.

"I'm suitably impressed," Lieutenant Hayes let us know after she was suitably impressed. "Now, you get to play the unwinnable game."

Almers, Beckel, Wiremu, and Pavel groaned in annoyance. The name itself should've been a warning, but I was confident that I could win this so-called unwinnable game.

"Current record is thirty minutes and forty two seconds. Good luck."

"Can someone give me the basics?" I asked.

"Agreed," Novak seconded, looking unsure of herself.

"Simple game," Lance Corporal Wiremu started. "We get randomly designed cover, usually overlooking the rest of the area and the enemy get their own little walls. Long story short, they swarm us until we run out of ammo and have to get shot."

"No ressuply?" Novak asked.

"We get 'drops' every four rounds, but eventually they'll outnumber us." He seemed strangely accepting of it.

An instant later the area moved and shifted to reveal a small hill in the middle of the room. There was a destroyed house on top, pockmarked with bullet holes and scorch marks. I don't understand how they managed to make such a good impression with flexible metal sticks. We started walking up there and then partially collapsed walls appeared all around us, some were made out of the metallic tubes and a few were holographic displays.

"This is gonna suck."

Exactly thirty minutes and thirty nine seconds later we were wiped out by an unrelenting force of holograms. It was quite embarrassing. Private Novak got stabbed by a stealth elite in the back the exact moment Pavel and I were blown apart by a grenade and PFC Brisbois was overwhelmed by enemy fire.

"That wasn't particularly bad," Grigori muttered after his armor allowed him to move. I knew him well enough to know that he was actually proud of making it so close to the record.

"Good job," I said, helping up Wiremu from the floor. "Maybe next time."

Beckel said something in German and kicked at the floor while rolling his shoulder. He had been 'killed' and all of us had been too busy to move him into a more comfortable position where all the weight wasn't on his shoulder. He was probably frustrated that he had been the first one to be hit. As my new comrades walked past me I saw little silhouettes on the windows, looking at us and chatting amongst themselves, probably criticizing our performance and maybe even praising it.

"Good work, Gunny," Lieutenant Hayes told me, clapping my shoulder as I walked outside of the simulation room. Or combat room, whatever.

"Thanks El-tee," I replied, trying to sound modest. "Maybe we'll get the record next time."  
>She laughed. "Maybe," Hayes agreed.<p>

As Pavel and I headed back towards our quarters I asked him what was the deal with Lieutenant Hayes and her resemblance to our very own Sexy Voice.

"Well, I don't remember Sexy Voice's name, but when I asked the El-tee if she had family in the Helljumpers she told me that she had a cousin there."

"Damn."

"Yeah, she was confirmed KIA in Aztlan, we had it wrong the whole time."

"Does she know that we…" I paused, looking for the right words and going ahead when I found none. "Left her behind?"

"No," Pavel said. "Hell no, I just told her that we worked with her over there, that she was a great soldier."

"Damn," I repeated. It was a valuable piece of information, I wouldn't want to screw up and tell my superior officer that I had basically left a member of her family to die.

Pavel looked uncomfortable. "When are you meeting up with Hanna?" It was an obvious attempt to change the topic, one which I was thankful for. I lived with enough guilt in my life.

"Later today," I replied. "She's also got to get herself set up with her new unit."

"Oh, by the way, did you know there's a boxing league in the ship?"

"Now I do," I told him, my interest growing. "But it probably wouldn't be fair, you know?"

"I don't know Frank, we've got some pretty good ones here," he told me. "Beat the shit out of me."

I smiled, patting his shoulder. "That's not that hard."

"Ha-ha," he replied. "Give it a shot."

"And make you a bunch of money on bets."

"Yeah, that too."

I smiled. That was more like the Pavel I met, immature and funny. His wife was making him a better person, but I was still left behind as a man-child. I knew it and I hated it, but there was little I could do at it, even with Hanna trying her best. Pavel and I chatted aimlessly for a while, taking a quick detour to buy ourselves some candy from the dispenser machines. When we reached the lowest deck we separated and made our way to our respective rooms.

I looked at the nametags and saw that Master Sergeant Yassir Dajani was my roommate.

_This ought to be interesting._

"Tell me about it," Schitzo groaned.

I opened the door and walked in. Dajani was lying down on his bed, reading a datapad.

"Master Sergeant," I greeted.

"Sarge will do," he said. "Room rules, your half, my half. You can do whatever you want on your side."

I let myself drop on my bed. My duffelbag was on top of it, someone must've put it there.

"No girls in the room either," he went on.

"Shouldn't be a problem," I shrugged.

"You have a girl?" he asked me.

"Yeah," I replied.

"Where is she?"

"Here."

He raised an eyebrow. "Huh, well, rule still applies. Whenever I want privacy I'm going to ask you to leave for fifteen minutes. Whenever you want privacy you have the same right." He went on as I nodded. "You can play loud music as long as I enjoy it, likewise for me. And don't go through my things."

"Reasonable rules," I told him. "Don't worry about me breaking them." While I was slightly irritated at the man's attitude, I had to play nice with him because he was directly above me in the chain of command and obviously had a lot more respect because of his time here. I'd just have to play nice for a while.

The rules didn't say anything about throwing knives, did they?

I opened my bag and got a thick wooden square, it had magnets attached to the back. I placed it on the wall at the feet of my bed, slightly to the right and up for safety. It attached and I grabbed my knife from my boot. I twirled it and threw it at the target, where it embedded itself with a loud thunk. Dajani raised an eyebrow and looked at me but otherwise said nothing. Since I wasn't feeling like an asshole at the moment and I was too lazy to pick up my sole surviving knife from the target I decided to set my alarm and get a nap before I met up with Hanna.

I was asleep in seconds.

* * *

><p><em>Thanks to Alshep and SilasWhitfield for proof-reading this chapter.<em>

_New ship, new crew, new faces, new unit. What could possibly go wrong now?_

_The _Flawless_ has one ODST platoon in addition to two large battalions of marines. The rest of the battlefield and its capabilities will be revealed shortly, but trust me when I say that the Battle Group Flawless is an incredibly valuable asset to the UNSC. And it's totally badass too. We've got the carrier, which is just under three kilometers long and has a huge-ass MAC in addition to conventional weapons and the fighter wing protecting it. Not to mention its escorts._

_Then we have the new platoon. Already I have introduced the new squad and a few other members. You know the old squad, and worry not, they'll be here and there, a constant presence in the battlefield. I think that new characters will allow me to grow as a writer at the cost of having antagonized half of you guys for killing pretty much everybody. I'm sorry about that by the way._

_Oh, and firefight totally ripped off their idea from me._

_Stay strong._

_-casquis_

Please Review!

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	137. Chocolate and an Abundance of Paintballs

Chapter CXXXVII: Chocolate and an Abundance of Paintballs

**February 28, 2545 (UNSC Calendar)/two weeks later**

**UNSC **_**Flawless,**_** interstellar space, FLEETCOM Sector Three**

* * *

><p><em>"One to the face and two to the chest?"<em>

* * *

><p>So the crew had been pissed that they had missed Valentine's Day. Yeah, it surprised me too. I had never in my entire life celebrated it and none of my steady relationships seemed to care. Of course, now that an entire ship managed to arrange a delayed celebration, with the day postponed exactly two weeks, Hanna seemed to be very eager to get some roses and chocolate. I had no freaking idea how I was going to get roses in space.<p>

Some genius had managed to sneak several thousand roses on board and was now making money like crazy, but I wasn't about to join the sheep-like minds of all my new ship mates.

"Valentine's Day?" Pavel was saying.

"I know, right!" Robert exclaimed. "I don't remember ever celebrating it on board the _Inconvenience_. And we had roller-blading competitions there!"

A couple of the Helljumpers in the platoon looked up from their plates and at us, eyebrows raised and curiosity on their faces, but they all decided against asking any questions. Pavel, Grigori, Snark, and Rob had been here for long enough so that everybody to know that our ship was less than standard. Our former ship. I was too involved in the conversation to care. At the moment, all I was paying attention to was the 'am I right?' conversation they were having with each other. Pavel was saying something and Snark was completely in agreement with everything that Pavel was saying. I don't even know why they kept talking if they were just repeating the same thing over and over. Eventually we all got tired of it and started playing along, being overtly loud and mimicking their voices.

That sure stopped them.

And now we had nothing to talk about.

Damn.

"So, Sarge?" Rob asked. "You getting flowers for Hanna?"

"No," I replied.

"Wha-seriously?"

"Yup," I nodded.

"Sarge?" Snark asked tentatively.

I sighed, relenting. "I'll get her some chocolates and a bottle of brandy."

"Brady?" Grigori asked, talking for the first time in the conversation. He looked like he was about to say more but stopped.

"What?" I asked him. "What?"

Pavel picked up on it and answered for him. "There are probably drinks that are considered more romantic," he told me. "Like, I don't know…flavored cocktails?"

"Are you kidding me?" I asked. "Not only are those college drinks, they ruin the taste of the liquor."

"Some would say make it better," Snark argued.

"Nah," Rob stopped him. "I'd never drink a whiskey with water on it. That's a little bit too close to blasphemy for me."

"Blasphemy?" Pavel asked. "Didn't know you were religious."

"I'm not, but I just-"

"Back to the matter at hand," I interrupted quickly. I didn't want this to degenerate into a religious debate. "Romantic drinks? That's a load of bullshit. I'll just give her her favorite. What's the problem with that?"

"Um, her favorite drink is…brandy?" Pavel suggested, as if it was totally obvious. "I mean…brandy!"

"What's wrong with brandy!" someone exclaimed from another table. It was quite obvious that he had been eavesdropping.

"Eat your meatballs, Escamilla!" Pavel told him off. "None of your business."

"You're a terrible noncom, Klaus!" the man shouted back, but not pushing the issue further.

Pavel chuckled and turned back to me. "Brandy?"

"What the hell is wrong with brandy?" I asked.

"Nothing," Snark said. "If you're a seventy year-old, cardigan-wearing man sitting by the fire while stroking his Golden Retriever."

"After dinner," Pavel furthered.

I leaned back on my chair, the old metal creaking with my weight. "What would you propose then?"

"Champagne," Pavel offered.

"Cognac," Snark said at the same time.

They both turned towards each other. _Oh boy._

"You do realize that cognac is a type of Brandy," Pavel informed him with the most sarcastic tone he could manage.

"Champagne? Did Sarge's girl win something and we all missed it?"

They began to shout reasons why their drink was a better option at one another. Their bickering got annoying about ten seconds in. I just shrugged at nobody in particular and proceeded to eat my own meager serving of meatballs. Fine, it wasn't exactly meager, but I still felt like it was too little. Grigori said nothing and dug into his meal. Rob seemed eager to join the argument, but decided against it.

There was a snort of amusement from the other side of the table. I raised my head to see Private Miranda Novak slowly shaking her head while reading something off her datapad. Her snort didn't went unnoticed and soon enough the whole table was looking at the newbie Helljumper. Her skin didn't show any blushing, but I could tell that Novak was flustered by the sudden attention that was being directed at her. Once again I marveled at the sheer abundance of pretty girls in my life. I hid a smile and looked at her questioningly.

"Something funny? Private?" Pavel was quite obviously annoyed.

Novak decided to make a stand, something which I found surprising; ever since she had arrived she seemed to be quiet and avoided drawing attention to herself. With a face like hers, it was a tougher job than one would imagine. "Um, I think it's pretty obvious." She then returned to her reading.

Before the table could erupt into taunts and angry comments, Grigori sighed loudly and theatrically. "It's obvious," he said, repeating her words. "Wine."  
>Novak raised her hand and Grigori high-fived her without a word. Both of them went back to being abnormally quiet.<p>

There was a moment of stunned and embarrassed silence on the table before the neighboring tables erupted in laughter.

After our lunch we all milled about the ship. Most of us were used to moving around and being active, sitting in your bed while reading a books seemed like something to do right before going to sleep, not in the middle of the day when you could get in a fight or something like that. Manly stuff.

It was funny walking through the various hallways and corridors. While relationships were frowned upon, most people didn't actually care. When I say didn't care I mean it in a way related to sex. Back in the _Inconvenience_ everybody had been realistic about their options and had often engaged in crazy sex with other crewmembers. I'm not talking full-blown, disturbing orgies, but people got around a bit. Stress relief.

I could tell that it wasn't very different here, but everybody was taking advantage of the situation. Guys would send flowers to speed up the process a bit and girls would use it as an excuse to speed up the process a bit.

It was strangely amusing, two people wanted to do it but social pressure didn't allow them to jump right into it. But I digress.

"Hey Sarge!" Snark called from in front of us. He was standing right in front of a bulletin board. "Look at this."

I walked up to him and stopped to examine the screen's announcements. One of them caught my attention.

"Paintball tournament?" I asked, smiling. "There a prize?"

"Honor and pride," Snark replied. "Says so right here. No entry free."

Pavel stretched his neck over my shoulder to get a look. "Five-man teams?"

"We got five men," I said. "You, me, Snark here, Rob, and Grigori."

Pavel placed his hand on my shoulder. "How about getting Private Novak on the team instead?" he suggested.

I looked over at Snark and Robert, both of whom were nodding in approval. "All right then, she needs to settle in some, this might help."

"Yeah, and I wouldn't mind getting closer to-"

"Out of bounds," Pavel and I said simultaneously.

Snark shrugged, he wasn't particularly surprised.

As I tapped our names and ranks on the list my former squad watched me. I made sure to spell all of their names wrong on purpose. Klaus with a C, Agnarsson with only one S, Avninder I didn't have to try to spell wrong, I just missed an N. My name, of course, was spelled perfectly fine.

"Come on Sarge," Rob complained.

I chuckled and change the names to their correct spellings.

"Team name?" I asked.

That promptly started another debate. The suggested names went from badass to adolescent. Stallions wasn't exactly an original one, neither was Thunderstrike. I heard the various different suggestions and came up with my own. I started tapping on the bulletin board and everyone shut up to see what I was writing down.

"Rangers?" Snark asked.

Pavel laughed. "You know, for all your asshole ways Frank, you still manage to get in some…"

"Admirable moments?" Rob suggested.

"Yeah, that."

I smiled until I realized that I had just been insulted in addition to complimented. I decided to take it as a compliment and patted Pavel's shoulders before heading ahead.

* * *

><p>Wine was surprisingly difficult to get around here. Even with the UNSC-sanctioned liquor store on board the ship I had almost no way to get a drink. Even though having an actual booze shop on board seemed strangely unmilitary I found it unusual that people didn't bring crates upon crates of alcohol for their own consumption on board.<p>

I ended up with mediocre wine for an incredibly high price. I had to swipe my identification card and they tagged me to see if I was behaving erratically. They would know the moment I was drunk. Geez.

Well, the wine had been expensive, but the chocolates had been a bargain. Truffles covered with cocoa. They were damn good, I'm not entirely sure why I tasted them before giving them to Hanna, but the box looked so goddamned tasty. Yeah, I know that sounded weird, but that's how it went down. Hanna was wearing a little bit of makeup and everything when I finally met up with her. It was very impressive what one could do because of peer pressure.

She looked nice in makeup.

"You look nice with makeup," I told her, kissing her.

"Oh this?" she asked. "I did this on a rush." She smiled at my look of amazement and incredulity. "Fine, thanks," she allowed. "I borrowed it from a friend."

"Looks stunning on you."

Her smile turned into a grin and now she leaned in to kiss me.

I handed her the chocolates and the bottle of wine. "Yeah, yeah, I know you wanted them."

She beamed. "Oh, you shouldn't have."

I made a sad face. "Why are you lying to me?"

Hanna rolled her eyes and hugged me by the waist. "Ok, I have to admit that I might've dropped some subtle hints…"

"Subtle?"

"…over the past days. But it was only because I'm new to the unit and wanted to fit with everybody here."

I nodded. "Gotta admit, it's pretty unusual that they do the whole Valentine's Day here," I said. "We barely even had holidays back on the _Inconvenience._"

I gulped at Hanna's expression when I said that. She had lost a hell of a lot more friends than I had. To this day I still don't know why our team had so much luck when everybody else had died without an opportunity to even _attempt_ to survive. I guess I should be thankful.

"Hey, don't make that face," I said, stroking her cheek. I mentally reared back when I saw Katie's face instead of hers. Somehow I think I managed to keep my expression neutral. "Next thing you're going to stop answering my messages."

That only made it worse. When I was on Paris IV I had sent her several messages. None had gotten any replies. At first I thought that it was simply because the messages didn't get through, or she was busy. Eventually I decided that she didn't want to answer. I thought that she was cheating, or that she had decided to break it up. I thought of the worst things that I could think about and I had ended up being the dick that cheated.

I didn't regret it one bit, and that worried me.

"Frank, you know that I-"

"I'm sorry," I told her. "Didn't mean it like that."

Yeah, eventually it turned out that she hadn't answered because she had been in a serious depression after having all her closest friends die. For some reason she blamed herself for their deaths and then got convinced that if she stayed with me I would only end up hating her for not doing anything to help her friends.

The brain is a wonderful thing, but sometimes it can be a curse as well.

"Amen," Schitzo cheered.

Hanna nodded and looked away, sniffled a bit and then looked back to me. "I know, I know."

I tried to appear cheery and smiled. "So? What's next?"

"Well, we might as well have a drink in a supply closet. There's not as much leniency here for…" she made her voice husky. "Sex."  
>I laughed. "Seductive, aren't you?"<p>

Hanna looked very satisfied with herself. Next thing I knew she would be running her hands along her sides and biting her lip. Man, I hoped she'd do that.

"We can't borrow a Pelican either."

"And our rooms are highly public," she added.

"Plus my roommate has a no-girls-allowed policy."

"Ooh, is he gay?"

"Hope not," I said.

"Getting a little bit homophobic are you?"

I smacked her butt. "Would you enjoy having your roommate coming on to you?"

She looked at the wall behind me and smiled dreamily. "Well, she does have the greatest ass."

"Now you're just teasing," I complained, poking her.

"So the storage closet?"

I nodded. "Hey, look, we're already in one of them!"

"Waddaya know?" she replied, making a surprised face.

The room was big enough for us to lie down on the floor and looked at the dull grey ceiling. Hanna had thought ahead and brought her datapad, it had a projector that displayed a stunning night sky. She turned the thing on and the ceiling suddenly turned into white upon black. It was actually quite impressive. Except for the grey walls and brooms.

We enjoyed a bunch of chocolate truffles. A couple of glasses of wine each and the kind of conversation that you could only have when half-drunk. After that we engaged in a session of lovemaking that was not as good as expected in the account of the cramped space and our own intoxication. All in all, it was a very fine evening. Or afternoon, stupid ship's version of day and night. After that we kissed and cuddled and all that, you probably know how it goes and I really don't want to delve into the details. You know, privacy and all that.

* * *

><p>The paintball tournament was a big deal on the ship. Only us and the guys on the other carrier in the battlegroup, the UNSC <em>Navarone<em>, had paintball tournaments. Well, those two ships were the only ones with a room large enough to be used as an arena. Every single ship had a hangar bay big enough to use as an arena, but they were occupied by important gear and personnel that needed to be alert at all times. So only we got the paintball tournament. It wasn't endorsed by the admiral, but he let it happen, it helped relieve stress. So would the boxing championships.

Every team was issued five marine vests. They were training vests, designed to be flexible and light but could still stop the progress of a plasma round. They felt like cardboard when compared to the stuff I typically wore. In addition to that we also got helmets with the optics and electronics yanked out. Again, they were training helmets. Someone had rigged a glass visor that covered the entire face. It looked weird and awkward, but it would protect you from getting nailed in the face by a training round.

For weapons we got M7 submachine guns set to single round only. No sidearms or long-range weapons. It was good old-fashioned paintball with incredibly fancy and expensive toys. If we were hit the bullet would foam up and harden, neutralizing our limbs or 'killing' us. With several teams composed of well-trained marines and combat veterans, this was bound to be interesting.

Somehow somebody had managed to get every single participant a free day. That meant that pretty much everybody in the ship would be a spectator at some point or another. That meant that nobody would be doing their jobs. That meant that the onboard AI was going to be very pissed.

"Hey, the bigger crowd the crowd the…more respect?"

"Higher amount," Snark told Rob.

"You know, it just doesn't pack the same feeling."

The marksman shrugged and checked his SMG before aiming down the sights. Once satisfied with the alignment he strapped it to his back and sat down on one of the various benches on the hallways. We weren't going to be playing for another half an hour or so, but the first matches had already started.

"So, do we have a strategy?" Pavel asked.

"It's just a game," I told him. "Just go with the flow?"

"Um, sir?" Novak asked. She hadn't talked much, but had accepted when she was asked to join the team. "No strategy?"

"There's five of us," I sighed. "Two on the right, two on the left, and whoever draws the short straw gets the middle."

"Short straw?" she asked me.

"Manner of speech," Pavel explained. "It usually means that whoever Frank's pissed at gets the tough job."

"Just ask Lamberti," Rob told her.

"Who's Lamberti?" Novak asked.

Rob shook his head while smiling and Snark snorted.

"Miri, you're pretty slow sometimes," Robert told her jokingly.

She knew it was a joke, but apparently she wasn't friendly enough with any of us to feel comfortable. Novak looked away and said nothing. This time I actually saw her blush a little.

I smiled and checked my own ammunition. We each had four magazines in addition to the one on the guns. That made five, five times sixty makes…three hundred. Yeah, I'm pretty sure it's three hundred. In a game of so-called paintball, we would have more than enough ammunition. Especially if our dead teammates could give us whatever ammo they hadn't burned through.

"So," Novak said. "Who's middle?"

"I'll be," I said. "Sounds like fun, besides, I need to get back into the action."

"And you think paintball is going to help?" Pavel asked.

"It's extremely high-stakes paintball," Rob helpfully added.

I laughed and slapped my weapon on my thigh before realizing that I didn't have the required magnetic plates. I avoided looking like an idiot only because everybody had glanced away from me and towards a swabbie that had just walked up to us. The poor guy looked a little nervous at having to approach five Helljumpers all by himself.

_I still have it._

"Um, Rangers?"

"That'd be us," Snark told him, leaning back on his bench and looking pretty intimidating for someone his size and weight.

"You're up," he said. "You're going to be Red Team for this match."

We all shrugged. "Suits me fine," I said.

"Here," the navy guy said, offering us red stickers. "Those go on your chest." After we were done slapping them onto our vests he told us to follow him. We walked through one of the access corridors that led to the training room, it was dark and I could hear a commentator on the other side. I felt like a gladiator. I liked the feeling.

The door opened to reveal a completely flat area. On the other end of the room another team emerged. They didn't look intimidating, but then again, they were a hundred meters away.

"Ladies and gentlemen!" some hidden loudspeakers boomed. "We've got a wonderful match here, last tournament's third placers against the ODST newcomers!"

There was no roaring or cheering, but I could see the spectators in the long windows waving their arms frantically. I could only guess that they were as excited as I wanted them to be.

The commentator made crowd noises before going on. "Rangers are red and Pandas are blue. Don't let their names fool you, I'm pretty sure that this Helljumpers are better than Army and you all know how fast the Panda's can move."

"No strategy?" Pavel asked me quietly. "You sure?"

"Yeah," I said. "We good for this."

"If we embarrass ourselves in front of the whole fucking ship it's your fault."

"And if we get ourselves some fame?"

"Then it's my fault," he said.

"…the map is already simulated and the room is ready to go! We're only missing one little thing now," the commentator went on, "one of the Rangers asked me for a special favor, and since I owe him, I pretty much have to do it. He said that he wanted some soundtrack to kick ass to."

Everybody save for Private Novak turned to face Robert, who just shrugged and smiled at us. "You're gonna love this," he promised.

The song started with a steady beat. A bass drum or whatever you call it, the one where you're supposed to step on a pedal, that one. Then a very electric sounding guitar was added. At that point several square pillars were raised from the ground. They were maybe two feet wide and seven and a half feet tall. There were a few of the traditional chest-high walls thrown in the mix. The columns and walls were only in the central section of the room.

"Get to it!" the commentator's voice boomed just as another electric instrument was added to the song. It was a very deep sound that gradually got higher.

"Greyhound by SHM," Novak said.

"I think I'm in love with you," Rob joked without missing a beat, jogging towards the arena proper. At least I hope he was joking.

"You an old music fan?" Pavel queried.

"Just house."

"House?" I asked.

"It's a genre," she explained.

"Huh."

By that point we were too far away to have a conversation and slammed onto the first column. I turned around and aimed at the enemy side with my SMG while walking to the next column, which was just seven feet away. The columns were set up in a grid-like pattern. The walls occasionally broke the pattern, but it was a completely symmetrical map that was very predictable. The players, however weren't so predictable.

I almost shat my pants when a camera drone appeared right next to my head. I glared at it as the commentator made a joke about me shitting my pants because of the drone. I waved it away and it moved a few feet backwards.

"Here comes the drop!" Rob called out.

Immediately after he said that the song got a serious bass sound going on. I'm beyond the point of hating myself for admitting it, but I loved it. It was getting me pumped.

Rob got punished for his shouting and a moment later both he and Snark were pinned behind their respective covers by series of shots from an unseen enemy. I moved up another column and leaned sideways to try and spot the offenders, but they were out of sight. All I could hear was their cussing and the snapping noise that the training rounds made. The pillar protecting them was already getting covered with the hardened foam.

"Damn, looks like two of the Rangers are pinned down, can they get out?" He paused. "Not without help they can't."  
>A few moments later I heard fire coming from Pavel and Novak's direction. There were a few scattered shots in response, but I could tell that we had the situation under control.<p>

"Ooh! The battle gets more…symmetrical."

Did that mean there was a single guy in front of me? I peeked out to try and spot anyone, but I could see nothing except for columns and columns. Well, there was a wall that would be about as high as my waist five columns away.

"He's gonna make a run for it!"

"Stop narrating everything!" I told the man as I pulled myself forward for additional speed.

A couple of bullets slammed onto the columns next to me, but I couldn't pin their origin. I slid down into the wall, scraping my shins and thighs. It's not as easy to do without protective plates of ceramic and titanium. I shuffled so that my back was pressed against the wall and my feet were stretched. The first thing I did was look to my left.

To my surprise one of the members of Blue Team (AKA Pandas) was using the column to stabilize himself. He was the guy that had been firing on Snark and Robert. He hadn't spotted me, so I took my time when aiming at him. Normally I would've sprayed with my BR55, which was a highly reliable weapon in long-distance engagements. The M7 I was currently toting, not so much.

Of course the first shot went wild, and so did the second one. There was a loud alarm blare. The third shot hit the guy in the ankle. He cowered away from the shots and to the other side of the column, putting it between him and me. A second later he fell backwards with a chest full of hardened foam. Another loud noise was heard.

"Wow, two kills in as many seconds!" the commentator commented. "Well, one for each team, but it was pretty cool."

Judging form the precision of the shots that the Panda guy had been hit with I deduced that Snark was still alive and kicking while Rob was cussing at everything and everyone because the foam wouldn't allow him to move.

I peeked over cover and immediately ducked when two bullets flew by. Well, training bullets, but that takes too long to type.

This time I spotted the shooter. He was pretty close, but at an awkward angle, so I could risk it. I got into a running position and launched myself across to the next column. I popped so that I was facing the side directly opposite from where we had started the game and then to the left. I moved forward with my gun raised and scanned the area.

"Man this shit is tense!" the commentator said.

I don't know who he was talking about, but it certainly felt tense to me.

I spotted movement and jumped sideways before going around a column and emerging on the other side. One of the Pandas was three columns in front of me. I fired at least twenty rounds into him before he went down. He got a couple of shots off but they all slapped against the floor or flew past me. The guy fell to the floor and another blare was heard.

"Rangers take the lead!"

"Yeah, just tell the other guys," I muttered under my breath before jogging towards Snark's position.

"Sarge," he called out from an unseen position. "Over here!"

"Hey," I said. "What happened to Rob?"

"Headshot, don't know whether it was skill or luck."

I shrugged. "Doesn't matter. It's four against three, let's flan-"

Two blares in quick succession. I waited for the verdict.

"And it gets interesting with three against two!"

"Shit," I cursed. "C'mon, let's go."

We walked around the arena, covering each other and checking all posible attack points. After we had gone deep into their starting side I stopped.

"See anything?"

"Nope."

"Here," I said, clasping my hands together and positioning myself against a column. "I'll give you a boost and you tell me what you see."

Snark nodded and jumped up to the column quickly. He was there for ten seconds before jumping back down. "Nothing."

And then we started getting peppered from the side.

We took cover in different columns as bullets hit right next to us. Snark popped from cover and fired three shots. Two alarm blares were heard. One was from the guy that Snark killed and the other one because of Snark himself. My last remaining ally collapsed to the floor with the right side of his face covered with hardened foam. It might've been slightly comical if it didn't mean that I would likely meet the same end.

"Whoa! Two simultaneous headshots, you don't see that everyday!"

"Sarge," he coughed. "Do something awesome." He then proceeded to make a dying noise and roll his head to the side.

I popped from cover and fired as fast as I could at the wall where the two Pandas were hiding while the commentator was saying that Snark had a penchant for the dramatic even though he was a terrible actor. My concentrated fire coupled with the surprise of having one of their teammates shot right next to them meant that both of the enemies ducked behind cover. I took advantage of that and collapsed the stock of the SMG before sprinting while firing. I dropped the clip when I ran out and reloaded before I slid into the other side of the wall. Before anybody could react I jumped over the wall and shot the two shocked Pandas one time in the chest.

"Well…" the commentator said. "That was…awesome!" He made more crowd noises and declared us the victors. I left the three dead guys (two of them my victims) and walked out while flexing both arms playfully. The song was just ending and I felt seriously badass.

Next game I was the first one out on the team.

On the third one I was knocked out right before Novak finished off the last guy on the other team. She was crafty. Not as sneaky as Snark, but she seemed to know exactly when she should move from cover to avoid being spotted.

Then we got a long lunch break so that the survivors could rest.

"Well, this has been fun," I said tiredly. This was tired. Hence the tired tone I used when I said that.

"Bloody wanker got me good last time," Rob was muttering, trying to pick foam bits out of his clothing. "Damn foam."

"Nice work Miranda," Snark said, patting her on the back. "Saved our asses."

"Well, technically speaking she just saved us from being eliminated," Pavel pointed out. "But yeah, thanks."

Miranda only shrugged and slung her rifle behind her back. All of the players were heading towards the nearest mess hall to get some nutrients on their bodies. When we arrived I noticed that every single team was conferring amongst themselves, looking over their shoulders and muttering. At first it seemed like something childish and ridiculous, but soon enough I found myself watching footage of the strongest teams' fights and analyzing it with Pavel's help.

Snark, Rob, and Novak played poker while we did that. Private Novak always seemed to lose. She was obviously not enjoying the game, but she kept playing for some reason. Maybe she felt pressured into it or something. I don't know, she was extremely withdrawn when compared to the rowdy Rob and the sometimes quiet sometimes not Snark. She'd have to come out of her shell soon or she'd end up the quiet, brooding type that was secretly a bitch.

Sort of like Grigori.

"So, house music?" I asked at nobody in particular.

"Good, isn't it?" Robert said. "Good shit. By the way, what kind do you like?" he directed that question at Novak.

She placed her cards next to her food tray and looked up. "Um, I guess I like the stuff from the second golden age more than anything else."

"Second golden age?" Pavel asked.

"Late twenty-fourth century," she explained. "Similar to the one that they played first." For some reason she looked terribly uncomfortable while talking about her likes and dislikes. Maybe she was a very private person?

After a while of rolling through the tapes of what we considered to be the toughest teams to face Pavel and I came up with outlines of what we would be doing in case we faced them. Some of the teams had very unusual playing styles. This wasn't war, it wasn't even a mock up of war. This was a game played with guns, people weren't afraid to get shot and they weren't afraid to pull of shit that would've gotten them killed in a battlefield.

Everyone was a badass here.

That frustrated me to no end.

After I finally finished my third serving we all stood up. I didn't feel guilty in the least for making my team wait for me. They seemed irritated and for a moment it looked like Novak wanted to say something, but closed her mouth. Perhaps it was a prudent move, perhaps it wasn't. I was not used to a Helljumper being so withdrawn. Grigori and Snark were quiet at times, but they weren't exactly withdrawn. They'd voice their opinions when they thought it necessary. Miranda Novak wouldn't.

"We're up," Pavel told me, checking the match schedule. "Semis."

"Let's go," I shrugged. We picked up our mandatory clips on our way inside and emerged into the completely flat arena.

Fifteen minutes later we emerged victorious, ready for the finals. This one was bound to be a good match.

And so it was.

Us five would face the reigning champions. One would think that they'd be our comrades from the ODST platoon or even a bunch of particularly talented marines. No, they were technicians that fueled and maintained the Pelicans and Longswords. They looked happy at the prospect of facing the best in a mock battle. I smiled at their eagerness and hoped that they would make this interesting.

"Remember, don't get cocky," I said. "They made it this far."

"The moment you've all been waiting for!" the commentator commentated in a commentating tone. "The final of the tourney! We have our reigning champions facing off against the unstoppable newcomers. A showdown for the ages, and all of it is being recorded and available for sale on my webpage."

I could literally feel the groaning through the windows.

"Ladies and gentlemen, marines and sailors, I give you…the labyrinth!"

And a labyrinth it was. The moment the commentator said that a wall emerged a few feet from our position. It was too tall for us to climb, even with one of us boosting the other.

"Now there, this isn't a particularly tough puzzle, there are even some wide open spaces," the commentator went on. "But it makes thing interesting. Go!"

We walked inside the sole entrance of the labyrinth and I looked on either direction before turning to face my team. "Right? Left?" I asked them. "Or do we want to separate."

"Two and three," Pavel suggested. "You take Private Novak. I'll take the vets."

I turned to face Snark and Rob. "Didn't know that you fixed animals for a living." I paused. "Sorry, that was a terrible joke."

"Indeed," Snark murmured. "Good luck."

"Likewise. Novak, you take point."

She nodded and started walking in a combat crouch with her weapon raised. I didn't quite understand why she was using the combat position, but it was her choice, not mine. We turned a couple of corners, met against a wall, and repeated the process a few times before we emerged into a rectangular room with nothing to provide cover.

"Stay here," I told her, "cover the other entrance."

Novak nodded and positioned herself behind the corner while aiming at the other entrance. I quickly ran along the wall while aiming at the entrance as well. When I was halfway through I saw movement on the other side and ducked to the side. Four rounds flew past me but none seemed to hit the enemy. I turned to face Novak, who just glanced away nervously. I shook my head and ran towards the opposite entrance and fired a couple of blind rounds before peeking my head through. There was nobody within sight.

"Come here," I whispered, waving her towards me. I stepped into the new corridor and the floor shifted.

"Oh, maybe I should've mentioned it," the commentator started, "but the labyrinth kind of moves occasionally. I'm not sorry."

I grunted and turned around only to almost slam into a wall. "Novak!"

"I hear you," she replied.

"Speak louder."

"I hear you."

I sighed. It was the exact same volume. "Just try to stay alive, I'll do the same."

"Ok."

I shook my head and steeled myself for the daunting task of solving a labyrinth while killing a highly efficient team of mechanics with M7 SMGs. I didn't want to end pasted to the walls for half an hour before the match ended. I moved forward very slowly, adapting the same position that Novak had at first. I somehow managed to ignore my hypocrisy until Schitzo reminded me of it. Fucking dick.

Ten minutes in I saw one of the other guys on the far end of a corridor. I fired as I ran towards him before ducking to the side on another opening. A few rounds hit near me, but none made contact. I was about to pop from cover when the loud blare was heard and immediately after that the walls shifted, cutting me off from the enemy.

The commentator didn't give any indication as to who had been shot. The walls were high enough that I couldn't see the holographic scoreboards on the side of the room. This was frustrating. Oh so very frustrating.

When I turned around I noticed that the walls here were a whole lot closer to one another than they had been before. I decided to give climbing them a shot. I jumped to the right and then pushed myself to the left. I did the same thing once more, but my foot slipped and I slammed to the floor, only just managing to place my hands in front of me to break my fall.

"Ouch, that's gotta hurt." The commentator seemed to enjoy his job a little bit too much. I'm almost positively sure that it was the animosity that came with his job.

"Yeah," I grunted. "Fuck you too."

I stood up, dusted myself off and slung my gun over my back before taking a couple of steps back and getting a running start. I jumped to the side, pushed myself to the left with my leg and arm and then repeated that same process with my left limbs. The second kick was much more powerful than the first in order to allow me to reach the top. I managed to hold on with just my fingertips, but I did get up on the top of the wall. In retrospect I think that it would've been easier than I expected to launch Novak up here. Maybe even Snark too. It just would've been counterproductive.

I ran the length of the wall and jumped to other walls, trying to spot enemies. It wasn't long before I found a lone mechanic. I hit him three times. A classic Mozambique drill. Two to the chest and one to the head. He took a step backwards before the huge mass of foam hardened and stuck his head in the position that it was. Just to top it off I fired one shot at each of his feet and had him stuck to his position.

"Some unsportsmanlike conduct right there," the commentator stated. "I do find it highly humorous though."  
>I kept jumping around the top of the labyrinth like a videogame character. It wasn't long before the floor disappeared under my feet and I was forced to twist so that I could land with a forward roll. It wasn't perfectly executed and I bruised my elbow before slamming into the wall in front of me as I emerged from the roll.<p>

"Huh."

I turned to the source of the voice while drawing my weapon, but Rob was presenting his palms. "Hey Sarge."

"You know who the first kill was?" I asked, suddenly cursing myself for not taking a look when I could've.

"Pavel," he replied. "Bad luck really. We nicked one of the blokes that hit him, but he wasn't out. Must be having a terrible time right now though."

"So that makes it-" another loud blare. "Three two four. I just don't know which is which."

"Hey, don't worry about it too much."

"That's not like you," I told him as he helped me up.

He shrugged. "Let's go Sarge. I'm hungry."

"Now that's more like you," I smiled. "You take point?"

"Might as well."

We managed to stay together through a couple of more labyrinth shifts. It wasn't until the third time that the walls moved that the entire labyrinth disappeared and we suddenly found ourselves in a completely flat environment once more.

Shit.

I turned three hundred and sixty degrees, spotting all of the remaining competitors. Fire started flying past before I could see who the survivors were. Bullets foamed up an inch from my face before the walls quickly appeared again. Two blares were heard.

"Goddamn," I muttered, angry at the sudden stunt.

"Two to four," the commentator stated. "Rangers."

I sighed with relief. "Come on," I told Rob. "Let's finish this."

Half an hour of brutal mind games later we had finally cornered the last enemy player. Snark had taken a couple of hits and was out, but the three of us could handle this. The moment a piece of him was exposed we all pummeled him with fire. Eventually one round hit and he recoiled backwards. We slaughtered the poor man, almost completely covering him with hardened foam. I ordered my two surviving teammates to stop firing and smiled.

"Winner, winner chicken dinner," I said, stealing an old-fashioned phrase. "Next leave, chicken wings are on me."

_You know, I might just get used to this ship._

* * *

><p><em>Thanks to Alshep and SilasWhitfield for proof-reading this chapter.<em>

_So you met the guys on the ODST platoon, this is the first chapter where you get to know them. Obviously, we start off with Private Miranda Novak. Other characters will be explored in the following chapters. I'll try not to make them all dicks. We also get to explore the reasons why Hanna didn't answer any of Frank's messages._

_Little trivia, the first paintball "map" is based on Hang 'Em High from Halo CE. Well, the ground level of the map at least. _

_I'm sorry, but I just felt like I had to use Greyhound by SHM in the chapter, it fit so well. It helped that I was listening to it when writing it down. You've probably heard the song at a party or something, if you like electronic music you should probably listen to it. _

_Please leave a review with feedback and thanks for reading this. _

_Stay strong._

_-casquis_


	138. Coaching the Tryouts

Chapter CXXXVIII: Coaching the Tryouts

**August 31, 2545 (UNSC Calendar)/six months later**

**UNSC **_**Flawless, **_**in orbit above Acheron-VII, Beta Rho Omega System**

* * *

><p><em>"Well, the siege was a short one."- PFC Sander Almers<em>

* * *

><p>One more day. In fact, less than one. Thirteen hours was all that we needed. Thirteen hours and we would've been able to return to Reach without a major incident. Three months had been spent on duty, playing at security guard outside of armories or important rooms, the other three months had been spent in a freezer. I had been woken up, expecting to be told to pack up my things and report for duty before I was shipped off again.<p>

But no, that didn't happen.

I was woken up one day ahead of schedule by Lieutenant Hayes. Contact had been made with the Covenant in a nearby system and we were gunning towards Acheron-VII, the sole colony on the whole solar system. We had already done a risky jump that put the colony itself between us and the aliens, then the entire battlegroup had gunned towards the enemies while we infantry grunts prepared ourselves to kick the covvies' sorry asses out of the ground.

It had been a relatively short fight. Surprised by the sudden appearance of seven enemy vessels and reveling in victory, the two Covenant battlecruisers had been destroyed by a MAC barrage. Our heavy destroyer, the _Honorable, _well, actually it was the _(Dis)Honorable_, but that's a long story. As I was saying, the heavy destroyer took out one of the ships almost immediately, firing its two MACs within seconds of one another and scoring direct hits. The three frigates closed in for the kill on the second one just as thousands of Archer missiles from the rest of the fleet hit it.

Our prowler had done nothing.

Still, even our brutal counter-attack hadn't been enough. A small enemy ship of unidentified class had managed to jump out of the system. It was obvious that we had very little time to kill all of the ground forces and evacuate as many of the civilians as we could.

Considering the numbers that we were facing, this was going to be a tough one.

"What the hell are you doing?"

I immediately removed my hand from my codpiece and glared at him. "Straps were too tight," I explained. "It was digging right against my balls."

"Uh.-huh;" Pavel muttered. "Sit down."

I sat next to him and glanced at the empty podium.

"Ten-hut!" someone yelled.

I stood up on reflex as Lieutenant Tahlia Hayes walked inside the room clad in full battle armor, her helmet under her arm. As per usual, Master Sergeant Dajani was walking right next to her and stood at ease when Hayes reached the podium. "As you were," she said. "Now listen very closely. Acheron-VII has been under attack for one week now. The only reason that they lasted so long is because the colony possesses two mass drivers, one of which is history. Enemy forces groundside are estimated at two regiments worth, that's a little bit more than our entire complement plus the one on the _Navarone_." I searched my memory until I remembered that the _Navarone_ was a light carrier attached to our battlegroup. That's the kind of stuff that I had to remember. "We currently have the element of surprise plus complete space dominance. Air superiority is going to take a while, but we'll get there. Army troopers on the ground are all but reduced to ashes and the ones that are still alive are doing their best to keep the covvies outside of the surviving cities." She paused and sighed. "That's the basics, but we have it a little bit more complicated this time."

"It wouldn't be a Helljumper mission otherwise!" Lance Corporal Wiremu boasted. There were a few calls of agreement.

"Shut up!" Hayes boomed. It was very unlike her, but I guess that you need to have a little fire in you to be an officer. "And listen very closely. Our mission involves a jump behind enemy lines. Deep behind enemy lines. There's this little town that was built around one of the aforementioned mass drivers. By little town I mean village that formerly had ten thousand souls on it." As she said that the holotank and the screen lit up. "There are three points of interest in this village, all of them highly critical to the war effort. Number one!" The screen zoomed in on a portion of the smoking village and a mass driver appeared on the holotank. "The mass driver, it is still functional and coincidentally enough, pointed at the initial jump point of the Covenant forces." She allowed us a moment to examine the cannon itself and the visible enemy forces. "Second target is a vehicle depot. The depot itself is not what interests us, there is a fuel refining facility set up there, intel shows that it's one of three in the planet, the fuel refined there feeds an entire front."

The refueling facility was surprisingly small for the amount of fuel that it produced. Granted, three regiment's worth of vehicles isn't exactly that many tanks or ghosts, but if you took into account the fliers, phantoms, and additional vehicles. As important as it was, it was very lightly defended for a target of that value. If you consider two companies lightly defended.

"Third target," Hayes snapped rather aggressively, getting our attention again. "Is a radar dish. Well, as you can see, it isn't exactly a dish, but it gets the job done. The tower works in conjunction with several smaller ones planted over the continent, but if they will stop working properly if the main tower is destroyed. That's the overview people. Three targets."

"El-tee," Staff Sergeant Gregory Williams, the second in command of Third Squad, started. "Which squad will take which target?"

"I'm glad you ask Williams, since we've got a new squad leader on Second Squad, we'll let him take a pick. Gunny?"

"Um, what?" I asked rather dumbly.

"Take a pick, A, B, or C."

I quickly went through the targets in my mind and made a decision. "A."

"Good. First Squad will take B and Third Squad takes C. Since First squad has the platoon's sniper I recommend every squad get a marksman. B's got the medic, and C's got our laser man. Adapt accordingly."

We all stood up and headed for the drop room itself. I walked up to Rob and tapped his shoulder. "You finally got them to give you the laser?"

"It was easier than you'd think, they've got like ten in the ship alone."

I raised my eyebrows, I was suitably impressed. "Try not to burn your eyebrows off."

He laughed loudly. "Ha! With the Spartan Laser I could burn your eyebrows off Sarge."

"Watch it," I told him, driving my elbow into his ribs. "I still expect some measure of respect."

"Right, sorry," he apologized. After he thought he was out of earshot he muttered something along the lines of, "Same old Sarge."

The drop room was a combination of well…a drop room, and an armory. There was a large section to the side with a bunch of weapons. Only then did it finally hit me that I had lost my battle rifle, the first gun that I had ever owned in my life. The weapon that had killed hundreds of hostile aliens and that had saved my life in countless occasions. I had lost my BR55 and I had only just realized it.

"Shit," I told myself.

"Something wrong Gunny?"

"Oh, nothing El-tee, it just hit me that I lost my weapon when my last ship was destroyed."

"Ah," she said understandingly. "I know what you mean. But you'll have to make do. Grab any of the weapons here."

I smiled. "Thanks."

"And wipe that smile of your face."

I almost scowled. "Yes, sir."

As everybody grabbed their own weapons from their named racks I went towards the deep end of the weapons closet and looked over the weapons. I shrugged and grabbed the BR55 closest to me and hefted it experimentally. It weighed exactly the same as my old weapon, but it just felt a little bit wrong. I slung it over my back and walked out. My sidearm had been replaces, but it wasn't the first time I lost a pistol. I had opted to take the M6C/SOCOM instead of the M6G that I usually took. Felt a little bit light too, but I had used the model several times.

Knives were good and strapped, magazines were secure and ready, grenades were good to go. I was ready to kick ass and I had never been more nervous before a drop, excluding my first combat drop.

A year. It had been about a year since my last drop, and that drop hadn't ended very well.

"Feet first Helljumpers," Lieutenant Hayes said. "Now onto your pods, I expect only the best out of you, so deliver."

"Feet first," I muttered to myself. I was the one that usually got that line. I shrugged and hopped inside the pod with my name on it, securing the BR55 onto its compartment on my right. I leaned back on the cushioned back and rolled my neck a little bit before putting on my helmet. After I had it on and secured I cracked my knuckles. Pavel gave me a quick salute from across the room before his door closed in front of him.

A second later my door closed in front of me and I took a breath in anticipation. It wasn't the good kind.

Red, yellow, green.

The pod lurched, gravity disappeared, and then we were entering the atmosphere. I felt sweat all over my body just as the nav systems on the HEV redirected me ever so slightly so that I would land right next to my target. I saw the other pods fly at an uncomfortably close distance before thick clouds blocked them from sight. My eyes then drifted towards my altimeter before I looked straight down. The village was putting out a shitload of smoke and I could spot the covvies from here.

There was a bunch of them.

"Good luck," Schitzo said. This time he chose to appear as my reflection on the glass in front of me. There shouldn't have been a reflection.

We made contact with the ground and I almost smashed my head against the door. I unlatched it just as I reached for my BR55. I took a step forward but was abruptly yanked back when my rifle didn't leave its holster. I drew my sidearm and emptied half the clip on a brute that was only just beginning to register what was going on. It fell to the ground with five holes in its head and twitched once.

"Fucking crap," I cursed as I tried at yanking my rifle. The pod had landed hard and the metal had folded over my gun a little bit. If I could just yank a little harder…

I heard growling and turned around to shoot another brute. This time I ran out of ammo before it went down.

"Shit," I said as I unloaded the magazine and reached for another one. The brute was now charging at me, blood flowing from its wounds. I wouldn't be able to make a reload that fast.

My hand changed directions and went to the knife in the small of my back. I had only just gripped it when the brute flew sideways.

"You planning on killing many Bravo Kilos with that?" PFC Beckel asked me, a smoking shotgun on his hands.

"Preferably not," I told him as I reloaded. "But I'm not opposed to the idea." I turned around and used both hands to peel the folded metal out of the way and retrieve my weapon. I slid the bolt backwards and reveled in the click that it made. "Let's go, we're meeting up with the rest of the team on Alpha."  
>Alpha was actually a house. Unlike most of the buildings surrounding the mass driver it was an actual house. I was willing to bet that it belonged to one of the caretakers and the owners would be in serious danger of their roof collapsing on top of them. Regardless, it was relatively close by and had windows facing the driver proper. It was a strategic position that we had landed further away from than I would've liked. That's why I preferred to do things manually.<p>

"Rea-Second Squad, check in."

"Klaus," Pavel said.

"Konstantinov," Grigori said.

"Wiremu," Apirama said.

"Beckel," Axel said.

"Almers," Sander said.

"Brisbois," Serge said.

"Novak," Miranda said.

"That was lame," I stated. "We need callsigns."

"Amen," Pavel agreed.

I ducked as plasma flew in my direction. The enemy was starting to form a cohesive defense. "You know the plan, rally on Alpha." I looked around, examining the scorched brick walls. They were actually brick walls. Funny. "Stick with your partner."

There were a few scattered acknowledgements before I nodded at Beckel. We started moving up the street when a squad of grunts led by a single brute emerged on the far end. I fired a couple of shots, hitting a grunt and wounding another one before they opened up on us.

"Over here!" PFC Beckel yelled, waving at me. He kicked down a door and I jumped in after him.

"Backyards?" I asked.

"Yeah," he nodded. "I'll go around, flank them."

"I'll keep them busy."

I popped from cover and fired a burst before a couple of spikes embedded themselves on the doorframe. I cursed and ducked before leaving cover again. This time I managed two bursts at the brute before I had to jump back to cover. The brute stumbled and fell backwards but didn't die. Its power armor stopped the rounds.

_Since when do the minors get fancy power armor?_

I fired a few more bursts, this time deciding to focus on the grunts to thin down the fire volume. They had my position tagged, but I was able to hit one grunt and take it down. After that I simply fired a few blind bursts, hoping to buy some time for Beckel. The grunts were now close enough for me to hear their bark-like language. The translator was deactivated of course, a mistake on my part, but I knew what they were saying, or at least the general idea.

Then I heard the first shotgun blast. "Brute down!" Beckel announced.

I walked out the door with my rifle raised and wasted two grunts while PFC Beckel took care of the rest. The brute was still twitching and struggling in the ground, trying to reach for its spiker. Beckel walked up to it and executed it with his sidearm.

"Clear?" he asked.

"Move up," I told him. "We're running late."

We had to climb uphill, it only made sense that the mass driver was positioned on the highest point around. Right now I wish it wasn't so. A couple of squads attempted to stop us, but a combination of my long range shooting coupled with close-quarters ambushes quickly left them in the ground. The brutes were terrible strategists when you compared them to the elites, and they lost their temper more often than not, we had that to our advantage. When the mass driver was ours, then we would have to worry.

"Pack of brutes," I whispered. "They're guarding our way in."

"Can we bypass them?" Beckel asked me.

"Don't think so," I muttered. "Not unless we take a big detour."

He peeked over the corner and than turned to look at me. "Is that backdoor our only entrance?"

"Our only realistic entrance," I told him. "Ideas?"

"You're the sergeant, Gunny," he replied.

I grunted. "You asked for it. Ok, so here's what we're gonna do. There's six of 'em and only two of us. You've got your SMG ready?"

"Yup."

"Good, I want you to run to the other side of the street."

"Are you crazy? They'll see me!"

"I'm the sergeant," I reminded him. "Now go!" I made sure to push him as I said that so that he'd have no other choice but to run.

Halfway through a couple of carbine shots flew past him, but Beckel made it safe. He jumped to the other side and glared at me before returning fire. I went prone and looked around form ground level. The major in command of the pack was ordering two of the brutes to go and flush out Beckel while the rest of them guarded the door. I slid back and grabbed a flashbang and a regular frag. "You've got the two coming for you, ok?"

"What?"

"Good."

I tossed the flashbang and the frag within a second of one another. Both were pretty good throws and landed close enough to their intended targets. The flashbang detonated right before hitting the ground, stunning the four brutes that had stayed back and drawing the attention of the other two. The frag grenade went of a second later, killing one brute instantly and wounding the three others. At that time I emerged from cover completely and took the brutes that were still standing with one headshot for each before Beckel wasted his two targets with concentrated bursts.

"One of them's alive," he noted.

"I see it," I replied.

The brute was struggling to get to its weapon, much like the one we had killed first had been. This one was a major and had more powerful armor, so it had been able to take the blast better.

When I say better I don't mean it in a necessarily good way. It was missing most of its two legs and there were shrapnel holes all over its body. I walked up to it and kicked it in the head, forcing it sideways. It roared weakly before I kicked it again. The brute was clawing at the ground, trying to reach for a plasma pistol, slowly dragging himself towards the weapon. Just when it was about to reach the gun Beckel pulled it back with his foot. The major roared and pounded the floor weakly, but it was losing blood and couldn't live much longer.

"Do you want to do the honors?" I asked Beckel, gesturing at the brute.

"Nah, you do it."

I shrugged as I pulled my knife from my boot and stepped on the back of its head. Normally that wouldn't have been enough to stop a brute, but this one had the strength of a handicapped grunt right now. I placed the top of the knife against the base of the skull and stabbed. The brute jerked before finally dying. I yanked my knife and wiped it on the creature's fur before sliding it back into its sheathe. The stab had severed the spinal column from the brain, cutting all the body from the brain. The brute would die a painless death, albeit a horrible one. It would lay there for as long as its brain could go without oxygen, knowing full well what was happening to it and not being able to do a goddamned thing about it. It didn't deserve that. It deserved worse.

"Man, Bravo Kilos sure can take a pounding," Beckel noted, examining the corpse of the brute and the blood trail behind it.

"They die just like us," I said. "And we can aim better."

Beckel shrugged before he reached for the door. "They broke the terminal, kicked the door in."

"So?" I asked.

He kicked at the door. "Twisted, blocked, can't open it."

I felt like hitting him for talking to me like a baby, but I decided that humiliation was enough. I walked up to the door and kicked it with full force. The blow yanked the heavy metal door of the wall, dragging a few pieces of polycrete with it. I pointedly stared at Beckel and waved him in first.

"Milady," I said.

Beckel grunted something but otherwise didn't voice his opinion.

"Badass," Schitzo said complimentarily. "What are you gonna do next? Kick him in the balls?"

We walked inside with out weapons up. This time Beckel got to take point, switching his SMG for the M90. He had configured his shotgun to have a flashlight, a bayonet attachment, and less spread. It was basically enhanced for greater range while keeping the lethality at close range. Plus, the switch-activated bayonet would make for some nastiness.

"House should be directly across after we exit."

"Well, move along," I said. "You go first, I'll cover you."

We left the building we were in and Beckel sprinted across the street before I did the same thing. He opened the door before I slid in.

"Ok, we're in," I said over the squad channel. "What's your status on arrival?"

"We're there," Pavel said. "That's Wiremu, Almers, and me."

"Novak and I are on our way." Brisbois told me. "Thirty seconds."

As he finished saying that Pavel walked in with Almers and Wiremu. I nodded at them and Pavel signaled for them to got to the second floor while he and Beckel cleared the ground floor.

"Caboose?" I asked.

"Who the hell's Caboose?" Beckel said in the background.

"Ran into some trouble," he said. There was a hesitant pause. "I'm bringing it to you Sarge."

"Hunters?"

"Hunter."

"You took one out by yourself!?" Almers exclaimed.

"Damn," I said. "Draw it to the street and keep running, we'll take it out as it flies by."

"Understood."

I turned around and started upstairs just as I heard the clear shout. "Who's got the heavy weapons?"

"That would be me," Lance Corporal Wiremu informed me, a little bit more dryly than I would've liked.

"You, roof," I ordered. "Pavel I want you to spray the fucker with everything you've got as it comes up, everyone else, same deal. Wiremu, blast it once Caboose is out of range."

"Why do you call Konstantinov Caboose?" Almers asked me.

"Used to be his callsign."

"Obviously he didn't get to chose it," Beckel stated.

"No," I replied. "And I was thinking about giving you guys your own."

"I'm good with my last name."

"Keep on talking and you'll end up being princess," Pavel told him. "Positions."

"Almost there," Caboose grunted in between breaths. "Can you see me?"

"I gotcha," Wiremu told him. "I can make the shot from here."

"Caboose?"

"Just get this thing outta my ass."

"Change of plans," I said. "Fire."

"Backblast!" Wiremu called in warning, he didn't want anyone roasted alive by the rockets, especially himself.

The dull thud that the SPANKr made was heard and a moment later an explosion followed. Pavel and two other rifles opened up on the hunter, finishing it off while I ran outside to get Caboose. He was on the floor, several meters away from the hunter.

"You ok?" I asked him, pulling him up and aiming downrange for additional enemies. He nodded and I helped him towards the house. "We're clear," I announced.

"That was the easiest hunter I've ever killed," Beckel said.

"My first," Novak voiced weakly.

"You never forget your first," Pavel laughed. "Good work kid."

"Cut the crap," I rolled my eyes. Not even I had made such a big fuss about my first hunter kill. Well, I had, but everyone else in the squad hadn't even mentioned it. I was kind of jealous actually.

"Novak, you're with me on the rooftop," I said. "Wiremu, I want you on the second floor in case we need a boom." I thought about my assets. "Pavel, you also get second floor, lay down fire on the enemy, keep their heads down. Everybody else is going to go out the windows and clear the courtyard."

"Wait, what about snipers?"

"That's what Novak and me are for."

The roof was a complicated one. Old-fashioned style with tiles and shit. I mean, who the hell uses tiles outside a museum? We climbed up and went prone on the top, our bodies on the opposite side from the mass driver. There were several grunts running around while brutes ordered them around. A few jackal sharpshooters kept overwatch on the neighboring rooftops, but none were overtly alert. Their attention was mostly focused on the other side of town where Lieutenant Hayes and her squad was causing mayhem.

"Hey, how the hell did you kill a hunter by yourself?" Almers asked Caboose.

"With my shotgun," he replied.

"It's not that hard," Pavel told him. "You just have to keep your cool and be at the right distance."

I nodded to myself while chuckling. It _was_ that hard.

There was some more bickering between Almers and Beckel with Pavel occasionally joining up while Novak and I tagged every single visible alien with our guns. Little red silhouettes would be appearing all over our squad's HUDs, showing them where to fire.

"Done?" I asked Novak.

"…Yeah," she said. "Do we start firing?"

"On my mark," I said to everybody. "Mark."

Two jackals went down at the exact same time, two more went down with a fraction of a second in between them. Only after that did we start taking out the snipers at different rates. The jackals were stunned, trying to find the source of our fire. Only the last ones managed to fire in our direction. I took out a final sharpshooter before sliding back down behind cover to reload.

"You ok?"

"Round bounced off my shoulder," Novak said. "Didn't punch through."

"Good," I said. "Now provide some snipering. Or whatever. Hey, hey, you all right?"

"I was just hit."

"Get used to it," I told her. "Hey, hey! Snap out of it! I'm not here to babysit you. Novak!"

"What?"

"You're fine, didn't even pierce the armor."

"Ok, ok," she was telling herself.

I rolled my eyes. _Fucking baby._

"Pavel?" I asked. "How goes it?"

"Right side is mostly clear and left one is being worked on."

Two minutes later we flushed out the last brutes and killed them.

"Clear!"

"El-tee, we're good on our side."

"Copy," Hayes replied. "Secure the position."

Well, that was easy enough now that the position was actually secure.

"How many explosives have we got on us?" I asked to nobody in particular.

"I've got rockets," Wiremu told me.

"That it?" I asked. "I want to blow up some of the surrounding buildings."

"What for?" Brisbois asked irritably.

"We're at the top of the hill, brutes are little more than animals, they're gonna come here first."

"This or the refinery, that one's gonna make a lot of noise," Pavel added. "But there are probably going to try and retake this first."

"I've got a block of C-12," Brisbois announced. "Standard weight."

"Good, break it into three parts," I told him as I produced my own block of explosive and climbed down to the ground level. "Anyone else?" Silence. "Serge, I want you to place one block on that building corner, one on that one, and the third over there." As I said this I tagged the positions on his HUD. "Pavel, the covvies have probably called air support already, hop on the Onager."

"I always wanted to fire on of those," he said cheekily.

"Let's hope you don't have to." I was already running down the clear space around the Onager cannon. It seemed unusual that they had put it in the middle of a village as opposed to the outskirts. Well, it seemed unusual that a village had grown around it instead of next to it. "Novak, I want you sniping from the best spot you can find, Wiremu, coordinate with her to locate and eliminate any hard targets. Caboose, Beckel, you two do a quick run of the perimeter, eliminate any enemies you see and place those new warning thingies."

Let me elaborate on that one. The warning thingies (whose name escapes me at the moment) were very small spheres that had sensors and cameras on all sides. They could see on most directions and stick to most surfaces. They also had the ability to spot thermal signatures and feel movement around them. They were pretty sweet.

They were also expensive as fuck, so we had a very limited supply.

"Who's free?" I asked.

"Me," Almers said.

"Go with Beckel," I ordered. "You know how it works, now move your ass."

"Yessir," he said before taking off.

"Serge," I told the Frenchman, "you ready?"

"Oui, oui," he replied.

I was only just finished sticking the charges onto their positions. "Good, set them to detonate on my detonator frequency."

"Already done."

"Good, anyone on my one through four? No? Good." I detonated the charges after running a reasonable distance away from them. The explosions were massive when you compared them to the size of the compound. Three different buildings on the north section of the mass driver compound collapsed. Two had been storage facilities for radioactive waste and ammunition. The other one had been a radar room that probably coordinated with satellites to target space-borne enemies.

"Probably shouldn't have blown that one so soon," Pavel snuck in after the noise died down.

"Planet's dead," I reminded him, "if we need to use that facility it's only because we're dead already and want to take as many of them as we can with us."

"So glum," he muttered. "Onager powered up, we need to keep our power source functional."

I nodded, thinking about it. "It's underground, isn't it?"

"Yeah."

"It should be fine," I said, thinking about it. "Serge, help me move those barrels in front of the wires and panels. An extra layer of protection won't hurt."

"Oui Sergeant."

"And cut the French crap," I snapped. "Or I'm going to start giving orders in Spanish, see how you like that."

This time he only nodded and rolled a barrel by himself towards the Onager. I heard a couple of shotgun blasts and immediately turned around to their direction.

"Caboose?"

"Negative, it was Beckel."

"What happened?"

"Two jackal scouts, they probably realized they lost contact with the garrison here and sent them in to see what happened."

"Might buy us some time," I muttered. I couldn't believe that the brutes still didn't know what the hell was going on, but I wasn't one to look a gift horse in the mouth. "Caboose, Beckel and Almers. As soon as you're done I want you to take position there. Pavel, hand me your M247L."

"What?" he asked dryly. "No."

"Come on man, I'm not going to break it."

"Is this where you toss it to Almers and tell me that you said _you_ wouldn't break it."

_Damn…_

"No…" I said.

"Yeah right."

"Just hand it over, I'll take care of it with my life. Remember my old gun? How long did I have that one for?"

"Ten plus years."

"Thanks," I said as he gave me the weapon. It was a lot heavier than I was used to, and I hadn't picked one up in at least seven years. The workings of the weapon were burned into my memory, courtesy of long hours with Gabuka and Bulldog. I strapped my BR55 to my back and hefted the weapon. "Toss me an extra."

"If you run out of both those drums before we get reinforcements, then we're in trouble."

"Aren't we always?" I asked him.

Caboose chuckled on the radio channel. The rest of the squad was obviously annoyed that we cut them off from our past and inside jokes, but I didn't exactly trust them yet and I didn't expect them to trust me. As a person of course, I fully expected them to die if I ordered them to.

"Brisbois," I called for the former legionnaire. "Set up in the fallen buildings, we need to aim down the street, got ourselves nice sniper alleys, so make good use of them. Caboose and Beckel, you're with him, Almers, with me."

There was a chorus of aye ayes and the like before I climbed over the smoking ruins of one of the buildings that we had blown up. It had been the one housing waste and ammo. The carts with the little cylinders had been all but destroyed, but the cylindrical bullets themselves were almost completely intact. They were, after all, designed to tolerate extreme friction. A pile of them would stop a plasma pistol shot sure as a Scorpion would. Now, I'm not exactly sure how much my suit would protect me from radiation, so I made sure to pick the bullets and not the empty casings filled with radioactive material to build my fort.

"Novak here, I see a platoon's worth of tangos coming here."

"Tangos?" Almers questioned her choice of words.

"Novak, I copy, who's leading them?"

"Brute captain, with the…um…brute shot?"

"Yeah, aim at the gap in his armor in between the chest and face. With some luck you'll get him in the first one."

"I'm new Gunny, I'm not ignorant."

"Then by all means, demonstrate."

There were four shots before she confirmed the kill.

"Maybe not ignorant," I groaned. "But you're demonstrating yourself as incompetent. Stall them."

Pavel then talked to me through a private comm line. "Bro, take it easy on her."

"And make her soft?" I asked him. "No."

"Frank, you gotta at least make her like you?"

I sighed. "She's a rookie, she's not supposed to like me, she's supposed to respect me for my combat skills. I don't care if she hates me as long as she stays alive."

"Protective are we?"

"You understand."

"Frank, I'm not questioning your leadership style-"

"But you are."

"Regardless. You should try and play nice."

"Me? Play nice?"

"I know it sounds insane, but don't be that much of an asshole."

I sighed, relenting. "Fine, I'll try more, but don't expect me to make any friends around here."

"Course not, next thing I know you're gonna be shitting rainbows and hosting barbecues."

"That's all I'm asking for."

"Fucking dick," I muttered after he cut off the line. "Caboose, got news?"

"Not on this side, I can hear a load of action of Almers' side."

"Almers, Beckel?"

"Uh, there's a shitload of covvies headed our way."

"Shitload?" I asked Beckel.

"Give or take a few," Almers specified.

"Boy Almers, you've got a gift for wittiness," Wiremu said. "How many?"

"At least fifty."

"Next time you give me a vague answer you're gonna be point for the next ten missions," I warned. "Now get back here, I don't want your ass getting shot." I positioned the M247L's bipod on a pile of rocks and set it to aim down street. There was very little cover for the aliens if they wanted to come up without blasting holes through the houses and buildings. It was a perfect killbox. Plus, I got nice cover and the option to slowly fall back through the ruins of the storage facility before I was overrun. "Novak, any targets on your side?"

"Negative on that one Gunny."

Now she was chatty.

"Ok, haul ass and get a position that allows you to see the force Almers and Beckel saw. Start taking out the jackals first, then the leaders."

"Wilco. Oscar Mike."

I rolled my eyes. Oscar Mike, nobody said that anymore.

Novak started firing at a rate of one round per second. I took the lack of curses from her as an indication that she was scoring her hits. It wasn't very long before Almers came back hopping over the rubble of the warehouse. Man, a little block of C-12 could bring down a lot of shit if you knew where to place it. There were only small sections of the wall left here and there, but mostly it was just a giant mess of rock. Worked for me.

"Almers, there's a nice spot over there, target brutes, spray them and keep them on their toes."

"Got it, Gunny."

"Caboose, Beckel?"

"We're there," Beckel replied. "Switching to MA5."

"Same deal, two of you target grunts and the other sprays the big guys."

We were in a very advantageous position. The street that led here was rather narrow and no cars could provide cover. Caboose and his fireteam were to our side, several meters away and looking down another street. Those two were the most likely approach routes of the Covenant ground forces, but we had Novak and Wiremu watching for flankers.

"Here's to reinforcements," Pavel said.

"Amen," me and a couple other guys agreed.

"Just around the corner!" Almers said. "Sensors say that-"

I fired a long burst from the M247L just as three grunts turned a corner halfway down my line of sight. The weapon was expertly sighted and I knocked them all out, splattering the floor and walls with their blood. There was a short pause before a group of shielded jackals emerged one by one. I managed to wound one, hitting it in the belly, before the rest of them overlapped their shields and formed a phalanx. More birds appeared and placed their shields on top of the first row.

Fucking Romans could've learned something from these guys.

"God-fucking-dammit," Almers cursed. "Can't get a grenade behind from this range."

I was pretty frustrated to, little orange and yellow pings marked the spots where my bullets hit their shields. They had even pressed them to the ground, making it impossible for me to make them stumble and fall. Precise shots were impossible too. Their phalanx was all but impenetrable.

I adjusted my aim and slid slightly backwards. Plasma and spikes were beginning to fly by my position. "Almers, I want you to target the jackal that I'm gonna fire at, ok? Overwhelm their shields."

"Got it."

I aimed at one of the jackals in the middle and started firing at full auto. Some shots hit other shields, but most of them pushed the jackal back. The rate of fire was enough to push it backwards and stall the advance of the entire formation. A second later Almers started firing, adding his more precise fire to mine. It took a lot more than I expected to destroy the shield, but we did and killed the jackal as well as whatever was behind it before the rest could close the gap.

"Another one," I said, repeating the process. "Last one!"

By the time we had overwhelmed a third jackal, the rest of them were forced to spread out from the top to the bottom, leaving some parts of the top row unprotected. The grunts behind mostly clustered behind the jackals, but now they couldn't all be protected.

"Almers, catch!" I shouted, tossing him my BR55. "Aim for the jackals if you can."

"Not a sharpshooter, Gunny," he reminded me.

"But you're a Helljumper, if you can't make a shot at a hundred yards then you're a failure."

"Understood," he replied, not coolly, but rather professionally.

While Almers took his time sniping the jackals I pummeled them with automatic fire. I didn't get that many kills, but the speed of their advance was dramatically diminished by my persistent firing. I had never played the role of squad gunner, but I had never realized how much concentration it took.

Sorry Pavel.

"Gunny, they're coming up close," Beckel radioed in. "No sight of brutes yet!"

"Use grenades," I replied. "I know I'm about to."

With that being said I tossed one of the grenades as far as I could down the street, setting the timer for three seconds after impact. With me being on my belly and throwing sideways, the grenade didn't fly very far. Well, it flew more than three quarters of the way, but I'm not one for bragging. After that the grenade bounced twice before rolling a couple of meters and then detonating. The impact wasn't enough to shatter the shield wall, but the jackal closest to it was overwhelmed by the shrapnel.

"Fire, fire, fire!" I ordered even as I moved my aim.

"Castillo! This is Lieutenant Hayes, is the position secure?"

"Affirmative El-tee."

"Then I take it you're just wasting ammunition for shits and giggles. Am I right, Gunny?"

"Negative Lieutenant, we're most definitely not wasting ammo on shits and giggles."

"Don't give me any more fucking attitude Gunny!"

"Sorry ma'am. Our position is being stormed, right now we're not in any trouble, but if they keep coming like this we'll be in serious trouble."

"Now, was that so hard Gunny?"

"No ma'am;" I replied, firing as I did.

I was a little bit confused. Lieutenant Hayes was friendly enough on the ship, but she most certainly didn't have any problem with chewing me out for being insubordinate. Which I wasn't being, by the way. Mood swings were something to be expected then. I took note of that and told myself to be more respectful when in combat situations.

Bitch.

"Novak, sitrep."

"Aliens are bunched up behind those buildings," she said, setting a waypoint for them. "Occasionally a squad comes up, but they're using cover and covering fire."

Yup, she also changed during combat situations, chatty as hell.

"Anything else?"

"Nobody coming up on our sides or back yet," she replied. "But that might change soon."

"Tell me when it does. Wiremu?"

"Bored as hell Gunny."

"Be thankful," Beckel told him. "This isn't fun."

I was inclined to agree with him, needles were now breaking themselves on the rubble in front of me. Plasma was heating the rocks and smoke was from them too. If we didn't stop them soon we'd be forced to fall back.

"Brutes on your twelve!" Novak warned.

Shit.

"Shit," I said. "Focus on the jackals," I ordered Almers. "I'll stall them."

I stopped firing on the jackals and aimed down range, waiting for the brutes. When they emerged, I was quite surprised. An unknown number were carrying a large piece of polycrete big enough to occupy two thirds of the street's width. Not that it was a very wide street to begin with, but it was most certainly a huge-ass chunk of wall.

"That's one huge-ass hunk of rock," Almers noted dryly.

"You don't say," I replied absent-mindedly.

I started firing on the brutes carrying their improvised cover at full auto. Some of the bullets punched through, leaving big holes in the wall, but most were stopped by the hard material. The advance stopped slightly before regaining speed. I rolled my head and then switched to the dwindling column of jackals and grunts trying to make their way up here.

"Hand me that rifle!" I ordered Almers, setting down the stock of Pavel's M247L on the ground before catching the BR55.

I ejected the half-full (or half-empty) magazine and inserted one with armor piercing rounds. Those would punch through the polycrete and then some. I took my time and fired a burst right at the middle of the wall. Two holes appeared after that.

_Must've yanked the trigger, _I told myself. _Getting sloppy._

From that point on I made a point to fire precise bursts at the edges and center, it wasn't very long before one brute corpse fell behind and the rest struggled to lift the huge piece of polycrete.

"Grunts are gonna overwhelm us!" Almers warned.

"We can handle them," I told him, twisting myself sideways and attaching the bayonet to my BR55. "As soon as the little ones are gutted you open up on the brutes."

A second later the remains of the grunts reached us. They were running on four limbs and more angry than scared. The one in the lead jumped me only to find itself stopped by a sharp knife and a stiff arm. As the first grunt fell down Almers killed the second and third ones with bursts before another one jumped at him. Had they been in their clear minds they would've fired at us, maybe even hit us, but they weren't. So they didn't.

As another grunt tried to grab me I slashed sideways with the rifle, hitting it across the neck and nearly decapitating it. I fired a burst at a jackal raising a plasma pistol before killing two more grunts.

"That's the lot of them!" I grunted, wiping blood spray from my visor. "Brutes!"

Almers was firing on them before I finished the sentence. I immediately dropped my battle rifle and reached for the light machinegun, the sling was a useful addition for a gun as heavy as that. I slung it over a shoulder and fired from the hip with one hand while I reached for grenades.

My arm rattled as the gun fired. "That's gonna hurt tomorrow."

"Got that," Pavel said. He sounded awfully bored, like he was seeing a rerun of an old sitcom or something. "Shit! Banshees!"

"Your job!" I replied. "Wiremu!"

"Got them on my sights, do I fire?"

"Pavel?"

"Please do!"

I could hear the characteristic screaming that had given the Banshees their name. I did my best to ignore the potential danger of a fuel rod up my ass and hit the polycrete wall with as much bullets as I could. Almers reloaded and my gun ran out of bullets at the same time. I kept the finger on the trigger for a little bit more than necessary, and the supposedly modern mechanism of the weapon kept on feeding non-existent rounds into the chamber. The repeated clicking noise was one known to everybody. Including brutes.

The wall hit the floor with a very loud thud and three brutes, one of them bleeding, jumped over it before it even fell on its flat side. Almers jumped back as he reloaded and opened up on the wounded brute. Apparently, it was very wounded, because a couple of bursts was all it took. The other two, however, were fully armored and very angry.

One of them fired at me with its brute shot. The grenades flew right by me, missing and hitting the ground behind. As the fourth one landed four meters behind me I stumbled from the shockwave. The brute grabbed the weapon by the barrel and swung it at me. I dropped to the floor underneath the blow and reached for my battle rifle. As I grabbed it I rolled away and to the side, I could barely register Almers running back as the other brute chased after him.

As I rolled the huge bayonet slammed onto the ground next to me. The near miss allowed for a thrust at the brute's knee. My knife dug in halfway through and I yanked back as the brute roared, more in anger than in pain. Fucking brutes and their nervous systems.

It tried to backhand me but I jumped away. Still, its long arm hit me in the shoulder, twisting me completely to the other side. I used the momentum to launch another slash with my bayonet. The knife hit the brute's skull and got stuck there. The brute roared once again, this time in pain, before batting the gun away, with it a good chunk of its skin.

"You've gotta be kidding me."

I drew my sidearm and emptied an entire clip on the brute's face before it could react from its dumb move. If a knife to the knee wouldn't bring it down and a knife to the face wouldn't kill it, twelve 12.7x40mm M228 Semi-Armor-Piercing High-Penetration rounds to the face most definitely would.

Eleven were enough to bring it down and one more was used when it was on the floor.

"Fucking ape," I grunted. "Almers, get back here!"

"Gunny?"

I turned to see that he had backtracked almost thirty yards before his assault rifle knocked down the angered brute. He was prodding at it with his foot, making sure that it was dead. Judging from the amount of blood in here I'd say that it was.

"Are you gonna keep playing around?" I asked him. "We're supposed to defend this street!"

"Right," he said. He kicked the brute one last time. "Fucking ape."

The echoed statement was a nice touch. I was thinking I liked PFC Almers.

"PFC! Get over here, help me drag those corpses over there."

With his help we used the dead grunts, jackals, and brutes to form an improvised barricade covering the street. It meant that any aliens that climbed over them would have to do it with care and they'd probably not be too excited about having to climb over the corpses of their comrades. It was a good plan, we could even use their corpses as cover. Brutes were soft and plushy when they were dead.

"Phantoms inbound!" Novak called. "Sarge?"

"What?"

"I was talking to Pavel, Gunny," she said dryly.

"Excuse me?"

"Um, sorry Gunny."

"Hey, don't worry about it," I told her, messing with her. "Honest mistake."

"Um…thanks?"

"Now back to sniping shit," I snapped. "Wiremu, I want you down here, Pavel can handle the birds!"

"No I can't!" he replied.

"It's hard to take that seriously when you're behind an Onager mass driver, Sarge," Beckel noted.

"Kid's gotta point Pavs," I assured him. "Keep firing."

The Banshees and Phantoms were flying around, trying to evade the incredibly fast and deadly rounds being fired from the Onager. The Banshees couldn't get a bearing without being shot at, and the Phantoms that tried to shoot were then switched to priority. The couple of dropships that tried to drop troops further back were hit while hovering above ground. Pavel was doing a fine job with the mass driver.

"Fine, but don't drag it on too long."

While we all took new positions a new transmission came in. "El-tee, this is Staff Williams, target is secure."

"Copy that Williams, calling in marine reinforcements."

"Regulars save the day, don't they?" Beckel asked Almers.

"They like to think that," Almers replied. "There are only like…what, a hundred and fifty aliens left in this town?"

"We could handle them," Beckel stated. It was a matter of fact to him.

And to me, but that's not the point, reinforcements were always appreciated.

"Ok squad!" I boomed. "You heard the El-tee, all we need to do is hold this position until we get a few ol' regulars in here to help us."

"Help us?" Pavel asked in between mass driver shots.

I rolled my eyes. "You know what I mean."

"Maybe observe us would be more appropriate?" Beckel suggested.

"Take the credit?" Wiremu threw in.

"Etcetera," Almers said sarcastically.

Novak's sigh was clearly audible. "Is it always like this? 'Cause in bootcamp they made it out to be this super serious thing."

"You have no idea," Pavel said.

I palmed my visor with my hand. Soon the marines would fly in and I could take a short nap before our next mission. Evacuation was probably it.

Yeah, evacuation, it was going to be fun.

* * *

><p><em>Thanks to Alshep and SilasWhitfield for proof-reading this chapter.<em>

_So, you've finally been introduced to the new squad, I hope you liked them. I know, I know, you probably think that they're not nearly as badass as Reaper, but Second Squad is made out of Helljumpers, and they're as badass as they come. The next four or five chapters are going to be introductions to the new members. I think that this serves as a good one though._

_I had like a whole speech planned but I forgot, sorry. All I have left to do is apologize for the delay in posting, I am ashamed to admit that I have watched the full three seasons of Blue Mountain State. Which is fucking awesome._

_:)_

_Hope you enjoyed, don't forget to review, and always stay strong._

_-casquis_


	139. Evacuation is Not Fun

Chapter CXXXIX: Evacuation is Not Fun

**September 1, 2545 (UNSC Calendar)/**

**New Montevideo outskirts, Acheron-VII, Beta Rho Omega System**

* * *

><p><em>"In urban situations things become a little too fast. Hell, they become too furious."- Lance Corporal Robert Aganarsson<em>

* * *

><p>The Pelican was constantly shaking from the flak. It wasn't accurate or even deadly flak, but enough hits from the automated guns would eventually punch through the bottom of the Pelican. That's why the pilot swerved as much as he could to avoid the green explosions. Fifteen of us were onboard the Pelican. Lieutenant Hayes and Master Sergeant Dajani were going over a map of New Montevideo.<p>

_Montevideo…that's Uruguay, right?_ I was going back to my basic Earth geography lessons back in Mexico City. I could barely remember anything. I remembered an old teacher with wrinkled skin and then stealing glances at a pretty girl that sat next to me. I couldn't tell anybody that I found her pretty, I mean, I was supposed to hate girls.

"Think she'd jump in the sack with you if you saw her again?" Schitzo asked me. "I know that you'd have no trouble jumping in with her."

_Shut up._ It had been a while since I had last had access to my crazy pills. I had been trying to have them as often as the doc had told me, but sometimes I forgot and sometimes they didn't work. _Shut up._

"I know already know that you have no problem with cheating on your girlfriend, so why bother asking."

_Shut up._

"And you thought that she was planning on breaking up with you just because she didn't send any letters." Schitzo paced around the Pelican and stepped on the edge of the open hatch. "She was having a breakdown you selfish dick." Schitzo stepped off the platform, but for a moment I thought that I was seeing myself instead of him.

_Shut up._

"You say something Gunny?" Almers asked from right next to me. He was sitting on the seat that I normally took, so I had chosen to stand up instead of antagonizing him this early on.

"Talking to the voices in my head," I replied.

"Fine, don't tell me."

"Castillo," Hayes called. "Come 'ere."

I nodded and walked towards her carefully, holding onto the handle hanging overhead. "Yes, sir?"

Dajani handed me the datapad and I examined the map of the city. He tapped the corner of it and the map changed to a live picture from an overhead satellite. The outskirts of the city were burned to the ground, the space port was under siege and local forces were fighting street for street, house for house, and room for room. It was one helluva shithole.

"Where are our forces?" I asked the El-tee.

"Second Battalion is already en route, they took a little while because they were mobilizing massively. All of their forces are going down at the same time.

"Talk about sledgehammer," I said.

Behind me Snark snorted.

"Regardless, they will not be able to cross the siege. Two Pelicans can bypass the flak barrier, but a whole battalion will be focused on." Hayes looked around at half of our platoon. "And their objective is not important right now. _Our _objective is."

I nodded. "What are we doing?"

"You Gunny?" Dajani asked. "Nothing."

"Explain."

"One squad is all that's needed for this mission. We're going to infiltrate their lines and blow up two of their air control facilities. The Covenant has air superiority in the city, Shortswords and Hornets haven't been able to knock them all out yet."

"Why aren't they attacking us now, then?" I asked.

Hayes shrugged. "Not enough of a threat I guess. I would be shooting down any bird that tried to fly past us, but that's not our problem."  
>I nodded carefully and examined the newest set of pictures on the datapad. "Which squad is going to be going in?"<p>

"Mine," Dajani stated.

I looked at his squad, all of it was in here. "And what about One and Two?"

"You and me will be aiding in evacuation duties."

I looked at the close-ups. "This housing development right here?" I asked. It was just a huge bunch of pre-made houses. It basically looked like piled up containers.

"Poor people's suburbs. It's going to be crowded."

"Yes," Hayes nodded. "Population was living there until a few hours ago, it is estimated that over thirty percent of the residents are still there."

"The rest?" I asked.

"Dead."

I grunted. "Who are we going to be working with?"

"Local police and army are trying to hold the line, buy some time for the civvies to move back, run towards the spaceport."

I gaped. "There's no organized evacuation?!" My voice was one full of shock. I was cold, but you just didn't leave civilians to die if there was even the slightest chance of saving them.

"'Fraid not, locals are focusing on protecting the spaceport, focusing most of their assets around it while everyone still alive runs for it."

"Damn."

"Yeah," Hayes agreed. "You can deal with local police and Army, right?"

"I've dealt with the Army," I told her. "But never really with the coppers."

Hayes muttered under her breath. "Goddamit, were you trained for it?"

"Negative on that, sir."

"No time for an impromptu course on PR. Take command and don't get them in too much danger."

I nodded, it sounded easy enough.

Hayes then turned to face a pair of Helljumpers who were muttering under their breath. I thought that they would've been too quiet for unenhanced ears to hear their conversation, but Hayes didn't seem to have that problem. "And quit bitching!"

The two men immediately stopped talking to one another, instead looking directly across.

"ETA is thirty seconds!" the pilot yelled from cockpit. "Gonna get heavy fire on us!"

"Second Squad! Helmets on, weapons ready!" I yelled even as Hayes started giving orders. Only half of my squad was here, the other half was on the other Pelican along with most of First Squad.

I cocked my rifle and moved towards the edge of the cockpit even as the copilot on the Pelican cocked the Gatling on the back. It was dark and we were flying fast, I could barely make out anything other than green flashes, sometimes close, sometimes not. Then I started seeing the neighborhood. Prism-shaped houses were one on top of the other, stacking themselves to form a flat-topped pyramid of sorts. Occasionally there would be a courtyard or a landing pad, with chutes towards ground level being strewn about. It was quite a messy place.

"Gonna love this," I grunted.

The Pelican did a full one-eighty while on the move, something that almost threw me off my feet. I found ourselves facing a small flat space. A few plasma shots flew in our direction, but the man on the gun quickly suppressed the fire.

"Go, go, go!" Hayes cried.

I was first one out, with Hayes close on my six. The second Pelican was dropping off the troops on another courtyard half a level up. I could see the second half of my squad over there, Pavel commanding them. I turned around to see the Pelican that I had been on fly away at near supersonic speed. The other one kept flying straight, towards the UNSC cordon.

"First Squad! On me!" Hayes shouted. "Second Squad, you're on the balconies!" She paused for the briefest of seconds. "Move your asses!"

"You heard the lady!" I boomed in my best drill sergeant voice. "On my six! Pavel, I want you to provide as much suppressing fire as you can, be careful, there are still civilians out there. Beckel, you'll provide support and cover him from any rushing attempts. Wiremu, Serge, and Almers, you're bottom level, leapfrog your way ahead, form a nice perimeter. Novak and Caboose, find a nice high point, Caboose, suppressing and support fire, protect her from rushing attempts." As I gave out orders the respective ODSTs broke off from the squad and found spots. They were all trained to stay within short distance of one another, we wouldn't want to be too far from one another if things got ugly.

The coppers and soldiers were holding firm at a gap in between the container houses. The gap reached all the way down to the ground, with a couple of railways before the compartments reached the bottom. There was a bridge, wide enough to fit two school buses parallel to each other. Right now there were a couple of smaller metal crates in a broken barricade. One side of the bridge was littered with human corpses, the other one was littered with both human and alien. Grunts and jackals were exchanging shots with the officers and soldiers while two brutes ordered them around, occasionally firing a grenade into the hastily fortified positions.

"Novak, those two brutes, I want them dead, now!"

"Gunny," she replied affirmatively. Her helmet cam showed her climbing.

Cabooses helmet cam showed her ass as she climbed.

I ran up to the nearest officer and ducked behind cover with her. "Officer!" I yelled at her, startling her. "Officer, who's in command here?"

"A Helljumper?"

"And a rather good-looking one too," I assured her. Pavel's machine gun started roaring as I depolarized my visor to show her that I wasn't lying. "Who's in command?"

"Captain Adama was shot a few minutes ago, the rest of us police officers are following the corporal's orders."

I heard the thick accent and immediately switched to Spanish. "What corporal? Can you point me to him?" I would've gone there directly, but these men and women didn't have UNSC IFF, a terrible mistake if you ask me.

"Over there," she replied, the thick Uruguayan accent reminded me of a friend of my dad's. "Behind that concrete divider."

"Thanks," I told her, putting my hand on her shoulder. "Keep your head low and stay strong."

"Yes, sir," she replied, sliding down the wall. She looked thankful, relieved.

I crouch-ran across the open space until I reached the safety rails. They weren't rails per se, they were made out of polycrete and tall enough for me to sit down without getting my head shot off in one of them.

"Corporal?" I asked.

"What?!" he replied. "Oh, Gunny, pleasure to have you here, we though they weren't sending any more reinforcements."

"Afraid we're it."

"Don't stop firing!" he yelled at a cowering officer. "Keep shooting goddammit!" He turned towards me. "Covvies got us pinned here, we can't fall back without giving them the bridge, and if we give them the bridge…well."

Before I could reply the man next to the corporal got shot through the eye with a needle. The man jerked backwards and slumped to the floor, blood already pooling around his head.

"Medic!" he yelled.

"That was our medic!" another soldier replied.

"Gunny?" Almers asked me.

"He's dead," I replied. "Corporal, we're gonna take back the other side of the bridge, push forward."

"Hey, if you can do it, feel free to try it."

"Spearhead fireteam," I called out. "Move up to the crates on the bridge on my mark."

"Got it," Wiremu told me. "Just say the word."

"Got one of the brutes!" Novak announced. "The other one scurried away."

"It'll have to do." I shrugged. "Pavel, spray the right side. Novak, keep the ones on the left with their heads down."

I stood up and fired a burst at the first thing I saw, which incidentally, happened to be grunt preparing to toss a plasma grenade. With its stubby little arms it probably wouldn't have made it, but I felt quite satisfied with myself. Novak hit a jackal aiming for me the next moment, and I kept firing at the top of the railing with single rounds, spraying little pieces of polycrete on whoever was hiding behind it, startling it. I was willing to bet that Pavel was doing the exact same thing on the other side.

With a machine gun.

"Move up!" I ordered my fireteam. "Corporal, tell your men to help provide suppressing fire."

"Aye, aye!" he replied immediately. "You heard the Helljumper, fire!"

Wiremu ran halfway up the bridge, the heavy SPANKr on his back looking unwieldy. Serge moved right behind him with the confidence of a man that had served his whole life in the military. The plasma bolts that flew past him barely seemed to faze him. Almers, on the other hand, looked a little bit more nervous when he moved. Being a PFC he had maybe two tours under his belt, and I'm willing to bet that he hadn't seen anything on the level that Reaper had faced.

With my luck, that was bound to change.

They reached the two crates in the middle of the bridge and ducked underneath them.

"They have their heads down!" I boomed. "Vault over and massacre those fuckers!"

_Very inspirational_, I told myself.

Brisbois was the first one up. The grizzled legionnaire didn't hesitate to follow my near-suicidal orders. He ran the length of the bridge, hopping over bodies, just as Wiremu and Almers vaulted over the crates. Once he reached the end of the bridge he slid down and fired blindly behind cover before shooting at the visible enemies opposite him. By that time Wiremu and Almers had arrived and crossed the bridge itself, firing on the clustered aliens. With no cover and completely surprised they were quickly overrun.

"Secure that side!" I ordered them. "Beckel, get down here!" I turned to face the corporal. "With me."

He nodded. "Push forward!"

I ran up to the crates along with the corporal before jumping over. The three guys up ahead were already securing the area, taking positions behind the corners and firing occasional bursts. I kept my focus on the rooftops, trying to spot any eager jackals. The corporal and his miss-matched team of soldiers and officer moved up towards the corner. The narrow alley-like street stopped abruptly and turned to either side. Each side climbed up to other levels.

"Here, you!" I stopped a tall and muscular officer. "Boost me up."

He helped me climb up the roof of one of the container houses and I ran to the corner. "Wiremu?"

"No takers, hit a jackal in the leg, hid behind that piece of metal. Other grunts managed to get away."

"Move up," I told him. "Clear the left and then the right."

"This is like a fucking labyrinth, Gunny," Wiremu stated.

"Yes, but it will work for us, _comprendre_?" PFC Brisbois told him.

"Frenchman is wise," I said, agreeing with Serge. "Move up, Corporal, you two, wait for my team to secure the left side and go to the right. Beckel, you're in charge of them."

"Me? My own command? Nah."

I ignored the sarcasm and climbed up another rooftop. I felt like I was in a videogame or a corny action movie, jumping through the rooftops. I entered a house through a broken window and cleared it before sitting down in a chair. I immediately tried to make contact with a recon drone. There were a couple within range. I redirected one to fly above us in circles, pointing out targets thermally. That would come with the bonus of showing us where any civilians were alive.

"We got a thermal map!" I stated. "Pavel, move up here, but be ready to fall back to the bridge any moment. Caboose, set charges on the bridge, you got any?"

"Enough," he replied. "I'm working on it."

"Novak," I said, pausing before giving out the order. "Stay there, find higher ground if you can, keep your eyes on the bridge."

"Back here?"

"No, Novak. Not back there."

"Fine," she replied, flustered.

"Thermal imaging is online," Pavel said. "Go!"

There were three thermal signatures in the house that I was in. One of them was my own, obviously, the other two were unknowns, I verified them immediately, spotting them in different rooms. The larger one was a pot full of boiling water; the other one was a punctured fusion coil. From that point on I went house by house on the second level. While my team and the locals cleared the lower one I kept watch above them.

"Whoa!" I managed as a pan smacked me right in the face. Well, visor. "The fuck?"

I rolled as the attacker tried to smack me in the head again and got up before she could follow up with a third attack. I grabbed the woman's wrist and smacked it against the wall, forcing her to drop the pan. "Calm down!" I shouted.

"_Dios mio," _she exclaimed.

"Relax," I told her, switching to Spanish once more. "I'm human. See?" My visor depolarized so that the woman could see my face.

The woman herself was in her early thirties, disheveled, and visibly pregnant. I hadn't realized until I took a step back.

"Oh crap," I muttered. "Can you move?"

"My husband, my baby," she cried.

"Can you move?" I asked again, pushing her off me. "Ma'am, listen, I need you to listen to me!"

She stopped sniffling and looked at me. "They killed them."

"And they're gonna kill you too unless you walk towards the bridge, you know the one I'm talking about?" I went on after she nodded. "Good, then. Move quickly and keep your head down."

She nodded and walked off, stopping only to grab a frame with changing stills of herself and her family. Her dead family.

"Novak, there's a civvie on the way, cover her."

"Got it, the cops here are setting up a nice barricade, bringing in a couple of transports to move people. With any luck we might get Pelicans."

"Don't dwell on it too much," I told her. "Just do your job."

"Uh, sure, yes Gunny."

Down on the lower floor things weren't going so well. "Holy shit! Four brutes, brute shots, power armor." Beckel sounded quite serene considering his pinned down predicament.

"I'm on my way," I replied. "Can you keep them with their heads down?"

"Can try," he said. "Army guys are doing a good job."

I nodded absently as I switched directions and ran on the rooftops, occasionally hopping over ledges and narrow alleys. I was enjoying myself despite the situation. This roof-hopping thing was quite fun. I stepped twice of another house compartment and pulled myself up to the rood. From this point I could also see the brutes firing on Beckel. He occasionally fired back over cover with his shotgun, sending the brutes back into cover. I aimed at the leader and hesitated before taking my finger off the trigger. Instead of firing I moved a few steps closer towards the brutes, moving up on their flank. Thank God for giving me a little patience. I grabbed a frag and dropped it in their midst. Two of them were immediately killed. The other two were taken out with quick bursts to the head.

"Thanks Gunny," Beckel told me. "I'm adequately impressed."

"I aim to please," I grunted, jumping across the narrow street and moving over the houses towards Pavel's group. This time I had to break inside a couple of houses instead of taking a huge detour. There were underground hallways in between the houses. Not necessarily underground, but I couldn't see the stars or moons. I met a few scared civilians, stopping to tell them where we were evacuating. Most of them were banged up and a few of them were splashed in blood. It was a sorry spectacle, but I couldn't stay there with them.

"Pavel, thins good?"

"Not bad, but we could use some help." He fired at a target I couldn't see. "Where are you?"

"Where do you think?" I replied.

"Showoff."

There were several grunts firing constantly at Pavel's own fireteam. It wasn't exactly a tough situation, but I was nearby and had a higher vantage point as well as a very good aim. The grunts were dead in two seconds.

"Showoff," Pavel repeated. "How does the search go?"

"Civvies all over the place, I'm trying to send them back to the bridge."

"Yeah, pretty much the same deal here too."

I climbed up another house to get a nice perspective on the surroundings. Up there I saw what must've passed off as a park in this neighborhood. It was a courtyard with a few benches and trees. There wasn't an alien in sight, but it could prove to be a defensible position on this side of the bridge. This could be our definite…landing position, if you will. Beachhead, that's the word. I examined and placed a secondary waypoint on it before climbing a section of the container house that I was on. I only realized how stupid I was being a moment before being shot.

I was highly visible to any creature with mediocre night vision. This jackal didn't have mediocre night vision, he had better than that.

The round nicked my neck, an inch off my carotid. I collapsed for two reasons. Number one was to make the shooter think that I had been killed and number two was because the mind numbing pain made my legs give under my weight. I fell down the expanded section and back to the roof. I could feel the warm blood flowing from the wound. It was probably a needle rifle that hit me. I remained still, my neck in pain and my limbs in awkward positions.

"Frank!"

"I'm good," I grunted. "Can you see the shooter?"

"Not from down here," Wiremu grunted.

"Wait, didn't I tell you to stay back at the bridge?" I asked Pavel.

"No…"

"Dick." There was nothing I could do about it. "Fine, think the jackal can see me right now?"

"Probably," Wiremu admitted.

_Here goes nothing._

I jumped behind whatever meager cover I could find and then rolled down the container, falling three meters to the next rooftop. Two needles flew by me, missing my millimeters.

I groaned in pain, pressing my hand against the scratch as I fumbled through my pouches, looking for the can of biofoam on me. I poured a little bit of it on my hand and took a deep breath before rubbing it on my neck. It stung like fuck, but I was used to it, and the pain would die away in a couple of seconds. Holy fuck rolling of the side of a house was a bad idea.

"Gunny, you ok?" Almers asked. I don't think that he was asking out of the kindness of his heart. He was the designated medic, he was just doing your job.

I'm fine," I groaned. "Yeah, I'm peachy."

"You sure?"

"Yup, no go and take that courtyard, set up shop there. Novak!"

"Yes Gunny?" she asked immediately. If I hadn't known better I would've thought that she was waiting for an order.

"How many friendlies do we have there?"

"An even dozen, Gunny," she answered quickly. "Why?"

I sighed. "Cause I need you here, fast as you can. Beckel, you good?"

"A lilttle bit tired and numb from all the death and sadness," he stated. "But otherwise I'm fine."

"Your team making their way towards the courtyard?"

"Yup, seems that most roads lead there in here. Sorry, not roads, I don't know what these are."

"Double time it then," I ordered. "That courtyard is gonna be our evacuating point." I moved up and leaned against the wall, the shock from the impact still on my bones. "Command?" I asked tentatively.

"Identify yourself," a voice ordered.

I squinted, trying to remember the code sign for our platoon. "This is Ash-3," I said. "Do you copy?"

"We copy Ash-3, what do you need?"

"Need nothing, but there are a few thousand civilians still in here, we have a viable landing spot for Pelicans to evacuate. And reinforcements are always good," I added as an afterthought.

"Landing area, you say? Last intel showed your sector as completely overrun."

"Not anymore, I'm sending the coordinates right now."

"And you're telling me it's clear?"

I glanced around the corner, seeing all the tracers and plasma bolts still flying around. "What's the ETA on evac Pelicans?"

"Five minutes."

"Then, yes, it's clear."

"Your call Gunny," the operator sighed. "If the pilots see a single shot they'll bail and won't come back."

"Understood."

I sighed, muttering to myself. I could've waited five minutes and then asked for five more. "Pavel, Wiremu, I want that courtyard cleared in three minutes or there'll be consecuences! Novak!"

"I'm here," she replied. I could actually hear her without my radio.

"Novak," I repeated. "How quick are you on the trigger?"

"Uh…"

"Never mind," I rolled my eyes. "I'm going to climb up there and you're gonna take out the fucker that tries to shot me, ok?"

"Are you sure?"

"Why, think you're gonna miss?"

"No, but-"

"But nothing." I snapped. "Get ready, shots are coming from your eleven o'clock."

Novak nodded nervously, I could tell that she wasn't ready to have me die because of her. If I died right now, it _would_ be because of her. Snark never would've hesitated to follow this order. I sighed and slapped her arm lightly. "You'll be fine," I assured her. "Now get ready."

"Ready," she said.

"Here goes nothing," I mumbled to myself.

"Francisco, one day you're gonna get the both of us killed," Schitzo muttered sadly.

"You can do this," Scarecrow assured me. Man, was he a sight for sore eyes. "Trust her."

"Scratch that, _he_ is going to get us killed," Schitzo amended.

I climbed up the stairs with my rifle up and ready. A shot was fired and I dodged to the right on instinct. Thankfully, my movement didn't put me in the way of the needle. Before a second round could be fired Novak shot five times at the jackal. I moved my eyes to the bird's perch and saw the creature falling from behind a window.

"Nice job," I said, I was a little bit more nervous than I had imagined I would be. I missed Snark. "Pavel?"

"We clearing surrounding buildings!" he replied. "It's a mess in here. I've got an idea!"

"Can it," I snapped at him. "You're still under my command."

He grunted but otherwise remained silent.

"Novak, spot for sharpshooters, I want this place clear as can be."

"That's a tough one."

"It wouldn't be a mission for a Helljumper otherwise," I told her.

I jumped down and started running across the rooftops until I could jump to the alleyways on courtyard level. This one in particular had been hit by brutes. Several human bodies were carpeting the ground, spikes protruding from their bodies and blood splattered on the walls. I averted my eyes from their faces and stepped over the bodies, being as careful as I could at the speed I was going.

They were all dead, there was nothing I could do about it.

"Clear," Beckel yelled from my left. "Oh, hey Gunny."

"Hey," I replied. "Keep doing what you're doing," I ordered. The courtyard was now almost completely clear. "I want a Perimeter, there's only two direct methods of entrance so it shouldn't be hard." I looked around. "I want men on the high ground."

Beckel nodded and turned to the corporal, who in turn ordered several of his soldiers to start moving around towards different positions. Pavel's fireteam had already cleared the surrounding area and they were beginning to set a perimeter. This was good, we might just evacuate a lot of people in here.

Five minutes later when the first Pelican arrived a squad of Marines emerged.

"Captain Galván?" I asked, surprised. "Nice to see you," I saluted him.

"Likewise Gunny, what's the situation here?"

"FUBAR," Almers said helpfully.

"Got some civvies coming in and we have a decent perimeter, but our grip on this sector is tenuous as best, Spirit ships have been dropping troops for the last minute. Three transports in all."

He nodded and waved his men around. "We've got two more Pelican's worth of Marines coming, that ought to even up the stakes."

"Sir, if you don't mind me asking, why would they send the XO of a battalion to command a platoon?"

"Because I don't want to see civilians die," he admitted.

I shrugged, most officers were…pragmatic, sacrifice a thousand to save a hundred that were more valuable or kill one to save three. It varied, but most of the guys in the military accepted civilian deaths as a part of life. It's what it was, we didn't have to like it, but we had to live with it.

"Fine by me, sir." I looked around to see civilians climbing onto the Pelican, wounded and children went first. "Orders?"

This time he looked around at the civilians. "There is actually one order for you." It was the way he said it.

"Someone up there owes someone down here a favor, am I right?"

"Unfortunately for you, yes," he replied. "You need to pull out a girl."

"Always a girl I muttered."

"Castillo," Captain Galván looked at me with disbelief. "Shut up, I'm talking." He shook his head. "As I was saying, you need to pull out a girl from this location. Well, her transponder has that as her location, but…I don't know if she's alive."

I nodded. "Orders are orders."

Galván rolled his head and rubbed his neck. "That they are. Of you go."

"Caboose, Wiremu, Almers, you three are with me. We got a special VIP mission," I said as I walked towards the alley leading outside of this courtyard. "You're gonna love this one."

"I still don't know why you consent to being called Caboose," Beckel said. "It's demeaning. Like they're calling you a butt, or an ass."

"Shut up," Brisbois told him. I could just picture the legionnaire slapping Beckel in the back of the head.

"We got the location," I said. "Three hundred meters from our position. Near the spot where we've seen the Spirits."

"That's what I'm here for," Wiremu said. It was half a question.

"Yup," Almers replied. "Hey, how heavy is that SPANKr?"

"Heavier than your little back could carry."

Almers wasn't scrawny by any means, like most guys in the military he had a very good physique, but it couldn't compare to the ex rugby player standing next to him.

"Cut the chit-chat," I told them. "We do this house by house, slowly but surely, steady wins the race. I think you get the point."

"Frank?" Pavel called in on the radio.

"I need you here for leadership," I said before he could even ask the question. "It wouldn't do any good to have both of us dead, now would it?"

"If you die, can I keep your knife?"

"Me? Die? I was talking about you."

* * *

><p>"We're here," Almers muttered. "Opening the door."<p>

"Quiet," I muttered, there were brutes all around us, not all of them were visible. "Caboose?"

"It's clear."

"Tempting luck," Wiremu said. "Open yet?"

"Aaand done, going in."

I followed Almers with my pistol out, I didn't want to make the least amount of noise, especially not with a platoon's worth of brutes and a hunter pair nearby. When I think back to it it's amazing how quickly things can go from bad to worse. It had been like five minutes since we left the courtyard, how was it even possible for us to find ourselves in this situation.

"Clear," I said quietly.

"Clear," Almers replied in kind.

"Clear," Wiremu said finally.

"Caboose, cover the door," I ordered. "Now where's the gi-oh shit."

"What's wro-oh shit."

The girl in question was in front of us. There were two spikes on each of her shoulders, holding her against the wall. That wasn't the only thing, two wide wounds from a spiker bayonet had gutted her, intestines and organs were hanging out of her belly. There was a look of pure pain and horror on her face.

"What'd she do to deserve this?" Wiremu asked. "Why?"

"Gun," Almers said, pointing at a civilian model of the M6. "She probably angered the brutes."

"Fucking apes," Lance Corporal Wiremu spat.

"She's dead," I said, nothing we can do about it. Let's go."

"We can't leave her here," Wiremu complained.

"Api," Almers started.

"No, I won't leave her like that."

"Fine," I ceded, moving towards the girl. She couldn't have been more than sixteen. I averted those dead eyes and pushed her head to the other side while I yanked the spikes on her left shoulder.

I repeated the process and gently placed her on her bed. My armor was getting soaked in blood and gore, but for Wiremu's sake I didn't drop the corpse. One she was in the bed I looked at the Maori man and waited for him to say anything. "Happy?"

He said nothing, instead walking towards her and closing her eyes with his hands before yanking the bedsheets from underneath her and using them to cover her gutted belly. "There."

I could almost see Caboose rolling his eyes in diapproval.

"Let's go then."

"Shit."

An appropriate statement considering that after Caboose said that everything went to shit.

Brute chieftain plus dead bodyguards and narrow spaces equals a whole lot of trouble.

"Move back!" I yelled, firing in full-auto at the huge specimen. The rounds pinged of its shields, barely even making the chieftain flinch. It was big enough to have to squeeze in the alley. It was strong enough to move aside the house containers. "Shotgun!" I ordered, throwing my hand back. As soon as I felt something on my hand I grabbed it and aimed at the brute again. Two shots to the face were enough to stall it a little, and we turned a corner.

There were two brute majors tking fire from Almers and Wiremu. I tossed Caboose his shotgun back. And fired blindly onto the alley that we had just been in before tossing a grenade. I turned and saw that the chieftain's body wasn't there. There wasn't even a little bit of blood.

"Tangos down!" Almers announced. "Both of 'em."

"We have to get back!" Wiremu said, firing onto unseen enemies. "Now!"

"Ok, I'll cover you," I said. "Go."

The three of them ran past me, sprinting through a different alleyway to avoid enemy fire while I emptied my magazine at the pack of brutes that were trying to rush me. I think I might've killed one before I tossed another grenade and ran after my fireteam. The chieftain was still nowhere to be seen. I looked back at the apes. They looked very much like angry gorillas right now, running at us on all fours with their guns behind their backs. They wanted some blood and they wanted it quick.

"Why did you gut that bodyguard?" Schitzo asked. "You only provoked them."

"Almers! Fire by me!"

I moved to the left as rounds started whistling by my ear, awfully close to my head. The 7.62mm rounds were like mosquito bites on the brutes, it barely slowed them and only served to make them angrier. Sure, after the adrenaline and anger wore off they would die, but right now their bodies wouldn't stop unless they simply couldn't go anymore.

"Go," I ordered my squad. They didn't hesitate to take off down the next alley as I turned and emptied another clip on the brutes. Two of them collapsed on top of one another before I was forced to reload and run after my team. I grabbed my sidearm and fired while on the run. I don't think I hit anything, but I'm sure that the rounds all flew directly behind me. It was a very well practiced maneuver.

"Gunny!" Almers warned from up ahead.

I turned just in time to avoid a lunging brute. It was bleeding from the chest and neck, I guess I hadn't missed. The brute flew over me and landed on a trash can, knocking it down. It was sliding back to its feet even as I raised my rifle. Two shots hit its head and one flew back. The brute took two steps towards me before falling down, its own brain realizing it was dead. The danger wasn't over yet, I turned back and emptied my clip on another brute. It seemed to float there for a moment, the bullets keeping it in that position. When my gun clicked empty the brute fell down as if on queue.

"Above us," Wiremu shouted, calling attention to a dozen brutes that had climbed up the roofs and were now ahead of me. In between the three Helljumpers and me.

The lead brute was killed with combined fire and the rest jumped down. It was the biggest mistake that they could've possibly made.

"Kill 'em!" I ordered, a new magazine already on the rifle.

I fired as I walked forward, my three squad mates doing the same thing on the other side. The brutes collapsed one by one, taking fire from both sides. It wasn't until the very last brute fell down that I felt the sting.

I raised my arm and saw blood trickling from above my elbow. "You shot me," I said to either Almers or Wiremu.

"Shit," Almers said. "Here, let me-"

"No time," Caboose yanked him back.

I turned and saw the chieftain running towards us. It was angry as fuck and the hammer was over its head. I fired several rounds before my gun clicked empty and I had to run. Caboose and Almers were already ahead of us, and Wiremu was firing short bursts while I reached their position. Once I was near enough he turned around and ran. I placed my rifle over my back as I reloaded my pistol once again. When I felt the brute coming too close I turned and fired two rounds. Those two were only a distraction; the third one was aimed at its hands. I was lucky that I hit the target, one of the hands let go of the huge hammer and the brute was stalled by the weight before roaring and regaining its grip on the weapon. This one was determined to kill me, I'll give him that.

I felt a grip on my leg and fell down. I turned to fire five rounds at the chieftain. Two of them hit its jaw and it recoiled. I took advantage to kick it in the face before recoiling backwards. A pair of arms helped me up and gave me a boost before I started running. Almers nodded at me and ran as fast as he could.

My neck was pulsing, the recent wound hurting like hell and back.

I paused once again to fire at the kneeling brute. It raised its head and suddenly it was covered in a golden web.

"Fucker's gone indestructible!" Almers complained.

There was nothing left to do but to outrun it. The chances of doing that weren't exactly high. I fired the last of my rounds and ran after Almers. I followed him through a corner and ran up a slanted alley only to spot Wiremu at the top, SPANKr at me.

"Gunny!" he yelled.

Slow-motion kicked in.

Huh, I guess I should call it Spartan Time. After all, I'm just like those freaks.

I lifted my right arm and turned to the side just as I heard the faint sound of Lance Corporal Wiremu pulling the trigger of his weapon. Even with everything happening so slowly the rocket flew incredibly fast. I kept turning, moving my arm up and to the side as the rocket flew past me. It must've been less than a foot away from my torso when it streaked by. I turned my head as I rolled, tracking the missile's movement with my eyes. I saw the expression on the brute's face as the missile collided with its face.

Back to reality.

The overshields weren't destroyed. In fact, they weren't even damaged.

But physics can be a bitch sometimes. The kinetic force that the explosion produced was enough to launch the brute chieftain backwards at a speed of at least sixty miles per hour. Its overshield ran out while it was on the air and it landed against a wall with a very sickening cacophony of cracks. The dented metal wall was splattered with its blood.

I turned around to look at Wiremu, his smoking weapon over his shoulder. "Next time you could wait half a second more."

He actually looked flustered at how close he had been to killing his commanding officer. "I-uh, I am-"

"Can it," I interrupted. "Thanks. You'll do fine." I looked around at Almers and Caboose and nodded at them. "What are you doing? Move along, we have to make it back to our perimeter!"

We started back to the rest of the squad. This one would be a pretty good story, and I could always use the extra respect with this unit.

* * *

><p><em>Thanks to Alshep and SilasWhitfield for proof-reading this chapter.<em>

_A quick apology for taking so long to update, I've been a little bit lazy when it comes to writing for the last few days, but I've got several exams and projects due in a span of only three days as an excuse._

_That's the first time that you see Second Squad in some proper action. They're all new and they'll get their time in the spotlight, but not right now. I need to start developing those characters slowly, giving them personalities and all that stuff. Man, it would be so much easier to make them one-dimensional characters and keep them that way..._

_Well, as for the setting of this chapter think favelas of the future (hence the chapter quote). Kind of like the Mass Effect 3 multiplayer map Firebase Ghost. I might've been able to do all that better, but oh well. On a different topic, that was the shortest VIP rescue mission ever. Fairly realistic ending considering the circumstances through._

_Oh, and the killing of brute hammer chieftains just amuses me so much that I keep finding ways to write them into the story. Read through the entire fic (feel free to skip the first forty chapters 'cause they're pretty bad) and you'll see that every single hammer chieftain dies rather graphically. Oh, don't lie, I know you enjoy it too._

_As always my faithful readers, stay strong._

_-casquis_


	140. Spaceport

Chapter CXL: Spaceport

**September 4, 2545 (UNSC Calendar)/**

**New Montevideo, Acheron-VII, Beta Rho System**

* * *

><p><em>"Nice for a landing, not so much for avoiding strafing runs."<em>

* * *

><p>"Is that the <em>More Badass Than Thou<em>?" I asked, my eyes tracking the UNSC frigate as it flew across the sky, chasing away a damaged Covenant corvette. It fired its MAC once, blowing up the enemy ship. The corvette managed to sustain itself in the air for a few brief seconds before a secondary explosion finally brought it down. As the purple spaceship fell I heard the incredibly loud boom that the MAC had made. A few seconds later the shockwave jerked me backwards.

"Nah," Apirama Wiremu told me. "That's the _Cappadocia_."

I nodded, looking at the massive frigate. Even at this distance the five hundred meter long ship looked imposing. I wished that I could say the same when comparing it to Covenant battlecruisers.

"The other two frigates are escorting the evacuation ships as soon as they exit atmosphere," Wiremu went on. "The rest of the battlegroup is holding back the enemy cruiser."

"And the prowler is gathering intel," Beckel sighed sadly. "We could sure use the help down here."

"I don't think heavy destroyers are rated for atmosphere," I said, observing the _Capadoccia._ "At least not when they come out of the shipyard. And the ONI guys in the prowler are helpful, as much as it pains me to admit it."

"Wow, Frank giving ONI credit, call the reporters."

"Last time it didn't end so well, did it?" I asked Pavel.

"Well, he wasn't a reporter, he was a journalist."

"Is there a difference?" Beckel asked. "I mean, other than the word?"

I shook my head. "Enough with the chat. Keep your eyes on your sectors."

The control tower was nearly useless. It was only in the spaceport in case there was a critical systems failure. Right now I was on the rooftop of the tallest building around. It didn't mean much though; there were several skyscrapers within beam rifle range around me. That's the main reason why I was covered by a pair of metal sheets and only aiming at the ground level. Still, I was scared.

The SRS99C-S2 AM rifle in my hands felt deadly, and it was. Snark and Novak had other firing positions. I had been given the best one and Snark the hardest. He could manage it and I wanted to have a nice spot. Novak hadn't been very happy about it, but she didn't mention anything.

Right underneath me Wiremu and Beckel were pacing the control room itself. All the windows had been turned into one way mirrors, and the windows that had zooming capabilities had been turned into telescopes to aid in keeping watch.

If I turned around I would see a crowd. A big ass crowd of the likes you had never seen in my entire life. Most of those people were alone, having lost their friends, their family, and everything they owned. They only had survival to look forward to. They waited patiently as FTL-capable transports were filled up to bursting and then tried to jump out of the system. So far we had enough ships for everyone in here, something to be grateful for considering that they'd have to be put inside our ships otherwise.

I heard another transport take off, but I kept my eye on the long avenue leading into the spaceport. I had practically every feature memorized. I saw the SUV that was practically fused to the side of a semi. The blood from the driver was splattered on the white side of the truck. I also saw the pair of trashcans that had no business being there, I couldn't figure how they had gotten down in the middle of the street. I saw the fresh corpses, only just beginning to rot. There was one Scorpion with it's turret by its side, flames were still flickering from the driver's compartment. A hundred meters away a Wraith was on the floor, a big hole in the front. It would've required at least three shots to punch through. Closer to the spaceport I could see cars just parked in the middle of nowhere. People had tried to get here as fast as they could, in their haste they hadn't even bothered to go inside the parking lot, instead opting to climb over the fence.

Ah, the fence. It was an old-fashioned chain-link fence. Useful and sturdy. It had been brought down by a polycrete truck, corpses were here and there, a dog was walking the area, andit occasionally paused to sniff a corpse before moving on. I had been watching the dog for a long time now. It seemed completely unaware of what was going on. I envied it for that. I also hoped someone would grab the poor animal and take him inside a ship before it was too late. From my position I could see two other dogs, both of them dead. One had been clearly run over, a large section of its torso caved inwards. The other one had been shot with plasma. Who would shoot a harmless dog?

It was a sorry spectacle.

A minute or two later silence was broken again. "How are the guys delaying them doing?" Beckel asked.

It was another full minute before anyone replied. "They're probably planting the explosives right now," I said.

Pavel chimed in from a small shuttle hangar. He was commanding the rest of the squad down at ground level. "That means we've got about twenty minutes for the explosions."

"What are they using?" Almers asked.

"Standard C-12 charges," I told him. "You know what they say."

"When in doubt, C-12," he replied. "I don't know if that's very wise."

"Oh, it is," Wiremu assured him.

"Shh," I muttered, tracking the dog through my scope.

Sure enough, twenty minutes later we got the first explosion. It was enormous. The noise was almost as loud as the MAC blast had been. A whole block disappeared after that and with it any Covenant soldier that had been there. Soon after the first explosion the second, third, fourth, and so on followed. Groups of marines and soldiers started trickling by. They had all been pretty beat up by the Covenant forces. Most of them came on transport 'Hogs or piled up on tanks. The Army came on their venerable Armadillos. A few Pelicans flew past the fence at low altitude. Some others kept heading straight towards space, no doubt filled to bursting with wounded men and women.

"Any moment now boys," I stated as an Armadillo plowed through the fence, gunning towards an empty space in the spaceport. That had been reserved for the UNSC _Navarone,_ our battlegroup's light carrier. It would be taking in any surviving local forces and evacuating them.

"Weapons free," Pavel ordered. "Remember your fields of fire."

"Wiremu, first Daemon you see you take out. They take priority over Wraiths."

"Castillo," Hayes came in a moment later. "I want you, Avninder, and Novak to target officers and officers only."

"Got it," I said.

"Roger that ma'am," Novak acknowledged.

"Don't I always?" Snark replied.

The first ones to come through were Ghosts. It was obvious. The Ghost was the standard recon unit for the Covenant ground forces. A few of them were blown up by landmines planter by the escaping marines and soldiers. The rest of them made it through and fired at out more visible positions. There was some machine gun fire exchanged and a couple of Ghosts blew up before the rest retreated. They had probed our defenses and were returning to report.

Brutes were getting smarter. That would just not do.

"See that?" I asked suddenly. "Wiremu, dead ahead, movement behind that upside down tanker."

"How'd a gas tanker end up on its top?" he asked.

"Yeah, man, how?" Beckel furthered.

I don't think I need to tell you that he was being sarcastic.

"See it?" I pressed.

"I see it, barely."

My scope was doing a great job, but the smoke made anything behind it invisible. It wasn't necessary for me to zoom any further, because an instant later a plasma round burned through the smoke before plowing onto one of our first trenches. The explosion lifted a ton of dirt that buried whoever had been left alive.

"Can you make the shot?"

"I can aim at it," Wiremu informed me. "But from here I have no guarantee that the rocket will fly in a straight line. If I had to guess, I'd say it's a miss."

The Daemon was four clicks away, extreme range even for the SPANKr.

I got an idea. "Bee, you hear me?"

"Loud and clear Sarge, need any help?"

"Think you can blow up…that target?"

"Ouch, it's a tough shot."

Bee was on the opposite side of the spaceport, but his position had a line of sight to the tank.

"What about the tanker, think the laser will ignite it?"

"Sure, provided it has anything flammable in it. There could be milk inside of it for all I know."

"Do it."

"Belay that," Hayes ordered. "Castillo, what makes you think you can waste a Spartan shot on a tank on _your_ side of the yard?"

Another shot was fired from the Daemon, this time it killed at least three soldiers trying to set up a machine gun.

"That," I replied simply.

Bee didn't wait for me to say anything else or for Hayes to give the go sign. I saw faint, flickering, red lasers and then a red line appeared out of nowhere. The Spartan Laser hit the point underneath the cannon of the tank. It had burned through the armor and punched out the other side. The heat had melted the barrel of the cannon, and it fell down before two faint figures climbed out of the hatch.

"Damn, I was aiming for the cannon."

He had missed his target by a few inches at a range of four and a half kilometers away. With a shoulder mounted weapon.

"You've got good pulse man," one of his squadmates voiced. It might've been Corporal Escamilla, but I hadn't learned all of my platoon's names. "Didn't even have to aim at the tanker."

I nodded in agreement. That had been a helluva shot.

"Shadow transports," I warned a second later. They were coming at us at full speed. "Target the lead one."

A few seconds elapsed before a rocket burst through the windows of the control tower. It flew straight at nothing before the Shadow's speed put the transport vehicle right in the way of the rocket. Boom it went and just like that a dozen covvies were dead. Another dozen followed as Wiremu hit a second transport. The two wrecked Shadows meant that the rest had to go around their wreckage, making themselves targets. Easy targets.

They stopped, eventually, and infantry started dismounting. The brutes moved several of our human vehicles to form a nice barrier. The barricade got them out of the field of fire. Well, out of some fields of fire. I got a brute captain in my beads and squeezed the trigger lightly. The armor-piercing round left a vapor trail behind before it made the brute's head explode. I laughed as I saw a grunt scream and recoil in fear.

"Spirits coming in," Novak warned. "Three of them, fast and low."

"Pavel, time to unveil our special weapon," I ordered. Take 'em down, the last thing we need is a bunch of troops amongst us."

"Aye, aye cap'n."

Our secret weapon in question was, you'll never guess it, a AAA gun from the Rain Forest Wars. It was here on an exhibit and it just so happened to use rounds that our ships could produce. The explosive shells would take down a Spirit dropship with a couple of hits at the most. The AAA gun had four barrels and had to be fired manually. It was one of those almost-impromptu guns made by the rebels, effective and sturdy. The fact that it was still in working order after four centuries was a small miracle in itself.

"In range," Pavel called.

"Targeting," Brisbois said. "Targeted."

"Fire," I ordered.

The tracer rounds lit up even in the middle of the day. The first few missed by a couple of feet, but when Serge realized that he had overcompensated for the drop he re-aimed and started pounding the lead Spirit. It started falling to the ground after the explosions tore off one of its two arms. The second one met the same fate even as it tried to bank, but the buildings around had it trapped. The third and last transport stopped abruptly before attempting to escape in reverse. Serge didn't let it escape, the French Foreign Legionnaire killed the third craft with solid body shots.

"Nice job," I complimented him. "Hide the gun, but keep it ready."

The battle started growing in intensity. Two Scorpion tanks were moved to aid us in the struggle. They kept themselves moving while firing at hard targets and buildings, attempting to bring a mountain of debris on top of the enemies. Meanwhile, Pavel and his section of the squad attempted to hold back the enemy at all costs, but there were simply too many of them. I took my time when picking targets. Shooting several officers at a time would only serve to bring me heat, I didn't want that. Instead, I mostly used my range finder and laser designator to call in mortar strikes. The mortar teams were low on ammo, so I just called them in on Hunters or Wraiths.

We sure could've used an H-165 Forward Observer Module, but we had no ships or satellites to rain missiles on out targets.

"They're reaching our frontline!" Pavel cursed. "Earn your pay, ladies!"

I spotted the dog running away from the gunfire and plasma fire. Away from the battle. I cursed when it didn't run towards the humans, instead drawing a perpendicular line and attempting to escape the battle altogether. The dog had just signed its death sentence.

"Fuck," I said. Thankfully, my squad took it to mean that I was frustrated at the covvies.

Then I spotted something that drew my attention from the dog. A brute, bigger and faster than all else. It had a plasma turret and wielded it as easily as I could a pistol. It was very obviously a chieftain, probably the man in command of this first assault. The sheer volume of firepower made it a highly visible target. A very tempting one at that.

I aimed, breathed in and out, accounted for the minimal drop, and fired. The bullet punched the highly ornate helmet that wobbled on top of the animal's head before turning its brain into mush. The chieftain collapsed.

One could just feel the entire assault wavering with that. I could relate to the cockiness that recon snipers often carried around.

"Boom, headshot," I boasted.

"There he goes," Pavel moaned. He was probably rolling his eyes right now.

The enemy assault had wavered. A few minutes after that they started falling back to the original barricade. They were now reinforcing it with deployable covers and shield walls. A couple of Scorpion shots ought to bring down any wall, but the mortars were just outside of range. Even with my rifle I'd have a tough time hitting anything behind it, especially now that they had all that hard cover.

"What now?" Novak asked. She had been the last to stop firing.

"We wait for the second assault," I replied simply. "You are under orders from the ranking officer down there," I reminded the squad. "So don't look up to me for everything."

There was a pause. Not quite audible, but close enough. That had certainly been an unusual order.

The conversation grinded to a halt after that. Everyone helped pick up the bodies and take their ammo during the lull. The barricades were reinforced and new positions were taken. I observed the process through the Oracle scope.

"Eyes up," I called the moment I saw the Wraith mortar shots arching up towards us. "It's beginning."

Minutes later I found myself firing at brutes indiscriminately, whether they were officers or not. I tried to save the marines and soldiers down there, hitting the brutes closest to the line, occasionally taking the time to target a higher-ranking ape. My ears were ringing constantly, I was going to have them checked the moment I got back on the ship. If I got back on the ship.

A brute fell down as a round severed its head from the rest of its body. Another one collapsed as I hit it in the chest. Others died, most of them had already killed before I got my sights of them. Some I ended before they could do the same to my comrades. I was trying my best, but I wasn't fast enough, not by any means. Pavel and his fireteam were holding their sector, but they were the best, and the rest of our allies weren't nearly as good or experienced. If the line broke we'd have to take a step back.

"Shit, I need a danger close mission," Pavel finally said. "We need those fuckers wiped out."

I nodded silently and called in the strike. "Heads down!"

I could barely hear the explosions from up here, but I could certainly see the limbs flying. The mortar rounds decimated the enemy and then decimated them again. By the time the smoke cleared only half of the original aliens remained alive. Those were dazed and wounded, they were wiped out within a minute. The ones further back slowly returned to their barricades. They were no doubt preparing for a third assault.

"That's the last one you get," I warned. "Mortar ammo is low and those crews are going to be pulling back."

"Understood," Pavel said. "Officer in charge was killed in the last assault."

"Guess you got yourself your own command," I congratulated. "Enjoy."

He scoffed. "Yeah, right."

The third attempt to attack came afterwards. The sun was still up in the ski, but soon enough it would go down. We needed to keep them out as long as we could. I could see the occasional dropship flying way back, dropping troops and equipment. They were preparing for a big assault. Reinforcements were called and our positions were strengthened, but we were underpowered, even with a whole battalion protecting the spaceport.

"Castillo," Lieutenant Hayes chimed in on my radio. "Bad news."

"Is there any other kind?" I replied. "What is it, El-tee?"

"Enemy fleet jumped in the system, they're already making the way towards the planet."

"Shit," I said. "What's the plan?"

"We have the _More Badass Than Thou_ coming down here to evacuate the marine battalion as soon as the last civvies are out. The rest of our ground forces around the planet are already being pulled out."

"And the local Army?"

"They'll do what they can, but there's a lot of them."

"There's still over a million civilians left all over the planet," I mused. "Damn." I zoomed in on some movement and relaxed when I saw that it was nothing.

"What's our job now?"

"We're going to be last ones out," Lieutenant Hayes explained. "We're going to be pulled out by Pelican."

"That sucks," I said. "Well, we'll do our best."

"You don't have to tell me that," she stated. "It's expected of you."

"Aye, aye, sir."

I relayed the news to my squad; they received it better than most would've. It was our job to be the first ones in and the last ones out after all.

"Frank, think we can get some air support here?" Pavel asked me. "Looks like we might need it soon."

"The Ground Attack Air Wing-"

"Just call it the GAAW," he interrupted.

"The GAAW," I groaned. "Is protecting the civilian ships, the Pelicans are being used to transport wounded and civilians to the ships without atmospheric capability," I lectured him.

"I know, I know, just don't talk to me as if I was a baby. Besides, a pair of Hornets couldn't hurt."

"No, they couldn't," I agreed.

I waited until they made their first move.

You know, I expected the brutes to start their assault the same way, bunch of grunts on Ghosts and perhaps a few Choppers thrown in the mix. After pounding our defenses they'd send regular infantry, some heavy weapons and hunters were definitely a probability. I didn't really expect them to launch a full-blown combined arms assault.

Banshees lifted off from behind the wall of vehicles and deployable covers that they had built in the last couple of hours. A dozen purple Banshees slowly rose up before flying down the street towards us. They let out green explosive rounds, aiming for the improvised instacrete bunkers down there. A couple of them were hit by SPANKr fire, but the others flew past our perimeter and turned around to fire at our forces from the rear.

"Serge, shoot 'em out of the sky!" I ordered. "Wiremu!"

"I'm on it, I'm on it!"

The fliers were screaming past, but none of them had spotted my hiding spot. I wanted to shoot at them, to do something, but I knew that giving away my position would do more harm than good. The Banshees strafed the marines on the ground, they tried taking out Serge's AAA gun as soon as he started firing on them, but Wiremu and other men with rocket launchers kept them busy while trying to avoid getting shot.

Right when it seemed like the Banshees were going to pull off over two dozen Prowlers emerged from behind the enemy line. They were packed to the brim with grunts and jackals. A couple of them exploded form sustained machine gun fire, but the rest made their way to the front and dropped off the troops clinging to them before slowly sliding backwards and forming a second wall of sorts. The brutes on the turrets started firing at our positions.

They made for very tempting targets, stationary and highly visible.

After burning through a box of 14.55x114mm APFSDS rounds I was finally spotted. Plasma rounds started hitting the edge of the roof, melting the metal and spraying bits of molten stuff around. I reloaded my rifle and fired at the brutes still on the turrets. Grunts and jackals had taken over the dead gunners and were making full use of the weapons. The troops down there were returning fire, but they were outgunned and the alien infantry. I kept firing until I saw a tank. A Daemon to be precise.

The tank had turned a corner and had received a couple of bullets for its trouble, but nothing above a pinprick. It turned and aimed at the base of the tower before slowly raising its barrel. The shot hit the ceiling next to me, blowing a huge hole on it. I grabbed the rifle and the remaining ammunition before jumping down the hole. I landed sooner than I expected, but the floor gave way under me and I found myself landing on top of a console.

"Gunny?" Wiremu asked. "What the-"

"Get down!"

Another shot was fired and this time it went through the windows before detonating against the ceiling of the control room. The explosion sent shrapnel everywhere, but luckily none of us were hit.

"Wiremu!" I shouted. "Wiremu?"

"I'm fine," he replied. "Banged up but fine."

"We have to get out of here!" I yelled, already climbing over the wrecked remains of consoles and desks to make my way to the door.

"Not without payback," he grunted.

Wiremu raised his SPANKr and fired two rockets in quick succession. He turned around to pick up a small crate filled with M19 SSMs and threw it at me. I caught it with some trouble, fumbling the ammunition box and rifle on my hands before managing to get a good grip on all of them. Lance Corporal Wiremu grabbed two of those crates and jumped over the wreckage before making it to the door. We ran down the stairs even as the Daemon pulverized the top of the control tower.

"Hold on, hold on," I ordered, stopping in front of a small window.

The window overlooked the battle in front of us. I grabbed the SRS99 and used the butt to break the glass. I positioned the barrel on the frame for support and searched for a target. I found them immediately. A brute with a fuel rod was firing while a jackal next to it made use of its beam rifle. The two shots made for clean kills.

"Move, move!" I urged Wiremu.

We reached the bottom of the control tower. The area in front of us was a massive polycrete floor, designed to support the weight of massive space liners without cracking. About five or six hundred meters away I could see ships being filled up with civilians. Even further back I could see more plasma fire flying in all directions. The spaceport was almost empty of civilians, we would be leaving soon.

"Gunny, I'm off to help there," Wiremu told me.

I nodded and took position behind one of the tower's walls, aiming at the battle. I didn't have a very good vantage from here, but I made use of my powerful rifle. Brutes and grunts with heavy weapons found themselves afraid and looking for cover. For a moment it seemed like we might be able to hold the enemy assault. Then the aliens sent their Wraiths charging forward. The tanks rammed through destroyed Shadows, Ghosts, and Prowlers, pushing them aside like toys. The Daemon switched to fire at our bunkers, it was damaged, but still in working order.

"Pavel, I need that Daemon out, it's killing us."

"We're working on it!" he yelled back. "Frank, jump pack brutes, we can't be flanked right now!"

I scanned the air, looking for the flashes of their jump packs. "It's been a while since I last duck hunted," I mumbled. "Novak, help me with those."

The brutes were highly visible targets, even if their speed and trajectory made them all but impossible to kill. I took deep breaths before firing. Three of my shots missed, but the last one hit one of the lead brutes. Novak missed all of the shots with her first mag, but on the second one she hit two of the brutes. They hit the ground right in front of our frontline and jumped again. I took two of them down before they could get speed. Novak evened it up with another two kills. She was good.

The few that landed behind our enemy lines were quickly handled. If they tried to take cover from me they were hit by Novak and the other way around.

"Good work," I told her.

"Thanks," she replied, sounding happy at the compliment. "I'm moving out, this position is becoming way too hot."

I nodded without bothering to reply. A trio of needles embedded themselves in the polycrete walls of the control tower, sending rock bits to my face. I jerked back and looked for new cover. The closest thing to me was a Scorpion tank thirty meters away. There was absolutely nothing in between it and myself other than a couple of civilian corpses. I made my mind and sprinted out of cover. Needles flew in front and behind me, missing by ridiculously small amounts of space. I ducked, rolled, and stopped right in the open to fire back. The jackal that was firing at me reached for cover, but a quarter of an inch of metal wasn't going to stop an armor piercing round that was the size of a small beer bottle.

I saw the puff of blood on the other side and chuckled with satisfaction. Of course, my sense of victory was short lived, as two Wraith mortars hit the tank I was heading towards. The first one nicked the front armor, damaging it heavily. The second one landed right on one of the threads, but the heat was enough to cause something to detonate. I ran towards the tank, the gunner was dead, half his body atomized and the other half scorched black. The driver still had vitals.

I tore the twisted metal hatch from the hinges, surprising even myself as I did so, and quickly pulled the man out of the cabin. I dragged him behind the Scorpion and placed him with his back against the tank. Half of the tanker's face was burned and one of his arms was most definitely going to be amputated. If he even lived.

"Hey, hey, you ok?" I asked. "Can you hear me?"

The man slowly nodded, dazed and confused and probably in terrible pain. "Is-uh-is the tank ok?"

I looked at it. "Can't move, but it can probably fire," I told him. I grabbed a syringe of painkillers and stabbed the man's leg with it. He visibly relaxed and took a deep breath before looking me in the eyes.

"Kill those fuckers."

I smiled. He was my kind of man. "Done." I grabbed him and pulled him slightly to the left so that the ejected shells wouldn't hit him when the tank fired. "Stay here, deep breaths. You'll be fine."

He nodded, he was already slipping into unconsciousness.

I turned around and climbed inside the tank. The firing systems were heavily damaged and some controls looked to be completely destroyed, but I could move the turret and fire.

Let me tell you something. You do not want to be near a non-trained marine firing a tank's cannon visually and with no electronic aid.

The first shot was a beautiful hit, plowing through the damaged front armor of the Daemon that had been harassing us. "Guess I have to do your own job for you, huh?" I taunted Pavel.

I then aimed at a Wraith. I missed by a good ten feet, instead the round flew back and hit a Prowler. I shrugged. It was a fair tradeoff. I adjusted my aim slightly and this time hit the Wraith's cannon, damaging it beyond repair. I was lucky that I hit there, because if I had missed or if the round had bounced off the armor the Wraith would've shot me.

Still, I decided that I had had enough of it and jumped out of the tank. The man behind was unconscious already, even despite the three smoking shell casings next to him. I grabbed him and carried him towards our frontline, slowly dropping him behind a concrete divider. My SRS99 had one magazine left, but I still had all my BR55 mags on their holsters.

A minute and four dead brutes later I found myself tossing the sniper rifle aside and running towards the frontline. Pavel was manning an HMG, firing at grunts trying to rush us.

"Hey bud," I said.

"Frank," he said gruffly. "We're preparing to pull back to the second line, you're highest rank here, give the order."

I examined the battle with care, ducking occasionally to avoid having my head blown off. To my right and left I saw my squad and marines. Most of the marines that I saw were dead, but the others were fighting professionally and giving as good as they got. The second line was a line of buildings right behind the improvised trenches and bunkers. They already had over half our troops in there, but the ones that were out here would do good to find cover. "Start pulling back," I ordered. "But we can't give those buildings. If we do then we'll be easy targets."

I was talking about the huge open space without any sort of cover in between us and the evac point.

"Castillo," Hayes came in. Damn, her voice was angelical, even despite the tone. "All the civilians are either dead or gone, pull your men back."

"We need someone to cover us, sir," I told her. "There's half a mile between us and safety."

"Of course, I already got Captain Galván to send a bunch of Tortoises your way. Do you take me for an idiot?"

"'Course not, sir. Good thinking." I spoke to the men and women here, "Fall back to the second line! We're going to be pulling back!"

Nobody questioned that order. Machine gun crews packed up their weapons while everybody else provided a wall of gunfire. Pavel unmounted the HMG and shouldered it, groaning under the weight. I took the opportunity to hit grunts and jackals trying to be heroes while Pavel ran back. I garbbed the tripod, folded it and moved back, firing as I went. Once we were all in the building the crews started deploying the guns again.

"What's the situation!" I ordered. Yes, ordered.

"Fifteen percent casualties," a marine told me. "We still have our heavy weapons and the AAA is in working order."

I nodded. "We're one tank down, but overall we're better than I expected."

"Gunnery Sergeant Castillo?"

"That's me," I replied to the voice in my radio.

"Tortoises are ready, we can't move any closer."

"Roger, what's your distance?"

"Fifty meters from your position Gunny."

"Got it, I'm sending men out."

"Hurry up."

"Ok, our carriages are here," I announced. "Wounded and non-specialized squads pull out first."

The building I was in suddenly felt a little emptier. Pavel was firing his weapon without even stopping. Even with the Gatling design I feared that he was risking an overheat. I fired occasionally, hitting the brutes that were now using our trenches for cover. Grenades rained down on the aliens, little splashes of blood emerged here and there, marking the accurate throws.

"We're in."

"Non heavy weapons pull out," I ordered.

Now Pavel and I were sharing this small building with two gunners. They were firing accurately in short bursts when compared to Pavel's spraying. He delayed and stunned enemies while the other crew took out the harder targets. I dedicated myself to shooting grunts. There were a lot of them, and the fear of their masters kept them going, firing wildly and squealing in panic and anger. When I got the clear sign from the second unit falling back I gave the order for everybody except my own squad to fall back.

The sudden decrease in numbers meant that the aliens really started gaining ground on us. Grunts were falling dead just meters from the walls of this buildings. Jackals were now forming shield phalanxes and brutes were within grenade range. It was getting too hot to wait any longer.

Banshees.

Fucking awesome.

"Banshees!" Almers yelled. "Serge!"

I heard the sound of the AAA firing. It was much louder down here. "Fall back!" I ordered. "To the APCs!"  
>Pavel abandoned his gun and ran away, I followed him, fire and needles trying to hit us. Novak and Beckel emerged from another building next to us, Wiremu tossed a pair of grenades before running after them. Almers and Caboose were sprinting towards the Tortoise APCs further away. Serge was trying to shoot down the Banshees with his museum piece. I ran yelling at him to get out of the goddamn seat.<p>

A single fuel rod flew towards him. Serge jumped out, running as the plasma round curved down, guided by some unknown tracking mechanism, and exploded upon impact. The AAA was history, now only a pile of mangled metal.

Pavel stopped and ran towards Serge, who was slowly getting up. Without even requiring an order everyone stopped and went on their knees to provide covering fire. I urged Pavel while hitting two jackals.

Then I heard a thunk right next to me.

The spike grenade was the size of a small baseball bat. And it was beeping.

_Huh, been a while since I last saw one of those._

Of course I didn't stay there like an idiot. I was hardwired to react to things like this. Having stun grenades thrown at me during bootcamp had left me with the closest thing that I had to a shield against grenades. Personal experience also allowed me to know precisely how much time I had to run before I had to dive. I took three long steps before jumping forward as hard as I could. The grenade blew up, sending sharp spikes in every direction. A couple of them bounced off my armor and a couple didn't, but none pierced it.

I groaned and turned around, scrambling to get up.

"Gunny!" Beckel yelled in my face. "You all right?"

"Yeah," I replied, taking his hand. "Get of my face."

"Gee, sorry."

"To the Tortoise," I ordered. "Now."

"Serge's fine," Pavel informed me before I could even ask. "Let's go."

The last Tortoise armored personnel carrier was waiting for us with the rear hatch doors open. The gun on top was firing at targets with ten round bursts, the high caliber guaranteed that each burst was a kill. A marine was firing with an MA5K at the enemies behind us. Each of us were now running towards the APC with all the speed that we could muster. Pavel all but threw Serge right before Beckel slid in. I stopped and fired at onrushing grunts while slowly walking backwards. The moment both my feet were in the tank the doors closed and we sped off.

"Status?" I asked.

Everyone patted themselves all over, checking for wounds that they might've not felt.

"Green," Wiremu said after a while.

"Excellent." I opened the line to Hayes. "El-tee, what's the ETA on the _More Badass Than Thou_?"

_I like the name, but couldn't they have made it shorter?_

"Fifteen minutes, they're slingshoting around the planet."

"Hmm," I hummed. "What's our defense plan?"

"You'll see it soon enough."

I felt the Tortoise turning and grabbed a handle to avoid sliding sideways. It was cramped in here, and Serge was still dazed from the explosion, but he wasn't complaining. The Tortoise stopped and opened its hatches to reveal the front of another APC. I exited the APC with care and saw that all of the Armadillos had been packed into a circle. There were Scorpions here and there, with their cannons aimed outside. The battalions two deployed Elephants were one next to the other in the middle. It was packed with marines. Even with Pelicans taking off with Warthogs attached to their tails and bursting out with men I could tell that a single Wraith shot inside the perimeter would be costly in both lives and…well, mostly lives.

"Castillo, you're here."

"Yes, sir," I saluted. "My squad is green and ready to go."

Lieutenant Hayes had her helmet under her arm and her hair was messy. She looked alluring.

_No Frank no._

"What's with PFC Brisbois?"

"Serge? Got a little shaken up from an explosion." I looked at the Frenchman, he was standing up but using a side of the Tortoise that had gotten us here to steady himself. "Hasn't complained one bit."

"And you?"

"What about me?"

Lieutenant Hayes tapped my right shoulder, bringing the four blades embedded there to my attention. I looked at them and rolled my shoulder around, trying to see if it'd be troublesome. The four jagged spikes form the spike grenade looked oddly fitting on my shoulder armor. "Grenade. It's nothing."

Hayes shook her head. "You are too…flamboyant." The way she said the word was incredibly sexy. "Try to be less so."

"Uh, yes, sir. I don't mean to come of as a showoff."

"I never said you were. I don't care if you throw yourself of a bridge to score an upside down headshot on a hunter with a rocket launcher, but I care of you make your team follow you. Their safety is your responsibility."

"I am aware of that," I assured her. "This isn't my first command."

She sighed. "Just try and act like a decent noncom, command may see it fit to make you an officer, you'd better learn to be one."

"Yes, sir."

"Now set up your squad to defend this section of the perimeter."

I nodded. Second squad, mount up, we're going to be bringing the pain."

They took position in between the Tortoises or above them, aiming out of our defense perimeter. It was a well thought strategy, we'd be protected from everything except for an air assault or Wraith mortars. The SAM batteries on the Elephants and the missile pods granted safety against the former. The incredibly high amount of tanks and autocannons we had at our disposal guaranteed that any Wraith firing on us was basically suicidal.

The few Hornets that we had with us were out hunting for Banshees and strafing ground positions. The enemy was already deploying shields and placing their own vehicles in between them and us. They were prepared for a siege, but they didn't know that a UNSC frigate was coming here to save everybody's asses. That was bound to give them a little jolt. Already they were beginning to fire, probably thinking that they had us with our backs against the wall.

Technically they did, but the wall happened to be angry at them.

_What if the frigate doesn't make it._

"Ah Francisco, you are such a depressing dick, you know." Schitzo paced back and forth in front of my sight. "You should plan for contingencies, just in case, steal a Tortoise and you just might make it."

"Shut up," Scarecrow growled. "The frigate will be here."

"I hope so…"

"Frank?" Pavel asked.

"Nothing," I said. "Ignore it."

"You ok?"

"Never better," I grunted.

Pavel didn't say anything, he knew enough about my…affliction to know what was going on. He was concerned. Oh, not necessarily for me, he knew very well that I could have a conversation while gutting aliens, but he was most definitely worried that one time that conversation would be the cause of someone's death. It was a legitimate concern. I mean, I would be pissed if I died because Pavel was talking to his imaginary friends.

"What's the first thing you're gonna do when we're back in Reach?" Almers asked. Knowing him, he was talking to Beckel.

Sure enough, Beckel replied. "Don't know, there's this new club in New Alexandria that I really want to try."

I remembered when I used to go clubbing.

"Sounds good," Almers replied. "Hey Novak, you up for some partying?"

"What's the drinking age in Viery?" Wiremu asked. "How old are you Miranda?"

"I-um, nineteen."

"Damn, fresh out of high school and bootcamp," Beckel stated. "Shave a year and a month from you and you'd be a child soldier."

"I don't understand," Novak said in confusion. "What does my age have anything to do with-"

"Ever gone into a club?" Almers asked, putting it quite bluntly.

"Um…no?"

"Is that a yes or a no?"

"No, I've never gone into a club," Miranda replied.

"Ever had a drink?" Wiremu asked. Of course he did.

"Of course I have!" she exclaimed, sounding offended at the mere notion of being thought a boring high school girl.

With looks like hers I doubted she lacked attention.

"What drink do you like the most?" Beckel pressured her for information.

I jumped in. "Why so curious? Trying to get her drunk?"

"'Course not, just trying to get to know her."

"Any reason why?" Pavel asked, joining in on the fun.

"She's a squad mate and I think I should be friends with her?" he asked, annoyed.

"You never asked me what my favorite drink was," Pavel complained.

"Didn't ask me either," Almers said. "Dick."

"Wow," Beckel groaned. "With friends like these…"

"Who said we were friends?" Pavel asked him. "Eyes open Beckel."

"I like vodka…" Novak said quietly.

The entire squad sans Caboose and Serge erupted in laughter. Well, Novak didn't laugh either. I guess only about half the squad laughed. Well, one more than half if you want to be precise. Once we had stopped laughing I assured her that I also liked Vodka for my mixed drinks.

"But I'm more of a beer and whisky man," I said.

"Tell me about it," Pavel said. Caboose chuckled.

And now the squad thought that I was an alcoholic.

"Are they wrong?" Schitzo asked.

_Recovering alcoholic._

"Once an alcoholic…"

The conversation was cut short. The attack was beginning.

Plasma volleys hit the Tortoises' armor. The ceramic and titanium plates started boiling, letting out steam and hissing from the heat. The smoke interfered with my sight, but I managed to score some kills, firing sporadically and letting the gunners on the APCs and tanks do most of the heavy lifting. A couple of the vehicles exploded when shoulder mounted explosives were fired at them. I turned around to see a pair of Tortoises in flames. Several marines rushed towards them to try and save the men inside and to block the hole in the defense. Above me the Hornets were firing it all into the enemy, zigzagging like crazy to avoid being shot down. More than one pilot failed the task and was shot down.

"Three grunts, fuel rods," I called.

The grunts were gunned down immediately, on fired into the ground on reflex, vaporizing the trio. It was almost comedic to see.

I couldn't see any brutes storming our position now. They were sending the grunts and the jackals ahead. The grunts were no better than cannon fodder, the jackals did a little better, forming shield walls and moving forward at a very slow pace, a wall of bullets slowing down their pace. Further back the covvies had set turrets, they were strafing our positions with automatic fire. The turrets couldn't do much damage, but they suppressed our gunfire.

"Castillo, jackal fireteams headed your way," Hayes called.

"Take 'em out," I ordered. "Jackals are priority."

As we slowed them down, the aliens wore us down. It was a give and take, with us giving more than we were taking. So far we were doing well, but they had us surrounded and outnumbered. We were running out of time. Things started taking a turn for the worse when Spirit dropships started arriving, dropping of troops and strafing our positions. Their angle allowed them to rain fire inside our little circle. The screams were loud and they were clear. It served only to anger me.

"_Badass_ is inbound!" a gruff voice called. "Prepare to evacuate."

The first thing that occurred to me was that _Badass _was a very good way to shorten the frigate's full name. The second thing to occur to me was that the ship didn't deserve that name. It was a freaking frigate, not a cruiser or carrier. Ridiculous.

After I was done pondering on ship naming traditions the _Badass_ opened up. The frigate wasn't designed as a fire attack ship, but its point defense guns were more than a match for the puny infantry soldiers and the occasional ground vehicle.

The .50mm PDGs fired explosive rounds at the ground, the polycrete was turned into dust with the explosions. The aliens were turned into pools of blood if they were hit. All of a sudden the enemy fire all but stopped. I turned around to see the UNSC _More Badass Than Thou_ slow down to a halt. It opened its hangar bay doors while splattering the entire enemy force that happened to be underneath it. I laughed at the thought of hundreds of aliens being flattened in between a ship and the ground.

The two Elephants started moving, the vehicles and marines in between them moving inside the hangar bay. It was going to be pretty crowded inside, but whoever tried to board the _Badass_ would be in for a surprise.

The entire ring of defense started slowly shifting towards the ship, the aliens were only just beginning to recover from a fucking ship dropping on top of them and even then most of the aliens fired at the ship, barely scratching its armor. Only the brutes fired on us. Mostly they missed.

The sheer number of soldiers and vehicles on the ground made for a slow process, any individual marines were quickly moved out of the hangar and the vehicles were ordered into rows to allow more tanks and APCs to fit inside. The few 'Hogs that hadn't been lifted off before were put in the elevators and lifted towards other decks.

Our platoon was on the rear guard. Us and a couple other squads of marines were firing full auto, burning through our ammunition as we delayed the enemy. It shouldn't be long before we could climb on board the frigate and take our leave of this wretched planet.

"What the hell is that?" Snark asked, his voice full with shock.

I looked all around and then I saw it.

A Covenant corvette. It looked terribly small at this range, but it was even bigger than a UNSC frigate. I blinked as a dozen blue blobs screamed by. All of them collided with the _Badass._ The PDGs immediately switched targets and started firing away at the unshielded enemy ship. Suddenly the few of us left out here were under heavy fire from the enemy infantry. The two Tortoise APCs provided support with their autocannons and their coaxial machine guns, but it wouldn't be enough to neutralize a horde of angry aliens.

"Ship's taking off!" Hayes called. "They can't take much more!"

I could feel the engines heating up all the way down here. The _Badass_ was going to leave. I turned around and saw two Scorpions and a Tortoise climb the ramp along with a Tortoise transport. The hangar doors started closing.

"The fuck?!" I yelled.

"They're sending Pelicans to pick us up!" Hayes yelled.

We were taking fire from the sides now, but the Pelicans only had to travel a few dozen meters from their hangars to us. Eight Pelicans slammed down on the floor, next to the remaining 'Hogs and Tortoises. The one closest to us attached its clamps to a Tortoise.

"Come on, let's go!" I yelled, it was a miracle that none of us were being hit. Hell, the frigate was already taking off.

I climbed inside the Pelican and fired wildly while the ODSTs jumped inside with me. Not all of them belonged to my squad, but that wasn't important. Before all of us were inside the _Badass _boosted off, taking the top off a couple of buildings as it sped away to break orbit. The Pelicans started taking off around us. One of them was shot out of the sky before it could even climb up and several others were hit with heavy fire. Ours was a lucky one, we didn't draw much fire for some reason. As soon as I stopped seeing Helljumpers on the ground I ran to the cockpit.

"Go, go, go!"

"Music to my ears!" the pilot said.

You see, the Pelican can be incredibly fast when in need. Unfortunately, with us carrying an armored personnel carrier with three men inside and half a load worth of men and women meant that the craft needed some time to gain full speed. From the cockpit I could see New Montevideo disappearing and the ground getting further away.

I patted the pilot on the shoulder and smiled, taking my helmet off. "Nice work buddy."

"What can I say?" he chuckled.

I turned to face the copilot and nodded at him too. "We good?"

"We-"

Then the Pelican shook sideways, slamming me onto the wall. For a moment I groaned in annoyance. The I realized what was happening.

"Mayday, mayday!" the pilot yelled. "This is Apple-1, we're hit, our starboard engines are in flames, I repeat, we are hit."

There was some noise on the radio that I couldn't quite make out. I pulled myself up and walked back to the cargo bay. "Strap down!" I ordered. "Tighten those belts!"

I saw my old and new squadmates as well as other Helljumpers strap down. One of them even crossed himself.

"Hey, hey!" I yelled in the copilot's ear. "What's the bird's status?"

"Not good! Banshee's on our ass, we're sending flares out, but this ship's going down!"

"Shit."

If we went down we were stuck here.

"Lieutenant," I said, communicating with Hayes. "Our Pelican's hit, we're going down."

"Shit."

"The prowler, the…uh, the…" I fumbled for the name.

"Yeah, yeah, the prowler," she urged me. "It could work, but the captain will never agree with it."

"Oh he will," I said, trying to sound sure of myself. If the captain of the ONI prowler was the spook that I expected him to be he probably knew a little bit about me. Hell, even if he didn't have any direct knowledge it was likely that one of the several officers in there did. It was our only chance.

"Hydraulics are out, the starboard engine is gone, we're going down. I repeat Apple-1 is going down!"

I was in a terrible spot for any kind of crash landing. Standing up in the cockpit. I could see the ground getting closer even as the pilot tried to gain as much speed with our remaining engines as he could. With luck we would slide on the ground instead of crashing directly down. With luck we might survive. With luck we might even get picked up.

I walked out of the cockpit and pressed my back against the wall separating the cargo bay from the cockpit. I closed my eyes and dropped my rifle. I brought my hands together over my chest and cracked my knuckles.

When I opened my eyes Schitzo was standing there in front of me. "Feet first into hell. Right?"

* * *

><p><em>Dayum. Thanks to SilasWhitfield and Alshep for proofreading. <em>

_Who the hell calls a ship the _More Badass Than Thou_? I mean, seriously. Oh...right._

_Well, here's the next chapter, I'm sorry for the delay, but there you have it. Now, I have a very important announcement to make. One of this fanfic's readers is currently writing his very own story. It is called Halo Prime and is, you guessed it, a Halo/Metroid crossover. Now, this by itself wouldn't be enough for me to make this announcement, even taking into account the excellent quality of the story. The author of the story, **AbsoluteDestruction** did me a big favor and gave Frank and Pavel a little cameo in the story, you should check it out, just saying._

_To **Brother of Death**: I've apologized for the delays, and I do the best I can, but I have to admit that I have been slacking off a bit. On the rest of your comment, I don't believe that your friend has approached me to use any of his ideas, but if he (or you) did, I'm very open to suggestions. As for your first comment: worry not, answers will come in their due time, but they will come._

_To **graysontyoung**: No, it's not the same guy._

_To **EveryoneElse**: Thanks for reviewing guys. **  
><strong>_

_I apologize for the cliffhanger but must ask of you a little favor. Think we can make it to 500 reviews with this chapter?_

_Stay strong._

_-casquis_


	141. Aces High

Chapter CXLI: Aces High

**September 4, 2545 (UNSC Calendar)/**

**UNSC **_**Flawless**_**, in orbit above Acheron-VII, Beta Rho Omega System**

**Lieutenant Vinh Phan**

* * *

><p><em>"Some say that a one-twenty mike-mike gun on the belly of my ship is overcompensating for something. I've never heard them complain about it after I made a strafing run."<em>

* * *

><p>The alarms had been ringing on and off all day long. By now everybody was used to it, but it didn't mean that it wasn't any less annoying. Every single crewmember of the venerable UNSC <em>Flawless<em> had been going at it for several hours. Most of them got breaks or didn't have very extenuating jobs, but the flyboys were just about to reach their limit. They had been flying patrols and sorties ever since the battlegroup had arrived in the system, and now that Covenant reinforcements were here, their jobs only got harder.

Lieutenant Vinh Phan was banging his head against the frame of his GA-TL1 Longsword Strike Fighter. He had been on three patrol missions in the last two days. Only during the last day had those missions become particularly intense. Phan had screwed up in his last patrol. To be fair to the man, it had been his whole flight that screwed up. The squadron had been ambushed by enemy Seraph fighters emerging from slipspace. One Longsword had been destroyed before anybody could react and Phan's own fighter was damaged.

The damage had been minor, but his navigator had been killed during the attack. A bright young kid hailing from Paris IV. Now his crew was one man short. Phan was angry for two main reasons. First of all, he still hadn't gotten any kills; second, one of his men had died while under his command.

"Hey, Vinh," his copilot, Lieutenant (junior grade) Mariah McDonnell greeted. "You're going to hurt yourself."

Lieutenant Phan only stopped after banging his head on the fighter three more times. The mechanics working on fixing the structural damage laughed at him and kept on working.

"When's our next flight?" Vinh asked his copilot.

Mariah shrugged and ran her hands through her hair. "Could be ten minutes or ten hours. They're evacuating down there, so probably ten minutes."

Vinh stepped back from the wall and nodded slowly, carefully. "Where's Ensign…"

"Quincy," she finished for him. "You know, you should really learn his name."

"He's a new kid," Vinh argued.

"Still, you might want to at least make him think you respect him somehow." Mariah was still in her flight suit, she hadn't bothered to take it off since she knew she would be needed again any minute now. "You good?"

Vinh smiled and nodded, trying to forget the kid's busted head, blood pouring onto the consoles. "You're going to have to step in as navigator," he told her.

Mariah laughed. "You sure you can handle flying all by yourself."

"Hey, if it weren't for you I would've been an ace long ago."

Mariah spread her arms. "Hey, whatever lets you sleep at night."

Vinh and Mariah had been together ever since they both joined flight school. They were completely different in almost every aspect. She was tall and had pale white skin, he was short and had a natural tanned skin that came with his slanted eyes and broad nose. She had bright red hair and a face covered with freckles while his hair was black and cropped short. She was a rich colony kid and he came from a small village in Thailand that had somehow managed to avoid the overpopulation problem. She had joined for adventure and he had joined in order to avoid living his whole life in a place he considered a pile of dirt.

When they met in flight school they had become fast friends. Their relationship had always been platonic, something that surprised everyone that knew them.

Perhaps most unusual was that they usually served as wingmen while on the prowl for potential hookup partners.

And they worked like magic in the cockpit, even if their lack of experience meant that they sometimes screwed up. Just like they had during their last patrol mission.

"Lieutenant!"

Vinh turned around to see the new ensign that served as his systems operator jogging towards him. "Ensign."

"Lieutenant, I heard word that we might be taking off soon to protect civilian transports."

"Ah, the joy of escort missions," Vinh said with no small dose of sarcasm. "You sure?"

"As sure as can be."

"Ok then, the Longsword is already re-stocked, might as well climb in."

The moment he sat down on the pilot's seat word came that his entire squadron would be taking off in order to escort the last escaping civilian transports. The rest of the Longsword squadrons would be on standby or on patrol. So far the enemy ships had made no move to attack, but it was only a matter of time.

"Pre-flight?" Vinh voiced.

"Everything looks good," Mariah replied.

"Same here, Lieutenant."

Vinh rolled his eyes and ran quickly through the instruments, taking his time while checking the ones that the copilot normally would've gone through. "Excellent, Scalpel-7 is green."

The rest of the fighters in the squadron confirmed that they were good to go and the launch tubes were quickly evacuated. The repair crews left and the tubes were sealed. Vinh flipped a few switches before the big launch tube door opened and his fighter was launched. His and three other Longswords sped away from the _Flawless_ and spun over it, towards Acheron-VII. Even from this altitude and in daytime Vinh could see the damage done by the initial Covenant invasion. Large craters and huge fires that most likely wouldn't die out until after this battle was over were visible all over the planet. An impressive sight, albeit a grim one.

"Listen up boys and girls," Scalpel-5, the squadron leader, came in. "Two Longswords go down and two stay up. Shot Glass and I will stay up here, Rover and EC will go down."

"Roger that Batman," Vinh replied, calling his squadron leader by his callsign. "EC, wanna take lead?"

"Yup," EC replied, turning his fighter towards the planet itself.

Vinh adjusted the trajectory using thrusters and then boosted after EC, leaving a sensible distance between the two of them. He could see his wingman's fighter enveloped in flames even as his own craft entered atmosphere. The temperature remained the same inside the cockpit even if it was a living hell on the outside.

"We're in," EC announced.

"Likewise," Vinh echoed.

"Copy that," Batman replied. "We'll be watching out for you."

The two Longsword fighters were barely aerodynamic in design, but their speed allowed them to fly in-atmosphere as well as in space. The two fighters shot through the land and over the remains of New Montevideo before catching up with four escaping vessels. The ships themselves were cargo vessels, designed to carry food or materials, not people. They were flying in close formation, a few green flack shots bounced harmlessly of their hulls.

"Damn, grunts down there must have it tough," Ensign Quincy said, looking through the ventral cameras. "Looks like a mess."

"Probably is two," Vinh agreed. "Jarheads tend to make a mess of things faster than the Covenant."

"Hear, hear," Mariah chuckled.

Lieutenant Vinh Phan smiled and positioned his fighter next to the civilian ships while EC did the same with his. "We good EC?"

"Affirmative, Rover."

Vinh flinched at his callsign, it was a habit that he could never really get rid off. The story behind it was embarrassing, but not overtly so, and the name itself wasn't too bad. He wasn't sure why he didn't like it, but he put up with it like every single pilot did. Hell, it had taken Mariah almost a year before she stopped blushing when someone called her by her callsign.

The four cargo ships broke atmosphere with ease and the two Longswords followed. While they could've jumped right then and there, it was a very bad idea. Gravity wells tended to mess with slipspace calculations, messing them up. You could end up several light years away from your destination or, much less likely, inside a sun. It had been known to happen, so everybody was extra careful when dealing with Shaw-Fujikawa slipspace engines.

"Captain of the cargo ships, this is Scalpel-7, your escorting fighter, do you copy?"

"We copy Scalpel-7."

"Good, just checking on communications. Are there any problems that I should be aware of? Nuclear reactor leaks, damaged thruster?"

"Negative, sir. All of these ships are fresh of the line, this should be only their third or fourth jump."

"Ok, thanks Captain. We'll stay with you until you reach the jump spot. Good luck."

From that point on it was quiet, the only noise that Vinh could hear was the occasional console beep and his own breathing. His eyes darted in all directions, trying to spot that teardrop shaped fighter gunning for him. The black space revealed no such threats, instead showing a few of the bright stars that managed to be visible at this distance even despite Acheron. For two hours they flew with the containers at an incredibly slow speed.

"Vinh, I got slipspace distortions some twenty kilometers away from our current position."

Twenty kilometers was awfully close in space combat.

"EC, you got that?"

"Yup, want me to go check it out?"

"Please do, be careful."

"Aren't I always?"

"That big scorch mark on your starboard wing would disagree."

EC chuckled. "You just had to go there."

His display showed EC's Longsword breaking formation to investigate the slipspace distortions. He would be at the point of origin of the distortions in less than a minute, if any Seraphs did come out they'd be ambushed before they could set up their shields.

"Distortions are getting stronger," EC's voice came in. "Weapons free."

Vinh kept his eyes to his display and allowed himself a sigh of relief when only four Seraphs emerged, all four of them were hit with missiles before their shield were up. EC had been quick and calculating. After the relief came the jealousy. EC had just scored four kills in less than one second, Vinh was still on the bottom of the pilot kill list.

"Good job EC," Vinh complimented. "Maybe next one's on me."

"With your luck?" EC chuckled. "Don't think so."

"Holy shit! Slipspace distortions everywhere!" Mariah suddenly burst. "Literally everywhere!"

"Fuck," Vinh muttered. "Captain, this is Scalpel-7, do you copy?"

"We copy, what's wr-"

"You have to jump now!"

"But we're still within the gravity well of Acheron!"

"No time, you can fix do a second jump if you miss. Go!"

At least fifty Seraphs emerged from slipspace portals all around and flew straight for the large and lumbering container ships. Three of them jumped before they could be reached while the fourth one took a few shots before disappearing from sight.

"EC, you good?"

"Negative, I got four, no six Seraphs on my ass, can't shake them off."

"Reinforcements are on the way, " Quincy said. "We're weapons hot and ready for action."

"Hold on EC, we're coming."

Vinh knew that my craft had lit up on every single display screen in the system the moment I used the afterburners to speed towards EC's position. Suddenly Vinh's Longsword found itself with its very own tail of pursuing Seraphs. As it closed in on its wingman the cockpit window displayed red squares around visible targets. Four of them were immediately locked on by the system.

"Firing," Vinh stated calmly.

The missiles were visible only for a second before they disappeared into the darkness of space. I saw flashes of orange as they activated their rockets and flew at the Seraphs. A few seconds later four explosions adorned the cold space.

"Two of the targets are dead and two have their shields down," Quincy informed everyone that bothered to listen.

Vinh used his thrusters to redirect the Longsword to the other target. The 50mm machine guns were hot and ready to fire. At this distance it was guaranteed that they would hit, so he wasted no time and immediately clicked the triggers. The tracer rounds illuminated the cold black void of space as they tore through the Seraph. It wasn't long before the alien fighter exploded in a purple fireball.

"Pursuers are closing in on us!" Mariah said.

"EC, can you handle three?"

"I can try," he replied, his voice strained due to concentration.

Vinh activatd the bottom thrusters and the Longsword spun a full one-eighty degrees. It was now facing the pursuers, flying in reverse. The technique was fancy-looking and visually impressive, but it was an incredibly simple and easy one to use in the vacuum of space. The lack of friction made things so much easier out there.

Vinh used his standard 50mm cannons to fire at the closest Seraph. The machine guns turned on their mounts and fired. The Longsword rumbled but not so much as a single noise was heard when they collided with the Seraph. Vinh could barely make out the flaring shield at this distance, and this was considered a knife fight in space.

"They're not breaking off," Mariah cursed.

"Rover, we go inside, fly in circles, cover each other's backs."

"That's an atmospheric strategy EC," Vinh grunted, twisting the stick to avoid a burst of plasma fire. "Probably not gonna work up here."

"It just might, besides, we just need a few minutes for reinforcements."

"Fine," he ceded. "Let's go."

A few seconds later EC and Vinh were circling each other as close as they dared. Each could see the other's Longsword if they just looked up. Occasionally a Seraph would try to get behind either one of them, but the other one would speed up and chase him away. Both pilots scored two kills before the Covenant fighters simply tried to fire at them as we passed. Vinh's Longsword was hit more than anyone would like to, but the armor held.

"Rover, EC," Batman came in. "We're within visual range of you, that's one helluva mess."

"It's worse than it looks," EC replied. "They're missing wildly."

Batman chuckled darkly. "If you say so, the rest of the flight should be here within minutes. Opening fire."

Eight Seraphs suddenly found themselves violently shaken when a missile hit them. Six of them couldn't take the structural damage and either exploded or started leaking atmosphere. The other two were quickly dispatched by the newcomer fighters. Before the Seraphs could react Batman and Shot Glass were inside the circle. With four fighters covering each other's ass, no alien pilot dared try to get on one's six. Instead they fired wildly, hoping for a hit.

"Shit, plasma torpedoes!" Mariah warned.

_I guess they got tired of waiting ,_Vinh sighed to himself.

Vinh twisted and turned his craft as the torpedo tried to get behind him. If he could get clear of everyone else he could just outrun the torpedo until it ran out of gas, but the plasma torpedo already had too much speed on him and was coming from a tough angle to outrun. Luckily, it wasn't a tough angle to avoid. Vinh did a barrel roll and a short burst of speed before the torpedo flew right by him. It started turning again before spinning out of control.

"For all their technology you think they could've made functional missiles," Ensign Quincy noted.

"Agreed," Vinh replied.

"They're breaking off," Batman said. "Reinforcements scared them."

"Damn, we were outnumbered twenty-five to one!" EC exclaimed.

"Sometimes its actually good for you to be this badly outnumbered, you can hide inside their numbers," Shot Glass told him. "Still, nice job."

The squadron remained in their protective circle until the rest of the Longswords arrived. The entire flight had been dispatched to help, boosting their numbers to sixteen fighters now. Vinh felt a lot safer when flying in a larger group, it meant that there were more targets and more experienced pilots to cover his ass if he got in trouble.

"Second Squadron," Flight Leader chimed in. "_Flawless _is under attack by a large enemy fighter force, every available exo-atmospheric craft is already working to defend it, we're not exempt from that mission."

"Copy that Scalpel-1," Batman said.

Vin suddenly wondered why Scalpel-1 got to avoid his callsign. Perhaps because he was a commander…

Minutes later Vinh could see the storm of tracers and flak surrounding the _Flawless._ Even worse, he could see plasma flying everywhere.

"Damn, display shows over a hundred and fifty enemy fighters."

"We've got a ship on our side," Vinh assured his copilot-working-as-navigator.

"If you say so."

"Two on our ten at negative forty degrees," Mariah announced.

"Got 'em," Vinh replied, boosting towards them.

The two Seraphs were flying parallel to the _Flawless_, most likely trying to find a nice spot from which to strafe the ship. Vinh fired with the standard 50mm guns as well as the 120mm ventral cannon. The rear Seraph exploded in a fireball before it knew what was happening. The lead Seraph turned to face Vinh and fired. Vinh twisted his Longsword to avoid colliding with the Seraph and started turning around to face the Seraph again.

The gunners on the _Flawless_ beat him to it, firing a short burst of heavy explosive ammunition at the alien fighter, killing it. Vinh sighed and set himself a goal. He was already a certified ace with six kills, but he wanted to get out of the bottom of the list. That required another ten confirmed kills and the pilot in second to last not to make any kills. It was going to be a tough one.

Vinh felt strangely safe when flying through the suppression barrage. Flak and tracers flew in every direction around him, but the AI managing the PDGs was flawless in its firing. Ever single round missed him and hit an enemy fighter. Even the flak rounds served to discourage attacking Seraphs. They also made his job all the easier. By the time the enemy fell back he had netted another three kills. Not bad at all.

"Enemy's falling back," Batman stated the obvious. Relief was evident in his voice. "We're setting up patrol formation to-"

A _CCS_-class battlecruiser appeared out of nowhere. It was at extremely close range. Seraph fighters poured out of it, firing at any and all targets. Vinh was lucky to be so far away from the new arrivals, because at least six Longswords went down in the distance. He headed towards the relative safety of the _Flawless_ and tried to avoid drawing attention to himself.

"Rover, EC, Shot Glass, all four of us are landing, we're being refitted with nukes."

Nobody acknowledged the order, instead Second Squadron headed towards their launch tubes. They slowed down as much as they dared before flying inside the carrier again. The _Flawless_ was twisting to face the enemy battlecruiser with its MAC cannon while the enemy ship tried to get a bearing with its plasma turrets. They were firing at each other with conventional weaponry, armor and shields absorbing the blasts as well as they could.

The Longswords had one Shiva nuclear missile attached to their belly in less than fifteen seconds before they were launched again.

"Second Squadron, we'll pave the way for you," Scalpel-1 called. "Let's go!"

Sixteen Longsword fighters flying in formation plowed through wave upon wave of Seraphs, never flinching even as their number was reduced. Vinh saw one fighter go down and another break off with damaged engines before we were inside of their defense laser range. The computer automatically locked in on the battlecruiser's central region before firing.

Four nuclear missiles flying at the ship wouldn't go unnoticed. Their defense lasers tried to pin down the Shiva's even as the aliens in charge added power to the shields where the nukes would hit. One of the missiles was destroyed before the other three made contact. There was a bright white flash and then nothing. The battlecruiser was still there, but yellow lighting ran along the armor. The shields were damaged but they weren't completely out.

All of a sudden the alien ship's bow crumpled. Vinh knew a MAC hit when he saw one, even at this range.

"What the hell was that?" Quincy asked.

"MAC blast."

"Not from the _Flawless_," Mariah added. "It was the…the _Honorable._"

"Hey, about that," Quincy started. "Is it _Honorable _or _Dishonorable_?"

"It's _(Dis)Honorable_," Vinh told him.

"So _Dishonorable_?"

"Not exactly," he shrugged. "I'll explain later."

"Nice work," Batman voiced out. "That's half a ship kill for all of us right there."

"Nothing to get the ladies we-"

"Shut up," Mariah interrupted Vinh. "Please."

They might've been as good as friends could be, but Mariah was still a girl and liked to be treated as a lady.

"All right," Vinh stopped. "Sorry if I offended you milady."

"Shut up."

"Everybody back to the ship, we're falling back," Scalpel-1 ordered.

"What about our forces down there?" someone asked.

"They're on their way, another flight is going to cover them. We'll be jumping out of this system as soon as every grunt is on board." Scalpel-1 sounded as if he didn't want to wait that long.

"He, might just leave them there for all the good they do," somebody else complained. "Killing aliens is all good and well, but battles are won up here."

The flight cheered, Vinh included.

"Quiet," Scalpel-1 ordered. "Everybody in, a nice cold trip awaits us."

Vinh parked and left his Longsword, hugging Mariah and high-fiving Quincy. They congratulated each other on their newly gained ace status before heading towards their quarters. There they took off their flight suits and changed into the more comfortable fatigues that they would be taking off before climbing into their cryo tubes.

Vinh found it hard to believe that it had only been fifteen minutes ago that he had been engaged in brutal dogfighting with explosions all around him. Now he was smiling and patting himself on the back for his accomplishments. Well, he had a right to be satisfied with himself. After all, only eight men had died and two planes had been lost. It was infinitely better than most times he returned from a combat mission.

_Another planet, another story,_ he thought. _I'm an ace now._

Vinh walked towards cryo with a big smile on his face.

* * *

><p><em>Thanks to Alshep and SilasWhitfield for proof-reading this chapter.<em>

_There are a few things that I want to point out here, namely the fact that this chapter in particular is written in third person as opposed to the usual first person. The guest character is Lieutenant Vinh Phan, a Longsword pilot that has to fight a war against an enemy that outclasses him in most aspects except for raw talent. Their ships are faster, better, tougher, and more dangerous while his are kind of crappy and odd-looking. I always found it interesting how not a lot of stories focus on the war in space, where the battles are actually lost. The UNSC can give the Covenant a run for its money on the ground any day of the week, but in space the aliens have the indisputable advantage. Perhaps that's why the sailors and airmen are so cynical, even more so than most of the guys fighting ground side in the regular infantry._

_Please, do note the incredible amount of cynicism and lack of shock towards human death when compared to the reactions of guys on the ground._

_Another thing that I want to ask of you is to tell me how you liked the chapter's style, it is written in third person, but it focuses on one character only, the narrator is not really omniscient. I'm definitely not switching the story format, but it might help know what you think in case I decide to write more epicness without a clear plot._

_...I think that's it. Oh, right, I'm kind of a dick for leaving you guys hanging about whatever happened to Frank._

_Stay strong._

_-casquis_


	142. Hunted

Chapter CXLII: Hunted

**September 5, 2545 (UNSC Calendar)/**

**Pampa Mountain Ridge, Acheron-VII, Beta Rho Omega System**

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><p><em>"Dawn came early that day. The planet was burning."<em>

* * *

><p>My head hurt. A lot. It wasn't the only thing that hurt either, both of my shoulder blades felt as if they had been stomped on and my entire back was throbbing. I have no idea how I was able to move my legs, by all means I should've been paralyzed or worse. I struggled to stand up, but my arms gave under my weight and I slammed back down on the blood tray. I rolled from my belly to my back, groaning quietly as I did so and slowly reached for the pouch strapped to my left thigh. I opened it and rummaged through its contents, feeling around until I found what I was looking for.<p>

The small cylinder contained synthetic adrenaline. You could take half a dose or a full one. A half a dose would bring anyone back from the brink as if they were new. A full dose would bring anyone back from the brink and improve them until it wore off. It was not advised to take a full dose, that much adrenaline could kill you.

I injected myself with a full dose.

My eyelids, which had been trying to close were suddenly open. I could hear my heart beating at a hundred miles an hour. I could see the little groves and scratches in the ceiling, I could see the colors of the wiring that had been exposed by the accident. I could hear the blood dripping from the cockpit and I could hear ragged breaths all around me.

I could feel the wetness in my right hand, but all of a sudden it didn't bother me anymore.

I examined my hand and saw that shards of glass were embedded all over the palm. I yanked them out quickly with my other hand and produced a bandage to stop the blood flow. It didn't hurt one bit, but I knew better than to leave the nasty wound exposed to the open.

_Ok, we crashed. I'm alive and I wasn't strapped. That means that everyone else should have a good chance of being alive, except for the guys in the Tortoise strapped to the tail. Well, of course the pilots are dead, they're always dead when a gunship crashes. Last I remember was Hayes telling me something about a prowler._

_Prowler: UNSC stealth ship, usually under ONI jurisdiction. Battlegroup _Flawless_ has one prowler with them. I don't remember the name, but it is way too long for a ship. Funny, though. What was it? Doesn't matter. Prowler, something about a prowler._

_Of course! The entire battlegroup retreated and we were left behind._

_But what was that about a prowler?_

_Right…_

"Stealth ship, can sneak through a Covenant blockade?" Schitzo suggested, checking the pulse of an ODST that I didn't recognize.

"Right, it's gonna pick us up."

"Hello?!" someone yelled. It was coming from the cockpit. "Can anyone hear me?"

_So much for that stereotype…_

"You all right?" I asked the voice as I walked inside the cockpit. The pilot was dead, that much was evident. The Pelican had crashed nose first into the ground, the metal frames that supported the windows had broken and impaled him through the neck and chest. "How long have we been here?"

"Ship crashed about ten minutes ago, everyone's unconscious or dead," the copilot groaned. He was in pain, that much was obvious. The white piece of bone jutting form his leg was also a clear indicator. "Everyone left, we're dead!"

"Not just yet," I told him. "What's your name?"

"Sam Fightmaster, Lieutenant."

"Fightmaster your real last name?"

He chuckled and then groaned in pain once again. "Yup. Believe it or not."

"Wow, manliest name ever," I noted. "Now stand still, I'm going to get you out of here."

The problem here was that one of the metal bars from the window had embedded itself against his seat, preventing Fightmaster from moving his arm towards the seatbelt buckles. The other arm was similarly impeded from moving by a bent cockpit wall. I undid the seatbelt and the lieutenant slumped forward slightly with yet another groan of pain. I pressed my foot against his console and pulled the metal bar with all my strength. The metal groaned and bent slightly before snapping off. I looked at the spiky metal bar and tossed it aside before carefully moving the lieutenant from his chair.

"So, you've got a broken leg and what else?" I asked.

"Sprained wrist," he grunted, "and one hell of a headache."

I nodded. "Could be worse."

"Hey, grab his dogtags, will ya?" he asked me, pointing at the pilot.

"Yeah, sorry."

I set him down on the cargo hold and reached for the pilots dogtags, leaving one hanging form his neck in case the body was ever recovered. I put them inside one pocket and moved back.

Lieutenant Fightmaster was seating where I had woken up. He was taking slow, deep breaths and staring at the open sky. The angle of the Pelican only allowed us to see the bright blue sky of Acheron-VII, I had no idea what was going around us. Unfortunately, I had better things to do. All of the Helljumpers inside were alive, at least that's what their vitals indicated, but I've never known them to be wrong.

"Snark, hey, Snark. Wake up."

Snark slowly did as I bid him and shook his head. He reached for his sniper rifle and sighed when his hand grasped at empty air. The rifle was on the floor, intact. I grabbed it and passed it to him.

"Can you walk?"

"I think so," he muttered. "Need some adrenaline though."

"Tell me about it. I need your help, wake up everyone."

"Sure thing, Sarge," he said, sounding a little bit more alive. "Just give me a moment."

Next to Snark, also unconscious, was Corporal Royce. His visor was slightly cracked, that was bad news. I took the helmet off and felt slightly relieved when I saw that his face was intact. "Wake up buddy," I urged him, slapping his face.

"Wha-"

"Relax," I said. "You ok?"

"Gunny?"

"Mhm, how are you?"

"I-uh."

I rolled my eyes. "How many fingers?"

Royce looked at my hand and my face before calmly raising his own and flipping me off.

"That's the spirit," I said, slapping his shoulders. "Now get up before I break your nose."

Royce slowly got to his feet before sitting back down. He was obviously not ready. Everyone here was going to need some adrenaline boosts if they wanted to get up. Snark finally got on his feet and walked across to try and see if Beckel was in working order. I then jerked Novak awake, she was in better condition than most, and only stuttered a couple of times before her eyes regained their focus.

"Gunny?"

"Glad to see you awake," I told her. "Now stand up, can you walk? Good. I need you to go outside, check the Tortoise."

"The…"

"Yeah, APC with three guys in it, probably dead. I want you to check if they're alive."

"Ok," she nodded. "I got it."

Novak climbed out, leaning on the wall and grabbing an MA5 before jumping out of the hatch. There were two more Helljumpers inside the Pelican. One of them was already jerking awake all by himself. I left him alone and instead went up to the still unconscious one.

"Wake up…PFC Liam Adama."

"Wha-"

"That's your name, isn't it?"

"Uh…yeah."

"You ok?"

"Not really," he mumbled. "My shoulder hurts."

"I can see that," I replied. "It's dislocated. I can fix it."

"You sure-ah!"

"There, all good."

"Thanks." Adama grabbed his shoulder and stood up before falling back down. "Shit."

"Take it easy," I told him. "We're moving out soon. Take some adrenaline."

"Yeah, yeah, got it."

"Snark?"

"Bee's good."

"That's Bee? What the hell happened to his old armor?"

"What do you mean?"

"The yellow streaks and the large pauldron," I exclaimed.

"Oh, he repainted the armor, pauldron's still there."

"Why would he-never mind. Get him up."

"I'm awake goddamit!" Bee exclaimed.

"And highly Scottish," I said. "Get up you lazy piece of shit. You too Royce."

"I'm up, I'm up."

"Snark, I want you to grab the Pelican's emergency transponder and turn it on. If we have any chance of getting picked up that's it. The fleet needs to know we're alive and just exactly where we are."

Snark ran into the cockpit and rummaged through the wrecked walls before finally turning on the emergency transponder. He made it beep it a couple of times, sending radio waves into space, before coming out of the cockpit with a small radio in his arms.

"Ok, Bee and Royce, pull the lieutenant out of the ship, everybody else get out."

When we emerged the sky was bright blue and birds were flocking in our direction. It wasn't until I slid down the pile of dirt that the crashed Pelican had created that looked down. New Montevideo was being glassed by seven separate Covenant ships. Half the city was already a giant molten pile of glass, the other half was aflame.

"Shit," I grunted. "Novak!"

"Gunny! One of the tankmen's alive!"

"Status?" I asked.

"Unconscious, but his neck and back seem fine."

"Pull him out," I ordered. "Snark, go help her." I motioned for Bee and Royce to put down Lieutenant Fightmaster before walking up to him and kneeling next to him. I had only a little bit of emergency medical knowledge, but I knew that an exposed fracture could easily cause a deadly infection. So, the wound had to be disinfected and then I would do a little bit of amateur surgery.

"Is it going to hurt?"

"Well, normally it would hurt like a bitch if you didn't have anesthetics on," I shrugged him off, pulling out the few medical supplies that I had. "I have some morphine though, but you're going to be screaming a lot."

"I screamed for an hour when I broke it, even with painkillers."

"Glad I didn't hear that," I chuckled.

I smiled at him in a way I thought was reassuring. "You've heard all about those crazy stories about marines that were stranded and had to perform crazy medical procedures just to survive?"

"Uh-huh," Fightmaster nodded shakily.

"Well," I started. "Now you're going to be able to tell them."

Fightmaster gulped and I gave him an almost lethal dose of morphine. Then came the dangerous part. I poured a huge amount of disinfectant fluid in his wound, prompting him to cry out in pain before grabbing his ankle and his knee. This was crazy, but I had heard of at least two documented cases where it worked.

"Bee, got one of those x-rays?"

"Let me get one."

"Hurry it up."

When Bee came back he was toting a portable x-ray machine. He activated it and placed it right above Fightmaster's leg.

"Tilt it," I ordered, "I need to see it."

Bee complied and I was able to see the outline of the clearly snapped tibia. The fibula was also slightly cracked. Man it was a terrible break.

"Ok, hold it there." I turned to look at Fightmaster. "Bite your flight suit collar."

The moment he bit down on the nomex flight suit I pulled the ankle slightly down and the white jagged bone disappeared inside the skin. The x-ray showed the bone moving slightly, but all I could think about was the screams of agony coming form the pilot. I used the screen to align the break so that it was as close to 'right' as I could make it look.

"Cast him," I yelled, not caring who followed through.

Beckel immediately produced a hardening bandage and started turning it around. He turned it several times over the wound until it started hardening and it broke off when he tried to spin it. He took a step back and waited. I, on the other hand, remained there and examined the x-ray. The bones were firmly in place, but soon enough his foot would lose circulation and he'd get gangrene.

I injected him with bone healing fluid, Bee handed me the syringe and then rummaged through the Pelican's emergency kit for other useful items. I secured Fightmaster's leg before digging the needle through the cast and into the bone. One the x-ray showed the needle was in contact with the break I injected the fluid.

It would speed up the healing process dramatically.

"Give him antibiotics," I ordered Bee. "Fightmaster, you ok?"

By then he had stopped screaming long enough to reply. "I'm ok."

"Yeah, obviously not."

The morphine then took full effect, and coupled with the shock, he fainted.

"Everybody start packing up!" I yelled. "Don't overdo it on the ammunition, pack enough MREs and water to lasts us for a week."

"And if we are here for longer than a week?" PFC Adama asked me.

"Then we might as well do ourselves in," Snark told him.

"Snark, how's the tankman?" I asked him.

Snark turned to me and cocked his sniper rifle. "He's great, actually, banged his head pretty hard, but his helmet protected him. He was firmly strapped to his chair."

"The others?"

"Broken necks, both of them."

I sighed. "How long till he's up and running?"

"Novak?" Snark yelled questioningly.

"Ten minutes, just needs some time."

It was all good and well, we needed to get a reply from the _So Much For Subtlety_ and get Fightmaster up and running again.

"This is _Subtlety_-Actual, does anyone copy?"

I literally jumped towards the emergency beacon. "_Subtlety_, this is Gunnery Sergeant Castillo."

"Yeah, we know, better be worth it Castillo."

"I appreciate the risk you're taking, sir," I replied, being as respectful as I could. Under the current circumstances, it wasn't that hard.

"Damn right better," _Subtlety_-actual grumbled. "What's your status?"

"Seven Helljumpers are alive and…relatively well. One of the pilots is dead, other one got a fracture, he's better…ish. Oh, and one of the crew of the Tortoise we were escorting is also on his feet."

"Good, that means you've got access to supplies. Listen, there's heavy enemy presence on your quadrant, you're going to need to haul ass out of there before we can even think about going down there."

"Uh-huh, where do you want us to go, sir?"

I received a set of coordinates and my eyes bulged. "What?! Sir, I'm sorry, but we're hardly what you'd call fast on our feet at the moment, that position is three days away."

"Ha, I was thinking six," _Subtlety-_actual said. "There's no other way Gunny, we're here for eight days, if you don't make it in that time, we'll leave."

"Fine," I replied. "We'll be there, sir."

"Contact me on that same frequency, do not contact me before that point or we'll be dead. Good luck, sounds like you're going to need it."

"Thank you, Sir."

The captain of the prowler clicked off and I banged my head against the radio. "You all heard that, you know what we've got ahead of us."  
>There were somber nods all around me, they were all from Helljumpers.<p>

"One of us isn't mobile, the rest of us are seeing double. I want to get a move on as fast as we can. We'll probably be seeing enemy patrols and if we're really unlucky we'll have to outrun a glassing."

"First time for everything," Schitzo shrugged.

"There's a first time for everything," I went on. "This is going to be one hell of a story to tell, and it's too bad that it's going to be a classified one, cause it would get all of us so much sex."

That got a round of chuckles from everybody save for Novak. But she was laughing on the inside, I just knew it.

"Tankman's up," Novak interrupted.

"Man, I was on a roll," I said regretfully. I turned to face the tankman, he didn't have body armor on, instead sporting the taker's helmet as well as a thin flak jacket that wouldn't stop anything past…well, anything. "What's your name?"

"Sergeant Parkes," he replied. "What happened?"

"Crash landed," Snark explained. "Stuck in the planet until a prowler picks us up, we've got five days of hard march ahead of us."

"That's the situation in a nutshell," Beckel agreed.

"Who's the ranking officer?" Parkes asked. Spoken like a true marine.

"That would be Lieutenant Fightmaster," I said, pointing at the unconscious pilot, but seeing as he is less than available to fulfill that role, you're talking to him."

"Ok, ok," he replied. "Should I-"

"Grab some gear," I told him. "Water and food. You…um Adama, are there any helmets or vests inside the Pelican?"

"I'll go look," PFC Adama replied.

Sergeant Parkes returned to his flipped APC and rummaged through the small supply locker as Adama climbed back up inside the Pelican. While they both did that I looked down towards New Montevideo. I could see small dots moving around, probably patrolling and searching for survivors. So far none of them were close by, but that would probably change. The Covenant were thorough.

"Bee, what have we got?"

"I've got a Spartan Laser, enough battery for ten shots at full power, SMG, and my rucksack's full of MREs."

"Snark?"

Snark moved his head from side to side and rolled his neck. "SRS with five additional magazines and a sidearm for weapons. MREs and water."

"Novak?"

"Um, I've got my DMR and my sidearm." She added, "Plus the supplies."

"Ok, why don't you go and look for one of those emergency blankets, the ones that keep the heat in and all that."

Novak raised an eyebrow but climbed up the Pelican to search the emergency supplies for one of those.

"Royce?"

"MA5B, standard load plus an M6 pistol."

Adama slid down from the Pelican with a CH252 helmet. It didn't have any attachments on, but it was more comfortable than the round tanker helmet that Parkes was wearing at the time. A few seconds later Novak climbed down with a satisfied smile on her face.

"Found half a dozen," she informed me.

"Why do you sound like you won the Miss Universe competition?" Bee asked her.

Novak immediately looked down. She looked funny, the armor was intimidating and everybody associated it with being a badass. Her body language most definitely went against that stereotype.

Parkes emerged from his vehicle with an M6J carbine slung across his chest and a smaller version of the same pistol attached to his hip. He also had an olive drab rucksack of UNSCMC design behind his back. He caught the helmet as Adama tossed it to him and replaced his own with it.

"Anybody hear that?" I asked, suddenly hearing a faint humming.

Snark and Bee immediately raised their weapons, they had known me long enough to know that I don't spook easily. Everybody else took a moment longer to react, but in a second all of us were aiming at different spots with our guns raised, holding down the sector.

"I don't hear anything," Adama muttered.

"Trust me on this one," Bee told him.

"Hear it now?" I asked, the buzzing was only getting stronger.

"I think I hear it," Novak said after a moment. "It sounds like a-"

"Phantom," I growled. "Bee, you know where the cockpit is?"

"Like the back of my co…hand."

"Everybody!" I yelled. "Take cover behind the Tortoise!"

Five helljumpers and a marine ran towards the overturned Tortoise and went prone while I ran up inside the Pelican and Bee ran of to a rock cluster nearby. It only took two minutes for the Phantom's humming to become clearly audible. Another minute after that I could see it. It was moving relatively fast, its automated turrets scanning for living targets. I was hoping that it would simply fly over and miss us, but it started hovering above.

"It's dropping grunts," Snark warned. "Five of 'em."

"When I say mark," I replied. "Bee, the moment you get an opening feel free to fire."

"It's at an off angle, I don't know if the laser will go completely through."

"Damn."

I fired a burst at the Phantom. The three rounds pinged off the armor and the craft immediately turned to bear its guns on me. Half a second later a red laser burned through the tip and the Phantom slowly fell into the ground.

"Mark!" I yelled. "Beckel, Royce, clear the ship. Someone will know that it went down. We've got to get out of here."

I climbed back down as gunfire echoed over the hills surrounding us. Fightmaster was beginning to moan something. I didn't think that mixing adrenaline with morphine was a good idea but I needed him on his feet. I injected him with half a dose of adrenaline and his eyelids shot open, eyes moving, searching for the source of the gunfire.

"Relax, relax," I told him. "We're good."

"Uh-huh. Ok, got it."

I ran up to the Tortoise and watched as Beckel and Royce jumped inside the ship through the side doors. There were a couple of shotgun blasts before everything went quiet. The only audible noise was that of fire crackling.

"Take photographs of everything inside," I ordered. "Just in case ONI could be interested. We're moving out. Now."

So began the journey through the Pampa Ridge. Ironically enough, it was named after one of the most fertile plains that existed back on Earth. The mountains weren't particularly tall when you compared them to some of the monsters that existed all throughout the colonies, they only had snow capped tops during the coldest days of winter. Despite that, they had very high prominence, and ridges and small valleys were aplenty. It was hard going, especially when two of us had to be helping Fightmaster move at all times. His bone was healing, but as soon as we were picked up the doctors would break it again and heal it properly.

"I hear something," I said, halfway up an inclined slope. "Everybody find cover."

"Easier said than done Sarge," Bee told me, hefting his heavy cannon and trying to climb up. "We don't have any overhead cover."

"Have to try," Royce grunted, kicking at the ground to get higher up.

In three minutes all of us were more or less hidden. There were enough shrubs and small trees around for us to get a minimal amount of cover. I found myself crouched behind a rock with a little tree covering me from the other side. PFC Liam Adam was occupying the same hiding spot.

"Those Banshees?"

"Yeah," I replied. "They're probably searching for whoever knocked that Phantom down."

"That means us," he smiled.

I nodded. "Snark, can you see anything?"

"They're doing a thorough search," he told me. "If they keep up this pattern we'll have to stay here for a while."

The sun was already setting, and we had been walking for hours now, and all of us were a little bit tired. "We can bunker down here, sleep for…" I checked my mission clock. "Three hours, then we set out again."

There were contented sighs of satisfaction as everyone shuffled themselves onto comfortable positions.

"Snark, you've got the first watch, wake me up after an hour."

"Sure," he groaned. "Sleep tight."

I didn't take off my helmet, instead just using my rucksack for support while Adama shuffled sideways to get comfortable in the cramped space. In the end we ended up with our knees pressed to our chests and our limbs in awkward positions. I fell asleep within a couple of seconds.

* * *

><p>"Wake up," Snark said.<p>

"I'm up," I replied immediately, stretching my legs and grabbing my gun. It was dark now. "Any developments?"

"Nope, Banshees are gone. Now, if you'll excuse me, I'll try and catch some sleep."

Snark probably dozed of in less than ten seconds. I climbed out of my little hiding hole and on top of the huge boulder that I had been using for cover. It was in the middle of the slope we had stopped in and had a decent view of the surrounding area and valleys. In the distance I could see orange light. It could've been sunrise, but it was too early for that. The planet was burning.

There wasn't much need for me to keep eyes everywhere, so instead I crossed my legs and focused on listening for anything that might betray enemy presence. I still kept my rifle in a firm grip. I tried not to fall asleep, but I started dozing off. The third time that I was forced to snap my head backwards to stay awake I activated an alarm function on my helmet. An annoying beep was audible every couple of minutes, it certainly served to irritate me.

"So? You doing some Zen thing or something?"

"Didn't hear you," I replied. Adama had been quiet when waking up. "And no, I'll stay awake easier this way."

"Mind if I join you?" he asked me. "Can't sleep."

"Sure."

We were both quiet for fifteen minutes.

"Why can't you sleep?"

"I had friends here," he told me. "I tried looking for them when we came here, but I didn't have any luck."

"Good friends?"

"Yeah, went to high school with them, they were doing some tour of the colonies." He huffed in amusement. "I couldn't afford it, joined the corps instead. Well, their tour didn't last that long, both of them met girls here and decided to settle down."

"I'm sorry," I told him. "Sounds like you got lucky."

"I guess," Adama agreed. "But you know, I always did want that family life, work as a lawyer or in marketing, get a wife and three kids."

I smiled. "When I was little I only had one uncle. My mom was an only child and my dad had one brother. I wanted to have as many kids as possible so that my grandkids would get as many aunts and uncles as they could."

I could hear Adama laugh a little bit at that. "You know Gunny, you're a weird guy. Most of the guys have a steady gal back home."

"I have a girlfriend."

"Yeah, but you strike me as the kind of guy that saw a lot of action in his day."

"What does that mean?"

"Look, no offense Gunny, but you strike me as the guy that would stay a bachelor forever and love every minute of it."

I sighed. "There's nothing wrong with being single," I admitted, "but there's nothing wrong with going steady."

"All right," Adama agreed. "Your girl treating you right?"

"What are you? My mother?"

"Sorry, didn't mean to prod." Adama cracked his neck. "You know, there's this girl back in Reach, beautiful in every way, you know?"

I nodded, I scared myself when I found myself thinking of Katie and not Hanna. Thankfully, Adama went on.

"Dark skin, like really dark you know. What I first noticed about her was her eyes, they were light brown, not the dark brown that most black people have. So, me being a hotshot right out of bootcamp decided to impress her."

"I take it it went well?"

"I crashed and burned Gunny," Adama admitted. "Told me to get lost. So I did. That is, until I saw her a few days later. This time I wasn't as drunk and she had given me a good dose of humility."

"What'd you do?"

"I apologized," he shrugged. "Hard to swallow my pride, but I did. She gave me a second chance and we started seeing each other whenever we can."

"She the one?"

He nodded. "I knew it the moment I saw her, but I was too drunk to realize it at the time. That's the reason I apologized."

"Best of luck, kid."

"Thanks, but I don't think I need any more of that. Married her two months after I met her. Even had a little jarhead."

I raised an eyebrow, Adama didn't seem nearly old enough to have a kid that old. "How old?"

"Seven. He'll be turning eight soon." Adama sighed, he was probably thinking about his family. "Little kid's been missing his father half his life, and all I've got to show for that is Private First Class. Anyways, Liam Junior's great. I think you'd like him, he does this weird thing when he talks, adorable as hell. We had him pretty young, right out of high school, but every moment I get to spend with him makes the pain worth it."

"Why are you telling me all this?" I asked him bluntly.

Adama shrugged and looked away. "Bee's the only guy from my squad here, and to be fair, he's kind of a dick."

"So I hear."

"I guess I just like talking about it."

I smiled. "I know how you feel."

At times I felt like telling Pavel everything about Katie, describing her to him in as much detail as I could and telling her every little thing that I loved about her. But then I remembered I wasn't stupid.

"Again, don't mean to pry, but you think your girl's the one?"

"I hope so."

"So, what's the story with you and the corpsman?" Adama stretched his legs and arched his back before sitting back down. "Unusual stuff, corpsmen usually have college degrees and therefore loved ones."

I had no idea what he was talking about, but I nodded regardless. "Met her on my last ship."

"The…umm, what was it?"

"_Inconvenience_," I told him.

"Right, that. Funny name. How'd you meet her?"

I smiled, remembering the first time I saw her. "Well, there was this big explosion, a branch cut through my back, lost a kidney and a lung in addition to other minor injuries."

"She patch you up?"

"Kept me stable. Got a terrible head wound for her trouble, met her in the hospital bed when I woke up. I have to admit, I was kind of a dick to her."

"You're kind of a dick to everyone," Adama said. "Sir."

"A likeable dick."

"I'm still forming an opinion." Adama chuckled a little bit and turned so that we were covering front and back. "Then what happened?"

"I started going out with a friend of hers, a hornet pilot."

"Huh, trying to make her jealous?"

"Honestly? No." My rifle's foregrip was starting to feel warm through my gloves, so I switched my hand's position. "Em was…she was great, and she was up for a no strings attached relationship."

PFC Liam Adama slid down the boulder and to the ground. "Must've been a tough transition, going out with one friend to the other."

"No, actually. I think that Em was thinking about breaking it off or something. Otherwise she was an extremely mature person who actually considered a physical relationship just that. Physical."

"Sounds like a nice girl," he chuckled.

"Yeah. She was." I paused, trying to listen and see if I could hear any noises, but the night was quiet. "Point is, smooth transition."

"Got any siblings?"

"What?" I jerked. "Why are you asking that? In fact, why the hell are you probing so much?"

Adama took a deep breath, clearly audible from my position. "The platoon says things about you, you know? You come from a ship that was completely blown up. If it wasn't for Rob, Snark, and Pavel everybody here would be spreading rumors that you let your squad die just so that you could survive."

I knew how that went. Everybody thought the new guy was some sort of death seeker asshole unless he was fresh out of bootcamp.

"But it's not that what annoys people. Guys in your squad say that you get pissed off real easy, that you're don't speak more than a few sentences to them."

Adama laughed. "Hell, they even say that sometimes you talk to yourself."

I froze at that one.

"But they still say that you're great at what you do," he quickly amended. "Sorry, I didn't mean to-"

"It's not my job to have them like me," I said, feeling defensive for some (obvious) reason. "It's my job to keep them alive, and I'll do what I can to make that happen." I turned to look at him, making the difference in height more evident. "Watch your words Adama."

"It just that… The men here would die for you just because you outrank them. Unless you told them to keep going they would stay behind with you. Would you do the same?"

I didn't answer. I would die for three of the guys here. Adama wasn't one of them.

"I don't blame you, Gunny. I'm thinking about starting a family back home, you know. If I'm going to die for you, at least I want to get to know you."

"Siblings?" I asked after a while, a little bit jarred by the change in topic. "Not that I care to talk about."

Adama didn't reply until after a couple of minutes. "I have two baby brothers. Mom's implant must've expired or something, because next thing you know I'm a big brother."

"How old are they?"

"Three. Twins. They're the cutest thing, not as cute as my little guy of course."

I smiled. "They all are at that age."

"Yeah, but these two, and my own, are special. I can tell. They talk with big words and all." Adama was smiling to himself now. Well, that would be my guess.

"Smart too, they're not going to be joining the UNSC."

"What's so bad about it?" I asked. It was a rhetorical question.

"Very funny, Gunny," Adama said. "Still, none of this for them."

"So, you're telling me this because you think that if I like you more then I'm more likely to risk my life for you?"

"Huh, I hadn't seen it that way," Adama told me. "It's a good side effect, but I guess that I just need someone to listen."

"I'm no shrink."

"And I'm no nutjob."

"Ouch, burn," Schitzo laughed.

Adama sighed again. "Most people don't get that, you know? That I just want to talk."

"Most people don't want to _just_ talk." This time I sighed. "But if you want to talk, I'll listen."

So I listened. We shared the next watch as well as the following one. I would sit there and listen to whatever he had to say. Adama didn't just spill every single detail about his life, he also talked about movies, his goals, funny stuff that had happened to him and more. I liked him, I just couldn't figure out how the hell a guy like him ended up joining the military. He reminded me of the main character on a high school romantic comedy. Granted, he was a bit too talkative. If the things he said had been funny I would've pegged him as the comic relief kind of guy, but right now he just seemed to me as someone who enjoyed people listening to him.

"That's enough," I interrupted. "Time's up, we've gotta go."

"Understood," Adama said, immediately adopting an air of professionalism.

Everybody was awake in five minutes and ready to go two minutes after that. This time Snark got to take point and climbed all the way up the slope while we slowly made our way. Three hours of rest and the bone healing fluid had done wonders for Lieutenant Fightmaster, he was limping strongly and still needed help, but less so than before.

"Looks clear," Snark came in. "You should see the lights from here."

"Something tells me that's not the sunrise," Royce grunted.

"We need to hurry up," Parkes voiced. "If they keep glassing the-"

"They don't glass the whole planet," I assured him. "Don't tell anyone I said this, but that's ONI propaganda. They will, however, scorch a continent and a half if given enough time and motivation."

"We need to hurry up," Parkes repeated.

"I agree with tankman here," Beckel said. "We could use that Pelican."

"Well, sorry that we got hit and my friend died."

"Didn't mean it like that," Beckel told Fightmaster.

"If anyone says anything stupid I'll have them take point for the next five days." I made sure everybody got that message by looking at each of them in turn.

"Now, if you want to talk, play a hiking game or something. Capitals of the world."

The night slowly changed into day and everybody stopped talking. We were all grumpy and tired, but nobody complained. This had to be done.

By this point I had taken off my helmet and attached it to the underside of my rucksack. The next break we took I removed the large, bulky chest piece as well as my two shoulder pauldrons. The right one still had the blades from a spike grenade embedded, so I handled it with care.

"You know Sarge, you're still carrying the same weight," Bee pointed out.

"Yeah, but the armor's exoskeleton is designed to distribute the weight on the rucksack more efficiently."

"Why do they call it an exoskeleton anyways?" Adama asked form a rock across the small basin we were resting in.

"Serves the same purpose," Royce told him. "Wouldn't want to call it individual weight-distributing strands, would you?"

"Enough resting," I stated. "Pack your energy bars and lets get going."

The sun was rising and the orange light over the horizon faded until it disappeared completely. We had flown a good deal in the Pelican before it came crashing down, at the speed we had been going it's a miracle that we didn't all die. By that time we had already reached the top of the nearest mountain and were moving through the more or less horizontal ridges. It was an up and down instead of simply going up.

We had two higher mountains flanking us on either side. It was an ominous feeling, being on top of a ridge with two near vertical cliffs flanking you on either side. Both of the cliffs were at least a hundred meters taller than our own ridge and less than that distance away.

"Damn, I feel like I'm in Mordor," Bee complained.

"You liked the Lord of the Rings books?" Novak asked him, speaking for the first time in hours.

"Books? I saw the movies."

"There were movies?" Novak asked. "When?"

"Two thousand and…two?"

Adama stopped abruptly and turned to face Bee. "Bro…"

"Let him be," Snark told him, passing him. "He's usually like that."

"And it's catchy," Royce warned. "So don't get to close to him."

Fightmaster and Parkes, who was helping him, just looked at each other and shrugged.

I had forgotten how much easier it was to communicate with people when they didn't have their helmet's on. Only Parkes still had his on, and even then it didn't cover his face at all, so we could see his facial expressions clearly.

The helmets dehumanized us. I realized for the first time that they were not meant for our enemies, but for ourselves. It was a lot easier to see a masked face die than that of your best friend. It was smart. It was horrible.

"Lunch break," I announced. "We'll set down in that cave, it's big enough to hide us from flybys."

"Cave?" Snark asked.

"Yeah, I think that it's more of a crevice," Bee agreed.

"You two, shut up," I ordered. "You're starting to get on my nerves."

Everybody sat down and huddled close together. While it wasn't the most comfortable thing that we could've done, none of us wanted to be spotted by an overhead spy drone that we couldn't see or hear. Every member of our small party produced a small bottle of water and a ration bar. I examined my own lunch, glaring at the poop-like bar I was holding in my hands. Like many times before I took a deep breath before taking a big bite. It looked like shit and it tasted very much like it, but there was nothing in the universe that could give you the energy that these bars did. I drank a small amount of water before taking another large bite. I almost winced, but it wouldn't do to give a bad example to everybody here.

"El-tee, you doing good?" I asked him.

"Yeah, I think that I can almost walk by myself now," he told me. "Hurts like a bitch when I put too much weight on it though."

"Think you'll be good by tomorrow?"

"At this rate? Damn right."

"Great," I smiled at him. So far he had given off no signs that he wanted to pull rank. After all, I knew what I was doing and he probably didn't have much groundside experience. Still, he was the ranking officer and I didn't want it to seem like I was stealing his position. "Whenever you say, Lieutenant."

"I hardly think that's my call," Fightmaster chuckled. "But have it your way, I am hereby giving command of this unit to Gunnery Sergeant…"

"Francisco," I helped him out.

"Francisco Castillo," he finished. "There."

"Thanks, sir. Up we go, time to move our asses."

Everybody got up and secured their rucksacks. Adama was the first one up and he looked almost happy. His smile wasn't exactly genuine, but for a Helljumper it was one big gesture.

"Anyone up for another game of Darkhorse Candidate?" he asked.

"Sure," Beckel said. His voice was ever so slightly touched by sarcasm. "Who goes first?"

Parkes spoke up. "Werewolves."

"Time travel," Bee said.

"How does that even-" Parkes started. "Whatever."

"Time travel, hmmm?" Royce asked himself. "Butterflies."

"Kings," I said.

"Dogfighting," Snark said.

"That's a lame one," Adama joked. "Let's see…sharks."

"How does that even relate on _any_ level?" Bee asked.

"It kind of has to make some sense," Sergeant Parkes agreed.

Adama smiled and turned to face us as he walked backwards. "Well, it's simple."

He never got to finish his explanation. A purple beam of light went through his head and he collapsed without another word.

A second later a hissing sound was clearly audible throughout the ridge.

Everyone ducked to one place or another, behind a rock, into a hole, or just away. The scree made for several quickly-accessible cover spots, and within one second everyone had a nice rock between them and whatever had shot Adama. From my position I looked at Adama, steam was whistling from his head and blood pooled around the wound. He was dead. As dead as you could be.

"Where the hell did that come from?" Fightmaster asked.

"Three o'clock," Novak said. "About forty degrees high. I saw the beam, but I couldn't pin down the exact location."

"Suppressing fire," I ordered, "Snark, take that mother out."

"My pleasure," he growled in reply.

"Fire!" I ordered.

All of us opened up. Us Helljumpers even peeked out of cover to try and get a decent shot, but Fightmaster and Parkes fired blindly from behind cover. After a couple of seconds of gunfire two sniper shots rang loudly, shaking the entire boxed ridge and echoing several times. Everyone stopped firing after that, instead returning to cover and looking at Snark expectantly.

Another SRS shot rang. "Shit," Snark cursed. "Got away, I nicked its shoulder, but just barely."

"A jackal?" Beckel asked, holding his shotgun tightly in his arms.

"Elite."

"Well, the new fleet must've had some serious reinforcements," Royce observed.

"What was the elite's class?" Fightmaster asked, showing that he was still an officer and taking the initiative.

"Purple black," he said.

"Damn it," I voiced.

"What does that mean?" Parkes asked, obviously worried.

"Spec Ops, right?" Novak replied.

"Right," Bee confirmed. "Spec Ops."

"I vote we slide down the slope and move up hugging that cliff, out as much rocks in between jus and them."

"Agreed," Parkes said nervously.

I nodded. "All right. Snark and Novak, give me some cover."

Both of them popped from cover and aimed down the ridge and towards the cliff as I hopped through the rocks and reached Adama. There was a neat hole in his head, starting from just above the left eye and ending just in front of his right ear. The two grisly wounds on his face deformed what had been his last expression. I avoided the dead eyes as I placed the corpse over my shoulder in a fireman's carry and ran down the slope with the rest of my team following in my wake. All I could think of was the two little twins that would never really know their older brother.

Without my armor I could feel blood seeping down the back of my neck. Rocks got loose and rolled downhill, but nobody said anything or stopped. We all climbed down as fast as we could, jumping from rock to rock. Fightmaster had it especially hard, because there was only so much that he could do with an injured leg.

"Stop," I ordered once we were on the bottom of the small ravine.

To our right we had a large inclined slope of rocks upon rocks and to our left a vertical cliff face.

"We need to get out of here," Novak said.

"Yeah, get on the high ground," Beckel agreed. "Have a vantage point on everything surrounding us."

I nodded slowly. "Not right now. That wall over there can give us cover, it's nice and defensible."

"What are we waiting for?" Bee asked loudly.

I gently placed Adama's corpse on the ground. "Royce, strip him of ammo, food, and water. Get his Helljumper flag and toss me his helmet."

Royce nodded solemnly and took a knee next to Liam Adama. Everybody realized what this was about and stood straighter. Snark kept his eyes on the ridge to our side while the others kept their eyes on the prowl for enemy movement, but so far nobody moved. I joined Royce and grabbed Adama's rifle before ejecting the magazine and the spare cartridge.

"Beckel, Bee." I gestured to the rocks and they quickly started piling them on top of Adama's body, starting with his legs.

I observed the process with grim eyes. When they had almost covered him I placed his rifle at his head, with the butt facing up. When it had enough rocks around it and was finally able to stay upright without support I placed the helmet on top of the rifle.

"His flag," Royce told me, handing me the neatly folded piece of cloth.

"Thanks." I nodded him off and placed the flag in my rucksack before turning to face the assembled men. "I…I was talking to Adama last night during watch, I got to know some stuff about him, but I don't think I'm the right man for this. Does anyone want to say anything?"

Nobody moved for a few seconds until Bee stepped forward. "Umm, well…yeah. Liam was in my squad, he entered the same time as I did, chatty as hell and would never shut up about his son and two little brothers. Still, he was a good soldier and a good man."

Everyone nodded.

"Liam was," Beckel started. "An unusual Helljumper. Too nice by half if you ask me. He never once used his fatigues to look tough, barely complained about anything. I once heard someone say that some people are too good for this world. I never really agreed with that, but I know that Liam was too good for this life. He deserved something better."

Royce grunted. "Can't say I knew him well, but a hero's a hero."

When nobody moved to say anything else I spoke up. "I…haven't been religious for a long time, but I know that he was raised in a religious household. Anyone want to lead a prayer?"

Everyone looked unwilling to speak until Novak sighed and took a tentative step forward. "It's a short prayer," she said nervously. "Eternal rest grant unto them, O Lord. And let perpetual light shine upon them. May his soul and the soul of all the departed, through your mercy, rest in peace. Amen."

"Amen," I echoed, crossing myself. Crossing myself after a prayer was a habit that I would probably never get rid of. I was afraid that I would have to sing it by myself, but every Helljumper joined halfway through the first word.

"_Gafflwn Dihenydd O'r fuddugol yn wiriol sydd, Ni fydd neb yn ein drechu, Falch ydy ni I drochu, Traed o flaen I'r Annwn, mewn y gwybodaeth fe godwn ni."_

I nodded. "Private First Class Liam Adama."

We saluted and held our hands on our brows for several seconds, our weapons held awkwardly in our left hands.

_We cheat Death from its rightful victory. No one can defeat us, we are glad to plunge feet first into Annwn in the knowledge that we will rise._

We might not rise in a literal sense, but we rise as heroes, we rise as legends.

"Let's go," I said. "We have ground to cover."

* * *

><p>My armor was beginning to get uncomfortable, but if there was any chance that a helmet could stop a sniper round from going through my brain that was a fair exchange.<p>

There was scarcely any concealment around us, all the rocks and boulders could make for decent cover if we were fired upon, but only as long as we knew which direction we were getting shot at from. For the last day and a half we had managed to keep ourselves on the high ground. That discouraged any enemies to fire at us from below. On the downside, we were highly visible to anyone who cared to look around.

"Halfway there," I announced.

Everyone groaned, they didn't want to be reminded that we still had twice the distance to go. Ever since the sniping incident I had doubled our pace, the rough terrain made speed difficult, but we were managing a pace that any ODST drill sergeant would be proud of. Even Fightmaster was keeping up, his leg was only giving him minor trouble now.

"Can we take a break now?" Novak asked weakly. She was lagging behind, with Parkes trying to play nice and staying within a few meters of her.

I looked over my shoulder and cursed when I saw that we were spread over a length of fifty meters. Most of the group was running by themselves, with a couple of smaller groups. "Hurry up!" I yelled. "We can rest as soon as we get this valley behind us."

"That's what you said last time, Gunny," Beckel stated. "And if I remember correctly, the time before that as well."

"Sorry Sarge, but I agree," Snark voiced his opinion. "That was six hours ago."

"Ever ran a marathon?" I asked him sharply. "No?" I sighed. "Fifteen minutes. Boys piss to the right and Novak to the left. Same goes for shitting and throwing up."

As soon as I said that Fightmaster doubled over and threw up. It was mostly water with a few chunks of energy bar thrown in for good measure.

"Charming," Beckel voiced.

I rolled my eyes at the pilot and sat down on a rock. As much as it hurt me to admit it, I needed the rest just as much as everyone else. Well, perhaps not as much, but I had been running from the front of the group to the back to urge everybody.

I took a large bite of an energy bar and ran my hand through my left thigh pocket. Inside it I had stored a neatly folded flag and a pair of dogtags belonging to Liam Adama. I checked them every so often just to see if they were there. I was going to get those two items out of this planet no matter what.

After I finished what was left of those bats I took a small swig of water. I was halfway down my rations, and everybody else was past that point already. If we wanted to make it we needed to find a stream or river. According to the scarce information I had stored in my helmet there ought to be a few streams in the next couple of valleys.

"Time," I shouted. "Up, up! Let's get moving."

"Not right now you don't," Schitzo said.

The phrase made me take half a step backwards, away from the hallucination. That act saved my life. A bright pink needle flew an inch from my visor. My eyes followed the crystal as it flew by in what seemed to be slow motion. A moment later I threw myself backwards and rolled as more needle rifle shots bounced of the rocks.

"Take cover!" Bee cried.

I rolled and tossed and climbed over sharp rocks until I found a nice hole to bunker down in. Needle rifle rounds shattered all around me, probably filling me with micro shrapnel.

"Return fire! Return fire!" I ordered loudly, reaching for my rifle.

Gunfire barked loudly and plasma fire answered in return. The quick retaliation had given me enough time and had drawn attention from my position, allowing me to fire back. I tried spotting the attackers, but they were firing from concealed positions. Concealed from my sight at the very least. I put their numbers at twelve.

"Snark, see the leader?"

"Can't," he grunted. "But I've got a plasma repeater on my sight."

"Take it out," I said, giving him the go sign. "Everyone, start sliding back over the other side of the ridge, we're falling back."

When Snark fired the sound blocked out everything else for a second, and I could almost hear the squishy sound that the huge bullet made when piercing an elite's body.

"That's a kill," Snark said. "I'm out."

I fired at an elite that had left cover, draining its shield and hitting it in the forearm. As I was about to finish it off a plasma grenade landed right next to me. I rolled on my side and grabbed the rock that it had fallen on before tossing it down as hard as I could. I thanked god for making the device land on a small rock as opposed to a boulder. As soon as it detonated I jumped up and down the other side of the ridge. In the short time that I was up I saw that the explosion had taken out the elite that had thrown the grenade. Pure luck.

"Move, move," I ordered. "Beckel and Royce, you two keep your eyes on the top of the ridge, discourage anything form jumping over."

Beckel and Royce fired upon two elites, forcing them back the end of the ridge.

"We got this Gunny," Royce told me.

"As much as one can…yeah, whatever," Beckel agreed.

"Now move!"

We ran. We ran as fast as our legs allowed us to. Beckel and Royce staved off a couple of assault attempts in a modified reverse slope defense. They only netted one kill when an elite stumbled after being shot, but they kept the other ones at bay and allowed us to gain some distance. Three dead for them and none for us. Not bad for having been the ones ambushed.

"We're going down the valley," I said. "Hide in the forest, lose them if we can. Double time it!"

The valley in question was small, perhaps three hundred meters across and a couple of kilometers in length. Running down the middle there was a stream. The only time we paused was to refill our canteens with the spring water. The built in filters would take care of any bacteria that could make us sick. The last thing I needed right now was one of our number shitting his pants as he ran.

"I see something," Novak called from up front. "It's a…it's a shack!" She sounded shocked.

"Stay there," I ordered.

The shack was small, perhaps big enough for one room and a kitchen. What was surprising was that it looked to be built by hand. That would be unusual anywhere in the entire UEG space. It even had a nice little stone chimney, like something out of a children's book.

"Thermal's not showing anything," Snark said. "Granted, my scope's not that good, but-"

"Shut up," I interrupted. "Novak, with me."

I tried the door and it swung easily. Inside the shack I could see one bed, a fridge, and a crappy cooking machine that looked like it was decades old. Other than that there were a few clothes strewn about and random stuff on the floor.

"It's clear," I said.

Beckel walked in and looked around. "Damn, hermit. He must've missed the option to call for takeout."

I rolled my eyes and examined what little stuff was inside. Beckel headed towards the fridge and grabbed a can of coke. He looked at the bottom for an expiration date before opening it. Immediately it burst, sending foamy coke into his helmet and splashing him with the drink.

"Christ Axel," Novak chuckled lightly. So unlike her.

"It has been inside that fridge for weeks," I stated. "How do you even manage?"

"Hey! I'm as shocked as you are!" he complained.

Whatever he was going to say next was cut short when plasma rounds burst through the wooden walls, sending splinters everywhere. I threw Novak to the floor and went prone while the guys outside returned fire at the covvies. The elites chasing us were persistent, I'll give them that. While on the floor I produced the last of my C-12 and pressed it hard against the wooden floor before inserting the receiver on the putty. It would blow as soon as I triggered the detonator.

"Sarge, you've got a window!" Bee yelled. "Hurry up!"

Novak left the shack through a shattered window while Beckel and I fired at the muzzle flashes. There had been a wall in front of us a few seconds ago, now it was mostly splinters and broken wood.

"Go!" I told the CQC expert. I followed soon after.

"Goddamn, they're persistent," Sergeant Parkes complained. "If only I had my Tortoise with me we could be-"

"Don't dwell on hypotheticals," Fightmaster told him. "Never works."

Parkes nodded as he ran and said nothing further. I took that as my queue to detonate the C-12 explosive. The explosion reverberated throughout the valley, and I could picture at least three elites caught in the blast. I wasn't feeling very optimistic at that time, so I made a mental note telling myself that it had only been two. That made seven of them and eight of us. Better odds than we had started out with.

By the time the sun was setting we were miles from the shack and had seen no sign of the enemy split jaws since then. I still made Snark hang back and scope out the area as often as he could. It wasn't easy to do while on a running pace, but he managed to, even with the heavy sniper rifle. Novak was doing better now, I don't know if she had been scared or inspired or whatever, but she was moving faster now. Fightmaster was the one that worried me. His leg was hurting like hell, I could tell, but he wasn't complaining.

"We stop," I ordered. "Three hours rest. We set out after that."

I had picked a decent enough spot for sleeping. Somebody else would do the watches and I would be able to catch some much-needed sleep. As soon as I laid down I drifted into slumber.

I woke up what seemed to be a second later. To be precise, plasma weaponry woke me up what seemed to be a second later.

"The fuck?!" I exclaimed.

I know, I know. Very elaborate wording.

"They were cloaked Gunny!" Parkes apologized, already firing. "It's a miracle that I saw them. At night!"

"Is that a Banshee!" Royce seemed to be phrasing his comment as a question, because there was no shred of doubt that that was in fact, a Banshee.

"Bee!"

"On it!"

"Cover him!" I ordered.

Like clockwork, every single one of us started firing wildly in the direction of the elites. Trees and rocks covered them, but the volume of firepower was enough to stop their advance. The Banshee, on the other hand, was positioning itself to strafe us. One blast from its fuel rod would spell our end. It would be enough to break our line.

"Yippe kay-" Bee started.

"Fire!" Snark ordered him.

A single line of red illuminated the night sky. The bright laser was more than enough to make my eyes wince. It only existed for half a second, but the blast was enough to melt through the frontal armor of the enemy craft, through the body of the operator, and keep on going. That laser would leave the atmosphere and keep flying until it simply didn't have enough cohesion.

"Frag out!" Royce called. The explosion that followed was accompanied by a cry of pain from an elite.

"Fall back, fall back!" I ordered. If we had all the time in the world I might've ordered a stand to get rid of those elites once and for all. If we had all the time in the world we could simply hide and wait them out. If we had all the time in…you get my point.

* * *

><p>"Helljumper, Helljumper, where have you been?" I asked as loud as I could.<p>

"Feet first into hell and back again!" everyone replied in chorus, even the non-ODSTs.

"_When I die please bury me deep!_

_With an MA5 down by my feet!_

_Don't cry for me, don't shed no tear!_

_Just pack my box with PT gear!_

_Cuz one early morning, 'bout zero-five!_

_The ground will rumble, there'll be lightning in the sky!_

_Don't you worry, don't come undone!_

_It's just my ghost on a PT run!"_

"And what a run it is!" I said loudly.

The rocks had given way to smoother trails. They were game trails, but they were large enough for us to walk through without much trouble. Occasionally trees would get in the way, but for the most part we ran without much trouble. Ever since the shack we had been pushing it hard. The Banshee attack only made us push harder. Now we found ourselves actually trying to outrun the glassing of the planet. We could see small capital ships scorching the ground behind us through Snark's scope.

The group of elites hadn't given up on chasing us. Occasionally they would try firing at us, but we had two or three men in the back with ranged weapons to push them back. Snark and I usually found ourselves at the back of the group, with Novak or Royce taking turns with the other scoped rifle.

"Movement." Snark dropped to the ground and everyone followed. "It's the sniper." He fired one round. "Damn."

"Do you have him?" I asked.

"Yes, but it's behind cover. As soon as it tries to step out it's dead."

I considered the situation and wondered whether we should stay. We were hard-pressed for time as it was, and if we rested here our bodies might give up. On the other hand, this was the son of a whore that had killed Liam.

"We'll wait," I said. "And make sure you hit it good."

With my own battle rifle I could see the place where the elite was hiding. It was a jagged boulder about fifteen feet high and six wide. It was right in the middle of a stretch of flat land. Normally, the elite would've been able to run back without exposing itself, but the only way back was up a hill. It would have to expose itself either way.

Snark pulled down his rifle's bipod and took off his helmet. Some said that firing manually was harder, but in my opinion it was the same thing. He started taking deep breaths until his chest was barely moving. I was prone next to him, eyeing the boulder through my scope. At this extreme range I could barely make out the thing. My scope wasn't nearly as powerful as the Oracle that Snark's rifle had. He probably felt like he was a few feet away from the rock.

"Spread out and watch for any flanking attempts," I ordered. "If anyone sees movement you shoot it."

The sun was slowly going up. It should've been cold at this altitude, but the sun burned the back of my neck. I thought about putting my helmet back on, but decided against it. It was resting on a rock right next to me, making for a highly visible target. Snark was still, not having moved or said anything since he settled down. Everyone else was watching our perimeter, quiet.

The sun moved across the sky and I thought I smelled ozone in the air. The atmosphere was burning, we needed to move. Still, I did nothing. Snark wiped sweat from his brow before returning to his position. I couldn't spot any movement whatsoever through my scope, and I even searched intently for glimmers that would give away the presence of a camouflaged elite.

I shook slightly at the sound of gunshots, but since no one reported any trouble I didn't move. I hoped that they had gotten an elite before it could fire back. Half an hour later there was another burst of gunfire followed by a few plasma rounds. The gunfire eventually overwhelmed the plasma and everything went quiet once again, with only faint echoes resounding against the mountains.

Then the elite did something amazing.

It rolled out of the boulder and turned its back to us. Its head was hidden behind its body, so Snark had no choice but to fire at the torso. The shields absorbed the blow but disappeared as a result. Following that, the elite sniper rolled sideways again and turned with its rifle up. It let out one shot that hit a rock three feet from Snark's position before he nailed it with a headshot in return.

"That's a kill," I confirmed. "What was the range?"

"Three-oh-seventy-seven," Snark grimly replied.

"Adama would be proud," I told him. "Nice shot. Everyone! We're moving out!"

"Adama would be proud?" Schitzo scoffed. "Adama's dead."

* * *

><p>"<em>I went to the market<em>

_Where all the innies shop_

_I pulled out my knife_

_And started to chop_

_To the left right left right left right kill!_

_Left right left right you know I will!_

_I went to the church_

_Where all the innies pray_

_I pulled out my machine gun_

_And started to spray_

_To the left right left right left right kill!_

_Left right left right you know I will!"_

"Three more miles boys!" I yelled loudly. "They can't hit us at this range so don't you dare stop now!"

Occasionally a plasma bolt would streak by, but the elites firing at us were at least two kilometers behind us and didn't have any precision weapons left. The mountain range was done, all those jagged peaks, sharp cliffs, and narrow valleys were behind us. Now all we had in front of us was miles upon miles of plains. It was good that we were going to be picked up here, because the elites would catch up with us in no time.

"Novak, get behind me," I ordered.

"Sure," she huffed. She was getting a little bit of sarcasm into her voice, that was good. "Why?"

"Open my rucksack and get the beacon out."  
>I tried not to move too much as she rummaged through the contents of my backpack. Perhaps I should've asked someone taller to do that, because she was probably hopping up and down to get a good look inside. Eventually she got it out and handed it to me.<p>

"One mile off," Bee called. "Let's go, let's go!"

"Who died and made you boss?" Royce growled.

"This is Gunnery Sergeant Francisco Castillo," I spoke into my radio, activating the beacon at the same time. "I repeat, this is Gunnery Sergeant Francisco Castillo, we are approaching the pickup point, it should be eight minutes before we get there. _Subtlety, _do you copy? _Subtlety_ come in."

"I copy," a gruff voice replied. "This is _Subtlety_, we're on our way."

"Someone must've heard that," Fightmaster noted. "There are corvettes within visual range."

"We'll be safe," I assured him. "See that small rise over there? We'll hole up and wait."

"How much longer?" Parkes asked. "I'm dying for a hot shower."

"They should be here any minute now," I replied.

"They'd better be," Novak said. "Look there."

I turned to the direction she was pointing at. It was at least three kilometers away. The two phantoms were moving fast and low, streaming through the plains. Before I could give the order I heard the familiar charging sound of a Spartan Laser. The red line cut through the air before colliding with one of the two dropships. It hit the right side of the craft and it started putting out smoke before veering off and touching down gently. It wasn't destroyed, but it was out of the game. The second laser bounced off the second Phantom.

Yes, it bounced.

"Did the laser just bounce?" Bee asked.

"Deflected is more like it," Parkes replied.

"Well, if the laws of physics are on their side, then I don't know why we still fight," Beckel complained.

"It's still coming," I stated calmly.

Another laser through the center brought the dropship crashing down. I could see little shapes climbing out of the burning wreckage at this distance. The elites that had been chasing us since the range assimilated them into their ranks and doubled their speed.

"Where is it?" Royce asked irritably.

"They'll be here," I replied.

"Sarge?" Snark pressed.

"They'll be here."

One of the corvettes that had been flying back in the distance was speeding up towards us. It was getting larger and larger by the second.

"Ah, you feel that?" Schitzo asked.

I almost shat my pants when the shape of a UNSC ship appeared overhead. The sky, which had been gray just moments ago was suddenly covered by a large hovering craft. I could see the distortion coming from its engines, I just couldn't hear them. Immediately after the prowler showed itself the corvette fired a plasma torpedo. The _Subtlety_ let out a bunch of small counter missiles that detonated prior to making contact with the torpedo. As the plasma torpedo flew through the air where the counter missiles had exploded it burst, scorching the grass beneath it.

"What are those?" Parkes asked.

"Archer-D missiles," Snark replied.

I scoffed. "What are you? Grass?"

"My ass isn't nearly big enough."

"I hate it when they do that," Royce muttered.

"Peace brother," Beckel consoled him. "Peace."

The UNSC _So Much for Subtlety_ did its name honor, blasting out several small missiles at the enemy corvette and firing at it with pulse lasers. The covvie ship started showing smoke and turned to bring its guns to bear. By that time we were already inside the prowler and camouflaged again. The Covenant would find us if we stayed, but the captain jumped as soon as it was safe.

"Safe," I muttered to myself.

Schitzo laughed. "Yeah right."

* * *

><p><em>Thanks to Alshep and SilasWhitfield for proof-reading this chapter.<em>

_Don't you think that the chapter title is incredibly original? __Come on guys, did you really believe that I would leave you hanging with a measly 4000 word chapter? Of course not! I might be a lot of things, but a dick to my readers is not one of the (a dick to everybody else is another matter altogether though...)._

_Well, somewhere a doctor is shaking his head in disappointment, but I think that the healing scene was rather dramatic, even if it would be painful enough to kill Fightmaster through sheer shock. By the way, don't you just love that name? He's going to be taking over Marina's role in the future. I hadn't planned it like that, but the name is just too awesome to use in one chapter. _

_What do you think about the funeral scene? I borrowed front his fic's namesake heavily. Look up Halo 3 ODST: The Life on youtube, it should be quite obvious. Still, I care about your opinion a lot and want to know if you liked it. I also enjoyed writing the cadences, they are actual cadences from the Halo universe. Well, one of them is, the other one is a slightly edited Vietnam War-era cadence. Oh, yeah, whoever guesses how the words in the dark horse candidate games relate then you get bonus points, and by bonus points I mean that you get to ask me to kill an extra in whatever reason you seem fit (within realistic limits, of course). Or you get to name the code name for Second Squad._

_On another note: Yay! 500+ reviews! And it only took 100+ chapters! I need to improve my chapter to review rating! Love you guys for all your support!_

_Next milestone: 666 reviews._

_Stay strong._

_-casquis_


	143. Semblance of a Regular Life

Chapter CXLIII: Semblance of a Regular Life

**November 30, 2545 (UNSC Calendar)/two months later**

**UNSC Armed Forces Cemetery, New Alexandria, Viery Territory, Reach**

* * *

><p><em>"Well, of course it couldn't last more than a day."- Gunnery Sergeant Francisco Castillo<em>

* * *

><p>Every single soldier, sailor, and marine is entitled to a coffin and a lot in the Armed Forces Cemetery.<p>

Provided they were dead of course.

Sometimes I wondered if half the coffins in this graveyard had bodies in them.

"Chamber round!" Lieutenant Hayes ordered.

The sound of seven M392 Designated Marksman Rifles cocking was shockingly loud. Not one of the attendees failed to flinch. Even I, used to the sound of gunfire and explosions was shaken to my core.

"Firing position!"

The seven Helljumpers spread their legs at shoulder width and held their rifle ready.

"Aim!"

The seven Helljumpers raised their weapon so that the muzzles were aimed above Private First Class Liam Adama's casket.

"Fire!"

The boom was surprisingly loud. With everyone quiet and not a sound disturbing the ceremony the seven shots seemed like one loud explosion. I squinted at the sun hitting my face. Even my peaked hat failed to block the light completely. It was pretty hot considering that it was almost winter. My black dress uniform wasn't helping much.

"Chamber round!"

The sound of empty casings clattering on the pavement seemed too loud.

"Aim!"

A fly was buzzing around my ear, but I would not move. My right arm was getting a little stiff from holding it over my brow in a salute, but I would not move.

"Fire!"

My eyes switched from the faces of the guests. Most of them were wearing black suits with white shirts and black ties. Very formal. Several of the women were wearing non-revealing black dresses and wide-brimmed hats. All the ODSTs were standing to either side of me or behind me, forming two neat lines. Some other men and women were wearing the standard white dress uniform for the UNSC Marines. They were also formed up and saluting. For all his chatting Adama never did get to tell me about his short stay in the regular Corps.

"Chamber round!"

Adama's two little brothers were too young too understand what was happening, but they knew that they would never see their cool older brother ever again. It almost killed me to see that they were both saluting with their backs stretched and their free hands at attention. Their parents had grim faces, but they hadn't shed a tear.

"Aim."

The stitched on my white gloves were slightly sideways. They felt weird when pressed against my temple. For all our technological prowess I couldn't figure why the UNSC hadn't found a way to make stitch-less clothing more cost effective than the regular kind. Maybe it had to do something with tradition.

"Fire!"

The last volley of the 3-volley salute seemed to echo for a long time, but it couldn't have been more than ten seconds. My mind wandered off as Lieutenant Hayes gave several commands. Four men from Adama's squad moved towards the empty casket and grabbed the corners of the United Nations Space Command flag that was covering it. They slowly folded the flag into a triangle and presented it to Adama's wife. Widow.

She was beautiful, that much was evident. I couldn't really blame Liam for falling in love with her. Tall, with dark skin and black hair. She had those eyes, light brown, much like Hanna's. Unlike her in-laws, she was visibly crying, but the tears were solemn ones. Running down her cheeks and leaving them marked. She met and held Lieutenant Hayes' stare when she received the flag. Whatever words the el-tee said I couldn't hear, but I saw the widow mouth a quick 'thank you' in return.

It was Adama's son, however, that proved to be the hardest sight to take in. He had an unusual tone of dark skin and dark hair, but his father's features were clearly there. He also had his mother's eyes. This one would be breaking a lot of hearts in a few years.

"Gunnery Sergeant."

I suddenly realized that Lieutenant Tahlia Hayes was standing in front of me. Not for the first time I was taken aback by her looks. She had one golden bar on either collar of her uniform, and the caricature-esque unit insignia of the 7th ODST Battalion was stitched on her sleeve. Her eyes seemed to be boring into my skull, but her face was the image of pure professionalism. I wondered what it would be like to _be_ with her.

"Ma'am," I said in reply.

Hayes said nothing, instead simply extending her arms. In between her hands she was holding a folded crimson flag. I could see that the edges were golden. It was all I could see, but I knew that if one were to extend the flag it would display the fearsome insignia of all Helljumpers. A yellow entry vehicle with a red flaming skull. I dropped my salute and grabbed the flag from the lieutenant's hands. She gave me a quick nod before marching to a different position and standing at attention.

I was suddenly the center of attention. I didn't like that at all. At the very least, I didn't like it in circumstances like these. I had never gone to a military funeral before in my life.

Nope, that's a lie. I had been to funerals, but always as an observant, or because Marina, Hanna, or even Pavel had asked me to come. Back in my early days on the _Inconvenience_ I hadn't even bothered with names, let alone funerals. I regretted those decisions now, but I hadn't even looked up the dead soldiers' names. Didn't need to feel any more guilt.

I walked through the space in between Liam Adama's family and me. His widow was holding the white and black flag in her hands tightly, her arms were shaking. I avoided her eyes when they met mine and instead looked at her son. Had Adama told me his name? Had I forgotten it? It was too late to think about it. I stood directly in front of them, incredibly aware of the several dozen eyes planted on me.

Very slowly I moved from the widow to the child. His head was staring at the ground, examining my dress shoes. Like his younger uncles he was wearing a black suit and tie that didn't seem to fit his face.

"Son," I said quietly, almost in a whisper.

Liam's son slowly looked up, his eyes were red and his lips were quivering. I almost cried when I saw his face. I'm not ashamed to admit it. I took a knee so that I was on even ground with the little boy. I extended the flag to him, noticing that it was dirty and stained. Some stains were from dirt, others from blood, and others from substances unknown. Whether the flag had turned that way during our trek through the mountains or before I couldn't know.

The kid slowly raised his shaky hands and pressed them against the flag. His hands were small when compared to mine, and they seemed awful vulnerable.

"Your father was a brave man," I said quietly so that only he and his mom could hear.

Tears started rolling down his cheeks as he nodded.

I looked down at the flag and into his eyes again. "Do you have it?"

He nodded.

"Do you have it?" I asked once more.

"I have it," he replied weakly.

I slowly let go of the flag and placed one of my hands on his shoulder. "A great man, never forget that."

I stood up and walked past the casket and back to my position in between Pavel and a guy from First Squad whose name I didn't know.

"Getting soft Francisco," a familiar voice whispered in my ear.

"What you did was a great thing," Scarecrow said on my other side.

"But it's not the real _you_," Schitzo countered.

I closed my eyes and they disappeared. Everything else seemed to fly by in a blur.

"Frank?"

"Sorry," I told Pavel. "I dozed off a little bit. Heat's killing me."

"Yeah," he agreed.

Everyone was offering their condolences to Adama's widow or chatting with one another. I could see that Master Sergeant Dajani and Staff Sergeant Greg Williams were talking to the widow at the time. Both of them had been in Third Squad, serving alongside Adama more often than the rest of us. Lieutenant Hayes was making small talk with the jarhead ranking officer. The man was obviously a little nervous at being in such close proximity with a Helljumper. His body language couldn't help but make me smile.

Someone cleared their throat next to me. I turned to see Miranda Novak looking at me with expectant eyes.

"Yeah?" I asked her.

"Gunny…"

I realized what she was worried about. "Relax Miri," I said. "I just found it amusing that despite the situation the regulars still find us intimidating."

Miranda looked over to the lieutenant and let out a soft chuckle. "Weird, huh?"

I nodded slowly.

Some of the people were beginning to leave after paying their final respects. The coffin would remain above ground for a few more hours before the grave digging robots came to do their job. I wiped sweat from my face and took of my hat, ruffling through my hair before putting it back on.

"You're not going to talk to the widow?" Miranda asked me.

I shook my head. "I wouldn't know what to say."

"You were there when it happened, maybe she'd just like to know-"

"Would you like to know if your husband was shot through the head? Every single detail of it? She knows that Liam was killed in action, that's all she needs to know."

"If you say so, Gunny."

"I do say so," I asserted. "You were also there when it happened, why don't you go and talk to her?"

"I…" she stuttered. "I wouldn't. I don't think it's my place."

"Right."

Miranda cleared her throat and stood awkwardly. "Umm…did you hear about Actium?"

I looked at her quizzically. "Are you actually trying to make conversation? That's very unlike you." I smiled. "But yes, I've heard about Actium, nothing concrete though. In my opinion it's just ONI propaganda."

"If you say so," she said again.

I could see that Pavel was getting into his car. Amber hadn't come to the funeral, but she didn't have any reason to. I was willing to bet that Pavel was almost desperate to return to his family. I wasn't in a rush to leave, but I would've preferred to be somewhere else. Standing so close to the coffin I couldn't help but wonder if there was something that I could've done to save Liam.

"So Gunny, what do you usually do on leave?"

"Drink," I replied. "But that's slowly changing." I couldn't help but keep the frustration out of my voice. I was willing to drink less to be with Hanna, but boy did the booze help. "Rest, catch up on new films. Try to lead a normal life. Why do you ask?"

Miranda smiled nervously. Everything she did she did nervously. "It's my first leave."

"You have friends out of the military, I take it."

"Yes," she replied.

"Go out with them, have some fun, party hard, get laid. You're still pretty young so just enjoy your life as much as you can."

"Hm…"

"What? You expected old sage advice?" I asked. "I'm thirty, not a hundred." I sighed. "Listen Miri, you're young. Enjoy your life as much as you can. In this line of work, odds are that it wont be a long one."

Miranda looked thoughtfull for a moment. "That sounded more sage-like."

I smiled.

"Frank, there you are!"

I turned around only to have Hanna plant a quick kiss on my lips. My smile turned into a grin. "Hey you," I said.

Hanna was dressed in casual clothing. I had told her to come pick me up after the funeral was over, but apparently she was tired of waiting inside the car. She turned to face Miranda and examined her carefully. "You must be Martina."

"Miranda," I corrected.

"Um, yes," she replied. Miranda looked at the two of us before redirecting her eyes to the ground. "Uh, sorry. I guess I'll see you later Gunny."

"M-hm," I nodded. I watched as Miranda moved towards Serge just so that it wouldn't seem like she was alone. It was funny how the French veteran didn't even seem to notice her. "Hanna, why are you here so early?"

"I'm not," she told me.

I glanced at my watch and realized that she wasn't lying. The ceremony had gone on for longer than I imagined. "Right." I looked over to Liam's widow but she wasn't here anymore. I spotted her climbing inside a vehicle before it took off.

Hanna said something.

"Sorry, what?"

Hanna sighed. "I asked if you wanted to have a late lunch before heading to Esztergom."

"Sure, where do you want to go?"

"There's a diner nearby, it's supposed to be good."

"Katie worked in a diner," Schitzo said.

"Hmm, I don't feel like a diner," I replied, trying to sound as casual as possible. "How about a sports bar?"

"We always go to sports bar," Hanna reminded me.

"Then where do you want to go?"

"To the diner!"

I looked around, people were leaving, but I didn't want them staring at us because we were fighting. We weren't fighting yet, but my keen male sense could tell that it was most certainly an option right now. I gave her my best smile. "Fine, fine, we'll go to the diner, ok hon?"

"Ok," she said solemnly.

I smiled again and put my hat on her head. It looked oversized and cute on her. "You drive."

The moment we parked outside of the diner I let out an obnoxiously loud sigh of relief. I let myself slouch a little bit in my seat and looked at Hanna.

She only rolled her eyes and smiled. "Ass."

Walking inside I unbuttoned my black jacket, being careful not to mess up all the ornaments, medals ribbons, and badges. I put the jacket on the far end of our booth and then took off my white gloves. Hanna sat down in front of me, still wearing my peaked cap. Let me reiterate how ludicrously cute she looked wearing the oversized cap. She probably knew it and that was the reason she didn't take it off.

"Good afternoon, what can I do for you?"

The waitress, for every self-respecting diner only hired female servers, was pretty, but not overtly so. This place was enough of a guilt trip for me without the need of attractive waitresses.

"Banana?" I asked Hanna.

She shook her head at the nickname, but failed to hide a smile. "The daily sub, please."

"Of course, and you sir?"

"The double cheeseburger. With extra bacon."

"Right away. Drinks?"

"Diet coke," Hanna said.

"Vanilla milkshake."

Both the waitress and my girlfriend eyed me curiously. I just shrugged and said nothing.

"Why don't they have robo-waiters or terminal?" I asked. "Diners, I mean." Nowadays only fancy restaurants and old-fashioned diners had actual waiters.

"Part of the charm, I guess."

"If they wanted charm they'd make those skirts shorter," I noted.

"Frank!" Hanna exclaimed while poking me.

"Good going Francisco," Schitzo said. "Just pretend that everything's normal and nothing's wrong."

I ignored him, I was becoming increasingly adept at blocking out feelings and sensations that I didn't want to feel. What I did want to feel was the lovely taste of the hamburger on my mouth. Unlike most other diners, this one used actual meat instead of cloned steaks. Very much like that diner back in Paris IV.

Damn.

"Is it good?" I asked Hanna.

"Yup," she said, eagerly digging into her sandwich. "You?"

"I'm willing to bet it's better than yours."

"Some of us prefer healthy eating Frank." She laughed. "If you ever stop hitting the gym you'll get fat in a heartbeat."

"Hey, in the meanwhile," I shrugged, taking a large bite of the burger. "Mmm, wow, it's so good!"

"Stop it," Hanna whispered. "People are staring!"

"But it's just so good!" I said loudly. "Mmm!"

"Frank!" she laughed, hitting me in the arm. "Seriously stop."

"You don't sound too serious."

It was a pleasant change of mood. The funeral had been tiring, both physically and mentally. While I could stand in the sun for long periods of time without complaining, I didn't exactly enjoy seeing grieving widows and family friends. Spending time with my girlfriend, just talking and having fun was good. I had to savor this little moments because they didn't come very often.

"Check please," I told the waitress. I turned to Hanna. "So, you want to head home?"

"Yeah," she sighed, stretching her arms. "I could use the nap."

"I was thinking we could get a little bit…you know. If the car can drive itself…"

"Frank! No."

"Aw, come on, the backseat in your car is more than big enough, and if you're feeling a bit adventurous-"

"No, there are cameras everywhere!"

"We just activate privacy mode," I countered. "Nothing can see through those windows."

"Really? You can't wait six hours until we get to a regular bed."

"Augh, so conformist," I muttered sarcastically. "Your loss."

She chuckled. "Yeah right."

* * *

><p>I opened my eyelids violently. My eyes jerked from side to side violently, looking for any threats. Deep inside me I knew that there were no threats inside the bedroom, that was the only reason why I didn't jump up into a combat stance. I gently moved Hanna's arm from across my chest and sat up on the bed, trying to make as little noise as possible. My clothes were all by my feet, and my jeans still had my pistol holster on the belt, with the pistol still attached to it.<p>

I reached for the pistol and pressed the barrel against my temple, tapping it against my head a couple of times before putting it down.

"Frank," Hanna moaned, still half asleep. "What?"

"It's nothing, go back to sleep."

I must've said it in a sharp tone or Hanna was better at reading me than I thought because she got up, clutching the sheets to her so that she wouldn't be naked. It seemed weird, but every girl had her own personal quirks.

"Did you have that dream again?"

"Nightmare."

"Yeah, sorry. Listen, if you want I can stay awake with you," she told me.

I smiled, not really feeling it. "Thanks Banana, I think I'll just go for a walk."

"You sure?"

"I'm sure." I kissed her in the forehead gently. "I'll be back in half an hour. Tops."

She sighed sadly. "Ok. Be careful."

"I will," I promised.

I left my sidearm on the night table but took my knife with me, attaching it to a special horizontal holster on my belt instead of beneath my jeans. It allowed for quicker access.

The streets of Eszterghom were empty of pedestrians, but the occasional car sped by. The wide sidewalks were immaculate, the cleaning robots had just finished doing their job. I probably just missed them. A couple of the night lights were flickering, probably overdue for a change of bulbs, but I barely noticed it. As I walked I thought about the implications of what I was going through. I had known it and admitted it before.

I was going crazy.

Never before had I felt that that statement was true as much as I did right now. The scars on my palm were hurting. They were already a couple of months old, but there were still little bumps on my palm. Whenever I stretched my hands too much I felt like something was pulling back. The main slice ran the width of my hand, and several other smaller cuts were littered along the palm. It was uncomfortable to say the least, but it didn't warrant epidural reconstruction.

"My, my Francisco. Your world is falling to pieces and all you can think off is that little sissy cut on your hand." Schitzo was obviously having the time of his life.

"You are what you are, do not try to fight it."

I looked around, there was no one nearby. "And give in to madness?"

"You're choosing between two types of madness, one that you can probably learn to control. Emphasize the probably. And another one that will slowly eat away your core until you just cant take it." As he said this Schitzo raised a pistol that looked very much like my sidearm to his temple. He looked up from the bench he was sitting in and tapped it a couple of times against his head. "And when you reach that point."

The gunshot was way louder than it should've been, and there was way too many blood. I jerked and jumped back, one hand already reaching for my knife even as Schitzo's dead corpse fell to the sidewalk. Blood poured out of his head in ungodly quantities, painting the sidewalk a dark red. I rubbed my eyes and when I opened them he was gone.

"You have to fight it," Scarecrow told me.

"Sometimes I think he's right," I told my friend. "That I just need to live with it."

"Don't talk like that, Sarge."

I sighed. Schitzo had a point. I could learn to live with his annoying (and often frightening) appearances and the nightmares. People already thought that we Helljumpers were insane, they wouldn't kick me out of the Corps as long as I didn't kill anybody. The UNSC needed everyone they could get their hands on.

On the other hand, I would be a maniac.

I dwelled on it as I walked around the block.

There was one third option, but I didn't know if it would work. The number was on my phone. I doubted it was his personal number, but if he gave it to me then it was probably a good number. I dialed it. As expected, the machine told me to leave a message after ringing twice.

"Major, I want to know more about this Spartan-IV program. I want to know everything about it, sir."

I hung up. I didn't expect an answer, but hell, everything was possible.

When I returned to Hanna's apartment she shuffled in the bed. "Feeling better."

"Yeah, thanks."

"Good, now come," she slurred her words. I don't known whether she was trying to sound sexy or cute, but she just sounded like a drunk.

"Of course," I replied, slipping inside the sheets with her.

* * *

><p>If I ever missed something when I was deployed, it was this place. The Grenadier. Dear God I missed it.<p>

Captain Montgomery had greeted me heartily, reminding me of the exact time it had been since I had last shown up in the bar. Or pub, whatever. At this time there were only a few costumers, most of them were actually alcoholics, drowning their sorrows and failures on their drinks. It was about time I joined them.

"Hey Cap, one for the house on me," I told him.

"One round free of charge!" Montgomery announced immediately. "Courtesy of this gentleman right here."

A few of the patrons thanked me, but most just looked up and raised their drinks half-heartedly. I felt as bad as they looked.

"Captain, got a new picture for you wall of pride," I told Montgomery, referring to the wall of pictures behind the bar. "It's a good one."

"Well show it," he told me.

I reached into my coat and pulled out a picture that showed Pavel and I smiling at the camera with Rob raising a crappy-looking trophy and Snark trying to reach for it. Miranda stood awkwardly apart from all of us, looking at the camera with a serious expression.

"Who's the shy chick?" a voice from behind asked.

"Murphy, how you doing?" I asked him. "Been a while."

"Tell me about it," he grunted, seating down next to me. "I take it you heard about Actium?"

"Yeah, ONI propaganda?"

"Don't think so, I had a friend on the sounds like the kind of shit his CO would pull off."

"Damn, if its true at least we showed them bastards."

"Hey Frank, how are you?"

"Lys!" I smiled at the waitress. She was wearing the standard sexy military-like uniform. "How are you?"

She rather obviously cut in between Murphy and me before running her hand through my upper arm. "Where's that girlfriend of yours?"

"You never flirt with me like that!" Murphy complained loudly.

"That's because you don't tip sweetheart," she said, turning to face him.

I shook my head. "I'm not sure I tip you that-"

"Shh," she interrupted. "Just enjoy it."

"What's up with her?" I asked Montgomery.

"She got engaged," he told me. "Got a weird way of showing her happiness, flirting and then turning guys down. I guess it's because she's got an excuse now."

"Huh," I said, agreeing with his point of view. "So, who snagged her? Helljumper? Ranger? Airborne infantry?"

"Accountant."

"Funny how things work out sometimes, eh?" Murphy said, taking a healthy swig from his drink.

"Indeed."

The conversation was pleasant. And by pleasant I mean that we barely talked and instead focused on watching the game that the screens were showing. Montgomery had installed this nice little holos in the bar that could display one of three different sports channels. Or all three at once. They were actually pretty neat. I tried to keep it within reasonable limits with my alcohol, but before I knew it there were two empty whiskey glasses and four bottles of beer tightly packed in front of me. It seemed weird that there was no tilting of the room.

Now that I think of it, my body's tolerance for alcohol had increased dramatically after I got augmentated. One more thing to thank them for.

"Hey Captain, think Pavel's coming?" I asked Montgomery.

"Not really Frank, he doesn't come as much anymore, likes to spend time with his family."

I nodded slowly. "In that case I think I'll be leaving." I swiped my card over the counter and it beeped as I got my drinks charged to me. "I'll see you later Cap. Murphy."

"Have a good one Frank," the sergeant said, not taking his eyes from the game.

"Hey Frank," Montgomery stopped me, leading me to the edge of the bar counter. "Are you all right?"

"Why do you ask?"

"You just seem…weird," he said. "I don't really know how to explain it."

"I'm not all right," I replied, patting him in the shoulder. "But I'll survive."

"It's what we do," Montgomery replied, nodding grimly. "Take care."

"I always do."

When the doors opened I was almost blinded by the sun. It took a moment for my hyper-sensitive eyes to adapt to the change in lighting before I could see everything clearly. I looked to my left and saw what looked very much like Doctor Sigfrid Vinter emerging from the strip club that stood next to the Grenadier.

"Doc?"

"Ah," he replied awkwardly. "Good afternoon."

"It's only afternoon?" I asked him, looking at my watch. "Huh."

"Isn't it a little bit early to be drinking?" he asked me.

"It's also a little bit early to be going to a strip bar."

"Point taken," he chuckled. "But every man has a right to their own guilty pleasures."

"Aren't all the crappy dancers there at this time of day?" I asked.

"Yeah, but they try so much harder."

I laughed loudly. "I thought you were still married."

"I am, but she doesn't mind my having a little bit of fun as long as it doesn't go too far."

I shrugged. Some people had different standards and points of view.

"Hey Gunny, I'm having dinner with my family, care to join?"

I was caught by surprise. "Uh, yeah, I couldn't intrude."

"I never did give you an appropriate thank you for helping my wife."

"I assure you that it isn't necessary Doc."

"Come on, I insist, besides, Astrid's been asking about you for a while."

I turned away to hide the look on my face. "Um."

"Relax, she's old enough to know that she's not in love, she just kind of thinks of you as a larger than life person."

_She's not too wrong either,_ I said to myself, indulging in a bit of self-flattering.

"Fine, but if something goes boom I don't take responsibility for it."

"Of course not," Sigfrid laughed.

The doctor's house was a pretty big one for a man in the military. I guess that medical officers got paid more than other officers. Besides, being a lieutenant commander probably had its perks.

"Honey, I'm home!" Doctor Vinter announced in an unnecessarily loud voice when he walked in. "I brought guests!"

"Guests?!" a voice came from another room. "You should've warned me bef-" Mrs. Vinter emerged from a door and looked at me for a full three seconds before her eyes went wide in recognition. "Sergeant Castillo!"

"Gunnery Sergeant," I corrected half-heartedly. "Gunny or Frank will do."

"Frank, of course, welcome!"

"Thanks," I replied nervously. This was getting really awkward for me. "I'm glad to see your leg is doing fine."

"Oh, just great, they didn't even need to operate."

"Biofoam's a modern miracle, am I right?" Sigfrid said. "Sweetheart I'm hungry, is dinner ready?"

Mrs. Vinter rolled her eyes. "It's always ready, you just press a button, remember? I was just waiting on Astrid." She turned towards me. "Can I offer you anything?"

"A glass of water would be nice," I asked her, reminding myself that I was still technically drunk.

I sat down on the living room and both of the Vinters joined me. It was extremely weird to see them talking so amicable and happily. I had heard from Doctor Vinter that they needed the time apart because they got on each other's nerves, but it certainly seemed like it helped. I was looking at them and they seemed to be as much in love with one another as anyone could be.

"Sounds like she's here," I said, hearing footsteps on the doorstep.

"Wha-" Doctor Vinter started before the sound of a door sliding open interrupted him. "Nice ears."

I shrugged.

"Hey Mom, Dad."

"How was school honey?"

"It was all right, just a bunch of lectures and- oh."

"Hey Astrid," I said, smiling.

"Frank?"

The way she said my name was slightly unnerving. The way she hugged me next was even more unnerving.

I looked at her parents over her shoulder as I patted her back awkwardly. Her dad was smiling and shaking his head. Her mom was just shaking her head. It should've been the other way around according to traditional stereotypes, but not here.

"It's been…what?"

"Since Lambari?" I asked. "Two years."

"Whoa, certainly doesn't feel like that long."

To me it did. Besides, she had most certainly grown. Genetics had been nice to her.

"Are you staying for dinner?" she asked me.

"Yes he is," her mom replied.

"I bet you have a lot of great stories, huh?" Sigfrid asked me.

"I-"

"When dad told me that you were on his ship I was _so_ excited."

"I-"

"Enough talking, dinner's ready."

_Thanks you Mrs. Vinter._

Dinner was chicken roast with mashed potatoes, green beans, asparagus, gravy, and more.

"Whoa," I said quietly.

"Yeah, we've got a very nice kitchen. It can cook pretty much anything."

I chuckled. "If I can afford one of those I'm certainly getting it. Takeout doesn't hold the same magic that it used to."

Astrid laughed and sat down. I decided to play it safe and sat next to Sigfrid and opposite the college student. On retrospect it might've been a bad decision, because she was in that age where everything that was low cut seemed fashionable.

When Katie had leaned forward to show me a little bit of cleavage I had found it sexy and alluring. The moment Astrid tried to I just felt awkward. Awkward as hell I might add. Luckily enough, her parents didn't notice and she didn't try it again after noticing that she had had an effect on me.

_Is she doing this on purpose?_

Whatever her reasons, I am thankful she only did it once. Damn it, but the girl was pretty.

At first I felt weird, like I was in a movie or a series. I had never had a very large family, just my mother, my dad, may he rest in peace, and I. My brother stopped joining us on our meals before I had a decent memory, and all I had of him were vague flashes. The point is, whenever I had dinner I had it with my uncle, with a friend, with a girl, or alone. For the first time in more than twenty years I felt like I was having an honest-to-god family dinner.

It was…nice.

"So Frank, how many times have you almost died?" Sigfrid asked me.

"Excuse me?"

"Ignore my dad, he's just trying to scare me into not joining the UNSC."

I looked at her. "You should really listen to him."

"Not you too!"

"War is never nice," her mom told her.

"Especially not this one," I added.

"Still haven't answered Frank." Doctor Vinter had a playful smile on his face.

I sighed, trying to remember all the times that I had been a little too close for comfort with Mr. Reaper. My first combat mission probably counted, but I scratched that one out because I hadn't been harmed. So, twice in Aztlan, once with the El-tee's cousin and another one right after leaving her behind.

_Damn Frank. You were cold._

That made two. Then I had that one time the brute chieftain stomped on my chest. Where the hell had that been? I couldn't even remember. With the elite in the fancy armor, back in Jericho VII. I still watched the helmet vids of that encounter from time to time. Seeing Pavel waste the so-called Arbiter with his weapon repeatedly always served to make me smile.

"That's four…" I muttered to myself, still counting. "What's your exact definition of almost died? I mean, could it be a bolt that singed my armor or do I have to actually be hit for it to count."

"I'll leave it to your judgment," Sigfrid said.

"In that case, I've been close to dying about six times and I've been clinically dead twice."

"Still, I'm sure that if I entered as a doctor I wouldn't be in the thick of it."

"You'd certainly see some rough things," I said.

"Agreed." Doctor Vinter looked into the wall with a somber expression. "You could find a better dream."

"But this is a worthy dream!" Astrid complained. "I mean, those men and women in Actium? They were heroes, every last one of them!"

"Astrid," I interrupted. "They might be heroes, but every single one of them is dead."

"You're impossible," she said, giving up. "Both of you."

"Let's talk about something else, shall we?" Mrs. Vinter suggested.

"Fine, how about you tell us about that time when you stormed that enem-"

"I hardly think that's an appropriate topic for dinner," I interrupted Sigfrid. I laughed. "How about you just tell me some of the news?" I suggested. "I haven't had much time to catch up on current events, with Liam's service and driving Hanna here I've-"

Astrid's back straightened like a bloodhound's. "Who's Hanna?"

_Shit._

"Sorry, what?" I asked, trying to buy myself some time.

"Who's Hanna?" she repeated, sounding uninterested.

"Oh, Hanna. She's-"

And then my phone rang.

"Excuse me," I excused myself. "Gotta get this." _Thank God. _"Hello?"

"Castillo, I got your message?"

"Major?"

"I can't talk much right now. I'll meet you."

"But I-"

"I know where you are. Give the Vinter family my good wishes."

I nodded mostly to myself. "Where?"

"Address is on your phone. Be there in an hour. And Castillo."

"Yes?"

"Do not call this number ever again."

The line clicked as he hung up on me. I hadn't expected Cavallaro to reply to my message, but this was good news.

"Something urgent?" Mr. Vinter asked.

"No, I just have to meet someone in an hour."

"Do you need to get going?"

"I can stay to finish the meal," I assured Mrs. Vinter.

"So, back to this Hanna of yours," Astrid said persistently.

* * *

><p><em>Thanks to SilasWhitfield and Alshep for proof-reading this chapter.<em>

_Guys, I don't want to sound like a total review whore but I do feel the need to point out that not a single one of you reviewed chapter 141, you know the one that I actually asked you to review. The one in third person? Yeah, that one. That chapter currently has 184 different visitors, not that much, but if one in every ten of you had reviewed that would've amounted to 18 reviews. Come on guys, I write this just for you, give a little something in return when I ask you. I'm sorry, but I really wanted some feedback on that one in particular, if it's not too much to ask you could probably tell me what you thought of that chapter when you review this one. Note that I didn't say if, but when :)_

_That was my equivalent of a rant, pretty sad huh, maybe I should be more assertive. But I digress, that's now what matters wight now, back to this chapter. Adama got the funeral that he deserved, even if his body was lightyears away at the time. I am extremely proud of that scene in particular, even if the rest of the chapter isn't that good. On the other hand, I always have fun when Frank finds himself in daily life situations where he has no experience. I have so much fun making him as socially awkward as possible. Not much else to say, it had been a while since we last saw Hanna, or am I imagining things?_

_I do feel that I should thank those of you that reviewed Chapter 142. So thanks guys._

_**VALKYRIE 003** worry not, answers shall come in due time. By in due time I mean that you're going to have to wait some time, but rest assured that Frank's brother will make an appearance before the war ends.  
><em>

_Stay strong._

_-casquis_


	144. Close Encounters

Chapter CXLIV: Close Encounters

**November 30, 2545 (UNSC Calendar)/**

**Esztergom (****Ezhtergom)****, Viery Territory, Reach, Epsilon Eridani System**

* * *

><p><em>"I assess the power of a will by how much resistance, pain, torture it endures and knows how to turn it to its advantage."- Friedrich Nietzsche<em>

* * *

><p>The air was cold outside, but my belly was full and I was in a good mood. That is, until I reminded where the hell I was supposed to be. My phone gave me the directions and I followed them to a partially finished apartment buildings. It was just a few blocks away, so I made it with minutes to spare. I had no trouble getting inside, seeing as the complex wasn't guarded and there were no security cameras.<p>

My breath left little clouds whenever I exhaled and my hands were beginning to feel numb. I shoved them into my pockets to keep them warm as I waited in the buildings courtyard. The building was not very tall, only forty floors or so. It curved around the middle. It was an old-fashioned design, and this building would probably end up housing lower middle class families. I would love to get an apartment on this one.

I heard a car stop right outside and then take off. Seconds later I heard footsteps. I reached for my knife instinctively, but didn't draw it. I allowed myself to relax when I saw Major Cavallaro walking towards me, back straight and head high. Somehow the body language felt off. Like he was trying to appear inconspicuous. There's nothing more conspicuous than a lone man walking into an empty construction site in the middle of the night.

"Major," I said formally.

"Follow me," he ordered, walking past me.

He climbed up two floors with me following closely in his wake. The major said nothing, instead just climbing the stairs and not even bothering to look back. On the second floor he swiped a card on a panel and a closet door opened. The closet was big enough to fit a table and two chairs, one on either end. I sat on one while Cavallaro took the other one.

"Nice little room," I noted.

"It's soundproof, usually used for torture."

"Huh," I deadpanned, managing to keep my surprise in check. "So?"

"So?" he asked me, annoyed. "You called me."

"I…I want to know everything that there is to know about this Spartan-IV project. I want to know if there's any way that the solution to my problems lies there."

Cavallaro produced a small holo-projector. "The solution to your problems lies there, but so far it's not real yet. Not that I know of at the very least."

"I need to know everything," I said, glancing at Schitzo, who was leaning on the wall behind Cavallaro. "Anything that might help."

"I'll tell you all I know," Cavallaro told me.

"Thanks, but…why?" I asked him. "Why now?"

"My reasons are my own," he replied. "And they are none of your concern. Ask."

"Fine, the Spartan-IIs, they're not the first ones."

"I thought the name was indication enough," he replied irritably.

"Where did the Ones go?"

He shook his head. "I don't know, even less people know about the Ones than they do about the Twos. If you ask me they were a failure."

"Fair enough. The Twos?"

"I know very little about them, only enough for me to do my job appropriately. It started with the Insurrection, back in the 20s, when it was about to get out of hand. This think tank decided that the best way to end it all would be by having an elite team of soldiers that could decapitate the innie leadership. The idea was…less than ethical. Every single candidate had to meet some sort of requisites. Much like you do, but theirs were even stricter."

I listened carefully to everything he said, my eyes getting wider and wider with every little thing that I heard. I admit that I shouldn't have been surprised by the revelation that the UNSC used child soldiers, I mean, I had met Carter and his team in New Constantinople, they were barely into their teens back then, but hearing the story told again only served to incense me. Kidnapping six year olds turns out to be one of the things that really piss me off.

Then he got on with the Threes.

"They _tricked_ kids into fighting for them? Orphaned kids?"

"No, they offered them the chance to fight for vengeance."

"Vengeance!" I exclaimed. "Of course they'd say yes! It's just like kidnapping, but the guy on top gets to feel better about himself!"

Cavallaro shrugged. "It's not my position to judge the morality of their actions."

I was about to point out that this was probably the only reason why he was here, but something held my tongue. "Doesn't matter," I growled. "The Threes."

I leaned back as he explained their purpose. He adorned it and put fancy words on it, but eventually it boiled down to the fact that ONI had chosen to exchange lives for time. I couldn't hold it against them, it was a necessary evil, but what I could hold against them was the way that they had done it.

Then I started asking other questions, questions about the training, the augmentations, anything that he knew about their missions, if there were other cases like mine. I asked anything and everything that I thought could help, but he stonewalled me when I asked about the fourth generation of Spartans. It went on for what seemed like hours. Eventually I found myself leaning back on the lone metal chair with my coat in the table in front of me.

"Could I be further augmentated?" I asked. "Would the problems go away?"

"It doesn't work like that."

"I'm just-I'm trying to find a solution to this."

"I thought it was clear that the solution was years away," he told me. "I came here because I gave my word that I would."

"You gave your word," I scoffed. "You're my handler Major, for all I know you might be doing this just because it'll have positive consequences on your resume."

"But I _am_ doing it. Am I not?"

"Yeah…"

This was pointless, I was getting nowhere, even if I now knew an unhealthy amount of information. Literally unhealthy, I could be killed just for knowing this. I tried to come up with more questions, but I couldn't come up with anything.

"I guess that's it then," I said bitterly. "I know a bunch of stuff I shouldn't and I'm still going to lose my mind."

"Nobody said life was fair Castillo," Major Cavallaro said, standing up. "Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to go. I think it goes without saying that this meeting never happened."

I raised my hand in agreement as he walked past me.

There was a loud noise and my face was suddenly wet.

Dust clouded my vision, but as soon as I opened my eyes I saw Cavallaro's body slam down on the metal table. Within a fraction of a second I had grabbed my coat and in a heartbeat I had jumped backwards towards the door. There was a huge hole on the wall, about the size of an orange. Major Cavallaro's head was mostly gone. I opened the door and ran out of the room, only just realizing that the wetness in my face was blood and brain matter.

When I turned the corner I saw two men with SMGs. They were in civilian clothing, but they had vests on top of their shirts. I was about to raise my hands to give up when the lead one fired a burst at me, missing by a few inches. I flipped back round the corner and drew my knife. They were about ten feet away from me, so I took a big risk.

I threw my knife at the lead gunman as I jumped out of cover. The blade hit his throat, just where I had been aiming at. The next second I tackled the falling man, still alive and choking on his blood. His companion was behind him, so both of our weights combined slammed him against the wall. Once there it was a simple matter of disarming him and slamming his head against the wall. I went a little overboard with that action, leaving a nice red splotch on the wall.

"Damn it," I cursed myself, recovering my knife even as I ran away from other voices.

On the stairwell I walked right into three other men, all of them wearing the same vests and using the same guns. I fired on the lead gunman before jumping back out of the door, closing it. I kept my foot on the door, and when they tried to open it I kicked it in, buying me some precious seconds as I ran down the hallway towards another staircase.

This time I found myself running up, after going more than halfway up the building I finally stopped. This floor already had glass on the windows, and some of the walls even had finishing on them. I allowed myself a brief moment of rest.

Next thing I know there are bright lights shining through the windows and they shattered inwards. At first I thought it was a Hornet firing at me, but it turned out to simply be deploying commandos. Two of them ran at me, holding some weird batons in their hands. If I had to make a bet I would say that they were electric shockers. I kicked at the closest assaulter's knee, hearing a loud snap as I did so. He screamed as he fell, but I paid no mind. The second man succeeded in nicking my arm. What seemed like a million volts coursed through my body, but somehow I managed to remain on my feet, more pissed than ever.

I reached for the man's wrist and grabbed it, I surprised even myself with my speed. The man yelped in pain as I squeezed, and he dropped the baton. Still he reached for his sidearm with his other hand. I was quicker, drawing my knife again and slamming it through his palm and into his leg. I considered leaving him there, but my knife was far too valuable for me to be wasted like that. Instead I yanked the blade and shot the man once in each kneecap, prompting more cries of pain.

"Who are you?" I yelled in his face.

Before he could reply I found myself under fire once more. I ran away from the gunshots and ended up in a back room of sorts. There was an empty elevator shaft without any doors. I fired what was left of my magazine before tossing the gun.

"What was the name of that movie?" Schitzo asked himself, deliberately elongating his words. "The one with the spy in the ladies swimsuit."

"Right," I grunted. Before I jumped I hesitated, but the gunshots were more than enough incentive. I jumped down the elevator shaft, angling my jump so that I would hit the wall in front. Once my feet hit it I pushed myself back.

I forgot to turn my body and miscalculated, because I hit the back of my head on the wall even as my body flew out of the elevator shaft and into safety. Before I could regain my bearings I found myself falling down again. This time I grabbed onto the ledge and somehow ended up another floor further down, but with actual solid ground under my feet.

"Whoa," I muttered incredulously.

Gunfire rang through the shaft, and I kept on running.

This time I was lucky, managing to avoid all the teams. There were a shitload of them, ideas were racing through my mind, all leading up to one conclusion. ONI had found out Cavallaro was planning to reveal sensitive information and planned to take him out. Why they hadn't bombed the building was beyond me, they could certainly play it out as a terrorist attack or an accident.

_They want me alive… They don't know what he leaked._

"Fuck," I murmured.

Half an hour later I was on the ground floor. The rear of the building seemed to hold no enemy soldiers, so I ran out as fast as I could. Five meters before I reached the wall a bright searchlight found me. Cars skidded to a halt in front of the gate and men clambered out, all of them aiming right at me with their submachine guns. I reached for my knife, but the weapons cocking stopped me mid-motion. There was no way in hell that I was going to get out of this, even with full armor and an M247 on me.

I slowly raised my hands and placed them behind my head. As I did that I sank to my knees and remained like I was. The ONI men seemed hesitant to trust my intentions, but eventually a man moved up towards me. He slammed my head with a gun and I jerked to the floor. My head started throbbing, but it wasn't enough to knock me out.

"Ouch," I replied, making my voice as annoyingly deadpan as I could.

Before I could raise my head I felt a sting in the back of my head and all was black.

* * *

><p>I woke up in a room that was identical to the one I had been in with Major Cavallaro.<p>

My heart skipped a beat when I remembered what he had said.

_Torture._

As I slowly raised my head I could feel a killing headache throbbing, but what annoyed me was an itch in the back of my neck. I tried reaching up to scratch it but was stopped abruptly with a clattering of metal. I realized that I was handcuffed to the chair.

"Gunnery Sergeant Francisco Castillo," a man in front of me said. "Welcome."

"Thanks," I grunted, trying to make myself as much of an annoyance as possible. "Nice place."

"Oh, you like it? That's good, you're probably going to be here for a while."

I shrugged, playing dumb. "I want my lawyer."

The man laughed, he was average height and rather muscular, but he had a smart and calculating face. He was in control here and he knew it. "I don't think you understand the severity of you-"

"Yeah," I interrupted. "Are you my torturer?"

"A rough word, but in essence, I am."

"Pleasure, what's your name?"

"My name is none of your concern."

"So, Torturer?"

He sighed. "Mr. Smith shall do."

"I like it," I rolled my eyes. "Very original."

His fist slammed on the table. "You're trying my patience."

I leaned back, I was scared as fuck, but my ego was too much of a dick to give up. "I apologize comrade. I know that I'm not the expert here, but shouldn't you be asking questions or something?"

Mr. Smith rubbed his temples and muttered something along the lines of us getting wittier every day. I probably wouldn't have heard it if it wasn't for my enhanced hearing.

"What did Major Cavallaro and you talk about?" he asked me.

"A bunch of stuff."

"Like what?"

"Why would I tell you?" I spat. "Your men shot at me, tried to shock me, and all in all botched killing me."

"Ah, yes, about that. You killed two men and severely injured others."

"To be fair, I was scared, there was blood on my face and Cavallaro had just gotten his face blown off."

"Why did you meet with him?"

"To talk." It wasn't a lie.

Mr. Smith sighed sadly. It was probably a very well-practiced expression. It was actually scaring me how good of an actor this guy was. "You know what this is?" he asked me, producing a strange device. It had the general shape of a knife, but it was obviously blunt, and only the tip looked like it had any edge to it.

"Can't say I do," I admitted.

"Good."

With that he slammed the tip on my right thigh.

"Mother fucker!" I yelled loudly, jerking sideways.

"No no, don't move, it'll only make it worse."

"I'll kill you, you-"

Suddenly pain flashed through my entire being, I had never before in my entire life felt as much pain as I had at that moment. Being shot, nothing. Being cut, nothing. Even the augmentations fell short to the pain. The pain was so much that it blocked out anything else from my mind. Suddenly, just like it arrived, it ceased.

"Cupid's knife," I said weakly.

"Oh, so you know how they work?"

"They cause pain to the victim unless he-" I stuttered, my leg was beginning to throb. "Unless he has affectionate thoughts for his torturer." I yelled as I felt my entire body burning once again. It was a different kind of pain this time.

"Wonder of technology," Smith nodded happily. "I don't even have to connect this baby to your neural pathways, one little stab and ready."

_Affection, love,_ I told myself. _Quick, think of something. Something good about this guy. Like what?! I mean, there's got to be something I can use!_

"You're looking at it the wrong way," Schitzo said, sounding slightly unnerved. Bad sign.

"Right," I replied. "You've got a nice beard," I told Smith. "Yeah, it's a very nice beard, not a neckbeard and it covers your face rather well. I think I like it."

The smile was wiped from his face in an instant. The smile on mine only grew bigger.

"How long did it take you to grow it? It looks good on you, flattering to your face."

"Not only are you a smart ass," he grunted. "You're actually smart."

I shrugged, very satisfied with myself.

"Oh well," he returned the shrug. Smith yanked the knife, twisting as he did. I yelped in pain, but suddenly I felt much better. "Ever heard of waterboarding?"

"What?" I asked.

"Old torture technique. Clean, efficient, and scary as hell."

"Wasn't torture supposed to be inefficient or something?"

Smith closed in on my ear. "I don't care," he whispered.

The door behind me opened and a pair of strong hands gripped my chair before it was kicked from under me. My wrist almost snapped as they tried to keep me up, but the handcuffs held. Oh, and they cut into my flesh, drawing blood.

"Hand me the towel," Smith ordered.

There was ruffling and I saw a blue towel closing in on my face. I was panicking and I struggled, but I couldn't move, instead resorting to shaking wildly and violently, but still I was held against the chair. I heard sloshing and suddenly I was drowning.

I couldn't breath, water was getting in my mouth and I tried to push it out. When I closed my mouth it got in my nose and I couldn't breath, so I opened it. For a moment I struggled against it, but then I focused every fiber of my being into not drowning.

I was expelling water from my mouth as fast as I could, but every time I spat it out I could draw in less air. Within seconds I was out of oxygen. Water was going down my trachea and I could feel myself dying.

I was dying.

I was as good as dead.

Suddenly the towel was removed and I gasped for air, coughing out water as I did.

And that's waterboarding for you," Smith said cheerily. "Again."

"No, wait!" I yelled, but my head was already covered with the wet towel.

As I felt myself dying, as I felt my body numbing, my mind panicking again. Something deep inside me told me that they wouldn't go through all this bother just to kill me, but I was still more scared than I had been in my entire life.

Again the towel was removed and I indulged myself with three long gasps, trying not to choke on water and spitting it out.

"So, why did you meet Cavallaro?"

"To talk!" I told him desperately.

"What did he say?"

"Nothing, we just got there."

"Again."

The more I went through it the worse it seemed. My hear was beating too fast, too fast.

"We know you were there for hours!" Smith yelled as water was poured into my mouth. "Don't lie to me!"

Suddenly a little something overwhelmed the panic. It didn't make the torture any worse, I would've given a hand for it to stop, but I wouldn't give this son of a bitch the…the_ satisfaction_ of beating me. I would kill him. I was going to kill him.

"I'm going to kill you," I growled as soon as I could.

Smith laughed loudly. "Get in line pal."

It went on for what seemed like hours, but every time I was allowed to breathe I spat in Smith's face. When he learned better he stood away from my face, I just threatened to kill him over and over again.

"You know, we're going to give you a serum regardless," he told me. "You're going to tell us everything, you're just making your stay here worse."

"I will kill you."

Again the drowning came, I yelled, I screamed, I begged them to stop, but they wouldn't relent. Suddenly something felt wrong. Something felt very wrong. My chest felt like someone was sitting on it and all of my body went numb.

"He's going into cardiac arrest," an unknown voice said calmly.

"Shock him," Smith ordered.

I yelled as electricity coursed through my body again, this time in my benefit.

"You lucky bastard," Smith shook his head. "Heart attack, which means that we're going to have to take a little break from the waterboarding."

"Thank god," I cried. Literally cried. "Thank god."

"Yeah, you might want to wait a little bit longer pal." Smith grunted.

Suddenly my nose shattered. The pain was immense, but it was infinitely better than getting waterboarded.

"Fuck!" I yelled. "You! Fuck you!"

_Why Frank? Just tell them goddamnit. No! As long as they don't know they'll keep you alive!_

A hook to my jaw twisted my head sideways. My hatred for this Mr. Smith was growing with every second. Suddenly I had an idea. Not a good one, but it was better than nothing. As Smith drew his arm back for another punch I took advantage of the only thing that I had.

My strength.

I made my neck and jaw stand as hard as I could just as he brought his fist towards my face. My head didn't move a single inch.

I heard bones crunching and a huge pain in my jaw. I cursed myself for being so stupid before I realized that Smith had cried out in pain.

"Mother-" he started before he caught himself. "Bastard," he insulted me. "You bastard." He looked at one of the men behind me. "Bring me the syringes, a whole dozen." Then he turned back to face me. "So, let's talk about your mom," he smiled.

"Sure you don't want an ice pack for that?" I asked, mumbling my words in account of my hurt jaw. "Might be broken."

He nodded. "You, bring me an ice pack."

"Your mom, persistent vegetative state, am I right?"

"Is that a rhetorical question?"

He sighed. "Still, I take it you care about her. A sizeable portion of your earnings goes to the hospital that keeps her alive and you've given donations to labs researching a cure for whatever she suffers."

"I'm a nice guy."

"A thanks," Smith said taking an ice bag from one of his henchmen. Instead of putting it on his hand like I expected, he gently placed it over my swollen jaw, it was humiliating. It made me hate him even more. "As I was saying…Is that too much pressure?"

"Fuck you."

"Well, I'll cut to the chase, if you don't tell me what I want to know I'll kill her."

"Some would argue it's a mercy," I bluffed.

"But not you," he replied without missing a beat. "So, I can make a call and she'll be dead in a week."

"Anything happens to her," I said. "I will make your death as slow as possible. If I don't, my brother will."

"Ah, your brother, curious that you brought him up."

I cursed myself for my stupidity.

"An interesting man your brother, fell pretty far from the tree. That he did." He seemed to want to go on, but the other man returned. "Thank you very much," Smith said, taking a small case from a pair of arms. "You know what this is?"

"A case," I replied. It had only just begun to synch in that I had had a heart attack. "Made out of…polyester?"

"Plastic, believe it or not."

"Isn't polyester a type of plastic?" I asked, smiling.

The smile was returned. "Too clever by half," he told me. "Just because of that I'll skip the courtesy of explaining you what this does."

I recoiled from the needle, but the liquid went into my arm and there was nothing I could do about it.

"You know, it's a shame that such a decorated soldier would be willing to betray his government. Your record is, I'll admit it, spotless."

As Smith droned on and on about motives, pride, and the like, I felt myself growing numb. The numbness turned to pain and the pain slowly turned to agony. It wasn't as bad as the knife, but it was close. Suddenly I felt my lungs failing to respond. They still drew in air, but not when I told them to. My eyes moved without me wanting them to. And worst of all, my heartbeat became slower. I could hear every heartbeat, each more distant than the last, weaker.

It was like being water-boarded all over again. I started panicking, trying to yell and scream, but my mouth wouldn't do what I told it to. I tried to move, but my eyelids fluttered shut, my whole body burned and I felt like I was being stabbed in the chest. My head felt empty, my brain was trying to keep my body alive. I screamed, I screamed and screamed but no sound came out. I felt myself become isolated from everything. The pain in my wrists disappeared. The pain in my right thigh disappeared. The pain all over my body just increased.

Absently I felt a prick on one of my limbs. Was it an arm? No, maybe it was a leg. Or the neck? I didn't know. All that I know is that the pain got worse before it suddenly disappeared.

_Dead?_

_No._

Suddenly I felt the pain in my wrists, the bump in my head, the cut in my leg. I felt everything. I felt fear like I had never before experienced. But something else woke up inside me. Hate. Hate very much like the one I had felt when being water-boarded. A hate so animalistic that even I was scared by it. A hate that something in the back of my head told me wasn't completely natural. And with that hate came aggression. Aggression and strength.

"Now, I can do this all day," Smith started.

I yanked my hands up. A part of me was surprised when I saw the handcuffs snap free of the table, but most of my mind focused on enjoying the expression of utter shock and fear on Smith's face.

I kicked to the back, hitting something. I felt joy when I realized I must've nailed one of the henchmen in the balls. I then kicked at Smith, slamming him against a wall. Then I turned and punched the other man in the chest. I felt bones crunching and almost laughed when I realized that they weren't mine. Suddenly I was on top of Smith.

"How?"

"I told you I would kill you," I said, too calm.

I started punching him, softly, softly for this newfound strength at least. I could hear his ribs breaking, but I avoided his face. I wanted him to feel as much pain as I had, I wanted him to suffer. I wanted him broken.

As my punches got higher he started coughing blood. Those coughs came in between pleadings of mercy and him begging me to stop. I didn't. Instead I grabbed his right hand, the swollen one, and crushed it with mine, the broken bones snapped completely and the noise was clearly heard.

"Now you can die," I said to the man.

And then everything went black.

* * *

><p>Yay, another dark room with grey walls.<p>

I groaned, my wrists were firmly tied to the chair that I was sitting in. Actually, it resembled a throne. Either of my arms was sitting comfortably on an armrest, tied down to it with three different leather belts a quarter of an inch thick and three inches wide. My legs were equally tied down to the legs of my new throne. Even my head had been firmly secured against the back of it. I tried shaking a little bit, but I couldn't move.

Besides, I had just had a heart attack and felt on the border of dying.

"Good…" the person in front of me looked at her wrist. "Morning already."

"Morning," I replied. "Smith?"

"He's alive," she replied. She sounded old.

"Damn," I cursed.

I took a second look at the woman in front of me. There was something about her, she was short and old, but there was something about her that cooled my blood as surely as liquid nitrogen would've.

"I will forgive your language because you do not seem to know who I am."

"Sorry, sir," I replied. "I haven't had a very…pleasurable evening."

"Oh, I am perfectly aware of that. In fact, I am perfectly aware of every single aspect of your miserable life."

"Sir?"

"And enough of that 'sir' bullshit. You can call me Admiral."

"Um, sorry Admiral."

"Better." The woman sat down on a chair in front of me and crossed her hands in front of her face, her cold eyes examining me.

"Careful now," Schitzo warned. "I don't like this one."

"Admiral, I know that I'm probably in no position to ask, but why am I here?"

"Because someone dropped the ball," she replied simply. "You've very obviously heard of Section Three?" Before I could open my mouth she went on. "Well, our late Major Cavallaro worked in that particular section of Naval Intelligence. Unfortunately for him, someone caught on to his plan to reveal classified information and reported him."

I nodded slowly, my head hurt and I was feeling dumb.

"Then Internal Affairs screwed up like they never before had."

"Internal Affairs?" I asked, mostly to myself.

"You didn't think that ONI would run without a special section supervising every single project, plan, operation, and employee, did you?"

"I…I never thought about it," I admitted.

"Of course you didn't," Admiral said. There was no tone to her voice, it was just cold. "IA immediately set after him, and when they saw that he was meeting with an unknown in a safe room they thought what anybody would think."

"That he was informing insurrectionists," I finished.

"Exactly. They killed him first, so that he couldn't reveal any information, but even then they botched it. They were too late."

"Admiral…"

"Shut up," she ordered. For some reason I obeyed. "Then they got you after you gave them more trouble than they would've thought one man could give."  
>I almost smiled at that.<p>

"In my defense-"

"I don't care," she interrupted me. "They did a quick background check, but Section Three hid your files so goddamned well that they didn't even come across them. They just thought you were a glorified soldier."

"Marine," I corrected instinctively. I gulped at the expression on her face.

Admiral leaned back on her chair. "Spartan-IV, huh. I authorized that project, and until now I had barely even bothered to check on updates. Probably because of a severe lack of them."

_Well, that sentence was grammatically ambiguous,_ I thought quietly.

"Of all the coincidences in the world, we got this one," she said regrettably.

"Am I going to be…disappeared?"

"No, no," she said a little bit too quickly. "You're far too valuable for that. Perhaps if you hadn't managed to break out of your handcuffs you would've been considered a failure, but that little show you put impressed some people."

"And yourself?"

"I am not so easily impressed," Admiral told me sternly. "But I have to admit that I know potential when I see it."

I almost smiled until I realized that she wasn't talking about me in particular, just about the program.

"Your little escapade resulted in the death of two of my men," she told me. "And their boss is calling for your blood. I'll handle him, and I doubt that he has the balls to go after you himself, but even then, be on the lookout."

"Admiral?"

"What?" she asked as she stood up. "I've got nothing more to say to you. You'll be assigned a new handler and we'll put this little business behind us, all right?"

"Uh, sure," I replied. _That easy? _"I won't let anything like this happen again."

Admiral laughed quietly. "Of course it won't, but not because of you, Sergeant. Oh, and before I forget, I consider letting you live as a favor, and sometimes even people like me need to call in favors."

I nodded, understanding what that implied. Until I paid her back or until I died I was leashed to that woman. I just hoped that she had better people to do the job for her.

Within minutes I was being unstrapped and led out into a small room. My knife was returned to me and I was blindfolded and sedated. When I came to I was in Hanna's living room, on her couch.

"Francisco, your luck never ceases to astound me," Schitzo said, shaking his head and smiling.

* * *

><p><em>Thanks to SilasWhitfield and Alshep for proof-reading this chapter.<em>

_First off, I'd like to thank all of you for all your reviews, seriously, it was a bunch of them, so thanks. Most of you didn't enjoy Chapter 141, mostly because it had nothing to do with anything. Now, while I plan to give those characters recurring roles or at least additional appearances I understand why you didn't enjoy it and I'll try not to do that again. Now, if you took the time to review, I'll take the time to address them. One review in particular drew my attention, it pointed out that conversations in this story are mostly one-liners. That's true, characters go back and forth very quickly, I started doing that in an attempt to mimic real-life conversations, people very rarely go on for more than a few sentences unless they're telling a story or giving a speech. Anyways, that's my justification for that. To the reviewer "Guest" who asked me to make Frank less alluring to women, remember that this story is in first person, which means that it's basically in Frank's POV. He sounds like the kind of guy that would believe himself better than he actually is._

_At **alricstrife**: The first one was related to Michael J. Fox appearing in Teen Wolf and Back in the Future. Granted, it was obscure but it was there. I liked your explanation for kings to aces, but the answer was much simpler. Kings and aces are both cards and aces to dogfighting is easy. Still, you win the bonus points, feel free to tell me what you prefer for a prize._

_I'm glad to know that so many of you really enjoy this story, I'm sorry for the delays in posting, but school's been tough lately. Just know that I'm doing my best to update as fast as I can. Also, the grammar and spelling mistakes issue has been addressed and I've asked my proof-readers to double check everything. I would do it myself, but you just have to look at the first few chapters to realize that I'm not very good at that kind of stuff._

_As for the chapter itself, I purposely made the torture not-bloody. I dislike fics where the protagonists are cut open and slashed and stabbed with impunity. I don't know why, I just dislike that. Besides, this is much more...cleaner and futuristic. Right. I used some accounts from people who were water-boarded to make this as realistic as possible. I personally haven't had the experience and I am content to keep it that way. The third and final torture was a bit of a mix from several books I've read, scary shit._

_So, the question of the day is: Do you think Frank would've broken if the torture was prolonged? Anyways, feel free to review some more (yes!) and tell me what you thought._

_Stay strong._

_-casquis_


	145. Offices

Chapter CXLV: Offices

**May 5, 2547 (UNSC Calendar)/two years later**

**UNSC **_**Flawless**_**, in orbit above Skopje, Philippus System**

* * *

><p><em>"I still don't know whether it was justifiable to defend that damned building instead of civilians."- Staff Sergeant Pavel Klaus<em>

* * *

><p>Finally picked this little piece of crap again. It's been a long time since I last wrote, and those little accounts of Sargasso and Cyrus VII barely count. Oh well, let's get to it.<p>

The last year was hell. I guess it should be enough to say that 2546 was not a kind year to humanity. Cyrus VII, Sargasso, and a dozen other worlds had been burned to a cinder by the Covenant. I had only fought in the first two, but it had been bad. Not to sound selfish, but on a personal level everything went to shit. Schitzo became an almost constant companion and others joined the program. That didn't do so well when talking about my personal life, but I had never performed better in combat. Talk about a double-edged sword, huh?

"I can't believe it took two whole years for me to become a PFC," Novak said quietly. Even when she was angry she was quiet.

"The UNSC wants everyone on the armed forces for as long as possible," Pavel informed her. "That's why none of us has had a promotion in a while."

"When was the last time you were promoted, Gunny?" Almers asked me.

"When I became a gunnery sergeant," I replied simply.

"Very informative, thanks Gunny," Beckel said with his characteristic dry sarcasm. "At least Wiremu got his promotion."

"Thank you," the man replied, obviously happy at having been named a full corporal. "You'll get a promotion eventually."

"Thanks a bunch," Almers said. "Very helpful. I can barely pay my bills."

"You live on a ship with everything for free half your life," Pavel said. "Sounds like a good deal."

"Except for the part where I'm constantly dodging incoming plasma fire."

"We wouldn't be Helljumpers," I started.

"If it were easy," everyone replied in unison.

"That's right." I banged the armrest loudly as I said that and everyone nodded in agreement. I was about to say something else to make everybody laugh when Hayes walked inside the briefing room. "Officer on deck!"

Lieutenant Hayes walked inside with her back straight and her helmet under her arm. "As you were." Hayes walked up to the podium as everyone sat back down.

"We've got our combat mission."

"Finally," someone grunted. "The jarheads are down there and have been fighting for almost a day."

"Be that as it may," Hayes said in a low growl. "We are only jumping now." As she spoke the holotable beside her and the screen behind lit up, displaying a huge complex, only five stories tall but occupying a large swath of land. "You are looking at the headquarters of Macedon Incorporated, subsidiary of Sinoviet Heavy Industries."

"Don't most building companies have their headquarters on Reach or Earth?" Royce asked.

"Do you really think that's an important question?" Hayes deadpanned. "As I was saying, the complex contains schematics as well as equipment and personnel experienced in the construction of UNSC combat vessels." The screen shifted to show a shipyard. "The complex also includes this shipyard, we are also supposed to protect it. Regular infantry is busy assisting in evacuation duties as well as trying to stall the Covenant, so every last Helljumper in the battlegroup will drop down to protect Macedon Inc."

"Sir, any intel on what we might be facing?" Master Sergeant Dajani asked.

"Ground forces are reporting both elites and brutes, not unheard of, but still pretty odd. I don't know if split chins and BKs are working together or if they're still segregated and frankly, I don't care."

"If they step in front of us, we kill them," Bee proclaimed boisterously.

"Exactly," the el-tee agreed. "Macedon's headquarters are currently being protected by a small Marine company from the _Navarone_, but they can't hold on forever, so armor up!"

"Second Squad!" I yelled even as other squad leaders called for their own men. "Move it!"

Everyone stripped down to their skivvies and put on their undersuits as fast as they could while Lieutenant Hayes gave us further intel.

"Two last things," she was saying. "Command has deemed us worthy enough to possess our very own combat AI."

Everyone stopped what they were doing and looked at Hayes. She seemed very satisfied with the impact of her words. "That's right. Al?"

One of the holotubes suddenly showed a man dressed in a long tunic with a turban of sorts covering his face. Instead of a belt he was wearing a bandolier. I know it was a he because female AIs had an annoying tendency to sexualize their avatars. "Thank you Lieutenant," it said. The AI had a very strong Arabic accent. "I am Al-Hassani, but you can call me Al. I am a 'dumb' AI. I am programmed to assist and maximize effectiveness in small unit tactics as well as to facilitate communication and logistics. Time is of an essence here, so I won't give a detailed explanation of my functions right now."  
>With that, it disappeared.<p>

"Well that was a weird speech," Miranda stated.

"Agreed," Brisbois said. In the entire time that I had known the legionnaire I don't think that I had heard him say more than three sentences outside combat situations. Even Grigori seemed a chatterbox when you compared them.

"Second Squad, pack as much ammo as you can, we might not get resupplied for a while is this goes south. Miranda, I want you to pack an SRS in addition to your regular weaponry. Apirama, take a double rocket load. Almers, Beckel, and Brisbois, you three take scopes for your MA5s, I don't plan on letting the covvie bastards get any closer than we need them to."

As I gave orders Schitzo strolled through the room, examining pieces of equipment as well as weaponry with a bored expression on his face. Thankfully, he didn't comment on my choice of words or sentence structure. It could get really annoying when that happened.

"Second Squad countoff!"

"Two," Pavel said.

"Three," Grigori echoed, his voice sounding equally bored.

"Four," Apirama said.

"Five," Beckel said.

"Six," Almers said.

"Sept," Brisbois said.

"Huit," Miranda said with a smile.

"You don't get to speak French Miri," Beckel told her jokingly. Still she appeared flustered. In almost three years as an ODST she hadn't grown out of her chronic shyness.

She could tackle an elite to the ground and stab it repeatedly, but she couldn't take a joke.

"Hey Gunny," Beckel called out. "Check it out." Beckel drew his knife and started spinning it in his hand, twirling it around his fingers and then finally having it spin a couple of times on his palm. "Not bad, eh?"

"Still got ways to go," I told him, drawing my own knife and going through the same series of tricks much faster than he had, only to end up with a ridiculously flashy spin through all of my right hand fingers before throwing it and catching it in a reverse grip. If there was something that I still prided myself in for acquiring naturally, it was my skill with the knife.

"Damn Gunny," Beckel whistled. "No wonder you pull that thing out every chance you get."

"You know," Almers started. "Out of context-"

"Shut it," Beckel interrupted.

"Smart choice," I told the man when he didn't finish his sentence. "Everyone ready?"

"We just did a countoff Frank…" Pavel reminded me.

I sighed. "Right. Pods."

"How exactly do we go?" Hayes asked from the middle of the drop room.

"We go feet first!" we loudly replied.

I climbed inside my pod, cracking my knuckles after securing my battle rifle to its designated holster. My sidearm was heavy on my thigh and grenades pulled down my webbing. I was ready to kill some bastards. My head started throbbing as the door closed from above, but the pain subsided within a few seconds. I had been getting more and more of those flash headaches lately, they didn't really do anything other than make me want to shoot something, so in this situation it might've actually been beneficial.

Red, yellow, green.

As always, my stomach lurched when we left the gravity of the ship. Below me I could see the skies of Skopje. This planet was three times as big as Earth or Reach, meaning that its atmosphere was a whole lot taller. We already were in low orbit, but it would take more than just thirty seconds to make it all the way down, increasing the chances of a malfunction in one of the pods. Not for the first time I caught myself praying unconsciously.

The first thing that I heard after we entered that mesosphere was countless radio transmissions from ground troops and civilian law enforcement. The next thing I noticed was that our distance to the ground was three hundred kilometers as opposed to a mere hundred.

"Holy shit that's a big storm," Wiremu pointed out.

I could see it, a tropical storm that was incredibly large to our left, it was too far away to cause any trouble to our pods, but it was simply enormous, covering an area the size of Eposz.

"Lieutenant, I'm picking combat chatter from the Marine unit at Macedon Headquarters, they are under heavy fire," Al-Hassani said suddenly, his voice broadcasted through all the pods.

"Sir, Second Squad can help while you secure the target," I offered.

"Ok, Third Squad and First Squad, we'll secure the west wing of the building, other ODST forces will take care of the rest."

"Second Squad, redirect to the following coordinates," I said as I used satellite imagery to locate the Marines' position.

I felt my pod shift a fraction of a degree as the temperature got higher and higher.

"I've never been on a jump this long," Pavel said weakly, he was no doubt sweating as profusely as I was.

"Almost one minute," Beckel said. "I would've thought that breaking a personal record would be more exciting."

As the large lot that was Macedon Incorporated Headquarters appeared we did some final adjustments to our trajectories and braced for impact.

The enemy unit closest to the main gate consisted of several squads of grunts commanded by a couple of elites. Our pods landed amongst them, Serge even managed to squash a little gas sucker with his pod.

As our doors opened we all emerged, firing into pre-designated fields of fire, taking out anything hostile in front of us. It was a maneuver that we had practiced several times before, even if this was only the first time we used it in combat. I could feel bullets flying a foot or two away from me, but none of them hit me. After three seconds the entire advance party was dead.

"Clear!" Miranda yelled.

"Set your booby traps," I ordered. "And head towards friendly forces."

The booby traps were similar to trip mines, but instead of producing a huge concussive and shrapnel explosion whenever someone stepped over them they just sent shrapnel whenever someone tried to use the pods for cover. It would serve to deny the opportunity of cover to the Covenant.

"Lieutenant," I called out to the man in charge of the Marine unit. "Everything all right?"

"If you consider twenty percent casualties all right then yeah," the woman replied with a husky voice. "Glad you arrived, Gunny."

I shrugged. "Sir, we have several units of Helljumpers dropping in to defend this location, you can call for evacuation, god knows you deserve it."

The lieutenant nodded and turned to her troops. "Pack up, I'm calling for extraction. Keep your guards up or I'll make sure that you stay behind."

"Second Squad, we've got the gate until more of our fellow Helljumpers decide to…jump in. See what I did there?"

Everybody groaned loudly, the Marines included, but they promptly glanced at their feet and tried to appear meek when I glared at them.

I examined the area that we would be guarding. No doubt that the Covenant would try to come through here first. There was a huge wrought iron gate that marked the main entrance to the complex, a relatively tall wall covered the offices while the shipyards themselves were only protected by chain link fences. From my position I could only see the gate and the walls surrounding it.

The entrance was two hundred meters away from the gate, and there was little to no cover in between the outer gate and the inner entrance other than a few abandoned cars and our booby-trapped pods.

The entrance to the building was like most building entrances. Huge glass windows that provided no real cover or concealment, but the Marines had set up barricades with sandbags and metal slabs. It was protectable enough and nothing short of high-explosive would be able to break down the barricades.

"Miranda, second floor, set up a nice perch, you know the rules for sniping."

She nodded and took off.

"Everyone else, bunker down here."

A Pelican arrived two minutes later, leaving us a bunch of ammunition and taking off with the exhausted and battered Marines. Second Squad was very calm, no one was saying much of anything and everybody was aiming at the gates. Smoke from the cars and dust from our pods blocked our view, gunfire and explosions were faint in the background, and every minute or so a bunch of HEVs would land hard in or around the complex. The minimap on my HUD displayed several ODST units protecting the area, but most of the recon drones had been shot down and I was willing to bet that the battlegroup and the defense fleet were having trouble.

"Enemy hostiles spotted, company strength, Grunts only," Miranda announced. "I don't see any other races."

"Whoa, back to basics then?" Pavel asked. "They haven't used wave tactics in ages."

"Not on us at the very least," I added.

"They're closing in," Miranda said pressingly. "Might want to get the-"

"When was the last time you had to face covvies using wave tactics?" Beckel asked me.

"I don't remember the last time, but I sure as hell remember the first one," I groaned. "Eden, one of the Outer Colonies."

"First deployment?" Almers asked.

"Yeah, I was the only one on my unit that got out alive, hell maybe the only one of my ship."

"I know a guy from Eden once," Apirama mentioned. "It was supposed to be stunningly beautiful, kind of like Arcadia."

"Shame," Pavel said.

"They are breaching the perimeter!" Miranda cried.

"Relax Miranda," Beckel told her. "We got this, just don't go around wasting your sniper rounds."

"I kn-whatever."

"Pavs?" I asked

"With pleasure."

His machine gun started roaring as the grunts tried to go through the gates. They had no cover other than the bodies of the ones in front of them, and even those wouldn't last long against sustained fire from Pavel's LMG.

"What rounds are you using?" I asked. "AP shredders?"

"Just shredders."

"Assault rifles, join the barrage," I ordered after taking in the information. "Do not let them get any closer than that."

Of course, that was easier said than done, especially when the Covenant seemed to have a nearly endless supply of grunts and plasma pistols. After fifteen minutes the metal barriers were starting to let out steam and I could even feel the heat through the titanium plate armor.

"If they keep coming like this we're going to run out of ammo," Almers said.

"You're right," I agreed. "Lieutenant Hayes."

"Yes Gunny?" she replied immediately.

"We might need some reinforcements, another squad should do, preferably one with several machine guns."

"We can't help right now, as you might've deduced, we're a little bit busy, I'll see if I can send one of the other ODST squads to your position."

"Thanks, sir."

I aimed down my scope and hit a trio of grunts that had made their way past the pods and were running towards a car. They all fell down to the ground, where I made sure that they were dead by shooting them again. My rifle was managing to fire constantly without any malfunctions, but at this rate it was bound to jam or overheat soon.

"They're going to overwhelm us," Wiremu warned in a low growl.

"Not just yet," Miranda said. "I'm reading friendly forces inbound, they're coming up behind you."

Sure enough, a squad composed of five Helljumpers emerged from behind the lobby and helped lay down suppressive fire.

"Thanks corporal," I told their leader. "We were starting to feel like we needed to share this party."

"My pleasure Gunny," he replied. "Little gas suckers are hitting us hard from every angle."

"What they lack in skill they make up for in numbers," Pavel said.

"Also what they lack in intelligence," Beckel added. "Or courage, dignity, tenacity, leadership. You name it."

"Just keep firing."

With our numbers bolstered we managed to keep the grunts at bay, but the booby traps on our pods had gone off and the grunts were relentless, they kept firing at us and eventually one of us would be hit. If they didn't stop sending their troops on suicidal charges we would just tire ourselves out.

"Ah-fuck!" Wiremu yelled. "I'm hit!"

"Almers, go check on him," I ordered calmly. If Wiremu had been seriously injured he wouldn't be subtle about it.

"Plasma hit your shoulder, armor absorbed most of it," Almers told the Maori Helljumper. "You're gonna get a bunch of blisters and a hell of a time moving your shoulder. Want biofoam?"

"Nah, I can handle it," he replied. "Burns like a bitch."

"Yes, that's why the injury in particular is called a burn."

"Fuck you Almers," Wiremu said, pushing him aside.

The grunts steadily advanced until they were less than ten meters away from our position, never relenting, always charging into certain death. You had to at least admire their perseverance in the face of these odds. It wasn't until they got within knifing distance of our position that they eventually stopped coming at us. One of the five additional Helljumpers bashed in the last grunt's head with his boot before we realized that we were actually safe for the moment.

"Reload," I ordered. "Fill up your magazines, jackals are up."

The only sound that was audible from that point was that of thirteen Helljumpers jamming bullets into empty magazines with what seemed to be inhuman speed. Truly it was just a question of practice.

"Jackal phalanxes moving up," Miranda warned from the second floor. "Sharpshooters behind them. Should I take them out?"

I thought about that for a second. "Yeah, start shooting them. Might as well get them before they enter their effective range."

Immediately after I gave the command a shot rang out. I had seen Miranda handle the SRS a couple of times before, the huge sniper rifle's recoil usually shook her violently, much to my (and everybody else's) amusement. Still, I couldn't complain about her aim, on a good day she could go toe to toe with Snark. Provided that Snark was on a bad day, of course.

When the jackals appeared through the gate all I could see was the bright shining shield gauntlets. None of them were firing on us yet, but everyone was keeping their heads low to avoid being hit by a marksman. They were all uncanny in their ability to snipe.

"Open up!" I ordered.

As we fired on them some of our bullets broke through, but the bird behind the one that died would take their position. The jackals slowly advanced, making use of the pods and the cars as well as their own shields to protect themselves. Unlike the dozens of grunts littering the courtyard, I could only see a pair of jackal bodies left behind. These ones were crafty.

The jackals moved forward despite our constant gunfire as well as Miranda's sniping. I was only glad that she was thinning down the sharpshooters.

When the phalanx got past the pods the sharpshooters started firing on us. We all ducked down and stopped firing as green rounds screamed past. The weird noises that the carbines made filled the air and the bullets hit the barricades. I ducked down as three separate sharpshooters aimed for my head. I was behind cover in a second, but the rounds were still uncomfortably close.

"Return fire! Return fire!" someone yelled.

I did as I was told even though no one here outranked me.

I hit a sharpshooter and it collapsed over one of its shield bearing comrades. They had gained more ground and were now as close as the grunts had gotten.

The next move I made was to smash the butt of my rifle into a jackal's face, that's how close they'd gotten. I heard bones crunch but I was already firing at a second jackal. I killed three more before the rest of my ODSTs drove back the jackals. The vultures overlapped their shields again and slowly stepped back until they reached the cars. Once they were there they started firing on us again while they overturned the cars to have better cover.

"Wraith incoming!" Miranda cried.

A muttering of shits and craps was all that anybody could do before the bright blue ball landed right in front of the barricades. The explosion vaporized a pile of sandbags and threw an ODST backwards, as far as I could tell he was still alive, two of his comrades grabbed him by either arm and dragged him back, the jackals pushed forward.

"Fall back!" I yelled. "Fall back!"

Three more Wraith mortar shots lobbed overhead, but we were already inside the building before they landed. A dozen jackals were already inside, firing wildly at us, trying to hit us. Like their bigger compatriots, the brutes, they had this annoying tendency to lose their cool and go apeshit. I had a couple of jackal-induced scars to prove it.

One of them landed on my back, clawing at my neck with its hands, trying to pierce the nomex undersuit. I turned around and landed on the reception desk, I heard the jackal's spine shatter as my weight pressed it against the corner of the desk. Its hands went limp and it slipped down to the ground, unmoving. I fired a burst at another jackal aiming at Caboose before a bright pink needle embedded itself in my chest plate. I jumped backwards as more flew above me and yanked it out a moment before it detonated. I could feel some of the shards going through my armor and immediately I felt wetness in those areas.

"Barricade the entrance!" I ordered, firing full automatic into the entrance, trying to stall the wave of jackals that were trying to come in.

Wiremu and Pavel, two of the biggest men in here jumped forward and grabbed a couple of sofas , pushing them over. Three jackals tried to jump over them, but they were all shot down. A second later someone from the support ODST squad pushed over a large wooden table. That prevented any more jackals from jumping over, but it wasn't nearly strong enough to prevent carbine rounds from punching through. As a few green rounds flew past the barricade we piled up more and more random shit until we had a veritable mountain of furniture and potted plants protecting the entrance.

"Lieutenant," I said, opening a line to Hayes. "We've been pushed back inside the lobby by jackals, we have control of it, but the outside gate is lost to us. What's the situation over there?"

"Similar, shipyards are still under friendly forces and most of the personnel have been evacuated, but we're not going to be able to hold out much longer."

"Roger, should we leave?"

"Negative Gunny, not until command tells us to."

"Copy that," I said, cutting the connection. Before much time passed I opened a new one. "Al-Hassani?"

"Please, call me Al."

"Al," I conceded. "Any ideas?"

"I see that you've already placed your men around the entrance, providing separate fields of fire to any that try to come in. Have you considered that the enemy might breach a different entrance?"

"Yes, hence the sniper on the second floor."

"Good, my only recommendation would be to increase the number of shooters on the second story."

"Thanks Al," I said. "I'll call you when I need you."

"Gunnery Sergeant," Al said, his face disappearing from the screen in my HUD.

"Corporal," I called to the leader of the other squad. "Your man?"

"His face and stomach were badly burnt, but your medic is taking care of him."

"Good. Are there any sharpshooters in your squad?"

"Negative Gunny, you asked for machine guns, you got them."

"That'll do," I said, observing the heavy M247 on his hands. "Send one of your men to join my sniper in the second floor, there are probably dozens of Covenant outside, trying to bring this barricade down, tell him to be…indiscriminate."

"Understood," he nodded, turning towards the other men in his squad, barking orders.

With the entrance barricaded and no windows nearby I ordered for most of the doors that could lead into the lobby to be closed. I only left the ones that lead straight into the building open. That way the likelihood of being flanked was drastically reduced and we could easily fall back towards another position. It was a very basic strategy, but for some reason I felt as if I was in a medieval castle.

"So, what's the plan?" Pavel asked me.

"We stay here until we are allowed to evacuate," I replied. "Not much else, really, just hold those bastards back for as long as we can."

Pavel sighed. "This is starting to get tiring."

"I know," I told him, patting his shoulder. "I know."

Pavel was about to pat my shoulder in return when he abruptly stopped, staring at the jagged spikes still protruding from my shoulder plate. "You should really take those out."

"Can't, not without breaking the plate," I told him for the eleventh time. "Besides, it's useful when tackling."

"No doubt," he agreed. "You know, I wouldn't be surprised if you decided to bring a two-handed sword into battle one day."

I laughed. "I _am_ surprised that you don't seem to use that shotgun I bought you anymore. It was really expensive you know?"

"I know," he laughed. "Besides, we have Caboose and Beckel, another shotgun would just be dead weight."

"Maybe so, but it's still pretty awesome."

"Yeah, love firing that thing," he admitted. "Still, my gun isn't bad either, the roar is quite…empowering."

"I guess that you need to feel powerful after spending so much with your wife," I said.

A couple of the guys on my squad laughed as Pavel pushed me, but the humor was short-lived, as the barricades on the door started shaking.

"Miranda, talk to me."

"Three Phantom dropships are inbound as well as half a dozen Spirits. Most of the jackals down there are dead."

"What's the shaking then?"

"Brutes."

"I thought we were fighting elites," one of the Helljumpers form the other squad said.

"This covvie fleet isn't segregated," Beckel told him. "God knows why."

"Wiremu, climb up and see if you can take out any of the dropships," I ordered him. "Serge, can you see anything outside?"

The Frenchman was looking through a small hole in the barricade. He looked back to me and shook his head before peering through the hole once again. Less than three seconds later he jerked backwards and fell on his ass. "Daemon!"

Everyone jumped away from the barricade just before it exploded. Splinters from the huge table hit and bounced off my armor, cotton and feathers slowly floated back down and dirt from huge pots flew everywhere. I was back on my feet before anybody else. For my reaction time I got the courtesy of becoming the first target.

A brute fired at me with its spiker, I dove to the side before it could properly aim and scrambled towards a column for protection. Serge fired at the brute with his rifle, killing it after a long, sustained burst. The rest of the ODSTs were just beginning to get up and back and ready. A couple of MA5s opened on the brutes, but they were twelve and had the element of surprise with them.

"Flashbang out!" someone yelled.

The loud noise was felt even through my sealed helmet, but we took advantage of it and killed three of the brutes before the rest jumped back and deployed shield covers. Our rounds pinged off them before we stopped firing. Right now we didn't have the firepower to punch through.

"Miranda, can you drop a grenade right outside of the entrance form your position?"

"Yeah," she replied, "but I'll be exposing myself."

"Do it."

"Gunny, I don't think you heard me. I'll be exposing myself."

"Miranda, if you do not do it I swear to god I will personally go up there and throw you out of the window!"

I didn't get a reply, but three seconds later a grenade detonated behind the brutes. The detonation was followed by an increase in fire on the second floor.

The explosion itself hurt the brutes, it didn't kill them, but two of them fell to the floor, blood pouring out from countless shrapnel wounds.

"Cover me!" Pavel yelled as he emerged from cover and slammed into one of the deployable covers. The shields turned red as he impacted them, but otherwise didn't budge.

A brute tried firing over the top with a mauler, but three ODSTs hit it in the hand before it could even aim down at Pavel. When Pavel placed his M247L over the shields and started firing the brutes didn't have the same luck. They were hit by several armor piercing rounds, their thick skins and hides doing nothing to stop the depleted uranium. Three more died before the rest pulled back. One of them, however, remained behind, enraged beyond reason.

It went berserk.

"Pavel! Get out of there!" I yelled.

My friend jumped to the side just as the brute shattered the deployable cover as if it was glass. The huge ape jumped at Pavel only to be pushed back by a blast from Beckel's shotgun. Almers ducked next to Pavel and yanked him back violently. As the brute attempted to bring both its fists down on them Beckel fired again, pushing it further backwards and buying Almers more time to drag Pavel out. Everyone else then proceeded to riddle the alien with holes, killing it.

"Miranda, start sniping the officers!" I ordered. "Now!"

"I'm trying!" she yelled.

"Well try harder! Wiremu, how's your mission progressing?!"

"They're onto me, can't aim at them."

"God fucking dammit," I cursed. "Get back down here, we need more guns!" _You useless fuck. _"Everyone else, drag the bodies, I want a nice barricade made out of them."

As the ODSTs set up I aimed down the front gate. The brutes had set up a bunch of deployable covers and now had a veritable fortress right outside our doorstep. I could see them trying to spot Miranda, even as her rounds pierced their leaders' skulls. The little fountains of blood that accompanied the headshots were a lovely sight, morale boosting.

"Lieutenant Hayes, we have brutes on our perimeter."

"You and me both," she told me. "There are reinforcements on the way, but I don't think they're headed your way."

"And why would that be?" I asked irritably.

"Because there's nothing of strategic value on your section, you're just buying the rest of us time."

"There is something of _tactical_ value here," I replied. "Thirteen Helljumpers."

"Mind your tone Castillo," she snapped. "And follow orders."

As she cut the line I punched a wall, muttering angrily.

"Daemon's aiming at the door again!"

I barely had time to move to the side before a plasma round flew by. I could see the bright shell fly through the air past me and hit the back wall of the lobby entrance. From what little I could tell, it didn't hit anybody or even harm anybody, but it brought the wall and a large section of the ceiling down.

"Wiremu, change of plans, take that fucker out," I said, coughing while my helmet's filters activated. "Now!"

"All right, I'm on it," he grunted.

The damage was only a semi-literal smoke screen for the brutes. A squad of them ran through the doors, firing with their grenade launchers wildly. When one of them ran past me I fired a burst at its head. It actually took two more steps before it collapsed. Another one met the same fate before the third one took notice of me and swung its huge bayonet at my head. By then it was a simple matter of taking a step back and allowing Pavel and Serge to kill the alien. Our quick reaction had surprised them, and they started falling quickly as coordinated fire hit them from all directions.

"Grab the launchers," I said, lifting one of them myself. They were incredibly heavy, but I could use the bayonet as a monopod of sorts to help aim and support the weapon.

I fired on the deployable shields as Pavel and another ODST joined me, grunting and groaning as they lifted the heavy brute shots. A couple of the brutes on the other side were hit by the explosive grenades, but the rest started returning fire before we could cause any damage.

An explosion rocked the building.

"Wiremu, you ok?"

"Daemon got a bead on me," he groaned. "I'm fine. I'm fine." He fired another rocket and I could hear the detonation in the distance. "Got that fucker, it didn't expect me to survive that."

"Now get back down here."

There was a pause before he sighed. "Right away."

"Why aren't they doing mass charges?" one of the ODSTs asked. "They would've overwhelmed us on the first try."

"Too proud to try that," his leader replied. "Don't give them any ideas."

"Gunny, I'm out of sniper rounds, getting back down."

"Understood, bring the gunner as well."

"Yes."

"Yes?" I asked. "That's a weird way to reply."

"Yes, sir?"

"No, I was just criticizing your choice of words," I told her. "Doesn't matter. Get down here."

While we switched positions and reloaded our weapons the brutes prepared for a third attempt. This time they almost succeeded. I examined the brute corpses covering the ground. They were certainly stupid, having little knowledge of tactics and almost no desire to implement them, that was the only thing keeping us alive right now, since our orders were pretty much suicidal.

"I don't get why they don't-ugh!"

I looked towards Beckel and saw that a brute stalker had managed to sneak in through the door. Beckel was currently being held in the air by the two bayonets of the brute's spiker. They were embedded halfway inside his belly. I turned and brought my rifle up, knowing that it was too late already. Even as I did that the brute tossed Beckel aside like a rag doll and aimed at me.

I got a burst before it managed to fire, but it only grabbed its shoulder before it fired again, this time the two spikes hit one of the other Helljumpers in the leg, right above the knee. He fell to the floor with a cry of pain as Pavel opened up on the stalker. Blood sprayed the walls as it fell down under sustained fire.

"How the hell did it get past us?!" Almers asked, running towards Beckel's immobile body.

"Status?" I asked.

"He's got a pulse, weak."

"Shit," I muttered, running towards him. "Prognosis."

"Not good," Almers replied hoarsely. "Blades went through several organs, he needs a hospital."

"Yeah, we're not getting that anytime soon," I said, watching as Almers poured bifoam on the wounds. "Try to keep him stable."

The Helljumper with two spikes in his leg was groaning in pain as one of his squadmates examined the wounds.

"Nothing serious," he assured his friend. "Relax and you'll be fine, you can still provide covering fire."

The wounded ODST visibly relaxed as painkillers made effect, but one could still guess that he was in terrible pain.

"Frank, we need to evacuate them," Pavel told me. "It's too dangerous here."

"And leave our position?" I asked. "If we do that we might as well put a bullet in our heads Pavel. There are a hundred brutes out there! You think we can outrun them with two wounded? One of them critical?"

"Gunny, Beckel's not going to make it unless we pull him out," Serge told me. It really spoke volumes that he had chosen to speak up for his friend.

I thought about it. "Almers, you go with the two wounded," I ordered. "Miranda?"

"Over here!" she announced from one of the doors. "Just got here, what happe- oh my god!"

"You go with them," I said. "And you," I pointed to one of the other ODSTs. You help your friend to our command post. As soon as you get there I want you all back. Everyone who's staying, we are going to be pushed back, be ready to fall back on my word."

"Yes, sir!"

When the brutes next attacked the brought down another large portion of the ceiling down with their grenade launchers. The rubble and debris barely worked for cover, but it did serve to slow down the hulking aliens as they came through. They were in difficult positions, and because of that several of them fell without any of us being hit. Pavel was making noise with his weapon and everybody else was firing full automatic, it was good that we had brought so much extra ammunition, because otherwise we would've long since ran out.

"Is that a-?"

"Chieftain!"

Wiremu fired a rocket, but the huge brute rolled to the side before swiping at my man with its hammer. Wiremu jumped up but the hammer nicked his foot, tripping him sideways. As the chieftain prepared for a killing strike I fired at it, forcing it to run for cover. Wiremu stood up and ran back to safety. The chieftain emerged again, swinging at an ODST. The man ducked underneath the blow and jumped back, firing as he did so. He managed to get to safety when Serge slashed the brute's Achilles tendon with a knife. The brute didn't fall down, instead it attempted to hit Serge, but the legionnaire was way past him already, hiding behind a column.

"Burn the fucker!"

Pavel was the first to fire, but the brute lunged towards him with his hammer, slamming his weapon out of his hands and forcing him back. I fired a burst at the chieftain, hitting its ornate helmet bur barely scratching it. It was enough to draw its attention towards me, and it swung for my head. This time I ducked as the hammer swung by before lunging forward. I hit the brute with my left shoulder, the one without any spikes on. Instead of attacking I spun around it and ran away.

This time it was Wiremu who tackled the brute. The former rugby player slammed into a ten foot tall monster with impressive speed.

The brute fell down despite what most would expect from that encounter.

At that point Wiremu bashed down on the brute's head with his rifle before the chieftain swiped at him, sending him flying backwards. Before it could get back up Serge appeared from nowhere and landed on its head with both feet. He stabbed at the brute's eyes with his knife before switching targets and going for the throat. The chieftain stopped struggling after Serge had stabbed his throat for the fifth time.

The French ODST slowly got up and dusted himself off. He looked down at the dead chieftain and kicked its helmet off. "Très bien motherfucker."

I laughed, it was the first time that I had heard Serge do a one-liner.

"Shit, another one!"

I almost exploded. Not literally, but two chieftains is bound to piss anyone off. This one was even larger than the last, carrying not one, but _two_ fuel rods, one on either arm. It aimed right at me.

"What the-"

Then, something incredibly happened.

The brute chieftain disappeared before it could fire and vaporize me. In its place stood a Single Occupant Exoatmospheric Insertion Vehicle, commonly known as a Human Entry Vehicle, drop pod, or egg.

"Hell of an entrance," Schitzo said admiringly.

The pod's door fell down to reveal nothing short of miraculous.

"Spartan," I said in a low tone. "Spartan! You come at a helluva time," I said, swallowing my pride.

The huge freak seemed taken aback by my statements, probably surprised at the familiarity that I was addressing it with. "Gunnery Sergeant," it said in a distinctively male voice. I don't think I recognized it. "I'll just be a moment."

"Polite too," Schitzo chuckled. "Why don't you marry it."

Gunfire and plasma fire merged in the background, but I merely watched as the Spartan burned through the ranks of the brutes, killing them as easy as I could kill toddlers. His two M7 SMGs riddling through the unarmored brutes and pounding the armored officers into submission. More than once he made use of kicks and punches to kill the aliens. About halfway through his onslaught the ODSTs with me joined in on the fun, firing at the disarrayed brutes and speeding up the process. Three minutes later the entire attack force had been completely wiped out.

"Gunnery Sergeant," the Spartan said when it returned. "Are you in need of assistance?"

"Not anymore," I said, looking at the corpses.

"Gunny," Al-Hassani suddenly said. "A company-sized unit of elites is moving towards your position."

"Gunny?" the Spartan asked after I received the message, expecting my answer to change.

"Negative, we can handle them, you should help others in a more critical situations."

The Spartan looked at me closely before nodding and sprinting away.

"So they are more than propaganda," the corporal said in a quiet voice. "I always thought it was just a story."

"Well, now you know it's not," I said. "Wipe that look off your face and prepare to repel the enemy, we're in for one helluva time."

It was technically a wrong statement, seeing as his visor was polarized and I couldn't see his face, but I could guess at the wide-eyed, gaping expression with little doubt. The man was in shock. It would wash away soon enough, and he'd start hating them again, just like every other Helljumper.

"You turned away a Spartan?" Pavel asked loudly. "Are you insane?!"

"No, I'm just being nice," I replied quietly. "We can handle this, at least for some time."

I could see the familiar shapes of elite warriors moving through the outer gates, some of them had energy swords out. I examined the ammo count on my rifle and made sure that all my knives were unstrapped.

"Count your rounds," I said, echoing that old phrase that meant everything was lost. "And make them work for it."

* * *

><p><em>Thanks to SilasWhitfield and Alshep for proof-reading this chapter.<em>

_So, I did another time skip. Two full years too. Many of you have been pointing out that this story needs to get to the point where we see Frank and whoever's still alive on Reach and Earth. Hey, with some (bad) luck they might even get to step foot on one of the Halos. Anyways, a lot of serious shit happened in those two years. Frank got his new handler, Frank's head got worse, Frank's squad got better, and Frank still thinks that everything revolves around him. Well, this story _is_ about him after all. Just a warning, I'm not going to explore whatever happened in the time skip until after a couple of chapters. By a couple I mean four. Two of them involve a castle and one of them involves a cavalry charge._

_Well, enough about that. This is a battle that actually happened in the Halo universe, not one that I just decided to pull off my ass. It's bound to be interesting, at least that's my opinion. This part is only the beginning, and while it isn't a strategically important battle I promise that some crazy shit will take place here. You know, just another day in the life._

_I was reading through a Battlestar Galactica/Stargate SG-1 crossover and while the story is very good and it is extremely well written, she length of the chapters annoyed me. All of the chapters were 10,000+ words long. Now, I'm only saying this because some of my chapters are as long as that. I wanted to know if you guys rather I keep them that long or at the 5,000-7,000 range with a few exceptions, for example this chapter is about 7,600 words long. Anyways, just tell me what you think._

_In other news, MC finally showed up in the Forward Unto Dawn miniseries. He did not disappoint, even if there was a little bit too much slow motion. Halo 4 is coming out soon! Yay!_

_Thank you guys for taking some time off your day to review last chapter and please do not hesitate to do it again after reading this one._

_Stay strong._

_-casquis_


	146. Lullabies and Nightmares

Chapter CXLVI: Lullabies and Nightmares

**May 5, 2547 (UNSC Calendar)/**

**UNSC **_**Flawless**_**, in orbit above Skopje, Philippus System**

* * *

><p><em>"You get used to it, no way around it. I know some guys with stress disorder that can't sleep without the sound anymore. They have to play recordings of explosions and gunfire just to fall asleep."<em>

* * *

><p>I reached towards the first chieftain and searched its body. There were several spike grenades attached to it. I grabbed them all and tossed them to Pavel and Wiremu while keeping two for myself. The goddamned things were almost as big as my arm, heavy as hell too. They made for excellent clubs (and crude demolition charges), but it was difficult to throw the explosives very far. I had to strap them over my back instead of on my thighs, but if everything went according to expectations they wouldn't be there for long.<p>

Expectations were not good.

"Set up fields of fire! Aim for the officers! I want everybody to keep their cool and do not fall back until I give the order!"

The elites came en masse, firing wildly. They didn't attempt to use cover, instead trying the same tactics that the brutes had attempted. When it came down to it the elites were great tacticians and knew how to fight, but sometimes their pride prevented them from reaching their full potential. More often than not that saved our the huge apes, the split chins actually had the talent to pull it off. They used their superior shielding and skills to drive us back. Combined with smarter fire and maneuver tactics as well as leapfrogging they gave us some trouble. Within three minutes we were forced to evacuate to our fallback point. We were in a long hallway, with several sandbags piled on the sides to give us cover. Only the second half of the hallway had any cover, the other half was a killzone, and a rather good one at that.

The elites came again, firing at us, suppressing our fire with their own and trying to move forward. The lack of cover meant that we could take them out easily, but eventually the volume of firepower that they were displaying was more than we could handle.

"Fall back!" I ordered. "Fall back!"

I ran to catch up with my team, hiding behind the last corner on the hallway. I waved at my teammates to run while I stayed there, drawing one of the huge spike grenades from my back. As I heard heavy steps I swung it. I smiled when I saw an elite minor's legs fly forward in an almost comical way. As it fell down I brought the spike grenade down with even more force, driving the spikes even further into its chest. I activated the explosive and ran away, diving before it detonated.

"Fire, fire, fire!"

Right now Pavel was our most powerful weapon. His machine gun could match the plasma repeaters that the enemy had on them and then some. He even yelled loudly as his weapon ate through the rounds of ammunition. We could've used Beckel's shotgun right now, the pellets would certainly bounce off the walls and ceiling, multiplying the damage output. Caboose was firing his own M90, but two is better than one most of the time.

"Two girls better than one, right Frank?" Schitzo taunted. He hadn't let it go and neither had I.

I ignored him, barely even registering the comment as I fired on an elite that had been unfortunate enough to try to shoot from cover. Its shields were already drained and it only took one burst for its head to burst like a melon. The minor behind it got splattered with blood and a second later filled with buckshot. Two kills in as many seconds, not bad.

"Frag out!" Miranda cried. Her voice broke during the yell, not because of fear or nervousness, but because that kind of awkward things just tended to happen to her.

"Corporal," I yelled. "Fire on the right side, we need to stall them!"

"Copy that Gunny."

Explosions and gunfire dueled with roars and plasma, we tried our best, but in the end they were more and they were good. We had to fall back yet again. Our next position was a security booth that had guarded the entrance to the inner sections of the Macedon building. It would serve as a nice spot for the time being, even if it did make firing from cover a little bit awkward.

"Spike grenade!" Wiremu warned as he tossed his softball bat-sized explosive at the ceiling behind us. When we turned the corner we heard the explosion followed by the sound of shrapnel bouncing off walls and cries of anger and pain.

"Nice job," Pavel complimented.

"Gunny!"

"Almers!" I yelled. "Glad to have you back, and you two as well. Beckel?"

"He…he might still make it."

"That's good."

This time the elites managed to get within knifing distance. Two cloaked split chins managed to sneak past our fields of fire and attempted to stab at Caboose. Years of battles and honed reflexes saved his ass, but his chest piece was left with a huge gash from side to side. He raised his shotgun and fired at the elite as soon as he landed from his backwards jump. The buckshot tore through the shields, armor, and skin like it was paper and the elite collapsed.

The other one instead aimed for me, probably recognizing me as the leader. I was crouching when it slashed at me with a sword. As I dropped to the ground the plasma blade tore through the rock wall, raising dust and making a loud noise. I swiped at the elite's legs with my full strength, not trying to subconsciously hide it anymore. The kick was strong enough to bring the elite to the ground, its back slamming against the floor loudly. I jumped on top of it and grabbed its left jaws, tearing them to the side until I heard cracks. The stealth elite then backhanded me across the chest, sending me flying backwards.

The corporal had come to my aid, planting his foot on the elite's chest and aiming at its face. The elite swiped the ODST's feet from under him and attempted to deliver a lethal haymaker to his face, but the corporal placed his rifle in between the alien's fist and his visor, using his elbows on the ground as support.

While this happened a battle was raging around us.

I barely registered the bite wounds on my hand as I reached for my sidearm. I clicked the safety off and fired into the elite. The rounds collided with its ribs, but the shields stopped them in their tracks. It didn't matter, it was only a distraction. I managed to get behind the stunned alien with my knife already on my hand and lifted its head towards my own before stabbing it in the neck violently. I turned towards the corporal, who fired no less than eight rounds into the elite, finally killing it.

"I swear they are only getting harder to kill," he grunted.

"Agreed," I said. "Get down!"

Needle's flew past both of our heads and detonated harmlessly against a wall.

"Keep their heads down!" I yelled at Pavel.

"I'm running out of ammo!"

"Goddamn!" Wiremu cursed, jumping back as plasma hit his position. "Gunny…"

"We can hold them off!" I insisted. "Use your flashbangs!"

It was almost certainly a futile attempt, the elites had long since gotten used to our flashbangs, and they had developed some sort of polarizing function on their lenses and visors. Sometimes it worked and sometimes it didn't, but it would be difficult for those devices to simply change the tide of the battle.

I was right, the elites barely reacted, save for one that dropped its weapon and was gunned down almost immediately.

"Fall back!" I ordered once again.

In our next position we met up with Third Squad.

"Frank!" Master Sergeant Dajani called out. "Good to see you."

"Same here Yas," I replied. "Helluva pounding we're taking."

He nodded. "Two squads and a half are better than one." He looked around, examining the open room that had served as a mess hall for employees some time back, it was easier to defend than most of our previous positions. "Second Squad and you four take center and right flank, Third Squad, we've got our left!"

The elites burst through the doors seconds after we had taken position. Sandbags and overturned tables had made our cover a small fortress while the elites had none of the advantage, a couple of them tried deploying shields, but they were clearly caught off guard by our fortified position and a dozen of them fell before they could react appropriately to the situation.

"Good job," Dajani complimented. "Show those fuckers."

In battle everybody's a pottymouth.

The next time the elites attempted to assault the position they tossed several deployable covers. They started firing from behind them holding an advantage over us because they could actually see where they were firing at without having to leave cover. Moments later elites carrying doors and tables burst through, positioning them in between the shield walls. They had made their own little barricade and we now found ourselves exchanging potshots.

"Wiremu," I called to the Maori. "Still have rockets?"

"Indoors?!" three different men exclaimed.

"Um…Gunny?" Miranda started. "We could bring the-"

"Wiremu?" I pressed, ignoring the girl.

"I-I do?"

"Well use them goddamnit!"

"Gunny, range is extremely close, they're less than fifteen meters away, plus the backblast could-"

"Either you fire them or I will," I growled.

He sighed.

"Heads down!"

The following explosion rocked the whole room, with pieces of the ceiling falling down on top of us. The results were clearly favorable though, with three elites now unrecognizable slabs of meat and one more out of the fight until he grew another pair of legs.

"Frank!" Dajani boomed. "Do not do that again without my explicit permission!"

I nodded, knowing that he couldn't see me. Just as well, he knew me well enough to know that my silence was agreement.

I ducked behind the tables and sandbags as plasma occasionally flew above us, the battle had slowly been dying down, no doubt the elites were expecting reinforcements. I had Serge to one side and Miranda to the other. The Frenchman was also taking a rest, taking deep breaths in order to make the tiredness fade away. Miranda looked annoyed and frustrated, but she hadn't been hit.

"Miranda, you still don't have a Purple Heart, do you?"

"What? No."

I examined her. "Those scratches don't qualify, do they."

"That's what command says."

"Uh-huh, do you want one?"

"No!" she exclaimed, sounding flustered.

"Just wondering," I shrugged.

"Frank…" Pavel started.

"Relax, I'm not planning anything, at least not yet."

A plasma grenade atomized part of our barrier, lightly scorching an ODSTs armor.

"Ok, I just came up with a plan!" I yelled loudly.

"About goddamned time!" Almers complained. "Do tell Gunny."

"It's a one man plan," I replied. "Just cover me."

"Covering fire!" Dajani shouted.

I ran towards the back of the room and ducked behind a partially collapsed column. Once there I tossed a small charge of C-12 at the ceiling. It was barely large enough for me to fit the minuscule detonator into it, but it would do the job. The explosion brought down a square yard of the ceiling, allowing me to jump and pull myself up the second floor. Once there I ran toards the direction of the elites and then some before placing another C-12 charge. This one would've been enough to blow through a frigate's plating. The thinnest section of it, but still.

For a moment I thought that I overdid it, but then I realized that I had placed just the right amount of explosive on the floor. A huge hole had emerged and the explosion itself had killed one elite. I tossed all my grenades down the hole, throwing them in different directions. The booms and ensuing cries of pain were music to my ears. I then started firing wildly at any movement I saw, producing even more cries. I enjoyed my advantageous position until I saw a green light.

"Shit," I muttered as I jumped backwards, a fuel rod shot only just missing me. It hit the ceiling above me and brought several pounds worth of rocks down on my chest, knocking the wind out of me. That would certainly bruise later.

"Hunter!" I yelled as loud as I could. "Fall back!"

Before I knew it another rocket was fired. Indoors. Again. The explosion brought down the floor from underneath me, and the air was driven out of my lungs once more as I landed on my back. I looked up with a groan to see a hunter's legs still standing and the walls behind it splattered in orange. Its bond brother roared in anger, the sound reverberating through my bones.

"Pull him out!" someone yelled.

Before I knew it two pairs of hands were dragging me back towards safety. I complained and got up just in time to hear Dajani give the fall back order and ran for my life as an angry hunter charged after us.

The hunter was berserk, tearing through the walls and ceiling of the room as we tried to enter a hallway. It was right on our ass, bashing at empty air with its shield while it tried to avenge its partner's death. I was the furthest one to the back and I didn't really feel like elbowing someone out of the way to save myself.

So I turned and fired a burst at the hunter.

Aaaand it had no effect whatsoever.

The hunter jumped forward, shattering pieces of the ceiling as it did so, landing right next to me.

"Gunny!" the ODST corporal yelled, running towards me and firing his assault rifle at the hunter.

"Duck!" I shouted at him.

We both ducked as the hunter swiped at us with its shield. He was only marginally slower than I was, but it was enough to fail him. As I ducked underneath the swing I could see the corporal dropping to the floor. The flat of the hunter's shield hit him in the head and chest, dragging his body towards the wall. As the ODST was hammered in between the behemoth's arm and the rock walls I heard a crunch that made me gag. I could see a splash of blood against the wall and the corporal's corpse sitting down with half its head missing.

"Shit!" I said again, running away as fast as I could, not caring if I left anybody behind me.

"Concentrate your fire!" Dajani ordered. "Aim for the neck!"

The ones of us that were still alive followed his orders, and eventually the hunter stopped running and crouched into a defensive position. That gave Wiremu enough time to fire another rocket at the hunter, finally taking it out for good.

"Head towards the cable car," Dajani said. "We're abandoning the building!"

The cable cars were packed to the brim with us Helljumpers, the elites that arrived first, the ones on our toes got hit with a gunfire barrage for their eagerness, the cable cars started away towards the main building overseeing the shipyards themselves.

"Tahlia, we held as long as we could, but we're falling back."

There was a pause and a sigh on the other side. "Understood," Hayes replied. "Good job."

Plasma flew towards us, but we were too far away from the rifles to have any accuracy.

* * *

><p>"Lieutenant!" I yelled just as Dajani called Hayes by her first name. She promptly turned to look at us. "El-tee, where's Beckel."<p>

"There," she replied, pointing to a door without stopping. "Yassir?" she asked her second-in-command.

"Tahlia, we need to review our…" his voice faded away as I walked away from him and towards the infirmary.

The room was like a house of horrors, small tables and chairs had been dragged all the way to the walls while the larger desks were being used as operating beds. Dry and fresh blood adorned the floor and the walls, the moment I stepped inside I could feel my boots slipping on the floor, the blood making slushing sounds as I stepped over it. Several corpsmen and two doctors were working furiously to stabilize an ODST that had lost an arm and both his legs.

"Stop, he's dead," one doctor muttered.

"Vinters?" I asked in shock. "What are you doing here?"

"Frank? Long story," he replied, barely glancing at me and instead examining another soldier's wounds. "What do you need?"

"PFC Axel Beckel."

"I'm afraid I don't know who you're talking about."

I was surprised by the change on the doctor. He was barely glancing at me, giving me short and sharp replied when he usually talked warmly and was polite. I couldn't blame him, but it was still unusual.

"Spiker bayonets to the belly," I said. "Came in critical."

"Oh, him. He's on the adjoining room, no longer critical."

If that was no longer critical then the situation was bad.

I walked out of the room, leaving red-tinged boot prints on the floor. The other room didn't have as much blood on the ground, but some of the patients were bleeding through their bandages and into the floor. This was bad.

I quickly located Beckel and walked up to him. His shotgun had been placed next to the desk that was acting as his bed, but his assault rifle was nowhere to be seen. His helmet and upper body armor were also off, piled messily underneath the desk. He was covered in bandages, with two large red blots covering most of his front. He was breathing slowly, carefully. He was still one hundred percent awake.

"Gunny?" he asked weakly, only to groan in pain after that. "They say that-"

"Quiet," I ordered. "Don't waste energy." I very carefully lifted the top of the bandages and examined the very edge of the wound. The skin had been messily sewn back together and there was still some biofoam trying to keep everything from breaking apart. I was no doctor, but I knew that he could still die. "I'll talk to the el-tee about getting a medvac. Try to get some sleep."

Beckel nodded weakly, but didn't mention that he would be asleep if the pain would let him. I guess the pain was too much for his usual sarcasm to cope with.

"You did good out there," I said right before leaving. I cursed myself for not meaning it, he had managed to get stabbed in the belly by a low-ranking brute, but I could not let him know that.

Outside I could see a flurry of activity, the landing bay for the cable cars was full of soldiers moving ammo boxes and with Snark and two other snipers firing at the other side of the man made cliff. Occasionally they'd duck from a beam rifle, but for the time we had the advantage. Helljumpers and the personnel that had failed to be evacuated in time shuffled from side to side, creating barricades or running back towards the other end of this building. Luckily for us, we were on top of a mesa of sorts, about a hundred meters prominent and the same in width. The building itself was circular and overlooked the entire shipyards.

This was the only point of entrance that was intact, the stairs had been demolished and other cable cars had been turned off, we had ourselves a little fortress.

I gave us maybe three hours.

I barely glanced at the Spartan as it walked by, trying to appear unimpressed with it. Everybody else stared and gaped, chatting amongst themselves.

"Lucky us, eh?" Pavel askd me, filling his ammo boxes with more ammunition.

"Yeah," I replied, sounding sarcastic but not really meaning it. "Can you believe that most of these guys never even heard about a Spartan?"

He shrugged in an exaggerated manner. "It's a big military, and they were supposed to be a big secret and whatnot."

"I somehow feel like that never applied to us."

Pavel laughed loudly. "Maybe you're right."

"Castillo." I turned to see Hayes walking up to me. "You and your squad are resting for the time being."

"But sir, we're more than able to fight."

"We need backup units," she explained. "This might drag out."

I refrained from making a comment, I believed that we would be overrun rather quickly, but she seemed to dislike me for some reason so I didn't voice my concerns.

"Very well, sir," I said, snapping to attention before returning to my previous position. "Any place where we can rest up?"

"Radio room," she told me. "Tell your squad to go there."

"Sir." I opened a line to my squad. "Second Squad, to the radio room, we're getting some rest."

To be fair, I did enjoy the rest. I managed to doze off a little bit, using my helmet as a pillow while everybody else tried to get some sleep. We were all used to sleeping with gunfire and explosions around us. A lullaby for a nightmare, they called it. It was fitting, if you were sung to sleep by bullets and shells, then you were bound to have bad dreams.

I was no exception, in the little time that I was asleep I saw the faces of the first ODSTs, Marines, and soldiers that had served under me in the _Inconvenience_, they had thrown their lives away without even caring, but I hadn't bothered to help or even try to save them. Then I saw everybody else, getting hurt, getting killed, in pain. It was my fault, they told me. It was all my fault.

"Castillo!"

"What?" I growled.

"Your squad is up," Sergeant Greg Williams from Third Squad told me. "Bravo Bay."

I nodded. "Second Squad!"

Nobody complained, they were disciplined men. The closest I got to that was Almers groaning a little bit as he got up, but he pulled back the bolt on his MA5 as everybody else took the safeties off. We trotted towards the second cable car port. Or bay, or landing area, I don't know how they're called. Two squads were already there, firing on a group of grunts and elites that had landed inside. The aliens had set up deployable covers, but they were getting hammered from all sides.

"Our backup's here," someone yelled. "Pull out."

I shook hands with some sergeant as his squad pulled out while mine took positions. We finished off the rest of the aliens with little effort.

"Phantom coming in," Al-Hassani warned, his face briefly appearing on my HUD. "Be ready."

"Ready, ready!" Wiremu yelled.

"Ready, ready!" the other squad echoed loudly.

Apparently that's what his team had cried before starting a play in rugby, it was supposed to intimidate the opposing faction, here it was good for boosting morale, everybody felt more badass than they actually were.

The humming got louder until a Phantom appeared on the open space. The cables were still there and were too thick for anything short of a power saw to cut through them, instead the aliens jumped several feet and landed, some of them rolling to divert the force of their falls. The grunt door gunner did an excellent job of suppressing us, firing on our positions wildly to keep our heads down. I wasn't able to look up until after the Phantom left and by that time the aliens had taken cover in the cable cars and had set up deployable covers.

"Elites go out first," I reminded everybody. "Miri, see if your rounds can punch through the cars, keep them with their heads down!"

For five minutes we did what we could, shooting at them from our fixed positions. We had a slight advantage when it came to altitude, standing about half a floor higher as well as having superior cover, but their plasma weaponry was heating up the metal walls, making it highly uncomfortable for us to stay where we were.

"Serge, throw a frag," I ordered. He was the best throw. Well, in truth he was the most precise, I was the one that could throw the farthest. "Second cable car, that elite's getting annoying."

He complied with my order and finished the elite as it staggered backwards, its shields drained from the explosion. Two other grunts were killed by the shrapnel, and I could see the body of one that had tried to vault over the window and to safety. It was bleeding blue blood into the floor.

A burst of plasma made me duck before heavy footsteps and bursts of gunfire drew my attention. I saw the Spartan jump over our line before landing amongst the surviving aliens. It killed the nearest elite with a flashy kick to the jaw. The grunts were peppered with SMG fire and the remaining aliens were quickly dispatched in a combination of gunfire and close quarters physical combat.

"I need a rocket launcher," it announced suddenly, its submachine guns hanging by his sides, still smoking.

"Wiremu," I ordered the man, extending my hand. As he handed me his rocket launcher I turned to the super soldier. "Catch."

He deftly holstered one of his M7s before catching the heavy weapon with one hand. I was amazed at myself for having been able to throw it that far, but the man just had to outshine me. He stood on the edge of the open space where the cable cars stopped, a hundred meter fall a step away. A couple of plasma bolts hit near him, but he promptly jumped back towards the wall, his back pressed firmly against it.

I had to duck as another Phantom hovered over the entrance. Then I saw the Spartan fire two rockets at the belly of the ship at point-blank range. The missiles hit the engines, and soon the Phantom was bucking wildly, trying to stay afloat. It hit the cables before sliding downwards and finally tipping over the side. Before it fell the other set of cables made contact with it and it stayed there, an upside down Phantom, hanging a hundred meters from the ground without any way out of there.

"Huh," I muttered in surprise. "Interesting."

"Take a picture," Pavel laughed. "I know I am."

"Then put a caption on it," Miranda laughed.

"No," Almers said. "No captions."

For a moment I thought that Miri would quip something back, but she was still awkward around people and instead remained quiet. I still didn't get how she couldn't give shit to anybody. She had been an ODST for over two years now.

"Thanks for the assist," Wiremu told the Spartan as he was given his SPANKr back.

The Spartan barely nodded before he was off, reloading his guns as he went.

"Damn," Miranda exclaimed in admiration.

I rolled my eyes. "Close your mouth," I snapped at her. "You'll drool all over your visor."

I could picture her snapping her jaw up before turning to aim down the range.

"Three Spirit dropships," Al warned. "Their shape should allow them to deploy the troops further in."

"Thanks," I said sarcastically. "Prepare grenades."

Only two Spirits could fit side by side on the opening, but they made sure to drop all their troops at the same time. Every last one was an elite wearing a full face helmet. Spec Ops. They started firing at us with their carbines while rolling away from our fire. The grenades took out a couple of them, but the rest found cover or deployed their shields. When the third dropship came in I knew that we were in some trouble.

"Fuck!" Caboose cried as a needle pierced his forearm, going all the way through. In pain, he stood up and cursed, pressing his hand against the entry wound. Another burst of plasma fire made him duck, but another elite fired a bolt that caught him in the back of the knee and made him collapse. "Yebat, yebat, yebat! Chertobski derm'mo!"

I had never seen Caboose lose his composure like that so I was immediately worried. I ran to him and dragged him behind cover again. His leg and arm were bleeding profusely, and he was quietly cursing in Russian. I looked at his wounds carefully before looking up at him once more. He met my stare through his visor and slowly, almost regretfully, shook his head.

"Keep your head down," I told him. "We should be relieved in a few minutes."

A few minutes turned into half an hour of intense combat with the elites. Wiremu was nicked in the waist, but he could fight on. I myself got hit twice in the chest, but the armor held well enough and dissipated the heat as well as destabilized the plasma. Pavel, as per usual, escaped completely unscathed, with Serge and Almers only getting close calls. In the end it was only the timely entry of the Spartan that allowed us to push back the elites.

Literally. The last elite alive was actually knocked off the edge in a combined effort of the ODSTs of the other squad. They laughed loudly for thirty seconds after that until they realized that one of their own had been hit right in between the eyes by a miracle shot. The atmosphere changed as they solemnly carried their dead comrade out of the room while I observed them, Caboose's good arm wrapped around my shoulder and his wounded leg bent at a slight angle so that he wouldn't put any pressure on it.

I carried him out, with the Spartan keeping guard as two other squads came to replace us. I entered the room for the mildly wounded and sat him down on a chair before calling for a medic.

"Just don't piss your pants," I teased.

"I'll try," he replied, not amused.

I then walked into the room where Beckel was, he was still awake, his eyes marked told me that he was in serious pain, but no more morphine or painkillers could be spared on him. He was stable and others weren't. He looked at me and smiled weakly.

"Gunny…"

"What did I say about talking?" I snapped.

"Just, could you?" He slowly lifted an arm and pointed at a can of coke sitting on a table opposite him.

"That can't possibly be healthy," I told him. "You have _two_ holes in your stomach."

"If I die I die. I know what the docs are saying."

I shrugged. It was his funeral, not mine. I reached for the can and gave it to him.

"Not gonna open it for me?" he asked.

I shook my head.

He shrugged and then grunted in pain before slowly putting his other hand on the top of the can. He opened it and for some reason it exploded in his face, getting him wet and sticky.

Yeah, kinky stuff.

"What?"

"This is the second time," I said disapprovingly. "Remember Acheron-VII?" I left the room without waiting for him to reply, silently hoping that he would make it in time to be saved. I walked to a bathroom and took off my helmet, examining my face.

I suffered from a great deal of vanity and was lucky that I considered myself good looking enough not to worry about that most of the time, but right now, looking at my face, I looked like shit. There were huge bags under my eyes and a large bruise on my forehead from having the helmet secured against it for so long. My left jaw was slightly swollen and I had snot dripping from both nostrils. My hair was messed up and even with water it wouldn't stay down.

I tried reassuring myself that I still had my natural good lucks underneath all that, but I decided to stop looking at my face and instead took off my chest piece and front armor, exposing the burn that the two plasma bolts had inflicted.

"Puta madre," I cursed when I saw the extent of the damage. I would've imagined raw skin and maybe some blistering, but it was evidently worse. I had no skin in the area in between my nipples and my solar plexus, blood and pus oozing from the wounds. Below that I had black bruised covering most of my ribs. "Carajo," I cursed again, throwing my armor aside and punching the window, producing a spider web-like pattern of cracks.

I cursed again, this time in English before picking up my shit and walking back towards the radio room.

"What up Gunny, showing off your abs?" Wiremu said jokingly before he could see the red spot of raw skin on my chest. "Goddamn…"

"Holy shit Gunny, you ok?" Miranda asked me.

Hell, even Serge looked over with a worried look on his face.

I dismissed them all, tossing my armor to the floor and kicking at my helmet when it rolled away from the pile. Pavel tossed me a can of biofoam and I poured some on my hand before gingerly rubbing it on my chest.

"Fuck!" I grunted as the biofoam started taking effect. The thousands of little stinging needles were closing off the wounds and mending tissue. After the pain was gone I looked down at my chest and was relieved to see that it was a much lighter shade of pink than it had been before. Putting my armor back on was painful but manageable.

"Frank…" Pavel asked after everybody had gotten over the sight of seeing my glorious naked upper body.

"I'm fine," I assured him. "Flesh wound."

"We're not in a movie," he told me. "There's no such thing as a flesh wound."

"Sometimes it feels like we're in one," I sighed. "With all this crazy shit going on. Relax man, I'm fine, it hurts like a bitch but shouldn't do much more than that. After I'm out of here I'll get skin grafts or surgery and I'll be as good as new."

"You sure?" he asked me.

"Yes!" I said loudly. "Just shut up."

I closed my eyes and managed to fall asleep once again, this time I was woken up by Snark, he prodded me with his sniper rifle. It was a good decision on his part, because I grabbed the weapon and yanked in an attempt to get the attacker, but I soon realized that there was no attacker. It had all been in my dreams once again.

"Sarge," he said. "You're up."

"Did you just poke me with the _barrel_ of your gun?" I growled.

"Uh…no?"

I glared at him and shook my head before deciding to let it go. "Second Squad up," I boomed, emphasizing the last word. "Let's go, let's go, let's go!"  
>Everybody slapped fresh magazines onto their weapons and shoved them into their webbing. No grenades this time, we were running low.<p>

"Follow me," Snark said, beckoning with his head.

He lead us through the small complex and towards a set of stairs. I shook my head and groaned as I saw that we would have to guard the rooftops. Several boxes and barriers had been set up as cover, but we were still exposed to enemy aircraft.

"Thanks," I nodded at Snark. "Can you spare Bee?"

"He's already up here," he replied. "Good luck. I don't envy you."

I slapped his shoulder and laughed without much humor before putting my helmet back on. "Wiremu, go see if you can get any more missiles, we might need them."

"Move along Api," Almers joked, slapping him in the butt as he walked past him. "And don't loiter!"

The hatch door leading to the roof hissed as it opened slowly. "Move, move, move!" I yelled, running out into the open. "Miranda and Serge, you get the right flank, cover the exiting squad!"

I stayed out with my weapon aimed up as the other ODSTs that had been here ran back down, some of them bleeding and one of them seriously injured. Bee tried running past me only to run into my outstretched arm. His head turned to look at me and I slowly shook my head. He depolarized his visor so that I could see his face and looked at me pleadingly. I shook my head again.

Bee stood straight and nodded before running back out with his Spartan Laser on his shoulder.

"Get out of the way!" someone warned.

I jumped to the left just in time to avoid a Banshee strafing us. The blue bolts produced hissing and little clouds of vapor from the spots where they hit, but otherwise they didn't hit anybody. As it flew past us I fired several bursts at it. Snark would've been useful right about now, but he was doing his own thing below. A couple of the bursts nicked the right wing of the craft and it veered off slightly before massed gunfire forced it to abandon a second attempt at a strafing run.

"Wiremu!" I cried into my comm.

"I'm going goddamit!" he replied, plasma fire loud in the background. "They took Alpha landing whatever, god fucking damn!"

"Phantom!"

All of a sudden there was a dropship directly overhead. I hated the ones that had active camouflage. It was one of those models that had gravity lifts underneath instead of doors. Well, maybe it was the same model with the doors closed. No matter, elites and jackals dropped, with the smaller aliens making a circular wall of sorts to protect the bigger warriors.

It was a terribly overused technique, but it was also terribly effective. Even when we tried firing at the gaps we usually missed. The few bullets that made it through were stopped dead in their tracks by the elite's own personal shields.

"Frag out!" someone yelled.

The explosion killed three jackals and then all hell broke loose on the aliens. They were partially surrounded and had two full squads of battle-hardened ODSTs firing on their faces. It took all of five seconds for them to collapse on top of one another.

"I'm here!" Wiremu announced all of a sudden. The Phantom was already leaving and one of the Helljumpers on the other squad was groaning and putting pressure on a burn on his leg.

"You're late," Pavel told him.

"I'm sorry, I-"

"Sh!" I quieted them. "Listen."

Sure enough, two Phantom's showed up a second later.

"Take out the one on the right!" I yelled. "Take cover!"

Wiremu fired two rockets at the dropship and it started putting out smoke, but it didn't stop. He reloaded in what must've been record speed and fired another rocket before a pink bolt hit his SPANKr. He dropped the smoking gun and kicked it away from him just in case it blew up. I looked up to see another Phantom directly overhead. Fucking stealth craft.

"Skirmishers!"

There were only two of them, but they managed to bring Miranda to the ground and before she killed one and Caboose shot the other. I turned to fire on the other Phantom's gunners but suddenly felt a heavy weight on my shoulders. Not a metaphorical weight mind you, a real one.

My head slammed into the rooftop as a jackal landed on my back. I pushed myself up and then threw the creature over my head and to the ground. Just as I looked back up I saw an elite aiming at me with a repeater. I didn't have time to reach for my rifle and my sidearm would've barely hurt it. It was too far away for close quarters combat.

"If only you had…" Schitzo started, but I already knew what to do.

I ducked and lifted the jackal. It was still alive but shaken up. I put my arm across its neck and it jerked as the elite fired three shots, not caring if it hit its ally. I used my other hand to lift the shield gauntlet and smiled when it held under the rapid plasma fire. I didn't even bother to draw my own sidearm, instead just yanking the jackal's pistol from its still-twitching hands and pulling the trigger down. I didn't let go until I had charged the shot for three seconds.

"Smile."

The green blob hit the elite right in the chest and I could see its shields disappear in a storm of yellow lightning.

"Serge!" I called out.

He turned from whatever he was doing and fired one quick burst into the back of the elite's head before firing a longer one into its body. He nodded at me and went back to his own business.

"Frank!" Behind you!" Pavel warned.

I was on a roll. I turned with the jackal's body still in my arms and stopped or deflected a bunch of needles from another jackal. I fired at its feet and finished it off, buying myself a moment's respite. I used that to yank the gauntlet from the jackal and put it on my won hand. I don't think I have to describe just how incredibly badass I felt when I activated the red shield, its hissing noise fading into a hum before disappearing.

My rifle was down on the floor a few feet away. I grabbed it and took a kneeling position before a bunch of plasma bolts slammed into my shield.

"Not so much fun now, dickhead," I told the elite that had shot at me. I knocked its shields off with three bursts before it tried to dive for cover. Miranda put it out with a neat headshot that went in through one of its eyes. "Get their shields!" I yelled.

The moment there was a lull every ODST grabbed a jackal's corpse and pulled the gauntlet out. There were a few mutterings regarding the new equipment.

"It feels…" Miranda started.

"Wrong," Caboose finished for her, examining his blue shield.

I was about to start yelling when another Phantom appeared from below. "You've got to be kidding me."  
>Three high-ranking elites dropped from the cargo bay. One of them had not one, but two energy swords and the other two had one turret each. They were crouching, no doubt having trouble carrying the huge weapon, but they were carrying it.<p>

An ODST jumped away while firing his sidearm at the leader, a field marshal by the looks of him. The enormous elite jumped towards the man and impaled him through the chest with one sword before decapitating him with his second sword. I allowed myself a sigh of relief when I realized that he didn't belong to my squad or platoon. Then the spell broke.

The ODSTs that were left fired at the three aliens and they opened up in return. One of the gunners went down almost immediately, but the other one managed to make all of us dive for cover. Rapid plasma fire flew overhead and anyone that tried to take a peek was aimed at.

"What now?" Almers asked.

"Fall back," I ordered. "To the hatch."

"Blind fire," Pavel said, mostly to himself. He raised his machine gun and started firing in the general direction of the enemy. His arms shook from the recoil, but his massive muscles managed to keep the M247L relatively stable.

I stayed with him as everybody ran back and the ordered him to fall back, leaving me alone.

After all, a leader is supposed to be the first one in and last one out, right?

_Fucking idiot,_ I told myself. _You should've run._

I played dead as the two elites walked past my position, the gunner barely spared me a glance before I jumped it. By jumped it I mean tackled of course. Its knees gave way under him and it collapsed. I could just imaging the train of thought that went through his head as I slammed the butt of my rifle on its face, teeth falling from its jaws. I jumped away just as the swordsman tried to impale me, the twin points instead went through the elite on the ground.

I allowed myself a small smile as the field marshal yanked its sword free with a growl.

It examined its weapon before looking at me. "My blade is stained by the blood of my comrade," it said in surprisingly good English, its voice a deep baritone that would've intimidated anyone. "Yours will have to clean the stain."

It didn't give me a warning as it lunged at me with both swords. I barely had time to activate the gauntlet as the plasma blades flew at me. Both of them hit the shield and the elite growled. The shield pulsed red but it held. I took a small step forward and pushed the two swords away before rolling sideways as the elite slashed at me.

"Too slow," I taunted.

"You mean to make me angry, vermin?" it asked. "A futile attempt."

I shrugged and fired at it with my battle rifle, it stumbled a little bit under the automatic fire before it lunged at me again, it attempted to decapitate me with both swords, but I dodged underneath them. A follow-up strike collided with my shield, completely draining it.

"Shit," I cursed. Jumping away and pulling out my pistol. I needed to get as much lead as I could into this alien's shields if I was to have any chance. "Can't handle the heat?" I asked it.

"The weather does not concern me, and neither should it concern you."

"Colloquialism," I explained. "Figure of speech."

"Human language confuses me," it admitted, trying to stab my belly but falling just an inch short.

"I'm confused by how you can stand to look yourself in the mirror," I taunted once again, firing both weapons at it in a futile attempt to finish off whatever was left of its shields.

The field master roared and charged at me, I was only able to survive through sheer reflexes. The swords were a whirlwind around me and I don't know how, but I managed to avoid the blades every time. I thanked the ONI bastards.

"You missed," I said as soon as I managed to put some distance between it and myself.

"You should not feel so full of yourself, imp," it told me. "You are just delaying the inevitable."

"Imp?" I asked it, reloading my rifle. "Why imp? I'm a full blown demon, bitch."

To my surprise, the elite's jaws spread in slight shock when I said that, but it started attacking with even more ferocity. I ducked and dodged and ran, but it was faster and stronger, it was only a matter of time before it caught up with me and gutted me from groin to neck.

Something similar to that was about to happen, with me on the ground, rolling, and the elite raising one of its sword arms. A burst of gunfire hit its hand, forcing him to drop the sword. It embedded itself on the rooftop before it deactivated. We both turned to see Pavel with his machine gun aiming at the elite. He fired another burst before the field marshal drew a plasma rifle from its thigh and fired at my friend, making him run for cover.

Then, through a series of events that I still fail to comprehend, the rest of my squad came up to my aid and suddenly Miranda found herself hostage, an energy sword pressed against her neck. Second Squad aimed at the elite but didn't fire. I myself placed its head in my pistol's sights, but didn't shoot.

"Damn it Miri," I cursed. "What the hell?"

"Sorry Gunny." She sounded genuinely apologetic.

"Not one more step human," the elite addressed me. "Or your man will be missing its brains!"

Miranda scoffed in offense as the elite said man instead of woman, but I was already pulling the trigger. Three bullets slammed into the elite's head before it jerked backwards, giving Miranda enough time to elbow it and stomp on its foot, getting away.

The whole squad opened up, but the elite ran out of the rooftop before jumping.

"Shit," Pavel growled.

We moved to the edge only to see the elite swing down one of the thick cables and disappear inside one of the windows.

"Fucking ninja," Almers complained.

I was about to mutter in agreement when Al-Hassani's avatar appeared on my HUD. "Frank, can I call you Frank?"

"Sure," I said quickly.

"The wounded are being evacuated, three Pelicans are coming to pull them out the rooftop. Hornet gunships will provide air support and cover while the rest come to pull you out."

"We're retreating."

"The United Nations Space Command prefers the term…tactical withdrawal."

"Sure they do," I sighed. "Second Squad, you all heard, take positions!"

Five minutes passed before the three dropships arrived, making a triangle with their rear sections facing each other. The wounded were already up and were inside the craft within seconds. It was very evident why the floor of the troop bay was commonly called the blood tray. Beckel was being carried up in a stretcher, groaning and complaining all the while.

"We've got space for one more!" the pilot on his Pelican said.

I looked around, all the wounded were up already. "Almers!" I called to him. "Go!"

The three Pelicans took off as soon as they were full, but the two Hornets accompanying them stayed overhead, slowly circling our position and discouraging Banshees or Phantoms from making any attack runs. A Banshee made the mistake of trying to engage in a dogfight and promptly got torn to shreds with combined fire from the two pilots. We were all tense, our guns trained on the hatch that lead down to the building itself. There were almost eighty Helljumpers here on the rooftop, a bunch less than we had started out with. The Spartan was nowhere to be seen.

"Al, where's the Spartan?" I asked the AI.

"The Spar-oh, right." It sounded vague, but I didn't press the AI for reasons as to its reaction. "Two ODSTs find themselves in trouble. He volunteered to rescue them."

"Good luck to it, then," I said simply, pointedly saying it instead of him.

"Pelicans inbound," Pavel told me. "Heads up."

This time it was four Pelicans, and they managed to jam nearly every last ODST inside their troop compartments. The ones left behind barely amounted to sixteen. First and Second Squads to be precise.

"Castillo, you and your men get the hatch," Hayes ordered me. "First Squad, set up fields of fire on the rooftops!"

I didn't think that it would be necessary, the Pelicans would be back soon and we only needed to cover the hatch. Pavel would occasionally fire a long suppressing burst to discourage them from rushing. They got the message well enough and didn't attempt to storm our position.

"Here they come," Wiremu said, pointing at two Pelicans in the distance.

Before anybody could even turn their heads one of the Hornets blew up as several heavy plasma rounds hit it. The other one quickly swerved out of the way and fired at the flight of Banshees, breaking up the formation and miraculously avoiding the plasma. The two Pelicans were still a few vital seconds away. I fired at the Banshees, trying to feel like I was doing something.

"First Squad," Hayes beckoned at her men, aiming at the Pelican. "Go, go!"

By that time my own squad was jumping on the second Pelican. I'm not sure why command deemed it reasonable to send two birds when we would've all fit in one of them with almost no trouble. Still, I couldn't complain as long as I got evac.

"Watch out!" someone warned.

It wasn't directed at me, but at Lieutenant Hayes. The same elite that had had a nice chat with me while trying to impale me swiped at Hayes. She ducked underneath the blow and charged at the elite, catching it off balance and making it stumble backwards. She then jumped back and backpedalled several meters before raising her rifle.

A green flash suddenly blocked her from view, and I saw a Banshee finish a strafing run. The el-tee had been thrown to the edge of the rooftop by the explosion, and the elite's shields had been drained.

"Stupid apes," it growled in its guttural language, my helmet translating it.

"El-tee!" I yelled, seeing Hayes slip down the edge of the rooftop and disappear. I ran towards the spot as the two door gunners on the Pelicans covered me with the heavy machine guns. Lieutenant Hayes hadn't been knocked unconscious, she had merely been dazed enough for her to slip down the roof. She had been lucky enough to grab onto the thick cables that supported the cable cars. She didn't look too good, her armor smoking and only holding on to the cable with one hand.

"Hold on!" I yelled. Even as I said that plasma bolts flew from the opening below, missing her by inches. She weakly raised her MA5 and fired at the aliens below me, but it didn't stop the plasma fire.

Then I did something incredibly stupid. Again.

I jumped down, catching the thick cables with one hand and grunting when my whole weight pulled down on my shoulder. I fired a couple of bursts at the grunts firing at us. They were inside one of the parked cable cars, taking quick potshots. I slung my rifle and pulled myself up the cable before carefully moving towards Hayes. I pulled her up with both hands and placed her behind me. The cable was big enough for us to precariously sit down in but not big enough to walk on.

"Some help here?" I yelled into the comm.

It wasn't a Pelican, but the lone remaining Hornet that hovered next to us. We both sat down on the same side, tilting the craft sideways. It flew off, jerking us and forcing us to hold on to something to avoid being thrown out.

"Why did you do that?" Hayes asked me.

"No one gets left behind," I said, smiling. "Right?"

She depolarized her visor and for a moment I saw the face of her cousin, the lieutenant whose name I hadn't even bothered to learn, who had helped me when my pod crashed down and allowed Pavel and I to get out of Aztlan alive. The same lieutenant that we had left behind without even bothering to confirm was dead.

"Right." The tone in her voice was as clear an indicator as I could get that she knew exactly what had transpired down in Aztlan. "No one."

* * *

><p><em>Thanks to SilasWhitfield and Alshep for proof-reading this chapter.<em>

_So, Frank clotheslined an elite a spike grenade. I don't think I could convey the sheer awesomeness of that act so I didn't elaborate. Just try to picture it, it's awesome. He also exchanged witty banter with an elite zealot, something most people would find interesting and under no circumstances incredibly stupid._

_So. Beckel's hurt bad. Frank's got a nasty burn on his chest. Pavel saved Frank (again). Miranda did something embarrassing. Caboose actually cursed. Lieutenant Hayes knows what Frank and Pavel did and is understandably pissed. And everybody else just tried to keep up with the badass. That's pretty much the whole chapter. Oh, and the Spartan. I think that Frank has matured a lot since he last worked with Spartans. When was that? With the Chief? I think it was. Say what you say about my story, there's some character development for you guys, and I consider that a small victory._

_I've been thinking about some incredibly cool, yet plausible stunt for Frank and Second Squad to pull off, but I can't come up with anything cooler than airdropping with a Scorpion tank. I mean, that was the high-point in sheer badassery of the story and that's depressing. I was considering a couple of things involving drop pods (use your imagination) or maybe jetpacks, but that's the extent of it. Maybe on the next planet they'll do something ridiculously badass again._

_To all of those that reviewed: thanks. To all of those who didn't: thanks for reading, but come on guys, it's just an additional ten/fifteen seconds of your time._

_Hope you enjoyed reading this chapter, and as always: Stay strong._

_-casquis_


	147. Going Medieval

Chapter CXLVII: Going Medieval

**May 6, 2547 (UNSC Calendar)/**

**Calderwood Château, Skopje, Philippus System**

* * *

><p><em>"They say that neurotics build castles and that psychotics live in them. Says a bunch of us Helljumpers, don't you think?"- Master Sergeant Yassir Dajani<em>

* * *

><p>Château might've been synonymous with a manor, long and wide windows with fancy tiled roofs and huge ballrooms. This one was what the French would've called a château fort. You see, château means castle in French. Not a residential kind of castle, but an actual honest-to-god castle.<p>

This pile of rock in particular was an exact replica of the Krak des Chevaliers, a castle built during the Middle Ages in Syria by crusaders. Let me give you a little description. It was a concentric castle, meaning that it had an outer wall and an inner wall. Inside the inner wall there was a keep that functioned as the primary residence of the nutjob that had spent a veritable fortune building this fucking place. God bless that man, because a castle is probably the best building for you to be defending no matter what century it is.

The Hornet that had saved Hayes and me dropped us off before flying away. Lieutenant Hayes barely glanced at me before moving towards the Pelicans with her platoon. I walked behind her, trying to think and staring at the ground, my rifle slung over my back and my liberated point defense gauntlet still attached to my left arm.

The platoon had been dropped off by the Pelicans, which were now crowded next to one another in the courtyard inside the inner walls. When we flew over the outer walls I could see that the space in between the two sets of walls was narrow, a design no doubt meant to complicate matters for any enemy that managed to break through the first wall. There were a few dozen regular Marines here and there, marching the walls and keeping their eyes open. The ODSTs that had made it through were in the inner courtyard, licking their wounds and looking glum.

"Who's in command?!" Hayes snapped at her men.

Yassir turned and looked at her. "One Colonel Felicia Sanderson. She's in the keep."

"Hardass bitch if you ask me," Bee muttered.

"I didn't ask you Lance Corporal," Hayes told him. "So keep your mouth shut." She turned towards Yassir. "Yas, with me, everyone else get some down time and await orders."

I let myself fall down to the floor and took off my helmet. All three squads quickly imitated me, dropping down and spreading their arms and legs on the floor, making the passage of air to their lungs easier.

"Al," I said after a while. "Give the platoon a quick overview on the castle. Defenses, personnel, points of interest, the works."

"Of course Frank," the AI replied before clearing its throat. "This castle, as some of you know already , was built by Ferdinand Calderwood as an almost exact replica of Krak des Chevaliers in Syria, on Earth. It is of the concentric design, meaning that it has more than just one wall. There are arrow slits on the outer and inner walls as well as round towers spread throughout the walls, with the corner ones being the largest. The only ground entrance is a large door in the southern wall, unlike the original, there is no bridge connecting it to the outside. There are, however, several landing pads on the largest towers, most of them are collapsible and can hide three Falcon-sized aircraft inside the towers. I think it goes without saying that that wasn't a feature of the original castle."  
>"Let's get down to the important part, shall we?" Pavel asked the AI. "Besides, just how the fuck would we be supposed to know why this castle was built?"<p>

"Of course Staff Sergeant. There are currently seventy five ODSTs inside the castle, not accounting for Colonel Sanderson, who is a senior officer and most likely will not be seeing any combat." That got a couple of humorous comments from the men. "More ODSTs are slated to arrive in the space of an hour. In addition to the Helljumpers there are two companies of Marines, amounting to a grand total of two hundred and sixty one able-bodied men."

"Equipment?" Staff Sergeant Greg Williams asked.

"A dozen M41 LA-AGs have been placed along the perimeters, they are complemented by smaller HMGs and M247Hs. One M71 Scythe AA gun is being installed on the top of the keep. It should keep away dropships and fighter craft. Colonel Sanderson requisitioned a missile battery and it should be brought in within an hour or so. The battery can keep anything up to a Covenant corvette away from lethal range, but that's about it."

"Missile pods?" Royce asked.

"Just three," Al replied. "Many were lost in when the convoy bringing them here was attacked." The AI paused and rolled its head. "There are enough Pelicans to evacuate everyone of need be and two Scorpion tanks are stored in between the two walls in case they need to be used. Several Warthogs and Mongooses are present in the motor pool and we have a mortar unit spread throughout the walls."

"Any special units?" I asked. "Other than us of course."

"One of the Marine companies has a Scout Sniper Unit deployed outside of the castle. They are slated to return before the sun sets."

I sighed. "Anybody have any questions?" No one was actually curious enough to warrant talking. "Thanks Al."

"My pleasure," it replied before breaking the link.

I could see the sky becoming darker and darker as time passed. I didn't really do anything other than rest and try to block anything that I knew wasn't real. Schitzo had an annoying ability to make friends. I was about to allow myself to fall asleep when I heard the roar of a Warthog and felt it drive right by my side. I looked up to see two ODSTs, one of them slightly wounded, jump off the jeep. The chassis shook when the driver jumped off.

It was the Spartan.

I was on my feet within a second for reasons seemingly unknown, the freaks always put me on edge, ever since I had been told that I was all but one of them it only made it worse. Not that I had to spend my days surrounded by them, but the rumors and stories had only gotten wilder after ONI had declassified the program officially. The super soldier was clad in an armor that I was familiar with. It walked away and entered the keep, leaving two open mouthed Marines staring after him.

"What the hell was that?" one of the newly arrived ODSTs asked.

"I…I don't know Gage," the other one replied.

The first Helljumper turned to face me. I didn't have my helmet on and he didn't have any visible insignia or rank markings, so I didn't know whether he was lower or higher-ranking than I was. Judging by his body language he was a veteran, but that was everything I could make out.

"Gunny," he asked me, slightly limping as he walked towards me. "Do you know what that was?"

I scoffed. "A Spartan," I informed him matter-of-factly. "A super soldier. ONI just recently made the program public."

"A super soldier…" he asked. "You mean he's…better?" Damn, he _was_ a Helljumper, an excellent question.

I thought for all of three seconds before slowly and reluctantly nodding. "Yes. He's…better."

The man, Gage, took a stunned step backwards before muttering thanks and walking away, no doubt deep in thought. I knew what it felt like to be the best of the very best only to have that yanked form under you by a bunch of freak child-soldiers.

But officially they weren't that. Officially they were just freak soldiers.

"Goddamn," I grunted before sitting back down.

"Anybody know how Beckel's doing?" Miranda asked after a while.

"Nah," Wiremu replied. "Hayes will probably come back with the information in a while."

The conversation then focused on the extent on his wounds and the surprise that everyone had at him having survived being stabbed by the wide and thick bayonets. Everybody then started comparing their own different puncture wounds, showing them off and wondering how serious they were when compared to Beckel's. It was what one would consider typical Helljumper behavior, but it was only our way of coping.

I hadn't said anything despite having my fair share of shrapnel and sword wounds. I don't know if teeth and claws counted, but I also had my collection of those. When Wiremu asked me about it I just shrugged. "He'll be all right, if they managed to stabilize him and he got here in time I don't see why he'd die."  
>"I was asking you about your wounds, Gunny," he reminded me.<p>

"Right. You've seen them before, no need for me to explain."

"Come on, we're all curious," Almers pleaded. Miranda, Wiremu, and even Serge nodded. "See?"

I looked at each of them in turn and shook my head. "You can ask Pavel all about it."

Pavel stood up and took a couple of steps back before the squad rushed him. For the last years I had been trying to not get very emotionally attached to Second Squad. I knew that it was an impossible task, but it was better than becoming best friends with everybody only to see them die. I sighed; I had never been so cynical in my entire life. Well, doesn't matter, the problem with that is that I somehow managed to gather a certain air of mystery around me, for the most part nobody cared, but on occasion they seemed to become gossipy teenagers.

Fine, fine, of course it was flattering in a way, but with enough time it got annoying.

"Everybody up!"

Hayes' voice was unbelievably sexy, much like her deceased cousin's. Unlike the aforementioned dead ODST, she could make it very, very loud when she wanted to. It carried authority, but they taught that in officer school.

"Ladies and gentlemen I've got bad news," she started as soon as everybody was paying attention. That was met with a unanimous grunt, on another occasion she would've given us shit for that, but she was a good leader. "Colonel Sanderson, in all her wisdom, has decided that as Helljumpers we need to set the example, so unless you're injured you're going to be on guard duty."

"Someone shoot me in the foot!" someone pleaded.

Hayes frowned. "Say something like that again and I'll personally shoot you," she warned. "First Squad, you're going to be with me on the northeastern tower and the surrounding area. Second Squad, you're going to be walking the east wall, occupy the two towers."

"Sir, are we talking inner or outer?" I asked.

"Outer. Third Squad, follow Master Sergeant Dajani, you'll occupy the southeastern tower and surrounding nearby wall." She waited and stared at us. "Well, what are you waiting for?!"

"Third Squad!"

"Second Squad!" I boomed. "Get of your asses, that means you too Serge!" I waited for everybody to get off their lazy asses and to put their helmets back on.

"Form up! Follow me!"

I was lucky that Al had downloaded a map of the compound into my helmet automatically, because otherwise I would've had to march around until I got one manually downloaded. I led them at a moderate trot through the outer wall and then to the eastern wall. There were two small towers dividing it into three sections. With seven of us I decided that one sharpshooter was enough for each of them and a pair would walk each length back and forth. Then I realized that I would've probably failed basic math because that amounted to eight.

_Then_ I realized that the tower that I thought Hayes meant something else by northeastern tower, there was a larger, taller tower a little bit to the side of the northeastern corner. So now we had _three_ towers to guard.

_So we're seven, still have three sections plus three towers, that's six total. One sharpshooter each and one rests. Aha! I am a genius!_

"Miranda, and Serge, you each take one of those two towers. Wiremu, Pavel, and Caboose, you divide the lengths of wall between yourselves. I'll take this tower."

"Me?" Almers asked.

"You're lucky," I told him. "You get a fifteen minute break. We'll rotate until the sun sets, then breaks are one hour long."

It was simple enough that nobody had to ask for me to repeat myself. Nobody was willing to complain about having to walk the wall.

So we got to it, I got myself a small stool and sat on it while I propped my battle rifle up on one of the battlements. The plains surrounding the castle extended for miles. On one side I could see smoke vary far off in the distance, everything else was completely empty of anything of interest. Sure, there were some interesting rocks here and a large boulder there, plus, the dirt road was oh so very hypnotizing. I am surprised that I didn't drop unconscious from boredom in the first couple of minutes.

It wasn't until the sun was below the horizon, the sky tinted in pretty, reds, purples, and pinks that seemed almost unnatural, that we got a sound of alarm. A group of three Spirit dropships covered by twice that number of Banshees flew through the air. At first I didn't see them, but they became large targets soon enough. Before I could even make out the turrets on the bottom through my scope the Scythe AA turret fired three half-second bursts. All three of the Spirit gunships suddenly exploded and fell out of the sky. The 20x102mm HEIAP rounds tore through the armor like paper. The first half of the shell contained high explosive that damaged the armor. The rear half had a depleted uranium or tungsten penetrator that went on with full force. Following rounds just made that hole bigger and finally ended up blowing up something or killing something important.

I could only imagine what would happen if a soft target was hit by even one of those monsters.

"Snark," I said, opening a line. "Anything interesting?"

"Extreme range, Sarge," he replied after a short pause, "even for my Oracle."

"Didn't you get a new one?" I asked. "Like a super powerful one or some shit?"

"Just testing to see if you'd remember," he deadpanned. "I can see three crashed Spirit dropships plus six Banshees running away from us like kingdom come."

"So nothing interesting?"

"Nope."

"You could've just said that," I deadpanned in return. "Would've saved some oxygen."

"You know Francisco," Schitzo said, "it doesn't really matter, this planet is going to be as good as dead by the time we leave. Use up all the oxygen you want."

I turned and saw his shape outlined in grays and greens. The night vision on my helmet made him look even creepier than usual. Then something put me off. He looked familiar. In a different way, it was like his face had changed slightly.

"Annoying," I said to myself.

"What was that Sarge?" Snark asked.

"Nothing, I was talking to myself."

I could picture Snark mentally shrugging.

The rest of the night went slowly, a couple other ODST units arrived by Pelican or by 'Hog, with those coming in on the Warthogs having scratches and scorch marks on their armor. The fight in the city was not going well. No wonder we had all been pulled back to this little piece of shit right here. I'm sorry, not piece of shit, it's just a figure of speech. I got myself an hour of sleep just before sunrise, by the time I was awake we were relieved of duty, with another unit taking our position. I was glad for the break, I hadn't slept in almost two days.

We returned to the inner walls, this time going all the way inside the keep and into one of the rooms. It was built like an ancient chapel of some sort, or maybe just a regular room with a vault for a ceiling, but the modern furnishings were a jarring contrast to the old walls. There were several screens and sofas that had all been pressed to the walls. In the middle of the room someone had placed UNSC-issue sleeping mats.

It was amusing to see the lower ranking members of my squad sigh with disappointment at having to sleep on the mats. Pavel, Caboose, and I all got a couch for ourselves. The man that had built this was a wealthy person; he had spared no expense when it came to comfort. The soft cushions were just perfect, designed to provide support and whatnot while at the same time being just the perfect amount of plushy.

"Ah," I sighed, smiling as I sat down.

"I don't think I've been this comfortable in ages," Pavel said, a huge smile on his face.

Caboose nodded before allowing himself a small self-satisfied smirk. "Agreed."

"What would the owner think of smelly and sweaty Helljumpers on his fancy couches?" Pavel asked, the tone in his voice made it evident that he didn't approve of the luxurious castle.

"The owner," a voice said. "Actually offered this place to the UNSC."

We all looked to the room's entrance to see a smallish man in slacks and a button shirt looking at us with his arms crossed.

"And you'd be?" Wiremu asked lazily.

"The owner," he replied, sparing Pavel a glare.

_Shit._ "Sir," I said, immediately standing up. "We're very thankful." _Why am I even being nice? _"Without this place a lot of ODSTs and Marines would be in trouble."

The man shrugged and shook my hand. "Just came to see if everyone was doing ok."

"I think we are, sir. Again, thank you very much."

He nodded and looked at Pavel. "Are you sure? You want any more cushions? Pillows? Maybe a blanket?"

Pavel started getting up and opened his mouth to say something but stopped when I waved him down. "No, I think he's just fine," I assured him with a smile.

When the man was out of the room and out of earshot I turned to Pavel and gave him a 'what the hell?' look.

"What?" Pavel asked me, raising his arms. "He was giving me shit!"

"I would've allowed you to beat his face in if he was military," I assured him, but that man made his home a target for the Covenant and has not left yet. He is also a civilian with more money to throw around than any of us could earn in a lifetime. If you made him angry enough he could destroy your life and career."

Pavel rolled his eyes and shook his head. He then muttered something about me being the one getting into fights and he stopping me.

I smiled. "Get some sleep everyone, that's an order."

I sat down on my couch and placed my rifle within easy reach of my hand before taking off my chest piece, abdominal armor, and my heavy armored boots. I wiggled my toes a little bit, enjoying the feeling of freedom that came with taking off my boots. The comparatively thin vest that I was wearing now would stop anything short of a DMR round, but would probably not even absorb a plasma pistol shot or deflect a needler crystal.

_Why am I even worrying about that? The walls are three feet thick, they'll stop anything._

I lay down for a while before deciding that taking off my vest would be a good idea. I winced a little bit when it pulled at the skin, my chest was still raw, but the biofoam had already worked wonders. My undersuit was useless for vacuum, but it could sure as hell stop a fire from burning my arm off or shrapnel from penetrating with too much speed.

I glanced at the gauntlet in my wrist, raising my hand to see just how heavy it was before shrugging and laving it on. If push came to shove it would compensate for my lack of armor.

"You're a true cynic," Schitzo said, shaking his head. "Expecting the Covenant to break through all defenses and come into this room _without waking you up before_."

I shrugged, my eyelids heavy. Within a second I was asleep, resting in my own little world of nightmare.

* * *

><p>A loud drum roll woke me up. I groaned at the annoying noise, but when I opened my eyes I realized that it was coming from my helmet. I sighed and put the thing on with some effort, the HUD activating the moment it confirmed me as a member of the UNSC military.<p>

"Hope you had an enjoyable nap Frank," Al told me, his avatar occupying my full HUD.

"Thanks Al," I told him, stretching my neck and hearing it crack. "It was…restful." I shook my head to myself; it had been filled with nightmares and visions. Nothing out of the ordinary, but I just couldn't fall asleep anymore without having dreams of some kind. "What's the matter."

"Your squad is supposed to report to the same position you were on before in ten minutes, fifty three seconds."

"Thanks Al, any news?"

"Nothing important. No enemy activity."

"Thanks. I'll be seeing you."

"My pleasure Frank," he nodded before flickering and disappearing.

"Second Squad!" I shouted as loud as I could, shaking everyone awake. Miranda, Almers, and even Wiremu reached for their weapons. My old squadmates already knew that if we were under attack I would wake them up with the sound of gunshots.

Pavel and Caboose were slow to get up, knowing that they weren't in danger, but Serge, the Foreign Legion veteran, got up immediately and started putting his armor back on. Years of fighting on Earth had given him a sixth sense that made him know when he was in danger. The other, younger members of Second Squad didn't quite have it, but they were getting there.

"Damn Gunny," Almers grunted. "Scared the shit out of me."

Miranda nodded in agreement, but tried to look meek when I glared at her.

"I don't give a shit what you think," I reminded him in a tactful tone. "Armor on everybody. We're going back to the wall."

I caught Wiremu looking at my chest and glanced down, pressing my chin against my neck in an attempt to see my burn. "How's it looking?" I asked him.

"Nasty," he admitted. "But a lot better."

"I'll take that," I sighed.

The burly rugby player laughed without much humor and stood up, towering above all of us. Not for the first time I stared at the tribal tattoos that covered his entire face and body. They were supposed to tell the life story of whomever they were on, but his life wasn't over, at least not yet. I had asked him before what they meant, but he wouldn't talk about it, saying that he would tell me when he knew their true meaning himself. Every time he told me that I shook my head and looked at him funny, but didn't press the issue.

Little by little the tattoos disappeared when he put on his undersuit, with the lines on his face being the last ones to go as he put on the helmet. At 6'6 plus helmet and boots he was imposing, his shoulders were wide enough to make Pavel's look puny. I could see why he would be a good rugby player.

I waited for Miranda to finish putting her boots on before I nodded the team out of the room.

"Why are you always the last one when it comes to putting our armor on?" Almers asked her teasingly.

"I'm not alwa-"

"Leave her alone," Wiremu interrupted. "She's a woman, they're supposed to take their sweet ass time."

Serge shook his head and shot a look at Almers that wiped the grin of his face and another to Wiremu that made him spread out his hands and shrug a little bit. Damn, the man could be scary when he wanted to. Caboose could give himself a creep/scary aura, but not an honest-to-god scary one like Serge.

"Enjoy your nap ladies?" one of the Helljumpers coming from watch asked us.

I bumped into his shoulder and Pavel tripped him before Caboose shoved him to the ground.

"Oh, we slept just fine," I assured him.

His squad laughed at him, one of them even stepped over his back before helping him up. The ODST glared at us but said nothing, without his squad to back him up in a fight he just swallowed his pride. It wasn't really something worth causing a fuss over; we were all comrades and behaved like it. Maybe out retribution had been a little bit disproportionate, but we were all friends.

_Damn Frank, you sound like a fifty-year-old woman._

"Same rule as before," I said once we were on the outer wall. "Almers, you get first rest."

"Fine by me," he smiled, sitting down on the floor and taking off his helmet.

"No, put it back on," I ordered. "Warzone, you know the rules."

I was expecting another boring watch, with nothing to shoot at and nothing to worry about. In fact, I was hoping for it.

The first sign that this wasn't going to be a regular watch came when a beam flew through Miranda's shoulder armor, taking it off her but otherwise not harming her. Everybody ducked and looked for the sniper, but no one could find it. I looked back at one of the towers on the inner wall and asked where the jackal was through signs. The sniper on top of it shrugged and shook his head.

"Ok, no flash or shooter, might be a stealth elite," I warned.

A single SRS shot rang out. "Got him," Snark said. "Stealth elite, black armor, one of those without shields."

"A scout," I murmured. "There's an attack coming soon."

"What was that Castillo?" Dajani asked me.

"A scout," I repeated. "They're preparing for a large scale attack, Yas."

"Sounds about right," he agreed. "I'll tell Tahlia, get the castle on full alert."

Sure enough, the covvies were as predictable as they came. Less than half an hour after that little incident several dozen Phantoms and even more Spirit dropships appeared in the distance. They were flying as low as they could, trying to avoid the Scythe AA gun. The weapon could aim below its base, something not common in AA weaponry, and it made quick work of several of the dropships before it got the order to stop firing. Believe it or not, we didn't have an endless supply of 20mm ammo.

The Phantoms dropped Wraiths and Revenants as well as regular infantry. The Spirits just dropped the cannon fodder, grunts and jackals.

"This is going to be a shooting range," Almers said in a surprised voice. A pleasantly surprised voice mind you.

And it was. Snark and the guys sporting sniper rifles were the first to fire. They were all well trained and none of the shots missed. As long as they measured the distance properly the shot was bound to hit something. The rest of us had to wait until the aliens got within range.

The Wraiths used their boosters to speed closer to the wall and fired their mortars. For a moment I panicked until I realized that the plasma wouldn't hit me. Then I panicked some more when I realized that the explosions would bring down the walls.

Then I laughed when I remembered that plasma had very little kinetic force, even less than a medieval trebuchet.

The blue mortars hit the inner wall and a few impacted the outer wall. I looked back and saw that smoke was coming from the stone, and the explosions had made the walls look slightly gelatinous for a few instants before they hardened again. All they could do was melt the rock only for it to harden again.

"My god, this is perfect!" I exclaimed joyfully.

The machine guns and Marines with rocket launchers were firing at the front most infantry and mortar vehicles. I could see the explosions here and there; a Wraith blew up, its turret flying up in the air. The grunts and jackals had a hard time withstanding the automatic fire from the machine guns, even at this range I could see the shields flicker and disappear from sustained gunfire. I waited until the infantry soldiers were within range before I fired. Most of the shots hit, even if not all of them were kill shots. It was almost fun to do this, fire without fear of repercussion, occasionally taking out a sniper or sharpshooter while the gunners and rocket men did the heavy lifting. It was a refreshing change of pace.

I started having fun, bringing down grunts with headshots, challenging myself not to place a single shot outside of a skull. For the most part I succeeded. My fellow ODSTs from Second Squad weren't doing too bad either, spraying or sniping at the mass of targets.

When they got closer to our walls things became a little bit harder, I had to duck a couple of times to avoid a jackal sharpshooter and the plasma rifles were now something to watch out for, but the machine guns and other defenders took care of any alien that got too excited about getting a kill. Time passed and eventually we got tired of shooting at them. They had dug down and had nice little positions right under our walls, out of heavy weapons range.

Most of the attacking forces were hanging out further back behind rocks, in ditches, or even behind small improvised fortresses consisting of wrecked vehicles and deployable shields. Those were the ones constantly taking potshots at us with their long-range weapons. The surviving Wraiths were still firing every now and then from behind cover, but we were doing well.

"Short break," I allowed my team. "Keep your heads down and get some chow."

I was already behind the battlements, taking my helmet off even despite regulations prohibiting me from doing that. The rest of my squad did the same and sat down with their backs against the short walls. I smiled to myself and pulled out a ration bar from my butt pack. It was squashed and ground almost flat, but it was still edible. Those goddamned things were always edible.

I swallowed a large bite with some trouble and gagged at the terrible taste, but already I could feel myself more full of energy than before. It was about midday and we hadn't had much of a breakfast, so I used one of my MREs, eating it straight from the waterproof bag.

"Frank."

"Hey Pavel," I told my friend, who had crouch-walked all the way here. "How goes it?"

"Not to bad," he replied, pulling out his own MRE. "Having a good time?"

"Man, I wished we had castles everywhere, we would kick their asses so bad in the ground that they'd stop bothering with invasions. Then we'd be able to evacuate civilians."

"M-hm," Pavel agreed, taking a large bite of whatever his MRE consisted of. "I can't believe they are stupid enough to keep firing at us. It's only a matter of time before they realize the…futility of their actions."

"Hey, don't complain about it too much, it works for us just fine."

"Mortar!"

Pavel and I looked up to see a blue ball of plasma slam into the top of the inner wall, actually cracking one of the battlements. I couldn't hear any cried of pain, so I guessed that they'd gotten out of the way.

Pavel looked at me and sighed. "How long until the fun ends?"

"You have an annoying tendency to ask depressing questions?"

"Me?" he exclaimed in disbelief. "You're probably the most cynical person that I know! You didn't even use to be like that."

"I've developed as a regular human being would," I told him. "I have no idea how you've stayed cheery and happy-go-lucky for over fifteen years Pavs."

"Well, I've got Amber and Lavanya to keep me in check."

I smiled at the mention of his daughter. I had seen her on our last leave and she was getting big, running around and saying some big words already. "How's Lavvie? She cry when you left?"

"She did," he replied, smiling despite himself. It was good knowing that his daughter really loved and missed him. "Amber's getting better about it, being stoic and whatnot." He sighed sadly. "She deserves better than that."

I scoffed. "We all do Pavs, besides, she knew what she was getting into when she married your sorry ass."

Pavel was about to give me a shove but paused when his hand got within an inch of the spike grenade blades embedded on my pauldron. He shook his head and instead just gave me a non-too-friendly slap. "Now that you mention the world marriage…"

"Whoa, whoa, whoa, " I exclaimed a little bit too loudly, drawing looks from Serge and Miranda, who were the closest to the two of us. "Marriage?"

"I'm surprised you haven't thought about it," he told me. "You and Hanna have been going steady for… what now?"

"Three years."

"Damn, that's a long time Frank. A long time to wait."

"Hanna isn't like that," I assured him. "She's never even mentioned it, and she's very vocal about what she wants."

Pavel shrugged, doing that thin where it seemed like his collarbones disjointed and his head sunk into his torso. "Just saying, might want to consider it."

"Not my thing."

"But if it is hers…"

"Damn Pavs, I don't really prod into your personal life, do I?"

"Sorry, sorry," he said apologetically. "Can I see your knife?"

It was an abrupt change of topic, but I obliged, drawing my blade and twirling it once so that I was grabbing the Damascus steel blade and the grip was facing him. Pavel examined it before grabbing it and spinning it in his hand.

"I have no idea how this little piece of metal has made it all through the war? Especially with the way you treat it."

I smiled, it was probably the last thing that I had left from home, the gift of a cook. "It does get a rough treatment, doesn't it?"

"Yup, but not a single dent on it."

"I mostly use it for stabbing," I reminded him. "And I oil it when I can."

"Isn't it stainless?" Pavel asked me, staring at the colorful blade.

"It's Damascus steel," I informed him flatly.

"I know that," he groaned. "But…bah, forget it."

I examined the blade while he looked at it. The knife was only sharp on one side, like most combat knives were, and was slightly bent forwards with the blade getting slightly thicker as it approached the point. If I had to describe it would say that it was a bastard offspring between a Nepalese kukri and a standard combat knife. The design was almost crude and it looked every bit the hand crafted knife that it was. It didn't even have a crossguard, and I had to replace the original leather grip for a more durable synthetic one long ago.

"This blade right here," Pavel said, "has seen some crazy shit. A lot more than my own little knife can claim." As he said that he yanked out his own combat knife, with small dents and a battle-worn look. "Damn, it's only the second combat knife I've had. I've had this one for almost five years."

"What happened to the other one?"

He laughed. "I forget, I don't know whether it broke or I just lost it." Pavel stopped laughing and sheathed his knife before handing me mine. "At least some things will always stay the same, right?"

I lifted my little bag of slushy food to Pavel in a mock toast. "Right."

"Cheers," he said before taking a bite.

It had been a while since Pavel and I had one of this heart to hearts. Back in the days before Reaper Squad we were always embroiled in some sort of adventure or other, we thought we were about to die many times. There are some things that you don't talk about unless you're drunk or believe you'll die. That's why nobody knew me better than Pavel and the other way around. Most of the time we just talked about whatever came to our minds, not even bothering to see if the other guy was interested.

Pavel wasn't the only one that knew some weird stuff about me. Pretty much everyone in the squad knew some unusual stuff about my life, even if they didn't know the specifics. In a way it's good that we knew each other so well, but it only made it harder when they died.

"Ok, helmet's back on!" I ordered as soon as I was done with my MRE. "Same fields of fire, keep watch for jackals."

As soon as we aimed down range again a couple of needles hit against the stone, shattering into thousands of pieces as they did that. I jumped back more than once to avoid the pink shards, but a few of them hit my armor.

There were several jackals lurking around, not even our snipers could take them all out, even if they were doing a damn good job at it. Snark alone must've bagged three dozen kills in the little time that we had before we were relieved.

Another squad came to tell us to get some rest. And a good thing too, I was just about falling asleep.

"Damn," I grunted as we made our way back to the inner walls and through the courtyard. A few Pelicans were taking off with wounded, taking them towards our spaceships in orbit or to the ground hospitals. "I'm sleepy."

"Tell me about it," Wiremu agreed.

"Relax Api," Almers told him, patting him in his shoulder. "You know how you get when you don't get your sleep."

Wiremu pushed him aside and chuckled. "Quiet."

Miranda and Serge looked particularly beat up. She had been glanced on her shoulder, and he had a concussion rifle hit the wall right behind him, transmitting some of the force into his back, jolting his bones and shaking him up. Not that he was scared or anything close, but he was in obvious physical pain. Almers, Wiremu, Caboose, Pavel and I were mostly fine except for the occasional bruise from ducking or dropping to fast.

This time we weren't allowed a room inside, most of the command corps were already occupying them and the wounded were given priority over us. Shielding the wounded was reasonable, but the officers? It was downright offensive for them to get preferential treatment. Sure they were older, but its not like they were seniors, and it's always good to see your superiors getting their fatigues dirty with you.

"So, we crash on a Pelican?" Pavel asked.

I nodded and shrugged. "I think Fightmaster's here, let's look around."

The man was sitting on the back of his Pelican, talking to a pretty girl in a mechanic's uniform. He smiled when I waved at him and excused himself from his company before coming towards us.

"Frank," he said. "Good to see you!"

"Same," I replied with a big smile. "Who's she?"

Fightmaster's smile turned into a grin as he slapped my shoulder. "What can I do for you, Gunny?"

"We need a place to crash in," I admitted. "Mind if we borrow your Pelican? We have everything else that we need."

"Sure, no problem."

"You sure?" I asked him. "Weren't planning on getting funky with Miss Mechanic?"

"Nah," he shrugged. "Well, at least not yet. Besides, she'll see me as a selfless guy that would give away his only shelter from the weather for a friend."

I looked up at the mention of the weather. Yesterday and today morning had been very warm with very few clouds. Right now the sky was overcast and it looked like it was much later than it actually was. The goddamned hurricane that we had spotted during our drop had made its way here, through an unreal stretch of land. We wouldn't get the worst of it, but I still preferred to be warm and dry. "Very well then Max," I said. "Thanks a bunch. Oh, and by the way, how's the leg?"

He outright laughed. "It's fine, thanks for asking. It's been fine for almost two years now."

"More than that," Novak said before hastily adding, "I think."

"How you doing Miri?" he asked her with a wave.

"Good, thanks," she replied, smiling as well.

"Anyways, feel free to crash inside," the lieutenant told us. "I owe you guys one, I always will…Doesn't matter. Have a nice nap."

"Thanks, you're a lifesaver," I thanked him.

The Pelican's floor was hard and cold, there was some dry and caked blood on it, but nothing that really bothered me. I took off my helmet and chest piece before removing my pauldrons. I had a thin blanket in my rucksack which I used instead of a pillow. My undersuit might've had a huge hole in the chest, but the rest was still functional. Coupled with my armor and its temperature regulating function I turned the heat slightly up and tried to fall asleep. This time it was harder than usual.

The explosions that so often sung me to sleep only served to keep me awake, eyes darting from one side to the other, expecting an attack at any minute. My head was throbbing, probably related to the stress of the job or maybe something worse. It didn't matter then, all I knew was that I needed to get some sleep or I would go crazy. Schitzo wouldn't shut up, and his friends were worse.

_Come on…_ I urged myself, closing off from everything, both inside and outside of my head. _Come on…_

* * *

><p>I was wearing armor, only not my usual armor. I looked down to see myself clad in some sort of plate armor reminiscing my regular ODST suit. It was a lot heavier and ten times as uncomfortable, but there was something about it that made me feel safe, protected. The other unusual thing was that my helmet didn't have a visor, instead it was simply made out of steel with a hole allowing me to see through. It wasn't until I looked around that I realized I was still asleep.<p>

"Right," I said.

"What was that, my lord?" someone asked me

I turned to the man and saw Scarecrow. He was wearing the same kind of armor that I was and topped it off with a huge sword slung across his back. I was definitely in a dream and it was one of _those_.

"Nothing," I said, waving him away. "What are we waiting for?"

I had learned over years of these kind of vivid dreams that it was best to play along, more than once I had been attacked by my friends because there was something not right about me. Not even virtual adventures were this realistic.

I looked away from Scarecrow and his huge sword to examine my surroundings. I was in the very castle that I was sleeping in, in the outer courtyard. Atop a horse.

I didn't even know how to ride a horse.

"Sire!"

I rolled my eyes before turning to see most of my squad riding towards me. Behind them a bunch of other men clad in less ostentatious armor, carrying long spears with them. Or were they lances? Yeah, probably lances.

"Pavel," I greeted my friend with a nod of my head. I as enjoying this despite myself. These dreams always ended badly. "What are we waiting for?" I repeated, this time addressing him.

"For the commander to give the attack order of course," Pavel told me as if it was the most obvious thing in the world. "I never imagined you to be this bloodthirsty."  
>"Don't worry, my lord," Serge told me. "The enemy will break in any minute."<br>I could only imagine what was going on outside of these walls, there were no noises that could give me any clues as to the situation, just silence.

As more and more mounted men massed on the courtyard I started hearing a battle going on. It sounded a lot like one of those movies that I had seen with Bumblebee. One of those with steel crashing against steel and screams of anger and pain all around. It wasn't so different from my real life.

"'Tis the commander!" someone exclaimed.

"Shall she be leading this assault herself?!"

"Madness."

Why did they have to speak in that antiquated sort of way, I didn't even know how people spoke in the Middle Ages, I guess my imagination was trying to make the experience all the more…realistic.

The commander was wearing the most ridiculously ornamented armor that I had ever seen or imagined. It had very large pauldrons that verged on the side of parody. It had spikes on the knees and on the elbows as well as gilded designs running across her chestplate. To top it all off that particular section of her armor was shaped to accommodate her breasts.

"Commander," I greeted, managing to keep a straight face. I didn't want a spear through my neck.

"The castellan is about to give the order," she told me without even sparing me a glance. "You'll get your glory in a moment Frank."

I nodded absent-mindedly and fiddled with my sword. It had a handle long enough for me to use both hands, but wasn't long enough that I couldn't wave it around with just one.

The commander still kept Lieutenant Hayes' sexy voice, even if her face had become something right out of a movie, prettier than the real thing but with the traces there. I didn't mind. It allowed me to stare without the risk of any real repercussions.

Then the lieutenant, no, the commander, put on her helmet.

I sighed inwardly. Her helm was also gilded with fancy designs.

"Sire," someone said from below.

I grabbed a long spear with a folded standard on top and watched it unfold as I raised it. Not surprisingly, it had a golden skull on a field of crimson. The skull had flames on top of it. "Thanks, lad," I told the kid. _Lad_? I mouthed to myself. Now that was ridiculous.

"Open the gates!" came the order.

The massive wooden doors opened to show grunts and jackals with pink crystal swords and axes trying to jump through. All were killed by the commander's personal guard. I smiled at that, the knights hadn't even batted an eyelash.

As the door opened slowly I could see arrows raining on an army of Covenant. They were trying to cover themselves with wooden shields or their comrades' corpses, but it was to no avail, already they were falling back towards the safety of their own lines.

"Charge!"

Now that was an order I was unfamiliar with.

My horse reared its legs and for a moment I was afraid I'd fall down on my ass, but it looked like dream me knew how to do this kind of shit. I held to the haft of my lance tightly and spurred my horse forward. Already the commander was out of the door, with her personal squad immediately behind her, cleaving in half any alien that got close enough to them.

I could see why we were charging, the enemy was falling back en masse and we wanted to destroy them before they got to safety. On horses it was easy going, slashing and stabbing with near impunity while the small aliens just tried to run away from our steel. I didn't really do much, instead just running over some grunts while keeping my standard high in the air.

"They're routing!" the commander yelled. "Press forward!"

We chased and chased them until we came to a hill. That's where something felt wrong to me, but this was only a dream, so I paid it no heed. My horse climbed over the hill, trampling jackals and grunts as it went. When we came to the top I could see that the few survivors from the escaping force were taking cover behind a wall of elites and a few hunters. The hunters used their shield arms to cover the elites, who had spears that resembled their energy swords.

"Form up, form up!"

Horses shuffled and moved to form a straight line. There was no chance that we could make our line longer than theirs, but we were cavalry and they were just puny infantrymen, we could crush their line and destroy them.

"Archers!"

At that command a few dozen arrows landed on the enemy force. Most of the elites that were hit with the huge broad-heads fell down, in pain even if they were not dead. The hunters were another matter entirely, barely flinching under the steel bites. The barrage was sustained for another two minutes before finally the order to charge was given.

This time I did lower my lance. It was a great sensation, to be trampling the enemy that so often trampled us. Our horses jumped over their spears and landed on top of them. I laughed as I stabbed an elite through the neck and yanked my spear back out. The standard was already soaking with purple blood.

"Grigori!" I yelled for my man, handing him the standard. "Take care of it."

He nodded and we were off to killing. I drew my sword and slashed and stabbed as my horse moved forward.

Then it got stabbed in the neck, making me fall over its head and land on my back. I wheezed for air, trying to get up. An elite pressed its foot against my chest and drew back its spear, but I slashed at its legs with my sword. It wasn't enough to cut them off, but it fell and I proceeded to stab it three times in the chest before getting back up. All around me I could see that our horses had been stopped. In front of me was a wall of elites wearing fancy armor and fancy helmets, their spears actually having energy blades.

"What?"

I was kicked backwards before I could think. I rolled and jumped back up, running away from the elite attacking me. As I did that I saw that the hill that we had come from was crowded with more troops. Those weren't our friends, they were elites riding some monstrous cross between a horse and a Tyrannosaur.

"Shit."

Once again, a dream would end up with me stabbed several times.

I knew that this was not real, but still I fought as it were. I have no idea where I learned to use a sword, but apparently I was a master in here. Several elites fell to my blade before an arrow punched through my armor and landed on my shoulder.

Yup, just like in the movies. I fell just as a soldier in medieval marine armor was decapitated, landing on top of me. I looked at the arrow and confirmed that only the top had gone through and that even then just a little bit of it had pierced my skin. Judging from the size it was a jackal arrow.

I didn't get up, I was afraid. The elites were butchering us humans from both sides, Cavalry on one end and pikemen on the other.

"Get up man!" I was ordered. "Up, up!"

I was yanked to my feet by a huge figure that I could only assume was the equivalent of a Spartan in my dreams. It pulled the arrow from my shoulder, ignoring all common sense and medical knowledge that it might've possessed. Surprisingly enough, my shoulder started hurting considerably less.

"We fight to the end," it told me, hefting an elite spear and throwing it at a charging horseman. The elite fell to the floor with a spear through its chest.

The Spartan had a Greek-style helmet, with a red crest running the length of it. In one hand it had a sword and in the other, an axe. It spun and stabbed and slashed and hacked away at enemies while I tried to keep up, falling desperately behind. Fortunately, I was not a center of attention, instead just slashing at a few enemies.

We couldn't last forever though. One of the elites stabbed the Spartan's leg with a spear, pinning him to the ground. The Spartan threw his axe at the elite, hitting him in the chest and killing it, but another one soon stabbed him in the chest. I could see the aliens swarming him, but couldn't help.

Something struck me in the head and I fell down. The moment I looked up I saw a giant foot coming to my face.

I woke up for real, breathing heavy and blood coming out of my nose. I wiped it away and grunted in annoyance. The dream had not been a pleasant one, I knew that much even if I couldn't remember all of it.

"Gunny," someone asked form outside. "Oh, you awake?"

"Yeah," I replied, still wiping blood from my nose. "What?"

"We need you and your squad on your position, the enemy is preparing for a mass assault."

I sighed. "I'll be there in a minute."

"So, here we go again," Schitzo said almost sadly.

* * *

><p><em>Thanks to SilasWhitfield and Alshep for proof-reading this chapter.<em>

_So, that last section gives a whole new meaning to the phrase "going medieval on their asses." Believe it or not, that dream is based on one that i had the day before writing it. Sure, it wasn't as long or as epic and didn't involve the Covenant as enemies, but I do remember the feeling of almost having a spear punch through my neck. In my dream my companions were characters from Game of Thrones. I am strangely ashamed to admit that they were all Lannisters._

_Well, that's it for my dream, let's focus on the rest of the chapter. It had been a while since Frank and Pavel last had a one-on-one talk, so it's good to finally have them chat like that. Now, for the ones who said that Second Squad didn't really have much character depth, I agree. So far I am not entirely sure how many of them are going to stay alive, so I don't want to give too much focus to one character that will only die abruptly in the next chapter. Or maybe I do, make it hurt when you guys read it. I know I did it blatantly with Adama, so maybe I'm lying right now._

_Still, they will gain more character traits and depth as the story goes on. A little food for thought, Serge and Caboose get along greatly, mostly because they don't talk at all and have the same mentality on war, but if you examine their backgrounds they're virtual opposites, one fought for his country right or wrong and the other fought for independence for perceived wrongs. Interesting contrast, don't you think?_

_On other news, Halo 4 is out! And I finished it in Legendary co-op! Which means that now I have to finish it solo! Fuck yeah I'm going to die so many times! I also get new weapons, equipment, and lore to play around with! No, seriously, Halo 4 was great, I have to say that it was pretty much everything that I expected of a Halo game, perhaps even better than Combat Evolved. If you haven't bought it, I can tell you that the price is worth it, and the multiplayer is still the Halo we all love so much despite its CallOfDutyfication._

_Now, to address your (very appreciated reviews): Claire and Marina will be showing up, in fact, I just finished writing a chapter where they both appear. Knives won't be named with carvings. I think that Frank's sword duel was pretty awesome too. I don't know why I haven't given them jetpacks, I had it in my mind that ODSTs with jetpacks were specialist units, but the idea is rather interesting. The jumping out of the pod idea has been toyed with, it could work with jetpacks...hmmm._

_Oh, and one very important thing that I completely forgot to mention last chapter. Squashing a chieftain with a drop pod was an idea by reviewer** graysontyoung**. Bro, I'm sorry I forgot to credit you for it, but believe me when I say that I was totally going to do it when I wrote that scene down. Again, thanks go to him._

_Ladies and gentlemen, apologies for the long post-chapter note, but some things have to be said and others I just say because this is my story and I can. Do not forget that your reviews are appreciated and that the current goal is 666 reviews, just 74 more to go. I'd love to hear what you thought on the medieval dream scene, it was tons of fun to write._

_Stay strong._

_-casquis_


	148. Surf Against Rocks

Chapter CXLVIII: Surf Against Rocks

**May 8, 2547 (UNSC Calendar)/**

**Calderwood Château, Skopje, Philippus System**

* * *

><p><em>"There are two ways to end a siege. Either you break them, or they break you."<em>

* * *

><p>It was raining. The water fell on my head and rolled down my forehead over my eyes, nose and mouth. For an instant I felt cold steel on my wrists and a warm towel covering my face. I had trouble breathing and I stumbled slightly, catching myself before falling down. It wasn't the first time that something like that had happened, even if it had been almost two years.<p>

"You ok?" Pavel asked me.

"Just woke up," I dismissed, putting my helmet back on, breathing easy once again. "One helluva storm."

"Yeah, big planet means bigger everything."

"I'm not entirely sure it works like that," I said. "But so far it seems like it."

Lightning crisscrossed through the dark sky, lighting up the castle towers as well as the AA turrets. It was windy as hell too, I could feel the wind hitting me inside the courtyard, I could only imagine how the covvies outside were coping against what must've been gale force winds. Not my problem, I guess.

"Lots of Marines," Almers pointed out. "We expecting an attack or something, Gunny?"

"I don't know, I just woke up, same as you."

Miranda craned her neck from side to side before taking a step forward.

"Yes?" I asked her.

"Oh, me? Nothing."

I shrugged, she always managed to sound like a scolded preschooler. "Wiremu, keep those rockets dry, something tells me we might need them."

"He doesn't have to actually keep them dry, they're rated to work in all kinds of weather…" Miranda stopped talking as I stared at her through my visor. "But you already knew that."

"Opa!" Almers exclaimed, slapping her in the back. "You're getting better."

"Second Squad!" someone yelled. "Second-"

"Right here!" Pavel cried. "Oh, hey Royce."

"Klaus," the ODST acknowledged. "Gunny, the el-tee needs you with her. She's in the tower her squad was assigned to."

I sighed. "I'll be right there." I turned to Pavel. "Wish me luck."

"Good luck."

The smell of excitement and nervousness was heavy in the air, Marines ran from one point to another making last minute preparations or shouting for extra ammunition. Looking up at the battlements I could see dozens and dozens of green-clad men aiming down their rifles at enemies that I couldn't see. There were several Warthogs parked with their fronts to the gates in case we needed to use them, the two Scorpion tanks were all the way at the front, but so far we hadn't used them.

I climbed up the tower that Hayes was supposedly in. There were more than a few Marines standing guard. One of them even ran a scanner on me to see if I was who I said I was. Dick.

"Sir," I saluted Hayes. "You asked for me."

"Actually, I asked for you." The woman who had spoken was without a doubt Colonel Sanderson. Pretty.

"Sir," I turned to salute her. "Any reason in particular as to why I'm here?"

"I'm calling most officers and a few squad leaders," she explained. "The Covenant have finally taken the city, they are moving towards us in force as we speak."

"More of them?" an ODST I didn't know asked.

"Let them," another one stated. "They'll be mowed down before they even hit the wall."

There were some mutterings of agreement and I found myself nodding as well.

"While that is all an well," Sanderson silenced us with a wave of her hand. "The enemy forces are…substantial." She motioned for us to move up to the hastily set up holotable in the room, lighting it up. "Here. Hassani, please."

"With pleasure, Colonel," the voice of our platoon's new AI said. "Ladies and gentlemen, the enemy has forces that under any other circumstances would be considered overwhelming." Al stopped talking as the holotable displayed two battalion's worth of Covenant infantry forces. "As you can see, their infantry is rather large."

"No shit."

Al dismissed the comment and went on. "In addition to the standard grunts, no pun intended, the enemy has several companies worth of light and heavy armor vehicles. At least three dozen Daemon tanks have been spotted by air recon. Those tanks by themselves would be able to make a hole in the outer walls given enough time."

"Then we don't give them enough time," I found myself saying.

"Ah, but that's where it gets complicated," Al stated. The holotable now displayed a pair of Scarabs. The smaller models. "As you see, the enemy spared no expense when massing this strike force."

"Did we really piss them off that bad?" a Marine captain asked.

"The answer to that question is not within my processing capabilities," Al replied simply, his hologram shrugging. "The ground forces could likely be fended off by our turrets and heavy weaponry with relative ease."

I huffed. Relative ease when speaking of taking down Scarabs was a terrible joke.

"The enemy also has large numbers of ground attack aircraft as well as dozens of dropships."

"So," Lieutenant Hayes spoke. "What do we do?"

Sanderson placed her two hands on the holotable, gripping it tightly before taking a small step forward. "We're pulling back, even if we did manage to hold off the enemy long enough for them to be destroyed from orbit the planet is already lost, already our forces are evacuating, with civilian evacuations being put to the back of the line."

It always hurt me to hear that. It made a lot of sense when you think about it, pulling out military assets to have them fight another day and leaving the mostly useless civilians behind, but it was still monstrous. I was beginning to think that it was useless anyways, we never did much damage.

"When does the evacuation begin?" Hayes asked.

"One and a half hours approximately, enough time to reposition some of the ships in orbit to make space for our men down here."

"One hour and thirty minutes down here is not so bad," someone said.

"No, it is not," Colonel Sanderson said firmly. "Everyone return to your units, we don't expect the aliens to just let us fly away."

"Sir," we saluted before leaving the room.

The rain was picking up, if that seemed even possible. Despite the sheer volume of water pouring down from the clouds I could still make out the purple and green lights that marked the Covenant positions. I don't understand why they saw it fit to announce their positions to anybody in the neighboring area, but the gunners and mortar spotters wouldn't be complaining when their vehicles started moving in our direction.

Soon enough they started doing just that.

"You know the drill," I told my men. "Hold until they're closer than two hundred."

"Feet or yards?" Almers asked.

"I thought Germans used metric," Pavel told him. As a born and raised Pole Pavel was certain that the Germans used metric.

"I'm not an Earther," Almers dismissed him. "Also, Netherlands, not Germany. Besides, everyone uses metric."

Miranda turned to the medic. "There are still some old colonies founded by United States explorers that stick to the old imperial system."

"Dye your hair blonde and you'll replace Grass in no time," Caboose said, allowing himself a small chuckle.

"Grass dyed her hair black," I told him.

"Newsflash," Pavel added.

"You know, I've yet to see this Grass that you talk so much about," Wiremu said.

I huffed. "Think she'd be into your tattoos?"

"They all are," he replied.

Our little conversation was interrupted as a Daemon shell exploded on the battlements in the inner wall behind us, the compressed whatever plasma didn't destroy it, but it did make a little crater and scattered rock all around, sprinkling us with gravel.

"Goddamn," Almers cursed. "Fucking tanks."

"Amen," Wiremu growled in agreement.

"Shut up, you're an atheist."

Wiremu spread his arms before giving Almers a knock on the helmet with the back of his rocket launcher. Almers stumbled and leaned on the battlements to stay afoot, cursing.

"Cut that shit," I ordered them. "Serge, anyone of them does anything stupid shoot them in the leg."

Serge nodded, acknowledging my order, knowing full well that he wouldn't follow it. It didn't matter, I had half a mind to do it myself.

"Wraiths and Daemons up front! Banshees are making a flyby!" Al warned us on our HUDs.

"Heads down! Wiremu!"

Green blobs collided against the hard stone walls, melting them slightly and creating small craters. The characteristic screaming of the enemy attack craft suddenly filled the air. I ducked and pressed my chin into my chest, making myself as tight a ball as I could. Blue plasma hit the battlements inches from my feet, but the angle didn't allow the Banshees to fire.

"Nail that fucker," Pavel ordered Wiremu.

The man rolled out of cover and took aim for a brief second before firing a rocket that took out a Banshee. It went down with smoke coming out of the fuselage. Several other Banshees were brought down by shoulder-held launchers as well as the Scythe AA cannon. The massive chaingun didn't kill as many as it could've, instead just focusing on the ones that were a direct threat. It could've brought down the entire enemy assault force, but the gunners were conserving ammunition.

"Shitfuck!"

Whoever yelled that was spot on.

Two Scarabs suddenly showed up, the lights on their legs and bodies lighting up all of a sudden, revealing the two walking mechas hulking towards us. They were a lot closer than I would've imagined.

The Scythe opened up on one of them even as the lead Scarab powered up its main gun. The green stream of plasma flew towards the AA gun even as heavy rounds hit its armor. Both the Scarab and the massive defense gun went up in flames at the exact same time. The problem there was that they had a spare.

"Shitfuck," I echoed.

"Movement on the ground!"

"What the fuck?!"

Someone cried out in pain and then a jackal jumped in front of me. The huge Skirmisher kicked me, almost making me fall out the back of the wall. I kicked back, expecting to hit it in the chest only to hit empty air. I used the momentum to help me back to my feet and saw Miranda drive her knife into the back of the jackal's neck.

"You know Miri," I said. "It's weird that you can't talk without blushing."

"A girl's gotta have a few glaring contradictions in her life," she said, shrugging.

"Huh," Pavel muttered.

That's all the time we got, because all of a sudden a dozen skirmishers appeared out of nowhere. I was pretty sure that they weren't cloaked, but the heavy bombardment by the Wraiths and Daemons had given them a small window to sneak in.

"And stay down!" Pavel yelled at a vulture he killed.

I saw Caboose hit a button on his MA5 and a bayonet jumped out, sticking a jackal through the neck. He fired his gun into the alien's face and dropped it, reaching for his shotgun. Miranda slashed at one of the attackers with her knife before firing into its chest from the hip. The skirmishers were carrying plasma pistols and some sort of needle knives. They were in a bad position, with their backs against a wall and then a long fall.

Plus, we were highly trained killing machines.

I made quick work of the two in front of me with a burst to each of their chests. I surprised myself, I wasn't normally that conservative when it came to killing. Wiremu, on the other hand, managed to bash a jackal's skull in with a haymaker and then snapped another one's neck with a backhanded strike. I could hear the poor bird's neck crunch all the way from here.

"Nice," Serge said, taking a moment off his fight to compliment Wiremu. After that he kicked a jackal against the wall and punched it over the top.

"That it?"

"Don't tempt-"

Another dozen skirmishers jumped up. They were using some kind of fancy grapple guns to pull themselves up. This time they fired wildly, missing us by inches or less. I took an involuntary step back as I fired my gun at them, missing as I sprayed just as wildly. After a second I fired three focused bursts on the three skirmishers closest to me, but before either side could react jackals with shields appeared out the ledge, forming a wall with their energy shields.

"Don't you have one of those?" Schitzo asked me, examining his fingernails.

I activated my gauntlet just in time for a burst of needles to bounc of it and charged forward. I slammed into the enemy shield wall with my own scavenged gauntlet. The jackals had weak arms and the one directly on the receiving end of my half-tackle collapsed backwards, slamming its head on the battlements. I tried raising my rifle and firing to the sides, but a skirmisher stepped on the BR55. Instead I drew my pistol and shot it three times in the chest before it could stab me with its stupid-looking pink sword.

That was enough for my squad to make quick work of the rest of them.

"Shields, castles, and now swords?" I complained. "Next thing I know someone will be shooting arrows…"

Pavel stared at me for a second before breaking into laughter. "You know what, you're right, this is fucking nuts.

He was joined by the rest of the squad sans Caboose and Serge, who usually laughed at things only they understood. Our laughter died down with the second Scarab's beam. It hit the inner walls, vaporizing the top of the battlements as well as the Marines behind them. Immediately several missile pods started firing into its knee joints. We were now not only getting pounded by tanks, but by the heavy Scarab as well. With the Scythe gone we were in what you would call a pickle.

"Castillo, I need you and two other men down here now!"

I considered Hayes' orders for a second before ordering Miranda and Wiremu to come with me. I followed the el-tee's IFF and found her climbing into a Warthog on the courtyard.

"Are we actually…" I asked.

"Yes."

"Sure, why not." I climbed onto the Hog's driver's seat and Miranda took the heavy machine gun on the back. Wiremu reloaded his SPANKr and took shotgun.

Hayes was on the side seat in her Warthog, with a PFC driving and Royce manning the gauss cannon on the back. The gates of the castle opened and our two scout vehicles lurched forward.

For an instant I had a sense of déjà vu.

I hit a grunt that jumped out of a rock at the sound of our jeeps. I have no idea how it managed to stay alive for so long, but it did the grunt no good, as its insides painted the hood of my 'Hog.

"What does that make, Gunny?" Wiremu asked.

"Keeping count is childish," I told him. _Sixteen._

He laughed and shook his head.

"There!" Hayes came on the radio. "Castillo, I'm going to need you to draw its fire."

"I am a tempting target aren't I?"

"I might just decide to use you for stuff like this more often then."

"I'm your grunt," I replied bitterly.

Wiremu slapped my arm and gave me a what the hell look.

"Sir," I added.

Before anything else could be said three different plasma machine guns started firing on our hog, a couple of bolts even scorching the hood plating. I swerved to avoid being targeted and cursed myself for not turning off the headlights before. Miranda stopped firing back as to avoid muzzle flashes.

"What the fuck are you doing?" I yelled. "We're supposed to be making targets of ourselves!"  
>Miranda didn't say anything, instead replying by firing at the Scarab's side with as much accuracy as the heavy Gatling could provide. I was thinking that perhaps I should've turned the lights back one, but I didn't want to make us <em>that <em>obvious a target. The heavy caliber rounds slamming into the lower deck should be enough to draw some attention away from the el-tee's 'Hog.

One of our tires was blown and I barely managed to regain control of the Warthog, but we were moving a lot slower than before, making ourselves an even better target.

"Shiiiiiit!"

I heard two blasts from a Gauss cannon just in time. The Scarab collapsed on its ass and a second later it blew up, less than a hundred meters away from us. I was rocked slightly by the shockwave, but I didn't feel any organs turn into mush. So that's good.

"Incoming!"

_Shit. Again._

All three of us left our Warthog before a Wraith mortar slammed directly into it.

"How do they even manage?" Miranda complained loudly. "I mean, they're never this accurate!"

"Easy girl," Wiremu said. "We need to get back."

"Agreed," I said. "Eyes up, there are still some Banshees lurking around. Those are your responsibility Wiremu."

"Understood."

"Let's move."

I felt a tickling on my face, kind of like it would feel if it were numb, but slightly different. It was accompanied by that déjà vu feeling, but I pushed it back. A couple of carbine-toting aliens spotted us moving and fired on us, but they were too eager and left cover in an attempt to secure the kill, allowing me to take them out.

"Nice reflexes," Schitzo complimented. "Almost…supernatural."

I groaned and ignored him, stepping up my pace and forcing my two squad mates to try harder to keep up with me. Luckily we weren't too far from the walls and went back in without much trouble.

"Damn, I half expected us to be ambushed by a platoon of elites with active camouflage," Wiremu huffed in between breaths.

"Agreed," Miranda managed.

I was about to say something when I saw lightning flash and looked up.

At first the raindrops hitting my visor didn't allow me to make out the shape clearly, but within a few seconds I recognized it for what it was, a Covenant corvette. Directly overhead, its pulse lasers heating up.

I saw dozens of missiles go up in an attempt to strike at the unshielded ship. The heavy SAM launched what must've been its entire arsenal at the ship. The defense lasers took out most of our missiles and I watched helplessly as the big gun in the center of the ship turned brighter and brighter. One missile got past all the defense guns and hit.

It was a small explosion, but it rocked the corvette. I whooped and hollered, realizing that I had been instants away from death. The enemy ship boosted away from us, with a few of the smaller missiles hitting its sides, barely denting the armor.

"Stop staring," I said, despite doing just that. "Back to our positions."

Pavel and the rest were just fine. Hell, they were even chatting with each other.

"One heck of a close call, eh?" Pavel asked.

"What the hell kind of question is that?" Almers exclaimed. "Of course it was a close call!"

"If I had to guess, I'd probably say it was a rhetorical one," Caboose said.

"Burn," Wiremu added.

"Anyone know how Beckel's doing?" I asked all of a sudden, feeling guilty for having forgotten about him.

"Still in the infirmary, but I hear they're preparing the wounded for evacuation," Pavel said.

I nodded and shrugged before sitting down. Occasionally a plasma shell would hit one of the walls, but they wouldn't punch through. Mostly they were just pestering us now. Their two Scarabs had failed and a miraculous shot had hit their corvette. Only know did I realize how unlikely it had been for that missile to get through the point defense systems. It was one of the bigger ones and therefore one of the more dangerous ones. It should've been targeted and destroyed before the rest, but for some reason it hadn't. We were alive and I wasn't about to complain.

"How'd that corvette get all the way over here anyways?" Almers asked. "I thought that we had the big guys watching us."

"Nah," Pavel said. "If they were we would be evacuating right now. They're not close enough."  
>Wiremu nodded and examined his weapon, brushing some mud from his SPANKr. "Still, it is worrying. What's to stop more of them from sneaking past."<p>

"The big guys?" Miranda said doubtfully. "Ok, maybe not."

I sighed; this siege shit was tiring me.

"I'm tired of this siege shit," I voiced my thoughts. "Castle warfare is not my thing."

"You should be thankful Gunny," Almers said.

"Kid's got a point," Caboose granted with a slight nod. "If it weren't for this castle…"

"Yeah, yeah, I know."

"Think that corvette will come back?" Miranda asked, squinting through the rain, trying to make out the shape of the enemy ship.

With my eyesight I could make the edges, but she could probably only spot the lights on the sides.

"Not sure," Wiremu muttered. "If the main gun was destroyed they could still launch plasma missiles against us."

"Do those have the torpedo tubes?" Pavel asked.

"Don't think so."

"Where's Grass when you need her, right?" I joked. "Let's not worry about that too much, shall we?"

I wolfed an energy bar and put my helmet back on before I aimed down my designated area. It was filled with the husks of destroyed Wraiths and Daemon tanks. I had been gone for about fifteen minutes and all of a sudden there's nobody else to fight. It was a little bit like one of those so-called classics that my uncle made me read, about a soldier that everyone thought was a coward despite being the bravest of the bunch.

Good book, can't remember the name though.

"What will they try next?" Almers asked after a prolonged silence.

"Stealth Phantoms?"

"Massive bombardment?"

"Dig a tunnel?"

"Storm the walls?"

"They already did that."

"Right…blow up the walls."

"They already tried. You're killing me Miri."

"I know, teleportation."

"You've been reading too much sci-fi," Almers told Wiremu.

"Almers…we live in a spaceship."

He sighed. "Point taken."

"Hey, when did the line between old sci-fi and reality blur this much?" Miranda asked.

"About the time the Shaw-Fujikawa business?" Pavel suggested.

"Nah, there were colonies before that," I said.

"Only the Jovian moons and Mars."

"Still, that counts as sci-fi."

"Old sci-fi," Wiremu specified.

"Thanks Api," I said dryly, using his nickname.

A few of the Pelicans were taking off, probably filled to the brim with the more critical wounded Marines. I watched them disappear into the rainy night before returning to look at the ground through my scope.

"…anyways, old sci-fi is still sci-fi," Pavel was saying. "Same as old theater is still theater, there shouldn't be a big difference."  
>The conversation could've been an interesting one on other circumstances, but right about now I was pissed for some reason. I kept having this flashes of an elite stomping on my face and trying to stab me through the neck with a spear. It was pissing me off because I couldn't do anything to make them go away. It wasn't something new to me, in fact, it was disturbingly familiar. See things that weren't there, feel things you shouldn't feel. Nosebleeds, headaches, hallucinations. They were all just part of the bundle of fucked up shit that happened to be me.<p>

A glimmer, something off caught my sight.

"Anyone see that?" I asked, tightening my grip on my BR55.

"I don't-"

A needle went through my scope, exploding before going completely through and destroying my scope completely, sending glass, crystal, and metal fragments everywhere, cracking my visor. I fell backwards as more needles from a needle rifle flew past me. A pair of heavy legs appeared next to my head, materializing from nothingness.

A stealth elite looked at me and reared its heavy boot to stomp my face in.

I raised my arms to protect myself. As my left arm passed in front of my face I saw the Latin carvings I had etched into my armor when I first got it. It had been almost juvenile, but it did look pretty badass.

_Nulli secundus._

Second to none.

And most certainly not to this motherfucking split chin.

I roared as my hands caught the elite's foot, stopping it abruptly. The elite seemed too surprised to react as Caboose fired a shell into the back of its head, leaving it a mess that looked like hamburger meat. The headless elite took half a step back before Caboose pushed it off the edge of the battlements.

"Nice," I told him.

"How'd you do that?" he asked me, voice quiet and serious. The rest of the team was firing at whoever had attacked me from below.

"Do what?"

"You stopped its leg with your arms moving barely an inch…" he stated. "How. Not even you are supposed to be able to do that."

"I stopped it before it could stomp," I said, trying to sound confused. "What the hell are you talking about?"

"No you didn't," Almers said. "But it's probably just adrenaline or something like that."

"I don't know what any of you two are talking about," I told them. "And I don't care what you think you saw. Back to your positions, both of you!"

Almers shrugged and obeyed like a good soldier, but it took Caboose a little bit longer to step back to his position, eyeing me cautiously as he went. I ignored him and returned to my position, keeping my eyes extra open to see if I could spot any movement while other members of my squad used the thermal scope on their helmets to see if they could make out the covvies.

Right about then the mortar teams started firing, lobbing explosives all the way across the battlefield and into enemy bases. They were disrupting enemy activities to buy us more time. Whichever ship was coming to pick us up would need some time to get us all in. Even if three carriers came it would take time for all of us to be picked up.

"Hear that?"

I looked up, I did indeed hear that. It sounded like a jet plane. It was in fact, the closest thing we had to that. I barely made out the shape of a Longsword fighter screaming through the air before it passed overhead. It sprayed the ground forces with its ventral cannon before gaining a bearing on the enemy corvette and pulling away.

"Are they-?"

"Yeah," I answered Miri.

"Aren't we a little close?"

"Yup," Pavel told her.

"Everybody down!" someone yelled.

It was a little bit too late. A MAC round split the night sky in two with a bright white line before colliding with the corvette. There was a small explosion on either side of the enemy ship before the massive slug impacted against the ground. The sheer kinetic force was enough to destroy absolutely anything within a kilometer of the impact point. Shockwaves slapped against the castle, even managing to tumble down one of the more weakened towers. I don't think that there was anybody on it, but it was still dangerous for the Navy to fire MAC rounds that close to us.

"Motherfucker," Serge cursed, dusting himself off.

"Gotcha," Almers muttered. "That was risky."

"Maybe they're in trouble up there," Miranda suggested.

I looked up. The MAC round and following explosion had pushed away most of the above, revealing the dark night sky. I could see the twinkling stars. Suddenly, one of them disappeared. A ship of some kind must've been pretty close to our position or attempting to enter the atmosphere. Bright white flashes converged on one position and a few seconds later my HUD flickered slightly.

"They're using nukes up there," Pavel said.

"Heavy ones too," Caboose added.

"Ship busters."

Al's image appeared on my HUD. "All units not on the outer walls report to the inner courtyard for evacuation."

"Why are we always the last ones to go?" Almers complained, kicking at a rock.

"Because we're the best," Wiremu reminded him.

"You'd think that we'd het perks for that…"

I shrugged. "Doesn't matter. All of the enemy forces are gone now." I waved at the crater. "Just relax."

Miranda looked like she wanted to say something when a plasma bolt hit my stomach. I collapsed as I felt my blood boil and my skin burn, my vision blacking off at the edges.

"Elites!"

My squad placed themselves between my attacker and me before firing at an alien that I couldn't see. I heard a little bit of plasma fire before it disappeared completely. I would've thanked them, but my belly felt like it had been burned out completely. I looked down to see that my armor was boiling off and that my skin was red, showing muscle and something that looked vaguely like an intestine. I started screaming.

"Almers! See to him," Pavel barked his orders. "Scan the area, more might've sneaked past us!"

I could hear plasma firing and explosions, no doubt coming from a few cloaked elites that had been inside when all their forces were destroyed.

"Gunny, can you hear me?!" Almers yelled, slapping my helmet softly. "Gunny, you're hit in the abdominal region, can you hear me?"

I tried to reply, but instead I just nodded weakly after managing to stop screaming.

"Good, good, that's good. The plasma burned through your armor, but it stopped short of your skin. The molten armor is what burned your undersuit and skin. Damage is not life threatening. A little bit of biofoam and a quick stay in the operation room and you'll be fine."

I nodded again, managing a grunt.

"Good, good, stay awake. Now, this is going to burn," he warned me as he shook a can of biofoam. "But you already know that."

I let out a hoarse scream of pain as the foam filled my wound, stopping blood loss and connecting the damaged muscle and skin tissue as well as keeping my intestines in. It was painful, painful as hell, but I managed to keep quiet after that initial scream.

"We're falling back!" Pavel ordered. "Pull him up."

"Here, I got you Gunny," Almers told me, gently lifting me up and pulling one of my arms across his shoulders.

I struggled to remain afoot, but I managed. My legs felt like jelly, but somehow I managed. Almers huffed under my weight, dragging me behind him while I tried to hold on to my rifle and keep myself as light for him as possible. I could only make out the rest of my squad running in front of us. They were firing to enemies that I couldn't see.

_Shit, shit, shit._

We entered one of the larger towers, stopping only to catch our breaths before Pavel and Wiremu kicked down the door on the other side and started firing on the covvies on the walls. Almers hung back for a moment, keeping me on my feet.

"We're almost there Gunny, hold on. Just hold on."

I nodded too weakly for him to see.

"Let's go!" Wiremu yelled. "Almers! Come on!"

Almers grunted something and carried me through the door before something separated him from me.

I looked up to see an elite materialize right above me for the second time in ten minutes. It looked down at me and aimed its plasma repeater at my head. Almers tackled it from the side, pushing it to the ledge. The elite managed to hold on, but Amlers was too busy firing at another alien that had seemingly appeared out of nowhere. The other elite's shields flickered and died before Almers finished it off.

I watched as the split-chin that he had knocked to the side of the wall pulled itself up and drew an energy sword.

"Almers!" I yelled in warning through my pain.

The medic turned around, swinging his empty rifle like a club at the elite. Before he could finish his swing the elite stabbed upwards, driving the twin tips of his blade through Almers' body. He grunted lowly as his body was violently lifted up from the ground. Despite having two burning blades in his body he managed to lift his head and look at the elite.

"Fuck…you…"

"Sander!" Serge yelled, firing his assault rifle at the elite's feet, draining his shields. "Help!"

The elite moved its sword to the side, carelessly tossing Almers' body against the battlements. I tried to pull myself to my feet to help, to do something. It was useless, my legs gave under me and I fell back to the floor.

More weapons joined Serge and the elite fell, roaring in its native language, probably cursing and damning us.

"Here Gunny," Wiremu said, picking me up like Almers had. "Serge, he's gone!"

"I'm not leaving his body behind for those carrion eaters!"

"Serge-"

"Api," Pavel interceded. "Shut the fuck up. Caboose, help him with Almers. We need to move it!"

I was dragged and manhandled through battlements, vaults, and corridors until eventually we were in the inner courtyard. I could see a Pelican taking off with one of the Scorpions and a group of Marines jumping on the back of another dropship. Most of the troops inside were already gone, but they were still keeping watch for any elites that might've avoided detection. I could barely breath, I wasn't even able to see properly.

"Klaus, Frank!" Fightmaster's voice yelled. "Over here!"

"Thanks Sam," Miri told him as we boarded the Pelican.

"Is he…?"

Caboose shook his head as he placed Almers' corpse on the blood tray with care and Serge threw his helmet at one of the walls.

"Damn. We've got to go."

"By all means," Pavel urged him. "Don't wait on our account."

My consciousness finally faded, the pain overwhelming my mind. I slipped into dreams of knights and monsters, dreams that felt like they were real. In all of them I saw Almers die and the planet burn.

I shouldn't have felt like that. It was just another battle we lost, just another planet taken from us, just another million dead. Just another number to put on a list.

Just another defeat.

* * *

><p><em>Thanks to SilasWhitfield for proof-reading this chapter.<em>

_Frank gets shot, someone dies, nothing is gained._

_Just another day in the life, right? _

_This is an interesting chapter, I think. There's not much combat on it when comparing it to most of this fic, but instead we get a bunch of close calls including almost being sniped through the eye, almost being glassed, almost being killed by jackals, and actually getting shot. Frank's luck ran out just in time. If you can call a plasma shot to the gut 'just in time'. PFC Sander Almers, on the other hand, didn't have nearly the same amount of luck as our protagonist. He went down like a true Helljumper, swinging his rifle and cursing the enemy._

_The team moved on quickly, but that's only because they were in mortal danger themselves. There will be some fallout in the following chapters (five or so). There's also going to be some big changes. Some seriously big changes. In fact, i just started writing one of them. Stay tuned, if I manage to write them half-decently then I have a feeling that they will be rather magnificent._

_As always, I want to thank you all for your incredibly kind reviews. I'm glad to say that all of them were positive, which is always good for the good old ego. I'm especially happy that you guys enjoyed the medieval scene, it was great fun to write. There weren't any questions or concerns, but I got a pair of reviews asking me to update more frequently. Guys, believe me, I try. I do my best, but sometimes the life (lowercase) gets in the way. (that was a terrible pun and i am sorry). I always try to update as fast as I can, and I do believe that one-point-something chapters per week is a great achievement. For example, last chapter was posted just four days ago._

_Let me know what you thought. Did anyone expect Almers to be the first to kick the can? I didn't when I introduced the new squad. Ladies and gents, please review and stay strong._

_-casquis_


	149. Unwinding

Chapter CXLIX: Unwinding

**July 12, 2547 (UNSC Calendar)/two months later**

**Esztergom (****Ezhtergom)****, Viery Territory, Reach, Epsilon Eridani System**

* * *

><p><em>"Watching a movie, getting a drink, talking with friends, and secret meetings with ONI spooks. One of those is not like the others."- Gunnery Sergeant Francisco Castillo<em>

* * *

><p>You would've thought that I was staring at something interesting, or that I had found the face of Jesus on the bottom of my mug, but in truth, the bottom of that glass was as interesting as staring at an old brick wall. There were some froth formations that one could interpret as cats, but most of them just looked like clouds. White clouds floating in a vaguely yellow ocean.<p>

Suddenly I found myself disgusted at the thought of yellow liquids. I should've asked for a stout or at least a dark lager. Instead I had tried a Corona for the first time in a while. The Mexican beer was good, light and easy to drink. But it looked like aged piss.

I groaned and pushed the mug away.

"Trouble in paradise?" Murphy asked me. Next to him Corporal Shaw chuckled and took a small sip of his whiskey glass. "I'm kidding Frankie, when they told me that I was being drafted back into action I almost drank myself to death."

I sighed and shook my head at Murphy. He had been drafted back into service recently, much like every single young and able men that the UNSC could get their hands on. "Nothing too serious," I assured him. "Only my second glass."

"Aye lad, but it won't be your last."

"What are you?" Driscoll asked him, elbowing him slightly. "A seer?"

"Seer?" Shaw scoffed. "Most people in the twenty-sixth century use the word psychic."

"Piss off."

The trio of Brits made a very quaint sight in here. They used to be security as well as costumers, now they were just like me, coming here to try and forget that any day they might look up to see Covenant ships burning their homes and families. I had it better than most. I didn't have a home or a family.

Hanna wasn't too happy about that.

"I know that look," Captain Montgomery told me from across the bar. "How's the missus?"

"She's not the missus," I told him.

His eyes widened slightly in dull surprise. "No wonder there's trouble in paradise. You planning on asking her to marry you?"

"No."

"Have you told her that?"

"Yes."

"How did she take it?"

"She said she can wait for me to change my mind."

"Huh."

"Now it just seems like she lied."

Montgomery smiled and leaned on the bar. "Frank, kid. A man as old as myself knows a lot more than you do about woman, so listen to what I am going to say."  
>I looked up at him with an annoyed look but nodded at him to continue.<p>

"They will always find a way to make your life hard. They will always find a way to make you feel guilty. They will always find a way to make you angry. They will always find a way to get what they want. Unless, that is, you stay away from them."

A memory came to me. "Mujer que no chinga…no es mujer."

"Sorry, what was that?" Montgomery asked me, pouring me more beer, this time a darker blend. "My Spanish is a little rusty."

"Woman that doesn't…um, the translation would be fuck with you, I guess." I nodded to myself. "Yeah. A woman that doesn't fuck with you isn't a woman. It's something that I heard my brother say once."

"Didn't know you had a brother," Montgomery noted.

"I…doesn't matter."

"Well, your brother is a smart one then."

I suppressed a growl.

Montgomery continued unperturbed. "Listen kid, I don't know if you love her or how much you love her or whatever. The point is, if you really care about her you'd put a little bit of effort in."

"I thought you were supposed to be on my side."

He laughed. "I'm a bartender, I give advice, doesn't mean you'll like it."

"I like her Captain, I do. Lately we just seem to be getting into more fights. Hell, sometimes I even start them on purpose. Sometimes I get the feeling that she does the same."

"I'm not a shrink Frank, but even I can tell that that's self-destructive. If not toyou or her, at least toyour relationship."

"You should listen to yourself," I said, laughing weakly. "You'd be a great talk show host."

"Right. I'm trying to lie to myself right now, I honestly have no idea what I'm doing."

I smiled. "Kind of obvious."

"Three failed marriages will do that to you," he returned the smile. "Here, have a drink," he offered, pulling out two shot glasses and a fancy-looking bottle. "Ever had Alt Burgundy?"

"Not in a while," I admitted. At his surprised look I added, "I was raised in Jericho VII, there was a lot of Alt there, cheaper than now as well. In fact, I think I still might have a bottle hidden somewhere."

"The pray you don't lose it, kid," he told me as he filled my glass and his. "In a couple of years this nectar of the gods is going to be worth its weight in diamonds."

"Wouldn't that be something," I murmured. "What shall we drink to?"

"That friend of yours that died?" he suggested. "The medic."

"Almers?" I asked. "No. There have been plenty of toasts in his honor already, besides, you don't know him. I couldn't ask you to do that."

"Fine then. What to?"

"To women!" Murphy suggested loudly, drawing the eyes of a couple other patrons.

"Shut up Murphy," Montgomery told him. "What shall it be to then?"

I sighed, trying to think of something smart or memorable, something that one would find in a movie or a book. I couldn't come up with anything from under my sleeve and sighed. "To living the life." I proposed. "Whether it be good or bad."

"As good a toast as any," Montgomery nodded.

"I'll drink to that!" Murphy said loudly, already half-drunk.

"Count me in," Driscoll voiced.

"And me!" Shaw said.

We raised our glasses and drank.

* * *

><p>"Hey Hon."<p>

Hanna turned and looked at me with cold eyes. Even when she was angry she was lovely. "Have fun?"

I dropped the smile and glared slightly. "Why do you have to ask it like that?"

"When we started going out, you promised you would stop drinking," she reminded me for the hundredth time.

"I did no such thing," I said. "I said I'd drink less and I never promised anything."

"It was _implied_ Frank!"

"So what? I'm not drunk!" I shouted. "It's not like I come here and hit you ever night! I'm not a deadbeat! Why do you have such a big problem with me drinking?"

"I've told you a thousand times!"

"That bullshit isn't cutting it anymore. Your foster sisters came in drunk? I mean, seriously? You can't possibly be that traumatized!"

"Well obviously you don't know anything about me!"

I rubbed my temples. "Really?" I asked her. "Really?"

The moment she switched from red hot anger to some kind of tranquil fury I knew that I had made a mistake, but I was too angry myself to care.

"Get out…just get out."

Then I made a second mistake. "I suppose you want me to get my things too." I almost had a heart attack when I heard the words coming out of my mouth. Sure, we got into more fights, but I loved her. I didn't want this to end.

_Shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shitshitshitshitshitshitshit shitshit._

And then I got a miracle, the first one that I had gotten without a gun in my hands and plasma flying around.

Hanna's eyes widened and she stammered on her words. "Are you…"

"No, no, no," I said quickly. "No, I'm not." I sighed and walked to her, putting my hands on her arms. "I'm sorry I said that. I didn't mean it." I could see tears on her eyes and felt myself gulping. I was an asshole. "I'm sorry."

"Frank, I don't want this to end. This…I like it," she said. "I love it."

I could see tears on those beautiful brown eyes of hers. "I do too," I assured her. "I don't know what… I just feel like you're trying to control everything sometimes."

"I'm not, I promise I'm not," she said, hugging me and pressing herself close to me. "I'm doing my best. I'm giving this my best shot."

I hugged her back and thought about my one big mistake in this relationship. It wasn't a mistake if no one found out you did it, but it still was enough to eat at me whenever I thought back to it. "You want to do something? It's been a while since we last went out on a real date."

"No, let's just stay like this for a while."

I smiled. "And then?"

She pinched me. "You really have no tact, do you?" The jab was good natured and the pinch didn't exactly hurt, so I laughed a little bit while I moved us to the couch. Hugging was all good and well, but she'd appreciate some old-fashioned cuddling and it didn't tire my legs out as much. Besides, it increased the chance of sex tenfold.

Funny how things change sometimes. Laying there I tried to find the root of our problems. I mean, I couldn't really see a reason why we would fight so much. The one thing I was hiding from here she couldn't have possibly known, it was a one time thing and she had no reason to believe I had cheated. She had never confronted me about anything and most of our fights seemed to be about nothing in particular. Sure, she complained about me drinking a lot, but drinking wasn't the topic of most of our fights.

I sighed, giving up. Perhaps it was because she wanted a marriage. If that was the case, then I didn't know what I would do.

"When are you leaving tomorrow?" she asked me.

"Morning," I mumbled in reply. I was already falling asleep. "I should be back before sunset."

Hanna yawned and shuffled so that she was facing me, her head propped up by her arm. "Do you _have_ to go?"

Her tone was…tantalizing. "Yeah, debriefing on some things that might be of interest to the UNSC."

"Why didn't Naval Intelligence do that when you were in New Alexandria for the funeral?" she asked.

"I don't know," I replied. "Guess they just wanted to fuck with me."

Hanna smiled and gave me a quick kiss before stopping when I yawned. "Well that was rude."

"I'm sorry," I apologized. "I'm tired, very tired. And my head hurts. Tomorrow morning?"

"Wow, a man asking for a rain check on sex. Better write this down so that I don't forget it."

I smiled, but I was already falling asleep.

* * *

><p>"Ah, good morning Frank, I trust you had a good trip?"<p>

"Good enough," I shrugged in reply, shaking the man's hand. Bruce Jones looked like an office rat, right down to the short-sleeved button shirt and clip-on tie. I'm not sure that was his real name, it sounded a little bit too generic if you ask me, but that's what I had called him for the past couple of years. He didn't have a military rank, at the very least he hadn't given it to me.

"Can't be helped," Bruce replied. "Everything good?"

"Mostly," I replied, taking a seat. "Same ol' stuff."

"Nightmares, headaches, and hallucinations?"

"Yup," I said, annoyed at having to go through this again.

"Any new stuff?"

"No."

"Sorry Frank, but I have to ask."

"Yeah, yeah, I know."

"Any new guests?"

I glared at him. "No…"

"So just Schitzo?"

"And Scarecrow."

"Of course. And the headaches?"

"Nothing I can't handle. Couple of aspirin and I'm good to go."

"M-hm. Now, as for PFC Sander Almers?"

"You're really going to do this?" I asked. "You're not a shrink."

"I'm required to perform many functions in order to be your handler."

"I thought you weren't supposed to say that word…" I sighed. "They should've given me an AI for a handler."

"Would that make you more comfortable?"

"Bruce…"

"Relax, I'm joking."

I allowed myself to comply with that and relaxed my muscles, slouching on the chair slightly. "Ok, let's do this. What do you need to know?"

Bruce leaned slightly forward, clasping his fingers and putting his elbow on the table. "I've seen your initial report, the official one. Have to say, it's not very detailed."

"I got tired of writing step-by-step action scenes," I dismissed. "It's got everything someone from ONI would need to know."

"Ah yes, but it's not always so easy, is it?"

"No," I admitted. "There was one particular moment in Skopje where your…program did its job rather well."

"It's also your program Frank, you need to accept that."

"I do, doesn't mean I have to like it."

"If you say so," he replied, clearly not believing me. "What happened?"

"Ever seen an elite?" I asked him. "In real life, I mean."

"Once," he told me. "I've seen plenty of corpses, even participated in a few dissections. Frank, please don't ask rhetorical questions."

"You're the one who answered it," I pointed out. "But point taken. Elites are pretty big guys, aren't they?"

"Rhetorical."

"Sorry. Point is, they're way stronger than your average human."

"You're not average."

I glared at him. "Point is," I emphasized the phrase. "I found myself on the ground, with a big-ass elite looming overhead and it stomped me."

"And? You don't seem worse for wear."

"Exactly, I just stopped the stomp."

"With your hands?" he asked, raising an eyebrow.

"There was some arm strength in there."

"Sarcasm won't get us anywhere Frank."

"Yeah, yeah," I waved him away. "That's the story."

Bruce leaned back on his chair and examined me carefully. "So, was this a full-on stomp? A 'finish you off' stomp? Or what kind of stomp?"

"The kind of stomp that you'd expect from an angry theocratic, genocidal alien."

"So a full-on stomp?"

"Yes."

"That sounds interesting. You do have the strength somewhere down there, but it only comes out sometimes. It shouldn't work like that."

I scoffed. "Look, I'm all for super strength, believe me. Just tell me why the hell it comes and goes? It's not like my muscles are constantly getting bigger and smaller."

"No, I'm thinking maybe it's psychological."

"Great. I'm even more fucked up."

"Frank, the more fucked up," he made air quotes around that, "you think you are, the more fucked up you'll become."

I didn't say anything, instead just glaring at him.

"You know," he went on. "I was going through your files again and realized that nobody gave you a full psych evaluation for the S-IV project. There was your pre-ODST evaluation plus a couple of other ones that you got after first time in combat, but nobody actually made an official one before indoctrinating you into the program."

"Go figure. Leave it to ONI to fuck up the easiest things."

He shrugged. "I know that I wouldn't have made that mistake, but then again, I'm the guy that's trained to deal with people."

"Thanks Bruce, I'm glad you see me for who I am."

"What did I say about sarcasm?"

"Not today," I replied, not really feeling it. "This conversation is going nowhere, is there anything you need to tell me or anything else you need to know?"

Bruce examined his files, tapping on his datapad and scanning through several pieces of information that might or might not be useful. "I don't think so. Your sudden bursts of strength might be promising or they might not be. The brains up there have some theories about why you didn't rise up to expectations, but it's all very technical, not even I can understand half of it."

"Great."

"To dumb it down, as they put it, your brain doesn't quite get that you can do more."

"And how do I get my brain to understand?"

"You can't. That's the main problem."

I looked to the side at a dull gray wall. "Everything would be so much easier if your stupid program had worked as it was supposed to."

"You don't have to tell me twice Frank." Bruce looked to the same side I was and rolled his neck. For a guy that belonged to a section infamous for their detachment he was very human. It annoyed me. "Listen Gunny, I'm sorry, but it's beyond my control. You know how it is, it's going to get-"

"Worse before it gets better," I finished. "That's what you told me two years ago when we first met."

"Ah, I seem to recall such an occasion. Frank, enjoy your life while you still can. There's no way in hell ONI is going to pull you from active duty no matter how cuckoo you go up there. Have a few drinks, make love to your girlfriend. Eat, sleep, shit. You know, the pleasures in life." Bruce smiled at his own sad joke.

"Just let the guys up there worry about it. Trust me, they're working hard to fix you, if only because it might mean that they get a promotion."

"You know that feeling of helplessness we talked about back then?" I asked him. "The one where I'm frustrated because I can't actually _do_ anything?"

"Yes Frank, for the third time, stop asking rhetorical questions."

"Right."

"As I said, try to have some fun."

"Maybe you should drop me in an enemy base, see how much damage I can do, and get this shit over with."

Bruce laughed. "Don't flatter yourself Frank. You're not a Spartan yet."

"I don't really feel like becoming a freak. You know, losing my humanity and all that."

The smile on the spook's face disappeared in an instant. "You know, you shouldn't be so cynical. Those Spartans are heroes. _Human_ heroes."

"I guess we'll have to agree to disagree," I said standing up.

"As always," he shrugged, standing up and moving towards the door. "I'll be seeing you."

"Likewise," I replied, shaking his hand. "Good talk."

"Right."

I left the soundproofed room and was escorted outside of the building by two MPs with serious expressions and MA37s. The sun was shining outside, even through all the buildings it still managed to hit me right in the face. It felt nice really, like being back in the real world.

If this had been ten years ago I might've hit a bar or even a club, no matter what the hour. I would've deceived myself into believing that I was much better at picking up girls than I actually was until my self-confidence actually managed to score. It was a lot simpler back then. I didn't have superhuman strength and reflexes and I didn't have to worry about slowly going crazy.

Those were the days. Sex, booze, and mental health.

* * *

><p>The drive was mostly uneventful. I saw a couple of Banshees attempt to strafe a sports car and then blow up a small building, but I knew they were fake. They looked too bright, a bit bigger than they would've been in real life. That worried me, in the heat of combat I probably wouldn't have been able to make out the difference. I'd have to double up on pills before combat jumps and make sure to keep taking them during extended missions.<p>

"Frank, is that you?"

"Yeah," I replied tiredly, I hadn't been able to get any sleep in the trip back here. "Interesting day?"

"Bowl of ice cream and romantic comedy marathon."

"Sounds better than mine," I admitted. "Anything interesting?"

"Not really, the new releases are just as predictable as the old ones. There was this one movie that you might've called innovating, but for the most part they all had the exact same plot with different actors."

"Boy meets girl, they fall in love, one of them screws up and tries to redeem him-slash-herself with a grand romantic gesture?"

"Yup."

"I could be a screenwriter."

"Bee could be a screenwriter," she corrected. "You'd just come up with the ideas."

"And what's so wrong with that?" I asked her, grabbing her by the waist.

Hanna giggled and smiled. She could really be the girly kind of girl when she wanted to. "Not now. Amber and Pavel asked us over for dinner."

"Really?" I raised an eyebrow. "What are we? Normal?"

"At least pretend like we are Frank. Everybody else does."

"Fine, fine. When do we leave?"

"Actually, I asked them over here."

"What?" I asked. "Are you cooking something?"

She looked ashamed for a moment and shook her head. "No, I suggested that we just watch a movie and they said yes."

"You do realize that we're no longer in middle school. Nobody actually does that anymore."

"Well, they said it was a good idea. Besides, when have you ever turned down pizza?"

"Not recently," I admitted. "Will they be getting here s-"

The doorbell rang.

"-oon?"

"Yes," Hanna replied.

Through the door came a beaming Amber and a rather annoyed-looking Pavel, no doubt he shared my thoughts about this stupid thing. There was no doubt in my mind that they'd make us watch the newest romance film that we had missed onaccount of our deployment. I knew Amber always skipped seeing those by herself so that she could see them with Pavel.

"How's life treating you?" I asked Pavel slapping his arm.

"Can't complain."

"Lavvie?"

"We left her with the neighbors."

I shrugged. "Shame, would've liked to see her."

Amber turned to face me after hugging Hanna. "Hey Frank," she said before giving me a quick hug. "Lavanya is getting so big."

"Let's just hope he doesn't get as big as his father."

"Ha. Ha. Very funny," Pavel deadpanned.

"Pavel, you know I like big muscles in my man," Amber said, poking him in the arm. "Come on, let's get started on that movie, I hear it's great."

"What are we watching?" I asked.

"It's a remake of a remake of a remake," Hanna said.

"Isn't everything these days?" Pavel complained.

"What movie?" I repeated my question.

"It's called The Notebook."

Pavel groaned loudly and I let myself fall back down on the couch.

"You've seen it?" Amber asked.

"The original," Pavel muttered. "Unfortunately enough."

"Is it bad?" Hanna asked.

"No, it just makes me fell like I need to drink beer and grow a beard every time I see it," Pavel said.

"And maybe chop trees down with an axe or get in a fight." Weirdly enough, those were the first two manly things that came to my head.

"For some reason I always end up speaking in a deeper voice after I see it."

"Just how many times have you seen it?" Hanna asked with a slight frown.

"Three?" I asked.

"Three," my friend confirmed.

"Care to explain why you watched such a girly movie three times?" Amber queried.

"You know Bee, right? Well, back in the day he used to have twentieth and twenty-first century movie nights or something along those lines," Pavel started.

"One day Cam won the right to pick the movie we would watch. And the rest, as they say, is history."

"But why watch it three times?" Amber asked.

"She always found ways to get to pick the movie."

"No doubt involving her feminine charms," Hanna stated, her voice perfectly neutral.

Pavel and I froze;both Amber and Hanna were looking at us expectantly, waiting for our answer to the question

"Yeah, she tended to take off her top in order to get that right," Pavel joked.

Smart reply, didn't really answer the question and used a joke to defuse the situation.

_Damn, women can be bitches._

So we sat down, and we watched the movie. I didn't think it was possible, but The Notebook 3.0 was ten times as girly as I imagined it would be. I did finish with a strange feeling that my balls had drawn back into my body. Nothing to do about it I guess.

"Next time let's just go to a restaurant," I suggested, getting up and rolling my head. "Any pizza left?"

"No, Pavel ate the last piece," Amber said.

"Wow, don't tell on me!"

"Sorry," she apologized quickly.

The women talked about the movie, obsessing over every last detail and squealing in some sort of weird giddiness at every last romantic scene in the entire feeling. Pavel and I were left to clean up the pizza boxes and wash the dishes. More manliness to us, as sexist as that sounds. At least it was done in a quick manner, with the both of us trying to recall who had won the last Mega Bowl back in Earth. He said it was some team form (**from)** India but I kept telling him that the Urus from Montevideo had won. None of us had any idea and it was very likely that none of those teams had won anything, but it was a macho boost that we needed.

I was willing to bet that the girls were feeling romantic, so I guess that's a pro for the movie.

Damn, I'm rambling about nonsensical stuff.

"Hey, why'd you leave early?" I asked Pavel. "For Almers' service I mean."

"Trouble at home, Amber thought Lavanya was sick."

"You seriously call her Lavanya all the time?" I asked him. "I mean, am I the only one who calls her Lavvie?"

"We gave her a beautiful name Frank!" Amber called from outside the kitchen. "You shouldn't butcher it!"

"I don't butcher it," I murmured. I glanced at the door before going to the fridge and getting two cans of coke. I tossed one to Pavel.

"Coke?"

"No alcohol in Hanna's house."

"I thought it was your house. Like both of you, I mean."

I shook my head. "I live with her, it's not my house."

He shrugged and opened the can. "Whatup?"

"Hear anything interesting?"

Pavel shook his head and started speaking more quietly. "Well, now that you mention it I did hear something…"

"What?"

"Not a good thing."

"Just spill it."

"The _Flawless_ battlegroup might be 'permanently' reassigned to a different system."

I put the can of coke down and leaned back on the counter. "Damn. What are you gonna do?"

"Nothing. Deployments are the same length as usual and the UNSC grants shuttle flights to various planets, one of which is Reach."

"Got it all figured out, don't you?"

"Yeah, but it's just a rumor. I'd rather the _Flawless_ be stationed back here, facilitates things, but I'm not too worried."

Amber and Hanna laughed loudly about something that I didn't quite catch. Both Pavel and I looked at the door.

"You have a nice wife," I complimented him, raising my can slightly.

"Why, thinking about getting one?"

"We talked about this…"

"Yeah, yeah, I don't intrude in your personal life."

"Good boy," I said, patting him in the head. "You ever wonder what we would be doing right now if we hadn't lost the _Inconvenience_?"

"Not really, no," he admitted. "Try not to think about it. Lots of good people died. Stuff like that, it's better left buried deep down."

I smiled. "You didn't use to be so cynical."

"Between you and Grigori," he half-whistled. "It rubs. Hell, even Almers had his fair share of cynicism."

"That he did," I agreed, raising my can again in a toast. "Wherever he may be."

"Let him have water, a gun, and a girl to sit on his dick," he finished. The moment after that he looked at the door expecting Amber to drag him out by the ear. When she didn't he visibly relaxed. "Didn't know that you guys from the 19th Battalion knew that one in particular."

"It's pretty well-known, I think." I examined my empty can of soda. "You know, toasting isn't quite the same without something that packs a punch."

"Tell me about it," Pavel agreed, spinning his empty can as well before crushing it together. "Oh, before I forget. Have you heard anything about Marina recently?"

"Marina?" I asked. "No, why?"

"In two whole years?"

I shrugged and looked away. "Some things are best left buried deep down, right?"

"Frank, jeez, I mean. What the hell? Even _I_ have talked to her a few times."

"Would it make you feel better if I _caught up_?"

"Me? No. She'd probably like it, you too."

"Hanna's gonna love this one…"

"Oh, don't be such a drama queen," he scoffed. "Listen, you might want to look her up. I have a feeling that you'll find whatever she's got to say is…interesting."

"Wipe that smirk off your face and get on with it already," I told him. "What is it?"

"I also heard that Hayes is getting a promotion. Captain."

"A full captain?" I asked, forgetting all about Marina. "Isn't that a company-grade rank?"

"Yes it is."

"So we're expanding?"

He shrugged. "I guess. It always seemed like one platoon for a carrier was a tad undersized."

I nodded, agreeing with his observation. "So they'll bring someone from the outside then."

"Can't possibly that bad, a couple of years ago we were from the outside."

I nodded once again. "For all I know it could be Darbinian, right?"

Pavel laughed loudly. At that I started laughing too. The memories of the old sunnova bitch were still there for both of us. I'm pretty sure that none of the survivors of the _Inconvenience_ had actually bothered with calling him ever since it was destroyed. I mean, the dude was a hardass but didn't have any redeeming qualities. According to Hanna he was a damn good fighter, but that didn't really help you if you were a mediocre leader.

"Pavel!" Amber called. "Time to go!"

Pavel rolled his eyes. "Guess I'll be seeing you later man."

"That would be the norm."

He pointedly ignored my sarcasm. "Think about what I said. She'll appreciate it."

I said goodbye to Amber and closed the door behind them before turning around to look at my girlfriend with a predatory look. She made a show of pretending not to want any kind of sexual activity, but contrary to popular belief, women also enjoy having sex on occasion.

As we collapsed on the bed I was thinking about what Pavel had said. _Catching up. Sounds easy enough._

* * *

><p><em>Thanks to SilasWhitfield for proof-reading this chapter.<em>

_Well there you go guys, a nice little nudge to get the plot moving disguised as a filler chapter. You would believe that it takes skill to do that, but it really doesn't. I mean, just add a conversation or three and you're done. Well, maybe you need a little bit of skill to make the whole thing flow :)_

_You know, that scene where they all watch The Notebook together was inspired by the constant complaining of my friends as to what movies they had to go watch with their girlfriends. I always tell myself that I'll never yield, but if taking a girl to the movies gets me some action then it's a fair trade. First I need a girl, but I'll worry about that when people start looking at me weird. _

_So there's our new ONI handler, a very nice guy that does his best to help Frank. He might not be exactly friends with him, but they do lead a cordial relationship, sort of the one that you might have with a friendly boss or an older kid in your high-school sports team. Frank and Hanna are having some friction, but is it a sign of anything or is it just a couple behaving like a couple? So the _Flawless_ battle-group might be switched to defend another planet and the ODST platoon might be expanding. Hell with it, I already told you there were going to be some big changes, so why try to hide it..._

_And to whomever asked me to bring back Claire and Marina, they'll both show up in the next chapter. Shits and giggles indeed._

_**DN 506**: point taken on the Warthog tires, let's pretend that I wrote down disintegrated or something similar. Maybe they just blew apart.  
><em>

_**Classy Cynic**: I've been thinking about having Frank take a big hit for a while, but so far I don't think having him suffer a big injury would affect the plot in any way. Perhaps later on he'll lose a limb or three._

_To the rest of you, thank you for your reviews, I am glad you liked the chapter and hope you enjoyed this one. So, how's the reunion with Frank's beloved ex-girlfriend going to go? Let me know what you think and your views on the chapter. Stay strong._

_-casquis_


	150. Winds of Change

Chapter CL: Winds of Change

**July 14, 2547 (UNSC Calendar)/**

**Esztergom (****Ezhtergom)****, Viery Territory, Reach, Epsilon Eridani System**

* * *

><p><em>"You must welcome change as the rule but not as your ruler."- Dennis Waitley<em>

* * *

><p>I hadn't actually gotten into a fight with her, I had just sensed the storm brewing. I told Hanna that I was going to go out for a walk and she shrugged. It was better for the both of us if we each had an hour or so to cool our heads off.<p>

_Hey, I've got a great idea, you should call Marina and catch up with her like Pavel recommended!_

_Shut up brain._

Damn, that was a terrible idea, if only because of the current situation.

_Maybe you could go to a bar, have a few drinks to calm yourself down and think it over._

_Shut up brain._

The sun was up in the sky, about three-quarters on the way to the summit. On earth it would've been about ten and a half, but here it was almost twelve. I don't know how Pavel would explain the difference between Earth Standard Time and the longer hours and days in Reach. It had taken men months to get used to the completely different sleeping cycle in Jericho VII.

As I looked at the sun I realized that my eyes weren't burning as much as they should and immediately looked away, chastising myself for becoming more and more like one of those freaks.

So there I was, thinking about the weirdest and most unusual things that you could imagine, walking down the street as if everything was perfectly fine. I know people often had weird thoughts, but I don't think that anybody short of a mental patient had the same kind of images in their mind that I did. It wasn't unusual for me to imagine something only to suddenly have it show up around the corner. Most of the time I knew what was real, but there were those few rare occasions when I didn't. It worried me. I knew well enough to tell that three Ghosts chasing a Warthog through the highway were fake or that the sight of Marines jumping over a shop window wasn't real, but sometimes I looked around for a sniper when a truck backfired or jerked sideways in an attempt to dodge mortar fire at the sound of aircraft. That's what worried me. **  
><strong>

I stopped at an intersection, realizing that I had passed the underground crossing and doubling back when something vibrated in my pocket. I almost jumped and could feel myself separating my feet slightly in order to be more balanced in case of an attack. I groaned at my own shakiness and pulled out my cell phone. It was a message on the military net, from one Captain Tahlia Hayes.

I frowned at the name but nevertheless opened the message. It was a professionally redacted letter coming from my el-tee, now captain.

"Classified," I muttered, reading the mail's subject, "not surprising."

I shook my head and glanced around. Most people walking on the sidewalk were taking the underground crossing or instead walking into the two buildings in between it and myself. I was alone.

It did pay to be safe, so I walked to the wall of the nearest building and pressed my back against it, looking around for cameras. If an ONI officer saw me opening classified information in a public space they would most likely put a hit on my head. I made doubly sure to cover the holographic display with my body and started to read the letter. It didn't exactly look like it had written by her personally. It most certainly didn't sound like anything she would say to me.

_I wonder how long till she finally tries to kill me?_ I asked myself.

Had I been holding an archaic paper letter, I would've most likely crumpled it in my hand or maybe even dropped it in surprise.

I'll be brief. The ODST platoon in the UNSC _Flawless_ was being expanded to a company-sized unit. Our twenty-four-man platoon would be scrapped and the members inserted into one of four different platoons. The first three platoons were to be regular ODST units, if you can call an ODST unit regular that is. The fourth and last platoon was to be a specialized one. I had to read through that section a couple of times. Further specialization in the Shock Troopers was something that you only heard about in declassified reports or saw in movies.

Captain Hayes would take command of the company as well as the first platoon. Dajani, soon to be made an officer and promoted to first lieutenant would be her CO and take command of a second platoon. A third individual from the outside would be in charge of the third platoon.

That left me, the dysfunctional schizophrenic in charge of the most specialized and valuable platoon in the company. Oh, but that wasn't everything, I was to be made an officer. Yes, you heard right. An officer.

_Who made that call?_

I laughed. I was anything but officer material. Sure, I was a good enough leader in small units, I'm not going to deny that skill, but leading a whole platoon? A whole platoon full of alpha males and females with Type A personalities? Dear God that was going to be exciting.

_Wait. Me, an officer?_

I re-read the message again. I was to take several courses from the Officer Candidate School in New Alexandria. Since I was an experienced Marine with over a decade's worth of combat experience as well as knowledge in commanding squad-sized units I would be able to skip most of it. According to the mail the decision came from the general in charge of both battalions on board the _Flawless_. Hell, the man wasn't even on board the ship, why would he make such a radical decision like that? Technically speaking we weren't even under his direct chain of command.

This reeked of ONI meddling.

Surprisingly enough I found myself smiling at the prospect of having golden bars on my lapels.

"You're going to suck at it, you know?" Schitzo told me.

"Piss off," I replied, borrowing the phrase from Robert.

"Lieutenant," he saluted me with a mocking grin before suddenly disappearing.

I put my phone back inside my pocket and started walking, going over the details. We usually had leaves of about six months, sometimes they were shortened in order to aid a planet under siege, but mostly we had six months vacation and six months deployment, with deployments occasionally being extended in account to us fighting a fucking war. We still had several months to go before we were recalled into service. That meant that I had all the time I needed to become a trim and shiny officer in order to lead my new unit.

My mind went over the possibilities. I deduced that most of the ODSTs being rotated into the _Flawless_ would have experience under their belts. They wouldn't just expand our platoon with fresh recruits and make us a force supposed to spearhead planetary assaults. Like as not the Helljumpers who would be under my command would be survivors from decimated units or maybe worse.

_Three regular platoons plus one specialized platoon._

The message had been vague as to the composition of my platoon. If I had to guess I would say that the other three units would be deployed after my own had done some recon and gathered some intel on the enemy. They would be shifted to a more 'conventional' role. That is, if you consider dropping from orbit in a glorified coffin conventional.

I pondered on the issue long and hard. I was particularly bothered by the fact that I would be going back to boot camp. Fine, not boot camp, but the closest thing to it. Boot camp for the slightly richer kids.

I almost bumped into a glass wall.

"Huh?"

I did a one-eighty turn and examined the area around me. I barely had to squint to make out the street name over fifty meters form me. I had gone more than five blocks without even noticing. That wasn't normal, one wasn't supposed to completely disconnect from the outside world, at least not without getting run over by a bus.

"Winchester Defense," I read the sticker out loud. The sticker consisted of two old lever-action rifles crossing one another with the letters forming a circle around them. _Huh, just like Claire…_

I suddenly found myself thinking about the Ranger. She was one of the only survivors from the _Inconvenience_. A miracle by most modern standards. She had also lost every last one of her friends and comrades and become seriously depressed. I had been very surprised to hear that she had attempted suicide shortly before I was assigned to the _Flawless._ Her, the strong and assertive woman that had almost managed to kick my ass post-augmentations. Headstrong and stubborn and set in her ways. The shrink that treated her after that failed attempt must've been a good one in order to convince her to abandon her goal of killing herself. It seemed weird, a girl that most would give their left nut to be with being able to kick their asses with one hand strapped to one leg. Even weirder was that she had given up on life.

Before I knew it I had opened the door and walked inside the gym. It was very similar to a boxing gym. There was a full-size boxing ring right in the middle of the large room. Further to the back there were several karate-style mats laid out, probably to do some light sparring. Boxing sandbags, pears and more cushioned devices than I had seen in my whole life occupied the other three sides.

_Very nice_, I admitted.

There were plenty of people in the gym. Some were sweating with the sandbags, but most had crowded around the ring in the center and were watching a sparring session.

"Well I'll be damned," I said, smiling at the spectacle.

Winchester Defense was evidently owned and operated by Claire Winchester.

She was on her toes, hopping from one point to another while her opponent tried to make contact. She dodged the blows easily, deflecting the ones that she couldn't completely avoid. The guy was good, I'll give him that, but there was no way in hell that he could handle a gal like Claire. It took her all of thirty seconds to get her opponent in an exotic leg choke. Even then she toyed with him for a while before going in for the kill.

There were some mutterings among the crowd before Claire stood back up, a little bit of sweat running down from her temples. "Can anyone tell me what his mistake was?" she asked her students.

"He stepped into the ring?" one of the guys in the crowd suggested.

Claire smiled and looked at her feet. "Fair enough." The crowd chuckled, hell, even the guy groaning on the floor smiled and shook his head before making his way to his feet. "But for real, where did he go fatally wrong? Metaphorically speaking of course."

Most of the guys just shook their heads and muttered amongst each other, trying to get in good standing with the ridiculously attractive personal defense teacher running the gym. I wasn't surprised that the majority of the people here were men, no doubt word of a sexy martial arts expert got around fast. After all, who wouldn't love to have Claire Winchester above you?

I smiled at the thought of the wake up call that these guys probably got.

"No one?"

I groaned. "He telegraphed his last two punches and his footwork was sloppy."

I immediately regretted drawing attention to myself. The crowd turned to face the newcomer and I suddenly felt seriously overdressed. Everyone was in shorts and t-shirt and there I was, standing in jeans and a plaid shirt. Despite my awkwardness I couldn't let it show, I was, after all, one of humanity's most efficient killing machines.

Up in the ring Claire was smiling. "Think you can do better?"

I shrugged. "I'm not in the mood for fighting right now."

"Aw, come on," she taunted. "What do you think guys?"

_Great_, I thought as everybody started urging me to go up and get my ass handed to me. _Now I have to go up._

I couldn't help but noticing that my jeans were slightly tight across my thighs and that they wouldn't allow me to kick any higher than Claire's waist. I also had my cell on one of the pockets, making for awkward kicking movement regardless of the height of my kicks.

"So, first blood?" she asked me, still giving no indication that she knew me. "Or maybe just a regular countdown?"

"Your gym," I replied. "Your call."

"First blood it is," she said with a decidedly dangerous smile. Claire took two steps back towards her corner before suddenly launching a reverse roundhouse that would've cracked my skull open had her heel collided with my head. But I had only gotten better in the time since our last sparring session. I had gotten a whole lot faster. I took a quick step backwards and leaned my head further back, examining her foot as it flew two inches from my nose.

I was slightly surprised when she followed up with a punch to my nose. I quickly sidestepped and then jumped back to avoid an elbow strike.

"You sure do love spinning," I told her, ducking under a high kick. "And theatrics."

"Me?" she asked, kicking at my thigh and stopping when I raised my shin to block her. "Who's the one who hasn't even raised his guard?"

I rolled my eyes and spun away from her kick before catching her next punch. It went much like it had the first time I caught her first punch, I stopped her abruptly and she attempted to yank her hand back. This time I didn't let her, instead bending her fist backwards and twisting her arm. I blocked a punch from her other hand and turned her around, two of my hands bending her palm upwards before I kicked her in the back of the knee and forced her to the ground.

"Still want first blood Specialist?"

Claire was obviously angry that I had shown her up in front of her students, but honestly, what did she expect? That she was going to completely humiliate me? Let's be fair, she didn't know I was stronger, faster, and more insane than your average human, so we'll excuse her lapse in judgment.

The pretty former Ranger sighed. "Have it your way. Yield."

"I just wanted to talk," I told her, letting her get back on her feet. "I pity the guy that wants to ask you out if this is how you treat everyone."

She smiled at that, still slightly frustrated but no longer angry with me. She turned to face the stunned crows. "Anyone speaks of this and they're dead. Now back to work."

The students quickly dispersed, murmuring to themselves like teenage girls.

"So, Claire, how long has it been?" I asked lamely with a stupid grin. "Two years?"

"Almost three," she corrected, grabbing a towel from the ropes and drying her hair. I noted that it was still the samereddish-brown that it had been. It looked good on her. "You make one hell of an entrance for not visiting."

"I'm sorry," I apologized. "I heard about…" I stopped, not knowing if discussing her failed suicide attempt would upset her.

"Let's not talk about it," she quickly said. "How've you been?"

"Fine," I replied. "Still in the service, seen some shit."

"I saw enough shit. No need to keep seeing more."

"I've got no marketable skills, besides, I like feeling like I'm doing something good."

"We all know that this is just buying time."

"Don't be like that," I said, knowing the truth in her words. "Tides can still turn."

"Really? Frank, I never took you to be naïve."

"Fine, fine, fine. Have it your way. So how have the last almost three years of your life treated you?"

She got out of the ring, ducking underneath the ropes and waved for me to follow her. I couldn't help but stare at that magnificently formed ass of hers as she walked towards a pair of chairs. As we sat down I could feel myself relaxing. It always felt like she would throw a surprise punch at any second. "Let's see, last three years…Hmm, can't think of anything interesting. You?"

I raised an eyebrow and smiled. "Well, there was this one time when I saw a brute chieftain get squashed by an ODST drop pod," I told her, tapping my chin with my index finger. "Got trapped under a building with a curious elite, that was right before everything went to shit, you pulled me out of there. I don't think I ever told you about that particular conversation."

"No you didn't," Claire confirmed. "Any other war stories?"

"New team, good guys, not as unorthodox as Reaper, but effective nevertheless. I'm stationed on the _Flawless_. Ever heard of it?"

She shook her head.

"Clothes-lined an elite with a spike grenade. That was a good one. Got in a castle siege."

"A castle siege?"

"It was in Skopje, long story. Classified too."

"Skopje, sounds familiar. How'd that end?"

"Not well," I admitted. "Evacuated less than fifteen percent of the population, but we got some significant ground victories."

"As if that matters."

"Little things." For some reason, I didn't really mean it.

"And lately?"

I sighed. "Lost a squad mate, the platoon medic. He was a good man."

"How'd he go?"

"Energy sword," I said, the image flashing in front of me and making me wince. It seemed almost real. "Died almost instantly. He was carrying me to safety, you know?"

"What happened to you?"

"Plasma bolt to the stomach." I stood up and lifted my shirt, showing her the pale skin in my belly.

"Surgeons did a good job," she said, leaning close to examine the skin grafts. "Once the skin's the same color you won't be able to tell what's original and what's not."

It suddenly seemed to me that having an attractive woman leaning towards my stomach and examining my rather awesome abs could be misinterpreted so I sat back down. "Got grafts on my chest to, plasma pistol I think it was."

"The others?"

"Camilla got a desk job."

"Yeah, I know, we've met up a few times."

"Oh, have you? How does she like it?"

"She hates it, but she's actually helped with some regulations and rules to make the life of military personnel easier."

"Is her hair still black?"

"Last time I checked. Gives her a very femme fatale look, doesn't it?"

"Yeah," I laughed. "It does."

"So, what's up with the rest of the legendary Reaper Squad?"

"Angel…well, Angel disappeared. I guess he just got tired of it all."

"What do you mean disappeared?"

"Disappeared, his passport and registered cards and IDs haven't been used ever since the _Inconvenience_ was destroyed. He was always good with computers, we think that he made himself a new identity and disappeared."

"I can see the appeal."

I nodded, agreeing with her. Retirement in a beach in Viery sounded nice to me. "The rest of the guys are in the same unit I am. Pavel's in my squad, Grigori too."

"Rob and…"

"Snark. Naveen. They're in the same platoon. Different squads."

"And your new CO?"

"Kind of a bitch," I told her truthfully. "She's got a reason for it."

"I won't ask. I sure hope so that you haven't tried to catch up with anyone else and that you just stumbled on me by accident. By the way, how come you came in here? Did you look me up? Stalker."

"What? No!" I laughed. "No, no. I was taking a walk. In fact, I was about to call Marina, catch up with her."

"That why you were taking a walk? Wondering what it would seem like if you called your ex after three years of no contact?"

"I was wondering what Hanna would think."

"Are you still going out with Lockley?"

"Yeah."

"Well I'll be damned. Congrats Frank."

"Thanks. So, have you stayed in contact with Marina?"

"You could say that. After all, she's the one who saved me."

"Right."

I was about to breach the topic of her suicide attempt after that last comment when I noticed Claire looking past my shoulders I turned around just as none other than Marina Bogdanovic, pilot extraordinaire walked past me. She went straight to Claire and leaned in towards her before planting a big kiss on her lips.

"Oh, no wonder you looked familiar," she said, turning to face me.

I was still too stunned by what had just happened in front of me to reply. I was a little turned on too.

"It'sBeen a while, Frank," Marina went on. "You look good."

I tried forming words in my mouth and eventually came up with a gem of a line. "Couldn't you have discovered your bisexuality while we were going out?" I complained. "I mean, seriously…"

Marina and Claire looked at each other before looking at me and laughing loudly. Images of naked flash and feminine moans were going through my mind. They didn't seem as real as the other images I sometimes got. I cursed myself for that.

"It's good to see you Marina," I said finally, standing up and hugging her.

"I'd sure hope so," she replied. "You didn't even bother in almost three years."

"Enough with the three years thing already, it was only two and a half," I complained. "I'm sorry. I just didn't think it important."

"You didn't think that keeping friendships was important?"

Digging myself into an early grave… "No, no. I've just been having some…issues."

Marian placed herself behind Claire and started rubbing her shoulders, looking at me with critical eyes. "I'm the daughter of two respected psychologists, you know. I could help."

I laughed. "I doubt you could."

Marina shrugged, but I barely noticed, instead I was trying not to picture her familiar naked body with the more mysterious curves of Claire. It was an exercise in futility, it was too tantalizing an image.

"I take it you're still in the service," Marina half-asked.

"Yeah. On board the _Flawless._"

"That's a carrier, right?"

"Yeah."

"Big one too," she said. "Patrol missions?"

"Supposedly, but there's always something."

Claire chuckled at that.

"So Francisco, what have you been up to?" Marina asked, finally stopping the shoulder rub she was giving Claire. "I take it you have something to talk about after all this time."

I shrugged. "I already told Claire most of the interesting stuff. My ship's ODST unit's being expanded to company strength. Might end up being an officer for all I know."

"Let's hope not," Marina joked, smiling.

A little while later Claire left us and returned to her class, drilling the students with close quarters combat techniques and occasionally pausing to utterly humiliate one of them. She was too flashy for my taste, relying on high kicks and spinning motions, but it worked for her and I could appreciate the intimidation and psychological factor that came with fighting a flashy opponent.

I answered Marina's questions to the best of my ability, but it didn't take long for the interrogation format to get boring for both of us. I asked her the thing that I had wanted to know ever since I saw her plant a big damn kiss on Claire.

"How the hell did that happen?"  
>Marina looked over at Claire, who was currently beating the snot out of a college-age kid, and smiled. I don't think she ever gave me a smile with as much feeling as the one that she was giving her. It made me kind of jealous.<p>

Marina sighed before turning to look at me. "I don't know really. It just happened."

"You never expressed any…interest in women before," I pointed out.

She nodded. "I mean, I could always appreciate a nice-looking woman, maybe even feel a little bit attracted, but with Claire…"

"And you didn't feel this before the _Inconvenience_ went kaput?"

"To be fair, I hardly knew her before that."

"Point taken. I take it you got to know each other as a support group of sorts?"

"Yeah," she said. "Unlike you ODST loners, both of us had friends on the ship."

I nodded, vaguely remembering Vince getting hit while I was getting rescued from that shithole of a planet. "You realize that you owe me like a bunch of threesomes."

"Oh, would Hanna be ok with that?"

"I don't know haven't asked her."

"Maybe you shouldn't."

"Maybe you're right, but your little display of affection's got me all shaken up. Seriously Marina, what the hell?"

"So you're saying that I should've had a threesome with you just because I'm attracted to some girls now."

"More or less," I admitted. _Some?_

"Would you have done the same for me?"

"I'm most definitely not attracted to men," I said defensively. "What does that have to do with anything?"

"You wouldn't even have to cross swords," she went on. "You'd just have to let me take care of you guys."

"Marina, you're freaking me out." I looked around nervously. "And you know that I'm not one for sharing."

"Hmm, maybe I also wanted you all to myself."

"Ok, _now_ you're freaking me out."

Marina laughed and smiled at me. "Same old Frank. It's great to see you."

"You too," I admitted. "Even if it's…weird."

"Weird," Marina agreed. "It's almost time for lunch, want to join us?"

"Nah," I said. "Maybe tomorrow or later, Hanna's going to be wondering why I haven't come back."

"Fight?"

"Pre-emptive retreat before it actually happened," I explained. "But I'd love to catch up some more, you have my number?"

"No."

"Right." I gave her my contact information and in returned jotted hers down. "I guess I'll be seeing you."

"Just don't make it another two years," she called out as I walked out.

"I won't. Promise."

I walked out and the sun hit me in the face, warming me up. The sidewalks were a lot more crowded now that people were leaving their homes or offices to grab lunch with their friends. I was feeling slightly hungry myself. I took a right in order to grab some sushi for Hanna and myself, she would appreciate the peace gesture and I loved raw fish wrapped in sticky rice, even if cucumber just killed it.

"Gotta say, I did not see that coming," Schitzo said, a look of shock still plastered on his face.

* * *

><p>"No shit!" Pavel exclaimed. "A lesbian!"<p>

Several of the guys in the Grenadier turned to look at us. Girls kissing girls had been a topic of interest for men since the dawn of time.**  
><strong>

"Gay?" he went on, his voice quieter. "Marina, there's no way."

"It's true," Hanna told him. "We had dinner with them."

"And Claire!"

"And Claire," I repeated.

"Wow. If they ever have kids they're going to be great looking."

That was something I could agree with. If they decided to use their DNA to create an embryo then the result would be gorgeous. Provided it was a girl. Despite my thoughts on that I didn't say anything, Hanna would probably not take it well if I agreed with Pavel on other women being beautiful. Couldn't blame her, I felt like punching a wall every time I caught her sneaking a peek at another guy.

"Ok, ok. Lesbians are all good and well, but you as an officer?"

"Well that was abrupt," Hanna said. "Besides, Frank would make a great officer. Isn't that right Frankie?" she asked, kissing me in the cheek.

"The uniform would look good on me, that's for sure."

Pavel scoffed and took a drink from his beer. "So, you're going to be Second Lieutenant Francisco Castillo. What about me?"

"You're going to be my platoon sergeant," I assure him. "I'll see if I can get you bumped up a couple of ranks. How does Sergeant Major sound?"

"That's three pay grades above Frank. You can't just skip through ranks."

"Fine, fine. Master Sergeant?"

"That might be possible. I'm up for promotion anyways."

"See? I take care of my men. I'm a great officer."

"Right you are," Pavel laughed.

"I don't want you to leave," Hanna told me, nuzzling against my neck. "I'll miss you."

"I'll miss you too," I said. "It's only a couple of months, and you can come visit any time you want."

"Provided it's on weekends and between certain hours?"

"Exactly," I said.

Frankly I would've preferred to have my goodbye party in a room with my girlfriend, under the sheets. Pavel wouldn't have it, he insisted that we get together for some drinks. It was quite depressing, it was him, Hanna, and me. A party of three. Well, you can count Murphy, Driscoll, and Shaw. If you're feeling nice you could also add Montgomery and Lys, but those two were employees and the other three would've been there regardless. Maybe some of Reaper would've appeared had they not all lived in New Alexandria.

At least I could hang out with them on the weekends.

_Officer Candidate School. Christ._

Everybody took the news with the same basic attitude. Most of my friends reacted with the same 'you've got to be joking' expression, but after a while they decided that I'd probably make a good officer. It was their initial reactions that worried me, I was not certain that I had what it took to be an officer. Sure I could lead men into battle and if necessary into their deaths, but I wasn't about to delude myself into thinking that I had all it took. Excellence and all that.

Officers were supposed to be smoother than NCOs. Fiction and my own personal experience always made it seem like a platoon had a well-meaning, nice, and capable officer commanding a unit with his second in command being a hard-ass that took care of discipline. There was a valid reason for that. If men were going to follow someone to their deaths it might as well be someone they liked, but someone still had to make sure that the underlings didn't step out of line. I hoped the guys that they rotated into the new company were used to hard-assness, because Pavel liked to joke that I was a dick even by ODST standards. I always thought of those comments as just that, jokes, but now I was beginning to wonder if there was some truth in them.

But Officer Candidate School wasn't even half the story. After I was given the green light to actually train to become an officer I was going to be sent to an actual officer academy in order to learn how to behave in different situations, how to react to ambushes and the like. I already knew more than half the stuff. I had been ambushed, I had been outnumbered, I had faced enemy armor without heavy weapons, and more.

Now I was going to have some jumped-up little shit telling me how to do what I did for a living.

I sighed, it was going to be oh so annoying.

Even if I was going to do an abbreviated course it was still going to be annoying. Hell, twenty years ago the stupid thing would've lasted over a year. The UNSC had made the courses shorter after the war started. I was going to do an even shorter version of it.

"So Frank," Hanna started, rubbing my arm, "on a scale from one to ten, how much will you miss me?"

"Eight halves."

"Four?" She rolled her eyes. "Ass."

"Oh, come on, it's only going to be a few months," Pavel told her. "Shouldn't be too hard on you."

"I'll never understand how Amber keeps up with you leaving for such a long time."

Pavel smiled. "We make it work."

"And we're glad you do," Hanna replied, smiling. She reached for her glass of coke and raised it. "To Lieutenant Francisco Castillo."

"It's bad luck to do a toast without alcohol," Pavel noted, nevertheless raising his own mug of beer. "But I'll toast to that."

"What choice do I have?" I asked, clinking my own glass with theirs. "I'd never be able to live with myself if I failed to finish OCS and Military Academy."

"Cheers!"

Tomorrow a new chapter in my life began.

* * *

><p><em>Thanks to SilasWhitfield for proof-reading this chapter.<em>**  
><strong>

_Change always comes bearing gifts. I think Confucius said that. Nope, it was Price Pritchett. So, are the gifts going to be good ones or are they going to end up breaking halfway through and end up costing more than they're worth? Who knows, depends on how I feel when I write, right? Frank is indeed going to niter training to become an officer and the ODST platoon will be made a company instead. Squads will be altered and new characters will be introduced. You'll have to bear with me while I flesh them out and develop them more. I'll have to do that while developing Second Squad members and other characters at the same time. I don't know why I decided to have a gazillion characters at the same time, but I do enjoy a challenge._

_Marina is gay. Whoa. So's Claire. Whoa. I mean, the images that I have of them in my head are awesome and picturing them munching each other's rugs is incredibly awesome as well (pardon the euphemism). But I'd like to think that it makes sense in a way, the way people tend to be struck with someone who helps or saves them. In this situation it just developed into real, honest-to-god, smoking hot lesbic love. But enough about that._

_I'd like you to notice that the last line of the chapter is a pun, a very good one at that. All of you should also rest assured that Sgt. Johnson and his squad will be making an appearance before this ends, I already have the whole scenario played out in my head. It'll be shits and giggles._

_Frank's mind is worse, his professional future looks better, and he'll have a bunch of badasses covering his back in case he gets in trouble. Sounds like a recipe for disaster._

_Thank you all for your reviews and I will ask you once more to take your time after reading this chapter to leave me some feedback and your thoughts._

_Stay strong._

_-casquis_

_PS: What was that? Did I catch that right? Oh yeah, I thought so. One hundred and fifty chapters! Booyah! _


	151. Valor, Integrity, and Other Stuff

Chapter CLI: Valor, Integrity, and Other Stuff

**January 2, 2548 (UNSC Calendar)/six months later**

**Mendez Military Academy, New Alexandria, Viery Territory, Reach, Epsilon Eridani System**

* * *

><p><em>"Officers are like us grunts, they just have fancier clothing when they're buried."<em>

* * *

><p>It was cold. Even with the temperature regulating technology in my new dress uniform it was cold. I didn't know that officers got fancy technology that only ODSTs and Special Forces Operators got in their fucking dress whites. Well, I can't complain about it anymore, I just so happen to be one of those pampered college kids now, even if I never did go to college. Still, despite the cold and the snow hitting my face I couldn't wipe that stupid grin from my face.<p>

I was a lieutenant. I was an officer.

Still, I would've preferred it if I had been allowed to wear my dress blacks or maybe even my gray service uniform, but the Mendez Military Academy had a long-standing tradition and everyone, Helljumper or not wore the standard UNSC Marine Corps Dress Whites. I do have to admit that the longcoats we were using for protection against the cold did make for a rather impressive show. Fifty-two of us had entered the course. Forty-nine had made it through. It wasn't exactly a deadly washout rate, but it had been tough, tougher than I expected.

Granted, there was no way in hell that OCS or Military Academy could compare to ODST boot camp when it came to physical effort or even psychological abuse, but I have to admit that Military Academy had me use my brains in a way that I hadn't since my last year of high school. It had been challenging, requiring hours and hours of studying as well as creative and outside-the-box thinking.

I had constantly run into problems when the drill sergeants and the teachers didn't consider my outside-the-box thinking actually outside-the-box. I got called batshit insane more than once.

OCS was relatively easy. I had to endure psychological abuse, and fold my clothes, and sleep on the floor as to not mess up my bed; stupid stuff that was meant to weed out the weak from the strong. I also got to do different kinds of tests on leadership and combat-related topics. I'd like to think I aced those, but those exams did have right or wrong answers, they weren't adaptable like combat was. It frustrated me to no end, but I ended up adapting to them, ironically enough.

When I first arrived I was annoyed at the amount of fresh-faced college kids eager for a life full of adventures. Some of them still had pimples on their faces.

* * *

><p><strong>Six months earlier<strong>

It was very much like the barracks in Camp Mars IX. Sure, the floors here didn't have holes and there was a rudimentary air-conditioning system, but all in all, they were the same basic shape, size, and model as the ones that I had lived during my indoctrination as a Helljumper.

I grunted and tossed my black duffel bag on the nearest empty bunk. This was the first day, we would probably get yelled at some and then we'd go through our standard health tests and physicals. I had contacted Jones before coming here and told him about the health tests. He had assured me that everything was taken care of.

There were three other guys that had definitely been in the service before, I could tell just by their posture and annoyed attitude. They'd probably be my equivalent of friends for the length of my stay here.

A young-looking kid with freckles running across his nose approached me. He looked like the kind of guy that would play water polo, probably great with the girls too. I looked up at him and gave him my best hateful glare. "Yes?"

The kid, however, looked unperturbed. "Hey, name's Mitchell Hood." He had a happy voice, but there was something behind those steel-blue eyes of his that made him look hard. Perhaps I had misjudged him. "You look like the kind of guy that has seen a lot."

"Does my cynicism leak?"

Mitchell shook his head. "Nah. I can see the bottom of your ODST tattoo."

I glanced at my right arm and saw that my t-shirt sleeve had gone up just enough to reveal the bottom of the drop pod and the ODST letters. "So you can see Sherlock, what do you want?"

Mitchell looked carefully at me before examining the jackal-caused scars on both the insides of my elbows and forearms. "I might not seem like it, but I ain't exactly joining for shits and giggles. I want to know what I'm dropping into."

"You won't be _dropping_ into anything," I told him. "You'll go down in a nice and spacious Pelican."

"Are you going to answer my question?"

I stood up. The kid must've been suicidal if he was going to talk to an ODST like he was talking to me. I noticed that a few of the other recruits were looking at us; some of them were staring at the tattoo on my right arm with different expressions. Some of them were surprised, others were just shy of awestruck, and some of the men that looked like veterans were looking at me with an expression of hatred. I didn't want to cause a scene; after all, there were few worse ways to start Officer Candidate School than beating the snot out of a college graduate.

"You just made the biggest mistake of your life," I said finally, in a voice quiet enough that nobody would hear and mistake for a threat.

Hood nodded and seemed to ponder on my reply before looking up and thanking me.

We spent a couple more minutes on the room by ourselves before two drill sergeants came through.

"Atten-shun!"

The three veterans and I stood up at attention immediately. A pair of girls that looked worried jumped up as well, even if they did it clumsily. Hood actually managed to jump up to the desired position at a respectable speed.

"I said attention you worthless shits!" one of the drill sergeants spat. "Stand up. I know this isn't hardwood like you rich kids are used to, but stand the fuck up!"

By the time he was done nobody was just sitting on their asses. The two drill sergeants took their time verbally assaulting everyone before coming to the three Marines and me.

"So you three have actually seen some combat?" they asked us.

"Sir, yes, sir!"

"And you think you've got what it takes to be officers?"

Silence.

"You think you've got what it takes?!"

"Sir, yes, sir!"

I resisted the urge to roll my eyes. This drill sergeant hadn't been nearly as intimidating as Gabuka had been.

"Ah, Gunnery Sergeant Castillo, I heard about you."

"Sir?" I asked, staring straight at the wall past the drill sergeant that had addressed me.

"You are an ODST, are you not?"

There were some murmurs amongst the recruits before the other drill sergeant shut them up.

"Yes, sir."

"You probably think that being a veteran gives you the right to get preferential treatment, don't you?"

"No, sir."

"Damn right you don't!" he spat in my face. "Because as long as you're here you are going to be my bitch. You hear me? My. Bitch." He turned around and took a couple of steps before turning to face me again. "Is that clear?"

I was very tempted to answer with 'crystal' as opposed to the usual 'yes, sir', but I managed to restrain myself.

"Very well then. You little shits are in for the time of your lives."

This time I couldn't resist rolling my eyes.

* * *

><p><strong>Present Time<strong>

It had been a pretty dull first day, even if I had gotten unnaturally nervous at the physical tests. The doctors looked pretty bored with me, even with my collection of scars. One of the nurses asked where the large slash scar on my back came from. She didn't believe me when I told her that it was from an energy sword.

I managed to avoid shaking my head. If there was something that the officer corps loved it was uniformity. Hood was standing directly to my right, his chin held high and shoulders set apart. To my left was Dufresne, one of the three Marines that had been with us since the beginning. He looked about as bored as I felt giddy. I cursed myself for the feeling of excitement. I was supposed to get excited for manly stuff like threesomes or decapitating elites. Being made an officer was not that manly, at least not in the eyes of a veteran of fourteen years.

The speech of the brigade general in charge of the Mendez Military Academy was a good one, even if it was likely recycled. I tried my best to put attention to what he said, but my mind kept making up various scenarios as to what my friends and squad mates would think of my officer commission.

* * *

><p><strong>Four months ago<strong>

OCS was done. It hadn't been exactly easy, but it had been easier than I had expected. The tests and exams busted my balls, but I could easily manage the physical part of it and the drill sergeants quickly learned that I could do any physical punishment that they could think of and make it seem like I wasn't even trying. I do have to admit that being forced to do twenty-five pull-ups three times in a row had strained even my enhanced deltoids.

Still, I didn't really cause any trouble for the drill sergeants, keeping my opinion to myself and refusing to reply to their taunts. They weren't worse with me than they were with the other recruits, but I was still close to beating the shit out of them more than once. I remained content to just picture myself doing that.

"Off to the Academy then," Dufresne said.

"Yeah," I agreed, poking at my cold pasta. "Supposed to be hard."

"I can pass all the combat tests no problem," he boasted. Well, he didn't actually boast since it was true. "Nothing they throw at us can compare to actually being shot at by a real alien."

I nodded in agreement. Dufresne was a five-year veteran. He had seen a lot of stuff and had had many people he knew die. He was a hardened man. He reminded me a little bit of Grigori and Serge, even though he was more talkative and in general friendlier.

"Only two dropouts, that's good."  
>I nodded again.<p>

"This war needs good officers."

"Then what the hell are we doing here?"

Dufresne smiled and took a large bite of his garlic bread before eyeing one of the prettier officer candidates. He seemed to undress her with his eyes before returning his attention to me. "I don't claim to be the best there is going to be, but I know that my own combat experience will help make me a better el-tee."

"You're right, you know?" I told him. "If we both come out as average officers at least we'll be marginally better."

"A terrible thing to look forward to."

"Agreed," I muttered. The last couple of months had left me cranky and short-tempered.

It had been tougher on me than I had been willing to admit.

"So, you hitting that?" I asked Dufresne, gesturing towards the pretty officer candidate. Even with a buzz cut she looked very doable.

"No. Unfortunately. How about you?"

"Got a girl."

"Really? She's probably a pistol. You know, in order to handle you."

"That's a weird expression," I noted. "But yeah, she's tough. Corpsman. Or corpswoman, whatever you want to call it."

"Huh, funny relationship that one."

"You should've heard everyone when I was dating a pilot."

"I thought ODSTs were never supposed to use Pelicans."

"Just for evac."

"Pelicans are nice, if you ask me," Hood said, sitting down next to Dufresne. "Spacious."

"Smelly too," I replied, shooting him a quick glance before digging into my food again.

Dufresne scoffed out a chuckle. "The smell does linger, doesn't it?"

"Give me air freshener any time of the day."

While we talked about the dried blood that was so often stuck to the Pelicans' cargo bay floor without actually saying it was blood Hood paid close attention to us. The kid had remained one of the best officer candidates for the last couple of months. He knew how to deal with the drill sergeant and I often saw him studying in his bed right before lights out. At first I had taken him for a spoiled rich kid whose dad might've been in the armed forces before him, but I came to see him as a spoiled rich kid whose dad might've been in the armed forces before him that had absolutely no personal interest in joining the Marine Corps.

I pitied the guy, being pressured into doing something sucks, especially if the odds are that you'll end up dead.

"So Hood, how's Military Academy going to be?"

"Mornings for school and afternoons for hands-on training."

"Physical?" Dufresne asked.

"Not a lot, I hear. Supposed to be a bunch of combat sims."

I swallowed a particularly overcooked bit of pasta. "School? What kind of school?"

"They're going to teach us about military history, then they're going to do a bunch of military theory exams as well as make us memorize the principles and whatnot of the UNSC Marine Corps."

"So it's basically OCS on steroids?" I asked.

"Yup."

"How come you know so much about all this?" Dufresne queried.

"I've told you already, practically my entire family has joined the Navy."

"And her you are," I said. "With the Marines."

He shrugged. "I wanted to be a lawyer, old pops wouldn't have it, he wanted me to be like my uncle, and my other uncle, and my grandparents, and my mom, and my brother, and my cousins, and my-"

"We get it pumpkin," Dufresne cut in.

"All of your relatives in the Navy?"

"Most of the living ones, yeah."

"And the dead ones?" I asked.

"Same deal."

"Hood, Hood, that name sounds familiar." Dufrasne stroked his chin.

"As in Robin Hood?" I suggested.

"Could be…" Dufresne said, returning my sarcasm with his own. "But somehow I don't think so."

Mitch was starting to look a bit uncomfortable at the prospect of his family becoming a conversational topic, but he didn't say anything.

Schitzo sat down with a tray full of hamburgers right next to Dufresne. The sandwiches looked tempting. He grabbed one of the burgers and took a big bite, juice flowing down his chin. "Hood. Does sound familiar."

"Maybe someone in command of a local ship?" Dufresne went on, thinking out loud.

"Nah, it rings a bell, but I think it's Earth-related," Schitzo continued.

Dufresne kept talking, undeterred. "There's a Bryan Hood captaining a _Marathon_-class cruiser somewhere out there…"

"The guy in charge of Earth Fleet is called Terrence Hood. That's probably it, Lord Terrence Hood."

"Mitch, you're from England, right?" I asked him.

"United Kingdom, yes. I was only born there and only came here to do college."

"So you're British."

"That's what comes with being born in the UK."

"Don't give me sarcasm," I warned him. "Are you by any chance related to Lord Terrence Hood?"

Mitch gave me a long look.

_Jackpot._

"Yeah, you're welcome," Schitzo muttered. "Dick."

Mitch quickly changed the topic. "What's that on your arm?" he asked me.

"Wait?" Dufresne said. "The fleet admiral in charge of Home Fleet? That's over one hundred ships!"

"Seriously, is your dad the fleet admiral for Home Fleet?" I pressed.

Mitch looked up at me. "I'll tell you if you tell me what happened to your arm."

I glanced back down to my arm. The stinging had stopped a while ago, but I was still supposed to keep the bandage covering it for another few hours. I shrugged and peeled the bandage off, revealing a black cross right above a crow.

"A cross?" Mitch asked.

"Yeah. After a friend of mine," I explained. "He died several months ago, I've been putting it off for a while. Got it on my weekend trip to Esztergom."

"Why a cross?" Mitch asked. "Was he religious?"

I glared at Mitchell and Dufresne shook his head in disapproval at the question.

"He was the team medic."

"And the other one?"

"I answered one question," I said. "Now you have to answer mine."

"Lord Hood's my uncle. Dad's oldest brother."

"I bet your dad has an inferiority complex," Dufresne joked. "That is, unless he's a chairman or something."

Mitch shook his head. "Nah, dad looks up to him a bunch. Everybody does."

"I bet," Dufresne agreed. "He's probably the second most important officer in the whole navy."

"After Admiral Freemont?" I asked.

"Yeah," Dufresne confirmed. "Or maybe the ONI chief, whomever that is."

"Who the hell decided to make that position not public?"

"A very smart person," Mitch stated. "The chief of ONI needs her identity to be a secret in order to avoid assassination attempts and the like by insurrectionists."

I nodded in agreement while my mind raged over a single piece of information that he had given me. _Her?!_

It was a her. A her very much like the one that had spoken to me when ONI had apprehended me.

Apprehended, mind you, They had most definitely not kidnapped me. It was not the term that they preferred to use in situations that needed direct action.

_The chief of the Office of Naval Intelligence deemed me important enough to walk into an interrogation room and actually give me an explanation regarding my situation?_

_Wow, I feel important._

"Don't get ahead of yourself just yet Francisco," Schitzo told me, only just finishing his last burger. "Might be she was just the one in charge of a certain section."

_Nah, Stanforth is in charge of Section-III, and that's the section in charge of me._

"Fine, fine. Smartass."

I quickly returned back to real life when I realized that the conversation had shifted back to other non-intrusive topics. It wouldn't do any good for me to stare dully at a point right next to one of my two 'friends' while they asked me a question. I had enough people thinking that I was a psycho. I nodded when the conversation required nodding and kept my smiles to a minimum while occasionally giving each of the two guys shit for something that they had said.

So Mitch's uncle was Fleet Admiral Terrence Hood, who also happened to be a British noble.

_No wonder he was pressured into joining the military._

I couldn't imagine a worse fuck you to your family than joining the Corps instead of the Navy. Well, maybe going the other way around would be worse.

* * *

><p><strong>Present Day<strong>

They were starting to give each candidate their gold bars. I was going to be one of the last ones to go. Our group consisted of forty-eight men and women of which I was one of the first in alphabetic order, but it wasn't the only one that was graduating. Seven other different groups were also going to receive their officer commission today, and all of them were ahead of us.

I suppressed any display of emotion for what seemed to be the eleventh time in the ceremony. This time I failed, a little sigh of boredom escaped my lips and I could see Mitch shake his head lightly next to me but refrained from smiling.

I endured the cold and the snow without another sigh. Hell, I managed to keep from shivering. I watched as one by one the members of other groups were called to the front to have their new pins insignia to their lapels. The brigade general did it with extreme speed considering how long it took me to get my goddamned chevrons to my lapels without any help. No doubt the man had commissioned many officers.

Suddenly it was my turn.

"Francisco Castillo!"

I did what we had rehearsed; I took one step forward before stopping and then marched towards the podium. There were several captains and colonels next to the general, they all looked bored and didn't bother to hide it. The man in charge of this academy however, looked professional as fuck. I have no other way to describe it. He reminded me of an aging movie star, the looks were there even if they weren't what they had been in his youth, but he was still in what appeared to be excellent shape and would certainly appear attractive to most women. But what he had that struck me the most was presence. Like most general officers he had something about him that just seemed imposing, no matter the age, or height, or even physical power difference. If this man told me to do something I would do it.

"You are now an officer son," he said as he pinned my bars. "Make the UNSC proud, make the UEG proud, andmake humanity proud." He pinned the second one and looked at me. "But on top of everything, make yourself proud."

I saluted like everyone before me had and gave the general a quick, curt nod before stepping to my left and returning to my place.

_I am now a lieutenant in the United Nations Space Command Marine Corps. Fuck. Yeah._

* * *

><p><strong>Two months ago<strong>

I gotta give it to them. The recovered Covenant weapons were a big bonus when it came to training. I rarely bothered to pick up a covvie weapon. I remember once firing a beam rifle in order to save a pilot, but it always felt wrong, no matter how dire the circumstances. I have to admit that the jackal gauntlets were incredibly useful during Skopje, but the feeling of _wrongness _was always there.**  
><strong>

A plasma rifle was no different.

The younger guys were incredibly eager to fire the things, lifting the rifles carefully and examining them before trying to aim down range. The ballistic gel dummies were shaped like humans and clad in old fatigues. So far we hadn't been given the order to fire.

"The Type-25 Directed Energy Rifle, more commonly known as the plasma rifle," our instructor started, "is one of the more common Covenant infantry weapons. Its rate of fire varies, our geeks haven't figured out how to tune it just yet, but so far it goes between three hundred sixty and five hundred forty rounds per minute. It is about six kilos in weight and unwieldy as hell. As you can see, it has no sights or stock. It was meant for Elite use, and those have enough strength to fire it like a pistol."

The instructor described more of its physical and technical qualities before going on to describe the damage it could cause on a human being.

"The plasma bolts that this gun fires are superheated, meaning that they will burn through several layers of ballistic armor. Clocking at almost half a million degrees Celsius it will sting like hell. The only good that comes from this is that the magnetic fields keeping the plasma together are unstable, meaning that they don't have much penetrating power. Don't get me wrong, one hit from this and you'll be out of commission for a while if not dead." She looked around the group with a slight frown. "Four veterans here…who of you has been hit by a plasma rifle?"

I raised my hand and so did another guy.

"You," the instructor pointed at me. "Where did you get hit?"

"Back." I pointed to my shoulder blade. "And belly."

"You?" she asked the other guy.

"Left thigh."

"How was it?"

"Burned all the way to the bone," the Marine replied.

"For a moment there my intestines were out in the open. Shoulder wasn't so bad, armor absorbed most of the heat, but it still peeled my skin off the muscle."

"So you don't want to get hit with one of these," she reaffirmed. "And you most certainly don't want the idiot next to you to accidentally melt your face off, so aim those things at the fucking ground!"

A few of the recruits that had been waving the guns around looked sheepish as they pointed the muzzles to the ground, others looked plain frightened at the prospect of being shot with one of those. I guess that the prospect of holding alien power weapons made them forget all about range safety.

The instructor had us fire a couple of times at the targets. She didn't tell us that firing for too long would overheat the weapons, and more than a few of the guys ended up with burnt hands. They winced and cursed but didn't complain. They knew better than that.

"Next up we have the Type-51 Carbine. Commonly known as the Covenant carbine or just the carbine," she said, holding the huge purple weapon. "Looks fancy, doesn't it? Well, it is. It's rare because it fires conventional ammunition, if you call caseless radioactive projectiles conventional. Now, be very careful when you run out of ammo, because the magazine ejects directly into your face. More than one imbecile has gotten a concussion from the mag."

The carbine was the counterpart to my personal favorite, the BR55. I would always pick the human weapon over the alien carbine, but I was of the personal belief that the BR55 was better. It had several different firing modes as well as a longer effective range in addition to a larger magazine size, and most importantly, a stock.

"This is boring," Dufresne muttered as the instructor walked past us. "I did all this in boot camp."

"And it still feels wrong," I replied.

"Amen."

Mitch was trying to aim down the rather unconventional scope without hitting himself in the face with the recoil, succeeding more often than not, but occasionally nicking himself in the forehead. It took some practice, but everybody got the hang of it quickly enough.

The process was repeated with plasma pistols, needlers, and even needle rifles. At one point I was hoping that they'd bring out fuel rod cannons, but they didn't. I had only fired those once and I wouldn't pass up the opportunity to do it again in the future.

"This bores me," I told Dufresne after giving in my spiker to the instructor.

"Day wasted," he agreed. "I've gone through this already."**  
><strong>

"But we have a fucking exam tomorrow."

"What was it on again?" he asked.

"Warfare in the Rain Forest Wars."

"Damn, it's a tough one."

"You're going to fail if you haven't even started studying."

"I'll manage," he shrugged. "I'll sit next to Mitch."

"Ha!" I exclaimed. "And he'll allow you to copy? Let alone being able to see all the way to his terminal."

Dufresne shrugged and smiled. "Guess I'll just study like crazy."

"Good luck."

* * *

><p><strong>Present day<strong>

They were giving off swords now.

Let me explain, because that probably sounded a little bit weird.

The Mendez Military Academy was one of the first officer schools on the planet. A British officer that had studied in a British military academy before joining the UNSC Marine Corps had founded it. He had set several 'traditions' based on the ones in his school back on Earth. I still don't know why the guy had named it after someone other than himself

That meant that the best students got swords, sabres to be precise. Ok, maybe they were not sabres; they were more like straight sabres. Is there a name for that? Well, the point is that you probably know what they look like already. There were five different swords in all. Each was given to a different student for a different achievement. They were incredibly prestigious to have and every officer that cared about his reputation wore them to every single important occasion.

It's a shame; a sword would've looked pretty damn good on my waist.

The general went into an explanation, telling us why each sword was important and what it meant to have it. They were all named after virtues or desirable characteristics in an officer. I thought that it was conceited, but then imagined being the proud owner of the Sword of Bravery, class of 2548 and decided that it was actually kind of cool.

The general turned to grab a sword from one of his aides and lifted it slightly to show it to the crowd. "Sword of Bravery. It is awarded to the cadet that displayed exceeding talent in combat situations. Every officer that earns the right to carry this sword leads his men into battle and fights just like one of them. Men and woman that have earned this sword are always looked up to by their subordinates, always keep morale high, and are not afraid to get their hands dirty…" I trailed off as he went on listing a couple of famous recipients and telling of their accomplishments before finally calling a name form a guy on another company.

My heart sunk a little. If I had a chance of getting a stupid sword then that was it.

"Sword of Diligence." The general had produced another sword, slightly different hilt and the blade looked to be a little bit shorter and wider. "Perseverance. This sword is issued to the cadet that managed to overcome challenges despite the adversity and refused to give up. The men and women that have earned this sword are known to have been determined until their last breath or until they accomplished the mission. They lead through example and sacrifice themselves for the greater good." Again he cited a few important figures before naming the student. I watched the kid march towards the general. He looked a little bit short and maybe on the heavy side, but I know that he must've done something to earn that price. He saluted the general and received his sword.

"Sword of Honor. This sword in particular has been held by many of the greatest strategists in the history of the Marine Corps. It is given to the cadet that understands tactics and knows how to use them. The men and women who earn this sword are always informed and knowledgeable."  
>In my own personal opinion it was the lamest sword. He was adorning it, but this sabre went to the person who had the best academic scores. Of course, a certain degree of practical abilities were needed, but it was the equivalent of the highest grade average in a regular high school. Kudos to the guy that got it though.<p>

"Sword of Excellence."

_This is a good one._

"As it name suggests, it is awarded to the cadet considered to be the best overall in the graduating class by the commanding officer. Me. It is considered by some to be the toughest sword to earn, but it depends on the man in charge of the academy at the time. Seeing as right now I'm the director of this school, I would also say that it's incredibly difficult to get." He smiled at his own joke because we weren't allowed to. "Grades in theory and academic studies go above and beyond; practical skills that surprise even our drill sergeants. And above all, he should have all the characteristics of a model UNSC Marine Corps officer. It is my honor to announce the winner of this sword. Second Lieutenant Mitchell Hood!"

Mitch took a step forward without saying a word. I don't know what he felt, but he was probably torn between pride of earning such a prestigious prize and frustration at having risen up to his family's expectations. No matter, he walked towards the general and received his sword with a perfect poker face, only smiling a little at some joke or comment that the higher-ranking officer made.

He walked back with a shiny new sword strapped to his hip. Mitch took position right next to me and ignored the glance that I shot him, looking straight ahead, his peaked hat almost covering his eyes.

In the podium the general had one more sword to give out. This looked no different than the others, perhaps a little bit slimmer than most, with a slightly modified handguard, but that's about it.

"The last sword," he announced, lifting it so that everybody could see. "The Sword of Leadership. This sword goes to a cadet that I chose myself, same as the previous one. This cadet is a man or woman that inspires others to follow him through sheer force of will and personality. Some of the Marines that have won this sword are not the best in theory, they are not necessarily the best in combat training, and they are most certainly not the drill sergeants' favorites. Men and women that have won this have been headstrong and meek, outspoken and shy. We've had women who could barely pass the physical win this and we've had men with a body that would put a rugby player to shame. There is no profile for the cadet that wins, the only thing in common that they all have is that they are exceptionally good leaders." He paused and looked down at the sword. "Holders of the Sword of Leadership have gained rank and prestige in the military. I should know since I got it myself."

This time we did allow ourselves a little chuckle. It was the kind of joke that called for it.

"Well, without any further ado, I shall name the winner of this class." Like all good speakers he paused for effect. "Second Lieutenant Francisco Castillo."

"Huh," I said. "Wait, what?"

"Move. Up," Dufresne urged me in a quiet growl.

_Right. What?_

I took a step forward, straightening my back. Suddenly it was a little bit too cold for my comfort and the wind seemed to be blowing just a bit harder than before. I could feel every last eye digging into my back. I felt very much like the first time I had been called into the principal's office. Hearing my name being called over the speakers and all my classmates staring in wide-eyed wonder and muttering amongst themselves.

The people looking at me weren't staring in wide-eyed wonder, they were staring with barely concealed curiosity. It is worth noting that they weren't first-graders either. They were all military men and women with impressive skill sets and a very high standard as to what 'leadership' actually meant. And now they thought that I had whatever they thought was necessary.

"Sir," I said, saluting the general.

"As you were, son," he told me. He unsheathed the sword and showed me the blade, point facing up. "This sword has been given to many of the greatest leaders in the history of the Marine Corps. It has also been given to the men and women with the biggest failures. It doesn't mean that you'll be a great leader or remembered in the history books. It means that those under your command will follow you to their death. It is your job to make sure that they don't die in vain." He sheathed the sword and presented the sword to me. "Lieutenant, you are the most curious combination that I have ever seen. From the outside you are narcissistic and egotistical yet also charismatic and engaging. Some of the school's psychologists say that you could be great and others say that you could be a Koslov in the making." He paused his tirade and sighed. "I think that you're a good at what you do and have an ability to make people want to follow you into their very graves. I have not seen anything to signal you as a potential terrorist."

_Thanks for the vote of confidence._

"I think you're going to do great, son. You need to believe that yourself, corny as that sounds."

"Sir."

"Make me proud," he ordered, finally handing me the sword. "Prove me right."

I saluted once more. "I'll do my best, sir. You have my word."

"That is all I ask," he replied, returning the salute.

I strapped the sword to my belt and returned to my position, feeling a little bit shellshocked form the whole experience. The general gave a closing statement before dismissing us all.

I got patted in the back by a few guys and Dufresne took advantage of the opportunity to repeatedly poke me. Mitch shook my hand and congratulated me. I congratulated him in return. A few minutes later I was dragged away for a photo op, the academy's official photographer and a few civilian freelancers took several dozen pictures of me posing in front of the statue of the school's founder before taking a hundred and a half of all five of us with fancy swords.

"What the fuck?" I asked myself as soon as everybody left.

* * *

><p><em>Thanks to SilasWhitfield for proof-reading this chapter.<em>

_So, I'm really sorry for the delay, but a couple of very big basketball games coupled with a party (yes, an actual party. With girls and boobs) prevented me from being able to have this wrapped up earlier. I was planning on putting it up friday, but evidently that didn't work out as I wanted. Again, sorry for the delay in posting this._

_Well, I wasn't going to go through all of OCS and Basic. I mean, I've seen enough movies to know how bootcamp is supposed to be like, but OCS? I mean, who makes movies about Officer Candidate School? That's right, no one. Well, the point is that I did some research and did my best to portray both separate sections of officer training as realistically as I could. First part was based on the United States OCS and the second...well, the Military Academy is based on a british one whose name I don't recall at the moment with a little bit of my grandpa's stories thrown in for good measure. Just don't make the mistake of thinking that becoming and officer actually works like that._

_Back in the day they would get locked up in the school's grain silo and they had to sleep on top and outside because it was actually warmer than the inside. Once he and his friends got an Italian lieutenant in a sack of potatoes and hung him from the flagstaff. And here I thought that the Mexican Army wasn't that interesting._

_Anyhow, I went through some of Frank's most memorable experiences in OCS and Military Academy before graduation itself. All of you know that Frank is special, but he doesn't quite believe it yet. Don't know if he has an inferiority complex or thinks that he hadn't earned all his skills, but Frank fails to see just how goddamned special he is. Not because he's modest, but because he has a variety of mental illnesses working together to make his life shit. But he was still awarded a fancy sword by a fancy general, that's gotta count for something. I hope that you liked Hood and Dufresne, they might be present further on if you liked them. Or if you didn't, I don't know yet._

_Next chapter will introduce lots and lots of other characters as well as a slightly different dynamic. _

_Ladies (hopefully) and gentlemen, I hope you enjoyed this chapter and look forward to reading your future reviews and thank you for all your past reviews. Stay strong._

_-casquis_


	152. Back to the New Basics

Chapter CLII: Back to the New Basics

**January 3, 2548 (UNSC Calendar)/**

**New Alexandria, Viery Territory, Reach, Epsilon Eridani System**

* * *

><p><em>"So I was at this party..."<em>

* * *

><p>It wasn't my idea, I promise.<p>

"It wasn't my idea, I promise," I assured Hanna.

It very well could've been, the way things were going. Amber seemed half a drink away from taking her top off and even Miranda was attempting to dance while trying to stay upright. I don't know where Pavel had procured this much alcohol from or why everybody had suddenly decided that they wanted to revisit the high school party scene, but this was getting ridiculous. Everybody was here. Everybody had been invited to my 'officer party.' No doubt Pavel had thought himself terribly funny when doing this. No doubt Api had thought that offering his house as a party room had been a good idea as well.

Even Murphy, Shaw, and Driscoll had shown up. I mean, those guys barely left the Grenadier and now they were all the way over here in New Alexandria. Those three guys were having a blast, quietly drinking cheap beer and sitting together in a couch. Even across the continent they barely changed their habits.

"I said I believed you," Hanna replied with exasperation. "It's just…this goes against everything I believe in!"

"I know you don't like drinking, but Hanna, you can't control what other people do."

"I know, it's just so frustrating!"

"Oi! Welcome to the party!" Robert yelled.

I turned to see Marina and Claire walk through the door. They already looked half-drunk themselves.

"I need a drink," I muttered.

"Frank!" Hanna exclaimed.

"Trust me; you're going to need one too."

When she saw what I was looking at she also rolled her eyes. "Oh great."

Leave it to girlfriend rivalry to draw attention away from me. I took advantage of her momentary attention lapse and took three long steps to the bar before pouring myself a steep one. I downed the whole drink, barely feeling the burn on the back of my throat before pouring myself another glass, this time filling it to the brim. Ever since my enhancements had been making themselves seen more often I had found it nearly impossible to get drunk.

I gave myself twenty minutes to start feeling the dizziness before deciding that it wasn't going to happen anytime soon and grabbed the whole bottle of Scotch. Pavel wasn't exactly buying top of the line booze, but it was good enough for me. I walked through the party, with people congratulating me more than a couple of times. I admired Wiremu's apartment as I walked through it. He had been a rugby player in the past and probably had quite a bit of money saved up. I hear rugby's quite popular back on Earth.

There was a nice balcony with a good view. It wasn't exactly a penthouse, but Api had gotten himself a very good apartment with all his secret fortune. I could see a bunch of buildings with important brand names from the balcony. Grigori was also leaning against the railing, a half-full glass of something in his hands.

"Sarge," he said. "Or El-tee."

"Sarge's fine." I looked around and sat down on a chair. "For now."

He shrugged. "Back on Skopje…"

"What about Skopje?" I growled. I wanted to forget all about it. My stomach still hurt from time to time. The doctors said that the new skin was adapting properly, but sometimes it didn't feel like it.

"The elite."

"We went over this Grigori…"

"You told me nothing," he replied. "You matched an elite's physical strength."

He sounded offended somehow. "So? You know what adrenaline can do, besides, I've got an advantage over most people."

"Advantage or no advantage, you're not supposed to do that," he replied.

"You would know, wouldn't you?" I asked him. "After all, you're nothing but an ONI mole. Spying on me."

"I'm not _just_ spying on you," he replied, turning to look at me. "I am part of the team, I am loyal to the team."

"You can't have two allegiances."

"But I can, and I do. I report everything I see about you and it's for your own good."

"And you think that excuses what you do?"

"Yes, I do."

"The end justifies the means then?"

"Most of the time."

"And I take it that's the same mentality you used back in the day when you were bombing hospitals."

"I never bombed anything," he assured me, anger in his face.

"Whatever. How would you feel if someone in the squad was reporting directly to ONI about you, telling them whether you were really loyal or just a double agent."

Grigori looked at me with a vague look of surprise. It hadn't occurred to me ever before, and evidently he hadn't thought about it either. "Never considered it," he admitted. "But I'm just doing my job. I'm trying to prove I'm not…" he looked around. "I'm not fighting against the UNSC anymore."

I sighed. "I know, I know."

"I don't know how I'm supposed to do my job if they don't tell me anything," he admitted, echoing my sigh. "So, how'd you do it?"

"I don't know. I just did."

"So you're telling me you didn't get any further…gifts?"

"Gifts? No." I shook my head and took another drink from the bottle. "I've got a bunch of shrinks and doctors asking me all this questions in addition to my so-called handler."

"Are you supposed to be talking about this?"

"No. But what are they going to do about it?"

Grigori nodded in acknowledgement but was interrupted before he could even start. A very tipsy Axel Beckel came in through the door before stumbling a little and straightening up.

"Oh, hey Gunny. I mean, Lieutenant," he greeted. He barely slurred through the sentence, good for him.

"What up, Beckel?" I asked him. "Stomach healing up nicely?"

"Yeah, doctors said that the stomach itself wasn't too torn up, the intestines were pretty mangled though."

"You ready for combat?"

"They gave me another week of rest just in case, but I'm going to stay awake during cryo to get it over with."

"Good," I told him. "So…how are you?"

"I just told you, Lieutenant."

"No, I mean…" I rubbed my temples. "I know you and Almers were close."

Beckel smiled sadly and let himself fall down on another chair, nodding at Grigori. "He was only my best friend."

"I'm sorry."

"I should've been there, you know."

"If anybody could've done anything it was me," I told him. "I was the one closest to him and couldn't do anything to help."

"You had just been shot, Gunny. Lieutenant."

"And you had just been stabbed," Grigori told him. "It's not your fault."

"I know, I know. It just feels like I should've been there."

"I know what you mean," he replied.

I nodded absent-mindedly, thinking back to that moment before taking a big gulp from the bottle. Having seen Almers stabbed through the gut by an energy sword hadn't been nice. The poor kid never had a chance against the elite swordsman. Ever since then I had had more than a couple of nightmares with that moment serving as inspiration. Either I was stabbed or I came across Anders' corpse, propped up on something sharp as a warning to stay away.

_Stay away from what, I wonder…_

"But I'll get over it," Beckel assured me. "Things like this happen. Besides, I just made Lance Corporal, can't really afford to look weak, can I?"

I chuckled. "Lance Corporal. I had forgotten. Congratulations man."

"Thanks, the higher pay helps."

"And Serge?"

"He's a rock," Beckel assured me. "I think he's pissed at what happened, but he's had enough friends of him die back on Earth to lose it."

"Good, I'm going to need him."

"So, what do you think about HIGHCOM deciding to expand the platoon to a company?" he asked, obviously wanting to change the topic.

"I don't know what to think," I admitted. "I just know that I'll be glad to have extra Helljumpers nearby."

Beckel nodded slowly. "Makes sense…"

The balcony door opened yet again to reveal one of the most stunningly beautiful women that I had ever seen. She was tall, curvy, and wearing clothes that seemed to cling to her skin. Her face was something that you'd expect to see on an angel.

"Oh, hey Cam," I greeted her, raising my bottle. "Been a while."

"Frank, heard you made second lieutenant," Camilla said.

"I did," I said. "Impressed?"

She laughed. "Very. How the hell did you make it past the initial screenings?"

I laughed as well and shrugged. "I was asked to become an officer. Can you believe it?"

"Yes. No way you'd become one all by yourself."

I nodded and smiled, taking another sip from the bottle of booze.

"Hey Grigori," Cam said, waving at the man.

"Cam," he replied, nodding slightly.

Camilla dragged a chair with her bionic arm and sat in front of me. "How you doing?"

"I'm good," I said. "Why don't you get a prosthetic that looks real? Or even better, flash clone yourself an arm."

"I can't afford a flash-cloned arm," she told me.

I shrugged. "Nobody can."

"And my boss wants me to look like I actually saw combat. It's better for PR he says. Besides, I like the way it looks."

"Cam, you'd make anything look good on you."

"Aw, thanks," she replied, "I saw Marina and Winchester outside. Did you know that-"

"Yeah," I interrupted. The last thing I wanted on my mind right now was the image of both of them making sweet, sweet love to one another. On second thought, it probably wasn't the last thing I wanted on my mind.

"Weird, huh?"

"Life seems to be a magnet for weird."

"Only yours Frankie," Cam told me. She closed in a little bit and whispered, "Why is he still staring?"

I leaned to the side to see Beckel gaping at Camilla. "Bro…"

"Sir?" he asked, confused.

"Stop staring."

Beckel's mouth closed immediately and he straightened on his chair, looking uncomfortable and trying not to meet Cam's eye.

She laughed and turned to face him. "Pleasure meeting you…"

"Beckel, Axel Beckel."

"Well Mr. Beckel. I'm Camilla Seppa."

"Better known as Grass," I added.

"You're Grass?" Beckel asked suddenly. "Damn."

"Why thank you," she said. "But seriously, stop staring, it's annoying."

"Don't mind him, he's half-drunk," I told Cam, trying to cover for Beckel, if only a little bit.

"Whatever you say Sarge," Cam shrugged, turning back to face me. "Back to this Winchester Marina business."

"Right…it's as weird for me as it is for you."

"Tell me about it. With all the times you snuck out in order to get some with her seemed to confirm that she liked men and she liked them often."

I felt a blush creeping up my neck but suppressed it before Camilla could see it. It had been a very long time since someone had made me feel that uncomfortable just with words. "I…I…what? I mean, it's not like we had sex every chance we got."

"Yeah you did," she told me. "Can't blame you, she's a good-looking girl, she is."

Great, now Cam had joined Marina and Claire for a threesome. My concentration was past its breaking point. On any other occasion I would've thoroughly enjoyed the fantasy, hell, I might've even connected to a v-world fantasy. Right now, not so much.

"Anyways," Cam went on, "I can't stay here for long Frank, got lots of papers to push."

"You deserve better than that," I told her jokingly.

"A desk job is beneath you Cam," Grigori agreed.

"Thank you guys," she said, "but this pays better." Cam stood up and dusted herself off. "You're deploying tomorrow, right?"

"Yeah," I confirmed.

"Good luck Frank," she said, giving me a quick hug. "Try and stay safe."

"It's like you don't know me Cam," I protested.

"Yeah right." She turned to face Grigori. "You want a hug too?"

He shook his head. "I'm good."

"Your loss," Cam shrugged. "I'll be seeing you."

As soon as Camilla closed the door behind her Beckel jumped up and took two long steps towards Grigori. "You just turned down a hug. From that!"  
>"You need to get laid," Grigori replied.<p>

"Yeah…"

Someone broke something inside the apartment.**  
><strong>

"Here we go," I groaned to myself.

* * *

><p>A few hours later I found myself helping Hanna walk towards her apartment. Not only had she gotten drunk for the first time in her lifetime, but she had managed to do it with barely enough alcohol to make a hamster fall now she was struggling to walk properly and apologizing profusely, saying that this never happened before.<p>

I struggled not to laugh, feeling like a parent driving his kid back home after his first party with booze in it. It was actually hilarious. I mean, the perfect girl who never drank and didn't engage in any kind of sexual activities all throughout high-school was trying to walk, her high heels in one hand and her purse slipping through her her arm.

I mean, if you had gone to school with her you would've appreciated the irony a bunch more than I was.

"I am so."

"Yeah?" I asked, smiling like an idiot. "You are…"

"So-" she gulped, probably gagging. "-ry."

"Don't worry about it honey," I said, still smiling. "You'll really be sorry tomorrow morning."

Hanna mumbled something before the full weight of her body pulled me down. I stumbled a little before catching her. "Hanna, Han?" I shook my head and pulled her into a bridal carry, making sure that her head was tilted sideways and away from my chest. I didn't want drool or barf staining my shirt. Only a few people were on the street, but all of them made sure to stare at us as we walked past them. I wished that I could've recorded that, just to show it to Hanna next morning. Oh well, the hangover headache would have to do.

* * *

><p>"Something amusing Lieutenant?" Lieutenant, no, Captain Hayes asked me pointedly.<p>

I realized that I had been smiling without noticing. Well, I couldn't help it, the thought of a cranky Hanna in the morning, trying to throw her pillow at me while rubbing her temples…priceless.

"Nothing, sir. Forgive me."

The newly promoted Captain Tahlia Hayes was doing the 'Welcome aboard' talk with all of her new officers. Yassir and I were both technically new as officers, but we had served under Hayes before, so we were the old and experienced guys. The other two newcomers were…well, they were Helljumpers.

First we had Second Lieutenant Jen Weller. I think it goes without saying that she was simply stunning. I really should stop being surprised when I come across pretty women, everybody can make their baby attractive with the right modifications. But go into their aptitudes and _then _it's illegal.

But I digress. Lieutenant Jen Weller was a two year veteran in the UNSC Marine Corps plus another extra year in the Orbital Drop Shock Troopers. She had seen combat in several engagements with the Covenant and had completed four combat jumps. Her scores were excellent and her skill was undeniable. Weller brought with her half a dozen Helljumpers form her previous unit, the only survivors of her latest run-in with the covvies. She was a tall woman, about 5'10, maybe a little bit less, and she looked like a tough bitch. Her head was shaved to a buzz cut and there were two nasty scars on her face, one was 'A' shaped and on her left cheek, the other one looked to me like a needle had grazed her cheekbone, right below the eye and also on the left side of her face.

Still, despite the tough-as-nails appearance she still had a certain allure, even if it wasn't exactly feminine.

On the other hand we had Second Lieutenant Domingo dos Santos. He was short, shorter than Weller and just shy of Hayes' full height. Unlike so many ODSTs that you met that were tremendously muscular and constantly worked to keep themselves in peak shape, he was slim and not exactly muscular. He was a veteran of thirteen years, one more than me. Of those thirteen only one had been spent as a regular, he had served in the trenches as an ODST for most of his career before finally deciding to become an officer. Like Weller, he had an excellent track record and had completed over fifty combat jumps and lived to tell about them. Yassir had passed me his file, seeing as Captain Hayes still hated me and hadn't given it to me. He seemed to have a thing for interrogating grunts in order to gain information before executing them.

Interesting tactic, I had never actually considered not killing a covvie. I might have to try it out it sometime.

"Welcome aboard," Hayes said as soon as all eyes were back on her. "No doubt you'll have time to get used to the ship in the following days. For now, all you need to know is the structure of the company. I'd love to do this myself, but our AI is more qualified. Al?"

Al's avatar popped up, displaying the Arabic-clad man. "Captain, pleasure seeing you again."

"Likewise Al. Please do explain the functioning of the unit to my platoon leaders."

"Right away, sir." His holographic avatar turned to face us before clearing his throat. "Good evening, my name is Al-Hassani and I am a 'dumb' AI, although I find that term prerogative and would prefer you to refer to me as an AI with different capabilities.

I chuckled a little but cut it when Hayes glared at me.

"This unit in particular, company-sized as you already know, will consist of five platoons. Four of those platoons are going to be regular rifle platoons, with every men and woman in them carrying regular weaponry with some specialized equipment. When I say normal I only mean Helljumper normal, you'll still have a longer leash when it comes to personal weapons and you will get to carry specialized weapons that the regulars aren't allowed to."

I saw Weller nod slightly at that, but she didn't comment.

"Platoon One is going to be commanded by our very own Captain Tahlia Hayes, she will also be in charge of the company itself." Al turned to point at Captain Hays before returning to his previous position. "Two, will be commanded by First Lieutenant Yassir Dajani who is also going to be the company's second in command. Three and Four will be commanded by Second Lieutenants Jen Weller and Domingo dos Santos respectively." Al pointed at each officer as he said their names and they subconsciously nodded in return. "As commander of Platoon Five we will have Second Lieutenant Francisco Castillo."

I nodded as well, feeling stupid as I did that. At least Hayes hadn't made us wear our dress clothes, instead just telling us to put on our work grays. The uniforms themselves weren't uncomfortable or even bad for action, it just bothered me that they had been designed to look very official while at the same time proving comfortable in a combat situation. It seemed a little bit conceited if you ask me.

"Platoon Five is not like the others," Al said in a lecturing tone. "It will be in charge of the most dangerous and complicated operations. Their missions will include SpecOps, specialized demolition, target acquisition, and intel gathering."

"Excuse me," Weller spoke up. "No disrespect, but why do we need a SpecOps unit in a unit that is already Special Operations capable?"

"A valid question Lieutenant-" Al started.

"Platoon Five," Hayes cut in, "will not hog all the dangerous missions, there are plenty to go around, rest assured. What they will be doing is going in first, not necessarily to spearhead a bigger assault for you, but to engage in guerilla and diversionary tactics as well gaining intel."

"Sir, I do not mean to question your system, but our units should also be able to complete those missions," Domingo agreed with Jen.

_Whoa, why are you ganging up on me?_

"Listen," Hayes said forcefully. "I don't care what you think; it is the way it is. I'll be honest with you, it seemed weird to me at first, but orders come directly from Naval Intelligence."

_That_ got my attention. If ONI was involved in this then it was bound to go wrong eventually. They kept thinking that I was merely a plaything for them to poke and prod while they wrote down the results.

"You're just a game for them Francisco," Schitzo said. "Even if you're a pretty important game."

"As I was saying," Al said, defusing the situation a little bit, at least for me. "Platoons One through Four will usually drop in after Five and move to secure high-value targets for the regulars to come charging in. The exact methods with which you complete your mission are up to you, but that's the general layout of how things will work."

"Thank you Al," Hayes said as the hologram disappeared. "Now you know the technical stuff. I think it should go without saying, but I'm going to say it regardless. Every single one of you will follow my orders without question. You will not complain, you will not make suggestions, and you will not fail to comply. You will also make sure that everyone under your command understands the importance of my orders and complying with them." Hayes sighed. "If you have any questions feel free to ask."

Nobody said anything.

"Good, dismissed."

Like one, we snapped to attention and saluted before we were dismissed. Yas remained behind to talk to Hayes. They were friends, a more professional version of Pavel and myself. Sometimes I wondered what their story was.

Lieutenants Weller and dos Santos stopped and turned to face me. They had probably chatted a little bit before meeting the rest of the team, but they still weren't exactly what you would call friends.

"Francisco, right?" dos Santos asked as a way to start a conversation.

"Frank's fine," I replied. "Domingo…Portuguese?"

"Born and raised in New Jerusalem, but I have Brazilian ancestry."

I nodded and shook his hand. "Weller?" I asked the other officer.

"Cygnus," she said simply. "And yourself?"

"Born on Earth, raised in Jericho VII."

"Those are a bit far apart," Weller noted. "Why'd you move?"

I shrugged at their inquisitive glances. "Long story. Parents died in an accident, uncle couldn't cope."

"Sorry," Weller apologized. Somehow, her voice didn't carry much meaning.

"Don't worry about it," I replied. "So, anything you need to know? Who to talk to when you want non-regulation items, who to make friends with, which cooks give you better rations?"

"No, thank you," Weller said.

"Yes please," dos Santos said.

"You sure?" I asked the scarred lieutenant.

"Yeah," she said, already taking off.

I waited until she was out of earshot before talking. "She's kind of scary, isn't she?" I asked dos Santos.

"Little bit," he admitted. "She's so tall."

"She _is_ pretty tall. But it's the buzz cut that does it."

"You have a point."

"Well let's see if I can introduce you to some important figures on board the legendary _Flawless_."

As we walked around the important sections of the ship I acted as a tour guide much like Pavel had once done. We passed through the large combat simulation room in the middle of the ship and I explained how everything functioned there.

"Apparently they have boxing tournaments there sometimes, " I said. "The ones for the last few years have been cancelled on account of planetary holocausts."**  
><strong>

There were a few guys from the first Marine battalion doing some training. I tapped on the window and brought up a holographic display of the guys inside. The displays on the windows marked them as a platoon from Dagger Company.

"Nah, he's not in there," I muttered. "You see, the XO of First Battalion is Darius Galván, Major. He's a good guy and doesn't mind cooperating with us dickhead Helljumpers."

"Dickhead?"

"Haven't you heard?" I asked my new colleague. "We're supposed to be dicks."

Dos Santos chuckled. "What about the captain of the ship?"

"The Admiral?" I asked. "He's supposed to be a great strategist, I've never actually met him in person, I hear he only meets with the COs of the big units. Marine battalions, Captain Hayes, the commander in charge of the Longsword squadrons…"

"But not us lowly knuckle draggers?"

"We're officers," I said. "Don't think we qualify as knuckle draggers anymore."

"You're right," he agreed. "It'll take a while to get used to the bars."

I showed him some more of the ship, making it a point to show the genera area where most of the escape pods were in case of a catastrophic decompression that was bound to happen eventually. I showed him the bigger armories and introduced him to a couple of important guys including my booze dealer. I also introduced him to Fightmaster and a couple of tankers that we came across. It wasn't exactly the grand tour, but it would have to do until he learned all the ropes on the ship himself.

"That's about it," I said. "Gotta go to the briefing room, give the 'don't mess with me' talk to my platoon."

"Yeah, same, but I don't get that until later."

"I'll be seeing you," I said goodbye, patting his shoulder.

I had only just gotten the list of men and women that were going to be on my new platoon. There were twenty of them. When I was told that we were changing the system I requested to keep all of my previous squad mates from Second Squad. I would've asked for Reaper too, but I didn't want to come off as too demanding of a Captain that had a very valid reason for hating me. She still didn't grant my request though, the bitch.

The briefing room hadn't been remodeled yet, but it was going to be made bigger in order to accommodate the hundred and sixteen Helljumpers on board the ship. So far there were only nineteen ODSTs inside, all of them were trying not to fall asleep as they waited for me to arrive.

"Officer on deck!"

_I like the sound of that._

I eyed everyone carefully as they stood up and snapped to attention. I could see myself growing to enjoy this feeling. "As you were," I dismissed them. "Welcome to Platoon Five." I smirked at Pavel. "In this unit I am the closest thing to God. If I were to be unavailable or not present you will defer to Gunnery Sergeant Pavel Klaus, who will be, for all intents an purposes, Jesus Christ."

Pavel smiled at the familiar speech. I had said almost the exact same thing when Reaper had been formed. Grigori also shook his head slightly form his place. He had been there back then too.

"All of you new guys feel free to ask the Helljumpers that have been serving under me how exactly this works. I like my orders followed and I like them done properly. Screw ups will be tolerated once or twice, fuck ups will not. How you deal with the rest of the guys at the platoon is up to you as long as it doesn't conflict with combat performance. I see a few girls…but most of you guys look like you like taking it form behind. The UNSC doesn't endorse or allow relationships between men and women in the same branch of the armed forces, but I won't ask if you don't tell. Again, as long as it doesn't affect combat performance…"

I made a point to say that to clear up their minds. Living with badasses for extended periods of time could cause tensions to arise and tempers to go high. Sometimes sex was a very effective stress reliever, especially angry sex. But that is not the point.

"Now that you understand that," I resumed my little speech. "You need to understand that this is an unconventional unit, even by Helljumper standards." As soon as I said that everybody shuffled on their seats and leaned towards me. They were curious. "Let's put it like this, if we were fighting innies we would probably be doing black-book kind missions, the kind that would have us tried for war crimes." I gave them my best psycho smile. "Seeing as aliens don't count as humans we are free to do as we want." That got a few smiles in return. "But that's not our only job. We will be going first every time, we will cause mayhem or we will pass by unnoticed. We might be asked to gain intel on an enemy position or to blow it up. We could simply be spearheading a large-scale assault or instead make a few raids to get the covvies nervous. Simply put we are the Special Forces Unit of this company."  
>Someone raised his hand, one of the new guys.<p>

"Yes…?"

"Corporal Andrea Livingston, sir. Could you explain why there's a need for another SpecOps unit on board when we already have a Helljumper company?"

I shrugged. "I asked that question many times and it seems that Command wanted it that way. Besides, it's going to make everybody's lives easier. Everybody's but ours that is." The corporal seemed satisfied by that answer and sat back down.

"If anybody has any questions you should ask them now, because I won't answer them later," I said.

Several hands went up. I felt like a kindergarten teacher. "You."

"How will this platoon be divided?"

"Good question," I admitted. "PFC…"

"James Ramirez."

"Ramirez. There are going to be three permanent squads in the platoon. Two six-man units and one eight-man unit. We're going to have the first squad under my command. It will be doing most of the direct-action operations as well as some other tidbits. We're the jack-of-all-trades for the platoon. Next up we have our heavy weapons squad under command of Gunnery Sergeant Klaus, they're the eight-man unit and will provide support by fire for the whole company as well as engaging armor and fortified positions. Finally, we have our target acquisition squad, otherwise known as recon, under the command of Staff Sergeant Konstantinov, I believe that the name should give away the purpose, but just in case you're stupid I'll say it. This squad will provide intel on enemy positions as well as laser in various different kinds of artillery strikes. You all got that?"

They nodded.

"Let's run it again. First we have the VSF Squad, like regular ODSTs but with a higher operational tempo level. Raids, decapitation strikes, assassinations, VIP escort, intel retrieval, and more. Then we have the D/HW Squad. They'll provide machine gun cover for any and all units in this company as well as serving as the anti-armored unit. You guys will be either sitting on your asses with the finger on the trigger or running around to get a new position to do just that. You'll demolish anything and everything that you are told to, whether it be on the surface, under the sea, or in orbit. Finally we have TA/FS Squad, they are basically the infiltrators of the platoon, go in deep behind enemy lines and mark high-value targets of any kind. They will also cause mayhem if it is required of them."

I examined the men and women under my command. "I expect every squad to be able to fulfill any role at a moment's notice no matter what the designated roles are. Any other questions?"

"Who will be in what squad?"

"I'll get to that," I sighed. "Anything else?"

"Will we refer to the squads by the initials you gave us?"

"It would make things simpler, wouldn't it? Still, it is not necessary. As long as you get the meaning across it will be fine, but no squad nicknames or numbers. I hate numbers and only I'm allow to give squad nicknames."

"Will the whole platoon go in first and before everybody else?"

"That's the idea, but it won't necessarily always work like that."

"What kind of support will we count with?"

"Most of the time none," I replied. "But on occasion we'll get space-to-ground missiles and strikes as well as the occasional strafing run and air support, but seeing as we're first boots on the ground I doubt we'll be seeing much of the flyboys."

Nobody else raised their hands.

"Nobody else?"

Pavel grunted. "So tell me lieutenant, what happens if somebody fails to comply with a direct order?"

"Why Gunny, they would be returned to their original unit and I'd make sure that they weren't accepted into the ODSTs ever again."

"Thanks, just wondering."

"Oh, one question," someone raised their hand. The guy wasn't familiar, one of the new replacements. "I was told that we had an AI?"

"Ah, yes, Al-Hassani. He's currently with Captain Hayes, but he'll be helping us during our missions. He's a 'dumb' AI specializing in all kinds of combat. He's rather boring for an AI, but friendly and useful. Make friends with him."

"El-tee," Grigori said, standing up. "Might we be divided into squads so that we can chat with our future squad mates."

"Seeing as there are no more questions…" I said, picking up a datapad and turning it on, displaying a holographic list. "Here it is, Platoon Five. VSF Squad: Myself, PFC Miranda Novak, Corporal Marvin Mobuto, Corporal Andrea Livingston, PFC Ryan Hoff, and Lance Corporal Takacs Sandor. On D/HW Squad we have Gunny Pavel Klaus, Corporal Dana Bamber, Lance Corporal Sasha Dotsenko, and PFCs James Ramirez, Kyle Sutton, Sarah d'Arc, Erwin Lizzo, and Daniel Carver. Target Acquisition/Fire Support will consist of Staff Sergeant Grigori Konstantinov, Lance Corporal Niles Atkins, Lance Corporal Jared Reeves, PFC Abri O'Malley, and Privates Anurak Montri and Stan Zepeda."

_That's a shitload of names._

"Meet with your Squad Leaders for further instructions." I looked at the watch on the datapad. "Anyone on VSF Squad feel free to leave."  
>I was tired of this; besides, I could learn everybody's names later. Right now I felt like having a one on one with Hanna before we jumped away from the system and were placed in cryo. I left the room while the new platoon milled about like school kids that had just been told to partner up with classmates that they didn't know.<p>

My room was nearby, but I was a little bit late. Hanna might've gotten pissed about that and left. She was very big on being punctual.

"Oh, hey there," Hanna said as soon as I walked through the door. "You're late."

"Sorry, I was giving a briefing."

"Relax," she said, losing the cool demeanor and smiling warmly. "I know."

"How's the head?" I asked her. "Still bothering you?"

"I'm trying not to shake it, but what really bothers me is my stomach, I feel like I'm about to throw up all the time."

"So maybe you shouldn't be on top then."

"Ha-ha. Very funny."

I smiled and approached her, putting her hair behind her ear. "How was your first day back?"  
>"The usual, used my feminine charm to sway the younger Marine recruits into doing my job for me. And yours?"<p>

"Tedious, had to give the 'I am God' speech."

"Sexy."

"Aren't we past the point where you know that everything I do is sexy?"

"Tone it down a notch jackass," she playfully warned. "Or I might just absorb a bit of your ego."

"And that just won't do, will it?" I said as I pushed us both towards my bed.

"Won't Yas complain about you having me in here?"

"Only if he finds out," I replied.

Hanna smiled. "Oh Lieutenant!"

Like always, sex with Hanna was good and fulfilling. I am proud to admit that I had no guilt regarding that incident with Katie "The Waitress" Ayers. I was finally beginning to put that little incident past me. Even though I was kind of a dick and most certainly a cheater at least I wasn't wishing Hanna to be someone she wasn't anymore.

That's good, right?

* * *

><p><em>Thanks to SilasWhitfield for proofreading this chapter.<em>

_So, sorry for the delay and sorry for making this chapter an info dump of sorts. Lots of new names and lots of new concepts. Don't worry about memorizing the names, I keep a list on the side in order to remember everybody, maybe I'll start learning the names in a couple of weeks, but not just yet. On the new platoon we've got two new lieutenants. First we have Lieutenant Jen Weller, tough bitch that can have an attitude. Then we have Lieutenant Domingo dos Santos compact and friendly guy that can make you beg to be killed. Ought to be interesting._

_On Platoon 5 we've got a bunch of names, one of which should be familiar to some of you that know everything that there is to know about Halo. Not to imply that some of you don't have lives, but then again, I am the one that's writing an 800,000+ story without any sort of monetary reward._

_As for the delay, all I can say is that I was the sickest I have been in years during wednesday and thursday and that exams are starting. In fact, I should be studying for my History of Mexico exam right now, but since I love you guys so much I decided to take some time to post this chapter. I'll try to keep updates as frequent as possible, but lately it just hasn't been possible. Don't worry, I will see this story to the end, but I'm sorry to disappoint you guys._

_Frank and Hanna look like a happy couple again. yay! I don't know whether to have them live happily ever after or get them into a shitload of entanglements and have them be a dysfunctional couple._

_New squad, new platoon, new company, new system. Hell, the rank is still new. Seems like an awful lot of change for Frank. I look forward to hearing what you thought about this, please leave me your opinions in your reviews._

_And thanks for all your previous reviews as well. Stay strong._

_-casquis_


	153. Trial by Combat

Chapter CLIII: Trial by Combat

**February 29, 2548 (UNSC Calendar)/two months later**

**UNSC **_**Flawless**_**, in orbit above LV-426, Zeta Reticuli System**

* * *

><p><em>"So, you guys want to be the best?"<em>

* * *

><p>"Ladies and gentlemen, this is your chance to earn some respect from me and your fellow Helljumpers!" I said loudly. Nineteen men and women were sitting in front of me wearing only their undersuits. I was the only one outfitted with full battle armor in the room. It gave the impression off power and superiority. "Covvies have overwhelmed friendly ground forces and have set up several different communication jammers as well as spires. Standard invasion procedure. From what little intel we can gather local Army is holding out against the covvies in major populationcenters. Fortunately for us, major population centers are all smaller than one million."<p>

The holograms and specs on the screen showed images of the biggest city in the planet, Water Oakley.

"Drone information is scarce and satellite imagery is non-existent. As heartless as it may sound this is a perfect opportunity to test Five. Al, if you will?"

"Thank you Lieutenant," Al said, his avatar popping up on the holo table. "There's very little information, but we can tell that there are two primary enemy concentrations in the cities of Water Oakley and Hope. The enemy force surrounding Water Oakley has a pair of corvettes floating overhead, supplying them with vehicles, ammo, and support when needed. That is going to be our primary target."

Al made several different bad-quality pictures appear on the screen as he talked, showing us the two enemy ships and the main enemy encampment.

"And that's it," I said, smiling broadly. "We drop and cause some mayhem before everyone joins the party. Ideally we're going to disrupt ammunition and troop transports by ambushing some convoys and if we're really good we'll blow up one of the ships. TA/FS Squad will do their job by acquiring targets and intel on them, you are to keep your heads low and make as little noise as possible. There are six of you, it shouldn't be too hard. Caboose, you got that?"

"Crystal, " he replied.

"D/HW Squad will provide cover for my squad. Pavel, I want you to find a nice perch where you can provide machine gun support in case we need it."

"Lieutenant is that it?"

"Why PFC Novak, yes it is." I smiled again. "Nobody every said it would be easy."

"Otherwise we wouldn't be Helljumpers!" Pavel yelled loudly, eliciting several cheers and oorahs.

"Now armor up, we drop in ten."

* * *

><p>"VSF!" I yelled the moment my pod door opened. "Converge on my position!"<p>

I had purposely directed our six pods towards a rear-echelon patrol. I hadn't been lucky enough to squash one of the grunts with my pod, but Novak and Hoff had. It took exactly three bullets to bring down the remaining grunts.

"Countoff!"

"Two!" Novak said.

"Three," Mobuto said.

"Four!" Livingston said.

"Five!" Hoff said.

"Six!" Sandor said.

"Good," I said as soon as everybody was close enough for me to slap in the back of the head. "See that hill over there? That's our target right now, we need a high vantage point. Mobuto, Hoff, you two take point. Novak and Sandor on the sides, I want those DMRs ready to fire. Move up."

Halfway up the hill I opened a line to the two other squad leders. "Pavs, Caboose, status report."

"We're all good, enemy patrol heard us land, took care of it," Pavel said. "You're moving up to the hill, right? We'll set up there as soon as you move up."

"Everyone fine, we're hauling ass. So far we haven't come across any hostiles."

"Good, keep it that way."

The hill had a short cliff on the other side that would protect against any direct assault. It was part of a ridge of sorts that ran the southern side of Water Oakley and was thankfully littered with boulders.

On the other side of the hill, however, we had quite a sight. To our left there was the great glorified village of Water Oakley in all its glory. It was half-bombed to shit, with gunfire and explosions audible all the way over here. To the right there was a purple ship that happened to be hovering above a Covenant encampment. It was still fairly dark and we could see the blue and purple lights leading from the camp to the city outskirts. Convoys full of ammo and troops.

"We got lucky, we don't have to go through anything to get to the convoys," PFC Ryan Hoff said quietly. "What do you think El-tee?"

"See those dark shapes running the length of the road?"

"Barely," he replied.

"They're watch towers," Corporal Marvin Mobuto said.

"That they are," I agreed. "Most of them are within sight of one another and they're probably crewed by a pair of grunts and a jackal sniper, maybe an elite too."

"So, which one are we attacking?" Lance Corporal Takacs Sandor asked.

"Don't be so eager," Corporal Andrea Livingston warned. "You get shot in practice matches a lot."

"Quiet," I said. "That one right over there. It's the closest one that doesn't have another watchtower within visual range."

"Sounds good," Mobuto agreed.

"Girls, you two go around the left. Marv and Hoff take right. Sandor, you're with me down the center."

Without an actual spoken command we broke off the squad and started moving down hill. The sun was rising to our east, so we weren't exactly visible. We still took care to hide as much as possible while keeping a ranged weapon on the jackal sniper on the target watchtower at all times. It shouldn't have been necessary, the jackal was resting with its back against us and its beam rifle propped up next to it. There were three grunts, two of which were sleeping and one of which was trying to stay awake while manning the turret. The turret in question was aiming away from us.

"Perfect," Sandor muttered.

"Shh," I told him. "Girls?"

"We're green," Novak came in.

"Guys?"

"And we're there," Hoff said.

The former all-state quarterback sounded like a typical high school jock right down to the slightly conceited tone. The guy had been one of the best in Paris IV and had been courted by professional teams ranging from Earth to Reach. That is, until he was on the bad end of a particularly rough tackle that broke his knee and femur in several spots. He hadn't been able to afford the top-notch medical treatment and so his career prospects ended. Instead he joined the Corps, where he got his leg fixed for free as well as a steady job with decent pay that also had a high risk of brain injury.

"Listen, I want you to keep your sights on the jackal and on the gunner."

"Done," Novak and Hoff replied at the same time.

"Sandor," I replied. "There are two sleeping grunts down there, you see 'em?"

"Yup."

"You take them, the ones on the tower are mine."

"Got it."

"Wait for me to go up the grav lift."

He nodded and propped his rifle on a rock while unfastening the strap on his knife. I quietly stood up form my crouch and slowly walked towards the gravity lift. I stepped through it, wincing slightly at the whooshing noise as it lifted me up in the air. I landed and the platform rocked slightly, drawing the grunt's attention.

Before it could even squeal I bashed its head in with my rifle. I followed its body down to the ground and saw Sandor stab a grunt through the throat down on the ground before moving to the other one.**  
><strong>

I turned to face the sleeping jackal and gripped its throat tightly. The jackal woke up and struggled against me, but I kicked its rifle away from reach. I drew my knife and showed it to the jackal, taking pleasure in its shocked eyes, before driving it through its temples.

"Clear," I said releasing a breath.

"Clear," Sandor echoed. Had his psych profile said that he was most definitely not a sociopath I would've thought his voice held some glee in it.

"See any movment?"

"Negative," Hoff said.

"Girls?"

"No movement," PFC Livingston agreed.

"Ok, I Miri, I need you up here on the tower. Hoff, move back with Marv until you can see past that twist in the road. Livingston and Sandor are ground level, hide the bodies and set up."

Everyone took position and I pressed my back against the wall next to the turret. "Hoff, you spot anything coming through give us a heads up."

Two minutes later I got a call from Pavel. "Frank, we're all good and set up, we see you from here. If you need support we can provide it, might not be accurate though."

"Friendly fire?"

"Nah, we're pros."

"Excited about all the big guns?"

"You have no idea."

"Well, here's to hoping you don't have to provide any support."

Pavel chuckled and cut the channel.

"I see something coming up," Hoff warned. "You're not going to like it."

"Never do," I said. "What is it?"

"Infantry column, platoon sized. Five elites, major plus minors. They've got a pair of Spectre support vehicles."

"Gunners on the vehicles?"

"Grunts for crew on both of them."

"That's good," I said. "Miri, Hoff, target the gunners, everyone else target the elites. Sandor, and Livingston, I want you to throw frags at the column as soon as they are walking past us or they realize that something's up. Let's surprise the motherfuckers."

It wasn't long before I could hear the shuffling of feet and humming of anti-grav engines. The grunts made barking noises and the jackals screeched to one another while the elites simply walked quietly with their backs straight and their weapons on their hands. I took a quick peek and saw the colorful column walking towards us. They didn't look alert, the grunts were occasionally walking on all fours and the elites were swaying from side to side despite their attempts to keep a professional and intimidating appearance.

"You got them?" I asked.

"Target locked," Hoff muttered.

"I got him," Miranda told me, lying prone next to me.

"Sandor?"

"Frags primed and ready to throw. One on each hand."

"Good," I said, nodding. "On my mark."

I waited patiently as the aliens moved up. They didn't say anything, they didn't shout out a command and most certainly didn't fire at us.

"They're right next to us," Livingston said, worry on her tone.

"Easy Andrea," I told her, using her first name. "Easy…"

One of the elites barked out a phrase. I heard it a second before my in-helmet translator did its job. "You! In the tower!"

"Now," I ordered.

Two gunshots rang out and I saw the grunts manning the turrets on the Spectre's collapse to the side with holes through their heads. There was a brief moment of shock and surprise. Nothing could be heard other than the echoes of the two gunshots. The spell was broken when four separate fragmentation grenades detonated, sending shrapnel at high velocity in all directions. The first few unlucky bodies served as cushions, absorbing and stopping the metal shards as well as mitigating the damage.

Then everything went to hell. I left cover and grabbed the unusual trigger-handles of the plasma turret before aiming at the elite major, its shields already flickering from sustained gunfire. The hot plasma peeled away at the energy shields in seconds and then melted through its armor and skin in turn. One of the elites tried to get its underlings to form up and return fire, but a few seconds of automatic plasma fire to the face quickly put an end to that.

"Goddamn!" I exclaimed when the turret overheated right on my hands. I jumped back as a pair of needles shattered against the walls next to me and took another step back as Novak carefully switched targets, nailing grunts with headshots. **  
><strong>

"Need help?" Pavel asked me.

"Nah, we're good," I grunted, getting back up and firing with my rifle. "Only a few left."

The grunts had died like animals and the elites hadn't fared much better. The last survivor of the whole group was a jackal that propped his back against a rock and raised its shield. All the squad fired at him and its shield soon overheated and disappeared.

Hoff got the honor of putting a bullet through its brain.

"Now what?" Sandor asked, jumping back to cover. "Hide the bodies?"

"I suppose we'll also wash off the blood, right?" Livingston replied.

"No, drive the Spectres next to one another, block the road. We need to get a move on, someone must have heard that."

As soon as the two support vehicles were placed next to one another and booby-trapped with C-12 we left behind a field of corpses and a bloodied dirt road. It was truly an encouraging sight. We had barely been here an hour.

"Pavel, you've got AA?"

"Dana's got the Spartan Laser," he replied over the radio. "And our MGs should be more than enough to drive away any Banshee that gets curious."**  
><strong>

"Ok, I want your squad to come down here and hold this part of the road, you hear me?"

"Should be fun. You want us to leave survivors?"

"Not if you can avoid it." I looked around the position we had just been holding. "As long as they don't use heavy armor you should be able to hold this curve. If you're running low on ammo feel free to retreat uphill."

"We can always commandeer enemy weapons."

"Right," I replied. "You can do that."

"We're on our way."

"So, what's the plan El-tee?" Miranda asked me.

I shrugged. "Right now we're going to take out one or two of the nearest watchtowers until we get a target from Caboose and his squad."

"Why do you call him Caboose, El-tee?" Hoff asked.

"Yeah, that's a good question," Marv nodded in agreement.

"You can ask him," I replied.

"No thanks," Marv replied. "He'd probably stab me with something."

"Sounds like Caboose," I agreed. "Shh!"

"What is it?" Miranda asked.

"You hear that? Banshees."

A few seconds later a pair of the fliers flew directly overhead, going away from us and the outpost that we had wrecked.

"They see us?" Sandor asked, raising his rifle and pointing it at the sky.

"Probably not," Livingston told him. "We need to keep moving."

Five minutes and a quick improvised plan later we found ourselves hiding to the sides of the dirt road, a second watchtower forty meters away from our position. Unfortunately for us, this one had an elite commanding a larger squad as well as a currently empty Ghost.

"Elite in your sights?" I asked my marksmen.

"Yeah," they replied.

"Grunts?"

"We got them," Marv assured me.

"Watch the gunner," I said for the second time. "Fire."

The elite took two steps back as a burst from my rifle and one bullet from each DMR hit its shields, draining them completely. I fired a second burst while Hoff and Miri aimed at and killed other targets. The elite fell to the floor with three neat holes in its forehead. This time, however, the enemy had high ground and superior numbers and started firing on us. Their lack of a leader was what did it for them, as they lost cohesion and quickly started getting killed.

One grunt survived and attempted to make a run for the Ghost, somehow avoiding the hail of automatic gunfire. It hopped on the recon vehicle and started speeding away.

"Hoff?" I asked the man.

"My pleasure," he replied.

A single shot rang out and the grunt fell to the side, with the purple hovercraft sliding a few more feet before stopping. I saw the grunt twitch and try to crawl away on the ground.

"You missed a spot," Miranda taunted her counterpart.

Another shot rang out and blue grunt blood spray-painted the back of the Ghost.

"There, all good," Hoff told her. His tone was dangerously close to flirtatious, but I couldn't really see Miranda being interested.

_Shit, was that jealousy?_

_Nah, call it protectiveness._

_Yeah, protectiveness. Sure._

"Secure the area," I said. "Make it quick."

My men spread out and started combing through the surroundings for surviving or hiding grunts while I stood in the middle of the road and opened a line to Caboose. "Caboose, come in."

No answer.

"Caboose, do you copy?"

Still no answer.

"I can see you're goddamned life signs and the covvies wouldn't jam their own encampment. Answer me."  
>Again I got no reply.<p>

I rolled my eyes and opened up a small screen on my HUD that displayed what his helmet camera was seeing. Caboose and his squad were currently hiding in some tall grass as a bunch of elites walked by. Seemed like an interesting situation. The five elites were all majors and had only plasma pistols, maybe they were on a break or something similar.

"Damn," I said. "Just make it quick."

There was some struggling and some kicking, but the unsuspecting elites had no chance when six Helljumpers jumped on their backs and drove sharp knives through their unarmored necks.

"Nice," I complimented. "That looked almost rehearsed."

"Thanks Lieutenant," Caboose said, wiping his blade on his victim's skin.

"No problem. Got any high-value targets?"

"So far we've tagged a vehicle depot as well as a small bunker complex. They're both too armored for us to take them out. We're looking for high-ranking personnel but Zepeda can't find anything."

I looked up towards the Covenant corvette hovering a few kilometers away from us. It was only a couple hundred meters in the air, but its presence seemed looming and dangerous. I knew the _Flawless_ or any ship in the battle-group could handle it with relative ease. A single MAC shot and it would be gone, but for us it was a veritable juggernaut of death.

"If you find anything let me know."

"Willco," he replied. "Over and out."

While my team finished up with securing the area I took a moment to observe the rest of the sky. Odds were that by the time we left this planet I would never be able to see it again. It wasn't the same blue as Reach, but it was close enough that you wouldn't see the difference unless you looked for it. The most impacting thing in the sky was the large moon that orbited LV-426. It was large enough to grant itself a ring of debris around it. I bet that meteor impacts here were common enough to warrant their own insurance companies.

Hey, maybe a meteor would hit one of the Covenant corvettes. Wouldn't that be nice?

"Area's clear," Marv announced.

"Good now-"

"Lieutenant, do you read?" AL came in, his avatar appearing on a screen in my HUD.

"I copy Al, what's up?"

"Command's getting itchy, the Admiral's got the sky under control, but he wants to drop of troops as soon as possible."

"There's nothing wrong with that."

"I agree, but he wants as much intel as possible before sending in the Marines."

"Tell him we're working on it. If he gives us half a day we'll tell him the position of every covvie bastard on the area."

"I know Frank, but they are worried about letting more people die. They opened an uplink with the Army HQ on the ground, they're past their breaking point."

I sighed. "I understand. You think they can drop regulars on the city, bolster up the defenses and then have the rest of the company drop in behind enemy lines?"

"They've been toying with that plan, but the _Flawless_ can only fire one shot at a time. If one of the corvettes survives it could throw everything it has at the city."

"Al, correct me if I am mistaken, but there are at least two more ships on the battle-group."

"Seven, actually."

"And where are they?"

"Hunting down a pair of destroyers that went off to destroy mining outposts in the asteroid belt."

"Huh."

"Indeed."

I thought about it for a minute. "Listen, here's what we do. You have the admiral drop us one of those nuclear-tipped SPANKrs…"

"The Personal Guided Nuclear Munitions Launcher."

"Yeah, the PGNML. You drop us one of those in a supply pod, we close in on the closest corvette and blow it apart at the same time you blast the other one to kingdom come."

"Nuclear ordinance for a single platoon? You're aiming a little bit high Frank."

"Pass the message to the ship's AI, have it tell the admiral."

"I am very capable of transmitting the message myself."

I smirked at the AI's offense. "Very well then. What'd he say?"

There was a slight pause before he replied. "He's thinking about it."

"Prognosis?"

"According to his body temp and psych profile I think he's going to agree to it. In fact, I am ninety-six-point-seven percent sure about it."

"Are you allowed to use the bridge cameras?"

"The ship's AI and I have an understanding."

"Got it."

"Just got the word," Al said. "He agreed. I need you to paint the location."

I turned on the laser designator on my BR55 and aimed at a position fifty meters away from me. I looked at my squad and they nodded before I clicked the designator.

"Receiving coordinates…package away."

Like little kids we all looked up to the sky to try and spot the blur before it landed. We all saw the orange flashes as the supply pod broke atmosphere and then followed the black case as it fell to the surface. It hit the ground a lot harder than a regular HEV would've and lifted a ton of dust around it.

"Sandor, you like big things, go get it."

"Overcompensating much?" Livingston teased.

Marvin walked up to me. "That probably drew some attention El-tee."

"And I thought that came with the job description," Hoff scoffed.

"Things change," Marv told him. "Now what?"

"We need to close in on the enemy ship," I told them. "The SPANKr rockets don't have much fuel in them."

"How much?" Miranda asked.

"Half a click should do. Miranda I want you scouting ahead of us. Hoff and I will take the flanks. Everybody else stay in formation."

Miranda nodded and took off without another word while we waited on the devastated covvie watchtower.

"Looks clear so far. Enemy camp's about two miles away."

"They're going to see the contrails," Livingston warned.

"We're going to have to haul ass."

"Did Pavel ever tell you about that time we ran like seventy-six kilometers in less than a day only to find our safe haven half-glassed?"

Silence.

"Cool story, now stop bitching Marine!"

"Yes, sir!"

"Move up," I ordered. "Miranda, let us know if _anything _is out of the ordinary."

I didn't like the feeling of not having the possibility of any backup whatsoever. I could always count on at least having the opportunity for backup or actually being the backup. I was starting to feel pretty lonely down here. The terrain was rocky and jagged, we had to go down ditches and up small hills before getting to our position. When we got within range I ordered the squad to halt.

"Al, we're there."

"Got it, _Flawless _is targeting the other corvette."

"Will it be able to tell?"

"They don't know we're here yet. They haven't even bothered with turning their deep scanners on."

"Ok. Who wants the honors?"

Five hands went up. Hell, even Miranda seemed eager at the prospect of sending a couple hundred covvies on their great journey.

"Hoff," I told the former quarterback. "Your ball."

"Thanks El-tee," he said, smiling.

Sandor tossed the launcher to Ryan and he sat down. Unlike the regular M41 SSR this launcher in particular was a single tube with a button for a trigger on top. It could fit one rocket at a time and was collapsible, much like a telescope. Other than the trigger it had a small scope on the left side and a handle near the front. It was supposed to be mass produced and sent everywhere, but the SPANKr was more effective than it and almost as cheap. It was good for when you wanted to be quick on your feet.

"Ready," Hoff said. "Nuclear missile is armed."

"Just curious Lieutenant," Miranda started. "What's the yield?"

"It's a MFDD," I told her. "A modified Fury tac-nuke. Blast radius should be about 1.2 kilometers."

"So we better jump behind a rock as soon as he fires," Sandor said.

"Wise words," Marv agreed.

"Target is locked," Hoff said.

"Al, you got that?"

"Loud and clear."

"Fire, fire, fire."

"Firing," Hoff said and clicked the trigger.

"Nuke away," I echoed, just in case Al missed it.

"MAC strike incoming," he replied.

The MAC strike was impressive, the trail of light that the heavy round left behind it seemed to cut the sky in two. The explosion that rocked the corvette from side to side also made a sizeable explosion on the ground as the Covenant ship exploded from critical systems damage. Half a second later the nuke collided with the other corvette. Fortunately, I was already with my back against a boulder and I only heard the explosion.

"Hoff, care to see your handiwork?"

He left cover and hollered. "Direct hit, the corvette is toast. I mean, it's completely gone!"

He was right. The blast had all but disintegrated the enemy ship. Only a few parts of the purple hull were still there, and all of them were falling to the ground, splattering the alien encampment underneath.

We took advantage of the mayhem and sprinted away. No doubt that some Banshees and maybe even a Phantom had been dispatched to our position already. The carrier in orbit overhead also took immediate advantage of the chaos and confusion, opening its hangar bays and launching every last Pelican filled to the brim with troops. With them also came Albatross and pods filled with bigger vehicles and more equipment. This was going to be fun for the regulars.

"How many kills do you think that made?" Hoff asked in between breaths.

"One," Marv replied.

"Ship class," Sandor furthered.

I smiled. "Don't worry, you get used to it."

"How many ships have you brought down El-tee?" Livingston asked. She probably meant it as a joke.

"By myself?"

Al's voice came through the radio before anybody could comment on that. "Frank, regulars are already away, you should be seeing the dropships in a few seconds"

"Got it, our orders still the same?"

"Negative," he replied. "Simulations show that the Covenant will likely send its remaining troops towards the city in order to have better protection and to keep the section of Water Oakley they are holding."

"UNSC troops would've stayed inside the ships, wrecked as they are," Hoff said.

"They're irradiated," Novak told him.

"One of them isn't," he muttered meekly.

"You're to report on their movements, recon for the regulars."

"I've already got Caboose doing that," I told the AI.

"In that case I guess you should regroup with Gunnery Sergeant Klaus and wait for the rest of the company. You'll be attacking the enemy from the rear, cripple their command center if possible."

"Roger that, then we'll wait."

"Understood. Over and out."

I was starting to get some minimal radiation readings on my suit. The fury was one of the 'clean' nukes, but it still packed enough radiation to kill anybody who lingered for too long. We'd have to move out of the way while we waited. Thankfully the wind was pushing the dust cloud away from us and the city, no doubt it was one of the main reasons why the admiral decided to go through with the use of nuclear weapons so close to a friendly city.

"Pavel, you got all that?"

"Loud and clear, Frank," he replied. "We're still holding our position, but enemy troops will start coming through any minute now."

"Understood, fall back to the hilltop and await our return." I switched channels to Caboose. "Your team ok?"

"Shaken up but good," he replied. "Still marking enemy high-value targets, mostly communications equipment and some light AA."

"Keep doing that," I told him. "We'll probably link up with you in a day."

"Lieutenant," he said as he cut the line.

For the first time in ages I allowed myself to consider the possibility of this engagement being a short and quick one that would end in a swift victory for the UNSC.

* * *

><p>"Heads up," I warned.<p>

Almost a hundred Human Entry Vehicles slammed into the ground, spaced about ten meters from one another in a carefully coordinated pattern. The high-speed impacts lifted some dust and made small craters, but otherwise nothing was stirred. After the sound faded away the hatches started opening and ODSTs in full battle gear emerged from their respective pods.

The area was already secure, but they still fanned out in order to establish a perimeter. A few of the ODSTs came across the two-thirds of my platoon currently with me and bypassed us with a nod of acknowledgement. Once the atmosphere had become less tense for the new arrivals I stood up from my position and moved towards the slightly larger command pod. Already three other figures marked as officers on my HUD were moving up.

"Two's all accounted for," Yas said when he arrived.

"So's Three."

"And Four," dos Santos said.

"Five's good as well." I looked around. "Well, save for Caboose and his squad, but they're fine right now."

Captain Hayes nodded and yanked her assault rifle from its spot on her pod before tapping a button. A couple of slabs of metal extended from the sides to form two tables and she yanked an AI chip from the pod before putting it on her helmet. "Al, light the tables up."  
>The pod's tables lit up to show a tri-dimensional map of the surroundings. We were next to a small ravine and all the Helljumpers were already digging out their pods and rolling them towards the steep ravine walls. We would be holing up in there for maybe an hour before we came up with a definitive battle plan.<p>

"Al," Hayes said. "Show me current enemy positions."

"Done," he replied.

The holographic displays changed to show a larger area. The city could be seen near the edge of the map, half of it was tinted red with markers showing large concentrations of aliens or important enemy positions. The rest of it was in blue and displayed UNSC assets in green. We were four kilometers from the closest enemy and even more from the closest friendly. Excellent conditions for creating some mayhem.

"Castillo, patch Konstantinov through."

I nodded and opened up a channel. Caboose's picture appeared on one of the tables as he started talking. "Sir."

"Staff, I need you to be my eyes and ears for this op. What can you tell me?"

"Not much that isn't already on the board, Sir. The Covenant is pissed, but the little ones don't seem too happy that their only way out of the planet was destroyed. The elites are keeping them in check, but morale seems to be low."

"Armored?"

"Plenty, Wraiths and Spectres are all over the place. In fact, I think that they have a lot more than any force this size should. Maybe the cruiser left them some before going away to blow up asteroids."

"That would explain the large size for this ground force," Lieutenant Weller said.

I nodded in agreement. "Two corvettes wouldn't be able to carry this many aliens by themselves."

"Are they watching their rear?" Hayes asked Caboose.

"Yeah, patrols here and there, nothing too heavy, but enough to warrant some attention."

"How's combat in the frontlines?"

"Pretty heavy," he admitted. "Seems like both local Army and our own intel underestimated the numbers of the Covenant on the frontlines. There were a bunch of them there."

Hayes nodded and zoomed in on the enemy positions, marking the targets that she considered priority with red squares. She marked a pair of AA guns large enough to stop a frigate from coming in through the atmosphere but not big enough to shoot out into space. Hayes also circled a Covenant forward operating base. It was bulbous and reminded me of some sort of insect, but it didn't look to be a buried Scarab just waiting for the chance to kick our collective asses.

"So we've got three high-value targets that are within range," Yas observed.

"All of them are bound to be heavily guarded," Weller said.

I examined the position of the two AA guns. They were far back enough from the frontline that anything shy of a Rhino or specialized artillery wouldn't reach them. I was also pretty sure that there were a few pulse laser turrets hidden somewhere to shoot down missiles.

The enemy command post was a different story, it was further within the enemy lines and it was one hundred percent guaranteed to be swarming with covvies. The only way to destroy that one without any casualties was to sneak in some good-old fashioned high-explosives and even then it was a high-risk op.

Guess who was going to be running that one…

"The Covenant has Banshees running sorties along this routes in addition to other combat missions, they knew were up there and are afraid of an assault from the rear or sides." Al shifted the map to show the Banshees flying. "Intel has them flying in groups of three to five. Phantoms and Spirit dropships are being used as close air support, but they're not being deployed in large quantities," he went on. "Most likely afraid that they'll be shot down. So far we haven't managed to break into their communications, let alone de-encrypt them, but hopefully we won't need to."

"Well, that's an intelligence goldmine compared to the stuff we dropped here with," I muttered.

"You're welcome," Al said. "They want us moving as soon as possible."

Hayes considered that for a moment. "Understood, we'll be going in…Yas?"

"Company can move out in five minutes if needed."

"Make that fifteen minutes," Hayes stated. "Who's commanding the Marines?"

"Overall operational command goes to Lieutenant Commander Becker, Captain Galván is in charge of the units in the frontline."

"He likes getting his boots dirty," Hayes said approvingly. "Ok, tell your platoons to get ready and load up on ammo, we're going to be marching here and then we'll break off to attack the objectives." The Captain looked around before folding the tables up her pod. "Al, I want you to come up with three hundred different battle plans and run them through simulations. After you're done with that I want you to give me the top five."

"I can only run two fifty good ones with this suit's processing power," Al replied. "As ashamed as I am to admit it."

"That'll do," Hayes shrugged off. "Get started on that. Castillo, what are you waiting for?"

"Nothing sir, No excuse," I replied, turning around and leaving with the rest of the platoon lieutenants.

The sun was starting to set on LV-426, we were getting ready to join an urban battle that was raging a few miles from our position. Tonight was going to be a busy night.

* * *

><p><em>Thanks to SilasWhitfield for proofreading this chapter.<em>

_So, I must start another one of my notes with an apology for the delay in between updates. I'm sorry for the delay in between updates. I've only got three more exams to go in two days and that'll be it. I might've failed math, but I honestly don't care since my teacher's a bitch._

_I think you guys know my own story better than I do. When I named PFC Kyle Sutton I didn't even consider Scarecrow into the equation, but seeing as you guys got so excited about it I can change that and write him to be his brother or some family member. What do you guys think? As for the Halo universe name, it is Marvin Mobuto, a Marine from Halo: The Flood. Look him up in halopedia and you should know why I decided to add him into the story._

_This is the first time we've seen Frank's new team in action and I promos you that it won't be the last. There'll be plenty of badassery on all sides and I intend to step up my game. Hope you enjoyed this chapter. Please tell me you figured out what I'm referencing in this chapter. Please._

__**RobbieLexington**: happy belated birthday, hope you had a good one.__

__**Everyone else**: thanks for reading and for all your reviews, be sure to tell me what you thought about this chapter.  
><em>_

__Stay strong.__

__-casquis__


	154. Covvie Bowl

Chapter CLIV: Covvie Bowl

**February 29, 2548 (UNSC Calendar)/**

**Water Oakley outskirts, LV-426, Zeta Reticuli System**

* * *

><p><em>"We are more than just special forces. We are Very Special Forces."<em>

* * *

><p>Already we could see the lights marking the beginning of the Covenant perimeter. Most of them came from watchtowers and high-powered guns, but I knew there would be other units watching out from the shadows. We were lucky that the heavy fighting wasn't being done here, I didn't think that the covvies were expecting us, but we still had to be careful.<p>

A Phantom flew overhead, its searchlights off but its front turret moving about, searching for targets. _Very careful._

"You know El-tee," Hoff asked, crouching next to me. "I never did ask why we are the VSF Squad."

"You didn't," I agreed.

"What does it stand for?"

"Very Special Forces," I replied. "Ready…"

"Are you sure this is a good idea El-tee?" Miranda asked me. I knew where she was, but I couldn't see her from this position.

"It is," I assured her.

"Not a very safe one," Marv said.

The Phantom disappeared over the top of some buildings and one of the searchlights on the watchtowers passed over our hiding spot before going over the high grass where Pavel's heavy weapons unit was hiding. I craned my neck to see behind me, trying to make a mental map of where the rest of the company was. They were close enough to help if anything went wrong, but right now they seemed to be awfully far away.

"Silencers on," I ordered quietly, screwing a suppressor onto my battle rifle. My pistol was already silenced and my knives didn't really make a lot of noise. "Miranda and Hoff?"

Hoff shuffled next to me and aimed at a jackal sharpshooter with his DMR before shooting me a quick nod. Miranda winked acknowledgement lights on my HUD.

"Marv, you ready?" I asked the corporal.

"Yeah," he replied.

I quickly considered the man. He was unusual in many aspects, his combat scores were almost as high as mine, higher than my own had been before augmentation. That made him a damn good trooper by my standards. His files marked him as sole survivor of his previous unit, pulled through by sheer talent alone. He didn't have the markings of PTSD even if he was quieter than most. I was glad to have him on my squad, but the shrink that evaluated him was afraid that he had mild sociopathic tendencies.

I glanced at him, armor barely showing through the thick grasses. That guy could be a paranoid schizophrenic for all I cared as long as he did his job right. Hey, I was literally the last person in the universe that could judge him based on his mental wellbeing.

"Your unit's been making quite a few supply requests," Al said, speaking to Captain Hayes. "The admiral is scoffing a lot."

"Like an EMP is going to make a dent in his armory," Hayes replied. "They only work against electronic missiles and the covvies don't use those."

"Giving a weaponized EMP to a squad is almost unprecedented. They are usually used in large-scale city assaults, not raids."

"Always a first time."

"It'll knock out every electronic device within a seven miles radius. Including ours."

Hayes sighed loudly. "Just fire the goddamned thing."

This time it was the AI who sighed. "Bombs away. EMP blast in 5…4…3…2…1…Detonation."

My entire HUD went down before a clock flickered back on. Everything other than that countdown was off. It took a couple of seconds for everything to flicker back on simultaneously. I couldn't help but notice that my ammunition count and targeting reticle weren't there. It would take a little bit longer for my weapons' electronics to come back online. I looked towards the enemy lines and saw every last light flicker and disappear completely. I heard a couple of loud crashes in the distance, hopefully dropships that were running sorties or dropping supplies.

"Go," I said, tapping Marv in the shoulder.

He and I jumped from the small ditch, still crouching and trying not to disturb the tall grass just yet. A few meters to our right Sandor and Livingston were moving in a similar tandem formation to our right.

"Fire," I ordered halfway through the watchtower.

I could barely hear the quiet clapping noises as two bullets penetrated the skulls of each jackal sharpshooter. I saw one of the birds fall over forward and land in between a pair of panicking grunts.

Marv took them both out with quick bursts from his M7S. The grunts rolled on their feet before collapsing.

"Keep moving," I said. "Livingston, Sandor, you ready to clear your building?"

"Yeah."

Marv slammed into a wall next to a metal door on our own separate building and nodded at me. I nodded back and he tapped a couple of commands on the keypad next to the door before opening it slowly.

He went in first seeing as he had the close-quarters weapon. I mostly stayed behind him as he fired short bursts into the grunts and jackals. The only noise was that of bodies hitting the ground. Four jackals and two grunts were dead before we had to break off and clear different rooms. I couldn't help but notice that my own rifle was a lot louder than his SMG. That and the BR55 wasn't caseless, which meant that the bullet casings clinked as they hit the floor. I kept on going, clearing my designated section of the house as Marv did the same with his.

I didn't call out the clear sign when I was done, I didn't want any other covvies hearing me. Instead I headed back towards our meeting point and waited for Marv to come up.

"Clear," he said. "Seven small guys, two elites."

"Eight small ones," I told him. "Move up to the window, give the all clear signal to Hoff and Miranda."

He disappeared and a minute later PFC Hoff walked inside the room with his DMR half-raised, "Man, I hate to think how we got along before radio," he said, examining a grunt corpse.

"Two world wars were fought without in-unit radio," I told him. "And plenty more conflicts too."

"Sucks for those guys," he shrugged. "Is the other fireteam good to go?"

"Yeah," Marv answered for me, climbing down the stairs. "Just got the all-clear sign from Livingston."

"Good, Pavel's squad should be moving in on our position in two minutes, the rest of the company will be following after that. We need to clear a path."

"Very Special Forces indeed," Hoff joked.

"Come on," I gestured to the door. "Let's go."

The next couple of buildings down our path were empty. They were both small businesses that had been occupied by the aliens, but recently vacated. We quickly cleared them before moving forward. Now this was the part where it got a little bit tricky. There was a wide six-lane beltway that went around the city in order to provide fast travel to its citizens. Right now that beltway threatened to expose us to anyone who cared to look.

"Hoff, you stay back here," I told him. "Cover for us."

"Got your back El-tee."

I nodded to Marv and we both hopped out of the building's window before stopping just shy of the beltway itself. There were a few abandoned cars in there, enough for us to take cover if we were spotted, but not enough to hide us completely from sharpshooters. The traffic dividers in the middle were mostly intact, primarily because polycrete was a bitch to destroy, especially with plasma weaponry. If we made it halfway through without drawing attention we would be well hidden from anyone on the other side.

"Aaand…go," I said quietly, sprinting towards the nearest car. It was riddled with plasma scorches and there was a decomposing corpse in the driver's seat. "Wait," I muttered. There was something slightly off.

"What?" Marv asked, glancing around and tightening the grip on his weapon.

"Shh," I told him. I turned around to face the position where I knew Hoff was and asked him what he saw through hand signals. I got the reply through a laser dot. Two bleeps, that meant nothing visible.

"You sure you heard something Lieutenant?" Marvin asked me.

"Yes," Schitzo said.

"Yes," I lied. "Wait."

My still-undiagnosed mental disorder paid off this time. Dull thuds were suddenly heard in the distance. They came at regular intervals until it became clear that they were footsteps. Two different sets of footsteps.

"Hunters," Marv said in realization.

I nodded. "Let's hope Livingston's fireteam doesn't try anything."

We waited patiently as the two hunters calmly passed right by us. Their footsteps shook the cars and us with them. If one of them decided to look down it would see us hiding and nothing would prevent it from shattering our bones with a quick stomp.

One of the hunters stopped.

The other one took two more steps before turning and asking something in a deep, rumbling noise. It sounded like a weapon charging up or something. The reverberations from their language shook my bones, I had to loosen up my jaw so that I wouldn't shatter my teeth. My hands tightened their grip on my rifle and I prepared myself to throw a grenade if I needed to. I just hoped Hoff had his crosshairs on the hunter's unprotected neck.

Marv shuffled slightly next to me and I patted him in the forearm, urging him to relax.

The other hunter replied before the pair resumed their patrol.

"Phew," Marvin muttered after the hunters were far away enough. "That was tense."

"It was," I agreed. "Let's move up."

We made it across the first three lanes and jumped over the barriers before sliding into cover behind another car. "You saw him?" I asked Marvin.

"Yeah. Jackal sharpshooter, third floor and second window from the right."

"Good eyesight," I complimented. "Weapon?"

He hesitated. "Carbine."

"Needle rifle," I corrected. "But close enough."

Marv shrugged slightly.

"Your mistake will cost you though. You saw that overturned trailer thirty meters to our right?"

"Pretty hard to miss."

"You're going to make a run for it."

Marv groaned and moved to the edge of the car, getting in position to start running. "Would I have been bait if I had gotten the weapon right?"

"Of course," I chuckled. "Go."

Marv jumped forward into a sprint, his gun swinging from side to side in front of him. I popped up from cover and quickly targeted the jackal shooter. It had seen Marv and was turning to aim at him. A pair of bullets to the chest quickly got it down and out. I gave Marvin a thumbs up and he ran from the truck to the building's entrance. After he gave me a thumbs up I turned towards Hoff's position and turned on my flashlight once at minimum intensity.

"Nice shooting," Marv told me as soon as I caught up to him. "Didn't even get a shot off."

"You don't have to tell me how good I am," I told him. "I'll never tell you how good you are."

"Was that a compliment?"

"Breaching."

Marvin kicked down the door and fired two bursts at recently woken up grunts. I fired at an elite that had been looking away from the door, switching to burst fire after two single shots. Marvin complemented my fire with his own SMG and we quickly brought down the elite. Marv moved to the right while I cleared the left side of the building. This one was filled with grunts. The suppressed weapons were quiet, but not completely silent. Some of the grunts woke up from my rifle's fire, but they were too confused to provide any actual resistance. When I was done and reached the stairs I switched to my sidearm. Now that one was nearly silent.

"Clear?" I asked Marv when we met up halfway through the second floor.

He nodded in reply and gestured to the set of stairs next to us. I nodded back and we opened the door before going in. The third and last floor was empty save for the still-breathing jackal.

I nodded at it with my head at Marv and he shook his head. I shrugged and drew the knife strapped to my boot before grabbing the jackal by the neck and driving the multi-colored blade through its neck and into its brain.

"Hoff should be here any minute," I said.

Exactly forty-one seconds passed before Hoff's voice was heard, quietly asking us not to shoot him, especially not in the face.

"We waiting for Heavy Weapons Squad?" Hoff asked me.

"No," I replied. "We move up. The enemy HQ should be one click away."

"Ten minutes until their electronics are back online," Hoff noted. "Think we can make it in and out?"

"In? Yeah," I said. "Out? Not so much."

"They'll notice that all their units in a straight line to their HQ have been wiped out as soon as they have communications back online," Marvin explained.

"Makes sense," Hoff admitted. "Let's get moving then."

Three blocks later we met up with Livingston's fireteam. They had been equally quiet and as effective as us. Corporal Livingston nodded at me before absorbing her squad into mine.

"See that stadium over there?" I asked. It was a rhetorical question. "Base is inside, the thing should be fortified beyond our capacity to infiltrate." I looked at the relatively large sports venue, examining its design. "There is one weak point, however. You're probably not going to like it."

My squad looked at me, their visors filled with dread at my words. More accurately, the faces behind those visors were likely filled with dread.**  
><strong>

"Relax, it's just a storm drain."

Their shoulders visibly relaxed at my explanation.**  
><strong>

"There should be an entrance right over there," I said. "It's the closest one to us, but as you can see, we're completely exposed to enemy fire."

"So what do we do?" Sandor asked, probably wanting some action already.

"We clear the surrounding buildings before going in?" Corporal Livingston suggested.

I smiled just as the countdown on my helmet reached zero. My visor flickered a little bit before my HUD came back online, showing everything a lot more clearly. My squad had clearly forgotten all about the EMP, because their reactions to having electronics again were amusing. The moment my HUD was back up I started getting radio communications from everybody. Seems like the regulars on the other side of town were also relieved to have radio and electronics again.

"We could clear the buildings," I admitted as I pointed my rifle at one of them. "Or we could just do…something else." I turned on the laser designator on my rifle and opened an uplink to Command. "Command this is Five Leader, target is designated, requesting immediate fire support."

"We read you FL, hold tight."

I heard the whistling of the artillery shells seconds before they lit up the entire block. All the buildings surrounding our point of entry were hit by several dozen high-explosive shells, collapsing onto themselves and taking down with them any covvies inside.

"You know El-tee, you could've told us the whole plan from the beginning," Hoff pointed out.

"For once I agree with him," Sandor said.

"Come on," I told them. "It made for a nice effect."

There were a few nods of agreement before everybody started moving towards our designated point of entry. Miranda and Marv lifted the drain cover and took a knee, aiming their weapons at the area around us. Livingston went in, followed by Sandor and then Hoff.

"Go," I told the other two.

They jumped down and I quickly followed them, making sure to cover the entrance above me.

"Helmet lights on," I ordered. "Sandor and Marvin take point. Livingston, I want you to cover our rear. Remember, drones like hiding out in spots like this one."

My team nodded in acknowledgement before they started moving up.

"Frank, you in yet?" Pavel asked me.

"We're in," I replied, happy to be able to communicate with my friend again. "How's your squad?"

"We're good, had to clear a building, but we've got a lovely vantage point on the stadium's parking lot. Just give the order and we'll hit them hard and fast."

"Any news from Caboose?"

"Still hiding out and marking targets. Those guys move fast."

"That's their job," I said. "What about the rest of the company?"

"They're preparing to strike the two AA guns. Lieutenant Weller's platoon is going to provide support for us the moment we blow up the Covenant base."

I smiled to myself. "It's so much easier to pull of shit like this when we have a hundred other Helljumpers helping, don't you agree?"

Pavel laughed on his end of the line. "Back in the day they would've had us drop right on top of the base before leaving a charge behind and then escaping the way you're going in."

"And then Marina or Zekalwe would swoop in to save the day."

"Yeah," he said. "Dangerous as it was it was also fun."

"Like parachuting with a tank."

"I still don't know how the hell you came up with that one."

I turned a corner with my team and ducked in order to avoid hitting myself on the ceiling of the storm drain. "Stroke of genius. Almost got myself killed trying to get that freaking jetpack to work properly."

"Right," he said, chuckling. "Damn, Nezarian and his rangers were always good to have."

"They were. They were."

"Shit, looks like the covvies have their power back up. I'm seeing Banshees and Spirits taking off. Wraiths haven't powered up yet, it seems."

"Activity?"

"Plenty. Can't speak for the inside, though."

The whole squad stopped under a ladder, they turned around to look at me and I nodded. One by one we climbed up the ladder before exciting. This drain in particular led to the bottom floor of the parking lot. It was within the premises, but not as close to our target as I would've liked it to be. I honestly have no idea why the covvies placed their base inside a stadium.

"Dug in, high walls, walled complex," Schitzo suggested. "Yeah, I wonder why."

_Dick._

"We need to hit fast and hit hard," I told my squad. "Scans of the stadium show that the power supply for their command center is in the north end of the field, we should be able to make our way there without going through the bulk of their forces."

"Sounds easy enough," Hoff said.

"Plans like this usually do," Miranda told him. "Obviously you're new."

"Burn," Sandor commented calmly, checking the suppressor on his assault rifle. "Shall we get moving?"

"Go," I ordered.

_Here we go…_

We climbed to the second level of the parking lot and met up a squad of grunts led by an elite gearing up for battle. They went down incredibly fast without any armor on, but even suppressed, the gunshots were loud in the confined space of the parking lot. We moved on to the third floor and once again took down another squad. This one was a bunch of grunts and a pair of jackals with their shields hanging by their sides.

"That was loud," Livingston noted.

"War's usually like that," Marv deadpanned.

"Keep moving," I grunted. I wondered if I had been that smartass kid back in the day.

I almost groaned when I realized that I had been even worse.

"We've got a corridor," Miranda said, opening a door. "Empty to the right…and-" she jumped back as plasma hit the door, heating up the steel. "Not so much to our left."

"Did you see them?" Hoff asked.

"No, but there's a large trash container to the other side. Should stop anything short of a fuel rod."

"Ok, cover me," Hoff said.

Miranda opened the door and fired four times before returning to cover, leaving the door open. It was heavy and metallic and it could stop plasma for a while. Hoff made a run for the other side, sliding down to cover behind a green container. Once he was behind cover Sandor also dove for cover on the other side, firing as he went. The plasma fire intensified and my men were pinned down behind their container. Miranda tried to help, but they had her pinned too.

"Geez," I said, rolling my eyes and grabbing a flashbang from my webbing. I tossed it without leaving cover and yanked Miranda back behind me as it detonated. As I popped from cover I saw two elites clawing at their eyes and ears or whatever they had that passed for ears. I fired three bursts at each one before taking them out with a headshot each. "Clear."

"I guess I should've thought about that earlier," Livingston said.

"All of you should've," I told them, suddenly feeling like a kindergarten teacher scolding his students. I stood there awkwardly before urging them to move on with a shake of my head.

The outer side of the corridor was open to the elements, with a chest high railing preventing anybody from falling down. It overlooked the surrounding parking lot as well as the neighboring buildings. I could see the pale lights that belonged to the Covenant vehicles that were powering up. They were still trying to coordinate and send everybody to the frontline, that's the only reason why we weren't currently being bombed with Wraith mortars.

"Frank, we see you," Pavel said. "And so can everyone that cares to look up."

"I know," I growled in reply. "Are your guns accurate at this distance?"

"It's three hundred yards. It won't be exactly surgeon-like precision, but Lizzo can put all his mag within a square yard at this distance."

I nodded as I tried to match the name to a face. PFC Erwin Lizzo was born on Mars and was of Italian descent. He was an incredible good shot with his machine gun, but didn't really excel in anything else. "Times like this make me want Snark on the unit."

"Can't always get what you want," Pavel stated.

"Api, Beckel, and Serge were all moved up to Weller's platoon. I could've done with their help."

"Captain makes the roster," Pavel said. "There's a squad of elites on your ass."

I considered that for a minute, craning my head to try and spot the elites, but the curve of the corridor blocked them from sight. "Light them up."

"Finally some action," Pavel rumbled. "You heard the lieutenant boys!"

The sound of dozens of bullets hitting flesh behind me was almost musical. Not one of the members of my squad turned to look, instead moving forward at a fast pace with their guns ready. I could complain about them all I wanted, but they were good in a fight.

"Oh shit!" Marvin shouted from the front.

That was slightly troubling, it took quite a bit to shock him.

Then I saw the pair of hunters that had caused him to curse.

"You can see a squad on our rear but not a pair of hunters right in front of us!" I cursed at Pavel.

"They weren't there a moment ago!" he replied. "We're on it."

I rolled to the side as the lead hunter fired its fuel rod cannon. Two of my squad mates also dodged the green ray deftly. Marvin was closest to them and fired as he backpedaled, moving for a door. He had to jump away from it as the second hunter fired at him. I got back up and helped Hoff behind a purple Covenant container before joining him there myself. I heard Pavel's squad pound the two hunters from their building and left cover to fire at their now-exposed flanks. The rest of my squad was now firing at the hunters as well.

"Oh shit, oh shit," Livingston was saying even as she fired full-auto at the two hulking aliens.

The hunters didn't go down without a fight, standing next to one another to block the maximum amount of bullets coming from both directions. They kept firing at us, but the powering up of their cannons were clear telltale signs to what they intended to do. Sure it wasn't fun ducking and rolling on the hard polycrete floor, but we had two different fire angles. With enough time and the liberal application of grenades the two hunters went down.

"Yeah!" Sandor hollered, kicking one of the hunters in its orange torso, his boot digging into the worms and making a squicky noise.

"Quiet," I told him.

"El-tee, we just lit up the whole place," Miranda observed. "I think we can throw quiet down the drain."

"Lady's got a point," Hoff said.

"Fine," I groaned. "Keep moving." _I seem to say that a lot…_

By this point everybody knew where we were. Grunts and elites on the ground were firing wildly at us, trying to hit us with plasma pistols and rifles.

"How much further?!" Sandor asked loudly, gravel and shattered rocks hitting him all over.

"Fifty meters and we go right!" I yelled back in reply. "Move faster!"

Sandor reached the door and tackled it open. I slammed into a jackal that was attempting to open it from the other side. Marv and Livingston fired into the room, killing the other jackals inside and calling it clear. They helped Sandor up and secured the area.

"Clear and clear," Livingston said.

"Frank, two enemy platoons are converging on your position. We can delay them, but not stop all of them," Pavel warned.

"Do your best," I replied. "We're close."

"That's an ultra to our right!"

I turned to fire at the elite, its white armor and extra strong shields held my automatic fire and the elite just kept on running towards us, it activated an energy sword. It was the kind that got all pissed for no reason. With its left hand it sprayed us with plasma, nicking Livingston and almost hitting Sandor. They both rolled away from the plasma fire as Marv returned fire with his SMG. The elite's shields flickered but held.

"Frag out!" Miranda called.

The device that she threw landed right at the elite's feet, but it kicked the grenade back in our direction. It detonated about one third of the way through, sending the elite backwards and finishing off what was left of its shields. Still, the explosion was too close for anybody's comfort, and it stunned the squad.

It bought enough time for the ultra to lunge towards the nearest target from a very respectable jump distance. Even for an elite.**  
><strong>

I barely avoided the twin points of the energy blade as it went for my chest. The rest of the elite hit me pretty damn hard and slammed me to the wall. I dropped my rifle in the tangle and instead grabbed the elite's sword hand with my own, stopping it from slashing me from groin to neck. The elite roared, spitting into my visor and trying to hit my head with its other hand. I pushed its sword hand back slightly and all of a sudden the elite fell down.**  
><strong>

I pushed the heavy corpse away from me to reveal Livingston holding her smoking MA5.

"Whoo!" I exclaimed. "That was close." I looked at Andrea and saw that her elbow armor was steaming. "Thanks for that, you good?"

"Yeah," she said. "Didn't go through the armor."

I nodded. "Target's just down that set of stairs."

"Looks heavily guarded!" Sandor shouted from the particular set of stairs I had just mentioned. His voice was accompanies by plasma shots.

"That sounds like a plasma turret," Marv pointed out.

"Hoff, you were all state, right?"

Hoff looked at me and tilted his head. "Lieutenant, there's a big difference between a football and an explosive charge that's just shaped like a football."

"So you're telling me you couldn't throw that," I pointed at Sandor's backpack, "thirty yards?"

"If you give me a window I can sure as hell try."

"One floor up," I said. "We go into the seats and give Hoff the cover he needs."

Sandor took his rucksack off and removed the explosive from inside. It did look vaguely like a football, slightly bigger and rounder. Like a rugby ball, perhaps. Maybe we should've had Wiremu with us.

"This door leads to the crowd seats!" Miranda announced even as she kicked it down.

The six of us poured out of the door and fired at a trio of jackals that were guarding the area. I could see several dozen more all patrolling the place. Our suppressed weapons had bought us some time, but already the closest jackals were beginning to turn around to look at us. Those weren't the most important thing, however. There was a huge firebase right in the middle of the field.

"That's at least seventy yards!" Hoff complained.

"Don't forget that you can't miss the windows," Livingston said, firing at two of the closest jackals.

"You can do it buddy," Marv assured him, aiming at the seats behind us and waiting for anything to show up.

"No pressure," Miranda added, taking out two of the furthest jackals with her DMR.

Hoff groaned. "Just shut up everybody."

I smiled. "Hut, hut!"

Hoff dropped his DMR and took a small jump backwards, grabbing the bomb with both of his hands. He was a lefty, I hadn't noticed that before. He threw his arm backwards before just launching it forwards. I gotta say, it was pretty damn impressive. I hadn't considered how good you had to be in order to be scouted by the best teams in both Earth and Reach.

The bomb flew over the seats, the touchdown, the first twenty yards, and then some more before disappearing down a window-like hole on the walls.

"Huh," Sandor muttered. "Didn't think you had it in you."

Every last elite on the ground turned to look at us.

"Time to go," I said. "Chop, chop."

Now everyone knew where we were, but our escape plan was still intact. Now all we had to do was fight our way through several dozen angry aliens, bust a hole in the floor, run through a room possibly filled with more angry aliens, climb out of a window, sneak past a hundred angry aliens, and we're good.

"Pavs, is Weller's platoon moving up?"

"I gave them the go the moment you went through that door," he replied. "You good?"

"Barely."

We were running down up the stairs now. They thought we would be going down first, but no way we were that stupid. This level wasn't completely empty though, we had to take down a pair of minors and several grunts before going into another stairwell and hauling ass down. This time it was empty. Sandor and Livingston were on point, clearing the stairs before we came upon a single door.

"Open it," I said, reaching for a charge on my butt-pouch.

"A broom closet," Livingston said. "Well, the mops will be useful."

"Move," I ordered, kneeling and pushing the cleaning stuff away. I placed the plastic explosive on the corner and moved back before detonating it. "Oh, right," I said, hitting another detonator. The second explosion shook the entire stadium.

"Well. There's that," Marv said.

"Let's go," I ordered, pointing at the newly-made hole in the floor. "A short run and then we're free."

It was short and rather uneventful, by luck or some other means we didn't come across a single alien. I kept smiling to myself at our fortune, trying to forget that it was bound to get worse.

"There!" Sandor shouted, pointing at a small window. It was high enough that we had to give each other boosts before climbing out.

We were now officially in the open.

"I see you Frank," Pavel came in. "And if you step outside so will the hundred angry aliens."

"Yeah, yeah," I dismissed him. "Livingston, you can pilot a Wraith, right?"

"I've only ever done simulations," she stuttered. "I-I…I might be able to do it."

"Good, cause we need at least two Wraiths."

"What?"

"Follow me," I ordered her. "TheRest of you, cover me."

"Frank…" Pavel warned.

"Too late," I replied. "Besides, it's been a while since I pulled off shit like this."

Livingston and I ran towards the two closest Wraith tanks. Livingston hopped on top of the first one and opened the hatch as a few needles shattered on the heavy armor, missing her by inches. She wasn't even fazed, instead just jumping down the hatch. I didn't see her Wraith powering up, I was too focused on not getting shot as I got to mine.

I jumped up on the wing-like engine on the tank and climbed up before coming face to face with a surprised elite. I quickly hit it in the jaws, twisting its head sideways and almost breaking my knuckles. I raised my gun awkwardly and jammed the barrel into the elite's mouth before clicking the trigger. Three bullets burst out the back of its skull and the elite collapsed, prompting me to chuckle slightly at the bloody spectacle before climbing inside the tank.

"Well, well, well," I muttered to myself. "Simulators must've been on an older model…"

It was all familiar enough though, and the controls were similar to those of a Ghost. There was a screen in front of me, it showed everything in front of me. Right now that everything seemed like a bunch of targets.

"Oh this is going to be fun," I smiled.

I lobbed two giant balls of plasma at another Wraith close by. The first one fell short, but the second connected and wrecked the turret. I strafed sideways to avoid some small arms fire and used the coaxial guns to shoot down a squad of frightened grunts and kill their elite leader. The next mortar was directed at a fortified position consisting of a watchtower and several turret emplacements. I didn't see it, but I knew that the aliens' blood was boiling inside their veins before bursting.

I could see the appeal in piloting a tank. You feel like you're immortal.

"Frank, you've got grunts with fuel rods on your left."

One mortar shot later they were all vaporized.

"Fun, fun, fun," I said contentedly.

The next thing to go up in flames was a Shadow troop transport.

"El-tee, explosions are all good and fun," Miranda said, "but we need you to cover us as well."

"Right," I said, driving backwards and forming a wall for my squad.

They waited for Livingston to position herself on the other side and then walked in between the two heavy tanks. I was getting hit with small-arms fire from every direction, but they wouldn't melt through the armor or hurt me. It would take something heavier to bring this bad boy down.

I would know.

"Almost through El-tee," Miranda said. "We can hop the fence and be off by ourselves."

"Understood," I replied. "Why the hell am I taking orders from you?"

"Pretty girl," she reminded me.

I laughed at that as the four members of my squad jumped over the fence surrounding the stadium. I turned my Wraith around to fire at the multitude of aliens that had formed around us. They were barely attempting to take cover. Maybe they thought that if I was with my back facing to them I wasn't a threat.

Big mistake.

Livingston and I fired on the aliens, vaporizing a few and killing many more. The rest dispersed. I could vaguely hear two other larger explosions somewhere in the background as gunfire started bringing down the other aliens. A couple of rockets streaked and hit two other Wraiths and a red laser blew up another one. That was an awful lot of firepower for just one platoon. Lieutenant Weller was here with Platoon Three.

"Whadda ya know," Schitzo said, his face on the Wraith's screen. "Been a while since we were last part of an offensive."

"Been a while," I agreed.

* * *

><p><em>Thanks to SilasWhitfield for proof-reading this chapter.<em>

_If Hoff's the quarterback what would that make Frank? I'm pretty sure that Miranda wouldn't accept being a cheerleader and that Sandor would be that one crazy linebacker that is kind of a dick to everyone he tackles._

_I finally finished school and so far it seems like the world hasn't ended. Don't worry, there's still a couple more hours before we get our earth-shattering kaboom or our zombie apocalypse. Alien invasion works too, I guess. As I was saying, vacations. Yeah. Awesome. That means that I'll get more time to write and a lot more sleep. As you might've noticed this chapter was put up only four days after the last one as opposed to the six days that I've been keeping to for the last few updates. I'll do my best to give you more frequent updates._

_I forgot one thing last chapter, the PGNML, or the mini-nuke launched from the rocket launcher, was the idea of **General TheDyingTitan.** Credit for the idea goes to him fully.  
><em>

_Don't really have much else to say. Thanks for your reviews on the last chapter and I look forward to reading your opinions on this one. Happy end of the world as we know it. Stay strong._

_-casquis_


	155. 18th Street

Chapter CLV: 18th Street

**March 1, 2548 (UNSC Calendar)/**

**Water Oakley, LV-426, Zeta Reticuli System**

* * *

><p><em>"Hit the other fellow, as quick as you can, and as hard as you can, where it hurts him most, when he ain't lookin'!" -unknown (British Sergeant Major)<em>

* * *

><p>"What the hell took you so long?" Api asked as I opened the Wraith's hatch.<p>

"Hey Api," I replied, taking his hand and pulling myself out of the cramped driving compartment. Wiremu looked like a veritable badass with his rocket launcher on his shoulder and helping me up with his other hand. "Damn grunt hit me with an overcharged shot."

"I think you're supposed to restart the Wraith and it's in working order again."

"Like I know how to restart this fucking thing," I muttered, jumping down the turret and aiming at plasma weaponry muzzle flashes as Api fired his two rockets at a fortified position. Suddenly the Wraith was the center of attention again.

"The rest of the platoon is moving into a flanking position," he told me. "Lieutenant left a few men to help your squad."

"Understood," I acknowledged, strafing the enemy lines with the plasma turret. I wasn't really attempting to hit anything as much as I wanted them to keep their heads down and their attention focused on me. "I take it we secure the area and then regroup with the rest of the company?"

"You'd have to talk to Lieutenant Weller for that," Api replied, reloading his SPANKr. "Just between you and me, she's one tough bitch."

"Certainly has the look…" I replied, ducking as a pair of needles flew right past my arm.

All of a sudden the enemy forces, what little was left of them, was hit from the side by Platoon 3. They opened up with grenade launchers and grenades before taking out anything and everything that was still moving with good ol' fashioned firearms. A few of the smarter elites and jackals took cover from the flanking attackers, but there wasn't much in the emptied parking lot that would protect them from both Platoon 3 and Pavel's gunners. They were all dead within one minute.

"Well there's that," I said, jumping out of the gunner's seat and patting Api in the shoulder. "Been a while since we last saw combat together," I told him.

He laughed. "If I was still in your squad it would've just happened like three hours ago."

"More," I corrected, "but I see your point. Serge and Axel?"

"Up to no good as always," Api said smiling. "They enjoy the extra girls in the platoon though."

"So do my boys," I said. "Well, Caboose is still trying to get into Miranda pants."

"What do you mean still?"

"Oh, I thought it was obvious."

"Well, it wasn't," Api replied. "Damn, Sergeant Konstantinov and Novak? That's a recipe for disaster right there if anyone ever finds out."

"I'm not telling, are you?" I sighed. "No need to worry about something that hasn't happened yet."

I looked around without really leaving cover. I was certain that every covvie in a two-block radius was dead, but it always paid to be extra careful. I opened up a line to Lieutenant Weller and asked her what her status was.

"We're good, just finishing up an area sweep."

"Good, good. Thanks for the help Jen," I said.

"No problem Frank," she replied almost dismissively. It was almost as if she was uncomfortable with me thanking her. Oh well.

"Fill me in on the plan?"

"Our two platoons are going to move forward as much as we can," she said, obviously happy at the difficult task. "A couple of armored teams from the regulars will be doing the same from the other side of the city. We link up with them and so do the other three platoons. We'll be making three corridors, separating the enemy forces into four different sections before taking them out."

"Multiple pincer maneuvers," I said. "Sounds like fun…" _And a lot of opportunities for friendly fire._

"When do we start?" Schitzo asked.

"When do we start?" I asked.

"Captain Hayes said to move forward as fast as possible," Jen replied.

"All right, give me a minute." I turned towards Api. "Think you should regroup with your platoon?" I asked him.

"Probably," he admitted. "Come on squad, on me!"

Api moved towards the rest of his platoon with three other Helljumpers in his wake. The man certainly could command by physique alone.

"Caboose, where are you?"

"Not far," he replied almost immediately. "The rest of my squad should be there in a few minutes."

"What do you mean the rest?" I asked.

"Lieutenant."

I jumped and turned around, raising my weapon and aiming it at the visor of an ODST. My HUD marked him as Private Stan Zepeda. He was the platoon's designated sniper. The guy was almost as good as Snark with an SRS, but he left my former squad mate in the dust when it came to stealth.

"How the hell did you manage sneaking past everyone?" I asked him.

The man just shrugged.

"Dammit Zepeda, next time warn me before I put a bullet through your visor."

"Willco," he replied. All through this little scene the sniper hadn't even flinched, instead he simply held his sniper rifle across his chest in a relaxed stance. "Sarge told me to come help if needed. Seems like I'm late."

"That you are," I agreed. "Where's the rest of your squad?"

"A few blocks that way," he said, pointing. "They should be here any moment now."

I nodded and considered the new information. "Five!" I yelled. "On me!"

Most of my squad was milling about next to me within a minute, but it took Pavel's Heavy Weapons Squad a little bit longer to grab all their gear and move up towards the stadium. The area surrounding us was already secure, but it probably wouldn't be like that for long. Once I saw Pavel's men trotting towards us I waved my hand at them and set a waypoint at Weller's position.

All fourteen of us moved across the parking lot and then some to reach Weller.

"Fan out," I ordered. "Keep the perimeter secure."

Over a dozen acknowledgement lights winked in my HUD before my platoon started dispersing to take defensive positions. Lieutenant Weller was holed up in a security booth with her platoon sergeant, Micah Black. The man seemed friendly enough, but there was always a smile on his face and he always seemed a little bit too optimistic. Granted, I had only talked to him once, but it did come off as unusual, especially from a veteran ODST.

"Jen," I greeted the platoon leader. "Good to see you."

"Lieutenant," she replied in acknowledgement. "Please."

I looked at the projector on her hand and waited for her to turn it on. The hologram that appeared displayed the city from a bird's eye view. It showed our current position in green as well as the UNSC-controlled area. In between them and us there was a large section of Covenant-held land covered in red.

"We'll go in a straight column," she said, "we will take and hold the blocks between 18th and 19th streets and we'll do what we can to hold the streets as well."  
>"That'd be a lot easier if we had vehicles," I noted.<p>

"Command is working on sending us a pair of 'Hogs," Lieutenant Weller told me. "Should be here right about now."

I listened for the sound of Pelicans and only just caught it over the raging battle. Already some of the ODSTs in the two platoons were firing their weapons. Just because we had accomplished part one of our mission didn't mean that the rest was going to be a cakewalk.

"One 'Hog per platoon?" I asked her.

"Yeah."

"Got it," I replied. "We'll take turns moving forward with Pavel's squad providing machine gun cover."

"That's the plan then," Jen agreed. She turned to face her second in command and put on her helmet. "Black, give out the orders and mobilize the men."

"Yes, sir," he replied, exiting the room with his weapon tightly held in his hands.

I followed after him and exited the security booth. Bright lights from the two Warthogs and several colorful plasma bolts illuminated the night even as the two ODST platoons fired upon attackers that I couldn't see.

"Five!" I yelled loudly. "We'll leapfrog our way to friendly territory with Pavel and HW Squad providing machine gun cover all the way. Staff Sergeant Konstantinov, I want three of your men on the Warthog."

It was like a well-oiled machine. Everybody started moving in different directions until you could clearly tell one platoon from the other. Three moved across 18th street and all the way onto19th. As soon as they were there I ordered my platoon to move up. As always there were plenty of cars and debris to provide cover for us. Since we were attacking the enemy from the rear it meant that there were also some pieces of equipment that the Covenant had left behind to provide for us.

"Warthog! Hit and run, give me an overview on numbers and positions," I ordered even as the vehicle lurched forward, its engine roaring. "Pavel, move your team up a building, we're going to be needing lots of cover. I want Carver groundside with us."

PFC Daniel Carver was the man with the M515 Multiple Grenade Launcher. The weapon had a revolver-like design that allowed it to house ten 25mm smart grenades. The little monsters were rocket-aided and had a high degree of maneuverability and some limited tracking function. They could be set to detonate above enemy cover or right in front of them. There were several different types of munitions for the M515 including regular explosives, incendiary, stun, AP, and my personal favorite, flechette.

My platoon moved forward while plasma and needles flew at us. They were being fired from a distance and with our Warthog distracting them so it wasn't very accurate. I took position behind a tall SUV as the rest of my squad and the other three men on Grigori's Recon squad moved forward.

"Lieutenant, we've got about equal numbers facing us," the passenger on the Warthog, PFC Abri O'Malley informed me. "They don't have any heavy weapons and appear to be attempting a holding action."

PFC O'Malley was born in Luna and was a first generation Lunatic, as residents of Earth's moon were often called. Her parents were from the south of the African Continent. She had brown eyes and blonde hair but her accent was like brick hitting glass. I guess I would've found it sexy if I didn't need the subtitle function on my helmet to understand half of what she said. Not even a drunk-as-fuck Bumblebee could speak in a thicker accent.

"Understood," I replied. "Make your way back here and hit their fortified positions if you can." I looked at my minimap to confirm that everyone was in front of me.

"Ok everybody move up! Let's take these bastards down! Pavel, covering fire. Now!"

Numerous SAWs and M247Ls boomed loudly from the second floor on the building to our right. The squad was at an angle and didn't really have a very good view of the enemy, but it was enough to kill a couple of aliens and keep the rest with their heads down.

I moved up even as my platoon already advanced in front of me. It felt weird not to be leading an assault at the very front, but I knew that I didn't need to feel that way. At least that's what officer school had taught me, I still felt like a coward for some reason.

"C'mon," I muttered to myself, ignoring the laughing Schitzo to my side. _Focus._

I fired a quick burst at a grunt that tried shooting at one of my men and with that every alien on this block was dead. **  
><strong>

We aren't called humanity's best for nothing.

"Keep pushing," I ordered. "Pavel, provide cover for 3."

"Lieutenant Weller is already moving up," he replied. "No need to provide cover. HW Squad is on the move."

I smiled. It _was _good to work with a unit of highly proficient killers.

It wasn't particularly fast, but we cleared our street and the neighboring buildings with deadly efficiency. Most of the Covenant forces were already on the frontline, but the few that we encountered here were prepared for our assault. The further we went the more fortified their positions were and the harder it was for us to punch through them. It would've been a lot easier if we had counted with a Hornet or three to provide air support. Instead, the covvies were the ones who had Banshees to support them. They stopped attempting strafing runs after Corporal Dana Bamber from Pavel's squad killed a couple with her Spartan Laser.

"Should we worry about damaging property?" PFC Carver asked me after a while.

"Didn't get that in the rules of engagement," I told him. "Besides, most civilians are either in the safe zone or outside the city."

All I got for a reply was three explosions followed by three floors of a building collapsing into the street and burying some grunts that didn't move out of the way.

"Sniper down," Carver announced cheekily.

"Good job," I complimented loudly, even clapping a couple of times. "Now lose the attitude and keep moving."

"Uh, yes, Sir," he replied, stumbling over his words ever so slightly. "Sorry Sir."

We had moved forward seven blocks when I got a transmission from Al-Hassan.

"Whatup Al?" I asked, suddenly realizing that I sounded like an idiot saying that. I was thirty-three now.

"Bad news Frank," he told me. I noticed that he changed the line into a secure one before saying that. "Very bad news."

"Covvie reinforcements?" I asked, shooting a jackal sharpshooter down from its watchtower.

"Afraid so."

"Are we pulling back?"

"No. The admiral said that we're defending this moon until reinforcements arrive. It should just be another two days."

"Damn," I grunted, taking cover behind the pile of debris that Carver had made with his M515. "Numbers?"

"Sixteen enemy ships. Six of them are cruisers and some are frigates, that's all we've got so far."

"Puta madre," I cursed. "The battlegroup?"

"They took out the last remaining cruiser just before the enemy reinforcements appeared. They took out the _Cappadocia _and heavily damaged the _More Badass than Thou_. The rest of the fleet is on the run but still intact."

"Something good I guess," I grunted, not really feeling it. "Aw well, nothing we can do about it right now."

"Negative Frank. Your current objective still stands. You're free to inform your unit of the situation as soon as it is accomplished."

"Yeah, that'll certainly be a reward for a job well done."

"I am sorry Lieutenant," Al said. "Good luck."

_Luck…_

In the next intersection we came across our first real obstacle. I found myself running across the street in order to avoid a Wraith mortar. Needles and plasma flew around me without really making contact even as the huge bluish orb detonated, sending shockwaves all around it. Automatic plasma fire hit the car I had chosen for cover, with a few of the rounds punching through the thin metal sheets. I popped out of cover and fired a burst at the elite manning the Wraith's heavy turret. The elite stumbled and the turret aimed towards the ground, where its fire hit two grunts.

I chuckled at my fortune and grinned as I saw the angry elite snarl in frustration at its mistake before firing another burst. The alien stopped firing briefly and instead just located my position before it resumed firing, trying to melt through the car in order to get to me.

"Wraith's going to take you out El-tee," Mobuto warned in a dull voice from an overturned truck.

"Miranda, take out the gunner will ya?" I asked calmly.

She fired five shots. "Done."

I used that small window to sprint from my half-molten car towards Marv's overturned truck. Just as I slid into cover I heard the familiar explosion from the Wraith's mortar. Some shrapnel clattered against the truck but none punched through.

"Hey Marv," I said conversationally. "You good?"

"Can't complain," he replied. "But I really think we ought to move."

I nodded thoughtfully. "Probably right."

Both of us dashed away as another Wraith mortar shot hit the truck essentially turning it into a giant grenade. Everybody had seen it coming and had taken cover behind something, but the huge amount of shrapnel and hot metal that was sent flying in every direction was still impressive. Every window within thirty meters was shattered by the fast-flying pieces of metal and the truck itself was rendered a pile of molten slag.

"Enough is enough," I growled. "Carver and Bamber, one of you take that fucker out."

"Ain't got the firepower," Carver replied. "I could damage the cannon if you want me to."

"Bamber?" I asked.

"Sorry," she apologized in her relatively deep voice. "Trouble reloading."

A second later a red laser beam collided with the Wraith's frontal armor and detonated the ammunition store. The tank blew up in a blue fireball and then fell down to the ground as its anti-grav engines failed. The Wraith was the backbone of the enemy defense, and with enough time and lead we ground down the enemy. A couple of squads fell back under our onslaught, but we took the intersection with no casualties. We were doing good.

"Frank," Jen suddenly came in. "Trouble on our end."

I almost said 'whatup' again. "What is it?"

"Two Daemon tanks, they've got us pinned down."

"Can Bamber-"

"No, they're just outside of her visible range."

"Have her climb down then," I suggested. "Fire from ground level."

Two loud explosions sounded from the other street.

Weller grunted. "Perhaps that's not the best idea right now; we can barely look over cover."

"Can you fall back and regroup with us?"

Another explosion.

"Risky, but possible," she replied.

I hesitated for a second. "Hold on," I said. "We'll try something."

_Formulate a plan, formulate a plan, formulate a plan._

"Not really inspiring any confidence Frank," Jen grunted. "Keep your thoughts to yourself."

"Right."

So I had one Warthog and thirteen highly trained killers plus another seven ODSTs with Pavel. It really shouldn't be that hard. Well, with those assets alone I could come up with several plans, all of which would've only worked if it had been Pavel and me doing them. The Warthog was a tempting possibility though.

"Caboose, get the Warthog down here. Carver, on me!"

The large vehicle skidded to a stop as I walked down the street. PFC Daniel Carver jogged up to me and said nothing.

"You two," I pointed at Caboose's two men. "Out. Carver, get in the passenger's seat."

"Want the wheel?" Caboose asked me.

"Last time I drove it didn't end too well," I said.

I actually got a chuckle in reply. Everybody loves the Warthog's handling, or rather, its lack of handling.

I spooled up the Gatling on the 'Hog's rear even as Caboose stepped on the pedal. Carver was already reloading his M515 with a different type of explosive. Caboose dodged some cars as we sped up. As we came across the first intersection I started firing at the elites I could see. I killed two of them before we had to dodge a salvo of plasma. Caboose put it in reverse before we were hit and hid behind a pair of small cars for cover as I killed our attackers.

"The intersection after this one," I said.

"I know," he replied irritably. No doubt he wasn't having much fun right now.

The tail of the Warthog fishtailed as he turned around. I held on for dear life as we hopped over the median dividing the road. A jackal was squashed under the 'Hog's hood and we burst through the second intersection. I fired at our rear, discouraging the covvies from taking any potshots at us.

"This is the one!" PFC Carver yelled.

Caboose floored it as he crashed through a pair of SUVs. The grunts taking cover behind the vehicles ended up underneath them. The rest of the covvies were rather shocked to see the Warthog plow through their cover and not even stop. It bought us a second that I used to fire at the elites and jackals, sending them running for cover and confusing the grunts. I took out one elite before we turned towards the 19th street. As soon as we turned I saw one of the two Daemon tanks. It was just standing there, calmly waiting for Jen's platoon to leave cover or make a fatal mistake.

Carver didn't need an order to fire. He put all ten of his smart grenades into the tank. The ten projectiles were pretty small but packed one hell of a punch. I raised an eyebrow when I realized that the first couple or so had been penetrator rounds, designed to punch through thick armor. The rest were all HE-AP. Regular anti-tank shells that would punch through some armor and then blow up some. I immediately started firing at the damaged section of the tank, hoping that one of the 12.7x99mm rounds would go through whatever was left of the tank's armor and hit the gunner or driver.

I had to stop when the elite manning the turret outside turned to aim at us. Fortunately I got the first shot off and didn't stop firing after that. By the time the elite was slumped over the edge of the seat Carver had reloaded his MGL. He fired two more shots, both of which went right into the damaged part of the Daemon's armor. The second shot seemed to have no effect until the tank's turret exploded upwards.

"Aimed for the ammunition store," he explained. "Memorized the location."

"Good work," I allowed. "But we still have another one to go."

I saw sparks on the second Daemon mark my hits. Carver was reloading his MGL again and Caboose was swerving around the wreck of the first tank in order to cross the intersection and put a building in between us and the other tank. The Daemon attempted to shoot us, with the corner of a building only just barely blocking the plasma shell. Bits and pieces of rock showered the Warthog and almost knocked me out of the gunner seat.

"Shit," I grunted as I tried to hold on. I accidentally clicked the triggers, spraying the wall to our left and startling Carver, who promptly aimed at the spot I had fired on before he realized what happened.

"You scared the shit out of me El-tee," he told me.

I remained quiet in response as Caboose turned the jeep around.

He stopped when the car's hood pointed towards the intersection we had just crossed. I could hear myself taking a deep breath and both Caboose and Carver's shoulders slowly rose and fell. We were literally going to make ourselves part of a shooting gallery with a tank.

Yes, we were _literally_ making ourselves part of a shooting gallery with a tank.

Caboose floored the accelerator and the car jumped forward. The moment we crossed into the Daemon's field of fire I started hitting the tank, the huge caliber bullets doing nothing to its thick frontal armor. Carver aimed with his launcher and fired all ten grenades. For a brief instant I saw three of the rocket-assisted explosives fly away from the barrel of the weapon at a fraction of their real speed. A pair of elites in ranger armor snarled at us, trying to aim their plasma repeaters at us. The shells from the LAAG slowly moved across the air and down to the street.

I don't know if time slowed down because of my psychosis or if it was a secondary effect from the augmentations, but it was probably the only thing that I enjoyed about being experimented on by ONI. For those brief instants I could see absolutely everything. I feel like I could do anything. It was a sense of _clarity_ that was simply indescribable, as if I knew everything that was going on around me.

I somehow knew that there were two grunts taking cover behind two jackals just to my right. I could see that the two elite rangers were about to overheat their repeaters and that the windows above them housed one jackal sharpshooter with a needle rifle that was half empty. There were about six grunts moving up from the next intersection, one of them an ultra with a needler and the rest regulars with plasma pistols. I could see the scratches that my firing had made on the side of the Daemon's turret.

I could also see as the first of Carver's grenades collided directly with the head of the elite manning the plasma turret. The alien's head blowing up was what snapped me back into real time.

"Fuck, fuck, fuck!" Carver yelled as he fired his weapon.

Halfway through his magazine the Daemon shot at us. It missed, but only just. The plasma shell detonated about three meters behind the rear fender. The shockwave was enough to tilt the Warthog's rear. Caboose tried to regain control but it was too late. I jumped as the Warthog became perpendicular to the street. My rifle was already on my back and my pistol was secured to my thigh. There were a few grenades still on their webbing on my belly, but I'd have to work around those. I landed belly-first, the impact driving the wind out of my lungs. My armor absorbed some of the shock, but not all of it. Despite the strength of the impact I had the advantage of a couple of inches of plating in between the asphalt and me.

I felt strangely ridiculous skidding through the street at high speeds, but the rapidly approaching sidewalk quickly changed my mind. I put my shoulder first as I crashed into the curb and flipped over, slamming into the sidewalk with a groan.

"Fuck me," I complained loudly, every inch of my body hurting.

"Not the time Francisco," Schitzo urged. "Get up."

"Take it easy," Scarecrow said.

_Been a while, _I noted.

"No time to take it easy!" Schitzo yelled-

The force behind his words was enough to make me jump to my feet, rifle in my hands. I quickly confirmed that both Carver and Caboose were alive and relatively unharmed. The 'Hog's frame had protected them from being squashed against the street.

One of the elites hopped over its makeshift barrier and aimed at me. It jerked its left hand away from its repeater violently as it overheated. I smiled to myself and squeezed off a couple of bursts. The elite rolled until its back was facing me and then it took another pair of bursts that drained its shields. I aimed at the gap in the armor between its head and back. It took two bursts to put it on its knees and one more to kill the elite. Those fuckers had some thick skin.

"Lieutenant!" Carver called at me. He was in panic.

"Relax," I told him, sliding into cover behind the overturned Warthog. I slid on one knee and with my rifle up, and I will have you know that I looked very badass as I did so. "Caboose?"

He grunted something in Russian before confirming that he was fine.

I fired a burst to discourage the other elite from jumping over cover and then ducked underneath the Warthog. Carver hadn't been wearing his seatbelt, but he had had enough time to slide down into crash position before his helmet slammed against the bulletproof windshield. It was a miracle that he hadn't been knocked out instantly.

"You have a hard head," I said, trying to see where he was stuck.

"And I'm also unable to move," he replied.

"Spine's fine," Caboose said, no doubt accompanying that statement with an eye roll. "You can walk."

"I _know_ that," Carver replied. "I just-"

"Aha!" I exclaimed in exaggeration. "That's the problem."

The seat itself had moved during the impact and was pressing both of Carver's legs against the floor of the jeep. I pressed my feet against the Warthog's frame and pulled at the seat, yanking it from its place with very little trouble.

"Ah…" Carver grunted as he fell to the street. "Thanks."

"Cover me," I ordered. "Caboose?"

"Can't move," he replied.

I went around the Warthog and helped Caboose out from underneath the wreck. Carver fired at something with his MA5, discarding the powerful M515 for the moment. Caboose was in better shape than the PFC. If we needed to move Carver would be in some trouble. It wouldn't be long before he realized that one of his ankles was broken and the other one sprained.

"Jen," I called the other platoon leader. "The Daemon should be aiming away from your position, Api can take it down."

There was a slight pause before I got a reply. "Looks like you're right," she said.

The two rocket explosions were way too close for my taste. I peeked over the edge of the Warthog and realized that the Daemon tank had been moving forward and was in the process of aiming its cannon at our little wrecked Warthog.

"Thanks," I breathed. "Close one."

Before Jen could reply a plasma shot burst right next to my head, only just missing Caboose.

I forgot that we were behind enemy lines while we were behind enemy lines.**  
><strong>

Caboose took down the offender with three bursts before rolling to the side in order to get better cover. There was no way that we could be fully protected from both sides, but he got the best spot.

"Platoon 5 move up, move up!" I ordered loudly. "Double time it!"

I could hear the gunfire intensifying on 18th street. It didn't take long before Jen and 3 got the hint and started pushing forward. Both platoons moving simultaneously was enough to distract the covvies and make them think about their priorities. The aliens stopped firing at us and instead focused on trying to push back the angry Helljumpers with fancy guns.

An exercise in futility, but they made a show of putting up a fight.

"Are you ok Lieutenant?"

I looked up to see Miranda standing next to me. All of a sudden I felt as if I had slammed into the pavement from a rapidly moving vehicle. My head spun slightly and my sternum started throbbing like hell. I had no doubt that at least a couple of ribs were cracked and that my titanium prosthetics had saved me from further internal damage.

"Peachy," I replied with my best smile. "Where's Livingston?"

"Am I not good enough for you?" she asked. "Besides, I'm qualified."

"I forgot that you took the Corpsman Course."

"Someone had to," she told me, "especially after Almers."

"Yeah…"

"Besides, I needed something to do while you were taking those vacations."

"A joke? From you?" I chuckled despite the pain. "Next thing I know you'll be cursing."

Miranda smiled but suddenly frowned as something caught her eye. "Grigori!" she exclaimed in shock at seeing Caboose. The man had a cracked visor, but he was in better condition than Carver and me both. "Are you alright?"

Miranda placed her hand on his shoulder and reached for a medical scanner in her butt-pouch. She looked at my former squad mate with a frown on her face as she examined his vital signs and other information that his suit gave off.

"No one ever medicates me with that much feeling," Carver complained.

"Oh," Miranda said, suddenly realizing what she had done. She quickly yanked both of her hands back towards her. "Seems like you're fine, no injuries."

"Thanks," Caboose replied, sounding a little flustered. For him that meant that he sounded the same as always. Dull.

"My legs, they hurt really bad doc," Carver said in an accent that I didn't recognize. It was rather funny the way he said it. "Be straight with me, am I gonna lose 'em?"

"Christ," Miranda muttered under her breath. "Might have a broken ankle."

"Broke-What?!" Carver said suddenly. "Broken ankle? It hurts but not _that _bad."

"Sorry bro," I told him. "Your boots can make a splint."

"The other one's also broken," Miranda said. "Minor fracture, should heal in two days with bone regen fluids."

"_Two_ broken ankles."

"You can't get more than that," I said, summoning all my strength in order to stand up. "Come on, splint yourself and have Miri help you up."

Caboose got up with me and looked around. Anybody else would've offered me a hand the way I was stumbling, but he barely spared me a second glance when he saw how weak I was. Frankly, I preferred it that way. Squad mates or no I still didn't like the guy.

"Pavel," I said. "Send three of your guys here to flip over the 'Hog." I stopped. "Negative on that one, send two of Grigori's guys, see if the thing's still drivable."

"They're on their way," he replied after a moment. "Frank, are you ok?"

"Yeah, yeah," I assured him, realizing that I was slurring my speech a little bit. "No. You have command of the platoon for the time being…whoa."

The world went upside down on me and I sat back down. It seemed like this wasn't as harmless as it appeared at first sight. Little black circles dotted my vision and I could feel myself growing weaker and colder.

"Am I going to faint?" I asked. "No way."

"You are," Schitzo said resignedly. "How embarrassing."

"Nah, I won't faint."

"Lieutenant, are you ok?" Miranda was asking me. "You just fainted."

"No I didn't."

"Yeah, you did. I was right here and I saw you. It's recorded and everything."

"No I didn't," I repeated. "Why the hell would you say all that on your first counter?"  
>Miranda shrugged.<p>

"Dammit woman."

"Take some stims," she told me in a doctor's tone. "I'd recommend downing one of your energy bars as well. Oh, and painkillers too."

I sat back up, not remembering having lied down.

_Holy shit I actually fainted._

"Told you," Miranda replied with a self-satisfied smile. "Don't worry; you were just out for a minute."

_Since when did the brain-mouth filter stop working again? Christ, another thing to worry about._

"Take the meds," she said. "We need to move out, armored teams are meeting up with us soon."

I did as Miranda ordered, swallowing a few pills and closing my eyes, waiting for them to take effect. The meds were designed to start working as fast as possible and they did their job right. In less than a minute I was feeling like I could take on a hunter with a pair of plasma grenades and a shotgun.

Yeah right.

Caboose and his men had flipped the Warthog over and were now providing machine gun support for the rest of my platoon. We had moved up an extra pair of blocks while I was allegedly fainting. No Covenant soldiers in those two blocks. It wasn't until the third one that we came across a fortified position.

Fortified position perhaps doesn't do it full justice. It was like a fucking fortress.

"How the hell did they get the time to make that!" Pavel exclaimed.

Even from my position I had to agree with him. The street went down as the avenue perpendicular to us turned into a bridge. 18th street briefly became a tunnel that turned to the left here. All the buildings surrounding this place were reduced or completely gone. There wasn't a construction more than two floors high. The Covenant had taken advantage of the situation to make a fortress.

They had set up an AA gun right in the idle of everything and had piled up cars, debris and deployable shield covers all around, forming a very well defended perimeter. There were a few plasma turrets on the second level of the AA gun and on top of the wall of cars.

"Christ," I cursed. "This is going to suck."

The AA gun wasn't only that, it was also a fortified infantry position that could fend off several attacks. Not to mention that they had made a wall around it.

"Holy crap," Weller exclaimed. 19th street also came across the enemy fortification, merging with our street right before the tunnel. "There's no way we're pushing through that!"

"Maybe we can wait for the armored teams to move up," I suggested.

"I'm afraid that's not going to be a possibility," Al said, his avatar appearing on my HUD. "The Covenant have sent all their Daemon and Wraith units to meet up the armored teams. Command expects a victory, but it might be a while."

"Urban tank combat," I muttered. "Great."

"Lieutenant," Jen said. "We need a step-by-step. Or air support."

"Sounds about right," I agreed, moving up towards her position as she jogged towards me. "We need a plan."

As soon as we were both safely behind cover Jen produced her holographic projector and placed it on the ground. It immediately displayed the AA gun and the wall of cars and debris surrounding it. From here it didn't really look like we had much of a chance.

"Any suggestions?" I asked her.

"Me?" she exclaimed, half-surprised. "You're the one that's supposed to come up with the crazy plans."

"Ah, my former squad mates like to talk," I said in realization. I chuckled to myself while shaking my head. "Ok, here's what we do," I started. "The tunnel isn't that heavily defended, but we're still going to need some skill to pull this off."

Jen nodded to show that she was following.

"We put sharpshooters here and here," I pointed at a few of the surrounding buildings. "Send both of the snipers, your platoon has a sniper, right?"

She nodded again.

"We send him and Zepeda as far back as we can while still giving them full view of the fortification. They and the sharpshooters will work on keeping the turrets empty and unmanned. Your platoon should keep hammering them from here while Pavel's squad pounds away at these two sections, they seem like the weakest."

I examined the hologram before going on. "The rest of my platoon can go down under the bridge if we have good enough cover. Send in a pair of Grigori's guys with explosives and we bring down the whole thing. AA gun should at least tilt sideways and about half of the wall will go down with the bridge."

Jen looked from me to the hologram and then back to me. "So everybody's a distraction?"

"Yeah," I confirmed. "But you need to sell it."

"Do you doubt me?"

I smiled until I realized that her question wasn't a joke. "No, no, of course not, just going over everything."

Jen seemed to consider whether I was being truthful before nodding and polarizing her visor once again. "Very well then, we'll make some noise. You should probably reposition your Heavy Weapons Squad from here to here. That way they can cover you and us without drawing fire to you."

"Good idea," I admitted. "Good luck."

"To you as well."

We took off towards our respective platoons while I ordered everyone about. I got the men on the Warthog to position it just around a corner and sent Zepeda to our rear to provide sniper cover.

"Keep those turrets empty," I told him.

He nodded in reply and took off without a sound.

"Move it people!" Pavel was yelling to his squad. "Move your asses!"

"Don't get to excited," I told him quietly as I passed by him. In reply Pavel simply pushed me in the back as I walked past. "Ok listen up!" I yelled loudly. "Everyone will be providing cover for us twelve. We need to get under the tunnel and then bring it down."

Long pause. "Wait, that's it?" Miranda asked what nobody else dared to.

"Do you require more?" I asked her. "Are you not supposed to function under tough circumstances? Are you not Helljumpers!"

"Oorah!"

"Damn right," I said, smiling.

* * *

><p>Holy fuck had I been wrong to expect this to be easy.<p>

Well, I hadn't exactly figured it to be easy, but I had expected it to be about twenty minutes of frantic shooting and some crazy awesome shit before we achieved out objective.

It seemed like humans weren't the only ones who can fight hard when they have their backs against a wall. And the covvies here had their backs against two full battalions.

"AL, where the hell is that air support?" I asked the AI, still crouching behind the car that I had been using as cover for the past thirty minutes. "Can't they send a couple of Hornets or even Falcons this way?"

"I'm sorry Frank," he replied. "But command is giving priority to the units fighting down the Scarabs."

"How the hell do they always keep those things hidden," I asked myself.

"They're modified mining platforms," Al lectured me. "They dig them into concealment."

"Lotta good that does me." I looked around to see Marvin calmly reloading his SMG and rolling his neck. "What's the situation on those?"

"Platoons One and Two are still up and kicking with four casualties each. No KIA just yet."

"The Scarabs?"

"They are trapped, One and Two are pounding them with rockets and trying to take out the crew. The armored team on the other side is keeping them from making a run for it."

"Why don't they just knock them out already?!"

"Well, they're waiting for the air support that you requested."

"Like every single gunship is busy."

"Or shot down," Al suggested.

"Yeah, yeah, yeah." I punched the car. "Our armored team still playing cat and mouse with the Covenant tanks?"

"Unfortunately."

"Guess this is still up to us then," I sighed.

Schitzo laughed and shook his head. "My my, I never took you to be lazy Francisco."

"You could always wait an hour or two, let the cavalry come in," Scarecrow suggested.

_Nah, that's not very Helljumpery-like._

Scarecrow shrugged before disappearing, a grinning Schitzo close behind him.

Had I been British I would've said that we were in a bit of a pickle. Marv and I were both pinned down and there was absolutely no way that we could make our way back to cover without getting an extra hole or two through the chest. The rest of the VSF squad was hanging out a little bit further back, just as the street started descending underneath the bridge. They were keeping our left side clear of any hostiles. If we were flanked here we were as good as dead.

Pavel and his squad was keeping anything in between us and Platoon 3 clear of hostiles while doing their best to suppress fire form inside the enemy fortification. They were doing an ok job, but the covvies had a dozen plasma turrets all aimed at them and were also doing a fine job at keeping my fire by support squad with their heads down. It was a miracle that none of us had gotten themselves killed yet. I knew that two guys on 3 were out for the count with minor wounds.

"Zepeda," I called the sniper. "What's the situation on your end?"

"Still the same, most of the turrets have deployable shields on the side that faces me. I can't take out the gunners without sacrificing two magazines."

Wow, that was twenty-six words out of his mouth in one go. Twenty-seven if you count can't as two. Very impressive.

"The one above us?"

"No good."

I cursed. "Orders stand, target elites."

I got an acknowledgement light instead of a voiced reply before he broke the line. The man was a damn good sniper, but right now some clever alien had placed covers on the plasma turrets that completely invalidated his skills. He had cleared a couple of watchtowers already, but he couldn't really do much right now.

"Jen, how's your sniper doing?" I asked the Lieutenant Weller.

"She's still moving through the streets, but Yumiko has to go around the fortification without getting herself shot. The area behind us isn't safe yet."

"You don't have to remind me that," I replied angrily. Getting shot at is never good for your mood. "Keep pounding away, if you see an opening go for it."

"I'm not a child," she replied before cutting the line.

"Fucking great." _Now everybody's pissed._

I couldn't blame them though, we had been going at this for an hour and a half, most of which had consisted of us with our heads down and praying that our cover held. All I could do was use the camera on my rifle's barrel to fire off a few shots form behind cover. It was difficult and my rifle had been grazed by plasma twice already. It wouldn't do me any good to have a molten pile of slag on my hands.

"Lieutenant."

I turned to see Marv waving at me.

"Yeah?" I asked irritably.

"Let's wing it."

That was quite possibly the worst idea I had heard in my entire life. Maybe a close second to that time Pavel and I decided to go down fighting in Aztlan instead of remaining behind our sturdy tree for five more seconds. Literally, we had one turret keeping us safely in check in front and above us. With that turret we also had four jackal sharpshooters with carbines and various squads of grunts that were feeling rather elated at being able to keep us imps pinned down and helpless. And that's not taking into account the three elites commanding all theselovely fighting aliens.**  
><strong>

"Sure, why not," I replied.

Marv nodded and positioned himself near the edge of his cover.

"Pavel, I want you to redirect all your fire towards the railing above us. Keep it going for as long as you can. None of that taking turns firing shit. I want _all_ of you firing at the same time."

"Sure, you want me to pour beer over your grave this day once a year too?"

I smiled. Same old Pavel.

"Now?" he asked after a second.

"Now." _Why am I doing this?_

I could hear the bullets whistling above us as well as the sound they made as they impacted against the cars, shields, and polycrete that made up the Covenant wall. Neither Marvin nor me needed a spoken order to spring into action. Both of us jumped out of cover and fired one burst each. Two jackal sharpshooters fell backwards, one dead and the other one dying. It was at that moment that my second Spartan Time episode of the day kicked in.

I can say that I was thankful for being a freak.

I moved my rifle, my body a little bit to slow for my mind. Before I could even raise it to look through the scope I knew where the bullets were going to hit. I squeezed off a burst and the three bullets flew out of the barrel. They passed just above the plasma turret, hitting the grunt manning it just on the top of the head. I was already switching targets as the blood sprayed backwards.

The next target I was going to aim at collapsed, a dozen rounds from Marv's SMG hitting it in the chest.

The next three seconds saw me take out the other two jackal sharpshooters as well as a grunt that looked like it was going to make a run for the plasma turret. The rest of the aliens were only just beginning to leave cover in order to fire back at Pavel's MG team. It took them all of two seconds to realize that we were going to make a run for it.

The guys above weren't the only threat though; there were several aliens on the lower street and in front of us as well. The closest one of them were right behind a pair of sedan-type cars places across the street. Marv and I both jumped over the hoods feet-first. Marv kicked a grunt's face in and I landed right next to an elite. The alien wasn't stunned at all. It aimed its plasma rifle at me and missed by inches as I jumped in between its legs.

Marv fired at the alien, draining its shields with his SMG and I finished it off with two bursts to the back.

Even as the elite was falling to the ground we pushed forward. I ran and jumped over another car and kicked a grunt while I shot another one. I turned to finish off the first one with a headshot and then sprayed at a pair of jackals, catching one of them in the throat and the other in the chest. They collapsed to the floor. I looked at Marv to see him finishing off a skirmisher. He spared me a quick nod before running forward again.

By the time we jumped over the third barricade we were already underneath the bridge. Or tunnel, it's confusing to me too.

Inside we had a full squad of elites. They weren't exactly paying attention to us. Like most of their kind they believed that they were too good for the rest of us. That cost the leader its life. It turned to look at us with what I could only assume was a surprised expression before Marv and I both let everything we had go at it. The major fell after a few seconds and the rest all jumped behind cover.

"Frag out!" I yelled, grabbing two fragmentation grenades and tossing them under a truck that two elites were using for cover. "Marv, gimme the explosives."

Marv tossed his last grenade before throwing the C-12 charge at me. I caught it just as my grenades went off, turning the truck into an explosive and frying the two elites.

Suddenly everything was regular speed again and I started feeling about as helpless as I was.

"Marv, cover me!"

I turned the charge over and activated it, foregoing the remote detonator for the simpler timer. I set it for twenty seconds and was about to hit enter when the car I was using for cover jumped.

I looked up to see an elite aiming down at me with a pair of plasma rifles. I drew my sidearm and fired two shots before it could squeeze of one. I was rolling to the side when the elite's head exploded and it flew backwards.

"Zepeda, I don't know how the hell you made that shot but I owe you a beer," I said quickly, blood covering my visor. "Marv, fall back!"

I tapped the little red button and threw the charge at the ceiling as hard as I could. In my enhanced and accelerated state I was more than capable of tossing one kilo worth of explosives for five meters. The sticky plastic explosive stuck to the polycrete ceiling and I was out.

I ran in a straight line without even bothering to take cover. I had twenty seconds until the sky literally came down on my head and I wasn't going to waste one of them. Marv was jumping back over the cars as the surviving elites and grunts fired at him, missing by inches. I didn't want to see how much they were missing me by. I jumped over the second barricade and a shot hit me on the side of the knee, grazing me.

"Fuck," I cried. The moment I slammed into the floor I fired back at anything, half my shots hitting the car I had just jumped over.

Two more sniper shots rang and I swallowed my pain to jump forward and run over the next barricade. I landed on my injured leg and collapsed, the pain suddenly too much for my body to bear. I tried standing up and fell back down once more. Holy shit did that sting.

My HUD had an automatic timer on and I looked at it just as it went down from seven all the way to zero. I could picture the charge beeping before blowing up. The sound was deafening, and the bridge collapsing wasn't far behind that either. I could hear rock upon rock and metal and knew that the entire bridge had collapsed, squashing anything underneath and bringing down anything above. A sizeable section of their wall was now gone.

Half a minute after the explosion Livingston and Sandor were dragging me out, firing sporadically at any survivors. Marv had also been hit. A needle went through his hand before exploding two meters in front of him. He could walk well enough, but Miranda was still checking him. On my minimap I could see Jen's platoon rushing through the walls and killing the dazed covvies inside the perimeter. Her platoon would take care of the aliens inside the now-destroyed fortification and the AA gun.

Me? Well, I just had another story that people wouldn't believe.

* * *

><p><em>Thanks to SilasWhitfield for proofreading this chapter.<em>

_So here we have Platoon Five facing some heavy urban combat for the first time, they also worked in conjunction with Platoon Three and Lieutenant Jen Weller. I'm only saying this so that you try to at least remember the platoon leader names. In any case, they did a good enough job, making use of their limited assets when facing heavy enemy presence and opposition. I like the idea of a larger Helljumper unit because it allows me to get Frank and Pavel (and everybody else) involved in battles with a much larger scope. Not that they didn't do that before, it's just that they didn't do it as well._

_Of course, there's a big problem that comes with having a larger unit. The large number of additional characters. I'll try to provide every character some measure of development and have them take part in some thing or other. I know that I can't have everyone become a main and well-developed character, but I'll do my best with non-VSF squad guys. As you can see I already gave some focus to both Zepeda and Carver as well as pointing out the roles of certain other ODSTs in other squads (Bamber in Pavel's squad). As I said, I'll do my best. Seeing as there are many characters and not many will be very developed, feel free to tell me which ODSTs you like more than others and I'll be sure to give those more focus. My goal is to make you happy, after all._

_Here I am, posting this chapter on December 24th, one day before Christmas. I wanted to post a chapter as a Christmas present to you guys, but I finished a little bit early and decided to post it anyways. From me to you, I wish all of you a Merry Christmas. To those of you that don't celebrate Christmas I want to wish you the very best holidays. I'll try to post one more chapter before I leave for vacations. Unfortunately, I might not post anything until after New Years due to lack of reliable internet connection. I will, however, be sure to write a bunch in order to come back with additional chapters. So in case I can't post a New Year's chapter: Happy New Year._

_Oh, and Marv is a badass._

_Stay strong._

_-casquis_


	156. Oh No, Not Again!

Chapter CLVI: Oh No, Not Again!

**March 3, 2548 (UNSC Calendar)/**

**Water Oakley, LV-426, Zeta Reticuli System**

* * *

><p>"<em>And what's this thing coming toward me very fast? So big and flat and round, it needs a big wide sounding name like 'Ow', 'Ownge', 'Round', 'Ground'! That's it! Ground! Ha! I wonder if it'll be friends with me? Hello, Ground!"- The Whale<em>

* * *

><p>The limp was almost gone. It just hurt when I sprinted, but I was still making a point not to put my full weight on my injured leg. Two days had been enough to let it rest. That and catch quite a bit of rest. I always underestimated how tired I was during combat. How I managed to underestimate falling from a speeding vehicle is beyond me, but somehow I did it.<p>

"Still limping?" Pavel asked me.

"Want to take care of my leg," I told him, gently patting my injury. "I think I'm good now."

"Good, the Covenant has been moving troops planetside for the past twelve hours."

"Yeah, I heard."

Pavel waved his arms around at the city. "Well, at least we saved Water Oakley."

"Damn right," I replied before chuckling. No humor like black humor. "Any other developments?"

"You were with Winters for three minutes Frank, not a lot of shit happens in three minutes."

"Point granted," I conceded. I grabbed my rifle from next to him and shouldered it. "Let's go, I've got an appointment to make."

"Pre-battle sex?"

I smiled. "Is there any other kind?"

"Post-battle sex," he shrugged.

"That one's good too."

The city had once been the largest population center in the entire planet. In a way it still was, filled with soldiers from two different carriers as well as the Marine complements from several other ships. There were thousands of Marines and a little fewer soldiers. The local soldiers were still large in numbers, but Army had taken a beating during the initial invasion.

We were supposed to get reinforcements from off-system yesterday, but the enemy fleet had held any UNSC ships on the outskirts of the system. According to Al we outnumbered them only just. That wasn't good news, we needed at least double their numbers in order to make a space battle anything close to fair.

I looked up to see the damaged _More Badass Than Thou_ floating above the city. Right now it wasn't giving much honor to its name; even from down here I could see the exposed decks and the partially molten armor plating. Half its name had been scorched off.

Hovering on the opposite side of the city was the UNSC _(Dis)Honorable_, with its UNSC-sanctioned name in formal white letters and the addition painted in blood red. Whoever had decided to add the 'dis' to the 'honorable' had been a genius, even if having a ship named like that didn't exactly reflect traditional military ideals. Instead it reflected badassery.

The _(Dis)Honorable _was a heavy cruiser, but I could see two places where heavy plasma weaponry had impacted as well as several other smaller impact marks marking its hull.

And we had caught them by surprise.

"Why are we stopping?" Pavel asked.

"I'm supposed to meet Hanna here," I replied.

"Why isn't she here then?"

"I'm early," I said after looking at my military-issue watch. I hadn't used that thing in ages. I only used it when deployed and not wearing my armor. That was very unusual.

"Early?" Pavel wowed. "Damn, you're never early."

"It's never too late to start," I said simply, looking around for Hanna.

"If it wasn't you'd still be late."

"What the hell does that mean?"

"You know what it means." Pavel rolled his neck. "Well, there comes Hanna. By your leave." He departed after making a fancy bow and greeting Hanna.

"Hey you," she said when she saw me, an ego-boosting smile on her face.

"Banana, it's good to see you."

She stopped and raised her eyebrow at me. She still hadn't gotten over me calling her by her best-friends-only nickname. I liked it though, it was kind of cute.

"Everything all right?" I asked her, walking inside the vacated building.

Hanna put her arm through mine and nodded her head before leaning against me. "So far so good, no casualties in my platoon."

"So you're a wonder medic then," I joked.

"I wish," she replied, laughing. "No, we didn't see intense combat. A pair of idiots almost got themselves cooked by a plasma grenade, but for the most part we were on the easy end of the shit."

"Good for you," I said. "Seriously. You have no idea how much I hate it when you fight."

"Aren't I the one that's supposed to say that?" she asked with a small smile. "I don't kid myself, I know that you do missions that not even my whole company could pull off."

"Why thank you," I replied.

"But it worries me too."

"Ha, maybe we should both call it quits and retire to live a peaceful life in the country."

"Well, I'm considering it," she said with a smile. "Maybe not the country, but a break from all of this would be…nice."

I shook my head slowly, opening a door to a room that had once belonged to a slacker. Right out of college and no portraits of loved ones. "I wouldn't know what to do with my time," I told her. "This is all I know. And I'm good at it."

"You could probably find something to do."

"Like a cop?"

"You?"

"You see?" I said with a small smile. "Stunt double could work, but that's probably about it. I don't think I could even act."

"Come on now," Schitzo said. "You act like you're completely sane on a daily basis."

Hanna smiled at me and grabbed my face with both her hands. "Sometimes you underestimate yourself Frank," she told me. She stared into my eyes before sighing and looking down. "I know you're not going to leave the Corps, but it might be time I do."

I grunted. It would make me incredibly happy to know that Hanna was safe and out of danger. On the other hand, I know just how easily one person could stray in a relationship. Hanna had come into this relationship with almost literally no experience. While that had made me comfortable in a way, knowing that she knew of nothing better than me, it didn't mean that if she really started missing some intimacy she would seek it with someone else.

Yeah, in short I'm saying that I didn't trust her to control herself.

I cursed myself for being like that. She was the last person who would do that.

"And what would you do on your spare time?" I asked, ignoring my mental debate and gently guiding her towards a moldy couch. "Paint?"

She chuckled. "Work. I do have some professional abilities."

"Not many people bleeding to death on Eszterghom."

"I would see plenty of those if I became a nurse," she countered.

I stopped.

"You're imagining the sexy nurse outfit, aren't you?"

"No, no," I replied, not able to lie properly. It was a very appealing idea. "Yes."

"Well, that is never going to happen."

"That is what you said about the sexy Marine outfit," I pointed out.

"Yeah, but I don't have to wear anything other than my uniform to be sexy."

"You don't have to wear much of your uniform you mean."

To her credit, she smiled and laughed at my terrible joke, grabbing me by the lapels of my uniform and pulling me close. "Come here."

* * *

><p>I figured that some of the older guys could guess what I had been up to just by looking at my face. I wasn't exactly beaming and smiling to everyone that walked past me, but one could tell. Sometimes a little bit of intimacy goes a long way. It's relaxing and…well, it feels good.<p>

My pleasant demeanor faded a little bit as the Pelican left atmosphere. At the speed we were going the lack of gravity was sudden and violent. I could see a few of the guys jerk in surprise. Fightmaster had dispensed with warning us about that.

"Sorry about that," he shouted from the cockpit. "Intercom was damaged during the battle!"

"You could've yelled it Sam!" I shouted back.

All I got for reply was a short chuckle.

The Pelican entered the _Flawless'_ landing bays and gravity returned. Everybody stood up and grabbed their duffels from the rack above and shouldered their weapons even as a crane secured the craft. Sam opened the rear hatch to reveal a second Pelican jerking in its own crane.

Pavel's squad poured out with all their gear. Most of us had put on all of our armor already, but there were still a few pieces of equipment that wouldn't really make sense to be wearing at the time. Helmets, for example.

I jumped up on a crate, eliciting a muttering from one of the enlisted men that was about to move it. "Platoon 5 listen up!"  
>They all dropped their conversations and turned to look at me.<p>

"Mission briefing is in thirty minutes and drop is in thirty five, if you want to leave anything in your rooms you're going to have to be quick. I want all of you there on time." I smiled. On time meant at least five minutes early, for them at least. "Squad leaders have to be there five minutes earlier." That meant that they could arrive five minutes after the rest of the men. "Get moving."

Most of the Helljumpers under my command quickly went up towards an elevator that would in turn take them to one of the trams that made transit around the ship faster. I jumped down from the crate and apologized to the sailors before returning to the Pelican to grab my things and maybe have a small chat with Sam.

"You have to vacate Frank," he told me, "we're leaving as soon as we're resupplied."

I lifted my own duffel bag and shouldered my battle rifle. "Damn, back to work already?"

"Sure beats jumping from orbit."

"Nothing beats that," I replied, smiling.

"Heh, maybe you're right," Fightmaster mused.

I shrugged. "Usually am." I walked up to him and shook his hand goodbye. "Good luck out there man, honor your last name."

He laughed and slapped me in the shoulder. "I will. Good luck to you too, you probably need it more than I do."

I smiled and hopped off the rear hatch before settling into a walk for one of the elevators.

Humorously enough, both Grigori and Miranda were waiting for the next elevator together, standing at least a meter apart from each other and not talking. They were staring into the elevator doors. I could feel them tense up when I joined them.

As soon as the elevator doors opened they stepped inside, but I remained behind.

"You're not coming Lieutenant?" Miranda asked.

I shook my head.

She seemed startled but seemed not to mind. Grigori in turn gave me a barely perceptible nod of thanks and acknowledgement. I don't know whether they'd make out inside the elevator or if they'd just enjoy the time by themselves. I thought about Grigori thanking me. We weren't friends by any means yet, but at least I could sacrifice a little bit of time to help him out with a girl and he could recognize that sacrifice.

_Isn't he like twelve years older than her?_

The thought occupied my mind during my entire elevator and subsequent tram trip.

"Frank!" Pavel said once the tram stopped. He was pacing around, probably waiting just for me if his reaction to seeing me was any indication. "I need to tal-"

"Is twelve years a lot of difference between a couple?" I interrupted.

"What?" he asked, taking half a step backwards. "Uh, yeah, I guess. A little past my comfort zone, but that's not important. I need to-why the hell are you asking me that anyways?"

"'Cause Grigori is twelve years older than Miranda."

"Grigori and Novak?" Pavel asked, laughing. "They an…item now?"

"No, of course not," I said instinctively. It was standard procedure to deny that anybody you knew was in a relationship. They could get suspended if one of the IA guys figured it out. Well, only if that particular guy was kind of a dick. "A hypothetical question," I said, smiling.

"I understand," Pavel replied with the same smile. "Well, hypothetically speaking I hope it pans out."

_For her at least. I want a friend to be happy._

"Oh Francisco, you asshole," Schitzo teased.

"What was it you wanted to ask anyways?"

"Oh, right," Pavel started.

"Castillo!"

"Crap," I muttered, recognizing the voice. I turned around and both Pavel and I saluted. I couldn't help but notice that she didn't return the salute. Apparently her hatred expanded to Pavel as well. After all, he had also been part of the team that abandoned her cousin to her death.

"Captain Hayes," Pavel said in a neutral tone.

"Platoons One through Three are dropping in five minutes," she said coolly. "Four will go two minutes after that. Are your men ready?"

"They will be," I said.

"So no?"

"Not at the time, no."

"Have them hurry up Lieutenant." She spat out the last word, making it sound like an insult. "I won't have Jaguar Company die because you messed up."

"If Jaguar's wiped out it won't be because of me," I assured her. It was professional and didn't imply anything against her directly. A very good comeback. "Captain, I must get going."

Hayes nodded slowly and took off, her helmet held firmly under one arm.

I shook my own head as soon as she turned the corner. The woman had gone from relatively friendly if a little bit strict to full bitch mode. Again, I couldn't really blame her; at times I asked myself if Pavel and I could've done anything to help save her cousin back in Aztlan. Most of the time I came to the conclusion that if we had just waited for her for a few more seconds she would still be alive and my life right now would be a lot different.

But people die. Soldiers die. Helljumper die. Her cousin knew what she was getting into and even if I had sped up her death, the blame wasn't all mine. Hayes could've just acted cold towards me, there was no need for her to treat me differently and go against me any time she got.

"Ever wonder where Darbinian ended up?" Pavel asked me when we started walking.

"Lieutenant Asshole?" I asked. "Not really, no."

"You know, sometimes I do," he admitted. "The guy jumped ship on a ODST pod."

"So he's got style. Doesn't take the asshole out."

"Can you picture him as a Helljumper?"

"Now you're just trying to piss me off," I grunted, shoving him against one of the walls. "Dick."

Pavel laughed and shoved me back into the other wall.

My, what would the admiral think, seeing two Helljumpers shoving each other around, one of them an officer. He probably wouldn't be very amused.

Pavel and I walked together to the briefing room. This section of the bottom deck was known colloquially as the Helljumper Deck and for a good reason, not many people came here aside from us. I saw the holographic displays on the top of the walls signaling the first of the jumps. The guys under dos Santos would be jumping in just five minutes. I needed my team to get down here quickly.

"Frank," someone hailed. I turned to see Lieutenant dos Santos in full battle gear sans helmet. He and his platoon were leaving one of the briefing rooms. "About to start the briefing?"

I nodded. "Sounds like a tough one."

"We'll see you on the other side," he told me.

"Good luck."

Domingo smiled and put on his helmet. "We'll need it."

I smiled back at him and walked the rest of the way down to our platoon's assigned briefing room. I was almost stunned to see that everyone in the platoon was here. Well, everyone except for Grigori and Miranda, but that was still a lot of my guys.

"Officer on deck!"

"As you were," I dismissed them. "You're early."

"Gotta admit I'm stunned," Pavel told me.

"Sit down everybody," I said after smiling. "As soon as we-" Miranda walked through the door, with Caboose following her a couple of feet behind. "Well, seems like our lovebirds are here."

There were some chuckles from the guys on the room. They obviously thought I was just giving them a hard time.

"So, you've heard the rumors I take it," I started, approaching my little podium. "The first three platoons are going to be dropping close to our target in order to draw attention and make some heavy noise. Dos Santos and his men are jumping right next to the target and will access it through this gravity lift. It has been active since the Covenant landed here and shouldn't be turned off in light of a few puny humans."

That brought general laughter.

"As soon and dos Santos and 4 are inside we'll jump right on top of the target, drive some heat off of them and…well. Yeah."

There were smiles of anticipation and eagerness all around me. This was going to be a tough one all right, but it was going to be one for the books.

* * *

><p>As we broke through the cloud cover I spotted our target. The 900+ meter long <em>SDV<em>-class Heavy Corvette was imposing with its sleek curves and dark purple paint job. It was bigger than a UNSC frigate, but when you compared it with pretty much anything that flew in outer space it was a lightweight.

My HUD lit up. The ship was outlined in red and the dorsal landing pad glowed brightly before dimming down. That was _our_ target. I did some minor readjustment while carefully examining the area below the corvette. I could see the flames that Hayes and platoons 2 and 3 had caused. They had pushed deep into the enemy camp but as soon as the elites got organized they'd have to pull back. Platoon 4 and dos Santos was nowhere to be seen, that meant that they were either directly underneath the corvette or already making their way up on the gravity lift.

"Aim for the center," I ordered calmly. Despite my tone my eyes almost burst out of my skull when I saw that we were at an altitude of one-point-five kilometers and the ship was-

Bang.**  
><strong>

Ah well, the plating of the landing pad was a lot harder than polycrete or regular rocks, I'll give the covvies that one.

The landing pad on top of the ship suddenly got very noisy. I targeted a pair of elites in pilot gear that were loitering about next to a Seraph fighter. They both raised plasma pistols at me, but their shields were barely strong enough to contain one burst of my rifle each. They went down even as the rest of my platoon just utterly destroyed anything that didn't bleed red. It took just under ten seconds for everything inside to be dead.

"Pavel, have your squad keep watch on that shield wall!" I snapped loudly. "VSF on me!"

I tossed my new holo-disc to the floor and it promptly showed internal schematics of the corvette. "This is the closest thing that ONI's got to blueprints on this ship. Our goal is this right here." The bridge of the ship lit up. "We'll be plowing through anything in between us and the bridge. Sergeant Konstantinov and his men will rig the engine room to blow up and 4 will keep the rest of the complement too busy to attack us."

Several machine guns were fired at the same time. I turned to see two elite rangers falling down, their chests riddled with holes. They had come from underneath the shield floor. No doubt there were quite a few aliens expecting us down there.

"Can you hold this bay?" I asked Pavel.

"Damn right we can," he replied. "Cover those two doors!" he ordered loudly. "The rest of you, eyes on the shield."

"Grigori?"

His squad was already climbing up to the very top of the corvette. Grigori turned to give me a quick nod before he activated his jetpack and flew up with his men.

So, we were good to go. Right before I grabbed my holo-disk from the floor the ship shook.

"That'll be their engines blowing up," Sandor noted happily. "Let's go El-tee."

"Lead on," I said, letting him know he would be point man.

He nodded and glanced at Marv, who just nodded in reply.

"And jump!" I ordered.

All six of us dropped through the shimmering blue shield floor and landed on small bridges that connected one central structure to a surrounding ring. Several grunts without armor and a group of elites with half their armor off were there. The damn critters were ugly, but I'd take them naked over armored every time. And that just sounded like I have a thing for seven-foot tall sauropods.

Marv and Sandor quickly took down the elites with bursts from their assault rifles. Miranda and Hoff took out the only two armored grunts while Livingston sprayed the rest of the unarmored little aliens with her MA5. We had ourselves a sizeable body count by the time the room was cleared.

"Man, I wonder if one day we'll be the ones massacring their civilians," Livingston muttered, as if talking to herself.

"I sure hope so," Sandor admitted.

I found myself huffing in agreement. Nobody else said anything, the phrase 'I hope one day we can kill civilians' wasn't one you wanted to be associated with, but there was no doubt that everyone here would've gladly participated in a Sangheili massacre. Hell, I could see everyone nodding absent mindedly while keeping their weapons up.

"Livington, place those charges in the…structure's power core. If we knock out their communications they'll have trouble calling for reinforcements." I watched as Andrea produced a small explosive charge from her butt-pouch and disappeared down one of the entrances to the communications center. A moment later she excited and I gave her a thumbs-up to detonate the charge.

"El-tee, why is the Recon Squad doing the demo jobs on this mission?" Sandor asked as we positioned ourselves near the door. "Shouldn't Gunny Klaus and his men be doing that."

"Normally they would," I said as Hoff placed a spoofer door-opener on the locked doors. The device's screen displayed an hourglass that quickly emptied. It beeped.

"Door's good to go," Hoff announced. The red lighting turned blue even as he spoke. "All oiled up and ready."

"Did you ever grow up?" Livingston asked him with irritation.

Hoff walked up to his position behind her and tapped her shoulder. "Shut up potty head."

"Breaching," I ordered calmly.

All six of us took a simultaneous step forward and the doors automatically opened. Sandor and Marv were in the front and they opened up full-auto. The pair moved forward, clearing the grunt-filled hallway with ease. The rest of us allowed them to handle the little aliens until we reached the end of the hallway. It was closed off by another door, also locked.

"Hoff," I said.

"Right away," he replied. He ran back to the first door and grabbed the spoofer before running back and placing it on the other door. "Done. Should be ready now." As he said that the lights on the door turned blue and blinked twice.

"Go."

This time the door opened to reveal a hangar. Marv and Sandor, with freshly loaded magazines, opened on the grunts and jackals that were watching the door. Andrea and Hoff moved to the left, climbing up a ramp that led to a control tower-like platform. There was another similar ramp on the right that Miranda and I took.

An elite officer was halfway up, only just beginning to turn to face us. Miranda fired three times to drain the shields and I topped it off with a burst to the chest and neck. The elite fell and two jackal rangers tried firing at us from behind before Miranda took them both out. I rushed ahead and turned to fire at an elite major in full battle armor. It turned and strafed me with his plasma rifle, but either Hoff or Livingston got it from behind.

As soon as that last elite fell we had control of this side of the hangar. The other side still had plenty of Covenant foot soldiers bolstered up by the mechanics and other non-combat personnel. The hangar was housing several elite drop pods on the ceiling as well as a Phantom dropship. The Phantom was right in front of the platform where Hoff and Livingston were firing on the covvies.

"Hoff!" I shouted. "Up you go and man the turret."

I turned to see the jock jump across the gap and land in the cargo bay. He fired a couple of times before I heard the familiar noise of a plasma cannon firing.

"I can pin down all of the covvies on the left," he announced. "Just keep the ones on the right off my head!"

"Sandor and Marv, move up," I ordered. "Livingston, you're with them."

"So El-tee," Miranda started, going prone to minimize her profile. "Do we target the elites?"

"Miri, I seriously think we're past the point where you need to ask that."

"O-of course. Sorry." She sounded a lot more flustered than she should've been.

I laughed. "And I love how you still get so nervous."

"Shut up," Miranda said, no more annoyed than flustered. "Sir."

There were at least two dozen hostiles going against us. Fortunately, most of those weren't combat personnel, but what they lacked for in experience they made up for in firepower.

"Do we just wait for them to run out of battery?" Sandor asked. "I mean, seriously."

I rolled my eyes. I thought that I was supposed to be the chatty one. "Sandor shut up and move up behind that crate."

"Yes, sir."

I felt relatively safe. It was weird because we were rarely under so much plasma fire but right now the shots were going wild. I guess that if I had to compare it to something more commonplace it would be facing a sports team that sucks when compared to you but they can still pull off a comeback.

I did kind of feel like the douchebag rival sports team that won't allow the underdogs to win. But that's beside the point. If these guys couldn't hit an elephant in a hallway I was going to take advantage of that. I took out thee grunts in some weird gear that probably marked them as engineers before Miranda knocked out an elite. Sandor and Marv were also causing some mayhem, easily killing grunts that left cover to fire. Marv was ahead on the body count by a few. Mobuto could sure fight.

"Ryan, they're on your left!" Andrea warned Hoff.

He redirected his fire to gun down two elite rangers and a jackal sharpshooter with the plasma machine gun. I could see the aliens falling as the superheated plasma burned through their shields and bodies. Plasma small arms definitely lacked penetration and stopping power, but they could really mess up a body through sheer heat alone.

I smiled at the smoking corpses before a carbine round nearly punched through my visor.

"Fuck!" I cursed. "Fucker," I added, killing the jackal before it could fire again. "Ok, time to clean this up guys," I announced. "I'm sick of this shit."

"Spoken like a true poet, sir," Sandor laughed.

"Was that Neruda?" Hoff asked, also laughing.

I just about shot both of them in the back. "No, I was quoting your mother right before she took off her shirt," I snapped violently. "Now move the fuck up and keep your mouths shut!"

"Damn," Miranda whispered next to me.

"That was a little bit rough," Scarecrow told me.

"They needed a lesson on respect," Schitzo disagreed.

Neither Hoff or Sandor said anything although they were probably itching to tell me exactly what they thought about me right now. I'd have to casually engage in a sparring match with them in the future to keep them in check and cut off the head of any ideas that they might be having.

_Lead by example my ass, force works just as well._

The hangar was cleared in another five minutes, with a pesky elite that just refused to die holding out against all of us from behind cover. Eventually Livingston tossed a grenade that pushed the crates it was using for cover against it and allowed me to rush it, spraying it while it was stunned on the ground. "Nice work," I told her.

The next hallway was empty and devoid of any aliens. We quickly cleared it and moved up with our weapons raised. All of us had reloaded our guns and were ready for anything that came across us. The doors on the end of the hallway opened up to reveal the plasma battery. There were several elite gunners as well as a small crowd of grunts.

"Frags out!" I ordered.

In perfect synchronization Sandor, Marv, Livingston, and I all tossed fragmentation grenades at the small crowd, still taking us in. The four explosives killed all the unarmored grunts and two of the elite gunners. The rest of the elites immediately ducked to the sides and took cover behind the sturdy firing panels for the turrets. Before I could wonder why the hell a gunner would have a repeater for a personal weapon we were taking fire from the side.

I cursed myself for forgetting that there was a door on the lower section of the battery. A small squad of grunt ultras led by an elite of the same kind had appeared right next to us and opened fire.

"Take cover!" I ordered.

"Fuck!"

Someone was hit, if he could scream and curse then there was no doubt that they were fine. "Supressive fire!" I yelled. "Toss flashbangs!"

Someone, I didn't see who, complied with my order and the familiar noise of the equipment detonating marked the signal for Marv and me to leave cover and fire on our attackers. I quickly targeted the elite while Marv sprayed the grunts. The ultra rolled to the side even though it probably couldn't see anything. I switched targets and helped Marv finish off the grunts.

"Gunner down," Miranda announced form behind.

I turned to nod at her and saw that Hoff was tending to Livingston, smoke drifting up from her helmet.

_Shit._

"Grenade!" Marv yelled.

Both of us rolled in opposite directions as a plasma grenade landed right between us. Miranda jumped backwards and Sandor quickly dragged her behind cover while Hoff positioned himself over Livingston. The explosive detonated and my HUD flickered, courtesy of the pulse the grenade emitted. Marv was up and firing at the same time I was. The ultra decided to attack him instead of me and produced an energy sword seemingly out of nowhere while spraying me with his plasma rifle. I rolled back to avoid the plasma even as Marv kept firing.

I left cover once more to see Marv's weapon click empty just as the elite prepared to lunge. His last bullet must've finished off the shields, because the ultra flared with yellow lightning. Even that wasn't enough. Still, Marvin Mobuto wasn't planning on dying that day, and he neatly sidestepped the elite's lunge before hitting it in the face with the butt of his rifle. Marv wasn't able to completely duck the backhand that the ultra delivered and flew backwards from the hit. The ultra roared in anger, its theatrics actually working to intimidate Marv into shuffling backwards.

I aimed at the elite, finally having a clear shot. Sandor was faster, emptying half his magazine into the alien's face at a range of less than three meters.

"Yeah fuck you too," he said, taunting the corpse.

While Sandor was taunting the corpse and Marv was further getting acquainted with the floor Miranda fired anything still in her DMRs magazine into the remaining elite gunners. The aliens returned fire, but shy as the Helljumper was, she was also one hell of a shot, needing only five rounds to take out each gunner.

"Clear," she announced, taking a deep breath of relief.

"Marv, get up and cover the door," I ordered. "Same goes for you Sandor."

"On it, sir," Sandor acknowledged, helping Marv up and positioning himself behind the firing controls of a plasma turret.

While he did that I approached Hoff and Livingston. The woman was still on the floor, groaning with a burnt helmet. "You all right?" I asked her. "Can you walk?"

"I-I…"

"If you can't I'll send Hoff and Miri to the comm center and bring Sutton here," I told her, referring to our platoon medic. All of us might've had some medical training and Miranda was corpsman certified, but no one could beat Sutton when it came to patching people up. Well, technically speaking Livingston was the squad medic, but right now she found herself a little bit…impaired.

"No need," Livingston replied with some trouble, trying to get up. Hoff had to help her to her feet before she wobbled a little bit and sat back down.

I took off her helmet and examined the extent of her injuries. The skin on the left side of her face had been peeled off and the upper half of her cheek was raw and a little bit charred at the edges of the wound. There wasn't a lot of bleeding, but the left side of her face and neck were still covered with blood. I was afraid that it had been worse. Judging from her helmet I would've guessed that she would lose an ear and maybe part of her scalp.

"You're fine," I told her, allowing myself a small smile of relief. "Some grafts and you won't even have a scar. Miranda?"

Miranda approached from her position, Hoff providing cover for her. "She looks well enough for being shot in the face. Don't you Andrea?"

The injured ODST laughed weakly. Her injury wasn't life threatening, but I had an idea about just how much it hurt right now.

"No medic for you," I told her. "Now brace yourself, 'cause this is going to sting like a bitch."

Miranda quickly handed me a can of biofoam and I gently placed my hand over Livingston's face. I pressed my thumb against her eyelid and made sure that her eyes were closed. If even a little bit of biofoam got into her eyes she wouldn't be able to see for a good fifteen minutes. Her eyes would be the whitest that they had ever been though. With my other hand I gently placed the biofoam can against her injury and nodded to Miranda. Miranda knelt next to me and grabbed both of Livingston's wrists.

"What are-"

Her question was interrupted by a scream of pain. She screamed so loud that I thought that I had done something wrong. I kept pouring the biofoam as Livingston jerked her face away in reflex. She stopped screaming and swallowed her pain, instead allowing herself a few grunts. Miranda released her grip on her arms as soon as it became clear that she wasn't going to try to push me away. I finished with the healing foam and Livingston took a few deep breaths.

"Congrats Andy," I said. "The moment we're out of here I'll pin a purple heart on your chest."

She smiled, the anesthetics on the biofoam already starting to work. "Thanks." Her voice was dripping with sarcasm.

"Frank, what the hell was that?" Pavel came in.

"Nothing," I said. "Livingston got nicked on the face, had to have some foam applied. Things on your end?"

"Rather quiet, there were a couple of attempts to take the landing bay from us, but we have the area tightly guarded."

"Good job," I complimented. "Keep it that way."

Livingston swallowed a pair of painkillers and carefully got up, putting on her helmet again. The burn marks on the side of her helmet would be a nice battle scar for her armor. She nodded at me and cocked the slide of her assault rifle, giving me the all-clear sign.

I walked down to the lower level where the turret controls were and wondered whether I should shoot them. I was about to when two Helljumpers appeared on the exterior of the ship tied to ropes. I recognized one of them as Caboose and waved at him. He waved back and opened a comm line to me.

"How goes it?" I asked.

"We're making progress," Caboose replied. "Several of the point-defense guns are already down for the count." As he said that he and his squad mate, who my HUD now marked as Lance Corporal Jared Reeves, produced small blocks of C-12 explosive and placed it on the base of the huge plasma turrets. "Zepeda is taking potshots at the covvies on the ground."

"At one-point-five clicks altitude?" I asked, disbelieving.

Caboose shrugged and Reeves did the same. "No need to account for drop when you're firing straight down, sir" the lance corporal told me. "If I didn't know him I'd say he's having fun."

Caboose finished placing his charge on the turret and gripped the rope that was holding him in place tightly. "You might want to step back Lieutenant." Having said that both he and Reeves activated their jetpacks, climbing up and disappearing fromsight.

The two charges exploded and destroyed the turrets, denting in the window and producing a loud noise.

"VSF," I said calmly. "On we go."

There was now only one more hallway in between the bridge and us. Fittingly, it was filled with grunts and jackals desperate to stop us from getting there. The jackals caused us some trouble in the confined space, using their shields to form walls. Despite that we pushed through with liberal use of grenades and automatic fire.

We all stopped in front of the final door, a good thirty corpses behind us. "Ready?"

"For whatever comes through that door," Hoff replied.

Suddenly something felt a little bit weird. "Is the-"

"The corvette is moving!" Pavel came in quickly. "They want to suffocate us in space!"

"I thought they took out the ship's engines!" Sandor said.

"Apparently not," Marv replied, his voice slightly angry.

"Double time!" I ordered. "Pavel, Caboose, hold your men a little longer."

The door opened and proved that Hoff was wrong.

Two hunters fired at us at the same time. All of my squad dropped to the floor, only just avoiding the green plasma that would've surely killed us. From the floor we fired at the pair of hunters and pouring out of the death trap that the hallway had become. All of us moved to the left. Several weapon crates would provide cover for us

"Focus on the one on the left!" I yelled loudly. "Use your grenades!"

A few explosions resounded in the large bridge room. I could hear one of the hunters roaring in that particular way of theirs and knew that we had hurt it. Not just pissed it off, but actually hurt it. I left cover and saw that our targeted hunter had half of its back armor damaged. I quickly switched to full-auto and fired my entire magazine into its orange side.

The other hunter fired a round at us and we all scattered away from the explosive. The first hunter, the one that we had shot at had fallen to its knees and both Miranda and Hoff took advantage of its pain to fire at its neck. The incredibly fast 7.62mm bullets had more kinetic energy than my heavier rounds and damaged the worms making up the alien. I don't know if they killed it, but they sure as hell severed the connection from eyes to anything else. One final grenade from Marv killed the hunter.

Now we only had another one to face and we were low on explosives.

"Go for the neck!" I said.

It seemed weird that the elites in the bridge hadn't attacked us yet; they were all very busy in front of their control consoles.

The second hunter didn't have any console to attend to, it just had us. I ran sideways to avoid another blast that seemed to be directed to me in particular. Livingston took the opportunity to fire at its head and neck. Even then most of her bullets bounced off the blue armor.

As the hunter redirected its attention to Livingston Sandor closed in on its beyond what I would've considered a safe distance and emptied his mag into the hunter's back. He quickly jumped back as the hunter attempted to squash him to the floor with his shields. This maneuver allowed Marvin to do the same thing to the hunter, firing at its exposed back and rolling away from the green explosive.

Hoff and Miranda saw themselves forced to take out one of the elites that decided to help the hunter.

"Hoff, Miri!" I yelled. "Link to the console and get what we came for! We can handle this fucker!"

I might've been wrong though. I had to run more to avoid another stream of green plasma. The explosion behind me knocked me off my feet and I slammed into a weapons crate, knocking it sideways. "Fuck…"

I heard gunfire and more plasma explosions as I got up, but that wasn't what drew my attention. I found myself staring at a sleek pink weapon. I had seen one of this a long time ago and ordered one of my guys to grab it and give it to ONI for investigation. It was strange enough that the sight of it made me raise one of my eyebrows. The concussion rifle seemed to be winking back at me, daring me to grab it.

I might've had my reservations about using Covenant weaponry if I could avoid it, but right now I wasn't about to turn this opportunity away. I grabbed the grenade launcher, remembering that it only head six explosives, and aimed.

The first three all hit the hunter's cannon. I'd like to say that I was hoping to hit it there, but it turned at the last second, preventing me from hitting it in the neck. The following three shots all hit its left leg, blowing it off. The rounds that hit the cannon damaged something, because its entire right arm was blown apart as the plasma fueling its weapon overheated and blew up.

Still the hunter did not die.

Sandor and Marv, both with freshly reloaded rifles calmly walked up to the injured hunter, firing as they went. The hunter received all the bullets right in its unprotected orange areas and struggled to stay afoot before it collapsed, dead.

Miranda and Hoff had taken out two other elites, leaving only the shipmaster to face us. They were kneeling next to a device that an ONI guy had given us just for this mission. It was supposed to extract and decrypt Covenant information but had to be in direct contact with it.

"Surround it," I ordered. It was one against six and if we captured it we would all get a very large bonus.

The four of us that weren't busy approached it. I aimed at it with my BR55, discarding the empty concussion rifle. The huge elite had one sword drawn and its back was against the wall. We made a semi-circle around it.

"Put the sword down," I said calmly.

The shipmaster instead drew another one and roared in anger at me. "You will die for this, vermin!" it spat in broken English.

"I'm not going to say it again hingehead," I told it. "Drop. The. Sword."

The shipmaster growled, but its expression switched from one of anger and pure wrath to one of confusion. I realized that it had spotted Hoff and Miranda as well as their little device. I allowed myself to turn and look at them before meeting the shipmaster's eyes again. Its jaws curved to form what was surely its equivalent of a smile.

"Kill it!" I yelled.

The elite didn't care, it just turned and sank both of its swords into the control panel as fire from four different automatic weapons hit its shields in the back. The ship's lights flickered. That wasn't what worried me; the entire corvette lurched and shook sideways. Had the platoons in the ground done their job right we could've avoided all of this.**  
><strong>

Mr. Shipmaster turned to face its glorious death and found its shields failing and its armor useless against the amount of lead and depleted uranium we poured into it. It fell to the floor and twitched.

"You will die," it calmly reaffirmed, looking directly at me as I walked up to it.

"Fuck you," I replied, firing one final burst into its face.

Suddenly all the lights turned off. The ship lurched once more and I knew something was terribly wrong. I could see the surface of the planet from the windows, but it slowly started gaining a different angle.

"Frank what the fuck did you just do?" Pavel asked me angrily.

"Jump!" I ordered. "Everybody off the ship!"

The elites had managed to get the ship to an altitude of eighteen kilometers or about 60,000 feet in their attempt to escape.

And now the corvette was plummeting back to LV-426.

Crates and corpses started shuffling to the side of the ship as it lost its balance relative to the planet.

"Run!" Miranda said.

I found myself chasing after my men through the bridge and picking up the abandoned device, securing it in the magnetic plates right above my butt-pouch and below the jetpack that had been issued to me for the mission. The corpses of the grunts and jackals gave me some trouble, and I found myself tripping over them, using my hands to support myself. I quickly holstered my rifle on my back and tried running.

Suddenly I found myself falling towards the direction I had been headed as the corvette's heavy rear pulled it towards the surface. The ship then rolled on its longest axis before settling on an upside down fall. We hadn't really been battered up by the sudden change of scenery, but running on the roof did disorient me a little bit. We emerged from the hallway and into the plasma battery. The corvette spun again and I found myself running on the large windows. Miranda helped Hoff back to his feet right in front of me. Marvin pulled Sandor and Livingston over through the wall and into the next hallway as I jumped behind them.

"Miranda!" I yelled. "How much did we get?"

"What?!" she asked, obviously confused and scared and running for her life.

"Hoff?"

"Not much," he said in a tone that obviously wished I would shut up. "Connection was severed when it stabbed the computer."

_Who the fuck makes a ship that fails when its main computer does?_ I cursed.

"Beats me El-tee," Marv replied to the question I thought had gone unasked.

"There's the hangar!" Sandor yelled.

As we emerged into the huge room the Phantom that had been clamped to its crane came free and slammed into the roof before another spin of the ship sent it tumbling out of the shields that kept the air in and the vacuum out. It disappeared from sight as the corvette kept turning, sending crates and equipment in all directions.

"Out! Out! Out!" I yelled, using a combination of hands, feet, and jetpack to make progress towards the shield wall.

I managed to hold on the edge of the floor, gravity dragging me down towards the other direction. Marvin and Hoff both shot out of the ship with their jetpacks leaving smoke behind them. Sandor climbed out and jumped even as Miranda let herself fall down and out the other end of the ship. I thought that she was going to hit something on her way down, but her gamble paid off. Livingston jumped up towards me and I grabbed her hand, dragging her up and unceremoniously tossing her out of the ship.

I climbed up, climbing out the shield and standing in the outside of the ship, suddenly realizing the absurdity of the situation. A spin sent me tumbling towards the secondary hull of the corvette. I quickly activated my jetpack, sending me flying sideways and avoiding the section of the ship by what seemed to be a couple of feet. I rolled and spun until I remembered my training and settled into a controlled fall, arms and legs spread out.

"Reap-" I started. "Platoon Five come in!"

"We're good!" Pavel announced in a strained voice. "I'm a Helljumper, not a Ranger goddamnit!"

"Recon's all out," Caboose said. For once his dull voice sounded somewhat out of balance.

I sighed with relief. "VSF?"

"We're all good El-tee," Miranda came in. "Although you might want to speed up!"

I turned my neck to see that the kilometer long corvette hadn't magically disappeared. It was still falling down and somehow managed to stay above me.

"Race you to the ground?" Schitzo suggested from next to me. He was wearing Ranger armor. For some reason that pissed me off.

I switched positions and pressed my legs together and my arms against my body. The roar of the air increased and my helmet shook. The ship had more mass than I did, but I didn't know anything about its density. I activated my jetpack wondering how this scene would've looked from the side. A single man trying to outrace a spaceship to the ground.

I suddenly started hurtling towards the ground a lit faster than I would've liked, slowly turning to the side and away from the _SDV_-class corvette that seemed to want to eat me. At an altitude of about two kilometers I finally managed to get out of the way of the corvette. I turned off my jetpack and watched as the ship slammed to the ground, lifting a couple of tons of dirt and making a huge crater. A couple of minor explosions raked its hull, but by some miracle its engines didn't overload.

The floor started approaching rapidly again and I used my jetpack to control my fall and head towards the rest of Jaguar Company.

"Ho-lee fuck," Sandor said on the platoon channel, echoing everybody's feelings at the moment.

* * *

><p><em>Thanks to SilasWhitfield for proofreading this chapter.<em>

_And Happy New Year to all! I had some very restful vacations, spent doing pretty much nothing other than sunbathing, sleeping, surfing, and writing of course. The awesome thing is that I still get another week before school actually starts. Can I get a fuck yeah?_

_There's Chapter 156, hope you enjoyed it. I was thinking that it was about time that something ridiculous and that would look awesome on a movie happened to Frank and Co. again. Hence the falling Covenant corvette trying to pin Frank to the ground. It's pretty amazing when you imagine it all in your head which as much detail as possible. The rest of the chapter included Frank being an asshole, the medic getting shot, and more of the usual shenanigans. All in all, I think that this was a rather nice callback to the old Reaper-era chapters_

_I promised to post more than one chapter when I return and I will. Next chapter will be up tomorrow morning, Mexico City time._

_**HodgePodge97**:I'm glad you decided to read this, when you get to this chapter please tell me what you think so far.  
><em>

_**AlysBrangwin**: I had something similar in mind. Your title is so much better than mine though.  
><em>

_**Colonel-Commissar2468**: You know, I don't usually picture a face when I write him. I've said a couple of times that he has light brown hair and light brown eyes, but haven't really elaborated other than on the fact that he's tall, ha a bunch of scars, and has the body that I would like to have. I guess that he looks however you picture him at the moment. Damn, I might have to fix that.  
><em>

_To reviewer _**_Guest_** _from Chapter 85: '_radio'_ is a noun that can be both feminine and masculine. In Mexico, nobody refers to it as '_la radio'_ always using the masculine form. I believe that both forms are accepted by the Real Academia Española. I realize that this reply might seem a little bit angry, and honestly your review annoyed me at the time I read it, but I'm mainly writing this for future reference. When I write in Spanish it will always be in the Mexican variation of the language._

_Wow, sorry to everybody else that doesn't actually care or speak Spanish. Thanks to all of you for reading and for the good vacations/christmas/new year wishes. I hope you had good ones too._

_Remember, your opinions and views on the chapter are always appreciated._

_Stay strong._

_-casquis_

_PS. Hope the quote wasn't much of a spoiler to those of you familiar with it._


	157. Backdoor's Open

Chapter CLVII: Backdoor's Open

**March 3, 2548 (UNSC Calendar)/**

**Mirn Province, LV-426, Zeta Reticuli System**

* * *

><p><em>"Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake."– <em>_Napoleon Bonaparte_

* * *

><p>My squad aimed for a small clearing, perhaps fifty meters long and ten wide. It was very flat and had no large rocks anywhere visible. I'd like to say that we landed in a very coordinated fashion and immediately brought our weapons up, but we weren't Rangers. I was proud of that fact and I considered every single one of my men to be a lot better than any Ranger save for maybe Nezarian. This time unfortunately, I wished that we had shared a particular part of their training.<p>

I landed a little bit harder than I had intended and felt my legs shake under the impact. Fortunately for me, the ground was soft and the added cushion of the grass helped mitigate the impact somewhat. I rolled forward in order to absorb the strength of the impact and realized that I had been going too fast for that. I came out of my front roll and ended up having to jump again, this time slamming into the floor and skidding through the mud for a couple of feet.

"And he nails the landing!" Schitzo yelled loudly. I half expected a crowd to cheer in the background.

I turned on my side to see Miranda struggle to stay afoot, running forward as fast as she could in order to avoid falling down on her face. Like me, she had been moving forward too fast, unconsciously thinking herself a plane as opposed to a VTOL. She failed and fell to the muddy ground as well. Livingston and Sandor both managed to do belly flops and slide a few meters before stopping down. Hoff was the worst of us, hitting one of the treetops with his legs and doing half a flip before turning on his jetpack and flying parallel to the ground, he pulled up before turning off his jetpack, falling back down from an altitude of three meters.

Marv landed on his feet and took a couple of quick steps forward to get rid of the momentum. That left him with muddy soles and us with muddy visors.

I felt like throwing a rock at him.

"Simply flawless team," I complimented everyone. "Next time we'll definitely record this." I groaned in an exaggerated fashion as I dragged myself back to my feet. "No doubt they'll put this video in manuals."

"No need to shame us further Lieutenant," Miranda said finally when it became clear no one else would speak. It made sense that she would be the one to speak, seeing as she had served under my command for the longest amount of time. It didn't make any sense for her to still be nervous about it. For some reason it annoyed me.

"Pavel, what's your position?"

"Two-seventy meters to your northeast. Blinking on my beacon once."

I saw the blink on my HUD marking my best friend before it disappeared once more. The Covenant could see that if they looked hard enough. "Good. Caboose?"

"Already en route to your position," he replied. "Emerging from forest now."

I looked around until I spotted our Recon Squad coming up. They looked to be in overall better shape than us, but that might be because they had had the time to wipe off the mud from their armor. Caboose nodded at me and ordered his men back into the forest in order to get air cover.

"Join up," I ordered. "Pavel, have your squad meet us at Rally Point Yankee."

"Yankee? I didn't know we had that many rally points," Pavel replied. "We certainly didn't before we had an AI."

"Sounds about right," I acknowledged in reply. "We'll meet there and join up with the rest of the company later." I paused and carefully considered everything that had transcribed in the past few minutes. "Any word on dos Santos and his unit?"

"They jumped ship as soon as it started moving up," Pavel said. "That much I heard, his platoon probably had some trouble getting out. Likely took some casualties too."

I shook my head. "Nothing we can do about it," I shrugged him off. "Let's get moving, this area will be swarming with air recon in a few minutes."

Immediately after meeting up with Pavel and his Heavy Weapons Squad we changed our bearings slightly to meet up at the designated fall back point. I was right to stay below the cover of the trees, a trio of Phantoms escorted by five Banshee ground-support craft passed almost directly above us but failed to spot us.

"Hate those things," Hoff admitted.

"Phantoms or Banshees?" Sandor asked.

"Banshees," he replied. "Hate the noise they make."

"At least they fit the name, eh?"

Marv was quiet, he seemed tired. Livingston wasn't speaking much either, but then again, she had just been shot on the side of the face. She had refused medical attention from Sutton or Reeves, insisting that she could handle the burn until we got to safety. Miranda seemed to be as always, moving with shoulders ever so slightly hunched and somehow managing to appear meek even behind the intimidating ODST armor.

I shook my head and sighed. It was a miracle that we had gotten out of this one alive.

A few conversations started here and there throughout the platoon, but they quickly died when everyone realized that nobody else really wanted to talk at the moment. We were still behind enemy lines and away from any support.

"Hold up," I said, seeing something in the distance. "Zepeda, what is it?"

The platoon sniper didn't reply immediately, instead he took a couple of steps back before standing behind a sturdy pine tree. "Something's off."

I examined the map of the area that I had stored on my HUD. "Everyone blink their IFFs on my mark. Mark."

Twenty blue lights erupted around me before disappearing. I waited a few seconds, praying that whatever Private Zepeda had considered to be wrong wasn't a well-planned Covenant ambush. Five seconds passed before twenty-two blue lights appeared in the area in front of us, clearly positioned to attack us from the sides and front. I smiled when I recognized the names of some of them. It was dos Santos and his platoon. The smile disappeared form my face when I realized that Four was supposed to have twenty-four men.

"Relax, it's Four," I announced the obvious to my men and women. "Move up."

I walked at the front, with my squad directly behind me and the other two flanking me at a distance of ten meters.

Lieutenant Domingo dos Santos appeared from behind a thick shrub and waved at me. "Hail sire!" he said.

I pressed my fist against my chest and bowed in mock greeting. "Domingo," I said, depolarizing my visor and giving him a smile. "It's great to see you."

The small man smiled back and offered me his hand. I shook it and pressed my shoulder against his; giving him a pair of pats on the back while he did the same. "Your men?"

"When we jumped we were surrounded on all sides, for a moment we were overwhelmed."

I nodded understandingly, just as Pavel had figured. "They died bravely then. Their families have every right to be proud of them."  
>Domingo returned the nod with a grim expression. "They do. And all of you have every right to be proud of yourselves as well!"<p>

A few of the men and women from Four and Five gave oorahs in reply but most seemed too exhausted to do even that. Still, I could see everyone near me smile behind their now-transparent visors.

"We did a good job," I agreed. "But it still isn't over."

"We were going to head to the company fall back point," Domingo told me. "Until we spotted your movement, that is."

"Same," I told him. "One platoon in the front and one in the rear?"

"I was thinking two squads on the front and sides and one on the rear," Domingo replied.

I nodded, it did sound slightly more military than my own suggestion. "All right, let's get moving then."

"Let's get moving," Domingo echoed.

* * *

><p>The rain had only made our journey worse. It was cold enough on this latitude that I wouldn't be surprised if it suddenly started snowing. I remember seeing on one of Bee's movies that rain mixed with snow was a bad omen. Now, I wasn't one to believe in those silly superstitions, but I'd prefer if it didn't happen regardless. I saw that many of my ODSTs had their chins tucked to their chest on instinct, as if the rain could get in their eyes through their helmets. It couldn't. What it could do was wet the undersuits and in turn your skin. You could turn on the heat in the climate control functions, but now you'd just have warm water on you.<p>

"I see them," Zepeda, our scout, announced. "They're here."

I smiled and sighed with relief. "Announce our presence," I told him. "Everyone else hold your positions."

I saw dos Santos relaying the same orders to his platoon and our formation stopped completely for a minute before the rest of Jaguar Company acknowledged our presence and ordered us to meet with them. Zepeda's helmet camera was aimed at the small flat-topped hill that the other three platoons under Captain Hayes were. I couldn't see many details in account of the crappy camera and crappier weather, but they were there and our situation had just gotten a lot less precarious.

Friends hugged and offered each other complimentary butt slaps. That prompted a few shoves and more than a couple of complaints, especially from female ODSTs that didn't particularly like being treated like one of the guys. After all, a lady is a lady. Even if said lady carries a 7.62mm MA5-series assault rifle and can nail a target at one hundred yards without skipping a beat.

"Sarge!" Bumblebee called out. "Sorry…erm, Lieutenant."

"Bee," I replied, ignoring his slipup. "Everything good?"

He smiled again and shook my hand vigorously. He seemed glad that I was alive, and that made me feel good for some reason. "After we saw that ship taking off and we lost connection I gotta admit that I was a little worried," he said in his strong Scottish accent. "Then Four had some trouble getting out…"

"But we're fine," I assured him. "I'll have to show you the video some time."

"No doubt a spectacle, eh?" he said. "Oi, Snark!"

I turned to see my former sniper jog up to us without his helmet and with his extremely long SRS held in front of him. "El-tee! Glad to see you made it in one piece," he said, also smiling. "Who brought down the corvette?"

"The shipmaster," I admitted, "but I think that we had enough of a participation to be warranted a percentage of the kill."

"Sorry Sar-Lieutenant," Snark shook his head. "Rules are rules. If you didn't kill the ship personally it doesn't add up to your kill count."

This time I grinned. "I was wondering when you'd try to pull that one on me."

"At least now he knows what it feels like," another familiar voice said from behind me.

"Api, good to see you," I greeted the tattooed Helljumper. I noticed that both Serge and Beckel were standing next to him. "Beckel, Serge, pleasure."

"Likewise, sir," Beckel replied with a smile.

Serge acknowledged me with a small nod before moving up to Caboose and having one of those almost wordless conversations that the two old veterans often shared. Every one of us stared at them for a while before returning our attention to each other.

"So what happened on your end?" I asked.

Snark was the highest-ranking man here so he explained. "We didn't have much trouble, inflicted some minor casualties on the covvies before shooting down the corvette's engines."

"Not all of them apparently," I muttered. "Or maybe you just turned them off."

"Through explosion?" Bee asked. "I wish things were that easy."

"Hey, explosions do tend to solve everything, don't they?" Beckel said, smiling.

The terrible joke brought some laughter. It was the kind of laughter that came from men that had been to close to dying only hours ago. I knew that it felt like we had won and deserved some rest, but the next order of business was to get back behind UNSC lines, and something told me that we weren't going to get Pelican evac.

"I'll leave you…_enlisted_," I said, making the word sound as if it disgusted me, "to your business, no doubt Captain Hayes wants to see me and Dom."

"We who are about to die salute you," Bee said, saluting smartly.

"I should be saluting you," I whispered loud enough for them to hear. They chuckled at that, they were all well aware of the state of affairs in between the company's commanding officer and myself.

I took off my helmet despite the slight drizzle that refused to let up. It was an unspoken tradition that when officers met during almost-combat situations they'd talk face to face. I don't know why it had started, but I liked it.

"Captain Hayes," I greeted with a slight smile on my face. After all, I was allowed to smile after the stunt that my platoon had just pulled off.

"You might want to hold that smile in Castillo," Hayes said dismissively, "we're not safe yet."

I saw Lieutenant Jen Weller nodding in agreement to my side. Both Desjani and dos Santos kept neutral expressions.

"Of course, sir," I replied. "What are our orders?"

"If you'd just let me get to that, I'd tell you," Hayes said in a tone that was almost a growl. "Our actions have removed one enemy warship from the battle and accordingly weakened the enemy frontline. The Covenant units that had kept themselves supplied by the destroyed corvette now find themselves without that luxury and on our home turf."

I saw dos Santos smile at that and allowed my lips to curve upwards slightly as well. Even the stoic Weller seemed to enjoy the idea of being able to hit one part of the enemy frontline hard.

"That particular section of the line is being held back by members of Battalion One from the _Flawless_ and some additional units from the _Navarone._ They are so far doing an excellent job at holding the line, and without any supplies the Covenant should collapse quickly." She paused for breath. "We are going to speed up that process."

"Oorah," dos Santos said.

Hayes acknowledged him with a nod and went on. "If a large section of their line fell it could mean that rear-echelon units would be able to step through the gap and envelop the enemy units from the sides. Ideally we'd knock out a large percentage of their forces on the area."  
>That in turn meant that we could hold on to this rock just a little bit longer. If we did that, the support fleet that was supposed to be coming in our aid could even the odds against the Covenant ships up there. That in turn could make this shitstorm into a salvageable victory, both military and political. And it all depended on how fast and hard we could hit their ground forces. If it all went according to plan we would be leaving behind a wrecked colony, but there would still be humans on it.<p>

"Jaguar Company will work as one unit for this one," Hayes stated. "With the exception of a specialized unit that's being created for the duration of the mission. Sergeant Avninder will take your platoon snipers and provide recon intelligence and support once the attack starts. This unit, the Scout Sniper Squad, or SSS for short, will work independently from us."

Snark leading a platoon of crack snipers? Now that was something for the covvies to fear.

Hayes went on. "Rest of the battle plan should be pretty standard. Two platoons will leapfrog the other two with one providing support wherever it's needed."  
>I had an idea of which platoon wouldn't get any rest.<p>

Hayes didn't seem to notice my slight eye-roll, instead keeping her briefing with that annoyingly sexy voice of hers. "The HW Squad on Platoon Five will remain at the center of rear and front platoons providing machine gun and heavy weapon support."

"That's the gist of it," Yas said, speaking up for the first time. "We'll go over the details right before the battle. We move out in twenty, tell your men."  
>We saluted.<p>

"Dismissed," Yas said. "Oh, and Frank, tell your men that they did a good job."

I smiled at his praise even despite Hayes' scowl. Yas' relationship with me had come a long way since that time we first met. I thought he was going to be a dick and no doubt he expected the same of me. I'd been more wrong than him, of course, but a friend's a friend.

"Thanks Yas," I said, calling him by his nickname. "Your praise is hard earned."

Yas smiled at that.

"Captain," I said to Hayes one more time before walking back to my unit.

Unfortunately for us officers, all of our companies had scrambled up as friends talked to one another and told each other the most recent stories. No doubt that in future retellings some of those stories would lose a little bit of their veracity and gain an amount of grandiose when they were being told. After all, you only got better at telling a story if you told it many times. You should've heard me talk about that time I clothes-lined an elite with a baseball-bat sized spike grenade.

Man, was that great.

"Five!" I yelled loudly, putting my helmet back on. "Five," I repeated. "Squad leaders on me, everyone else group up."

The moment Caboose and Pavel were with me I started explaining the plan. "We'll make a wedge and meet up with Battalion One. From there I can only assume that we'll be allowed some rest."

"My squad will remain in the center for the duration of the operation?" Pavel asked.

"So far that's the plan," I nodded. "As you know-"

"Subject to change, got it."

It occurred to me that not very many officers would've let one of their subordinates cut them off in such an abrupt manner without attempting to remind them of their position.

"Caboose, your unit is supposed to function in concordance with the rest of us, but again, you might be sent off earlier to cause some mayhem."

He nodded. "We'll handle it."

"I know you will. And please tell Private Zepeda that he'll have to work with the rest of the company snipers. I take it he won't have trouble with that order."

"Not in the least," Caboose said.

"That's all," I said. "Inform your men."

They both gave me very lazy 'sir's of acknowledgment and moved back to their respective squads while I returned to mine to give them the same briefing.

Seventeen minutes later we had all filled our pouches with grenades and ammunition dropped from low orbit by an Albatross dropship. The pilots of the ship had spray-painted us a thumbs-up on one of the canisters accompanies by a good luck wish. I'd have to see about buying those guys a beer.

"Jaguar!" Hayes came in through the company-wide channel. "Let's get moving. There's some covvie ass-kicking about to start and we don't want to be late."  
>Take away the bitchy and borderline unprofessional attitude that she seemed to reserve only for me and Tahlia Hayes was a model ODST officer.<p>

* * *

><p>For numbering one hundred fourteen men Jaguar Company moved quickly and rather stealthily. The dense forest covering this region of the planet certainly helped. LV-426 was lucky to have two small and mineral rich satellites orbiting it while being relatively barren itself. That meant that the planet got to keep its ecosystem and it could easily mine the satellites.<p>

Caboose and his squad moved up ahead, scouting the ground before us and then giving us warnings. We managed to avoid a pair of exceptionally large patrols and ambush a few smaller ones. Hell, Yas and a few of his men rigged a pair of Wraiths to blow after killing the elites that were supposed to crew them.

"We see it," Caboose came in with a dull tone. "The back of their frontline."

The ground in front of me sloped up sharply. It wasn't steep enough for us to need to use our hands to climb, but it sure brought the hurt to my calves and thighs. I knew from my minimap that Caboose and Recon were over the side of the hill. Topographical maps showed a wide valley and then a ridge-like formation of spiky hills. The brave men and women of Battalion One and the Marines from the _Naverone_ manned those hills. They were all that stood in between the large Covenant ground forces and any civilians still remaining on the planet.

"Time for action Jaguar," Hayes said immediately after she confirmed the sighting. "Platoon snipers are under Sergeant Avninder, fall in on him."

"Satellite imagery shows a beautiful crag that'll give us a good vantage point on most of the valley," Snark said. "We'll make it hard for them."

"Then hurry up," Hayes retorted. "Platoons One and Three are going to lead the attack at first, Two and Four are behind."

"HW Squad," I called out. "Move up behind Captain Hayes and Lieutenant Weller."

Pavel and his squad packed up their heavy weaponry and huddled towards the line that Platoons One and Three were already forming. To my left I could see Zepeda heading out to meet up with the rest of the green dots marked as friendly snipers. Snark and the others would make life hell for any high-ranking Covenant officers.

"Castillo, call your men back and form up behind us," Hayes ordered in a sharp voice. "You know what you're supposed to do."

I nodded as I recalled Recon Squad. "We'll provide support Captain," I assured Hayes. Some of the ODSTs in the unit might've noticed that my voice carried a little bit more than the usual cockiness present in all of us Helljumpers, instead it sounded almost like I was taunting her for needing my support.

_Shit, watch it Frank._

Despite my tone Hayes didn't reply. She probably didn't want a confrontation in full view of her men, men who were supposed to trust her to be calm and levelheaded. Men who were supposed to follow her to their deaths if she so ordered.

No, she preferred for me to be the asshole.

"All units green?" Captain Hayes asked after we were all formed up.

"Two's green," Yas said.

"So's Three," Weller said.

"And Four," Domingo said.

I rolled my head, cracking my neck. "Five's ready and good to go."

"Machine gun unit is green," Pavel said.

"And SSS is all good," Snark said, elongating the two last words. I could picture him clearly, aiming down his scope and zooming in on the elite with the fanciest headdress.

Once on the top of the hill I could see the valley. Trees and thick foliage still covered this hill and the slopes down to the valley, but from that point on the forest became thinner and thinner until it completely disappeared. The first half of the valley was completely occupied by Covenant forces. Buildings and vehicles were parked in the artillery-pounded mud. The second half of it was instead filled with trenches, craters, and the husks of wrecked vehicles, both human and Covenant. I could see a few instacrete bunkers on the far side of the valley, a few of them were even firing sporadically at the covvies. Despite the alarming amount of Marines and Covenant the battlefield was still relatively quiet.

But that was about to change.

A couple of lines scrolled through my HUD. "Battalion One has been notified of our position," I told my men. "They'll start the attack as soon as we give them the go sign. After that…"

"After that we kick some ass!" Sandor said loudly.

"After that we kick some ass," Hoff agreed.

Livingston paused next to me to examine the view. We couldn't see everything, but the space in between two pine trees allowed us to see a large section of the valley. "Fun," she said, groaning afterwards.

Marv chuckled at that.

"Remember the rules," I said, glancing at the two squads that would be directly under my command for this op. "We get called in for support and we go there. Simple as that."

Everything was clear to everybody, I was just trying to ease some of the nerves I was feeling. With time I could get over someone under my command dying, hell, sometimes I didn't even need that much time to forget all about it. But if I screwed up now a whole lot of good men and women could die, and I wouldn't be able to live with that.

The few Covenant patrols that we encountered on the downhill slope were composed only of grunts and jackals. One and Three took them all out quickly and silently. It didn't seem likely that they could've sent out any alarms with knives in their throats, but it put the rest of us on edge.

"We're in position," Hayes said finally, communicating with whomever was commanding the Marines on the other side of the valley.

I didn't hear what reply she got, but I did see the barrage of artillery hit the edge of the Covenant encampment. The explosions lifted dust, dirt, mud, and the occasional limb. The covvies weren't particularly surprised, they were probably used to this kind of attacks.

The sight reminded me of a war flick I had seen about the Battle of the Somme. Half a millennium later we were still using the same shock tactics. Honestly, I think that we were past the point where we should be using laser blasters.**  
><strong>

"Where mah lasers at?!" Schitzo complained. This time he was dressed in a white full-body armor from one of Bee's 20th century sci-fi flicks.

"Lighting up our projected route," Hayes came in. "We'll follow the rise, it should give us cover from the sides."

Calling it a rise was being nice. The small section of the valley that was higher than its surroundings was only about twenty feet taller than everything else. Fortunately for us, it was rather steep, forming an elongated mesa of sorts. Under any other situation it was tactically useless, for us it was the difference between life and death.

"Lighting up targets," Snark came in. "We have all visible officers tagged and the higher ranking elites won't live much longer. Just waiting on you, sir."

"Execute," Captain Hayes ordered, her voice carrying more than a small amount of satisfaction in it.

The five cracks of the SRS-99s werenot deafening, neither were theyparticularly loud at this distance. They were, however, extremely pleasant to hear. Half a second later the five snipers fired again at pre-designated targets. After that they seemed to lose coordination and instead I could hear them firing at random intervals.

The Covenant troops farther back to the rear were the first to react to the gunfire. They were, after all, the ones closest to the source. It was a shame that they hadn't seen us then, because it was at that time that Hayes ordered the two lead platoons to open fire. Forty-eight ODSTs complied happily and pummeled the aliens.

"Snark," I said. "I want you to tell me everything you see. Everything important." At that moment I didn't care if I overstepped my bounds ordering someone from a different platoon, but judging from our numerical disadvantage I was hoping to get all the help I could get.

"Sure thing El-tee," he replied calmly, surely searching for his next victim.

One loud gunshot.

And he found it.

A second later I found my own.

Whoever was in charge back here reacted quickly, forming up the little grunts under his command in between the two troop barracks nearest to us. Despite the quick reaction we still overwhelmed them through superior numbers and firepower. The grunts fired wildly, still trying to pinpoint our exact positions. I took out a pair of grunts carrying plasma pistols just as Hayes ordered two of her four squads to slide down the small raise to protect our flank. Weller did the same with her platoon and they pushed forward.

Pavel's squad started hitting large concentrations of enemy troops without any discretion, hitting anything and everything that could be hiding aliens. They had an extra-large ammo load and that was bound to help us during this mission. I could hear the sniper fire in one corner of my mind, probably taking out elites in golden armor or fancy headdresses. _That_ was probably to draw the most violent retaliation.

"Covenant artillery is firing back on Marine positions," Snark came in. "They still don't deem us a threat."

"Be sure to change that," I told him, forgetting that I wasn't his CO. "Try taking out those artillery crews."

"Wilco, Lieutenant," Snark replied. "Zepeda, Yumiko, you heard the-" I closed the line to avoid any more distractions.

"Elite squad," someone warned. "Hit them hard!"

On the other end of the battlefield someone else called for fire discipline and Hayes made sure to keep barking out orders.

For the first fifteen minutes of battle we stood in the back, firing occasionally at targets of opportunity but for the most part remaining quiet and ready to rush to support any unit that needed our help.

"Lieutenant Castillo!" Corporal Kenneth Royce called. "We've got cloaked units firing on our position;they hit the sergeant, requesting immediate support!"

"On the way," I replied immediately. It had been a while since I had last interacted with Royce and I couldn't help but notice that he was still a corporal. No doubt the UNSC was delaying promotions as much as possible in order to keep men and women in the Armed Forces for the longest possible amount of time.

"Hoff and Novak, switch to thermal and see if you can pinpoint those cloaked elites. Take them out the moment you see them."

"Yes, sir," they replied unanimously.

I looked at Caboose's squad and quickly identified the two men with long-range weapons. Lance Corporal Niles Atkins and Private Anurak Montri both had BR55s.

"Atkins, Montri, same orders for you two. Stay on the raise."

The rest of Caboose's and my squad moved down and joined with Royce and his squad. Out of the two squads covering our left flank his had been hit the hardest. His sergeant had been hit in the chest and was critical but could probably be stabilized and saved. Another soldier had been hit through the visor with either a carbine or a needle and wouldn't be getting back up no matter how hard we tried.

I jumped behind cover and spotted a blur that I quickly fired at. The silhouette of an elite became barely visible before one of my marksmen took it out with three rounds. I ignored the falling corpse and sprayed at another blur of movement.

"Frag out!"

"Over there! On our right!"

I looked around before a burst of plasma made me jerk my head behind cover.

"Jackal lance moving up through the center!"

"Hit them with grenades!" Royce ordered. "Don't let them get close to us!"

The explosions that followed killed half of the jackals. The rest were quickly wiped out with automatic gunfire. I personally took out one of the jackals, hitting it square in the chest.

"Lieutenant, there are two watchtowers activating to your…ten o'clock," Snark warned. "And they're up now."

I moved to the other side of my cover and saw the two sniper platforms only just finishing to raise above the other Covenant buildings, gravity lifts keeping them up.

I fired at the grunt manning the plasma turret and watched it tumble over the edge. The jackal sharpshooter on the same platform fired one quick shot at me before I zeroed in and killed it.

I winced as the carbine round nicked my shoulder, right in between the pauldron and the rest of the chest armor. My helmet didn't let me see the wound, but my HUD told me that my suit had been breached and that my injury was minor.

"At least it won't leave a scar," Schitzo said positively.

The other watchtower was still a threat though. The gunner opened up on the area where I had left Hoff, Miranda, Anurak, and Montri.

"Snark?"

As per usual, his reply came in the form of a 14.5x114mm APFSDS round. Probably a little bit of an overkill for a grunt. Or any organic target short of an elephant for that matter, but it got the job done.

"Thanks," I said, letting one of the marksmen take out the jackal.

"Sanchez, Griffin, move up!" Royce ordered. "Cover them!"

The gunfire barrage intensified while two Helljumpers with MA5 assualt rifles and M90 shotguns attached to their backs moved up. They killed a few grunts before switching to their shotguns and hitting an elite hiding behind a crate. The two blasts knocked the elite on its ass.

"Cloaked targets are all eliminated Lieutenant," Hoff announced. "No cloaking devices seen through thermal."

"Switch back to regular optics and cover this advance," I ordered them.

Already the two squads from Platoon One were moving up, leaving and my men standing behind them to cover their advance.

"Back up we go," I ordered. "Snark, what do you see?"

"I feel compelled to remind you that I'm not your personal pair of eyes," Snark told me. "You've got one of your own men here, you know?"

He did have a point. "He's shy. Humor me."

"Heavy Covenant activity, but that's to be expected. They still aren't firing on us but they're already forming defensive lines in front of you. Friendly forces are already attacking and have moved halfway through the no-man's-land." He sent me an image of what he was seeing.

Several dozen Scorpion tanks were advancing, firing their main cannons as fast as the reloading systems allowed them to while shrugging off small-arms fire with no trouble. Behind the Scorpion tanks I could see Armadillo and Tortoise troop-transports moving with several dismounted marines in between them. The resolution on Snark's Oracle scope allowed me to see all of that with crystal clear clarity.

"Armadillos?" I asked. "Weren't those Army exclusive?"

"Must've commandeered a few," Miranda replied obviously listening in to my conversation.

"Army got hit hard," Snark agreed.

I cut the line and sank back in with my unit.

"Platoons Two and Four prepare to move up!" Hayes ordered loudly.

"That's our cue," I said. "Five, move up and provide support!"

We had roughly forty-five men moving up to the frontline at the same time. That meant that there were a bunch of targets for the covvies. The rest of the company started pounding away at Covenant positions with an almost criminal disregard for ammunition conservation. Pavel's squad in particular was an offender. They didn't stop firing the entire minute that it took to complete the maneuver. After it was completed I found myself in our rear, with Pavel's unit even further back.

"Come on! Keep up!" I yelled, leaving cover and moving up to the front, my men behind me.

"Uh-oh," Snark said, this time on the company-wide net. "Two Wraiths are turning to fire at you!"

The image of the two Covenant tanks appeared on our HUDs and everybody recognizing their own positions ran like hell. The two mortars impacted empty ground, but nonetheless they disrupted our advance.

"We need to take them out," Hayes said.

"Sir," Pavel came in. "My unit has a Spartan Laser."

"Do it," she replied. "Now!"

I saw as Pavel ordered Corporal Dana Bamber to move back and find a vantage point from which to take out the tanks. Lieutenant Weller also ordered two of his men to go with her and cover her while she fired.

"Wraith number one is toast," Bamber announced half a minute later. "Two is…" She fired. "Gone. All clear."

"Move forward men!" Yas ordered.

"Lieutenant," Miranda said. "You're hit."

"Want me to patch that up?" Livingston offered.

"No, it's minor," I replied. "You can do that later."

"That's the spirit," Sandor cheered, making me feel slightly uncomfortable.

"Holy shit Banshees," Snark warned everybody again. His voice didn't carry any trace of shock whatsoever, once again reminding me why I had given him his nickname.

I found myself about to order Api to shoot down the Banshees when I remembered that Weller might've not enjoyed me ordering her men around. Asking Bee to complete that same task would've been even worse, since Hayes would've had grounds to charge me for insubordination right then and there.

I needn't have worried. Both Weller and Hayes were capable officers and immediately ordered their SPANKr toting men to hit the Banshee fliers. Bamber also took part in the defense and hit one of the craft with her Spartan Laser. I saw the fireballs, the Banshees destroyed far enough to pose not theat.

"Spirit dropships approaching from your right flank, sir," Snark warned a few minutes later. "Looks like…They're trying to drop troops behind you!"

"Hit them with rockets!" Hayes ordered. "Castillo, get your men back there now!"

"Already on the way," I replied. "Hurry up!"

Three Spirit dropships were already hovering in a point we had cleared and left behind. Yassir and dos Santos were ordering their men around while the ones that had explosives and rocket launchers fired them at the dropships. One of the three Spirits was knocked out of the sky, but it was able to drop its cargo before blowing up and crashing back down on the ground.

"Zepeda, hit the leader!" Caboose ordered his man. "And any officer you can manage!"

Two cracks resounded and I knew that a high-ranking elite was missing its head. Before I could ask for confirmation on the kill I was being fired upon by about one hundred different aliens.

"Down!" someone yelled and I was only too happy to comply.

I slammed into the muddy ground and wiped some of the mud from my visor before crawling up to better cover. The aliens were spreading out in a semi-circle, trying to surround us. At the same time we were doing the same, trying to beat them to the edge but not wanting to make our line too thin.

"Fire on their flanks," I yelled. "Keep them bunched up!"

"Discourage those grunts!" Weller ordered one of her squads. "Keep those jackals in check!"

Hayes was focusing on repelling a charge by some of the elites. The aliens had been dropped closest to her position and she currently found herself in more trouble than the rest of us.

"Spirits are coming for a firing pass!"

"Take cover!"

I ran away from the pink plasma, wishing that they had made it another color, being murdered by something pink was awfully embarrassing. One of the explosive rounds hit right next to me and burned one of my boots. I could feel the heat all the way through the titanium armor and suppressed a grunt of pain as I felt the heat coming into contact with my skin. The last thing I needed was more skin grafts.

"They're coming on through our left!"

I was on the left.

I hopped back behind cover and saw Marv nod at me from another building. I waved him over and he joined me along with Hoff. "They're trying to flank us," I told them. "We'll hold back the attack until Hayes and her platoon can push them back."

"The three of us?" Hoff asked, checking his DMR for rounds before reloading it. "Great."

"Relax," Marvin told him, placing a hand in his shoulder. "It'll only take a minute."

"For them to wipe us out," Hoff grumbled in reply.

"Nonetheless," I said sharply. "We'll do it."

All three of us left cover and moved up to a little pile of rocks that seemed to serve no purpose other than to provide cover for us. I could see the unit that was attempting to flank moving through the barracks and various pieces of equipment.

"Fire," I ordered.

Hoff was the first one to open up, his DMR nailing an elite in the side of the head and shoving it against a tarp. The elite trid to grab it but it fell off and both slipped down to the floor.

The tarp had been covering fusion coils

I didn't need to tell PFC Ryan Hoff what to do next. Like every good quarterback he saw an opening and he took it. Instead of using a pigskin to deliver it, this time he used a pair of bullets. The fusion coils detonated, vaporizing the elite and killing two jackals and a skirmisher in the blast. After that both Marv and I opened up.

We aimed for the officers if possible, but the covvies had diverted a large number of their own in an attempt to flank us. We fired everything we could just to keep them from rushing our position.

"The elites must've been impatient, because they ordered all of their grunts and jackals to charge at us. Unfortunately, this time it worked. Their large numbers overwhelmed us and I suddenly found myself kicking at a skirmisher that had jumped at me from behind a crate.

The skirmisher slammed into the ground and I stomped its chest in. It took only one powerful stomp to do that, my superhuman strength allowing me to quickly dispatch the alien. I spun and slammed the butt of my rifle into another leaping skirmisher's face. I could see the fangs fly from its mouth and almost grinned at its shocked expression. Marv finished it off with a quick shot to the neck before spraying two grunts preparing to prime plasma grenades.

One of them launched it, the other one didn't.

"Grenade!" he yelled.

All three of us rolled away, only barely avoiding the blast.

"Lieutenant!" Snark suddenly came in. "You've got four elites inbound on your-. Holy shit! Banshees, everybody out!"

I cursed again as I stood up, switching my rifle from burst mode to full-auto. The first of the four elites that Snark had warned us of appeared right over the piled rocks we had been using for cover with two plasma rifles. I emptied what was left of my mag into its chest and Hoff got the honor of killing it with two shots.

"Cover me, I'm reloading!" I yelled, feeling stupid for saying that like a videogame character.

I saw Marv toss a grenade and two elites with battered shields jumped over. Marvin killed one of them and I finished off the other one with a quick burst.

"Whoa!" Hoff cried.

I turned to see him duck under an elite that had apparently tried to tackle him. I fired at it, several rounds pinging off its shields until my rifle did something that a movie director would've been proud of.

It jammed.

"Fuck," I cursed, running at the elite with one hand drawing my pistol and the other going for my knife. My discarded BR55 was already on the ground behind me.

I tackled the elite in order to keep it from frying Hoff's brains with his plasma repeater. The elite was a big specimen and didn't fall down, instead taking a couple of steps back in order to compensate for the force of my impact. I fired with my pistol at its arms, draining its shields and launched an upwards stab with my knife.

The elite took a step back and my knife sliced through its lower right jaw. It launched a kick at me that I only just manage to dodge and then tried to shoot me.

Marvin fired what was left of his ammunition at it and staggered it somewhat, buying me some time to tackle it again. Once again the elite took my attack and withstood it, but the rest of my pistol rounds were enough to drain its shields and I quickly started slashing at the gaps between its armor.

But the elite, being eight feet tall and on the heavy side of 300 pounds, just shrugged my deep cuts off and grabbed me with both its arms before throwing me to the barracks to its side.

"Ouch," I said after having slammed into them and slid to the floor.

Hoff then killed the elite with a gunshot to the head. "Tackling?"

"It usually works," I told him. "And it saved your life."

"It was a good tackle," he told me. "If you had hit me it probably would've been a career-ending injury."

"I'm flattered," I replied, not really feeling it.

The elites and the skirmishers had been the last of the aliens to rush us, and Hayes had managed to get one of her squads to move to the flank and hold back the aliens still there.

"Captain, we've reached the halfway point, friendly forces are already in sight," Yas' voice came in.

"Excellent job Lieutenant," Hayes replied immediately. "Hold the position until UNSC forces link up with you."

"Wow, that was actually faster than expected," Hoff said. "I thought they'd put up more resistance."

"They're low on supplies," I reminded him, "probably couldn't get half their vehicles up and running and had to conserve ammunition."

Marvin nodded in agreement with my assessment.

"Have you ever actually enjoyed a victory, Lieutenant?" Hoff asked me.

"Not for long," I admitted.

* * *

><p>Livingston had just finished bandaging up my wound. The round had gone above my collarbone and cut through the muscle. It was nothing overtly deep, but a little bit more serious than I had imagined at first. The wound wasn't serious enough to warrant wasting bifoam, so instead she closed it with glue and then placed a square of gauze over it.<p>

I thanked her for her help and put the top of my undersuit back on;thankful for the warmth it gave. After that I started strapping the rest of my upper body armor to myself. Most of our company was still holding the position, but the Marines had moved to the sides and were sweeping through the confused and broken Covenant lines.

"Snark!" I greeted the man. "Glad to see you're in one piece."

He smiled weakly. The Banshees sent to kill him and his Scout Sniper Squad hadn't let up for a few minutes and had bombarded the woods behind them. Thankfully, no one had been injured aside from a few splinter cuts. "Glad about it myself," he said.

"You guys did a good job," I told the five snipers. They all gave me quick nods of acknowledgement.

"What happened to your shoulder?" Snark asked.

"Carbine round glanced me," I explained. "Nothing serious."

"Well, if you don't mind I'll be off somewhere, resting."

I nodded as they departed, moving slowly towards their respective units. Stan Zepeda remained behind, standing a little bit hunched despite his usual calm and silent demeanor.

"Get some rest Stan," I told him, using his first name. "You deserve it."

He nodded slowly. "Thanks you, Lieutenant."

I felt like I needed a little bit of rest myself, but instead I grabbed an energy bar and took a bite off of it. Like their non-combat counterpart, the ration bars, they tasted like absolute shit.

I examined the wrapper, displaying a force of impossibly brave-looking Marines marching with their weapons aimed at an unseen enemy. The favorite food of the UNSC Marine Corps it claimed.

"Favorite my ass," I grumbled, taking another bite of it.

I walked through our position until I saw Bumblebee. "Hey," I greeted. "Where's Yas?"

"Lieutenant Dajani's with Captain Hayes," he told me, looking up from a seated position. "They're meeting up with Lieutenant Commander Becker and Captain Galván."

"Briefing?" I suggested hopefully.

"I don't know," he grunted, "but they're probably planning a follow-up op."

"No rest for the wicked."

"I believe the right term is weary…sir."

I looked at him and laughed. "All of us are a little bit wicked, Bee."

"More wicked than weary?" he asked. "I don't think so."

I smiled sweetly. "I'm an officer of the UNSC Marine Corps Bumblebee. You're forced to agree with me."

He stood up and quickly saluted. "Sir yes, sir!"

I didn't need to think over his gesture to realize that he was mocking me. "At ease," I ordered him. "I said at ease, not as you were. Maybe next time you plan on mocking me you'll thi-"

"Lieutenant Castillo!"

I turned to look at the source of the voice and then back to Bee. "Lucky bastard," I told him as he smiled. "Sit down and finish your food."

"Lieutenant Weller," I greeted the woman. "Outstanding job back there."

"Thanks," she replied. "Likewise."

"Any idea on what we're going to be doing next?"

Weller shook her head and wiped some dry mud from her face. "The reinforcement fleet should already be here," she said. "Perhaps that'll prolong the battle, allow us to evacuate more of the civilians."

"So we do our jobs," I said, smiling.

Both of us walked towards the front of the Covenant encampment. A troop transport Warthog was waiting there for us, Domingo already sitting in the passenger seat. The driver took us across the former no-man's-land, carefully avoiding the craters and corpses. I noted that most of the corpses here were alien, but as we got closer to the UNSC camp I saw that trend change and found myself staring at many human corpses torn apart by plasma explosions.

"Lieutenant Commander Becker should be in the war room," the driver said as he stopped in front of the main building.

"Thanks Private," dos Santos said, hopping off the car.

Weller and I followed him and entered the room. It never ceased to impress me how professional and military our mobile CIC buildings could look. This one in particular reminded me a little bit of the bridge on the _Inconvenience_, albeit a lot larger. The officer's rooms were to one side and there was a separate section for the unit assigned to protect the CO and XO of the battalion. The war room was very much like our drop bay, with a holo-table right in the middle. It goes without saying that it didn't actually have the launch tubes for the drop pods.

"Ah, lieutenants," Lieutenant Commander Becker greeted us, there were bags under his eyes. "Good to have you here."

"Sir," I said as all three of us saluted. He saluted in reply and told us to be at ease.

"If you'll excuse me for a moment," he said. "I need to talk with Captain Hayes." He turned to face Captain Galván, his XO. "You too Darius."

"Sir," Galván replied before walking out of the room along with the rest of us.

All four of us ODST lieutenants walked outside of the room along with Captain Galván. It had been a while since I had last talked with him, so I took advantage to catch up. Naturally, both of us being military all that came up was the current situation.

"Things look good so far," he was saying. "With Apex, Boomer, and Cutthroat moving up west and everybody else heading east we're already starting to make progress."

"That's good," Weller said, stating the obvious.

"Did you name the companies in your battalion?" I asked suddenly. "Or have they always been called that?"

"The 201st MEU is pretty old," Galván told me, apparently not surprised by my question in the least. "But the companies have always been named like that."

"Good names," Domingo said. "I like them."

"Any idea what they've got in store for us, Captain?" Weller asked.

Galván seemed slightly surprised that Weller would address him in a professional manner. She was, after all, a Helljumper. Helljumpers were supposed to be cocky and use as little respect as possible towards those not in their class. Sometimes I found myself having trouble addressing a non-ODST superior officer as such, even if he was a good superior officer.

"I don't know what they've got in store for you," he replied. "I know I'll be helping to envelop the Covenant troops in the area. You? You'll probably weaken them for us."

"Sounds like something we would do," I admitted. "Were casualties high?"

"Not particularly," he shrugged in reply. "More than I would've liked…"

"None of us enjoy casualties," Yas spoke for the first time.

I thought about the three ODSTs that had died in the past hours. Two of dos Santos' men had been left behind to the Covenant and one of Hayes' sergeants had been hit right through the visor. I'm glad to say that I didn't know them, but I still regretted their loss.

Captain Hayes called us into the war room a couple of minutes later. She didn't sound happy.

I wondered what she was unhappy about and how it would affect me. The moment I saw the holographic display I suppressed a groan. This just kept getting better. and better.

* * *

><p><em>Thanks to SilasWhitfield for proofreading this chapter and for some dialogue quotes he came up with.<em>**  
><strong>

_I know I said I'd post this in the morning, but my internet went down for a while and then I went to see jack Reacher (awesome movie btw) and then I went to a friend's house and I only just got back. Sorry for the delay, but here it is._

_Not much to say about this chapter I guess. Snark's still an awesome sniper and Frank hasn't gotten used to not having him on his unit even after two years. Everyone's a badass, Frank get's saved by Hoff and Marv, and a couple of our disposable red shirts die. I've got about a hundred ODSTs to kill now. But you know me, I'll probably only kill the ones that you care about the most because I'm a dick like that sometimes._

_I haven't heard your views on my spelling and grammar, my beta tells me that I keep getting better, but nobody's perfect and sometimes I do some awkward wording and stuff like that. I don't think that SilasWhitfield misses a lot of stuff when proofreading, but in case he does just tell me so I'm more thorough when doing my final check of the chapter._

_Men and women (not likely) of : I thank you once again for reading this chapter and reviewing the last one. The review button is still where it was yesterday, just letting you know._

_Stay strong._

_-casquis_


	158. Bambi's Final Act

Chapter CLVIII: Bambi's Final Act

**March 5, 2548 (UNSC Calendar)/**

**Pelican Golf-07, LV-426, Zeta Reticuli System**

* * *

><p><em>"I could've used some rain with that fire, let's see them try and set fire to that."- Lance Corporal Takacs Sandor (unknowingly mocking 21st century artist Adele)<em>

* * *

><p>I couldn't keep the scowl off my face. The frown was pretty much immovable too, seeing as a scowl and a frown are both the same thing. My expression must've been scary, because none of Pavel's fellow squad mates seemed to be able to meet my angry gaze. Even Pavel himself seemed to be treating me with kid gloves. <strong><br>**

I kept my grip on the handhold while PFC Sarah d'Arc manned the heavy machine gun aiming outside of the Pelican's cargo bay. I could see the forest fly by, occasionally showing a small clearing or a creek but mostly just trees.

"Come on Frank," Pavel was saying. "We've done plenty of crazier stuff in our day."

"Crazy yes. Stupid? Not like this."

Pavel sighed. "I know it's not the-"

"I don't care that we're doing this," I snapped. "I can handle stupid well enough. God knows I've had to in the past."

"Yeah, but then-"

"Because that bitch-" I started, catching myself before it went to far. "Because the Captain volunteered _my_ unit for a suicide mission!"

"It's not a suicide mission," Pavel said calmly. "Not for us at least. We're perfectly qualified to do this."

"Be that as it may," I growled. "If anyone is going to volunteer my men for probable death it's going to be me."

"Don't we get a say?" Pavel asked with a small smile.

I nodded. "I would ask before doing it," I told him. "Hayes didn't even give us that courtesy."

"She's our CO," Pavel told me.

"Oh shut up," I told him. "I know full well that you're just as pissed by what she did."

He walked close to me and looked at his men. "Might be, but I don't go around badmouthing her in front of _her_ men."

I shook my head, knowing the truth in his words but not really wanting to admit it. Hayes could've ordered us to do the mission and it would've been all right, but she had actually volunteered my unit. You can't volunteer someone for a near-suicide mission, least of all with a perfect poker face. I could still see the surprised expression on Galván's face. Even he had been shocked by it. I don't mind being ordered into my deaths, it is part of the job description. What I do mind is being made as if I volunteered to go into my death.

"Fine," I finally said. "I'll try not to badmouth my Commanding Officer in the future."

Pavel nodded and took a step back before sitting back down in between Lance Corporal Sasha Dotsenko and PFC James Ramirez. The burly Russian from Harmony and Colombian from Troy were pointedly checking the magazines on their SAWs.

I wondered why people were still referred to in regards to their ethnicity after so many years of humanity being in space. None of them had ever been to Earth yet they still had an Earth-based ethnicity. I wondered what actual Earthers would say to that.

I purposely thought about that while we moved towards our target. I could see the wing of the other Pelican containing the rest of my platoon behind us.

"There it is," Fightmaster called from the cockpit.

I walked through the cargo bay and into the cockpit, propping myself against both walls. "Damn."

"That thing is huge," Fightmaster said in agreement. "Think the elites are overcompensating for their lack of penises?"

"Could be," I chuckled.

I stopped laughing the moment after I remembered exactly what that giant ship was capable of doing. The Covenant Assault Carrier was not the first of its time I had ever seen, but I could count the number in one hand. It was a planetary occupation ship, one of those could give any colony that wasn't named Reach or Paris IV a run for its money. Right now the only reason why this entire rock hadn't collapsed under the pressure was the comparatively large UNSC fleet fighting back desperately and sheer luck.

The assault carrier had landed and immediately started unloading troops. It had made the mistake of landing within range of an Onager mass driver. The man in charge of sending toxic waste into the hot surface of Zeta Reticuli hadn't taken too kindly to his planet being invaded and in turn had shot a couple of toxic containers at the ship at a fraction of the speed of light. His aim wasn't exactly great, but it had been good enough to knock out the ship's engines. The man had been made a hero and Army troops had moved in on the Onager facility, keeping the thing aimed at the ship in case it attempted to drop its shields to deploy more troops. So far they had been successful in pushing back the few troops that the carrier dropped, but the Covenant had recently sent reinforcements, tilting the odds in their favor.

"There's the Onager," Fightmaster said, pointing at the cannon. "Odd place for a mass driver, don't you think?"

"I guess nobody wanted to be woken up by the sound every night," I shrugged in reply. "ETA?"

"Forty seconds."

I patted him in the shoulder and walked back out to the cargo bay. Already everyone was putting their helmets on and checking their magazines for obstructions. I picked up my own helmet and placed it under my arm, my BR55 slung across my back and my sidearm on its holster in my thigh. I had a particularly heavy ammunition load and I could feel the additional weight pulling me down.

"Go, go, go," I ordered as soon as the Pelican touched down. The moment we were all out Fightmaster dusted off and turned back to base. To my left I could see the other Pelican dropping the rest of my team. All of the guys on Caboose's squad were carrying large suitcases with our special payloads.

"Lieutenant!"

I turned to see an Army captain moving up towards me.

"Captain," I gave him a greeting. "What's the situation?"

"We're ready to pull back," he informed me, obviously not comfortable with the idea of abandoning the facility. "The moment we do the elites should order everyone forward, destroy the facility."

"And then the carrier begins dropping troops again," I finished. "It'll also drop its shields."

The Army captain looked around at his men. "I lost a lot of good soldiers defending this place. And now we're just leaving."

"I know how you feel Captain," I told him. I didn't tell him just how much it hurt to leave behind a whole planet and not just a small area. "What can you tell me about the complex defenses?"

"Well, obviously we have the Onager itself, helps take down Phantoms and Spirits. We've also got a pair of old Wolverines standing guard in case the covvies ever attempted to overwhelm us with air superiority. Never had to use 'em."

"Those might come in useful," I nodded. "Anything else?"

The captain shrugged. "Not really, command told us that you'd come with everything you needed."

"Gave us everything we needed too," I admitted. "Have your men finished setting up the explosives?"

"Yeah, detonator's right here," he said, offering me the device. "You click that and the complex blows sky high."

"That'll be a pleasant surprise," I smiled.

"You got the maps and pictures of the area?" he asked.

"Yeah," I replied, drumming my fingers on my helmet. "When are your men pulling out?"

He pointed at a badly battered Armadillo AFV that was having several duffels and pieces of equipment strapped to the outside. "We're just preparing the old girl. That 'Dillo saved our collective asses more times than I can count. Nobody wanted to leave her behind."

I smiled, knowing how he felt.

"Just out of curiosity," he began. "What exactly are you doing here? I know that Army Rangers have the same operational capabilities as you Helljumpers."

That drew a couple of angry glares from the nearest ODSTs. The captain pointedly ignored them and stood by his branch of the military.

"What can you do that Rangers can't?"

Had I been six or seven years younger I might've knocked his teeth in, but after having lived through so much and having fought with all kinds of men, I understood him. "Rangers are all good and well Captain, some of the bravest men I ever knew and fought with were Rangers. The only problem is that they're not as crazy as us."

The Captain coughed and shook his head slightly. "In any case, good luck then." He turned around to order some of his men to be careful with the crate they were carrying, startling them and almost making them drop it.

I smiled at his back and put my helmet on, looking at the enormous assault carrier that we were supposed to be taking out in the next couple of hours. I had spent two days preparing for this goddamned operation that I might very well die in and I hadn't even been able to see my girlfriend.

"You mean the one you cheated upon and haven't even had the decency to tell?" Schitzo asked. "Or the one you let get shot."

_Shut up._

"I didn't even say anything yet," Pavel complained.

"Don't," I warned him, going along with it. He already knew how bad I had it; I didn't want to give him any reason for further worry. "Get your men ready, they're going to have to dish out the pain."

"Feel like that's our squad motto," Pavel said, cracking his neck and examining the ammo count on his M247L. "I'll get the men ready while you go over your plan and do officer stuff."

"Jealous?"

"Only of the pay Frank," he replied, walking away.

"You and Gunnery Sergeant Klaus lead a curious relationship," Al said. I had forgotten that he was in my helmet. "That's a very good picture of Corpsman Lockley."

I took the picture down from my HUD. "How would you know?"

"I can analyze appearances and compare them to preferred male tastes in female appearance. After analyzing the results I can tell that you are what other human males would call a very lucky guy."

"Yes Al, guilt him more," Schitzo laughed.

"Did I say something wrong?" Al asked, his avatar frowning. "Your brain waves spiked."

I smiled. "You didn't say anything wrong Al."

"But then why-"

"You're a smart guy Al, figure it out."

His avatar shrugged in my HUD and disappeared, no doubt off calculating some useless equations that could tell me the mass of the sun with only minimal information to begin with. Stupid super smart dumb AI. He was a mass of contradictions.

"Caboose."

"Yes, sir?"

"Have Zepeda and…O'Malley scout the area close by, tell them to stick to our planned route."

"Right away, Lieutenant."

I looked around at my Helljumpers, trying to see if there was anything else that I needed to handle. "Livingston."

"Yes, sir?"

"How's the face?"

She shrugged. "Better now, the bandages itch like hell, but apparently that way I won't have a big ugly scar covering half my face." Like most women she cared about her appearance. She was good looking; it would be a shame if this war disfigured her.

I nodded and she took off. The rest of my squad was fanning out, climbing to the walls of the complex and scouting the surrounding area while Zepeda and O'Malley disappeared into the thick foliage. Even the constant barrage hadn't been able to thin down the forest much. I don't know what kind of trees grew here, but they were all at least twenty feet thick and ten times as high. They would've reminded me of sequoias except that they had branches with large leaves extending all the way down to the ground, providing excellent cover.

"Pelicans are inbound Lieutenant," Miranda called in. "Small fleet of them."

"Army's pulling out," I said to myself. "Party's about to begin."

The Pelicans arrived and the Army guys pulled out in impressive time. They all had loads bigger than anything Marines carried into battle. I never ceased to be impressed by the different tactical mentalities of the two branches.

"Orders?" Pavel asked me.

"We slip past them," I said, reiterating the original plan. "Can't do anything for this base." I paused to look around. This place had probably been everything for the soldiers defending it. "Come on, we go out the front gate and into the creek. Keep this thing stealthy for as long as we can."

"Knowing you El-tee, that won't be long," Sandor said.

"If that wasn't true I'd have you whipped."

"Don't think you're allowed to do that anymore," he replied, chuckling.

The geography of this area was probably one of the main reasons why we were given the all clear for this mission. Or Hayes had anyways. The creek I mentioned was a little creek much like many others. The water had dug a little trench about ten feet tall and twice as wide. Normally that would've been a death trap, but this creek was surrounded by the huge trees with leafy branches that sprouted at ground level. We would practically have a ceiling above us. In theory, it would allow us to get close enough to out target to carry out our mission.

"Zepeda, O'Malley, you see anything?"

"A couple of grunt and jackal scout teams, they seem to be reporting back to base," PFC O'Malley came in.

I winced at her jarring South African accent but then smiled at the subtitles that I had set as default for her on my HUD. Every time she said something my helmet helped me transform it into something resembling understandable English.

"Want us to take 'em out?"

"Negative on that one O'Malley," I replied. "We don't want anything giving away our position just yet. Keep your eyes on them and hold your position. We're moving up."

The whole platoon left the Onager facility as the Pelicans took off. It was a short sprint towards the forest. Most of the trees closest to the Onager had the tops blown off in order to get a clear line of fire to the carrier. Perhaps that's why the man that fired the first time had missed.

The creek seemed welcoming at first, but as the branches and leaves began to thicken and block out the light, it became quite a scary place.

"Recon Squad will go up front, give your suitcases to my squad," I ordered. "Pavel, I want your men at one hundred meters distance. VSF, we go on the rear, another hundred meters between HW and us. Avoid concentrating in one point if possible; we want to keep this quiet as long as possible."

It wasn't the going in part that bothered me;it was the going out that did.

"You know," Hoff said after a while of silence. "This place reminds me of the woods outside my house. I'd go there and find nice hideouts."

"You strike me as the kind of kid that would give shit to other for finding hideouts," Sandor replied, scanning the surroundings with his MA5.

"Hey, come on!" Hoff complained. "Give me some credit. I might've been a jock but that doesn't mean I was a dick."

"Ryan, you're a dick half the time," Livingston told him. "Well, more conceited than dickish, but you get what I mean."

"Am not, besides, even if I was there's no way I'm _that_ much of a dick."

_My, my, whatever are you implying?_

"Maybe you're right," Sandor admitted. "Perhaps they beat the dick out of you in boot camp."

"That would explain the high voice and bleached hair," Livingston suggested. The comment drew a huff of amusement from Marv and a scoff from Hoff.

"I do not bleach my hair," he declared adamantly. "And my voice is not high!"

"It's a little bit high," Miranda said quietly.

Hoff turned to look at her and shook his head. "High? As compared to what? Marv's baritone? He sounds like a movie villain!"

"Why are you dragging me into this?" Mobuto asked. He did have a pretty deep voice.

"And the El-tee's also got a relatively deep voice."

"I like to call it the perfect manly pitch," I said simply. "And you're not helping your case, Girly Cords."

"For fuck's sake." Hoff finally relented.

I wondered how long it would last speaking in a deeper voice. Perhaps about a week before he forgot all about this. Poor guy, he did have a pretty high-pitched voice for a man.

"Down!" I ordered suddenly, getting alarm lights from Recon Squad. "Recon, what can you tell me?"

"We've got several large enemy units heading past us. So far they haven't seen us," Caboose came in, short and to the point.

"Al, can you link up a camera from the complex to my HUD?"

"Can I- Damn right I can," he replied, making a show of being offended. "There."

A small screen appeared on the top left corner of my helmet, displaying the courtyard of the Onager facility. I kept it on my HUD, the concentration of covvie troopers would let me know when detonation would prove to be the most effective.

"Enemies coming up," Miranda whispered. "Lots of 'em."

"Down," I waved my team as I took a knee.

The elites' heavy stomping was the first thing I heard. After that I could make out the squealing form the grunts. The jackals had an uncanny ability to walk almost silently, but taking into account their weak bones and incredibly light weight it made sense. Several squads of Covenant soldiers bypassed us, the heavy foliage only allowing me to see their feet and parts of their bodies. The aliens seemed to move hesitantly, the Army unit had probably given them hell in the last few days.

"Shhh," I said, trying to calm down my team.

The parade of covvies seemed to go for quite a bit longer than necessary, but fortunately for us none of them decided to look down. They knew the creek was there, but since it hadn't presented a threat in the past it didn't present a threat now. I smiled to myself, wondering what the Covenant would think if they had a chance to analyze our actions after we blew their ship to hell.

"Covvies are past us," Caboose announced.

"We still see 'em coming," Pavel came in a second later. "Wait…the last of them are approaching."

"Wait them out," I ordered my squad.

"There's so many of them," Miranda muttered.

"Way more than a regular demolition op would need," Livingston agreed.

"Perhaps they're expecting a trap," Sandor suggested.

"There_ is_ a trap," Hoff reminded him. "But this way they'll just get more of their own killed."

"Fine by me," I shrugged. "Now quiet."

When the last of the aliens bypassed us I allowed myself to relax. I waited for an extra minute before allowing my squad to move ahead. Caboose and Pavel had already sent their men forward and were reporting no enemies.

We were careful not to make any splashes or bring any rocks down. With the water all the way to our knees, the first one was more difficult than it sounded, but if we moved slow it was easily accomplished.

"Two grunts," Caboose came in. "Moving up quickly, probably running late."

"Ha," Hoff chuckled. "Maybe the elite's will eat them."

"That's the brutes," I told him. "Ok, wait them out."

The two grunts were making a lot of noise and we heard them several dozen meters before we could see their thick legs stomping hurriedly. They must've been going a little bit too fast or stomping too hard because the dirt under their feet collapsed and they both slid down right in front of us.

For a moment I think we were more stunned than they were, but then I was lunging towards the nearest grunt. As Marvin drove a knife through the other alien's throat I found myself disarming mine instead, tossing the plasma pistol to the side.

"Quiet," I told it. "You speak English?"

The grunt's eyes were wide with panic. It was surrounded by six huge and angry humans, so there was a good reason for that. "Little."

I smiled at my fortune. Most of the grunts seemed to speak English or some other major human language to some degree. I wondered why. "What is your plan?"

The grunt looked around nervously and squealed.

"Quiet," I repeated, this time pressing my knife against its throat.

"What is your plan?"

"Destroy big gun."

"The cannon?"

"Yes, cannon. Sangheili masters want it gone."

"Know anything else?" I asked it. "What kind of forces on the carrier?"

It shook its head and I was surprised that they shared that gesture with us humans. "Very many… thousands."**  
><strong>

"Lotta help that does us," Sandor groaned.

"I'm going to have to talk to Domingo about the usefulness of questioning grunts," I said. "Poor bastard's scared shitless."

The grunt seemed to be trying to keep up with us, no doubt our skill and mastery of the English language being too much for it to keep up with. "Not understand," it said. "What you need to know?"

"Wow, poor creature's almost pitiful," Livingston noted.

"Almost," Hoff agreed.

I sighed and pressed my knife against the grunt's throat. I pressed it pretty hard and soon enough the grunt was on its knees with both hands trying to keep the blood in. It wheezed and attempted to get away from us, but dropped before it went more than a couple of feet.

"Useless git," Sandor said, kicking at the still-dying grunt.

Marvin examined the grunt before yanking a pair of plasma grenades from its harness and placing them in his pouch. "Good thing they aren't protected by the Geneva Convention."

"Oorah," Sandor chuckled.

"Move along," I ordered. "What a waste of time."

After several more minutes of carefully wading through the creek and stopping for the occasional covvie unit I finally decided that there were enough covvies in the Onager facility to warrant blowing it up to kingdom come. I stopped and clicked the detonator twice. The sound of the explosion reached our position a few seconds later, the shockwave instants after that.

"There goes the neighborhood," Hoff joked.

"Lieutenant, we're within firing range," Caboose came in.

"Understood. Move up to the pre-designated firing position, we'll catch up with you."

Caboose and his men had already climbed out of the creek by the time Pavel's squad fanned out to form a defensive perimeter. My own squad arrived at our firing point a minute later. The creek turned into a small pool that in turn fed two different streams. Unfortunately, they hadn't eroded the ground enough to give us concealment.

"All clear, Frank," Pavel told me. "Not a single covvie within eyesight."

I reminded myself that eyesight range wasn't much considering the thick foliage. "Understood. Keep your eyes open." I quickly looked around for Caboose and waved him over. "The launchers?"

"Over there," he pointed. "Should we fire?"

"Can you see the ship?"

"Zepeda's up there," he pointed at a tree. "What do you see?"

"Assault carrier looks like it still has its shields up, nothing's coming out of the cargo bay."

Caboose pondered on that one for a second before talking. "Might be they sensed the trap, we did blow up their forces on the ground."

"They'll see it as an acceptable risk, they should start dropping troops soon. Which of your men are going to be firing?"

"Reeves, Montri, and Atkins."

"Good, send them up and tell them to wait. I want Zepeda to have his scope aimed at the ship at all times."

Caboose nodded and started ordering his men about. I watched in amusement as the three Helljumpers climbed up the trees with large rocket launchers strapped to their backs. The men climbed a lot quicker than I would've imagined they could. As soon as they were high enough they grabbed the launchers and aimed at the assault carrier. It was only a matter of time until the ship dropped its shields.

"Pavel, what can you tell me?" I asked after a few minutes.

"Nothing, no movement."

I nodded, still crouching behind a sturdy branch that must've been as thick as a hunter. These were weird trees indeed.

"Something's happening," Montri said.

I directed my attention to the screen in my HUD and noticed that the assault carrier was indeed doing something. "What the hell is it doing?"

"I don't-"

I dropped to the floor when I saw that the massive ship had fired one plasma torpedo at our direction. For a moment I thought we were dead men walking, but the torpedo kept flying past us and exploded further back. If I had to guess I'd say that it had vaporized anything within three hundred meters of the Onager cannon.

"What the hell?!" Sandor complained.

"Probably covering up their casualties," Livingston suggested.

I didn't really know what to think, only that the huge goddamned carrier had almost vaporized all of us without knowing that we were here. "Zepeda, give me a picture."

The carrier was still there, nothing seemed to have changed.

That is until the moment that hundreds of Phantoms, Spirits, and Banshees started pouring out of the massive cargo bay like a swarm.

"Shit," I said. "Fire, fire, fire!"

The moment the three missiles had been launched my men were climbing back down. The huge contrails that the rockets left behind were as big a 'we're here' sign as we could manage under the circumstances. There was no way they were going to miss our position.

"We've got fliers inbound!" Lance Corporal Atkins cried, dropping from one branch. "We need to get out of here now!"

"An accurate statement," I said. "Pavel, pull your men out, you come across anything you kill it for us. Caboose, take your men and run, we'll cover your back."

I watched as we retreated in an orderly fashion. Already I could see Banshees screaming past the canopy of the forest. They were trying to pinpoint our location, some of them were even firing blindly in an attempt to get us. The three missiles had timers on. They were supposed to attach themselves to the carrier's hull before detonating. The timers were supposed to buy us time; we would surely need a little bit of that with fifteen megaton nukes. They would vaporize anything within a five mile radius and flatten a lot more.

We had already cleared four and a half miles, the distance that we had fired from, but there was quite a ways to go before the detonation didn't prove fatal.

"Fall back to Position Alpha!" I snapped as my squad formed up and ran. "From there we'll call for support and evac."

"And if you're lucky you might get it," Schitzo told me. "Now run."

There was no need for him to tell me twice, as I could now hear the Phantoms and Banshees coming for another pass, or rather, keep on coming. Most of my platoon was already out of sight, hidden by the thick branches and the wide leafs. Despite my orders a few of the guys in my platoon had started going a little bit early. I didn't blame them for it though; everybody was running for their lives.

Marvin and Atkins were the only two Helljumpers that remained with me, although probably not by choice, Marv looked like he wanted to bolt and Atkins slipped while hopping over a branch, leaving us all three together.

"They want to bring the forest down," Pavel called from the front.

_Figured out that one myself._

Plasma rounds that weren't heavy enough detonated against the upper branches, sending thousands of wood splinters in every direction. The heavier rounds cracked the branches and hit the ground, sending dirt and more splinters everywhere. Most of the enemy weaponry couldn't fire plasma that would keep stable through all those tree branches.

I could hear the Phantoms and Spirit dropships humming overhead, their cannons firing as fast as possible. The grunt gunners on the Phantom side doors were causing some trouble too, firing blindly at any sign of movement.

"Holy shit!" Atkins shouted as two lucky plasma bolts flew right past his shoulder. "Can't we call for support?!"

By that point everything was exploding, I was hopping over branches too low and sliding under branches too high. Already I could feel some of the bigger splinters embedded in my undersuit. "No support! That was the plan!" I shouted, a mortar ripping half a tree trunk and sending wooden spikes in every direction. One of them hit my visor, knocking me backwards and leaving a smudge on it.

"Ah fuck," I grunted, looking up at the rays of sunlight that leaked through the branches. "Fuck."

I rolled and pushed myself back to my feet only to have to duck immediately as another mortar hit several meters away.

"Clearing up ahead!" Pavel warned. "Going right!"

A few seconds later O'Malley came in. "Phantom dropping troops on the clearing!" she yelled it at the top of her lungs, her scream surpassing even her jarring accent.

I kept running until I spotted the edge of the clearing. Already there were a couple dozen covvies on the ground; Marvin and Atkins sprayed the closest grunts, killing five of them and sending the rest for cover. Unfortunately for me, the aliens lifted their heads just as I was passing through and fired all they had at me.

I took cover behind a thick tree trunk and waited exactly one second before tossing a grenade. I didn't get a chance to see the effects, but it bought me enough time to run past their immediate fields of fire. I didn't enjoy being the one furthest out back, but that was the way it was.

"Frank, I am getting reports from Battalion One that they have an available drone," Al said suddenly.

"Tell 'em to send it!" I told the AI.

"It's only a recon drone, no weapons capabilities."

"I'll take it," I grunted, slipping on a mossy rock and hitting the ground with my shoulder.

"Drone is in the air, it should get here in a minute or so."

Atkins and Marv became visible a few seconds later, their non-augmented bodies were peak human, but not quite as good as mine. They were both young kids, probably more athletic than I would've been without my special add-ons. So here I was, a man in his thirties, running through a forest on a moon colony while a couple hundred aliens tried to atomize me with energy weapons. I should've been sitting on a small office complaining about my boss and waiting to get back home to my beautiful wife.

But nooooooo.

"Frank, drone shows several Phantom and Spirit units dropping troops in front and around Five." Al's avatar had the tact to look worried.

"You catch that?!" I asked my platoon loudly. "Meet any enemy force with overwhelming fire, is that clear?"

"Crystal," Pavel came in. "You hear that? We're the ones with the most firepower so that's up to us!" He was talking to his squad, but he still used the platoon-wide channel. Probably trying to tell everyone that he had their backs.

"Drone is circling overhead," Al told me. "Setting camera to thermal and popping maps one everyone's HUD."

"Thanks Al," I told him, climbing over a half-fallen tree and jumping down to a low branch. I managed to keep my balance on the long branch and ran along it until it became to weak to support me. After that I jumped down to the ground, rolling to absorb some of the shock from the fall. "Tag enemies in red."

"Done," he said. A bird's eye view of the area around me replaced my nearly useless minimap, displaying my unit in as green dots and the covvies as red ones. So far they were only to our sides and back, but they were closing in and it was only a matter of time until they made contact with us.

_Something's wrong._

I ducked sideways without really wanting to and three needleshit the ground to my side. I turned and shot a jackal sharpshooter in the chest with my rifle. It was at least fifty feet above me, perched on a tree branch.

"What the hell?" I asked. "Why didn't it show up?"

"My mistake Frank, jackals are ectothermic."

"Cold-blooded?" I said after figuring out the word. "But they're birds!"

"They share more traits with Earth's reptiles," he replied. "I am sorry, should've thought of that. Their temperature is that of their surrounding, that's why they didn't show up."

"Can you fix that?" I asked him, running along once again.

"Yes. Changing parameters..."

A second later several more aliens appeared, all of them were uncomfortably close to my unit. "Jackals in the trees," I warned.

My squad responded immediately, doing their best to comply with my orders of using overwhelming firepower. Several of the red dots disappeared. It would be a while before their bodies actually cooled off, but the drone was just doing that for our benefit, to avoid confusion.

Our advantage over the aliens was reduced to our drone. They hadn't put up their own air reconnaissance yet, but it was only a matter of time until our advantage was nullified.

I heard four sniper rifle cracks and saw four dots disappear, reducing the jackal's numbers to just two. A barrage of machine gun fire and one DMR shot eliminated those and returned us to relative safety, relative being used in the loosest sense of the world possible.

"The forest is catching fire," Livingston said. "They're setting fire to the trees."

A quick look into the drone's screen and I knew it was true. The Covenant had noticed that their high-heat plasma weaponry could easily ignite wood and leaves and had started taking advantage of it. It looked like they were trying to herd us towards their ground units.

"Clever fuckers," PFC Lizzo, one of Pavel's gunners, muttered.

"Pick up the pace," I ordered. "We don't want to get caught in the fire."

"Enemy squad on our two o'clock!" Pavel cried.

All of his men stopped and fired, six red points disappeared from the screen. The other four moved back and started returning fire from behind cover.

"Keep moving everybody," I ordered. "Pavel and Lizzo, you two keep them behind cover!"

The rest of the unit moved past the four remaining aliens as quick as possible while Pavel and Lizzo fired almost continuously, trying to cover the rest of Five. I looked around and saw that Marv was still the one closest to me.

"Marv, on me," I told him.

I took a sharp turn to the right and climbed a couple of branches, helping Marv behind me. Once we were at an altitude of about three feet we jumped and ran through the thick branches, moving around the enemy unit. It took half a minute to position ourselves where we could see them. Once there I ordered Pavel to stop firing and tossed a grenade at them. The two grunts were killed immediately, but Marv took out the elites with the depleted shields with quick bursts.

"Nice shooting," I told him. "Let's catch up."

As soon as we jumped down two Banshee fuel rods slammed through the branches and hit the tree next to us. The trunk blew up completely. I almost got my head impaled by a splinter the side of my leg, but by some miracle or other none of the other shards of wood went through my armor or undersuit. Marv was equally lucky, with only a single piece of wood embedding itself in the back of his armor, not punching through.

"They know where we are," he said, yanking the wood out.

"They're coming around," I said. "Run!"  
>Both of us ran as the two Banshees switched to regular plasma cannons and started a strafing run. I was afraid to look back, but I had no doubt that the moment I did I would see blue plasma going through all the vegetation and biting at out feet. Instead I focused on the enormous branch in front of us, it reached from my knees to about my neck. I slid under it with Marv and pulled him back when he looked like he wanted to keep running. The plasma didn't go through the thick branch and the Banshees kept on going.<p>

"Move." I opened a line to Corporal Dana Bamber. "Bamber, can you shoot one of those Banshees down?"

"I think so," she replied in between breaths. "Which one?"

"Anyone!" I shouted, fire now almost surrounding me. "Give them a scare."

When I heard the laser I hoped that one of the Banshees was down. I examined my map and sure enough one Banshee was falling through the trees, ripping branches apart.

"Good work," I told her.

"I'm seeing elite Rangers jumping around," Corporal Dotsenko, another one of Pavel's men, said. "They're trying to get ahead of us."

"Force them to stop," I ordered. "Keep them busy, we can't afford to be surrounded."  
>Marv and I caught up with a couple other guys. Gals, to be precise. Both Livingston and Bamber were running alongside one another, Livingston using her assault rifle to keep Bamber safe in case she needed to use her Spartan Laser again.<p>

"Spirit vectoring towards your location Frank," Al told me.

"Bamber," I told her. "Hit the dropship."

Bamber took a knee and aimed her Spartan Laser up. I saw Al produce a white line on the minimap that displayed where the laser would hit. As soon as she had a target she charged the weapon and fired. The powerful laser went through several branches, burning holes through them, before hitting one of the two troop compartments on the dropship. The ship pulled up to avoid further fire, its gunner firing wildly and smoke coming out of the impact area.

"Nice work," I told her, pulling her up from her kneeling position and shoving her into a run.

"Frank," Al started, "at this pace you'll be overwhelmed in five minutes."

"Then what do you suggest, Al?" I exploded at the AI.

Al took a deep breath, preparing me for the incoming suggestion. "We are approaching Bravo Point."

It took a moment to remind the location. It was a pile of rocks surrounding a cave of sorts. It was in the middle of the forest, covered on all sides by trees but relatively high when compared to the surrounding ground. It was an excellent position from which to make a last stand. "There's no need to bunker down," I told him. "If we do that we're as good as surrounded."

"There are several Longswords within striking range," Al told me. "If you can convince them to provide close support you can buy some time for the evacuation team."

"Which Longswords?" I asked, surprised at myself for actually considering it. If this didn't work all of us would be dead, if it did all of us would survive. If I refused to bunker down some of us would certainly die as more and more covvies poured out from dropships.

"Scalpel-5 through 8," Al told me.

I almost smiled. "That's Shot Glass and EC, right?"

"Those are their callsigns, yes," he told me.

"Patch me through." I spoke to my men, "Five, we might be bunkering down in Bravo Point, stand by for orders."

"This is Scalpel-5, come in."

"Batman, Five-Actual here, we need some help."

"I can see, optics show one hell of a mess down there."

"Tell me about it," I said, trying to sound as calm as possible. "Can you provide close fire support? I know that's not a Longsword's traditional role but we could really use the help."

There was a long pause. "Not all of us. I'm sending Scalpel-7 and Scalpel-8 down to your location. Do you have a strong point?"

"Something like that," I replied, smiling.

"Good, stay there and keep your heads down. ETA is four minutes."

"Thanks Batman, I owe you one."

"You do, and I won't forget it."

I cut the line. "Five, everybody head to Bravo Point."

I could see my unit change their bearings slightly to head towards our new intended destination just as another timer appeared below that of the nukes.

I hadn't noticed, but as I requested support I had lagged a little bit behind. Livingston had remained behind as Marv and Bamber moved up ahead. I started running, picking up the pace.

"El-tee, behind you!"

I rolled instinctively as Livingston fired several rounds. I turned just in time to see a jackal fall down from a tree branch and land down on the ground with a sickly crunch. I thanked her as she pulled me back up.

"That's the second time you save my life," I told her. "I need to catch up."

"Don't worry El-tee, part of the job description."

I smiled. "Right."

We ran the rest of the way, only stopping to keep some jackals off our shoulders. About fifty meters from our destination one of the Banshees that Bamber hadn't shot down decided to return, firing a fuel rod right at me and Livingston. I threw her sideways and jumped behind her as the green plasma detonated, sending dirt and wood everywhere. I jumped back up and saw that Livingston had been hit.

"Andrea, are you ok?" I asked her.

The question was a stupid one, there was a thick splinter jutting out of her chest, right below her right collarbone. Her vitals said that she was fine, but she was certainly in pain if her screams were any indication.

"Come on," I said, pulling her up and placing her over my shoulder, ignoring the piece of wood coming out below my armpit. Already there was some blood slipping down and dripping into the ground. "You'll be fine," I assured her. "But you really need to stop getting hit, seeing as you're the squad medic."  
>That didn't do anything to alleviate her pain, and instead her grunts seemed to get worse.<p>

"Lieutenant, over here!"

I looked up to see PFC Ramirez crouched on a rock that I could've sworn hadn't been there earlier. He was offering me his hand.

"Thanks James, "I told him, pulling myself and Livingston up. "Where's Sutton?"

"Over there," he told me, pointing at another rock. "He's patching up d'Arc and Carver."

"Thanks," I repeated. Carrying Livingston was easier than I would've imagined. She was in very good shape. By that I mean that she was perfectly proportioned, with a nice ass and a very decent rack without being heavy. The problem was that she had this huge branch jutting out of her chest.

"Sutton," I told the man. "We've got wounded."

"I know Lieutenant," he replied, barely glancing up from a screaming Sarah d'Arc, who had been shot through the thigh with a needle or a carbine. He glanced up and examined Livingston. "Place her over there. Gently!"

He was a medic, not a doctor, he had no right to speak to me like that.

"Sure," I said, gently placing Livingston down with her back against a rock. "Take care of her."

"I will," he replied.

I could see that Pavel's squad had spread out and we now had machine guns on every point of our little rocky hill. It would've been slightly more comfortable if we had more than a dozen meters to visibility, but the trees were as thick here as they were anywhere else.

"Zepeda, can you use the drone to guide your shots through the branches?"

I got his green light.

"Do it, target larger dots."

He immediately started firing, red dots disappearing with every shot. The man was as good as they came.

"Carver, Carver!"

"Here Lieutenant."

"Where are you wounded?"

"Splinter punched through my left hand," he replied. He sounded high on meds.

"Can you fire?"

"Yes."

"Then start volleying HE rounds at troop concentrations asap," I ordered.

"Yes, sir."

I went through my platoon's roster quickly, wondering who else could damage the enemy before they actually showed up. No one had weapons with that capability at the time. Instead I ordered everyone to fire into anything that moved. It was a redundant order; we were already pushing back waves of covvie soldiers.

"Lieutenant!"

I turned to catch Caboose's shotgun.

"Give it to Sutton," he told me.

I nodded and threw the shotgun at the medic, he caught it and placed it by his side, ready to be used if any alien got too close to him or the two wounded girls. There was a rock in front of him that gave him good cover and a large boulder behind and to the sides, but an alien could still jump through and cause mayhem.

I had no time to think. An elite started firing at me with a plasma repeater. I ducked behind for cover until Hoff and one of Pavel's gunners took it out.

"Two more minutes!"

_I could've sworn that the Longswords were ready._ I grunted, firing at jackals on the branches. _Four longest minutes of my life._

I could see that the gunners were having trouble handling the grunts and jackals on the ground, but I was too busy handling the sharpshooters in the branches. I felt like I killed jackal after jackal only for more of them to immediately show up. If I hadn't had Hoff and his DMR helping me cover the sector I might have very well gotten someone killed.

"Elite general," someone said in a deceptively calm voice. "He's got a fuel rod."

For a moment everybody in that area redirected their fire at the elite, completely ignoring everything else. The moment the general went down we knew that the enemy morale would go down and several of the grunts down below would panic. It took longer than expected, the strong energy shields holding out and allowing it to get two shots off.

"Report!" I ordered.

"We're good Lieutenant," Sandor came in. "Minor burns but we're intact."

The enemy didn't let up, a couple of Banshees strafed us once, Bamber killed one of them, discouraging further attempts. Instead they started firing at our position with Wraith mortars. At first they missed by far and even hit some of their own soldiers, but with every shot they got closer to our position.

"Ten seconds!" I yelled.

Ten seconds was not a lot of time considering the damage that two Longsword spacecraft could cause on soft targets. I managed to keep myself from ducking under cover until the timer said that we only had four seconds left before Scalpel-7 and Scalpel-8 brought home the pain.

I ducked and counted to four as slowly as I dared.

The moment I mouthed 'one' I heard the gunfire. The ventral cannons on the Longswords could fire 120mm explosive rounds and their regular M9109 ASW/AC cannons could fire 50mm rounds, also high explosive. I knew that I was hearing the gunfire after the Longswords in question had already flown past us. The bullets flew faster than the speed of sound and I had no doubt that the Longswords themselves were doing Mach 4 or 5. The programs on their craft ensured that every single bullet hit the spot it was intended to, even at supersonic speeds. If the computers could make regular rounds hit ships traveling at speeds measure in kilometers per second then this was a cakewalk for them.

I waited a few seconds and heard trees cracking and falling down. Only then did I dare look at the screen that displayed everything the drone was seeing. Every last one of the covvie soldiers in a three hundred meter radius was dead. All of the dropships had been destroyed by ship-to-ship missiles and the forest itself looked as if it had seen better days.

"Thanks Scalpel," I said, referring to both pilots. "Thanks for that."

"No problem," Scalpel-7 replied. His nickname was Rover. "Always glad to help out Helljumpers."

I didn't miss the slightly taunting tone in his voice, but considering the circumstances, I decided to ignore it.

"Good luck up there," I said.

"Likewise. Scalpel-7 out."

I sighed and sat back down, smiling.

"Frank, no need to be a…party pooper, but the nuclear devices are about to detonate."

I looked at the smaller timer on my HUD and nodded slowly. "Everyone keep their heads down," I ordered. "We move as soon as the shockwave makes it past us."

My platoon moved to the side not facing the assault carrier and we bunkered down on one of the caves that all the rocks formed, waiting out the nuclear fire that would vaporize all the aliens.

Half a minute later I heard the explosion and closed my eyes as the shockwave flew past us.

_Safe._

* * *

><p><em>Thanks to SilasWhitfield for proofreading this chapter.<em>

_So we have a suicide mission where nobody dies, inter service rivalry, the Covenant contributing to global warming, exo-atmospheric fighters doing strafing runs, and reckless usage of nuclear weapons. I wish I could say that I added something new and unusual to the fanfic..._

_Oh well, regardless of this chapter's lack of originality, I still think it turned out pretty good all things considered. _

_**Qwerty282:** I did kind of make it like this chapter was going to be much worse than expected. Sorry for teasing, bro.  
><em>

_**Seredhras: **hey, your review was a perfectly adequate one and also happened to be incredibly helpful. On the previous eighty chapters, they are kind of crappy (especially the first 20ish) and I'm the first one to admit it, you don't really have to read them, but it would probably be a good idea to skim through some of them in order to get some information that might prove important later on. On the bombshells... what can I say, i think that it's a lot better than having a bunch of ugly people on my fic ;) Also, how did you get to Aztlan on google?  
><em>

_**cuz you asked:** Been a while, you should really get a name so that I know who's ass I'm going to be driving my fist up until the rims of my watch make you shit blood. And your advice is much appreciated, bro.  
><em>

_**NonSolus:** Armored Prayer was added to my Epic Playlist the moment I listened to it, thanks man.  
><em>

_**Colonel-Commissar2468:** (on your review in 156) If I was a good drawer (I know that's not the word, but it's funny) I would've posted several stuffs on deviantart and would've done some shameless self-promotion. If i ever find a picture that matches my image of Frank I'll be sure to let you know, i can tell that this is bugging you.  
><em>

_To everyone else, thanks verily much for all your reviews, kind or otherwise. Little spoiler, after this battle we get to the year 2549, the year during which the Siege of Paris IV took place. As halopedia puts it, little is known about that conflict except that Sgt. Avery Johnson distinguished himself in it. That's right, you all get some Johnson badassery and I get an ambiguous conflict that I get to shape and transform into whatever I want. Fun, fun, fun._

_Let me know what you thought of this chapter and stay strong._

_-casquis_


	159. Tip of the Blade

Chapter CLIX: Tip of the Blade

**March 27, 2548 (UNSC Calendar)/three weeks later**

**Water Oakley, LV-426, Zeta Reticuli System**

* * *

><p><em>"I'm in love with whoever invented ropes."– Corporal Marvin Mobuto<em>

* * *

><p>"Andy!" Sandor greeted, raising his cantine. "Welcome back!"<p>

Livingston smiled. "Why thank you Tak."

"Wow, only my mother calls me Tak."

"Good to see you Andy," Marv told her.

Andrea smiled at him. "Thanks."

"So, you're going to show us the scar?" Miri asked. "I guess it's pretty messy."

It probably was. After having lived four solid days with a piece of wood lodged through her chest and no advanced medical equipment it was bound to be.

"It will be until I get plastic surgery," she said.

"Plastic surgery?" Hoff asked. "Really? Are you a girl or a Helljumper."

"I'm both, ass," she told him. "That's why I've got more scars than you do."

"Ouch," Sandor said. "Burn."

"Oh, shut up. Getting shot is not a skill," Hoff said dismissively.

"Not a marketable one, at least," Marv somewhat agreed.

Miranda smiled. "Knowing how to get shot though, that's a skill."

Andrea grabbed the collar of her shirt and pulled sideways and down, prompting Hoff to cover his eyes and squeal like a little kid. That got a couple of laughs going. Once Andrea pulled the shirt enough I saw her scar. It was a big ugly mess of raw skin, stitches, and half-healed cut. It looked even worse than the one I had on my lower back from a similar injury, and that one had hurt like hell.

"Ouch," Sandor said again, this time meaning it. "You good?"

"I'm good," she confirmed, smiling again.

"Good to have you back Andy," I said finally. "But you really have to stop getting shot if you're going to be our medic."

"Hear, hear," Hoff cheered.

"Hey Lieutenant, do you know why we're running low on top-notch med supplies?" Andy asked me.

I shrugged. "All of the ships except for the…_Screaming_?"

"The _Badass_," Marv corrected.

"Right. Every ship but the _Badass _left to engage the Covenant fleet. Last I heard they're trying to outmaneuver each other before actually engaging, but the moment the battle actually starts…" I stopped talking, all of us knew how those things used to go.

"So the Navy's hogging all the supplies for themselves?"

I nodded. "They're supposed to send a couple of corvettes to resupply Water Oakley and other firebases."

The men and women in my squad seemed to nod before returning to their MREs, looking as if they wished they were eating anything else but the military rations. This city's dispenser machines had long since run out of candy bars and Army or Marines had probably repeatedly looted every candy shop. Every veteran worth his salt knew that candy bars and chips became a priced commodity during prolonged ground engagements, and this one was starting to shape up to be just that.

I took one bite of my locally grown chocolate bar and smiled at the looks I got from my men. "Enjoy that, this might be our last meal."

"You know El-tee, you can be a real dick sometimes," Miranda told me.

I raised my eyebrows at her. "I'm going to let that one pass because you served with me when I was enlisted."

"Sorry, sir," she apologized quickly, looking down and pushing her food around.

"Hey Frank," Pavel said from behind, taking another bite from his own candy bar. "Where are all your chocolate bars?" he asked my squad.

"They ate them," I told him.

Pavel did an incredible job of looking shocked. "Before what is quite possibly last meal?"

I shrugged.

"Noobs," Pavel scoffed. "All of them."

"Come on Gunny," Hoff complained. "Leave us alone."

Caboose chose that moment to walk up to us. "Lieutenant," he said formally. "The men are getting restless. When are we deploying?"

"Oh, Grigori," Pavel exclaimed. "I see you have your own chocolate bar too! What is that? Kit-Kat?"

"They still make those?" I asked.

"When did they stop?" Pavel replied half-sarcastically.

"It's some local knockoff," Caboose replied, looking a little bit confused. For him, that meant that he was completely in the dark about what was going on. "You making a list or something?"

"Nah, we're just rubbing it in their faces," I explained.

"Oh. They ate them already?"

"Come on already!" Sandor exclaimed. "Please. It's bad enough as it is that I have to eat this crap."

An outside observer might've wondered why a bunch of ODSTs would be joking around with crappy chocolate and even crappier dehydrated food. For us, the only way to vent after or before combat was to do stupid stuff, try to be as normal as possible. Pretend to be normal. It got our head off the matter at hand for long enough to keep us from going into combat depressed or thinking too much. It was better to laugh than to cry or scream. When the time came the ones that made it would fuck with the younger recruits.

"We should be deploying in a couple of hours," I said, taking the last bite of my chocolate bar. "Tell your squads to get some sleep. Full combat loads, explosive charges, the works."

Pavel and Caboose quickly took off towards their respective squads. I frowned when I saw that every squad avoided mingling with the other two if possible. Not actively avoid them of course, but they just tended to hang out with their own squad mates. It made sense, there's no doubt that you bonded more with the guys you fought side by side with. It still kind of bothered me to see them so divided.

My squad broke off and they each went their different ways. Hoff was most certainly going to meet up with one of the various girls that he had seduced using his time-proven high school charms and Marv was probably going to do something similar to him. I don't know about Andrea or Miri, but I'd like to think that they went off together. Sandor? Well, there's a good chance that he met someone as bloodthirsty as he and was off to get some pre-battle sex.

Me? Well, me too.

As per usual Hanna and I had an agreed-upon meeting place. She arrived looking suitably excited without appearing too obvious. On the other hand, I walked there with a large grin on my face that anybody who had been on more than one battle would be familiar with. I once heard someone joke that the best time to attack us would be before a major offensive, when everyone would be humping the hell out of each other.

"Hey there beautiful," I greeted.

"I love it when you call me that," she said in an unnecessarily sultry voice. "Big boy."

That actually managed to make me uncomfortable.

"Yeah…" I said. "No."

"Oh, come on!" Hanna laughed. "You get to do all the wannabe smooth, sexy comments and I can't?"

"Wannabe?"

"Wow."

I smiled. "Come on, we're on a tight schedule here." I slapped her butt as she turned and made sure that no one was watching.

Inside the building I actually came across another couple. The girl did a fine job of looking embarrassed and the guy did what any guy right out of high school would've done. He smiled, mouthed the word 'nice,' and gave me a quick fist bump. I found myself feeling accomplished despite myself.

"Wow Frank," Hanna teased, "if I didn't like you so much I would be working hard to keep your ego in check."

"Ha-ha." I deadpanned. "Look, here's our room."

Hanna opened the door and led me inside.

* * *

><p>"Hey Frank, pass me my shirt please."<p>

I picked up her small shirt and examined it, making a show of smelling it and appearing disgusted. "Why?"

"What do you mean why?"

"I mean, what would I gain for this?"

Hanna shrugged. "My happiness."

I smiled and tossed her the shirt back. "You know, helping you dress seems counterproductive."

"Oh, shut up!"

My smile turned to a grin and I grabbed Hanna and pulled her close for a long kiss. We held each other for a few long seconds, knowing fully well that we would be going into battle soon. Lately it had been getting worse, I used to jump without even bothering to think what would happen if any one of us died. Now it was all I thought before a fight. It spoke volumes about our relationship, but it worried me that I couldn't isolate those thoughts.

"You know what also speaks volumes about your relationship?" Schitzo asked. "That one time you had sex with a different girl."**  
><strong>

_Shut up._

"I'll never let that go."

I rubbed Hanna's arms and stepped back before giving her another quick kiss. "Come on," I said. "Don't want to be late."

"I do want to be late," she said. "But oh well."

We walked out of the building holding hands, but we immediately pulled apart as we exited. One thing was disregarding regulations, but another thing was being blatant about it.

"Hey, Lieutenant!"  
>"Great," Hanna muttered.<p>

I saw Api leaving another house opposite our building, a girl already heading down the street.

"I'll see you later," Hanna told me, kissing me in the cheek. "Bye Api."

"See ya," he replied, "El-tee, how you doing?"

"Good. Better actually. Is she into the tattoos?"

"She was," he said, smiling. "Some girls find them…intriguing."

"Well, if you refuse to tell them what they mean…"

Api smiled knowingly. "Still curious then?"

"Very," I admitted. "What do they mean?"

"I'll tell you when the time is right."

I shook my head. "Whatever you say Api."

"What do you know about this operation El-tee?" he asked. "Weller's been very hush-hush about it and Bee couldn't get anything from Lieutenant Dajani."

"Did you ask Snark?"

"Whoa, honestly El-tee, I don't really want to get too close to the captain. She's a good leader, but we've seen how she gets around you and Pavel."

I sighed. "She's your commanding officer and _my_ commanding officer. You'd do well to remember that."

"No, I know, what I meant is-"

"I know what you meant Api, but just treat her as you would any other CO, she's not a bitch to everyone."

"About that, why is she like that towards you?"

"It's a long story, past mistakes. Nothing sexual of course." _Not that I would mind it…_

Api nodded. "Understood, won't ask about it again."

"Thanks. Say hi to Beckel and Serge for me."

"I will El-tee, see you later."

I waved goodbye and headed towards the room that I had been assigned. As an officer, I had been assigned a relatively large room. As a junior officer, I had been assigned a partner. As far as roommates went, Domingo wasn't bad at all. He was a cool guy. I don't know if he was best friend material, but I would've certainly invited him to watch a movie and not felt awkward about it.

"Hey Frank," he greeted, already with the bottom of his undersuit on.

"Dom;" I replied, taking off my clothes for the second time in an hour. "Any action?"

"Yeah," he admitted. "But I keep having to find short girls…Man, genetics were not kind with me."

I smiled and shook my head. I wasn't stupid and with an ego the size of mine I knew how good I had it. "That blows man."

"Smaller target," he told me. "Unlike you or Wiremu. Hell, if Corporal Royce had any more shoulder he'd have trouble going through doors."

"You know, you can have height-enhancing treatments."**  
><strong>

"Oh shut up."

I smiled and tugged at my undersuit, trying to stretch it a little bit in the parts where it was pulling on my leg hairs. After I had achieved relative comfort I pulled it up over my chest and shoulders. There was zero chance of accidentally ending up in vacuum, so I chose the version of the suit that had regular long sleeves and didn't end in gloves. I'd still put gloves on, but they wouldn't seal against vacuum.

"Does the extra weight for the grenades bother you?" I asked Domingo, pointing at the underbarrel grenade launcher his MA5 had.

"Nah. I mean, I can feel the weight, but ten of these aren't that much of a change in weight."

"Those are the 25 mike-mikes, right?"

"Yeah, compatible with the M515 and a variety of other weapon systems." He showed me one of the small explosives. "These little guys are quite useful."

I pulled out my knife from its sheath in my right boot and twirled it. "I'm more of a blade man myself."

"High explosive against sharp steel?"

"Damascus steel," I clarified.

He raised an eyebrow and smiled. "There's literally no difference other than the pretty colors Frank."

"It's _treated_ Damascus steel."

He shrugged. "I wouldn't know about that."

"You know, I tried your interrogating grunt technique."

"Oh yeah? How'd it work out?"

"Not so well, had to execute the bastard."

He shrugged. "It happens. Here, help me out."

I groaned loudly and stood up to help Dom strap on the vest that went underneath all the heavy armor. I tightened it until he grunted and patted his shoulder. "All good, buddy."

"You know what I would like to try out?"

"No."

"One of those armors the Spartans wear."

My throat tightened. "Really?"

"Yeah, I mean. I've seen it stop damn near anything up to a fuel rod explosion."

I shook my head. "Well, I try to avoid using up my armor too much. Besides, this girl is good enough for me."

"You're telling me that if given the chance you wouldn't wear a Spartan armor?"

"If given the chance, I would do anything to avoid being associated with those freaks."

Dom nodded. "You have a point man, but I wouldn't turn down the extra protection."

I shrugged, not wanting to say anything else. I could already feel myself getting angry. This was still something that bothered me.

After both of us were in full battle armor we made sure to grab our weapons and left towards the nearest armory. Several of our men were already there, filling magazines with bullets and strapping them inside their pouches. I saw Snark juggle three of the huge sniper bullets before Bee shoved him to the side, making him drop them to the ground with a loud clatter. Snark kicked him behind the knee, making him stumble and almost fall. Both of them laughed.

"Hey Frank, catch."

I turned and quickly caught the item that Pavel threw at me. I smiled at my reflexes, forgetting for a moment what the cost of getting them had been. After catching it I took a moment to examine the magazine, for that's what it was. Still, it was no regular magazine; it was a drum magazine for my BR55. I laughed as I looked at it. One of these puppies would hold a hundred rounds inside, turning my battle rifle into a very powerful machine gun with a low rate of fire.

"Wow, where'd you find it?"

"In a box of miscellaneous equipment," Pavel told me, attaching several pouches full of ammunition to himself. "Thought you might find it interesting."

"Thanks man," I said, already pushing bullets into the mag. "It'll be useful."

If the initial part of the mission proved as tough as expected then there was no doubt I could use the continuous stream of bullets.

After I was done with all my magazines I strapped them on, making sure that the pouches were tight against my armor and that the magazines were secured. We still had some time left to go, so everybody double and triple checked their own magazines and grenades, making sure that they were as secure as possible and wouldn't snag on anything. Some of the guys were doing some last minute cleaning on their guns, trying to get their minds off of the incoming danger.

I had cleaned my rifle before my meal, it made no sense to do it again. Now all I had left to do was walk around. I wished that I had had the kind of romantic sex that lasts longer than the 'oh my gosh we might just die in the next twelve hours' kind of sex.

After a while I glanced at the clock on my datapad. I sighed and put my helmet on. "Everybody to the Pelicans."

* * *

><p>Standing at the rear of the Pelican I could see the armored troop transports and the Marines and soldiers walking next to them. I could clearly tell which groups were Army and which were Marines by the bulkiness of their uniforms. The Army guys were carrying almost double the load of ammunition the Marines were and had backpacks with enough gear in them to survive in the harshest conditions for a week or two. The Marines, on the other hand, had a lot less bullets and if stranded in a snowy mountaintop they could only hold out for about three days before they ran out of ration bars.<p>

We had even less supplies than our regular Marine counterparts but carried more ammunition.

It was funny how the two different branches approached similar roles with completely different philosophies. Marines would come in hitting hard and fast, taking advantage of their speed and carefully practiced maneuvers with the occasional help of artillery and armored support. The Army would pick a position in front of the enemy and just pound them into complete submission with overwhelming firepower of all kinds.

Both had their merits, I suppose.

I examined the tanks below, some of the bigger Rhino tanks were already firing their rather unconventional shells, probably hitting high-value targets as they went. Intel said that the covvies had no long-range artillery. Our mission with the assault carrier had ensured that most of the ground force's specialized supplies didn't deploy. The covvies didn't have the range to hit us yet and they'd certainly be taking some serious punishment.

"Everybody hold on to your seats!" the pilot warned.

I made sure to tighten my grip on the handhold and planted my feet on the floor. I found myself wishing that Marine were the one piloting the Pelican. Then I found myself wishing that Fightmaster's craft was designated Golf-05 instead of Golf-07. It still made me uncomfortable to trust my life in someone that I didn't know.

My deliberations were interrupted as the ship started moving from side to side, occasionally it would shake as flak detonated too close to the hull. I saw a few green explosions behind the Pelican, lighting up the sky above the battle that was only just beginning in earnest.

I examined the explosions and saw the squads of Marines and soldiers moving up slowly towards the frontline, colorful plasma and tracer rounds crisscrossed the sky, lighting it up. The moment the sun disappeared we would be in the middle of one impressive display of fireworks. I sighed and opened a private line to Pavel.

"Pavs?"

"Yeah?" he asked in a gruff voice.

"You ever think about Amber and Lav before going into battle?"

There was a long pause. "All the time."

I nodded even though he had no chance of seeing it. "How do you do it? How do you still manage to go into battle? Why aren't you back home with them?"

Pavel sighed loudly. "I'm fighting for them Frank. Every time I jump I know that I am doing my best to kill these bastards, to slow them down. If risking my life means that I get to kill a couple more covvies before they make it to Reach, then I'm damned proud to do so."

"Makes sense, I guess," I conceded. "Not a lot of sense, but enough."

Pavel laughed weakly. "Life doesn't have to make much sense. Just enough for whoever's living it."

"Spoken like a true philosopher."

"And now you managed to get me depressed before combat," he grunted. "Ass."

"Bitch," I replied. "We'll meet down there. Good luck."

I turned around to face Recon and VSF squads. Our platoon was smaller than the other four, we could divide ourselves into two Pelicans without breaking the weight limit. I considered for a moment that the weight limit was stupidly arbitrary. If this Pelican could carry a tank in addition to fifteen men, then surely it could fit twenty-four armored Marines inside. A lot of Pelicans were shot down though, maybe it was done to prevent men from dying like animals. If that was the reason, then at least it was a good one.

I tossed an imaginary ball into the center of the cargo bay's floor and the holo-bands on the ceiling lit up. "You all know what our objective is," I asserted. "The Covenant don't have as much heavy firepower as they would like…thanks to us!"

My men responded with a stomp on the floor. Their armored boots and the butts of their rifles made it sound empowering.

"Five guns," I said. "That is all they have." I paused to look at my men. "We'll bring them down."

They stomped down, this time making the sound louder.

The hologram changed, instead of displaying the wide area where the five heavy plasma cannons were it switched to zoom in on one in particular. The hologram highlighted important enemy emplacements and targets with red.

"Our target," I began again, "will be heavily protected. We can expect hundreds of enemy troops as well as fortified positions and armored support. It's going to be just our kind of poison."

My men stomped again, this time louder than last.

I allowed myself a smile of satisfaction, letting my men see it through my visor. "They don't think we can do it," I told them. "They think we're not good enough. We'll prove them wrong, and by the time we're done…" I paused for effect, dramatizing my speech like I had heard high-ranking officers do. "None will be left to tell the tale."

They all stomped, using both feet and the butt of their rifles. They kept on stomping;the rhythm speeding up until it was too fast for them to coordinate. They maintained it for a couple of seconds before they all stood up and grabbed on to the handholds above their heads. I nodded at them and turned back to face the battlefield. I could now see burnt vehicle husks and several human corpses.

"ETA fifteen seconds!" the pilot's voice boomed.

"Ready, ready!" I yelled, settling into a half-crouch, using the wall for support. The human corpses gave way to alien bodies strewn about, craters, and more Covenant destroyed vehicles. There were still some human bodies here and there, but most of the humans here were fighting fiercely.

"Five seconds," I said, checking my tacpad. "Pavel?"

"Green," he replied.

Caboose tapped my shoulder before I could ask him for his status and I nodded in reply. The ground rose up to meet us and the Pelican started shaking as it became a very large, very visible target for the ground troops.

"Go, go, go!" I yelled, jumping down to the muddy ground first. "Move!"

"Recon on me!" Caboose yelled, jumping down right behind me. "Spread out, spread out!"

The ground spread all around me, flat and scarred by battle. The plains had once been covered with golden wheat plantations that spread as far as the eye could see. Now there was little trace of them left. Craters seemed to adorn the ground every half a dozen meters, and heavy rains had further helped turn the loose dirt into a muddy nightmare.

I heard two missiles whistle over my head and saw them collide with a Banshee, turning the craft into a fiery wreck. Even as it fell down to the ground I started moving up, my men behind me in a V-shaped formation. I fired at any movement I saw, mostly grunts and jackals. Plasma of different colors flew past me, sometimes missing me by mere inches. My whole being urged me to jump into a crater, but speed was of the essence.

I kept on advancing, knowing that the regulars behind us would be pushing forward with all they had in the hope of breaking the enemy line for us and, if possible, take more land for the UNSC.

"Watch out!"

Everyone ducked as three Banshees strafed us. I realized that they weren't aiming for us when the plasma bolts hit way behind us. I turned to see three green explosions rock the wings and hull of the Pelican that had dropped us off. It raised a couple more meters before the right wing exploded. It spun wildly and crashed hard into the ground behind us. A second pass from the Banshees detonated the rest of the fuel, lighting up the Pelican in a fireball.

I suddenly found myself thankful that Fightmaster hadn't been our pilot.

Still we pressed forward, Miri, Hoff, and me took care of the Covenant soldiers directly in front of us, firing as soon as we saw them. The longer effective ranges of our weapons allowed us to clear more land while the rest of the squad fired at the sides, taking care of any alien that we missed and of those that tried to fire at us. I knew that Recon squad would be doing the same thing, their firing envelopes crossing with ours to provide cover to our side. Pavel was farther away, but they were certainly making quick progress. Two men would fire their machine guns continuously and then they'd switch when they ran out of ammunition. Carver would hit any hard targets or elite officers with his MGL before they had a chance to return fire.

"Enemy bunker!"

The Covenant picked a good place for their bunker. It faced a formation of rocks and then there was nothing but flat, exposed land for almost a hundred yards. If anyone wanted to take that bunker they'd have to go around it. The small fortress might've not had a lot of range, but it could hold the surrounding area without much trouble.

"Zepeda, take out the gunner," I ordered, pressing myself against a jagged boulder as plasma tore bits and pieces from the rock.

One shot rang out and the plasma turret went quiet.

"Move!" I yelled. "Carver, fire through the bunker slit!"

Had Carver been using any other weapon it would've been an almost impossible request, but the guided grenades in his M515 MGL easily went through and detonated inside, killing or severely wounding anything inside it.

"Marvin, on me!" I cried, sprinting ahead towards the bunker. A couple of grunts on either side of the fortification tried taking potshots at me, but the rest of squad took them down easily.

I arrived at the bunker and pressed my back against it, the slit was about a foot from my head. Marv slammed into the wall a second later, firing at an enemy behind me. He looked down and nodded. I took a knee and Marvin immediately tossed a flashbang through the opening, the moment it hit he climbed up to my shoulders and fired three quick bursts.

"Clear!" he called out.

"Move up!" I ordered the rest of the squad.

I climbed the little hill upon which the bunker rested and entered the building, double checking every elite corpse to confirm that they were dead. I entered the battlenet and marked the place as a friendly emplacement. It would keep any artillery crews from hitting it and would allow our men to use it in the future.

From this position I could see our target. The Covenant had used explosives to turn a hill into a canyon, blowing up all of the earth in the middle to provide effective cover for the gigantic plasma cannon.

Thanks to the satellite and drone surveillance we could guess where their rounds would land the moment it fired, but the incredibly large blast radius guaranteed that some of our men would fail to make it out in time. The cannons could potentially be used to continuously shell an area to keep us from going through it. The covvies weren't that desperate yet, but HIGHCOM wanted us to prevent them from even thinking about it.

As I watched the cannon two Shortsword bombers banked away from it. My eyes caught the movement and spotted the unguided bombs falling towards it. Laser emplacements immediately fired in return, heating up the bombs and destabilizing the explosive compounds inside them. The explosions that followed were large enough that I was able to actually see the shockwave, but they didn't damage the shield protecting the gun.

"Who the hell shields their artillery?" Sandor asked.

"These guys," Andrea replied.

"Obviously," Hoff added. "Still a pretty stupid waste of capital if you ask me. "Artillery should never be in a position where it could be hit."

"Ah, an ideal world," I said. "No doubt the war would've already been won."

Hoff seemed a little bit uncomfortable. "I meant-"

"I know what you meant," I cut in. "Pavel?"

"We're at Rally Point Alpha," he replied instantly.

The moment I got the confirmation I opened up a line to the artillery emplacement covering us. "This is Jaguar-Five-Actual, requesting immediate artillery support in grids Echo-Sixteen, Echo-Seventeen, Foxtrot-Sixteen, Foxtrot-Seventeen. Acknowledge."

"Acknowledged," the reply came almost instantly. "Fire support is inbound. Give them hell Jaguar." He cut the line before I could thank him.

"Ready!" I called out to my men. "Move!"

The plan had been created by Al and had been carefully reviewed several times. Al added bits and pieces even as we were carried to the frontlines. The dumb AI didn't have nearly as much processing power as a smart AI like Eliza, but it was damned intelligent and good at its job. Occasionally a red line of text would appear on my HUDs corner, warning me of a change of plan. Ideally Al would've told me in person, but he was stretched to his maximum capacity coordinating our assaults as well as the movement of troops behind us.

By the time we were on the bottom of the small hill the artillery shells had begun landing. Some of them were high-explosive, others were conventional shrapnel rounds, and a chosen few were designed to deploy the thickest kind of smoke possible. The smoke in question had been carefully designed to mask heat and electronic signatures and to stick to the ground for as long as possible, prolonging its usefulness. It was also slightly unhealthy to the Covenant races.

Rumor had it that ONI had viable biological weapons to use against the elites, jackals, grunts, and drones, but their physiology was so different that it was hard to find a mix that would prove one hundred percent deadly to all races without harming humans. These smoke rounds were somewhat of a compromise in that part, they would make most covvie races stop and cough, maybe make their eyes tear up, but that's it.

I wasn't about to complain. A black wall of smoke was already rising in front of us, hiding us from enemy eyes. Our drones marked the smoky area black in my HUD, but they marked the last known positions of Shade emplacements and enemy bunkers. Seeing as those weren't exactly what you'd call mobile, I had a fairly good idea of where they were.

"Bamber, get-"

Sometimes I forgot that I was serving with the very best that humanity had to offer. Corporal Dana Bamber didn't need an order to know what to do; she immediately targeted the Shade turret closest to us and destroyed it with her Spartan Laser, killing the gunner in the process. She immediately switched targets and blew up another turret emplacement, producing a colorful explosion that even the thick smoke wasn't able to hide completely.

"Marv, Andy, and Sandor, you take point," I said. They had the most effective close range weapons, MA5 assault rifles. "The rest of you, hang back."

"How come you don't call me by my first name?" Sandor asked me.

"'Cause I'd be too tempted to call you 'Tacky'," I informed him in a neutral tone.

He groaned. "Fair enough."

The three of them shot at anything that moved, their bullets meeting the intended target more often than not. I could see several dismembered aliens from the artillery barrage, mostly grunts and jackals, but there were a few elites here and there. I was glad that we hadn't had to face any hunters yet, they were deadly in wide, open areas. A pair or two would be guarding the cannon, but we'd worry about them when the time came.

"Shade turret," Marv called out. "Dead ahead."

"I don't see it," Andy said. "Ah, there it is."

"Distance?" I asked.

"About sixty meters," Marv replied. "I can barely see it."

"Tag its position," I told him. "Hoff, how's the arm?"

"I'm a quarterback, not a pitcher," he complained. "I might overshoot."

We all formed a circular formation while Hoff yanked two grenades from his webbing and took position. He tossed the first one in a deceptively lazy motion and before the fragmentation grenade had reached the apex of its arc the other one was also in the air, flying faster and in a straighter curve. Both of the frags hit at approximately the same time and the explosions killed the grunt gunner.

"Great, you missed," Andrea taunted.

"Did not! The gunner's dead."

"More might climb in," I said. "Quick."

We covered the distance in a minute, handling the wounded aliens carefully, making sure to approach them from behind. Miranda, Hoff, and I stopped to use our knives on them, shooting the ones that looked like they could put up a fight, mostly wounded elites.

"Lieutenant, there's a trench behind the Shade, can't see anything from here."

"Wait up," I ordered, turning over an elite with its legs missing. "There you go," I muttered to myself, yanking the two plasma grenades from their magnetic clamps. The elite's jaw moved, perhaps in a spasm, perhaps not. I still made sure to drive my knife through its throat three times in quick succession.

"Move clear of the turret," I called out, priming one of the plasma grenades. As soon as my men were in the clear I tossed one of the devices. It landed right on top of the Shade emplacement and blew up, lighting up the plasma supply and producing a smaller secondary explosion.

"No movement from the trench," Sandor reported.

"Caboose, we came across a trench."

"Same here," he replied. "We were about to jump in."

I smiled, remembering that time in the brute trenches. I had forgotten the name of the planet, Catamaran Peninsula, I remembered the place well enough. Caboose and I had knocked out a Scarab tank with Snark's help back then. I still wondered why we hadn't been issued the Colonial Cross for that. Maybe ONI didn't want one of their top-secret projects and a former insurrectionist-turned-confidant exposed to too much public attention.

"Hold up a minute," I said. "Pavel, you hear that?"

"Yeah, overhead imagery shows where the trench emerges from the smoke cloud, here, I'm sending you the zoomed picture."  
>I examined the live picture and saw that the trench in question appeared to bend at an angle to the frontline, leading back to a partially dug-in Covenant building. It was probably a frontline Command and Control center.<p>

"Hmmm, why didn't they tag that as a target?" I asked.

Al responded through text almost immediately. "The building is shielded and only concentrated artillery fire will punch through. Command did not deem it worthy of wasting so much ammo on it."

I nodded slowly. "Is the shield's power source inside the building?"

"No."

"Pavel and Heavy Weapons, it's your time to shine," I said immediately. "We go in, clear this section of the trench and then you find and neutralize the power source. Recon Squad any VSF will keep on moving towards the primary target. Understood?"

"Yes, sir," Pavel's reply came in. He sounded almost giddy at the opportunity of having his men blow up something sky high for the first time, honoring their secondary purpose of demolition.

"Try and make it quick," I said. "Good luck."

I turned to my men. "Andrea, what do you suggest?"

She was the second highest-ranking ODST in the squad after myself, tied with Marv. "Uh, we drop frag grenades on the trench and then jump in, Marv clears left and Sandor right, the rest of us follow."

"Why frags and not flashbangs?" Sandor asked.

"Better dead than stunned," she replied with a shrug.

I nodded. "Do it."

Miranda and Hoff had the honor of tossing the grenades. As soon as they detonated Sandor and Marv hopped inside the trench, keeping their heads down as they ran towards it. A few plasma bolts flew in their direction once they got close enough for visual contact, but they weren't terribly accurate. The moment they landed in the trench Andrea and I jumped after them. Marv and Sandor were both crouched against the trench wall that faced the enemy, allowing us to fire over their shoulders without fear of accidentally hitting them in the back of the head. I landed on a jackal's entrails. I looked down and rolled my eyes in annoyance in a natural and instinctive reaction to my bad fortune.

Jackal entrails aside we were in a good situation. The covvies around were dead and the ones that had survived were stunned and ripe for killing. Sandor and Marv's MA5 assault rifles rang continuously until they ran out of ammo. When that happened Andrea and I took over for them while they reloaded. I dispatched an elite and a jackal, keeping my bursts tight and aiming at their chests. Once the jackal collapsed Sandor resumed firing.

"Clear, clear!" came a familiar voice. The smoke was already drifting down into the trench and I couldn't quite make out the silhouette.

"Clear," Marv replied.

My HUD tagged the man as Lance Corporal Jared Reeves, the medic in Recon Squad. "Reeves, hold position here," I told him.

"Clear on this side, sir," came Marv's voice a minute later.

I turned to face Reeves and jerked my head for him to follow me. I knew that the rest of his squad would follow behind me.

Sandor and I returned to the point where we had jumped, where Miri and Hoff were aiming at the two different directions while quietly chatting.

"You can ask her out for coffee later Hoff," I said, unable to resist the opportunity. "Come on, on me."

Our four-man group kept moving until we caught up with Marv and Andrea. Yhey were both crouching behind a purple crate, fresh scorch marks still putting out smoke and a dead elite major a few meters in front of them. Only then did I notice that the rear of the trenches was designed in a way that it resembled the walls inside a Covenant corvette. The walls curved outward and had purple lights at regular intervals. Slap a ceiling on these and I could've sworn I was back inside the corvette.

"Hey El-tee," Andrea greeted.

"What have we got?"

"Two elite minors," she said. "Marv hit one of them pretty good, both legs and one arm."

"You managed to hit it in three of the four unimportant limbs?" I asked, turning to face him.

He shrugged innocently. "It takes some measure of skill to do that."

"Or rather a lack of it," Hoff suggested.

"I was being shot at, ok?"

"Shut up!" I suddenly snapped. "Caboose?"

"Headed your way," he came in.

I waited, directing my visor at Hoff and Marv, letting them know that I was glaring at them underneath it. They obviously caught the hint, because they did their best to avoid making anything that would resemble eye contact.

"Sir," Caboose reported behind me.

"Been a while since you last used that shotgun, right?"

He nodded. "I have half a mind of asking Pavel for his."

I grunted. "Bought the damn thing for him, never uses it anymore." Nobody snickered at the slightly homoerotic comment, my men all valued their lives and wellbeing. "You know what to do."

Caboose nodded again and sprinted towards the barricade that the elites were using for cover. He slammed into it in a crouch and fired over it behind cover. Immediately after firing the first shot he rose just in time to meet the uninjured elite that planned to return fire. Unlike the elite, he was actually prepared for the sudden encounter. Unlike the elite, Caboose had a weapon designed to do as much damage as possible in close quarter combat. The huge alien flew three feet backwards, a nasty hole in its chest.

Caboose peeked over the barricade and fired another round. "Hit it in the uninjured arm," he called out. "Want me to-"

"Kill it," I ordered.

Another last settled the matter.

"Ok, let's move up. Pavel's squad should be close."

They were. About fifty meters ahead of us Pavel had concentrated his squad where the main trench divided into another smaller one, the one that led directly to the Covenant command building. They were standing there with bored looks, judging from their shoulders. Two of them would fire at anything that moved in the other trench and another two kept eyes above. The rest of them had one knee on the muddy trench floor or were resting against the walls.

"Frank," Pavel greeted. "We were waiting for you." He turned towards the two men that were firing down the other trench. "Covering fire."

PFCs d'Arc and Ramirez let their SAWs rip and kept firing until every member of Recon and VSF squad had made it across. After that they stopped firing, waiting for a target to present itself.

"They have a turret," Pavel told me. "We should be able to bring it down. Air imagery doesn't show any other heavy weaponry, plenty of enemy infantry though."  
>I examined the drone images. "Use Carver's MGL, raise some smoke, draw their attention, keep them of our backs."<p>

"That was the plan," Pavel told me, nodding sharply. "That all?"

"That all. Come on, let's get moving."

We cleared another hundred meter stretch of the trench without too much trouble. The smoke had made its way inside and impeded our vision, but we knew the covvies were here and they didn't expect an attack from their sides. They wouldn't realize that our gunfire wasn't coming from their fronts until it was too late.

"Preparing to move," Pavel warned.

"Get ready," I urged my men.

"Now."

"Go."

We jumped over the trench. There were no covvies directly in front of us. It made sense, why would you hide right behind a decent defensive position when you could hide _in_ a decent defensive position? All twelve of us moved forward at a fast jog. Our movements would've looked awkward and uncomfortable to an outside watcher, but out positions made us smaller targets while maximizing our firing angles and reaction times.

"Smoke cover is about to run out," I reminded my men. "Zepeda, take out snipers and gunners, hang back if you need to. O'Malley, stay with him." I watched as the two blue dots that were my ODSTs separated from our tight formation, slowing down and drifting off to our left. The rest of us kept on moving.

"Spread out," I ordered. "And pray."

The smoke stopped rather abruptly, revealing the still-bright sky and the small hills that the covvies had blasted to provide protection for their cannons. It also revealed a couple hundred enemy soldiers.

"Shit," I cursed, jumping sideways into an elite drop pod right before several carbine rounds pinged of it. "Take cover!"

My men rolled around, some of them miraculously avoiding fire, and into cover.

"Zepeda, mark targets for us," I ordered. "I want every single enemy sharpshooter here tagged. You handle the elites."

Zepeda worked quickly, marking the jackals at a rate of two per second. After a while he stopped and instead I started hearing the incredibly loud boom of his sniper rifle. I knew for certain that every one of his shots marked the death of an elite with a long-range weapon.

"Hoff, Miri, Atkins, and Montri," I said, remembering the names of those in the two squads that had long-range weapons. "Get to work."  
>We knew where our targets were and Zepeda's onslaught had them looking for him and not us. At a range of about three hundred yards they were easy targets, most jackals weren't bothering with cover, simply eager to get the kill. Five of them went down almost simultaneously, another eight were killed before the rest realized what was happening and dove for cover. By that point we knew where they were and would be ready the moment they attempted to leave cover.<p>

"Move up!" I ordered.

My men started running forward, making sure to jump inside craters or behind abandoned barricades at random intervals. The Covenant soldiers without any long range weapons did their best to hit us, but at this range their weapons weren't terribly accurate. Someone ordered the jackals to fire upon us and allowed my sharpshooters to waste three more.

"Anurak, Montri, move up," I ordered the two of them.

They lowered their rifles and immediately took off, stopping about fifty yards ahead and taking new positions, scanning for new targets.

"Miri, Hoff, you two are going to keep the jackals off our ass, ok?"

They nodded calmly and popped out of cover to keep the jackals in check.

"Zepeda?"

"Done," he replied. He didn't ask for orders, but the tone in the single word he said was enough.

"Good job, handle the officers and plasma turrets. Any heavy weapons you see I want dead." I paused. "Keep O'Malley close."

At that, Zepeda actually let out a short chuckle. O'Malley was a good-looking girl, not a lot of men would mind having her close by.

It seemed that a lot of the guys from Recon agreed with me, because the platoon battlenet was suddenly flooded with short laughs.

Battle humor aside we were making quick progress. The heavy barrage from our long-range artillery cannons as well as our Rhino tanks had made a big dent in the Covenant defenses in this area. I knew that four other similar strikes would be effectuated shortly or had already been launched to help the rest of Jaguar Company. Most likely we would compromise the location of several of our batteries as well as our tanks, but the price would be worth it.

The heavy artillery cannon in front of us fired once, a huge volt of plasma flying out of it and disappearing over my shoulder. I ignored it and kept moving forward, using the scope on my BR55 to hit unshielded targets. Everyone in the platoon with long-range weapons was doing the same thing, letting the rest of my men fire sporadically in an attempt to keep the covvies with their heads down.

"We have the power source," Pavel called in. "Planting charges."

"Status?"

Pavel hesitated. "We lost Sasha for a moment, he touched something he shouldn't and was electrocuted. We were able to revive him."  
>I sighed, wishing that I could rub my temples through my helmet. "Pump him full of stims, we're not in a position where we can afford to carry him out."<p>

"Could be bad for his heart, Frank."

"I know," I said. "Do it. How long until you blow it up?"

"Charges are set, we're just waiting for a window to escape."

"Tell me when it's done," I ordered him, closing the line.

I immediately returned my full attention to the enemy forces in front of us. Their elites had been almost annihilated by Zepeda's constant firing and the few that remained struggled to contain and control the other aliens. I worked in concert with my two sharpshooters as well as Atkins and Montri to take out the rest of the elites we could see. There were bound to be a few survivors crouching behind rocks or barricades, but we could handle them later.

"Everybody move up!" I said, turning my voice into something akin to a roar. "I want that stretch of land clear right now!"

Everybody doubled their pace, staying behind cover for shorter amounts of time than before and running for even longer stretches. At that pace it wasn't long before we reached them. It was funny, I half imagined us to clash into them like horse-mounted cavalry into light infantry, but in reality it was a lot different.

My lead Helljumpers had assault rifles or M7 SMGs. They quickly dispatched the covvies in the front and jumped over whatever they were using for cover. After that out advance drastically slowed, we made sure that every last piece of alien filth near us was completely dead and unable to be a threat. The guys took good care of the aliens, dispatching them efficiently and firing an additional burst into their corpses once they dropped. The rest of us sharpshooters barely had to fire a shot.

"Good work," I told them. "Move up the hill."

If we could take the hilltop and hold it we would be facing the huge cannon from the side, giving us a truly beautiful vantage point from which to clear anything shooting at us. The only problem was that the Covenant soldiers on the other side of the hill would no doubt be doing everything in their power to stop us. Anything else would mean that the UNSC would sweep through and kill every last one of them. Facing us directly also tended to imply certain death.

Lose-lose situation for the poor suckers.

Something blew up and the voices of HW Squad flooded the battlenet. I was forced to silence them from the platoon channel and in turn opened a private line to Pavel. "What happened?"

"Nothing serious, we left just as the enemy tried to rush us and we had to blow the charges a little bit early."

That would explained the amount of 'holy shits' that I had heard.

"Good work Pavel, bring your men up here. We'll need them to hold the hill."

"We're on our way."

I looked to my side, seeing that the huge cannon was slightly taller than the artificial canyon that it had been places in. That was a relief; it saved us the need to repel any attacks from our flank. I ducked behind a medium-sized boulder as a barrage of plasma bolts hit the ground in front of me. The crackle of assault rifles was heard and someone marked a target as taken out. We were perhaps thirty meters from the top of the hill and there was no cover in between it and us. It was a perfect position for us.

Five grunts appeared over the ridge marking the top of the hill and immediately went down. Having no cover and being clearly outlined against the sky behind them they made for incredibly easy targets. I shook my head as I watched one of the grunts roll all the way to Sandor's position. He chuckled and kicked it out of his way.

From this position we fended off a couple of assaults and waited for Pavel to arrive.

"What do you need me to do?" he asked in between breaths.

"Clear the other side of the hill and keep it that way. I don't want any of your men stepping over the top."  
>He nodded and turned towards his panting squad and started barking orders. "Carver, set your grenades to detonate right over the hill's ridge. I want everybody with one frag in their hands and ready to throw!" He turned and nodded at me.<p>

"Miranda, Hoff, I want the two of you halfway down the hill, shoot anything that even tries to look at us dirty!" Ideally, the rest of the UNSC Ground Forces would be engaging any Covenant that could be a threat to us, but mistakes happened.

I narrowed my eyes and started moving towards the edge of the canyon. "Sandor and Marv, move to the right, behind that large rock. Andy, you're with me over there. Caboose, I want you and Recon to spread out from there to there. We open fire on my command."

I allowed a few seconds for everyone to run and hop into position and waited until I got the go signal from Caboose. I waited an additional second, giving my men time to steel calm themselves a little and then ordered them to open fire.

The Covenant weren't idiots. They knew we were there and had prepared accordingly. They had moved several of their plasma turrets to this side and their infantry troops were behind cover and expecting targets.

My men weren't idiots either; they fired a burst and then immediately took cover when they saw the overwhelming fire in front of them.

"Shit," I cursed, ignoring the pink plasma flying a foot from my head. Grab your flashbangs and set them to burst one second after being primed. Make that one and a half," I corrected. "Toss 'em high and wait."

With luck the movement would draw the nervous eyes of the covvies and the intensely bright devices would blind a lot of the aliens. With even more luck a lot we might catch most of the gunners with their hands clawing at their eyes with our figurative follow-up punch.

"Ready? Go!"

I tossed my own explosive over my head and towards the cannon itself. Not even the noise dampeners on my helmet were able to completely block the sound of eight flashbang grenades going off at once. I ground my teeth at the pain in my ears, but pivoted out of cover all the same. I had memorized the position of two different turret emplacements and was lucky enough that both of the grunts manning the cannons were looking at the flashbangs when they went off. I barely registered several other stunned aliens around my two targets, but didn't take them into account. I fired one quick burst and before the grunt's brains were going out the back of its skull I had already fired a second burst.

Only after the rest of my platoon hit their selected targets did I realize just how fast I had done that.

Well, no reason to stop after just two kills.

The flashbangs gave us an advantage that the Covenant hadn't been expecting. We kept on firing right until every last alien below us was either dead or hiding behind something sturdy. As good as we were, we only scored two or three kills each before the rest of the aliens found safety. They still had numbers on us, but we had height and had killed all their gunners.

"Atkins, Montri, see that little grav lift that keeps the plasma turrets up?"

"Yessir."

"Yeah."

"Hit the base," I ordered. "It knocks them to the floor."

The three of us were the only ones with precision weapons participating in this particular assault. We dispatched two turrets each before the covvies realized what we were doing. At that point an elite in the golden armor of a general decided that it had had enough of our shit and emerged from cover, a fully charged plasma launcher on its right shoulder.

It fired before we could bring it down and even then it ducked back behind cover before we could kill it. The four explosives landed directly below two of my men and blew up simultaneously. A huge chunk of the cliff face cracked and started sliding down towards the bottom. Two of my men were still on that piece of land.

"Jump!" I cried, knowing that I could do nothing.

One of them managed to turn and jump, throwing his assault rifle ahead ofhim and only just grabbing the edge of the cliff. Below him his friend fell down. I caught him spreading his arms and legs to absorb the maximum amount of force and then there was a loud smack followed by a dust cloud.

"Pull him up!" someone yelled.

I saw as one of Cabooses men pulled their friend up. Several needles flew past him, barely fazing him. One of the rounds embedded itself in the ODST's left leg, right above the nook of the knee, eliciting a cry of pain.

"Reeves, look after Atkins."

"That's Reeves down there," Private Montri shouted back.

I turned to look at Livingston. "Andy, see to him," I told her in a quiet voice.

I looked back down at the settling dust cloud and saw Reeves' unmoving body down on the bottom of the canyon; it was uncomfortably close to the enemy. If there was any chance he might've survived I didn't want them firing at him just to make sure. "Keep them away from him!" I yelled loudly.

What was left of the two squads fired at two jackals that had left cover and had been closing in on Reeves, killing them instantly. Our surprising barrage forced several suddenly-eager covvies back behind cover and evened out the odds again.

"Zepeda, O'Malley, I want both of you here now!" I ordered them. "Hoff, Miri, cover them!"

I fired at anything that moved below, hitting several grunts that failed to take cover properly and killing an elite minor that attempted to return fire in a move that was either very brave or very stupid. As the elite fell a portion of the enemy's number was left leaderless. My men took out half of them before they could react and get to safety.

"Sir."

"How the hell did you get here so fast Zepeda?" I asked the sniper. He was in Andy's previous position, looking inhumanly calm.

He shrugged. I hadn't heard approach, not until the moment that he jumped into cover right behind me.

"We were already on our way when you gave us the order, sir," O'Malley explained.

I smiled at myself. I had barely had to glance at the subtitles to understand what she was saying.

"There's an elite general somewhere down there," I told the sniper. "He hurt Reeves. I want it dead yesterday."

I saw Zepeda's shoulders set in what I could only assume was resolution and he gave me a small nod. "Consider it done."

Zepeda didn't usually talk much, resorting to nods or shakes of the heads when possible and shrugs the rest of the time. For him to talk you needed to ask an incredibly complex question or manage to piss him off. I smiled at the venom in his voice.

"Quick," I repeated as he jumped back and towards a better vantage point.

At some point our battle turned into a contest. The Covenant would try to get to Reeves and we would do everything within our power to stop them. After attrition had ground their numbers down to a manageable size they were smarter about it, slowly moving forward and using leapfrog techniques. Reeves still had vitals, weak, but they were there.

"Fuck," I cursed in exasperation as an elite managed to sneak past our fields of fire and closer to the landslide.

"Lieutenant, I've got an idea," Marv said.

"Don't wait on my account."

"Two men go down, use those chunks of rock as cover and drag Reeves behind them. It gives the covvies something else to worry about and we get Jared away from them."

I examined the portion of the cliff where all that rock and dirt had slid down. The loose dirt meant that one could potentially slide down and avoid garnering too much speed, but it was still too steep. All things considered, it was possible. Granted, it was one of those ridiculously stupid plans that I might've thought of myself back in the days, but it was workable.

"Pavel, send me two of your men," I said. "It'll be brief."

He grunted, obviously not happy with the idea. "Ramirez, Lizzo, you heard the lieutenant."

I waited for the two ODSTs to arrive and ordered them to provide heavy suppressing fire with their machine guns. They nodded and I had a feeling that they were smiling at each other behind those visors. They sure loved going full-auto with their heavy support weapons.

As they started firing I moved up towards the landslide. "Caboose, Marv, you two will be going down."  
>Sending Caboose down wasn't a smart move, he was a squad leader and if things went to shit down there I would find myself in some trouble, but he was quite possible the best fighter in terms of skill on the whole platoon, myself not being counted, of course. God knows, Marv could've given Grigori a run for his money.<p>

Sending my two best men down there seemed like a big risk, but if anyone could pull this off successfully it would be them. Back in the day it would've been Caboose and me or Caboose and Cam if I didn't feel like it was a particularly good day to die.

I grabbed a rope from my butt-pouch, marveling at the amount of stuff that I could keep there, and tossed it down the steep slope. "Frags, frags!"  
>Three loud explosions immediately responded to my orders. Caboose and Marv slid into position behind me just as I was tying the rope to a small boulder and nodded at me before grabbing hold of the thin rope. Normally, the standard-issue rope wouldn't inspire much trust, but it was a marvel of engineering and would support the weight of a Warthog if necessary.<p>

The two men grabbed the rope and started running down the slope, disappearing from my sight. A moment later the rope shook in my hands, letting me know that they had slid down safely.

I frowned when I realized that I hadn't needed to use the rock for help. I had supported their combined weight without even realizing it. Superhuman strength was a gift, I wasn't about to deny that, but if I didn't know when it came or how to control it I could easily find myself hurting someone by accident. Not precisely good news.

Caboose's shotgun blasts brought me back to reality; I peered down and saw him take out two elites that had eagerly jumped at the opportunity of fresh victims. Marv was moving towards Reeves.

"Stop!" Andy shouted. "His spine might be injured, leave him where he is!"

Marv didn't acknowledge but switched directions and took cover behind a chunk of rock before firing on an enemy that I couldn't see.

"O'Malley, Montri, get over here, you're going down as well."

I could feel the hesitation in their voices when they replied. They were both veterans, but they were still younger and unaccustomedto the craziness that seemed to surround me. Granted, Marv didn't exactly have a big advantage on them, but he seemed to draw enough insanity on his own right.

"Go, go!" I ordered them as soon as they had grabbed the rope. Once again I held both of them by myself.

I saw them roll below and take a couple of long steps, overtaking both Caboose and Marv. They promptly dove behind crates that the covvies had piled together to defend against us and started firing on the enemy. The covvies downstairs were now being faced from two different altitude angles, complicating matter severely.

A single sniper shot rang out.

I was about to congratulate Zepeda on his good work when another two shots rang. I quickly linked to his helmet camera and saw that the elite general had two new holes right below its throat.

"Good work," I said. "Kill the cannon's crew if you can, this thing has been firing for too long."

Zepeda winked his acknowledgement light and got to work. Below, my men were making progress, already having moved up a couple dozen meters and establishing a firm hold on the ground below.

"Pavel?"

"Keep 'em a little bit longer," he told me. "The covvies here seem to have gotten the point."

I smiled. "Hoff? Miri?"

"Regulars are giving the covvies a pounding," Hoff came in.

"None of them are coming our way."

I hesitated, if an enemy force decided to try and hit us in the rear it would be a big help to have both of them there to stall them and give us an early warning.

"Miri, get over here," I ordered, compromising.

"Awww man," Hoff complained.

"Hush," Sandor said mockingly.

Various plans raced through my mind. "Sandor, your turn to go down."

"I thought you'd never ask, sir," he said.

The man was too eager by half. In peacetime he would've certainly been one of those thrill seekers that jumped out of high orbit with an oxygen mask and their underwear. Parachute optional.

As Sandor slid down Miranda arrived. I pointed her to a rock and told her to start firing on targets of opportunity.

"Andy, how's Atkins?"

"Stable," she replied. "Needle didn't hit anything big."

"Hurts like a bitch though, sir," Atkins came in.

"Relax, you'll be up and fighting in no time," I assured him.

"I think I like it here. Quite…comfortable…"

"Sedatives are taking effect. He was in pain," Andy explained.

I nodded to myself and returned to my previous position. It was only a matter of time until our combined assault secured our victory. Miri, the two gunners, and me would keep the aliens pinned behind cover and our ground team would move up and hit them at close range. The cannon had long since stopped firing, courtesy of Zepeda and his SRS. At this range, it was all but impossible for him to miss.

"Clear," Caboose said finally. "Hilltop on the opposite side still presents targets although they do not appear to be able to hit us."

"Excellent," I said. "Hold position. Pavel, who has the charges?"

"Ramirez and Lizzo," he replied.

I smiled. He had sent them both towards me when I asked for support. It was good to see that he trusted me to get things solved as quick as possible.

"Ramirez, Lizzo, you're going down to ground level, set up the charges."  
>"Sir," they said.<p>

A few minutes later I had helped pull everyone back up and the legs of the artillery cannon were rigged with enough explosives to punch through the armor of a UNSC corvette. As an additional gift they had planted an extra pair of charges on the cliff opposite us.

"Everything ready?" I asked them.

They looked at each other before nodding.

"Good, detonate."

Ramirez produced a small detonator and tossed it to Lizzo, who nodded in thanks and clicked the button twice.

The force of the explosion wasn't really felt up here, but the sound was more than audible. They six different explosions made an incredibly loud noise. Half a second alter the sound of sliding rocks and land joined the collapsing artillery piece. As the cannon fell a large chunk of the canyon did too, taking many aliens down with it.

"Kill the survivors," I ordered lazily, sitting back behind a sturdy boulder and allowing myself some rest. Mission accomplished.

I smiled as I heard similar explosions to either of our sides. Platoons One and Four had accomplished their missions as well. It wasn't long before Two and Three called in to give us the good news.

Forty-five minutes later the lead elements of the UNSC assault force rolled by us, the troops mounted on the tanks and AFVs cheering us and taunting the enemy. With enough luck we could push the Covenant armies all the way back to the ocean and wipe them out completely.

The Scorpions that fired from the hilltop seemed to be eager for the opportunity.

* * *

><p><em>Thanks to SilasWhitfield for proofreading this chapter.<em>

_Not much to say here, I just started school so I might be posting at slower intervals. Thanks to all of you for your reviews on previous chapters and I hope you enjoyed this one. One reviewer brought to my attention that I have been dragging this out for a little bit too long, but the problem is that I can't not drag this out. There are so many years in between important events of the Human-Covenant war that I just have to make up shit unless I do a massive timeskip. Oh, and then everything happens in less than a year._

_I think I'm going to do only two more battles after this one before the Fall of Reach, and then... well, then we'll see what happens._

_Stay strong._

_-casquis_


	160. Jen

Chapter CLX: Jen

**April 10, 2548 (UNSC Calendar)/two weeks later**

**UNSC Marine Corps FOB, LV-426, Zeta Reticuli System**

* * *

><p>"<em>Jen can't cry."- First Lieutenant Yassir Dajani<em>

* * *

><p>"Not likely he'll do much running in the future," Lieutenant Commander Sigfrid Vinter said calmly. He was clad in an apron that had blood splattered all over it, giving him the look of a butcher and not helping him at all with the almost holy appearance that battlefield doctors were supposed to have. "Fall severed the spine cleanly. With the technology available to us we can have him up and walking, but even for that he's going to need some serious rehabilitation to be able to do that."<p>

I sighed, that was unfortunate.

"He's lost feeling below the waist, meaning that he's going to need to use diapers and be attended to." Vinter looked at the datapad in his hands and sighed sadly.

"I've seen a couple of similar injuries before Frank, you shouldn't worry too much about it. As soon as we get to a decent hospital your man will receive the care that he deserves and he'll be able to feel his lower body once again."

"But meanwhile he's pissing and shitting himself and can't do anything about it," I said.

Vinter shrugged. "I'm sorry Frank, but that's the way it is."

I let out a long, tired sigh. "Is he in pain?"

"Yes."

"A lot?"

He nodded.

"Can you give him any more painkillers?"

He examined his datapad again and frowned slightly. "No, not really. Even if I managed to overlook the fact that we're dangerously low on all kinds of painkillers, Lance Corporal Reeves can't take any more without his body collapsing."

"Dammit," I grunted. "He's one of my men."

"Listen Frank, I know how you feel, but you've done everything you could to make him comfortable and he'll be fine. He's going to make it."

"But the moment he's patched up they're going to discharge him."

The doctor nodded. "It's for his own good. He'll get an honorable discharge and a nice pension to go along with it."

"Dammit. He'll probably be out of a job…"

This time it was Vinter's turn to be annoyed. "Frank, for Christ's sake. Shut up and deal with it. Your man is alive after a fall that would've killed most people I know and he'll be able to walk and move by himself. You're an officer, you need to get used to stuff like this. People will die under your command, get used to that idea." His eyes softened slightly and he gripped my shoulder lightly, much like my uncle would when explaining something to his only nephew. "How do you think I felt when my first patient died? I did everything I could and he still passed. Some things are just beyond our control Frank, this is one of them."

"No, Doc. He was under my command, he was my responsibility."

"If every officer used your logic, we would've lost this war long ago."

I looked at him and considered his words. "Maybe you're right."

"I _am_ right," he said firmly. "Now I want you to get some food and maybe roll around in your bunk with that corpsman girl of yours."

I smiled a little bit. "I didn't know doctors were allowed to assign that kind of treatment."

He grinned in return. "Whatever it takes to keep you away from my daughter."

"Oh come on! That's unfair, Doc."

He spread his hands. "I was just joking, besides, she's got a new boyfriend now."

"If you ever need someone to give him a scare…"

"I know who to call," he assured me. "Now go, you did good for your man, let him rest."

I looked through the small glass window and into Reeves' room. He was asleep, but the grimace in his face was testament to what he was going through. He had been moved from the ICU just a couple of days ago. I had pushed the doctors to attend to him for a couple of days, but they were too busy with what they deemed more serious casualties to even consider looking at Recon Squad's medic. I had been on the verge of killing a nurse when Doctor Vinter spotted my annoyance and intervened, promising that my friend would be taken care of.

After that the series of operations that he had been through had almost cost him his life. None of us had realized that his spine was very likely not the only injured thing in his body. Reeves had sustained internal organ damage and his sternum had cracked. The bones surrounding his eyes had also collided against his visor and several hairline fractures left him with what must've been the worst case of black eye that I ever had the misfortune to witness. In the end it appeared that I had been right to threaten every doctor I came across.

I turned to thank Vinter but he was already walking away and chatting to a nurse, asking quick questions about another patient.

"You know, you should've ordered your men to be careful near the edge. The Covenant blasted the hill quickly and they certainly didn't take measures to prevent landslides," Schitzo said calmly. He was wearing bloodied scrubs to suit the mobile hospital. "You need to think of these things."  
>"Frank made a sensible choice," Scarecrow countered. "The orders were sound, he couldn't have known that would happen."<br>I frowned. He was right, I couldn't have known, but Schitzo also had a grain of truth in his words, I should've thought about the possibility.

I dismissed both of their presences with a lazy wave of my hand and walked out of the hospital. The light drizzle that hit my face was cold enough to make me mutter a curse under my breath. The officer's uniform that I was wearing at the moment didn't cover my face or neck, but the rest of my body was comfortably warm. My hair had grown to a decent length in the weeks that we had been here and further shielded me from the rain. I squinted and looked up at the gray sky, it always looked like a storm was about to start, but all we got was this fine drizzle. The locals said that a storm_ would_ in fact start eventually, but that it would be at least a day before it happened.

Thunder rumbled in the distance, somewhere over the Covenant lines.

_Let's hope some of those bastards get hit by lightning._

It was a stupid thought, but it was an amusing one.

I walked through the muddy dirt, splashing water around with my boots and earning glances from fresh-faced Marines. My ODST uniform was intimidating enough by itself, the fact that I was a Helljumper and an officer as well had most of the new Marines swallowing and wondering whether or not they should salute me. In the end, most did. It was, after all, military protocol to salute any superior officer that you came across.

I walked inside a large tent. It was large enough to house three Scorpion tanks and a couple of Mongoose ATVs. My platoon had been assigned to the tent, we shared it with two Warthogs and a Mongoose. The Scorpion tanks had been moved outside and into the rain. As I walked inside I wondered not for the first time why someone would keep a battle tank inside a tent.

"Sir," Caboose said, standing up the moment I walked in. "What's the prognosis?"

The rest of Recon Squad also stood up immediately and took a few steps towards me. The rest of Platoon Five turned to look at me and listened respectfully. "He'll be fine. Doctor says that Reeves is going to be able to walk, but…"

"But what?" Atkins asked. "Sir."

"But he's going to be discharged, no matter how much care he gets he'll never be able to run without being in pain."

There was a sound that mixed relief with disappointment and no small degree of anger.

Caboose looked at his feet briefly. "I'm without a medic, sir."

I nodded. "I know. If you go solo I'll send Miri or Andy with you, but as long as you're working with the rest of the platoon you'll have to do without."

He nodded. "Thanks, sir."

I looked around the room at my men. They all looked bored and slightly tired. The massive offensive had kept awake for extended periods of time. The strike on the cannons had allowed the bulk of the UNSC forces to bull through the Covenant soldiers. After that we had gotten several other missions, shorter and not as dangerous, but they still kept us busy.

Pavel met my eyes and shrugged. Every time he did that his head seemed to sink into his shoulders like a turtle. It was almost enough to make me laugh. He looked bored and there were bags under his eyes.

"Everybody try to get some sleep," I told the men. "Your bunks are right there."

I received a unanimous sigh of relief.

"You heard the Lieutenant, into your beds," Pavel's voice boomed through the tent. "Sandor, Marv, you're not allowed to share bunks, no matter how cold is it."

The platoon chuckled and started moving towards their beds.

"Where will you be going, sir?" PFC O'Malley asked me.

I shrugged. "Officer's quarters. There's some business I need to attend to."

She nodded, her youthful features looking soft. Her hair was slightly past regulation length and there was something in her eyes that just gave her a friendly look. That, coupled with her dimples and the perpetual smile that seemed to be on her face made her look very appealing. Funny, I hadn't realized earlier.

She also happened to be a subordinate directly under my chain of command. While entertaining those thoughts was all good and well, acting upon them was a big no-no as far as military protocol went.

"Good luck, sir."

I refrained from giving her my flirty grin and instead just nodded her thanks. I shook my head as soon as I left the tent. There were precisely six women that I couldn't entertain sexual thoughts about. Five of them were under my command and the other one worked as a waitress in Paris IV. I did a good enough job on the first five, I wasn't about to failing.

"Francisco, you have the mind of an eighteen year-old boy," Schitzo said.

I had to physically stop myself from drawing my sidearm and shooting him. A lieutenant firing three rounds into empty space for no apparent reason might not be well seen by the rest of the FOB populace.

"Crazy weather, eh?" Domingo said as I walked inside the tent assigned to the officers of Jaguar Company.

Yas laughed and even Weller failed to suppress an amused smirk. "Never took you for one to make small talk," I replied.

"Small talk is the only game I have," he shrugged.

"That I can believe," Yas told him, patting him in the back.

"What is that supposed to mean?" Domingo asked, turning around and hitting Yas with a vicious poke to the ribs that would've made even a grown man double to the side and squirm away.

I grinned at their antics, antics that nobody would've thought becoming of an officer, least of all an ODST officer. Lieutenant Weller rolled her eyes in a way that seemed to say 'boys' with an annoyed but endeared tone. At that point I wondered just how all of us would've interacted if we had met in high school.

Not well, I suppose.

Captain Hayes would've been the bitch that ruled the school with an iron fist, no doubt. I would call her by her first name and she would call me Frank. She'd certainly be an angel to everyone but me and maybe Pavel.

Yes would be her boyfriend, the classic jock that was actually a really nice guy.

Weller would be a loner. With her buzz cut and the scars someone would spread rumors that she was a killer.

Domingo. Domingo would be literally everybody's friend.**  
><strong>

And me? I don't know whether I would be that bully that everybody hated but no one dared to face or if I'd be another a jock that was a bit of a dick but everyone knew was nice deep, deep inside.

It was an interesting thought, but the point is that out of all five of us I was certainly the one who would get laid the most.

Next to me Schitzo palmed his face as my train of thought reached that point.

"Whatcha reading Jen?" I asked the other officer not currently embroiled in a wrestling match.

"War and Peace," she replied, glancing up from her datapad.

I raised an eyebrow. "That's some heavy reading."

She shrugged. "I like reading," Weller said simply.

"I have a pretty big library in my datapad," I said, stepping back and away from Yas' and Dom's tumbling bodies. "If you ever feel like it…"

"I'll check it out sometime," Jen said, shrugging. "Don't think I'm going to get much progress with these two louts."

I smiled. "Agreed."

The joke wrestling match ended when Yas slipped under a chokehold that Dom had worked really hard to achieve and reversed into a similar choke. Dom struggled for a moment before going limp and admitting defeat. He held himself pretty well all things considered. Yas was a lot taller and bigger than him.

"How's your man?" Yas asked me.

I sighed. "He'll live, he's not gonna fight ever again."

"Probably the best thing for him," Dom said.

I nodded. "Probably, but it should've been his choice."

Dom shrugged. "Hey, at least he made it."

He was right. Dom and Platoon Four had lost two men during our mission to board the Covenant corvette. Everyone had some minor injuries and the captain's platoon had suffered one KIA during the mission immediately following that one. All things considered we were doing relatively well with four casualties for the company, only three of them killed.

Back when I was only a squad leader four casualties would've been unacceptable, they would've broken my unit. Now, four casualties we could absorb with relatively little trouble. Even my platoon could keep on operating effectively with four casualties.

It bothered me. It also made me wonder how generals would feel about numbers and figures. It was hard to picture myself saying that we had only suffered five hundred casualties.

Damn, the higher-ranking officers could sure use their personal shrinks.

I was glad that Captain Hayes wasn't in here. While she wouldn't do or say anything, the glares that she could manage could put the ones that Marina and Layla used to give me to shame. And I had thought that those could melt through battle armor…

After chatting a little with the other two lieutenants not reading I decided to follow my own advice and head down to bed.

Like every good Marine I fell asleep in seconds.

* * *

><p>I woke up after several nightmares. Thankfully I didn't remember much of them, but the last one had made me a general that sent millions of men to their deaths in a desperate attempt to win a battle. It failed.<p>

"Damn," I muttered, getting back up and rubbing my hair.

"You know, somehow I never took you to be the kind of man to wear a wife beater."

I looked at Lieutenant Weller, who appeared to have moved to her bunk to read her book more comfortably. I then glanced to my sleeveless black undershirt and proceeded to crack my neck. "It brings out my eyes," I said finally. "Captain Hayes show up yet?"

"No," she shrugged.

"How long was I out?" I asked her, looking around for my tacpad.

"Almost two hours," Jen said.

I groaned loudly as I got up. "If Hayes hasn't shown up…"

"Yeah, she's planning an op."

"Damn."

"Yup."

I let myself fall back down to my bunk and made what my mom would've called 'annoyed noises.' After indulging in child-like behavior for a couple of seconds I sat up, swinging my feet over the side of the bed. "Finish your book?" I asked her.

"Almost," Jen said. "I'm going to save the last pages for after this next mission."

I smiled and moved towards my helmet, which had been placed in my standard-issue bedside table. "May I?"

"By all means," Jen said, allowing herself a tiny little smile. "Gotta say, your music is…interesting."

I returned the smile, putting on my standard-issue woolen sweater. Black. "Not really my music," I said. "You know Rob Agnarsson? From Platoon One?"

"Bumblebee?"

My smile turned into a wide grin. "That's the one. Well, he's a bit of a nut for old stuff." A weird riff came from the speakers on my helmet. "This is the latest thing he discovered."

"What's their name?"

"Gym Class Heroes," I told her. "Haven't listened to them much yet, but I gotta say I like the name."

I went back down into my bunk, listening to the song. I knew that I tended to misinterpret the lyrics of a song as often as teenage girls did, but when the song consisted largely of a woman telling her man that he would miss her and that she wanted him to 'get his ass back home' it was not difficult to relate to the song.

"Fitting," Jen said about halfway through the song. "And catchy as well."

"Bee has a thing for finding the good stuff," I assured her. "At least when it comes to music, his movie tastes are…well, let's just say that the last Movie Night I went to consisted of us watching Supershark vs. Megalizard Part II and leave it at that."

"Movie Night?"

I smiled at the tent ceiling. "Yeah, Bee used to get us all together and make us watch his crappy movies. It was fun." I sighed, those were the days.

"Wait, but-"

"Yeah?"

"You used to serve with him?" Jen asked. "I mean, before you came to the _Flaweless_?"

I nodded. "Reaper Squad. We were an unusual bunch. Italian convict, Scottish pyromaniac, Indian street urchin, Finnish supermodel, a dark and brooding mysterious Helljumper whose birthplace I still don't know, Pavel, me, and…and this kid from the Midwest that looked like he could crush an elite's throat without breaking a sweat."

"This Midwest guy, what happened to him?" Jen was an officer and she had lost several men under her command before. She sensed the change in my tone and the hesitation before I mentioned Scarecrow.

"He was killed in action. In Lambari." I closed my eyes, the image of his grizzly dead was etched into my memory. "Before him I had had several men die under my command. They…they didn't mind. Most of them were slightly bad in the head or didn't have anything to live for. For a while I was just like them, you know? They didn't mind jumping into their deaths and I didn't care when they did."

"He changed it?"

"No, not really. I changed with time, by the time we crossed paths I was considerably…saner."

"Well that's a lie," Schitzo sighed.

"He was probably the main reason why I started caring for the men under my command. Other than Pavel of course, he's always been my best friend."

Jen smiled and nodded.

"And then, just like that, he's dead."

"It hurt more than most, didn't it?"

I nodded slowly. "But life went on. Next man I lost was this other great kid, Sander Almers, our squad medic. He died carrying me to safety. Great guy too, a bit of a loudmouth, but nobody's perfect. He was great friends with Serge and Beckel, you know?"

"He died right before the company was formed, right? No wonder both of them are so grim."

"Serge's always been like that. He saw a lot of stuff even before he came into the Helljumpers. Beckel…well, he's changed."

Jen glanced at her datapad and gently put her on top of her traveling chest. "Your first squad…Reaper?"

I nodded.

"Why were you all from Earth? You _are_ from Earth, right?"

I nodded again. "URNA, Mexico to be more precise. Pavel's Polish. I honestly don't know why, I know Grigori's not from Earth, but it is a little bit weird that the rest of us were."

"Grigori… why do you call him Caboose?"

I frowned. I had used the excuse of him being my last pick for Reaper Squad as a cover for his nickname, but honestly I had just used it out of spite. I knew that he was supposed to be spying on me for ONI and had given him an embarrassing nickname for it. "Long story."

"Ah," she smiled. "Maybe I should ask him."

I shrugged, trying to appear as noncommittal as possible.

"And Pavel, what about him?"

I sighed and took a deep breath. This story was a long one. "Our previous ship, the UNSC _Inconvenience_," Jen snorted at the name, "used to have a rather unconventional purpose, and in turn it had a very relaxed sense of discipline. One day we found ourselves on the beautiful beaches of Jericho VII. I was raised in Jericho VII."

Jen winced involuntarily. The action looked unnatural on the hardened ODST.

"My uncle still lived there, so I broke off from my unit and headed towards Camp Afghan. He was an instructor there. Seeing as Camp Afghan was a military installation the covvies hit it and they hit it hard. Pavel doesn't like to talk about it much, but his entire unit was sent to defend the place. His unit was the… the 105th Drop Jet Platoon."

"Never heard of them," Jen shrugged.

I smiled, it was exactly what I had said. My smile disappeared after a second. "They were wiped out. Pavel was the only survivor."

"Oh."

Oh indeed.

"The point is, I found Pavel, armor scorched, parts of it missing, hell, there were spikes embedded on him too. After that… well, he didn't have a unit, all his friends were dead, and he didn't know what to do. We retreated from the planet on and I guess he just decided to remain on board."

Jen was silent for a few long moments. "And your uncle?"

I shook my head. "Brutes got to him. He got one of them at least, hit it with this huge hunting shotgun he used to show off to everyone that came inside the house."

"I'm sorry."

"Thanks," I said. "It's all in the past."

There was no happiness in the smile that Jen gave me next. "Nothing ever stays in the past."

"Ah, a pessimist."

"A realist."

"Relax, we share schools of thought. Besides, my own personal experience would prove you right. Some things don't like to stay buried."

An uncomfortable silence followed that. Not because I had managed to kill the conversation, but because we both knew how uncomfortably true that was. Now I was thinking back to all those moments that I wished I could forget. I wondered what Jen was wondering behind her frown and she was probably wondering the same thing about me.

All the same, perhaps it was better if this conversation ended right there.

"You don't want to hear my story?"

Or not.

"You don't have to feel like you have to tell me anything," I told her. "Seriously."

She smiled. Jen was attractive, maybe if she had grown her hair just a little bit longer… "It's not polite to talk about yourself and not listen to others," she chided.

"All right. Shoot."

Jen leaned back in her bunk, placing her intertwined hands behind her head and taking a deep breath. "I joined the Corps out of spite more than anything."

"As good a reason as there is," I said simply.

"No sarcasm, please."

"That's just how I deal with my feelings."

"Frank…"

"Sorry, go on."

Jen took another deep breath before she started talking again. "If I had stayed my dad would've paid for my trip to Earth or Paris IV after getting my degree and he would've gotten me into one of the best universities in this side of the galaxy in order to further my education. Not such a bad fate, but it wasn't the one I chose." Jen turned to look at me. "I realize how I must sound, probably the most cliché thing you've ever heard."

"Not ever," I said with a small shrug. "Maybe all day…"

She laughed quietly. "Oh well, maybe I watched on too many movies and decided that I wanted to be independent. Couple that with the incredibly effective propaganda branch of ONI…"

"And you jumped at the opportunity," I finished. It was something of a joke that the only branch of the Armed Forces that was effective against the Covenant was the propaganda that ONI gave out. Even a bitter veteran that had seen his friends slaughtered by the Covenant would feel a little bit patriotic after one of their commercials.

"Joined the Corps, told myself that I'd be there for a few years, kick some alien ass, and then return to Cygnus and actually start my civilian career. First mission, I'm a green-faced lieutenant in charge of a bunch of equally green troops. The only one of my men that had actually seen any combat was my platoon sergeant. We're flying in two Pelicans, fifteen men each."

"Where was this?" I asked.

"Draco III."

I let out a whistle. Draco III hadn't been a good place to be when the Covenant came.

She nodded understandingly. "The other Pelican was shot down almost as soon as we took off. A flight of Seraphs tore through the formation. I heard the screams of my men as they fell to their deaths."

It was most definitely not a nice way to go. I found myself sitting back up, listening intently to what she had to say.

"Our other Pelican made it through in one piece. The pilot was cool and calmer than all of us, save perhaps for my platoon sergeant. He had just seen his over twenty of his friends die and he was telling _us_ that everything would be fine and wishing us good luck."

"Sounds like a hell of a man."

"Yeah. Moment he dropped us off four Banshees hit it hard. The Pelican blew up, no survivors."

I winced.

"So I found myself with an under strength platoon, and that's putting it mildly, with men so scared that they had just about pissed themselves. I wasn't feeling too well either, but I had to keep calm, after all, if I lost my cool then we would all die. I don't think I managed to stay cool and collected because of my men, it was something of a self-preservation thing. If they were alive it meant that I wasn't going to be the first thing they shot at."  
>I smiled. Spoken like a cynic.<p>

"So we moved towards our objective. With more than half our forces missing we were immediately routed. Our glorious advance turned into a miserable retreat, a retreat that cost me two more men. We fell back to our own lines;the upper-ups congratulated us on our effort, saying that we had bloodied their nose and that losses were to be expected against a fortified enemy. We believed them of course, how could we not?

"Truth is, they botched the operation. I don't think I could've done it better to be honest, but later I found out that Command had messed up. I don't care if they're ten times better than me at planning operations, it's their job to do it well."

"Then you tried to join?"

"No," she shook her head. "But it is when I first came across an ODST unit. I was in our camp, I think I was leaving our small hospital, when I came across four Helljumpers. Three of them were talking and walking, the other one was on a stretched between them. He was missing one of his legs above the knee and was smiling and joking with them."

_Wow._

"Later I figured out that they were as worried for their friend as any other human being would've," she continued, "but at that time the only thing that I could think about was that they were hardasses."

"Part of our job description," I shrugged.

"So I decided to become a hardass as well. Shaved my head and did my best to detach myself from useless things such as feelings."

Considering our career choice, her move had been a smart one.

"Two years of the same story in different colors followed that," Jen said. "I had gotten better, of course. I saved some of my men and did some good job, but it never seemed to be enough. _Then_ I joined the ODSTs."

"How's that going so far?"

"Not too shabby," she admitted with a shrug. "First mission was a bitch though. I got my platoon sergeant to enlist with me and both of us were sent to a platoon that had just lost its lieutenant along with a third of their number. I came in a little bit too hard."

I shook my head. "I take it they didn't exactly receive you with open arms."

"No," Jen said, tracing her hand through the A-shaped scar on her cheek. "They didn't."

I waited for her to keep talking.

"We were dropped into action before things got more crazy. Everything changed then, I wasn't the enemy anymore down there. I was their leader, maybe reluctantly, but I still was…" Jen paused and sat back up, facing me. "Long story short, I earned their respect, saved the platoon and lived to tell the story."

It might've been imprudent of me, but I couldn't resist it any longer. "How exactly did you get that scar?"

She smiled. "Three of my men jumped me, they were wearing masks and I managed to fight them off. I couldn't prove anything so they went unpunished. Next time they hit me before jumping me. One of the guys pulled a knife and carved me up nice and slow."

"What did you do to him?"

"Me? Nothing. My good platoon sergeant, on the other hand… Let's say Micah doesn't know who could've tied my aggressor to a chair and beat him within an inch of his life."**  
><strong>

I had heard some stuff about us ODSTs, a lot of it was crazy and most of it was true, but something like this was right up there with the craziest stories.

"Micah?" I asked. "Micah Black? The guy that's always smiling and seems about to break into a song?"

"Beware the nice ones," she said simply.

"Damn, never would've imagined." I tried picturing Gunnery Sergeant Black tying a man, an ally, to a chair and beating him until his face was too swollen for anybody to recognize. I couldn't, his face kept shifting to show either Caboose's or mine. "That was your first mission as a Helljumper then?"

"Yeah. I earned my platoon's trust. Not their friendship, mind you. Nobody ever apologized for this ugly scar, but I earned their loyalty and their respect."

"In this world, one might argue that it was a fair exchange."

"One might," she conceded.

"What happened to them?"

She looked away from me, her eyes distant. I had to remind myself that she had lost about four fifths of her platoon less than a year ago.

"All of the troublemakers died in a Covenant ambush. They surrounded us and hit us from all sides. Half my platoon was dead in the opening volley, the rest of us managed to fight our way through. In the end there was only seven of us left."

Jen had brought six men from her previous unit, seven if you counted her. I had skimmed through her file, even the report on her last mission, but hearing it from her own mouth was completely different. I could hear the pain in her words, the failure that she believed herself to be.

"I'm sure there's nothing you could've done better. You saved six of your men from a situation most would call an impossible one."

"I know," she said, her voice breaking slightly. "Doesn't make it any better."

I nodded, wondering if I should say anything. Putting my hand on her shoulder was out of the question, Jen was a woman that wouldn't take pity or comfort from anybody if she could avoid it. In her attempt to pretend to be a hardass bitch she had actually turned into one. I was at a complete loss, watching this woman that could break most men in half singlehandedly, about to burst into tears.

"Damn Frank, you made Jen cry," Dom said from his bunk.

"No way," Yas said a second later. "Jen can't cry. She's physically unable to."

I relaxed at their jokes. Now that Jen knew that they had been listening she would be slightly pissed and would complain some, but she wouldn't lose her cool in front of a peer and could keep herself the toughest lieutenant amongst all four of us.

"You ass," she said, tossing her pillow at Dom.

"Ow! Did you put rocks in it?"

Jen let out a laugh that masked the turmoil of emotions she was going through right now. After that she shook her head and muttered something concerning Dom's lack of verticality before turning over in her bunk and trying to fall asleep.

"Relax Jen," Dom said, his tone changing. "We've all been through some hard stuff. I don't think I can talk about what I went through yet."  
>Jen once more muttered something that included the words 'sissy' and 'legally a midget' before dismissing him with a wave.<p>

I turned on my bunk to face the other two males in the large tent and gave them a thank you look. Dom shrugged and returned to his bunk. Yas gave me a 'that was close' look and shook his head before pulling his datapad from his table. He started watching some vid and didn't look at me again.

I smiled at the guy. The first time I had come across him he had been a huge douche. Living in the same room had forced us to get along, and with time we discovered that we actually kind of _liked_ each other. But on top of it all, I respected him for not taking sides once Hayes discovered my part in her cousin's death. It took balls to do that, especially considering the story that he and the captain shared.

Which reminded me…

"Yas, what's the story behind you and the captain anyways?" I asked.

Even Jen sat up in her bed, Dom all but squealed with glee at the opportunity to hear about the story behind our Captain and First Lieutenant. I waited for several seconds, watching as Yas finished with his video and a waiting for him to put his datapad away.

"Not for me to say," he said, looking serious.

The rest of us groaned before and dropped back into bed in a motion that looked so practiced that it could've been taken out of a comedy.

* * *

><p>I woke up precisely on hour and four minutes later to the flapping of fabric and the sound of wind. The light drizzle had turned into actual rain if the sounds on the ceiling were anything to go by. I opened my eyes slowly and carefully sat up, not really wanting to get dizzy. I looked towards the entrance and saw Captain Hayes, she was clad in her work uniform, the only difference between hers and mine the insignia on her shoulder.<p>

"Captain," Dom greeted from his bed. "News?"

"We've got a new mission, get your men up and ready and head to Landing Pad Twelve in twenty minutes. I'll explain more on the way up." With that, she turned around and left.

"You catch that Jen?" Dom asked.

"Myeah," she replied, groaning.

"Yassir?"

"Got it," he said.

I groaned and stretched me neck. "Should we dress up in full battle gear?"

"Yeah," Yas said. "Come on, let's go."

I groaned again, if only to get some of the frustration out of my system. Jen was already undressing herself and yanking her undersuit out of her trunk. I averted my eyes out of respect and went through my messy trunk in order to find the undersuit. It looked to me like a full-body swimsuit, but I knew that the materials it was made off made it so much more.

Once it was on I flexed every muscle I knew how to and then started yanking at the sections where it was tight. It was around that point that I noticed that Lieutenant Jen Weller had an amazing ass that the tight undersuit she wore helped display. It was not on Cam's level, but I had to admit that it was pretty close.

Jen looked like the kind of woman that would like to be in control in a relationship. She probably preferred being on top.

Yas saw exactly where I was looking at and slapped me in the back of the head as he went. I smiled and once again averted my eyes.

You know, as far as these things went, my life could've been worse.

* * *

><p><em>Thanks to SilasWhitfield for proofreading this chapter.<em>

_Hey errbody, this chapter started out as a base-to-battle kind of chapter, I planned to have some fighting in here, but the moment I realized that I could elaborate on Jen's background I just went with it. I had a good time making up a suitably dramatic story without making it so incredibly tragic that it verged on the unbelievable. I guess I did alright._

_And I noticed that Frank's quoting Cortana…or is it the other way around. *unecessary evil laugh*_

_Thanks to all of you for your reviews and I look forward to any comments you might have on this chapter._

_Stay strong._

_-casquis_


	161. High Tides

Chapter CLXI: High Tides

**April 10, 2548 (UNSC Calendar)/**

**UNSC (**_**Dis)Honorable**_**, in orbit above LV-426, Zeta Reticuli System**

* * *

><p><em>"The operation was called Splasher, nobody even thought about Red Tide or something considerably more intimidating."– Lance Corporal Takacs Sandor<em>

* * *

><p>The heavy destroyer wasn't a ship designed to transport troops. It had a small hangar from which it could launch ten Pelicans and enough troops to fill them up. Its Marine complement was mostly used for internal security and occasionally served in ground engagements as an additional company to any of the two battalions from the <em>Flaweless<em>. Despite its shortcomings, the _(Dis)Honorable_ was as much of a threat in space combat as six frigates. It had two MAC cannons running its length as well as several smaller railguns and an inordinate amount of point-defense guns. In addition to that, it carried enough plating to make it cumbersome and slow to accelerate.

It was like a well-armed tortoise.

It had been designed to take enough punishment to kill a cruiser while dealing enough damage to fend off any number of ships for a long enough time. The standard UNSC heavy destroyer had been the bane of insurrectionist fleets back in the days before the war started. Now they were terribly outdated and didn't inspire any fear in the Covenant. Rumor had it that the higher-ups in the UNSC Navy mostly saw destroyers as damage sponges nowadays.

The _(Dis)Honorable_ had one good thing going for it though. It had thirty HEV launch tubes.

My twenty-man platoon was already inside their respective launch tubes and awaiting the time to jump. I was overseeing Staff Sergeant Mark Bradford as he ordered his men to climb inside the remaining ten drop pods. Not being one to waste perfectly good equipment Captain Hayes had ordered a squad from Platoon Four to jump down with us in order to have the whole company on the ground as fast as possible.

"Your men ready Staff Sergeant?" I asked impatiently.

"Uh, yes, sir," Bradford replied, had a little trouble attaching the hoses to their helmets.

I shrugged. While we were supposed to operate literally anywhere in the galaxy…well, maybe not literally, we didn't really expect to actually operate everywhere. Even within the ODSTs there were several smaller units that specialized in different mission types. Take the Leapfrogs and their jetpacks for example, working in a manner very similar to that of the Army Rangers. While everyone was supposed to be able to function in every aspect, we didn't really expect to have to do a whole lot of zero-gee or underwater missions.

I instinctively reached for the large oxygen tank strapped to my back. It was on my right shoulder blade strapped securely and reaching halfway down my back. The hose was secured to the back my helmet and nothing short of a direct hit from a rifle round would sever it.

"You ready?"

"Yes, sir!" "Then hop in," I ordered. "We're pushing it close as it is."

Bradford saluted and jumped inside his pod, pressing the button that sealed the hatch. Once he was inside I walked to the four remaining pods, they had been stripped almost completely bare and filled with mission-specific equipment. I made sure that everything was tightly strapped and closed the hatches.

"Jump in thirty seconds," a robotic voice announced.

"I know, I know, goddamnit," I growled at the speaker. I grabbed my battle rifle from the table in the middle of the room and jumped inside my pod, securing it on its designated space to my right. I waited for the hatch to close in front of me and cracked my knuckles in the same fashion that I always did before a jump. I rolled my neck slightly to either side before taking a deep breath.

"Helljumpers!" I boomed, my voice audible through the speakers in every pod. "How do we go?" "We go feet first, Lieutenant!" the men shouted back in chorus.

"Damn right we do," I replied, closing the line.

The light bulb directly in front of me lit up as the countdown reached three. Red, yellow, green.

My pod lurched and my stomach with it as we left the gravity of the ship. I glanced up and saw the bright engines of the _(Dis)Honorable_ and the rest of the ship already flying away from us, speeding up to a speed of several kilometers per second. After that I switched my attention to the moon of LV-426. The moon looked dreary from way up here. The large storm that was directly at our feet didn't really help. MY HUD immediately outlined the coastline that I couldn't see in bright yellow and displayed my intended landing area in a green square.

My pod's guidance systems were doing their job properly and I didn't interfere. This was a high-orbit jump, it would take longer than the usual thirty seconds, as much as that bothered me I swallowed any complaints.

The moment our pods hit the atmosphere and started shaking, Sandor let out an excited holler. "Whoo! Hell yeah!"

As much as he was enjoying himself, nobody else seemed inclined to partake in his taunts to Lady Death.

"Shit," a man from Dom's platoon said.**  
><strong>

My heart jumped up to my throat. That word could only mean one thing in this situation. My eyes quickly scanned through the names in my HUD until I saw him. Corporal Jens Larssen, his pod had hit the atmosphere at a slightly steeper angle than the rest of ours, it had been enough to send it tumbling into a uncontrolled fall.

"Corporal, report!" I barked, sweat pouring down my face.

"Pod's systems are failing, electronics are going haywire, the chutes aren't responding," he yelled. The panic in his voice was too much for a man to bear, but I didn't close the line. "Oh my God, oh my God!"

His failing pod kept feeding me reports. The outer shell of the pod was failing and Larssen was slowly being roasted alive. The sad part is that he was falling him to fast for the heat to kill him. He would be in horrible pain as he saw the surface of the planet fly at his face.

His screams of panic filled my pod and I immediately cut his feed from the rest of my men. "Corporal, if you have a family, I'll personally see that they are taken care of. God knows you deserve better than this, but you're leaving a horrible world. I hope we meet again on a better one."

It was poorly worded, but it was the best that I could come up with in the spur of the moment. Larssen gave no acknowledgement that he head heard, but I knew that my voice had been projected over the speakers in his pod.

"I'm sorry," I added before cutting the line.

_I'm sorry. How can you say that to a man that's about to die?_

"Hey, it's better than disinterest," Schitzo said, his voice manifesting from all around me.

Before I could retort, before I could say anything at all, the pod tore through a gray cloud and slammed into the stormy ocean.

"Don't open your pods yet," I ordered my men. "Wait for the go sign." Sinking as fast as we were into the dark sea was an experience that would frighten anybody, especially considering that our pods were vaguely coffin-shaped.

"Now," I said, my voice a little bit louder than it needed to be.

My hatch opened and water began pouring in. I yanked my rifle from its hole and waited for the compartment to be completely filled before gently pushing myself away from the pod. The flashlights in my helmet immediately lit up to illuminate the dark sea around me. Several similar beams of light appeared all around me, their sources obscured by the stormy water.

Four waypoints appeared on my HUD, one of them was almost directly below my current position and slowly sinking deeper into the ocean.

"Grab your gear," I ordered.

"Sir, what about Larssen?" Bradford asked me, his voice perfectly calm.

I sighed. "He's gone. Set his pod to turn on a beacon on an hour, someone will take care of him." "Yes, sir."

Bradford had probably been close to Larssen. They had fought together and lived together. I could only be glad that they hadn't died together.

I clamped my rifle to my back and spun so that my head was facing the bottom of the ocean. My heavy armor was more than enough to drag me to the depths, but I needed to accelerate the process a little bit. The four pods had let out small air bags that would slow down their descent and eventually stop it completely, but so far they were still sinking.

"Ah, there we go," I said, finally reaching the pod. It was giving off bright lights so that we could locate it easily. I opened the hatch and grabbed one of the handheld turbines designed to transport a man underwater. I grabbed onto the pod with one hand and turned the turbine on with the other one. I slowed down the pod's fall and managed to keep it in a relatively stable position for the rest of my men to reach.

"Damn it's dark," Hoff said in a glaring understatement.

"We're half a mile below sea level," Andy reminded him. "It's supposed to be."

This part of the ocean was supposed to be three miles deep. I involuntarily looked down at the depths at my feet, not really wanting to think about it.

"Hurry up," I said sharply. "Grab your helping hands and we can swim back to shore."

There was the expected amount of horseplay from Hoff and Sandor while everyone reached one of the different supply pods and grabbed their turbines. After everyone was ready I opened a line to Staff Sergeant Bradford.

"I'm sorry about your man," I said.

"Terrible way to go." I nodded; realizing that there was absolutely no way that he would see that. "Yeah. You know where the rest of your platoon is. Once you link up with them tell Lieutenant dos Santos that I wish him luck."

"Willco, sir. Good luck to you as well. Careful with the sharks." At that moment it occurred to me that I had no idea what kind of fauna inhabited the oceans of LV-426.

"I hate sharks," Marv muttered under his breath. "And swimming." Hoff chuckled slightly. "Don't worry, sharks won't be able to bite through titanium and ceramic." "_Are_ there sharks?" Miri asked, her question tentative.

"I don't know, now that you mention it," Hoff admitted, "but I don't really think that they'd approach us."

I looked at the beams of light that seemed to struggle to light up the dark ocean. There was absolutely nothing else around us, considering the noise that we had made coming in it seemed pretty possible that a curious fish or two would be headed our way. The only fish that would be curious as opposed to afraid would be the big ones.

"Let's not linger," I said in the most professional tone I could manage. I didn't like sharks.

A chorus of 'yessirs' and acknowledgment lights followed. I grabbed the bullet shaped turbine and made sure that I had a firm grip on it while I aimed it at our destination. As I turned it on I could feel the water it pushed out hitting me right below the neck. The little turbine propelled me forward with incredible speed, the rest of Five following closely in my wake. It would be almost two hours before we reached land, only then would the real party start.

Almost two hours later we slowed down. The surface of the ocean had steadily grown closer and closer to us until we were forced to adjust our course in order to ascend with it. If I looked directly up I cold make out the vague shape of clouds and the occasional flash of lighting. Those last ones would light up the water,giving the coral reefs and my fellow Helljumpers a ghostly appearance. It could almost be called strangely beautiful.

"There," I said, creating a waypoint on the platoon's HUDs. "Those are the docks." We moved forward slower, watching out for mines or other dangers in the harbor. I could see the shape of a sunken ship below me, huge holes on its side where the plasma bolts had hit it. Most of the ships had been large cargo vessels, some of them still had containers strapped onto their docks. Others still had been pleasure craft, yachts and old-fashioned sailing ships had been sunk as well. In my opinion it was a waste of time and effort, there was no use that I could think of for those ships, at least none that would hurt the Covenant.

The city of Two Stones was more of a glorified town, but by the standards of this moon it was a large population center. It wasn't a particularly strategic location, the founders of this colony had seen to it that a port had been built here in order to facilitate transport and a city had grown around it. The comparatively heavy concentration of people had been what made it a target to the Covenant. The UNSC hadn't been able to respond because we had to deal with the larger threats in Water Oakley and Forest Green. As a consequence, every last human being on the city had been killed by the Covenant.

It was necessary sacrifice; their deaths had saved tens of thousands other humans and bought us time to kick the Covenant's ass right back here. Somehow I don't think that made anybody feel better about their deaths.

"Pavel, break off," I told him. "Inform me when you've cleared your target." "Understood," he replied. Eight blue dots started swimming in a separate direction from the rest of us.

I knew that the other four platoons would be doing similar assaults on the different ports in the city; we were supposed to coordinate our assaults in order to cause as much chaos as possible and prevent the Covenant from forming an effective response. We would keep our attack going for as long as possible and then the UNSC forces on the far side of the city would launch a rapid assault Marine force in Pelicans, hitting the Covenant on the other side of the city hard and fast. If it went well, we would destroy the last significant presence of Covenant forces on the planet with relatively little blood shed. Human blood, I can't speak for the aliens.

But first, first we needed to take the docks.

"Spread out," I ordered, stay low and turn down flashlight intensity.

Nothing quite said 'I'm over here!' like a set of bright lights.

The docks were made out of polycrete that reached all the way to the harbor floor. Some large rubber wheels were still hanging from ropes or chains, their purpose to keep ships from banging against the rock. I stood behind one and turned off my flashlight completely, the darkness of the ocean enveloping me. I was only a couple of feet under the surface, but the night sky and murky water kept me hidden from all but the sharpest eyes.

I almost started giggling hysterically when I imagined a pelican, the bird, diving for my helmet in the mistaken belief that I was a fish. How embarrassing.

"Ready," Caboose said a moment later, speaking for his whole squad.

My head broke the surface of the water without a sound. The moment that happened I activated VISR mode on my helmet and looked around. The pale lights that the covvies had set up were perfect for night vision, they wouldn't blind me if I looked directly at them and they would light up their surroundings more than enough for my helmet to let me see everything. I reached up to the top and pulled myself up slowly, the water dripping from my armor seemed incredibly loud.

"Go," I whispered. "Quiet." I finished climbing up and drew my rifle. There were two grunts directly in front of me. One of them was sleeping and the other one was walking like a zombie. I approached them as quietly as possible, drawing my knife as I went. I dispatched the woken grunt first and then slashed the other one's throat. I could see my men beginning to climb this dock and the adjoining one, dark silhouettes making short work of the sentries.

Marv and Sandor jumped on top of an elite, bringing it down while clamping its jaws shut with some effort. Before the elite could reach for its rifle or activate its shield Hoff ran up to it and stabbed it through the eye. That was good news; the elites believed they were doing rear echelon duty, which meant that their shields wouldn't be activated at all times until the alarm was raised. All the more reason to keep quiet.

"First dock is clear," I called after the elite was dead.

"We've got the third one under control," Caboose informed me.

"And two's fine," Pavel came in a second later.

"Ok, good. Keep moving up, keep it quiet for as long as you can," I said.

Progress was slow; killing people while observing noise discipline is a lot different than killing them regularly. Mostly we used our knives, but on occasion the ones of us that had suppressed pistols used them. The docks were long enough that they warranted their own management buildings. Clearing those was a little bit noisier than I would've liked, but in the end nobody raised the alarm.

"That was close," Sandor noted, letting an elite fall to the floor.

Hoff nodded, probing the elite with the top of his DMR. When the elite didn't move he took a step back.

"The docks are clear," I broadcast to the platoon. "There are three priority targets," I told them, going over what we already knew. "We have the AA gun, that's MG squad's priority. Then we also have the communications antenna here and this building right here. The building is an excellent defensive position; we can use it to distract the Covenant while the regulars attack on the other end of town." I examined the city map on my HUD, carefully going through the plan. "Recon will take care of the antenna. I want you to set up explosives, quietly if you can, and then do some scouting of the area. We'll clear the building as quietly as possible."

"Understood," Caboose said.

"Yes, sir," Pavel said.

"Detonate explosives on my command or as soon as you're made. Let's go."

Everyone nodded, in a way they seemed giddy with anticipation. It wasn't always that you were part of an assault on the Covenant forces that might actually turn into a victory. If we won here then the planet was ours.

"Snipers, there and there," I said, spotting the glints of the helmets the jackals often wore.

Before I could even order them to do it, Miri and Hoff dispatched them, the suppressed DMRs making a quiet snap that even then seemed too loud. I could hear other faint noises to my right, where Caboose's and Pavel's squads were moving up as quickly as possible.

There weren't many guards in this area. If an attack was to come it would come from the front, where the bulk of our forces were waiting. Even the long-range jumps and long swim after that served to assure the Covenant that we didn't have any secret plans for them. It was all good and well, they had been so battered by our continous **(continuous) **assaults that the covvies barely had enough soldiers to hold the city, small as it was. Despite that I was still nervous, good as Jaguar Company was, we'd have a very tough time facing off against five thousand angry aliens.

"Patrol's coming," Sandor hissed. "Squad and a Revenant."

"In through that building," I ordered.

All six of us sneaked to the side, with Marv and Andy covering our flanks while we entered the building. We quickly cleared the building, making sure that it was empty before waiting for the patrol to pass. They made their way around the corner and slowly moved through the street in front of us. I examined the troops as they went; even the elite leading the squad looked bored, not to mention the grunts and jackals. They took their time, but when they were far enough away that the Revenant's humming wasn't audible anymore we kept moving.

Everything was going well. Two houses and five dead grunts later something blew up. The noise was incredibly loud and seemed to snap everyone out of a dream-like state.

"What the hell was that?!" I asked. "Report!" "Wasn't us, Lieutenant," Caboose came in quickly.

"Nor us," Pavel said. "We're holed up right outside the tower's defense perimeter."

I groaned. "Must be some other platoon." I groaned again, this time louder. If any of the other platoons had been caught this early it meant that we would have to rush our mission. Not only would the five thousand Covenant soldiers be awake and alert after that, they would be actively searching for intruders. Two of our objectives were supposed to be the first ones taken out, that's why this area of the docks had been given to Five.

"We're going to have to hurry," Pavel said, sensing what I was feeling.

"Agreed," I replied. "We can take advantage of the chaos right now; better get our work done before they're all awake and coordinating search parties."

"Sounds like a plan," Hoff sighed.

We were moving faster now, clearing the houses quickly and barely bothering with patrols. We ran behind them as soon as they were past us, a couple of times I thought our steps would make an alien turn, but they were all too eager to get to the action. Already I could hear gunfire and other minor explosions not too far away. They were making a lot of noise.

"Who's that?" I asked finally. The company-wide frequency had a larger chance of being intercepted, which is why we rarely used it during stealth missions. "Need assistance?" "This is Two," Yas responded immediately. "We're good so far, making lots of noise, drawing them away." He paused and I could hear the plasma bolts even through his helmet. "Might need a little bit of help in a moment." "Don't worry Yas, we'll ease some of the pressure soon," I assured him. "Just stay alive." "If I had a nickel for every time I heard that…" I chuckled lightly. I was half-expecting Grass to say something about nickels not being used anymore as currency before explaining the origin and meaning on the phrase.

"Building's in sight," Sandor announced. "Two Wraiths, fifteen soldiers. Wraiths aren't active." "Hoff and Miri, you take out the elites closest to the tanks," I quickly ordered, moving up. "They should be the drivers. Andy and Sandor, I want both of you to move to that car over there. Marv, you and me are going to move to the right and behind those crates. We draw their fire as soon as Miri and Hoff fire then Andy and Sandor take them from the back." "I did always consider myself an ass man," Sandor said with a small shrug.

"I–I don't even…ugh," Andy said, expressing her feelings clearly and concisely.

"Move," I said, inwardly groaning.

Our armored boots clicked on the pavement even despite the specially treated rubber soles designed for maximum grip and minimal noise. Marv and I ran and slid behind a bunch of abandoned-looking crates and took aim at the closest targets.

"On your shot," I addressed Hoff and Miri.

They fired simultaneously a moment later. They didn't stop at the first shot, the elites had wizened up after the explosions and had activated their personal shields, but even then they couldn't avoid the barrage. The two aliens jerked backwards and tried to avoid the bullets that pierced their armor as their shields failed. They weren't exactly successful and their corpses fell down to the floor a second later. By that moment both Marv and I had fired. The two elites closest to us also tried to run for cover, but they were too far away from anything sturdy to make it. They both died short of safety. By that point most of the grunts and jackals had panicked and were running away from our position while the rest of the elites tried to get them to turn around and fight us.

"El-tee, cover me," Marv said.

_What now?_ I inwardly groaned.

Marv dashed from cover and climbed onto the rear of one of the Wraiths from there he pulled himself up and crouched on top of the turret. He fired a couple of bursts before sliding forward and manning the plasma turret. He started firing indiscriminately, the hot plasma shredding flesh and shields alike with deadly efficiency. It wasn't long before all the aliens around the building were dead.

"Marv, drive that Wraith into the building's entrance," I ordered. "Sandor, put some C-12 in the other Wraith's engine." As Sandor quickly booby-trapped the other Wraith and Marv carefully maneuvered his commandeered tank in order to jam the entrance the rest of us moved up inside the building. It was five stories high, with a sturdy ten-foot wall surrounding it and fifteen meters between the wall and the building. It had no windows on the first floor, and that alone meant it was a fortress to us.

"Lieutenant, the antenna is rigged and ready to blow," Caboose said.

"Roger that, no time to scout for targets right now. I want you and your team on our position as soon as possible."

"Yes, sir." By that time we had kicked down the door and were going in with our guns blazing. Sandor and Andrea took the lead, leaving Hoff, Miri, and me at the rear, checking for anything they might've missed. The first floor was mostly grunts. The second one had mostly jackals. The third one had four elites, all of them ready for us. The fourth floor was empty and the fifth floor had an ultra that almost managed to chop Sandor's head off.

"Shit that was close," he heaved, resting his hands on his knees and taking deep breaths. He straightened up and rubbed his throat where the plasma sword had cut through the undersuit. "Too close."

"It's gonna leave a scar," Andy noted drily, closing in on him and lifting his chin to examine the wound. "Cut wasn't deep, but the burn's going to stay." "Great," Sandor muttered. He didn't sound as if he was in pain at all. He turned and stomped the dead elite in the head, denting the alien's helmet. "Bitch." "You're going to look like a mafia hitman," Hoff told him. "Not your look, bro." "Shut up," he snapped back.

"Friendlies coming in on your six," Marv warned.

"What the hell took you so long?" I asked him.

"Sorry, I was jamming the Wraith into the gate so that they can't move it." I sighed. "Whatever. Find positions."

"Frank, we've rigged one of the AA guns legs." I squnted, suddenly remembering that their target in particular was the AA gun version that stood on three long legs and didn't have any battlements. The one that could punch through the plating on a cruiser. If one leg went down then the whole thing would collapse.

"Got it, fall in on our position, we're going to make as much noise as possible."

My men scrambled in different directions, mostly going for the windows. Once we had all sides covered and Caboose's squad was in position I waited. And waited.

"Uh, do you want us to fire now, Lieutenant?" Miri asked tentatively.

"No, I want you to make me tea," I said with a roll of my eyes. "Come on! Let's make some noise!"

That was all the encouragement my men needed. Suppressors were taken off and everybody that could changed their guns to full-auto. Already some aliens were coming towards our position, no doubt investigating the lack of response. From our location in the fifth floor we could easily spot several other Covenant groups, but those closest to us were the logical targets.

I never got tired of easy pickings. Hitting a grunt in the head when it wasn't even expecting it gave me this weird sense of satisfaction that would've been considered psychopathic when facing human enemies. But they weren't human and I wasn't a psychopath... probably. Three grunts went down when I fired, it took a moment for everybody else to catch up with me.

Sometimes being augmented did give me some satisfaction. I was the best one in my company, no doubt about that. Then I remembered that I was only that way _because _of my augmentation.

"Frank, we're inside the building," Pavel said.

"Blow the charges," I replied immediately.

Two loud explosions shook the building. One of those explosions was followed by the unmistakeable noise of a collapsing structure. We had just knocked the most powerful defensive weapon the covvies had out of the game. Oh, and disarrayed their communications too, but nobody ever cares about stuff like that.

It wasn't long before we got exactly what we wanted and ludicrously large numbers of Covenant soldiers started moving in around our position. The advantage of this building was that nobody could get close to the outer walls without being exposed to our fire. Even if they made it to the walls, going past them would expose them to our weapons again. Quite a few grunts died trying to get to the outer walls before the elites realized that they weren't getting anywhere.

Despite our strategic advantage we were severely outnumbered and all the covvies had to do was throw enough aliens at us until we ran out of ammo. That was doubly true for Pavel and his men, who were firing almost nonstop, slowly eating away at the walls protecting the Covenant.

"Hold your fire," I ordered.

It didn't take long. Some eager elite squad leader ordered his underlings forward. They were cut down before they ran the length of the street. After that we repeated the process two more times before the aliens got smart and stopped trying to rush us.

"Hold your fire until you spot targets," I ordered. "MG Squad, that goes to you guys too." "Buzzkill," Pavel complained.

I rolled my eyes and crouched behind cover. "Jaguar Company, this is Lieutenant Castillo, we have control of Strong Point Alpha and can keep one of the access points clear."

"I might just take you up on that offer," Lieutenant dos Santos said. "Which point of access can you clear?" "Northwest," I replied. "You should make it quick though, little buggers are swarming this place." "Understood, we're on the move." Platoon Four would push their way towards us, tearing the covvies a new one as they went. If it worked they'd have even more aliens on their tail and would lead them straight to us. That was part of the plan, the less covvies our Marines would face the better. It took Dom and his platoon exactly four minutes to get to our position. We intensified our fire in order to allow them to come through.

"Your house, Frank," Dom said as soon as all his men were inside. "Your rules." "Send your sniper and sharpshooters up to level five, keep the rest of your men on the first and second stories. And Dom…"

"Yeah?"

"Nobody gets through." He laughed. "Frank, I'm insulted." I smiled. Dom could keep the covvies from climbing up.

"Sir, they're doing something!" Miri called in.

I looked up through the window and at the spot Miri had marked. I could see three elites crouching behind a large SUV. They lifted it to its side and crouched behind it. The three elites proceeded to push the car forward several feet. One of the elites the rolled back to its previous position and behind another car. The huge alien lifted it to its side and pushed it forward all by itself until it was nose to tail with the other car.

"Oh shit." A dozen elites that had been taking cover behind cars saw what was going on and decided to join the fun. The small walls of cars moved forward and our bullets wouldn't penetrate the undercarriage with enough stopping power. The moment they crossed the halfway point to the outer walls yellow sparks appeared on the bottom of the cars.

"Hold your fire!" I yelled. "Carver, break the wall, hit them right there!"

A red target designator appeared on one of the cars in the middle and Carver immediately set to work with his MGL. The explosions tore the car apart and blew up whatever was left of its fuel cells, shredding the elite behind it to ribbons. The covvies responded with a heavy barrage on Carver's position.

"Shit," he cursed. "They've got me pinned!" "Switch windows, you jackass," PFC Ramirez told him.

"Right," he said, sounding embarrassed.

Despite his constant firing, most of the elites didn't stop pushing their cars, the ones that did only left behind convenient cover for any other covvies that wanted to move up.

"Shit, they made it to the wall," Andy cursed.

"Forget about them!" I ordered my platoon. "Dom, we need you to handle anybody that tries to hop over the wall, we'll bleed the rest of 'em." "Sounds like a plan," he replied immediately.

The elites in the front started jumping over the walls only to be brutally stopped by Dom and his platoon. The rest of the covvies on the rear started moving up, the bracketed line of cars allowing them to take cover and avoid most of our fire.

"Shit," I said. "Zepeda, if you spot elite ultras and above be sure to take them out." I got his acknowledgement light and resumed firing. The bulk of the alien forces surrounding us were slowly moving forward, apparently unfazed by the corpses littering the street.

"Shit," I said again. "All right, MG squad, I want you to focus only on covvies vaulting over the wall." An explosion brought down a large section of the outer wall.

"Or through it," I amended. "Let's go!"

Tracers started pouring into the breach that the covvies had opened, going through the dust and hitting flesh and shields. Several grunts collapsed before a few of the elites could toss deployable covers and hide behind them. The elites waited while more and more aliens poured in, setting up a small area that was relatively protected from our fire. Dom's sniper started taking some of them out through the gaps in between the shields, but they covvies in the back quickly fired at his position.

"Hoff, Sandor, I want grenades on those shields, take a few of them out. Miri, I want you to kill anything with a carbine, give our snipers some breathing room."

"Yes, sir," she replied even as Hoff and Sandor tossed their frags.

The explosion allowed Pavel and his men to kill three elites that had been exposed and forced a couple more back behind the all again. That bought us some respite, but already the aliens were breaching through other sections of the wall.

I did my best to help Miri, shooting down jackal sharpshooters in order to allow us to defend this building a little bit more comfortably. The covvies didn't seem to lack numbers, they had enough soldiers to make us run out of ammunition.

"Frank, I'm sending my men up the second floor," Dom came in. "Not long before they push through." I nodded and acknowledged that. Once the covvies made their way inside the building it would prove tough for them to take the stairs, but it wouldn't take long for one elite to get crafty and decided to make a hole in the ceiling. I had done that more than a couple of times, it tended to work surprisingly well.

"To all Jaguar Company, this is Captain Hayes. I just received word that the Marine Strike Force has lifted off and they're on their way here, to put in in their words, to assist us. I'm just giving you all the heads up in case you're required to provide support to our so-called saviors." Even I had to smile at that. If Hayes wasn't such a bitch I would've liked her a lot. And my sexual fantasies with her would not involve so much angry sex.

I looked up to see Scarecrow and Schitzo both giving me disgusted and disapproving glances.

"They're inside the building!" one of Dom's men broadcast.

"Keep them off the stairs," Dom ordered. "I want one squad covering the stairs. Bradford!" "We got it, sir."

More and more covvies started moving up. We could barely hold them back as it was. Had they been a more…reasonable enemy, their leaders probably would've long since given up on the assault and would've called one or several artillery strikes on our position. The elites, however, weren't exactly reasonable. They had an entire race's worth of cannon fodder and weren't afraid to use them. What I wouldn't have given for an allied race that we could just throw to the dogs.

"Hit priority targets only," I ordered. "Grunt officers and fuel rod carriers count."

The fire coming from the building became a lot more sporadic, but a lot more effective. Elites collapsed at higher rates and several grunts were sent into disarray or panic as their officers were killed. I could hear the gunfire coming from inside the building several floor below us, but so far Staff Sergeant Bradford's squad hadn't requested assistance.

"Hunters, coming across the corner." "Pavel," I said.

Two or three of his men immediately redirected their fire to the alien behemoths, forcing them into a crouch o protect themselves. Seconds later one of the aliens was killed when Bamber fired her Spartan Laser. The weapon left a perfectly circular hole on the alien's thick shield and turned its torso into an orange mess. The other hunter roared in anger at seeing its partner die. It tried to run to hide behind heavier cover, but Bamber hit it before it could reach safety.

"Those things get easier to kill," Pavel said.

"Only because it's not just the two of us anymore," I reminded him.

Before he could reply to that an incredibly loud series of explosions rocked the building. For a moment I thought that we had been hit, but then I realized that the explosions were coming from the opposite side of town. Command must haveauthorized some seriously heavy bombs in order to shake us up that bad. I almost pitied the covvies that had been incinerated by the blasts.

"There's the cavalry," Marv noted.

"And it was only starting to get fun," Sandor said wistfully.

The arrival of several Pelican's worth of Marines didn't go unanswered. Even as I watched several of the covvies in the rear started moving back. Well, forward I guess. The departure of those aliens took some of the pressure off, allowing us to take our sweet time sniping jackals and tormenting grunts. Less than an hour passed until we saw the Scorpion tanks rolling down the street, their gunners looking for targets.

"You really did a number on them, Helljumpers," one of the tankers said admiringly.

"It's in the job description," Dom laughed, leaving the building and approaching the tank with little concern for his safety. "How was it?"

"Lieutenant, I drive a sixty-six ton machine of death. It was a cakewalk."

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is how we pushed the Covenant out of LV-246 for good.

* * *

><p><em>Thanks to SilasWhitfield for proofreading this chapter.<em>

_It's nice to have the good guys win every once in a while. It's not very often that the UNSC gets victories, due to the nature of the games you participate in most of the victories that the UNSC had or make the defeats seem like they were somehow worth it. To Frank every defeat is just a fight that wins nothing but a little bit of time, a delaying action that in the end might not be enough. He doesn't know it, but his effort and that of everyone in his unit helped win the war, stalling the Covenant onslaught enough for the Chief to do his job and kick some ass in the Halo installations and the Ark._

_As for the chapter itself, I would've loved to make the entrenched-in-a-building section a little bit longer, but I have to admit that I didn't have the willpower or even the desire to do it. Besides, the ending of the chapter would've been the same. I'm sorry if the last couple of chapters have seemed somehow repetitive or lack innovation, but it is mostly because I've been spitting them out as fast as I can come up with anything resembling a storyline in order to get to the good part. I know that's not exactly what you'd expect a writer to do (and if I ever write something I intend to have published I'm going to take my sweet time doing it), but I really wanted to get to the big battles. I have so many ideas for reach that I'm probably going to make that battle at least twenty chapters long. Regarding Larssen, the ODST that died during the jump. I've always wanted to show that dying like that is something that can happen to Helljumpers, but I couldn't bring myself to do it to one of the more primary characters. It would be bad taste and a crappy death to boot._

_I do recall mentioning having slightly over one hundred Helljumpers to toy with a couple of chapters back..._

_Anyways, hope this chapter was to your liking and again I apologize if you perceive it as inferior to others. Let me know what you thought and stay strong._

_-casquis_


	162. You Know What They Say About Progress

Chapter CLXII: You Know What They Say About Progress

**November 28, 2548 (UNSC Calendar)/seven months later**

**New Alexandria, Viery Territory, Reach, Epsilon Eridani System**

* * *

><p><em>"Progress is a nice word. But change is its motivator. And change has its enemies."– Robert Kennedy<em>

* * *

><p>Never in my life had I felt this elated before a deployment. The last dozen times that I had gotten the news telling me that we were about to deply I had sunk into near depression. I don't know why it happened, I honestly didn't like civilian life that much, but it still felt like they took something from me when I was called back into action.<p>

But not this time. After we had returned from LV-426 victorious, both fleet and ground forces, I hadn't been able to stop feeling triumph. I knew most of my colleagues felt the same way. Lots of Marines seemed to have a 'we're going to kick their asses' attitude as opposed to the usual 'here we go again' one that all veterans usually had. It was a nice feeling. I liked it. Winning was good for a change.

"Frank, over here!" Dom greeted from the back.

I smiled and waved, examining the bar. It was a lot different than the Grenadier back in Eszterghom, but it still had a definitive military feel to it. New Alexandria might've been the hub of commerce and economy in Reach, but it was still neighboring one of the largest naval bases on the planet and in turn was a city with heavy military presence from Marines that came and went.

"Where's the girl?"

"Hanna went out to meet some friends she hasn't seen in a while," I explained. "We're meeting later for dinner."

Dom nodded. "Well, that means you can be my wingman."

Dom was thirty-six years old; I didn't know that he was allowed to use that word. For that matter, I probably would look weird as well. Not for the first time I wondered how old I was biologically speaking. Time in cryo and slipspace meant that my body didn't age as much. I knew I was in good shape for my age (or any age, for that matter), but I had no idea how old my body was. There are a couple of gizmos that can tell your age, but I honestly never found the time.

"Wingman? You're telling me you need help?"

He shrugged. "Not many people believe me when I say I'm a Helljumper. I know I don't look the part, with me being so short and all."

"Hey," I said, putting my hand on his shoulder with a serious face, "it's not the size that matters."

He pushed my hand away and laughed. "I can tell you that I'm not short in that particular department."

"Keep telling yourself that," I said. "Fine, I'll help you."

"Great, thanks."

"Want me to make up a story about how you saved my ass some time?"

"Sounds like a plan. In a couple other years you probably won't have to make one up."

"If we get another couple of years," I said. "But that doesn't matter right now, does it? Who do you like?"

"Hmmm," he hummed, looking around the bar. There were a couple of girls that were obviously Navy and another group of young girls that looked like they were celebrating their boot camp graduation in the oldest of fashions. "Let's go for the Navy girls. Shall we?"

I groaned and stood up. "Let's go."

* * *

><p>One hour later I didn't know whether to high-five myself or shoot my own kneecap. Dom was leaving the bar with a pretty girl in each arm and left me sitting in a bar stool all by myself. I had just helped that guy get into a threesome that could've certainly been mine.<p>

"Goddamnit," I grunted, slamming my head against the bar.

"Relationships suck sometimes, right?" the bartender asked me, nodding at the closing door. "Thinking about the possibilities?"

I nodded, not raising my head. "I would give a lot of to be in his place. You do realize I put him there?"

"Yeah, yeah," he said. "I heard all of it. Did he really save your life like that?"

I shook my head. "No, he's a great Marine, but we've only been deployed together once."

He whistled long and loud. "Damn, that man owes you a lot of favors. I mean, did you see those girls?"

"I know, I know!" I said, finally straightening up. "One glass of your finest whiskey."

The bartender paced a glass and grabbed an old-looking bottle from under the counter. "One," he said, pouring whiskey halfway through. "And another one on the house for helping a man out."

I chuckled. "Thanks."

"For the record, I wouldn't have been able to keep it in my pants with those two beauties."

I glared at the guy.

"Fine, all right," he apologized. "Sorry."

I shook my head and drank half the glass. I glanced up to see Schitzo wearing a dirty apron. "You know," he said. "Normally I'd give you shit for thinking about anybody other than Hanna, seeing as you had sex with someone else while you were dating her."

I groaned quietly.

"But," he continued, "those two girls were _hot_. I'd understand and even encourage it if you jumped into bed with both of them."

I groaned loudly.

"Easy there man," the bartender said. "It'll pass."

I raised my glass slightly. "Here's to that."

It had been a very long time since I had last been on a bar by myself staring at the bottom of an empty glass. Whenever I was on the Grenadier there was usually someone there to chat with, and Captain Montgomery was always there if any of the regulars were missing for some reason or other. Right now I was by myself with a bunch of Marines that I didn't know and didn't seem interested in anything to do with me. Oh, there was also the bunch of giddy girls getting themselves drunk and, by extension, ready for the aforementioned Marines. Now that I think about it, it was incredibly depressing.

"Refill?"

"Please," I told the bartender. "On second thought, just half the glass."

"Really? Why's that?"

"You ask a lot of questions for a bartender," I told him.

He shrugged. "It's been a slow day," he admitted. "And honestly, I'm bored."

"I'm going out with my girlfriend later," I told him. "She's not a fan of booze."

"Daddy issues?"

I sighed. "I wish, it's even weirder than that."

"Women."

"Amen," I agreed. "But seriously, too many questions."

He shrugged again. It was beginning to annoy me. Hanna was supposed to get here soon. As per usual, she was the one that got to keep the car that the military issued to us. I needed to buy myself a car; frankly, it was getting annoying the way that I needed to keep asking for someone to drive me around when I was in my thirties. It was embarrassing.

My phone rang.

"Thank God." I answered the call. "Hello?"

"Frank, I'm just around the corner."

"Oh, hey Hanna, how you doing?"

"Fine. Had a lot of fun."

"Good, good. Where are you?"

"Just around the corner, I just said that."

"Oh, right."

"…"

"What?"

"Are you going to come out?"

"Oh, right."

"Did you make the reservations?"

"Yeah."

"Did you?"

"No, but I know a guy."

"This guy isn't this girl that you used to have sex with, right?"

"Um…"

"Wow Frank."

"Come on, we're friends. Besides, she's going to be intimidated when she sees how beautiful you are."

"You make a fine point, mister."

"You know I do."

"I'm right outside the door."

"Right, on my way."

I slid my credit card over the counter before downing the second glass of whiskey and leaving the bar. The Grenadier was ten times better.

"Hey," I greeted Hanna, kissing her. "How are you?"

"Good, good," she said, smiling. "Hey, you'll never guess who I came across?"

"Claire."

"Wow, how'd you know?"

"Claire? Really? It was just a wild guess." I rubbed the stripe of hair that ran along the middle of my head. "What's she doing here?"

"She got drafted back into action."

"Wow, that… that sucks." Someone should crown me the King of Understatement.

"I know, she was so angry."

"And Marina?"

Hanna shrugged. "I don't know. She did mention her being pissed as well, so I think she didn't get drafted back into service."

"I just saw them three weeks ago."

"And you didn't tell me?" she asked, mock offended.

"Well yeah, two girls are hard to handle, a foursome would've been beyond me."

"Ha-ha. Like Claire would ever have sex with you."

I opened my mouth in a comeback but closed it immediately. Hanna had a very good point there. "Touché."

Hanna then got one of those self-satisfied smiles that women seem to get whenever they win an argument. Damn her.

"So, can we afford the food in this place?" Hanna asked.

I chuckled. "Hanna, I live in a house you own, don't drive a car, and wear the same clothes I bought five years ago. I don't spend any money, I actually think I'm about ten months' pay from being a millionaire."

"A simple yes would've sufficed," she replied, smiling. "And seeing as you're so rich, I'm going to stuff myself with lobster."

"You know they bring their lobster all the way from Earth?"

"Really?"

"Yeah, it's crazy," I said. "I mean, they probably reproduce or eat each other on the way here."

"Frank, you're the weirdest person I know." Hanna paused. "And I love you."

"Love you too, honey."

* * *

><p>"Geez Frank, stop yawning."<p>

"What are you going to do about it, Banana?" I asked Hanna, squeezing both of her her buttocks. "Spank me?"

Hanna twirled around and pressed my hands to her butt a little bit tighter. "I might just stop allowing you to do that."

"Wow, smooth." I kissed her and gave her butt a couple of extra squeezes. "You know, you've been getting a lot less shy."

"Not like I've got much of a choice, with you groping me publicly every chance you get."

I shrugged and nodded. "I'm slowly corrupting you."

"I thought that I was slowly making you better."

"Nah, I don't think so."

"You two guys are disgusting," Pavel groaned.

"Oh come on, you're like that with Amber all the time," I said.

"Yeah, sometimes it's worse. Think about poor Lavvie;" Hanna seconded me. "You're going to scar her for life if you keep on going like that."

"She's four years old," Pavel said. "She's not going to remember any of this when she grows up."

"Damn, she's probably going to grow up into a serial rapist or something," Hanna suggested.

"Or worse, one of those people that don't have sex until their twenties."

"Very funny, Frank," Hanna chastised me.

"Ok, I'm going to stop you right there," Pavel interrupted. "Last thing I need is to be a bystander to you two guys arguing."

Pavel did have a point. The three of us were standing in line waiting to be processed and sent to a Pelican that would take us to the _Flawless_. I didn't know any of the guys around us, but they were all pointedly looking away from the two big Helljumpers and the pretty corpsman. I understood that, Pavel and I could've beaten any of those guys' faces in with little effort and Hanna could sass anybody into submission if it came down to it.

But mostly it was Pavel and me that scared them.

Once on the ship we all had jobs to do. I was an officer now, and I was supposed to handle a lot of paperwork after a mission. Pavel, as my second in command, would make sure that everyone in my platoon reported for duty. Hanna had to report with her own unit, but if all went well we might meet before the day was over. I kissed her goodbye before everyone took off in different directions.

The ship's systems were already aware that I was inside, but I still had to report to my superior officer. Hayes barely raised her eyes when I walked inside the room, but she acknowledged my presence with a grunt and dismissed me with a wave of her hand. It could've been a lot worse. In response for her behavior I failed to salute before leaving. She didn't say anything, she was beyond the point of caring. After that I made my way towards one of the briefing rooms, Pavel was there, sitting down in a chair while playing a game in his datapad.

"Pavel," I said, slapping his shoulder. "How are we?"

"Your squad already reported for duty, Grigori as well. We're still waiting for the rest."

"My whole squad?" I asked, surprised. "At the same time?"

"No, Miri showed up later. With Grigori."

"Huh," I mused. "All right."

I slouched on a chair behind the podium and pulled out my datapad. We had a replacement coming, for Reeves. I sighed and started reading through his file. A decent section of it was covered with black ink, but I promptly used my clearance to read about his past deeds. Like Reeves he was a trained medic, seemed capable with weaponry, and had more balls than your average alligator wrestler. He was a corporal, one full rank higher than Reeves had been. All in all, the guy seemed like a model ODST. It was up to Recon Squad to confirm that.

Corporal Jin Han would do.

"Hey Gunny," someone greeted Pavel. "Sir!"

I looked up to see PFCs Ramirez and Lizzo saluting. I gave them a half-hearted salute and told them to be at ease. They complied and promptly reported for duty with Pavel. After that the rest of my men came in groups of twos and threes, saluted and reported for duty. When Corporal Han came in I took the time to ask him a couple of questions before sending him off to Grigori to get better acquainted with the rest of his squad. He seemed like an all right guy, treated me in a matter befitting an officer and didn't engage in any of the usual ODST dick swinging.

"That's all of them," Pavel told me.

"I can count."

"Not very well."

I laughed. "Anything else in the schedule?"

He glanced at his own datapad. "Not for me, no."

"Are you going to do the usual thing?" I asked Pavel.

"Yeah, I was just about to start the call."

I smiled. Pavel liked calling his family one last time before we left orbit. I hadn't been able to spend much time with Lavvie or Amber, but those calls usually allowed me to intrude and say goodbye before Pavel did the same. My current calendar wasn't going to allow me to say goodbye to them, I had a briefing with Captain Hayes and the rest of the platoon leaders.

"Tell Lavvie I said goodbye, will ya?"

"She's going to be angry that uncle Frank wasn't there to say goodbye."

Lavanya was four years old already. She could walk like the best of us and was beginning to master the art of running. I loved hearing her talk.

"You know what? Tell her that I'll get her a puppy as an apology."

"Amber hates dogs," Pavel told me.

My smile turned into a grin. "But you don't. She can't say no to a beautiful puppy if I give it as a gift to her daughter."

For a moment Pavel's face reminded me of his daughter whenever she saw that Uncle Frank had brought gifts for her. "Don't let me down on this one Frank. I want a dog."

"Soon as we get back," I assured him. "Well, gotta go."

"Hey Frank," Pavel stopped me. "Just keep your cool with Hayes, a'ight?"

I sighed. "I will. It just pisses me off."

"We let her cousin die, Frank," Pavel reminded me, standing up.

"You think I don't know that!" I turned. "I still have nightmares about that place. I still see her face sometimes Pavel. I hate myself for it, but war is war."

"She was her family," Pavel tried to explain. "And she can't blame the Covenant for killing her."

"Not as long as we're here."

He nodded. "Our fault or not, in her eyes, you killed her. Try to see it that way."

"I see it that way Pavs, I just understand why she does too."

Pavel sighed and shook his head disapprovingly. "Fine. Just don't give her any reason to… well, you know."

"Fine, I won't."  
>"Thanks. She hates me too, you know?"<p>

"Lucky you I'm the higher-ranking one of us."

"Lucky me," he agreed. "Off you go, you're going to be late. Sir."

I slapped Pavel's head on my way out. As good friends as we were, I still liked to take advantage of my officer status on occasion. He didn't mind, he got to hit me back and I didn't report him. That way he could impress everyone else when he told them that he punched an officer and wasn't reported. He liked telling that story. It pissed me off.

"Lieutenant."

Jen was walking towards me. "Hey Jen. And call me Frank, please."

It had been almost six months since I last saw her. I had met up with Dom and Yas a couple of times during our leave, but I had herd nothing from Jen.

"Fine," she relented. "Frank."

"Didn't hear from you. How you been?"

She shrugged. "All right, I guess. Catching up with my family, met my two new nieces. They're adorable."

"You have siblings?" I asked.

"Two sisters."

"Wait, but what are they doing in Reach? I thought you were from Cygnus."

She nodded. "Parents live there, but one of my sisters married this Army big-shot and they live here. Mom was visiting, so I got to spend quality time with her."

"That must be nice."

"It wasn't."

"Oh. Why is that?"

She sighed. "She thinks I'm old."

I laughed. "Old? Jen, you're four years younger than me. And look at me."

She raised an eyebrow, it made me notice that she had let her hair grow quite a bit from the buzz cut she usually sported. "She thinks I'm past marriage age."

"Oh."

"Yeah."

"She try to set you up or something?"

She nodded.

I laughed.

"What?"

"Nothing, just the thought of you going on a blind date." I shrugged. "You're an intimidating woman Jen."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

_Oh boy. _ "Just that I can't see many guys being…"

"Being what?"

"I'm going to shut up now," I told her. "And let's forget this ever happened."

"You just insulted my womanhood," she said.

"I'm sorry, I'm not good with words. Besides, English is not my first language."

"Frank, you're thirty years past using that as an excuse."

I laughed. "Sorry, ok?"

"Whatever."

When we crossed the next corner we saw Yas coming out of a bathroom. "Oh, hey," he said, zipping up. "Hey Jen."

"Did you wash your hands?" I asked him. Why else would he be zipping up outside the bathroom?

"No," he admitted. "But unlike you, I can take a piss without getting urine all over my hands."

"Gross," Jen said.

Sometimes I forgot that we were all people before Marines. It was interesting to see Yas behave like a thirty-something slacker and Jen like a proper lady. I already knew that Dom was human, considering his excitement at the threesome I got him yesterday. Dick.

When all three of us walked inside the briefing room Dom was already there. He still had a huge grin on his face form last night. Jealous as I was, I couldn't really blame him for it. I looked at him and shook my head.

"Well someone was lucky last night," Yas said, catching the glint in his eye. "Do tell."

"Don't," I stopped him. "You're better off not knowing."

Dom was opening his mouth to say something when Captain Hayes walked in. Civilian life was good for her, she looked relax, fresh, and there was actually a ghost of a smile on her face. Sometimes it would've been easier to hate her if she wasn't so goddamned attractive.

"Sir," we saluted in near-perfect synchronization.

"As you were," she dimissed us. Normally a superior officer would ask a couple of polite questions regarding his or her subordinates experience during leave, kind of the typical 'what did you do during summer?' deal that most schools in Jericho VII had. If Hayes did that it would imply interacting with me more directly than any of us would've liked. Fine by me. "Sit down," Hayes ordered.

We took the front row seats in the briefing room and Hayes lazily walked up to the podium and turned on the screen behind her as well as the holo-tanks to the sides. "First order of business is checking that everyone reported for duty. I assume you have all done that so we'll skip that."

Behind her the screen showed several closed folders, all of which she would open in turn. "You'll be glad to know that the armories on the ship have all been updated with the latest BR55 model. The BR55HB SR, as its name indicates, is a heavy-barrel variant that supposedly has increased accuracy. The materials used to build it mean that it weighs the same as previous models despite the heavier barrel."

I raised an eyebrow. That was good news. I didn't have any particular attachment to the BR55 that I had been using for the last year or so, and a new one might prove useful.

"The MA5-series assault rifles have all been outfitted with the newest technologies to reduce recoil and jamming by half a percent or some ridiculously small number like that. Other than that we've gotten the usual replacements for older guns and a slightly larger-than-usual equipment supply."

Hayes' face actually lit up. "Now that I mention equipment…" The captain opened one of the various folders and the holo-tank displayed an object that looked like an egg with four spikes attached to its sides, pointing upwards. "New technology, straight out of the factory. Only Spartan teams have used it before us."

"What an honor," Yas quipped.

"For them?" Dom asked.

"Yeah, they get to beta test our equipment."

I laughed at that and even Jen allowed herself a small smile. Captain Hayes kept her professional expression.

"As I was saying, the PS-PC-012 is a very interesting device. My guess is that they reverse-engineered it from existing Covenant technology, although I've never seen anything like this before. The PS whatever, more commonly known as the bubble shield is exactly that. A bubble shield that protects anyone standing inside it."

The hologram moved when she said that. The spikes on the egg switched so that they were pointing downwards and a tube emerged from the egg, lowering the spikes further. A very realistic-looking Marine grabbed the bubble shield and threw it to the ground. A yellow blast came out of it and eventually settled into a sphere of golden hexagons. Plasma bolts from various weapons impacted the bubble shield, and it rippled slowly as it absorbed the blasts. After exactly twenty seconds the bubble shield collapsed upon itself and the device that created it collapsed.

"That's some cool shit, Captain," Dom noted eloquently.

"That is indeed some cool shit," Hayes conceded. "The bubble shield, however, still has downsides. The technology is new to us and we can only make the shield last for so long before it burns itself out. For some reason or other it's impossible to deploy for shorter lengths because then it wouldn't have enough power to start up a second time. One use, twenty seconds only."

I shrugged. I'd take what I could.

"Also, before any of you ask, the technology's power source needs to grow exponentially as the size of the shield grows in a linear way. That means that if you wanted to make a bubble shield big enough for a ship you'd need a power source the size of an asteroid. With our current technology it's just not possible, but apparently it will be in the future."

As I said, I'd take what I could.

Hayes went on. "These puppies are few and they are expensive. We have precisely one hundred of them on board this ship, and that's only because ONI was feeling nice with us."

I hoped that I had something to do with that. If I had, I could rub it in the captain's face in the future.

"That's all for the bubble shield, the files that show how to properly use it will be uploaded into the Company's netpage later today," Hayes said. "I regret to say that that's the only interesting piece of information that you'll be getting from me today, the rest of this is mostly routine."

And it was. Hayes went on and on about dull stuff that every one of us had to memorize or at least be able to remember at the mention. It included the numbers that Battalions One and Two had as well as what the AI overseeing both units thought about the replacements for recent losses and how well they would adapt. It was routine, and dull, and boring, but it was important. I did my best to put attention while trying to suppress the image of me yanking Hayes' head from her torso. I didn't have much success, and eventually I started dozing off, even if my face looked like I was giving her my utmost attention. Years of practice all throughout my teens had finally paid off.

"And finally…"

I blinked once, slowly sliding back into reality.

Hayes sighed deeply before going on. The screen and hologram both switched to display an image of the Milky Way galaxy in all its glory. I knew form school that it was a barred spiral galaxy, whatever the hell that meant. The hologram did a fine job of displaying our home galaxy. I could locate the arm of the galaxy where Sol System and the rest of humanity's colonies were located. The arm itself was colored in green with the regions of space that had been lost to the Covenant now colored orange. There was a lot more orange than green now.

"The Covenant is slowly but surely finding the rest of our systems," Hayes said seriously. "More colonies have been lost that the UNSC would care to admit, but that's beyond us now. ONI has taken into account the Covenant's search patterns and they have come to the conclusion that any of these four systems will be attacked within two years' time."

The hologram switched to display four different solar systems while the screen in the back displayed their names and the list of planets as well as the planetoids that orbited their stars and whether they were inhabited or not.

"Current estimates say that it is more likely that these systems will be found within a year, although it could stretch to the aforementioned two years or not happen at all." Hayes shrugged. "In order to prepare for what HIGHCOM believes is a highly-probable threat, several battle groups have been dispatched to these four systems. Their role, our role, is to stop the Covenant when they come and send for reinforcements, with readiness levels this high, any help should arrive quickly. Two battle groups will be sent to each system, one large for space combat and planetary defense and a smaller one to collect intel and dash back towards Reach to get reinforcements."

The holograms switched to display a destroyer surrounded by two corvettes and a small prowler.

"Working with us we have Battle Group Charlie. As you can see, they aren't exactly heavyweights."

Yas chuckled, but he was the only one. Jen didn't laugh very often and Dom was simply not amused. Some part of me liked to believe that they were more loyal to me than to Hayes, but I knew that wasn't true.

"The destroyer and one prowler and corvette each should remain to assist _Flawless_ in defending our system."

Hayes waved at the display and the ships disappeared, giving way to Al-Hassani's hologram. The AI was covered in a long tunic and his face was hidden by a turban wrapped around his head. I could see leather boots underneath his tunic, and for a moment it felt so real that I felt like reaching out to confirm it. I knew that wasn't the case, if I squinted hard enough I could catch the hologram's flickering.

"Morning, ladies and gentlemen," Al said. "Good to see all of you again."

"Likewise, Al," I replied.

"Same," Dom said at the same time.

The other two lieutenants gave us weird looks.**  
><strong>

"The situation regarding this deployment is an unusual one to say the least," Al started. "But being in close orbit of a system for an extended period of time means that men and women are going to want to set their feet down on solid ground. The admiral has deemed it fit that all ground forces be deployed to the ground and be placed under command of the local Marine branch. Your unit, as a SpecOps unit will be allowed to go down to the planet's surface in turns, a couple of weeks at a time each. The definitive schedule hasn't been decided upon yet, but rest assured that everyone will be getting some leave time."  
>I smiled, this was good. I would be getting paid for doing nothing. Sure, it was very likely that that wouldn't last, but it was better than nothing.<p>

Al went on explaining the contingencies in case we were attacked before the entire unit could regroup, or in case we were on patrol away from any nearby planets, and several other situations that each seemed more unlikely than the last. Al went on and on until he finally stopped.

"Any questions?"

I suppressed a yawn.

"Yeah," Dom said. "You forgot to mention which system we'll be going to."

Al looked awkward and cleared his throat. "Of course, my apologies. Both battle groups are assigned to Paris System."

_Shit._

"Seeing as Paris only has one habitable planet, the _Flawless _and _Naverone _will both be taking turns orbiting the planet while the rest of the battle group patrols it and sets various comms and spy satellites."

_Shit._

Al droned on, giving a couple more details on the planet.

"Hmmm, sounds familiar, don't it," Schitzo said more than asked. "Oh! Right! Wasn't that the place where you met this pretty girl? You know the one, the one you fucked while in a relationship with someone else."

_Shit._

"What was her name?" Schitzo asked himself, tapping his chin thoughtfully. "I can't remember."

_Katie…_

_Shit._

* * *

><p><em>Thanks to SilasWhitfield for proofreading this chapter.<em>

_So we've got the bubble shield, I love that thing and remember being so pissed when they took it out from Reach and didn't put it back on in Halo 4. Still, nothing to do about it. Other than that we realize that Frank is quite possible the best wingman in the existence of ever. Most of you know that he started out as an author avatar, the amount of sex is testament to my own teenage thoughts, but I've done my best to change him from an author avatar and believe that I have mostly succeeded, but I will tell you that I am quite possibly the best wingman that you could get, maybe not Frank good, but that little bit of story is based on something that actually happened._

_So we set the stage for a huge battle. A battle of heart and mind. Frank is going back to Udinia in Paris IV and fate (read: casquis) won't let him avoid Katie and his guilty past. What will he do? How will he react?_

_Oh, and we've also got the Siege of Paris IV coming up, but that's hardly important._

_I like the quote, at first you think it's about the new shit that Frank and Co. are getting, but in reality it's about the story itself progressing on one front in particular and Frank doesn't like that much, especially considering where he's progressing towards._

_Don't think I'm forgetting anything other than to thank you all for your kind reviews, keep 'em coming._

_**creamofwheat2311: **thanks for what you're doing, if you make it all the way over here consider this a big thank you for taking the time to review every chapter since the beginning. Here's to you for bearing through the first few chapters and getting here to the good stuff.  
><em>

_Everyone else, thanks again. Stay strong._

_-casquis_


	163. Boxing Episode

Chapter CLXIII: Boxing Episode

**December 25, 2548**

**UNSC **_**Flawless, **_**in orbit above Paris IV, Paris System**

* * *

><p><em>"You said it, you believe it, now make it happen."- PFC Ryan Hoff<em>

* * *

><p>It was not very often that an officer found himself confronted by two enlisted men. I currently found myself in such a situation and I didn't quite like it. Pavel and Grigori were standing in front of me with their arms crossed firmly over their chests. Under normal circumstances I would have felt threatened by them, Pavel was an incredibly strong man, stronger than me under normal circumstances, and Grigori was one of the most skilled men in hand-to-hand combat I knew. Any smart man would've backed away and conceded.<p>

These were not normal circumstances. First, I was a superior officer to both of them and Pavel was my friend. Secondly and most importantly, I had been augmented beyond the physical capacity of any normal human being. I might not have been super strong all the time, but even at my worst I was stronger than the muscular Pavel and faster than the agile Grigori. Sometimes it did me a degree of satisfaction that I was the most deadly man in the room at any given time.

"It is too risky," Grigori asserted calmly.

"Risky my ass," I replied. "I can do whatever the hell I want; you know that, don't you?"

"Frank…" Pavel warned in a low growl.

"What?! I'm going to do it. I don't care what you think."

Grigori shook his head and moved his arms so that his hands were firmly planted in his hips.

"Listen Frank, why don't you just come down to Paris and we talk it over?"

"No!" I snapped. _I can't go back down there. Not if I can avoid it._ "No. No need to go back down to that shithole."

Pavel's eyes widened in a mix of amusement and anger. "I know Paris isn't the most beautiful of cities, but you shouldn't care about it as long as you have a drink in your hand."

"Are you trying to say something?!" I asked him.

Grigori quickly stepped in between Pavel and me, stretching his arms and pushing us back. "Easy there."

I raised my hands and took a step back. "I'm not going down to that shithole," I said, my tone final. "And I will end that fucking tournament."

"You could kill someone," Pavel hissed.

"I won't," I assured him, taking deep breaths in an attempt to calm down. "I know better than that."

Pavel sighed, relaxing a little. "I don't know all the details about what is going on with…" he waved his hands at me in a vague gesture. "Whatever. I _do_ know that you might end up killing someone by accident, whether you want to or not. It happens to regular people all the time."

I grunted. "I. Do not. Care. I'm going to do this." After saying that I shouldered my way past them and headed towards the nearest terminal.

Getting myself enrolled in the ship's not-quite-yearly boxing tournament wasn't exactly a smart idea. I knew that well enough. Despite my own personal misgivings about that I also knew that if I went down to Paris IV and to Udinia, I might not be able to control myself. The last thing I wanted was to hurt Hanna, and if that meant that I needed to hurt some unlucky Marine then I would gladly do it. The tournament would occupy my attention for at least a full week, after that I'd just have to find something else to keep myself busy with.

"Wow, after four years you still love the waitress," Schitzo said disbelievingly. "Four years Francsico. What the hell's wrong with you?"

I grunted and waved him away, knowing the truth in his words. It didn't make sense, if I still didn't trust myself with a girl I had had a one-night stand with years ago my own opinion of myself was lower than I had imagined.

The roster was a big one, with several men from other ships signing up for getting their asses kicked. Most of the participants were from the _Flawless_ itself, but quite a few were from the _Naverone_ and the rest were from the other ships inthe battle group. Even the prowler had submitted a contestant.

I signed up on the terminal and took half a step back. The little computer told me that a sheet with rules and all the necessary mumbo jumbo would be sent to my personal datapad for me to review and agree to before my first fight.

I sighed. I really hoped I didn't kill someone.**  
><strong>

* * *

><p>"Remember to keep your guard up, Sir," Sandor reminded me for the eleventh time.<p>

I groaned. "I brought you here to wipe sweat from my face Sandor, I know how to box."

Sandor shrugged but gave me a wide grin. "Of course, El-tee."

"So, what do you know about my opponent for today?"

"Marine, Grizzly Company. Don't really know much about him other than he's good but not that good."

I had to suppress a smile of amusement. If he wasn't that good then this could prove to be a very short fight. I could drag it out, try not to make it to obvious, but I wasn't about to look like an idiot in front of whoever decided that they wanted to watch the fight.

There weren't that many people in the simulation room. The huge swath of space had been configured so that there were four different boxing rings as well as stools surrounding them. This was only the first round of fights, which meant that my opponent wasn't going to be that tough and that not a lot of people would be watching. Still, beating the shit out of someone was a good stress reliever.

I sat down on a stool near my corner and asked Sandor for the time. I waited for my opponent to show up and then lazily climbed inside the ring. The referee looked like a chief from one of the hangars, he was obviously going to enjoy seeing Marines beat the hell out of each other. He checked my gloves to confirm that they were the ten-ounce regulation weight and then repeated the process with my opponent.

"We're using standard UNSC boxing rules," the ref explained. "We're going to have six rounds of three minutes each with one minute in between them. Mouth guardsare obligatory, no punches below the belt, etcetera. Play nice."

I nodded at the ref and rolled my neck, biting firmly at my mouthguard. I looked at the Marine I would be fighting in the eyes and punched his gloves. He returned the gesture and we both took a step back.

"Go," the ref said lazily.

I started bobbing, moving around my opponent slowly as he did the same thing. The man was muscular, I'll give him that. He had a barrel chest and his biceps were a lot bigger than your average testosterone-filled Marine. Most importantly, he had nice footwork and an appropriate boxing guard.

He threw the first punch, a probing jab that I leaned back to avoid. After that I delivered a quick hook that grazed his belly when he jumped back to avoid it. He had quick reflexes and looked like he could punch out a small elephant.

It was still going to be an easy fight. I ducked underneath a couple of his swings and delivered a jab to his belly. He contracted his muscles properly and I didn't drive the air out of him. He knew the basics, but he was an amateur in every sense of the word. He punched and I either ducked or stepped back. Even by regular standards he was a slow fighter. For the sake of entertainment I let him connect a hit to my jaw. The man packed a punch and even prepared I stumbled sideways a couple of steps. I had to sidestep in order to avoid a follow-up attack.

"Come on, lieutenant!" Sandor called. "Keep your eyes open!"

I rolled my eyes and kept on boxing. The man's friends were cheering him on after that solid hit he connected, but the round ended before anything of interest could happen.

I went to my corner and sat down; taking a small sip of a water bottle that Sandor offered me.

"He's powerful, but slow as an Elephant." I didn't know whether he was referring to the animal or the vehicle. "Just get him to throw a hook and duck under it. After that you should have easy access to his ribs."

Despite my opinion on having Sandor working as a coach for me, I had to admit that he had read the situation perfectly. He had spotted his strengths and weaknesses and advised a course of action that I could easily follow.

"Got it," I told him.

Next round was more ore less the same, but this time I didn't allow him to connect any punches.

"Come on El-tee," Sandor said. "What the hell's going on? Just punch him the hell out."

I sighed and rolled my eyes. "Fine, if you stop complaining I'll do that."

"Great!" he exclaimed cheerily. "Let's do this!"

The third round was quick. The guy was tired and angry and just wanted to knock me flat on my ass. He threw three jabs before attempting to hit my face. I even lowered my guard a bit for him and everything.

The punch missed and I threw three quick short hooks at his left ribs. He grunted hard with each one and lowered his guard to protect himself. The moment he did that I hit him with a moderately more powerful hook to the jaw. His head snapped to the side and he collapsed to the floor.

He sat up and shook his head only to fall back to the floor again. There he groaned and rolled to his side, prompting the referee to declare a technical knockout.

I smiled as his friends complained and Sandor let out a whoop. **  
><strong>

* * *

><p>I couldn't help but being proud of myself at the increased size of my entourage. A couple of random passerbys and friends of my opponent had been the only ones to spectate during my first fight. With each successive match a lot more people had come. It was partially because there were less fights for people to watch, but I had also been placed as one of the top contenders for the title. I did my best to drag out the fights, to make them fun and interesting to watch, but in the end they were all outclassed.<p>

Wow, how arrogant does that sound?

This next fight was supposed to be a tough one. A lot of people had congregated to watch. I was facing a huge sergeant from the _Naverone_. He was half a foot taller than me and every bit as muscular as most men dreamed of being. I had to admit that I was intimidated by the guy. I had seen a couple of videos of his fights and he was every bit as strong as he was fast. That, coupled with his longer arms and reach meant that I'd have to be extra careful unless I wanted to be knocked straight to the tarp.

Other than that, I could take the guy. If I held myself back and was careful I'd have a little bit of trouble, but not much. Judging from his previous fights, he was slower than me, with enough punches to the body I could bring him down.

Sandor was helping me bandage my arms; he was taking his job very seriously. I could bandage my own hands perfectly fine, but he did a nice job of it too. Behind him were all the surviving members of Reaper Squad as well as some other Helljumpers from the company, most of them men from my platoon. Pavel and Grigori still had disapproving looks on their faces, but my previous matches had convinced them that I could handle my strength and speed without sending someone to the hospital.

"That good?" Sandor asked me.

I flexed my hands, testing the bandages and then nodded. "Yeah."

Sandor smiled and nodded back to me. "We went over this El-tee, try not to get hit much. He takes longer to get back into a proper guard when he punches with his left hand and his footwork is not as good as it could be. Tire him out and connect when you can."

"Kick his ass, sir!" Rob called out.

"Thanks Rob," I replied, raising one hand in thanks. I turned to Sandor. "Ok, gloves."

Sandor put my gloves on and tightened the Velcro straps, making sure that they wouldn't slip off if my opponent caught them between his arms and body. I pounded the red gloves together and nodded to myself before standing up. There were almost three hundred people here, all wanted to watch the fight between the huge Marine and me. To my pride and joy, I was leading the odds in the unofficial betting pools. At least my skill hadn't gone unnoticed.

"Is it really fair, Francisco?" Schitzo asked. "I mean, I don't think it is, with you being what you are."

I ignored him. It wouldn't do me any good to lose my cool in front of everybody. Instead, I climbed into the ring and let the referee examine my gloves.

"Flex for us, El-tee!" Rob called from behind.

After the ref was done I turned and did just that, smiling when I got wolf-whistles and catcalls in return. Most of my men were confident that I would win, and the rest just seemed amused by my confidence in front of what seemed to be bad odds.

When I turned I saw the huge Marine climbing in. I raised an eyebrow, I would've been skeptical of my chances if I had been an outside observer. He let the referee examine his gloves and then gave me a once-over. His body language marked him as relaxed, I'd make him pay for that mistake soon enough.

"Ok, we're in the final rounds," the ref began. "As you know, the match will now last the standard length of twelve rounds. The rest of the rules are the same as always. No hits below the belt, etcetera. Got it?"

"Got it," I replied."

"Yeah," the other man replied.

"Very well then, back to your corners."

I walked back and Sandor handed me my mouth guard. Rob and Hoff were also there andboth gave me quick words of encouragement. Behind them Pavel gave me a quick look of warning, but he didn't seem to be angry at me anymore. I met his gaze and gave him a quick nod of acknowledgement. Then I got back up and turned around to face my opponent. The bells rang and the fight began.

The man still carried a somewhat arrogant posture. I launched a quick right hook that hit him in the ear before he could react. The crowd roared in approval and he hunched over slightly, getting himself into a tighter guard, his eyes warier than before.

From that point on it turned into a good fight. I didn't have to hold back that much. I knew that I was stronger than him, but my augmentations didn't always respond, he was almost as fast as I was and strong enough to make me wary of his huge fists. We kept our distance, only landing a couple of hits on each other on that first round. When the bell rang, I was leading the scoreboards.

"He's good El-tee," Sandor said immediately as I sat down. "Fast and won't tire easily, despite his size."

"What do you recommend?" I asked through my mouth guard.

"Go I quick, hit him once or twice, then go out."

I that strategy would go something like this: my first hit would make him close his guard, the second one would just be a cover for me to jump back out before he could recover. Two quick jabs or a jab and a cross would do.

It worked well enough the first couple of times. I hit him in the belly and the chest but then he closed his guard even more. On my fourth or fifth attempt to hit him he managed a counter punch that caught me right in the left of the jaw. I rolled with the punch and for a moment I thought I would go into the tarp, but I kept on rolling and eventually landed with my back against the ropes. I looked up to see a huge red glove flying straight at my face and somehow managed to duck underneath it and take a step forward, escaping from the ropes and putting some distance between myself and my opponent.

_Shit,_ I cursed myself.

After that I was feeling a little bit vindictive, so I didn't hesitate one bit to hit the guy with a four punch combination, three out of those four landed, hitting him in the ribs, chest, and forehead.

The entire simulation room roared.

"Knock him out!" someone yelled.

"Kick his ass!" another one seconded.

After that it all became a little bit blurry and soon the second round was over.

"Shit, sir," Sandor said as I sat down on the stool in the corner. "If you keep up that pace the fight is going to end pretty quick."

"With him on the tarp," I growled.

"Damn right," Rob agreed.

Sandor nodded. "Yeah, but be careful, don't tire yourself unnecessarily."

I nodded and drank some water before jumping back to my feet.

The fight resumed with a vicious rhythm that none of us would've been able to support for long. We punched at each other with little to no regard for our own protection. I was faster and landed more punches, he was bigger and made me stagger more times. A couple of seconds before the round ended I ducked underneath a wide swing and hit him twice right below the ribs. He huffed and went down on one knee. The ref started counting. My opponent, however, wasn't out for the count just yet. He stood up just before the round ended.

"Damn El-tee, try not to get hit that much."

"I'm fine," I assured Sandor. "Only a couple of his hits were really bad."

"Try to slow down a bit," he recommended. "He's worse for wear than you right now and you're leading the scoreboards."

"Yeah, yeah. I'll try."

Next round saw a blurry of punches and combinations even worse than the last one. Two punches landed straight on my face, one of which opened up a small cut near my right eyebrow. In return I punched him right below the eye hard enough to send him two steps back and then hit him three more times in the sides before he could lower his guard again.

When Sandor chastised me for being so careless I didn't say anything, I only nodded and took deep breaths, trying to regain my bearings. Sandor wiped the blood from my face and rubbed petroleum jelly over the cut, sealing it for the time being.

"Keep your guard up," he told me.

When the fifth round started my opponent's face was swollen up where I had hit him. I hope I didn't look half as bad as he did. I like my face the way it was.**  
><strong>

He threw three powerful punches that made me stagger backwards from the force.

"Footwork," Rob yelled from my corner.

"I know," I groaned quietly, sidestepping another massive power punch.

The round went on for a while in the same fashion. I would block his punches with my forearms and then deliver one or two weak jabs as I tried to get myself away from the ropes. I was about to start a counter-attack when I saw something strange. My opponent was taking slow steps towards me. Only then did I realize that they weren't slow steps.

_Spartan time._

I knew I could've ended the fight right then and there with any of the three opening in his guard, but that would've been dangerous if I couldn't control my strength. Instead, I waited for him to throw a low hook meant to hit me below the ribs. That worked fine for me. I lowered my arm and made sure that my elbow was positioned to catch his inner forearm. I knew just how painful that could be.

My plan paid off and his face contorted in a wince as his punch was deflected. Before he could move it back I threw a counter punch with that same arm and hit him right in the jaw. His head snapped to the side along with the rest of his body and he fell down to the floor.

Everything gradually returned to its normal speed and I could feel my heart beating way faster than was probably safe for an average human being. I took a couple of steps back and watched as the referee counted out my opponent. I was declared the winner by knockout and immediately ran up to my corner and raised my arms in triumph. My men and others cheered for my victory. I could really get used to this.

* * *

><p>"Frank, sometimes I think there's something seriously wrong with you," Hanna said firmly.<p>

I chuckled. She had a point.

"Not only do you actually renovate your contract without even considering, you enroll yourself in a boxing tournament to get your head hit repeatedly. That's not healthy."

I shrugged, my left cheek was slightly swollen from my latest fight and I had a killer headache. Sometimes I underestimated the strength of normal humans, more than one of those guys had actually had a chance at beating me, especially my latest opponent. That one had managed to last through all twelve rounds before collapsing when the final bell rang. I still had to buy him a beer next time I saw him. I would be bruised all throughout the day and tomorrow morning my ribs would be covered in deep purple blotches. Not so bad considering I had been facing a former professional boxer. Not a champion mind you, but it was still something to be proud of.

"I need something to pass time," I told her.

"You could have gone down to Paris IV," she told me. "Everyone's gone down there at least twice now."

I sighed. I was doing this for her; I couldn't trust myself after the mistakes I had made before. "Fine, I enjoy this. I know it's not good for me, but I have a good time."

"That sounds like your opinion of alcohol," Hanna warned.

She had a point.

"Don't worry, I'm not about to join an underground fight club or something like that."

This time she sighed. "I just don't like seeing you getting hurt, Frank."

I pulled her towards me slowly. "I'm not getting hurt." As she leaned on me I winced exaggeratedly and she frowned slightly.

"You know, sometimes I don't know what I see in you."

It was just a joke, but considering my current state of emotion I couldn't completely hide the look of shock in my face.

"What?" Hanna asked. "What's wrong?"

"Nothing," I assured her. "My head does kind of hurt a little."

Hanna at least had the decency to look concerned, even if she was just itching to tell me 'I told you so'. She tilted my head to either side before kissing me in the forehead. "There, all better?"

I rolled my eyes. "Much."

She smiled again. "You ass, I'm trying to help."

She moved from my lap over to my bunk not short after, I sat in my desk chair, occasionally moving my body slightly to test the pain. My next fight wasn't going to be until next week, but with the condition I was in I knew that I could've used more time. My ribs burned and my cheek stung, the swelling would go down soon enough and the bruises would disappear with help form medication, but my body would still be sore and tired from all the work.

Hanna talked about what she had done the past week. She spoke about Udinia and revisiting all the places we had once toured before. I listened attentively , trying to see if she had gone anywhere near the region of the city where I had stayed when I had that full psychiatric workup. Udinia was a big city, just shy of ten million inhabitants, so I was lucky on that count.

For a moment I had the weird image of Hanna and Katie meeting up and becoming fast friends. If that happened then they wouldn't mind sharing.

_You're in the real world, Frank_.

And the real world sucked.

"Frank, are you ok?"

I shook my head and smiled lightly. "Yeah, yeah… I just dozed off for a little bit. Sorry."

"Maybe you need to go to a doctor…"

"You're a doctor," I reminded her. "I'm just sleepy, Vinter said that I was fine."

She nodded firmly. "Good. At least you had the common sense to visit him after your fight."

"You made me."

"With good reason."

"Of course."

There was a brief lull in the conversation and I took advantage of the silence to ask Hanna a question that I had been wanting to ask for months now. "Hanna, why didn't you leave the Corps? I know your term was supposed to expire before we deployed."

Hanna pushed her feet up the bed and rested her head on my pillow. She took a deep breath and let it out slowly. "After I heard about Claire I panicked. She was devastated Frank, being drafted back into service like that, just when she was beginning to settle down and really get past her… her suicide attempt."

"You don't-"

"No, no. It just seems likely that I'd end up back in the Corps a year or two from that. Frank, I'm not deluded enough to kid myself into thinking that we have a chance of winning this war."

"All the more reason to leave."

She raised an eyebrow. "Do you want me to leave?"

I shook me head. "No, of course not. I don't like having to say goodbye every time we go into a fight."

"I don't either Frank, but this is our life."

"Not a good one," I mumbled.

She shrugged. "As I was saying, I just didn't want to grow happy and satisfied with my life only to suddenly have all that yanked away from me. It would hurt too much."

It made sense. All my life I had been in a military setting, my uncle was half-obsessed with making me the perfect soldier before ONI got ahold of that idea. Sometimes I thought that the only reason it was so hard for ten-year-old me to adapt to my new life after my parent's deaths was because there was no discernible amount of happiness there. Sure, I might enjoy reading a book or getting a girl drunk, but the rest of my life was dull and routine. No wonder being on leave proved to be so different and exciting even after all this time.

"So you're gonna be unhappy now so that you're not more unhappy later," I stated.

"Well… yeah."

I smiled. "At least we'll be unhappy together."

"Awww," Hanna said, smiling and suddenly jumping up to give me a kiss. "Sometimes you can be really sweet, you know that?"

I only just managed to resist the temptation of groping her violently. "It's because I care," I assured her. "And I love you."

I was extremely surprised when she violently groped _me_. "Say that again."

"I love you," I obliged, pulling her close.

With the state my body was in, I was about to indulge in a session of incredibly painful sex.

It was worth it.

* * *

><p>The championship fight was a grand affair. I hadn't expected it to be this crowded. The simulation room was absolutely packed with what must've been the entire ship's Marine complement as well as every last sailor that wasn't indispensable to the functioning of the ship. Hell, there were even a couple of groups of Marines from the <em>Naverone<em> and other ships. What really did it for me though, was the two camera drones floating around us. They were going to televise the fight. It was very flattering in a way. Alright, alright, it was very flattering in a lot of ways.

My entire platoon had come here to watch me fight; only Hoff, Sandor, and Rob were in my corner, they were the first ones that came to watch and in turn had earned the front-row seats.

This felt good, it did. Nice pair of gloves around my hands, half of a crowded room cheering me on and a good, brave Marine whose ass I was about to kick into kingdom come. We had even been provided with a pair of professional boxing shorts each. Mine were blue and his were red. I don't really know what the big deal with the UNSC and those two colors was, but it was unavoidable.

A sailor dressed in a cheap suit stepped into the ring and rolled his neck before smiling. His amplified voice carried throughout the massive room. He was a charismatic one, getting the crowd excited and making a couple of quick jokes. He gave our names, ranks, and units, allowing for appropriate booing and cheering. I wasn't surprised when more people booed for me than for him, most of the guys here were Marines, and we all know how well they got along with us ODSTs.

"Let's get ready to rumble!"

I loved that phrase, it just worked for me.

I walked into the middle of the ring ready to give my all and received two jabs to the face that were by far the fastest punches I had seen in my entire life. I only just managed to avoid the second one from breaking my nose by lowering my entire head so that his glove hit my forehead. I immediately launched an uppercut that caught him in the stomach and jumped back.

_Damn, he's fast._

Both of us squared our shoulders and took more cautious positions. I slowly bobbed from side to side, trying to avoid getting another hit to the face. He did the same, eyeing me with dark, dangerous eyes. I was suddenly more frightened for my personal well-being than I had been in a very long time. For the briefest of moments I thought that facing a Covenant squad might've been easier.

The first round went slowly after the initial hits. Mostly we probed at each other, trying to test our guards. When the bell ran we quickly disengaged and returned to our corners.

"Come on, El-tee," Sandor chastised. "Don't let your guard down, so to speak. You can't let him hit you like that again. He's fast and he hits hard, if you get many more hits like that he'll find an opening and turn your insides into paste. Listen, his guard is a little low, you might sneak in a couple of punches to his forehead if you're quick, that'll get his guard back up and then you can start on doing some damage to the body. You got that?"

"Yeah," I nodded.

"Good."

"Go kick his ass, El-tee," Rob encouraged. "Kick it hard."

"Well, you don't say it a homoerotic way at all," Hoff noted.

I smirked and stood back up in time for the second round. I was going to kick his ass. That second round started out well enough, I hit him twice in the forehead and then once right above the belt. I started circling around him while he silently cursed under his breath. He managed to get past my guard and hit me in the ribs two times before the round ended. I knew that those two hits would bruise, but the adrenaline I was feeling wasn't letting me feel any pain.

"Watch his left hook," Rob told me.

"Agreed," Sandor nodded. "It's fast as lightning."

"I'll just pretend I know about boxing," Hoff stated happily. "Watch out for the free safeties."

I felt like punching Hoff right about then.

Third round was the most embarrassing thing I had felt in my entire life. I received two hits to the face right off the bat, halfway through I got pushed against the ropes and was pounded relentlessly until I managed to get a powerful uppercut right into his jaw. As he stumbled backwards I got another cross into his jaw. After that it only got worse for me, two hits to my left side left me breathing hard and another powerful hook to my head left a dull throbbing that would transform into a headache for the books.

"Fuck," I spat out. "Fuck!"

"Relax El-tee," Sandor told me. "But for Christ's sake keep your fucking guard up! You're lowering your hands! Don't get confident, he's at least as good as you are. Don't. Get. Confident."

"Yeah, yeah," I said, spitting out water. "He's going down."

"That's the spirit!" Rob cheered, "Come on!"

The next round was no better. I managed to get in two powerful punches but he still circumvented my guard several times. I got a hit to the nose that made me believe it was broken and then another one to my chest that stung and pushed me back. I had to avoid a flurry of punches that followed that. I ducked underneath the first two, feeling quite satisfied with myself until another one connected right with my mouth. After that I blocked the rest with my forearms. Right before the round ended I launched a punch out of desperation. It was fast and strong and somehow connected. My opponent rolled sideways until he was facing away and the three steps back before turning back to face me, a stunned expression on his face.

The bell rang.

_Thank God!_

"Shit," Sandor said. "Shit Lieutenant, what the hell?"

"I don't know," I replied. "He's good, he's very good. If this was full contact…"

"Yeah, you would kill him Lieutenant," Rob said. "But this isn't and you can't. What's wrong? He's better than all your previous opponents, but not good enough to lock you out."

I grunted, it was true. His punches seemed fast, and they were, but for some reason they always landed a little bit faster than I expected them, managed to sneak past my guard, catch me in between steps and make me stumble. If I had to describe it I'd say that he knew exactly when and where to hit. He got past me every time, no matter what I did.

"Stay away from him, he's obviously pounding you too hard," Sandor recommended. "Out of range. Stay out of range like that for the next couple of rounds."

I nodded, it sounded like a reasonable plan considering how bad I was doing.

The fifth round started well enough, I stayed away and he didn't get any punches in. It was only after I attempted to hit him on the side of the head that he returned a powerful hook to my ribs. I had a feeling that if they had been normal bone they would've snapped. I leaned back to avoid a follow up hit to my face and wasn't able to avoid a right cross right into my belly. I doubled up ever so slightly and got an uppercut right into my already-swollen nose.

Next thing I knew I was on my ass and my head was spinning.

"Three!" the ref yelled in my face.

"Get back up!" Sandor urged, banding his hands on the ring. "Stand the fuck up, sir!"

"Four!"

_Shit._

"Five!"

I stood up, the ref checked me quickly and declared the round started again. I shrugged off several blows to my arms and forearms and ducked a couple of hooks before delivering the only punch that I connected in the entire round. He recoiled from the powerful punch to the chest but otherwise seemed unharmed.

The bells rang and the round was over.

"Fuck," I said. "Fuck! Fuck!"

"Don't lose your head, sir," Sandor reminded me. "He… he's very fast, his blows only just get through."

"I know that!" I snapped. "I need a way to get through his guard."

Sandor shrugged. "I would know how you could do that if he wasn't punching you all the time."

"Don't give me attitude," I growled.

"I'm here as your coach, not your subordinate," he reminded me.

"Yeah," I agreed. "Sorry."

"Don't worry about me," he told me. "Worry about avoiding his hits."

"Avoid enough of them and he'll make a mistake," Rob reminded me. "Whatever you do El-tee, don't let him connect, make him angry, piss him off."

"I'll try," I said. "And then I'll finally fuck him up."

"You said it, you believe it, now make it happen," Hoff said.

"Wise words from the coach?" Rob asked.

Hoff shook his head. "Grandpa."

I smiled. I was already starting to feel better.

The hook that almost knocked me to the floor for the second time quickly made me change my mind. Round six only went downhill after that. He hit me time after time and I barely managed to duck or block his punches. I hit him on the side of his belt two times, only barely managing to stop his onslaught. The rest of the round consisted on me steadily walking away from the man, trying to guess what he would do and how to counter. It did no good, he closed in and did the unexpected. I had to hug him in order to have him stop punching me twice before the round ended.

"Verga con la puta que te parió," I said as I walked back. It wasn't as much an insult to him as it was to me. I was pissed, not at him, he was good and there was nothing wrong with his game.

On second thought, I wouldn't have minded kicking his skull in once or twice.

I saw Sandor give me a 'are you fucking kidding me?' look and Rob shake his head in disappointment. Hoff looked like he had given up on me.

"Move," Pavel's voice came through the crowd. "Move!"

"I thought you didn't like me getting myself involved in this kind of shit," I said with a weak smile.

"I don't," Pavel grunted, "but I still don't want you giving us Helljumpers a bad name to a measly Marine."

I looked at him and held his gaze. "Pavel… thanks."

"Welcome," he said gruffly. "Bee, move to the side."

"Uh, sure."

"Ok, listen," Pavel began, closing in to me. "Here's what you're going to do: you'll do the same piece of garbage routine and get him to punch you three or four times, close in on him but don't hug him. When you see an opening launch a left upper, then do one of those right downward hooks you do.

"An overhand," I said.

He nodded calmly. "You're fast enough to connect a long swing right after that. Step away and start jumping around, get on his head."

I smiled. "That sounds like a plan."

"Crazy enough to be one of yours too," Pavel said. "Don't embarrass us."

"I won't," I promised. _Damn right I won't._

I stood up as the bells for the seventh round rang. I could feel myself frowning, but I knew that it was concentration and not anger. I closed in on my opponent and he repelled me with three quick jabs. I tried again only to get the same result. After that I started moving around, waiting for him to close in some. When he did I attempted the same thing again.

The tarp covering the ring felt comfortable. It wasn't soft, but it felt a lot better than standing up, being punched time after time.

"Get back up!" someone yelled. "Stand the fuck up, you worthless shit!"

Nobody called me worthless.

"Eight!"

I was on my feet in half a second, cracking my head.

"You good?" the referee asked me, a worried look in his eyes. "That punch was enough to knock down a brute."

"I'm perfectly fine, ref," I assured him.

He shrugged. "Ok. Go!"

I swung wildly and felt the short hook to my right side. I shrugged it off and threw a quick uppercut that was only just dodged. I raised my left shoulder to partially deflect another swing for my head and then I was making contact with my opponent's body. His black skin was slick with sweat, mine was no doubt the same.

_Let's do this._

I threw the left uppercut only for it to be abruptly stopped just shy of his solar plexus. Shame, that could've been a knockout. Even before my left arm was stopped I was launching a right overhand punch. My entire arm circled vertically and came down with power that would not be denied. I used my weight and as much as my enhanced strength as I could manage in that punch. I felt it connect and guessed that it had hit the Marine right below the eye.

Most people would've expected a hit from the other side after such a powerful punch. A lot of boxers could launch quick punches with the same arm, but nobody could punch as fast with only one arm as they could with two. The Marine knew that just as well as I did. He raised his right arm to block my left fist, a fist that never came. Instead I circled around with my right arm, faster than even the fastest boxer, and connected a powerful swing to his head before sidestepping.

He slammed into the ropes and shook his head there. I jumped up and down like a giddy kid, overdoing it in order to piss him off more. I punched my gloves together and smiled. I didn't even have to fake the smile.

"Now we start for real," I said through my mouth guard.

"Finally," he grunted in reply, a small trickle of blood sliding from his eyebrow.

He threw two swings in quick succession. Had I not known better I would've known he was also superhuman. I ducked underneath the first one and blocked the second one with a decidedly non-boxing move. I raised my right arm and caught his left forearm with my right, stopping his punch before it gained power. I then used my left hand to punch him on his biceps. It was a move that I knew would weaken his strong arm.

As his arm slackened I threw a right swing that had him against the corner. The Marine had time to huddle into a tight guard and his forearms caught every punch I threw but the last. That last one hit him in the left side, right below the ribs. He doubled over and then the bell rang.

I walked back to the corner smiling as I did.

"Great work, El-tee," Sandor complimented, setting up the stool and handing me water. "He leaves a small space in between his arms open for a fast jab after he blocks any hooks or swings to the body."

"He's right," Pavel agreed. "And he hunches down when he's closer, try and see if you can hit him with another downswing."

"Overhand," I corrected.

"Whatever."

Round Eight started and I was feeling good.

My first punch connected with his glove, but was hard enough to push him sideways. I quickly swung with my left to jerk his head back. The second punch hit him right on the ear, but opened my torso for a quick uppercut to my stomach. I took a step back and returned with a right cross, putting the full weight of my body behind it. Had it hit his face it would've broken his nose or any other bone, but he somehow managed to cross his arms in front of him and took three steps backwards form the punch.

I was on him in seconds, hitting everywhere. I punched his arms and gloves more times than I could count before I reminded Sandor's advice. A quick left hook demonstrated that he did indeed leave a small gap, another right swing allowed my left glove to slide through his arms and hit him right above the navel. I could feel that he hadn't had time to tighten his abs and had the wind knocked out of him.

From that position he launched a right punch that I only just dodged. I saw his fist stop and move at supernatural speeds at my face. It was too close to avoid, but he managed to put some power into it and my head shook violently. After that he delivered three quick punches into my ribs, the titanium ones. The skin felt it, even if my ribs did not.

I took three quick steps backwards and feinted another powerful right cross. He instinctively protected his face and chest, allowing me to throw a hook into his left side. With my left hand I connected with his jaw as he reached down to cover his belly. His body acted without thinking and his hands went back up immediately, buying me enough time to hit him with an uppercut right to the sternum.

This time I heard him wheeze as I drove all the air out of him.

And then the round was over. A few more seconds and I would've had him.

"Good job," Sandor complimented, rubbing petroleum jelly on a cut that I hadn't even noticed. After that he rubbed my ribs. The other guy had managed to break the skin with a boxing glove. I cannot explain just how hard that is to do to the ribs. "Gunny, you got any suggestions?"

"Keep on doing what you're doing," Pavel said. "Don't allow him to recover. Frank… you lost the first six rounds bad, you're going to need a knockout."

"Knockout it is then. I'll work on the body, go in for the kill on the eleventh."

Sandor nodded. "Do your thing."

The Marine changed his strategy on the ninth round. He hunched and closed his arms over his body. I punched and punched but his gloves blocked most of my blows. He was good.

Despite the excellent defense, he couldn't take my enhanced strength forever. At one point he tried to sneak through my side, delivering a jab in order to prevent me from hitting him as he did so. Had he not thrown the jab his plan would've worked just fine. His right glove flew at me at an agonizingly slow pace. I knew that I had him then. I was going to rupture this fucker's liver.

I punched as fast and as hard as I could with my left arm. My body seemed to move too slow, but even before his jab had reached me I was already connecting with his body. I saw him jerk and shake as I hit him and then my head snapped backwards from the jab. I threw a blind right hook that connected with nothing but air and then stepped back, afraid of where he'd gone.

I opened my eyes, I hadn't realized that I had closed them. I saw that the Marine had indeed felt the force of my punch. He was standing on his right knee, with one glove on the tarp to prop himself up. He looked at me and shook his head before trying to stand back up. His body wouldn't support his weight and he fell back down.

"Four!" the ref shouted.

Sound started flooding my ears. Cheers and curses and hollers and more.

"Get up Sarge!" one of the Marines in his corner yelled.

"On your feet!" another shouted through cupped hands.

"Five!"

"Great job Frank!" Pavel urged. "That's my man!"

I turned around and spread both of my arms to my side in triumph. I shook them slightly and the crowd roared their approval. The fight wasn't quite over just yet, but everybody loved a showman when it came down to boxing.

"Six!"

"Seven!"

"Eight!"

The count stopped.

I turned to see the Marine stumble sideways slightly before shaking himself back into action.

I shrugged. "Still got half a round to knock you back down," I told him.

"You're welcome to try," he replied with a fierce expression that might've just been a grin.

The fight resumed and he ducked a swing before hitting me with an uppercut that I never saw coming.

"That how you gonna knock me down?"

I shook my head and threw three quick hooks to his head, ribs, and head again. Only the last one connected, but it was enough to turn his head completely sideways.

"No. That's how!"

He had an annoying little mustache that was just begging to be hit. I punched away until I finally managed to achieve my goal. I watched in satisfaction as he spat out blood and punched at my head. I blocked it with my glove, but I still felt the impact. He was strong. Too strong.

The round ended and we nodded at each other before stepping back into our respective corners.

"Don't stop hitting him!" Pavel growled. "He had more life in this round, he's not out yet. You need to hit him hard as many times as you can manage. There's no way you'll catch up to him on the scorecards."

"Those power punches of yours seem to be working. I don't like them," Sandor said, "but he can't hit you fast enough when you throw those. He's tired, but as Gunny said…"

"Yeah, I got it."

I drank water, regained my breath, and tried to look confident before the bells for the tenth round rang loudly.

"Let's go!"

I was excited now, I had a chance to redeem myself after being thoroughly humiliated by the shorter Marine. He wasn't even that muscular, he was just _strong._

I had a pretty good start, slamming several strong hits on his body and a couple on his face. Both of us were huffing and puffing, trying to get as much air into our lungs as we could with each breath. I had a hard time keeping a steady rhythm with all the counter punches and jabs I had to block or avoid. I was doing good and was focused, that was the only thing that allowed me to avoid being pounded like a college slut. The Marine wasn't as focused as he had been on the previous rounds and so earned the role of the aforementioned college slut. I had him against a corner and was hitting him as fast as I could manage when the bell rang.

I walked straight back to my corner. I was only just beginning to feel the strain on my arms. Throwing punches as fast as possible wasn't something that you did easily, it was incredibly tiring if you tried to sustain it for any considerable amount of time. I was also starting to feel my stomach lurch as if I wanted to throw up. This business was beginning to tire me.

"Good work for the most part," Sandor said.

"Most part?" I managed to ask.

"Yeah," Pavel agreed. "He managed to get in some good punches."

"I didn't notice." Really, I hadn't.

"Well, he did. You have to keep hitting him bad like that, El-tee," Sandor told me, "but you can't allow yourself to be hit as well. He's too far ahead of you on the cards and one luck punch could have you back on the floor."

"Are we working on the three falls rule?" Pavel asked.

I nodded.

"No more falls, ok?"

"I won't fall down," I assured him calmly. "Water."

"Here," Sandor said. "Remember the gap in between his gloves. He hasn't noticed how you're getting through yet, but he's done some pretty good bobbing. Try to avoid any wide swings or he'll get on your ribs."

I nodded again and swallowed some of the water. "Any other tips? I want to knock him down on his ass, this time for good."

"Last time he was on his knees," Hoff muttered.

Pavel ignored him. "Up, down, up, up. It worked last time, keep trying different combinations, I've got nothing concrete for you right now."

"Better come up with something, coach," I said, addressing Sandor. "My head's starting to hurt."

"It's almost over," he said. "You can end it quicker."

Schitzo chose that moment to appear, dressed in full boxing paraphernalia: robe and gloves. "What was the saying? Float like a butterfly, sting like a bumblebee?"

"Like a bee," I said, low enough that nobody would understand through my mouth guard.

"That's right, like a bee."

I stood up and Sandor dragged his stool underneath the ropes, wishing me good luck as he waited for the round to start. It didn't take that long, three seconds was all that was left on the resting period, and after that me and that Marine would return to beating the hell out of one another. My body was throbbing, even if my adrenaline levels kept it in check for now, I was certainly going to end up in the hospital after this.

"The floor's been missing you," he taunted.

I scowled slightly. "You'll do for a replacement."

"That I would like to see."

The eleventh and second-to-last round began in earnest, with the Marine hitting me twice in the mouth before ducking underneath a right cross. After that he ran straight into my left fist, sliding two steps backward before actually jumping forward and slamming his right glove directly into my chest.

I started getting worried when I realized that I was backed right into the corner. A flurry of fast punches landed all around me, even of most of them were blocked or deflected some of them managed to score hits. I bobbed from side to side, attempting to spot a quick opening.

"Use the ropes, El-tee!" Sandor cried. "The ropes!"

I immediately knew what he was talking about, even if it hadn't been for the reason most would imagine. This time I had Rob to thank for. One of his movie nights had consisted of a boxing film based on the life of one of the greatest boxers in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. I kept forgetting his first name, but the movie was called Ali.

"Ali!" Rob suddenly screamed. "Ali, the movie!"

That's the one.

I slid sideways, managing to move despite the punches that kept on coming. After a few painful seconds I was in between two corners.

I took a deep breath.

Then I leaned back and started moving sideways and up and down and in every conceivable way. I didn't stop no matter what, only adjusting the direction I was moving in if I read a punch before it struck. It was a risky technique, cornering myself in order to make my opponent tire himself. His blows didn't all miss, but the glancing blows didn't hurt much and they tired out the Marine. It went like that for about thirty seconds, with the crowd getting more worked up and urging my opponent to connect a hit.

"Watch," Schitzo said.

I looked up and saw the opening. I slammed my gloved fist right into his chin, snapping his head upwards and positioning perfectly for a right hook.

"Yeah!" Rob hollered. "Don't stop now!"

I didn't. I hit him again, and again, and again. The two previous punches should've knocked out any man, the second one would've been enough to crack his jaw, but he just shrugged them off like it was nothing. It was right about then that I started considering going all-out on him augmentation and all. I was barely managing to keep up with him even with my speed and strength, if I could just hit him a little bit harder then he surely would've fallen down.

Before I could continue that train of thought he jumped back and resumed a guarded stance. I circled around him and prepared to engage. I wasn't ready for the vicious punches that he threw, barely even bothering to protect himself. They hit me like sledgehammers, shaking me around like a ragdoll before I managed to get in a haymaker to his forehead.

He didn't budge, instead just kept on hitting me. I realized what he was doing, he was trying to land one good hit, knock me out before I knocked him out.

The fight switched from a very fast-paced, contact heavy boxing match to a full out slugfest.

"That how you want it?" I asked after he landed three straight hits on my stomach.

"You know you love it baby," he replied.

I quickly shut him up with three straight punches. I put my full weight behind all of them, pushing him back into the ropes. In return he threw a right swing with such force that even after I placed my arm between his glove and my body I felt like it had connected.

That bought him enough time to get away from the ropes and engage again.

I didn't like it. It was like a bar fight where my opponent fought back, managed to score serious hits, and went on for a very long amount of time.

It wasn't like a bar fight at all.

I connected at least two dozen punches after that moment. He connected a few less than me, but I still returned to my corner with a throbbing jaw that would swell twice to its original size.

"El-tee, you've got to knock him out, after all those hits he scored there's no way you can catch up to him."

"I scored more than he did this round."

"Yeah, but not by a lot," Pavel came in.

"Sir, you have to knock him out and fast," Rob said.

"Final stretch El-tee," Hoff tossed his two cents' worth in. "Get him on the floor."

"I will, I will," I assured them. "I can do it."

"Yeah you can," Pavel said. "Just make sure you _do_."

Wise words from my best friend. "Asshole."

"That's my boy!"

Twelfth round. All or nothing. Time to kick his ass.

The slugfest was resumed with me managing to gain the upper hand early on. I scored hit after hit, but also took some hard punches. One hit to my ribs felt like they had actually been cracked despite their augmentations and another cross to my nose finished breaking it. He was bleeding from the nose, eyebrow, and mouth. I wasn't faring much better, with my mouth and nose bleeding like crazy. At least the blood wasn't going to get in my eyes.

"Go down!"

I punched down only to predictably meet his gloves. That's where he had made his mistake, his mind figured that it was still a fight with no strategy. My right fist connected with his nose, breaking it. I didn't hold back, punching him hard enough to knock out an elite. He didn't drop so I punched him again. This time he fell to the floor, blood spraying the white tarp.

"One!"

"Two!"

I paced, watching him struggle to get into a seating position before taking several quick breaths and glaring at me with dark eyes. He pressed both of his gloves against the floor and his muscles tensed as he attempted to put himself back on his feet.

"Seven!"

"Eight!"

_Come on, come on, come on, come on, come on, come on._

"Nine!"

_Yes!_

He stood up.

I couldn't help but smile at his incredibly show of willpower. If I ever met this guy again I would make sure to get to know him, he seemed to be good enough to be a Helljumper. And that's not praise that is easily given.

"Is that all you've got?" he asked me.

"Just about," I admitted, throwing wide swings and catching them in the gloves.

He returned the strikes with two quick jabs to the sternum. I recoiled from the punches and almost launched a kick on pure instinct, but instead managed to turn it into a stomp as I punched with my strong arm. His nose was twisted beyond recognition now, and that punch didn't help. He slammed into the ropes, using both hands to hold himself up.

I approached for the kill and received a hook to the liver for my troubles. I doubled over and took several steps back in pain. It was a lot of pain.

I felt his gloved fist slam into my cheekbone and for a moment I thought I was falling to the floor. I couldn't allow that to happen, and somehow I managed to stay afoot. From down there all I could do was throw an uppercut.

Instead I did two.

It was ridiculous; you don't see anybody throwing two uppercuts at the same time unless he's a little boy playing at superhero. That's precisely why he didn't expect them. He blocked my right punch but not the left and almost fell down for a third time. I was wide-eyed at him now, he couldn't have withstood that much punishment. No human being could.

_Maybe they can… maybe you're just not as inhuman as you thought._

I kept on hitting him, there was less than half a minute left in the bout and I had to get him back on the floor for good. He blocked, and ducked, and bobbed, and weaved, but my punches were hard and my attack relentless. It was a good effort and it was almost enough.

The round ended with both of us still on our feet.

The crowd cheered and suddenly pain washed all over me.

I stumbled slightly and watched as the Marine slid down to the floor, using the ropes to slow his fall. He took a deep breath and smiled a cocky smile at me. I shrugged in response and took two steps back before I lost my balance and slipped sideways. Somehow I grabbed ahold of the third rope, buying Pavel enough time to jump in and gently lower me down. I vaguely saw the doctors coming to examine both of us, trying to see if we weren't brain dead from all the hits.

I answered their questions and managed to get back to my feet when the commentator started speaking.

"Ladies and gentlemen, that is quite possible one of the most amazing spectacles I have witnessed in my entire life! These two men deserve a place right next to the great ones in boxing history. I cannot explain just how amazed I am by the quality of this fight. We saw it all, every style, every combination, every part of the body punished. They took hits heavy enough for brutes or elites and still they fought on!"

The crowd roared in approval. It was a nice little detail, using us as examples for humanity's fighting spirit.

He wasn't done yet. "The fight was a close one, our judges, three smart AIs from different ships, have found a victor. It was a split decision."

I almost gasped with the rest of the crowd. AIs usually agreed on anything.

The commentator gave the scores in a painfully slow and dramatic voice while Pavel cut my gloves from my hands. One of the judges had given the victory to me and the other one to the Marine. I was above him by a margin of one point and he was above me by a margin of two points.

I still had to wait to hear the third and final judge.

The commentator droned and I raised my eyebrows when I saw that there was only a two points margin between the winner and loser.

"The winner of the _Flawless_ Boxing Championship is…" there was a drum roll. "Sergeant Avery Junior Johnson!"

The room went wild and my shoulders dropped.

I approached him and patted him in the shoulder before shaking his hand. He nodded in reply.

"You put up a good fight," he said gruffly.

I nodded and smiled. "It was almost enough." I saluted in respect.

He returned the salute and then his small entourage had him up in shoulders, congratulating him on his victory.

* * *

><p><em>Thanks to SilasWhitfield for proofreading this chapter.<em>

_Twenty pages of boxing bonanza. I'm sorry, I just watched The Fighter and have to admit that I honestly loved that movie. Besides, I've had the idea since you guys kept repeatedly asking for Johnson and ever since Marquez beat Pacquiao I thought that it was about time I gave him to you. I did my best to have both the fighters come off as incredibly badass while making Johnson more so than Frank. To me Sgt. Johnson has always been the most incredibly badass character from the Halo universe, being able to keep up with the chief even while being a simple SPARTAN I. Of course, I also wanted Frank to remain the same badass that he has always been, so I made this into my image of a movie boxing match, with everybody landing punches everywhere._

_Besides, I had lots of fun writing this. I like boxing as a sport, making this chapter was easy to write. I know that at points the descriptions of the blows became a little repetitive, but you try saying that Frank ducked underneath a hook in eight different ways._

_Ladies and gentlemen, I give you Avery Johnson. This is the first time he has appeared here, but I promise that it will not be the last. The Siege of Paris IV is coming up and with it more and more battle and mayhem for you to enjoy._

_Please let me know what you thought about the chapter and stay strong._

_-casquis _


	164. Electric Feel

Chapter CLXIV: Electric Feel

**January 12, 2549 (UNSC Calendar)/**

**UNSC **_**Flawless**_**, in orbit above Paris IV, Paris System**

* * *

><p><em>"Do all things with love."–Og Mandino<em>

_"And that, Francisco, is why I think there's an empty space in between your legs."–Schitzo_

* * *

><p>"Give me a prognosis, doc," I pleaded. "And stop sweating me."<p>

"My, is that any way to address a superior officer?" Vinter asked me.

I glared at him through my swollen eyes.

Vinter chuckled and looked at his datapad. He raised an eyebrow at me and shook his head before he started reading through a list of injuries. All of them were minor injuries of course, but the sheer amount of them surprised me. I had a concussion, torn muscles, dehydration, bruising, minor lacerations, and even a wrist sprain. I had hit him so hard that my wrist had sprained, augmentation and all. After those he moved to the more serious ones.

"Your nose is broken, almost completely shattered. You'll need surgery to get it to look like it did before."

I shrugged. "Not the first time I've had to go there."

"In addition to the sprain on your right wrist you've got two metacarpal fractures, commonly known as-"

"Boxer's fracture," I finished with a sigh.

He smiled and nodded. "You've also got two fractured ribs. Your left side was hit hard, if you didn't have those fancy titanium ribs on your right you'd have broken ribs there too if the bruising is anything to go by."

"Which ribs?" I asked.

"Fifth and sixth."

"Anything else?" I asked him.

Vinter smiled again. "Of course. There's severe damage to both of your kidneys and you bit your tongue pretty bad once or twice. It will take a time for the damage to heal, and it'll be pretty painful for a while."

_Great._

"There are minor fissures on your cheekbones and your jaw. Nothing too serious, I almost missed them too."  
>I raised an eyebrow, modern medicine didn't miss much.<p>

He nodded. "Yeah, I know. Fact is, those are going to bother you for a while, but a couple of bone healing injections will take care of them pretty quickly. You've got some minor internal damage on both your kidneys too. Other than that, I'm just worried about the sheer amount of bruising on your body. The cuts on your torso aren't serious, but the bruising underneath will be painful."

"How long am I going to be bed-ridden?" I asked him.

"Without any surgery or meds I'd say little less than two months, maybe more. Fortunately for us, we have discovered space flight and realistic virtual sexual reality. With those two great achievements comes the miracle of modern medicine, so I'll say that you've got about three days on bed and a week of no strenuous physical activity."

I shrugged. "Sounds better than expected."

The doctor nodded. "Frank, I had never seen anything like that in my entire life, you were both so fast… with the punches you and Johnson took, I'm surprised that any of you two made it."

"It takes more than that to bring me down," I assured him.

"He _did_ bring you down," Vinter reminded me. "Twice."

I couldn't help but groaning in annoyance.

"Can I let Hanna in now?"

"Yeah, I just didn't want to hear her say 'I told you so'."

"Reasonable enough."

Vinter turned around and opened the small room's door, letting a very distraught Hanna Lockley come in. Her look went from distraught to pissed and back to distraught.

I like that word… distraught.

"Jesus…"

I was that close to telling her to just call me Frank.

"Jesus," I agreed.

"Frank, do you realize what you look like?"

I shook my head slowly and carefully. "I haven't seen myself in a mirror yet."

"You look like shit," she said, using a word that wasn't common for her. "There was one point where Grigori had to restrain me!"

"So you do care."

"Don't joke about this, there were a couple of times I thought he was going to kill you! I screamed at you to stay down that second time."

Ironically enough, my second knockdown had been a prelude to my ultimately unsuccessful comeback.

Hanna wasn't done. "You need to know when to stop Frank! How could you just keep taking those hits?"

"I don't give up."

"Well, this time you should've. Who knows what's going to happen to your head in the future."

I rolled my eyes. "Hanna, we live in the twenty-sixth century, I'm pretty sure that a concussion isn't that big of a deal."

"Frank, you endured torture out there…"

_It wasn't the first time…_

"It's not healthy Frank," she said.

I realized what she was talking about right then. She wasn't that concerned for my physical wellbeing. She was concerned because I had willingly stood up after being hit so hard that any sane human being would've collapsed. Some might call that an admirable trait and an amazing show of perseverance, others would just call it foolishness and reckless disregard for personal safety. In truth it was both, but Hanna was my girlfriend, it was her job to be worried about me, it was obvious she was angry right now.

"Frank, if you don't know when to stop in this… a game, then how will you know when it's the time to retreat, to fall back and accept defeat."

"I've done that plenty of times before," I said angrily. "I know perfectly well what it is to retreat after a defeat."

Hanna remained impassive. "Have you ever done it willingly? Have you ever ran away before all things went to hell and people started dying. Have you ever fallen back without being ordered to?"

I looked away, unable to meet her beautiful eyes. "Nobody does."

She disagreed. "Most know when it's proper to retreat. It's the only reason why we get any victories on the ground. It is our only advantage over them."

"I… I get what you're saying," I finally relented. "But it's not the same thing."

"Frank, if there's something in your head that won't let you give up, that's not good. Not giving up isn't smart, it isn't even heroic."

"I know!" I burst out. "I know…"

Hanna walked closer and sat in the chair next to my bed, taking my hand in hers and holding it softly. "You don't need to prove anything."

"I don't," I agreed. "I don't try to."

"Why do you act like it, then?" she asked sadly. "Just… it's hard enough every time we go down into combat, but it's even worse when it feels like you want a fight, like you want to…"

"I don't want to die," I told her. "I promise you that. Dying is the last thing on my list right now."

Hanna seemed to calm down a little after that, placing her head on my chest and breathing quietly. Much as I disliked what I perceived as her judging, I had to admit that it pained me terribly to see her so upset by my actions. I kept telling me myself that all that fight had been for her, had I not joined the tournament I could've been down on Paris IV, checking every coffee joint and diner in Udinia to see if I could find Katie.

I was perfectly aware that I could be a dick to my closest friends and even worse to people I didn't care about, but I still didn't know whether I'd actually hurt the person I loved the most knowingly.

Didn't seem too far-fetched.

"Hey sweetie, can you hit me with morphine please?"

Hanna chuckled on my chest before finally sitting back up and pressing a couple of buttons on a datapad hanging from my bed. "That ought to do the job," she said. "Sleep tight."

"Love you," I muttered.

* * *

><p>I was conscious before I opened my eyes, I felt weird. Not in pain, just… weird. It was a while before I finally allowed myself to open my eyes. It was a lot like in the movies, when the camera blacks out and the character is the in another place. The ceiling was bright white, with a big lamp shining directly over me. The whiteness was supposed to slowly turn into its actual color before I could see clearly.<p>

Only that it didn't. The ceiling was actually white. The ceiling on the _Flawless_ wasn't white, not in the infirmary, not anywhere.

"What?"

I looked around and slowly got back up. My ribs were hurting like hell, but not as bad as they had been before. I looked down and saw that someone had changed me into a hospital gown and had my wrist set in a plastic cast. I wiggled my fingers, eliciting spasms of pain from them. So that was still broken.

After slowly testing my broken hand I looked to my right and saw that I was on a planet if the view was anything to judge by. Paris IV if my memory served me

"Oh crap."

"Yeah, they moved me without telling me beforehand either."

I turned my head slowly to my left to see Avery Johnson, the man that had just beat the living shit out of me. "What?"

He shrugged with some effort. "Damn white coats moved me here soon as I went under. They been telling me about all the shit you made me go through and next thing I know I'm in this nice little hospital room."

"Was it a good idea to put us in here together?" I asked the first thing that came to mind.

"Nah," he shrugged. "By the way, you ruptured my liver, jackass. And you broke like eight of my ribs."

"You cracked my skull in two places and broke three ribs. And I broke my hand punching you."

Johnson raised his hands, they were both encased in casts similar to mine. "Doctors told me it was gonna be a week or so before we're back in fighting condition."

"Told me the same thing," I replied. "How's your head?"

"Got the worst goddamned headache I've ever had."

I nodded. "Second worst," I told him. "But it's throbbing."

"You're welcome."

"Asshole," I grunted. "When can I get out of this room?"

"I asked the same thing, docs didn't want to answer."

"Maybe they like you."

"I do have myself a beautiful face."

I looked at him. With his swollen cheeks and black eyes he didn't look exactly beautiful. Even with his skin tone I could tell that there were bruises under his eyes. Other than that he still had a mustache that I found annotying. He did look a lot better than the last time I saw him, with a face swollen beyond recognition and injuries that mirrored my own. I hoped that I looked as good, I'd probably have the black eyes for a couple other days and my nose would remain swollen for a while, but I wouldn't look like a victim of a gang beating.

I didn't talk to him and he didn't talk to him. It was pretty obvious that we wouldn't like each other after having beaten each other half to death. He was watching something on his datapad and in turn I started reading the news while trying to forget that I was within driving distance of Katie Ayers. Despite my best attempts I found myself thinking about which way was the shortest to the diner she worked, or used to work, in.

The door slammed open and a young female doctor appeared.

_Damn._

At this point Johnson and I looked at each other and raised our eyebrows. She was attractive.

"Why the hell am I here?" I asked.

"What he said," Johnson echoed.

The doctor seemed at a loss for a moment, looking confused. "I… uh," she stuttered. She cleared her throat and then remembered that she was a smart, successful, and attractive woman before regaining some of her confidence. "Sergeant, Lieutenant, you are in the Huerta Memorial Hospital."

"Yeah, there's a sign right there," I pointed. "But why wasn't I told we were going to be moved? From orbit at that."

The doctor seemed at a loss for a few moments before she opened and closed her mouth several times in rapid succession. "Well, I don't know."

"Leave the poor girl alone," Johnson said.

I smiled and shrugged, but nodded. Seeing her so confused and out of it had been slightly funny, even if it had been mean. Still, pretty funny though, it was like indirect revenge towards all those pretty girls from my school that saw me as the poor kid form Earth who was weird and talked about guns a lot. Thinking about it, that was probably the main reason why I was successful with women, I had been forced to meet other girls from other schools and do the most of less time. In a way, I probably had to thank them for that.

"They're all dead Francisco, Jericho VII was glassed, remember? You were there," Schitzo reminded me with a roll of his eyes.

"As I was saying," the doctor started carefully. "Both of your bills have been paid in full by the UNSC Marine Corps and-"

"When can I leave?" Johnson and I asked at the same time. We looked at each other uncomfortably before returning our attention to her.

"My recommendation is that both of you stay abed for two more days given the extent of your injuries."

"Lady, I'm not going to stay here two days," Johnson said. "No way in hell."

"I hate hospitals," I grunted. I had been inside them far too many times.

"Oh. Well, at the earliest I'd say that you can leave in three days."

I shook my head. "What time is it?" I asked her.

"Ummm, eleven thirty, that's two hours before midday."

I nodded. "I'm familiar with timescales in this planet. I'm going to be leaving here tomorrow morning… Where are my clothes?"

"You can't leave so early!"

"Listen, doc, I appreciate all the good work you did. I take it you fixed my nose and skull?" She nodded. "Thanks for that by the way, but I hate being in hospitals and I can handle myself with a broken rib or three."

"And I'll be damned if I let some uppity Helljumper leave before I do," Johnson said.

A military doctor would've told us to quit our dick measuring and yelled at us in a maner befitting a drill sergeant until we agreed to stay on bed until he deemed us fit to leave the hospital. This young girl wasn't a military doctor, she wasn't even a very experienced doctor. So she took half a step back and nodded slowly before quickly telling us what we should do in order to have our injuries heal faster and reiterating that she thought it was a bad idea that we left.

I shrugged and thanked her after Johnson did the same, telling her that nothing she said would change my mind.

"As you wish," she said before finally leaving.**  
><strong>

"Ruptured liver, huh?" I asked Johnson. "How's that feel?"

"Fuck you," he said in a growl. The tone stopped me from making any further comments and I went back to reading the news on the datapad.

"Lieutenant."

"Yes?" I asked.

Johnson positioned himself so that he was facing me before deciding that sitting up was more comfortable. "Have you ever done work for ONI?"

The question was asked right out of the blue, I had no idea why. "Yeah," I admitted.

"Are you involved with them closely?"

"More than I'd like. Why? You?"

He nodded. "NAVSPECWAR," he said simply.

That certainly explained why he was so good at hitting people. At least part of it, it didn't explain why he was so fucking fast or strong.**  
><strong>

"Does the word ORION mean anything to you?"

The way he said it I knew he didn't mean the constellation. "Not really, no." I peered at him intently. "You ask a lot of questions. If you know anything about ONI you should know that it only draws unwanted attention."

Johnson nodded before shrugging. "I was never one to cower to spooks," he told me. "And I was just wondering how you are so goddamned strong."

"I was wondering the same thing about your speed," I replied.

We looked at each other in the eyes for what seemed to be an uncomfortably long time before both of us nodded slowly and returned to our business. The memory of pain was fresh in my mind, pain inflicted on me by Johnson and by ONI scientists.

_Could he… nah.__**  
><strong>_

* * *

><p>"Damn Francisco," Schitzo said with regret in his voice. "Asshole."<p>

I couldn't argue against that, especially considering that the first thing I had done after I left the hospital had been to catch a cab to the diner where Katie had worked as a waitress. It hadn't occurred to me that I should've called Hanna to tell her that I was fine and on my feet. That's what friends were supposed to do, I owed that and more to someone who was actually my girlfriend. These kind of things always dawned on me a little bit too late, and by that time either I didn't care or I couldn't get out of it.

"Here we go," I muttered under my breath. _It has been over four years, she probably doesn't even remember you._

I hoped she did, I hoped that she would feel just as I had.

_Four years Frank. What the hell?_

_I just want some closure._

"Closure, please. She's probably not going to be here," Schitzo said.

_He's got a point._

I groaned. I was arguing against myself and I was ganging up on me. _Scarecrow, some help?_

No reply.

I decided to walk inside the diner before I went any crazier than I already was.

The place had changed a bit, but that was to be expected. The general layout was the same, with booths next to the wide windows and stools in front of the bar. It was the classic American diner layout. Other than that I could tell that they had changed the color on the booth seats and added a couple of screens on different corners so that everybody could watch one without having to snap their neck to look.

No sign of Katie.

_It's for the best._

I sat down on the same booth that I always used to sit on four years ago and examined it carefully. It felt different somehow.

"Hey there sweetie, what's it gonna be for you?" a middle-aged woman wearing a waitress outfit asked me. I looked at her, but couldn't place her face. I guess she must've been hired in the past couple of years.

I smiled at her. "I'll have a special hamburger and a vanilla milkshake, please."

She raised an eyebrow as she jotted down, actually wrote down, my order. "Didn't peg you for a milkshake kind of guy." She finished writing down my order and read through it. "You want fries or onion rings?"

I hesitated. "Fries please."

"All the condiments?"

"Yeah."

"Be right up sweetheart."

I leaned back and stretched my leg underneath the table, resting it on the other side of the booth. The view here wasn't a particularly good one, but I had noticed that if I pressed my head against the window and looked directly up sometimes the sun would bounce of off the contaminants in the air and color the sky in unnatural colors. Some people were of the view that it only served to remind them how badly contaminated the city was, others just thought it was pretty.

Either way, I liked looking at the rainbow-like pattern of colors.

I thanked the waitress when my meal got here and hungrily hunched down the burger before ordering another one. The meat was good, the artificial flavor-enhancers that they added to it took something form the experience, but the improved taste was certainly worth it. The milkshake was as good as I remembered. In fact, everything was just like I remembered, down to the level of greasiness on the fries. Everything save for Katie that is.

_It's for the better,_ I reminded myself.

And it was, had she been her I might've done a bad thing.

"You gonna order the third burger sweetie?" the waitress asked me.

I glanced at my empty plate. "Yeah, why not?"

She smiled and called to the kitchen to make me another hamburger while I finished what was left in my massive milkshake glass. This was good, I got some minor degree of closure and a great meal out of it.

"I take it that's all?"

"Yeah," I told the waitress. "Thanks, as good as I remembered."

"You've been here before?" she asked.

I nodded. "Long time ago, best milkshakes I've ever had."

"Judging by your appetite I would've thought you'd say best burgers."

I smiled in return. The best burger I had ever tasted had been grilled by my dad in this little grill we had on our backyard. I honestly don't know if it was the taste or just the memory, but having my whole family there, mom, dad, brother, and myself… It was one of those few truly happy moments from my childhood. He had ruined half of it, and right after that both my parents had died.

But damn could my dad make burgers.

I decided that it wasn't the memory, that he actually had a skill when it came down to grilling shit. I remembered so little about him, it was good to remember something that he had done well and enjoyed it.

The pollution rainbow flickered and disappeared and I decided that it was time to go back to Hanna.

"You know, I never did figure why you did that?"

_Shit._

What.

_Shit._

I turned around as slowly as I dared. I didn't want to face her, but there was no way out of it, I was physically cornered against a wall and it just wouldn't do for me to walk away. I could do it I guess, ignore her and walk away from her like a coward. I had been called many things in my life, even a coward. The people that called me that didn't keep their teeth for long after they said it.

"Hi."

"You silver-tongued devil," Schitzo complimented loudly, slamming his palms on the table.

"Hi?" Katie was of a mind with my subconscious.

I shrugged. "You look great." She did, four years wasn't that long when it came down to it, but Katie still looked as beautiful as the time I had first noticed her.

Katie wasn't smiling. She wasn't frowning either, her face was perfectly neutral. It was terrifying.

She took a deep breath before beginning. "You never called."

"I… I know."

"You didn't even bother to write," she replied, sitting down on the opposite side of the booth. Only then did I notice that she was wearing the same waitress outfit that I had first seen her with. "You…" she clenched her fists and took another deep breath. "How _could_ you?"

I opened my mouth and closed it when I couldn't come up with anything to say. "I don't know." At least it was the truth. I owed her that.

"You don't know," she echoed, leaning back. "Do you know what you put me through? I waited one year of my life before I finally realized that you weren't even going to bother with sending me anything. One whole year."

"I-"

"But that wasn't all. Then I figured that perhaps you had been killed in action. I hated myself for hating you then. I looked your name up on all the casualty lists that I could find. I did that for another couple of months."

"Katie."

"Don't," she broke in. "Don't. You took almost two years of my life away from me Frank. Two years and you didn't even have the good grace to write."

"I'm sorry," I said finally. It had never occurred to me that it might be this way. At worst I would've guessed that Katie was angry for a while and then just decided to get over it and start seeing other people. It would've been better that way.

We had only actually gone out once and been a couple for about a week. There was no way that she could've taken things that seriously with something that could be regarded as an extended one night stand. Four years was a long time to get over your anger, but Katie still had some in her.

"Bah, you're criticizing her but you still have feelings for her after the same four years," Schitzo said.

_Damn…_

"You're sorry," Katie scoffed. "I wish it was enough."

I couldn't say anything. There was nothing to say. The fact was that I had hurt her pretty bad and I could've avoided it with a simple note.

"Why are you here?" she asked me after a short silence.

That was a good question. "I don't know. I guess I just wanted some closure."

"Closure? _I_ wanted some closure for the past four years."

"Katie, I'm sorry. I did what I did, or rather didn't do anything because I thought it was for the best. I live all the way to Reach and half the year I'm not even there. You know that it wouldn't have worked that way. I made a mistake and I'm willing to admit that, but at the moment I thought it was for the best."

"Frank, I would've abandoned my whole life here for you if you had just asked. I _wanted _you to ask." She was on the verge of tears.

Schitzo chuckled. "One week and you broke her… seems like she broke you too."

"I-"

"So it was just a game for you? Make the naïve girl fall in love with you and then just walk away? Was that all it was to you, a one night stand?"

"Don't say that," I replied, a little bit of anger in my voice. "You meant everything for me. I did what I thought was best for you, not for me."

"You were wrong."

"And I'm sorry." I was pleading with her now. "I am, I really am."

She seemed to have relaxed now. Not all the way, but she was certainly a lot calmer than she had been a few moments ago. "You should've called."

"Yes," I agreed.

I couldn't keep apologizing, if I did it would start sounding insincere, and I wanted her to know that I hadn't meant to hurt her. I took advantage of the silence to look closely at her. Despite her red eyes and a couple of tears running down her cheeks she looked beautiful. I had always considered her one of the prettiest women I had ever met, but there was just something about her that made her… more.

"Why did you come?" she asked again. "What where you expecting? Did you think I would be waiting for you and would be happy to just jump into your arms?"

The thought had crossed my mind. "Not really. I just… it's complicated."

"I've got time," she said, leaning back on her seat.

Wow, back when I had first met her she had been all flowers and rainbows with me. It made sense, seeing as she liked me and wanted to get me to ask her out, but right now she was being pretty damn assertive and behaving like you would expect a scorned ex-girlfriend.

"Hell hath no fury," Schitzo lamented.

I sighed and mimicked her movement, getting myself comfortable. "It's a story you're not going to like." For a moment I realized that I was actually about to tell her everything. I was ready to explain to her that I had been seeing Hanna and I had cheated on my girlfriend with her.

"Why won't I like it?"

At that moment I lost my nerve. There was no way I could tell her the truth. I was already an asshole to her; I didn't need to ruin myself in her eyes more than I already had. I cared about her and whatever Katie thought about me would affect me whether I wanted it to or not.

"Some might even call it love, Francisco," Schitzo chided.**  
><strong>

I glanced away, looking at the cars and cabs that drove by at ridiculous speeds. It reminded me of that one time that someone in HIGHCOM had considered linking all Warthogs and Mongooses to a single AI designed to drive them, but the sheer unpredictability of humans at the wheel had outweighed the benefits that a super-fast artificial intelligence could provide. It was not the case in the city, where every car was driven by a specialized program and all of the cabs were controlled by the city's resident AI.

"What happened to the store across the street?" I asked.

Katie didn't seem surprised by the change in topic. "The owner was drafted into the Marines, she was killed and her husband had to join in order to provide for his kids."

"Is he still alive?"

"He came to visit both his kids a few weeks ago."

"That's good."

"Yeah."

"Were you friends with the owner?"

Katie shook her head. "Not really, she and her husband came here occasionally, talked to them some, but we weren't really close."

More silence.

"What have you been up to?"

Her question surprised me, I hadn't expected her to act normal all of a sudden. My surprise must've showed, because a second later she told me that she still expected answers from me.

I nodded, it sounded reasonable. "Mostly just doing my job," I told her. "Planet hopping and kicking alien ass."

She smiled a little bit. "Girflriend."

"Yeah."

"Is it serious?"

"Pretty serious."

Katie shrugged. "How long have you been dating?"

_More than five years… since before I met you._

"A while," I replied instead.

"Do you love her?"

"Damn, she's a sneaky one," Schitzo said with a wide grin.

I was at a loss of words, of course I loved her, but if I told Katie that she could just chew me out for even showing up here. "I do."

"Then why the hell are you here?"

And there it was. "I told you before," I said. "I…" I stopped myself right there. I had told her that I didn't know and I had told her that I would explain later. I couldn't go back on my word. "I guess I was hungry."

"And this was the first place you found?"

I shook my head.

"Let me ask another question, why are you on this planet?"

The reason I was on the system was technically classified, but I could tell her why I was on the planet easily enough. "I was on the hospital."

"What happened?" There was enough worry in her voice to give me a small degree of satisfaction.

I pointed at my black eye. It wasn't swollen anymore.

"You got into a fight?"

I smiled and shook my head again. "Boxing match," I said. "There was a tournament organized on board my ship, I decided to join and in the end I got more than I bargained for. You should see the other guy."

"Did you win?"

"Nah, the other guy really did a job on me. He was pretty beaten up too."

"Oh my gosh, are you Lightning Helljumper?"

"What."

Katie seemed to catch what she had just said and had the grace to blush a little bit. "I– I mean, there's this video of an Army–Marines boxing match that's been circulating around the net, a lot of my friends are talking about it. Somebody uploaded into YouTube. I think it's called Lightning Helljumper vs. Thunder Jarhead."  
>I smiled, not really knowing how to react at that. I had all but forgotten that the encounter had been televised. "You're kidding."<p>

Katie shrugged. "I shit you not, mister."

I did what any reasonable human being would've done. I yanked my cellphone form my pocket and immediately looked up the fight. There were already several versions of the video on YouTube. I quickly picked one that claimed to have the best moments of the fight on it and watched. The first thing that I thought of was that my latest gym routine had really worked for my triceps. The second thought that I came up with was that ONI would be pissed. Both Johnson and I were moving a little bit too fast. To the untrained eye it would seem like we were both really talented boxers, but the problem was that we weren't really pro material, we were just very good and more than human. Now that I was watching it from the outside I realized that I had a relatively sloppy technique, even if I was fast enough to surprise even the most hardened boxers.

"Wow," I said. "I'm famous."

"YouTube famous," Katie corrected.

"Of course," I conceded. "I still lost."

"I wouldn't feel so bad, I heard a couple of guys say that given a few more minutes and you might've won."

That was certainly a possibility, but he could've knocked me out just as easily. I had collapsed the same as he had when the fight ended.

_Guys…_

"Are you seeing anybody?" I asked her.

"Why so curious?" she asked. "I thought you were in a relationship yourself."

I nodded. "Just curious."

"No."

"What?"

"I'm not seeing anybody."

"That's… well, I guess that sucks for you." I had been close to saying that it was a good thing, but it wasn't supposed to be, even if it felt that way.

She shrugged and I couldn't help but interpret that as a sign that I had an opportunity. _What the hell is wrong with you?_

"Listen, Katie, it's getting late and I have to report to my CO before sunset. If you still want answers you'll get them."

Katie inched her way out of the booth while I swiped my card on the table, paying for my meal. "I… I want to understand Frank, I loved you, I did."

"I did too," I said.

"Funny what can happen in just a week, huh?"

"Yeah," I agreed. "But you had a crush on me for almost five months before that, didn't you?"

She smiled. "More or less."

Here we were, both of us had been on the verge of a shouting match just a few minutes ago and all of a sudden we were as close to flirting as you could get. Katie was a great girl, not for the first time I wondered how things would've turned out if I had met her before Hanna. Maybe I would've ended up cheating on her and not the other way around. The only thing I was sure of was that I would've found a way to screw it up.

Katie walked me to the door and stood there with me for a moment.

"It was good seeing you," I told her. "Despite everything."

"Despite everything," she began. "I'm glad to see you too. And that you're still alive."

"Thanks," I scoffed. "I'm happy you're alive too."

"You know what I mean," Katie replied.

Before I could reply, the hair on the back of my neck stood up. "Did you feel that?" I asked her.

"The electricity?"

"Yeah," I nodded. "What-"

Every single light inside the diner and down the street as far as I could see went off at the same time. I turned around and brought my hand to the back of my belt, gripping the hilt of my knife. Hanna had been thoughtful enough to send it down to the hospital with me. She was too good for me.

_Focus._

"Frank, what's happening?" Katie asked.

"It's probably just a blackout," I replied. I knew it was a long were a thing of the past, the last recorded accidental blackout had been over three hundred years ago, the only ones after that had been due to terrorist attacks or power station workers going postal. I realized a moment too late that my statement wouldn't reassure her in the least.

"All of these buildings have backup generators in case of a terrorist attack," Katie said. "They should be coming up right now."  
>The lights were still off. This wasn't good. "They're not."<p>

"What could do this?"

_A high-end weaponized EMP._ "I'm not sure."

My pocket started vibrating and I pulled out my phone.

"How do you have signal?" Katie asked. "Frank, what's going on."

The phone's caller ID showed Captain Hayes' official UNSC picture. She looked damn good in it, even with the serious face and all. "Captain?"

"Castillo, where are you? You're not at the hospital."

"No, I'm not," I replied. "I'm right outside Duck's Diner, on Almonte street."

"What were you doing there?" Hayes asked.

"Eating," I replied. "Sir, what's this about?"

Hayes' sharp breaths were audible through the speaker. "The Covenant arrived. They jumped at the edge of the system, by the time we saw the light from their arrival they had already done a microjump. They're right behind Paris IV's moon, some of them got past the defenses."

"The battlestars?"

"And the six Super-MACs."

"Are they still in working order?"

"All but a couple of the battlestars. One of the stations was destroyed and another one damaged when the ships punched through."

"What class?"

"A small flotilla, an assault carrier and four _CPV_-class destroyers."

_CPV_-class destroyers… those were the ones with a bulbous front and two leg-like appendages on the back. They were not exactly the cream of the crop when it came down to space combat, they would have a hard time standing against a _Marathon_-class cruiser or a pair of heavy destroyers, but they were designed for planet occupation. The huge bulbous heads on their front were filled to the brim with ground forces and equipment. It was an occupation force while the rest of the Covenant fleet tried to take out the sizeable defense force.

"Shit."

"Indeed," Hayes agreed. "Two of the destroyers are damaged, but they can still do their job. Command has already alerted Army HQ and Marines all over the planet are preparing to mobilize."

"What about ship-borne forces?"

"The admiral has already alerted every last Marine on board the battle group. We're ready to move as soon as we know where they're landing."

"It can't be that long."

"Correct," Hayes agreed. "Castillo, it's not definite, but…"

"One of the ships is headed here?"

"Correct, one of the intact destroyers."

Then the raid sirens went off.

* * *

><p><em>Thanks to SilasWhitfield for proofreading this chapter.<em>

_Well, Silas pointed out that a person with more than one broken rib would probably not be allowed to leave the hospital so quickly. He has a point (and a good one too), but sometimes I take for granted that the story takes place 500 years in the future and forget that some of you guys forget about that. A few friends have complained about the miraculous recoveries, but you have to remember that medical sciences have advanced a long time since the 21st century. The time for healing broken bones would be reduced drastically with the use of my invented "bone-healing fluid." That and Frank is getting close to becoming a gorram Spartan! Mostly I just use the bone-healing thingy to have the guys back in action quickly as opposed to having them take a realistically long time to recuperate. I just wanted to remind you guys about that to clear things up._

_Other than that, Frank meets Katie again and is debating with himself (literally) about his feelings for her. Does he love her? Does he love her more than he does Hanna? He still cares for her, that's a given, but what exactly is going on with him? All that and more on the next–wait... nope, the covvies are attacking so that means that this sentimental chat won't be finished until later._

_Johnson's still a badass but is a real gentlemen too. Frank is a big eater but also kind of a dick. Katie is as pretty as usual but also seems to have revealed character traits unfamiliar to Frank, testament to the short amount of time that they actually spent together. Oh, and Hayes was actually kind of nice to Frank for once... that was weird, it felt weird writing it._

_On other less important news, I'm going to the Swedish House Mafia concert on Saturday night. I'm a big fan of them and some of you might recall that I used their song Greyhound on a previous chapter, the one with the paintball and whatnot. It's going to be awesome. Like all good teenagers I'll avoid listening to my parents and will most certainly get very drunk on cheap liquor (tequila, of course) during the concert. I'll hate Sunday a lot, but hopefully I'll have lots of fun. The reason I'm telling you this? Dunno, maybe I just want you to know that I'm hardcore and get drunk and shit, gangsta style._

_Hope you enjoyed this chapter, I certainly had fun writing it. Leave me your thoughts and opinions about it._

_Stay strong._

_-casquis_


	165. Space Invaders

Chapter CLXV: Space Invaders

**January 24, 2549 (UNSC Calendar)/**

**Udinia, Paris IV, Paris System**

* * *

><p><em>"The sky is falling!"–Chicken Little<em>

* * *

><p>"Frank, what's going on?" Katie asked. All signs of anger or frustration were gone from her voice, instead she spoke with barely concealed panic.<p>

"Are there any shelters nearby?"

"Shelters? What kind of shelters?"

"Bomb shelters, raid shelters, a big basement will do," I told her, jerking my eyes from side to side, seeing if I could catch something through the skyscrapers.

"Katie, we're under-"

A loud explosion rocked me off my feet. I had expected the Covenant to attack the city's outskirts first, but it seemed like this time they had gone right in for the kill. The explosion was uncomfortably close to me and seconds later car alarms started going off and people started screaming.

"Oh my God," Katie whispered.

I raised my phone back to my ear, wishing that I had gotten one of those douchy earpieces with it. "Captain, are you there?"

"I'm here Castillo. The Covenant knocked out all satellites above the city, we're blind for the moment, drones are going to be in the air in two minutes, they need an additional fifteen minutes to reach the city."

"Captain, the Covenant are attacking the downtown area, they got past all the defenses, mass drivers and SAM batteries. My guess is that the EMP they used was strong enough to burn through the protective measures. So far I haven't had contact with them, but judging from the screaming…"

"Frank…" Katie said.

"Understood," Hayes replied, "the _Flawless _is already moving into position above the city. We'll be dropping down in about an hour. We need all the intel we can get before we jump Lieutenant."

"Got it," I said. "I'll do my best. Do I have any kind of support?"

"I'm working on that. Most of Jaguar is on board the ship at the moment, but two men are in the city right now. Lance Corporal Agnarsson form Two and Corporal Bamber from your own platoon. I'm trying to communicate with them right now, but the EMP really did a number on communications. If I can locate them I'll redirect them to your position."

"Thanks, Sir." Bee and Bamber would do. "Can you track me through my phone?"

"Yes, Al already has you pinned down, but you need to keep your phone on."

"Understood. What do you need to know?"

"Anything that might help, move towards the screaming."

"That's the Helljumper way, sir."

Hayes seemed to hesitate a little bit before speaking next. "Good luck out there, Lieutenant. Don't get yourself killed."

I smiled a little bit. "I wouldn't dream of depriving you of that pleasure, Captain. And thanks. Castillo out."

"Frank!"

"What?!" I shouted. Katie had been calling my name all throughout the conversation, but I hadn't paid her any mind. "Katie… what?"

"What's happening?"

"We're under attack by the Covenant," I told her. I pocketed my phone and put my hands on her shoulders as I met her eyes. "Listen Katie, I need you to go towards the nearest shelter you know of, can you do that?"  
>She nodded several times.<p>

"Good. Here's what you do, you run all the way there and don't stop for anything. Once you're there you'll be safe. UNSC forces will repel the attack and everything will be fine."

"Frank, oh my God, I'm so scared, how can this be happening? The war isn't supposed to get here, it's supposed to-" she stopped and her eyes widened.

That was as much of a warning as the familiar high-pitched screaming.

"Down!" I yelled as I shoved Katie into the sidewalk, covering her with my own body.

Plasma cannons strafed the street, tearing through the thin metal hoods over the engines and blowing them up. Several unlucky bystanders were also hit by the fast-flying attack craft. The Banshees dropped one fuel rod bomb each before banking hard to the right and disappearing behind a building. Smoke started to go up, obstructing my view. It would also prevent any follow-up air attacks from having any degree of accuracy. Shame about the dead civvies, though.

"Katie, are you ok?"

She didn't answer. She was looking at the burnt corpse of a boy that looked fresh out of high school. His entire torso was charred and blood was seeping from the wounds. The frightening part was that his chest was slowly heaving up and down. He was still alive.

"Katie!" I shouted, slapping her as hard as I dared. "Look at me."

Her eyes snapped back into mine.

"Forget everything I just said, ok?" I told her. "Go into the diner and hide under something. You'll be safe as long as you're inside and don't make any noise."

"Ok," she said softly.

Police sirens flooded my ears, and two patrols accompanied by a heavy truck turned around the corner, stopping and unloading the cops inside. More cop cars disappeared down the other streets, going off to stall the Covenant and to rescue all the civilians they could. To protect and to serve indeed, those brave men were going to their deaths to fulfill their oaths.

"Everyone go back inside!" an amplified voice boomed. "The city is under attack by the Covenant. The UNSC Defense Forces are responding on all fronts! We need all non-combat personnel to return to the nearest building and hide, it is your best chance for survival!"  
>Well, he certainly wasn't sugarcoating it.<p>

I jogged up to the nearest squad car and elbowed past a cop to meet the man who was speaking through the bullhorn.

"Someone get him out of here!" he barked.

"Lieutenant Frank Castillo, UNSC Marine Corps," I said quickly, before I had to knock out some cop. "Sir, I'm here to help."

The officer gave an order and his men stood down. "What can I do for you, Lieutenant?"

"I was on leave," I explained. "I got a call from my CO just as the lights went out. The Navy is preparing to counter-attack, but it will take some time before they can get in position to drop troops."

He nodded. "That much we know, last I heard the Army garrisons that weren't turned into molten glass were also preparing to respond to the attack, hold the enemy until the Marines could come in."

"How bad was it?"

"We're still getting a damage assessment from the city AI and other military AIs, but things weren't looking so good."

I nodded understandingly. He lived here; he probably had a family that lived here. "Officer…"

"Allen," he said.

"Officer Allen, my captain tasked me with acquiring as much intel on enemy forces as I could, do you have anything useful?"

"One big-ass spaceship," one of the officers said.

"Anything else?"

"Not really," Allen shrugged. "The Covenant spaceship let out a swarm of smaller dropships and attack craft like the ones that just came through."

"Banshees," I told him. "Fast and dangerous, but fragile. Sir, I need to borrow a vest and a rifle if you have it."

"Not two?"

I raised an eyebrow and then turned around, following his eyes. "Katie, I told you to go back inside the diner!" I yelled at her.

Allen made a noise that might've been a laugh. "She did look too pretty to be a Jarhead."

A purple beam pierced an officer's sternum and he collapsed, a gaping hole in his chest with steam coming out of it.

"Everybody down!" Allen ordered.

"Sniper!" I cried at the same time.

I yanked Katie down with me, she was breathing hard and shaking, but at least she seemed to have focused. Crowds of civilians were running past the squad cars and away from whoever had just shot at us. There were eleven cops still alive and half of them looked like they were about to shit their pants. More beams cut through some of the escaping civilians, oftentimes more than one at a time. Nobody stopped to help the fallen, instead just running for their lives. It was the smart thing to do, no matter who had been hit.

"Gun!" I shouted.

The officer closest to me tossed me his law enforcement M6 pistol and I jumped out of cover. I squinted through the smoke and spotted what I was looking for. Three jackals armed with beam rifles were walking over the roofs of cars. They were firing at the unarmed and unarmored civilians indiscriminately. I don't know why the hell they were giving away their position in order to take out useless civilians instead of preparing ambushes for police and Army units, but jackals always did have a bloodthirsty streak to them.

I fired my weapon six times, hitting each jackal twice in the chest.

"Katie, stay here," I told her, tears were streaking down her face, but at least she had stopped shaking. I turned to face two cops in armor and carrying M7 SMGs.

"You and you, with me."

They looked at each other before standing back up and walked down the street with me. I approached the jackals with the utmost care and shouldered two of the beam rifles before tossing the other one to one of the officers. "Take them back to the squad cars," I ordered. "We need to-"  
>Carbine rounds tore through his face and neck, killing him instantly.<p>

"Fall back!" I shouted at the other man.

I just caught the shape of an elite before I had to duck behind a car. A beam rifle would do, but the huge sniper rifle had no stock or proper foregrip, it would be a tough shot.**  
><strong>

"Spray him!" I yelled loudly. "Covering fire!"

The cops reacted surprisingly quickly, with the SWAT unit taking the lead and the rest of the regular officers following their example. Within a couple of seconds the elite was being hit by small arms fire all over its chest. It returned fire with its plasma rifle, and hit someone, if the screams were anything to go by. I jumped out of cover and fired one shot at it with the beam rifle. The weakened shields coupled with the astounding power that the beam rifle had tore through the elite's shields and armor. It collapsed with a hole on its side. I promptly fired another shot through its head to make sure it was dead.

"Return the beam rifles to the squad cars!" I told the SWAT man that had been pinned with me. "They're easy enough to use, look through the scope and fire. Don't fire too quickly though, they overheat."

"Yes, sir," he replied.

The man returned to the small barricade and handed one of the rifles to the regular officers, keeping one for himself. I just caught that out of the corner of my eye as I took a carbine from the dead elite, feeling sick as I did. This very weapon had killed a human less than a minute ago, but I had to swallow my dislike and heave it, taking as many spare magazines as I could fit into my pockets and shove through my belt. The cops were placing the cars in a more defensible position while the few civilians still in the street ran away.

"Lieutenant," Allen called out. "What now?"

"What were your orders?"

"To provide safety to civilians."

"That would be a lot easier if they weren't scattered all over the place," I muttered under my breath. "Ok, listen up! Here's what we do, we're going to cordon off that intersection right over there, move the cars around and make a wall if you can. The covvies were coming from over there, so they'll be running straight into us, we're going to kick their asses and send them back into their ship."

My speech didn't have a very positive reaction, but at least some of the cops seemed happy to have a plan.

"Start moving the cars, get that armored truck over there. I don't want anything getting through without being shot at all over."

"You heard him," Allen barked. "Get moving!"

The cops scattered and started shoving the cars closest to the intersection into position. The cars were all turned off, but they weren't in park, so they were easily pushed into position. They were ready before the armored truck drove in.

"Katie," I said. "Katie, I need you to go back into the diner and hide underneath a table, ok?" She nodded. "Preferably one away from any windows. Come on, I'll take you."

Katie stood up and walked with me, looking at the burnt cars and corpses with wide eyes. She held onto my arm, gripping it tightly as if she thought she would fall otherwise. Inside the diner I led her into the booth that was farther away from the door and told her to keep her head down.

"Frank, what's going to happen?"

"They sucker-punched us," I explained. "We'll organize a defense and soon after they'll all be dead."

"We're supposed to get refugees," she said, "we're not supposed to be refugees."

I could relate to that. Paris IV was a prosperous colony where the unemployment rate was close enough to zero that it made no difference. People here lived comfortable lives and it only made sense for them to believe that the war didn't apply to them. I felt that way in Reach, untouchable behind all those orbital defense platforms.

"We'll be fine," I assured her. "You'll be fine."

I walked out of the diner and joined the cops. They were just done making a ring around the intersection. I ordered the one with the beam rifle to climb to a third floor and cover us. From that position he could cover three out of four streets with relative ease and fire down the other one with just a little trouble. The rest of the officers I spread out through the ring. Even Allen seemed to have delegated his authority to me, nodding to everything I said.

"Do you have grenades?"

"Fragmentation?" he asked.

"Yeah."

"No, sorry. We've got some flashbangs though."

"That'll do," I shrugged. "Hand me a pair and give one each to some of your men. Anything else inside the truck?"

Allen pondered for a second. "A pair of small recon drones. They help when breaching apartments."

"Use them," I ordered. "And tell me if you see anything."

It took less than three minutes for the drones to spot a large force of grunts and jackals moving towards our position. They had heard the gunshots and had decided to pounce on some defenseless humans before anyone else found us.

"We've got grunts and jackals!" I shouted so that every man could hear. "Jackals are the ones with the shields, they're deadly good when it comes to aiming, grunts are weak individually, but in packs they're dangerous, and if you're careless they can gut you with their claws. Go for headshots with both of them, use flashbangs to disrupt their formation."

Once the enemy force was within range we opened fire, catching them by surprise. It went terribly. My team could've taken out half of their number in the same amount of time, my whole platoon would've killed every last alien in three seconds. The cops fired as they had been trained to, center mass shots. Three grunts and a jackal went down, but the rest quickly formed a wall of shields and protected the grunts behind them. I fired at the gaps with the carbine, but they quickly tightened the wall before I could get more than one kill.

"Flashbangs!" I ordered. "Quickly!"

Two men tossed the devices, blinding the lead jackals. The grenades fell short, but they still made enough of a bang to cause two jackals to stagger. The sniper overhead took one of them out and the other SWAT cop killed the other one with his commandeered beam rifle. The rest opened fire at the gap in the wall, hitting and wounding several grunts. The body shots were enough to bring them down but not enough to kill them.

"Keep firing!" I yelled. "Hit the birds!"

With help from our sniper we killed the rest of the jackals and took down all of the grunts.

"Why won't they surrender?" one cop asked.

"Cause we won't let them," I replied. "And they won't let us, surrender means death."

_Just clearing that up._

"All right, cover me," I ordered.

The men nodded and I hopped over one of the cars, dashing towards the dead and dying covvies. I stomped the grunts that were still alive on the head and took a few of their plasma pistols before grabbing one of the needlers. I examined it before grabbing it carefully and taking it back.

"Plasma pistols, single fire, incredibly weak against most armored targets. If you keep the trigger depressed they overcharge and fire a powerful bolt, only use them that way."

"And that?" some cop asked.

I raised the needler. "This? This is mine."

After that we fended off another grunt and jackal attack, but one of the SWAT cops got hit through the neck with a needler. He staggered backwards, reaching up to his neck to grab at the pulsing crystal. He must've disturbed it a little bit too much, because a second later it went off and destroyed everything in his neck that wasn't bone, leaving a gory mess on the street.

"Shit!" one of his friends cried, jumping back. "Oh my God, oh my God."

"Snap out of it!" Allen yelled. "Eyes down range."

I nodded at him in thanks. "We can't afford to panic right now, help is coming."  
>We waited on that position a few more minutes.<p>

"What the hell's that noise?" Allen asked.

"Heads down," I ordered. "Phantom dropship."

The Phantom overflew our position, strafing the armored truck and hitting one of the cops in the foot, blowing it off at the ankle. I ignored his cries of pain as the gravity lift activated. Nothing came out, but it was turned on too long for that to be a malfunction.

"Eyes open!"

My suspicions proved to be right when Allen's head was loped clean from his body by an invisible sword. I fired my carbine at the neighboring area and a couple of rounds collided with a cloaked elite. I kept on firing until the minor turned to face me. It raised its plasma rifle and roared angrily as other officers started looking around with nervous expressions. The elite got a dozen needles to the neck and face before it could fire, and I tossed the empty needler to the side.**  
><strong>

"Wha-"

Another two cops went down, one with a slash across his chest and another one with two holes through his belly. Before any of the others could react plasma bolts appeared out of nowhere and hit another of the cops. I fired at the distorted shape and my carbine decided to run out of ammunition at that exact same moment. I nearbrained myself when the clip ejected straight back, but it was too late to reload, the elite was coming straight towards me.

I tossed the carbine at it and rolled away from it. I landed near Allen's beheaded corpse, his hand still held onto a plasma pistol. I yanked it free and quickly charged it. The elite had been going for a sword kill, because it had its rifle arm handing to its side. It barely flinched as the overcharged plasma shot overloaded his shields, instead swiping at my neck with its sword.

It wasn't a swordsman, it was probably a jumped up shit that got too excited at getting to handle a sword.

I ducked underneath the blow, drawing my knife from my belt and throwing an upwards thrust. It was a well, practiced maneuver and I had used it countless times, but it was always useful and reliable. The sharp blade cut through the unarmored neck on the alien. I did even more damage as I brutally yanked out the knife, tearing through flesh and cutting through arteries. The elite dropped both its weapons and tried to keep its blood inside its body.

The huge alien collapsed to the floor within two seconds.

My phone rang again. The cops that were still alive had looks of shock on their faces. They wouldn't fight even if an elite was standing right in front of them with a target painted on its ugly face. Instead I climbed into the armored truck and answered.

"Kind of busy Captain," I grunted.

"It wasn't easy getting a signal through to your phone," Hayes said. "Bamber and Agnarsson are one block away from your position. Sitrep?"

"I'm defending an intersection with a few cops. Dead cops now, the ones still alive are going to need some therapy if they get out of this. So far we've only come across some death squads hunting for civilians. A Phantom dropped a couple of elites on our position in attempt to disrupt out hold on the intersection. They succeeded."

"So," Al's voice chimed in. "They're mostly causing mayhem, giving their ground troops free reign, but there is some degree of organization, seeing as they sent what I can only assumed to be specialized troops into your position in order to facilitate their movements."

I shrugged. "Sounds accurate."

"Castillo, I'm going to need you to move towards Elysium Park, preliminary intel shows that the Covenant has set up a beachhead there, some SAM devices are already in position around the park, command wants us to take them out."

"I'll scout them out for you," I said.

"Good, I'll communicate with you in twenty minutes."

I waited on the armored truck until I head Bee calling out to me. "Lieutenant? Frank!"

"I'm here," I said. "What have you got for me?"

Bee tossed me a lightweight bulletproof vest and held a spare M7S SMG on his left arm. I quickly put the vest over my black t-shirt. The desert brown contrasted heavily with my shirt and it most certainly wasn't Helljumper black, but it would do. The light vestwouldn't stop even the weakest plasma shot, but it would save my life when it came to shrapnel. As soon as I was done with my vest Bee tossed me two knee guards and then an ammunition belt. I quickly strapped the belt to my waist and caught the M7S, cocking it and testing its weight.

"Where'd you get all this?" I asked.

"ONI cache," Bamber said. She was rather muscular for a woman, with well-defined biceps and triceps that her tanktop displayed. Her short hair wasn't my style, but I could appreciatethat she would forsake personal appearance for comfort and practicality. "They sure are paranoid if they have this much equipment in one of the most stable UEG worlds."

I shrugged. "That's ONI for you. Got any radios?"

"Oh, right," Bee muttered, reaching into one of his leg pouches before pulling out an ear piece with a microphone and a single piece of transparent plastic that covered one eye. It was the kind of equipment that black ops ONI operatives would use. Small, easy to hide, and useful.

I put the thing on.

"You know, there is a certain amount of badassery to this look," Bee noted. He had a point, the civilian clothing with combat boots and military equipment did look badass in its own unarmored way.

I looked up at the window where I had ordered the SWAT sniper and waved my arms. "I'm going to need you to hold this position," I shouted. "Harass enemy troops, aim for the big ones! If you're overwhelmed run, there's no shame in it."

"Y–yes, sir!" he shouted back, if a little weakly.

I turned to face Bamber. "Dana, where are we on equipment?"

"Some C-12 and a pair of old frags," she replied, tapping the pouch hanging across her shoulder. "Nothing heavy."

"Ok, stealthy it is."

"No fun that way," Bee lamented. He always did like the explosions.

I shook my head disapprovingly to remind him of the seriousness of the situation. "We need to scout out the exact position of enemy SAM emplacements in order to have the rest of Jaguar land and take them out. Out of sight, out of mind, all right? I don't want to be spotted and have a whole covvie battalion on my ass. We stay quiet unless I give the order."

"Yes, sir," they both replied.

"Ok, we head to Elysium Park. There's a couple of subway stations nearby, we'll close in through the tunnels and then walk the rest of the way on the surface."

They nodded.

"Good," I said. "On me."

I left the street being careful not to get shot through the head and praying to a God that I wasn't sure I believed in to keep Katie safe. That God had kept me safe for a long time, but it had also allowed the Covenant to butcher billions of innocent human beings. That made God something of a dick, unless of course he was just the god of humans, in which case he was obviously doing his best and managing to pull off the occasional miracle.

Food for thought, eh?

"Last time we went into the subway tunnels things didn't end too well," Bee grunted as soon as we were underground.

"What happened?" Bamber asked, curiosity filling her voice.

"El-tee?"

"Go ahead."

Bee took a deep breath and started telling the story, describing the huge crater in the middle of Catamaran City and how one of the subway tunnels rang the length of it, with parts of it occasionally exposed to the outside and to enemy fire. He narrated the events of the battle, theatrically reciting the moment that the whole tunnel rolled to the side and down the crater slope. I remembered that part well enough, being tossed around like a rag doll only to then be in the danger of being trapped underwater and drowning wasn't an experience that I wanted to repeat.

Then the Yevgeny and his Rangers saved our asses and then everybody died.

By the time Bee had reached the part in the story where they were organizing a rescue mission to get me out we were climbing back out.

"Shit," I murmured as I saw the heavy enemy movements covering the street in front of us. "There's no way we're getting past that."

"We could climb," Bamber suggested, pointing at a building right next to us.

"Did you grow wings?" I asked her.

She hesitated. "There's a zipline in Bee's backpack."

"Right, I forgot about that," Bee replied. "Thought it would be useless."

"Zipline huh…" I said. "These ONI operatives do have a penchant for the dramatic, don't they?"

"That they do," Bamber agreed.

"Ok, Dana, cover Bee and me, we'll head towards the building."

"Yes, sir."

We ran inside the building and covered Bamber as she ran to join us. After that it was a simple matter of taking one of the elevators up to the top floors. Not for the first time I wondered why the hell elevators were always the first things to return to working order when a whole city didn't have any power. I'd have to ask Camilla about that, she's the kind of person who would know.

"It's amazing how the elevator's still working," Bamber noted, echoing my thoughts.

"It's amazing how they still play crappy elevator music," Bee replied. "I mean, seriously. The Girl from Ipanema?"

"The what?"

"It's a song," I explained. "The one playing right now. Almost five hundred years old."

"More, I think," Bee replied. "I need to brush up on my dates."

"You do that," I said, watching the floor count steadily go up. "You hold movie nights in your new squad?" I asked him.

"I'd hardly call it new, I've been with it almost as long as I was with Reaper," Bee said. "But yeah, I do have movie nights sometimes."

Bamber scoffed in amusement. "You used to go to movie nights El-tee?"

I shrugged. "Sure. I liked the films."

"Are they the five hundred year old films that everyone seems to talk about?"

"Indeed," Bee confirmed, his strong Scottish accent coming out with the word. "Everybody complains about the quality, but they still return next time."

Bamber chuckled lightly. "Five hundred year old flicks. Damn."

"I have no idea how they survived that long," I said in agreement. "But I honestly can't complain."

The elevator dinged and the doors opened to reveal an immaculate reception desk to a company whose name I vaguely recalled. I think that they had something to do with money, but then again, which company doesn't?

"Dane, that window. Bee, find me some tape. Do we have rope?"

"Yeah," Bee replied. "For the zipline."

I shrugged. "It'll work."

Bee quickly pressed the zipline rope against the window and I stuck it there with scotch tape. I would've preferred some duct tape, but this was an office building. The moment the rope was safely attached to the glass window I made sure to cover as much of the window with tape as I could that way when we broke it not all of the glass would fall all the way to the street. It was simply a precautionary measure. The last thing I wanted was to turn our ziplining stunt into a shooting gallery.

"Break it," I ordered Bamber

She kicked the glass and a second later Bee yanked back the rope, dragging pretty much the entirety of the glass window back towards us. A few small chips of glass fell down, but nothing that would draw unwanted attention. The smoke from cars and explosions on the street would provide some concealment from the enemy forces on the ground.

"Fire," I told Pavel.

The zipline was shaped like a miniature one-tubed rocket launcher. Well, it would be easier to say that it was a tube with a grip. Bee shouldered it and aimed at the building across the street before firing. The sound the device made was awfully quiet when compared to the usual weapons we used. The sound that it made when it broke through the glass window on the other building was louder than I expected. Thankfully, the direction of the impact pushed most of the glass inside the building.

"Did it get a nice grip?" I asked Bee.

"Ummm, yeah, hit a support column and punched clean through."

"I wouldn't want to get hit with one of those," Dana noted.

I stood up and made sure that the end of the rope securing us to this building was nice and tight. I wouldn't want to go all Tarzan if the rope fell. Imagine slamming into a pane of glass at a speed of over fifty or sixty miles per hour. It would hurt like hell and then you'd get cuts all over the place. And then you'd die.

"Who wants to go first?" Bamber asked. "And don't give me any of that ladies first shit."

"I'll go," Bee said, grabbing one of the handholds and pulling down to make sure that it was safe. A moment after that he took a deep breath and let himself fall out of the window. I watched as he slid down the rope and a moment later I followed him myself with just my hands to keep me from falling down to my death.

Sorry, hand. The other one was busy holding on to the M7S.

Bee raised his feet to avoid hitting the floor and slid on his ass for a couple of meters before stopping and rolling out of the way. I raised them backwards and slid forward on my kneepads before slamming into the column and moving away. Bamber somehow managed to get a running landing and stopped herself just short of crashing against a desk. I wondered why people had left the safety of their buildings so quickly after the air raid sirens went off. Perhaps it's because no one wanted to be caught in a collapsing building.

"Downstairs?" Bee asked.

I nodded. "This building is directly adjacent to a big plaza and we can see the park form here. We go down and stay about five floors around ground level, do some observation and then move on."

"Elevator?" Bamber asked.

"Yeah, we stop on the tenth floor and then make our way down to our intended vantage point. We keep a tight formation, overlapping fields of fire and all that."

"SWAT style," Bamber said.

I nodded. "Pretend we're on a drug bust."

"I can do that," Bee said with a smile. "Want some background music?"

I was tempted to agree, but our earpieces wouldn't work as well as our sealed helmets. "Negative on that one. Maybe next time."

"Ok," he replied meekly. Bee looked different in civilian clothing. He had always had a flair for the dramatic, with the yellow-striped armor that had earned him his nickname, but now, dressed in a tight fitting t-shirt that showed just how much time he spent on the gym he looked like someone who could break you in half. Armored Bee could blow you up and Unarmored Bee could snap your neck. Both looks had their merits to them, but I still couldn't figure out how the hell he had managed to pull off a meek face.

We took the elevator down. This one didn't have any music, instead it was broadcasting yesterday's news on a small screen. The news seemed terribly quaint and outdated considering that we were currently under attack by an invasion force. I did manage to memorize most of the soccer scores before the elevator stopped. The time I had spent here five years ago had been spent going to the shrink, drinking, working out, and watching the local ESPN clone.

All my teams had lost, could this day get any worse?

"Sarcasm from you? No way Francisco, I thought you were all grown up," Schitzo said.

_Shut up._

"I didn't say anything," Bamber whispered back a complaint.

"You were breathing too loud," I said. It was half the truth.

"Sorry," she whispered back.

I looked around the elevator lobby and then we moved out, our SMGs scanning the surrounding area for any movement. The building was completely devoid of life. It was scary how quickly it had been emptied after the sirens went off. Every floor was like that, after the second one we just kept using the stairs, closing the open emergency exits behind us to make sure we weren't caught by surprise without a warning. On the fifth floor we stopped and took our sweet time making sure that the floor was clear.

It wasn't not entirely so. Two jackals were calmly watching the activity going on down below. They didn't notice us as we slowly moved up behind them. Bee and Dana aimed at one each and then looked at me in turn and nodded. It was good to know that both of them were familiar with my methods. I approached the two jackals slowly, only realizing just how tall they were. Jackals always went hunched and were as thin as a scrawny teen. But they were tall and all muscle and sinew. No wonder they could fight on even terms with humans most of the time. Had their bones been stronger they would've surely overwhelmed any regular human being in a hand-to-hand fight.

One jackal raised its beak to sniff at something just as I drew my knife from its sheath. I calmly raised the blade and waited for the jackal to turn. The moment it did it received a slash through the neck and the other one followed suit. It was bloody but it was quick, and the two covvies stopped jerking less than a minute after I slashed them.

"Move them out of the way," I ordered. "Do any of you have a camera?"

"My cell has a camera," Bee joked, getting a handheld device from his backpack. "This should transmit high-res and thermal images to the _Flawless_ if you link it to your own cellphone."

"Shouldn't be long before the UNSC reestablishes communications," Dana added.

I nodded in agreement and grabbed the military camera. I don't recall its name, but it was mostly used to identify assassination targets in large crowds. Right now it would transmit video and picture as soon as Hayes called my cellphone.

She wouldn't be getting a good picture. Even the hastily set up SAM site was a daunting task for even two full ODST platoons. The SAM itself was not a heavy weapon, designed only to shoot down atmospheric craft and maybe give a second thought to prowlers and corvettes, but it was dangerous enough to deny us air control on a very large area. The problem was that the Covenant knew just how valuable an asset the SAM could be and had protected it accordingly. At least a hundred grunts and jackals with half as many elites milling down on the plaza. They had already set up several barricades and a couple of watchtowers to provide cover down the streets that had access to the plaza.

"At least they didn't destroy the fountain," I muttered under my breath.

"It is a lovely fountain," Dana agreed. "That might change the moment the captain drops."

"It's just a fountain," Bee muttered.

It was. I had walked past it a hundred times when I had been here, but it had never been anything other than a pretty thing to look at. This place had been my home for a mere six months, but already I was feeling pain at seeing it burn. The covvies would pay with blood for every inch that they tried taking from us. If I had any to say in it they would pay with lots of blood.

"Scout for targets," I ordered. "And keep your eyes open for sharpshooters."

I tagged targets with the camera, all the way having an uneasy feeling that a jackal was looking for me. I had little chance to survive a beam rifle shot to the face with a helmet on, but with just my skin and bone in between my brains I was basically a paper target.

"There are three jackals on the blue building across us. Second floor, they're just talking to one another," Dana said quietly.

"Warn me if they move," I said. "Bee?"

"Nothing so far." He spoke again after a couple of seconds. "Oh shit."

"What?!"

"Look, over there, right by that UPS truck." He nervously tapped his fingers on the glass windows. "You see it?"

I quickly shifted my camera and used its incredible zooming capabilities to look at the shape that Bee had pointed. I saw two black and orange armored elites flanking a small hovering vehicle. In front of the throne-like vehicle was an elite, a general if the ostentatious armor was any indication. What seemed to be surprising was that the general appeared to be arguing with the occupant of the hovering throne.

"A prophet," Dana said in near awe. "I had never seen one before."

"Pavel killed one once," I said without thinking. "Frail things."

"They are the lead caste of the Covenant, if we could capture it…"

Bee shook his head. "We're past negotiating with these fuckers. Maybe if we kill enough of them they'd just piss off."

"Bloody unlikely," Dana replied, mimicking his accent. "We have killed enough of their number every time they decide to put boots on the ground."

"Shut up," I ordered. "We tag that as a priority target and the fancy elites too, move on."

For three more minutes we tagged every last grunt, marking them as low or high priority depending. **(fragment. Depending on what?)** The structures were the targets to be taken down first, with the watchtowers and heavier barricades taking priority. After that Hayes and the rest of Jaguar Company would just kill anything that moved here.

"We're done with the SAM," I said. "We need to tag anything we can on the park."

The corner of this building had a nice line of sight to Elysium Park and we could see the alien infantry that the destroyer had deployed. At this distance any movement was merely a small blur, but their numbers made sure that even the smallest movement of troops wasn't clearly visible.

"Can't see anything from her, El-tee," Bee said.

"Same thing, sir."

I shrugged and used my camera to spot and mark emplacements and high-ranking elites. The small amount of laser radiation that the camera used to mark the aliens would disappear after some time, but if the counter attack that the UNSC was planning went well every bit of information we gathered would help.

My earpiece beeped twice and Hayes came in. "Castillo, report."

"Captain," I acknowledged her. "The SAM itself is not a defensible position, simply a launcher. The plaza surrounding it though… enemy presence is substantial. I'm already sending all the specs up to you. The park itself is no task for a sole company, even our own. My recommendation would be to take out this SAM emplacement and neighboring ones with surgical strikes before pulling out and regrouping for another thrust."

"Your recommendation is dully noted," she replied.

"Shit!" Dana shouted.

I dodged sideways while hoping that whoever was shooting at me had aimed true. Of the four or five shots that shattered the windows only one would've hit me, but it would've punched through the pathetic vests that we were wearing with ease. I landed on the floor with hundreds of shattered glass pieces landing on top of me. I felt a couple of cuts on my hands and neck before I rolled away. More shots were following the first.

"What was that?!"

"One of the sharpshooters in the towers!" Dana shouted back. "We have to get out of here!"

"Castillo! Report!"

"Just a minor inconvenience, sir," I told Hayes. "I'ma have to call you back."

The call ended and I found myself at a crouching sprint while green and blue bolts hit the ceiling near the walls, igniting the paneling that protected it. Dana and Bee were already hitting the button for the elevator, the doors opened quickly and all three of us barged in.

"The covvies are going to be swarming the building," Bee noted.

"Can the zipline drag us back?"

"Yeah," Dana said. "Not quickly though."

"So we'll be hanging ducks," Bee muttered. "Quite literally."

I looked up and cracked my neck. "If we wait too long the risk will be too great," I said. "Covenant soldiers will be swarming the streets below and they'll hit us in a second."

"We still risk a hit if we go even right now," Dana said.

"Double down or nothing," Bee said, his tone half a question.

_That's not even how you say that…_ "Do or die, more like. The Covenant will be behind us;no doubt they're swarming the building."

Dana seemed to ponder on that for a moment. "Very well then, the shooting gallery it is."

"I don't need attitude from you, Bamber," I told her. "Just do as you're told."

Dana promptly shut up and stopped complaining. The rest of the elevator trip up was made in silence.

"You know, I wish this elevator also had music," Schitzo mused. "It would make this scene much more amusing."

The comment brought no smile to my lips. In fact, I felt like punching the wall.

"Go," I ordered as soon as the elevator stopped. "Bamber, you first."

Dana ran towards the cable and grabbed on to one of the handholds. She pressed a small button on its side and it started moving back, pulling her upwards towards the other end of the rope. Bee gave her a couple of seconds before grabbing on to the rope and clicking the button.

"Listen Frank," Schitzo warned.

I turned halfway towards the direction of the elevators and heard the doors opening. "Shit."

"El-tee?"

"Bee, your weapon!"

He tossed it without question and jumped out the window, both hands holding onto for dear life.

My ears picked up the steps of at least two elites and I ducked below a cubicle. After that I heard one of them barking an order and I emerged from cover, firing both SMGs at the nearest alien. The rapid rate of fire coupled with the monstrous recoil threw my aim off. Half the rounds missed, but the sheer amount of bullets was enough to keep the elite stunned and burn through its shields. After that a simple short burst to the head did the job and the elite fell over, dead.

The other alien was not amused.

The borrowed pistol that I was using had a fresh magazine in it, but it wouldn't be enough to kill the alien. Instead I aimed for its right arm, hitting the plasma rifle it carried. Two shots left small scratches on the rounded surface, but one hit at just the right angle and the plasma rifle started leaking blue vapor. The elite tossed it and a moment later the weapon tore itself apart.

Now I was only at a monstrous disadvantage instead of an unbeatable one, but that had never stopped me before.

Knife against half a ton of muscle, it could be worse.

Then the elite drew its energy sword with a guttural laugh. The tiny, little colorful blade that I held in my hand amused it. Tiny to him no doubt, to me it was a very large blade and it would be enough for the job.

The elite charged. They always did. After all, to them I was merely an insect to be squashed by their righteous boots. Fucking assholes.

Like all elites it slashed in an attempt to separate my head from my body, but I was already moving towards it and cutting towards its unarmored throat. The shields stopped my knife. It didn't happen very often, the energy shields seemed to be fickle when it came to knives. Stabs at the neck and underside of the jaw were almost always effective, and slashing attacks to those areas tended to work too, but sometimes their goddamned shields decided to stop my blade and do their job properly.

"Fuck."

The elite slashed backwards, the energy blade cutting through the ceiling with ease. I was already out of reach, but only just. The sword then doubled back up and I jumped back as the elite tried to stab at me. It chuckled again, seemingly amused that I would put up such a fight.

"Come on!" I shouted, hitting my chest in taunt.

The elite stabbed twice and my knife bounced of the armor plates on its arm. I attempted to get inside its effective range, but I promptly found myself kicked against a cubicle. The weak walls collapsed under me, but they served to dampen the fall somewhat. I suddenly found myself in real trouble.

The elite lost no time in jumping on top of me. It stabbed at my head and missed by a breath when I rolled to the side. I quickly slashed at the small of its knee, which was located in the front of its leg. The alien roared and stumbled slightly, that bought me enough time to scramble to my feet while avoiding a pair of clumsy slashing attempts.

"Fuck you," I growled as I found myself clinging to its back and stabbing furiously at its neck. "Ha-ha! Fuck you!"

The elite fell backwards and I had the wind knocked out of me from the weight, but it sure beat being gutted by white-hot plasma.

"Lieutenant!"

"I'm fine," I replied, shoving the dead weight off me.

"Told you," Bee said cockily. "Now hurry up. Sir."

I had no need for him to tell me twice. I grabbed the SMGs and strapped them across my chest before grabbing the handhold and jumping off the building. The mechanical devices in it slowly started pulling me up. I dared not to look below, but I knew that the covvie foot soldiers would be moving up in an attempt to surround the building. It wouldn't be long before one decided to look up and spotted three silhouettes moving slowly through the air.

"Maybe they'll think us birds?" Schitzo suggested from atop a giant eagle. Sometimes I couldn't help but wonder why I could come up with shit like that, even in my subconscious.

I was left with nothing to do, just hanging a couple hundred meters from the street. A couple of colorful plasma bolts sped by me, but they were too far away to even threaten me. Shooting directly up wasn't exactly comfortable, but the distance wasn't that long when it came down to it. Within a few seconds I was surrounded by more and more heated plasma. It wasn't until a couple of needles nearly took my head off that I realized there were enemies behind us.

I spun as much as I could and wildly sprayed the space area where I had jumped from. I saw an elite and a few jackals move away in fright, they ducked on reflex, I wouldn't have hit anything while handing from one hand and firing form the hip.

"Almost there…" I heard Bee growl.

My SMG clicked empty for the second time in a minute and I cursed as the aliens started firing again. I couldn't help but thank the Higher Power that they hadn't thought about cutting the rope. Had they done that first the impact against the building might've killed me or at least severely injured me.

I felt my stomach lurch and suddenly I was in a free fall. I guess they couldn't be _that_ stupid for long. Still, it was too late for the fall to do anything to me. I slammed into the glass window a floor below my intended goal, cracking the glass. Bee kicked at the glass and pulled himself up before I started dragging myself along the rope.

"Shit!" I cried when something sharp cut along the length of my thigh. I kicked violently and Bee pulled me up while Dana provided covering fire. The first thing I did was shove one of my two SMGs into Bee's chest and drag myself forward. My leg gave way underneath me as soon as I tried standing up and I looked down to see the wound. My jeans had been cut through by what I assumed to be a needle and the skin below had been opened. It wasn't very deep, but it was bleeding a lot and it stung like a bitch.

"Painkillers?" I asked.

"Sorry," Dana said, firing as she walked backwards. "We've got bandages and some numbing cream."

"That'll do," I said reluctantly. "Hand me the cream or whatever."

As soon as we were behind sturdy walls I lifted my jeans, wincing as they made contact with my injury. Bee rubbed the medical cream roughly over the injured area and Dana started bandaging as soon as Bee was done. She took special care to make the bandage extra tight. With their help I stood up and managed to take a couple of unsteady steps before carefully bending my leg. It hurt, but the numbing cream was actually pretty amazing. I couldn't exactly sprint, but I could jog and move around well enough.

"Castillo."

"Captain," I spoke into my mic. "News?"

"Keep your eyes up, Frank," Pavel's voice flooded my ears. "Because I am saving your ass yet again."

I couldn't see anything through the ceiling, but I could hear the pods slamming into the concrete and the gunfire that followed them. The noise increased in volume at a steady rate before it started going down again. It took all of two minutes. They had sent the entire company to take care of the SAM site. That meant that there were more ODSTs available than I had first imagined. We had a chance to make a quick and effective counter-attack.

I smiled as the screams of Covenant soldiers overwhelmed those of humans for a few minutes and allowed myself to enjoy the small victory.

* * *

><p><em>Thanks to SilasWhitfield for proofreading this chapter.<em>

_Come on! Did you really think that Frank would stay unarmed for long? He's crafty like that. Unfortunately for the cops, they don't share that talent. We've got some wanky rope antics as well as Bee and Bamber, two characters who haven't gotten much screen time lately, especially the second one, 'cause she's not one of the main peoples on this fanfic. I'm glad all of you liked the last couple of chapters guys, certainly got a lot of reviews for them._

**_alricstrife _**_the gangsta style thing was meant as a joke, don't take me too seriously._

**_the lone wolfos _**_been a while since you last reviews, glad you still like and follow the story._

_As for that concert I went to, I had a great time, but the rest of the week was filled with stuff and I didn't get too much time to write, which is why it took so long to post this chapter. I'm sorry about the delay, but some things can't be helped. One last thing, to clear something a few people pointed out in the comments. According to halopedia Johnson escaped the flood in Installation 04 out of sheer skill because he's just that badass. In fact, he's so badass that ONI had to make up an ailment just to protect his identity as an ORION candidate._

_That's about all I have to say my loyal readers, so stay strong._

_-casquis_


	166. Plaza

Chapter CLXVI: Plaza

**January 24, 2549 (UNSC Calendar)/**

**Udinia, Paris IV, Paris System**

* * *

><p><em>"I guess there are worse places to fight in than a wide open plaza with absolutely no cover to speak off and several ways in or out that you can't block off. Vacuum, or Mercury during summer perhaps..."– Corporal Dana Bamber<em>

* * *

><p>Gunfire had been the only constant sound for the past couple of hours. Even the unusual noise that plasma weaponry made had to stop every now and then. We got all the varieties of the soundtrack of war. Gunfire with plasma fire, gunfire with human and alien artillery, gunfire with explosions, gunfire with engines, and gunfire with screams. The screaming, I had never heard so much screaming in my entire life. I had fought enough battles to know how a painful death sounded or how a soldier or Marine would react to being gutted by an energy sword or pierced by a needle, but I had never heard the screams of terror that the civilians of Udinia gave as an inexorable and merciless enemy approached.<p>

The screaming couldn't be easily ignored. Had it been constant I would've just grown used to it, but instead it was an intermittent thing, with an occasional high-pitched scream or a small crowd crying in fear when they were found and promptly executed. I could sense that it was getting to some of the younger members of my platoon from the way they tensed at the nearer screams. Myself? I did my best to convince myself that they were only mild annoyances. I didn't even need to try that hard and soon I stopped wondering if Katie had been amongst the victims. I couldn't afford to be distracted right now.

"Frank!" Pavel shouted from below the landing pad. "Another counter-attack! Hurry it up!"

I cursed as I sat on the Pelican seats and tightened the straps on the armor that covered my forearms. My own rifle was leaning against the seat next to my own while Dana did her best to put on her own armor as quick as she could. I put on my helmet made sure that it was properly tightened so that it wouldn't bounce around. I immediately grabbed the M7S that I had been using for the past couple of hours and collapsed the stock before slinging it over my shoulder. A regular, unsilenced M7 would've been shorter than this sub machine gun, but I had to make due with what was available.

My own blades had been brought down to the planet along with my armor, the weight of the two knives on the small of my back and left shoulder felt comfortable and familiar along with that of my other knife on my right boot.

"Bamber," I snapped. "Move it!"

Dana was just finishing securing her chest piece as I said that. She finished securing it and grabbed the heavy Spartan Laser at her feet, shouldering it before securing it across her back, moving her shoulders experimentally. A second later she picked up an almost skeletal looking MA5K with absolutely no attachments and nodded at me. Both of us hopped down the Pelican's hatch and jogged towards the stairs that led from the landing pad and inside the building. We ran through a windowless hallway before coming into a room that had been hit a couple of times by Wraith mortars. Half of Pavel's platoon was there, but Pavel himself had moved on towards the streets.

"Bamber, stay here," I told the woman. "Provide covering fire with the men and use your Spartan Laser as sparingly as possible or when I order you to."

"Yes, sir."

I joined my own squad on the lobby of the building. It was a short and stocky building that had been designed with the rental of office space in mind as its main purpose, it covered half of one of the sides that surrounded the plaza where the SAM had been destroyed. The wreckage of the weapon served to block vehicles from coming in through one of the corners, but it also functioned as cover for the Covenant. We had been constantly harassed from that direction, but we couldn't afford to focus on them when we had more important matters at hand. Namely the three Wraiths formed up in column and the fifty covvies moving up towards our position.

"Caboose, report!"

"We have them on our sights, Zepeda's got a nice perch to shoot from."**  
><strong>

I moved out of the lobby and sprinted towards one of the overturned cars that we had made to form a wall. Coupled with debris form the buildings around the street we had a pretty formidable wall that reached from the building all the way to the edge of the fountain in the center of the plaza. Pavel and half of his men alongside with my own squad manned the wall, rifles propped up on car hoods and trunks. Black scorch marks and small craters marked the spots where plasma bolts and mortar shots had hit.

So far none of my men had been seriously wounded. There was the small matter of LIzzo losing his index and middle fingers on the left hand, but the bleeding was stopped and he was high on painkillers. He was relatively safe up in the room with Bamber and the rest of Pavel's squad, up there his missing fingers wouldn't hurt his aim terribly and he could provide good support with his machine gun.

Two burnt husks that had once been Wraiths smoked a dozen meters from our wall while several Ghosts lay overturned or destroyed all over through the section of the plaza.

"Pavel, sitrep!"

I slid into an empty position, the cut on my leg throbbing at the move. I shrugged the pain off and aimed down range. The smoke grenades and smoking vehicles were doing us a favor, partially concealing us from sight while Caboose and Recon Squad could designate targets for us from their position. In short, we could see them before they could pinpoint our positions.

Pavel huffed before replying. "The leading elements of Cutthroat Company already reached the southeast corner of the plaza. They're forming up before moving forward."

I didn't blame them for their hesitation to move across the plaza. The eastern side had absolutely no cover for them to use.

"Galván promised to send us a Scorpion tank and those 'Hogs you requested, but it's going to take a while."

"There's a good man," I replied. "Ammunition reserves?"

"Plenty," he replied.

I nodded slowly, aiming at the outline of a Wraith. I could barely see the tank through all the smoke, but Recon provided a different point of view that our helmets automatically used to update our targets.

"Zepeda, do you see the leader?"

He replied with an acknowledgement light.

"Take him out on my mark," I ordered. "Miri, Hoff, Atkins, and Montri, I want you to take out the gunners on the two lead Wraiths as soon as Zepeda fires."

"Yes, sir," they replied simultaneously.

I waited another second. "Fire."

One of the red silhouettes jerked violently to one side and collapsed.

_You know, they really should start disguising their officers as low-ranking minors._

The thought was spoken out loud, but it got the platoon chuckling. The chuckle contrasted with the barrage of gunfire that came after that. Two of the elites manning the plasma cannons recoiled and jerked violently as they were hit from two different angles each. Their shields promptly failed and they slumped over, dead.

The surviving elites ordered their troops forward and the Covenant column rushed our position. Whoever commanded them was smarter than most, because he stopped his troops a couple dozen meters from our wall and had them take cover behind the wrecked Wraiths and Ghosts. That maneuver partially concealed them from Recon's sight and still kept them in the cover of the smoke. It was at times like this that I started weighing the advantages and disadvantages of smoke grenades against one another.

"Movement, movement right!"

"Watch for that gunner!"

I cursed as the one Wraith with a living gunner started strafing our position. The ground soldiers started slowly moving up, deploying shield covers as they went and hiding behind them.

For the past few hours the lack of a decent HUD had been sorely missed. My headpiece worked well enough when it came to identifying targets and its target reticlewas certainly better than nothing, but it didn't have nearly the same range of movement and quality of my helmet's HUD. The aliens were outlined in red and those that were behind the smoke had their last known position tagged for a second or two before they were seen by someone else's helmet cam.

Every movement brought pain to my leg, but it was worth it every time I saw the spray of blood when my shots hit the mark.

One of the intact Wraiths stopped and pivoted ever so slightly before its cannon aimed at a position in our wall.

"Out of the way!" Hoff yelled. I turned and saw several of my Helljumpers run quickly and dive out of the way of the bright blue fireball that landed in the position that they had previously occupied.

The explosion was hot enough to melt half the car that it hit and ignite the hydrogen fuel cells in a secondary explosion that consumed the rest of it. Debris from the explosion landed all around us.

"Pavel, seal the gap!" I yelled. "Bamber!"

Dana quickly fired a shot at the Wraith that had fired at us, giving away her position and that of several other members of HW Squad. The bright red line punched a hole through the Wraith's heavy front armor as if it were paper, the gunner was completely incinerated by the beam and the Wraith itself collapsed to the plaza's floor with a dull thud. Even as that happened Pavel dismounted his machine gun form a car's hood and ran towards the newly created gap. Hoff and the rest of the scattered ODSTs were shuffling back to their feet, their heartbeats elevated from the sudden rush of adrenaline.

"Block the gap!" I yelled hoarsely. I could see that the aliens closest towards us were exploiting the small advantage that their tanks provided them.

The second Wraith stopped as well in order to aim at a position behind and to our side. It fired one blast before turning slightly and firing another one. I turned to see two sections of the office building covering our flank explode in a flash of plasma and stone.

"Bamber, report!" I ordered loudly.

"We're good, Lizzo is still giggling like an idiot."

"Relocate and provide support. I want you to hand back and shoot the third Wraith, the one with the gunner as soon as you can."

"Yes, sir!"

"They're coming through!" Livingston shouted. "Jackals up front, big ones in the back!"

I turned back around to see that five jackals were moving forward with overlapped shields, a pair of elites behind them, firing at our positions with repeaters, taking turns so that their weapons wouldn't overheat.

"Marv, Sandor, fire at their flanks!" I shouted.

The two men did as ordered and the small formation was forced to turn sideways ever so slightly in order to account for the gunfire. The change in formation gave me an opening and I shot at a jackal's armored leg. It sagged slightly and fell to the floor, providing easy picking for Pavel and Hoff. The rest of the formation, however, compensated properly and started firing at Marv and Sandor in order to move up again.

"Lieutenant?" Caboose came in.

"A little longer," I growled in reply, firing at the jackal's shields to no effect. Sometimes it seemed like the little fucks could take as much as an elite before finally resigning to their fates.

They were moving a lot slower now, but the jackals and elites still shuffled forward at an uncomfortably fast pace. Pavel's M247L fired a stream of bullets at the shields. Some were flattened against the energy field's surface and some other bounced, making whistling noises as they ricocheted. The elites behind the wall of shields fired at him, forcing him to stop shooting and Hoff and Livingston to pick up the slack.

"Lieutenant?" Caboose asked again.

I understood his concern. If the small force made it through we would be forced to shoot at them and nullify the threat. We would succeed quickly, but the angle at which they would enter meant that we faced a very real risk of friendly fire. With the enemies just a few feet away from our position Caboose had little window to fire before he too faced the risk of hitting us.

One jackal's shield finally gave out, the red energy field suddenly disappearing. The jackal behind the shield stood dumbounded **(dumbfounded)** for a fraction of a second before a dozen bullets pierced its body. The jackal collapsed and with it the two next to it, leaving just another bird and two split-chins for us to face.

"Sir?" Caboose asked, a touch of urgency in his usually calm voice.

"Now!"

The two elites and the jackal were riddled with fire from their other flank. They quickly fell to combined fire from three different directions. Bamber chose that exact same moment to fire her Spartan Laser for the second time. The beam hit another Wraith, the one that had been hunting her and her group. The tank's armor proved as ineffective as the other one, but this time the laser detonated the plasma reserves and sent the tank's turret to the sky while pieces of shrapnel flew in every other direction.

Sandor laughed with mirth as the jagged pieces of metal cut any unshielded Covenant soldiers nearby to ribbons. The man truly liked seeing the aliens dying. His tastes agreed with mine.**  
><strong>

"Lieutenant, enemy snipers have been dispatched," Zepeda came in. I was momentarily stunned at the sound of his voice. It wasn't very often that he spoke so many words.

I ducked back behind cover. "Probably sent to dispatch Bamber…" I muttered

"Yes," he agreed.

"Keep an eye out for them," I ordered. "Since you haven't relocated I assume you weren't spotted. Keep it that way, kill the snipers on sight."

He opted to give me an acknowledgement light instead of a word, but by this time I was already used to his silent replies.

"Sir! That gunner is giving is hell!" Miranda yelled from a few cars over.

She was right. The blue bolts were melting through the sheet metal of the cars at a rather worrying pace, and if given enough time they would reduce one of the cars to a pile of molten slag and the covvies would have two gaps in our wall to attack.

I quickly looked around, my HUD marking my men with nametags. I quickly spotted Carver. "Carver!"

"Sir?"

"Ten rounds for the gunner!"

I could almost see his smile. "Yes, sir. Right away, sir!"

"Covering fire!" I yelled.

All the Helljupers down on the plaza fired wildly in all directions, aiming to scare the covvies into taking cover. Sometimes I wondered why that tactic was still effective after centuries of being used. One could immediately deduce whether the enemy attempted to actually hit us or just scare us by the accuracy of the shots. Normally one would think that after so many years of knowing nothing but battle a warrior would know better than to take cover for the wildly inaccurate gunfire. Instead, the instinct for survival was so deeply ingrained that even the most knowledgeable of us ducked when they heard the enemy's fire intensifying so drastically.

Despite that biological disadvantage both of us were smart and experienced. They would realize their mistake and our intention soon enough and would just be incredibly pissed and willing to waste their plasma if it scared us as much as we had scared them.

That small window was all we needed. Carver left cover and took what seemed like an uncomfortably long time to aim at the gunner. He depressed the trigger five times in quick succession, firing as fast as the spinning rate of his weapon's revolver-style magazine allowed him to. The rocket-assisted grenades flew forward with enough force to shatter the elite's shield in one hit. The explosions that followed served to completely obliterate the upper body of the gunner and damage the Wraiths cannon. It wouldn't be enough to stop it from shooting, but the damage might reduce its accuracy enough to save us.

"Or doom us," Schitzo said. "Wraith gunners aren't renowned for their accuracy."

_How could they? When their tanks lob plasma instead of firing in __a straight line._

"That felt a little bit like you were tempting fate, Francisco," he said.

Sure enough, half a minute later a Daemon tank rolled through, twenty Covenant soldiers in tow.

"Come on!" Sandor complained loudly. "Seriously?!"

I turned towards Pavel, who had just finished taking care of an elite major. "How are we on those tanks?"

"Cutthroat has finished clearing the enemies directly in front of them, the Warthogs are moving up as we speak."

"I figure that Gausses are too much to hope for?"

"You figure right," he replied.

I cursed and kept on firing even as the Daemon tank and its escort moved closer. "Caboose, has Recon relocated?"**  
><strong>

"Yes, sir."

"Take out the Daemon's escort and hit its gunner if you can."

"Right away, lieutenant."

I have no idea how Recon Squad managed to move across the street and up another building without anybody noticing. Even I had not seen them, true, I had been occupied with battle, but I was supposed to know where they were going to come through. Their stealth paid off and soon enough the newcomers found themselves being fired upon from higher ground. The red elites promptly fell under the onslaught, with the other footsoldiers moving towards the sides for cover. Several of the elites fell in the first onslaught, and many of the grunts died as they ran for cover. The aliens found their numbers cut by more than half in the first few seconds of the attack.

The Daemon stopped and turned its turret as fast as it could. It raised the cannon at the windows that Recon had been occupying and fired three shots in quick succession, blasting debris all over the street below.

"No casualties," Caboose came in. "But we need to move."

I had no time to reply to that, seeing as the rest of the aliens still trying to kill us all had suddenly found their balls once again. The remaining elites did what their race usually did when faced with a tough situation; roar and yell angrily while recklessly sacrificing their lives in order to kill some of us.

I ducked from needle rifle fire and cursed the elites for being so goddamned accurate all the time. Say what you say about them, but they knew their profession well.

"Warthogs moving up," Pavel called.

I caught movement out of the corner of my eye and heard the roar of the heavy machine guns even as I saw the results they provided. The large caliber bullets tore through shield, armor, and flesh with ease and the two Warthogs pivoted to the side and concentrated their fire on the last remaining Wraith.

The tank turned and fired, missing wildly.

"Bamber, where the hell are you?"

"Sorry, sir," she replied. "We were informed that snipers were looking for us."

"Don't worry about it now," I said. "Hit that Wraith. Zepeda, be ready."

The bright red beam hit the Wraith's damaged cannon, destroying it and rendering the vehicle useless. Two purple beams crossed the length of the plaza from different locations, but judging from Bamber's cursing, they missed by inches. Zepeda dispatched them with his SRS a second later, having pinpointed their locations and gotten them to expose themselves. I didn't see the result of his work, but the snipers didn't fire again.

"Courtesy of Captain Galván," one of the Marines from the Warthogs called.

"Position yourselves over there," I ordered, marking a waypoint for them. "I don't want that Daemon hitting you."

"Yessir, how considerate of you."

I rolled my eyes at the comment but kept silent. Marines could get so cocky when they saved someone.

The Daemon fired at them before they could get out of range. The shell detonated in between the two 'Hogs, sending the one in the front on a front wheelie that seemed dangerously close to flipping the car before it slammed back down and drove away. The tail 'Hog flipped backwards immediately, the Marines manning it shouting as that happened.

"Hit the tank!" I shouted. "Andy, with me."

We left the cover of our wall and walked towards the overturned Warthog. Plasma fire intensified as the covvies noticed our movement and we were forced to dive into the explosion crater from the Damon's shell. I could still feel the heat from the explosion.

"Zepeda, I want you taking out everything you see," I ordered. "Caboose, provide covering fire!"

Fuck their secret positions, I wanted to get this over with. Maybe it was about time that I started having some of my other men carry anti-tank weapons. The Spartan Laser had incredible range, accuracy, and power, but it was because it was overpowered that I was hesitant to use it most of the time. Sandor would do, he'd certainly love carrying a SPANKr.

The gunfire intensified and didn't let up. Plasma bolts started flying in different directions and Andy and I were free to leave the crater and slide behind cover behind the Warthog. Two out of the three Marines inside were still alive. The passenger had been cut in the face and throat with pieces of the windshield. The driver had slammed his head against the wheel and dashboard, but he seemed to be fine. The gunner had been squashed by the 'Hog when it flipped and would only lose both legs if she was lucky, but she'd live.

"God…" she muttered before slipping into unconsciousness.

"Andy," I said. "Stabilize her."

My squad's medic nodded and started checking for additional lacerations while pulling out tourniquets. The driver was still strapped to his chair. I supported his weight with my shoulder, hoping he didn't have any spinal injuries, and released the buckle. I gently lowered him into the street and examined his wounds. The goggles on his helmet had been shattered and there were some nasty cuts around his eyes. The eyes would bruise and the cuts would turn into scars, but it wasn't anything serious, the eyes themselves seemed intact.

"I've cut the bleeding and administered painkillers, but both of her femurs are broken and anything below the knees is completely shattered. She probably has a concussion and maybe some broken ribs," Andrea informed me. "The driver?"

"He's fine, hit his head pretty hard."

Andy peeked over the side of the 'Hog. "Do we take them to the wall?"

"No."

"Building then?"

I glanced at the lobby of the building. It was too far away to carry someone at a sprint, especially considering that you seemed to become a priority target whenever you were helping a fellow Marine.

"Too far," I muttered. "Place them in the crater. They should be safe unless someone shoots an explosive directly over them."

Andy shrugged. "Ok, cover me."

I pivoted from cover and shot at anything outlined in red. The new heavy barrel variant of the Battle Rifle was very precise. That in itself is high praise, considering just how good the previous version was. I shot at a couple of grunts with needlers while Andy dragged the gunner and placed her in the crater. She returned and carried the driver back towards the crater. Once they were both there she returned to cover with me.

"The Warthog should still be in working order," I said. These things were impossible to wreck unless you actually blew them up. "Help me tip it."

"Banshees!" Hoff yelled.

Well, we'd have an AA machine gun just in time to take them out then.

"Come on," I urged Andy.

We tackled the Warthog and pushed, tilting it up before it fell back down. "Harder!"

I heard Andrea grunt in pain at tackling the 'Hog for the second time, but we managed to get it on its side and hold it there. We pushed one more time and gravity dragged the Warthog back into a proper position.

"You drive," I yelled, hopping on the rear and grabbing the heavy machine gun. "Come on!"

I was firing even before Andy hopped on. The Banshees that Hoff had spotted were coming in at an almost vertical angle. The cannon barely gave me an angle to shoot at them, but it was enough to destroy one of them. The pilots realized that the Warthog was still a threat and broke off in different directions. I could feel the Daemon's cannon turning towards me even as I gunned down another Banshee, tearing its wing from the body. The attack craft rolled and slammed into a building before blowing up, leaving me with just another two Banshees to handle.

Gunfire from another LAAG machine gun drew the attention of the two Banshees away from us and Andy managed to avoid being hit by the first shell from the Daemon.

Bamber fired her Spartan Laser at the Daemon, but the thing shrugged off the blast, with only smoke coming out of the impact point. The Daemon turned to fire at Dana.

"Shit."

The blast blew up windows on three different floors and I got static from Dana's suit, but her life signs appeared a moment later. I sighed in relief as the tank turned its cannon towards us again. I fired at it in order to gain some time, but the beer bottle-sized bullets bounced of the thick armor, producing sparks and minor scratches.

It was precisely at that time that a Scorpion tank fired at the Daemon from what any tanker would've considered extremely close range. The M808 Main Battle Tank fired a 90mm tungsten shell that hit the spot where the Daemon's turret met the main body. The explosion was violent enough to tilt the whole tank backwards before it slammed back down, its front scraping the plaza's floor before the anti-grav units regained power. The Daemon wasted no time, firing a round straight at the Scorpion at the same time the tanker fired its second shot.

The Scorpion's armor took the hit, but only just. The armor covering the front right tread was completely destroyed and a good portion of the front armor was damaged. The entire battlefield appeared hypnotized by the spectacle. I was watching the two tanks calmly slugging out at each other, both of them smoking and stationary. The Scorpion managed to fire a third shot before the Daemon could fire its second shell. The blast was enough to punch through the weakened armor of the tank and destroy the turret. After that the Scorpion fired three more shells into the main body of the Covenant tank in order to kill anybody inside. If I remembered the specs correctly that was three dead elites.

The Scorpion then switched to less important targets, hitting clusters of covvie soldiers and blasting away at window buildings. With the tank on our side we quickly repelled the assault, with the few remaining aliens running back towards their bases in the park. My Helljumpers roared in victory even as Cutthroat Company moved forward with Tortoise troop transports and a Gauss 'Hog.

"You, in the Scorpion," I shouted. "Move up and place your tank in the gap!"

"Yes, sir!" he replied, turning his tank around to plug the hole in our defenses. If we had some time we would place several cars in front to further protect the damaged Scorpion, but right now its own weakened armor would do.

My own men celebrated, talking with one another, but they still kept watch on the Covenant positions. Knowing those alien bastards it wouldn't be long before they decided to attack us again, with larger numbers and more armored and air support.

"Lieutenant Castillo!"

I turned in the direction of the voice to see the commanding officer of Cutthroat. Lieutenant Ana Maya was a couple of years older than me and had been in charge of that company since before I had arrived on the _Flawless_. She was good at her job and commanded the respect of her men, **(comma to period)** I couldn't have asked for more.

"Maya, good to have you here."

"Seems like we arrived just in time."

I shrugged. "We could've handled it, but you did save some lives."

"You're welcome," she replied, looking around while her men positioned their vehicles to form a wall that covered the other side of the plaza. They received some small arms fire from a pair of covvie squads, but the cannons on the Tortoises quickly took them out along with half the building that they occupied. The debris blocked off a large portion of the street, if any tank tried to come through they would be funneled through the small gap that the pile of rock formed.

"Caboose, I want you and Recon down here ASAP, same goes for Zepeda."

"Right away," he replied.

I turned back to Maya. "What's the situation back there?"

Maya crouched and I followed. "Udinia is a mess," she replied. "The city's filled with Covenant pockets of resistance."

That was a minor improvement, a few hours ago it had been occupied by UNSC pockets of resistance, at least now we held the majority of Udinia. "Has the Army Group deployed?"

"Yes," she said. "They are moving up from the south, but they're encountering heavy resistance. There are a couple of Covenant battalions holding them back, but Battalion Two and some of the men from _Naverone_ are redeploying to hit them from the rear." Lieutenant Maya tilted her neck to one side until it cracked and then rubbed the spot. "Another enemy force moved up on the Air Force base, reports indicate that they suffered heavy losses, but they took the base and killed the majority of the complement."

"Shit, we could've used the air support."

"Yes," she agreed, "but we'll have to do with what we have."

"And what exactly do we have?" I asked her. Reports from Al and other sources were vague. Cyber attacks on all human systems had left us struggling to communicate. "I know that there are two small Marine bases on the city's outskirts."

"One of them was completely wiped out by the Covenant destroyer, glassed in passing and no survivors. Scout teams report that no salvageable equipment was found."

"The other one?"

"Intact. The men repelled a probing attack and called for support, Commander Becker sent Apex and Boomer under Galván to do just that. They report that the base is intact."

"What does it hold?"

"Men, 'Hogs, a small number of Pelicans, and a small fleet of Hornets."

I nodded with a small smile. "The pilots are going to be pretty busy."

"Yes," she agreed. "We can win this city with some effort as long as the destroyer doesn't decide to start burning everything," Maya muttered, glancing warily at the part of the ship that showed through the buildings. "We have the advantage in numbers and equipment, but if we don't get those Shortsword bombers…"

"What about the Onager cannons?" I asked her.

"Most of them were destroyed during the initial assaults. The covvies do well to fear them. There are a couple that remained intact, but the one that has an angle on the ship is damaged. Repair crews are on the way."

I nodded slowly, I didn't know what the higher-ups were planning, but I would have to be a fool not to see the pieces. We had one Onager cannon that was presumably far enough away to get off a few shots before it was taken out by the destroyer. In addition to that we had Shortswords being readied from one of the nearest cities.

"What news do you have on the battle group?"

"Not sure, the invasion fleet snuck past them without firing off a shot, and they've got the Super MACs to help them. I imagine that they're waiting for the enemy to get back into range before they turn their backs to them to help us."

I pictured the situation in my head. It was a double standoff. The invasion fleet was at least partially exposed to fire from the atmosphere, but we didn't want to risk it because the rest of the Covenant fleet could take advantage of the movement to attack while their backs were turned. The Covenant fleet in turn couldn't close in because the Super MACs would tear through their shields and armor as easily as a hot knife through butter.

"Curious little situation we find ourselves in," I chuckled.

"Agreed. I hadn't given mutually assured destruction a thought ever since high school history."

"MAD…" I said. "I remember a bit of it, but they didn't teach us anything of the sort in Jericho VII."

"Not a lot of history there?"

"Nah," I shook my head. "Only a couple hundred years of peace and prosperity that ended in fire and blood."

_Great, I'm quoting more of Bee's shit now._

"Very poetic," Maya noted. "The situation remains the same, though. We need to take out a fully-shielded Covenant destroyer with no nukes or magnetic weaponry."

"Gather all the tanks and shoot at it at the same time."

"There aren't enough tanks in this world, Castillo."  
>The statement was only half-truth. I had no doubt that with enough Scorpions we could take out the shields, but gathering them would be a problem.<p>

"So we wait for the repairson the Onager and for the Shortswords to arrive then?" I asked. "With enough conventional explosives we could weaken the shield enough for the Onager to break through a section of it."

"Which one are they going to go for?" she asked. "Plasma projector or engines?"

"Plasma projector, obviously," I replied. "Wanna bet on it?"

"I'm not an idiot," Maya replied. "Of course they're going to take out the weaponry first."

I stood back up and checked the ammunition count on my rifle, opting to replace the magazine with a fresh one. "Our own orders?"

"We hold the line and wait for reinforcements. As soon as we've got enough numbers we move towards the park."

I sighed, the orders had been the same ever since Hayes and the rest of Jaguar landed on the plaza. The pods had been used to form the wall, with most of them already behind us. They had severed their purpose as deployment vehicles and cover, but now they just hindered vehicle movements.

"Good talking to you, Maya," I said, jogging off towards Pavel. The CO of Cutthroat just let out a gruff sound in reply.

Pavel was busy resting from the previous encounter, resting his head against a battered sedan. His half-empty machine gun rested by his side and within quick reach of his arms. He looked up and depolarized his visor. "Hail, glorious leader, good to see you back in armor."

I patted my chest affectionately. "Yeah, feels good too."

Pavel groaned as he pushed himself back so that his back was straight. "Figures you want a report, sir."

I rolled my eyes. "Yeah."

"I had my men pull back inside the building," he replied. "Carver's still here with us, but the rest of HW is providing overwatch. You want them to come back down?"

"Yeah."

"I'll order it as soon as they've had some rest."

"Don't make it too long, Pavs," I told him. "Lizzo?"

"Giggling stopped, but he's still pretty numb form all the painkillers."

"Let's just be glad he can still aim his weapon." I looked at the direction where I knew HW was resting. I read their status on my HUD quickly, the sensors on the suits giving me a rough outline of their current condition. I didn't take them too seriously though, the readings themselves warned me that they weren't nearly a hundred percent accurate.

My platoon was in fine working order, a small miracle considering that twenty-four men had faced down a superior force with armored support. Ignore the fact that we had to be rescued by Cutthroat's heavy armor and we were nearly demigods when it came to fighting a battle.

"Could you be any more self-satisfied with yourself?" Schitzo asked with a groan.

_Yes. I could like myself more as a person…_

"Francisco, sometimes I think that you were born with the wrong genitalia."

And sometimes I wished that I could rip his eyes from their sockets.

Schitzo shrugged. "I know when I'm not wanted," he said before simply disappearing.

I grunted and realized that Pavel was looking at me with a concerned expression. "Are you all right?" he asked.

"I'm fine," I replied.

"Head ok?"

"Yeah," I assured him. "Head ok."

Pavel nodded slowly before slouching back down. I patted him on the shoulder and walked back towards my position. The men and women of Cutthroat Company were already bolstering our defenses and finishing the other end of the defensive wall. I looked at the Tortoises, their heavy cannons and coaxial machine guns turned to aim towards the Covenant positions. I noted that they had been placed so that they could move if fired at with a Wraith. Smart move, with scouts to warn them any shot fired would likely miss.

From my position I could just see the tip of one of the destroyer's leg-like structures. I desperately wanted to see it burning on the ground.

"Tough day, eh Lieutenant?" Miranda asked.

I looked at her and thought about the day. It had started out with me in the hospital, having just received the worst beating of my entire life at the hands of a mere jarhead. After that I had found myself at the workplace of a one night stand from five years ago because somewhere deep inside I still loved her. Once I met with Katie I realized that I had hurt her beyond anything I could've imagined and in the end I had secured another date/meeting with half a mind to cheat on my girlfriend again. Once my romantic life had gotten so entangled that I didn't know head from ass the fucking Covenant had decided to attack while I had absolutely no weapon at hand other than my own trusty knife. After that I had fought and fought with no armor or decent weapons until I finally got my equipment delivered to me. The rest of it you know…

"Yeah, tough day," I agreed.

* * *

><p><em>Thanks to SilasWhitfield for proofreading this chapter.<em>

_Hey, I want to apologize for that silly mistake last chapter where I said Pavel instead of Bee. I'm so used to Frank and Pavel being bash brothers that I accidentally slipped that in. Silas must've missed it too, because otherwise the sentence makes sense. Other than that I've got a question for you guys, a couple of reviewers noted that I made a Mass Effect reference two chapters back, but I can't remember it or even find it (and I looked, trust me). Would you be so kind as to remind me of what I wrote?_

_Thanks._

_Well, this chapter is showcasing everybody back in action. A little bit of badass here and a little bit of badass there. Try to remember the names added to the story. I know that's a tough thing to ask because there are simply too many of them, but some might become important later on or at least minor recurring characters. Say I wouldn't have bothered with even naming Lieutenant Ana Maya if I didn't plan to have her make an appearance ever again. But since I did name her you guys now that she'll probably show up a couple other times before I completely forget about her existence as a character or kill her off in a horribly brutal way._

_Or not, who know._

_Well, I didn't get a lot of feedback on last chapter, I know it wasn't that great, but I really want to make it to 1000 reviews before this story hits the 1,000,000 word mark. When that happens I'll be sure to thank all of you guys for making this possible, but that is not the time._

_As for the ongoing debate (kind of) about Johnson and Boren's and whatnot. Master Chief got attacked by an infection form and ripped it off before it actually had time to take over its mind. I went over that section in the books and did some additional research on Halopedia and other forums before coming to the conclusion that Boren's is a made-up disease. Originally it wasn't intended to be, but there's some additional material (an email conversation between two spies) that shows that Boren's Syndrome was used by ONI to cover up some side effects of the ORION project as well as to hide the fact that Johnson had escaped from a situation that no _normal_ human being could've. Anyways, that's how I'm going to treat that in this story. If you disagree feel free to leave your argument in the form of a review in order to bolster my review count._

_So that's that. Thanks for bearing through the story up until this point and for reading this exceptionally long post-chapter thingy. God knows you deserve better than me, but I'm fairly confident that I have improved. Just read the first five chapters and then read this one (don't) and you'll have proof of my improvement as a writer._

_Stay strong boys and girls._

_-casquis_


	167. No Loitering

Chapter CLXVII: No Loitering

**January 28, 2549 (UNSC Calendar)/**

**UNSC FOB 'Fountain', Udinia, Paris IV, Paris System**

* * *

><p><em>"Those weren't meteorites, we were just testing our new weapons."<em>

* * *

><p>"Hey Lieutenant! Did you get us a combat mission?"<p>

I groaned and turned towards Sandor. His armor was lacking its chest piece, probably getting repairs from that needle burst. It had been rather impressive, a whole section of the chest piece was shattered when the pink crystals detonated. They had flown outwards like fireworks and thrown Sandor backwards.

And yet he still desired to see some action.

"No, Sandor," I told him. "Besides, you'll get enough action on the…" I looked for the right word. "…battlements?"

He turned to look at the slabs of Titanium-A at his back. The whole plaza square had been turned into one huge fortress, with walls covering every entrance. "Shooting the occasional careless grunt isn't action El-tee. These fuckers invaded our planet; I want to kick them out."

I shook my head and hefted my battle rifle. "We wait." Sandor's sigh made it seem like he had just been forced to kick a puppy. "Fine, I'll go see if any grunts are out in the open." "Good luck," I told him, walking away.

Sandor was a good time, but he got too eager sometimes. He was already climbing back up towards the thirty-foot tall walls, trading banter with some of the Marines assigned to guard them. Ever since Pavel's unit had rigged the buildings around us to collapse, the walls had become useful. At times I wondered whether bringing down a giant pile of polycrete that protected us from the Covenant was a smart move, but then I remembered that had they collapsed it instead of us the building probably would've squashed us all.

Units all around the city were blowing up buildings around the park and other Covenant strong points, boxing them in but also giving them debris walls all around them. If all went according to plan then we could just bomb them from orbit.

Marine regulars and soldiers alike subtly moved out of the way as I walked past. Even without full battle armor they recognized me as an ODST, and I made it a point to sport a pissed-off look in order to discourage anybody from causing me trouble. Most of the Marines were from Cutthroat and knew me by reputation. I got the occasional nod from them, but the Army soldiers just thought that I was an asshole that was perpetually pissed off.

"You found what you were looking for?" Pavel asked me as I walked inside the lobby of the building. The office building was being used as barracks and to house additional equipment. The landing pads on top meant that it also worked as one of our resupply points.

I nodded. A quick trip to the database had revealed that Katie was alive and well. She had checked into one of the nearby refugee camps. She was as safe as she could be while inside the city. The subway tunnels had been blocked and turned into homes for all the civilians that had become refugees inside their own city.

I had checked in on Hanna too, she was resting from a recent defensive action on a suburb on the outskirts. I even managed to talk to her for a couple of minutes. She seemed tired, but intact.

As I left the terminal I couldn't help but feeling guilty that all I wanted was to talk to Katie.

"Frank?" "Sorry," I said. "Got lost in thought."

"Hanna alright?"

"Yeah…" I took a deep breath and looked around. Pavel's eyes widened slightly as he waited for me to speak. "Pavs, can you love two women at the same time?" Pavel recoiled from my words. "Frank, you worthless fuck."

I chuckled slightly and sat down on a tattered couch. "My thoughts exactly."

"Who's the other one?" he asked. "Please tell me it's no one we know."

"You don't know her," I replied. "Look I'll–did the guys from ONI get here already?"

"Wha–don't change the subject!" I looked at my watch. "No, seriously."

Pavel mirrored my gesture and examined his own watch before letting out a curse. "They should be landing soon. We aren't done talking about this."

"No…I know." I stood back up, feeling like my rest had been all too brief. I moved towards the elevators and all the way to the top floor. On the way there I wondered how they kept the elevators working when the covvies were hitting power plants as fast as they could find them. I did note that the speakers weren't playing muzak arrangements of popular songs anymore. Oh well, at least I didn't have to use the stairs.

The doors opened to reveal Miri and Andy standing on either side of them with their weapons held casually across their chests. Further down the hallway Marv was chatting with a man in an ONI uniform. Scratch that, the man was trying to bull his way past Marv while my man told him he couldn't allow that without proper authorization. Marv could be many things, but I had never expected him to play the obstructive bureocrat part.

"You're late," Miri whispered quietly.

"Ah, are you Lieutenant Castillo?" the ONI man asked over Marv.

I nodded and walked towards him, gently pushing Marv aside. "Lieutenant Khan, I presume?"

"The same," he replied.

"Apologies for the delay Lieutenant," I said before he could say anything. "I had some matters to attend. Are you here for the corpse?"

"I thought that everything had been made clear in the message?"

I chuckled humorlessly and gave him a fake smile. "Of course. Follow me."

I led the man through the office space and into a small room that had once been a supply closet. The only thing the room held was a large metallic box with a legend marking it as ONI property and a number. Inside the box there was a rare specimen indeed, a nearly intact San 'Shyuum corpse.

"You can come down," Khan said into his mouthpiece. "Bring the lifting equipment."

I waited while Khan's men made their way from the rooftop. I was surprised to see two men in an unfamiliar armor appear with assault rifles in their hands. Behind them was a small tank-like drone designed to lift heavy equipment and a bunch of labcoat-wearing eggheads.

"Eggheads?" Schitzo asked.

_That's what they called them in an old crime show from Jericho VII… Why the hell do I have to explain myself to you? _

"Load up the worm-neck," Khan ordered. "And please be careful." The technicians moved it to the drone with the utmost care while the men with the fancy armor watched. It was a strange configuration, but it didn't look nearly heavy enough to be Spartan armor. Perhaps it was one of the latest specialized designs. I disliked the men wearing them for the simple fact that I didn't have that configuration available for my choosing. It looked so badass.

"Off we go," Khan said. "Let's go."

"Excuse me Lieutenant," I said, grabbing his arm. "I'm aware that ONI has a standing bounty for intact San 'Shyuum specimens… I don't want to sound…well, let's just say that my men aren't exactly millionaires."**  
><strong>

Khan nodded and produced a datapad. "The reward money will be transferred to your unit's accounts based on…rank?" "Equal parts," I told him. As much as I would've liked a larger share of the reward, my men would appreciate the gesture. I watched as Khan tapped the commands and departed, the two armored ONI agents keeping watch on the package.

Marv walked up to me and shook his head in disapproval as the ONI group disappeared inside an elevator.

"Did he give you much trouble?"

Marv shook his head. "Nah, standard ONI attitude. Threatened me a couple of times, but I think that he mostly wanted to get this thing done with." "ONI agents are people too," I reminded him. "Barely, but they just want to be done with their jobs as fast as possible."

"Never looked at it that way," Marv admitted. "To me they have always been like lawyers."

"Hey! My dad's a lawyer," Andy complained.

"My condolences," Marv said. "It must've been tough being raised in an environment like that."

I laughed loudly and slapped his shoulder as Andy struggled to form a reply. Miri looked away and suppressed a chuckle. The only two girls in the squad usually stuck together on most matters, but Marv's joke had been pretty funny. Andy gave up on a comeback and instead sniffed and looked away.

"Um, El-tee, now that we don't have to guard the stiff…" Miri began.

"Feel free to get some sleep," I told them. "I'll let you know as soon as we're assigned a new mission. If you want you can try and snipe grunts with Sandor." They looked at each other and shrugged. They had been guarding this floor for over a day catching little sleep and being bored half to death. Poor guys, but Hoff had quickly called 'shotty not' and Sandor had made a point to act hurt that I'd make him stand watch right after his armor had literally shattered on his chest.

So my squad got guard duty while the rest of the platoon got to rest. Mostly they had been catching up on old TV series, but the occasional probing raid or mortar bombardment meant that they couldn't really focus on enjoying whatever they were watching. I had been doing the same, but my distractions had mostly revolved around Katie and Hanna. Sometimes I tried to turn it into something sexual, but I usually ended up being stabbed to death by one or both of them.

My imagination was way too vivid.

The next person that wanted to talk to me was Caboose. The man was extremely talkative as of late. His voice still sounded like an emotionless robot, but the fact that I heard it so often only served to draw attention to his lack of emotiveness.

"Caboose?"

"I got some news on the situation around the planet," he informed me matter-of-factly. "I think it might interest you." I stopped walking and turned to look at him. "Indeed." He nodded. "The destroyer that flew in from the coast stopped on the outskirts of the city. It's been dropping troops constantly for the past half hour."

"Another destroyer… that's not good."

"It can be," he said. "It'll make command redirect some of the other units to help us. Either way, the Covenant troops appear to be positioning themselves to assault the Marine garrisons in between them and the city. With them on the outskirts and the rest of the aliens still in the park we're kind of sandwiched." "They're sandwiched as well," I reminded him."

"I know that… it's just that we are too."

"You just said that."

"Sorry."

"Got any more news?"

He nodded. "The Onager cannon is almost fully repaired. We can expect action before the day's done." "Who's guarding the facility?" "I didn't ask," Caboose shrugged. "But last I heard it was still dos Santos and Weller." "Hayes and Dajani?"

"Their units are being redeployed towards the new arrivals. They'll hit them hard before they can make their first attack." It would be a tough mission for the men and women of platoons One and Two, but the rest of the humans in this city couldn't afford to be distracted while some glorified Komodo dragons attempted to wipe us from the face of the planet. Hayes and Yas would keep the new arrivals busy long enough for whomever was in the neighborhood to strike. Perhaps it would be Battalion One, but I hoped that it was another unit; I still didn't want Hanna in harm's way.

"Thanks," I told Caboose. "Tell everybody, I want them ready for anything."

"Will do, Lieutenant," he replied, giving me a lazy salute and walking away towards the barracks.

"Caboose talk to you?" Pavel asked me.

"You know you missed a verb on that last sentence? You're slipping Pavel. Pull yourself together, soldier! Verbs save lives!"

"You know me, gruff and to the point."

"_I'm_ gruff and to the point," I corrected. "But I digress. ONI took the body and we're getting the reward."

"Frank, about–"

I stopped him with a wave of my hand. "Pavel, I'm tired and my head hurts. We'll talk about this later, I promise, but right now I need some rest." My friend didn't seem too eager to let me scurry away from the matter at hand, but he nodded slowly and pointedly avoided looking at me as I left the room and found my way towards the nest of blankets and scavenged cushions that I called a bed.

* * *

><p>By the time Miri shook me awake the Onager MAC was fixed and the Shortsword bombers were fueled and ready to go. Unfortunately for the bomber pilots we didn't have complete air superiority. Most of the city was safe to fly in, but the area surrounding Covenant strong points was under the protection of AA batteries as well as anti-missile lasers. The bombers would be going in while risking getting blown out of the sky and any bomb they dropped would be fried by the laser systems.<p>

The lasers could be countered with unguided bombs that detonated on impact, but the SAM batteries presented a different problem. The covvie SAMs meant that we couldn't fly Pelicans or Hornets, which in turn meant that the covvies were free to have Banshees and Phantoms hanging about, even if the Shortswords did a supersonic pass they would be taking a big risk from both enemy aircraft and surface-to-air weaponry.

That's where we came in.

"Break off by squads," I ordered the moment we left the building. I could feel all eyes on us. Twenty-plus armored ODSTs with that special look on their faces tended to draw attention, especially considering that we were hefting some big and mysterious crates. Their contents weren't particularly secret; they had oversized missile pods that would bring a Spirit or a Phantom with one or two shots. They'd eliminate any covvie fliers that rose to meet the Shortswords and reduce the threat level to the pilots and the mission by about half.

Pavel and his team broke off towards a group of three Falcon gunships and placed their crates inside, securing them with straps before hopping on the turrets. Caboose and Recon did the same with their own crates with another trio of crates. Caboose gave me a curt nod as my own squad walked by. The gunships that were waiting for us looked battered and shot up. Last I heard at least two other major cities were being assailed by large covvie forces and the rest of Paris IV's military was spread thin pushing them back.

"There we go," Sandor exclaimed as we threw the crate we were carrying inside the Falcon. He pushed it so that it fit properly and then helped me tighten the security straps. "Heavy fuckers aren't they?"

"Yup," I agreed. "Hop on the turret. Hoff, you get the other one."

Andy and Sandor were piling up the other two crates on their Falcon while Miri secured them. Recon was already done with their weapon crates and their Falcons were already taking off. Pavel's three gunships had already disappeared behind a building.

"Ready, sir?" the pilot asked.

"Off we go," I told him. "We'd better not get shot."

The pilot gulped audibly. "Of course not, sir. I'll do my best." Damn right he would, it wasn't just his ass on the line. If he got us shot down all four of us would die a very bloody death.

The two Falcons flew some sixty meters from street level, with Hoff and Sandor keeping their eyes peeled for any movement. If they spotted a covvie they would kill the alien before it could transmit our position and vector we were moving in. So far the M247s were quiet. These sectors had been fought over so often that the buildings were too dangerous to use as cover, some of them seemed like they would collapse if a strong breeze hit them.

The pilot weaved over and under tram lines as well as the occasional high bridge that connected buildings. I looked at the street down below. Some of the streets looked simply as if everybody had disappeared at the same time, with cars piled up in a traffic jam that wouldn't be cleared. The next street would have several cars still putting out smoke with destroyed tanks and vehicles (human and otherwise) littering the place. The worst ones were the streets where the covvies had landed before any response could be made. Dozens if not hundreds of human bodies littered the streets and sidewalks. Most of the bodies sported horrific burns or had missing limbs from an overzealous elite.

I had known the situation in the streets for a while now, but it was a different thing to see what three days of all-out war could do to a city.

"That's the target, sir," the pilot warned.

I stood up and leaned out of the Falcon to look at the building. It was a particularly tall skyscraper. It was a triangular with rounded edges. What was particularly special about that building was that it was tall enough to provide a very wide area of coverage in relation to the neighboring buildings. The problem was that since it was so much taller than the surrounding buildings that if any aircraft tried to land on the topmost landing pad would be seen by anybody that cared to look.

Luckily for us, the architect had deemed it appropriate to add several retractablelanding pads at different altitudes.

"There," I told the pilot, pointing at a landing pad that had a wrecked craft on it. Some big shot had tried making their way out during the initial attack only to draw enemy fire. Poor bastard. "Don't touch down, the pad looks structurally weak."

"Aye, aye, Lieutenant."

The Falcon slowly spun and Hoff jumped down as I started undoing the straps securing the crate. I shoved it towards Hoff and he dragged it through the landing pad as I helped Sandor out of the gunner seat and down on the landing pad.

"Hoff, secure the entrance," I ordered. "Sandor, you and Marv take those two crates. I toted the other crate and placed it over my shoulder, pulling out my sidearm while securing my BR55HB SR on underneath the crate.

"Damn that's heavy," I grunted.

The two Falcons banked away from the landing pad and held their position. "We have enough fuel to stick around for thirty minutes," one of them told me. "If you take any longer than that you'll need to find an alternate method of extraction."

"Understood," I acknowledged.

"Tell us if you see anything."

"Aye, aye."

I jogged down the stairs and inside the building. The landing pad had an elevator close by, lucky for us it was still in working order. We piled the three crates one on top of the other and clicked the top floor. This mission was progressing extremely well, we rarely got to the point where we needed to use an elevator without getting shot at on the way there. In my books that meant victory.

"Huh, no elevator music," Sandor noted. "Is that a good or bad thing?"

"Shut up," Hoff said. "And enjoy the silence."

I was glad that Andy was in the other elevator, because otherwise she would've replied with a snarky comment that would've in turn ignited yet another dumb argument.

"Come on," I urged as the elevator doors opened. "Carry the crates to the base of the stairs, but leave them there."

Once the second elevator with the rest of the squad arrived I moved to join Hoff and Sandor. The two were breathing hard from carrying the crates, but I didn't blame them, those things weighed a ton and a half.

"Sandor, Andy, and Marv, I want you three to move up and clear the rooftop before us." I produced a set of blueprints for the building in my HUD and considered the next move. "Yes, watch out behind you for the lightning rod." They quickly nodded and positioned themselves to kick the door down. Sandor promptly knocked the thing off its hinges leaving the rest of us wondering why he didn't just try opening it first. A second later all three of them disappeared behind the door and the sound of wind rushed inside. A couple of gunshots were heard and Andy called it clear.

"Two jackals, not snipers. They look more like scouts," she explained.

"Good work," I told them. "Hoff and Miri, you two keep eyes out for anything that moves on the buildings around us. Marv and Sandor, get down here and help me with those crates."

Once the crates were on the rooftop Sandor opened them carefully and examined the contents for a moment. He then proceeded to assemble what appeared to be an oversized missile pod right in the middle of the pad. While he did that I grabbed some camera-like devices and tossed one to Andy and another one to Marv. They moved out and placed them at the edges of the building. I moved towards the edge of the landing pad and took a long look down before placing the camera on the railing and securing it. The cameras would locate any flying craft and identify them as friendly or otherwise, the cameras would then send the information to the missile pod and guide the missiles to their targets.**  
><strong>

"That's a long fall," Miri noted from a few feet to my left.

I nodded thoughtfully. "Miri, be a dear and tie a cable to the railing." "You don't expect us to-"

"Expect the unexpected!" Hoff interrupted from across the pad. "If ten seconds of tying a rope save my ass, I'm all for it." With those wise words from our resident quarterback everybody reached into their butt pouches and grabbed the cable inside. The thing was as thin as a… well, as a cable, but the synthetic material that it was made of was supposed to support anything up to a Warthog. Camila had used one of these very cables several years ago to rappel down a building.

I finished tying the thing off and made sure to leave the rest of the rope coiled on top. That way I could grab onto the end of the rope and jump out of the building before slamming into a window and inside a building.

"El-tee, what are the actual odds of someone firing on our position?" Marv asked.

"Before we can evac?" I asked him. "I dunno. The two Falcons can climb up here pretty quickly, but that SAM doesn't have unlimited ammunition and we'll be a pretty big target once they realize what's going on."

"Won't this baby shut down any enemy aircraft?" Sandor asked me.

"Not all of them," I corrected. "Just the ones that pose a threat to the bombers." Sandor shrugged. "Oh well, it wouldn't be a Helljumper mission if it didn't have a risk."

"Damn right," Hoff agreed.

"Am I seriously the only one that would prefer being back home sipping some hot cocoa?"

"My home is a pile of molten glass," I replied with a shrug.

"Mine's about to become one," Hoff added.

I squinted, trying to make out what he meant before I remembered something that I should've remembered at least three days ago. "Shit man, you're from Paris IV."

"Yup," he said.

"I forgot," I admitted. "I–"

"Don't worry about it El-tee, my hometown hasn't been attacked yet and all my friends and family have secured places on evacuation craft."

Both he and I knew that having a seat in a slipspace capable ship didn't guarantee that you'd leave the system alive, in fact in only guaranteed that you'd become an even bigger target.

"I'm sorry Ryan, I didn't know." Miri started saying.

"I said don't worry about it," Hoff said, his voice was not quite snappy, but there was a definitive edge to it.

"Mouths shut and eyes open," I grunted out an order. "Hoff and Miri, be on the watchout for the all-clear signs from Recon and Heavy Weapons."

Everybody nodded and I started pacing around the SAM, attempting to spot anything that might present a threat. While the five Helljumpers in full battle gear did present a threat, they didn't present one to me, so I scratched them out of the list. For the time I was glad that this was the tallest building around, there were about a dozen or so skyscrapers taller than this one in Paris IV, but most of them were on the other side of Elysium Park and none were close enough to us that a jackal would get a nice vantage point to my head.

While I waited for Pavel's and Caboose's squads to finish setting up their own SAMs I examined the city. Power plants and the occasional hydrogen fuel station were still putting out a lot of smoke. The city's sky had always had this muddy brown tint to it, but now the sky was almost perpetually grey from so much smoke. There were huge fires that covered entire blocks or more and then there was the giant fucking ship hovering over the city's park.

It was a sight that didn't bode any good to the city's future, but I knew better than that. Given some time this city would be free of aliens and then it would just be a matter of more time until everything was fixed and back to normal.

"Recon Squad is signaling the all clear," Miranda said.

A couple minutes later Pavel's squad reported the same thing.

Once the whole platoon was ready I opened a link to dos Santos. With so many satellites shot down and radio antennas destroyed it took a while, but the helmet itself had an incredible range when it came to radio.

"Dom, it's Frank." "Hey Frank. News?"

"SAMs are installed and primed, tell your Onager operator that he's free to shoot any moment now."

Dom chuckled on the other end of the line. "Great, I was starting to consider picking my eyes out to see if something would change."

"That boring, huh?"

"Yup. We should've been down in the city. After we took down that covvie AA gun they whisked us away to nowhere's asshole. I can appreciate the calm and the silence, but standing around gets on your nerves."

"Tell me about it," I replied.

"Yah. Hey, the Onager was modified to shoot a shell twice as large, that's one of the reasons why it took so long to fix this goddamned thing, The blast and flash should both be bigger and brighter than normal, just a heads up."

"A'ight, thanks Dom."

"You're welcome. See you around." Dom cut the line, no doubt warning everybody that they were about to see some shit blow up.

As soon as Dom and whatever techs were manning the cannon got organized they'd call the airfield and the two Shortswords would launch with full loads. If everything worked according to plan then the bombs would go off less than a second after the third blast from the mass driver hit the ship's shields.

"Hey El-tee, do you have any of those oldies that Rob likes in your helmet's drive?" Sandor asked me.

I smiled. "Yeah, got a couple of new ones. Wanna listen?"

"Yeah!" Sandor and Hoff exclaimed, perhaps with a little bit more excitement than the situation warranted.

My HUD opened up a couple of different folders until I found what I was looking for. It had taken some time to get around the firewalls that prevented me from listening to music during combat missions, but sometimes it was worth it, having a soundtrack brought out the little kid in me that never actually had a chance to be.

The song started rather unusually, which was a given for all of Bee's music. Rapid violin screeching gave way to electric guitar backed by trumpets or something like that before an upbeat rap started.

_Am I wrong, cause I wanna get it on, till I die_

_Am I wrong, cause I wanna get it on, till I die_

_get it on, till I die, get it on, till I die_

_Y'all, y'all remember me_

_Y'all, y'all remember me_

I could picture the looks on my men's faces as they listened to the song. Rap from five hundred years was absolutely nothing like rap nowadays, both consisted mainly of rapidly spoken lines and shared the same themes, but the way that the lines were delivered just varied incredibly. Old-fashioned rap had this authentic feel, as if the raper was making things up as he went. Sometimes the lyrics were nonsensical and some other times they were works of art.

Once the next part started I could see my men moving their heads in rhythm to the song. Even if the lyrics weren't the best I had ever heard the combination of them and the music worked just fine. The funny part was that this version of the song was from some old movie or other. Bee claimed that it was a great film, but I had yet to see it myself. The song was interspersed with the sound of gunshots and ridiculous lines from the movie. Again, it just worked, at least for me.

_Only wish to breed_

_I explode into a million seeds_

_Ya'll remember me_

_Legendary live eternally_

"Oh, so this song is about sex," Schitzo said. "Go figure."

"Hey El-tee, we've got enemy aircraft moving up," Miri warned, peering intently through her scope.

"Relax, that's why we brought that massive bazooka there for," I told her.

Miri's shoulders relaxed only a little bit. It was a good thing, a Helljumper had to be at least a little on edge on every mission. Reaction times were quicker that way. The rest of Very Special Forces Squad also looked ready for anything despite their bobbing heads and the upbeat rap song in our helmets.

We all had to look away from the ship when the first round from the Onager collided. The shell had been accelerated to what one would call relativistic speeds. The drag from the atmosphere slowed it down considerably, but it still managed to conserve enough force to rock the entire Covenant destroyer from side to side. The next blast came a few seconds later, and the white sphere that appeared a the moment of the impact was burned into my retinas.

"Let the games–" Hoff started.

The interruption came in the way of several missiles flying out of the SAM. The missiles were pretty small, only slightly larger than the M19 warheads that the SPANKr used, but they had a warhead that was twice as powerful and used some kind of fancy fuel that allowed them to fly faster, further, and for a longer time. The increased velocity meant that the rockets penetrated more armor before detonating, inflicting even more damage.

Very fancy, very expensive rockets.

I trailed the orange flashes of a couple of missiles and had to squint to see the Banshees that they hit explode. The missiles had crossed the distance in about a second and a half.

Very, very fast rockets.

"Damn," Marv noted drily, elongating the vowel on the word.

_Take them to places, stake they face then erase 'em and brake 'em_

_Murder motherfucker's at a rate and then quicken the pace_

_Blast me but never ask me to live a lie_

_Am I wrong cause I wanna get it on till I die_

Damn I know how to pick songs.

"The Shortswords!" Andy exclaimed loudly.

I turned to see three shapes flying fast and low. They weren't going as fast as they could've gone, but they were at least doing Mach-2. The destroyer rocked violently for a third time as the Onager fired once more. The SAM behind me was now firing at a rate of several missiles per second, hitting Phantoms, Spirits, and Banshees all around. I could see the contrails that the missiles left trailing back to the buildings that Pavel and Caboose were in, marking them as targets.

The bombs flew from their bays and slammed into the unshielded front section of the Covenant destroyer. The _CPV_-class destroyer's energy projector took the brunt of the bombs. Naturally, it was completely destroyed by the sheer amount of conventional explosives that it received, but what really did the job was the superheated plasma that was stored right next to it. The plasma blew up in a second, bigger explosion that tore a huge chunk of armor off the ship.

"Sir, we've got bogies incoming," Marv announced calmly. "Several Phantoms and a dozen Banshees." I turned to look at the SAM and saw it smoking standing there calmly.

"Well shit," Sandor expressed himself eloquently.

"Falcon gunships, come in."

"This is Dragon-1, we are moving up."

"Shit, no! Tell them to get out of here!" Andy yelled. "Now!"

"You heard the lady," I shouted into my helmet immediately. "Get out of here!"

I turned to see the reason why I had sent our best hope of getting out of here alive away. It turned out that Andy kind of had a point. She had correctly deduced that several of the lead elements would get here faster than the Falons could climb to our altitude.

Sometimes it was easy to forget that the slow-flying Phantoms and the Banshees that could almost stand hovering could fly faster than the speed of sound.

"Jump!" I ordered.

_Am I wrong, cause I wanna get it on, till I die_

_Am I wrong, cause I wanna get it on, till I die_

_get it on, till I die, get it on, till I die_

_Y'all, y'all remember me_

_Y'all, y'all remember me_

Hoff and Miri were the first ones to follow my order, being the ones nearest to the edge. Andy and Marv followed, the first one taking a moment to hesitate before wrapping the rope around her forearm and jumping down.

"Lieutenant," Sandor began, peering over the edge. Already the lead Banshees were shooting at us.

I grabbed my rope and shoved Sandor over the railing. I think I might've heard a curse, but I was already jumping over the railing myself. For a moment I was in that beautiful place where gravity wasn't pulling me down. I could see the abandoned cars below me, some of them with broken windshields and some others were completely wrecked. My feet kept moving in an attempt to find solid ground below them, but before my body realized what my head already knew gravity did what it was supposed to and brought me back to the ground.

The rope went taut, my left arm felt like it was going to be wrenched out of my socket, and I was swinging back towards the building.

I managed to half-turn towards the mirrored windows and brought my feet up. Normally I would've shot at the glass in order to weaken it before punching through, but I was holding onto the rope with both hands and I was swinging towards it with enough speed that it would make no difference.

My boots shattered the glass and I saw the crystals fly inwards. I let go of the rope at the exact moment that my helmet collided with the ceiling. The rope had been a foot too short, and I did a backflip before landing belly-down on the glass-covered floor. The next thing I knew my legs were pulling me down. I must've passed out for a second or something, because I barely managed to claw at the carpet before Sandor came out of nowhere and grabbed my forearm.

"Watch out!"

Like there was anything I could do, hanging several hundred meters above the ground and with bloodthirsty pilots trying to hit me.

The windows all around us were shattered when plasma bolts burned through them. I kicked at the one below me only to suddenly find it gone.

"Swing me!" I yelled.

Sandor wasn't one of the brightest minds of this generation, but he was by no means an idiot. He roared in effort as he swung me outwards and then let go.

"Reaper!" I yelled loudly. "Fuck! VSF, get moving, I want everybody to meet two floors below the one I'm currently on! Move it!"

A few stray plasma bolts hit the floor next to me before I turned a corner and was out of sight. I pressed my hands against my knees and took a couple of deep breaths. That had been a close call, a few of those bolts had flown close enough to me that I knew I would be getting some blisters. Once I had taken three deep breaths I stood back up and ran towards the emergency stairwell. I could hear furious steps above me, but I kept running down, jumping down the last set of steps before stopping and pulling out my rifle.

"Lieutenant!" Sandor exclaimed when he almost slammed into me. "I didn't see the rest, everybody came in on different sections. I think Hoff crashed through a floor above me."

I made sure that all of my squad's lifelines were beating steadily, albeit at an accelerated rate. Everybody was still alive, so that's good.

Marv and Andy arrived together, with Andy breathing hard and Marv looking like he was expecting covvies to come out of the walls. A second later Miri arrived, tripping over herself before Sandor caught her right before she fell. Her armor was scorched on places but otherwise she seemed intact.

"Miri, are you ok?" Andy asked her, kneeling next to her and examining the scorch marks on her armor to make sure that she wasn't hurt. "Burns?"

"No," she took a couple of deep breaths.

"No, I'm fine."

"Where's Ryan?" Marv asked.

"Hoff," I spoke into my helmet. "Hoff!" There was no response. I cursed and looked up his location and cross-referenced it with blueprints of the building. He was four floors above and still within visual range of the windows. If anyone wanted to shoot at him they would have no trouble hitting him.

"Marv, with me," I ordered. "Come on!" We climbed through the emergency stairwell as fast as Marv could move. The man was damn fast for being a regular human, sprinting up the stairs at a pace that would've pressed pre-augmentation me into trying to keep up. Once we were on the same floor Hoff was we took a brief moment to regain our breaths and I nodded at Marv.

"Go." He kicked down the door and burst through. The sound of continuous plasma firing filled our ears. It wasn't until we turned the corner that we saw a Spirit dropship hovering right outside of the windows, firing its rear turret at one fixed point.

"Frags, frags!" I yelled. "Try hitting the turret!"

Marv and I both pulled a grenade from our webbing before tossing it as hard as we could at the Spirit's turret. The two grenades hit the turret, but while one of them bounced straight towards the ground the other one bounced upwards before exploding a few feet from the turret itself.

"Fuck, fuck, fuck!" Hoff yelled from somewhere to my side.

If he was swearing he was alive.

The Spirit shuffled on its positioned slightly before closing in on the building. The side doors opened and two elites in bright blue armor jumped out before pulling energy swords. They did their roaring thing and charged towards us even despite Marv's full-auto barrage.

Once I joined his fire the two elites rolled sideways and took cover behind a pair of cubicle walls.

"Keep their heads down!" I ordered, reaching for another grenade and throwing it. "Hoff! Hoff! Where are you?"

"Down here!"

I moved towards his voice just as my grenade detonated. Hoff was leaning back against a waist-height polycrete wall that divided a few steps and a handicapped ramp. He was breathing hard and holding his DMR tightly across his chest. His right leg was horribly burnt. A heavy plasma bolt must've hit him directly, because there was almost no trace of his armored boots left. I could smell the charred meat all the way from here.

"Yeah… sorry," Hoff apologized through clenched teeth.

"Come on," I grunted. "Don't let go of your gun."

"I'm about done El-tee!" Marv yelled.

"Just a little longer!" I shouted back, propping one of Hoff's arms over my shoulders. "Come on Ryan, try hopping, I need you to work with me."

"Yes, sir," he replied, pushing himself up with his free hand.

"Keep your head down," I advised.

I ran with Hoff struggling to hop on his good leg. Marv's rifle clicked empty a second after we went past him. The sound seemed to be incredibly loud despite the Banshees and dropships firing all around us. If I had any doubt that the elites heard it, it disappeared when they roared and vaulted over the cubicles they were using for cover.

Hoff attempted to fire at them, missing wildly due to the awkward position. My luck wasn't any better and I couldn't afford to turn around to get off a couple of good shots. Instead I did my best to reach the emergency stairwell. The door was open and I jumped through a second before Marv came in behind us and slammed it back shut. He ejected his empty magazine and placed it through the handle before putting a fresh one in.

"Put me down, sir," Hoff requested.

I complied and placed him against a corner. He kept himself afoot with his good leg and aimed right at the door. When the door shook he fired half his magazine through it. An elite burst through the door as if it was paper and suddenly found itself facing the business end on Marv's rifle. His shields had been weakened by Hoff's DMR and Marv finished the job with a sustained burst. The energy sword cut a line on the stairs before it deactivated.

"There's still another one!" Hoff shouted.

The second elite was more careful, firing with a plasma pistol before bursting through with a huge leap. It jumped right over Marv and landed right next to me. I ducked under an attempted elbow strike but couldn't move fast enough to avoid it slamming me against the wall. The huge alien batted my rifle aside with a flick of its arm and turned to fire at Marv with its pistol, keeping my neck pressed against the wall with its sword arm.

"Shoot it!" I shouted, trying to breathe.

Hoff fired three shots at the elite, hitting it in the back of the neck. The alien roared and turned again to shoot at Hoff. The man let himself fall down to the floor with a cry of pain. A black scorch mark adorned the wall where his head had just been a second ago.

I took advantage of the distraction to raise both my legs and kick at the elite, using its own arm for support. The alien recoiled backwards and almost went over the railing, but it jumped right back at me with its sword aiming for my chest. I dodged the blow only just, with the hot plasma blade leaving a gouge in my chest piece. Marv had recovered from the elite's attempt to kill him and slammed into the alien from several steps above. The combined force of his jump and gravity made the elite lose its footing and both of them rolled down the stairs, with Marv landing on top.

The elite raised its pistol only for Hoff to fire whatever was left in his mag at the alien's head, finishing off the elite's shields. Marv then raised his rifle above his head and brought it back down with incredible force. The elite's jaws cracked and several pointed teeth flew out of its mouth. Marv repeated the process three more times before the elite stopped struggling.

"Aw, shit," Hoff moaned, looking at his mutilated leg.

Marv shot the elite in the face and moved to pick him up. "You ok, El-tee?"

I nodded. "Damn thing…" I had to take a deep breath. "Almost crushed…" Another deep breath. "My windpipe."

_Should've called the rest of the squad with us…_

"Come on, help me up, sir."

I nodded and rubbed my throat before helping Hoff back to his feet… ahem, foot. Marv and I made our way down rather fast considering that we were dragging a large man with heavy armor on. Hoff moaned and grunted all the way, but I couldn't blame him for it considering the extent of his injuries.

"Holy shit!" Sandor exclaimed. "Why didn't you ask for help."

"Not enough time," I grunted in reply, putting Hoff on the floor as gently as I could. "Andy, what's the prognosis?"

"He needs immediate medical attention or he'll lose the leg," she replied immediately.

"I concur," Schitzo said, looking sharp in a white lab coat.

"Let's get out of here," I ordered. "One of the service elevator shafts should go down in the middle of the building, out of plasma range."

My team didn't need another word before they got a-moving. This time it was Andy and Sandor that took the lead while Miri watched over the rest of us with her DMR. Not that it would do much good in close quarters, but it was better than nothing. The covvie pilots were still pissed off and hitting the building with everything they had, but most of them were focusing on the upper part of it. Despite that the amount of firepower they were using on the place was frightening, if they kept it up the building's supports would melt and the whole thing would come crashing down.

"Dragon-1, Dragon-2 do you copy?"

"VSF, this is Dragon-1, we copy." "Where are you guys?"

"We hid down in an alley, I can just see the building from here, but damn does it sound bad."

"It sounds worse than it is," I replied.

"Really?"

"Nah, it's hell up here." We all clambered into the elevator, struggling to fit inside the cramped space.

"Lieutenant, are you ok?" Andy asked me.

"What?"

"Your chest." I looked down at the gash from the energy sword. "Yeah, I'm fine." Andy stared at me for a second and then nodded before managing to kneel to take a closer look at the mess that was Hoff's leg. She produced a can of biofoam and I could just feel Hoff tense up at the anticipation of the horrible stinging pain that would come a few seconds later. Before applying the foam she took a moment to pluck a piece of molten boot from his skin, eliciting a wince.

"Your head is awfully close to my crotch," Marv noted drily.

Andy sighed and shifted so that her head moved away from the awkward position. It now happened to be facing almost directly into Miri's crotch.

"Ah, that's better," Marv said.

The elevator was filled with the sound of chuckling before Hoff's curses and suppressed grunts of pain replaced them. Hoff stomped against the floor with his good foot, putting his weight on Marv and me as Andy kept on spreading the biofoam.

"Hold him still," she ordered, tossing the can aside and pulling a good-old-fashioned bandage. As she started wrapping it around Hoff's leg the elevator reached the ground floor. Miri and Sandor clambered out and went right and left respectively to secure the area.

"Done, let's move," Andy said.

"Come on," I seconded, motioning for Marv to move with me. Hoff was half-delirious from all the pain. By this point we had to actually drag him. His leg wasn't bleeding anymore, but it had left a nice little puddle on the elevator's floor. Whenever his leg bumped into anything he'd cry out quietly before shaking his head in an attempt to make the pain go away.

"Keep your heads down," Sandor warned once we reached a side door. "Falcons are over there."

"Head over there," I told him. "You, too Miri."

"Yes, sir," they replied. "We'll cover you."

They crossed the street with their rifles aiming straight up for a change. Andy kept watch for any covvies on the street, but Sandor and Miri crossed over to the alley without incident. I looked around and started running across the street, with Andrea looking around and scanning our surroundings with her rifle.

"Banshee."

"Double time it!" I yelled. "Andy, get to cover!"

She didn't need me to tell her twice. Andy sprinted towards the alleyway as Marv and me started dragging Hoff faster, ignoring his cries of pain as his foot hit debris or the edge of a car. A couple of plasma bolts hit right behind us, but the alley walls shielded us from any damage.

The two Falcons already had their rotors spinning and one of them was all filled up with half of my squad. The other one promptly saw Hoff strapped on and Marv and me on the gunners' seats. I was rather impressed at the precision that the pilots had managed, the alley walls were only a couple of inches wider than the wingspan of the Falcons themselves. We took off and disappeared in between the buildings before the Covenant fliers could get a good shot at us.

"Think that the other squads had as much trouble?" Marv asked after we came into sight of the FOB.

"Nah, Pavel only gets bad luck when he's with me. Knowing him he probably had the time of his life."

"Sergeant Konstantinov?"

"Not the bad luck kind of guy either, but he's rather capable when it comes to all shit hits the fan situations."

Marv chuckled lightly. "At least we all came out in one piece." I glanced at Hoff's leg. "That is yet to be seen, my friend."

* * *

><p><em>Thanks to SilasWhitfield for proofreading this chapter. I hope that this chapter was more to your liking when it comes to grammar or spelling mistakes.<em>

_So we get ourselves a nice little action piece. According to Silas the strategy used by VSF Squad is similar to one that the Russian (Soviet) Spetsnaz used, planting a SAM near an airfield and then leaving. Unfortunately for VSF, the Russians cared for the lives of their commandos a lot more than the UNSC does. There's some stunts, some light shooting, and then there's Marv being a badass, living up to his name as one of the most talented fighters in the Halo universe. _

_Oh, and Frank spills the soup to Pavel about Katie. He got out of it, but that probably won't last for long. Unless, of course, the covvies pull off some crazy shit that prevents them from sitting down and talking about the business at hand. But that's just not their style..._

_Hoff's hurt, but the destroyer was knocked down. That's the chapter in a nutshell. I hope that it was to your liking. _

_Thanks to the readers that reminded me about the reference that I made. Now I recall actually thinking about ME3 as I wrote down the name of the hospital, but for a while it confused me. Another reviewer pointed out that some combat scenes seem kind of stale. I understand what you mean and would like to ask all of you if you have a similar opinion, and if so, to give me ideas to make the fighting scenes even better._

_I'm preparing to leave the city of Udinia in a few more chapters and have some different kind of warfare. So at least you have that to look forward to. So, desert or arctic warfare?_

_Thanks for reading this chapter. Stay strong._

_-casquis_


	168. Cleanup

Chapter CLXVIII: Cleanup

**February 10, 2549 (UNSC Calendar)/two weeks later**

**Udinia, Paris IV, Paris System**

* * *

><p><em>"Cleaning up two different kinds of messes."<em>

* * *

><p>"This is the unit that took out that supplies convoy," I reminded my team. "Not one of them gets out alive."<strong><br>**

They all nodded slowly, grinning diabolically behind their depolarized visors.

"You don't have to tell us twice," Sandor said.

I grinned with them, looking at each in turn. Hoff was still out of commission and would be that way for at least another week. Miri had asked to take a break from the constant missions and so I had asked Pavel to fill in for her. Snark had volunteered to take Hoff's place. It felt good to have him back on the squad. It had been a pretty long time since I had fought with him under my command.

"Let's go over it again," I said. "Caboose and Recon are going to be dropping to our right so that we don't end up shooting one another. Remember to only fire into your designated fields of fire. Friendly fire is a big risk in the opening seconds of this raid." I waited for them to nod. "That being said, the covvies know we're here and prepared accordingly, the doors are barricaded and they have positioned themselves in concentric circles, with the bigger squids in the back. It should be done quickly, all things considered."

"Enough Frank," Pavel grunted. He was probably the only person that could get away with interrupting me in this kind of situation. "We're Helljumpers for Christ's sake!"

I half expected him to start swearing in Polish or something judging by the look on his face, but Pavel was a good guy at heart. He had perfected the art of the drill sergeant face over the years, especially in the past few years where he had served as my second in command and platoon disciplinarian. To be honest, he was better at doing that than me. His short blonde hair and blue eyes gave him the evil-Russian look and he worked it for all it was worth.

"Very well then," I relented. "Double check your harnesses and move to the edge of the building."

ODST training involved a variety of different skills. We learned everything from scuba diving without vacuum suits to free climbing. We also learned to zipline from aircraft such as Hornets and Pelicans. Right now that skill would prove useful, as we would be rapelling down the wall of a small warehouse. It was at times like this that I appreciated the huge amount of possibilities that windows brought to warfare.

"Ready?" I asked after checking my own harness and cable. I waited to get the affirmative replies and looked down at the opposite side of the warehouse to nod at Grigori. "Go!"

All twelve of us jumped over the rooftop's edge. The freefall was cut short by our cables and all of us swung inwards with our feet aimed at the glass windows. They shattered as expected and only then did the cables loosen enough to bring us down to floor level. The grunts squealed as we rained gunfire upon them. A few of the jackals tried raising their shields, but they weren't expecting an attack from the windows. Most of the aliens went down in the first couple of seconds, with the few elites leading this band putting up a token resistance before they were overwhelmed by our superior numbers and firepower.

"Damn, that was easy," Pavel noted, untying his cable from his belt. "It almost wasn't fun."

"Gunny, I've yet to _not_ have fun while killing covvies," Sandor said.

Marv chuckled and shook his head. "Look at us, the band of psychopaths."

Andy just sighed sadly before crouching to examine an elite corpse. She picked at the elite's armor before grabbing an unused plasma grenade and shoving it inside one of her pouches.

"What is that, like the fourth one?" I asked her, looking over her shoulder.

"Sixth," she corrected. "We're piling them all up on this huge crate back in Fountain FOB."

"Yeah, I've seen Marines tossing them into that thing. Any reason why?"

"Mostly they're just hoping that we capture a ridiculously large number of covvies before frying them with the grenades."

"They?" I asked.

She shrugged. "I wouldn't mind tossing a few of these myself, but so far it's only hopes and dreams. Haven't had the opportunity to throw one in yet."

"And this fuckers don't surrender," Sandor said, kicking the elite's neck. "Oh well, this'll have to do."

An experienced military man would've wondered why we weren't even bothering with clearing the warehouse, but with complete air superiority all over the city we had hundreds of UAVs flying around and giving us real-time thermal specs. The only thing that was emitting any kind of heat down here was us. Somehow the the guys had fixed that little glitch where jackals sometimes didn't show up on thermal.

"Yeah, it's clear," Atkins called from across the room.

I looked up and waved for Caboose. "A word."

Caboose walked up to me and I lead him away from the rest of the group into a nice little corner. I took of my helmet and held it between my arm and my waist, waiting for Caboose to do the same. He was wearing a black beanie under his helmet. That seemed unusual, but he always wore a black cap whenever he was out of his armor and added an extra layer whenever his helmet was actually on. I shrugged it off and gestured towards Corporal Han.

"How's he adapting?"

Caboose looked at Han quickly. "Jin's all right, as tough as any Helljumper."

"But?"

"I've got no complaints, he's a little bit green if you ask me. Certainly the greenest guy in the platoon in my opinion, but he follows orders and has the skill. Haven't had any problems with him personally, but the rest of the guys are having a hard time warming up to him."

"Any particular reason?"

Caboose seemed to consider the question for a moment, kicking at a piece of broken glass, shattering it into smaller pieces. "He's too uptight at times. The perfectly professional soldier."

"Have we really sunken that low that we consider that a bad thing?" I asked.

Caboose looked at me and actually laughed a little bit, prompting me to do the same.

"It's a weird world we live in," he said. "They'll get used to him or he'll mellow out a bit. Perhaps I need someone to get shot so that Jin can patch him up."

"Just don't shoot them yourself Grigori," I warned. "Anyways, tell the men they did a fine job, the cleanup crews are moving in.

The cleanup crews in question were a bunch of civilians that had volunteered to move the covvie bodies out of the building and to wash out the blood stains. This warehouse was actually inside the UNSC perimeter in the city, and with a couple of decently-sized outposts nearby it could be made into a refugee home to ease up the pressure on some of the other places.

The civilians were a loud and rowdy bunch. They were armored with lightweight body armor but carried no weapons. They were mostly strong, large men that could lift the bodies of the elites without too much trouble. They started with the grunts, moving the smaller aliens out of the warehouse's main entrance and piling them up one on top of the other before moving on to the jackals.

They joked and laughed while kicking at the bodies they picked up. They had a right to be angry, after all they were forced to become refugees inside their own city. The ones that were lucky enough to have kept their home were forced to share it with other civilians. Not a lot of people were happy about it, but when the UNSC asked you to do something you did it. The only ones that hadn't complied were the rebels, and now they were a dying breed, with most of them joining us against the Covenant or being left to their fate. Fucking separatists.

"You think those vests would make any difference against a plasma weapon?" Pavel asked me.

I shook my head. "It's mostly for morale," I reminded him. "Besides, they probably get to show them off to the girls back in the camps."

"About that…"

I shook my head. Pavel had been pressing me to talk about Katie. So far I hadn't said anything else, and for a while we had been too busy wiping out the Covenant survivors in the city to talk about it, but now that the downtown area and most of the key strategic zones were under our control he was finding the time to talk about more trivial things.

"I don't want to talk about it."

"But you still make visits to one particular refugee house."

It wasn't a house, it was more like several dozen rows of neat military tents, but his statement was still true. "What about it?"

"Are you–"

"No," I said, waving my hand. "No, of course not. I'm just making sure she's got everything she needs."

"I'm sure that the UNSC is giving her–whoever _her_ is–all she needs. You don't need to keep checking on her."

"I–"

"Please don't tell me you feel guilty about the invasion," Pavel groaned.

"Of course not, I just feel responsible for her."

Pavel looked over four of the cleanup guys as they carried one of the elites out, struggling with the weight. "Was she worth it?"

"What do you mean?"

"Was the sex great?"

"Sex doesn't have anything to do with it," I said angrily.

"Oh, so you weren't kidding when you asked if you could _love_ two women at the same time."

"I wasn't. I wish I was."

"Damn Frank, you're like a magnet for shit. Not just trouble, but shit… like really disgusting shit."

"Tell me about it," I groaned while scratching the back of my neck. "Listen, I'm not going to act on it, at least not until I know what's really going on. Not gonna tell Hanna either."

"Does she know?" Pavel asked. "I mean, about Hanna?"

"I told her I had a girlfriend."

"And?"

"And she hates me." I took a deep breath and explained everything that happened that time when I was forced to take those stupid psychiatric sessions. I went carefully through the progression of events and finally told him about the time we slept together. Pavel listened carefully and nodded occasionally to show that he was listening. After that I skipped to the time I went to her diner.

"Why'd you go?"

"Because I love her," I said. "Or I think I do."

"You don't _think_ you love someone Frank. Only teens do that, and you've had enough relationships and sex to differentiate the feeling that they give."

"True."

"Hanna's my friend too, Frank, and I would hate seeing you hurt her."

"There's no way for me _not _to hurt her," I said. "I could tell her I cheated and break her heart or leave her and break her heart… Why am I such an asshole?"

"You were raised wrong?" Pavel suggested. "Hey, no offense to uncle Manuel, he sounded like on hell of a Marine and a good man, but maybe he wasn't exactly parent material."

"I know that," I told him. It wasn't easy for me to take criticism directed at a family member from someone that was outside my family. Trash-talking about your own family was all good and well, but nobody else could do it. And seeing as how I was the only remaining Castillo on this universe (sans brother, of course), I was the only one allowed to criticize my family.

"What are you going to do?"

"I don't know," I admitted. "I'll come up with something."

"My advice, bury this. Bury this deep and don't mention it to Hanna ever. If you want to talk to the other girl then you can do that, but end it and then forget about it."

"But–"

"But you love her," Pavel sighed. "Yeah, yeah. And I thought I was the sentimental one."

I chuckled, trying to detract some of the seriousness of the situation. Hey, it might seem like if whining to you, but to me this was a very real, very annoying problem that had to be taken seriously.

"Pelican's arriving," Pavel said gruffly before walking away and putting his helmet back on. "Let's go."

"Hey you!" I shouted at the cleanup crew. "No souvenirs, all right? Anyone of you is found to have any Covenant tech will be imprisoned."

"And prisoners are the last people on the list that we'll save if need be," Sandor added, "so keep your hands to yourselves."

I couldn't have said it any better.

* * *

><p>The moment we landed I headed out of the garrison and walked a couple of barracks towards the place where Katie was staying. The place was teeming with activity, with several local Army soldiers and Marines that had friends and family here checking up on them as well as a lot of jarheads from the fleet. The refugee camps had become informal markets of sorts, where we could get fancy electronic toys in exchange for a gun for self defense or ammunition. The UNSC command didn't like it, but they looked the other way. I was certain that ONI had a couple of agents in every marketplace to make sure nothing that could pose an actual danger to the war effort would be sold.<p>

My appearance caused a small impression, drawing some staring from the younger kids and teenagers. The older men either raised eyebrows or tried not to look at me. I was flattered by the attention, with Spartans nowhere to be seen us Helljumpers were everybody's heroes. Not that we didn't deserved it, we had worked our asses to keep the people safe.

I turned past a row of tents and came up to Katie's place. I had managed to get her a tent all to her own, seeing as she didn't know anybody. Other than that I kept her out of any work lists that could put her in any danger and gotten her a datapad so that she wouldn't pluck her eyes out from boredom. She was sitting on a stool right outside the entrance to her tent, reading something on the datapad.

She looked up. "Frank. I told you not to come here anymore."

"And I said that you couldn't make me."

Katie groaned in annoyance. "You don't need to baby me."

"Think of it as penance," I replied. "For hurting you that bad."

"That bad, I was overreacting," she scoffed. "Like you could still affect me after five years."

We looked at each other for a few moments before we both burst out laughing. A couple of people passing bylooked at us weird, but we kept on laughing for a while. It was a terrible situation for both of us, for her because she still cared despite what I had done and for me because I still cared after five years of a different girlfriend. At least we took it with some humor.

"What are you laughing at?" someone called from inside the tent. "Katie? Oh! I didn't know we had visitors."

I was looking at a carbon copy of Katie. Well, perhaps not a carbon copy, but she certainly looked a lot like her.

"Sister?" I asked, examining the woman. She looked slightly younger than Katie.

"Cousin," Katie said before she could reply. "And she was just going back inside."

"Eliza," she introduced herself. "Our moms are sisters."

The last Eliza that I had known had been an impertinent smart AI. I missed her. "You do look alike," I said, placing my helmet on the ground and sitting on top of it. "Are your families fine?"

Both Katie and Eliza looked at each other with worried expressions.

"We haven't heard anything from them," Eliza said finally. "They say that it's because so many satellites were shot down, but I–"

"Where do they live?" I asked.

"All over," Katie said.

"You know, if you gave me their names I could look them up for you, see if they're fine."

Eliza's face lit up. "You could do that?"

"I can try," I said with a shrug. "No promises though."

I was knocked backwards when Eliza rushed to hug me. "Thank you, thank you so much. It has been so hard not hearing anything from them."

"Hey, anything I can do to help," I replied awkwardly, trying to get back up. Somewhere in the back of my head I was hoping that the hug had made Katie jealous.

"You never told me your name," Eliza said, stepping back.

I looked at Katie and laughed nervously. The way women were there was no doubt she knew everything about me. Everything Katie thought about me, that is. Katie looked away pointedly and sniffed loudly.

"Uh… Frank. The name's Frank."

Eliza's eyes widened and she took half a step back before crossing her arms over her chest. Her body language changed entirely and she eyed me carefully. "I didn't expect you to be so…"

_Let her say handsome, please let her say handsome…_

"Eliza," Katie cut in. "Why don't you get a list of all our family members?"

Eliza looked from her and back to me before sighing and shrugging. "I'll be in the tent."

"Why are you doing this?" Katie asked quietly so that her cousin couldn't hear.

"She seems like a nice girl," I said.

"Frank…"

"Sorry. I do feel bad about hurting you Katie and believe it or not, I still care about you."

She scoffed. "I don't think your girlfriend would be happy to hear that."

"No she would not," I agreed. "But it's still the truth."

"Do you expect me to forget about everything?" she asked. "About all I had to go through because of you!"

"No."

"You fucking _ruined_ two years of my life Frank!" she shouted, drawing curious glances from all around.

Eliza picked that moment to emerge from tent. She looked around nervously and gave me a datapad. "Here's the list, it's not complete, but it should do."  
>I grabbed it and transferred the information to my helmet, giving the datapad back before Eliza disappeared back inside the tent.<p>

"You hurt me Frank," Katie said angrily. "A lot."

I looked at her with an expression mirroring her own. "You don't have to like it, but that is why I'm doing this."

* * *

><p>I slammed my rifle into its rack and kicked the wall before taking off the rest of my armor, letting it clatter to the floor. I took off the pieces that covered my thighs but kept the boots on. After that I unzipped my undersuit, tying the arms across my waist to keep it from falling down past my waist. I kicked the wall again before making sure that my belt held my pistol and a couple of spare magazines before heading out.<p>

"Put a shirt on, Francisco," Schitzo said.

"I was about to, dick," I replied, reaching into my trunk and smelling the dirty shirts.

"What?"

"What?" I echoed.

"Did you say something?" Hoff asked me.

"Talking to myself," I grunted. "How's the leg?"

Hoff looked down and moved his right leg experimentally. He was wearing a weird-looking cast that would be kept on until whatever was left of his leg properly merged with the artificial tissue that had been implanted. The poor guy had most of his gastrocnemius and soleus, the muscles in the back of the calf, burned to cinders. The doctors had removed most of those muscles and replaced them with an artificial tissue. The funny thing is that they had run out of synthetic skin due to most skin banks having been destroyed along with most hospitals. Below the cast he would have black muscles not unlike Cam's prosthetic arm.

"It still hurts like hell," Hoff said. "The little muscle they left there is still healing and the implants have to completely merge or whatever." He rolled a football on his right hand. "I'm good enough that I can throw a football now. Wanna throw some passes, sir?"

Whatever provided distraction. "Yeah, sure."

Half the plaza was occupied by barracks and the other was empty space left that way so that the men and women could use it. A basketball court had already been set up, with a match between Army and Marines going on. People booed and cheered for their branch on the sidelines. Had it been late spring or summer there would've been a couple of inflatable pools, but instead we had people kicking around soccer balls or just sitting and talking.

Hoff stopped walking and I went on until I was far enough away that passing a football would be a comfortable exercise.

"Remember I can't walk that fast," Hoff called out as he threw the ball.

I caught the thing right over my chest. "I'll keep that in mind," I replied, throwing it back.

Like most people in this side of the galaxy, I had grown up and learned hot to pass a football. The athletic teen that my uncle had shaped me up to be had had strength and enough coordination not to miss any pass by a ludicrous distance, but it still felt pretty bad that Hoff had to hop up on his good leg in order to catch the football one handed. It hadn't even been that long a distance to pass.

"Been a while," I offered. "Gotta get back in the game."

Hoff smiled his cocky jock smile. "Sure thing, sir."

We tossed around a couple other passes. I threw most of mine straight enough, but the precision and speed that Hoff could manage with a football was nothing short of intimidating. A couple of times I jogged from side to side and had Hoff anticipate where I would be. Again, pinpoint accuracy from his arms.

"Did you ever think about joining the Marine Football Team?"**  
><strong>

Hoff shook his head. "Considered it, but the big game always takes place on Earth and most of the guys playing there are local."

"Didn't want to visit Earth?"

He shook his head and threw another annoyingly perfect pass. "And be stuck up to my neck in people? No way, I like my personal space."

This time it was my turn to laugh. Udinia was the biggest city in the second most populated planet in all of UEG space. Hoff wasn't from this city, but by most standards this planet was as crowded as it got. I, on the other hand, was raised on Jericho VII, which happened to be a relevant colony albeit not a heavily populated one. He did have a point though, large crowds are one of my main memories from my childhood back on Earth.

"Hey Frank!" Pavel called, appearing from behind one of the barracks.

I threw the ball at him. And he threw it back to Hoff.

"I didn't know Poles could throw a football," Hoff joked teasingly.

"We don't," Pavel agreed. "We kick it."

"You mean a soccer ball."

I groaned as I caught Hoff's pass. Even after centuries of debate nobody agreed on what to call each sport. That's why most of the time I stuck to gravball or headcase. I threw another pass to Pavel before he excused himself and disappeared into our common building. From there he could record and send a message back home. It would probably have to go past countless censors and ONI personnel before it was actually delivered, but Amber and Lavvie would get it.

"Any news about your family?" I asked after a few more passes.

"Not really," he shrugged. "They keep sending me messages that they're fine. I hear that the situation's tough down there, lots of refugees coming in."

"As long as the covvies don't attack I'm sure they'll be fine. Just a little bit longer and we'll break through the siege."

Hoff nodded. "Thanks El-tee."

After a few more minutes Hoff's leg started hurting him and he had to lie down for a while. I tossed him his football back and left him in the care of two young female Marines that seemed very interested in both his ODST-issue clothing as well as his injury. I figured that if he got some attention from women then I also deserved the same. Especially after the fiasco that the meeting with Katie had been.

It didn't take long to find Hanna. Most of Battalion One had been relocated here after their defense of the suburbs. The defense of the city's outskirts was a task for the Army. Us Marines were in charge of wiping out any covvies still alive in the city. After we were done with that we would be deployed elsewhere to aid in ongoing campaigns. It should be relatively quick, especially if UNSC reinforcements got here as promised.

"Hanna," I called out to my girlfriend. "How do you do?"

"Hey Frank! Didn't you go out to clear this place or other?" she asked me, hugging me tightly. That was something that I could never get tired of.

I nodded. "It was quick, lots of intel and we had the high ground."

"Glad you killed those suckers," she said, letting go and tapping my arms. "It's been horribly boring here. Your company is the only unit that has actually left the base for combat missions."

I shrugged. "There aren't that many Covenant troops left, we can kill them the quickest."

Hanna rolled her eyes. "Modesty isn't really your thing, is it?"

"Baby, you knew what you were getting into."

"And after five years I'm still here." There was something about the way that she enunciated the time we had been going out that worried me. Sure we had had our ups and downs, but five years was still a pretty long time, and if marriage was what you had in mind…

"I wonder how Katie feels about marriage," Schitzo wondered out loud.

I ignored that as best I could, but I could still feel myself tensing up slightly.

"And I'm glad you are," I told Hanna. "But you know what would make me even gladder?"

"Sex?"

"We _have_ been together way too long," I replied, amused. "Got a place?"

Hanna nodded with a decidedly naughty smile. "I know just the one."

Hanna led me to a building directly outside the FOB's walls. There were a few Marines manning a sandbag bunker a few dozen meters down the street and several cars were piled one next to another on the other side of the street. The building itself was empty except for perhaps a couple of snipers and a SAM on the rooftop. It was a perfectly ordinary building. A perfectly ordinary empty building.

"You know, Valentine's Day is coming up," Hanna said suddenly.

The tip of my armored boot hit the edge of the next stair and I stumbled forward. I stopped myself before I actually slammed into the floor. I pushed myself back up and looked at Hanna with a worried expression.

"Banana, you don't really expect… I mean, we're in a warzone."

Hanna shrugged. "Yeah, but things seemed to be looking up so I just–"

"Listen hon, if we have time for something, I promise I'll do my best, but I don't want to promise something and then let you down just like that."

She sighed. "I just want something in this relationship to be normal for once," she complained. "Don't worry, don't worry. I get it, the wine and candlelight dinner is pretty hard to pull off in a city under siege."

"I'll do my best, but we might not even be together four days from now."

Hanna looked away. I don't know if she was actually that affected or just acting, but it certainly worked on me.

"Listen, as soon as we get out of this place I promise I'll make it up to you. Hot air balloon and all that, ok?"

"I'll hold you to that," she told me. "What about this room?"

"As long as it's not on the floor it's fine," I said. I took a quick peek inside the room and saw that it was completely intact. A strange sight considering that the windows showed a ravaged cityscape. "Yup, this one will be fine."

* * *

><p>"Can't another unit take this one?" Sandor complained.<p>

I shook my head. "Not according to command."

"And meanwhile Four is still guarding that stupid Onager mass driver," Miri shook her head.

"You have to come this time," I told her. "Snark, you're coming too."

The man nodded from across the room, patting his sniper rifle and dragging his chair towards me. "What kind of mission do we get?"

"A simple one."

"Can't HW take it then?" Marv suggested, taking a shot at our second platoon squad. "I mean, if Command wants them to put up a show…"

I groaned. It had been a topic of discussion for the past couple of days. HW got to stay back here at the base, manning sandbag barricades and making the occasional trip to nearby refugee camps to boost civilian morale. Despite having the most firepower, they were probably the nicest squad in the platoon. My own squad was nice enough, but Hoff had this jock attitude that he just couldn't turn off, Sandor had been one childhood incident away from being a serial killer, and Andy was always certain that she was the smartest person in the room.

Miri and Marv were both pretty nice though.

Recon Squad… well, let's just say that sometimes they scared even me.

"HW is boosting morale," I reminded them. "Walk inside any neighboring refugee camp during your free time and you'll know what I'm talking about," I said loudly, ending the discussion before it could begin. "The mission is like the last one we did. Small covvie group holed up in a building. Note I said building and not warehouse. They've been harassing patrols and a few hours ago they killed three Marines." I paused a moment to let that sink in. "Gear up, I'll brief you on the way."

Pavel had been listening to the briefing from his bed. I had given him some time off because he had done a mission a few hours ago and because he was my friend. Mostly because he was my friend.

"You sure that Hayes' platoon can't take this one?"

"Nah," I replied. "Orders came form her directly. Her and Dajani's platoon are supporting one of the offensives on the outskirts, sans Snark, of course. They won't be back for a couple of days."

"And here I thought that they were only leaving to do the same cleanup duty we did… Nobody ever tells me anything."

I patted his head affectionately. "Just wait until you become an officer."

"And sell out? Not in this lifetime."

I laughed. Before I had gone on to become a second lieutenant I had had that same attitude towards officers. They had their use, but mostly they were just the richer variant that didn't really get muddy in the trenches.

Sometimes I like to think that I personally disproved that belief.

"I'll hold the fort for you," Pavel told me. "Make sure Hoff doesn't bring any girls here."

I scoffed. Last time he did that I just about murdered the girl for touching my stuff. Then I had her commanding officer reprimand her and assign her to picking up trash for the next week. I still threw my candy wrappings in front of her if I saw her.

Hey, nobody ever said you had to be nice to be an officer.

Fifteen minutes later two thirds of my platoon was climbing into a Pelican waiting for us. Fightmaster somehow managed to be the pilot that would fly us to our objective. While I waited for my team to climb I saw another Pelican with two squads from Platoon Three boarding it. Weller gave me a curt nod before climbing on board the Pelican. It took off a second later and I climbed inside Fightmaster's Pelican.

"Off we go Sam," I told the pilot.

"And thank you for choosing Fightmaster Express!"

"I'd totally use that airline," PFC O'Malley said. Her accent was getting a lot easier to understand.

"Quiet," I ordered. "Holo up."

The Pelican's blood tray projected a building with some damage to the lower levels. I quickly went over the details of the plan while the hologram highlighted the parts of the building where they would take place. The building conveniently flashed red whenever I highlighted a floor. Coupled with real-time thermal imagery from various drones and other equipment around the place we knew exactly how many baddies we would face as well as their positions.

"Can't Lieutenant Weller's platoon do the rappelling?" Sandor asked.

I almost exploded. "Listen all of you! I am sick and fucking annoyed by all of your whiny attitudes. Every last one of you has been complaining about the dumbest shit for the past week. I don't care about it. I don't care about _any_ of it. I don't care that you don't like doing so many missions, I don't care that you were grazed because you didn't keep your fucking head down, and most importantly I don't care what you think. If anyone has a complaint, keep it to yourselves. If any of you complain I'll personally fuck your shit up." I paused. "Is that fucking clear?"

"Sir, yes, sir!"

"Good," I said with a nod.

After that I moved inside the cockpit, I couldn't stand looking at my platoon right then. Sam's copilot looked at me nervously before pressing a couple of random buttons and looking straight ahead. Sam on the other hand chuckled quietly and looked over his shoulder at me. He was obviously amused by my chewing out of the deadly and intimidating Helljumpers on his ship.

"They had it coming," I said, answering the unasked question.

"I'm not disputing that," Fightmaster said, "but an officer isn't supposed to threaten subordinates to fuck them up. That's the noncom's job."

"Well, my noncom is taking a nice nap at the moment."

"How is Pavel by the way?"

I shrugged. "He's all right. Pavel is always all right. He misses his wife and daughter but keeps his spirits up in the hope that he'll come back home to them."  
>Fightmaster was silent for a moment. "So he's not chronically depressed?"<p>

"No."

"How long has he been fighting for?"

"Fourteen years," I replied. "He's a tough one, he is."

"Amen," he agreed. "I understand why Marines would want to off themselves before they're actually supposed to die, but it's a little selfish to do it now, don't you think?"

"Wise words," I agreed. "We're stopping on that building over there to–"

"I know, drop off your sniper. I'm not an idiot Frank, I remember."

"Right," I said, walking out of the cockpit before Fightmaster hovered over the building's rooftop. Snark and Zepeda hopped off and turned around.

"As soon as we bust through you can shoot anything you want," I told them.

Snark nodded with what was probably a smile behind his visor and tapped his oversized scope. "With this baby the covvies are going to have nowhere to hide."

I nodded and banged on the wall, signaling Sam to take off again. As we crossed the over the street I saw the other Pelican landing a couple of blocks away. Weller and her team would be linking up with a pair of Tortoise AFVs that would help the two squads under her command clear the first couple of floors.

"Double check those harnesses," I said. "Most of the grunts and jackals don't have weapons, but don't underestimate them."

"Hey, it's a lot more fun than having them shoot back," Sandor said.

"Got that one right," Atkins agreed.

"Ready?"

I got green lights from the ten men. A second later the loud cracking of gunfire came to us from the street.

"Let's go."

We jumped down the side of the building much like we had done several hours ago. The maneuver went pretty much like the last time and we slammed through the windows two floors from the rooftop. There were only a few targets for us and I didn't get to take a frightened grunt out. The few grunts on this room were all unarmed and huddling close to a methane machine.

"We go down!" I ordered.

Caboose and O'Malley took point, with Andy and Sandor right behind and the rest of us going down by twos. Most of the floors were empty, but drones were known to fail occasionally and I didn't want to risk getting attacked from behind while we were busy taking out entrenched elites.

Most of the buildings were cleared easily enough, with jackals and grunts falling before us with a lot more ease than they usually did. According to the drones all of the elites were in a lower floor. If things progressed well we could hit them from above and below along with Weller and her two squads.

"This is too easy," Montri muttered.

"It's supposed to be," Sandor reminded me. "This is just a small unit cut off from supplies and allies."

"Point taken," Montri conceded.

"It's still unnerving," Corporal Han muttered. "Half the time I've been in this unit has been spent getting shot at."

"Welcome to the outfit," Andy told him.

Several minutes later we were on the floor above the elites. There were fifteen elites in total, more than enough to give us some trouble if we weren't careful, but the odds were in our favor. That and Snark and Zepeda were clearing entire floors before we got to them.

"Weller, do you copy?"

"I was about to contact you Frank," she replied. "Got a crazy plan?"

"Not so crazy, I was going to suggest rigging the floor below the elites with explosives and then kill them when they fall down."

"Yeah, a few of my men proposed that too," she replied. "What will your squads do?"

"We go in and make sure that anybody that didn't fall gets killed. I'll have Zepeda and Snark shoot the elites, herd them into fixed positions."

"You do that, I'll start setting up the explosives as soon as you give me the word."

"Understood, Castillo out." I opened a new line to Snark. "Start shooting at the elites, if you can't hit them keep them in one fixed spot, we're gonna blow up the floor underneath them."

"Got it," he replied.

The two snipers started pounding away at the elites. Four of them fell before the rest could take cover and another two were killed before the rest actually took the sniper fire seriously. You'd think that the first four casualties would've made them realize the seriousness of the situation, but hingeheads tended to be somewhat dumb when it came to thinking of us as threats.

"Snark?"

"They're not moving."

"Weller, you're good to go."

"I'll let you know," she said. I waited patiently for a couple of minutes. "Ok we're all good."

"Form up on the stairs!" I ordered. "Wait for my order!"

I heard the blasts through the door and a second later the barking of automatic weapons fire shooting at the elites that had fallen down to the ground. My team broke through at my command and cut down one elite that had managed to avoid the fall into bloody ribbons. The elite fell through a hole with a loud crunch. And just like that it was over.

"Check the room for survivors!" I ordered. "Be thorough people!"

The room was declared clear a few seconds later. It took a minute to make sure that the rest of the floor was devoid of hostiles.

"Good work Jen," I congratulated Weller.

"Likewise, Lieutenant," she replied. "I'll be calling for evac."

"Sure thing."

I looked around and kicked at a piece of loose floor, knocking it down to the floor below us. I had fired my rifle exactly twice during the entire mission, letting my men do the heavy lifting while I barked orders at them. When it came to simple missions it was usually better to let my men do the actual killing while I hung back. I didn't appear as a micromanager that way.

"Lieutenant."

"Hey Al, good to see you again. Finally got tired of dos Santos?"

The AI's avatar shook its head and my spirits were immediately depleted. "An enemy ship got past the defenses, it is seriously damaged, but the vectors suggest that it is preparing to drop troops from orbit and into the city."

"Right now?" I asked.

"That is correct."

"Shit. What do you want us to do?"

"The enemy ship is dropping several dozen dropships right now… oh dear."

"Al…"

"Two Scarabs have been deployed from orbit. It appears that one of them is going to land very close to you."

"How close?!" I asked. I yelled at my unit to start running down the stairs and get out of the building. "Al, how close?!"

"It's landing," he said simply. A second later the whole building shuddered from a nearby impact. "Platoons One, Two, and Four are being rerouted to your position and all of Fountain FOB's complement is being alerted as we speak. I'm patching you up to Captain Galván."

"Lieutenant, I'm being informed that you are in the vicinity of one of the Scarabs?"

"I don't even know where that thing is!" I replied. "Captain, I'm in the dark here."

"Same as we are," he replied. "Listen Frank, we're moving out as soon as we can, but it's going to take a while. Klaus has already borrowed three 'Hogs and is racing towards your position as we speak. What equipment do you count with?"

"Four squads plus two Tortoise AFVs."

He groaned. "That's not going to cut it."

"Agreed."

"Just try and hold it, air support is on the way."

By the time the brief conversation was over we were already on the fourth floor. Weller and her two squads were a floor below us and the two AFVs moved out of the main street and into a small side street next to the building. I could hear the Scarab moving now, the four legs made a shitload of noise whenever they banged against the street. The gunners of the huge walker were already shooting at whatever they deemed to be worthy targets.

The Scarab walked right past the building but then it stopped and took a few steps backwards. The rear turret turned to aim at us and powered up.

"Oh boy."

* * *

><p><em>Thanks to SilasWhitfield for proof-reading this chapter.<em>

_Fun, fun, fun! We start off with some easy cleanup missions and end up having to face a Scarab. Isn't life as an ODST fun?_

_Frank went to Katie to help and didn't expect anything in return. Gasp! Is he perhaps... a good guy? Or maybe he just wants to have a backup in case Hanna doesn't work out. Maybe Hanna's the backup in case Katie doesn't work out. Maybe he's hormonal because of the augmentations or maybe he's just actually trying to be nice. Who knows, eh? The point is that he acted like a decent guy with a girl he loves and then went back to fuck his girlfriend that he also loves._

_Do I hear threesome?_

_Relax, I kid you. On other news, Hoff is slowly getting better and we mix up the deal a little bit with Snark thrown in the mix. I miss the guy sometimes, but I think that Zepeda is an interesting replacement. Or not, maybe you guys don't like him and are kind of assholes. Next chapter is going to be interesting even if I'm recycling the good old urban warfare trope. I want to mix it up a little, but honestly, it makes sense that the covvies would attack population centers seeing as they are waging a war of extermination._

_I read your reviews and it appears like most of you guys want arctic warfare. Good call, because that is what I was going to go with anyways. Some of you have complained that people haven't died and I'll say this again: people will die, I'll just make sure that you care for them a little bit before they do. Remember when Sutton died? Remember how I spent half a chapter having him talk about his family and his dreams and hopes? Yeah, kind of like that but a little more sobtle._

_While I'm on the subject of your reviews, I couldn't help but notice that we haven't broken the 1000 review mark just yet even if I did break the million words mark a chapter ago. A million words. A MILLION words. That's six zeros. Six of them. 1,000,000. Try counting to a million, it's tiring as fuck, let alone write to a million! I'm pretty proud of myself, if only I was this dedicated when it came to school. But honestly I have you guys to thank for this, for reading on and encouraging me to keep writing. For that I give you all my thanks._

_And let's hope that we finally hit the 1000 review mark with this chapter. Stay strong._

_-casquis_


	169. ¿Por qué no?

Chapter CLXIX: ¿Por qué no?

**February 14, 2549 (UNSC Calendar)/**

**Udinia, Paris IV, Paris System**

* * *

><p><em>"The bigger they are the harder it is to make them fall down on their asses. But it makes it all the more satisfying."– PFC Ryan Hoff<em>

* * *

><p>There are times when you feel like a deer caught in the headlights. Like there's nowhere to go and nothing to do in order to avoid the rapidly approaching vehicle about to slam into your face. Some of those times there's absolutely nothing you can do to avoid it.<p>

This wasn't one of those times.

"Down!"

We were lucky. Very lucky. The Scarab's tail cannon aimed just a little bit too high, vaporizing the ceiling above us but missing my two squads by a meter and a half. Everybody crouched behind a column or a wall or simply dropped to the floor. The ones that were still in the stairwell just jumped down to the next level. I felt my skin heating up from the plasma blast, but my undersuit and my armor absorbed enough of the heat to make it non-lethal.

"Fuck that's hot!" someone yelled.

"Get up!" I ordered, struggling to get back to my feet as pieces of loose rock fell on and around me. "Helljumpers! On your feet!"

I pulled Sandor and Andy upright while Marv did the same for O'Malley. The rest of Recon Squad was running down the stairwell as fast as they could. If the Scarab could fire again before we could get out of its weapon's firing cone we would be atomized. Or maybe the gunner would just decide to bring the whole building down on our heads.

"Move, move, move!" Caboose barked at his men, shoving them downstairs.

"Is that the last of us?" I asked him.

"Yes, sir!"

"Let's go!"

We caught up with Weller and her squad on the ground level. They were taking up positions around the entrance and fortifying the place.

"What are you doing?!" I asked Weller. "We need to get out of–"

Three needles flew at me, missing my neck by less than one foot. I jumped to one side and pressed my back against a column as drones started flooding the entrance lobby through the broken windows. They fired at us from all over, but Weller's squad kept them back from behind their position.

"Jen! We need to get down on the parking lot!" I yelled.

"Your men are closer to the stairs!" she replied, hiding behind an overturned table. "We'll cover you!"

I turned around to see my men awkwardly huddled behind pieces of furniture, plasma hitting their positions. Andy, Miri, and Sandor were all crouching behind a piece of ceiling that had fallen over a couch.

"You three, go!" I yelled. "Caboose?"

"I got it!" he replied.

Platoon Three's fire intensified and they drowned out the sound of plasma for a moment. My three men dashed back to the stairwell and Caboose took advantage of the situation to make a dash towards the elevators. He pressed the button and then took cover in the small gap between the doors and the walls.

"Montri, Han, and Atkins, I want you three to move towards the elevators as soon as the doors open!" I ordered. "O'Malley and Marv, you'll go with me."

A chorus of nervous 'yessirs' followed the rapid-fire orders. Weller, on the other hand, was dead quiet, letting her men pick their own targets. She would order them to fall back as soon as we were safely away from the drones.

"Watch out!"

I looked up to see a drone taking aim at me. A burst hit the thing and it fell right on top of me, twitching and kicking at me, still very much alive. I pushed it away and fired a burst into its belly.

"Fucking insects…"

"Frank, get a move on!" Jen called out.

The drones were gaining ground on us, and a few of Weller's Helljumpers were pulling back to avoid being overrun.

"Elevator's here!" Caboose yelled.

"Move!" Han yelled.

"O'Malley, Marv, let's go!" I barked.

All six of us crashed into the elevator as multi-colored plasma tried to make contact with us. Caboose tapped the button to close the doors furiously and the elevator started making its way down. I took a deep breath and moved my crotch away from Marv's backside nonchalantly. Abri got off Han and Caboose helped Atkins up. We all took deep breaths and chuckled lightly before the elevator doors opened. The half of my unit that was already down here aimed their guns at us, only lowering them after they recognized us.

"Frank, we're coming in through the stairs, might need some help!" Jen shouted through the radio. "Now!"

"Doors!" I ordered. "There and there, take cover!"

We took cover behind a pair of sturdy-looking SUVs and aimed at the doors. A large Helljumper smashed through them shoulder-first. Two others picked him up and then the rest of Two flooded in through the door. After that four drones came in, firing wildly. We quickly cut down the drones and fired some more in order to discourage a second attempt.

"Block the doors!" Jen shouted. "Wiremu, Beckel!"

Two familiar shapes moved towards the car closest to the door and the bigger one smashed the side window. He reached in and unlocked the door before setting it to neutral. They moved the car and propped it across the door, quickly moving out of the way. We hit a couple more drones that tried to barrel their way through.

"Put it on its side!" Jen ordered.

With that, four other Helljumpers joined Api and Beckel in pushing the car on its side. They made sure that it blocked the entire door before tossing a grenade in through the broken window. The blast shook the car, but it stayed there. After that Jen had her unit move a couple other cars in front of the first one to prevent the drones from tipping it back on its four wheels. Only then did I signal for my team to leave cover.

"Jen, good to see you made it," I told her.

She sighed and nodded. "No shit. Did you get through to Fountain?"

"Yeah, I spoke with Galván. The rest of my team is headed in this direction to link up with us."

"Do they know they're going to run straight into a fucking Scarab?" Jen asked.

"Probably," I shrugged. "We need to get out of here before the walker decides to collapse the building on top of us. The two Tortoises made it out alive, we can use them for backup and support."

She nodded. "I'll have them meet us on the parking ramp. One of them covers our front and the other one flank."

I nodded. "Still a lot of space to get attacked from," I told her. "The ship probably dropped a bunch of pods as well as dropships."

The building rumbled violently, the sound of the Scarab's tail cannon clearly audible.

"Let's move!" I ordered. "Let's go, let's go, let's go!"

The building rumbled a couple other times before we left the parking lot. The two armored vehicles were waiting there for us as promised. The Tortoises were very much like the Armadillos that the Army favored. The only difference was the cholor and camouflage scheme as well as some other minor stuff. Technically speaking the Tortoise was an IFV, not an AFV, but the terms could be interchangeable in some situations. To the untrained eye they would've looked like variants of the same vehicle, but they were actually pretty different. The Tortoises were designed to dish out as much damage as they could while absorbing a lot of it. The 'Dillos were designed in the same way, but their main role wasn't infantry support. They were mostly used to hold positions and sometimes engaged in tank combat. Their speed and powerful autocannons allowed them to provide a fair enough match to any Wraith they encountered.

These two Tortoises were scorched with plasma, but otherwise they seemed perfectly fine. Instead of the powerful autocannons they sported a heavy machine gun and a few rocket pods. Both of them might overpower a Wraith, but a Daemon would be pretty bad news.

Let's not forget that we were facing a Scarab.

"Move up, move up!" I ordered. "Caboose and Recon with the Lead Tortoise!"  
>"Lima-One if you please, Lieutenant," the vehicles commanding officer replied through the radio. "Our partner here is Lima-Two."<p>

I nodded even though they had no way of knowing that. "Recon with Lima-One."

"Second Squad, you're with Lima-Two. Black, I want you to use the cover."

"Wouldn't dare to do anything else," Weller's staff sergeant replied. "Let's go!"

Weller's squad joined mine and we moved up as the two large wheeledvehicles started moving.

"Snark, Zepeda, you there?"

"That we are, sir," Snark replied almost immediately. "I was beginning to wonder if you–"

"Snark, what's your position relative to the Scarab?"

"Hold on, I'm patching you through."

They were almost directly above the huge walker. It was still firing at the building, specifically aiming for strategic points to collapse it faster and minimize the risk of the building falling on top of it. The high-res feed that I was getting from Snark's Oracle scope showed movement on top of the Scarab, mostly grunts and jackals, but I saw a pair of brutes as well.

"Fuck," I muttered. "Any additional enemy units?" I asked him.

"Yes, two or three pods landed a block away from your position, I don't have eyes on them, but they were the big pods."

"Fuck," I repeated. "Snark, I want you and Zepeda to take out the brute in charge of that platform if it leaves cover. It's probably a captain."

"Yessir. What I wouldn't give for the Sledgehammer right now…"

"You can't always get what you want, Naveen."

"You called me by my first name, it must be serious."

I rolled my eyes. I rarely got quips from him now that he wasn't in my unit. He wasn't half as sarcastic when he wasn't in high-intensity combat.

"Get to work."

"We'll do our job," he replied. "Isn't that right, Stan?"

"Yes, sir."

_Huh, you got him to talk._

"Roger that, out." I jogged up with the two Tortoises. They were already moving forward, moving around cars and crushing the ones that they couldn't completely avoid. A car being crushed made an awful lot of noise, but it was probably drowned by the sounds of renewed battle.

"Enemy infantry, dead ahead," Lima-One said. "Engaging."

It's multi-barreled machine gun roared as it fired, and the casings clinked as they hit the street. I couldn't see the result of the attack, but I could only assume that the targeting systems functioned properly and a bunch of covvies now found themselves riddled with holes.

"Move up!" Weller shouted.

"Intersection up ahead," Lima-Two said. "We'll form up a wall for you to pass."

"Much appreciated," I thanked them. "We'll move as quick as we can." The two Tortoises would be exposed to fire from the Scarab all the while, and a blast from those cannons would completely obliterate any and all armor that they had on.

"Moving up," Lima-One said.

"Acknowledged," Lima-Two replied, patiently waiting for the lead IFV to take position. "Rolling."

"Recon Squad move up!" Caboose shouted. "Make this quick!"

Second Squad followed Recon and I found myself running with my squad and Jen's. I looked to the left and saw the Scarab. It was one of the bigger models, impervious to anything short of a tank brigade or high-concentration bombing strikes. Its rear turret slowly turned to aim at the two Tortoises.

"Move, move!" Jen urged them. "We got this!"

"Negative ma'am," Lima-Two replied.

The moment we crossed the intersection and were safe the two IFVs started moving. The Scarab fired before it could properly aim, and I saw its stream approaching the rear Tortoise as fast as the turret could turn. A section of the vehicle was burned completely off before it could take cover around the corner.

"Lima-Two, are you all right?" I asked.

"All good," the driver replied in a perfectly calm voice. "Those doors always were too heavy for my taste."

Lima-Two rolled by, black smoke coming from the rear. Only the doors and a small section of the walls had been burned off, but the wheels were all intact. I looked inside and the two crewmembers looked over their shoulders to smile and give me a thumbs-up.

"Let's roll!" I shouted. "Vamos!"

We started moving again through the vehicle-littered street.

"Scarab is moving on your position," Snark announced.

"Tell me something I don't know," I replied. "We're moving as fast as I can."

"Might I suggest those tunnels?"

I had considered them. "So that the walker can bring them down on top of us? No thanks. Besides, latest intel shows that they're clogged with abandoned cars."

A couple of sniper shots rang out, clearly audible through all the battle noise.

"Brute captain out," Snark informed me. "And now they're firing at us. Remind me why I took this job again."

"Because you were a homeless orphan."

"Right, thanks El-tee."

"Anytime," I replied.

"Ghosts, three of them," Montri warned.

Lima-One stopped. "We see them."

"They're probably scouts," Black said. "Three Ghosts as scouts means at least a platoon-sized force."

"Engaging," Lima-One said.

The IFV fired two long sustained bursts at the incoming scouting vehicles. A few plasma bolts flew over the Tortoise, but most of the plasma fire impacted it in its frontal armor. The plasma barely burned at the armor, and two of the Ghosts blew up in flames before the third one turned tail and ran.

"Watch out for fuel rods," Jen warned. "Yumiko, I want you scouting for snipers."

As if by magic, one of my Helljumpers was hit in the chest. I couldn't see who it was, but Marv pulled the ODST behind a car and several assault rifles barked out in response to the shooter.

"Jackal! Third floor, fourth window from the right!" Yumiko yelled. "I got the fucker!" She fired two shots through the polycrete walls and then everybody aimed at the windows. After three seconds of no movement Beckel tossed a grenade in the window for good measure.

"Who was hit?" I asked. "Marv!"

"It's Andy," he replied. "She needs a medic."

"Han, get over there!" I ordered. "Lima-One, we're going to put two men inside."

"Understood Lieutenant, opening rear doors."

"The needle didn't go completely through the chest piece before detonating," Han informed me, "but once it did it sent shrapnel through her chest."

"How much?" I asked.

"Not much, but you only need one piece for it to be lethal."

I cursed. We didn't have the equipment to remove the jagged pieces of metal from her chest here with us. Han could stabilize her and prevent her from bleeding out. If it came down to it he could even open her up in order to close a nicked artery, but if the shrapnel cut a lot of blood vessels then it was out of his hands.

"It doesn't look too serious," he was saying. "But she needs medical attention now."

"Get her in the Tortoise," I ordered. "And stabilize her."

We covered Marv and Han as they dragged the unconscious woman inside and placed her on the floor. Marv closed the doors as he jumped back out and banged on them to signal the driver to get moving.

"Why does our medic always get shot?" Sandor asked. "She can't help us if she's unconscious half the time."

"Takacs, shut the fuck up," Miri told him.

Whether I liked it or not he had a point. I would have to talk to Andy about situational awareness if she pulled through this one.

"Don't worry El-tee," Beckel said, patting me on the side. "I made it through worse, remember those spiker bayonets?"

"I do," I told him. "And she's a hell of a lot tougher than you are."

Beckel laughed. "Let's hope."

"Banshees!"

A unit large enough to have vehicle and air support in front of us and a Scarab building-killer behind. I was fairly confident that it could not get much worse, at least not very quickly.

The two Tortoises fired at the lead Banshee. Their machine guns tore through the front armor and killed the driver, bringing down the craft before it could let off a bomb. The second one didn't face the same trouble. It barrel-rolled to avoid the gunfire and dropped a fuel rod on Lima-Two. The battered Tortoise took the hit and shrugged it off like a champ, but I could see that a section of the IFV had dented inwards from the explosion.

"We can't take many more hits like that," Lima-Two said.

"Wiremu, take that down!" Jen barked at Api.

Api hefted his rocket launcher and fired at the Banshee. The missile quickly caught up and detonated, slamming the Banshee against a building wall and destroying it. The rest of the enemy unit was already moving around the corner of the next intersection and were taking position to fire at us.

"Move forward," I shouted. "We need a wall. Lima-One, I want you to place yourself behind a big car, keep my men safe."

"Yes, sir."

"Two, place yourself in front of him, I want a wall."

"Understood."

Jen was already signaling for her men to take positions on the sidewalks and close to the windows. If the Scarab decided to shoot at us we could jump inside the buildings in an attempt to avoid its blast of doom.

"Work in pairs when taking down brutes!" I ordered. "Target the same monkey before shooting, you know how hard it is to bring those fuckers down."

Al-Hassani's avatar appeared on my HUD. "Lieutenant, I managed to get two Gryphons to move to hit the Scarab. They can only waste a missile each."

"Gryphons?" I asked with a groan. "Really scraping the bottom of the barrel, are we?"

Al shrugged. "Better than nothing."

"Agreed. Target one of the leg joints. Two missiles won't be enough to bring it down."

"That was my consensus," Al said. "The Scarab will be unable to move for at least an hour. You'll hear them soon."

"Thanks Al. Frank out."

To the AI "soon" meant fifteen seconds. I heard the two atmospheric fighters fly overhead and the two missiles strike a second later. The explosions and groaning noises brought whoops and hollers from our ODST unit, but the strong opposition in front of us discouraged us from getting too cocky.

"Grenade!"

Some ODSTs dove out of the way of the blue explosion and the Tortoises redirected their fire to hit the offending alien.

"We can't keep firing at this rate without running out of ammunition," Lima-One informed.

"Target only high-ranking brutes or other high-value targets," Jen told him.

"Yes ma'am."

I frowned. I was used to call superior officers 'sir' regardless of gender. Oh well, I guess some things weren't the same all over the Corps. After all, the branch consisted of a couple hundred million brave men and women.

"Brute jumpers!" Miri shouted. "Watch out!"

The jet-pack brutes flew several dozen meters up in the air before they started coming back down. I targeted one that seemed like he would land close and fired at it. A couple of shots hit, but mostly I missed. The brute did indeed land a few feet away from me and turned with its spiker. It fired two shots that missed my head and then recoiled as I replied with far more accuracy. The brute took an involuntary step backwards even as I ran up to it. I took advantage of its stunned moment to jam my rifle into its mouth and fire a long burst. The brute's head was all but gone after I was done with it.

"Sir, get down!" Marv warned.

I ducked, landing on top of the bloodied brute. Several bursts of plasma crisscrossed the space above me before I dove behind one of the many cars that had been abandoned in the initial strike.

"Frank, my other two squads are being dropped in on that building two minutes from now," Jen called out. "Yours?"

"Still moving," I replied. "Pavel will tell me when he's close."

"Let's hope he gets to that point," Weller replied, obviously annoyed by all the aliens trying to kill her.

The nature of this encounter meant that we couldn't flank them or outmaneuver them. We couldn't call in for support seeing as everyone was under attack at the moment and the UNSC's priority would be to secure strategic positions, fight back attacks on strategic positions, and defend refugee camps in that specific order. We were pretty far down the list, and no matter how many favors I was owed there was no one that could get here faster than Galván or Pavel.

"Jumpers eliminated," Black said. "No casualties."

"Move up," Jen ordered. "Just a dozen meters and hold."

"Come on! You heard the lady!" Black urged his squad. "I want to be back home for breakfast!"

The squad moved up while the rest of us provided covering fire. They used a large bus as cover and started firing at the covvie positions form their locations. In return they started receiving a whole lot of plasma. The distraction that they provided served to give Yumiko an opening. The tiny sniper took out two brutes in three seconds before they pinpointed her location and started concentrating on her instead. Then Api fired the other rocket in his SPANKr at a large SUV, blowing it up and sending shrapnel through several grunts. The blazing vehicle also denied the covvies the use of that are as cover until the flames died. That wasn't bound to happen any time soon.

I squinted as I saw some movement.

"Caboose, watch out!" I yelled.

Caboose turned around at the sound of my voice and saw just what I was referring to. He jumped out of cover with a roll just as a bright orange ball flew at him. The ball exploded in a fireball and a brute stalker briefly materialized before disappearing again. I fired wildly at the position until a couple of shots hit it. Caboose dropped his MA5K and switched to his shotgun. The shimmering that my bullets caused was enough to give him a target. He blasted the towering brute in the chest with his shotgun and then fired another two blasts into its face for good measure.

"Sandor, I want you on thermal. See anything?"

"Hold on…negative, but I can't see the whole battlefield."

"Marv."

"Nothing here," he replied after a moment.

I grunted. "Lima-One, can you use thermal?"

"Affirmative Lieutenant, we'll keep an eye out for stalkers."

"Thanks," I said.

By that point there really wasn't much else to talk about. The two Tortoises were scanning around for anyone that tried to sneak past while gunning down any brute stupid enough to get out of cover. The rest of us took care of the grunts and the jackals. They were probably being ordered to keep shooting at us, but we were better trained and a lot deadlier. It wasn't long before the tide started sporadic plasma fire flew in our direction and the brutes were keeping their heads down.

"Move up, let's finish this," Staff Sergeant Black ordered. "Let's go!"

His squad moved up another dozen meters while Recon moved to the side and advanced through the sidewalk. I ordered my own men to move forward as well, leaving Jen and her ODSTs to provide cover for the rest of us. The three squads approached the enemy positions from different angles, killing a couple of jackals that tried to shoot at us.

There was a blur of movement and a brute chieftain jumped from a second floor window.

"Move!" Caboose yelled, raising his weapon.

The chieftain landed directly amongst Black's squad. Two ODSTs aimed at it before promptly being batted aside like rags. One of them landed on a car and the other slammed against the floor, skidding for a couple of meters before coming to a stop. The chieftain then hefted its huge war hammer with one hand and hit another ODST right in the chest with it. The poor man flew twenty meters into a wall, leaving a nasty blood splotch there. Black turned around, firing at the chieftain's back. The brute hit him with a backswing, sending him flying into a car.

One of the men in Black's squad was Beckel. He was one of the only two that hadn't been quickly eliminated. He raised his rifle and emptied half his magazine into the chieftain's face. The action only drew an angry roar from the creature. Even as the rest of us turned around to aim at it the chieftain didn't stop. He grabbed at Beckel's arm and yanked. I could hear the pop as his shoulder dislocated and actually thanked God for allowing Beckel to keep his arm.

"Concentrate your fire!" Jen ordered. "Shoot it!"

I didn't have to think twice. The three other squads hit the brute with everything we had, but its shields and armor held up. The chieftain reached behind its back and produced a concussion rifle. It fired three shots at my squad's position.

"Down!" Marv shouted.

"Snark, where the hell are you?"

"What's going on?" he asked. "El-tee, I'm almost within visual range!"

"Hurry it up!"

The chieftain kept us at bay with the explosive weapon, but eventually it ran out of ammunition. The brute used that moment to take another leap that seemed to defy gravity and jump wherever it had come from. It hung onto the window's ledge with one hand and gripped his hammer with the other one. One of the two Tortoises hit the brute right then, knocking it to the floor and kept on firing until the chieftain was nothing but bloody pulp.

"Fuckin–"

Three green lights flew from behind the enemy lines. I turned to look at the source and saw a grunt with a fuel rod cannon. I shot it even as I heard the explosions behind me. I turned back around to see Lima-Two being hit three times in quick succession. The transport seemed to stand there for a moment before blowing up violently. I found myself thankful that it had been Lima-Two and not Lima-One, otherwise I would be two men down.

"Fuck!" Jen cursed loudly.

"Caboose, secure the area!" I ordered. "Kill every fucker still there!"

The task didn't take long. There were only a couple of brutes and a few grunts left there. Recon quickly dispatched them with well-placed bursts and then declared the immediately neighboring area clear.

I jogged up towards Jen.

"…Black's alive, but he won't make it," her squad medic was telling her. "Logan and Reese are both dead."

"Reese?"

"His neck snapped from the blow," the medic explained. "Dead was instantaneous. And Logan…" he glanced at the bloody mark on one of the building's walls. "Well. Yeah."

"God damn!" Jen cursed. "Fuck. Is there no way to stabilize Micah?"

The medic shook his head. "Negative, sir. The hammer crushed his sternum and pretty much every rib. Some of the ribs seem to have punctured the lungs and heart. His organs are paste." He paused and shook his head sadly. "I'm sorry Lieutenant."

"Jen…" I said.

"Leave it," she grunted.

I knew how important Micah Black was, or had been, to her. The man had pretty much saved her from being fragged and helped her earn the respect of a particularly vicious unit of ODSTs. They had been together ever since she left Officer Candidate School. And now he was dead, unceremoniously batted aside by a brute chieftain.

"When a dog's backed against a corner it bites back," Schitzo said. "I always knew he wouldn't last long."

I tightened my grip on my rifle but otherwise said nothing.

"Beckel's fine, we just need to pop his shoulder back into place and give him some…a lot of painkillers."

I shook my head, leaving Jen to confer with her medic and moved over to see to Beckel. The man had served with me for a pretty long time. I was concerned for him, but glad he wasn't dead.

"Axel, seems like you made it."

He looked up, holding his limp arm. Han was already looking at him, having left Lima-One, and giving him a once over before preparing to fix his shoulder. The joint popped again and Beckel let out a grunt of pain.

"Thanks, sir," he grunted. "Staff?"

I shook my head. "Logan and Reese two."

"Damn," he shook his head. "They were good men… Api?"

I turned around to see Wiremu kicking the dead chieftain angrily. "Alive."

Half his squad had been killed in just a few seconds. He had a dislocated shoulder and the other guy that the brute had batted aside without any actual weapons was unconscious and probably had a concussion. I was glad that the brute hadn't decided to jump in the midst of my own squad.

"Come on," I told him, slinging his good arm over my shoulders. "You'll be fine."

"Thanks, sir," he replied. "I'm…I'm tired."

"We all are, Axel," I told him. "Let the drugs do their job and get some rest."

"Yeah…"

Han opened the doors of the surviving Tortoise and helped me sit down Beckel. We strapped him tightly and his head slumped over forward as he fell asleep.

"How is he?" I asked.

"He'll be fine. The bones are in place now, but I think that the ape tore several muscles. It'll take a while for them to mend, even with medication."

"At least he's alive," I muttered. "Andrea?"  
>Han looked at Andy. "She was very lucky. Her undersuit stopped a surprisingly large number of shrapnel fragments, and the ones that got through didn't hit anything vital. She needs to have them removed as soon as possible, otherwise–"<p>

"Yeah," I waved him away with a hand. "Good job."

"Thanks, sir."

I nodded and closed the door behind him. The four members of Recon out on the street had their weapons trained in all four directions while Jen's squad scanned for movement around the intersection. Jen was still conferring with her medic while he attended to the other survivor from the squad. He'd be packed inside the Tortoise as soon as he was given the all clear and then we'd move up as if nothing had happened.

I banged a couple of times on the front of Lima-One and a small slide slid open to reveal half a face.

"Yes, Lieutenant?"

"You guys good?" I asked.

"We knew what we were getting into," he replied, looking downward briefly. "We won't let you down."

I nodded. "Thanks Lima," I glanced back at the smoking Tortoise next to this one. "They were good men, brave men."

"Thanks, sir."

I banged on the hull a couple of times and walked up to the rest of my squad. Marv and Miri were crouching behind a car, their rifles aimed at the ground. Sandor was by himself, leaning against a wall inside a shop window. He kicked at a mannequins arm and shook his head.

"Damn fuckers," he said.

"It was a clever strategy," I replied. "We shouldn't have fallen for it."

"None of us saw it coming, sir," Miri told me. "It was an attack of desperation."

"That none of us saw coming," I reiterated. "We can't be that sloppy again. Next time it might be us dead on the pavement."

Marv looked at the Reese's broken body and shook his head before leaning back so that he could sit down. He rolled his neck and stretched his legs. "Fucking Covenant."

"Fucking Covenant," Miri agreed, the curse word sounding weird when it came from her.

"Frank, don't forget about the–" Schitzo began.

I snapped my head around as a loud mechanical noise flooded my ears. "The Scarab… Scarab!"  
>"Get him inside the Tortoise!" Jen ordered. "Get a move on!"<p>

Lima-One started moving up and stopped only to let Jen's medic put the banged up Helljumper inside. Han quickly strapped him to a seat and closed the hatches behind him. Lima-One rolled forward and took point with the rest of us taking positions behind and to the sides. The Scarab was moving now.

"Snark?"

"I can see you," he replied. "I've got fields of fire all the way down the street."

"Might be better if you don't make yourself visible," I told him. "Big-ass walker's about to turn the corner."

"We can provide cover Lieutenant." He paused. "Just saw the bodies. Weller's unit?"

"Black's squad," I replied. "Three men down."

"Yeah, I saw them."

I sighed. "Listen Snark, I won't order you away because, frankly, I'd love to have you two covering our asses, but you should probably run."

"Well, my commanding officers never did show me how to do that."

"What a bunch of dicks," I replied.

"Yeah, I'll cover your backs," he replied. "And so will Stan, won't you Stan?"**  
><strong>

"Yup."

_Wow, he got him talking again._

"Phantoms overhead!" Marv warned. "They're dropping hunters!"

Heaven picked that moment to turn my shit day into… well, a less shitty day.

"Frank, you hear me?"

"Pavel, thank God!" I exclaimed. "Where the hell have you been?"

"Ran into some Wraiths, had to take a detour."

"Do you have all of HW with you?"

"Yeah, even got ourselves a Gauss 'Hog."

"Good, but I have a feeling it won't be enough."

He chuckled. "Lizzo can put two rounds into the Scarab's joints before it can fire."

"It's one of the big ones Pavs."

"Holy shit… Well, I guess that Carver will have to help. You've got Api with you?"

"Yeah."

"He can join in on the fun."

"I can have the Tortoise shoot at it too."

Pavel was silent for a moment. "We might have a chance. After we bring it down what do we do?"

"We need it taken out," I said. "And we need to do that as fast as possible."

"We're two minutes away," he replied. "Hang tight."

We weren't jogging next to the Tortoise anymore. We were sprinting next to it. I can only imagine how frustrated the crewmembers must've felt. If I had been driving the thing I would've left us all behind and saved my own ass.

"Just be careful not to say that in front of Hayes," Schitzo warned. "Because of, you know... that one time you left her favorite cousin to die without a care."

One of the hunters fired at our group. Everybody scattered, jumping in different directions to avoid being burned to cinders. Recon took cover behind a pair of crashed sedans and started firing back at the Hunter. I used their distraction to pick myself back up and jump behind another car. The Tortoise turned its heavy machine gun and fired at the hunter. Even with its shield it couldn't stand up to the onslaught. "Target down," Lima-One reported. "We're low on ammo."

"Concentrate your fire on the other hunter," I ordered my men. "Take it out!"

Weller's men, who had a sturdy IFV in between them and the hunter took positions around the Tortoise and started firing at the second hunter.

"Api, take it out!" Jen cried.

Api raised his rocket launcher and took a second to aim at the alien. He let one rocket fly and I followed it with my eyes. The hunter crouched behind its shields and the rocket flew straight at it. For some strange reason the rocket actually_ bounced _off of the shield and spun a couple of times before blowing up without harming the hunter.

"Did the rocket…" Api trailed off.

"Just bounce off?" I finished.

"Fire again!" Jen shouted.

The hunter couldn't pull off the same trick twice in a row, this time the rocket punched through the shield and just turned the hunter into a giant pile of orange goo.

"Wasting rockets on a single infantry soldier. Yup," Api said. "Dear fucking God."

He had a point. Hunters were part of what made Covenant ground units so terrifying. They were basically giant trolls that could kill anything up to a Warthog if they didn't screw up too bad. They could certainly provide enough trouble for any UNSC unit below a platoon.

Luckily, we counted with Lima-One.

"What happened to the other Phantom?" Miri asked.

"Good question," Marv said.

"Oh shit, incoming!" Sandor cried.

The other Phantom was flying down the street, its heavy front cannon firing at us while the two door gunners shot us. I switched positions to take cover from them and fired full-auto at one of the grunts manning the turrets. The first couple of rounds missed, but the rest hit it in the arms and head. The grunt toppled over and slammed into the pavement just as Api hit the dropship with another pair of rockets.

"I'm out!" he warned.

"Hit the gunner!"

I cursed and ducked back behind the car as the Phantom's front cannon redirected its fire towards my position. A couple of heavy blasts shook the ground and I shouted angrily as gravel landed all over my head.

"Get out of there Lieutenant!" Marc cried out a warning.

I cursed again and jumped away from the car just before another pair of heavy blasts caused it to explode. The wall that I used for cover withstood another few blasts before it shattered and pieces of debris started falling off.

"What the fuck does this ass have against me?" I complained.

"It's dropping troops!"

The Phantom was indeed dropping troops. Two brutes jumped out with brute shots and started taking aim. One of them decided that me having to face the heavy cannon wasn't enough and turned to aim at me too. Just as it was about to let off a couple of shots its head jerked to the side and a bunch of blood and brains flew out of it.

"Snark, was that you?"

"Actually, sir, that was Stan."

"Thanks Zepeda," I thanked the sniper.

The other brute was hit a second later and the Phantom flew up, redirecting its fire towards the two snipers' position. I heard Snark cursing in a foreign language before he cut the line. I fired at the Phantom in an attempt to draw its attention as did everybody else on the ground. Lima-One lit it up with heavy machine gun rounds and promptly announced that it was out of ammo. The Phantom didn't stop and kept shooting at Snark and Stan's position.

"I see you!" Pavel shouted.

"What?"

Two white lines crossed the sky and hit the Phantom's engines. The dropship shook violently before crashing into a building and then spinning back down before crashing down onto the street. Three other bright lines of light made contact with the Phantom before it finally decided to blow up for good.

A Warthog slid to a stop and Pavel climbed out of the side seat. "Frank, why on Earth does trouble on this level keep finding you?"

I laughed and hugged him, slapping him in the back a couple of times. "What the hell took you so long?"

"We hit some traffic," he replied. Two other Warthogs stopped behind the first one and the gunners aimed at different directions. "Where the hell's Andy?"

"In the Tortoise. So's Beckel and another guy. Han's in there taking care of them."

Pavel looked around, no doubt scanning the ODSTs with his helmet. "Snark?"

"Over there, you just saved his ass."

"Yours too," he reminded me. "Come on, we need to get moving the Scarab's–"

The Scarab was right about to fry us all, its main gun was powered up and aiming straight at us.

"Move, move, move!" Jen shouted. "Lima-One, get the wounded out of here!"

By this point the two crewmembers on board the Tortoise were way past their normal limit. Urban combat was all good and well provided you were the one with the big guns, but facing a Scarab was something that nobody should have to go through.

The IFV sped up and burst through a pair of cars before turning around a corner. Pavel ordered his men to back up their Warthogs and Jen moved her men out of the way. We moved quickly, but the Scarab had already turned the corner.

"Snark, hit the gunners!" I shouted. "I need you to kill the gunners and get the hell out of that building!"

"Yes, sir!"

The Scarab fired its main cannon, aiming for one of the Warthogs. Whoever was driving it saw it coming the moment the weapon started powering up and banked hard to the left, disappearing around the same corner the Tortoise had gone through.

"Pavel, who's on that Warthog?" I asked, blinking after the bright green flash.

"Ramirez, Dotsenko, and d'Arc," he replied. "Why?"

"Have them leave the Warthog, I want them to climb five or six floors on that building over there, you see it?"

Pavel paused for a moment. "Very well then. How do we herd this thing over there?"

"Just make sure it keeps missing."

"Not as easy as it rounds Frank," he grunted. "But we might pull it off."

"We don't have a chance," Jen chimed in. "Leave the 'Hog close by. I'll have a few of my men man it."

I nodded at Pavel.

"Yes, sir," he told Jen. "Right away."

By the time the Scarab's cannon had cooled off enough for it to fire again we were all out of the street. The plans called for us to sprint one block away from the street the Scarab was in, then move up in the street paralel to that one, and then go back to the street where the Scarab was in, all while keeping ahead of the huge walker. It was a lot of sprinting, but the covvies were scattered and still trying to get their shit together while we pounded away at their positions.

By we I mean the UNSC units with armored and air support.

"I hate running," Miri huffed as we stopped just short of exposing ourselves to the Scarab.

"Pavel, move your Warthogs… now!"

The three jeeps roared and moved forward. The men on the guns fired at the Scarab, knowing full well that they probably wouldn't do any damage. The two regular Warthogs aimed at the Scarab's deck, but the Gauss 'Hog shot twice at the walker's front legs, denting the heavy armor that covered them. The Scarab stopped to aim and only just missed the tail of the last 'Hog.

"All clear!" Bamber called out.

"Pavel, move up the next intersection," I ordered. "This time see if you can hit the leg a couple extra times."

"We're on the move."

Jen looked at me and gave me a quick nod. I tapped Marv in the shoulder and he rolled his neck from side to side. All of a sudden he took off. I immediately lunged after him, knowing that the rest of the ODSTs behind me would be sprinting as fast as they could as well. Running out in the open with a weapon designed to dig mines aiming at you.

We made it just before the Scarab fired again. I thanked my luck for making the gunner a goddamned idiot. That had given Pavel and his Warthogs a small opening. They used it to their full advantge. They appeared one intersection further down the road ten seconds later and this time the Gauss cannon managed to fire three times before they had to pull out.

"Snark, are you with Ramirez?"

"You mean Burly Russian and–"

"Yes, them!" I interrupted. "How long until the Scarab comes right beneath you?"

Snark took his sweet time answering. "Shit, El-tee. You want us to jump on top of it?"

"Yes."

"There's five of us!"

"I reckon you already took out half the crew."

"Two of us have sniper rifles!"

"Snark. Do it."

"Fine. I'll do it Lieutenant, but only because it's gonna get me laid."

"Be sure to film it," I reminded him. "Prick."

Jen and her team took off and a second later I sent Recon behind them. I stayed back with Marv, Miri, and Sandor, waiting for Snark and the others to make their move. As soon as the Scarab was beneath them they rapelled onto the deck. I couldn't see it from down here, but I heard the gunfire well enough. There was almost no plasma fire to respond to it.

"Drop us a rope," I ordered. A moment later two cables appeared from the Scarab. Marv and I immediatelly grabbed onto one and started climbing. It was a lot easier than it had been back in high school, especially considering that I was trained to this kind of thing. I pulled myself up and Zepeda offered the barrel of his sniper rifle to help me up. I hoped that he had the safety on and dragged myself back to my feet before helping Marv. Sandor and Miri were already climbing up.

"Marv, hold the ramp," I ordered. "Stan, is this deck clear?"

He nodded.

"Good, go upstairs and tell us if anything aproaches."

Stan nodded again and took off.

I helped both Miri and Sandor up the deck and we headed towards the ramp that led into the Scarab itself. Several corpses littered the Scarab's top deck, most of them were grunts and jackals, but there was a brute captain and a pair of lower ranking apes.

"What's going on?" I asked.

"We've got two or three brutes holding us off. They've got plasma rifles, but they move on us whenever we stop firing," Snark replied.

"Can't you make the bullet ricochet?" Sandor asked him.

Everybody turned to look at him.

"This isn't a videogame, idiot," I said.

Marv gave him a dope slap.

"Ramirez, Dotsenko," I adressed the two gunners. They both nodded sharply but didn't stop aiming down the ramp. Both of you will keep firing on the left side, nonstop. Marv and Sandor will go down pressed against the right. D'Arc, I want you to aim at the right, but don't fire unless a brute actually shows up." I turned to look at my two volunteers. "You two have any grenades left?"

"Two," Marv said.

"I'm out," Sandor replied.

I handed Sandor my last frag and Marv hit him in the back of the head once more.

"Toss the grenades, clear both sides and then pull back a meter. We'll move down the ramp, take the bottom and then wipe out anything inside this stupid thing, ok?"

"Yes, sir!"

"Ramirez, Dotsenko, fire!"

The roar of their SAWs made my ears ring. Marv and Sandor started moving down the ramp. Their body language indicated that they were indeed uncomfortable near a stream of bullets flying inches next to their heads. The two gunners, however, didn't seem worried at all. After all, it wasn't their head blowing up if they missed.

Both of my squadmates made it down and tossed their frags without incident. One of the explosions sent a brute flying into view and they both tossed their flashbangs inside the control room immediatelly.

"Move, move," I ordered. "More flashbangs!"

The loud detonations were amplified by the enclosed space, and even with my helmet's protection I could feel my ears throbbing in protest. The three men from Pavel's squad didn't need a direct order to move. Ramirez and d'Arc moved on the left and Dotsenko on the right. They fired their SAWs at targets that I couldn't see, but a few seconds later they stopped.

"Clear," d'Arc called out, her voice dripping with satisfaction.

"Great job," I allowed myself to say. "I want pictures of every inch of this room, scan the place with your helmet, ONI might feel grateful if we do."

My men moved in on the alien room and made a point to look at every last piece of wiring and paneling.

"Lieutenant, the two Gryphons are in range, they need you to paint the target to– Oh, I see you already took care of it." Al sounded suitably impressed, and it was pretty hard to impress and AI enough for it to drop from monotone or sarcastic. I was profd. Of myself. Sure, my men had done most of the leg work, but I had come up with the plan crazy enough to pull it off.

"Keep up with the program, Al," I teased the artificial intelligence.

"I'm keeping up with a hundred different programs, literally. You're just not that important, Lieutenant. No offense."

I laughed. "Redirect those Gryphons and patch me up to Captain Galván, he's going to be damn happy that we did his job for him."

"Oorah!" my team agreed.

I walked out of the control room and beckoned for Zepeda to come over. He looked around and placed his rifle's butt on the floor before looking at me and depolarizing his visor.

"Did we just highjack a Scarab?"

* * *

><p><em>Thanks to SilasWhitfield for proofreading this chapter. I saw that some of you commented on his not so good proof-reading and talked to him about it. If this persists I'll see about getting an additional proofreader.<em>

_Finally made it to 1000 reviews! Thanks everybody, I couldn't have made it without you._

_Johnson stole the ending of Halo 2 from Frank. Damn copycat. Because I most definitely didn't play the ending of Halo 2 after writing this chapter. Well, I think I should have more missions with Armadillos and Tortoises (google Stryker IFV) because the way I picture those things they are just too badass. They make it easier to face down bigger covvies such as brutes and hunters. Plus, they just sound cool in my head. Interesting point, Frank barely took part in the hijacking of the Scarab, he was the one with the idea but it was his men who did most the legwork. I wonder if he would be proud about it or just annoyed that he didn't get the lion's share of the killing._

_Well, I wrote the first arctic warfare chapter and started writing the beginning of the next one. As you know I use a three chapter buffer system in case I lose an arm or something like that and need some time to get used to typing again and you want to get some reading done. Well, I can tell you that I had fun writing it and the next one will feature some heavy duty snowstorms. Before I forget, I have most of this battle planned, but there is some space open for suggestions. If you want anybody from the games or books (worry not, Johnson will get his due glory, but it might be a while) to appear in the battle, please let me know._

_Which Spartans do you want to show up? So far I've only had Blue Team and a few Spartan-IIIs. There's plenty of space for more. Oh yes. If you have suggestions feel free to leave them down there._

_Stay strong._

_-casquis_


	170. Errands

Chapter CLXX: Errands

**February 17, 2549 (UNSC Calendar)/three days later**

**Temporary Firebase Scarab, Udinia, Paris IV, Paris**

* * *

><p><em>"Boredom is rage spread thin."– Paul Tillich<em>

* * *

><p>"That's official!" Sandor exclaimed. "We've been stuck here for three days now!"<p>

"You're free to look outside if you want," Marv said.

Sandor shook his head. "And get my head blown off? No thank you."

He had a point, jackal snipers had scattered all over the city. We could spot a lot of them with the help of sattelites and drones, but the troops that had been dropped a few days ago had managed to set up enough SAM batteries to make flying dangerous. At first I had thought that the covvie ship could've only dropped a couple hundred troops at most, but the ship had apparently emptied its hangar bays as it passed by.

The inside of the Scarab could've been worse. It was strong enough to withstand anything short of massed artillery fire and spacious enough to house my platoon and what was left of Jen's. Not that we were working at full capacity either, seeing as Han and Andy had left with the injured on Lima-One, but we hadn't heard from them since I last saw that IFV turn the corner.

I stood up. My butt was beginning to lose its feeling.

"Going somewhere?" Pavel asked me.

"Checking up on the perimeter," I grunted. "Don't wait up."

I grabbed my rifle and made sure that there was a bullet in the chamber before climbing out the ramp. As soon as I was out in the open I ducked and moved towards the improvised gangplank that connected the Scarab's deck with the building next to it. I ran and jumped inside the window. Fortunately, no jackal spotted me quickly enough to take a shot at me.

"Hey El-tee," Snark called. He was sitting down behind an overturned table, his helmet next to him. On his other side he had an ammunition box for his sniper rifle and a couple of candy wrappers. "Lovely day, isn't it?"

It wasn't.

"Jackals have been quiet lately," he went on. "They've only tried to hit me twice." He pointed at two black scorch marks that looked fresher than the rest. "Best I can tell there are at least three snipers focused on me and the Scarab at all times."

"One on that building across the intersection and two on the one across the street, right?" I asked.

"Far as I can tell," he replied with a short nod. "Hey El-tee, remember how Galván promised to get us a few tanks and a couple of platoons to help with the Scarab?"

I nodded. "Yeah."

"Whatever happened to those?"

"We took out the Scarab by ourselves, he redirected his armored units to face a unit of Locusts."

"Have you heard anything from him? Or for anybody else for that matter?"

I shook my head. "The Covenant must've put up some kind of jammers, because nothing works."

He patted his own helmet in agreement. Zepeda was a few floors above us right now, no doubt sitting with his back against a wall and waiting for an order to provide sniper cover. The best range my helmet had right now was abouthundred meters. I couldn't talk to anybody further than that without some serious amount of static blocking the conversation. The covvies weren't exactly innovative, still using the same tactics, weapons, and vehicles that they had been at the beginning of the war, but they were just so advanced that it still worked for them.

"Heard anything from Stan?" he asked.

I shook my head.

"I'll go check on him in a while, I guess."

"You're awfully talkative today, Snark."

"I've been alone here for almost two days El-tee, of course I'm talkative."

I shrugged and walked on my hunches to a column across the room. "I'm going to check on our other positions."

"I'll be right here," he replied. "Good luck."

"I'll try not to get myself shot."

After I was behind the damaged column I stood up and walked towards the stairwell. From there I climbed down a couple of floors, stepping over the bodies of two grunts and kicking their heads for good measure. Once I was on the lobby I crossed a part of the building and ran through the collapsed windows as fast as I could. A couple of needles shattered safely behind me as I ran past, but none were close. It was obvious that the Covenant were as bored with this as we were.**  
><strong>

After the windows turned into good solid wall I stopped running. A section of the ceiling here had collapsed, but the metal bars hadn't bent or broken, making the ceiling into a ramp that led to the second floor. The only reason that I had taken this route was because the aisle that connected to this section of the second floor was completely blocked by debris from the third floor. Annoying, but there was nothing we could do about it without wasting what little explosives were left.

One of Weller's men greeted him from behind a pair of drawers packed together. "Sir."

"Lieutenant Weller hasn't moved."

"Thanks," I replied, patting him on the shoulder.

I walked past through the battered aisle, thankful that there weren't any windows here either. Well, there was one window, but it was pretty narrow. Two men were sitting down on either side of it and motioned for me to hold. They both peeked out quickly and then motioned for me to run past them. I ran two long steps and then settled down into a walk again.

"El-tee, come to check on the grunts?" Api asked, getting up from in between a couple of desks that he had fashioned to be his room. He had his useless SPANKr with empty tubes leaning next to him, but I noted that he was keeping his assault rifle closer than he usually did.

"More or less," I told him. "Bored?"

"You have no idea," he grunted. "El-tee, we've been waiting here for three days now. No combat, no reinforcements, no contact with anybody else. I mean, if we wereactually fighting we would at least have something to focus on."

"You'd rather be fighting?" I asked as a couple of explosions faded in the background.

He shook his head. "'Course not… we're just on edge. All of us."

I nodded. "Haven't had any word from Beckel or Serge, I take it?"

"Beckel? No." He shrugged and rolled his massive shoulders. "Serge, I'm beginning to think that the UNSC unit that's pinned down a block that way consists of our two missing squads."

I nodded, only just remembering that Jen had called for her two other squads to rejoin us right before we had taken the Scarab out. The mess that this battle had become only an hour after that had prevented them from reaching us, but if they were just a block away it meant that we could link up with them if shit became serious. I just hoped that Api's theory was right, because Helljumpers beat regular jarheads any time.

I took a step forward, closer to Api, and lowered my voice. "How's Jen?"

"Lieutenant's doing fine, still pretty angry that we lost three men, but she's angry with herself. At least she's not taking it out on us. A little bit snappier than usual, but nobody blames her."

"Is she fit to command?"

"Damn right she is, it'll take more than that to break Lieutenant Weller," Api said, actually sounding slightly offended. I was actually kind of glad that he was loyal to his new lieutenant, but at the same time it also hurt that he seemed to be taking her side against me.

"Good," I said. "Good."

It had been so long since I had lost a man under my command that I was beginning to think that I wouldn't be able to handle it if it happened again. ONI had given me the absolute best to work with when they assembled Reaper Squad. I had handpicked them to suit my needs and commanded them in a way that increased our effectiveness way past what one would expect of a small squad. After that I had moved on to the _Flawless_ and had been made squad leader of yet another top-notch squad. Certainly not as good as Reaper, but they had handled themselves pretty well. Now I was in charge of a whole platoon, and even though I'd lost a man, he hadn't died. Lizzo had lost half his hands but could still fight and Hoff was already walking after having his left all but burned away. Sometimes I imagined that Andy didn't make it to a doctor in time and it pissed me off. If I were to lose someone… well, let's just say that it wouldn't be good for me.

"What are the odds of that unit being Serge and your two other squads?"

Api seemed to consider it for a second. "Pretty high, I'd say. They were supposed to be coming from that direction and they seem to have some pretty nice fire discipline."

"Can we coordinate to take out the units that have them pinned down?"

"Not sure, you'd have to talk to Mei about that."

"Yumiko, right. Where's the sniper?"

"Two floors above us?"

"Three," another ODST corrected.

"Three," Api muttered. "Damn, but that girl can shoot."

I nodded. I hadn't seen Yumiko in action, but from the mission reports and shooting scores I could tell that she was pretty above the average score for a sniper. For a moment I wondered why most Helljumper sharpshooters were that way.

"Elite corps, perhaps?" Schitzo suggested. "But I might be wrong. They did take _you_ in."

"You talk to her," I told Api. "Ask her if it's possible to cause some damage. If it is, send a runner my way and I'll have Snark or Zepeda come on over to provide support."

"A little bit of machine gun support would be nice."

"I already gave you Dotsenko and Lizzo. If you want to approach Sarah just tell me and I'll give her a message from you." A couple of the nearby ODSTs laughed half-heartedly before returning to whatever they were doing. I wasn't surprised to see a man reading a binder of what could've only been boring office documents. I didn't really blame him. I was lucky to have saved a few books on my helmet, even if reading on my HUD was as uncomfortable as it got.

"Out of your chain of command and you're still ordering me around," Api mused. "Oh well."

I really didn't want any more complaints from subordinates who still thought that I was a noncom so I just walked past him. The few windows on this side of the building were mostly covered with planks from desks and cushions. The few that Jen had left intact didn't have glass anymore and were only used to discourage enemy movements with occasional sniper fire or machine gun bursts.

The place was a mess. Three had ripped cushions from chairs and sofas to turn them into makeshift beds and a few of them had started burning desks and documents to keep warm. The city wasn't cold enough for snow this time of the year, but it still gotpretty cold. I hadn't really felt the cold on the FOB's barracks or the courtyard itself. There had been reports of small-scale orbital bombardment, but it might've been a little bit soon for the dust to cool down the atmosphere. Who knows, I'm not a scientist.**  
><strong>

I walked past another two ODSTs warming their hands over a small fire. I was tempted to step on it, but I controlled my baser instincts and instead went around. I noticed the holes in the wall. Some were from regular bullets, but others were from beam and needle rifles. It was kind of unnerving to know that if a jackal decided to try its luck I could find myself with an additional hole in my body.

"Banshees, heads down!"

I ducked and pressed my back against the wall, covering my head with my hands. I could hear the screaming from the craft before the plasma bolts and fuel rods hit. The pilot must've missed with the heavy explosive, because I could feel the shaking from below me. The regular plasma bolts hit the wall and made it shake. A couple of the more stable plasma bolts managed to punch through sections of the wall that had been weakened beforehand.

"Anybody hurt?" someone asked.

I waited for everybody to confirm that they were indeed safe and sound before standing up.

"El-tee?"

"I'm fine," I replied. "As you were."

Everybody returned to normal, a trio of ODSTs returned to their card game after straightening the cards on the floor and another two Helljumpers resumed their conversation like nothing had happened. It wasn't an unusual sight. For the last few days we had been constantly harassed by the covvies. Mostly it was limited strikes and some small raids, but as soon as the danger passed everything returned to normal.

Jen was in the large corner office that had been fortified to serve as a machine gun nest. Her squads had piled up the sturdier pieces of furniture against the windows and stuck them there with anything they could find. The barricade was held up with anything ranging from recycled nails to scotch tape. I could see that by the time they were about done with the barricade they hadn't even bothered with taking apart the furniture. There was an intact chair piled over a broken desk.

"Frank, what are you doing here?" Jen asked. She had her helmet off and was checking some hand-drawn maps. There were several discarded sheets of paper on the floor around her. It seemed like she had tried to get the perfect map before settling for the one she was using.

"Good to see you too," I replied. I glanced at the discarded paper and gestured at it with a small questioning shrug. "Not much of an architect, are we?"

"My dad wanted me to be a doctor, guess that didn't work out to well for him," she replied without glancing up at me. "Hey come and tell me what you think about this."

I approached her and looked at the map. I was actually kind of impressed. Lots of straight lines and enemy positions were clearly marked. She had even taken the time to draw the cars and trucks on the neighboring streets.

"We're here, right?" She pointed at the Scarab and the section of the building under our control. "This part right here is unsecured, but to get there the covvies would have to get past them." She pointed at the two gunners that I had lent her.

"Dotsenko, Lizzo," I greeted them. "How's the hand?"

"Getting better," Lizzo replied, raising his left hand to show that the digits were still missing. "I'm beginning to think they might grow back." Dotsenko elbowed him and they both went back to aiming out the windows with their machine guns.

"As I was saying," Jen resumed, "We're pretty much safe from anything short of a dedicated assault. We're good on ammunition and have enough food to last a couple of weeks."

"Yes…" I said, motioning for her to go on.

"I think that the unit right across the intersection–"

"That they are your two other squads, yes. Api told me."

"Well, if they are, we could stage a small strike on the covvie platoon in between us and have them come over."

I nodded. "We could always use the extra men, but if we leave this building–"

"We'll be under attack from every direction, yes," Jen finished. "I've been trying to come up with some plans. We could reach them like this…" She traced an L-shape from our position to a building across the street and then to a building that was in a diagonal from this one. "But we'd increase our time out in the street and Mei tells me that there are snipers down this street."

I nodded. "Going directly across would expose us to fire form here, here, and here?"

"Yeah. Here too."

"Which would be bad."

"Very bad."

"So we can't approach directly or indirectly without suffering casualties," I said.

"And we can't take out all the sharpshooters before they start shooting back."

Dotsenko turned halfway around. "Sewers?"

"Not all sewers are big enough to walk in," I reminded him. "Some are big enough to crawl through."

"I checked, you could barely fit a large man in the ones that run directly below us."

"And a small man?" Dotsenko asked.

"No way anybody is going to volunteer for that, Sasha," Lizzo said.

"Will you two please be quiet?" Jen asked.

"Dotsenko, Lizzo, shut the fuck up," I said at the same time.

The jerked their heads back and resumed their watch-towering.

Jen smiled slightly and nodded at me in thanks. "We need something that can provide cover from at least two sides."

"The Warthogs?" I suggested.

"They'd just shoot the engines."

"If we had some welding equipment we could just weld some metal desks to the back and have someone push the cars. I wish we still had a Tortoise or a 'Dillo…"

"You're not the only one," Jen said in agreement. "I'll try to come up with something. Are you going to stay here?"

I shook my head. "I'm headed for the Warthogs," I told her. "Gonna check on the guys."

She nodded. "Keep your head down."

"I'll try not to get myself shot."

I walked back through the hallway and down the ceiling/ramp. Instead of running through the section with the shattered windows I turned around and went through a supply closet. I exited on the inside of the building, happy that there were at least two walls in between me and the Covenant. This part of the building looked almost like it would on a normal day. There was a thin layer of dust covering everything, but other than that everything was in perfect order.

Two Warthogs were parked inside one next to the other and the other one was positioned so that its turret could cover a hundred and eighty degrees. If Snark or Zepeda saw any movement they'd radio down to whoever was down here and tell them. These three machine guns were one of the main reasons why the covvies stayed well clear of us.

Right now Miri was down here. She was sitting down on a small chair, looking like she was about to fall asleep. Dana and Carver were both using the two spare 'Hogs to rest in. I was certain that they were asleep. I slapped Carver's head to wake him up.

"What?!" he exclaimed, shocked.

I grabbed his grenade launcher and shoved it at his chest. "Don't fall asleep again."

Dana had been woken up by the noise and promptly jumped down from the Warthog and grabbed her assault rifle. I could see her Spartan Laser on top of the Warthog's hood. At least she hadn't left it lying where she couldn't reach it.

"Wake up!" I shouted. "You're supposed to be watching one whole flank!"

Miri shook violently, fumbling with her rifle before managing to calm herself down. "Geez lieutenant," she muttered. "Scared the hell out of me."

"At least I'm not running an energy sword through you," I told her. "Don't fall asleep again Miri."

"But I didn't!" she complained.

I waved my hand and she promptly shut up. "Whatever. Have you had any trouble?" Miri shook her head. "Bamber, what can you tell me?"

"Ummm, right. We haven't had much activity lately. The snipers haven't tried to shoot at us ever since Carver took two of them out yesterday. They can't hit us from any window above the third floor, and the ones below are well within our range."

"I know that Dana, any new developments?"

She shook her head. "Not really."

I nodded. "How are you? All of you."

Miri and Dana glanced at each other in that way that women often do and Carver just shrugged.

"I'm really bored," Carver said. "I haven't gotten to shoot at anything since yesterday."

"Do you really want something to shoot at?" Dana asked.

"It's preferable to being shot at," he snapped back.

Miri supressed a snicker. "We're bored," she said.

"And sleepy," I muttered. "So none of you have any mental conditions I should be worried about?"

"Oh, the irony!" Schitzo shouted loudly.

"My eyes are irritated," Miri said. "But other than–"

"Having red eyes is not a mental condition," Dana noted.

"If you approach it from a metaphysical standpoint it is," Carver chimed in. "Or maybe she's just stoned."**  
><strong>

"For the love of God," I muttered. "Just don't fall asleep. I'll send your replacements later."

"Yes, sir," Carver said.

"Thanks Lieutenant," Bamber replied.

On the way back I almost got hit a couple of times. In fact, one of those times I was so close to being shot through the balls that I had Yumiko take out the jackal that shot me. I mean, the hair on my balls had been burnt by the beam, figuratively of course, I hadn't had the time to trim down there in ages. Yumiko reported success and I walked back towards the Scarab.

"I see you still have all your limbs," Snark noted. "I heard Mei shooting, a jackal's beam got uncomfortably close?"

I nodded. "Fuckers are good when it comes to shooting, I'll give them that."

Snark nodded. "Something about being able to slow down their heart rate… and something about being able to hold their breath for a very long time. I think that they also have eyesight twice as good as ours, but I guess that they need that to keep up."

"We get it, you're better than them," I said, rolling my eyes. "I don't have to remind you that I'm better than them too. Oh wait, I am. Funny thing, you're not that unique."

"Well, thanks Lieutenant."

"You're welcome," I replied. Sometimes my men needed someone to knock them down a couple of pegs.

It might've been a bit of a dickish thing to do, but my men needed to be reminded that they weren't as good as me. Don't get me wrong, I wasn't the only one that did that. It was a popular Helljumper officer technique to constantly remind their subordinates that they had been through everything that they were going through and survived. It served to keep the underlings' respect. People were more likely to follow a man they considered… well, harder to kill.

The catwalk to the Scarab proved to be sturdy enough and I walked back inside the control room. The inside was illuminated enough in account of the luminescent panels and some holographic terminals that were still functional.

"Hey Frank, glad you're back," Pavel said, standing up and approaching me. "Hey, we've been thinking."

"Well that's a new–"

"About," Pavel cut me off, "something important. You know how the holograms are still flickering?"

"Yeah, they keep me up at night."

"Well, if they work it means that at least a section of the Scarab should be intact. I know it's a long shot, but we could try to get this thing moving." Pavel cracked his knuckles. "You know, I've always wanted to drive one of these big boys."

"Pavel, we don't even know how to drive this thing."

"I know, we just hit random buttons until we know what each one does."

I looked up. "Sure, why the hell not."

"Wow, really? I thought you'd say no."

"What can I say? I'm bored as hell too."

Sandor and Marv were beginning to get up and some of the other men in here also seemed interested.

"Pavel, you drive. I'll radio everybody about what we're attempting to do and make sure that they know it's your fault when we fail horribly."

"Ha-ha," Pavel muttered as I radioed in our intentions.

"…so don't be surprised. Here we go."

"Captain's Log, Entry One. First attempt with captured enemy walker," Pavel said. "Here we go."

He tapped a glyph on the main hologram terminal to no result. He muttered something and attempted to hit another button. After three failed attempts Marv suggested that maybe he needed to turn the thing on before trying to move it. There was some scattered laughter around the control room and Pavel promptly ordered everyone to shut up. He examined the glyphs with more care this time and stood in front of the largest one.

"That's probably the fir–" I began.

The front cannon whirred and the entire thing shook violently as a long stream of green plasma flew directly into the building in front of us. I looked around nervously and heard the rocks falling on the other side of the street.

"Snark, Stan?" I asked.

"Damn El-tee, Pavel knocked down half the building," Snark told me. "And at least two jackals with it."

"Hit it again," I ordered.

Pavel laughed. "This is awesome."

The next blast shattered the other half of the building. According to Snark at least.

"We need to see what we're shooting at."

"Hit more buttons," Sandor suggested. "That always works."

I was surprised then the third button that Pavel tapped turned on a holographic screen. It looked grainy, probably from some minor damage to the systems, but it looked like there was no wall in between us and the outside world. I had always wondered how they managed to see out of these things, let alone steer and fire them.

"Huh," Pavel mused. "Go figure."

Pavel hit several more buttons and spun a circular hologram. Apparently that's whatever turned the tail cannon. Pavel was beginning to get excited about this. I'm not going to lie to you, if we managed to get this thing under our control we would bust through any and all covvie defenses without a scratch.

"Careful now, don't want to shoot our own building," I warned Pavel. "Might want to take it easy."

Pavel nodded and started prodding and pressing a several buttons at the same time. After about fifteen minutes of careful experimentation the Scarab whirred and stood taller.

"This is it, this is it!" Pavel exclaimed. "Here we go!"

The Scarab took a step forward and its legs shook. After another step I was beginning to imagine the city burning under our feet. Perhaps not UNSC troops or refugees, but it was a pretty appealing image. If you think about it the idea of a Scarab it's pretty cool. Most of the time you only think about them as an enemy. If only we had our own Scarabs.**  
><strong>

The walker took one more giant step before something metallic groaned and the whole thing slammed down flat on its belly.

I grunted and pushed myself up from the floor. "Damn Pavel."

"Captain's Log. Mission is a failure, I repeat–"

"Shut up," I groaned. "Snark, how bad are we?"

"Hold up," he said through heavy laughter. "Actually, it's not that bad. One of the legs is stretched all the way into the building. Should provide cover if you want to come here."

"Well, that's not that bad," I grunted. "What about** t**he other legs?"

"The rear left leg is also stretched out, could provide some cover if we move a couple of cars to finish up the wall… the front right leg is underneath the body and the left one looks like it snapped."

"Why the hell did it fail?" Pavel asked. "It was all going so well."

I only just resisted the urge to hit him in the back of the head. I would've certainly done it had Ramirez and d'Arc not been here with us. He wouldn't have liked me undermining him in front of his men. Instead I shoved pushed his shoulder back down and forced him to try and get up again. It was less embarrassing that way.

"Damn Sarge," Ramirez said. "I thought you were a good driver."

"Shut it," Pavel snapped. "Fuck…"

I groaned loudly and sat back down on the floor, taking off my helmet and placing it on its side to use as a pillow. "Pavel, you get watch on the Warthogs with Ramirez and Sandor. Switch with Dana, Miri, and Carver in thirty minutes. If they're sleeping feel free to hit them as hard as you want."

"And you?" Pavel asked.

"I'll be sleeping, because I'm the lieutenant."

"Right," Pavel muttered, shrugging. "Does Marv get to watch the ramp?"

"Yup," I replied. "Marv, you heard him."

He sighed. "Right."

I sighed, echoing Marv and closed my eyes. It was hard to admit to myself that I was susceptible to boredom as my men were. My eyes were beginning to hurt, and I was tired as hell. I wanted to catch some sleep, but every time I dozed off some problem came up. I hadn't really organized my men because we didn't think we would be here this long. I understood the confusion, but if twenty grown adults couldn't get organized without my supervision… well, then we had a problem.

Right as I began to fall asleep I heard a familiar click and the sound of static. It was coming from my helmet.

I sat up and put my helmet back on. The HUD flickered on and I noticed that several channels that had been offline for three straight days were working now. Three seconds later the whole net was flooded with chatter. I winced from all the different voices, but then my helmet started blocking off the ones not addressed to me. Eventually I got two different lines. One of them was from Battalion One from the _Flawless_, with Lieutenant Commander Becker and Captain Galván exchanging their current situations. At least they were both alive.

The other line was from my own company. Captain Hayes and Yas were talking about something that I didn't understand, probably their current situation. I blocked that line and interrupted Becker and Galván.

"Commander, Captain, sorry to interrupt."

"Castillo, glad to see you're still alive," Galván said.

"Likewise Lieutenant," Becker added. "Need anything?"

I thought about it. "I hate asking for party favors, but we could really use four or five Tortoises. If you can't spare those a pair of Scorpions to clear the area would be nice."

"I'll see what I can do," Becker said. "But you'll owe me one."

"Of course, Commander."

"No problem, now, if you could give us some privacy…"

"Of course, Castillo off."

I immediately unblocked the company line. "This is Castillo coming in, what just happened."

"Castillo, I see you're still alive," Hayes said. The contempt she felt for me was quite evident in her voice. "My platoon and Two neutralized the Covenant jammer."

"Thanks Captain," Dom came in. "We've been in the dark for ages. What's the situation on the city?"

"Reports are still coming in, but it seems like we managed to hold on to most of the city. "It looks like they landed mostly on the contested sections of Udinia," Yas said. "They wanted to reinforce the remaining Covenant units."

"Their mistake," Dom said. "Weller, you there?"

"Yeah, half my platoon's holed up with Five. Give me a moment will ya? I need to confirm whether the rest is still alive."

Jen disappeared from the line and Dom started reporting his situation. He had been forced to repel several attacks on the Onager cannon he was defending and after that they had been redeployed in the suburbs to help with the evacuation of a refugee camp that had come under attack. He had seen mostly low intensity combat and his unit was fine.

Yas and Hayes had managed to stick together throughout the three days of radio silence, but they had each lost a man each and had several injured. They didn't have the advantage of a fortified position and had to keep moving. They had been very proactive and when they localized the jammer they immediately took it out.

"Three and Five are fine," I reported. "We holed up in the Scarab we took out–" I loved saying that, "–and held here. One of Jen's squads was almost wiped out by a chieftain, Api is the only one still here with us. My own men are fine, couple of scratches."

"We're still at full capacity then," Hayes mused. "Well, mostly at least. Apparently Battalion One is fine, but I hear that Two got hammered pretty hard. I'm not sure about their situation yet, but it doesn't look good."

"Can we contact Command?" Yas asked.

"They'll contact us," Hayes replied. "They're probably reaching out to division right now. They'll contact us as soon as they need something done. We'll wait until they do."

"Sir, Becker might be sending a unit my way in order to link up. If he does Three and Five will probably provide support for them."

"You didn't contact me beforehand?"

"Uh, no. Sorry, sir."

Hayes groaned. "Damn. Understood, any priority missions coming our way will be done by Dom's platoon."

"And you owe us big time," Dom said.

"Not up for the challenge big boy?" I taunted.

"I thought you were the special platoon," he quipped back. "Wouldn't want to rob you of your glory."

"Enough!" Hayes ordered. "We need to get ourselves reorganized. Command won't be too happy with the situation and if I'm reading this right then they'll want to strike back immediately,wipe out the Covenant presence on this city. Castillo and Weller, link up and help Becker with whatever he asks, next time you volunteer for helping another unit without asking me first I won't be so lenient."

"Yes, sir," I said.

"Of course, sorry," Jen said.

"Hayes out."

"Good luck everybody," Dom said before leaving the channel.

The rest of us promptly left it as well. It wasn't long after that when Lieutenant Commander Becker called to tell me that he was sending a small armored force to pick us up. In return he was asking for us to stick with it and work with them in retaking a small park that had been turned into an enemy base of operations. It sounded like a reasonable exchanged so I agreed.

"So we're going to jump right back into action?" Pavel asked. "It will do us some good to loosen up our legs."

"Yeah, Sandor looks like he's about to bang his head into the wall."

"Without a helmet," Pavel added.

I nodded. "Hey, does the tail cannon still work?"

Pavel smiled broadly. "I can try it."

Ten minutes later there wasn't a single jackal within range that wasn't trying to desperately get away from our field of fire. The superheated plasma punched through rock and steel with ease, to say nothing about the jackals themselves. Pavel and I were laughing by the time he was done, but Sandor was rolling on the floor. He seemed to find it highly ironic that we were killing jackals with stolen equipment. I'll admit that there's some irony there, but not nearly enough to warrant his outburst. The guy was most certainly a psycho. The last thing my squad needed was another one of those.**  
><strong>

"Frank, should we meet up on your position?" Jen came in. I could hear the happiness in her voice. Murdering covvies always warranted a small degree of happiness. "Or somewhere else?"

"We'll meet up with the Warthogs," I told her. "Go out together from there."

"Roger that, we'll see you there."

I turned around to look at Sandor. "Everybody, out," I ordered. "Now!"

My men heard the edge in my voice and started moving out as fast as they could without looking too desperate. I stopped Sandor, grabbing his arm. After everybody had left the Scarab's control room I lightly pushed Sandor backwards.

"What is your problem?" I asked him.

"Sir, what? I mean… I was just laughing."

"You weren't laughing, you were on the floor and couldn't breath. Listen, I understand that you enjoy killing aliens, God knows I do too, but don't you think that you're taking it a little bit too far?"

Sandor's face immediatelywent serious. "Sir, those bastards killed my family and burned everything I ever knew. As far as I'm concerned nothing that happens to them is bad enough."

"You know what? They killed my family and burned everything I ever knew too. I saw my uncle's body with spikes in his chest. I heard my home burn even as we retreated."

Sandor looked away.

"And I feel a rush every time I kill a fucking covvie, believe me, I do."

"Then why–"

"Because," I stopped him. "Because your team members look at you weird, they think you're nuts, and with good reason."

"I don't care what they think," he replied. "I'm just–"

"You should care," I replied. "This isn't high school. This is war. If they don't trust you to watch their backs do you think that they'll watch yours? Oh, they won't just let you die, but they won't make you a priority. I'm sure it won't be on purpose, but the time might come when they won't put saving your life as the first thing on their list."

Sandor opened and closed his mouth, trying to say something.

"Nobody wants that to happen," I went on. "Not me, not them, and especially not you. Sandor, you'll keep being your usual self and shout cocky insults at the Covenant. You'll get giddy when we talk about explosives and you'll make sure to thoroughly kill every covvie bastard you come across, but if it ever starts to look like you're only into this for guilt-free killing… Well, I won't try to get this lesson through your thick head with just words. Ok?" I let the threat hang in the air for a second.

"Yes, sir."

"You're a good soldier Sandor, I'd hate to see your friends lose their trust in you."

"Yes, sir."

"Off towards the Warthogs, I want you behind the Gauss cannon."

"Yes, sir."

He left and I rolled my eyes.

Schitzo laughed and mimicked Sandor's way of walking before stopping right in front of me, his nose almost touching mine. He seemed to have gotten somewhat bigger. He looked stronger than before.

"Being a leader without losing your horrible personality. Pure genius Francisco. Embrace it. You'll be just like me in no time."

"I'm not like you," I growled.

"Oh, no. We're just similar enough that it frightens you."

Someone called in to say that the armored column was arriving and Schitzo disappeared, leaving me with a strange urge to punch someone's face until it was an unrecognizable mess.

* * *

><p><em>Thanks to SilasWhitfield for proofreading this chapter.<em>

_It was kind of a slow chapter, not much action in it. Mainly it consisted about Frank walking about and talking to his men, but seeing as you got this far I think that you already knew that. I enjoyed the part where they had fun with the Scarab, but it would've been too much if the thing could work, Frank and Co. would've killed every singly alien in the entire city and the whole Paris IV arc would've been a whole lot shorter. Anyways, I hope you appreciated the attention that some other minor characters got. There was a fairly long conversation with Api, whom I always liked, and some appearances by Frank's platoon members._

_Fun stuff._

**_MVPredicon: _**_I liked your idea, I had been thinking about Palmer, but why should she be the only one to get a chance to shine?_

**_SpartaLazor:_**_ Worry not, Noble Six will most definitely be in The Life, but it won't be during this battle._

**_ultimate idiot:_**_ I'm not sure about Omega, they are certainly canonical, but they could be any of the other Spartan-IIs just using a different team name._

_I want to thank all of those who reviewed for taking the time to do so, but as the story gets more and more readers it means that I have more people to please. Don't get me wrong, I love getting reviews for the sake of having more reviews, but I also want to know what you think about my story, my strong and weak points as a writer, so that I can improve on that and make this even better for all of you._

_Don't think I missed anything for this after-chapter author's rant/note. Hope you had a good time while reading through my ever-better attempts at literature._

_Stay strong._

_-casquis_


	171. Touch Wood

Chapter CLXXI: Touch Wood

**February 27, 2549 (UNSC Calendar)/ten days later**

**Udinia, Paris IV, Paris System**

* * *

><p><em>"In a thirty-year-long war you get to see some pretty... funky stuff."– Corporal Andrea Livingston<em>

* * *

><p>Someone slapped my feet off the Tortoise's seats and they slammed into the floor of the IFV with a loud noise. I jerked up violently, suddenly awoken from my power nap. My hand fumbled blindly for my rifle while the other one reached towards my thigh holster to draw my pistol. Only as my hand closed on the M6's grip did I open my eyes. Pavel was standing right outside the troop transport, he wasn't wearing his helmet but he had his M247L held on one hand.<p>

"More good news?" I asked sarcastically.

"'Fraid not," he grunted, stepping in and offering his hand to pull me up. "Reinforcements."

I made sure not to bang my head on the ceiling and reached for my rifle. "Not ours, I take it? All of Battalion One is already within a couple of minutes by Warthog. So what is it? Did the covvies bring in more Wraiths? Another Daemon tank squadron? Oh, I know this. A Scarab backed up by Locusts!"

Pavel shook his head. "Try bigger."

I frowned.

"Another fleet," he said.

"What?!" I shouted, this time actually hitting my head on the ceiling. "What? How many ships, what class?"

"Reports are still sketchy, but it looks like another five ships arrived on the system, one of them is an assault carrier."

"What about the battle group? And the reinforcements form Reach?"

"No news from them yet, but sensors and telescopes based on this planet are just getting the light from the ships. They arrived about twelve or thirteen hours ago."

Space combat was so complicated. The Covenant ships moved at near-relativistic speeds and you could be fighting a battle where you wouldn't engage the enemy until hours later even though you knew exactly where they were and how many they were. The great distances involved meant that the actual position of the ships was different because it took the light some time to bounce off them and reach the observer. Complicated stuff.

"Twelve hours…" I muttered. "That means that they could be more than halfway through the system by now, even if they didn't rush."

"Yeah, that's why we're switching to full alert." Pavel stepped out of the IFV and waited for me to do the same. "Galván is flipping out. We were so close to winning back this neighborhood and cutting off supplies to the rest of the Covenant troops in the city."

"Shit. Are we going to be on full alert until we know what the enemy fleet is doing?"

"Dunno," Pavel said. "Galván wanted to talk to you."

"Alright," I said, hefting my rifle. "See you in a few."

People were moving about as fast as they could. Some of the younger Marines still kept their backs slightly hunched over, as if to make themselves smaller targets to snipers. Squads were getting together and platoons were organizing themselves. Even the tankers were yelling to their mechanics and the men in charge of loading the Scorpions with ammunition. The Tortoises were idling and several of the IFVs already had squads standing behind them, ready to board them at a moment's notice.

Captain Galván was discussing our current position with Lieutenant Ana Maya. They were using a portable holotable that displayed the city.

"Captain, Lieutenant," I said, making my presence known.

"Frank," Darius replied. "Come in."

"What's the situation?"

"Not sure yet," Ana said. "We're holding our position until we get further intelligence."

Darius nodded. "Command authorized the Air Force to completely level the enemy held-positions."

"But what about the damage?" I asked him. "They'll destroy every last building there."

"Yup," Ana agreed. "Lots of refugees are not going to have homes to go back to."

I nodded. It was kind of rough on the civilians, but at least no Marines would die. "When?"

Darius looked at his watch. "Fifteen minutes, we'll issue a warning five minutes before. Once the bombing is over we'll move in and clear the area."

"The whole Battalion?" I asked.

"No, just a couple of companies," he replied. "Lieutenant Maya will stay back here with Cutthroat."

"I take it that Apex and Boomer companies will be on cleanup duty?" I asked. After Darius nodded I went on. "What about Dagger, Enhance, Flamer, and Gorgon companies?"

Ana smiled. "You just love saying the names, don't you?"

I nodded with my own smile. "Except for Enhance, they could've made up a better name."

"The rest of the companies will be surrounding the bombed area, cordon it off and let us do our job better," Darius said, clearly not amused by our lack of seriousness.

Ana cleared her throat and I stood a little bit straighter.

"Our Ground-Attack Air Wing will be in standby in case we need to blast any survivors to hell and back." He paused. "Maybe not back."

I nodded and suppressed a smile.

"Cutthroat will be staying here to protect the artillery battery."

Lieutenant Maya nodded, doing her best to look professional.

"And us?" I asked.

"Not sure, we don't exactly need your expertise here," he said. "And Becker thinks that you might be recalled to help somewhere else, preemptive strikes on enemy landing zones. I don't know."

"Very well then," I said. "Is that all?"

"Until we have more information, yes." Darius looked over my shoulder. "Now, if youexcuse me, I have some business to attend to." He stalked off with a look of annoyance in his face.

Ana turned to look at me. "So."

"So this just became an even bigger pile of shit," I said.

She crossed her arms. "That's one way to say it. At least my men get to rest up."

"With my luck, my platoon will be sent off to a scorching desert or something like that."

She raised one eyebrow and pursed her lips. "You're right, we have been attacked more often ever since your unit's joined up with us."

"Hey!" I complained, pushing her shoulder back. "You also get less casualties."

"I should probably call a statistician," she said, chuckling. "Anyways, how's your platoon?"

"Better than most," I said. "We've been pretty lucky these past couple of years, but I'm amazed that the worst we've had during this battle is a banged up leg and two missing fingers."

"Don't jinx it," she said.

I nodded and looked around the room. I saw a wooden table and knocked on it twice.

"What was that?"

"Toca madera," I said. "Knock on wood."

"Oh, wow. I always thought that the expression was more of a… metaphorical one."

"Why would you say knock on wood and then don't knock on it?"

"Because people don't always have access to wood."

"It's an old tradition," I shrugged. "I think. How the hell can you not know? I mean, your name is Ana Maya. With one N on Ana. That's as hispanic as it gets."

"What? Maya is a Germanic surname!"

"Come on, when was the last time you heard of a Germanic guy with Maya as a last name?"

She paused for a second. "I'm thinking..."

"You're hispanic, aren't you?" I asked.

"Si," she admitted. "But I'm from Crassus, you can't expect me to be up to date with current hispanic traditions."

"Fair enough," I said.

"I barely speak any Spanish. My family has been on Crassus for at least eight generations on either side."

"I'm surprised you know that."

She shrugged slightly. "Believe it or not, I actually wanted to be a genealogist. It seemed so interesting, to find out about the deeds and lives of people long dead. Kind of like a historian that focuses on the background."

"Or whoever pays."

"That too," Ana admitted, "but Crassus was pretty small, and a time came when all I wanted was to get out of there. Too hot, toomuch sand."

"Ha, the sand in Jericho VII was the soft, white kind. Lovely beaches there."

"I bet that the glass there is also the soft kind," Schitzo said.

Ana smiled sadly. "You know, I don't know how some guys deal with losing their homes. Sometimes I feel like… I don't know, like if you don't have something to fight for…"

"Vengeance is a pretty powerful motivator," I said. "I see my uncle's face every time I kill a brute you know. I picture my home burning when I start to feel tired." I shook my head. "I also think about my friends, the ones that are still alive."

"Wow, very poetic."

I laughed. "I guess that you have to hold on to something that keeps you going, whether it be revenge or protecting loved ones…" I shrugged. "Whatever keeps me going, right?"

Ana nodded. "Sometimes I wonder what keeps _me_ going." She suddenly looked a lot more tired than a minute ago. I knew that she was a few years younger than I was, but she appeared to have aged a decade. "But hey, as long as it keeps working."

I smiled and nodded slowly. "Don't crash down on me Ana."

"I'll be sure not to disappoint you Frank." She held my gaze before bursting out with laughter. "That sounded like something straight out of a war drama."

I laughed with her, taking deep breaths to calm myself down. "Look at us nutjobs, huh?"

"Anybody that joins the Corps is a nutjob. A Helljumper twice so."

I showed my agreement by nodding wholeheartedly.

"You plan to add her to your love triangle?" Schitzo asked.

_Nah, she's just a friend._

"Well, I gotta go," she said. "Get some crap organized, wake up my junior lieutenants…"

"Good luck," I told her.

"Thanks. Try not to get yourself killed."

"That's what everyone says."

She smiled and left me alone, walking off to get Cutthroat ready to repel any attack that came our way.

I stayed with the holotable for a while, examining the slow movements of UNSC troops around Udinia. Most units held their positions, notably fortifying them on all sides. I kept a particularly close eye on the refugee camp where Katie was still in. It was defended on all sides by UNSC units with armored support as well as air wings. It was the biggest refugee camp in the city, so Command was making a big effort to keep it safe. I noticed some other troop movements that would allow the civilians to retreat past a corridor into the outskirts and towards one of the large air bases on Udinia's outskirts. The rest of the city was being cleared with the liberal use of thermobaric explosives in high quantities.

That worried me slightly. It meant that we would have less bombs to work with when the enemy fleet dropped reinforcements, and they would, it was just a matter of when.

"Frank?"

I turned around as Pavel threw my helmet and caught it in the air. Pavel was looking at me with a curious expression on his face, his weapon slung over his back and slightly to his side. He was rolling his helmet in between his hands.

"What?"

"You just looked so… focused," he said. "What were you thinking about?"

"Troop movements."

He walked up to me and examined the city map. "It wouldn't have to do anything with your mystery woman, would it?"

"Pavel, we talked about this."

"No! We didn't," he snapped. "You don't want to talk about it."

"Is this because of Chloe? Look, I know she cheated on you, bu–"

"Don't you dare make this about me," he growled. "This is about you, being a dick to a woman who loves you more than anything in the world."

"You think I don't know that? You think I don't feel guilty? You don't understand Pavel. I love Hanna, I know that for certain." I looked around to make sure that none of the Marines were within eavesdroppingrange. "But I don't know if I love her more than Katie."

"So that's her name."

"Yes, that's her name," I said. "Get your squad ready and have them move to the broken house. Keep watch on the two avenues."

"Frank…"

"Do it Staff Sergeant!" I boomed. "And make it quick!"

"Yes, sir," Pavel said, saluting and stalking off.

Schitzo walked past him, clapping slowly. "Now there's the insensitive asshole we all know and love."

* * *

><p>"Remind me what we're doing again, Lieutenant," Caboose asked me. He was looking down at the scarred cityscape below us, just on the edge of the Pelican's ramp.<p>

"I told you already, civilian protection."

Caboose tilted his head slightly. "I know what we're doing, I just don't know why _we_ are the ones doing it. Platoons One and Two are off hunting some hinge**-**head shipmaster and Four was tasked with planting a nuke near the destroyer on the outskirts. I thought that our unit was the one that was supposed to do the crazy missions."

"They were closer," I replied simply. "And protecting civilians might be very straightforward, but if the intel we got is anything close to reliable, we're going to have a pretty bad time down there."

"Sixty seconds!" Fightmaster called out.

"Ready men," I shouted, standing up and pulling back the bolt on my rifle. "Remember that we're protecting other people, we are expecting sniper fire from both sides and quick strikes from brute packs. We'll be counting with armored support in the form of Armadillos and the occasional Tortoise. All LAAG and Gauss Warthogs have been sent to units engaging the Covenant directly, whatever that means, seeing as we'll be getting shot at. But I digress, we'll be using troop transport 'Hogs. I want at least one machine gun on every Warthog." I confirmed that I was also transmitting to the other Pelican carrying the rest of my platoon. "Bamber and Carver will be taking shotgun on the front and rearmost 'Hogs. What else… right. Three gets to guard the column's left flank and we do the same for the right."

I could see the improvised housing set up by UNSC authorities as the Pelican closed in on the landing pads. Most of the camp was empty, with only a few stragglers running towards the trucks and troop transports. It would be tough having so many civilians with us. Most of this camp had already been evacuated to the main refugee camp near Fountain Base, the one where Katie was staying, but there were still slightly over twenty five hundred people to get to safety.

"Wow, they're packing them on trucks," Miri noted with some worry. "They do realize that some fabric isn't going to stop a plasma bolt?"

I hushed her. I didn't want any civilian hearing her and panicking. "Some of them have light armor welded onto them," I said. "And it's better than walking."

I did feel a little bit skeptical about the trucks, but most of the Armadillos and Tortoises were packed with civilians. If you were going to ride a slow-moving giant target you might as well ride one with armor on it.

I was greeted by a scrawny Army private who directed me towards a small group of Warthogs that was waiting for us. I started missing Snark right about then. Hayes had asked for her top-notch shooter back. It made sense, but I couldn't bring myself to _not_ hate her for it. Annoying bitch.

"Four Warthogs," I said, pointing out the obvious. "Carver and Pavel take the rear 'Hog. Bamber, I want you and Lizzo on the front."

Both Pavel and Lizzo had M247Ls instead of the SAWs that the rest of the squad toted. They had a faster firing rate and a bigger magazine than the smaller SAWs, and would compensate for the lack of another machine gun on board.

"The rest of you, you know the drill."

"And what would that be, Lieutenant?"

"Andy!" Miri exclaimed. "You're… alive."

"And kicking," Andy replied, smiling widely. "I still have a few pieces of shrapnel inside my chest, but they'll get those out later."

My squad swarmed her with hugs and friendly pats on the back, welcoming her back to the squad. The other two squads shook her hand and sometimes shook her shoulders softly. Andy was a good looking girl, which meant that the guys liked her. She was also a girl in an outfit consisting mostly of guys, which meant that the girls pretty much had to like her too. Her armor looked strange with a brand new chest piece on it, the paint looked fresh and shiny, but that would probably be fixed soon enough.

"I'm glad you're back, Andy," I said after everyone was done welcoming her back. "Does it hurt?"

"Not anymore," she replied with a small shrug. She patted her chest piece softly. "I got worked on by Vinter, he's a good guy."

"That he is," I agreed. "Are you gonna scar?"

"Nah, the puncture wounds were pretty small, it was my insides that were a mess."

"Well, I'll tell Vinter that you owe him a six pack." She chuckled and nodded. "How's Hoff doing?"

"Ryan? Well, he's pretty shaken up by the situation. This planet is his home after all, but so far he's handling it pretty well, nobody close to him has died, but he's worried for them."

"And his leg?"

"Almost healed, but there's a small section on his calf that hasn't completely bonded with the muscle weave implant and it pulls when he tries running. Vinter said that it would be a few more days before he can fight, but he's helping with overwatch and other missions that don't involve moving past a fast walk."

I laughed. "Glad he's fine. Still drawing a crowd of fan girls?"

"Yup," she replied. "How come I don't get muscular Marines with broad shoulders and sexy scars to crowd me."

"You should try walking around with less clothing on," Sandor shouted from the Warthog's driver's seat.

I was glad he said it, because it would've been highly inappropriate if I had been the one to say it.

"Shut up Takacs!" Andy yelled back. "Your skinny legs sure don't get you any action!"

"Hey!"

The men that could hear the exchange laughed and ribbed Sandor. After I shot them a quick glare they returned to the matter and hand and threw pre-loaded magazines on the Warthog's back. They didn't really bother with securing them; speed wasn't a luxury that we would have in this mission.

"Andy, you're driving," I told her. "Let's go."

"Hey!" Miri complained, hopping off and going to the back.

My platoon finished throwing grenades and ammo on their Warthogs and just sat in their places, waiting for the whole convoy to start moving. Already a few Falcon gunships were taking off. They had two gunners and a sharpshooter on them, some of the Falcons were clearly in bad condition. In fact, all of them appeared to have some kind of damage on them. Command had obviously sent every working Falcon to exterminate the covvies in the city and left us with the barely workable ones. Still, it was better than nothing, at least it would draw fire away from us.

"What we need right now is a pair of Hornets with chaff and flares," Andy muttered from the driver's seat.

I agreed, but Hornets were a lot more versatile than Falcons were, and therefore even the damaged ones were off doing something more… important. I quickly went over the convoy's elements. We had a dozen Armadillos and Tortoises plus about a hundred cargo trucks. Five Falcon gunships would be providing overwatch and in some cases early warning while the twenty something Warthogs we counted with would fight back any attacks. The man in charge of this evacuation hoped that we didn't have to use the armored troop transports, but with the covvies you could always expect the worst to happen. At least we had two Scorpions with us, one in the front and one in the rear.

The trucks suddenly roared to life and the sound of people was drowned by the engines. My own platoon revved the engines on their 'Hogs and I checked in with the commanding officer. Every unit checked in and the lead Scorpion started moving, passing the chain link gate that had been set up around the camp.

"Come on!" I shouted, hopping on the passenger seat. "Move it."  
>Bamber and Lizzo's Warthog shot forward before settling a short distance behind the one in front of it. To our left we had the troop transports and then the trucks carrying the civilians. Weller and her platoon were all the way across the column, helping defend the left flank.<p>

Halfway through our route we still hadn't been attacked. Normally I would've been happy, but ONI had given a high probability of enemy action against us. They might be assholes, but they weren't wrong very often. If we hadn't been attacked yet it meant that we were only in it for something worse later on. The covvies couldn't be stupid enough that they didn't realize what the trucks and civilians packed in them meant. Easy pickings and a free meal.

Well, it was our job to make them pay for it, preferably before they sank their dirty fangs in human flesh.

I shuddered at the thought. My uncle had made sure that no brute ate him, but a lot of people didn't get that luxury, reports of eaten corpses were common these days, especially after the brute-led fleet arrived.

"This is Sparrow-1, we're seeing some movement in sector two-seven. Looks like a couple of packs moving through the houses."

"Roger that," the commander acknowledged. "Engage and destroy; Warthog units, do not engage until I give the order."

I looked up to see the Falcons breaking off to the left and banking hard in order to give their gunners the best possible range of fire. Gunfire started crackling from the ships and a few frightened cries came from the civilians, but the scarcity of the plasma bolts flying back at the Falcons meant that the unit below truly was a small one. I watched the Falcons fire tracers back down at the brutes for a while before I returned to look at the houses to my right. Most, if not all, of them were missing their windows and were riddled with bullet holes and scorch marks.

Suddenly four blue balls flew out of a large hose close to my Warthog. Three more groups of bright blue projectiles followed the first one. I traced them with my eyes, my mouth opening to shout a warning even though I knew that it was too late.

Four different Falcons were hit, barely even shaking from the impact, but I knew what that the small blue things were capable of, and a second later all twelve of them detonated, turning the four Falcons into fireballs and scrap metal.

"Plasma launchers from the right!" I shouted into the battle-net. "At least four weapons! Lose some altitude!"

One of the Flacons was hit by the second volley, two blue balls hitting its right rotor. Everything seemed frozen in place for a second before it blew up and started spiraling down, landing right in the middle of the civilian convoy.

"Bamber and Caboose, take your Warthogs and fry those guys," I ordered. "I don't– oh shit!"

Seven bright plasma mortars flew overhead in an arc, leaving behind superheated air in their trails.

"Evasive action!" I yelled.

"Sniper!"

Someone yelled, explosions rocked the Warthogs from side to side and something bounced off my helmet. I looked up and saw several heavily damaged Banshees taking off from our right. A dozen missiles rose up to meet them, cutting most of them before they could start firing. The rest of the Banshees managed to strafe the convoy, blowing up a truck and damaging several other ones. Small arms fire hammered the small attack craft from all directions, bringing several of them down. I couldn't help but noticed that one of them crashed right into a damaged Armadillo, blowing it up.

"Warthogs move aside, I'm engaging those Wraiths!" a Marine shouted. My helmet quickly designated the man as the driver of the rear Scorpion.**  
><strong>

"Move!" I quickly ordered. "Pavel, hit the windows, I want those sharpshooters dead! Andy, don't drive in a straight line, are you an idiot!"

"Here comes the second volley!" Sandor shouted a warning. He was driving Bamber's Warthog, so he was closest to the Wraiths.

"Lieutenant, we're being hit on all sides!" Bamber shouted. "Small arms fire mostly, grunts and jackals… I see the Wraiths!"

"Take them out!" I shouted. "Fuck them up!"

I vaguely heard her Spartan Laser and a second later the mortar volley hit the convoy. I saw one Warthog spin twice in the air before coming back down hard, its occupants either burned or broken beyond saving. Another Warthog abruptly stopped as it was completely destroyed by another direct hit.

"Any of those were ours?" Andy asked, banking hard to avoid a crater.

"Negative corporal," I said. "Keep your eyes peeled."

Bamber came in again. "El-tee, we're being hammered from all directions, we can't keep this going for much longer!"

"Hit another Wraith and then get back here," I said. "The Scorpion will handle the rest."

"Aye, aye, si–"

"What happened?" Sandor asked, sounding shaken.

"Dana hit!" Lizzo shouted. "I repeat, they hit Dana!"

"Pull out, pull out!" I ordered. "Get the hell out of there."

Lizzo's M247L roared as he fired back and then the I switched the channel. "I need your Scorpion to engage those Wraiths ASAP," I told the tanker. "My men can't handle them!"

"I'm on my way," he replied. "But I need someone to cover me from fuel rods and launchers."

"I'll go," Pavel volunteered.

"Go," I said. "Caboose, what's your situation?"

"Heavy enemy fire, so far they don't seem overly coordinated, but there's so many of them!"

"Hit and run, hit and run," I shouted. "Don't linger!"

"Yes, sir!"

Sandor's Warthog appeared a few seconds later, only two men still standing in the back. Corporal Han hopped down from the passenger seat and went around to examine Bamber. He hopped on and immediately hopped back down and turned to look at my Warthog as Andy drove past them.

"She's gone," he said.

"Fuck," Pavel grunted.

"Fuck," I agreed.

"Andy, let's go," I ordered. "Hit and run, hurt them and retreat before they can hurt us."

She nodded and turned to the right hard, fishtailing the vehicle. "We'll hurt them good, El-tee."

I looked over my shoulder and saw Dotsenko and Ramirez nod back at me on one side of the back. To complement our numbers we had Miranda, looking determined with a firm grip on her DMR.

"Let's go," she said.

We broke through the first line of houses and suddenly we were being hit from both side and the front. I fired at a group of eager grunts standing on a rooftop, toppling down three of them and sending the rest driving for cover. Ramirez and Dotsenko lit up the windows with their SAWs, firing with extended bursts and sending little pieces of polycrete and debris flying in all directions. Miranda, on the other hand, fired once every two or three seconds, taking out a covvie every time she fired. Andy swerved and zigzagged, jerking me from side to side and throwing off my aim, but it was better than getting shot. I switched to full-auto and started firing long bursts at anything that moved. I made out the shape of a Scorpion move through what had once been a house and fire once.

"Come on, let's pull out," I ordered.

Pavel came in, his weapon's sound leaking through his helmet. "Frank we're facing heavy opposition, we need another Warthog!"

"What about Carver?"

"Not exactly the fastest reloading speed!" the man in question shouted back.

"Sandor, off you go," I ordered. "Don't skimp on the ammunition!"

I ducked as a needle whistled right next to my head and embedded itself in the hard foam headrest right behind Andy's helmet. She looked back at it and pushed herself forward as the pink crystal shard detonated. I felt a few pinpricks on my left arm and cursed, knowing the procedure that I would have to go through to remove the micro shrapnel.

"Aw fuck," I muttered. "Hate this shit."

"Same here," Andy grunted in reply, scratching the back of her neck. "This was shaping up to go so well."

"Newbie," I said. "Come on, let's fall back in line."

Caboose was driving his own Warthog in front of us. The poor jeep was battered badly, with scratch marks and spikes embedded on the hood and rear. It seemed a small miracle that nobody from his 'Hog had been hit. Both of our 'Hogs moved to the right as another pair of mortars were lobbed in our direction, but the sound of the Scorpion firing and a large explosion calmed me down somewhat. The same could not be said for the civilians, whose cries of help and pain were getting increasingly louder.

"We're stopping!" the commander came in. "Move the wounded to the working lorries. Come on, let's do this thing fast!"

"Hold position," I ordered. "Wait until the Scorpion returns."

Two more mortars were lobbed our way, one of which didn't hit anything. A minute later my two other Warthogs appeared over a big pile of debris with the Scorpion trailing behind them. The tank had been hit on the front treads and turret several time. It was putting out smoke, but it could still move and that was good news.

"Caboose, come on," I ordered. "Don't give them a moment's rest!"

We took off in the direction that the tank had come from. As we passed it I couldn't help but notice that the gunner was slumped over in the turret, several spikes embedded in his chest and face.

I averted my eyes and instead made sure to slap a fresh magazine into my rifle. They started firing at us before I could spot them; green plasma hit the hard plastic windshield and melted it slightly, making it more opaque. I saw some movement and started firing at it. Dotsenko and Ramirez followed suit and a second later Miri joined the party. I was glad that it was mostly grunts and Shield-bearing jackals firing at us, the brutes might've been… well, brutes, but they did have aim on par with elites, to say nothing about jackal sharpshooters.

Then the green carbine rounds and needles started flying.

"Target the sharpshooters!" Miri said. "Rooftops, rooftops!"

I ducked as I reloaded and snapped right back into action, taking out three more jackal sharpshooters with the next magazine. It doesn't sound like a good ratio, but considering that I was on a moving vehicle constantly hitting piles of debris and the occasional corpse.

"Ok, time to turn around," I yelled over the plasma fire. "Caboose?"

"On it!"

"Thank God," Andy said, hitting the handbrake and spinnigthe Warthog around. "About time we–holy shit."

I looked over her head and realized exactly why she had frozen. It wasn't every time that you saw something like this. The only thing that I could compare to it was the insane elites that attempted a charge at Pavel, me, and a group of Marines back in Jericho VII. They had been lead by a hingehead in an incredibly ornate armor. This time it wasn't elites, it was brutes and grunts and hunters.

"Why are they charging us?" Dotsenko asked dully.

"How can you protect against that? The moment they get close we're dead. The–" Andy spun completely around and started speeding away from the mass of aliens as they started firing at us. "–troop transports won't be useful." Ramirez seemed pretty satisfied with his assessment.

"Plus they get food," Miri added.

"Fire!" I yelled.

I tried to hit some of the charging brutes, but I couldn't get a decent shot off without going through an ODST helmet.

"Screw this," I muttered. "Keep it steady."

"What?"

I spun around on the seat and held onto the roll cage. A couple of red bolts whizzed past and I ducked. I kept coming with great ideas. After a few more bolts flew by I jumped over the seats and landed in the back. I slammed onto one of the small seats on the back and an empty magazine dug into my ribs, but Dotsenko yanked me back up and now there was four of us shooting at the massive group of aliens.

"Target the chieftain!" I ordered. "Hit the fucker!"

There was a big-ass chieftain right in the front of the charge, a larger than usual warhammer in its hands. That didn't bode us any good. In my personal experience the more primitive the brute looked the deadlier it was. I had seen the smaller ones tear a man's arm from his body, the bigger ones could rip you in half without even breaking a sweat.

"Banshee!" Andy cried.

The Warthog swerved to the side violently and a flash of green blocked everything as the fuel rod's explosion lifted the back of the Warthog. I blocked my face from the heat and next thing I know I'm holding Miri parallel to the ground with one hand while grabbing the roll cage with my other one. I didn't even remember dropping my rifle, let alone seeing Miri fall out of the Warthog.

"Pull me up!" she shouted wildly. "Oh my gosh pull me up, son of a–"

I yanked back up and both of us landed on our asses on the floor. Dotsenko and Ramirez helped us up and immediately redirected their attention to the Banshee trailing us.

"Caboose!"

"We're moving!" he shouted back. "Don't need to be told what to do all the time, you know?"

His Warthog appeared around the corner and they started hitting the Banshee from behind. Coupled with our two SAWs the Banshee took enough fire that it had to break off. I smiled when the turn was too hard and a damaged wing snapped off.

"Brutes are coming through the houses," Andy warned.

"Back to the convoy," I shouted, firing at the lead elements. "Commander come in, we have a large enemy force charging at your position."

"Yeah, our Falcon saw them, we're just loading up the last of the wounded."

"How long will it take?"

"A minute or so," he replied.

"We don't have thirty seconds," I said. "We need to move now or we'll get caught out in the open."

He sighed. "Understood. Delay them Lieutenant."

"I'll try." This time I sighed.

"Arewe turning around?" Miri asked.

"Just a little bit," I admitted. "Andy?"

"I hate you."

"Andy…" I warned.

"If we die, you might as well know what I really think."

"When we don't, you'll get laundry duty," I replied. "Turn it around, we'll plow through them."

Andy complied and Caboose promptly did the same. So it was two Warthogs without any heavy weaponry pitted against a hundred brutes plus a couple dozen hunters and some grunts thrown in to the mix.

"Don't stop accelerating," I said softly. "Don't try to get the Warthog to go in a straight line, let it move. Only turn if we're about to hit a hunter."

Andy took a deep breath," I got this." She floored the accelerator and we started closing in on the brutes. "I don't got this!"

Two brutes leaped out of the way, taking heavy fire from all four of us. Andy slammed into another brute right after that and then nicked a pair in the arm, throwing them aside. I smiled as we slammed into brutes and grunts, firing on them all the time. Then the impacts started slowing down the Warthog. Continually slamming into brute after brute couldn't have been very good for the vehicle. The hood was crushed under the weight and a brute that rolled over the windshield almost threw me out of the 'Hog.

"We went through," Andy said. "We made it through!"

"And back around," I ordered. "Come on, come on!"

This time we didn't receive as much fire as when we were moving against them, but some of the running brutes tried to slam into the Warthog, toss us out of it.

"Watch out!" Marina cried.

I ducked instinctively as a brute jumped right on the passenger seat that I had left unoccupied. It reached at Andy and clawed at her arm, only jerking back when she drew her sidearm and fired at it a couple of times. Ramirez then leaned over the side and emptied half the magazine on his SAW on the brute's ribs. The massive alien fell back off and we ran it over, jerking the car violently.

"Watch for the hunter, watch for the hunter!"

Andy served hard to the right just in time to avoid a hunter form slamming its shield arm into the side of the car. Some spikes flew in our direction and a stream of green plasma almost took Miri's head off, but we made it back out, with Caboose and his men right on our backs.

"Come on, back to the convoy!"

We came through the Warthogs and stopped, joining up with them to form up a wall. I quickly moved back to the passenger's seat and aimed down the street where the brutes would be coming from. I looked around and realized that there weren't enough of us. Most of the column had already left, with only one Armadillo and two trucks still here. The trucks were filled with wounded and I could see some Army medics working on the civilians.

"Get those trucks out of here!" I shouted. "Move, move, move!"

One of the cargo trucks started moving out, taking a couple of Warthogs with it. As soon as the second one was full it took off, but by that point it was too late. The brutes were close enough that I didn't even have to bother with aiming. Brute after brute moved past us. Some attempted to attack us and were quickly cut down, but the rest moved in straight to the truck full of civilians.

"Let's get out of here!" I shouted.

"But he civilians–" Dotsenko cried.

"Too late for them. Andy, floor it!"

We shot forward, running over a grunt and nearly being hit by another hunter.

"Pavel, where the hell did that Scorpion go?"

"It took off," he replied. "We moving out?"

"Yeah!"

I vaguely registered my two other Warthogs moving out with Caboose and me. I glanced at the truck and saw that it was already overwhelmed. There was loud screaming for a minute and then it stopped. The Armadillo fired at the truck with its autocannon after some deliberation and ripped through the brutes near it with incredible ease. After that it turned its cannon on a pair of hunters and ripped them apart as it moved away.

"Watch out!" Andy yelled.

"Hit it, hit it!"

A particularly massivebrute was running towards us. It was the one with the giant warhammer. I hadn't noticed until now, but the brute went completely unarmored except for a giant shoulder plate and some weird sort of webbing that secured it to its chest.

"I didn't know that brutes had mohawks," Schitzo said. "And those mutton chops are pretty old-fashioned."

I yelled as I fired, but the brute seemed unaffected by it. In fact, some sort grey mist started emanating from the gargantuan alien.

"What the hell?" Ramirez complained.

The brute rolled forward and slammed its hammer on the Warthog's left wheel. I heard the metal crunch under the impact and a second later my neck jerked violently as the vehicle literally left the ground and spun sideways like a top. For some miracle we landed upright with a still-functionalWarthog.

"Hunter!" Miri cried out.

The ridiculously gargantuan alien bashed its shield against the Warthog and this time we spun onto our side. It was small miracle that we kept rolling landed right on our wheels, because otherwise we would've all been killed right then and there.

"Where's Sasha?" Ramirez asked.

"Dotsenko!" I shouted.

"Over here," he cried, twenty feet away from the Warthog. He seemed to be intact, but three brutes charging straight at him looked bent on changing that. I jumped out before I realized just what a stupid idea it was and hit one of the brutes. Ramirez and Miri took out the other one and I reached Dotsenko just before the brute. I fired at it, but my rifle clicked empty. It seemed like an decidedly heroic way to go, but I heard Pavel cry out an order and I immediately dropped to the ground.

The brute prepared to hammer me into a piece of pulp and then the sky went black for the briefest of instants and the brute was gone. I spun on my belly and pushed myself up, watching Pavel's Warthog move away from me. He had ordered whoever was driving to run over the brute.

"Good job, Marv!" Pavel shouted joyfully.

"If I survive this, I'm gonna kill you," I said, running back to my own Warthog.

"Mr. Mohawk's coming again!" Andy warned.

There was a lot of movement and shouting, but next thing I knew we made it out intact. All of us were still alive and we had left the massive melee without getting killed. Sometimes I didn't know whether my luck was good or bad, but right now it felt decidedly good. All four of my Warthogs reported no additional casualties and were moving to rejoin the refugee column. I looked up and said a small prayer of thanks before reloading my rifle.

"Remember Lambari?" Pavel asked over the radio. "That didn't seem half as bad as this."

"Agreed," I replied. "But this is not over yet."

And it wasn't, not by a long shot. There was still a long way to go and the convoy was still under attack. With the massive force of berserk brutes running behind us as fast as they could we would be hard pressed to fend off all attacks. I knew that more than a couple of trucks would be left behind burning by the time the day was done. And if we all got to Fountain we would still have to fight off the massive force that was behind us.

"Count your rounds men," I said. "And make them worth it."

Wave after wave of brutes attacked us. We repelled all of them, but not in time. They seemed to know exactly what our mission was. They'd charge straight for the civilians and then attack us as soon as we compromised our position to defend the civvies. The brutes would then intensify their attack on us while sending small packs to take out the trucks. And that was only when they didn't have heavy weaponry. I saw two Warthogs blow up and several Armadillos crippled by fuel rods before the shooters were spotted, but most of my men were still alive and well, and that was all that mattered.

"We're just about done!" I shouted. "We're right around the corner, this is the home stretch boys!"

Everybody knew that. The whole column lost cohesion and every vehicle shot forward. The few survivors still on foot started sprinting with newfound energy. Andy didn't hang back to provide a heroic rear guard and I didn't order her to do so. Brutes were nipping at our heels, and even with two machine guns we couldn't keep them back for much longer. We were almost out of ammunition and the Warthog could barely move. With several dents in the hood and smoke coming out of the engine it was a miracle that we hadn't been forced to walk a mile back.

"Hit the brutes!"

Gunfire came from the walls of Fountain Camp. The brutes paid it no heed. Only the hunters seemed to react. They stopped and took positions, firing long streams of green plasma at the men on the walls. Several Marines were hit and the fire slackened for a second, allowing the brutes to regain some ground and catch up to the rearmost elements. Unfortunately for Sandor, his Warthog was the one furthest to the back. A couple of brutes latched onto the Warthog and came with it through the gate. Before it could close a dozen more of the aliens dove underneath. Something was off about them, they were all wearing some weird black shoulder pauldrons and every last one of them carried a spiker in each hand in addition to a brute shot slung over their shoulder. They seemed almost like…

Shit. Special Forces.

Two of the brutes slammed into my Warthog, it had decided to give out right then and there. Their combined strengths easily overturned the vehicle anda ll of us had to scramble out before we became easy pickings. I turned around the Warthog and raised my rifle to fire at the closest brute, but its spiker was already up and I suddenly felt an impact on my chest.

I looked down to see a glowing spiker embedded on the right side of my chest and fell back down on my ass. The brute immediately closed in on me and lowered the bayonets to my neck before it was blasted off.

Marv offered me his hand, holding a shotgun in the other.

"Where the hell did you come from?"

"I'm always around," he replied, firing at the other brute and sending it scurrying back behind my Warthog. Dotsenko and Ramirez were waiting for it and turned it into Swiss cheese with their machine guns.

"They're moving towards the refugees!" Pavel shouted. "Hit them, hit them!"

Most of the brutes were already disappearing through the buildings, but a few of them had stayed behind to kill as many of us as they could. I was surprised by how good their aim was. They didn't seem to miss a shot. Men fell with spikes in their faces, chests, and necks. I suddenly looked back down to my chest and saw that some blood was leaking out, a drop dripping over the spike. My chest started hurting. It started hurting a lot.

"Oh dear, El-tee…"

"I'm fine," I grunted, dismissing Andy with a wave. "We need to protect the refugees, move, move!"

And so it became a race, we had to kill the brutes before they reached the civilians. The camp's buildings were too tightly packed to drive anything in between them at anything faster than a walk. Normally I wouldn't have cared, but those buildings happened to be filled with people.

"Follow the screams!" I ordered. It was the most depressing order I had given in my entire career.

People were beginning to appear, running in the opposite direction. They all had looks of absolute terror on their faces. The occasional civilians became small groups and then mobs. I was separated from my group as I tried elbowing my way past them. I even fired a couple of times in the air, but they were so frightened that I didn't have any effect.

"Out of the way!" I shouted.

"Maybe you should fire into the crowd, eh?" Schitzo suggested.

I grunted in agreement.

"Help!"

I turned a corner and caught a brute cutting through a woman's throat with its spiker. I fired into its back, making it stumble forward. I slammed into it with my shoulder and the brute fell to the ground. After that it was an easy matter of emptying my magazine in the back of its head. The brute shook a few times and then stopped. I took a quick moment to notice the eight dead bodies around the brute and then took off, following the screams.

I heard another high-pitched scream cut short and turned around a corner before slamming into a fast-moving mass of flesh. I tried to regain my balance but both of us fell into the floor.

"Katie?!" I asked, shocked at seeing who it was. I depolarized my visor. "Katie!"

"Frank? Oh my God, Frank! You're shot!"

I looked down at my chest, it was hurting like hell. "It's nothing," I assured her. "Why are you running? Where's your cousin?"

"I don't know!" she replied. "I came here to get some–"

"Doesn't matter," I interrupted. "Get out of here, keep your head down!"

"Frank, where are you–"

Her voice was drowned by screams and I came into a small open space that had once been a marketplace or just an open area for people to hand out in. At least twenty civilians were dead in the floor, three brutes were firing at a group of Marines that were trying to take them out.

"El-tee cover me!"

I vaguely registered Marv running past me as I aimed at the brutes. I killed the nearest one with a long burst, hitting it right in the temple. I kept firing even as the second one turned to fire at me. The brute's shots went wild, its aim thrown off by the pain. The third brute had more time to react. It turned to face me and fired a short burst before Marv blasted its face off with his shotgun.

I felt pain and looked down to see a massive gash on my right side and yet another spike embedded on my chest, slightly above the first one and a little bit to the right. It was almost completely inside my body.

I fell to the floor, putting my hand against my side instinctively in an attempt to stop blood loss. The sky lost its color and shapes started becoming more vague. I couldn't faint, not here, not now.

"Frank!"

Katie's blurry face wasn't medically trained like Hanna was, but she was here and that meant something.

"I told you to run," I said, laughing for no discernible reason. "I told you to run."

I heard a sound like a bell and then my body decided that it had taken enough and sent me into unconsciousness.

* * *

><p><em>Thank to SilasWhitfield for proofreading this chapter.<em>

_I don't want to sound like a resentful author, but I didn't get many reviews for last chapter, I was kind of hoping to get some of your opinions on my writing as a whole and not just the story, but then again, I can't force you to do that._

_Writer's rant aside I hope you had fun reading this chapter. There were two cameos on this chapter, well, actually it was more like a cameo and a reference. Those of you who have been in the Halo fanfiction section for a long time should know what I'm talking about, the cameo is really more obscure, but a couple of you guys should figure it out._

_So we had some funky stuff, Warthog cavalry charge at a brute infantry charge; strong and independent black woman is killed; Fountain Base is attacked by brutes; Katie is nice to Frank (in public!). That's about it, I think. Oh, and Andy's alive, hope you guys like her character, cause I do. This battle will get worse before it gets better. There will be deaths, there will be angst, there will be Spartans, there will be extreme prejudice, and there will be blood._

_Let me know what you guys thought (nudge, nudge)._

_Stay strong._

_-casquis_


	172. Snow Cones

Chapter CLXXII: Snow Cones

**March 1, 2549 (UNSC Calendar)/two days later**

**UNSC FOB 'Fountain', Udinia, Paris IV, Paris System**

* * *

><p><em>"The blood the little ones leave behind always gets me in the mood for a blueberry snow cone."– Lance Corporal Takacs Sandor<em>

* * *

><p>My right side was in what I could only describe as a raging pain. It had been that way ever since I had woken up a day ago. It had been a long time since I had been unconscious for more than one day, but I could count on waking up in pain every time something like that happened. The painkillers were doing their job pretty damn well already, but with medical supplies being pretty scarce, I had been treated as I would've been a couple hundred years ago.<p>

Vinter was in a bloody white coat with his sleeves rolled up to his elbow. If he had to operate while wearing his lab coat then it meant that the victims had been too many for him to change into proper scrubs. He looked tired and he had bags under his eyes.

"Frank, this was all very unusual," he said. "I want to make sure that you understand why you can strain yourself too hard."

I nodded and groaned. "Ok, shoot."

"All right. The spike that hit you in the chest, the lower one, didn't do much damage. Your armor did its job right and stopped the spike, just half an inch went through. Painful, but not life-threatening or serious at all. I used some spare biofoam for that and patched it up. The gash in between your ribs… well, that one was a funny one. Not to you perhaps, but you get my point." Vinter chuckled weakly and shook his head to himself. "If your ribs had been your natural ones the spike would've punctured the lung and you would've likely drowned in your own blood, but the titanium implants deflected the spike. It went in between two ribs and carved out skin and flesh in between."

"Yeah, yeah, but it barely scratched the titanium," I said. "Next."

"This is the good one," Vinter said, looking down at his datapad. "The spike went through the armor and completely shattered your collarbone. Collarbones are supposed to be easy to heal, but given the circumstances ONI wanted you back on your feet and had me get you an implant. Same material as your ribs, armor-grade titanium. Sounds fancy, right? Well, the implant is just three inches long, but if you have any trouble with movement I'll fix it."

"But later," I said. "Doc, thanks for everything, even the butchering that you did on the gash on the ribs."

"Yeah, that'll leave a scar."

"But I'm leaving tomorrow and I honestly just want some rest."

"Very well. Oh, before I forget, that patient you asked about…"

"Eliza," I said. "Atkins."

He tapped a few buttons on his datapad. "She's fine. Just a concussion. She'll be out in a few hours."

I smiled. "Good, good."

"That's all then, sorry to bother you."

"No problem Doc."

"Oh, and there's someone here to see you."

I nodded and leaned my head back on my pillow. If someone wanted to visit me, then they could deal with me having my eyes closed while I talked.

"Frank?"

I jerked my eyes open. "Katie?"

She was standing right over the door, looking meek and uncomfortable. She was wearing a pair of old and dirty jeans and a thick jacket that looked scavengedfrom a corpse. It _had _been scavengedfrom a corpse, by me.

"Is this a bad time?"

Not at the time, but if Hanna walked through that door then it would be a pretty bad time.

"No, no. Of course not. What are you doing here?"

She smiled and looked away nervously. "I don't know. I just wanted to make sure that you were ok. You did save me."

"I save a lot of people, but I haven't saved you yet."

"Yet?"

"Let's hope I don't have to save you at all," I said. "Ever."

Katie smiled and walked up to my bed, pulling a chair with her and sitting next to me. I smiled back, it felt good to know that people cared about you, knowing that your funeral would be at least partially crowded. Katie made it a point to look like this was awkward and straightened her back, crossing her hands on her lap.

"How are you?"

"I'll be fine," I told her. "I just heard about Eliza, send her my regards."

"I will." She smiled again. "She'll be happy to hear from you." Katie immediatelylooked like she regretted saying that.

My smile turned into a grin. "Really, why?"

Katie made a face, pursing her lips and moving them to the side. "Who doesn't like getting good wishes?"

My mind started machinating different reasons why Eliza would be happy, but the most popular one by far was the one where she was incredibly attracted to my rugged good looks.

"Really?"

Katie laughed. "No." She paused. "She's young and stupid."

"Unlike her older cousin," I said. "I like her. Seems pretty level-headed to me."

"Just don't flatter yourself," she warned. "With half the guys she knows dead she'll settle for anything."

I couldn't stop smiling. It felt like I was back in middle school and I got a little note saying that someone liked me. It was flattering and… well, it was flattering. "I take it you settled for me too?"

Katie patted my hand. "You seemed like you hadn't gotten some in a while. I kind of pitied you."  
>To be honest I didn't have a good Comeback to that. Before I got together with Katie I hadn't had sex for six months. Coming from a guy that had been in a steady relationship for a while and constantly had sex, it was a pretty long time.<p>

"Well?" she asked.

"I was on a completely different planet," I reminded her. "So it doesn't count."

"Excuses, excuses."

Then it was quiet for a while. We could talk some, but things were still incredibly awkward between the two of us. I couldn't blame her for it, I still had a hard time holding her stare sometimes, and it had been me who fucked things up here. I leaned back down and closed my eyes for a moment while Katie examined the entire room twice. At least that's what I assume she did, because my eyes were closed.

"How long until you are ok?" Katie finally asked. "I mean walking around."

"Tomorrow morning. They gave me some weird thing to accelerate the healing process, but I'm going to be hopped up on meds for a while until the wounds scar."

"Tomorrow?"

I nodded slowly. "Yeah, we're leaving tomorrow morning."

"You're leaving?!" she exclaimed. "Why didn't you–"

"Tell you? I was unconscious, remember?"

Katie looked away. "And it's not like you have to tell me anyways."

"No," I agreed. "No it's not."

She squeezed my hand lightly and then moved a little bit closer than should've been appropriate.I found myself lifting my head towards her a little bit as well, stopping just shy of it becoming _really_ inappropriate.

"Where are you going?"

I could feel her breath.

"You know I can't tell you," I replied in a whisper.

Then things became a little blurry. Her lips met mine or maybe it was the other way around, but we started kissing. I felt her hands leave my hand and up to my face. I grabbed the back of her neck and pulled her towards me. There was a throbbing in my side, but I ignored it, kissing her harder as she responded in kind. The room's door had a big window on it and anybody that cared to look could see us.

Katie shifted her weight and half-climbed on the bed so that she didn't have to twist so much to kiss me. The momentshe did that I spasmed and let out a small cry of pain. She pulled back from me and took a deep breath, a look of surprise and worry on her face.

"Are you ok?"

"Yeah," I groaned in pain. "Just great."

"Did I–"

"No," I cut in. "It wasn't your fault. I shouldn't have kissed you."

She shook her head. "I kissed you."

"Kind of felt like I kissed back." I looked away. "I can't do this, you know. I have a girlfriend."

Katie looked exasperated. "Then why do you keep… encouraging me?" she asked. "You have no idea how much you hurt me Frank, but I can't…" she looked away.

"You can't what?"

"I love you Frank, God knows you don't deserve it, but I can't help it." She looked away from me and leaned back in her chair, an angry expression in her face.

"You used me and–"

"I didn't use you."

"And then just left me like a rag," she finished. "And now you're back and I can't bring myself to hate you... quite the opposite."**  
><strong>

I remained quiet for a second. "What do you want me to do Katie? I have a girlfriend and I love her."

"What about me then?" she asked. "Someone's got to end up alone here Frank."

"That's not what I want."

"You dug yourself into this mess," Katie said, standing up and walking towards the door. "Now dig yourself out."

"Wait. Stop!" I took a deep breath. "I do love you."

For a moment her expression became one of happiness and relief, but then it changed back into a mask. "You love me and you love her?"

I nodded. "Well, you do whatever you think is right Frank."

"Wait–"

"I'll tell Eliza you said hi."

And with that she stepped outside and left me alone.

"Damn Francisco," Schitzo said, squeezing my good shoulder. "I wouldn't mind leaving your girlfriend of six years for that hot piece of ass. I think she tried to pressure you into choosingher." He laughed and I closed my eyes again, trying desperately to fall asleep.

* * *

><p>Pavel had a grim expressionon his face that I had only seen on him during Scarecrow's funeral and other similar occasions. It wasn't only his frown or look of pensiveness; it was his whole body language. If a man saw Pavel with that expression then they would know better than to disturb him. Even I felt a little bit uncomfortable when facing that gaze, and I had had to stand up to the legendary glares of Marina and Layla more than once.<p>

"That's the whole story?" he asked.

I nodded.

"Well, you didn't paint yourself in a good light so I know it's true. It's better than I expected," Pavel rolled his helmet in between his hands. "You really do love this girl, don't you?"

"Yes. If you'd met her you would understand."

"No, until you solve this debacle I don't want to go anywhere near it."

I shrugged, it was understandable. "All right. Suggestions?"

Pavel thought about it for a moment and then stopped spinning his helmet so that the visor was facing me. His helmet was a standard version of the ODST helmet with the addition of a small piece of plating on the forehead. It wasn't his first helmet and probably wouldn't be his last. My own helmet had lasted a pretty long time already, I liked the dull black visor on it. It gave the armor an even more menacing appearance.

"Frank. You fucked this up. You fucked this up real good. The only piece of advise that I can give you is to try and not hurt any of these girls, especially Hanna."

"Easier said than done," I grunted.

"Yup, but that's not my problem." Having said that he spun his helmet onto his head and secured it to the rest of his suit before walking back towards Fightmaster's Pelican. There were four Pelicans tightly packed together. Two were for my platoon and two were for Jen's platoon. I just knew that we were going to be redeployed to a different part of the planet. I wasn't terribly happy about it, but at least I would be away from both Hanna and Katie, have some time to think by myself.

"Nothing gets you focused like plasma fire," Schitzo said in agreement.

But all of this was very hush-hush. I didn't expect anything too surprising to come out of this, ONI liked to keep absolutely everything in wraps, even if everybody knew about it. Take for example the Spartan program. Pretty much every veteran Marine knew that they were real before ONI revealed it to the public officially and it had been that way for years already. Or the Orbital Defense Grid they were building back on Earth. They didn't talk about it very much even if you could just look up at the sky and see the hundreds of platforms being constructed. ONI was paranoid, sometimes ridiculously so, but they had a job and they did it better than anybody else, I had to at least give them that.

"Wow, I was surprised when you stopped hating Spartans," Schitzo said. "Now you're going to start respecting ONI?"

_I respect Spartans. And I hate ONI, I just think they are necessary._

"What was that?"

"Ah, Jen, glad to have you here. You're late."

"Yup," she agreed, scratching the scar on her cheek. "But now I'm here and we're waiting on you."

Her whole platoon jogged past me and threw their duffels into the Pelicans as she said that. That left me feeling quite like an idiot.

"Bitch," I muttered under my breath. "Race you to the finish line?"

"For all I know we might have different finish lines," she called out from the hatch of her Pelican. "Good luck!"

"You too," I cried as the hatch closed. "You too…"

* * *

><p>It was a long flight, just over four hours long. The Pelican had to go at subsonic speeds in order to go unnoticed by covvie drones or sensors. High speed usually meant urgency. Wind currents occasionally shook the Pelican, but I had no trouble falling asleep. I was slouched and Sandor was leaning on my shoulder when an alarm woke me up. I snapped my head up and shook Sandor off my shoulder.<p>

"Hey," he muttered, still half-asleep.

My eyes hurt when I opened them, but they quickly adapted to the dim lighting in the Pelican. My HUD was turned off, but as soon as I opened my eyes it flickered back on and a small screen appeared on the top left corner. Al's avatar greeted me with a smile that was way too big considering the planet was under siege.

"Good morning Frank," he said. "Looks like you're still in some pain. Will you be able to fight effectively?"

"You know the doctor cleared me Al," I said.

He nodded. "Yeah, just being polite. You're half an hour away from your destination so I'm authorized to give you your mission specs now."

"Are you talking to Jen right now?"

"Of course," Al said. "But I need to make this quick."

"Go on," I said.

"You know about the ODPs? Of course you do, they're the only thing keeping this planet alive. The defense platforms aren't large enough to support their own power sources, so they have energy transmitted to them from orbital defense generators down on the planet surface. These babies are powerful enough to power up three generators each. These past few days there have been some attacks, their intensity has increased with time. So far we don't know where the Covenant are staging their attacks from, but ONI suspects that the Covenant have stealth pylons cloaking their movements."

"Uh-huh," I grunted.

"Yesterday the plant was almost shut down by a small Stalker team while a larger enemy force attacked. There's already two companies defending them, doing a rather good job at it too, but they are stretched out thin along the perimeter and probably won't be able to repel another attack."

"So we're going to be there for backup?" I asked.

"Mostly," Al agreed. "Your sharpshooters can provide direct support and you can have some of HW Squad in the watchtowers as well, but you need to have a decent-sized force in case of an eventuality."

I groaned. "We got moved halfway around the world for this?"

"The generators are vital to defense of this planet, but there aren't enough men to defend them. This is a very important job, Francisco."

"All right, all right. I promise I'll take it seriously mom."

"Good. I'm sending all the specs to your helmet right now. Your platoon will cover the east side of the complex. Lieutenant Weller and her platoon will do the same for the western end."

"Very well then," I said. "What about the rest of the company?"

"Sorry, I'm not authorized to say, someone made a mistake when informing me. My programming won't let me. You can ask them later."

I shrugged. "I hate that you're not a smart AI."

"Thanks, Frank. Really, appreciate it."

Before I could apologize Al logged off.

"Geez, so moody." I shook my head and stood back up, grabbing onto one of the handholds on the ceiling. "All right, wake up, wake up. Everybody wake up!"

The Pelican was filled with groans and stretching men as everybody woke up. I gave them a good ten seconds to become fully alert before I started reciting what Al had just told me. I displayed a hologram of the power plant and complex. The place was a pretty massive building two or three floors high that went deep into the ground, that's where the power plant itself actually was.

The important parts of the complex were two massive satellitedishes that transmitted the energy directly to the orbital defense platforms. They were sturdy enough to withstand anything short of a concentrated artillery strike.

"El-tee, why is the picture grainy?" Sandor asked.

"It's not," I replied. "That's the snow."

"Great, we're in the North Pole…" Hoff moaned. "My leg's gonna start aching."

"I didn't know you were eighty," Andy told him. "Next thing you know you're going to have to use a cane."

Marv leaned forward and examined the hologram. "How cold is it out there?"

"Sam?" I called out.

"Uhhh, instruments show that we're at minus eighty-one degrees Celsius," Sam told me. "But that's just up here. Temperature in the power plant is at… well, I hope you guys brought your coats. The temperature is at holding at minus fifty-eight."

I made a quick calculation in my mind. "That's like negative seventy in Fahrenheit."

"Seventy-two point something," Sandor said. "Point… four."

"Easy there Rain Man," I said, unable to stop myself from making a referencethat nobody would catch. Damn Bumblebee. "It's going to be cold, our undersuits are vacuum rated, but we're going to be out there for a pretty long time. Odds are that we won't get to be inside much, so expect to get cold eventually. Oh, and the helmets can't heat up the air fast enough. My recommendation is that you fill up your oxygen tanks and then use that air and repeat. Got it?"

"Yeah," Pavel said. "Cold as fuck, lots of angry brutes."

"That's the gist of it," I said. "Sam?"

"We're here," Fightmaster replied. "Good luck."

The cold hit me like a punch, but my suit immediatelystarted adjusting the temperature so that I would be comfortable. Within a couple of seconds I was already back to normal, but this looked like it would suck for anybody without a climate controlling undersuit. Oh well. I jumped down and my boots crunched down the snow. I could barely see more than a couple of meters away from me, there was a snowstorm going on and it looked like it was going to last for a while.

"Lieutenant? Lieutenant Castillo?" a voice shouted over the snowstorm.

"That would be me," I replied, establishing radio contact. "Captain…"

"Lieutenant," he corrected. "Flint. The captain got ganked a couple of days ago." A human shape made its way through the gale with a hand raised to protect his face and a rifle firmly held in the other arm. "Pleasure making your acquaintance."

"Lovely little place you got here," I said. "What did you do wrong?"

The man guffawed. "Me? Nothing. My wife, on the other hand, decided to have an affair with my superior, got me assigned here." He paused. "Is it bad if I hope she died when the covvies attacked Valern?"

"Not at all," Pavel said. "Your superior?"

Lieutenant Flint shrugged. "Don't know, don't care. I'm going to need you to follow me, all right?"

"Got it," I said. "Five, let's go!"

There were still nineteen of us. Bamber's corpse had been frozen and was ready to depart back to her home as soon as we kicked the Covenant bastards out of the system with their tails between their legs. Or she would just burn like the rest of us. I still had to talk to Pavel to see how his squad was doing. For that matter, I still had to wait until things were a little quieter to actually come to terms with her death. She was a good soldier and a good person, it would fully hit me later, but I didn't have the time for it right now.

Flint led us through the courtyard with precision that could've only come from someone that had done the trip several times. The lack of anything to guide himself by didn't seem to affect him. We ended up underneath a set of tarps linked together with pieces of plywood. The snow still got inside from the sides, but it wasn't as much as outsider. In fact, there were a couple of butanetanks with hot flames on top.

Flint turned around to greet me while my team spread out around the tarp. "Nice to have you here," he said, shaking my hand. "Ever since the captain died morale's been pretty low. Can't blame them, the captain was a good man."

"I'm sorry," I said.

He shrugged again. I noticed that he was wearing an old version of the Army Winter Armor. In addition to the special clothes he had a balaclava that he pulled down to reveal his mouth He also had a pair of particularly heavy gloves and a scarf tightly wrapped around his neck. There was frost on his goggles, but he didn't take those off.

"Well, nothing we can do about it. I was told you'd defend the west side of the complex?"

I nodded.

"Excellent." He produced a holodisk and promptly displayed the complex on it. "The defense generators are underground, UNSC placed them here so that nobody would go through the trouble of attacking them."

"Well, that didn't work out too well."

"The covvies are more miserablethan we are, moving enough equipment to provide hot rooms and food for their numbers would be pretty hard to do without us noticing."

"That's good, have they targetedthe dishes?"

"Nah, they know they can't damage them without heavy gear. At first they only attempted small raids, to probe us and get us on edge. Then they really started stepping up their game. They've broken through the perimeter several times. These brutes are crafty bastards, I'll give them that."

I nodded in agreement. "Where can we help the most?"

"I noticed that some of your men had heavy machine guns?"

"Yes."

"Well, I could use one of the heavy machine guns and two SAWs."

"Done," I replied. "I've got a sniper. Do you have a good perch for him?"

Flint nodded. "I know just the place. As for the rest of your men, how many are you willing to let me have?"

"Recon Squad can help you hold the line," I told him. "Staff Sergeant Konstantinov will stay here along with Lizzo, Ramirez, and Dotsenko."

"Thanks Lieutenant, we need all the help we can get. The storm stopped the attacks, but it won't be long before the brutes run out of patience and decide that they want us dead. I'd recommend moving your men to their positions as soon as possible."

"Will do, thanks Lieutenant."

He nodded and pulled his balaclava back up to cover his mouth and nose, promptly raising his scarf all the way to his goggles as well. "I'll be here if you need me."

"Ok. Come on, let's move!"

I used waypoints and my HUD's map in order to find my way through the low-visibility weather. We made our way to one of the outer buildings and climbed up a ladder to the rooftop. From there we spread out so that we could cover most of this side of the plant. It really was pretty large, I didn't feel comfortable being so far apart from the rest of my platoon.

Caboose sent Zepeda away towards the nearest satellitedish. From there he would have a pretty decent vantage point to cover the western side of the orbital defense generator plant. I ordered most of my men to stay close to the outer perimeter, but had Hoff and Miri hang further back along with me. All three of us had long range weapons and could afford to be further away from danger. Of course, only as long as the blizzard didn't completely block our sight, which it was doing right now.

"When is this going to stop?" Hoff muttered. "I can't see more than ten meters."

"It'll stop when it stops," Andy said. "Just be happy that you're not–"

"Missing a leg?" he finished. "Well, I kind of am."

"Mommy says that whenever a girlbothers a boy it's because she likes him," Sandor said in a baby voice. "But seriously, you two…"

I rolled my eyes. Why was it that I could never get myself a decent and professional squad? Ever since my very first squad had died in Eden all my following units had consisted of rather skilled men and women who happened to have the minds of precocious ten year-olds. It was annoying, sometimes I just wanted to sit around while waiting to ambush a Covenant unit with no talking whatsoever.

"Shut up," I ordered.

The cool thing about being a platoon leader is that I could just order my men to do what I wanted.

The chatter slowly died down and I took the opportunity to mark every one of my platoon members with green waypoints. Flint's men I marked with blue. My HUD outlined them, marking their positions relative to me even through the blizzard was still going strong, frost was already beginning to gather on the edges of my visor. I had to periodically shake my head to get the snow off.

"I think the snowstorm is beginning to let up," Pavel said. It had been almost two hours and already I felt the cold beginning to seep through my undersuit. Fortunately I had brought my long-fingered gloves, otherwise I would've lost my fingers by now.

"It does look that way," Sandor agreed. "Yup, it's beginning to let up."

The snowstorm gradually waned out until I could actually see the chain link fence surrounding the complex. The surroundings looked beautiful, completely white with absolutely no sign of battle, I knew that there had to be a few craters here and there, but the snow covered them completely. A few minutes later I could see clearly. The snow stopped completely and the sky cleared. The base was right in the middle of a pretty large valley. In fact, we were completely surrounded by jagged peaks that gently sloped down towards the base.

"Wow, the place is pretty," Miri noted. "Or it would be if it wasn't so cold."

"Yeah, it is kind of nice, a perfectly round valley covered in white snow," Andy agreed. "I'm taking some pictures."

"Christ," Hoff let out. "You are seriously going–"

Several green explosions rocked one of the outer watchtowers and left several big craters on the snow. I expected to see some rock, but instead just saw more snow. Looks like this snowstorm had been going on for quite a while. Steam started coming out of the impact craters just as Recon began firing back. Flint's men immediatelybunkered down, digging themselves down into the snow. A moment later I realized why. Brutes and grunts emerged from the snow, a lot closer to the outer fence than I would've imagined, and strafed the towers and fence. I saw several of Recon's members dive down as they were almost hit.

"Yeah, they've been doing that for a while," Flint came in. "Start big in order to draw a counter attack and then hit us as soon as we leave cover."

"Understood," Caboose said. "Any other tips?"

"Watch the sides."

Little black shapes started emerging from the snow, some were wearing some weird cloaks that presumable held the cold back, but most were wearing regular armor. I watched the exchange, using the zoom capability on my visor to close up on the battle. The brutes were as nimble as ever, wading through the deep snow while the grunts struggled to get through it. I tried spotting some jackals, but didn't see any. The birds would have had a pretty hard time surviving in these conditions.

"Some help here," Caboose suggested.

"Uh, right," I said. "Pavel, light 'em up."

"You just love saying that, don't you?"

I chuckled. "You wanted to say it?"

"Yeah," he grumbled. "Firing."

Pavel and the rest of his squad started firing their machine guns. I loved the sound that they made. Some of the brutes tried to redirect their fire before HW cut them down. I kept my rifle aimed at the aliens, but didn't fire. Instead I just enjoyed the way that their blood colored up the snow.

Wow, I just felt a little psychopathicright now.

The brutes took some losses and started falling back, disappearing into trenches that they had dug before the snowstorm. Recon stopped firing, but Flint's men kept their gunfire up for a while before they finally let up.

"Sometimes they fake retreats," he explained. "We should expect a bigger attack a few minutes from now."

"Hey, how deep's the snow?" I asked him.

"Hmmm, don't know," he replied. "Sometimes you can't tell because of the ice."

"Ice?" I asked.

"Yeah, the base is built on a lake."

"A lake?" I asked, realizing how stupid I sounded. "They built this on a lake?"

"That's the same thing I asked when I found out. It gets worse, see those mountain peaks? They're actually the edge of a volcano crater."

"This is a crater lake? So we're in the middle of a volcano?"

"An active one too," he replied. "How do you think they get all the power? Besides, why else would anybody build anything this far north?"

I looked directly down, picturing the raging inferno ragingunderneath us. "A super-volcano. Well that's not foreboding whatsoever."

Flint laughed. "Agreed, but we've got some sort of early warning things in case this thing actually decides to ever go up."

"Well I feel better already."

"Kind of takes your mind off the army surrounding us, eh?"

"Almost," I deadpanned. "Wait… I'm seeing movement. Over there."

"Uhhh, I see it," he replied. "Get ready."

This time the attack was for real. The brutes started with strafing attacks on the towers closest to them. The ones with carbines hung out back, constantly firing at my men to keep their heads down. The rest of them started moving up, firing as they went. I noticed that it was the brutes that moved up first and not the grunts. Either they were lo won numbers or they ate the grunts. Maybe both. A few of the brutes fell down, but they could just drop and hide underneath the snow any time. When they were halfway through another group emerged, this one had grunts and even some jackals amongst them.

"Oh shit," I muttered. "They are going to reach the fence."

"And knock it down," Flint added. "Could sure use the help right now."

"Li–"

"Light 'em up," Pavel violently cut in.

I started firing, aiming for the head with the brutes. It was pretty long range, but I still managed some hits. I hated the way those fancy helmets actually served to stop bullets instead of just making for bigger targets. Some of the brutes fell down, but most of them just got back up and kept on running, ignoring the gunfire that rose up to meet them. They were doing an incredibly good job at suppressingFlint's and Caboose's men. They were acting surprisingly not like brutes.

When the first brutes reached the fence they tackled it. I noticed that some of them jerked violently and started smoking. The fence was electrified, nice going. When the brutes didn't get up the rest just moved forward, jumping over the gate carefully. The few that didn't make it well enough jumped up and down as the gate shocked them, but most of them landed on the other side of the knocked-down gate. Half of them started firing at our positions and the rest of them began digging through the snow.

"Making a snow-fort," Schitzo said. "How manly."

I switched to full-auto and began hammering at the brutes. One of them flew sideways as Zepeda nailed it with his sniper. The rest of the brutes took a knee and scattered buying some time for the rest of the men down there to start returning fire. My men on the towers were still pinned down, but it looked like Caboose and Flint's men could handle it right now. I switched back to semi and started taking careful, measured shots at brutes that had been weakened. I smiled as five brutes went down in quick succession. Coupled with Miri and Hoff firing with me, we reduced their numbers by a third by the time the second wave got there.

"Fuel rods," Zepeda suddenly came in. "Watch out!"

Six green blobs flew out of nowhere and headed directly towards the watchtowers. I saw men jump out of them and land in the snow just as the tops blew up in green explosions. I quickly confirmed that my men were alive and started shooting again.

"Zepeda, I want you to scan for those fuel rods and take them out," I ordered.

Steam was beginning to raise form the snow, blocking my sight. My shots became less and less accurate as I started using movement to guide myself and eventually I had to stop. Miri and Hoff also stopped not long after that, even with linked up HUDs not many of us could see the brutes moving around.

"What's that?" Hoff asked after a few seconds of relative silence.

I looked at the place that he had marked and cursed. Several black silhouettes flashed through the steam, gaining altitude before coming back down in a steep arc. At least twenty brutes with jump jets flew over the fence and the defenders, throwing down grenades as they went.

I winced as three of Flint's men were torn apart by the spike grenades. The jumpers kept going and landed right in front of the outer walls. I lost eye contact with them and started frantically ordering Pavel to get them from getting inside the building. He and the restof my men started firing at the brutes, but about twenty seconds later they stopped.

"They got in Frank," Pavel said. "At least ten of them."

"Oh shit," I muttered, standing up and running down the emergency stairwell on the side of my building. I jerked a window open and jumped inside, ordering Hoff and Miri to make their way inside.

"Al? Al?" I tried communicating with the AI. "Al… shit."

I started pulling up the base's blueprints and tried to connect my helmet with the security network on the complex. All the camera's on the place were still active, and at least a few of them must've captured the brutes coming inside. I stopped so that my helmet could synchronize with the cameras. I got a feed, there were exactly eleven brutes inside of the building. My HUD marked them on the minimap with red dots, they weren't too far away.

"Miri, Hoff, where the hell are you?"

"Right behind you El-tee," Hoff replied.

I turned and saw them running across the hallway, leaving snow behind them. I waited for them to catch up to me and we ran perpendicular to the path the brutes were taking. They were headed directly for the satellitedish control room. I have no idea how they figured out where they were.

"Three against eleven?" Miri asked. "Not good odds."

"For them," Hoff replied.

"No, she's right," I said. "Not in tight quarters. Pavel, I want you to send Andy and Sandor behind the brutes. Carver too."

"Got it," he replied.

"Come on, double time it," I shouted. "We need to get there ahead of them!"

We managed to get to our destination before the brutes. I had aimed for a small room that was right before the control room. There was scarcely any cover for us, but there was absolutely no cover whatsoever for anybody that came in barging through the door.

"We kill three or four, keep the rest from coming through and then wait for Andy and the rest to arrive, ok? Carver's MGL will do the job."

They both nodded and pressed themselves tighter to the wall, aiming at the door. The brutes would have a hard time coming through the door considering their size.

"Grenades?" Miri asked.

"We'll probably need to use a lot of them," Hoff muttered.

"They're around the corner," I warned. "Ready."

The door was dented as the lead brute slammed into it. I adjusted my aim slightly and waited for them to knock the door down. The moment the metal door clattered down to the floor we lit them up. The first brute to come through the door was dead before it could react. The second and third one attempted to bull through the narrow (for them) opening and had to pull back. One of those was killed when it fell to the floor and the other one was dragged back by its partners.

"Frags," I ordered. "Now!"

All three of us threw grenades through the opening and waited for them to detonate. The brutes replied in kind, tossing two baseball bat-sized spike grenades through the door and sticking them to the ceiling. I already had jagged spikes embedded in one of my shoulder plates, I didn't need any more ornaments in my armor.

I jumped back as the grenades detonated, sending spikes flying n every direction. A few of them whistled dangerously close past my head, but the lack of explosive force in the grenades saved us.

"I'm good," Miri said, panting.

"Same here," Hoff grunted after a moment.

"Watch the door," I ordered.

Already a brute was through, having used the grenades for distraction. We took it down with concentrated fire, but by the time it was dead two more had made their way through the door. They fired their spikers wildly and sent us wheeling backwards. Miri opened the door on the back of the room while Hoff and I covered her and took off down the hallway. I emptied my magazine on the brutes coming in through the door and threw a grenade just to be sure before leaving the room myself. The hallway was the last line of defense before the control room. If they got there the entire covvie fleet would have an open door for the planet.

"Andy, where the hell are you guys?"

"Sorry El-tee, they left two brutes behind, guarding the entrance. Tough to handle."

"Did you get shot again?"

"Not this time," she said. "Carver got nicked on the elbow, but he's fine."

"Well move it, we don't have much time left."

"Almost there, sir."

The brutes ignored their casualties and moved forward, firing spikes and using those red plasma rifles of theirs. The hallway didn't have any cover, but we had the advantage of corners while they didn't. Two more brutes died before the rest could reach us, but once they did it was pretty much game over. Hoff and Miri took out the first one and then jumped out of the way as the survivors overwhelmed our position. One went straight for the control room while the others focused their attention on us. I was beginning to think that only I would get alive out of this one when the brutes suddenly exploded, missing a limb or torn in half. The one banging on the door was hit in the back, Andy and Sandor walking towards it as they fired full-auto.

"Done, and done," Sandor said. "Hey El-tee."

"Thanks for the help," I said. "Carver, nice aiming."

The man raised his grenade launcher in greeting and muttered a quick thank you. Andy helped Miri and Hoff back to their feet and examined the dead brutes for a moment.

"Everybody ok?" she asked.

"Looks that way," I said. "Carver, you might want to bandage that cut, the cold can go through your suit there."

He glanced down at his bleeding elbow. "Goddamnit."

"Yeah," Andy agreed. "Here, I'll help you out."

We waited for a minute while Andy pulled out a bandage and wrapped it around Carver's arm. Sandor used the moment to shoot one bullet into each of the dead brutes' skulls to make sure that one of the beasts didn't turn out to be only mostly dead. A couple of the brutes jerked when they were shot, but none appeared to have been faking.

"They look bigger than usual," Sandor said. "Certainly craftier than the usual beasts we work with."

I nodded. "Seems like the brutes here are better trained."

"Certainly a far shot from the conscripts we get to face," Andy said. "Well, I don't know if they're conscripts, but they sure act like they are."

"On that we can agree," Hoff said. "But this worries me."

"The last thing we need is brutes starting to behave like elites. All professional and shit," Carver muttered while examining his arm and bending his elbow experimentally. "All good. Thanks Andy."

"All right, let's go," I said.

We raced back outside, breaking off in groups to exit near our previous positions. I climbed back out the window and ran towards the place that I had been in. The gunfire and screams were audible all the way over here, and the number of corpses had doubled in the minutes that we had been inside. The cold hit me pretty hard again, but my suit quickly adjusted accordingly.

"Caboose, report!" I shouted, quickly firing on a pair of brutes attempting to flank some of Flint's men. "Flint, what's going on?"

"A bunch of them were hiding under the snow right outside the gates, they surprised us just as the third wave hit us," Lieutenant Flint replied. "They killed four of my men and pushed us back beyond the second fence."

"I see that, what do you need?"

"Just keep shooting, we stopped them with help from your men," he grunted. "We took out the leader, the advance lost steam after that."

"All right, I'll keep shooting."

Hoff and Miri got back on their perches a few moments later and started firing. They worked with me to take out the brutes closest to our men. Zepeda joined us, hitting them in the head with every shot. Six dead brutes and several grunts later the attack started to slacken. Half the brutes were already dead and the grunts were beginning to panic. If we kept this on for a little bit longer the brutes would go berserk and the grunts would retreat.

"Come on, come on," I muttered, aiming at the corner of a watchtower. A brute looked around the corner and popped back behind cover. I waited a few seconds longer and then the brute decided that this was beginning to turn bad for them and ran away from the complex. I fired a burst that connected right between its shoulder blades. My next two bursts raised plumes of snow when they missed, but the next three all landed on the back of its head. The brute fell, twitched, and died.

By the time I redirected my attention back to the chain link fences most of the covvies were dead or dying. A few managed to make their way out and jump inside holes or trenches, but by the time this was over eighty percent of them were dead. Not terribly bad numbers for us, but Flint's company had suffered pretty bad, their section of the line had been hit the hardest. A few soldiers were still twitching and crawling on the ground, but most of the men on the ground weren't moving. A few of them were most definitely missing a limb or two. Damn brutes.

"Looks like it's the last of them," Pavel said. "Goddamn."

"Flint, your unit ok?"

"Shit," he grunted. "We can't take another pounding like that. I lost two– no, two and a half squads. We're about at sixty percent capacity."

"I understand," I replied. "Shit, do we have an estimate on their numbers?"

"Nothing accurate," he replied. "They have a stealth pylon or something similar, we can't pin them down." He paused. "Listen Castillo, I need to take care of my men right now, if you'll excuse me."

"Of course," I said. Iswitched to a line with Caboose. "Grigori, why the hell didn't you answer?"

"Uh, sorry Lieutenant," Corporal Han came in. "Sergeant Konstantinov was hit. Wait, let me rephrase that, a brute hit him, with his hand. The blow knocked him unconscious."

"Was he using his shotgun again?" I asked.

"Yup," Han replied. "Killed two big ass brutes with it before the third knocked him out."

"Who killed that one?"

"O'Malley and Montri drove it off, but I think it might've been you who killed it when it was running away."

I smiled to myself. "Tell him he owes me one when he wakes up. Is he fine?"

"Yeah, nothing to indicate otherwise."

"Good, good…" I stared thoughtfully. Having Caboose die and then Han become squad leader right now wouldn't be the best thing. "Anybody else hurt?"

"I got grazed by a carbine and Atkins got a couple of scratches, I think it's shrapnel, but it's too soon to tell. Nothing serious."

"Excellent," I said. "Flint's men?"

"Army guys got hit hammered pretty bad. The ones that are still struggling will die, no way going around that." Han sighed. "Next attack like that is going to be the last."

I could see Han crouching over Caboose's unconscious body through my scope. He looked up at me and shrugged before gently poking Caboose awake.

"Yeah, he's fine," Han assured me. "El-tee, we can't–"

"Shit, get down!" I yelled.

My eyes traced the trajectory of a giant blue ball of plasma appear in the distance. Men scattered in every possible direction even as another shot appeared. The explosives were flying in too straight a line to be from a Wraith. If the covvies had artillery, they could take out at least one of the dishes with sustained fire. The first three plasma shells landed just short of the outer fence and the next four hit the area in between the second fence and the outer buildings. My men and Flint's soldiers ran around, looking for places to take cover in as the shells landed. The barrage stopped after the twelfth shell and no one was hurt, but we couldn't afford to have an enemy artillery piece in the field.

"Why'd they stop?" Sandor asked.

"They were calibrating the cannon," Pavel explained, now they know just where to shoot."

"We need to take that out," I said.

"They'll see us coming a mile away," Marv muttered. "Either we get another snowstorm or we just lay down and die."

I stood up and looked around in a circle. Clouds were beginning to slide past one of the edges of the crater, I wasn't terribly good when it came to reading weather, but clouds usually meant rain, or in this case, snow.

"Zepeda, can you see the artillery piece?" I asked.

I got a negative light. "It's somewhere between there and there," he spoke, delimitating a rather large area between two peaks.

"That looks like a snowstorm to me," Sandor said. "We might get our chance."

I quickly contacted Jen and Flint and explained what we planned. Flint told me that the base had a few snow-enabled Mongooses that could help us cover some of the distance. I quickly started working on a plan and borrowedsome explosives from HW and Recon squads. By the time we were ready and geared up the visibility was almost zero and the temperature had dropped back to ludicrous levels. My squad was ready to go and I was eager to get this over with.

"Let's go," I ordered as I started jogging towards the garage. "We don't know when this storm will end and we need to take advantage of it. Everybody ready?"

"Yes, sir!"

"All right, let's do this."

* * *

><p><em>Thanks to SilasWhitfield for proofreading this chapter.<em>

_As some of you may know, Silas won't be proofreading for much longer in account to his moving to a different state and into military barracks as opposed to his own place. Yeah, that guy can kick your ass, so don't criticize his proofreading... I kid you. Anyways, I already sent out a couple of different requests to betas registered in the site, but if anyone here would be interested in proofreading AND HAS THE SKILL AND TALENT FOR IT I'm willing to consider you._

_That being said, I love ending a chapter with that phrase. I don't think I've ever done it before, but it's certainly better than a cliffhanger. Maybe like you're about to jump off a cliff voluntarily... Oh well, the point is that it comes off as pretty badass._

_What else, what else? Oh right, there was that little debacle with Katie, no biggie. Frank's got a shitload of time to think it over. He can consider his options while in between battles and skirmishes. Well, maybe he doesn't have that much time. Sucks for him. And Hanna. And Katie._

_You asked for arctic warfare. I give you warfare in the snow. Maybe later we'll get a full-on battle, but as for now you'll have to settle for this. Good for those of you that noticed Tartarus, the guy's pretty damn badass even if he's kind of a dick. No wonder the brutes on Paris IV are so fucking awesome._

_Thanks for all your reviews and don't forget to stay strong._

_-casquis_


	173. Static

Chapter CLXXIII: Static

**March 2, 2549 (UNSC Calendar)/**

**Caradhras Caldera Orbital Defense Generator, Paris IV, Paris System**

* * *

><p><em>"Stay frosty."<em>

* * *

><p>As the garage gates opened the snow flooded inside, covering the clean floor. There were a couple of large transports designed to move over snow and ice without breaking through it as well as several Mongooses with treads instead of rear wheels and extra wide front tires.<p>

The ice Mongooses were a little bit wider than usual and had an abnormally large windshield. Andy, Sandor, and Marv hopped on the driver seats while Miri, Hoff, and myself on the passenger seats behind them. I secured my rifle on the holster next to my seat and made sure that my boots were firmly planted against the footholds before ordering my squad forward.

Two of Caboose's men opened the gate for us and promptly closed it as soon as we were throughLess than ten seconds later, the defense generator was gone, blocked from sight by the other buildings.

"Well this is going to be fun," Sandor muttered.

A gust of wind almost jerked me from the Mongoose and I immediately tightened my grip on the handholds. My gloves stuck to the cold bar even despite the foam around it. The temperature in here was frigid; I kept a thermometer on my HUD just so that I could constantly be amazed by how incredibly cold it was out there.

"Slow down," Andy warned. "The snow's a little bit crunchy here."

Our Mongooses were already half-buried in snow. We were only staying afloat due to the compressed snow underneath us. We slowed down regardless; the last thing we wanted was to bog down less than a hundred meters away from the base. Instead we focused on keeping watch for any covvies around us.

"Slow down," I said. "We're coming through enemy territory."

So far we didn't know where the covvie main camp was located– odds were that it was located over the crater– but we still knew where their front lines were. Right now we should be crossing directly through the trenches that they had dug. I couldn't really see more than ten feet away, but I know that I wouldn't appreciate landing into a nest full of cold and angry brutes.

"Shit," Hoff muttered. "Movement over there!"

Every head turned to the right where Hoff had pointed at and I indeed caught some movement. My eyesight was far better than theirs. I had to squint to make out the silhouette even despite my physiological advantages the snow still proved to be as effective as a smokescreen. I gently tapped Marv in the back, making him stop, and pulled out my rifle, taking careful aim at the silhouette with it. Miri and Hoff also aimed their rifles and waited for my move.

"I don't see anything," Miri said. "It could have been some bunched up snow."

"She has a point El-tee," Sandor said. "Besides, we can just skip by them and hit the Spire and the artillery piece."

I didn't move. The bunched up snow hadn't moved. Had it been what Miri suggested the strong gusts of winds would've scattered it. The silhouette seemed a little bit too motionless, but if I fired not even the snowstorm would block the sound of the gunshot completely. I wondered what the consequences would be if I fired at a pile of snow. The nearest covvies would definitely hear us, maybe they wouldn't see us, but they would know we were there. If I didn't shoot we could just return and take care of the alien later.

I fired.

The silhouette turned out to belong to a brute, because a faint roar reached my ears. A half a second later both Hoff and Miri fired at the brute. By some miracle they managed to hit the alien even though they couldn't see it very well. The brute grunted as it was hit and then fell back down before snow covered it up.

"Go, go, go," I said urgently. "No more stopping from now on, we don't want to be caught out in the open."

The three modified Mongooses took off, shooting snow out the back and we were once more on our way. Our objective wasn't that far off, maybe about six minutes on a Mongoose if this had been solid ground, but the soft powder didn't really give the vehicles much traction, that and there was the constant risk of driving over a particularly soft patch of snow and completely losing the vehicle. Equally real was the risk of falling inside an enemy trench if we weren't paying attention.

"See that pile over there?" Marv asked after a while. "It looks artificial."

"Yes," I agreed. "Could be an igloo or something similar."

"Let's just go around it," Andy said. "We can mark it for later."

"Do it," I agreed. "Go wide aro–"

"Castillo come in!" Flint suddenly cried through the radio. "They're firing that big piece of theirs again, they're aiming for the dishes!"

"Understood," I replied immediately. "We'll double time it."

Marv made the Mongoose move ever slightly faster as did Andy and Sandor. Our trio of snowmobiles made their way through the snowstorm at what seemed to be a recklessly fast speed but was probably something closer to running speed.

"We're starting to climb up," Andy muttered. "We must be close."

"Yeah," I agreed. "Spread out and be careful."

My HUD flickered slightly. "Flint, Caboose, does anyone copy?"

I got some static through my feed. "Li… the… mbard… s hurt… we ne…" And then it cut off.

"We're getting closer to the stealth pylon," Marv said coolly. "There's heavy interference."

"Tell me about it," I muttered. "How much longer until we can't climb with the Mongoose?"

Marv shrugged, but he might've just been shuddering from the cold. "Not sure, we can climb fairly high up the rim, but I'm not sure we'll need to."

"What do you mean?" I asked him.

"There," he said pointing.

I leaned over his shoulder and looked carefully. At first I saw nothing, but then there were flashing lights. Very pale, almost imperceptible, it was surprising that Marv had seen them.

"I see that," I said. "Doesn't look big enough to be a pylon."

"Might just be a command building," he suggested. "Or some sor–"

A flash of skin and fur yanked Marv from the driver's seat. I immediately jumped forward and stopped the Mongoose. I pulled my pistol and fired at the brute wrestling with Marv on the ground. Two fountains of blood blossomed from the alien's shoulder plate.

"Don't shoot," Marv said.

I obliged and a second later he climbed out from underneath the giant mass of furry muscle with a bloodied knife. "Damn animal."

"Nice job," I observed. "Knives are supposed to be my thing."

"I've picked up a trick or two, sir," he replied. "My rifle."

I pointed.

"Thanks."

"Was it dead before I shot it?" I asked him.

"Almost, but the distraction certainly helped. The thing was so busy trying to crush my skull that it didn't try to stop my hands from moving." I could almost see Marv smiling behind his visor. He rarely cracked jokes during combat, but few people could claim to have handled brutes in one on one combat. Marv now joined a very select club.

"Nicely done regardless," I complimented. I spun the Mongoose around and tagged the position in my HUD. "We move on foot, try to be as small as possible."

Marv nodded and hefted his rifle. "Let's go, sir."

I jumped off the Mongoose and my boots sunk all the way to the knees. I tried taking a step and soon enough I was thigh-deep in snow. Marv hadn't fared any better. He simply shrugged and started moving in the direction that we had been heading. I took point, not wanting to appear like a lazy bastard, and let Marv walk the little path that I carved behind me. It wasn't long before I found myself wishing that I hadn't done that. Moving through deep snow wasn't exactly the most comfortable of exercises.

"Storm's letting up," Marv noted dully.

"Only a little," I grunted. "Let's get lower in any case."

From that point on it was only harder, moving through snow is hard enough, moving through snow in a crouch is even harder. It only changed when my boot hit something solid. It didn't feel as slippery as ice, so I raised my fist and signaled Marv to stop. I crouched even lower and dug out the snow surrounding my boot. It took some effort with the wind constantly undoing my efforts, but eventually I saw that I had hit something purple.

Purple in the middle of nowhere could only mean one thing. "The Covenant."

"We're right in the middle of their camp," Marv said.

"Andy, Hoff, do you copy? Miri, Sandor?"

I got some bursts of static from Miri, but from Hoff and Sandor I didn't get anything. I repeated the message once more, this time I barely heard anything from Miri and Andy. I shrugged and stifled a curse. I just hoped that they weren't dead. I turned around to look at Marv and tilted my head slightly. He was a formidable soldier, but we didn't know what was inside the building.

"So…" he said after a while.

"Want to go in?"

Marv sighed audibly. "Sure. Breach, flash, and clear?"

"Only way I see how," I replied. "Did you bring breaching charges?"

"They didn't have any at the power plant," he apologized. "I do have some C-12."

I smiled and took the putty that he offered. "When in doubt, C-12."

"Indeed," he agreed.

I turned back around and stretched the putty as thin as I could. C-12 was designed to be highly explosive as well as stable. Very few things short of God's own hand or magic could detonate it without the help of the detonator. The explosive was also incredibly versatile, designed to do anything from punching through battle-plate to demolishing buildings.

Maybe using it to breach a comparatively thin wall was stretching its list of purposes, but I wanted to see what the powerful explosive would do.

As soon as I had a semi-circular shape I planted the detonator right in the middle. I ran back and Marv did the same. Normally we would've stayed some ten meters away from the explosive, but C-12 was notoriously lethal, and I didn't exactly want to die from concussive damage to my organs.

"Ready?" I asked.

"As ready as I'll ev–"

I hit the detonator and an incredibly loud noise flooded my ears. I looked over my shoulder just in time to see a pile of snow coming down.

"Just say yes next time," I told him. "Take point."

Marv waddled through the deep snow and disappeared down the hole that the C-12 charge had created I jumped down behind him, the sound and flash of his flashbangs already fading. As I landed snow crunched under my boots and I could see three dead grunts scattered around my feet like rag dolls. Marvin was engaging two brutes, both of which had been badly hurt by the blast. I took aim at another brute farther out and fired three bursts. On the third burst the brute raised its spiker and fired a wild shot.

I turned and twisted as the spike nearly hit me in the side. As it flew past I felt a burning pain on my side and fell to the ground. For a moment I thought I had been shot, but that wasn't it. A quick look down revealed that I was fine. I cursed loudly as more spikers flew above Marv's head.

I took a jackal out from my position, but the moment I tried to stand back up I could feel the pain again. Marv killed the rest of the covvies inside the building and then immediately turned back around to tend to me.

"Sir, are you hit?"

"No," I grunted, still in pain. "That gash in between my ribs… it's hurting like hell."

Marv nodded understandingly. "You should still be in a hospital bed."

"I'm a Helljumper," I replied, managing to get to my feet.

"But you're also human," he replied, helping me up. "Did the stitches break?"

"Probably," I said. "But I'm not about to take the suit off. Not in this cold."

I pressed my hand against my side firmly, ignoring the pain. When it didn't go away I pressed harder and harder until it was almost too much to bear. When my eyes began watering I finally released the pressure. It was a very crude technique, but the pain was now less than it had been a second ago and I tricked my body into believing that I was fine. I moved around experimentally and shrugged at Marv.

"What's this place?" he asked.

"Looks like living quarters to me," I said. "One door and a bunch of bunks. That's a methane tank for the grunts over there and a nipple thingy."

"The brutes were sharing with the grunts? Maybe the situation is better than we expected."

"Yeah," I agreed. "Or maybe they just want to eat them easily."

"Always a possibility," Marv agreed with some humor adorning his voice.

I winced as my wound throbbed and made sure that my suit was tight against it, stalling the bleeding ever so slightly. Had the wound been a little bit higher I could've administered biofoam through the tubes in the chest, but it was low enough that it wasn't considered lethal and therefore was sealed from the rest of the thoracic cavity.

"Come on," I said. "We need to keep moving. Find that pylon or that piece and blow 'em up."

"Let's go," he said, climbing back out the hole we had made. "Need help?"

I took his hand and pulled myself out of the small barracks. The snowstorm was beginning to whittle. I still couldn't see clearly at a distance greater than twenty meters, but it was a lot better than it had been a few minutes before. Well, not better for us, it just meant that we could be spotted a lot easier.

"The lights," Marv said. "It was a watchtower."

I nodded and aimed at the tower. There was no movement on the top. "Marv, move up and clear it, I'll cover you."

He made his way through the snow and climbed somewhat clumsily until the gravity lift shot him into the platform hovering above. He looked around and then have me an ok sign form his position. As I moved in I started hearing growls and barks. No doubt the brutes were ordering the smaller aliens to go back out. It didn't seem like we would have an easier job at this.

"El-tee, I see the pylon," Marv said excitedly. "Behind those two rocks over there, probably placed in a crevice."

"I see it."

That meant that anything within fifty meters could see me as well. My armor was black with some grey streaks here and there, but black wasn't a color that blended well in a Christmas-like scenario of white snow. I started moving faster as Marv jumped down from the tower and landed in the soft snow. My side throbbed and hurt every time my right foot hit the snow, but I kept moving.

"Jackals!" Marv called out.

I raised my rifle and fired one burst at each jackal. They looked miserable and had probably just been sent up to guard the gap between the two rocks Marv had pointed at. Their bodies fell back and disappeared from sight and we moved on. The snowstorm was almost completely stopped now, but the sky was still overcast. If we were lucky we could get another violent snowing to make our escape.

"Watch out," Marv warned as he started climbing down the crevice. "Pylon's right in front of us. I don't see any grunts manning the turrets."

"Good," I said, "move up."

Marv slipped on what turned out to be ice and fell right on his ass before sliding down the rest of the crevice like it was a slide. He used his feet to stop himself against one of the pylon's three legs and immediately stood up to clear the space around him. He fired one long burst and I immediately found myself sliding down to help him. I flew past him and shot a wet and bedraggled-looking brute in the face before stopping. I immediately shot at another brute that popped out from behind a rock and sent it running for cover. Marv and I brought down two grunts that tried to run away in a combined effort and then I struggled to get back up.

"Shit," I cried as my side started burning and my legs gave way underneath me. I slammed into the ice surface just as the brute jumped from behind the rock. A miracle burst took the spiker from its hands, but it didn't stop, instead raising a meaty fist and swinging it down towards my chest.

Normally it would've been a matter of sliding backwards and avoiding the clumsy blow before hitting the brute in the face with a kick and following up with a burst from my rifle. This wasn't me at my best.

My right foot slipped and I was only able to move most of the distance required. I could've compensated with my rifle, but my vision was flooded with flashing stars and red from the pain on my side. The pain was briefly redirected to my foot as the brute's fist hit my armored boot, denting it.

Marv fired a burst and the brute collapsed sideways with eight holes in its chest.

"Shit," I said again, propping myself to a seated position. "Can't keep this up much longer."

He nodded, still wary of our surroundings. "I'll climb up, clear the second floor and plant the explosives."

"I'll guard the slip-and-slide," I told him, gesturing at the icy slope. "Go."

Marv disappeared up the gravity lift and not a second later a shape slid down the slope. I aimed at it but held my fire when I realized it was someone wearing Helljumper armor. An embarrassed Sandor looked up and started reaching for his sidearm before he saw it was me. I kicked him his rifle back and he carefully stood up. A moment later Hoff slid behind him and crashed against a pile of snow.

"You hit?" Sandor asked me.

I shook my head. "Stitches opened, or something. Marv's up there."

Both Hoff and Sandor looked up at the bottom of the second floor and then back towards me. They helped me back to my feet and Hoff quickly checked the area while Sandor supported my weight. I pressed my side once again, this time pushing myself a little bit harder. As soon as my legs wobbled from the pain I released the pressure and felt marginally better again.

"Sir, shouldn't you just take some painkillers?" Hoff asked me.

I shook my head. "I'm as hopped up on those as I dare," I told him.

"And too many cloud the mind," Sandor added.

"Yes, and you wouldn't want your fearless leader high during battle, would you?"

Hoff shrugged. "Sandor gets high on combat all the time, and I still take him into battle with me… as frightening as that is."

I squeezed Sandor's back to remind him of the little talk that we'd had. "Marv?"

"Coming down!" he replied. "Charges are just about set!"

"All right," I said with a slow nod. "I might need some help to climb out. I said might!"

Sandor immediately stepped back and spread his hands apologetically. I grunted and started climbing towards the slope. I held onto the purple support leg that Marv had used to stop himself and used it to push myself into a small ridge on the rock walls. From there I started climbing, using some ropes that the jackals had left there for support. Awful nice of them for doing that. Otherwise we would've been stuck here for a while.

"I'm up," I told myself, resting just shy of the top of the big rock. "Hoff?"

"Right behind you."

I took a deep breath and pushed myself to finish the final bit. I crouched and aimed at the Covenant camp. I could now see the piles of snow scattered about in what seemed to be almost a pattern. All the way from the power plant these would just look like random piles of snow, but from here I could clearly see that they weren't natural.

I looked around the camp and suddenly wondered why it was so empty. The barracks that Marv and I blew up must've drawn some heads. And there were enough buildings in this place to house at least two hundred covvies. Maybe less if we accounted for brutes.

"Where are all the– oh shit!"

"Sir?" Hoff asked me. "What's– dear God."

From this position we could see the base, even if the lingering clouds obscured the tops of the satellite dishes. What drew our attention was the massive force of Covenant moving towards the base from one of the sides. From here it looked like they had linked up with covvies from the other side of the crater. Pavel and Jen would have to handle it.

They couldn't, they were just too badly outnumbered.

"Ok, let's clear the area," I said, sliding down the rock and into the still-fresh snow. "Come on, come on!"

Hoff, Sandor, and Marv all jumped behind me in quick succession and we all took cover behind the boulders that flanked the crevice. Marv detonated the explosives and a few pieces of stealth pylon landed in front of us, producing steam as they hit the snow.

My HUD immediately showed all the chatter from troops in the neighboring area. The first thing I did was open a line to Pavel.

"Frank, they are–"

"I know, I know," I replied. "I see them from here, how long has the attack been going on?"

"About five minutes," he replied. "Jen and her platoon stalled it with rockets and grenades, but there are just too many of them, they took the outer wall and pushed us back to the buildings."

"Casualties?"

"Not on my unit," he said. "But O'Malley was hit by shrapnel. She's unconscious and it's a head wound."

"Damn it," I said. I liked O'Malley. "Flint?"

"I don't know how the man is still alive, his men took a pounding, he only has about a platoon left, the rest of the company is dead."

"And the Army company on the other side of the complex?"

"No better." He paused. "They're breaking through Frank, we need reinforcements ASAP!"

The moment Pavel was cut off Flint opened up a line to me. "You did it, eh? Lotta good it did us."

"I know," I grunted, already moving towards Miri and Andy's markers. "Can you hold?"

"Not for long. I requested support from Command, made it extremely clear just how bad we would have it if this complex fell to the Covenant." He chuckled humorlessly. "They're sending reinforcements from orbit, should be here in less than ten."

"We'll be there as soon as we can," I assured him. "Just hold on."

"Only thing I've been doing lately…" he grunted before cutting the line.

Next I switched to the squad line. "Andy, Miri, did you locate the cannon?"

"Yeah, but it's guarded by a large pack," Andy replied immediately. "They look nervous, some look like they want to leave and kill you guys."

"Kill the leader," I said immediately.

"Sir, there's two of us and fourteen of them," Miri spoke up. "We can't really–"

"Just do it!" I snapped. "We're right behind you."

I grunted and stopped, holding my side. "Marv, Sandor, off you go. Hoff, I'm going to need your help."

The two ODSTs immediately sped up and Hoff propped me up, slinging my right arm across his shoulder. We moved marginally faster than I had been doing a moment ago, but there was almost no pain from it. I hopped through the snow as fast as I could even as saw my men engaging unseen foes. There were a couple of plasma explosions and a small blaze that promptly died out, probably from a firebomb grenade. I felt relief when I saw that my men were all still alive and well. Marv fired two more bursts and Miri killed the last brute with what I assumed was a well-placed headshot.

"Good work," I complimented.

"Sir, we only got the jump on them because they were halfway frozen," Miri said.

"I know," I replied. "Next time I don't want you questioning my orders."

She nodded.

"Didn't hear you."

"Yes, sir," Miri said firmly.

"Good."

I walked up to the cannon and examined it. It looked similar enough to a human artillery piece, except that it was something of a mix between a beam rifle and a Wraith's cannon in appearance. I quickly located the firing panel and stood behind it. The controls appeared simple enough; they were almost identical to those on a Wraith.

"Andy," I waved her over. "Hit the covvies. I'll stay here with you. Everyone else, I want you to head back to the base, provide support."

The squad broke off as Andy carefully tapped some glyphs on the control panel. The cannon moved a little to the left and then down.

"Crap," Andy cursed. "These look like readings, but I can't read hingehead."

"Well, neither can I," I told her. "We're doing this the old fashioned way."

"Spotting our own strikes, huh… I don't think gunners have done that since World War Two."

"They did it in the Second Civil War," I said, remembering a little fun fact from my history books during my time in Earth.

"Spanish or American?"

"American," I said. "Now fire."

Her first shot landed at least two hundred meters short of the Covenant and far to the right. Andy quickly adjusted accordingly and fired off another shot, this one was about three dozen meters shy of its mark, but it was lined up with the covvie advance column. I could see some disarray through my scope.

"Fire faster."

"I'm going as fast as this thing does, goddamnit!" Andy exclaimed in frustration, furiously tapping buttons. "Come on, come on…"

The next shot landed right in between a small squad, frying some and vaporizing others. After that second shot, all the following ones were hits, not all hit what she was aiming for, but she was hitting the mass of the advance regardless. The enemy started scattering and in all likelihood intensifying their attack on my men. I saw the two Mongooses moving through the giant crater at a painstakingly slow speed. I quickly redirected my attention to the enemy force and saw that while our barrage had hurt them and disarrayed their attack, it hadn't done any serious damage.

"Hit the front of their advance," I ordered. "Do it."

"I can hit the building," she warned.

"You'd better be careful then," I replied. "Fire."

Her first shot hit a space in between the outer fence and the buildings. She muttered something and fired another shot, this one hitting a couple of grunts moving through the open area. Once she got her distance calibrated she started firing left and right, occasionally shifting the distance slightly to hit the occasional target that was closer or farther away.

"Can't that thing fire any faster?" Pavel complained after a minute. "They're still flooding through!"

"Well we're trying Pavel," I snapped back. "Reinforcements are on the way."

Suddenly my HUD flickered and a small screen appeared on the upper right corner. The screen revealed a familiar face that filled my body with hope and at the same time made my stomach twist in some sort of almost unnatural hatred.

"Lieutenant Krikor Darbinian," I said, spitting the name out.

"Captain," he corrected, a big smirk on his face. "Made it into your beloved Helljumpers too. Not as bad as I thought they were, I'll give you that."

"I kind of hoped that you had run out of oxygen on that drop pod."

"Careful there," he growled. "I still outrank you. We might not be in the _Inconvenience_ anymore, but the chain of command still has to be observed."

"That never stopped me before."

Darbinian actually shrugged. Instead of shooting back a snappy comment insulting my mother, my heritage, or the planet I lived on he just shrugged. I noted that there were some new scars on his face. The frat boy look that he had so often sported during his days in the _Inconvenience_ was all but gone. To anybody else he would've looked like a hardened killer instead of an asshole who had a knack for shooting big, angry aliens.

"Sitrep," he ordered.

"Enemy assault force in the low hundreds," I said immediately. "Two hundred eighty would be my estimate, maybe as high as three-fifty. They are attacking the northern side of the complex. Brutes, grunts, and jackals only, they have shoulder-mounted weaponry and plasma turrets, but no vehicles."

"No support?"

"I'm seventy percent sure of it," I replied.

"Better than most odds," he admitted with another small shrug. "Friendlies?"

"One and a half ODST platoons plus two Army," I said. "We have a lot of wounded who need medical attention, myself included."

"Understood," he said, tapping something on his drop pod. "Will you need a band aid or just some disinfectant spray?"

"A stapler will do," I said, keeping a perfectly clam voice in response to his taunt. "But you can use the band aids on your men."

Darbinian laughed. "You haven't met my men," he said.

"But I have met you," I said, raising an eyebrow. "Anything else?"

"No, that's about all the information we need. Hey, did Klaus finally bite it? I don't see him sucking you off."

"He's going to be so happy to see you," I muttered. "Don't worry, I'll make sure that he doesn't rip your head off, so no need to be afraid."

Darbinian laughed again, grabbing his helmet from out of frame and putting it on. It pissed me off to see him wearing the same kind of helmet I wore. "You know," he started. "I always kind of hoped I'd get to see you die. Maybe put in some token effort to save," he made air quotes around the word, "you, but fail. This could be my chance."

"Watch your tongue Darbinian," I growled. "Because I'll cut it off."

He spread his arms in mock surrender. "If you say so, then I shall do it." He approached the camera. "Now listen to me you worthless fuck, just because you are good at killing doesn't mean you are worthy of being a Marine, let alone a Helljumper. I'll cooperate with you, but step cross the line and I'll make sure you have some sort of accident that renders you unable to walk. You catch that?"

"Sir, yes, sir," I said in the cheeriest possible tone. "I look forward to it. Maybe I can fight off that accident."

Darbinian smiled again. "I'm gonna love the look on your face when you thank me for saving your ass ten minutes from now."

I bit my tongue. I _would_ have to thank him, if only to make it seem like he and I weren't about to strangle each other in front of our men. "You always did have a thing for my face, didn't you?"

Darbinian shook his head and polarized his visor. "On my way."

"I'll be waiting," I said as I cut the feed. "Pinche hijo de la chingada de la reputísima madre…"

Andy turned to look at me, still firing the large artillery cannon. "So, who was that?"

"You'll get to meet him soon enough."

"Doesn't sound like we'll get along." She looked at me. "Oh please, you were kicking at the snow and besides, you didn't have the helmet filter on."

I sighed. "You know Andy, sometimes I think that you're too damn smart to be a Helljumper."

"Thanks, sir," she replied, beaming.

"But then I remember that you enlisted to be one and change my mind," I finished.

She laughed. "Fair enough, sir. Fair enough… Look, here come your friends."

I followed her pointed finger all the way up. A section of the crater had been cleared up of clouds, and it was wide enough to reveal several dozen ODST drop pods plummeting towards the ground. They vapor trails behind them and the drag chutes were yanked off violently as they hit the correct altitude. For a moment there I found myself wishing that one or two pods would fail and land sideways or something, but I quickly got rid of the thought.

My HUD quickly marked the pods as 120 individual entry vehicles. I saw them flash as their booster rockets slowed them down further before slamming down into the soft, plushy, fresh snow. The heat from their ceramic shells melted through the snow and ice, raising water steam and making the whole area where they landed a large puddle. The Covenant soldiers hadn't seen them coming until the very last moment, and by that point it had been too late to do anything.

"Should I fire?" Andy asked.

I examined the battlefield before me. "Nah, someone would realize that it was on purpose."

She shrugged and chuckled slightly. "We've got your back, sir. Worry not."

I grunted something and limped back towards the lone remaining Mongoose. Once there I climbed up the passenger seat without too much difficulty and placed my rifle on the holster as Andy jumped on the driver's seat. She looked over her shoulder and waited for me to nod back at her before taking off.

The pain on my side had diminished greatly, but I still felt the blood pooled around the area and had to suppress a grunt whenever the Mongoose slid on a patch of particularly soft snow or hit a bunch of ice. The worst thing about this was that I had nobody but myself to blame. Had I been more reasonable and let Doctor Vinter keep me in the hospital for a little while longer I could've avoided all this mess. Maybe another unit would've been sent in to coordinate with Jen and Three and I could've avoided having to face Darbinian after he pulled our asses out of the fire.

That's what bothered me the most, not the pain, not the risk of death, or even the cold. What bothered me the most was that I had to thank that fucker for doing his job. That fucker in particular.

By the time Andy and I reached the power plant the battle was almost over. My men and Jen's were killing the last few covvies that had managed to get inside the buildings while Darbinian's men cleared up the Covenant corpses and made sure that the few wounded that they had would be ready to fight at a moment's notice. We drove through the black armored ODSTs without paying them a second glance. I located Darbinian with help from my HUD, but he was far enough away that getting back to my own platoon first wouldn't seem like an offense.

It would've been better if he had been closer, that way I could've just bypassed him completely and let him now that I actually meant offense.

As Miri and I stopped right outside a torn-down wall I saw four ODSTs approach us from amongst Darbinian's company. From inside the building came the sounds of a shotgun firing and a moment later I heard the all-clear come from Caboose. The man had a knack for the M90, I certainly enjoyed the show whenever he decided to take out his shotgun.

"You're gonna love this Pavel," I said. "Caboose, I want you here ASAP."

Pavel grunted and Caboose sent me an acknowledgement light. I didn't have to wait long for them to walk out and examine the ODSTs that were just finishing securing the area. Both Caboose and Pavel knew Darbinian, Pavel more personally so than Grigori.

"Fucking great," Pavel muttered. Even Caboose groaned.

The four ODSTs, the rest of my squad, finally joined up with us and stood around with us, waiting for something to happen. I jumped down from the Mongoose and steadied myself before grabbing my rifle and slinging it over me shoulder. Miri started to approach to help steady me but Hoff wisely held her back by the arm. My side was killing me, the brute that shot me promptly found itself missing its face, courtesy of Marv and his shotgun. Somehow it didn't seem like punishment enough.

"You all right?" Pavel asked me.

"Hurts," I said. "But I'll survive."

Darbinian's face appeared on my HUD. "Castillo, I want you here ASAP."

I acknowledged his order and opened up a line to Jen. "Hey Jen, you headed to Captain Darbinian?"

"Yeah, I'm on my way," she said. "Why?"

"No reason," I said. "Bring your second in command."

She chuckled. "I always do." Her laugh stopped abruptly when she remembered Micah Black. He had been her best friend for years, literally saved her life more times than she could count and now he was dead.

"Shit," I said. "Sorry."

"Don't apologize," she said. "Katsaros fills the role well."

I nodded to myself. "Well, here's to good men."

"Amen," she said. "I'll see you there."

"Caboose, Pavel, with me," I ordered. "Marv, hold down the fort will ya'?"

Marv nodded and cocked his rifle in a rather theatrical manner.

"You do realize that you just wasted a perfectly good bullet?" Sandor asked him, elbowing him in the ribs while stomping on the bullet. "Still, very impressive, cocking your gun and all that?"

"Thanks, I thought so too," Marv said. It was impressive how friendly and funny the man could be once combat was no longer a reality. "Very action movie, don't you think?"

"Oh yeah," Andy chimed in. "Dreamy."

I rolled my eyes and started walking towards Darbinian, Pavel and Caboose immediately stepped behind me, each to one side. We didn't usually walk like this, but it was useful when we wanted to give a nice impression. Three men walking like that, with scarred armors and their rifles still hot, could cause an impression. Caboose was 6'1 and Pavel just at 6'0. With the work ONI had done on me I was a bit over 6'4. Add our boots and helmets and you had three large men with armor so damaged that it stops looking unlucky and starts looking badass.

Darbinian was standing with four of his own men, presumably his platoon leaders, around him. He looked taller than before, but that was probably just the armor he was wearing. It had enough dents and scratches in it that I couldn't make myself believe that he just hid in the back.

"Shit," I muttered. "They're with the 7th."

"Hayes is from the 7th," Pavel grunted.

"And she's one of the nicer ones," Caboose added.

The 105th Shock Troopers Division was famous for its brutality. It was a reputation that I enjoyed, but sometimes came to bite me in the ass. I'm the first one to say that ODSTs are assholes by excellence. Even Miri gets all high and mighty with Marines sometimes without realizing it. We earned that right, we warned the right to brag and to be assholes simply because we are the best there is. The problem with our reputation is that some people think we would shoot a fellow jarhead or soldier for amusement. That reputation has its source in the 7th Shock Troop Battalion.

Jen was the first to talk. "Captain, thanks for the help."

Darbinian depolarized his helmet and nodded curtly.

"What she said," Caboose said, taking the hit for me.

"Been a while," Darbinian said. "Konstantinov, Klaus, Castillo."

"Darbinian," I replied in an equally dry tone. "Your men did a fine job."

One of the lieutenants nodded. "Damn right we did."

I was starting to hate these guys already.

"Give me an overview on the situation, will ya?" Darbinian asked.

I shrugged as Jen looked at me and she started explaining the situation, she went over our redeployment and the few short skirmishes that had been fought around the base before we left for the raid and the bulk of the Covenant forces attacked. Darbinian listened carefully while his lieutenants just looked around and chatted quietly with one another, occasionally letting out a snicker.

"So, you were safe from any trouble when the attack came, huh?" Darbinian said.

"To be fair–" Jen began.

"Yeah, I was," I replied drily. "If memory serves me correctly so were you."

Darbinian turned to look at me and his officers immediately tensed up, looking ready to jump me for not speaking properly to their commanding officer. I heard Caboose and Pavel tighten the grip on their guns behind them, Jen and Katsaros were confused about the whole situation, but I caught their fingers hovering towards the butts of their pistols.

I glanced in every direction and crossed my arms, both to show that I wasn't going for a weapon and that I wasn't about to back down.

Darbinian in turn uncrossed his. "Still the same impertinent asshole."

"Some things never change," I replied.

"And some do," he shot back, gesturing at his men, as if to remind me that they outnumbered us. "You'd better watch your tongue in the future, wouldn't want one of my men to think you were actually serious."

"And the Captain's men can get… defensive," one of Darbinian's men said. My HUD marked him as First Lieutenant Armando Asher, probably the company's executive officer.

"They're welcome to clear up any misunderstandings with us," Pavel said and Caboose nodded in agreement.

Asher let out a low growl before one of the other lieutenants waved him quiet. Darbinian chuckled and gestured for another of his men. The lieutenant reached into his side pouch and tossed me something.

"There's your stapler," Darbinian said after I caught it.

I looked at the thing. It was an honest-to-God surgical stapler. I examined the thing and then patted my right side softly. Darbinian might've thought it an insult, but I was actually thankful for the stapler. It would close my wound and it was almost guaranteed that it wouldn't open again. I examined the device carefully and raised it in gratitude at Darbinian. He and his cronies turned around and left even as we did the same.

"What was that?" Jen asked.

"Long story," I replied. "Maybe later, right now I've gotta staple myself shut and get some rest."

I could almost see her rolling her eyes as we walked back indoors.

* * *

><p><em>Thanks to SilasWhitfield for proofreading this chapter. In addition to Silas I managed to get two brave souls to volunteer for helping me proofread this chapter. Silas won't be proofreading anything past Chapter 175, but I managed to get the two aforementioned brave souls to start helping right away. So without further ado I'd like to thank <strong>SpartaLazor <strong>and **defarcher** for proofreading this chapter._

_Bet you didn't see that one coming. Darbinian had been out of everybody's minds for... how long? Probably a pretty long time. Well, he's back and he's even more powerful than before, not to mention that he improved in the arts of killing. I always love myself some good tension in between human forces. The war forced everyone to cooperate, but that doesn't mean that they still have to like each other. That's a thing that I don't feel like I've explored much in this fic other than with the ongoing almost-hatred between Frank and Hayes. Besides, I thought this would be fun._

_This chapter has the first true arctic warfare, based myself on MW2 a little bit (you all know that level, the one with the snowmobiles). In other news, that is probably the best chapter quote I've ever come up with since I started doing chapter quotes._

_All I have left to say is that things are going to get worse before this is over. A lot worse. In fact, I have to stop myself from making them too bad or otherwise Reach and Earth won't have that big an impact on you guys. Anyways, I hope you enjoyed this read and look forward to your opinions in the form of reviews. Yes. Review..._

_Stay strong._

_-casquis_


	174. Of Aliens and Pricks

Chapter CLXXIV: Of Aliens and Pricks

**March 9, 2549 (UNSC Calendar)/one week later.**

**Caradhras Caldera Orbital Defense Generator, Paris IV, Paris System**

* * *

><p><em>"Humans are better at killing humans than the Covenant will ever be. For that matter we're better at killing them too."<em>

* * *

><p>Darbinian's men were beginning to irritate me. The man himself hadn't directly confronted me or even attempted to talk to me. He ordered us to fortify the power plant and sent me a schedule for the patrols. I couldn't help but notice that my platoon had a disproportionately higher amount of combat patrols than anybody else, but if that was the extent of his dislike I was willing to take it and feel grateful too.<p>

His men though… how to explain…

They were stuck up, they were cocky, they were assholes. More than once they had taunted Flint's soldiers, taunting the few survivors from the two companies with insults too strong to be anything other than cruel amusement. Too often they had probed and poked at the survivors until they had snapped and attacked them. His men outnumbered us all, and the first couple of fights ended with the Army men severely beaten by the ODSTs. So far my men and Jen's had managed to keep our heads cool. I gave orders not to interact with Darbinian or his men unless expressly told to.

The other Helljumpers were beginning to notice that too, lately they had redirected their attention from the soldiers to us. After all, what's the fun in fucking with someone who snaps so easily?

Not an hour ago I had to stop an argument between Sandor and a particularly vicious sergeant. I had ignored the man but severely dressed down Sandor. I had been tempted to hit the sergeant after he taunted Sandor as he walked away, but somehow I managed not to. The incredibly humiliating dressing down that I gave him certainly helped. I had pretty much insulted him in two different languages for a period of two minutes before telling him not to fight with allied troops.

A few of my men chuckled when I left the sergeant behind, fuming, but doing that had been a mistake. That had put me in Darbinian's men radar. It didn't do well to discipline someone from a different unit in the military, but these Helljumpers would take it especially bad.

"Stop pacing around," Hoff said lazily. "Takacs, seriously, stop pacing around."

Sandor kept on walking from side to side. He was the kind of man who didn't back down from a fight, but during a heated argument he would get angry and start stuttering and would get so flustered that he'd just stop making any sense and start shaking. While I could relate to that, he was evidently pissed off because he hadn't beaten the shit out of the ODST that offended him.

"Sandor, sit down!" I snapped loudly. "You're going to make me dizzy."

He looked at me and sighed before reaching for a folding chair and opening it violently. Andy tossed him a squishy ball she had found and Sandor promptly started squeezing it to get rid of some of the tension. Andy chuckled slightly and Miri rolled her eyes.

My whole squad had commandeered one of the rooms for themselves. They managed to get most of the cushions and couches from the neighboring buildings before Darbinian's men set themselves to do the same. Andy and Marv both got a couch all to themselves in account of their higher ranks. The rest of them slept on improvised beds on the floor. Darbinian's men had dropped with full gear and therefore had no problem, but they hadn't exactly liked that we took all the actual cushions.

Pavel, Caboose and I in turn got another room to ourselves, with an old ratty sofa for each of us. It could've been worse, but the cold and occasionally failing power meant that we had to sleep in our undersuits, which made for terrible pajamas.

"El-tee," Andy said, "what can we do for you?"

I turned to face her. "Just came in to check if Sandor here hadn't decided to rip someone's head off."

"Obviously I didn't," Sandor said with a certain regret in his voice. "I can handle myself, sir."

"I'd sure hope so," I told him. "Otherwise we might find ourselves in a precarious position."

"What, you think they would frag us?" he asked with a snort.

"They just might," I assured him. "Most of those jackasses are nutjobs. Anything else?"

"Oh, sir!" Andy said, suddenly remembering something. "Those staples, ready to take them off?"

I patted my side gently. The pain from the wound itself was all but gone. There was still some tightness in the area, but the feeling that the surgical staples gave my skin was slightly uncomfortable.

"I dunno," I muttered. "It's been a week."

"For a wound that size I think it's fine, especially considering your reckless disregard for doctor's advice," she said. "Sir."

Marv snorted and Miri giggled quietly before trying to hide it with an imaginary coughing fit.

"While I do appreciate your concern. I don't think that your opinion really counts here or anywhere else. I'll remove these when I damn well want to."

"Your call El-tee," she said meekly.

"Damn right it is," I replied. "Now, if you don't ha–"

"Frank!"

I groaned, from his tone, Pavel didn't have good news.

"What?" I asked irritably, turning back around to look at my friend. "What?"

Pavel looked rather pissed, and to really piss off my friend required quite a lot of effort.

"Did you get the latest patrol schedule?"

I shook my head. "No, the longer it takes me to reply, the better."

Pavel reached into one of his pouches and gave me a crumpled piece of paper. "Look."

"I'm looking, I'm looking," I said, grabbing the thing. As my eyes scrolled through the print I started getting angry. The patrols that were supposed to walk outside the crater were all squads from my platoon. The schedule was valid for another four days, meaning that my men would be walking around in extremely hostile weather with little rest in between patrols. Darbinian could mess with me, but if he started putting my men in harm's way then he had a problem.

"That fuck," I muttered quietly.

"Can we expect some trouble?" Pavel asked.

I nodded. "Go get Grigori, Atkins, and Dotsenko," I said. They were some of my most intimidating men, and they also happened to be the most talented ones in hand-to-hand combat.

Pavel nodded and disappeared through the door, off to find the men I requested.

"Sir…" Miri began doubtfully.

"Sandor, Marv, come with me," I told them.

They immediately stood up, Sandor looking a whole lot more eager than Marvin. Both Sandor and I only had our leg armor on. I was wearing the vest that went under the big chest piece and stomach armor, but Sandor was only sporting his undersuit. Marvin was fully armored save for his helmet, which he had been using as a footrest for the past minutes. They both grabbed their MA5s and shouldered them as we left the room.

The weather had improved a lot in the past week, but I still felt the wave of cold hit my exposed face when we walked out in the open. The courtyard was filled with small tents and Darbinian's men. Some of them looked at us as we walked through them, but mostly just minded their own business. I got a bearing towards the building Darbinian had picked as his headquarters, but I hadn't gone more than halfway through when a group of three ODSTs stopped us.

"Hey lieutenant!" the one in the front called. "I want to talk to you."

"Get in line," I muttered, attempting to bull my way past him.

He stopped me, placing his hand firmly on my chest. "I'm afraid I must insist."

It took all my self-control not to break his arm into a dozen pieces. I could almost hear Sandor's gloves squeaking as he tightened his fists.

"And you are?" I asked him.

"That's a good question, sir," he said, making every word drip with contempt. "I served back in the _Inconvenience_."

"Good for you," I said, "you were in the escape pod that made it out?"

"One of the few survivors," he confirmed. "You still dating that pilot?"

"No. I really don't have time for this…"

"Fritz."

"Your rank."

"Corporal."

I sighed. "Listen corporal, my personal life is none of your business, now move."

He didn't. "Off to see Captain Darbinian? He was my CO, you know. Served with him for a couple of campaigns. That pretty medic you liked was in my platoon too. What was her name again?"

"Is there something you want to say, corporal?" I asked, making my voice sound deadly calm. This man was obviously building up to something, asking personal questions and not calling me sir. The two guys behind him looked giddy, as if they were expecting a fight. I would be sorry to disappoint them, if only so that they didn't get their way.

"Yes, the captain told me to tell you that he was not to be disturbed."

"Ah," I muttered. "Of course, and you have the written orders?"

"Written orders?" one of the men behind him scoffed. "We're in the twenty-sixth century."

He wasn't calling me sir either.

"Oh well, when you get those in paper you can stop me," I said, once again attempting to move past him.

"I'm afraid I must insist," he repeated threateningly.

I looked around to see that at least a dozen of the ODSTs from his company had stopped doing what they were doing and looked at us intently. The few that didn't have helmets on were sporting grins.

"All right," I said, "I see how it is." I turned around even though it pained me to do so, but these men would have a harder time stopping me if I had my whole platoon armed and armored up with me. My officer training told me that it was the smart thing to do, to avoid confrontation.

Fritz, however, wasn't done yet. "I heard that pilot girl went dike. I'm not surprised, maybe that pretty Han–"

I turned around and hit him in the visor with the most vicious, fastest, strongest punch that I had delivered in my whole life. I felt no pain when my knuckles collided with his visor, but I did hear how the ballistic plastic cracked slightly.

Fritz fell to the floor, stunned from my hit. I immediately picked him up and tossed him back down, but the soft snow he landed on meant that I wasn't doing anything other than shaking him around. As soon as he landed I took off his helmet and threw it at one of the guys behind him, knocking him to the ground. I vaguely registered Marv kicking the other ODST in the knee as Sandor approached the one I had thrown the helmet at.

I flipped Fritz around so that he was facing down and stuck his face in the snow as far down as I could. Fritz attempted to grab his MA5, but I kicked it away from him, pushing his face deeper into the snow. He struggled and tried to get out, but I was just too strong for him. When he realized that he started reaching for his pistol on his hip and I decided that I had had enough. I used my full strength to lift him back up like a rag doll and swung him about so that he smacked down with his back to the ground. I grabbed him by the collar and yanked his pistol from its holster. As soon as that was done I brought him back to his feet and positioned the high-caliber pistol next to his ear and fired eight times in quick succession.

Fritz yelled in surprise, shock, and fright as I did that. I followed up with a knee to the groin and yanked him back up before smacking him in the bridge of the nose with the pistol's grip. Doing that was supposed to be bad for a pistol, but hey, it wasn't my gun anyways.

A nasty gash appeared on his nose and blood started trickling down his ugly face. Only then did I finally calm down enough to register what was going on around me. Marv had kicked the ODST on the floor a couple of times, probably bruising his ribs and maybe even cracking them. It would be good for him, taking out his anger like that. Marv had quickly knocked his opponent to the ground and hit him with the butt of his rifle a couple of times, knocking a tooth loose. The man was now on his knees with the barrel of Marv's gun planted firmly in the back of his head.

The rest of their comrades reacted in an embarrassingly slow time. Had this event not been so surprisingly unexpected I have no doubt that the ODSTs would've swarmed us in a second.

I heard the cocking of at least a dozen different weapons and saw Sandor aim at the closest of the ODSTs before taking a couple of steps to stand next to me. A few seconds later Pavel arrived with Dotsenko and Caboose in tow, all three immediately raised their weapons at some of the other ODSTs, but if this standoff turned into a shootout we would be hopelessly outgunned.

"Miranda, Ryan, I want both of you to take positions at the windows," I heard Pavel murmur. "Andrea, alert Recon and Heavy Weapons."

If he got a reply I didn't catch it.

"Let them go asshole," one of Darbinian's ODSTs said.

"Don't think so," Sandor retorted, switching his aim to the man that had spoken.

"Put down your weapons!" I ordered. "That is a direct order!"

"Yeah, good luck," another man said, his voice betraying his nervousness.

"Let me rephrase that," I said. "Put down your weapons or I make sure that every last one of you gets a bullet in the brain!"

"Miranda, warning shot at someone's feet," Pavel murmured.

A plume of snow appeared in front of the latest man to speak and he stumbled backwards from the surprise before he started looking frantically for whoever had shot at him.

"There's more of us," he said.

"We're better," Pavel replied, cocking his heavy machine gun. I was glad that he hadn't done that before, because the noise really punctuated his statement.

"Castillo!" a voice roared. "What the hell is going on here?"

Darbinain had emerged from his command center with several men at his back. Unlike us, he was in full battle armor and gear.

"Sir," Fritz started. "I tried to tell them that you didn't want to be disturbed, but he at–"

I fired another round right next to his ear and pressed the warm tip of the pistol into the underside of his jaw.

"Liar," Dotsenko muttered, followed by some words in an offshoot of Russian.

"I think it's time you start teaching your men some respect," I growled.

"If you threaten my men–" Darbinian growled.

"I didn't threaten them," I cut in. "Well, I kind of am now," I admitted, pushing the gun tighter against Fritz' skin, "but if your men can't defend themselves in a good natured brawl without reaching for their firearms…"

"Then they don't deserve to be called Helljumpers," Caboose finished.

I noticed that none of my men were aiming at Darbinian, which was good. Things wouldn't get out of control that way, at least not any faster than they already were.

"Lieutenant, you will put down your gun or–" Darbinian began.

"Or what!" Sandor taunted.

"Or you and all your men will be charged for treason. The punishment for treason, as you all know, is death."

"Death now, death later, what's the difference?" Marv said in a perfectly calm voice.

Darbinian's jaw tightened, but eventually he sighed and waved for his men to relax. They didn't lower their guns completely, but they stopped actively threatening to blow our heads up. I looked back and nodded at my men to do the same. I released the magazine on the pistol and shoved it back into Fritz' holster before kicking him in the belly and sending him tumbling into the snow ass first.

Marv pulled his prisoner up and dusted his shoulders free of snow before turning him around and shoving him hard towards the rest of his unit.

"What happened?" Darbinian asked.

"Sir, he–"

"Shut the fuck up or I swear to God I will kill you," I said sharply. "Captain, may I?"

Darbinian nodded and I told him what had happened in a few short sentences.

"You can confirm it on his helmet camera," I said. "It's all in there."

Darbinian took off his helmet and rubbed the bridge of his nose. "This isn't how you handle things Frank…"

"I just thought I'd try speaking his language," I replied.

"You fucker," Fritz muttered.

Darbinian very calmly turned to face his man and in one swift motion clocked him right across the jaw, sending him tumbling to the snow for what must've been the eleventh time in the last minute.

"If you touch one of my men again…" he warned.

"Don't worry, I wouldn't go near them even if I was wearing a hazmat suit," I said. "Tell them to do the same and we should have no problems."

"Fair enough," he said, looking as angry as I felt. "But if th–"

He was interrupted for the third time in the span of a few seconds, but this time it was by the power plant's air raid sirens. Every last ODST (even mine) stood where they were, confused expressions on their faces.

"What the hell are you standing all there for?" Darbinian yelled.

"The fuck is making you so slow?" I shouted at the same time. "Move, move, move! Gear up for combat!"

And just like that, the Covenant put a close to the little conflict we had been having.

* * *

><p>"Move, move, move!" I urged my men, helping Miri climb to the top of the massive volcanic crater. From this position I could see the orbital defense generator as well as a trail of black ants coming from it to my position. If I just turned around I could see the slopes of the supervolcano gently rolling downwards as far as the eye could see. "We need to hurry up!"<p>

From what little information we had we knew that the Covenant had arrived with a force roughly equivalent to our own, but everything appeared to indicate that they had both air and armored support.

"Where the hell did they come from?" Hoff asked as he climbed the steep edge of the crater. "I seriously dislike those fuckers."

"Doesn't matter," I said. "There! You see them?"

Hoff squinted. "I think so… yeah, I see 'em."

"We'd better get a move on, I want to surprise them if we can."

Sandor was the last one of my squad to climb out. He was toting a SPANKr rocket launcher that he had borrowed from Darbinian's company during the confusion that followed the arrival of the Covenant. He had been exceptionally happy ever since he got to kick one of the other ODSTs half an hour ago. Marv also seemed in an exceptionally good mood.

To be fair, so was I.

"All ready," Sandor said.

"Let's go," I ordered. "That's our target. Satellite images show a rocky section that will slow the Covenant down and provide excellent cover for us."

"What are we waiting for then?" Miri asked and started moving down the slopes.

Moving down was harder than it looked. With fresh snow going all the way too our knees and unsteady ground beneath it we mostly rolled downhill. It was… fun. Even though I was headed to fight an enemy force with armored support it had been a very long time since I had felt this much like a kid. I had to keep myself from laughing out loud as we rolled down.

The fun never lasted. By the time we reached the boulders I had my men take cover behind the jagged rocks and did the same thing myself. As I looked back I saw the rest of my platoon headed down towards different spots in the massive mountain even as Darbinian and his men spread out to the other side. The little black dots were quite visible against the bright white snow, but maybe the glare would hide us for a while.

"Hoff, you're on lookout," I said. "I don't want any cloaked brutes getting past us."

"I'll keep my eyes open," he replied, pushing himself up to the top of his boulder. From there he kept aim on the enemy.

"Thank God we're not in the middle of a snowstorm right now," Andy muttered. "Otherwise…"

"Yeah," Miri agreed. "This way they can see us."

Andy scoffed. "And we can see them."

"Fair enough."

The covvies were advancing at a breakneck pace. That would turn out for our advantage, even if we did have less time to prepare it meant that they would be tired when they got to our positions.

"We've got elites," Hoff said.

"Come again?"

"We've got elites," he repeated.

"Damn it," I grunted. Elites would a lot tougher than brutes usually were. They weren't just crafty, they also happened to be smart. It also meant that I had to talk to Darbinian to warn him about it. "Captain, it appears we are facing elites," I said after I opened a line to him.

"Can you repeat that Second Lieutenant?"

I rolled my eyes, calling someone second lieutenant as opposed to just lieutenant couldn't have been anything but an insult. "We are facing elites captain, the not-so-big ones with four jaws, sir."

"Ah, understood. Is that how you learned to tell them apart from the other big ones?"

"It was mainly the fur, sir."

"I wouldn't expect anything else from you Castillo. Now, if you would just get your head out of your ass and start shooting at them, that would be great.

"Yes, sir," I replied.

"Orders, sir?" Miri asked.

"Wait for them to get within assault rifle range," I replied. "I want you and Hoff to take out the leaders first, I'll handle any sharpshooters I see, the rest of you can take care of the little ones. Hoff, what exactly are we facing?"

"Looks like just a couple of squads, sir. Probably scout forces."

"Excellent, we can kill them before they know what's going on."

We only had to wait for a minute and a half before my men were all within range. Marv and Sandor looked a little bit more uncomfortable at this distance than Andy, but they could all hit a bullseye at this range with no trouble or else they wouldn't be in the Shock Troopers.

"On your word, sir," Hoff stated calmly.

I carefully aimed at a particularly large jackal with a beam rifle slung across its back. "Fire."  
>I let out a single burst and immediately switched aim towards the two elites leading the force. Hoff and Miri quickly drained their shields and I helped take them out. The rest of my squad dispatched the grunts and other jackals with short and well-placed bursts to the chest and face. The engagement had taken a grand total of four seconds and it had left twelve dead aliens. The snow around their position took a different colors as blood pooled around their bodies.<p>

"They know we're here now," I reminded them. "Keep your eyes open for any flanking attempts. Hoff and Miri, I want you to tell me the moment you spot any vehicles, alright?"

"Yes, sir!"

"Pavel, where's your squad?"

"Behind you and to your left, about a hundred meters or so. Grigori is… a hundred and fifty meters to your left. From here we can provide cover for both of your squads."

"Great. Do you have the Spartan Laser?"

"Not right now, I gave it to Grigori. I think that Atkins has it."

"All right, that should work well enough. We're the left end of the line, aren't we."

"Correct," he confirmed. "Darbinian staggered his unit to our right. They're not facing the covvies directly, if they attack most of their forces will hit here."

"Tell me why I volunteered for this again?" I asked.

"Because Darbinian promised to provide support and then move his company to flank the Covenant assault force."

"If this works…"

"We'll wipe them out," Pavel said. "But if it doesn't…"

"My ghost will haunt that asshole for the rest of his life," I finished.

"Fair enough."

After those first two squads the rest of the Covenant forces started being more careful. They started sending larger units with heavy weapons, but so far our cover held and our overlapping fields of fire with HW and Recon kept them bogged down.

"Won't be long before we run low on ammunition," Marv said, slapping a fresh magazine into his rifle. "We can't keep this up much longer."

I looked to my right and saw a few muzzle flashes coming from foxholes. Darbinian and his men were certainly making themselves scarce right now, but that was all part of the plan.

"He'll keep his word," I said. "Or I'll make sure to avenge you all."

"Your confidence on us is inspiring," Andy told me.

"Shit banshees!"

"Fuck, Sandor!"

We had to stop shooting as the three fliers strafed our position and banked hard to come for another pass. As they turned Pavel's squad hit them on the side, but it wasn't enough to knock them out. When they came for the second pass Sandor was ready. He fired a rocket and then took cover. The lead banshee detonated in a colorful fireball and landed amongst us, thankfully not hurting anyone.

"Shoot again!" Hoff urged him.

Sandor was already aiming at the banshee's that had gone past us. He fired his second rocket and we all watched as the pilot tried to shake off the missile. For a moment the pilot appeared to be successful, but then the rocket swung around in a tight arc and smacked into the aircraft's wing, tearing it off and sending the Banshee crashing down unto the snow. We didn't get to admire the lovely spectacle, as the Covenant had taken advantage of the distraction that the banshees had given them to try and rush our position. We found ourselves on the verge of being overwhelmed.

"You can't fall now," Darbinian came in. "We need the covvies to commit to your position!"

"Fuck, you," I replied. "Sir."

"Castillo, if your pussy-ass unit fails then we might as well say goodbye to the power plant."

"And in turn the planet," I finished. "Yeah, yeah. The weight of a world on my shoulders, got it." I cut the line and fired at an elite that had gotten dangerously close to our pile of boulders.

"Pavel, hit them!"

"We'd have to fire _through_ you!" he shouted. "I can do it, but it's a big risk, Frank."

"Frags out," I ordered my squad. "Everyone take cover!"

My men threw the grenades at the advancing units. I barely saw a pair of grunts torn apart by the shrapnel before I ducked behind my boulder.

"Pavel, do it!"

Tracers immediately appeared in between the pointy rocks we were using for cover. I could hear bullets whistling past my head on both sides as HW Squad hit the force that was rushing us with their full might. An elite collapsed right next to me, a dozen wholes in its chest. I made myself as small a target as possible and let Pavel and his men handle it.

"Fuck!" I cried out when a bullet hit an inch from my head.

"My bad, sir," Lizzo apologized immediately.

"I expect friendly fire from the _other_ ODSTs, Lizzo!"

"My hand, you see–" he began apologetically.

"Focus!" Pavel snapped at him. "Frank, we stop firing in three, two, one. Cease fire!"

The battlefield quieted down for a moment, the only sound of battle came from Caboose and his men.

"Come on!" I shouted, leaving my rock to shoot at the few survivors that Pavel's barrage had left. "Pavel, I owe your squad a drink!"

"We can worry about that later," he said. "You still have Banshees to take care of."

"Sandor, watch out for the birds," I said. "Grigori, what's your status?"

"Hard-pressed but holding."

"Keep it that way, we need them to think they're just about to overwhelm us."

"They always are," he replied sardonically and cut the line.

From that point on things became slightly easier. We would let them come a little too close for comfort and then start cutting them down. Most of the time we halved their numbers, killing the grunts and jackals, before the elites decided that they didn't have enough force to take us on. They'd promptly change their mind and attack us again with reinforcements, but the way they were pushing their rear units to the frontline meant that they were always on the brink of exhaustion when they finally faced us.

"We're at twenty percent on ammunition, sir," Sandor said after a particularly easy skirmish. "We can't keep this up much longer."

"Twenty percent?" I asked him.

"I'm good with math," he replied simply.

"That's not what I meant, but still, pretty impressive." I looked down and saw that I only had a few magazines left. There were empty magazines and casings at my feet. I checked my clock and was surprised by how long it had been since this started. It seemed like it had only been a few minutes.

"Darbinian, where the hell are you?"

"I can't attack now, if we do they'll still have all their armored and most of their air support!" he shouted back. "They're not committing."

"Maybe they saw through your clever strategy," I suggested.

"A possibility," he admitted, startling me. "But we don't have any other choice."

"Fuck," I cursed. "I'll see what I can do."

"Make it quick, or your men won't have any ammunition by the time this is over."

"It's their lives that concern me," I told him. "If we die because of your stupid plan…"

"It's gonna work," he assured me, an edge to his tone. "It has to."

I kicked at an empty magazine and cut the line.

"Ok, listen up," I boomed. "We need them to send their armored support and planes," I said. "From now on we only kill elites and sharpshooters. We need to scare them!"

It was a risky tactic, especially because we would have to wait until the grunts were terribly close for the elites to move up. Normally the large and proud reptilian aliens were the first ones in, but despite their twisted sense of honor and pride, they also knew when it was better to be pragmatic. After all, there was no glory in being killed by worthless vermin.

"All right," Andy sighed. "Here we go."

Our position was hit by plasma and needles, most certainly covering fire for the units that would be advancing and engaging us. We waited a lot longer than I was comfortable with, but as soon as the elites were within extreme close range we opened up. The hingeheads were surprised, our lack of response probably led them to believe we were out of ammunition. Not an unreasonable assumption, mind you, but still a mistaken one.

The lead elites were now majors clad in blood-red armor. The closest ones fell to Miri and Hoff. Despite his high opinion of himself and her almost-chronic shyness, they were both deadly marksmen and excellent soldiers. I also happened to be one of the best at what I did. The three of us hit two elites and then killed a minor before the enemy started firing on our positions. Pavel and his men provided some covering fire for us, but their pouches weren't exactly filled to the brim with ammo either.

A couple of grunts panicked and the jackals stopped their advance to form a shield wall. The elites that remained immediately made a dash for the colorful shield wall, but two more of them fell to our precision weapons in the trip. One of the elites on the ground struggled to drag itself to cover.

"Leave it there," I ordered loudly. "Hoff, keep aiming at its head. Miri, if they try to drag it to safety you and I will take the brave fucker out, got it?"

"Understood, sir," she replied.

The battlefield quieted down after Marv and Sandor took out the few grunts that hadn't run away from us. The elite minor slowly but surely dragged itself towards cover and safety. The ones behind the jackals had noticed what we were doing, because they made no effort to save their comrade. Perhaps a little but of pressure would do.

I switched my rifle to semi and fired at the snow right next to the elite's head. The gunshot made it recoil its head away and roar in both pain and frustration. After that I aimed for its leg and fired another shot at the gap in between the thigh and knee plates. This time the elite roared in agony as the bullet tore through the joint.

"Let's see if those hingeheads are the good friends you think they are," Sandor said.

And indeed, despite their failings as organic beings, the elites still had bonds of friendship. A major and a minor left the shield wall to help their wounded friend. I let them get all the way over there without firing, but the moment they reached the injured elite all three of us opened fire on the major. The alien tried to raise its plasma repeater, but it fell back from the bullet impacts before it could fire. The other minor grabbed its wounded comrade and started dragging it to safety. A couple of bullets pinged of its shields, but Miri took the cake when she shot the wounded hingehead in the head just a second before it disappeared behind the overlapped shields.

"Wow, that was cold," Andy noted.

"Psychological warfare," she replied simply. "The survivors behind the wall are gonna be pissed it was all for nothing."

"I know the feeling," Hoff said. "Gotta admit that I love inflicting it."

"Amen," Sandor echoed. "Did you see that fucker's brains splatter the other's face?"

"Gruesome," Hoff said. "But strangely satisfying."

"I'm glad you started thinking like me," Sandor replied. "There is some fun in all of this."

I rolled my eyes. "Mouths shut please. Hoff, I want you to lob a grenade over the shields, see if you can take out whatever's behind it.

"I was a quarterback," he said for the umpteenth time. "Not a pitcher." Even as he said that he lowered his rifle and yanked the last fragmentation grenade from his webbing. He took a couple of steps back and peeked out to see where the jackals were. As soon as he got his bearings he threw the explosive high up in the air.

"Look at it go," Andy said, craning her neck to look at the frag. "And it comes back down…"

The explosive landed just in front of the shields, but the shrapnel and concussive force was still enough to disable two of the shields. Sandor, Marv, and Andy immediately fired at the small gap, killing the unshielded jackal and the two on either side of it. I took advantage to pitch a grenade into the gap, throwing it as fast as I could. The explosion that followed completely disarrayed the enemy formation, and within a minute they were all dead.

"I'm down to my last two mags," Andy said.

"Same here," Sandor replied.

"Three," Marvin announced.

Hoff lifted one finger while Miri examined her pouches and then shook her head sadly.

"Well, at least we can say that we gave it our best shot."

"Sir," Caboose came in. "You've got a Wraith incoming. Those two Banshees appear to be coming from the side."

"Your side or ours?" I asked.

"They're gonna strafe both of our positions. Yep, that way." Caboose sighed for a moment before I heard detonations off to my left side.

Sandor was already raising his borrowed rocket launcher and firing at the lead flier, but the other one got within firing range before he could lock it. We were forced to turn around the rocks and expose ourselves to fire from enemy infantry as the banshee strafed the rocks with plasma cannons and two fuel rod shots. I always did hate how slow the things could go when they wanted to do the maximum amount of damage.

"Wraith!" Hoff shouted.

"Take cover!"

The blue plasma mortar landed right where I had been taking cover. I felt the heat from the explosion on my back and heard the snow melting from it. Now that I noticed, most of our pile of boulders was lacking any snow. The plasma had molten through most of it and turned it into hot water or steam. No wonder the covvies had been having trouble hitting us. Whenever they fired and missed they just provided more concealment for us.

"Lucky you," Schitzo said.

The Wraith wasn't done yet, it kept on firing and proved to be enough of a distraction that the enemy infantry started advancing again. The last remaining Banshee came for another strafing run and suddenly we found ourselves in some deep shit, as they say.

"Pavel, keep the infantry off our heads," I said. "Caboose, where the hell are you?"

"Firing at their flanks," he said, "they seem to think they can break through your position."

"Darbinian, they are committing!" I shouted.

"Hold on," he said. "We're deploying."

I held onto my rifle and loosened my knife from its sheath on my boot. It had been a really long time since I had used it, really. Maybe it was about time to get it wet with blood once again, but I really didn't want it to come down to that.

But want doesn't always get.

"Fuck, watch out!" Andy yelled, firing a long burst at something next to me. Another elite fell on top of the one that Pavel's men had taken out and I cursed. Andy jumped back behind cover as plasma bolts flew in her direction and cried out in pain. A white-clad elite appeared and I immediately tackled its legs. The elite fell on top of me, pinning my gun in between us. Fortunately, my knife was already in my hand. The ultra growled something and elbowed me in the ribs, the surgical staples dug into the skin, but the wound was almost healed and the ribs were made of titanium, so I wasn't badly hurt. After it hit me I raised my hand and brought my knife back down on its throat, cutting through the fabric covering its skin. The elite gurgled as my knife cut through its windpipe and a couple of important arteries. I carved through its muscular flesh and took a deep breath when the elite struggled. My next move was to shove it to my side.

Three needles buried themselves on the ultra's body and detonated, sending splashes of purplish blood everywhere. I yanked my pistol from its holster and fired at the grunts that had tried to kill me. I killed one of them and sent the other one tumbling downhill. I emptied the rest of my magazine on a jackal's shield and then reached for the plasma pistol attached to the ultra's thigh. My hands closed in on a grip and I aimed at another grunt that had gotten too close. I squeezed as the grunt covered its face.

The grunt opened one eye and lowered its arms, shocked that it was still alive. I was equally stunned, but then I realized that there had been no recoil and that I hadn't heard the sound of a plasma pistol firing. It was only then that I saw the twin tips of an energy sword, my energy sword, inches from the grunt's arms.

The grunt squealed in delight and raised its own weapon only for Marv to cut him down.

"Nice," he complimented. "But impractical."

I clicked on the sword's grip again and the plasma blade disappeared. I immediately dragged myself back to my feet and behind cover with Marv. My battle rifle was still underneath the huge elite ultra and I only had my pistol with two magazines for it. And the energy sword of course, but those things looked as dangerous for the user as they did for the one unlucky enough to be facing the pointy end.

"How much longer?" Marv asked.

"Until we die?" I replied, raising an eyebrow. "Ten, maybe twelve elites."

"Each?"

"Don't flatter yourself," I told him. "You might make it to six."

The next elite that made it past the rock turned to fire at us, but it met Marv's rifle. The elite recoiled from the burst as I carefully aimed the energy sword at it. The two tips cut through the shields and armor as if they weren't there, and the elite looked stunned for a second before I jerked the sword violently from side to side. The elite's burnt entrails left its belly and it collapsed to the ground, dead.

"That's one," I said.

Andy, Miri, and Sandor were all working to funnel the advancing aliens away from Marv and me while Hoff took potshots at other aliens from his position in the rear. He couldn't have much ammo left, even if he killed an alien with every shot it wouldn't be enough. Darbinian needed to make good on his word and do it fast.

"Pavel," I said.

"We're out," he said. "All you have right now is Grigori."

"We're doing our best," Caboose came in. "Darbinian's men are moving, just a little bit longer, sir."

Marv and I held. Without Miri and Sandor working with the wounded Andy we would've been overwhelmed, but the aliens had to get past the boulders to get to us and our position meant that we couldn't be flanked. Marv helped out a lot. He was handy with a knife, as the dead elite to his right testified to. His MA5 was empty now, but his pistol still had some life in it, and the two plasma rifles I was using were enough to gain us some time. I fired one until it overheated and then switched to the other. Rinse and repeat.

When another elite came, Marv stabbed its foot against the ground and fired two shots at its jaws, stunning it. I used my small backup knife to gouge its eye out and then Marv finished it off with his knife, driving it through its neck. The next elite that came swiped an energy sword at us, carving a nice, deep groove on the stone. I activated my own energy sword, but the elite easily tore it from my grip with a flick of its wrist.

I grabbed my last knife from the small of my back and crouched into a combat position. Marv threw his knife at the elite and as it raised its sword to cover itself I lunged for it. Two quick slashed to the right knee brought it down so that its face was level with mine. I smiled at it through my black visor and then brought my knife down on its head with all my strength. The blade dented the helmet and cut through the skull. Marv yanked me back to cover and now I found myself completely unarmed. My knives were all stuck on three different elites and my ammunition was all spent.

"What does that make?" Marv asked, tossing his empty pistol aside.

"Six," I said. "In between the both of us."

"Well that was disappointing," he said with a shrug.

"We're out!" Sandor shouted.

"Oh well," I sighed, looking up at the clear blue sky. "Darbinian is gonna get it."

A barrage of gunfire came from our right side, away from Caboose's position.

"Or not," Marv said tentatively.

"Darbinian kept his word," Pavel said. "They're hitting the covvies from the side!"

I heard explosions and blasts and screams, but in the end the covvies couldn't turn their line around fast enough to counter the attack of a well-trained and bloodthirsty ODST company.

The focus of the battle changed and after a few minutes of respite a small squad of ODSTs got to our position even as Pavel's and Caboose's squads joined mine. The men dropped a couple of large ammunition boxes in our midst and very grudgingly told us that they were here to help us if we needed anything.

"Cover us while we resupply," I ordered them.

The men nodded and moved downhill to protect us if the Covenant suddenly decided to attack us again.

"Andy, you got shot again?" I asked her. "Are you ok?"

She patted her thigh gingerly and shook her head. "I'm fine. The armor stopped the bolt, but it heated it up and burned into my leg. Undersuit is useless."  
>I smiled.<p>

"Why does our medic keep getting shot?" Sandor complained. "Andy, you have to keep up."

She laughed weakly and started unclasping her thigh armor. She removed it with a wince and revealed that the undersuit had been burnt away underneath it. Her skin was bright pink and bloody and she had several blisters there.

"Horrible legs," Hoff said, looking over her shoulder. "A woman should always have good legs."

"Shut up," Miri said, shoving him sideways and into a patch of snow that had remained.

Hoff chuckled and got back to his feet as Andy self-administered some biofoam. She winced and clasped her fists, but otherwise managed to keep from crying out. It was a small injury, otherwise her screams would've startled everybody within two square miles.

"All right, enough ogling," I said. "Let's resupply. The battle isn't over yet."

By the time we were armed up again it mostly was. Pavel and his men broke off to find a good shooting position and Caboose kept his squad with mine. The only one of us who got a shot off was Zepeda. We all turned to look at him after we saw a wounded grunt's head explode. Zepeda just shrugged and pointedly ignored us while looking at his SRS.

"Now where the hell's Darbinian," I said to myself. As soon as I located him I started taking long strides towards him. He saw me and said a couple of quick words to one of his lieutenants, sending him away. "You took your sweet time," I said. "How ab–"

I stopped as I felt a weird feeling in my belly. I looked up at the same time as Darbinian did, evidently feeling it too. We looked up to see a small bright light in the sky. It was blue and therefore barely visible, but I could just make out the circular shape.

"It can't be…" one of Darbinian's men trailed off.

"Too close to the planet," I said. "They fucking did it."

"What is it?" Pavel asked. "What class?!"

Zepeda immediately aimed up through his scope at the thing. "Corvette."

"It's still enough to wipe us all out," Darbinian said. "All right, we need to fall back and seek shelter!"

His men started moving frantically, packing up and climbing back up the hills and towards the volcanic crater. I squinted and used my helmet to zoom in on the Covenant corvette. The blue light disappeared as it finished its slipspace jump and I found myself staring at a small black dot.

"How the hell did it make it through the defense platforms?" Caboose wondered out loud.

"If it did it means the planet is lost," Hoff replied. He had family here.

"They would've told us something!" Pavel exclaimed, outraged.

Suddenly a bright white light crossed the sky, disappearing over the horizon. The small black dot that was the corvette was covered by the light and disappeared. The Super-MAC had practically atomized the small starship with a single shot. I kept my gaze on the flaming remains that fell down to the planet.

"There it is," Marv said. "For a moment there I was scared."

I heard the sound of laughter all around me and knew that the ODSTs had thought the same thing. I smiled myself, relieved that we weren't dead just yet. The ODPs were still intact and the planet still held.

"Take your time boys," Darbinain called out loudly. "And enjoy this victory."

Just as he finished that three more bright lights appeared. Everybody stopped laughing and we all looked at the three Covenant corvettes with expectation. One of them blew up as the Super-MAC hit it. A few seconds later the second one did the same, but the third managed to position itself between the defense platform and the planet. If the MAC fired the slug would go straight through the ship and into the planet. A kinetic projectile that size flying at near-relativistic speeds towards Paris-IV meant destruction on continental scale. The corvette was safe from harm from the MACs.

"Don't celebrate just yet," I said, staring at the ship as it got bigger and bigger.

* * *

><p><em>Thanks to SilasWhitfield, SpartaLazor, and defarcher for proofreading this chapter.<em>

_Highlights:_

_–Good-old-fashioned brawl between ODSTs and ODSTs in which ODSTs kick some serious ass. I had been wanting to do that for a while. Write that last sentence, not the brawl scene._

_–Darbinian reacts with maturity beyond his previously established character. Could it have been that those years... changed him?_

_–Darbinian apparently sacrifices Frank and Co. but comes to the rescue at the last possible minute. Maybe he didn't change that much._

_–Miranda has a really worrying psychopathic moment as does Hoff. Same goes for Sandor, but it's not as worrying coming from him._

_–There's some serious mood whiplash at the end, but it turns out that their victory might've been for nothing. Oh bummer._

_–I deliver an incredibly entertaining chapter._

_Well, there it is folks. Chapter 174 in a nutshell. Also, good news everybody. For those of you that aren't glued to your computer for the whole day, I'll update next chapter later today. I'm going to be going on a week-long vacation (snowboarding anyone) and as such won't be able to post new chapters for a week. For those others that are actually away from your computers most of the time: feel free to ignore this fragment, by the time you read this the next chapter will probably be up._

_I've got some awesome stuff planned for you guys. I think you'll enjoy the next couple of chapters._

_Stay strong._

_-casquis_


	175. Of Cyborgs and Tacticians

Chapter CLXXV: Of Cyborgs and Tacticians

**March 9, 2549 (UNSC Calendar)/**

**Caradhras Slopes, Paris IV, Paris System**

* * *

><p><em>"This is a target rich environment, I repeat, a target rich environment."<em>

_"My favorite kind of environment."_

* * *

><p>The slopes of the supervolcano Caradhras were currently filled with Helljumpers and the occasional soldier. Every last one of us was attempting to climb to the top and then back inside the crater. That way we could only be attacked from directly overhead. Seeing as our current enemy was a corvette, that wouldn't be too difficult to achieve. Darbinian had been calling for support frantically for the last few minutes, but judging from his language Command kept saying no.<p>

"Frank, can you collect some favors?" Pavel suggested, elbowing my ribs. The real ones.

"This is one pretty big favor," I told him. "Lieutenant Dawson owes me one small favor. He's in the bridge of the _Flawless_…"

"Could work, if he can get the admiral's ear."

"What should I ask for?"

"Command is sending help!" Darbinian broadcast. "We're safe!"

There was some cheering, but everybody kept moving up the slopes as fast as they could. Even if they were rather gentle it was still incredibly frustrating to have to climb up the side of a mountain.

The corvette seemed to be taking its sweet time, but I saw smoke billowing from its rear. It could've been some shrapnel from the two other corvettes, but the damage to its engines was going to buy us some more time until our support came. I wonder if they would be sending Longswords or Shortsword bombers. Longswords would be optimal; they could just jump out of orbit, spin around and then come back in.

I wasn't expecting a lone Pelican to arrive. The ship flew past the rearmost ODSTs and landed amongst the lead elements on the edge of the crater. I ran until I caught up with Darbinian and one of his lieutenants. The man looked at me and shrugged slightly before returning his attention to the Pelican. The rear hatch opened to reveal five imposing figures.

"Spartans," I said, not able to suppress the smile that formed on my lips. I hated myself for it.

"Spartans," Darbinian's lieutenant spat out.

The first Spartan to jump out was wearing a helmet similar to those that EOD crews used, with tiny lenses and fang-like protuberances on the lower jaw. His chest had the numbers 005 painted on the armor. The Spartan toted a simple MA5 rifle as well as two pistols strapped to either thigh. As he jumped down the snow crunched under the weight of its armor.

Behind it came another shorter Spartan jumped down. It had a thinner frame and also had two M6 pistols on its thighs, but instead of an assault rifle the Spartan carried an SRS99-S2 sniper rifle. The number on the chest plate was 058.

The next two Spartans were of similar size, they both had BR55 rifles and SMGs. One of them was number 044 and the other was 008.

The last Spartan to jump out was something of an oddity. It had three different combat knives strapped to its chest, belt, and boot. Normally one would've expected it to carry a shotgun or a short-range weapon, but instead it had a rocket launcher on its back and an assault rifle in its hands. It chest numbers marked it as Spartan 043.

"Who's in charge here?" the lead Spartan asked.

Darbinian muttered something and stepped forward. "I am."

"Captain," the Spartan acknowledged him with a small nod. "I am Sierra-005, Command mentioned a corvette?"  
>Darbinian pointed. "Feel free to take a shot at it."<p>

S-005 looked at the corvette and then back to his men. He gestured to the Pelican and S-043 jumped back inside and emerged with a briefcase of sorts. The Spartan opened it to reveal a small missile similar to those that the SPANKr usually fired, but the configuration was different.

I sighed. "I'll declare Bandersnatch."

"What's the yield on that?" Darbinian asked.

"One megaton," the leader responded. "Should take out the corvette no problem."

"Great," Darbinian said, even though he sounded like he didn't really mean it. "Well, I have wounded and I would like to give my men some rest. You five look like you can handle it, so I'll leave you here. Castillo, stay with them and make sure they don't do anything stupid."

I turned to look at him. Darbinian probably didn't know that I had grown past my hatred of Spartans. I still didn't completely like them, but I would never turn down their help or deny their usefulness. Still, he had meant that order as an insult. I sighed and let my shoulders slump slightly to make him believe he had gotten at me and nodded slightly. Pavel, take the men down to the power plant," I told my second in command. "Marv and Miri, you stay with me."  
>They were the two members of my unit that were the least likely to care about the Spartans. I could've asked Caboose or Zepeda to stay behind as well, but it made more sense if I ordered someone from my own squad to do it.<p>

The five Spartans fanned out, studiously ignoring the looks and comments that some ODSTs made as they walked past them. I said nothing, simply stared down at the corvette as it kept making its way towards us.

"What's the range on that thing?" I asked after a while.

"Five miles," S-043 replied. "Well clear of the blast radius."

I frowned. "Why don't you just hop back on the Pelican and shoot from there."

The Spartan with the sniper rifle turned to look at the leader with what I could only assume was an expectant expression. The other two with battle rifles glanced at me from over their shoulders before they returned to watching the snow. The leader looked awkward even in all that armor.

"It hadn't occurred to me," S-005 said.

"Hell no!" a voice came from the Pelican's cockpit. "I am not putting my bird up there for us to be shot down."

S-005 shrugged. "She's got a point."

"Pilots always have an excuse," I replied. "Too hot, too boring, hell, I've even heard too close to safety."

The Spartan let out a small chuckle. "I take it you were an enlisted soldier before becoming an officer El-tee?"

"An enlisted Marine," I corrected. "I've always been a Helljumper."

"And we've always been Spartans," he said quietly, as if not realizing that he had spoken out loud. "Forgive me if I'm tactless, but you seem not to mind our presence that much."

"Screw political correctness," the Spartan with the rocket launcher joked.

I tilted my head slightly. "Make no mistake, I still think you're a freak," I assured it. "But I have worked with your kind before… and have been saved by them. More than once, actually."

S-005 turned so that he was completely facing me. "Really? When?"

"Concordia in '41 and Miridem in '44." I rolled my neck from side to side and fingered the grip of my pistol. "Both times it was the same guy now that I think about it. Very heroic looking, a no-nonsense look to him."

"Do you remember the number?"

"Damn right I do," I said, tapping the side of my helmet with two fingers. "One-one-seven."

When I said that all the Spartans briefly turned to look at me before returning to their previous tasks.

"One-one-seven, was it?" he asked. "What did you think about him?"

"Quiet. Insufferable prick," I joked. "Good soldier, I guess. There was also this girl, had a rabbit painted on her armor. Flashy as hell, flipped around and did somersaults when she engaged the covvies."

"Sounds like someone I know," S-005 said. "She's also a good soldier."

"So you guys all know each other?" I asked.

"That's classified," he replied.

"Please, everything's classified nowadays," I muttered. "Half my life is classified. Everything since I turned eighteen."

"All my life is classified," he replied.

"I know," I said cryptically, wondering what it was thinking. Right now I was thinking about a little five-year-old kid being kidnapped and taken away from his family. Sometimes I wished that Cavallaro hadn't told me all that stuff about the Spartan program, but his guilty conscience needed to unload on someone and that someone had been me. "What _can_ you talk about?"

"Sir?" he asked me, addressing me as a superior officer for the first time. "What do you mean?"

"Oh come on, you must have some humanity left in you, and humans love talking as much as they do breathing."

"That's true," Miri said.

"Well," S-043 spoke up, just finishing loading the nuke into the rocket launcher. "Sierra-058 certainly doesn't love it."

The sniper didn't even move as its name was mentioned.

"She's kind of shy like that," he went on in a joking tone, hefting his launcher onto his shoulder one-handed.

"She?" I asked. "That's a she?" The Spartan was at least half a foot taller than I was, and that was being conservative, she was certainly over the 7-foot mark.

"Damn, what did they feed you with?"

The Spartans said nothing. If my guess was right they were all thinking back to the augmentations. I remembered the process I had gone through very vividly, but these guys were faster and stronger than me by an order of magnitude. Whatever they had been given had probably hurt that much more. I sat down on the edge of the Pelican and waved Marv and Miri away. They looked at me weird for a moment before they took off, heading away from most of the Spartans, walking the edge of the crater.

I trailed them and took my helmet off when they were out of earshot.

"Can you tell me your names?" I asked. "Or is it also classified?"

"Classified. Sorry, sir."

"No you're not," I told 005. "You're a II, right?"

"Ummm, yes."

"ONI will delete any record of this mission after you're gone, won't they."

"Sir?"

"Just answer."

"Almost certainly."

I sighed. "I hate those fuckers. So full of themselves."

"They have their uses," S-043 said. He seemed to be far more talkative than his leader, but since I wasn't addressing him he didn't talk as much.

Instead of further pursuing conversation I aimed my rifle at the approaching corvette and activated the range finder on my scope. It was still ten miles away from our position, but steadily approaching. I sighed and lowered my rifle.

"Ready," S-043 said, taking a knee and aiming at the corvette.

The leader turned to look at the Spartan with the rocket launcher and moved slightly to the side before returning his attention to the enemy ship. He slung his rifle over his back and crossed his arms over his chest. I had to admit that the Spartans had this presence about them. Even just standing next to it I felt safer.

"Fire," he ordered.

The rocket left the SPANKr with a lot more speed and force than I was accustomedto. I recoiled slightly to the side as it flew past me and then traced its progress with my eyes. About halfway through the corvette started dropping Phantoms and those massive drop pods that the elites were so fond of.

"Well shit," the Spartan that fired the rocket said.

I turned away and took a knee just before the rocket collided with the ship. I heard the explosion just a moment before I felt the shockwave. I was thrown to the floor and even the Spartans had to brace themselves against the rapidly expanding air. I stood back up and saw that the ship was now missing its front half and the rear was rapidly plummeting towards the ground. It slammed into the slopes with a noise loud enough to make me wince uncomfortably.

"Did any of the dropships make it?" S-005 asked. "S-058?"

"Several," she replied in a surprisingly melodic voice. "About thirteen or so plus four large drop pods."

"Enough to cause some trouble," I muttered. "Shall I recall my men?"

"No, we can handle this," S-005 replied. "S-044, S-008, and 058 will handle it."

"Three against…" I made a quick operation in my mind. "Four hundred."

"Piss poor odds for the little guys," Spartan 044 said with certain satisfaction in his voice.

* * *

><p>In this secluded spot there were two sources of light. First we had the faint glowing that came from the base inside the crater. I only needed to walk around the Pelican and I could see the damaged complex. The second source of light was the Pelican itself. The pilot had turned off the floodlights, but there were still some minor lights inside the cockpit and cargo bay that illuminated the area around it. The third and most important source of light was the burning Covenant corvette. Whatever that thing used for fuel had been burning for several hours now. The two Spartans that had remained behind hadn't moved for what seemed like ages now. They were both standing one next to the other, staring off into the darkness.<p>

Occasionally I would hear explosions and a barrage of gunfire. After that usually came faint screams and maybe some return fire, but for the most part what followed was silence. The three Spartans appeared to be wrecking havoc with the enemy landing force. To be fair to the covvies they had just jumped out of a damaged ship that was immediately destroyed and were on hostile ground.

To be fair to the Spartans it _was _three against four hundred.

"Is this going to take much longer?" Marv asked me quietly after what seemed to be like an hour of silence.

"As long as it takes," I replied. "You should ask. S-005."

"Hey, 005," Marv called out. "You got a name?"

"Classified," Miranda, the Spartan, and me said at the same time.

Marv chuckled slightly. "Any-who, Sierra-005 isn't exactly a name."

The Spartan didn't say anything.

"All right then. Are we going to be here much longer? I don't want a storm to catch us in the open."

"Hold on," he said. He pressed his index and middle fingers to his helmet and started talking to one of the Spartans down there. The conversation went on for a while, but I couldn't catch anything through the big, fancy helmet.

"Send an email," I told Marv. "He'll get back to you as soon as possible."

Miri laughed and Marvin shook his head with a quiet chuckle. The Spartans seemed to be more uncomfortable around us than we around them. Weird if you think about it, the big-ass monsters could've squished us with a hand tied to a leg.

"Should be about an hour," S-005 said. "They ran into some trouble, Spec Ops elites."

"Ah," I said understandingly. "But surely they can't pose a threat to you mighty Spartans."

"You'd be surprised," S-043 muttered, leaving me wondering what scars it had underneath that massive armor.

Half an hour later a large explosion illuminated the night sky. The corvette's fuel reserves must've finally blown up for good because the fireworks were probably the most impressive I had ever seen. A fountain of fire erupted from the alien ship and came back down on the mountain slopes. I found myself hoping that some aliens were burning right now.

The two Spartans said nothing, instead just staring at the spectacle, the fire reflected off their visors.

"That armor, what can it stop?" I asked after further moments of silence.

"It shatters needle rounds most of the time," S-043 replied. "Plasma bolts are usually absorbed and carbine rounds don't really do much damage to it. Sustained fire'salways troublesome though."

Miranda whistled in admiration.

"If only they had shields," Marv said.

The Spartan chuckled and looked at the leader. "I hear you brother."

The other Spartan twitched slightly. "They're on their way back."

"Give me a sitrep Spartan," I ordered the thing.

"They say that they neutralized most of the enemy landing force, but they ran out of ammunition. Might be that a few covvies survived. Probably some twenty or so."

I sighed and rolled my neck around, hearing the cracks that my vertebrae made. "Very well then, let's head back to the power plant. Your team can canvas the area for survivors tomorrow morning."

"Yes, sir," the leader replied.

"You did a good job, Spartan," I said.

"Thank you, sir."

_A fine job._

* * *

><p><strong>April 12, 2549 (UNSC Calendar)one month later**

The snow was beginning to melt, only on the top of the crater, of course, but it was a relief. We were far enough north that the lake would remain frozen for the duration of the year. Lieutenant Flint had assured me that even if the whole lake melted the power plant would remain intact. In fact, the foundations ran deep into the ground below the frozen lake and into the magma pools underneath the supervolcano .

The Spartan fireteam, which we had ended up referring to as Spartan Fireteam (I know, very creative) had remained with us. The Pelican had made several supply runs and we now found ourselves rather cozy, with a pair of SAMs on either end of the crater as well as an AA gun covering the base. An air assault was highly improbable considering the range those SAMs had.

Darbinian was still in charge and his men were still assholes, but no more fights had broken out since the Spartans arrived. I still got some glares from that asshole Fritz, but the scab on his nose always made me smile.

"Hey El-tee, catch!"

I turned and caught a football in between my two hands just shy of it hitting me in the back of the head. A smiling Hoff offered his palm to a soldier standing next to him and received what looked to be like a pair of chocolate bars from the grudging soldier. I examined the scratched football, wondering not for the first time where he got it from. Still, the point here was that he had risked hitting me just to get some candy.

I tossed the fall away from him as far as I could, which was pretty far considering my super-dense muscles.

Hoff sighed and patted the soldier on the shoulder before he set into a jog to go recover his prized football. I considered tripping him as he went past me, but decided that it wouldn't be very officer-like of me. Instead I kept on walking, focusing my attention on the female Spartan on the rooftop of the complex. She was always alone, even when the other Spartans were close to one another she chose to be away. A lone wolf.

Lone wolves died.

I shook my head and walked up to Pavel. He was unarmored from the waist up. Most people were these days. Except for the Spartans, of course. I hadn't seen any of them remove a single piece of their armor in the whole time that they had been here. While I could relate to the feeling of safety and protection that undoubtedly came with that armor, I could also relate to the aches and pains that would come with sleeping with it and keeping it on for extended periods of time. The things probably looked like vampires underneath all that metal.

"Hey Frank," he said. "Slow day?"

"Yeah," I replied. "Who's got watch?"

Pavel looked at one of the two SAM emplacements on the edge of the crater. They were pretty far away, but still within eyesight. "Not sure, both emplacements are being handled by Darbinian's men. I think one of Jen's squads is due tomorrow. Speaking of… have you had time to talk with Api, Serge, and Beckel?"

I shook my head. "Just in passing. You know I do the catching up in bars. With lots of alcohol involved."  
>Pavel sighed and shrugged. I enjoyed watching him shrug, if only because he looked like a puppet when he did that. His shoulders went all the way to his ears.<p>

"Fine, fine," I conceded. "I'll see about catching up later. Right now I've got to talk to Jen, something about reorganizing her platoon."

"Most of one squad is dead, I'm surprised it took her this long."

"We've been busy."

"Not for the last month."

I grunted and cracked my neck. It had been bothering me lately. I let my hands fall down to my waist, with my right hand leaning on the butt of my pistol. My sidearm hadn't been fired for over a month. My rifle was pretty much the same. I hadn't even taken it out to hit the targets that the Spartans set up. The things said that it was to keep them sharp, but we could hardly afford to waste ammunition on snow elites when the real deal might come crashing down any minute.

"How are your men?" I asked.

"Bored. They've taken to tossing snowballs at one another lately."

I chuckled. "All right, give them my regards."

"Give them yourself," he said. "You're a lieutenant, not a general. You can talk to your men."

"That's why I have my NCOs for."

With that I took off, leaving Pavel to his own business and instead headed towards Caboose. The man was usually found in the second floor, admiring the landscape out of a broken window. He was drinking water from his canteen and holding his MA5K on his other hand.

"Sir," he said, raising his canteen in greeting. "Good day to you."

"Thanks. Anything to report?"

"No. O'Malley's still getting those headaches. Ever since she got hit, says she can handle them."

"Keep an eye out for her, will you?"

"Yes, sir."

"Anything else?"

"Montri and Atkins have been getting a little bit friendlier with the Spartans, especially the one with the knives…"

"Sierra-043," I said.

"That's the one." Caboose turned to look at me closely for a second. "How is it? I mean, being next to them?"

"Intimidating," I replied simply.

He looked around. "Is it weird being around them? Since… you know…"

I shrugged. "Not really. It keeps me human, knowing that they are even more of a freak than I am. Why do you ask? ONI concerned about my reaction to them?"

He shook his head. "ONI stopped asking for reports on you a long time ago."

I did a double take. "Why didn't you tell me?"

"You didn't ask."

I grunted and looked out the window. The jagged edge of the crater truly was an impressive sight. From down here it look like a particularly prominent mountain ridge, but I knew that you could climb it easily enough without any gear. It was easier when the Pelican ferried us up, but most of the time we had to climb up in order to conserve the hydrogen fuel cells.

Those things were supposed to last a lifetime; the pilot was just a lazy bitch that happened to outrank us all.

"You know Grigori," I began. "Maybe it's about time I apo–"

I was thrown forward and half my body went outside the window. I managed to hold on and pull myself back inside, my arms straining from the effort. I turned to see Caboose getting back up from the floor and grabbing his rifle.

"What the hell was that?!" I asked him, drawing my pistol

Caboose put on his helmet. "Explosion in one of the dishes, seems like it was brought down."

"What?!" I exclaimed. "Come on!"

We ran through the hallways as more explosions rocked the complex. I finally made it into my room and started gearing up as Caboose did the same thing. I made sure that all the straps were tightened before grabbing my battle rifle and pulling back the bolt. Caboose finished strapping his webbing to himself and nodded at me.

"This is Castillo," I said. "Someone tell me something!"

"Plasma hit the satellite dish, took it out," one of Darbinian's men replied. "Smaller rounds landed on the building. So far we've got a few wounded and no deaths."

"Where are they shooting from?" I asked.

"Not sure, we're still trying to reach out to the SAM emplacements."

"Shit," I muttered while opening another line. "Platoon Five, rally on my position!"

"We're gearing up Frank," Pavel came in. "We'll be there in a minute."

I left the building and came to the courtyard. It was filled with Helljumpers and a few soldiers running frantically in all directions. I turned in a 360 degree but failed to spot any Spartans.

"Sierra-005, come in," I said. "Do you copy?"

"I copy Lieutenant, do you have any intel on the current situation?"

"Negative Spartan, I thought you were the war machines."

"We're only human, sir," he replied. "We're heading to the south end of the complex."

"Only human, right."

Plasma bolts started landing all around me and I threw myself to the ground as an unlucky soldier was pierced by the blue plasma. I heard the screaming of Banshees followed by a loud explosion.

"They took out the AA gun!"

"How the hell did they get past us?!"

"Contact right, contact right!"

"We've got elites!"

"Shit, shit, shit," I growled, pushing myself back to my feet. I looked up just in time to see an elite uncloak and raise its energy sword. I still had my souvenir energy sword strapped above my combat knife, but a rifle would shoot that much faster.

My first burst did nothing to slow the alien down, but the blast from Caboose's shotgun certainly slowed it down. I looked over the dead elite and nodded thanks at the man. He nodded in reply and we started moving. Helljumpers were coming into small groups wherever they could and ran towards cover when they couldn't. The few soldiers out in the open were dashing towards thee watchtowers and sandbag emplacements. Caboose and I moved towards an HMG on a tripod.

"Watch out!" he cried out.

Both of us ducked as a pair of Banshees did a pass over our position. The bolts missed, but I didn't think our luck would hold. I looked up at the Banshees and saw trails of vapor appear. Two elite corpses left the cockpits even as I heard the boom of a sniper rifle. My eyes traced the contrails to the girl Spartan. She had just shot two pilots from their Banshees in less than a second.

I raised my hand in thanks and kept on running towards the HMG. I manned it and started firing at anything not human. Caboose helped me with his own rifle and located targets for me.

"Cloaked elites, they took the SAMs!" a voice came in on the general UNSC channel. "They–"

I looked up to one of the SAM emplacements and cursed. They must've disabled them before attacking the power plant.

"How the hell did that happen?" Caboose muttered under his breath.

"Doesn't matter," I replied, shooting down an elite that had just impaled a soldier. "Let's kill these fuckers."

"This is Sierra-005, we're moving to the SAM emplacements," the Spartan came in. "We need to put them back online if we've got a chance of survival."

"Understood," Darbinian's voice replied. "Make it quick Spartan!"

"Yes, sir!"

Our Pelican took off and weaved in through the Banshees and Spirit dropships with no apparent trouble. It grew smaller and smaller and finally appeared to make it to safety.

"Contact right!" Caboose warned.

"Shifting fire," I replied accordingly, sending three elites diving for cover.

"They're in the building!" Pavel shouted. "They're headed for the control room!"

"Klaus, you've got to keep them from getting there," Darbinian said.

"I thought I'd hold the door open for them," he replied. "I know my job."

"Then start doing it!"

I grunted and kept firing at the enemy positions.

Two ODSTs dove into cover behind me. They had almost all of their armor on except for the forearm pieces. One of them was clearly from Darbinian's unit as his patch marked. The other one was no other than Serge Brisbois himself.

"Cover my back," I ordered immediately. "Caboose, I need to reload!"

The man grabbed a massive ammunition drum and hefted it, keeping it up on his knee. As soon as the HMG clicked he detached the empty drum and replaced it with the fresh one. The elites dove out of cover and threw plasma grenades at our positions. Two of them fell short, but the other one landed right in our midst. I vaulted over the sandbags as the explosive detonated. Something heavy landed on my feet.

I fumbled and grabbed the HMG, now detached from its tripod, and fired it. The first dozen rounds hit the ground by my feet, but I managed to get the barrels up and tear through the leading elite. The other two decided that as long as I had that machine gun active they weren't willing to risk it.

"Caboose? Serge?"

"We're good," Caboose said. "All three of us."

"'Twas damn close," the other ODST grunted.

"Help me up," I ordered. "Is the tripod still working?"

"Negative," the ODST said.

I ordered the man and Caboose to hold the turret's main body as I aimed. It would have to do until we could get a counter attack organized. The three of us made for a funny sight, all crouched under the weight of the HMG. They shuffle walked as I ordered them to, changing the direction the HMG was aiming at. We cut down another elite before two squads of Darbinian's men arrived.

"We've got a hingehead," I said. "Down over there."

"Understood," a sergeant acknowledged, ordering his men to toss frags. They hit the elite as it left cover to avoid the explosives. "Spread out, defense pattern Alpha!"

The ODSTs complied and fanned out, firing at anything they saw.

"Sir, what do we know?" the sergeant asked me.

"Jack shit," I replied. "Where the hell did they even come from?"

The sergeant shrugged.

"See to your men," I ordered.

He saluted and took off after the two squads under his command. I nodded at the other ODST from the 7th and the man immediately followed his comrades.

"Serge," I acknowledged the man with a nod. "Good to see you alive.

"Good to be alive," he replied.

I looked around and immediately spotted what I was looking for. A watchtower, relatively damaged but still useful. "Caboose, grab two drums of ammo and head up there," I ordered him.

"Yes, sir."

"Serge, can you lug the HMG by yourself?"

He nodded and took the massive machine gun from my hands and propped it over one shoulder.

"Good," I said. "Up the watchtower."

We moved quickly, I quickly discouraged any elites from attempting to hit us with a few quick bursts from my BR, but the aliens appeared to be busier with other things. Fritz and his men had mostly been out in the open and had been further decimated during the attack. All that remained of the power plant's original garrison was a mere dozen men, Fritz amongst them.

"Banshee!"

We all ducked as the craft flew overhead, but instead of firing at us it let out a fuel rod against a short building. We climbed the rest of the way up and I mounted the HMG on the side of the tower. I tracked the Banshee with it and started firing as it exposed its side to me. The Banshee exploded in a fireball after I hit it with enough bullets and came crashing down on the snow, behind two elites with beam rifles.

I ducked as two beams crisscrossed the space where my head had been a second before.

"We've got them, sir!" the ODST sergeant came in. "Take out those fliers, we can handle the squids."

I quickly thanked him and peeked over cover to confirm that the elites were indeed keeping their heads down. I grabbed the HMG again and started firing at the Banshee fliers, discouraging them from any further strafing runs. More machine guns started clattering at the aircraft, and a few of them came crashing down on the snow.

"Frank, we've got the control room locked up and safe," Pavel came in. "My squad can handle this, I'm sending Recon and VSF your way."

"Got it," I said. "Marv, Andrea, I want you to man the sandbags and defense emplacements on either side of this watchtower, we'll hole up right here."

"Yes, sir," came their reply.

My men arrived and took positions. Caboose climbed back down as Zepeda took his place. I told him where the two elite snipers were and he immediately aimed in their direction, hoping for a target.

"Serge, you've got any word from Jen?"

"Working with Darbinian, sir."

I sighed. At least she was alive.

Several missiles flew from one of the SAM emplacements and hit two of the Spirit dropships. The rest of them turned tail and started heading out, but the missiles caught up with them before they could get to safety. A few moments later the other SAM emplacement blew up in a gigantic blue fireball. It seemed like these covvies were smart, denying us the opportunity to use our own equipment. I didn't like smart covvies, they were the worst kind you could come across.

"Spartan, come in," I said.

"Sir," it acknowledged. "We're getting a feed from Command."

"Patch it through," Darbinian ordered.

"…ment fleet. At least fifty enemy ships. They burned through _Zulu _as if they weren't there. Holy fuck! They've got a–"

The transmission ended and another one began.

"Enemy reinforcement fleet is headed directly towards the north pole. Our ODP's aren't discouraging them, they're bulling straight through the barrage. Shit, they're going for the generators."

I looked up to the bright blue sky and failed to spot anything. Right now a battle was going on up there, but I couldn't see shit.

"Get back down here Spartans," Darbinian ordered. "Ships will have to lower their shields if they want to blast this base to hell. If they do that the MACs will get them. They're gonna be sending teams."

"Sounds about right," Spartan-005 replied. "Command is sending evacuation craft as well as Gryphon and SkyHawk atmospheric fighters. They'll pound any ship that comes through."

"We're not abandoning this place!" Darbinian spat. "Four of my squads were just slaughtered for this place!"

I frowned. The men guarding the SAMs were probably all dead. All of them had been Darbinian's men. Damn.

"We're out of our league here, sir," Sierra-005 insisted. "Orders are come straight from Command."

"God-fucking-damnit!" Darbinian cursed. "Get down here fast, we kill all these fuckers before we leave."

"Yes, sir," S-005 replied in a perfectly neutral tone.

Zepeda's rifle boomed once and I caught purple blood spraying the snow. I fired at a small group of elites that had left cover and hit two of them in the legs, allowing somebody else to finish them off. A moment later Zepeda fired a second time and killed the second elite sniper. That marked the last Covenant soldier in the immediate vicinity.

The Pelican landed and the Spartans stepped out, one of them had black scorch marks on his armor. The sniper immediately climbed into our tower. Zepeda gave her an uncomfortable look and shuffled over to the side. I looked at Serge and suppressed a snort. The girl could outshoot Zepeda no trouble, and Zepeda was probably in the top one hundred marksmen in the entire galaxy. I wondered how Snark would've reacted had he been in the same situation.

"Evacuation craft should be here in half an hour barring enemy AA guns," Sierra-005 said. "Once they get here we'll be leaving."

It sounded more like a suggestion than an order, but when a seven foot plus machine suggested you do something it was just a polite way of telling you that you better fucking do as it said.

Half an hour, it shouldn't be too bad.

"Don't be so sure, all it took to undo over a month of work was five minutes," Schitzo said. "Plus, these covvies must've deployed from somewhere."

Half an hour later Schitzo was proved wrong. Several Pelicans arrived and landed all over the courtyard. Most of the birds were obviously local Army or repurposed police craft. Some hadn't even been painted over yet. The Pelicans hovered on their position for a few moments as the wounded started getting in. We took our dead and gently placed them inside the blood tray as well. They deserved at least that much.

I was overseeing the procedures when Darbinian turned me around by the shoulder.

"Sitrep."

"My men were all inside," I replied. "Most of them were, at any rate. No casualties."

He nodded. "Good. My own company was hit pretty hard. Four whole squads gone."

"I heard," I said, not offering him condolences. "Your men were mostly in the courtyard, right?"

He nodded. "I've got a couple more KIAs, but a lot of my men are wounded."

"Are you asking me to cover the retreat?"

"It's not a retreat," he said. "Besides, there's nothing to cover it from, I just want my men looked after as fast as possible."

"Fair enough," I conceded. "Lieutenant Weller?"

"She's already boarded a Pelican."

"Good," I replied. "I'll cover your retreat."

Darbinian stopped and looked over his shoulder at the thinly veiled insult. He said nothing and instead kept on walking.

Pelicans started taking off as fast as it was safe for them to do so. The last thing we wanted was a mid-air collision.

"Incoming!" one of the Spartans shouted.

I braced for an explosion, but was surprised to find myself staring at a cylinder. It was one of the drop pods that elites used, similar enough to our own SOEIVs, even if they were thinner and proportionally smaller.

"Caboose!" I shouted.

I caught the shotgun in my hands just as the hatch opened. The elite behind it met the buckshot before it could even raise its weapons. Blood splattered all over my visor, forcing me to wipe it off. More and more of the drop pods landed all around. More Pelicans started taking off.

"Pavel, go, go!" I ordered. "Go!"

His ship took off and I started running towards mine. Halfway there I crossed two Spartans. Sierra-043 and Sierra-008. The two Spartans hit the elites as they exited their pods, killing them before they could react. But the elites were landing faster than they could kill them, and eventually they had to stop to take cover. The sniper started firing, but in this target-rich environment she quickly ran out of ammunition. I felt an impact on my shoulder and found myself spinning around and falling on the snow on my ass.

I was looking directly at an elite clad in golden armor with an energy sword in one hand. I braced for an attack that never came. The elite ignored me completely and instead headed directly for the Spartans. In truth, I felt slightly offended.

I struggled back to my feet and saw the elite engage the two Spartans. Sierra-043 placed its assault rifle in between itself and the elite's sword, but the blade cut clean through. The maneuver bought enough time for him to draw his two knives, though. The second Spartan delivered two kicks at the elite's legs, but the alien raised its hooves and avoided them, viciously countering with his sword. The second slash managed to cut off the barrel of the Spartan's BR55.

I cursed and raised my rifle, but an ultra appeared in front of me and yanked the weapon from my hands. I drew my pistol in a manner that any cowboy would've been proud off and emptied the magazine on the alien's face. The ultra's shields held without a problem.

I rolled away, hoping that somebody else would target the elite. My prayers were answered when a sniper round cracked. The girl Spartan had saved me for the second time in an hour. The elite fell to the floor, a neat hole in between its eyes. Excellent marksmanship.

"Thanks," I said, reaching for my battle rifle.

The other elite was still engaged with the Spartans. S-043 managed a pair of slashes that left small dents in the elite's chest plate, but the elite appeared to have the upper hand. It donkey kicked S-008, sending it flying backwards. It swiped its weapon at S-043's feet, but the Spartan jumped over the blade. As the elite brought the sword back around it was shot off its hand.

"I'm out," the sniper said in her musical voice.

The elite growled and activated two energy daggers out of forearm holsters. S-043 and the elite then started punching and kicking at each other. They were both equally matched in that they both had blades, but the elite appeared to be as fast and as strong as the Spartan. I fired a couple of shots, but it immediately drew attention from other ultras. I found myself running as fast as I could and jumped inside my Pelican.

I turned to see the Spartan receive a blow to the upper chest, the plasma cutting through the armor. In return it stabbed the elite in the thigh, but none of them seemed to take notice. The huge elite swiped both its hands in an arc that the Spartan only just managed to duck underneath. Sierra-043 kicked up as he positioned his palms on the floor, bending his back completely. The elite flew backwards as the Spartan finished its flip and landed back on his feet. He wasted no time and tackled the elite to the floor. The alien wasn't done yet. It threw the Spartan off him and jumped back to his feet.

There was a blur of green and the alien suddenly found itself knocked to the floor. The sniper Spartan went for S-043 and picked him up from the floor, helping him inside another Pelican. She started climbing inside but something stopped her. Instead she turned and sprinted towards my Pelican, moving so fast that she seemed to leave a trail behind. I suddenly remembered the other Spartan chick I had seen, she had been even faster than this. Perhaps all female Spartans were this speedy.

She clambered inside just as the golden elite stood back up, rubbing its head. I flipped it off as the Pelican took off, a couple of plasma bolts hit the ceiling above me, but by that point the Pelican was safely out of range.

"Wait, why are we leaving?" Sandor asked. "Won't they still take down the base?"

It was a valid question, but what I was seeing right now was enough of an answer. A Covenant ship large enough that I didn't see where it began or where it ended. A Covenant supercarrier. I had seen one once before, and the single ship had been enough to keep an entire planet by the balls for a very long time. I doubted that it had been destroyed.

"Holy fuck," Sandor swore. "There's no way we're taking that out."

"I wonder if it knows its over an active supervolcano," Marvin mused.

The Spartan immediately perked up, she said nothing as she sat down and started chatting through her helmet.

The generators were as good as gone, but maybe something could be done about it. I wondered if you could artificially detonate a volcano as we left Caradhras Caldera behind.

* * *

><p><em>Thanks to SilasWhitfield, SpartaLazor, and defarcher for proofreading this chapter. This is probably the last chapter that Silas will ever proofread and I want to thank him for all the time he spent making sure my work was better. As I mentioned before he's in the armed forces and they requested that he leave his home in order to live on base. He's not defending my country, but he's defending his and that's a good and honorable thing he's doing. For that and everything else I wish him the best of luck. We say goodbye to him with a quote inspired by a comment he made while proofreading this chapter, Although I wish it could be more. I guess now it's up to the two other guys. Wish <em>them_ luck._

_I told you I was going to get a chapter before the day ended. And I did. Am I good or what? Well, actually this chapter was done a while ago, but I pressed my betas hard and they delivered. Off to a good start._

_So what happened here... Spartans? Check. Nuclear explosion? Check. Semi-unnecessary timeskip? Check. Suspiciously badass elite? Check. Andy getting shot? Che– Hmmm... Maybe next chapter, she's always catching bullets nowadays. Wonder what got into her..._

_Oh yeah, I know what I was forgetting, the threat of a supervolcano detonating. That would be something to see. I mean, I saw 2012, but the real deal would probably be a lot more exciting. From a reasonable distance, of course. Maybe even from low orbit._

_Don't think I missed anything that would allow me to make some sort of witty and humorous comment... I hope you had fun while reading this chapter, because it's the last one for another ten days, although I might give you a double when I return. You know I love you guys. No homo._

_Stay strong._

_-casquis_


	176. When the Exterminator is Not You

Chapter CLXXVI: When the Exterminator is Not You

**April 30, 2549 (UNSC Calendar)/two weeks later**

**Valern Spaceport, Valern, Paris IV, Paris System**

* * *

><p><em>"Stealing our thunder... conceited sons of whores."–Captain Krikor Darbinian<em>

* * *

><p>People used to turn their eyes away from mine after meeting them, but now they kept them firmly grounded. The hundreds of thousands of civilian refugees that still remained in this city had all but given up hope. The last evacuation ship to have left had done so three days ago and had been neatly gutted by Covenant ships in orbit. Even after a Spartan team planted a nuke underneath the supercarrier and detonated it morale was still low.<p>

I remember watching the vid of the explosion. All the magma bottled up underneath Caradhras Caldera had burst out a second after the nuclear detonation. The impact and heat had engulfed the supercarrier, barely damaging it. It wasn't until a few seconds later that a second, bigger explosion came. The pressure underneath the tectonic plates sent insane amounts of magma out in the open, and this time the supercarrier was damaged enough that it was rendered inoperable. There had been talks about nuking the useless ship, but Command had deemed it low-priority when compared to the rest of the problems we faced. Half the planet was accessible to the Covenant navy, and the few sections that didn't have considerable UNSC presence had become killing ground.

Even here we suffered from Covenant attacks. Now that the Super-MACs that covered the north pole and arctic circle of the planet were useless stations the Covenant could resupply their troops with little trouble, even with Spartan teams constantly raiding the supply lines.

We were no longer just outgunned, we were also outmanned.

I hated that the civilian living spaces were adjacent to those of the UNSC. It meant that I had to constantly walk through them and see their faces. I turned my gaze away and walked towards one of the gates. The entire spaceport had been walled off by the Army when the covvies attacked, but most of those walls were on their braking point right now.

"Where are my men?" I asked a grim-looking Marine.

He pointed at a group of ODSTs clustered around a Warthog. I moved over there, pushing aside O'Malley and Zepeda. Caboose looked up at me and shook his head. Lying on the floor was Lance Corporal Niles Atkins. The injury didn't seem bad, but a pair of plasma bolts to the gut would melt every internal organ without damaging your shell too much.

Corporal Han was trying to revive my man, but he didn't appear to be having much success. Next to the unmoving body of Atkins were several used biofoam canisters. Finally Han stopped his attempts and sighed sadly. He removed Atkins' helmet and closed his wide-open eyes gently. After that he reached into his neck underneath his undersuit and yanked his dogtags.

"Sir," he said, offering the tags to me.

I nodded at Caboose, but he shook his head and beckoned Han to give them to me. I closed my left fist around the tags and examined them.

81046-01928-NA.

I pocketed them and took a deep breath.

"Barracks," I told them. "Grab some chow and try to catch some sleep."

The men nodded and broke away from the battered Warthog, looking at the corpse one last time before turning their back. Caboose remained behind for a minute longer.

"They're getting smarter," he told me. "Booby traps and ambushes in places we had declared clear just a day ago."

I nodded. "How'd the scouting mission turn out?"

"Aside from the obvious?" he asked, jerking his head at our dead comrade. "It was productive. We confirmed the presence of enemy Locust units all through the middle ring as well as West End. They're massing for an attack."

"But we knew that already," I said.

"Suspected," he corrected. "Now we know."

I looked up at the sky. "Damn pylons… Join your men, you're likely going to need the rest."

Caboose nodded and shot me a quick salute before leaving.

I waited for him to disappear and knelt over Atkins. I started rummaging through his pockets, looking for anything that he would've considered of value. I found the usual personal effects, but there was no picture or holo-frame. I finished up by looking inside his helmet and put it back down when I found it to be empty. I sighed and gently positioned his helmet next to him. Atkins hadn't died with a peaceful expression. His mouth was still slightly open in pain and shock. Had his eyes been allowed to remain open his expression would've been a haunting one.

I nodded at two Marines and they lifted the body into the back of a flatbed truck none too gently.

"We'll take care of him, sir," one of them told me with what I assumed was a sympathetic expression.

The truck took off after I thanked them.

The best I could hope for right now was that Recon got some rest before Command sent us back into the suck.

* * *

><p>"Here's the deal," I said loudly, getting my men's attention. There were still eighteen of us, so it wasn't so bad. "Green Team is going to be doing the heavy lifting here, so we can thank Command for that."<p>

"Amen," Sandor said.

I went on. "The Locust units that Recon Squad found are very likely going to be used when the covvies go for the big assault on this airfield. Command thought it prudent to neutralize the threat quickly and in the most prejudicial manner they could think of. Enemy air superiority on that area put an airstrike out of the question, so they're sending the next best thing?"

"Us?" Hoff suggested good-naturedly, earning a few light chuckles from the platoon.

"The second next best thing," I amended. "Green Team will be going in, but unfortunately, there are large enemy camps on either side of the Locusts. Those soldiers need to be engaged or the Spartans will find themselves surrounded and quite possibly dead."

My men had never heard of a dead Spartan, I certainly hadn't _heard_ of one, but I knew better from my mission back in Miridem. Seeing one of those juggernauts brought down had shaken me. I knew my men wouldn't take the words seriously, but saying them immediately drove home the importance of our part in the mission.

"We'll be coming in by truck," I said, tracing our route. "This area was last reported as clear of snipers and enemy skirmishers, but anything could happen. By the time we get to this point we'll have the attention of every covvie fucker in the block. Once those are dead they'll probably send more after us."

Some of my men smiled wickedly.

"Once _those_ are dead… well, we'll see about that. Remember, our mission is to draw the attention of the Covenant soldiers long enough for Green Team to get in and get out. Alpha will be doing the same thing on the other side."

Darbinian's men had proven to be effective fighters in the last few days. I didn't have to like them to admit that they were useful and reliable during combat.

"Will we be counting with any kind of support?" Pavel asked.

I shook my head. "Might be we can call in some mortar strikes, but I'd say we're on our own."

"Just like Command to send us in a high-priority mission with no support," Carver grunted. He hefted his MGL over his shoulder and muttered something under his breath.

"Be that as it may," I went on. "It needs to be done. The armory's open to us so don't skimp on the equipment.

"Hey, sir, after this op do we finally get to link up with the rest of Jaguar?" Ramirez asked.

"The rest of the company is still in Udinia," I said. "We'll go there as soon as we are ordered to." I still felt that Jen had gotten the good end of the deal when her platoon was ordered to return to Udinia, but there was nothing I could do about it. "For now I want you to keep your head in the game, all right?"

"Yes, sir," they said, nodding abruptly, as if caught by surprise.

I let them walk away from the room and watch them towards the nearest armory. I examined the map in front of me, scanning it for any locations that would be of use. The point where we would be stopping was already as defensible as it got, the street was narrow enough that numbers wouldn't be as big a factor as they could've been and there were enough collapsed houses around it that most covvies would have to climb to get to us. As long as the covvies didn't make it to the buildings on the sides we would be all right.

"All right just doesn't mean the same thing anymore, does it?" Schitzo said. "I wonder what all right will mean three years from now…"

"Probably that we still survive as a species…" I muttered in reply.

Having said that I picked up my helmet and trudged after my team. The spirits weren't exactly what you would call high. Not everybody here had been close with Atkins, but everyone here knew him. It was unavoidable, especially considering that the twenty of us had been together as a platoon for a very long time. Reeves had been especially good friends with him. Right now the man was focusing intently on his task, loading bullet after bullet into his magazine. O'Malley and Zepeda were standing to either side of him, not saying anything but letting him know that he had their support.

Normally I would've looked around longer, examining my men for anything that might give away nervousness of lack of concentration, but right now the five massive armored Spartans were what drew my attention. They were strapping surreal amount of ammo to their armor, using both pouches and velcro patches. Four of them were carrying large Det-Packs and SPANKr rocket launchers.

The things looked tiny on their massive armor, but it still seemed to me like they were carrying way too much stuff.

I nodded at S-005 and headed to the spot where the 9 mike-mikes were. Most of my mags were already full, but the armory had special drum magazines that would prove to be useful in a high-intensity combat mission. I sighed as I grabbed one and started picking bullets from the case. Loading these things took a long time, even to a man that was used to doing this.

The girl Spartan walked up next to me, the floor thudding as she walked. She stopped next to me and started filling one of her sniper rifle mags with the massive 14.4x114mm rounds. She quickly loaded four into the magazine and started on a second one.

"Five-eight," I said in greeting.

The Spartan stopped for a brief instant and nodded in acknowledgement before she resumed her work. She was done before I had gone halfway through my own magazine. I kept shoving bullets into the thing until it was finally full and then slapped it into my rifle. My men were all but done, finishing tightening their armor straps and double-checking their weapons.

"Ready?" I asked.

"Waiting on you Frank," Pavel replied for the platoon.

"Very well then, let's head to the trucks. Andy and Sandor drive."

We divided into two teams of nine and hopped on the old trucks. Three Spartans got inside a Warthog with a missile rack on the back. They cold probably take out two Locusts with the rockets on the 'Hog, but the rest would be a touch harder. The other two followed behind in a Mongoose that was weighed down by their weight.

"Come on," I said, banging on the top of the driver's cabin. "Let's go."

The trucks took off. Darbinian's men were behind us in another pair of identical flatbeds. They immediately veered to the side while we kept heading in a straight line. Progress was slow, but all the piles of debris had been moved to the side of the street. If anybody tried to attack us they would have to zig-zag through them, slowing their progress and making for easy targets. Unfortunately, it also mean that we had to navigate through them if we wanted to get out.

A couple of plasma bolts hit the truck's hood, urging Andy to increase her speed. We busted through one of the smaller piles of debris and finally stopped when I gave the order. Sandor and Andy turned the trucks to give us the maximum amount of coverage against an attack from the front and we piled out the back. I pointed at locations for Miri, Hoff, and Montri and they promptly started climbing to get a decent vantage point. The rest of the platoon immediately broke off so that our fire was the most effective.

"Nothing comes through, we've got lots of ammo," I said. "Use it!"

The snapping sound of machine gun fire grew louder for a second until my team ran out of visible targets. I could see an enemy checkpoint several blocks away, but we'd leave that one there in order to give the Covenant a chance to regroup and attack.

I sighed. Playing bait wasn't as heroic as it sounded.

"Enemy on the right!"

I could hear my men breathing hard as they pounded the covvies with everything we had. At a time grunts would be hit by three different machine guns, tearing them to shreds. We had a ludicrously high amount of ammunition, so we could give ourselves that luxury. The problem here was that if the Spartans of Green Team took a little bit longer than expected we would be dry and on the run.

"Ghosts are moving up!" Hoff cried in warning. "Right side, right side!"

Sandor moved up, carrying his stolen rocket launcher. He took a knee and fired two rockets in quick succession, blowing up a Ghost and sending a squad for cover.

"Reloading!" he said.

The other Ghosts were met with a barrage of gunfire. One of them skidded through the street and slammed into a light post as the elite driving it was killed, but the other one punched through, using a pile of debris as a ramp to jump over us. As it flew it boosted overhead, landing amongst my men. I ducked out of the way as the Ghost sped away from our position, attempting to turn around and hit us from the rear.

"Miri, go for the fuel tank!" I ordered.

I raised my rifle and aimed at the small hovercraft. I muttered a quick thank you when the elite turned the thing around in a way that it exposed its fuel tank to us. Miri and I opened up, but the Ghost was moving and the target was small enough that we didn't have much success. Just as the guns were almost lined up with us a shot hit the bottom of the tank, tearing it out and spilling some weird-looking fuel.

"It didn't blow?" Miri asked, surprised. "They always blow!"

The elite jumped out of the Ghost, but it was too late for it. Miri took out its shields and I finished it with a series of bursts to the chest.

"Nice work," I told her. "Marv, get over here!"

Both of us ran towards the Ghost and pushed it all the way to the front, so that one side of it was behind cover and the other exposed. We ducked under a couple of bursts from plasma rifles, but soon enough Marv was sitting low on the driver's seat and firing the powerful twin plasma cannons at the covvies. The cannons didn't have a big angle, but they could suppress a big portion of the street.

"Come on, come on," I muttered as I fired. The Spartans would tell us when they were done, but I really wanted them to do this quickly. Normally the sound of a dozen different Locust walkers blowing up would be clearly audible, but right now we were making so much noise that I doubt even the covvies could hear it.

"Frags, frags!" I ordered. "I want it loud!"

Explosions joined the cacophony of noise. Already we had killed at least forty covvie soldiers and they showed no sign of stopping. They were angry and therefore stupid, recklessly moving forward when hanging back would've made more sense. The elites had been offended and they wanted our blood. Sometimes their weird culture made fighting them a lot easier, sometimes it just made it a whole lot harder.

"Sharpshooters on the rooftops!"

"That's your cue Zepeda," I shouted, looking around for the jackals. I ducked as one of them fired at me and cursed myself for being stupid enough to stay out of cover like that. "Kill that one first," I ordered.

Zepeda was a crack marksman, but he couldn't shoot at something that he couldn't see. It took a few moments for the sharpshooters to expose themselves again and only then did Zepeda start shooting. I had no doubt that every bullet that he fired met its target, but the covvies were starting to press harder.

"Shadow transport moving up," Hoff called out. "They're grouped behind it."

I looked up to see the unusual vehicle slowly moving forward, its powerful top-mounted turret firing almost continuously. My men had to take turns ducking from the plasma fire. At this range it was improbable that we would be hit, but when the plasma bolts hit whatever you were using for cover it was a sure sign that maybe you ought to actually _use_ that cover.

"Zepeda, hit the driver if you can," I said. "I want someone to fry that thing with the Splaser as soon as it makes it past that lightpost right there, got it?"

"Yes, sir!" PFC O'Malley said eagerly.

I had been expecting Bamber to reply to that order, but she was long since dead.

I pushed the thought away, no use in dwelling on it.

"Jackals are massing up!"

"Carver, break them!"

"My pleasure."

I wasn't able to see the explosions, but they sounded nice.

"Hit the Shadow!"

"They're trying to bust through our flanks!"

"Redirecting fire!"

Holy fuck we were being loud.

"Finish that fucker!"

"Reloading!"

"Frag out!"

I started firing wildly, using the drum magazine on my rifle for what it was ment for: continuous and overwhelming fire. I gunned down a squad led by an elite before they could move up past the checkpoint, somewhat stalling the flow of renforcements. Miri and Hoff were wreaking havoc with the enemy leadership. The elites wisely kept their heads down now that we were targeting them almost exclusively.

"They're sending in grunt ultras!" Miri shouted. "White armor, white armor!"

The grunts were tenacious and could prove troublesome. They were the cream of the crop, veterans of several battles. Those little guys had my respect, serving under races that saw them as nothing but cannon fodder and making it past those first few ranks and to squad leader was a feat that deserved praise. I was almost ashamed that it would be up to us to cut that illustrious career short.

Two grunt ultras fell to the street with holes in their heads a couple of seconds later. The survivors moved on, barely noticing the losses and instead urging the grunts to move on. The elites saw what was going on and started providing covering fire. I ducked as shards of rock hit my helmet.

"Too damn close," I muttered.

"I'll be damned if we're killed by a bunch of upjumped grunts!" Pavel's voice boomed loudly. "I want every last one of those gas suckers with their faces on the pavement."

The plasma fire intensified.

"What the fuck are you waiting for?" I shouted. "You heard him!"

I threw a grenade to encourage my men. The explosion brought a couple of cries of pain and appeared to invigorate my men. I smiled and popped out to fire at the covvies. The lead grunts were the first ones to go and the attempt to storm our position promptly fell apart after that. The few grunts that we didn't get ran back to safety under the protective fire of the elites.

"I'm tired of those hingeheads," I said. "Tag their positions. Carver, you're up."

What followed next was an excellent display of what human ingenuity and engineering could do if properly applied. Twenty something different silhouettes appeared, each with a distance marker on top of their head. Carver positioned himself behind the front wheels of one of the trucks and set his grenade launcher to the task. He moved a small knob and nodded.

Our gunfire intensified for a brief second, allowing Carver to pop out of cover and fire.

His grenade went high. The explosive flew over the cover that the closest elite was using. It didn't fly any further than that. When the microcomputer inside the explosive detected that it had crossed the assigned distance it detonated violently, sending concussive waves and shrapnel directly towards the elite. That was the beauty of it, the grenade could actually be detonated in a way that most of its force was directed towards a certain point.

"Beautiful," Carver said. "Next!"

Six more elites died that way before the rest realized what was going on. Marksman fire intensified around Carver's position and once again we were hard-pressed to fight off the vicious shooters. Zepeda dispatched four of them when they became too careless, but the rest had relatively free reign, having pinned Hoff and Miri's positions. Montri was still safe, occasionally popping out to shoot at a jackal that got too eager for a kill.

The Covenant line had moved forward several dozen meters. They were now close enough that shotguns were effective against elites. A few more meters and we would be able to smell their ranky breaths.

"Don't start slacking," I shouted, making my voice as booming as possible. "I want runners for the trucks, give out ammo to everybody. We need to keep this up for as long as possible!"

Two grunts lost their legs as a fragmentation grenade detonated underneath them. The plasma grenades that they had primed and were preparing to throw detonated in the ground, engulfing another unfortunate grunt. When the dust cleared Sandor chuckled slightly.

I smiled, I could not fault him for smiling at that feat.

"How much longer, sir?" Andy asked while reloading.

"Hold on, I'm getting something," I said, turning my head around and crouching behind a piece of floor. "Castillo, come in."

"Lieutenant, this is Green-Three," Sierra-044 checked in. "We're about three quarters of the way done, but there's a Locust walker headed your way."

"Shit," I cursed. "How high up?"

"Two blocks from your current position," he replied. "One of its legs is damaged, but it's still plenty deadly."

"All right, thanks for the heads up," I said, signing off. "Listen up Five! There's a Locust walker headed our way! It should be coming up about two blocks from here! The moment it shows its ugly head I want everyone firing at it. Carver, Montri, Sandor, you're the main ones. Hoff, can you throw a frag that far?"

"No problem," he replied.

"Good, be ready."

The enemy attacks just intensified, they had bunkered down and were now mostly doing what we were. Firing continuously at our positions in an attempt to hit one of us when we got careless. We had killed almost eighty aliens during the opening of the battle, but for the past fifteen minutes we hadn't gotten anything more than a wounded jackal and a grunt that would need a prosthetic. They had gotten smarter. I hated when they did that.

"Zepeda, do you have any high-value targets?" I asked him.

Red light.

I sighed. "What's the highest rank you've got?"

"Elite minor."

"Not worth it," Caboose spoke his opinion.

I nodded in agreement. "Don't hesitate to shoot anything with a big helmet," I told the sniper.

The comment actually got a chuckle from the man. "I never do."

"Did he just…laugh?" Montri asked.

"Don't think so," O'Malley replied almost immediately. "A chuckle doesn't count."

"You know Abri, the way that you butcher the English language with that accent never ceases to amaze me," Corporal Han told her.

"Fok jou, kont!" she replied.

"Well I certainly don't need a translator for that," Hoff joked.

"Was that Afrikaaners or English?" Montri asked her.

Their friend had just died and they were joking around in the middle of a battle that was critical for the city. Good, they could deal with the pain and loss later, right now I needed them to be in tiptop shape.

The covvie onslaught slackened a little. I ordered my men to slow down their rate of fire and climbed up a pile of debris to meet with Hoff.

"What can you tell me?" I asked.

"The ones up front are crouching behind cover, they don't look too eager to leave it."

"And further back?"

He peeked over and shrugged. "Offering some token action, but that's about it."

I nodded grimly. "Locust is about to come up… Locust is coming up!"

"Ready weapons!" Pavel shouted. "Carver, I want HEAT rounds on that MGL!"

"High-Explosive Anti-Tank coming up!" the man replied, ducking backbehind cover to switch the shrapnel rounds in his grenade launcher for more appropriate HEAT ammunition.

"Sandor, you can't miss," I reminded him. "O'Malley?"

"I've got this, sir."

"Good. Good…"

When a Scarab came in you always knew it before it happened. They were fucking huge and equally loud. You could hear their joints whirring, the ground cracking under their legs, and the overall noise of a very large vehicle moving. It wasn't very often that a Scarab could get you by surprise, it wasn't unheard of, but still pretty uncommon. Locusts, on the other hand, were small enough that they could sneak up on you.

Not this time, we had previous knowledge, we knew where it was coming from, and we were ready to fry the fucker before it managed to get a shot off.

"Rooftop!"

Nobody remembered that the fuckers could climb buildings.

A single beam of purple plasma crossed the air and collided with one of our trucks, overheating the fuel cells and detonating it in an orange fireball. Shrapnel flew in every conceivable direction and the covvie assault intensified.

"Man down!"

"I'm hit, I'm hit!"

"Medic!"

"Shoot the walker!" my voice boomed over all others.

My wounded ODSTs were left were they were and we redirected our attention to the biggest threat. Sandor shook his head and took a knee before firing two rockets at the Locust. I raised my body so that my torso was exposed and sprayed the covvies closest to us, sending them reeling back to cover and buying us some time. A red beam flew from O'Malley's Splaser and smashed against the Locust's shields. The large walker was surrounded by yellow lightning as its shields failed.

"Kill it!" Pavel shouted, redirecting his fire to the thing's joints.

"Get down!" Caboose warned.

I threw myself to the ground as the purple beam flew right above me. It crossed the street, hitting our positions and melting them down. I could feel the temperature around me go up by several degrees as my suit struggled to keep me at a comfortable temperature. Some of my men were probably having a worse time, but nobody was killed.

"Carver, kill it!"

The man fired his entire magazine at the walker. The shells collided and penetrated the comparatively thin armor. As soon as all ten grenades were inside the Locust's hull they detonated, tearing apart the driver and everything around it.

"Yeah!" he shouted in victory.

I allowed myself a small smile. "Andy, Sutton, and Han, tend to the wounded," I ordered. "Keep them engaged."

The Covenant took the loss of their single most valuable asset in stride. The elites hanging back sent even more squads up front and deployable covers started poppin in every direction. Groups of jackals started leaving the checkpoint firebase to disappear behind houses. We shot as many as we could, but when they disappeared they became invisible threats. The troops on street level were easier to handle, but easier is being used loosely in this situation, very loosely.

Already a pair of elites had bulled their way through our fields of fire and vaulted over cover. Caboose had received them with a shotgun blast to the face that left them both decapitated and leaking blood into the street. Other hingeheads seemed more reluctant to try doing that after that, but that didn't mean that they slackened on the plasma. The rocks in front of me were no doubt beginning to exhibit a redish tinge from all the heat. Already some my men were behind piles of smoking debris, looking uncomfortable in the intense heat.

"Green-One here," Sierra-005 came in. "We're down to the last Locust."

"Copy that Spartan," I acknowledged. To my team I said, "Prepare to fall back! Andy, turn the truck around!"

"Wounded go under the seats!" Pavel ordered in an imposing voice. "We need to get out fast!"

Andrea climbed into the flatbed truck and turned it back on. She quickly turned it so that we could fall back down the street and Han and Sutton started helping the wounded into the truck. Already my platoon had about half of our men out of action, some were wounded and some were helping them, but it meant the same thing. We were currently at fifty percent effective strength.

"Full-auto! Full-auto!" Lizzo roared, echoing his machine gun.

"Hit the fucker!"

I fired at a grunt that was about to throw a grenade, timing the shot so that the explosive fell where the alien was standing. The explosion engulfed it and drove an elite out of cover, where it was promptly gunned down by Lizzo and Hoff.

Hoff's head snapped backwards and he cried out. I traced the small green trail that carbine rounds often left and found a jackal aiming right at me. I jumped to the side, exposing myself to any covvie that cared to shoot.

The jackal missed its second shot by a hairbreadth. I felt my helmet move slightly as the carbine round nicked it. As I fell I rolled and came out in a crouch, my rifle already up. Three squeezes of the trigger later the jackal tumbled over the roof and slammed into the street with a crunch that I was able to hear.

"To the truck!" I ordered. "Machine guns go last!"

Recon and VSF started moving back slowly, hesitant to leave cover. I ran back to the pile of debris that Hoff and I had been using and winced when I saw that the carbine round had torn through the side of his helmet, starting just at the edge of the visor. I took the helmet off and cursed. Hoff was unconscious, but the shot had hit his cheek and carved down through the skin until it hit the jaw, tearing it from the rest of the skull. His mouth was hanging from a loose piece of muscle and skin, opened unnaturally far down.

But he was alive, and for that we could be thankful.

"Medic!" I shouted. "Medic!"

Sutton immediately appeared to my side, he took Hoff's injury in stride and pulled out a can of biofoam, turning my man on his side. "So he doesn't choke," he explained quickly. "Messy injury, painful as hell. Surgery here will patch him up, he'll have a hard time talking." Sutton talked as he worked, bandaging the wound with some weird adhesive tape and then covering most of Hoff's face with regular bandages. "He'll be alright."  
>I nodded and tapped him in the back. Between the both of us we carried Hoff's unconscious body towards the truck. Han helped us drag him up and threw him to O'Malley and Caboose.<p>

"Pavel?"

"They're about to overwhelm us!"

I turned to Sutton. "Hop in," I ordered. "Fall back, fall back!"

Ramirez, Dotsenko, d'Arc, and Lizzo walked backwards, emptying their magazines as they went. I in turn moved forward, hitting the elites that tried to capitalize on our retreat with scarily precise headshots. Not all of the elites were without shields, but the ones that were promptly found themselves short a brain.

"Pavel!" I shouted.

Just as I finished shouting things started moving slowly. Spartan time kicked in. A blue glowing orb flew in a beautiful arc, landing not six feet from my friend. I grabbed him by the belt and yanked back as hard as I could. For such a heavy man he felt incredibly light. The explosion sent me flying backwards, flipping my head over my feet and then back to the ground.

My vision went black.

When I came back to it I saw Pavel climbing on the truck. The heavily crowded vehicle opened up on the covvies charging our position, slowing them down.

"Go!" I ordered, my voice faint. "Go!"

The truck drove away, hesitantly so at first, but when the Covenant fire intensified Andy didn't seem to brake.

I turned around back on my back and raised my rifle only for it to be kicked from my hands by an angry and bleeding elite. As I drew my sidearm the same elite stepped on the hand, making my cry out in pain. The huge alien leaned towards me and grabbed me by the neck, lifting me effortlessly. I held onto its wrist in an attempt to give my windpipe some more breathing room. I never thought I'd use that phrase literally…

The elite growled something in Sangheili at two other hingheads behind it and they replied in turn.

"Fuck you!" I said, ever defiant and wasting air.

I let go of one hand and started reaching for the knife on the small of my back. With my left hand I started squeezing, using my full strength, augmentations and all. The elite's grip tightened on my neck, but its eyes bulged in what I could only assume was pain. My fingertips reached the grip of my knife, but my vision was already blackening on the edges. I felt myself weaken and my feet stopped kicking.

The elite growled something more and drew a small energy blade with its other hand.

I closed my eyes and swallowed.

_Wait… swallowed?_

I opened my eyes just as I heard the gunshot. The supersonic round had killed the elite before I could hear it. The elite that had been holding me was missing the entire front of its head. A few drops of purple blood colored my visor. The two other aliens jerked sideways almost simultaneously as sniper rounds hit them in the head. The dead elite finally dropped me, falling to the ground.

I slammed down to the street on my ass and rolled to the side, grabbing my rifle. Two more elites were running towards me, bringing plasma rifles to bear. One of them fell as the unseen shooter hit it and the other one hesitated for just a second.

A giant green object landed right next to me, cracking the pavement and sending ripples through the street. The Spartan moved with speed that I couldn't even hope to match even if I was ten times as augmented. I saw the sniper rifle in her hands twirl like a baton before its butt made contact with the final elite. The massive alien doubled over and the Spartan then snapped its neck with an overhead swing of her rifle.

Before I could say anything she had holstered her rifle and was yanking me back to my feet.

"On your feet, Marine," she said. Her voice was melodic to the point of being hypnotic. Or maybe it was just the lack of oxygen to my brain.

"I'm a Helljumper," I said stupidly. "Let's go!"

I turned around even as Sierra-058 drew her two pistols. I heard the sound of gunfire over my shoulder and willed the pain away as I ran. I didn't bother turning around to help. She was a Spartan and could handle anything short of a Scarab all by herself. I kept on running, when the gunfire didn't grow more distant I looked over my shoulder to see 058 ten feet from me, running backwards as fast as I was sprinting.

"Show off," I muttered.

We ran like that for two blocks. When I hadn't heard a plasma bolt whiz past me for thirty seconds I slowed down a little bit, but only a little.

Finally, after some heavy running I stopped completely, almost out of breath and in incredibly pain.

"Thank you," I told her. "So very much."

The Spartan nodded, her headmoving from side to side in a search for enemy targets to kill. I reloaded my rifle and winced in pain, drawing one half-concerned glance from her.

"Don't worry," I said. "I'm fine." I was only half-sarcastic.

"Don't shoot," she said suddenly.

I turned around and saw the other four Spartans emerge from a half-collapsed house. They had dropped their launchers and their Det-Packs were gone. I was surprised that they had been able to carry that much ordinance,but I was even more surprised that they had used it all up so quickly.

"Lieutenant," S-005 greeted quickly. "Thanks."

"My pleasure," I said, trying to stand straight and look tall amongst the veritable green giants. "You did a fine job."

The Spartan nodded and turned towards the sniper. "They want you for an assassination mission. The elite that lead the strike on Caradhras."

"That fucker's still alive?" I asked, annoyed.

The Spartan nodded. "We fall back to the spaceport, wait for further orders."

The Spartans said nothing and took off, leaving me alonewith Green-One.

"Are you ok, lieutenant?"

"Not so much," I admitted. "But I can still kick your ass, so don't get any ideas."

That actually got a chuckle from the Spartan, and for some reason it felt like making a Spartan laugh was the biggest achievement in my whole life.

"Let's go home," I told him, walking in the direction of the spaceport, trailing behind the other Spartans.

"Yes, let's go home." Sierra-005, walking by my side.

* * *

><p><em>Thanks to SpartaLazor and defarcher for proofreading this chapter.<em>

_One of these days I'm going to write myself into a corner with Frank and his near-death experiences. Oh well, it wouldn't be fun if it wasn't a challenge._

_Anyways, I'm back guys! I know I teased about giving you a double update when I returned, but it appears that that won't come to fruition (nice word, fruition). I had very little time to write while on vacation and only managed to write about seven pages. To get this into perspective, I usually write about twenty five pages a week, now I only managed seven in ten days. If it's any consolation, I had a pretty good time._

_And Game of Thrones came back. And The Walking Dead season ended in a weird note. I didn't expect the result, especially considering that I read the comics up to that point. What else... what else... Battlefield 4 looks pretty interesting, the graphics on that game are just beautiful, let's just hope that the plots on this one is better than in the last one._

_Spartans working with ODSTs to take down a swarm of Locust walkers. I would've loved to write the battle from the Spartans' perspective, but you can't always get what you want. And those guys are showoff douches anyways. I hope you're glad I'm back, it certainly feels good to be back, even if school is still a pain in the ass at least 90% of the time._

_Stay strong._

_-casquis_


	177. To Die

Chapter CLXXVII: To Die

**May 8, 2549 (UNSC Calendar)/one week later**

**Valern Spaceport, Valern, Paris IV, Paris System**

* * *

><p><em>"Tell us, why do you want to be a United Nations Space Command Marine?"<em>

* * *

><p>"Good, we're all here. Now we can proceed."<p>

Colonel Bourne was a grim-looking man, but his somber expression and snappiness could be forgiven when you remembered that his home was burning. The man was in command of the Army forces in the city, what little remained of them. While Darbinian was the highest-ranking Marine officer on location, Bourne was of higher rank so he got command of all UNSC forces in the city.

The few of us left.

I crossed my arms under my chest piece, the skin was completely healed from the burns inflicted by that plasma grenade and the tautness was gone too. My throat still itched from time to time, but for the most part I was in fine working order. Darbinian seemed to be fine too, but there was a patch covering his right cheek and his eye seemed to droop slightly from time to time. The other officers in the room all had minor injuries of some sort ranging from scratched knuckles to missing teeth. My face was relatively clean save for a few persistent bruises running the length of my jaw that seemed to want to stay there for a long time.

The Spartans… the four of them still here looked ready to pounce at the slightest sign of danger. They held their weapons loosely across their chests, but there was an air of danger about them. Even when they walked, fluidly but looking like they could break a tank in half without a second thought. The one with the knives walked almost as if on his tiptoes, like he was in the middle of a martial arts tournament all the time. The knives strapped to his armor did nothing to diminish his threatening appearance.

But their armors were battered, even worse than my own. I had a neat slash across my chest piece, pieces of a spike grenade embedded on my right shoulder plate, a long groove on the back of my helmet. One of my bootshad been slightly melted, giving it a wave-like pattern. My kneepads were worn and beaten almost beyond use. The rest of the armor had scratches all over from sliding in and out of cover, slamming into the ground, and just general use.

The Spartans' armor looked even worse, and they had amassed all the damage in just three weeks while it had taken me a few years to get mine to its current level.

"I just got word from Spartan Sierra-058," Bourne announced, drawing interested glances from all around him. "Her mission was a failure."

Even the Spartans seemed shocked by it.

"The target wasn't present in the main Covenant camp, instead it was spotted fighting in the frontlines."

"Fucking elites…" an Army captain muttered angrily.

"After seven days of waiting Sierra-058 decided that the risk of discovery was too great. She dispatched two general-class elites, but the field marshal is still at large."

"Smart hingehead," Schitzo complimented.

"Command has assessed our current situation and they've decided that this city is as good as lost."

"What?" a man exclaimed. "We've been fighting for months to keep this city from their hands and now we just decide to throw it away?"

The commander nodded grimly. "This is my home too. But we're effectively surrounded. The river is the only thing that has kept us from being overrun. Even with Green-Team we're hard pressed to hold the entire spaceport."

Commander Bourne took a deep breath, suddenly looking sad and tired.

"We're pulling out. Civilian personnel will be evacuated in airliners, flying low with SkyHawk fighters as escorts. We've got enough atmospheric liners to fit the survivors, even if it's a little bit tight."

"What about military personnel?" a Marine lieutenant asked.

"We'll pull out later. Myself and my own staff will go first along with a couple of companies. After that we'll collapse onto this point right here. It's the most defensible building in the entire spaceport."

"From there we hold until we're all evac'd?" I asked.

"That is correct, lieutenant," he said. "There is an exception. Green Team will be move past enemy lines and take out three enemy SAMs here, here, and here. We need you to do it quick."

"We can do it," Sierra-005 said with a quick nod that was imitated by the other two Spartans.

"Good." Bourne turned back towards me. "Lieutenant, I was actually hoping that your unit could help with another two SAM emplacements here and here. They're not as big a risk to the airliners but could still pose a threat."

"Excuse me, sir," Darbinian came in. "Castillo's platoon is still recovering from the beating they took last week, and the attacks on the perimeter haven't sped up that process."

"Your point?" Bourne urged.

"My point is that my unit is better suited for this task."

_As of right now_, I added mentally.

Commander Bourne turned to look at me, with a seemingly amused expression on his face.

"Your call, sir," I said.

"Very well Captain," he told Darbinian. "Your op."

"Thank you, sir," Darbinian replied, shooting a self-satisfied smirk my way.

"Green Team and your unit will be pulling out by Pelican in any of the evac points that you designate, but you'll be too far from the airfield for us to provide any support."

Darbinian nodded at the same time S-005 did.

"That's about it," Bourne said. "I'm sending the specifics to everybody, the order of withdrawal is right there as are the positions and key strong points. Go talk to your men. Civilian evacuation will commence shortly. Dismissed."

We saluted and started walking out.

"Sir," I said after everybody had left.

"Yes?"

"Do you have any news from the Navy?" I asked. "The _Flawless_ Battle Group in particular."

He shook his head. "Last I heard things weren't going too great up there, but I don't have any specifics."

"Thanks, sir," I replied, walking out.

"Wait, lieutenant."

"Sir?"

"Are you all right?"

I smiled. "As all right as can be."

Bourne nodded grimly and waved me away before returning his attention to the hologram in front of him, allowing me to leave the room. The massive landing pads for spacecraft and shuttles were an imposing sight. Kilometers of polycrete paving welcomed me along with several huge hangars to be used whenever particularly repairs needed to be done. A refit station in orbit was always a good choice, but it couldn't beat a groundside port.

The open area was filled with tents and improvised housing. I could see damaged barracks and vehicles here and there. The hangars were further out back, they housed the airliners that Bourne had been talking about as well as several dozen civilian refugees that hadn't gotten their own tents or housing.

The spaceport was a grim sight. People were low on morale and they barely did anything other than sit down and stare at the ground. Occasionally one would see small children running around, laughing, but then you'd remember that for those two you saw there were another ten that had been killed by the Covenant. Valern had been hit hard by the covvie onslaught and the survivors were shellshocked.

I shook my head sadly and made my way through the refugee camp and to the barracks. My platoon wasn't faring too well either. We'd taken no casualties during our diversion mission, but most of my men had been wounded. Hoff was still recovering and barely spoke due to the pain it caused. Miri had been hit by shrapnel and a pretty large piece had dug into her shoulder, leaving it numb and painful to move. A jackal sharpshooter had hit Montri and Zepeda both in the right arm. Both had made it out on their feet, but the injury was painful and I often saw them twirling their injured hands around experimentally and with grimaces on their face.

Marv had receives several second-degree burns and Takacs had gotten a concussion when the truck blew up. At least his helmet had stopped the piece of shrapnel going straight to his head.

Pavel's squad had fared comparatively better, but d'Arc still had a slight limp. When the truck blew shrapnel tore through one of the two tendons on the back of her left knee. The doctors had patched it up well enough, but the tissue was still mending.

Most of my wounded had that stupid truck and the Locust to thank, but we had taken it out and were in relatively good shape.

"Frank," Pavel greeted, his voice hoarse. "What news?"

I let myself fall down on a folding stool and groaned loudly. I explained everything to my platoon, not bothering that they didn't appear to be listening.

"Why didn't we get to go to Udinia?" Sandor asked. "No way the brutes down there are doing as well as these elites…"

I shrugged. "If this was an easy mission…"

"It wouldn't be a Helljumper mission," my platoon finished half-heartedly.

"That's what I like to hear. We'll get some downtime before this goes down, alright? I want you all to rest up, take a couple of painkillers or something. Get some rest."

"Yes, sir," my men said, sounding slightly more eager about being able to get some quick zees.

I stood from my small stool and headed towards my bed.

"How's the jaw?" I asked Hoff. His cheek was still horribly scarred, but they would fix that up as soon as we were back on Reach.

"Hurts," he said, sounding like he had just recovered from a stroke and was learning to talk again. "Got news from family, they're in Udinia, in the spaceport.

Their permits still valid."

I nodded and smiled while clapping his shoulder. "Good. That's good, I'm happy for you."

He nodded and attempted to smile before wincing from the pain. "Fuck."

"On the bright side," Andy called out from the other side of the room. "We don't have to listen to your annoying voice anymore."

A few men laughed while Hoff threw a box of tissues with deadly accuracy, clocking Andy in the nose. She laughed and thanked him for the tissues before blowing her nose and sitting down on her bed. Most of my men were already asleep, it was a talent that you had to develop quickly.

I myself didn't know whether I should go to sleep. Dana's face was often in my dreams, accusing and damning. Atkins was there too, looking at me with disapproval in his eyes. The worst of all was when Scarecrow and Almers were there too, yelling at me for not doing my job right. Schitzo was present every time, sitting back and looking over their shoulders with a satisfied expression on his face. Sometimes he would remind me that this is what I was, a man destined to see the men and women he knew and cared about die.

"Frank," Pavel said quietly, making me jump. "Not going to sleep?"

"Don't think so," I replied.

"Nightmares," he said knowingly. "Ah well, not much can be done about those. Hey, I never did pay you back for saving my ass back there."

"You'll pay me back when you save my ass," I told him.

"So you don't want this?" he asked, offering a king-size Kit-Kat chocolate bar.

My eyes went wide open. These things were often the first to go. Marines and soldiers took them whenever they went past a store. They usually didn't last long, we ate them pretty quick most of the time.

"How did you get it?"

He whistled enigmatically and smiled, giving me the candy. "Enjoy it my man, that's for saving my ass."

"Thanks."

He shrugged and promptly went to sleep. I liked to think that he often dreamt about his wife and daughter back home, thinking about the moment when he met them again after so much time away from them. It sounded like a good way to pass your nights. Better than my dreams at any rate. Better than the dreams most of my men had, if the way that they abruptly woke up in the middle of the night or jerked in their sleep was any indicator.

I sighed tiredly. Maybe it wouldn't be good for my mind, but sleep would certainly be good for my body.

* * *

><p>I woke up and some of the aches in my body were gone. It had been a pretty long time since I had slept this well without drugs. I remained as I was with my eyes closed, just enjoying the comfort and warmth that the sheets offered me. Even then I could hear the faint sounds of battle in the distance, but those were like background music to my life and I quickly forgot all about them. I could hear my platoon breathing, some light snoring, and the sound of people talking in the way they do when they don't want to wake someone up.<p>

I focused on my latest injuries. The skin on my back was still somewhat stiff and the front of my body felt as if I was recovering from a bad sunburn. I hadn't gotten sunburned since I was seventeen.

I curled my toes and flexed my muscles. It had been a refreshing nap, maybe even four hours long. I finally allowed myself to open my eyes and slowly brought myself to a sitting position. From there I promptly put on my socks and slid my feet into my armored boots, clicking them shut. After that I slowly put on my thigh armor, doing one leg at a time and making sure that they were tightened on the most comfortable level.

I sighed contentedly and looked up as I stretched my neck.

"Enjoy your nap?" Andrea asked me. She was rubbing the small shrapnel scars on her chest.

I nodded. "Your chest still hurting?"

Andy looked down and noticed that the undershirt she was wearing didn't do much to cover her rather sight-catching assets, especially considering that she wasn't wearing a bra and that the air conditioning on the barracks made the temperature slightly chilly. She promptly blushed and tried to cross her arms over her chest in the most nonchalant way possible.

She failed. Miserably.

"You're as bad as Miranda," I told her as I smiled and shook my head. "I was talking about your injury."

Andy turned an even deeper shade of red but didn't uncross her arms, instead she looked down and examined the small scars. For a moment I wondered what her cleavage looked from her eyes, but I promptly shook those thoughts from my mind.

"The scars aren't bothering me much," she said. "It's that piece of shrapnel still in there that hurts. Sometimes it aches and when I move a certain way it feels like it's pushing against something."

I nodded, the few shrapnel wounds that I had suffered had been minor. A spike grenade detonation had sent jagged metal through my calf several years back and I had constantly been in the need of micro shrapnel removal when needler rounds detonated nearby, but those rarely if ever caused any pain.

"Suck it up, Helljumper," I said. "It might be a long time before you get the chance to have that removed."

"Yes, sir," she replied, instinctively losing the embarrassed demeanor and adopting a professional one. Andrea grabbed her sidearm and started cleaning it before she realized what she was doing. Marines were conditioned to follow orders, Helljumpers were conditioned to _be_ Marines. The moment I spoke to her as a superior officer she started acting like an enlisted ODST. Tough as fuck.

I smirked inwardly, had it not been for my own past experience I never would've been able to play her like that. She had gone from embarrassed to determined and fierce with a change of tone. It made me wonder how many times that trick had been used on me.

_Probably a few dozen,_ I reasoned. _I did spend some time digging latrines for Darbinian, after all._

I checked my watch and frowned when I saw the time. I really had slept for little over five hours. It was to be expected that the civilian evacuation would take that long, but not without something going wrong and waking me up. I smiled and removed my watch. Something would go wrong eventually.

My undersuit was off at my waist, I quickly pulled it all the way to the top and put it on. The black material clung to my body before adapting to it and losing most of the stickiness that came with it. I put on the vest that went under all my torso armor and sat back down on my bed. Something would happen soon enough.

A few minutes later the few of my men still asleep woke up. Chatter became louder and everybody started armoring up. We had enough ammunition in our barracks to do with in case of an emergency, but it was always better to be laden with spare magazines. If they were too heavy you could just shoot them off until you felt lightweight enough. Win-win.

"Tell us Marvin, why did you join the United Nations Space Comand Marine Corps?" Sandor asked.

I could picture Marv shrugging at the question. In all likelihood he did just that.

"They pay," he replied, drawing some laughter. "The glory." That earned more laughs. "The food!"

I was forced to chuckle lightly myself.

As soon as the laughing died down Sandor kept going.

"Seriously man," he pressed. "I joined because I'm a little off in the brains. Thought that shooting aliens would be fun and all. Don't get me wrong, I have a blast, but the rest of the time… not so much."

"We've all got our reasons," Marv told him.

"Each as valid as the other," Miri chimed in.

"But not all of them are as good," Dotsenko shouted over from the other side of the room. "I joined to impress a girl."

"I joined because I believed I would be doing something good," Ramirez said, drawing some good-natured jeers from the rest of the platoon.

"I joined to make my dad proud," d'Arc said.

Someone guffawed.

"What does he think of you now Sarah?" Carver asked her.

"Don't know, don't fuckin' care," she said, eliciting 'Oorahs' from the men. "What about you, Dan?"

Carver took his sweet time answering. "I joined to avenge my brothers."

"I joined to kill the fuckers that murdered my best friend," PFC Sutton said.

By this point my eyes were open once again and I was sitting back up, examining the exchange with interest.

"You sure he wasn't more than just a friend?" Lizzo joked, shoving the medic on HW Squad lightly. "I joined to pay off my debts."

"Spent too much on gas and water?" Miri asked with a small smile.

He shook his head. "I wish. What about you Miranda? You don't seem like the kind of girl who would end up in the Corps."

"Why is that?"

"Because you look down when someone speaks too loudly!"

The whole platoon laughed at that.

"I joined because my home was burned," Miranda said after the laughter died down.

Andrea placed a hand on her shoulder. "I joined when it became clear I wasn't good enough to be a doctor."

Hoff punched her gently on the shoulder. "Washed out athlete," he said brokenly, pointing to himself.

"Washed out athlete," Sandor said, imitating Hoff's hanging jaw and voice, drawing some laughter and a not-so-light shove in retaliation.

"O'Malley! Why did you join?" Ramirez asked.

"To perfect her English accent, of course!" Carver said, getting a glare in return.

"Because it was expected of me," she replied. "How 'bout you Montri?"

"I joined to protect my family."

"My hero!" Dotsenko said in a high-pitched voice, getting some rude comments from the rest of the platoon.

"Han?" Montri asked his squad medic.

"I joined to honor my ancestors."

"Boo! Come on," Lizzo said, waving his hand in mock disgust. "What I really want to know is why quiet Stan Zepeda joined."

The entire platoon went deadly silent in perfect imitation of our platoon sniper. Eveyrbody, myself included, turned to look at the man. Zepeda raised his head to return our gazes. For several seconds it seemed like he would remain like that, quiet and cold to everybody.

"I joined because I was drunk," he said finally.

The place erupted in laughter. My men laughed so hard that some of them doubled over and started taking deep breaths. The man was so quiet, so serious, so cold and professional all the time that a comment like that had that much impact. Platoon Five laughed as one, every last one of us laughed except for Zepeda himself. Even Caboose allowed himself a hearty chuckle. I had rarely seen the man smile, let alone chuckle.

"Why did you join, eh Sarge?" O'Malley asked Caboose, gently elbowing him in the arm.

Caboose looked at me and then shrugged. "I joined because it was my only choice."

"And I joined because otherwise you worthless shits wouldn't know the business end of a rifle," Pavel said, standing up. "Armor on everybody!"

My men laughed and chuckled some more as they stood up from their beds and began putting on the few pieces of armor that they hadn't been wearing.

"Hey El-tee! We still haven't heard why you joined our damned Corps," Carver said.

The tacpad on my left forearm chimed and I grinned. The Covenant had attacked many places at many different times, but never before had I considered their attack to come at an appropriate moment.

I finished strapping my chest piece and grabbed my battle rifle before answering.

"I joined for the same reason we all joined," I said.

"Because I was stupid!"

"Because I was innocent!"

"Because I was young!"

"Because I was naïve!"

"Because I was crazy!"

"I joined for the same reason we all joined," I repeated, this time louder in order to make myself heard over the screams and explosions outside.

"For glory!" Pavel shouted.

"For honor!"

"For pride!"

"For our families!"

"For humanity!"

I put my helmet on. "The Covenant have figured out what's going on, they're attacking on all sides and shooting at escaping civilian craft," I told my men.

"Why did we all join, sir?" Marv asked.

"We joined to die!"

* * *

><p>The two Marines on my left suffered an extremely quick and brutal death when the hunter's fuel rod atomized the top halves of their bodies. The heat and subsequent explosion threw me to the side and at an improvised tent.<p>

The flimsy fabric did nothing to stop my impact and I grunted as my shoulder hit the hard polycrete floor. I was immediately pulled back to my feet by another Marine and resumed my dead-man's-sprint. The pair of hunters giving chase had busted through the barricades as if they were nothing more than paper and then led the assault that forced us from our first line of defense prematurely.

Two fucking aliens had done that.

"Two fucking aliens that happen to be walking tanks," Schitzo reminded me sensibly. "Don't you forget that. We're not that easily bested, you and I."

"Pavel! What's the sitrep on those Molotovs?"

"We're moving them to the second line Frank!" he shouted right back. "We've got elite Rangers and grunt shock troops hitting our flank."

"Do what you have to, but don't let the line break."

"Yes, sir!"

I yanked the Marine that had pulled me to my feet towards me and both of us fell on top of the other as another stream of green plasma flew overhead. The heat lit up some of the cruder tents around us.

"Thanks, El-tee."

"Don't thank me yet," I told the man. "Let's go!"

"Sir, we've reached Strongpoint Delta," Marvin came in, sounding out of breath.

"Provide support immediately," I ordered, looking at the secondary control tower to my right. "Focus on the big guys, stall them. Any info on Recon?"

"Sergeant Konstantinov and his men were headed towards the hangar last I saw, but I can't pinpoint their location, too much interference."

"Let me know if anything happens," I said, vaulting over a polycrete divider.

About two dozen Marines were still running away from the hunters and the covvies behind them. My companion Marine and I were the ones further back and closest to being fried alive.

"Oh shit!"

I looked over my shoulder to see one of the hunters bull through tents, improvised housing, and polycrete barriers alike with its shield. It seemed to be intent on catching up to us and then smash us to bloody pulp on that massive slab of metal it had for an arm.

"Faster!" I yelled hoarsely. "Faster!"

The crack of gunfire flooded my shouting and drew a roar of wrath from the hunter. I could feel my bones shaking from the noise the hunter made and knew that the rest of my squad had pissed it off. Their actions bought me some time, time which I put to good use as I hastened to put more distance between the covvies and myself. A few stray bolts flew here and there, but Marv and the others seemed to have drawn enough attention to turn us into less valuable targets. Bloody good thing too, had these covvies been under brute commanders I had no doubt that they would've gone for the most vulnerable target, not the most dangerous one.

Of course, had brutes been in charge they wouldn't have gotten past our defenses so easily.

"That's the second line right there!" I shouted, pointing at the rough wall of cars, dividers, and useless armored vehicles.

There were two Armadillos with still-functioning turrets facing this direction, they'd prove to be our most valuable assets when the covvies tried to storm through us.

"Frank!"

"Pavel, the Molotovs?"

"Right there," he replied, pointing at a large crate. "Should last us a while."

I clasped his forearm and nodded before I started issuing orders to the Marines and soldiers scattered through the wall.

"Sir, they've got us suppressed," Marvin informed me. "We're relocating."

"Understood, booby-trap sniper perches."

"Yes, sir," he said, signing off.

"They're coming!" I shouted so that everyone could hear. "Be ready!"

Pavel directed his men with quick hand gestures, spreading them where they would be most effective but keeping them close enough that they would be able to regroup at a moment's notice. I climbed one of the Armadillos and placed my battle rifle on the top, scanning the flaming tents for enemy movement.

"Hunter!" someone cried.

I ducked as a blast of green plasma nearly took my head off. The two Armadillos immediately opened up on the massive alien. Heavy explosive rounds dented and damage the thing's shield, sending it backwards from the impacts. The shield finally snapped and the hunter's heavy armor could do nothing against the autocannons. Orange pulp flew in every direction as the rounds detonated.

"Let's see you mess with someone your own size!" another unknown voice taunted.

"Watch out!"

A green beam flew from behind a large tent and hit the other Armadillo's turret, melting the canon and rendering it useless.

"Well, there goes half of our tactical advantage," Pavel deadpanned.

The hunter started charging at my Armadillo as the cannon swiveled towards it.

"Molotov!" I shouted. "Give me a Molotov!"

Someone tapped me in the back and handed me two bottles with the cloths already ignited. I turned back around to throw them only for the hunter to shoulder-tackle the armored fighting vehicle I was standing on. I flew backwards and landed on my ass, my rifle clattering a few feet past me. The hunter then kicked at the car next to the Armadillo and squeezed its way through our line.

I threw one of the cocktails still in my hand, hitting the hunter's leg and igniting it. The fuel was mixed with motor oil and maybe egg whites in order to make it as sticky as possible. Most of the mix stuck to the ground, but a good portion clung to the thing's leg and started burning.

The hunter barely seemed to notice all the heat through its armor, but it did turn around to face me.

"Hey dipshit!" Dotsenko taunted, firing at the hunter's head.

The hunter turned to the side briefly enough to allow me to jump to my feet and prepare another throw. I tossed the bottle with all my strength at the hunter's relatively unprotected mid-section. The glass broke against its tough skin and the mixture ignited, lighting the whole thing up. Bright orange flames and thick black smoke blocked whatever was going on from view, but I could hear it well enough.

For the first time in my entire life I heard a hunter _howl_.

"Watch it, watch it!"

The hunter twisted from side to side, slamming back against the Armadillo and trying to hit someone with blind swings from its shield and cannon. It fired wildly, most shots impacting the ground next to it or flying way past our heads and landing harmlessly amongst the tents. It made that strange howling noise and moved from side to side.

"What are you waiting for?" Pavel asked. "Shoot the ogre!"

I think that most of the men and women here would've enjoyed to see it burn to death, but pragmatism dictated that we removed the threat as fast as possible.

Over ten different rifles were directed at the burning alien, and within a few seconds it was down on the floor, twitching and crackling as the fire burned its flesh.

"Damn," I exclaimed, picking up my rifle and examining my handywork. "Covvie kill of the week?"

"Covvie kill of the week," Pavel agreed.

By that point a celebratory beer or a victory cigar would've felt quite nice, but I didn't often get that luxury. With two hunters down the enemy onslaught decreased in intensity, but it didn't stop completely. Instead, the elites ordered their forces to spread out and started deploying shields. The tents would do little to stop a bullet, but they could hide grunts and jackals behind them. The smoke from the flames didn't further our cause either.

"Watch the left side!" I shouted, hitting an elite on the leg. "Don't let them flank us!"

I ducked behind the Armadillo once more and looked towards the hangars. The airliners were still taking off. Most of them took some fire from the ground, but so far only three had been shot down. Small arms didn't do much damage to the massive aircraft, but with enough lucky shots they could bring one down. My ears thundered as yet another airliner hovered above us, gaining speed as its thrusters switched angles. Blue and green plasma hit the bottom, leaving small scorch marks behind.

"Sir, we've relocated to the third line," Marvin came in. "No casualties."

"Good, who's in command there?"

"Army captain, don't know his name, seems to know his business well enough."

"Recon?"

"Still no word."

"Dammit!" I cursed, as much from the bad news as from the shards of needles that bounced off my armor. "Does anybody have a radio?" I asked. "I need a fucking radio!"

"Sir!" a soldier said, running towards me with a hand keeping his helmet in place. "I have a radio," he told me, pointing at the relatively large pack on his back.

"Thanks,"I grunted, grabbing the thing and pressing it against my helmet's speakers. I switched the tuner to Recon Squad's personal line and started hailing them.

"Lieutenant? We've been trying to contact you," Caboose came in, sounding tired. "They must have some sort of jammer in place."

"Never mind that," I snapped violently. "Are you in position?"

"Negative, sir. We're two minutes out."

"Well move faster. I need you on that rooftop right fucking now!"

"Yes, sir! We'll do our best."

"Thanks," I told the soldier with the radio, dismissing him.

The enemy kept on coming, making use of a variety of tactics and using all weaponry available to them. I ducked underneath plasma bolts and felt the sting of one as it passed a little too close for comfort more than once. HW Squad and their gunners were the only thing keeping them at bay. They couldn't come at us through open ground, but they sure as hell could fire from behind cover.

They did that to pretty good effect. We didn't get many kills in those minutes, but the jackal sharpshooters knocked down at least six men. I was forced to keep my head down more and more as green rounds and needle rifle shots weaved their way around my head.

"Sir!" the soldier with the radio shouted. "Sir, Recon Squad is in position!"

"Tell them to go for it!"

Not four seconds after that the enemy assault seemed to slacken. They stopped firing at our positions and instead I could hear a few tentative bolts headed towards a different direction. I couldn't see Caboose's squad or the rounds they fired, but I knew that from their position they would have a perfect vantage point for the task at hand.

I opened up a small screen that showed me what Zepeda was seeing through his scope and immediately smiled with satisfaction. The smoke from the tents barely interfered with his line of sight. He shot an elite and started tagging different aliens. Their red silhouettes appeared on my HUD, our helmets would cross-reference information and give me the location of enemy soldiers. This far from one another the margin of error was about four to six inches.

Good enough for me.

"Fire, fire, fire!" I ordered my platoon. We were the only ones with the fancy helmets, but we should be enough.

Zepeda and Recon stopped firing, not wanting to give away their position. While they pinpointed and tagged enemy troops we did the dirty work. Most of the aliens were hiding behind cloth and plastic tents that wouldn't do absolutely anything to slow down the trajectory of a bullet. We tore through several jackals and grunts as well as a few unfortunate elites with low shields. After twenty of their number had gone down in just two minutes they decided that it was best to fall back and build their numbers for another assault.

"Two civilian transports to go, sir," Marvin came in on the radio. "The captain wants you to start pulling back some of your men."

"Understood," I said. "Tell him we're on our way."

"Yes, sir."

I ordered the Marines to pull out the wounded, both Marines and Army alike and tightened the positions of HW Squad. The Armadillo gunner started firing at whatever target he could find, wanting to make the most of his immovable vehicle before having to abandon it.

"Take the Molotovs," Pavel ordered two men. "Leave the mines, we've got those."

Pavel grabbed two soldiers and ordered them to plant bouncing mines in three different spots. The wall had been designed in a way that if the enemy came through it they would form four different bottlenecks. If we left three of them mined the covvies would get the gist of it and start using the fourth one. That fourth one happened to be directly in line of sight of Recon Squad and the sharpshooters on the control towers.

Colonel Bourne was a good strategist and knew how to play dirty.

"All right, non-ODST units start pulling out," I broadcast. "Keep to pre-designated orders of evacuation."

More and more yellow dots disappeared from the small map on my HUD, but with Recon on a flanking position we could hold out for a little bit longer.

"All mines are set, Gunny," the two soldiers said.

"Good, go!"

The two men saluted and hastily retreated back to the third line of defense.

"Frags ready!" I shouted.

"Ready!" my men shouted back.

"Throw!"

All of us tossed our devices as far down range as we could handle. Most of us could throw about fifty yards, but it was still short of the enemy line. The dust and noise was all we needed. Pavel's men immediately grabbed their machine guns and pulled back while Recon covered us. We made our way through strategically-placed cars and then climbed the small hill upon which the smaller landing pads for VIPs were located. The hill was a flattened pile of dirt with an area of about six and a half acres. Most of that space was flat polycrete floors for space yachts and shuttles, but there was also the customs building and the main control tower for the entire spaceport.

High ground and an excellent killing field…

We'd put the fear of god in the covvies when they tried taking our last bastion. In this case, we would be playing god.

"El-tee," Marv waved at me. "This way."

I nodded and followed him towards a man in Army armor leaning over a sand-filled barrel. The Captain was examining a map and folded it as soon as he saw me.

"Lieutenant," he acknowledged with a curt nod.

"Sir," I replied, giving him a quick salute.

"We can h-"

The captain was cut short as his head exploded in a gory mess. His body fell on top of mine and I was forced to unceremoniously shove it away from me before sliding into cover behind the barrel.

"Sniper!" Marv shouted.

"Where is he?"

"Stay down!"

All activity ceased as men dropped to the floor and behind cover. I looked around, not daring to leave cover. I pulled my legs closer towards me and avoided looking at the disgusting mess that was the captain's head. Blood and brain matter were splattered all over my visor, and already there was some more blood pooling around the poor man's head.

"I need someone to contact Recon!" I shouted. "Marv, who's got a radio?"

"Helmet radio's aren't working," Andrea shouted. "We need radios!"

"That's what I just said," I muttered quietly. "Radio, who's got a radio?"

"I have one, sir!" a Marina shouted from behind a car.

"Ok, listen closely," I said. "I want you to switch the frequency to Zero-Zero-Juliet-Charlie-Five-Three-Romeo."

"…Three-Romeo," the man finished saying. "Done!"

"Get Zepeda to start looking for the sniper."

"Yes, sir, right away, sir!" he shouted back. "This is Private Menendez, I've got Lieutenant Castillo here do you copy?"

There was some barely audible reply on the other end of the line.

"We're pinned down by a sniper, best guess is that its firing from our west side. Can't see a goddamned thing."

Another beam rifle shot rang out.

"Man down, man down!"

"You see that?" Menendez asked, some desperation edging into his voice. "Lieutenant, they're working on it."

"Tell me as soon as it's clear," I said, taking a deep breath and attempting to calm myself down so that I could think clearly.

I heard another beam slice through someone and someone shout out in pain, followed by another voice crying for a medic.

"No!" I shouted. "Stay behind cover!" I cursed at myself and punched the ground in frustration at being forced to give that order.

It didn't take long for Zepeda to pinpoint the location of the sniper, but the jackal had enough time to kill another soldier before Zepeda finally took it out. I heard the sound his SRS made when it fired and waited tentatively for the all-clear sign. It didn't take long for the Marine to cry out that the sniper was dead.

"All right," I said, jumping to my feet. "No more saluting! You hear me? They got the captain that way. I want one squad to clear out those two buildings over there."

"Sir, I volunteer!" a soldier immediately stepped forward.

I looked him over and nodded. "You've got a radioman?"

"Yes, sir."

"Good, stay in touch and booby-trap the most likely sniper perches."

"Got it," the man nodded before waving at his men to follow him.

"And sergeant…"

"Yeah?"

"We won't be able to provide support if you get caught in the open."

"We know, sir."

The large squad departed, jumping over the improvised wall and running down the small hill. I traced them with my sight until they disappeared through the smoke and dust.

"Get ready!" I shouted. "Mortar teams, I want you firing at designated targets as fast as you want. Snipers and sharpshooters, you'll take out high-ranking elites and nothing else unless absolutely necessary! Machine guns and heavy weapons, go for the big guys. You know how it goes, bigger the fucker the faster I want it to hit the floor. Let's make them bleed!"

I got a chorus of 'oorahs' and 'hoo-ahs' in reply as soon as I finished my little speech. Men started moving about and the wounded man was immediately attended to. He would lose an arm, but it was better than losing his life. They pulled him back towards the landing pads and stabilized him there. The rest of us spread out and manned the defenses.

"El-tee, call for you!"

I approached on of the radiomen and picked up the phone. "Yeah?"

"Lieutenant, they tell me that the captain's dead?" Commander Bourne said.

"Yes, sir," I replied. "Sniper."

"Shame," he grunted. "Well, you're in command now, you hear me?"

"Yes, sir."

"Good. We have Pelicans coming our way already. We're pulling out the wounded first and then we'll start evacuating, back to front. The less time we stay here the better. Soon as we don't have boots in the city Hammerdown and Bandersnatch will be declared."

"Yes, sir," I said. I knew this already, but it didn't hurt to go over it another time. "How long until evac arrives?"

"First birds should be here in ten, the rest will keep on coming after that."

"All right, got it, sir."

"Bourne out."

The moment he signed off I returned to shouting at everybody that happened to be close to me. I ordered Marines and soldiers alike to fix their positions, pile up additional items in front of them and make sure that they weren't exposed to enemy fire from any direction. I did my best to look as just another soldier, but occasionally I was forced to wave my arms around or point in an attempt to make an emphasis on what I was saying. The last thing I wanted was to end like the captain had.

"Every squad get at least two Molotovs!" I shouted. "Don't use them on anything smaller than a hunter!"

"Down!"

A mortar blast hit a car lying on its side. The explosion melted through it and sent shrapnel flying all around. The two soldiers unlucky enough to have been behind it were cut to ribbons immediately.

"Eyes up!" someone shouted.

"Mortar teams, neutralize the threat!" I shouted. "Fire, fire, fire!"

Almost immediately I heard the thudding noise that the mortars made and caught four black flashes disappearing in the distance. I heard the explosions in the background but a moment later another Wraith mortar hit. More people started shouting and crying for help, but it seemed like this second blast hadn't come close to anybody.

"I see it!" Miri shouted. "By the building the medical clinic was in!"

"Quadrant Ten-Ten-Niner!" a Marine shouted. "Hit it!"

"Fire!"

The four explosions were quickly followed by Miri cheering loudly.

"It's a hit!" she announced. "Finish it off!"

Two more plasma mortar rounds landed behind our lines before the massed mortar fire could take out the Wraith tank. Another Marine died in those two explosions, being incinerated by the blast.

"Enemy foot-mobiles incoming!"

Everybody knew what they were doing and everybody knew the stakes. I didn't need to micromanage everything going on. As soon as the battle started in earnest I let the men and women under my command do their own thing. We had the high ground and a fortified position, we would hold.

I hung back from the frontline, observing everything with as much calm as I could muster and occasionally barking out a quick order. My platoon was spread out amongst the Marines and soldiers, I hoped that their presence would boost the overall morale in here. We weren't Spartans, but I was prepared to kick teeth in if anybody voiced that opinion. And I'll be damned if we weren't the next best thing that humanity had to offer.

"Friendly birds inbound!"

"Pavel! Hold down the fort!" I shouted, backing up and trotting towards customs. "Menendez, tell me if the situation changes!"

"Yes, sir," the private acknowledged while Pavel just sent me a green light.

I was running towards the main entrance when two Banshees appeared out of nowhere and blasted one small hangar to kingdom come with fuel rods. The explosion was too big to have been caused only by the green bombs. Something inside there must've been flammable. I covered my face and shook slightly from the shockwave before I kept on running.

"LC!" I shouted. "Bourne!"

"Lieutenant!" he shouted back, coughing through the thick smoke. "That was all of our wounded and half our able-bodied officers right there!"

"Goddamn," I cursed. "What now?"

"We follow the evacuation plan," he said. "Birds are still intact."

I looked at the four parked Pelicans and wondered whether the pilots were nervous about having to fly through Banshees.

"Shouldn't all enemy air assets be neutralized?" I asked, half to myself. "Sir, senior officers are next on the evacuation list."

"No way in hell I'm leaving my men right here!" he shouted back. "I've got over two hundred men still fighting there!"

"I know, sir," I replied. "There are many Marines down there as well. You can coordinate after you've left the danger area."

"Don't think for a moment that you can order me around, son."

"It was merely a suggestion," I quickly apologized. "Your call, sir."

Bourne looked around, examining the medics attending to the few wounded that survived and piling them inside the Pelicans. He seemed doubtful, but the man was a good strategist, whether he liked it or not he would work just as well with another unit if all of us died here. Whether I liked it or not he was more important than the men down there to the war effort.

"Goddamn," he said after a while, no doubt reaching a similar conclusion. "I don't like it, lieutenant."

I shrugged. "We can hold the line long enough to pull out everybody. I promise my unit will be last one to leave."

He nodded and placed his hand on my shoulder. "Much appreciated son. Captain Custer was supposed to have command after I left… Seems like you've got that honor."

"Hardly an honor, sir," I replied. Highest-ranking officer in an entire city. Sounded like a lot of pressure, even if it was only for a few minutes.

Bourne nodded curtly and slapped me in the shoulder. "Very well then, good luck."

"Thank you, sir," I replied, not saluting in account of recent events.

I walked him to his Pelican and helped a couple of wounded soldiers up the thing. The bird looked overcrowded even as it was, but it would be best if the pilots made as few trips as possible.

"Watch out for Banshees," I said jokingly.

Bourne smiled and nodded as the hatches closed and the Pelican took off. I traced its flight as it slowly turned back around and gained altitude. The two Banshees were being engaged by one of the more heavily armed Pelicans. The bird simply fired most of its missiles at them to gain some time for the rest of the Pelicans.

Lieutenant Colonel Bourne's Pelican finished turning around and then exploded.

Two Seraph space fighters screamed past at supersonic speeds. The shockwave threw me backwards and into the ground. A few rockets flew after them, slowly catching up, but the damage was done. The Seraphs had killed three out of the four evacuation Pelicans.

I was the highest-ranking officer in a whole city. Fun.

"Sir!" Menendez shouted over the radio. "We've got elite shock troops coming in! There's too many of them!"

"Hold the line Marine!" I told them. "I'm on my way. We just need to hold out a little bit longer!"

What I wouldn't have given for those Spartans right now…

The moment I hit the frontlines two blasts almost took my head clean off. The elites had made their way to the bottom of the short hill, but they didn't have the numbers to swarm us, not yet. Most of the men here were focused in keeping the elites where they were while the rest took out the squads that came in after them. There were more than we could handle, and the Covenant seemed to be taking their losses in stride, barely giving a second thought to destroyed squads and decimated units.

"Menendez, get me Recon!"

"Yes, sir!"

"Their location."

"Banshee's made them. Something about O'Malley killing one of the fliers before they were forced to relocate."

I looked at the large terminal building running almost the entire length of the spaceport. Caboose and his squad would be running through the second floor right now, no doubt seeking to put as much distance between their previous position and the new one. I could vaguely see the black smoke from where a Banshee had collided into a rooftop, but the other flier was still around and searching for Recon.

"Shit," I cursed. "Menendez, tell them that two squads are heading their way to cut them off."

"Yes, sir!"

A needle brushed past my neck and I ducked as three flew through the space that my head had been occupying.

"Sharpshooter!" I warned from behind cover.

"Dealt with!" Hoff shouted through his mutilated jaw.

I popped back from cover and propped my rifle on the car's hood. I fired two shots at an elite and then switched to another one, finishing it off with a headshot. After that I started focusing on grunts and jackals, but most of the time I could barely get my head up, let alone an accurate shot.

"They're suppressing us!"

"HW Squad, handle it!" I ordered.

The staccato sound of gunfire intensified as Pavel's men started firing as fast as their weapons mechanisms allowed them to. The enemy fire stagnated for a few seconds before it returned to its previous intensity, but it was less accurate, more guarded. Maybe the desperate barrage had killed a few of their number or at least scared them into being more careful.

"Grenade!"

"Contact left, contact left!"

"We've got a sniper!"

"Man down, man down!"

"Medic!"

I blocked out the cries of pain and desperation, even those of my own men. The only thing I focused on was the progress that the Covenant troops were making. Ever so slowly they pushed forward, cementing their gains with deployable covers and the occasional rolled car. The elites were the worst of all. Most of them were clad in fancy armor that marked them as specialists. The bodies of human men and women around me didn't do anything to improve the situation. Not one bit.

"Lieutenant, Recon reports a high-value target. They think it might be the same field marshal from Caradhras!"

Menendez had no way to know what Caboose or Zepeda had seen, but he reported everything in a professional voice, even if it wasn't exactly cool and collected.

"Can they neutralize it?"

"Negative, sir," Menendez replied. "Don't have a direct line of sight. They marked the estimated position."

"Thanks," I replied after ducking under yet another failed attempt to remove my head from my shoulders. I wondered how long it would take for my luck to run out. Odds dictated that I should be dead by now.

"Odds dictate a lot of things, Francisco," Schitzo chided. "Yet here you are, physiologically augmented beyond what any normal human could hope for, crazy enough to see me and who knows what else from your past, and you happen to be commanding over a hundred and fifty men. Odds should hold little or no meaning to you and I."

I slapped a fresh magazine into my rifle and sprayed a trio of grunts trying to set up a turret close to our line. Two fell and dropped the turret, but the survivor dragged one of them back behind cover the moment I was fired at with plasma pistols. I felt my helmet and quickly removed my hand. The metal was hot at the touch. Must've been a glancing blow.

"Shit," a soldier said, looking at my helmet with a raised eyebrow.

"What the hell are you looking at soldier?" I snapped. "Carry on killing!"

Marvin and Andrea both slid into cover next to me. Andy quickly dabbed a bandage to my neck while Marv tossed the last of his grenades over cover.

"Sir, we need to pull back the wounded to the evacuation point," Andrea said. "Next wave of Pelicans is going to be here shortly."

I winced at the stinging pain from the disinfectant and nodded. "Got it. Do they know about the Seraphs?"

"Pilots wouldn't turn back," Marvin informed me.

"Brave men," Andrea said.

"Stupid fuckers," I disagreed. "Start pulling back the wounded. Keep an eye in the sky, got it?"

"'Course," she replied with a small smirk before polarizing her visor.

Andy took off and Marvin reloaded his rifle.

"That woman thinks the world of herself," I noted drily.

"She has a right to," Marv said before chuckling slightly. "We all do."

"Damn right," I agreed. "Now back to killing!"

Both of us returned to the matter at hand and started firing at the enemies closest to us. I decided right then and there that as soon as the wounded were evacuated we would pull back a little bit further and torch the line with Molotovs.

"Sir, we've got enough room for ten more men," Andy informed me.

"Fifth Squad, Army," I ordered. "It's your lucky day."

"Thank you sir," the squad leader replied. "Good luck."

"Thanks, now move it soldier!"

This time no Pelicans were shot down. I smiled as the five birds disappeared behind the thick curtain of smoke that the battle had lifted. I slowly started pulling men back, massing enough soldiers behind this line to provide cover for the few that remained.

"Flashbangs! Frags!" Pavel ordered in a booming voice. "Now!"

We used the distraction that the explosions caused to abandon that frontline and head back to the smaller fortifications closer to the control tower and landing pads. We didn't have the luxury of wrecked cars here, but the sandbags came with a few heavy machine guns that would cut through any covvie trying to make the run in between the first line and us.

"Molotovs!"

Two dozen cocktails flew in beautiful arcs and hit the cars. The flammable mix inside them torched the defensive line, rendering it nearly useless for the covvies. Sure the elites could handle the heat with their shields, but the grunts and jackals would boil if they remained there for long. One way or the other it was good for us.

"Menendez, where's Recon?"

There was a slight delay before he replied. "They bypassed the enemy unit sent to stop them, but had to make a large detour, they're headed our way."

"Tell Konstantinov to send Zepeda to the control tower, we need sniper cover."

"Yes, sir!"

The man sure was eager about his job.

The first covvies over our line were all elites. No surprise there. They were all quickly gunned down by a soldier manning a machine gun, leaving them crumpled corpses. A few jackals vaulted over next, immediately piling together in order to form a shield wall. The gunner redirected his fire towards them and slowly pushed them back towards the flaming vehicles. The jackals couldn't take the flames for long and a few seconds later they tried to fall back. Most of them were cut down before they could retreat.

"Hell yeah!"

Our small victory was sweet, but it didn't last long. Several bright blue plasma grenades flew over the flaming cars. I ducked behind cover to protect myself from the explosions. I heard a few cries of pain, but I couldn't afford to attend to them. I ordered the gunner to start firing again before the covvies could capitalize on our brief moment of distraction. What came over the wall wasn't exactly what I expected.

"Drones!"

Fuck.

I raised my rifle and hit one of the fliers, tearing its arm off and then toping it off with a burst as it slammed to the ground. The gunner adjusted his aim and started strafing from side to side, clipping and grazing the buzzing aliens as they flew at us. Most of the men quickly recovered and began trying to hit the elusive drones. I managed to hit another one before a soldier finished it off with a sustained burst. The only good thing about them being so hard to hit was that their rapid movements threw their aim off.

Needles and green plasma bolts flew at us, but most of the time they went wide. A man or two were hit and cried in pain as they went down, but so far as I could tell we didn't suffer any KIAs.

The man next to me was thrown backwards as two blue bolts evaporated against his chest. I looked back to the wall and saw an elite charging at us.

"The elite, hit the elite!" I ordered the gunner. "The elite!"

A bolt hit me in the shoulder, knocking me all the way around and flat on my ass. The soldier on the machine gun lowered the weapon and clicked the triggers just as the elite swiped downwards with its sword. Over half of the three barrels fell to the floor with a loud clang, leaving the HMG shortened and with a smoking barrel. The elite and the soldier just stared at each other for a second before the man depressed the trigger buttons again and burned through the elite's shields and armor in a matter of instants.

"There's something as too sharp," he quipped before returning to strafing the line of cars and dividers that the covvies were vaulting over.

I smiled, quickly noting that the HMG wasn't nearly as accurate as before even though it was still functional.

"Next batch of Pelicans is coming up!"

"Second Platoon Marines and Squads One through Four!" I shouted. "Move, move!"

The sound of plasma grew louder even as our gunfire slackened. We had been outnumbered from the beginning, but now there weren't enough of us to cover the entire line. It was beginning to get… frustrating.

"Pavel, how are we on the Molotovs?"

"Half a crate!"

"Use 'em!" I shouted. "Hoff, this is your kind of deal!"

"My pleasure," he grunted in reply.

A few elites burst in flames when Hoff hit them with the incendiaries. I noticed that not one of the men tried to shoot them while they were vulnerable. We wanted them to suffer as much as possible. Besides, we were running low on ammo.

"Pelicans are up and safely away," Andy came in.

One of the Pelicans blew up and crash-landed just as it was clearing the gates of the spaceport.

"Most of the Pelicans are safely away," she amended.

"Get back here, I need every man," I ordered. "Hurry!"

Medic or no medic, woman or no woman, Andrea Livingston was one of the best damn killers in this side of the galaxy and I did need every last possible able-bodied man to help hold back the covvies.

The next Pelican convoy arrived with two SkyHawk fighters as escort. One of the Seraphs attempted to make a run, but the fighters quickly spammed it with missiles before it could even get within strafing range. The other Covenant fighter veered off and disappeared in the distance.

"Pull back to the control tower!" I shouted. It was our last defensible position. The area around it was fortified to hold off an assault for a brief period of time, and the tower itself would be a big advantage for my sharpshooters.

A fourth of the men under my command had been killed or wounded. I never really thought that I'd be past the point where the word decimation was considered too mild for me. Several corpses had been left behind when we pulled back, we could carry either our dead comrades or as much equipment as we could handle. In the end I chose to pull back with three HMGs as well as several crates of ammunition. I got a few of the wounded to start reloading empty magazines in case it really became that kind of situation.

"Sir!" Hoff warned, tossing me a lit Molotov.

I turned around and threw it into an elite, covering it in flames. The elite roared in anger before its body registered just exactly what was going on. The anger quickly turned into pain and it started jumping around, trying to get rid of all the flames. Another large hingehead pushed it aside without a second thought only to run straight into a face full of buckshot.

"Zepeda?" I asked Caboose.

"On the tower," he replied. "We're good."

"I want O'Malley to shoot down that Banshee, got it?"

"She's looking for it, we think it might go for Stan as soon as he racks up some kills."

Hoff tossed me another Molotov and I promptly threw it at another elite, hitting it in the neck. The alien dropped to the floor and rolled in an attempt to get rid of the fire, but instead it just started groveling in pain. A single pink round went through its head as a fellow elite tried to shorten its pain. The elite looked up at me and growled, raising its needle rifle.

Zepeda decided to start shooting right then and there, blowing the elite away with a headshot.

"That's one," Caboose noted drily. "A few more should do."

"There are sharpshooters on the tower, shouldn't take too long for them to draw attention."

Caboose nodded and blasted at a jackal. The impact broke its arm and left the shield hanging limply by its side, allowing me to take it out with a headshot. Caboose looked at me and nodded as we repeated the tactic on other jackals.

"Reloading!" he shouted, ducking behind cover.

"Birds are coming!" Menendez announced loudly. "Six of 'em!"

"First and Third Marines!" I shouted. "Rest of Second Army and Fifth Army goes too!"

I was down to my unit and two squads that hadn't suffered any losses. The few of us lucky enough not to have been seriously incapacitated started firing with wild abandon, shooting at everything that moved in an attempt to rack up as many kills as possible. O'Malley killed the last Banshee the moment it showed up. Our sharpshooters were wasting dozens of the covvies, but they didn't seem to mind the losses. They had reserves and they just didn't care.

"Cloaked elites!"

Our automatic fire turned into strafing automatic fire. Whenever someone with sharp eyes saw the rounds ping off an invisible shield he'd focus on that and call for help. A grand total of two elites fell before the rest jumped over the sandbags. Menendez jumped back as a sword materialized in front him. The radioman raised his rifle and fired half his mag at the elite, uncloaking it. Unfortunately for him, the alien still had shields and a thirst for blood. Another quick swipe cut through his armor and opened a massive gash on his belly. Menendez dropped to his knees and tried to keep his intestines from spilling out.

The elite collapsed as a burst tore its head apart. I saw Montri and Han rush towards the wounded radioman and pick him up by the arms and legs, ignoring his cries of pain. I kept on firing while I walked backwards.

"To the tower!" I shouted. "Inside the tower!"

Most of the Marines and soldiers maintained discipline, firing as they retreated, but in this situation it might've been better to just run. The cloaked elites slashed through three more men by the point I reached the door.

"Hurry!" I shouted at Han and Montri. "Hurry up!"

They started moving faster, but about ten meters from the door two white plasma blades appeared through Montri's chest. I could hear him gurgling in surprise at having been killed and cursed when he dropped Menendez and fell next to him.

A massive elite in golden armor materialized over Montri and then stabbed at Menendez, cutting through his throat and face.

"Move!" I shouted, firing a burst at the elite. I took notice of the small gash on its chest plate, courtesy of one of the Spartans back in Caradhras. It was the same fucker that had led the assault that pushed us out of there. This field marshal was in charge of all the elite troops on the planet, and like me, it had come here to die.

I fired another burst and ran towards the elite. Han jumped away, barely dodging a swipe from the field marshal's energy sword and raised his battle rifle.

He was at least three meters away from the alien and the elite had staggered from my fire, but somehow it flashed and then Han dropped to the floor with a gaping wound from shoulder to hip. Only his spine held the two halves of his corpse together.

I roared as I charge tackled the elite only for it to sidestep me like a minor nuisance and bat me aside with its free hand. I rolled backwards and fired wildly in an attempt to stall it from stabbing me to the ground. The marshal jerked sideways as Caboose hit him with a shotgun blast, but it didn't falter, instead drawing a pistol and shooting Caboose twice in the belly, making him double over.

It rolled to its side as another blast missed him. Caboose cursed loudly and cocked his shotgun one handed, holding his wounded belly with the other hand. I fired at the elite, emptying the rest of my ammunition on it and draining its shields. The alien raised its plasma pistol and aimed right at my head when my rifle clicked empty.

The bolt went wide by a mere inch. I saw the trail of vapor and realized that Zepeda must've shot the elite.

The field marshal had dropped its plasma pistol and was grabbing onto its side, bleeding. He rolled around again and dodged two more sniper rounds that way. Zepeda had missed an unshielded target at a distance of less than twenty meters. He never missed at anything less than a mile and a half.

I drew my sidearm and aimed at the elite, firing just as it cloaked again and disappeared.

"Fuck!" I shouted, grabbing Caboose and pulling him towards the door.

"Watch out!"

I tore his shotgun from his hands and blasted at another elite that had tried to go for what seemed to be like two easy kills.

I ran inside the tower and Marv slammed the door shut behind me just as three Marines tipped over a footlocker and propped a table against the door.

"Shotguns, who's got shotguns?" I asked.

"Reno, Shindi, and yourself, sir," the sergeant said.

I tossed him the weapon. "Guard the door," I ordered. "Any word on the squad that went out to flush out jackal snipers?"  
>He shook his head and I cursed, punching the footlocker propping the door closed. I climbed up the stairs, helping Caboose up and urging the men to climb to the last floor. The Pelicans could pick us up on the rooftop and then we'd declare Bandersnatch. I would've preferred to kill that fucking marshal with my own knife, but I guess that nuclear fire would have to do instead.<p>

"They're trying to get through!" a frightened Marine shouted.

"Well don't let them!" his sergeant ordered. "Through the door!"

I heard two blasts and a grunt of pain.

"Andy, how much longer?"

"Don't know," she replied, tending to a wounded soldier. "Lost all radio contact."

"They're coming, they have to!" a man shouted.

"Of course they're coming," Pavel told him. "This isn't the time to lose it!"

"What happened?" Sutton asked, grabbing his SAW and approaching Caboose and me.

"Plasma bolts," Caboose grunted in pain.

"Two of them," I said. "Seems like the armor did its job." My own armor had done a terrific job, absorbing a plasma bolt on the shoulder. I'd probably get some minor burns, but that was about it.

"Anurak and Jin?" O'Malley asked for her two squadmates.

I shook my head. "Sorry."

She nodded quickly, not saying anything. Now was not the time to grieve. A bunch of exceptionally skilled elites could make their way through the door any minute now and kill all of us. She could mourn her two friends later, on our way back home.

"Pelicans!"

"To the rooftop!" I ordered. "Wounded go first!"

"Like hell!" Caboose complained.

"O'Malley," I called her. "Make sure he boards the Pelican. Sutton, go with them."

"Yes, sir," they said, manhandling Caboose up the last set of stairs.

This whole thing had been one huge clusterfuck after another. We deserved some respite in the end, but it seemed like we wouldn't get it just yet. Two of the Marines covering the entrance ran upstairs and shut the door, firing two blasts through it. The other man was without a doubt dead right now. They looked at me and I jerked my head at them to go to the rooftop. The sergeant tossed me Grigori's shotgun. I promptly fired the last three shells through the thin metal door, killing at least one elite. I smiled and emptied the magazine on my pistol before moving back to the base of the stairwell. I tossed my last frag when I heard the door bust open and hoped that it would kill at least two hingeheads, but knew that those were pretty high hopes.

"El-tee!" Miri shouted from a Pelican, offering me her hand. "Come on!"

I climbed onboard and without further ceremony we abandoned the city of Valern to the Covenant onslaught.

* * *

><p><em>Thanks to SpartaLazor and defarcher for proofreading this chapter.<em>

_Sorry for the long delay in between updates, but I've been pretty busy lately and may not update as often as I do for the next month or so. I hope that the length of this chapter more than makes up for it. Don't really have anything special to say about this one, other than the two platoon deaths I think it was a pretty standard chapter, maybe a bit more dramatic than usual. I especially liked the "I joined" part, but you'll let me know what you thought about this one._

_Stay strong._

_-casquis_


	178. Pretty Places

Chapter CLXXVIII: Pretty Places

**May 9, 2549 (UNSC Calendar)/one day later**

**Sparatus, Paris IV, Paris System**

* * *

><p><em>"Pretty places are usually the ones that get hit first. I hate pretty places."– Staff Sergeant Grigori Konstantinov<em>

* * *

><p>I jumped off the Pelican right after Miranda. She stumbled slightly and was forced to lean on Sandor to keep from falling down. The poor man almost fell down himself. He had an empty SPANKr clamped to his back and his rifle on his left hand. O'Malley and Zepeda jumped down right after them, helping Caboose down. I could see raw skin through the gap in his armor, and he constantly moaned in pain. I don't know how he hadn't dropped after taking those blasts from the marshal, but he had saved my life for staying afoot.<p>

Andy hopped off the Pelican and removed her helmet. She shook her head and sighed tiredly as she started rubbing the back of her neck. Marvin put his hand on her shoulder and walked on towards the small welcoming committee that had been prepared for us, or more likely, for me.

"Lieutenant," a bulky corporal saluted. "Major Peterson wants to see you."

"I need to see to my men," I told him. "I've got wounded and I've got half a mind to take a nap myself."

"Sir, I'm afraid I must insist."

"Listen you piece of–"

"Frank…" Pavel warned, gently squeezing my shoulder with his oversized hands. "Cool it. I can handle the platoon."

"Fine, fine," I told him before turning back to the corporal. "Lead the way."

"Sir," he nodded, appearing completely unfazed by my sudden outburst and unfinished threat. "This way."

Major Peterson was the kind of man that you would've expected to hit the rank of colonel or higher by his age, but for some reason or other had remained a lowly major. He had a nasty scar going from his right eyebrow and carving through his face down to the left side of his jaw. It looked like it had hurt a lot and left his face in a permanent scowl.

"Sir," I greeted lazily, barely managing a salute.

"What the hell happened back there?" he asked, snapping at us. "We lost all contact."

I shrugged. "They were jamming most long range and broadband frequencies," I explained. "We couldn't even use our own helmets to communicate with one another."

"What the hell happened to Bourne?"

"His bird was shot up."

Peterson sighed and rubbed his temples. "Goddamn, are you the highest-ranking survivor?"

"Yeah, most officers were killed in a bombing run. Bad idea having most of them clustered together like that."

"You don't say…"

I shrugged again. "Will that be all, sir?"

"No. Another Helljumper unit got here half an hour ago."

"Darbinian's unit?"

"Yeah, that was the CO's name. They were supposed to handle Covenant SAM sites to make way for civilian evacuation?"

"Yes, sir," I confirmed. "Did you get any word on the transports?"

Peterson scratched the back of his neck and sat down in a large ammunition crate before looking me over. The eye that his scar crossed drooped slightly, giving his menacing face a darkly humorous look. "Several transports were shot down," he said. "But sixty-seven percentof all refugees made it back to Udinia."

"That's good news," I said. _I guess…_

"It is," Major Peterson confirmed. "For them, at least. Now that most of the remaining civilians in the planet are located in Udinia it means that the covvies will want to go there."

"I guess we'll just have to pull out before they get there then."

"It isn't that easy Lieutenant," he said. "The Covenant now outnumber us up there, if it wasn't for the defense platforms this rock would be nothing but molten glass now. The problem right now is getting past the enemy ships. They are holding position just outside of the ODP's effective range, far enough to dodge a slug fired at them and close enough to intercept any escaping craft before they are far enough away from the planet to jump. A few dozen proactive civvies have found that out the hard way."

I sighed tiredly. "No way out then?"

"No. But the UNSC doesn't intend to give up Paris IV without a fight. This place is one of the most important colonies out here. It wouldn't do well for us to abandon it without sending as many alien bastards as we can down to hell."

"Yes, sir." I frowned slightly behind my visor and remembered something. "Major, do you have any news on a Spartan unit?"

"Ahhh… I wish, heard that they were in Valern with you."

"Yes, sir."

"Well, they're not there any longer and I'm not important enough to be told where they are going to be deployed. Rumor has it that there is more than one Spartan unit in the planet. Hope it's true, we need all the help we can get."

"Yes, sir. Are there any more questions you need answered? My men are tired and so am I… I would like to see to them before getting some rest."

"Of course Lieutenant," Peterson nodded. "You earned the rest."

I saluted and thanked him. The same corporal that had walked me here led me to the commandeered house that would serve as barracks for me. Sparatus was a mid-sized village that had been abandoned some time ago, a lot of the houses were being used as quarters for Marines and Army. It felt weird, not a single one of this houses presented bullet-holes or battle damage. I figured that it would change soon enough unless we pulled back to Udinia to bolster their defenses, but things were rarely that easy for me.

I walked past my men, noticing that they didn't seem to acknowledge my presence. O'Malley and Zepeda were both staring at a wall with their helmets close to them. They had just lost two more of their friends. Recon Squad had been cut in half. HW unit was probably the most psychologically exhausted, they had been fighting constantly, not daring to stop paying attention to the battlefield because so many lives depended on their machine guns' continuous firing.

My own platoon wasn't faring any better. Sandor was already fast asleep, but Miri and Andrea had haunted looks on their faces while Hoff and Marv kept examining their rifles, going over everything as if they had just forgotten that they had checked them.

I walked upstairs and into a bathroom. I removed my helmet and took a long, hard look at my face. Much of my good, youthful looks were gone. The narcissistic and vain bastard in me reminded me that I was still good-looking and in great shape, but I could see something in my eyes that would scare most people that knew how to look. It scared me.

There was a cut on top of my forehead. It had bled heavily, but the shape of the helmet had sent most of it sideways before it fell down my cheek. My sideburns and beard were caked with dry blood. I pulled down the undersuit to reveal that my neck wound had bled heavily as well. The entire left side of my face and neck were colored in a brownish red.

It didn't hurt much.

I removed the armor on my upper body next. My shoulders were both covered with bruises. They probably came from slamming into cover so hard. I was certain that I had similar bruises on my hips and perhaps on my legs drew my attention was a patch of pink skin right below my collarbone where the plasma rifle had hit. It was tender to the touch but not raw. I could be thankful for that. I gently poked at it, noticing that the closer to the center of the patch of pink I poked the more it hurt.

I rolled my neck experimentally and scratched my beard, trying to get the dry blood off.

_Wash your face, trim that beard and girls will be turning their necks to look at you in no time, _I thought. _Yeah, maybe stop looking so haunted. You've still got your looks Frankie-boy._

"Yeah, Han and Montri had nothing on you," my reflection agreed with me.

I punched the mirror so hard that it shattered. I could hear the tiling behind it crack as my fist went through the mirror. Or perhaps it had been my knuckles.

"Fuck you," I growled at the broken reflection laughing back at me. "Fuck you."

* * *

><p><strong>May 22, 2549 (UNSC Calendar)two weeks later**

**Sparatus, Paris IV, Paris System**

The view was quite nice. The sun was only just beginning to rise and long shadows extended for hundreds of meters. The hill range had a gap on the precise spot where the sun rose. I could stare at the star with only a little bit of polarization on my visor. Lovely sight really, if I focused really hard on it Schitzo and the others would disappear. I had pretty much managed to get this watch shift every day. Climbing to the top of the church tower in the early morning was frustrating, but the sunrise made it worth it, if only to gain a small measure of peace for a couple of minutes.

"Major," I said. "My scout has just confirmed Covenant troops behind the hill range."

"Copy that lieutenant," he replied. "Awaken your men, let's get ready for battle."

He signed off and I turned towards Caboose. Lately he had been even more quiet than usual. I had ordered to come up here today, see if the corny sunrise thing would work for him as well. I wasn't much of a talker when it came to thesethings, and Caboose wasn't much of a talker at all, but O'Malley had come to me to tell me that he had started shifting and muttering in his sleep.

"Caboose, get Zepeda back here," I ordered. "And wake the men."

He nodded and climbed down the ladder, leaving me standing on the top of the tower by myself.

Sparatus had been one of those 'rustic lifestyle' villages. It was supposed to contain minimal technology. No AI to run the city or public transport system. The cars still drove themselves though, it was against the law to remove that function. I don't know how seriously the citizens took that rusting thing, but the appearance of the city itself was very old-fashioned. Andrea had mentioned that it looked like something out of a twentieth-century film and Pavel had agreed, saying that there were a few isolated communities in Poland that looked as if they hadn't changed for five hundred years.

European style village… I had never been to Europe.

I let out a small chuckle. I had been to dozens of planets on this side of the galaxy. I had been on Mars, Reach, Jericho VII, Paris IV, Eden, Skopje, and more. I had fought on moons as well as planets on solar systems with yellow dwarves and red giants for suns, but for some reason I had never been to Europe. Fancy that.

I picked up my canteen and gulped down some water as I leaned back against the railing. From this point I should be one of the first ones to spot any movement coming our way from the north. Zepeda would probably leave behind a few sensors and micro-cameras, at least those would transmit better than nothing. With drones shot down as fast as we could put them in the air and a grand total of zero satellites in orbit we could only rely on our own eyes and ears.

By the time the sun had completed a quarter of its trajectory I had finished my water and felt like it would be wise to take a piss. I could always pee in the corner, but the urine would seep into the wood and it would probably get stinky. I just shrugged it off and tightened my bladder. The moment I spotted Zepeda making his way back into Sparatus I would inform Caboose and Major Peterson, after that I would allow myself to take a nice, long, piss.

Zepeda was a master of two things. Sharpshooting and timing. It became frustrating when he consistently took out elites or brutes just about to gut me, but it was better than him letting them actually go through with it. This time he appeared just after I started thinking that my own bladder would betray me and I would be forced to piss on a church's bell tower.

A few minutes later my bladder was empty and Recon was back to fifty percent capability, the highest it would get until we got reinforcements. If we ever got reinforcements.

The northern end of Sparatus was fortified with trenches, sandbags, barricades and more. The while village had been fortified with several different lines of defense. I do believe that there were more HMGs than Marines in this place. Command had deemed it fit to give us as much equipment as we needed to hold this little town. Sparatus happened to be right in the middle of a large valley. Its location meant that the only road that crossed this valley came through here. If the Covenant wanted to cross the steep range that kept them walled off from Udinia they would have to come from here.

We knew it, they knew it, we all knew it. Now it was just a matter of waiting for them to act first.

"El-tee, Stan says that the covvies are setting up camp," Caboose radioed in. "Don't think they'll attack today."

"Think they want to do an attack-at-dawn kind of thing?" I asked. "Do they even know we're here?"

"Radar hasn't shown anything up there, but you never know."

"Very well then, assume they know we're here and that they attack during the night. Peterson's gonna love this one."

"You can give it to Darbinian, have him deliver the bad news."

I shook my head. "We've lost four men Grigori… he's already lost a third of his company."

"I'd like to blame it on him personally," he replied. "But…"

"Wrong place, wrong time," I agreed. "Nobody's fault but the fucking Covenant."

"Maybe he'll appreciate the chance to deliver some payback."

"I know I do," I said. "Get Recon, you three are specialist support."

"Yes, sir."

I examined the bright sun once more and then looked at the small pass in the hilly range. Soon there would be thousands of covvies flooding from it and we would be in for one helluva battle.

* * *

><p>By the time the sun finally set I could just make out the covvie knuckle-draggers beginning to set up fortifications. I couldn't make out anything clearly, the zoom on my scope was only so effective at that range, but it appeared that they wouldn't be moving in on us today. I briefly wondered what their strategy would be? They'd probably send scouts first, if we were lucky we could catch them when the sensors reported their location. If we were very luckywe could extract information on their numbers and support too. On the other hand, they could just swarm us with troops once they decided that this village was in fact occupied. By the time we ran out of ammo the ground would be carpeted with dead aliens, but we would lose this town.<p>

So the question here was if they'd do it slow and smart or fast and stupid. For the first time in my entire life I hoped that the covvies would play this smart, we needed to buy as much time as possible.

We had a strong defensive position and two Scorpion tanks. Major Peterson had called for reinforcements, and Command had dispatched a dozen Tortoise IFVs as well as four Falcon gunships armed with rocket pods. At least that's what Peterson had told me, the additional vehicles hadn't gotten here yet. For now we had the two tanks, some mortars and light artillery pieces, and a few Warthogs and Mongooses. Pretty standard, really. Except for the artillery cannons, but I certainly couldn't complain on that one.

"Frank, the men want to know if they can get some sleep," Pavel came in. "And I want to know if you're ever going to climb down from that fuckin' church tower."

I yawned, the sun was already gone, with only a few orange clouds in the distance witnessing its light.

"Sure," I said. "Have them sleep in shifts, not more than a third of them at a time."

"And you?"

I yawned again. "I think I'll sleep here," I told him. "Wide enough for me to lay down. Good night."

"Good night," Pavel grunted. He was probably a little resentful that I would be sleeping for the whole night while he only got a few hours worth of rest. "You fuck."

Yep, definitely resentful.

* * *

><p>I was awakened by the sound of engines. I shut my eyes even tighter and then fell back asleep. It was probably the Tortoises.<p>

Some time later it was a sniper rifle. One could forget the sheer amount of noise that the SRS made, but it was pretty hard to forget the sound it made. My eyes snapped open immediately. I might've decided to go back to sleep, but if we were within small arms range it meant trouble. I stood up and grabbed my rifle, looking in the direction of the Covenant.

"Whoa," I muttered. That was a shitload of aliens.

"Pavel, who'd they shoot?"

"Ultra, walking right down the middle of the road. Damn idiot." He chuckled. "Good to have you back in the realm of the living. Tortoises and Falcon gunships are here. I'm glad for the support, but now they have confirmation that we're here."

I yawned as I examined the attack force. It was a pretty large unit; infantry and armored support as well as a few Ghosts to act as fast-attack units and scouts. It was not an overwhelming force, but it was still a tough cookie.

"Front line will take the brunt of the assault, direct mortar fire. We keep the Scorpions and Tortoises hanging back until we absolutely need them. Falcons will provide limited air support," I said, mostly going over the contingency plan in my head. "Pavel, you're in charge of the platoon, but I want you to send Miranda and Hoff my way."

"Understood," he grunted. "Stan?"

"Nah, Zepeda will come here when he needs to. And Pavel…"

"Yeah?"

"Be careful out there. We've already lost too many men."

"Yes, sir."

I half-expected the Covenant to start off as they always did; sending a bunch of grunts to their deaths in order to make us run low on ammunition. Instead of doing that they started out strong. They targeted two houses with fuel rod cannons and then bombarded the area around those with Wraiths. A couple of men must've died in the barrage, nothing too serious, but the covvies wanted a place where they could go through. They had succeeded in getting everyone out of that little area and their infantry was beginning to run towards it, their attack spearheaded by Ghosts.

"Here we go," I muttered.

A few mortars landed amongst the covvies, sending limbs flying in all directions, but their attack had been well planned. The troops got to the bombed out section of the village and prepared to bunker down. Now the only thing left to do was kill them faster than they could throw themselves at us.

I took a deep breath and steadied my rifle against the railing of the tower. I had a beautiful shooting spot and I wasn't about to let it go to waste. I started with the elites, mostly minors, but I had seen a few flashes of red armor. I mostly focused on elites on the front, the ones with drained shields. When Miri and Hoff arrived I became a lot more effective. They'd lower the shields on an elite and I'd cap it off with a burst to the head. It was a useful strategy and hard to counter. The first shots that they fired would stun the elite just long enough for me to kill it. I racked up eight kills in the first few minutes alone, but it didn't take them long to figure out where the shots were coming from.

I ducked behind cover as a few carbine rounds flew past me. So far it seemed like no sharpshooters had been sent with the initial attack force, but the elites were good shots in their own right.

"Do we move?" Miranda asked, reloading her weapon. "Sir?"

I shook my head. "There's a small window halfway down the tower. I want one of you to see if they can spot elites carrying long rifles and relay their location to Zepeda and Pavel."

Miranda and Hoff looked at each other.

"My leg's kind of artificial," Hoff said.

Miranda sighed. "I'll go."

She disappeared down the hatch, off to look for the elites that would be most dangerous to us.

"How you doing?" I asked Hoff.

He shrugged while checking his DMR. "Jaw hurts a lot less. I can talk normally now."

I chuckled. "No more caveman speech?"

Hoff nodded. "I was starting to get tired of Andy asking if all jocks spoke like this."

"It was a pretty clever joke," I said.

"From your point of view…"

"Indeed," I admitted. "Did your family finally make it off planet?"

He shook his head. "They were scheduled to leave last week, but increased Covenant naval activity kept their ship grounded. Now we're waiting for the next breach in their blockade."

"I'm sorry man," I said, "but I'm sure they'll turn out just fine as long as the pilot doesn't decide to leave without the UNSC's permission."

"Yeah, I talked to them about that. There are lots of desperate civilians nowadays, trying to get out as fast as possible."

"M-hm," I mumbled. "How are they doing?"

"Scared, I guess." He looked up at the ceiling and sighed. "When they got the news that home had been glassed they took it pretty hard. I mean, the place where you've lived your whole life… gone just like that."

"I know what it feels like," I told him. "I never liked Camp Afghan, but losing Jericho VII was still pretty hard. It still hurts sometimes…"

"Great, I'll probably never get over this."

"Probably," I said. "I'm a tougher man than you are."

"Of course, sir," Hoff replied good-naturedly, although the sarcasm in his voice was so thick that you could taste it. "The toughest."

"And don't you forget it," I said firmly. "But seriously Ryan. When we make it out of here it'll be tough. Don't be afraid to ask for help."

"Look at me, I was once the most promising quarterback in this side of the galaxy and now I'm a Helljumper with a bunch of mental health issues in the brewing."

"You're one of the saner ones," I told him. "Trust me."

"You would know, eh?" he asked jokingly. "You've served longer than anybody. Hell, you've been an ODST longer than Captain Hayes."

"Yes, but she was in the Corps before I was even legally allowed to enlist. Tough bitch, that one."

"Tell me about it, ever hear that story ab–"

"The one where she led her team through a flooded city occupied by the Covenant in order to call in precision orbital strikes?"

"Actually, I was going to say the one where her unit did a blind jump on this stormy planet. I think they barely had enough oxygen for three hours and they had to clear a research facility before the covvies acquired some information on the system's defenses."

"I heard she only had two hours," I said. "As I said, tough bitch."

"Sir, can I ask a question?"

"You just did," I told him. "Go ahead."

"What's it with you and her?"

"What do you mean PFC?"

Hoff stretched one of his legs, the good one. "You don't have to be a behavioral psychologist to know that you two don't like each other."

"It's a long story, Hoff," I said. "One that I would rather not go over again. Let's just say that I deserve it… mostly."

"All right then," he said. "You didn't fuck her, did you?"

I slapped him in the back of the head. "'Course not."

"Good. But if you had my respect for you would be a lot more."

I slapped him again, harder.

"Hey! I was joking!"

Miranda climbed up and looked at us weird for a moment before she sat down, her feet hanging by the hatch.

"Yeah?" I asked her.

"Oh, of course. S-sorry."

I rolled my eyes. _Please don't start stuttering again. It took you years to get over that._

Miri cleared her throat. "Sorry. Gunny Klaus said that he'll prioritize elites with rifles and carbines. Staff Konstantinov already had Stan target those. I think a few of the Marines started gunning for the marksmen too. Major Peterson said that it was in everybody's best interests to keep superiority in the long-range department."

"I'd like to have superiority in a lot other departments," I muttered.

"Tell me about it," Hoff agreed. "Miri, did you spot any sharpshooters?"

"Two," she said. "They're both dead now."

"All right, let's get back to business then," I said. "Battle's still going on, you know?"

"Yes, sir!"

We settled back into a routine. Gunning down elites or fuel rod toting grunts. It felt comfortable. We all knew how each of us operated and had done this countless times before. They'd take out the shields and I'd finish them. Shields, headshot and repeat. If this wasn't a matter of life and death I would've said that it was fun. Almost.

"I'm halfway down," Miranda announced.

"Yeah, same here," Hoff said.

"All right, two more elites and you get to make an ammo run."

The first one we capped after that was attempting to flush out a group of Marines. It kept firing at them and trying to lob a grenade behind them, but the range was extreme even for the alien. After two explosives landed a few feet short of the intended target the elite decided to move closer and try again. We already had it in our sights, but it was behind cover. When it decided to move up we took it out quickly and efficiently, saving those Marines and allowing them to push back the covvies in the area.

The second hingehead we killed was simpler. The elite decided that it would risk going across open ground in order to get to a position that would allow it to flank a machine gun nest that kept a large portion of the Covenant forces from moving up without risking massive casualties. About halfway through it fell to the ground, dead. Hoff fired six times in quick succession, killing the grunts behind it with a beautiful set of headshots. When his gun clicked empty Miri took out the last two grunts.

"Nice work," I commended. "Hoff, you get to make the ammo run. Bring a crate with mags for both your rifles and my BR55, got it?"

"Yes, sir."

Hoff made a show of being careful when he climbed down, as if his leg still hurt him. He hurried it up when I made as if I was going to kick his face. I was certain that he would've been one of those diva quarterbacks had he gone pro, but it would've been better that he did, otherwise he would have a whole leg and a perfectly healthy jaw. Maybe a bad knee or something, but it certainly beat this.

An explosion resonated as if to emphasize my thoughts.

"So, Miranda, now we get to chat?"

"Ummm, about what?" she asked, sounding confused. "Sir."

I laughed softly. "Whatever you want to talk about Miranda, I'm bored and this might be the last chance for a normal conversation."

"You do realize that we're in the middle of a battle, sir?" she asked.

"Low intensity," I replied. "For us at least. We've got time."

Miranda shrugged. "Sure, I guess… Back in Udinia, why'd you make so many trips to the refugee camp?"

My heart skipped a bit. "Alright, anything you want except for that," I told her, trying to get Katie off my mind. With her came a flooding of guilt and a strange sense of pleasure. I needed a doctor. "Let's talk about you then."

"Deflecting the question… very suspicious, sir."

I groaned inwardly. "I was just wondering how you've been feeling. You're a far cry from that trembling little girl that first came to my squad."

"War changes people," she replied simply. "And I didn't tremble."

"You did," I assured her. "I don't know if you were a nervous wreck or just naturally shy, but you trembled."

"Fine," she muttered. "I was quiet–"

"Still are…"

"And maybe I had trouble maintaining eye contact–"

"Still do…"

"Sir," she said in that way women do when they're giving you a final warning.

"Sorry," I apologized, smiling. "Go on."

"But I did _not_ tremble," she finished.

I suddenly roared and made wild noises as I flayed my arms and legs wildly. Miranda squeaked and squealed, jumping away from me. I started laughing loudly at her reaction and Miri indignantly sniffed before settling back into a more dignified position.

"I thought you didn't tremble."

"And I thought people in their mid-thirties were more mature than the average pre-pubescent child," she grumbled. "Sir."

"I'm sorry," I replied. "Glad to see that the war hasn't changed you that much. Honestly though, I don't want you to become cold and detached like Grigori or myself."

"Staff Konstantinov is cold, but I don't know about detached… He's been doing his best to hide it, but you can tell that he's hurt by the loss of half his squad."

I frowned slightly. I hadn't noticed that.

"You sure?" I asked. "Grigori's a tough man. He's gone through a lot of shit and is still functional."

Miranda nodded slowly. "He worked with those guys every day for the past year, half that time they were fighting. They were his men, only a sociopath wouldn't feel anything."

"Only a sociopath, huh?" I asked, wondering whether I fit the description. It had hurt when Montri and Han had died, but I remembered the moment clearly and the only thing I remember feeling at the time was a whole lot of anger. Even now I wasn't too bothered by their loss. Sure they were in my nightmares, but those nightmares had been going on for a long time before they became guests.

"Figure of speech," Miri went on. "But you might want to check into that, have him talk to someone."

"I will," I said. "Maybe I'll talk to someone myself."

"With all due respect, sir, you're a wreck. I don't know how much good it'll do talking to someone."

"I'm the wreck? I didn't just jump halfway across the room at a friendly joke."

"Whatever you say, sir," Miranda replied with a shrug. She really _had_ come a long way since I first met her.

Hoff climbed back up a short time later. He had two ammunition crates underneath his arms. He brought one and a half crate's worth of magazines for himself and Miranda and filled the other half with magazines for my BR55HB SR. The ammunition would hold for at least four more hours if we kept the same pace we had for the last hour or so.

"Ok, let's go," I ordered.

* * *

><p>The sun was behind us now, giving us a definitive advantage. It was at an angle that would provoke glare on anybody that looked into the church tower from ground level. My little team and I didn't let that advantage go to waste. For as long as we dared we kept firing at enemy targets. Grunts mostly, but a few elites went down too. By the time the sun had descended some more we had each killed about twenty aliens. No wonder marksmen tended to have the highest kill-counts during urban engagements.<p>

"They're stopping reinforcement runs," Major Peterson came in, "but they've got a firm hold on the town."

"We can push them out, sir," Darbinian suggested.

"Yes, but there'd be way too many casualties on our side. Those four houses have excellent coverage of the area around them. Soon as they try again tomorrow I'll deploy the Falcons, strafe their positions and see if we can take out as many as possible."

"Understood," Darbinian acknowledged reluctantly.

"Sir, what about the tanks?" I asked.

"They're still hidden, they don't know we have them and I intend to keep it that way for as long as possible," he replied. "Lieutenant, your platoon held the line out there, congratulate them for me."

"I will, major."

"And you too, lieutenant. Your sniper coverage was invaluable."

I smiled despite myself. "Thank you, sir. We'll make sure to deliver the same service come tomorrow."

"You'd better. I'm calling command. This was just the enemy's vanguard and there are thousands of soldiers behind those hills. This valley is the perfect location to bog down their advance, if I can persuade the higher-ups down in Udinia to send a regiment or two up here we might buy enough time to evacuate every last civilian."

"Hope they listen, sir."

"As do I, but right now I'd settle for a battalion right now, maybe an armored company too."

"Don't set your expectations too high, sir," I joked. "You know what they say."

"Yeah, yeah. Get some rest and tell your men to pull back, I'm sending another platoon to get them some rest."

"All right then," I said. "Thank you Major."

"No problem. Peterson out."

I immediately opened a line to my platoon and told them the good news. There was an appropriate degree of cheering in reply and they fell back further into the village to safety. There they'd go back to sleep.

"Miri, Hoff, flip for night watch," I told them. "One of you gets to sleep here like a pigeon. Good night."

"Sir…" Miranda began. "Never mind."

"Heads or tails?" Hoff asked.

"You know, most people say flats or numbers nowadays," Miranda told him. "You know that, don't you?"

"Shit, you're starting to sound like Andrea," Hoff complained. "The last thing I need is two of them."

"Oh really, and would that be…"

The conversation faded away as I climbed down the tower. There were a few bullet holes here and there that had punctured the walls. Well, perhaps carbine holes would be more precise, but calling them that sounds unusual. I made my way down at a leisurely pace and on towards the two houses that my platoon was occupying. On the way there I crossed a patrol of ODSTs from Darbinian's unit, but they didn't seem to pay me much mind. They had all seen the ass whooping that I had delivered back in Caradhras.

"Frank, good of you to join us," Pavel greeted. "You know, your men would appreciate it if you shared the risks a little more."

"I was lessening the risks," I reminded him. "And I think they're all smart enough to realize that. I got more than a few thank yous."

"Yeah, yeah," he waved me away. "Whatever. Anyways, you alright?"

"Yup, you?"

"Yah, nothing I can't deal with. Few scratches."

"Was anybody hurt?" I asked. "Seriously, I mean."

"No, a couple of minor burns, nothing that lessens combat performance."

"Good, good. Everybody gets to rest, nobody has to take watch."

"Thank God," Pavel sighed, turning around to go into his room.

"Hey Pavs," I stopped him. "Tell Amber and Lavvie that I miss them will ya?"

He raised his datapad and smiled. "I'll be sure to tell them, but the transmission probably won't get there until–"

"I know, Pavel." I shook my head. "Just, don't make it too long, all right? You need some rest too."

Pavel laughed. "I can never make a message too long Frank, they are my family." With those words he disappeared through a door.

"Family," I echoed, as if saying the word for the first time.

I looked around me to see the men of my platoon talking to one another. They were all tired, that much was clear, but I could also tell that they were happy. They had all done a great job at holding back the enemy penetration attempts and were no worse for wear. A few of Pavel's men laughed raucously at some joke that I missed and Andrea talked animatedly to Marvin while Sandor moved around with the look of someone who's up to no good. I pulled out the chocolate bar that Pavel had given me and took a healthy bite, smiling as I looked at my men.

My dad was dead, my mom wasn't ever going to recover, and my brother was certainly making himself a nuisance to someone. My uncle was dead too. They had been my family for the first years of my life and now they were all gone. Now these men and women right here, some I had known for as long as I had been a soldier and others I had barely talked to in the last year, but I knew them. I knew that I cared about them and would give anything for them. _They_ were my family.

Maybe I wasn't a sociopath after all.

"One hell of a family," Schitzo mused, sounding slightly less annoying than usual.

"And I wouldn't trade it for the world," I replied, smiling widely.

* * *

><p><em>Thanks to SpartaLazor and defarcher for proofreading this chapter.<em>

_That's how you do character development during a battle ladies and gentlemen, take the focus away from the battle itself and instead focus on the people fighting it. I should do it more often. Well, whether it was well done or not I hope that it did give a little bit of insight into some of the characters in this story. Reaper was a small unit, with only eight men (at first). Eight characters are relatively easy to develop in a story as long as this one, but once you move into a unit as big as a platoon it gets hard to spread around the focus amongst so many characters. Band of Brothers did this and they managed to do it awesomely, but sometimes it still felt like some of the characters deserved more screen time. Sadly, I could not call the producers (I was like eight) and tell them to give us more of Lt. Speirs or whoever, but you guys can always tell me who you feel deserves more 'screen time.' Of course, as the party dwindles it means that there are less ODSTs to spread the attention around._

_On a different note, I'd like to recommend my readers to check out some of Obsidion Production's fics. He's got several stories in the site, some of them are quite good. You might have seen The Rookie Chronicles on the Halo story menu. They're a bit different than what you'd expect, but that doesn't make them any less great. They are masterfully written and deeply entertaining, but for some reason or other lack the attention they deserve, be sure to check it out._

_Now, to address some of your reviews: Hanna and Katie will get their attention in due time, so will Johnson and Tartarus and the badass elite for that matter. Frank's brother will appear eventually and with his appearance... well, I'll keep that a secret for now. The reactions to last chapter were good to say the least, I'm glad you enjoyed it. To SpootinLaza, I forgot to address your review last chapter, but I'm glad that I could help in any way, whether small or large._

_Stay strong._

_-casquis_


	179. First There was Tanks

Chapter CLXXIX: First There was Tanks...

**May 25, 2549 (UNSC Calendar)/two days later**

**Sparatus, Paris IV, Paris System**

* * *

><p><em>"It started with tanks."– Gunnery Sergeant Pavel Klaus<em>

* * *

><p>When Peterson asked for a couple of regiments to help hold down the valley, we got instead two battalions. Peterson wouldn't stop complaining to Command until they agreed to send an artillery battery as well. It would've been a very helpful thing to have, but the heavy troop movements drew the Covenant's attention to this little town. They started believing that this place was important and moved accordingly, but at the same time failed to realize just how important it actually was. We had been outnumbered before and they still outnumbered us now, only that now casualty reports came in the dozens as opposed to ones and twos.<p>

Naturally Sparatus had become the center of attention. The once beautiful little town had been transformed into a mass of crumbling houses and buildings. They debris and broken walls were perfect for taking cover and for hiding. The covvie units that made it to the edge of the city made sure to use it to their advantage. What surprised me the most was the church tower. It was still standing after two days of intense combat and constant artillery barrages. The church itself was on the verge of collapse, but the tower, the tower still stood.

It was there that I spent most of my time. Occasionally Hoff or Miri came up here, but most of the time I had Zepeda's silence for companionship. My two marksmen were busy the town hall's rooftop. From there they had a fine view of the muddy fields that separated the main Covenant force from the town. They were a bit frustrated at the idea of spending their time on watch duty, but they got enough action. The rest of my squad was still under Pavel's command, holding down the most hotly contested sections of the town. They were keeping the covvies from accessing the main street and in turn the rest of Sparatus. And doing a damn fine job of it too. My platoon was the only thing keeping the line in check and I was proud of them.

If my platoon held the town, then Darbinian's unit held the fields outside of it. They were where they were needed the most, using Warthogs for transport. I hated the man and I hated his men, but I wouldn't fight alongside anybody else. Provided that they were far enough away to make friendly fire impossible. They were good fighters, but I wasn't stupid enough to believe that they liked me.

"Zepeda," I said, "when was the last time you got a kill?"

The sniper shrugged without even looking in my direction, his rifle held in his arms.

"About an hour and a half, right?" I asked him. "Maybe a little bit more."

He shrugged again. He knew full well that it had been three hours and six minutes since he had last shot an elite major through the left eye and I knew it just as well. He probably knew I knew too, but the man never opened his mouth. I didn't mind having him here with me, of course. It only meant that the covvies down below were half as likely to shoot at me, but Christ he could've opened his mouth more often.

"Did you reload your magazine?" I asked.

Zepeda nodded and ejected the magazine from his rifle to show me that it had four bullets in it. I waved him and he slapped it back into his rifle before cocking it.

I sighed and closed my eyes, holding my rifle close against my body. The air was filled with the sound of battle. Right now it was a lot quieter than it usually was, but there were still some sporadic explosions and gunfire. I set myself to getting another quick catnap and closed my eyes.

"Church tower come in, do you copy?"

I opened my eyes and saw that I had only been asleep for a couple of minutes.

"This is church tower," I said. "We copy, over."

"We have an elite scout moving over 13th Street, he knows our positions and keeps well hidden from them. We're requesting you take it out."

A lone elite meant a scout. One hingehead didn't warrant mobilizing a unit in order to take it out, but if it was left unchecked it could create mayhem and report back to the other squids on our forces and current positions. As a wise man once said: the only good covvie is a dead covvie. Maybe it wasn't that exactly, but it was something along those lines.

"Understood, can you give me its exact position?"

"Hold a second church tower," the man said. "Ok, it's on 13th, right between Montenegro and Dassel."

"Got it," I replied. "Taking care of it."

"Thanks church tower," the man replied, signing off.

I turned to look at Zepeda. "You want it?"

He extended his hand at me, offering me the kill.

"All right then," I said. "Wish me luck."

I set my rifle to burst mode and mentally visualized the elite's location. I took three deep breaths and stood up while turning around. I quickly located the alien soldier and zeroed in on it. The alien was hunched down and obviously trying to make itself as small a target as possible, but from this angle it wasn't likely that it would succeed. I aimed at its head and squeezed the trigger. I watched its head jerk backwards violently from the three bullets and then squeezed the trigger another three times in quick succession. Each burst weakened its shields further until the last one finally hit the elite itself. Its head was torn apart by the three rounds, blood and skull fragments painted the floor behind it and the elite promptly collapsed in a heap.

As soon as the kill was confirmed I crouched back down behind cover and let myself fall into a sitting position.

Zepeda gave me a slow nod, complimenting me for the quick kill.

"You're welcome," I said, closing my eyes once more. "You've got the next request."

* * *

><p>"El-tee, you there?"<p>

I grunted slightly. "Yeah, I'm here, Hoff?"

"Yeah. We're seeing some movement along the northwest end of the town, there's some houses blocking our view, could you confirm?"

"What's so big about this movement?" I asked, not wanting to get up.

"Miranda saw three Wraiths shifting their positions fifteen minutes ago and we saw some movement just now."

Three Wraiths shifting their positions could mean nothing, but it could also mean a major offensive.

"Zepeda, check it out," I ordered.

The sniper stood up and a moment later came back down. He nodded at me once.

"Zepeda confirms that the enemy is moving troops to the northwestern end of the town," I said. "I'm informing Peterson, tell Pavel to get ready for some heavy fighting."

"Understood, wilco."

I tightened my grip on my rifle and passed on the information to Major Peterson. He sighed tiredly and told me to get ready. Then he passed on the information and within minutes the entirety of our forces here were alert and ready for a fight.

The covvies didn't disappoint. Before five minutes had passed they launched the biggest offensive in the past few days. I heard scattered cries and shouts as men told each other to duck and stay down as blast after blast of mortar rounds detonated in the town. Debris flew everywhere, the explosions were intermingled with the occasional sound of a dying marine or cries for help. I heard two houses collapse and kept praying that no mortars would hit the tower. I knew that I would die in combat, but I didn't want to die like this. I was certain that I would be out of ammo and wielding a bloodied knife when I died.

"They're letting up," I said half to myself. "Zepeda, get ready for some action."

He nodded, a little bit more pronounced than usual. The man sure did do a lot of nodding, for a moment I wondered whether his neck hurt from all the use he gave it, but then I realized just how stupid that thought was.

My helmet immediately patched through a dozen different requests for sniper assistance. I immediately turned them all off and announced that church tower wouldn't be providing direct sniper support unless it was absolutely critical. Once I explained that we would be choosing our own targets and requested that only hunters and high-ranking elites be tagged as high-value targets the requests died down.

Zepeda had already turned on his belly, aiming out a large hole near floor level. We had made it with my rifle, shooting the wall a couple of times before making it wider with a piece of metal. Over the last couple of days we had made a couple of holes like that, allowing us to shoot safely from behind cover. The covvies had helped us out with another larger hole a few feet below. I climbed down the hatch opening and a few steep steps down, placing myself so that I could lean back on the stairwell and aim down the quaint little town in relative comfort.

"Of dear," I muttered when I saw the advancing waves of covvie soldiers.

The few aliens inside the town intensified their fire, suppressing as many UNSC units as they could in order to make way for the main force barreling their way towards us.

"Oh dear," I repeated as Wraith mortar rounds once again started landing all around us.

The outermost elements stalled the enemy advance for a few brief, invaluable minutes and then it all went to hell. The outer line was forced to collapse upon itself before they were overwhelmed and fell back to secondary positions after taking heavy casualties. Major Peterson immediately ordered one of our two Scorpion tanks to move up and help hold Main Street as covvie light armor moved up and started setting up defensive positions inside Sparatus.

The tower vibrated as Zepeda fired, taking out an unfortunate hingehead.

I took a few deep breaths and made my best to calm myself down in order to keep my heartbeat to a minimum. I was still at a distance where I had to account for bullet drop. Despite my weapon's purpose and range I didn't often found myself in a situation where I was far enough away from the enemy to be in the BR55BF SR's most effective range. I quickly located a smoky silhouette moving over piled-up debris and towards a machine gun emplacement and squeezed the trigger twice. The elite struggled to keep going and then collapsed backwards as the men manning that outpost used my fire to their advantage and took it out. I smiled and turned my attention to a different target, this time it was a jackal climbing one of the outer houses, seeking to find itself a decent sniping perch.

Its body slid down the rooftop and down into the house's backyard half a minute later. The covvies stagnated slightly after coming through the first few streets. Once we realized just exactly what tactic they were using to advance and reacted accordingly to it. The tank that the main enemy unit met head-on also was a big contributing factor to the slowing down of their fierce assault.

A Scorpion MBT tended to have a somewhat demoralizing effect on those that happened to be unlucky enough to be on the business end of it. For the rest of us… for the rest of us it happened to be something of a show. Pieces of alien flying in every direction soon lifted spirits and the gunfire intensified even as plasma weaponry fire dwindled ever so slightly. I knew that this wasn't likely to last long though and didn't allow myself to slacken my work.

"Hoff, Miranda, how's it going down there?" I asked after a while.

"Didn't know you cared, sir," Hoff replied. "Miri and I are doing just fine, aren't we?"

"We relocated a block closer to the town center," Miranda said. "Advance units took light casualties in the initial enemy assault, the covvies died by the dozens when they busted through the outer line, but things have slowed down somewhat."

"Not unexpected," I said. "We had a nice defensible position with reliable cover and now they do too. Anything unusual?"

"Other than the twelve foot tall aliens barreling through house walls?" Hoff asked. "No, not at all."

"We'll let you know, El-tee," Miranda said.

"There's a good girl," I told her. "Keep me informed."

After they both acknowledged that last order I opened a line to Pavel.

"What's the story Pavs?"

"They're pressing us hard Frank, but we've got one of the most beautiful crossfire I have had the pleasure of being part of in my whole life. As long as those two platoons next to ours are active and we can coordinate then nothing short of an armored column is going to get through."

"Excellent," I said. I knew that already, I had helped Peterson plan de defensive positions after all. "How are the men?"

"Eager for some action, but the covvies seem content with their gains. My guess is that they'll keep moving troops up here and then fight a war of attrition."

"Not their usual strategy," I noted.

"Yeah," Pavel admitted. "But whoever happens to be leading this particular bunch of uglies is doing a superb job at it."

"And I hate the fucker," I added. "Let me know if anything changes, ok? Keep the men's spirits up."

"Sir, yes sir," he replied offhandedly. "Keep your head down, Frank."

"I will, Pavs," I assured him. "Over and out."

During the conversation I had spotted a lone grunt that appeared to have been left behind after an enemy squad fell back. The poor little alien seemed scare shitless. At least that's the appearance it gave off at this distance. It moved from side to side, unsure of where it was supposed to go, clinging tightly to its needler. The grunt kept its head low and walked on three limbs as often as it trudged on its two legs. I looked at it for a while, wondering if it would find out where its squad had gone. My guess is that they had been all killed by machine gun fire or mortar support if those craters were anything to go by. After closer inspection I saw that the grunt was bleeding heavily from a nasty cut in the back of the head.

_Maybe it doesn't even remember what's going on…_

"Poor little thing," Schitzo tisked. "Hey, maybe it has a family back home that it has to feed and doesn't want to fight this war any more than we do. Well, not we per se, 'cause I know you like this, but the rest of humanity in general. Anyways, getting back on track: you'd think that a slave race would at least try to subvert its masters."

We didn't even know that the grunts were a slave race for certain.

"Come on Francisco, you've seen the intelligence reports, and besides, it's the only possible explanation. My guess is that the hingeheads and baby kongs scare it more than your ugly face does.

A feasible explanation.

"As I was saying, the poor gas-sucker probably has friends and family back home that he just wants to see again and hates this as much as the next guy does. No honor in it for him."

"It," I corrected. "No honor in this for _it_."

Having cleared that up I squeezed the trigger lightly and sent three rounds through the grunt's neck and skull, killing it instantly.

"Friends and family my ass," I muttered, looking in Schitzo's direction only to confirm his disappearance.

Zepeda's rifle boomed loudly, shaking some dust off the rafters over my head. I could hear some distant cheering a second later. No doubt he had hit a high-profile target this time. I smiled and aimed down my scope. And I waited.

When my eyelids started dropping I quickly shook my head and forced myself to a more uncomfortable position. It wouldn't do for me to fall asleep. Just as I moved in a way that my back hit a step at an awkward angle a beam hit the step just above my head. Startled, I flailed my legs and slipped downwards another four steps, hitting my ass on each one. Another beam almost fried my head, had I not slipped the second shot certainly would've killed me.

"Zepeda! Counter sniper, you see it?"

I got a negative light.

"Shit, did you at least get its position?" I asked.

Red light.

"Fuck!" I cursed. "Ok, I know that it had to come northwest of this position, north-northwest… See any likely spots?"

Green light.

"Good, take your time."

The problem was that I couldn't go up or down. The hole in the wall exposed me to the enemy sniper however I went. I would have to stay in this little corner until Zepeda found the asshole that had tried to ruin my day. Fortunately I had enough of an angle on the battle to provide some limited support.

As Zepeda scouted for the sniper I fired at some less important targets, helping out by taking out a grunt here and a jackal there. The process went on for half an hour. Zepeda carefully examined every window and every rooftop for the sniper that had come so close to taking my head off while I provided some token assistance to forces in a sector that didn't really need my assistance at the moment. Oh, I certainly made their lives easier and their jobs quicker, but I just didn't get that sense of satisfaction that I had become used to getting.

The wall right in front of my eyes exploded in a shower of blue and brown. Pieces of brick hit my visor as a purple beam punched clean through the wall, leaving a nice little hole the size of a grapefruit two inches in front of my head. I leaned backwards and almost fell down the stairwell before regaining my balance. The sniper had waited for me to fire enough times in order to get a reasonable location. The fucker was crafty and had almost managed to hit me through a fucking wall.

"Zepeda, did you get it?" I asked.

Red light.

"Goddamit Zepeda," I cursed. "Ok, I'm coming up, be ready!"

Green light.

I prepared myself to climb upstairs, exposing my left side to the sniper. I pressed my rifle to my left, adding a small layer of protection in case this very smart enemy sniper also happened to be a crack shot. I took a deep breath and hoped that I wouldn't die before pushing myself off the wall and jumping up the stairwell in two quick leaps that promptly put me back behind the relative safety of the wall.

No shot came. The sniper was too smart to expose itself for anything less than a guaranteed kill it seemed. I wondered how it felt about having missed me twice in quick succession for two dumb accidents.

"Did you narrow its location?" I asked Zepeda once I was on the rooftop.

He nodded and brought up an old datapad that was displaying a map of the city. He pointed at a small warehouse-type building near the enemy line. It wasn't held by UNSC forces, but the warehouse was behind some of our positions next to it.

"This fucker is smart," I told Zepeda, who just looked at me. "But we've got bigger guns."

I opened a line to the mortar support unit and requested fire support on the building that Zepeda had designated as the most likely spot for that sniper. It took a few moments to make them understand that I wanted the whole thing showered with explosives and a minute more to convince them to actually do it, but when the rain came in I knew that everything on top of that warehouse was most definitely gone. In fact, the warehouse itself collapsed, only leaving a corner still standing.

"Back to business," I told Zepeda. "And you have to do better next time."

Zepeda shrugged slightly and fired once, killing another elite.

I aimed through one of the holes and looked for targets, firing only on elites. Most of the job I left to Zepeda. His Oracle scope could see through the thick smoke more accurately than mine could and the zoom capabilities on it were beyond anything mine could manage. With the battle's rhythm escalating at an alarming pace I had no shortage of targets. Elite after elite crossed a wrong corner or raised their heads at precisely the wrong time and fell victim to my fire. It almost lost its excitement this way, there were way too many targets here. I started racking up kills pretty quickly, but reminded myself that I couldn't draw too much attention to my position unless I wanted a dedicated task force to shoot at the church tower.

"Ten minutes," I told Zepeda. "We don't fire no matter what."

He nodded quickly and dragged his sniper rifle backwards as he sat up. Zepeda quickly checked the weapon to make sure that nothing had gotten inside the firing mechanism and then reloaded his empty magazines with fresh bullets from the ammunition boxes up here. I followed his example and spent that time filling up my magazines with ammunition. It certainly took my mind off things. I'd much rather be busy pressing bullet after bullet into a magazine than enthralled in the screams of pain coming from men and women that were defending their homes from the Covenant. I had become scarily adept at ignoring the cries of pain and suffering during the last couple of months. Fighting here in Paris IV had been rough.

"Church tower, church tower, this is Rifle One-Four, do you copy?"

"Rifle One-Four, this is church tower, we copy, whatcha need?" I asked, just finishing my last magazine.

"We've got two hunter pairs taking down walls to move forward. Some jackass forgot to bring more ammunition and we need something to hold them back while we get our machine guns fed."

"Roger that Rifle One-Four. Maybe you should just send that jackass for them to toy with."

"That was my first suggestion," she said. "But I was helpfully reminded that doing that would get me a court martial and transferred to a unit where I would suffer a similar fate."

Damn, the woman sounded pissed, but I would be too if someone forgot to bring extra ammunition.

"We got your back Rifle One-Four," I replied. "We'll stall them."

"Thanks, over and out."

"That's your department Zepeda," I said. "I need you to kill one of the hunters if you can, give the others a pause."

Zepeda nodded so quickly that I would've bet that he was smiling underneath his reflective visor. He cocked his rifle and popped from cover to fire all four rounds at one of the hunters that Rifle One-Four had been so kind as to tag. I didn't directly see the results, but after the fourth round the hunter collapsed, needing to use its two hands to keep from completely falling down to the ground. Zepeda ducked back behind cover and reloaded quickly before emerging once again and quickly firing all four rounds. This time the hunter's tag disappeared completely on the first shot. The other three made contact with another hunter.

"One more," I told him. "We're drawing too much attention as it is."

Zepeda nodded again, eager to take out another hunter. In between his second and third shot a purple beam hit the barrel of his sniper. My brain made it all seem like it was happening in slow motion, but I knew that the beam that was shredding through Zepeda's sniper was going too fast for me to do anything about it. The purple plasma beam carved through the barrel and the rifle itself before coming out the back and hitting Zepeda's helmet. The sniper fell backwards, body limp and smoke coming from his helmet.

"Zepeda!" I shouted, lunging towards him to catch him before he fell. I placed him on the ground and took off his helmet.

I let out a massive sigh of relief when I saw that the beam had burned completely through the side of the helmet but left him with only a large burn that went from his right eyebrow to just above his ear. It would leave an ugly scar and he would never grow hair there unless he got some pretty expensive surgery, but it wasn't deadly by a long shot.

I administered some biofoam and quickly patched him up to keep the wound from infecting. His rifle was useless now, nothing but a pile of molten metal. The shot that hit him had come from the general direction of the warehouse I had ordered blown apart. For a moment I wondered how likely it was that the enemy sniper had survived that and come back for revenge. It could've been another sniper for all I knew, but the angle of the shot and the direction indicated that the shot had come from behind our frontline units. It wasn't entirely impossible that another sniper had sneaked past UNSC forces and taken a shot at Zepeda, but something told me that it was the same dick that had tried to kill me less than an hour ago.

"Rifle Two-One and Yankee-Six," I broadcast to the two platoons closest to the area where I presumed the sniper was. "There's an enemy sniper unit somewhere behind your position. I don't know its exact location and he's been… frustratingly successful at keeping us from actually doing anything. I'm requesting you dispatch a small unit to the buildings I'm sending you right now, flush it out and kill it."

The leaders of the two units quickly said that they would and told me, that way we would be even for the help that I had provided earlier. I thanked them for their help and sat back down to wait. After a while I used Zepeda's useless helmet as bait, putting it on his rifle's tip and lifting it above the short wall in order to see if I could get the sniper to reveal its position to the teams searching for it. I bobbed it up and down a couple of seconds and then yanked it back down when no shot came. Something told me that the reason the helmet hadn't been fired at wasn't because the sniper wasn't paying attention. Smart.

I patiently waited for the friendly units to comb the area. I pushed up Zepeda's helmet once again and then brought it back down when I didn't get any results. My fellow Helljumper was still unconscious and I was beginning to get frustrated. It would only take a few more minutes for the guys down there to kill the sniper or at least force it to relocate to avoid discovery. Any of those results would be favorable.

After some more waiting I grabbed Zepeda's useless rifle and carefully examined the damage. The barrel itself was split and melted almost halfway through. The beam had carved through the polymer body's right side, fusing the magazine to the body and destroying the rear of the Oracle scope. It had done a number on the SRS, it would be cheaper to buy a new one than to fix this piece of metal, and the SRS series rifles were notoriously expensive.

I sighed and grabbed the helmet. It too had been damaged beyond repair. The entire right side had been cracked open. The beam had hit right above and behind the visor, opening a massive gash two fingers wide on the right side of the helmet. The shot had come awfully close to killing Zepeda, but the rifle had saved him. Had the shot collided with his helmet at that same angle without hitting his sniper rifle then I have no doubt that half his head would've disappeared.

I cursed quietly and once again propped the helmet on the rifle, pushing it up slowly in an attempt to make the motion seem natural. This time the maneuver brought enemy fire, but not in the way I expected.

For the second time in an hour the enemy sniper miscalculated by mere inches. Another beam punched clean through the wall, right by my left temple. I felt pieces of rock and brick hit the back of my head as a cloud of dust blinded me. My first reaction was to drop to the floor immediately. Down there I realized that the enemy sniper had realized what I was doing and waited for me to repeat my maneuver enough times in order to calculate just the place where I was located. The briefest of errors had saved my life.

"Fuck!" I cursed as the dust cleared up.

"Church tower, are you alright?"

"I'm fine," I said angrily. The units below hadn't found the sniper yet. "Did you get him? It?"

"Not yet, but we have its location," the man came in again. "Just a matter of minutes now, sir. We'll take it out."

"Great," I said. "This fucker's been on my nerves for too long now."

"Happy to help," the man replied. "If you want I can open a screen so that you can see us kill it."

"I'd love that," I told him. "Good luck."

"Thanks, sir," he replied, signing off and sending me a view from his helmet camera.

Zepeda shuffled slightly and opened his eyes in what I assumed was fright and confusion. He looked at me with an expectant stare and I quickly explained what happened, showing him his damaged helmet and rifle in order to drive the point across.

"There's a Marine unit breaching the building where the sniper is located, they'll kill it in a minute or two."

Zepeda nodded slightly, running a hand across the bandages on his head and then looking at me questioningly.

"No," I told him. "Wait for them to take it out and then you can get another weapon. You know Peterson's not going to be happy about this. SRSs aren't cheap, you know?"

He waved me away and grabbed his sniper rifle, examining it with an expression that came close to grief. He had been using that rifle ever since the first time he shipped out. Losing it was very similar to losing a close friend.

"They're going in," I told him, redirecting my attention to the small screen on my helmet.

The Marine climbed a stairwell on a large house, two men in front of him. They were being really quiet about this, not wanting to spook the enemy sniper before they could club it in the back of the head. By club it I mean shooting it full of bullets and buckshot.

The Marines spread out and quickly checked the rooms to the sides to make sure they were clear. They knew where the sniper was, but they didn't want its friend to jump them from behind before they got the chance to shoot it. I watched as the squad positioned themselves behind a closed door and prepared to breach it.

"Ready?" the leader ask in a low whisper.

The men nodded.

The man whose helmet camera I was connected to kicked down the door suddenly and abruptly. The first thing that I saw after that was a flash of movement as the man ducked to the side. Bright green lights covered a portion of the camera and a cry of pain was clearly heard through the crappy speakers. The man fired from the floor at a fast-moving shape and then rolled as more green bolts flew his way. The rest of his squad came through the doorframe and filled the room with lead even as the sniper, a jackal, jumped through the window.

"I think I nicked it!" someone shouted.

"Bull's down!" another voice said. "Shit."

"Church tower," the man on the floor grunted. "It got away, but you might still get it if you hurry."

"Oh, I'll get this fucker," I muttered, popping from cover and aiming at the street where the jackal would be.

The enemy sniper was lugging a beam rifle over one shoulder and pressing its hand firmly against a leg. It _had_ been nicked. I calmly zeroed in on the place in between its shoulder blades and squeezed the trigger.

Now, bullets take their time. It's not usually a long wait, but sometimes that delay is more than enough to ruin your day.

The jackal's leg gave way underneath it just as I fired and it narrowly avoided being killed. The burst cut one of the spike-like crest pieces on its head, but it didn't kill it. As it fell it rolled and avoided a follow-up burst before taking cover behind a small car, getting itself to safety.

"Huh," I muttered. Now I knew how the fucking jackal must've felt after missing so many shots to dumb luck. "I'll be damned."

The jackal emerged from the car suddenly, running across the street as fast as its limp allowed. It seemed to be quite fast considering that it had just been shot. It fired at me on the run. The shot hit the wall to my left, making me jerk slightly and sending the burst I fired wide. The jackal then jumped and slid behind a pile of debris, leaving a small trail of blood where it had slid.

"You've got to be fucking kidding me," I cursed, wiping dust from my visor and aiming at the pile of debris. The jackal would have to come out soon or else it would find itself sharing its cover with a fragmentation grenade.

Two green carbine rounds went a few meters over my head. I instinctively looked up at them and then trailed their origin back to a house too far away for any respectable sharpshooter to bother shooting at me. I realized even as I quickly located the point of origin of the shots that someone had requested fire on my location.

"Shit," I murmured as my eyes returned towards the pile of debris. The jackals was already up and bringing its rifle to bear.

I had the advantage of having my rifle aimed in that direction, but dammit this fucker was quick. I aimed and squeezed the trigger once before I had a certain kill.

As I mentioned earlier, bullets take their time, but this time it was just fast enough. The three rounds hit the jackal's right hand just as it clicked the trigger on its beam rifle. The impact made it jerk the trigger and miss its shot. By miss I meant that it flew a few inches from my left shoulder.

The fucker was real good.

The jackal looked at its hand in surprise for a second, examining the finger that was hanging by a thread and then looking back at me.

I squeezed the trigger again only for my rifle to make a click. I stood there, dumbly thinking that I was certain my magazine still had rounds in it while another part of my brain assured me that I must've fired more times than I remembered as the jackal waited for its death. The bird either realized what was going on or decided that maybe I was giving it a second chance because it took off, abandoning its beam rifle and ignoring the wound on its leg.

"Did you get it?" the Marine asked.

"Negative," I told him, "chopped off its trigger finger."

"Better than nothin'," he grunted. "Bird won't be bothering anyone again."

But I hadn't killed it, and that frustrated me to no end.

* * *

><p>"Church tower, a jackal sharpshooter has been pestering us. I'm transmitting its location."<p>

"Got it," I replied. "Urgent?"

"Very much so."

"I'm on it," I told the man requesting sniper support. "Church tower out."

I sighed and took a deep breath as I aimed. The only things I could see through my scope was a battered house and a whole lot of smoke. I made sure to locate all the windows and then deduced which one would be the best to shoot at the Marines. From this angle I had a reasonable chance to hit a sniper firing from inside the windows, but any self respectable shooter would keep himself a little bit behind in case someone like me was gunning for them.

A carbine barrel poked through the window.

Too bloodthirsty, jackals were simply too eager to get blood on their hands to make good sharpshooters. I chuckled under my breath as I saw the jackal's beak appear on my sights and then squeezed the trigger, hitting it square in the cheek. The blood sprayed the window frame and the jackal collapsed to the floor.

"It's clear," I informed the man.

"Thanks church tower."

"Anytime," I replied, watching as two squads moved in to occupy the house that the jackal had been sniping from. Now they had firing positions on two ends of the street. No wonder the guy requesting support had called it urgent. I observed as the two squads moved a car over to the front door and took positions on the windows and sent a sharpshooter to the rooftop. Most UNSC-held houses had a similar configuration. Intersections were bulked up with sandbags and machine guns; the sandbags had a small C-10 charge inside of them, ready to blow up as soon as the position fell to enemy forces.

After I got bored of watching them I switched my attention to the Scorpion tank. The thing was half buried in rubble from nearby houses. I had seen a Wraith mortar barrage burn the area around it to cinders, sending pieces of brick and wood flying in every direction, an hour earlier. To my surprise and joy the tank had not been harmed, but the debris had instead piled up around and over it to give it some sort of protection.

The debris shook as the tanker fired, hitting some unseen target that a house prevented me from seeing. A second shot quickly followed the first one and then the tank was quiet once again.

"Huh," I said. Tank fire was effective and a Scorpion rarely needed to fire more than twice in order to get rid of a target.

The hatch behind me whirred and I instinctively reached for my pistol before I realized that Zepeda was supposed to be coming here. He climbed up and grunted angrily as he tossed an Enhanced Marksman Rifle to the floor before sitting down next to me. I knew how he was feeling at the moment. He had gone down to get another SRS to do his job up here, but we were short on spare sniper rifles, something that had an annoying tendency to keep happening seeing as the weapon was pretty fucking expensive.

On the other hand, the EMR was as good a long-range weapon as they came. It had a pretty decent range and impressive accuracy. Sure it didn't pack the same punch as the 14.55x114mm APFSDS rounds that the SRS-99 used, but they would whittle down an energy shield in no time.

"Get over it Zepeda," I told him. "Snark sometimes uses one of those and you know how good he is."

If anything my comment didn't make him feel any better.

I chuckled. "Relax man, you'll get a new one."

Zepeda settled back into position, expertly manning his weapon but somehow still retaining some sort of dislike for the weapon. I don't know exactly how he did it, but Zepeda had mastered the art of body language. Or maybe it was just that I had become so used to him not speaking that I understood him without a need for words.

Just like love.

Damn. I was bored.

"Christ, Francisco, that embarrassed even me," Schitzo muttered.

I waved the thought away and shot a grunt through the neck. That certainly had me feeling manly once again. As the grunt fell another pair of aliens were startled and emerged from behind cover, running away from my direction. Surely they must've misinterpreted my position or intention, because they exposed themselves to me as much as possible. I quickly switched to semi and fired four times, hitting the first grunt once and the second one twice. I frowned slightly at the shot I missed, but then again, me missing wasn't entirely unheard of and I _had _been actively shooting aliens for a day and a half now.

"I need some rest," I muttered. "Zepeda, I'm forwarding all requests to you, all right?"

He shrugged as I prepared myself for a very long nap.

No sooner than I had closed my eyes that all hell was unleashed on the little village of Sparatus. Explosion after explosion rocked the church tower and the cries of pain and sounds of gunfire were drowned in an ocean of plasma explosions. A section of the roof above us quivered and shook before collapsing. I put my hands up to protect my face, but the wooden rafters were caught in the walls and stopped short of hitting me. Zepeda himself had dragged himself towards the hatch that led down the church tower and opened it for me, waving frantically.

I grabbed my rifle and the box of ammunition. Our weapons shared the same type of ammunition, but his own rifle could fire it more accurately and make it go faster. I don't really know how that worked, but it did. Zepeda let himself fall down the first flight of stairs as the roof above us finally collapsed and slammed the hatch shut right after I went through it.

"Goddamn!" I cursed. "Zepeda, you stay here," I ordered. "I want you to tag enemy movements on the battle-net, got it?"

He nodded.

"Stay safe," I told him as I ran down the wooden stairs, hoping that they wouldn't give way under my weight.

I landed on the bottom of the tower and slammed my way through the heavy wooden door that led into the church itself. The pews were still in perfect order despite the pieces of ceiling and wall that had fallen. What seemed most foreboding was the stained glass windows that had remained intact. Biblical figures and saints stared down at me with sad stares as I ran through the empty church. The feeling was not one I enjoyed and I felt relief as soon as I left the church.

The massive doors opened into a relatively large courtyard full of command tents and armored vehicles. Men ran in every direction, seeking cover or moving away from fires. I ducked as a mortar detonation sent rocks my way, but the shower of stone pushed me to the ground. I would have some bruises later from that.

"Incoming!"

That word was dreaded all throughout the armed forces.

I barely had time to look up and see a Banshee attack craft dive for a strafing run. I ran towards the nearest crater as it began firing its twin plasma cannons and jumped inside as pieces of stone flew from the impacts.

"Zepeda, keep low for a while!" I shouted from my crater. "We've got enemy birds in the air!"

I got a green acknowledgement light and dragged myself outside of the crater, my rifle in hand. The Banshee had been devastatingly effective, hitting seven Marines and topping it off with a fuel rod that wrecked a Tortoise beyond use. I cursed at the sight of the dead men and crossed the courtyard at a sprint. Mortar rounds landed all around me even as our own mortar unit started firing back in retaliation.

"Phantoms!"

This time I wasn't the only one to curse. I looked up to see a pair of dropships approaching, glancing off small-arms fire with imperviousness. They stopped perhaps a block away from my position and started unloading troops. One of the Phantoms was hit by a shell that could've only come from a Scorpion tank as well as smaller explosive rounds that certainly had their origin in a Tortoise armored vehicle. The Phantom started putting out smoke before it came crashing down on top of a house.

The other one dropped of the entirety of its complement as well as two Ghosts. I fired upon the elite major that appeared to be leading the group, hitting it with automatic fire and killing it before it could react. Machine gun fire from behind me sprayed the grunts and jackals, killing a couple of them.

"Kill them all," someone shouted.

"Don't let them get a foothold," I ordered at the same time. "Wipe 'em out!"

The Marines were all too happy to comply with my order. The disarrayed men and women were happy to have a goal and immediately reorganized themselves to achieve it. The covvies had had the element of surprise on their side, but now that they had lost it they were just a small unit completely surrounded by angry Devil Dogs.

"Good job men!" I shouted loudly once the last elite was dead.

A squad that had come up to me and helped nodded in satisfaction and slapped each other's shoulders.

"Sergeant," I told the leader. "Clear the surrounding area, we don't need any covvies pestering us."

"Yes, sir," he said, nodding towards his men. "Let's move!"

As the Wraith barrage let up somewhat I started moving towards Major Peterson's command post. The place was a big house, but not really something that would draw attention to itself. That was fortunate, because only one blast had hit the front lawn. I made my way past a pair of men carrying a wounded girl on a stretcher and inside the house.

"Major," I shouted. "Major Peterson!"

"Castillo," he called from the dining room, looking over several incoming reports. "What are you doing here?"

"I left a man in the tower," I said. "What's going on?"

"The earlier attack must've been a feint."

"A feint?" I asked, confused. The earlier attack had been the largest attack that the Covenant had launched. If it had been a feint it had been a damn good one.

"They're throwing everything that they've got at us," he told me. "The Western Flank is on the brink of collapse and we're just barely holding up… How the hell did they hide all those birds?"

"Sir, we've lost contact with Colonel Olson!" a corporal shouted.

"Jammers?" Peterson asked.

"Confirming… negative Major."

"Fuck," Major Peterson cursed.

"Sir," I said, ignoring the uncharacteristic expletive. "If Olson is dead that would make you the highest-ranking officer here. Someone needs to organize this."

"I know that boy!" Peterson told me angrily. "Corporal, broadcast the news, I want every unit reporting to me as of right now!"

"Yes, sir!"

"And send Darbinian's ODSTs to the Western Flank."

"They're already en route, sir!"

Peterson turned back to look at me. "Don't like the man, but he sure is effective."

"Tell me about it," I said. "Where do you need me?"

"We need to eliminate Covenant air superiority," he told me. "Our Falcon gunships are grounded as long as there are Banshees in the air. I want you take some of your men right here, we have some SPANKrs and missile pods there, and start hammering away at them. I don't care how much attention you draw to yourselves, Lieutenant."

"Yessir," I replied, saluting. If we killed more than three Banshees from a single location we would have a veritable storm of mortars falling down on our position.

It was a risky mission. Very risky.

"Well what are you waiting for?"

I met my squad three blocks away, closer to the Covenant forces than I cared for, but such is life.

"Where's Miranda and Hoff?" I asked, looking at my not-squad.

Marvin shrugged slightly. "They remained back to provide sniper support, O'Malley and Ramirez volunteered to take their place."

I looked over my temporary squad. Marv, Sandor, and Andrea were a given, but I had never worked closely with O'Malley even despite Caboose speaking very highly of her skills. Ramirez was an excellent fighter, possessing a near suicidal disregard for his safety whenever he was providing covering or suppressing fire for the rest of us. It might've been that he was slightly off up there, but as long as it worked for the best I had no reason to complain.

"Where's the Laser?" I asked O'Malley.

"With Staff Konstantinov, sir," she replied in that thick accent of hers.

"And what the fuck is Grigori doing back there?"

"Commanding half of HW Squad, sir," Ramirez said. "He's a good leader."

"Damn right he is," O'Malley spoke up for her squad leader.

I rolled my eyes as Marvin checked his weapon and Andrea pointedly looked in the general direction the Covenant where coming from.

"All right, Peterson wants us to take out some Banshees," I said simply. "I'm setting a waypoint for a SPANKr cache. Double time it!"

What should've been a straightforward jog through UNSC-held ground turned out to be a slow and hellish crawl through ground we were now hotly fighting to keep. The once-beautiful brick houses with painted windows were now blackened from the smoke and ashes, but most of those had been heavily damaged. White picketed fences surrounded yards that were no more than muddy craters and up heaved earth. The Covenant had managed to move up to the line of houses directly across the street, turning the battle into an extremely uncomfortable close-quarters fight.

In fact, the covvies had a few squads inside houses on our side of the street. Mostly we tried to keep our heads down and leave the heavy fighting to the Marines, but more than once we had to shoot our way outside of a house that had been just recently stormed by Covenant troops. Sandor seemed to be enjoying the unexpected encounters, making good use of a shotgun he had taken to using.

"Hold up," I ordered, standing over the bullet-riddled body of an elite minor. "Hold!"

I got a chorus of 'yessirs' as I raised my voice, giving me a sense of smug satisfaction. As my men slowly spread out to take defensive positions in the house I knelt down to examine the elite. At first glance the minor seemed no different from other elites of its rank, but years of fighting against their kind had thought me a thing or two. Minors were usually younger Sangheili, the equivalent of our fresh-outta-highschool privates. Most of the time their youth showed in the same way it did on human males; with smaller muscles and thinner frames. I was no xenologist, but this elite minor looked older than that, the battered armor and scars on its forearms and shoulders were testament to its status as a veteran fighter.

I started calling for Miranda but bit my tongue when I remembered that she wasn't here. "Marv, get over here," I ordered.

"Sir?"

"Do you see something weird here?"

He looked down at the elite. "All the shots hit in the right side of the chest?"

I hadn't noticed that. "No… well, yes, but that's not what I meant. This elite looks a little bit too experienced to be wearing blue armor."  
>Marv knelt next to me and carefully examined the corpse. "You're right, sir. Bigger, lots of scars… It could just be an unfortunate squid."<p>

"True, but the Covenant forces we're facing are the toughest and most effective we've faced."

"Elites have a natural talent for war, but they do seem to lack even the most basic training from time to time," Marvin noted drily. "Could these be actual soldiers?"

"If we've been fighting bloody conscripts for the past twenty years…" I muttered under my breath. "Oh well, I always did like a challenge."

"Oorah!" Ramirez called out from the dining room.

"Enough playing detective," I said, mostly to myself. "Let's move on."

"I'll take point," Sandor said eagerly. "Andrea?"

"I got your back," Andy assured him. "Ready when you are."

I waved at them to go as I opened a line to the lieutenant in charge of the platoon holding this street. He appeared to be a capable man, if a little bit jumpy under pressure.

"Lieutenant, we're coming back out," I said. "I need your men to turn up the ante."

"Fucking shit," he replied. "We've got your back, lieutenant, but my men are taking a beating here!"

"I know, I know," I assured him, moving through the small piece of grass that separated this house from the next. "I've told my sniper to provide support."

"That is all good and fucking well, but I could do with some fucking air support right now."

"We all could," I replied with a small chortle of laughter. Perhaps jumpy had been the wrong word to describe him. "All right, we're safe."

"Tell me when you need some more help," he replied. "And please make it fast."

Huh, funny world where two officers of the same rank–one a Helljumper and one a regular jarhead–found themselves in a situation where the Helljumper was the one being spoken down to.

In the past I would've kicked his teeth in first chance I got. Right now it just seemed amusing.

"Sir, are you going to let him talk to you like that?" O'Malley asked quietly inside the next house.

I shrugged. "He said please. Now clear the second floor for me, we don't want another jackal jumping us from behind, do we?"  
>Her visor covered her face, but I was certain that she blushed behind it. A jackal had attempted to go in for a quiet kill, pulling out a knife and trying to slash O'Malley's throat. She had caught the knife right before it plunged through, but she still required saving. The funny part there was that the jackal had been hiding inside a closet of a room that she was supposed to clear.<p>

Battlefield humor, got to love it.

"Target is just seventy meters away," I said. "Those Banshees need to be taken down a notch or six."

"We go when you say, El-tee," Sandor voiced, finishing up reloading his shotgun.

I quickly requested firing support and the moment I heard the gunfire from the houses around us I gave the order to go. This house was the last one on the block. Ahead of us we had a street as well as a parking lot before we actually reached the building itself. It should've been simple with the Marines providing suppressing fire, but things were rarely that simple.

"Andrea, if you get shot another time…" Sandor began.

"What would that be, the third in this campaign alone?" Marv added teasingly.

Andrea cursed at him before Sandor opened the back door and we poured out the house. We started sprinting across the street in turns, taking cover behind a pair of minivans once we reached safety.

"Move, move," I ordered. "Let's go!"

Ramirez and O'Malley took the first turn, clearing the empty parking lot and sliding behind a thick square column next to the entrance. Several green carbine rounds hit the marble column, tearing shards from it and prompting them to press themselves tighter against the column.

"Shit," I muttered. They knew where we were. "Marv, Andrea, your turn."

"Sir," Marv said.

"I'll cover you," I told them. "Go!"

I popped from cover and fired three rounds at brown house. I shattered what was left of a window and then fired wildly at the roof and windows. Sandor switched to his assault rifle and sprayed the bottom windows, sending a pair of shapes backwards, reeling for cover.

I ducked back down as needles and carbine rounds banged against the car's roof and hood. Whichever soccer mom had driven this thing before the covvies came would surely be displeased with the state of her car.

"Saving the best for last, eh lieutenant?" Sandor asked, reloading his rifle.

"Most certainly Sandor," I assured him. "That's why you'll go first."

He chuckled. "On your go, sir."

I nodded and shouted over at Ramirez to give us some covering fire. His SAW could lay down a heavier volume of fire than most weapons that an ODST could carry. He pivoted out of cover and started firing, holding his SAW tightly against his shoulder. As the weapon fired away Sandor dashed out of cover at a sprint. I immediately moved after him, emptying the rest of my magazine blindly. Not for the first time everything around me slowed down, but unlike the other times I didn't move any faster.

A needle shattered against the ground halfway between Sandor and myself. He ducked as a burst from a repeater flew over his head. As he stalled slightly I caught up and grabbed him by the arm, shoving him forward as plasma bursts hit all around us. For the first time I noticed that the points where the bolts hit turned bright red for the briefest of instants before putting out smoke and vapor.

It was all really quite enthralling, but whiles my mind and eyes moved at incredibly speeds, my body did not. I felt like I was trapped as my legs moved ever so slowly. Sandor almost fell on his face at my shove, but he regained his balance quick enough and resumed his sprint.

Ramirez had to duck behind cover when three carbine rounds hit the column he was using for cover. One of them flew exactly where his head had been half a second later. Andrea and Marvin started firing to pick up the slack, but they were both quickly sent back into cover as needles and plasma flooded their position. A green blob of plasma flooded my vision as it slowly flew an inch from my visor. I only just managed to jerk my head back slightly in shock before I spotted a pink shard moving at a leisurely pace towards Sandor.

I opened my mouth to warn him, but it was too late. The needle flew a lot lower than expected, but it still hit Sandor's right calf. He took another step, putting all his weight on the wounded foot. To my surprise he managed to keep upright despite a cry of pain. He started toppling down and I tackled him just as time resumed its normal pace. We landed just short of safety, but Ramirez and Marv dropped their weapons to drag us into safety.

"Holy fucking fuck!" Sandor cursed loudly, grabbing at his injured leg. The needle had punched a clean hole through and through, but there was an awful amount of blood coming from the holes in the armored boot.

"Take it off," Andrea ordered me. "Hurry!"

I removed the boot, prompting Sandor to bite back a curse. The wound was nasty, with an irregular entry wound and an exit wound that looked more like a cut than a circular hole. The needle had probably split at the outside before coming out through the other side.

"The needle sent shards through your leg," Andrea explained to Sandor in a perfectly calm voice. Every time you put weight on your foot you'll feel them cutting into your muscle."

"Just give me some painkillers Andrea," Sandor spat.

Andy administered biofoam and held Sandor down as he started to shake involuntarily. As soon as that was done she patched him up with good old-fashioned bandages and then put his armored boot back on. Sandor slowly started getting back up, using his rifle for support.

"And I do appreciate the irony of this," he grunted as he managed to get on his feet. "Not a word Andy, not a word."

"Maybe you'll take the human target spot on the squad, huh?" Marv poked at him.

"Enough goofing around," I said loudly, wiping the blood from my gloves. "Ramirez and Sandor, I want you two to stay here and cover the entrance. O'Malley, Marv, and Andrea, you're with me."

"Yes, sir!"

When Major Peterson mentioned a cache of rocket launchers in this building I half expected walls covered with M41 SSRs and rocket boxes in piling up high enough to hide behind, but what I got was the sad reality. Four battered and used SPANKr rocket launchers were leaned against a corner with a pile of about twenty boxes on the opposite side of the room.

Eight rockets in the M41s plus some forty spare missiles. Once my head assimilated the number of M19 HEAT missiles my disappointment quickly turned into anticipation.

"All right, everyone grab a pair," I shouted. "We spot for each other and don't stick outdoors for long, if possible try and stay inside."

"Ah, nothing like noxious exhaust fumes from the missiles, eh?" O'Malley quipped, grabbing her rocket launcher. "By the time the second missile's away we won't be able to see a thing."

"O'Malley, shut up," I ordered, hefting my own rocket launcher. It had been a long time since I had used one, but the weight of it felt comfortable in my shoulders. "Call out your shots, not a single missile goes to waste."

The second floor windows were all broken, giving us a nice view of the sky around us. It was easier than I imagined spotting a Banshee, there were far too many flying about in the sky for comfort. Everybody got a different target and let off a missile before ten seconds had passed. Three of the fliers went down and several more broke off, attempting to avoid being targeted.

"That felt good," Andrea said after taking a deep breath.

"Sure did," I agreed. "Two minutes in between rocket barrages, understood?"

"Yes, sir!"

The chaos of battle kept our position safe for a few more strikes, but by the time fifteen or so Banshees had been shot down our position was made. Before long the aircraft were focusing on our position as opposed to regular strafing runs. The building was sturdy enough to hold up to a few heavy plasma cannons and the occasional fuel rod, but soon enough we were missing a roof above us and Marv had nearly been buried under rubble.

"We can't keep this up much longer!" Andy shouted as soon as a Banshee finished a strafing run.

O'Malley immediately stood up and fired a rocket at the thing, it quickly locked on and started following, chasing it down before colliding in a fiery explosion.

"I'm doing fine," she shouted. "I think we-"

Her boast was cut short as two fuel rods detonated against the walls. The entire building shook violently and a corner started collapsing as the bricks gave way to the hot plasma. I started sliding down as the floor tilted but was promptly grabbed by the scruff by Marvin. He pulled me back and I found myself looking down at the parking lot, a whole section of the building had collapsed upon itself.

"Lieutenant, are you alright?" Ramirez asked. "What happened up there?"

"We're fine, Ramirez," I replied. "We might need to move out soon."

"I don't know about that," he said hesitantly. "I don't think Sandor can move."

"I can move," he cut in. "I'm fine."

I grunted angrily. If Sandor was that insistent it meant that his leg was a mess. He wouldn't be able to run without one or two of us carrying him. If we moved that slow we would surely be mowed down by the Covenant, whether they were in the air or in the ground.

"You think we pulled enough weight here to warrant an APC extraction?" Marvin asked, patting my shoulders to dust them off. "I'm certain some of the Marines 'round here would be jealous."

"Hmmm," I hummed, considering the request. "Maybe Peterson will dispatch on or two and have them mow down the covvies inside those houses…"

"Redirecting two Tortoises to a less important sector, sir? I don't know…"

"I know for certain there's one Tortoise with damaged armor in the square, perhaps they can spare that one for a half an hour."

Marvin shrugged. "I sure hope so."

I nodded sharply. "I'll call it in, no way in hell I'll sleep here until someone deigns himself to come and helps us pull out."

"My sentiments exactly."

I opened up a line to Peterson and held until he checked in. The man sounded tense. It had only been an hour or so since I had left him and the pressure of commanding such a large force was now beginning to show. I was glad that I was an officer and appreciated the pay that came with it, but I decided that if I ever reached the rank of captain I would start turning down promotions after that, I'd rather fight my ass off in the trenches than have thousands of lives under my responsibility.

"Yes?" he asked sharply.

"Sir, could you arrange for some armored support or extraction?" I requested.

"God damn," he replied. "I ask you to do something and then you ask _me_ for help doing it."

I looked up at the most recent smoke mark from a Banshee. "The job is almost done, the screamers are already making themselves scarce or going for us. Sir, we're pinned here for good unless we flush out the Covenant, and that's not going to happen unless you bring in the heavy guns."

"I know the situation!" Peterson said loudly. "I'm getting a live feed from everybody in the area. Map says that there's some twenty to forty Covenant infantry preventing you from moving in any direction."

"Plus the occasional Wraith blast, yeah," I agreed.

Peterson huffed. "I can't spare any Tortoises, your staff sergeant already requested our two damaged Tortoises, and they're holding back the main spearhead."

Pavel…

"I'm gonna kill him," I groaned. "The Falcons?"

"One of them was hit in a bombing run, I can't spare the rest to your position. In short, lieutenant, I can't offer you any help right now."

"Shit," I grunted. "Sir. Can you dispatch some assistance to our position if the enemy assault slackens up? We'll help the units here."

"Understood lieutenant," Peterson said. "Peterson out."

I looked up and cursed at the ceiling. "Everybody to the ground floor," I ordered. "We'll bunker down here until we get evac."

"Shit, sir," Sandor cursed. He said that to me more freely than I had to Peterson. "Any idea how long we'll stay here?"

"As long as it takes, Sandy," Andrea told him. "You just sit tight."

"I'll do whatever I damn well please," he grunted angrily. "And don't call me Sandy."

"You'll do what _I_ damn well please," I corrected. "And right now I'm ordering you to sit tight."

"Yessir," he said through clenched teeth.

"There's a large room near the main entrance," Ramirez said. "No windows and only one door."

"Do you have anything with two doors?" Marv asked. "In case we need an emergency exit."

"I've got a door and a small window," Ramirez told him.

"That'll do," I said. "Marv and Andrea, you two bring down the SPANKrs," I ordered them. "Abri, I want you up here as a sharpshooter."

"Sir, ummm," she said, showing me her MA5. "Not exactly a sharpshooter's weapon."

"Shut up Abri," Andrea told her. "He called you by your first name! You should be excited."

I rolled my eyes as Marvin chuckled slightly. "Here, take my rifle."

"Yes, sir," O'Malley said. "Thank you, sir."

I grabbed her weapon and gave her two spare magazines. "Take care of it."

"I will, sir."

I helped Andrea with some of the rocket launcher ammo and tossed everything inside the room. Sandor had already packed a few crates and was resting his leg on them. He appeared angry, but his face was contorted in pain. Andy removed his boot and told him not to move his foot in the least unless absolutely necessary. The blood flowing through his veins moved his muscles just enough to make the shards cut in more and more with every beat of his heart. He would need surgery to remove the shards before the wound got infected.

"I can remove them if you want," Andy told him. "But I've got no anesthesia or painkillers."

Sandor laughed. "I know I'm tough and I know I'm a little dumb, but there's no way I'm that stupid. Not now."

"Good choice," Andy said, removing her helmet and placing it on the floor.

"Sir," Ramirez said, tapping my shoulder. "You sure you don't want me up there?"

"Not right now, Ramirez," I told him. "We need to conserve SAW ammo. You can guard the main entrance, grab Sandor's shotgun."

"Don't worry," Marv said, brandishing the M90. "I got this."

That left Ramirez, Sandor, Andy, and myself in the little room. I smiled at Ramirez behind my visor. "Well, it appears you get to be useless for a while."

"I just hope it's not very long," he said as the house shook. "I don't think this building can take much more."

A little bit of dust from the ceiling fell on my head and slid down the side. I was worried about the building coming down on our heads, but if things kept going like this the Covenant would swarm past our lines before the building had time to collapse.

"I hope it's not long either," I muttered agreeingly, moving towards a corner in order to catch some sleep. "But you know how these things are."

Ramirez propped his SAW against a wall. "Lucky us, huh?"

* * *

><p><em>Thanks to defarcher and SpartaLazor for helping proofread this chapter.<em>

_Talking about that, this is probably the last chapter that I'll have proofread by someone else. No offense to the guys, they did a fantastic job, but this is more of a personal issue. The relatively large gap in between this update and the last was due to something that all fanfic writers dread. Running out of ideas. I always hate it when someone says that they were 'battling with writer's block' because it sounds a lot harder than it was for me. Normally I'd just ask myself what the coolest thing to do would be and adapt it to the story. Sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn't, but it always allowed me to finish the chapter. During that brief period of absolutely no ideas I felt myself actually start to lose interest in this story, and that's something that I really don't want to happen. Because of that and a multitude of other things I will start posting chapters proofread by me. This will likely amount to an increase of spelling mistakes and the occasional word salad sentence that nobody understands. I hope that it doesn't harm the quality of the story itself, but I'm pretty certain that it won't happen. If this works out as planned I will be able to write and publish chapters faster. I know most of you prefer quality over speed or whatnot, but I really don't want to feel myself losing interest in The Life again._

_Now, as for the chapter itself. Pretty long chapter, some humor here, some battle there. A shitload of irony concerning Sandor and his injury... A small thing that I'd like to point out: the jackal that Frank failed to kill isn't some future character, it's just a jackal. I wrote it in because it suddenly occurred to me that I don't very often write in badass enemies. Sure, I've had an occasional elite or brute that can kick ass, but never a covenant trooper that is skilled enough to take Frank or any of Reaper or Platoon Five one on one and come out alive, let alone on top. I'll see about doing that more often._

_Johnson will be in the third chapter after this one as will Hanna and Katie. Rejoice._

_Stay strong._

_-casquis_


	180. Then There was Knives

Chapter CLXXX: ...Then There was Knives

**May 26, 2549 (UNSC Calendar)/**

**Sparatus, Paris IV, Paris System**

* * *

><p><em>"Outgunned and outnumbered, but never outskilled."– Second Lieutenant Francisco Castillo<em>

* * *

><p>Even with the treads moving as slow as they were, the engines on the APCs were still uncomfortably loud. I could hear them even inside the building. It was probably due to the number of missing walls and sections of ceiling, but to me it still sounded like a thunderstorm. In fact, when I heard it I woke with a start. Ramirez shook when he heard it and reached for his SAW before recognizing the sound.<p>

"Sir?" he whispered.

"Wake Andy and Sandor," I replied, equally quiet. "Gently."

I calmly stretched my arms and stood up. My head spun as soon as I did that, but I promptly steadied myself against a wall. "Abri, you napping?"

"I'm here sir," she whispered despite her helmet. "Found myself a nice little spot. What was that sound?"

"The APCs, I told her. Might be evac."

"Got it, should I come down?"

I thought about it for a second. "Not yet, but be ready to."

Marvin walked through the door just as Andy helped Sandor up to his feet. He looked at all of us and placed Sandor's shotgun next to the door. "Sir, there are three Tortoises right around the corner."

"We heard them," Ramirez said. "That means the covvies probably did too."

I nodded in agreement. "Abri, warn me if you see any movement on the Covenant side."

"Yes, sir," she replied.

"Lieutenant Castillo," my helmet radio crackled. "Lieutenant, are you there?"

"This is Castillo, I copy Hammer Two-One."

"Good," the commander of the lead Tortoise grunted. "My own girl as well as Two-Two and Two-Three are here to help evacuate the street."

"Evacuate?" I asked. "That bad?"

"Yes, sir. Aerial recon shows mobilization of Ghosts and heavy weaponry behind that line of houses. The major believes that an attack is coming soon. Sir, the two other Tortoises will move up, guns blazing and tear down as many houses as they can manage as my own girl moves up to your location. I understand you have wounded?"

"Yes."

"Very well, I need you to make it quick sir, I don't want to stay in a place for too long."

"Got it, shouldn't be a problem. The rest of the Marines?"

"They have their own houses for cover, my Tortoises will just curb off any attempt to rush across the street and take advantage of our retreat."

I sighed. "Thanks Two-One," I said. "Ready when you are."

"Just a bit longer," he told me. "I'll let you know."

I started getting that sense of anticipation as soon as he cut the line. My first combat jump had been an emergency evacuation from a damaged ship in a trajectory to crash-land on a UNSC planet. I didn't have time to feel nervous then, but I always did get slightly nervous when we were about to start something big.

"Abri, get over here," I ordered after a couple of minutes. "Quietly."

"Yes, sir."

All of us were on either side of the main entrance. Sandor was leaning against the wall and Marvin kept near him for when we needed to run through the parking lot. Andrea was also there, waiting in case she needed to help with our injured squad member. On the other side I stood with Ramirez and O'Malley. Ramirez was every bit as tall as I was and with shoulders almost as broad as Pavel's, but the huge M739 SAW he carried. A foot longer and three times as heavy as my battle rifle, the machine gun was a fearsome weapon befitting a fearsome man. Ramirez certainly fit the stereotype down to a t.

On the other hand, O'Malley was shorter and not nearly as bulky. Unlike Andrea or Miranda she didn't have a curvaceous figure, but was instead skinny and wiry. I knew better than to be fooled by her appearance, she could give as good as she got in the fighting mats and was good enough to have survived so far in this unit. She was far too young to be a veteran of so many battles.

"We're coming," Two-One said.

The roaring of the engines rattled the crumbling building and the three Tortoises streaked past the windows. One of them veered off towards us while the other two turned the corner and strafed the brick and wooden houses. It came to my attention that they were only part of a major action, similar noises echoed all through Sparatus as more IFVs, APCs, and tanks fired on Covenant positions in order to cover our retreat.

Two-One turned and slammed into the broken doors in reverse at full speed. I cursed as bricks flew backwards, raising dust and impeding my vision. The rear hatch doors of the Tortoise APC opened and a man in a round tanker helmet appeared, holding an M7 SMG on one hand.

"Get in!" he said.

"Go, go, go!" I ordered. "Let's move!"

Marv dragged a complaining Sandor inside the APC and sat him down. I was last to go in, but the tanker stopped me.

"I was told there were M41s here," he told me.

"Fuck," I cursed. "Come with me."

Both of us ran upstairs to grab the missile launchers and the remaining ammunition. I slung my BR55HB over my shoulder and grabbed one launcher with either hand, huffing with the effort from carrying it. The tanker slung one loaded launcher over his back and grabbed four boxes of rockets. As he climbed down he asked me whether there was more ammunition for the SPANKr missile launchers.

"Three more boxes," I replied.

"We really ought to get those," he grunted. "These are our only defense against the Wraiths."

"Ramirez, get the rest of the ammunition boxes," I ordered through the radio. "And bring one of the SPANKrs if you can!"

"Yes, sir!"

He passed us on the stairs, running up as fast as he could. We loaded up the equipment inside the Tortoise and waited for Ramirez to come tumbling down the stairs with not three but four boxes of missiles in addition to a launcher.

"It was hidden under a piece of ceiling," he explained as he half-fell, half-walked inside the Tortoise.

"We're ready, let's move," the tanker said to the commander of this Tortoise. "Let's go!"

The Tortoise moved forward as soon as we closed the hatch. O'Malley kicked at the launchers and boxes of ammunition with her feet to make more legroom. The point was moot; the Tortoises were notorious for being even more cramped than Armadillos. I had to sandwich my legs with Ramirez and his knee felt awfully close to my groin. The racks over my head were usually filled with spare ammunition for the APCs autocannons or for the troops that were deployed by APC. Right now they had some repair equipment and empty ammunition boxes. I should've shoved a few of the missile boxes there before, now the little comfort that we had was hampered by all the piled M41s.

"Fucking cramped," Sandor complained in his usual eloquent manner.

As the Tortoise moved a few rounds pinged off the armor, making a dull thudding noise as they did so. I tightened my harness as the vehicle turned in a tight turn, the machine gun and autocannon hammering away at Covenant targets of opportunity. I felt slightly useless here, not being able to do anything.

For once in my life I didn't mind. I knew that I wouldn't' have been able to survive a barrage of small-arms fire that this armored vehicle was merely shrugging off.

"We're stopping," the driver called out. "Dismount!"

I opened the hatch and piled out into an area bustling with activity. Marines were preparing to face the likely counterattack by the Covenant. As soon as our armored vehicles stopped firing the covvies would fire back and their spirits would only increase when they realized that our infantry had pulled back with the tanks. Machine guns were placed in strategic locations and men aimed down the streets. Last I passed through here there hadn't been a single sandbag; now there was a massive fortress of sandbags, armored plates, and abandoned vehicles.

"Frank!" Pavel called out to me. "Haven't seen you in three days now."

"Sorry man," I told him as I walked towards him. "Andrea get Sandor to a surgeon."

"But El-tee–" Sandor complained.

"But nothing!" I cut him off. "A doctor will remove any shrapnel and you'll be ready to fight by tomorrow."

"Yes, sir," he said reluctantly.

Pavel led me to a lavish house four stories high with tall windows and balconies. "The platoon is here," he said as he walked. "The men are tired but ready."

"Injuries?"

"Nothing serious, scratches and bruises. Carver was nicked on the hand, hurts like a bitch apparently."

"As long as he can use that grenade launcher of his."

"Don't worry about me, sir," the man in question shouted over from the second floor.

"Whatever you say Carver," I shouted back. "Pavel, I was cut off, what's the plan here?"

"Not much of a plan, Major Peterson expects that the strongest attack will come through this area so he places us here. He promised three Tortoises but apparently could only muster two."

"There _were_ three," I muttered under my breath. "Damn."

Pavel shrugged. "They're usually priority targets for the covvies, it's our job to take care of that."

"All right then," I said. "We set our sharpshooters to hunt other snipers and be on the lookout for heavy weapons while the rest provide support and hold back any advance attempts."

"The usual," Pavel said with a shrug. "You know, sometimes I think we should have more of those crazy missions."

I nodded in agreement. "It all gets boring sometimes, doesn't it? Fighting the same battle in different places. Outgunned and outnumbered but never outskilled."

"Then we have to pull back because those fuckers happen to have bigger spaceships," Pavel said. "Rinse and repeat."

I chuckled. "Well, at least we switch it up a little sometimes. Remember when I airdropped with a tank?"

"How could I forget," he laughed. "With Bee's song blaring on all our speakers."

"That time we jumped out of the falling corvette," I said. "That one was pretty crazy too."

"There was also that fancy-ass elite in Jericho-VII. Remember that guy?"

"How could I forget?" I asked him. "I still have the scars on my back."

He nodded. "You know, pulling the trigger on that bastard has been some of the most pleasant experiences in my whole life."

"I can relate to that," I told him, slapping his back. "But you might not want to tell Amber that, she might just cut your balls off."

"Agreed, that woman's a pistol."

Pavel's wife was indeed what you would call a strong-spirited woman. She managed to keep Pavel in check while at the same time made a livelihood and raised a little girl by herself for up to six months at a time. This deployment had been a lot longer than usual, but we had the blockade to blame for that.

Pavel's mood turned grim at the mention of his wife.

"Have you gotten word from her?"

"No," he replied. "I've sent messages and I know she makes vid messages at least twice a week. If wireless traffic isn't getting through…"

"She knows you're fine mate," I told him, "after all, if you stick with me you'll have no probem."

"No problem?" he asked me raising an eyebrow.

I chuckled. "Well, you might get out with a scratch or two, but you'll get out. That's the way it's been since we met."

"You're my bad luck charm," Pavel assured me. "And I just don't know whether I'd be better off without you."

"But you're too scared to try," I said.

"Look at you," Schitzo huffed. "Three days without talking to one another and you get all teary eyed and girly when you meet. Might want to kiss him."

I dismissed his presence.

As Pavel and I walked up the circular staircase the men had gathered behind us. Apparently they were listening in on the conversation, because the moment I turned they did an excellent job of looking like meek children that had been scolded for stealing candy. A few of my men even looked down at their feet when Pavel and I turned. Out of my platoon of twenty men four had been killed. Only sixteen of us remained, and it didn't appear like all of us would make it out of here, not with a Covenant army knocking on our door.

With Zepeda in the church tower and Sandor with the doctor my group looked even sorrier than it was.

Hoff finally broke the silence. "You airdropped with a tank?" he asked incredulously. "How does that even work?"

"Parachutes kid," I told him.

"Lots of parachutes," Caboose added. He had been there where it happened, even if he hadn't been in the middle of it.

I could still see the snow rushing to meet the tank and me if I closed my eyes and thought about it.

"Why do I feel like we know nothing about you, El-tee?" PFC d'Arc asked me, fiddling with her SAW.

"Because you don't," I replied simply. "Now, do you want another story before you go to bed?"

"Positions!" Pavel shouted hoarsely. "What the fuck do you think you're doing standing there like idiots? Move before I shoot you!"

The platoon dispersed at what must've been relativistic speeds and everybody took positions in the windows or rooftops. Ammunition boxes were spread out all throughout the large house, with grenades here and there to complement our weaponry.

Pavel and I laughed as the men ran at our orders and I slapped his back with a smile. "Good to see you again."

"Likewise," he told me.

A nearby explosion rocked the building.

"Get ready," I told him, grabbing his forearm firmly. "Stay safe."

"Safe? That stopped being an option a long time ago," he replied.

With those wise words he climbed downstairs and disappeared to coordinate the machine guns.

"Sounds bad," Schitzo said, fear creeping into his usually calm voice. "Sounds very bad."

* * *

><p>I remember this one time Bee showed us a movie from the early twenty-first. It was a fantasy film, but I don't remember its name. I do remember that it had been a thoroughly enjoyable series of films. But I'm going off on a tangent here. A character had mentioned something about a red sunrise meaning that blood had been shed during the night. I recall it vividly because everybody laughed at the corny phrase at the time, especially when it came from a guy in long blonde hair that looked as soft as a girl's.<p>

The sun rose and it was indeed red. I had never seen a sunrise like that in my entire life, not in Reach, not in Mars, not in Jericho-VII or even Earth. On another occasion I might've dismissed it as a trick of the light or simply the color of the star itself, but for the last few days I had woken with the purpose to see the sunrise. The sun was no different than Epsilon Eridani as seen from Reach. Perfectly round and yellow if a little orange when it rose and when it set.

Now its blood red color mirrored the events that had transpired during the night and were still going on.

I looked at my empty pistol and considered tossing it aside before sighing and releasing the slide and shoving into my holster angrily. The dead elite at my feet had taken at least twenty bullets from Miranda and myself to be brought down and then another one to the head. That last bullet had been _my_ last M6 bullet. The pistol was now nothing but a fancy paperweight.

"And I'm out," I said. "Miri?"

She released the magazine on her pistol and pulled back the slide, catching the ejected bullet before it fell to the floor. She shoved the bullet into the magazine with one hand and counted them. "I've got seven rounds."

"And your DMR?"

"Four plus fifteen."

I looked at the ammo counter on my rifle. "Thirty-three."

"This isn't good, sir," Miranda said, her voice strained. "Not good at all."

I nodded. "Get back up, don't shoot unless absolutely necessary, ok?"

"No grunts, no jackals, just elites."

"That's a girl," I said. "Make sure Hoff observes firing discipline."

"Yes, sir."

I kicked the elite in the head as Miranda left and climbed back upstairs. I could barely make myself get up to the third floor before a fuel rod explosion blew up half a wall.

"Sasha!"

"I'm fine," the man in question replied.

"Everyone alright?" I asked, waving the dust away from my face. "Anybody hurt?"

"Holy shit! Sarah!"

PFC Sutton approached a pile of rubble on the ground and pulled off a piece of wall from d'Arc. She been blown across the room by the concussive force and most of the rubble landed on top of her.

"Sutton, give me her status."

"She's alive, sir," the medic replied, checking her for wounds. "But it's not good, spinal injuries likely."

"Fuck, can you move her?"

"At this point I think that either she'll walk or she won't."

I considered it for a second. "Damn it, get her to safety."

"Yes, sir!"

Sutton lifted the unconscious woman from the ground and I winced involuntarily as I saw the twisted angle of her arm and the steel bar that impaled her from the top of the belly and through to the middle of the back. Being that close to the explosion, it was a miracle she was still alive.

"Clear the room," I ordered. "Now!"

"Hold up, sir," Dotsenko said, aiming down the hole in the wall. "Got the bastard."

The man fired a quick, short burst and then hollered as he hit his target.

"Dotsenko!" I shouted. "Clear the room!"

He ran back just in time to avoid a single green carbine round that would've gone straight through his helmet. As he ran past the door I stopped him, holding him by the collar. "When I order you to do something, I expect you to do it immediately."

"Sir, it hurt my friend, it might've damn well killed her."

"Well tough shit," I replied angrily. "The last thing I need is two men down instead of just one, and you nearly got yourself killed."

"Sir, I-"

Suddenly Pavel was at my shoulder.

"Sasha, we all care for Sarah, but you can't lose it now. We've got to keep it together."

"Sarge, we're down to our last magazine and our sidearms are pretty much empty too! You saw Sarah, half of us have injuries that would have us on a hospital if we had access to one, the left flank is all but collapsed, our air support had gone off to help who knows what and the Marines have taken over fifty percent casualties. How the hell can you tell me–"

Pavel chose that moment to clock him in the helmet. Dotsenko was cut off mid-sentence by the punch and fell against the door. I pulled him back and shook him around before letting go of him.

"Keep. It. Together."

Dotsenko shook his head. "Yes, sir. Sorry sir." He turned to Pavel. "Thank you Sarge."

"Any time," Pavel told him. "Don't you have a place to be?"

"Yes, Gunnery Sergeant!"

I sighed when Sasha disappeared through another door. "Damn."

"He'll be fine," Pavel assured me. "Sarah…"

"She's a tough girl," I told him. "She'll pull through."

"Even the toughest fall Frank."

"And they are the ones that fall the hardest," Schitzo whispered in my ear.

"Keep them in check," I told him, heading back for the stairs. "The Covenant don't have infinite ammo Pavel, they're at least as bad as we are, that fuel rod was their last."

"We don't know that Frank," he grunted. "Sasha might've killed whoever fired, but there might be more."

"There better not. You saw what they did to those Tortoises."

"Yeah, I saw," I snapped. I had gone on without sleep for longer stretches of time, but I hadn't had to fight a battle of such intensity and ferocity for such an extended period of time. A human body, enhanced or not, could only take so much.

"We need to stay cool," Pavel said slowly.

"Yeah, yeah," I dismissed him. "I know… Back to your men."

"Yes, sir," he told me nodding and hefting his M247L.

"And Pavel…"

"Yeah?"

"Tell them to fix bayonets."

He nodded grimly and climbed downstairs.

I made myself climb back to the fourth floor and then to the attic. There was a tiny little window up there, useful for nothing except to be looked at from the outside. It was only large enough to fit your head through, but it provided a very good view of the street in front of us. I tried to keep my firing to a minimum, but the beginning of the battle had drained our ammunition reserves before we realized that this might last longer than just a few hours.

"Sir," Marvin greeted me. "I heard the explosion."

I nodded. "D'Arc was hurt. It's bad."

"Damn," he murmured. "We can't take much more of this."

"The ammunition situation is the same all throughout what's left of our lines. Peterson requested additional reinforcements from Udinia, but I don't know what he was told."

"We can't take much more of this," he repeated, checking a magazine for ammo. "But then again, neither can they."

I nodded and started looking through the window, careful to hang back in case a jackal saw me peeking. The houses had been damaged before, but now most of them were flattened to the ground from the continuous Wraith strikes and plasma grenades. The covvies had treated us like shit during those first couple of hours, but when we managed to coordinate an effective defense we returned the favor and managed to destroy most of their armored support as well as their air support. It had cost us our rockets and most of the ammunition on the Tortoises. Then the covvies had taken out the APCs in retaliation with shoulder-mounted weaponry. Then we killed the bearers of the fuel rods and the Covenant rushed the house that had killed the most. After every Marine inside was dead we in turn made sure that the Covenant couldn't return to the safety of their lines. It became sort of a cycle of revenge, Dotsenko's latest insubordination was only the latest example.

"I see an elite," I said absent-mindedly. "Two plasma rifles plus one strapped on its thighs."

"I call that overkill," Marv said.

"I call that low ammo, pirates used to carry several pistols back in the day."

"Sea pirates, isn't that a thing," Marvin chuckled. "It seems so… antiquated."

"Agreed." I traced the elite with my scope, zeroing on his head. "Why'd they give him three weapons?"

"Maybe he's on a mission."

"That's what I'm afraid of, but it's wearing blue armor."

"Does it fit?" Marv asked.

"What?"

"Does it fit? If it fits perfectly then it's probably just an attempt to get us to waste ammunition on a minor target."

"Only a hingehead would think this honorable."

"If it doesn't fit it might be a more skilled elite disguising itself."

I looked back at Marv. "Huh." I looked back through my scope. "Armor seems a little loose."

"Your call, sir."

The elite moved carefully, with the look of someone who knew that he was being watched. Despite that it didn't appear too frightened. I wasn't an expert on alien behavior, but I could tell whenever an elite was angry or a jackal frustrated. Hell, my livelihood depended on it.

The elite had what to me seemed like a look of determination.

"This one's on you Marv."

I fired three bursts at the elites head, clicking the trigger three times in one second. The shields flickered and died after the third burst. Before the shields failed completely I had already switched to single fire and aimed at the elite's head. Another squeeze of the trigger later the elite collapsed, kicking out with one leg before its body realized that it was dead.

"Thirteen rounds left," I muttered angrily. "I don't believe I've ever been in this situation…"

"First time for everything, sir," Marvin said uncomfortably calmly. "I'm down to my last three bullets."

"If you get three kills out of those I'm buying you a drink."

"I'll hold you to that, sir," he told me.

"But I'm still ordering you to fire only on elites."

He stood up. "Of course, wouldn't be a challenge otherwise."

Three jackals passed by in less than an hour, I was tempted to put a bullet through their ugly heads, but they weren't worth it. Marv took advantage of the opportunity to take a nap, but he was awakened by a Marine screaming. The sound had come out of nowhere, so it probably meant that an elite or a jackal had sneaked past the man's friends and cut him up. Sad way to go, but it had become the standard modus operandi for both the Covenant and us for the past few hours. I muttered a curse under my breath as Marv complained about not being able to get a moment's rest.

"Sir, we've got a squad of jackals moving up, they're wielding plasma rifles."

"Keep an eye on them," I told Caboose. "Don't shoot unless… you know."

"Yes, sir."

An explosion in the distance broke the relative silence for a few seconds before it faded away, then everything was quiet once more. From this distance I couldn't tell whether it was a human or alien explosive. Even if I could've, I wouldn't have known if it was a good or bad thing.

"Lieutenant Castillo, do you copy, are you there?" my radio crackled. I hadn't had any radio contact from Command for over eight hours.

"I'm here," I replied. "What is it?"

"Good news, for once," the man on the other end of the line said. "Of a sort."

"Do tell," I said, not wanting to set my hopes to high.

"The left flank has cut off the Covenant forces from their only source of ammunition in the valley."

"What?" I asked, jumping. "I thought the left was all but collapsed."

I could picture the man nodding. "Yes Lieutenant, but they pulled off a last second counter attack that caught the Covenant by surprise. Reports are scarce, but it seems that the troops rallied around Captain Jordan and commandeered a Covenant Wraith as well as several alien weapons. They pushed through the enemy lines which happened to be made up of tired and wounded soldiers that believed that they ahd just won the engagement."

"I'll be damned. Were Darbinian's men there?"

"Negative Lieutenant. They're still helping hold our right flank, doing a rather good job at it too."

"Yeah, yeah, the explosion?"

"That was their ammunition dump blowing up."

"That's fucking great," I said. "Where's Peterson?"

"The Major is coordinating with Captain Darbinian on the right flank, it's up to them to keep us from getting too flanked."

"Too flanked," I chuckled. "Did any of the men survive their charge through the enemy lines?"

"Negative El-tee, the entire battalion was wiped out."

"Eleven hundred men, damn… You said they rallied around a captain?"

"Yes, sir. Everybody above him was killed."

"And the Colonel on the East was KIA too… is Darbinian in charge there?"

"Yes, sir."

"Huh, I bet he loves that."

"I wouldn't know."

"Right, sorry. Thank you for the good news, is there anything else?"

"Negative, sir. Major Peterson just thought you would appreciate the morale boost."

"Damn right I do. Castillo out."

I smiled and moved away from the tiny window.

"You look happy, sir," Marv told me. "What was that all about?"

"Good news," I said. "We might be out of ammunition, but the Covenant just got their ammo dump blown up."

"The explosion?" Marv asked. "How?"

"Brave men died," I said with a shrug. "The left flank is gone."

"So we're exposed to anything that comes from the west?"

"There's not much left in the west apparently, but if the Covenant move their troops fast enough we might find ourselves in some trouble."

"Well, that won't happen for a while, I'll go downstairs and tell the rest."

"You do that," I told him. "Make it quick though."

Marvin climbed out of the attic and disappeared. A few moments later I could hear laughter coming from the bottom floor and the smile returned to my face. My men would appreciate the good news, and so would all the Marines in Sparatus. My smile briefly turned into a grin before I heard scratching on the ceiling. I grabbed my rifle and looked up at it. I heard some more scratching and followed it, moving quietly. I wanted to shoot through the ceiling so badly…

"Shit, shit, shit," I muttered.

The ceiling behind me collapsed and a jackal came down with it. I turned around but the bird batted my rifle aside before jumping at me. He had a plasma grenade on his other hand. It raised its ugly paw in an attempt to stick the grenade into my face but I managed to hit it in the beak, stunning it for an instant. The distraction bought me enough time to twist my body underneath and kick it off. The jackal flew backwards and slammed into the wall before the plasma grenade detonated.

"Phew," I said.

The floor groaned and collapsed, bringing down with it a section of the wall as well as my unfortunate ass. I crashed down into the fourth floor and felt a weight on my back. I realized that it wasn't only rubble when it screeched.

I turned around just in time to place my forearms in the way of a knife. Out of all the Covenant species, only the jackals and brutes used metallic cutting weapons and even then jackals preferred to use crystal like blades that detonated when they stabbed you.

The knife dug into the forearm armor, but it couldn't cut through the ballistic armor. I grabbed its wrist and ahoved its arm sideways before throwing it off me with a burst of superhuman strength. I stood up and reached for my sidearm before I remembered that it was empty and useless. I instead went for the knife on my chest and threw it at the jackal.

The fucking bird somehow managed to block it with its ugly blade. It fucking blocked a thrown knife while lying on the floor after having been thrown into a wall. Somewhere in the back of my head I found myself congratulating the scarred vulture for its quick reflexes. The rest of my head urged me to kill the bird even if it had a semblance of skill in hand-to-hand combat.

"Lieutenant!" one of my men shouted as I drew my knife from my boot.

"Don't shoot!" I ordered just as O'Malley and Hoff busted through the door, their rifles zeroed in on the jackal's head. "Don't shoot!"

The jackal was on its feet now, twirling the weird knife on its hand and eyeing us warily. I noted that it did not reach for the plasma pistol on its thigh. It suddenly lunged at me, but I parried its slashing attempt by placing my forearm against his. I countered but the jackal swatted my stab away with its own blade. We traded a few more blows to the same effect; it would block my knife with his and I would block his attacks at its forearm or wrist. Different styles, but the bird could fight.

Hoff lunged to bayonet it but the jackal twisted around and deflected his rifle before slashing at him. Hoff jumped backwards but was slashed in the hand and dropped his rifle. I hit the jackal with a kick to the leg, but as it fell down it swiped my feet from under me and jumped away from O'Malley's bayonet. I jumped back to my feet and brought my knife in a downward slash with all my strength. The jackal's arm faltered, but the dull side of his blade slammed against his beak armor and deflected my strike.

Sometimes it was easy to forget that most jackals were over six feet tall and had a wiry strength that would make them fearsome opponents. That, coupled with their beaks and claws turned them into very dangerous foes to fight up close. This one just happened to have a talent for knife fighting, making it even more annoying.

The thing rolled away and slashed at my thigh, hitting my pistol. I kicked at it, hitting it in the sternum, but the jackal held on to my leg and shoved me backwards, sending me into the pile of rubble from the explosion. I fell on my ass and could feel my blood rising in anger, but the fall gave me an idea. I grabbed onto a rock and stood up, a left-handed throw wasn't a guaranteed hit, but it would have to do. My arm flew back and then forward, letting go of the rock. The red brick hit the jackal in the beak, making an ugly noise. The bird stumbled backwards, its beak broken in what appeared to be a gruesomely painful injury.

It tried bringing its knife up but I had already stabbed it through the heart.

As the jackal collapsed I turned to see O'Malley looking at Hoff's hand injury.

"Lotta good you two idiots did."

O'Malley looked up but said nothing.

"Sorry sir," Hoff spoke up, sounding suitably ashamed. "I'm just not used to this kind of fighting. I feel like we ought to be carrying swords and shields."

Next to him O'Malley fervently nodded to signal her agreement.

I rolled my eyes. "Get that bandaged, and please don't make yourself look like an idiot again."

"Especially not in front of a girl," O'Malley added.

"Since when are you a girl Abri?" he asked her. "You're one of the– ow!"

"My, my, does it hurt too much?"

"Shut up," Hoff grumbled. "Let's go."

From the hole in the roof Marvin called out. "I leave for one minute and see what happens."

"Shut up and help me up," I ordered, picking up my thrown knife. "Asshole."

"Your rifle, sir," he reminded me.

"Right," I grunted, reaching for the weapon. "Not much left in this one."

"Not much left in any of us, sir," Marv replied with a small shrug after he pulled me up. "But we'll outlast them… we're good at that."

I nodded, wondering whether that would be humanity's way from now on. Outlasting an alien juggernaut hell-bent on exterminating us. It certainly seemed like it would end that way, they'd take planet after planet until there were no more humans left to fight back.

_No. They'll get tired of dying by the thousands soon enough. Even if they don't they'll meet a wall at Reach._

"Reach?" Schitzo laughed. "Please, they're just about done with this place and it's been less than half a year. It might take them twice as long as that to get through the Epsilon Eridani fleet, but it will happen."

There was a tone of reluctance and finality to him that I did not enjoy.

_No. It won't come to that._

* * *

><p><strong>May 28, 2549 (UNSC Calendar)**

**Sparatus, Paris IV, Paris System**

"That was our last bullet," Miranda said finally.

"Was it worth it?" Hoff asked her.

"Damn right it was," Ramirez said. "That ultra led the–"

"We all know what he did James," Lizzo said tiredly. "Let's worry about something else for now. Sandor is supposed to be getting here soon. Maybe he'll bring ammunition."

"Yeah right," Carver joined the conversation. "Maybe he'll bring knives."

"Like we need those," Ramirez replied, drawing his own large combat knife.

I let the conversation fade to a buzz in the back of my head as I limped downstairs. I winced halfway through the fancy stairwell and gripped the railing tightly. I hadn't been hit in a while, but my whole body was just tired. Some part of myself wondered whether a good night's sleep in a fancy mattress would do while the other told me that I would never recover from this feeling.

I hopped down the last few steps and then slid down a hole in the floor and into the basement. From down there I looked up at the six consecutive holes going from basement to attic. Not for the first time I thought it a miracle the mortar punching a hole through the house hadn't seriously hurt anybody.

"Sir?"

"Yeah," I grunted.

"How's d'Arc doing?"

Sutton looked down at the unconscious Sarah and huffed out a breath of frustration. "I removed the steel bar," he told me, pointing at the item in question, "and patched her up with nylon and a needle that I found here. Disinfected the wound with rubbing alcohol on the bathroom's first aid kit…"

Sutton sighed and rubbed his head.

"Is she all right?"

"Being impaled clean through isn't really all that bad as most people would imagine," Sutton told me. "The rod did some damage to her intestines and liver, but nothing too serious. People used to survive injuries like this one in the middle ages."

"Sutton, get to the point."

"It was the concussive blast, sir. The explosion sent splinters and shrapnel through her body. Again, nothing serious, but the blast itself played hell with her internal organs. Best as I can tell one of her lungs is partially collapsed and there might be internal bruising." He paused hesitantly. "I don't know El-tee, I can't make a diagnostic like this."

I looked at d'Arc. Her chest rose and fell slowly. The problem was that when she inhaled her chest barely rose. Even without her armor on it was hard to notice any movement on her. Her forehead was covered in a thin layer of sweat and her face contorted in an ugly grimace of pain.

"Can you make it easier for her?"

"We're all out of painkillers," Sutton told me. "Sarah's on her own now."

"Fever?"

"Yes."

"Antibiotics?"

"I'm dosing her with as many as I dare," he said, "but they don't seem to be working. If we didn't have any meds she would've died last night."

I looked back down at her. "Will she make it?"

"If we don't get to a hospital soon she's as good as dead. If we do… it's too hard to tell."

I removed my helmet and ran my hand through my hair. For the past five months I had grown an unusually long mop of hair. I hadn't washed it in almost as long, it felt greasy and disgusting, but the feeling of it wasn't what kept my attention. D'Arc was a good Helljumper, a sweet girl too. Pavel told me that she had something serious with a guy back in Reach. The guy was a little bit older than she was, but he had served and finished his contract. That made him a good man in my books.

I didn't want her to die, she was young and under my command.

"Us young folks are the ones that pay the price, eh?" Sutton said humorlessly.

"I don't think I'm that young anymore," I said, sitting down on my helmet. "I've been fighting for a long time, Sutton. Longer than most. I don't know how much longer I can keep up with this shit."

"Sir, with all due respect, you're wrong. Thirty four isn't old by any standard, not even professional sports and I'm willing to bet everything I have that you'll outlive us all, older or not."

I chuckled quietly. "Outlive you all… If that were to happen I don't think it'd be by much. With this war and all, if I outlive you Sutton you know what that means."  
>He shrugged. "We all joined to die."<p>

"We joined to die," I agreed, remembering my own words. "To die…"

"And kick ass as we go," he added.

"Words to live by," I said. "And Sutton?"

"Yes, sir?"

"Never tell me I'm wrong again."

"Understood, lieutenant."

I patted him in the shoulder and gave d'Arc a long look before climbing back out of the basement. I don't even know why I bothered with carrying my rifle with me. It was just dead weight, barely useless as a club. My men were all in the same condition as I was, tired, frustrated, and angry. Yet they were determined. I could see the fire in their eyes that told me they would fight to the death, kicking ass as they went.

"Grigori."

"Yes?" he asked, lazily looking up at me.

"Get some planks or bedposts, sharpen them."

"Spears?"

I nodded. "It _has_ been a while since things were this interesting, let's add a little bit of spice to it."

Caboose nodded and pulled himself up. "Yes, sir. Looking forward to using them."

"So am I."

I was surprised at the quality of spears that my men made. I was more surprised at the eagerness to use them. Sandor came up to deliver them, limping slightly. He had a big grin on his face and carried with him three makeshift spears, one of which had his knife firmly tied to the top.

"Sandor, glad to see you on your feet," Marvin said, clapping him in the shoulder. "Limping?"

"Little bit," he said. "But it's a lot better now. Hey sir!"

"Sandor," I greeted, raising an arm. "Got ammunition?"

He shook his head. "Nope, they stripped me of ammo before sending me to the front, greedy bastards. Anyways, here's your pointy sticks."  
>I grabbed the spear and noticed that it would probably snap the first time I used it. The point had been sharpened with someone's knife and would indeed go through a body without too much trouble, but a good old-fashioned steel-tipped spear would've worked fine for me. Even better, a box of ammunition and a six pack of Eposz Lager. Not too much to ask for, especially considering that it was the military's duty to provide me with ammunition and a six pack wasn't really all that expensive.<p>

"So… we throw them?" Marv asked, hefting his stick. "I mean, I can handle a stick well enough, but I think that I'd be good at the thrusting thing, not throwing."

I smiled.

"I don't know how good this one would handle," Sandor said, examining the knife tied to his stick. "Little longer, more reach, but seems like it's dangerous to handle. People don't always like longer, you know?"

Marvin nodded. "I like the length of this stick, long enough but not long enough that it hangs downwards on its own weight."

"I know what you mean," Sandor said seriously. "But should I use the pointy end to stab or just slash with the blade of it?"

"Generally I think that sticks are supposed to go in point first. Faster is better."

"Not really," Sandor shook his head in disagreement. "Slow prolongs the pleasure."

"You mean pain?"

"Yes, but their pain is my pleasure."

There was an uncomfortable pause.

"That analogy just went down a very dark place," I said. "And I've got the biggest dick in the room."

Sandor tried and failed to hold in laughter while Marv simply chuckled slightly in the way of a man that had been beat and wasn't bothered by it. They talked for a little bit mire, mainly about what Sandor had been doing for the past couple of days. He was pissed that he hadn't been able to fight, but assures us that he was ready to make up for his absence during the constant assaults.

"Well, gotta guard downstairs," he said with a small shrug. "Second floor is reduced to a room now…"

"Surprised the house is still standing?" I asked.

"You have no idea," he told me. "Anyways, see you in a few, sir. Marv."

"See ya," Marvin said. "Hey, ask Miri whether she thinks she'll be good handling that stick."

"She's in the same room as Staff Konstantinov."

"On second thought," Marv amended, "ask O'Malley. I'd tell you to ask Andrea, but…"

"She'd eat me alive," Sandor said. "See ya."

"Never thought I'd see the day where we'd have to use spears to fight the covvies," Marv said after the door was closed. I mean, I didn't think bashing a hingehead's skull in with a rock was too far-fetched, but actually _building _a spear…"

I kicked my own spear. "Brave new world we live in."

"Tell me about it. Hey sir, shouldn't we head downstairs? Another attempt to come through the roof is unlikely and we can just guard the stairwell there."

I shrugged. "If you think it advisable."

Marv froze. "Is that a trick question?"

"I don't think it even was a question," I told him. "And besides, the answer is a simple one."

"Which would be…"

I raised my eyebrow slowly. "Really? Marv… You can't make up your own mind?"

"We should… stay?"

"Hell no," I said, standing up. "Set a guard on the room downstairs and the attic stairwell and let's get it over with. You know what, you stay up here, guarding the attic."

"Of course…"

"What was that?" I snapped.

"Nothing, sir."

"Thought so."

I walked down the attic and stepped on the fourth floor. The floor was covered with dust and pieces of the ceiling, and the lighting paneling as well as the light bulbs were destroyed. The glass cracked under my feet as I walked. The walls were pockmarked with holes with sizes ranging from thumb-width to as big around as my fist. Most of the enemy counter-fire had been directed at this floor in the opening day of the battle, in an attempt to hit Miri or Hoff, our deadly sharpshooters. The house must've looked like a cheese grater from the outside had half of it not been missing. It probably just looked like a crumbling mess.

The third floor was in better shape. Only one of the rooms was completely inaccessible and the rest of them all had mostly full ceilings. While it was almost as riddled with holes as the fourth floor there were less big ones. Most of the heavier weapons had been directed at the fourth floor as opposed to here. The walling was torn and hanging, the doors were hanging by the hinges and a few of the window frames had been shattered into small particles from all the concentrated plasma fire.

The second floor, unlike the other two, was damaged mostly by plasma weaponry. Scorch marks marred the walls and not needle and carbine holes. The energy weapons had lit small fires a couple of times, but after we removed the drapes and beds the fires had stopped being an issue. I had to step over ripped bed covers and a mattress to cross the main hallway.

Pavel was sitting at the bottom of the stairwell, looking disgustedly at the spear over his knees. His was shorter than mine and had been carved so that the pointy end had barbs. It looked like a great weapon for repeated stabbing. Pavel, however, seemed unsure of how to even look at it. A barbed spear was all good and well if you wanted to do some harpoon hunting in the sea, but the elites weren't exactly analogous to fish.

"There's always bigger fish," I muttered.

"What was that?" Pavel asked me. "I see you got your wooden stick."

I examined the spear on my hand. "Should do the trick."

"Next thing you know we're going to be jousting with Mongooses as steeds."

"Pavel," I said, placing my hand on his shoulder gently. "Who the fuck even says steeds anymore?"

Pavel brandished his spear angrily, shaking it in his fist. "Hey, calm down Mr. In-Style."

"At least my haircut isn't an outdated one," I snapped back.

"We have the same haircut!"

"Your buzz cut is so 2548."

"Really, Frank?" Pavel asked in a droll voice. "Really?"

"Movement!"

"Movement!"

Both Ramirez and Lizzo called out the warning at the same time. I heard the cocking of rifles followed by curses and mutterings of anger. I hefted my spear and loosened my knives on their sheathes. It would certainly be an interesting thing… a full-scale physical action against the Covenant.

Interesting, but not fun, mind you.

"Shit, shit, shit!" Lizzo called out. "We've got some serious troop movement, they're preparing to storm our lines!"

I heard similar shouts and warning calls coming from nearby platoons and squads, all of them saying the same thing. The Covenant were attacking.

"Handle the big ones first!" I said. "Remember that some of them might still have ammunition!"

"Go for the mouth on the elites," Pavel shouted. "Neck and armpits if that one fails. Shield batteries or no that armor can stop these flimsy sticks."

"Don't engage in one-to-one unless you're Pavel, Marv, Caboose, or myself," I added. "Swarm the big ones, terminate the smaller ones with extreme prejudice."

"Always loved that expression," Hoff said, coming down the stairs. "Extreme prejudice."

"Because that's how women reject you?" Sandor asked him.

Hoff laughed loudly and stopped abruptly. "We can make a contest out of it next time we get some shore leave."

"They're half a block away!" Lizzo shouted. "Energy swords!"

"Damn," I muttered. "Throwing your spear might not be such a bad idea."

"Maybe we should just run, eh?" O'Malley suggested jokingly. "Leave Sasha as bait."

"Hey!" Dotsenko shouted back. "I thought you cared!"

The rest of the platoon laughed at his theatricality, but their laughs were nervous, empty. I moved up to the front door and ordered my men to cover the windows and other points of entry. The two heavy wooden doors were both closed and barred with an equally heavy table. An elite would knock them open in perhaps to heavy kicks.

"They're just outside!" Lizzo cried.

The doors shook just as two elites burst through the windows. Before they could even get a footing they were swarmed. The one on my left was impaled completely through the neck by Caboose just as Carver got a spear underneath the elites armpit. The other elite on my right received a spear to the gut, courtesy of Sandor. The elite doubled over on instinct, letting go of its energy sword. Miri and Hoff immediately helped Sandor kill the elite with their own spears. Driving them through the hingehead's neck and upper chest.

As the second elite fell the doors burst open and a large elite came bellowing at everyone. The wide open jaws presented an irresistible target, and the red-armored elite soon found itself with a spear coming in through the roof of its mouth and out the back of its head. I smiled as I yanked the spear and the alien collapsed, giving way to a bunch of grunts and jackals with kitchen knives and needle cutlasses.

I took three frantic steps back as I repositioned my spear. Marv and Dotsenko each hit a jackal in the chest, hitting the lungs and forcing them to the floor.

Dotsenko was tackled by a grunt and stabbed on the thigh with a small blade. He grunted and brought down his fist on the grunt's head, knocking it to the floor. Ramirez stabbed the grunt as it fell and helped his best friend back, using him to lean on.

I barely got to raise my spear in time to block a jackal from taking a bite off my neck. Its teeth closed on the spear, biting on the shaft. I twisted it sideways and kicked the jackal's ribs. As it doubled over I yanked my spear back and smacked it on the neck before swinging it around and driving the point through its chest.

"Elite!"

My men immediately grouped themselves tight together, spears aimed at the elite in question. The alien in question was a big one, with an energy sword on one hand and an energy dagger on the other one. Marv jumped forward and probed at it before jumping backwards to avoid a swing.

Pavel threw his spear at the elite, hitting it in the chest. The wooden spear bounced off the armor with barely a pause and the elite roared, jumping in his direction and swinging its sword wildly. O'Malley jumped backwards and Carver tossed her behind him with one hand before stabbing at the elite. The spear slipped on the chest armor but carved into the unprotected arm, eliciting another roar from the elite.

My men decided that a dozen of us cowering at the sight of an elite was slightly embarrassing and rushed the alien. Dotsenko stabbed it in the leg just as Ramirez tackled the elite, making it stagger and driving it against the wall. Sandor stabbed it through the wrist, driving the elite's hand into the wall and rendering its sword arm useless. The elite tried to hit the Helljumpers closest to it with its energy dagger, but Miri ducked underneath a swipe and came up, stabbing the alien through the armpit and out the shoulder.

I almost laughed at the sight of the elite pinned on so many sides, but Andrea got it out of its misery with a well-placed stab through the neck.

The rest of the grunts and jackals had kept their distance behind the elite and seemed to panic when we killed the last of their warrior-caste leaders. We certainly didn't give them time to fall back, instead stabbing and slashing and snapping necks before they could leave the house.

"Now what?" Dotsenko asked, nursing his injured leg.

Sandor was already moving. He disappeared through the door and let out a war cry. Hoff and Marv went behind him, probably trying to stop him from doing something too stupid. Ramirez followed them with O'Malley and Caboose close behind.

"Well what are you standing there for?!" I asked, running after my men.

"Kill them all!" Pavel shouted.

The first thing I ran into was Andrea. She was punching a jackal on the ground with both fists. Her gloves were bloodied and the jackal's head was a bloody mess.

"Get up!" I shouted, jumping over her. "Up!"

I slammed into an elite. The poor alien didn't see me coming and tripped over its own legs, falling to the ground. I raised my spear with both hands and drove it through the back of its neck with all my strength. I yanked and turned at the same time I drew my knife. I barely had time to kick at a grunt, driving it backwards. The grunt staggered before Pavel brought down his knife on its head, cleaving through the skull.

"Behind you!" he warned.

I turned around and caught a jackal in the shoulder. The spear snapped and the jackal fell, but I drove the broken end through the jackal's right eye, leaving it there and pulling the tip free of its shoulder.

"Frank!" Pavel called.

He jumped back as an elite punched at him. I moved in to join him, the broken spear in one hand and my knife on the other one. The elite in front of us looked wild-eyed and angry. There were several bandages around its belly and arms. Most of them looked like they came from bed sheets or ripped shirts.

Before it could move a head-sized rock hit it in the side of the head. Marvin jumped at the elite immediately after it fell to the ground, picked up his rock, and brought it back down in its head. The elite jerked its legs once and died.

"Well that was… anticlimactic," Pavel said.

"That's a word we don't hear very often," I told him. "Stand ready."

A plasma shot rang out and I heard a cry of pain. Andy collapsed, grabbing onto her hip with both hands. O'Malley and Carver jumped over her screaming body and drove back two jackals that had swarmed in for the kill while Sandor, Hoff, and Miri cornered the elite that had fired at her and stabbed it more times than was strictly necessary.

"Andy's hit again," Schitzo complained. "I swear, she's as big a drain on UNSC resources as a whole battle group."

"Drag her back inside!" I ordered. "Get her in the basement with Sutton and d'Arc!"

As Carver dragged Andrea back to relative safety Dotsenko and Ramirez engaged a jackal with a functioning shield-gauntlet. They took turns stabbing at it. The jackal had to quickly switch between high and low guards without a possibility for counterattack. Dotsenko got an attack past the shields, but the jackal pinned it to the ground. Still, Dotsenko was a lot stronger than the jackal and raised the spear violently, forcing the jackal's arm up with it. Ramirez gave a shout of triumph and drove his spear through the jackal's stomach, twisting and turning it before yanking it backwards.

I jumped back as a grunt slashed at me with its claws. Before I could stab at it another of the gas-suckers jumped at my back and started clawing at my shoulders and neck. A few of its attempts got through the thick undersuit, but it was its weight that brought me down. I managed to twist so that I landed on top of it and promptly rolled so that I was in a position to stab it. As soon as I got that over with I turned to face the other grunt, but Pavel had already taken care of him, slashing its throat clean through with his knive.

"Your spear?" I asked.

He shrugged and picked up a fist-sized rock from the ground before throwing it at an elite. The elite blocked it with its forearm, but it could block Hoff's next fastball. The helmet was dented from the force of the impact and the elite fell right on his ass.

"Maybe you should've been a pitcher!" Sandor told him as he stabbed the stunned elite through the chest.

"Baseball's for sissies," Hoff shouted back at him.

The way he threw the next brick you would've thought he was being sarcastic. A grunt's skull caved in just as a jackal dug a knife into Miranda's arm. She cried out and jerked her arm backwards, taking the knife with her. The jackal tried to hop back but Sandor slashed at its throat with his spear, the knife went through cleanly and nearly decapitated the jackal.

"Back to the house!" I shouted, poking at a pair of jackals that were snarling at me.

"Back!"

I hadn't realized it, but we had moved pretty far away from the entrance to our house. My men had the wounded place themselves behind a loose line and slowly moved backward as the disorganized Covenant tried to get past us. They almost did two or three times, but we managed to enter without any further injuries.

"Goddamn!" I shouted, closing the doors behind me. "Bar those doors!"

"Cover the windows!" Pavel's voice boomed.

My men slammed the doors shut and poked at the covvies that tried to come through the windows before we moved furniture up to cover them. A few of the Covenant soldiers attempted to bring them down before giving up and deciding that they probably had more important things to do than storm a single house. I had Andy and Miranda moved up to the second floor.

"Sutton, can we move d'Arc?"

"We _can_, but I wouldn't really recommend it."

"Why not?"

"She might panic."

I rolled my eyes. "Do it, we can defend the stairs easily."

"Only when compared to the hole in the basement," Sutton muttered. "I'll get her upstairs right away."

"Be quick about it." I looked around at the flurry of activity, some of my men were grabbing other pieces of wood or steel rods to use as close-quarters weapons.

"Miranda, are you alright?" I called out, climbing up the stairs.

"Yes, sir," she replied, her voice breaking. "It hurts."

"Can you hold a knife?"

She nodded. "Andy?"

"I can't even stand, sir," she said drily. "Really?"

"Make a crowsbow or something," I told her. "You'll just be stomped to death if we're all killed."

"Great," she muttered through clenched teeth.

One look at her injury showed that the plasma had dissipated when hitting the armor and had been further destabilized when it made contact with the bone. The problem with it was that a large portion of the skin had been burnt pretty badly. Sutton had already washed the wound, but it was still exposed to the open air. In a way, she had been lucky, had there been any live ammo on her belt they surely would've detonated, injuring her further.

I ran back down and helped my men block the doors. The windows had been covered with a wardrobe and a large table before they piled some debris in between them and the walls. While the covvies could easily move those, they couldn't move them so much that they could jump through without any effort, instead they had to squeeze through them, facing dozens of angry spears from both directions. After two elites had tried to bull their way through the windows and died for it they concentrated on the door. Those they could open and have some maneuvering room for attacking us.

"Hold the door!" I ordered, tackling it back shut after a particularly hard kick.

"The hinges can't take it," Pavel cursed. "Frank, we have to pull back to the stairs."

"A little bit longer!"

The doors were kicked and all of us were thrown backwards before jumping back towards it, using out weight to hold them closed. I could see that another two or three kicks would remove the heavy wooden doors from the hinges and then nothing would stop the covvies from coming through.

"All UNSC units this is Major Reyes with Army Airborne, call in your positions immediately."

I complied on instinct, not even wondering how the hell that man had gotten here and had reliable radio in this jammer-filled town.

"Heads up," the major warned.

A loud bang drew my attention and as I looked back over my shoulder I saw a UNSC resupply pod behind me. It had come through the hole on the ceiling. As I looked at it with wide eyes I heard the beautiful sound of heavy caliber gunfire hitting flesh and concrete. The sound seemed so alien even if I had only last heard it a day or so ago.

"It's shotgun shells!" Ramirez shouted.

"Out of the way!" Caboose ordered, shoving him to the side and grabbing a bunch. He ran towards his shotgun, which had been propped up against the stairwell, and started loading it. "Let them come!"

All of us immediately stepped away from the door and to the side. A massive elite with armor that looked like it had been through hell and back again stepped through. Caboose gave him a suitable welcome, any UNSC serviceman would've been proud of the way he decapitated it with a blast of buckshot to the face. He immediately followed up with a blast to a jackal and another to a grunt. Three dead aliens in half as many seconds wasn't bad at all, especially when we hadn't had the least amount of gunpowder on us.

"MA5 ammo," Ramirez called, tossing magazines to the ones that had assault rifles. "Let's make them pay for it."

Before I could even process what had just happened my men were slapping fresh magazines into their rifles and firing at the Covenant. Even then I couldn't help but notice that the bursts they used were a lot shorter than usual, even though that issue was no longer a problem they still had ingrained into their minds.

More thudding noises filled my ears and Caboose immediately said that more resupply pods had landed right outside the house.

"Pistols, sir!" he shouted back.

"Clear the area," I ordered. "Form a perimeter and don't let your guard down!"

The few of my men who had loaded weapons stepped back outside, gunning down anything that didn't have olive drab or ODST blacks on. I moved up to the nearest supply pod and grabbed two pistols, Army issue.

"Pavel, catch!"

He caught it and immediately nailed a grunt in the head with it. "Damn that feels good."  
>I threw two other pistols at Lizzo and Sandor before grabbing the last one for myself. I aimed at a jackal and fired a single shot, hitting it in the chest. My men slowly spread out, taking weapons from the pods. I hit two grunts and helped bring down an elite. Soon enough our perimeter was made larger and we linked up with a Marine unit.<p>

"Lieutenant!" the sergeant in charge called up to me. "Good to see you!"

"Same thing," I replied happily, clapping him in the back. "They finally sent reinforcements."

"Indeed they did," he said, looking up at the Falcon gunships and Pelicans making strafing runs on the Covenant soldiers. "God bless them."

"Sir, found some BR55 ammo!" Marv said, tossing me a belt of the 9.5mm bullets.

I looked down at them and grabbed my rifle from over my shoulder, slapping a fresh magazine inside.

"De aquí soy," I murmured with a smile. "Come on! Let's take back this town!"

* * *

><p><em>Not a proofread chapter. I just corrected the red squiggles and fixed a few small things. Forgive any mistakes. I'd also like you to forgive the delay, but this week has been killer. I hate burdening you with my personal life, but I'm two weeks from finals and all my teachers decided that it was the time to leave a bunch of essays and annoying investigations. I also happen to be participating in a Model United Nations and have been researching my topic like crazy lest I risk getting kicked out of it (I'm traveling to New York for it, bitches). Other than that I'm moving out of Mexico and into the US and nobody told me that I had to take the SAT to get into college so I'm taking some intensive courses that take five hours from tuesdays and thursdays. And I was really disappointed with today's Arrow episode and the Game of Thrones wasn't all that great and for some reason I've started watching Downton Abbey but haven't been able to progress with it because of just how fucking busy I am.<em>

_Sorry. I promise not to do that ever again, I hate reading it in post-chapter notes in other fics and I know that you guys do too, but I need you to understand what I'm going through right now._

_*deep breath*_

_Well, pretty sweet chapter, little bit of gunfighting and a lot of spears and knives. We also get the UNSC Army Airborne to show up. Just a heads up, they won't really be big players in this battle, but will have more appearances in Reach._

_We also have one marvelous jackal that gave as good as he got before, you know, dying. Two awesome jackals in a row... must be a phase._

**_The Critical One:_**_all the way to Earth._

**_alricstrife: _**_I like how you think_

**_FlamingDVD:_** _Yeah, I'm actually doing that, the problem is that I had this campaign all planned out and actually got some ideas as I wrote it down. I even had to save up the good ones for Reach. It won't be much longer until Reach, worry not._

**_TrickyNick20:_**_ You have my respect. Thanks for putting up with this for such a long time and even more thanks for actually enjoying it._

_I'll try to update more often gents (and ladies?), but it might be awhile before I really warm up. As always, I ask for your reviews in a way that seams eager but not too eager to hear what you think while cleverly disguising the fact that I love seeing my review count rise and get a kick out of all the email notifications._

_Yeah... erm... Feliz Cinco de Mayo, where we beat the toughest army in the world at a time and then got conquered for it. Viva México!_

_Stay strong._

_-casquis_


	181. Out

Chapter CLXXXI: Out

**June 17, 2549 (UNSC Calendar)/three weeks later**

**Sparatus, Paris IV, Paris System**

* * *

><p><em>"You can't win all your fights."<em>

* * *

><p>Major Reyes, simply put, was full of himself.<p>

To put things into perspective: Darbinian and I stopped snapping at each other in order to snap at him. He was that big an asshole. The fact that he never passed an opportunity that he saved all of our asses was also a big factor in our relationship. Plus he had shit personality, so there's that. At least I wouldn't have to interact with him just yet.

When the Army Airborne came in they brought with them a few dozen Pelicans. Some of those were packed with soldiers, but most of them were full of ammunition crates, fuel cells, medical supplies, food, and other equipment that had proved invaluable to our defense of Sparatus for the last couple of weeks. In addition they had also delivered a few additional Warthogs and Scorpion tanks to help make this shadow of a town impenetrable. Despite all of that most of the Marines that had fought here before those pricks arrived appreciated only one thing. The ammo. Marines were supposed to carry a lighter load in compliance with our more 'do the job quickly' mentality, but even now it was evident that absolutely every survivor was carrying as much ammunition as they could.

I myself had an additional bandolier strapped across my chest. While it did increase my overall intimidation factor and did in fact provide space for five additional magazines, it was heavy. It was just heavy enough that it annoyed me to have it on me at all times. Caboose and Sandor had two sets of bandoliers, one with shotgun shells and the other one with regular MA5 magazines. It _was_ a pretty badass look. HW Squad, however, took the cake. Pavel and Lizzo had connected their M2747Ls to their rucksacks, giving them a nearly endless (for all practical purposes) supply of ammunition and the rest of the guys were almost completely covered in box magazines for their SAWs.

Pavel rolled his shoulders backwards and grunted slightly. With his helmet hanging below his rucksack I could easily read his expression. He had a frown that seemed to be eternally present when on deployment, but I knew him well enough that it would be hard for him to hide his feelings from me.

"Relax," I told him. "I'm sure d'Arc will be fine."

He shook his head. "I'm not five years old, Frank," Pavel said firmly. "So don't treat me like an idiot."

I nodded slowly and returned my attention to the door, running my fingers through my rifle's carry handle. "All right then."

Sarah d'Arc had been wounded back when we ran out of ammo. We all thought she wouldn't last more than a day, yet here she was, three weeks later. When it took her so long to die we all thought that it was good news. If you weren't dying from a fatal injury it had to mean that you were getting better somehow. That was not the case. Sarah fought and she fought hard. She wouldn't allow us to give up on her and wouldn't let the doctors to let her die despite how much pain she was in. Her kidneys hadn't been working for a while now and her stomach was basically mashed tissue. Her lungs had collapsed and Sutton hadn't been able to fix them all the way through. Every breath she took failed to provide enough oxygen to her body and taking deeper breaths only made the pain increase.

"Lieutenant?"

I looked up at the door to see a doctor in front of me. Surprisingly enough his scrubs barely had any blood on them save for a small stain on the bottom of his shirt. His gloves, however were another matter. The white latex gloves were almost completely covered with blood. Sarah's blood.

"Yes?" I asked.

"I'm sorry, but I'm afraid that PFC d'Arc has passed away."

I nodded slowly. "What was it?"

"Her organs couldn't support her body anymore. I'm surprised that she managed to stay alive this long."

"She was a tough one," Pavel said. "You said her organs failed?"

"Yes. The concussion from the blast in addition to the shrapnel turned most of her vital organs into a pile of mush, the shrapnel mostly severed blood vessels and caused internal bleeding, the concussion… well, it was bad."

"What are you writing down?" I asked the doctor.

"Critical organ failure," he replied, removing his gloves. "Her body is going to remain here for a few more minutes before it's bagged. Sorry for your loss."

As the doctor walked away I looked at Pavel.

"What?" he asked me.

Once again he couldn't hide his feelings from me. He felt very much like I did. Angry, frustrated, and sad. As an officer I really hadn't had the opportunity to interact with those enlisted men outside my squad, but I knew d'Arc well enough to be hurt by her death. The fact that she was under my command only made it worse. She had been killed while serving in my unit, but it had taken her until now to die. I felt the same way I had felt when Bamber died, the same way I felt when Han and Montri died. I felt as if I had failed them and my failure had cost them their lives.

Still, I had absolutely no doubt whatsoever that Pavel felt worse than I did. She had been a member of his squad under his _direct_ command. He would blame himself for a while and then snap out of it when he realized it wasn't his fault.

Pavel sighed when I didn't immediately reply. "I'll go get the men," he told me. "Wait here."

I nodded and then walked inside the operating room as soon as Pavel left. There were still a couple of nurses inside the room. They cleared a few of the surgical implements and then showed themselves out. I moved up to the operating table and dragged a stool behind me.

"Damn," I said quietly, examining d'Arc.

Whenever you read about a dead person or see a funeral on a movie the dead guy always has this peaceful look on their face or the author goes out of their way to describe how the corpse looked 'at peace' or some other shit like that. Most of the time that was the case in real life too.

Most of the memories I had of my dad were good ones, the typical stuff that you'd expect of a childhood. Throwing a football or kicking a ball were frequent ones, I also remember wrestling with him, he'd let me win most of the time, tickling me occasionally. But I also remembered the last time I had seen his face. It had been during his funeral. His expression was certainly calm and peaceful, but I doubt that it had been when he saw those headlights coming up to meet him and the pavement rushing up.

The undertakers usually did something to the bodies' faces. I'm not exactly sure how they did it, but every corpse looked like they had died a peaceful death in their sleep.

Not so with Sarah. Even despite the anesthetics the pain couldn't be completely countered. Her face was contorted in a grimace of pain, even if she was supposed to be unconscious. Her brows met in a frown and her jaw was tightly clenched. It was an easily recognizable expression, one that you adopted when you were trying to bite down pain.

"Hell of a way to go, eh Sarah?" I said. "Most of us die quick deaths out there. Maybe not so quick and definitely not clean, but not like this. Never like this." I looked at her and shook my head slightly. "I'm sorry you know. We try Sarah, but we're only human."

I reached underneath the light blue sheet and felt around for the dogtags that should be on her neck. Protocol dictated that you remove the patient's dogtags during an operation, but tradition dictated that you leave them there. I grabbed the chain and yanked softly. The two metal pieces felt light in my hand.

01996-67882-SD

I grabbed one of the two dogtags and put it in a special pouch. It clinked when it went in. That made for a total of five dogtags on my pocket. Five men had died in as many months. What made it worse was that they had been fighting alongside me for years now. I had gotten to know them and make friends with them.

"I'll see you soon enough," I said finally, standing back up and leaving the room.

When Pavel and the rest came through I handed him the other dogtag and patted him in the shoulder. The rest of my platoon entered the room to pay their respects to their fallen comrade-in-arms and I left the building, trying to get myself to think about something else.

The bombed-out town didn't help matters. Even after our victory everything was still collapsing. The downtown area was massively fortified, but the rest of Sparatus was on the verge of becoming an oversized pile of rubble. The valley was ours, but most of our vehicles and equipment were all stored inside the town. A few Warthogs made patrols and scouting runs day and night, and two tanks were kept on either end of Sparatus in case we needed to stall an enemy raid or small-scale attack.

The town hall still stood. Miraculously enough. I sighed and walked towards it, trying not to look as tired as I felt.

I met Darbinian in the lobby. He was carrying as much ammunition as I was.

"Trying to break the record for most consecutive rounds fired?" he asked me.

I gestured at his bandoliers and ammo pouches. "I don't believe you're in any position to judge."

"I'm your superior officer," he said. "I'm in whichever position I want to be."

"Please," I scoffed. "You think too highly of yourself."

"I don't believe you're in any position to judge."

I shrugged. "Fair enough."

We both kept quiet for a few moments.

"Major Reyes in there?" I asked.

"Yeah," he replied.

I groaned. "I'll hold him."

"And I'll rip his fucking head off," Darbinian finished. "Let's go."

Whenever something important happened the officer in charge would usually call a conference. When you say it that way it sounds very civilian, but perhaps it's the other way around. This time we would be discussing a topic that Mayor Peterson had been tiptoeing around for the past two days. Ever since we had established a decisive hold on the valley the Covenant had been hesitant to attack us here, but they had been massing their numbers and deploying small units in the mountains around us. An attack was imminent, and the only question here was whether we would be more valuable here or back in Udinia, with the rest of the UNSC forces.

Major Peterson had seniority over Major Reyes, but the Airborne commander used his rank in an attempt to pull weight here. He had found Darbinian and me a lot more stubborn than the regular officer, besides, he was not in the same branch that we were, so his rank didn't count as much as you'd otherwise expected.

"Majors," I said neutrally, offering Peterson a small nod.

Darbinian simply walked in without saying anything and didn't even bother to shoot a quick salute. Reyes frowned slightly at his evident show of disrespect, but Peterson didn't really mind. He wasn't exactly fond of Major Reyes, our so-called rescuer.

"Good, we're all here," Peterson said. "You all know that Command wants us to move back to Udinia, but if we do there's nothing keeping the Covenant from actually getting there."

I examined the holographic map we were standing around. It showed the valley, our troops, and the known Covenant units in the ranges on either side of us.

"If we stay we risk encirclement," I said. "There's a small trading post right here, we could relocate the majority of our troops there and hold the main highway easily."

"For once I agree with him," Darbinian said grudgingly. "I do not like it, but the Covenant's numbers swell while we stay an under strength battalion and change."

Reyes shook his head. "My men and me didn't come here and rescue your asses just so you could fall back two weeks later."

"I don't exactly recall it that way," Darbinian muttered.

"We didn't need any rescuing," I said. "And bravado won't do us any good here. There are plenty of men here who will tell you that. My vote is we move to the trading post."

"It's alright to be ashamed," Reyes told me. "But there's no need to be ungrateful."

"Listen you cu–"

"Easy," Peterson interrupted, looking at the map with a pensive expression. He didn't even seem surprised or offended by my would-be outburst. "Staying here could mean suicide. I don't have any doubt that we'd make them pay for it, but I don't want to die just yet and I'm certain my men feel the same."

"Words to live by," Darbinian said in agreement. "This rock is as good as lost. Pull back, buy some time for evacuation and then leave this goddamned place."

"This goddamned place is home to millions," Reyes said. "And only a coward would abandon a UNSC colony world."

"Then we're the biggest amongst cowards," I said. "Because we've fought in more worlds than you've heard of."

That struck a chord. Major Reyes was a veteran of a single campaign while Darbinian and I had been fighting for a very long time. A vein in his forehead swelled and a red flush started creeping through his neck before he got it in control. His face went from anger to cool detachment in a matter of half a second. Reyes crossed his arms over his chest and looked at Darbinian and me with pure contempt in his eyes.

"Your words, not mine," he said.

I clenched my fists and Darbinian almost jumped him, but we both managed to restrain ourselves. Peterson looked up from the holographic map and gave us a strong glare before returning his attention to the fake troops and landscape.

"Please be so kind as to fucking shut the hell up," he said. "Your presence here is merely a formality, yes, yours too Reyes. The final decision rests on my shoulders."

"Sir," I muttered at the same time Darbinian did.

Peterson then went on to mention the pros and cons of staying against leaving. As he spoke on it became clear that he didn't want to stay here a second longer than he had to. Major Peterson had been in command of three times as many soldiers as I had been at the beginning of the battle, then he had been in command of every last Marine in Sparatus. If he was anything like me then the deaths weighed heavy on his shoulders. This place reminded him of those that had fallen while under his command.

"You would have us leave then?" Reyes asked angrily. "My men helped defend this town and–"

"Do not make the mistake of believing your men suffered nearly as much as mine did," Peterson interrupted calmly. His voice might've been the epitome of professionalism, but there was a fire in his eyes that gave Reyes a pause. Green or not, he was still Airborne, and that in itself meant that he was a hard man. To take him aback with a glare was not unworthy of praise.

The room's atmosphere became tense, but Peterson didn't seem to notice, instead keeping his usual aloof façade. After a few more moments of awkward silence he uncrossed his arms and slapped his thighs.

"I'm radioing Command," he said finally. "We're not staying here."

I nodded gratefully.

"We have enough Pelicans to evacuate all of our troops and most of our equipment, but we can't leave all at once. Standard evacuation procedure, wounded and non-essentials go first. Special Forces stay behind and evacuate last."

"Sir, if I may," I said. "My men have suffered quite a bit, I'd appreciate it if you could avoid having us as the last ones here."  
>Peterson nodded. "Very well."<p>

"I do not like saying it, but my company is at little over half strength," Darbinian spoke. The words sounded as if they had been yanked from his tongue, but he was worried enough for his men that he spoke them without stuttering.

"Reyes?" Peterson asked.

"My men will be the last ones out."

"It's settled then," Peterson said. "Dismissed. All of you."

"Sir," I said.

The three of us left the town hall without even looking at one another. Reyes immediately broke off towards his men, leaving Darbinian and me to walk side by side another couple of streets. The men he commanded had had it as bad as mine. Their numbers meant that they had suffered more casualties, but about the same percentage was wounded or incapable of fighting. Ironically enough, I had seen a few of them stop to chat with a few of my men occasionally or help each other out.

Their cooperation was a good sign I guess. No fragging or friendly fire.

"Good news?" Pavel asked me as soon as I met up with him. "We could use some for once."

"We're leaving," I said. "Back to Udinia and with some luck we'll be on our way to Reach from there."

Pavel nodded and sighed with relief. "That is some good news. The men will be happy to hear them."

"Good," I said tiredly, sitting down. "They deserve some rest."

"So do we for that matter," he replied, letting himself fall down next to me. "It's been a long month."

"Too long," I agreed. "To many of us have died."

"At least they died well," Pavel said, stretching his neck. "And at least we haven't joined them yet."

"Our time will come," I told him. "We'll go out in a blaze of glory."

"I don't plan on going out if I can avoid it," Pavel said. "I have a family to look after."

I shrugged. "Guess I'll have to go out in a blaze big enough for both of us then."

"That sounds like something you would do Frank," he said. "Just don't forget that death is not a requirement in this line of work."

"It's just a guarantee," I grunted. "Even if it shouldn't be."

Pavel was silent for a few seconds. He tended to do that on occasion. At times he'd just sit back and remain quiet for a long time, saying nothing. I never asked him what he thought about during those moments, but my guess is that he held his family in his mind.

"I got a message from Amber," he said finally. "She's doing well."

"Good," I said. "That's good. Lavvie?"

"She's good too. She misses me apparently."

"Of course she does, you're her father."

"She looks a lot bigger than when I left her. She's going to be a beautiful girl."

"Let's just hope she takes after her mother."

Pavel laughed and took off his helmet. "She's worried, you know? Amber is. We've been here for too long."

"This place was my home for a while Pavs, I don't want to see it burn any more than the next guy."

"It's too late for that Frank. You've got to admit that this place was as good as gone the moment the Covenant landed here. Udinia is the last major city under our control, the other two continents have been abandoned to the aliens and we only have a small area of this one under UNSC control." He stopped for a breath. "It cannot last much longer either. They outnumber us in orbit and there are now more alien troops on the ground than humans overall."

I nodded slowly. "I've never known you to be so grim, Pavel."

He grunted something intelligible. "Must be rubbing off on me."

"Sorry about that," I apologized, squeezing his shoulder as I stood up. "I'll try to be more idealistic in the future."

"I don't think that'll help," he replied, dragging himself up by pulling my arm. "We need some crazy in this unit if we want to stay alive."

"Sometimes I think there's too much crazy here," Schitzo muttered under his breath.

"Too much crazy," I echoed quietly. "Pavel, get the men to pack up their things, we leave before the day's over."

"All right then, do you want anything? A memento?"

"A jar of dirt maybe."

Pavel laughed. "Yeah right. I'll get you something fancy if I can find it. A table leg or something like that."

This time it was my turn to laugh. "Make sure it's sturdy enough to bash someone's skull in."

"I'll try."

A few moments later I heard the relief and happiness of my men from upstairs. My men were happy. After having lost a friend a few minutes ago, they were at least happy that they would leave this place and all the memories that it had created behind. I immediately heard the noise of furniture moving as my men started grabbing whatever personal equipment they still had in their possession. Mostly they had spare clothing and some food that they had scavenged from the town. Candy most like. Everybody liked candy.

"El-tee," Caboose said, climbing down the stairs with some difficulty. "So we finally leave this godforsaken place."

"Yes," I said. "Funny, I don't think a lot of people would've called it that before the Covenant came."

"It doesn't matter anymore," he said. "Nobody will ever live here regardless. Even if by some miracle…"

"I know," I said. "Caboose, how are the men?"

"Tired, but they still have some fight in them. If anything this retreat will buy them some time to recover."

"And psychologically?"

"Same thing. They're pretty upset over Sarah, but who wouldn't be. I think that it's the mounting up of the dead that's hitting them. I'm not sure that they have realized that they lost five friends yet."

"And you?"

"I'm good at this El-tee, I've lost a lot more men than I care to remember. I'll be fine."

"I need you to be," I said. "The men know me as headstrong and emotional. They can forgive my outbursts, but if you were to suddenly start punching walls then they'd know something was wrong."

He raised an eyebrow questioningly. "Something _is_ wrong. Very, very wrong."

"Yes, but they don't have to know that. Not just yet."

"Fair enough lieutenant," Caboose conceded, tightening a strap. "I'll go pack my things, make sure everybody's fine. And I'd have a talk with Sutton if I was you."

"Will do," I told him. "When I have the chance."

Caboose climbed back up and barked a few orders, telling my men not to lose focus, that they were still in a combat zone. While he berated them for their lack of professionalism in a situation like this one I grabbed the sole surviving chair in the entire house. We liked to joke that any and every god that existed protected it. Despite concentrated small-arms fire, plasma cannons firing on us, grenade explosions, shrapnel flying around, men crashing into furniture, men using furniture for weapons, and even direct mortar hits that cleaved right through the entire house the chair was perfectly intact. Not a single scratch was on it.

It was a dire contrast to the condition of our armor, our bodies, and our minds. Part of what made us Helljumpers so great was our extensive psychological training. Sergeant Gabuka had made us go through hell and back, he'd physically and mentally tortured us and made us believe that we would die. The things we went through during training were supposed to rival most of the stuff that we would experience in a battlefield at a psychological level, and most of the times it succeeded. Not this time. I had seen my men sporting the dazed thousand-yard stare, looking at something in the distance that only they knew was there. More than once I had heard my men wake up in the middle of the night, breathing hard and occasionally even crying softly.

They weren't the only ones that suffered. Schitzo was something I had gotten used to, but the visions of dead men walking behind a corner were not. The first time I thought I saw Atkins I ran through a street and turned a corner, following a man that wasn't there. The next time it happened it was Jonah, the man that had become my best friend during training only to die during our first deployment, unable to ever see any actual combat. I hadn't given him a serious thought in years, yet here he was, haunting my dreams and every waking hour as well.

"You don't often hear me say things like this," Schitzo said, sitting next to me, "but we've gotten to the point where you and I will be forced to stop caring about anyone."

_If I keep losing my mind at this rate, it won't be a problem._

Schitzo stood up and looked at me with a sad expression on his face. For a moment I believed I recognized him and even stretched out my hand to touch him, but I realized what I was doing and yanked it back down before anybody saw. Having hallucinations was one thing, talking to them was another, believing that they were real…

I stood up and dusted myself off quickly. I grabbed my battered rifle, examining the scratches and grooves that it presented. I tried to remember where they came from, and I could remember a few of the incidents that had caused them, but most of the time I had no idea how a particular mark had gotten there. It happened with my own body sometimes as well. A big-ass nasty scar on my back was hard to forget, the painful spike scars all over my body were pretty etched into my memory too, but some of the minor burns and smaller scars had unknown origins. A mark might clearly be a needle scratch or a plasma burn, but some of them I couldn't even remember how I got or even when I got.

"Don't look so grim, eh El-tee," Sandor said cheerfully from behind me, jumping down the stairwell with his duffel over his shoulder. "We finally get to go back to Udinia and from there we hop back home."

"We're only going back to Udinia," I said. "Not back home. Not yet."

He shrugged and threw his duffel at the door. "I don't plan on dying here Lieutenant, not after all we went through. If I die it's going to be with plenty of Covenant dead around me and having fought for something that was worth it."

"We should all be so lucky," I muttered.

"Sir, you are sounding particularly grim of late," Hoff said from behind. "But maybe it's because we're all happy now. Well, happier. I think that calling our current state of mind happy would be a little bit too much."

"How is everybody taking it?" I asked him, lowering my voice. "Sarah's death."

He shrugged. "I can't say I was close to d'Arc, but she was a pretty good girl by any standards. Hell of a soldier too… It hurts to see a comrade die, sir, but it hurts to see other friends hurting over it too."

Sandor nodded slightly as he walked over towards us. "The girls are particularly beaten up over it, they were all close in the platoon. I think Sutton has it the worst. He cared for her during the beginning and maybe even believed that she would be able to pull through at the end."

"I'll talk to him," I assured them. "You two keep Andy up to standard, ok?"

"That's more in Marv's area," Hoff said nervously, scratching the back of his neck. "I'll see what he can do."

"Is there anything Marvin Mobuto cannot do?" I wondered out loud. "Mark my words, that man will outlive us all."

Sandor laughed. "We're gods among men, sir. But I've got to admit that Marvin does take the cake when it comes to fighting ability."

"Almost as good as you are, sir," Hoff said, slapping my shoulder.

"Flattery will get you nowhere," I replied dismissively. "We're slated to pull back in precisely two hours. Report to Gibs Street and hold position. Is the rest of the squad ready?"

"They should be soon," Hoff said, switching his tone from friendly familiarity to professionalism in a blink. "We had less stuff than the other two squads."

"Sir," Miranda said, Marv and Andy standing with her. "We're here."

Her smile was short of a grin, but only just.

"Wipe that smile from your face," I ordered. "We haven't finished this yet."

"Yes, sir," she said. Her tone draw eye rolls from Andrea.

"Head to Gibs," I repeated my order. "And await further orders. You are not to avoid confrontation with Airborne troops but don't actively seek it either. Insults to their mothers should do."

"Yes, sir," they replied.

"Marv, make sure Sandor doesn't get too carried away," I told him, placing him in temporary command. "If things get heated just be sure to remember them who fought the battle."

"Can we call them cleanup duty?" Sandor asked eagerly.

I smiled. "Yes, yes you can."

* * *

><p>It was a cloudy day and the sun was beginning to set. Darkness was beginning to cover the valley, with only a few shadows still present. Most of those were man-made. I wondered how attractive a target we made to the Covenant on the valley and the pass in front of us. It must've been frustrating for the survivors of the initial battle, knowing full well how beaten up we were and still they were unable to attack us because of their own losses. Had I been the overall commander of the hingehead forces I would've hacked some heads off, the battle should've been a Covenant victory by rights.<p>

"Ready men!" I shouted. "Pelicans are about to depart!"

Normally it would've required only one Pelican to carry my team, burdened with losses as we were, but Command wanted us to get as much materiel from Sparatus as possible. The Pelicans were all heavy with gear, and we wouldn't have a lot of legroom in the cargo bay.

"Come on, let's go," Pavel shouted as soon as our designated Pelican landed in front of us. "Move it!"

I climbed inside first of all and moved towards the cockpit. I didn't often recognize one Pelican from another, but this one I could tell apart.

"Well I'll be damned," I laughed. "Fightmaster."

"I've been known to go by that name," the pilot replied. "Some also call me Badass Ultimator, but whether you believe me or not Fightmaster is my real name."

"Good to see you again man," I told him, squeezing his shoulder hard enough to make him complain. "Fly us safe, will you? We… we haven't had it easy."

"I heard," he said quietly. "Things back in Udinia have been hell and I could hardly believe that they'd get worse than there, but seeing all this, the looks on men's faces… It's easy to believe that something horrible happened here.

"Something did," I agreed. "And we all just want to put it behind us."

"Sounds good to me," he grunted. "Let's go."

As the Pelican took off I walked back to the rear and took in the small, quaint town of Sparatus. What was left of it. I saw figures that weren't there as Fightmaster pulled up and away from the town. Men and women long dead in the war. I closed my eyes tightly, trying to make them go away. When I opened my eyes the faces were still there, haunting, blaming.

_I can't. I can't lose sight of who I am. _ I thought about blaming ONI for what they had done to me. I had never had hallucinations before the procedures, and I was certain that those were the primary factor in my increasing madness.

_I can't lose myself, not just yet. I can't lose what makes me human._

For the first time since Schitzo had first manifested himself his tone changed. It wasn't mocking or even concerned for himself. It was a tone full of warmth and understanding, one akin to that of my uncle or my father.

"One can lose his sanity, Francisco," he said, "but never his humanity."

_Never._

* * *

><p><em>This chapter is seriously not proofread, so forgive any mistakes. At least it ended on a relatively happy note.<em>

_Another chapter, another victim. Things are getting darker, and it certainly has nothing to do with the hour (ha...ha...). As per usual, there's not much to say about this chapter, we've got three assholes in a room and another battle lost, or maybe it was won at too high a cost. The point is that they're leaving because they can't afford to stay there any longer. I'm happy to tell you that I'm finally wrapping things up here in Paris IV, should take two or three more chapters, because I know that a lot of you are looking forward to Reach and whatever comes after._

_On another note, I won't be able to post the next chapter until at least next monday, that's one of the reasons why I didn't proofread this chapter. Anyways, hope that you enjoyed reading it and as always..._

_Stay strong._

_-casquis_


	182. Minutos Finales

Chapter CLXXXII: Minutos Finales

**June 18, 2549 (UNSC Calendar)/**

**Udinia, Paris IV, Paris System**

* * *

><p><em>I've always wanted to fight a desperate battle against incredible odds."– Brig<em>

* * *

><p>Sometimes you stepped down from the Pelican with your chest out and a cocky smile on your face, other times you jumped down with grim determination and immediately crouched to avoid plasma fire, but at least once in every battle you stepped off with your head hanging low. This was one of those occasions.<p>

I half stumbled as I let myself fall down the short gap in between the hatch and the ground. Fountain Base looked ten times as crowded as when we left. The refugee housing was still there, but plenty of improvised tents had sprung up, oftentimes in between the bigger, pre-made shelters. To move I had to walk over sleeping bags and rags that made up beds. People had to shuffle away so that we wouldn't step over them, but other than that they barely shot us a second glance.

"Looks like hell," Pavel muttered under his breath. "Smells like it too."

"We have a dozen warships in orbit and twice as many civilian transports ready to go. As soon as the swabbies get their shit together we're on a straight line to Reach."

"Well, technically–"

"Yes," I cut him off. "Not a straight line because we do multiple jumps."

"In compliance with the Cole Protocol," Pavel finished. "Yeah, yeah."

"You should know by now that I often speak figuratively."

"You must feel so special."

"For that and other reasons, namely my incredible chest-abs combo."

"Yet you're still jealous of my shoulders and arms."

I shrugged slightly. "Mine are more defined."

"Mine are wider and bigger respectively."

I leaned over towards him. "Mine are stronger."

"Cheater," he replied. "In any case, I don't think that's the important thing."

"Shooting scores?" I suggested.

"I got you on everything automatic."

"Not everything," I corrected him. "SMGs."

"Nah, beat your record two days before we deployed."

"No way, and you didn't brag about it?"

He laughed. "I wanted to get your MA5 record before, make the pain bigger."

"You ass," I said. "I can respect that."

"But I've got you on BR, SRS, DMR, and EMR."

"I have you on all kinds of machine gun up to HMGs, shotguns, and–"

"And that's it," I finished for him. "Should we go into knives?"

Pavel shook his head. "Perhaps we should go into emotional maturity. Alcoholism maybe?"

"Pathological depression?"

"Schizophrenia?"

"Ouch, low blow," I said, elbowing him in the ribs. "Let's have a boxing match to settle this."

"Settle what?"

"Who's better?"

"Frank, you're a child."

"I'm older than you are."

"Stop proving my point."

"Stop proving my point," I echoed, making a dumb voice. "Pavel, as soon as I meet up with Hayes and the Yassir I want you to take everybody to the barracks. Have them mingle with everybody for a while and then an obligatory nap. Play classical music or something, anything that might prevent nightmares."

He leaned in closer so that nobody would hear what we were discussing. "Nightmares are something that you don't get rid of easily. Not at this point."

I sighed as we emerged from the ramshackle of tents and tarps and into an open area with a few craters and tanks. Most of the Warthogs had been moved outside of the firebase and into a small adjacent area. It was relatively less guarded, but in this instance relatively meant that it only had three companies and four tanks watching over it.

My platoon moved through the open area as quickly as we could. In our current condition, with wounded and us being the most tired we had ever been, it wasn't very fast.

"Well I'll be damned!" dos Santos called out. He was wearing full armor sans helmet and had a look of weariness in his face that mirrored that on mine. The joy at seeing us momentarily made his face look better, but it wasn't enough. "Francisco Castillo! Is it good to see you and the rest of Five."

I smiled and clasped his forearm before hugging him. "Dom, it's been a long couple of months. How have you been?"

The smile slipped from his face and his eyes moved away from mine. "Not good Frank. I've never had to go through anything like this."

"Yeah," I agreed. "I've been through tough shit before, just not quite like this."

"That all of you?" he asked.

I nodded. "We have five KIAs." I shrugged as if to dismiss it, but saying those words brought back the pain of seeing my men die. "The rest of us all have some injury or other."

"I can see that, you're all helping each other up. Sandor looks particularly beaten up."

"Needle went through both the tibia and the fibula. Mended pretty well all things considered. Andy was shot, she has a very bad habit about it. The rest of them are minor injuries, but still a concern."

"You?"

I shrugged. "Not important."

"All right then. I heard some rumors about spears and swords. Any truth in those?"

"Spears only," I said, allowing myself a small smile. "The covvies did use those energy swords of theirs."

"And you won?"

"We did," I said. "Fucking Airborne finished them off, but we held the line before they arrived with their fancy bullets and shit."

"You actually ran out of ammunition?"

"Yes."

"At the same time the enemy did?"

"Yes."

"And then you dished it out with sticks and stones?"

"Well, it does sound ridiculous when you put it that way."

"Pretty crazy shit, bro." He laughed, but it sounded empty. "Hayes, Weller, and Dajani are inside."

"How bad has it been here?"

Dom ran his thumbs down the side of his chest plate. "Three casualties in my platoon, four in Wellers, and three each in One and Two. Pretty bad Frank, but not as bad as you guys had it."

"Sucks," I said simply. "But now's not the time to think or talk about it."

"Right you say," he agreed. "Come on."

I turned and jerked my head at Pavel, who nodded in return and redirected the platoon back towards the barracks we would be sleeping in. He nodded in return and started barking orders in a way that made me believe he was ready to run a marathon or two.

"Frank, good to see you!" Yas greeted as I walked inside. He gave me a half-hug and then slapped my shoulders, being careful with the one that had spikes embedded in it.

"Hey Frank," Jen said with a small smile. "Good to see you."

"You too," I replied, shoving Yas away from me playfully. "Captain."

"Lieutenant," Hayes replied in an equally flat tone. "Now that we're all here I can begin the briefing."

We straightened ourselves and clasped our hands behind our backs as good officers. Even Jen, whose face was covered in bruises from a particularly rough encounter with the Covenant made it a point to look professional and heroic. If we managed to look like that in front of our men, no matter the circumstances, they would follow us into hell.

"We lost," Hayes stated. "Plain and simple. Now that this rock is nothing special, we'll be sure to leave with as many people as possible. Command managed to round up enough starships for every last man, woman, and child in the city. With the addition Battle Group Flawless and Trafalgar there should be enough legroom to get everyone out comfortably."

"Sir?" Yas questioned. "What's our role in this?"

"The big operation is for the big boys in orbit," she replied. "We're supposed to provide ground support in case the Covenant infantry troops attempt to burst through. Same old shit."

"How long should it take?" Dom asked.

"Udinia used to have a much smaller population before the invasion, you know? Refugees from all around the planet are living here now. It'll take some time to evacuate seventeen million people."

I let out a whistle. "That's a lot of people."

"It'll take about a month to get everyone out safely," she went on, apparently not having heard me. "Some losses are expected, perhaps as many as ten percent, but that's the risk that we're taking. Command wants us to be on watch when the bigger ships are taking off, they'll be more attractive targets and therefore more likely to be shot at. We can expect some last minute deployments to take out SAMs or AA Wraiths. For now we stay with our regular schedule. Castillo, Yas can get you up to date."

"Sir," I said, acknowledging her with a nod.

Hayes walked out, taking Dom and Jen with her. Yas stayed with me for a little while and we chatted a bit. He was as glad to see me as I was to see him, but his own platoon had suffered losses, not to mention two men that wouldn't be able to fight ever again because of their wounds. Yas was tired, not as much as my men were, but the fighting here hadn't been exactly forgiving, and small teams managed to get past the perimeter every now and then, butchering civilians.

"Glad to see you in fine working order," I said, shaking his hand for the second time. "We stopped getting word from Udinia several weeks ago. All low-priority messages couldn't be delivered. I have no idea how Pavel even managed to get mail to his wife."

Yas chuckled softly. "Love finds a way," he said. "But I don't think I'm in fine working order Frank. Not up here." He tapped his head. "Nightmares and shit, man.

I've had them before, but never like this."

I nodded slowly, frowning slightly. "My advise; see a therapist as soon as possible. No, for real, I'm not kidding. It worked for me."

"You? A therapist? Really?"

I nodded. "It's a smart thing to do Yas," I assured him. "Trust me. Besides, every Helljumper is supposed to be a little crazy."

"Oorah," he agreed. "Thanks Frank. I'll see you later."

"Likewise, good luck."

Yas nodded and walked away slowly. There was a slight limp to his left leg, almost unnoticeable unless you knew the man. He had been my roommate for a few years now, and I could tell by the way he moved that his whole body was at least as sore as mine. No self-respecting ODST officer would fail to go directly into combat along with his men.

I stayed in the empty conference room for a minute more, looking at the broken holotable that had stood between the officers of Jaguar Company. We were broken men leading broken units. Strangely fitting.

"Frank?"

The voice was the most beautiful thing I had heard in years.

"Hanna?"

"Frank!"

I barely had enough time to turn around before Hanna crashed into me in what was a cross between a hug and a tackle. I immediately hugged her back and held her tightly against my body. Her hair was messy and as I breathed in it tickled my nose. I laughed and leaned back slightly, blowing air out of my nose in order to get her hair out. Hanna just held tighter against me, squeezing my ribs even through the ballistic armor and suit that I was wearing.

"It's good to see you," I said finally, hugging her tight enough to have her gasp for breath. The brief respite that bought me allowed me to out some distance between her and me and swoop down for a quick kiss. "So good to see you."

"I got some of your messages, but then they cut off radio traffic and then I heard about how bad it was over there…"

"And then?" I asked jokingly. "Relax. I'm fine and so are you, we'll be out of here in a month, you can finish your contract while on leave and that's it."

"Sounds good," she said after giving me another kiss. Hanna took a small step back and scratched a bandage on one arm. "I'm lucky to be a medic, most of us have been turned into doctors for the refugees, most patrols go out there without combat medics."

"Is that a good thing or a bad thing?" I asked her, leaning back on the holotable.

"Is anything good nowadays?" she replied. "We're mostly helping with disease outbreaks and the occasional plasma or spiker injury. I could be doing a lot worse, especially considering how high our casualties have been."

"Yeah," I nodded. "It was pretty bad up there too."

"How many did you lose?" she asked. "After… what was his name? Atkins?"

"Yeah. Three more men. Montri, Han, and d'Arc."

"I'm sorry Frank," she said. "I didn't mean to–"

"Don't worry about it," I told her. "Hayes just gave us some time to rest and I have a great idea of how to spend it."

Hanna laughed and sighed. "Leave it to you to think of sex in this situation."

"In _any_ situation," I corrected. "And don't get all high and mighty, when the next time I do you may be our last, I'm going to take advantage of that as much as I can."

She shrugged. "It _has _been pretty long since you left."

I hated when she turned on her seductive voice. Despite the comparative gap in our levels of experience prior to having actually dated, she could melt me into a puddle and get me to do anything she wanted if she just spoke a little huskier and drew out the words. Had I attempted to do that I probably would've gotten laughed at.

"Do you know a place?" I asked her, trying to appear perfectly calm and totally not desperate.

She shrugged and beckoned for me to follow her. I sighed inwardly and complied.

"I wonder what Katie would think?" Schitzo asked, skipping happily along. "Perhaps you should look for her and go say hi."

I grunted quietly and tried to get him to go away, but after he had said those words Katie was all I could think of. Even being with Hanna, alone inside a locked room I couldn't get her out of my head. I felt guilty, but not guilty enough to stop. By the time we were both done I was torn, my body felt satisfied and somewhat rested, but the rest of me felt like the shittiest human being in the universe.

"What's wrong?" Hanna asked, rolling on the mattress. "You look… hmm…"

I laughed, trying to make it sound real. "I'm sorry. Guess I'm just tired. I'm sorry, I'm sorry. First time we see each other in months and I go all shell shock on you."

She laughed, but her eyes showed worry. "Frank, you know you can talk to me about anything."

_Not anything._

"Thanks," I told her. "I'm just tired."

"Frank…"

"Hanna, please," I said. "Not now."

"Ok, whatever you say."

She didn't sound angry, she just sounded sad. Her tone only served to make me feel even worse about myself. How did she end up with me? I wondered whether breaking up would be for the better. I know that she loved me and that I loved her back, but would hurting her turn out to be for the best? Damn, being a dick could be monumentally annoying. The universe had a way of catching up to you.

"I should be getting back," I said, standing up and reaching for my undersuit. "I'm sorry I'm like this. I promise I'll talk to someone as soon as we're back on Reach. Ok?"

"Ok," she said, rolling back around and reaching for her own clothes. "That means a lot to me."

We each dressed up in silence and I made sure to pack the outer armor inside the ballistic vest, leaving me with only leg armor. Hanna had left her armor behind, replacing it with a loose t-shirt and her regular fatigues. I hadn't noticed before, but she had huge bags under her eyes and her hair was messy to the point that it looked almost deliberate. She looked all the more beautiful for it.

"I love you," I told her. It felt like the truth, but it still hurt to say it.

She smiled and her face became even more beautiful. "I love you too, Frank."

I kissed her one last time before we each went our separate ways. Even if I did feel guilty and horrible inside, there was a part of me that felt happy.

"Fucking schizophrenia," Schitzo complained. "How the hell can you feel two ways at the same time?"

"How the fuck are you still here?" I replied, drawing a surprised glance from one of the nearby Marines. A quick glare fixed that.

"Easy Frank, we wouldn't want to get busted."

_I wouldn't want to get busted, _I corrected, emphasizing the I in the sentence.

The barracks we had been assigned to were the same ones that Dom's Platoon Four was using. The men were moving the beds and mattresses towards the walls and making more space for everybody to sleep in. The tables were covered with weapons piled on top of each other. The armors were all arranged on the special trunks, but the trunks themselves were also piled uncomfortably close to one another. It was easy to tell that we were running out of space.

"Frank, where were you?" Pavel asked, lugging a bed.

"Getting reacquainted with the missus, no doubt," Sandor called out.

I couldn't help but smile slightly, drawing boos and jeers from the rest of the men from my platoon. They had the right, of course. They had been working hard at rearranging furniture while I was getting well and thoroughly fucked. Not to mention that they _had_ just come from over a month of heavy-duty fighting.

"Get back to work," I ordered, inflecting my tone with a small dose of humor. "The faster you finish the faster you can get those eight hours of sleep that the doctor recommends."

I had never seen my men more eager about anything.

* * *

><p><strong>July 3, 2549 (UNSC Calendar)two weeks later**

"Sir, can I talk to you?" Hoff asked. He sounded eager.

"Your voice sounds better, they operate on your jaw?"

"Yes, sir," he said, positively beaming. "Just yesterday."

"Huh, good for you, kid."

"Thanks, sir."

"What was that you needed to talk about?"

"Sir, you know how my family found a nice place on an evac ship?"

"Yeah, I recall you mentioning that," I replied, leaning backwards on my folding chair. "What about it."

"I finally managed to locate them, I know where they are."

"And you want to talk to them?"

"Yes," he said.

I nodded slowly and carefully. "Are they on the transports leaving today?"

"Yes, sir."

"Very well, make it quick. They might need us to do some shit or another, as per usual."

"Yes, sir. Thank you, sir."

As Hoff saluted and walked away, trying not to appear to eager, Pavel huffed.

"Nice Frank scares them," he said. "You're not usually that nice."

"You know how I feel about family," I told him.

He scoffed. "About other people's families. You yourself have mentioned that your uncle was a dick and don't look to eager to start a family."

I sighed. Lately the memories that I had about my family weren't good ones. My dad screaming at me, my mom doing the same thing. The ones involving my brother were always the worst ones, but those were immediately suppressed. I could still remember the good times. Having dinner with my mom, playing with my dad, learning to shoot with my uncle. Those were good memories, but for some reason the bad stuff was beginning to surface lately. Not that being scolded qualified as bad, but it certainly took away from that idyllic image that I often had about my early childhood.

"Frank?"

"Sorry," I apologized. "I was thinking."

"About starting a family?"

"Hell no," I replied. "You know what kind of father I would make? If I had a son nothing he did would ever be good enough for me, and if I had a daughter I would be tempted to lock her in a room and turn her into a lesbian."

"What?"

"Men are assholes Pavel. I mean, do you remember the kind of stuff we used to pull on girls on the early days?"

"Point taken," he nodded. "But women can be bitches too."

I shrugged. "You win some, you lose some."

"Frank, I can smell the bullshit coming out of your mouth. You're not making any sense."

"Yeah," I admitted. "Perhaps this much rest has messed me up somewhat."

"Worry not, three straight days with no missions or tasks is a dream that can't last for too long."

"Agreed," I said.

Pavel was proven right an hour later. My helmet beeped and I put it on. It seemed weird that most people had telephones implanted or used relatively small 'old-fashioned' devices while I was forced to use my helmet as a replacement for a cell phone. Irony aside, my helmet was an incredibly good piece of equipment, very clear sound and reception.

"Castillo here," I said.

"This is Hayes," came the captain's ridiculously attractive voice. "We're being called up for wall duty. Air assets have spotted suspicious enemy activity."

"Roger that, sir. North or south?"

"North," she replied. "Lots of ammo in case they attempt something."

I mentally cursed. Enemy movements in the north meant elites. Their forces had reached Udinia not so long ago and had begun raiding all UNSC positions within their reach. They were surprisingly effective at the task considering that their homologues in the south were vicious and violent gorillas that took every chance they could to mutilate their victims.

Well, their violence did mean that they often lost sight of the mission, making them less effective than the professional elites hitting valuable positions in our northern side.

"Discourage them from coming at us," I said. "Got it captain, I'll rouse the men immediately."

"Make it quick, lieutenant."

"Wilco," I replied. "Out."

"What's the job?" Pavel asked.

"Wall duty," I replied. "Come on, up you go."

He groaned theatrically as he pushed himself up from his chair. "Could be worse, you know. We could be doing SAM destruction, early prevention, or even assassination."

"Yeah," I nodded. "They have the Spartans doing that shit, deep behind enemy lines or so I hear."

"They don't appear to have had much success," Pavel said. "Which is actually disappointing for once. Don't get me wrong, I'm an ODST and think it's great to see them humbled a little bit, but not when the stakes are so high."

"Agreed. They need to take out Mr. Mohawk and Fancy Moves Elite."

"I call the elite Fleetmaster. With a capital F. ONI got some intel on his rank and everything, the guy was second in command of the fleet, but the leader died when the Spartans detonated a volcano right underneath his ship."

"Why the hell is he here groundside?" Pavel asked. "You don't see Admiral Patterson fighting here with the grunts."

I shrugged. "Hingeheads are weird Pavel, you should know that by now."

"Frank, don't be an asshole."

"That's don't be an asshole, sir," I corrected. "Get your squad and gear up," I ordered. "Let's get this over with."

Pavel and I were close to the barracks. He quickly got his armor on and took off to get the rest of his squad. It seemed like every time we got called up for a mission we were spread out all over the area. I should've told them to stay close by, make my job easier. Apparently my men had enough time to find themselves a willing sexual partner in this mess. I know that being an ODST gives you a huge bonus when trying to seduce a woman, but taking advantage of shell-shocked refugees seemed a little bit too much, even for me.

"What's the news, sir?" Sandor asked me. "We going out or what?"

"Wall duty," I replied. "Get dressed. You too Marvin."

"Sir," Marv said.

"Where's Andy and Miri?" I asked.

"They went to the showers."

"That's some fetish fuel right there," I noted drily.

"That's what I said," Sandor said. "I mean, it's perfectly normal for a man to–"

I waved him quiet. "Marv, go get them," I ordered. "Just tell them to get dressed."

"Where's Ryan?" he asked, moving towards the showers.

"He went to speak to his family," I said. "I'll get him in a while."

"Yes, sir."

As soon as I was done with my armor I opened a channel to Caboose. "Caboose, you got your men with you?"

"Yes, sir," he came in after a short pause. "Zepeda and O'Malley are right here with me."

"Good to go?"

"Yes, sir."

My helmet tagged them immediately as soon as they put on their helmets. The three of them were in one of the smaller control towers. For some reason Caboose kept volunteering himself and his squad to do overwatch on the tower. There were some refugees on the bottom floor, but that was about it. The tower probably had enough rooms that Miri could sneak up there every now and then, and perhaps O'Malley and Zepeda each had their own civilian partners, but I don't think that the three of them decided to stay up there for the sake of sexual escapades.

Recon Squad had lost half its number in a matter of days. Perhaps they just wanted to be alone.

I'd have to put them all for a chat with a shrink. Perhaps right after I had a talk with one myself…

"Sir?" Andy asked, coming out of the shower with just a towel on. Miranda was right behind her.

"Get dressed," I ordered. The towers seemed to be too short. "We've got wall duty."

"Yes, sir," they said. I couldn't help but notice that Miranda went beet red even despite her relatively dark skin.

"Is Platoon Three working with us?" Marv asked, placing magazines into his pouches.

"Don't think so," I said. "They're still guarding our supply drops."

"Boring job if I ever heard one," Sandor said. "They don't even get to shoot anything."

"And what's so bad about that?" Marv asked him. "Come on hurry up."

Andy and Miri were done putting on their armor by the time the three of us guys had finished with out ammunition and weapons. We waited for them to get their weapons and magazines before taking off at a light jog.

"Five, we're meeting in Sector Thirty-Three," I said. "One is going to have our left flank and Two will have our right. Standard wall duty, fire at anything that moves, don't let anything get close. Elite and jackal rangers take priority over any other target short of a tank."

"Yes, sir," came the nearly simultaneous reply.

I looked over my shoulder to confirm that Sandor had brought his SPANKr with him and nodded to myself once I saw the rocket launcher slung across his back. We made our way through the five ships that would be leaving today, calling out for the civilian refugees to get out of our way as we pushed past them. The big transports would fit several thousand people each. It wouldn't be exactly comfortable, but they would spend most of the time in cryo, so there was no need to complain.

"Ok, I want us spaced like this: sharpshooter, assault rifle, sharpshooter. Ok? If we face wave attacks do mow them down but don't stop looking for infiltration units. You all heard about that trick they pulled off five days ago in the western wall. Also, anything that even vaguely resembles a SAM will be immediately targeted and destroyed, it doesn't matter if we waste a rocket. Our job here is to protect the civilian population at any cost."

"Oorah!"

"Good, double ti–"

Something hit me really hard and I was thrown off my feet. I saw the world spin completely around before I came crashing back down on the hard polycrete surface. My vision was dotted with black dots and bright flashes even as I struggled to draw air into my lungs. I vaguely registered the sound of another explosion and one of the transports blowing up into a million pieces before something landed on top of me.

I grunted and shoved a mangled corpse off me. "Report!" I shouted, my ears ringing. "VSF count off!"

"Sir, I'm here!" Marv shouted. "Sandor's ok too."

"I'm good," Miranda said.

"Same here," Andy came in. "What the hell just happened?"

One of the transports had been hit by something or other strong enough to shred it to pieces. The shrapnel and fireball had killed pretty much everyone within fifty meters of the ship and wounded many more. The mob of people had dispersed in record time, leaving behind an uncomfortably large number of unmoving and twitching bodies.

My helmet was immediately flooded with chatter from everyone inside the firebase. I quickly gave the command for it to filter out all non-essential channels and broadcast the situation to all military channels.

"We're going to need medics down here. A lot of them."

Just as I finished saying that the screams came. A lot of the wounded civilians were only just beginning to realize just how fucked up their situation was. The shock was finally wearing off and they were now beginning to experience the full extent of their injuries.

"Sir, I'm getting distortions in the space in front of me," Marv called out.

"Test them," I ordered. "Now!"

Two shots rang out and one of the distortions flickered briefly to reveal a big elite.

"We've got Covenant inside the perimeter!" Marvin shouted, making sure to broadcast it to all channels. "Elite stealth troops moving in on the wrecked transport!"

"Take 'em out boys!" I ordered. "Fire, fire, fire!"

The elites didn't seem to be expecting such a quick reaction, but then again, we didn't expect one of our transports to be blown up from inside our own perimeter. A few of the elites fell quickly, but the rest immediately took advantage of their camouflage and faded into the smoke.

"I need some thermal imagery ASAP," I shouted into my helmet. "We've got an unknown number of enemy elites inside our perimeter. They are cloaked and appear to be attempting to destroy evacuation transports."

"Lieutenant, this is Command, we're sending birds up right now."

"Thank you sir, I recommend to immediately scan the entire firebase for hostiles."

"We're doing that right now, son. We need you to hold back those elites until we can send in armored support."

"Yes, sir. Thank you, sir."

My men were already moving up, urging the few remaining civilians to evacuate the area.

"Spread out," I ordered. "Come at them from the sides."

"Thermal's not showing anything, sir," Sandor came in.

"Too much heat interference from the wreck," Andy said.

"Pelt the area with automatic fire," I ordered. "Caboose, Pavel, how are you?"

"Frank, they're attacking the walls," Pavel came in. "Looks like the real deal."

"Starting to sound like it too," Caboose came in. "We're seeing some big movements on the north side, Daemon tanks and everything."

"Keep a lookout," I said. "We might need you to cover us in a while."

"Yes, sir."

I hated this. I hated having eight multiple conversations at once while I was being shot at by targets I couldn't see.

"Elite's making a run for it," Andrea shouted.

"Miri, take it down!"

"On it!"

An elite materialized along with half of its brain matter. It fell about thirty meters from the wreck and immediately sent to other gelatinous blobs moving back to the relative safety of the smoke cover.

"We might need a small-scale airstrike," Marv muttered.

"Agreed," Sandor said.

"Where the hell is Ryan?" Andrea asked. "We don't even know how many covvies are in there."

"Frags!" I ordered loudly. "Start throwing frags!"

The explosions were pretty loud considering the ambience noise. The attack on the walls was only just beginning to gain speed and the gunfire was also increasing in volume. A few of the explosions were hits, sending the occasional limb flying one way or another.

"We need either a firefighter brigade or mortar fire," I said. "Command, this is Lie–"

"We heard you, Lieutenant. You might want to keep your head down."

"Down!" I shouted.

The mortars started raining down upon the wreckage a few seconds later, the explosions went on for ten seconds before Command finally decided that it was enough. Ten seconds might not sound like much, but when it comes to sustained artillery fire, ten seconds can be eternal.

"Marv, Sandor, clear the wreckage. Andrea, Miranda, start pulling out any wounded."

"Yes, sir!"

"Ryan, do you read me?" I asked. "Hoff, are you there?"

No answer.

"Fuck!" _He didn't take his helmet with him._

While they followed my orders I made sure that I had a channel to Pavel and another one to Hanna just in case. I set those two to be the most easily accessible ones and moved up to help clear the wreckage.

"Clear!" Sandor shouted. "Nothing here but corpses, sir!"

"Human corpses," I muttered in reply. "Where did they come from? Even cloaked they couldn't have snuck past us."

"Airdrop?" Marv suggested.

I immediately looked up.

"Command, what's the situation in the air?"

"No movement, thermal specs are coming in and… nothing."

"Could they have fooled our sensors?" Sandor asked. "It has been done before."

"Don't think so," I said.

"Back in the day people used to dig tunnels to get behind enemy fortifications," Marv said.

I froze. "Do you see anything?"

"Negative."

"Listen up everybody," I broadcast to my platoon and company. "There might be some tunneling activity, keep your eyes open."

I got a few acknowledgement lights and returned to my own business. There were no more aliens anywhere nearby, but the six dead elites were too many for a raid of this kind. An elite and a grunt would've been more than enough to sneak past and plant some explosives in one of the transport ships.

"That can't be the whole assault force," Andy said.

"Exactly what I was thinking," I said. "If they came through a tunnel there might be more waiting."

"Oh shit," Miranda said in an uncharacteristic bout of potty talk.

"Shit, evacuate the area," I shouted. "Come on, let's–"

Before I had taken four steps I was thrown from the ground for the second time in a minute. I landed hard on the ground, albeit not as painfully as the first time. Another explosion came after the incredibly loud noise that the ground collapsing underneath us had made. Several dozen tons of rock simply fell down to god knows where and pushed up a storm of dust that pretty much blocked everything from sight.

All this happened while I rolled away from my rifle and tried to get a firm grip on it again.

"What the fuck!"

"Count off!" I ordered for the second time in less than a minute.

"I'm ok," Miranda came in.

"I'm ok," Marv echoed.

"I'm ok. I'm fucked up, but ok," Sandor said.

"Likewise," Andrea checked in.

I got myself up to my feet and saw vague shadows of what was going on. A second transport had been right underneath the epicenter of the blast. The explosion had left it as useless as the one they had blown up first. A small secondary explosion broke the relative silence before alien war cries came to my ears.

"Incoming covvies!" I shouted. "Suppressing fire!"

Marv was the first one to react to my orders, quickly followed by Andy and Sandor. Miranda seemed to be taking her sweet time, and dozens of grunts were flooding through the crater in underneath the transport. The first few ones were quickly and effectively mowed down. They were too eager and didn't bother checking their surroundings, but after those first ones died the rest started firing as they went, sending us diving to the ground.

"Pavel, they're coming in through a tunnel! They out a whole fucking army inside the walls!"

"Fucking shit," he eloquently replied. "Shit, shit, shit. I can't help you Frank, they're just about flooding over the walls."

"Caboose!"

"We just finished setting up," he said. "Stan's got your back."

Sandor finished cutting down a trio of grunts and an elite's head exploded, a few seconds after that I heard the characteristic noise of Zepeda's SRS.

"Thanks, Zepeda," I said. "Elites only."

Green light.

Before too long we got reinforcements in the shape of a platoon of half-armored Marines. They placed themselves on one of the covvies' flanks. Incredibly enough we got even more reinforcements less than two minutes after that. Three battered Armadillos formed a barrier and started firing their autocannons at the mass of aliens trying to gain a foothold inside Fountain Firebase.

"Lieutenant Castillo," Hayes shouted into my helmet. "Castillo!"

"I hear you Cap," I said, reloading my rifle. "What is it?"

"Command wants the transports to take off before any more are destroyed. The Covenant are too close for comfort."

"Roger, what do you need us to do?"

"Civilian herding, they're scared and need some ass-shoving."

I grunted. "Sir, you know we can handle that, but this isn't exactly a field day down here."

"I get that, _lieutenant_, and Command does too. They're sending every available man to your position and need you to hurry up the evacuation process along."

"Yes, sir." I cursed. "Come on, you heard the lady," I told my squad. "Pull back, pull back."

I saw my men start moving back as Marines and soldiers flooded in the area. Despite our armored support and large numbers the covvies kept on coming. They must've had at least a hundred in the tunnels and probably even more waiting in line. This was the real deal.

"I want clear visors," I said. "We're doing police work, but stay sharp."

Tanks started rolling past us with groups of Marines behind them. I did my best to ignore them, but the sheer numbers of Marines and soldiers that they were sending to the crater could only mean that they were actually needed there more than at the walls. The two transports that were still intact were being crowded by the survivors from the destroyed starships. A few men in armor were trying to keep them from rushing in but were being overwhelmed by sheer numbers.

"Sandor, you get to be the bad guy," I said. "Make sure only civilians with valid passes get on board."

"Got it," he said.

As Sandor elbowed his way through the mob and started shouting I motioned for my squad to spread out around the civilians. They immediately started spreading out the word that the ones who were supposed to be inside the destroyed ships would get a new ship or a ride on a UNSC ship. A few made attempts to protest, but the iconic ODST helmet quickly discouraged them. Sandor, however, was the main reason that the mob started sinking back into relative peace. It was an incredible feat considering that there was a battle going on less than a kilometer from this position.

"Sir, my wife…"

"I'm sorry," I dismissed the man. "UNSC will release a list of casualties later today."

"But what if they overwhelm us?"

"They won't," I quickly replied. "Everyone not supposed to be here please return to your shelters! We need to make this quick!"

"My daughter–"

"Where are we supposed to go?"

"I can't stay here!"

"I need to get on the ship!"

"Where's my baby? Where's my son?"

The voices started coming in and I could tell that more than a few of those weren't real. I growled quietly and pushed people away from me not too gently. The moment there was enough space I raised my rifle and fired three shots in the air.

Hearing a gunfight a kilometer away was one thing, but having a rifle go off less than a dozen meters from you can be scary.

In hindsight it was probably a pretty bad decision, especially considering the fucking battle that was raging around them.

"Everybody calm down!" I boomed as loudly as my helmet's amplifiers would go. "Anybody not on the passenger list will return to camp immediately or will be charged with disorderly conduct and treason."

"You heard the big man!" Sandor said. "I'm the nice guy here, so back the fuck off if you're not supposed to be here!"

I have no idea why I wasn't beat to death or yelled at, but for some reason beyond my understanding everybody started moving in different directions. People started climbing the boarding ramps calmly and others jogged back towards the safety of the refugee camp.

"That's it, keep moving," Marv said in a calm voice. "Come on, let's go. You'll get your chance another day."

I paced back and forth, occasionally urging a person to move faster or checking a victim to see if the injuries warranted immediate medical attention. Most of the people that had made it all the way over here were good enough to walk, but I made sure to direct a few to the nearest hospital building.

"First transport is good to go," Andy said. "Captain is just waiting for the go sign."

"Relay the information to Control Tower," I ordered. "And hurry up boarding process."

"Yes, sir."

The second ship was almost twice as big as the first one, but the loading ramps were much bigger. I moved my men so that one of two of them would each be guarding one and I paced in between them to take care of whatever issues arose. The process was going quite fast and even though the battle hadn't died down it had bogged down.

"We're about 90% full," the pilot said. "A few more minutes should do it."

"Good," I said. "Report progress to Control Tower."

"Understood, el-tee."

Now I had pilots deferring to me. Next thing you know I would be in command of a battalion.

"Marv, start boarding process on the third transport," I ordered. "Lower the ramps and hurry along everybody still around here."

"Yes, sir."

The crater battle had been going on for almost an hour now, either they would cave in or we would. We still had to get this over quickly to jump back into the battle as soon as possible.

"Pavel, sitrep."

"Not good, sir," he came in, panting. "We're holding the line, but just barely. We need constant mortar support if we want to survive."

"I'll see about that. Casualties?"

"Sutton was hit," he said. "I don't think he'll make it."

I nodded. "Copy that."

I took a deep breath.

"Fuck!"

A few startled civilians looked at me and started moving quicker, but otherwise nobody said anything about my brief outburst. Sutton was the sixth casualty in my platoon so far. That was almost a third of my men dead in a year.

"Lieutenant, we're getting reports of enemy air assets on the move, I repeat, there are enemy air assets on the move."

"Copy that, Command," I said, thoughts racing through my mind. "What kind of air assets?"

"Drones are getting some interference, but it appears that there is at least ten Banshee fighters and two Spirit dropships. We've dispatched two squadrons of Hornets and are gearing up the SkyHawks to intercept."

"Got it, let's just pray they hold long enough. Castillo out."

Just when you thought things couldn't get worse…

That's when they got worse.

Someone started screaming and the crowd lost it.

I was taller than most and my armored boots added some height to that. It still didn't allow me to see just what the hell was going on. I couldn't stretch my neck to see over the crowd unless I wanted to get trampled, instead I crouched to get more stability and survive all the people trampling each other.

"What's going on?" I asked.

"Cloaked elites, they started cutting anyone within arm's reach," Miri said.

"Well shoot them!"

"Too many civilians around them."

"Shoot them!" I shouted.

Two DMR shots rang out and the screaming intensified.

"Shit," Miranda muttered. "Nicked a man."

"Killed him?"

"No. Wait. The man or the elite?"

"Both."

"No and yes."

"Then you saved the man."

"There's more than one!" Sandor joined the conversation. "Looks like at least six."

I started running against the crowd, gaining perhaps three or four feet before the people started thinning out enough for me to actually make some progress. Three of the six elites were busy impaling wounded or trampled civilians while the other three were busy being killed by my men.

One of the elites fell and another picked up a corpse as a meatshield. I rolled my eyes and out three bursts through the man's neck and into the elite's chest. The alien dropped the corpse and recoiled from the impacts before Miri finished it off with a headshot.

"Behind you!"

Once again my men proved teamwork the best solution for survival in active combat.

Just as Sandor shouted out a warning I jumped forward. Even as I jumped I started turning around. A massive elite with a sword on either hand growled angrily and jumped at me, both blades going for my neck. I ducked and rolled away. For a moment I thought it was the field marshal, but the armor was different and didn't have the scratches.

"Oh shit," I said. "Zepeda?"

Red light. He didn't have a line of sight.

I fired three times in quick succession, two shots hit the elite in the arm and stalled it somewhat, but it wasn't until Sandor and Andy started hitting it with sustained fire that it tried to run away before coming to its knees. I fired the last shot, piercing its helmet and splattering its brains out the back of its head.

"Sir!"

"Hoff?" I asked myself. "What?"

"Sir!"

Ok, it _was_ him.

"Ryan!" Sandor shouted.

I backed away from the sword-bearing elites, firing as I went, and turned around. Hoff was running towards us. With at least twenty civilians in tow.

"What?" I deadpanned.

"Sir!" he shouted for the third time. "These people have places in the second transport!"

"Well get them on board!" I shouted back. "Go!"

I quickly noticed that three civilians stayed behind with Ryan.

_Shit, his family._

As soon as the last civilian climbed on board I told the pilot to take off and left the area.

"Hoff, what the fuck?"

"Sorry, sir," he quickly apologized, breathing hard. Forgot my helmet."

"At least you didn't forget your rifle… That your family?"

"Yes, sir."

I looked at the frightened Hoffs. "Pleasure making your acquaintance. You on that transport?"

"Yes," his dad said.

"Well, Mr. Hoff, we'd better start running."

The elites that we had killed moments ago hadn't come alone. Our defensive line had been broken some place or other and now large numbers of enemy infantry were flooding through. Most were going straight for the camp, but they'd have some serious firepower to contend with before they made it close. The rest of them were coming towards the last remaining transport ship.

"Move, move!" I shouted.

Hoff wouldn't let go of his mother, helping her run as fast as she could and urging her to go on. His little brother was keeping a brave face, but the fear was burning him up. His dad was calm, but he wasn't even bothering with trying to hide his fear and worry. I would've liked to meet him before this.

"Come on Ryan," Sandor urged. "Come on!"

"They're going!" he shouted back. "Let's go mom."

"I'm– I'm trying."

We made our way past a group of dead elites, only that one of them turned out to be not quite dead. The alien pushed its chest from the ground and stabbed Hoff through the back of the knee with its sword. The other blade missed him, but having a plasma sword through a major articulation is bad enough. He cried out in pain and stopped abruptly. Before anybody could do anything Hoff bashed the elite with his rifle's stock and jerked himself free of the energy sword. Andrea shot the elite in the back of the head and caught Hoff before he could collapse.

"You ok?" she asked.

"Can't walk…" he grunted.

"I'll take care of them," Sandor assured them.

"Let's go, don't stop!" I shouted, pushing his mom back in the direction of the last transport ship. "Move! He'll be fine!"

Plasma and needles started crisscrossing the air in front and around us. I pressed myself against Mrs. Hoff and made her run while crouched. Sandor did the same with Hoff's brother and Marv took care of his dad, leaving Miri and Andy to fire back at the Covenant soldiers.

"Just a little bit more," I growled when we were fifty meters away. "Don't stop now!"

Something hit me in the ankle and I fell to the ground face-first.

Don't you just love irony?

"Keep running!" I shouted, feeling the burning pain on my ankle. "Go!"

Not a second later Marv was hit in the back, right between the shoulder plates. He collapsed without a sound and this time Hoff's family did indeed start running faster.

Sandor let himself fall back to the rear and started firing at the sword-bearing elites trying to close in on him. Two of them fell and another one managed a swipe, but Sandor killed it with a burst to the face after ducking the blow. The Hoffs were the last ones climbing the platform, and as soon as they did Sandor turned around and started firing at the Covenant trying to get past him.

"Back bitches!" he yelled. "Or meet your gods!"

I'm not sure if they understood him, but they got the meaning of his words well enough. I started reaching for my rifle when I saw a huge elite in golden armor materialize twenty feet from Sandor. It activated two energy swords and started walking towards him slowly. Sandor finished off a fourth elite and reloaded. The golden elite was too close.

He ran at it and fired a short burst before placing his rifle on the way of one of the energy swords. The plasma blade got caught halfway through the MA5 and Sandor slammed into the elite in a hard tackle. He grabbed its other sword hand and reached for his sidearm. He only got two shots before the elite cut his hand off and impaled him through the chest.

"NO!"

Sandor was slumped over as the elite lifted him off the ground effortlessly. I watched in rage as Sandor reached up to his face and removed his helmet. He threw it in the elite's direction and spat at it before dying.

"Sandor!" Andy shouted. "No!"

I pushed myself to one knee as the elite carelessly threw Sandor's body aside. Andy and Miri fired at it, hitting the shields protecting it.

"You fucking asshole!" I shouted.

The elite turned around and growled in reply. Only then did I see the grooves in the armor dug there by knives. This field marshal was the same one that had faced a Spartan and gotten the better of him. It was the same one that had killed Han and Montri. It was the same one that had almost killed me.

It dropped a sword and drew a pistol. One shot was all it took to put Miranda out of commission. The blast hit her between the chest and throat, right where the armor was the thinnest. I fired a few bursts at it, but its fucking shields held for long enough. Two more elites placed themselves in between their leader and our rifles and paid for their lives with it, but by the time their bodies hit the ground the field marshal was gone.

"Andy, get Miranda," I ordered. "Go!"

The transport's engines started roaring, incinerating several Covenant troopers that had been too close to them. I limped towards Marv's limp body and picked him up with a lot less effort than it should've required before slinging him over my shoulders.

"Come on man," I murmured. "Come on."

I placed him next to Hoff, who was busy looking at the evacuation transport as it slowly gained altitude.

"They got away," he said. There were tears in his eyes. They could be of joy or of pain, but in all likelihood were a mix of both. "They got away."

Three Banshees came out of nowhere and started firing at the transport.

"No!" Hoff shouted. "No, no!"

I looked around the sky, trying to find anything that could help. When that failed I raised my rifle and started firing in a wild attempt to hit the three purple fliers. My shots did nothing of significant impact, and before a minute had gone past one of the pilots hit something important and the entire ship blew up in a magnificent fireball.

"No!" Ryan screamed. "No!"

Andy finished dragging Miranda towards us and looked up. Then she started crying

* * *

><p><em>Chapter is barely proofread, I apologize for any mistakes. I also apologize for the long delay in between updates, as you know I was in New York last week and returned here to beautiful, smog-riddled Mexico City for finals week. Ain't that great? The answer (in case you were wondering) is no. It is not great. it fucking sucks. I don't usually swear in these author rants things, but I'm annoyed beyond explanation. Oh, and this was my last buffer chapter, so now I'll have to speed up my writing speed during exams week. *Groans loudly*<em>

_Well, I'm sorry about that. Now, to address some of your concerns..._

_A few reviewers asked why Frank and Co. didn't just steal covvie weapons. I meant for the story to make it clear that the covvies were equally low on ammo and making every effort to save their own weapons for ammo. If I failed to make that clear enough I apologize, but that's that. As for the elite's shields, they ran out of power or something. I don't think I mentioned it, but in my head the Spartans were always in the Covenant's rear, raiding and making trouble for the covvies._

_And another one bites the dust._

_Stay strong._

_-casquis_


	183. The Truth is Relative

Chapter CLXXXIII: The Truth is Relative

**July 3, 2549 (UNSC Calendar)/**

**Fountain FOB, Udinia, Paris IV, Paris System**

* * *

><p>"<em>The truth is absolute."<em>

* * *

><p>The transport ship broke up into several big pieces and started falling back down to Paris IV in a meteor shower out of hell. The three Banshees broke off and disappeared behind some clouds.<p>

"Fuck!" Marv shouted, kicking a rock. He barely ever lost his cool like that.

I saw Hoff reach towards his sidearm and raise it so that the barrel was aiming at his chin.

"Hoff!" I shouted, kicking his hand. The gun fired right after I hit his wrist and the bullet barely missed his jaw.

Marv immediately jumped at him and pressed his hand against the ground, slamming it twice to get him to release the pistol. Andrea, still crying, reached for his other arm and pinned it to the ground as well.

"Just let me die," he shouted. "Let me do this!"

"I'll let you die," I told him, shaking his head. "But I won't let you kill yourself!"

The words seemed to get to him and he stopped struggling with Marv and Andrea. He looked up at me

"My whole family was there," he said coldly. "What is there to live for?"

"Revenge if nothing else," I told him.

I almost cried when I saw him die a little. His eyes managed to show that all desire to live had left him. He stopped crying and stared into some point in the distance. His eyebrows came together in a determined frown and he put his hand up so that I could pull him to his feet. Once there he leaned on Marv, letting his injured leg slide to the side a little bit. He looked at me, absolutely no expression in his face.

I nodded at Marv and he flipped the pistol around in his hand before hesitantly offering it to Hoff. He took the pistol and examined it before letting his arm fall back down. I picked up his DMR and placed it on his back, making sure the magnetic clamps kept it firmly in place.

"Andy, stop crying," I said drily. "You're a Helljumper, not a fucking baby."

"Sir," she sniffled, her voice managed to break halfway through the word. "Sorry, sir."

There weren't many covvie soldiers left and already some units were being sent our way. Despite us having been the only UNSC forces in the area up till a few seconds earlier, the few survivors were focusing on the bigger threat. Seeing as the bigger threat involved two tanks and a couple of platoons they weren't exactly effective.

I sighed. "Marv, help Hoff. Andy, you and I will move Miranda, ok?"

"Yes, sir," they both replied.

"Come on," I said, giving one last look at the fading fireball. "Let's go."

* * *

><p><strong>July 4, 2549 (UNSC Calendar)one day later**

**UNSC **_**Flawless**_**, in orbit above Udinia, Paris IV, Paris System**

**Vice Admiral Oliver Bogart **

"Sanders, have we finished scavenging the _Navarone_?" I asked.

"Yes, sir," the junior officer replied. "All MAC ammunition has been divided in between us and the _(Dis)Honorable._"

I cleared my throat.

"Sorry sir," Sanders apologized quickly. "The _Honorable._"

"Very well. Dalman, give me an update on the battle group."

"Yes, sir. Right away." The man tapped a few buttons on his console and the information I wanted appeared on the screen in front of him. "The _Honorable _still has battle damage, but the repairs have progressed, especially since they sent scavenger crews to cannibalize the _Naverone._ Their Archer stocks are back to 15% and they've replenished their PDGs. The _Orchestrating the Screaming_–"

I chuckled at the name. I always did.

"–has been mostly evacuated and the ship's AI is creating a subroutine for the ramming attempt."

"Commander Williams?" I inquired.

"She's not happy, sir."

I shrugged slightly and rubbed my right temple. That headache just wouldn't go away. "Can't be helped. Anything else?"

"Ummm… not really, sir. The _So Much For Subtlety_ is still undetected, but the reports coming in are nothing new."

A prowler was certainly useful, but said usefulness was limited to planting minefields and gathering intelligence. The moment a prowler was made its destruction was guaranteed. The ships were state of the art, but were small enough to be destroyed by simple anti-fighter lasers and plasma cannons. No amount of camouflage would stop the plasma coming at it.

"Thank you, ensign," I said. "As you were."

"Sir."

I stood up from my chair and slowly walked up to the large holotable in the middle of the bridge. It was displaying the _Flawless_, my ship, and highlighted the damaged areas and other important information. I couldn't help but frown at the display, even if I had the information it showed memorized by heart. One of the two MAC cannons was completely useless, courtesy of a raiding crew that we somehow managed to miss. The starboard side had been on the receiving end of a particularly nasty series of strikes, only a few of the Archer missile pods were still intact, and those had only a few missiles left. The ventral and dorsal pods were mostly in working order, but Seraph fire and plasma torpedoes had damaged a few of them. The port side only had half of its missile pods left and those had about 10% of their full capacity.

_In this state we could barely go up against a pair of corvettes._

I quickly flicked through similar displays showing me the current state of affairs on board the UNSC _So Much For Subtlety, _the UNSC _Honorable_, and the UNSC _Orchestrating the Screaming_. All three ships were badly damaged, but the _Orchestrating the Screaming_ was barely functional, its life support systems were about to fail and the inertial dampeners had stopped working a long time since. I hated to see a good ship like it go, but if the plan worked then it would take out a cruiser.

That left me with only my own ship, a prowler, and a heavy destroyer. My ship was tough and the _Honorable _was tougher, but we could only take so much.

"How far is Patterson's fleet?" I asked.

"Twenty light-minutes, sir," Sanders replied. "Do you want to send a message?"

"No, thanks," I replied. "He's engaging a flotilla, is he not?"

"Yes, sir," Sanders confirmed. "Well, technically the battle was over a few minutes ago, but we won't see it until later."

I rolled my eyes. Sanders was the kind of guy that seemed to explain everything to everyone. It wasn't because he thought that he was smarter than everybody around him, it was just a personal habit of his. Every elementary school kid knew that what we saw in the sky was actually in the past because light takes a certain time to travel from one place to another. Every naval officer knew that what you saw in a certain solar system was up to a few hours or even days old, so you had to make your moves in a way that tried predicting those of the enemy you were seeing on your screen.

My head throbbed again. Life was hard enough without having to plan combat strategies in four dimensions. This was especially true right now, when two of my ships had been blown to oblivion and a third one was damaged badly enough to warrant using it as a bomb.

"Sir, incoming hail from ODP-02."

"Patch it through."

"Good morning, Admiral," the officer in charge of the defense platform greeted.

I looked down at my watch. I hadn't noticed that it was morning, I was running on frequent naps more than anything. I knew how important being well rested was, but the situation made it nearly impossible for me to catch more than four consecutive hours of sleep without something important happening.

"Good morning, Commander," I replied.

"Sir, you asked me to report as soon as the survivors from the _Naverone_ had been assigned living quarters and issued personal effects. We don't have enough rooms for everybody, but we managed to make some room."

"That's good."

"Sir, I also had a request…"

"Go on," I told him after I sensed his hesitation.

"Some Phantoms and Seraphs are still getting past our PDGs on occasion. A squadron of Longswords would come in very handy."

I sighed. "I'm sorry commander, but our remaining fighters are divided between your station and ODP-05, we can't afford to pull even a single fighter from that station either."

The commander nodded, he had expected this response. "I understand, sir. In that case I have another request. A few enemy boarding parties have made it through. My Marines have been able to handle it, but if too many covvies got on board we would be in real trouble. I wanted to ask for volunteers amongst the survivors, create a few auxiliary infantry units. We have enough weapons and ammunition here to arm two platoons."

I almost smiled. "Well, I'm glad you asked first."

The commander actually did smile. "They're your men, sir. My mom taught me to always be polite."

"A wise woman that one."

"Yes," he said. "Yes she was."

"Was she on the planet?"

"Yes, sir."

"I'm sorry," I apologized sadly. So many people had died. "Is there anything else?"

"Not really, I heard that the factories were destroyed?"

"Yes, captured," I confirmed. "What we have is what there is. No more heavy rounds for your station."

"Understood, that is all, sir. Out."

The image disappeared from in front of me and my _Flawless _replaced it.

"Sir," Sanders said, "The _Stalingrad_ and her auxiliaries engaged two cruisers and five corvettes. The battle was a stalemate, one of the enemy corvettes was damaged and two of our frigates appear to have lost some of their propulsion capabilities."

"Give me a full report when we have more information," I said. "Jaws."

A holographic shark replaced the diagram of my ship. "Yes, admiral?"

"Play some music. Classical."

"Will Montmercy suffice?"

"No, let's play something older…"

"Yo-Yo Ma?"

I shook my head again.

"Admiral, this would be easier if you told me what to play."

"Play me Symphony Number 40 by Mozart. All four movements."

"Right away, sir."

The soft and relaxing sounds of Molto Allegro filled the bridge, quieting any conversations that had been going on. I closed my eyes and allowed myself to slump slightly on the command chair. One of my bridge crew would wake me if anything merited my attention. Once I made the decision I let the beautiful music carry me to sleep.

* * *

><p><strong>July 4, 2549 (UNSC Calendar)**

**Fountain FOB, Udinia, Paris IV, Paris System**

**First Lieutenant Yassir Dajani**

"And his knee?" I asked.

"Half of it was vaporized by the energy sword," Frank said tiredly. "Doctors got some crappy temporary implants, enough to give him some mobility. Problem is up here." He knocked his head and made crazy eyes. "That man is dead inside."

"I'm sure he can get over it," I said, trying to sound convincing. "Some therapy and he'll be back to normal."

Frank turned his face and looked at me. The man had been my friend for a long time, but sometimes his eyes scared me.

"I know crazy Yas," he said. He barely ever mentioned insanity or mental problems. I had spent enough time around him to know that I noticed some things.

Frank sometimes spoke to someone that wasn't there, and he seemed to hear somebody that wasn't there too. We all had nightmares, but the ones he went through were always the same, he apologized repeatedly to several different people. He occasionally mentioned that I had been talking in my sleep and I said the same thing, but we never discussed the nightmares themselves. As good a friend and a warrior as he was, he was walking a very thin line.

"I guess…" I said noncommittally. "What about it."

"I've been dealing with my own personal shit for a very long time and a quick look at Ryan is enough to tell me that he's lost it."

"That bad?"

"You saw him."

"I did," I admitted. "And it did look pretty bad… What are you going to do about it?"

Frank groaned loudly as he got up from the ground. "What _can_ I do? I can't allow him to bite a bullet, and I certainly can't order him to load himself with explosives and run into a Covenant compound. He wants to die, no way around that."

"Frank, allowing a man to die, whether he wants to or not is bad enough to warrant a court martial and maybe even a firing squad."

"They won't allow that."

This time it was my turn to groan. "Who the hell are they?" I asked. "You keep mentioning them or they or whatever, are they made up?"

"Whoa! I'm not that delusional."

"Then?"

"Classified."

I rolled my eyes. "Frank, for Pete's sake."

He shrugged and looked genuinely apologetic. It was strange to see a sincere expression coming from him. He rarely smiled in a way that looked heartfelt and the few times his laughter wasn't ironic or mocking it was when Pavel said something funny. He could fool most people, but spending so much time in the same room as him gave me a slight advantage. His facial expressions looked a little bit too practiced, as if he was consciously thinking about frowning in order to appear as people would expect him to.

"I seriously can't tell you," he said.

"And I seriously fucking hate you," I replied. "Let's change the topic. Ok?"

He shrugged. "Sure."

I tried thinking about something but couldn't come up with anything interesting for at least fifteen seconds. I flipped through my standard small talk opening phrases until I finally came up with something that didn't have anything to do with the war.

"Christ, when was the last time you got laid?" Frank asked before I could open my mouth.

"What?" I asked, momentarily stunned. He had a particular talent for making people uncomfortable. "A while I guess, since before we deployed here."

Frank looked at me and laughed.

"What?" I said, this time defensively. "I don't like relationships, if I allowed myself to love someone and then died… That can be painful."

"You never talk about her," he said. "Now I'm no expert, but I've lost a few girls that I loved."

"Not like this Frank. That's something that you can never get over."

He hadn't done it on purpose, but he had managed to get me thinking about the hardest time in my life during the toughest battle in my life.

"I'm sorry," he apologized quickly. "Shouldn't have brought her up."

"Don't worry about it."

"But you still get laid enough, right?"

I chuckled at his frankness, no pun intended. "Yes, you might see me as a sentimental bitch."

We both laughed a little bit. He had called me that during a half-drunken bout. I had punched him so hard for it that he slammed into the floor. Then he had somehow kicked me hard enough that he drove the wind out of me and pushed me all the way into the opposite wall. We decided to leave it at that and called it even after he apologized.

"But I'm still a man," I continued. "Sex is as essential to life as breathing."

"Amen," he said, pronouncing it as he would've in Spanish. "I gotta admit that having a girlfriend on the same ship does have its benefits."

I smiled. Hanna was a nice girl and happened to have a ridiculously cute face that went perfectly with her sexy body. Of course, whenever Frank asked I just told him that she was very attractive.

"I don't think I could handle it," I said. "Well the sex would be pretty damn welcome, but…"

"Don't jinx it," he interrupted. His tone was playful, but there was something that told me that he really didn't want me to continue that line of thought.

I opened my hands and slouched back against the wall.

"It's a bitch to talk to you, you know?" I said.

"And you're so sensitive about everything," he replied.

I grabbed a small rock and threw him at his boot. He picked it up and tossed it back, hitting my rifle and knocking it sideways, where it made a loud clatter.

"Dick," I said.

"Ass," he replied.

"Yas, do you copy?" Captain Tahlia came in.

"Loud and clear Tahlia," I said, grabbing my rifle and standing up. "What's up?"

"They're pushing us hard. I want your platoon and Castillo's to replace One and Three in fifteen minutes."

"Understood," I told her. "We'll be ready in ten."

"That's what I like to hear. Hayes out."

"What's the word?" Frank asked.

I don't know what was the problem between Tahlia and Frank, both were two of my best friends and both absolutely hated each other. None of them would tell my why no matter how much I begged them to. It was very annoying.

"We're moving in to replace One and Three," I informed him. "We need to be ready in ten minutes."

"I'll have my men ready to move in five," he replied. "Good luck."

I clasped his forearm. "You too."

* * *

><p><strong>July 4, 2549 (UNSC Calendar)**

**Fountain FOB, Udinia, Paris IV, Paris System**

**Private Stan Zepeda**

"Wake up, wake up ladies!"

I groaned quietly and tucked my chin into my chest further, hugging my SRS.

"I said… wake up!"

I opened my eyes. No matter how much I would've enjoyed going back to the nightmares there was work that needed doing and I was certainly going to be partaking in that work. I opened my eyes and took a deep breath. Before I could do anything else Abri put her hand towards me and helped pull me to my feet. I stretched and thanked Abri with a quick nod. She returned it in kind and pulled back the bolt on her assault rifle.

"O'Malley, Zepeda," Staff Sergeant Konstantinov called in. "Five is going in to replace Three's place in the defensive lines. We'll do the usual, ok? O'Malley, fall in with VSF Squad, I'll sink in with HW. Zepeda, do your own thing."

"Yes, sir," O'Malley said.

I nodded.

"Remember, we're fighting against brutes here. They don't usually hide anything behind their massive charges and attacks, but it pays to have your eyes open. Questions?"

I shook my head slightly.

"Good, let's go."

The two of them disappeared down a door and left me alone. I grabbed a few spare magazines for my rifle and shoved them into my various pockets. It still felt good to have ammunition despite having had plenty of it for the past weeks. It felt good to have a rifle as opposed to a spear and a knife that I could barely use. As soon as I was heavy with ammo I put my rifle across my back and drew my pistol. I leaned out the window to make sure that the nice three-story house I had seen earlier was still there and smiled slightly when it was. The whole city had been shot to hell, with building periodically crumbling down. A small unit of people had been created to dig out any soldiers trapped underneath the rubble. Messy work, but it had saved lives.

I climbed out the window and into a small ledge before jumping to the next house. I ran across the roof and jumped down to the ground. I made sure to roll and then crashed sideways into a wall to keep myself from falling to the ground. I didn't think anybody had seen me, but it paid to be cautious. I kept sprinting until I reached the house adjoining the one I wanted to be in. I kicked down the door and climbed all the way to the second floor before jumping across the narrow space in between the two houses and climbing inside through a broken window.

Now I know that all that wasn't necessary, but it made me feel better about myself.

I climbed to the third floor and into a window that provided a great view to the battlefield. The large number of destroyed houses meant that the Covenant had little cover if they were coming at my platoon. The good thing about having a large-caliber weapon was that it could punch through any wall not designed to stop artillery, with the drones flying above the battlefield I would have real-time thermal imagery of Covenant locations and shooting a target through a wall provided a sense of satisfaction that was otherwise hard to get.

"Zepeda, you up?" Staff Konstantinov asked.

I gave him a positive green light.

"You know what to do."

I gave him a second green light. Interacting with other people was so dull.

I looked through my scope and slowly moved it through the battlefield, playing close attention to the areas directly in front of my platoon. The covvie attackers had piled up some of the debris in order to make improvised barriers here and there. Some of the houses still had some walls standing, but most had been brought down. I made sure to have every single good sniper perch spotted and memorized. A jackal sharpshooter could hide anywhere, but it couldn't be effective from all locations.

Most of the brutes were behind cover, I could catch an occasional flash of movement here and there, quickly followed by a few red plasma bolts. Everything was incredibly loud, but from my location it seemed like the noise was disproportionately high. I knew that if I went towards my platoon that everything would seem a lot more fitting, but as long as bullets weren't flying my way everything would seem a little bit louder than was strictly necessary.

I made sure that the platoon line was open so that I could hear their chatter. They had an annoying tendency to speak out loud everything that they saw. Most of the time it bothered me to no end, but it could prove to be helpful, helping me locate targets.

Someone cried out something about a brute captain and a moment later I took it down. Not my greatest shot, but headless is headless.

I sighed. Things could get so boring sometimes. A brute captain here, a jackal sniper there, yet still I was unmade. Every good sniper knew that the key to survival as to remain unnoticed, but for some reason that I didn't understand I deeply enjoyed the act of shooting while under fire. I knew it was dangerous and I knew it was stupid, but I still liked it. I could always blame it on combat stress, but it had always been like this, I could always appreciate a good fight.

I saw a large group of grunts moving from cover to cover and zeroed in on them. They looked like regular grunts, no particular markings or armor to indicate that they were spec ops, but the way they moved didn't really scream dumb-alien-that-can't-fight.

A second later I saw what I was looking for. A brute in very ornate armor slid into cover behind a large pile of debris, the hammer over its back bobbed slightly. I aimed at the debris it was using for cover and waited for it to move. The moment the dumb brute did that I put a high-caliber through its fancy helmet.

I smiled as the bullet punched through the debris, leaving a trail of dust behind it. The blood that splattered the rocks was also quite spectacular. The chieftain somehow managed to stay on its feet for an astounding five seconds before its body realized that it was dead. The brute crumpled to the ground and the veteran grunts around it succumbed to their biological programming and started running in every direction. Then either Hoff or Lieutenant Castillo quickly gunned them down. Whatever their flaws, our two resident crazies were deadly with their weapons. I would've preferred to have Miranda watching my back, Staff Konstantinov trusted her and she didn't have any serious mental issues. At least none that were readily apparent.

After the chieftain fell the jackal sharpshooters started actively hunting. I made sure to keep hidden. I might've liked the thrill that came with being shot at, but I liked the thrill of actually being alive and kicking more, so I didn't actively draw attention to myself. I did clock a jackal or two that were getting too close, but after that I switched windows and decided to lay low for a while. The platoon was handling the constant attacks well enough and the Covenant would have to rest up unless they wanted to start dying because of lack of sleep.

I nailed a brute right through the skull and then slid back into the shadows.

"Zepeda, we're seeing some shimmering. Looks like they're sending stealth brutes to hunt you," Lieutenant Castillo came in, sounding surprisingly well-rested for someone who had been fighting constantly for the last half year. "Be on the lookout."

I sent him a green thank-you light and switched to thermal mode on my Oracle scope. Most stalkers showed even brighter in thermal imagery because the equipment that made them invisible heated them up, but lately I had come across the occasional oddball with state-of-the-art equipment that didn't show on thermal imagery either.

I allowed myself a small sigh. Why couldn't things be simple?

After passing up on a couple of decent targets I spotted a brute ultra on a second floor about seven hundred yards from my position. It seemed to be pacing, because every now and then I would see a part of its body on the window. The house was thick enough that my scope's thermal mode couldn't penetrate through the walls, but that was nothing out of the ordinary in this city. Besides, it wouldn't be fun if it wasn't a challenge.

It didn't take long to figure out how much time it took for the brute to appear on the window and after that I only had to make a quick calculation to figure out how much time it would take for the bullet to reach my target. Instead of risking the brute changing its routine I would wait for its heat signature to appear on the window, fire at the wall, and wait. The bullet would go through the wall and through the brute's shields and head. Easy as pie.

I fired and knew that I had hit my target even as the wall burst inwards. Before I could start enjoying the kill a wave of plasma fire rained down on my little windowsill. I jumped backwards and only barely managed to avoid the bulk of it, but a blue bolt tore my shoulder plate off my shoulder, tearing through my undersuit. For once I was thankful that Lieutenant Castillo kept insisting on us wearing it.

"Stan, your vitals are off, you ok?" Sergeant Konstantinov asked in a perfectly calm voice.

I grunted a reply and gave him a positive green light before tossing my only flashbang out the window and in the direction of the covvies that had fired at me. Relocation was a tedious part of the job, but while feeling the rush of danger could be invigorating, it didn't mean that I enjoyed taking a hit to the shoulder. I ran across the floor and left out the window before crossing a few yards, closing in with the rest of my platoon.

"Zepeda, brute stalker unit just bypassed us, they took two casualties, but we can't protect you anymore," Castillo warned.

I rolled my eyes and gave a green light.

_Talk about a thrill._

A few minutes later I was in a small balcony on the third story of a building that was perilously close to becoming a pile of debris. Nothing out of the ordinary, but the balcony was a giant bull's-eye to any trained sniper. I could only get a couple of good shots out before they started shelling this position with fuel rods or wraith mortars.

The first kill was a brute with a spiker on either hand. The brute was leading a large squad of grunts and jackals around a house in an attempt to flank the platoon. The rest of the enemy unit was quickly routed by Platoon Five when they lost their leader.

Carbine and needle rifle rounds quickly started shattering against the balcony and wall behind me, but I could still get another good kill before the area got too hot. I peeked through a hole in the balcony and saw the shimmering shapes of brute stalkers. I cursed. They were directly in between me and the rest of the platoon. I'd have to go solo in order to lose them, and I would have to do it now.

I got up and lifted up my rifle, but as I did that I saw two large and hulking brutes running towards the platoon from their blind side. I didn't understand how they had managed to bypass all defenses, especially considering that they were both hammer-wielding chieftains.

_Shit_...

"Lieutenant," I checked in on the radio.

Before he could reply a red bolt hit the side of my helmet. My HUD flickered briefly and disappeared right before I started feeling the burning pain on my ear.

_What are the odds? _ I asked myself taking off the smoking helmet and throwing it to the side. No radio and no HUD.

Two chieftains were headed down to Platoon Five and a stalker team converging on my position. It was either one or the other.

"Oh fuck me…" I cursed, raising my rifle.

The first shot I fired pierced the chieftain's helmet and head, dropping him immediately. The other chieftain jumped sideways and took cover. That wasn't good news, I needed every second I could get if I wanted to survive. I held my position, exposed and highly visible, until the brute's instincts took over and it left cover. Another headshot, another kill.

I turned around and prepared to leave, but the room's wall came crashing down. I fired at the doorframe. There wasn't much room to miss, and a dead brute materialized in front of me. I fired another shot and a second brute appeared, but this one managed to move away before I could fire and only took an arm hit. My rifle clicked empty and I dropped it, switching to my sidearm. I fired two shots before I heard a growl behind me. I turned and something drove the wind from my lungs. I dropped my pistol and stared at the massive brute standing a foot away from me.

I looked down to see the two sharp bayonets of a spiker rifle coming out of my gut. A little bit of blood ran down them before trickling to the floor.

The brute yanked and the only thing that I could think of was that the noise that my body made was disgusting. I could feel myself losing control of my legs and struggled to stay on my feet. I failed and was forced to take a knee. I then had to focus my attention on a different matter. I suddenly felt like I couldn't control my bowels, and dying in a pool of my own shit was not the way I planned to go.

I grunted something and looked up at the brute that had killed me.

"F–fu-ck, you," I spat out.

"No," a deep, rumbling voice came from the doorway. "Fuck you."

I turned my head around as much as I could to see one of the largest brutes that I had ever had the misfortune of coming across. It looked old and scarred, with white hair on its head and jaw. Strangely enough, this chieftain carried a hammer that seemed to be made of stone and was a lot larger than the usual gravity hammer. It also seemed to be sporting a Mohawk.

The brute swung its hammer backwards.

"Well I'll be damned if you're not the ugliest fucker I've eve–"

* * *

><p><strong>July 4, 2549 (UNSC Calendar)**

**Fountain FOB, Udinia, Paris IV, Paris System**

**Lieutenant Ana Maya**

"Captain, you know I only have half a platoon to work with," I insisted. "Half a platoon of great fighters, but you know as well as I that we just can't do what you're asking me to."

Captain Galván sighed deeply. "You think I don't know what I'm asking of you, Ana?"

"No, sir. I only–"

"Shut it," he cut me off. He somehow managed to make the words sound kind. "You know how bad we are. I requested a SpecOps unit for this job, but they're all busy."

"Even Spartan units?"

"They're the only reason why we haven't been overrun yet," he told me. "Last I heard they were doing raids on the enemy supply trains."

"Frank does owe you a couple of favors…"

He grunted. "That he does, but his unit is holding the outer perimeter."

"If you told him I asked?" I suggested.

"I know you're friends with him Ana, but Command won't have it."

This time I did the sighing. "Well, then I guess that this officially blows."

"It does, but you'll follow orders and hold the sector for as long as you're told to. Ana, if you have to fight to the last man you will do so, there are tens of thousands depending on you."

"Yes, sir," I said. "It's been a pleasure."

"Likewise, Lieutenant," he said. "Don't die out there."

"I'll try."

Captain Darius Galván and I exchanged a brief salute before I left the crumbling bunker. Even the strengthened instacrete could only withstand so much. My men were all huddled around the entrance, resting on the floor or in the two Warthogs that we had for support. They were a sad bunch, with bandages and limps and scratches and tired faces. I probably looked as bad as they did.

"Sergeants Perez and Jackson, we're going back to the suck," I said. The comment drew a universal groan of frustration. "I don't want to hear a single sound of complain out of your mouths. Lives are depending on us, and I will not allow _my_ men to let them down."

"Yes, lieutenant!"

"Let's go, Captain Galván was nice enough to provide us with ammunition."

"And a tank," he said from behind me. "Managed to snag one."

There were a few ragged cheers from my men, but even with a tank our odds would be horrible at best. I nodded a quick thanks and watched a Scorpion pull over with one Marine seating over one of the treads.

"Let's go! Time's a-wasting!" I ordered. "Move!"

My men got back to their feet a little slower than I would've liked, but they had been fighting almost nonstop for the past week. A few of them climbed on the vehicles, letting their legs hang down the sides, and the unlucky ones had to walk back to the frontline. I moved towards the tank, looking to climb on top.

"Lieutenant Maya?"

"Yes?" I asked, turning to look at the person that had spoken. "Ah, you're the medic I requested."

"Yes lieutenant," she said. "Corpsman Hanna Lockley."

"Ah, you're Frank's girlfriend, right?"

Her pretty face seemed awfully confused for a brief instant. "Um, yes."

"All right then, better not die out there, because he'd rip my head off."

"I'll do my best, ma'am."

I nodded and sent her off.

_That's one lucky girl._

I stopped dead for a second when I realized what had gone through my head.

_Oh shit._

Frank was good-looking, but I was too old to be having crushes on older men.

_He's not that much older… He's just like five years older than I am._

I was too old to be having crushes on anybody for that matter. Least of all in the middle of the mother of all battles. I took a deep breath and climbed up the Scorpion tank and banged on the turret, signaling the driver to move forward. The tank rumbled and I tightened my grip on my handhold. We passed a few small units on the way there, most of them were wounded men and women. The battle wasn't going too well down here, but the big ships up there could only fit so many shuttles into their hangars. Our turn was supposed to come soon, but it couldn't be soon enough.

Only a few days ago this section of Fountain Firebase had been full of tired but safe civilians, now it was marked by craters and the occasional burnt out husk of a vehicle. Most vehicles were human, but here and there you could spot a Covenant wreck that reminded us of just how far they had pushed us. The chain link fences surrounding the firebase were all on the verge of falling over if they hadn't already. Some of the aforementioned burnt vehicles had been moved in order to compensate and so far they were doing a mediocre job.

"Get over there," I ordered the tanker. "Behind that truck. You got the latest official engagement recommendations?"

"Fire on large clusters and enemy-occupied buildings," the driver replied. "Ma'am, I'm not exactly sporting a full cache of shells here…"

"Understood, prioritize your targets."

"Yes, ma'am."

I jumped down the tank and jogged up to the front. "Perez, take your squad to the right flank, you've got suppression duty. Jackson, take left flank and pick out sharpshooters."

"What about the 'Hogs ma'am?"

"I was getting to that," I growled. "Everybody else not on those two squads is with me as is one of the Warthogs. The other one can rotate to where it's needed the most."

I got a chorus of 'yes ma'ams' and the men started spreading out in different directions, being careful to keep their heads down as to avoid being killed.

"Lockley hold up," I called out. "Come here."

"Ma'am?"

"You're the only medic we have. Take off your armband."

She glanced down at her arm and examined the white armband with a red cross. For most of us seeing that armband was a sign that everything was going to be ok despite all the pain that you were (in all likelihood) going through. To the Covenant it was just a big sign that begged them to shoot you.

"Good," I said as soon as she took it off. You're already marked as a medic on the platoon's HUD and since you're the stranger you wont' have trouble being recognized."

"Got it ma'am. Anything else?"

I took a deep breath. "It might get ugly. Prioritize."

"Yes, ma'am."

An hour and three minutes later I was happy that Lockley had decided that I had been considered high priority. A needle through the leg usually knocked someone out of commission, but fortunately for me the needle had gone through muscle without hitting any vital arteries. It meant that with some biofoam and a few bandages I could limp around. It also meant a whole lot of pain in the meanwhile.

"Just pour the fucking thing," I growled at Lockley through clenched teeth. "Do it!"

"Your leg's all torn up," she said. "That much contact surface for biofoam… It will hurt ma'am."

"Do it."

"You could go into shock and die."

That gave me a pause. "Do it," I asserted. "Carefully."

Lockley actually smiled. She really was a pretty girl.

_She's your age, stop calling her girl._

"Besides, Frank wouldn't be exactly happy if you died while I was taking care of you."

"Well that's good to know."

Before I could say anything else I felt a stinging sensation in my leg and just a moment later my brain was flooded by so much pain that I stopped being able to tell where it came from. I'm pretty sure I screamed a lot for a full minute, but when I regained consciousness my leg was just feeling numb.

"I injected painkillers," she told me as she wrapped a bandage around my leg. "Should hold up reasonably well until we can get some stitching done."

"All right," I managed to say. "Is that all?"

"Yup."

"Then what are you still doing here?"

"Sorry ma'am," she quickly apologized before taking off to attend another of my Marines.

_Good girl…_

I stretched my leg and pressed lightly on the wound. I might've been able to run if I tried to, but for the time being I would wait until the painkillers really started numbing my leg.

"Lieutenant, elite shock troops are coming in hard and fast!" Perez shouted. "We have wounded and won't be able to hold them back!"

"Prepare to fall back," I replied. "Both Warthogs with Perez."

I hated sending my biggest asset of to Perez and his men, but they were my men too and if they fell our whole effort would collapse.

I opened a line to Captain Galván. "Captain, how much longer do you need us to hold?"

"Ana, I was just about to call. Bad news, ODST and Airborne units are being overrun."

"So much for special forces," I muttered. "Now what?"

"It's chaos back here, we're pulling back everyone we can, but people are going to be left behind."

"Wait, what?"

"We lost, lieutenant. This was our last stronghold in the planet and we just lost."

"What the hell happened?" I asked. "I thought that we could hold for at least one more week."

"Well, _our_ tactical geniuses didn't weren't counting on both the brutes and the elites having their own master tacticians."

"You're telling me that Mr. Mohawk we've been hearing so much about knows the first thing about tactics?"

"That and more," Galván replied. "Jaguar Company is going to be coming through you," he warned. "The moment they are in your position you can fall back."

"Yes, sir," I said, immediately relaying the orders to my men. Just a little bit longer.

The ODSTs came in small groups, the wounded first, being carried by those that could walk. First to come was Lieutenant Weller and Platoon Three, she was a tough bitch that one, but not as tough as she looked. Over half her platoon hadn't made it. The lieutenant herself had been hit by something or other, because her left leg was bleeding heavily.

"Lieutenant," she said. "I see we find ourselves in similar predicaments."

I tapped my leg very gently. "Apparently so."

"I can spare five men to help you," she said. "But the rest of us…"

"Thank you Weller," I told her. "We got this."

She sighed with relief. "I owe you one."

"And you'd better believe I'm going to cash it in."

Platoons One and Four followed quickly, they were in relatively better shape, but dos Santos had been hit and was in critical condition. His platoon sergeant ordered half a squad to stay in the position while the rest of them moved back. Captain Hayes was fine, a scratch here and there, but otherwise ok.

"Lieutenant, what are your orders?"

"Hold until all of Jaguar makes it through," I replied after a short burst. "We're just missing Two and Five."

"Lieutenant Dajani told me that they were on their way. Castillo will do what he wants."

"He usually does," I agreed. "But if he wants to survive he'll come through here."

"All right, I'm assuming command."

"If you say so ma'am," I replied with a shrug. "But in five minutes we're going to be the ones falling back and are going to need the rest of your company to cover our asses."

"Point taken," she grunted, "I'll fall back with my men and organize the defense."

"Yes, ma'am."

The moment she disappeared with two thirds of her men the Covenant intensified their attack. Wave after wave of grunts and jackals hammered us only for packs of brutes to try and make dents in our line. More often than not they succeeded in killing or wounding at least a few of me men. I wasn't feeling to good about the situation, and even when Platoon Two started coming through the situation didn't appear to take a turn for the better.

"Where's Lieutenant Dajani?" I asked a sergeant.

"He went towards Five," she replied. "They were trapped in between two brute packs. He said he'd be right behind us."

I looked over cover and saw nothing but alien monsters.

"Ok, go."

I looked at my watch. I had told Hayes that we would be toast in five minutes and four of those had already gone past. I cursed as one of the Warthogs exploded after being hit by two fuel rods. The other Warthog had to take cover to avoid the green projectiles and only just managed to come out safe.

"Ma'am! I'm low on shells!" the tanker warned. "Taking out those fuel rods!"

A house blew up and collapsed on top of a squad of covvies, but it wasn't enough.

"Shit," I muttered, opening a line to Castillo. "Frank."

"Ana, that you?" he came in. "I was about to call, I'm going to be a little bit late."

"What the hell happened, Frank?"

"They got my sniper and flanked us, they got Carver and damn near killed Ramirez. We're moving slowly but we're on our way."

"Dajani took a squad in your direction," I said.

"Yeah, they're drawing attention away from us. I'll be there in three minutes… is it bad down there?"

"You have no idea," I replied. "We can't keep this up much longer."

"I'll make it quick," Frank told me. "Thanks."

"You're–" He cut the line.

I sighed and reloaded my rifle. At least ammunition wouldn't be a problem.

Grunt after grunt died trying to get through us and more than a few jackals met their end at my men's hands. Brute kills were rarer, but a few baby kong corpses littered the ground in front and around us. So far we were doing better than I could've hoped for, but the reality of our disadvantage was beginning to catch up to us. A grenade landed right on top of a car my men were using for cover and blew up, killing one of them and wounding two others.

"Medic!"

I watched as Corpsman Lockley braved enemy fire to move in. She was all the way up front with nobody to cover her while she worked on my men.

"Cover her!" I ordered. "Don't let them flank her!"

My men complied, many of them were wounded themselves, but they didn't want to see their brothers die any more than I did. After an entire Covenant squad was cut down the covvies decided that they could wait to kill the wounded.

"Ana, we're coming through!" Frank's voice screamed in my head.

Three brutes collapsed as they were taken out from behind. Somewhere deep in my head I rolled my eyes at the easy way that Five dispatched the aliens, but the rest of me was just thankful for the brief respite. The aliens were confused and my men took advantage of that to take out another two brutes that turned around to fight Castillo's men.

Two large ODSTs came first. They were carrying another large man missing his left leg below the knee. Despite missing a limb he was firing a pistol as best he could to discourage any attacks on him. After that came two men that my HUD tagged as Lieutenant Dajani and another ODST from his platoon. The rest of Five came later, firing wildly at anything that moved and blowing up everything around them. The heavy weapons squad didn't remove their fingers from the triggers even for a second.

Frank made it to my position and briefly glanced at my injury.

"Frank," I said. "Hanna. She's back there!"

"What?" he asked, turning around. "Hanna!"

A spike grenade landed right next to the car that the Lockley was using for cover. I watched as one of my wounded men rolled over it and was shredded by the explosion. A large brute kicked at the car and shot my other man with its spiker.

Frank had disappeared and was already on the move. Brutes were usually pretty large targets at this range, but there was a person in between Frank's rifle and the target and that person happened to be no other than his beloved girlfriend.

Frank fired four times and the brute fell down without being able to fire.

"Frank!" Lockley shouted, half joy and half confusion.

He made it all the way up to her position and she hugged him.

It took me half a second to realize that she wasn't hugging him. She was holding onto him for support. Something blew up, a lot of my men were killed and a chieftain with a plasma cannon appeared out of nowhere. I stood stunned, watching as Frank kept Hanna afoot with one hand and fired his rifle with the other.

"Get out of there!"

I blinked.

"Maya, come on!"

It was Klaus.

"I'm going," I shouted.

"Give me some cover!" Frank shouted.

Hanna had been hit, that much was clear.

One of Frank's men used a spike grenade to take out the chieftain, using it as a club to take it down and then sticking it to its face before activating it. I vaguely registered his name as Marvin Mobuto. Before the brutes could reorganize Five and what was left of the defenders opened up on the enraged berserkers. Half a dozen brutes fell and the others opted to take cover.

Frank arrived safely with Hanna. I winced involuntarily when I saw that there were six spikes on her back, all of them deeply embedded in her body.

"Frank…" I began.

"There's still time," he grunted hoarsely. "Come on."

"All right then," I replied quietly. "We fall back…" Louder, to my men, "Fall back! Fall back!"

* * *

><p><strong>July 4, 2549 (UNSC Calendar)**

**Fountain FOB, Udinia, Paris IV, Paris System**

**Sergeant Avery Johnson**

God, I loved this kind of music, but there was nothing that I liked more than how much my men hated it. Flip music was something of an oddity nowadays, but the few of us that managed to keep it alive were a select group.

"Bisenti, Mendoza, get over here ASAP," I shouted over the speakers. "We are getting our ride out of here in less than fifteen minutes and I can't have you two pecking concrete pieces all the way over there!"

"Yes, sergeant!" they shouted back, running back towards us.

O'Brien and Jenkins were already here, smiles on their faces and rucksacks on their shoulders. They wanted to leave this planet as much as I did. Ironic, I landed down in this rock in worse condition than I was leaving it.

_Don't tempt luck Avery, _I told myself. _We're not out of this one yet._

"Our transport is coming in right over here," I said, pointing. "As soon as that Pelican lands I want you to jump on board so fast that the rest of these whinny jarheads not with me carrying them into combat will be so jealous that they'll request a transfer to this unit."

"Oorah!" my men shouted.

They were used to my personality, otherwise I would've gotten a whole lot of weird looks from them.

But like all good things, evacuation came at a price.

"Banshees!"

And not only Banshees, Phantoms too.

"Get back out there!" I ordered my men. "Belay that, Pelican's getting here. Get in there now!"

"Sarge, we can buy some time for the–" Mendoza began.

"On the bird," I shouted. "I'll hold them off!"

"What?" Bisenti asked. "Sarge…"

"Go!" I shouted loudly, pushing Jenkins towards the aircraft.

Something caught my eye and it was only fifty meters away. It was a room-sized crate full of commandeered plasma grenades and with walls one inch thick. It wasn't full of fragmentation grenades, but I guess that it would have to do.

* * *

><p><strong>July 4, 2549 (UNSC Calendar)**

**Fountain FOB, Udinia, Paris IV, Paris System**

**Katie Ayers**

Of course I was thinking of that jackass when the first bombs landed. He seemed to be the only thing on my mind nowadays, even with his long absence. It's not that I was still in love or anything, it's just that I wanted to be in love with him again. Again, can you believe it? A week was all it had taken for me to fall in love with a complete stranger. Well, technically I had known him for over six months, but I had only began talking to him during the last two or three and even then we only actually went out for about a week.

The moment that the first bomb hit Frank turned into the last thing on my mind.

I grabbed my crowbar and shouldered the backpack that contained the entirety of my possessions.

"Eliza!" I shouted. "Eliza where are you?"

"Over here!" she shouted back. "What's happening?"

Before anybody could say anything else a blue bomb landed about thirty feet away from us. I was thrown to the floor and the right side of my body felt the heat wave from the explosive. I screamed, but I promptly decided that screaming was stereotypical and wouldn't gain me anything whatsoever.

"Report to evacuation pads immediately!" a loudspeaker blared.

"Katie let's go!" Eliza said, pulling me up back to my feet.

A crowd of people moved towards the large transports, filling them up as fast as possible while the few soldiers in here tried keeping a semblance of order. A few missiles flew at the Covenant planes, smacking into them and turning their purple attack craft into fireworks. A few of the people around us cheered, but it was half-hearted anyways.

"This ship is full," a gruff black man told me. "Move on to the next one."

"But this was the last transport!" I shouted. "You have to let us in."

"I'm sorry ma'am," he said, unflinching. "Pelicans are coming, you'll have to wait a little bit longer."

"We don't have that much time!" Eliza shouted, drawing cries of agreement from the people around us.

The soldiers immediately took half a step back and grabbed their rifles. They didn't raise them, but the threat was clear. If we stepped out of line they would start shooting, and I doubted it was training rounds in their rifles.

"You can't leave us here to die!" someone shouted.

The soldiers took the cries of abuse in silence. It wasn't until things seemed to be about to explode that a man stepped forward. He was in a relatively clean uniform and was evidently an officer.

"The Pelicans they are sending to get you, they are ours."

My mouth dropped open in shock. These men were going to die for us and here we were shouting at them to let us pass. I wasn't the only one to react with shock, and the crowd quickly turned submissive and stopped trying to break past the line of soldiers. I noticed that a few of the soldiers had tears running down their faces or were shaking. Some of them were even younger than I was.

"My God," Eliza said, sitting down. "I can't believe this."

"Come on, we'll be just fine," I told her. "We'll start over."

"So many people are dead…" she said softly.

"Come on Eliza, you can't go all shellshock on me now," I told her. "You've been the strong one for this past year. I need you to be strong for a little bit more."

She looked up and I realized that she was crying too. She nodded and then hugged me. I cried with her, but I knew that the moment the Pelicans landed even the soldiers would be hard-pressed to keep up the order and we needed to get on board as fast as possible.

"Come on," I said. "Deep breaths."

I was crying even more than she was and we both laughed at the absurdity of this all. Our home was going to become a ball of glass and fire and we were all that we had left. Our families and friends were dead and all that we had ever worked for was about to go up in flames. It was good to know that we could still find something to laugh about.

"Just a little bit longer," I said. "And this will all be over."

* * *

><p><strong>July 4, 2549 (UNSC Calendar)**

**UNSC **_**Flawless**_**, in orbit above Udinia, Paris IV, Paris System**

**Vice Admiral Oliver Bogart **

"Bloody hell," I said.

"Admiral?" Sanders asked.

"See there?" I pointed at the display. "The Covenant is going to go straight for the evacuation ships. The moment they overwhelm the Defense Platform they'll pounce on them."

"I…see," he replied. "What can we do about it?"

I considered my options and quickly checked what the evacuation status was on the ground. The troops and civilians in Udinia were apparently having a pretty hard time down there as well. Not everyone down there would make it up here, and even less men would be able to get out of the system. If that Covenant group attacked the evacuation craft it would be hell.

"Not much," I admitted. "What's the word on Patterson?"

"He's still managing to hold back the bulk of the Covenant fleet, he says he can buy the evacuation two more hours, maybe three."

I examined the display with a frown. We had two functional ODPs, but they had been boarded and were in the process of being captured. Last I heard the control rooms were still held by UNSC forces as was the area around them, but the Covenant wouldn't take much longer to wear them down through attrition. I watched as one of the platforms used its thrusters to align itself and fire at a corvette that had decided to try its luck. The purple ship was hit in the midsection by the massive round and was all but disintegrated by the massive kinetic force that the round carried. No more Covenant ships made moves to move forward.

"Does the _Honorable_ have any Pelicans left in it?"

"Two dozen," Dalman informed me.

"Jaws."

"Yes, Admiral?" the AI asked. "What can I do to help."

"How many Pelicans are in fine working order here?"

"Fourteen, sir."

"Good, have the pilots head down to Udinia, evacuate as many people as they can."

"Yes, sir, right away."

"Dalman, hail the _Honorable,_ tell them to do the same with their own Pelicans, all of them."

"Yes, sir."

"Sanders, redirect all non-essential personnel to the lifeboats."

"Admiral?"

"Do it," I ordered. "The _Honorable_ will pick them up. Jaws, get me firing solutions on that Covenant group. I want battlecruisers on priority and then scale back down to the corvettes."

"Already done, Admiral." The AI was a funny fellow, lacking the typical devil-may-care that other artificial intelligences reveled in.

I watched the display and frowned as one of the two ODPs went dark. With one less defense platform we had no way to hold off the Covenant Navy for the necessary amount of time. The constant stream of civilian evacuation craft proved to be a very tentative target to the Covenant and they immediately started moving forward.

"All non-essential personnel are on the lifeboats, Admiral," Sanders informed.

"Jettison them," I ordered. "Have the _Honorable _pick them up and then send it into low orbit to pick up the Pelicans evacuating."

"Yes, sir."

"Dalman, set an intercept course for the lead Covenant battlecruiser. Jaws, I want weapons hot and ready to fire."

"Yes, sir," the both said.

I sighed sadly. Dying was never something to look forward to, but at least I would die for something good.

* * *

><p><strong>July 4, 2549 (UNSC Calendar)**

**Fountain FOB, Udinia, Paris IV, Paris System**

**Lieutenant Francisco Castillo**

"Shit Frank," Schitzo muttered with worry. "We have to move faster."

_I'm trying…_

"Watch out!"

Two of my men dodged to the side as a Wraith blast hit right in front of our path. The shockwave threw me backwards even with Hanna over my shoulder. I somehow managed to make her land on her side at the cost of a snapped wrist. I cried out in pain and clenched my fist, trying to swallow the pain. Yas and Hoff dragged Hanna behind cover and I pulled myself towards him.

"Frank…"

"Her vitals are weak, but they're still there," I cut him off. "If we hurry."

Yas nodded and squeezed my shoulder gently. "But first we need to do something about that Wraith."

Another mortar blast landed close by Pavel and Lizzo. They both cried out and their vitals fizzled for a moment before they came back somewhat agitated. I peeked over cover and saw that the Wraith in question was a Daemon tank with a short cannon.

"It's a Daemon," I spat. "Looks modified."

"That explains why no one saw the volley coming," Yas replied. "Lot of good that'll do us."

"Who has rockets?!" someone shouted.

"Ana," I called out. "We need to take out the Daemon. Where the hell's that Scorpion?"

"He's moving into position!" she replied, screaming through her radio. "I don't think that he has enough shells to take out the Daemon."

"One in the right place should be enough," Yas said. "Come on…"

The Scorpion fired and the shell hit the Daemon tank right in the front armor. The blast crumpled it and shook it violently, but the alloy withstood the impact with almost no trouble. The Daemon stopped and turned around to face the Scorpion. The Daemon fired even as the Scorpion driver hit reverse. The first blast hit the front of the Scorpion and melted through the threads. The second blast hit the turret and fried the driver.

"Fuck."

"Well Frank, it was a pleasure serving with you," Yas said.

"I won't let her die," I muttered, looking at Hanna. "I won't."

"Then just what do you propose we do?" he asked. He sounded incredibly annoyed, which was justifiable considering that we were about to die.

"Frank, our cover won't last much longer," Pavel said.

"Same here," Ana voiced. "A few of my men managed to get away, but…"

"Let me think!"

I considered all the options available, grenades, flashbangs, explosives, and sacrificing half my squad if it meant that Hanna would have a chance to make it out alive. I looked down at her and saw that she was conscious, barely.

"Hanna, can you hear me?" I asked. "Hanna, you're going to be fine, ok? You'll be just fine."

She croaked something quietly before fading back into unconsciousness.

"No, no…" I muttered.

"Sir," Hoff said, placing a hand on my shoulder. "I can do it."

"Ryan, you have zero chance to take out a Daemon tank right now, with our help or without it."

"You have your emergency stash of C-12," he stated. "I'm sure that there are some of us who have something else to spare."

"You can't be thinking of–" Yas began.

"Yas," I cut him short before turning to Ryan. "You don't have to do this. I mean it."

"I want to," he replied. "There's nothing left for me here."

I nodded, feeling like hell for having allowed him to fulfill his death wish so easily.

"Everybody who has plastic explosives slide them here!" I ordered. "Marv and Dotsenko, I need you to play decoy when I say go, got it?"

"I can't leave James alone!" Dotsenko said.

"I'm fine," Ramirez said. "And Staff Konstantinov can take care of him."

"Yes, sir," Dotsenko ceded.

Hoff had finished sticking the explosives to himself and looked at me. He nodded. "Ready when you are," he said calmly.

I waited for the Daemon to fire on Pavel's position one more time.

"Go!" I shouted.

Marv and Dotsenko moved out of cover, drawing the plasma cannons away from Hoff. As soon as the coaxial guns started firing Hoff moved out of cover. Before he had gone two steps I gave the order for my squad to fire on the Damon or any Covenant soldiers that tried to take out Hoff before his time. Ryan took a hit on the shoulder and barely avoided being decapitated when he stumbled, but he kept moving. When he was five feet away from the Daemon I ducked behind cover and closed my eyes for the blast.

"Target neutralized," Caboose reported quietly.

"Ok, let's move," I said, carrying Hanna over my shoulder once again.

We moved in silence for a while, avoiding any and all engagements that weren't absolutely necessary to our survival. My wrist was hurting like a bitch and Hanna's life signs were getting more and more erratic. The debris made it hard for us to make good time, but it also made us less visible targets. We made it into the large courtyard after which this firebase was named. The fountain was nothing but a broken memory now, with only a little bit of the original still in place. The crowded refugee camp that had been bristling with activity was now almost completely empty. Most of the civilians had moved towards the landing pads on the park.

"There's an armored column in between us and the landing pads," Ana said all of a sudden. "We're cut off."

"Fuck!" Andy cursed, kicking a rock. "Now what?"

"We need two Pelicans," I muttered to myself. I opened a line to Fightmaster. "Sam, what's up?"

"We're pulling out civilians," he replied almost immediately. "Why the hell are you still– shit. You're cut off."

"Yes," I replied. "I need a favor."

"I could get a court martial," he said simply. "We got very explicit orders telling us to pull out the civilians first."

"I know Sam," I said, looking at Hanna, "but I wouldn't ask if this wasn't important. Trust me."

"You know I do. How many of you are there?"

"We're going to need two Pelicans," I admitted.

"I have a friend who owes me a couple of favors," he said. "I'm on my way."

I smiled slightly. I would have to buy that man a beer or a house.

"Frank," Pavel said. "I'm all for living one more day, but we can't leave thirty-something civilians to die."

"We damn well can," I said. "And we will, especially if it means that Hanna might survive."

Pavel looked around and closed in on me. "Thirty dead people isn't something that you shrug off easily Frank," he said. "And ONI might cover for you, but they won't do the same for us, least of all Lieutenant Maya and her men."

I looked at the Marines and then back to Pavel. "Then ask them if they want to die so that some people they don't know."

"We can't be that selfish," he said. "We're fighting for humanity."

"And we'll keep fighting," I said. "For as long as I can. You might not like this, but believe me when I say that Amber will be very glad you made this choice."

He took a step backwards. "I don't like it," he admitted. "And I don't like that you made the choice so quickly."

I shrugged and returned my attention to Hanna. "We can talk about this later."

Before too long Fightmaster had arrived on his Pelican, a companion close on his back. We piled inside the vehicles and strapped ourselves tight.

"Hey Frank," Fightmaster greeted me. "Sorry for the delay."

"Don't worry about it," I told him. "I owe you one."

"Damn right you do, they won't be happy with us."

"No they won't," I agreed.

"And there's one more thing," he began. "You know that guy, Johnson?"

"How could I forget," I said. "What about him?"

"He's covering for the civilians down in the ground. We're pulling him out."

"This Pelican can't fit another squad," I said.

"It's just him."

"What?"

"That's what I said."

Fightmaster maneuvered his Pelican through the crumbling buildings and turned it around behind a lone figure. Johnson was taking cover behind an empty crate, a dozen or so plasma grenades next to him. As the hatch opened and my men started firing at the covvies half-heartedly Johnson threw a grenade at an elite with such force that it knocked it to the ground.

"Johnson!" I shouted. "Get in here!"

"Castillo? What the hell are you doing here?"

"Saving your ass."

"My ass don't need saving!"

"Johnson!"

"Shit," he muttered. "Make room!"

Johnson threw four more grenades before running towards us and jumping inside the Pelican. Pavel helped him on board and Fightmaster took off. I almost laughed with joy, having finally managed to abandon this hellish planet. It was right then when Hanna's vitals flatlined. For the past minutes I had been keeping her situation compartmentalized somewhere in the back of my head, but the moment I heard that shrill, steady beeping sound it all hit me, my legs felt like jelly underneath me and I found myself falling on my ass, tears flowing freely down my face.

"Francisco, I am so sorry," Schitzo said.

* * *

><p><em>Thanks for reading this chapter.<em>

_I read your reviews for last chapter... I wish that there were more. Relax, I'm only mostly kidding. What I'm saying is that you all appeared to enjoy the chapter even despite the deaths and all that. Well, in that case I'm very interested to know how you feel about this one, not because of all the deaths, but also because it was done in a different format than what I usually use. Personally, I had fun writing this, even if it took like a week to get it wrapped up. it is, after all, eleven thousand words long. Probably the second longest chapter I've ever posted. Let's say that this is my way of apologizing for the recent delays._

_Small side note(s): Frank and Ana were obviously the big stars in the chapter, with their sections being the largest of all, but some of you might feel like Johnson got a small section. The reason for this is that he is a canon character with an established personality and I didn't want to toy around with that. I'm pretty sure I might've been able to write him pretty well, but I'm certain that it couldn't have even approached the real deal. So there's that._

_Let's go back and remember those that were lost: Bamber, Atkins, Montri, d'Arc, Sutton, Sandor, Zepeda, Carver, Hoff. That's pretty much half the platoon. Imagine losing half the people you lived and fought with. I'm pretty certain that that can't be a pleasant experience. Then add up the death of your girlfriend and the second-degree murder of thirty-something civilians who were counting on the Pelicans you stole to save them. Looks like things up here will get worse and worse. Or maybe not, this is, after all, Francisco Castillo we're talking about._

_May the fallen find peace or something like that. I hope that you enjoyed this chapter._

_Stay strong._

_-casquis_


	184. Noli Nothis Permittere Te Terere

Chapter CLXXXIV: Noli Nothis Permittere Te Terere

**December 1, 2549 (UNSC Calendar)/five months later**

**Esztergom (Ezhtergom), Viery Territory, Reach, Epsilon Eridani System**

* * *

><p><em>"Keep on going."<em>

* * *

><p>81046-01928-NA<p>

35941-00014-DB

83671-10236-DC

01996-67882-SD

83001-01292-JH

92820-21121-RH

90281-01276-AM

71771-29001-TS

83728-19271-KS

38291-01311-SZ

Ten numbers, ten names, ten friends. The service numbers looked bloated and awkward on my right forearm. They reached from right above my wrist to halfway up my forearm. The sting was still fresh, and it wasn't just from the inking needle. It seemed weird that I had more tattoos than most people and I had gotten them using an antiquated method that only Helljumpers and the occasional tattoo parlors that wanted to be known for being different.

Stefánia Stark was only just finishing putting the funny little machine away. She closed the drawer and turned back to me with a gauze patch. She wordlessly wrapped it over my newly acquired tattoos and then let her shoulders slump slightly.

"I don't see you in two years and then you bring me ten in a row… I'm sorry, Frank."

I shrugged. "I wish it was only ten."

She raised an eyebrow before quickly regaining control of her facial muscles. I noticed that she had a few additional tattoos on her. "How many more?"

"Just one," I told her. "Well, that's a lie. There's thirty-two plus one."

"Thirty-two, huh?" she asked before whistling.

"It's the one that bothers me," I confessed. "She was… she was someone I cared about."

"Are you going to get inked?" she asked. "Because that one's on the house."

I shook my head. "I don't know yet," I admitted. "I try to come up with something but nothing ever seems good enough."

"Angel wings are a favorite," Stefánia said. "But then again, a big, manly, ODST such as yourself might not like that one."

"True," I said with a light chuckle. "In any case, you might see me again soon and many more times after that."

She shook her head. "I hope that you decide on something, pay me for giving you the best service in this planet and then never see you again."

"I wish you well too," I told her, shaking her hand. "Three days?"

"Two," she corrected, "then you can take off the gauze. The skin will be tender for a while, but then again…"

"I know the drill."

"That you do. See you soon."

"And then I won't see you ever again," I finished. "Gotcha."

* * *

><p>My car stopped and honked me awake. I had bought a smaller model the moment I got back to Reach. Like most civilian cars it could drive itself and the fuel cells could last for about twenty something years before you had to refuel. The entertainment system and comfortable seats were pretty sweet too, but apparently it hadn't sold well because the average Joe would fall asleep on the way to work. Seeing as I didn't have a job in between deployments it turned out to be a decent purchase for me.<p>

I groaned, not because I was particularly comfortable or sleepy, but because I didn't want to actually go inside the ONI office.

I had to so I got myself together and climbed out of the car. I felt slightly ridiculous without my Hog, but the comfort really was something.

"I'm here to see Bruce Jones," I told the receptionist. As per usual, she was a pretty blonde with perfect makeup.

She smiled up at me. Her smile was so perfect that it had to be fake and practiced. "Of course. Your name?"

"Francisco Castillo."

She tapped something into her console and waited a second. "Of course. Fourth floor and to the right. The building's AI will guide you."

"You have an actual AI for the building?" I asked.

"Not really," she admitted with a shrug. "It's more like a glorified computer program, it can only tell you where to find something, someone, or make small talk."

I nodded and went up to the elevator without any further ceremony. One short walk later I was walking inside Jones' office. He was not alone, standing near a window and with his back faced to me.

"Should I have worn my fatigues?" I asked tiredly, gesturing to my jeans and shirt. "Maybe dressed a little bit more formally."

"Francisco, shut up," Jones commanded sharply. He was typically calm, collected, and most importantly, friendly. Ever since I had returned from Paris IV he had been anything but. "Are you drunk?"

"Not today," I said. "Shall we begin?"

"Yes we shall," Jones said. "Let's do a recap."

"I really don't think it's necessary…"

"Oh, but it is," he said. "After all, it wouldn't be polite to our guest here to jump into this without really knowing the whole story."

"Please, Bruce…"

"Paris IV, the biggest battle in the war so far. Right up there with Harvest. UNSC puts up a commendable defense but in the end is overwhelmed by superior numbers. You keeping up?"

"Yes. I was there."

"Damn right you were," he said. "You've got the scars to prove it. Then when all things go to hell you, your men, and a few of your friends find yourselves stranded and cut off. Thirty-three ODSTs and Marines, low on ammunition, tired, and severely demoralized. In fact, I heard that they had to witness one of their own friends blow himself up with six pounds of C-12 to help them make it."

"And we're damn proud of him for that," I said. "Ryan was a fine man and sacrificed his life for the people he loved."

"And you let him do it?"

"Yes," I replied, no hesitation. "It was the right thing to do."

"And why was that?"

"We went over this," I said loudly, banging my hand on the table for emphasis. "Ryan saw his family die, lost all his will to live. That's the only reason why I acceded to his request."

"You didn't order him to sacrifice himself?"

"No, you can check the mission video feed."

"We did. Several times actually. Who knew that the microphones on the helmets had such a crappy quality."

"I don't buy them," I shrugged.

"No you don't. But that's not really what matters, is it. Suicide missions have become a part of life, and while we don't like them much–"

"Bad for PR?"

"Most of the time, but don't interrupt me again. We don't like suicide missions, but they have become more common lately and in turn we've been forced to accept them as a part of life. What troubles me and my colleague here is what came after that. You managed to get your men as well as Lieutenant Maya's and Lieutenant Dajani's through enemy-occupied ground without a single casualty and then made it all the way to Fountain Square."

"Yes," I said, letting annoyance drip into my voice.

"You carried a Marine that you were romantically involved with the whole way, didn't you?"

"Yes, she was my girlfriend."

"What happened to her?"

"She was shot, several times. The she died."

"Don't get ahead of yourself," he chided. "You then asked a friend of yours a favor. Samuel Fightmaster is it? Lovely name."

"He gets that a lot."

Bruce actually chuckled slightly. "Well, it actually impressed me enough to look him up. Turns out the name is his birth name."

"Go figure," I scoffed. "Never did believe that it was his actual name."

"I can relate to that. Do you know what his actual mission was that day?"

"To evacuate civilians," I said through clenched teeth.

"But still you asked him to go against direct orders coming from none other than Admiral Bogart in order to come meet you and your men. Then _he_ asked a personal favor from his friend, Blair Woodrow, in order to carry _all _of you back to the UNSC _Honorable _and to safety."

"Yes."

Jones scoffed and dropped the file he was holding. "You do realize that you got two pilots to disobey orders to save a bunch of strategically insignificant soldiers."

"And got thirty-two civilians killed, yeah."

He stood up abruptly. "I couldn't care less about those civilians Frank. Thirty-two people, do you know how little that is in the grand scheme of things. That battle alone cost us almost a billion people. And that's not counting military casualties! A billion deaths Frank, and you think that thirty-two bother us?"

I was taken aback by the sudden outburst. "I caused those deaths."

"And your conscience is none of my concern," he said. "You know very well that the nature of your… nature means that you have to keep a low profile."

"Is this what this is about?" I asked. "I have the deaths of those people in my head and all you care about is exposing some crappy program that has exactly one participant in it?!"

The room went deathly quiet. It went so quiet that the tension was palpable. The man facing the window even turned his head slightly before returning his attention to the nice view.

"Colonel?" Jones asked the man.

"Go ahead."

"The Spartan-IV program was greenlit," he informed me drily. "The augmentation process hasn't quite been perfected yet," he gestured to my head, "obviously. Despite that, we've already started screening for potential candidates and will begin training them early next year."

"I'll take it from here," the colonel said, turning around to reveal a face severely scarred by a blade of some sort. "Listen son, someone very far up the chain of command decided that you were apparently the perfect compromise between the Spartan-IIs and the IIIs and the rest of us lowly humans. In fact, a certain colonel from the Army came up with you. Augmentations similar to those that the Spartan-IIIs possess, high-quality power armor, and the best training that humanity has to offer."

I frowned slightly. "This sounds great, sir. It does, believe me, but is it feasible? I mean, I don't know all the details about the Spartans, but I know that they aren't cheap, even the disposable ones."

He growled. "You certainly know a lot of things you shouldn't."

"I've had a long career," I shrugged in reply.

The colonel glanced at Jones, who just shrugged.

"Anyways, you can understand why we'd be… irritated if word got out that we were making more super soldiers. Especially considering the implications. If word of S-IV got out then people would start asking questions about the second and third generations."

"Ok, I can get that, but how exactly does me doing this endanger the program?"

"The problem with that is," Jones began, "that we had to cover up what you did. Do you have any idea how hard it is to cover something like that up? There were hundreds of witnesses that saw the two Pelicans keep flying straight instead of touching down to pick them up. Fightmaster and Woodrow shut down their radios from all the hails they got from their colleagues, the _Honorable's _computer and AI picked the Pelican's movements and logged them. Word got out, people were pretty pissed about it."

"Yeah, I figured," I shrugged. "I had to beat the shit out of some guys that wanted to do the same to Sam."

"We had to send several hundred different messages making it very clear that anybody who spoke about the incident would find themselves stabbed in a back alley in the middle of Queson's red district. Then we had to access the ship logs on the _Honorable_ and delete the specific movements of those two Pelicans and then replace them with fake ones. Then we had to _lie_. Do you know how bad that is?"

"I thought that's what you guys did for a living," I said.

"No Frank, we hide the truth, we don't lie unless we absolutely have to. If we get caught in a lie a lot of bad things could happen. Do you have any idea how bad our reputation is amongst civilians? It is even worse than it is with you Marines. You know that we're what you might call a necessary evil. To the rest of the population we're just evil."

"One out of two isn't bad," I joked.

Jones glared at me.

"Sorry," I apologized.

"Now you understand the position we find ourselves in. If anybody looks into this even a little bit the whole thing is bound to come down. You know, when the big guys up there met to discuss this situation they proposed to have you killed out of spite and it almost passed."

"Well, at least there are more reasonable people up there."

"No, most of them voted to take you out, but they were overridden when someone pointed out that short of using explosives or a sniper the attempt would end up with dead ONI operatives."

"At least they respect me."

Jones rubbed his temples. "Frank… it might all be a game to you, but if this comes out it could mean anarchy, humanity's very affected after Paris IV was finally declared lost. The prowlers we sent caught some footage of the glassing process and somehow _that_ of all things managed to worm its way into the media's hands. People are on edge here, and if this were to happen now then God knows what."

"Ok, I understand. Anarchy, chaos, and rebellion." I took a deep breath. "What comes next?"

"You're the first domino," the colonel spoke. "So we hide you."

"There were other men involved," I said. "If you're going to cover my ass the least you can do is cover theirs."

"The Marines won't talk," Jones assured me. "It seems that a few of them have fallen into depression and alcoholism… they blame themselves for those deaths."

"Well, they shouldn't," I muttered. "What about the my men? What about Yassir, Fightmaster, and the other pilot girl?"

"They'll be taken care off," Jones assured me. "And I actually mean that, no need to kill a bunch of people."

Believe it or not, actually hearing those words made me feel incredibly relieved. It finally took a weight from my chest.

"So?" I asked. "Where are you sending me?"

"The Asymmetrical Action Group," the colonel said.

"The AAG?" I asked. "Seriously, those douchebags?"

"Wow, a Helljumper saying that the men in another unit are bigger assholes than you are," Jones said.

"But more importantly, how do you know about the AAG?" the colonel asked me.

I almost blushed. "The Special Forces community isn't all that big. The Very Special Forces is even smaller."

"Very Special Forces is not a thing, son."

"Trust me, sir. It is."

Jones rolled his eyes.

"Truth be told," I sighed, "the AAG was only a rumor. I honestly didn't believe it was a real thing until now. I figured that with the Spartans you wouldn't need regular super special forces."

"Son, believe me when I say that they're anything but regular."

The colonel gave a curt nod to Jones and turned back towards the window before Jones started going into detail about what the new assignment implied. I leaned forward and listened closely. It sounded very interesting…

* * *

><p>Twenty minutes later I found myself back on my car as First Lieutenant Francisco Castillo. I forced two men to disobey direct orders, endangered a Top Secret program before it even launched, killed thirty-two innocent people, and contributed to the depression of several good men and women. What did ONI have to say about this? They gave me a promotion and transferred me to the single most elite unit that your average human could get into while allowing me to pick my own team.<p>

"They really should work on their punishment methods," Schitzo said.

"Agreed," I replied, turning on the music. "Next time I fuck up I probably will find myself blown to a million pieces by a car bomb."

"Probably," he agreed. "You know, I'm happy that we can talk now."

"You're the only one who talks to me," I reminded him. "Ever since…"

"I know. I miss her too," he said. "She was–"

"Don't even start," I cut him off. "Hanna didn't know you."

"She knew both of us," Schitzo said. "A little bit better than anybody should have. It hurts that she's no longer here, but you'll have to pull out of this soon. You can't go outside and put a decent face and then go back inside to drown yourself in alcohol. I'm surprised that Jones and the colonel didn't smell your breath from across the room."

"Shut up," I ordered. "Please shut up."

Schitzo bowed and disappeared.

"Car, take me to the Grenadier."

Montgomery greeted me in his usual way, with a glass of whiskey and a slight frown that seemed etched into his face. Lys the waitress was still there, she smiled at me as I walked in and then went straight back to work. I expected to see the trio of Irishmen sitting in their usual position, but I knew that they had been drafted back into the Corps and were off fighting covvies someplace or other. Their pictures weren't in the memorial wall of the bar, but the news could come in any time soon.

"You look like shit," he toted. "What happened to your arm, kid?"

"Tattoos to honor the fallen," I said, downing my drink.

"Ah, I see," he replied, filling up my glass again. "We have the wall, you have your skin."

"Soon enough I'll be more black than white," I grumbled.

Montgomery looked at me and raised his eyebrow slightly. I couldn't help but chuckling. He was as black as they came, complete with a thick little mustache and everything. He was the kind of man that would look the part in police officer blues and a big-ass revolver on his side. Not that anybody still used revolvers, but he certainly had that police officer look.

"I thought you'd be flattered," I joked, taking another drink from the mid-quality whiskey. "But having ten names etched into my skin…"

"Is worse than having the pictures hanging on the wall. I am reminded of those that died every time I turn around, but not every waking moment."

I shrugged. "It's my way of honoring and remembering them."

Now he shrugged. "Have another drink Frank. And try and relax a little bit."

Montgomery cut me off after the sixth drink, but those six stiff whiskey drink coupled with the gallon and a half of beer that I had drunk earlier in the morning I started feeling pretty tipsy. Most people drink to forget, but when I drank all I could think about was Hanna, slowly bleeding out over my shoulder, her eyes open and an expression of pain permanently fixed on her beautiful face. Not only that, but it also brought back ell the good memories. I half expected to be wrung over guilt for having cheated on her, but I was just sad. Five months should've been enough, but I still saw her face every time I closed my eyes.

Even worse was that Katie still occupied my mind from time to time. I hadn't checked to see if she had made it out. A lot of civilians hadn't made it out even with hundreds of military personnel willingly sacrificing themselves to save them. Remembering that only made me feel more guilt. The worst thing I could've found out was that Katie was one of those that had died because of me, but there wasn't a list of definitive victims, but the number was the maximum amount of people that would've fit in those two birds. The odds were actually good for me if you thought about it, but knowing my luck… if Katie was dead I could never know if it had been because of me.

"Son."

"What?" I asked. "Did I fall asleep?"

"Yeah," Montgomery said. "Wanna go home?"

"Not really," I said. "Has Pavel showed up?"

"No," he said. "You two still not talking?"

I nodded. "He's pissed at me."

"Are you going to tell me why?"

I shook my head. "Let's just say that he has a good reason to be angry at me."

"No reason is good enough when you've fought side by side for the last ten years."

I looked up from my empty glass. "You might have a point there Captain," I told him. "In any case, I should at least talk to him."

"First time I hear any sense coming out of you in the last three months Frank," Montgomery said. "Have some water and I'll send you off."

"I'm feeling sober already," I told him. "I'll be on my way."

"Frank, have some water," he said, slamming a massive glass in front of me. "I won't let you leave until you take a piss."

"I'll make sure he doesn't cheat," Lys said as she walked by.

I swiveled around on my stool. "Something wrong? You haven't flirted with anyone since like forever."

"She got a divorce early this year," Montgomery explained.

"Ah," I hummed. "Did she take half his money in the process?"

"Nah," she said. "It was pretty amicable."

"Good," I said. "I guess… In any way, at least it wasn't a huge mess."

"Yeah," she replied. "Now drink your water and get that bladder of yours filled up."

"When you say it like that," I told her with a shrug. "I don't think I can refuse you."

* * *

><p>"…and that's pretty much it," I finished.<p>

Pavel grunted. "Only you would get rewarded so grandly for killing thirty people."

"My life does tend to be like that sometimes," I admitted, "but I think that Hanna's death is enough punishment…"

"Frank, her death wasn't karmic, it wasn't your fault…"

I chuckled humorlessly. "I know, but that doesn't make it any better."

There were a few awkward seconds of silence. Pavel was very obviously still angry with me, but five months was a very long time for anger to boil down somewhat.

"They'll let me pick my own men," I told him.

"Really? Who are you thinking about?"

"You, for starters," I told him. "I was thinking about getting the old squad back together, a few of my men from Five and maybe snag a couple of guys from the other platoons."

"Well, let me know when you decide," he said. "I'll be seeing you."

"Oh! Just tell him to come in already!" Amber called out through the door. "You two are worse than girls."

"Hi Amber," I greeted. "I was just leaving."

Pavel looked back at me with an irritated look on his face. I would've felt the same if my wife or anybody else had made that sort of annoying comment. "I'll see you later," he said.

I nodded and offered him my hand. "Pavel, for what it's worth… I'm sorry."

He shook my hand and grunted something in Polish before disappearing through the door.

"Say hi to Lavvie for me!" I called out.

* * *

><p>"I'm surprised you called," Grigori said. "You never do."<p>

"Don't take it personal."

"I never do," he said, taking a big gulp from his drink. "I never do."

I raised an eyebrow and mimicked him. "Drinking heavily?"

"With thirty deaths in my conscience… Yes."

I shrugged and took another big swig. "Sorry about that."

"I don't blame you," he said. "People are selfish by nature, but you did what you did to give Hanna a chance."

"Lotta good that did, eh?"

"If it's any consolation El-tee, the reason that everybody's feeling bad is that nobody did anything to stop you. Nobody wanted to. Other than Ryan anyways."

I took another drink. "How's Miri?"

Grigori sighed. "You know, things were going pretty good, but she felt like a break would be a good thing for us right now."

"Can you still work together?"

"What do you mean?" he asked. "Did we already get reassigned to another unit? Because if we had we would've all gotten a message from Hayes."

I leaned in close to him. "ONI stuff."

He groaned. "Damn. I'll need a few extra drinks to handle that."

"I never pegged you for an alcoholic Grigori," I said. "I always thought that you'd be the guy that wasn't affected by anything."

"Flattering… and I always thought the same thing myself. Back when I was with the Insurrection–"

I looked around, making sure that nobody was within hearing range. Even then it wasn't good enough, the various police departments and intelligence organizations had bugs placed all over. It would be at least a few uncomfortable hours before somebody realized that ONI's most recent pet project had gotten himself arrested and came to get me out. With the amount of trouble that I had caused ONI lately I'm not even sure that they would actually come and get me.

"Relax," he said. "Back in the day I saw some horrible stuff. I even did some horrible things. Torture, mutilation, kidnapping, and more. I saw friends die, I saw men blow themselves up in the middle of a crowd to advance their ideals. It didn't start affecting me in a psychological level, I just decided that what I was fighting for was wrong if these were the methods we were using."

"And ONI caught you."

"Yeah, that too. Then I became an operative and saw more of the same. _Then_ the war started and the horror was amped up."

"Grigori, not to seem like an insensitive jerk, but get to the point."

"Of course," he said. "Paris IV was pretty bad. Losing half my squad early on wasn't good for me, losing all those other people from Five wasn't exactly good, and Zepeda was just the cherry on top. Seeing all those refugees, living amongst them… It was all piling up El-tee, those thirty deaths just sent us over the top."

"How many are bad?"

"That's Pavel's job," he said. "He's the one that gets along with pretty much everybody that meets him."

"That's a skill he has," I agreed. "But _have_ you heard anything?"

"Lizzo was very close to Carver, he's been taking it pretty badly. Ramirez has a surprisingly good outlook despite missing his left leg."

"Dotsenko?" I asked. "I know he's good friends with Ramirez."

"He's ok. I guess that having his best friend happy and alive can be somewhat contagious."

"How's Abri?" I asked. "You two are the only ones that made it from Recon."

"She's kept in touch," Grigori confirmed. "I don't think she'll ever be able to fight again. She's been seeing a military shrink and has been trying pretty hard to get over everything, but last I heard…"

"I had no idea it was that bad," I said. "Poor girl. She must've gone through a lot."

He nodded. "And wasn't prepared for it."

"As for VSF Squad," I began. "Miri…"

"Just needs to work it out," he finished. "How about Mobuto?"

"Not sure. I've only spoken to him twice and both times he was with friends and family. He can't be too bad then. Andy seems to be in fine working order I guess, but she's changed. She hasn't been her usual snappy self. She's apparently something of a shut in now."

"I'd talk to her if I was you."

"I will," I said. "But right now I need to talk to you."

"Right, I'm pretty sure you didn't call me here only to talk about your unit's mental state."

"Ouch," I said.

"You_ are_ an asshole, sir," he said, not making any apologies. "What did you want to talk about anyways?"

"Top Secret," I told him. "I'm being reassigned."

"Figures," Grigori sighed. "You have to stay hidden."

"Yes. I'm being sent to some fancy new joint whatever unit."

"Which one?"

"AAG."

He raised an eyebrow, as much expression as I had ever seen on his face. "That's actually a thing?"

"Apparently so," I said. "They're giving me command of a small unit. I don't know all the details, but I can bring around twenty men with me."

"All right then," he said. "Have you spoken to Klaus?"

"Yeah, Pavel's still somewhat pissed, but he's definitely coming. There's one thing though. When I was talking to him I got the feeling that he didn't exactly want the responsibility of commanding his own unit again."

"He still outranks me, sir."

"I know, I just wanted to know if you'd have a problem commanding your own squad if Pavel doesn't want to do it."

He shrugged. "Sure, I guess. I follow orders."

"Good."

"Have you thought about who you want on the team?"

I nodded. "I was thinking about getting Reaper back together."

"You do realize that Lamberti is still MIA, do you?"

"Still no word from him? An unidentified body or something?"

"No," he said. "I did have some of my friends look into it a few years ago, but he's good with computers, sir. He wiped every record of himself pretty thoroughly. Well, everything save for his military career."

"Well, what about Cam?"

"She's going places in her new desk job, I hear she made officer and everything."

I sighed. "So she won't be coming back to the field?"

He shook his head. "I don't think so, but you should at least talk to her, ask her what she thinks."

"I will," I assured him. "In the meantime, I'll contact Snark and Bee. Maybe I'll get Serge to come join us."

"I always did like the guy," Grigori said.

"Yeah, he's like a carbon copy of yourself."

He shrugged. "Might be."

"Api's dead, so that's a no go," I muttered almost angrily. "You think Beckel will want to come?"

"Don't know," he admitted. "Axel might not exactly like being pulled from his platoon. I can have Serge test the ground."

"Do that," I told him. "I'm also not sure that Jen will be happy with you dragging them away from her unit without bothering to ask for her permission."

"Yeah, I think you should do that."

I nodded. "When did you start talking so much?"

He shrugged. "I don't know. I don't like it."

I had to laugh at that. The eternally brooding and mysterious squad mate had become talkative and opinionated in a matter of minutes. I still didn't exactly like him as I would a friend, but at least I could have a conversation and listen to his opinions. That could certainly improve relations outside of work hours. I talked with him a bit longer while we finished our beers until it became obvious that neither of us wanted to keep talking about things that weren't work related. He paid for his drink and left me by myself.

_New unit, old team…_

"You can't fill the twenty places with the people you have in mind," Schitzo reminded me. "Who are you going to get for the other spots?"

_New team as well… _I thought to myself. _This is going to be fun._

"Check please," I requested.

* * *

><p>"Can you put the knife away?"<p>

"Why?" I asked. "Am I making you nervous?"

"No," Stefánia Stark said. "You're making the clients nervous."

I looked up to see six or seven large men with long hair and the look of gang members staring at me as I twirled my knife back and forth. I did a couple of spins with the Damascus steel while staring at the hypnotic patterns that the colorful blade made before putting it away.

"So, you haven't come up with anything yet?" she asked.

I shrugged. "I want something to honor her, but I'm just not the kind of guy that would write down someone's name in their skin."

"But numbers and birds are fine?" she asked. "And I thought that women were supposed to be the ones full of contradictions."

"Hey," I complained. "That's rude."

She looked up at me. "What are you? Ten?"

I ignored her. "Numbers aren't so bad… I always hated mathematics though…"

"Dates then?" she asked. "Birth and death? Date you met her?"

"Too corny," she agreed. "A simple birth and death should do it. Maybe surrounded by a heart?"

"Really Stef? Really?"

"Nobody ever calls me Stef anymore. Or Fran for that matter."

"Yeah, I keep your middle name is the feminine version of mine," I said. "Fran… your life must've sucked during high-school."

"Shut up," she said, rolling her eyes.

"Your bad childhood would explain all your tattoos," I went on.

"And yours?"

"I had a pretty bad childhood… and my teenage years were basically a boot camp by my uncle."

"In that case you should get more ink then. I get paid, you get to show just how many issues you have… we all win."

"Not to imply that everybody with a tattoo has issues," I said.

"Of course not," she agreed. "I'd be out of business otherwise."

I laughed quietly for a few seconds before stopping. "You know, I still can't come up with anything…"

"You don't have to get anything," she said. "If you don't think anything is good enough maybe you're right."

"No, it's not that," I said. "Whenever someone I care about died I got a tattoo. I'm not sure why I do it, but it seems to give me closure and that's something that I really need right now."

She nodded. "Tribal inking?"

"I know that they're supposed to have meaning, but I'm not sure she would've appreciated a mess of lines on my shoulder."

"You should keep it simple then," she half-suggested. "Don't corpsmen have their own insignia?"

"Yes," I said, "what are you thinking about?"

"I can give you the insignia and then birth date on one side and death date on the other."

I shrugged. "Sounds good. Just make the tattoo more angular, so that it fits in with the rest of them."

"Of course," she said, reaching for her datapad and inking gun. She made her pad pop up a holographic image of the corpsman insignia, a baton with two snakes spiraling around it and topped off with a pair of wings. Hanna hadn't been simply a medic, she had been a hospital battlefield corpsman, trained to keep people from dying while she herself was under fire.

"Where do you want it?" Stef asked.

I pulled up my left sleeve. "Right above Almers."

"What?"

"Above the cross," I told her. "Come on, let's do this."

An hour later Stef leaned back and examined her handiwork. The outline had taken longer than usual because she had been so careful, but once that was done she quickly filled it in.

"Almost done," she said. "What are the dates?"

"February 20… Twenty-five twenty. And July 4, twenty-five forty-nine."

"Twenty-nine years," she said. "Alright then, don't twitch."

The two dates took a lot less time and were done in a minute. Stef was very practiced at her craft. I waited for her to finally lean back again and then turned my forearm so that I could look at it. The tattoo was inverted, but if I ignored the swollen skin around it you could easily tell that it was incredible work.

"It looks great," I said quietly. "How much do I owe you?"

"I'll round it up to one hour, so it's gonna be two hundred credits."

I nodded and handed her my card. "Thanks."

"Any time," she said with a similar nod as she charged my card and reached for the gauze. "Same deal, keep this for a couple of days and I hope never to see you again."

"Same here. Thanks for everything Stef."

I walked outside as in a daze. The clerk on the shop wished me a good afternoon and I half-mindedly replied to it. When I walked outside it was a lot darker than it had been when I walked in. The difference in lighting wasn't what affected me though. There was a weird feeling that inside me that made me want to fall to the ground and curl up into fetal position. I had only felt like this two times in my whole life. That one time when my uncle told me that my dad was dead and five months ago when Hanna's vitals went flat on my HUD. It finally hit me that I would never see her smile, never hear her laugh, never fight with her, or even hold her hand ever again. She was gone for good. She was a thing of the past now.

"I'm gonna miss her," Schitzo said, placing his hand on my shoulder and squeezing gently.

_Me too…_

* * *

><p><em>Thanks for reading this chapter.<em>

_Frank is just the kind of guy that would get rewarded for having been directly responsible for over thirty civilian deaths. However, we still don't know which civilians in particular are the ones that perished in that eventful day, but we do know that Hanna is most definitely dead. I'm glad that the reception for last chapter was positive, I had been writing it for a pretty long time and was a little bit nervous about what the outcome would be. Of course, by positive I mean that you're all highly offended that I finally decided to actually start killing off characters. A lot of you mentioned that Zepeda was one of your favorite characters. Which others do you like? So I can make their deaths more violent and painful._

_In any case, this chapter is pretty much an aftermath chapter. Note that five months have been skipped as well as most of the raging alcoholism and self-destructive behavior on Frank's part. The only actual characters that participated in this chapter were Caboose and Pavel, both of which had relatively minor roles. The recurring characters were also given some of the spotlight, seeing as they hadn't appeared for ten chapters or so. _

_One last thing, the next two or three chapters are going to set the ground for the big events to come. I'm giving you a warning that I'm going to "rush" through the two and a half year period in between december of 2549 and the infamous Fall of Reach. After that... who knows? Anyhow, old characters will return to the squad and new ones will be added to it as well._

_Thank you all for your reviews and opinions and, as always, stay strong._

_-casquis_


	185. Through the Eyes of the Beholder

Chapter CLXXXV: Through the Eyes of the Beholder

**February 13, 2550 (UNSC Calendar)/five months later**

**Esztergom (Ezhtergom), Viery Territory, Reach, Epsilon Eridani System**

**Sergeant Roderic Mata**

* * *

><p><em>"Testis unus, testis nullus."<em>

* * *

><p>"Ah, Sergeant Mata, is it?"<p>

"Yes, sir," I replied, putting down my two duffels and giving my new commanding officer a smart salute. I had only met him once before and then it was a brief meeting, but it didn't hurt to give good second impressions.

He saluted back with a smile that didn't quite reach his eyes. It was the smile of someone that had seen too much. I knew a lot of people that had a smile like that one. For a few years even I had that same fake smile. Then I just stopped smiling.

"Welcome aboard," he told me, shaking my hand. The lieutenant looked around and then back to me before shrugging. "Normally I'd say this on board an actual ship, but we haven't been assigned to a ship yet."

"Sir?"

"Never mind," he dismissed me with a wave of his hand. "Come."

I picked up both of my duffels with a suppressed grunt and started walking behind him. This base was a relatively small one compared to others in Reach. Only a single division was permanently garrisoned here. They didn't even have an air wing. To top it off, this was an Army base. I might have not been the smartest one of the bunch, but I knew that Marines and Army had segregated bases with the occasional exception in the form of a Joint Operations Base. However, this seemed to be purely an Army garrison. I could've understood being in a Navy base, but this just seemed unusual.

The again, there was nothing 'usual' about my current situation. Plucked out of what was left of my unit by a couple of ONI spooks to be reassigned into this so-called AAG. I think I might've heard someone mention those initials some time ago, but I had never really heard of this unit until the moment I got assigned to it. On one hand I was proud of myself, but mostly I was confused. Being drafted into the ODSTs is one thing, but being drafted _from_ the ODSTs is a completely different matter that leaves you confused and questioning a lot of your beliefs.

"Yeah, I didn't like being garrisoned here at first," the lieutenant said, "but some compromises had to be made. As you know, the AAG is a joint unit overseen by ONI, right?"

"Right," I replied, trying not to sound strained by the weight of my duffels.

"Need some help?" he asked me.

Apparently my effort was for naught.

Before I could say anything my new CO grabbed one of the duffels and propped it over his shoulder. "Damn, did they tell you to pack your weapons too?"

"Sentimental value, sir."

"Of course, of course," he muttered. "I see your armor also holds sentimental value."

"It's saved my life more than a couple of times."

"That's what armor does."

We walked through the base in relative silence, with him only asking me a few token questions about my background and how I felt about my new assignment. I responded with the appropriate mix of excitement and professionalism, not sounding too eager or bored with my new unit. Truth be told, the only thing that actually surprised me was the realization that the lieutenant was in his thirties. Most El-tees were usually in their mid or late twenties, but this guy was a bit older than the norm. Perhaps he had refused a promotion to stay with his men, but any jarhead with half a brain would accept every promotion available to get further and further away from the frontlines. I know I would.

Perhaps this officer had been an enlisted Marine before going off to the dark side, but those things rarely happened. In any case, it was not important so long as he proved to be a good leader that would keep me and my new comrades-in-arms alive.

"So, most of the men here have been serving with me for at least a couple of years," he said. "They are the band of brothers that all those campaign posters seem to be talking about. I'm only telling you this so that you're not thrown off by all the inside jokes and natural distrusting attitude that they'll have towards you, ok?"

"Yes, sir."

"Good. You can also expect to be treated as a recruit as opposed to a higher-ranking Marine."

"Sir?"

He shrugged. "I'm sorry, Mata, but even if I constantly intervene it'll take some time for that to change. I'm hoping that the acclamatory exercises will fix that… if not then I'll see what I can do about it."

I was still confused, but I said nothing. Back in the Corps I had been taught that discipline was everything. When I joined the ODST I learned that it wasn't quite as important as the regular Jarheads had made it out to be, but when push came to shove everyone would follow an order from a superior officer. I just hoped that the situation here would be similar. I would really hate it if someone died because they decided that me sending them off to flank an enemy unit was an unlawful order or some such bullshit.

"Well, here we are," he said finally. "ONI managed to get us three barracks buildings and a large section of the base for personal use. The old team is in here, the newcomers should arrive tomorrow and the day after that."

"Why am I the first one here, sir?" I asked. "I know I'm not going to be a platoon sergeant in this unit."

The lieutenant turned around and smiled at me. This time his smile seemed slightly more genuine, but only slightly.

"When ONI told me that I would be choosing my own team I was excited, you know? I was allowed to handpick a squad once before, but the selection process is dull and boring. Last time I simply asked for a number of dossiers on their most talented soldiers. I realize now that it was only by miracle that the personalities of everyone managed to mesh into this perfect _thing_ that allowed us to work as a squad. After that I got different squads, but they didn't quite have that magic, you know?"

"I'm not sure I'm following, sir," I said."

He made a noise that was halfway between a scoff and a chuckle. "I specifically asked my superior to give me different types of personalities so that we could work perfectly."

"You're _forcing_ chemistry?"

He nodded, very self-satisfied with himself. "Yeah, read about it somewhere. Still, the funny thing is that they had already thought about it. They really don't want this unit to fail."

"Ok, but that still doesn't explain why I was the first one here."

"You're pretty old for a sergeant, especially considering that we're in the middle of a total war. You're from a very poor background, missing father, abusive mother. Played football, soccer, as a kid. Got into trouble in school, trouble with authority, trouble with just about everyone short of the police. I'm no expert, but apparently this makes you relatable to just about every male from their teens up. Did you ever see Never Back Down?"

"What?"

"Never mind. You'll probably see it soon enough if you get along with Bee."

"What?" I repeated.

"Sorry, I know this is a lot. As I was saying. Since this is a male-dominated line of work, that immediately makes you relatable. What really tops it off though is that you fought your situation and actually became an asset to society. Finished high school and joined the Marines."

I put down my duffel and crossed my arms. "With all due respect, sir, I'm not a movie character."

"No, but real life works a lot like movies. And the new guys are all younger than you. They'll instantly see you as a superior just because of your personal history. My own men might not be so quick, but it'll certainly help."

I leaned slightly backwards, still skeptical. "So you just selected me because I would help the new and old team members work better together?"

He smiled, going back to his fake smile, this time it was laced with a certain amount of contempt. "Yes. I also got you because of your seemingly supernatural ability not to die. You'll find that your ability will become a lot less common once you get used to life here."

I had been under Lieutenant Castillo for a grand total of three minutes and he had already managed to offend me, annoy me, and somehow manage to make me feel like a little kid. The way he explained things to me managed to be make me feel somewhere between a colleague and an ignorant moron. It was mostly the way he said it, like he was so thoroughly convinced that he was superior but making his best effort to hide it. At least he _tried_ to hide it. It's more than can be said about a lot of Helljumpers that I've met.

"Sir," I said simply.

He slapped me in the shoulder and grabbed my other duffel with barely a show of effort. "You don't need to get along with me," he said. "You don't even have to like me or even respect me outside the battlefield. The only thing I ask for you is complete trust. And _inside _the battlefield you will respect me, you will like me, and you will treat everything I do, say, order, or imply as the complete absolute truth. I once told my first squad that to them I was the one and only god. This same rule will apply to you and everyone else in the unit."

"Understood," I said. Now I_ really_ didn't like that guy. He must've been pretty good if he got command of this unit.

"Now, sorry about all the fuss, but this is the main reason why _I _wanted you here first. If you're going to be the unofficial leader of the newcomers, I want you to understand exactly the dynamic we're going to be having. Once the new team members get here you will be my right hand with them. Not their squad leader, not the older guys, you."

In a twisted kind of way, it made sense to bring me here in order to get the newcomers to treat the lieutenant like he wanted to be treated. He had just gone from friendly to crazy to downright hostile and then to some sort of coldly calculating sociopath. Normally I wouldn't have cared, the Shock Troopers had a reputation for causing mental disorders of all kinds if you survived them long enough. The sheer speed that he switch in between them was slightly troublesome, but ONI wouldn't have cleared him for active duty otherwise, they were good at catching the basket cases that actually presented danger to their fellow humans.

At least that's what I told myself.

"Go in then," I he said, opening the door. "Get to know the team. You get to pick your bed."

Having said that he rather unceremoniously dropped my two duffels on the floor and walked away. Several heads rose at the noise, a few of them went straight back down, but a few others looked at me with what I could only describe as curiosity. At least it wasn't downright hostile.

"Bee, where's Pavel?" Lieutenant Castillo asked a particularly wide-shouldered man.

"Off with Konstantinov," the man replied. "They were talking business apparently."

"Goddamn," he muttered. "I'll be right back. Team, this is Sergeant Roderic Mata." With that introduction he departed.

And there I was, not entirely sure about what I was supposed to do next, thankfully, the broad-shouldered man helped out.

"Hey Sarge," he said, offering me his hand while he lifted one of the duffels. "I'm Rob, lance corporal, but most people here call me Bee."

"Bee?"

"Or Bumblebee if you're feeling fancy," he added. "Long story."

"They all are," I said, grabbing the other duffel and following him.

He chuckled slightly, at least he didn't sound like he was dead inside. It was a refreshing change of pace. "I see you've met our glorious leader. Back when I first met him he was only a staff sergeant, I think. Went through the ranks before going into OCS."

_So he was an enlisted Marine…_

"We all know he's a little bit weird," he went on. "Some might say crazy, but I'll be damned if he's not the best fighter I've ever seen and the most capable leader I've had the pleasure of serving under." He paused and turned to smile. "Now that we've established that, we can get to know one another."

"Ummm…"

"So, what do you like? In general, I mean. Do you like sports, chess, videogames? Me personally, I love television. Of all kinds really, but mostly old-fashioned."

"Oh, you're one of those," I muttered.

He actually laughed. "That's what everyone says. Which bed?"

"What?"

"Which bed?" he repeated.

"This one's fine," I said, tossing my duffel into one cot.

"As I was saying, everyone is initially annoyed and then they just happen to become another one of my kind."

I sighed quietly. "What so you like?"

"Movies and series. The very first ones."

"At least you're not one of those stuck in the twenty-third century."

He nodded. "A sad age for visual media, but we don't really talk about that."

What a peculiar man. I would've been more judgmental had his biceps not been the size of my neck. I was pretty strong myself, with larger-than-average muscles, but a lot of guys went overboard with their workouts. Sometimes it looked like they wouldn't be able to press their arms to their sides because there would be too much muscle in the way.

I rolled my eyes at myself. Sometimes I found myself paying too much attention to silly things like that, lately I had begun suspecting that it was a slight complex of inferiority that rooted from my mother's annoyingly broad shoulders and big arms. No wonder I didn't like women all that much. Perhaps it also had to do something with her constantly beating me. Well, doesn't matter much, does it?

"Come, I'll introduce you," he said. "Not everyone's here, but they can wait."

I shrugged and followed. I had nothing better to do and I could always unpack later. Besides, I hated unpacking. Bee led me back out to the section of the barracks that functioned as a common room.

"That guy over there is Marvin Mobuto, we call him Marv. I haven't served in his squad or platoon yet, but I hear that he's almost as good as killing as the El-tee is."

"Some say better," Marv said.

"Only you say that," a woman scoffed.

"That little ray of sunshine over there is Andrea Livingston, or Andy. She's a medic but not a corpsman. Has an annoying tendency to get shot. I still don't know if I want to get close to her or away from her. Bullets could hit me by accident or just be attracted to her instead of me."

"Very funny," she said. "It's not like you were there for any of those occasions."

Bee shrugged. "Oh, trust me. Your accidents were the talk of the Company. But moving on, we have Snark."

"Why do you call him that?" I asked.

All conversations died and everyone turned to look at me. For a moment I felt pathetically close to what the new kid in school would feel like.

The man in question, Snark, as he was called, lowered his datapad and looked at me with a raised eyebrow that managed to convey levels upon levels of amusement.

"You get a free pass because you're new," he said.

"He's called Snark because he snarks a lot," Bee helpfully said. "He's also the fourteenth best marksman in the entire UNSC Defense Forces."

"Fourteenth," I said. "Impressive."

"It used to be number twelve," Bee informed me. "But age… you know how it is."

"And you won't let me forget about it," Snark muttered under his breath, raising his datapad once again.

"Anyways," Bee went on. "His full name is Naveen Avninder, but nobody calls him that. Mostly because we can't pronounce it right."

"God forbid your tongue from having to enunciate a 'v' followed by an 'n.'"

There was a certain amount of snarkiness to him. At least the nickname was indicative. You wouldn't believe the nicknames that people get. I once heard about a guy that was called Volcano because of a particularly bad case of diarrhea. If they wanted to mock him they would've just called him something like Drippy or perhaps Liquid. Both sounded relatively harmless but were more to the point. Volcano sounded almost badass if you think about it.

"So we have Snark, Andy, and Marv over here," Bee said. "And here we have Sasha and James. For some reason we call them by their considerably longer last names; Dotsenko and Ramirez respectively. I've known these two for the shortest amount of time, but I can tell you that they're great machine gunners, are very burly, and you'll rarely find them apart from one another."

"We're not gay," Ramirez said. "And his description hardly gives me credit, but it pretty much sums him up."

"Right," Dotsenko added. "He should've mentioned your lacking in that department."

"You sure you're not gay?" I asked jokingly.

Bee laughed and slapped my shoulder. I had just met the guy, it felt weird that he treated me like an old friend. Weird in a bad way.

"He means this," Ramirez said, propping his left leg on the table and pulling up his pants to reveal an artificial limb. "State of the art, turns out mommy dearest had quite a bit of money stowed away from one inheritance or other. Got outfitted with the best of the best and I'm now back on active duty."

"With the advantages of receiving an amputee's pension," Dotsenko added. "Don't mind his funny way of running. It's too much leg for the man."

"I'm sure you'll grow into it," I said. So far, these two guys were the ones I liked best.

Bee looked around and frowned slightly. "We're missing Brisbois, Miranda, and both Klaus and Konstantinov. They're a Foreign Legion veteran, a shy marksman, and our two seconds respectively."

I shrugged slightly. "I'll get to know them later. Where can I get some food."

"Right this way, Mata. That's kill in Spanish, right?"

"Well, yeah, but the last name is Catalan, it means something like 'thick of the forest' or brush."

"How come everyone knows the meanings of their last names?" he asked. "Like I know what Agnarsson means."

"Son of Agnar?" Snark suggested.

At that, I had to laugh.

* * *

><p>"I am really getting sick and tired of all these training exercises," I grunted. "Sir."<p>

Lieutenant Castillo propped his feet up on a box of ammunition and raised an eyebrow at the four paint marks on my chest. "You're sick of losing, you mean?"

"Sir, your men have been working together for a long time. My men just met each other three days ago."

"They're all my men now," he corrected. "And you only get to call them your men for as long as they're under your command in training exercises."

"Sir," I said, checking my weapon for any paint. "That sniper of yours is very good. Very fast."

He nodded with a small smile. "One of the best there is. But then again, so are the men that you're commanding right now. On paper, Pavel's team is as good as yours."

"Sir, we both know paper isn't the best indication of skill or talent."

"Then you are saying that _your_ men aren't as good as mine?"

"No, I'm not saying that," I immediately said. "I'm just saying that they don't know what the other one's thinking."

"Yet," he said. "But still, if you keep losing all these it'll only sow discontent. I'm mixing up the teams, giving you command of some of my men, as you call them. Anyone in particular that impressed you?"

"Mobuto," I said without hesitation. "Both gunners gave us some trouble…"

"Not Pavel?"

"Well, yes," I said, "but he plays a more standard rifleman role despite his weapon."

"He does do that, doesn't he?" he asked. "Well, who do you want?"

"Any of the gunners will do," he said. "Dotsenko is slightly more accurate, isn't he?"

"Yes he is," Castillo agreed. "And he still has both his legs."

"That too," I admitted. "Could prove to be an asset."

"All right, they are yours. Who will you exchange them for?"

I grunted. "I don't know yet."

Lieutenant Castillo shrugged. "Well then. I'll pick them then, but first I want you to go over your team."

"All of them?" I asked.

"Yourself excluded of course," he said. "Go."

I sighed and sat down on another box of ammunition. "Well, we've got our three Army soldiers. Good men despite their branch."

Castillo chuckled. "If you say so."

"As soldiers they're pretty much equal to one another."

"PFCs Stapleton and Almasi along with Specialist O'Neal, right?" he asked.

"Yes, John, Oscar, and Eric respectively."

"Well, go on."

I frowned slightly, trying to remember particular details about each one. "I wouldn't go as far as giving them each a special ability, so to speak. They're all incredibly talented marksmen and handle their MA37s with impressive skill."

"Older rifles," he said. "But the Army is pretty fond of tradition."

"And they're usually the last ones to get the new gear," I added.

"That too," Castillo agreed.

"Private First Class John Stapleton… He is your typical Army type. Joined because ONI propaganda is just that good, could've gone to your average college and lived your average life but decided to live a life of adventure. A few years later we get John 2.0, your battle-hardened, wise-cracking soldier with a knack for killing. Good mental state, self-confident, doesn't expect to die any time soon."

"Good."

"Then there's Oscar Almasi," I went on. "Half something, half another something, and half some sort of Arab. At first glance he looks like your average Reach native except that he's from some backwater mining station that nobody's ever heard from. Speaks half a dozen different languages. Supposedly was a candidate for undercover operations with Insurgency, but the war was a more urgent circumstance apparently. He can draw his sidearm pretty darn fast, no doubt that will help him someday."

"And O'Neal?"

"He's your standard big and scary black man. Hell, he's even from the Bronx in New York."

"How tall is he again?" he asked.

"Six-foot-eleven," I replied. "And he's got the muscles to match. No wonder he's the one that carries the rocket launchers and other heavy gear. His size, however, does make him a big target. It also happens to make him a little bit slower when on the move. Give him a pair of machine guns and he'd be your perfect action movie hero, firing them both simultaneously."

"That might just come in handy some day," Castillo noted. "Not the kind of guy you'd want to get into a fist fight with, I assume."

"Not on your life," I agreed. "I'm still a bit worried about his size, but then again he could probably take twice as much punishment as your average human being."

"Let's just hope we never have to find out."

"Yes," I said. "Let's."

Castillo put his feet back down and leaned forward to look at me closely. "So that's our three soldiers. All of them are spectacular fighters in their own right and will pull through if needed."

"That would be my assessment," I said. "Then we've got two swabbies. Did you really have to pick candidates from all branches?"

Castillo smiled. "Of course not, but they were the best candidates, and I'm not going to let something as small as military branch prevent me from picking them."  
>"Really?"<p>

He laughed loudly. "My superior suggested that a few men and women from different branches be brought in, but one he convinced me I realized that the candidates _were_ the better option."

"If you say so, sir," I said. "As for our Navy specimens, not only was I surprised when I found out that the Navy types still had their own ground forces, I was even more surprised to find out that they actually saw combat on the ground."

"Yeah," he agreed, "I used to think that us Marines handled the muscle work for the swabbies, but it seems like they have some muscle of their own."

"Special Warfare Operators, both of them. They're also both Petty Officers Third Class. Corporals."

"PO-3," Castillo said with care. "As for their capabilities?"

"Chang Sun-Hoyt, other than a very unusual last name, he's got the very unusual training of underwater demolition and boat handling. I mean, who the hell needs a boat these days?"

"Fishermen," he said.

I nodded. "Well, he's well-versed in the use of all kinds of weaponry and happens to be particularly effective when using marksmen rifles. He's a fan of the EMR, but also has a wonderful talent for the M7 SMG. Used to provide sniper cover for his previous unit."

"I've seen him at work," Castillo said. "He can empty his magazine into a melon in the span of a second. Impressive fingers."

I groaned. "You won't believe the amount of jokes I've heard on the matter. He seems rather proud of himself too."

"And the girl?"

"Natasha Krieger… well, she's a handful."

"So I've heard," Castillo muttered. He stood up and rolled his neck around before cracking his knuckles. The man was in good shape, not overly bulky like a lot of us Helljumpers were, but the word fit wouldn't do him much justice. I hadn't seen him fight yet, but the way his men spoke of him you'd have thought he was Ares incarnated. A god amongst mortals, or at the very least a demigod. He walked around his stool and crossed his arms, revealing some tattooed numbers on his left forearm.

"What do you know about her past, sir?"

He sighed. "Daughter of a very rich businessman. Her father was Russian, I believe, but she was born wherever he moved to. Grew up rich and privileged, but she suffered all the syndromes of a child that didn't get enough attention. Promiscuous in high school, bad grades, not a care in the world. Then she decided her life was too damn boring and got into some shady business. Obviously, she wasn't smart enough not to get caught. Her father shipped her away and she joined the Navy as a compromise of sorts. She was supposed to stay behind combat lines, but a filing mistake changed that. Found her calling apparently."

I raised an eyebrow. "Huh, explains the reason why she's angry all the time. She's got a very… explosive personality."

"The next time she decides to get angry, make sure you slap her hard," he said. "Backhand. Might just give her some humility."

"She's got the looks and the background of an alpha bitch," I noted. "Some humility will do her good. Unfortunately, she's got an amazing skillset for this line of work."

"Well, that's Natasha for you. What about out three jarheads?"

"They're all Helljumpers," I started. "Veterans of several campaigns and with at least a dozen combat jumps under their belts. PFC Hipolito…"

"Ee-poll-ee-toh," he corrected my pronunciation.

"Hipolito Gibson. We call him Polly. He's the youngest of the bunch, and some would say he's our naïve and idealistic one, but underneath that perky exterior you have a hardened man. I'd say he has some sort of disorder, but I'm no expert."

"Well I am, and the moment he stops being cheery is the moment you watch out for him, ok?"

"Yes, sir," I said. "I'll be sure to. Then there's Lance Corporal Aaron Eidelberg, resident Jew doctor, drafted into the Corps and for some reason or other wasn't made a surgeon."

"The correct term would be Jewish."

"Unfortunately," I said. "Nobody cares."

"Good point. Go on."

"And then there's Corporal Adrian Longworth."

"The Third?" he asked.

"I wouldn't know, but with a name like that, I wouldn't be surprised. Still, the guy is too…_ good_ for his own good. Pretty good-looking, he's got a nice and heroic jaw, baby blue eyes." I scoffed. "He's every girl's wet dream. Unfortunately though, it doesn't stop at that, he also happens to be good at everything he tries. Might not be the best at everything, but he comes damn close to it."

"Ah, troublesome ego?"

"Yes," I said. "He does a pretty sell job at containing himself, but you can tell he thinks himself better."

"Most of us do," Castillo muttered. "Until we're proven wrong. I'll see about taking him down a notch, but I think that Krieger's personality will clash with his, tone them both down a bit."

"Or make one of them an even bigger dick," I suggested. "Anyhow, I suppose that some sort of preemptive action will be in order."

"Hand-to-hand usually has a big impact on the psyche," he said. "Getting beaten up is a lot quicker than mentally breaking someone, not as effective, mind you, but it works."

"If you say so, sir," I said for the second time.

Castillo sighed, somehow managing to drive home a feeling of disappointment in me. For some reason it affected me more than it should've. "I'll put Krieger with Pavel, see if he can tone her down a bit. And Stapleton too."

I nodded and picked my rifle back up. "One more simulated match?"

"Yes," he replied. "Let's see how you do with Marv and Dotsenko on your side."

* * *

><p>The fight was over in a grand total of six seconds. Even then most of those were dedicated to watching. The lieutenant had seen an opening and had gone in the moment he saw it. He delivered two quick punches to Almasi's ribs and somehow managed to throw him across the mat and onto his back pretty damn hard. Even I had to raise an eyebrow in admiration. I had rarely seen someone so quick.<p>

"Now, those who have served with me know just how much punishment I can dish out."

"And how much you can take!" Bee cried, drawing a few laughs.

"And how much I can take," he agreed. "But the rest of you do not, consider this a welcoming lesson. You'll learn that I am better than you and that there's a reason why you follow my orders. Other than rank of course. Many of you think yourself better or underachievers, today you'll learn that you're nothing of the sort. You're simply not as good as I am. Clear?"

Nobody said anything, but a few of the more veteran members rolled their eyes. If Castillo gained obedience, trust, and respect by cultivating a cult around his person, then he would be the first person that I met that did that. I'm usually a follower of the 'if it works, it works' mentality, but this might've been taking it a bit too far. I understood that he wanted every order he gave followed without question, especially considering our intended roles. One didn't form an elite unit if you didn't want expect them to go on tough missions or make hard choices. Castillo would need one of us to sacrifice himself at his word if it meant saving the team. As I said, understandable, but he could've done it in a way that made him less annoying to people.

"Ok, who's next?" Castillo asked, spreading his arms like he was some kind of gladiator. "Or shall I pick my victim?"

"How about O'Neal?" Ramirez suggested.

Every head turned to look at the massive black man, who simply crossed his arms over his chest. Personally, I wouldn't have liked to fight him under any circumstances.

Castillo turned slightly to the side and his eyes focused on something that I couldn't quite see. For a few brief instants he frowned slightly before returning his attention to Ramirez with a cheery smile. "Well, if you want to see O'Neal fight so badly, then I suppose you shall get your wish then. O'Neal, get in here, grappling gloves on. Ramirez, you too."

"Oh shit," he muttered.

"Oh shit indeed," Castillo agreed. "Smartass Now not only am I better than you, I am also smarter than you are. This is yet another reason why you will do everything I tell you to do. It's for your own good."

"I'm not sure this is for my own good," Ramirez muttered.

"All right," the lieutenant conceded. "Maybe it's not for your own good."

Ramirez could walk and run with his artificial limb, but he wasn't exactly maneuverable with it yet. We watched as O'Neal soundly beat the shit out of him in the space of one minute. To be fair to the guy, he did manage to get in a few good punches, but kicking with a fake leg does appear to be more difficult than you'd imagine.

A few of the men laughed as Ramirez fell to the ground from a particularly tough punch to the jaw. He propped himself back up and shook his head before waving his arm in surrender. O'Neal shook his hand and they both went back to their respective seats, allowing our brave leader to step back into place and start delivering particularly embarrassing beatings. He didn't even skimp on the girls, but I did notice that he did use more grappling as opposed to straight-down punches that he used on the rest of us.

"I have three months to train you," he said. "And by the time those are done I want two things: for us to function as a single unit and for all of you to be able to last more than forty seconds in the mat with me. That second one's important."

Out of all twenty of us only six had managed to go a full minute in the mat with the el-tee. I managed to make it a full minute along with Gunnery Sergeant Klaus, Mobuto, O'Neill, Staff Sergeant Konstantinov, and Brisbois. Mobuto and Brisbois were very impressive, managing to last a full three-minute round against Castillo, even O'Neill didn't manage that, and the man was a monster.

"Change into training gear," he said. "I want you on The Lot in ten minutes, there's a nice little setup for you guys to go through."

There were mutters from the unit but everyone got back to their feet and started jogging back towards the barracks. How nasty of the lieutenant to make us go all the way across the base, send us to change our clothes, and then have us come back here.

I sighed and started jogging with the rest of them. At least Castillo had the decency to jog with us. It probably just meant that he had something particularly nasty prepared for us as soon as we got to The Lot.

* * *

><p>I was really beginning to hate Castillo's methods. I felt like I was back in boot camp, but instead of everything being unbearably painful, it was unbearably embarrassing. Castillo had a certain something about him, call it charm or charisma or whatever, but he came painfully close to alienating everybody in the unit. Normally a drill sergeant would make his recruits hate him so much that they start working together as a team. Castillo was doing the drill sergeant bit and in a way it was working, but if he didn't cut it out soon we would have a hard time taking orders from him. Officers were supposed to be tough, but not tougher than your sergeant.<p>

I wiped some paint off my gun and rolled my neck. Some dickwad had Almasi and me pinned down behind a bunch of empty barrels.

"Any ideas, Sarge?" Almasi asked me.

"Negative Oscar," I said. "If this was real life my gun would be useless and these barrels would be of no use as cover."

"So we're cheating?"

"Technically," I agreed. "If we're already cheating then we might as well keep doing it."

"Sarge?" he questioned.

I sighed. The guy was a bit slow sometimes. "We lift the barrels, use them as cover to flank whoever has us pinned down."

Almasi smiled. "Sounds good."

I tilted the barrel slightly in order to get my fingers underneath. Fortunately they were empty and light enough to carry without much trouble.

"On our knees?" he asked.

"Yeah. I don't want my feet to feel numb for the rest of the match."

"Agreed. Straight up front?"

"Yeah," I said. "Let's show this dicks."

Not two minutes later Petty Officer Three Sun-Hoyt and Corporal Livingston were calling bullshit on our cheating. I told them that there hadn't been a set of rules and urged them to stay on the floor until the numbing agent on the training bullets wore off. As a sergeant I wasn't above some trash talk with my underlings. Livingston just muttered a curse and rolled her head to the side so that she was more comfortable.

Pretty girl, that one, but everything annoyed her, or at least that's how she behaved.

"Nice work, Oscar," I told Almasi. "Come on."

Ten minutes later my team managed to get the win and we stood in front of the el-tee. Castillo smiled at us and congratulated our win.

"Nice work," he said. "That was a nice move with the barrels Mata."

"Thanks, sir," I said.

"Innovation and creativity is something that I like seeing in my men. Don't cheat ever again."

"Understood, sir," I said apologetically.

"The same goes for you, Almasi," he added.

"Yes, sir. Sorry, sir."

"Well, I've got good news," he began. "You're making good progress, starting to work more like a team. You can have Friday and Saturday off, but I want you here by nine o'clock Sunday morning. Got it?"

"Yes, sir!" we said enthusiastically.

* * *

><p>Sunday morning came entirely too fast for me.<p>

"Head hurting?" Castillo asked.

"Yeah," I admitted.

He nodded. "I have the same problem, especially since they made those hangover pills illegal."

"Why would they do that anyways?" I asked.

"Once they went in the market the alcoholism rates went through the roof. Or something like that," he muttered. "It's supposed to be good for society in general, but not so much for us."

"Yes, sir."

"Here," he said, offering me a bottle of Clamato. "Trust me, it helps."

"Is it just Clamato?" I asked.

"Sure, let's go with that."

I took a drink from it. "Beer?"

"Yup," he said. "Lemon, salt, Maggi sauce, hot sauce, ground bacon bits, and peppers."

I took another drink. "Spicy."

"It helps," he said. "But you have to get the beer volume right or otherwise you just go right back to being drunk."

"Did you get it right, sir?" I asked.

"I'm pretty sure I did," he replied. "Keep it. Was it a fun night?"

I nodded. "You'd think that by this point in life one would be able to go to a bar and not get shitfaced."

"Don't worry about it, I plan on continuing to be an alcoholic for as long as I live."

"Not the most positive outlook in life, sir," I noted, taking another drink of the mix. "This is really good."

He nodded a small thanks. "Did everybody get drunk?"

"To some degree," I said. "Save for Sun-Hoyt, he doesn't drink, apparently."

He nodded again. "Crazy college drunk? Melancholic drunk?"

"Mostly melancholic," I said. "But the younger kids did start going into the crazy college territory. Why are you asking me this?"

"Just curious," he said. "How's the team coming together? Good?"

"A lot better," I admitted. "Everybody's starting to integrate real good. There's still some work to be done, but it won't be long before everybody works like you want them to."

He shook his head and looked at me. I couldn't help but notice that his eyes would move to the side, as if there was something behind me. At first I barely noticed it, but then I had to try hard not to turn around and look.

"They'll do fine, but if they could work like I wanted them to…"

I smiled, it was my best fake smile, but it carried my meaning across. "I understand." Everybody wanted the men they commanded to function as perfect killing machine. We could work hard to make them as close to perfect as humanly possible, but we couldn't get quite there, not even those fancy Spartans were perfect.

"Is there anything else, Lieutenant?"

"No, that's all for now, Mata," he said. "Be ready in… one hour."

"Yes, sir." I stood up and offered him the bottle of Clamato back.

"Keep it," he said, pulling another bottle from underneath his desk. "I've got mine."

"Thank you, sir."

"Anytime. Pavel should be right outside, tell him to come on in, will you?"

"Of course, sir."

I opened the door to Lieutenant Castillo's so-called office and walked out to the waiting space. Gunny Klaus was indeed waiting there. He looked tired, but unlike the rest of the team he didn't look like he was still drunk. In fact, he actually bothered with what appeared to be a genuine smile when he saw me walking out. He stretched out his hand and shook mine vigorously.

"Hey Mata, tough night, huh?"

I nodded. "Yup. We don't often get a whole weekend for ourselves, you know Gunny."

"I know," he said. "Don't tell Frank I said this, but I think that the main reason he agreed to this was because my wife kept pestering him and asking him to give me more visiting hours."

"You and the El-tee go a long way back, don't you?"

"A pretty long way," he confirmed. "Once upon a time he was only a sergeant above me."

"Why didn't you go into OCS, Gunny?"

He shrugged, somehow making it seem like his shoulders were partially dislocated or something. "I'm not sure. I never wanted to. I don't like the responsibility of command. Sometimes I think that a squad is way more than I can handle, but hey, this way I'm only bossed around by one person."

I actually smiled at that. "I usually have command of my own squad, but there are no less than four sergeants in this team right now."

"And those pesky POs," he added. "Navy ranks are so fucking weird, right?"

"Yes they are," I agreed. "Hey, El-tee wants you to come in."

"Of course he does. What else does he think I was doing out here? Just waiting for him to come out? He can be so stuck up sometimes."

"That's not for me to say."

"Come on Mata, it's a God-given right for enlisted men and NCOs to bitch about their superior officers."

"You know I can hear you through the door, right?" Castillo called out. "Pavel, get in here, I need to talk to you."

Pavel smiled and shrugged again, patting my arm before going into the lion's den. He left me thinking though, it had been some years since I had last complained about a superior. I had run through quite a few of them. Some of those had been bad, some good, and some others went from one end of the spectrum to the other. To me it had stopped making sense to complain about them if in all likelihood they'd be dead by the end of the year. As long as they didn't get _me_ killed I guess that they could be as incompetent as they wanted. Still, if I had one thing to complain about regarding Castillo, it would be that he was just fucking weird.

* * *

><p>"Hey Sarge, what's the word from the El-tee?" Eidelberg asked.<p>

The man was the most stereotypical Jewish person one could imagine but somehow still managed to come out attractive. Not to be offensive to the stereotypical Jew here, but he had the nose, the receding hairline, the dark and curly hair, and dark eyes. Now, that didn't mean that he was ugly by any account, he was a good-looking man, just not my type.

"Just wanted to talk," I replied. "Does he have this talks with everybody?"

"Not as often as he does with you," he said. "I think that Polly's been in the office twice."

I turned to Gibson. "That right?"

"Yeah," he said.

"Polly?"

"Short for my name. Apparently Hipolito is too hard to pronounce for some of the fine brains in here."

Polly was a lot easier to pronounce, but I could always just call him by his last name.

"Which reminds me," Andrea spoke up, lowering her datapad. "Are you new guys going to get nicknames?"

"You're not allowed to give us nicknames, Andy," Eidelberg said. "I think that only the sergeants are allowed to do that."

"Don't say that," Gibson said. "Next think you know Snark is going to be giving us nicknames."  
>"Who the hell made him a sergeant anyways?" Eidelberg asked. "I mean, whether he earned the rank or not he keeps acting like a regular enlisted soldier. I don't think I've ever seen him give out an order."<p>

"Well that might change soon, Corporal," Snark said, having just walked inside the room. "What was that I heard about nicknames?"

"Nothing," Eidelberg said, frowning at his misfortune.

The rest of the people in the room seemed to be enjoying the situation he now found himself in. To be fair, I did find myself crossing my arms and smiling as I watched the spectacle unfold.

"No, I'm pretty sure I heard something about nicknames," Snark went on, tapping his chin. "Do you have one?"

"Well yes, but–"

"Ah, now I remember," Snark said, raising a fist in triumph. "You don't have an in-unit nickname."

"Yeah, but–"

"But nothing, you offended me so now I'm giving you a nickname."

Eidelberg sighed. "Yes, Sergeant."

Snark nodded, satisfied with himself. "Well, I know all of two things about you. I know that you are Jewish and I know that you are a trained surgeon. If I gave you a nickname related to your medical skills it could be considered a compliment, so I'm going to have to make fun of your religion."  
>"People have been doing that for thousands of years," Eidelberg muttered.<p>

"Aaron Eidelberg, let's see… You're not orthodox, are you?"

"Nope."

"All right, then I guess I'll call you Payot."

"What? Really?" he asked. "I just said I'm not orthodox."

Snark shrugged. "It was either that or Kippah."

"Fine, Payot is fine," Eidelberg said, resigned.

Snark ruffled Eidelberg's head and then slapped him in the back of it. "You've inspired me. I might just nickname everybody after this. Please do tell me if anyone doesn't call you Payot, I'll finally make my rank proud and be an asshole to them."  
>Eidelberg, or more appropriately, Payot, nodded and went back to watching whatever the hell was watching. He didn't complain nearly enough about his nickname. My guess is that he was too hungover to even bother with a discussion with a guy that was known for his incredibly annoying capacity for sarcasm. The only person who could go toe-to-toe with Snark was the El-tee, and even then he'd have to be on a good day. Or a bad one, it depends how you looked at it.<p>

"What the hell's Payot mean?" Andrea asked, sounding annoyed.

* * *

><p><em>Thanks for reading this chapter.<em>

_Almost two weeks in between updates. Damn, sorry guys, but this time I've got (yet another) legitimate excuse. The first four of those twelve days I was still in my finals and could barely get any writing done. The following days I went to the graduation party for the senior class. I'll have you remember that in Mexico the legal drinking age is eighteen years old, which means that I took full advantage of that before I move to the US. After the graduation party (and subsequent morning) I didn't really feel like doing anything for a day. The next two days were full of some family business and then I had a big going-away party that left me once again drunk and blabbering like a baby. The guess what I did next day? Yes. Drink and party. Then I went out again on Friday and finally I topped it off with a lovely evening with a lot of Bacardi and coke. Apparently I deal with change by drinking hard. Early onset alcoholism? I hope not._

_Still, I know that this is probably not a very good apology for the delay, but I'll have you remember that I've lived here most of my life and all my friends, acquaintances, crushes, and more reside here. My whole life is here and I'll be leaving it all behind in just a month. Oh, sure, I'll be able to skype and whatnot, but it just won't be the same. I'm trying to hang out with my friends here as much as possible and spend my last month here having fun and making good memories. You think that something is just sentimental bullshit and then it happens to you._

_Now to the real post-chapter comment: we got a new character, gave him somewhat of a personality and background. Made him... well someone. Roderic Mata, ladies and gentlemen. Then of course, we have a grand total of nine new characters. Hell, some of them aren't even from the Marines. Will they say Oorah or Hoo-ah? I don't know anymore! Well, those characters will be expanded upon in the next couple of chapters, they'll get hopes and dreams and flaws and painful deaths (maybe?). This chapter was mostly a way to show Sergeant Mata as well as Frank from a different perspective._

_I also got most of Reaper back together! Yay! Added Serge because I like that son of a bitch too. Who says that Frenchmen can't be badass? Oh, and the main reason I got Dotsenko and Ramirez in this new unit is because I wanted to give them the 'those-two-guys' treatment. And I really started liking them during the last couple of chapters._

_There were a couple of questions in your comments. Most of which I am at no liberty to answer, but perhaps they will be answered with time. And yes, the AAG is actually a canonical unit from the Halo universe, but it's so goddamned obscure that I get to mold it to my own liking. I hope it's also to yours. Before I sign off, there's a couple of things that I'd like to ask you. I know a lot of you really like Snark and Bee, but what I want to know is what you like about them. If I had to guess I'd say that you like his twenty-first century pop culture references and Snark's offhanded comments, but if there's anything else feel free to tell me so that I can bring those aspects you like into play._

_A thousand points if you tell me what a Payot is. Half a thousand points if you translate the quote and give me a meaning in the context of this chapter._

_Stay strong._

_-casquis_


	186. Dogs and Bitches

Chapter CLXXXVI: Dogs and Bitches

**May 15, 2550 (UNSC Calendar)/three months later**

**Esztergom (Ezhtergom), Viery Territory, Reach, Epsilon Eridani System**

* * *

><p>"<em>The more I see of men, the more I admire dogs."– Jean-Marie Roland<em>

* * *

><p>"Come on Frank, you knew just how this was going to turn out," Pavel told me. "There's no way that they're getting better than this. And <em>this<em> is pretty damn incredible."

I grunted.

"Listen Frank," he went on. "You've got the best of the best with you and you've got them following your orders and working like a finely-tuned Swiss clock. Things don't get much better than this. Unless, of course, you want Spartans."

At that I had to scoff. As an ODST I could never, would never, admit to actually wanting Spartans. I could admit to needing them, to their skill, and even to their… superiority over the rest of us humans, but I couldn't allow myself to admit that I wanted to be one. Being half a Spartan had sent me to the brink of madness and it only seemed to be getting worse with time.

"You enjoy being the voice of reason, don't you?" I asked him.

"Well, I have to be," he said. "Ever since you lost yours…"

"Ha-ha," I deadpanned, slapping his thigh.

"Hey!"

"Shut up," I said. "Now what was that you needed again?"

"Baby food," he said. "A lot of it. There's a Costco on the other side of the mall."

"Just drop me off here," I said. "And you can come pick me up when you've packed all of Lavvie's needs. She's six years old now Pavs. There's no way she still needs baby food."

"I didn't mean actual baby food," he grunted. "Amber's pretty pissed that we have to leave again. We've been here almost a year and she was getting used to having me here."

"So you're personally doing your shopping? You know, there are robots that can do that. In fact, they're free. You could just drive in circles and wait for your… stuff… Pavel, are you going to buy some adult stuff that you don't want me to see?"

I knew right there that I hit the right spot. Pavel and Amber's sex life was the stuff of legends. They loved each other so much that they couldn't even begin to consider an open relationship, let alone actually cheating. Because of that and many other reasons, almost every waking moment that they spent together was spent with his wee-wee inside her hoo-ha. I knew from several sessions as baby-sitter that they could go at it for a long time, especially the days before we deployed.

"Frank."

"Hey, don't worry about it," I told him. "I had to buy some stuff for myself as well."

Pavel nodded slightly and stopped the car right off one of the mall's entrances. "I'll be back here in… say, half an hour?"

"Half an hour it is," I agreed. "Maybe you can meet me inside?"

He sighed. "Sure."

"See you later. Hey, by the way, you might want to look into those balls that go in one by one. I've heard great things ab-"

Pavel drove off, leaving me talking to a parking lot. I smiled, satisfied with myself, and walked inside the gigantic shopping center. The city mall was one of the largest in Reach, it had stores from pretty much every system in UEG space and then some. You could find anything from candy huts to grocery stores to designer clothing brands to survival gear. It was five stories of nothing but shopping heaven for the average person.

Once upon a time I would've made it a point to see if any of the women in the vicinity looked at me in a way that showed interest. Back then I had been an arrogant fuck who was handsome and knew it damn well. Right now I was an arrogant fuck that was crazy and knew it damn well. To be fair to good-old me, I was still good enough to be Mr. June on any women's calendar in this side of the galaxy, but there was also something about me, something that drove people away.

I sighed inwardly and put on a smiling face. Not a big smile, mind you, but something that wouldn't make a pretty girl think that I was about to snap her neck.

"For a psychopath, you seem to care about what people think about too much," Schitzo said.

_What can I say? Maybe I'm not a full-blown psycho._

"Good for you, Frank. Next thing you know you're going to be walking around with puppies and kittens."

"Not kittens," I murmured quietly enough that nobody would hear.

"What?" he asked. "What the hell does that even mean? Frank, you're not seriously… my God, you are…"

I let my fake smile become a genuine one and walked inside the largest pet store in the planet. The smell of pet food wasn't exactly a pleasant one, but even I have to admit that the sight of all those fish tanks and birdcages did make me feel childlike in a way that I hadn't felt in a very long time. I took my time walking through the store, looking at the exotic varieties of fish and the colorful parakeets. A few of them welcomed me to the store with funny voices.

"Hey there, welcome to Pet Smart, how can I help you?" a young high-school kid asked me.

"Hey," I said, once-overing the guy. He was skinny and not terribly tall. "I'm looking for a dog."

Now _he_ once-overed me. For some reason I felt strangely exposed. "You look like the kind of man that would like a big dog. A mastiff, perhaps?"

I smiled at him. "I am partial to bigger dogs, but this one's not for me. It's for my niece."

"Ah, how old is she?"

"Six years old," I told him. "Her dad's not present all the time and I wanted to give her a gift to fill in the blanks, sort of."

"So are you looking for a small dog then?"

I shook my head. "No, I don't want her to grow up with a dog that she can kick farther than she can throw a baseball."

The employee smiled again. "Of course. Where does your niece live?"

"An apartment, but her mom goes for walks every morning, I figure that she can walk the dog if it's an active breed."

He shrugged. "I guess it would depend on what breed you choose. But hey, that means that we get to look at all different kinds of puppies!"

"Even the hardest men love puppies," I admitted. "Lead the way, kid."

"So, you're in the military?"

"How could you tell?" I asked.

"I can see your dogtags. Well, the chain."

I felt the chain going around my neck and nodded. "Yeah, I'm in the Marines."

"Cool, how is it there?"

"Why'd you ask?"

"Well, I just got my notice. I was drafted into the Army."

I winced involuntarily. "I see. How do you feel about that, kid?"

"It's not what I would've chosen. At least not before college, but it's for a good cause, right?"

"The best cause there is," I agreed. "It's tough, I won't lie to you."

"Then I guess I'll have to toughen up. A couple of my friends are also coming with, so I guess it's not so bad. Any tips?"

"Well, boot camp is mostly every man for himself except when it isn't. The problem is figuring out which is which. Ummm… don't try sleeping with a squad mate, or even someone in your same company. Don't be a smartass with the drill sergeants, and give it your best."

The kid nodded thoughtfully as we turned down another aisle. "Thanks. I'm a little bit nervous about all this, you know… Well, I won't burden you with my problems anymore, so here's some puppies."

I looked at an endless row of transparent boxes filled with all kinds of puppies. There was barking and yelping and even some growling. I looked at the first couple of puppies and couldn't help but smile. They were just so fucking cute.

"Here we've got our standard Earth breeds," he said. "They're arranged by continent of origin. You can tap the console if you want any specifics about them, but I should be able to tell you most of the basics about these breeds."

"There are like a thousand different kinds of dogs here, you know something about all of them?"  
>He smiled. "There's a reason this place pays so well."<p>

"Ok, this is a girl's dog, so I want a nice puppy that will remain cute even as it grows older. As I said, I don't want her to think toy dogs are real dogs, and I'm pretty sure her mom won't be very happy if I get her a dog big enough to smother her child with weight alone."

"So a medium-sized dog, then? You know, those usually weight about twenty or so kilos, so smothering wouldn't be a problem."

"Good, one less thing to worry about. I want a smart dog that can be affectionate, loyal, and all the good stuff."

"You know that most dogs were bred for those qualities?"

"I knew a couple of Martian Mastiffs that were pretty damn dumb."

He chuckled. "You know, those are actually lazier than they are stupid, but I can see how you got that impression."

I hummed slightly and walked past the rows of little dogs. It was hard not to fall in love with the puppies. Even an ugly dog was cute when it was a puppy. I think the effect was magnified when you put two or more of those together. There were your ever-typical Labradors and Golden Retrievers along with your less common Sand Hounds and Maned Terriers. I did my best, but I smiled a little bit at every new breed.

"See anything you like so far?"

"Not yet," I lied. "What's with this box here?"

"The Australian Shepherd?"

"Yeah, why is it in the America section?"

"Oh, it was developed in that continent."

"I know enough about Earth to know that Australia isn't in America."

He shrugged. "I wouldn't know, but that's a pretty big mistake to make. I'm sure the console has more information."

I asked the console in the box to tell me where the breed was developed in the United States.

"Huh, go figure," I said. "Guess you were right. Why is it empty?"

"Not sure, could be for vaccination or a shower. We can come back later. Oh wait, here they are."

And just like that I fell in love for the fourth time in my life.

With a dog.

Yes.

With a puppy dog.

"That's the one," I said immediately. "That's the one."

"You sure? You don't want to look at other breeds?"

"No," I said. "I want that dog right now."

The kid's smile became a grin. "Alright then! Well, this is your standard Australian Shepherd, or Aussie if you want. That color is called blue merle, as you can see, this little… uhhh, guy right here has blue eyes as well. The white chest doesn't go around the neck to form a full collar, some people don't like that, but apparently you do."

"Damn right I do," I said, picking up the dog and looking at it. "They need exercise?"

"A lot," he confirmed. "They're very active dogs and need to walk and run and play and all that."

"Ok, I'll be sure to tell them that. Food?"

"They eat your standard dog food," he said. "Like most other dogs do, but the occasional piece of beef or steak won't hurt them."

"I want every possible detail about this little guy," I said. "Can I take him right away?"

"Sure thing, there's some paperwork, but most of the information that we need should be in your card anyways."

"Good, and give me a bag of food while you're at it," I said.

"Yes, sir, I'll be right back."

Ten minutes later I was leaving the store with a puppy on one arm and a bag of dog food over my shoulder. I felt strangely satisfied with myself, as if having a dog was a good thing. Pavel still had some time left and hadn't called yet. I guess I would have to wait for a little while. I sat down on a bench and placed the dog food at my feet before letting the little puppy on the bench next to me. It walked around some before looking down and then decided that jumping down wouldn't be a very good idea, especially considering that the dog was about a foot long and half that high.

The puppy moved around some before deciding to settle down against my leg.

"It really is ridiculously cute," Schitzo admitted.

"Oh my gosh! Look at that puppy!"

I looked up to two very attractive young women ogling my new puppy. I was confused for a brief moment until I remembered what Dom had told me about taking his dog for walks right outside the sorority houses.

"Is it yours?" one of them asked. She was a little bit short, but she had a cute face and a kick-ass body that more than made up for it.

"He is," I confirmed, giving them a winning smile. It _had_ been almost a year. "For now at least."

"Oh no, are you giving him up?" the other asked. This one was blonde and had a not-quite-perfect body, but nobody would've objected to seeing her without clothes.

"Yeah, he's a gift for my niece."

"What's his name?"

"Doesn't have one yet," I told them. "I'll let her name it."

"He is _so _cute."

"Can you believe that you used to date girls that sounded like this?" Schitzo asked.

_I can, however, believe that I used to date girls that looked like that,_ I replied.

"Good point," he said, slapping one of the girls' asses violently.

I made some small talk with the two ladies for a while, letting them rub the puppy's belly and carry it. At least they didn't ask to take any pictures with it. They seemed nice enough, I don't really know why I judged them so quickly.

"Frank?"

I turned my neck around one way and then the other and saw none other than Marina Bogdanovic walking past. "Marina?"

"Well, yes. Obviously," she said.

The two girls picked up on the vibes and took a half step backwards. Very awkwardly.

"Oh, she's an old friend," I explained.

"Oh," they said.

"Hey, it was nice meeting you," I said apologetically. "I'll see you around."

"Bye…" There was just enough flirtation in their voices that I felt like my ten minutes with them hadn't been a total waste of time. Maybe I _would_ see them around before I left for deployment.

"I'll see you around?" Marina asked, sitting next to me. "Really?"

"Hey, maybe I will," I said defensively. "When was the last time I saw you?"

"Ummm, the same time you found out that I go both ways."

"Oh, right, that time."

"Yup."

"How's Claire by the way?"

Marina sighed and I immediately knew that I had said the bad thing. "We had a falling out," she explained. "I asked her to try and retire. She had all the points for it too, but she just didn't want to leave her unit."

"I'm sorry," I said. "But you've got to understand."

"I do," she said, "but if she thinks her unit is more important than me then there really is no future there."

I nodded in agreement.

"What's with the puppy?" she asked, picking it up from the bench and placing it on her lap. "Cute little one."

"It's for Pavel's daughter."

"Oh, how is he anyways?"

"Good," I replied. "He should come around later."

"Huh, I haven't seen him in ages."

"You'll get to catch up then," I said. "How's your life been?"

"Pretty decent," she said. "Now that I know I like girls too I can get pretty crazy."

"Really?"

She scoffed. "Of course not, I enjoy good sex, but even I would be a little bit out of my scene in an orgy."

I coughed. "That's not what I meant."

"Yes it was."

"Yes it was," I admitted.

"How's Hanna?"

I looked away. "She, uh, she was killed in action."

"Shit, I'm so sorry Frank. She was a great gal, you know. When did this happen?"

"Almost a year ago," I said. "But it's still fresh."

"Was it bad?"

"I was right there when it happened."

"And now you feel guilty?"

"You know, it's hard to believe I didn't miss your amateur psychology."

"Not amateur anymore," she said. "I got my degree."

"Wow! Congrats, that's good for you!"

She nodded and rubbed my puppy's ears. "Love it so far, it almost makes me laugh how trivial normal people's problems are when compared to ours."

"You mean mine?"

She smiled and nodded. "How's that going by the way?"

"Yeah, how's it going?" Schitzo added.

"Manageable," I replied. "Hey, why don't you come over for lunch or something? Catch up."

"It's a little bit late for lunch, don't you think?"

"Well, how about dinner then?" I amended. "Pavel can come too, you'll love his wife."

"Sure. When do you deploy?"

"Uh, soon."

"So maybe Pavel will want to spend some time with his wife then?"

"Good point," I said. "It'll be just like old times then."

"Just like old times," she said, rubbing the puppy's belly and giggling when it tried to bite her, twisting itself in order to reach her hands.

"Frank?"

That voice sounded familiar… oh.

"Katie?"

"So she's alive!" Schitzo exclaimed triumphantly. "Which you could've found out almost a year ago if you had bothered to check."

And yes indeed, it was none other than Katie Ayers standing right in front of Marina and me. She was beautiful as always. Everything from her feet to her head was absolutely perfect. Even that slightly annoyed frown on her face. It wouldn't be the first time I didn't call for a ridiculously long amount of time.

And her equally beautiful cousin was with her as well.

"Hi Liz," I said.

"Frank good to see you."

"I'm Marina," Marina said.

The dog barked.

Things were awkward.

"Um, Marina, this is Katie, and her cousin Eliza, I call her Liz."

"He's the only one that does that," Liz said, smiling.

"Katie, Liz, this is Marina."

"You didn't call," Katie said. "Again."

"Should I leave?" Marina asked, sounding incredibly pissed.

I shook my head. "No, of course not."

"I see she's not your girlfriend either," Katie said angrily.

"Hanna died," I explained.

"I'm sorry."

"What does she mean either?" Marina asked.

"Hey Frank! Good to see you?"

"Dom?" I asked, leaning sideways to see the former commander of Platoon Four walking towards me. He looked good, smile on his face and everything. His hair was a little bit longer than regulation allowed for, so maybe he was just getting home from a deployment.

"Girls, this is Dom," I introduced them.

"Hey," he said. "I'm Dom."

"What does she mean either?" Marina asked, barely sparing a glance for Dom. "And who is she?"

"Who is _she_?" Katie asked me, pointing at Marina.

"Bad time?" Dom asked, the smile falling from his face.

"Bad time," Liz said. "Hi, I'm Liz."

"Nice to meet you," he replied shaking his hand.

I grabbed the puppy and pressed it to my chest. "How the hell are all of you here at the same time?" I asked. It was too much of a coincidence. "Did you plan this?" I asked Dom. "Did you plan this?" I asked Marina.

"No!" she said, there was a little something in her voice that told me she was offended.

Great.

"Why the hell are all of you here?"

"This is a conversation long overdue," Katie said.

"She does have a point, you know?" Liz agreed. "The faster she gets over you then faster I can jump your bones."

"Eliza!" Katie exclaimed.

I just blushed.

"Kidding," she apologized, but not before winking at me.

Marina scoffed.

"You have the coolest problems," Dom said. "You have my number, I'll call you for drinks later today."

"We have a date," Marina said.

"Tomorrow then," Dom said, spreading his hands and leaving.

"You have a date?" Katie asked, crossing her arms.

"People are beginning to stare," I whispered. "Can we do this outside?"

"No we can't do this outside!" Katie exclaimed.

"There's a door like literally thirty feet away," Liz said, pointing.

"Thanks," I told her. "You know what, you can't keep me here. I'm a grown man and I am my own boss. If you want to talk, let's do this outside."  
>With those words I picked up my recently bought bad of dog food and shoved it over my shoulder. It made me feel like I regained some of my manhood.<p>

"You coming?" I asked.

Katie and Marine both scoffed at the same time and followed me, with a smiling Liz following close behind.

Once outside there were a lot less people coming through and I stopped feeling like I was a spectacle for the people walking by me.

"You never told me what she meant by either!" Marina asked. "Francisco!"

"Why does she get to call you by your full name?" Katie asked me. "You told me to never do that!"

"Your full name is Francisco?" Liz asked. "Can I call you Pancho?"

"No!" I exclaimed. "Marina, you can't call me by my full name either. Ok?"

"You don't tell me what to do. And who the hell is she?"

"She's–"

"Tell her!" Katie exclaimed. "Tell her!"

"Now I don't know what to say," I complained. "The hell?"

"You know what Frank," Marina said. "I'm tired, I'll just go home."

"Why are you so angry?"

"Because you won't tell me who she is?"

"And who is _she_?" Katie asked, repeating her question.

I took a deep breath. "Katie, this is Marina, she's my ex girlfriend and we've been good friends for a while now. Marina, this is Katie, I cheated on Hanna with her and I think I might be in love with her but I thought she might be dead so I didn't call her because I didn't want to find out."

"What?" Katie asked me. "That's the reason you didn't call?"

"Yes," I admitted.

"You love her?" Marina asked, sounding heartbroken.

"I need some time," Katie said, walking away. "I– uh, call me."

Liz gave me a peck on the cheek before shrugging apologetically. "Nice meeting you Marina."

As soon as they were out of earshot I turned towards Marina.

"What the hell is wrong with you? You think that was funny?"

She lost it, she started roaring with laughter. In fact, she laughed so hard that my puppy yelped in surprised and tried to squirm its way free.

"I'm sorry," she apologized. "It's just that when you saw her you got the weirdest face. Like someone that was tied to the rails and a train was coming. I just had to do it."

"And her? You had to play with her feelings as well?"

"Oh come on, Frank. Really?"

I growled.

"I'm kidding. But believe me when I say that this will actually improve your chances with her. Plus, it was very fun. For me."

"How will your bullshit help me?" I asked skeptically.

"Hey I'm a girl, I don't want to explain myself to you."

"Yes you do."

"Fine. If she thinks you gave _this_ up for her she'll appreciate it." She ran her hands along her body as she said that. "Look, I can tell she loves you, for whatever reason…"

"Thanks."

"And you love her. I'm pretty sure that there's something to her other than bitchyness. No offense, but right now it was hard to make anything of her personality. Her cousin, however, she looks like my kind of girl."

Marina and Liz together in bed, with me sandwiched in between. Now that was a picture worth fantasizing about.

"I know what you're thinking," Marina said. "And the only reason I'd consider having a threesome with you is if the person I was dating asked me for one."

"Can you read minds or something?"

"Frank, we dated for a pretty long time," she explained. "And we were friends for even longer."

"And you're a shrink."

"That too," she agreed, smiling. "But truth be told, the moment I saw you sitting there with this little puppy, I thought that having a quick fling with you would do wonders for my body."

"Huh?"

Marina smiled and placed her hand on my shoulder. "Are we still on for tonight?"

"Yeah, but–"

"Hey Pavel!"

"Marina! Good to see you!"

"You too, hey, I'm in kind of a rush, but we're meeting for drinks tomorrow with Dom, want to come?"

"Sure," he said.

"You could've told me that _after_ we had dinner!" I complained. Like most men, I wouldn't be able to focus properly all throughout dinner with Marina. "Bitch!"

"You know me," she said. "I'll see you later."

Pavel frowned slightly and then shrugged it all off."

"What the hell is that all about?" he asked. "Is that a puppy? Frank. No."

I smiled. "Yes."

"Amber is going to kill me…"

* * *

><p>"I hate you," Amber growled. She looked over her shoulder at her daughter playing with her new puppy and then back to me. "I hate you."<p>

"Come on Amber," I said quickly. "It's not that bad, I mean, I know you like your morning walks and all, you can take the dog with you, play frisbee in the park on the weekends. Besides, look at it, Lavvie loves the thing already."

"Of course she loves him, it's a puppy!"

"Told you," Pavel said, opening a beer. "This is your mess to fix."

I groaned. "I wanted to do something nice for her Amber. I know she's old enough to go to kindergarten now, but she'll still be alone for a little while until you get home from work, she can have fun with the dog."

Amber sighed and rubbed her temples. "Meanwhile, I'm going to be the one that cleans all the poop and wipes all the pee."

Lavvie laughed at hearing her mother say those words. "You said poop."

I smiled. "I'll pay for all the dog's needs," I said. "Really."

Before Amber could say anything else Lavvie picked up the dog (rather awkwardly, I might add) and brought it to her mom. "Look mom," she said, gesturing for Amber to pick it up. "Look!"

Amber sighed and knelt down to pick up the dog. Like most women she had been programmed to have a desire to cuddle and protect anything that she considered even remotely quite. The dog barked and Amber squealed in delight. I knew right there that the little mutt would definitely stay here.

"What are you going to call it?" I asked her.

Amber sighed, this time it was one of reluctance. "It's Lavanya's dog, she gets to name it."

"So Lavvie," I said, looking at the five-year-old, "what are you going to call it?"

"Frank!" she said immediately.

I shook my head. "Nope, that's my name. You need to find something else to call it."

Lavvie sat back down on the floor and crossed her arms thoughtfully. She even tilted her head slightly to the side and adopted a pondering expression. She sat like that for a few moments until a flash of inspiration crossed her face.

"I know!" she exclaimed. "Daddy's friends sometimes call him Gunny, and because that's not his real name I can call my dog Gunny."

"Pavs?" I asked.

"Yeah, sure."

"Are you tearing up?" I asked.

"I am not!" he snapped, turning away from me. "It's a good name."

"Yes," I agreed, "it's a good name. Amber, thanks for agreeing to this."

"I hardly had a choice," she said.

I raised an eyebrow. She seemed to be enthralled by the puppy's cuteness factor.

"Pavel, your allergies are acting up again, you're tearing up," I told him.

"Don't you have somewhere to be?" he asked, lifting his daughter from the floor and placing her on his shoulder. "Like. Now."

"Oh, right. Marina." I didn't move.

"Frank, I'm kicking you out," Pavel said. "Go."

I smiled and said my goodbyes before leaving his place. The drive to the restaurant was a short one and soon enough I was sitting in a nice table across from Marina. Like most women, she had put on some make up and done up her hair. I knew better than to read into it and just pegged it as a girl wanting to look good in public. She did look good, having been blessed with her parents' good genes and then some. No wonder I had immediately been attracted to her.

"You look good," I said as I sat down.

"And you didn't shave," she replied.

I scratched the stubble on my face and shrugged. "If I had known it bothered you…"

"It doesn't," she replied. "I've just gotten used to smooth cheeks."

"Enough with the lesbian comments," I told her. "Seriously."

"Why? Do they make you feel… emasculated?"

"More like uncomfortable," I told her, taking in her mocking expression. "But then again, it's also something of a turn on."

For a moment I felt guilty when saying that. I had been feeling guilty about looking at any women for a long time now. It always felt like Hanna was watching. She had never found out I had been unfaithful to her, but I couldn't stand even imagining what her reaction would've been. Anger and disappointment for certain.

"Are you ok?" Marina asked. "You look…torn."

"I'm just… I know we're friends, but it's been almost a year since I had anything close to a date."

"I see. I didn't peg you for the grieving type, you know. But everyone deals with loss at their own pace."

"I know," I said. "I just never thought it would be this bad."

"You'll get over it," she assured me. "Not completely, of course, not if you loved her as much as I think you did. But you'll be able to live with it eventually."

"How can you say that so easily?" I asked her. "I mean, that's an awkward position for an ex-girlfriend."

She shrugged and smiled brightly. "You know me, Frank."

"If you say so," I sighed. "Am I buying?"

"Of course," Marina said. "You are, after all, a gentleman."

"If you say so," I repeated. "But like every self-respecting gentleman expects sex at the end."

"Sex was actually on the table before your friend showed up. Unless… I did mention how some jealousy could spice up a relationship."

I took a sip from my drink while I searched for a suitable answer. I did want to have sex with Marina. She was attractive and good old Manola wasn't doing it for me anymore. Pro tip: Manola is a Spanish play on words. Particularly the word hand.

Yes, I am talking about masturbating. A whole lot of it.

Now it boiled down to ethics or some such bullshit. I loved Katie. At least I think I did, but a man has needs. Would it be ok for me to sleep with Marina just because my blood was rushing down to my groin?

"Boy, you really haven't had sex in a while, have you?" Marina asked with a smile. "Well, I'm game if you are."

"We'll see," I told her. "We'll see."

* * *

><p>"Ah shit," I muttered, sitting up on my bed.<p>

Marina giggled and stood up, letting the covers fall down. "Come on you weren't _that_ bad. In fact, you were pretty good considering that you haven't really fucked anyone in quite some time."

Despite my misgivings about the act, I couldn't help but feel a certain degree of satisfaction with myself.

"Come on man," Schitzo said. "The only reason you didn't completely suck at this is because you remember how to push her buttons. Had this been any other girl you would've been a complete flop.

_Thanks…_

"I gotta go," I said. "I don't think this was a good idea. For me."

"Guilty?"

"Yeah," I admitted. Not only did I feel guilty because of Hanna's death, I also felt guilty because I had somehow betrayed Katie. What the hell was wrong with me, normally I would've just high-fived myself for my accomplishments and then gone on to sleep with Katie and maybe Liz if possible.

When I say it like that it doesn't sound quite so bad, but apparently there's a certain degree of emotional maturity that comes with aging. Maybe I was just subconsciously trying to overcompensate for my growing insanity with what I perceived to be 'the right thing' to do.

"You should write a book Francisco," Schitzo said, laughing.

"Are you sure you don't want to stay?" she asked. "It's still early. And I'm sure that Katie wouldn't like it if your new first time was anything short of spectacular."

"When you say it like that… Besides, I already feel guilty about this."

Marina smiled. "I'm glad you haven't changed _that_ much."

* * *

><p>Guess I was wrong, I did feel more guilty and Marina just seemed amused by the whole situation even as I left.<p>

I did fell good and thoroughly fucked, but I'm not sure that physical satisfaction went hand-in-hand with psychological satisfaction. At least we agreed that this wouldn't happen again so long as either one of us were seeing anybody. Apparently we were still up for drinks later tonight with Pavel and Dom. Pavel would probably notice that we had slept together, but he wouldn't say anything. Dom, well, it would be good to see him after almost a year. Maybe he could call Jen too and Yas as well. At least we would have fun while getting drunk.

"What the hell do we do now?" Schitzo asked. "It's still pretty early. It just wouldn't do for us to get drunk this early on. I know, we could watch a movie, there's this now one about the… uhhh… about the you know."

"Right," I muttered, climbing into my car. "And what the hell is this we thing? There's just me here."

"Not really, and you know that. You want me to bring some of my friends?"

"No," I said. "Please. Don't."

The last thing I wanted was to see the faces of the dead while I was awake. They came to me often enough during my sleep, I couldn't bear seeing them day in and day out, at least not for a very long time.

"We'll go watch a movie," I said. "Then we begin packing. And then we call Kaite."

"No," he said. "You call Katie, you're not dragging me into that."

Four hours later I had done everything that could be done. I watched the movie, got some burgers, packed the stuff I could dispense with and cleaned the apartment. Hanna's apartment.

Well. That was an issue. I loved this place, I had many good memories of it, some fights, some make up sex, and a lot of regular sex. But I also remembered the five years of loving Hanna, and this place wouldn't do much to help me forget. I had taken down most of our pictures together. I couldn't bear looking at them for the first couple of months after she died. But now the whole apartment reminded me of her. The place where we used to have breakfast, the table where she used to jump on whenever she decided to be funny, or the couch that we used to watch old movies on.

I didn't know whether I should sell the place and metaphorically get over her or just learn to live with it. There were movie situations that I could apply to both possibilities. In most movies the guy let go whatever kept him attached to the dead loved one. So far fiction wasn't helping me much and people in real life didn't really talk about these things. It's not like there were tons of people whose situation I could relate to and were willing to help me out.

"Mmmta madre."

I picked up my phone and contacted the city AI. "Ayers, Katie. Refugee from Paris IV."

"Please hold… Done. Would you like me to patch you through?"

"Yeah, thanks."

"You're welcome," the AI said. "Have a good day."

The phone rang.

_Why the hell do phones still ring?_

The phone rang again.

_We should make holographic communication standard._

It rang for a third time.

_But that could be somewhat invasive._

Then it rang a fourth time.

_This is taking way too long._

"Hello?"

"Uh, hello?" I asked. "Katie? Ayers?"

"Oh, hey Frank, this is Eliza," Liz said. "I'm surprised you called. I was expecting anything between a year and five."

"Ha. Ha," I said. "Very funny. I decided to become what you would call a responsible adult and face my mistakes." I paused. "That came out wrong, Katie wasn't a mistake."

"Cheating on your girlfriend wasn't a mistake?"

"Liz, I will personally beat the wit out of you."

She laughed. The sound was melodic almost. It was similar to the way her older cousin laughed, only less... well, magical.

"She just finished showering," Liz explained. "I'll hand you over in a minute. Meanwhile we can talk."

"What do you want to talk about."

"I dunno, stuff I guess."

"Liz, just how old are you?"

"Twenty three," she said.

"Wow, so you were just old enough to drink alcohol when all shit went to hell?"

"You mean when my planet was invaded?"

"Yes Liz, that's exactly what I mean."

"I'm not that young," she said. "How old are you?"

"Thirty five," I told her. "I'm like… way older."

"You did not just say that?"

"What? I did not just state a fact?"

"No, it was the way you said it. Like we're still in the thirties."

"I'm a thirties kid," I said with a shrug. "Is your cousin there yet?"

"Hey, all in due time," she stopped. "Now tell me all about that blonde. Marina was it?"

"Yeah, and she's none of your business."

"Fine, Katie will just tell me later."

"That's her business," I said. "Now please give the phone to Katie."

"Nah."

I heard something on the other end of the line.

"Is that her?"

"No," she lied after a pause.

"Liz, just hand over the phone. I'll buy you a stuffed animal or take you to Six Flags."

"I'm not a kid, you know."

"Fine, I'll let you have your first beer with me."

"Frank," she growled.

The moment I got her to say my name I knew that Katie would want to talk to me. There was some sort of conversation that I couldn't quite make out followed by what could only be a scuffle and then the phone was dropped.

"Get off me!" one of them complained.

"No!"

"Girls?" I asked. "Girls!"

"Hello?"

"Katie?"

"Nope, still Liz," she said. "Katie is somewhat indisposed at the time."

"Get off me!"

"Liz, please just hand her the phone."

"And you promise to take me to Six Flags?"

"I'll even buy you a subscription to Playgirl."

"Now that's something a girl my age could enjoy."

I smiled. "If this thing with Katie works out you can tell her that I let you see the naked pics I send."

Her squeal was too loud to be real, but it did make me smile. "You have a deal," she said. "Katie, there's someone on the phone for you."

"Well no shit!"

"Katie?"

"Frank?"

"Yeah," I said. "Hi."

"I remembered you being better with words."

"Must be the accent," I shrugged.

"You've got no distinguishable accent," she said.

I adopted an extremely over-the-top Mexican accent that was typically seen only in movies. "Well you know that can change."

"That is kind of sexy," she noted. "Frank, there's a lot of things that we need to talk about."

"Yeah," I agreed. "The phone seems a little…"

"Impersonal," Katie finished. "I've got work tonight."

"Waitressing?" I asked.

She chuckled. "Yeah, I'm a little bit old for Hooters, but it's hard finding a decent job with nobody to reference you."

"Yeah, sucks," I told her, wondering is it was just a joke. "How about we meet tomorrow for lunch?"

"I know this great place," she said.

"You do realize that I probably know a better place?" I asked. "After all, I've been a resident of Esztergom for some time now."

She laughed. "Well, we're going wherever I want. You owe me at least that."

"I owe you a lot of things," I said. "And I promise I'll try to make up for them."

"That's a good start," Katie muttered. "I'll send you the address and time later, ok?"

"Ok," I said. "See you tomorrow."

I hung up and smiled.

"That went well."

* * *

><p>Surprisingly enough, we met for drinks at the Grenadier. Pavel was there already, chatting with Montgomery and Lys. I walked up to them and joined the conversation. Before long Dom arrived with Yas trailing him closely. I greeted my former roommate and sat down to talk with him. Yas was one of my best friends, but I hadn't been able to talk or meet with him for the past year. He was still serving in the same unit that Captain Weller was, as were Dom and Jen.<p>

"Does she talk about me?" I asked jokingly.

"No," he replied. "But I don't know is she's glad to be rid of you or just angry that she didn't get to see you die."

"You can't always get what you want," I said. "So what have you been up to?"

"Nothing much, really," he said. "We had a short deployment on Cheest. A few jackal ships were trying to cut a piece of the moon for themselves. Simple really, the birds are fierce, but they don't have the shock factor that brutes and elites do."

"Agreed," I said, taking a sip from my beer. "How's the new team?"

"It's coming together," he said. "Most of the old guys were still coping with the fact that all their friends are dead when we got our replacements. It didn't make for good beginnings."

I shrugged.

Pavel sat down with us, pointing behind his shoulder to let us know that Dom and Jen had just arrived. Dom was his usual smiling self and Jen was her usual gloomy self. I did notice that she had let her hair grow longer. While the buzz cut did give her a fierce appearance, the longer hair actually made her look attractive. The moment she sat down I started joking about it and wouldn't stop until Marina got here.

Marina got well with the lieutenants, it probably helped that she was easy on the eyes and wouldn't take shit from anybody. She had always been somewhat of a tomboy, but years of war had hardened her some more. She would still pretend to be the fancy lady/princess when it suited her, but most of the time she would be her regular veteran pilot self.

We drank and we talked, and for a while there we all forgot about the trouble out there. We exchanged some stories and then drank some more. It was the standard Marine outing. Several other groups of jarheads were doing the exact same thing that we were and it wasn't long before we started mingling with them, trying to establish who was the meanest Devil Dog in the room. There was some arm wrestling and some trash talk, but it was all good-natured.

"You ok?" Pavel asked me.

"Yeah, I'm having trouble getting drunk," I explained.

"You've been drinking too much," he said. "Your body gets used to it."

"I think it has to do with… you know," I muttered, referencing my secret augments. "Faster metabolism or something."

"I don't see you peeing much," he replied. "But I guess it's good, eh?"

"My alcohol expenses are through the roof Pavel," I told him. "I think–"

"What?" he asked after a moment of silence.

"Is that… is that Grass?"

Pavel turned around and looked for the supermodel blonde with the prosthetic arm. Sure enough, a person like her wasn't exactly hard to fine. If her looks didn't draw your attention, then her carbon-black arm certainly would. Or her majestic behind. Take your pick.

"Cam!" Pavel called out. "Camilla Seppa!"

Cam turned around and found us. She smiled and all but jogged over towards us. I could tell that she was more than a little tipsy from the way she hugged Pavel and then me.

"Cam, it's good to see you," I said. "How have you been?"

"Good, good," she replied, sitting down. "Very busy. I've been working on some secret stuff, but they have me working as a spokeswoman more often than not. Apparently people pay more attention when I say things."

"I don't think it works that way," Pavel said.

"They pay more attention to you, not to what you say," I explained.

Cam drunkenly giggled. "Oh Sarge."

"Lieutenant," I corrected. "You were at my party, remember?"

"Of course, of course," she apologized. "Habit, I guess."

"Or alcohol," Pavel muttered under his breath, prompting me to stifle a laugh.

"Why are you here?" I asked her. "Celebrating something."

"Kind of," she admitted. "Well you see, I'm finally going to put my skills to use again."

"Really?" I raised an eyebrow. "Back to the field?"

She nodded, letting her head fall down more than was strictly necessary. She really was drunk. "Not in full combat duties, of course. But at least I won't be sitting on a desk being ogled by every man that comes in."

"Sounds horrible," I noted. "Must be terrible on your ass."

"No, the chairs are actually quite comfortable," she giggled. "Sarge, sorry, Sir, what about you?"

"All very hush-hush," I said, leaning in closely. In fact, by this point we were so close to one another that the casual observer would've thought we were a couple. It made me feel slightly guilty. "Ever heard of the AAG?"

She leaned back and nodded, looking confused. It didn't take long for her drunken self to realize just exactly what I was alluding to and smile. "My, my, you keep going places," Cam said. "If anything of what I've heard is true then those guys are the very first ones to get new equipment."

I shrugged. "Just finished training," I said. "But we'll see about it soon enough."

Camilla suddenly leaned back, as if realizing that she was flirting with her ex-superior officer. I simply chuckled at her realization and crossed my arms. "Do you want some water?"

"Yes, please," she said carefully, doing her best to sound completely sober. "Thank you."

"No problem," I said. "Marina is here as well."

"Please wait," she pleaded. "Last time I saw her in these conditions she almost seduced me."

"You know that only adds to the temptation of bringing her here?" I asked.

"Sir, please…"

By the end of the night I had snapped several pictures of Marina making out with Camilla and the men in the bar went home with a lot of images to fuel their fantasies for a long time to come. Cam would probably be regretful in the morning and in all likelihood would blame me for it, but Marina had found her without my intervention and she did seem to be enjoying herself.

"Frank, there's still some of you in here," Schitzo said proudly.

* * *

><p>I woke up the next day feeling pretty good. Last night had been pretty fun and the lesbian antics had only added to it. Not to mention that I still had pleasant memories of the night I had spent with Marina and for once I didn't feel as if I had betrayed Hanna and broken her heart. It was a good morning, the sun shined brightly and the sky was bluer than usual.<p>

Perhaps this meeting with Katie would go well. Or at least better than expected. Somewhere deep inside I wanted to end up in bed with her by the time this was over, there was nothing quite like a farewell fuck before going on deployment.

A few hours later I had gone through all the faces. I had felt confident, nervous, cold feet, and more. Eventually I did what every self respecting man would and went into the bathroom to put some of that Marina/Cam fuel to use. By the time I was done it was already time to leave for lunch.

The place that Katie had picked was a decent little restaurant that served most kinds of food but leaned towards the Italian side. I walked in and asked whether there was a reservation to her name or mine. When I was told no I decided to sit down in a booth and wait. Being a woman, Katie decided to assert her authority by arriving precisely eight minutes after she had told me she would. I paid it no heed, simply swallowing it as part of my deserved punishment.

"Hey," I said awkwardly. "You look good."

"Thanks," she said, sitting down. She was all business, from that point on.

Katie asked me several rather blunt questions that I answered to the best of my ability, she went on to explain just precisely why it was wrong for me not to even bother calling to check if she was alive in a lot of detail before finally winding down some.

"Do you love me?" she asked calmly.

I very gently put my fork down and looked up to her. I didn't know the answer to that question, but looking at her, seeing her face and her eyes, I realized that I did. I did love her despite having been a bastard to her and to Hanna, despite realizing that loving her meant that I _had_ betrayed Hanna.

"You sound like a soap opera," Schitzo chided.

"Yes," I replied, ignoring him. "I'm pretty sure I do."

"Well pretty sure doesn't cut it," she snapped. "You've yanked me around for a long time and I need an answer Frank. When are you deploying?"

"Tomorrow," I said cheekily.

"Tomorrow… great. So even if this _works out_ I won't see you for at least a couple of months."

I nodded and decided that it had been enough of her having all the control in this so-called date. I leaned forward and grabbed her hands gently. "Katie, I've been through a lot recently, but for some reason seeing you… it just makes me feel like there's something to fight for, you know?"

"Go on, go on," Schitzo urged.

"And I do want this to work out," I told her, meaning every word of it. "But starting a relationship like this isn't exactly a good idea. I'd just like to leave with a clean slate. When I come back we can start over."

Katie smiled. Every word of what I had just said was true, but I had made it a point to say those words in a way that would make Katie's inner teenage girl feel butterflies in her stomach. She might've been my weakness, but that didn't mean that I was completely defenseless against her charms.

"Ok," she said, nodding. "That sounds like a good idea to me."

"I'll write," I assured her. "I promise. This time is going to be different."

She looked at me closely, meeting my gaze. "Ok."

* * *

><p><em>Thanks for reading this chapter.<em>

_Now, is that emotional maturity? Or is it just Frank pretending to have some emotional maturity? Well, in any case, this was a lighter chapter. Pretty long for a filler chapter, but it does have some development and a puppy, so what's not to like? Anyhow, I hope you enjoyed it. At least I hope that you had a laugh or two. Not real laughter, but the internal laughing that you do whenever you're on the internet. If you did that, then my goal was made._

_Frank's still got some game, Marina is still into chicks, and I decided that I enjoy blonde-on-blonde lesbian imagery more than your average guy. But then again, you can never have too much blonde, can you? Since you guys wanted Grass I gave you Grass, even if only for a little while, but trust me, she'll be back with a vengeance._

_Well **SpartaLazor, Luckiswithyouall, RobbieLexington **and **KodeV**_ _all get points! Congratulations! You get points! Other than that, **D-sama** (thanks for reviewing) brought up a very good point. While normally this wouldn't be terribly important, it is a detail that does concern me. The Navy, unlike other branches, has both rank and occupational specialty. This means that you can be a Petty Officer Third Class and a Special Warfare Operator. This in turn means that you have to condense those two into a single rank. That way you get Special Warfare Operator Third Class John Smith or SWO-3 John Smith. If you didn't condense those you would have to call the guy by full rank and occupational specialty._

_Special Warfare Operator Petty Officer Third Class John Smith doesn't quite have the brevity one would like, does it?_

_Thanks to**D-sama** once again for that one. I did the research in wikipedia, but I only ended up confused and decided to call them by their rank._

_Next chapter is going to be shits and giggles. Well, not really, but it's a little bit different than usual. Be warned. Other than that I just have to thank you all for taking your time to leave reviews (which I value a lot) and reading this (which I also value a lot)._

_Stay strong._

_-casquis_


	187. Snippets

Chapter CLXXXVII: Snippets

**May 18, 2550 (UNSC Calendar)/**

**Esztergom (Ezhtergom), Viery Territory, Reach, Epsilon Eridani System**

* * *

><p>"<em>The title is misleading, boys. This chapter is a long one." – Schitzo<em>

* * *

><p>I looked over my new team, all nineteen of them. Coming from every branch in the military save for those idiots in the Air Force. All of them were clad in the fatigues that their respective branches used. It made for a weird sight, seeing nineteen men and women in black, green, and blue fatigues standing side by side with their legs opened at shoulder width and their hands clasped behind their backs. I stood in front of them and felt proud.<p>

Not only did I feel proud because the men in front of me where in all likelihood the best outfit short of a Spartan-II unit, I also felt proud because after a year of sorrow and grieving it finally felt like I was beginning to climb out of it. That I had gotten Cam to make out with Marina was also no small amount of ego-booster.

"Men! We are AAG Team 7," I said loudly. I paused for a moment, not being able to suppress a grin at the next phrase. "Today is the first day of the rest of your lives!"

* * *

><p><strong>May 19, 2550 (UNSC Calendar)**

**PFC John "Crow" Stapleton**

Every rookie makes the mistake of wanting to get their own cool and badass nickname once they're in the Army. Every rookie learns the error of his ways as soon as he sees that nicknames aren't cool or badass. They're just embarrassing while sounding innocuous enough that your superior officers won't raise eyebrows at hearing you called that way. I had had the extreme lucky break of not having been given a nickname when I first walked in the Army.

That mostly owed to the fact that I went into a standard infantry unit. No light infantry, no armored support, and no fancy toys. At the end of the day we were just the lowest of the low in the Army, but without us everything would've fallen apart. I sighed. The 86th Infantry Regiment had been through a lot of wear and tear, but in the end the Marines or the mobile divisions got all the credit.

When I was contacted for this I didn't have to think about it twice. Fancy toys and getting recognition sounded damn good, but the real seller was that we didn't have to walk miles and miles lugging half our body weight in ammunition plus additional equipment.

And now I had just gotten my first nickname.

"Crow! Crow! Crow! Crow! Crow!" they chanted as I sunk deeper into my chair. Under a lot of circumstances the name would've sounded good, something to be proud of.

Apparently I cackled like a bird whenever I laughed.

"All right!" Lieutenant Castillo shouted after it had gone on for a while. "Quiet down, quiet down! I'm pretty sure Crow knows his name by now."

There were a few chuckles at that. Man, the El-tee was worse than some of us enlisted.

"Relax, Crow," Oscar said as he sat down next to me. "You'll grow into it. They all do. You had the relative luck of being one of the first to get a nickname. I hear that the last one to get it usually has the worst one."

"Why is that?" I asked him.

"Because we get tired and decide to just get over with."

He did have a point, but every time I laughed I would feel self-conscious about my laughter. It was the perfect psychological attack.

"Anyways," Oscar said. "Seen anything you like on board?"

"I've been here for a day," I told him. "Besides, the El-tee was very clear about keeping to ourselves."

"Yeah, yeah," he said, "I know, but you can't expect us all to share the three girls here."

I laughed and then quickly suppressed it. "You do have a point. And being SpecOps does have a certain kind of allure, doesn't it?"

"Yeah, it does. So what do you say, want to go out on the prowl? Nobody said that the rec room was out of limits."

"Maybe."

O'Neal was coming down to join us.

"Hey Eric," I waved. "Come here, Oscar has a proposition."

The bench groaned as the massive behemoth of a man sat down on it. He had three times as much food on his plate as Oscar and I did together, but then again, he also weighed three times as much.

"I'm listening," he grumbled, grabbing the comically tiny fork with his massive hands.

"First of all, I need to know if you've got a girl back home," Oscar asked him.

"Not right now," he replied, taking a bite of his cheap cloned steak. "Why?"

"We're thinking about going out and seducing some of the younger and more naïve ladies of this ship."

"Hmmm," O'Neal muttered.

"Yeah indeed," Oscar went on. "It shouldn't be so hard, should it? Most of the people on board have already gone through a couple of tours of service. You know how it is, you get a close brush with death and then everybody's fucking everybody."

I nodded slowly. I don't think I had gotten so much sex as I did after my first tour of service. Not only was I horny as hell, the girls in the various Army and Marine units that fought in Algolis. I still had fond memories of the long ride back home, even if the battle that preceded it had been a real nightmare.

"So, is there a plan?" I asked. "Or you're just telling us this because you need wingmen?"

"Well, I just thought that if the El-tee disagreed with our practices then he wouldn't be as rough on three of us."

I leveled my eyes at him. "You really think that? After the past months you really think that just because it's three of us instead of just one Castillo will decide that it's ok?"

"Cleaning the sewage pipes is done three times as quick with three men," Oscar said. "Plus you get laid. That's gotta be a plus, right?"

O'Neal shrugged slightly and nodded carefully. A man so massive had to learn to watch his surroundings carefully and take care that he didn't accidentally strangle somebody because he didn't know his strength, in turn most of his movements were slow and deliberate.

Except, of course, when he was on the fighting mat. Those massive tree-trunk arms of his were as fast as mine.

"Us Army boys got to stick together," Oscar went on.

"We stay together, and we fail together?" I asked.

He shook his head. "We stay together and we get laid together."

"Metaphorically speaking, of course," I quickly added. "I'm not into that kind of stuff."

"Right," he quickly said apologetically.

"We stick together we…" I began. "Got nothing."

"How about we just 'stick together?'" O'Neal suggested.

"Double meaning, I like it," Oscar said. "We stick together."

"You do realize that you still make it sound like all three of us are fucking together."

"But in different rooms," Oscar told me. "In different rooms."

* * *

><p><strong>May 23, 2550 (UNSC Calendar)four days later**

**PFC Oscar "Pitcher" Almasi**

How on Earth did I manage to get myself into this situation. I had found a pretty girl, flirted with her, talked with her, and eventually things got intimate. The problem here was that they didn't get intimate enough. I barely even got a few seconds of kissing before she said that it might be a good idea to take it slow.

I had no chance but to agree, when you start pressuring a girl you begin treading some really dangerous territory.

Then we talked and she said goodbye and then Lieutenant Castillo walked in.

"Damn," he said. "The one that got away?"

"Yes, sir," I said, standing at attention.

"At ease," he dismissed me. "Almasi, Almasi, Almasi… I am disappointed in you."

"I'm sorry, sir. I didn't mean to."

"Nobody ever does," he said. "But the ones that do only do it once. You know why?"

I gulped. "Sir?"

"Because I make damn sure they don't."

I said nothing.

"Of course, I could just tell everybody how that girl ran out of the room as fast as possible."

"Please don't, sir," I begged. It wasn't true, but everybody would believe him over me. "She's a nice girl."

"No wonder you didn't go in for the kill."

"It was not for lack of trying," I said.

"So she made you strike out?"

I nodded. "I guess you could say that."

Castillo slapped my shoulder and then squeezed so hard that I had to wince. "Ah, it hurts!"

He stopped squeezing and gently rubbed my hurt shoulder. "Well, I'll be sure to tell everybody to call you Pitcher."

"Yes, sir," I said quickly. An embarrassing nickname was a better alternative than most.

"And you can report to the chiefs occupational officer. Tell him I sent you to clean all the sewage pipes in our section of the ship."

I sighed. "Yes, sir."

The CPO in charge of occupations was quick. I met up with him immediately after my little run-in with Castillo and soon enough he had me in overalls and inside a cramped corridor. He made sure to give me an instructional pad that would apparently tell me exactly what I was supposed to do.

"Hello," the pad said once I was in the first pipe. "My name is Dino and I'm this ship's on-board AI."

"I thought you were just an instructional computer," I muttered, placing the pad on a special pocket in my overalls, illuminating the space in front of me. "What do you need me to do?"

"It's simple," Dino said. "You see those nuts there?"

"Yeah," I grunted, shifting myself.

"Unscrew them. The unscrew the screws."

"All of them?"

"No, just half of it so that the shit and piss from your team can leak through the pipes."

"So all of them," I muttered, getting the appropriate tool for the job. Castillo had made sure that I didn't get any automatic tools, so all of this was done by hand.

"Ok, then?"

"Then you remove that section of the pipe," Dino told me. "You place one of those tubes instead and wait for it to do the cleaning."

I relaxed a little. "And the section I removed?"

"I'm glad you asked," the AI said merrily. "That one you get to clean yourself. You didn't think that the three different tube brushes and all that bleach were just for show, did you?"

"For a while there, I did," I admitted to the AI. "So, Dino, you've got any conversational subroutines?"

"Why yes I do," it replied. "Not a lot of people want to talk to an AI, you know?"

"I was born and raised in a mining station," I explained. "There were times when I was bored out of my mind and had to talk to the AIs."

"Sounds reasonable. What do you want to talk about?"

"I don't know. Whatever."

By the time I had unlatched all the nuts and bolts in the first pipe we had settled into a nice conversation about ass or boobs. I am sure that Dino could've made convincing arguments for just about anything, but right now it was sounding remarkable human. It must've come from a man's brain.

"Ok, now pull the pipe, " it said.

I tanked the pipe and almost threw up at the smell. The smell of shit was fresh. Castillo must've told everybody to use their bathrooms not so long ago. It was a nice touch. I got to admit that.

"Fuck's sake," I cursed, taking in quick breaths to avoid taking in the stink, but it was unavoidable. I put the pipe down and then placed the magic tube in its place. As the device started cleaning the piping above and below it I started doing the same with the yard-long section of piping next to me. The brushes were effective at separating the fresh shit from the metal, but they weren't nearly as good at doing that with the hard shit. The shit that had been there for days now.

"Shit."

"An appropriate response considering the circumstances," Dino said.

"Play me some music, please," I told it. "And say that thing about squishiness you were saying earlier."

The AI started playing some orchestral music that served to relax me a bit and we resumed our conversation. I kept insisting that the ass was the most fundamental part in a woman's body, but Dino kept returning to boobs. The stupid AI wouldn't yield to my point of view and I wasn't about to let a machine beat me at talking. The conversation went on for the remainder of my punishment until I got to the final pipe.

"Last one," I said to myself, removing the pipe.

Then, without any warning whatsoever other than the sound of fluids moving through a confined space, a giant wave of fresh shit and piss landed all over my right arm. The position of my arm meant that it bounced off it and hit me right in the face. I had the presence of mind to close my mouth, but its still got on my eyes and nose and pushed me backwards. I grunted and spat, sliding into the floor slowly.

"Up you go," Dino said, laughing. "We're not done yet."

I swear that I could hear laughter coming through the pipe.

* * *

><p><strong>June 8, 2550 (UNSC Calendar)three weeks later**

**LCpl. Robert "Bumblebee" Agnarsson**

"First combat drop with our new and fancy unit, eh?" I said. "What do you think?"

Serge didn't reply. He never did. Instead he just turned to look at me and gave me his trademark 'are you fucking kidding me' look. Most people would've been annoyed by it, but me, I just took it in stride. Serge was that kind of guy and I could always just talk to someone else.

"Oi! Snark!"

"What's up?" he asked, checking his rifle.

"Does something have to be up for me to want to talk?" I asked, slapping him hard in the back. "You're such a downer."

"I'm a sniper, it's basically in the list of requirements."

"Right," I muttered. "You nervous?"

"Well, I'm always nervous about a potentially catastrophic failure with my pod that could end up with me dead."

"You do have a point there," I said gloomily. "And what about the team?"

"Lucky number seven baby," he said, slapping a full magazine into his rifle, cocking the bolt and then placing another full magazine into it.

"You mean Lucky Number Slevin, right?"

"What?"

"Movie."

"Oh. Good one?"

I shrugged. "Pretty watchable."

"I'll check it out," he said.

I nodded. My unorthodox tastes in entertainment seemed to be something that people naturally grew into. They damn well better, with the shit that was coming out nowadays, my outdated stuff was a whole lot better than theirs.

"Oi, pass me that, will ya?" I asked Snark.

He shoved the box of pistol ammunition my way and I started loading a few of the spare magazines I had on me. Everybody seemed so dull and boring whenever we were just about to drop. Everybody except for the El-tee and Gunny. Those two bickered like an old married couple whenever they got the chance. I looked over my shoulder to look at them and then chuckled slightly when I saw that they were still going at it.

"It makes the new guys nervous," Snark said once he realized I was looking at them. "They should tone it down a bit. At least for a little while."

"Nah," I said, shaking my head. "El-tee is as stubborn as a mule and Gunny keeps him in check. It's always worked that way and they better get used to it."  
>Snark sighed and then delivered a vicious elbow strike to my ribs.<p>

"What the fuck?"

"You were invading my place," he said.

I kicked him in the back of the knee and then shoved him backwards. "Dipshit."

"Hey! Enough!" Sergeant Mata called out before Snark could do anything else.

"You heard him," El-tee said. "Act like Helljumpers."

"But we're not Helljumpers anymore," I complained playfully.

I knew that I had said the wrong thing. Everybody, even those of us that weren't ODSTs stopped what they were doing and turned around to look at me. Even Snark seemed dumbfounded by what I had said. I closed my eyes and prayed that the El-tee wouldn't discipline me in front of everybody out of respect for the several years that we had fought side by side.

"Bee," he said. "What did you just say?"

"An incredibly stupid thing," I replied immediately. "And a lie."

"Good," he nodded slowly. "You and I are going to have words later."

I nodded quickly and then finished preparing everything. The moment my rocket launcher was ready and loaded I shoved it into my pod and waited. The mission parameters weren't exactly narrow, so I decided to get myself an MA5 as opposed to an M7 SMG. I began placing magazines into my pouches while Snark occasionally looked and shook his head. Even Staff Sergeant Grigori managed to shake his head at me.

It was even worse than that time when I decided to tell my dad that he wasn't a real Scotsman because he liked ale better than scotch. He had actually been hurt by that and didn't talk to me in days. I later found out that it was because he was disappointed that I thought your choice of liquor was what made you Scottish, but I still felt pretty bad for a while.

"Everybody ready?" Castillo asked when it was T minus two.

"Yes, sir," came the immediate reply.

The El-tee placed his pistol into his holster and let his hand rest on it. I never did figure out why he went with the old-fashioned holster as opposed to standard-issue magnetic plates. It was pretty much impossible to lose your sidearm if it was magnetically attached. I have to admit, it did give him a look of more authority.

"Ladies and gentlemen, this will be our first combat drop as a team. I expect nothing short of perfection, you understand me?"

"Yes, sir!"

"Good. This mission is important for two reasons: it'll allow UNSC forces groundside to communicate without the covvies eavesdropping and it will let me determine if you are good enough." He paused and paced a little bit. I could see Gunny Klaus roll his eyes slightly, but he remained like a statue.

"Those of us that are Helljumpers say that we go feet first into hell before every jump. I know that some of you aren't from the ODST, but the situation still applies. Am I right?"

"Yes, sir!"

I could feel myself smiling, this was just like old times.

"Damn right I am," he said. "Into your pods!"

We all climbed inside as fast as possible. I could tell that the Army and Navy guys were nervous. They had completed their training jump and done several dozen simulations, but unlike the rest of us, they hadn't done an actual combat drop before. And nothing did quite compare to the excitement of the real thing. I made sure that my weapons were secured and took a couple of deep breaths before the hatch came down.

I saw Lieutenant Castillo crack his knuckles like he always did before a jump and prepared to broadcast one of the better epic songs on my playlist.

"How do we go?" he asked.

"We go feet first, Lieutenant!" we all shouted.

_Yes, just like old times._

* * *

><p><strong>June 8, 2550 (UNSC Calendar)**

**Special Operator Third Class Chang "Preacher" Sun-Hoyt**

"That was the worst drop of my life," Natasha complained. I couldn't figure how such a princess could have made it through basic. To her everything that wasn't a luxury yacht was only good for the bottom classes and in her opinion we were all the bottom classes.

"Easy Tash, you get used to it," Mobuto said, gunning down a wounded grunt. "Clear!"  
>"Don't call me that," Natasha said sharply.<p>

I couldn't help but roll my eyes. Pride was a sin, and when her time came she would be punished for it unless she repented for it. For the time being, humanity needed people with her skills, and God had deemed it fitting for her to remain alive this long, so there must've been a purpose for her to fulfill.

"Can it," Staff Sergeant Konstantinov ordered, sounding uncharacteristically emotive. "Klaus' fireteam should send the signal soon.

And true enough, Gunny Klaus and his men cleared the target building and flashed the IR strobes four times, signaling for us to go ahead. Sarge beckoned for us to move and we climbed out of cover, with Natasha and Mobuto taking point. The area around us was mostly cleared, the El-tee's fireteam had helped with that right after landing, establishing a very effective crossfire.

"Preacher, head up that building," Sarge ordered. "Marv, you go with."

I nodded and took a left turn, Mobuto following close behind.

"Why does he call me Preacher, again?" I asked after a while.

"Because you do a lot of praying," Mobuto replied, clearing a corner.

"Praying is not the same as preaching," I noted.

"But apparently nobody cares," he said. "I'm sorry, but it'll stick."

"It could be worse," I sighed, climbing up a set of stairs closely behind Mobuto. "It could be–"

The building rocked sideways violently and for a moment it seemed like it would collapse on top of us, but the structure held. I grunted a small complaint and climbed another story up. As we opened the door from the emergency stairwell I heard the screaming of Banshees as the attack craft dashed past the building. Mobuto and I cleared the entire floor and then I set a proximity mine right next to the door.

"Southeast corner," Mobuto said. "Let's go."

That particular corner presented a wonderful vantage point for the Covenant listening facility. From here I could see all five fireteams moving from different directions and provide sniper coverage for them. Snark was also on overwatch duty, but his main purpose was to take out high-ranking elites. I was supposed to finish the pitiful life of any alien that was in the way of Castillo and Mata's fireteams.

"There's the listening station," Mobuto muttered.

"Overwatch-Two is primed and ready," I broadcast on the team's channel.

"Stand by," Castillo said calmly. "We're on the move."

The first target for my EMR was an elite minor. Not the most stellar of targets, but one worthy nonetheless. I zeroed in on its head and fired four times in a row. The fast-flying bullets all collided precisely where I had aimed at, draining its shields and piercing its skull in quick succession.

"Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil," I muttered.

"Corny," Mobuto dully noted.

"I always start with that one," I replied. "It gives me strength."

A minute later I took out another elite minor that had been attempting to divert Mata's fireteam. The elite took a shot through the shoulder, making me stifle a curse, before I fired another time and killed it.

"For if we live, we live to the Lord, and if we die, we die to the Lord," I prayed.

Another elite.

"Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord from now on."

"Are you praying for them?" Mobuto asked me.

"Yes," I said.

"Why?"

"Because despite their goal to exterminate humanity, they are still part of creation," I explained. "And as such could be God's creatures. Misguided as they are."

"By that same logic they could also be demons," he said.

I nodded with a small smile. "They very well could be demons in the shape of alien beings," I admitted, "but I don't know that, and until I do I will keep praying for their souls."

Mobuto shook his head. Not many people understood why I was faithful. A lot of Marines, Troopers, and Sailors had long since lost their faith. Some attributed it to the horrors witnessed during the war, others believed that science had advanced enough to disprove the existence of the one true God, and some others believed that since we hadn't found Him in the starts then he wasn't here. I understood that God was not in the same plane that we were and I understood that he would not intervene because that was not His way. Everything that happened here was because of His will, whether it seemed fair or not. If we endured through all of this and our faith remained intact then we would be rewarded beyond our wildest dreams in His kingdom.

"Three elites, twenty meters ahead of the El-tee's fireteam," Mobuto informed me. Those binoculars of his were very effective in helping me spot additional targets.

"I see them," I said. After all three of them were dead by my hand I muttered another small prayer. "I give them eternal life, and they will never perish, and no one will snatch them out of my hand."

Mobuto just sighed next to me. I could tell that he didn't like me praying for their souls, but he didn't understand that I was only doing this as a precaution. If the Covenant turned out to be creatures of God and had souls then I would be doing what was right. If they didn't I would simply be annoying to a comrade-in-arms at most.

_Who said that pragmatism and religion couldn't go hand-in-hand?_

* * *

><p><strong>June 9, 2550 (UNSC Calendar)one day later**

**PFC Hipolito "Polly" Gibson**

Flick, flick, flick. Flick, flick, flick.

"Can you stop doing that?" Longworth groaned.

Flick, flick, flick. I palmed the butterfly knife in my hand and placed it back into the pouch in my belt.

"Why do you carry that thing, anyways?" he asked me. "That thing's too small to do any serious damage to anything. I mean, other than slashing necks of course."

I pulled the knife out again and flicked it open with a small smile. "The blade's shorter than usual, true," I admitted, "but it's hi-tech, laser sharpened. Stabbing might not do much damage, but this baby will slash through just about anything."

Longworth drew his combat knife. It was the larger version of our regular knife, big enough to be considered a machete. "This will also slash through just about anything," he said.

I shrugged. "I guess it's just a good luck charm then."

"An interesting one," he admitted in an unusual display of interest. "Why do you keep it."

"Remembrance," I said with a small shrug. "See anything?"

"Nope," he replied. "The slope's clear."

"Good," I said.

"But boring."

He had a point there. Just ten hours ago we had been in the middle of a heated battle with air and armor support on both sides, now that we had made it out of enemy-held ground it was all very quiet. The Covenant ground forces couldn't afford to focus on a small twenty man group when there was an entire Army Group moving in from both sides. They would be hard-pressed to get out of there alive, let alone send enough men to hunt us down. The covvies were still pretty big on revenge, so they might still be stupid enough to send a company or two here in order to make us pay for rendering their only strategic advantage moot.

"Boring's good," I said. "It means there's less screaming in my head."

"Dude…"

"Relax," I chuckled. "There's not screaming in my head."

"Don't joke about that," he said. "I've known a lot of good guys that went crazy."

_I guess you can add one more to the list then…_ I knew that not having any emotion in me wasn't sane or healthy, but perhaps I could still find a way to make everything normal. To feel again.

"Bro?"

"What?" I asked.

"You dazed off for a second there."

"I'm tired."

"So am I," he said. "But you don't see me slacking off."

"That's because you've got the BR, I don't have a scope."

"You do realize that your helmet has a zoom function and night vision."

I grunted. "Yeah…"

Longworth sighed. "Just don't fall asleep, the El-tee will chew your ass out if he finds out. And that's after Gunny does the same thing."

"I won't fall asleep then," I said. "Besides, exfil should be here some time from now."

And just like clockwork my helmet's HUD came alive. "Fall back," Lieutenant Castillo said. "Pelicans are arriving."

"That's our cue," Longworth said, picking up his BR55 and getting off his belly. "Come on."

I picked up my MA5 and followed, climbing up the rocky slope and making my way through the hilltop. I couldn't help but notice that Longworth wasn't very comfortable behind me, but the guy was so good at everything that he couldn't handle not being first place in anything. The way he paced and fumed when the El-tee gave his ass a royal beating I would've chuckled, but there really was no point to it.

The rest of the team was already up here, some of them chatting and some of them sleeping. I would've liked getting some rest, but we would have the time for that later. Sergeant Mata was rousing some of the sleepers.

"Hey Sarge," Longworth said.

"Hold your position," he said. "Or better yet, watch my six."

"Right away, Sarge," I replied, nodding my head for Longworth to follow me. "Let's go Goldilocks."

"Don't ever call me that again," he grunted.

"You'll get your nickname soon enough," I warned him.

"I bet it's going to be better than Polly."

"I actually like that nickname," I replied. "It's better than all you mispronouncing my name."

"I don't mispronounce your name," he complained.

"Yeah, you do."

"No I don't. Hipolito. See?"

"Well, you don't get it quite right."

"Yeah I do," he complained. "I said it just right."

"No you didn't, watch. El-tee! How do you pronounce my name?"

"Hipolito," Castillo replied. "Please stop wasting my time."

"Yes, sir. Sorry, sir. Thank you, sir."

"He said it like I said it," Longworth muttered.

"But not quite," I said. "Don't worry, it's pretty hard for a non-Spanish speaker to get it a hundred percent right."

"Spanish speaker? Your last name is Gibson."

"Well, I'm sorry my name doesn't sound like it's out of a romance novel Sir Adrian Longworth."

"Romance novel?"

"He means erotic," Snark said. The guy just happened to walk by to get the best stingers.

"I know what he means," Longworth replied.

"That's sergeant to you," Snark said, moving past us.

"Is there a number after your name?" I asked. "Like 'The Fourth' or something like that."

"No," he said. "And stop pestering me, Polly."

"If you ask nicely, "I replied. "You hear that?"

"Yeah," he said. "Pelicans."

"To a successful first mission," I told him.

He paused to look at the birds. "Agreed. It was pretty much perfect."

"Pretty much perfect," I agreed. "And here's to more."

* * *

><p><strong>January 1, 2551 (UNSC Calendar)seven months later**

**Corporal Aaron "Payat" Eidelberg**

"What the hell happened to you?" I muttered, bandaging around Andrea's nasty wound. The spike had punched clean through her thigh armor and tore a sizeable piece of flesh. "No wonder they call you Magnet."

"You're not allowed to call me that," she spat out through her clenched jaw.

"Whatever you say," I muttered, tightening the bandages. "Stitches are in place and as you can see I've got you all patched up."

"When can I move?"

"Normally I'd tell you to wait until tomorrow for the biofoam to fuse everything together, but if it's an emergency you can walk with some help."

"Thanks Payat," she said.

"Why couldn't they just call me Doc?" I wondered out loud. "I'm a trained surgeon. A lot of hospitals would be happy to have me with them."

"I'm happy to have you here," she said. "You're a lot better at stitching people shut than the El-tee."

"I don't know how much of a compliment that is…"

An explosion rocked the small house.

"Looks like we're really starting to bother them," I mused. "I'm going to give you a painkiller, don't be surprised if you fall asleep."

"I won't," she said.

"Fall asleep or be surprised?" I asked.

She mumbled something and her head tilted sideways as she fell asleep. A little piece of the ceiling fell off and hit her in the head, prompting me to guffaw. She really was a magnet for all kinds of projectiles. Despite being the team's second medic she spent more time being worked on than working on wounded.

I moved a table over her in case the house decided to collapse and then climbed out of the basement.

"Payat, what the hell took you so long?!" Gunny Klaus shouted. "Move up to the third floor! West side, west side!"

"On it!" I shouted back, checking my assault rifle and climbing the stairs. We were being attacked from only one side, but they were giving us their best. A couple of carbine rounds punched through the wall and hit the wall next to my head, startling me. I shrugged it off and climbed through the third floor.

"Incoming!"

I ducked as a sizeable portion of the wall burst inwards, sending brick and wood in my direction.

"Some help here!"

I moved towards the voice asking for help, it was Almasi.

"Hey Pitcher," I said.

"Payat?" he replied. "I don't think anything's broken."

"Let's go," I muttered, pulling him out. "You ok?"

"Think so. Remind me why we were redirected here as opposed to a defensible ONI facility?"

"ONI agent took the information when the facility was attacked," I said. "Escaped and brought it here."

"And he was killed for his troubles," Pitcher finished. "Right. Now I remember."

"Are you sure you didn't get hit in the head?" I asked the Trooper.

"I'm pretty sure," he replied. "Come on."

Pitcher placed his rifle on the edge of the newly-made hole in the window and started firing, gunning down several grunts. I moved up next to him and started helping, removing jackals from the equation. I couldn't help but notice that brutes didn't make for the best tacticians. They were too brutal for that.

"Watch out!"

I rolled backwards, but the beam still managed to slice through my chest armor and undersuit.

"Ah, it burns!" I complained. "I could be working in a hospital right now!"

"I'm sorry Mr. Jewish Surgeon," Pitcher complained. "I thought we were over that."

"What does my religion have to do with anything?" I muttered. "I should be more focused on my profession."

"Are you hurt?" Pitcher asked.

"No," I said. "This kind of shit just fucking annoys me."

"Agreed," Pitcher nodded. "Now stop whining."

"You do realize I've got two full ranks over you?" I asked him. "I'd appreciate it if you acted like it."

"Yes, sir."

I rolled my eyes. "Watch those hedges," I ordered. "Five more minutes of this shit and our armored support will roll by."

"You know, when I was in the Army I was never promised and assured that my support would come. I was only told that they were working on something."

"Same thing for me," I said. "Even as an ODST I rarely got everybody to drop what they were doing and come get me."

"I guess being the elites of the elite does give you an advantage."

"I guess it does," I said. "House across, second story window."

"I see him," Pitcher said.

I leaned backwards and tried to get a good look at the gash in my chest. The armor was ruined, that much was for sure. But my chest was relatively unscathed, perhaps a few blisters and second degree burns at the most.

_I could've been working in a hospital._

* * *

><p><strong>February 11, 2551 (UNSC Calendar)one month later**

**Corporal Andrea "Magnet" Livingston**

"Damn that tastes good," I sighed happily. "I needed this."

Miranda shrugged and smiled, taking a healthy swig from her own tankard of beer. "I aim to please," she said, mimicking the El-tee's voice.

We laughed over that and then drank some more. It had been a long time since the two of us had gotten to hang out together. Us ladies of VSF Squad of Platoon Five had become fast friends, not only had we been forced to work together because we were women, but as women, we enjoyed working together. It was a lot better than having to spend time with a man who tried to impress me and get in my pants. Whether they did it subconsciously or not didn't matter, it was still true.

"How's your hand?" I asked her.

She showed me. "The scar's almost gone," Miri said, "but the skin is still a little bit tight, you know?"

"Yeah," I said. "I do."

Our last deployment hadn't been particularly tough when one considered Paris IV, but after an idiot of a hero had decided to save vital information, we had been forced to relocate by foot and get the hard drives that ONI considered sacrosanct from an unsecured location deep behind enemy lines. Granted, we were going to do that in the first place, but we were supposed to drop inside the building and be evacuated five minutes later. The whole thing had become a daylong operation.

When I complained about this to Miranda she nodded thoughtfully.

"At least we've got a good improviser as a leader, huh?"

"Yeah," I agreed. "Castillo does have a talent for that. I don't know where we would be right now without his imagination."

"Here's to that," she said, offering a toast.

I clinked my tankard with hers and drank a little bit more of the beer. It was really something, these drink.

"It's just about a year since Team 7 was formed, isn't it?" Miri asked me. "Feels like a flash to me."

"Everything save for training camp. Castillo had a field day with that one."

"Yeah, he did," Miranda chuckled.

"He's a good leader, but sometimes I think that he's still stuck as a gunnery sergeant. I don't think he ever wanted to make officer."

"Well he certainly appears to enjoy it now," she said. "Bossing people around, waving his arms at other sergeants."

"He'd make for a great star in a doc vid."

"He does like theatrics," Miri admitted. "And I think it's rubbing off."

"On me?" I asked.

"On all of us. I mean, look at the facts."

"What facts?"

Miri didn't have to think about it for long. "Well, for starters, remember this time when you had to fight a jackal at close quarters? On our latest deployment."

"Yeah."

"Well, you disarmed it and slashed its chest, but instead of finishing it off you loped of one leg and then kicked its head in."

"So?" I asked, knowing that she had a point. "I still killed it."

"But it took you longer. And if someone had recorded it then it would've appeared a lot cooler."

"Yeah, but–"

"And then there was that time Ramirez used his prosthetics hydraulics to snap a brute's knee. That one was very impressive."

I shook my head. "That was a matter of life or death, not showmanship."

"You might recall that he had his SAW jammed down the throat of the brute in question?"

I gave a surrendering nod. Castillo and his stunts were very admirable. I had heard the story about the tank in the parachutes a thousand different times, but everybody kept saying just how incredible it had been. The covvie corvette that plummeted down from low orbit had also been another amusing story. I mean, running down a spinning warship that was in a freefall? That was like something out of a bad action flick.

"Then there was that time that Grigori used two knives to decapitate a grunt."

"Hmmm," I said, suddenly perking up. "Now there's something I can talk about. Staff Sergeant Grigori Konstantinov!"

Miranda groaned. "What about him?"

"What is it with you two? I mean, you go to great lengths to make it seem like you're not even on friendly terms. Soon enough people will start asking questions."

"We're not sleeping together," she said immediately. "Well, not really, at least."

I laughed. "What does that even mean?"

"I like Grigori," Miri admitted, "but we're not in a relationship. At least not a normal one."

"Again, what does that even mean?"

"We just talk. And hang out. We tried making it a physical thing, but there just wasn't any chemistry."

"There doesn't have to be any chemistry for sex to be pleasant," I said wisely. "Was it bad?"

"No, it just didn't feel… I don't know how to say it."

"I think that too much plasma fried your brains," I muttered. "You're telling me that you don't enjoy sex unless it's with someone you looove?"  
>Miranda groaned. "I'm not saying that."<p>

"Then?"

"I'm just saying it's better that way."

"Ok," I said, slamming my palms on the table. "Look around you and tell me who the most attractive male in this room is."

Miranda stretched her neck around and eventually settled on a very good-looking kid in his early twenties. He looked fresh out of college, probably relaxing with his friends after a tiring week. He wasn't particularly tall, but he was handsome and had good shoulders.

"Good choice," I complimented. "Would you like to have sex with him?"

"What?"

I chuckled. For a veteran ODST and special operator Miri did tend to be very innocent. It was almost as if I was talking to a ten year old about sex. I laughed a little bit as she flushed violently and then drank a bit more beer while I waited for her to calm down some.

"Physically. Do you find him attractive enough to _fuck_?"

"Well… y-yes," she said after some hesitation.

"Good, then that's the guy that will take you home tonight."

"Andy, you can't just decide that!"

"I just did," I told her. "Excuse me! Excuse me! Yes, you, with the blue eyes. My friend here thinks you're cute and wants you to buy her a drink!"

"Andrea!" Miranda complained. "What are you doing?"

"Too late," I apologized, getting up and letting the sexy young guy sit in front of Miranda. She smiled awkwardly and I made myself towards the bar. There were still a couple of other men that looked like they knew how to handle a woman. It was still early and I didn't want to go home all by myself, especially not on my first night out after a deployment.

* * *

><p><strong>June 8, 2551 (UNSC Calendar)four months later**

**Specialist Four Eric "Tank" O'Neal**

_Highty-tighty, Christ almighty,_

_Who the hell are we?_

_Zip-Zam, God damn,_

_We're airborne infantry!_

"We're airborne infantry," I muttered happily under my breath.

"What was that, Tank?" Bee asked over his shoulder.

"Nothing," I said quickly. A little bit too quickly. In this Marine-dominated environment sometimes it was best to make no mention of my past as an Army Airborne trooper, it had started some memorable arguments. It was a little bit hard to do that when I was the only one here that wore the standard Airborne BDUs as opposed to the ODST battle armor that everybody else were. Granted, there was a little leeway here in the AAG, and some of us had chosen armor and equipment that didn't come with the standard ODST armor, but if you looked at us from a distance you wouldn't guess that we were anything but an ordinary Helljumper unit.

At least my AA helmet was similar enough that it didn't draw comment from regular troops.

"Tank, wake up."

I grunted and nodded, grabbing the rocket launcher that Bee was offering me and shouldering it. I looked through the specialized scope, reminding myself that I should remove it from the discarded launch tubes before abandoning them. The scope alone was worth quite an amount of money.

"There's the walker," Bee muttered, shouldering his Spartan Laser. "Son of a bitch has been making it hell for the Fourteenth."

I nodded slowly. Scarabs had a way of making life a living hell.

"On my signal," he said. "You got it?"

"Yes," I said. "Forward right leg."

"Good," he replied, adjusting his aim accordingly. "Fire."

I tapped the trigger twice, feeling barely any recoil from the rocket launcher. I watched as the two missiles streaked across the sky. They collided right with the knee joint of the walker, tearing out the relatively light armor and damaging the machinery behind it. A fraction of a second after the two missiles detonated a brilliant red light hit the knee as well, going through the damaged armor and melting anything on its way.

"That's a hit," Bee said. "Good job. That should buy them enough time to climb on board and clear the walker."

"Why is this a good idea, again?" I asked him, detaching the scope from the SPANKr and pocketing it.

"It's worked before," he told me. "Only that it involved an experimental railgun and two men as opposed to a Spartan Laser, a rocket launcher, and three fireteams."

"Sometimes I think you make that shit up," I grunted, jumping down a hole in the floor. "I'd really like to see that one time."

"The El-tee's got it all recorded," Bee replied, jumping down next to me and cocking his M7S. "It was very impressive. They even gave him a medal for it."

"Who was the other man?"

"Staff Konstantinov."

I raised an eyebrow. The man always seemed like a competent fighter and a decent leader, but he didn't strike me as the kind of man who would climb on board a Scarab walker alongside the El-tee. Perhaps one year wasn't enough time to fully get to know those I was fighting alongside.

"You hear that?" Bee asked.

I turned around just in time to shoot at a jackal coming through the door. I kept blasting at the wall with my assault rifle, hoping that some of the bullets would go through. Bee was quick to throw a grenade through the doorway and then another one for good measure before going through. He fired a short burst at a wounded elite and then gave me the all-clear sign.

"I see dead people," he said with a smile.

"They aren't people," I corrected.

"No, it's a– Nevermind."

"They know we're here," I said slowly.

Bee nodded. "Probably, but these were likely just coming here in an attempt to flank or something."

"Anyways, we should move," I urged.

"When you say it like that," Bee said. "Come on."

He was a peculiar man, Agnarsson. Not only did he seem almost unfazed by most things going around him, he also appeared to actively work to set himself for obscure references or sardonic comments. He would've been a Scottish version of Snark except that nobody except the El-tee got his comments. Oh, and he had a tendency to be extremely loud the rest of the time, unlike the deceptively quiet Snark.

"Watch out!" I yelled.

We ducked just as a barrage of plasma hit the wall behind us. The rubble of the building across the street made a very effective impromptu trench, and we quickly started moving through, providing suppressing fire at random intervals.

"Did you see them?" Bee asked me.

"Negative," I replied. "We should've brought more rockets."

"Agreed," he said, "but lucky for you, I like my explosives."

As he said this he produced an uncomfortably large brick of C-12 explosive compound from his butt-pouch. He tossed it in the air and then started stretching it before grabbing one of his grenades.

"Think this is enough to bring that building down?" he asked.

"A part of it," I admitted. Half a pound of C-12 could punch through a lot of rock.

"Well," he said after his grenade was completely covered in the plastic explosive. "Here's to hoping. The moment I toss this we run like hell."

I nodded. "We run like hell."

Bee threw the improvised demolition pack and stood up from his crouch, firing at the unseen covvies. "Run, Forrest, run!"

* * *

><p><strong>November 17, 2551 (UNSC Calendar)five months later**

**Special Warfare Operator Third Class Natasha "Lady" Krieger**

I hated my life right now. Not only because I had to wear this totally unflattering piece of shit armor, but because I had been paired with two equally annoying idiots who seemed to make a game out of giving me a bad time. I knew that they did it for one of two reasons: either they were jealous of my social background or they were intimidated by my looks. It was always one of those with men. With women it tended to be the latter.

"Please," I said. "I'm begging you, just shut up."

"As you command, Lady," Dotsenko said.

"Right away, Lady," Ramirez said.

"And stop calling me that."

"As Lady pleases," Ramirez acknowledged with a nod of the head. "Perhaps Princess will suffice?"

"Seriously?" I complained, mostly to myself. These two dumb brutes would keep going until they stopped being amused. I guess I could ignore them, but their stupidity was hard to stay quiet at.

"Tash, what did you expect?" Dotsenko scoffed, letting just enough of a Slavic accent drip into his voice. My father would've liked him; called him a proper Russian man even if he wasn't even Earth-born. "Especially that one time you made a show over your broken nail."

"Or that time you decided to complain during the whole mission about how ineffective the ODST drop pods are," Ramirez added. "Or when you said that the fabric of the undersuits was low quality."

"You do realize that those undersuits are more expensive than anything your daddy could buy in a boutique?" Dotsenko asked.

"Both of you, shut up," I said assertively. Normally it worked. Ever since high-school people had made sure to do as I said. My father's trust fund was large enough that my classmates understood the advantages of doing what I did and my looks were good enough that boys just wanted to do what I told them to.

Except for Al Kross. God damn that man.

"You hear that?" I asked suddenly, lacing my voice with urgency.

Both the machine gunners went deadly quiet and half turned over the debris to see if they could catch whatever it was I had heard. I grabbed a palm-sized rock and smashed both of their helmets.

"The sound of your hollow heads!" I said. "Idiots!"

"What the hell's wrong with you, Lady?" Ramirez complained. "Chingada madre."

"What does that even mean?" I asked him sweetly.

"It means you're a bitch," Dotsenko said, kicking me hard enough that I slid down the mountain of rubble a couple of meters.

"Hey!"

"Listen Lady, unless you're having your period, you'd better have a damn good reason to be behaving like this," Ramirez said sternly.

"What the hell, you pig!"

Before anything else could happen a burst of gunfire hit the space in between my head and Dotsenko's leg. All three of us immediately made ourselves as small a target as possible before we realized that gunfire had to be friendly.

"All three of you be quiet," Castillo's voice came in. "Next time I might just mistake you for infiltrating grunts."

"Sir," Ramirez began. "I really do have to protest your methods."

"Oh, do you James?" Castillo asked sarcastically. "In that case I want to put into record that I want to protest your childish attitude. The same goes for Sasha and Lady. I mean, what the hell is wrong with you? We're in the middle of an operation that could potentially liberate this city and you're bitching to each other."

As pedestrian as the lieutenant might've been, he did bring up a good time. I was enough of a – for lack of a better word – lady. I could keep quiet if these two dumb brutes did the same thing. However, him firing a non-suppressed blast was very contradictory. He was a mass of contradictions that man. Most of the time he seemed the very model of an officer. He was hard and stern but also gentlemanlike and educated. Then out of the blue he would become a cursing pig that seemed to be staring at something right over your shoulder and barely listened to what you were saying.

At least he wasn't too hard on the eyes though. Still, daddy would never approve, best I could figure he was a colony kid, but he had mentioned something about being born on Earth. That meant that the guy was bottom class and his parents had saved up enough money to move out to a low-population colony in order to have a job. At least that's what I figured.

"Lady, Sasha, Ramirez," Snark checked in through the radio. "I've got a small unit of jackals headed your way. Five of them."

"I wonder what drew their attention," I muttered under my breath.

Ramirez and Dotsenko looked at each other and moved out of the small gap in the pile of debris and carefully placed their SAWs at their feet as they drew their knives. I rolled my eyes. For some reason or other they had chosen not to bring suppressed pistols, leaving them with no stealth capabilities whatsoever.

"Give me green lights when they come through," I told them, drawing my silenced pistol and climbing the rest of the way down before hiding behind a piece of wall that was still standing. I had to give it to the jackals, I really needed to take out my anger on something.

* * *

><p><strong>November 17, 2551 (UNSC Calendar)**

**Sergeant Naveen "Snark" Avninder**

I watched from the rooftop of my ten-story building as our resident princess popped from cover and took out four of the jackals I had spotted. She left the last one for Ramirez, who gleefully jumped forward and grabbed it tightly before plunging his knife down the bird's throat. I watched attentively as the last bird kicked to no avail as its life poured out of its throat.

_Thinking a little bit like a psychopath now, are we?_

"Hm, hm, hmmm," I broadcast. "That was some fine marksmanship Lady."

"Every time someone calls her that it sounds like a black man," Longworth noted.

"I take offense to that," Polly said.

"You're not black," Ramirez said. "You're café con leche."

"Milk and coffee," Lieutenant Castillo helpfully translated. "Or mocha if you prefer."

"Tank, however, is very much black," Polly said, referring to O'Neal. "What do you think, Tank?"

"That was some fine marksmanship, Lady," Tank said, drawing laughter from all of us.

"All right, all right," Castillo cut us off. "Enough for now. Reaper should be linking up with the Eleventh soon."

"About that," I said. "Why did Gunny's squad get to be called Reaper?"

"What's so bad about Predator?" Lady asked. "Not intimidating enough?"

"Back in the day when the El-tee was only a sergeant the squad he commanded was codename Reaper," Ramirez explained using a tone very much akin to a patient teacher.

I smiled, preparing for another outburst from Lady. That woman was a comedy goldmine. I had refrained from commenting because if I responded to every last one of her comments then my one-liners would stop being expected. It felt bad having to pull back like this, but it only meant that I would get a really good zinger in before the day was over.

"What did I just say?" El-tee asked. "Seriously?"

"Sorry, sir," Ramirez apologized.

Predator Squad went quiet once again. I couldn't help but resent Bee for getting to be on the new Reaper. Ever since El-tee had formed Team-7 we had been divided into numbered fireteams or squads. It was only in this deployment that he decided that it would be a good idea to give the squads names. Apparently, nostalgia affected all of us. Predator wasn't such a bad name when it came down to it, but I had gone through so much as part of Reaper. I still missed Angel and Grass sometimes. I had met with Grass for drinks a couple of times, the girl was going places, but Angel was still completely off-grid. I knew that Bee had tried to track him down and I suspected that Grass and El-tee had done the same thing, but Angel was damn good with computers. I remember that one time he bragged about being able to circumvent a program guarded by a dumb AI.

I didn't believe him, of course. Still don't.

_Stop musing Naveen…_

I shook myself back into the real world and bean scanning through my Oracle scope. The night vision on this thing was beautiful, I could see everything in beautiful detail with it, even if everything was saturated in green. I switched to thermal and made sure to check the whole perimeter with it. One of the jackals was still putting out some heat, but it quickly faded into the background. When I raised my rifle the fires in the city illuminated the screen of my scope.

_Ah well. No targets for today._

This had been a quiet deployment. Granted, the assassination part of assassination mission hadn't come up yet, but we needed Reaper and the Eleventh to blow up a convoy. I frowned for a second when I remembered that. The whole mission was based on a sketchy ONI intel report on the hingehead in command of this particular covvie army. From what little they knew of him, the xenopsychologists had decided that the elite was the kind that liked to lead from the front. If we caused mayhem so close to its headquarters then it would leave the safety of the HQ building to fight. And get a bullet through the brain.

"That's Pavel's signal," Castillo said. "Ok Predator, we're on the move. Let's go, let's go, let's go."  
>I grabbed my SRS-99C and pulled it over my head. The goddamn rifle was longer than I was tall, but I'll be damned if it wasn't the finest weapon in existence. Sometimes I would've preferred the standard version, if only because of its length, but a shorter barrel meant a shorter range, and twenty extra centimeters of barrel meant a whole lot more range.<p>

I climbed down the building, hitting a wall with the tip of my rifle more than once. I rolled my eyes at that. I knew I wasn't the tallest man out there, but when some genius in the weapons section decided to make the standard-issue sniper rifle as tall as the average man you knew that something was wrong.

I stopped on the second floor and took a couple of breaths.

_I miss Scarecrow…_

* * *

><p><strong>December 25, 2551 (UNSC Calendar)one month later**

**First Lieutenant Francisco Castillo**

"Are you and Katie fighting again?" Pavel asked.

I chuckled and downed another shot of whiskey. "She's the perfect woman Pavel. What's even worse is that's she's perfect for me. She'll take all the shit I give her and will keep on believing in me. It's not healthy."

"Come on, Frank," Pavel said. "I'm sure it's not that bad…"

I shook my head. "I don't know, every time I feel like I'm hurting her, you know? But at the same time I'm not strong enough to let her go. And what's worse, sometimes Hanna comes up."

"It's been two years Frank," Pavel said.

"Yeah, but something like that, it's hard getting over it."

"Frank," he said. "You've managed to get drunk and you're feeling philosophical. We can talk about this tomorrow when you're sober."

"All right," I said, recognizing the truth his words. "But I'm not ready to go home just yet."

Pavel shrugged. "If you say so. Frank, Katie's a good girl and you'd do well to stop hurting her."

"We'll make up," I told him. "I'll apologize and promise that it'll never happen again. And for a while I'll really try. Then something will come along."

"Listen son," Montgomery cut in, "I know it's none of my business, but it sounds to me like you're treating this girl like shit."

"And I love her," I laughed. "Isn't that fucked up."

"Very," Pavel said before addressing the captain. "Take care of him will you?"

"I always do," Montgomery replied, pouring me another shot of whiskey.

"You going to stay till morning?" he asked.

"Yeah," I said.

"I was just about to close. You don't mind locking it down, do you?"

I shook my head. "Anything I can do to help."

"Good," Montgomery said, grabbing a full bottle of whiskey and placing it on the bar. "Don't tell Pavel I went upstairs to catch some sleep."

"I won't," I promised, grabbing the bottle. "Good night."

"I'll charge you for that bottle," he said.

"I wouldn't expect anything else."

I leaned backwards on my stool after Montgomery disappeared into the second story that was his apartment. For a moment I teetered on the edge of balance before I brought my head back up violently. I shook myself and poured myself another glass of medium-quality whiskey.

"That clever bastard," Schitzo said. "He gave you the expensive bottle, knowing full well that by this point you can't taste the difference."

"I owe him at least that," I replied, drinking half the glass. "He's been good to me."

"Yes he has," Schitzo admitted. "And you've been good to his wallet."

"Shut up," I slurred. "Nobody likes you!"

"I'm sorry, is the place still open?"

I turned around on my stool so clumsily that I almost fell off it. "You're not Sch–" I began before I caught myself. "Sorry, what?"

"Is the place open?" The source of the voice was a pretty woman, not much longer than I was. Brown hair tied in a professional-looking ponytail. She was wearing civilian clothing that fit her quite well, but I could tell that she was a military woman.

"Not technically," I admitted with a shrug. "But you look like you need a drink."

"Or three," she admitted with a rueful smile.

"What's wrong?" I asked, leaning over the counter and grabbing another whiskey glass, pouring her a double shot.

"Lot's of things," she said. "But apparently not as much as you've got going on."

I laughed loudly. "That's funny. That's funny."

She shrugged and downed the alcohol. While she was wincing from the aftertaste she urged me to pour her another one and before long she was as drunk as I was. We started talking more freely and I realized that I was about to run out of alcohol.

"Gimme that," she mumbled, tearing the bottle from my grip. "You've had enough."

"And you haven't?" I asked, trying to get the bottle back from her. As I did that I accidentally placed my hand on her thigh, trying to reach the bottle as she placed it behind her head.

"No!" she said, ignoring the presence of my hand. "Besides, I'm a lady, I should get the last drink."

Before I could really react I found myself being passionately kissed by the woman. She seemed equally surprised by her own reaction, enough that after she broke off she looked at the bottle doubtfully.

"So what's your problem?" I asked her.

"A lot of my friends are dead," she said. "And I'm getting a medal for it."

"Ah," I nodded understandingly. "I know the feeling."

"Do you really?"

"Yes," I said. "You don't go through seventeen years in the Corps without losing some friends."

"You're a jarhead?" she asked, her interest piqued.

"Not only a jarhead," I replied, lifting my shirt sleeve to show her my ODST tattoo.

"What do you know?" she muttered, taking of her jacket to display a similar tattoo on her upper arm.

I couldn't help but notice that she wasn't wearing a bra.

"And what is this award they gave you?" I asked, tearing my eyes away from her cleavage.

"A medal," she said. "And a redeployment."

"Ah… where exactly?"

She smiled and shook her head. Apparently she was still very drunk. I smiled back and suddenly realized that my hand were resting firmly on her hips. Apparently I was also very drunk.

"Top secret?"

I nodded gravely. "So," I said, leaning in very closely. "What's your name?"

"You haven't told me yours."

"Lieutenant Francisco Castillo at your service ma'am."

She gave me a quick kiss, deciding that the last drink of whiskey could wait. I let my arms link up behind her and smiled a little bit. Katie was the last thing on my mind.

"Lieutenant Sarah Palmer, at yours."

* * *

><p><em>Thanks for reading this chapter.<em>

_Sorry, I couldn't resist. I know someone suggested the Palmer thing some time ago, believe it or not I came up with the idea maybe two days before that. Sometimes I think that the only friend I talk with about plot ideas makes numerous accounts to review and boost my self esteem. Sometimes you guys are dead-on._

_Well, this chapter was here mostly to burn through a year and a half and to get to know the new characters a bit more before they die horrible and painful deaths. Or not, I guess it's up to you guys. On an unrelated note, I recommend you guys watch the following series: The Spectacular Spider-Man, Gossip Girl (yes.), and Community._

_I'm sorry about the lack of puppies, but I hope you still enjoyed reading this._

_Stay strong._

_-casquis_

_PS: Lovely quote, huh?_


	188. Twenty-five, Fifty-two

Chapter CLXXXVIII: Twenty-five, Fifty-two

**January 1, 2552 (UNSC Calendar)/one week later**

**Esztergom (Ezhtergom), Viery Territory, Reach, Epsilon Eridani System**

* * *

><p><em>"Today is the first day of the rest of your life."– Charles Dederich<em>

* * *

><p>I think it must've been weird. At least to an outside observer. Hundreds, well, dozens now, of human colonies all celebrated a single date simultaneously. And I do mean simultaneously. The advent of technology had permitted us to run clocks and watches that accounted for FTL and time dilation. Mining settlements probably celebrated with holographic fireworks, but every colony that had even a semblance of an atmosphere would make good use of fireworks. The simple rockets would streak into the sky at the exact same moment, whistling wildly as they went.<p>

Then, we on the ground would get to watch them explode in colorful detonations. They could last for as long as an hour if you went to the right place, and here in Esztergom they went on for a good long while.

And I was watching them by myself.

"Hey," Schitzo said, slapping my shoulder. "At least it's not AA fire."

"At least…" I murmured quietly.

Palmer had gone someplace or other the morning after our little encounter. Not someplace in the city, it turned out that her deployment to wherever was actually a couple of hours later. It was enough time for what I wanted to do and Montgomery to scream his head off at us for doing it on one of his tables. After a little while he had seemed slightly amused, but to be fair to the old man, I shouldn't have had sex on one of his tables.

"Happy new year," I muttered, turning away from the incredible display of fireworks and heading back home.

* * *

><p>I woke up late, but I woke up without a hangover. I had been too depressed to actually bother going anywhere to drink and my personal cache had long since run out. It wasn't an entirely unpleasant situation, waking up sober, but instead of feeling regretful and dedicating all my attention to my hangover I still felt depressed. It's easy to see why alcoholics are alcoholic. It may ruin their personal and professional lives, but at least it helps them forget.<p>

I grunted as I sat up on the bed. "Time," I ordered the clock even as I got up. "Shit."  
>It was late. It was a lot later than I had expected. I was supposed to report to base along with the rest of my team. ONI had gotten it into their heads that the only way to improve was to keep doing training exercises.<p>

They weren't wrong, of course, but vacations were supposed to be vacations.

A lot of my men would've said otherwise, since they lived in apartments purchased by themselves, apartments which had mortgage payments and maintenance costs. I had the 'luck' to live in a place bought by somebody else that had been left to me. The money my parents had had been left entirely to me and my uncle's modest fortune had also found its way to my pockets. That in turn meant that I had enough money to spend on alcohol for the rest of my life.

Less than a minute after I had woken up I had fatigues and a shirt on and was looking for my boots.

"Where the hell are you?"

"Right here," Schitzo said, lifting them from the floor and swinging them. It had been a long time since I had stopped wondering how I could grab them from the air when he wasn't even real to begin with.

"You're going to be late," he warned.

I ignored him and got on the elevator while still putting my boots on. My armor was on the car as was my rifle. That looking ahead was courtesy of my sober self last night. It took only another minute to get inside my pathetically tiny vehicle and set a course for the base. I didn't even have the luxury of a breakfast because I was in such a rush.

When I finally arrived I got a lukewarm reception.

"You're late," Captain Flatt said dryly.

"Sorry ma'am," I apologized. "Happy new year."

The officer scoffed and rolled her eyes. She was the ONI officer directly in charge of my team. Whatever her reasons for being in that position, it was quite obvious that she didn't like it much. Despite that she was still quite competent as an officer and usually took my concerns seriously, provided those concerns were related to the wellbeing and effectiveness of AAG Team 7.

"Did I miss anything, Captain?" I asked.

"Fortunately for you, no. Head back to Red Base in the training grounds. I'll meet up with you in a couple of minutes."

"Is my team already there?"

"Yeah," Flatt said. "You'd do well to get here before they do. It's good for morale."

"I'll try," I said, not really meaning it.

"And Lieutenant?"

"Yeah?"

"Kick their asses."

I smiled and started jogging towards the training ground. If AAG Team 4 was nearly as good as we were then it would prove one hell of a challenge.

"Happy new year, El-tee!" Bee greeted the moment I walked through the doors. "I see you didn't engage in too much drinking."

"Yeah," I said, shoving him slightly. "And you did?"

"Yes, sir," he said proudly. "I'm a Scott, you see?"

"No, you're a Rob," Andy said, shoving him a lot harder.

I walked through my men and into the dais designed for the squad leader or officer in charge to speak.

"Now why did I not get a salute?" I asked loudly.

"Atten-shun!" Pavel shouted loudly, if only to humor me.

The nineteen members of Team 7 clicked their heels together and saluted me. A lot of them looked hungover and most of them looked like they hadn't had a single minute of sleep. I could only hope that the opposing team had a similar handicap.

"Good morning ladies and gentlemen," I said.

"Good morning, Lieutenant," they replied.

"Today is a beautiful day, cold and snowy. Perfect New Year, wouldn't you agree? Anyhow, it's my ass on the line if you guys fucking mess this shit up, ok?" I liked lacing my speeches with just the right amount of swearing on occasion. I never really did like it before I noticed that SO-3 Krieger would keep rolling her eyes whenever I cursed. It was amusing really, seeing our Lady live up to her nickname.

"Today's exercise is a simple one," I went on. "Deathmatch. The first team to completely eliminate the other team wins. As you know, I'm a big fan of capture the flag and other similar objective-based games, but today we'll have to settle."

I noticed that most of my men were already armored up and a few had even managed to get all their pouches full of practice magazines.

"No cheating," I furthered. "Mata, Pitcher, that goes double for you two."

"Isn't this a forest scenario?" Pitcher asked.

"Yes it is," I agreed. "Can you lift a branch?"

"Uh… yes."

"Then that means that you can also put it in front of you to stop paint bullets," I snapped. "I want the win, but I don't want it to be marred." I paused to let that settle for a moment. "We go in standard fireteams and two squads. I'll lead Reaper and Gunnery Sergeant Klaus will have command of Predator. That's it for now boys."

I let my men get back to whatever they were doing before I got here and started putting my armor on.

"Tough night?" Pavel asked me quietly.

"Nah," I said. "No drinking."

"That's not what I meant, Frank."

I sighed. "Yeah, tough night."

He slapped me in the shoulder. "Sorry. That being said, you're an imbecile of superior category. She's good for you Frank, and every time things are getting better with you two you go off and fuck it up."

"I know that," I replied. "We've been over this."

"You just don't seem to get it," he sighed. "After this I want you to go to her house, apologize profusely, and get your shit together."

"After this?" I asked, taking in Pavel's advice. "And after she forgives me? And I hurt her again?"

"You won't," he asserted. "Because you're better than that. You're going to get clean, stop drinking so much, and then you're going to have a nice life with her. Ask her to marry you after a couple of years, have a lot of sex and a lot of babies."

"I like the sex part," I said, slamming a magazine into my rifle.

"I'm not joking," Pavel said. "You can't keep going on like this."

I sighed and checked my rifle's safety before slapping it over my shoulders and onto the magnetic clamps on my back. "New year, huh?"

"Yup," he agreed quietly.

"Resolutions… I guess I can try."

"To you Hanna was worth it," Pavel said. "And I damn well think that Katie is too."

"You're too good with words for me to resist, Pavs," I told him. "I'll try. I promise you I'm going to try."

"Good," he said.

"Twenty-five, fifty-two, huh?"

He nodded and smiled, lifting his M247L. "I can tell this is going to be a good year."

* * *

><p>The exercise was already half an hour in and none of my team had reported contact with the enemy. The forest was dense and there was plenty of shrubbery and ferns to interfere with line-of-sight, but even then it was an uncomfortable amount of time. It made me feel like we were running into an ambush.<p>

"Sir," Mata murmured, approaching me.

"Yeah," I said. "I know."

"Have you done exercises here before?"

"Not in this grid," I replied.

"From what little information we were given, I know that there's a decent rise about three hundred yards west. Not prime defensible ground, but that means that they might've bypassed it," Mata said.

"It's the might've that worries me," I replied. "Who's quiet?"

"I'd say Lady is our quietest asset right now," he said thoughtfully. "Longworth is pretty good at not making noise, too."

I rolled my eyes at that. "Is there anything that guy isn't good at? I swear, he's just like Marv."

"Sir," he said in as non-committal a way as possible.

I almost chuckled. "All right then, send them both as point."

"Lady, Longworth," Mata called out over his shoulder. "Take point, fifty meters."

"No fornicating in the bushes," Payat called after them.

The whole squad chuckled.

"Shhh!" I urged half-heartedly.

We started moving again. With limited technological support I didn't know exactly where Pavel and Predator were, but they had to be somewhere off to our left flank, going in a wide semi-circle. Or they could've been ambushed and forced to surrender. Not likely, but still a possibility.

We moved through the dense forest slowly, spread out and making good use of cover and concealment. Normally we weren't this careful even out in combat, but another AAG team was certainly something to be feared. And if the covvies killed you that was it, if you were killed in a training exercise then you'd have to take the taunts and insults that the other team _earned_ over you. No, this was some serious shit right here, and I didn't intend to lose.

A single gunshot rang out and we all immediately dropped to the ground and rolled to the nearest piece of cover.

"Where'd that come from?" I asked quietly, grateful that none of the men in my team had shouted or done anything to give away their position.

"That wasn't from our front," Tank said behind me.

"Where's Mata?" I asked.

"Over here," he replied, somewhere to my left.

"Who's hit?" I asked.

"I am," Ramirez said, saving us the trouble of doing a countoff. "Shit."

"Kill shot?" I asked him.

"Yup."

"Sorry, you know how it is."

"Yup," he repeated. "Good luck."

"Thanks. Anybody see where it came from?"

"Somewhere to our left," Tank said. "Judging from the sound I'd say it was forty or fifty meters away from us."

"That's damn close," I complained. "We crawl forward and meet up Lady and Longworth. We can take care of the shooter later."

"Yes, sir," Tank said, relaying the whispered order to those behind him.

Crawling through muddy and snowy ground is as fun as it sounds. I got my armor dirty and my lack of undersuit meant that the snow wet all my clothes, making me shiver. I would've used my winter gear, but the thick clothing meant that sometimes the paint bullets wouldn't completely penetrate. Plus, they would ruin the expensive snow clothes.

"What was that?" Lady asked when we met up.

"Sniper," I replied. "Or sharpshooter. Did you see where it came from?"

"Negative," she said. "Only heard it."

"Longworth?"

"Same thing," he shrugged. "Sorry, sir."

I sighed. "Tell me about that raise."

"Four meters prominence, trees and boulders all around that can be used for cover," he reported.

"Is it clear?"

"Appears to be," he said, "but I can't be sure."

I nodded understandingly. "Take Serge with you and make sure it's clear. We'll be right here, wave us over if it's clear."

"Yes, sir," he said.

The Frenchman walked up and rolled his neck before switching his assault rifle for his preferred shotgun.

"You scare me sometimes," Longworth joked. "Let's go."

Half a minute later Longworth waved the all-clear.

"Ok, let's move," I ordered.

"Sir," Longworth said when I arrived. "People have been here."

"How do you know that?"

"Tracks."

"Is there anything you can't do?"

He shrugged, trying to make it seem like he felt awkward, but it was a shrug I was familiar with. It was the shrug of someone trying to hide the face that he was pleased.

"I used to go hunting with my dad."

"Yeah," I muttered. "How many?"

"At least two," he said. "But it could be as many as five."

"Ours?"

"Could be, but Predator wasn't supposed to be in this area and we haven't heard anything that would make them move."

"Kid's got a point," Mata said from behind. "Could be that sharpshooter has a spotter."

I nodded. "All right, we bunker down here for three hours, if nobody comes by in that time then we move for the creek, see if we can find those suckers."

My team nodded and spread out over the small hill. There were still enough shrubs around that we would be easily concealed from prying eyes, but I needed at least one pair of eyes outside.

"Andy," I said. "You're up."

She mumbled something and approached a large pine tree with plenty of foliage. "Cover me."

"Cover her," I ordered.

She climbed the tree astonishingly quickly.

"Should I fire if I see anything?"

"That should be enough warning," I replied, cursing our lack of radios for the duration of the exercise.

I sent a couple of my men down to the base of the small raise and told them to keep guard while the rest of us hunkered down and tried to get some rest. Unfortunately for me it only took ten minutes for Andy to spot a viable target and shoot it. The gunshot was as loud as the real deal and soon enough we were all alert and ready to face a squad of badasses.

"There's at least four of them," Andy called out in a loud whisper. "I got one so there's three left."

I nodded. "Hold your ground. If you see any movement, kill it."

That movement came in the way of two men leaving cover and firing at Andy's position with sustained automatic fire. My men got one of them, but Andy was hit several times and we revealed out positions to what turned out to be a full ten-man squad. With two casualties on out side and two on theirs we were evenly matched.

"Fire, fire, fire!" I ordered as soon as more paint bullets started bursting all around our position.

Things got fucking annoying when those guys turned out to be as good as we were.

"Serge and Tank, go around the right," I ordered. "Longworth, I want you to cover them and only them, ok?"

"Yes, sir!"

"Go," I urged the two men. "Don't get spotted."

We kept at it with the enemy squad for a while until I heard the sound of a shotgun coming from somewhere to our left. I smiled as Serge fired again and then let myself grin when an MA5 joined the cacophony. My grin was wiped from my face when the fire intensified and I realized that they had been made far too soon.

"Longworth!"

"On it!"

Before he could fire he was hit in the chest with an SRS round.

"Ah shit," he muttered, sitting back down.

"Sniper!" I shouted, urging what was left of my men to duck underneath the bushes and trees. Despite their best efforts Payot was hit in the shoulder as well. The SRS was considered a one-hit kill in these kinds of war games. He grunted something and sat down, tossing his rifle away in frustration. Still, the second sniper shot was good enough for me, giving me the location of the shooter.

I stood up and switched to full-auto, firing even as I went. It took almost half my magazine to zero in on my target and then some more to hit him, but I hit him in the legs before he could hit me and then another shot to the neck was all it took. I smiled as I ducked back down before I was hit. A shot to the neck was a dick move, it hurt like hell because there was no real armor protecting you there.

"They're spreading out," Mata warned me. "With Tank and Serge down there we need to fall back.

"Agreed," Pitcher said, reloading his rifle. "Behind you!"

I turned and almost emptied what was left on my rifle into Serge's face, but the guy remained impassive.

"Shit," Pitcher muttered. "Give us a holler or something."

"I don't need another mute," I said in agreement. "Did they get Tank?"

He nodded.

"How many did you get?"

"Three."

"Not bad," Sergeant Mata complimented.

Serge just shrugged.

"We're down to five," I said. "Us four and?"

"Me, over here!" Miranda said.

"Miri, get back up here," I ordered. "Cover her!"

Miranda climbed to the top of the raise with fire hitting all around her, but miraculously enough she managed to make it to the top unscathed. She took a few deep breaths and looked at me expectantly.

"Since we're at fifty percent strength I suggest we link up with Predator," Mata said.

"My thoughts exactly," Pitcher said. "Should we?"

"Yes," I said. "Full-on retreat. I want sprinting, ok?"

"Yes, sir."

"Follow me."

The last time I was running through a dense forest I believe that I was being firebombed. Things like this happened a lot to me, but not on New Year and especially not because ONI wanted us to do training exercises to see who was better. A few bullets whizzed past us, but by that point we were too far away and their only sniper was toast. This brief exchange had been a lot deadlier than the past couple of deployments we had had against the Covenant.

"So that's five of us dead," Pitcher began in between deep breaths. "Plus three of theirs. Plus the one that Magnet got."

I smiled at Andy's nickname. It was black humor at its finest.

"And then there's the one that the El-tee got," Miri added. "I think I got another one, but I'm not sure."

"So they matched us evenly?" Mata muttered. "Not a pleasant experience."

I agreed silently. "There should be a clearing two hundred meters that way," I said. "A creek passes through the middle, we can hunker down there. There's open ground on either side, nice defensible location."

"Let's go then," Mata urged. "These guys seem like the kind that like taking the initiative."

The clearing was large enough that I felt uncomfortable walking through, but not a lot of people would be stupid enough to put themselves in the open like we were doing right now so none of the two teams had positioned a unit to ambush any imbecile that attempted to cross the clearing.

I jumped down the creek only to find the barrel of a SAW aimed right at my face. I moved to the side and deflected the barrel with my hand, but before I could raise my rifle to fire at the opponent I saw that the outline was a familiar one.

"Dotsenko?"

He nodded slowly. "The one and only, sir."

"What happened to Predator?"

"Most of it is still together. I know that Snark took a hit and is out."

"We didn't hear any gunshots," Pitcher noted.

"Neither did we," Dotsenko admitted, sitting back down. "They're muffling their shots somehow, not silencers, otherwise they would've gotten us all."

"Nature silencers?" Mata suggested. "Grab a hollowed out branch?"

I shrugged. "I'm not sure. I guess we'll have to be extra careful then." I turned back to the burly machine gunner. "Why are you here alone?"

"There wasn't only one enemy shooter, I was targeted and had to run before I was flanked and here I am."

"Did you get any of them?"

"Not sure," he said. "I think Marv might've gotten one. Knowing him he probably did score the kill."

I nodded slowly. "Well, we wait here. The river's frozen, so we can rest up some."

My small team nodded and sat down on the ridge that the creek had dug out. It was only high enough to cover our chests, but it was better than nothing.

"Who keeps watch?" Miranda asked.

"You do," I said. "Thanks for reminding me."

She sighed and stood at a half-crouch, only the top of her head showing. Whether she saw them coming or they saw her she would be a fair warning.

"It's been two hours," Miranda said after precisely two hours.

"Yes," I agreed. "Dotsenko, you're up."

"Yes, sir."

In the last two hours there had been one exchange of gunfire somewhere south of us. I hated not having a radio. We could've coordinated so much better that way. Unfortunately we were now stuck here, with no way of knowing if our whole unit had been wiped out already and we were only delaying the inevitable.

"Oh shit," Dotsenko cursed before firing full-auto at someone. "Got him!"

His head jerked backwards and he fell right on his ass.

"I bet he probably said the same thing," I replied, shaking my head and standing up. "Fire!"

The four men I still had with me all stood up and started firing at the three assailants, taking down two of them before the other one took cover behind a comically tiny rock. I did some quick math in my head. If the other team had divided itself much like we had then there was something wrong. Four seemed like a pretty random number for a fireteam. At least to me.

"Sir," Serge began.

A flash of Army green appeared, hitting me in the back of the head and firing two shots, hitting Miri in the side. The enemy turned and fired another two times, but Mata managed to somehow duck underneath the two shots and then disappear around a curve in the creek. Serge kicked the assailant in the chest and at me. I grabbed her and made sure to secure her right wrist and her sidearm.

"There's no hand-to-hand!" I said, banging her hand against my knee with every word. "Christ!"

When she dropped the pistol I shoved her forward and fired twice with my own sidearm, hitting her in between the shoulder blades.

"Any particular reason why you didn't shoot her when I had her?" I asked Serge.

He shrugged.

"Mata?"

"I'm good," he said. "Please don't mention that I ran away."

I chuckled. "I'll try. Come on, let's grab their ammo."

All of the opposing team members were unconscious. The numbing agent in the bullets usually knocked you out after a few seconds, but sometimes a glancing hit took a little bit longer to take full effect. Some people liked taking advantage of that, taunting their killers or giving plain disinformation. That was allowed, but the moment you asked for information then it was immoral. At least it eliminated the temptation.

"We're down to three," I said. "Suggestions?"

"I thought that was your job, sir," Mata noted dryly.

"Serge?"

The Frenchman shrugged.

"Thanks," I replied. "How deep is the snow around here? I'm talking maximum depth."

"About four feet in some places," Mata said doubtfully. "Sir, we don't have winter clothing, we can't hide in the snow."

"You have a point," I ceded. "Let's keep moving. Try and make contact with Predator or whatever's left of them."

Both of my underlings shrugged simultaneously and waited for me to lead the way. I sighed and made sure that neither Miranda nor Dotsenko had any usable magazines on them. I wasn't about to lug around another long and heavy weapon in addition to my BR. The weight was annoying, but what really killed me was just how uncomfortable it was to have to carry two different sets of ammunition and magazines.

"What's that over there?" I asked, mostly to myself.

"Body," Mata said. "Can't tell if it's ours."

"Check it out, Serge," I ordered. "We'll cover you."

He nodded and went off to the body, turning it over. "It's Bee."

"Damn," I muttered. "Predator shouldn't be too far off then."

Someone decided that things had been too quiet for the last few hours because the moment I finished that sentence a massive firefight erupted not thirty meters away. All three of us ducked until we realized that we weren't being fired upon. I silently gestured for Mata and Serge to spread out and make contact with the shooters. As we closed in on the firefight I silently hoped that we were on the side of the enemy, if that turned out to be the situation we would smash them from both sides and finish this war game in time for dinner.

My hopes weren't for nothing and a mere five minutes later this whole charade was over.

"Five of us left," Mata muttered, pointing at Marv and Preacher over some trees. "Could have better odds."

"Agreed," I nodded. "Marv, where's Pavel?"

"Over here," he said, pointing at the ground. "He got hit just as you finished up. Thanks for that, by the way."

"Your performance reflects upon me," I said simply. "He unconscious?"

"Not yet."

I walked towards Pavel and kicked him softly in the waist. "What's up?"

"Ha-ha," he mumbled, his eyelids drooping.

"Twenty-five, fifty-two, eh?" I asked him.

"Good year," he mumbled, sounding like a boxer that had seen one too many fights.

"This is going to be a good year," I said, but Pavel was already unconscious.

* * *

><p><em>Thanks for reading this chapter.<em>

_It was slightly shorter than usual, but that's only because after this you're going to get a healthy does of Reach. Important shit is going down._

_Stay strong._

_-casquis_


	189. Boots on the Ground

Chapter CLXXXIX: Boots on the Ground

**August 11, 2552 (UNSC Calendar)/seven months later**

**UNSC **_**Camerone**_**, Epsilon Eridani System**

* * *

><p><em>"Feet first into hell."<em>

* * *

><p>It had been a long time since I had last heard Serge so talkative. In fact, I don't think he ever was this talkative. The moment he found out what the name of the ship was he began remembering his days of pride back in the Foreign Legion. This cruiser was named after the battle that had made the Foreign Legion famous. A battle that they had lost, but Serge didn't seem to get that. No, he insisted that the Frenchmen of the 19th century had been all brave men. I didn't disagree with him there, but he didn't seem to understand that the Mexican peasant army was also made up of brave men. They had gone against a highly-trained force of elite soldiers that had been professional killers and thugs even before they had been trained. So what if the French hadn't surrendered? It only meant that they had all died.<p>

Why wasn't there a UNSC _Puebla_? Or the UNSC _El Paso_? Both were memorable Mexican victories from the French Intervention and the Second Civil War. Stopped the best army in the world and the time and then helped the best army in the world fight another section of itself that disagreed with the way things were run.

But then there were ships named after the Alamo, Thermopylae, Tsushima and Dunkirk. I mean, those guys have my respects, but they all lost. And I'm pretty sure that the ships aren't named that way in order to commemorate the victors, because that's politically incorrect.

_Sigh._

Normally I wouldn't have minded, but the way Serge walked, with his chest all puffy and an almost imperceptible smirk on his face… or maybe it was the cabin fever that was getting to me. We had been in this tin can ever since the Battle of Fumirole. It was supposed to be a short series of jumps to Reach and then some down time, but then those assholes decided that invading Sigma Octanus IV was a good idea. _Then _ we finally got there and they were already gone.

"What's on your mind El-tee?" Miranda asked.

"I'm bored," I told her. "This ship doesn't have a simulation room like the _Flawless_."

"Yeah," she agreed. "But at least these _Valiant_ class can take a pounding. I don't think we've ever been on such a powerful ship."

"She's got a point," Pavel said through his food. "I mean, I'm willing to spend my time doing boring stud like reading and watching movies if it means I have that much plating protecting me."

I sighed. "What do you know about the Battle of El Paso?"

Caboose sighed. He had been quiet throughout this lunch break.

"Well," Miri began after a slightly uncomfortable silence. "It was a battle during the Second American Civil War."

"Go on," I urged.

"Ummm, the Triumvirate was short on fuel and needed it badly, so they invaded Mexico to get it from a place near the border. The Mexican Army went around the small invasion force and attacked the larger army in El Paso."

"A great victory," I said. My uncle had often talked about it in nearly reverent tones. "So why the hell isn't there a UNSC _El Paso?"_

"Frank," Pavel said very calmly, "we went over this several times already. Life is not fair and the Mexican government hasn't donated enough money to warrant a ship named after a significant moment in Mexican history. Hell, there isn't a Mexican government anymore."

"That's only because you Poles have the UNSC _Warsaw_," I retorted lamely.

"But there aren't any ships named after Polish battles," Pavel said.

"Because there aren't any victories," Miranda said.

All three of us looked at her and she blushed furiously.

"Miri," Pavel began, "you don't have nearly enough seniority to say something like that."

"S-sorry," she apologized quickly, looking away.

"Kid does have a point though," I muttered under my breath, drawing a punch from Pavel.

"Contact the Secretary of the Navy," Pavel said. "Ask for a personal request."

I pursed my lips and considered what he was saying. "I do know Lord Hood's nephew."

Pavel coughed slightly. "You never told me about that."

"Yeah, met him in OCS."

"Huh."

"Huh indeed," I agreed. "So I _could_ make that happen."

Pavel laughed. "If there's a UNSC _El Paso_ by the time we win the war I will let you–"

"Have sex with your wife?" I suggested.

That got me another punch, a much harder one.

"Sorry," I apologized.

"I won't give you anything," he said finally.

"Anyways, I stand by what I said."

"Serge is really getting to you, isn't he?" Pavel asked me.

I took a big bite of my Bolognese. It was a lot better than usual, I think the UNSC renewed their catering contract with a different company. Same price, better quality they said. I'm not sure about better quality, but it was certainly better tasting.

When I didn't reply Pavel simply chuckled at my lack of an answer. For some reason or other my uncle had managed to leave two things behind; a strong sense of loyalty to the United Nations Space Command and a strong sense of loyalty to my country of origin. Those things had caused me nothing but trouble ever since I joined the Corps. Well, there was that one time when Mexico won the World Cup, but other than that I didn't really get news from the so-called homeland. It was weird that the URNA was a single state but the former countries that still made it up tried to remain their national identity despite being part of a confederation.

"It's weird that you're annoyed by this," Schitzo told me. "Think of the name of this ship as a celebration of an achievement of humanity as a whole and not of the French."

The ships alarms started blaring loudly. For five full seconds nobody said or did anything, instead we just crammed as much food as possible into our mouths.

"This is not a drill," the ship's AI said. "Battle stations. This is not a drill."

I swallowed and took a moderately large gulp to help me swallow.

"Come on, people!" I shouted. "Head to the drop room!"

My team had been isolated from the rest of the ship's small Marine complement. I'm not sure why ONI wanted it that way, but it meant that the smaller mess hall was emptied a lot quicker. My men started running towards the drop room, which coincidentally enough, was closer to this mess hall than the main one. I waited for all of my men to rush downstairs and then followed them as the blaring alarms stopped, leaving instead flashing red lights.

"Undersuits on!" I reminded my men. "Don't even consider not wearing them. Might I remind you we are in space?"

A few of my men turned and nodded in my direction, but most of them simply started taking their clothes off. I unlaced my boots and kicked them off.

"Bolivar!" I called out. "What's the situation?"

The ship's AI popped up on one of the holo-tanks. It was modeled after the famous soldier and politician that liberated much of South America from the Spaniards back in the day. I liked his uniform, even if the thick Venezuelan accent was slightly overdone. I would've preferred he speak in Spanish, but apparently not everyone spoke it.

"We received an incoming transmission from HIGHCOM just as we exited slipspace. WINTER CONTINGENCY has been declared in the Epsilon Eridani System."

Everyone went quiet. Someone even dropped a helmet.

"Reach… no, it can't happen here," Crow said. "This is–"

"Who gave you permission to stop?" I asked, trying to mask the sheer amount of feelings going through me. "This ship is still under threat and we are going to protect it. Hurry it up!"

My words seemed to make my men snap out of their haze. They resumed what they were doing with a cold determination in their eyes. I made sure to take a moment to see Pavel's reaction. He wasn't the only one with family in this planet, but he was the only one with a kid in this planet. He returned my gaze and nodded slightly before he went on ahead to finish donning his undersuit.

"Bolivar, Room-B."

"Of course, lieutenant."

I walked to the aforementioned room and the AI's holographic avatar appeared on the tanks. I couldn't help but notice that despite his artificial nature there was an almost imperceptible frown on his face. It must've taken a lot to worry an AI, especially to worry it enough for the worry to show.

"What do you know?" I asked, pulling at the undersuit. "I need everything."

The AI nodded. "You understand that there are some things even you don't have clearance for, Lieutenant," Bolivar said. As soon as I nodded he went on. "In July 24th contact with the Visegard Relay was lost, an Army unit was sent to investigate and made contact with Covenant forces."

"Shit," I cursed. "What unit?"

"A curious question," Bolivar said. "I see you have the required clearance… Spartan Noble Team. It is my understanding that you worked with them a few months ago in Fumirole."

I nodded. "Helped them take out a _CCS_-class battlecruiser. They lost one of their own and another Spartan lost an arm during that op."

"Oh, and I see that you also worked with two of them before they were drafted into Noble. How curious. My, my, you're file is full of very interesting stuff. I'm surprised I didn't read it earlier."

I rolled my eyes. This construct could make a million simultaneous operations and it didn't bother to read through the files of everybody on board. They are all different I guess.

"Get on with it please," I said. "What intel can you give me?"

"There are at least two corvettes hovering over Szurdok Ridge. They are backed up with numerous infantry, which indicates the presence of at least one more ship."

"Szurdok is in Viery," I said, my eyes widening with shock. Esztergom was in Viery. "What's the situation on Esztergom?"

"There are Covenant ground forces nearby, but not close enough to threaten directly. They do seem, however, to be moving away from the city. I don't have enough information right now to give you an accurate threat assessment."

"It'll have to do for now," I grunted. "Why haven't we responded?"

"We will, Army is preparing a scouting mission before they begin their assault. If everything goes according to plan then the assault will begin early tomorrow."

"Tomorrow?!" I exploded. "Do you know how much can happen in a single day?"

"I am sorry lieutenant," Bolivar apologized, "but there's nothing that can be done about it."

I took a few deep breaths. "What's our role in this?"

"Due to possible Covenant presence in the system we have slowed down our approach to Reach slightly. We should arrive to the planet early tomorrow."

"And in the meantime?"

"In the meantime," Bolivar said, "we can only wait and hope that no more enemy ships show up."

"How very sad," I said. "Anything else?"

"Not really," the AI said, shrugging slightly. "I'll let you know if there are any further developments"

"Thanks Simon," I said.

I left the room to find all of my men already in their armor and with their helmet at their feet or under their arms. Nobody was saying anything, instead they were either standing by their designated pods or they were pacing about with worried frowns on their faces. Pavel looked particularly concerned with the situation, but it was understandable. They looked at me when I came out, but once it became clear that I wasn't going to reveal anything they stopped staring. I began putting on my boots, but I couldn't get the frown off my face.

"What's on your mind?" Pavel asked.

"Noble Team," I lied through my teeth.

"What about them?" Polly asked rather bluntly.

Fortunately, or unfortunately, my comment started a discussion. Most of the guys didn't really like the Spartans, but that was probably due to the fact that most of the guys here were Helljumpers. The guys from the Army didn't really care much either way. I could tell that Tank wasn't one hundred percent happy with them since he was Army Airborne, but Pitcher and Crow were mostly ambivalent. Both Lady and Preacher actually liked the Spartans, but they only started behaving like that after they realized that the Spartan program was a Navy program.

"Noble Team went through hell to save the city," Pavel said. "They lost one of their own and another one was badly hurt."

I nodded. "You don't have to like them. But you can at least respect them."

That drew the discussion on for some time, but in the end a bunch of spec ops types couldn't keep up with an argument about an outfit that was infinitely more skilled than we were. It was bad for our self-esteem.

* * *

><p>I looked at my wrist pad. "All right! Everybody up! Up, up, up!"<p>

Everybody got up almost immediately. The few that had been able to catch some sleep had probably been having nightmares of some sort of bad dream. Five seconds later I had nineteen sleepy faces looking at me through beady eyes. I gathered Team 7 around the large holo-table in the middle of the drop room.

"Bolivar," I said. "Bring up Viery. Real-time please."

"Of course, lieutenant," he said, complying.

The entirety of the Viery territory appeared in the table, with little flags displaying UNSC units as well as Covenant ground forces.

"Ok, listen up," I said loudly. "As you can see we're already counter attacking on all fronts, but the bulk of our forces are concentrating in the Szurdok Ridge area." As I said that the table zoomed in on that region. "The assault began about an hour ago. You can see two frigates, the _Grafton_ and the _Saratoga_ moving in on one of the spires." I waited a few seconds for the _Grafton _to fire at the spire. It looked pretty unimpressive on this holographic table.

"Is it a good idea to use MAC rounds in-atmosphere?" Dotsenko asked.

"The shot was toned down by several percents," Bolivar explained.

"Well, once the spire– holy shit!"  
>Everybody took an involuntary half-step backwards- Half the display was suddenly covered by a gargantuan Covenant ship. It flickered a couple of times, making me hope that it was just a mistake, but the shape was the right one. It was a supercarrier. It was nearly thirty kilometers of space superiority. That ship was large and dangerous enough to bring Reach to its knees, even with our ODPs.<p>

The alarms started ringing again.

My men were looking up at me, but I didn't know what to say.

"Bolivar, confirm that," I sputtered after a while.

"It's real," the AI confirmed. "Excuse me, lieutenant. The entirety of my processing capabilities is needed."

The ship moved sideways fast enough that the inertial dampeners couldn't eliminate the entirety of the momentum. I gripped the table and stumbled slightly even as the ship started rumbling.

"Sir, what's going on?" Polly asked.

"Everybody inside your pods," I ordered. "Pavel, Grigori, and Mata stay with me."

My men made their way inside their pods, leaving me and my three fireteam leaders alone.

"What is it?" Pavel asked after the pods had all sealed shut.

"The Navy will make sure that that supercarrier is blown out of the sky before the week is over. That thing is just too damn dangerous."

"What's our role here?" Grigori asked. "As good as this team is we can't take down a supercarrier."

"I know, I know," I said. "Besides, we're not the only AAG team in the system, some of them are Spartan-III units."

"Great, we're not first pick," Mata muttered under his breath.

I nodded slowly and avoided looking at the holo-table. The supercarrier had blown up one of the frigates and was making it a point to fry the victorious UNSC troops in the ground as it slowly lumbered forward.

"Our planet is burning down there, Frank," Pavel said.

"We can't do anything about it," I said. "HIGHCOM will probab–"

"My family is down there!" Pavel shouted. "I can't just stay here!"

"Katie is also down there," I reminded him firmly. "Not ten blocks away from your family. We can't help them right now. The only thing we can do right now is stay put and wait for orders, ok?"

"He's got a point Klaus," Mata said. "Space traffic is certainly grounded and getting your family to a spaceport would only make it a target."

"Spaceports are usually primary targets," Grigori said. "Besides, that ship's moving away from Esztergom."

Pavel seemed to be calmed down by that last statement, he stopped frowning so hard and instead leaned slightly backwards, crossing his arms over his chest. I didn't blame him for the way he reacted. His family was down there and it probably felt even worse than I could imagine. Katie and I were finally in a good place, we were finally beginning to settle down together. I erased her image from my mind and gripped my pistol tightly.

"What about the men?" Mata asked. "Most of them have someone they care down there."

"Not just them," I said.

Mata shrugged. "Szurdok is pretty isolated, not much civilian presence there."

"So? The Army is still getting incinerated down there," Pavel said. "Aren't there any Onagers in the area?"

"An Onager against a supercarrier?" I asked. "There's no way to damage it that way."

"There are six Onager mass drivers in the area," Grigori said.

"How do you know that?" Mata asked.

I coughed slightly. I had no doubt that Grigori knew that because at one time or other the insurrectionist cell that he worked with.

"Six mass drivers firing simultaneously might be enough to deter the supercarrier from firing," Pavel said. "If it brings its shields down to shoot then one of the cannons might get a lucky hit."

"If we came up with it then Command is probably thinking about it too," I said. "We're not that smart."

"Good point," Mata said, chuckling. "So now what?"

"Nothing," I said. "We wait for orders and then fulfill them to the best of our ability. Reach is under attack. The Navy will take out that big mother of a spaceship soon enough, but it'll drop troops and materiel."

"A lot of it," Pavel said.

"We go down, fight, and keep our minds off it," I said finally. "Keep their minds off it."

Pavel nodded. I was worried about him, but at least he seemed to be back in control of himself. It was unlikely that he would stop worrying about his family until the Covenant were off the planet, but until that happen he would be perfectly functional as a Helljumper. At least that's what I was hoping.

"The ship's moving," Mata said after a while. "It's coming up."

I saw the supercarrier disappearing from the holographic display. "Zoom out." The carrier was moving up and away from the planet.

"Why is it moving?" Pavel asked.

"There's nothing left to burn," I grunted.

The hologram disappeared and was replaced by Bolivar's avatar. "Lieutenant, you have your orders."

"Finally," I said.

"You are to drop with your team down into Szurdok Ridge," the AI said. "This is a simple mission. The supercarrier dropped off most of its infantry complement before bugging off."

"Figures," Mata said.

"You and Team 7 are to drop down and eliminate any and all enemy forces you encounter."

"My kind of job," Pavel nodded.

"HVTs?" I asked.

"Currently the only explicit target you have is a Scarab walker," Bolivar said. "The rest is up to you. In addition to the destruction of enemy forces you are to link up with any UNSC forces you encounter to further your objective. We're cleaning up this mess."

"Got it," I said. "Did Bee get his laser?"

Pavel nodded. "And Tank's got a rocket launcher."

"Good. Mata, I need you to get yourself another rocket launcher."

"Yes, sir," he said, rushing to the armory.

I moved towards my pod, trying to think of anything else we might need. We all had full ammunition and equipment loads and if we gathered out explosives together we had enough to bring down an entire city block if we so chose to. C-12 was a marvel and our status as Tier One operators meant that we had constant access to the little compound. Short of a portable nuke we had enough firepower to bring down anything that we came across. I shrugged and moved inside the pod, closing the hatch.

"Men, Reach is under attack," I said on the broadcast channel, trying to come up with something better. "And we're going to clean up. We will destroy every single fucker down there and we will do it fast. This is not just any planet, this is our planet. The Covenant made the biggest mistake of their lives when they set their eyes here." I took a deep breath. "Let's go over it again. We drop and we kill everything."

"Hell yeah," Dotsenko said. "Let's do this!"

My men started whooping and hollering, getting themselves pumped up.

"How do we go?" I asked.

"We go feet first, Lieutenant!"

"Damn right," I muttered as I cracked my knuckles almost ceremonially.

My stomach lurched as we were launched off the _Camerone_. I looked down at Reach and saw that a large section of Viery was on fire. The fire didn't reach as far as Esztergom. The damage was mostly contained on the northeast of the continent. As we plummeted down to Reach I spotted the massive carrier that the Covenant had begun their invasion with. It wasn't because of its simply ludicrous size, it was because it appeared from underneath the clouds right at our feet.

"Go right! Go right!" I ordered, frantically redirecting my pod away from the supercarrier.

We bypassed the ship by what must've been a few hundred meters, but even as we flew past it I couldn't help but notice just how large it was. It was at least three kilometers tall, that's longer than every single UNSC ship currently in service. Its purple lights gave it a sinister appearance. I turned my eyes from it and hoped that the _Camerone_ had gotten itself to safety. No matter how powerful that ship was, it couldn't stand up to a Covenant supercarrier.

"There's the Scarab!" I said suddenly, seeing it on my magnified screen. "I need three volunteers."

"I'll go," Ramirez said.

"Guess that means I'm up for it as well," Dotsenko added.

"I'm with them," Marv said.

"Hit the head and body only," I reminded them. "Everybody else, we aim for that little cliff over there."  
>We did some final adjustments to our trajectories and our pods slammed into the ground at barely survivable speeds. The seventeen of us that hadn't used our pods as kinetic projectiles spread out and secured the area. The three others had completely wrecked the walker. Not only because the main cannon on its head was useless now, but because they had killed the entirety of the crew in what must've been less than twenty seconds.<p>

"Clear down here," Marv transmitted.

"Good work," I said. "We'll meet up there."

I set up a waypoint and looked at the rest of my men.

"Snark, Preacher. Find me something to kill," I ordered the two sharpshooters.

They nodded and moved out, leaving fifteen of us together in a tight group. I could hear gunfire and plasma fire, but what troubled me the most was that I could hear the sound of fire crackling. It must've been a pretty big fire if I could hear it and not see it. The smoke that it made was clouding my vision already, and the sky was obscured by it.

"Got something," Snark said. "Small squad."

"Handle it," I said. "We move north. I spotted what looked like enemy armored that way."

My men nodded and started moving in the direction I had pointed even as Snark and Preacher neutralized the small squad of covvies that they had spotted.

"Frank," Pavel said. "We don't have any kind of support."

"Not yet," I agreed. "But there's got to be at least a couple of tanks that survived this and this place will be covered with aircraft soon enough. For now we fend

for ourselves. We're good at that, remember?"

"Yeah," he agreed. "But after two years of having every kind of support readily available…"

I shrugged. "It's been a good couple of years," I agreed. "But this is our thing."

Pavel chuckled humorlessly and offered me his fist. I bumped it and moved up ahead. This place hadn't seen any fighting during the Army offensive, but it hadn't been far from the battle if the nearby sights were anything to go by.

"We're coming up on your left," Marv let me know.

"Roger that," I replied.

"Lady and Longworth, spread out to the right."

"Yes, sir."

I kept moving, spreading out my unit to give out the best possible cover for everybody. I was left with Serge at my side. The old legionnaire had switched to his shotgun. I don't know why he liked that thing so much, especially considering that he rarely had the chance to use it. Pavel still had his automatic shotgun, but he barely used it and in turn barely carried it for missions.

"Enemy contact," Snark said. "Two Daemon tanks plus infantry."

"Hold position," I ordered. "Mata, Tank, you're up."

"What about me?" Bee asked.

"Hold up," I said. "Move up everybody."

The two tanks that Snark had spotted were moving slowly through the scorched ground. The infantry troops surrounding them seemed to be at edge. I wouldn't blame them. They were in the single largest military complex that humanity had and seemed aware that they weren't evenly matched on the ground.

"No additional support," I noted slowly. "I takes roughly three hits to blow up one of those, right?"  
>Serge nodded next to me.<p>

"Tank and Mata, I want you to target the closest Daemon. Two rockets only," I ordered. "Bee, you've got the laser. Try and see if you can hit the driver. If not, I want a follow-up rocket right on their asses. The rest of us handle the infantry."

"Ready on your go, sir," Mata said.

I aimed at an elite with a carbine on its left hand. "Go."

Three rockets slammed into the nearest Daemon tank. At this range the M19 missiles didn't have much trouble punching through the thick composite armor the tanks sported. The three missiles destroyed the armor and then proceeded to fry whoever was piloting the goddamn tank. Nearly simultaneously Bee fired at the other Daemon's midsection, melting through the armor. The man knew his job and succeeded in hitting the driver, removing the second tank from the battle for at least a couple of minutes.

I fired at the elite, who just seemed to be realizing that its two tanks were gone. It recoiled from the impacts and then fired a couple of quick shots that didn't come anywhere near my direction. I squeezed of an additional couple of bursts to kill it and then switched targets. Two jackals were trying to overlap their shields, but I got both of them before they could get close to each other. I once again switched targets, but my team had neutralized the rest of the Covenant infantry.

"Move up," I ordered. "Caboose, Serge, shotguns first. Make sure there are no survivors behind the tanks."

The two shotgun-wielding men moved quickly and turned behind the two Daemons. They fired their shotguns three times each and then Caboose tossed a grenade before taking cover. Crow moved up and finished off whatever was left behind the tank. Pitcher and Andy climbed up the Daemon that Bee had neutralized and opened the hatch.

"Frag out," Pitcher said, dropping his grenade before Andy closed the hatch again.

I smiled at the muted explosion that shook the tank.

Andy opened the hatch again and peeked in. "Three dead covvies."

"Is it usable?" I asked her.

"Not my department," she replied.

"Longworth!" I called out, "can you drive one of these?"

"In theory," he replied. "Hold up."

The man jogged towards the tank and dragged one half of an elite out of the hatch before sliding in. He gave Andy the other half, which she promptly tossed away. Bee chuckled at the sight of his handiwork.

"Nah, this thing's unusable," Longworth said. "Controls are all messed up."

I nodded. "Pitcher, blow up the cannon, will you."

"Yes, sir," he said, producing yet another fragmentation grenade. He waited for Longworth and Andy to clear the tank and tossed it down the tank's cannon. He jumped down and ran as fast as he could, letting the grenade destroy the Daemon's main offensive capability. I considered doing the same thing for the plasma turrets, but this tank couldn't move and couldn't shoot.

"A minute and fifteen seconds," Snark said, looking at his watch. "Good job kids."

"Good job," I agreed. "We keep going north."

We encountered a few small Covenant units as we moved. Most were handled rather quickly and without any inconvenience on our side, but there weren't any human forces here. Sure, there was a wrecked Hornet here and a useless Falcon there, but no survivors so far.

"Enemies up ahead," Snark came in. "Lots of them."

"Give me a number," I said.

"About a hundred or so."

"Shit," I said.

"We can't handle that many," Pavel said. "Not without a significant terrain advantage."

"I don't think we have that," Caboose said.

"We bypass them?" Mata asked. "Or we raid them?"

"Hold up hold up," Snark said. "Oh. I see two Scorpion tanks, they're moving up behind the enemy. Shit they were made."

"Snark, hit any covvies with shoulder-mounted weapons," I ordered immediately. "Tank, Mata, and Bee, you take out any armored and vehicles that they have. Move, move!"

Whenever you had two Scorpions on your side you were practically guaranteed a victory. Even if it was against a Scarab. I heard the sound of the tanks firing before I could see what was going on. The rocky terrain was a bitch to travel through, but it worked to our advantage more often than not.

I stopped short of a fall and saw that the covvies were directly in front of us, only separated by a chasm a hundred feet long. The road I now found myself in hugged the side of the ridge to my right and then curved.

"Down," I urged my men.

"Did they see us?" Miranda asked.

A single needle shard burst against the rock wall behind us.

"There's your answer," Polly said.

"Someone man that gun," I shouted, pointing at a wrecked Warthog with what appeared to be a serviceable M41 LAAG. "We need to gain a foothold there!" I pointed at the spot where the road curved back around. If we got a squad there we would be firing on the Covenant unit from two different directions and the two Scorpions would have an infinitely easier time pounding the aliens into submission.

"I got it," Pavel said. "Dotsenko, Ramirez! With me!"

"Cover them!" I shouted. "Snark, get their heads down."

"Working on it," he replied. "Preacher here keeps praying."

"I don't care what he does as long as he kills one per shot," I replied. "How are we with that Gatling?"

"I'm up," Polly said. "I got this shit."

The weapon started firing, quickly increasing its firing rate. Several grunts and a pair of elites were hit by the heavy rounds and killed almost immediately. A few of the grunts even tipped over the barrier and down into the chasm. I repressed the urge to chuckle at their comic fates and ducked back behind the polycrete barrier.

"Pavel?"

"Almost there!" he replied.

The Scorpions were now exchanging fire with a Wraith and what seemed to be six or seven plasma cannons. Snark couldn't hit them from his vantage point, but hopefully Pavel would be able to harass them long enough and give the two tanks a window to take out the unprotected gunners.

"Hit that Wraith!" Mata shouted. "Tank!"

"I'm reloading," the big man replied.

It was a couple of frantic seconds before I heard the two rockets fire and then a brief instant before they hit the Wraith, eliminating it. Pavel, Dotsenko, and Ramirez got to their intended position and started firing at the surviving Covenant soldiers. They could've stayed here, because the two Scorpions fired on the infantry with what could only be gleeful expressions. The hundred or so aliens were all dead a minute or so later.

"Pavel, meet with the tankers," I ordered. "Caboose, set up a perimeter, will you?"

"Yes, sir," he replied, immediately starting to give out orders.

I pointed at Polly and beckoned for him to come with me. He climbed down and his spot in the wrecked 'Hog was immediately replaced. Polly seemed quite content with his role in the short battle, he had taken out the most aliens and then helped us by keeping their heads down.

"That was a good one, wasn't it, El-tee?"

I nodded and smiled slightly. "Yeah it was. Happy with yourself?"

"Very," he confirmed. "Did you see the way their little heads went pop-pop-pop? I just love the LAAG."

"Everybody does, Polly," I said in agreement. "Why aren't you manning those more often?"

He chuckled. "Usually it's Gunny Klaus and those two guys."

"Yeah, Dotsenko and Ramirez do tend to hog the guns."

"Besides, driving isn't so bad."

I nodded, stepping over a fresh corpse. "It's been a while since we've had a driving mission."

"Yeah," he said. "We only do raids and behind enemy lines insertions nowadays."

"So lame," I said, prompting a chuckle.

"Frank, over here!" Pavel called out. He knew damn well I could see him. He probably just wanted me to hurry up. I rolled my eyes and moved up a little bit faster to humor him.

One of the tankers popped open the Scorpion's hatch and climbed halfway out. "Thanks for the assist."

"Likewise, Sergeant," I said. "That was some mighty good timing on your part."

"Yours as well," he replied with a chuckle. He stopped laughing abruptly. "What are you? My first guess was Helljumpers, but those two don't exactly have regulation armor on them," he pointed at Dotsenko and Ramirez, "and then you've got an Army jock here with patchwork armor."

I looked over at Polly. I hadn't really ever noticed that he had a variety of armor models on him. His vest was standard Army issue, but he had added an ODST chest-plate to it. Then you had shoulder pauldrons that I vaguely recognized as some type of experimental variant. All of it was painted in Army digital camouflage.

"What?" he asked.

"We're special forces," I told the tanker.

"You're not Spartans," he noted.

"No shit," Ramirez scoffed.

The tanker eventually shrugged. "Meh, don't care. Did you take part in the offensive?"

I shook my head. "Just dropped."

"We were heading down to the valley," the tanker said. "Prime tank terrain."

"Our orders were to clear out every Covenant fucker we saw," Ramirez said. "And you guys did that down in the valley."

"What he's saying is that you're needed up here," I said.

The tanker sighed and leaned on his hatch. "You see these two tanks right here? We're the 12th Tank Battalion. Yeah, _battalion_. When the offensive started there was fifty-two Scorpions with us. Now it's just us two."

"Shit," Dotsenko said.

"Listen, Sergeant," I said with a sigh. "I'm sorry. Truly, but with two Scorpions working with us…"

The sergeant nodded. "Sir, I just lost fifty friends today."

"Don't make me pull rank here," I said, feeling every bit like an ass. "I'm pretty sure that your friends would appreciate you blasting every single Covenant bastard that you can."

The sergeant nodded once again, this time more slowly. "Very well then, sir. We've got your back."

"Thanks, Sergeant," I said. "I'm going to buy you a beer once we're through with the Covenant."

"Thanks, sir."

"Turn these back around," I gestured at the tanks. "There's a fork back there that leads into the mountains. I take it you cleared this road?"

"We did," he said. "We're going to need some infantry support if we're going to go into mountain terrain."

"I've got you covered, Sarge," I said.

"I'll get the men mobilized," Pavel told me. "Mountain terrain is dangerous terrain. Especially for tanks."

"I know that," I told him. "We'll take good care of them and they'll take care of us."

He nodded and called the rest of the team to move up and join us.

"Fifty tanks," Polly muttered.

"Yeah," I said, watching the two Scorpions turn. "He didn't say if they were gone before or after that ship showed up."

"Let's hope it was after," Polly said. "Because then the covvies have some serious shit going on."

"Agreed," Ramirez said, moving closer. "You just don't walk up and take out fifty Scorpion tanks in an hour."

"Either way, whatever took them out probably lost, right? These two survived," Dotsenko said.

"Ever heard of a retreat?" Ramirez told him, pushing him sideways.

"Didn't we win? I mean, before that giant carrier showed up," Polly asked.

"Shut up," I said, rolling my eyes. The rest of the team was getting here, some of them looked particularly interested in the two big-ass tanks that we would be fighting alongside.

"Tank escort mission," I said. "We take out the threats and they take out everything else."

"My kind of mission," Bee said loudly.

"Yeah, yeah," I dismissed him. "Snark and Preacher."

"We've got point," Snark sighed. "Got it. Tell him to stop praying."

"You outrank him," I said.

"He doesn't listen," Snark complained. "Nobody takes my rank seriously."

"That's because you don't take it seriously," Payat quipped.

"See what I mean?" Snark said. "Payat's only a corporal."

I sighed. These men were the cream of the crop, but it was easy to forget that they were mostly a bunch of imbeciles that had skipped college and were only just beginning to release their inner frat boy.

"Shut up," I ordered my men. "Next one to say something stupid gets one in the back."

Pavel shook slightly. Only I knew that he was struggling to avoid laughing. "You heard him! Those tanks aren't going to protect themselves!"

"Let's move!" Caboose shouted, urging the men with him to follow.

Mata, not to be outdone, barked out orders at lightning speed.

My men might've been a bunch of idiots, but when it came to soldiering, they were the best idiots out there.

* * *

><p><em>Thanks for reading this chapter.<em>

_So it begins. This chapter and the one after this are mainly introductory chapters. Not too much plot, just a whole lot of chaos and fighting. After next chapter I'll start going into the plot stuffs. There will be cameos and there will be awesome things. Right now I'm just looking to get past all this Szurdok Ridge and Viery stuff so that I can get to the tri-dimensional city fighting. I know you guys love that._

_Thanks to the four of you that reviewed the last chapter. I don't think I've had a chapter with so little reviews in a long time. Guess I'm getting complacent or something. It wasn't a great chapter, but come on guys, I need my semi-weekly dose of ego boosting or I start killing off characters. I even made it so that every time you review a pop up appears telling you that I'm grateful for your continuing support. Seriously, review and check it out._

_Stay strong._

_-casquis_


	190. So it Begins

Chapter CXC: So it Begins

**August 13, 2552 (UNSC Calendar)/**

**Szurdok Ridge, Viery Territory, Reach, Epsilon Eridani System**

* * *

><p><em>"Sometimes they care, sometimes they don't."– Sergeant Naveen Avninder<em>

* * *

><p>"It's getting late, Frank," Pavel said. "We should catch some zees."<p>

"You're the worst spotter ever," I replied.

"Well, you sent Preacher and Snark off together, so this is your own mess."

I nodded slightly. There was a small valley-like space in front of us. Unlike most of this ridge it was full of trees that could be hiding anything from a jackal to a Revenant tank. I had sent two other teams of sharpshooters to try and spot anything. We hadn't actually been successful, but from our limited thermal and drone capabilities we could tell that there was some covvie activity in there.

"Yup, still empty," Pavel said.

"Ok, ok," I sighed. "Sharpshooter teams, fall back."

"Yes, sir," Snark came in.

"Gotcha, El-tee," Miranda replied on the same channel.

I slid backwards for a few meters and then got up on a crouch. From there Pavel and I rolled and fell our way back down to the base of the peak and then walked five minutes towards the camp. The two Scorpions were both packed tightly into a cave with a few of my men inside. The camp itself basically consisted of a bunch of ODSTs, sailors, and soldiers asleep on the ground.

"Hey sir, gunny," Crow greeted quietly.

"We've got the other two teams coming in," Pavel informed him. "Don't get jumpy."

"Understood, got it."

I walked through my men, trying to avoid waking them up. There was a group of Army soldiers that we had run into a few hours ago. They were a ragtag bunch, consisting of members of three separate battalions that had run into each other after all shit hit the fan. A few of them looked like they would need some therapy, but for the most part they appeared to be a sensible bunch that would follow my orders. All fifty of them. The lack of officers in their group was unusual, but at least it meant that there was no chance for anyone to override my orders.

Sounds kind of grim, but shit like that happens.

"Hey lieutenant," one of the soldiers said as I walked nearby. "I think we managed to get the radio to punch through the interference."

"That's good news," I said. The covvies had a system in place that prevented the weaker signals from reaching satellites in orbit and the network of antennas was currently a little bit… destroyed. "Did you send something out yet?"

"Nah," the man replied. "Sarge was waiting for you."

"Where is she?"

"Over there," he pointed.

I looked at Pavel and he shrugged before taking off. I walked towards the woman in charge of the soldiers and settled into a crouch next to her. She looked up and nodded slowly before reaching around and grabbing a large radio pack.

"Here it is," she said tiredly. "Make the call."

"Thank you, sergeant," I thanked her. I set the channel to one of the emergency frequencies that the UNSC _Camerone_ had.

I waited a couple of seconds for the signal to stop chattering. "_Camerone, Camerone_, this is Alpha-Alpha-Golf-Seven-Actual. Do you copy?" I paused. "I know you're there Bolivar."

"My, my. Lieutenant, I see you're still alive."

"I'm a tough man to kill," I told the AI. "You know that. Why are you so surprised?"

"Well, it so happens that the area your signal is coming from is almost completely under Covenant control."

"What?" I asked. "We haven't seen any movement in hours."

"Well, according to the sensors here you have a battalion-sized force less than two kilometers from your position. Then there are several infantry companies to your south and east and then there's the two armored columns moving up to meet the battalion."

"Bolivar, you've got to be fucking kidding me."

"I'm sorry, El-tee," the AI apologized. "I've done three different system checks since you called and the systems aren't lying."

"So we're surrounded?" I asked him, keeping my voice as quiet as possible. "Can you help out?"

"Not really," Bolivar said. "I'm sending you pictures of the area and current enemy locations. The 61st Armored is a hundred and five kilometers away from your position and closing in. But as I said, the enemy presence in the area is heavy and it'll take some time for them to reach you."

"Fucking great," I muttered. "Images are up?"

"Yeah," he replied. "Even added little tags so that you know what everything is."

"Yeah, thanks," I said. "Ok, that sounded more sarcastic than I meant it to be. We'll see about surviving."

"Good luck," Bolivar said.

The channel clicked, officially declaring the conversation over.

"Bad news," the Army sergeant said. "Really bad news."

"Yeah," I agreed. "Let them sleep two more hours. After that we'll see what our options are."

"Yes, sir," she replied.

I nodded and thanked her before transferring the images from the radio pack to my helmet. I went through them and cursed. Thermal and conventional imagery showed the Covenant positions clearly and the tags that Bolivar added were quite helpful. The ridge that we had been watching had more than a thousand individual soldiers as well as mortars and vehicles. The companies to the south were smaller, but still larger than our whole group put together.

"Ah shit," I muttered.

There were groups of Banshees and Phantoms moving about. They looked frozen in the pictures, but they didn't appear to be coming anywhere close to where we were. It was a pretty bad situation all in all, and our position wasn't as defensible as I would've liked.

"We need to move," Schitzo said. "Those two companies are moving towards us."

I nodded. _We can probably smash through both of them with help from the tanks… But then there's the battalion back there and the air assets._

"Yeah," Schitzo said. "We run?"

_We don't run. We smash the enemy while avoiding the bigger threat._

"So we run away from the battalion."

"Yup," I replied, willing him to disappear.

"Hey, sir," Miranda said. "Nothing to report."

"Yeah, I'm not sure about that," I told her. "Bad news Miri."

"Aw crap," she muttered. "I was so happy."

I shrugged. "Catch some sleep," I told her. "Two hours and I'll fill you in."

"Sir."

I sat down near a rock the size of my head and shuffled myself so that the little rock worked as my pillow. It took some time but I eventually found the sweet spot and closed my eyes.

"Banshees!"

"Of course," I muttered quietly.

The three explosions rang my ears. One of them even shook me sideways, scorching the weeds around me. I groaned and got back up.

"Rockets, rockets!" I shouted. "Tank, Bee, where the fuck are you?"

"I'm on my way!" Bee shouted.

"They're coming for another pass!" one of the soldiers shouted.

"Get down!"

This time the Banshees started a strafing run. The soldiers were targeted first, a few of them were hit, but most managed to get out of the way. The fliers kept on going, hitting the rocks where my men were scattered about. I ducked behind my tiny little rock in a vain attempt to get some cover. A few bolts hissed when they hit the rocks next to me, but the Banshees missed my men and me.

"Bee, what the fuck?" I asked.

"Got the fucker," he shouted back.

Bumblebee fired his Spartan Laser at one of the Banshees, neatly bisecting it. A second later two rocket flew up and hit another of the enemy fliers, tearing it apart. The third flier started turning away from us.

"No, wait!" I shouted. "Don't!"

It was too late. Either Tank or Mata fired at the Banshee just as it made it over the ridge. The missile tracked it and disappeared over the other side. The explosion came a couple of seconds later. I could just picture the entire Covenant battalion looking up to see the bright detonation. It was as good a beacon as any. Right now they would be going into alert and sending messages to the companies in the area.

"I want us ready to move in one minute!" I shouted. "Get the wounded on the tanks. Any dead?"

"Just one!"

"Leave him behind," I said. "Back the way we came from!"

I sent the maps and pictures to all my squad leaders as well as the men and women in charge of the Army soldiers. I heard a few loud curses after they got them, but at least they knew what we were up against.

The tanks rumbled to life and left the cave.

"One tank in the front one in the back," I said. "I need a scout group with some serious firepower. Enough to buy us time if we run across an enemy company."

"We can do that," a corporal said. He and his five men belonged to an armored division. Most of them were squad gunners. Apparently they were chilling in a ditch when the supercarrier fired. Their squads were all fried and most of them had serious burns.

"You've got the firepower," I said. "Got the stealth?"

"I think we're long past that point, Lieutenant."

"Point taken," I agreed. "Go."

Pavel walked past me with Predator squad behind him. Snark broke off to the right, disappearing into the darkness.

"Preacher," I called. "Go with the scout squad. They'll need long-range."

"Yes, sir."

"Rest of you, form up in between the tanks. Eyes open."

The tanks rumbled down the dirt path, going slow as to avoid falling down the side of the road. I jogged alongside the men for ten minutes before I heard Preacher's EMR bang loudly. A second later a barrage of machine gun fire followed. It was a solid five seconds before the Covenant soldiers managed to return fire. The lead tank stopped and waited for instructions. Preacher contacted the driver and gave him the direction to fire in.

We all crouched as the Scorpion's turret whirred and then winced when it fired. The tank fired three more times, wiping out a bunch of the Covenant soldiers. As soon as the tank stopped firing Pavel took his squad down to wipe out what was left of the enemy company.

"We won't have the high ground for long," Andy said.

"Magnet's right, sir," Crow said. "As soon as we move back into the highway we'll stop having the advantage."

_Magnet…_ I thought, smiling at the nickname. It never ceased to amuse. "Yeah, that's why we need to move fast."

Preacher's EMR rang two more times before they called it clear.

"Marv, Longworth," I said, picking my two best fighters. "Double-check that."

"Yes, sir," Longworth replied. The man always sounded like he was smiling. Maybe he was for all I knew. He had a great smile, like model-good.

"Keep moving!" I shouted.

The next Covenant company that we met was on equal ground. They got a few good shots at some Army troopers that didn't take cover quickly enough and shot off the armor on the front right tread of one tank. In the end our two tanks proved to be an advantage and we managed to drive them back. Unlike our past encounter we couldn't completely wipe them out, but we bought ourselves enough time to keep running down the mountain.

_Ok… we're on the valley floor now. We're so fucking screwed._

The dirt road twisted through the valley floor, with steep slopes on either side we would be susceptible to enemy fire from both sides. The tanks started driving faster, pressing us to run in order to keep up with them. Normally some of us would've climbed on top of the tanks, but those things were prime targets. Nobody wanted to be fried in the opening salvo.

"Sir, I'm seeing some Phantoms moving in towards you," Snark said quietly. "Yup, definitely towards you."

"Where are those two idiots?" I asked.

"Dotsenko and Ramirez are right here," Lady said, drawing some chuckles.

"I was talking about Marv and Longworth."

"Oh, you mean Mr. Talent and Mr. Everything Is Easy?" Ramirez asked. "Cause those two idiots are not us."

"Most definitely," Dotsenko agreed.

"We're here, sir," Longworth checked in. "Not too close right now, but there's a lot of air movement."

"I hear you," I replied. "Try to catch up. We'll need your help soon enough."

The first Phantom appeared a minute or two later. It fired at the rearmost Scorpion with its heavy cannon and tried to strafe us infantry grunts. When it moved sideways to give its gunners an angle the lead Scorpion fired a shot. The Phantom shook violently and a couple of jackals fell down one of the sides. The rest of the soldiers on board jumped down the gravity lift and started spreading out before the Scorpion fired again, hitting the Phantom's rear, putting it into a spin.

"Don't let them get to cover!" someone shouted.

"Fire right, fire right!"

I ducked behind one of the tanks. A few plasma bolts hit the ground where we had been standing on seconds ago, but everybody had taken cover on the opposite side of the road. I fired at a stumbling elite and ordered the column to start moving again. It's not like we couldn't run and shoot at the same time. The elites in charge were probably getting a bit offended that we were ignoring them, but the tanks' coaxial machine guns changed their mind soon enough.

I moved forward and jumped on top of the lead tank. "Sergeant, how are we on the ammunition department?"

"You know, a lot of people think that the Scorpion has an unlimited ammunition feature."

"Sergeant…" I pressed.

"I've got fifteen rounds left," he said. "And little over 2000 in the M247T."

I winced slightly. "Not too good."

"It could be worse," he said. "A lot worse."

"I know," I told him. "Well… try and conserve."

"Will do, El-tee," he told me. "Gotta admit, this is going better than expected."

"It always does," I assured him. "At least for a while."

"You sure know how to inspire a man."

"I'm better with girls."

"They all say that."

I chuckled and jumped down the tank. I stumbled for a couple of meters before I regained my balance. It was easy to forget just how fast these tanks could move. One of the Army guys helped me regain my balance and I settled into a fast jog with them. The highway was just a couple hundred meters away and once we got there we would have a nice vertical cliff to our left and a nice vertical fall to our right. The only way we could be attacked was from ranger troops dropping from above or fliers coming at us from the air. Tank, Bee, and Mata could handle the Banshees with relative ease and the tanks could take out any dropships that came at us.

We knew that, the covvies knew that, we all knew that.

"Snark?"

"I'm catching up," he replied in between breaths. "You on the pass already?"

"Nah," I said. "We're going to get there in about thirty seconds."

"Are they waiting for you there?"

"I've got a feeling that they are."

"Daemon!" someone shouted.

"They are," I confirmed.

"I'll get there, Snark out."

The Damon fired and missed by a hair, but the plasma shell went past the Scorpion and tore apart one of the soldiers, engulfing at least one other in the blast. The two Scorpions fired almost simultaneously, but I didn't get to see the results. I managed to duck behind a boulder just in time for a barrage of plasma fire to land. Two of my men fell along with several more Army soldiers.

"I'm hit! I'm hit!" Lady shouted.

"Stop moving!" I told her. "Everybody get out of the road!"

"It hurts!" she cried.

"Relax!" I told her. "Payat, where the hell are you?"

"Over here!" he called out. "Andy was hit."  
>I rolled my eyes. "Of course she was."<p>

"Seems to have knocked her out. Vitals seem fine though."

"She's a rock, that one," Pavel said. "Where was she hit?"

"Chest."

"Ah, another scar in her boobs," Marv said, joining in. "Maybe she'll show it to us."

"For the love of God!" Lady cried.

"Right," I muttered. "I'm coming to get you."

I prepared myself and sprinted towards her, sliding into position behind her. She immediately started complaining that I was using her body for cover. I rolled my eyes and fired at the muzzle flashes with my battle rifle. I looked down at Lady and saw that she had been hit right above the knee. It was a low risk area, but she wouldn't be able to put weight on it.

"Don't scream."

I flipped her around so that she was facedown and sure enough Lady cried out as her exposed raw skin made contact with the dirt road. I shook my head and grabbed the back of her vest before dragging her out of the road and into the ditch on the side.

By that point Lady was screaming quite loudly.

"You sure know how to treat a Lady," Bee said.

"That was terrible," Miranda muttered.

"Ok," I said slowly. "Biofoam on the way. Don't you just love this thing? It's like magic foam. It does everything. Now try not to bite your tongue off."

Lady screamed for the third time in fifteen seconds. It was hard not to wince at the sound of it. She was a very high-pitch screamer. After a few seconds she stopped screaming and instead began hyperventilating. I held her shoulders against the ground for three more seconds before I decided that her body wouldn't try to get away from me without her being able to control it. People had this tendency to avoid the source of pain.

"You ok?"

"No," she replied. "You pretty much just butchered my leg."

"Not my fault you got hit, Lady," I told her. "Now stop whining."

"Yeah, give her some tough love," Ramirez said.

I looked at Lady. After two years of being in a high-risk unit she still seemed to believe that her social status made her somewhat better than us. Down in the trenches she was just another one of us poor people. It was the first time that she had been shot during her stay with AAG-7. Maybe it would make her stop being such a bitch.

"Don't move," I ordered.

"I can't," she replied dryly.

"Don't be a bitch," I ordered. "And don't say anything."

I got back up and started moving up behind the lead tank alongside Pavel and his squad. The Army troops had spread out and were currently forming a semi-circle around the small enemy unit supporting the Daemon.

"Daemon is down," the tanker said. "I still have infantry up ahead."

"We'll handle that," I told him. "Hang back and conserve ammunition."

"I know how to do my job, Lieutenant."

"Sorry," I apologized. I was the kind of guy who enjoyed giving out orders to everyone, but not all officers did that. A lot of people simply expected their underlings to follow their training. It was a reasonable expectation, but sometimes it didn't quite pan out.

Predator squad and the Army guys wiped out the enemy forces after a short firefight, but the covvies were already moving troops behind us.

"All right! Move up. Polly, Mata, help me set up explosives on the walls. We're going to block the road behind us."

"That's a pretty wide pass, sir," Mata said. "We can't block all of it."

"A bottleneck is better than nothing," I told him. "Come on, let's go."

The two Scorpions rolled around the smoking Daemon as my men finished up. They started heading back down the highway just as we finished setting up the explosives on the rock walls. It wasn't my best work, but it would bring a nice bunch of rocks down. After all, C-12 was almost as good as bifoam when it came to universal problem solver.

"All done," I said. "Mata?"

"Almost finished."

"Polly?"

"And done."

"Done," Mata said.

I nodded. "Ok, let's get out of here."

I detonated the C-12 when we were out of range and then just kept on running down the highway. It was very uncomfortable, the highway itself wasn't actually built over something solid, instead it was hanging off the side of the cliff. The mountains in this planet had a tendency to look cartoonishly steep. While the structure holding the highway up was being a little bit strained by two tanks weighing over fifty tons each. The groaning metal made me nervous.

"There's a highway station two kilometers away," Caboose said.

"Last time we were in a fuel station it blew up," I reminded him.

"You guys really have to start talking about your past missions more," Polly said. "You keep teasing with that story about the tank and the parachute."

I smiled. "Caboose, is it a fuel station?"

"Yes."

"Can we drain it?"

"Our tanks could use refueling," one of the tankers said. "Well, not really, but we can use up a lot of it."

"Wouldn't that make you extra volatile?" Snark asked.

"Our armor is explosive," the man replied. "It literally blows up when we're hit."

"No it's not," I said. "Scorpions stopped using explosive armor when we realized the covvies used plasma."

"Who are you?" Pavel asked. "Grass?"

"Who is this Grass you keep talking about?" Polly asked. "He sounds interesting."

"Oh, you would love her," Marv said. "She'd make you feel even dumber."

I stifled laughter even when the rest of the guys who knew Grass didn't. I had to maintain at least some semblance of professionalism.

"I'm still trying to see if the station is a viable defensive location."

"Looks like it," Caboose said. "Only one small pump, it is dug into the mountainside. We can put a Scorpion on either side and hold our position for a while."

"The 61st is a pretty long way off, sir," Mata said. "And we're not exactly well-supplied, you know?"

"He's got a point," Schitzo told me. "We can always commandeer enemy weapons if we need to, but the tanks aren't going to get any more ammunition."

"Can we arrange for evac?" Caboose asked. "If it is possible we can handle the enemy for a while."

"I'm not sure about evac," I grunted. "Back in the _Flawless_ I could call in favors every now and then."

"Advantages and disadvantages," Pavel said.

"We get the same budget that the entire complement of the _Flawless_ got," Marv said. "We're twenty guys plus support staff here. We used to be over two thousand men back on board the _Flawless_. I guess it evens out somewhat."

"When was the last time we went over budget?" Ramirez asked.

"I think the last time we reached fifty percent I got a dressing down," I told him. "You really went overboard with armor."

"Sorry," they replied meekly.

After I got yelled at for two straight hours I yelled at my men for four straight hours. It was mostly a matter of principle really, they were to blame for me being scolded and they had to go through the same thing. After an hour and a half I was basically recycling the initial insults with different words. After the third hour I just started abusing every one individually. I apologized at the end, but they understood the gist of it.

A massive budget was good and all, but we still had some restrictions. I had filled out the paperwork to get us a Sledgehammer railgun several months ago and they were still trying to get one to us. The word trying is used in the loosest sense of the word. When you think about it, they could get us fancy armor almost immediately, but weapons took a while. It was almost like they wanted us to get shot out there.

"Can you contact the 61st?" Pavel asked.

I tried.

"Nope," I replied after the second try. "They're too far away right now."

"So the closest UNSC asset is too far away for radio contact," Bee mused. "Fucking great."

"Wise words, my man," Snark said. "And they're actually true. Well, sarcastically speaking."

"That kind of loses the meaning," Andy told him. Apparently she was good enough to

"Magnet, you're no fun," Snark said.

"Please don't call me that," she said. "I just got shot."

"Ok, there's the station," one of the tankers said. "You lot are annoying, you know that."

"It comes with the job description," Pavel deadpanned. "Frank?"

"We've got a better chance here than out in the open," I decided. "Bunker down in the station, try and get evac. If we don't at least we'll be drawing some of the Covenant assets away from the 61st. Win-win."

"Unless we die," Tank said. Hid deep voice gave those words more seriousness than anybody else could've managed.

"Drama queen," Pitcher said.

"Please give the situation the consideration it deserves," I said. "Tanks, one on either side of the station, back out and aim down one of the sides, minimize your profile. We've got any cars nearby?"

"A bunch," Crow said. "We'll start moving them."

"Let the Army men do it," I said. "They're better at fortification than we are."

"Do you want me to rig explosives to the highway?" Polly asked.

I paused to give that some thought. "Yes. Preacher, help him out with that. See if you can get some on the supports underneath."

"Sounds dangerous," Preacher noted. "I can pray some for you."

"Please don't," Polly said sharply.

Preacher chuckled. "Like I would ever waste my time on you."

"Wow, I'm flattered."

I was about to tear my hair off. They were even worse than I was an enlisted soldier or an NCO. Maybe you could excuse it as combat nerves or something that they did to avoid thinking that they were about to die any moment, but they were supposed to be the very best there were. Admit it, when was the last time you saw a film or played a game where the super elite soldiers constantly snarked at one another. Sure, there was the occasional quip or sarcastic comment, but not on this whole other level.

_Deep breaths… deep breaths…_

By the time I reached the station the first tank was already parked and aiming down the highway. The Army soldiers had moved two cars and blocked half the highway with them. A few of them were moving further down the highway to get a couple of abandoned trucks while the rest pushed the two cars on their sides.

"Vent the hydrogen cells!" one of them shouted.

"Huh," Marv said next to me. "Never really thought of that."

"And they don't teach that in OCS," I said. "They really should."

"Yup," he said in agreement. "I'm going to go clear the building."

"Take Serge with you," I said.

"He's already waiting," Marv replied.

I shook my head. Sometimes my men didn't talk to me with the respect that you'd expect. But nowadays you didn't serve under the same lieutenant for over five years. Hell, the guys from Reaper had been having me as their direct superior since pretty much forever. No wonder they saw me more as a friend than a lieutenant that they had to obey. I didn't blame them, but the newer guys were already beginning to follow their pattern. One time it would be Bee ribbing me on something I said and then I'd have Pitcher trying to do the same. Not cool.

"Frank, we're almost done, are you going to keep standing there?" Pavel asked.

"I'll stand here for as long as I damn well please," I shouted back. "Polly, how's it going?"

"I'm pulling him back up," Preacher huffed. "We got this."

"Move it up," I said. "Or do you need me to personally go help you?"

"I'm up, I'm up," Polly said. "We're on our way."

"Polly, you're in charge of blowing that shit up as soon as something major moves over it."

"Yes, sir," he said, sounding eager to blow something up.

I waited for them to walk by me and then followed inside the hastily set up perimeter. It was a pretty nice setup all things considered, but with enough Wraiths the cars would turn into molten slag and then the infantry would just keep on coming.

"I guess an additional defense ring is out of the question," Schitzo chided.

"Building's clear!" Marv called. "Full of food."

"Booze?" I asked.

"Beer."

"Engine oil?"

"I like where you're going," Bee said.

"Yeah," Marv confirmed. "Quite a lot of it, actually."

"I'm breaking a very important rule today. We're wasting all that beer. Lady and Andy, start making cocktails."

"Why are you getting the girls to do it?" Miri asked.

"Would you care to join them?" I asked her.

"No."

"They're both injured, smartass," I told her.

"Yes, sir. Sorry, sir."

"Can we get someone up the cliff walls?" I asked.

"Not likely," Longworth said. "I used to go rock climbing, but those walls are perfectly vertical, laser cut."

"Is there anything you don't do?" I asked him.

"I'm sure I can think of something," he replied. There was a definite sense of satisfaction in his voice. Fucking wonder boy, his marksmanship scores were almost as good as mine.

"All right, all right," I muttered. "Listen up everybody! You too Army boys! We're not getting evac and the Covenant sure as hell knows where we are right now. We've got walls on our sides and two Scorpion tanks with us, if we don't survive this for the four hours that we need to, then we are worthless and deserve to die. The 61st Armored is coming through and we're going to be here to say that we didn't need any rescuing when they do. You feel me?"

"Yes, sir!" my men shouted.

"Hooah!" the Army soldiers shouted.

I smiled. It wasn't quite an Oorah, but it was good enough for me.

* * *

><p>"Sir, sir."<p>

I opened my eyes and blinked several times. I glanced down at my wrist tactical pad and saw that I had dozed of for almost forty minutes. Not for the first time I wondered why exactly I kept my clock on the tacpad as opposed to my HUD, and not for the first time I reminded myself that it was better to have a clean HUD as opposed to one full of target reticules, mission indicators, waypoints, and other similar displays.

"What is it?" I asked.

"Our scouts are reporting enemy movement in the pass we brought down," Crow told me, sitting down in front of me.

"Scouts?"

"Yeah, Gunny sent them."

"Uh-huh," I nodded. "Should I be concerned?"

"Not yet, they appear to be building up their forces before marching down. We're assuming that they know where we are."

"They probably do," I agreed. "The Molotov cocktails?"

"Lady and Magnet finished with them a few minutes ago. Most of the liquor was poured on the sink."

"Most?"

He nodded, actually smiling a little bit. "Lady and Magnet decided that their WIA status made them deserving of a beer each."  
>I sighed. Had they asked me I wouldn't have denied it of them, but they hadn't even bothered.<p>

"Gunny let them when they asked," he went on. "He said that you needed the sleep."

If anybody knew me it was Pavel.

"Did you catch some rest yet?" I asked the young Army trooper. "You didn't get much sleep back in the mountains."

"You didn't get any sleep at all, sir," he said, pulling out a non-regulation blade. He crossed his leg over his knee and started picking at his boots, trying to get a piece of molten glass from the sole. I observed the knife for a while. It wasn't the standard-issue machete-like blade that we all got when we first joined. It was about forty centimeters long and looked like something that a Brute would be proud to use.

"Nice blade," I noted dryly, opting to avoid telling him that it looked crude.

"Thanks, sir," he replied, examining his massive knife. "I got it custom made before I shipped off for my second tour of action. Cro-Van steel and leather grip handle. This baby hasn't let me down yet."

"Looks vicious," I said. "What did your smith base himself on? A Bowie knife?"

"Yeah, it's an homage of sorts," Crow said. "Slightly slimmer blade, but still has the overall appearance."

"Wouldn't you prefer using a smaller knife to take dirt off your boots?" I asked, pulling out the backup knife on my chest strap and offering it to him grip-first.

"No thanks, sir. This is my good luck charm."

I shrugged and flipped the knife back around before sheathing it. "If you say so, Crow. Crow… you know, I used to serve with a guy we called Scarecrow. Crow, for short."

"What happened to him?"

"Several needles to the midsection," I said, closing my eyes. I could remember the image vividly. I had been holding onto him and trying to pull him on board the Pelican even as we evacuated the port. Maybe if I had been a little bit faster, a little bit stronger…

"Ouch," Crow muttered.

"Yeah, his whole lower body was torn apart. He was closer than you and I are when he died."

"Must've been tough."

"It was," I agreed. "Scarecrow was one of a kind. Too nice to have a job like ours, but too damned good at it to be able to do anything else. Huge-ass man. Almost as big as Tank, damn near as black as him too."

"One scary motherfucker then?"

"You could call him that," I chuckled. "He had no trouble fighting down elites if it came down to it."

"I'm sorry, sir."

I sighed. "No need to be. He died a long time ago and we've all come to terms with it." I looked around and saw that most of the Army soldiers were catching some sleep. My men were nowhere to be seen, presumable they were either off on patrol or just sleeping inside the small store.

"Why do you carry so many knives?" Crow asked suddenly. "Well, I honestly just want to know what the story is with that one." He pointed at the Damascus steel knife sheathed on my right boot.

I reached down and yanked it out. I spun it several times out of habit, but I felt satisfaction when Crow's eyes widened slightly at my theatrics. I finished up be tossing it in the air and letting the former Army soldier snatch it. He examined the blade curiously, trying to follow the random patterns that curved and twisted around it.

"Interesting knife," he said. "Looks like a mix between a kukri and a regular combat knife. Where did you get this?"

"It was a gift," I told him. "Given to me right before I left to train on Mars."

"You were trained on Mars? I thought that all Helljumpers came here for their training."

"Most do," I said, "but there are a few that don't. The 19th is headquartered in Mars."

"I hear life in there is hell."

"And training wasn't any easier," I furthered. "At least we had less gravity to deal with, even if it wasn't that much."

"From what I've heard about ODST training, it sounds more brutal than effective, sir."

"It's both," I said, recalling the days when Gabuka ran us until our legs literally couldn't move and Bulldog beat us as much as he could get away with. I wondered if those two bastards were still alive.

"Bootcamp wasn't a walk in the park for me," he said, "but the training regime for SPECWARCOM began to look a lot like hell after the first thirty minutes. Not to say that your training methods fell far behind, sir."

"I eased up on the brutality," I said. "But I made it as tough as I could. You know, it helped me see why the drill sergeants are such sadistic bastards."

"I always thought it was unfulfilling lives."

I shook my head. "Those men play one of the most important roles in this war. They prepare meat like you and I to go out and take as many covvies with us before we die."

"I never saw it quite like that," Crow admitted. "I do respect what they do, though. Even if it took me a long time to figure it out."

"You did always strike me as the slow kind," I said. "Wait. Was there something else other than reports of enemy movement?"

"Not really," he said. "Snark was wondering whether he should stay or leave."

"Ah," I nodded slowly. I quickly accessed a map of the terrain and my helmet immediately pinpointed Snark's location. It was only a couple hundred meters away from the station and maybe half a kilometer away from the pass that lead _into_ the mountainous terrain. "Snark, don't give away your position unless you see a field marshal or golden armor. Leave when it becomes obvious that they're going to attack."

"Yes, sir," Snark replied. "Gold means go."

"Did you know that the first time I met him I couldn't get more than five words out of his mouth?" I asked Crow.

"Who? Snark?"

"Yeah."

"No way," he chuckled. "How did that change?"

I smiled. "You know, now that you mention it, it was Scarecrow. They became fast friends and Snark became more open. First he would just make a sarcastic comment every now and then, I think it was his way of getting himself known. Then it just became who he was.

"Well, I like the new Snark," he said. "Even if I never met the old one."

"Good. You would've liked the old Reaper squad too. Back then we were all about your age and in way over our heads. Remind me to tell you about that time with the Sledgehammer."

"Or the tank?" he suggested.

"Maybe later," I said. I liked telling that story, and when I told it I tried to make it as memorable as possible so I just kept teasing and teasing until one day I finally told it with some help from Pavel or Bee. Bee in particular made for a great companion storyteller.

"Some other time then," Crow said regretfully. "One more question."

"Yeah?"

"Why do you call him Bee?"

I smiled and laughed a little bit. "Back in the day he came in with a battered and damaged armor. He had been through a bunch, but the most noticeable thing about it was the fresh yellow paint that covered most of it. Took to calling him Bumblebee just because it doesn't sound as good as Bee. Eventually we just shortened it for convenience. I still call him Bumblebee sometimes."

"Gotta love custom armor," Crow said.

I looked him over. He was wearing a regular undersuit with the twist of it being colored in standard UNSC Army camouflage pattern. Covering his lower legs he had the armored knee-high plated boots that Army Rangers and Airborne used, but had avoided full thigh armor in place of lighter plates that only covered his front and sides. On his upper body Crow had a relatively tight vest with a crotch protector. Over that he had the ODST belt-like armor that protected your abdomen and a Soldier chest piece shipped straight from the Damascus Testing Facility in Chi Cheti IV. But that wasn't all; he also had some light forearm armor on that also covered the back of his hand and a small shoulder piece on his right arm. His left arm had similar coverings with the exception that they were considerably bigger and thicker. That meant additional protection on his exposed side whenever he was firing at the enemy. He topped it all off with an Airborne Assault helmet. All in all Crow's armor configuration was much like those of the rest of the team, with variation in chest pieces and leg and arm covers.

"God bless custom armor indeed," I agreed, thinking of my own state-of-the-art armor and how it had saved me countless times.

What I was wearing was at its core ODST armor. The UA/Multi Threat shoulder pieces that I had worn for so long had long since become useless and had been replaced by Harvest-Era pauldrons. The left one was larger than the right one and they both had the tendency to not absorb plasma heat properly, but they were incredibly effective against solid projectiles and also looked pretty good. My boots were a lighter and slimmer version of the standard ODST armored boots that the instructive claimed were even more effective at stopping projectiles and dispersing heat. My helmet was still the one I had ordered a few years ago. It still had its black visor, but I had replaced some of the plating with more modern armor and added a CNM at the behest of Captain Flatt. While the little cylinder looked awkward on the side of my helmet, it certainly did wonders for communications and keeping track of everybody.

Yeah, gotta love custom armor.

"Get some sleep," I ordered Crow. "We're going to be under attack and fighting for our lives in about twenty minutes."

"Yes, sir. Shouldn't I stay awake then, sir?"

"You haven't slept since we heard the alarms back in the _Camerone_, have you?"

"Negative, El-tee."

"Then get your fifteen minute nap time," I told him. "That's an order."

"Yes, sir," Crow said, saluting sharply and moving back towards the store.

That left me all to my lonesome for precisely seventeen and a half minutes. By the time those minutes had passed I had already reloaded my magazines and made sure that my BR55HB was clean and serviceable. My pistol also received a quick check before being put back into its holster and I checked the edge on all three of my knives.

"Expecting trouble?" Schitzo asked me.

"Are you an idiot?" I asked back.

"I am you," he said simply. "You just don't want to admit it."

"Sir," Snark interrupted. "I'm seeing what one would consider hostile movements."

I nodded to myself. "Thanks, Snark. Who's leading them?"

"I haven't seen any elites yet," he replied. "Mostly grunts and jackals, but there was a hunter pair somewhere."

"Ok, the tank can handle those, get back here."

"Yes, sir."

I looked around at the still-sleeping men and the few that had remained awake to stand guard on the wall of cars. A few of them would be dead by the time all this was over, and that was if we got support. I just hoped that all my men would make it through this.

"Wake up everybody!" I shouted, making sure to broadcast my voice to every UNSC helmet in the area. "The Covenant decided to get his thumb off his ass and is coming to get us. Battle stations everyone!"

The squad leaders took over from there. Pavel woke up in an uproar and started ordering everyone about, making sure that the men remembered to move all the fresh Molotov cocktails close to the frontlines while keeping them away from the enemy's line of fire. My half of Reaper squad fell in behind me in a quasi-straight line and Mata's half formed up next to me. Bee handed me two beer bottles full of flammable engine oil.

I examined them and groaned. "Goddamit Andrea!"

"What?" she asked through the helmet. "What?!"

"Didn't I tell you to tape the rags to the bottom of the bottle?"

"You did?"

"It lets you grab the bottle by the neck," Bee explained. "Longer throwing reach."

"I know that!" Andy exclaimed. "I did like you said!"

I turned around and saw that indeed some of the cocktails had the rags taped to the bottom, but some others had it tied and taped around the neck of the bottles.

"Ouch, someone told on you, Lady," Pitcher chided.

"I–" she began.

"You what?" Pavel asked her.

"I'm sorry," she finished through clenched teeth.

"Damn right you are," Pavel added. "As soon as you're able to limp on that bad leg of yours you'll get right over here and take over waterboy duty."

"Understood," Lady said. "It won't happen again."

She was a stubborn one. I have no doubt that Andy explained very calmly and carefully why the rags should go on the top and not on the bottom, but Lady had been set in her ways and kept on doing it like she had started doing it. Then Andy decided to avoid a fight and just shrugged it off. Natasha had an attitude problem and needed to be fixed. Two years hadn't beaten it out of her, but maybe if she got a couple other times she'd finally grow some humility. Even if it was only around Team-7.

"Coming through!" Snark shouted, jumping over one of the shorter cars. He stumbled and used the large rifle he was carrying for support before he regained his balance. "Two or three companies. Grunts, jackals, and a hunter pair."

I looked around. There was about seventy of us here, barely a full company. Pound for pound the UNSC infantry was worth twice or three times as much as the Covenant's. Unfortunately, the Covenant races were usually much heavier. And there were just so many of them…

"Do we fire first, sir?" one of the Army sergeants asked me.

"Whoever hits first hits hardest, right?" I asked him. Only a second later did I imagine an old fashion musket battle, where both lines waited until the last possible second to fire their weapons. Grass would've pointed it out. "Wait until they are within one hundred meters. Then we fire."

"Yes, sir." The seventy men under my command replied.

"Tanks, shells only on the hunters," the tanker in charge said. "We'll stick to machine gun for the little ones."

"Good," I said. It was the last thing I said before the Covenant were within firing range.

Our opening barrage might've cut their numbers by a third, but they returned fire equally quickly. These grunts we were facing were nicely trained and the jackals providing support went a long way.

"Behind the Chevy!"

"I see them, I see them!"

"I said behind the car, you idiot, not in front of it!"

I ducked back behind cover as a pair of sharpshooters zeroed in on my position.

"Watch the shields, watch the shields!"

"They're closing in on the bus!"

"Don't let them get within grenade range!" I ordered.

It was a little bit too late. Grunts had surprisingly strong throwing arms when it came down to it, and three blue orbs of plasma were lobbed in our direction. The first one landed pretty short of our barrier, but the next two hit the undercarriage of one of the cars and bounced back down.

"Move!" Caboose shouted.

He jumped out of the way before the car was engulfed in a blue explosion that left me blinking wildly. Most of the vehicle was burned away, leaving only a burnt skeleton of a car that would easily be toppled over if even a single grunt got to it.

"Cover the gap!" Pavel shouted.

"Somebody check the wounded!"

"Hunter!"

"That's my cue," the tanker said.

His turret whirred and aimed at the hunter before firing. The shell hit the massive colony of worms right in the chest. The subsequent explosion tore it completely apart, leaving two smoking legs standing in place. Its bond brother roared savagely, sending waves that reverberated all throughout my body. It leaped clean over the bus and landed on top of a wounded grunt, splattering it completely. The tanker fired a second time, this time hitting the hunter in the left shoulder, tearing half its body off and killing it.

The Covenant advance slackened when they saw that, and the grunts fell back long enough to for us to pull out Caboose from the wreckage. He seemed to be fine save for a couple of minor burns. The car had taken the burnt of the explosion.

"Payat, check him," I ordered our able-bodied medic. "I want suppressing fire, don't let them move up."

Dotsenko and Ramirez propped their SAWs on the hoods of the cars and started firing long, sustained bursts. A few grunts and jackals fell prey to their fire, but mostly they just fell back behind the abandoned cars and buses. Already they had begun setting up barriers and barricades. It was strange to think that those defenses were well within the range of our tanks, but we were low on ammunition and I didn't want them to waste any of it.

"I have three Phantoms moving up!" Preacher called.

"Don't shoot at them unless they hover," I ordered the tankers. "Tank, Mata, how are you on rockets?"

"Still good," Tank said.

"Down to my last box," Sergeant Mata informed me.

"Target the lead Phantom," I ordered. "Aim for the engines."

The Phantoms bypassed our position, strafing us as they came. As soon as the first one had gone right over us Mata and Tank fired at the rear engines of the lead Phantom. Both their rockets hit the same engine at nearly the same time. The Phantom started strafing towards the abyss before its pilot jerked the controls violently and slammed it into the cliff walls, where kept on going. I watched with interest as the dropship slammed repeatedly into the wall before regaining some degree of stability. The moment Tank and Mata saw that they fired an additional missile each, hitting the Phantom's other engines and bringing it down on the highway. The Phantom crashed on the highway. The sudden increase in weight made the supports groan, but the highway held. I would really have to compliment the engineers on their work, even if their engineering actually worked against us.

"I can't believe that the highway is still standing," Polly said.

"At least the Phantom's blocking the road," Miranda said.

Phantom or no Phantom we were now about to be attacked from both sides. It was fortunate that we weren't being attacked on all sides and even more fortunate that the highway was only four lanes wide, otherwise the covvies would've been able to move a lot more personnel at us.

The other two Phantoms dropped their troops and the Covenant attack resumed, this time with them hitting us on both sides. The covvies sent waves of infantry at us, trying to get us to expose ourselves so that their sharpshooters would take us out. One Army soldier was killed that way and a couple others were wounded before I directed Snark, Miri, and Preacher to handle the jackals. As long as they were kept busy then we would be able to hold back the grunts and jackals moving towards us.

I cursed when a carbine round ricocheted off the car I was using for cover and grazed my helmet.

"That was close," I muttered after taking a deep breath.

"I'm seeing elite troops," Snark said. "A whole lot of them."

"You know the drill," I told him.

"Yes, sir."

It was quite obvious that the presence of the elites greatly helped the enemy morale. Soon we were being fired upon a lot more frequently and both grunts and jackals were leaving cover more often in order to get some good shots at us. The elites soon started running towards us, a few of them even drew energy swords. I shook my head at that. They were obviously delusional if they thought that four of them would kill all seventy of us.

Snark took out the first three with dead-accurate headshots while the fourth one was brought down by combined fire. The rest of the elites without swords suddenly realized that we weren't just going to let them vault over our barricade and took cover.

"They're setting up plasma cannons!"

"Don't let them get to the Chevy!"

"Goddamit Sasha! I said _behind_ the truck!"

I cursed as more plasma fire rained down on my position. "Snark, what's the distance?"

"Between you and them? About sixty yards."

I nodded. "Longworth, get me the Molotovs."

"Sir, sixty yards is a pretty long way," he replied, nevertheless handing me the two bottles.

"I wouldn't worry about that," I told him.

"The El-tee's got a pretty good throwing arm," Bee said. "Watch."

"Suppressing fire!" I ordered.

The gunfire increased exponentially as everybody started firing blindly in the direction of the Covenant. I stood up and threw the first Molotov cocktail towards a relatively intact SUV. Even as my first cocktail made its way I saw an elite pop from cover to return fire. I smiled and threw the second cocktail at it as fast as my considerably enhanced muscles allowed me to.

I ducked behind cover and smiled when I heard the sounds of pain and suffering coming from a hingehead.

"Nice throw," Polly complimented. "Right in the face too."

"I aim to please," I told him.

Despite my incredibly brave and valiant efforts, the oil in the cocktails was consumed and the Covenant began attacking with their full strength once again. They started gaining some ground and throwing up the occasional deployable cover. It was amazing how just a few elites could make everything that much harder.

"Sir, should I blow it?" Polly asked. "I have the detonator right here."

"No," I said. "If we keep holding the line they'll send a Daemon after us."

"And that is good, how?" Pavel asked.

"We can bring it down, otherwise they'd just stop before the gap and snipe at us from there," I said.

"That's one hell of a risk we're taking, Frank," Pavel said. "We can draw a Daemon if you tell the tankers to fire more."

"That's true, sir," one of them said. "Daemon drivers are extremely competitive."

I sighed. "Find a priority target and blow it up," I ordered.

Before I was even done talking one of the tankers fired at the bus. The bus was torn in half and one section was thrown over the edge of the highway and down the cliff. I didn't see the results firsthand, but one could assume that the anti-personnel explosive had turned the bus into a big shrapnel grenade that in turn shredded through anything within range.

"Well that was certainly a big explosion," Pitcher noted. "Nice going."

"Now it's a waiting game," I sighed. "Oh well."

The battle stagnated slightly after that. The bus had been the biggest piece of cover that the Covenant had and now it was gone. A few deployable covers were close enough that we had to keep firing at them to discourage any attempts to move forward. On the other side of our barrier the Phantom proved to be an effective funnel and prevented the Covenant infantry from moving past it. That left us with a whole shitload of aliens on the other side. So far they weren't mobilizing their Wraiths, but the moment they did they would have a definitive advantage. We could still fall back into the station, the cliff walls around it were too steep for effective mortar fire, but the highway itself would be lost.

"Why aren't they bringing their mortars?" Caboose growled next to me. "Something's off."

"Could be they don't have any Wraiths close by," I told him. "Don't panic just yet."

"Did you hear that?" Caboose asked suddenly, looking up.

"Time to panic," I said. "Incoming!"

A plasma mortar shell fell directly in front of a car making our barrier. The car flew backwards, nicking one of the soldiers. Everybody else started moving away from the highway and falling back into the station as another pair of blue orbs rose up in the dawning sky. I quickly calculated where they would fall and decided that I was relatively safe. I ran towards the soldier that the car had hit and lifted her unconscious body from the highway. Her arm seemed to be dislocated and maybe broken in a couple of places, but she appeared to be alive.

"Sir, watch out!"

I increased my speed and stumbled when one of the mortars detonated a few meters behind me. I almost fell face-first, but Marv caught both of us before that happened.

"Can you see the Wraith?" I asked the tanker.

"Negative, sir!"

"What about you?" I asked the other Scorpion driver.

"No, but I've pinpointed its location. It's fifteen hundred meters away, maybe a little bit more. It's right behind a curve, the cliff won't let me hit it."

"Ah shit," I grunted, passing the wounded soldier to Marv. "Handle the enemy infantry," I said. "I've got a plan."

"Is that my cue?" Bee asked.

"That it is," I told him. "Get Mata's rocket launcher and come here ASAP."

Bee switched his Spartan Laser for a SPANKr and ran towards my position. He tossed me the rocket box and moved to the edge of the wall protecting us in order to see if he could spot the Wraith. While he did that I removed the two rockets from the pack and unscrewed the cap off them. They had three different firing modes: the traditional vehicle lock-on, no lock-on, and location lock-on. That last mode was a relic of the past, it was supposed to fly up and then straight down in order to hit a tank in the top of the turret, where the armor was weakest.

I set both rockets to that last mode and twisted the caps back on.

"Ready!" I told Bee. "Did you get it?"

"Yeah," he replied. "I'm going to nail this fuck."

"Just be quick about it," I told him, placing the rockets back into the box and throwing it to him. "If they cross the car wall."

"I know, I know," he said, loading his rocket launcher. "I got it. Firing."

He fired the two missiles in quick succession. I couldn't help but blink slightly as they suddenly flew straight upward after having gone a couple of meters. They climbed and climbed until they were right above the Wraith's position. From there they both immediately fell into a steep dive, disappearing behind the cliff wall.

The two explosions were followed by a complete cease of mortar fire.

"I don't know if I killed it," Bee said. "Could be I just scared the driver."

"It'll have to do," I told him. "Everybody back to defensive positions!"

My men and the soldiers rushed back to defend our wall before the covvies tried to overwhelm us again. This time we were barely in time, and Serge and Caboose had to run around with their shotguns to blast elites and grunts back to where they came from. Despite our success the elites managed to set up their own line less than forty meters away from our own defensive line.

"Shit, this is bad," Payat complained.

"Did I give you permission to bitch?" I asked him.

"Sorry, sir," he quickly apologized. "In a hospital I would have an entire department reporting to me," he muttered after that.

"Sir!" the Army sergeant said. "We can't hold out much longer like this!"

"Hand me your radio!" I ordered.

Having favors owed to you was all good and well, but owing someone a favor wasn't terribly bad if it meant you got to live another day.

"_Camerone_ come in," I spoke into the radio. "Bolivar do you copy?"

"I copy," the AI came in. "The situation has stabilized somewhat her in orbit."

"By stabilized you mean something bad, don't you?"

"Yes, I do," Bolivar confirmed, chuckling. "We're in trouble."

"No, _we're _in trouble," I corrected. "Bolivar, I need you to get someone here to help ASAP. If we don't get help soon we'll be overwhelmed before the 61st shows up."

"There's not much I can do, Lieutenant. The air space in the area is completely under Covenant control."

"Shit," I cursed. "Are there any available AAG teams nearby? We kicked Team-4's ass in New Year. If they drop here we can call it even."

"Most AAG teams are doing decapitation strikes or in reserve right now," he told me. "Team-21 is the closest to you, but their situation is just as bad and I don't think you could call two hundred kilometers close."

I banged the ground with my fist and bit down a curse. "Anything you can do, Bolivar. Please. Hell, if you get us out of this mess we'll help fight the Covenant. All I need is to get out of this goddamned death trap."

"It's a defensible death-trap from what I can see," Bolivar said. "But I agree, you can't hold out much longer, especially if you factor in the ammunition levels you are currently at."

"Yeah, thanks." I sighed. "Is there anything you can do?"

"I'm working on something," Bolivar told me. "Don't get your hopes up."

"I never do," I said. "Tell me when you work something out."

"Will do, Lieutenant. Good luck."

"Thanks, Castillo out."

I took a deep breath. If we wanted to survive we would need to gain some ground, or at least pretend to be attempting that.

"Don't skimp on the Molotovs!" I shouted. "Use them!"

Immediately after that some ten or eleven cocktails were lobbed into the wall of deployable covers that the Covenant had set up. The flames couldn't go through it, but some of the oil did sneak through, lighting up a few aliens on fire.

"Marv, Longworth, Serge, get over here!" I ordered. "You see those two cars? The ones that crashed together? We're going to get that position."

"Are you sure that's a good idea, sir?" Longworth asked.

"I'm with him on this one, El-tee," Marv said. It's a helluva risk."

"Serge, what do you think?" I asked the Frenchman.

"Poutain toujours avec nous," he said.

"See? He doesn't mind," I said. "Pavel, suppressing fire!"

Pavel grunted as he lifted his machine gun. "Don't die."

"If anyone is going to die," I said. "It ain't gonna be me."

"Great," Longworth said.

"Go!" I ordered, vaulting over the cars. "Move!"

Serge and Marv followed me, while Longworth took off while we covered for him. He slid into cover and the rest of us started running just as our Molotov cocktails started fading. Marv and Serge fell into cover just as a pair of sharpshooters zeroed in on me. I jumped forward and slammed into the ground. My shoulder was sore, something had hit me.

"Grenades, use your grenades!" I shouted.

Marv and Longworth tossed two frags each, but Serge waited for them to explode before firing his shotgun at the stunned survivors.

I smiled. From this position we had an interesting angle on the covvie soldiers. We didn't exactly have a flanking angle on them, but it was close enough that they'd stop trying to move forward until they had dealt with us. That meant that the four of us were now the sole focus of the Covenant forces.

No wonder I brought my three best fighters with me.

"Snark, Preacher, I want dedicated support for us," I ordered my sharpshooters. "Miranda, start targeting enemy leadership. Pavel–"

"I got you, Frank," he said.

I started firing at everything that moved in front of me. The Covenant got angry and started trying to take this position by force, but they couldn't come from our side or they'd fall prey to machine gun fire and they couldn't really come head on because this pile of cars was protected by four of humanity's best shots. In addition to that we had two tanks firing into their ranks whenever too many of them got together.

"I see a Daemon," Miri informed rather calmly.

"Polly, heads up," I informed the man. "As soon as the tank is over your charges you blow it up."

"Yes, sir."

A plasma shell flew past me, tearing the roof of one of the cars and hitting one of the Scorpions. The tank shook but returned fire at the Daemon, presumably hitting it. I cursed and fired into an elite's chest, depleting its shields and letting Marv finish it off.

"We're not good for much longer," Longworth muttered.

"We've angered them," I said. "They're throwing themselves into the fire."

"That fire is a little bit too close for comfort," Marv said. "Sir, they will encircle us."

"Daemon in range!" Polly shouted. "Detonating!"

The blast was surprisingly anticlimactic. The explosion was loud and everything, but the section of highway fell with surprisingly little ceremony. The metal groaned slightly and then a very large section of the highway just fell down, taking with it a Daemon tank and a dozen infantry soldiers.

"Huh," I said. "We could've done that earlier."

We finished off the rest of the Covenant soldiers on this side of the gap with some effort before the rest of them began closing the gap with a pair of metal bridges carried by Phantom dropships.

"Well that was all for nothing then," Longworth complained.

"It bought is some time," I told him. "Fall back to the defensive line. This is going to suck."

Twenty minutes later half of my team was wounded and about a third of the Army men were dead. In addition to Andy and Lady several of my men had taken hits. Preacher, Ramirez, Bee, and Crow were unconscious, with that last one in critical condition. Pavel, Caboose, and Marv had taken minor hits but were still in fighting shape while Miranda was clutching at a wound in her left leg, stifling cries of pain.

"Sir, get back here!" Tank shouted. "Lieutenant!"

One of the tanks blew up when I looked up, being hit by what appeared to be fuel rod cannons. A piece of shrapnel flew at the head of the soldier I was tending to, putting him out of his misery. I punched the ground and ran towards the tank, jumping on top of the hatch. The driver was crying out, trying to extinguish the flames that were consuming him.

I reached inside the compartment and yanked him out, unceremoniously throwing him down to the ground, where he started rolling and flapping at his arms before he took off his shirt and helmet, both of which were on fire.

"Get him some armor!" I ordered loudly, clutching my side. "Into the store!"

Already twenty-something soldiers were crammed into the shop, moving the various shelves to cover the windows. A few of my men were going into the back and climbing up the roof, while the Scorpion driver rolled his tank backwards and placed it next to the store.

"This is it!" I shouted. "Don't let them get close or bring fuel rods to bear! Get the wounded in the back!"

There were cries of pain and curses all around me, but everybody steadied themselves for what was to come. The Covenant would bring everything they had on us, trying to take as many of us out as possible in the initial barrage.

"Come on, come on, come on," Polly muttered next to me. "What's taking them so long?"

"They're coming," I said. "Just building up their numbers."

True enough. The covvies somehow managed to get two Shadow troop transports over the bridge and placed them one in front of the other. Our Scorpion driver blew them both up, but the transports remained there, forming a neat little line that would provide cover to all those that were about to come.

"Lieutenant, do you copy?" Bolivar came in. "Castillo?"

"I copy," I said. "Seems like you're a little bit too late."

The AI actually chuckled. "I don't think that is any way to thank me."

Before I could ask what he meant I heard the familiar sound of HEV slamming into the surface. I looked out the window and saw five pods standing right in front of the two destroyed Shadows. They opened and transparent shapes came out. It was hard, even for my enhanced eyes, to keep track of the figures as they moved, firing at the Covenant troops. Within a minute they had neutralized every last alien near the station and then began moving out.

Five Helljumpers would've helped, but not much.

_He didn't…_

"Lieutenant Castillo?" a voice came in on my helmet. "Somebody up there is looking out for you and your team."

"Thanks for the assist," I said, moving towards the door. "Is it clear?"

"Clear enough," the voice replied. There was still gunfire going on.

I opened the door and walked out, with the few of my men that weren't wounded following me with their weapons up.

I spotted a gelatinous shape in front and stopped, gesturing for my men to lower their weapons.

An armored shape materialized in front of me, carrying an MA5K rifle across its chest and sporting a helmet that consisted almost entirely of a golden visor. The rest of its armor looked similar to what I had seen the Spartans wear. I frowned slightly until I remembered where I had seen this armor before. Back in New Constantinople, when I came across Carter for the first time.

"Jonah-G012," the Spartan-III said. "Pleasure."

Snark guffawed. "I guess the Brass does give a shit."

* * *

><p><em>Thanks for reading this chapter.<em>

_Readers, this is probably the last chapter that I'll post for about a month. I am currently living in my grandparents' house while the big move is all done. I am also going to summer camp as a slave (I get paid in community service hours) for three weeks, which means that I don't get to do any writing. I might do a bunch of brainstorming, but that's about it. I made sure to get a nice chapter good and ready for when I get back. I'll post it as soon as I have boots on the ground in the states. Then I'll see about going to the football tryouts in my new school. I'll try to kick some ass, but I'll probably get mine kicked._

_Anyways, this is the first chapter that features Team Falcata of Gamma Company. Look Falcata in your preferred search engine, it's a bloody nice sword. I even bought me one when I was in Toledo. My brother got himself a katana. I mean, who the hell goes to Spain to buy a (replica) of a Japanese sword? He does, that's chapter also featured some minor injuries and some painful injuries. The two tankers didn't get names because I was planning on killing both of them, but I decided that it would be kind of mean to kill both of them for their awesomeness. Reach is just getting started boys and girls, I fear that it might not be nearly as long as Paris IV was, but this battle lasted for barely a month when Paris IV stretched out for the better part of a year. To counter that I'll make sure to make every chapter as long and epic as possible. There'll be stunts, there'll be awesomeness, and there'll be blood. You'll enjoy this and I'll try to do it justice._

_In case you were wondering. Team Falcata is: Jonah-G012 (leader), Miranda-G192 (electronics and explosives), Alex-G301 (sniper), Eduardo-G271 (close-quarters), and Kevin-G111 (machine guns and heavy weapons)._

_I hope you enjoyed the read._

_Stay strong._

_-casquis_


	191. Hegy

Chapter CXCI: Hegy

**August 14, 2552 (UNSC Calendar)/**

**Szurdok Ridge, Viery Territory, Reach, Epsilon Eridani System**

* * *

><p><em>"If we came up with the term 'shock and awe', it was the Covenant who redefined it."<em>

* * *

><p>The sun had reached its summit only recently. Epsilon Eridani shone brightly overhead, but the smoke and dust that the small-scale glassing had raised dulled its shine. The daytime didn't make it any easier on the covvies however, the Spartan-IIIs and their camouflaged armor was every bit as effective during the daytime as during the nighttime. I dare say that the cloaking mechanism on the armor was even better than whatever the Covenant used.<p>

That's the magic of reverse-engineering for you.

"Frank," Pavel said, sneaking up behind me.

"Yeah, yeah," I muttered. "I got you."

"Who has the radio?"

"Longworth was giving it a work over," I told him. "He told me that he might get a direct line to Esztergom."

"Longworth? Is there anything he can't do?"

"Not much, really," I said, chuckling. "Beat me in hand-to-hand."

"Beat_ me_ in hand-to-hand," Pavel said.

I nodded. Pavel's methods were brutal and unrefined, but he could dish out a pounding like few others. Most of his skills came from firsthand experience in close quarters combat with elites, jackals, and sometimes even brutes. He compensated for his lack of natural talent with incredibly powerful punches. Trust me, you haven't seen a real punch until you see Pavel Klaus snap a grunt's neck with a left hook to the jaw.

"Longworth, get over here," I said, kicking a grunt's burnt corpse. "Quickly."

"Yes, sir, right away, sir."

The man jogged up to our position and handed me the radio pack. I placed it on the dead grunt's chest and looked at him expectantly.

"I did the best I could to increase the transmitting power," Longworth said. "This thing should get a clear signal to Esztergom, but with all the interference…"  
>"Do I just dial a number?" Pavel asked him, grabbing the phone from my hands.<p>

"Yes, sir," Longworth said, nodding brightly.

"Don't call me sir," Pavel muttered, dialing his wife's number and taking off his helmet.

I looked at him expectantly and he met my eyes, not saying anything for a couple of seconds.

"Amber?" Pavel asked, practically bursting with joy. "Yeah, yeah, it's me. Are you alright? You alright?"

I smiled when he gave me a quick nod.

"How's Lavanya? And Gunny. Good, good… No, I'm sorry, things aren't too good right now. What have you heard? What?!"

"What?" I asked him.

"They've lost contact with all the planet, but state of emergency hasn't been declared yet."

I cursed. The UNSC and ONI liked keeping things on the down low, but not telling your own citizens that the planet they were living on was under attack was just downright mean.

"Ok, Amber, listen very closely, ok? No, no, no, shut up and listen. Reach is under attack. No, shut up. It's the real deal, love. We've got boots on the ground all over Szurdok Ridge and the area around it. Don't panic, Amber! I need you to listen to me. The warning hasn't come out yet, but it will soon. I want you to pack up one bag for yourself and another one for Lavanya. I also want you to grab the pistol in my bedside drawer. You know how to use it, right? Good."

I cursed again.

"Once you have those two bags I want you to head straight for the space port. It'll probably be closed or all flights will be delayed, but I need you to stay there. The moment the warning comes it'll be the main evacuation area and I want you to be the first one there."

Pavel paused and frowned.

"Leave him enough food to last him a week or three. And leave the window open."

I cursed for the third time. Of course Amber couldn't take her dog with them. Pavel's apartment was on the second floor and Gunny could probably make the jump down if it ran out of food. It was still a pretty long way down for a medium-sized dog, but it was better than starving to death.

"No, no, no. We're going to win this, Amber. I know that because this is Reach, you can't just attack this planet and expect to win. No, no, I don't want you here at all until we've kicked them out of the system. Yes, I promise I'll go check on Gunny as soon as I can. And Amber? Don't tell anybody. No, nobody at all."

I glared at him.

"Fine," he relented. "You can tell Katie, but she cant tell anybody at all. You be sure to let her know that, ok? Good. Love, keep the gun with you at all times. Don't let go of it unless UNSC personnel ask you to leave it. Do you understand? Two bags, one gun. Tell Katie, she'll probably bring her cousin along, but that's it. Amber. I love you. I gotta go, I gotta go, Amber. I love you."

Pavel pulled the phone from his ears and hung up. I sighed and sat down in front of him while Longworth just lunged around awkwardly looking away.

"Longworth," I said.

"Yes, sir?"

"What we just did breaches several protocols, you understand that?"

"Yes, sir."

"It is also morally wrong. Us taking advantage of our seniority in order to make personal calls in the middle of a combat operation isn't exactly a good example."

"Sir?"

"What I'm saying is that you can't tell anybody that we made this call. If anybody asks you why you were working on the radio you say that you were trying to clear through the interference on my orders."

"Yes, sir."

I nodded and clapped him in the shoulder. "Good man… and keep your opinions of this to yourself."

"Yes, sir," Longworth nodded.

"Dismissed."

Longworth walked away a lot faster than he otherwise would have, leaving the radio behind with us. I looked away from him and back to Pavel. My second-in-command was on his knee, looking at the radio in his hand. He had a pondering frown that spoke volumes about what he was going through. After almost a minute he sighed and took a deep breath before looking at me, hanging the radio on the backpack.

"It could've gone worse," he said calmly. "She could've panicked."

"She's a strong woman," I told her. "Katie and Liz have firsthand experience with this kind of crap, they'll be safe together."

"Let's hope they don't need the firsthand experience," Pavel said, grabbing his helmet and putting it on.

"Pavel, she's going to be fine," I assured him. "The whole city is going to be fine. Your wide, your daughter, your dog, and your home are all going to be waiting for you right there. Well, you know what I mean."

"I want Amber on Earth. Did you hear about the ODP web?"

"Yeah," I said. "Heard that there are three hundred defense platforms. I mean, there are only twenty of those here."

"We could sure borrow a pair right now," Pavel grunted.

I stood up and squeezed his shoulder tightly. "It's going to be fine, Pavel."

I left my friend sitting by himself and walked back to the small plateau where we had set up shop. The five Spartans had taken off to do some scouting and were supposed to be back anytime now. Team Falcata had done wonders for us. They didn't have the sheer speed or strength that the other Spartans had, but they moved faster than anybody else and the photo-reactive armor that they had was an extremely useful tool. They'd disappear and kill the aliens while we held their attentions. They were silent about it too, by the time the Covenant noticed that they were under attack from the rear their numbers were down by fifty percent or more.

"Sir," a couple of my men greeted.

"How's Bee doing?" I asked Payat when I saw him.

"A lot better," he said. "He can walk on his own now, but the biofoam needs more time to speed up the healing process. Medical attention would be great, but… well."

"And how's everybody else?"

"Minor injuries mostly," Payat said, scratching the back of his neck. "Crow was hit pretty bad, but it was more messy than dangerous. He won't be walking for at least a couple of days before he's on his feet. If I could give him a transfusion then he'd start feeling better faster."

"And Miranda?"

"She's good," Payat said. "The pain's all gone now, but she'll be limping for a while. A whole chunk of muscle was hurt, but the armor kept her leg from being charred."

"And that's the good news," I smiled. "Thanks Payat."

"No problem, sir. I wish I'd get more appreciation from the men whose lives I'm saving."

"If you wanted appreciation you should've become a doctor."

Payat cringed. "That was a low blow, sir."

I laughed. "Sorry, Payat," I apologized. He had been a doctor before he was drafted, and he had been on the way to becoming a damn fine surgeon. "You're a better combat medic than anybody I've known. And I've known a lot of damn fine medics."

My head immediately flashed back to the first time I had seen Hanna walking the halls of the _Inconvenience_. She had been beautiful back then and in my mind she was still the most beautiful women I had ever known. She had also been an excellent medic, but Payat had been a doctor in a trauma unit and not a lot of stuff could beat that, not even half a decade of combat experience.

"Thank you, El-tee," Payat said, beaming. "I'll be sure to tell them you said that."

I laughed. "Please do. Any word on the Spartans?"

"Sir?" a vaguely familiar voice said.

I twitched and turned around to see an incredibly tall armored figure standing opposite me. It was Eduardo-G271. The only way I managed to recognize him was because he had a Falcata, his team's namesake, strapped across his shoulder. The man was quite a bit taller than I was, but not nearly as tall as Tank was. The IIIs weren't nearly as massive as the IIs were, but they were still big enough to give most men a pause.

"Yes?" I asked. It irked me that the Spartans hadn't given me their ranks. I had gotten my helmet to identify them each by their first name and number as they had given it to me, but saying it out loud felt unprofessional, especially because I didn't know them or anything about them.

"No Covenant activity to report," the Spartan said.

"Did you have to spook me to tell me that?" I asked.

"I apologize, Lieutenant," he said. To his credit, he actually sounded apologetic.

"Damn right you do," I said. "The rest of your team isn't going to magically appear around me in, are they?"

An instant later the four remaining members of Team Falcata simultaneously turned off their cloaking systems and materialized. They weren't exactly around me, but they were forming a semi-circle of sorts.

"Fucking kids," Schitzo muttered.

I shook my head. "A battalion, was it?" I asked them. "Damn fine job we all did."

"No problem," the leader, Jonah-G012 said, taking a small step forward.

A few of my men scoffed at that. They were mostly the ODSTs that harbored some degree of resentment towards the Spartans. I ignored them and looked at the five Spartans. One of the two girls was even slightly shorter than I was. Not by much, mind you, but to my ego it was quite a victory.

"Well then," I said, clapping my hands together. "No sign of the covvies means no more work for us. The 61st is going to be here in a couple of hours, we can hold this ground until they do."

A few of the Spartans looked uncomfortable at the thought of inaction, but ultimately they didn't say anything when Jonah-G012 nodded at me.

"Spread out," he ordered his team. "Keep watch for any enemy movement."

I nodded at the Spartan leader to give the impression that I endorsed his order. I couldn't have a unit working alongside mine where the leader didn't want to follow my orders. I didn't expect to order around the Spartan team, but if my suspicions were correct, these five men were not men. They were kids, and kids could make mistakes. If I sensed that Falcata was about to fuck something up I had to know that they'd cease and desist if I told them to.

I sighed inwardly. Being an officer was a drag, but being a simple first lieutenant in charge of over fifty men was a lot harder than I expected. A unit this size was supposed to be commanded by a captain, at least in theory. My biggest command ever had been twenty men and I was now in command of almost three times as many as I was used to. I had to let go of my instinct to micromanage everything and everyone and let the squad leaders do their thing.

"Two hours and this nightmare will be all over," I murmured, looking at the Spartans as they jogged away from me and started taking defensive positions. "Two hours."

* * *

><p>"Lieutenant Castillo, pleasure to finally meet you," Lieutenant Colonel Andy Smith said. "We've been hearing your name nonstop since yesterday night."<p>

"I'm flattered," I said, shaking his hand. "I see you brought the whole brigade?"

"Not all of it," he chuckled. "The rest of my vehicles are down the hill."

I looked at the four Armadillo IFVs and smiled. The tracked vehicles were full of duffel bags and entrenchment equipment. With the addition of extra armor on the sides and front the machines looked might powerful, particularly the autocannons on the top.

"Well, you certainly made our job a whole lot easier," Colonel Smith said. "I can't believe you wiped the floor with a whole battalion."

"We had some help," I said with a small shrug. "A lot of it."

"Nonetheless," he said. "Thanks a lot."

"Anytime," I replied, smiling. "You have any news? We didn't get many transmissions. Mostly just you guys updating us on our position."

Colonel Smith sighed and crossed his arms over his chest. "It could be going better, you know? We're countering on all fronts, but the Covenant dropped at least a couple of divisions. We'll squash them in time, but there's been some trouble mobilizing our forces, so progress is pretty slow."

"Shit, sir," I grunted with a humorless chuckle. "Looks like we've got our work cut out for us."

"Yeah we do," he agreed, looking up at the sky. Even through the dust and the atmosphere I could make out the little dot that was the Covenant supercarrier. From here it looked about as long as the tip of my finger, but the thing was a shitload of kilometers away and in orbit and I could still see it.

"You know," Smith said, leaning towards me. "I hear that SPECWARCOM is preparing a counter-op."

"Army?" I asked him. "Shouldn't this be more in the Navy's line of work?"

Smith shrugged. "Above my paygrade, El-tee. I just do as I'm told the best I can."

"Uh, Lieutenant?" Lady asked.

"What?"

"The ship."

I looked back up at the supercarrier and frowned, trying to make out something. The Covenant ship was there, but right in the middle of it was a bright black and blue circle that shone brightly even through Reach's atmosphere. I felt my jaw slackening enough that it dropped, leaving me gaping open-mouthed at the two surviving sections of the supercarrier.

"What the hell?" Smith asked to no one in particular.

"It looks like a slipspace rupture," Lady said.

I turned towards her. "How do you know how a slipspace rupture looks like?"

"My yacht has windows," she replied dryly.

"Of course it does," Ramirez muttered loud enough for me to hear.

"So the ship's gone?" Miri asked. She was one of the veterans in Team-7, but from time to time she still reminded me of the fresh-faced timid girl that had first come into my squad some years ago.

"Certainly looks like it," I replied. "Colonel, do you mind getting an open channel, see what's going on?"

"My pleasure," Smith replied with a smile, signaling for one of his men to do just that. "Put it on speaker!"

Several transmissions were coming in. Most of them were cries of near-ecstasy from satellite and space station crews. It quickly became very clear that the enemy ship had been completely obliterated by UNSC forces. I recalled an incident about two years ago. A colony ship en route to New Jerusalem had experienced problems with its slipspace drive. Half the ship just disappeared all of a sudden, leaving no trace.

"A slipspace bomb," I chuckled. _Whoever came up with that is one crazy son of a bitch…_

But despite what we were seeing in orbit, the situation changed. The reports of victory and triumph quickly turned into reports of panic. I heard mention of dozens of enemy ships and listened to the sources of reports began going silent one by one until just half of those remained. I looked up and saw no sign of the massive Covenant fleet that the Navy was speaking about, but the threat was clearly there.

The colonel's face had drained of color and he now looked like someone just died.

In a way, someone had. Seven hundred fifty million souls were hanging by their necks.

* * *

><p>Hegy Valley and Hegy Lake had once been <em>the <em>image that sold Reach as a colonizable world. Valley gently sloped upwards at the sides and the tall green grass extended all the way up to the snow-capped peaks, the tallest in Szurdok Ridge. The lake itself was a beautiful water mirror that reflected the snowy peaks and green slopes. There was an iconic picture that I had seen countless times on the net or on tourism commercials. It was truly one of the most beautiful places in the planet.

And then the Covenant ruined it.

"We can't lose the pass!" I shouted. "If we let them come through they'll flood through the valley and the 12th Light Infantry."

I had twenty men and five Spartans working with me. Lieutenant Commander Smith had sent six Armadillos and an anti-tank platoon to help, he also left a sizeable force down in the valley to help the 12th. The Armadillos had with them ten soldiers each, and the Army troopers were already digging trenches for their 'Dillos and setting up machine gun emplacements.

"How long do we have to hold this pass for?" Pavel asked me quietly.

"Indefinitely," I told him. "If the Covenant take this valley then it's just flat plains until Quezon and Manassas."

"We hold the line, then," Pavel said.

"At whatever the cost," I told him. "Go set up with Dotsenko and Ramirez."

"Yes, sir," Pavel replied, tilting his head at me and pushing my shoulder lightly.

He ran down the slope and towards the dirt road, leaving me standing all by my lonesome. I looked through my scope, trying to see if I could spot anything. We had already used up all the ground-to-ground missiles in order to decimate the Covenant's armored support. I laughed when the little holographic missiles hit the little holographic Wraiths, killing them and the Covenant infantry around them. The Covenant had retaliated with limited airstrikes and some artillery, but we hit them first and eliminated most of their long-range artillery.

We still had several Wraiths and other vehicles to contend with, not to mention the tens of thousands of infantry soldiers ready to come and tear our throats out.

I had terrain advantage, sixty troopers, armored and artillery support, five supersoldiers, and the best twenty goddamned men that anybody could ask for. It could be a lot worse.

It could also be a lot better. I could have air support and a couple of tanks fighting with me. The six Rhino tanks down in the valley had the pass zeroed in and would prove invaluable, but having another six or sixty of those would've been great.

I grunted at the sight of Schitzo laughing at our predicament and slid down the slope and into the wide dirt road. At about twenty meters wide it was big enough that we needed two Armadillos to block it. The slopes on the sides were steep enough that no Covenant vehicle would be able to climb past it, but we still needed to watch out for infantry.

"Hey Lieutenant," Preacher checked in. "They're finally moving up. Snark's got a field master on his crosshairs."

"Nice little golden helmet," Snark said. "Want me to pop him?"

I considered it. "What's the range?"

"One thousand sixty meters and closing."

"Can you guarantee a headshot?" I asked.

"Sir, with all due respect, are you fucking serious?"

I chuckled. "Sorry, Fifteen."

"I'm back to fourteen ranked," Snark said. "I can guarantee a headshot." He fired and waited a second and a half. "See?"

"Haul ass back here," I told him.

"We're on our way," Preacher said.

Four minutes later the loud roaring engine noise of a Mongoose echoed through the mountain pass. I zoomed in on it and saw Preacher driving while Snark sat behind him, facing backwards and with his SRS resting against his leg. He couldn't have looked any calmer.

"Get ready!" I shouted, making my voice as loud as possible. "We see them, we hit them!"

Grunts and jackals were the first ones to show up as per the norm. The jackals formed triangular phalanxes and moved forward at a slow trot while the grunts hid behind them. They moved up about a hundred meters before the lead Armadillo opened up with its heavy autocannon, tearing through the lead covvies like butter. A few grunts with fuel rods appeared behind the shield phalanxes and aimed at the Armadillos, but Snark, Preacher, Miranda, and me had them hitting the ground before they could even get a bead on. I smiled, this was the part of my job that I loved the most, hitting the little guys hard before they realized that we posed a threat. It was amazing how often the elites drained their own resources before coming in themselves. But when they came, that's when shit got real. They hadn't earned their name for no reason.

"Redirecting!"

I liked when everybody stopped screaming and the nerves went down. Combat became this sort of cacophony of noises only interrupted by the occasional shout of warning or someone asking for support fire. It became almost magical. Nobody was panicking, nobody was crying out in pain. Everybody was just calmly killing the Covenant as fast and as effectively as possible.

It was art. It was the art that came before someone decided that the whole canvas was fucking useless and threw a bucket of black paint at it. That part came later, and plenty of panic and screaming came with it.

I tried to ignore the gigantic sections of the supercarrier that were burning through the atmosphere even as we fought. Bolivar had told me that the sections would fall close to our position, but not nearly close enough to be a threat. He told me to keep watch for any spare pieces that might squash my arm, but I think that the AI was joking. Two kilometric-long sections were currently burning themselves up, distracting us even if we tried not to look at them.

"Eyes front!" I shouted, hitting a jackal that had jumped on a foxhole. "Falcata?"

"We're here, sir," Jonah checked in.

"How deep behind their lines are you?"

"Deep enough," the supersoldier replied. "We set charges underneath a couple of Daemon tanks and a Wraith, but we haven't come across any marshals or elites with fancy helmets."

"How much longer can you stay there?"

"About twenty minutes, give or take," he replied. "Our cooling units are starting to wear off."

"Can you blast your way out of there?" I asked.

"Yeah, we'll stay camouflaged, they'll just be able to spot us if they use thermal."

"Ah," I nodded. "Feel up to it?"

"Yes, sir," the Spartan said, mirth coloring his tone. "We'll find someone to kill and make our way back there."

"Good luck, son," I told them. "We can't afford to lose you just yet."

"Maybe later then?" he joked.

"Maybe later," I replied. "Good luck Falcata, over and out."

I left them to their own devices and began sniping at the jackals again. Every now and then an elite popped up here or there, but they were quickly handled. The Armadillos had stopped firing at everything and instead conserved their ammunition for big clusters of Covenant soldiers or Ghosts. Already several burnt out husks were littering the mountain pass, making for great cover.

"Why don't we have a mortar detachment?" Caboose asked.

"They didn't need the target practice?" Snark suggested.

"He's got a point, this is getting ridiculous," Crow grunted. "I have a hole in my belly and I've killed at least ten covvies."

"Don't start calling out your kill scores," Pavel cut in before they began doing just that. "Focus on holding the pass."  
>I understood the frustration. Had we been facing a human force they would've long since given up. They wouldn't have thrown themselves at our guns that way in the first place. The Covenant didn't care if they lost 90% of their assets, they only cared if they won. Already there were some two hundred unmoving Covenant bodies in front of us. We only had a single casualty and it was a carbine shot to the forearm. The soldier that had been hit was patched up and ready to fight again. It was a massacre, and I knew that the longer this first part dragged on the worse the second part would be. More dead grunts only meant more angry elites.<p>

"They're bringing in the squid heads now," Preacher warned. "I've got squads of elites moving up!"

"Remember the rule," Mata said. "White, red, and blue. Strictly in that order."

"Like the French flag," Pitcher said.

"You're fucking with me," Serge muttered.

I raised an eyebrow.

"Huh, got him to talk," Pitcher replied.

"And showed your ignorance as well," Lady said.

"Why the hell would I know what the flag of an Earth nation looks like?" Pitcher defended himself. "I wasn't even born in a country."

"Hey, I've been meaning to ask about that," Ramirez said. "What does your ID card say next to nationality?"

"The name of the station I was born on," the former Army soldier said. "Since it was a permanent settlement it counts as a country."

"Do you elect your own officials or something?" Dotsenko asked.

"Nah, we're under CAA jurisdiction, so they pick out our leaders. It's very much like the military, you know. Plus the AIs are the ones that actually run anything."

"It must've sucked," Lady said. "Watch your right."

"Nah, it was good," Pitcher told her. "How many kids get to say that they had recess in a zero-gee environment? It was fun."

"Well, I'm sure that Lady's papa bought her a zero gravity room when she asked for one," Payat chimed in. "Wouldn't want her little princess to pout."

"Fuck you," Lady told him.

"Wait, I want to know," Crow said. "Did you have a zero gee room in your house?"

"What is it to you?" she snapped back.

"Oh my God, you totally did," Crow laughed. "Wow. You're just so annoyingly rich."

"Get over it," she scoffed. "And stick to sewing people up."

"Will do, Lady," Payat said while Crow and Pitcher chuckled.

I looked at Miranda, who was sharpshooting next to me, and she depolarized her helmet. On her face was an incredulous smile.

_Zero gee room? _she mouthed silently. _Really?_

I smiled back and shook my head, gesturing for her to pay attention to the pass ahead.

"Sir, they're moving up their tanks," Preacher warned.

I sighed. The Daemon tanks wouldn't be able to hit our Armadillos unless they had a direct line of sight, and by the time they had that they would be exposed to the rocket batteries and our SPANKr-toting soldiers. The Wraiths, on the other hand, would be able to bombard us from below the slope of the mountain. That's what we had our Rhinos for, but we would need to use spotters to direct their fire. Falcata was probably tagging every Wraith there, but drones would've been more effective.

"Lieutenant, we're easing off the pressure," Jonah said.

"Thanks, kid," I said. "Try not to get killed out there."

The Spartan chuckled. "Will do, sir. Over and out."

I couldn't hear anything yet, but I knew that the Spartans were causing mayhem down there. And sure enough, a couple of seconds later I heard the explosions that signaled a couple of Wraiths blowing up. A few minutes later I heard more explosions, this time closer to our position. I knew that Team Falcata was moving closer and closer to where we were, making a shitload of mayhem as they went. I even felt the pressure slacken up somewhat as the covvies realized that their rear was being completely and utterly violated.

"Yay, rape puns," Schitzo laughed, firing a massive chaingun and hitting absolutely nothing.

"Lieutenant, we're coming up on your left side," Jonah-G012 warned.

"Gotcha, kid," I said. "We'll stop firing."

"What was that, sir?" Miranda asked.

"Falcata's coming up on the front and to our left," I said. "Focus on the right."

"Yes, sir," she said.

"Team-7, focus on the center and right," I ordered. "We've got friendlies coming up."

The word spread and I saw the Armadillos shift their fire to the right. A lot of covvies fell under the increased pressure, but the advance on the left started gaining momentum. The covvies began dropping shields and gaining a decent foothold before the invisible IIIs came up behind them and completely and utterly slaughtered the fifty or so aliens attacking us in a span of fifteen seconds. They left me wide-eyed and impressed. I couldn't really see anything other than muzzle-flashes coming from nowhere, but I did see a falcata sword materialize out of nowhere and lope off a couple of heads.

That was really a sight to behold. A sword being carried by an invisible warrior chopping of the heads of eight-foot tall elites was actually something funny.

"Damn," I muttered.

"What do they feed them?" Miranda asked me.

"How the hell would I know," I told her. I didn't even know what they had juiced me up with. "All I know is that it does good."

"Lots of the guys say that they put people like us out of business," she said.

"I wish that was true," I told her.

"Really?" Miranda asked, perplexed. "Why?"

"There aren't nearly enough Spartans out there to put us out of business. If there were, it would mean that we would be winning this war. I mean, look at those five kids. There's only five of them and see what they've achieved."

"Then what about us?" Miranda asked. She didn't sound angry, she just sounded curious. I often failed to remember that she was great to have conversations with.

"If there were more of those around," I said, gesturing to the now-visible Team Falcata as they jogged up towards our lines, "I'm pretty sure we'd be one of them."

"I don't know whether to be flattered or insulted," she said. "I mean, because I am an ODST and everything."

"I'm your superior officer Miranda," I reminded her. "Pretty much everything that comes out of my mouth is a compliment unless I'm not directly insulting you."

"You don't compliment us much, then," she said.

"When did you stop being so shy?" I chuckled.

She chuckled back. "Once I realized I wasn't the worst fighter out here."

I almost choked in an attempt to keep from bursting out in laughter. "Really, who gets the title?"

Miranda shook her head and shrugged slightly. "Calling someone in the team bad would be a pretty long stretch, but the way that Andy keeps getting shot…"

This time I laughed, but it was little more than a chuckle. "She did earn her nickname, I'll tell you that."

"She hates it."

"Why wouldn't she?" I asked her. "Everybody hates their nickname."

"I think it would be cool to have one," she said simply.

I stopped searching for targets and turned my head to look at her. "Really?"

"Well, I've always been just Miri or Miranda. Maybe having a nickname or a call sign would be nice."

"Miranda, you have no idea what you're talking about," I told her. "You're lucky that you managed to finish bootcamp without a nickname and even more lucky that you didn't get one later. People are mean."

"Thanks, sir," she said, sounding more than a little sarcastic.

"Miranda," I warned with a low growl. "Just because we're having a conversation doesn't mean that you're allowed to give me attitude."

"S-sorry," she apologized quickly.

"Now there's the Miri that we all know and love," I said.

"Sir, with all due respect, you're an asshole."

"That I'll admit," I said after laughing slightly. "Come on, focus on the Covenant."

* * *

><p>"They're stopping," I muttered. "They're slowing down their attack."<p>

"Looks like it," Miranda agreed.

"Pavel, how are we?"

"Good," he said. "Minor burns for our men and two casualties for the soldiers. One of those is KIA."

"What about the Armadillos?"

"Down to about sixty percent ammo, I think, but they're having ammunition sent up from the valley."

"Thanks," I said. "How are they doing down below?"

"Frank, I'm your second, not your bitch."

"Fine then, bitch," I said. "I'll fucking call them myself."

"Do your thing," Pavel said.

I sighed and opened up a channel to the major in charge of the valley fortifications. They were supposed to be digging trenches that stretched the whole two miles across the valley and setting up SAM emplacements. I knew that the trenches would be done by now, but I would hate it if Phantoms suddenly started dropping troops behind us.

"Major," I checked in. "Major, do you copy?"

"I copy, El-tee, how's it up there?"

"We fought off the first wave," I told her. "But they'll be sending their armored and whatever air support they have next."

"I agree," the major told me. "Castillo, I have the trenches all set up, but I'm getting some bullshit about logistical issues every time I call up the Brass."

"Sounds like them," I sighed.

"Yeah," she agreed. "Listen, the Rhinos are all set up, we can open up on the Wraiths anytime."

"I don't want to reveal their existence just yet," I said. "How are we on drone support and spotting?"

"Logistical issues."

"Surface-to-air?"

"Logistical issues."

"Ground-to-ground?"

"Logistical–"

"Fucking hell," I cursed. "Is there anything that we do have?"

"You've got your team, the wonder boys, my three-quarters-of-a-battalion, and a shitload of ammunition."

"We could do worse, Major," I told her. "We'll hold the line for you."

"Thanks. I wish I could send more men up there to help."

"We've got Falcata," I said with a small smile. "And if we lose this position we are going to need you to hold the valley for as long as possible."

"I know," she agreed. "I just feel like I'm cutting off my men up there."

"They're fine," I assured her. "Most of them."

"Yeah, I heard. Well, that's that, I guess."

"Yeah."

"I'll let you know as soon as Command sends us equipment. Oh, and it looks like it's about to rain."

I looked up at the sky. It was already nighttime, but the flames that came from the portions of the supercarrier that had crashed down here lit it up something. I had failed to notice the dark clouds that loomed over our heads. It looked like a big ass storm.

"What?" Miranda asked.

"It's going to rain."

"And here I thought it couldn't get any worse," she said.

"Miri, only Snark can pull off that kind of jokes."

"Ok, sir. And our support?"

"Nothing yet," I told her. "Trenches are dug and the Rhinos are ready, but that's about it."

"Yay."

"Yay indeed."

Overhead, the dark clouds ripped with thunder.

* * *

><p>"Fall back!" I ordered. "Dotsenko, get out of there!"<p>

"All right! Cover me!"

"Covering fire!" I shouted. "Fire, fire, fire!"

I emptied my magazine at the elites rushing his position. Even with the help of the flaming Armadillo the rain obscured my vision. I hit one of the elites, sending it backwards, where it disappeared from my sight. Plasma and tracer rounds streaked through the rain while Dotsenko made a run for it. Already we had lost two of our Armadillos and ten more men.

"Move your ass!" Ramirez shouted at his friend. "Hurry!"

Dotsenko slipped in the mud, narrowly avoiding being hit by what looked like a needle rifle. I searched for the offender, but one of the Spartans hit the alien first.

"Move!" I shouted.

Dotsenko got back on his feet and struggled to make his way through the mud that was reaching all the way to his ankles now. He slipped a couple of times but managed to stay up on his feet. Right before he got to the Armadillo's trench a blue plasma shot collided with his lower torso. He stumbled some more but managed to slide down into the trench relatively well.

"I'm alright!" he shouted. "I'm alright."

"Ramirez, check him," I ordered, observing the situation develop through my scope.

"Looks like second-degree burns," Ramirez said. "Burned straight through the armor but that's about it."

"Patch him up and get back to business."

The Armadillos were firing constantly, usually just stopping when one of the camouflaged members of Falcata was crossing their sector. The Spartans were a wonderful asset, especially in this lighting. They could make their way behind the elites and jackals and start slicing necks before anyone knew better. It was putting the elites on edge, but they had gotten better at it lately. Apparently some of them had thermal vision and were expressly searching for the IIIs. The Spartans had adapted by turning off their camouflage and not activating it until the very last moment.

"Sir, I'm seeing what looks like two Shadows moving up," Alex-G301 told me. Even with the robotic sound that her voice had I could tell that she was a young kid. They were all young kids, but you wouldn't know it by looking at them.

"You think?" I asked, frustrated.

"I'm pretty sure, El-tee."

"Can you hit the drivers?"

"Under normal circumstances…"

"Ok, so that's a no," I sighed. "Ok, just tag them for us and I'll let Bee handle them."

"Yes, sir," the Spartan said.

"Bee, you catch that?" I asked him.

"Yeah, sir," he groaned. "I got that."

"I'm going to need you to move fast after you fire, ok? You're going to have plenty of shit headed your way after you fire."

"Yes, sir," Bee said.

One of the Shadows opened up with its turret, hitting one of the Armadillos. The Armadillo returned fire, hitting the vehicle with its heavy autocannon. The Shadow was ripped to pieces in a matter of a few seconds, but the Armadillo's armor took some punishment as well. It started steaming up. Whenever that happened it usually meant that the occupants were in trouble.

"I got the second one," Bee said.

The night was lit up by the bright red laser. For a fraction of a second I saw Bee's silhouette outlined against the darkness and the Shadow being torn through by the laser. The Covenant vehicle exploded, sending pieces of itself flying in every direction and stunning the troops that it had dropped off. I got two grunts before the light from the explosion faded.

"Shifting fire right," Pavel warned. "Any of you boys out there?"

"Negative," Jonah said. "Fire away."

Pavel cut what looked like two jackals, but I couldn't be sure with all the rain.

"Ok, we're going to pull out the Armadillo," I decided. "Move back to the next trench."

"Yes, sir," the driver said. "On your command."

"Get the hell out of there," I said. Already we had taken out several grunts and elites with fuel rods and a couple had even hit the 'Dillo. The driver hit the reverse and the Armadillo moved about ten feet before its tracks slipped in the mud.

"What the hell?" I asked.

"Ah shit," the driver said. "One of the fuel rods must've damaged the treads."

"Ah shit," I echoed. "Can you move?"

"I don't think so," he replied. "Shit, sir. We're right in the middle of their killzone."

"Open the rear hatch," I told him. "The moment it gets too hot we'll cover your asses and you get over here."

"How about I get my men out of here and I man the guns?"

"Sounds good," I said. "Get them moving and we'll cover them."

"Thank you, lieutenant."

"No problem," I replied.

The two Armadillo occupants exited their vehicle, holding MA5Ks. Ramirez and Dotsenko stopped firing and went over to them, exchanging some words. They nodded to each other and Ramirez took off towards the nearest trench, narrowly avoiding being hit. He slid into cover and gave Dotsenko a thumbs-up.

"Covering fire!"

The two men sprinted across the muddy ground, rain getting in their faces, and jumped into cover. I sighed with relief when the two men made it to safety. Now only Dotsenko and the Armadillo remained in the trench, less than forty meters away from the enemy.

"Major," I said, contacting the valley. "I need some fire support."

"Roger that, Castillo," she came in. "Give me the coordinates."

"I want a flechette barrage two hundred meters in front of my position," I said.

"I have six Rhinos, Lieutenant, it won't be much of a barrage."

"Better than nothing," I said.

"Firing," she announced.

I heard the whistling of the shells and then saw them burst in front of me, almost directly above Dotsenko and the 'Dillo. The flechettes whistled loudly and most definitely hit some soft targets. There was some howling from the ones that didn't instantly die and then there were a thousand tiny explosions when the fuses on the flechettes detonated. Some eight or ninety covvie soldiers were killed in three seconds alone, with many more wounded.

"Dotsenko, now would be a good time to get out of there," I said.

"Negative, sir," he said. "I still have one man here with me."

"Sasha," I warned.

"Sir, I got this."

"Fine," I said. "Don't get pissed when you die."

"I promise I won't, El-tee."

The Covenant recovered from the attack pretty quickly. They started hitting our right side pretty damn hard and we got some Wraith fire on some of our positions. Their artillery stopped after a counter-strike from the Rhinos, but their infantry was hitting us hard. They had numbers and they had motivation. I don't know how they kept moving with three hundred corpses at their feet. The dead grunts weren't a terrible uncommon sight, but there were elites carpeting the ground as well.

They had discipline, I'll give them that.

"Sir," Spartan G301 said. "I'm seeing Banshees moving up."

"Fuck. How many?"

"A dozen, at least."

"Fuck," I cursed. "Thanks for the heads up."

"We got this," Tank said. "Sergeant Mata and I'll drive them off."

"Don't get spotted," I said. "Good luck."

The Banshees screamed as they strafed our positions. I ducked and prayed that no fuel rod landed on my ass. A trio of soldiers weren't so lucky. They were blown apart when one of the bombs landed right on top of their foxhole. The twelve fliers turned over and met Tank and Mata's missiles head on. Four of them exploded in bright fireballs, but the rest of them just strafed our line again, hitting one of our Armadillos and killing another two soldiers.

"Team-7!" I shouted.

"Pitcher was hit," Crow informed me. "It was a graze to the head, but it looks like it knocked him out."

"A fried brain isn't good," I said, quickly checking his vitals. "Andy?"

"I'll check him out," she told me. "Cover me."

"Cover her," I ordered.

Before the Banshees managed to turn around for a third pass three more exploded, cutting their numbers by more than half. The flight of Banshees decided that they had had enough and disappeared into the night.

"I hate this rain," I muttered. "Fucking hate it."

"Sir," Miranda said. "Are we getting reinforcements?"

"Not anytime soon," I said. "Shut up and fire, Miranda. You know what's gonna happen soon."

"The same thing that always happens. We get overrun, fight bravely and then fall back only to be saved by someone or other. Sorry, not saved."

"Link up with," I corrected.

"That's right," she agreed.

The two of us hadn't moved from our position in over six hours. I had pretty much considered pissing myself a few times. The undersuit could absorb and disperse my urine in a matter of seconds, but peeing myself next to a girl felt slightly dirty.

"I got to pee," Miranda said, as if reading my thoughts.

"Your undersuit can absorb it."

"You're not uncomfortable about it?" she asked.

"Not really," I lied. "I've peed twice already."

"Really?"

"No," I said. "Don't worry about it."

Andy checked in with me and told me that Pitcher was miraculously fine, but that his helmet was useless. The covvies slowed down their attack some, giving us some degree of comfort and allowing for additional supplies to be brought up from the valley. The Major and her men were pretty well supplied, but at the rate we were going we would leave them with only the magazines in their rifles. More than once the Spartans proved to be lifesavers. The five of them were all over the place, hitting an advance team here and then killing an ultra there. They were unnerving the Covenant, but that was about the only thing we had going for us now. If the Banshees were any indication, the covvies had air support now, and they would keep using it until we ran out of rockets.

Attrition was a fucking bitch.

Three of the Armadillos blew up and black shapes streaked past us, sending a shockwave through my body.

"What the hell was that?"

"Were those Seraphs?"

"How the hell did they get past the space defenses?"

"We aren't equipped to handle this shit!"

"Major," I said. "You've got Seraph's headed your way!"

"Seraphs?!" she sputtered. "How-"

If she was going to say anything else her words were interrupted when the Seraphs hit her position. I heard the explosions from down in the valley.

"Major? Major?!"

"I'm here," she replied, coughing. "How the hell did they get past our air defenses?"

"I have no idea," I said. "How bad?"

"I don't know," she grunted. "We can't handle them. We need fighters and SAMs."

"I know," I sighed. "Can you contact Commander Smith?"

"Yeah, but he can't help. They had him relocated to Manassas. The 12th doesn't have much pull with Command. Can you give us some help in that sector?"

"I've been trying," I told her. "I can't patch up to my ship."

"Your ship?"

"Yeah, I pretty much depend on the AI to survive," I joked. "Look, I'll try again."

"We need support right now Castillo," she said. "Or those things will just tear us to shreds."

"Ok, ok. I'll give it a shot. Over and out."

Miranda rolled over on her back and took a couple of deep breaths. There was a big scorch mark on her left shoulder pad. Again, her armor was barely ODST standard-issue. She was sporting a chest piece that looked basically like a thinner version of my ODST piece that was a lot taller and had a neck protector. Her shoulder pieces were some version called Scout, but at least the rest of her armor was standard ODST battle suit.

"You ok?" I asked her. "Did you take that piss?"

"Y-yes," she said awkwardly. "It's not that. I'm just tired…"

"We can't afford to be tired," I told her. "Miranda…"

"I'm fine," she sighed. "I'm just tired of this all."

"Don't go soft on me now, Novak," I told her. "I need you at a hundred and ten."

"Don't worry, sir. I'm not about to have PTSD."

"We all have PTSD," I told her. "I don't want you to shut down."

"What? We do?"

"To some degree or other," I confirmed. "According to Captain Flatt, that is."

"I always thought she was kind of a bitch," Miranda said.

I laughed. "Why is that? It wouldn't have to do anything with the way Grigori looked at her ass."

"Lieutenant, you know that us enlisted have privileges as well. I could have you court martialed for inappropriate comments towards someone of lesser rank."

I slapped her visor as hard as possible from my position.

"Are you gonna have me court martialed for that?"

"Sir. You are an asshole."

I laughed. "And you're fun to hang out with," I told her. "You're almost part of the club now."

"It's the almost that bugs me."

"It's the almost that doesn't let you insult me," I told her. "And don't tell Bee that you're part of the super exclusive club. He'll feel offended."

"I won't. I promise."

I sighed and looked down at the three smoking Armadillos. They were up in flames, the men inside were most certainly dead, and several of the soldiers next to them had been seriously wounded. Not for the first time I thanked the higher powers that my men weren't anywhere near the IFVs. The ones not wounded were helping the survivors, but right now the only thing holding back the Covenant was the five Spartans of Team Falcata and the surviving 'Dillos. They were really letting it rip right now. My own men were trying to get their shit straight. Pavel divided his squad into two fireteams and sent them each to one of the smoking wrecks. The Seraphs weren't about to waste another bomb on those and the trenches were still pretty damn useful.

"Dotsenko!" I shouted. "Get out of there!"

"I'm on it!" he replied. "You, driver, get out! Come on!"

I saw as the driver of the Armadillo stopped firing, silencing the autocannon. I traced them with my scope and saw them sprint under limited covering fire. The driver was hit in the back of the knee by a plasma bolt and Dotsenko had to sling his arm over his shoulder. They limped towards the nearest piece of cover. Two elites materialized right behind them, each with an energy sword on their hands.

"Miranda!" I shouted as I fired.

I hit one of the elites with a burst. It was a risky shot, going barely a foot over Dotsenko's head. The elite jerked backwards just in time for Miranda to nail it with a double tap to the head. The hingehead fell, dead, but the other one attacked Dotsenko and the soldier.

My man dropped to the floor, avoiding the first swoop of the sword. The soldier rolled away, but the elite seemed intent on finishing off Dotsenko first. Its shields seemed to be holding our fire pretty well. The elite slashed downwards at Dotsenko and the hit loped his arm clean off at the elbow. I heard him screaming all the way over here. The soldier got his rifle up and emptied his magazine at the elite, filling it with holes.

"Someone get them!" Pavel shouted. "Payat!"

Three of my men were there in a flash, and suddenly everybody was providing cover for them. Preacher and Snark added their efforts to ours and then my men dragged the two wounded fighters back to safety. Dotsenko screamed his ass out all the way through until he appeared to pass out.

"Arm was cleanly cut. Partially cauterized, not immediately life-threatening," Payat reported calmly.

"Good," I said. "Treat him and see about having him transported down to the valley on the ammo run."

"Sir, we have too many wounded," Payat said. "With the Seraphs and everything…"

"Payat, we cannot afford to lose this pass. The moment we lose it the covvies will flood through and get to two of the most heavily populated cities in this planet."

My speech, if you could call it that, served to remind my men of just exactly what was at stake here. Some couple dozen million lives were at stake, and I didn't even know if they were aware of just how threatened they were.

"Longworth, I need that radio here ASAP," I ordered.

"Yes, sir!"

We had one Armadillo left. Most of my infantry was still in fine working order, but by most I mean that only one in four men was out of the fight. The Spartans were still causing as much mayhem as they had early in the battle, but the elites were beginning to strike back at us. They were taking advantage of their superior numbers and shielding to move their line forward ever so slightly. Already they were using some of our fortifications as their own.

"Sir," Longworth huffed, climbing up to my position. "Radio."

"Thanks," I told him, grabbing the device and opening a channel to the UNSC _Camerone_. Whatever the Covenant had up there was giving hell to our signals. Already our helmets were beginning to have bursts of static on occasion. I tried about five times before I finally managed to get through. Our tight beam radios were truly wonderful for looking so freaking ugly.

"_Camerone, Camerone_, do you copy?"

"I copy," I managed to get in between bursts of static. "-ning up."

Abruptly the signal stopped buzzing and I got a clear line to the ship and Bolivar.

"Bolivar, the Covenant has fighter support, we need some Longswords in the air right now."

"I read you, Lieutenant, but HIGHCOM has decided that your operation is no longer a priority."

"What?"

"Sorry Castillo, they think that artillery and air strikes on the Covenant in the plains will be enough to evacuate Manassas and Quezon before the enemy gets there."

"No it won't!" I shouted. "The Covenant won't stop for anything!"

The AI sighed. "I know, but the situation is bad and Command is starting to lose its cool. They're using all available air assets to engage the Covenant fleet."

"Listen Bolivar, I'll tell you what. How about you get me two or three SkyHawk in-atmosphere fighters. I just need them to hang around for fifteen minutes, maybe score a kill or two. I want you to request Command directly, drop my name and my unit, maybe something about Sierra Team Falcata as well. Do it repeatedly and eventually someone will authorize it. We're not a bunch of meat that you throw away when things go south, goddamit!"

"Lieutenant, I'm doing my best, but what I'm getting back is not encouraging. They're claiming that the Spartans down there are just IIIs."

"Just IIIs?" I asked.

"Their words, not mine."

"Bolivar, get me the air support and that's it. There's gotta be at least one Longsword that won't lose much time if they help."

"I'm crossing some lines here, Lieutenant," the AI huffed. "There, you've got three Longsword fighters redirected to take out the Seraphs. I'll see about getting them to drop some ordinance on the enemy position, but it's not likely."

"Thanks," I told the construct. "I owe you one."

"You owe me _another_ one," he corrected. "Good luck, El-tee. Over and out."

Half the length of the pass now belonged to the Covenant. They had paid for it dearly, but we couldn't keep it up much longer. Our ammo runs were becoming increasingly more rare and every time they brought less ammunition. This latest run only brought us two small crates of small arms ammunition in a transport Warthog. The 'Hog returned to the valley with four wounded men on it, one of them Dotsenko. My man was unconscious now, at least he wouldn't have to live through the worst of the pain.

"Well, at least you are now both amputees," Crow told Ramirez.

"Yeah, that's pretty fucking funny," Ramirez muttered angrily despite the rest of the chuckles from the team.

Black humor at its finest.

The two best friends were both missing a limb now. It was strangely fitting when you think about it. Ramirez and his mechanical leg would be matching Dotsenko and whatever kind of prosthetic he got. Humor or no humor my men were pissed. Dotsenko was our first serious casualty so far and we would do our best to make them pay for it. The elite was already dead, but that wasn't nearly enough.

Even despite our little ammunition problem we started firing more and more. We killed several dozen aliens before they started responding with the same volume of firepower. Unlike us, they were able to keep up firing at the same rate. They had over a thousand troops in reserve plus all the vehicles and ammunition that went along with it.

Three elites were approaching Pavel's position from a flank. I hit one of them, killing it with Miranda's help, but the other two managed to get into cover. I saw one of the Spartans approach and then disappear behind cover. A second later the armored figure reappeared on the other side, not having lost a beat. He moved up and then disappeared when he activated his camouflage.

I could catch glimpses of the Spartans here and there, they would deactivate their camouflage briefly and then disappear back into the rain. They were taking full advantage of their assets and were playing a nice game of psychological warfare on the covvies. I even saw a couple of elites start panicking when their friends were decapitated right next to them.

"Focus on the big ones," I told Miranda after she hit three grunts in a row. "The others can handle the gas-suckers."

She nodded and instead started focusing on the elites.

"Sir, I'm seeing a hunter pair," Snark called in. "And I'm about to get swarmed, so I'm moving out."

"Fuck me," I groaned. Hunters were the last thing we needed. They would move up, draw all our fire and the die. But while all that happened the rest of the Covenant would jump up at the opportunity to advance their line.

"Tank, do you have any rockets left?"

"Just the one, sir," he replied. "Tell me where to fire."

"There's a pair of hunters moving up," I said. "If you hit both of them I'll give you five hundred credits."

"For real?"

"For real," I said. "I'll settle for one."

"I'll see what I can do, sir," Tank told me.

I wondered whether the shock factor of the Spartans compared to the shock factor of the Hunters. Sure, an invisible warrior that would decapitate the guys next to you and leave you alone was something that you'd talk to your therapist about for years, but the thirteen-foot tall and five ton behemoths that came at you with massive cannons on one hand and indestructible shields on another were something that you wouldn't get an opportunity to talk about later. A hunter would more than match a Spartan for strength and their armor and firepower would compensate for their lack of raw skill.

Well, if you pitted two Spartans against one hunter in close combat was really something to watch.

"I see it," Tank said. "They're two spread out. It's only gonna be one today."  
>He fired at the closest of the two hunters. People seem to have this misconception about rockets and missiles and their speed. Your average rocket would cross a football field in less than half a second. If you saw an M19 missile flying at you, odds were that it was too late already. You might be able to duck, but you wouldn't be able to dive far enough. Hell, you'd probably still be in the air when the explosion swallowed you.<p>

The hunter was crouching in a combat position, but Tank knew his shit. The missile slammed right into the hunter's cannon shoulder. The detonation tore the arm to pieces and swallowed the helmet and chest completely. Orange blood and flesh rained on the area around it.

The other hunter roared into the sky and everybody prepared for the onslaught that was certain to come. The hunter started charging, but unlike many others, it actually fired while it went. Several soldiers ducked underneath the blast, but the moment they stopped firing the hunter managed to get close enough for a second, more accurate burst. One of the soldiers was caught in the blast and immediately killed. I didn't have any men in that trench, and the machine gunners wouldn't be able to fire without hitting the soldiers too.

I started hitting the hunter with everything I had, but my rounds simply bounced off its armor and the few that managed to sneak past didn't do much damage. Miranda did her best as well, but it wasn't enough.

The hunter swiped its shield, sending one of the soldiers flying away in a heap. It then brought its shield back down, cleaving another of the troopers in half with it. Before it could strike again one of the Spartans, Eduardo-G271 appeared in the air above it. The kid had his massive curved sword in a reverse grip, holding it with both hands above his head. I saw the scene so clearly because a that precise moment lightning lit up the night sky. The Spartan landed on the hunter, digging the sword deep into the hunter's neck until only the hilt showed. Before pulling the sword out Eduardo-G271 fired his entire magazine into the hunter's head.

By the time I heard the thunder the hunter was on the ground and the Spartan had disappeared.

One Spartan had taken down one hunter with a sword. With a fucking sword. Things like that weren't often seen. I heard more than a few whistles of appreciation from the troopers and my men alike. I was left gaping myself.

I felt something squeeze my shoulder. I was grabbing a wrist and reaching for my pistol when I realized that it was a Spartan. Miranda-G192. Like the smaller and considerably less gifted Miranda to my side, this Spartan sported a DMR.

"Yeah?"

"Sorry for scaring you, El-tee," she apologized quickly. "I got hit in the helmet."

"No more camouflage for you, then?" I asked her. "What is it?"

"Jonah's comm unit is fried. He wanted me to let you know that we're running low on ammunition."

"Hence the stunt with the sword?"

The Spartan girl actually chuckled and nodded. "Eduardo's always been flashy like that. Says that he remembers a sword just like that hanging on his wall."

"Huh," I scoffed. "He could be Greek or Nepalese for all he knows. Kid, I need you to stay here with Miranda. She's your tocaya, so be nice to each other."

"What does that mean?" Miranda, my Miranda, asked.

"That both of you have the same name," I replied. "There's no word in English for it."

I moved back and then slid down the slope, leaving the two Mirandas all to themselves. I tried to move smoothly, but the wet grass was more mud than grass and the angle of the slope had me rolling down. I managed to stabilize myself and slid down to the bottom on my ass. The road was a mess, sucking my boots when I tried to walk and making me move considerably slower.

"El-tee, what are you doing here?" Preacher asked from the top of our last remaining Armadillo.

"Get out of there!" I ordered. "There's Seraphs in the neighborhood." I banged on the hull. "Hey, everybody who's not the gunner get out of there. Now, now, now!"

I heard the hatch open and saw to shapes move out, rifles across their bellies.

"You two, get over there immediately. Ask for Sergeant Mata and do everything he tells you."

"Yes, sir," they said simultaneously.

I looked up at Preacher, who fired twice and then got into a crouch before jumping down next to me.

"Get down!"

Before I could even drop to the ground I felt Preacher slam into me and saw the last armored car we had blow up, sending pieces of shrapnel everywhere. We flew about ten feet backwards before landing in the mud. I cursed and tried to get Preacher off me, but that was before I heard him screaming. Instead I scurried from underneath him and looked him over.

"The hell was that?" Pavel asked.

"Seraphs!"

I cursed again and then looked Preacher over. He had three pieces of shrapnel the size of my hand embedded in his back. I knew that there were probably smaller injuries somewhere in here or there that I couldn't see.

"Medic!" I shouted. "Medic!"

I checked the back of his helmet for any sign of shrapnel and breathed in relief when I didn't find any already he was beginning to put out unhealthy amounts of blood, with some of it even seeping out from underneath him. I pulled out one of my personal cans of biofoam and started rubbing it all over his back. It was too late to do anything about his internal injuries, but I could keep him from bleeding out.

"Hang in there," I told him. "Hand in there."

"I'm trying," he said through clenched teeth. "It hurts. I can't breath."

"You've got three pieces of shrapnel on your back, one of them looks like it went deep enough to puncture your lung."

"Is it bad?"

"Pretty bad," I told him. "But you're conscious, and you're in pain. That means that you're alive."

"Doesn't feel so good right now."

Andrea slid into a crouch next to me. "Sir, Gunny needs you to hold the line."

I nodded. "She'll take good care of you," I told Preacher.

"She'll just draw bullets," he muttered. Then he started praying.

I moved up, noticing the sudden increase in plasma and needle fire. With our last Armadillo out for the count we didn't have anything to give us any real suppressing fire and the Covenant would easily take swarm us with superior numbers. I ran past a limping trooper and jumped into cover with Longworth and Lady.

"Hey boys," I said, settling into a shooting position. "How's it going?"

"What happened to Preacher?" Lady asked.

"He'll be fine," I said. "I think."

"Magnet will take good care of him," Longworth said, firing his MA5. "Watch those jackals."

"I got them," I said, hitting them in the legs. "How are we on grenades."

"Pretty fresh," Lady said. "We haven't needed them so far."

We three were about a hundred meters from the closest aliens, but there were trenches and foxholes that were a whole lot closer. The Army jocks were pulling their weight, they were experts when it came down to static warfare and large-scale battles. Normally they also counted with air and armored support, but today they were infantry and nothing else. My men had been trained for a variety of scenarios and this was nothing new to them, but just because it wasn't something we weren't used to didn't mean that they were any less dangerous.

Three elites made it close to Pavel's trench, but he pounded them with automatic fire, leaving Tank to take them out with headshots.

"Hey El-tee," Kevin-G111 said, materializing next to me. "Jonah told me to lend some support."

I eyed the M247L he was carrying and nodded. "Who's still doing ninja shit?"

"Eduardo and Alex."

"What about your team leader?" I asked.

"He got nicked. His panels aren't working anymore," he said, propping his weapon on the foxhole's edge. "I'll take out shields and hit large groups."

"You heard him," I told my two men. "We do headshots and jackals."

"Yes, sir," Lady and Longworth replied.

Kevin was like a wonder boy. Every single shot that he fired hit a target. No matter how fast it was moving or how awkward the angle was he hit the mark. I don't think I saw him miss one single bullet. After he had drained an elite's shields one of us would take it out. I racked up a dozen kills in half an hour, but soon enough we had to give up on some targets, we had to let a few covvies advance in order to take out the more valuable targets.

"Sir, we're going to have to fall back," Caboose said.

"We'll cover you," Pavel told him. "Give me the word."

Pavel's men opened up and Caboose and his men started running back to cover. I did my best to provide some support fire, but Caboose and the others were in the middle of it. I simply waited for them to make it to safety and then started breathing easy again. Two men ran into our trench and dropped a crate of ammunition into our trench.

"We've got seven-six-two and nine-five," one of them said. "Give us some cover, sir. Will you?"

"No problem," I said. "Where you headed?"

"First big trench to the left."

"We'll cover you," I said.

"On three," he told me. "One. Two. Three."

"Fire!" I shouted.

The two men managed to make it safely, but despite their efforts and ours' I couldn't help but get the feeling that things weren't going to improve. Things took a turn for the worse when two Spirit dropships appeared directly overhead and began dropping troops behind our position. I ordered Kevin to go back and told the two Mirandas to handle it. We couldn't afford to stop paying attention to the frontline. Hell, we couldn't even afford to have those three people addressing a separate problem.

"Shit Frank," Pavel grunted. "We're moving back."

I cursed. "Mata's fireteam will cover you. Caboose?"

"We can still hold for some time."

"Lieutenant, I have Ghosts and Wraiths moving up the slope," Alex-G301 said. She sounded worried, and when a Spartan sounded worried you knew you were in trouble.

The Wraiths made their presence known soon enough, but by that time our lines were broken and we were moving back in a very disorderly manner.

"Pavel! Get the wounded out!" I ordered. "Take Predator and secure the descent. Make it safe enough to have some Warthogs brought up."

"What about you?"

"We'll buy you time to set up," I said. "Us and Falcata."

"Good luck," Pavel said, taking his squad with him.

That left me with nine able-bodied men and five able-bodied Spartans, three of which still had camouflage capabilities on their fancy armor. It was better than nothing.

"Francisco, I'm starting to feel like you're wearing out that phrase," Schitzo said. "Anything is better than nothing, but that doesn't mean it is even remotely close to good or even close to halfway decent."

The guy had a point.

"Mata, take Andy, Bee, Lady, and Crow to the left slope. Rest of you, come with me."

"What about us, Lieutenant?" Spartan Jonah-G012 asked me.

I raised an eyebrow at that. If a Spartan was ordered to do something by a superior officer they would do it without question, but it was rare to have one actually _ask_ for orders.

"You five stay with this 'Dillo and hold our center. We'll bring fire from the flanks."

"Yes, sir," Jonah said before ordering his men about.

"Start climbing," I told my fireteam. "Get up there!"

We got to a decent altitude just when the wave of Covenant infantry slammed into the Spartans. For a moment the aliens seemed confused that the Spartans just stonewalled their advance. Then they were even more surprised when they started getting fire from both of their unprotected flanks, courtesy of my men.

"Sir, we don't have much cover," Mata said. "Scratch that, we don't have any cover."

"We have the cover of darkness and rain," I told him. "It'll have to do for a good two minutes."

"I'm afraid that two minutes might be one too much," Mata grunted. "Let's hope Klaus can set everything up in one."

Three grunts, a jackal, and two dead elites later I found myself running for my life with my team right in front of me. I hated that I had to slow myself enough for them to move at my same speed, but I had the five Spartan-IIIs right behind me, making themselves large and visible targets.

"Just a little bit more!" I shouted. "Speed up!"

"Frank, we've got your 'Hogs here!" Pavel called out.

"Enough for everyone?"

"Yeah!"

I made it past two large boulders where Predator Squad was taking cover and jumped into a transport Warthog's back. All of my men made it safely before the Warthogs began driving down one by one. We bounced and slammed around, but soon enough we were far enough away that the Covenant wouldn't be able to hit us with small arms fire. Despite that I saw some Ghosts dart straight past Pavel and Predator and start chasing us.

"Lieutenant Castillo, do you copy?" Bolivar came in.

"Bolivar. Boy, you are a sweet sound right now," I replied.

"I'm afraid that I don't have good news right now. We're barely holding the line here as it is. We had to let a few enemy ships barrel past us just to hold out the rest."

"Hence the Seraphs," I muttered. "You wouldn't have called me if it wasn't important."

"That whole region has been declared lost," Bolivar told me. "Command is pulling out every asset in that region."

"What do you mean by that whole region?" I asked. "Bolivar!"

"The whole ridge as well as the neighboring valleys," he explained. "The Army is focusing their forces in Manassas and the Marines are securing Quezon."

"If we let them come through the plains–"

"They know, Lieutenant, but they can't afford to commit any more assets and risk losing them."

"Fucking assholes," I muttered. "Then why'd they send us here in the first place?"

"Lieutenant…"

"Doesn't matter. Where are we going?"

"Command won't be sending any evac your way," he told me. "You're cut off. My recommendation is that you abandon the valley, maybe leave some surprises behind if you have them."

"Bolivar, they can't just cut us off. We have a Spartan team here with us."

"They understand," the AI said. "And they don't care. I'm sorry Lieutenant. I'll talk to you when you make it to one of those two cities. Good luck."

The Warthog stopped once we were behind our fortifications in the valley. I looked up at the clouded sky and felt like stabbing the general in charge of the defense of this region. Being angry wouldn't do me much good so I calmed myself down and told the major exactly what was going on. A few minutes later the entirety of the forces defending this critical valley abandoned it to the Covenant because some fuck up there decided that we wouldn't be getting any support. No heroic sacrifices, no memorable last stands. We would just link up with the rest of the UNSC Ground Forces and hope that we survived this.

* * *

><p><em>Thanks for reading this chapter.<em>

_Good morning Vietnam! Hey guys, I'm finally back from my summer camp. I was treated like a slave for three straight weeks, but it was certainly worth it. Had a fun time with my friends and all that summer camp stuff. Well, I'm back and that means that The Life is also back. The only issue is that, as you know, I'm in the middle of a huge move. I just got to my new house yesterday, but this new house is only temporary, so I'll be moving to another one in about a month. This means that the update schedule will probably be a little bit more sporadic for a couple of weeks. Plus, I also have to get back into the zone, it's been three weeks of me not writing a single word._

_Well, other than that we've got some Spartan action as well as artillery, massed assaults, high kill-counts, and more than a few wounded men. Reach is the beginning of the lowest point of the Human-Covenant War for humanity and I really want to capture the desperation and horror that would be to face extermination, to have your most important military complex taken by surprise by the most massive enemy fleet ever seen. This was a fun chapter to write, even if I barely remember what this was about. Anyways, hope you enjoyed reading this thirteen thousand words of something._

_Stay strong._

_-casquis_


	192. Manassas

Chapter CXCII: Manassas

**August 15, 2552 (UNSC Calendar)/**

**Manassas, ****Ütközet**** Province,** **Viery Territory, Reach, Epsilon Eridani System**

* * *

><p><em>"There's always more than one side to war."<em>

* * *

><p>Half the city was empty and the other half was rapidly becoming anarchy. The police department had been successful in keeping the order so far, but at this point even the cops were beginning to start panicking. Imagine that your entire family was at risk and you somehow managed to make sure that they got out safe. Then what? Then you want to get out of there yourself so you could be with them. You don't want to stay behind with a few million people that you don't know, you don't care about your oaths and your job, you just want to get your ass out of there alive. I hear my men bitch about fighting aliens, joking that they didn't sign up for this shit. The thing is that they <em>did<em> sign up for that shit. These cops didn't. They didn't have the training for this and they were way out of their league.

"Frank, they're moving Dotsenko into the operating room," Pavel told me. "Doctor wants to talk to you."

"And Preacher?"

"He's recovering," Pavel said. "His lung is fine, but he's going to need a few days to recover fully. They have them pumped full of painkillers. Lady and Andy are both fine and Pitcher's head didn't suffer anything major. He won't grow any hair around his left ear for a while, but he's fine."

"How about you?"

Pavel showed me his hand and the bloody bandage wrapped around it. The blood on it was dry and old, which meant that his hand wasn't bleeding anymore.

"It hurt like a bitch, you know?" he said. "But it's fine. They put some of that sponge thing to plug it in. Docs told me that the tissue will grow through it."

"And they gave it to you for free," I said, smiling. "If there's anything good about the end of the world is that it tends to bring the positive side of people."

"And then there's the looting," he said.

"Yeah," I agreed. "But believe it or not, that's a minority."

He nodded calmly and shifted his weight to his left foot.

I sighed and stood up, securing my battered helmet under my left arm. "Did you manage to talk to them?"

"No," he said. "I couldn't even get a line to Esztergom."

"I'm sure they're fine," I told him. "Katie and Liz know their shit in this situation and your wife won't hesitate to shoot anything if it comes down to protecting Lavvie."

"She's a damn good shot, too," Pavel said. "How's the shoulder?"

I rolled my left shoulder and stretched my neck. "It's a little bit stiff."

"How'd you hurt it again?"

I sighed. "I don't remember. It started hurting once we left the valley."

Pavel opened the door for me and settled into step next to me. "We got out with everyone."

"Only because they didn't chase us," I reminded him. "I don't know why."

"Can't be good. They've been playing it smart so far. No unnecessary risks or big stupid moves."

"Who's to say that aliens can't have good generals?" I asked.

"Years of experience facing aliens with superior technology but inferior strategies," he suggested. "The elites are like hunters, Frank. They stalk you and surround you and scare you into making a mistake, but small-scale doesn't always translate to the big leagues."

"Baseball metaphors? Really?" I asked, sidestepping though a pair of stretchers with bleeding and unconscious Marines on them. "I thought that baseball bats were illegal in Poland."

"Please Frank, that joke is old. They were legalized over forty years ago."

I chuckled. "Making baseball bats illegal. That's stupid. It's like charging tanks with cavalry."

"What do you have against us Poles? That was a moment of incredible bravery and selflessness. And if you want to talk about Poland why don't you ever mention the great moments of our history? Like Grunwald and Kircholm."

"I'm just messing with you, Pavs," I told him. "I've got nothing but respect for the Polish people. Granted, you're the only one I know, but it's good enough for me."

Pavel stopped to look at me. "Wow, that's the nicest thing you've ever said to me. Thank you."

"We might die any moment now, Pavel. I want you to know that."

"You kind of ruined it now," he sighed, "but thanks anyways."

"Just don't get used to it," I said. "Is this the room?"

"Yeah, this is the room," he confirmed. "Be nice."

"Have you met me?" I asked, walking inside the operating room.

There was an operating table right in the middle of the room with Sasha Dotsenko, still very much conscious, strapped to it. There was a doctor in a bloody lab coat and several nurses around, getting ready for the operation. Dotsenko looked weird without a right arm. It had been chopped off right below the elbow, but that was still a good fifty centimeters of arm missing.

"Hey, El-tee," he said, waving his bloody stump at me. "Come to watch?"

I nodded and squeezed his shoulder. "Yeah. You ok?"

"Just peachy," he replied.

I turned to face the tired-looking doctor and placed my helmet on one of Dotsenko's feet.

"Lieutenant Castillo," he greeted, gesturing for me to follow him into a small side room. "Good to have you here. Your man is so doped up on painkillers that he can't really be held as a responsible adult."

"He's like that when he's sober," I said. "What appears to be the problem?"

"I understand that you didn't recover his arm."

"Yeah," I nodded. "Situation was a little bit explosive at the time."

"We might've been able to graft it back," he said. "Doesn't matter. A mechanical limb will probably help him in this line of work."

"Agreed," I said. "You have access to high-end military prosthetics and the equipment necessary to graft them."

"Yes, sir," he confirmed. "I just needed you to give me the go and choose the prosthetic for him."

"I have a man with an artificial leg. It's a Lanning series. Model XII, I think. Great piece, pretty narrow, but strong and firm. It's even got clasps to attach armor to it."

"The Lanning models are very good," the doctor said, "but they focus on the lower body, they're not that great when it comes to arm replacements."

"What do you recommend then?" I asked.

"I'd opt to go for an Asimov Robotics limb," he said.

I whistled. "Those are pretty high-end."

He chuckled and nodded. "Yeah they are. We have this model right here."

I examined the prosthetic. It was made of four main pieces. The upper arm, a large elbow and then the forearm and hand. It was dark gray and I couldn't see any cables or exposed wiring that would be vulnerable to plasma fire. The only problem I saw with it was that it had two additional pieces that Dotsenko wouldn't need.

"Can you shorten the piece?" I asked the doctor. "My man still has his elbow."

"That's the thing right there," the man sighed. "We could graft the prosthetic as it is, but he has about three inches of flesh below the elbow, which would make the arm three inches longer. And that's adding to the additional length of this prosthetic in question. We didn't exactly have time to have one custom made."

"I understand," I nodded. "You want to chop of his entire arm?"

"No, of course not," the doctor said, waving his hands in front of him. "Just the elbow."

"Wow," I grunted. "He just lost his lower arm and you want to take a bit more?"

"Yeah," he said. "It's not just for cosmetic reasons. The cut, no matter how clean, wasn't exactly surgically precise. If we operate on his arm we can remove the damaged nerve and muscle tissue and make the process a lot easier. I promise that it'll be a lot less painful for him this way."

"He won't like it."

"He doesn't," he agreed. "That's why I brought you here."

"To talk to him?"

"Yeah," the doctor said.

I sighed and walked out of the small side room, carrying the prosthetic in my left hand.

"Dotsenko," I called to my man. "You see this?"

"Yes, sir."

"You're going to have prosthetic grafted to you, ok? You'll be able to tear through a brute's throat and chop through concrete with this shit."

"They want to chop off my elbow, sir," he complained, regaining some lucidity.

"They want and they damn well will," I told him. "This thing right here costs more than your car, my car, your place, my place, and our entire salaries for the year combined. The docs here have been nice enough to give it to us for fucking free."

"I don't want to lose any more of my body, sir," he pleaded.

"Listen," I said. "What happens if you don't get used to your arm? You might miss a throw with a grenade. You might take longer to reload. You might even lose some of your accuracy because your right arm is too damn long. These good doctor here is going to remove your elbow and then have a marvel of medical and military engineering for left arm. You understand?"

"Yes, sir," he said reluctantly. "I understand."

"Good. I'll see you in an hour and then you can talk to Ramirez all about it."

"Yes, sir."

"Good luck, Doc," I told the doctor.

"We'll take good care of him," he promised. "Now, if you'll just leave the room."

I nodded and walked outside after grabbing my helmet to rejoin Pavel. He was leaning on a stretcher with a dead man on it. He stood up and shook his head slightly.

"Can you even order a man to give up a piece of his arm?"

"I can order him to give up his life," I reminded him. "This way he'll be more effective and less likely to kill himself and anybody who's around him. Truth be told, he knew what had to be done. He probably didn't want to give the go himself."

My friend nodded thoughtfully and then shrugged like he usually did. "The rest of our wounded men are over here. You might want to have a word or two with them."

"And what about Command or the _Camerone_?"

"Nothing yet," he replied. "I did manage to get a message to Captain Flatt, but that's only because she was in New Alexandria."

"What the hell is she doing there?" I asked. "Never mind. If we don't get orders for another twenty-four hours and this city is still not under attack I'll see about getting to Esztergom and making contact with your family."

"A lot of the men have families and loved ones there, too," he said. "They'll be happy."

I grunted. I wasn't doing this to make them happy. I was doing this because I didn't know what else I could do. Normally we had very clear and concise orders with very little room for maneuver. I mean, with a unit called Asymmetrical Action Group you could expect high-risk missions with very specific objectives. The name itself reeked of conceit. Not to badmouth my own unit, but the AAG was supposed to be a scalpel, not a sledgehammer.

"Hey, sir," Snark greeted, getting up from his helmet. "How's it going?"

"Good, you?"

"Same," he replied, leaning on his SRS very much like an old man would lean on a staff. "The guys are in there. Mata and Caboose are chaperoning for them."

"And you?"

"Isn't it obvious?" he asked. "My new nickname is Cerberus."

"Clever," I noted. "You good?"

"Arm is still a little bit sore, but I'm getting the hang of it."

I nodded and slapped him slightly in the chest before walking through the doors. Me men were crowding the room, some were sitting on the floor and some others were using empty stretchers as chairs, but Pitcher and Preacher were both resting in their own stretchers. Preacher was resting on his belly and Pitcher was sitting up with a huge bandage covering his head.

"Sir," some of my men greeted when I walked in. Most of the others just nodded in acknowledgement or raised their hands in greeting. We had had a very busy couple of days and the exhaustion was only just beginning to catch up with us. Some of my guys were more conditioned than others and could go without sleep for over 72 hours at a time, but the others weren't robots that way and instead were just sleeping their asses off.

"Preacher," I said.

The man slowly moved his head so that he was facing me and then looked up at me. "Hey, sir."

"Did I interrupt your praying?"

"No, sir. I don't often pray for myself."

"How selfless," I noted. "I'm not religious, but I pray for my own ass all the time."

"There's ways around it," he said. "I pray for all those around me."

"Oh that's sweet," Pavel said.

"The rules are very clear on that," Preacher said. "And if you're all safe and God's protecting you then odds are that He's protecting me too."

"Well, you certainly get some points for absorbing all that shrapnel for me," I said.

I grabbed the strap closing his hospital robe and undid it despite his complaints. He had three big patches covering the major injuries on his back plus several stitches covering his back. It was almost funny to see how the shrapnel had gotten around the areas where the armor was thinner or non-existent. He puncture wounds were concentrated in the shoulders and the area right above the waist.

"Hey, sir!"

"You've got a hairy ass," I noted while carefully lifting the biggest patch and examining the wound. "That'll leave a scar. It's a good scar though, chick's will love it. Hell, I'll even let them tell you that you saved my life."

"Thank, sir," he said, not sounding remotely pleased. He probably owed that to the fact that most of the guys still awake were making fun of his hairy ass.

I left him there without bothering to pull up his robe and moved up to examine Pitcher. He had a cotton bandage covering the side of his head and it was firmly wrapped in place with regular bandages. There was barely any blood in there, which was probably a good sign.

"You good?" I asked him.

"Yeah," he replied, nodding slowly. "My head hurts a bit. Doc told me that as long as I keep this covered I'll be fine."

I considered slapping him on his good side of the head, but that would be out of line even for me. Pavel squeezed his shoulder and congratulated him for not being a pussy about his injury.

"Lady, Andy?" I asked our two damsels in distress. "How are you two doing?"

Lady lifted her good leg up and flexed a couple of times before bending it back underneath her. "I'm all good, sir."

"Andy?"

Andrea pulled down her tank top to reveal a big gauze patch with some dry blood on it and gave a thumbs up. She got whistles and catcalls for exposing herself like that, but she dismissed them with a wave of her hand and went back to reading. It was hard to tell with all the armor on, but she had a pretty decent rack. Most of my team had their armor off, which explained the smell of sweat and dirtiness in the room.

"Isn't there a bathroom here?" I asked Pavel.

He nodded. "Yeah, right over there."

"Well, I'm going to take a shower," I told him.

"Yeah. I'll babysit them for a while."

I walked inside the rather large bathroom and took off my left shoulder piece. It was scorched from near-misses and there were tiny grooves where two needles had cut through. I tossed it to the floor and reached inside the shower to turn on the water. The showerhead sputtered for a few seconds before steaming hot water started pouring out. As steam started coming out I started taking off the rest of my armor, off-handedly checking for damage. My right shoulder piece was completely intact. Some of the black paint was chipped off and there was dry mud on it, but no structural damage. My helmet was quickly devolving into a relic, with most of the black paint gone and scratches all over. The black visor was intact thankfully, but that was mostly luck on my part. My chest piece had absorbed two plasma shots, the vest had taken some splashes and deflected some needles. My forearm armor had long scratches of varying depth and width that ran the length of them. My gloves were worn from punching. The belt-like armor that protected my belly and sides of my waist was pretty damaged on the left side when I had slammed into a bunch of rocks pretty damn hard. The thigh armor was fresh, I had gotten the new pieces on our way here from Sigma Octanus, but it still had some battle scars in there. The boots were just about done, but they would do the job for a little bit more.

I thanked God when my undersuit proved to be intact and then I stepped inside the shower with it. I slowly removed the undersuit and let the hot water hit me. I turned the heat down a little bit and finished removing the undersuit. I let it wash in the water for a few seconds before tossing it outside.

The hot water felt wonderful on my chest and shoulders. I could feel all my muscles relax and sighed happily, letting the hot water cover my body. I washed away the sweat and the blood. It never ceased to amaze me how many bruises I could get in battle. My right side was covered in a big blotch that ranged from black all the way to yellow. I had a pretty big bruise on my left shoulder and several scratches on my right hand. I never really did understand how I could cut myself when the undersuit wasn't punctured. My knees were blue, but they pretty much stayed like that. I was surprised that I hadn't developed calluses on my knees. I let my whole body relax and loosen up until the contact with the water started hurting my skin. I lowered the temperature some more and then started laddering myself with soap. I felt the pain when I went over the bruised areas, but this hot shower was doing wonders for me.

I felt a pair of hands running across my chest and opened my eyes. There was no one with me in the shower. I had hallucinated sounds and sights before, but I don't think I had ever _felt_ something that wasn't there. I turned around and saw nothing. The feeling wasn't what bothered me, it was the fact that it was so familiar. Those non-existent hands felt very much like Hanna's.

I sighed and shampooed my hair, refusing to close my eyes no matter what. Once that was done I wanted to spend the rest of my life in this crappy hospital shower, but things didn't always happen the way you want them to. I grabbed the only towel and dried myself up after turning off the shower. Once I was done I threw my wet undersuit and towel inside the towel drier.

It only took about five seconds for the towel to be fresh and plushy and a little bit more for my undersuit to be ready.

I put on the bottom half of my undersuit and picked up my armor, bundling it up.

"Everybody listen!" I said. "If you can I'd recommend you take a shower. Three minutes tops."

"Damn, sir," Bee whistled. "How the hell do you stay in shape like that?"

I rolled my eyes and suppressed a satisfied smile. "The same way you keep those shoulders. I was born with this," I pointed to my nicely defined abs.

A couple of the guys chuckled. They were half a second away from taking their tops off to brag about their own well-developed muscles. It was practically a part of the job. We got all kinds of shots that made developing muscle easier and made our muscular tissue stronger. Then there was all that waiting time in the ships we deployed on. You didn't have much to do and your CO usually made sure that you were in shape.

To me and every single ODST and every single member of Team-7 workouts were a part of life. When we weren't in combat we were usually preparing for it. Prepare or die.

"I got the shower," Pavel said, shoving aside Crow. "We go in by rank. Nobody tell Snark."

The guys chuckled and Pavel closed the door behind him. I put my armor down and started by donning my boots, bending down to make sure that they were tightly secured.

"Damn, sir," Crow muttered. "You've got some serious scars on your back there."

"Yeah I do," I agreed.

"Where'd you get that one?" Longworth asked.

"I can't exactly see where you're pointing, Adrian," I said.

"The long one running across your back," he amended.

I sighed. "It's a good story, that one. Who's heard it?"

"I have," Bee said. "Want me to tell it?"

"Sure," I said, grabbing the right thigh protector.

"Well you see, back in the day our fearless leader was also a lowly enlisted soldier much like we were. I know, I know, it's hard to believe. Well, he and his trusty friend, Gunny Klaus, were fighting in the wasteland that was… ummm… that was…"

"New Constantinople," Miranda said.

"Right," Bee went on.

"I thought you were from Earth," Lady said.

"I was born there," I confirmed, "but I was raised there."

"Well, the El-tee and Gunny were stranded behind enemy lines alongside a small unit of Marines. They took refuge in a collapsed building and were ordered to defend the place."

It hadn't exactly been like that. We had been ordered to take out an enemy artillery emplacement and after we had done that the elites guarding them got pissed.

"Then the Covenant came at them with everything they had. A hundred elites charging forward with swords. Half were cut down by El-tee and Gunny, but some got through. Their leader, a massive elite in adorned armor, an arbiter."

"A what?" Tank asked.

"An arbiter," I said. "That's what ONI told me. I don't think they even knew what it meant."

Bee shrugged and kept going. "All the elites were defeated and all the Marines were killed until only our Lieutenant, our Gunny, and the big-ass elite remained standing. El-tee fired at the elite, draining its shields, but the hingehead batted his pistol aside. Just before it could kill him, Gunny blasted the elite point blank in the back, but this monster wasn't done yet."

I rolled my eyes and secured the left thigh piece to my undersuit.

"This arbiter forced El-tee to the ground and stabbed downwards. The kill shot was avoided, but the sword went through the armor. Gunny fired at the elite again with his shotgun, but the elite didn't fall."

"Wait, you mean Gunny fired point blank with an M90 and the elite didn't fall?"

"Yup," I said, reaching for my other thigh piece. "Big-ass elite."

Bee went on, acting the movements as he narrated them. He was a very gifted chronicler. "Our El-tee, stabbed and beaten up, got up and tackled the elite."

"No way, the El-tee tackling a hingehead? He never does that!" Marv said, pretending to be shocked.

"He stabbed it in the ribs and then pulled out his second knife and stabbed it in the shoulder," Bee said in ominous tones. "And that's when Gunny pressed the elite to the floor with his foot and blasted its face away."

I looked up at him. "How could you forget the planet's name?" I asked him. "It was your first deployment."

"Right," Bee said. "And the El-tee was so impressed with me that he recruited me into the original Reaper Squad."

I laughed. "That's partially true."

"And what about that one?" Ramirez asked. "In your shoulder."

"Plasma rifle," I said.

"Sir, you should give your injuries more credit," Bee said. "The El-tee was jumping from a watchtower that had been targeted by fuel rods. During the drop somebody got a lucky shot and hit him in the elbow."

"And I assume that you just machoed through the pain?" Polly asked with a sardonic smile.

"We didn't have much of a choice there," I said. "We were defending the last UNSC stronghold in Lambari."

"Heard about that place," Crow said. "Turned into a massacre."

I nodded.

"That was my first deployment," Tank said. "It was bad."

"And those three in your lower back?" Lady asked.

"You checking me out, Lady?" I asked, smiling.

"You wish," she muttered, going back to bitch for a few seconds before blushing and looking away.

"You're blushing," Ramirez pointed out, not missing an opportunity to take her down a peg. "Oh my, you are aware that relationships with your commanding officer are discouraged."

The team chuckled and laughed before I waved them quiet. Lady was evidently angry at them, but her blush said a lot of things and I couldn't help but feel flattered that a perfectionist bitch like her had actually enjoyed the sight of my awesome and manly back.

"These two up here," I said, pointing at the spiker wounds. "Were from a brute spiker. They hurt like a bitch. This knobby scar here, below those two; I got this one when a shockwave slammed me against a tree. I don't think I've ever been in that much pain."

"Funny thing," Pavel said, walking out of the shower with his undersuit on. "Piloting that ship was Frank's then girlfriend. Some of you guys know Marina, don't you."

A few of the guys smiled at that. Marina was a gorgeous blonde that happened to be bisexual as well. It was practically every man's fantasy. I mean, seriously.

"And tending to our so-called fearless leader was his future girlfriend.

I smiled. I could never forget that the first time I met Hanna I was in a pain coma and she was saving my life. She never let me forget that either.

"No way, that's how you met Hanna?" Andy asked. "That's straight out of a romantic comedy. With war."

"Yeah, that's how I met her," I confirmed with a smile. "There's a reason they call them angels of the battlefield, you know."

"Awww," Andy said, giggling.

"Who's Hanna?" Polly asked.

"I used to date her," I told him.

"Was it serious?" he asked me.

I nodded. "It was. She was killed in Paris IV. Just an hour before evac."

"Shit. Sorry," Polly apologized.

"Don't worry about it," I said. For a moment I remembered her fondly. I was glad that I could think about her without feeling guilty. Sure, when I looked back to our years together there was always some pain, but I could focus on the good parts and all the fun I had with her. I focused on the good memories.

"You're not going to tell them about the ribs?" Pavel asked.

"That one knocked the wind out of me," I said, watching Pavel roll his eyes. "A brute almost castrated me with a warhammer."

"Damn," Payat winced.

"Then it stomped on me. It shattered six ribs. I've got nothing but titanium there."

"And the most entertaining thing I have is a graze to the side of the head," Pitcher mused out loud. "What about you, Gunny?"

Pavel sighed and shrugged. "Nothing so theatrical."

"Show them the one in your back," I told him.

Pavel raised an eyebrow and looked at Team-7. "This that you're about to see is a privilege. I don't undress for anyone who's not my wife."

Pavel undid his undersuit and showed the men a massive scar bigger than my fist that was right next to his spinal cord, almost in the exact middle of his back. Then he turned around and showed them the equally big scar that came out on the opposite side of his belly, right below his navel. The entire room winced.

"What happened?"

"Total lack of situational awareness," I said. "And a beam rifle."

Caboose sighed and got up. A few of the guys turned to look at him, wondering what our mysterious fireteam leader would show us. I frowned slightly until I realized that he wasn't going to show anything. Caboose had pretty horrible scars. That's one of the reasons why he always had his head covered. I had also seen glimpses of scar tissue covering his sides and back. Instead he just walked inside the shower and shut the door, prompting a few of the younger members of AAG Team-7 to chuckle slightly.

"Well, there's this one time when I lost a leg," Ramirez said. "Want to hear about it?"

"Not really," Lady said, drawing jeers and taunts directed at Ramirez, who just chuckled and checked his prosthetic.

"We all know that Lady has flawless skin," I said. "Except for that thing on her leg, but the point still stands. Does anybody want to brag?"

"Hey Magnet, how about you show us your collection?" Payat asked.

Andy turned to look at him and raised a single eyebrow. The majority of her scars happened to be in the area around her breasts.

"You wish," she said. "How about you?"

"I've got a couple of leg ones," he said. "I'll show you all when it's my turn to take a shower."

Payat was a good-looking man, but nobody really wanted to look at his hairy legs and scars. Maybe if he had some of the scars on his chest instead of his bottom half then maybe some of us would've asked to see them. I mean, legs are probably the single most unattractive part of the male body right after the feet.

This still turned into a bragging fest. Everybody started showing everybody their scars. Lady got a couple of boos when she failed to show us her legs, but everybody else had at least some sort of combat mark or other. They were all bruised and scratched from our latest battle, which soon became the main talk. They all started comparing the size and color of their bruises. Most had bruising similar to mine, but a couple of my men had massive bruising that left even mine to shame. Just because I had the most interesting scars it didn't mean that I was clumsy and kept hitting myself on non-lethal objects.

It took about an hour, but after that time had passed everybody had taken a good, hot shower and shown off their scars to everybody who cared to look. After that hour had passed I felt a lot better about my body and even my overall physical appearance. I might've even gotten a semi-permanent smile on my face. I was finished with my armor long before Snark finally came out to the showers and I gave the order for everyone to put their armor on. We killed some time by talking and joking around, and when another hour had passed, I prepared to receive Dotsenko.

A few minutes after the two-hour mark passed there was a knock on the door and everybody turned to look around. Polly, who had been standing guard, opened the door with a big smile on his face.

"Ladies and gentlemen," he said. "I introduce to you. Lance Corporal Sasha Dotsenko Two-Point-Oh!"

Dotsenko groggily walked in, leaning on one of the nurses that had operated on him. He was leaning on the nurse with his good hand, because the other one was a state of the art piece of military equipment.

"Hey," he said with a weak smile.

I looked at him and mirrored his smile. The whole team looked at him with confused expressions in their faces until Pavel started clapping. He didn't go for the slow clap, which is bad enough to be considered a sin in some jurisdictions, but it was still good. I started clapping and Ramirez started clapping and soon enough the whole team was clapping for him. Hell, even Lady was clapping and she meant it. Dotsenko smiled and hugged Ramirez before the whole team converged on him to slap his head, punch his shoulder, and tug at his new prosthetic. Dotsenko complained about the attention with a big half-doped smile before I finally gave the word for my men to disperse.

"Did you do the tests?"

"Yeah," he said, "but we kind of rushed through it."

I nodded and picked up his SAW from the wall it was leaning against. "Come with me."

"Yes, sir," he replied, following me to the elevators and then to the roof.

Manassas Veteran's Hospital was one of the tallest buildings in the east side of the city. Most of the constructions around were residential housing and small businesses. I stood on one side of the roof and placed one of my empty cans of biofoam on the ledge. I walked up to Dotsenko and handed him my silenced pistol.

"Draw and shoot," I told him. "You're right-handed, right?"

"Yes, sir," Dotsenko confirmed. He looked down at his new right arm and the gun he was holding in it. "You know, El-tee. It feels weird. I can feel my arm, like it's there and I can move it and everything. At the same time it feels like it's _not_ there. Doc even said that I might feel like my real arm is there at the same time this metal thing is."

"I wouldn't know about that," I confessed. "I've never lost a limb, Sasha. What I do know is that you need to get over this, no matter how tough it sounds. I need you to be able to tell which finger is which. I need to know that you'll be able to flip me off, that you'll be able to pleasure your girl, and that you'll be able to pull a trigger with that hand. I need to know that you'll be able to elbow someone in the nose and aim appropriately with that limb of yours. And I need to know that you'll keep whatever you feel all to yourself."

Sasha sighed and twisted his wrist completely around at an angle that no human would be able to pull off.

"See what I mean?" he asked. "To me it feels like a turned my wrist far enough around to snap it, but at the same time it feels like it's fine."

I nodded. "I want you to shoot that can."

Dotsenko looked back up and nodded. His arm flew straight up and his artificial forearm moved slightly to adjust before he fired off two quick shots. Both hit the biofoam can, knocking it down the ledge.

I smiled and retrieved my pistol. "Nice. Now I want you to grab your SAW and load it and unload it as fast as you can."

"I usually do that with my left hand," he said.

"Use your right," I told him. "Go."

His movements were clumsy, there's no way around it, but he managed to remove the drum magazine and slap it back in the weapon three times in twenty seconds. That was quite an achievement for the SAW, but it was not up to par. Not yet.

"Now your left."

He nodded and proceeded to do the exact same thing in considerably less time. He looked up at me with a satisfied smile on his face.

"Not too shabby," he said.

"Indeed," I agreed with an equally satisfied smile. "Now come here." I offered him my hand. "Squeeze until I tell you to stop."

I squeezed back, but by no means I could compete with a robotic prosthetic. After holding out for a few seconds I finally gave the word for him to stop. I shook my hand and grunted at the pain.

"You've got a good grip, sir," Dotsenko said. "It felt kind of uncomfortable. I think that's the sign for pain."

"Well, you've got an even better grip. Remember that there aren't any safeties on your hand, you wouldn't want to tear your dick off during a rough session."

"Don't worry El-tee. I'm a southpaw when it comes to masturbating," he informed me, making jerking motions with his left hand.

"Great, same here," I said, offering my left hand for a high-five.

Dotsenko gave me the high-five with his own left hand and chuckled. He was a good man and he deserved better than this, but not everybody amputee could claim to have an Asimov prosthetic. Some of those new wave freaks would even willingly get one grafted to themselves. I offered Dotsenko my right hand and shook his prosthetic using a regular amount of force. Dotsenko shook back and smiled again. This time he didn't appear to be doped up on painkillers.

"I'm glad you're ok," I told him. "You're a good guy Sasha."

"Wow, a compliment from you, sir? This must be serious."

I laughed. "Just take it for what it is, kid. Let's go back down. And hey, Ramirez went through what you went through. I know that a hand is a lot more complex than a foot, but he'll understand better than anybody. You don't exactly have the luxury of a personal psychologist, so James will have to do. He'll probably help you out without you needing to ask, he's a good kid."

"Ok, I got it."

"Good. I also want to know if you feel like your limb is not responding."

"You'll be the first to know, Sir," he assured me. "I promise."

* * *

><p>"Finally some good news," I told my men. "The first two battlegroups from outside the system just came in. They're moving in to engage the Covenant fleet in orbit."<p>

"Yeah!" Bee shouted, prompting the rest of my men to cheer at my news. I smiled at their eagerness and waited for them to settle down.

"This probably means that we'll be getting new orders and new targets. Rest time is over. In fact, I want everybody to move down to the lobby, the police forces guarding the entrance are being redirected to the starports. Now we owe it to this hospital, so we'll stand guard for the time being. Reaper will stand outside the main entrance and Predator will guard secondary entrance points."

"What about me?" Preacher asked.

"You stay in bed," I told him. "We'll come get you if we need to. Pitcher, can you walk?"

"Yes, sir," he nodded. "My head's throbbing, but I can still walk and shoot."

"Good. Pavel, work out the details. Reaper Squad, on me."

I was surprised at the lack of people trying to get in the hospital. The ones that hadn't been seriously hurt opted to take their chances with a self-help clinic and head for the evacuation ports. Only people with bad injuries or broken limbs were coming in. Mostly parents with kids were trickling through. I let Bee and Miranda humor some of the kids in line, talking to them. They were both very different, Bee was boisterous and outgoing, but Miranda had a way with civilians. She had a pretty face and a soothing voice whenever she wasn't stuttering or cussing at the covvies. Point is, civilians tended to listen to whatever she said.

I walked past a line of people with my helmet's visor depolarized. I made sure to hold my rifle across my chest in as non-threateningly a way as I could manage. I smiled at some of the little kids and gave the occasional nod to the teen or tween that stared at me. ODSTs used to be held in the same regard that Spartans are. When those older kids looked at me they saw the guy that they wanted to be. It was a big weight once you realized that every little thing you did would make an impact on their lives.

"Sir," Mata said, swaggering next to me. "Up there."

I looked up to the spot he was pointing at and saw what appeared to be a falling object careening towards the surface. It was too far away for me to tell what it was, but at that speed it wouldn't take much longer for it to slam into the surface.

"It looks like a Spirit," I muttered. "Probably damaged in the upper atmosphere."

"Must have some control still left," he said. "Might be some survivors when it comes down."  
>I got my helmet to make a rough trajectory calculation and sighed when I was told it would crash about a block away from my position on the same avenue I was standing on.<p>

"Take Longworth and Serge," I told him. "Make sure that no one gets near it and make sure nothing survived."

Already some of the civilians were screaming and pointing at the rapidly approaching Spirit. I rolled my eyes and had Bee and Miranda calm them down. The screaming stopped, but there was still nervous chattering and some crying from the younger kids.

"Hey," I told a little girl who seemed to be on the verge of bawling her eyes out. "Look at me. You're going to be ok, and your siblings as well. This is nothing my men can't handle. Ok?"

The little girl nodded and shoved her face into her mother's leg.

"Thank you," her mom mouthed, on the verge of panic herself.

The Spirit slammed down three hundred meters away from us and somersaulted some thirty meters before slamming right back down. Mata and the two others made sure to clear the Spirit before they started ordering the onlookers to stand back.

"Serge, clear the cabin," Sergeant Mata ordered.

I watched as Serge climbed up the wrecked dropship and opened the hatch. He looked inside, leading with his shotgun. Serge fired once and gave Mata a thumbs up while Longworth examined the corpses on the troop bays.

"All clear, Sergeant," Longworth called out.

"Sir," Mata reported. "You heard him."

"Yeah," I said. "Longworth, stay behind and make sure that nobody tries to grab a plasma pistol and blows their own brains off."

"Yes, sir," he replied.

I nodded to myself and turned back towards the line of civilians. "See? There's nothing to worry about ladies and gentlemen! Everything is going to work out of fine."

I practically felt the waves of relief coming at me.

A couple of hours went by without any major incidents. A column of Scorpions rolled through and I exchanged a few quick words with one of the tankers, but they knew just about the same that I did. The Covenant were preparing for a big assault on the city and at the same time made sure that they had all major highways and air corridors under their control. The UNSC was barely dedicating any forces to delaying action, instead focusing on civilian evacuation and reinforcing the city. We could take advantage of our knowledge of the city in order to do our thing and fuck their shit up.

A flight of outdated Gryphon fighters screamed overhead, leaving contrails behind. I shook my head. Those men piloting the fighters were going to do some serious damage, but their mission was as good as suicide. It was hard enough to match a Seraph's maneuverability and resistance with a Longsword, let alone an old fighter craft.

"Not good," Mata muttered next to me. "When are we getting our orders?"

"Soon enough," I assured him. "In any case, it all points out to a deployment in New Alexandria or Esztergom."

"We're not defending this place?" he asked.

"Nah," I shook my head. "This place is as good as gone, Mata. Sure, there'll be some heavy fighting and after the our and the covvies' forces are both reduced to nothing there'll be some more fighting, but the important battles will move on."

"You are a cynical person, sir," Mata said. "Very cynical."

"We're all cynical," I told him. "I just seem to voice my thoughts more often than not."

"We can agree on that one, El-tee. Sometimes you actually say what you're thinking about."

I chuckled slightly and looked at him with a curious expression. "I call it the brain-mouth filter. It used to be worse when I was younger. I'd literally speak my thoughts without noticing."

"I bet that was awkward, sir," Mata shrugged with a small smile on his own face.

"Most of the time it was. Complimenting a girl's body in a very explicit manner isn't as charming as it sounds."

"I wouldn't know, sir," Mata said.

"Ah, you're not that into women, right?"

"That is correct, Lieutenant," he went on. "And an androgynous man doesn't quite do it for me."

"Well," I laughed. "Your personal life is yours alone."

"Aw, come on El-tee, I was about to make my move."

"I'm flattered," I replied dryly.

"Anytime, sir."

I laughed, this time with more feeling. "You know, this is quite possible the most awkward conversation that I've ever had."

"Thank you, sir."

I was saved from having to come up with a come back for his deadpan sarcasm when I got a request for a transmission in an unsecured line. I considered the request for a second, but not a lot of people had my number, so it must've been something important.

"Lieutenant Castillo," I checked in.

"Hey Castillo, good to see you," Bolivar's cheery voice came in. "Well, not see you per se, but you know what I mean."

"Yes, I do," I confirmed. "And you know that. Now what's so important?"

"AAG is pulling all its teams together. We don't have much intel right now and there are Spartan units pretty much all over Viery right now and they're taking care of all the missions we can throw at them. AAG is going to be working as a rapid reaction force."

"Ok," I said, nodding. "You're telling me that all AAG teams are going to be in one place?"

"Except for a couple, yeah. Teams 1 through 30 are going to be all put in one place and then they're all going to go to different places wherever they're needed. You'll be doing mostly delaying action and decapitation strikes it seems."

"All right then," I said, glad to finally have anything resembling an objective. "You know where we are?"

"Yeah, jamming is not so bad. We're going to send four Pelicans to the Drake Naval Base. It's right in the middle of the city."

"Yeah, it's close by," I said. "Listen Bolivar, we're policing a hospital here and I would really appreciate it if you could have a small unit sent here. Just a squad will do."

"I understand. I'll see what I can do, El-tee. You and your men are supposed to be in the landing pads precisely two hours from now. Should be easy."

"Ok, I got it," I told the construct. "Thanks Bolivar. Good luck up there."

"We're kicking ass, Lieutenant," Bolivar said. "Over and out."

I relayed the orders to my men and got a few mutters of appreciation.

"Hey, sir," Bee said. "How about I circle around a couple of blocks and see about getting us a lorry. I think I saw a car dealership on the way here."

"You do that; if it's empty make sure to link up with the city's AI. It'll provide for us. "

"What if there's an employee there?"

"Tell him our situation and explain very carefully and tactfully that those pretty cars of his are going to be molten slag in a week or two."

"I can do that, sir," Bee said cheerfully. "Can I take Magnet?"

"Sure, take Andy with you," I told him. "I want you back here with two trucks in twenty minutes. Can you do that?"

"Yes, sir," they replied.

I waited for them to jog past me and opened a line to the city police channel. "This is Lieutenant Castillo of the UNSC Marine Corps. I have twenty men guarding Manassas Veteran's Hospital, but we're being redeployed. If you could send five to ten men, it would be much appreciated."

I got a reply from dispatch. "Hey Lieutenant, how's the situation over there?"

"Pretty good," I replied. "People are lined up and aren't causing any trouble. There are a couple of hospital security guards that are holding the doors, but it's mostly us that's keeping them from panicking."

"I see," the voice on the other end of the line said. "I'll see about getting some uniforms over there in a litt– Whoa, I just got orders to send ten officers your way, Lieutenant."

I smiled. "Well, I guess that solves my problems then," I told him. "Thanks for the help. Good luck."

"Good luck to you, Lieutenant. Give them hell. Over and out."

Bee and Andy rolled by with a couple of large trucks. They were flatbeds for large cargo and didn't have anything to keep a guy from falling out, but if somebody fell out of a slow-moving truck it was probably because he or she was an idiot. I had my men move into one of the trucks while Miranda very calmly explained to the civilians that police officers would be getting here to defend them in case anything happened. She also made sure to point out that the Covenant wouldn't make it into the city for at least another day. It would be plenty of time for them to go into the hospital for a quick checkup and then move into the evacuation ports.

A lot of the adults lost it and started asking us questions, wondering where we were going and why we were leaving. Miranda did her best, but many of the civilians started getting angry.

I rolled my eyes and climbed outside of my passenger seat on the truck and onto the top of the cabin.

"All right everybody! Listen up!" I shouted, making sure to use my helmet's loudspeakers. "Are you listening?"

I got a few nods from the civilians and went on.

"My men and I are highly trained special forces operators," I said, enunciating every word very carefully. "We don't mind defending you civilians, it is our job, but frankly, there are better things for us to do than play security guard in a hospital line. Do you understand that?" I sighed and kept going. "We are leaving to a place where we can be more helpful and the officers coming here will be equally effective. They are trained to deal with situations like these, ok? There's absolutely no need to panic."

I wasn't exactly the smoothest talker when it came to helpless civilians, but if you say something with enough authority and charisma and people will listen and even believe it. It's a little something that I learned back in high school. It's a funny story, that. I wasn't the most popular guy, but I was good-looking and friendly enough. I went to a party where this drunk senior told me the secret for getting girls to make out with you. He very explicitly told me that it wasn't a good idea to order a girl to sleep with you, but it worked well enough for a lot of other things.

But I digress, my words seemed to calm down the civilians a little bit, even if they didn't completely relax.

"You've got a way with words, Frank," Pavel muttered, getting on the side seat of the other truck.

"Drive," I ordered Bee. "Easy on the turns, you wouldn't want half the squad to kick your ass because you drove them off the truck."

"Yes, sir," he replied. "Want me to play some music?"

I smiled and leaned back on my seat. "Sure, why not? It's been a while since we last heard your stuff."

Bee smiled and immediately started browsing through his library. I flipped the side mirror and made sure that Preacher was safe and sound. He was face down and a couple of my guys were grabbing him to make sure that he wouldn't need to exert himself if he started sliding one down way or the other.

Bee selected a song called Eternal Flame. I had heard this one before. It was one of those inspiring orchestral pieces, full of warmth and hope. Seemed like an appropriate choice when you considered the situation in the planet. Plus, it was an enjoyable song regardless. I leaned back on the seat and closed my eyes for a few seconds, listening to the song as the piano was joined by other instruments in a crescendo of sorts.

The city looked wrong. There was nothing that would jump up at you and scream invasion, but here and there was an abandoned care in an awkward position, a shop-window was open, a trash can overturned. We might've been traveling through a bad part of any city, but then there were some highly visible marks. Smoke coming from one building, a Pelican parked in a crossroads while its crew worked furiously to repair it. Families were still leaving their homes, packing their valuables into SUV trucks. The public service announcement was playing a loop, telling civilians to head to the nearest evacuation ports or to leave the city, heading away from the approaching Covenant forces.

The things I was seeing deeply contrasted the song playing inside my helmet. More and more fighters and bombers were screaming overhead. I could see Shortswords with their iconic triangular shape flying in formation, they were usually escorted by old Gryphon fighters or the newer SkyHawk strike fighters. So far there wasn't much military presence in the ground, but that was only because most of the UNSC had already pulled back, leaving some token forces to delay the Covenant and hoping that the Air Force would do enough with bombing runs. Most of the people were already outside of the city, but a couple hundred thousand remained, trying to find the means to escape what would soon become a death trap.

Drake Naval Base was not too far away from our position, but there were police roadblocks here and there. We had to stop for them, even if they let us pass as soon as they saw Bee's ODST helmet. The officers were beginning to get jumpy. Some of them asked us quick questions, most of them regarding the state of the civilian population. Some others asked when they would be allowed to leave their stations and save their own asses. I gave them the best answers I could and ordered Bee to drive through. Occasionally we would spot something that showed us that the Covenant were here. The Spirit that had crashed down on the street wasn't the only Covenant craft that had been shot down over the city. I saw a Phantom that had slammed into the side of a building and a pair of Banshee husks that were smoking on the street.

"Hold on," Bee called out. "Speeding up."

The next song on his playlist was called Protectors of the Earth. Even more appropriate. This one was not a song of hope, it was purely badass. It could've been played during a scene where the heroes are just beginning to fight back against the unstoppable enemy. We could've played it a couple of days ago, but we had already fought back against the Covenant and it hadn't done much good. Some of the younger members of Team-7 liked the song and rocked their heads back and forth in rhythm. A few of our more cynical members didn't say anything about the fast-paced music. I could tell that Pavel was worried, but I didn't know whether he was thinking about his family or something else. Andy, Marv, and Snark just looked at the cityscape. Caboose and Serge were inscrutable, but with their helmets on it wasn't very easy to see what they were thinking, especially when you considered that I had to crane my neck backwards to see them in the flatbed.

"How much more?" I asked Bee, eyeing the pad in my left wrist.

"Should be about an hour all things considered," Bee said. "Enough time to play some music, indoctrinate the team into my ways."

I chuckled. "Right. Don't play any melancholic stuff, ok?"

"I know my shit, El-tee. I got you." Bee rolled his neck around and sighed, tightening his grip on the car's wheel. "I'd catch some sleep if I were you, sir."

"Way ahead of you," I told him. "Wake me in forty minutes."

The entire truck shook when Bee hit what appeared to be an explosion crater in the middle of the speedway. I glared at him through my depolarized visor and he quickly apologized.

"I'll drive smoothly."

"We've got wounded back there," I told him. "And not one of those guys has a seatbelt on."

"Yes, sir," Bee said. "I'll be very careful."

I closed my eyes and let Bee do the driving.

* * *

><p>"Sir."<p>

I opened my eyes. I wasn't prepared for the sun hitting me right in the face. I grunted some curses in Spanish before grunting some curses in English. I stretched my legs and my back before opening the door and climbing down. My men were already helping Pitcher and Preached climb down of the trucks and moving towards the landing pads where the Pelicans would be coming down. Ramirez and Dotsenko were talking to each other, comparing their mechanical limbs and chuckling slightly. Dotsenko was still eyeing his arm uncomfortably, but when you get a state-of-the-art robot arm, you get over your loss a lot faster. Ramirez didn't have a limp anymore, but his walking was still awkward. The mechanical leg, no matter how good it was, couldn't imitate his walking patterns perfectly weird. It was not something that you'd immediately notice, but when you had lived and fought with a man for a few years, you could tell that something was slightly off.

Well, it didn't matter. He could jump pretty damn far with that mechanical leg of his and the suspensions it had meant that he could survive jumps that would leave most humans crippled. Physically speaking, a mechanical body was a lot better than a natural one.

"News?" I asked to nobody in particular.

"Not much," Pavel said, hopping off the other truck. "A small Covenant incursion in the suburbs. The cops handled it without too much trouble."

I raised an eyebrow. "Did they have any help?"

"The security systems in those houses told them exactly where the enemy was, they'd just fire through the walls. I heard it was quite impressive, actually."

"Must've been grunts," I said. "Elites would've noticed what was going on."

"There was two of those," Pavel went on. "They just never thought to look."

I sighed and smiled. "Serves them right, those fuckers."

I glanced at my watch. There were only a few minutes left until the Pelicans that were going to get us arrived. Seeing as they were sending four Pelicans our way I could only guess that there was another unit that would be joining us soon. The pilots would contact me whenever they arrived, but I had no way of knowing when the other unit was getting here. It would probably be around thirty men, certainly special forces. Hell, in all likelihood they were AAG like us.

"How you doing?" I asked Pavel.

"I'm good," he replied. "I'm good."

I nodded and patted him in the shoulder. "You know I'm here for you if there's anything you need."

"I know," he said. "Thanks Frank."

"Sir, Armadillos rolling by," Miranda said. "Pretty fresh paint on them, too."

I chuckled. That was about the worst insult you could give a tanker or any man who drove armored vehicles for a living. I saw the armored vehicles roll by and stop about thirty meters from my position. I started walking towards their position, slapping my rifle onto my back and gesturing for Pavel to walk with me. Caboose immediately stepped up and ordered my men to grab all their gear and set it next to the pads in a neat line.

The rear hatch doors to the Armadillo's opened and out came a bunch of men and women wearing different styles of armor and different color fatigues. I smiled, they were indeed Asymmetrical Actions Group. My helmet tagged them by their rank and last name. The colors floating above their heads marked them as mostly Army men. There were some sailors and Marines in there as well, with the Marines being the minority in the group. There was even one Air Force operator in the group.

One of the men stepped up, my helmet tagged him as Captain Nezarian.

For a brief instant I saw Yevgeny's face looking down at me, screaming orders to his men. A second later my vision was obscured with blood and Yev was on top of me, bleeding out and choking on his own blood. I must've stumbled slightly at the vivid flashback, because Pavel glanced sideways at me before taking off his helmet. I followed suit and offered my arm to Captain Nezarian.

"Captain Alaric Nezarian," he introduced himself, shaking our hands.

"Lieutenant Francisco Castillo," I replied in kind. "This over here is Gunny Klaus."

"Pleasure," he replied. "Now why does your name sound familiar, Lieutenant?"

I shrugged. "Your name sounds pretty damn familiar to me. Any relation to Yevgeny Nezarian? He was a Ranger, like you."

"You knew Yevgeny?" he asked, taking off his helmet. "You _are _talking about Lieutenant Yevgeny Domitrovich Nezarian of the UNSC Army Rangers? Killed in action in Asilon about eight years ago?"

"That's the one," I said. "He was one of my best friends."

"And a great man," Pavel added.

Captain Nezarian smiled. "Well, isn't the galaxy a small place… Yevgeny was my cousin, the closest to my age. I was drafted and he immediately joined. To protect me, he said. Of course we got sent into different divisions quartered in different systems."

I chuckled slightly. "Might be a little late, but for what it's worth, he saved our asses more than a couple of times. In fact, some of my guys here knew him as well."

"It's nice to hear good things about him," Captain Alaric Nezarian said. "But we can always talk about Yev later."

"Yes, sir," I said, nodding. "I've got several wounded in my unit, two of them serious. One of my men lost an arm, just got his mechanic limb."

"Relax," Nezarian said. "I'm not your commanding officer, no need to give me reports."

I smiled. "Well I'll be damned. Appreciate that, Captain."

"Call me Alaric, or Al," he said.

"Frank," I told him. "Where are you coming from?"

"We did a HALO about one hundred miles north of here," he told me. "All of our targets and then some were taken out right before our jump, we weren't informed of that until the unit that handled that was picked up."

"Spartans?"

"Spartans," Alaric confirmed. "They really did a number on the covvies, but had to pull out because of enemy air supremacy. The incredibly high number of Seraphs was something that nobody told us about either."

I chuckled. "Jumped into a grid with no targets and suddenly found yourselves with a target painted on your back," I said. "Sucks."

"Tell me about it," he scoffed. "We made our way out without firing one single shot and then came across a set of containers with Armadillos inside. They were supposed to go to an Army unit that got redirected somewhere else. Logistical nightmare."

"Yeah," I agreed. "I was wondering why the 'Dillos were so clean."

"Woah, might be careful when you say that," he told me. "My men are pissed that they didn't get to fight. Last thing I need is a rivalry with Team… Sorry, didn't catch your team number."

I cleared my throat. "AAG Team-7," I told him.

"Ah, I've heard good stuff about your unit."

"Thanks Al," I said. "And you're with what team?"

"Team-29," he said.

I nodded. "You did some work in Sigma Octanus, didn't you?"

"Yes, we did," he confirmed. "There were Spartans there, too. Well, with the way things are shaping up, there's no doubt that my men will get the action they want." He paused and sighed. "Reach, huh?"

"Reach," I agreed.

"What about your men?"

"Where to start?" I muttered. "We arrived to the system just when the Covenant began their invasion. We had to wait for a long time before we dropped. When we dropped the Supercarrier was still there. Did some guerilla work for a day or two and then we got sent to Hegy Valley."

"Postcard central, eh?" Al asked. "I heard it was abandoned."

"Yeah," I said. "We were bottling the Covenant, but HIGHCOM decided that stopping the Covenant advance there wasn't worth the resources, we pulled back and here we are."

"Sucks," he said, "but it might've been for the best. I hear that there are big troop movements elsewhere in the planet. If we give up Manassas we might just be able to save some of the other population centers."

"One of the biggest cities in the planet and we're abandoning it," I grunted.

"We're off to a great start," Captain Nezarian muttered, directing his eyes to the approaching Pelicans.

* * *

><p><em>Thanks for reading this chapter.<em>

_Well, for starters, there wasn't much proofreading done here, so I apologize for any and all mistakes in here. Secondly, I do believe that this was a pretty long chapter for a non-action one, so I'm proud of myself._

_In this universe everyone knows everyone. Maybe Al Nezarian will have another appearance or maybe he'll be brutally killed in the next chapter. Who knows? Anyways, we now have two guys with artificial limbs and a recap of scars and their origins. Some of my readers will remember all of them, I know I didn't. I have to keep a list of the scars and their causes because I know that they'll eventually come up._

_I hope that you enjoyed this chapter boys and girls. If there's any character that you want to know more about, please tell me, otherwise it might be too late in a few chapters (or not, I guess it depends)._

_Stay strong._

_-casquis_


	193. Skyhooks

Chapter CXCIII: Skyhooks

**August 15, 2552 (UNSC Calendar)/**

**Clarke Orbital Skyhook, Viery Territory, Reach, Epsilon Eridani System**

* * *

><p>A skyhook is basically what it sounds like. A structure in the sky that hooks things. Ergo: skyhook. The truth is a lot more complicated than that. Skyhooks were built long before humanity had the capabilities to build space elevators in every planet we colonized. I'm not exactly sure whether the first thing we had built on Earth had been a skyhook or an orbital elevator, but I was damned certain that the first thing we had built here was a skyhook. When the <em>Odyssey <em>first arrived in the system in 2362, ages ago, the planet wasn't ready to be colonized. Instead, several enclosed habitats had been placed all around the planet and the terraforming had begun. While the planet began its drastic changing, someone decided that there had to be some degree of revenue to make up for the trillions of credits being poured into terraforming. We already knew that Reach was going to be vomiting titanium for at least two millennia, so we put automatic miners down there. The titanium than had to be brought to orbit to be refined and then shipped out back to Sol.

How to do that?

Skyhook.

A skyhook was basically a giant hollow tube with a big-ass space station on one end. The 'top' end was anchored in geosynchronous orbit and the 'bottom' end was several miles high in the air. The theory was that you saved more by building that big-ass structure than you would've spent on fuel otherwise. I'm not exactly sure how long this skyhook was in use for, but after Reach was terraformed and became one of humanity's population, military, and commercial hubs, more and more were built until finally Reach got its own orbital elevators. At that point the skyhooks were rendered obsolete, even if not completely useless. Most of them were still used to some degree, but in the end most of the goods were transported to the orbital elevators instead.

So the skyhooks were put to the side in favor of the more effective elevators, but you can't just bring down a trillion dollar structure that is over 40,000 kilometers in length. It's not that simple. You have to find a use for it. Several big companies bought them and built their factories directly underneath, saving money by avoiding the fees that elevators charged, others were bought by ultra-wealthy individuals and converted into retreats or permanent residences.

Clarke Orbital Skyhook, the first in the planet, had been converted into an ultra-expensive hotel. The single structure at the bottom had been converted into four different boxes, all of them forming the corners of a square separated from one another but connected by skyways. They were connected to the main body of the skyhook itself by metal columns and secured by pylons and tethers. If one of those columns were to be cut, the structure it supported would plummet down to the surface 16 kilometers below.

Four floating cubes, each connected to a tube that appeared to be defying the laws of physics, were the place where the UNSC had decided to headquarter their single most elite corps of fighters.

"So that's what a skyhook looks like," Mata muttered next to me. "Impressive."

"Looks like it's about to fall down to Reach," Pitcher muttered. "Damn."

"I know it looks pretty," I said, stepping off the Pelican and into the hangar, "but we're probably not gonna be here for long. I want helmets on at all times. The skyhook should be pressurized, but you know how it goes."

Nineteen of us jumped out of the Pelicans, one of us was carried down. Preacher insisted that he could walk and I believed him, but no matter how miraculous modern medicine might've been, I didn't want him to take another extra day. The advanced biofoam that had been administered to him was speeding up the regenerative capabilities of his cells, feeding them with some sort of material that increased their reproduction exponentially. There would be several ugly scars on his back, most of them bumpy, but he would be ready to fight in just a few more hours.

"Lieutenant, you're late."

I looked up to see Captain Flatt walking towards me. It took me a quick moment to recognize her with the armor she was wearing. It was an unusual configuration, with more rounded shoulder pads and a very angular helmet. Recon armor wasn't precisely common, even in our circles. It was usually issued to anti-insurrection units. Her helmet was tucked under her right arm and she didn't look very happy. Out of all of that what surprised me the most was her makeup. For starters, she was in full battle armor and wearing makeup. She looked good, too.

"Captain," I said, straightening my back. "Nice to see you're alright."

"Thanks," she said, waving her hand for me to relax. "Ah, Captain Nezarian, is it?"

"Yes, ma'am," Alaric said, stepping next to me. "Pleasure."

"Wish I could say the same. Your direct supervisor was supposed to be here."

"Is John dead?"

Captain Flatt shrugged. "It would appear so, no confirmation of it, but seems very likely."

Nezarian looked to the side and muttered a quick curse in Russian. "Shit. He was a good man."

"A lot of good men are gonna die before this is over," Flatt said. "For now, I'll forward all your information to the chain of command."

"Understood, ma'am," Captain Nezarian said.

Flatt sighed. "Captain, you and your team have rooms 1213 through 1218. Head up and occupy them before someone else does."

"Yes, ma'am, right away." Nezarian turned around to face his team. "Team-29, on me!"

The twenty men marched out behind Nezarian at a slight jog, leaving the hangar empty save for my own men and a couple of technicians. The hangar doors were already shut and the place was pressurized. I took off my helmet and rolled my neck.

"You look like shit," Flatt said.

"You look good," I replied, vaguely gesturing to her face.

"Very funny, Frank," she muttered. "Is your team ready for action?"

I looked back at my men, who seemed to be about to collapse under their own weight. I sighed and shook my head slightly. "If we need to fight we'll fight. I think that they need some rest though, we got naps on the trucks and naps on the plane. A couple more hours should do it."

Captain Flatt nodded. "Good. I'll give you your two hours, have your men rest up."

"Thanks," I told her. "Pavel, take everybody and head out."

Pavel nodded and shouted for the team to follow him. He shouldered his heavy weapon and started walking, leaving the rest of the men to slowly move up behind him. Preacher was still on a backboard, complaining every step of the way as Ramirez, Polly, Crow and Payat carried him. I waited for my men to leave the hangar before I started walking with Flatt.

"Captain," I began, "why are we bunching up all of AAG here? A single pulse laser is all it takes to kill us all."

"I assure you that this skyhook is protected," she said. "At this altitude we can deploy almost anywhere in east and south Viery in a very short amount of time. Command wants us to jump out at a moment's notice. Whenever a mission comes up the next team on rotation will take it and deploy. All missions will be quick, either decapitation strikes or guerilla action. Your transport will remain there and wait for you to get the job done, ok?"

"We'll be jumping down with basically no information and we are expected to complete the mission in less than twenty minutes?"

"Fifteen would be optimal."

I smiled at Flatt, who just chuckled at my eager grin. "My men are gonna love this."

"They probably will," she agreed. "Your team is filled with a bunch of overeager dicks."

I laughed with her. "You know Cap, the eyeliner looks good on you."

"Fuck off, Frank."

* * *

><p>"This is a simple mission, understood?" I asked loudly. "That's why I only brought half the team. Truth be told, I could've done this myself, but I couldn't have all of you pissed because you didn't get some mud in your boots. Our task is simple. Assassination. There are three elite ultras in charge of Covenant hit-and-runs in this area. They've stopped now that the larger enemy advance is converging on their position. This means that we have a very small window to take them out before five thousand angry aliens overrun us."<p>

"Doesn't sound so simple, sir," Crow said, drawing some good-natured laughs.

"Simple doesn't always mean easy," I told him. "Snark will make all three kill-shots. Longworth and I will go with him to our shooting position, the rest of you will stay on our exfil point, secure it, and wait for us to come back."

"Aw, come on, sir," Bee complained. "We don't get no love?"

"Negative," I said. "Sergeant Mata, you're in charge, ok?"

He nodded. "Yes, sir."

"Touching down," the pilot said. "Fifteen minutes, Lieutenant."

"We only need five," I replied. "Move out!"

The wet leaves barely crunched when my men and I landed from the Pelican. The craft touched down a couple of seconds later and turned its engines off. Mata gave the word for the men to spread out and I immediately followed Snark as he started climbing up the hill. Longworth jogged up to me and kept pace as we followed Snark on his climb. Snark was 33 years old, even if the slipspace travel and cryo made his physical age somewhat younger, I was still impressed with the way that he could climb a steep hill. Longworth, needless to say, had no problem keeping up the pace. I couldn't help but wonder what he would've done with his life had he not been drafted.

Adrian Longworth, born to a privileged family, had a decent education, natural talent for all things athletic, and looked good enough to be the face of the trendiest men's fragrance. I have no doubt that he would've been successful. Maybe as an athlete or maybe as a researcher. Being a soldier was a waste of potential for him. Unfortunately, he damn well knew it. Arrogant bastard.

"Slow down," Snark gave the order.

"More?" Longworth teased.

I rolled my eyes.

"Crouch," Snark said, ignoring the taunt. "Thirty meters."

I followed his orders. No matter how much raw natural and artificial talent I had I knew that I would never be as good as Snark. The man had a natural talent for all things sniper. He could read the wind, he could read the drop, he could read the target's movements and predict where the alien was gonna be before he fired. Snark lead us through the forest and up to the hilltop. Drone surveillance and satellite imagery had already been made available to us and Snark had picked the better option. We made our way to a small spot where the foliage was considerably less thick than in other places.

"I'm climbing up," Snark let us know. "I'll tag the targets as soon as I see them."

"Make it quick," I told him.

Snark climbed up a thick pine tree and made himself comfortable while Longworth and I took cover behind a boulder. Longworth propped his DMR on the top and aimed downhill, trying to make out any enemy movement.

"You see anything?" I asked him.

"No sir," he replied.

"Of course you don't," I said, rolling my eyes. "Sit down Longworth, let Snark do his job."

"Sir, why do we have him up there to make three kills? We could easily climb different trees and shoot down the elites at the same time."

"Listen, kid. This is a mile-long shot, a lot of things can go wrong with one of those. I'm barely good enough for those, and I know that you're not good enough to guarantee a killshot at this distance. Now don't look at me like that. Snark is one of the best damned snipers in the world, you've seen what he can do."

"Yes, sir," Longworth muttered.

He didn't really sound like he believed it, but people like that always had a tough time admitting that someone was better than them. Instead of sitting back down with me Longworth stayed upright, propping his rifle against the rock. Snark didn't take too long to spot our three targets. Three red silhouettes appeared in the distance. They looked like tiny red dots, but through Snark's scope they seemed to be just a hundred feet away.

"Whenever you feel like it," I said.

Snark fired three times. The reticule wasn't aiming anywhere near the elites, but I could see one of the vapor contrails. The bullet seemed to have a mind of its own as it dropped ever so slightly. One head exploded and in less than a second the two others ended up the same way. I smiled at the sight of three dead elite ultras, especially at this range. Snark even reduced the zoom on his scope to give me some perspective before he started climbing down the tree. As soon as he hit the ground we started running downhill and towards the Pelican that was waiting for us.

* * *

><p>I waited for the hangar door to close down before taking off my helmet. The Pelican with Pavel and his team on it was only just beginning to open its rear hatch. My men stepped outside, looking tired and almost completely covered in mud. This made the third mission that Team-7 had taken care of in the last day. It wasn't very relaxing, but at least we felt like we were doing something. Two assassinations and sabotage. That made five dead hingeheads and a blown-up fuel depot for Wraiths, Ghosts, and Banshees.<p>

"How was it?" I asked Pavel.

He grunted. "Truth be told, we could've used the rest of the platoon."

"Sorry Pavs," I apologized. "I didn't expect anything to go wrong."

He shrugged, seemingly dislocating both his shoulders as he did so. "We messed up in the evac, but swimming through mud was not that bad. It was a little bit tense for a moment there, but we're fine."

"Good, good," I said. "Wanna get some rest?"

"Not particularly," he replied. "I did, however, manage to get us a six pack."

I smiled. "Nice going. I hear the observation room is pretty relaxing."

Pavel nodded and rolled his neck, smiling. "Sure, let's go."

We moved through the hangar, avoiding crates of ammunition, equipment, and even vehicles. Among the various markings I could see Warthogs, Scorpions, jetpacks, and grenades. I considered grabbing myself a jetpack and some grenades, but if they had them here it was probably because somebody was going to use them. Pavel and I walked through some of the support staff, making our way past engineers and mechanics that handled the Pelicans and skyhook workings. The stairwells were empty, and after fifteen minutes of climbing up we finally made our way into observation room.

"Damn," Pavel said, looking through the massive window. "No wonder people paid for this."

I nodded in agreement. From here we could see two of the other skyboxes and their respective columns. If we looked down we could see the white clouds and some land that peeked out of cover here and there. Far in the distance I could see the peaks of some of the Highland Mountains, tilted sideways as if someone had punched them through the crust. It was truly an incredibly sight.

"I don't have a bottle-opener," Pavel told me, tossing me a beer.

"Corona?" I asked, eyeing the beer with a small smile. "How'd you manage to find these?"

"Believe it or not, it was the only thing they had."

I laughed. "Well, to me this beer has always tasted like home."

"And even if our home is burning right now, we can forget about that for a while," Pavel said, opening his bottle with a swipe from his knife. "Cheers."

"Cheers," I replied, clinking my bottle to his.

We sat down on the floor and said nothing for a while. We enjoyed our first beer in silence, but when we opened our second one we started chatting a little bit. Pavel had talked to Amber again and had been relieved to hear that she was fine. She was inside the spaceport with Lavvie, Katie, and Liz. Things were beginning to get a little bit hectic down there, but with a little bit of luck they'd get on the first five transports leaving the city.

We talked about a bunch of things, but after Pavel had told me how glad he was that his family was fine we mostly avoided the issue of Reach being under attack. We talked about sports, about old friends, about old times, and about whatever else came to our minds. Halfway through our third and final beer we started joking around a little bit. We weren't exactly tipsy, but we were feeling a little bit more giddy than usual. Pavel more so than I, but it still wasn't bad.

"Thanks for the beer," I said, eyeing the amber liquid in the bottle. "I've missed doing this."

He laughed. "Remember how they used to let us take booze down groundside for missions?"

I nodded and smiled. "We'd stop right in the middle of something to have a sip and then bitch around when we spilled some."

"We were a nice pair of jackasses you and I," Pavel said.

"We still are," I told him.

He shook his head and chuckled, looking at his near-empty beer. "Well, I like to think that I've matured a little bit over the years."

"And I have to make up for that," I told him.

Pavel smiled. "Nah, you're a better man now than you were before."

"Sure doesn't feel like it."

"Trust me," he assured me. "You are."

I smiled to myself and finished the last of my beer before leaning back and enjoying the view. All throughout my life there were few sights that compared to this one. The sun hit the clouds in just the right angle and made them look almost golden.

* * *

><p><strong>Lance Corporal Serge Brisbois<strong>

"There they go," Bee complained. "Those two have one of the legendary bromances in the history of men."  
>"Don't forget about Ramirez and Dotsenko," Crow said, chuckling. "Besides, Gunny and El-tee have been fighting together since the Paleolithic."<p>

A few of the men chuckled. It was a funny joke for the younger soldiers, but most of the men were only a couple of years younger than Gunny. Konstantinov and I were both older than El-tee. Granted, Sergeant Konstantinov was only a year or so older, but I had nine years on the kid.

_Je suis vieux…_

Damn right I was. I was in my mid forties and still in the frontlines. I could still take all of these kids to school if I felt like it, but when it came down to the raw physical stuff most of them had an edge on me. I was fairly certain that only Konstantinov, Klaus, and Longworth could beat me in a fight, but if we decided to run a marathon I'd end up losing. I kept my thoughts to myself and walked with the rest of Team-7 in silence. Some of the guys reminded me of my old company in the Foreign Legion. The men that joined it were usually down on their luck and trying to get some source of income. I had gone in as an officer because my family had had the youngest son join the Legion for the past seven generations.

Nobody would have expected me to actually enjoy it there.

I almost bumped into Marvin when he abruptly stopped. I shook his shoulder slightly and looked at the datapad he was holding.

"Oh," he said. "Sorry Serge. I was promoted?"

I raised an eyebrow.

"Wait, what?" Bee asked. "Were you gunning for a promotion?"

"Not really," he replied.

"But you still got a promotion?" Crow asked. "Damn. Congrats."

"Thanks," Marvin said. "I like the sound of that. Sergeant Mobuto."

"Don't get full of hot air," Konstantinov called from the front of the group. "No command privileges for you."

"Wouldn't dream of it," Marvin said.

I heard something creak and then snap.

"Watch out!" someone shouted.

I looked up and jumped out of the way just as a crate of something slammed into the floor where half of us had just been standing in.

I grunted.

"Anybody hurt?" Konstantinov called out.

"Doesn't look like it," Sergeant Mata replied. "Ramirez?"

"I'm fine," he replied. "We're all fine."

"What the fuck, dumbass?" Bee shouted at one of the workers above us.

I examined the crate just as Bee got into a shouting match with the mechanics in charge of the crate. I shook my head when I saw that it was full of jetpacks. If El-tee hadn't told us about this then they probably weren't meant for our use. Such a shame, everybody enjoyed having some fun with jetpacks every now and then.

"Serge, are you ok?" Lady asked. "That crate landed inches from you."

"Our," I said. "I'm fine."

"What happened here?" Captain Nezarian asked, looking sleepy. "Can't a man get some sleep?"

"Sorry Captain," Mata quickly said. "Some asshole up there didn't secure the crate. Damn near slammed on top of my men."

"Shit," Nezarian muttered. "Everybody fine?"

"Not if I have a say in it," Bee grunted, making his way towards one of the mechanics.

I rolled my eyes and grabbed him by the arm, pulling him back. Bee looked like he wanted to say something, but I glared at him and got him to stop. The guys were pissed, and rightfully so, but we couldn't afford a brawl right now.

"Well, if nothing happened then I have no business here," Nezarian said. "Au revoir."

I almost replied to that, but before I could even begin to form words with my mouth The entire floor tilted and the create slammed against me. I expected to be splattered against a wall, but suddenly I found myself falling down. The sounds of groaning metal and screaming suddenly filled the air. It wasn't too long before I realized what was going on. We had been attacked and our portion of the skyhook was plummeting down to the ground.

"Merde."

* * *

><p><strong>First Lieutenant Francisco Castillo<strong>

"What the-"

The large window shattered and both Pavel and I were dragged outside of the observation room. I only just managed to reach for my knife and stab it into the ground as hard as possible. I grabbed my helmet and was almost yanked outside when Pavel managed to hold on to my helmet.

"You reached for your helmet before me!" he shouted.

"Sorry!" I shouted back. "What's going on?"

As soon as there was no more air to escape the observation room I pulled Pavel up into the room and put my helmet on. Shit the air was freaking cold up here. Pavel had somehow managed to hold onto his own helmet.

"My machine gun is gone," he said simply.

I moved back to the edge and looked down to see that half of this section of the skyhook had been severed from the top and was currently falling down to the planet. I looked to the other four sections and saw that all four of them appeared to be intact.

"The whole team was there Frank," Pavel said.

"They still are," I told him. "They'll find a way."

Pavel shrugged just as a pulse laser slammed into the cube-like structure facing us. The section of the skyhook must've been some three hundred meters away from my position, but the shockwave was clearly felt even as the skyhook shuddered violently. Pavel and I found ourselves falling and slamming into the walls. I grunted and made sure my rifle was secure to my back even as I tried to come up with a way to get out of this one alive.

"That's a corvette," Pavel said. "Shit, they sent a corvette!"

"Ok," I said. "We move up and climb our way into space."

"Frank, are you a fucking idiot?"

"Well, it's a lot better than falling into Reach, Pavel!"

"We're screwed aren't we?"

I nodded.

"Try and contact the team."

"There's no signal, Frank."

"Ah, shit."

The corvette was shifting its turrets to hit the next structure even as half a dozen Phantoms left its hangar and started flying in our direction. We moved to the edge and ducked just one of the dropships passed right by us. It was too late, we had been spotted. I hit the grunt in the turret before it could blast us into oblivion, but three elite rangers jumped off the Phantom and used their jetpacks to land through the broken window. I managed to take one out before Pavel detonated one of his flashbang grenades.

My brilliant friend and second-in-command forgot to shout flashbang, My helmet failed to see the device and in turn didn't polarize for the flash. I suddenly found myself unable to hear anything or see anything. I jumped backwards and slammed into what I hoped was Pavel. I felt his hand reach for my sidearm and managed to make out what sounded like clicks. My eyes were beginning to make out vague silhouettes and shadows, but I didn't really feel like I could be helpful.

Pavel slapped me twice in the back in what I could only assume was the 'clear' sign and turned me around. My vision started slowly coming back to me.

"-ntom is coming towards us!" Pavel was yelling. "It's coming back!"

"Get an elite!" I shouted. "Prop it up and draw the Phantom closer!"

Pavel may or may not have nodded, but he dragged me towards one of the dead elites and made me help lift him up. By the time the Phantom was in front of us I had mostly regained my vision.

"Jump!" Pavel shouted.

Let's put this into perspective. Over a dozen miles of empty air below me. A collapsing structure behind me and an enemy dropship in front of me. Throw in my damaged eyeballs and you had a real cocktail right there. I followed Pavel and slammed into the Phantom. I thought it was closer, because only my upper body made it. I grunted and climbed my way up as Pavel used my and his pistol to blast away at the grunts in the cargo bay. I climbed up and fired twice at a grunt.

"Frank, left!"

I turned and fired at an elite pilot just in time, but its dead carcass slammed into me and tilted me back towards the plasma cannon on the side of the Phantom. I flipped over it and found myself holding onto the hot barrel of an energy weapon. My vision returned fully at that time, just when the adrenaline kicked in. I fired at another elite that Pavel was engaging, but the alien positioned itself between Pavel and me. My friend killed the elite, but suffered the same fate I did when the driver of the Phantom shook the ship.

"Well hello," I said to Pavel, who was hanging on right next to me.

"Shut up," he grunted, slipping one of the sidearms into his holster.

The Phantom once again shook as the pilot tried to get us off, but both of us managed to hold onto it.

The sole remaining occupant of the Phantom decided that it had had enough and left the cockpit with a plasma pistol in hand. The elite took careful aim at us, hiding its body behind the cockpit door.

"Let go!" Pavel shouted.

I let go and suddenly found myself falling towards Reach.

"Well, isn't this fun?" Schitzo said.

* * *

><p><strong>Lance Corporal Serge Brisbois<strong>

_Think fast…_

I managed to hold onto the crate until we were thrown clear outside of the wreck. The crate was spinning violently, but after a few seconds it slowed down enough that I could regain my bearings. The first thing that came to mind was that the massive Covenant corvette on top of us had appeared out of nowhere with no warning. The second thing I thought of was that I was now falling at a considerable velocity towards the oh so very hard surface. Then I remembered that the crate that I was holding onto was full of jetpacks.

What were the odds that the jetpacks inside were fueled up and ready to be used?

I made my way to the doors and opened it. The task was a lot harder than one would imagine, especially considering the falling into the surface thing and everything. I climbed inside the crate and grabbed one of the jetpacks and slung it across my shoulders. I activated the thrusters and hollered when they worked.

"Team-7, Team-7," I shouted into my helmet. "Converge on my position!"

It had been a very long time since I had yelled that loudly. I climbed out of the box and shut the doors. I started firing my pistol into the air, trying to draw someone's attention. I could see several humanoid shapes around me. All of them had all their limbs spread out, certainly trying to slow down and think of something.

The nearest shapes saw me firing and started diving towards me, angling themselves to hit the crate.

"Serge!" Bee shouted. "Holy shit man!"

"Grab a jetpack!" I shouted.

"Holy fuck!" Lady cursed as she slammed into the crate a little bit harder than she expected.

"Jetpack!" I told her.

More and more of the guys started clinging onto the crate.

"Is that a Pelican?" Tanks asked.

"I got it," I said, activating my jetpack and rushing towards the plummeting aircraft.

"I'm with you," Marv said from behind me.

I used the jetpack to head towards the Pelican and settled into a fall with the bird. Once it stopped spinning violently in one direction Marv and I grabbed onto it and jumped into the troop bay. I used the netting on the roof to drag myself inside the cockpit and was surprised when I saw that Captain Flatt was there.

"Captain?"

She looked over her shoulder.

"Brisbois?" she exclaimed. "You scared the living shit out of me!"

"Pardon," I apologized.

"I'm just about to get this thing back on," she informed me. "Hold on!"

I barely had time to grab onto anything before the engines roared and the Pelican managed to magically stabilize itself. I grunted at the g-force pulling at me and fell to my knees.

"Whoo-hoo!" Flatt shouted. "This is Captain Flatt, if anyone copies me, I want everybody to link up with one another. This Pelican can hold about twenty five people if we cram in!"

That plus the thirty jetpacks in the crate we might just be able to save ten percent of the section. Tops. I moved to the back of the Pelican and saw Marv grabbing the machine gun in the back, preparing for any Covenant aircraft that my try to attack us.

"Section Four managed to completely evacuate," Flatt shouted over the radio. "Three got about eighty percent of their guys off!"

"What about two?" Marv asked.

"Complete loss," she replied. "No transmissions or vitals. Where the hell's Castillo?"

"He and Gunny were upstairs," Marv replied.

"Shit," she sighed. "Get me Konstantinov."

"Forwarding," Marv said. "There you go."

Staff Konstantinov informed Captain Flatt quickly established what the problem was and then reported that all of Team-7 along with a few of the guys from Team-29 were safe and sound with jetpacks. They'd each try and hold onto another lucky falling human and save their poor frightened soul. I jumped back into the cockpit and the copilot's seat. Already Flatt was getting dozens of calls from AAG operators who were linking up with the hopes of rescue.

"We've got several Pelicans with some room," Flatt broadcast. "I'm sending them over to your position."

I saw on the Holotank as a few of the Pelicans started dropping quickly in order to catch up with the soldiers falling to their death. I distracted myself from that and instead strapped myself to the copilot's seat. My helmet immediately interfaced with the Pelican and its weapon systems. I did quick system checks and spooled up the cannon in front as well as checked the tracking systems on the wing-mounted missiles.

"We're weapons hot," I said.

"Let's hope we don't have to use them. Try and get me an uplink with Castillo."

"Ma'am," I began. "He was probably vaporized."

"Knowing that bastard he's probably sitting in a Pelican all to himself."

I nodded. "You've got a point, Captain."

* * *

><p><strong>First Lieutenant Francisco Castillo<strong>

"Now what the fuck are we going to do?" Pavel asked.

Not only were we falling at a speed of over a hundred miles per hour, but we also had to dodge pieces of skyhook that were beginning to fall all over the place. The main body of the skyhook was slowly climbing up into space even as the bottom section, the section we were in, plummeted downwards. The majority of the skyhook's bottom section was already way beyond us, but some of the pieces that had been torn off sliced through the air around us. I had even seen a couple Warthogs rolling violently.

"No parachutes for the tank, eh?" I muttered, trying to think of something.

"Oh, shut up."

"Well, we've had some good times, haven't we?"

Pavel sighed. "Yes we have… Should I record a farewell message?"

"You could throw the helmet upwards just as you fall, maybe it'll survive," I suggested. "Well this fucking sucks."

"Watch out."

Both of us moved out of the way and avoided a section of the hangar door from slamming into us. As soon as it was past us we glided back towards one another and kept close, spreading our arms and legs in order to slow down as much as possible. We both knew that it wouldn't be enough… Talk about an unceremonious death.

"Lieutenant, do you copy?"

"Holy shit!" Pavel exclaimed. "Answer that!"

"I copy, I copy!" I said. "Who is this?"

"It's Brisbois, sir. We're alright."

"Yeah! I'll see my daughter again!" Pavel exclaimed.

I grinned. "Serge, where are you? Where's the team?"

"We got jetpacks. I'm with Captain Flatt in a Pelican. Give me your position."

"Uh, above Reach?" I said. "I'm activating my transponder."

"All right, I've got you," Serge said. "Hold on."

Pavel gripped my forearm. "I don't think I've ever heard him say so many things in a row."

"Agreed," I replied.

I waited for an uncomfortably long amount of time as the clouds passed by until Flatt reported in.

"Frank, do you copy?"

"Yes, ma'am," I said. "What's the plan?"

"Do you have any feasible way to slow down your fall?"

"Negative ma'am," I said. "What's the plan?"

I almost pissed myself when a Pelican appeared right in front of me in a vertical dive. The Pelican spun on its longest axis so that I could see the cockpit. Brisbois and Flatt looked up at me and gave me a thumbs up.

"What the hell are you doing?" I asked.

"I saw this in a video," she shouted. "We match speeds and then I pull up."

"Where the hell did you watch this?" I shouted.

"Hurry up," Pavel grunted, sliding towards the Pelican as we finished going through the clouds.

Captain Flatt spun the Pelican back so that we were facing the bottom and sped up enough to give us a free entry into the cargo bay. I gently directed myself there, trying to ignore the fact that the ground was getting dangerously close at an annoying speed. I climbed inside after Pavel and was thrown against the wall when the Pelican shook violently. I managed to make out some smoke out the rear hatch and cursed.

"We took a hit on our left engine!" Flatt announced. "I have marginal control! Hold on!"

I dragged myself to a seat and strapped on as the Pelican slowly slowed down and tilted its nose upwards. I could see green trees not a hundred meters below us and suddenly realized that we were in a narrow valley, with high mountains on either side. I thanked God that we hadn't hit any of those mountains and then blacked out when the Pelican slammed against something hard.

* * *

><p><em>Thanks for reading this chapter.<em>

_Well, I gave Serge a little bit of a highlight in this chapter. I guess I just like the guy. Now, the whole falling scene is a lot cooler if you know what a skyhook is You might want to look it up on wikipedia in case the explanation wasn't clear enough or I didn't describe it properly. This was a bit of a short chapter, some combat in it, but it's mostly just waiting for the big stuff to happen in New Alexandria and Esztergom. _

_On a more personal note, I've been going to football practice for the past week and I'm annoyed. I am by no means a little guy. I am 6 feet and not exactly skinny (yes, I am incredibly sexy), but some of the guys in the team are just fucking ridiculous. I mean, the quarterback's got four inches and twenty pounds on me. But the rest is fine. Lots of fun hitting people._

**_Lennarts-L02: _**_thanks for the information man. Let's make it number one on both counts._

_Stay strong._

_-casquis_


	194. Schitzo of the Apes

Chapter CXCIV: Schitzo of the Apes

**August 17, 2552 (UNSC Calendar)/**

**Iskander Valley, Eposz, Reach, Epsilon Eridani System**

* * *

><p><em>"Sam, what about a bit of rope? You'll want it if you haven't got it."–Samwise Gamgee <em>

* * *

><p>Not for the first time I woke up with quite a little bit of pain. I didn't open my eyes, I don't think I could've even if I tried. I realized that I was strapped to something, most likely a Pelican chair. It took a few seconds for me to remember everything that had happened right before. Skyhook, pulse laser, incredibly long drop, Pelican caught us. That was the rough order in which things had happened. My head was throbbing and with every little thing I remembered I seemed to get a very brief flashback of the scene.<p>

I saw myself stabbing into the floor and hanging on to my knife.

"Thank God for hardwood floors, eh?" Schitzo whispered next to my ear. "Wake up, Francisco. It's about time."

"Time for what?" I asked.

Pavel detonated a flashbang and I was blinded. I remember him telling me to jump and then there was something about a Phantom followed by a very long drop. I couldn't remember what happened next. Somehow I had made it into a Pelican, but I was probably missing a huge chunk of what had happened. Had I landed with a parachute or a jetpack? Maybe the fall hadn't been that long… I grunted and opened my eyes. The world seemed blurry and strange, but that was only until I realized that I was hanging upside down.

Upside down. Damn, Captain Flatt had picked us up!

_Us… where the hell is Pavel?_

"It doesn't matter right now," Schitzo said. "You gotta get moving."

"Yes." I took a deep breath. "Get moving. Evade, survive, and all that."

My helmet slowly flickered back to life, displaying some vitals that didn't look very promising and informing me that I had two broken ribs on my right side. They didn't hurt terribly bad, which meant that they were probably just small cracks. One of my arms was numb, but I could tell that it was from a hit and not from anything more serious. For a Pelican crash I had ended up quite nicely, especially when you considered that my whole seat had been thrown out of the cargo bay. I felt for my sidearm and sighed when I didn't find it there.

_Wait, Pavel had it for a while… He lost his weapon in the skyhook. Or something._

I grunted and tried pulling myself up, but the straps were too tight for me to really do anything. Before undoing my straps I tilted my neck backwards and tried to measure the height I was at. It wasn't too bad, probably about five meters and easily survivable, even in my state. I began reaching for the clip when I heard a noise that sent me into high alert.

It sounded like growls. In fact, it was growls. I stopped moving and waited for my helmet to confirm my suspicions. Perhaps it was only a mountain cat of something of the sort, but in the end my helmet began translating the growls for me and confirmed that the growling belonged to brutes. I looked down again, ignoring all the blood that was going to my head, and searched for them.

"This is a waste of time," one of the brutes said.

"You know how it is," the other replied. "Pack leader tells us to do something, we do it."

"You saw the crash, nobody could've survived that, not even Mgalekgolo," the first one shot back. "I know how pesky this vermin can be, but their bodies are weak."  
>"They are tenacious," the second one told him.<p>

"Yeah… like rats."

The two brutes laughed. It sounded unnaturally similar to human laughter, even if it was more animalistic. They were almost below me now, it was a miracle they hadn't noticed me yet.

"I just want this to be over with," one of them said. "Kill some humans, eat some humans, burn this planet, and then back to High Charity."

"With some luck you'll get to return to Doisac, eh?"

"Yeah," it agreed. "I want to see my close-pack again. My son should be almost as big as I am now."

"It must be his mother," the other one said, drawing a head butting that sent it sideways. "Peace," it said, rumbling with what seemed to be a low chuckle. "Let's just find their craft, it shouldn't be much farther."

"It's a miracle that it can even fly with such primitive systems," the first brute complained. "Let's go."

I had had enough of their bullshit and they were already close enough for my plan to work. I stretched my legs and slowly brought them as close to my head as I could. Their weight shifted the position of the seat slightly. I reached behind my back with one hand and pressed the belt's release button with the other. The weight of my legs made me flip so that my feet were facing down. I yanked my knife free and slammed it into the brute directly below me. The knife dug into its neck and then some. I immediately let go and landed in the soft ground behind the now-dead brute. Its companion hadn't noticed yet. I grabbed the weapon that it was holding and aimed it at the back of the other brute. The thing looked vaguely like a six-shot with no barrel, but like all brute weapons it had a brutal aspect to it.

The brute I killed fell loudly, prompting the other one to turn around. It met the blast of my stolen weapon face-first and fell backwards. I didn't stop there, instead I jumped on top of it and fired two times more, both times hitting it in the face.

I examined the weapon in my hand, it had a small bayonet facing downward right in front of the trigger guard and a circular magazine that gave it a revolver-like appearance. Judging by the kick and mess it had made it appeared to be a handheld shotgun. I rolled my shoulder, not having expected the fierce kickback of the weapon.

"Damn," I grunted.

I turned back to the brute I had killed first and blasted its head with the weapon. Both of the aliens looked like they had been completely mauled by something. I examined the weapon and fired at the dead brute one more time. The gun hissed and clicked, telling me that it was out of ammunition. I made sure to take a picture of the unfamiliar weapon with my helmet and then tossed it aside. My knife was stuck to the brute's neck, but it wasn't particularly hard to yank it out. A nice chunk of flesh came with my knife. I sighed and wiped it clean before sliding it back into my sheath. I still had three knives, but I was in unfamiliar territory by myself and with no firearms.

I looked at the other brute and saw it had been carrying a needle rifle. I approached it and hesitated slightly before grabbing it. Scarecrow had been killed by a weapon just like this one. Hell, for all I knew it had been this very same rifle that killed Scarecrow. I told myself that it was incredibly unlikely and grabbed the weapon. It was slightly over a meter long and like most Covenant weapons it didn't have a stock. I examined it and rolled my eyes at the bulky midsection it had before collapsing it and strapping it to my back. I grabbed additional ammunition from the dead brute and slung it across my chest very much like an old Mexican revolutionary. Caboose usually slung his shotgun shells across his chest like this, I could see the reason why.

"Ok, let's get moving," Schitzo said.

I nodded and started walking in the direction the brutes had been. First things first, check for survivors in the Pelican. I started moving and realized that I was climbing. If the Pelican slammed into a slope then the odds of survival decreased dramatically. My head was inundated by those thoughts for a minute or so until I saw a couple of trees with their tops torn off. I followed them and eventually found the path that the falling dropship had carved for itself. Some of the trees were scorched and some others were actually aflame.

"What happened?" I asked myself. "Falling and then what?"

"Come on Francisco," Schitzo muttered. "You don't just forget stuff like that."

I stopped and took a knee, trying to remember. If all my team was dead I wanted to know. I frowned as I remembered. There had been high winds, clouds, a sense of incredible stupidity all around me, and then it all went black. It was nothing out of the usual except for the wind. Where the hell would I find high winds like that, especially in this valley? It took me just a few seconds to figure it all out.

"I was falling," I realized. "Shit."

I kept walking, making use of cover and avoiding the carved path of trees. The climbing slope suddenly stopped and gave way to hard stone ground. I frowned slightly at the sudden change in terrain but nonetheless kept moving. About two hundred meters later my eyes widened. The valley I was in kept narrowing, but the floor below my feet disappeared into a chasm. About half a click in front of me and fifty meters below me was the Pelican, firmly wedged between the two sides of the valley.

"Holy shit," I said.

I looked around and found a little climbable path to my left. I climbed and started moving towards the Pelican, making sure to stick to the wall as much as possible. I was using what looked like a goat path. A very narrow goat path. The wall opposite me was only twenty meters away. I stopped when I saw some movement near the Pelican.

I drew the rifle and pressed myself against the cliff wall. I looked through the scope and saw two elites and a jackal right above the Pelican. They looked like they were preparing to climb down on top of it. I saw what appeared to be a rope and cursed. At this range and with this weapon I couldn't trust myself to make the shot. I began moving faster, which isn't saying a lot when you're standing on a slightly sloped trail less than a foot wide.

One of the elites started climbing down while the other held onto the rope. I stopped and aimed again. The elite on top had blue armor with several battle scars. The one in the bottom shared the rank, but its armor looked brighter and cleaner. The veteran had no doubt gotten the newbie to do the dangerous job. Very… human.

It was a disturbing thought.

I aimed at the elite on the top and fired three times, all of them hitting it in the head. It jerked backwards and its head slammed into the wall behind it. The elite slipped and fell on its ass before the rocks gave way under him. Before the elite began screaming I took out the confused jackal with a series of shots to the chest and neck. The two elites screamed bloody murder as they fell down the deep chasm. I stopped hearing their screams soon after they disappeared down the mist. The dead jackal was silent as it fell down to join them.

"Nice," I complimented myself.

I made my way to the top of the Pelican and tied one of my climbing cables to what appeared to be the most solid handhold. I took a deep breath and let myself fall down. The rope held. I smiled and slowly made my way down to the Pelican's top. Once my feet were there I stepped on it, not letting go of my rope. The Pelican didn't even creak, it was firmly wedged between the cliff. I slowly walked towards the cockpit. The windows were completely shattered, there were even a few branches sticking out. I carefully climbed inside and checked for survivors. The Pelican was trashed, but it was empty. A few of the seats in the back were missing. No doubt that mine had been one of those.

"How the hell did I get to a Pelican in the first place?" I asked myself.

I checked for any of the spare weapons or equipment and found nothing.

"Ok," I said, talking out loud to see if my theories sounded stupid. "This Pelican had at least some members of my team on it. My team is crafty, they know their shit. They grabbed everything and jumped ship. The only question remaining is…"

"How the hell did they get out of here?" Schitzo finished. "They could've climbed, but there are no veritable handholds in between here and the goat paths. Besides, the walls have a negative slope."

"Yeah," I agreed. "I'm pretty sure that they didn't jump down either."

"That's the only way out of here," Schitzo said with a small shrug. "They didn't have to jump."

"I didn't see any ropes," I said. "Wait, I was falling… They could've had jetpacks."

"A long shot," Schitzo said, "but let's assume they did. They let themselves fall and stopped short of a violent death with their jetpacks. They're in the bottom then."

"Only answer I can come up with," I said. "Anything I can do about it?"

"You can use your rope to climb back out and find yourself another way out."

"Or I can climb down," I sighed.

The Pelican had few salvageable objects in it. One of them was the standard length of cable that most Pelicans had with them. It was a length of rope precisely two thousand meters long. It couldn't have weighed more than ten pounds.

"Two thousand meters worth of rope," I grunted. "Should be enough."

Schitzo chuckled and shook his head. "What's the tallest peak in Reach?"

"Mount Ki-Adi," I said simply. "But we're not anywhere near that," I said.

"What's the tallest cliff in Reach?"

I pondered that for a few seconds. I knew this. "Sky Walls," I said. "It's three thousand meters of vertical rock. One in front of the other. One of the walls extends about a mile more than the other, but they are parallel for a while."

"Hmmm…" Schitzo hummed. "So this walls very well could be the tallest cliff in the planet."

"Come on, what are the odds?" I asked. "I mean, Verona Rupes is over twenty kilometers high."

"It is also in Sol," he said. "Where are we?"

"Reach… but where in Reach?"

"Check the computer," Schitzo instructed. "Maybe the Pelican still has functioning electronics."

"Doubtful," I said. "Still worth a shot."

The cockpit had no blood in it, something I hadn't noticed earlier. It bode good news. I activated the holotank and it flickered alive. The holographic controllers didn't work, but the buttons in the base did. I slowly shifted through the command options and eventually found one that showed my position. I clicked it and waited while the Pelican acquired some satellite data. It took longer than I expected, but the Pelican showed me the general area I was in.

"Iskander Valley," I said quietly. "Near New Alexandria… I haven't heard the name of the valley before, but I know that the Sky Walls are near New Alexandria. Just a drive away."

"Are you willing to take your chances?" Schitzo asked.

"No," I said. "I've got enough bars for a week. That ought to be enough."

Schitzo shrugged. "Suit yourself."

I said nothing and climbed back out of the cockpit and into the roof. The Pelican was still firmly wedged between the walls, but there was now a whole unit of jackals on either side of me. It took them a moment to spot me. By that point I had already sneaked back inside the Pelican.

"Tough luck," Schitzo said. "I guess jumping is the only way to go."

"I guess so," I agreed. I used one end of the rope and tied it down to the webbing on the ceiling.

Before jumping out to an uncertain fate I grabbed the rear machine gun and pushed it out. I started firing at the few jackals that I could see and then hit the edge of the goat path, sending rock flying all over the place and cutting the jackals off. If they wanted to keep moving towards me they'd have to jump. I kicked the rope down and waited for a few moments to steel myself. I grabbed the thin rope and took a deep breath before using a carabineer to attack myself to it. I took another deep breath and jumped down into the mist.

My gloves kept my hands from burning away from the friction. I tightened my grip and started sliding down a little bit slower, the occasional pink needle would fly past or smash into the rock wall on either side, but after fifteen solid seconds of sliding down they stopped firing. I held on tightly and eventually stopped my fast drop. I gripped onto the rope as tight as I could and let go at regular intervals, falling about twenty meters at a time at manageable speeds. I couldn't see much more than that with the mist, but the strategy should keep me from breaking my legs or my back.

I slid down for longer than I cared, but it wasn't very long before I hit the bottom of the cliff. I let go of the rope and saw that there was still plenty of cable left coiled up on the ground. The sight of the two splattered elites and jackal brought a small grin to my face.

"You do realize that if they had jetpacks they could've just climbed up instead of down, right?" Schitzo said, prodding one of the corpses.

"Nope," I said. "That only meant that they would've had to climb back down later on."

"If you say so."

I tugged at the rope twice and then let go. The cliff floor was practically flat, with some water dripping down the walls where the mist had condensed into water. I followed the little streams downhill and settled into a fast jog. The sheer cliff wall on the left suddenly stopped, giving way to another massive valley that slowly but surely turned into the massive metropolis that was New Alexandria.

"That's where we're headed then," I said.

The sun was beginning to raise over the ocean, casting long shadows and making me frown slightly at the brightness. I got my helmet to polarize a little bit more and slowly started walking down. There were tall and thick trees in front of me that didn't allow me to see anything. If my men were anywhere within sight I would've been able to spot them, but that was not to be.

"You see that?" Schitzo asked me.

I nodded. Two Spirit dropships were coasting along the cliff walls to my right, escorted by four Banshees. I started moving faster, but one of the Banshees broke off in pursuit. I sprinted towards the woods even as I was fired upon. Pieces of dirt and gravel hit my armored boots, but the bolts failed to hit me directly. The fast-flying Banshee screamed as it prepared for a second strafing run. I knew from experience that after the first failure they'd go into their freaky hover-mode or whatever, flying so slow that they seemed to defy the laws of physics. If the pilot missed after that then its whole species deserved to be wiped out.

Just as it let lose a green fuel rod I jumped behind a thick tree. The tree was shattered by the explosion and I was thrown forward, but I was fine and well when I landed face-first in the mud.

"Don't stop on my account," Schitzo said just as heavy plasma bolts started raining around.

I ran as fast as I could, trying to get out of sight. The woods weren't exactly dense here, but the limbs got denser the further in I went. After enough time the Banshee pilot gave up the chase and broke off. I sighed with relief but nonetheless kept on running.

I stumbled on a root and almost fell down, but I regained my balance right before I slammed into the ground. I heard creaking behind me and turned, aiming my rifle up at the sound.

"Frank."

"Pavel," I replied equally calmly. It was easy to recognize him even with the armor. I smiled and depolarized my helmet just as he did the same thing. I lowered the needle rifle and hugged my friend with one hand. "I was afraid you were dead."

"We thought _you_ were dead," Marv said, appearing behind Pavel.

"But I knew better than that," Pavel said. "Good to see you, Frank."

"Easy on the ribs man," I said. "I think a couple might be broken."

"Whoops, sorry," he quickly apologized, taking a step back.

"Who else made it?"

"Serge, Marv, and myself," Pavel said. "Oh, and Captain Flatt, too. She's alright, she's tougher than I gave her credit for."

I shrugged. "Had to be in order to be given command over us. What about the rest of the team?"

"They all made it," he said.

I smiled. "Well, they don't call us the best for nothing. Where are they?"

"Flatt and Serge are back there," Pavel said. "We were heading north to meet up with the rest of the unit. Helmets are slightly scrambled, but from what we can gather they're with Captain Nezarian and some of the guys from 29."

"How many more made it?" I asked.

"Well, most of AAG is gone," Pavel sighed regretfully. "Our section was completely decimated and pretty much everybody in the second section was killed. The third and fourth sections managed to get most of the people out and rescue some of the guys from ours."

"How'd they do that?" I asked.

"They caught them," Pavel said. "Like they caught us."

"I hit my head, I'm a little bit blurry on the details. What exactly do you mean with the word _caught_?"

Pavel explained exactly what had happened in very simple and easy to understand terms. My eyes widened slightly at his explanation and I ended up shaking my head.

"Wow," I said. "Did anybody get that recorded?"

"My helmet cam was on," Pavel said. "Which reminds me… why the hell can't we talk to you on the radio?"

"My helmet was probably damaged," I said. "You know, they really should give more of a protection to the radio system in these."

"Tell me about it," Pavel grunted. "Well, let's get moving, shall we?"

I nodded. "Lead the way."

Marv took point and led us through the woods. Pavel had an SMG as opposed to his usual machine gun. Marv had managed to keep his MA5 firmly attached to his back during the fall and was now holding it loosely across his chest. We caught up with a limping Captain Flatt and Serge a little bit later.

"Well, why am I not surprised," Captain Flatt said. "Good to see you Castillo."

"Likewise," I replied. "Thanks for catching me."

"Anytime," she replied. "Are you injured?"

I nodded. "I might have a couple of broken ribs."

"And I've got a sprained ankle," she informed me dryly. "Let's link up with the rest of the AAG survivors. We'll work it from there."

One hour later we walked into a small hill/clearing where about one hundred men were gathered. There were a pair of Pelicans on the side of the hill, both of them looked like they had made a hard landing. Several of the AAG operators were lying on the ground, injured. A few heads turned to look at our group and some of them lingered on the needle rifle I carried on my back. Most of the men clearly belonged to different teams and were huddled together in small groups of no more than six or seven men. My own team was clearly fortunate to have made it out completely intact.

"Well I'll be damned," Polly said when he saw me walking towards them.

"You owe me a hundred credits," Bee told him. "Good to see you, sir."

"Likewise," I replied.

"Sir," Caboose said, stepping forward. "We don't have a lot of manpower right now, but the few stragglers that have made it here are reporting enemy troop movements in the adjacent valleys and ridges."

I nodded in agreement. "Yeah, I came across a pair of brutes and then two elites."

"We haven't heard anything about elites," Caboose said, "but it seems pretty obvious that they're scouting the area for an attack on New Alexandria."

"I've got friends there," Lady said simply.

"So do I," I told her. "Who's ranking officer here?"

"Captain Nezarian," Crow said.

"That would make Captain Flatt the ranking officer," I muttered to myself.

"Aren't they both captains?" he asked.

"I'm a naval captain, you idiot," Flatt told my man.

"A colonel," Marv dutifully informed Crow. "Did you really not know that?"

"Uh…"

I shook my head. "It doesn't matter. Why haven't we gotten a line to New Alexandria?"

"Brutes set up jammers and scramblers all around," Caboose said. "Plus, a few of the elites that bombed the skyhook managed to get some of our clearance codes. All of our channels are useless and we don't have any access to the new ones."

"And we can't get through the jamming on an open channel?"

"Negative, sir."

"How fast can we be on the move?"

"Us?" Caboose asked. "We could leave right now."

"But the rest of these men aren't in such fine shape," Captain Nezarian said, walking up to greet me. "Good to see you made it."

"Likewise," I said for the third time. "Captain, we have to get out of here as soon as possible. There are already Spirits and Banshees here in the valley."

"Do you have confirmation?"  
>I raised an eyebrow. "They fired at me."<p>

He nodded. "Good enough for me. A lot of the men here can't walk without help. It'll be slow going. According to the limited imagery we have and some UAV surveillance there's a road five clicks from here. We'll head that way and work from there."

"Sounds good," I said.

"Your team is the only one completely intact, I need you and your men to scout and clear the area ahead."

"Will do," I said. "Snark!"

"On my way," he said, grabbing his sniper rifle and running into the woods. "Don't be too long!"

"Pavel get Predator ready, Mata, same goes for Reaper."

Both of the sergeants nodded sharply and set about rousing the men.

"Al," I said, addressing Captain Nezarian. "Sorry about your men."

He shrugged slightly and sighed. "They knew what they were signing up for."

I nodded. "Is there a way you could get me a rifle?"

"Negative Frank. Not a lot of us had our rifles on when this went down. I can give you a pistol, but that's it."

"Well. At least I'll have some human steel on me," I sighed.

Nezarian ordered one of his men to give me his pistol and then wished me good luck before I jogged to meet up with Reaper Squad. Predator and Pavel were already spread out in front of us and disappearing into the forest. Reaper would stay relatively close to one another and move quickly towards any threat that might arise. I didn't expect any real trouble, but anything could happen. Crow settled next to me and chuckled slightly.

"What?"

"You really are an impossible man to kill," he said simply.

I shook my head. "So far, but everybody dies John."

Crow shrugged. "Not everybody is killed," he argued. "I don't expect to be killed anytime soon."

"Don't jinx it," Polly said, joining us.

"Touch wood," I said. "Or knock on it. Whatever."

Crow knocked on one of the trees on his way and returned. "But sir, how did you manage to survive? Gunny made it sound like you were thrown out of the Pelican at high speeds."

"I was," I said as I began retelling the story as quickly and concisely as possible. The task soon turned into an impossible one as more and more of my men started listening in and asking questions. The kids made me feel like a grandfather telling a story. I was thirty-seven, not nearly old enough to be feeling like that. I grunted and grumbled, but I humored them and answered their questions to the best of my abilities. Bee just chuckled at the end.

"Sir, your life would make a great movie."

"I don't think so," I told him.

"Well, be sure to write your memoirs just in case," he said.

I was about to say something when Snark signaled that he had reached the road.

"It looks clear," Snark said. "Nothing left, nothing right."

"Ok, you can cross now," Andy told him, getting some of the guys to laugh.

"Wait," Snark called. "I've got a human vehicle incoming. Shit, it's an RV."

"Stop it," I ordered. "Ok, let's hurry up."

Once in the small road I saw that Snark was trying to keep the driver of the RV calm while very strongly suggesting that he go back. The man was not happy with that. He had left New Alexandria for a reason and didn't plan on going back right as it fell under attack. Pavel, Grigori, and Mata all looked at me expecting me to step up and explain in very simple terms why the man and everybody inside the RV would die if they kept going west.

"Excuse me," I said, stepping in between Snark and the driver. "Lieutenant Castillo, what seems to be the problem?"

"Your man won't let me keep driving that way," he said angrily. "He has no right to do that."

"I tried explaining WINTER CONTINGENCY to him," Snark began.

"Quiet," I said.

"Sir, will you please tell your man to step out of the way so that I can take my family to safety?" He pointed back to his RV, where I could see a woman and several other vague shapes behind the windshield.

"Listen mister…"

"Cline."

"Mr. Cline," I said. "You recognize my armor? My helmet at least?"

"Yes," he said. "I've seen your type on the propaganda vids."

"Then you must know that my type are the guys that do special operations?"

"Yeah," Cline said, crossing his arms.

"Then you must realize that I have a perfectly valid reason for telling you to turn back around and return to New Alexandria."  
>Cline shook his head. "I can see the enemy starships from New Alexandria, Lieutenant. There's absolutely no way that I'm going back there, not when I can escape with my family."<p>

"I tried to explain that the evacuation ports-" Snark said.

"To hell with those!" Cline interrupted. "Like we'd have any chance of getting on a ship."

I took a deep breath. "Listen to me very closely, sir," I began slowly. "There are enemy troops all throughout this forest. A big camper like yours would make a big and easy target for their Banshees. I take it you know what a Banshee is?"

"Their gunships," he said.

"Close enough," I shrugged. "There's a small Covenant army led by brutes. More are behind the mountain ridge. In short, if you go there you and every single person inside the camper will die and probably be eaten."

Cline paled. "Th-they're going to hit the city from both sides?"

I nodded. "Yes. Now, I want you to turn your big camper back around and return to the city. There is significant military presence there, you'll have a better chance than you could ever have out here by yourself."

"You think the UNSC can handle it?" he asked earnestly.

"We've handled worse," I lied. "Sir, there are more UNSC troops in the neighboring area and we have no way to return to the city other than our own feet. I'm going to need to put some of my men in your camper and have them deliver a message."

"That's not a request, is it?"

I shook my head. "Sorry, sir."

"Ok, I'll tell my family."

I nodded and gave him a reassuring smile before turning to my men. "Preacher?"

"Yes, sir?"

I looked at him. He had his EMR and was leaning on it slightly. "Can you run?"

"Not yet," he admitted. "I can shoot as well as ever though?"

"Ok," I said, "I want you on the rooftop. Bee, same goes for you. Give Tank your laser?"

Bee moved towards the massive Army trooper and exchanges his Spartan Laser for a rocket launcher.

"Take care of it," Bee said. "She's touchy."

Tank chuckled as he eyed the energy weapon appreciatively. "Hey, once you go black…"

"Ha. Very funny," Bee replied, eyeing the scratches on the SPANKr.

I wanted to send at least one woman with the camper. Research indicated that the presence of a female seemed to comfort all age groups in most situations. Young kids saw a woman as a motherly figure of sorts, women saw her as another woman, and men thought that they couldn't be in that much danger if they were sending a woman. It was something along those lines. Our biology had ingrained us with that, we would see each other by our sex before we saw each other as anything else.

The only question was which one I should send. Miranda certainly had the friendly attitude down, she would make them all feel at ease. The only problem was that the wife would certainly feel ugly next to her. Andy would probably do a decent job even if she felt a little awkward herself, but like Miri she also happened to be more attractive than you'd expect your average Helljumper to be. Then there was Lady, who was better-looking than both of them and had no doubt never before stepped inside an RV.

"Lady, you're inside," I said.

She looked at me for the briefest of instants before releasing an almost imperceptible sigh and moving towards the camper.

"Try and keep them calm, ok?"

"Yes, sir," she replied.

"You're in charge," I told her. "I want you to get me the quickest evac possible, ok? Be a bitch."

Her helmet didn't show me her face, but I could tell that she smiled when I said that. "I can do that," Lady told me confidently.

"Don't be a bitch to the civilians, though," I said.

"I'm not an idiot, sir," she said before stepping inside the camper. Her voice carried just that tiny little bit of contempt. I didn't feel personally affronted when she spoke like that. She had just been raised to believe that she was somehow better than everybody. Coupled with near-genius IQ and above-par combat skills even in our SpecOps niche she started believing it herself, even if it was only subconscious.

"I feel like angry sex with her would be a most rewarding experience," Crow whispered next to me.

I suppressed a chuckle even when Polly didn't.

"I agree," I said. "Speak like that again and I'll tell her you said that."

Crow immediately stopped laughing and straightened his back. "Of course, sir. I apologize, sir."

Polly snorted and then promptly straightened his back when I shot him a mean glare.

"Set up a perimeter," I ordered. "I want men two hundred yards from me and your personal guarantee that nothing will get past you, ok?"

"Yes, sir!" my team replied, scrambling to comply with my orders.

Within three minutes I already had LMGs mounted, foxholes, sharpshooters in the trees, and the rest of my men were hiding around the road in ambush formation. I remained close to the road in case another vehicle approached.

"I've got friendly troops approaching," Pitcher said. "Looks like its AAG."

"Let them know we're here," I said. "Direct the wounded and have the able-bodied soldiers fill in the gaps in the perimeter."

"Yes, sir," Pitcher replied.

More and more men arrived in a steady stream. Not a lot of the wounded looked particularly bad, but there were plenty of broken bones. A few had been hit by shrapnel from the skyhook when it was attacked, but most of them had had hard landings or some trouble when they were being caught by the Pelicans. I saw one woman in particular that evidently had a shattered femur. Her leg was hanging awkwardly and there was some serious bruising showing. I had never seen a femur fracture like that. Her eyes were rolled into the back of her head and she was drooling. They must've pumped her with a near-lethal amount of painkillers in order to move her. The healthy men all looked pissed off and ready to kill anything that antagonized them. I almost wished that a covvie unit made its way here. I would have no way of stopping the AAG guys from going for leg shots or belly shots. They'd make the covvies die as slowly and painfully as possible.

I wouldn't really mind it if they did it either.

"Captain," I greeted Nezarian. "Flatt?"

"I'm here," she said from behind me. "I see you already set up."

"We're fast workers," I said. "We intercepted a civilian transport and sent it back to New Alexandria. We should have evac or at least news within three or so hours."

"Good," Flatt said. "Should we start moving?"

"Negative, ma'am," Nezarian said. "Most of our wounded have serious fractures. We can barely move them."

"Yeah, I heard the screaming," Flatt sighed. "Fine then. We bunker down here."

I nodded. "We've got a decent perimeter. We should be able to handle anything short of heavy armor. At least for a while."

Nezarian looked at me and shook his head. "Heavy armor in these forest seems like a long shot, but there's always space for air support."

"Always," I agreed.

"Well, I'm glad I'm not in the field," Captain Flatt stated flatly.

I chuckled and winced when I realized that laughing made my ribs hurt more than anything else I did. I groaned and sat down on a nice little tree stump that I had found for myself. I grabbed a branch and set myself to carving something on it with my knife. If I was going to wait then I might as well find something to keep myself busy.

A quick round of gunshots roused me an hour later. I waited to hear plasma and then sat back down when there was no return fire.

"Report," Nezarian ordered calmly on the open channel.

"Enemy patrol, eight in number. One brute, one jackals, and five grunts down."

"That only makes seven," Nezarian noted.

"We got one alive."

There was a momentary pause.

"Bring it here."

I reached Nezarian's position just as four ODSTs brought a kicking jackal with two bullet wounds on its chest. It was a miracle that the bird was still alive when you considered just how frail their were internally. Granted, they didn't seem that frail when you had to fight one hand to hand, but a bullet to the gut makes anybody frail.

"Skirmisher," one of them said as the bird suddenly started thrashing.

The jackal managed to wrest one of its arms free and used it to hit the ODST holding his other hand in the face. I took one long step towards it and swung at its beak as hard as I could with a right hook. My gloves had hard studs in the knuckles and my muscles had a classified compound in them that made them stronger. The jackal never stood a chance.

It's beak cracked.

The jackal wasn't one of the more saurian-looking ones, it was one of those with the more pointed snouts, but it was still a skirmisher and bigger than the normal vulture.

It shook its head carefully, blood dripping off its cracked snout. The skirmisher stopped struggling and looked up at me with hatred in its avian eyes. I simply took off my helmet and bared my teeth.

"Can you understand me?" I asked it. "English? Español?"

The jackal nodded slowly.

I grinned and gestured for Captain Nezarian to begin asking questions.

"A lot of my men are dead," he said, punching the alien in the gut pretty damn hard. "The few that aren't are angry."

The jackal wheezed in some air and then looked up back up at him, holding its head up defiantly. "You kill me?"

"Yes," Nezarian said. "You're as good as dead. If you tell me what you know I'll make it quick."

"I'm dead still," it hissed.

I rolled my eyes and approached it slowly. With one hand I gripped its mouth shut, being especially brutal with the crack that I had made in it. I used my other hand to press into its bullet wounds as hard as I dared. Suffice to say, I dared to press pretty damn hard. The jackal's eyes bulged and it tried to cry out in pain. I could even feel some air escaping through the crack in its snout.

"We can take our time," I said. "So answer the good captain's questions."

"Make death quick?" the jackal asked through hisses of pain.

Nezarian nodded.

"You… translator?"

Nezarian nodded once again and tapped the side of his helmet. The jackal looked up at him and began squeaking in its language. Nezarian would periodically stop it and ask a question. It went on for five straight minutes. I didn't understand what the jackal said, but I could surmise from Nezarian's questions that there was a sizeable Covenant force uncomfortably near our position. So far they didn't know we were here, but they knew we had to be nearby. Captain Nezarian sighed and patted the jackal on the shoulder.

"You all dead," it said. It wasn't a boast or a threat, it was simply a statement.

I laughed at that.

Nezarian spun around and smiled. "_We_ are all dead, little man."

The skirmisher stood up to its full height. It was about as tall as I was even with my armored boots on. The jackal hissed something and only hunched back down when one of the ODSTs holding it down elbowed it in the ribs.

Nezarian turned to one of his men. "You have five minutes starting now. Have fun."

"Oh I will," the man said, taking off his helmet and setting it on the ground. "Hey there bitch. My name is Carl Staunton."

With that simple statement it started hitting the jackal's lower torso viciously. The jackal started crying out after the tenth blow and maybe on the thirtieth it started pleading for the beating to stop. Only a minute had gone past and already the jackal had had most of its ribs broken. It would be alive for just long enough to suffer.

I walked back to my post and looked down at the road. Four guys had carried the brute patrol leader into the road and left it there. We would probably mutilate it or something later to leave a warning and lower enemy morale.

"Ah well," Pavel said once I sat next to him. "Someone is going to be very happy for the next few hours."

"Beating the shit out of someone can be very satisfying," I said.

"You don't have to tell me that," Pavel replied with a chuckle. "Eh boys?"

"When have we ever gotten to do that to a jackal?" Polly asked.

"What are we?" I asked angrily. "War criminals? Mistreating prisoners of war?"

Everyone within earshot laughed uproariously.

* * *

><p>The three NAPD Pelicans had been loaded up with most of the wounded. A few of the guys that could still limp and work a weapon had volunteered to stay behind and remain here and wait for the Armadillos and Scorpions to get here. The Pelicans had brought medical supplies and a radio to ensure that we'd remain in contact with New Alexandria. Command had also deemed fit to procure us with half a kilo of C-12 explosives. I couldn't help but grin at the sight of the putty. That much C-12 was enough to punch a hole in the side of a Covenant corvette. I could only imagine what Angel would've felt like with so much explosive in his hands.<p>

"Castillo, you have a knack for explosives, don't you?" Captain Flatt asked.

"I have a knack for a lot of things."

"Modesty isn't one of them, obviously," Nezarian chuckled.

I shrugged with a small smile. "I'm good with explosives, but it's been a while since I've had to use them for large-scale demolition."

"We need to make a big-ass crater in this road," Flatt stated. "Blow it up as soon as we leave."

I nodded carefully. "Yeah, I can do that. I'd probably have an easier time if we could punch a decent-sized hole in the surface, but I can manage a nice crater."

"How big?" Flatt asked.

I did some quick calculations. "Three meters deep and about ten across. It's a rough estimate, but it should work."

"Ok, get on it," she ordered. "Command deemed it fit to leave us a pair of sledgehammers and pikes."

"Did she say what I think she said?" Snark asked.

I chuckled. "She means the actual hammers," I shouted back. "No railguns for you."

"Awww…"

"Polly, Crow, get your hammers and follow me."

The two men grunted but got up nonetheless. I signaled them to start hammering at the ground while I patiently waited for them to crack the hard polycrete. It would've been a lot easier had this road been made of old concrete, but New Alexandria was renowned for being the best at everything, even if it was back roads. After they cracked it they set to work with a pair of pickaxes and then made a small hole about three inches deep.

"That's enough," I told them. "Good work."

"Thanks," Polly huffed. "I don't want to get shot while doing manual labor."

"I don't plan on getting shot anytime soon," Crow told him.

Both Polly and I paused to look around.

"What?" Crow asked.

"Come on! You're practically begging for a sniper to hit you," Polly said.

"It's true," I agreed as I crouched and started working on the explosive. I gave the C-12 a conical shape while my two men discussed the real-life applications of movie clichés.

"Crow, if you keep saying that you don't expect to die, you'll be the first one to go," Polly insisted.

"What about you?" he shot back. "You're the youngest here plus you are black."

"Attitude trumps race," Polly insisted. "And age."

Once the explosive was nice and conical I started hollowing out the insides.

"Just because I don't expect to die every single moment–"

"Yes it does," Polly said. "Especially if you keep repeating it constantly."

I listened to them argue. The discussion was a disturbing one because of the underlying reasons they behaved like that. Polly had seen too much too quickly and hadn't escaped completely unscathed. Most of his emotions were rehearsed and unnatural. I think that the only thing he had left was his desire to behave and feel like a regular human being when he couldn't feel anything. Crow joked around and gave an aura of confidence only because he tried to. A lot of his friends had been killed when he was regular Army, perhaps he had really been confident back then, but now he just tried to give that impression because he believed that it would make him survive.

Two deeply disturbed individuals were both arguing why their respective fake personalities had more merit. To me it showed what humanity had come to because of the war. Crow should be bitching about his first boss while Polly got drunk in college yet they were both in full battle armor defending the planet they considered their home.

There were worse fates than theirs, but not many.

My helmet informed me that the Armadillos transports were approaching us. I finished setting up the charge and stood up calmly, shaking the dust off my hands and nodding with satisfactions. The armored vehicles rolled by and stopped just shy of our position. The wounded boarded first, followed by the incomplete teams and my own men. Captain Nezarian remained behind until the last of his unit had climbed inside an Armadillo and signaled for the transports to start turning. Two AAG operators in mix-matched armor moved to the side of the road and propped up two sharp branches on either side of the road. One of them was topped off with the jackal's head and the other one was topped off with the brute's. A few other guys moved the beheaded bodies and left them next to their heads before climbing into the last Armadillo.

"Ok, move back," I gave the word to Polly and Crow to get inside the Armadillo.

I moved past the vehicle and down the back right after Crow. A second before I put my feet inside I heard and saw a beam shoot past me and saw Polly fall down.

_Shit._

I took a step to my left, leaving cover. I saw the trail of superheated air immediately and traced it down to a tree some five hundred meters away. Aiming was difficult without a stock, but the needle rifle was a precision weapon. I clustered all my shots within a very small area just as the Armadillo opened up with its autocannon. I reloaded and fired another magazine before the Armadillo stopped with its barrage.

I could only hope that somewhere in that mess of torn and shredded trees was the corpse of the covvie that shot my man.

Crow was leaning next to Polly, but even as he checked for vitals that his suit might've missed I knew that it was in vain. The beam had hit Polly right in the left side of his back, easily perforating the armor and making a fist-sized hole in his back before going through his heart and back out. Polly was dead.

"He's gone," Crow informed me, his voice hoarse.

I punched the Armadillos hatch.

"Get him inside," I ordered. "Let's move out."

* * *

><p><em>Thank for reading this chapter.<em>

_Much like last chapter, this one had absolutely minimal proofreading, so I'm sorry for any and all mistakes that you might've found during your reading of it._

_To be honest with you, I enjoyed writing this chapter very much. It has been a long time since I had Frank and Schitzo have a conversation. In fact, Frank actively avoided all things to do with his alter-ego or whatever you want to call Schitzo. To me it was because Frank wanted to forget all about his insanity and bury it deep. So is it a good or a bad thing that he can talk to Schitzo so openly? He could either be accepting the fact that there's a part of him that will never be completely sane or he could simply be losing what's left of his sanity little by little. Frank's always been a bit fucked up, but lately it seems that he's been getting better. He had a steady relationship, leads a fine team, gets along with everybody... Maybe that's just how he sees it, maybe I should write more often from different POVs to see just how Frank really is. Or maybe he's actually got it right. Anyways, we'll figure that one out later._

_Frank got to go solo for a while, do a couple of badass kills and then meet up with the rest of his team. A team that is miraculously intact. I know a lot of you keep complaining about how I don't kill my characters very often. I have a unit of twenty soldiers, most of which aren't very developed and could easily be disposed off. But where's the fun in that? I mean, come on. You all know that I have to develop my characters a little bit before I kill them off, I'm kind of an amateur George RR Martin. That's the Game of Thrones guy for those of you who don't know. That's why I gave Polly a little conversation. I was going to kill him off anyways, but it seemed right to get a gleam into him before he went. Some of you have even called me out on doing that. If I make a character too sympathetic it's a sign that I'll kill him. Maybe, maybe not. To me it means that I can bluff the shit out of you guys._

_I'm halfway through the first New Alexandria chapter. It starts out in the outskirts of the city and gradually moves into the skyscrapers and urban area. There'll be Noble Team, there'll be civilians, there'll be death and pain and suffering. You'll like it, I promise you that. If there's anything in particular that you'd like to see in the following chapters, anything you'd like me to do, feel free to let me know. Before I say goodbye I've got a little favor to ask: There's a TVTropes page for this fanfic, some of you may have heard of that site, some of you haven't. In any case, I'd like it if you guys took the time to go there and maybe edit it and show it some love. The more publicity my story gets, the more readers I get, the harder I have to work to satisfy you all. See? Works out for everybody._

_In any case, I hope that you enjoyed reading through this moderately long chapter and I want to remind you that your reviews are always very much appreciated. _

_Stay strong._

_-casquis_


	195. Lock and Load

Chapter CXCV: Lock and Load

**August 17, 2552 (UNSC Calendar)/**

**New Alexandria, Eposz, Reach, Epsilon Eridani System**

* * *

><p><em>"The Mendez Joint Base armory was built with the idea that one day it might be used to equip every single soldier in the planet. Nowadays, with the increasing size of the Armed Forces, the task couldn't be accomplished, but only by a little."<em>

* * *

><p>"New Alexandria. As pretty as ever," Schitzo said.<p>

He had a point. Even with the numerous tanks, Warthogs, Armadillos, Pelicans, and assorted military materiel you could still see the beauty in the city's architecture. When I was younger I had taken it for granted. I had spent countless nights partying and getting drunk in this city, thinking more about alcohol and girls than what was actually around me. I would've preferred to be surrounded by alcohol and girls and have not yet regretted my choice of partying and inebriation yet.

Payat and Andy looked down on Polly's corpse as a corpsman zipped up the body bad. They had been his two closest friends in the team and had been the most upset when I informed everybody of his passing. Longworth and Mata stood a little bit to the back, both with deep frowns and arms crossed. The rest of the team wasn't as sad by his passing. Don't get me wrong, they were plenty upset. We had all fought along him for two years, but most of my guys were just fucking pissed.

I could see Tank tightening his hands into fists repeatedly and Marv seemed so tense that he shook. Crow, however, just looked at Polly's body bag with no expression.

"You alright?" I asked him quietly.

"We were talking about this right before he was killed, sir," he said softly.

I sighed. "I know.

"I know it wasn't my fault and that I couldn't have done anything," Crow told me matter-of-factly, "but I should feel like an asshole for this."

"Do you?" I asked.

"No," he shook his head.

"It'll hit you," I said. "Maybe not today, but you'll feel something."

Crow said nothing.

I turned back to my team and looked at Pavel, who only gave me a small nod.

"If anyone wants to say anything, then now's the time. We can't stay here forever," I said.

Payat cleared his throat awkwardly. "We all knew Hipólito Gibson as Polly. A lot easier to pronounce, apparently. He was a good friend to everybody in this team and a good friend to me. I loved him like a brother."

Everybody said a little bit, recalling a funny anecdote or story where Polly was the central character. There were some stories that I hadn't been there for and some that I recalled from a different point of view.

"He was a good man and a good fighter," I said when everybody had gone. "This fight isn't over yet and we have work to do, alright?"

A few of my guys nodded.

"Alright?" I repeated, louder.

"Yes, sir!"

01928-46513-HG

Just one more number to add to the list.

* * *

><p>There were only enough AAG operators to make five different teams. There was one team that had been outside of the skyhook when we were attacked, but they were off in the highlands. Captain Nezarian and I were standing next to one another while the other three team commanders went over their new team rosters.<p>

"Well, I'm the only handler left," Flatt stated. "All five of you are going to be reporting to me directly. We've all lost friends today, some more than others, but our losses can't distract us from the matter at hand. New Alexandria is quite possibly the most important city in the planet right now. Some jackass decided to put all the headquarters in the same place and here we find ourselves having to defend them."

I looked down at the datapad that I had been handed and thought about the locations that would likely be priority targets. The big UNSC multi-branch joint base was an obvious first choice. It was big and bright and was outside the city. That base would become a huge battleground in just a few hours, even before the rest of the city did. Next big choices were the hospital and, of course, FLEETCOM HQ. That last one was topped off with the unmistakably important and imposing Olympic Tower, headquarters to the infamous Office of Naval Intelligence.

"Hospital and FLEETCOM are both downtown," Nezarian noted. "It wouldn't make much sense to send us there if we're not going to see any fighting for a day or two."

"I know that," Captain Flatt growled. "I just thought that it went without saying…"

"Yes, ma'am. Sorry, ma'am," Nezarian apologized quickly, bowing his head.

"We have with us Team-7," she went on, giving me a small nod. "Team-29." For that she looked at Nezarian. "And teams 13, 19, and 22. Most of the troops quartered in Mendez Joint Base were dispatched to fight in Szurdok Ridge, the ones getting back will be sent to fight in different sectors of the country, but it doesn't look like they'll be defending Mendez JB. That place is still important strategically. It overlooks the city and blah, blah, blah. Long story short we'll be defending that place along with the two companies in charge of security.

"Two companies?" one lieutenant asked. "That makes maybe three companies with us included. It seems like a little bit of a stretch for us to defend the whole place."

"I wasn't done, Liang," Flatt told him. "To assist in our defense we'll have a dedicated air group assisting us. That's an air wing for you Navy boys."

"Nice," I said.

"And, we have full access to the vehicles left behind in the installation. I hear that the amount of Scorpion tanks is… substantial."

"Well, this might just turn out to be fun," Nezarian said gleefully. "Oh yes indeed."

I smiled with the other team leaders, as special operators we didn't get to work in tandem with tanks very often. Sure, here and there we'd come across a company or pull one Scorpion out of a bog, but it had been several years since I last _used _one of those. Grass usually got the drivers part when we were in Reaper and then we didn't really have a chance to drive a Scorpion. There was no way that I would allow anybody else to man a Scorpion MBT.

"Pelicans are already waiting for us," Captain Flatt said. "I'll be coming with you."

"Glad to have you on board, ma'am," I said.

She nodded in appreciation. "Let's go."

As we walked out I looked at my new battle rifle. It felt very new, there's no other way to describe it. The bolt moved back and forth perfectly fine, but each rifle was sufficiently different from each other that I would have to get used to mine. Once we left the building I saw the massive amounts of movement in the street. Squads moved back and forth along the sidewalks while vehicles of all kinds rolled past, heading towards their defensive positions. There were soldiers and Marines as far as I could see. The only thing that I could compare to this was the retreat from New Constantinople or the military bases during the Siege of Paris IV.

We crossed the street and moved into the tennis courts that were being used as landing pads. Nobody had bothered to take out the nets and the Pelicans had just ripped them when they touched down. I started jogging forward and gave the word for my men to climb back inside the Pelicans.

"Hey Frank," Pavel waved happily. "What's the job?"

"Why are you so fucking happy?" I asked him. "And we're defending Mendez Joint Base."

"MJB?" Mata asked. "I hate that place. Too much… people."

"Kind of like the city?" Marv asked him. "The one you live in."

"Just because you're a sergeant it doesn't mean you can sass me, boy," Mata told him.

"Uh," Marv stumbled over his words.

"That's 'uh sir' to you," I said. "Pavel?"

Marv just sighed and hopped inside the Pelican behind him.

"Nothing important," Pavel told me, but the smile on his face remained there even as he turned around and then stopped. "Before I forget, the needle rifle is underneath your seat just in case. I know you don't like covvie weapons, but we can't exactly leave it in a trash can, can we?"

I sighed and followed him inside. The Pelican was obviously right out of the assembly line. The green paint on the outside was fresh and there wasn't a single scratch on it. The real tell was the floor, the so-called blood tray. Usually there were scratches and wear on it, but what really stood out was that there wasn't a single spot of dried blood in the whole floor.

"Anybody want to inaugurate the tray?" Crow asked.

"Care to guess who'll do it?" Longworth asked him.

"Probably Magnet," he replied. "She always get shot."

I nodded in agreement. Andrea did tend to get shot very often. It was good that she wasn't in this Pelican with us, otherwise she would've been might angry. The guys in here started coming up with the most plausible choices to stain the floor with. Andy ended up being the most voted choice, quickly followed by Pavel and then me. I didn't get serious injuries as often as Andy did, but I did accumulate scrapes, cuts, and other injuries whenever I was in the field. Marv was fourth choice because he often got scrapes and cuts even with all the armor on. The discussion went on for a while as the Pelican spooled up its engines and all other AAG operators got on board.

"Lady, you've been quiet," Snark said. "What's up with that?"

"Well, we lost Polly not ten hours ago and you're acting completely normal," she said coolly.

"I thought you were supposed to be the heartless bitch," Snark replied.

"Hey," I interceded quickly. "Deaths are expected in the battlefield. We move on. None of us is going to forget who Polly was or why he died, but there's no sense in dwelling in his death."

Lady nodded sharply, even if she didn't appear entirely convinced. Her outburst cooled the mood a bit and the conversation died down. Instead my men began chatting quietly with whoever happened to be next to him.

"What the hell is taking so long?"

"We apologize for the delay, ladies and gentlemen. Our D77-TC Pelican is brand new and the controls are a little bit stiff," the pilot broadcast over the intercom. For some reason her voice was distorted. "Please strap on and secure any loose objects that may fly around the cabin."

The voice didn't sound human with the distortion and all, but the speech patterns and the attitude that went with them was something that I couldn't fail to recognize. I looked across at Pavel and tilted my head questioningly. He nodded back to me and the mysterious smile on his face turned into a shit-eating grin. I stood up from my seat and walked to the cockpit as the Pelican took off.

"I did say strap down to your seats, didn't I?"

I smiled broadly. "Marina Bogdanovic!"

"Pilot extraordinaire," she finished, turning around and smiling back. "It's good to see you Frank."

"You too, Marina. I thought you were back in Esztergom."

"I was up till yesterday," she said. "I've been trying to help out, but the re-enlisting process was a little bit more complicated than I expected. I had to call in a couple of favors."

"Grass?" I asked her.

"Yeah," she snorted. "When I called her she thought I was trying to ask her out or something from the way she stumbled over her words. I swear, sometimes she acts like she's right out of high school."

I nodded. "Sometimes it seems like it was only a couple of years ago."

"Sometimes it seems like it was a lifetime ago," she added. "And I'm not even that old."

"Well, it was nineteen years ago."

"We are old," she said, pouting.

"Well, you're still as pretty as always," I assured her, squeezing her shoulder.

"I was going for sexy," she sighed.

I laughed. "That was always my role in the relationship."

Marina groaned in annoyance. "Is everybody strapped up?"

I looked over my shoulder. "Looks like it."

I was only partially prepared for what came next. Marina always did enjoy doing barrel rolls during routine taxi missions, but I didn't actually think that she'd go through with it while I was standing up and unstrapped. Not to mention the fact that nobody in the back was expecting it. In fact, she usually called out before doing them.

"Do a barrel roll!" she shouted.

_There it is_.

I stretched my legs and arms out and pressed against the walls as hard as I could. Had I been in the cargo bay as opposed to the space right behind the copilot's seat. The walls were considerably tighter here than in the back and I managed to stay suspended for the duration of the barrel roll. I did slam hard on my side when Marina stopped it abruptly, but that wasn't too painful. Some of the men in the back did complain very vocally about the sudden and abrupt roll.

"Wow… Marina?" Snark asked. "No wonder!"

"Good to see you, Naveen," she replied. "Who else is in here?"

"Just me," Pavel called out. "Bee and Caboose are in the other Pelican."

"Well, let them know I say hi."

Lady scoffed. "You know this psycho?"

"That's Mrs. Pilot to you," Marina said.

"She and El-tee used to date," Bee explained. "And don't call her a psycho."

Lady grumbled something as I walked back and sat down. I made sure to strap myself tightly to the seats. The tall skyscrapers reflected the sunlight right back at my eyes. I squinted slightly and looked down at the traffic. Even with our best efforts there were still people trying to get out through the western side of the city. Roadblocks and barricades had been set, but if someone really wanted to get out they would. The Army had better things to do than stop every conspiracy theorist and idiot that didn't believe them.

"Damn, that's a nice line," Longworth noted with a small whistle. "Lots of people are gonna be pissed about that."

I nodded in agreement. The suburbs on the west end of New Alexandria were the most expensive piece of land to live on in the most expensive city to live on in this planet. The houses were more like estates where the wealthy and privileged lives. At low altitude I could make out the pools and beautifully landscaped gardens. I could also make the crudely dug trenches that were deep and wide enough for two Wraiths to fit at the bottom. There were small bridges crossing the trench, they would be blown up as soon as we had to pull back. Behind the massive trench were further fortifications. I could see the obvious ones, such as instacrete bunkers, but I knew there would be people hiding all over the mansions.

"Well, at least we're well-prepared," Crow noted. "It'll be hard to get through those trenches."

"They'll just throw grunts at us," Longworth said with a side. "Then they'll come through wherever the corpses have piled up high enough for them to use them as a bridge."

"They do tend to do that," Preacher agreed. "Well, their souls shall burn in hell for their crimes."

"You know, you're really violent for such a religion person," Pavel told him.

"It is the duty of every Christian to eradicate evil from this world."

"Just this world? Or every world? I mean, there's evil in plenty of worlds," Crow asked.

"Shut up," Preacher told him.

"Yeah, mocking religion is disrespectful," I said. "No matter how tempting it becomes at times."

I got a few chuckles from everyone except for Preacher, who just rolled his eyes. The flight of Pelicans veered off to the right after someone contacted our pilots. A few of the younger soldiers looked up from below and waved at us as we passed. I frowned slightly and gripped my helmet tighter. A lot of these men would be dying before this whole shitstorm was over. Command was very obviously pulling out the big guns for this one. There were Rhinos, Scorpions, and even Wolverines adorning the landscape below me. I had no doubt that there were a few thousand artillery pieces further back or inside the city. The Covenant would have a bad time trying to pry this city from us.

"Ladies and gentlemen we are approaching our final destination of Mendez Joint Base, please remain seated and refrain from removing your seatbelts until we touch down. I will be landing next to the armory area for your comfort. Thank you for flying with Little Lamb Airlines and good luck boys."

Her Pelican touched down exactly as she finished her little speech. Unsurprisingly enough, nobody had listened to her. We hopped off the moment the wheels touched the ground. Nine other Pelicans touched down almost simultaneously and men poured out and started walking towards the armory. One hundred of the best that humanity could field quickly shuffled so that they could get first pick in the biggest armory in the planet.

"Grab what you want," I told me men. "Knock yourselves out."

I genuinely laughed when they all started jogging towards the massive sliding doors.

"Well, looks like I have some free time," Marina said.

I turned around and smiled again at the sight for her. Even though Katie had been holding my thoughts for the last few days I _had_ been worried about my other friends here. I had wondered whether Marina and Claire were safe and then thought about Captain Montgomery and Lys. From there I thought about the three Irishmen that were always in the Grenadier. I knew that Murphy and the guys had all been drafted back into the service as well as Clair, but there were fifty/fifty chances that they had been on leave.

"I'm glad you're safe," I told her.

Marina just smiled slightly and hugged me. I was surprised for a second. Even back in the day she wasn't a big fan of tenderness. Sure, she enjoyed kissing and some cuddling after sex, but she didn't thrive on it. I wrapped my arms around her, awkwardly holding my helmet in one of my hands. She remained there for a couple of seconds before she let her hands fall down.

"Have you heard anything about Claire?" she asked me.

I shook my head. "We barely keep in touch under the best circumstances," I told her. "I don't really know anything."

"I just know that she was planetside."

"How?" I asked.

"MySpace," she replied simply.

"I can find out where Army Rangers are deployed," I told her. "If you really want to know."

"Thanks," she said. "I know we broke up, but–"

"You and me?" I asked. "Or you and her?"

"Me and her," she said with a small smile.

"Did you try calling her?"

"Nah, she would've just called me a bitch. Besides, the lines went down a few days ago."

"Yeah," I said.

"How's Katie?" she asked me.

I snorted. "She's just fine. Pavel reached out to his wife, who in turn talked to my beautiful girlfriend."

"And her cousin?"

"Yes," I said.

"Well, I'm glad to hear that. Are they still in Esztergom?"

"Last I heard."

"Frank…"

"I know," I told her. "But they're in an evacuation port and already have guaranteed passage out of the city. They're as safe as the can be right now."

"Even if it's not that much."

"You are depressing the shit out of me, Marina. No wonder I broke up with you."

"Didn't I break up with you?" she asked.

I coughed. "It was mutual."

"Yeah… right," she said.

"Hey Frank!" Pavel called out. "You gonna come here?"

"Just a second!" I shouted back.

Marina was walking back to her Pelican. "I think that I'm going to be assigned to your platoon," she told me. "Command mentioned something about you guys needing quick transport at all times."

"Good," I replied.

"It's gonna be a lot more fun without a copilot."

"Yeah, right," I said, making my way towards the door. "I'll see you around."

"Stay safe, Frank," she said, hopping on the back of her Pelican.

"You know me, Marina!" I yelled.

"That's the problem," she called back.

I shook my head and walked inside the massive armory. It had every weapon that the UNSC used in any circumstance and it had at least a thousand of each. You started out with your obvious MA5-series and MA37 assault rifles with BR55 rifles coming up next. Shotguns and SMGs were located in the next massive row of gun racks. Pistols of all models also rested there, waiting to be picked up. There were gaps here and there, where a squad or a platoon had picked up weapons because they were missing theirs, but the amount of rifles, pistols, machine guns and the like was just incredibly mind-blowing.

"Where's the special stuff?" I asked Pavel as soon as I caught up to him.

"Down over here," he said. "It's about five hundred meters long, can you fucking believe that? There's even a basement section!"

"It's ridiculous," I said. "What are we getting?"

"All kinds of stuff," Pavel told me. "All shit's gonna hit the fan in a few hours and this might be the last time we have to grab some gear. I'm going to get myself a scope for my machine gun and whatever I feel like I might need."

"Let's see what I find then," I said, smiling at the thought of all these guns. "Come on."

"You know, I really hate it when you make it seem like you were the one waiting on me," Pavel said. "Asshole."

"Bitch," I replied.

Pavel laughed. It had been a long time since we joked that way. We had been through a lot, the two of us. I didn't know whether to hope for more misadventures with him or pray for them to stop.

"Over here, sir!" Payat called out excitedly. "It's just like heaven!"

"I seriously doubt that," Preacher shouted over a shelf.

"It's close enough for me," Bee jumped in. "I don't think I've ever had access to this amount of gear."

I agreed with him. The gear aisle or section had anything and everything that a firearm could ever need. I could pick anything ranging from grips, to mini-missile launchers, to heartbeat monitors. Some of the shit in here was ridiculous, but it didn't mean that I didn't appreciate it. I slowly moved to the section of BR55 accessories and started going through them. My rifle was a fresh acquisition, which explained why it didn't have any attachments. It just gave me a lot of extra working room.

I saw Miranda attaching a grenade launcher to one of the sides of her DMR. She had removed the front grip and replaced it with a thinner part that had a vertical grip instead. Upon closer inspection I realized that the grenade launcher in fact was one that fired rocket-powered and semi-guided AP grenades. It couldn't hold up to the M515 MGL, but it could certainly aid a lone rifleman, or in this case, riflewoman. She looked up from her gun and shrugged slightly at me before returning to work.

"Well, well," I muttered to myself. "Let's see."

I started with the important part. I replaced the carry handle in my rifle for a slightly longer version with picatinny rails. I proceeded to remove some of the side coverings of my rifle near the front and instead replace them with more picatinny rails. I used those to attach a state-of-the-art laser rangefinder that could also temporarily blind certain electronics. On the other side of my rifle I attached a small but powerful flashlight that could blind anybody that looked directly at it. I considered getting myself an underbarrel attachment, but decided against it for comfort reasons.

"Not upgrading your scope, sir?" Longworth asked me. "I know I am."

I looked at his BR55, it had a vertical grip and several of the parts had been stripped and replaced with slimmer ones, giving it a more skeletal look than my own. On top of his carrying handle he had attached a beautiful Oracle scope similar to those that SRS-99 rifles used but smaller and less powerful.

"I will," I told him. "I'm just getting rid of some extra weight."

"Alright," he said. "I removed most of the parts in the front and replaced them with lightweight alloys."

"I can see that," I said. "Where are those?"

"Right over there."

By the time I was done doing that my rifle weighed two hundred grams less. I had some room there, so I replaced my barrel with a longer and slightly heavier version that would increase range and accuracy. I was starting to feel very good with my main weapon, but I still had the matter of a scope to resolve. I considered getting a more powerful scope, but in the end I settled for a more expensive one.

I picked an Ushuaia Armories MulTec Mk. 50 Multi-Purpose Scope. It looked something like a slightly oversized holographic sight that one would find on a submachine gun, but it was anything from ordinary. Sure, it had a standard mode where it simply painted a red targeting reticle for you with no zoom, but it also had zoom capabilities up to 7x and three different modes. It had a neutron detector much like the Oracle N-variant sniper scope, thermal, and the ever-necessary night-vision. It also looked very damn stylish on my rifle.

"Ah," Longworth said when he saw my final product. "That was my second choice, sir. Looks like you've got a nice piece of work right there."

"Thanks Adrian," I replied, examining my weapon. "Tell me, why are you in the Corps?"

The question seemed to catch him unprepared. He stumbled slightly over his words before charmingly smiling and ruffling his hair. "Well, sir, I'm not exactly sure. I've always excelled at everything that I tried, not to sound arrogant–"

"But you are," I reminded him. "You're as arrogant as I am, and believe me when I say that that's not a compliment."

"Uh…"

"You were saying?"

"Well, I guess that nothing I ever did felt like a real challenge. I know I'm smart and that I could've gone into science. I could've gone into sports as well, but I never really felt like I enjoyed doing what I did, I only enjoyed the recognition. It started getting depressing after a while."

"So you decided to join the Corps?"

"Yeah, I guess. I knew that I would be doing something good and I wanted to try it. Thought to myself that if I did something because it was good for other people I might enjoy it."

"Do you?"

He smiled. "Yeah. I do. I guess you could say I found my calling."

"Well, forgive me, but I find that a little hard to believe."

Longworth sighed. "Sir, I honestly don't care whether you believe me or not, but I could've been any kind of civilian contractor making millions or even billions of credits a year, I know it _is_ arrogant, but it's the truth."

It was.

"The reason I'm here," he continued, "is because I like the feeling. Every alien I kill and every battle we win is more time for humanity to deliver a knockout blow. I do this for my family and for my friends. I risk my life so that they might live theirs."

I looked at him and held his gaze for a second. Longworth was an arrogant douchebag, no doubt about it, but he didn't seem to be lying. I held his defiant stare until he blinked a couple of times and looked away.

"Cute. Did you rehearse that?"

"Yes," he admitted. "But that doesn't make it a lie."

"Have you been waiting for somebody to ask you that just so that you could explain?"

"I was kind of hoping."

"Well Longworth," I groaned, standing up. "I believe you. But good motives or otherwise you're still an arrogant shit and it would do you well to tone it down."

We were both silent for a moment.

"Have you been waiting for an opportunity to say that?" he asked me.

"Yeah," I admitted.

"Did you rehearse that?"

"Hell no."

"Didn't think so," Longworth chuckled. "Well El-tee, we're both the way we are and there's very little I can do to change that. If I know that I'm better than somebody at something I'll let them know it. It just so happens that I'm better at most things that most people are."

I chuckled with him. "Tone it down, ok?"

"I'll try."

"Good," I said.

Once that little matter had been settled I grabbed my rifle and left, making sure that all the pieces were nice and tight. The last thing I wanted was my barrel to slide off in the middle of a battle. Not only would my gun be useless, but I would also feel like a fucking idiot.

My next stop was for my pistol. Pavel, the dumb brute that he was, had lost mine in the skyhook. I had been issued a replacement, but a standard version just doesn't have the same appeal. I switched my M6C sidearm for a heavier, more accurate M6H officer's pistol. The one I picked had a KFA-2 scope right above the barrel and a flashlight/laser combination underneath it. I removed the scope from the pistol and examined the more square and angular look it had. Next up was a suppressor for it. Giving my M6H a SOCOM suppressor was almost an oxymoron, but the engineers did their job right and I knew for a fact that the pistol wouldn't make much noise when fired. I almost moved on right there, but I spotted some double-finger triggers that would speed up my rate of fire. I quickly switched the regular trigger for the double one and moved on.

"All ready?" Pavel asked me.

"Nope," I replied.

"Good, because I'm not either."

I laughed and slid the weapon into my holster, making sure to grab six 12-round magazines for it. That was about it for my sidearm, it's not like I needed a silly bayonet attachment for it. It sure would've felt good to stab a grunt in the face and then shoot it, but that was just ridiculously impractical.

"What else are you getting?" I asked Pavel.

"Guess?"

"An ACS like the one I bought you for your birthday so long ago?"

He laughed. "Nah, as much as I'd like to it would be too much weight for me. I'm not twenty five anymore."

"Please, you could beat the shit out of any twenty five year-old in the galaxy."

"I'm flattered," Pavel said. "But you know how it is. Wait, do you?"

I sighed. "Truth be told Pavs, I feel better than I've felt in my whole life. Physically speaking. I can run faster than before, run for longer times… I can hit harder, aim better. I'll probably never know exactly what was done to me, but it sure did help out."

"What _do_ you know?" Pavel asked carefully. "Did they tell you anything?"

"Why so curious all of a sudden?"

"I've always been curious," he said. "It's just that I never asked you because it bothered you so much."

"I didn't earn this," I told him. "My speed or my strength is all artificial. How would you feel if everything that you did was thanks to somebody else?"

"Unfulfilled," he admitted. "But they did this to you for a reason Frank. Even before this happened you were the single most impressive fighter anyone had ever seen. Sure, we've got Marv and Longworth in this team and they are both impressive badasses in their own right, but I know I could still beat the living shit out of them and you damn well could do it with or without whatever you keep complaining about."

"Aw. Thanks."

"But seriously Frank," he said seriously. "Frank. What did they give you?"

"I don't know," I replied truthfully. "But I do know what they were trying to make me."

"No way…"

"Yeah," I said. "They wanted cheaper Spartans."

"Like the IIIs?"  
>"More or less," I said. "I think that they wanted supersoldiers, give augments to every single trooper in the UNSC or at least make a bunch of us. The details aren't really clear to me. I know that I'm supposed to be a failed prototype of the Spartan-IV generation."<p>

"Well, I cannot wait to see the successful prototype."

"Pavel, I'm getting a gay vibe from you right now."

My best friend actually flushed at that comment. Even though he was fair skinned, blue-eyed, and blonde, it wasn't very often that you saw his face change color so abruptly. I had seen him uncomfortable many times, but this was probably the best one.

"Right. Sorry."

I laughed. "Who's gonna tell Amber?"

"Geez Frank," he grunted, pushing me away. "Back to the matter at hand. I have nothing against Spartans, but I wouldn't want to be one myself. They're like machines. Even the IIIs give off a robot vibe. Hell, the IIs we fought with in Paris IV could hardly be called sociable. Even the most outgoing one was withdrawn."

"Well, I'm glad I'm not one of those," I said. "Super strength or not I enjoy who I am."

"Most of it, at least," Schitzo said with a small shrug.

Pavel remained silent for a few seconds as we walked. We could hear AAG operators talking and chattering, but there were none in this aisle with us. "I'm happy we talked about this."

"Me too," I admitted. "Caboose always knew. It was his job."

"I suspected as much."

"But I actually feel good now. Because I talked about this, I mean."

"We're both being really gay right now," Pavel stated.

"Yeah, good thing we're in a room fool of weapons," I said. "Makes me feel manly."

We laughed together. It wasn't very often that we became sentimental, at least not with one another.

"So, what'd you do to your gun?" I asked him.

"Lightened it up some," he replied. "Changed the stock and got one of those vertical grips that also works as a bipod. Oh, right. I also got myself a scope and laser rangefinder. For my pistol I just got a better silencer."

"I'm surprised you didn't get a bigger caliber for your M247."

"It's how you use it," Pavel said. "And I can't carry all that extra weight."

We stepped out of the way as a tracked robot rolled by. It was one of those drones that followed a squad or platoon with military supplies or additional ammunition. I didn't like using those, they were very rarely worth it. Oftentimes they'd draw fire and fail to properly travel through rough terrain. The one that just rolled past appeared to be a newer version.

"Wanna give it a shot?" Pavel asked me, pointing at the tank-like drone. "Sure they can't move worth shit in mountain terrain, but we are gonna be in urban terrain for a while."

"Sounds good," I said. "Want to get three of those?"

"Yeah. I'll tell Crow and Tank to load them up with ammunition."

Pavel broke off and left me by myself. A few men that I didn't know were upgrading their SMGs and some men that I recognized as Captain Nezarian's were chatting as they walked past me. Their rifles had underbarrel grenade launchers of the more conventional type that would fire two 30mm grenades before you needed to reload.

"Oh, hey El-tee," Andy greeted me. "Marv and I were getting busy behind the shotguns."

I raised an eyebrow and Marv just turned to look at her with a confused expression. I just rolled my eyes. There was absolutely no way that Andrea would hook up with anybody she worked with. She was the most professional member of Team-7 along with Serge. It would be incredibly hard for her to betray her professionalism for something as materialistic as sex.

Besides, it's not even like Marv was that attractive.

"Are you getting shotguns?" I asked them.

"Nah," Andy replied. "I'm good with my assault rifle."

"I see you customized it," I noted. "Nothing else?"

"Nah, I'm good with my gun. Just gonna get some extra gear."

"I'm getting a shotgun," Marv said.

"Well, so am I," I told him. "Come on."

The shotgun section of the armory was a dream. There was your standard M90 shotgun, but we had all different versions of it. We had the M90, the M90A, M45, M45D, M45E, and a lot more models that I couldn't name at first glance. Marv immediately moved towards a rack of compact M45 shotguns with collapsible stocks and shortened barrels. He looked at it briefly before shrugging to himself and attaching it to the magnetic plates on his back.

"That it?" I asked.

"I'm just planning on using it during emergencies," he replied. "Just going to get some ammo for this and I'm set."

I raised an eyebrow. "Well, that's one way to go about it. It's probably the way I'm going to go, to be honest."

"You want one of these?" he asked.

"Nah, I'd like something smaller," I told him. "Have you seen those breaching-type guns?"

"They should be right down there," Marv told me. "Those little things pack a punch, but…"

"Yeah," I said. "Four shells ought to be enough in an emergency."

Marvin just shrugged again.

I sighed and walked down the aisle to the shorter and smaller shotguns. I found one that I liked and examined it thoroughly. It was about sixty centimeters in length and pump-action. It was basically a shortened M90 without the top sights. There was no stock and some of the non-essential parts had been stripped. The little shotgun only fit four rounds, but as I had said, it should be enough. I grabbed it and added shell holders on either side, giving me space for sixteen additional shotgun shells. Laser sights would be highly unnecessary if an enemy was in the same room with me, but a blinding flashlight could always buy me a millisecond or two.

"Hey Frank, most of the guys are done," Pavel radioed in. "You about ready?"

"Almost," I told him.

I pumped the shotgun a couple of times and then started loading it. I chose shells that would inflict maximum damage at extremely close range. I ended up picking a mix of incendiary and buckshot. Well, it was more like incendiary buckshot. The moment the shells made contact with anything they would detonate, shredding through flesh, armor, and shields alike.

Schitzo whistled, impressed. "Goddamn. Do we have any idea how much these puppies cost? About a hundred credits a piece? No wonder we don't use them more often. Did you see those bullets? The ones that automatically detect a surface and detonate inches from it. They have a three meter kill radius."

_Yup, those are about five hundred credits each._

Three of those bullets could buy you an M6 pistol. No wonder we didn't get to use the super fancy bullets during every mission. I would've loved to use explosive bullets or guided bullets or any other kind of bullet, but these 9.5mm semi-explosive rounds that I used did the trick and didn't cost the taxpayers an arm and a leg. Pity, it was the middle of the twenty-sixth century and we still didn't have lasers. I should've had a laser blaster.

I jogged back out of the armory and looked at my men. "You ready?"

They nodded.

"We have three drones with us," Pavel said. "They are all carrying ammunition and a little bit of medical supplies. They also have armor plating on the side. You've all participated in engagements with these little guys, so I assume you know how they work."

"Team-7 is the only intact team," I began. "Which means we get the hardest job. We're going to defend the main entrance on the western end. You know, the only one that doesn't have a huge-ass ten-meter wall surrounding it. That's us. We've got machine gun emplacements, missile pods, the works. Coupled with near-unlimited ammunition I don't expect us to lose the gate. Even if we do fail we're going to have exactly _five _Scorpion tanks just waiting for targets to move through."

"You hear that?" Pavel boomed. "You better not mess this one up."

"Listen to him," I advised. "Move out. Snark, not you."

"Follow me!" Pavel shouted. "On the double!"

"Sir?" Snark asked, sounding confused.

"Follow me," I ordered. "I've got news."

I led Snark back inside the armory in complete silence. In truth I just wanted to make him nervous, so I said nothing and didn't answer his questions until he finally shut up. I walked to the restricted section of the armor and pressed my palm to the sensor that kept the door closed. Once it opened we both stepped inside. Snark looked at all the experimental weaponry and his eyes widened ever so slightly.

"Is this what I think it is?"

I turned and nodded with a big smile on my face. "It's all you."

"I'm going to need some help, you know?" he said. "That shit's heavy."

"I'll give you a hand," I sighed. "Come on."

Snark took a couple of steps forward and slowly, carefully, lifted the M102 SASR Sledgehammer railgun from its little stand. He looked the weapon over before gently setting it on its stock.

"Ain't she a beauty?" he asked. His voice was full of awe.

I chuckled. "That she is. How long has it been?"

"Ever since Catamaran Peninsula, when we took out that Scarab."

"Well, get reacquainted, because you might be giving this one a lot of use."

"Oh, I plan on it."

We walked out of the armory with more than fifty pounds worth of railgun ammunition. Snark was beaming. He had a massive weapon that would destroy a Scarab's main gun in a couple of shots and he would get to use it very extensively. I was practically beaming as well, I would get to see the Sledgehammer in action once again. The railgun was no longer experimental, but the technology used to make it portable and effective happened to be incredibly expensive. There weren't more than a thousand or so of these in the whole universe.

"Take a tower," I told him. "Keep the shots sporadic, ok? You'll become a big target."

"I know my deal, sir."

"Just making sure," I told him, handing him my crates of ammunition. Hurry."

"Yeah," he heaved through the weight.

To be fair to him, he was carrying a twenty pound sniper rifle, a forty pound railgun, and fifty pounds of ammunition. Not even the exoskeleton on his armor could lift that. He dropped his rifle and the ammunition and took two deep breaths. I'll make two trips.

I nodded and headed towards the security booth next to the gate. It had retractable windows and metal shield doors. This whole base was designed to be defended, but it would be pretty hard to pull off with just a few companies worth of men.

"Lieutenant Castillo," Captain Flatt called in. "Are you in position?"

"Yes ma'am," I said. "Any news?"

"We have enemy sightings two miles away. The treeline starts at a mile and a half from the walls. Anything in between here and there is a killzone. Oh, and I managed to secure artillery support as well."

"This is gonna be a good one," I told her.

"Good luck, Lieutenant. We're all gonna need it."

* * *

><p><em>Thanks for reading this chapter. There was minimal proofreading to it much like the last few chapters, but I don't think there were any major spelling mistakes.<em>

_I've always enjoyed writing down the lock-and-load montage scenes where everybody gets their shit together and starts getting ready for combat. You know how in the movies the camera always lingers on those guys putting bullets into the magazine? Well, I decided to write a whole chapter around that. Frank with a shotgun also sounds like a good idea, so why not?_

_I took my time and wrote down Marina into this chapter. To be honest with you she's always been one of my favorite characters. She's a strong and independent woman that isn't afraid of kicking ass but at the same time she's also... well, a woman. I'll be honest with you guys, Marina is probably my idea of the perfect woman. Bisexuality and everything. Other than her I also gave a little spotlight to Longworth. I keep mentioning how he's so good at everything and talented, but never really explained it. Well, he's that guy that is always going to be better than you. You guys all probably know someone like that. The only difference is that Longworth is better at everything and not just a couple of things._

_Pavel and Frank had this bromantic moment that veered slightly into the homoerotic. Personally I've got nothing against gay people, but the situation seemed funny and I wrote it that way._

_Brief recap: Marina is back and likable as always. Pavel bonds with Frank. Longworth gets some insight into his character. Yup, they're all going to die. And let's see if I can hit twenty reviews for this chapter, shall we? Last one was thirteen._

_Stay strong._


	196. Walled Out

Chapter CXCVI: Walled Out

**August 18, 2552 (UNSC Calendar)/**

**Mendez Joint Base, New Alexandria, Eposz, Reach, Epsilon Eridani System**

* * *

><p><em>"Oftentimes the first place that any newcomer Marine or soldier steps on is Mendez Joint Base."<em>

* * *

><p>"Thirty meters," I said. "Snark, Preacher, Miranda, and Longworth?"<p>

"We've got our rifles," Snark said. "I just want to get the chance to use the Sledgehammer."

"Soon enough."

"They're coming through," Pavel warned. "I see them."

"We agreed on seven hundred meters," I said. "Let's go over the plan again. Shall we? Grigori."

"Let them reach the seven hundred meter mark, fire. Once they reach the wall we activate the minefield and we go on from there."

"See?" I asked. "It doesn't get more simple than that."

My men replied their agreement and watched as the scouts of the enemy force carefully approached. All of my men were well-hidden and only watching the approach through cameras. A few squads jumped out of the tree line and started moving towards us. The camera highlighted the pressure mines, but since they were deactivated none of the covvies were blown up. The brute-led grunts waddled and the jackals carried their heavy beam rifles.

"Well, they're certainly slow movers," Snark muttered. "I take it they know we're here?"

"They do," I confirmed. "They just don't know our numbers or location. There are drones scrambling signals."

"Good to know," Tank muttered quietly. His voice was like a rumbling tractor.

"One kilometer."

The leading squad had a brute captain and several brute ultras. They were moving ahead without a care in the world. Already more enemy units were emerging from the forest. A few Ghosts were slowly moving forward while grunts began deploying cover for the units behind them. Soon they would bring their own trench diggers and make a solid defensive line on their end of the killzone. More and more aliens were pouring out of the forest and painting the grass with different colors. I could see greens, blues, reds, and yellows. Don't forget the purple, there was an annoying amount of purple. That always happened with the Covenant.

"Eight hundred," Snark said.

"Pick your targets," I ordered. "Gunners, calibrate your guns."

"Seven fifty," Snark updated.

"Ghosts are priorities," I said. "Keep your eyes open for important targets."

"Seven hundred meters," Snark said.

I smiled. "Weapons free."

They let me fire the first shot. That's the way it usually went in ambushes. Either the team leader or a specially designated shooter fires first. Most of the time Snark and I switched, depending on the distance. Right now Snark would've had a much better chance of scoring a one shot kill, but I really wanted to fire the first shot of this battle. I zoomed in on the brute in charge of the squad closest to us and compensated ever so slightly for the distance. I squeezed the trigger slightly and three bullets flew straight out. A fraction of a second later they all punched through its thick skull and came back out. The brute toppled to the ground and the whole world exploded with noise.

Snark downed four brutes in half as many seconds while Longworth and Miri used their rifles to take out the grunt ultras before they could rally the other ones to form something threatening.

About fifty aliens died in the initial twenty seconds. They were out in the open and had absolutely nowhere to hide. A few of the guys further back managed to deploy cover or run back to safety. After every single target out in the open was killed the battle became something of a pissing contest on our side. We had the advantage of near-unlimited ammunition and a defensible position, so we basically just started firing heavily at the more distant targets.

I sighed as the covvies hid behind cover way to far back for us. There was no way that they'd stop there, but it would take them some time to get something ready. If the brutes got tired enough they'd just send the grunts in waves, try and make us run out of ammunition. Unless they were just complete idiots they'd try something else first, but you couldn't trust them to make smart decisions.

Snark and Preacher were the only ones still firing constantly. They had the weapons for it while the rest of us would have to wait for the targets to get closer. The Covenant had already set up a nice wall of deployable covers some three hundred meters from the edge of the forest and there was heavy troop movement behind those. Already they were beginning to dig some nifty little trenches. The grunts had this lawnmower kinda machines that would eat up dirt and then spit it out back. They were not nearly as effective as our trench diggers, but they would do the trick.

"I'm seeing three different chieftains," Snark said. "All of them are hammer guys."

"Ignore them," I told him. "Only prioritize them once they get past the five hundred meter mark."

"Ghosts moving up!" Crow called out.

"That's you gunners," I said. "Bee and Tank, we've got half a million rockets, make sure to use them all."

Two rockets flew from one of the towers next to the main gate and then another two followed them from the security box directly underneath. I sighed when Bee didn't use his Spartan Laser. The fuel cells for those things were a lot scarcer than I would've liked. We would expend our light-based weaponry with aircraft and Wraiths.

Four Ghosts exploded almost simultaneously. Their husks were shredded enough that they would only provide cover for a small jackal or a grunt without a particularly visible backpack.

"Whoo! Yeah!" Bee exclaimed ecstatically.

"Settle down," I said quietly. "We're in this one for the long haul."

* * *

><p>"I fucking hate jumpers," Lady cursed. It wasn't very usual for her to curse, but once she got started she became a real potty-mouth.<p>

"Agreed," I said, taking deep breaths.

I looked at the seven corpses. The brutes had made it close enough to our walls to hop over them a couple of times, but only now had they finally achieved their goal. Lady and I were coming back from our sixth ammunition run, so it had fallen to us to handle the little intrusion. Preacher had taken out three of them while praying and the rest of them had met their end slightly later. I reloaded my battle rifle as Lady released her empty magazine and slammed another one in.

"Nice shooting," I told her. "Bursts to the face for your two kills… Priceless."

"Thanks," she shrugged, pulling back the bolt. "You too."

I looked at my two kills, both were perfect bursts in between the eyes. I had actually taken a little bit longer with my second kill just so that I could hit him there.

"Drone, head to Tower A," I ordered the little tank UAV. "Lady?"

"On the move," she sighed, hopping tiredly to her position on one of the watchtowers.

I climbed upstairs to my position, feeling the difference in weight with every single step. I crouched for the last few steps and then pressed my back against the chest-high wall that Snark was using for cover.

"There's ammo downstairs," I told him. "I'll spot you."

"Yes, sir," he replied, handing me his sniper rifle.

I grabbed the SRS and propped it on the edge of the wall. I took one deep breath and stood up, emerging from cover. The amount of corpses didn't cease to impress me. The ground was littered with bodies all the way from the trees down to seventy meters away from the wall. An astounding majority of those bodies belonged to grunts and jackals. You didn't have to look very hard to spot a brute, but the grunts were quite obviously being used for cannon fodder and nothing else.

About three hundred or so aliens were constantly moving from their line and towards ours. They now had emplacements only two hundred meters from our position. Only our overwhelming defenses could keep them from setting up plasma cannons or heavy weaponry. Our biggest worry right now was any sniper that pretended to be a dead jackal and fatigue. Ammunition was not a problem for us, but they were throwing them at us faster than we could kill them. As soon as they started using tank and air support we would be hard pressed to push them back.

I hit a brute right in the neck. It stumbled slightly and then fell forward, trying to keep blood from coming out of its neck. I hit the second-in-command of the same squad to further disarray their advance. As soon as I had fired the two shots I ducked back behind cover and took a couple of deep breaths as random plasma bolts flew nearby.

"Squads right! We've got three squads!"

I didn't see as the Covenant soldiers were mowed down, but I heard the machine gun fire shifting towards my right. The grunts screamed when they were hit and the jackals screeched, trying to hide behind their shields. A couple of explosions boomed and I heard the sound of dirt hitting the ground. I took advantage of that moment and popped out to fire another shot at a jackal. The jackal was moving into a crater just as I shot it in the chest. The large caliber bullet tore through it with ease, pulling a huge chunk of flesh out the back.

I looked to my side and saw the automatic turrets. The M8 Automatic Defense System was nicknamed the Wolf Spider. I don't know why because it didn't resemble any of those two animals in the least. They had been a big help in dealing with light infantry forces, they could even self-repair when damaged. Despite that we had still lost four automatic turrets to concentrated plasma fire.

"I'm back," Snark let me know, carrying two bandoliers of SRS ammunition.

I handed him his rifle and grabbed my own. Just as I prepared to jump out of cover and start shooting again an explosion tore the ceiling of the watchtower. I was thrown down by the shockwave and debris, but whatever had hit the tower had only grazed it.

"I'm hit! I'm hit!" Tank cried. "Oh my god!"

I tried to wave some of the dust away as I struggled back to my feet. "What the hell was that?!"  
>I heard another explosion and my HUD notified me that another defense turret had been destroyed. I looked up over the damaged wall and couldn't gleam anything of value. Instead I crawled towards Tank. Half his body was underneath rubble and his left hand had been pierced by rebar.<p>

"Shit, sir," he said, almost whimpering. "It hurts."

"It's not so bad," I assured him.

"No, not that! My leg!"

I looked down and pulled some rubble off him. He winced with every rock I moved and then cursed when he was finally able to see the damage to his leg. Yet another piece of rebar had flown through the air and hit him. The steel had punched through his armor and his thigh before coming back out and pinning him to the ground. Blood was slowly pouring out of the injury.

"I need a power saw!" I shouted. "And somebody tell me what the hell is shooting at us!"

"It's a Daemon!" Pavel called. "I can't pin down its position!"

"Shit," I cursed. "Smokescreens now!"

"Sir, those work both ways," Mata said. "We won't be able to see them coming at us."

"And we'll be protected from the Daemon," I replied. "Where the hell's that power saw?"

Andy stumbled up the last couple of steps in the stairwell and immediately went prone. Snark, Serge, and Miranda were up in the watchtower providing covering fire, but they wouldn't be able to hit anything more than one hundred meters away with the smoke. Another explosion rocked the tower, but this time the Daemon had hit the walls protecting the base.

"Anybody got a bead on it?" Pavel asked.

"I think I know where it's coming from," Bee said, "but I can't see it."

"Send a bird up," Caboose ordered him. "A UAV can paint the target for you and you can hit it with the Splaser."

"That bird won't stay up for long," Bee said.

I was only half listening to the conversation, instead I focused on the piece of rebar coming out of Tank's thigh. Andy had already poured some biofoam into the wound and was preparing the small saw. She looked at me and nodded quickly before looking back to Tank.

"This is going to hurt a lot, ok?"

Tank nodded faintly. He was losing blood.

I lifted his leg just enough for the saw to fit underneath it. Tank screamed loudly before he managed to take a couple of deep breaths. Andy started sawing through the rebar and sparks flew out as metal met metal. It took about twenty seconds for the buzz saw to completely cut through the rebar. Just then a couple of plasma bolts flew past me. One of them hit me in the back and knocked me to the ground.

"El-tee!" Andy cried out.

"I'm fine," I grunted. "Get Tank out of here!"

I dragged myself to safety as my guys intensified their covering fire. The sudden lack of wall and ceiling in one corner of the watchtower meant that we were exposed to enemy fire whenever they made it close enough to the wall.

"Are you alright?" Miri asked me, kneeling next to me.

I grunted and sat up, rolling my shoulders and tightening my back. I did that a couple of times and then took a deep breath. "Yeah, looks like I'm fine."

"Good," Miri said simply. Another explosion rocked the wall.

"UAV is up," Bee said. "I'm getting a live feed."

The flying drone tagged several dozen enemy infantrymen as it flew over them. Snark and Preacher quickly started hitting the bigger targets through the smoke, stalling the enemy advance. Bee waited patiently for the UAV to make its flyby over the forest and give him the position of the enemy Daemon. The camera feed that the UAV gave me wasn't particularly good or high quality. The bird was a disposable one that was usually sent for recon during situations like this one. More and more bolts of plasma flew at the UAV until finally it spotted the energy signature of a Daemon tank.

"Got it," Bee notified calmly before warming up his Spartan Laser.

A big red blob marked the place that the Daemon was in for Bee, cross-referencing its location with Bee's helmet and pointing it out through the thick smoke cover. Bee fired his laser and hit the tank. The UAV couldn't see the damage properly through the thick tree foliage, but it could see that it had been a solid hit. Bee didn't waste any time in a follow-up shot and warmed up his laser again. One plasma shell missed his position as the Daemon attempted to fire back, but Bee hit it a second time, finishing it off.

Just as the Daemon exploded violently so did our little UAV drone.

"Good kill, good kill," Crow complimented.

The smoke was beginning to dissipate and all conversations had died down. Usually you had at least a couple of guys chatting about some nonsense while killing aliens, but the moment Tank cried out in pain everybody focused on the battle. Hearing the biggest, toughest man in your unit cry and scream from pain hit you pretty hard.

"How is he?" I asked Andy.

"Looks like the rebar nicked his femoral," she said. "It's not severed, otherwise he'd be dead already."

"Don't talk like I can't hear you," Tank managed through shallow breathing.

I sighed. "Payat, you hear me?"

"Yeah, you need me there?" he replied through the radio.

"Negative," I told him. "What's your recommendation?"

"Bring me up to speed again," he requested.

Andy took a breath. "Rebar went through Tank's leg, punched through his femur and nicked his femoral artery."

"This is when I wished I was in a hospital," Payat sighed. "If we move him the rebar might finish cutting the artery. We can't exactly do a bypass before pulling out the piece of metal, so I'm saying you yank it out and fill him up with biofoam."

"Yank it out!" Tank exclaimed. "You're a doctor! Are you fucking kidding me?"

I nodded quickly and Andy held Tank down. Before he realized what was going on I pulled out the rebar as fast as possible. I did my best to yank it back as straightly as possible. Blood sprayed my visor and Tank screamed the loudest I had heard him scream so far.

Andy let go of his shoulders and pulled out a can of biofoam. She pressed it against the wound and then poured the entire contents of the can into it. She didn't stop until pink foam came out the other end of the wound. Tank cursed and punched at the ground with his good hand, but for the most part he manned through it. A little bit of blood seeped out through the biofoam, but everything seemed to be fine.

"Do we have a scanner?" I asked.

"Yeah," Andy said. "Let me check."

She pulled out a medical scanner and put it above Tank's leg. The device recreated the injury and displayed it in a small screen. The break was nasty, a section of the femur had completely shattered, but the femoral artery seemed to be mostly intact. The biofoam would hold the blood in and keep the circulation going. Some of the blood with inevitably seep out, making his leg feel a little numb, but it would keep him from bleeding out.

"What about his hand?" I asked.

Andrea rolled my eyes and pulled the rebar out from Tank's hand. It was a smaller piece and Tank barely winced at that. I almost rolled my eyes back at them. After he had screamed his lungs out this display of badassery probably alleviated him some.

"We're going to need you out of the way," I told him. "Andy's going to shoot you full of painkillers and you're going to move you back."

"Sir, I can still help," Tank said. "Sit me down somewhere and I can fire or man a turret."

I shook my head lightly. "Sorry Tank. The moment the adrenaline stops pumping you'll realize that your femur is completely shattered."

"What about painkillers?" he asked.

"That's part of the problem," Andy told him. "You're going to be completely under."

"Shit," Tank sighed. "Fine. Whatever's best."

I nodded at Andy and she pulled out a packet of painkillers. She quickly administered it to Tank, who just took a couple of deep breaths before his eyes rolled into the back of his head.

"Can you handle him?" I asked her.

"Yeah, thank God this tower has an elevator."

Andrea dragged Tank's unconscious body to the small elevator and then disappeared. Snark and Miri were both firing away at the covvie infantry, but far in the distance I could see that some of the trees in the forest were being brought down. It could only mean that tanks and vehicles were coming through. We had trouble handling one Daemon, let alone three at a time. So far we hadn't used any of our support, but we would be forced to use it soon.

"Ah shit," Snark muttered.

I was thrown back as an explosion rocked the tower. Pieces of ceiling fell over me, but the watchtower was obviously not the main target. Explosion after explosion shook the gate. It was made of reinforced Titanium-A, but with so much plasma and heat would get to it. The walls next to the gate were weaker than the gate itself. Shot after shot shook the walls and gate, but we could barely fire back. Bee could only fire so often and the Spartan Laser had only so many spare batteries. One of my guys had picked up a rocket launcher, but the Daemons had chaff and flares to deflect our strikes. We managed to take out one, but the enemy tanks succeeded in breaking the wall that held the gate up.

"It's going down!" Pavel shouted.

The massive metal gate slammed down into the ground with a loud clang.

"Ah shit," I grunted. "Hold the line, I'll be right back."

I climbed down the tower as fast as I could just as troops started heading towards the door. All of our automatic turrets attacked the enemy infantry and my men focused on the leaders. I ran past the open gate, ducking underneath incoming plasma fire as I did. Once through I paused to take a couple of deep breaths. The motor pool was not too far away and we had already prepared some tanks for this eventuality.

"Hurry up, Francisco," Schitzo advised. "Yours is not the only life at stake here."

He was right. My entire team as well as the four other companies defending different sectors of the wall depended on us holding the gate. If we lost this base before the civilians evacuated the western sector of the city it would be a massacre.

I jumped on top of the Scorpion tank and yanked open the hatch before sliding in. My rifle poked me and I had to remove it and put it in a holster to my right. The tiny cockpit felt confining and cramped, but there wasn't much I could do about that. The tank rumbled to life. Its powerful engine roared as I floored the accelerator I positioned the tank right behind the opening where the gate had been brought down.

"Give me targets!" I shouted, moving the turret to aim at the gap in the wall. "Prioritize!"

I fired one shell in the distance, hitting a squad of brutes. I couldn't exactly see the results this far away, but none of the four aliens got back up. A couple of plasma bolts hit the front right tread, but the tank didn't even register the impacts. I started firing the coaxial machine gun almost wildly, spraying the grunts and jackals with it. The tightly clustered squads started spreading out when they realized that they now had a fucking tank to contend with.

"Daemons are still out there," Pavel told me. "Frank, we need you to take them out!"

"Got it," I said. "We've got two more Scorpions out back, knock yourselves out."

Crow and Lady dashed out from the booths next to the collapsed gate and headed towards the motor pool. I stopped firing for just long enough as they moved in front of the tank and then I floored the accelerator again. The gate clanked when the tank rolled over it and the grunts turned and ran away. I suddenly realized just exactly how exposed I was.

"Move, move!" Snark cried out.

I turned hard to the left, barely avoiding a shell from a Daemon. The Scorpion's targeting systems immediately located the source of the shot and tagged the target. I turned the turret without letting go of the accelerator and fired at the Daemon. Another plasma shell detonated close to my front right tread, showering the tank with dirt. My own shot hit the Daemon tank right under its turret. I fired again and the Daemon appeared to be damaged enough that it couldn't keep actively working.

Bee fired his rocket launcher at another Daemon and I banked hard to the right. Covenant corpses popped and burst as the tank ran them over.

"That's a hit," Bee said.

"Finishing it off," I said, aiming and firing at a second Daemon.

My shot hit the enemy tank just as a third plasma shell flew in my direction. I barely saw it coming and managed to turn slightly, but it was too late to avoid the shot. The Scorpion stopped suddenly as my rear left treads were hit. I cursed and waited for the tank to self-assess. As soon as its systems restarted I accelerated again, narrowly missing a follow-up shot.

"How many tanks are there?" I asked out loud.

"Looks like at least two more," Snark replied. "I'm tagging them for you right now."

I grunted at the sight of two red silhouettes in the forest. "Lady, Crow?"

"On our way," Lady said.

Miranda took out a grunt with a fuel rod before it could fire at me, but another alien managed to get off a shot with its plasma launcher. The explosive stuck to my front right tread armor and exploded, tearing a large section of it apart. Miri promptly took care of the alien, hitting it three times in the neck and chest. Brutes and jackals tried pelting my tank with small arms fire, spikes and needles stuck onto the armor harmlessly, but the noise was distracting and quite frankly, aggravating.

I vaguely registered Lady and Crow driving both their Scorpions through the gap in the wall and fired at one of the Daemons. The other one, unfortunately, had gotten a bead on me. The shell hit the back of my turret, melting through the armor.

I sucked air in, expecting my own shells to detonate from the heat, but when nothing happened I turned my turret around and fired at it. The explosive round hit the strong frontal armor on the Daemon, barely scratching it. Bee helped out with additional rocket fire, but the Daemon hadn't been knocked out of the fight. Crow and Lady both were engaging the other enemy tank.

"Ah shit," I cursed softly.

I turned my tank completely around so that the hatch was facing away from the enemy. I spun the turret to aim at the Daemon, but it had already reloaded and fired at me. The tank shook and its engine died. The display told me that both the treads on the right side of the Scorpion were completely useless. It was a good exchange for an enemy tank kill. I aimed at the Daemon and fired at the exact same spot that Bee and I had targeted before. The damaged armor couldn't withstand the HEAT round and the enemy tank crashed down to the ground and then exploded.

"That's my first two tank-on-tank kills in a while," I said. "I'm dead in the water here."

"You're in the clear for now," Pavel said. "Make the most of it."

I suddenly felt like I was not the man in charge. Pavel was one of the three people that could make me feel like a child. I rarely appreciated it, particularly when it happened in front of my men.

Regardless of my feelings Pavel did have a good point. I had a big-ass tank ready to fuck things up, at least until the Covenant could field reliable anti-tank measures. Their fuel rods were certainly dangerous, but the rounds flew slow and my guys would handle those that were close enough to be a threat. I began firing indiscriminately, hitting both small and large groups alike. Brutes were torn to pieces by the explosions even as the smaller grunts were tossed around like rag dolls by the concussive forces. The jackals tried in vain to hide behind their energy shields, but few things can withstand a Scorpion tank and come out on top. Four Ghosts sped out of the forest, leaving exhaust trails behind them as they boosted. I handled the first one, sending it into a front flip as my shot detonated. Lady and Crow adjusted their aim and took out two others in a combined explosion. The Ghosts were almost completely shredded by the HEAT round. The last Ghost charged ahead, firing wildly as it went. The brute could've turned at any time, but instead it chose to meet its end as stupidly as possible.

I proceeded to strafe the forest's edge with the coaxial machine gun, occasionally letting off a shot from the main gun. Lady and Crow followed my lead, hitting the trees. Shards of wood flew everywhere, the tanks optics allowed me to see the results in detail. Wood shrapnel tore aliens apart, completely overwhelming those that had shields and utterly destroying those that didn't. A few here and there were caught in the machine gun fire while some others fell to the main gun.

The tank informed me in a cold, mechanical voice that I had burned through 75% percent of our ammunition and warned me to conserve it for the future. I duly noted the suggestion and kept firing as often as the automatic reloading system let me.

"Lieutenant," Captain Flatt checked in. "We've got reports of a large enemy air group moving towards our position! Their approach vector suggests your position as the primary target."

"Roger that, ma'am," I told her. "Are the Scythes up and running?"

"We've got six of them online already," she said, "but four others were undergoing maintenance. I have men working on them right now."

"Understood," I replied, ending the conversation. "Team-7! We've got airborne inbound!"

I could hear Pavel yelling at the men to pick up rocket launchers and keep their eyes open. I would've liked a little more time to prepare, but fifteen seconds later the three lead Banshees appeared over the treetops. They were flying fast and low. I attempted to hit them with the machine gun, but I was never much of a tanker. The tracer rounds all failed to make any kind of contact with the fliers even as more and more Banshees appeared behind the leading ones. The three front Banshees began strafing with their plasma cannons, even hitting some of their own that were close to me. Several superheated plasma bolts hit the Scorpion. I wasn't very worried by those, I knew that the armor could withstand a lot of punishment.

"More incoming!" Lady cried out.

"Move, move," I urged her and Crow.

I kept firing my machine gun at the sky, hoping for a Banshee to fly through my crosshairs. I knew that the Banshees weren't overly concerned with us, they were instead hitting the wall with their green fuel rod explosives and flying further inside the base to wreck havoc inside. It wasn't until a lucky burst took down a Banshee and an immaculately well-timed shot took out another one that I became a concern for the enemy. Bee took out a Banshee that was getting a bearing on me.

"Get out of there, sir!"

I punched open the hatch and grabbed my rifle, awkwardly pulling myself out. I had to slide back in almost immediately in order to avoid a pair of plasma bolts that nearly melted my head off.

"Fuck," I cursed, peeking carefully back up. The Banshees suddenly looked a lot bigger and numerous now that I could see all of them without needing to turn the turret around.

I pulled myself up and felt a searing pain on the inside of my arm. I grunted as my arm gave under me and I rolled down the side of the tank and into the ground. My right arm was bleeding, not too heavily, but not something to dismiss so easily. I cursed and experimentally moved it, wincing with pain as I did. Judging from the look of the injury a needle or a carbine had nicked me.

Before I could get a move on two fuel rods hit the Scorpion tank I was leaning against. The heavy explosives detonated almost simultaneously, the heat was enough to melt through the armor and detonate the fuel on the tank. I was thrown forward into the mud. All the explosives, shells, and blood had turned the dirt into nearly ankle-depth mud. Tank's dry blood on my visor was wiped away by the muddy grass.

"They're swarming me!" Crow shouted. "They're trying to open the hatch!"

I jumped back up and climbed on top of the flaming tank. It was probably a stupid move, seeing as it could blow any second. The smoke it produced, however, did give me a certain degree of concealment from the enemy sharpshooters. I quickly searched for Crow's tank. It was hard to miss the house-sized mass of death with all the brutes banging on it.

Crow violently floored the gas and managed to knock down a brute by swinging the turret violently. A moment later he hit the brakes, loosening up another brute from his tank. Despite his efforts there were still five brutes clinging into his tank. I aimed at the one banging on the hatch and hit it with a burst. The three rounds hit right where I had aimed at. The brute's right arm fell down, useless. Another two bursts to the center mass, dislodged its firm grip on the tank and it fell in between the front and rear treads, where it was dispatched with a dull pop noise. The other four brutes turned to look at the source of the fire without stopping their punching of the tank.

Crow managed to hit one with the coaxial machine gun, nearly cutting off its left leg. The three others shifted away from the turret and towards the dented hatch. I put three in the eyes of one of the brutes before a beam rifle shot from a sniper nearly beheaded me. I could feel the heat in my throat even through my undersuit. The shock made me slip on the tank and fall down to the ground. Almost immediately I heard two sniper rifle shots.

"I'm all clear," Crow said with relief. "Thanks for the assist guys."

"No problem," Snark and I said at the same time.

Crow was clear now, but I was still sixty meters away from the safety of my walls and then some, because I had traveled sideways. I was roughly three hundred meters away from the big-ass hole in our wall. It hadn't seemed like that much back when I was inside the tank, but the constant movement had pushed me away from the safety of Mendez Joint Base. I looked down and sighed. The Banshees were being dispersed by the constant Scythe AA fire, but the sheer number of enemy aircraft meant that one would spot me sooner rather than later.

"That's a pickle we find ourselves in," Schitzo sighed.

"Shit," Marv huffed. "You're too far away."

"I know," I said. "I might need some help."

"That's a new one," Andy commented. "Sir."

"Very funny," I told her. "I take it you bunch of incompetent shits can't guarantee my safety for the stretch."

"I can guarantee I'll get at least eight kills before you get killed," Snark told me. "All of them brutes."

"I can guarantee that I'll get more kills than Snark," Longworth said.

"And I'll top him off," Preacher said. "I've got the Lord on my side."

I rolled my eyes. Not only at Preacher, but at my three best marksmen. Well, Miri was my third best, right next to Longworth, but she wasn't the kind to joke about someone dying when it was a very plausibly outcome.

"I'm coming around," Lady said. "I can't go too slow, you know that."

"What's the record speed for three hundred meters?" I asked as Lady approached my position with her tank.

"I'd guess about high twenty seconds," Longworth said. "I could run it in thirty-two back in high school."

"Only Longworth," Andy said with an almost audible eye-roll.

"I'll do it in thirty," I said. "Pavel, time me."

"Frank, you're thirty-seven. Stop behaving like a child."

I laughed with the rest of the team. Pavel had a very valid point here, but his tone indicated that he wasn't really opposed to my antics.

Lady's tank rolled past right in front of me before coming into a wide u-turn, coming back around on the other side of my wrecked Scorpion tank. I strapped my rifle to my back and got into a sprinter's stance on the edge of my tank.

"Distance is three hundred and ten meters," Pavel said. "I'm only timing your three hundred, ok?"

"Ok," I said.

"Lady's coming up. Go on my mark."

"Ready," I said.

"Mark."

I sped out almost as soon as I heard him begin saying the word. Unexpectedly enough, time slowed down by a margin of magnitude. My own body seemed to react incredibly slowly. My thoughts went incredibly fast, allowing me to carefully analyze everything that my eyes could see. I noticed the two dead jackals and mutilated brute standing in my way. I could see Lady's Scorpion's treads moving ever so slowly. Dirt was thrown out the back by the tank and colorful bolts flew here and there, faster than even my own body could dodge. A red bolt made its way three meters in front of my head even as random needles shattered on the tank's armor.

Time seemed to slowly regain its normal speed with every single step, but even then the Banshee turning in order to get a bearing on Lady's tank or the squad of aliens a kilometer away seemed comically slow. I could see the enemy rounds hitting Lady's tank or flying all around me and knew that it would've been impossible for me to survive the sheer number of shots that would've been flying in my direction.

The Scorpion proved to be an invaluable barrier as it stopped all small arms fire in its tracks. I was already halfway through this, but the angle of my run exposed my back to the Covenant soldiers. I did my best to stick close to Lady, but she couldn't keep driving this slow and in a straight line for much longer. Already I could see that she was almost subconsciously drifting away in order to avoid the incoming Banshee.

"Faster," Schitzo urged.

My legs found strength and I seemed to double my speed as I jumped over corpses and craters I vaguely registered myself hitting the three hundred meter mark before my boots clanked against the toppled metal gate and I almost fell forward. I managed to hold onto our tank drone and use its weight for support as I slid behind it for cover.

"What was my time?" I asked, out of breath.

Pavel was silent for maybe half a second longer than he usually would've been. "Twenty seven point five," he said finally.

"Are you sure?" Longworth asked.

"A hundred percent," he replied.

I few of the guys on my team congratulated me. Some of them were obviously shocked. A man isn't supposed to run faster with armor, ammunition, and weapons on top of him than with shorts and running shoes. Even with the exoskeleton the ODST armor had to help us manage the weight I was still carrying several pounds of equipment. Not to mention the uneven ground with patches of grass equally spaced with patches of corpses.

Normally I would've felt elated. Don't get me wrong, I did feel a sense of elation, but it was elation at being alive. For the most part I was just confused. Even I wasn't supposed to break Olympic records in the middle of combat. Sure I could run a couple of marathons if it was a life or death situation, but when it came down to it your legs could keep you going for a long time. I was just surprised that they had gotten me across so fast.

I turned around and placed myself on all fours. The tank drone slowly moved forward as I crawled, providing cover for me even at this range. I made my way towards the watchtower, feeling the burn in my legs but not really affected by it. If my sudden burst of speed had been a heroin high, this wasn't unlike an ecstasy trip. Every color seemed more vivid than normal, my movements looked fluid and seemed to be made even before I thought about them. My rifle was unslung and ready before I even thought about it. I felt like I was inside my own head watching a more better person control my body.

_Is this what it feels like? _ I asked myself. _Fucking Spartans._

Dirt and gravel flew as mortar shots started landing all around us. My men immediately jumped down to cover and prayed for the best, leaving the automatic Wolf Spider turrets to suppress any infantry dashing towards the wall. I pressed my back against the drone and calmly reloaded my rifle. The mortar barrage stopped just as I let go of the bolt.

"They're on the wall!" Mata shouted. "Take 'em out, take 'em out!"

I stood up and fired at a platoon of jackals moving with their shields in front of them. A Banshee strafed the ground in front of them, hoping to clear out Ramirez and Dotsenko, who were moving their machine guns to cut them down. My two men jumped inside a fresh crater just in time to avoid the plasma cannons, leaving me to contend with the twenty jackals.

They were still forty meters away, but they were sprinting for all they were worth. I switched to single fire and raised my BR55. I quickly zoomed in on the legs, the only part that the jackals were leaving completely uncovered. Every single shot I fired was a hit, with a faster body and more precise movements I couldn't miss. I knocked down ten of the jackals in half as many seconds, but the rest made it through the gate.

One of the jackals ducked in order to let a massive skirmisher lunge at me over the drone. I saw it coming almost in slow motion and easily sidestepped its tackle. Before it landed I hit the jackal that had ducked for the skirmisher. I killed another one when in the time it took the skirmisher to land and begin a roll. Another skirmisher jumped at me, throwing my aim off and making me stumble. I let my rifle slid so that my left hand was holding onto the grip and drew my sidearm. I used my pistol to hit the second skirmisher before firing three times at its neck. The large caliber bullets nearly severed its head. I turned around, feeling the first skirmisher coming back. I kicked at its hand as it tried raising a plasma pistol. The alien didn't stop its assault there, instead switching its weight to its other foot and then lunging for a tackle. It never got its foot off the ground, I quickly moved my rifle in its way and stabbed with it. The tip of the barrel actually embedded itself in the bottom of the jackal's neck.

I smiled and squeezed the trigger four times in quick succession.

A couple of bursts from Pitcher cut down two of the remaining jackals while Preacher sniped the other four. Pitcher looked at me form his position and gaped for a moment.

"Not half bad, sir," he complimented.

I nodded in acknowledgement and gave the order for both Lady and Crow to fall back behind the wall, where they'd be relatively safe from the strafing Banshees. I ran sideways towards the wall. The security booths on either side of the destroyed gate were already occupied by my men with automatic weapons. Dotsenko and Ramirez jogged inside right after I ran past the door. The watchtower was not much further from my position. I jogged towards it alongside the drone. I grabbed an extra two magazines from it and put them in my ammo pouches, replacing the ones I had just used.

"Bomb!" Snark broadcast over the whole channel. "Bo-"

I watched as the wall next to the watchtower ballooned inwards. Bright white and blue light shone through the cracks for a brief moment before the light overwhelmed the wall and sent pieces of rock and rebar flying backwards. I stumbled from the shockwave and watched as a thirty meter gap appeared in our perimeter. The rubble from the wall made a small hill that would slow down infantry and make both Wraiths and Daemons vulnerable, but a massive gaping hole in a wall was still a massive gaping hole in a wall.

The gate had been brought down along with a sizeable section of the wall. Both of the main watchtowers still stood, even though one of them was no longer attached to anything.

"Castillo, enemy troops are pulling out all around the perimeter," Flatt shouted. "What the hell was that noise?"

"Bomb," I said, my bones shaken. "They brought down the wall."

"What?"

"They're going to flood through," I replied, slowly regaining my bearings. "Fuck, we'll need reinforcements. A lot of them."

* * *

><p><em>Thanks for reading this chapter. Once again I have to justify myself by reminding you that this wasn't proofread.<em>

_Well, the reviews for the last chapter were pretty positive. It seems like most of you guys enjoyed reading the armory scenes and didn't exactly dislike the characterization going on. I couldn't help but notice that you don't want me to kill Pavel, so I'm going to give him more screen time. Just saying. Miranda and Andrea are both important secondary characters, so they too will get more screen time._

_People are starting to get injured here. Is that fortunate or unfortunate for them? I don't know yet. The only thing that I know is that I keep promising you guys that people are going to start dying and that I intend to keep that promise and hurt your feelings while I'm at it._

_As for this chapter itself. Well, there were explosions and there were more explosions. There was some death here and some death there, but mostly it consisted of our favorite SpecOps outfit blasting the shit out of the Covenant assaulters. I'm sorry that I only posted half of the battle, but the next chapter will be basically the same except that everything will be multiplied. Oh, and one more thing, Frank got Spartan speed all of a sudden. Well, maybe it was half-Spartan speed, but it didn't go away after the danger had passed. What could that possibly mean? That's up to you guys to figure out. For next chapter I promise you tanks, explosions, sledgehammer and more!_

_I'd also like to thank you guys for your reviews. I more than made it to the goal of twenty and that's all thanks to you. I even got a little bit of a flame war going on there. I feel like I'm somehow relevant now. Well, in any case, rest assured that I read all your reviews and appreciate every single one of them and would love to keep them coming. One a minor thing: the new Halo: Initiation series came out and it kind of invalidates my little bit with Palmer, if you remember that. Well, it was strongly implied that Palmer was leaving to become an S-IV. Let's change that to a regular SpecOps assignment so that I keep up my record of completely adhering to canon._

_Thanks once again and I hope you enjoyed this chapter._

_Stay strong._

_-casquis_


	197. Shock and Awe

Chapter CXCVII: Shock and Awe

**August 18, 2552 (UNSC Calendar)/**

**Mendez Joint Base, New Alexandria, Eposz, Reach, Epsilon Eridani System**

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><p><em>"Someone once said that silence is the ultimate weapon of power. That poor idiot obviously never saw the UNSC in a large-scale ground battle."- Sergeant Naveen Avninder <em>

* * *

><p>The Covenant didn't immediately storm the gap like I expected them to. Instead they displayed brilliance and tactical consideration. When I apply those terms to the covvies I do it very loosely. What they did was take advantage of our confusion and set up several hundred deployable covers and large barriers as close to our position as possible. From behind those they began eliminating the Wolf Spider turrets one by one. Snark and Preacher kept their heads down, but there were just too many of them out there.<p>

"Pull back the tanks!" I ordered loudly. "Get them out of range!"

Crow and Lady rolled by even as another Scorpion tank joined them. Three Armadillos rumbled into position behind the pile of rubble that had been the wall. From those thirty men emerged and began spreading out and taking positions. My own men started moving dividers and barriers into place with the help of unmanned drones. A little wall appeared where the gate had once stood, but it was nothing compared to the massive polycrete wall that had stood there before. Even a little grunt could hop over it without much effort.

"Shit, shit, shit," Payat cursed as he shoved a barricade into place. "I could've been a doctor."

"You're our doctor," Lady reminded him. "It should be good enough."

A burst of plasma sent them both into the ground.

"You know," Lady said in between deep breaths, "I can see where you're coming from."

"Keep working!" I shouted. "The Covenant waits for no one!"

Two Warthogs rolled by and positioned themselves behind the watchtowers. From that position they could hit all aliens that got closer than fifty meters while remaining relatively safe. Captain Nezarian reported that he had sent some of his men to help, but that his sector of the wall was still under heavy attack. Various team leaders reported decreased enemy presence in their quadrants. It didn't take a genius to figure it out. The covvies had made a giant gap in our defenses and were going to exploit it.

"They're moving Daemons and Locust walkers to the front," Snark warned. I was about to ask him why he didn't sound worried until I remembered the big-ass piece of death that he had in his position. "Time to bring out the Sledgehammer."

"This ought to be fun," Pavel growled.

A third Warthog rumbled through the soon-to-be-battleground. Captain Flatt jumped out almost immediately. She was barely recognizable in her Recon Armor, but it was clear that she had been fighting along with the rest of the defenders. She walked towards me with rifle in hand.

"Ma'am," I greeted with a small nod. "I'd recommend leaving here as soon as possible."

"No shit," she replied. "I see you've managed to give an entryway to the Covenant in just a few hours."

"To be fair, the gate was already here," I replied. "The massive hole on the wall… well, that one I don't think needs explanation."

"How many turrets are there left?" she asked.

"We have two in the watchtowers plus three more in the wall. Those three barely have an angle or range."

"Not good," she noted. "Are the mines still in working order?"

"A couple were destroyed during the initial assaults, but the vast majority of them are still in working order."

"We let them approach as close as possible before activating them."

"The explosion should take out a thousand or so of them," I said. "Seems like something to watch."

"Have one of your men record it," Flatt said dismissively. "I'm giving you control of all the mines in this sector of the base. After those are expended we _will _have to make use of our artillery and air support."

"I have a feeling that those two won't last for long," I said.

"Agreed, but it's better than nothing."

Flatt climbed back on board her Warthog and took off, headed back towards her spot in the defensive line. I watched as the wheels lifted some dust and then turned back towards the rapidly growing defensive emplacements. The Army company deployed here certainly hadn't wasted any time, leaving my own men hard-pressed to keep up.

"Snark! Let me know when they start their attack!"

I paused for a moment to consider my words. There was already plasma flying all round and the occasional mortar blast that landed close by. Our own turrets made a clattering noise as they fired and the Banshees screamed overhead, strafing us while working to avoid the Scythe AA emplacements. By any reasonable standards, their attack _had_ begun. A few of my men stopped and turned to look at me with a curious look on their faces.

"You know what I mean," I said.

"They're massing near their wall," Snark said. "They're waiting for the Locusts!"

I was torn. Snark could probably take out three or so Locusts before they zeroed in on his position, but they would fire back. If he waited until the last possible moment to fire then the Locust turrets wouldn't have the required firing angle to take him down, buying him precious minutes while Wraiths redeployed to take him out.

"They're moving," Snark said. "They're moving!"

"I need guns on the walls!" I shouted. "Fire at will!"

Three tank shells flew past me, shaking me as they did. I briefly looked back to see our three available tanks in position two hundred meters away before rushing to the pile of rubble separating us from the outside. Pillars of dirt rose up and brutes were sent flying. Heavy tracer rounds tore through flesh and armor alike, catching dozens of Covenant foot soldiers before they had even gone a few meters. Grunts and jackal alike tripped over the bodies of their fallen comrades, making easy prey for the defenders. Pavel, Dotsenko, and Ramirez used their machine guns to cut down the assaulters, hitting their feet. I fired at the brute leaders, hitting them in the gaps between their armor. The brutes tended to be hard to bring down, but three bullets to the nape of the neck or to the knee had them slow down in no time. The berserk ones were harder to stop, tending to ignore all wounds until there was far too much damage for their bodies to keep functioning.

"Focus on the hunters!" I shouted. "Hunters first!"

The fire shifted accordingly, pounding the hunters with round after round of lead and depleted uranium. Most of those bounced off the hard armor and shields, but our sheer volume of firepower overwhelmed the two enemy behemoths. They both fell dead almost simultaneously, but their deaths allowed the smaller aliens to close in relatively unimpeded. Three grunts took a knee and fired fuel rods at our closest Wolf Spiders before anybody could do anything about them. I watched the green explosions with frustration and kept on firing. The closer the enemy got the harder it was for me to pick out the brutes. The aliens moved far too fast and I had to compensate even more due to the close range.

"Bayonets ready!" an Army soldier shouted.

I heard the clicks as various spring-loaded bayonets emerged from their hiding spots inside the rifles. I waited for a few grunts to begin climbing the rubble wall before activating the mines.

Thousands of explosions flooded my ears as the pressure activated mines suddenly detonated. Not only the covvies taking part in the charge, but every single alien standing over a mine in the space between the forest and the wall was killed by a mine. These mines weren't your traditional ones designed to maim in order to lower morale and burden the enemy. This were killing devices designed to defend the base, plain and simple. Most of these mines had been planted recently and had been designed with elites and brutes in mind. The explosions sent shrapnel upwards, shredding flesh without even slowing down.

I watched as brutes were cut to ribbons, leaving them nearly unrecognizable lumps of flesh. The grunts and jackals alike were quickly turned into mists of blood. Rarely did one of those escape with more than a limb or their head intact. A few of the Wraiths and Locusts standing nearby a soldier were shaken and damaged by the shrapnel explosion, but the strong armor of the Wraith tanks and shielding on the Locusts withstood the punishment.

Nonetheless, some of the heavier vehicles were destroyed when specialized anti-tank magnetic mines were activated. The shaped charges punched holes clean through the Wraiths and completely and utterly destroyed the smaller vehicles. The Locusts once again proved to have strong shields, but most of them withstood the mines. I saw at least one succumb to a series of anti-personnel mines after its shields were lowered, but the rest pressed forward.

It was still an impressive sight. A million tons of dirt were blown up to the sky and a thousand Covenant warriors died in the span of about five seconds. I watched carefully as the dirt was tainted with blood and the entire enemy forces in the strip of land were completely and utterly annihilated. Four Locusts remained out of the five that had been sent forward, but those would meet their end soon enough.

Bee fired his rocket launcher at one of the walkers without shields, easily taking out the cockpit. The rest of us focused our fire on another of the walkers, bringing it down with armor piercing and regular ammunition.

The other two Locusts quickly regained their shields, easily deflecting our attempts to bring them down. One of them stopped and fired a sustained pulse beam at our positions, sending us down for cover and severely burning a soldier that didn't get her head down in time. That Locust was quickly destroyed when our three Scorpions fired at it simultaneously. The shields withstood the explosive shells, but the Locust itself was thrown backwards like a ragdoll, where a trio of grenades hit it, finally destroying it.

"That seemed almost trivially simple," Andy noted, reloading her rifle.

"More will come," Marv told her. "They always do."

"Five species against one hardly seems like a fair game, does it?" Payat asked.

"I think it's six," Preacher told him. "Their false prophets and founders of their alliance."

"The worm-necks barely count," Payat told him. "They don't fight."

"I have a feeling that nobody is suitably impressed by the sheer explosive force we just witnessed," Ramirez said with a sigh.

"I agree," Dotsenko said. "It was beautiful."  
>"Agreed," Bee seconded. "Angel would've loved this."<p>

"You know, I wish I could've met this Angel guy," Ramirez said. "He sounds like my kind of guy."

"Hey," Dotsenko said, sounding hurt.

I rolled my eyes. It was then that I noticed that a small indicator in my HUD flickered slightly. It was the little sign that told me that I had an uplink to a satellite and therefore could remain in contact with pretty much the entirety of the UNSC forces in the planet. I looked at the sign again and after a few seconds it flickered.

"Did anybody catch that?" Marv asked.

"I did," I said. "We're being jammed."

"Helmet to helmet's still working," Pavel noted. "We have contact with everybody in the base, but everything outside gets scratchy."

"Why the hell are they jamming us now?" I wondered out loud. "Captain Flatt, do you copy? We're being jammed."

"I copy," she replied immediately. "I'm working on getting a signal to our support groups, but they seem to be actively jamming us."

"Do we have an estimate?" I asked. "We're going to be needing that support soon."

"I'm working as fast as I can," Flatt assured me, effectively ending the conversation.

"Why are they jamming us?" Marv asked. "We haven't used our support yet, so they don't know we have any. We haven't requested reinforcements either…"

"As stupid as the covvies tend to be, they're not the kind to waste jamming equipment for nothing," Sergeant Mata muttered. "We jam them when we're working ambushes or when we don't want them calling for support or reinforcements."

"They usually do the same," Caboose jumped in. "This can hardly be considered an ambush, so they suspect that we're about to call reinforcements or support."

"Why would they suspect that?" Bee asked.

I scoffed. "I have a couple of ideas."

"Don't be a Scarab," Miri prayed. "Please don't be a Scarab."

I looked up and waited for the Scarab to drop from low orbit. I was sure that nothing was going to happen and that I'd just look like a complete and utter idiot. Fate was not good to me this time, as soon enough I saw the red burn of an object entering the atmosphere at high speeds. I called out a warning, but there was barely enough time before the Scarab walker landed. The ground shook with the impact, almost throwing me off my feet. I was thankful that the Scarab hadn't been able to land directly above us, but it was still far too close to us.

"Seven hundred meters!" Snark called out. "It's one of the big ones!"

"Fire, fire, fire!" I shouted. "Don't stop!"

The Scarab fired first, destroying another section of the wall and incinerating two unfortunate soldiers that had been too close to the plasma beam. One of the Warthogs moved out of cover in order to fire at the Scarab. Tracer rounds lit up as they flew out of the chaingun and at the giant walker. Our three Scorpions fired almost simultaneously, barely scratching the strong armor on the Scarab. It was one of the big ones.

"Hit the legs!" Someone shouted. "Hit the legs!"

"Watch for snipers on top!" I added.

I zoomed in on the deck of the Scarab and spotted the covvies coming out. A dozen jackals came out and started firing at us, meeting fierce resistance. I dispatched a pair of them before I was forced into cover. Our Scorpions kept firing as fast as possible even as the rear turret on the Scarab turned to aim at them.

"Get out of the way!" Pavel shouted. "Move!"

It was only then, after the twenty most frantic seconds of the entire battle, that Snark finally fired his Sledgehammer. Once again, the effect of the weapon was awesome in the true sense of the word. It was awe-inspiring. Your whole vision would flash white for a fraction of a second as the round flew out. Not a lot of things can do the damage that a 15mm super-dense bullet can do when it's going at a fraction of the speed of light. I was too close to really tell, but I knew that the round had hit the Scarab and done the damage before the sound had reached my ears. The entire battlefield shook from the noise, lifting dust into the air and shaking rocks loose from the damaged wall and watchtower.

The Scarab's front right leg lost a ton of its armor from the impact. A second later the walker fired its rear turret. The Sledgehammer threw off its aim somehow. That, combined with the movement of the Scorpions made the shot go high, missing all three of them. I breathed with relief and then shouted out as one of the Scorpions, Crow's, fired a round at the damaged leg, bringing the whole Scarab down and stopping its advance.

"Hit it while it's down!" I ordered. "Destroy the turrets!"

The other two tanks fired at the head turret, but the armored flaps had closed down already, negating the effect of their shells. The jackals on the deck had already been wiped out by sustained fire and the covvies had only covered the first couple hundred meters from the forest. They would take their time, making sure that they set up emplacements before rushing us again. A few of the undetonated mines would take out a grunt here or there, but for the most part we had used up our reserves.

"Aiming for the head," Snark let us know. "Cover your ears."

I noticed something weird with the Scarab right as he said that, but I would realize what it was exactly until a second later, when I witnessed the aftermath of Snark's shot. One could always count on the effects being devastating when it came down to the M102 SASR Sledgehammer, but nothing quite prepared me for the shock of what came next.

Nothing.

Well, not exactly nothing. The entire Scarab lit up in a way that was all-too familiar and absolutely nothing happened after the light faded.

"Shields…" Pavel muttered.

"It's got shields," Snark said quietly.

"Ah, shit," Mata said.

"Well don't fucking stop!" I ordered. "Fire!"

I was left wondering why the pilot only activated its shields until after we had pounded it with tank and rail gun fire. The thought was quickly replaced with one of panic and frustration. There were many reasons why a Scarab walker would have shields, all of them perfectly valid. It still didn't mean that I felt any better about having to face a fucking juggernaut of death with the tools I had at my disposal. Usually three tanks and a Sledgehammer would guarantee an instant win under most circumstances.

"Scarab trumps most things," Schitzo said. "I recommend we run."

"Hold positions!" I shouted. "Don't stop firing!"

The Scarab was impervious to our efforts. Explosions washed off its shields and our smaller bullets bounced off harmlessly. The Scarab activated a pair of anti-tank mines, further draining its shields, but not completely. To me it was just frustrating, seeing no effect at all on the massive walker.

"Captain! We need immediate artillery and air support!" I shouted into my helmet. "Flatt, do you hear me?"

"How urgent is it?" she asked, sounding tense.

"Five minutes ago," I shouted back.

"Shit. I need one more minute."

"That's too long," Caboose said.

"That's too long!" I told her. "We need it now!"

A tank shot hit the Scarab's belly, detonating against the armor instead of shields. For a moment I thought that we had succeeded in draining its shields, but I realized that the Scarab had purposely lowered its shields because it wanted to fire. Everybody with a sensible head on their shoulders moved out of the way as the Scarab's main gun fired. The beam burned through the rubble in between the wall and the watchtower, leaving a cylindrical furrow in the ground. I was amazed that nobody got hurt, but that big a hole in our already damaged defenses would spell certain death.

Lady fired, hitting the Scarab right next to where its head was. The tail turret turned slowly to face her.

"Get out of there!" Preacher cried out. "Bail, bail!"

Lady immediately complied, opening the hatch and jumping out of the tank just as the green plasma beam hit it. The tank's armor bought her a solid one second to sprint away before the heat detonated the hydrogen fuel cells and the shells. I caught a glimpse of Lady been thrown by the explosion, but her vitals proved that she was alive, even if her heart rate was through the roof.

"Hit it!" I ordered loudly. "Fire!"

The next couple of tank shots promptly bounced off harmlessly as the Scarab put its shields back up.

"It lowers its shields before it fires," Sergeant Mata said drily. "Goody."

Snark grunted. "I know what to do."

"Move out of there," I ordered. "Vacate the watchtower ASAP."

Miri and Preacher were in the watchtower along with Snark. They must've helped him carry down the spare ammunition, because just before the Scarab completely destroyed the watchtower they were running out the main door. Snark looked particularly burdened by the massive Sledgehammer in addition to the already oversized SRS he kept on him at all times. The watchtower collapsed behind them, showering them with small pieces of polycrete as they tried to get away from it.

"Set up and get ready," I shouted over the noise. "Crow, fire on Snark's word."

"Yessir."

I had to shift my fire from the Scarab to the lead elements of the Covenant infantry. As usual I tried to take down the brutes first, but they were being more careful now, taking advantage of the craters and the corpses of other aliens and using them for cover. The grunts jumped and squeaked at every dead body they saw, but their brute masters kept them in check with loud and threatening growls. The jackals just seemed pissed. No doubt that these ones hadn't expected to fight seeing as their brethren had made it almost all the way to the wall before suddenly being caught in a massive explosion.

"Stop shooting. And fucking run," Schitzo urged. "You've got one shot and there's no guarantee."

_Shut up…_

Things happen very fast during combat, even with my senses as sharp as they had just become and everything moving slightly slower I was still hard-pressed to keep track of everything. A brute dropped with Miri and my sustained fire. Preacher kept firing single rounds at the head of the Scarab, testing for its shields. Snark shot his Sledgehammer at the walker when the round pinged off the armor. The head of the Scarab was already loading up, with green specks of superheated plasma appearing in the air as the Scarab prepared. Crow and the soldier in command of the other tank both fired nearly simultaneously when Snark gave the word.

All three heavy shots fired hit the unshielded Scarab before it could get off a shot. The Sledgehammer was all it took. The main cannon was destroyed before it could fire and the two Scorpion shots to the damaged leg finished up the job, severing the lower joint from the top and collapsing the Scarab on its belly. Everybody shouted in jot when they saw the Scarab go down, but the fight wasn't done yet. The Scarab might've been immobile, but the rear turret was in fine working order and the Covenant infantry wouldn't just stop.

Schitzo sighed with relief just as I did the same thing.

"Taking down a Scarab with nearly no casualties," Longworth said. "I don't think that's ever been done before."

I smiled.

"Maybe just a couple of times," Caboose said, not able to resist the temptation.

Crow and the other soldier both fired their tanks a second time, hitting the rear turret and damaging it. Snark fired his Sledgehammer again with them, finishing off the threat once and for all.

Despite the thousand covvie soldiers coming at us, despite the pain, despite the danger, and despite the overwhelming odds we faced at the moment I smiled. I smiled because we had once again managed to do the impossible. I smiled because I had a feeling that it was most likely the very last time that my team would achieve such a feat without much trouble. Me and my men had gone through a lot the last couple of years and had always come out on top. We had only suffered one casualty during those years, Polly. He had been the first of my men to die in this battle and I knew that he wouldn't be the last to go.

We were used to being the ones attacking the Covenant. Even when we were defending our own planets Team-7 rarely partook in defensive ops, instead taking the fight to them. All of that was going to end with this battle right here.

"Ghosts down the middle! Shifting fire!"

I fired at the Ghosts along with everybody else, succeeding in taking some out and forcing the rest to stop their charge. There was no respite, as the regular enemy infantry jumped inside the craters and abandoned barriers that they had set up and started firing at us. Even then we also had to worry about the Banshees left up there. Our Scythe cannons had taken out a bunch of them, but they were still clearly a threat to us.

"Phantom dropships!" Caboose called out. "Watch the rear, watch the rear!"

Sure enough, the three Phantoms sped past the no-man's-land and burst through the hole in the wall. One of them was hit by tank fire which sent it careening into the remains of the watchtower, where it was promptly destroyed by sustained fire from the other tank. The two other Phantoms were flying low, but the Scythe AA turrets had a good angle on them. The only problem was that the Phantoms were in between the turrets and us. A single bullet could punch completely through the Covenant dropship and hurt any of our guys.

Brute shock troops jumped out of the cargo bay, opening fire on our exposed backs. Preacher and Miranda turned to fire at them, hitting the first ones to land right between the eyes. I wounded a brute, hitting its left arm before it could bring its spiker to bear. It used its right arm to throw a deployable cover and soon there was a neat little circle of deployable covers surrounding the ten brutes that had jumped off the Phantom.

"Chieftain!" Preacher called out. "Take him down!"

Snark was the first one to react. He brought his heavy Sledgehammer around, heaving as he lifted it over his body to get a good angle. The chieftain jumped over the small wall with its hammer raised over its head. A soldier blasted part of its chest armor off with a shotgun, but the chieftain ignored the buckshot and broke the man with his hammer. I winced at the sight of the blood and fired a couple of shots at the other brutes, following its leader into battle.

The last Phantom hadn't deployed troops already, instead it was circling around our back, firing from its turrets to give the other brutes some cover. It only began dropping off brute shock troops when Bee hit the rear thruster with a rocket, damaging the craft, but not enough to bring it down. We had a thousand covvies in front of us and twenty behind us. It wasn't going to end well.

Fortunately for my men, the Army company took the brunt of the assault. Four of their guys were killed before they could react, buying some time for my men to dig into cover and fire back.

"Heads up!" Snark warned.

Once again the sound of the Sledgehammer drowned everything else in the battlefield. I barely caught a glimpse of the brute chieftain being nearly atomized as the round hit him. The round didn't detonate when it hit him, the chieftain was too soft a target for that. Instead, the round went completely through and hit the wall of deployable covers, killing the two brutes still behind it. Yet the round went on without detonating, finally disappearing from sight, leaving a trail of superheated air behind it. I wondered for a brief moment whether it would be able to leave the gravity of Reach at such a shallow angle. It was certainly a possibility.

"Where's Lady?" I asked. "Is she conscious?"

"Her vitals are fine," Payat said. "I can go check her out."

"Do that," I told him. "And see if there's anything similar to a Wolverine in the motor pool."

"Yes, sir," he replied immediately. "Cover me."

"Will do," I assured him. "Ramirez?"

"I'm on it."

Payat took off, flying through the open ground as the remaining brutes turned to fire at him. Ramirez used suppressing fire to keep them down, but the few that refused to duck under cover were quickly dispatched by a headshot. I smiled grimly at my kills and watched as Payat slid into cover behind Lady's wrecked Scorpion.

"What's her status?" I asked almost immediately.

"She's unconscious," he responded. "Looks like shrapnel hit her in the back of the head. Knocked her out cold. I don't see any puncture wounds or blood. Probably a concussion, the bad kind."

I sighed. "Can you move her?"

One of our Armadillos exploded when two Banshees hit it with fuel rod bombs. The detonation sent a pair of soldiers flying around, where they were promptly dragged to cover by their comrades.

"Not very fast," he replied. "Some hospitals have automatic stretchers that follow instructions. I could've been working there."

"Get her to safety," I instructed, ignoring his bitching. "And do it quick."

The brutes behind us had all been neutralized, but their attack had distracted us from the main threat in front of us. The Covenant assaulters tried going around the crashed Phantom that now walled them off and met our remaining Warthog head on. The gunner dispatched a couple of squads before a brute threw a spike grenade at the 'Hog. The device embedded itself on the windshield, prompting the driver and passenger to jump out and dive underneath the car. The gunner didn't notice until it was too late, and the spikes on the grenade hit him in the legs, drawing screams of pain.

"Medic!" one of his friends shouted even as he climbed into the turret to plug the hole in our defenses.

"I'm on it!" Andy shouted. "Cover me!"

Longworth and Pavel both fired wildly in without leaving cover. Andy had to duck a couple of times, barely avoiding having her head burnt off. She got into cover behind the Warthog and tapped the former driver of the now ruined vehicle in the shoulder. They exchanged a few words before the man moved to the ruined front of the Warthog and started firing in short bursts. Andy crouched up and examined the screaming soldier in the back of the truck while the third man fired at the grunts trying to bypass them.

It must've been distracting for all of them. Andy had to treat a man while bullet casings fell all around. The wounded soldier had to swallow his pain while bullet casings fell all around. The gunner had to fire at all the visible targets without stepping on his wounded friend.

I could watch as Andy pulled out biofoam and jabbed it into the man's upper leg. I could hear the screams of pain all the way over here. Suddenly, the man stopped screaming and instead began shaking. The length of the shakes diminished until they stopped completely. Andy pulled the man from the back of the Warthog and rolled his limp corpse underneath, where it would be relatively protected from stray fire.

"Must've hit the femoral," I said to myself. _Tank could've ended up just like that._

Captain Flatt checked in. "You've got your support."

The appropriate channel appeared on my helmet and within a second I had contacted the officer in charge of the artillery battery. The man must've barely understood my incoherent screaming over the sound of the battle, but he got the coordinates I sent him. The battery was several kilometers back, the shells that they would fire were partially-guided supersonic rounds, but it would take a few seconds for them to travel the distance.

"We've got an artillery strike inbound!" I shouted. "Heads down on my word!"

The small HUD map on my helmet was automatically transformed into a map of the surrounding area with me on one edge and the battery on the other. A little red dot symbolized the dozens of high explosive shells flying towards us. More would be coming behind those, but we just cared about the first ones. I watched as the red dot approached out the corner of my eye while gunning down grunts and skirmishers.

"Down!"

All our gunfire stopped almost simultaneously. The Covenant surged forward before the first shells landed. The powerful rounds detonated, sending shrapnel flying everywhere. I didn't see the effects directly, but I had participated in enough battles and even called in several strikes to know the effect of an anti-personnel artillery shell. They were designed to take out brutes and elites as well as hunters and small vehicles much like the ground mines. The only difference here was that the guidance systems on the shells were designed to detonate a few meters before hitting the ground, effectively carpeting an entire area with deadly shrapnel. But that was not all, in addition to your conventional shrapnel all this shells had another section that would break into five parts. Those five parts would land on the ground and detonate after five to ten seconds.

Entire armies had been wiped out with well-timed artillery strikes.

The Covenant soldiers here had no warning and no cover. A large swath was cut through them, perhaps about three hundred enemy soldiers were killed in the space of one minute. It was not nearly as impressive as the sudden eruption of the minefield that we had witnessed a few moments ago, but it was every bit as deadly and gory. A few brutes tried to brave the artillery, meeting their ends at the hands of the fast-flying shrapnel that embedded itself in their armor and cut through their bodies.

People always say that battles before the invention of gunpowder were incredibly bloody. I don't doubt that, but I have seen the things that conventional modern weaponry can do to a body first hand and I am entirely certain that no sword could produce as much blood as an M90 shotgun or a grenade.

"Tanks, move up," I ordered. "Crow, empty your reserves on them and vent the fuel cells."

"Where do you want me?" he asked.

"Right side of the Phantom," I told him. "Make it quick."

Crow moved up even as he fired. The Scorpion was already low on ammunition, so the increased firing quickly drained the few shells it had left. Crow then proceeded to vent the hydrogen fuel cells, producing a white vapor from the rear of the Tank. The wind quickly dissipated the flammable smoke before it could be lit up. Some of the fuel dripped down to the ground in liquid form just as Crow jumped out of the cockpit. The Scorpion might've been useless as an offensive weapon when it had no shells to fire, but it was still a big-ass piece of plating to put between the Covenant and us. With no explosive material inside it the covvies would be hard pressed to remove it from the equation.

"Go get yourself another tank," I ordered, briefly considering the words I was saying. "And get on with it."

"Yes, sir!" Crow replied, sprinting towards the motor pool.

Just then Payat checked in on the radio. "Sir, all the Wolverines are on automatic, watching for Banshees. Not that three Wolverines was very much to begin with, but… Anyways, I've got rocket 'Hogs, Scorpions, and some Falcons. Nothing else seems to be of much use."

"Any Grizzlies?" I asked, knowing it was a long shot. It had been years since I had last seen the flamboyant variant of the Scorpion tank.

"Negative, sir," Payat said. "I'm thinking that an AA Warthog is our best option."

"Agreed," I said. "Move your ass."

The artillery strike bought us perhaps a minute of relative peace, but the covvies would not stopped. They knew they had us outnumbered and they also know that out superiority wouldn't last for long. Artillery shells tended to run out. Air support tended to bug out when it became too hot. If they kept on the pressure they would completely overrun us.

"Captain Flatt, I need immediate support," I cried into my helmet.

"There are additional breaches in the perimeter," she said. "Nobody can be spared."

"Ma'am, if the base is lost why don't we just leave?"

"We're buying time," she told me. "That's all we're doing here Lieutenant, buying time for the civilian population to evacuate."

"Understood," I replied, grunting.

Plasma mortars landed right in front of our little rubble pile. The shattered polycrete was still polycrete and it absorbed the heat, but the smaller pieces were thrown violently around, hitting some of my men. Snark cursed as a large piece of wall hit him in the leg, pinning him to the ground. He twisted around, but failed to yank himself free.

I was far too busy to help him.

A jackal skirmisher had somehow managed to make its way through the no-man's-land and climbed the rubble. I didn't notice it until it was almost upon me. I moved my rifle to shoot it, but it kicked my rifle away, deflecting a burst. It fired at me at close range. The first shot landed in between my shoulder blades and the second missed when I finished my roll. I ignored the pain as I rolled on my back and grabbed the jackal's left leg. I pulled, throwing it off slightly off-balance and then I twisted, snapping its ankle completely. The skirmisher cried out in pain and collapsed on top of me. I pulled the plasma pistol away from its hand and threw it aside, reaching for my backup knife in the same move. I pulled the relatively small blade from its sheathe on my chest and pinned the jackal to the ground by the chest. The skirmisher must've been overloaded with pain from its nearly severed ankle, because its attempts at defense were pathetic as I brought my knife down on its chest half a dozen times. The skirmisher promptly stopped struggling, allowing me to slice its neck open and throw it to the side.

"Chingada," I cursed.

The battle still raged on. It was often easy to forget that despite individual struggles you were only a small part of a whole. Soldiers cried out warnings and instructions even as others shouted in pain. My men were considerably quieter, but they did call out whenever they shifted fire from their designated fields of fire. Pavel, Ramirez, and Dotsenko were the most vocal, seeing as they had the machine guns.

Snark cried out for help, still pinned underneath a rock. Two skirmishers approached him without much regard for their own safety and were promptly dispatched when Snark drew his sidearm and put a bullet in their brains. The two skirmishers fell down and Longworth rushed towards Snark, helping him lift the stone.

I was rocked when two objects thundered overhead at several times the speed of sound. I was shaken by the shockwave that came seconds later, my teeth clattered violently and my bones shook inside my body. I turned around and made out the shape of Seraph fighters. A second later four Longsword atmospheric fighter thundered past at the same speed, firing their forward-facing cannons at the alien spacecraft.

I checked in with the artillery battery and warned them. The two Seraphs wouldn't have faced certain death unless it was for an important cause. The only likely target I could think about was the artillery battery.

"Understood," the officer in charge said. "Firing the rest of our payload, keep your heads down."

"Thank you," I told him. "Good luck."

The man could've simply thanked me for the warning and told his men to take cover. Instead he decided to keep un firing, risking his artillerymen to support my team. The shells started landing a few seconds later, neutralizing the enemy infantry. This time the strike wasn't nearly as devastating, but the battery compensated for that by extending the range of their barrage. The shells shredded the edge of the forest and the Covenant soldiers within. Much like last time it cleared the field, but there were barely two platoons' worth of enemy soldiers in the open this time.

The barrage stopped almost abruptly and I knew that the Seraphs had managed to hit their target before they were chased down. My suspicions proved correct when thirty seconds later a lone Seraph flew past us in the opposite direction. The spacecraft was trailing smoke and its shields were lighting up as rounds from the chasing Longswords. I saw as our flyboys scored the kill and then saw surface-to-air missiles fly off from the forest, knocking down two of the four slow-flying Longswords in blue fireballs.

"Ah, shit," Sergeant Mata said. "I take it we don't have any more artillery?"

"Correct," I confirmed. "We still have close-air support."

Mata scoffed. "Let's see how long that lasts."

"Probably more than us, Sarge," Longworth said.

"Probably," Mata agreed.

An electronic beep distracted me and I turned to look at our drone. It was once again full of ammunition and had come to supply me with more magazines. I realized that I had burned through nearly all of my battle rifle ammunition and grabbed enough magazines to fill up my pouches. In addition to those I grabbed two more magazines that wouldn't fit and placed them next to me.

"They're moving slow," Snark said. "More careful. They've got Wraiths leading up the way."

"You can handle those," I told him. "Bee, how's your laser?"

"I've got four more batteries," he told me. "Enough to take out a third of those Wraiths."

Just as he said that three Banshees screamed past our position, strafing us with plasma and making us duck down underneath cover.

"I might want to handle those first," Bee muttered.

"Yup," Pavel said, dusting his shoulders off molten polycrete.

Snark began firing his Sledgehammer again, going for the Wraiths. One after another the Covenant mortar tanks stopped moving forward. The remaining ones pinpointed Snark's position and began firing at his position, lobbing mortar shells into the air. Snark grunted as he lifted his heavy railgun and ran as fast as he could. Two mortars detonated right where he had been standing a moment ago, sending molten gravel flying. A third one went wide, missing him completely. It was the fourth one that landed far too close. Snark was violently thrown off his feet and back to the ground by the shockwave. His heart was already thundering, but it promptly slowed down when he was knocked out. Once again I was far too occupied with a team of jackal sharpshooters to help him. Once again Longworth jumped to help, he dragged Snark from his position and tossed his thin frame behind cover. Just as Longworth himself was about to take cover a trio of spikes appeared on his upper back.

"Medic!" Mata called out. "Magnet, where are you?"

"I'm moving!" Andy replied. "Ramirez, cover me!"

Andy once again rushed from cover to cover in order to get to the wounded men. Payat arrived with his Warthog a few seconds later and immediately rushed to help his injured friends. Mata flew towards the Warthog and jumped on the rocket turret in the rear. He immediately began firing on the Banshees harassing us, taking out two of them before the third one flew out of range. He quickly shifted his fire from the aircraft to the advancing Wraiths and the infantry behind them. I was surprised when the Wraiths didn't fire back at him. Instead, they lobbed their shots far overhead and behind us.

"They're hitting the Scythes!" Flatt reported. "Take them out now!"

"You heard her," I shouted. "Fire on the Wraiths!"

We still had one usable tank, which promptly started firing upon the enemy. Crow was taking his sweet time with his own Scorpion. We needed him to get back here as soon as possible if we wanted to last another couple of hours.

A few of the Wraiths were knocked out by the tank, some others were stopped when enough rockets and ammunition from the Armadillos had hit them while a few others fell to Snark's Sledgehammer. The Wraiths were obviously being piloted by grunts, otherwise they wouldn't have been sacrificed like that. Despite the loss of all those tanks the Covenant continued without slowing down. The Wraiths now formed a wall of sorts where they had been destroyed and they had gotten the infantry behind them close enough that we were now the ones under fire.

"Prepare to fall back to Rally Point Golf," I said. "Tanks and vehicles cover infantry."

I got a wave of 'yessirs' from the soldiers and from my own men. None of the replies were enthusiastic, our rally points were not nearly as defensible as our position here. The walls, destroyed as they were, provided cover and concealment as well as an obstacle for the enemy. We still had one watchtower from which Caboose was firing. The security booth underneath that tower was occupied by Ramirez and Dotsenko, giving them an incredible vantage point as well as great cover. Any other positions we moved to would consist of an instacrete bunker and perhaps sandbags. The moment we left this position we would be on the run, scrapping for every little bit of time that we could get.

Slowly but surely we were being pushed back. Even when Crow showed up with another tank we couldn't handle the sheer numbers they were throwing at us. Snark was alive but shaken up, he could barely sit up without falling over the side. Longworth was unconscious and his life signs were fluctuating wildly. Andy and Payat were furiously working on him, trying to save him before he bled out. One of our drones was directed to move towards them and Payat didn't waste any time in throwing out all the boxes of ammunition and placing Longworth inside. Andy fired back at a pair of approaching brutes, sending them running for cover.

"We can't keep this up much longer, lieutenant!" the leader of the Army men shouted. "We're burning through ammunition faster than we can get it."

"Just a little bit longer!" I shouted back. "Prepare your 'Dillos to fall back, but hold your positions!"

More and more Banshees appeared overhead. We still had a Scythe working, but one turret could only do so much. Our positions were constantly being strafed and the watchtower that Caboose was in continually got hit. He had to evacuate the tower before long, running across the gate and sliding into safety behind a Phantom. The man was carrying way too many weapons for his own good. In addition to his ever-present MA5K assault carbine and his trusty shotgun he was carrying an M400 EMR. He nearly fell to the ground under all the weight, but instead of keeping all the weapons to himself he tossed the EMR to one of the soldiers in the Warthog and began firing his carbine at the oncoming aliens.

"Shield walls to the right!"

"Hit them, hit them!"

Our fire shifted to take down the slow-moving wall of jackals with overlapped shields. Behind the jackals were at least four brutes, all with their crude grenade launchers. Miranda began firing on the shields with her newly acquired grenade launcher. Hers was infinitely more advanced than the crap the brutes used. She fired a single semi-guided Armor-Piercing grenade at the wall, killing one jackal and making two others stumble. The neighboring jackals closed the gap before anybody had the opportunity to capitalize on it. Miranda, however, had already reloaded her grenade launcher and fired another shot. This time she took fool advantage of the guidance system that the little devices had. She fired directly above the wall and the grenade curved downwards by itself, hitting one of the brutes in the neck and decapitating it in the subsequent explosion. Granted, it wasn't nearly as impressive as the Sledgehammer, but it certainly had its own appeal.

"Sir, get over here!" Payat called out loudly, waving me over.

"Cover me!" I shouted.

Running out of cover had rarely felt so dangerous. I knew that leaving cover was often a dumb idea, but rarely did it feel so risky as it did then. A pair of needles flew in front of me along with half a dozen plasma bolts. I couldn't begin to imagine what was going on behind me. I slid into cover as I usually did, feet-first.

"What is it?" I asked.

"It's Snark," he replied.

Snark had been hit in the head and was now back in the realm of the living, but he wasn't doing exactly well. His legs were awkwardly kicking and his hands twitched even as he tried to reach for the Sledgehammer. I depolarized his visor remotely and sighed at his animalistic expression. He might've been conscious, but he had been hit so hard that he wouldn't be in control of his own actions for a while.

"He might need some drilling," Payat noted. "I didn't think it was this bad. He even sat up on his own."

"Put him under and see to it," I told him. "Andy, how do you feel about a sniper?"

"Not very good," she replied, scanning for enemies. "We're too close right now."

"Magnet's got a point," Payat agreed. "A sniper won't do us much use."

Snark's eyes rolled into the back of his head and he promptly fell asleep. I looked at him carefully and then gave the order for Payat to pull him back to safety. We were four men down now. None of them were going to die except maybe Longworth, but I was certain that he would find a way to survive that one.

"And Payat…"

"Yes?"

"Stay down there, prepare Rally Point Golf for our arrival, make sure the wounded can be moved."

"Yessir."

I watched him run back with Snark slung over his shoulders and then directed my eyes to the little piece of hell commonly known as Sledgehammer. I had never gotten to use one in my life. I had only seen one twice during my service and both those times Snark had gotten the privilege of unleashing its destructive power.

There were still rounds in the magazine as well as a couple of almost full boxes. If every round hit the ground then the explosion would be big enough that a grenade would seem like a child's device put next to it.

"Dibs," Andy said quickly.

"Andrea, did you for a moment think that that was going to work?"

"Not even remotely, sir," she said, letting out a small sigh of disappointment.

I put my rifle behind my back, letting it attach itself to the magnetic clamps on the back of my vest. The Sledgehammer was soon in my hands and I immediately propped it up on the rubble. I recalled an impromptu lecture that I received nine years ago in Lambari. It had happened an hour before Scarecrow had been killed, but it was not as fresh in my mind. The Sledgehammer would fire a relatively light round at over two kilometers per second, but from what I had seen off this rifle, it fired faster than that.

I knew that it probably had a knob that lowered the muzzle velocity, but I didn't really care about that right now. The more kinetic energy the projectile carried the bigger the explosion that ensued.

"What do you want to hit first?" Schitzo asked me.

It wasn't really a hard question. The biggest targets would be the first ones to go. All of the Wraiths had been rendered useless and now the only vehicles left were either Ghosts or Banshees. And the four Shadow troop transports moving fast towards us. I looked through the scope and as soon as I got one in my crosshairs I squeezed the trigger.

One of the first things that they teach you when shooting a gun is how to keep your eyes open while you're doing it. My uncle taught me to do it when I was twelve and I had been able to fire an entire magazine without blinking before I even left for bootcamp in Mars. I had fired all kinds of weapons under all kinds of situations without blinking. Anything from M6 pistols to SRS-99 rifles were easy to handle. Sure, sometimes the noise was hard on your ears and the recoil rattled your arms, but blinking because of the noise and recoil itself was something that no veteran soldier ever did.

I blinked when I fired the Sledgehammer.

The recoil was horrible. I could only imagine how a small and slim man like Snark could've handled that much recoil once, let alone over a dozen times. I was too shocked by the weapon to analyze the damage done to the Shadow. I quickly regained my senses, though, and looked for the Shadow. It took me another second to realize that there wasn't a Shadow. It had been destroyed and torn apart by the blast. A few of the occupants had left limbs behind, but the round had done exactly what it advertised.

"Fuck yeah!" I exclaimed without even wanting to.

The second shot was dedicated to another Shadow. This one met a very similar end to the first one, only that the rear section was tossed in the air several meters before it came crashing back down. The two remaining transports turned around in an attempt to avoid certain death. I instead switched to considerably softer targets. A large enemy force like the one we faced was bound to have several chieftains leading it, and most of those were carrying gravity hammers.

Those things were almost as effective as free sex when it came to drawing the attention of Marines. I went for the nearest chieftain, managing not to blink when I fired. My eardrums were hurting even despite the high-tech noise blockers in my helmet. I think that the shockwave alone managed to travel through my helmet and into my ears. Well, back to the chieftain. As soon as the round hit it in the leg there was a massive spray of red blood and not a single piece of its body was to be seen after that. The railgun round went on to fly for a couple dozen meters before it hit the ground and detonated its explosive charge, sending jackals flying everywhere.

I felt incredibly overpowered with the Sledgehammer in hand. There was a slight problem with that. The railgun was best used on Locusts, Daemons, and Wraiths. Every now and then you could use it to take out a Scarab or even Banshees. Every round I fired resulted in one or more kills, but it was like using landmines to kill the squirrels infesting your backyard. Only the squirrels were gigantic and trying to kill you and there were thousands of them.

Well, it's a bad metaphor, I know. The point is that the rounds were being wasted on soft targets.

I looked through the scope for a few seconds and only spotted a few Ghosts flying at us. If we were going to fall back this was probably the best time.

"Tanks up front!" I ordered. "Warthogs too!"

Our two Scorpions rolled forward and were almost immediately peppered with small arms fire. Our two Warthogs took more care, maneuvering into defensive positions before the driver jumped into the gunner's position. Payat handled the rocket 'Hog while a soldier got behind the machine gun on the other Warthog. Those four vehicles could plug the two main gaps in the wall well enough by themselves, but not for long.

"Start falling back," I ordered. "Keep your heads down!"

Both my men and the Army men were well trained. The wounded were sent back first, quickly followed by those without any specialized weaponry. I sent those with long range weapons after them, leaving only the machine gunners and a couple of other guys. I had a handheld weapon with more destructive capabilities than both of the Scorpions put together and so remained behind with Pavel, Ramirez, and Dotsenko. The three of them moved out of the security booth and took cover in the pile of rubble with me.

"We've got center sector," Pavel said. "Don't stop firing."

Traditionally the squad gunner was supposed to expend a greater amount of bullets than the rest of the squad. That didn't mean that they didn't have to conserve ammunition. It was frustrating when you were told to stop firing when your only job was to keep firing. The gunners were always ecstatic when they got a free rein. Both Ramirez and Dotsenko enjoyed the order and even Pavel got a small smile on his face.

I put the Sledgehammer to the side and began firing with my battle rifle instead. The brutes no longer exploded when I hit them, but I made sure that every shot went to the face or neck, where their power armor didn't protect them. Sometimes I came across one with shielding and tagged it for the machine gunners. I felt powerful, I was still moving and thinking faster than I had ever been able to. This time it didn't seem like my advantage go away after the danger passed.

"Start moving back," I ordered my men. "Get in Payat's 'Hog."

Ramirez and Dotsenko slowly crawled backwards before they began running towards the Warthog. That left only Pavel and myself as infantry soldiers. It felt familiar.

"Remember when every mission was like this?" I asked him.

He scoffed. "How could I forget? I had to pull your ass out of the fire more than a few times."

"I think that it goes both ways," I told him.

"You were always doing crazy shit," he insisted. "Jumping through the rooftops, sneaking up on elites…"

"You're one to talk," I shot back. "Clearing houses by yourself with a shotgun in one hand and a machine gun in the other."

"It's almost as if we didn't care back then."

I nodded in agreement, shooting a grunt through the gas mask. "Maybe we didn't."

One of our two Scorpions blew up, its turret flying dozens of feet up in the air. A second later the Scorpion that Crow was in was also hit by plasma bombs. The massive tank rocked backwards before it came back down. I saw four Seraphs responsible scream past overhead and prepare for another pass.

"Flatt, where the hell's our air support?" I asked. "Pavel, get Crow out of there!"

Pavel picked up his M247L and began sprinting towards Crow's smoking tank. I secured my BR55 and grabbed the Sledgehammer, heaving it over one shoulder. Flatt replied, but there was too much static to make any sense of her words.

"I didn't catch that," I said drily, sprinting towards the last remaining Warthog, where the gunner was doing his best to spend every single round of ammunition.

"Our air support got pulled," Captain Flatt shouted. "They're coming through the walls. Captain Nezarian is leading what we have left to the landing pads. Our second line was overrun!"

If their second line had been overrun it meant that we couldn't stay on Rally Point Golf or we'd be surrounded. Flatt was basically telling me that we had lost the battle for the base.

"We've got Daemons!" the gunner shouted.

Almost immediately one plasma shell flew through the front section of the Warthog, going in one side and coming out the other without actually hitting anything. I was almost atomized by the shell in question, only missing it by a couple of inches. I shook my head in an attempt to get over the incredibly amount of luck that I had just experienced and climbed in the driver's seat after throwing the Sledgehammer in.

"Frank!" Pavel shouted.

I floored the accelerator while spinning the wheel, nearly tipping the Warthog sideways. I drove towards Pavel and Crow, whipping the Warthog sideways to stop in time. Pavel threw himself to the back alongside with Crow. They landed face first next to the gunner's feet.

"Go!"

A second Daemon shot exploded a few meters behind us. The shockwave lifted the rear end of our Warthog slightly, but it didn't do any damage. I started driving away as fast as the 'Hog would allow me to, following closely behind Payat and his own vehicle. I moved out of the way and let Dotsenko fire the rest of the rockets on the turret while also giving Ramirez an angle to use his SAW. Pavel spun to his back and began firing alongside our gunner, hitting those brutes and jackals coming over the pile of rubble.

"Caboose, we're falling back to the landing pads!" I ordered. "Golf is a no-go. Golf is a no-go, do you copy?"

"Loud and clear, sir. We're falling back."

"Frank, you can drop me off near the motor pool," Pavel shouted. "We could use a tank."

I began turning, but a Phantom dropship began strafing us. I braked and let it pass in front of us before turning towards the motor pool, forcing the Phantom to turn with us, exposing its rear thrusters to Dotsenko. Several rockets hit the Phantom as it got a bearing on us, throwing its aim off and damaging one of the engines enough that the dropship wobbled as it flew. I sped up as much as possible while weaving side to side in an attempt to avoid being hit. The plasma bolts landed all around, sometimes even nicking the armored plating on the Warthog.

"Left!" Pavel shouted.

"Hold on!"

I hit the emergency brake and turned left as fast as possible, sending the Warthog into a drift. I could hear the gunner cursing as he struggled to both hold on and get a bead on the Phantom. The enemy drop ship couldn't stop as fast as we could and had to circle around while I floored it again and entered the motor pool. There were several Warthogs without any weaponry as well as Mongooses that nobody really wanted to use. I could see about two dozen Scorpion tanks some two hundred meters away, neatly parked side to side.

Unfortunately, I could also see the four Seraphs that had wrecked our Scorpions. I cursed as I saw them begin a strafing run. They couldn't have asked for more perfect targets. The Scorpions were immobile, close to one another, and completely useless. They fired their regular plasma cannons, they dropped bombs, and they even used their torpedoes. The ground in front of me lit up in blue and red as plasma and fuel exploded. Scorpion after Scorpion was destroyed before we even got to their position. I was forced to take another sharp turn in order to avoid being hit in the strafing run.

"God damn!" Pavel cursed.

"Caboose, what's your status?"

"We're loading up on Armadillos," he replied. "Attach them to the Pelicans."

"How far are you from the pads?"

"About one minute," he said. "We've got about a million Banshees up here!"

"Don't try to save rockets for later," I said. "We're catching up."

Six or so rockets flew right in front of me and proceeded to detonate against the Phantom's hull. The chasing drop ship came down hard, digging a furrow into the ground. I looked to my left to see Dotsenko cheering from the other Warthog. I felt like cheering myself. We drove through building after building. Some of them were only barracks, some others were classrooms, some were nurse stations, some were bathrooms, and some were chow halls. Mendez was truly a massive base. Its size bought us time when it came to the enemy infantry chasing us, but the Ghosts appeared eager to catch up.

Dotsenko and my gunner discouraged them with rockets and bursts of armor piercing ammunition, but the brutes driving them were bloodthirsty and pissed. They had just lost a couple thousand of their own soldiers against a small unit consisting of about a hundred and fifty men. Sure, we had tanks, landmines, artillery, and limited air support, but it must've still hurt them.

"There's the landing pads," I warned. "Looks like some Pelicans are already leaving."

"I'm going to need a hand here," Pavel told the gunner. "My man's unconscious."

"Yes, sir," the gunner said.

Before we got to the landing pads five more Pelicans took off, all of them laden with troops and Armadillos in the rear. The Pelicans couldn't fly very fast with so much cargo, but the enemy Seraphs would be discouraged by our only remaining Scythe AA cannon.

I see you, sir," Caboose said. "We're taking off."

"Don't let me stop you," I replied, heading towards one of the last remaining Pelicans. "Payat, follow me!"

"Yes, sir."

I drove through the open ground, fearing that a stray needle or something similar would end my life or one of my men's. The second-to-last Pelican took off with the last of my men.

"Hurry up!" Marina's voice flooded my helmet. "I'm sick of waiting!"

Of course it was Marina.

"Get the clamps ready!" I told her. "I've got seven men and a Warthog."

"Ready!"

I stopped the Warthog just close enough and climbed down. Pavel and the gunner were already dragging the unconscious and badly burnt Crow into the Pelicans' blood tray even as Payat stopped his own Warthog and jumped off. I turned around to see half a dozen Ghosts appear on the edge of the landing area and urged my men to hurry. A few stray bolts of plasma hit the back of the Pelican, but I was already inside and taking off.

From the air I could see the enemy infantry firing up at us, trying to get revenge for all the losses they had suffered.

"We're razing Mendez Joint Base," Captain Flatt transmitted. "Are you clear?"

"Just about," I replied.

Only a minute later two ground-to-ground missiles landed in Mendez, detonating their highly-explosive thermobaric payload and burning to the ground what had once been humanity's largest military base. Secondary explosions rocked Mendez as the shockwave caught up to us. The size of the explosions was large enough to cause mushroom clouds even if the explosives weren't nuclear.

I turned around and wondered what we would do now that the fighting was moving to New Alexandria. If we were forced to fight in our own cities already then things weren't going well.

* * *

><p><em>This chapter was proofread by <strong>GeneralTheDying Titan<strong>. That's right. For the first time since chapter 180 I got myself some proofreading. Let's hope that the quality of the chapter increases. It should've at least gotten rid of some spelling mistakes._

_As you may or may not have noticed I did my best to make this chapter seem like a glorious gorefest of conventional and not-so-conventional weaponry. Our heroes had a ridiculous amount of firepower at their disposal, so don't let their victory fool you. Sometimes you may have ten tanks working with you against an enemy platoon and other times you have one gun to work with against an enemy battalion. Frank and company got relatively lucky this time and they had nearly half their unit wounded and put out of commission for a while. Just imagine what's going to happen next._

_Let's recapitulate: our favorite nutjob had to abandon a strategically important military base full of materiel because of non-specified reasons. His air support got pulled back and the UNSC decided that it was easier to torch the place than keep it in working order. Why? Well, because somebody else fucked up on another end and ruined Frank's valiant efforts to defend the city of New Alexandria from the covvies. Or maybe the invasion force was simply too much even when everybody was giving it their best._

_You remember those Spartans I introduced a while back? Yeah? Well, Team Falcata will have some screen time in the chapters to come. For that matter so will Noble Team. You didn't think I'd go through Reach without coming across those guys, did you? Reach is where it all began. Literally, everybody was in Reach when shit went down. All the Spartans still alive except for a few of the guys in Gamma Company were there. Johnson, Silva, Stacker, Jenkins, Mendoza, Locklear, McKay, and of course, Master Chief._

_I can't promise you that everybody will show up, but I can promise you that a lot of guys will. Let me know what you thought about this wondrous chapter._

_Stay strong._

_-casquis_


	198. Doctor's Orders

Chapter CXCVIII: Doctor's Orders

**August 19, 2552 (UNSC Calendar)/**

**New Alexandria, Eposz, Reach, Epsilon Eridani System**

* * *

><p><em>"Contrary to popular belief, this is exactly the kind of shit that we signed up for."- Sergeant Marvin Mobuto<em>

* * *

><p>The city was infested with military. I could tell that most of the units here were engineering. It was easy to tell because they were in the process of fortifying the streets, taking special care to turn every intersection into a nearly indestructible fortress. Most of those fortresses would come with a decent amount of explosives in the corners in case the covvies ever took over the position.<p>

It was hard seeing the beautiful and artistic streets being turned into angular and utilitarian defensive positions. It was even harder seeing the mass of civilians moving towards the evacuation ports by foot because their cars could no longer transit through the fortified streets. Here and there I could spot a transport station where NAPD Pelicans ferried civilians across the city, but for the most part the people walked. Some buildings had fallout shelters built into their basements and so were receiving a flux of people seeking a place to weather the storm. All in all it was a highly discouraging sight.

"How's Crow doing?" I asked.

Payat looked up to me and sighed. "He's very badly burnt. The bomb landed right next to the Scorpion, I'm surprised he's still alive. His wounds don't look particularly life-threatening, but he does have burns in over sixty percent of his body, mostly the face and torso, although both his feet are completely raw. In any case, he won't be able to fight for some time."

I looked at Crow. Payat had removed most of his armor and opened his under suit to treat the wounds. His face was a mess. There was a long, irregular burn crossing his face where the visor had melted and fallen into his face. Miraculously enough both of his eyes had been spared, but his nose and upper lip were almost completely gone. His neck, chest, shoulders, and abdomen were burnt, displaying red wounds with charred black edges. His left collarbone was visible where the skin had been burnt through. It was not a pretty sight.

"Reconstructive surgery will probably get him looking just the way he was," Payat went on. "If I had finished my medical career I would probably know one or two guys that could help out… Sorry, sorry. He's out for this one, sir."

I nodded slowly and looked back to Ramirez and Dotsenko. Both of them were very quiet, studiously avoiding the sight of their mutilated comrade lying in the blood tray. Their mechanical limbs were perfectly silent even though I kept expecting to hear whirring or mechanical noises with every small movement. My hearing was still beyond anything I had possessed before, but the artificial limbs were simply engineering marvels.

"You two ok?" I asked them.

They looked up and then at each other before nodding. They didn't look like they had been hit, but there were scorch marks on their armor. More surprisingly, they didn't have a single spare ammunition box for their SAWs. Both of them had completely used up their ammo, leaving them with only the bullets inside their current magazine. They seemed shaken up. Despite their veteran status they were both in their early twenties. They were pretty young when it came down to it.

"Pavs?"

"You know me," he said. "I just want to talk to my family."

"I'll take care of that as soon as we land."

There was an uncomfortable silence as the soldier that had hitched a ride with us said nothing and we all looked at him briefly.

"What's your name, son?" I asked him.

"Parker," he said. "Uh, Private Parker."

"Are you alright, Private parker?" I asked.

He looked up from the ground and smiled awkwardly before shaking his head. "A lot of my friends died out there, sir. They were good men."

I nodded. "Perhaps they were the lucky ones, Parker."

Pavel looked at me and frowned before shaking his head almost imperceptibly. "Is this your first time seeing combat, kid?"

"Yes, sir," Parker replied, looking at Pavel. "I was permanently assigned to base protection so I didn't really deploy anywhere."

"Well, at least you had a quiet life before this," Pavel went on. "But you're going to need to get your shit together."

"My shit is perfectly together, Gunny," Parker assured him. "Doesn't mean I have to like it, but I don't plan on dying because the wires aren't well up here." He knocked the side of his helmet.

"Spoken like a true Marine," Ramirez said approvingly.

"I'm Army," Parker reminded him. "Soldier through and through."

"Hooah," Dotsenko said, using the traditional Army slang in respect.

"Hooah," Parker echoed quietly. "Hooah."

I turned back from the rear of the Pelican and walked into the cockpit, where Marina was following another Pelican at a safe distance and a relatively slow speed. She weaved through the tight space in between the buildings without making an effort. She looked up at me and smiled underneath her big pilot helmet. Sometimes I wondered why we had broken up.

"Are you ok?" she asked me, closing the door behind me automatically.

"Didn't we clear that up?"

She rolled her eyes at me. Well, I didn't see that, but I could tell that she did. "You know what I mean. It can't feel good having so many of your guys wounded."

"Of course it doesn't feel well," I told her, sitting in the copilot's seat. "But what can I do about it? Casualties are part of war and unfortunately we're in the business of war."

"The business of war?" Marina repeated carefully.

I shrugged. "We wage war and we get paid for it," I told her.

"Well, you have a point there. Are you sure you're ok, though? I still remember how you felt after you lost Scarecrow."

I sighed. I didn't like being reminded of Scarecrow. Sutton had been a great man, perhaps one of those guys that truly deserved better than what he got. You came across good guys and cool guys and fun guys in the military, but you rarely came across people that were truly better people. Being reminded of him always made me feel like I had failed in protecting the one person that deserved it.

"Frank?"

"Sorry," I apologized quickly. "I'm fine. All of my guys will make it, even Crow and Longworth."

"Longworth? Isn't that a little bit too normal for you? I know how you like giving nicknames."

"I never gave you any nicknames."

"And I never forgave you for that," she said, chuckling. "Well, if you're ever feeling like you need to talk, I'm here."

"For the last time, Marina. Having psychologist parents doesn't make you a shrink."

"I think it does," she said. "In fact, I'm pretty sure it does."

"Thanks," I said. "Really."

"That's what friends are for," she replied.

I nodded to myself before moving out of the chair. I looked at it before leaving the cockpit. Sheppard had once been Marina's copilot, younger than all of us and pretty uncomfortable around my team he had always been kind of a little brother figure to all of us. I rarely thought about him, but he was as responsible for saving our lives as Marina had been.

"Sir," Payat said. "You were hit."

I stretched my shoulders and winced slightly. I _had_ been hit by a plasma bolt.

"Do your job," I said reluctantly.

Payat was evidently surprised. It wasn't very often that you came across an ODST that let you work on their wounds, let alone one that was your superior officer. In fact, pretty much everybody with a non-life threatening injury refused to be treated for a certain amount of time in order to prove that they were fit to be a Marine or a soldier. It was pretty much an unspoken rule.

"Ok…" he said dubiously. "Turn around and sit down please."

I complied and Payat began treating my wound by removing the armor on my back. I winced and tightened my fists when he poured biofoam on the wound but otherwise didn't make any noise.

"Your armor's intact," Payat said. "Your undersuit looks good, some of the fibers melted, but it should probably still be airtight. Don't trust me on that one though. Well, the wound itself is a second degree burn, nothing serious, it might bother you some."

"Thanks," I said. "Now get the armor back on."

"Right away, Lieutenant."

As soon as Payat tapped my shoulders I stood back up, carefully avoiding Crow's unconscious form and sitting back down on the edge of the Pelican. This section of the city was emptier, but there were still groups of civilians moving by foot. At least it seemed like these groups consisted mostly of businessmen and women. It was easier thinking that they might die as opposed to being reminded that whole families would be massacred. The inner area was heavily fortified, with Scorpions, Warthogs, Armadillos, Tortoises, and even mobile hospitals in the form of Elephants. Some of the straighter avenues even had Rhinos on them. Below us I could see as Falcon gunships and Hornets flew considerably closer to the ground. Above us some other Pelicans flew. I even saw an Albatross slowly moving through the skyscrapers.

"Ever wonder why we name all our vehicles after animals?" I asked Pavel.

"Probably the same reason why we named all the covvie vehicles after ghosts."

"It's incredibly how many synonyms there are for the word ghost," Ramirez said.

"Well, we ran short of those when it came down to the Prowler and the Chopper," Dotsenko told him.

"Speaking of, why didn't we run into any of those?" Ramirez asked.

"Should we have?" Parker asked. "Wasn't it enough with the Ghosts and Wraiths?"

"Brute-led forces usually have different vehicles," Pavel said.

"Why?" Parker asked. "I mean, it doesn't make much sense. I know that Marines use Tortoises instead of Armadillos, but they're over eighty percent compatible."

"Covenant fleets are segregated," I said. "Brutes and elites don't mix."

"Nobody ever told me about that," Parker said.

"I thought it was common knowledge," Ramirez said. "They should teach that in basic. Brute-led and elite-led forces behave very differently during combat. We should make that common knowledge."

"Well, nobody ever told me," he complained.

A flight of Shortswords screamed overhead, shaking the windows on the buildings. I traced them with my eyes until they disappeared behind the skyscrapers. They were headed west. If someone was requesting six bomber's worth of air support simultaneously then things couldn't be going too well out there. They had bulled through our position in less than a day and we counted with enormous walls and the biggest minefield in the history of history.

"Castillo, we're headed towards the hospital," Flatt said. "I pulled some strings and called in a favor to get our wounded there."

"Thanks ma'am," I replied. "I've got a few men that could use it."

"Everybody does right now," she said. "Listen Frank, HIGHCOM is in complete disarray right now, I can't contact anybody outside Viery territory and the fleet's too busy."

"Doesn't sound too good," I sighed. "Can you contact ONI?"

"Of course I can," she said. "When all things go down ONI is still there."

"The most efficient branch of the UNSC," I said.

"Why do you make that sound like an insult?" Flatt asked me. "You are still technically ONI."

"I know," I said. "Doesn't really feel like that though."

"I know what you mean," she said. "Listen, they've given us clearance to land in the shorter of the two buildings, there should be enough space on the rooftop to get everybody off. After all the wounded are down we're moving our vehicles groundside. You can leave most of your men down in street level as well."

"Yes, ma'am," I said. "Thanks for doing this."

"I'm AAG's de-facto commanding officer, Frank. I'm with you for the long haul and I intend to keep my unit the very best I can."

I smiled. "Yes, ma'am."

Marina landed the Pelican in the park terrace. I could barely feel the landing gear hitting the rooftop. Two nurses immediately climbed inside and knelt over the Crow. Before I knew it they had already gotten an IV into his arm and were preparing a stretcher to move him out. I began climbing down, but six more nurses climbed inside and began poking and probing with scanners. I tried to shake them off.

"I'm fine," I insisted. "Please."

"No you're not, I'm seeing a second-degree burn in your back."

"It's already been treated," I told the nurse.

"Right," she scoffed. "I've seen how you jarheads apply biofoam. It's disgusting."

"Did she just call me a jarhead?" I asked Pavel, grudgingly letting the nurse take off my armor.

"I think she called all of us jarheads," he replied.

"As a soldier, I find that offensive," Parker mumbled, lifting his eyes for his own nurse.

I chuckled.

"Wow, this biofoam was actually applied correctly," my nurse said. "I'm impressed."

"Yeah, I'm a doctor," Payat said, trying to shove his own nurse away from him. "Certified and everything. Now, can you please let us down?"

"Sorry, not yet," my nurse replied. "You all have minor stress fractures, extensive bruising, scratches, cuts, and minor contusions. All of you. I don't even know how you're still standing."

"Our job's not to fall, honey," Dotsenko said.

"Did you seriously just say that?" Ramirez asked.

"I'm with James on this one," Payat said. "Can't believe you actually said those words."

"Are we done?" I asked my nurse.

"Just about. I need you to-"

I rolled my eyes and jumped down. "I'm sorry, but we're in a hurry. Pavel, on me."  
>I walked through the crowded rooftop, ignoring the wounded soldiers and AAG operators being carried in stretchers by nurses and doctors. Caboose walked up to me, trying to shake off a nurse treating him.<p>

"Sir," he said. "They're taking Longworth down for surgery. Snark's getting preferential treatment. His head wound was deadlier than you'd think. Hell, the doctor didn't believe me when I told her that he had been conscious most of the ride. Tank's being moved down to get his fracture treated."

"And Lady?"

"Ah, Lady. I had the displeasure of sharing the same Pelican with her," Caboose sighed. "She was badly hurt when her tank was hit, but Payat failed to catch that."

"I'm sorry," Payat said behind me. "I was being shot at and just wanted to get her to safety."

"Most of her injuries are burns, bad ones. Right leg and arm have bad burns on them, her tendons are damaged and she's going to need extensive surgery and some implants to speed up the recovery process. Once the adrenaline wore off she realized just how much pain she was in and bitched about it the whole trip. We didn't have Andy with us so we couldn't put her under."

"I genuinely feel sorry for you," I told him.

"How's Crow?" he asked.

I shook my head. "He'll live, but it's bad. It's very bad. He won't be happy when he wakes up."

Caboose nodded slowly. "Very well. I'll take the rest of the men down. Set up around the entrance."

"Alright," I told him. "I'll meet you down there later."

Caboose nodded again. "Team-7 on my position! Move it!"

The nurse treating me still refused to let go and instead tried to get me to remove my helmet.

"Will you stop it?" I asked violently. "Listen girl, I appreciate the help, but five of my men are wounded and I'd appreciate it if you'd let me go down and see them!"

"I'm sorry," she apologized, startled. "But Doctor Vinter gave strict orders not to let anybody who hasn't been treated pass through."

My mind went to Lieutenant Commander Sigfrid Vinter, the chief medical officer on board the UNSC _Flawless_. I knew for a fact that the man had died on board the ship. Then I thought back to her daughter who had been studying in medical school last time I called.

"Are you talking about Doctor Astrid Vinter?"

"You know her?" the nurse asked.

"Damn right I do," I said. "Now let me talk to her and we can speed this whole process along."

The nurse looked at me before jogging off to get one of the doctors to come back here. I waited very patiently while she talked to Astrid and then pointed in my direction. Astrid, for it was indeed her, walked over towards my position and planted her feet on the ground and her fists on her hips. She had grown up quite a bit since I last saw her. She looked good, but there were lines in the corner of her eyes and she no longer looked like an idealistic college girl.

"Yes?" she said.

I took off my helmet. "Hey."

Astrid rolled her eyes. "Goddamit Frank."

"Hello to you too," I said. "Astrid I need you to let my men go through right now, I don't want to cause a scene."

"Asking for favors? You do realize that you didn't even bother showing up for my father's funeral."

I nodded and looked away from her piercing eyes. "I'm sorry," I apologized earnestly. "Sigfrid was a great man Astrid, you know that as well as I do."

"Not great enough for you, apparently."

"You know it's not like that," I said.

"Then what happened? You didn't show up and you didn't even bother with a call or even a letter."

"I'm sorry."

"What I don't understand is that you didn't even bother to show up at the funeral. A lot of people were there, Frank."

I looked back to Astrid. "There were far too many funerals for me to go to," I told her quietly. "I lost a lot of good men that were fighting under my command. I'm sorry. I've visited him a couple of times, you know. No flowers or anything, but I didn't forget about him and all he did for me."

Astrid crossed her arms and looked at me with a frown on her face. "Damn you Frank. You always did know what to say."

"Debatable," Pavel said behind me.

"Good to see you," Astrid waved at Pavel. "Come on down, but I can't have a bunch of lumbering Marines inside my hospital. I've already got enough on my hands as it is."

"We'll stay out of the way," I said. "Oh, I have a doctor on my team. An honest-to-God doctor. Certified and everything."

"Bring him down," Astrid said. "We could sure use the help."

"Payat!" Pavel shouted. "Get over here! You're going to be a doctor!"

I almost laughed at the squeals of excitement that the man made as he all but bounced towards us. He would finally fulfill his dream of being a doctor in the best hospital in the system and quite probably this end of the galaxy.

"Follow me," Astrid said, leading us into the elevators. "And please put all your weapons away. We have civilian patients here too."

"This is your rodeo," I told her. "Whatever you say goes."

Astrid nodded and walked inside the elevator with us in tow. "I'm giving members of the military priority over civilians," she said. "And trust me, there's no shortage of wounded from any side."

"Thank you for that," I told her.

She produced a small datapad and flicked through it. "You've got five serious wounded, I see. All of the procedures are relatively simple, but they will need at least a week of recovery each. As for the rest of your unit, it appears that everybody's got minor wounds of some sort or other. Normally I wouldn't let them leave the hospital for a few days, but considering the situation…"

"I need them fighting," I said.

"Yes."

"What about the seriously injured? This city is about to turn into a battleground soon, I can't have them here while that happens."

"You're right," she said. "We're already sending everybody that can be moved to Quezon and Esztergom."

"Quezon is still intact?"

"It's the planet's largest city," Astrid said. "The UNSC made sure to send a sizeable portion of their forces there."

"And Esztergom?" Pavel asked.

"I don't know much," Astrid told him, "but the city is still held by UNSC forces. There are rumors about Covenant armies encircling them, but I don't know anything. I asked some of my dad's friends from the Corps and they were also confused. Half of them didn't even answer."

"It's bad," I said, stepping out of the elevator and into an aisle full of wounded and screaming soldiers. "But we still have the advantage in numbers and personnel."

Astrid nodded, her face becoming soft for the first time since I had seen her. For one moment she looked like the scared girl I had first met in the middle of a battle. A moment later she went back to her hardened expression.

"Your men are all in this wing," she told me. "I promise you that I'll have them moved as soon as they've been operated on."

"Thanks," I said again. "Can you see that they are sent to Esztergom?"

"Why there?"

"It's a defensible city," Pavel replied.

"More likely that it'll hold longer," I said. "And more likely that it'll fall under attack sooner, which means that they'll send us there."

"That's some strange logic you've got going on, Frank," Astrid said. "But I'll do what you want."

"What are you going to do?" I asked her.

"I'm going to stay here," she replied. "The wounded are going to keep coming and they'll need help."

I shook my head. "You've got to leave as soon as possible," I told her. "Wounded may keep coming, but soon enough there won't be a way for you to leave this city and then you're as good as dead."

She shrugged. "That's what my mom said and I'm still here. You can't make me change my mind, Frank."

I sighed. "You'll regret this," I told her.

"Maybe, but I'm a doctor, it's what I do."

I nodded understandingly and turned around, signaling for Payat to approach. He seemed awed by the impressive machinery and technology that this hospital possessed. The way that the machines seamlessly integrated multi-layer scanning with tridimensional holograms was quite impressive, especially when you saw the impressive quality of the holograms. They appeared to be realer than the stuff around them. Not even the latest films had that kind of quality. Most of the machines were automatic, but they needed a doctor to program them or supervise them while they worked. Some hospitals were completely automated, working under an AI's control, but a simple glitch in the system could shut down the whole thing. That's why, when it came to it, humans are the best doctors there are.

"Look at all this," Payat said in amazement. "You've got the latest equipment available!"

"Our hospital is typically considered the best in existence," Astrid told him. "You're not up to date with the latest improvements on these machines, so I'm going to have to have you use some of the older ones. You don't mind treating trauma injuries with the older machines, do you?"

"How old are your oldest machines?" he asked her back.

"About ten years old."

"I think I'll be just fine," he replied with a big smile. "Whatever you need me to do, I'm there."

Astrid nodded in appreciation and directed him to an operating room in this same floor before turning back to Pavel and me. There were lines in the corner of her eyes. She looked way too young to have those.

"I need you out of here Frank, we're getting dozens of men every hour and need as much space as possible."

"Yes, ma'am," I replied with a courteous nod. "My men and I will be waiting outside the hospital for a little while until we get reassigned. Can you tell me as soon as my men are evacuated?"

She nodded, motioning for another doctor to wait. "Of course. I'm going to keep your man for a while, he can communicate with you."

I nodded and smiled at her much like I used to do whenever her father asked me over for dinner. "It was good seeing you, Astrid."

"Well, my dad did always say that it was hard not to like you."

"He was a smart man," I said. "Good luck."

"And you," she replied, already moving away. "Try to stay alive!"

I nodded in response even though she was already out of sight.

"A good gal, that one," Pavel noted. "Pretty eyes, too."

"You're married," I reminded him.

"The eyes do wander," he said simply. "As long as it's only the eyes it's fine."

"I know a lot of women who'd disagree," I chuckled, moving back towards the elevators. "Still, I can't help but agree with you."

"It's not like women don't look," Pavel went on. "They want to pretend that they don't but they're also hiding a little pervert inside them."

"Interesting words," I said, pushing the ground floor button and squeezing back as a bunch of nurses piled in.

Pavel made a noise as the elevator doors closed. The nurses were all sporting bloody scrubs and most of them had their arms covered with blood up to their elbows. A few of the younger ones looked almost shell-shocked while the older ones simply looked tired. It couldn't have been easy for them, especially after years of working in a nearly utopian city where crime rates were nearly non-existent and most trauma accidents didn't begin to compare to the realities of war. They also stopped talking as soon as they realized that two large Helljumpers were sharing the elevator with them. The ride down was a long one that was made even more uncomfortable by the existence of elevator music. I still don't understand why they insisted with it. Most of the times that I used an elevator I happened to be in the middle of a battle.

The elevator dinged and the nurses spilled out. We followed in their wake, noticing the soldiers with less lethal injuries. Those were kept in the lobby and told to wait, with only a few doctors and nurses attending to them, mostly just issuing painkillers and stitching up cuts where they could find them. Once we left the large lobby and walked outside into the street I was almost overwhelmed by the sheer amount of transports coming in. About half of the Pelicans belonged to the NAPD and were being used to ferry the wounded from the frontlines, but a sizeable number of the rest belonged to the Army. I could only assume that the Pelicans under UNSC Marine Corps control were being used in the frontline to ferry ammunition and able-bodied soldiers.

"I hate elevators," Pavel muttered, sidestepping a row of body bags. "I swear, every damn time I'm in one…"

"I get flashbacks," I agreed. "Avoid them as much as possible."

"Yeah," he said. "There they are." He pointed to an intersection and moved out of the way of a damaged Tortoise IFV, letting the hatch open to get the wounded out. Military vehicles surrounded the few ambulances out there, their flashing lights barely noticeable in the commotion

I saw my men standing in a street corner around Marina's Pelican. On the opposite side of the large intersection was Captain Nezarian's unit. He hadn't reported any KIAs, but there had been several wounded that would be out for the count. What stroke me most unusual was that Parker was still hanging around with my unit. He was chatting with Ramirez and Dotsenko, talking about something or other that I couldn't make out.

"Sir, word from Captain Flatt is to wait around the hospital until she gets orders. She's trying to get us back into the regular chain of command or at least make sure that everybody knows we're still alive," Caboose said.

"Good," I said, motioning for him to continue.

"What's left of AAG is at about 60% capacity. Most units received as much casualties as we did. We came out lucky without any deaths, sir."

"Well, can't complain about that one," I said, drawing a dry chuckle from Pavel. "How are we on ammunition?"

"Everybody's got regular loads of ammo except for you two," Caboose replied. "We did a little bit of trading and switching to account for our wounded. Bee still has a Spartan Laser with two extra batteries, but Tank isn't here to handle the SPANKr, so the rocket launcher is going to Sergeant Mata."

I nodded.

"Why do we call it rocket launcher?" Pavel asked suddenly.

"It's what it does," I replied. "It launches rockets."

"It launches missiles," he corrected. "They're guided."

I shrugged slightly. "You have a point," I agreed, "but I'm not about to change twenty years of habit."

"Not a lot of people would," Caboose acknowledged. "Well, as I was saying… The Sledgehammer is in the Pelican. There's not a lot of ammunition left, so there's that. We're out a sniper, but Preacher is stepping up. He upgraded his Enhanced Marksman Rifle in the armory with a heavier and longer barrel, should be able to do the job well enough."

"Where is he, by the way?"

"Inside," Caboose said, pointing at an adjoining building. "Praying."

I sighed. "Alright then. Anything else?"

"We're still at fifteen out of twenty," he said. "Could be a lot worse all things considered."

"How are the men feeling?"

"Mata is probing them right now," he said, pointing to Sergeant Roderic Mata. "From what I can tell they're tired and pissed, but not anywhere close to giving up."

"Good."

Caboose looked at me for a couple of seconds, probably waiting for me to ask another question or issue an order. When I did neither of those he took half a step back and then walked towards an empty crate of ammunition and sat down on it. I began moving towards Ramirez and Dotsenko.

"Private Parker," I said.

"Sir!" He saluted sharply.

"At ease," I waved him off after returning his salute. "What are you still doing here, private?"

"My unit, well, what's left of it, is waiting for orders around the hospital. It's a long walk there, so they'll notify me when they've got a mission."

"Understood," I said. "No injuries for you?"

"Nah," he said. "Well, they gave me a few metabolism pills or whatever you call those. They'll help my cells regenerate faster where they are damaged. They told me I should be fine by tomorrow morning."

"Yeah, we sometimes get those," Ramirez told him. "Pretty darn useful if you're fighting in rough terrain."

"Man, you elites get all the fancy toys," Parker muttered with admiration mixed with jealousy.

"That we do," I agreed.

Parker resumed his chat with Ramirez and Dotsenko, leaving me to walk around, examining the state of my men. They seemed to be fine, but I knew better than that. I had never seen my men looking more subdued. I don't think it was the wounded or even Polly's death that was weighing upon them. It was the fact that Reach, our untouchable fortress, was under siege. I got a couple of greeting from Team-7, but for the most part the men kept to themselves.

"Castillo, a word?" Captain Nezarian said.

I looked across the intersection and Nezarian waved at me. I jogged up across the fortified street and towards him. His armor was scorched badly on the left side and his arm seemed to have suffered some burns, but the man moved without showing any pain.

"How you doing, Cap?" I asked.

He looked at me and scoffed. "How do you think?"

"About as well as the rest of us?"

"Correct," he confirmed. "Not a good place for us to be in right now."

"Hospital? Or the planet?"

"Both."

I sighed. Hospitals were usually the main targets when the covvies attacked large cities. I'm not a hundred percent sure, but I think that our medical technology was probably more advanced than theirs. At least I never witnessed any Covenant soldiers receiving medical attention in the battlefield and over my career I had only seen a couple of elites that seemed to be wearing some sort of bandage. The grunts had to do what they could about injuries without any support from their superiors. Only the jackals had some semblance of camaraderie with their own species, often they pulled each other out of the battle in order to stop bleeding.

"Do you have a ship, Lieutenant?"

"No," I told the Captain. "I was in the _Naverone_ before this whole thing started. I haven't had any contact with them for a couple of days now. You can't be thinking about a way out already."

"At this point we still have a chance," Nezarian asserted. "Command is sure taking their sweet time sending troops from the other side of the planet. If we got those reinforcements tomorrow I'm certain we could finish off the Covenant ground forces in a matter of days."

I nodded slowly. It seemed weird that the UNSC hadn't sent all available troops to kick out the Covenant invaders. I would've understood their mindset had the invasion been planet-wide, but the Covenant had only touched down on Viery and some of the northern territories. They were confined to a small area, sure it was the most populated region of the planet, but we still had some few million soldiers available.

"Something's gotta be wrong if we're not getting troops from the other side of the planet," he went on. "My guess is that they're jamming all communications."

"That can't be good," I said, unsure about whether to share his opinion or not. Jamming a couple of thousand satellites and radio towers was no simple matter, not even for the Covenant.

Nezarian sighed. "Anyways, I'm working on transport to Aszod in case everything goes to hell. The shipyards should still have a couple of ships being prepped there. I suggest you do the same."

"Thanks," I told him. "I'll get started on that."

Nezarian nodded and was about to say something when Captain Flatt radioed in. "Attention all AAG units, there are enemy air assets punching through our defensive lines. Our flyboys can't stop them all so it's our job to finish them off. There are several SAM emplacements all over the city, Army is taking care of fortifying those. The Marines are moving out to meet the enemy ground forces right outside the city. We're left here with a few other units. Our job is to eliminate any alien that sets foot here. I'm transmitting your respective grids right now."

I stopped to look at the map that Flatt sent me and frowned when I saw the designated names for the other units in the downtown area. We had the Sea District, the residential area surrounding the Cargo Port near the ocean. Gauntlet Team, who would be protecting the civilians moving being moved there, was defending the Cargo port itself. From there they would be moved to the orbital elevators out in the ocean.

"Gauntlet?" I asked.

"We've also got Kopis, Claymore, and Falcata," Nezarian said. "Call me a wishful thinker, but those names sound like Spartan."

I agreed with him.

"As you may have noticed," Flatt checked in again. "Some of the other units are Spartan units. The only reason we're seeing those names is because AAG is now under temporary NAVSPECWAR. That's all I have to say for now. Start moving out."

"NAVSPECWAR?" Nezarian asked. "ONI's not gonna be happy about that."

I shrugged. "Not our problem. Good luck."

"Likewise Castillo," he replied, shaking my hand.

I turned back towards my men, who were beginning to get up and lift our spare ammunition crates.

"Marina! Heat up your engines!" I shouted. "Team-7, get on board! We've got some killing to do!"

* * *

><p><em>Thanks to <strong>General TheDyingTitan<strong> for proofreading this chapter._

_Hey, I'm sorry for the comparatively long hiatus in between chapters. Frankly, I'm having a rough time getting used to this new school I'm going to. Worry not, socially I'm doing fine. A lot better thane expected actually, I even got myself a date for Homecoming dance. I didn't even realize that school dances were serious shit here in the USA. Oh well, I guess I still have a lot of things to get used to and movies can't always do everything for you. The problem is that I ended up with two AP classes as well as one Honors in my schedule. So far I'm not finding them particularly hard, but they do leave a lot of homework. As does Calculus. Fuck calculus. I fucking hate math enough as it is. And don't forget that I'm in the football team, which only serves to take additional time from my day but is one of the reasons why I actually entered a new school with some friends and am doing well socially. The other reason being my incredibly good looks._

_Well, there's my excuse. It is also a warning of sorts, upcoming updates may be a little bit more scarce. On another non-story related note, I have figured out what my next project will be. A Halo-Mass Effect crossover. Terribly unoriginal, I know, but I think I could be unto a very original plot, at least I haven't seen anything that looks like it in this site. The kicker? It'll be an alternate timeline sequel to this fic. Frank will no longer be the main character for obvious reasons, but him and any other survivors will be supporting characters or one-shots. I'd tell you more, but we're still far from that point._

_Ok. Sorry. Let's talk about this chapter, shall we? Payat finds himself in doctor heaven, Frank and Pavel bond some more, and five of the guys in Team-7 are badly hurt. Badly enough that they won't be able to fight during the Siege of New Alexandria. To me, as an author, it means that the rest of the team gets more focus time. To you it means that you don't have to remember as many names. Astrid Vinter showed up, I'm sure that at least some of you remember her or her father. Good-looking girl, if you ask me. Doctor too... a real catch. Everybody is a little depressed that they aren't kicking the covvies buts out of Reach as fast as I expected. It's to be expected, after all, they don't know how this story ends. Next chapter is going to be fairly combat heavy, I'll try to make it long and awesome for you guys, but it might be another full week before it's done._

_I hope you enjoyed reading this chapters and look forward to your reviews._

_Stay strong._

_-casquis_


	199. Arrivals

Chapter CXCIX: Arrivals

**August 19, 2552 (UNSC Calendar)/**

**New Alexandria, Eposz, Reach, Epsilon Eridani Territory**

* * *

><p><em>"We should be bringing order to this chaos, sir."- Special Operator Third Class Chang "Preacher" Sun-Hoyt<em>

* * *

><p>I studied a map of the Sea District as we flew there, trying to get as much of it memorized as possible. The Sea District was something of an abnormality in New Alexandria. It hadn't been part of the original city planning. The port had once been separate from the city, not by much, mind you, but just enough. The people who worked there or some visionary businessman or other had started construction there. Most of the buildings there weren't much taller than four or five stories, a deep contrast to New Alexandria's skyscraper based architecture. The buildings there had also been constructed with cheaper materials. In short, the sea district consisted of short housessmall businesses of brick held together by polycrete. It gave the district a somewhat rustic appearance, but it deeply contrasted with the rest of the white glass towers on either side of them.

"There, Tower 58," Pavel said. "Tallest building in the district."

"Twelve stories. Impressive," Bee said sarcastically. "Not exactly tall when you think about it."

"Tall enough to die from the fall," Andy reminded him.

"No," I said. "Too visible. Marina, see any place you like?"

"There is a couple of old warehouses near the port. They look like they have old ceilings," she said.

I looked over the map again and sighed. "Alright. Here's the plan. We have two Warthogs for rapid deployment around the district and might be getting a Falcon gunship to help us move around later. We can't all stay together at the same time. Pavel and Caboose, you two each get a small fire team with you. I'll stay with Preacher, serve as sniper support."

"Are we using the Sledgehammer?" Marv asked.

"Not unless we have to," I told him. "Marina, drop Preacher and me off on Tower 58, then move to the warehouses. Caboose and Mata will bring down a section of the roof and let you park inside."

"Yes, sir," Marina replied cheekily, changing her course slightly.

"The rest of you are dropping in on Cross Avenue and spreading out from there," I went on. "Whenever we get reports of enemy troops you'll move in to destroy them. One fire team will engage while the other maneuvers behind on the Warthog."

"Simple shit," Pavel said. "Hard to mess up, do you understand?"

"Yes, Gunny!"

"Bee's on AA duty," I said. "Pilots will have to defend their own Pelicans. If all else fails we fall back to the warehouse and pull out from there."

"It's a little bit rough," Schitzo said. "But we don't have much to work with."

I nodded in agreement before catching myself. "We'll polish the plan as we go."

"This is your stop, Frank," Marina said, hovering her craft over the rooftop of Tower 58."

"Preacher," I called out. "Let's go."

"Yes, sir," he said, jumping down to the rooftop with one crate of ammo on either hand.

I hopped down immediately after him as Marina kept the Pelican moving over the rooftop. I landed on the rooftop just as the Pelican started speeding up and turned to follow it with my eyes as it descended towards the warehouses. I would've waited to see my men bring down the rooftop on the warehouses, but Preacher was already kicking down the door that lead inside the building. I followed him down the dark stairwell and into a surprisingly well-furnished apartment on the top floor. We started moving the tables into the corners of the building, making weak barricades to protect us from any counter-fire from street level. Once we had completed that task we waited for word from Captain Flatt. After five minutes had passed without an incident in our area Preacher leaned back on one of the couches and took a moment before leaning back forward and putting his hands together. Within a few seconds I heard him muttering prayers. A few of those were vaguely recognizable from my childhood in Earth. As soon as I began linking those prayers to my time there I began remembering all the things that I didn't want to and moved out of the room and into the kitchen.

"You can't repress it forever, you know?" Schitzo said, leaning against a counter.

I growled and opened the fridge, finding it almost completely stocked with food. I looked it over for a few seconds and decided to grab a pair of pizza slices wrapped in tinfoil. I smiled when I unwrapped them. Pepperoni. I took my helmet off and took a large bite, enjoying the taste.

"Frank, Frank?" my helmet said.

I sighed and put it on. "Yeah?"

"Please tell me you didn't fall asleep," Pavel said.

"I didn't."

"Ah, raiding the fridge, were we?"

"Yes." I admitted, still tasting cold pizza in my mouth. "What?"

"Caboose set up eyes for us. We've got three UAVs flying overhead us and a link to the security cameras in the district."

I nodded with satisfaction. "Good work. Are you ready to move out?"

"We're holding our position in the warehouse until you give the order," Pavel said. "Frank… there are still people here, not everybody left their homes."  
>I sighed. "There's not much we can do about it. The emergency broadcasts are still going on."<p>

"Should we send somebody to order them to leave?" Pavel asked.

"Good point, how ab–"

Five red dots pulsed in my helmet's HUD. A moment later they turned form dots into Spirit-shaped tags. They were flying in close formation and only a hundred meters from street level. I followed their progress with my eyes until it became evident that they were going to land a few blocks away. The drop ships rumbled past Tower 58 and moved in a straight line down Cross Avenue. I ran towards the windows and followed their progress with my eyes. They stopped in three different intersections, setting down troops and vehicles.

Preacher immediately picked up his Enhanced Marksman Rifle and zoomed in on them.

"Brutes," he announced. "They're setting up."

"Let's hit them early," I said.

"Pavel, we've got approximately a hundred eighty enemy infantry in Cross Avenue. I see two Phantoms moving out to scout."

"Roger that, I see them," he replied. "We should be there in a minute."

"I'm bringing my unit around the back," Caboose said. "Draw their attention."

I looked at Preacher and nodded.

He nodded back and looked through his scope and into the enemy. It took him all of three seconds to find the highest ranking brute in the place. He fired twice, hitting the brute captain in its unarmored left knee. The moment the brute fell Preacher fired another two times, hitting its spine just at the base of its skull. The man muttered a quick prayer for the alien and then waited.

I watched through the scope on my BR55 as the grunts scattered and the Spirit dropshits moved up to search for us. They couldn't stay here long or otherwise they'd be shot down. In fact, two of them were hit by the SAM emplacements around the city just a few seconds later, one of them crashed right on top of the troops it had just dropped, crushing about ten of them underneath. The other five dropshits turned around and flew away.

"We're closing in," Pavel said. "Tag the brute majors for us, will you?"

I complied with his request, taking a moment to mark every visible brute major as a priority target for Pavel. I watched silently as the enemy divided into squads and started moving down the avenue and in our direction. A few of them made their way towards a building on the side of the street, but Pavel's unit got there just in time. Four men hopped out of the troop transport Warthog and opened fire on the squad, cutting it down in a matter of seconds. The driver and passenger moved behind cover and began setting up an M247 machine gun which they promptly used fire on the lightly armored grunts and jackals.

"Weapons free," I told Preacher. "They don't have the weapons or support to blow this building up."

"Yes, sir," he replied.

I looked through my scope and found a jackal rapidly moving towards a shop. I fired a burst, hitting it in the waist and leg. Once it fell I quickly switched to another skirmisher that appeared to be moving towards one of the few deployable covers that they had set up. I drilled this one in between the shoulder blades and then switched to a pair of brutes using an SUV for protection. They were firing back at Pavel's fire team, hampering their movements. I took one out with two bursts to the head and Preacher did the same for the other one.

"May your sins be forgiven," he muttered quietly.

I ignored his praying and watched as the covvies slowly took cover and organized an effective counter attack. The ones closest to Pavel had all been killed by this point, and the other hundred fifty enemy soldiers still alive were running through the street to provide support to their comrades. I traced a pair of grunts with my rifle before firing on the brute leading them. Three bursts was all it took for it to fall, dead.

Preacher, meanwhile, was having considerably more success. His heavier barrel and increased muzzle speed provided more accuracy and firepower than my own rifle could manage. It wasn't as much as a regular sniper would do, but it was bringing brutes down with just one or two shots. Seeing his success with the large aliens I dedicated myself to hunting down the jackals with long-range weapons. I was surprised that only a couple of the jackals present possessed focus rifles. They didn't get a chance to use them, courtesy of three bullets in the brain to each of them.

"They're starting to get hot and heavy," Pavel said. "We've got sturdy cover, but they outnumber us."

I could see that. The covvies were all massing near Pavel's position, peppering it with plasma and needles. Only a few brutes remained, and Pavel's fire team was handling those that remained with semi-guided grenade launchers. Miri seemed to be having fun while she used her new attachment, calling out her kills in a giddy voice. I couldn't help but roll my eyes as she bisected a brute with her latest shots.

Still, they couldn't hold their position and expect to survive when they were outnumbered this badly. Six men are usually not a match for a hundred, no matter how good they are. I began mentally urging for Caboose to hurry up.

I was not disappointed. He appeared around a corner and moved into Cross Avenue with and M247 already mounted on the cage of the transport Warthog they were driving. Marv opened up with the machine gun while Dotsenko used his SAW to hit the enemies from behind. The covvie forces had massed themselves in between two streets and now had no way out. To escape they'd have to go through my men, and I knew Team-7 well enough that nobody went through us unless we let them.

The aliens began panicking. Sure, they were still outnumbering us by a hundred or so men, but they didn't have any weaponry and most of their leaders were dead. We had the benefit of UAV support as well as five machine guns with plenty of ammunition. My men fired indiscriminately into the mob of alien infantry, killing mostly grunts and jackals. A rocket flew out from Bee's launcher and destroyed one Ghost, killing two jackals next to it in the explosion. After that point everything went from bad to worse for the covvies. Their leaders hadn't even bothered with cover in the first place and they had been dropped in an eight-lane avenue with nothing but the occasional abandoned car for cover. After the brutes were gone the grunts and jackals did their best to survive and fight back, but my men were angry and indiscriminate. In the end we probably took longer than we should've and wasted more ammunition than was really necessary, but every last one of the hundred eighty Covenant soldiers that had been dropped was dead.

"Ten minutes," Bee said. "Must be some kind of record."

"Don't get too excited," Caboose told him. "El-tee and I still hold that one."

I chuckled over Preachers quiet prayers.

"Good work Preacher," I said as soon as he finished mumbling. "Nice aiming."

"Thanks, sir," he replied. "You too."

I nodded in acknowledgement and checked my empty magazine. Over the course of the last ten minutes I had burned through three magazines worth of ammunition. Preacher had done the same with four of his. We set ourselves to filling our empty mags with the 9.5mm ammo that we had brought from the Pelican.

"Move out," Pavel ordered. "Back to cover."

My men got up and slowly moved back towards the Warthogs. At no moment did they stop aiming at the carpet of corpses in the street. A grunts may fake its death in order to survive, but a brute may collapse from pain and injuries only to suddenly decided that it's still got a little bit of fight left in it.

"You keep praying for them," I told Preacher. "Why?"

"You know why, sir," he replied, setting one magazine aside and picking up another one.

"Just in case they have souls," I said. "But even if they did, do you think that they deserve to be forgiven?"

"God forgives all."

"I remember that one," I said, once again uncomfortable with my childhood memories. "But I also remember that you have to be repentant in order to be forgiven."

"Ah, you're a Catholic," Preacher noted.

"What? Aren't you?"

"Technically, yeah," he said with a small smile, "but I have a little different set of believes than most other Catholics do."

"I think everybody does," I said with a half-hearted chuckle. "Not even the pope herself complies with every single dogma of the church."

"True," he admitted. "I believe that it is our surroundings that are evil, not ourselves."

"I get where you're coming from," I said. "But the Covenant? They live to kill us and don't treat each other particularly well either."

"Think about the grunts, sir. Do you think they enjoy this?"

"No," I said. "But I've seen them enjoy butchering unarmed civilians."

Preacher laughed. "You're tough to argue with."

"I'm always right," I told him. "Of course I'm hard to argue with."

He chuckled some more. "Well, let me tell you how I feel about it. I don't think that every soul is born a sinner, quite the opposite actually. I think that every soul is good and it is its surroundings that mold it to be a sinner. But at the heart of it, everybody is a good person and in turn will regret any wrongdoing when the time comes."

"I've seen amazing displays of human generosity in this war, "I said in agreement. "But I've also seen the worst that we have to offer."

He nodded. "I don't have all the answers, sir. I'm not supposed to. That's part of what makes me so happy of having my faith. I truly believe that people are good and will keep on believing that no matter what."

"Let's say all people are good," I said, truly wanting to believe it as much as he did. "Them? The aliens?"

Preacher frowned deeply. "That's the problem, sir. I haven't seen anything to indicate that there's any good in them. They fight together, true enough, they care for their own men, also true, but they don't behave like I would expect good people to. Maybe it's just that they are so different, biologically and psychologically, from us that our morals and beliefs aren't compatible."

"You're saying that they are evil then," I half-asked.

"I'm only saying that they haven't shown any good yet."

"So why do you keep praying?"

"If I am wrong and these aliens, these Covenant races, are good, then their souls are deserving of forgiveness."

"Old Testament God would disagree with you. As do I."

"Old Testament God is kind of a dick," Preacher said. "As are you."

I grumbled under my breath, not wanting to laugh and trying to appear offended. "If you ask me, they are going to meet those cruel gods of theirs and will be punished for failing their task to exterminate us."

"They haven't failed yet," Preacher said, rather grimly.

"They haven't succeeded either."

"Funny world we live in, eh El-tee?"

"Funny isn't the word I would use," I told him.

"Good point, sir. Good point."

We settled into a slightly uncomfortable silence, neither of us wanting to keep the debate going. Our points of view were incredibly different. I hated the Covenant, I hated everything about them. They had killed my uncle, asshole that he was, they had killed Scarecrow, they had killed Almers, and they had killed Hanna, Emily, and Doctor Vinter. They had killed Polly, and Sandor, and Hoff, and Han, and Reeves, and Zepeda and more. They wouldn't stop until every last human being was dead. They were evil, there was no way around it.

Preacher, an oriental-looking man with a decidedly western mindset disagreed with me. He believed that they were doing evil, but that at their core they were good.

"We aren't exactly paragons of virtue either," Schitzo said with a small shake of his head. "Think about all those children in the Spartan program for starters. Think about surrendering grunts, the ones that aren't sent to ONI for vivisection are executed without a second thought. And don't forget the occasional torture we engage in."

_I never said we were good… How can we be good after all this?_

"I shudder to think at what comes after," Schitzo said in his trademark mocking style. His tone might've implied joking, but his words worried me. What would happen to the human race if we survived this?

* * *

><p>"Enemy signatures inbound," I announced almost tiredly. "Four dropshits. Phantom, Phantom, Spirit, Spirit."<p>

"Roger that, El-tee," Caboose replied, sounding as professional as always.

"Hold," I said, muting the line. "Preacher, what do you see?"

"They're flying close to the ground," he replied. "No Daemon tanks this time."

I sighed with relief. "Wraiths?"

"Negative, sir. Just infantry this time… Scratch that, we've got a watchtower being carried there."

"Roger that," I said. "Caboose, we've got a watchtower."

"No armor?"

"Negative," I confirmed. "Are Mata and Marv back yet?"

"Uh… negative, El-tee. They've maintained radio silence so far."

"Have you heard any shots?"

"Not since I sent them to clear number 82911. It could mean anything."

I nodded. "I haven't seen any movement in the windows, but I have a hard time believing that brutes could be that quiet when killing. Odds are on our favor for now."

"I'm hesitant to agree with you, sir," Caboose said, referencing the fact that Reach was under fucking invasion.

I sighed. "They should have that building cleared in about two minutes. If you don't hear anything from them in five send Ramirez and Serge to check it out."

"Yes, sir."

"Caboose. We can't have any more enemy troops unaccounted for, you hear me?"

"Yes, sir."

"I tagged the dropshits for you, although I'm sure you can use the UAVs well enough for that purpose. Good luck."

"Thank you, Lieutenant. I'll call if we need any help."

I cut the line and sat back down on the scorched couch. Tower 58 was no longer an option, not after the Covenant had unleashed a storm of plasma on it and dropped a platoon and a half on the rooftop in an attempt to take us out. In a way I was flattered, we had been taking out leader after leader since they showed up, but we were now in a shorter building, considerably less central to the district and had limited fields of fire. So far our strategy had involved Caboose's fire team luring the covvies into position while Pavel's team moved and attacked from the sides or behind. The problem was that we couldn't move fast enough before the Covenant dispersed. Right now we had as many as fifty unaccounted for enemy soldiers. I am certain that they were going door through door, killing any civilian that they saw while searching for us.

An ear-piercing scream interrupted my train of thought before being abruptly cut by plasma fire. Another civilian had been found.

"That one was closer," Preacher noted calmly, readjusting his scope to a nearby building. "They're pinning our location."

I nodded. "We might need another move soon," I said. "These impromptu flash suppressors are good, but we can't keep hidden forever."

After moving from Tower 58 we had both attached heavy silencers to our rifles, nearly muting the noise that they made when they fired. With the addition of homemade flash suppressors we were nearly impossible to spot. Nearly impossible.

"I've got eyes on an enemy squad in the alley," Preacher said. "They're crossing the street."

"Hold your fire," I said. "It's just three of them."

I followed the brute and two jackals with my scope as they dashed across the street. Instead of coming into our building they kept on going, keeping their bodies close to the wall. They remained in our sights as they moved slowly towards Cross Avenue.

A burst of gunfire from Caboose and my other men drew their attention.

"Fire," I whispered.

It was a well-rehearsed maneuver. Preacher had a more powerful weapon and so went for the brutes first. He fired three shots into the back of the brute's helmeted head, each one hitting within an inch of the previous one. The second shot overloaded the minor's weak shields and the third one cleanly punched through the armor and the brutes brains. By the time the alien had hit the sidewalk face-first the two jackals had both had their spines severed by my rifle. One of them struggled slightly, still not quite dead. I kept my eye on it for a while and decided against finishing it off. The jackal wouldn't be able to move by itself and didn't appear to have any headpiece with which it could transmit its location. Besides, they hadn't been facing us when we fired, so they had no idea where the bullets had come from.

"You've got three grunts moving in from your side," Marina broadcast a warning to Caboose's team. "They're coming through in about ten seconds."

"Thanks," Caboose huffed. "James."

"Got them," Ramirez replied.

I tried to connect the bursts of gunfire to my men's weapons, but the only one that I could make out clearly at this distance and over the cacophony of noise was Ramirez's saw. The mechanical noise that it made was clearly distinguishable even under these circumstances. The M247 that Serge was probably manning was running low on ammunition and so only fired in short bursts.

"I need two minutes," Pavel said. "Hold."

"Holding," Caboose replied calmly.

"I don't have eyes on you," I said. "I can't guarantee support from sniper units."

"When have we ever had that guarantee?" Bee asked with a small chuckle.

"Man's got a point," Pitcher said with a small laugh. "We'll be fine, sir."

I watched as the occasional plasma round, needle, and spike flew through the intersection and disappeared behind the buildings. I knew that Caboose's small team was right outside of my visual range. If he wanted cover he would stay where he was, but I couldn't provide support from there. If he wanted my support he'd need to move his unit back about fifty meters, exposing himself to fire from all sides for several vital moments. He could handle the pressure and so could my men.

"How do you figure Marv and Sergeant Mata are doing?" Preacher asked quietly.

"They're fine," I told him. "When was the last time you saw Marv make a mistake?"

"Outside of combat? Never," Preacher replied. "Sergeant Mata is a tough son of a bitch, too."

"See, nothing to worry about."

"Kind of hard to believe when you remember that Reach is under attack," he muttered. "Still, they should be about done by now."

"They've got two more minutes," I told him. "I'll start worrying after five."

He nodded and said nothing, instead opting to scan the windows of the various short buildings with his high-powered scope.

"Enemy unit, moving in to flank Staff Konstantinov," he said suddenly. "Five brutes."

"I see them," I told him, almost immediately spotting the huge aliens. "No armor on the minors. Leave the major for last."

"Copy," he replied.

"On you."

Preacher wasted no time and fired three shots at the closest brute. The distance was about three hundred yards, more than manageable with his EMR. I fired a fraction of a second after him, barely hearing the noise my rifle made with the state-of-the-art suppressor I had picked up at Mendez. The two brutes on the back collapsed almost noiselessly. Both their spines had been severed where the skull met the neck, rendering them completely useless hunks of meat. The other two barely had time to turn around before they died. This time we had to fire a couple of additional shots in order to account for our misses. By no means did we miss the brutes altogether, we only missed the spots that would bring them down immediately.

That left only an armored brute major left. Unlike its underlings, this specimen possessed power armor and fast reflexes. It dashed to the side, avoiding one of my bursts and crashing through a storefront. Unfortunately for the brute, the broken glass cut into its left leg, stopping it just enough for Preacher to fire two rounds into its back. The armor held, but the kinetic force pushed the brute back into the ground, where I helped take it out with sustained fire.

"We're going to need to move," Preacher said calmly after his prayers were done.

"Yeah," I agreed. "Take a pick."

"There," he pointed. "Five story building. It's got a tarp or something in the rooftop that we can use for concealment from Banshees and Phantoms."

"Sounds good," I replied. "You do realize it's across the street?"

Preacher turned and smiled. "I could use a little excitement."

We found ourselves on the exit of our current building just as Pavel's unit hammered the covvie squad Caboose had engaged from the side. I could hear the increase in gunfire and the desperate attempts of the covvies to fight back. I moved forward slowly, pressing myself against the walls on one side of the sidewalk and keeping my rifle aimed at the corners of every street and alley. Preacher did the same, aiming at the windows instead.

"Enemy unit neutralized," Caboose checked in. "I'm sending my men for Marv and Mata."

"Roger that," I replied quietly, scanning for movement. "Report in three."

"Copy."

I signaled for Preacher to stop and sneaked into a building entrance without actually going inside. I saw Caboose's Warthog drive past an intersection a few blocks in front of our current position and waited to see if any snipers revealed themselves when they tried to get a better look. As bloodthirsty as the jackals were, they weren't completely stupid, they knew that we were in the area and weren't willing to risk their feathery heads in order to get off one shot that would very likely miss altogether.

"Ok, I'll cross first," I said. "You got me?"

"I got you," Preacher said.

I sprinted across the relatively narrow street. It was only two lanes wide, but the lanes were big enough for a semi, which made it feel like a more daunting task than it already was. A shot rang out just before I made it across. I didn't turn back around until I was safely behind cover.

"Jackal," Preacher informed drily, his rifle smoking.

I nodded a quick thank you.

"Ready?"

"Ready."

He ran across the street while I furiously scanned for any movement. There was none. We moved to the building entrance and used our override code to open the door. It was clear that this building had been abandoned in a hurry, there was stuff strewn over the hallways and the first floor doors were all open. I took a moment to look at the grim scene and then moved down the hall to find the service stairs.

"Looks like we only have the main stairs," I told Preacher after a few seconds. "Your turn to go first."  
>Preacher sighed and strapped his large rifle to his back before pulling out a downsized version of the M7 SMG. It was basically the same model as the standard one, but the collapsible stock had been completely removed, turning it into a machine pistol of sorts.<p>

We didn't bother with clearing every single floor. We didn't have the time. We did, however, make sure that we weren't ambushed around the stairwell corners. The climb must've taken two minutes at the most, but it felt much longer. Once on the top floor we had to travel down the hallways to a different staircase that led into the rooftop.

"Go," I told Preacher, letting him kick the locked door open

"Sir," Caboose checked in. "I made contact Marv and Mata. They were running a little late and Serge caught up to them just as they finished the job."

"Good to hear," I replied, climbing out to the roof. "Regroup and wait for Pavel to engage the other drop zones. Avoid any other engagements unless necessary."

"Not hunting down everything anymore, sir?"

"Negative," I confirmed calmly. "There's too many of them and not enough of us. I'll give Captain Flatt another half hour before requesting support."

"At this rate, sir?" Preacher asked me. "We could lose control of the situation very quickly."

I groaned. We had already lost control of the situation. The only reason that we hadn't been forced to bunker down permanently in a vital structure was because of the Spartan unit defending the cargo port itself. Those guys were being constantly harassed by dozens of Banshees and troops were dropped constantly in their position. The brutes saw us merely as an afterthought, but they still chose to charge our position because it would give them another angle from which to attack the Spartans.

"Why is Gauntlet providing civilian escort and protection?" Preacher asked suddenly. "Don't get me wrong, sir. I'm all for saving people, but aren't Spartans offensive tools."

"Spartans are very versatile," I told him. "They can be whatever you want them to be and make you look stupid while they're at it. You raise a valid point, however. They should be using them on offensive operations."

"They could very well be used to destroy the enemy base of operations west of the city. Pull them into orbit, drop them back down right on top. It would take five minutes tops and they would kill all the enemy leadership within a few seconds."

The ODST inside me growled viciously at that, but I managed to keep the hatred for the Spartans inside. I had long since accepted what I was, what I had been turned into. I knew and understood that Spartans weren't just things, they were things that we desperately needed and couldn't have done without under these circumstances. I would never accept them completely, they were pushing the boundary of what meant to be a human, but they were pushing it from the wrong side.

"Command is not clear on everything right now," I said with a minuscule shrug. "We probably know more than most UNSC generals right now."

"We do have top clearance," Preacher agreed. "It all sounds so frustrating…"

"It is," I agreed. "And there's absolutely nothing you can do about it."

He fired twice, killing a jackal sniper on a building opposite ours. The bird leaned forwards and almost went over the window and into the sidewalk, but its legs caught on the windowsill.

"Your silencer is wearing out," I told him.

"I know. I picked silence over durability. This thing isn't designed to be fired so constantly and so often."

"You could've grabbed two silencers."

"God provides," he said, "but one does not always take the advantage."

"God provided indeed," I said, smiling slightly at the thought of millions of weapons all neatly lined up in rows, arranged by purpose, caliber, type, and rarity.

"I'm engaging a small enemy patrol," Pavel reported. "My unit can handle it."

"Roger," I replied, frowning. Pavel had referred to the Covenant unit as a patrol. If the covvies were sending patrols out it meant that they were now coordinating here in the ground and could send out units to accomplish tasks in a semi-orderly fashion. We were already losing control of the situation.

"We've got air support incoming," Preacher said. "Three Banshees, flying slow."

"Bee, that's you," I said. "Keep an eye on them."

"Shit, they shot down one of our drones," Preacher informed me. "Must've spotted it visually. What does that make, the fourth one they shoot down?"

"Yes. Captain Flatt won't be happy about that." I sighed and opened a line to her. "Captain Flatt, this is Castillo."

"Flatt. Go ahead," she replied.

"We've got enemy air assets flying freely over our quadrant. Three Banshees. They've shot down one of our UAVs. I'm requesting an immediate replacement as well as six Hornets to knock them out."

"UAV is dispatched. Don't make stupid requests again. You know damn well I can't give you any Hornets."

"Yes, ma'am. The Falcon gunship?"

"I've already secured a vehicle," she replied. "They are working on bringing it back to working order. It was damaged."

"Scraping the bottom of the barrel are we?" I asked.

"Good thing come to those who wait," Preacher told me.

"Listen to Sun-Hoyt," she told me. "If you wait a little bit more you'll get to see those 'good things' that he's talking about."

"Ma'am, I'm going to need additional bodies soon if I want to keep this situation under control. So far we've been successful in denying the enemy a solid foothold, but they are showing signs of coordination that indicate they have a staging point of sorts in this sector."

"Do their troop drops give any indication of where it may be?" Flatt inquired.

"Nothing specific. All their drops have been made in a six square block area. They don't stick there, though. I've got some of the enemy on thermal, but they're bringing up jammers and sticking to buildings. The UAVs can't help us with that."

"I'll work on getting you satellite imaging," she said. "And those reinforcements you asked for are prepping up. You're getting the survivors of A Company, from Mendez Joint Base."

"Sounds good," I said. "Armored?"

"Two Armadillos and a Scorpion."

I smiled. "Thank you Captain, I could kiss you."

"I'd rather you didn't," she replied, although her voice at least slightly humorous. "Flatt out."

"God provides," Preacher said, looking at me with a smile.

"Indeed," I said. "And right now he's providing targets. Ten o'clock. Fourth story window, second from left to right."

* * *

><p>"ETA for reinforcements is ten minutes," I assured Pavel. "Preacher and me are moving. Hold on."<p>

"I'm doing my best here, Frank!"

I cursed. "Caboose?"

"We're still here," he replied. "The Covenant haven't made any moves yet. The rocket discouraged them."

I ran across a street and into an alley with Preacher on my heels. I shot at three grunts that appeared on the other end of the alley, downing them all with a burst each. I emptied my magazine and replaced it just as a brute appeared, firing a spiker wildly. Preacher took it down while I reloaded and the spikes bounced of the brick walls, chipping red stone over us. I turned sideways and faced a back door on our target building. I gave Preacher just enough time to switch to his downsized M7 and kicked the door down, leading the way.

"Clear," I called. "Secure the door. We don't want any surprises."

"Should I leave a surprise?" he asked.

I nodded and waited as he set a small anti-personnel mine. It would be powerful enough to kill a fully shielded brute. As soon as he was done we started moving deeper into the building to find the service stairs.

"Looks like the covvies were here," Preacher whispered, referencing the blood on the floor and walls. There were spikes and scorch marks all over the hallway, but no human corpses. Either way, the blood was a clear telltale of what had gone down here.

"Move up," I ordered. "We've got six floors to go."

We walked as quickly as possible, trying to maintain our noise level to a minimum. The higher up we went we saw less signs of violence, but a lot of the civilians had been caught while trying to escape and the bodies were outside the elevator doors or on the stairwells. It was a grisly sight, seeing women and children impaled by spikes or disfigured by plasma, but it wasn't a sight that we could afford to be distracted by.

"Frank!"

"I'm moving as fast as I can," I replied, doubling my pace into a full sprint up the stairs. "Hold on!"

I knew it was a mistake the moment my boots started banging on those metal stairs. The noise echoed through the building, a building that I very well knew was probably still occupied by the enemy. I heard a gruff and small roar before I saw the brute jumping from two flights of stairs above me.

"This is high enough," I told Preacher. "I'll handle it, you help Pavel."

Preacher nodded and disappeared through a broken door.

I raised my rifle at the brute as it jumped a second time, but the alien tossed a grenade my way while it was in the air. The spike grenade embedded itself in the wall against me, forcing me to jump back to avoid the explosion. I landed hard half a flight down, but the spikes and shards of metal all flew above my head. I aimed up at the brute, but only squeezed off one burst before the animal was upon me.

My burst hit its knee, buckling it slightly. The brute immediately threw my weapon to the side before bringing down the bayonets on its spiker down on me. I rolled sideways and drew my pistol, aiming it at the brute. It kicked my hand away before I could get off one shot, smashing it against the wall. I instinctively dropped the pistol and the brute let go of its weapons to grab me.

This fucker was faster than its massive size would lead you to believe.

I twisted in the brute's grip, loosening myself enough to deliver a powerful kick to its jaw. As the brute looked up at the ceiling from the impact I used all my strength to try and break free. Even enhanced it wasn't enough. I did, however, gain a small amount of space to maneuver with, and when the brute decided to throw me against the wall it didn't hurt as much as it could've. I ducked under a follow-up punch that shattered the wall behind me and drew my knife from my boot, stabbing the brute upwards in the chest.

Unsurprisingly, it wasn't enough. The brute roared at me and lunged, hitting me in the left arm and sending me spinning down another half flight of stairs. I drew my smaller knife from it's sheathe in my chest and threw it into the brute as it lunged towards me. The brute covered its face, but the knife went into its left forearm and bought me enough time to recover. At this point my already enhanced body had adrenaline flowing through it. Time slowed down some more, even though it seemed impossible at this point. I drew my last knife from the small of my back. In the process of doing that my hand brushed against something that my brain had forgotten about.

The shotgun.

I had already pulled out my knife, but my other hand was free. With my right hand I finished an awkward throw, barely nicking the brute's torso while with my left I drew the small shotgun. I handled the unfamiliar shape awkwardly, but the brute had slowed down slightly after two thrown knives. I jumped to the side and avoided being plastered into the wall. The brute recoiled from the impact. A moment later its head was splattered into the floor, ceiling, wall, and stairs.

"Whoa. That thing sure packs a punch," Schitzo noted drily, wiping blood off his face. "Lots of spread, right?"

"Yup," I said, kneeling down to remove my embedded knives. My small knife and Damascus steel knife were deep inside the brute's thick skin, the other one had bounced off and was on the floor, with some blood on the edge. I barely cleaned them as I put them in sheaths, instead rushing to sheathe them as fast as possible while gathering my weapons.

As soon as I had my pistol holstered and my rifle back in my hands I jumped over the brute and ran upstairs to Preacher. I could hear the faint voices of my men as the shouted and called out both kills and near misses. The voices gradually began growing louder and louder and increased in desperation.

"Preacher, I'm coming up on your six!" I warned as I entered the hallways. "Which room?"

I didn't get an immediate reply, instead I kicked down the nearest door and entered what had once been and uncomfortably cramped room for someone with a very limited amount of money. The bed was neatly made, but the rest of the room had been tossed, with clothes strewn all over the floor and various cabinets left open. Someone had left this place in a hurry.

The small window provided with a decent angle to my men. Otherwise it wouldn't have been great, but the covvies were all up in their faces. They were so close in fact, that Pavel had ordered the bayonets to come out.

"Movement right! Brute, brute!"

I transitioned into sniper mode almost seamlessly. My body was still shaking from the fight with the brute and the pain was only just beginning to surface, but once I focused on aiming everything else became irrelevant.

Pavel's unit was neatly arranged into staggered lines, using a storefront and two cars for cover. Pavel and Dotsenko were behind the storefront, spraying the enemy constantly with their machine guns. Andy had one of the edges of the cars while Miranda covered the other, leaving Bee to protect the center. The street in front of them was covered with corpses and deployable covers. The corpses were mostly grunts and jackals, but there was enough of them that some brutes had piled them together to form decent meat shields.

The brutes were fighting fiercely, suppressing the machine gunners with sustained plasma fire. One of them had a brute shot on him, but Pavel was making a fine job of keeping its head down. One of the attackers fell dead when Preacher fired through its head from one of the adjoining rooms. I quickly joined him and started firing upon the brutes. The aliens had been focused on killing Pavel's unit and had all but forgotten about the two snipers racking up their kill count.

It didn't take long for them to realize where we were firing from, but even then they had trouble finding appropriate cover. The rifle rounds easily pierced their thick skins, but the brutes were hard beasts to kill. They realized that they were going to die and thus began firing wildly at Pavel's men with reckless abandon. Both of the girls were nearly decapitated by plasma bolts when wounded brutes got too close to them and Dotsenko was nicked by a spike somewhere in his left arm, but he kept firing.

"Flight of Banshees moving overhead," Marina announced. "They're going fast and low!"

"Bee, that's you!" Pavel shouted. "Miri, Andy, get back in here!"

I started firing faster, buying a small window for the girls to dive through the storefront. I then began hitting the brutes as fast as possible, but they were coming from all directions and even with Preacher helping it was a little bit hard to knock them all out. Bee, however, didn't seem to mind. He calmly put his rifle aside and brought his launcher to bear. He calmly aimed at the direction the Banshees were in and then called for cover.

He stood up a second later, bringing his rocket launcher up. Even with my enhanced reflexes I was surprised by the speed at which he zeroed in on the fast-flying Banshees and fired. He let two missiles fly nearly simultaneously and they smashed into the fliers head-on. Bee calmly examined his handiwork only to begin panicking when he realized that the two Banshees would sweep through the street, squishing him against the pavement.

"Oh shit!" he shouted at the moment of realization. He turned and ran straight into the storefront, going in through the open window. The Banshee husks crashed into the street and kept going, leaving a trail of smoke, dust, sparks, and fuel behind them. The brutes didn't have enough time or presence of mind to get out of the way and were splattered by the debris.

"Looks clear from here, Pavs," I said. "Move your asses now."

"Roger that, Farnk," he replied. "Caboose, we're clearing out, tag known enemy positions for us, see if we can sneak up on them."

"Done," Caboose said after some moments. "Some speed would be nice."

"We'll try," Pavel grunted. "Come on, let's move out."

I stood up and moved back away from the windows and out into the hallway. Preacher had already done the same and had his rifle slung over his shoulder when I met him.

"We're drawing too much heat," he said. "If we keep pissing them off like this they'll end up sending a fleet of tanks."

"We've got a tank of ours on the way," I told him.

"Scorpions can handle a lot of fire, sir, but in urban warfare tanks lose most of their advantages."

"Stop being such a downer," I grunted. "We'll put troops on the buildings on either side, bring down some structures, make some chaos."

"We should be bringing order to this chaos, sir."

"Don't go all religious on me," I groaned. "Those fuckers invading my home are chaos and I can't exactly fight them with order. Fire with fire, Preach."

"I understand, El-tee. Still doesn't make me comfortable."

"Have you ever been comfortable fighting this war?"

"No."

I raised an eyebrow at his bluntness. Sure, I wasn't comfortable either, but I was comfortable with the reason and way that it was being fought. I was comfortable knowing that it had to be fought. I just hoped Preacher was the same way.

"Let's go lower," I said, changing topics. "Reinforcements are going to roll through Cross Avenue, we've got enemy concentrations in between Franklin Street and Green Lane. That means that they'll have to go through 7th and 8th to get to Cross Avenue."

Preacher was no doubt following a map like I was. "Sir, the only building with a nice vantage point in there is a giant bull's-eye."

I agreed with him. It wasn't as tall as Tower 58, but it was a large, triangular building with a bright white marble façade that drew attention like low cleavage.

"Do we have subway there?" I asked.

"We've got a stop half a block away," Preacher replied. "We'll be exposed all the way from the station to the building."

I glanced at my tacpad. A Company would be arriving in five minutes. We would be hard-pressed to make that deadline even if we took the faster route.

"Do you know how to jack a car?" I asked Preacher.

He looked perplexed by the question.

"Where would I have learned to do that?" he asked me. "Seriously, sir? Me?"

I cleared my throat. "Had to ask. You know how in Bee's movies hijacking a car is a simple matter of breaking a window and rearranging some wires or pushing a magical device into the key slot that will morph into the shape of the key?"

"Yeah?"

"No wonder we changed to more advanced technology. Who back then would've thought that jacking a car would become harder than hacking a government server."

"I don't know," Preacher admitted, "But it sure did lower theft numbers."

The subway entrance had a couple of corpses there where two women had tried to escape inside only to be hit before they made it. We had already come through here and knew it was clear, but it never hurt to be cautious and I certainly didn't want to revive any incident in the past with a drone hive and an enclosed tunnel.

"Double time now," I ordered. "We're about to get ourselves a nice little kill zone and I don't want to let it go to waste."

We traveled through the subway unimpeded. The other station was considerably smaller, but still had some signs of looting and panic. The vending machines had been looted and only a couple of chocolate bars were left. I grabbed two for myself and tossed the other one to Preacher before we moved up the stairs. We stopped just shy of the surface and Preacher looked at me, waiting for my word.

"That's seventy meters to the nearest entrance," I said. "We don't have any cover. Do we sprint it or move while scoping for movement?"

"I thought you were the officer here, sir."

"You don't want the responsibility if we get killed then?"

He shook his head. "Whatever God wills."

"Sprint it is," I said.

"I was hoping He would will caution this time."

"Well, maybe He likes me more than He likes you."

"You're still alive after all these years so… Might be."

I chuckled. "Ready?"

"Yup."

"Go!"

We dashed out of the subway at a dead sprint. Well, it was a dead sprint for Preacher; to me it felt like a fast jog. I kept my eyes to the side, watching the dark windows for movement. I failed to spot any threats, but I wasn't about to discard them. We reached our point of entry without any incident, but we were fired upon when I smashed the glass doors. Preacher almost got his neck sliced, but instead he simply fell backwards in surprise. I fired back wildly, having a vague idea of where our assailant was. A second needle bounced off my chest armor in a surprising turn of events. Those things tended to penetrate almost everything they hit.

That second shot was enough for me to get a bead on the jackal sniper, but it ducked before I could hit it. I merely grabbed Preacher and dragged him inside the entrance even as he tried to pull himself to his feet

"You ok?" I asked, realizing that my chest hurt.

"Yeah. You were hit."

"Armor deflected it. Miraculously enough."

Preacher examined my damaged chest piece.

"God has a plan for you, sir. He wouldn't go to such lengths to keep you alive otherwise."

"God would kill me as soon as possible if He liked me," I said. "Plan or no plan, God doesn't want me happy."

"Maybe you'll be happy if you accept your role in the world."

"Preacher. Please don't preach, pardon the wording. Not right now."

He nodded in acquiescence. "As you wish, sir."

"Third floor," I said. "Hurry."

The building was empty. It was an office building, which meant that when the evacuation notice had come they had been forces to evacuate. All the cubicles were left exactly how they had been when the workers left. Everything was relatively tidy, no chaos or overturned chairs or holes in the walls. Stray bullets or debris from an explosion had hit a few of the windows, but the building itself appeared eerily empty, not completely ransacked.

"There," I pointed, "I'll take 7th and you watch 8th."

"Yes, sir."

"Pavel what's your situation?"

"I'm in position to take out once Covenant position," he replied quietly. "We'll try to go silent."

"Tell me when you're done," I said. "Caboose?"

"We're waiting for Pavel to clear the way," he replied calmly. "We're still pinned here."

"Alright," I said. "As soon as you've got a window move down to my position."

"Yes, sir."

"Pavel, you head back towards the warehouse, resupply."

"Wilco."

I got a hail from the commander of A Company a few seconds later. Interestingly enough, the man in charge of the unit was a gunnery sergeant. Probably the top ranking NCO left alive. I knew for a fact that they had at least one lieutenant still alive when we left Mendez, but the man had been hit. They were perhaps at sixty percent strength right now, but the tank and IFV bolstered their offensive and defensive capabilities.

"Lieutenant Castillo, good to be working with you again," the leader came in.

"Likewise Gunny," I replied. "Good to see you."

"Details are scarce, sir," he went on. "Where do you need us?"

"Just keep moving forward," I said. "I'm fortifying our current position, draw the Covenant into a sniper alley."

The Gunny chuckled. "Ah, I like the way you think, sir. I'll position my vehicles to appear as non-threatening as possible. You want 7th and 8th for the sniper alleys?"

"Yes," I said.

"Alright, I'm moving my men into position."

I watched as A Company settled into defensive positions. Some of the soldiers entered the building and began clearing the bottom two floors, finding no sign of enemy activity. The jackal sniper fired on the soldiers not soon after, hitting an unlucky fellow in the chest the man went down, but the medics got to him almost immediately, presumably stabilizing his condition before he passed. That's when the Armadillos truly began drawing the attention that I wanted them to. They retaliated against the sniper with a barrage of explosive rounds into the building it was in. A whole section was brought down and the jackal was either torn to pieces or crushed under the rubble.

"There's the noise I was hoping to get," I said grimly. "Gunny, send up any marksmen you've got. Keep them in the second floor."

"Alrighty," he replied. "They're moving."

I saw two blue dots separating themselves from the bulk of A Company and immediately focused back on 7th. The street was empty, but the crumbling of a building was not something that went unnoticed. Already I was getting images of enemy movement.

"A Wraith?" Preacher asked. "How the hell did they manage to sneak a Wraith in without us noticing?"

"I don't know," I said, groaning. That one was going to be a bitch to handle in enclosed quarters such as this. "Gunny! We've got a Wraith in the area, I'm linking you to the drone following it, move your vehicles and men accordingly."

"Thanks for the heads-up, sir."

"I see enemy targets," Preacher informed me calmly. "Seven hundred meters and closing."

"Copy," I replied. "Let them hit the two hundred meter mark."

"We're gonna be pushing our skill there," he noted.

I chuckled. "We me suena a manada."

"What?"

"Just try and keep up," I taunted.

"Oh, I'm the one that should be saying that, sir. Didn't we agree that God was against you?"

"I think we actually disagreed on that and you were on the opposite side of the debate."

"Let's focus on the task at hand, shall we, sir?" he said cheekily. "Two fifty and closing. A Company is ready for a crossfire at the fifty meter range."

"I see," I acknowledged. "Pavel?"

"We took out two enemy units for a total of twenty-two kills," he checked in. "Knives only."

"I'm proud of you," I said honestly. "Start heading back. Caboose?"

"Already en route. I'll let you know."

"The plan comes together," I said to Preacher in my best evil mastermind voice. "Even when the world comes apart."

"There's a silver lining in everything," he asserted in response. "Not a lot of silver on this cloud, but still…"

I rolled my eyes. "Shut up and let the carnage begin!"

He didn't need another word. We both fired our first shot almost at the exact same moment. I hit a jackal, Preacher presumably hit a brute. I assume that his target went down at the same time mine did, but soon after I completely compartmentalized him away from my current point of focus. I looked for the most valuable targets and took them out as fast as possible. It was in situations like this that I really noticed just how fast I had become. It was literally an overnight thing, but I loved every minute of it. Jackals moved slower, bolts dragged themselves as they flew, and every little glint or reflection seemed to be highlighted in my sight.

Brutes and jackals went down easily, leaving behind confused grunts. I somehow managed to force the enemy force to stop after I killed twelve of their number, and only then did they begin firing back in my general direction.

"Spirit inbound, Frank," Marina said. "It's bearing down on you form the 7th."

"Got it," I replied. "Gunny, did you catch that?"

"Affirmative, Lieutenant. I'm preparing my SPANKRs."

The Spirit slowed down before actually coming close enough to make it obvious that it was gunning for me. It dropped down additional troops, but this time it was an obnoxiously weird drop. Ten hunters jumped out of the cargo bays, shaking the craft as they left it. They immediately moved together with their bond brothers and formed the single most intimidating phalanx that I had had the misfortune to see in my whole life.

"Oh, fuck."

"Oh, fuck," Schitzo echoed.

"Gunny, I've got ten hunters moving down 7th!" I shouted. "I need you to move an Armadillo up and stop them ASAP!"

"Did you say ten?" he asked.

"Yes!"

He gave the word and one of the IFVs rolled into position. It brought its auto cannon to bear just as the hunters began warming up their fuel rod cannons. The 'Dillo fired head-on at the hunters, but for some reason this vehicle had the high-explosive version of the rounds, not the armor piercing ones. Normally that would've been enough, but the phalanx meant that the shockwaves were absorbed by at least three hunters at any given point. The occasional round hit the shoulders or legs, tearing huge chunks of armor off, but not enough to kill them.

"Ah shit," I muttered.

The hunters opened up on the Armadillo. I couldn't directly see the effects of their weapons, but the IFV was knocked backwards at least three meters before coming to a stop at a tilted angle. The gunner didn't stop firing though, instead it switched to the edges of the formation, succeeding in taking out one of the hunters out. A Company repositioned and sent most of their troops to back up the Armadillo, pummeling the hunters with smaller caliber rifles as well. Grenades flew as I did my best to keep the brutes firing on the soldiers from doing too much damage. The hunters were moving at a brisk pace, gaining ground quickly and tightening their phalanx whenever one of them died. I fully expected them to finish off the Armadillo and move in to engage the regular infantry. Even with four of their number dead, six hunters were still enough to wipe out a company caught unprepared.

Instead they raised their cannons at my window.

"Ah shit," I said yet again. "Move!"

I jumped to my feet, my body not nearly as fast as I would've liked it to be. I moved through the office cubicles with Preacher close behind me. My vision slowly turned greener and greener as the fuel rods closed in. My legs moved in incredibly slow motion as my mind tried to get my body to escape the danger. Even my eyes seemed to be taking a while to move where I wanted them to. I registered the sound of glass shattering behind me and the whole world went green. I jumped forward, diving as far away from the blasts as possible. At this angle the hunters had a relatively nice window before their shots hit the ceiling and could very well burn me alive before they reached that point.

I heard the explosions as some of the fuel rods went over me. There was a scream, there was pain, and then something fell on my head, knocking me out.

* * *

><p><em>This chapter was proofread by <strong>General<strong>_**_ TheDyingTitan_. **_Let it be known that he wants to improve as a proofreader and appreciated constructive feedback on any mistakes that he might've had._

_Well, before I go into an overview of sorts for this chapter I want to apologize for the longer than usual delay in between updates. You all know that I just moved to a new country, but I just moved into another house because the last one was too small and this one was the one that we actually planned to move into, but the family living here hadn't left when we arrived. I was stuck in between school, sports, family, and ferrying our stuff between this house and the last one. I barely had any time to write. I was going to post this yesterday, but I was simply exhausted. I even went into bed without taking a shower after a particularly arduous football practice (I'm doing alright there, by the way). You have no idea how disgusting it is to sleep in a bed with just a blanket, a pillow without a pillowcase and no AC. Fucking hell if you ask me._

_So there's that._

_Frank's squad is decimated, only one KIA, but a lot of WIAs. We got a sniper-heavy chapter. I let the basics of sniping go down the toilet and instead gave you this little thing of hopping around buildings and then staying in your position even when you're made. The rest of the guys were mostly in the background, so you could say this was basically a Frank and Preacher chapter. Nice guys, aren't they? Well then. That's about it. I had absolutely no fun writing this because it took way too long. I hope that it is at least decent enough to make up for the long wait._

**_Takalo_**_ I hope you were satisfied by the brute scene, man._

**_outcast's redeemer_**_ You're half right there buddy. If you remind me at the end of Reach I might just tell you why there were no reinforcements._

**_AFlameofVengance _**_I'd like to agree with you. Really, but I'm terrible at math and that's probably not going to change any time soon. So for the time being I still hate it._

**_fantasydelver_**_ welcome to the Big Leagues. Count yourself amongst the select few that have achieved this. Reading your way through the absolute bullshit that were the first few chapters is something to be proud off. Making it all the way over here even more so. I tip my hat to you (and thank you for the reviews). As for the name similarities, it was a total coincidence, but I like the reference a lot. Frank Castle v. Francisco Castillo. That would be a fight worth seeing._

_We went over pretty much everything I think. Homecoming is on friday, I'll let you know how it all goes. Wish me luck in the form of an astounding number of reviews. You know what I'm talking about. Review you lovable bastards._

_I hope you enjoyed this chapter and that the 10,000 words I wrote down just for you guys were enough to satisfy your interest in my humble story._

_Stay strong._

_-casquis_


	200. Man of War and Medicine

Chapter CC: Man of War and Medicine

**August 19, 2552 (UNSC Calendar)/**

**New Alexandria Hospital, New Alexandria, Eposz, Reach, Epsilon Eridani Territory**

**Corporal Aaron "****Payat****" Eidelberg**

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><p><em>"As military surgeon you get to see the aftermath of battles, the worst injuries and mutilations that you can imagine... At least you don't have to witness whatever caused them."<em>

* * *

><p>"We've got shrapnel in the chest and abdominal cavities," the nurse said tiredly "Medics managed to pull out the larger pieces before bringing him here?"<br>I nodded, putting my rifle against the corner. "Thanks," I said, avoiding calling her by her name because I didn't know what it was "What's the prognosis?"

"Positive," she said.

At this point positive meant half and half. The man had probably been stabilized for long enough, but if the operation didn't save him we would start moving him down to the lower floors for a quick trip to the morgue.

The man's torso was a mess, his vest had already been taken off, but his top was a bloody tatter. I pressed my eyes against the machine's eyepiece and took a deep breath, getting my hands on the controls. The machine immediately detected three separate layers of clothing and automatically began removing them. I drew a few bright green lines right above the shrapnel wounds and let the machine's pliers punch through on automatic. Once there I had to be extremely careful not to cause additional damage. A little bit of tissue tear here wasn't bad, but many veins and arteries had been nicked when the shrapnel flew in, if I wasn't careful when I pulled it out I could finish the job.

"Nice and easy," I muttered "Be ready to apply biofoam."

"Yes, doctor," the nurse said.

I smiled at that. I had been called doctor several times now and had to admit that I was loving it.

"First one's out," I said "Go."

A little blood bubbled out, but nothing too bad. The other pieces would be trickier. I had to make one of the cuts larger to avoid hitting an artery. I pulled out three more pieces of shrapnel, leaving me with only three dozen more to go. The man's heartbeat was slowly going down. He didn't have much longer.

"Start stitching him up," I ordered "I'll work around you."

The visual display showed a pair of hands stitching closed the empty wounds. The nurse was good at this, stitching inside and out faster than the machine could work.

Suddenly the machine stopped responding to my movements before the lights went out.

"Shit," she said.

"What's the time for the generators to kick in?" I asked.

"Ten seconds doctor," she replied "But I don't know if they can handle what this hospital is going through."

"It'll have to do for now," I said as the lights came back on.

I removed most of the shrapnel before the man flatlined. I tried to revive him three times before giving up. The trauma damage had been too much for his body to bear, and even with the assistance we gave him he hadn't managed to pull through.

"Time of death is… 23:59 Viery Eastern," she said "Private Miguel Darter."

"Move him out," I said "Get the next critical in here."

"Yes, doctor."

I sat back down and took a sip of water. I had been at this for eight hours now. Not exactly the longest shift a doctor had ever pulled, not even close to the longest operation, but seeing most men die even with this impressive piece of technology I had in my hands was not something I could enjoy.

"Aaron," I heard "Aaron!"

"Yeah?" I asked, looking at the source of the voice "Doctor Vinter, how are you?"

"How do you think?" the beautiful blonde replied scathingly "Maintenance tells me that energy consumption will run the generators dry in two hours."

"Two hours?" I exclaimed "That's bullshit Doctor Vinter."

"Tell me about it," she said "We were replacing half of our generators due to age and wear when this shit happened. The half we have consists of antiquated technology."

"Can we get anything here?"

She shook her head "Generators are sent to frontline military units. I'm trying to get some generators from adjoining buildings, but our power grid is supposed to be so good that very few private buildings bother with them."

"What about other public buildings?" I asked, beginning to evaluate our next patient. She had been badly burnt by a plasma explosion, both her legs and right arm would need to be amputated and most of the skin on her chest would be removed as well

"Police stations are all being commandeered by military," she replied, looking over the operation with vague interest. "Firefighters are as busy as it gets for them, and they do need their generators to keep going. Public offices are mostly abandoned, but those generators have already been hogged by the military."

"What then?"

"I'm being stonewalled," Vinter said simply "I'm arranging for transport to Esztergom for the most critical patients. NAPD has agreed to lend us two dozen Pelicans and an Albatross. I'm having a couple of commandeered yachts flown here as well. Army boys are loving that one."

"Piloting a yacht?" I asked rhetorically, confirming that the patient was properly sedated "What's not to like."

"Careful," the nurse urged as I began removing the left leg "We need to get rid of all damaged tissue."

"I know," I replied.

The laser cauterized the wound as it went. I deftly adjusted intensity and angle in order to get rid of the charred and dead skin without cutting too much off. It took maybe about a minute to get the leg off, after which the nurse tightened a bandage over it. I frowned at that sight, we were running out of high-tech medicine fast.

"When are the yachts due?" I asked, moving on to the next leg "We could fit at least a hundred men into each of those."

"I estimated it at two hundred and ten per yacht," Vinter replied, pulling a stool and taking a seat. Her eyes were red and weary, even worse than mine looked

"They should be here in about an hour. They're moving them from the northern suburbs."

"Alright then," I said "If there's anything else that you need me to do, I'm here."

"Right now I need you to be a doctor," she said "Not a soldier."

"Marine," I corrected "Technically I'm a trooper, but I never really did become a real ODST."

"Sorry," she apologized "I don't usually make that mistake."

"You should get some sleep," I told her.

"I can't," she replied.

"Doctor Eidelberg is right," the nurse said "You should get a quick nap, Doctor."

"Maybe fifteen minutes," she said "That won't hurt, will it?"

I shook my head and smiled slightly even as I finished amputating the second leg "It won't."

It did. For every moment that she slept another wounded man perished because there was no doctor to help stop the bleeding or pull out the shrapnel. But even if she was helping, she couldn't keep this pace forever. If she tried to stay awake then she would start making mistakes, and those would kill more wounded.

"Does the coffee machine work?" I asked the nurse "Get her a coffee and bring it here."

"Yes, doctor."

I lasered off the arm by the time she was back.

"Put it here," I ordered, reaching into my butt pouch. I found the little tube that I was looking for and popped a combat stim into the coffee cup. When the nurse raised her eyebrows at me questioningly I just gestured for her to go back to work.

This next part was not something that I would enjoy. Her whole chest had been badly burnt and her breasts were all but gone. It gave me a weird feeling. I didn't know what it would feel like to lose my breasts seeing I didn't have any, but a woman losing them felt to me like she would be losing part of what made her a woman. She would get UNSC paid-for breast implants if she made it out of here along with three artificial limbs, but I don't know if it would feel like the real thing.

Maybe I'm wrong. The only comparison I have to her boobs is my dick, and losing my dick would certainly be a traumatic experience, no matter how big or well-circumcised the replacement was.

_That was a weird sentence._

"She should be fine," I told the nurse "Get me the next patient now, we don't have much time left."

"Yes, doctor!"

I smiled once more despite myself. I loved being called that.

* * *

><p>"Please stop!" he shouted. "Stop!"<p>

I ignored the screams and kept on going. The poor man was in pain but his brain just wouldn't let him pass out. I made sure that the pliers were firmly gripping the spike and then yanked violently just as Doctor Vinter pushed down on his chest. A spurt of blood landed on her face, covering the dried blood on her cheek. I tossed the spike aside and opened the wound with two fingers. The man screamed loud enough to scare the souls in Gehenna itself. I ignored it as best I could and spread the wound wide enough for Astrid to crudely stitch the man's torn heart. It took her a little bit longer than it might have done otherwise on account of the shaking and struggling, but as soon as she was finished I pulled my fingers out and poured biofoam in the open wound. I was prepared for the screaming that followed, but it didn't mean that I didn't close my eyes at the intensity of the man's pain. As soon as the biofoam attached itself to the tissue and stemmed the blood pouring out of his heart Astrid pulled out another needle and stitched the wound closed.

"You're good," I told the man "You're good."

The man stopped screaming, but instead he began whimpering and sobbing in pain. It was a shame to see brave men like this. I moved on to the next injured soldier in the row, but the poor bastard was already dead, his eyes wide open. I closed them in passing and then worked my way to the next injured man. The roaring of Pelicans barely distracted me now, even the shouts and instructions didn't affect my efficiency much. I was having an increasingly harder time handling the moans and screams of pain though, it had been what seemed like an eternity since I had arrived here and the wounded just kept coming.

"How are we doing?" I asked.

"We've still got three more floors to move up here!" Astrid shouted over "They've started targeting the Pelicans!"

The situation was so bad that she didn't even care if the wounded heard her.

A Wraith mortar shell landed just shy of the edge of the terrace, crushing some glass and scaring the shit out of the doctors. I ignored it as best I could and began stitching up another woman. She was trying to stay calm, but the laceration on her arm was deep and bloody. She looked very pale. I gave her a small smile and began stitching. She wouldn't have been classified as anything close enough to a dangerous condition had she showed up an hour earlier, but all our equipment was out of juice and the generators had been either damaged or destroyed by Covenant scout groups. The Army boys had killed all the perpetrators, but not after they had achieved their goal.

"Payat, Payat, do you copy?!"

The voice in my helmet seemed like something out of a dream at first. I didn't stop stitching as I replied.

"Copy that."

"Payat," Gunny Klaus went on "I'm getting chatter that points to an assault on NA Hospital. Be on the lookout."

"Thanks, Gunny," I replied.

Just like that, he hung up. I raised an eyebrow at the short warning and then had my other one join it when I realized that I had received the word from Gunny and not from the El-tee. It could mean anything, but it could also mean that Castillo had been killed and shit here was even more fucked up than this monumentally fucked up situation would've indicated. I finished stitching up the woman and stood up, looking for Astrid.

"Doctor Vinter!" I shouted loudly "Astrid!"

"What!?" I heard her shout back.

"We gotta get this people out of here!"

"I'm trying!"

"No! We really have to get them out of here!"

There was a short moment of relative silence as the artillery strikes stopped and the gunfire in the streets was subdued for a bit. I don't know whether it was a coincidence or just God's way of fucking with us mere mortals, but it only gave the following event that additional shock factor. I looked up to see one of the freshly arrived Pelicans blow up. It had just been loaded up with as many as fifteen injured soldiers. I couldn't hear the screaming over the sound of the Pelican's sputtering engines. I ducked over a soldier, but the Pelican's pilot managed to get the craft to land away from the terrace. I didn't see it slam into an adjoining building, but I heard it and the secondary explosion well enough.

But that wasn't it. A flight of five Banshees had made it through our AA defenses and mercilessly strafed the wounded soldiers and assisting doctors. I stood up, completely abandoning the wounded men below me, and running perpendicular to the strafing banshees. I ducked behind a big ornamental step and waited for the plasma bolts to pass. The screaming Banshees rocked the whole rooftop terrace as they passed overhead. Two of them were hit by missiles fired from the street, but the rest of them just scattered and disappeared.

"I need anti-air up here!" I shouted loudly, addressing the soldiers helping up here "Come on, get the order!"

I was about to get back to work when the building shook again. On second thought, it wasn't the building that shook, it was only the rooftop. It took me longer than I care to admit to notice exactly what happened. It wasn't until I turned around and analyzed the situation that I realized just exactly how fucked up this was. My inner Jew surfaced for a moment there, wondering why the terrible stuff always happened to my people.

"Pods!" some soldier shouted.

It wasn't until a brute kicked down the hatch on the pod that everyone's screaming intensified. The brutes went for the easy kills first, shooting at the nurses or the wounded men and women that couldn't fight back. I watched for a second as plasma burned through the ranks of wounded before I brought my rifle to bear and squeezed a well-placed burst into the brute's temple. The alien collapsed, but not before it had killed at least five defenseless men and women.

It wasn't the only alien on the rooftop. Other brutes had dropped down in insertion pods oddly reminiscent of ODST HEVs. Most of the brutes had focused on the easy targets, strafing the rows of wounded and aiming for the doctors and nurses in bloody scrubs. A few, however, were more professional than their idiotic brethren. One of them was a hammer-wielding chieftain and the other two were bodyguards with bright red armor.

"Hit the chieftain!" I shouted, firing at the brute in question "Move the wounded down!"

A few doctors were quick to react, dragging injured men and women towards the elevators. The soldiers were scared, but they were still highly-effective professional killers. They quickly took out most of the brutes and forced the others to stop their rampage. At least sixty men and women had been killed in the span of ten seconds, but an equal number were still alive and could be moved to the lower floors within two minutes. Once again we faced the problem of holding the enemy back for the required period of time.

"Eyes on the chieftain!" I shouted, giving out orders "Get men around, keep them pinned on all sides!"

The soldiers slowly started shuffling sideways, covering each other and strafing the brute positions with their assault rifles. I stayed where I was, keeping my rifle firmly trained on the place where the chieftain was taking cover. The brute began moving, but a trio of snapping rifles kept it back down. I remained nearly immobile, half my body out of cover.

"Twenty seconds," Astrid shouted "Cover for us!"

"You heard the lady!" I shouted "Twenty for them and we're out!"

"I'm calling in a strafing run on the rooftop," a soldier said "As soon as we're safe we can-"

The chieftain leapt out of cover. Its whole body covered in streams of golden energy. Everyone who had earned the right to call himself a veteran knew what that meant. It meant that the massive fucker was nearly invulnerable for a short amount of time. It wouldn't need that much to smash us all into a pulp with its invincibility shields on. It swung its hammer over its head and circled it twice before catching up with a running soldier. The poor man's back was nearly shattered as the hammer hit him in the side. The gravity burst sent him flying to the side and falling out of the building.

"Fall back!" someone shouted the obvious "Cover the elevators!"

A grenade detonated right next to the brute chieftain, making it stumble but otherwise leaving him unharmed. I fired a couple of wild bursts at one of its bodyguards and slid into cover behind one of the elevator pylons. There were still a few wounded men here and the doctors with them looked like they were about to piss their pants.

The doors dinged.

"Hurry!" I shouted.

The chieftain was too fast. It landed amongst the wounded after a powerful leap and swung its hammer in a circle around itself. The gravity bursts sent bodies around like rag dolls, both soldiers and medical personnel were caught in the slaughter. I forced myself to turn around and ignore the carnage behind me even as blood sprayed all around me. Instead I brought down a brute bodyguard, stalling the advance of the others.

I tossed my grenades out and jumped into the elevator. Another soldier made it inside before the chieftain could kill her, but the brute was in the middle of a blood frenzy and wasn't about to let us go so easily. It jumped inside just as the doors closed, leaving us trapped with 600 kilograms of death. I fired my rifle point blank into the brute's face. It still had its shields on, but the kinetic force was enough to send it reeling into a wall. Once it fell down its invincibility shields disappeared, leaving it considerably less well-defended, but still shielded and armored.

I reloaded.

The woman with me fired her pistol twice at the brute before it batted her aside with its hand. I aimed at it after pulling the bolt only to be kicked into the opposite side of the elevator. I struggled to get some air into my lungs as the brute stood up, its headdress touching the ceiling. It gripped its hammer and tried to swing, but there wasn't enough space in the elevator, and half the wall was torn off with the gravity burst, stopping the elevator abruptly.

"Aim for the gaps!" I shouted at the woman "Knee!"

She was in a considerably better angle than I was. She fired the rest of her pistol's magazine into the brute's knee, forcing it down slightly. I managed to raise my rifle once again and squeeze off a sustained burst, but the regular shields held and the brute batted my rifle away from me before bringing its meaty fist overhead for a haymaker. I rolled to the side, but the impact of its fist on the floor shook the elevator and made me jump up slightly. I reached for my MA5 and turned just in time to see the brute backhand the soldier across the shoulder. I heard a crack and saw her slam into the partially destroyed wall. I took advantage of the brute giving me its back and jumped on top of it.

Once there I grabbed onto the ledge of the elevator and pull myself up. The brute held on to my leg, pulling me back down. I turned around and fired another long burst of my rifle before it could use its full strength. The brute let go and I grabbed onto one of the cables that kept the elevator going. I aimed at the base of the cables and fired what was left of my magazine. The box fell down a few meters before the emergency brakes kicked in.

There were a couple of gunshots before the chieftain quelled them with a sickly crunch. I closed my eyes and held on, my legs swinging below me. I put my rifle on my back and grabbed one of my grenades, activating it. It was a simple matter of letting it fall into the elevator and watching as the explosion tore the metal box apart. The chieftain roared as it fell, but hit after hit drained its shields and then broke its bones. It was a long fall before it would hit the bottom. By the time the chieftain reached the base of the building then it would be very much dead.

That still left me, hanging by a cable inside an elevator shaft.

"Ah shit," I muttered much like El-tee did when something went to hell "Astrid, do you copy? Astrid?"

She had been wearing an earpiece to communicate with everybody and coordinate the evacuation. I'm not entirely sure why Astrid had become the de facto leader of the hospital. She was way too young for that role, but everybody had been deferring to her opinion even before we got here. I waited for her reply.

"Aaron, you're alive?"

I sighed with relief "Very much so. I'm in the elevator shafts. Could you get someone to open the doors on floor 49, please?"

She sighed "How'd– I'm sending someone up. Just hold on."

I looked up at my hands tightly gripping the cable "Oh, believe me, I am."

It took four minutes for the doors to open and then another minute for me to swing perfectly into the frame of the elevator doors. My feet landed on the edge and my arms swung desperately as I tried to regain my balance. The two soldiers reached out and grabbed me by my shoulders, pulling me back inside the safety of the building. I fell forward and took a couple of deep breaths. My arms were burning.

"Thanks," I heaved, my body shaking.

"No problem," one of them said, helping me back up "Doctor Vinter told us to bring you down to the MagLev station."

"Are we evacuating?"

They nodded "We can't go through at ground level and the park terrace is no longer an option."

"So we're sending everybody to a different building, then?" I asked, moving with them at a brisk jog.

"Correct," one of them said.

"Where are we going?" I asked.

"We're not sure yet. It's either Vyrant Telecom or Olympic."

"Huh," I muttered to myself _ONI Central?_

My thoughts were interrupted as a Phantom appeared on the windows of the hallway bridge. This bridge was the only way to cross to the main tower of the hospital and we were already too far in to simply turn around. The Phantom's door gunner began firing at us, shattering the windows on either side. We moved our fast jog into a full-on dead man's sprint, as El-tee liked to call it. Plasma flew all around me and I thanked Adonai for the grunt's incredibly bad aim. It was still a long way to go and I refused to let myself become overconfident. In the end all those speed and endurance exercises that El-tee made us go through paid off. I made it to the other side and turned around just in time to see one of the soldiers struck in the side of the head by a bolt. I saw exactly what happened as the superheated plasma burned his skin and melted his brains inside his skull. He fell right in front of me, smoke coming out of his eye sockets.

I felt like throwing up.

"Come on," I said, urging the other soldier to keep moving.

"Wait," he said, kneeling down and grabbing the man's dogtags, pocketing them.

"I'm sorry," I said awkwardly.

"It's war," he replied "Let's go."

The rest of the journey was made in silence, with only our boots hitting the floor. We began hearing the sounds of the dead and the dying once we closed in on the MagLev station. I had been expecting waves of wounded men and women to be waiting, but I hadn't prepared myself for the sheer volume of bodies covered in blood and bandages. Burns, lacerations, and amputations were all equally common. Some men had the advantage of a stretcher or a wheelchair, but most had to deal with their injuries in the cold floor. Doctors moved from one place to another, either in lab coats or in bloodied scrubs. A few nurses here and there were quite evidently shellshocked, looking off into the distance with a dead look in their eyes. The moans of pain were accompanied by the sounds of prayer.

"Aaron, you made it," Astrid said, standing up from next to a recently deceased Marine "Good."

I smiled slightly. That was more concern than Castillo had ever shown for me.

"Before you ask," she went on "Medically there's nothing that you can do to help. We ran out."

"What?" I asked, confused.

"We ran out. There's no more stitching cord, no more tissue webs, no more biofoam cans, no more blood, no more nothing. We're burning through the last of our bandages Aaron."

I looked at the wounded. All of them looked like they were shaking hands with the devil. Some looked calm in the face of death, some others were crying at their untimely decease, while some others looked like they were daring Death to try and pry their souls from this world. You couldn't tell the veterans from the green-faced rookies here. Some rookies found the spirit to fight their injuries and try to keep on living while other stone-faced veterans simply seemed content to let death take them and finally be free from this madness.

"Astrid," I said, looking at the young doctor "You should sit down."

She looked at me and complied without a word. The surviving soldiers had taken charge of the situation. They were yelling orders for the more seriously wounded to be moved nearer to the train stop while the wounded that could walk unassisted had to stay back and wait. At this point not a lot of men could walk by themselves. It was a sorry spectacle, seeing those that wanted out dragging themselves towards the train, leaving bloody stains behind them. Some of these men wouldn't ever be the same even if they made it out.

The MagLev arrived, stopping sharply with a screech. It wobbled slightly before the doors opened. Nurses and doctors jumped in, dragging and carrying wounded soldiers and Marines. To my surprise, they jumped back out and repeated the process with help from some of the able-bodied soldiers. The train filled up way too fast for my liking, but by the time it was full we had made the waiting room considerably less crowded.

Astrid was still sitting down cross-legged looking at the ground. I frowned at the sight of the once-strong woman, but a trio of soldiers appeared from the hallway.

"Sergeant!" one of them shouted "Sergeant!"

Another soldier hopped over the wounded and made her way towards us. She looked at her men and gestured for them to give their report.

"We've sealed the elevator shafts," the one that had spoken said "They can't be opened by anyone without UEG identification chips now. A little bit extreme, but it should keep the covvies from using the elevators."

"What about the stairwells?" the sergeant asked.

"We did our best, ma'am. We set a couple of charges two floors above, but it's not a big jump even then."

"Sergeant," I said "We're going to need to barricade these hallways if we want to evacuate everybody."

The soldier seemed to notice my fancy armor and me for the first time. She gave me a once-over and then frowned "We both know that all these men are as good as dead. Half of them will bleed out on the way to Olympic Tower and the rest will put one on their brains as soon as they realize that their families are dead."

I growled at the words, but she was right "Still, we can't abandon them."

"Of course not," she said "I just want to feel like I'm dying for something important."

I chuckled. "You'd get along with my CO."

"Sergeant Clarke," she introduced herself "These are my men. Wait, where's Pierce?"

"Dead," the surviving soldier of the pair that had rescued me said.

"Ah," Clarke said "Well then… we need this hallway secured. If the attack on the rooftop is anything to go by the covvies are going to try and kill us all. We've still got a decent enough perimeter in the ground, but there are reports of enemy squads punching through. Things are falling apart, soon enough this will be urban warfare of the worst kind. No defined fronts, no decent communication or support."

I nodded "Command is cutting off support to those units that they deem lost causes; it's in our best interest to be seen as important or relevant."

"Mr. Fancy Armor is right," Clarke said in a firm voice "We're in a hospital right now, and that gives us an advantage."

"Eidelberg," I introduced myself.

"Corporal Eidelberg here," she went on "Looks like he might know what he's doing."

That was as clear as she was gonna get that she would be deferring to my better judgment. I nodded in acknowledgement and made no big fuss about the symbolic exchange of power.

"We're gonna have to trust the guys on the ground to keep our asses covered," I said "Remain in communication with them as constantly as possible. If it was up to me I'd start sending a few of the soldiers up here. Evacuating to Olympic through MagLev is gonna be easier than going through at ground level."

"That's a no go," Clarke said with a shake of her head "The trains are filled to the brim with wounded and we can't afford to abandon all the materiel down there. A Scorpion is one thing, but seven is another matter entirely. And that's not counting the Armadillos."

I nodded. "Alright, they stay down, then. We've got at least three more trains to go before we can leave ourselves. Ammunition boxes?"

"There are half a dozen right there," Clarke said. "Full."

"Empty them," I ordered "And set them in that corner over there. They ought to be enough to stop plasma or spikes. Do we have any kind of spare explosives?"

"A little bit of C-10," one of the men said "Not enough to be useful."

"I'm going to doing a little something that I once heard," I said "Make a hole in the ceiling right here, climb onto the next floor and make another hole that we can fire from."

The men nodded.

"Grenades should be a wonder here, shrapnel bouncing all over the place."

"Their spike grenades also use shrapnel," Clarke pointed out.

"No matter," I replied "We should be good on ammunition, at least for a while. The important thing right now is to remain of relevance. Command won't usually abandon entire squads, but this isn't your typical situation."

The men nodded at me.

"Start setting up the barricade," I said "Once you have that one done I want additional ones further down the hallway."

"Can't the covvies use those for cover once we fall back?" a soldier asked, pointing out the obvious.

"Yes," I said simply. "But by that point there should be enough dead bodies in the ground that they don't have to worry about cover, you hear me?"

"Hooah!" they shouted.

"It's oorah," I replied with a good-natured smile "I'll try to communicate with my unit. My El-tee might be able to pull some strings and get us some help."

The soldiers set themselves to comply with my suggestions and I opened a link to AAG-7. The little sign that determined whether my helmet had signal or not flickered before going dark and disappearing from my HUD. I clenched my jaw when I realized that we were being actively jammed. We hadn't been actively jammed a few seconds ago. The covvies must've just set up a jammer nearby.

"Damn," Sergeant Clarke said a second later "Not good."

"Short range still works," I said "I can't contact HIGHCOM…"

"Medium to long range jammer," she summarized "Not good."

"We just became irrelevant," I replied "Can we pinpoint the position of the jammer?"

"Probably," Clarke said "We can always try one of the landlines while I get Cortez to try and extrapolate or triangulate or whatever."

"Is he good with computers?" I asked the obvious.

"Better than you'd expect," she replied "Looks like he could wrestle a brute."

"Get him here," I told her "I'll get Doctor Vinter to begin working on a landline."

Astrid looked up at the mention of her name. Her eyes were red, not from crying, but from an overuse of stimulants. I was partially to blame for that, but I'm certain that the good doctor took her own fair share of stims to try and keep going.

"I can't fall asleep," she said.

"I pumped you up," I told her, helping her up "You should be good to go for about three more hours assuming you weight hundred and ten or so."

"What's that in kilos?" she asked.

I shrugged "Fiftyish? Doesn't matter. You need to get the landlines up and running. UNSC has contingency plans for situations like this. Landlines all link up to emergency services which in turn should link to the nearest UNSC military base. And all those are linked together."

"You don't have to use that voice to explain," Astrid said, sounding more like the confident doctor that she was "I can get emergency services shortly. Last I heard there was still UNSC presence in there, right?"

"Last I heard," I confirmed.

She collected herself and moved towards the waiting desk that received people coming from the train. The desk itself was occupied by two men that in all likelihood were already dead, their blood colored the waist high walls. Astrid deftly moved past the dead and dying bodies before getting behind the desk. She disappeared as she picked up an incredibly oversized phone and sat down.

"Sir?"

"Corporal," I replied "I'm a corporal."

"My name's Cortez," the massive soldier said "Sergeant Clarke said you needed my help?"

"Yeah, I need to see if you can pinpoint the location of the jammer."

"Why is that important?" he asked "If we're jammed we're jammed."

I nodded in understanding "If the jammer is in this building, then we're taking it down."

Cortez looked at me and scoffed slightly "You know, we usually aren't that proactive in the military. Picking our own missions and shit."

"Well, desperate times," I replied "Do you need a computer?"

"I can link up with a terminal. Should get more processing power that way."

"Do what you have to," I told him "And try and make it quick."

Suddenly I realized that every single member of Sergeant Clarke's unit had left to do something that I had personally ordered them to do. Not exactly what I had expected, but a feeling of power and authority remained, giving me a slightly awkward urge to smile. With the two hundred or so injured men and women here, laughing would've been taken as a sure sign of insanity. Now that I had ordered everyone to work, the only thing left to do was to wait. While I waited I could formulate defensive plans, and to do that I needed the building's blueprints.

Access to those was easy enough and soon I was trying to memorize the layout of the floors above and below this one. I studied the blueprints in my HUD until the next train arrived. At this point the screaming intensified as men and women began begging to get a seat on the train. Anybody ranging from a recent amputee to a third-degree burn victim tried to get on board, but only the most immediately deadly cases were admitted. The doctors didn't have to work hard to contain the wounded soldiers and Marines, but a few soldiers had to stand there with their rifles half-raised in order to discourage any acts of desperation from the wounded.

I helped various men and women hop inside the train and couldn't help but consider what the consequences would be if I stayed inside it. As soon as El-tee found out I most certainly would be returned to my original unit, even if it was in the middle of the war. Castillo wasn't one to take mission abandonment likely. Then I'd be shunned by every single member of AAG-7 and I'd probably end up dead.

For a moment I thought that it would be worth it.

"Ten seconds," the driver broadcast over the intercom "Clear the doors!"

"All non-wounded out!" I shouted "Out, out!"

I stepped outside and back into the hospital just as the doors slid shut. The train started gaining speed, but just as it left the station a pair of fast-flying Banshees appeared overhead. I watched in complete and utter powerlessness as the attack craft dove in for the kill. The plasma bolts seemed to do little to no damage, but I knew that they were burning through the thin metal sheets faster than one would think possible. The rear of the train detonated in a shower of sparks and metal before it derailed. After that the MagLev's own momentum forced the rest of it down. A hundred men careened to their deaths in a massive metal coffin.

My first thought was of anger. My second thought was the realization that all of the wounded men and women here were as good as dead. I sure as hell didn't plan on keeping them safe at the cost of my own life. Three fourths of the wounded here wouldn't make it anyways. I looked around the emptier station. There was crying and there was screaming.

I could just walk out. I was certain that El-tee wouldn't fault me for that at this point. I'd get bonus points if I took all able-bodied men and women with me and saved the doctors as well. He'd be pissed, but he'd understand. At least I hope that he would. Then there was the fact that I wasn't a psychopath and could hardly live with the death of a hundred men and women in my conscience. Clarke might've been the highest ranking person here, but I was the de facto leader right now by right of experience.

"Aaron, I have a direct line to UNSC Command!" Astrid shouted from across the room.

I nodded and gestured for her to wait a moment "Cortez, how are you on your research?"

"Moving," he replied "I've gotten the area down to a block. It seems like we're going on that mission of yours."

"We might not have to after all," I said "But don't get excited."

He chuckled humorlessly and I walked over to Astrid. She offered me the phone as I removed my helmet and sat down in a bloodied chair.

"Corporal Aaron Eidelberg," I said "AAG-7."

"Where's the rest of your unit?" the voice on the other end asked. Straight to business.

"Sea District," I replied "I was left here because of my medical expertise."

I could almost see the person on the other end nod slowly.

"I'm running out of options here," I went on "MagLev is out of the question now and we no longer have air superiority around this area. I need twenty Pelicans sent my way ASAP in order to evacuate the hospital."

"You know that can't happen."

I nodded. It was a ludicrous "I need ships if I want to get the wounded out."

"I know how the situation is there, half those men won't survive even with medical assistance."

"Be that as it may," I said, not correcting him on his optimistic estimate "We can't just abandon them to their fate."

"What do you suggest?" he asked.

It was always like this with the El-tee. He'd start out by asking something ridiculous and then move his offer down.

"Four Pelicans and pilots willing to do repeat trips," I stated calmly.

"I can't allow that," he said "All Pelicans are being used to carry men that assist the war effort, not hamper it."

Ouch. That was one way of putting things. Very… cold. Even if it was true.

"If aircraft are out of the way I'm going to need ground transport. Do you have any available Elephants?"

"Listen Corporal, I can spare you two Olifants for transport."

"Two?" I exclaimed "Olifants? You've gotta be shitting me. We've held this hospital for a day without any reinforcements or replacements of any kind. If you're going to be giving me shit for transport then you might as well offer me some air support."

The man sighed "I can redirect two Shortswords for a bombing run."

I frowned. "It could work. I believe that the Covenant may have placed a jammer on this building. Taking that out would just be a bonus."

"Two Shortswords and two Falcons," the man said "That's because you helped us find it."

"Any time," I replied.

"You have eight minutes."

He hung up.

Eight minutes to move a hundred dead and dying men fifty floors down when the elevator shafts weren't working in our current floor? Not to mention the high probability of a Covenant attack in the stairwell.

"Clarke! Tell your men to move that explosive into the ground. We're making a hole to the floor below! Everybody listen up!" I waited a few seconds. "Listen up! I secured evacuation for us. I need everybody to move to the ground floor. This is how its gonna go. I'm gonna blow a hole in the floor right over there. From there we can move to the elevators below us and take them down with no problem."

I turned around and got to work before anybody could complain. I studiously ignored the doctors and nurses asking questions and let the insults from the wounded bounce off. After I got Clarke to detonate a beautifully shaped hole in our floor everything seemed to go in a blur. A couple of stretchers were rigged to become a ramp of sorts and the wounded slid down, often crying in pain as they stopped at the bottom. From there they were moved in stretchers two or three at a time. That is five stretchers at a time with three wounded each. We could get two runs before the elevators came back empty.

We were the last, us fighters and a couple of the doctors. The elevator felt cramped even despite its' ridiculous hospital size. Astrid's arm was brushing against mine. That was important for two reasons. One: it made me feel like I was back in high school. Two: it meant that my undersuit wasn't separating her skin from mine. I looked down to realize that I had a massive laceration in arm. Well, maybe massive is overselling it, but there was a huge scratch all over my left arm. It went from below the elbow to my mid upper arm. Once I realized I actually started feeling the burn. I tried remembering where I got it and failed to come up with a definitive moment. Perhaps it had been during the altercation with the brute, although I hadn't noticed anything.

"Out, out," I said as soon as the doors opened "Move!"

The journey from the elevators to the main entrance was a short one. There was a more sizeable contingent of Army soldiers standing guard outside the entrance. The two Olifant garbage trucks were there, both of them full to the brim with wounded

"Doctors first!" I ordered the obvious "Go!"

Astrid stayed back to wait for all the nurses and doctors to go. Just as she began moving forward I stopped her. Something in my gut told me to. Immediately I assumed that it was my Jewish sixth sense. My people had been through so much in the last millennium for me not to have developed some self-defense mechanism of sorts. A few minutes later I realized that I stopped her because I wanted to kiss her.

How stupid of me. I barely knew the woman and I had my helmet on. How utterly unromantic would it be for me to flip her around only to break her nose against my ballistic visor? Very, that's how.

One of the Olifants was hit with what I recognized to be plasma torpedoes. It detonated in an explosion exponentially deadlier than anything a Banshee could come up with. A fraction of a second later two teardrop-shaped objects screamed by, shattering reinforced windows and sending infantry flying away in their shockwave. The Seraphs had taken their time to bomb irrelevant targets. In fact, I have no doubt that they actually helped us in the long run. Demoralizing as it might've been, everybody that witnessed the destruction of one of the Olifants would fight for revenge and we wouldn't need to take care of those men, saving up valuable manpower for other causes.

The horror wasn't done there. A secondary explosion rocked the wrecked Olifant, sending shrapnel the size of a desk flying everywhere. A few men were cleanly bisected and the doctors were all but atomized by the two explosions. One of the jagged pieces of metal flew up and got stuck in one of the Falcon's rotors. The craft that we had been promised stumbled slightly before its right rotor detonated in a fiery explosion. The pilot attempted to keep the bird under her control, but she only bought enough time for the gunners to jump down and break their legs or their spines as opposed to their necks. I watched as the Falcon slowly came towards me and started running backwards, dragging Astrid by the arm.

Short story shorter, by the time I came to I couldn't move and the entrance lobby to the hospital looked a lot more different. I took a moment to collect myself, expecting the pain to hit me like Snark's beloved Sledgehammer. I waited until I realized that it wouldn't come. I still couldn't move, but the pain was there.

My first thought was that I was paralyzed, but my hands felt like they were there, and after further experimentation I realized that I could also wiggle my toes. Not paraplegic and not quadriplegic. I was in relatively good condition seeing as there wasn't that much pain.

"Aaron! Aaron!"

I stepped outside of my own body and my eyes slowly focused on my surroundings. The outer wall of the lobby had been brought down along with a section of the top floor. The debris had fallen mostly inside. The once aesthetically beautiful entrance was now a mess of grey rocks. It wasn't until a second later that I saw the remains of the Falcon gunship on top of me. It was a quasi-literal interpretation of the word literally, seeing as the top of the craft had been torn off and the base of it was pressing my boot against the floor. The only reason why I hadn't lost my leg was because two little rocks had kept the Falcon propped up.

"Aaron!"

"What!" I shouted, annoyed "What the hell do you want?"

"Are you ok?"

I turned my head to see Astrid kneeling next to me, her hand on my wrist and her other one holding what I was certain was my sidearm. A quick look down confirmed that suspicion and also told me that my legs had received additional injuries other than the Falcon coming on top of it. The space in between my armor was leaking some blood while the armor itself had held pretty decently against the shrapnel.

"Get me out of here," I mumbled, still shaken up "Get me out!"

"I can't move the VTOL," she said, sounding desperate.

"Clarke! Cortez!" I shouted "Anybody, help me out here!"

The first two names I called were the first two people that came to my aid. Along with Sergeant Clarke and Cortez came a couple of other soldiers from her squad. I didn't have to ask them for help again. They immediately tackled the Falcon and set it back on its bottom. I cried out at the point that the weight was mostly on my toe, but it didn't feel like it cracked. Those two little rocks turned out to be a huge lifesaver. Once the Falcon was back upright Cortez jumped inside and manned the still-intact machine gun.

I was dragged backwards, pain throbbing through my ankle. It took a few seconds for me to get safely behind cover. Once there Clarke left with her reduced squad, leaving Astrid behind to do her doctor thing with me.

"I don't have a scanner," she said, beginning to remove the armored boot "It doesn't look broken, but there's gonna be some damage to the muscles and tendons."

"I know," I replied "I'm a fucking doctor."

"Well, excuse me Mr. Fucking Doctor," she muttered, removing the boot completely. "But I'm a fucking doctor too. And I'm actually a real doctor."

"Fair enough," I grunted "Where's my rifle?"

"I don't know," she replied "Here's your handgun. I panicked and took it."

I received the weapon as she began poking and prodding at my red and swollen ankle. It was too early for bruises, but those would begin popping up sooner rather than later. My guess was muscular damage as well as bone contusions. About two weeks of taking it easy if you didn't want any kind of medical help. To me it basically meant that I was fine and would be limping around for a while until I got some painkillers.

"Any numbing agents?" I asked her "Little something for emergencies?"

"We're all out," she said sadly "Your boots have built-in braces, right?"

"Yeah, you can set them to become casts. Comes standard with most current armor in the UNSC."

"It was a yes or no question," she noted "Anyways, set it to no movement. You should be able to move fast enough even then."

"Alright," I said. "Sounds about right."

I probably would've allowed for some minor movement, but she was the doctor and she was gorgeous. It had been some time since I had last gotten myself any tail. Most of the guys barely went out to party anymore. Usually I just stayed in my apartment and caught up with my films and television series while spending my salary on high-end alcohol. It wasn't healthy physically or mentally, but at least I compensated with long hours at the gym and the range. Sometimes I couldn't help but wonder how I would cope after the war. If I even made it.

Something exploded nearby.

I probably wouldn't make it out of this one. I was sure that El-tee and Marv might have a good shot at surviving everything thrown at them. Maybe Staff Konstantinov too, but those two just had a way of always coming out on top.

"Done," I told Astrid "Now what?"

"I'm looking at you," she said "You're the Marine here."

"I am indeed," I replied with a well-practiced chuckle "But I'm just human."

"As are we all," she said with a small sigh "Aaron, I need a way out of here. I don't want to die."

"Not a lot of people do," I said, grunting as I pulled myself upright "Give me a moment."

I looked outside. The second Olifant was already disappearing in the distance, a Falcon close above it. Several unmoving bodies littered the area directly outside the hospital entrance. The once-massive contingent of troops defending the perimeter of the hospital had been reduced to a mere contingent the size of a platoon or so. Most of the Armadillos were nothing but scrap heaps. Two Scorpions remained, but both were immobile and heavily damaged. From here I could count one Gauss Warthog as well as two regular models. The ammunition supply for both probably wasn't too good, but those vehicles alone ought to be enough to defend this lobby for an extended period of time.

"Clarke!" I called out "Who's ranking officer?"

"Me!" she shouted back "So basically you!"

"Get the tanks to pull back! Use the Warthogs to drag them out if you need to. We can't hold the entire hospital anymore. We're bunkering down in the lobby!"

"Understood. You heard him everybody! Get to it!"

The army had an exceptional talent for fortifying things. Soldiers not directly involved in combat piled up rocks and debris to form barricades. Others moved the pre-existing sandbags and metal slabs inside. If we only protected the lobby then it meant that we would be vulnerable to attacks from behind. I wanted the elevators available to us if possible, so I gave the word for the fortifications to include them and the adjoining corridors. Some of those could simply be blocked off completely, others would have to be actively manned.

"What's the status on those guns?" I asked one of the tankers as his Scorpion was dragged backwards by two Warthogs.

"Main gun can still fire," he replied "Coaxial is fine but low on ammo."

"Ring mounted?"

"Plasma bolts hit it," he informed me "Killed my gunner and made the thing useless."

"I'm taking the ammunition," I told him, climbing on top We need all the help we can get."

"Feel free," he said.

The side guns on the Falcon were still useful. One of them was perfectly positioned to cover anything that came through the door while the other one was detached and positioned independently next to it. Sooner than I could've imagined we had three different rings of defense. One was marked by the two Scorpions and the debris piled just outside of the place where there had once been a wall. The next one had the crashed Falcon at its middle while the final one had the reception desk and assorted barricades making it up. The setup was complete just when the Covenant dropships arrived to capitalize on our retreats and losses here.

"All non combat personnel move to the elevators!" I shouted "Brutes are priority targets. Handle heavy weapons and marksmen first when possible. Conserve your fucking ammo!"

I only realized that I was sounding exactly like El-tee about halfway through my barking of orders. It made me feel somewhat cheap, but even if everybody mentally rolled their eyes I did manage to put the thought into their heads. I never considered the fact that the El-tee might've done that for just that reason. It certainly felt empowering. Lately I had began feeling more and more… well, like I had authority. As a corporal I was only supposed to lead fire teams, or maybe even squads into action. Corporals had a fair degree of authority, but in AAG-7 rank was basically meaningless. You had El-tee sitting on top of the pyramid like a god. Below him you had his two seconds. Gunny was infinitely more influential than Konstantinov when it came to issues less directly related to combat, but once the fight began both of their opinions had nearly the same pull. After those two demigods came the more human fireteam leader. We had Sergeant Mata, a man as deadly as they came, short and bulky and strong as he was fast. His ugly face and large musculature often deceived those that thought he had no brains, but he was a capable tactician and a fast thinker. Normally we'd have those four men lead us all. A bit of an unorthodox arrangement, seeing as Castillo personally led a fireteam more often than not. That's where it got weird, we had two other men of Mata's rank in the unit, but none of them behaved even remotely like a sergeant. Sure, Marv was the guy that you would call a leader in a sports team, but not the captain. Snark was just plain childish, but he had been in the game so long that he had climbed to the rank of sergeant through sheer time spent in the Corps.

In a normal unit I would've had Mata's role. I had never really wanted the authority, but at this point it was practically shoved into my face and I had no practice with it whatsoever.

"I need a rifle!" I shouted "Get some from the dead!"

"Already done!" a soldier replied, tossing me a battered MA37. The weapon looked old and used, but the slide was in perfect condition and it would fire bullets just as good as the next gun.

I thanked the soldier for his help and began looking for targets. All I could see was wave after wave of grunts and jackals being gunned down pretty darn fast. I joined the assault, hitting targets as fast as I could. They went down relatively quickly, these grunts seemed vastly inferior to those that served under the elites, and that's saying a lot. The jackals were competent, but only just. It wasn't anything out of the ordinary. They tried to overwhelm us through superior numbers and firepower before sending in the big guns. It was ugly and inelegant, but it rarely failed to work. A few brutes here and there, taking cover and giving orders, but nothing too bad. Their numbers were getting close to overwhelming quickly, the brutes were wasting no time in taking this place.

"I've got movement in the back!"

"I'm on my way," I replied, pointing at two soldiers to follow me.

I ran past the few doctors that remained here. All of them had a pistol and looked more annoyed than scared. At this point all of them had seen enough death to guarantee that they'd receive a healthy dose of PTSD if they made it. A few of the docs had vests from soldiers. They looked awkward and oversized without the rest of the armor or fatigues, but it was better than nothing.

A burst of plasma received us once we got to the barricaded hallway. It missed, but it was close enough to me that I felt the heat. I dropped and rolled as spikes filled the air above me, narrowly missing my recently acquired subordinates. There were three additional soldiers manning the barricade, firing with SAWs at the enemy. I heard grunts of pain as the brutes were hit and got back on my feet, taking cover behind a corner. I fired a couple of short bursts as the gunners reloaded. The bullets ricocheted off the walls and failed to hit anything, but the brutes pulled their heads back behind cover. We promptly began going back and forth. They couldn't go the length of the corridor without dying, but they could saturate it with enough fire to have us duck down.

"How are we on grenades?" I asked.

"I have two," a soldier said.

"On my three," I told him "One, two, three!"

We suppressed the brutes as the man threw his first grenade and then the second. The detonations came almost simultaneously. I heard the explosions and peeked over. The gore that sprayed the back wall was a testament to the effectiveness of the fragmentation devices. I don't know whether all the brutes were taken out, but certainly one of them would no longer see the light of day.

"Shit!"

I almost turned around before I realized that the voice was coming from my helmet.

"What?"

"Payat, what's your status?" Staff Konstantinov asked.

"Pretty darn bad," I replied. "I've got a platoon to defend the hospital."

"You're in charge? Doesn't matter. Things are bad down here. Can you get out?"

"I'm hardly in any position to help."

"No, get out of the city," Konstantinov said. I paled at those words. So casually mentioning surrender.

"Negative, sir."

"We can arrange for evacuation," he went on. "I'll contact someone. There should be three Pelicans headed your way and on the rooftop of the main building in exactly fifteen minutes."

"Wait, what's the situation down there?" I asked, but he had already cut the line. I cursed and looked at the men. "Small miracle. We have evacuation provided, but we need to reach the rooftop in fifteen minutes."

"Elevators still work," one of them said "We can easily reach the top floor."

"Arrange it," I told him "As soon as we hit the ten minute mark we move out."

The man looked back at me with a huge smile on his face "Yes, sir!"

_I'm a corporal…_

I briefly wondered if people called doctors sir sometimes, but the surviving brutes decided to attack once again and kept my thoughts occupied. I could hear the other end of the firefight behind me, but I put that in the back of my head as best I could and focused on suppressing the attackers. Brute after brute tried to come through, some of them died when they refused to go back, but most realized that they couldn't move forward. They began throwing deployable covers and slowly moving closer towards us.

"Bring the covers down!" I shouted "Grenades!"

Two deployable shields were shattered when an equal number of grenades detonated. A further three pulsed red when the shrapnel hit them. Only one brute was killed during the explosions, but two others had to pull back due to bleeding injuries. I fired at one of the wounded brutes as it tried to squeeze behind another deployable cover. My bullets hit it in the back, right above the waist. The alien slammed into the weakened cover, finishing it off. The other injured brute fell prey to a barrage of bullets before it could jump back further into cover. I smiled at the sight of the two dead aliens and ducked back behind cover in anticipation of the retaliation by the brutes.

As expected, spikes, needles, and more flew in our direction. Nobody was hit, but the barrage was a lot more intense than I had expected. I fired blindly, trying to discourage any brute from closing in on us. I had barely any warning when not one, but three brutes burst through our barricade. One soldier was trampled under the legs of the brutes, one of the brutes collapsed down, dead. The other two brutes were still able to fight, but they were both hurt. One of them turned around and sprayed the area with two spikers. It managed to miss every single shot, but sent us all diving down for cover.

I stumbled backwards, tripping over my own feet. I got a decent vantage point on the brute's belly from where I was and didn't waste a single instant. I emptied my rifle at it. The brute was unshielded and unarmored. Even with its thick skin and hard muscle, it couldn't stand up to that amount of bullets. One by one they pierced it, leaving behind an almost minuscule hole behind. The hole slowly expanded as the bullet traveled further in. Blood sprayed out the few exit wounds and dripped out the entry wounds.

It all happened in painstakingly slow motion for me, but the brute died well enough.

"Hit it, hit it!"

The other brute had a brute shot. It brought the massive bayonet around in a practiced swing and sliced through a soldier's neck. A follow-up move almost killed a second one, but the man was luck enough to avoid it. The brute was no slouch though, it fired at the soldier, blowing him apart with the grenade. A third soldier fired at it, but his magazine was emptied on the third bullet. The brute kicked him, breaking his femur with a crunch and then proceeding to fire two grenades into his chest.

The three of us still alive were slow to react, but the brute had just come from connecting three kills in half as many seconds and wasn't able to keep the pace. It stumbled slightly as it turned. That hiccup was enough for us to fire first. The brute was pierced at least three dozen times as we all hit it with full automatic fire. It didn't take long for it to collapse, but we didn't stop firing even then.

"Fall back," I said, realizing I was wasting time and ammunition "We're due to go up in ninety seconds."

More brutes were rushing through the now unprotected hallways, but we were already on the move. The secondary defensive barricades were all being manned already. We jumped over the barricade and stepped into cover behind. From there on out we quickly began moving closer and closer to the elevators. There were about forty people still in the building, a quarter of those being doctors. The civilians went in first, but they needed a military escort. We sent most of the doctors in the first two groups, but a few remained behind for the last trip.

"Ready!" I shouted.

A plasma grenade landed four feet away from me as the elevator doors opened. I didn't see any reasonable source for it, but it was still a plasma grenade. I started moving sideways, but I knew that the explosion would kill half a dozen people in this confined space. One lone soldier moved towards the grenade instead of away from it. He jumped on top of the incendiary device and let out a cry of defiance that was only cut short when the explosive detonated. Blood and gore splattered everywhere, knocking me back on my ass.

Something in my head clicked.

"Everybody stay on the floor!" I shouted.

I stood up as the men and women began dropping. My rifle had only a third of the magazine full, but it should be enough. I held it at my hip and spun as I pulled the trigger. For the most part nothing happened, but a single bullet bounced off thin air instead of hitting the walls. A silhouette shimmered, giving four soldiers the target they needed. The brute stalker died quickly, but not before two others appeared, firing their spikers. This time they threw incendiary bombs, catching most of the remaining doctors in the fire. I immediately made an assessment and deemed the situation a lost cause. I barely took a step away from my route to grab Astrid's arm and throw her into the elevator. Another soldier ran inside with me, but as he turned around to fire a stalker impaled him with the bayonets on its spiker. The soldier still had enough presence of mind to fire his weapon at the brute's face, killing it.

The doors closed behind the dead brute, knocking Astrid and me backwards. I got up and dragged the soldier from underneath the heavy brute. He had two huge puncture wounds right below the chest. They looked deep. I did my best with what I had. I applied as much pressure as I could and ordered Astrid to tear a sleeve from her shirt. She had long since cut up her coat to use as bandages.

The man died a few seconds later, just as the elevator opened.

"Ten seconds!" I heard.

"Astrid, hurry!" I urged.

The Pelicans were already beginning to take off, letting out storms of chaff and flares in an attempt to have the plasma bolts and bombs collide with something before they hit them. A few stray bolts hit the lead Pelicans, but nothing too serious. The door gunners were firing at an enemy that I couldn't see, but that was only a sure sign that making the run wouldn't be simple. Things seemed to move slowly then. Astrid had a head start and was certainly no slouch in the speed department, especially with all the adrenaline in her system. I was an ODST, I basically had the running beat into me. I was also an AAG operator, which meant that I was better than all other ODSTs. It became hard for me not to overtake her, but I couldn't allow myself to let her become a target. Too many people had already died while I was in charge.

A brute in a jetpack jumped up from behind a ventilation system. I brought it down, but had to stop for a second in order to get a good shot on it. The brute died and fell to the ground. Just as its' body hit the rooftop with a sickly squelch I felt a piercing pain in the back of my leg. I took another step, but the pain became too great. Astrid turned around and put my arm over her shoulders. Another step in I felt two more impacts on my back.

"Run!" I shouted, feeling the blood come out of my mouth "Run!"

Astrid didn't hesitate. It was kind of depressing, really. I propped myself back to a knee. My left leg throbbed and shook, but I managed to lock my knee into place. With my rifle I pushed my body up until I was half standing. I reached for my sidearm weakly with my other hand.

Astrid jumped inside the Pelican and the door gunner shredded two brutes that were trying to kill me with their bare hands. Blood splattered on my visor as the brutes were pierced by the hail of bullets. I took a step forward and stopped. My leg wasn't going to hold and I couldn't pull my own weight up even using the MA5 as a crutch, not with two spikes on my back.

"Hurry up, sir!" the pilot shouted through the radio.

"Go!" I gurgled back "Go!"

The door gunner didn't stop trying to cover me from all the berserking brutes, but the pilot understood the situation well enough. The Pelican slowly took off. Just as it disappeared I could see Astrid screaming for the pilot to turn back. That gave me a smile, she cared a little bit, at least. The Pelican flew off and disappeared behind the buildings. The brutes reacted with low growls of apprehension, not wanting it to be a trap. I fired at the nearest one that I could see with my pistol, hitting it in the back of the head twice. The brute's metal helmet flew off and was quickly followed by bits of skull and brain. I winced as the shock from the recoil shook my body. It took a few seconds for me to regain my composure and balance, but the covvies here in the rooftop had come out of cover and were slowly approaching.

A grunt raised its plasma pistol and fired. I prepared for the inevitable, but the bolt went wide. I opened my eyes just in time to see a brute chieftain finish a backswing with its right arm and a grunt slam into the ventilation systems. The metal was bent by the impact and the grunt left a sizeable blood splatter behind. The other grunts cowered and moved away from the brute chieftain while the jackals and brutes snickered.

I raised my pistol at the chieftain, but all the bullets in the magazine bounced off its shields. The hammer it was carrying was not the standard gravity hammer. It looked ancient, like a crudely carved rock that had had pieces of metal embedded into it to make it more deadly. The grips on the handle seemed to be made of very pale leather. I wondered if it was human skin.

I sighed slowly and tried to look up defiantly, but the pain didn't allow me to lift my chin as high as I needed to. The brute stood in front of me, massive and imposing. The grey-haired behemoth with a mohawk-like crest of hair on its head looked at me with complete and utter satisfaction on its face. It seemed to be waiting for me to say something. In fact, it seemed to be granting me time for my last words. A million thoughts raced through my head. An insult would be fitting, even if it was vastly unoriginal. Pleading for my life would be both humiliating and useless. Those two were basically the only options.

The brute growled and grabbed its hammer with both hands, preparing for the crushing swing.

I let go of my rifle and managed to stay afoot without its support. I slowly removed my helmet, shaking with pain. My leg was about to give, but I wanted to die on my feet. I let go of the helmet and barely heard its clattering as I struggled to raise my head as much as possible. Waves of pain surged through my back, but even with my eyes tearing up from the effort and agony I succeeded in my goal. I snarled in pain, anger, and a lame attempt at defiance.

The chieftain echoed the snarl. "Pitiful," it said in perfect English.

Then it brought its hammer down.

* * *

><p><em>Thanks to <strong>Colonel-Commissar2468 <strong>for proofreading this chapter. This by no means signifies that **General TheDyingTitan** will no longer be proofreading, but he couldn't make it until tomorrow and it has been a while since my last update (something that I apologize for)._

_Ah... here it is. Chapter Two Hundred. I hit One Hundred about a year and three months ago maybe? I'm not really sure, I just know that Sniper-Fodder was still proofreading my chapters. A hundred chaps later we find ourselves here. It's kind of weird that I didn't give the honor of being the protagonist to our actual story protagonist, but life works in mysterious ways. I know that Payat is by no means Frank, but he is (or was) an interesting character to me. He disliked his job but was simply too good at it. I enjoyed writing this chapter, it gave us quite a lot of insight into the kind of man that Payat was and wanted to become. You all know that you can't have character development in this story without the risk of certain death, and this time it seems our milestone protagonist went down the 'Death in the Limelight' road (you should look that up)._

_Well, Chapter 200 of The Life. I have to say that I'm happy with myself. I know that this chapter isn't the best one in this fic, but I like to think that it comes pretty damn close even with the removal of most combat elements and scenes. It was an idea that I had been holding inside my head for a while and the timing just felt right considering the shitstorm that Frank went through at the end of last chapter. I'm happy with myself, but I still want you to be happy with me, I am an author after all._

_To those of you who care. Homecoming went petty decently, I'm probably gonna have a girlfriend before two months. For those of you who don't care, that might also mean slightly longer update times. I hate myself for taking so long already, but this is Reach, it has to be every bit as awesome as the books and the games and the entire Halo universe makes it out to be. Most chapters from this point on will be in the 10,000 word range, and I can't spit those out no matter how hard I try. You're gonna have to bear with me. Also, take note that I said I might get myself a girlfriend. Be proud. Now._

**_Maxxy989, Nato556 _**_Yes. It was on purpose. My proofreader wanted to have some fun and I thought it was a pretty funny letter switch._

**_TheUltraGrand: _**_It's been a few chapters, hasn't it? Well, glad to have you review again. I'm working on the one-on-one stuff. I love writing those, but due to plot and other stuffs I can't have a CCB scene every single chapter. I think the ones in this chapter were pretty decent. Would you agree?_

**_rakushun:_**_ I tried translating that phrase, but sometimes it's just not good enough. Bilingual bonus for sure, I'm glad someone caught it!_

_**fantasydelver: **I agree with you on the ranges, but we have to remember two things: this is five hundred years in the future and both Frank and Preacher were using marksmen rifles.  
><em>

**_outcasts's redeemer:_**_ I am a Roman Catholic much like Frank is (I thought it would be a lot easier that way). I am well aware of how it works. I don't mean to sound agressive or anything like that, but I want to clarify that I was taught to differentiate between the testaments at an early age and Catholics usually use the New Testament more in our dogma. That being said, I agree with you, I don't usually go into religion because let's face it, nobody wants to read about that in a Halo fanfic and I can get some small details wrong. Having cleared that up, when you look at it from an outside perspective, God was very much a dick in the Old Testament. *crosses himself and prays lighting doesn't strike*_

**_guest:_**_ I try to appeal to everybody and will do my best to have a perfect balance when it comes to descriptions. Spartans and Johnson will show up, rest assured._

**_electric2097:_**_ Glad to have you with us buddy._

_This chapter is special, so I decided to address those special readers of mine more extensively than I usually do. I'm actually pretty open when it comes to interacting with my readers._

_Well, let me know, was this all you expected it to be? Was it better, was it worse, was it worthy? Be the case it be, I hope that you enjoyed reading this chapter._

_Stay strong._

_-casquis_


	201. Nope

Chapter CCI: Nope

**August 19, 2552 (UNSC Calendar)/**

**New Alexandria, Viery Territory, Reach, Epsilon Eridani System**

* * *

><p><em>"You can be a mason and build fifty buildings, but it doesn't mean you can design one."–John Malkovich <em>

* * *

><p>"<em>Hey."<br>_

_"Hey," I replied. "Who are you?"  
><em>

_"Really, Frank? Really?"_

_I rubbed my eyes to try and see the person clearer. It was clear enough that it was a she. The voice made that much a certainty, but that's about all that I could gather. It was too bright for me to really tell anything else about this person. She did sound slightly familiar._

"_Mom?" I asked, taking a shot in the dark._

_Even if I was dead it didn't make sense that she would be waiting here for me. She was still in a permanent coma or vegetative state or whatever it was back on Earth. Maybe I was in purgatory, that made more sense. Perhaps I was in limbo, that state that you find yourself when your prognosis could go either way._

_The woman chuckled and shook her head. Her shape became clearer with that movement. I could make out the gray officer uniform that naval personnel used. Her hair had been flung around when she shook her head. It was regulation length, maybe a bit longer than military propriety dictated._

"_Nope. Try again."  
><em>

_"I don't know," I sighed. "Some version of Hanna?"_

_This time the silhouette chuckled. It wasn't mocking or anything like that, in fact it seemed very much like the chuckle that Pavel or Amber would give when their daughter asked them a question that only a young kid would ask._

"_Wrong again," she replied. "Third time's the charm?"_

_I smiled. Now my memory was finally coming back. With the sound of the voice came numerous other memories of good and bad times alike. Sleepless nights, youthful love, passion… I also remembered the other things, the more mature parts of a relationship, if you will. I smiled at those memories, but the smile disappeared as the love I associated with her turned into a feeling of failure._

"_Layla," I said. "Layla Wickett."  
><em>

_"Bingo."_

"_I never knew you were such a smart-ass," I commented calmly, sitting down. Weird, there was nothing to sit down on in this void, but yet I still did it. "But then again, it's been what?"_

"_Twelve years, five months, and eleven days."  
><em>

_"Did you keep count?" I asked._

"_You did keep count," she replied calmly, almost peacefully._

"_I still think about you," I said. "I mean, I don't love you, at least not like that, but I still think about you."_

"_Weird," she noted. "You don't seem to write about that in your journals."_

"_I don't write a lot of stuff in my journals," I shot back._

_She smiled and tilted her head slightly, as if waiting for me to notice. It took me perhaps a few seconds to realize that this conversation was one that I was having with myself, deep inside the recesses of the fucked-up piece of crap that happened to be my brain._

_Layla seemed to realize that I noticed, too. She sighed and sat down, suddenly much closer to me. I could now see her features very clearly. It was still a little bit blurry, but almost standard holo-definition. She looked at me with a small frown that made her look cute._

"_So I'm still alive?"  
><em>

_"Yes," she said._

"_Alright. Pavel will get me out of this one, then," I said with complete and utter confidence. I even surprised myself._

"_Maybe so," she said, although she agreed, seeing as she was just a product of my imagination._

"_Then what are you here for?" I asked. "A life lesson or something?"  
><em>

_"I don't know," Layla admitted. "You tell me."  
><em>

_"You know, I'm curious about that one," Schitzo said, placing his hand on my shoulder. "Are you actually here for a reason or can you just poof away and let me go back to my monopoly of hallucinatory haunting?"_

_I chuckled despite myself._

"_Not yet," she said._

"_Not yet," another voice said. This one came from behind me._

_I turned around to see a vague and blurry person that I couldn't really make out properly, but the moment my eyes landed upon him I could tell who he was._

"_Hey there, little brother," he said._

_His face became clearer and I saw a smile fit for nightmares. A ringing noise throbbed inside my ears, getting higher and higher until everything-_

* * *

><p>Not pain, but complete and utter confusion. I opened my eyes and saw nothing. I blinked furiously, trying to get my eyes to see again. It didn't work. I was panicking, I couldn't see and I couldn't move. If this was hell, then it was off to a pretty good start. I could feel the soreness in my body though, so I knew that in all likelihood I was still alive. A quick death would've been too merciful for me. You don't let thirty civilians die to save your own sorry ass and get a clean death. The universe doesn't work like that.<p>

My brain went from full-blown panic into a state of cool down. I realized that I wasn't dead and began wondering what was going on. So far my surroundings weren't giving me any indication of what might've transpired a few seconds ago, but if I could just focus and remember…

Something flickered brightly before disappearing once again. I guess you could say brightly is the wrong term, but that's close enough to the reality of what I saw. I frowned in concentration and my eyes slowly made out what seemed to be like a pattern of sorts. A second later I could make out a few of the grooves that were present in my helmet's visor. I tried moving once more, but my limbs didn't budge.

It was only after this attempt that that small light flickered again and turned into a HUD. My visor flashed red and orange, giving off confusing readings. From what I could gather I was still very much alive. My legs were marked as moderately damaged and so were my arms. Curiously enough, my torso was nearly intact according to the readings my suit was giving. My head, however, had sustained a blow of some sort, which was probably what had knocked me out and was making it so damned hard for me to remember just exactly how I had gotten myself into this position.

"Radio," I muttered to myself, glad to be hearing a human voice. "Radio, radio."  
>Nope. The HUD clearly marked my transmission unit as useless. It must've been damaged in the accident or event that put me here in this situation.<p>

"Ah, crap."

_Ok, where am I?_

"Reach," Schitzo said, sounding a bit unsure about it.

_Nah, why would I__–__ shit._

"Shit indeed," Schitzo said, bitterness heavy in his voice. "New Alexandria."

"That's good enough for now," I said. "I can work out the rest later."

"First you have to dig yourself out." He paused; he seemed surprised by his own choice of words. "Dig…"

Damn.

Damn!

I started shaking and trying to kick and move arms and legs. A felt a little movement, but for the most part I was completely pinned. I pressed my hands against something hard and pushed. This time there was some groaning as rock slid against rock. My muscles throbbed with horrible pain, but a few smaller rocks fell, holding the bigger slab that I was pushing up in place. I let go and took several deep breaths before pushing at the slab again. It rose maybe three inches before more little pieces of rock came in. With those little rocks came a ray of sunshine and the very familiar sound of a battle.

"Help," I croaked weakly. "Help."

There was no reply. Explosions, both small and large, shook me. For a moment the small ray of sunlight that came through that little hole was blocked. I started panicking.

"Help!"

I started pushing back as hard as possible. Something must've moved some of the rocks, because this time I was able to lift the slab overhead a significant amount. My right arm started shaking and gave, but my left arm held just long enough to move the huge piece of what appeared to be a floor out of the way. I could see buildings and the sky from my position. It seemed wrong; I don't think I had been outside before all this came down on top of me. I ignored the feeling of wrongness and just worked at getting myself out of this mess. I don't think I had ever used that phrase more literally.

The gunfire got louder and louder. It took me a few seconds to realize that it was getting closer to me. At first I panicked, but then I realized that it only meant that someone with a human weapon was approaching me. I started crying out for help while frantically waving my only free arm. The renewed effort to save myself seemed to finally rack my brain back into order.

A building had collapsed on top of me after a shitload of hunters had fired on it. Well, maybe not a building, but a good section of it.

"Over here!" someone shouted. "Over here!"

I looked around, but my head still couldn't move. I tried pressing against the rock, but my right arm had been pinned down and my left didn't have much leverage against anything really. I furiously kicked with my legs, but they could barely move an inch in any direction. I finally relaxed when a very familiar helmet appeared overhead. Pavel looked down at me and dropped his M247L next to me before gripping the slab of stone pinning my chest down. He groaned as he lifted, but the piece of rock moved easily enough. It had to weigh at least a couple hundred pounds, probably more. It was easy to forget that Pavel was a very strong man in his own right sometimes.

"Come on," he grunted.

I helped him as soon as I could. I moved my right arm up and pushed. The weight was a lot less this way, and the slab promptly rolled over to the other side. My arm felt numb and would certainly bruise, but it was in fine working order.

I was surprised when a section of the floor right next to Pavel fell, seemingly into oblivion. I still couldn't move my head very much, but Pavel was quickly fixing that, kicking and pulling rocks and debris away from my body. Halfway through the process he seemed to find my rifle, which he violently pulled out from underneath a pile of debris. He handed the weapon to me and kept pulling at the rocks on my legs while I focused on those on my upper body.

"What happened?" I asked.

"Whole damn side of the building collapsed when the hunters fired," Pavel grunted. "We thought you were dead."

I nodded slowly and sat up. From this slightly higher angle I could see that I was still above ground level, but not by much. In fact, it seemed to me like I was a little bit closer to the ground than I should've been.

"The side of the building came down like a rockslide," he said. "Your floor went down with it, but looks like you stopped short of the lobby."

"Good," I said. "Good."

I didn't remember any of that. I only had the vague image of a large number of hunters approaching. After that my mind was a blank. Before that, it was all very blurry. I must've hit my head quite hard if I was going through this kind of memory loss. I would probably have a headache from hell by the time all this was sorted out. Death was also a plausible alternative when I considered just how bad things looked from here.

"He's here!" Pavel shouted. "Help me out."

I craned my body around to see Bee moving up, discarding his laser as he approached. He moved next to Pavel and positioned himself to move another large piece of wall or floor from my legs. They both shoved it after a quick count to three, succeeding in moving it a few inches. The shift in weight applied pressure to my leg, but my armored boot kept my ankles and feet from being damaged in any way. Bee and Pavel shifted positions so that Bee was tackling the slab and Pavel was pushing with his legs. They shouted with effort and cursed, but they freed my pinned body.

"Oh shit," I muttered for what felt like the umpteenth time in the day.

"Oh shit," Schitzo said simultaneously.

"Ah, shit," Pavel grunted in between two breaths of exertion.

There was a nice little piece of rebar coming through the inside of my right thigh, about halfway between the knee and the dick area. It had been quite close to the big guy down there. The moment I looked at it and realized that I was wounded I started feeling the pain, it wasn't bad, which meant that it must've pushed more tissue aside than it pierced, but it was a piece of rebar in my leg and I was starting to feel it.

"How close to the edge is it?" I asked.

"Not close enough," Pavel replied after quick examination.

I sighed. Had it been close to the skin he could've simply cut open the wound and pulled me out sideways. It was painful and very messy, but it minimized the risk of further tissue damage, especially with rebar, which was grooved and could pull at muscle and blood vessels. Me being at this particular angle, cutting me out was an easier way to remove me from the metal spike impaling me through the right leg, but it seemed like my friends would have to lift me.

"Alright, make it fast," I ordered.

"Don't struggle," Pavel told me, crouching next to me and slinging my arm over his massive shoulders.

Bee whistled and grabbed the bottom of my leg just next to either side of the injury. He looked at me and then back to the wound when I nodded to him. I made sure that my jaw was clenched and that my tongue was safely behind my teeth. I didn't have anything to bite down on and I sure as hell wasn't going to take my helmet off with plasma flying all around us. They pulled me up, as hard and fast as they could.

I screamed. It wasn't as bad as I had feared, but it was pretty bad. Blood poured out of the injury, hitting the debris below me. I looked down at the crimson liquid. It was streaming out of my leg. Not fast enough that I would be rendered unconscious in a few seconds, but fast enough to pose a legitimate threat to my survival.

"Where's Andy?" I asked Pavel as he placed me on the ground.

"Apply pressure to that," he said.

"She's otherwise engaged," Bee answered my question. "Can you walk?"

I shook my head. "Grab your weapons and get me out of here."

They nodded. I might've been injured, but I was still the boss.

They carried me in between the both of them for a few meters until we were completely safe from enemy fire even while standing up. At that point they let my uninjured leg down and I hopped to help them. The feeling of wetness down my leg was unnerving me. I had an especially rough time listening to every last drop that fell on the ground. My enhanced hearing allowed me to make sure I heard that, but it was a possibility that I was simply hallucinating the sounds.

Bee and Pavel both carried me as fast as possible. It was slightly awkward considering that both of them were a little shorter than me, but nearly my whole arm length was used if I tried to wrap my hands around their shoulders. I was pretty damn satisfied with my body proportions, but sometimes the shoulders on those guys made me wonder just exactly how much time they clocked in at the gym without telling anybody.

Something struck me as odd then. I couldn't pin it down, but there it was. I was alive, very much so. I was being moved away from immediate danger. My team was moving me out of danger, which meant that they themselves weren't in life-threatening danger. At least not the kind that would've forced them to abandon me to my fate. It took a flight of stairs and a trip through a dust hallway with broken lights for me to remember what was wrong.

"Wait, we have to get Preacher!" I shouted.

"It's coming down!" Marv radioed in. "Move!"

"No! We have to get Preacher!" I insisted, struggling.

Pavel stopped. I thought that he was gonna turn around and comply with my order, but instead he just grabbed my good leg and gave Bee the word to double the speed. I tried to get out of his grip, but my right leg hurt too much. The ceiling on the hallway started breaking apart little by little, with dust coming from the cracks that were forming and little pieces landing around us.

"Hurry!" Bee huffed.

I stopped struggling. Instead I tried furiously to have my helmet link up with Preacher's. My radio transmitter was broken, which in turn meant that the whole helmet wouldn't be able to send or receive any wireless transmissions until it was fixed. I gave my helmet the order to search instead through my tacpad, which had a limited wireless capability. It took almost ten seconds, but finally it picked up Preacher's location. The poor man was still alive and not too far away.

"He's still alive!" I said. "Pavel!"

"I know!" he shouted back, not making the move to stop.

"We have to get him!"

"Frank–"

"I'm not letting anybody die," I growled.

"This is not your call," Pavel replied. "This is my call."

I started to argue, but he kicked open an emergency exit and sprinted out of the building and into a small side street. About halfway through the street I heard the entire building come down behind us. I twisted my neck around in an attempt to see what was going on, but all I saw was the cloud of dust coming at me and everything else was blocked out of sight. Preacher's vitals went flat before disappearing.

"Fuck, Pavel!" I shouted. "We could've gotten him out!"

"No we couldn't have," he replied. "He was deeper and in a position more exposed to enemy fire."

"You knew where he was and didn't attempt rescue?" I accused.

"He was a marksman," Pavel said. "You're the team leader."

"Gunny's right, sir," Bee chimed in. "We can't function as effectively without you. No offense intended, Gunny."

"None taken," Pavel said dismissively. "Frank, shut up now. We're not in a situation where we can argue about this."

I clenched my jaw and remained silent. He was right. It made me feel like an asshole, but in this situation my life was more valuable than Preacher's.

_Just one more number, isn't it?_

"Andy!"

The medic got here soon enough; she was tired and breathing hard. When she depolarized her visor I saw just how bad her face looked. Andy was an attractive woman, some might even call her beautiful, but right now she could've been confused for a corpse. Her skin was pale, cracked, and dehydrated. There were bags under her eyes reaching halfway down her nose and her brow seemed to be drooping in an attempt to get her to close her eyes. In addition to the signs of extreme fatigue she had a small cut crossing the bridge of her nose and what appeared to be a bruise on the left side of her forehead.

"Sir," she said, "good to see you alive."

"How long was I out?"

"Nearly an hour," she replied. "In fact, a little bit over an hour."

"Damn," I said.

Andy began removing my armor, giving Pavel and Bee a quick nod that signaled that she had this under control. The two hulking special operators disappeared into the dust without too much trouble, gunfire and plasma silencing the sound of their footsteps. Andy looked down at my exposed leg and raised one eyebrow slightly. The wound was an ugly-looking one.

"They should've cut the rebar," Andy muttered.

"Well, the situation didn't allow for it."

She shrugged and began to look into her pouch for medical supplies. She produced a small can of biofoam as I examined the hole. Blood was bubbling out of it a small, irregular hole. It didn't look like much, but the tears in the skin around it gave it a decidedly nasty look.

"Frank," Andy said, calling me by name, "this is going to hurt a lot."

She extended the straw-like end of the biofoam canister and positioned it in the wound, pressing it lightly against the raw skin. I groaned when I realized what she was going to do.

"Is it necessary?" I asked, fearing what was to come.

She nodded. "We need you to be able to move, sir. It's bad down here."

I sighed. "Do it."

She breathed out and then breathed back in before bringing her fist down on the bottom of the can like a hammer. The straw-like mouth went through the wound, taking the open path, but damaging the raw and lacerated tissue as it went. For the second time in a few minutes I cried out in pain, but this time it wasn't over yet. She started applying the biofoam, slowly pulling back the can along with the straw so that every single centimeter of that wound would be nicely covered with biofoam. The vicious stings that opened up tissue in order to merge it with the artificial foam were infamously painful, but they would be what would save my life. More often than not a soldier owed his life to biofoam.

Finally Andrea finished her butcher's labor. I took a deep breath and started shaking. I was surprised that I hadn't attempted to attack her in an instinctual burst of self-defense. I leaned back on the cold, hard pavement and closed my eyes. My whole right leg was burning with pain. Some of the pain was the dull leftovers from the rebar piercing the muscle, but most of it was the burn and sting that the biofoam caused whenever it was applied.

"God."

"Call me Andy," Andy joked.

I chuckled at her joke; it was good, simple humor.

"I need to see if you can move well enough without help, sir," Andy said after chuckling briefly. "No need to sprint or even jog fast, but it would be great if you could walk by yourself."

I stood up, refusing her help when she offered me her hand. Waves of pain shot through my leg and body when I had to use my right leg for support, but once I was up it was surprisingly easy to stand without having to favor my left leg too much. I took a small step forward and my leg buckled, but I managed to remain upright. The pain from the biofoam was already disappearing, leaving behind only a lingering sense that something was not quite right in my leg. It was a weird feeling, having a hole in your body plugged up by biofoam. It was a painful feeling.

"Do you have painkillers?" Andy asked me.

I nodded. "Take two," she ordered. "The effort will make the wound worse and slow the foam's progress significantly, but it should be enough to get you to a medical station. They should be able to fix you up pretty quick there."  
>"What's the damage?" I asked her.<p>

"You were lucky sir, most of the tissue was pushed aside, but laceration couldn't be completely avoided. Sections of your quads have been pierced and damaged. Some blood vessels were punctured, but nothing major. It was more the amount of vessels than their significance.

The pain was already disappearing. Those painkillers worked fast.

"Don't overexert yourself," she said. "Ready?"

"Ready," I confirmed, feeling eager to avenge Preacher's untimely death with as much prejudice as I could manage. "Give me a sitrep."

"The covvies are down to five hunters, they're taking care now. One of our Armadillos is gone and our Scorpion had to pull out due to the presence of enemy anti-tank infantry. We're moving it around, trying to outflank the enemy, but it doesn't look too positive."

"How's our other IFV?"

"Able, but running low."

"Falcon?"

"It never got here," she replied. "Captain Flatt said it was shot down."

"Damn. What's the plan?"

"We're fighting for our lives sir, we haven't been surrounded yet, but drones show troop movements to our sides. It's gonna happen soon."

"We need to pull back," I said. "And do it fast."

"Give the order," she said.

I waited to be close enough to the heat of the battle. The dust was still pretty thick, but it shouldn't impede the volume of my voice. "Listen up! We're pulling back towards the warehouses!" I shouted. "A Company move back to form defensive fields of fire, the Armadillo will cover our retreat!"

"What about the hunters?" the NCO in charge of the survivors of A asked.

"We'll have to deal with them as they come," I said. "How are we on rockets?"

"Low."

"Spartan Laser?" I asked Bee.

"Down to the last two shots."

"Why didn't you take out the hunters?" I asked him.

"Enemy air and armor," he replied simply.

I made some quick calculations in my head. We had enough firepower to take out two hunters with one shot each, that much was simple. The anti-personnel rounds that the Armadillo had would be able to knock out another two or maybe even all three if it came down to it, but it wasn't a guarantee, and a lucky shot from the hunters could even neutralize the ability of the IFV to use its turret. Our single strongest advantage was out of the equation and the anti-tank infantry was very likely still in the area and would be a threat to the Armadillo. All in all, the situation didn't look too good, especially when you remembered that there was no longer any marksman support. Preacher was gone along with all the marksmen that A Company had sent up the building.

Things were most certainly not looking up.

"Fall back!" I shouted. "I've never seen a group less eager to get out of harm's way!"

The men redoubled their speed, leaving only a few soldiers to hold the line along with my men. I waited for the Armadillo to shift into a position where it could provide decent covering fire and then gave the word for the rest of the men to fall back. The Armadillo would cover my team and those soldiers that had remained, then the other soldiers would cover the Armadillo and then my men would cover those soldiers. We would leapfrog backwards until we deemed it safe enough to move constantly.

I remained further back, motioning for Andy to stay with me. As soon as the men and women of A Company began passing us we started moving back. I could move, but the biofoam had to men my muscle some more before I could move well enough to jog. The Armadillo's machine gun roared, but its main autocannon remained silent. I listened to the sound, still unable to see through the dust from the collapsed building. I could make out silhouettes a lot better, but the cramped nature of the Sea District meant that the dust would take a little bit longer to settle down.

"Sniper, sniper!" Pitcher warned.

"Got him!" Miranda called back.

"Shift fire, shift right."

"Frag out!"

It was nothing out of the ordinary. It was standard battle chatter. For some reason it felt almost surreal, with me not participating, instead hanging back in relative safety like a coward. I _did_ feel like a coward.

"Move the Armadillo back!" I gave the word.

By this point the dust was beginning to clear up and I was now a viable target. My leg was almost well enough for a jog, but I didn't want to risk it giving under me as soon as I put too much weight on it. Biofoam was a miracle of modern medicine, but it wasn't nearly as magical as some people thought it was. I moved faster now, my leg moved like it would've done had I had a week of healing unaided, if not more. That didn't mean that it was healed though, the wound was still there, and it wasn't about to go anywhere for a while.

The building that had come down had taken Preacher and at least four other men with it, but the dust it brought up had worked in our favor for a good amount of time. We had minor thermal capabilities on our weapons and rifles, if we coupled that with the overhead drones, we could pinpoint enemy positions pretty reliably. As soon as the dust began settling we became targets once again and the Covenant forces soon had the advantage. Jackals had set up in the windows and had good vantage points on us.

"Speed it up!" I ordered. "We're in the open here!"

The warehouse that Marina and the Pelicans were in was pretty defensible. It had good solid walls and a small wall around it as well. Even despite the relative height of the buildings around it the covvies wouldn't have the chance to shoot us unless we royally fucked up.

"Banshees!"

I dropped to the ground, the Banshees were coming from behind as opposed to the covvie infantry. Three soldiers that were too slow to react were incinerated in a fuel rod explosion. Another soldier was thrown backwards by the same explosion, landing in an abandoned sedan. The fliers strafed our positions, sending my team and A Company scurrying in every direction. I was sprayed by heated gravel, but the bolts weren't targeting me. It became obvious that the Banshees were only thinking of us infantry soldiers as a convenient secondary target. This coming from brutes, it was very surprising. The Banshees slowed down, exposing themselves to our limited return fire.

Bee was the first one to realize what they were doing. It was his job, after all. He rolled over, shouldering his Spartan Laser as he did. He took a fraction of a second to aim and he was loading the laser before anybody else realized that the Banshees were gunning for our single biggest advantage here. The Armadillo swerved violently from side to side as the driver realized he was in danger. Two fuel rod detonations rocked it, heating the armor enough to make it steam. The third Banshee was pierced by the Spartan Laser before it could fire a shot.

I allowed myself to breathe, but my relief was short-lived. The two Banshees were still in position to get off one final shot.

The Armadillo was hit twice, exploding in a green fireball. The hydrogen generator caused a secondary explosion, completely incinerating the inside of the IFV, effectively eliminating any hope for survival. With the explosion came shock and panic. My men were infinitely better trained than the soldiers of A Company and also happened to have more natural skill as well as overall talent. If they knew that we were fucked they weren't above running.

My men started sprinting back towards the warehouse even before I gave the order. Only when I shouted repeatedly to abandon all semblance of order and run for our lives did the men of A Company do the same. We had limited suppressive fire capabilities, but the Covenant had air, artillery, and sniper support. Two soldiers that were too slow were cut down by beam rifles that pierced their armor and bodies like thin paper. I started running as fast as I could, but there was a tightness and pain in my leg that even the painkillers couldn't make go away. I kept going in a straight line as fast as possible, forsaking any attempt to fire at my attackers. Plasma shots flew past me, but I couldn't be certain that I was their target.

"Come on, Frank!" Pavel yelled, turning around to help.

"Go!" I told him. "Go!"

"No way," he replied. "You're not gonna die because you were too slow."

I grunted something, but a pair of carbine shots discouraged me from complaining. I put my right arm around Pavel's shoulder and gave him a small nod. He started sprinting, elevating his shoulders with every other step. I used the small lift to propel myself up with my left leg, jumping as far as I could in an attempt to keep up with Pavel. My right leg was well enough that I could use it to help myself stay upright. We only needed to make it to the corner and we would be able to get a more effective defense set up as we moved back. Only a few more meters.

Pavel slipped and fell.

He didn't just slip, he cursed and cried out as he fell.

I turned around and saw that he had been hit. Grazed is a more accurate word, but the injury had knocked him down to the floor. I turned around and grabbed the straps of his armor. I gripped as tightly as possible and used all of my strength to swing him around like a hammer throw. Pavel flew three meters at least, making it just past the corner. Once he hit the ground he pulled himself behind safety with his hands, leaving me to wobble unsteadily there. We were the last two men to make it, all those behind us were caught in the crossfire.

"Goddamn, Frank," Pavel muttered, pushing himself to his feet. "Don't ever throw me again."

"Sorry," I apologized. "Can you walk?"

"More or less," he said. "It's mostly just pain."

Marv and Pitcher were already running towards us. They helped us move faster without need for an order. I could run well enough, but that little extra support that Pitcher's body provided for my right leg sure helped. We moved through that smaller street a lot faster, fearing being hit from behind or the side. I made sure to contact the Scorpion and tell it to start falling back towards the warehouse. Marina and the other pilots were already beginning to move some materials to make barricades. They were probably rolling trashcans or stuff like that into a wall of sorts to give us a slight advantage the moment we got there.

"Why did we stop moving?" I asked, reaching the rest of the soldiers. They were all bunched up right behind the corner.

"I think there's a sniper over there," one of them said, in fact, it was Private Parker. "I can't really tell."

"That's easy," I said. "Marv?"

Marv sighed, but otherwise didn't voice a complaint. He simply helped Pavel lean into a wall and prepared himself to sprint across the narrow street. I gave him a quick nod and he sprinted across. A beam nearly took his head off, but it was a little behind. He stopped once he was behind cover and looked back to us. I gestured for Miri to move up while the soldiers and my other men moved back, giving her some space. Marvin looked at her and she gave him a thumbs up, aiming just at the edge of the building's corner. Marv removed his helmet and grabbed one edge of it. He slowly positioned it so that it looked like he was peeking and then fired a couple of blind bursts with his rifle.

His helmet was yanked of his hands an instant later. The jackal had been too bloodthirsty and inexperienced to notice the fluke. The blind bursts had helped sell it, and now the covvie had sealed its fate. Miri popped from cover and fired five times in a row. She stopped and stayed there, exposed. I looked behind me nervously, the covvies behind us were no doubt rushing to turn the corner and once again catch us in a sniper alley.

"Clear," she said.

"Move," I gave the word. "Move!"

We began our retreat once again, the wounded slowing everybody else down. I did my best to keep up, but it wasn't as easy I would've liked. Even with a little bit of Spartan in my system I couldn't move as fast as the average soldier. It only made me wonder just how bad the injury would've been otherwise. I hopped and wobbled and stumbled, but I managed to stay at the back of the group with the rest of the wounded.

"Drones are showing enemy movement behind us," Andy said. "We need to move faster."

I would've linked my helmet to the drones, but there was absolutely no wireless coming in or out of my damaged helmet. Pavel had the leadership of the squad outside of earshot. I was sure that he had been calling for support and reinforcements repeatedly. He seemed preoccupied, more so than everybody else.

"What's going on?"

"Our drones are being shot down," he told me. "Four in the last thirty seconds. Make that five, no, six."

I looked up at the sky and actually saw a small explosion above the buildings. I frowned slightly at the sight of it. Drones being shot down wasn't a terribly uncommon sight. We shot covvie drones down and they did the same with ours. Normally they were the ones that didn't put up drones and actively shot down ours, but having this many brought down in so little time was unusual and worrisome to say the least.

"Crap," Pavel muttered quietly. "Everybody take cover!"

Nobody questioned his orders. We all spread out, kicked down doors and windows, and ran inside the buildings. Pavel's warning proved to be fruitful when two blue torpedoes flew down at our previous position. The plasma torpedoes detonated violently, shaking the buildings and making a huge crater in the middle of the street. The Seraphs that had fired them screamed past, not bothering to come back for a second time.

It was what came after that sealed our fate.

Three Phantom dropships appeared just as we were beginning to move out again, each of them carrying underneath a Daemon tank. Packs of brutes jumped out and forced us back behind cover before we could hit the vulnerable tanks. They kept on firing just for long enough and soon the three tanks were on the ground.

"Where the hell's that Scorpion!?" I shouted.

"The Scorpion was hit!" Pavel replied. "He's gone!"

"Marina, can you make it to the rooftop?" I asked, slapping my forehead when I realized that she couldn't hear me.

Pavel relayed my question and then shock his head when she replied.

"Airspace is too crowded, she can't guarantee making it here or out," he told me. "She'll do it if you ask her to."

"I can't," I replied. "Fuck."

We were effectively stuck in between three tanks and a wall of buildings.

"Move into the back of the buildings," I ordered. "Get as far from those Daemons as we can and hope we can kill any brutes that try and attack."

We moved back just as the tanks opened fire on our position. The walls were torn apart by the plasma shells and the buildings shook violently. Part of the outer wall collapsed, making a pile of debris on the exits. We had to fire at brutes climbing over the top as we moved back. A second barrage basically collapsed the top of the building right over our heads. I cursed and moved out of the way of the rocks. A few hit me in the head as the ceiling failed to sustain the weight of the debris above it. I backpedalled furiously as it started collapsing. The ceiling stopped just short of crushing me.

I looked down to see a hand covered in Army gloves. The hand twitched once before the owner finally died. I hadn't seen the man trying to run, I was so focused on trying to save myself as well.

"Team-7, tally!" I shouted.

"Mata's unconscious, but everyone else seems fine!" Caboose shouted from somewhere. "We're pinned, sir!"

"Hold the line!" I shouted. "Pavel! Pavel!"

"I'm here!" he shouted back. "I'm trying to get those reinforcements Frank!"

"Don't let them get close!" I ordered. "Kill as many as you can!"

The building that I had taken cover in was a pretty short one. Only three stories tall. I was still surprised to look up and see the sky. The three Daemons had brought it down in a matter of seconds, killing many of the soldiers in the process. The poor guys were as tired as we were if not more and they simply didn't have the tools needed to survive in this kind of fight. It wouldn't mean much either way, with the way things were looking we would all be lucky to survive the hour.

"Brute, brute!"

I heard the warning somewhere to my right and looked over there to see a pack of brutes rushing over the debris with spikers in hand. They fired as they went, roaring loudly in an attempt to rattle us or boost themselves up. I hit one in the nape of the neck, sending it crashing down. The second brute gunning for me was stalled by a burst from my left, buying me the perfect window to take it out with a headshot.

"Who was that?" I asked.

"Me, sir! Private Parker."

"Good to see you're alive, son," I told him. "How are you on ammo?"

"Good enough to rack up some kills," he said.

I smiled slightly. "Good, where exactly are you?"

"Service closet, I think. I can't move all that much. My foot is stuck."

"I'll get you out later," I falsely promised. "For now I want you to kill as many of these fuckers as we can."

"Music to my ears, Lieutenant."

I didn't know where the rest of my men were. From what I had seen they had taken cover in the building adjacent to this one. They were probably in a slightly less defensible position even if they could all cover each other more effectively. I was left with only Parker in my immediate vicinity and some other soldiers pinned around me. Those guys would be the first to go. They were closest to the tanks and brutes. Sure enough, lobbed spike grenades took out the closest soldier in a red mist. A direct shot from one of the tanks vaporized the other soldier. Then the brutes set their sights on Parker and me.

I had relatively decent cover, my back was safe, my sides were safe, and there was a three-foot tall pile of debris blocking anything that came head on. The problem was that a single grenade landing close to me meant that I'd have to expose myself to fire from all directions if I wanted to survive.

Despite the considerable protection I had at my disposal, I could hardly squeeze of a burst without being almost killed. I managed to take out two eager brutes with Parker's help, but after that I could only fire blindly in an attempt to stave them off as long as possible. The brutes were close now, they were close enough that I could hear them barking to each other in their primitive language. I stopped, took a breath, and listened. I focused on their noises and my enhanced hearing helped me pinpoint an approximate direction and distance. It was a simple matter of tossing a grenade overhead and taking out whoever was caught in the blast. From the sound of it, not all shrapnel had hit rock.

"Man, what does it say about us that we know the noise shrapnel makes when it hits flesh?" Schitzo asked.

_I don't know, _I admitted.

"Yeah!" Parker shouted "Whoo!"

I could still hear Pavel and Caboose somewhere to my right, but they were shouting out enemy positions and movements. I decided to focus on my own ordeals and kept firing. The Daemons had limited angles with the massive pile of debris between us. I had no doubt that at least one of them was moving to get us from our back, but the other two couldn't do much. They had done enough already.

This went on for what seemed like an eternity. I killed three more brutes and Parker took down two. They stopped coming so strong after that and instead started playing it smart. They'd send one low-ranking brute forward to suppress us and act as a decoy while leaving marksmen further back, trying to get a decent angle on us when we fired back. If we focused on the marksmen then the brute closest to us could just toss a grenade, if we focused on the closer brute the marksman would eventually get a hit.

"I'm running low, son," I told Parker. "I can't go much longer."

"Same here, sir," he admitted. "I don't want to die."

I nodded. "Same here, kid. It was a good run."

"There's gotta be a way, sir!"

I shook my head, looking at my last magazine. It was already half-used from a previous firefight. That left me with my woefully underpowered pistol and my shotgun. I could get in a couple of good kills before I died. It wouldn't be all that bad. It would be a good death.

"A beautiful death, eh?" Schitzo asked, almost nervously. I had never heard him quite like that. "How'd Bee's song go?"

"It's gonna be a beautiful death, jumping out the window…" I whispered softly, wondering what exactly the guy meant when he wrote those lyrics.

"Probably nothing, Francisco. You read way too much into songs," Schitzo said, back to his usual cocky and douchy tone of voice.

"I'm out," I finally announced, dropping my rifle and drawing my shotgun.

"They're closing in on you, sir!"

I nodded to myself and sat back down. I raised my shotgun and waited for the brutes to approach. I was out of grenades and couldn't do anything if they threw one of theirs. It basically boiled down to just how exactly they decided to kill me. Brutes would often go for the personal kill. More times than not it was a huge disadvantage for us, but this little shortened M45 said otherwise.

The first brute that came already had its spiker raised to deliver a cleaving blow. A simple shot took half its face off and knocked it backwards. Unfortunately, it also knocked the spiker away from reach. The second one was more careful, firing wildly before it came, but the spikes went wide and it too was soon dead. The third one didn't make the same mistake, instead hanging back. I didn't see it moving, but I did hear the rocks clinking slightly on the other side of the pile of debris. A spiker appeared on the top and lowered its barrel towards me.

I acted then. If I was going to die then I might as well go with some style.

I jumped up and pressed my boot against the spiker, pinning it to the rubble. The brute glanced up at me, surprised. That expression was wiped off its face when a pound of buckshot simply turned its head into hamburger. I pivoted to fire at a nearby brute captain, but the alien had already shortened the distance and punched me right back where I had come from.

My chest hurt. I wouldn't be surprised if the punch had dented the chest piece in my armor. It was a miracle that my sternum hadn't been sunk into my chest with that hammer of a punch. The brute captain displayed the beast-mindedness that its race boasted by kicking the shotgun away from me and lowering its mauler at my face slowly. I reached for my pistol, but the brute stepped on my hands, breaking a few fingers.

"Fuck you, coward," I said.

"You're the one who's dead," it replied with broken English.

I raised my chin and prepared to die, sad that my face would be unrecognizable if my body was ever retrieved.

"Wrong."

The brute's head was separated from its body.

I blinked twice. There was nothing there.

"You alright?"

I nodded slowly, slowly putting two and two together. "Eduardo?"

There was a disembodied chuckle. "Team Falcata at your service, sir. We are getting you out of here."

"Let us handle the tanks, Lieutenant," Jonah-G012 said, also invisible. "We'll get you ammunition as soon as that is done."

I heard a whishing sound and saw Eduardo's falcata flash before it disappeared. After that everything started happening too fast that even I had trouble keeping up with the Spartans.

I limped towards the top of the pile of debris. I ignored my own safety in an attempt to catch a glimpse of what the Spartans of Team Falcata were doing. One of them, I believe it might've been Kevin-G111 was toting a full-size M247 Heavy Machine Gun and firing from a rooftop at the brutes. He didn't seem to be overly concerned with accuracy, even when several brutes found themselves caught in the gunfire most of the rounds uselessly pinged off the Daemon tanks' strong armor.

The brutes turned to fight off this new attacker, but four of them collapsed nearly simultaneously, one of them was missing its head and another had its neck twisted completely around. The other two simply jerked as blood started pouring from the back of their heads. The rest of the brutes hadn't even noticed what was going on yet, and four more were killed in a similar way before a chieftain realized what was going on.

The enormous brute turned around and growled only to suddenly find a falcata going in through its mouth and out the back of its head. Eduardo's silhouette slowly became visible and the Spartan-III twisted his large sword, producing a sickly noise as the brute's skull shattered into dozens of fragments. He pulled back his sword and sheathed it as he drew an M90 shotgun. Two brutes tried to fire at him, but he was out of the way before the spikes even left their guns. Three blasts later the two brutes were twitching on the ground, dead.

Kevin was using his MA5K carbine with deadly efficiency, closing in the distance with a shot or two before viciously jamming the weapon into the brutes' eye sockets or mouth. Once the S-III had you in his sights then you were as good as dead. The other two Spartans on ground level were more conservative in their approach, but equally devastating in its execution. Alex-G301 and Miranda-G192, the two girls on the team, instead opted to use pistols to neutralize the brutes, hitting them in the neck or face before they could fire back.

It took them precisely ten seconds to kill thirty-three brutes that I could count. The three Daemon tanks were boarded and rendered useless five seconds later, when the Spartans jumped up and wrenched the hatch from its hinges with barely any effort. After that it was a simple matter of tossing an incendiary grenade inside and pressing the ruined hatch hard against the hole to keep anybody from leaving.

Smoke started billowing out of the Daemons and all three tanks skidded into the pavement, dead.

Even as that happened, the Spartans placed small shaped charges into the Daemons' turrets, detonating them and rendering the tanks completely useless.

I watched in amazement, my mouth trying to form of words.

"Thank you," I said finally, regaining my composure and stumbling down the debris. "We still need to leave, though."

"Agreed, El-tee," Jonah-G012 said. "Do you have a fallback position?"

"We were en route when all this happened," I said, slinging the rifle across my back and reloading my shotgun slowly and methodically. "Where'd you come from?"

"Airdropped," Jonah replied almost dismissively. "Low altitude, armor lock, I won't bore you with the details."

I tilted my head, wondering exactly how they had gotten here. I shrugged to myself and started shouting out for my men to come out and start moving. Most of them were eager to comply. The soldiers of A Company followed the order as well, but their numbers were greatly reduced. It wasn't that they had been too slow when Pavel warned us, but they had moved to one of three buildings that had been most damaged. I had been in the back, my men in the front, and the soldiers in the middle. The middle was obviously the most targeted area.

"Some help!" Parker shouted out. "I'm stuck!"

One of the Spartans jumped at the task, wrenching Parker's stuck foot from the debris and carried him out.

"I think I can walk, he was saying."

The unnatural angle of his foot determined that he was lying.

"Warehouse," I said. "We're short on time."

"Sir," Jonah-G102 began, "we need to move now. We no longer have the element of surprise on our side and are outnumbered."

I nodded. "We'll move out as soon as everybody's here."

"I think we're good, Frank," Pavel said, jogging up to me. "You good?"

"Barely," I said. "I can breathe and I can walk."

My chest was throbbing, but I could function well enough. We had enough Pelicans to move out my unit and the few survivors of A Company. The five heavy Spartans would probably need another Pelican due to their bulk, but they were Spartans, they practically had a guaranteed evac all to themselves. Perhaps now that they were with us we would have a much better chance at getting HIGHCOM's attention.

"What the hell happened?" Marina asked as we entered the warehouse. "I thought you were–"

I tapped the side of my head. "Radio's dead. Are we good to move out?"

"Yes," she said, crossing her arms. "All we need is a place to land."

"Do you have an uplink?" I asked her.

"Yes," Marina replied, leading me to her Pelican, barely sparing a glance for the five Spartan-IIIs."

I put my helmet aside and sat down in the pilot's seat on her Pelican. She had remarkably strong signals to every single UNSC stronghold in the city. We still held most of New Alexandria, but the covvies had managed to drop astounding numbers of troops into our midst, making artillery and air support a risky matter on a scale larger than a block. Guided bombs usually hit where they were intended to, not missing by a margin of more than a millimeter or so, but when you factored in glass skyscrapers reaching a thousand meters into the sky… then you got yourself a bit of an unpredictable variable. We already had buildings collapsing on top of people and military, we didn't want more of those.

"Olympic, Olympic, this is First Lieutenant Castillo of AAG-7, do you copy?"

The acronym for Asymmetrical Action Group was usually enough to get me through. If there was any kind of computer program at all recording the call then they would immediately patch me through to somebody of relevance. This time was no exception, even when the world was coming apart that little thing worked in my favor.

"Francisco, you're alive," Captain Flatt came in. "Small miracle."

"I wouldn't say small," I replied, thinking about my leg. "Ma'am, my district is being surrounded, we had some Spartan assistance in securing our retreat, but there's no way we can hold this area much longer."

"Damn," she muttered. "The Sea District is vital to moving supplies to the spaceport."

"I'm sorry ma'am," I apologized. "It's how it is. How are you in Olympic?"

She chuckled. "Situation is bad everywhere, I was coming here to coordinate all AAG teams more properly, but then it all went to shit. I'm afraid that the only two teams remaining are yours and Nezarian's."

I cursed. "Nothing can be done," I reassured myself. "We need somewhere to go."

"I'm authorizing you to land here at FLEETCOM HQ, we're in the middle of evacuating non-essentials, but top brass is staying here."

"Well, a Spartan team and us is probably gonna be a boost in that department," I said. "We might need an additional Pel–"

The flimsy roof exploded, sending hot shrapnel everywhere. I covered my face instinctively, but the armored window held without much trouble. I looked up, but whatever had destroyed the roof was long gone. Instead I saw half a dozen brutes with jump jets and the thing that annoyed me the most during combat. At least fifty drones were buzzing their way furiously towards us, coming through fast.

I jumped out of the seat, leaving Flatt hanging. I immediately grabbed my helmet and cursed when I remembered that I had no ammunition for my rifle. Instead I grabbed the HMG on the back of the Pelican while Marina dashed back to the cockpit. She had the craft up in the air just as the brutes landed.

The Spartans had left the inside of the warehouse to defend the perimeter just seconds ago, and now they were handling whatever the covvies were throwing at us from outside.

"Turn it around!" I shouted to Marina.

Marina complied, firing the main cannon of the Pelican as she did. I don't know whether she hit anything, but the powerful nose gun of the Pelican certainly frightened the brutes and some of the drones. Once the tail section of the Pelican was facing the drones I began firing. We were really low on ammunition, so I was basically one of the only ones firing back.

"Get to the other Pelican!" I shouted, hitting two drones flying at me.

"There's more coming!" Pavel cried.

I saw as the pilot made a dash towards the Pelican, closely followed by Marv. Halfway through to the other craft the pilot was thrown sideways. I wasn't paying attention, but the sudden movement drew my eyes. I winced when I saw that he had been hit in the side of the head with a spike grenade. Marv stopped to help before realizing what happened. He rushed forward, narrowly avoiding a second spike grenade from hitting him.

The two explosions sent Marv tumbling forward and completely tore the poor pilot apart into a fleshy mess. My men were technically trained to fly the Pelicans, but it would be pretty difficult for any one of them to spin it one-eighty degrees and hold it stable while being fired upon and giving the rear gunner a decent angle. In short, our only other reliable source of firepower was effectively useless.

"Brutes are moving left," I shouted. "I'll handle the drones!"

It seemed like the drones seemed to reciprocate, because they were heading towards the Pelican in bulk. I hit at least ten before they got close, but after that they started swarming me. One of them tackled me, knocking me backwards into the Pelican. I struggled with the insect, but those things were stronger than one imagined. I struggled with it until I succeeded in getting my pistol out of its holster. A quick shot into the drone was all I needed to gain an upper hand. I shoved the wounded alien from myself and twisted its right wings with my arm. I then fired three quick shots into its head before stomping on it furiously.

Needles bounced off the Pelican's walls, reminding me that there were still other drones to worry about. I fired six or seven quick shots at one of the closest drones with my pistol before manning the turret again. I had more success after that. The brutes had been stopped short as soon as Ramirez and Dotsenko managed to get their SAWs back in the fray.

We slowly pushed the aliens back against the wall until we killed them all. I gave the word for everybody to move back to the Pelicans. I had to assume that one of the Spartans would be a more talented pilot. My men carried Mata's unconscious body into the other Pelican as Marina set down her own. I kept aiming at the massive gaping hole in the roof as an assortment of soldiers and AAG operators hopped inside. Pavel must've been in contact with the Spartans, because they burst through one of the smaller side doors a few seconds later. They no longer had their camouflage on, and their armor showed some minor scrapes and scorches.

"Go!" Jonah shouted, sliding inside the Pelican along with one of the Spartan girls, Alex or Miranda.

"Go!" I echoed to Marina. "Now!"

She took off immediately, almost hitting the edges of the hole in the warehouse roof. The other Pelican floated up almost a second later, I could see a Spartan piloting it, with Marv in the copilot's seat. Our craft shook as we were fired upon by AA Wraiths. I covered my face and then looked down in an attempt to spot the vehicles. Instead, I saw four hovering Phantoms and a dozen vehicles of all types surrounding the now-empty warehouse. I began firing on the covvie soldiers on the outside, hoping that Marina could get us under friendly SAM air cover before we were shot down.

"Come on!"

The chase went on for a full minute, with Marina outmaneuvering the Phantoms until one of them was hit with AA defense. The rest of the chasing Phantoms gave up the chase and banked hard to avoid being hit. One of the enemy dropships was destroyed before the others finally managed to get outside of the envelope. I looked at the departing dropships and breathed with relief.

* * *

><p>FLEETCOM HQ was a crowded mess. Units of all branches were moving in every direction, mixed with civilian subcontractors and low-level employees trying to get out. We landed amidst the mess, with a wounded Marine waving us down into the landing pad. Marina parked her craft flawlessly and we hopped off. Few of the men and women even spared a second glance at the Spartans of Falcata. At first I thought that it was just because they were so intent on getting out, but then I realized that it was because they had seen their likes before. There were at least a dozen other Spartan-IIIs moving through the mass of frightened men and women.<p>

"Well, the odds are looking good for us," Schitzo muttered. "For once."

I almost agreed with him.

* * *

><p><em>Thanks to <strong>Colonel-Commissar2468 <strong>and **General TheDyingTitan** for proofreading this chapter. Also, ironic quote much?_

_We went back to our dearly beloved Frank for a while here. And Frank went back to his very first dearly beloved for a while there. Then he went a bit further back to that brother that you want to know so much about. I wonder what that means... No matter, the rest of the chapter consisted of Frank trying to be badass with a hole in his leg while the rest of his team was successfully badass as well. Lots of the soldiers of A Company were killed in the process, but they just can't keep up with AAG-7 even if they're doing their best. I wonder if Private Parker survived, I legitimately forgot to write him in there at the end. I guess we'll find out next chapter. All in all, I have to say that this was a bit of a hard chapter to write, mainly because there wasn't a lot of Frank in the action scenes until the very end. I hate to do offscreen deaths like Preacher's, but it happens in real life and it happens in The Life. He-he, see what I did there?_

_Anyhow, our heroes are finally safe and surrounded by the mysterious Gamma Company that the books fail to talk about. You know that when the books fail to explore something it means that I'll do it myself. A few of the Gamma teams were in Onyx while all this happens, but where was the rest of the company? Reach is the only place that makes sense. Maybe some of the teams were on Earth or Sol, but screw it, you want Spartans, I want Spartans, we all want Spartans. You get Spartans._

**_fantasydelver:_**_ I know that Halo universe weapons still use chemical propellants, but in my head they have always been using propellants that are five hundred years ahead of anything we have right now. It always irked me a bit that the dates in Halo seemed to be so far in the future but we still had weapons analogous to current small arms. Hell, the Scorpion would get its ass kicked by any modern Main Battle Tank in a one-on-one match if I didn't find little caveats based on future technologies (stronger armor, technologically advanced shells). Point is, I always think about small arms in the Halo universe as being significantly more powerful than what we have here, at least superior in range and muzzle velocity. I hope that clears any doubts up._

**_Adam 1076: _**_don't sell yourself short. I admit that the dedication part might be a bit hard (I did write this massive behemoth of a fic in a relatively short time), but I'm sure you could write something of the same or even quality if you give it a shot. I look forward to seeing your work._

**_Jackarall:_**_ it's the tower in Reach. The building you try to blow up in ODST is located on Earth, and we're still a bit short of getting there._

_Thanks to everybody for your reviews and feedback, you don't know how much that helps me make this story better and more appealing to my readers. I look forward to hearing your thoughts on this chapter._

_Stay strong._

_-casquis_


	202. Sleep and Breach

Chapter CCII: Sleep and Breach

**August 20, 2552 (UNSC Calendar)/**

**FLEETCOM HQ, New Alexandria, Viery, Reach, Epsilon Eridani System**

* * *

><p><em>"There's no time like the present for someone to tell you that you should've done something five hours ago. Fucking assholes."– Lance Corporal Sasha Dotsenko<em>

* * *

><p>The Spartans were all moving out from Olympic Tower and towards the landing pads. They were clustered in small teams of five, all of them clad in the same stealth armor that the members of Falcata were wearing. Most of the IIIs had MA5K rifles with suppressors, but some of the bigger Spartans were carrying M247Ls much like Pavel's, adding ballistic shields or an ammo backpack.<p>

"Pavel, I need you to get in touch with Captain Flatt, get us supplies and–"

"On it," he said. "She says they're on their way."

I nodded and waited. The five Spartans jumped out of the two Pelicans and clustered together, talking amongst themselves. I looked at them before moving towards my own team. Pavel and Caboose were already talking to each other, with Mata leaning back against the Pelican, his eyes droopy and looking confused. They turned to look at me as I joined them, stepping aside to let me talk.

"What's next?" Pavel asked me.

"For now? Nothing," I said. "I'm gonna try and set up a line to Esztergom and see if we can contact Amber and Katie. Caboose, anybody you want to talk to?"

He shook his head.

"Alright. A lot of the guys have friends and family here and in Esztergom, we can see about giving them contact numbers. After that we're probably gonna be sent on a counter-op. If that's not the case we'll probably just stay here and defend this location while evacuation goes on. Either way, we might get a couple of hours rest."

Caboose nodded thoughtfully while Pavel sighed with relief.

"You need to get that helmet radio fixed," Pavel said. "Being a platoon leader is such a hassle."

I chuckled. "Tell me about it. I'll just get the module replaced."

"We also need to stock up on ammunition and supplies," Caboose added. "Most of us are out of rifle ammo and low on both stims and medical supplies."  
>I nodded. "Flatt will take care of that, I need to talk to her as soon as she shows up."<p>

A little golf cart approached our landing pads, towing behind it a small trailer with what appeared to be like crates. The golf cart had only two people on it, but none of them appeared to be Captain Flatt. However, one of them was someone I knew.

"Well, what do you know?" Pavel asked, chuckling.

"Grass!" Bee exclaimed. "Grass, great to see you!"

Camilla stepped out of the small cart with a smile on her face and hugged Bee. They exchanged a few quick pleasantries before Cam told him that she had to talk business with me.

"Cam," Pavel said, giving her a quick hug as well. "It's good to see you."

"Same," she replied. "How are you, Grigori?"

"Just peachy," he replied, giving her one of his rare smiles.

"Hey Grass," I greeted her, also giving her a small half-hug. "What are you still doing here?"

"They killed my boss in the opening blitz," she said with a small sigh. "He was moving to Castle Mountain, covvie air assets caught up to him. I was lucky I wasn't there. Anyways, that's not important. Propaganda and public relations isn't really important at the moment, so they paired me up with Captain Flatt. You know, prior SpecOps experience."

I nodded, taking in her quick explanation. "Well, glad to be working with you again. Are you working logistics?"

"For the moment," she said. "I'm switching to mission control once we get some ops for you."

I smiled. "Alright then."

"What do you need then?" Grass asked, leaning back and crossing her arms.

"Full ammunition loads for everybody. We usually go a little heavier than we did back in Reaper," I told her. "Medical supplies, water, stimulants, energy bars, and all that stuff would help too."

"Rucksack loads?" she asked.

"We're not gonna be moving too much," I said after some thought, at least not for long distances. "Rucksack loads."

"Ok, I don't think we can supply Spartan Laser batteries, those are rare enough as it is. We do count with SPANKr ammunition."

I shrugged. "It'll do. If you could arrange for the two Pelicans to be refueled and have a full load out, that'd be great."

"I'll see what I can do."

"Marina would love it too," I added cheekily.

"Marina?" Grass asked after awkwardly clearing her throat. "I have no idea how you always manage to find yourself back together with your friends."

I chuckled lightly. She had a point. More often than not I ended up working together with people that I had known beforehand. It was an unusual thing in a military so large. Grass smiled as well, looking awkwardly at Marina's Pelican. She would be hard-pressed to forget her little drunken foray into kissing a person of her same sex. To her it would forever be a source of discomfort when it was brought up. To everyone else it would be an excellent story to tell whenever we met for a few drinks.

"Cam, if you could get us a working phone?" Pavel said. "I want to talk to my family and I'm sure that the guys here want to talk to their friends as well."

Grass nodded and smiled. "I can do that. I'll be back in about half an hour, ok? Meanwhile just try and rest. Take a nap. I know you're good at that."

I smiled. "Thanks Grass. We owe you one."

She smiled back rubbing her good arm with her artificial one before hopping back inside the small cart, all the crates now on the ground.

"Time for a nap ladies and gents!" I shouted to my men and the few survivors of A Company. "We'll get our orders soon, meanwhile, just get some rest."

There was a universal sigh of relief.

* * *

><p>I was woken up precisely forty minutes later by Grass. She gently shook me, careful not to startle me unnecessarily. I looked around confused before remembering just exactly what was going on. My head was still killing me and my leg was beginning to get stiff. I had already solved the problem of ammunition I should see about securing some medical assistance. There had to be at least some sort of machinery here that could speed up the healing process in my leg.<p>

"Here's a phone," Grass said.

"Thanks," I replied, grabbing it and dialing Katie. "Can you give me a sitrep?"

"The covvies have been contained, but they dropped so many infantry here that they have secured areas of the city all to themselves. Most of those places hadn't been evacuated yet."

I nodded and waited for the phone to get through to my girlfriend. "Some of the guys need medical assistance."

"I was wondering when you'd ask about that," she said. "Your leg looks like a bloody mess."

"It is," I admitted. "But I'm not the only one."

"We have an infirmary in the tower. It's not being used currently, too small for any serious use."

"Sounds good," I replied, slowly getting up.

"I'll take you there," she told me, helping me to my feet. "Pavel's got working phones for everybody, he said that he's gonna let everybody get another hour of sleep before waking them."

"Is he talking to his wife?"

Grass nodded. "Yes. He sounds worried."

I sighed and moved with Grass towards her little cart. The phone pressed against my ear was now beeping, waiting for Katie to pick up her own device.

"My helmet radio is not working," I told her.

"Already working on that," she said. "Pavel told me."

"What would I do without him," I wondered.

Grass rolled her eyes and scoffed, driving through the ever-increasing number of troops. FLEETCOM HQ was slowly becoming one of our most vital positions in the city, especially considering the losses we were going through. I noticed that most of the troops here were elite soldiers. I saw Ranger and Airborne patches on the Army soldiers as well as the iconic ODST armor here and there. Most importantly, there were still a few Spartan teams within sight, slowly and methodically field stripping their weapons.

"Hello?" Katie's voice came in through the phone.

"Katie, Katie, can you hear me?"

"Frank? Is that you?"

"Yes," I said, heaving a huge sigh of relief. "How are you?"

"I'm fine," she replied, sounding every bit as relieved as I was feeling. "Eliza is sleeping and Amber is talking to Pavel right now."

"Yeah, we managed to get a good line to you. How are you? Is everything fine?"

"We're fine, Frank. We're still in the spaceport. They're not letting anybody move inside the transports yet. People are beginning to get angry."

"Are they still keeping order there?"

"Yes," she confirmed. "We have the police and the Eposz Regional Force keeping civil order. Frank, people are leaving the city."

"You stay there," I told her. "Katie, if there's any chance to get out of the planet, that's the best one you have."

"Frank… are you sure?"

"Yes," I affirmed. "I need you to trust me on this one."

"I do. I trust you."

I nodded to myself, following Grass down into the infirmary, limping slightly. "Ok. Good. Where are you right now? Are you in the terminal?"

"Yeah, we're in line for the third transport out of here. They keep telling us that they're waiting for a window to evacuate."

I frowned. If they needed a window to move the evacuation transports then it meant that the covvies had a pretty good chance of shooting them down in space. That in turn meant that the UNSC Navy was about to lose up there, condemning the planet to a fate that countless other colonies had suffered.

"Frank?" Katie asked.

"Sorry," I said. "I'm a little tired. Are you ok? Do you have food, water?"

"I'm fine," she said. "You keep asking."

"That's because I care," I said, chuckling.

Katie chuckled a little bit. "And you're tired. Frank, have you been getting enough sleep?"

I laughed, drawing a startled look from Grass as she motioned for me to sit in a plastic chair in front of a giant medical apparatus.

"Come on Katie, I'm in the middle of fighting a war. The only sleep I've had is unconsciousness and a short nap."

"Frank…"

"I'm kidding," I lied, drawing a disapproving look from Grass as she turned on the machine.

"Leg armor off," Grass told me.

I complied, pressing the big military phone against my ear with my shoulder.

"Are they giving you food?" I asked again.

"Yeah, they're giving rations to everybody in the terminal. It doesn't seem to be a big problem right now."

"Good," I said. "Have you heard anything about troop movements?"

"I know that they moved the battalions quartered here," Katie said. "All I hear is rumors Frank, we don't have any communication with anybody. Phones aren't working, neither is email, or messaging. We're cut off."

"That's the whole world right now," I said, trying to calm her down.

"And you?" she asked me. "How are you?"

"I'm alright," I said, following the robot arm as it approached my bandaged leg. I winced slightly as it cut the bandages with micrometric precision, but gave no voice to my complaints.

"I'm administering anesthetics," Grass said.

I nodded.

"How is Pavel?" Katie asked.

"Fine, it's gonna take more than a bit of plasma to get through that thick head of his."

Katie laughed. "That's what Amber said about you."

"She's a smart woman," I admitted. "How about Lavvie? Is she ok?"

"She's nervous," Katie sighed. "She doesn't really know what's going on. She's only eight years old."

"Figures. Poor girl."

"She misses her dog, too. She kept crying over Gunny all through yesterday. It took a lot of effort to convince her that he would be fine until we came back."

I frowned and rubbed the bridge of my nose. The battle was in that point where it could go either way, if we lost then Gunny would die trapped in an apartment building, scared and alone. If we won then Gunny would probably starve to death before anybody could get to it and open up the door. It would take a long time to kick the covvies out of this planet, but it could still be done.

I was gonna miss that dog.

"Frank?"

"Yeah?" I asked, feeling a bit drowsy form the anesthetic in my leg.

"Are you sure you're fine? Have you been having any nightmares?"

"No," I lied. "Not at all. I can't be distracted right now, and my body knows that."

Katie's sigh of relief was clearly heard through the telephone's speaker. "I'm glad. That's the last thing you need."

"Tell me about it," I said, chuckling and trying not to feel guilty about the lies.

Katie was silent for a second. "And your boys? Are they fine?"

I was dreading that question. Katie knew most of the men in AAG-7 personally. She wasn't close friends with most of them, but whenever we went out for drinks or a meal some of the guys would bring whoever they were dating or trying to impress. It only made sense that she would want to know who was hurt.

My pause was long enough that she noticed.

"Who?" she asked.

"Hipólito," I told her. "Chang."

"Anybody else?"

"No," I said. "Some of the guys are wounded, but they'll pull through."

"Good," she said softly. "Good. As long as you're fine."

"Yeah. Same goes for you, eh?"

I could see her nodding on the other end of the line.

"Frank… I love you."

"I love you too," I replied. "Katie, promise me that you're going to be careful and stay there until the ships evacuate. Please, please don't leave the spaceport."

"I won't," she said. "I promise. Can you promise me you'll do your best to stay safe?"

"I'll do my best," I assured her. "I know it doesn't mean much, but it should be something."

"Thanks. When am I going to see you?"

I sighed. "I don't know. I really don't. Hopefully you'll evacuate before I get a chance to be there. It might be a few months…"

"Will you call again?" she asked, sensing that the call was about to finish.

"I'll try to call tomorrow," I said. "I can't guarantee that I'll have a good uplink, but I'll try."

"I love you," she said again.

"Me too," I replied.

"Be safe," Katie said before hanging up.

I groaned both at the slight pain on my leg and at the impotence that I felt. Katie was fending for herself. She had gone through this once before and she had almost died. She knew what to expect this time, but that wasn't necessarily a good thing. I trusted her to cope with the stress and to keep Amber and Lavvie going strong. She had her cousin to lean on, so the five of them should be fine. For now.

"Is she fine?" Grass asked.

"Yeah," I replied, smiling a bit. "I asked her like five times."

She smiled. "You know, most people opt to look away from the operation."

I looked up from my butchered leg and gave her a big grin. The robotic arm had reopened the wound and was cleaning out the biofoam that hadn't already melded with the muscles. I knew that after that was finished I would be injected with some fluid or other that would both glue the muscles together and act as a conductor for blood and nervous impulses while also speeding up the healing process exponentially. It was basically biofoam on steroids. A shitload of steroids. Even as the machine injected the new fluid it would be stitching the wound closed with a degradable wire of some sort that would keep the muscle together, facilitating the healing process.

"I wasn't really paying attention," I admitted. The sight of my leg cut open and gradually being healed was one that made my stomach churn slightly.

"That's not surprising," Grass said. "It's just like you."

I shrugged slightly.

"How'd you get that injury anyways?" she asked. "It looks horrible."

"A building came down on top of me," I said. "I was lucky I guess. All I got was a headache and a piece of rebar through my leg."

"Could you move?"

"Not really," I told her. "I could hop a little bit, but Pavel and Bee carried me downstairs."

"No, I mean after they applied the biofoam."

"Yeah, I could move."

Grass scoffed. "Seriously?"

I nodded.

"Frank, you do realize that you had a piece of grooved metal about an inch thick going through your leg. You're not supposed to be fine after that. Not even with biofoam."

I smiled weakly, I was beginning to feel the fatigue. "I don't know Grass. Adrenaline?"

"Nope," she said. "Adrenaline can do a lot of things, but you were standing up when I saw you when your leg should've been in agonizing pain."

"I took a few painkillers," I said.

"Agonizing pain," she asserted.

I shrugged. "Well, I don't know what to say."

"You never cease to surprise me Frank. Even when I'm not in your unit you find ways."

"Well, you know me, I aim–"

"To please, yeah," she said, smiling. "I know. I think we all do. Even if you do your best to prove otherwise."

I raised an eyebrow questioningly.

"You're an ass, Frank. A complete asshole."

I laughed. "I'll give you that one, Grass. You know-it-all."

"I'm far from knowing it all," she replied. "Did you know that the Germans use the word _besserwisser_, which means better knower?"

"Know-it-all," I replied.

Grass laughed. "Come on Frank, darling. We're just about done. It looks like you're gonna get about four hours of sleep."

"I love you, Grass, but don't tell anybody I said that."

"I wouldn't dream of it," the striking blonde said with a small, satisfied chuckle. "Come on. You should be off your leg for at least one hour. After that it should be back to 90%."

"Alright then," I said, letting her help me sit down on a wheelchair. "Can you get the rest of my wounded men here?"

She nodded. "None of them had injuries quite as bad as yours, but if there's anything that needs treating I'll see to it."

"Thanks, Cam," I said, calling her by her name.

"Frank, I know that you have five wounded men in Esztergom, but where are the other ones?"

I sighed. "Polly Gibson and Preacher… Chang Sun-Hoyt, are gone."

"We're still one short."

"Payat," I said. "Aaron Eidelberg. You know him, right?"

"A bit," she shrugged.

"I left him at New Alexandria to do doctor work. He's with Astrid. You remember Astrid Vinter, don't you? Good girl, that one– What's wrong?"

"Frank, NA Hospital was lost to the Covenant five hours ago. We lost all contact with UNSC forces."

"Are you sure?"

"Frank…"

"Sorry. Did anybody make it out?"

"They were evacuating the wounded on the MagLev when the Covenant hit them hard. Less than a third of the soldiers receiving attention made it out. Even less survived."

"What about the doctors?"

"A few doctors made it out along with some soldiers. There's no word on an ODST or SpecOps type."

"Can you find out?"

"Not for sure," she admitted. "The Pelicans left the city for Esztergom."

I sighed. "I'll talk to Pavel or Caboose. One of them had to talk with him at some point."

"Do that," she said. "Frank… Don't be optimistic."

"You can never stop hoping, Grass," I said quietly. "These days hope is the only thing we have."

She nodded slowly and stopped the little cart, allowing me to hop off and sit back down in the wheelchair.

* * *

><p>I woke up a few hours later, still in my wheelchair. I rubbed my right eye and rolled my head, cracking my neck. An explosion had woken me up, not one that had happened particularly close, but it had still been loud enough to get me to stop sleeping. After I cracked my neck I shook my head a bit, feeling my growing hair shake as I did so. Strangely enough, I felt like I had had more than enough sleep. I couldn't have possible slept for more than four hours, but I felt incredibly well-rested. At first I wondered if my Spartan augmentations had anything to do with it, but then I remembered that I had also been pumped of all types of medicine and stimulants, so it was probably a combination of both.<p>

I looked down at my leg and saw that the wound looked almost healed. The synthetic flesh had already melded with the muscle and skin on my leg, it had healed at an incredibly fast pace, leaving only a small pink mark about an inch in width where the rebar had gone through. I stretched my leg carefully to test for pain and limitations. While the movement didn't hurt, there was still a certain tightness in my leg that might prove troublesome if I overused it.

A quick look around showed me that the members of my team had clustered in or around Marina's Pelican. Most, if not all, were enjoying their napping sessions, using their helmets as pillows and propping up their feet on crates of ammunition. The few survivors of A Company had done the same thing in the other Pelican. They looked like they were ready to walk through the gates of death even in sleep. I frowned at the sight of the soldiers, I didn't know any of them other than Private Parker, who had managed once again to survive through the shitstorm that this battle was quickly becoming.

I propped myself up and grabbed my helmet from the ground next to me. A section on the side was metallic gray and looked to be fresh from the manufacturing plant. A quick inspection showed that the damaged cover protecting the radio on my helmet had been replaced along with the useless radio system. A quick check showed that I was now able to communicate without trouble. Three large tables had also been set up in the edge of the landing pad, providing with pre-loaded magazines for us as well as boxes of ammunition and other equipment. A quick glance at my team showed that they had already stocked up on supplies, leaving me as the only member of AAG-7 not mission ready.

I got up and walked towards the table, carefully examining the sensations in my right leg. I began grabbing magazines of 9.5mm ammunition and pocketing in their respective pouches.

"How long have you been awake?" Pavel asked, leaning on the table next to me.

"Just woke up," I replied. "You?"

"Same. Did you get to talk to Katie?"

I nodded. "She's fine. Worried, but fine."

"The same goes for Amber," he said. "You know, I'm more worried about Lavanya than anything else now."

"She's got her mother to rely on," I said with a small shrug. "She'll be fine."

"She misses her friends," Pavel went on. "And her dog."

"Yeah. It's a shame."

Pavel sighed. "If it comes down to it I think we could manage to get Snark or Tank or some other guy to pick Gunny up and evacuate him with them."

"I hadn't thought about that," I admitted. "Have you heard anything about them?"

"Nothing," Pavel said, stretching his back. "I checked in with Esztergom and they confirmed that our guys reached the city's military hospital safely, although they had no additional information."

"They're fine then," I surmised. "At least for now."

"Grass said that she'd let us keep a couple of her fancy phones. Apparently they can communicate with any working device in the entire planet."

"Good," I said. "You have one?"

He nodded.

"Then I'll keep mine… How are you, man?"

"I'm good," he said. "Now that I know my family is still safe I can breathe easy."

"Injuries?"

"Nothing serious," he replied. "Scrapes and bruises. That graze to my knee was just a graze."

I looked down at his leg and saw that he wasn't wearing kneepads, instead there was a white bandage wrapped tightly around his knee. A little bit of blood had made it through, but it looked like something minor. The pad contained agents that would heal and harden the burnt skin on the outside, preventing chafing and pain when there was contact with material.

"As I said," Pavel went on. "I'm good."

I smiled and clapped him in the shoulder. "Good to know, Pavs. Are we ready to kick some ass now?"

"Hell yeah," he replied in a gruff tone. "That and more."

"That's what I like to hear!"

"I'm packing heavy on AP rounds," he let me know. "Grass supplied us with a pair of one-shot grenade launchers."

"M319s?" I asked, referring to the one-shots commonly fielded by the UNSC Army.

He shook his head. "Something fancier than that. They're a bit smaller than that, about the size of your shortened shotgun. Well, point is, they fire some sort of experimental superheated grenade designed to burrow through armor before detonating."

I raised an eyebrow. "Are they HEAT rounds?"

He shrugged with those massive shoulders of his. "Something analogous to it, I'd say. Either way, field testing shows that they can punch through ten centimeters of Titanium-A armor."

I raised my other eyebrow. Titanium-A was usually used in ships only; it was nearly impervious to impacts and conventional explosives, only suffering drawbacks against the heat-based plasma weaponry that Covenant capital ships fielded. If this little puppy could punch through Titanium-A, then it would certainly go through a Ghost or Wraith without too much trouble.

"It's designed to produce as much shrapnel as possible," he went on. "So that if it blows up inside a Wraith it will do as much damage as possible."

"I like it," I said. "Who has them?"

"Marv has one," Pavel told me. "And the other one went to Andy."

I nodded in approval, they were good choices. Trusty.

We talked for a little while, mostly discussing the way things were looking. Pavel had asked a lot of questions while Grass was tending to my wounds. The battle was at a stalemate, but with the majority of the Covenant forces still locked in orbit with the UNSC Navy, we would certainly win if it came down to attrition. It wasn't a pretty outlook regardless, the Covenant had managed to land thousands of troops with tanks, scout vehicles, air and ground transports, and enough supplies to last them a good long time. Pavel had heard reports about Scarabs here and there, but we still counted with substantial air support from Shortsword bombers and SkyHawk gunships. The tall buildings would ensure that the Scarabs wouldn't see our aircraft coming until it was too late.

"You packed on shells?" Pavel asked me.

I nodded and patted my shortened shotgun. "This little puppy is ready for action."

"Good, 'cause it looks like our expertise is going to be required."

Pavel's head was looking away from me. I followed his eyes and quickly stopped myself from raising my eyebrows in surprise. Even with my helmet I would've felt a little more than uncomfortable. Pavel was looking at a trio of people. If you could call two of those shapes people. Captain Flatt was walking with people that could only be described accurately with the word big. They weren't tall and disproportionate like most tall people were. They simply seemed like someone had messed up and added a little bit of extra size to the whole body. With that size went an astounding level of muscle mass and other things I could only begin to guess at.

But that wasn't all. These two Spartans I knew.

"Captain," I nodded at Flatt, addressing my direct superior first as a sign of respect. "Commander. Noble Two."

"Kat will do," Noble Two replied, leaving me wondering whether I should consider her accent sexy, intimidating, or both.

I knew those two Spartans from their early days when they were just kids and now they were both practically gods among us humans. I had witnessed Carter-A259 fighting in New Constantinople and saw the prominent scar on his left cheek when it was just a bleeding mess. Kat I had met some time later, back in '43, during a little engagement in New Moskva. Her team had been directly responsible for saving mine. Pavel and Bee would certainly remember. Grass, too. Back then I vaguely remembered her as an angry kid not ready for fighting. To think I had dismissed her as a child soldier with little future before she went nuts.

Time had served to prove me wrong.

"Nothing like a reunion," Schitzo said with a smile.

"Good to see you well, Lieutenant," Carter said in a neutral tone.

"Likewise Commander," I replied, shaking his hand and doing the same with Kat's robotic right arm. "I never properly thanked you and your team for taking down that cruiser back in Fumirole."

"No thanks are necessary," Carter said dismissively. "It was a joint operation."

"One that your man finished all by himself," Pavel said. "Thank you."

I remembered that other Spartan. Thom, I think it was. Hadn't really caused much of an impression the first time I saw him, not when you put him next to Carter, Kat, the knife guy, and a II like Jorge. He had quickly proved me wrong by sacrificing himself to save a whole city. He was the stuff of legends indeed.

"I'm sure he would appreciate your gratitude," Carter said somewhat awkwardly, "but right now we have an important matter at hand."

"Understatement of the century," Kat said in a playful tone before quickly settling into business mode. I had seen her like this once before when she was outlining the plan for that operation in Fumirole. "City's in trouble, we all know that. Covenant presence is heaviest in the southwest and northwest regions of the city. The proximity to the main body of their ground force complicates matters."

"Sexy, definitely sexy," Schitzo decided on her accent.

"A counter-op?" I asked.

She nodded. "We have limited information on the extent of their forces, but we do have some visual confirmation of leadership in this position."  
>I looked down at a small holographic projector she put on the table as it showed a rough map of the city and its surroundings. A red dot pulsed right outside of the main area of the city. Very few buildings, small or large, were outside of what you could consider downtown New Alexandria. This city was basically all downtown. The area in question was one of the more developed areas outside, meaning it had a grand total of fourteen mansions which had been modified to become defensive positions by the Army and were now serving the same purpose by the occupying covvie forces.<p>

"What's the plan?"

Carter took over. "The Navy has the UNSC _Stalwart Dawn_ orbiting overhead. The plan is simple. We need you and your men to come down hard and loud on the southern end. You hit these two mansions simultaneously. They're the least protected and are the best defensive positions."  
>I nodded slowly, guessing at the rest of the plan.<p>

"We need the noise," Kat said. "Once you land and we confirm enemy troops moving towards you we'll come in from the rear, take out our target."

"So you want us to land, blow shit up, and give you a window to take out a chieftain?" I asked.

"In layman's terms. Yes," Carter said with a brief nod.

I smiled. "Sounds like my kind of plan."

Carter nodded and switched his helmet from his right to his left arm. "Very well, Lieutenant. Captain Flatt has arranged for evacuation and limited air support for you. I'm afraid time is of the essence, though…"

"We'll discuss it on the way up," I said dismissively. "We owe you one, after all."

"Thanks," Carter said.

We both knew that I couldn't refuse a Spartan and even if I did Flatt would simply order me to do the mission. Thing is, I wanted to do this mission for them. Noble Team I liked. They weren't like other Spartans, they actually had personalities and faces. Whenever they weren't in active combat they would remove their helmet to talk to each other. Just like regular combatants would do.

Within a minute Pavel had roused my team and had them ready for action at a moment's notice. Marina asked me a pair of quick questions about the operation before hopping on the cockpit. She had worked with Reaper often enough to know that we usually had to take part in missions that had been hastily planned and sometimes even conceived while she took us to the target. She was happy that she wouldn't have to brave AA fire to drop us off, but the fact that we were doing a HEV drop worried her a bit.

My team was good to go in under a minute. We still had pretty much all of the fancy gear we had picked up at Mendez and our ammunition had just been completely replenished and then some. We found ourselves leaving Reach's atmosphere less than three minutes after that and boarding the UNSC _Stalwart Dawn_ just a few moments later. The frigate appeared to be in relatively good condition, but we didn't get a walking tour.

"I'm gonna be your evac," Marina shouted as we jogged towards the drop bay. "I don't want to make the trip for nothing, alright!"

I turned and waved at her. "I'll be waiting for you!"

Marina was a tough woman and she knew damn well just how tough my men were, but this situation was completely out of the norm, even for this fucked-up war.

A junior officer welcomed us to the ship and led us into the drop bay. The man seemed to be high on stims if the wide open eyes and incredibly dry face was anything to go by. He dropped us off and told us to welcome ourselves to any gear that we deemed necessary to grab. Everybody double-checked everything, with just Pitcher grabbing an extra magazine for his pistol. Once I was sure that nobody was going to grab anything else I positioned myself at the head of the holo-table and waited for my men to stand around it. The target area immediately appeared, accompanied by a flickering AI.

"Hello," it said. "I'm Newton in case anyone was wondering. I've been fully briefed on your mission."

"Go for it," I told the construct, waving my hands to gesture for it to go.

"There are fourteen mansions," Newton began calmly. "All of them were made into veritable fortresses by the Army, but they were smart enough to leave the side facing the city relatively unprotected in case something like this happened. They were also careful enough to make it easy for them to fire on one another in case they had to provide support to their neighbors or if the Covenant made it through one of the mansions."

As Newton spoke the hologram changed to display the mansions and highlighted the walls that the UNSC Army had erected around it.

"The houses are arranged in two curved lines, they're all technically on the same street, but the mansions are so massive that it would take a good jog to get from one end to the other. For your purposes, you'll just need to land in one of these three mansions and make some very loud noises."  
>The three mansions were precisely in the middle. They were all sorts of all fashioned buildings with lots of right angles and glass walls, but one of the houses in the middle looked like a miniature castle. It had been pummeled by enemy artillery fire and large sections of it had collapsed, but its walls still stood strong.<p>

"My recommendation," Newton said, "is go for this spot. It's high ground and close enough to two of the mansions. I would discourage you from attempting to land directly overhead of one of the buildings, they are massive houses and have countless hallways and small rooms that could house all number of surprises. If you're going to clear one, do it the old-fashioned way."

I considered its recommendation. Landing in the middle of the stone mansions would make a shitload of noise, but it wouldn't be any help if we all died in just a few minutes. The area that Newton had pointed at was a small raise on the hill that housed the stone mansion and another mansion. There was a small path there if the photographs were anything to go by; a few lumps here and there marked the presence of covvie soldiers patrolling the area. Upon further examination it became clear that the stone mansion was on the base of the small hill, while the other one was about halfway up and had a direct line of sight.

"We could break up," Caboose said. "Provide fire support while we clear the stone mansion."

"I was thinking the same thing," I said. "Two teams of six?"

"One of four and one of eight," Pavel said. "Ramirez, Dotsenko, Miri, and myself."

He would keep all our gunners and our marksman up in high ground while I took the rest of the team and cleared the stone mansion bit by bit.

"Let's do five and seven," I said finally. "Mata, you're with them. How's the head?"

"They cleared me for action," he replied with a small nod. "I'm just seeing double now."

His comment drew some chuckles.

I smiled and nodded. "Very well then, Pavel, I leave the details up to you. Everybody else, are we clear on what we're doing?"

I got a few nods.

"I said: are we clear?"

"Sir, yes, sir!"

"Damn right we are," I replied, gesturing for everybody to get inside the pods. "Noble asked us to do them a small favor, a favor that I think we owe them! They want us to be a distraction, they want us to draw as many motherfuckers to our position as we can before they kill the motherfucker in charge. Well, if the motherfucker in charge comes to us first, I say we try and beat them to the punch. I want those houses completely drenched in alien blood by the time we're picked up. Do you hear me? Drenched!"

"Yes, sir!"

I could see Newton's avatar rolling its eyes on the holo-table.

"Will you be joining us?" I asked the AI in a more subdued tone.

"No. I'm busy with running the ship, sorry. We're the only UNSC vessel able to provide ground support at the moment."

I nodded. "Alright. Good luck."

"Likewise, Lieutenant."

I walked towards my pod; it seemed to be a brand new one, with the name on the hatch freshly painted on. I couldn't help but notice that it wasn't my name and began wondering what had happened to the ODSTs that were supposed to be in this ship. In all likelihood they had been groundside when this all happened. Now they were either dead or fighting with the rest of the UNSC.

"Team-7!" I boomed. "How. Do. We. Go?"

"We go feet first, lieutenant!"

"Damn right," I whispered, cracking my knuckles.

Red. Yellow. Green.

Lurch followed by loss of gravity followed by the most beautiful view you could ever imagine. Reach was truly a beautiful planet, the aurora phenomena that surrounded it only increased the effect that it had. It seemed almost like an aura of… well, beauty. At this altitude I couldn't see anything clearly if I looked down at the surface, but the sun still wasn't hitting New Alexandria at quite the right angle, and the darkness showed patches of destruction here and there where fires raged. It was, however, bright enough to see the incredible amount of smoke coming from various places in Viery. I think that I could even make out the front section of the supercarrier that had been destroyed.

Reach got closer and closer at a steady pace. The temperature increased exponentially, so much that I could see the heat permeating through the transparent door right before it automatically polarized. Instead the door displayed everything that I would've been able to see through a fairly simple set of heat proof cameras positioned at various points on the outside. The door tagged the target landing area, just a small red dot.

New Alexandria soon appeared, majestic even as it burned. I could make out tiny little dots here and there, flying through the buildings and presumably firing on enemies. Directing my attention to the ground at my feet I could see that rows of massive mansions. They had backyards big enough to build several football fields in each one. I don't think I would've minded one bit living there.

The pods split off slightly right before the drag chutes deployed, jerking me downwards and making me experience several Gs in an unpleasant, lurching sensation. The rockets slowed down the pod even more, but the adrenaline was already pumping through my blood, everything became clearer and brighter just as the pod slammed into the ground.

I grunted, it had been a pretty hard landing.

"Contact, contact!"

For the first few seconds the vast majority of the noise that came through my helmet and into my ears was exclusively gunfire. A few grunts of surprise were followed by growls and some low-level return fire, but within a minute we had cleared a nice swath of space in the small hill. It was enough space for Pavel's team to start moving towards one of the mansions, climbing up the gentle incline at a very decent pace, keeping their guns trained on the walls and windows of the mansion.

"Start moving!" I shouted. "Don't hold back!"

We had the element of surprise and had just taken a pretty good break from battle. We were eager to kill and the mission parameters provided for the perfect way for us to do it. My team began burning through ammunition as fast as they could, firing at every little thing that moved. Jackals and grunts were the first ones to go. I myself stuck to jackals, trying to deny the marksmen any opportunity to fire. Grunts tried to run towards the stone mansion, dropping their guns in a panic. A couple of brutes here and there roared for the grunts to turn and fight, but they didn't get more than a few roars out before they were gunned down themselves. We were basically running downhill now, firing wildly at anything that moved.

"Play us some music, Bee," I ordered.

"That's why I like you, sir," he said, immediately playing one of his epic songs. The name quickly appeared in my HUD, just long enough for me to read it. Brotherhood by John Dreamer.

I might have heard it before, but at the moment I wasn't sure.

The stone mansion had a short wall surrounding it. By short I mean that it was only twelve feet tall. A few sections of this outer wall had been brought down by artillery fire, both human and alien, but most of it still stood. At least it still stood on this side. I slid to a stop and slammed into the wall with my shoulder, turning around just in time for Marv to jump into my clasped hands and over the wall. Caboose went right after, his shotgun in one hand and his carbine in the other. I knew that he would stop using the MA5K that he favored, switching it for the shotgun. He couldn't exactly cock a shotgun one handed, could he?

Bee and I were the ones helping everybody hop over, and in the end I propped him up and then jumped up. I pulled myself up, preparing my battle rifle exactly as Pavel's team secured their position. Tracer rounds flew a few feet above me, drilling into the mass of grunts that had only just woken up.

I jumped down and saw Caboose firing one-handed with his carbine while he cocked the M90 shotgun with his left hand. I guess that he could fire one-handed after all. My amusement was quickly replaced by surprise. There were at least a hundred grunts in this small courtyard, most of them looked to be unarmed and had little armor on, but they were still threats. I wondered why the covvies would place all of their grunts in one place and then take their guns from them.

It took me only a moment to realize that these grunts were the wounded ones. The realization brought a smile to my face. If they could gun down and tear through our wounded with impunity then we could very much do the exact same thing. The song playing on the speakers brought a sense of grandiose to our actions, even if what we were doing would be considered an abomination if the enemy were humans. I felt empowered.

"Clear!" Marv called after the grunts had all stopped trying to run or crawl away.

"Move in!" I shouted. "We want the ground floor in disarray, move upstairs as soon as possible!"

We wanted confusion. We wanted to leave enough aliens alive that the word could get out. I had no doubt that we were already on the right track, but the more we made the occupants of this massive mansion panic the quicker the reinforcements would get here and the more they would be. Noble Team would get their stupid window and we would get in one hell of a mess.

Fun.

The mansion was a bit darker than I expected. There were no windows and the electric power had been cut off, but the lighting system that the covvies seemed to favor was almost dull. The purple lighting gave more than enough light to see, but nothing close to what an average human house would've had. The first thing we came across was a brute, rushing towards us before it realized we were running at it. Caboose met it with a faceload of buckshot and we poured into a large room that could've fit a hundred people comfortable. It seemed almost like a dance hall.

A dance hall full of brutes trying to scramble themselves into their armor and a pair of hunters barreling through the ones that couldn't get out of their way.

"Bee!" I shouted, spraying the closest brute.

The hunters fired, splashing the stone wall behind us with superheated plasma and lighting up an old painting that had escaped the battle. Bee returned fire with a missile. The hunter had opened up in order to fire, and the explosive payload on the missile was enough to take it out. In fact, the explosion tore the hunter in half, sending the top flying backwards and slamming against a small brute.

The second hunter roared. The vibrations made my bones shake violently, but Bee quickly hit it with another rocket. The hunter was thrown backwards by the explosion and against a wall. As its body slid down it left behind a viscous orange fluid. Two grenades landed on the wounded hunter, finally reducing it to a pile of gore and bits of armor.

The brutes had used the time to grab their weapons, even if they had forsaken the use of armor or any kind of shields.

A few spikes and bolts flew our way, but they quickly fell silent as the brutes were hit from all directions. I moved sideways, crouched, as I fired. The brutes had those weird helmets that only seemed to cover a section of their skulls, but their faces were free for anybody who cared to aim. The mouth was a good place to go. Even if it didn't guarantee an immediate kill it was an immediate neutralization. The brutes would either suffer from unbearable pain or the spine would be severed as the AP bullet punched through the trachea.

It was a good sound, the sound of brutes choking on their own blood.

Marv and Pitcher were serving the role of gunners here, firing their assault rifles automatically, expending the sixty rounds in the magazine as fast as possible. The brutes fell a lot more quickly than I had any reason to expect them to. I noticed that my team didn't miss. They just kept firing, but they didn't miss. I raised an eyebrow in surprise, none of them were augmented, but they all appeared to be fighting the best they ever had. Perhaps we had luck on our side this time. I had never been able to say that for the whole team before.

"Stairs!" I shouted. "Contact right!"

Four jackals poured down the stairs, firing wildly with their needlers. The jackals tripped as Andy cut their legs down from underneath them. They stumbled down, where they proved easy kills for Pitcher. I instead directed my attention to the single brute that had all of its armor on. The brute tossed out a bubble shield, sending our bullets ricocheting in every direction, breaking whatever hadn't been broken yet. Caboose and I moved towards the brute. It appeared to be a chieftain, but it didn't have its helmet on so it was hard to tell.

The chieftain rushed towards a plasma turret. With that and the complete and utter lack of cover it could keep us from going any farther at best or cut us down at worst. Caboose saw it too and immediately tossed a flashbang. I turned around as I entered the bubble shield. The noise left my ears ringing, but the flash didn't hurt me. I turned back around to face the chieftain and saw that it was grabbing its turret and bringing it to bear.

Caboose dove for the turret, knocking it sideways and almost yanking it from the brute's hands. The brute stumbled slightly, but it managed to bring its left foot up in a stomp that would've killed Caboose. I slammed into the brute and climbed onto its' back, dropping my rifle and drawing one of my knives. The brute attempted to shake me off even as it turned to fire on my men, but I stabbed into its' neck before it got the chance.

Amazingly enough, the brute didn't stop fighting. I yanked the knife and stabbed again, this time only half as deep, from that point I violently yanked sideways, opening a nice hole on the brute's neck. I could feel liquid pouring on my hands, but still the brute refused to go down.

Caboose had already gotten back up. A powerful kick tore the turret from the brute's grip. He then drew his pistol and pressed it against the brute's jaw, facing up. He fired six times, prompting me to jerk my head back. A little bit of blood sprayed my visor, but mostly the bits of brains and skull missed me.

I faced my team, expecting at least one compliment or noise of amusement, but they were already climbing to the second floor, having caused enough mayhem here in the ground floor.

"Did you record that?" I asked Caboose.

He shook his head. "Maybe next time."

I chuckled. "Let's move."

Caboose and I ran over the mangled brute corpses and bits of gore, the roars and growls from other brutes were getting louder and louder, but we hopped up inside the spiral stairwell before any of them entered the large hall. The sounds of gunfire were magnified by the confined space of the stairwell, but not that much. My men had already left and were presumably creating some chaos in the second floor.

"Wait," I said, switching from my battle rifle to my short shotgun. "Let's wait for someone to get here."

Caboose nodded and turned around, aiming his shotgun down the stairs. The rounded walls would be an excellent asset to us in this situation, helping the buckshot ricochet and smash into whatever alien tried to climb up the stairs. I knew that we couldn't exactly stay in here for long, but we'd get a couple of kills at the very least.

I fired first, hitting what sounded like a brute. Caboose then followed up with two blasts that tore a bit of the wall off before bouncing out of our sight and slamming into more flesh. This time the cries of pain clearly belonged to a grunt. We moved a bit down and fired twice before hopping back almost all the way to the second floor. A brute tossed a plasma grenade in soon after, but the explosion couldn't even begin to go through the thick rock and the lack of shrapnel meant we only felt a little bit of the heat.

We fired more shells into the stairwell, hearing the sound of bodies falling down with each blast. The brutes were sending grunts up first to try and overwhelm us, but they could only send one or two at a time. The stairwell was narrow enough for us humans, the brutes would have a bit of trouble climbing up.

"Throw a frag," I ordered. "And let's keep moving."

He complied and tossed the little explosive metal sphere down the stairwell. We jumped out to the second floor right before it detonated, sending shrapnel flying in every direction and then bouncing back again. Any covvies that were in the shaft probably took a pounding.

Looking up I saw a dozen or so jackal corpses, most of them were half-armored and weaponless. Gunfire was coming from my left, so I headed in that direction, switching back to my battle rifle. Caboose kept his shotgun out, aiming back at the stairwell in case the brutes decided to rush us again. I was about to open a massive wooden door that was slightly ajar when four blue bolts punched through it right above my head, lighting it up and sending me reeling backwards.

"Oh-kay…" I grunted, waiting for Caboose to position himself next to me. We kicked the door in and came into a large hallway with big windows on our left and a series of doors on the right. Also inside the hallway were five of my men and a wall of brutes with plasma repeaters.

We started firing as we ran towards the nearest door. There wasn't much cover in this hallway to begin with, and my men had already taken all of the available ones. I hit one brute in the chest and belly before Caboose and I had to tackle through a heavy door and inside a room for cover.

I grunted and rubbed my shoulder. Those doors were solid oak or at least something equally heavy and hard.

"Damn," I muttered, climbing back to my feet. The room was simply lavish in its decorations, a bed with four posts, paintings on all the walls and furniture that looked hand-carved and overall very expensive. It was a shame that most of it had been damaged one way or another.

"Sir," Marv checked in. "We don't have a way to punch through them and our rear is unprotected."

"Use your frags," I said. "No sense in conserving anything. Don't be picky."

"Yes, sir," Marv replied quickly.

His reply was followed by a series of explosions that quieted down the firefight for a few seconds. A few clinking pieces of glass fell to the floor, but after the five grenades were thrown there was simply nothing left to fight us in this hallway.

I walked out and saw that the deep end of the hallway had been painted with blood and gore. It was certainly a disgusting thing to look at, but also strangely satisfying. I wondered what exactly the grunts and jackals that were following our tracks would think when they came upon corpse after corpse with no sign that we had been hurt.

"Move up!" I ordered. "If we can make it to the rooftop all the better!"

The mansion had five stories, all of them incredibly large and spacious, but the roof only had two ways in according to satellite imagery and other specs, if we could bust through it would be relatively easy to secure it for ourselves. The shape of the roof meant that we could only be attacked by aircraft and jump jet troops from one side. It was perfect for making noise and drawing attention.

A wide open staircase welcomed us as soon as we left the hallways. Judging from the expensive marble it was made of I could only assume that it was the main set of stairs for the house. It should lead us to the rooftop easily enough. My men followed the same line of thought, because they started jogging up, hitting three brutes that were doing the exact opposite. Marv and Pitcher took the lead, with Andy and Caboose up behind them. Bee and me were close behind, leaving Serge to guard our rear with his shotgun and deadly aim. At this moment we were the very model of efficiency. We didn't have to clear out everything, so we didn't bother. We moved fast and killed only a couple of enemies each before moving on. Soon enough we were on the top floor.

"Stairs to the roof are over there!" I pointed. "Move!"

Caboose switched to the back, bolstering our rearguard with his own shotgun. He and Serge were now blasting at the berserk brutes with almost continuous fire. I kept my sight on the doors, firing as soon as they opened to discourage anybody from entering. If we had to move across the bullet-riddled doors I would kick them closed and fire a good burst through just for good measure, leaving them for Serge and Caboose.

Marv kicked down the door that led to the rooftop and bashed in a grunt's head before moving up with Andy right next to him.

"Go! Go!" I shouted. "Serge, once on top you're guarding this entrance. Caboose, you'll get the other one.

"Yes, sir," Caboose replied, running up the stairs behind me.

"Pavel, can you see the rooftop?" I asked.

"Miranda can," he replied.

"Miri?"

"Three sharpshooters at least," she said. "I'm keeping them down, should be enough for you to surprise them."

"You catch that, Marv?" I asked him.

"Yes, sir!"

He kicked the second door and came out guns blazing, Andy doing the exact same. The three sharpshooters turned out to be five, but the jackals didn't seem to realize that we were already this close to the rooftop. They squawked in fright before they were dispatched with short bursts. One of them managed to squeeze of a shot with a needle rifle, grazing Andy's armor on the shoulder.

"Magnet does it again," Bee said jokingly. "Damn if you don't attract all the gunfire."

"Shut up," she replied, examining her armor until she was satisfied that her own skin hadn't been pierced.

Caboose dashed to the opposite side of the rooftop where the other door was and opened it. He cleared the stairwell and then remained there, waiting for anybody to show up.

"Bee, you've got AA duty," I said. "Andy, Marv, left side. Pitcher, you're with me to the right."

They all nodded and started moving to their respective positions. The mansion was already pure chaos, but we needed to make this whole place erupt before Noble could come in. We had some sort of drones up in the air, and the faster the brute commander was spotted moving towards us the faster Noble would put a bullet in its brain.

From the rooftop I could see all the other mansions very clearly. The tall glass walls had been fortified by the Army, but the other side that was facing us hadn't. A few covvies had set up something here and there, but they hadn't been nearly as effective as our guys. I could see grunts, jackals, and brutes moving around, carrying spare pieces of armor or weaponry. They had been sleeping.

"Man, their discipline just sucks," Pitcher mentioned, propping his rifle on the wall. "Weapons free?"

"Weapons free," I replied. "Kill as much as you can."

"I'd make a wager with you, boss," he said. "But… yeah."

I smiled despite myself. "Smart man."

I noticed that Bee's song had ended only to give way to another one. Now that I considered it, Brotherhood had ended some time when I was in the first spiral stairwell, but the song that was now playing was very obviously not one that belonged to Bee's so-called epic genre. It was… well, it was hard to describe, I guess. It was like rap of a sort, but there was emphasis on the instruments.

"What is this?" I asked Bee. "The song."

"Three-hundred violin collapse," he said. "I think it might be a remix of some sort. Like it?"

I did, very much so. Uplifting shit right there.

Not long after I found myself firing at the targets in rhythm to the song, firing every fourth beat or so. The violins in the background gave the lyrics a certain additional power. The sight of brutes and grunts tumbling down dead only helped. I was already full of adrenaline, but a little more didn't hurt my focus. Things already moved slow enough as it was, making things easier than they had ever been. Now it was only better.

A brute was dashing through the road, carrying two brute shots. It threw one to another brute taking cover behind a luxury SUV. The two brutes dashed away from cover and moved towards us. I simple squeeze of the trigger sent three bullets through one of the brute's skulls. The next burst knocked the second alien down, where its legs twitched once before its brain realized that it had died. Five jackals that had been following them stopped to form a phalanx and fired on my position with pistols, proving that their eyesight was annoyingly good.

They sent me down for cover, prompting Pitcher to pick up the slack.

"You're good!" he said.

I popped back up and hit two of the birds in the legs, breaching their shield wall and allowing for Pitcher's automatic fire to take out the rest with ease. I then switched to the windows and rooftops on the other mansions. The sharpshooters were our first priority, but killing them didn't cause nearly as much mayhem as killing grunts and brutes in plain view did. I kept the sharpshooters down, leaving Pitcher to practice his marksmanship. His gun roared as he fired, bursts of blood came out of grunts and brutes. It was something of beauty, this combat thing. When things went right and everyone was in sync you could compare a firefight to an orchestra. Except an orchestra can't kick your ass.

"Frank, how's it going?" Grass suddenly asked.

"Good to hear your voice, Grass," I said. "You're Mission Control?"

"For now, yes," she replied. "You good?"

"Very much so," I assured her. "You should be here."

"Oh, I'm seeing it alright. I'm impressed."

"Thanks," I said. "Any news?"

"We've pinpointed the exact location of the enemy commander, but he doesn't seem to be leaving his position."

"What do you want us to do?"

"Nothing, we know where he is, it's enough for Noble to go in and dispatch it."

"Good."

"They should be there in ten minutes or so. The enemy's already riding your ass, Frank. I recommend you conserve ammo and lower your risks a bit," she advised.

"Understood," I said. "Thanks."

"Anytime," Grass replied.

"Priority targets only," I broadcast to my team. "Noble's on the way. Pavel, keep making noise."

"Got it," he replied. "Exfil still happening in our landing area?"

"Negative," I said. "Too exposed. Marina won't be happy if I ask her to do two separate pickups."

"We're gonna need to meet on the street level," Pavel grunted. "It's gonna be a dash."

"You'll love it," I told him. "Sprinting's our thing. Remember Aztlan?"

"How could I forget," he muttered. "My quads still hurt sometimes just by thinking about it."

"What happened in Aztlan?" Pitcher asked from next to me.

"A lot of things," I replied. "Good and bad. Mostly bad."

"You know, sir. You've got to tell us more of these stories of yours."

I shook my head. "No use. The only reason why anybody would revisit past battles is if it got him laid."

Pitcher paused for a second before replying. "You have a good point, sir."

"I usually do," I reminded him, killing a brute.

The pace of battle slowed down considerably, at least for us. Instead of hitting everything that twitched, we decided to conserve our ammunition and fire only at brutes and jackal sharpshooters. There weren't any hunters that we had to take care of yet, but that was bound to change. The skies were relatively clear too, which was good. Bee had only needed to fire once to take out a Banshee that was trying to strafe our position.

"Be ready to rappel down," I said. "We might need to make an unconventional exit."

My men all had some climbing wire on them at all times. Tie it to something and that thing could hold a Warthog up. If the thing you had tied it to didn't break, the cable was nearly unbreakable. It was used in space to tow damaged Pelicans and debris out of the way and it was used here as climbing rope or anything else that you could think of.

"We've got a squad of Majors moving our way," Pitcher said. "Engaging."

"I see 'em," I replied.

The five brutes were all more experienced, making liberal use of cover and strafing us with plasma repeater fire. We could barely get a good shot at them until they crossed the street. Pitcher and I took one out with combined fire, sending the rest going for cover. I killed another of the brutes with a shot to the throat, but the other three moved inside the mansion before we could take them out.

"Well, that'll bite us in the ass," Pitcher grunted. "What's Noble's ETA?"

"Grass?"

"One minute," she replied. "Marina is already on the way, she needs to know where you want to be picked up."  
>I tagged a position halfway in between Pavel and myself. It was in the middle of the street and exposed, but it should work if Marina made use of her rockets and guns.<p>

"I hear something," Marv said. "Falcon gunship."

I turned around to see one lone gunship speeding through towards one of the mansions. The grenade launchers on the side were firing nonstop along with the main cannon on the nose. A few bolts of plasma hit it, but they weren't receiving too much fire. They were flying too low for AA to pick em up properly. I saw four Spartans hop off as soon as the gunship was close to their target mansion and disappear through a door in the rooftop. The pilot escaped by the skin of his teeth, smoke coming from one of the rotors.

"Noble is on the ground," Noble-One said. "We're on the move."

I tried to follow Noble with my scope, but even with the massive outer walls made out of glass, the owners had chosen to have regular opaque walls on the inside. Here and there I would catch a flash of gunfire or a fast-moving silhouette, but Noble didn't really move into the outside of the house. I resumed my shooting a few seconds later, tuning out the chatter on my helmet. Ramirez and Dotsenko were by far the most vocal members of my team, but they countered that with brutal efficiency when it came down to laying suppressive fire. Ironically, they carried smaller weapons than Pavel, but it was my friend who could claim the most accuracy with his heavier machine gun. Not to say that the two younger men were inaccurate by any account, but Pavel was one of those guys that could group fifty shots in a space of ten inches at a hundred yards.

"We've got squads climbing fast on our side," Marv told me.

"Caboose, Serge, what's your status."

"Holding," Caboose said, "but the intrusions are becoming more frequent."

"Same," Serge replied calmly.

"Pavel, how's your ass?"

"Still tight, but I'm feeling like puckering up."

"Well, that's a weird metaphor," I noted. "Grass, what's Marina's ETA?"

"She's in position right now, but we need Noble to secure that kill first. The commander they're going for is in charge of–"

"Shit!"

I ducked right before a fuel rod took my head off. The explosion sent me backwards and Pitcher sideways. I groaned as pieces of molten rock landed on my armor, sticking to it as they rapidly cooled. Pitcher cursed loudly as he rolled his head, trying to confirm that his neck hadn't been broken by the impact.

"What the hell was that?"

"A fuel rod," I told him.

"Where'd it come from?" he asked after a brief pause to look at me.

"Beats me," I grunted. "Pavel, you got eyes?"

"Negative. Miri?"

"Nope," she said. "Can't help you."

I sighed.

Another blast hit the wall below us and I could hear the rocks shifting. I violently backpedaled as three more explosions rocked this part of the rooftop. Pitcher was only a second slower than I was and soon we had put a solid five meters between us and the edge of the rooftop. Excellent timing on our part, because a chunk of mansion suddenly dislodged itself and started falling down.

"We gotta take him out if we want to move out," I told Pitcher.

"Agreed," he replied, moving back towards the edge.

I popped out and started looking, it didn't take long to spot what I was gunning for. A single brute chieftain standing imposingly in the middle of the road. It was reloading its cannon when Pitcher and I hit it. The brute dropped the shells and jumped out of the way behind a small sports car. The tiny speedster was barely enough to cover the hulking alien, let alone allow it to reload without exposing itself. It was an extremely long thrown, but I could make it with a grenade.

"Frag out," I warned Pitcher as I reached for a grenade.

"That's a long toss," he mentioned calmly as he kept squeezing the trigger to pin down the brute.

By the time he finished talking my grenade was arcing through the air. My stronger muscles allowed me to make the throw with relative ease and I watched as the sphere traveled the hundred and eighty four meters to the car, punched through the windshield, and detonated in a fiery explosion.

The hydrogen cells ignited, turning the car itself into a much larger fragmentation device. The shrapnel and concussive force sent the brute sliding out of cover, blood pouring out of a hundred little wounds. Pitcher put in a burst in the back of its head for good measure, but the chieftain was already dead.

"Lieutenant, we got the kill, call your evac!" Carter came in.

Things must've been hairy from the way he was talking, no doubt the brute commander had surrounded itself with a few chieftains.

"Marina, we need you."

"I'll be there in a minute," her voice said. "Don't be late."

"Move out!" I shouted. "Smokescreens up!"

We always kept a few smoke grenades on us, but this time we only had three. Pavel's team had one and my team had the other two. We threw them down and waited a few seconds before jumping down the side of the five-story mansion with our rappel cables. I squeezed the cable to slow myself down and stopped a few feet above ground before letting go. A couple of jackals were still firing at the rooftop when they saw me through the smoke. They were dead before I could even aim for them. I turned to look at Marv holding his smoking rifle, who just shrugged slightly.

"Forty seconds," I said. "Two hundred meters."

I chose my words carefully, because my pack of alpha males and females would obviously take it as a challenge.

The mansion's courtyard had been vacated when the covvie troops had been sent up to the rooftop to try and overwhelm us. A simple hop over the stone walls had us outside the grounds and in the hillside. It was a long, exposed run until the road itself and then some more before we got to the highlighted area where Marina would pick us up.

"Enemies left!" Andrea warned, firing her rifle in their direction.

"Sniper!"

I crouched instinctively and some of the guys on my team actually dropped. The beam sliced through thin air, barely missing Pitcher's chest. I fired two bursts at the source of the rifle, but missed all of them in my rush to kill the jackal. I did, however, keep the bird pinned behind cover while we started moving once again, firing in all directions to suppress enemy forces.

I could see Pavel's smaller team moving from the other mansion, firing at the covvies chasing them. The intense song playing on my helmet only made things more… well, intense. I could hear every single shell as it clinked against the ground and then louder as I stepped into the road itself. Pavel was leading his team, barely turning around to fire, instead clearing the ground in front of them. Dotsenko and Ramirez were laying suppressing fire with all the accuracy that they could manage while running and firing backwards with SAWs. That is to say, not a lot. Mata and Miri were considerably more accurate, but they could only fire so many bullets at a time.

"I see you!" Marina shouted. "What have you gotten yourself into?"

Her Pelican roared overhead, its main gun blazing as it strafed Covenant positions. A couple of missiles flew out of the pods, hitting emplacements and sending covvie troops flying in every direction. I barely spared a glance at the spectacle though, because the covvies were still professional soldiers when it came down to it, and they were now beginning to get a coherent response organized. Normally it wouldn't be a particular worrisome thing, but we were basically surrounded in the headquarters of the enemy.

"Go! Go! Go!" I urged my men as Marina's Pelican touched down. "Faster!"

"Fucking hell!" Pitcher complained as he jumped over an expensive sports car, narrowly avoiding a burst from plasma rifles.

"Noble, what's your status?" I asked.

"We're making our own way out," Carter replied, "but thanks for the concern."

"Sure you don't need a hand?" I asked.

"You're already drawing all the fire to your position. Noble Four isn't terrible happy about it."

"Well, maybe next time he can play the rabbit," I replied, rushing inside the Pelican's blood tray. "Marina, get us out of here!"

Pavel had already settled into position behind the rear gun and was gunning down everything that moved, sending pieces of rock flying as the large bullets pounded the mansions.

"Are we all good?" I asked.

I patiently waited for all my men to reply verbally before nodding to myself and allowing me a degree of relaxation. The mission had gone well all things considered. I was more than happy with my men's role and they more than exceeded any expectations I had of them. Between the bunch of us we had killed over a hundred enemy soldiers. Most of them were grunts, but the brutes hadn't exactly been scarce either.

"We're outside of their SAM range," Marina announced with relief. "Heading back home."

"Good work," I told my team. "I'm proud of you."

There was a solid five second silence.

"Did he really say that?" Ramirez asked.

"I wasn't recording it!" Dotsenko replied. "Shit!"

* * *

><p><em>There was some laughter. It was the good kind of laughter. It was too early to dare to hope, but things were looking to <strong>Colonel-Commissar2468 <strong>and **General TheDyingTitan** for proofreading this chapter._

_Well, let it be known that this was basically a double chapter welded together, which means that I expect double the number of reviews. The main reason it took so long to update was because I was off doing college visits. Apparently college is a pretty big deal here in the US, who would've thought? That was a joke, it's a pretty big deal everywhere, they just make it an incredibly stressful process here for the sake of being assholes to young, innocent, bright-eyed high-schoolers. Not that I'm angry or even annoyed. That was also a joke. I'd also like to point out that writing four consecutive chapters of 10k+ words isn't exactly a small thing, especially when you post them so close to one another. Sorry, I needed to pat myself on the back for that, but feel free to join._

_So what happened? Grass is back! She's going to be mission control for a while! She didn't have any of her 'did you know...' moments. Goddamit! I forgot about that! Really? Yes. I apologize._

_What else? Holy fucking shit! It's Noble Team, and they kinda get along and sorta maybe respect Frank, holy crap, that's awesome! _

_Anything else? Oh, that's right. Everybody was a fucking badass in this chapter. And I really need to cut back on the swearing a little bit. I'm sorry, my college visits also meant that I missed a grand total of four tests, which I now have to take along with the tests that I had to take this week, so I'm a bit swamped right now._

_Reception to the last chapter was fairly positive, for which I am glad. Thanks for that by the way. Most of you complimented my writing, which makes my ego swell to dangerous levels. Not that I want you to stop, if anything I don't think you're doing it enough._

**_Doubledgeking: _**_I wouldn't know man. Frank started out as the identity I would adopt if I was dropped into the Halo universe, but within a short amount of time he morphed into his own person. I can barely say that he has any traits that I actually do have when I write him. If I had to answer your question without giving it serious thought I'd say that he is a mix of Zaeed from Mass Effect with and a little bit of Frank Martin from The Transformer thrown in there._

_Chapter 202. Wow, sometimes those chapter numbers just look unreal to me. I'm proud of myself, but I owe all of this to you guys, so thanks for that._

_Stay strong._

_-casquis_


	203. Good Deeds

Chapter CCIII: Good Deeds

**August 20, 2552 (UNSC Calendar)/**

**New Alexandria, Viery, Reach, Epsilon Eridani System**

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><p><em>"No good deed goes unpunished."<em>

* * *

><p>I failed to realize just how dark it was. It was the middle of the day, but there was just too much smoke and dust floating around. Marina flew us through the buildings, taking long detours to avoid sections of the city that were held by the Covenant or were deemed unsafe for aircraft. Most of New Alexandria was still under friendly forces, but the covvies had AA Wraiths and SAM batteries covering a large area of the city. So far their high-tech airspace denial pieces were still being effectively countered, but a few teams had been dispatched to deal with the guns themselves in case our countermeasures failed soon.<p>

"Frank."

"Yeah, Pavs?"

"Stop tapping your foot."

I looked down at the offending appendage and stopped tapping it. It wasn't very often that I expressed excitement that openly. An outside observer would've thought I was nervous, especially if they saw the tall, white buildings around the Pelican falling apart, but we had just come from a nearly flawless operation without barely any planning and a very vague objective.

After I stopped tapping it came to mind that Pavel was a noncom and I was an officer.

"Fuck you," I said after a stupidly long pause. I tapped my feet loudly once for effect, drawing chuckles from those observing.

"Hey, Frank!" Marina called from the cockpit. "Get in here!"

I got up from my seat and walked to the cockpit, barely feeling the gentle rocking motions as the Pelican flew. Marina was calmly piloting the craft, making the ride as smooth as possible. If she was going to be told to fly slowly and only take certain routes, then she was sure as hell going to make the ride a comfortable one. She turned around to face me with that big flygirl helmet of hers. It reminded me of some type of bug, with the round shape and the big reflective visor.

"What is it?" I asked, pressing my hand against the side of the cockpit window.

"I'm picking up some chatter. There's a tank platoon in need of a particular set of tools to fix up a damaged engine and get moving."

"Do they not have the tools they need?" I asked.

"Negative," she replied. "They're requesting an assist and we're in the neighborhood. Literally."

"This area's cleared, right?"

"Yup," she replied. "Cam?"

Grass joined the conversation through the speakers. "Yeah, it was declared safe thirteen minutes ago."

"Alright," I said. "We'll lend a hand. How long should it take?"

"I'm not a tank engineer," Marina deadpanned.

"Did you know that it only takes and average of three minutes to completely refit a tank with the appropriate machinery?" Grass asked.

"No, I did not know that," I replied, using that bored and annoyed tone for the first time in a few years. It brought a smile to my face and I could almost picture Grass smiling on the other end of the line.

"Alright, I'm calling it in," Grass said. "The stop should take about ten minutes give or take. I'm no tank expert, but judging from the platoon's descriptions the balance shaft and the alignment are a little bit off. Perhaps there's some issues with the connecting rod as well. Sounds like they were rammed by a Chopper."

"I have no idea what you're talking about," I replied. "But alright. Marina, where are your tools?"

"Overhead netting," she replied. "Turning now."

"Why are we slowing down, sir?" Pitcher asked as soon as I left the cockpit.

"I felt like lending a helping hand," I replied with a small shrug, reaching for the Pelican's toolbox. I knew from experience that it contained anything from your archaic wrench to the more recent scanners and automated repair tools. It was also heavy as fuck.

"Helping hand?" Andrea asked, failing to keep the skepticism out of her voice. "That doesn't sound like you… sir."

I sighed. "There's a tank platoon that needs to make some quick repairs. I kindly volunteered to help them."

My men weren't in any shape to complain and they all knew damn well that we were only flying through cleared areas. They checked their weapons and reloaded, standing up as Marina slowly approached the tanks. I walked out right behind my men as she parked her Pelican carefully. There were three Scorpion tanks, two of them positioned in clearly defensive position. Accompanying them there was a Warthog H variant. This one had even more armor than the norm would dictate on an H-model. Hell, it even had doors with windows on it.

Three tanks, a Warthog, and six soldiers that were very obviously not tankers looked at us with a puzzled expression. The tanker in charge of the damaged Scorpion moved up to me and took the toolbox without a single word. Once the heavy box was safely in his hands he looked up at me and asked my why the hell an ODST would bother with something like this.

I laughed. "As good a question as I've heard. But I'm not technically an ODST, not anymore. Neither are my men here."

"They certainly look it," the tanker replied. "With the ODST armor and all."

"It's better than the shit you're wearing," I pointed out. "Anyways, nobody here has time to waste, so get moving."

"Yes, sir," the tanker replied, remembering what appropriate behavior was when dealing with Helljumpers.

He didn't even make five steps before his head was lopped clean of his shoulders.

Blood sprayed my visor, making me flinch.

"Wha-"

I was thrown to the ground by an explosion. My head quickly surmised that it hadn't come from behind me and hadn't been close enough to have harmed my men through concussive blast alone. I somehow managed a levelheaded approach even when I had pissed my pants a little bit. Heads don't usually fall off shoulders just like that, in fact, the neck's there to prevent freaky shit like that from happening. I hadn't seen anything that could've caused something like that to happen so abruptly, beam rifles weren't powerful enough and I would've seen it.

By the time by brain made the collection I was already up and firing at the general area above the tanker's corpse. As soon as my brain clicked with my body and I thought cloaked elite I modified my aim.

The head had been lopped from right to left, which meant that the elite had swung from that direction. The man couldn't have moved through the cloaked hingehead, so it was easy to deduce that the alien had been in front when it attacked. I sprayed to the left at chest height, hoping that one of my bullets would catch the elite.

Shields shimmered and suddenly there was a target.

Automatic fire joined by BR and the shimmer turned into a silhouette which turned into a dead elite.

"Incoming!"

Everything was happening too fast, the damaged Scorpion was immobile and completely useless, one of the other two tanks had been blown up by the first explosion. I barely made out a bright green light before it hit the ground next to the group of soldiers complementing the tank platoon. I started moving back before a second and third fuel rod blasts hit, wiping out the six men in a cloud of green. I raised my rifle to try and find something to fire at, but there wasn't anything that I could see.

The other Scorpion roared to life behind me, moving from its vulnerable position. I couldn't afford to turn and look at it, this was a highly coordinated attack and soon enough I would be targeted myself.

"Frank!"

I turned around just in time.

The silhouette was just clear enough for me to see. I managed to barely deflect the energy sword with the stock of my battle rifle. The elite's lunge went a little long, allowing me to get a follow up strike to the mouth. The hit was enough to disrupt the active camouflage. The elite didn't react to the bash, it simply twisted its wrist forty five degrees and slashed sideways. I dropped my rifle and grabbed its wrist with both hands, stopping the slash a few inches short of my ribs. This second failure made the elite growl angrily, but it didn't pause before drawing an energy dagger on its other hand and attempting to punch it into my side. I kicked up at its forearm, deflecting the punch.

I twisted myself so that I was outside its sword arm, but the elite swiped at my feet before I was done with the maneuver, almost tripping me. I let my momentum carry me down to the ground and rolled with it, reaching for the shotgun on my back as I did. I came back up facing away from the elite, but the shotgun was already in my hands. I flipped myself around and fired blindly. The buckshot hit the elite right above its knee, jerking its leg backwards. Its shields flickered and disappeared, but it moved with a purpose. I pumped and fired a second time as it raised its sword, hitting it in the other knee. This time the blast completely shattered armor and bone, bringing the elite to the ground and making it drop its sword.

The plasma blade made a hissing noise as it hit the polycrete street and the hilt clattered loudly. The elite kept swinging its' fist against me from its kneeling position; it looked me in the eye, growling. A third blast ripped half its' head off and bought me a moment's respite.

I rushed to get my rifle and began running back towards the Pelican. My men were too far away from the dropship. Pavel was laying heavy suppressing fire along with Ramirez and Dotsenko, but there wasn't anything that I could see them firing at, the elites were all camouflaged.

"Thermal, thermal!" I shouted. "Marina, hold up!"

"I can't stay here longer," she replied. "They're painting me!"

I cursed. "Shit, go!"

The Pelican shot up dangerously fast, but even then it was barely enough to avoid two small plasma torpedoes from hitting its engines. Marina barreled her craft and only just avoided a second torpedo from hitting her, but her stunt sent her Pelican smashing against a building. I held my breath, but the roll was completed and she regained control. Pieces of glass and building fell on the street.

The Scorpion fired at some unseen target. Whatever it had been aiming at was very thoroughly killed, but an elite jumped up onto the tank from a second story window. It tried ripping the hatch off, but instead decided to sink its energy sword a couple of times. The Scorpion lurched forward and crashed into the other damaged tank, where they were both destroyed after the elite jumped out.

"Into the buildings!" I shouted. "Move!"

The Pelican was only thirty or so meters above us, but fuel rods and plasma fire were going at it. Marina was the best pilot I knew, but there was just too much for her Pelican to handle. She succeeded in dodging most of the dangerous fire, but her craft shook violently when a fuel rod detonated against the right wing engine. Smoke and fire billowed out and her Pelican once against slammed against a building, but not as hard as I had feared.

"Frank…" she began.

"Go!" I shouted. "We'll be fine!"

Marv and Andrea were slowly walking towards a building, firing short bursts as they moved backwards. I didn't see them hitting anything, but then again, they probably were using their VISRs or thermal scopes. I cursed myself for not following my own advice and switched to thermal on my visor. The smoking Scorpions lit up my display, but there were enough little red dots for me to make out targets.

"Clear!" Caboose shouted from inside the building. "Move in, move in!"

Miri and Pitcher went in first with Mata right on their heels. I waved at Marv and Andrea to move to cover when a needle punched completely through my left hand.

"Ah," I said, my stomach clenching.

"Lieutenant!"

"Move!" I roared. "Pavel, move your ass!"

The three gunners doubled their speed, keeping their fields of fire going. I looked at the source of the needle and saw a thermal signature coming from a window. I jumped sideways before I fired three bursts, shattering the window and making the elite fall backwards and out of sight. I could feel the blood trickling through my hand and down to the ground, but the pain wasn't there yet. I cursed when three heat signatures rushed through cover, moving faster than I would've thought possible. Pavel and Ramirez were almost inside, almost a few meters away from me. Ramirez turned and rushed inside as Pavel sprayed two of the elites, sending them rushing for cover. Dotsenko hit the other one several times, but his SAW clicked empty at the most unfortunate time. I brought my rifle up, but the sharpshooter fired at me again, forcing me into cover.

"Fuck," Dotsenko cursed.

I looked up just in time to see his SAW clatter to the ground and the elite swing at his unprotected head. Dotsenko brought his right arm up and clenched his fist. The energy sword stopped, stuck in the Asimov artificial arm. The military-grade metal was enough to stop a full on swing from an energy sword, a fact that didn't go unnoticed by the elite. The alien seemed surprised even through its failing camouflage. The pause was enough for Dotsenko to draw his pistol and blow the elite's brains out the back of its head.

"Get in!" Ramirez shouted. "Move!"

He and Pavel began firing again, discouraging the rest of the spec ops elites from rushing us.

"Move back, move back," I ordered. "Hurry!"

"Caboose, Mata, take point," Pavel said.

"Marina, you copy?"

"Frank, I'm good," she replied. "I can't turn back… sorry."

"It's fine," I said. It wasn't. We needed her. "We're good. We'll see you in Olympic."

"I'll hold you to that," Marina said firmly.

"Roger that, over and out."

_For those about to rock, we salute you!_

"Bee, turn that shit off," I said.

The music stopped and I no longer felt like I was in a badly scripted movie.

"God fucking dammit!" Pavel cursed, kicking a chair.

"Where are we?" Andy asked.

"Bank of Eposz," Miri replied. "I used to come to this branch."

I looked around, we had moved deep into the building and into the office space. Some of these offices were pretty damn large for ground floor offices. Everybody was moving at a brisk pace deeper inside the building, trusting Caboose and Serge's intuition to lead us to safety. One of them had to have the blueprints downloaded. We followed their lead as they climbed down a set of stairs and into the underground levels of the building.

"Anybody wounded?" I asked.

"Just you," Andy said, pointing at my hand.

I looked at the wound. I could see through my hand. "Sasha, you alright?"

"My arm's not moving too good," Dotsenko said. "The sword damaged it."

"You know, that was pretty badass, what you did there," Ramirez told me. "Kudos, bro."

"Thanks," Dotsenko replied with a chuckle.

"James' has a point," Bee chimed in. "Was your helmet camera on?"

"Yeah," Dotsenko said with a small nod. "I want that on a big screen soon."

We talked and walked, with Andrea pulling a bunch of bandages from her pouch. She poured a small amount of biofoam on the wound to close it and then wrapped bandages around me, placing some folded gauze on either side of my hand. I could not move my hand much, but it would be enough to hold my rifle up.

"Dotsenko, you ne– ah fuck! Shit Andrea!"

"Sorry, sir," she apologized, but I wasn't really feeling it. "I need you to hold still."

I sighed and tried to keep from wincing as she tightened the bandage around my hand.

"Caboose, where we going?" Pavel asked.

"There's a basement," he replied. "Vaults for storing material goods."

"Banks still have vaults?" Pitcher asked. "Wow?"

"Yeah, some people want to store stuff like gold or cars or stupid shit like that," Pavel said. "Why they do it? Beats me."

"Is there a way out?"

"Executive elevator shaft," Caboose said. "It's in sublevel six."

"Fancy, fancy," Pitcher said. "I gotta get me one of those vaults. Hey sir, what about we blow open one of the doors?"

"Tempted," I admitted. "But we're not common criminals."

"There wouldn't be anything common about a job like this," Pitcher said. "We can blow open a door and be on our merry way within a few minutes."

"So you're telling me that you want to stop doing our job while this city burns for the sake of a few extra creds?"

"Uh…"

"Don't let me hear any of that fucking bullshit ever again, you hear me?" I snapped.

"Yes, sir. Sorry, sir."

Miranda moved to the back of the group and made sure to close the doors we went through every time. If there were any available objects she'd press them against the doors, otherwise she settled for the override code that locked them all. The rest of us were moving fast.

"Frank," Pavel said, motioning for me to be quiet. "What's with the elites?"

"I don't know," I said. "Maybe the worm necks decided that the brutes weren't enough, sent the Sangheili in to get the job done?"

My friend sighed. "We were barely holding up against the brutes Frank. If they send in the elites…"

"I know," I replied. "Let's just hope they're the only hingehead unit around."

"Let's hope they didn't send a lot of them here. They were a whole lot better than standard."

I nodded. "Probably a SpecOps team sent in to do some scouting."

"Damn good team if they managed to sneak all the way past our patrols into cleared land. They did a pretty good job in the ambush too."

"Why'd they botch it?"

"They probably planned it just for the tank platoon," I said. "We showed up and they adapted poorly. They didn't expect us to fight back so quickly."

"We were lucky," he said. "You were lucky."

"Agreed," I said. "But I'm starting to like this shotgun deal. I don't know why you would give yours up."

Pavel groaned. "You're never gonna give that up, are you? I only carried a shotgun because back then it was only you and me."

"Well, I bought you that shotgun for your birthday."

"And I still have it."

"You never use it!"

"I left it at home," he said with a small shrug.

"Did Amber take it?"

He shook his head. "She barely knows her way around a pistol Frank, let alone a fully automatic combat shotgun."

I shrugged, accepting his point.

"How many did we get?" he asked.

"I got one, Dotsenko got another one."

"I didn't hit anything," he said. "At least not enough times to kill. Neither did anybody else. I'm pretty sure that the tank got at least three elites."

"That makes five to six, seven, eight… five kills to nine. Not a good ratio."

"We were ambushed," Pavel said. "It's not our fault."

"That doesn't make me feel any better."

"It's not supposed to," he said. "Anyways, this business with the elites… it's worrisome."

"I don't want to face another well-trained fleet. They only send in the veterans when they're talking business."

That's why the second half of the Siege of Paris IV had been so bad. The elites they sent in were all veteran fighters, well trained and disciplined. The brutes were more savage, but they were a lot more skilled than usual. This time we were getting skilled brutes to begin with and now it seemed like we were about to have to fight the elites that finally beat us in Paris IV.

"Not good," Schitzo said.

Sublevel Six was big. It was a lot bigger than any of the other sublevels. The hallway separating the vaults was large enough that you could fit two Scorpions side to side. The vaults themselves seemed to have doors large enough for said Scorpions to drive through. I could only imagine what kind of people had access to these. Probably trillionaires who owned their own specially designed space stations and had a small fleet of slipspace-capable yachts. I was tempted to open the vaults to see what was going in there, but nothing short of C-12 would open those, and my own personal stash was going to something that would take out a few dozen covvies.

"There's the elevator," Bee announced loudly.

"Hit it," I said.

"Once we're up, then what?" Pavel asked.

"I'm working on it," I growled. "Grass, Grass, do you copy?"

"Frank, I copy. How's it going?"

"Well, not too good."

"Frank, what the hell are you doing on the basement of B of E? Shit. Marina's Pelican is still flying, what the hell happened?"

"We were ambushed, there's a group of SpecOps elites in the area."

"How'd they make it through?"

"I don't know, Cam. They ambushed us, took out the Scorpions and the soldiers in maybe ten seconds. I was hit in the hand and Dotsenko's arm is experiencing some trouble."

"His good arm?"

"The robot one," I said. "Looks like he can only move… two fingers?"

"Two," he confirmed. "I've got full range of motion with my shoulder and very limited motion with my elbow."

"You catch that, Grass?"

"Yeah," she said. "Alright, I'm putting out a warning for cloaked infiltrators. I'm gonna see if I can get Command to send up a few specialized birds to try and find them."

"That's a good start. What about us?"

"You're making your way up?"

"Affirmative."

"Alright, I'll send a–"

Whatever she said next was blocked by an incredibly loud noise. For a brief instant I thought it was an explosion, but after the smoke cleared out I realized that it was coming from the elevator shaft. I looked there as Grass frantically asked what was going on. The doors were open, but I could see the top of the elevator and into the shaft.

"Looks like someone cut the cables," Marv said, clearing the dust and looking inside. "Suffice to say, we're not gonna go up using this one."

"Did you know that all elevators have a backup engine at the top of the shaft?" Grass said after a short moment of silence.

I walked towards the busted elevator doors and looked through the small gap in between the frame and the elevator itself. A quick look up showed that the top of the shaft was not precisely close to the basement. I sighed and moved back out.

"Grass, you know if there's an engine halfway up or something like that?"

"Nope," she said. "Just the one on top. Bad news, the cables are designed locked."

"Can you access them?"

"Not from here," she replied. "It's at times like these when I miss Angel."

I grunted. "That fucker would've accessed the stupid engine from Tribute."

"Yeah. Frank, these cable engines are pretty antiquated, they're there because putting them on is cheaper than amending the law that requires them to be there."

"How do you even know that, Cam?" I asked. "That's pretty fucking obscure."

"I read about it somewhere," she said dismissively. "Anyways. There should be some way up, elevator shafts usually have ladders on the edge."

I peeked back inside the shaft. "Yeah, looks like it."

"Well, all you have to do is climb up to the top of the shaft and get the engine started. The cable should be wrapped around there," Grass said.

"Alright then," I said. "Thanks for the info, Grass. I'll let you know."

"Frank, you need to make it quick, ok? I can't guarantee you a dropship."

"What about Marina?"

Grass snickered. "You do remember her bird was hit."

"Ah, of course. Alright then, over and out."

My men were assembled in a half circle behind me, waiting for me to tell them what had happened.

"What's the word, El-tee?" Andy asked.

"Well, we're stuck here," I said. "But we have a way out."

"Do tell," Pavel said, shifting his weight from one foot to another.

I carefully explained everything that Grass had told me and then finished by saying that one of the guys would have to climb up the sixty story elevator shaft and activate the engine. Various of the younger guys shuffled their feet uncomfortably and did their best to avoid looking at me. Normally they wouldn't have behaved like that, but we had a pretty solid wall in between us. Several solid walls, as a matter of fact. If those elites were coming after us they would need some heavy-duty gear to get to this room.

Essentially, they knew we were safe and didn't want to do a relatively dangerous climb up a ladder in a dark shaft.

"Shotty not," Pitcher said hesitantly.

They all looked at me, wondering whether I would make him do the climb because he had been the first one to avoid it. After a few seconds they all started jumping over one another in order to avoid being the last one to say that. Out of all of them only Pavel and Caboose remained silent. They knew damn well that they were exempt from this kind of stuff. Serge, suffice to say, was quiet too.

Only Andy and Serge stayed quiet. I looked at the two of them and back to Pitcher, considering who would have to do the climb. It didn't really matter, they could all make it equally fast, but it was just a matter of amusement for me. Serge wouldn't become uncomfortable, Andy and Pitcher, on the other hand, would begin sweating if I kept them on the dark too long.

"Andy," I said. "Make the climb and make it quick."

She sighed. "Yes, sir."

Andy removed her torso armor and helmet while some of the guys jeered and chided her. She ignored them completely and jumped up the gap and into the elevator shaft.

"Earpiece good?" I asked her.

"Yeah," she replied. "Anything happens and I'll let you know."

As soon as she began climbing Serge moved towards the entrance and stood guard, everybody else spread out and sat down, backs against the walls but weapons close at hand. I walked from one end of the massive hallway to the other, counting the vaults. There were precisely eighty-one vaults. Eighty of them were all identical to one another, massive metallic doors with state-of-the-art electronic lock systems that were about eight meters wide and half again as tall. The last one was twice as big and didn't seem to have any visible locks or keypads. I examined it from a distance and then stepped closer, curiosity drawing me to it. A quick examination revealed that the vault itself was made out of Titanium-A, but as soon as I touched it a pair of blue scanning lights appeared from the wall and scanned me up and down before blinking red twice and disappearing.

"Whoa," I muttered.

"Whoever owns this must've had a helluva lot of creds to his name, eh?" Pavel asked from next to me.

"Yeah," I agreed, stepping backwards slowly. "How's it going, old friend?"

"Don't call me old," he said snappishly. "I'm thirty-six."

"And I'm thirty-seven," I replied, suddenly feeling all those years of combat weighing on me. "Damn… I've been fighting almost for as long as I haven't…"

"I'm old," Pavel said grumpily, leaning back next to the massive vault door.

I looked at him. He didn't look old. At least not for his age. In fact, he probably looked a little bit younger than most thirty-six years old, the long amount of time that he had spent in slipspace and cryo had shaved at least a year from his total age, the lifestyle of constant exercise and healthy UNSC food also had him looking good and sexy, as his wife would put it. There was only one place where you could clearly tell his mind was old and tired. His eyes showed that haunted look that most veterans came to display on occasion, but most of the times you could just look at them and see a certain fire that could only be fueled by years of constant hatred. His eyes were hot with hatred, distant with pain and loss, and cold with reluctance and acceptance.

His eyes were scary.

"Imagine how yours must look, Francisco," Schitzo said with a small shake of his head.

"At least we look good, eh?" Pavel asked, not having noticed my introspection. "Especially when you look at the actors in Bee's movies. I couldn't believe it when he told me that that guy was in his early fifties."

"Which guy?" I asked, curious.

"The one in the space movie."

"Ah," I said. "Yeah, he looked at least mid-sixties to me. Still pretty damn handsome though."

Pavel smiled and nodded in agreement. "What was the name of the movie again?"

"Gravity," I said. "Can you believe space suits were so freaking bulky back then?"

"Can you believe that their space stations were so frail?" he shot back. "Life in the past must've sucked."

"Agreed." I sat down next to him, unclipping my rucksack and setting it next to me.

"How's the hand?"

"Burns," I admitted. "And I can't make a fist. The leg?"

"I told you, it was just a graze, nothing big."

"Good."

Pavel rolled his head, cracking his neck loudly and sighing with relief. "Ah…"

"You know, Andy is probably gonna take some time to get up top," I told him. "You could get a quick call to Amber, see how she's doing."

Pavel immediately perked up. I don't know if he had been thinking about it before, but me bringing it up certainly wiped that look of boredom from his face. He looked at me as if expecting me to reveal that I was just being an even bigger ass than usual and joking with him. When I gestured for him to go ahead he reached into his own rucksack and retrieved one of the two radios that Grass and Captain Flatt had let us keep. He started dialing.

I smiled at him and got up, grabbing the other radio from my rucksack. I walked towards the rest of the team and stopped in front of Miri. I tossed the phone and raised an eyebrow when she over reacted and flailed her arms before catching the radio.

"Three minutes each," I said, looking at the watch on my wrist tacpad. "Go."

Miri looked down at the radio and back to me before she quickly dialed a number and waited for the answer. She got a reply only a couple of seconds after she pressed the radio after her ear.

"Adri? Is that you?" she asked tentatively. "Thank God! Aceasta este Miranda."

She started speaking her native language too fast for me to make sense of anything she said. I wasn't particularly good with Hungarian despite living in Reach, but I could catch a few words here and there. My Rumanian was a bit rusty too, but she seemed to be speaking a mix of both. She had Eastern European ancestry, and the language in question seemed to be some variation of Bahar. I wondered why I had never asked her exactly where she came from.

I didn't quite catch the meaning of the conversation, but the spirit of it became clear from the tone of it. Miranda's face sunk into a frown of worry before she relaxed it just a little bit. She kept talking for the entirety of her allotted time, finally speeding up and saying her goodbyes as I gave her a silent countdown. She hung up and made a quick dial. She then looked at the phone and sighed before handing it to me.

I tossed the phone to Ramirez.

"Miri, you ok?" I asked her quietly.

She sighed, looking a bit flustered. "Yes. They just haven't been able to contact one of my friends. He's from Manassas."

My face matched her frown. "I'm sure it's just traffic overflow," I lied. "He should be fine."

"Yeah," Miranda said. She knew just as well as I did that the high-tech radios that Grass had provided us with were pretty close to infallible. In fact, Grass had guaranteed that they would get through no matter what. Miri's friend might've been sleeping or maybe he just didn't answer the phone, but in this situation I doubt anybody would turn down a call from loved ones.

Last I heard Manassas was about to fall under attack.

Ramirez was making his own call. He didn't actually talk to anybody, instead he appeared to be contacting a slipspace buoy that would send out a message that he was now recording. He spoke in English, throwing in a few Spanish words here and there. He was letting his family know that he loved them despite everything that had happened. Ramirez took a few seconds to say a few words to each family member and then added a general message to the rest of his family as well as some of his friends.

"…I hope to see you pronto, ok?" he finished. "Well, maybe not so soon, depende on how it all turns out. Los quiero, bye."

Ramirez looked at the radio for a second and then tossed it to me. I looked at him and then moved onto the next person in line. Dotsenko extended his left arm towards me and I passed him the phone. I took a couple of steps back, enough to make it seem like I wasn't snooping on his conversation but close enough that he would keep it brief. My presence also had a secondary objective, worried men had a tendency to reveal information, or maybe it was worried women who had the ability to extract it. It was a long shot, but even if there was a one in a billion chance I didn't want to risk it.

Dotsenko frowned after twenty seconds of no words. He looked down at the radio and dialed again, pressing the phone against his ear a lot harder than the first time. He repeated the process four times before I asked for the radio back.

"Sasha…"

"They're not answering," he said. "Sir, they're not answering."

"Maybe they're sleeping," I suggested. "Or have their phones off."

"Sir, they answered when it was the middle of the night back in Olympic. They said that they were fine."

"Sasha," Ramirez said. "I'm sure that's still the case."

"The call rang," he told him, "they just didn't answer."

Dotsenko began shaking just a tiny little bit. His eyes started getting red and he stopped talking. Instead of showing his distress he opted to look down at the ground and say nothing, handing me the radio instead.

I looked at him and said nothing, instead making a small motion with my head to Ramirez, who nodded back to me and leaned towards his friend.

"I'm sure they're fine Sasha," he began. "There's a million reasons why…"

His voice trailed off as I moved up towards Serge. He looked at me with unreadable eyes. Out of all the men and women that I had served with Serge was probably the one with the most mental strength. His silence itself wasn't what convinced me of that, but his reactions to anything that happened. When we came across a mutilated body he'd give it a quick look and move on, when we came across a murdered family of five he would give them a quick look and move on. I had never seen him panic during battle or even become the tiniest bit unnerved. Serge was obviously a quiet guy, he wouldn't talk unless he absolutely needed to, but when he did his voice was perfectly calm and steady, even if his French accent was a bit heavy for my taste.

Not even Caboose managed to keep that calm all the time. It unnerved me.

Serge held my gaze for five seconds and then extended his hand, grabbing the radio. I hadn't seen him make the call in Olympic and I had certainly never heard anything about his personal life, so I was slightly surprised that he took the phone. He dialed quickly and waited. As soon as he got a connection he began speaking in rapid-fire French. I knew that he was originally from _the_ France. The one on Earth. I assumed he was leaving a message to someone back home.

I was curious, I admit it. I tried spying on his call, but not a lot of people spoke French outside of France. I knew back in the day France had been one of the main countries to launch colony ships. The majority of French speakers lived on Earth, Mars, Titan, and some of the closest Inner Colonies. The point is, not a lot of people spoke French, so it wasn't a big language to learn. I knew even less than you would've expected a first year student of the language to know.

_Je __m'appelle__, je suis, tu est, _and all that bullshit.

Serge went on for longer than I would've expected him to be physically able to talk, but he still stopped short of the two minute mark. He handed me the radio and gave me a nod of thanks.

Pitcher's call went smoothly, primarily because he was also leaving a message to the few friends that he had. The station he had been born in wasn't listed because it was too far and too small. He spoke in a combination of languages that stemmed from his background. Mining stations often had immigrants from all over UEG space, so it wasn't uncommon to have four people with five different backgrounds each. I caught bits of Spanish, bits of Russian, bits of Swahili and more languages that I couldn't even begin to understand.

"You good?" I asked after the call.

"Yeah," he said with a smile. "Thanks, sir."

Marv went next, making two short calls. One was to his parents and another one was to his older sister. He asked them if they were fine and then asked about his niece. He smiled a bit when the reply came, but his face hardened as he began reminding them what to do if anything went wrong. They were still in the evacuation bases and were technically guaranteed a shuttle out of the system, but they still weren't allowing civilian vessels to evacuate the planet.

"Thanks, EL-tee," Marv said, offering me the phone.

"Bee, you want to take this?" I asked him.

"Nah," he said. "I already left a lengthy message to my mum and dad. They're sure to know I'm alright. Sending another one without need… it's just not Scottish, sir."

I chuckled. "Your call," I said, giving the phone to Caboose.

Caboose looked down at the phone before sighing and handing it back to me with a small shake of his head. He almost looked sad, but his expression went back to that mask that he always wore, making me question whether his face had actually changed or I had just imagined it. Caboose didn't have friends, he had colleagues and he had Miri. The exact workings of his relationship were beyond my understanding, but I knew that he cared for her and she felt the same way. Sometimes I wondered why they weren't screwing like rabbits half the time. They had certainly had some sort of physical relationship in the past, but they seemed to have settled for whatever they had now.

I looked at the phone and wondered whether I should call Katie.

I almost slapped myself in the forehead for even wandering about it. The phone beeped as it got a line and then I waited. She answered before the first ring.

"Frank!"

"'Ello darlin'" I said in a fake accent.

"I've been trying to call you since Amber answered her cell, but the calls don't get through!" she complained.

"I'm afraid that this is a one way deal," I told her. "We've got some very fancy radios here, Katie. Not a lot of people can communicate with anybody else."

She sighed. "Yeah, yeah, it's just hard. I'm getting cabin fever. Liz is starting to get a bit nervous."

"How is she?" I asked. "Your cousin is a strong girl, but…"

"She's just afraid that it's going to be Paris IV all over again. Back then she was my rock, always upbeat, but I don't think she has it in her to go through it a second time. I don't have it in me."

"You're stronger than you think, Katie," I assured her. "And Reach isn't Paris IV. We've got every single Navy ship up there fighting or headed there to join the fight. It might take a while, but we'll kick their asses out of here and they're gonna wish they never even found us."  
>Katie laughed a bit, but it was a sad laugh. "Are you ok? Well, are you–"<p>

"Yeah," I assured her, smiling earnestly. "Came across a little hurdle, but nothing we can't deal with. The boys are resting right now. They deserve it."

"We're resting here too," she said. "But I'm sick of that. We are stuck in this tiny space and they keep telling us that they're gonna move us into the transports any time now."

"Don't get angry at them, Katie," I said. "They're just doing their job and are probably every bit as scared as you are."

Katie sighed. "I know, but we can't see the covvies and people want to blame somebody. Some idiot already got his eyebrow busted for trying to get past the soldiers."

"Stay away from conflict," I said immediately, "don't interrupt a fight, don't mediate, don't do anything."

"But Frank-"

"No," I cut her off. "Katie, this is an invasion, you should know pretty well how people behave when this happens."

"Yeah…"

"Listen," I said, calming down. "I'm sorry, I want this to be over just as much as you do."

"Probably more," she said without much humor. "I just want to know if you're ok."

"I'm ok," I said.

"But no promises."

"I promise you I will see you again," I said. "Before all this is over."

"You promise?" she asked.

"I swear," I confirmed. "No matter what."

"Ok. I believe you…"

"Katie, I love you, but I have to go."

"Love you too. I'll see you…"

"Soon," I said. "I'll see you soon. Goodbye."

I hung up and looked at the radio, ignoring the calls coming from the elevator shaft. I shook my head and put the radio back inside my rucksack before answering.

"What is it?" I asked loudly. Annoyed.

"I've got the cable," Andy said. "Am I supposed to know how this works?"

"Link it up somewhere," I replied. "There should be a loop on top, maybe it has a small terminal somewhere around it."

"I see it," Andy said. "Done."

"Ok everybody!" I shouted. "Rest time is over! Pile in on the elevator and let's get this moving!"

"Yes, sir!"

"Grass, you copy?"

"Loud and clear, Frank."

"We've got the elevator working, can you send a Pelican for us?"

"I'm doing it right now," she said. "Be on the rooftop in five."

"Wilco," I said. "Thanks."

"Anytime. Over and out."

Everybody piled into the elevator, but Dotsenko's nervousness was clearly palpable. He kept his eyes glued to the ground and didn't say anything. Even Bee and Pavel failed to mention the cliché elevator scene that usually came up in these kind of situations. Ramirez was standing close to his friend, a worried frown on his face that was only hidden after he polarized his helmet. Andrea looked confused, but she refrained from asking any questions in this enclosed space.

"This is our stop," I said. "Two floors up and we're on the roof. We're in a low building and the safety of this area is no longer guaranteed. We wait inside and wait for the Pelican."

"Yes, sir."

The Pelican arrived as promised. We entered in an orderly fashion, with Caboose and Marv covering our asses while we moved in. I walked straight at the cockpit and waited for my men to sit down before giving the word to go.

"You guys kept me from my break," the pilot noted drily.

"Mine too," his co-pilot added.

"Tough shit," I replied, drawing snorts. "Any news?"

"We were mobilizing large numbers of men and materiel just a few hours ago, looks like the counter-offensive worked," the co-pilot replied.

"Good," I said. "Good."

"Do you mind if I ask what you were doing in the bank, sir?"

"I do," I replied.

"Of course," the pilot said. "Anyways, please move back to your seat. We heard this area is no longer secure, we might be facing enemy fire."

I moved back and sat near the edge, looking down at the streets. The trip was a lot longer than I would've liked, but the pilots kept being ordered to take different turns. Flying above the buildings would've exposed us, and flying in certain areas would do the same. From what I gathered the counter-attack was working, but there would be pockets of enemy resistance left for at least a few more weeks, and those would do anything from ambushes, to sniping, to bringing down Pelicans. They were doing it now already, with a large percentage of our casualties coming from strikes from our rear or flanks.

"We're doing a u-turn," the pilot announced. "Area up ahead was declared–"

The Pelican was thrown violently to the side and we slammed into a building. Glass shards landed inside the blood tray, making everybody throw their hands up in an instinctive reaction. I held on to the edge of my seat, literally.

"We've run into a bit of trouble," the copilot said. "Prepare for a hard lan–"

A secondary impact hit the Pelican, cutting him short. This time the Pelican spun twice before crashing into another building on the opposite side of the street. The engines were still working, but we couldn't just come down, slamming side to side.

"Out, out!" I shouted. "Everybody out!"

"Frank, what the hell–"

The Pelican spun away from the building, cracking rock and snapping metal. I stood up, precariously maintaining my balance. The buildings on the other side of the street were closing in on us, but so was the ground. I refused to think my action through and jumped when we were fifteen meters from the target. Jump is probably a poor choice of words, dive is perhaps more accurate.

I made my hands fists before pressing my knees against my chest and covering my head. I looked down at the street only to see ceiling and buildings. My body spun in what seemed to be slow motion and I turned down again, the Pelican blocked my view, but I could see my men had jumped too, perhaps six meters or so below me and slightly closer to the building. I saw what looked like Marv and Serge crash against a window before I felt my own shoulder hitting a window.

Something cracked, but it wasn't just the glass.

I tried to swear, but the wind was driven out of me. The glass wasn't your standard cheap glass apparently, but it gave. I slammed into the ground on the same shoulder that had rammed into the window and cried out in pain. I rolled and writhed in something close to agony before the pain receded a little bit. I got up and looked around.

"Did everybody make it?!" I yelled into the radio.

"I think so!" Andrea coughed. It sounded like she spat out blood.

"I'm good," Bee said in between hyperventilating breaths. "I'm good."

The Pelican exploded as it hit the street.

"Ramirez, Dotsenko!"

"A-ok!" Ramirez replied. "Well, maybe just ok."

"Pavs?"

"Good," he said. "Miri knocked herself out."

"I'm alive… surprising as it is," Pitcher said.

"Same here," Caboose grunted. "Marv and Serge are with me."

"I'm alive," Mata grunted. "Shit."

"Meet up on my position," I ordered through clenched teeth. "Double time!"

I looked back at the window and realized that it hadn't actually broken. There was a large crack where I had hit it, but the glass itself hadn't broken. A simple look told me that the window had come off completely.

"Really?" Schitzo asked, groaning in shared pain. "Really?"

I wasn't sure, so I tested his hypothesis. I drew my sidearm and fired once at the adjoining window.

The high-caliber explosive bullet hit the window and left nothing but a white round mark about two inches in diameter.

"Bulletproof glass…" I muttered. "Fucking hell."

I dragged myself to my feet and looked around. The office was about twice as big as our room in the apartment I shared with Katie. My room wasn't exactly large, but this was still big for an office. Expensive furniture, expensive electronic equipment, holographic projectors, the works. I don't know what building this was, but the asshole that had owned this office had just broken my collarbone. If I ever found the Mr. Harvey Specter whose New Alexandria University diploma was in the wall, I would kick his ass three blocks down.

Pavel was the first one through. He looked at me with a worried expression look in his face and then looked at the piece of bulletproof glass on the floor. He looked back at me and snorted.

"You have the worst luck in the world, you know that?"

"Fuck off," I said angrily. "Where's Andrea?"

"Magnet, you're needed," Bee said, coming in right behind my friend.

"I'm with Miri," she said. "Give me a moment."

I groaned and leaned back on Mr. Specter's genuine leather chair. It was immensely comfortable, even with my armor on. The holos of his wife also showed an insanely sexy woman, it would be a shame that I'd have to embarrass him in front of her when I saw him.

"Bulletproof, shit, sir. I'm surprised you aren't smeared on the windows right now," Bee said. "You're lucky the frame gave."

"Don't tell me I'm lucky," I said. "You are the fucking shit that's lucky, coming in through soft glass."

"Yes, sir. Sorry, sir."

Pavel chuckled and picked up the pane of glass with some effort, he leaned it against the other window, covering us from any fire from the outside. He breathed deeply from the effort and slapped his hands clean.

"Damn, that shit's heavy."

"Probably some composite plastic," I said. "It fucking hurts too."

"Looks like it," Pavel said.

If it was as heavy as Pavel had made it out to be then I had no doubt that any normal human would've turned into paste. Once again I had my enhancements to thank for saving my life. All my men had made it without the need of those, but I had only survived because of them. It was what you would call a humbling experience. I hated it. I hated it like nothing else.

"What is it?" Andrea asked as she walked in. "Ah shit… Wait, is that–"

"Yes," I interrupted. "Now give me a hand, will you?"

"Ummm, hold on a sec." She pulled out the medical scanner and aimed it at my wounded shoulder. "Well, it seems like you managed to dislocate your shoulder and get a hairline fracture in your collarbone."

"Two for the price of one, eh?" Pavel asked. "Why doesn't that surprise me."

"Shut up," I ordered sternly. "Andy, pop it back."

"It's gonna hurt, sir. Especially with that fracture there."

"Just do it," I ordered.

It hurt like a bitch. And I do mean like a bitch. I would've preferred to have another needle go through my hand.

"Ah fuck," I said without any emotion.

"You ok, sir?" Andy asked, looking worried.

"Just fucking dandy," I replied. "What the hell happened?"

"I didn't see anything," Pavel told me. "But we can't stay here. They had to see our little stunt."

"How come nobody broke anything?" Bee asked.

I glared at him.

"I mean, anybody that could've slowed us down," he quickly amended.

"Nice save," Pavel said, elbowing him in the ribs. "Frank, we might want to ask Grass for advice here."

I rolled my eyes at his tone but contacted Grass nevertheless.

"What is it?" she asked calmly. "Ah, shit. Again?"

"Yes," I confirmed. "We need a way out."

"Well, there's no way in hell they're going to authorize another Pelican. I'm getting aerial imagery… shit."

"What is it?" I asked.

"Somebody screwed up. Big. Frank, you want to get out of there ASAP. Linking you to the drones."

I got a small screen displaying the area I was in. My position was highlighted in a bright red dot. The screen automatically tagged enemy units and revealed that there was heavy enemy presence for at least five blocks to any side. The way to FLEETCOM and Olympic was thankfully the one with the least amount of enemies, but the bulk of the Covenant forces seemed to be moving in that direction.

"Let's get moving," I ordered, my tone immediately switching from annoyed to dead-serious.

"Miranda's still unconscious," Andy complained. "And your–"

"Carry her," I said. "We need to get out of here. Covvies found a way to deploy troops without us seeing. We're surrounded."

"Shit," Pitcher muttered.

"Let's get moving!" Pavel shouted. "Aren't you listening? Move your asses!"

Sometimes it was his booming voice that made everyone snap back to reality. He had that talent. When I yelled I sounded like an asshole, when he yelled he sounded like a drill sergeant, exactly what his role was supposed to be in this platoon. Sometimes it seemed ironic that everybody thought me an asshole and Pavel the gentler of the pair when the role was supposed to be the exact opposite. I'm not saying there wasn't a good reason for that, but it never failed to annoy me that no matter how hard we tried we wouldn't be able to switch roles. Pavel was just too friendly and there was something off about me that even my charisma couldn't help with.

I pondered on that while we moved down on the elevator.

"There's a medical station in the lobby," Andrea said before the doors opened. "There should be stims and painkillers in there as well as a stretcher."

"Did we burn through our supply already?" I asked.

The silence from my men was all I needed to know. We all still had enough stimulants to last us a lifetime, but more than half of our painkillers had been used. A person doesn't usually make a hard landing through a window after jumping out of a falling Pelican without a few bumps and scratches. I was willing to bet that after we stopped fighting we would all need a couple of weeks to let our bodies recover. I was fighting with wounds inflicted in our first landing still partially healed, not to mention rebar through my leg and a needle through my hand. Let's not forget the recent acquisition of a broken collarbone.

"Bee and Pavel," I said, gesturing to the stretcher that Andy carried from the medical station. "We'll switch until she wakes up. Andy, can we give her stims?"

"I already gave her a dose, she still hasn't woken up."

"Why do I feel like we're constantly practicing medicine wrong?" Pitcher asked.

Mata snorted. "That's because we do, kid. I'm sure Magnet could do a fine job of patching you up if need be, but El-tee here doesn't need us patched up, he needs us ready to fight."

"Listen to him," I said. "You might learn something."

"Still a little unnerving," Ramirez said with a small smile.

I expected Dotsenko to chime in, but he remained silent. It was troublesome.

"Frank, there's an enemy armored unit moving in right next to you. They look like they're going to search the Pelican," Grass said.

"Are you going to be the voice in my ear?" I asked her.

"You need me to, Frank, there's at least three hundred covvies between you and me right now."

"You know we can take them," I said.

"Not in your current situation."

I nodded in acquiescence. "Ok then Grass, you've got our backs. Everybody else, if you've got silencers, use 'em. We're going silent this time."

"Silent?" Pitcher asked. "Sir, we're geared up for anything but that. We just came from a loud as fuck mission."

"You've got a silencer?" I asked.

"Yeah…"

"Then fucking use it!"

"Yes, sir!"

"Caboose, no shotguns. Serge, I want yours on backup, last resort. Andy and Marv, you two have silencers?"

"Yeah," Marv replied. "We're good."

"No silencers for us," Ramirez said.

"Then let's hope you're not spotted then, shall we?" I suggested. "Grass?"

"They're examining the Pelican, looks like three elites, eight grunts, and two jackals."

"Tell us when."

We slowly moved into position right next to the exit. I could see one of the jackals standing on top of the tail section of the Pelican with a carbine held loosely across its chest. The rest of the enemy squad was out of sight. I waited for the jackal to turn and Grass gave us the word to move across the street.

It must've looked funny, twelve guys moving as fast as they could at a crouch, two of them carrying an unconscious one in a stretcher. The enemy squad was just a few meters from us, yet the elites were searching for victims inside the cargo bay and the grunts were just awkwardly standing guard, but facing the wrong side.

"Shit, hide!"

Everybody dove for cover. Pavel and Bee had foreseen something like this happened and were lucky enough to both be behind a car with Miri and her stretcher. Everybody else was close enough to the other side that they made it, but Ramirez had to dive behind an uncomfortably short pile of debris from the building. He stayed there and didn't move a muscle.

I couldn't see what was happening. I didn't know whether it was the jackal with the carbine, the elites that had come out of the Pelican, or the grunts had finally spread out. All I had was Grass.

"Wait for it… Go!"

Pavel and Bee were on the move before Ramirez could get to his feet, but the four of them crossed the street without more noise. We stuck close to the wall, with Marv keeping his rifle trained on the jackal. He moved slowly, lagging a bit behind us.

"There's a small parking space right to your left," Grass said. "Turn."

I rolled my eyes slightly at her instructions, but did what she said. The parking space in question was more like a wide alley with enough space for two cars to move side by side. A few cars had parked against the right side, but there was not much else in this alley that could hide us if someone looked.

"There's a side door thirty meters to your right," Grass said. "Open it quietly."

"Marv, with me," I said, jogging to the door. "Quiet."

He twisted the handle and shook his head slightly before moving to the control pad.

"Smashed," he said.

"Frank, there's a group of covvies coming up in front. Hurry!"

"Dammit Grass," I muttered, drawing a knife from the small of my back.

I pressed it against the crack of the door where the bolt would be and motioned for Marvin to kick it. He did a powerful side kick, hitting the hilt with his heel. The knife was sharpened to near-molecular level and was good enough to take out shields if need be. The bolt was cleanly cut through with a clank that was a lot louder than I would've liked.

"In, in, in!"

"Frank!" Grass was shouting into my ear.

"Go!"

I saw the lead elite out the other end of the parking alley just as Bee and Pavel dashed through the door. I moved inside, hoping that we hadn't been spotted.

"Grass?"

"Looks like you're clear," she said, sounding like she had been holding her breath. "Damn Frank, I've got you on four monitors here. You have no idea how suspenseful that was."

"Keep moving," I told my team. "Four monitors? Why do you need so many?"

"We've got grunts," Marv said. "Four."

"Take them out," I ordered. "Pitcher, help out."

"Yes, sir."

"I've got one monitor for the drone," Grass said, "one for street cameras, one for your own helmet camera and I'm using the other one to switch between Pavel and Grigori."

"Why don't you play some music while you're at it?" I asked her. "I know you have some of Bee's stuff there somewhere."

"I did in my old computer," she admitted. "But not here. And I need to listen to everything that's going on."

I heard four silenced shots ring through the hallways and got the all-clear signal from Pitcher.

"Move to the southeast corner," Grass said. "There's a broken window."

"Marv?" I asked.

"Yeah, it's here."

"You doubt me?" Grass asked.

"We're just making sure your four monitors don't have any chinks on them," Bee said with fake contempt.

"Don't antagonize her, Bee," Pavel told him. "Did you know that our lives are under her care right now?"

Us three laughed and Caboose snorted, but nobody else got the joke. Nobody else understood why Pavel was making a girly voice.

To be fair, Grass laughed with us. "Alright, this is an intersection," she said. "There are two destroyed Wraiths that should conceal you, but there's seven jackals milling about."

"Patrolling?"

"Negative," she said after a brief pause. "Looks like they're waiting, must be milling around for some reason, but they don't seem to be actively searching for anything."

"Too confident," Pitcher said.

"I have to agree with the kid on this one," Mata rumbled.

"They're in three groups of two," Grass went on. "One of them's on top of a Wraith."

"Marv and Caboose, you move first," I gave the word, "try and avoid them."

"Yes, sir."

"Grass will paint the real life positions for them, I'll cover you."

"You'd better step it up, too," Grass added. "That group that almost caught you in the parking space is moving up. Forty seconds."

"Move," Caboose told Marv.

They started moving and stopped just shy of one Wraith, pressing their bodies against the tank to avoid the prying eyes of the jackal on top of it. I kept my rifle trained on it in case it looked down. Unfortunately enough, the jackal didn't look at my men, it looked at me.

The bird raised its rifle, but Caboose took a step forward, twisted around and put two bullets in the jackal's chest. The bird gurgled and collapsed forward, where Marv caught it.

My heart was beating a thousand miles an hour.

"Shit," Marv muttered.

"Under the Wraith, the wing on the side," Caboose said.

Marv didn't skip a beat. He shoved the dead jackal underneath the small space and the two of them moved back and around the other side as one of the pairs moved around. The two jackals didn't appear to notice that their comrade was missing and kept moving. The jackals appeared on the left side of the tank and my men disappeared on the right.

"There's six of them," Pavel said. "We can take them out and hide them before the big group moves up. We're short on time."

"It's viable," Grass said.

I looked to Pitcher, who was to my left, and gave him a nod.

We both fired at the two visible jackals, hitting them in the back of the head with a single silenced shot. The two bodies crumpled to the ground. Marv and Caboose had heard our conversation and knew that they could take out the jackals instead of just avoiding them. Bee and Pavel started moving Miri forward as Ramirez and Dotsenko rushed towards the two dead jackals. They slung them over their shoulders, picking up their weapons as well. Caboose and Marv shot two others and Andy handled the last two as they turned around the left of the second Wraith.

I moved towards the last two jackals with Andrea moving behind me. Everybody was busy picking up a body except for Mata and Serge, those two were aiming down the street where the group of Covenant troops would show up. I picked up the jackal, wondering why every single time I was surprised at how large and how heavy those birds could be. It still wasn't particularly heavy, and I had made it halfway across to the other side by the time Andy managed to get the jackal over her shoulders.

Grass was chuckling by the time everybody was safely inside the other building. We dropped the jackals behind the reception desk and moved a sofa to cover them. It would've been somewhat conspicuous to any human, but I doubt that any covvies had enough sense to recognize traditional furniture patterns in big company buildings.

"Ok, this building has a rail station on floor sixty-three," Grass said. "Elevators should be in working order and the Covenant doesn't have air superiority yet."

"Do we have a brain train?" I asked.

"A what?"

"Sorry, I was thinking about something else," I said, shaking my head. "Trains on the rails? Working trains?"

"Yeah," she said. "No, just kidding. You're gonna have to haul ass."

"I'm very confused, Grass. You're not supposed to inflect sarcasm on both parts of the sentence."

"Don't use big words, Frank. It isn't your style."

"Ha. Ha," I said. "Onomatopoeia. Bitch."

Pavel laughed and the rest of the squad snorted in disbelief.

"Dick," Grass replied, but I could tell she was holding back laughter.

"You know, you seem to be a lot braver when you're speaking to me."

"I wonder if it has anything to do with the fact that she's sitting on a comfy chair behind a desk right now," Bee teased.

"For your information, jackass, I'm sitting in an incredibly uncomfortable chair right now and my screens are on a wall, not a desk."

"That must suck," Pavel said.

The elevator dinged and Miranda groaned.

"Look who's up," Ramirez said. "Sleep well princess?"

"What?" she mumbled.

"Don't try to move," Andrea told her. "We're good, we're good."

Miri didn't say anything, but her eyes were wide open. Frankly, she looked like she had just had a bad encounter with some kind of acid. It was probably the stims rushing through her body. No wonder doctors advised against taking stimulants the moment you woke up, your body was tired, but your brain was not. It amounted to something like playing the big game without a warm-up, but this time she hadn't been sleeping, she had been knocked out. Oh, and the game wasn't a game, it was a war.

"Frank, your metaphors leave much to be desired," Schitzo groaned.

"Train terminal right up there," I said. "Jump down and move your asses, we need to get to FLEETCOM before they attack."

The skyrail was an incredibly unnecessary thing in most cities. New Alexandria was so dense that a single subway system wasn't enough to deal with the amount of people moving at all times. The solution? Another subway, but in the sky. The genius that had thought of that one had probably believed himself original and avant garde or some such shit. I have to admit, it did give this city something of a twenty-fourth century style, but in my opinion it was just an eyesore.

And I was starting to sound like my uncle.

"How many stops?"

"Two," Grass said. "Then it's just three blocks."

"What?" I asked. "Why aren't we hopping off in Olympic?"

"Brass blew up that section, didn't want any covvies pulling off surprise attacks."

"Makes sense," I admitted. "You know what would've made even more sense?"

"If they blew it up just as enemy soldiers were crossing?"

"It's almost like you were reading my mind," I told her. "I hate walking. I hate it."

"Yet here we are," Grass said. "Frank, we're sending tanks out."

"Ah shit," I grunted.

"How is that a bad thing?" Pitcher asked.

"The tanks draw attention," Mata told him. "They might kill fifty aliens in ten seconds, but within two minutes there's gonna be a bunch of Wraiths and Daemons looking to take them out."

"So we'd better hurry then?" Ramirez asked. "So that we can time it and move during the lull."

"Wow," I muttered. "Impressive tactical thinking. Or is that strategic?"

"It can be both," Pavel said, "I think. I never really was very clear on the difference."

"Tactical is the physical stuff, like winning firefights. Strategy is the long-run kind of deal, like losing a battle but costing the enemy precious time and resources. Thermopylae was a tactical defeat but a strategic victory," Pitcher said.

"You're stealing my thunder, kid," Grass said.

I laughed. "Ramirez, set the pace."

We started sprinting.

* * *

><p>"The walls are just a bit farther!" I shouted. "Miranda, move your ass!"<p>

The tanks were gone, the Wraiths were charging and the elites had drawn their swords.

"Where the hell's that sniper support?!" I asked.

"They're pinned down by mortar fire!" Grass replied.

"Frank, take cover!"

Pavel, Ramirez, and Dotsenko opened fire just as Miranda and I dropped to the ground. They set up a wall of ammunition to stop the covvies closest to us. I crawled faster. I just had to move past one flaming Scorpion and I'd be on the barricades. Just a little bit more. It never ceased to amuse me how fast things could go to shit.

"Frank, move!" Pavel shouted.

I got up, but my left hand still had a pretty big hole in it. The pain overwhelmed my senses and I fell face-first into the curb. Miranda sprinted past me, plasma chasing her. Something exploded right above the barricade, spraying my men with debris and sending them to the ground. I felt the ground shake behind me and turned around.

"Die!"

My rifle wasn't within reach, my left hand was useless, and my right hand was above my head. I could draw my sidearm from that position or roll away, but the elite wasn't preparing to swing or stab, the sword was already moving towards my head. I wouldn't stop this one.

* * *

><p><em>There was some laughter. It was the good kind of laughter. It was too early to dare to hope, but things were looking to <strong>Colonel-Commissar2468 <strong>and **General TheDyingTitan** for proofreading this chapter._

_It has been some time since we ended things with a cliffhanger, hasn't it? Well, to be honest, I felt like the chapter was stretching out and since I was getting angry because I couldn't find a way to close it off without being abrupt I decided to be an asshole and give you this little gem. Fuck yeah._

_Well, reviews for the last couple of chapters have been overwhelmingly positive, something for which I am very glad. Last chapter got 17 reviews, not a bad number at all, but The traffic numbers indicate that I'm getting a lot more than 17 viewers per chapter. I'm not telling you this just because I want a higher review count (which we've established already) but also because the more readers I cater to the more likes and dislikes there are. I want to appeal to the highest number of readers possible with this fic. You traveled through the muddy swamps that are the first chapters and made it to the lovely meadows that everything post Chapter 150 is. I want to give back._

_Anyhow, mushy stuff aside, we've got a pretty decent chapter. When was the last time you saw Frank be genuinely nice to a stranger? No wonder he isn't a nicer person if shit like this happens every time. Karma is a bitch, but not because it works properly, it's precisely the other way around, at least for the members of AAG-7. Also, remember that the rest of the team is convalescent in the Esztergom area, resting in plushy hospital beds with bitches and hoes to attend their every need. Except not. We'll see them soon enough, perhaps two chapters from now. New Alexandria is closing to an end... we all know how it goes._

_Now, questions, comments, and concerns. Everybody's favorite part._

**_Heart0fSt33l: _**_Yes, this story keeps with canon and doesn't go against anything that has been established by the Halo lore. Sorry._

**_Electric2097:_**_ Check out my favorites for what I consider to be the cream of the crop. I also recommend When There Was a Tomorrow and Guilty Sparks, both by General Rage._

**_The Awes0me One:_**_ It's been a while man, missed your feedback. And yeah, they are pretty similar, Pavel became nicer as the story progressed, but I would argue that Jorge is still nicer than Pavs._

_To everyone else, thanks for reviewing._

_Epic songs of the day: Arise by E.S. Posthumus, Apollo's Triumph by Audiomachine, Protectors of the Earth by Two Steps From Hell. Enjoy your epic lives._

_Personal part of the after chapter note. Basketball season is starting. Man am I pumped, football was fun, but I barely knew how to play. Basketball is something that I'm actually pretty decent at. Let's do this!_

_*Clears throat awkwardly while looking around tugging at collar* Sorry._

_Stay strong._

_-casqui_


	204. Cansancio

Chapter CCIV: Cansancio

**August 20, 2552 (UNSC Calendar)/**

**New Alexandria, Viery Territory, Reach, Epsilon Eridani System**

* * *

><p><em>"You either get tired fighting for peace, or you die."–John Lennon<em>

* * *

><p>A man could survive with two holes in the chest, those were my thoughts as the energy blade moved at me. Like most things, it seemed to be happening in slow motion, but there was absolutely nothing my body could do about it.<p>

The elite's head suddenly jerked and pieces of skull, armor, muscle, and brains came out the left side of its head. The arm was still moving forward, its muscles not quite sure of what had just happened to the organ in charge. The elite started leaning slightly to the side as its legs proved unable to maintain their balance. The sword moved with the body and I rolled away. I didn't have time to think as I moved away, instead I only screamed in pain when one of the two twin tips of the energy blade pierced me in the side, a hand above my hipbone.

I had been rolling away, but I had to roll back the other side to keep the energy blade from wreaking further havoc on my torso. The elite fell with a loud thump and the energy sword automatically deactivated, making me hiss with pain. Only an inch or so had gone through the skin, but the energy sword had burned like hell.

I couldn't afford to feel pain, not now.

The other covvies were still alive and trying to kill me. I stood up once again, grabbing my battle rifle in the process. I could see Andy hopping from over the barricades while the rest of my men covered her. In her right hand she had that anti-tank grenade launcher that Pavel had told me about before the mansion drop. I could see a brief flash before something detonated against the wall above and behind my men. The ones directly underneath the explosion disappeared with the dust, but Andrea was thrown forward and hit the street headfirst.

I slid down and grabbed the grenade launcher. I aimed it in the general direction where the shell had come from; the target was easily the most prominent enemy in the neighboring area. The range was pretty extreme, but I had to try. I shot at the Daemon tank, surprised by the lack of recoil from the grenade launcher. At first I thought that the device had malfunctioned, but the explosive shot forward with the help of rocket boosters and flew straight at the Daemon tank. It hit right underneath the main cannon and nothing happened.

I grabbed Andy and put her over one shoulder, grunting as the energy sword hole felt the extra weight. The explosion came later, as the high-tech round burrowed through the armor on the Daemon with a combination of speed, extreme heat, and even drilling. The HE shell should've torn a hole the size of a hula hoop on the tank. The place where it had hit guaranteed the death of the gunner and the destruction of the main gun.

I threw Andy over the barricade and hopped with her, landing on top of Ramirez. He and Marv were dazed, but the shell fired by the Daemon had been an AT round, not designed to have a big explosive radius.

"Grass! We need to go through!"

"Patience," she said, her voice suddenly a lot calmer than it had been for the past hour. "It's all good."

I was about to shout at her when the amount of Covenant fire decreased dramatically. Six separate explosions shook the street and the sound of gunfire intensified briefly. The few of my men who hadn't been dazed by the tank firing at them returned fire. I saw a few grunts looking confused and promptly killed them, but the majority of the Covenant soldiers were now firing at their rear and sides. They were surrounded.

My mind quickly deduced the only two possible alternatives: ten Scorpions or a Spartan team. The explosions were hard to tell apart, but I hadn't heard the loud firing noise that Scorpions made when they fired.

To be honest, I preferred the Spartans.

"Who is it?" I asked Grass, firing on a panicked elite minor.

"Noble, Falcata, and Gauntlet."

"Well, aren't we fancying it up," I chuckled. "Damn."

The smoke cleared up a bit and I caught sight of Emile from Noble dispatching elites and jackals with his shotgun. The Spartan didn't seem to have any trouble with the aliens, just moving slowly through the street and not even bothering with cover. Close behind him were two members of Falcata, one of them was Eduardo-G271 and the other appeared to be Miranda-G192 if the smaller frame was anything to go by. I couldn't see the rest of the Spartans, but the results were impossible to deny, a few seconds ago we had been on the verge of death, now I was calmly looking at the battlefield as the Spartans did what amounted to mop up duty.

"Move up to the doors," Carter's voice came in.

I jerked my head in the direction of the doors and told my men to move it. Everybody seemed to be able to walk, but Ramirez and Pavel had to lean against the wall with one hand while Andy still used me for support. I reached the large doors, true to their purpose, the massive metallic slabs would be nearly impossible to plow through with anything short of anti-ship weaponry. We wouldn't want to make access to FLEETCOM too easy, would we?

Carter-A259 was standing near the doors, with Kat-B320 standing next to him. They looked even more imposing in combat than they did outside of it. Standing opposite Carter was Jonah-G012, the leader of Team Falcata, next to him was another S-III who my helmet tagged as S-G298, presumable the leader of Gauntlet.

"Commander," I greeted, letting Marv support Andy instead. "It seems like I'm going to end up owing you my mortgage at this rate."

Carter chuckled. "It was nothing."

"You too," I told Jonah and the other S-III. "Thanks."

"Just doing our job," Jonah replied.

"Lieutenant, you're hurt," Kat noted drily.

I looked down at my injury and waved my hand dismissively. "Nothing major," I assured her.

"Hey, are we going to keep saving these guys every time they fuck up?" Emile asked, walking past me. "It's getting kind of counter-productive."

I ignored the Spartan, not the least because it was one of the few beings alive that would be able to kill me without batting an eyelash. My jaw clenched at his comment, but antagonizing him openly wouldn't do me any good, especially when it was a psychopath only in it for the fun, unlike the other Spartans.

Thankfully, Carter also ignored Emile.

"If you want to thanks someone, thank Jun," Kat said. "He's the one that got the elite about to pummel you."

"Thanks Jun," I said.

"Anytime," he replied on my helmet.

"Kat, open the door, will you?" Carter asked, going back to his no-nonsense voice. "Jonah, Dan, is the area secure?"

"Yes, sir," the two S-III team leaders replied simultaneously.

"Good, then we're falling back inside. Command will send troops to take over."

A pair of Spartans materialized and joined the little circle; one of them was Kevin-G111, the gunner on Falcata.

"Lieutenant, pleasure."

"Likewise, Kev," I said, trying to act nonchalant about the impressive active camouflage that their armor systems had.

Kat had been tapping at the console next to the massive doors and after a few seconds the metal groaned and hissed as the hydraulics began putting it down slowly. The doors must've been damaged somehow, because the last time I had walked through these they had moved down almost instantaneously. Once they were down and we could walk through we were greeted by a platoon of Marines and Captain Flatt.

"Captain," I said.

She nodded at me. "Commander Carter, Holland wants to talk to you and your team."

Carter nodded and moved out, with Kat, Emile, and Jun in tow.

"Where's the other two?" Pavel asked me in a whisper.

"I don't know," I replied, worried. "I thought they were with them."

"Jonah, Team Falcata is to remain here, Dan, you and Gauntlet are to run civilian evacuation until further notice, understood?"

"Yes, ma'am," Spartan Dan-G298 said, waving his hand for his team to follow them as they turned and disappeared.

"Frank, you're with me," Captain Flatt said.

"Yes ma'am," I replied. "Seven, let's go."

"Your men can stay at the medical station if they want," Flatt said, making her suggestion very clearly an order.

"Pavs," I said, gesturing.

"Wilco," he nodded.

I walked with Captain Flatt, staying a couple of feet behind her and doing my best not to limp. As soon as the adrenaline wore off I could feel every knick and knack in my body. My hand throbbed, my shoulder screamed, and every single joint felt three times its age. I noted that Captain Flatt had an M6J Carbine slung across her back in addition to her usual pistol. Not only that, but she was wearing light armor plates on her legs and torso as well as armored boots. She was ready for action.

"Nice outfit, ma'am," I said.

"Don't get cheeky," she replied. "Everyone is wearing light armor under Admiral Freemont's orders."

"How many people are here?" I asked her. "In this complex I mean?"

"Most of FLEETCOM has been evacuated and is running on a skeleton crew, but Olympic has two thousand personnel still in it."

"That's got to be mostly non-combat personnel," I muttered. "Do we really need so many?"

"There are over a million troops in this city as of seven minutes ago," Flatt said. "We're the only source of intel and are coordinating all units in New Alexandria. We're short staffed."

"Well, I'm glad they stayed then."

Flatt walked through the courtyards; the landscaping crew had done a great job here, combining sharp angles, the steps and occasional sculpture with evenly spaced plant spaces. I'd give you a better description, but my knowledge of words falls short. Anyways, I was surprised by the lack of combat scars in the courtyards, I could see ammunition boxes, command tents, tire marks, and more signs that you would expect to see in a military base, but there weren't any scorch marks, craters, or shattered debris.

I just hoped the situation wouldn't change soon.

"Ma'am?" I asked when Flatt abruptly stopped just shy of the elevators.

"Frank, you're not gonna like what I have to say."

I snorted. "We're at war. In Reach. It can't get much worse than this."

She nodded understandingly. "It is precisely because of that that we find ourselves in an unusual situation. Namely the excess of Special Operations units."

"Excess…" I said, tasting the word in my mouth. "Ma'am, SpecOps units is something you can never have enough of."

"Command doesn't seem to be thinking it that way. Attrition has ground down the standard units to around sixty percent of their original size, but most SpecOps units have considerably less losses."

"You're not kicking us out, are you?" I asked.

"I'm not, I'm just passing the word."

"Come on, Flatt," I said. "You know damn well that short of those Spartans my team is the best combat unit in this galaxy."

"It's not a matter of skill, Frank, " she told me. "Logistics is hell right now, and the easiest way to give out missions was to make a list and do first come first served."

"You're putting us at the back of the list?" I asked. "Captain, we do our best work under pressure."

"I vouched for you," she said. "I did, but the ODSTs have a lot of pull here, and some of their men haven't seen any action yet. Rangers and Airborne also want to get into the thick of it."

"Then have them go fight alongside the jarheads," I said angrily. "Flatt, you can't make me and my men fight alongside regulars. If you put us there we're going to be about as useful as an Army squad, we can't change the flow of battle from defensive positions."

"I know!" she snapped, finally showing anger at my lack of respect. "But it is not my choice, Frank!"

"What can I do about it?" I asked her.

"Nothing," she replied. "They shut me out, and you've been draining resources pretty damn fast. Everyone is convinced that their units are the best, but everyone here happens to be an admiral. They're sending you to bolster up an Army unit on the west end of the city."

I took three deep breaths. "My men could use the break…"

Flatt straightened her spine and looked me in the eye. "I'm glad you can see the positive side."

"You know me," I said.

"Dismissed."

I saluted and did an about turn, clenching my fists.

* * *

><p><strong>August 22, 2552 (UNSC Calendar)two days later**

**Saint Bystrík, New Alexandria, Viery Territory, Reach, Epsilon Eridani System**

Saint Bystrík was a quaint little neighborhood, if by quaint you meant as high end as you could get in downtown New Alexandria. Of course, high end usually meant high raises and reflective glass windows, which in turn made this neighborhood a big target. I'm sorry, perhaps quaint wasn't the correct term at all, especially considering that the majority of the buildings here had collapsed, forming a labyrinth of debris reaching as high up as fifty meters in some places. The Army Engineers had detonated and dug and improvised defenses from that debris, building what was basically an improvised system of trenches and tunnels that were dozens of meters above street level.

In fact, right now I was taking a break on the former roof of an apartment building.

"Sir, I don't want to be a dick," Bee began.

"Then don't be," I replied lazily.

"But what the hell are we still doing here?"

"We're holding this district," I said for the umpteenth time in the day. "It is of vital importance that we don't let the Covenant pass."

"Sir," Andy jumped in. "If we're left in a static position we're basically another squad, except we have a higher hit percentage."

"Then that's what we're gonna do," I muttered, irritation creeping into my voice. My tone was enough to discourage further comments, but I could sense that my men weren't satisfied. I didn't blame them, we had been stuck here for the past two days, not doing anything particularly productive and getting countless requests from the adjoining units to provide sniper support or assists in certain jobs.

"Frank, we're seeing movement on sector… what's that building with the eagles again?" Pavel radioed in.

"I don't know," I admitted. "I feel like it might be twelve. I know the one."

"Anyways, Miranda saw what looks like a trio of jackals moving along the top of it, jumping in and out of windows."

"I don't feel like playing whack-a-mole right now," I grunted. "Andrea, who's up top right now?"

"Serge's got the SRS," she answered.

"Serge, did you catch all that?"

Green acknowledgement light.

"Knock yourself out man, get all three of them or send them back. You know the holes right?"

Green acknowledgement light.

The jackals could move inside the building with the eagles on it, but most of it was filled with debris, which meant that there were certain points where they had to jump outside a window and run down the side before hopping down another window. We had mapped those holes as fast as the Covenant could find them and soon it became a matter of whether we spotted them before they could make it to safety on the other side, bolstering the pinned Covenant company at the base of the crater.

Ah, the crater, a roughly circular area where the pileup of debris hadn't exceeded ten meters in height. It looked like a crater, hence the creative name. The difficulty of movement along its sides meant that going straight through was the shortest way. The Covenant usually went for shortest, not smartest. A hundred or so dead aliens were bleeding into the polycrete and there hadn't been another attempt to cross through since yesterday.

Serge's rifle boomed once.

Right after we had arrived a Phantom ship had been shot down right near the edge of the crater. We had rushed to occupy it before the covvies could set up snipers. Right now there was one squad inside it, using the plasma turrets as deterrents. We had used what little heavy weaponry we had to set up a nice little position in and around the enemy dropship, which now gave us the possibility to cut down anything that tried and move through the crater.

In paper, things were easy for us, but the Covenant were beginning to outnumber us. No matter how many we killed, more and more dropships began sneaking through our space defenses. Their casualty rates must've been somewhere in the high seventies, but for every platoon they dropped our initial numerical advantage was reduced.

I was still unsure about why we hadn't received reinforcements from outside Viery, but I hadn't heard anything from the other side of the planet since the invasion began. The reasons for that were all troubling, so I kept myself from thinking about it for too long.

Serge's rifle boomed a second time.

Then there was the matter of the Covenant company trapped near the edge of the crater. They were pinned down by sniper and machine gun fire, but what little air pictures we had access to showed that they were digging through the rubble in the tunnels. We had no way of knowing how fast they were progressing, but the most likely exit points were being monitored at all times. It made me a little bit uneasy knowing that they could've popped out below my feet with barely a few moments' notice.

I sighed. This assignment wasn't hard. It was tedious and boring, but it was also dangerous. A very bad combination if you ask me.

Serge's rifle rang for a third and final time.

"Good work," I said lazily. "If anybody wants to relieve him, feel free."

The fireteam members all looked at each other before Bee sighed. "I'll take next watch," he said. "Andy, look after my girl."

Andrea nodded, patting Bee's rocket launcher affectionately. That launcher in question had saved all our lives more than once. The sight of the M41 reminded me of the little grenade launcher slung across my belly and a little bit to the left, covering the hole where the elite had punched its sword through. The pain was all but gone, but the stitches and biofoam had left behind a big scar. The launcher had saved my life once before, but I suddenly felt a bit weird carrying so many different weapons. Usually I did with only my rifle, my sidearm, and my knives, but now I was burdened with a shotgun and a grenade launcher. Granted, the shotgun was just under sixty centimeters in length and fit comfortably in my lower back if I tilted it some. The grenade launcher was even shorter than that, perhaps thirty-five centimeters in length. The weight didn't bother me. I just wasn't used to the feeling of having those weapons hanging there. After using the same loadout for countless missions for two decades, the slightest changes felt… wrong.

"Lieutenant," Private Parker checked in. "Sergeant just got word of enemy dropships in the area. They might be coming this way."

"You're still around, huh?" I asked him. "Shit man. Alright, thanks."

"No problem, sir. I'll be around for a while longer."

_Don't tempt fate…_

"Alright men, prepare for a possible enemy incursion on this position. Unspecified number of dropships. Shooting gallery for us unless our air defenses fail and we get flanked from behind, the sides, above, and below."

"Same old, same old," Pitcher grunted.

I nodded. So far our SAMs had been outstanding, but all you needed is one slipup to get thirty covvies on our asses. Or on our heads, it depends how fast they got here.

I looked up instinctively. There were about two floors worth of polycrete above me, one of them was too unstable for anything to walk on it, but the top one was sturdy and provided an excellent view of the crater and the area around it. Bee would have a field day if they did drop troops. He had the lowest scores in all of Reaper when it came to using the SRS-99, but when he used it in combat he was as efficient as they came. Ironically enough, his kill percentage with the SRS was 97.7%. He liked to brag about it a lot, but the truth was that he had only ever needed to shoot forty-five aliens. He had only ever missed once.

Had we made fun of him when that happened.

"I'm seeing the dropships," Bee announced.

"Bee as a sniper, what have we come to," Schitzo teased.

"Ready, ready!" I shouted. "Positions!"

I moved to the windows, propping my rifle against a nice little pillow that had escaped the building collapse with only a scratch or two. It was impressive how well polycrete could hold up against wear and tear.

"Two clicks and approaching," Bee updated. "They're on an approach vector."

Andrea snorted. "Stop taking yourself so seriously."

"I'm the cold sniper," Bee said in the same calm voice. "It's my job to take myself way too seriously. Snark should do it more. Nine hundred meters."

I could see the Spirit dropships myself. There were four of them, an unpleasant number. In fact, the number four means death in Chinese cultures. I remember Preacher having mentioned something of the sort before he died.

"Yup, definitely bringing presents for us," Pitcher said. "Yay."

A little part of me liked this. The attack meant a departure from boredom. Two rockets came from the Army emplacements and hit one of the dropships, making the other respond by strafing in that general direction as they dropped their troop contingents. I was dismayed when I saw that it was mostly elites.

Bee fired, hitting a minor through the neck. The shields went down and the bullet was barely deflected. I could see the alien drop its rifle and reach for its throat as blood started spraying out. For a moment I pondered on my next move. I could kill it or I could watch it die. I sighed and fired, hitting it in the hands and going through and into the throat. It wasn't an instant kill and the alien would have enough time to realize just how dead it was.

The rest of the aliens began to fan out around the drop zone. The crater was anything but even and there were plenty of spots for them to hide. Some of them even made it to the windows that would let them get underneath some sections of the debris. I cursed as a major disappeared from sight near an area that was known to house one of those tunnels. I made a mental note and switched back to another elite. This one had been hit in the leg and was struggling to make it to cover. I cut its trip short and the alien collapsed to the ground.

"How many did we get?" I asked after a while.

"One," Bee said. "And an assist."

"One for me," Miranda announced.

"We took out two," Pavel said.

"Two for me," I replied. "If I'm doing the math right, that's six."

"Plus three that Army squads took out," Marv chimed in.

"Bringing it to a grand total of…" I said.

"Nine," Mata said. He didn't sigh, but I could feel him holding the annoyance back.

"Which means that there's roughly eighty-one aliens that made it safely to cover before being cut down. If I ever have the misfortune to witness something as pathetic as this again, I will personally knock each and every one of you out. Understood?"

"Yes, sir!"

"Now kill those fuckers before we find ourselves in trouble. I've had enough of your lazy shit."

Perhaps it was unfair to them. The elites did get to cover pretty fast and my men did try to hit them, but I knew that they were better than that. Even at this range Pitcher should've gotten at least a hit, not to mention Marv and Serge not getting any kills. Disproportionate or not, they would try that much harder. Pavel liked to joke that they all saw me as the father that was never proud of them. I liked to think of them as the younger siblings that were never quite good enough for the older one. Luckily, I had never had to deal with an older brother that was the best at everything. Quite the opposite, if memory serves me right.

"Movement, movement!"

"Coming up on the left!"

"Watch for snipers," I warned. "Bee, that's you. Miri, you too."

"Yes, sir," they replied, aiming at the opposite side of the crater.

The battle settled into a comfortable pattern. The covvies would advance slowly with fire maneuvering, occasionally getting help from the others trapped on the other end of the crater. We had never had this many aliens in the crater at once, but the machine guns the Army had were handling them quite well, leaving us to finish them off whenever they made a mistake.

It became a standard attrition firefight, something that my squad wasn't really used to. We would fight hard and go for the quick knockout. I don't think I recall any fight where I just told my men to conserve ammunition and let the covvies go. The way we worked we liked to cause panic and have our location remain vague. Here we were defending a well-established position and would remain here for a week or however long they wanted us to stay here.

I killed an elite as it tried to dash through ten meters of open ground. Idiot.

"Lieutenant, there's a pair of elites close to our position," Private Parker radioed in. "We can't hit them from here and they're within grenade range. Marking their position."

"I see them," I replied. "Pavel?"

"Scaring them now," he said simply.

I watched as Pavs fired a long, sustained burst right into the edge of the pile they were using for cover. One of the elites shuffled away from it just enough that Parker and his squad could put a dozen holes in it. The other one in turn instinctively jerked away from its dead comrade, where it met a swift end at the hands of a combined barrage from Miranda and myself.

Idiot.

We must've cut their numbers by a third before they started moving back away from us. It frustrated me that we would have to let many of them go, but Bee racked up his kill count as they reached the far end of the crater, putting the fear of God in them.

"Good work people," I said finally. "Keep your eyes peeled. They won't take defeat nicely."

And sure enough, before ten minutes had passed the Covenant were coming at us again, this time hiding behind a wall of grunts and jackals. Cannon fodder in the purest sense of the word. I shook my head and began shooting.

"Sir," Bee said. "We-"

Whatever he was going to say next was silenced by the massive explosion that hit the crashed Phantom. Every single soldier that had been taking cover there or within ten meters of it had been completely vaporized. My eyes got spots on them and my ears started ringing as the piles of debris rumbled and groaned from the shockwave. Before I could even recover a second explosion sent me back to the ground. I groaned and bitched with the rest of my men, but it wasn't until Bee checked in again that I realized just how bad it was.

"Shit, they got through! They got through!"

"Got through where?" I asked. "What the hell, Bee?"

"They got through the Navy, there's one, no two, no three! There's three, no shit, it's four Covenant corvettes, there's four of them."

"Fucking shit," I said cleverly. "Wha–"

This time the explosions came from behind. They must've been at least half a click off, but the result was very clear. The SAM sites that were protecting this whole section of the city had been taken out.

"I'm seeing dropships incoming from front and back!" Bee shouted. "Screw it. I'm bailing."

"Stay in your fucking spot," I said, jumping back to my feet. "Parker, we need to fall back! We need to fall back!"

"They're in our positions, sir!" he shouted. "We're already moving back! Third Squad was overwhelmed, they're hitting Second with fuel rods. Ah shit!"

I cursed and waved for my men to begin moving back.

"Pavel, get the hell out of there!" I shouted. "Rally Point Alpha!"

Alpha was seventy meters behind our position, but the nature of Saint Bystrík's collapsed buildings made the trip a zigzagging madness through tunnels and trenches cleared by the Army engineers. We moved fast but kept our guards up, clearing every corner as we would an enemy occupied building.

"Down, down!" I shouted.

Two Ghosts sped over the edges of the debris trench, flying directly over us without noticing.

"Enemy presence to our right," Caboose said. "Be alert!"

"Grigori, Serge, Marv, switch to shotguns!"

Their weapons made a satisfactory noise when they cocked them.

A Phantom flew overhead but failed to see us moving through the debris, but it became evident that our position was all but lost.

"Parker, Parker, do you copy?"

"Yes, sir," the shaken private replied. "Only three of my squad made it out, we've got elites right on our ass!"

"Where are you headed?" I asked.

"Charlie, Charlie!" Private Parker. "Shit, they're closing in!"

"Ramirez and Dotsenko, give 'em a hand," I ordered. "Go!"

The two guys broke off from the group, taking a small tunnel to our left. The tunnel would lead them to the emergency stairs of a building, from there they would climb down two floors and then move underneath the rubble before coming up behind Charlie.

"Sir, watch out!"

Two elites jumped down into the trench, holding plasma rifles. They seemed at least partially surprised to come head to head with such a large group, but we were equally shocked at their sudden presence. I pressed myself to the side and raised my rifle only for the lead elite to kick it back down. Before it could aim at me I pushed the plasma rifle up, flinching as two shots flew right past my hand. The other elite was partially blocked by our struggle, it couldn't bring its weapon up before Marv and Serge both blasted it. I struggled with the other elite for a second before Andrea crashed her shoulder into it, getting it away from me. I swung my rifle at the elite's wrist, making it drop its weapon. Andrea dropped to the floor and Miranda fired five quick shots with her DMR. I was angry, so I got in her way and swung my rifle at the elite's head. It's jaw cracked and it fell to its knees. A knee strike had it on its back. From there I jumped on top of it and bashed its head in with six or seven hits.

"I am fucking sick of this shit," I muttered. "Move!"

My men seemed to stare at me for a second before they resumed their run. Alpha was just two turns away. From there we would have sniper support and access to the old underground system.

"Down!"

Another group of Ghosts streaked past just above our heads. This time it appeared like one of them saw us.

"Pitcher, did it see us?" I asked.

He climbed a bit and peeked over the edge of the trench. "It's coming around!"

"Mata, be ready!"

The sergeant nodded and drew the small grenade launcher that he kept.

"Turn the corner, turn the corner!" Pavel shouted. "Go, go!"

The Ghost came in at a sharp angle, it just barely fit inside the trench, but as soon as it cleared the edges Mata fired. The anti-tank grenade launcher was completely overkill on the scout vehicle. The explosive tore through the front section of the Ghost, punched a hole in the elite driving it, and detonated about three meters behind it, destroying the back of the Ghost.

"Shit, Phantom!"

"Alpha's compromised, Alpha's compromised!" I shouted. "Shit, shit, shit. Move to Charlie!"

"Sir, we've got enemy infantry left, right, and center," Ramirez checked in. "Are you coming in from the east?"

"Negative, negative, we're coming in from the south," I said. "Holy fucking hell!"

A massive explosion threw everybody off their feet. I looked around, but the trench was turning into a tunnel as the debris piled up higher and higher. I ducked underneath a floor and slid down a wall. The glass windows cracked under my feet, but if they gave I would just fall down an inch or so before hitting more rock.

"Watch your feet!" I warned.

"El-tee, we could use that assist right about yesterday!" Ramirez shouted.

The sound of their SAWs was getting louder, but not even the debris surrounding us could drown the sound of plasma, needle, and carbine fire. A small explosion that could only belong to a plasma grenade rocked the little tunnel.

"Coming through, coming through!" I shouted twice right before hopping out of the tunnel and into Rally Point Charlie. "Right, right, right!"

Pavel came up behind me as I fired straight ahead at the aliens trying to outflank Ramirez and Dotsenko from the left while he fired at the ones whose flank we had just hit. I hit an elite with drained shields and took out two jackals before I had to move to the left and take cover. Pavel sprayed while everybody else moved up. My men knew better than to throw grenades in this giant mountain of debris. The polycrete had held for a long time, but a single explosion could bring everything down in an instant.

"Shifting left," Pavel called out. "Cover me."

"You heard him!" I shouted. "Fire, fire, fire!"

"Moving up, moving up!" Marv called out. "Serge, with me!"

The two of them moved under the cover of our fire and stopped right on the opposite side of a pile that two elites were using for cover. The two men fired blindly over the top, but with two shotguns in such a small space, it would've been a small miracle for the covvies if they missed.

"Move up!" I ordered. "Miri, keep their heads down!"

The firefight lasted maybe ten more seconds before surprise and overwhelming firepower eliminated the Covenant presence in Rally Point Charlie. From there the only thing to do was to move back until we made contact with troops from the 11th and we could either pull out or make a stand in our secondary line of defense.

"Can you contact Grass?" Pavel asked.

"Trying," I said. There was heavy interference, probably courtesy of the corvettes. "Not for now. It might take a few minutes."

Pavel gave a quick nod and sank into step with me. Our secondary line should have been holding up well even if the Covenant had managed to drop troops all around them. In fact, I fully expected all the corridors to still be open to transit for the frontline units. As soon as we made it out of Bystrík and into actual pavement I saw just how right I had been. Three smoking dropships had made hard landings and there were countless Covenant corpses littering our surroundings. Most of them had limbs blown off, the obvious mark of SRS-99 fire.

"Hello boys," a vaguely familiar voice radioed in. "Tough day, eh?"

"Tell me about it," I replied to the sniper. "You got us?"

"We got you," she confirmed. "Where's the rest?"

"We're all that's left," I said. It was just my unit and two Army troopers, one of them was Parker. "They came in from all sides."

"Shit," the sniper muttered. "Alright, move it up. They've been dropping troops constantly for the past fifteen minutes."

"You heard the lady," I said. "Double time it."

I kept wondering how the hell we would take down those corvettes. One of them was certainly manageable. I had heard of a couple of situations where long-range artillery had been used to bring down single corvettes, but mostly we deterred them with SAM presence. The newer models were designed to mess with the laser point defense systems, giving multiple signatures per missile. It was a nifty little piece of work, taking full advantage of our electronic warfare superiority. From what little I knew of the Covenant's AIs, they were outclassed even by our dumb AIs by exponential factors. Come to think of it, I had seen all that they had to offer less than five years after I first fought them. They certainly weren't innovative, that's for sure.

"Alright, looks like you have a small group approaching from behind," the sniper said. "We can handle them, don't stop moving."

"Thanks for the heads up," I replied.

I saw the trail of smoke appear before I heard the shot. Even at this distance it was uncomfortably loud, reminding me of one of the many reasons why snipers had to constantly switch positions. A second later another shot followed the first.

"They're staying back, but you'd better hurry it up."

By this point we could hardly move any faster without breaking into a full on sprint. So that's exactly what I ordered my men to do, yelling at them for being so damn slow when they failed to meet my standards.

As we ran I looked up, one of the corvettes was almost directly overhead. It wasn't hard to tell that it was moving into position. I winced as I felt the static electricity. The ship fired a single shot. The explosion was followed by the sound of a building collapsing, a loud sound that I had become all too familiar with. It came from the north side of the city. There were still around a million civilians in that area, awaiting evacuation.

"Shit," Pitcher grunted, realizing how many people must've died.

"Shit, down!" Pavel warned. "Down!"

His warning came too late for us to do anything about it. The corvette fired a second shot, this one was coming straight in our direction. I backpedaled furiously as I saw the plasma torpedo hit the building where the snipers that were covering us had set up shop. The plasma burned through the polycrete and the metal with barely slowing down. The explosion only happened after the plasma had gone in several meters. It was big enough to throw me backwards and into the ground.

"We… we," I muttered, shaking my head. "We still have- We still have them on our ass!" I cursed as I struggled to get to my feet, the world shaking as the building came down. "The dust will cover us."

I helped Andy up and then gave a shaken Mata a hand. As soon as everybody was up I found myself doing something that I would've never expected to do. I found myself running into a falling skyscraper.

* * *

><p>"What the hell took you so long?" I shouted at the Pelican as it approached. Behind me, the Covenant kept firing. Pavel fired wildly, buying just enough time for Ramirez to limp into cover, pressing his hand against his leg.<p>

Ramirez tripped over his wounded leg and Dotsenko leaped forward to catch him and drag him into cover. Mata leaped over to their position, firing at the phalanx of jackals.

"Hurry the fuck up!" I shouted at Marina.

"I'm doing my best!" she replied angrily, spinning her ship around and slamming the rear into the edge of the rooftop.

Marv was the first one in, grabbing a hold of the door turret and depressing the trigger buttons. The machine gun roared as everybody else dove in. Mata and Ramirez were the last ones in. As soon as they were inside the Pelican I sat back down on the edge of the hatch door and kept firing. Miranda grabbed the back of my vest so that I wouldn't slide down and propped her rifle on my shoulder. I gave the command for my helmet to block out outside noise and gave her a go sign. We fired alongside Marv, hitting angry elites and scared grunts. Quite a few fell to the ground, but in the end they realized that they just wouldn't be able to take us out.

"Alright, we're good," I said, perhaps a bit too loudly. "Help me up."

Miranda dragged me back a bit before I jumped to my feet and sat back down inside the Pelican. She was breathing heavily. In fact, everyone was breathing heavy. It was a miracle that our only casualty was Ramirez' leg. Even Parker and his colleague had made it out without any problem.

"Olympic is about to fall under attack," Marina said. "A few dozen personnel evacuated, but everybody there is needed."

"Anything new?" I asked her. "Grass barely got my position before we were cut off."

"Other SpecOps teams are pulling back. I think a few of the S-III teams are being shifted to civilian evacuation and containment."

"Why the hell aren't we pushing back against the corvettes?" I asked. "We should be running counter-ops right about yesterday."

"Command is waiting this one out," Grass said. "I have no idea why, but they wouldn't stop offensive action against something this big unless they had a good reason."

I snorted. "Come on Grass. When was the last time the brass made a smart decision?"

"Frank, really?"

I snorted again. "There are four corvettes hovering above this city. If they're not shooting them out of the sky for a reason, then it better be something that could win this battle or end this war. We don't take those out and we're gone."

"Have a little faith," Grass said. "I'm redirecting you to the executive pads on the tower, ok? Flatt is having an emergency meeting."

"Alright," I replied, deciding to ignore the fact that she didn't want to argue. "See you in a few."

This time Marina sped through the street at a speed that could best be described as reckless. The banking Pelican sent our bodies from side to side and front and back with each turn, but there was no longer any area that could be considered safe. If you were flying, you were a target. This time we weren't targeted, something that I was thankful for, the last thing I wanted was another hard landing and fractured collarbone. My shoulder was still a little bit stiff, but a lot more mobile than before.

"Approaching,"

Marina spun the Pelican around as she usually did, having the rear hatch facing the entrance to the building. Nobody was waiting for us on the landing pad and the wind howled as we jumped out of the Pelican. Ramirez struggled up to his feet and was helped down by Dotsenko and Serge. He winced with every step he took and blood was pouring freely out of the wound.

"Come on," I said. "Let's get inside."

A civilian contractor welcomed us into the building. He looked like a professional to me, but the guy was obviously not used to the large scale combat that we lived by.

"Right this way," he grunted. "Any injuries?"

"Just the one," Pavel said, pointing to Ramirez. "He can handle it for now."

"It burns," Ramirez said calmly. "It feels like it went through a bunch of muscle."

"No shit," Bee said. "What else could it go through?"

"Bone, tendon, skin, blood vessels, connective tissue," Andrea suggested offhandedly. "But yeah, mostly muscle."

Grass was sitting in a large conference room that had been stripped of most of its furniture. The only thing remaining was a large holotank pressed against a corner and a large leather chair. There were a couple of ammunition boxes and a small table with papers on them. In the middle of the room was Grass, looking at the monitors on the wall, the top of her undersuit tied around her waist, revealing a sweaty tank top and her ODST tattoo on the back of her left shoulder.

"Grass," I greeted.

"There's an infirmary just at the end of the hall," she said, tapping commands into one of the consoles. "The rest of the guys can take a break in the dorms. Just two doors down."

"Pavel, stay," I said. "Grigori, make sure they get some rest."

"Yes, lieutenant."

Grass finally turned around. Her face was shiny from sweat and her hair was beyond messy. This from the girl that put on makeup before she did combat drops. The only reason she would let herself go that much was obvious, coordinating several different units at a time probably left her no time for breaks. Still, Grass was the most attractive woman I knew; even in this state she looked… desirable. I focused instead on the part of her arm that melded seamlessly into the black prosthetic she had for a right arm. It looked almost like a normal arm would, except for the carbon black color.

"You look like shit," I greeted.

Pavel snorted.

"You're not looking too sharp yourself," she replied. Grass turned and grabbed, of all things, a handheld mirror. She tossed it.

I took off my helmet and looked at my face.

"Ouch," I muttered. My eyes looked haggard and my cheeks were sunken. The appearance was somewhat mitigated by my ever-growing beard, but I was a step away from looking like a corpse. "A week of normal food and I'll be back to normal."

"A day of rest," Pavel said. "That's all I'm asking for."

"It's gonna have to wait," Grass said.

"Stims can only carry us so far," I told her. "Cam, we're going to need rest at some point."

"Not today," she replied. "Those four corvettes, they're a game changer Frank. New Alexandria is key, there are four orbital elevators, two spaceports, f–"

"Yes, military bases, civilian population, and more," I said. "What are we going to do about it?"

"Civilian evacuation is paramount," she said.

"Wonder why that changed," Pavel muttered.

He was right. I had rarely known the UNSC to prioritize civilian evacuation over military victories. The Inner Colonies were already bursting full of refugees from all the worlds that the Covenant had glassed. Reach was no different, but it had managed to go through the population boom better than others. Paris IV hadn't weathered nicely and the colonies in Sol most certainly weren't going through this catastrophe all that nicely. Already some of the colonies towards the Perseus Arm of the galaxy were receiving an influx of refugees. The terraforming colonies must've been making a shitload of credits.

"Flatt wants to talk," I said. "Where is she?"

"Right here, Lieutenant."

"Captain," I greeted, turning around to meet her face to face. "Good to see you."

She nodded. Captain Flatt looked as tired as I felt. She was wearing some sort of variant of the Marine armor without a helmet. I did notice that she had an ODST undersuit, but the armor was vastly outdated. Perhaps forty or so years old. It reminded me of the model that they used back in the Harvest Campaign, the one that you saw so often in the films because they had been phased out so suddenly. They were as cheap as props if not more.

"What's the plan of action?" Pavel asked her.

"No offensive actions," she said. "Word comes straight from the top, we are to act defensively only."

"Bullshit," I snapped.

"Yes," she said. "But those are the orders. I have a feeling that they're planning something Frank, we have a few hundred Spartans on the planet as of this moment. Nobody is stupid enough not to use them."

"They have a reason," Grass added.

"We just have to hope it's good enough," Captain Flatt said. "Until then, you and Captain Nezarian will help defend this tower."

"He's still alive?" I asked. "How's his unit?"

"Same as yours," Captain Flatt replied with a shrug.

"Good," I said. "That's good."

"What are our assets, ma'am?" Pavel asked.

"FLEETCOM was allotted a total of sixteen Falcons and thirteen Hornets for air support. Tanks… we don't have more tanks. Camilla?"

Grass cleared her throat. "We've got thirty Warthogs to help cover the whole perimeter, twenty-two of those are regular LAAG models, seven are Gauss 'Hogs, and the last one is a missile 'Hog. We're good on turrets, air defenses, ammunition, and everything else that we might need. Medical supplies are running a little low, but they should last for a day or two."

"Who else is on defense?" I asked.

"We've got Badger Company on defense, they're Marines. Army has 3rd Company," Grass explained.

"What about Navy and Air Force?" I asked. "Don't they have token units?"

"Our Para Rescue company was slated to do an op five minutes ago," Grass said. "They were from the 1001st Special Operations Wing, 1st STS."

"They have a good reputation," I noted. "Where are they?"

"We lost contact with them," Grass shrugged. "MIA, most likely KIA."

"Navy?"

"There was a NAVSPECWAR team here," Grass said. "They were killed in the opening days of the battle. Command knows that this place is important, but not nearly enough to warrant a battalion for our defense."

I raised my eyebrow. "That sounds stupid. If we want to keep fighting this battle, then this place is important."

"All units are dragging out ground combat," Flatt explained in a patronizing voice. "This building is the epicenter of the ground we hold, but since we can't make an impermeable perimeter, some forces need to be dedicated to defend FLEETCOM HQ. There will be attacks here, Frank, but we'll be facing small, elite units trying to decapitate us."

"It makes sense," Pavel told me. "And we could use the break."

I chuckled. "What break? You know damn well what she means by small and elite units. She means elite units alright, but small isn't an appropriate adjective."

Captain Flatt looked at me without an expression.

"When do you need us down there?" I asked.

"As soon as possible," she replied. "Badger and 3rd are spread thin around the walls. There are some other Army units defending the outside of the walls, but you saw what happened. That little probing attack almost got through."

Again, Flatt wasn't using the term little in the right context. There had to be at least a couple of companies right on our asses in addition to the Daemon and Wraith tanks. That little probe had nearly cost us our lives. The kicker was that the moment that we made it to safety they sent us back out. Now that this place was no longer safe they were keeping us in.

"Give us a few hours," I told Flatt. "Ramirez isn't in any condition to move right now and my men are so full pumped of stims that their bodies will break apart soon. They can't go on without sleep much longer. Same for me."

"You look like shit," Flatt agreed, "but considerably better than your partner here."

Pavel shook his head. "I want to sleep ma'am. I want to sleep really bad."

"Go," I told him. "I'll catch up."

I looked to Grass and Flatt. There was a haze beginning to form around the edge of my vision, they looked worried, Grass more so than Captain Flatt, but they both had a concerned expression on their face. I blinked repeatedly and the haze faded but nonetheless began creeping back in.

"How long have you gone without sleep?" Grass asked.

"At least two days," I said, rubbing my eyes. "I had trouble falling asleep."

"Give him tranquilizers," Flatt ordered. "We'll bring you back."

Suddenly my legs felt very weak.

"Ok," I said quietly. "That sounds... nice."

* * *

><p><em>Thanks <em>to <strong>Colonel-Commissar2468 <strong>and **General TheDyingTitan** for proofreading this chapter.__

_Well, this was a lot shorter than usual, but still an enjoyable length I hope. At some point in this chapter I realized that Frank was going through way too much shit. Granted, we have the miracles of modern medicine on their side, especially when it comes to lacerations, punctures, and even bone breaks, but a single man can't stave off fatigue and tiredness for all eternity, even if he's Frank._

_Other than that? Well, Grass in a tanktop though. She's sexy as hell man. Yeah... Anyhow, Reach is finally getting to everyone, and there's still a couple of weeks to go. Dun-dun-duuuun. Hey, next chapter is either gonna be super long or divided into two, but it's gonna be fun. As long as your definition of fun is the same as mine, that is._

_Thanks to all of those who reviewed, but my personal philosophy boils down to: you can't have enough reviews. So yeah, click the hell out of that button and write words and shit._

_Hope you enjoyed the chapter ladies and gents._

_Stay strong_

_-casquis_


	205. Crown Jewel

Chapter CCV: Crown Jewel

**August 23, 2552 (UNSC Calendar)/**

**Olympic Tower, New Alexandria, Viery territory, Reach, Epsilon Eridani System**

* * *

><p>"<em>Look at this place. Used to be the crown jewel… not anymore." <em>Jun-A266

* * *

><p>The closer you got to the walls the more obvious it became that this was a warzone. Not that you needed a lot of help to figure that out in the first place, but the amount of explosion craters, scorches, and glassed marble tiles increased with every step I took. The material of the courtyard switched abruptly from an exquisite black marble to a more utilitarian brown polycrete floor. My boots felt considerably more comfortable now that my feet had had time to rest outside of the boots. My joints were a bit achey, like they would usually feel after an intense workout session back in high school. My head was still hurting, but it was no longer pounding and I could see very clearly indeed.<p>

When your body is used to sleeping four or five hours at most every day and you've gotten even less than that in the past nights, a short amount of sleeping time can work wonders. I felt almost rejuvenated. In fact, my men looked rejuvenated. Dotsenko had been down since he made that call, but he was a little more talkative now. Ramirez was limping heavily, but I couldn't spare him, not now. Marv and Caboose looked more like their usual selves and Pavel was no longer tripping over his own feet.

We were always a killing machine, but now we were once again well oiled.

"Machine guns on towers," I said. "Everyone else, ramparts. Wait up, Andy, I want you to hang back in a Warthog."

"Um, sir. May I ask why?"

"Because I say so," I told her. "And because you're our medic. We need you to be able to reach anybody quickly."

She nodded. "Alright then."

"We're also going to need you when the wall comes down."

"You mean if."

I shook my head. "Come on, Andy. This city is as good as lost, you know that as well as I do."

Andrea stiffened slightly. "Yes, sir."

She moved back at a brisk jog, raising dust with every step she took. The rest of my guys were climbing up to the walls while Pavel, Dotsenko and Ramirez spread out to the nearest watchtowers. From this position we would be able to cover several blocks. There was a nice little space in between our walls and the nearest available cover. The few Daemons and Wraiths that had made it all the way over here dotted the landscape and would certainly be a bitch for us. They would be great cover for the covvies.

I patted the wall, feeling it. There was a certain quality to its molecular bonds that made it feel hard. I knew that the material was dense, flexible, and could take up to seven direct shots from a Scorpion in the same square yard.

It would last us about a day, I reckoned. Two with luck.

"We're gonna need your help, little buddy," I whispered. "Don't let us down."

"Frank, drones are not an option," Grass told me. "We've established unsecured communications with all units, but secure channels have been a little harder to make work. Their jammers are actively blocking those frequencies."

"Why am I not surprised," I muttered. "How does that affect us?"

"It doesn't," she said. "Not directly. Helmets can communicate directly with one another and my radio doesn't need an antenna to talk to you."

"I remember back in the day when I used to own a prototype helmet," I said. "It could communicate reliably across seventy kilometers of solid rock. Now I feel like we're stuck in the 22nd century."

"What can I say, Frank?" Grass said. "Did you know that helmets with radios only became standard in the 23rd century?"

"I didn't know that, no," I said. "Any other fun facts?"

"Oh. I have so many of those," she said. "But I'm saving them up. What you do need to know, is that Nezarian's got your left flank all covered."

I winced involuntarily. "You know, every time someone says that name I think about Yev."

"So do I," Grass admitted. "He was a good man, Frank."

"He was one of my best friends."

"You still have Pavs, me, and Marina."

"Actually, you're supposed to say Pavs, Marina, and me," I corrected. "But you know what I mean. Making friends nowadays is a hard thing to do, especially for veterans. That's why losing them is that much harder."

"I know," she said. "We've all lost our fair share of friends. I also know that you've lost a lot of men under your command, Frank."

"Why are you bringing that up now?" I asked. "As if I don't have enough already."

"Oh come on, I can read you like an open book. You're worried you're gonna have to add more numbers to your arm there."

I sighed. "I'm not worried about that. I'm more worried about when it's going to happen."

"You're such a downer."

"And you've got a great ass," I said. "What's new?"

"Umm…" she muttered awkwardly. "Your right flank's covered by a ragtag unit. Men from various decimated squads, Flatt assembled them to further bolster our defenses."

"Are they reliable?"

"They survived most of this in really bad spots," Grass said. "The few of them that didn't pass the psych were evacuated. Mostly they're angry and want to kill something."

"Alright then. We're gonna have to work with that. Does Badger have any issues?"

"Nope, neither does 3rd. We're all good to go."

"Ok, how do we know when we're about to be attacked?"

"For the most part I'm going to be using street cameras, working with the city's superintendent. Other than that we're going to take a little while to pass on information. All unsecured communications are probably gonna be spoken in code or encrypted, so it's going to be a bit longer."

"Damn, how encrypted are they?" I joked. "Well, you just let us know and we'll nap."

"Right," Grass said. "I guess it's gonna have to be a short one."

An hour. That was all it took for the so-called small and elite unit to get through to the walls.

"Why are we still here?" Pitcher groaned as he propped his rifle up on the edge of the wall, securing his footing on the ramparts. "I don't think I signed up for this."

"Wrong," Andy said.

"This is exactly the kind of shit that you signed up for," Bee added. "So stop bitching about it."

I smiled. I had said something along those lines a long time ago.

"Gentlemen," I said. "We all know that they're probably gonna go through this walls. Let's make them afraid to take another step once they're inside."

"Oorah!" Pavel shouted. "Let's get loud, boys!"

"Solid defensive position, unlimited ammunition, air support, and plenty of targets," Ramirez said. "This is the kind of shit that I live for."

My smile turned into a grin. That rest had sure done my team good.

Miranda opened fire with her DMR, hitting a grunt right in between the eyes. She fired a second time, hitting a jackal. By the time she fired a third time the whole squad had opened up. I worked in conjunction with Miri, lowering the shields on the elites while she finished them off with a quick headshot. It amazed me just how steady and smooth she had become with her weapon. Even back in the day she had been a real talent, but nowadays she rarely missed. People like us couldn't afford to miss. If we did, we were dead.

The Covenant that were attacking us were indeed of the more talented variety, making extensive use of suppressive fire and maneuvering in order to make us spread our fire as much as possible. They got about ten meters from the wall before I gave Pavel the signal. He stopped firing his M247L and instead pulled up a mounted HMG. The weapon took a second to spool up and then it started doing precisely what it was designed to. Bullet after bullet was spat out at a ridiculous rate, cutting down several of the enemy infantry closest to our position. After a few seconds of sustained fire Pavel instead began firing short bursts, suppressing advance on our entire right flank.

"Frank, eight Wraiths and a Locust walker made it through our perimeter," Grass announced. "They're headed your way… wait, the Locust and two Wraiths split off towards Nezarian's unit."

"We'll handle the rest," I said. "Listen up! We've got Wraiths incoming, be ready to jump out of the way!"

I got a few subtle acknowledgements, but my men were all focusing all of their attention on the targets. I moved back and started walking the length of the ramparts in between the towers, doing mostly spotting work and redirecting fire. Occasionally I would turn around to reassure Andrea that everything was alright. She was still in the Warthog, gripping the wheel tightly and sprung for action. I turned around to look at the wasteland surrounding FLEETCOM. Most of the bodies here were Covenant, but even after all these days we hadn't been able to remove the civilian bodies. Some of the corpses were already beginning to rot.

"They're moving down on our left," I noted. "Ramirez, Dotsenko, shift fire."

"Negative, sir!" Ramirez shouted back. "They've got their center stacked! It's a feint!"

I looked at the center of their advance and indeed noticed that there were plenty of aliens taking cover there. I frowned, the covvies weren't normally this smart, at least not early on in an engagement.

"Marv, Mata, eyes center," I said. "Ramirez, shift to the left on my mark."

"Yes, sir."

"One, two, three, mark!"

The two gunners started firing on the advance on the left, triggering the center to advance in a massive charge. We drilled the lead elites in the opening moments of their advance, and then we hit the ones right behind that, leaving six squads without a leader. Pavel chose that moment to shift his fire for a few seconds, strafing the grunts and jackals with HMG fire. The advance faltered for an instant as squads that had been rushing forward instead stumbled and looked for cover. I emptied my magazine on grunts and jackals' backs before they could take cover once again.

"Let's see them try that again," Schitzo said.

I glanced sideways to look at him. For once he seemed to be serious. It wasn't very often that he took himself seriously. After scaring the shit out of me that first time he had become an uncomfortable and unwanted presence, but mostly a comedic, annoying one. Well, that's how an outsider would see him, I guess. To me it was a constant battle with myself, trying to forget that despite my functionality I was still insane and broken.

"Wraiths, four blocks down," Miranda noted calmly.

"That puts them within range," I said. "Everybody be alert."

The enemy mortar tanks didn't take their time, instead they began shelling us with plasma. At that range the buildings on either side of them kept them from having too wide an angle, and we solved the problem that their firing presented simply by shuffling sideways, but the Wraiths didn't stop firing. They were hitting the wall, the space in front of it, and the space behind it.

"Frank…"

"Let them keep at it," I said. "Focus on the infantry for now."

It seemed to me that the alien in charge here seemed to have at least some decent commanding qualities, which is what made me believe that it wouldn't throw its forces against this wall when the danger of friendly fire was so great. However, it seemed unlikely that they'd pull them back. I gave command for my men to take out those closest to our positions with combined fire and minimal grenade use. Once we had cleared a nice little semicircle around our section of the wall we had a decent shot at firing on the Wraiths.

"Bee, do you have those anti-tank missiles?" I asked. "The guided ones?"

"Yes, sir," he said. "But I can't fire without exposing myself to tank fire."

"Can those be adapted to follow painted targets?"

"Yes, sir."

"Get on it," I said. "I'll tag you a Wraith."

I watched as Bee grabbed his SPANKr and took the missiles out, unscrewing the caps. He began fiddling with the warheads and then screwed the caps back on before loading them in the launcher again. He gave me a thumbs-up and waited for me to paint the target. I slowly edged to the spot where the Wraith mortars could no longer reach and waited for a lull in their firing. All I would need was a second or two.

"Wait for it…" Schitzo said. "Wait for it…"

I waited.

"Go!"

I popped up and out just as the Wraiths fired. I ignored the blue orbs that quickly moved up their arch, trailing vapors behind. I found the lead Wraith immediately and aimed at it. The target designator on my BR55HB beeped and I jumped back to the side, running away from the explosions that were soon to come.

I didn't see Bee fire, but the sight of the rockets flying diagonally up and to the side before turning abruptly to their right and down was something impressive. The two rockets detonated against the plating on the Wraith, presumably destroying it. The destruction of one of the tanks would give the others a warning.

"They're moving to the sides," Grass announced. "Nice stunt, by the way. It's hard to get your hands on multi-purpose missiles, how do you handle that, again?"

"I know a gal," I said with a shrug. "They come in handy."

The quick lull in their assault allowed Pavel to move from his position, dragging the mounted HMG behind him. The weapon was heavy, but its mount had wheels that could be secured. I couldn't help but note that having that down on the courtyard would be immensely helpful if it came down to it. He relocated just outside of the tower, propping the HMG against the wall and placing the ammunition crates next to him. Ramirez and Dotsenko retained their position, but everybody else shifted around. The top of the wall had firing ports, but we hadn't made use of them yet, instead opting to keep that advantage hidden for when the Covenant made it to the walls. Once there, there would be nothing to cover them from our fire.

"Here they come again!"

"Ready, ready!" I shouted, slurring the words as I said them.

My men opened fire, hitting a bunch of elites and sending them running for cover. I shouted orders viciously and violently, insulting, berating, and demeaning my men with every word that came out of my mouth. Meanwhile, they did their absolute best to prove me wrong and rack up their kill count. I kept on firing, adding up to my own tally, knowing that nobody but Pavel or Caboose would ever come even remotely close to reaching my number, even if I discounted the use of nuclear weaponry on my part. I focused on grunts that seemed to be carrying heavier packs than normal. My instincts proved right when one of those grunts was dragged behind cover and its pack was transplanted to another unlucky gas sucker.

"They're carrying det-packs," I noted. "Hit those first!"

"Ah, shit!" Pitcher shouted when a needle shattered in the wall in front of his face, sending shrapnel into his visor.

"Pitcher, report!" I shouted, sprinting to his location.

"I'm alive," he grunted. "Ah shit, I'm alive."

I reached him and looked him over. A small section of his visor had been cracked and pieces of the polymer had dug into his skin, but otherwise he seemed to be fine. A little bit of blood dripped out the gap in his visor and he wiped it off.

"Gory, gory," I said. "You're fine."

"That would've been a helluva way to die, eh?" he asked. "Just like they say in the Airborne."

I nodded and dusted his shoulders. He seemed shaken. Very much so.

"How did that song go?" I asked him, handing him his weapon back. "He was just a rookie trooper and he surely shook with fright."

Pitcher chuckled. "He checked off his equipment and made sure his pack was tight."

I gestured for him to continue.

"He had sit and listen to those awful engines roar. You ain't gonna jump no more!"

I smiled and sang the chorus with him. "Gory, gory, what a helluva way to die!"

Soon enough Marv joined us. I wondered for a moment how he knew an Army Airborne cadence and then shrugged it off. I even heard Grass mumbling along on the radio before she suddenly patched the song through to the speaker systems on the walls. Those speakers were as loud as they came, if not more. They were designed for everyone in the FLEETCOM complex to be able to hear it in case of an emergency.

"_Gory, gory, what a helluva way to die!_

_Gory, gory, what a helluva way to die!_

_Gory, gory, what a helluva way to die!_

_He ain't gonna jump no more!"_

The song blasted loud enough to startle the covvies for a brief instant. I mused for a few seconds, wondering if their translators would work well enough to make them understand what the song meant. Then I wondered whether they would understand the meaning of the song itself. They would probably think that they were the ones that were supposed to suffer the gory deaths.

They weren't far wrong.

Pavel tore a jackal in half with a particularly vicious sustained burst, tearing its bones and flesh with near ease. Miranda hit a wounded elite in the neck, severing an artery as well as taking a large chunk of muscle off as the bullet expanded. The elite reached up to try and keep the blood in, but its trachea was exposed to the open air by this point. Marv fired mostly center mass, but when he went for the head the bursts he fired often took out the face and obliterated the back of the skull, sending bone fragments flying alongside the brains and bullets. Ramirez and Dotsenko punched holes the size of lemons through jackals and elites, leaving them writhing on the ground if they were lucky.

"_There was blood upon the risers, there were brains upon the chute,_

_Intestines were a-dangling from his paratrooper's suit,_

_He was a mess, they picked him up, and poured him from his boots,_

_He ain't gonna jump no more!"_

The song wound down as the unlucky airborne trooper crashed into the ground because of a malfunctioning parachute or some such thing. The chorus once again repeated itself, but this time at a slower pace and with a much more solemn tone. Pitcher sang through the length of the song at full volume, firing fast and accurate, hitting grunts and jackals while he left the elites to Miranda and me.

"Camilla," Nezarian's voice suddenly came in on the shared channel. "Are you taking requests?"

"Sure," she replied.

"If we're playing oldies, then my men would like Airborne Ranger."

"Deep in the battlefield?" Grass asked.

"How do you even know that?" he asked.

"I know everything," she said.

"_Air, bo, or, or, orne!_

_Ran, ger, er, er, er, er!"_

I shook my head. This was a damn old cadence, but the speakers made the old-fashioned vocals sound that much more impressive. I found myself mumbling along the cadence, repeating after the drill sergeant in the speakers had finished his part. Pitcher chanted along with me. This time Miri joined in. I was surprised at her voice. She had a beautiful face and a killer body, but I had never considered her to have an attractive voice. Once she began chanting the cadence her voice proved to be nearly angelic.

"_Deep in the battlefield, covered in blood,_

_Lies an Airborne Ranger, dying in the mud!"_

I shook my head slightly. It had truly been a long time since the Airborne and the Rangers had been the same thing. They used similar methods to make their grand entrances, and even had similar roles, but their specializations were not the same. Airborne was, when it came down to it, the best infantry you could get. The Rangers were a top of the line special operations unit. Not to say I would like to face an Airborne unit in an exercise, but I would prefer them to the Rangers every time.

I found myself bobbing my head in rhythm to whatever cadence happened to be blasting in the speakers as I fired my rifle. For some reason or other I realized that I was firing my bursts with the beat of the songs, at first it seemed slightly bothersome, but in the end I gave in and fired in sync with the speakers. Not soon after I realized that I wasn't the only one doing the same things. Everyone but the gunners was firing in beat. Whether it was by accident or on purpose, it gave our barrages a certain beauty.

"I am, Earth's best," I muttered as the fast-paced cadence went on. It was a very old one, but the people back in the day had certainly been cocky assholes. What would they think of us if they had the chance to meet us?

"_We don't need no innies!_

_Hangin, hangin, hangin around!"  
><em>

I laughed, a little bit old fashioned.

"_Hey, don't be a fool,_

_Somebody said we were number two,_

_We're number one,_

_Go Army!"_

Pitcher cheered, the lone member of AAG-7 that had come from the UNSC Army. Well, Tank and Crow were both Army, but Tank was in Esztergom and Crow was dead. I prepared for the next part as the song came around, returning for a second round.

"_We don't need no covvies!_

_Hangin, hangin, hangin around!"_

It was a little detail, but it made all the difference in the world.

"Wraiths are moving up," Grass said. "The Locust is shifting to your spot."

"Ready, ready!" I shouted again. "Wraiths and Locusts want a piece of this."

The explosions began to drown out the sound of the speakers. Explosion after explosion shook the walls as the Wraiths fired on our position. This time the Covenant commander made sure to fire suppressive fire on us as the tanks worked at the damaged section of the wall. It made it hard for me to paint a target for Bee, but after some serious annoyances I managed to achieve just that. I cursed our lack of any kind of combat drones, remembering the few times that drone assistants had been made available for our use. The best kind was those little hovering ones that would fly through a building, tagging the layout and blinding the enemy with strobes.

"Painted, fire!"

"Firing!"

The two missiles once again flew up, hitting the Wraith I had painted. The other two tanks moved out, rushing for cover. I smiled with relief, but the Locust began advancing, climbing over debris and wrecked vehicles with ease. The occasional bullet would make its shields shimmer, giving it a sinister appearance.

"Frank, they're overwhelming us with fire," Pavel said.

"Use the firing holes," I said. "And fire nonstop!"

My men ducked back down and slid open the firing holes. I did the exact same, but instead of firing on infantry I painted the Locust for Bee's SPANKr. The two rockets slammed into the walker a few seconds later. The smoke faded to reveal a damaged hull as yellow lightning coursed through, signaling that its shields had failed it.

"Grass, give me some air support! Now!"

"Falcon dispatched!"

The rotors were loud enough to be heard. I turned around and looked at the gunship as it flew at us. It went over the wall, nearly hitting it and making us duck out of the way. As soon as it left the perimeter it started climbing up as it pivoted. The gunners fired at the infantry, nullifying whatever cover they had. The craft banked hard to the right as the Locust fired a beam at it. The pilot kept on strafing sideways as the beam disappeared, its energy supply exhausted.

"Hit it!" I shouted, urging them to fire before the Locust would be able to recharge.

The Falcon pilot knew his shit. The pilot fired the main cannon as the two gunners twisted around to join him. The Locust was heavily armored, but its shields were down and the frame couldn't withstand the sustained barrage. The armor gave in and the bullets punched through, killing the pilot and rendering the walker useless.

My men cheered as the machine groaned and collapsed, sending several grunts into a panic.

The Falcon flipped back around, strafing the exposed elites and grunts from above. As soon as it was back behind the wall it hugged the floor and moved further back into the perimeter.

"_Cuando yo tenía 15 años,_

_Mi mamá,_

_Me lo decía_

_No te metas de soldado,_

_Porque corren todo el día."_

I smiled. My uncle used to sing this one back in the day. Some of the guys that they brought to him knew Spanish, but by the time they were out of boot camp they all knew the cadence word for word and could recite it with perfect pronunciation. Nowadays most of the cadences used un the UNSC were from old cadences from the United States back before their Second Civil War or from the URNA shortly after that. The British had managed to sneak a few of theirs in, as well as the Russians and Chinese back before that Sino-Soviet business. National armies still used their own cadences, but the UNSC forces hadn't added any more in a long time.

"_Pero terco terco el indio,_

_Quería andar uniformado,_

_Y cambiar mis huarachitos,_

_Por botas de soldado."_

I chuckled again as the cadence faded down into silence.

"Ah, this one is one of my favorites!" Pavel shouted loudly as the next cadence began playing on the speakers. "PT, PT, PT count!" his voice boomed.

"PT, PT, PT count!" my squad shouted back, firing as they did.

"Mile One, just for fun!" I shouted.

"Mile One, just for fun!" they replied.

"Mile Two, good for you!" Pavel shouted.

"Mile Two, good for you!"

An elite fell as Miranda hit it in the waist, rendering it unable to walk. A second shot hit it in the chest. I switched from that elite to another one that hadn't been killed, but the one I had been gunning for made it into cover before I could breach its shields. I settled for tripping a grunt, letting Marv finish it with a burst.

"Mile Three, good for me!" Mata's voice boomed.

"Mile Three, good for me!"

"Mile Four, let's run some more!" Marv joined in.

"Mile Four, let's run some more!"

The Wraiths began advancing once again, pummeling the wall with fire from their mortars as well as their coaxial plasma turrets. The wall shook with each impact even as Bee and I worked in tandem to paint and destroy the Wraiths. No matter how fast I moved, we could only fire two rockets at a time and the Wraiths could sometimes take a lot more than that, especially when Bee wasn't able to properly aim, instead hoping the warheads would hit a weak spot in the armor. We brought down one of the Wraiths, but another one was still left.

"Goddammit," I cursed.

"Mile Nine, I'm feeling fine!"

"Mile Nine, I'm–"

The mortar explosion drowned the reply to the cadence as my men struggled to keep firing. Already the Covenant had set up jackal sharpshooters and snipers that had managed to hit the firing holes a couple of times. So far nobody had been harmed, but there had been a few close calls. Besides, I was more worried about Ramirez' ability to move quickly. Already he had to rely on Dotsenko for support when changing location.

"Frank, we're getting pings on our radar," Grass said. "Signature matches Banshees."

"Radar," I sighed. "No more sensors?"

"Nope, good old fashioned noise."

"How are our SAMs doing?"

"Not good," she replied. "There's at least twelve of them."

"Pavel, ready for fliers!" I shouted. "Eyes on the skies! Andrea, hop on the LAAG!"

My men moved around, switching their positions. If the infantry had communicated our exact location to the Banshees we would be in an uncomfortable situation. Namely, the bad end of a fuel rod bomb.

I heard the screaming sound that the fliers made before I could see them. I could hear it even above the cadences on the loudspeakers. Pitcher fired at the lead Banshee, hitting the wing but otherwise leaving it undamaged. The dozen aircraft all began strafing at the same time. Their plasma bolts hit the wall, sending bits of molten material flying up above us. I ducked my head underneath the ramparts as plasma splashed around me before popping back up and firing at the lead Banshee.

Pavel opened up with his HMG, hitting the Banshees on the edge of the formation. Missiles flew from the SAMs inside the complex. The missiles used data from our helmets to pinpoint the location of the Banshees, slamming into them. Four of them remained after the barrage. Andy had backed enough that she had a decent angle on three of them. She tore through them with the LAAG, sending bullet after bullet past the wall, a few feet from our heads.

One Banshee remained, damaged and fire coming out of it, but it soldiered on despite everything. I realized that the wounded pilot could only be thinking about one thing. I tried to look at it from its perspective. Hundreds of its allies were sacrificing their lives to get through to this wall and finally defeat an enemy that had proved to be brutal to fight. It was wounded and would surely die, but it wouldn't die for nothing. The Banshee boosted forward, angling straight towards Bee and Serge. The two of them jumped sideways as the Banshee exploded against the weakened wall. Bee was thrown down the wall and slammed into the courtyard with a disgustingly loud crunch. If he hadn't broken a bone, it would be a minor miracle.

Andy hopped off the turret and climbed into the driver's seat, she rushed towards the wall, placing the Warthog in between the wall and Bee. As soon as she stopped a mortar explosion brought down what was left of the wall, covering her with gravel and debris. She cursed loudly, but otherwise appeared to be alright. She began tending to Bee as Serge climbed down the wall and manned the LAAG on the Warthog.

"Hold the gap!" I shouted. "Hold the fucking gap! Grass, we've got a breach. I repeat, we've got a breach!"

"Shit Frank, there's Daemon's moving towards Nezarian!"

"Come again!" Nezarian checked in. "Do we have AT?"

"Negative Captain," Grass told him. "Badger is dealing with a tank platoon on their end. You're on your own."

"Ah shit," I said. It was quickly becoming my most used phrase.

I heard the war cries as the elites spurred their troops forward. The jackals were the first to jump out, making me think that this had been coordinated somehow, even if the total destruction of the Banshees hadn't been planned. The jackals moved fast, but they kept their shields held up at an angle. We shot at their feet, bringing a few of them down, but even then their numbers suddenly swelled. The cover of dust and smoke meant that we couldn't even see their bright shields clearly. Behind the jackals came the rest. I cursed as I tried to hit as many as possible. Even with my skill and speed I still had to reload, and with every magazine I burned through, they gained more ground. They soon made it to the walls and the elites lobbed grenades over it at our positions.

"Grenade!"

I rushed sideways away from the explosive, barely avoiding the explosive blast that sent me tumbling forward. Another nearby explosion shook me some more and I found myself crashing into the ground, an inch from the edge of the ramparts. I held onto the rail and pulled myself to my feet as the jackal units started climbing over the rubble from the wall.

"Pavel!"

"I'm working on it!" he replied.

Andy was moving Bee into the Warthog as Serge stopped the advance short with the LAAG. The heavy bullets tore through the shields like paper. Whenever they failed to pierce them they would simply break every bone in the jackal's arm and send it tumbling backwards. A small bottleneck was formed in the gap, but the rest of the Covenant infantry was arriving. At this point we wouldn't be able to keep them all from rushing the Warthog.

An elite produced a plasma grenade. I aimed at it and squeezed a burst. The elite didn't drop the explosive, instead it ignored me and reared its hand backwards. Two grunts turned to cover their leader, flooding my position with needler fire. I ducked backwards, firing but missing. The elite threw its grenade right before I managed to kill it, shooting one of the grunts for good measure.

"Watch out!" Miranda shouted.

Andy already had half of her body in the Warthog. She pressed the pedal and turned the wheel just as the plasma grenade began coming down. Serge's body twisted at the sudden lurch and he stopped firing lest he accidentally spray one of us with beer bottle-sized bullets. The jackals surged forward, trampling over their dead and making a shield wall as dense as they came. The elites and grunts behind them tossed grenades in every direction, saturating the ramparts with explosives.

"Dotsenko, Ramirez, stay on your tower!" I shouted. It was a risky position for them because they could easily be cut off, but they had a beautiful vantage point on all directions, especially on the side and rear of the force that had made it through the wall.

"Pull back to the second line!" I shouted, pointing at the sandbags and barricades that had been erected. "Move, move, move!"

Serge began firing again, covering us. The wall of shields slowly moved forward. Occasionally a jackal would fall over, dead, but its comrades would simply keep on walking forward, in an inexorable advance. Deployable covers began popping on their flanks. Pavel directed his HMG fire to the sides, moving his weapon on the wheels of the tripod while running for cover. Miranda and I tried to find any gaps, but their phalanx was so densely packed that there were none that could really hurt.

"Enough bullshit," I muttered. "Grenades!"

Several fragmentation devices flew at the mass of shields, but even then the shrapnel only took out a couple. After those initial explosions the phalanx was weakened enough that Serge could exploit the weak points. Their wall began to collapse, but more and more deployable covers popped into existence as the elites rushed out and fired on our positions.

We had been pushed back only thirty or so meters, but now the Covenant had both feet inside our perimeter. Plasma rained on our position, keeping our return fire down. Ramirez and Dotsenko fired their SAWs from above and behind, hitting several aliens that hadn't spotted them yet. As soon as the fourth elite fell five more deployable covers popped into existence, denying my two gunners their valuable angle. They held their position, still an advantageous one, not nearly as much as it had been a few seconds earlier.

I growled as I hit a jackal trying to move forward. The range was extremely close, but we couldn't afford to back off and give them comfort. We had more positions to fall back to, but as soon as the covvies made it through then they had their backs against a wall.

"Hoppers!" Ramirez warned. "Watch out!"

We all looked up as the elite rangers used their jetpacks to fly over the wall. They slowed down their descent and fired their twin plasma rifles. I was almost hit, but the elites didn't exactly have high accuracy as they came crashing down. Three of them were killed before they could make a dash for cover, but more of them rushed our positions, firing to keep our heads down. Caboose dropped his rifle and reached for his shotgun as the aliens in white armor moved towards his position. He stood up and blasted at them with his shotgun, only ducking his head after a bolt glanced off his shoulder.

"Ah!" he cried. "I'm fine. God. Damn!"

He had wounded two elites, enough for Pitcher to take one of them out and for Serge to cut down the other. We had the advantage, but only just. As soon as their numbers started working against us they would simply bull through.

"Start moving back," I muttered quietly. "Prepare to fall back!"

_"Come along and join the party!_

_Come along and join the fun!"_

The loudspeakers were still working, but the cadences were no longer being sung along. Back then we had the relative safety of a wall in front of us, now we were on the same level that the covvies were, but they had numbers on us.

"Hunters incoming," Ramirez announced. "Two pairs, running down the gap."

"Bee, Serge," I shouted. "Take them out as soon as you see them!"

"Watch the right, watch the right!" Pavel warned, firing at a pair of squads that were moving to our right flank, hugging the wall. "Shit!"

The four hunters thundered past the wall. One of them brought down additional rubble as its shoulder hit the damaged edge of the gap. They stepped on two grunts that weren't fast enough to get out of the way and jumped down the pile of rubble, cracking the floor underneath them. Serge and Bee hit the first one. The missile tore its midsection apart, forcing the other three to crouch into defensive positions.

"Grass, we're in a bit of a pickle here!" I shouted. "We need help!"

"Shit, shit, shit," she replied. "Alright, Nezarian's team and the unit to your right are both falling back. They're being pushed back. Ok, ok, ok… Fall back to the third line and meet up by that sphere fountain. You're all linking up. The Covenant has to go through there or face 3rd Company."

"What's so special about them?" I asked.

"Well, for starters, there's a hundred of them and they all have Warthogs. Before you say anything, they have the 'Hogs because they're protecting one of the gates, facing down bigger numbers."

I fumed slightly, but gave the word to fall back before the Hunters got any closer. We had to wait for Ramirez and Dotsenko to get out of the tower and cross the open space. They pummeled the hunters from the side as they went, but we managed to keep the rest of the aliens down long enough for my men to make it to safety.

"What's the plan?" Pitcher asked next to me.

"Fall back to the fountain," I said. "Trust our perimeter and the guys on either side."

"That's not a plan," he complained. "Sir."

"Got a better alternative?" Sergeant Mata asked him.

"No."

"Then fall back we do," I said. "Let's go."

I vaguely noticed a different cadence playing in the background as we ran towards the fountain. Serge and Pavel covered us rather effectively with the Warthog's LAAG and the HMG. I hopped behind a nice sandbag wall, noticing that we were now 200 meters from the wall, a fair amount of space for the Covenant to maneuver. The three hunters led the assault, but the sudden inclusion of Nezarian's team and the unit of survivors had them out of balance. We added more machine gun and Warthog fire into the fray, destroying the three hunters before they could do any damage.

"Spread out the Warthogs!" Captain Nezarian ordered. "Left and center, next to the fountain!"

"Andy, space it out between the steps and fountain," I ordered. "Who's in command?"

"Me, sir!" a sergeant replied. "We're calling ourselves Ragtag for the moment."

"Alright then," I said. "Space out your vehicles and machine guns. Same drill, we've got to hold them as long as possible."

"What happens if we do hold them?" Pavel asked me quietly, rolling his weapon into position.

"We get reinforcements," I said. "They'll hit the Covenant from the rear and serve as a hammer to our anvil."

"You've certainly got a way with words," Pavel muttered.

"Grass, what's the estimate on their numbers?" I asked our internet connection.

"I'm counting around five hundred," she said. "Three Daemon tanks are still up and I see six, no eight Ghosts running around. They've got Revenants up and running too."

"Not too bad," I said. "Bad, but manageable."

"Just barely," she concurred.

The Covenant had decided that they were close enough to begin attacking again. They had our positions on the wall and our first line of defense. There was huge gap in between them and us, but they could move inside the walls with ease, from cover to cover.

The situation started going badly from the get go. The hunters had been killed, but they had moved close enough that our fields of fire proved somewhat ineffectual for the other infantry soldiers. I focused on hitting grunts and jackals as much as possible, but even those were crafty fuckers. The aliens usually ran straight into our fire, but this time they were behaving more intelligently than they had any right to.

"Give us some support!" I shouted. "Grass, get the Falcons and Hornets over here!"

"Can't," she growled. "All Falcons are engaged right now, the Hornets are being swatted down, they sneaked AA into our perimeter."

"How are we not getting more assistance," I growled. "This place is the most important stronghold in the city and probably the planet."

"Captain Flatt is working on pulling some strings," Grass replied, sounding out of breath. "We're working on it."

I hit an elite in the face, sending it down to the ground ass first. A second and third burst took out the shields, leaving it open for one final shot to the jaw. The elite's spine was severed, but it didn't die instantly, instead it slowly choked on its blood as two grunts tried to drag it back behind cover to provide first aid. Another thing I noticed about this unit was that no matter how many we wounded they all seemed to help each other back to safety, grunt, jackal, or elite.

"_Cinco segundos antes de morir,_

_Yo vi el rostro, el rostro de mi madre,_

_Que con voz tierna y cariñosa,_

_Me decía hijo, hijo no vayas a la guerra."_

I snorted. I wish I had received that advice 18 years ago. Well, for that matter I also wished that my mother was still alive by her own means and not kept that way by mechanical means. I couldn't for the life of me figure what the hell had happened in that crash that modern medicine hadn't been able to heal. I never bothered to check, instead dutifully sending part of my pay to the institution that kept her alive. She was the only link that I had to that good part of my life. My uncle had cared about me, but he wasn't fit to raise a child. All other memories of my family were unpleasant ones, even those involving my dad. He tried, but my brother had skewed his perception of the world. He had done more good than bad with me, but the truck had cut his life short before he could amend his wrongs.

"_Cuatro segundos antes de morir,_

_Yo vi el rostro, el rostro de mi padre,_

_Que con voz fuerte y amistosa,_

_Me decía hijo, hijo, no vayas a la guerra."_

Once again, my dad's face flashed in front of my eyes, making me miss a shot. I ducked back behind cover and pressed my eyes closed as tightly as I could handle, trying to stop the headache before it came.

"_Tres segundos antes de morir,_

_Yo vi el rostro, el rostro de mi hermana,_

_Que con voz clara y cariñosa,_

_Me decía hermano, hermano no vayas a la guerra."  
><em> I didn't have a sister and I doubt my brother would've cared much. Maybe he would've enjoyed seeing me suffer? I don't know.

The aliens had closed the distance to fifty meters, grenade range.

"_Dos segundos antes de morir,_

_Yo vi el rostro de mi novia,_

_Que con voz tierna y amorosa,_

_Me decía amor, amor no vayas a la guerra."_

The first image that flashed was that of Casey First, the only girl that I had dated during high school. She was the first person I had loved in any way, but strangely enough, it didn't hurt when I left Jericho-VII to go to the Corps. In fact, the fact that she had had sex with me before I left made me feel strangely satisfied with myself. Then came Layla, her smiling face and charming wit. Marina replaced that one, sarcasm and seduction. After that came Hanna, the one woman I had betrayed. No matter how many women I slept with, I always told myself that they knew they were one-time things coming into my bed. Hanna had been the love of my life and I betrayed her.

I betrayed her for the very woman that I loved right now, but even then I had only chosen her after Hanna had died in my arms.

My head started throbbing.

"_Un segundo antes de morir,_

None of them had wanted me to go to war. None of them had wanted to be there once they realized what it really was. They only stayed there because I did. Marina piloted the ship that often kept me alive and Hanna had repeatedly asked me to leave the Corps and have a normal life with her. I couldn't do that. I couldn't do normal.

_Yo vi el rostro, el rostro de la muerte_

I had been face to face with dead on more than my fair share of occasions. I had even died once, but then Lieutenant Hayes' cousin had brought me back to life. How did I repay that? By abandoning her and her whole team for some stupid piece of intel and to keep my sorry ass alive. Everyone else that I cared about was either dead, dying, or waiting in line.

_Que con voz fuerte y tenebroza,_

The elites were beginning to get close. Ragtag Unit on our right flank was failing. No matter how angry they were or how much they wanted to avenge their friends, they simply didn't have the skill. An explosion shook the building and brought pieces of glass down. I moved my head, but things were happening too slowly. One of my bullets tore through an elite's chest armor, not slowing down in the least as the depleted uranium expanded inside the elite's chest cavity.

Two mortar orbs began their descent, headed far to the right. If Ragtag broke, then we would be enveloped from the right and the Covenant could move straight for Olympic, destroying our only method of coordination with the enemy.

_Me decía listo, listo vamos a la guerra."_

I saw the opportunity as soon as it presented itself. An elite marshal in crimson armor appeared, it waved its left arm around, growling orders in its piss-ugly language.

"Cover me!" I shouted even as I left cover.

I could hear Pavel cursing as my men asked me what the hell I was doing, but tracer rounds started flying by my sides. My body moved slowly, but everything else seemed to be caught in molasses. A grunt revealed a portion of its skull, allowing me to shoot it. An elite angled its carbine to fire at me, but a pair of shots sent shrapnel and radioactive fumes into its face as I neutralized its weapon. The elite growled, but it couldn't do anything. An explosion raised dirt and gravel to my right as a Revenant mortar shot detonated in front of me, blasting up dust.

I jumped over the crater, closing my eyes instinctively. The field marshal had spotted me, but it was too slow as it turned to fire its fuel rod cannon at me. One of its ultra bodyguards raised its rifle faster, hitting the ground in front of me with plasma. One of my men hit the elite with a burst, because its shields flickered and its aim was thrown off. I finished it with three quick bursts, all of which hit the space right between its eyes. The other bodyguard turned to shoot at me as well, firing as the marshal did. I dove forward, tucking myself into a ball to break my slide with a roll. For a fraction of a second I wondered why the hell I had done that, but my body thought faster than even my mind could at this point. I came out of the roll and used both legs to propel myself forward into a jump even as the fuel rod detonated right behind me. I grabbed my shotgun with my right hand, placing my BR55 HB into its magnetic clamps on my back. A quick blast lowered the bodyguard's shields before I landed on the marshal shoulder-first. We fell into the ground, giving me enough time to hit the other elite with a follow-up shotgun blast that knocked it out.

"Frank!"

The cries were ignored, but the marshal hadn't attained its rank for nothing. It batted my shotgun away from its face, instead growling as the buckshot ricocheted from the ground next to it and drained its shields. I slammed its wrist against the ground, hard. The elite's face contorted in pain, but it tried to press its forearm-mounted energy dagger into my neck.

I shifted myself and stepped down on its wrist with my right boot while reaching for my sidearm with my right hand. A shot hit me in the back of the shoulder, making me wince. Instead of shooting the marshal like I had planned I turned faster than I thought possible and put three bullets in a grunt's head. After that I twisted my body in every direction, shooting two jackals and three grunts in the head before they could get to me. I had turned my attention back to the elite and fired the remaining four bullets into its face, stunning it but failing to pierce its shields. Instead, I reached for my knife and stabbed its hand to the floor. Once there I grabbed my other knife from the small on my back and brought it down on its head. The marshal tilted its head forward and I found that the knife had gotten itself stuck on the elaborate headdress.

"Fuck this," I muttered.

I grabbed its headdress and yanked as hard as I could. The helmet came off, but the elite's neck remained intact. I was starting to get pissed. I brought my fists together above my head and swung down viciously, hitting the elite's nose and slamming its head against the hard marble floor. After that I started hitting it with wide swinging punches. Every punch turned my body all the way around, giving me even more power for the follow up. I found myself thinking about all that I had lost in my 37 years of life. Dutch, Chow, Ramsey, and Jonah. My very first squad. They had died before they had even made their first combat jump. The guys at the _Inconvenience _that I had distanced myself from, they died because I didn't care. Layla got hurt, Scarecrow was killed. Almers, Hoff, d'Arc, Sandor, Han, Stan Zepeda, Carver, Atkins, Montri, and Sutton. And now Polly and Preacher were both dead as well.

By the time I had mentally run through the list of names the marshal's head was a messy mass of pulpy flesh and brains. I cursed inwardly and emptied my pistol before reloading it. I reached for my knife and failed to yank it free from the headdress. Instead I fired at an elite that was coming my way and moved towards it.

"Why the hell aren't you heading back?" Schitzo shouted in my face. "Idiot! Dipshit!"

As I got up to my feet I grabbed the fuel rod from the marshal's corpse and shouldered it. The elite hesitated when it saw me, but it was vaporized before it could do anything. I jumped into position behind a deployable cover and zeroed in on a Revenant, hitting it with the remaining rods inside the shoulder-mounted launcher. I turned around to look at the corpse and see if it had additional rounds, but to my surprise Pavel was there. He pressed an additional bunch of green rods into my chest and growled a long series of Polish insults before he fired his M247L, hitting a squad that was rushing towards us.

I reloaded the fuel rod cannon and started playing once again. The launcher was an incredibly overwhelming piece of weaponry. Not only did it fire faster than the SPANKr, it also held more explosives in it. I recoiled slightly from every shot, but the corpses that were disintegrated or the vehicles that were destroyed more than made up for it.

_Me decía vamos, vamos a la guerra._

"Push them back!" Nezarian shouted. "Don't stop firing!"

By the time the two Falcons arrived with Team Falcata the courtyard was carpeted with corpses.

"You're late," I told Jonah-G012. Even all his armor couldn't hide the surprise that he felt. "But it's good to have you here."

The Spartan chuckled and shook his head.

"Good to be here," he said.

* * *

><p>"Tell me you've got good news Jonah," I said, standing up as the armored kid left Olympic Tower.<p>

"Noble Six is alive," he replied. "Noble Five is not."

"It's more than we could've hoped for," I said. "Anything else?"

He shook his head. "We're still not getting the go ahead to knock out those corvettes and now I don't think we could even if we wanted to. Things aren't looking good for us."

I growled and sat back down, moving the box of ammunition under my butt so that I had more space to sit on. The initial attack had been brutal, but the following ones had taken their toll as well. The covvies had been pushed back from the wall, but the man in charge had been smart enough to set up explosives all around the holes where they had breached through. According to Grass over 80% of our walls were now piles of rubble. Our limited air support had been enough to eliminate most of their Wraiths and all of their Daemons, but the main body of the Covenant ground forces had managed to link up with the assault force, providing them with a never-ending stream of supplies and bodies.

At first we hadn't been overly concerned about ammunition, but now things were looking a bit more dire.

"What about your team?" I asked the Spartan-III. "News for you?"

"Negative, El-tee. Many Spartan teams have pulled out of the city. Many others we have lost contact with."

"Damn," I muttered. "Did you find out why we're not getting any reinforcements?"

Jonah looked around and closed the distance. "I couldn't find anything concrete," he admitted, "but our snooping paid off. Miranda, my Miranda-G192, managed to pick up some transmissions that proved to be interesting. Command seems to want to draw in a Covenant ship for boarding."

"There's four of them right now," I muttered, pointing at the closest hovering corvette. "Why the hell would they attempt to board a ship?"

"I know, it's all but impossible."

I shook my head. "No, just stupid. Personal experience."

Jonah paused for a second before shrugging and going on. "Anyways, they want an assault carrier at least."

"At least? At least an assault carrier? That's got to be a fucking joke."

"It's what I heard," he shrugged. "I don't like it either, El-tee, but that's the way things look."

I fumed silently before looking up at the Spartan. "Anything else you heard?"

"One thing," he said. "RED FLAG. Have you heard about it?"

"No. Above my pay grade."

Jonah chuckled.

"What?"

"Lieutenant, I don't know if you know it or not, but at this point you're privy to most UNSC secrets. There's very few things above your pay grade."

"I should've died back in Eden," I said, standing up. "Thanks for the help, Spartan. Tell Alex to keep up the sniping, we can't take another large-scale assault."

"Yes, sir," the Spartan said. "Stay safe."

"You too, Jonah," I muttered.

Pavel found me sitting on the same ammunition box a few minutes later. He looked at me and reported the new developments. There was not much of interest happening near the walls, but Ramirez' leg was getting worse. Our scanners couldn't detect any infections of any kind, but the devices weren't infallible. It seemed like the wound hadn't been properly treated.

"Don't tell Andy," I said. "She's gonna beat herself over it."

"She damn well should, Frank. If she messed up…"

"I'd rather lose one man to pain than her to guilt," I said. "Ramirez is excellent with his SAW, but Andy's our medic. She's good for morale."

"If we lose Ramirez then Dotsenko will snap," he told me. "You've seen him. He hasn't been the same since he found out about his family."

"What, you don't think they might still be alive?"

"Do you?"

I shook my head.

"Miranda asked for another phone call," he said after a short pause. "I said no."

"Good," I said. "Did you talk to Amber?"

"No."

I looked up at the darkened sky. My musings were interrupted by an incredibly loud noise. The sound of a building collapsing was a familiar one already. I turned to the direction of the noise and saw a dust cloud billowing up at a rapid pace. I frowned slightly as Pavel muttered under his breath. There was a corvette hovering over that area, its turrets glowing.

"Was that Traxus?" I asked.

"Looks like it," Pavel said. "That was one of our evacuation ports, Frank."

"Well, ain't that just peachy," I grunted. "I need to kill something."

"When this war ends I don't know how you'll deal with your anger," Pavel said.

"Please," I scoffed. "How do you think this war is going to end?"

"You can never stop hoping," he said calmly. "That's all we have right now."

I hated hope. It always let you down. I remember hoping that my mother would open her eyes weakly and smile at me from her hospital bed. I hoped that my brother would come back and then I hoped that he would come away. I hoped that my uncle would stop treating me like a soldier when I was only thirteen and I hoped that I would make him proud when I joined the ODSTs. I hoped my friends had made it out of the ship, I hoped Layla hadn't left, I hoped Hanna was alive. Hope had a way of putting you up only to slam you down twice as hard. I hated hope, but I hated myself even more for having it. Even now I had a small hope that we would win this battle and I couldn't get rid of it no matter what.

I moved towards the wall, where most of Ragtag was present at the moment. I ducked and moved through our barricades and the piles of debris until I made it to the front. A private greeted me absent-mindedly and shuffled out of my way so that I could get a nice shooting position. He grabbed a spare helmet from one of his dead companions and propped it over cover. No shot came.

"Sell it," I said.

The private sighed and jumped out of cover before dropping back down.

Four different rifles fired at him.

I shot twice, hitting a jackal that had fired a carbine and then another bird with a needle rifle. The two birds reached for their throats before they fell. It took them perhaps a couple of seconds to die, but they'd stop causing trouble.

I grunted thanks and slid backwards out of the danger zone. I was still pissed, but at least I wasn't feeling the urge to punch the shit out of something. The last time that had happened I had found myself in a standoff with Darbinian's men. My own men had proved their loyalty back then. I couldn't help but miss them. Crazy Sandor and arrogant Hoff. An unlikely friendship had formed between those two, but it hadn't lasted long.

"Hey El-tee!" Private Parker greeted me with a smile.

"Parker, you're still alive," I noted drily. "Good."

"I've been lucky," the Army private said. "Either your luck rubs off on me or someone else's does. The last time I was this lucky was during junior prom."

"Not senior prom?" I asked.

"Exactly."

I smiled despite myself, calming down a little bit. "I'll want to hear about that someday," I told him.

"Provided we get out of here alive, I'll tell you all about it, sir!"

"Deal, now back to your post, private."

"Yes, sir!"

Pavel waited for me behind a ten-foot mobile wall. "You better?"

"A bit," I confirmed.

"Frank, everybody's talking about your little stunt."

"You were there too," I reminded him. "And I didn't even ask you to be there."

"It's my fucking job," he replied. "But I didn't take on an elite Field Marshal, its two bodyguards and then some. That's before you even grabbed the fuel rod."

"What do you want me to do about it?" I asked him. "We were on the verge."

"Frank, honestly, I don't give a shit about what you do or don't do. Captain Flatt was pissed about that. She purged every single helmet video that had you on it."

"Why?" I asked him. "I didn't know about this."

"Because she doesn't want people looking into you. You're too linked to everything else. People don't want this to come out. If there's a breaking news story about how the UNSC's glorious Spartans are nothing but fourteen year old kids it's your head and hers along with it."

"Alright. Next time I'll just sit down and die."

"No," Pavel said. "Next time you'll just move and shoot. You won't bash an elite's head in with your bare hands. Things aren't supposed to work like that in real life."

"They do for me," I muttered. "Alright. If something like this comes up again I'll try and tone it down. For you, ok? Not for her."

"You know just what to say to me," Pavel said. "Grass wants to talk to you, she's near the main entrance."

"What's she doing down here? Does it have to do with this business?"

He shrugged. "I'm your gunnery sergeant, not your secretary."

"Fuck you," I said.

Pavel laughed. "Hurry before she gets angry!"

I muttered to myself. I had ordered Grass around for years, getting her to do things that would've killed her as likely as they could've worked. I had absolute trust in her and she had to have the same in me. Her being phased out of my unit had hurt, but there was not much that I could do about it. She had found her way into ONI and knew more secrets than I did. She was still a noncom, but her position as coordinator of ground forces in Olympic and her security clearance put her a bit above me in the chain of command.

It was not something that I was used to.

I moved down the steps and over a few barricades, nodding at my men and those that were serving under Nezarian. The fountain that was in the middle of our last line of defense had been scarred and damaged multiple times, but for some reason it was still spitting out crystalline water. I shook my head at the sight of an airborne trooper dunking her head into the fountain as her colleagues washed the grime from their faces. I moved on towards the main entrance, where two massive machine guns had been positioned. The guns were typically used in anti-tank role. I think they fired 20mm explosive rounds at a rate of 1000 rounds per minute or something insane like that. Anything on the receiving end of those two would not even see its' death coming.

Grass stood a few meters outside the door, clad in a thin armor that ONI spooks had used during the Insurgency when going against badly-armed rebels. It would stop shrapnel and most bullets, but it couldn't disperse heat worth shit. That was not what I noticed first, though.

I hugged Grass tightly and pressed her against me. She wriggled in surprise and discomfort and tried to say something.

"There's an elite behind you," I murmured into her ear. "Three meters."

She stiffened and pulled her head back. It occurred to me that hugging her like this had provided the elite with an opportunity to skewer us both at once, but Grass was fast to react.

She let go of me as I drew my sidearm and aimed at the invisible blur. As I tried to zero in on something I realized just how hard it was to see the camouflaged elite. I fired twice at the spot from memory. Only one round hit, bounding off shields. The elite turned on its energy sword and lunged for Grass. She twisted sideways, using her artificial arm to deflect the stab so that it missed. The elite's lunge went wide and Grass grabbed it by the throat. Her artificial limb whirred slightly and her fist closed on the elite, tearing a chunk of flesh from the alien's neck. Blood sprayed everywhere as the alien fell.

"Shit," I grunted, suitably impressed. "They're in the perimeter. They're in the perimeter!"

Grass was giving word as well, shouting into her mic. "We've got camouflaged elites inside the perimeter. Who the hell screwed up like this? Thermal on, thermal on!"

Screams began to come for every direction. The elites were more than I could have imagined. All of the ones that were visible had some weird kind of black armor on, but they were fast and they were deadly. The woman that had dunked her head in the fountain now found herself decapitated and the other soldiers were backpedaling furiously away from the elite. The alien slashed their torsos open before they could reach their weapons, but it fell prey to machine gun fire. I noted that it didn't have any shields on, appearing to fall to our fire too fast.

"AAG-7, ready for an attack!" I shouted into my helmet radio. "Shit, shit, shit!"

Mortar rounds curved gently downwards before exploding with violence that betrayed their true deadliness. I looked up and moved out of the way as more rounds than I cared for began coming down.

"Take cover!"

Fire and brimstone. That's what this scene reminded me off. A soldier from Ragtag was consumed by an explosion. Another woman was thrown to the ground by heated marble.

_I'm living in hell_ I thought calmly. _I screwed up big time at some point while I was alive._

"They're attacking!" A panicked voice flooded the combat net.

"Hold the line!" Captain Nezarian's voice roared. "Fire, fire, fire!"

"God-fucking-dammit," I cursed. "Grass, we need something to handle those Wraiths!"

"Sir!"

I turned around as a Warthog almost ran me over. Marv was at the wheel with Mata on the passenger seat. I jumped on the rear and grabbed the Gauss turret, aiming at the nearest gap in our walls. Marv floored the accelerator as he violently shouted for everyone to move. We plowed through a barricade before coming into the pile of debris. An elite climbing over it met the Warthog's grille guard. Blood splattered over the windshield and Marv cursed as he plowed through the elite's squad. Covenant units were beginning to make the run across the street and over the fallen walls.

"There!" I shouted. "Wraith!"

Against all common sense, Marv turned towards it. I fired the Gauss cannon twice, hitting the strong front armor. Regardless, the magnetic weapon punched through the armor. A third and final shot destroyed the plasma supply inside, detonating the tank in a brilliant fireball. Mata cheered and fired his assault rifle at the infantry, hitting a couple of jackals and an elite.

"Hunters!" I shouted, mostly to myself.

I pivoted on my own position and fired one round, tearing a hunter's shoulder off. Its heavy metal shield fell into the ground as it roared in pain. A follow-up shot destroyed its head, torso, and right arm. Even despite the gory show I couldn't help but be amazed that it had survived a direct hit by a Gauss cannon.

Plasma slammed into the 'Hog's armor near my leg. I craned my neck and saw two Ghosts turning around to give chase. I spun the cannon as Marv skidded to avoid the plasma volley. I fired a shot, missing by a couple of feet.

"Fuck."

A second shot was more effective. The round plowed through the front of the Ghost, through the elite, and slammed into the ground behind it, making a sizeable crater. My third shot hit right below the other ghost, sending it up in a backflip. The Ghost came down crashing into the pavement, leaving a nasty smear in place of the grunt pilot.

"Wraith!" Sergeant Mata shouted. "Heads up!"

The mortar hit right in front of us. The shockwave sent the front of the Warthog up in a wheelie. I grabbed onto the Gauss cannon, accidentally firing a shot. Marv violently jerked the wheel, but the front wasn't in any way near the pavement. He slowed down just enough that we slammed back down into a drivable position, catching the Wraith's gunner by surprise. I fired a shot at the tank, hitting the turret. That would've been enough, but I couldn't resist firing a second shot as we turned away. The Wraith crashed into the ground, unable to move or use its cannon, neutralized.

"There's one more near your position," Grass' voice flooded my head. "Tagging it."

"Marv, you got that?"

"Yes, sir!"

For some reason I felt like having sex at that point. Don't get me wrong, I wasn't sporting a raging hard on of any kind, not even a stir down there, but at that point I started thinking that maybe having sex wouldn't have been a bad idea. I missed having Hanna near me on my deployments. I missed her.

"Duck!"

I ducked, but the Daemon shell took out the Gauss cannon.

"It's a fucking tank, Grass!" I complained. "A fucking Daemon!"

"Sorry," she said earnestly.

"Lot of good that does," I bitched. "Mata, you have that grenade launcher?"

"Yes, sir," he said, pulling out the pistol-like device.

"Use it," I ordered, grabbing my own grenade launcher and making sure it was loaded. "Marv, give us an angle."

"Yes, sir!"

Marv floored it, swerving to avoid a second shot. The tank got bigger and bigger, its coaxial guns began firing at us. Fortunately, its size worked against it. It couldn't turn as fast as Marv was swerving.

Mata fired, hitting the tank dead on. The round burrowed deep into the armor before taking out a huge chunk of it. I fired a second later, hitting the same spot. The explosion that followed was a bit bigger, no doubt because I hit something important. Still, the tank could still move. A third shell almost turned us into slag, but Marv deftly avoided it, buying us vital time for a second volley. This time both Mata and I hit simultaneously right above the first spot. The explosion wasn't overly big, but I could tell that we had taken out the crew inside the Daemon. Marv stopped next to the tank and waited for Mata to toss a grenade inside for good measure before flooring the pedal all the way back to base.

"Coming through!" I shouted. "Out of the way!"

To my dismay, I found that Marv was hitting Covenant soldiers from behind. I fired with my battle rifle, catching surprised grunts and jackals in the back. The Covenant had already set up a nice wall inside our perimeter, but they were having trouble getting through. I saw Army units running away from our second line and towards the final one. Most of them were hit in the back by elites and jackals. I shouted something angrily before I noticed that Ramirez was limping away from the advancing Covenant, firing his SAW as he went. His leg was bleeding pretty bad.

"Marv!"

"I'm on it!"

A mortar landed next to us. This time the explosion threw me off the Warthog and made the vehicle spin twice. I cursed as the Warthog nearly crushed me, but then immediately moved in to get Marvin out from underneath the wreck, ignoring the growing pain in my body.

"Mata? Mata? Roderic!"

"I'm fine!" he shouted back. "I'll get Ramirez!"

"Go!" I urged. "Marv?"

No sell. He was knocked out.

I threw him over my shoulders and started moving back towards our last line, wincing as tracer fire flew past me. I looked to the side to see Ramirez kneeling, smoke coming out of his chest piece. He had been hit. I shouted as a carbine round knocked him to his back, where he writhed in agony. Mata got to him, dragging him and throwing him up into his shoulder in one smooth, powerful motion. He looked in my direction and gave me a short nod as he let go of his rifle to carry Ramirez easier.

I ran as fast as I could, but Marv was a big guy and all muscle. Even at this point, strong, fast, and able to suppress most pain, I could barely take a step without tears forming in my eyes. I told myself that the fact that I could walk after being thrown out of a Warthog was a miracle and soldiered on, Marvin's body on my shoulder.

I looked at Mata, who was lagging a little bit behind. I winced as a needle pierced his calf, sending him to his knees.

"Roderic!" I shouted.

He roared and took two more steps, throwing Ramirez over the wall of sandbags before climbing over it himself. Three needles flew at him just as he rolled over the wall. I hit the wall of sandbags myself and came over it with Marv in tow. I shoved one of Nezarian's medics off me.

"Him!" I shouted.

He nodded and began checking on Marv while I ran towards Mata. Already Andy had made it to his position and was furiously working on Ramirez. Mata had three needles in his chest. He had been hit after all.

"Don't breath!" I shouted. "Don't move, Mata!"

He looked at me and then down at the glowing needles in his chest. He took a small breath and all three crystals glowed a little bit brighter.

"I'm a goner, aren't I?" he asked quietly, every word making the needles glow more.

"Not just yet," I said.

"I think they got my heart," he said. "It's not gonna stop beating."

The movement would make the crystals explode. He was right. He was a goner.

"Shit," I muttered.

Mata took another breath, wincing. "Is Ramirez ok?"

I looked at my other man and Andy, who had removed his helmet and was furiously applying foam into his wounds.

"Yes," I said. "He's fine."

"Good."

"Mata, it was an honor," I told him, making sure my voice wouldn't break. I reached for his neck and grabbed his dogtags. "You won't be forgotten."

"The honor was all mine, sir," he replied, even more weakly.

The three needles were almost at the point where they would explode. Sergeant Roderic Mata looked down at his chest and then to me.

"It's a damn shame, at least one of us will make it," Mata said. He turned away from me, summoning the last of his strength to face away as the needles finally detonated. I couldn't see the results directly, but the blood splatter on the sandbags was more than enough for me.

I turned away from Mata, clutching his dogtags in my hand.

"Sir…" Andy said, looking up at me from Ramirez.

I looked at her as she shook her head and closed Ramirez' eyes.

"Push them back!" Nezarian was shouting. "Camilla, we need that air support!"

"It's on its way!" she shouted back. "Badger is about to be overrun!"

"Where the hell's Falcata?" Pavel asked. "We need support."

* * *

><p>Night fell and the screams of the dying dwindled.<p>

I knew that it was because they had passed away and not because we had managed to patch them up and ease their pain. If you were still screaming, then it was good news.

"It's been a little quiet lately, hasn't it?" Miri asked.

"Yeah," I agreed.

"See anything?"

"Negative, PFC. You?"

"No movement."

I looked down my scope, aiming at the walls where the Covenant had set up their line. For the past hour or so there hadn't been a single sign of their presence other than the occasional missile flying up to take out our recon drones. I shuffled inside the Falcon gunship, moving the useless side gun out of my way some more, wincing at the noise that I made.

"Maybe they're just tired," Miranda suggested.

It was a reasonable guess, especially seeing all the Covenant corpses on the ground.

"Maybe…"

A shot rang, but it didn't come from our side of the perimeter.

"Easy…" I said, feeling my men tense up behind me. "Easy."

"Looks like we're good," Pavel said after a while. "Communications are finally up."

"Someone took out those jammers," Caboose muttered.

The ground started shaking violently. I looked in every direction and slid back out from the crashed Falcon, looking up. A _CCS_-class battlecruiser flew over the city, its purple lighting giving it a strangely sinister appearance. It flew past our position and down to the far side of the city, where the battle had long since been lost. A few seconds later it fired, beginning its glassing.

"Shit," I muttered. "Grass?"

Her voice sounded tired. "Captain Flatt is calling in for evac. All the civilians are out or moving down to the bunkers."

"I want out, Grass," I told her. "I'm not staying here."

"Understood," she said. "Marina will fly you out."

"Alright. I'll handle business."

I quickly let my men know what was happening. I made sure to get through to their little brains that the Covenant hadn't evacuated just yet, which meant that a battle was still a possibility. My men nodded back, but they were relived, there was no doubt about that. I sighed to myself and moved back into position, scanning for enemy movement.

"Shit, they're attacking!"

It was the largest assault since the one that had cost me two of my men. This time we were more prepared, having fortified positions and overlapping fields of fire. The machine guns on the main entrance fired, but the Covenant were swarming us with Ghosts, Revenants, and dozens of soldiers. I fired, hitting elites and jackals, but the aliens seemed to be ignoring their own wellbeing.

Nothing interesting happened for at least fifteen minutes, until the rotors of a Falcon flooded my ears. Again I looked up, only just catching the sight of a Falcon moving overhead. It fired at something that I couldn't see, but a stream of bright blue plasma disappeared.

"It's taking out the turrets," I muttered. "Ok, we're gonna be able to pull out now."

Despite the assistance up top, there was still plenty of infantry to handle on our end of the program. We ground the enemy force into nothing as they threw themselves at us. Explosions rocked their ranks and every bullet seemed to hit its mark. The defenders were tired, but they were more angry than anything. We all wanted to get out of this goddamned tower and nothing was about to stop us.

The Covenant were out of tanks. That proved to be our salvation; their assault was mainly focused on the air, as they attacked the civilian contractors and employees working on the top of the tower. Grass had stopped communicating with us after saying that she was climbing down. I wondered if Noble Team was still upstairs with most of those civilians, but then returned my attention to the advancing hunters.

I fired at them twice before the massive machine guns fired on them, literally tearing them to shreds before they could do anything of note. The biggest threat was the Revenant tanks strafing around, but even they couldn't stand against the 20mm automatic fire bearing upon them. We ran out of ammunition just before we took out the last Revenant, but Bee finished it off himself. Now it was just a contest of infantry.

The Covenant fell back.

"I thought they would last longer," Pavel muttered.

I looked up to see that there were no longer any plasma volleys coming at the tower. No doubt that Falcon had taken them out.

"Who was that?" I asked absent mindedly.

"That was Noble Six;" Grass said.

"Oh, you're here," I noted. "Was it getting too cozy up there?"

"Banshees were hitting everywhere," she said. "Noble was helping out, but they couldn't really do much from there. Six came to the rescue."

"How is he?" I asked. "I thought he was dead."

"Well, he's not exactly my good friend," Grass said. "He hadn't landed by the time I left."

"Just curious," I shrugged. "Flatt?"

"She's on her way," Grass said. "Are your men ready to pull out?"

"That's their favorite method," I said, drawing chuckles.

"Marina's on her way. Now we just have to wait."

I heard Phantoms and began panicking, but then I saw that they were flying away from us. I sighed with relief until I saw just how fast they were going.

"They're evacuating," Pavel said. "Pretty fast too."

"Marina, what's your ETA?" Grass asked, urgency creeping into her voice.

"Right on top of you," she replied.

I heard six or seven Pelicans and started running towards Marina's. My radiation sensors started going wild, alarms began ringing all over the place.

"Shit, radiation flare! Hurry!"

I looked up and saw the source as a battlecruiser opened up its maw, preparing to fire down on us.

"Hurry!" Marina urged.

Dotsenko was carrying Ramirez' with him, placing him on the blood tray. Marv and Pitcher carried Mata into the Pelican as Grass and a sprinting Captain Flatt jumped inside Marina's Pelican. The rear hatch doors closed immediately as our helmets scrambled.

"Get out of here!" I shouted.

"Wait!"

I cursed, but a shockwave rocked the Pelican sideways violently, even in the ground. I heard an explosion coming from outside the ship, no doubt an unfortunate pilot that hadn't been able to get his ship under control. I blessed Marina in all the ways I could think as she took off, climbing up as fast as possible. The little window on the rear showed Olympic as sections of it fell off, crashing down on the courtyard that we had fought so hard to defend. FLEETCOM HQ, our last stronghold in New Alexandria, disappeared under the glassing of the cruiser. I closed my eyes as it fired again, making my vision go white.

"Did Falcata make it out?" I asked.

"They had their Pelican," Flatt said. "Most of AAG-29 also made it out I think."

"Noble?" I asked.

"They were still on the building. Might've found their way to a shelter."

Marina sped off, leaving the once-beautiful city behind. Not much remained now. A few buildings still stood here and there, but most of the city had been glassed and the rest would soon follow. I wondered what had happened to the friends that I once had here. Marie Megalos, that pretty hostess I used to have a thing with. No doubt she had moved up in life since then. A third stream of energy hit the area around the tower, lighting the night up brightly. Not much remained of New Alexandria now, just dust and echoes of what had once been the symbol of humanity's presence in this planet.

* * *

><p><em>Thanks to <strong>Colonel-Commissar2468<strong> for proofreading this chapter._

_The deaths are piling up gents. Every time you don't review I kill off a beloved character. Relax, I'm kidding. I was probably gonna kill them off anyways. And I'm (mostly) joking about my obsession with reviews. It's not like I like the warm fuzzy feelings that I get when someone compliments my story-telling abilities._

_This was a big chapter, almost 15,000 words in all. Frankly, I think it was a good one, even if the defending a fortress part is a little bit overdone. I wish that I could change it up a little, but the defensive nature of the Fall of Reach means that most battles are going to be defensive. I mean, just look at Halo: Reach, all missions are defensive in nature and there's at least one section where you have to hold for a certain degree of time. Other than that I can't do much about it except when I add those battles that aren't mentioned in canon or aren't really expanded upon. On the other side of this chapter, we had a fair amount of conversation and baddassery. In fact, I wrote a large section of this while listening to military cadences. I want to apologize to international readers for not including more variety, I just had US and Mexican cadences in this chapter. **Nohdby **mentioned that he liked having international nits brought up in the story, and while I love giving the Halo Universa a little more flavor, the UNSC is a separate entity from most Earth nations. In my head it works like this: if you're mexican you can join the Mexican Army or the UNSC. If you're Vietnamese you can join the Vietnames Army or the UNSC. Basically this means that the Ghurkas, the SAS, and the Spetsnaz GRU still exist, but their importance and usefulness has been greatly reduced since the Earth has been united under the UEG. At one point I mentioned that Serge had fought in the regional conflicts on Earth. That's what national armies do (at least for the purposes of this fic). If France is attacked by Switzerland, their armies duke it out without the UEG or the UNSC intervening, you feel me? Of course, once we get to Earth things might become more interesting._

_On a related note. The UNSC is based of the larger initial suppliers of troops to its numbers. FOr me the obvious answer would be the world powers. We have the URNA, China, and Russia as obvious choices for it. Throw in some heavy French, English, German, and Indian presence with some Brazilian and South African there if you want, but Halo has consistently portrayed the UNSC as based on current day US military forces, so there's not much I can do to give it a more international look other than through the people serving in it._

_Rest assured that I have read all your reviews and have considered all of them. Most questions can't be answered without giving away some part of the plot and your suggestions are all considered. Some of them might even make it into the story, but not all of them can be made to fit to the outline that I have planned. Despite that, know that I appreciate your thoughts and concerns very much._

_One question that I can answer, however. **Allen**: Albaf was killed when the Inconvenience was destroyed._

_Music for today is: Cassandra by Two Steps From Hell, Arrival by Neil Davidage, Lost Generation by Audiomachine. I'm going to throw two other ones that you might want to listen to as well: Foreplay Long Time by Boston (a rock classic) and The Reluctant Heroes by Hiroyuki Sawano (soundtrack)._

_Other than that I pretty much said all that I needed to say. It's good to be back guys, even if I wasn't gone for that long. Hope you enjoyed this chapter and look forward to your opinions._

_Stay strong._

_-casquis_


	206. Patterns

Chapter CCVI: Patterns

**August 24, 2552 (UNSC Calendar)/**

**Esztergom (****Ezhtergom****), Viery Territory, Reach, Epsilon Eridani System**

* * *

><p><em>"The more things change, the more they stay the same." – Jean-Baptiste Alphonse Karr<em>

* * *

><p>We made landfall a bit harder than Marina would've liked, but her ship was all but falling apart by this point. Hundreds of Pelicans, Falcons, and Hornets were taking off and landing in Esztergom Air Force. It was the largest Air Force base in Reach and one of the largest outside of New Alexandria. More than a few thousand men and women were moving through the giant landing pads; refugees, wounded, fresh reinforcements, and war-weary companies all weaved through one another. They all had different looks on their faces, but they all shared those hunched shoulders and lowered eyes.<p>

Captain Flatt had called in beforehand and I smiled at the sight of the welcoming party. My men were there waiting for me at the edge of the landing pad, standing next to a large bus. Snark, Crow, Tank, Lady, and Longworth were all standing with their hands clasped behind their backs. They were all wearing their dress uniforms. Snark and Longworth had their ODST all-blacks, Crow and Tank had their dark green Army uniforms and Lady was wearing the Navy whites. They looked somewhat out of place, especially Crow, whose face was completely covered with bandages. They all looked somewhat uncomfortable, but the moment they heard about the loss of two of their comrades they had insisted on wearing the dress uniforms to receive them.

Grass was the first one off, climbing down and making sure that her MA5K was properly attached to the magnetic plates on her vest. Captain Flatt climbed out shortly after, making way for ground personnel to move stretchers in. They moved Ramirez and Mata into the stretchers with utmost care, keeping their eyes from meeting ours.

Bee immediately moved towards Snark and enveloped him in a very unprofessional bear hug, lifting the smaller man off the ground and shaking him vigorously.

"Oh-ho-ho!" Snark huffed, taking shallow breaths. "I missed you too, yah big Scottish bastard."

Bee put Snark down before embracing the other members of AAG-7 in more modest hugs, smiling as he spoke to each of them. The last time I had seen them they had all been either unconscious or in terrible pain. It was good to see them up and running again.

"Lieutenant," Longworth said, smiling a little bit.

"Adrian," I greeted. "How's the back?"

"Better, three little scars is all that's left."

"Good," I said. "Mobility?"

"A hundred percent."

"Natasha?" I asked Lady. "Still seeing double?"

"Ready for action," she said.

"Well, you might have to wait a little bit. I secured two days' worth of leave for us."

I could sense their frustration, but they knew that we had been fighting violently for the last few days. They knew we needed the rest even if they were looking for a little payback.

"Tank, Crow," I nodded at the former Army troopers and they nodded back. "How are you doing?"

"Limp's almost gone, sir," Tank said. "Still a little bit of pain, but the doctor cleared me."

"You?" I asked Crow's bandaged face.

"I'm an ugly mother fucker now," he grunted. "But I can fight."

"Good, we'll make your face pretty once we get out of here, see if the girls want to kiss you again."

"Sir."

I sighed and stretched my sore shoulders. I wasn't feeling too well.

"Funeral's at seventeen hundred hours," I said. "Military Cemetery. In the meanwhile, do whatever you want. Drink yourselves to death, jerk it or whatever it is you guys do in your free time. No fucking each other, alright? Ok, I don't even care. I just want you there on time. Everybody, on the bus."

"Frank," Pavel whispered. "You're getting incoherent."

"I'm tired," I said. "We'll visit the girls tomorrow morning, ok?"

"Sounds good," Pavel said. "I need some sleep and Amber can wait."

"You can go today if you want," I told him.

"I wouldn't do that to you, Frank," Pavel said. "It's a small sacrifice and you look like you're about to fall on your ass."

"Thanks," I said, moving inside the bus.

* * *

><p><strong>Staff Sergeant Grigori "Caboose" Konstantinov<strong>

My eyes traced Lieutenant Castillo as he made his way into his apartment buildings. This whole area had been evacuated a few days ago and looters had made their way through the various stores. A few civilians still remained, and the ones that were close stared in wonderment as he crossed the street with full battle armor and a dazed look in his eyes. I wondered whether we should've accompanied him into his room, but he had literally ordered us against it, saying that everybody needed as much rest as possible.

We were still going to be in the bus, so I didn't see the logic behind that.

Well, not everybody was still in the bus, only Pavel, Camilla, Captain Flatt, and I remained.  
>Flatt turned over her shoulder to make sure that the driver wasn't listening in and then looked at Pavel.<p>

"How is he?" she asked.

"I've never seen him this tired," Pavel said. "Not even on Paris IV."

Flatt looked at me and I simply nodded in agreement.

"He was looking… dazed. Should we worry about that?"

"No," Pavel said firmly. "He's just tired."

"So his… issues aren't acting up?"

"No," Pavel repeated, this time with an edge to his voice. "I've seen Frank when he goes nuts and it's nothing like this. I'd get worried if his mood starts swinging wildly or he starts cheating on his girlfriend."

"Ok, I'll take your word for it," Flatt said, leaning back on the bus. "Camilla, anything you want to add?"

"I'm with Pavel on this one," Cam said. "I can't speak for his future state of mind, but right now he's fine."

"Good," the Captain said, running a hand through her hair. "Is there anything else about the team we should know about? The men looked happy to be home."

"More like happy to be safe," Pavel grunted. "Either way, they seem fine to me. Crow's got me a bit worried with his face and everything. He was a good looking man before it was burned off."

"He'll survive," Cam said. "He seemed to me as more of an angry cynic than anything else. He'll be looking for some payback."

"We all are," Pavel added. "Ma'am, if you don't mind me asking, how will we be working? Where exactly are we in the chain of command right now?"

"Team-7 and Team-29 are all that's left of AAG. There are some Spartan teams still functional, but those fall directly under NAVSPECWAR."

"Don't we?" Pavel asked.

"Yes, but we're a rung down the ladder," Flatt admitted. "I've still got some friends; we'll be back in the fray before too long, doing what we do best."

"What's going to happen to Cam?" Pavel asked.

"Good question," Cam agreed.

"For now she'll remain as Team-7's uplink to command," Flatt said. "I'll be working with Nezarian and 29."

I leaned back, relaxed now that we had a future in this battle.

"Anything you'd like to mention, Grigori?" Flatt inquired.

I shook my head slightly. "Things seem well. There's no need to get nervous about anything. As soon as Castillo gets his head cleared up we're all good to go. He's got that kind of personality."

"Tell me about it," Flatt mused. "Sometimes I feel like I'm the one that needs to be respectful around him."

Pavel laughed. "He wasn't always like that, you know?"

"Wasn't he?" Grass asked.

"No," Pavel confirmed. "When I first met him he was lost and had just found out his last, well, second to last family member had died. I was in much worse condition, my whole unit had been wiped out."

"We've heard this story before," Cam interrupted. "I want to know how he was."

"He was a very funny guy, still is… sometimes. More than anything he was out to enjoy life as much as possible. You should've seen him in a bar, I don't think there was a single time that he left there without the hottest girl clinging to his arm. He loved to show off his knife to anyone that cared to watch and was always up for a good brawl."

"Sounds normal," Flatt said.

"Exactly," Pavel agreed. "Back then his biggest problem was his ego."

"One could argue it still is," Cam muttered. "But I agree that he's toned it down quite a bit."

"Imagine him back then. Serving on the _Inconvenience,_ a ship that was practically freelance, didn't help matters either. What else? Well, he always had a smirk on his face, an annoying smirk that drew the anger of whoever was unlucky enough to think him an easy target. Not a lot of people made that mistake, mind you. He was 6'2 and over 200 pounds of pure muscle even back then. Before the… you know."

We all nodded.

"When did it start?"

"Ten years ago," Pavel said. "After Aztlan. We both nearly died there, but he was at that point for a couple of days before finally coming back to life. It didn't truly start a few months later, I think, he doesn't like to talk about this much. Anyways, he would stare off into nothing or would just seem to focus on listening to something that wasn't there. It didn't strike me as serious back then, but looking back on it I should've noticed that something was wrong. Everything started falling apart for him then, but he kept it under control for a very long time."

"And under wraps," I added. "The first mention in his dossier about personality disorders wasn't there until a few years later."

"Only Marina knew," Pavel said. "She helped some. A lot of credit goes to her."

"Sometimes I wonder why they broke up," Cam muttered under her breath. "She was too good for him."

"It's more like Frank is bad for anybody that comes across." Pavel sighed. "His family died at a young age. There's some issues with his brother that-"

"Brother?" I asked.

"Exactly, I didn't know anything about it until recently," Pavel admitted. "I have no idea what went on there, but obviously it bothers him and has affected him. Top that off with the death of his friends from boot camp, his uncle, fourteen unlucky bastards that served with us in the _Inconvenience_ and you get a very unhappy camper."

"Poor bastard," Flatt said. "When they handed me his dossier they said almost nothing about his mental health. His accomplishments were written in a very flattering light, almost awestruck. That doesn't happen on dossiers very often. What he did must've been very impressive."

"He's the best fighter I've ever known," Pavel said. "Even before the augmentations he was better than anybody I've ever seen. The only thing that comes close is probably Marvin and even then I'm being generous. He always liked showing off and looking good. You wouldn't believe the amount of time he spent on the gym trying to get exactly the look that he wanted. He wanted to be a big guy, but not so big that it seemed too much, he wanted his muscles toned, but didn't want to sacrifice mass. Shit, if you could hear him talk about it you'd probably laugh yourselves to death."

"He's a good looking man," Cam admitted. "Nothing wrong with wanting to look good."

"He didn't just want to look good, he wanted to be good. I don't know if it had anything to do with his stunts, but a lot of times he'd point out that a certain kill, or jump, or whatever would've made for a great take. It's like he wanted to impress somebody."

"Daddy issues?" Flatt asked

"Maybe, he doesn't talk much about his family. The thing is, everybody was always impressed by whatever he did. Whether it was killing thirty aliens by himself, downing lasagna intended for eight people, or talking himself into a threesome, no one was ever unimpressed by anything he did."

I chuckled. I knew I was a cold person, but I would not be allowed to call myself a man if I said I didn't fantasize about a threesome. Repeatedly.

"Then?" Flatt urged him.

"Then something went wrong. My theory is that someone royally screwed up when they messed with him and then it exploded when he flat-lined two years later in Aztlan. Caboose, you mentioned something about him only just being a match for the genetic parameters or whatever."

"He was a good enough match for the S-II program," I said, "but only just. I think he was four slots from being picked, but he was too young at the time. He would've been two years old when the first class was drafted. It's a good thing too, because had there been a second class he would've been too old. Thing is, the Spartans had their own personalized augmentations, designed according to their own genetic code and other factors, but they half-assed it with Frank."

"How do you know?" Cam asked me.

"I can read a lab report well enough," I assured her. "And the dossier that ONI gave me all but admitted it."

"Did you get dossiers on all of us?" Cam asked. "Just curious."

I nodded. "Smaller ones on the rest of Reaper, but I wanted to know you before I jumped into something like this."

A few years ago Pavel would've jumped me for saying something like that. Shouting about betraying their trust and whatnot. He had grown used to the idea that I had worked for ONI, spying on them.

"Why are they still working with him?" Flatt asked. "Had they asked me about a mentally unstable man with knowledge of the most controversial and dangerous secrets that the UNSC has I would've recommended immediate termination. I don't know a lot of ONI people that would've disagreed with me."

"Be that as it may," Pavel said calmly and carefully. "Frank isn't crazy. Well, he is, but not just any kind of crazy."

"He should be," Flatt said.

"But he's not," Cam interceded in Pavel's favor.

"And we should all be thankful for that," Flatt muttered.

"And woe to the Covenant," I said.

"Oorah!"

* * *

><p><strong>First Lieutenant Francisco Castillo<strong>

"What a beautiful funeral," Schitzo repeated for what must've been the tenth time. "I mean it."

It had been a terrible ceremony, the chaplain had stumbled over his words over his fatigue and the bodies had been hastily prepared for the cremation ceremony, with ill-fitting uniforms on them. What annoyed us the most was that we were unable to get their own dress uniforms with their campaign ribbons and medals that they had earned. A funeral in their armor would've been better, but the UNSC couldn't spare their armor even if it was damaged. We all said a few words and that was that. Two bodies were cremated in a ceremony meant for four. We hadn't been able to recover Preacher's corpse from the debris and making a stop in New Alexandria to get Payat had been out of the question.

A horrible ceremony.

Luckily for me, there was one thing that remained constant in Esztergom. The Grenadier. I walked inside the bustling military bar. This time it was full like I had never seen it. Two thirds of the clientele were wearing full battle armor and had their rifles slung over their shoulders. I noticed that all of their weapons had the magazines removed and the safety on as I walked in. Good call on Montgomery's part.

"Excuse me lieutenant, I'm gonna have to ask you to- Frank!"

I turned to face Lys, lovely barmaid extraordinaire. I gave her a weak smile that she returned before embracing me in a hug. She had taken care of me whenever I drank myself into oblivion. I owed her a lot.

"It's good to see you Lys," I told her, thinking about the other Liz, Katie's cousin. "Is Cap around?"

"Yeah, still at the bar, as always."

"Good," I said. "I need some familiarity."

"We haven't heard from you in so long…" she began. "Montgomery said it was best not to jinx it, to not talk about it."

"Wise man. I made it here, didn't I?"

"Yes you did," she agreed. "Where's the rest of the team?"

"Resting," I said.

"Did anybody…" Lys trailed off, pursing her lips and looking up at me.

I nodded, a small frown creasing my browns. "We lost Hipólito early in the fighting. Chang, and Aaron a few days later. Roderic and James were killed yesterday."  
>Lys covered her mouth. "So many… I'm so sorry, Frank."<p>

"They died well," I assured her, grabbing her arm lightly. "Have things been rough here?"

"Business is booming," she joked with a noticeable lack of humor. "Otherwise we're pretty bad off. Montgomery had to fight off looters a few times."

"Did he use those?" I asked, pointing at the ancestral AK-47s hanging on the wall behind the bar.

"Nope, but believe it or not, he cleaned them and got them back in working order."

I raised an eyebrow in genuine surprise. "Those things? Aren't they like four hundred years old? Five?"

"Yeah, but they've been maintained properly all throughout those years. How he got the proper ammunition, I don't know. He said something about 7.62mm but I doubt that they're the same kind you guys use."

"I use 9.5," I told her.

"What?"

"Nothing, you're right. MA5s use 7.62mm, but I'm not sure about the AK-47s."

"Does it matter all that much?" she asked.

"Not really," I admitted, shrugging slightly. "Still got some of that Alt Burgundy in the backroom?"

Lys shook her head sadly. "No. Montgomery wasn't able to get another bottle. Something about there only being a few dozen bottles left in the universe."

"A few dozen," I sighed. "I'm down to my last quarter of Alt. Gonna have to pick it up before I leave."

"You rascal. And you've been buying it here?"

"Yes."

Lys laughed and shook her head before leading me towards my favorite stool in the bar. Surprisingly enough it was empty. She shouted for two large soldiers to get out of the way and make room for me. They looked like they wanted to complain, but once they saw that I had a few inches on them they stopped. They turned around and decided to forget all about me the moment they realized I was wearing an ODST uniform. It was one of my oldest uniforms, I had found it in my apartment, hidden out the back of the closet. I hadn't been able to beat all the dust from it and the water wasn't coming in to the neighborhood.

"Ah, if it isn't my favorite Helljumper," Montgomery said as he dried the counter in front of me and placed a glass. "Good to see you kickin' son."

"Good to be," I told him.

We didn't call Montgomery Captain for anything. He had earned that rank and had led men into battle during the Insurrection and during the Harvest Campaigns. He had seen men die and knew how it felt to have those under your command perish in the line of duty.

"How many?"

"Five."

"Shit. You good, son?"

"Yes, sir," I assured him. "Nothing a few days of rest and a good drink won't fix. They died brave deaths."

Montgomery poured me a double of a nice whiskey and gave himself a single shot.

"To the fallen," he said quietly.

"To the fallen," I repeated. "Cause they're the lucky bastards."

"Amen to that," Montgomery chuckled. "Swimming in the clouds and getting it on with angel ladies. To me heaven is about sex, son."

"Aren't you married?" I asked him.

"Indeed, but in heaven my wife won't care, she'll let me do whatever I want."

"I'm not entirely sure it works that way, Cap."

He shook his head and smiled. "To the fallen."

"To the fallen."

I downed my drink with one big gulp.

"Enjoy it, son," Montgomery said. "Call me for a refill."

"Will do," I said, directing my eyes to the screens. They were playing an old gravball game from a few years back. One of the classics.

I ordered a few beers, stout ales that claimed to use the ancient Zimbabwean techniques used in Southern Africa during the twenty second century. I didn't care if their claims were true, I just enjoyed the alcohol for what it was. I mentally cheered for one of the two teams playing on the screen, but only because I didn't know which one had won back when they played the game. It was a good distraction, the fluidity of gravball coupled with the constant hits made it a fun sport to watch.

"Where's Pavel?" Montgomery asked me when he had the chance. "Not gonna show up?"

I shook my head. "He went home again, his wife is in the spaceport waiting for evacuation and they left their dog alone. It had enough food, but the poor animal was very confused."

"Ah, dogs. I hadn't thought about them…"

I nodded. "At least they won't know what's happening if it comes."

"Most are gonna starve, aren't they?"

_If we manage to hold the Covenant that long…_

I just nodded.

Montgomery poured the guy next to me what must've been his twentieth refill of cheap vodka and gave me a look before he moved on to the other side of the bar to attend other clients. I looked to my side and slightly shook my head at the sight of three empty glasses as well as plenty of beer bottles. The poor guy seemed like he couldn't keep his head from falling down but still he drank.

The man, a corporal, moved and accidentally knocked down my beer. He was lucky I wasn't in a particular mood and the bottle was empty, because that was an offense big enough to warrant a day or two in the hospital.

"Easy there," I muttered, just enough threat in my tone. "Might want to stop drinking."

He shook his head.

"Why are you drinking, kid?" I asked him.

"Why wouldn't I be?" he asked, voice bitter.

"What's your name, corporal?" I asked, letting authority creep into my voice.

"Anderson, Jacob, sir."

"Stop drinking, son," I ordered. "We might have to fight any moment and your comrades rely on you not to be hungover as fuck. You hear me?"

"Yes, sir."

"Now answer me. Why are you drinking?"

"Why are _you_ drinking?" he shot back. His words slurred a bit, but not as much as I would've expected them to.

"I'm drinking," I began, "because five of my men are dead. Because my home is under attack, and because life is a fucking mess for me. I, however, will not drink enough to endanger those that I lead."

The man paused and put down his vodka, edging it in my direction with a defeated look on his face. I grabbed the glass and downed it myself, shaking my head at the horrible taste.

"My wife," Anderson said. "She died."

"I'm sorry, son," I said, reaching for my own beer to wash away the taste of cheap vodka. "When?"

"I just got word that our home was glassed. I should've been there."

"You would've died too," I told him.

"If the fucking UNSC would've let me go home to her, I could've done something… anything."

"Like what?" I asked him with a sigh. "Fight off an armada? Son, I'm sorry your wife is done, but you couldn't have done anything about it. Mourn her and be thankful that you'll be able to avenge her death."

"You don't understand!" he shouted angrily. "She shouldn't have even been there in the first place. It's the UNSC's fault that she died!"

A few heads turned in our direction after his outburst.

"Listen son, I know that the UNSC isn't all good and dandy, but they didn't kill your wife. It was the Covenant that did. Don't get angry with the wrong people."  
>Anderson was looking at his lap, gripping the bar tightly with both hands.<p>

"They're the only thing keeping humanity alive right now," I went on, trying to calm him down. _Why do you care so much? Let him drink himself to death. _

"Whether you like it or not."

The drunken corporal suddenly threw a punch my way. I was so surprised by it that I couldn't avoid or block it in any way, instead I rolled my jaw slightly away so that he wouldn't break his wrist against my face. Even then it hurt more than it should've. The guy packed a punch. Unfortunately for him, so did I. I grabbed his fist as he attempted to hit me a second time and then hit him in the gut. Hard.

The man gagged and turned around on the stool, falling on the ground. A second later he threw up all the alcohol that he had just consumed, drawing complaints and words of annoyance from other patrons.

I shook my head and returned to my beer.

_Don't do it…_

The idiot decided that it would be a good idea to try and hit me again, this time with a beer bottle. I turned and caught his wrist as it came down. He tried hitting me with his free arm, but I blocked the punch and pried the bottle from his hand, breaking it against his jaw and knocking him back down to the ground. Still he refused to stay there and got back up in a fighting stance.

"Really, Anderson?" I asked, raising an eyebrow.

He didn't say anything, instead swinging for my head. I ducked underneath the blow.

"You don't want to do this."

He roared and swung wildly again, drawing jeers from the people in the bar.

"Don't kill him!" I heard Montgomery yell from behind the bar.

Anderson hit me again, but the punch was weak. I let it make contact with my elbow and countered with a jab to his chin, stunning him.

"Enough, corporal!" I shouted. "This is your last warning!"

He kicked at my legs. I almost rolled my eyes as I took a step backwards and avoided the kick. I grabbed his right arm as he tried to punch me and dragged him towards my direction, stepping sideways as I did so. Once he was close enough to the bar I gripped the back of his neck tightly and slammed his face down where I had been drinking. He came back up and groaned in pain, a nice, bloody line on his forehead. I slammed him back down, breaking the bridge of his nose for good measure.

As he came back towards me I threw him to the floor where he writhed in agony for a few seconds. I raised my eyebrows in grudging respect when he struggled to get back to his feet and face me. The respect immediately disappeared when he started reaching for his sidearm.

The bar went quiet.

"Think carefully about your next move, son," I warned, moving my hand towards my knife. "Or it will be your last."

Marines were moving their hands towards their own pistols and even the Army soldiers that had been cheering on the man from their branch seemed offended that he had stooped so low in a situation like this.

The man was beyond reasoning. He drew and aimed.

I was faster than he could've predicted or perhaps even imagined. I had my hand on him before he could get his finger in the trigger guard. A nice, deep cut to the back of his hand made him drop the weapon and a second later he was laying on a table with my knife coming down on his throat.

"No wait, stop!"

I turned to look at the source of the voice. Another Army trooper, this one a staff sergeant.

"And why would I do that?" I asked him, pressing my knife against Anderson's throat.

"He drew first," a Marine supported me.

No Army soldier raised his voice to defend Anderson.

"He's drunk. His wife just died," the sergeant told me. "He has a bad history with UNSC and likely took it all out on you, Lieutenant."

"What's your name, Staff?" I asked.

"Taylor Adders, sir."

"Can you guarantee that this fuckwad will never wear a uniform again, Taylor Adders?" I asked. "Or that he'll never have the privilege of being called anything remotely similar to defender of humanity?"

Adders looked down at Anderson's bleeding face. The corporal writhed in my grip, but I squeezed his throat, interrupting the oxygen supply to his brain briefly enough for his vision to black slightly.

"Taylor. Please…"

Adders looked back at me and nodded. "I'll make sure that he's dishonorably discharged, sir. Just don't kill him."

"Good," I said, pulling my knife back from his throat. "Take him before I change my mind."

Staff Sergeant Adders moved to pick up his man as I moved back to my stool, wondering whether I should wipe the blood myself. Halfway across the bar I sensed the commotion. A few of the men looking intently at the fight began opening their mouths and their eyes widened. The hair on the back of my neck stood and I felt the danger. I heard the familiar click and spun.

I don't know why I spared him. In the end I think I didn't want to kill a human being after having seen two of my men's dead faces so recently. Anderson had managed to get his hands on Adder's pistol and was raising it towards me. I began aiming for the throat, but instead decided to let the bastard live. The knife was flying before he could even aim properly. It went through his wrist all the way to the hilt.

Anderson looked at his hand in disbelief as I approached.

"Ah…" he said weakly.

I yanked my knife violently and shoved Adders backwards before delivering a vicious kick to the injured man's ribs. I wondered whether I should stop, but instead I stomped on his other hand with the heel of my combat boots three times in a row, drawing cries of pain.

"Get him out of here," I ordered Adders. "He might lose the hand."

"He fucking deserves it," he replied, dragging his man up none-too-gently. "I apologize, sir."

"Just get him out of my sight," I grunted, wiping my knife on Anderson's cheek, making a small cut near his cheekbone and leaving his face even more covered in blood.

"Yes, sir," Adders replied, elbowing the corporal as he dragged him away from the bar.

A Marine spat into Anderson's back as he stumbled out of the bar.

"I should've broken his legs," I said to myself.

Once the man was safely out of the bar Lys picked up his abandoned sidearm and complained about having to mop the blood from the hardwood floors. Montgomery shouted for her to hurry up before it seeped into the ancient wood, making some of the people laugh and returning some of the ambiance to the Grenadier. A few guys tipped their glasses to me as I sat down and patted me on the back for showing the man where he belonged. Most of those guys were Marines, but a few troopers approached to say that Anderson had stained their branch of the UNSCDF for behaving like that, especially at a time like this.

I nodded politely to all those that approached and eventually they realized that I wanted to be left alone.

"Oi, Cap, just saw a lovely pair in the corner, one with an injured hand and the other cursing like no other. What's that all about."

Montgomery looked at the source of the familiar voice and then nodded in my direction.

A Marine sat down in the now-empty stool next to mine. He was an ODST just like me. He was an ODST that I was very familiar with.

"Well, shit," he grunted. "Castillo. Why did you almost kill that man? What'd he do to piss you off?"

"Darbinian," I greeted the Helljumper Captain irritably, not answering his question. "I see you still waste your time on hair product."

The man growled, but he didn't say anything.

"Where have you been?" he asked instead.

"New Alexandria."

"Shit. My men were deployed to protect ground transports leaving the city. I heard it went to shit a day later."

"It was doomed to begin with," I said. "You got lucky."

Darbinian was from the 7th, a notoriously bloodthirsty chapter of the ODST. I would've expected any member of his battalion to take personal offense and challenge me to a fight. Fortunately, Krikor Darbinian knew that in a fair fight I would beat the life out of him before he could land one good punch, but it still didn't mean he would take any shit from me.

That's why I was surprised when he just nodded.

"My company's taken some hard hits," he admitted. "We were in the thick of it when they landed outside the city, it was just us holding the whole line while the Army got their shit together."

"We were at Hégy Valley," I said. "But we weren't alone. Had artillery and Spartan support."

"Lucky bastard," he said. "We didn't have a mountain pass or a good kill zone Castillo; they gave us a box of ammunition and all but told us to fuck ourselves. They had air and armored support and I had a hundred men willing to fight."

"How many did you lose?"

"Forty-two died. Ten more won't be fighting any more."

"I'm sorry," I said genuinely.

Darbinian snorted. "And here I thought I would never hear words of concern coming out of your mouth. What about you Castillo? Deaths? Casualties?"

"Five KIAs," I admitted. "A number of my men were injured, but they're back in action."

"That why you're wearing the all blacks?"

"Yes. Just came from the funeral."

Darbinian nodded but didn't offer his condolences. There was too much history in the past for us. There was nothing but hatred between the two of us. I could respect his ability to lead men and channel their anger into an impressive will to fight and I knew that he either feared or respected my own abilities to kill, but in another time any of our careers would've probably ended by a misplaced grenade or friendly fire.

I finished my beer and swiped my card over the counter, backing up from the bar and leaving Darbinian to himself.

"Good night Cap," I told Montgomery. "Lys, stay safe."

"You too Frank," she replied, giving me one of those lovely smiles that got her high tips.

"Well," I muttered, stepping outside of the bar. "What a fucking awful night."

* * *

><p>It was a weird look for me, but it was one that worked. As an officer I was entitled to different uniforms than enlisted men, but the situation called for precaution and readiness, which is was why every serviceman refused to wear only fatigues and no armor whatsoever. I had opted to put on my armored boots and let the built-in plating protect my thighs. I had on a belt with only three spare magazines for my rifle as well as a pair of grenades cradled in between. My shirt was a short-sleeved gray thing with some plating in the chest and abdomen as well as the spine and shoulder blades. It looked somewhat similar to a gravball uniform, but it had a decidedly military look to it. I shook my head at my reflection in the mirror and put on my cap, rounded top in contrast to Pavel's black utility cover.<p>

I looked like I was half-assing war, but I looked very good indeed.

"Stop looking at yourself and let's go," Pavel urged. "I want to see my wife!"

"Sorry," I apologized earnestly. "Let's go."

The drive there was a quick one. There was almost no traffic to interfere with us and our Warthog's markings made it clear that we were important enough that everybody else gave us the right of way. We made it to the spaceport in a short amount of time, but the closer we got the more people we saw. The entire area had been turned into refugee camps, but mostly because nobody wanted to leave and lose their place in the gigantic evacuation line.

Few eyes looked in our direction as we drove through the throng of people, they were used to seeing military vehicles in here.

Pavel parked the car in our assigned lot and he hopped off. He hadn't brought his heavy M247L with him, instead switching to a skeletal-looking MA5K like the one Caboose used. I hefted my larger BR55 HB and crossed the sling across my chest. Normally I would've hung it on the magnetic plates, but the shirt I was wearing was light and would be yanked down by the weight of the rifle, looking weird and feeling uncomfortable.

"This way," Pavel said.

We moved through the checkpoints very quickly. The guards in charge of the place had been made aware of our visit before we even left, they were expecting us and treated us with utmost respect. After a few checkpoints and a long walk we made it into a crowded terminal. Military-issue mattresses had been piled down all over the floor and a few rooms had been erected through the use of poles and tarps or blankets. It didn't smell nice, but there were enough showers in the place that people could clean themselves every third day or so.

"Lieutenant Castillo?" a guard asked me.

I nodded.

"Right this way."

He led us into a small side room that didn't appear to be occupied and closed the door behind us as we went in. Inside the room were two women and one girl.

Katie rushed to hug me while Amber did the same, embracing her husband. Little Lavvie hugged his father's leg before he easily picked her up with one arm and squeezed her tightly. I focused all my attention on the woman in front of me. Katie looked tired, but the moment she smiled I remembered why I had risked everything I built with Hanna to be with her. I smiled back and swooped down for a quick kiss that turned into a very long one.

"I missed you," she said after we broke off.

"I missed you too," I told her, giving her another peck.

I looked down at her and didn't really know what to say. I could tell that she was at a loss for words because she laughed at the same time I did before we both hugged each other tightly, not saying anything at all. I liked the feeling of her in my arms, she was warm and soft against my body. Her hair got caught in my stubble as her head pressed against the bottom of my jaw and we laughed. It happened pretty often, which is why she liked me to shave. I joked that I liked it when she shaved too, but she didn't grow any hair down there, using laser shavers or something like that.

Personally I enjoyed the feeling of a blade and foam, but I had to admit that lasers worked a lot faster and were more effective. However, I still used my knife to shave on occasion. I never ceased wondering why my uncle had decided that shaving with a combat knife was an integral part of my formation as a young boy.

"How have you been?" I asked. "Do you have everything you need?"

"Yes, I'm alright," she said. "What about you? You're the one fighting a war, Frank."

I smiled sadly. "I'm fine. A scratch here and there."

"And your hand?" she asked.

I looked at the still recent scar on my left hand. It was easy to tell that something had gone through it once you looked at both sides. I stretched my fingers and looked down as she held my hand, rubbing it gently.

"It's nothing," I assured her, wondering how I would explain to her the other, bigger hole in my thigh. The burns would all disappear without any need for surgery or grafting, but it would be a few weeks.

"It doesn't look like nothing," she complained. "Frank, I hate it when you go."

"Someone has to do it," I told her. "And we're the best there is."

She rolled her eyes. Not because she didn't believe me, but because she was simply tired of watching me go off to fight a war that nobody wanted to fight.

"Does it always have to be you?"

"I'm bringing home the bacon, hon," I jokingly said. We both knew that she made more money than I did, even with my bonuses.

"Right," she muttered, holding me tightly again. "I missed you a lot. Eliza is good company and all, but sometimes I just want to… well. Yeah."

I smiled. "How is Liz, by the way? She good?"

"She's better," Katie told me. "She mostly complains about everything, but at least she's talking."

"And you? How are things?"

"I'm fine. I'm sick of being trapped here, but there's nothing I can do."

I nodded. "The moment they let you, you hop in on a ship and bail on this planet."

"And then what?" she asked. "They're saying that the ships are going to Sol. What the hell am I going to do in Sol?"

"Stick with Amber," I told her. "Pavel has family there. Imagine living in a quaint little village on the Polish countryside."

"Frank, there is no countryside on Earth."

"Shhh," I urged. "You don't know what you're saying."

She struggled half-heartedly but eventually stopped talking. It was true, there was not a lot of pristine nature in Earth, even with reclamation efforts a lot of species had gone extinct and only existed through cloning and artificial means. Back in the twenty-fourth century the oceans had been cleaned up, which meant that most sea life lived as it had for millennia, but the land species were another story altogether. Sure, natural parks dotted the planet and humanity kept to themselves as much as possible, but our numbers had forced us to expand. Now that most garden worlds were gone I would assume that Earth was once again growing its own food, struggling to provide for the colonies in Sol system.

"Poland does sound nice," Katie said. "If only for a little while."

"We can go to Crassus," I said. "The asshole of the galaxy."

"Frank! Lavvie can hear you!"

"Sorry," I said, quickly looking at the young girl, who was busy telling her father all about the new neighbors.

Katie let go and moved back to a metal chair. "Has everything been fine?"

I knew what she was talking about and nodded, even throwing in a smile to assure her that I hadn't seen anything out of the ordinary. It hurt me to lie to her like this, but after she kept panicking I decided to tell her that Schitzo no longer appeared. Instead I said that I had auditory hallucinations. She seemed to think that this was better than the alternative, so I kept feeding her the same story.

We talked about her life in the terminal, but she kept asking me questions about my mental health. I don't know how, but she could tell that something was wrong. I didn't want to say anything about Ramirez' death and the others with Lavanya here in the room, but it would have to come up sometime. I shook my head softly when she started prying and she instead returned to the topic of rations and water shortages.

"It's just a little bit longer," I assured her. "One way or the other."

Katie gave me a nod before reaching out to hold my hand. Our conversation from then on became a series of increasingly light-hearted complaints about the nutrition that UNSC meals provided.

"Have you had the chocolate?" I asked her.

She nodded and made gagging noises.

"We're in the twenty-sixth century," I muttered. "You'd think we could make something that actually tastes like chocolate."

"Tell me about it, people are hungry, but nobody wants to eat it. You should be here after we get those as part of a meal. Everybody is trying to offer their chocolate to somebody else so that they don't look wasteful."

I laughed. "Sounds like the trenches. With pillows."

"Maybe you should take a pillow with you next time then," Katie said, raising her eyebrow. "One of those inflatable ones wouldn't harm you."

I opened my mouth. She had a good point. Why had I never thought of that? An inflatable pillow could be compressed to a very small size inside my rucksack or one of my pouches.

"See?" she said. "What would you do without me?"

"I don't know," I admitted, kissing her again.

After that Lavanya interrupted us to give me a big hug and a sloppy kiss on the cheek. She was even bigger than I remembered. I hated missing out on her growing up, but I could only imagine how bad it must've been for Pavel. It was his only daughter after all. To think that she was already eight years old.

"How are you?" I asked her, swinging her tiny body around until she was on my shoulder, legs up and head down my back.

"Uncle Frank! My face is in your butt!"

I lowered her down a bit more. "I'm gonna fart!"

"No. Eww!"

I laughed and pulled her back up before setting her down on the floor unceremoniously

"How are you?" I asked again, smiling. I always smiled when I saw her.

"Well, I'm tired of being here," she said matter-of-factly. "I can't go outside to play very often and mom says that it's better to stay next to her, but me and the other kids sometimes play football on the outside."

"What do you play?" I asked her.

"I'm a goalie."

"Oh, nice. Do you like it?"

"No, because I have to throw myself to keep the ball out and the ground is hard so it hurts. See?" She showed me her scratched hands and bruised elbows to make her point.

"Back in the day I was a midfielder," I told her, recalling the pickup games back in Mexico. I tried to remember the names of all my friends, but instead only came up with blank faces kicking the ball. "I was the very best."

"Maybe you could play on my team?" she asked. "Daddy too!"

Pavel laughed. "I don't think it would be very fair to the other kids, sweetheart."

I chuckled. "I would love to, but I don't think I can today."

"It's ok," Lavvie said with a shrug that was disturbingly similar to Pavel's. "It looks like it's going to rain today."

"Indeed it does," I agreed with her. "Katie was telling me about the food here, what do you think?"

She looked at Katie, who smiled at her.

"It sucks!"

"Lavanya!" Amber chided half-heartedly. "Come here, you little rascal."

Lavvie laughed loudly and wriggled away from her mother's hands, running around me and then hiding behind Pavel. Amber made a show of trying to get around her husband's massive shoulders before extending her arms through and pinning her daughter against Pavel's legs. After that she picked Lavvie up and set her on the table. Amber moved to kiss Pavel, who returned her gesture with a little bit more passion than would've been appropriate in front of an eight-year-old child.

"They always kiss like this when daddy comes back from fighting bad guys."

Pavel and Amber broke their kiss before blushing and furiously looking away from their young daughter. She picked up on things.

"It's just because they miss each other," Katie explained with a smile.

"I'm never going to kiss a boy," she said adamantly.

"And a girl?" I asked jokingly.

"Eww Uncle Frank!"

"Yeah, eww," Pavel said with a disapproving shake of his head. "Why don't you show me around, sweetheart? Introduce me to your friends."

Lavvie perked up and grabbed Pavel's massive hands in her own tiny little fingers and led him outside of the room, opening the door for him. Amber followed after them, shaking her head but unable to rid herself of a giant grin on her face.

"How long do we have?" Katie asked me after the door slammed shut.

"Ten minutes," I told her, furiously undoing my belt.

Katie reciprocated, removing her shirt and pants as I tried to yank my own pants past my armored boots. I gave up after two failed attempts and instead pulled my underwear down before doing the same for her. We both went at it furiously and with desperate abandon. I could tell that she had waited for this just as much as I had, because not half of those ten minutes had gone by before the both of us were sweaty and spent. However, I didn't stop just then, instead making sure that she would be able to enjoy that little aspect of female physiology that made me so jealous sometimes.

I'm talking about multiple orgasms, gentlemen.

I only stopped after I hit the nine-minute mark, at which point we both began dressing up, wiping sweat from our faces. I cracked my neck and smiled at her, a gesture that she returned as she squeezed into her underwear. It never surprised me just how good of a body she had, almost as good as Grass, in fact. Precisely ten seconds after ten minutes had passed Pavel's family walked back in. Pavel of course knew what had transpired in the room, in fact we had already made plans for it. Amber was a grown woman, and it didn't take long for her to realize as well, at which point she smiled devilishly and gripped Pavel's waist firmly.

"How about we go kick the ball around some?" I asked Lavvie, lifting her by the waist. "Show me how good a goalie you are."

She turned her little body around in my grip to look at her parents, who just nodded for her to go.

Katie followed after me and as soon as I set her down Lavvie led me towards the outside as she called it. The massive polycrete paved area where the transports could land was smooth and even. It seemed to me like it would become slippery, but as soon as I stepped on it I realized it wasn't so.

"Tony!" Lavvie shouted. "Tony!"

"Hey there champ!" an Army guard said, turning at the mention of her name.

Tony seemed like a weird name for a woman, but I'm not one to judge.

"Tony, this is Uncle Frank, he fights bad guys like my dad!"

"Sir!" Tony snapped a salute.

"At ease," I dismissed her with a smile. "I'm just visiting for now."

"Of course, sir." I could tell that she wanted to say something, probably ask how the war was going, but Lavvie tugging at her ammunition pouches distracted her.

"Can I have the ball?" Lavvie asked. "I want to show my uncle how good I am."

"Of course, champ!" Tony said cheerfully, reaching inside an ammunition box to grab a worn football. "Knock yourself out, kid."

Lavvie gave me the spherical ball and stood in front of a wall that had a goal painted on it with chalk. I set the ball down and juggled it with my feet, remembering skills from my youth in Mexico and Jericho-VII. I had played the sport on occasion, but it had been a while. I managed to keep the ball up, alternating my feet with each small kick.

"Are you sure you want to do this?" I asked Lavanya. "I am known as the striker of death in many planets."

"Bring it on, Striker!" she proclaimed loudly, banging her chest. "I'm known as The Wall in this town!"

"Well, it's time someone broke the wall!" I shouted loudly in as hammy a tone as I could manage, cackling.

I kicked the ball a little bit harder and let it land on my knee before spinning my foot around it before it fell, pressing it against the ground.

"Impressed?" I asked, waggling my eyebrows.

"My own grandmother could do that! And she's in a wheelchair!"

Well, she certainly had the trash-talking down.

I kicked the ball, hard but close enough that she could block it. I knew that she wouldn't shy away from it, not if she was anything at all like her father _or_ her mother. I was proven right. She extended both hands and deflected the strike. The ball bounced back gently towards my feet.

"Ah, I see your name is well-earned," I said. "Perhaps my young apprentice could use the challenge."

"She'll be no challenge to me," Lavvie said, laughing like a maniac.

Katie looked at me and rolled her eyes as I kicked the ball towards her. She had no idea what to do with it. She hadn't been the kind of girl to play team sports in high school, instead keeping to cross-country and track and field. Her body was a testament of the hours that she spent in the gym and the healthy lifestyle that she led, but all the athleticism in the world wouldn't help you if you booted the ball thirty feet in the air and hit the window above the goal.

I turned to Katie with a frown.

"What?!" she complained.

"Really Aunt Katie?" Lavanya asked with her hands on her hips as the ball bounced down.

I kicked the ball again, this time by surprise. Lavvie dove and got it out, but it hit the chalk post.

"Gooooooooooooooooooooooal!" I yelled loudly.

"Was not!" Lavvie shouted back.

I ignored her and instead sailed around with my arms extended like plane wings. Lavvie chased me while complaining that I hadn't scored, eventually catching up to me and trying to pin my arms against my sides. I simply let her cling to my left arm and kept moving with it completely extended to the side. I stopped after a few seconds before anybody realized that it was a rather unnatural feat of strength, even if Lavvie was only about sixty pounds.

"It was not a goal!" she said adamantly.

"Well, maybe it wasn't," I admitted, looking at my watch. Pavel still had a few minutes to go, but I knew that it wouldn't be enough for him.

Since he had a daughter that was getting progressively older (like all people tend to do), he couldn't do the same thing that Katie and I did, which is basically spend a whole weekend naked and having sex in an almost constant basis. Instead, he would come home to his wife and lock himself in the room with her, where they'd fuck each other's brains out for an hour or two. They'd repeat the process the next day or the day after that. I tried to imagine what it would be like, if every time I had sex with Katie it was like we had just done it. I wouldn't have minded, but it would've had to be with the same regularity that we usually had.

Thunder interrupted my line of thought.

"Looks like it's gonna rain after all," I muttered. "Come on Lavvie, let's go back inside."

"It wasn't a goal," she insisted.

"Fine, but we'll finish this another time."

"Promise?"

"Promise," I said with a smile

We moved back up as I tossed the ball to Tony the soldier, who promptly stowed it inside the ammunition box and prepared for the downpour that was soon to come. I opened the door for Katie and Lavvie before we killed some time in order to let Pavel and Amber enjoy themselves. A few people asked me questions about the war while we waited. I answered all those questions with small shakes of my head and telling them that I knew nothing, that I was just a grunt and knew little to nothing about the overall state of things. It was a merciful lie.

I knocked the door for good measure and walked in, ready to yank Lavanya backwards at a moment's notice. It became obvious that Pavel and Amber had gone at it like there was no tomorrow. The slightly askew table and chairs on their backs were telltale signs of their furious lovemaking. I couldn't help but shoot them a grin of my own, one that promptly had them blushing.

After that we all sat down to talk about things. The conversation went from one place to another without really going anywhere. It was small talk, it was a good distraction from the fact that Pavel and I would have to leave and report to base in just a couple of hours. The thing that bothered me the most was, to put it in layman's terms, that I wanted to violently shove my dick inside Katie's vagina several more times before I left, but there just wasn't enough time to turn this little reunion into a sex party.

Instead I had to settle for a nice and long kiss that still left me yearning for more. It was at times like this that I missed the simplicity of single life. I shook myself away from such thoughts and gave Katie's well-formed butt a nice little squeeze that made her yelp.

"Take care of Gunny, ok daddy?" Lavvie said as she hugged her father goodbye.

"I will, sweetheart," he promised. "I already checked on him once. He misses you."

"I miss him too."

"I'll be sure to take him home so that grandma and grandpa can meet him. Sounds good?"

"Yes!" Lavvie exclaimed, considerably happier now.

"Love you, darling," he said as he kissed Amber.

"They're sweet aren't they," Katie said. "A whole family."

She looked at me and the question was clear in her eyes. Katie wanted a kid. I didn't. Well, it's not that I didn't, but I was afraid of having one for two main reasons. My father had struggled to be a good dad, eventually succeeding, at least partially. My uncle had been a terrible parental substitute, even if I did enjoy a lot of what he had to offer and knew that he tried his best. I was a mentally unstable man that was an ass even on a good day; couple that with my extended deployments and I would make for a terrible father figure. I didn't want a kid growing up with a dad like that.

"Frank…" she said. Katie usually stopped talking about this when I explained myself to her. She knew how painful it would be for me to have to leave a son or daughter for months at a time and come back for a month or two before leaving for the better part of the year. This time she didn't look away.

"When this war is over," I told her.

"I don't want to wait that long."

I leaned close to her so that Pavel's family couldn't hear. "Katie, do you really want to bring a kid into this world?"

"There's always hope for a better world, Frank, and I'm confident that our son will live in that future."

"When I see you on Earth we'll talk about it," I promised her.

I looked at Lavanya, who tilted her head and grinned broadly, showing her mixed milk and permanent teeth on her small mouth. I smiled back and she squeezed in between her parents. It was endearing how she could go from outgoing and loud to shy in such a short amount of time. She was adorable, that's what she was.

Maybe having a kid around wouldn't be so bad. Katie was an exceptional woman. We could make it work.

I smiled at Katie and she smiled back.

"Ms. Ayers," I said with a tilt of my head. "It has been a pleasure."

"Likewise Mr. Castillo," she said, raising her chin. "Please, don't go off and do something stupid."

Pavel snorted at the sound of that. "Ha! You obviously don't know him well enough."

I smiled and gave her one last kiss before Pavel and I left and went back to the real world, where things weren't coated in a nice shade of pink and people tended to die at an alarming rate.

"At least you had some time," Schitzo said, sounding genuinely sad to leave her.

I wondered why he seemed to be more in synch with my feelings as of late, no longer playing the devil's advocate or being an overall asshole to me. In all fairness, I didn't mind.

"I wonder if you would also think you're a pussy if you saw yourself from my perspective," he went on.

_And there it is._

* * *

><p><em>Thanks to <strong>Colonel-Commissar2468 <strong>for proofreading this chapter._

_This chapter was incredibly fun and awesome to write for the following reasons: sex jokes, sex, and the ability to display a soldier during leave while a battle rages on around him. In essence, it permitted to recreate one of the breather chapters of Band of Brothers, when the men of Easy Company are sent back to friendly lines to take a break and have some drinks._

_Frank did his usual thing, but I liked showing a more human side of him where he isn't just ordering people around and killing things with more violence than is absolutely necessary. It was pretty sweet having a family moment sort of thing even if Lavanya isn't exactly Frank's daughter. I don't write enough about Katie and Amber, usually glossing over filler chapters, but both of them are incredibly important to Frank and Pavel. They're basically all that they've got to fight for along with some of their surviving comrades._

_Then there's a bar scene. You should know by now that I love those. The reason I had a particularly brutal barfight in this chapter may or may not be because a particular friend of mine asked me to do what you could call a backdoor pilot for him. Those two Army guys seem like an interesting pair, in particular the one that Frank almost killed. I wonder why he hates the UNSC enough to take it out on a random officer... Oh well, I guess you'll have to figure it out if you eventually. Either way, he's not my character, I just wrote this scene._

_Darbinian was here. Which is good. Well, bad, technically, but you guys know what I mean. I feel like Darbinian would've been a nice protagonist for a similar story to this one. He's so much like Frank and at the same time so different. It would've been an interesting concept... oh well._

_Songs for the day: Lavanya by E.S. Posthumus (for obvious reasons), Epica by Audiomachine, and Estasi del Anima by David Sardi. Enjoy._

_To those of you who care (**deafarcher**) my profile has been updated to show the members of AAG still alive. I can't really answer your questions seeing as they would spoil the plot that I've been planning for a while now. It also feels like you've built it up so much that it might be a let down in the end. I certainly hope not._

_Hope you enjoyed reading this chapter and I'm looking forward to your opinion._

_Stay strong._

_-casquis_


	207. Hace Frío

Chapter CCVII: Hace Frío

**August 25, 2552 (UNSC Calendar)/**

**Esztergom (Ezhtergom), Viery Territory, Reach, Epsilon Eridani System**

* * *

><p><em>"Estoy celoso de tu papá porque tu mamá esta buenísima."<em>

* * *

><p>"We're not going back to New Alexandria, are we?" Bee asked as he traced a group of Air Force Pararescue moving towards a Pelican.<p>

"No," I said. "We've got better things to do than S&R."

"Even if Noble-"

"Yes," I interrupted him. "Even then."

I counted my men again, stopping at fourteen before adding myself in to make fifteen. It was weird, having a bigger squad than I had had just a few days ago, but less men alive. With the wounded back in the fray things seemed better, but four men had been lost in New Alexandria and they would not come back.

I sighed and checked my rifle for the seventh time while I waited.

"When's Grass gonna come back?" Longworth asked.

"You don't get to call her Grass," Snark said as he paced behind him.

"When's Cam gonna come back?" Longworth asked, deferring to Snark's seniority.

"I don't know," I growled. "She said it's be twenty minutes. It has been twenty minutes. She should be here anytime now."

Indeed, Grass came back thirty seconds behind schedule. Not bad.

"What are we doing, Cam?" Pavel asked her, standing up and using his M247L as a cane.

"We've got some transmissions of Covenant units in the Highlands," Grass said, planting her hands on her hips. "They're coming earlier than we thought they would. Air recon shows heavy troop movements leaving New Alexandria by land."

"Search and destroy?" I asked.

"Yes," she said. "Units are being sent out all throughout the Highlands to see if we can eliminate the enemy units. So far we don't have a reason to believe that there's anything other than infantry in the area, but they could get some good intel on us if they manage to get closer."

I nodded slowly to myself. The Highlands was an area that was considerably higher than the surrounding area, as its name would appear to indicate. It wasn't a ridge, or a series of hills, but instead the crust of the planet had risen higher in that area. High enough that experts advised at least a few days of not doing anything to acclimate to the thin air. It was a beautiful place, with plenty of good places to go skiing if you so desired. The southeastern end of highlands was a Titanium rich area, even by the standards of this planet. The metallic spikes that punched through the rock could be seen on a clear day from the top of a few skyscrapers in Esztergom.

"Where are we going?" I asked.

"Here," Grass replied, pulling out a paper map. "Western Highlands."

"Oh, pretty," Andy said.

"And cold," I muttered. "Search and destroy?"

"Search and destroy," Grass confirmed for the second time. "Long range combat patrol, you guys know the deal."

"Everybody packed for three days?" I asked.

"Yessir."

"Good," I replied. "The first person to ask somebody else for a ration bar gets a punch in the gut."

Lady, Bee, and Tank all got up and moved towards the tent we'd been assigned, presumably filling their rucksacks with MREs or ration bars. I shook my head and gave the word for my team to move out into Marina's Pelican. With fifteen of us it would be a little bit cramped, but Marina would get us there quickly.

"Let's go, let's go!" I shouted at the three men that had grabbed additional food. "We're wasting daylight. Move!"

I smacked the back of Tank's head as he climbed in and jumped inside myself. Marina closed the hatch and we were off, leaving Esztergom behind once again.

* * *

><p>"Good evening ladies and gentlemen," Marina's voice woke us up. "It is my distinct pleasure to announce that we are three minutes from our destination, please strap your seatbelts, or don't, whatever. I'm not the boss of you."<p>

"Alright," I groaned, slapping my thighs. "Get up!"

I walked inside the cockpit while Pavel sorted the men out and saw the patches of snow that covered most of the tundra-type ecosystem. A lone tree stood here and there, growing despite the scarce nutrients. Further back I could see the tips of the mountains of Szurdok Ridge, several dozen miles in the distance.

"We're doing two drop points," I told Marina, placing my hand on her shoulder. "Pavel's taking one fireteam, drop him off on Mt. 4961."

"Adjusting," she replied simply, bearing towards one of the two mountains that overlooked the rest of our search area.

The rear hatch opened and I could hear the wind blowing and the chill permeating through my undersuit before it automatically acclimated to a more comfortable temperature. Pavel hopped off the Pelican with Caboose, Bee, Andrea, Marv, Pitcher, and Serge in tow.

"The rest of us to Mt. 5001," I told her.

"Alrighty, Frank," she replied with a short nod. "Hey."

"Yeah?"

"Stay safe."

"I will," I promised, giving her shoulder a soft squeeze. "Don't miss me too much.

"I'll try," she shot back as I left the cockpit.

Marina had left the hatch often and I looked down at the scree, piles of jagged and broken rock that piled down the sides of the mountains. I noted that a single misstep could result in a broken ankle. Our boots negated that risk for the most part, but a broken ankle was better than a snapped knee if your foot got caught in between two rocks.

"You have reached your destination," Marina said. "Thanks for flying Riding Hood Air."

I smiled and shouted at my men to get out of the Pelican, hopping off behind Lady.

I watched as Marina flew off and made sure to point my helmet's camera in her direction for a nice, long take. It was a beautiful view. I could see pretty much all of the highlands, snow and all. This high up there was more snow than below, but the peaks weren't completely covered yet. It was still late summer in Reach, and these latitudes got a good degree of heat from Epsilon Eridani.

"Now what, sir?" Longworth asked.

"Hold up," I told him, looking in the direction of Mt. 4961.

Pavel flashed a red laser in our direction three times and I returned the favor with my green laser targeter.

"Good on radio contact?" I asked.

"Loud and clear, Frank," Pavel replied. "Checking with Command… Grass is coming through A-ok as well."

"Good," I replied. "Grass, copy?"

"Copy, Frank."

"Alright, we're good to go," I told Pavel. "Twelve hours should be enough, we meet on Waypoint Alpha."

"See you there," Pavel replied, cutting the line.

I looked at my fireteam. Eight men, one of them Snark, a world-class sniper.

"We're going to need you on sniper duty," I told him. "Real sniper duty. Can you do without a partner?"

"Yes, sir," Snark replied without even pausing to consider.

"Alright then," I told him. "You're not gonna be shooting, I just want you scoping out the terrain."

Snark nodded.

"Pick a spot," I told him. "I leave that to you."

Snark looked in the direction of Waypoint Alpha twelve miles from our position and then back to me. He nodded and began climbing down, the cue for the rest of us to start doing the same. High-speed winds buffeted us as we carefully moved down the side of the mountain. We were at 5000 meters above sea level, but the prominence of this mountain was a little bit less than 1000 meters. From here we would be able to spot anything moving in the wide open land and would then move onto the next area through a sharp ridge about 500 meters below our current position. I hated thinking about the difference in altitude, because moving 300 meters up could mean anything from advancing a couple of feet or several dozen miles. The sharp inclines in this area meant that we wouldn't be moving incredibly long distances.

I looked down at the jagged rocks before every step, making sure that the snow wouldn't make me slip. Whenever I felt the wind picking up I would steel myself for the gusts that could knock me down any moment. It made for relatively slow progress, but I was certain that few units would've been able to move at our pace in a situation like this.

"I'm staying here, Lieutenant," Snark let me know, settling down in a false peak. "Good spot, can see everything for miles."

"Alright," I told him. "Anything you see."

"I'll let you know. It's my job after all."

"Damn right," I agreed. "Everyone else, stop slacking."

"You know, sir," Longworth began, "sometimes I feel like this is just a continuation of bootcamp, with you and Master Sergeant competing for the title of meanest asshole."

"Well, if it's still a competition then I'm obviously not trying hard enough," I said, getting a chuckle from Lady.

"Something to say, Natasha?" I asked her.

"No, sir. It just feels like Marines bitch about a lot of things."

A year ago I would've taken that jab at face value because a year ago she would've been stupid enough to think that she could've gotten away with it, but our lone Navy Special Warfare Operator had matured some in the last months.

"I doubt you could've made it through Helljumper Factory," Longworth told her.

"Look at these swabbies," Tank told Crow. "Bitching about their vacation spots. While us Army guys haul ass."

"What did we do to deserve this?" Crow replied, shaking his head in mock disappointment.

Conversation sprung up as everybody tried to argue about which bootcamp was the worst. I had a clear bias, but at the same time I knew damn well that getting in the ODST was a good deal harder than getting into any other special operations branch. That is not necessarily because you had to be more skilled, but because the training methods were so sadistic. If someone died during Helljumper training they would leave the body there in the mud until the rest of the recruits finished the drill. In my opinion, the main difference between all camps or whatever you want to call them is that the ODST instructors just didn't give a shit about the trainees. A Ranger drill sergeant might be as much of a hardass as Gabuka had been back in the day, but if he saw that you were about to die from dehydration he would stop you, Gabuka would just keep going and you would either stop to live or keep going until your body collapsed and organ systems failed.

I shook my head at the memories of blacking out during long runs. At first we had run without any gear to weed out the weak. Then we ran with standard combat gear, maybe throw a rucksack on some unlucky recruit that smiled too much or didn't smile enough. Then we ran with full survival gear. Finally we were made to fill our rucksacks with iron-heavy rocks and march with double ammunition load. If we did any slower than we would've without any gear on then we had to go again.

My class had been a good one. Sergeant Gabuka himself had grudgingly admitted that. Only two deaths during the whole period of training. Two deaths still meant two deaths, and out of the initial members less than one percent made it to graduation day.

ODST training was designed to break you like no other special operations branch did. Then the drill sergeants would shape you into a warrior that could fight off anything that the enemy could throw at him. Most guys were stable enough in the head that their personalities remained mostly unchanged, but anyone that said he went through bootcamp and came out the same is a liar. Everyone changes in bootcamp, whether it be for the ODST, the Army Rangers or the Airborne, or Navy Special Warfare, bootcamp changed everyone. Then it was just a matter of innate talent that took you that extra step to become the elite of the elite.

Lady had made it here even though she was a self-entitled bitch. Longworth had made it here even though he was convinced that nobody would ever match up to him in any aspect, making excuses for when that failed. Tank had made it here through sheer determination to survive. Crow was now a member of the AAG because he had never given up on any task, even when his unit had. Andrea and Miranda, nearly polar opposites on the outside, but both of them were still deeply insecure about their position in this elite unit. Oftentimes I wondered why they did that when time after time they proved their value. Then there was Snark, he had joined in order to leave the streets, to get a roof over his head and a hot meal on the plate, then he decided that he liked shooting things from far away and pushed himself to become better and better until he finally became the best. Sasha Dotsenko, he had just lost his best friend and had become machine-like, talking sparingly and often lost in thought, but he was still functioning and would fight until the bitter end. All these men were above what anybody could expect of a human being and all of them deserved better than this hell that they were going through.

For a moment I wondered what they would think of me if I used my pull to get everyone shipped out of Reach and discharged. With my contacts in the intelligence community I could probably make it happen, send them all to live off their days in some dense city on Earth or a distant colony and to hell with the rest of humanity.

"They would love it," Schitzo said in a neutral tone. I couldn't detect sarcasm, but I felt like there was some there.

I dismissed those thoughts. They felt like there was no hope, and hope, as painful as it was, was the one thing that kept us going. Hope that one day the last grunt would twitch in the ground dead and the last elite would growl in defiance as some kid blasted its face off with a shotgun.

Reach burning made it damn hard to cling on to hope.

The skies were clear, which was lucky for us. No hail or snow or any kind of precipitation would hamper our travel. The more we climbed down the less of an incline we had to deal with. No longer we were using our hands and sliding down, we were instead stepping down with long and careful steps.

"Watch out for this rock," Miranda warned as she stepped off a bobbing boulder.

"Start spreading out," I said. "Dotsenko, you're hanging back to provide suppression."

"Yes, sir," the man replied.

We maintained about fifty meters distance between each other and the conversation slowly died down. We could still communicate through our radios, but we had to be on the lookout for Covenant units. According to Grass, the enemy scout units had last been spotted in this area. The boulders and rocks didn't appear to provide much cover from a distance, but once you realized just how large they were you became apprehensive, eyes peeled in order to spot movement.

A rock clacked about 300 meters down the mountainside. The whole team stopped and aimed in that direction. Nobody moved.

"Mountain goat?" Longworth asked.

"I don't think they live this high up," Lady told him.

"It could be nothing," Miri muttered.

"Crow, move down," I gave the word. "I'm with you."

"Yessir."

The two of us slowly walked down, not taking our rifles from the direction where the rocks had clacked. The fact that the noise had come from behind a large boulder only made things tenser. As soon as we reached the boulder I climbed over it while Crow moved around it, hand pressed against it. He looked at me and nodded that he was ready. I gave a finger count and closed my fist, giving the signal for both of us to move.

There was nothing on the other side.

"Clear," I called. "Nothing here. Let's keep moving."

"I hate scares like that," Crow muttered as I jumped next to him.

"Better than coming across something," I told him.

"True, but I still don't like it."

"Stop bitching, soldier," I told him. "And get back in line."

Crow started going back to his spot and I did the same thing. My fireteam climbed down to catch up to us and move faster. Waypoint Alpha was still far off, and this mountain terrain was a bitch to travel through.

"Contact," Snark reported. "Get down!"

Everybody ducked, going for the biggest boulder and trying to get behind it. We had the high ground, a serious tactical advantage, but if we couldn't hit first then we would just be made. Our armors were all appropriately camouflaged for this terrain with shades of black and grey, but the constant use had chipped a lot of the paint away, leaving us with patches of silver titanium here and there.

"Put your head down," I urged Crow.

"I can't," he muttered. "The rock is loose."

"Don't move," I growled. "Snark, what do you see?"

"Three jackals, looks like a scout team. One mile out."

"Don't shoot," I told him. "Patch me through."

"Roger."

A small screen appeared on my HUD and displayed three jackals, all of them with needle rifles. They didn't seem to care a lot about their movement, jumping up and down the rocks and squawking at one another as loudly as possible. Well, that's what I assumed from the way that their beaks were moving. For a moment I wondered what they were talking about, maybe bitching about their bitches back home. It seemed like a reasonable thing for soldiers to talk about.

"Snark, move a little bit to the right."

"Looks like a trail of some sort," Snark said, moving his scope to aim at the direction the jackals had come from. "The cliff won't let me see anything."

"Wait ten," I gave the word. If nothing happened then we'd move down with Snark covering our backs and then Miri and I would take out the jackals with silencers on. We didn't want a massive noise echoing all over these cliffs.

"Sir," Crow said.

I looked in his direction, he was propping himself up with his right hand only. If he laid on his back the boulder would come down rolling, if he moved up a simple look in this direction would reveal his position.

"Hold on," I ordered.

"I can't," he replied. "Shit, it hurts."

It was an incredibly uncomfortable position, holding his whole body weight with just his left triceps. He couldn't even lock his elbow or use his other arm to sustain the weight.

"Shit, shit, shit," I muttered. "Miri, silencers on, move down."

"Yessir," she replied.

I quickly screwed my silencer into my BR55 and got up; the jackals weren't looking in our direction, but it was a huge risk we were taking. I didn't want them firing and I certainly didn't want Snark to shoot his behemoth of a rifle. I moved past Crow's position just as his arm gave way. He crashed on the rock and the small boulder wobbled on the brink of falling down before it rolled downhill. I cursed as I completely left cover.

The range was extreme for my rifle, especially while standing up and on the move, but I couldn't wait.

The jackals' turned their beaks in our direction.

I fired.

The shots flew high as I overcompensated. It was only then that the jackals truly realized what was going on and brought their weapons up. Miranda fired twice, hitting the closest jackal in the chest. I fired a second burst, this time adjusting properly for the distance. I got it in the shoulder and then Miranda finished it off while I hit the other one in the stomach before it could hit me. A final burst took out the final jackal as it writhed in agony. We couldn't afford them radioing their situation.

"Shit," I muttered as the silenced snaps echoed through the mountains. "Everybody move down! We need to hide the bodies."

"Frank, was that you?" Pavel asked.

"Yeah," I replied. "Silenced."

"Shit."

"Yeah. There's aliens in the area, they probably know we're here."

"Roger that, getting dangerous."

I rushed down the mountain, Longworth moving as fast as he could behind me. We were the two fastest guys in the fireteam and at this point we wanted to get those bodies out of sight as soon as possible.

"Three hundred meters," I said. "Let's go Longworth."

"I don't want to break my neck, sir," he said.

"Tough luck, everyone else wants that," Miri joked.

We reached the jackals just as Snark gave the word that the rest of their unit was coming up. There were at least five elites with carbines and plasma repeaters turning the corner. Longworth and I tossed the jackal corpses behind a boulder and pressed tightly against it as the rest of my team ducked behind cover. Snark gave me an ok as soon as he had the lead elite in his crosshairs.

"Five elites," I whispered in Longworth's ear.

"One jackal," Snark said.

"Keep that one alive," I told Longworth. "Keep one elite up if you can. Snark, I want you to take out the leader. Dotsenko, spray them and draw their attention. Longworth and I'll handle the rest."

"Yes, sir," the two men replied.

Dotsenko was about five hundred meters behind our position, ready to go with his SAW. Snark was even further back, perhaps over a mile behind us. It worried me slightly that I could see myself in his scope as he aimed at the lead elite, a major carrying a plasma repeater. The other four elites were all minors, but they appeared to have been through battle more than a couple of times. The jackal behind them was of the skirmisher variety, but it carried with it a beam rifle.

"On you," I told my sniper.

His scope snapped up slightly and I eliminated it from my HUD. A second later the bullet slammed into the lead elite's head. The major was suddenly left headless, falling down as the boom of the SRS finally caught up to the bullet. Dotsenko opened up on the enemy patrol at a rate of 900 rounds per minute. I pressed Longworth's chest and pushed him against the rock. The elites were perhaps eight feet from our position, but we needed Sasha to pummel their shields some more before we came out.

I slowly positioned my rifle in the ground against the rock and reached for the shotgun in the small of my back.

"Stop!" I shouted.

The machine gun fire stopped immediately and both Longworth and I left cover. He fired upon the skirmisher that we wanted alive, aiming for its lower body in order to keep it from firing at the team with its beam rifle. I blasted the closest elite in the chest, knocking its shields out of commission. My second shot hit another elite, knocking it to the ground before I returned to the first one, killing it. Longworth finished the elite that I had targeted second before pummeling the third and fourth elites with surprise flank fire. The shields were weakened and failed quickly, giving me a good window to fire on them with my shotgun. One of them received a shell's worth of buckshot to the chest, the other to the left knee.

"Pistol!" I ordered.

Longworth dropped his rifle and pulled out his sidearm, mirroring my movements. He moved towards the wounded jackal, keeping his pistol trained on it. I did the same with the elite, firing two shots at its right hand and then another to its left wrist, leaving it completely defenseless. I kicked the carbine away from the elite's vicinity and then yanked its plasma pistol from the magnetic holster on the thigh. The elite roared, but with one leg all but useless it could barely move before hitting the ground again.

"Stay down!" I shouted, firing a warning shot. "Down!"

Elites tended to commit ritual suicide when captured, and most of the hingeheads tended to have energy daggers built into the forearm armor. I came down hard on its right wrist, pinning it against the ground with my boot while Longworth flipped the struggling skirmisher over and pressed his knee against its neck, pulling out the cuffs. I wondered for a moment why on earth he had those on him in this situation but opted to keep my mouth shut. As soon as he had the jackal tied up he came to my aid and secured the elite's left arm against the hard, rocky ground.

"You're clear," Snark announced. "Nice work."

"Everybody move down," I ordered. "Miri and Dotsenko, secure that corner for me. Lady and Crow, help secure the perimeter. Tank, I'm going to need you."

"I ain't six-eleven worth of muscle for nothing, sir."

I smiled. At that height he was probably less than six inches shorter the elite at my feet. Tank jumped into the elite's chest, knees first and got close to it, depolarizing his visor and giving it a threatening grin.

"Hello, pretty," he said, laughing as the elite snapped its jaws back at him. We cuffed one hand first before turning it around and cuffing the other one while

Longworth moved to guard the jackal. Tank and I disarmed the elite, removing the forearm guards with liberal use of knives. When we were done the elite had several little cuts marking its arms and a lot of reasons to be pissed.

"I don't often get to do questioning," I said to the elite. "That's why I like to make it last." There was no reply from the elite. "You understand me, squid?"

The elite looked up at me. "Just kill me and be done with it human. Its shameful enough that you managed to capture me."  
>I smiled, picking up both its native language and the translation in my helmet. I briefly wondered if they made the translator voices out of a single black man with a deep baritone, because the elites always had voices that made me jealous. The jackals, on the other hand, had voices that made them sound very much like the birds they were.<p>

"My name is Lieutenant Castillo," I told him. "Kind of a midpoint between your ultras and your majors."

"Don't compare yourself to us, vermin!"

"Perhaps more like an ultra," I went on, "but the unit I command is so small because they are the best."

The elite snorted.

"We got you, didn't I?" I asked, crouching next to it and taking my helmet off. "Listen, how old are you?"

"Four full cycles."

I laughed loudly and insolently. "I have no idea what the fuck that means, you hear me?"

The elite growled but said nothing.

My grin disappeared and turned into a frown. I put my shotgun back in its holster and brought my knife back out, displaying the multi-colored patterns of the blade. Three twirls and I gripped it with the tip facing out. The elite's eyes traced the movements of the blade involuntarily, but nobody liked the idea of having a knife used on you.

"Longworth! Bring that bird here!"

The jackal hissed and complained, but it struggled in vain with two bullets in its right leg and one in its left. It was a miracle it could still move those two limbs all things considered.

"What's this bird's name?" I asked.

"Nizk," the elite said.

"It's Jeet," the jackal hissed back.

"Watch your tongue, imbecile!" the elite growled.

"What for? We're both dead."

"He's right," I said with a small nod. "I'm going to kill you both."

The elite laughed. "You tell me this and think that I will talk! Bah, you only reveal your stupidity."

I looked at Jeet. "Care to illustrate your superior?"

"He can make our deaths as long and painful as he wishes."

The elite growled angrily but said nothing. Instead it looked at me and I gave it a shrug, apologizing for the whole situation. I waved Tank over and nodded. The massive man delivered a kick to the elite's jaw, drawing a solid amount of blood and cracking the thin armor plates covering it.

The elite remained silent still, but it couldn't completely suppress the pain.

Tank went on, kicking it in the ribs, face, and upper arms, occasionally stepping on one of the bullet wounds. The elite took the punishment with surprising dignity, but after thirty seconds of silence it started letting out noises of pain. Tank went at it until the elite started crying out. Eventually it gave the word for us to stop.

"You're supposed to ask a question first," Jeet noted, earning a rifle butt to the face, courtesy of Longworth.

"You think I don't know what I'm doing?" I asked it, crouching next to it. "Are you trying to tell me how to do my job?"

The jackal furiously shook its head.

"Good," I smiled at it, driving the tip of my knife into its left leg, a few inches from the bullet hole. "I like you."

"What do you want to know?" the jackal asked.

"Silence!" the elite shouted. "I order you to shut your mouth, you filthy pirate!"

Tank backhanded the elite.

"I want to know the exact positions of all your units in this area," I said. "I want to know how your little group divided itself up and where the rest of you filthy fucks are soiling this planet."

It was a carefully worded question. It gave the impression that I already knew how many covvies were here and also appeared to indicate that we had them completely outnumbered and outgunned. The elite seemed to be relatively new in this business, but the jackal knew exactly what was going on and played it to his advantage.

"The Sangheili divided us into four groups and split those into two patrols each," the jackal said.

_That's about eighty total…_

"And I assume your mission was to-"

"Traitor! Heretic!" the elite shouted. "You will pay for thi-"

"I hate being interrupted!" I yelled into the elite's face, driving my knife three times in quick succession into its right leg, the one riddled with buckshot. The elite cried out loudly, but it certainly stopped annoying me.

"We were to move forward towards your nest-city, identify artillery positions and tag them for initial targeting. Any other information we could gleam from your defenses would be valuable."

"It's a reasonable mission, wouldn't you agree, Longworth?"

"Seems like a good plan," he agreed.

"Anything else you want to let us know?" I asked it. "Anything at all?"

The jackal looked at me and then at the miserable elite to its right. Jeet seemed to be considering the possibilities before he spoke. "I gave you something already, I want something in return."

"You're in no position to make demands, you little shit," I growled, gripping its throat tightly.

"You'll like this one," it croaked. "Promise."

"Do tell," I said, loosening my grip.

"I want to see this one suffer for a bit before you kill him."

"How about I shoot you and promise you I'll torture it for a while?"

"You wouldn't waste your time," the jackal said. "If I tell you everything he knows then there's no sense in torture."

I nodded slowly. "You have a good point."

"So?" It asked.

I sighed. "Two minutes is all you get. And it better be good or I might just take some time to torture you as well."

The jackal nodded.

Tank yanked the elite's armor off and then drew his own knife, driving it deep into the alien's flesh just above the waistline. The elite cried out as Tank began punching with his meaty fists. I had sparred with the Army soldier before and it was probably one of the worst experiences you could go to. He was as big as they came without any genetic therapy and had enough muscle on him that he didn't appear lanky. He was about 370 pounds of muscle and could put enough power behind those punches to kill a lesser man.

By the way, I won all the sparring matches that I went against him, just putting that out there.

Tank didn't hold back and soon I could hear the sound of ribs snapping.

"Stop," I said.

I grabbed my knife from the elite's leg and yanked it out only to sink it halfway into the alien's stomach. A quick maneuver later and the elite had been gutted from one side of the torso to the other. This one drew the loudest cry yet. It only became worse as the alien's intestines started coming out.

"Go ahead," I told Tank.

"Why?" Longworth asked the jackal.

"Because he sent my friends to their deaths," the jackal replied. "And because their kind repels me."

"Hey, me too," I said. "Your kind disgusts me as well. Especially when you eat my kind." With that I showed it my bloodied knife and pressed it against its chest.

"Nothing personal," the jackal said, struggling to get away from my blade. "We don't do it by choice, we never get the rations we need."

"I've heard that one before," I said.

"I swear! The Jiralhanae keep the fat ones, we have to eat what we can!"

I turned to Longworth as Tank worked on the elite. "You ever try jackal?"

"Nah, but I sure do love chicken."

"We would have to cook it though," I said. "I hear raw meat can make you sick."

"You humans always upset stomachs," the jackal growled.

I laughed. "Well, consider it a final fuck you from our part, eh?"

With those words I pressed the knife through the jackal's left shoulder.

"Poor choice of words, bird," I growled. "Now speak, unless you want me to strangle you with your intestines."

Once I said that Tank stopped hitting the elite and drove his knife through its throat.

"Speak, bird."

The jackal then said everything and anything that it deemed important. It gave us the exact number of troops in the area and their intended patrol routes. As soon as I had extracted every bit of information about the scout unit I began asking broader questions. I wanted to know how many battalions were moving from New Alexandria, whether they were led by brutes or by elites, if they had long-range artillery or Scarab walkers. The news was not good, but it could be worse. This battle would be a slugging match between two sledgehammers and we'd have the advantage of a fortified position.

We always seemed to have that advantage and it never did any good.

"You done?" I asked the bird after fifteen minutes of questioning.

"Yes," it said in English.

I nodded at it and shot it through the head before putting my helmet back on.

"That was good, Frank," Grass came in. "Got a lot of usable information."

"That's my job," I replied. "Wait, actually, that's yours."

"And you just made it easier, thanks."

"You're really making it hard for me to be arrogant here," I complained.

"I know you too well," Grass said simply. "In fact, I know you well enough that telling you to get back on the move would be redundant, wouldn't it?"

Yes, I was already signaling for my men to regroup and start heading towards Waypoint Alpha again. Grass chuckled on the other end of the line and said her goodbyes before cutting the conversation. I grouped my men together and gave them a quick set of instructions to stay in groups of two at thirty-meter intervals. I wanted them to be able to protect one another but I didn't want an upstart grunt to take everybody out with a single grenade.

"Let's go," I said. "Ten miles."

* * *

><p>"Don't," Pavel grunted. "Not a word."<p>

"I won't say anything," I promised, eyeing up his blood-soaked armor. It wasn't just splashed, it was actually soaked. "Ok, sorry, what happened?"

"Elite almost got me," he grumbled. "It pinned me against the ground and Marv had to slice its throat open to get it off me."

"Giving our gunny an impromptu shower," Bee finished for him.

I chuckled and shook my head in disbelief. When they contacted me saying that they had found a Covenant unit I didn't expect much trouble, but seeing Pavel like this was a surprise. Thankfully it wasn't one that had become unpleasant.

"Alright, we've got four hours of sleep," I said. "Pavel, fix 'em up."

I moved towards a hole between two boulders as Pavel ordered everybody to go to sleep. He made the rosters for keeping guard at random and promptly looked for his own comfort spot. I smiled when I realized that the space between the boulders was covered with soft dirt. I rubbed my butt into it to find that sweet spot and promptly fell asleep.

* * *

><p>"Wake up, wake up!"<p>

I looked at my mission clock first. Three hours had passed since I fell asleep.

_Not too bad…_

"Phantoms and Spirits overhead!" Andrea shouted. "Shit!"

"Get down!"

I stayed where I was, letting all the plasma wash across the boulders. I heard the familiar sound of heavy plasma rounds hitting rock and tightened myself into a ball, wishing that my men would stay safe. The onslaught only lasted a few seconds and then the humming of dropships became more distant. Only then did I peek my head out, cursing at their numbers.

"Grass, Grass, do you copy?"

"I'm here," she replied after a few moments.

"We've got fifty or so enemy dropships moving towards Esztergom at low speeds and low altitudes. Are you seeing them right now?"

"Negative Frank," she replied, sounding concerned. "There's nothing on the sensors. Radar's coming clean too."

"Shit Grass, I'm seeing them right here!"

"Satellites aren't showing anything… fuck."

"They got through to our system," I said.

Grass breathed in. "We're going to have to purge everything simultaneously. That means we'll be exposed for a solid hour."

"You've got a few minutes to give a warning," I said. "Send intercepting craft to get the dropships and additional units to pick us up."

"Alright," she said, muttering too herself as she tapped at her console. "Marina's on her way. It'll take a while."

"We'll stay on the move," I told her. "Good luck down there."

"Good luck up there," she replied. "Shit. Over and out."

I cursed as Pavel told me that everyone was fine. He seemed surprised by my reaction, but I quickly explained the situation to him and he soon was feeling as concerned as I was. The rest of my men were still angrily yapping about how close the plasma had been to them, but the moment I gave the word they all shut up. I ordered a quick march over the ridge, dreading those long minutes where anybody looking from either side could spot us.

"Snark," I said. "Why the hell didn't you warn us?"

No answer.

"Snark!"

"Sorry, sir," he apologized. "I got sloppy, they dropped troops on the other side of the mountain, rounded up on my ass. I got most of them."

"Are you good?"

"Mostly," he said. "Got nicked in the left side. Didn't go through the armor but I've got some burns."

"Ok, stay in contact, we'll get to you once Marina picks us up."

"Yes, sir," he said.

I shook my head, separating Snark from us had served no purpose. He hadn't been able to warn us of the incoming dropships and now he was a liability to the whole unit. Hovering a Pelican on the side of a mountain is hard to miss, even if you don't have absolutely any sensors, the echo would draw your attention and then you'd just have to look in that direction. You wouldn't even have to see it to know it was there.

"Oscar Mike," Pitcher shouted, chuckling at his own joke. Nobody said Oscar Mike anymore…

Twenty minutes into our march Grass communicated with us to update me on the situation.

"They had Seraphs in the air," she said after I asked for news. "We took out about ten percent of their numbers, but they've landed outside the city."

"Shit."

"Shit indeed," she agreed. "Marina can't come pick you up, instead I sent out three Falcons and three Hornets."

"What an unusual combination," I deadpanned.

"Hey, don't bitch about it," she shot back. "More firepower."

"Less speed. Not to mention comfort."

"I remember when once upon a time my CO told me to stop complaining about superficial things like that."

"Sounds like a handsome guy," I said. "Any other news?"

"Negative, Frank."

I shook my head and waved for my men to move faster. We were already approaching the tree line, once we were there we could start moving at a more reasonable pace and take a couple of minutes to rest our legs. The highlands didn't have a lot of trees, but this area was one of the only spots with dense forest. It wasn't particularly large, we could cross it in a few hours, but with the gunships coming in to pick us up we wouldn't have to. I gave the word for my men to hold positions near a good landing area. It was a tedious wait, but the Falcons couldn't fly as fast as a Pelican could.

"I hear something," Pitcher muttered. "Sounds like rotors."

"Yeah," I agreed, nodding. "Good ears."

The Falcons landed in the small clearing in front of us as soon as I gave them our position. Pavel boarded one and immediately everybody spread themselves out. The Falcons once again looked like they had been through a lot. As I walked in front of one of the VTOLs I thought I saw Emily Hardwick piloting the craft, but I turned and a flash of light blocked sight of anything inside the cockpit. I kept moving and jumped up into one of the Hornets. Pitcher joined me on the other side.

"Alright, we've got a man in the mountains," I told the pilot through my radio. "We need to pick him up."

"We'll have to divide the group," the pilot replied. "Three and three, we wouldn't want to be caught unawares."

"Alright," I said. "We've got no time to waste."

The Falcons took a bearing towards the city while the three Hornets instead aimed back towards the mountains. Caboose was on one of the passenger seats in the Hornet that would pick up Snark while Dotsenko and Lady sat in the other one with their legs dangling as the Hornet sped off. I made sure to secure my armor to the harness and my rifle to myself. The Hornets could move damn fast if they tilted their rotors straight ahead. Stupid things looked unwieldy but were in fact terribly fast and maneuverable.

It wasn't a nice ride, but we had all gone through it a few times. Especially Caboose and I. I simply tried to ignore the wobbling and jagged rocks underneath me, but I was surprised at the velocity with which we reached the peak. By that point we had warned Snark of our plans and he simply jumped into the Hornet, making it wobble a little bit. He grunted in complaint at the lack of space as he secured himself with cable, but other than token bitching he said nothing else.

"Come on," I gave the word to the pilots. "We're already missing the first wave."

"I'm doing my best," the pilot replied simply.

I squinted at the three Falcons way off in the distance. I didn't like having my team so separated, especially when we had only joined after such a long time apart. I shook those thoughts away and instead focused on planning. Enough Covenant forces had gotten through that they could establish a nice position. I knew that if we didn't counter attack quickly and with extreme prejudice then we wouldn't be able to prevent them from landing additional troops. The way our defenses were placed around the city we still had a decent chance to push out the Covenant from their landing positions. The Covenant would have no trouble with using their dropships as gunships, which made them twice as dangerous.

"Sir, where are we coming in?" Pitcher asked me, shuffling slowly to the back of the passenger platform.

"Same place we landed," I replied. "Grass will let us know if we're needed."

"We're not jumping right into it?"

"Not unless they need us too, Pitcher," I told him.

I could feel the man's nod even if I couldn't see it. Directly in front of me was another Hornet with Dotsenko and Lady in it. Lady was looking back at the two mountains, her rifle slung across her back and both her hands tightly gripping the small handholds. I didn't blame her for feeling uneasy, Hornets were feeble craft at best and the two passenger seats were completely and utterly terrifying, especially at these speeds.

The rocky ground below us was soon covered by tall grasses. The highlands were a nice place, even if they were a dreary one. We flew through a solid wall of mist that left us all completely soaked. I was thankful for my full-fingered gloves. The pilot slowed down some as we navigated another set of jagged cliffs before the highlands finally became sloping plains that would lead us into Esztergom.

"What's the ETA?" I asked our pilot.

"An hour and a half I think," he replied. "We're getting unconfirmed reports of Banshee sightings. We can't afford to be caught in the open."

"Why are they unconfirmed?" Pitcher asked, echoing my thoughts.

"Not sure," the pilot replied. "Most of the scouts have been pulled back. The few remaining are probably moving back to rally points and be evacuated to defend the city."

"Aren't we deploying any troops behind the enemy?" Pitcher asked.

"I wouldn't know," the pilot replied.

"Grass, copy?"

"I'm here, Frank," she said.

"What's the plan of action right now?"

"Army is securing the civilian population, fortifying our secondary lines. They're not too happy about playing police duty, but the Marine detachment was in the best position to engage. They're securing the outer perimeter and slowing down the Covenant."

"How's the fight going?"

"No large-scale engagements so far," Grass said. "They landed away from our outer line of defense, but they picked their position well. We're shifting troops to meet them when they do attack."

"Are they not moving yet?"

"No, they do appear to be forming up, however," Grass said. "Seems like they have a pre-planned strategy. Very eighteen hundreds if you ask me."

"Don't underestimate them," I said. "If we slugged it out like they did in the nineteenth century we'd be losing every fight."

"Aren't we already?" she asked. She sighed. "Frank, the covvies are a threat right now, but they won't be able to get past our line, not with the numbers they have right now."

"I trust your judgment on this on this one, Grass," I told her. "We'll see you later."

"Stay safe, Frank."

"I never do."

By the time the conversation was over we had passed through the fogbank. Esztergom should have been close enough. I couldn't see it from here, but very far off in the distance I could make out the smoggy haze that hovered over the city. I squinted hard, trying to make out anything that looked like it might be purple. It would've been easier if I knew where they had landed, but I couldn't use my scope to pinpoint their location.

"You got them?" I asked Snark.

"I'm working on it," he said. There was a ten minute pause. "Might have them. The hills are blocking my sight."

"Doesn't matter," I said, "we're not going to be fighting in this one anyways."

"Why'd they pull us out then?" Caboose asked.

"They didn't need us any longer," I said with a mental shrug. "We found their scouts. The Covenant probably decided that their scouts weren't needed either and attacked early."

"Makes sense," Lady said, inching back into her seat.

"There they are," Snark said. "Damn, that's some weird formation."

I aimed where he was pointing at. The scope on my battle rifle was not nearly as powerful as the Oracle scope on his SRS, but I was able to spot the purple armor glinting. They were arranged in a curious formation, with the dropships nowhere to be seen while a dozen or so Wraiths spread out.

"Is our artillery in position?" I asked.

"Don't know," Caboose muttered. "I know we're low on long range guns right now. Might be moving them."

"No missile artillery left?"

"Most of it was used in New Alexandria," he told me. "The rest is spread too thin."

"How the hell do we have anything spread too thin? This is Reach, you can see a soldier any way you look at."

"They're killing us too fast," Caboose growled.

"We just need to kill them faster then," Pitcher said. "I think we're doing a fairly decent job at it so far."

I shook my head. Nobody could see me but Lady and she said nothing. Either way it wasn't my place to think about the larger picture. We in AAG-7 were glorified grunts. Sure, we might be able to tip the balance in a fight and maybe even make a difference in the long run, but our job was to fight whatever Command told us to fight and do it as effectively as possible. No matter how angry that made me at times, it was all we were. Grunts.

"Sucks, doesn't it?" Schitzo asked.

I sighed as the Hornets banked to the left in order to avoid any possible AA defenses that the Covenant had set up. Their AA capabilities left much to be desired, but whenever they brought in appropriate SAM emplacements then they could be as dangerous as ours. I tightened my grip on the handholds and gripped my rifle tightly as I secured it to my back once again.

"Frank, we're almost landing," Pavel checked in. "I just called the girls. They're nervous, but they're finally letting them in. Looks like we might evacuate now."

"How's the situation in orbit?" I asked him.

"Can't gather much information right now, but it seems like the Navy would be willing to sacrifice a couple of ships to punch holes in the Covenant blockade."

"Do you know if the transports are flying straight up?"

"Doesn't look like it. Might go a couple thousand miles before leaving the atmosphere," Pavel told me. "South would be my best guess. Maybe southwest."

"Alright, we're going to be there in a few. Start asking questions, I need to know as much as possible right now."

Sure, I was only a grunt, but I was still a glorified one. I had a little bit of pull when it came to what missions I got. I always wanted the most important ones.

"Yes, sir," he said in the tone he always used when he called me sir.

"Alright then," I muttered to myself. "Looks like we're done for a few hours at least."

We hit the city's outskirts before it all went to shit.

The pilot started swearing and gave us a heads up to hold on tight. Five Banshees appeared from above and behind. I cursed when I saw them and realized that they had been cloaked and waiting to position themselves above us. It was only by miracle that their camouflage had failed or been jammed. I wondered if we had any disruptor equipment in place briefly before they started firing. The pilots knew their shit because the moment the Banshees opened up I felt the G-forces on my body as we dodged. Bolts of blue streaked past, missing my by inches. I rolled on the small platform and reached for my rifle, gripping it tightly while I looped my hand underneath the handhold. I caught a flash of the Hornet that Lady and Dotsenko were sharing as I struggled to aim at the rapidly shifting Banshees. They still had a good position on us, but the Hornet pilots were moving very fast, keeping them twisting and turning.

I squeezed the trigger, missing by a solid ten meters. I cursed and activated my thermal sight. The Banshee was a big orange blob against a cool background, but every bullet that flew streaked brightly against the backdrop, allowing me to see where exactly they were hitting. It didn't take long for me to get an understanding of how my bullets were being affected by the movement, but I needed a test shot before firing for real every time and at the rate the pilot was swerving I barely had any chances to aim, let alone fire. If any bullet hit it was more out of luck than anything.

"Can't hit anything like this!" Pitcher complained from the other side.

"I'm going low!" the pilot announced.

"Where are the other Hornets?" I asked.

"We broke off!" the pilot replied hastily. "I'm leading them to our AA envelope!"

"You might want to climb up then!" I shouted back.

"They won't reveal the position of our SAMs for a Hornet!"

The pilot had a point. A Hornet was… well, it was like comparing saving a hornet when you could keep the whales from going extinct.

In these case the hornet was the Hornet and the whales was humanity at a large. Or maybe the Covenant dropships. In which case it was a bad metaphor in the first place. A more appropriate one would be comparing killing a baby cub when you could get the lion.

Maybe animal metaphors weren't the way to go here.

"Shit, shit, shit!"

The pilot banked hard, dodging a bright green fuel rod. I saw the explosive curve upwards to chase us, but its detonation was strong enough to send pieces of housing flying my way. I jerked backwards as bricks hit me in the chest, making me lose grip of my rifle. I managed to snag it with my legs, but another sharp turn and the rifle was gone.

"Fuck!" I cursed.

"You ok, El-tee?" Pitcher asked.

"I'm fine," I said, starting to feel the bruise form in my chest.

"Hold on!" the pilot shouted loudly. The Hornet twisted yet another time and I was almost ripped from it. I could certainly feel the effect on my organs and thanked God for my armor. A turn like that could've liquefied my organs.

We started climbing up way faster than I thought would've been possible for a Hornet. It was easy to forget how fast these VTOLs could go when they looked so damn ugly. The cars started getting smaller and smaller, but the size of the Banshee remained constant. The bolts that it fired got bigger and bigger before they flew past us. The pilot was doing an excellent job.

It was not enough.

Two consecutive bolts hit the right rotor right above me. I turned my head as pieces of molten metal flew my way. The Hornet sputtered and slowed down, giving the Banshee the opportunity to hit us a few more times, damaging the rear armor and port of the Hornet. I toyed with the idea of jumping and landing on the Banshee, but before my brain dismissed that as a complete idiocy the Banshee had sped past us and the cars were no longer getting smaller. Quite the opposite in fact.

"Lost power on right side," the pilot announced, his voice no longer panicky. He knew exactly what was going to happen and wanted to give us the best chance.

"No thrust on the rear. Left rotor is in fine working order."

The Hornet spun completely around and we flipped several times before we managed to stabilize the position of the craft so that the bottom was facing down.

"I'm slowing down as much as possible," he informed calmly. "Losing altitude, I'm redirecting energy to the rear turbine."

We were falling too fast. Even with the left rotor working to spin us down bottom first. If he managed to activate the rear engine then we would start moving forward and slow down our fall just enough. The pilot would slam into a building twice as fast, but Pitcher and me would be able to be launched forward. If we compressed into a ball our armor would provide a small chance for us to survive the impact.

Small being the key word. Small is being generous. Small was optimistic.

"Impact in ten."

I undid the cable that was securing me to the Hornet.

"Five!"

Well, not everybody can stay calm in the face of imminent death. I'd have to make sure I found out what his name was if I made it. Write a letter to his mother.

The Hornet burst forward violently as the rear turbine finally started working. The front of the Hornet hit the top of a rooftop, flipping it forward. I held on as hard as I could, but the combined forces of gravity and my own muscle strength tore the handhold from its hinges. I briefly thought it very improper engineering before I saw another rooftop fly at me an alarming speed. I hit it hard, bounced and hit it hard again.

* * *

><p><em>Thanks to <strong>Colonel-Commissar2468<strong> and General **TheDyingTitan** for proofreading this chapter._

_Ah, he's fine. You all know it._

_The delay in posting time was largely due to my incredibly bad decision to leave all my college essays for this month. I've been insanely busy with applications and only just managed to squeeze this chapter in a couple of weeks. It's been the longest in between updates for a pretty long time. I usually get to warn you guys before I do something like this or am on vacation without any internet. I think that using my future as an excuse is still pretty valid though. Other personal stuff about me that you're not interested in: I broke things off with my "girlfriend" but it doesn't matter cause another girl expressed her interest in my body and we're going out. Fucking coach cut me from the basketball team and I am trying to be as objective as possible here, but he didn't do it because the other players were more skilled. I've been hitting the gym though... yeah, I try not to be that douche that brags about it, but sometimes you can't help it._

_Questions that need answering: Lavanya, Katie, and Amber weren't in New Alexandria, they are in Esztergom, a different city in Reach, so they didn't evacuate with the ships that we see in the game. Any other doubts as to timeline? No? Great._

**_ravemonster:_**_ happy belated birthday, hope it was a great one. I don't condone the use of drugs, except yes. Hope it was good._

_To everyone else, my sincerest apologies for the delay, but you can expect another similar delay after this one. Enjoy the holidays, spend time with your families, masturbate vigorously, and be happy. If you're from a place that doesn't have Christmas vacations then I still wish you an incredibly awesome few days. Unless you're from the Galapagos. Fuck the Galapagos. If I don't make it in time: Happy New Year!_

_Stay strong._

_-casquis_


	208. Solo

Chapter CCVIII: Solo

**August 25, 2552 (UNSC Calendar)/**

**Esztergom (Ezhtergom), Viery Territory, Reach, Epsilon Eridani System**

* * *

><p><em>"Dei Einsamkeit ist Noth; doch sei nur nicht gemein; so kannst du überall in einer Wüste sein."– Angelus Silesius<em>

* * *

><p><em>Why am I still alive?<em>

"Are you really bitching about that?"

"Yes…"

I rolled from my side so that I was belly-down and groaned as the pain became marginally less incapacitating. I opened my eyes and saw cold grey rooftop greeting me. I hadn't hit my head particularly hard, even if the throbbing in my skull argued otherwise. I could clearly remember crashing hard into the building two times before being knocked unconscious.

I groaned.

"Come on Frank."

The Hornet pilot was certainly dead. Pitcher, however…

"Shit," I said, pushing myself up slightly and then locking my elbows. I felt like I wanted to throw up.

I couldn't hold my own weight for too long so I rolled and sat down, leaning against the short protective wall that I had slammed into some time ago. I looked at the mission clock on my helmet before looking at the one in my wrist tacpad. I had been out for at least eight hours. No one had tried to contact me for that time, which could mean one of several things. The Banshees could've gotten to all of them, something that I didn't want to consider right now or my helmet's radio wasn't working. A few quick tests revealed that it was the latter.

I breathed with relief. At least there was a chance that they were still alive.

Banshees screamed overhead and an explosion rocked the small building.

"Come on, Frank. Where are we?" Schitzo asked, helping me up to my feet.

I turned around, looking over the edge of the rooftop as my back screamed with pain.

"Residential area…" I began, willing the black spots in my vision to go away. "Looks familiar. Shit, I'm just a few blocks away from the Grenadier."

"Pavel's place is not too far off either," Schizo reminded me.

"Yes, that's right," I agreed.

I saw two Sprits disappear below the short residential buildings about a kilometer in front of me and ducked. My rifle was completely and utterly gone. I reached behind my back and pulled out the small shotgun. I winced as I realized that the weapon had been cutting into my skin. The impact must've been hard if the shotgun had bent the armor in my back through the undersuit. I sighed as I looked at the ruined weapon. It would be all but useless. A brick would be more lethal than the short weapon. I then drew the pistol-shaped grenade launcher and smiled when I saw it was in fine working order. I had only three shots for the weapon, but it would be a world of help if I had to get past light or armored vehicles.

"A grenade launcher and your pistol," Schitzo sighed. "If this was a videogame it would probably be the worst possible combination of weapons."

"Shut up," I said.

I slowly moved around the rooftop until I found the spot where the Hornet had crashed. The craft was embedded into a building. Well, what was left of the Hornet, at least. I could tell that the fuel cells had detonated some time ago, sending pieces of metal flying far away from the main wreck. I carefully calculated the trajectory that Pitcher would've followed if he had jumped a few moments before impact. I didn't have to look too hard to find him.

"Shit."

"He might still be alive," Schitzo said. "We have to move now, you might as well check."

A few painful minutes later I knelt next to Pitcher's unmoving body. It didn't take an expert to tell that he was dead. His left leg was bent completely in the wrong side and his right arm had been broken under his body. I looked up and tried to see if I could find the place where he had first hit the building, but the polycrete façade showed no signs of damage. I shook my head slowly and flipped his body around. Thankfully, his visor was polarized. I lifted the helmet slightly and reached into his neck, jerking the dogtags free from it.

PFC Oscar Almasi, Pitcher. 67435-10007 OA.

Another one to add to the list…

I pocketed the dogtags and flipped Pitcher again. His rifle was nowhere to be found and he didn't have anything of value on him. I briefly wondered where all his grenades had gone before I stood back up, my back complaining all the way. I had my pistol with just two spare magazines, a single fragmentation grenade, and three high-tech AP launcher grenades. It was really the worst combination of weapons I could've asked for.

"Gotta keep moving, Francisco," Schitzo reminded me. "Just a few blocks."

"Right," I agreed. "The Grenadier is the first stop."

I started moving, slowly at first. My back was in horrible pain, but thankfully my legs were well enough to walk. I kept wondering why exactly I had survived. I knew I hit the rooftop at a steep angle that dispersed most of the force in a way that didn't burst my insides. The second impact had been harder. In the movies you always see the guy being punched through the wall only to come back up through the hole. I admit that it's a very entertaining image, but in real life if you're thrown that hard against a wall the wall will always win. Polycrete is one of the hardest materials known to man, strong enough to build several miles up if need be and to take Covenant artillery with little complaining.

My back armor was made of a material that was certainly harder than polycrete, even if the modified titanium did have a slightly lower boiling point, but that's not the point. My armor and undersuit were designed to absorb impacts and they did a fine job of it, but no self-respecting human being would claim that it could absorb the impact of a high-speed collision caused by jumping off a moving Hornet.

"Maybe we were moving a bit slower than we think," Schitzo said.

"Yeah," I agreed, stopping near a corner, "but so was Pitcher."

"He fell eight stories after hitting the polycrete head on, we bounced off the roof."

"How many times am I gonna have to owe my survival to those fucking labcoats?"

"As many as it takes," Schitzo grunted, sharing my distaste for the scientists that had changed me, and by extension, created him.

I walked two blocks without further incident and took cover behind a small car, drawing my pistol as I heard the familiar screeching of jackals.

"What do you think happened to your back?" Schitzo asked.

"Not sure. I know I hit the wall hard enough to get some fractures. Probably a small one if I can walk."

"It's always small fractures with you," Schitzo noted.

"You can thank my bones for that. Anyways, I don't think any nerves were compressed, otherwise… well. I would be writhing in agony back in that rooftop."

"You do realize that the treatment for spinal fractures without nerve compression still requires immobilization of the patient?"

"Yes, I know everything you do."

Schitzo laughed, it was so loud that I feared the jackals would hear it. "Right. You'd be surprised at the amount of knowledge I posses that you don't."

"What?"

Schitzo was gone.

I shook my head and waited for a small patrol of jackals and grunts to move in front of me. They seemed jumpy. I wondered if they had originally had an elite with them. If they did, it would probably explain their jumpiness. As they crossed the street not twenty meters from my hiding spot I prepared for the worst. In the end none of them spotted me and they disappeared on the other side of the street. I gave them five seconds before I moved on.

The neighborhood was not in terribly bad shape. It looked abandoned, which it had been for a long time, and like it had experienced small-scale urban warfare. Occasionally I would come across something more telling, like a massive crater that had taken out a whole intersection or half a building. I ignored the sight of familiar buildings plagued by gunfire and instead soldiered on, every step making my whole body shake and my back burn with pain.

"Just a bit more," I told myself.

Two more blocks was all I needed. Once I was inside the Grenadier I could grab Montgomery's shotgun and maybe see if he kept other stuff in there. Knowing the guy, it was probably the case. What I needed the most was painkillers, I had already taken a few myself, but my supply was low and wouldn't last forever.

I stopped when I remembered something.

"Med station," I muttered.

It was a small detour. Only a block. The station would scan me, tell me what was wrong with me, recommend a course of action, and medicate me as best as it could. I sighed as I began moving to the small station. It looked like one of those old ATMs that they had in some of the outer colonies and older neighborhoods, except bigger.

"Welcome," the station said as soon as I stepped close to it. "First Lieutenant Francisco Castillo."

"Scan," I said.

"You appear to have a hairline fracture in your lumbar vertebrae," it said almost immediately. "The recommended course of action is to go to the neares-"

"Just medicate me," I told it. I groaned, the city's AI was probably busy with other matters and hadn't been able to update the stations on the situation in the city.

"Superintendent, if you can hear me, I need something to keep going."

"Please stay still," the station said.

It extended two robotic arms, one of which clamped my arm and injected something into it through the undersuit and the other simply went around and pierced the skin covering my spine before injecting something into the bone itself. I stiffened with pain, but a third arm clamped my waist, keeping me from falling down. I went through five seconds of silent agony before the needle left my back.

"Puta madre," I breathed deeply. "Fuck."

The first arm came back out again and injected something else.

"Thank you for your patience," the station said. "The nearest hospital is-"

"Thanks," I dismissed it, moving back in the direction I had been headed.

The Grenadier was pretty much intact, with the only damage to it being a small crack in the front wall. I examined the crack from a distance before I saw a brute's corpse in the entrance. I frowned and raised my pistol, keeping it trained on the brute for a few moments before I began looking for other threats. I slowly approached the dead brute with no sign of other covvies before I reached the door.

I looked down at the brute, it had a massive hole through its chest, as if someone had punched through it. I wondered what could've caused the injury, it was way too big to be from a shotgun and a Spartan would've just shot the brute. On the opposite side of the grenadier was a broken display window, but that was about it.

I shrugged it off and walked inside.

"Get on the fucking ground!"

I aimed at the voice and almost found myself shooting Montgomery through the eyes.

"Captain, it's me," I told him. "Frank."

"Frank? Goddamn, what the hell are you doing here?"

"Hornet accident," I replied, closing the door behind me and moving towards him. "What the hell happened to that brute?"

Montgomery put down his shotgun and gestured at an empty metal tube with wooden parts. I recognized it as one of the incredibly old RPG-7s that hung over the wall behind the bar. I raised an eyebrow as I took that little piece of information in, I wouldn't have thought that the relic of times past would be in working order. Sure, it looked pretty handy back there, but you wouldn't expect an ornamental sword to be sharp enough to cleave a limb.

"Damn, must've been an interesting sight."

"Gory, more like," Montgomery corrected. "Um… Frank, you wouldn't happen to have any biofoam on you?"

"What happened?" I asked, my face immediately growing into one of concern.

"Well, let's say that the brute managed to get the first shot off. I got nicked."

I approached him and saw that the floor behind his little barricade of tables and stools was covered with blood. He had bandaged his leg with what appeared to be an apron, but the blood was still coming through. It seemed like a spike or needle had gone completely through the leg.

"Shit. Don't you have a first aid kit?"

He shook his head. "We used it on Lys."

I cursed. She was my favorite waitress and one of my only friends outside the military. "What happened?"

"She came here with her husband to find temporary shelter, some of the regulars were here already. The covvies didn't like that, so they tried to storm the place."

"I didn't see any bodies," I noted.

"We didn't get any, none of us had any real weaponry. Still, we pushed them back."

"Where's the rest?"

"Three guys didn't make it," Montgomery said. "They're in the back."

"Anyone I know?"

"Not anybody you were close with," he told me. "We were preparing to leave, move our wounded. One of the guys opened the door and a brute is standing right there. It shot at me, but rocket beats needle every time."

"And you told them to leave you here."

"Damn right."

I smiled despite myself. Montgomery was one tough son of a bitch.

"There's a med station just a block away," I told him. "They could stop the bleeding there."

"Alright," Montgomery nodded. He'd obviously thought about it before. "Can you carry me?"

"Of course," I told him. "Do you have any weapons here?"

"Not anymore. The guys took all the good ones and the bad ones. They even got the…"

"Cap, you there?"

"Sorry, I'm a bit tired…"

"It's the blood loss," I said, putting him on his feet. "I'm going to sling you over my shoulder, ok?"

"Ok," he said. "Want me to carry the shotgun?"

"Sure," I said. "I can hardly aim and fire a long barreled weapon with your fat ass over my head."

Montgomery chuckled half heartedly, but I could tell that the life was draining out of him and fast.

"Come on," I urged, walking out the door. "Try to hold on a bit more."

"I'm fine, Frank," he assured me.

I jogged in silence, but his weight was killing my back, even with the strong painkillers and the injections I could feel every step right in the vertebrae that had been fractured. I moved as fast as I could, but I had to stop once to regain my breath.

"You're hurt, aren't you?" Montgomery asked lazily. "I saw it the moment you limped through my door."

"I'm alright," I told him. "I'll survive."

"Son, I can tell you're hurting."

I laughed. "You always could."

"I own a bar, it's my job."

"Come on Cap, just a little bit more."

"Alright."

I slowly walked towards the station with Montgomery on my back. At first I feared that he wouldn't even make it there, but the blood loss wasn't that severe yet. He had certainly lost more than most people would be willing to give under any circumstances, but he could still survive a bit longer. The station would administer biofoam and perhaps even provide him with a pint of blood.

"Here we are," I said, setting him down. "Station, scan."

"Scanning."

I waited a second for the station to extend its arms towards Montgomery.

"Captain Roy Montgomery, Retired. You have a-"

The machine went quiet when two plasma bolts hit it, making the screen go dark and producing some smoke from it. I cursed and ducked, turning around to see two brutes with red plasma rifles. I aimed at the closest one and hit it two times in the head, both in the piece of metal that passed for a helmet. The other brute turned its attention towards me as I put as much distance between Montgomery and myself as possible.

The Captain propped his shotgun up on his good leg and blasted it into the brute I had dazed, drawing the ire of the other one. He got a bolt in the gut for his trouble, but managed to fire a second blast that knocked the brute to the ground, where a few bullets from my pistol finished it off. I aimed at the alley that they came from and started moving across the street.

"Stay there!"

"I'm in no hurry," Montgomery replied weakly.

I ran across the street and fired as I saw grunts try to scurry away. There was no cover for them in the confined alley. Three grunts fell before I had to reload. By the time I was ready to fire again the fourth grunt had turned the corner.

"Fuck."

I ran back to Montgomery and cursed when I saw that he could no longer hold himself up.

"Shit, Cap. Can you hear me?"

He moaned.

"Captain, stay up!"

I jumped to my feet and grabbed one of the arms of the station. I started pulling, trying to tear the arm off and get to the biofoam inside so that I could administer to Montgomery. I pulled and pulled, but the stations had been designed with this in mind, not any common criminal could smash it and steal pricy meds. I cursed at the designers, but there was nothing I could do.

"There should be another one just a few blocks-"

Montgomery dismissed me lazily with a wave of his hand.

"I'm dead, son. They killed me."

"Not yet, Cap."

"It's too late, son. I can feel it. I can hear them calling to me."

"Well, tell them to wait, cause I sure as hell won't let you die, not after everything you did for me."

Montgomery chuckled. "It's bright."

"That's just chemical reactions, Cap."

"Maybe, maybe not," he said. "I never thought I would go to heaven… not after all I did."

His words were getting softer by the second.

"Cap… shit… Your bar was always my favorite."

"I thought it had something to do with Lys."

I smiled. "It was all you, Cap."

"Maybe I'll see her there… I hope not. Anyone you want me to say hello to?"

"A whole lot of people, Cap," I said, but he was already dead.

"Shit," Schitzo spat.

I sighed and got up before punching the station's screen as hard as I could. The glass broke and smoke came out. My knuckles felt like they had burst, it was enough to numb the non-physical pain somewhat. I looked down at Montgomery and confirmed that he was dead before looking at his shotgun. It wasn't a military model and didn't use the same shells that the M90 or my small shotgun used, so it was useless for me.

"Ah fuck," I grunted as I saw him.

I closed his eyes and fixed him a little bit, straightening him up against the wall next to the med station and crossing the shotgun across his chest. He looked almost peaceful in that position, especially with the shotgun covering most of the blood in his stomach. His leg would remain bloody no matter what, but at least he didn't look like just another dead man.

"It was a pleasure, Cap."

Schitzo shook his head. "We have to keep moving. Pavel's is the next stop."

I nodded, saluting Montgomery's corpse before moving on.

It was hard leaving him behind like that. Montgomery had been there for me almost as often as Pavel. He was a great man, helping out anybody that walked through his doors. I don't know why he had taken a liking to me, we both knew damn well that I was an asshole. Lys had also been there more times than I could count and now she could be dead as well. I shook my head slightly as I moved. Her dead wasn't something that I wanted to picture. Montgomery's dead eyes were seared into my memory forever, but I could avoid having her pretty face etched into my head. There were already too many faces there, most of which didn't have names that I could attach to.

"Come on," Schitzo said calmly. "Focus."

I nodded and kept on walking. I now had just two magazines for my pistol. It might be enough to take two brutes, three if I got enough headshots through. I made sure to keep my eyes peeled and my head moving. Anything could pop out of a window or a door and bite me in the ass.

A familiar humming droned on my ears and I stifled a curse as I felt more than heard the swarm of drones approaching. The humming became louder and louder, but before I saw the first of the bugs come I jumped inside a large trash can, coming down on cans and leftovers. It smelt like shit.

"Oh well," Schitzo said with a shrug.

The buzzing was magnified by the metal encasing me, but it got quieter and quieter soon enough. I gave it a minute before coming out and then carefully opened the lid. Since I saw nothing I finally climbed out, keeping my gun out. It wasn't until I had one of my legs hanging out that a brute and two jackals walked around the alley corner, less than ten feet away from me. I raised my pistol just as the jackals activated their shields.

Something caught my other leg as I tried to climb out, making me fall on my face and saving my life. Spikes and plasma embedded themselves behind me. From my position in the floor I emptied my magazine on the brute and then the shields when it ducked. The barrage kept them from firing back and bought me enough time to start running. I slid my last magazine into the pistol just as they began firing back, but by that point I was already safely behind another similar trash container.

"Suppressing fire!" I shouted, hoping for the aliens to understand what I was saying.

Their fire did diminish a little bit, by coincidence or not. I popped from cover and drilled the lead jackal with five shots. Two to the exposed arm and three to the chest to finish it off. The other bird quickly crouched behind its shield as the brute tossed a spike grenade my way.

I grabbed the bat-sized explosive and threw it back, aiming at the space above the two aliens. The spike grenade detonated above the jackal, but the angle sent all the shrapnel directly into its raised shield. I emptied what I had left on my pistol trying to take it out, but it got its shield back down before I could go for a center mass shot. I did manage to hit it twice in the right leg and once in the left, effectively removing it from the equation.

That left the brute.

I ran.

The brute ran after me.

It was faster than I was, even with my bursts of speed. I managed to stay in front of it for a few seconds before I heard its heavy footsteps right behind me. Its own biological need for violence gave me the chance to fight it in close quarters, giving me an opportunity to survive. For most humans fighting a brute up close was as good as a dead sentence unless you had it outnumbered four to one, but for me it was just another Friday. The brute didn't realize what it had walked into until it was too late.

I stabbed it twice before I realized what I had gotten myself into.

The Covenant consists of several races and sometimes it is easy to generalize them. Grunts are cannon fodder, jackals are crafty scouts and sharpshooters, elites are excellent fighters if a bit too "honorable," brutes are powerful and violent, drones are an annoyance, and hunters are… well, hunters.

This brute didn't look any different. It was half again as tall as I was and twice as thick. It's arms were perhaps as thick around as my torso was and it could crush my skull with relatively little effort. Again, nothing out of the usual.

It wasn't until the alien punched me into a car with speed that seemed to betray its size that I realized this particular specimen was what you would call versed in martial arts.

"Ah shit."

I rolled out of the car before the brute could bring down its ham-sized fists over my head. The car's hood bent inwards from the impact, angering the brute. I took as deep a breath as I could manage, but the alien had hit me hard enough to knock the wind out of me. I gripped my knife tightly and reversed the grip as I took four quick steps backward, escaping the brute's range.

The alien appeared a bit thicker around the shoulders and neck than most other brutes, even if that seemed like a physiological impossibility. I groaned in annoyance as it adopted the closest thing to a stance I had ever seen a brute take. It wasted no time, however, because a moment later it was moving towards me, dishing out incredibly fast punches that I could only duck or bob underneath. With every chance I got I slashed at its arms, but the brute was too fast for me to do any serious damage. I kept trying to draw my grenade launcher, but the brute's assault was too violent. A single moment could cost me my life.

So I moved with it, slowly shuffling my feet as it punched and punched. I was thankful the brute didn't kick, because avoiding those would've been way harder and impossible to block. It went on for perhaps twenty seconds before I found my opening. The brute threw a particularly powerful punch. Its arm was overextended for the briefest of instants, but it was enough for me to punch my knife almost completely through, embedding it all the way to the hilt.

The brute roared, but it was already dead.

I kicked at its knee, buckling it enough for a follow-up kick stomp to bring the brute down to its knees. I drew my smaller knife from my chest and brought it down on its neck. I growled angrily when the wounded alien managed to grab my hands and block the attack. I used my considerable strength to wrestle the knife closer and then added my second hand, forcing the brute to do the same. It growled at me and its jaws snapped violently, echoing my own contorted face. I huffed and used my whole upper body to get the knife through.

I was stronger than any human being not a Spartan, but the brute was still a brute. In a contest of strength I had no chance, and this time was no different. I held my ground briefly, but the brute simply threw me backwards after a few tense moments. I was counting on this, however, and rolled backwards as I landed, reaching for the grenade launcher slung across my torso. With one swift motion I drew the weapon and aimed at the brute as it clumsily jumped at me. The sound of the rocket-assisted grenade was drowned by the sickly squelch of the device entering the brute's body. The grenade was designed to punch through tank armor. Brute flesh, muscular or otherwise, was no contest. The brute suddenly found itself missing a sizeable piece of stomach and the grenade flew on, slamming into a building at the end of the street, some ninety meters from our position.

The brute looked down at the gaping hole in its belly and then at me before it fell, its guts already spilling out.

"Close, but no cigar," I told it before I stomped its face against the curb five times in quick succession.

"I would've said something else," Schitzo interjected. "Perhaps something relating to its lack of belly. You didn't have the guts!"

I rolled my eyes, but I had to admit that a corny one-liner like that would've been pretty funny.

I managed to make it the rest of the way to Pavel's without any further inconvenience. I hopped over the small fence surrounding the short building and walked through the open door. It didn't look like any covvies had been here, more like someone had forgotten to close the door behind them. That seemed unusual, Pavel had been here a couple of times after this neighborhood was evacuated, to feed his dog and sleep. Maybe he had been the one to forget the door.

_Maybe he left it open to give Gunny a chance to escape…_

Yeah, that was a possibility.

Still, I kept my left hand on my knife and held the grenade launcher on my right. I didn't want to have to fire indoors. Well, technically the device wouldn't explode unless it had gone more than five meters, but it would pierce the first couple of walls and then detonate against the outer polycrete façade, collapsing a sizeable portion of the building.

I climbed to Pavel's floor and reached his door. It was closed. I slowly opened it after tapping in the security code.

"Gunny?"

Soon enough I heard the sound of dog paws on hardwood floors and saw the Australian Sheppard jogging towards me with its tongue hanging out and its tail waggling behind it. The whole world was collapsing and this dog was happy to see somebody. It sniffed around at the blood on my boot before looking up at me and sitting back down in an almost comical fashion before tilting its head.

"It's me, Gunny," I told the dog, taking off my helmet. "You wouldn't happen to know where Pavel keeps that incredibly expensive shotgun I got him?"

There was no answer.

_Of course there wasn't an answer, it's a fucking dog._

I sighed and threw the helmet on the couch before walking inside. Pavel's bedroom was the obvious answer. The bed was unmade, something which caught my attention. Pavel usually made his bunk whenever we were in the _Inconvenience, Flawless, _and lately in the _Camerone_. I certainly didn't make him do it, but still he did. Maybe he had just wanted a break from the military way of life, I sure did feel like one.

I opened the drawers on both sides of the bed to no avail, but I was surprised that no dildos or fuzzy handcuffs came out. After that I trashed the closet, paying no mind to where the things landed. Behind me I could feel Gunny's eyes peering into me, but paid the dog no mind. It knew I was a friend. I eventually came into a small safe. It was a bit small, but big enough to fit Pavel's shotgun in its collapsible mode. I sighed as I looked at the keypad. I knew for sure that my DNA or thumbprints hadn't been programmed into this thing.

"Lavanya's birthday?" I asked the dog.

I shrugged and clicked the numbers 08/06/44. The light beeped red. I then switched to the more unconventional month-day-year method, but got no result. I wondered whether he had bought this safe before or after he had his kid. The next obvious combination was the date of his wedding, but that drew red lights too. I tried his birthday and then Amber's, but that got me nowhere.

My own birthday got flashing red lights.

I paced from one end of the room to the other, ignoring Gunny's piercing eyes.

"Eleven…" I muttered. "Oh-two… thirty-five." Seventeen years ago, the day I found him dying on the ground of Camp Afghan, where I had lived for so many years.

The lights beeped green and the safe door opened.

"Pavel, you'll never hear the end of this," I said to myself, sporting a big grin.

Sure enough, the safe had the ACS I got him in its collapsible form. I grabbed the weapon and extended it, watching with small wonderment as its pieces folded and moved to reveal a moderately long weapon. Its stock consisted of a small shock pad that was connected to the main body of the gun by two narrow tubes. Everything else was simply skeletal looking, but the body itself was pretty angular and the top came down on the bottom, encasing it almost completely when in its portable form.

I smiled at the weight of the gun.

"Bingo, am I right, Gunny?"

The dog was no longer in the room.

I shrugged. "Oh well."

The safe also contained three circular magazines, all of them full of very expensive shells. I examined one of them and shook my head when I saw that the pellets themselves were explosive, designed to detonate upon impact but only when they had gone more than fifteen meters. This feature would allow me to ricochet the pellets off floors and walls before they started exploding and killing stuff. Very useful indeed.

I slapped one of the magazines into the front of the ACS, trying to get a feel for the unusual magazine-in-the-front configuration that the shotgun had. The only other weapon I knew that was designed like that was the SRS and the machine guns. All other small arms were usually in the bullpup configuration.

"Alright then," I said, hefting the shotgun. "I feel better already."

Gunny was back in the room, looking at me with one of those ropes that you're supposed to try and yank from them. I smiled and played tug-of-war with it for a while before letting it win. Instead I moved to the kitchen, sighing when I saw all the cabinets were empty. The tap still produced some water, enough to fill my canteen. I looked in vain for something that could help me contact my team, but the phones were dead and Amber had taken all the radios at Pavel's instruction. Good for her and her daughter, but not so good for me.

"You've got enough food, Gunny?"

I walked with the dog to its designated sleeping place and saw that it did indeed have enough food. A dozen bags of dog food were all piled up in neat rows with small tears in them. Small enough that the food wouldn't pile out but big enough that Gunny could tear them to get to the nutritious and tasty meal advertised in the bags.

"I'll take that as a yes," I said, petting the dog's ears.

I wondered what I should do about it. If I left the door closed it would survive for a couple of months on the dog food alone. Pavel had made sure to fill the bathtub with water and left the door open so that Gunny could access it. Most of the dog shit was neatly piled in the corner of the kitchen, but the rest of the apartment was beginning to smell like piss.

The dog would survive for a couple of months, but I was no longer so confident that we were winning this fight. New Alexandria had proved otherwise.

If I opened the door it would escape, but it would escape to a warzone that could potentially become glasslands soon.

I moved towards the door and frowned.

"I'm going to leave this open for you, alright?" I told him. "Don't leave until you run out of food, do you understand me?"  
>It barked.<p>

"Of course you don't you're a dog."

It barked again.

I frowned.

It barked again and kept on doing it.

"What's got you all-"

I ducked instinctively as the building shook. Something had exploded pretty close to us. From the sound of the explosion I figured it had been plasma from the particular hiss that followed immediately after. Gunny started whining quietly and only stopped after I petted it between the ears. I shushed it and moved towards my helmet, grabbing Pavel's ACS and extending it once again. I could hear the humming of Covenant dropships nearby. I began moving towards the door when another explosion sent me to the ground. This one tore a large chunk of the outer walls off, exposing the apartment to the exterior. I turned around to see the rear end of a Spirit and began moving towards the door.

Gunny raced past me, climbing down the stairs and disappearing as the Spirit fired follow-up blasts. I cursed at my impotence, but there wasn't much I could do, especially considering my limited weaponry and complete and utter lack of allies in the area. I ran down the stairs as fast as possible, trying to get Gunny's fate to go away from my mind. Once I left I managed to catch sight of the dog's tail disappear right around the corner. I allowed me a small sigh of relief.

The Spirit hovered overhead and opened its right side hatch doors. Three brutes jumped out before a missile hit the ship, tearing the three main sections apart and sending it to the ground. I found myself running away from the wreck, only narrowly avoiding being crushed to death by a pile of alien metal.

"Fuck!"

The three brutes in question heard my curse and immediately began giving chase over the remains of their dropship, but they weren't counting on the ACS-37. I aimed and fired. The brutes could've survived one shotgun shell each, buying each other time to fire at me and maybe wound me, but I didn't let go of the trigger as I burned through nearly half the drum magazine's ammo, leaving the torsos of the brutes unrecognizable messes.

"Pavel, why the hell don't you use this?" I asked myself.

I didn't have time to ponder that more, because more Spirits hummed overhead, heading towards the airport, a few miles away. I began giving chase to them, settling into a quick trot, but I hadn't gone more than a block when the dropships began exploding. I hollered, but then I realized that the rest of the Spirits were slowing down to set their troops down here instead of exposing themselves to the UNSC's formidable air defenses.

I looked behind me to see more dropships setting whole platoons down behind me. I ducked into a side street as the closest squad opened fire on me and then threw myself to the ground as a rain of artillery fire began coming down on me. Some of the shells hit the dropships, but the whole neighborhood was just about leveled in a matter of minutes. I crawled into a crater in the middle of the street and hugged my legs tightly, hoping that nothing explosive would land inside the crater. The barrage went on for just another minute or so, but the shrapnel and high-explosive shells tore through everything. I was almost crushed when a car was sent up into the air and came down on the crater, only stopping when the edges prevented it from going any further.

Then, on top of everything, it began to rain.

_It never rains, but it pours…_

The bottom of the crater turned into a nice muddy pile by the time I climbed out. When I popped over the edge of the hole I was shocked. This neighborhood had been the epicenter of my activities in Esztergom for years. Pavel's house was here, the Grenadier was here, my various temporary apartments had usually been in this area. Now the whole thing was reduced to giant piles of rubble and a few skeletal remains of the shorter buildings.

Before I could give it further thought I heard Pelican engines. I tried to catch a glimpse of the ship in question, but before I could see it I heard the sound of fuel rod cannons fire and a large explosion.

There were still Covenant in the area. If I had made it through an artillery barrage like that then others could do the same.

I ran towards the sound of the fuel rods and climbed a ten-foot high pile of rubble before coming into a small hollow with a brute and four grunts, all of them unharmed. I promptly changed that and fired two shells at each of them. The second one was largely unnecessary, but this shotgun had a light trigger. With four dead covvies, any additional survivors would know that they weren't alone either. The ACS was effective, but it was also what you would call loud as fuck.

Roars started coming from my left and I tumbled down the debris before running up the other end of the small hollow. I was cutting through a series of buildings and would soon end up back near the Grenadier if I kept going. I cut back near an alley, or at least what had once been an alley, and through the remains of a small apartment building. I had to climb up a pile of debris and out through a window before I came out the other side, rolling into a ball as the rubble gave way under my feet.

I groaned as pain shot up my spine again. I just knew a doctor would yell at me sooner rather than later. Some corner of my mind hoped that it would be Astrid Vinter, if only to confirm that she had survived.

I climbed back to my feet and crossed the street. It was littered with small craters and the remains of two Phantoms as well as several dozen Covenant corpses. I turned around and fired at two jackals giving chase, killing one of them and sending the other one scurrying for cover. The other side of the street was comparably less damaged and I could enter a building at ground level before I had to start climbing through debris once again.

Halfway up I heard growls and shrieks from my right. Another group knew where I was. I cursed and turned away from them, dreading the next street. When I came down from the debris and into the furrow that had once been a street so did the other Covenant squad. I had to duck behind a debris-covered truck and then jump out of the way of a plasma grenade before I was in any position to return fire. The ACS had excellent range, allowing me to score a kill and a hit with three shells. It bought me enough time to bunker down where the buildings had fallen down in a relatively defensible position.

"Ah, funny place to die in, isn't it?" Schitzo asked.

"I'm not going to die here," I told it. Him. Whatever. "Got a nice little field of fire and can fall back to funnel them into my kill range."

"I'm just busting your chops," Schitzo confessed.

"Fuck off."

The hallucination promptly complied and disappeared.

Now it was just me and a couple of angry squads trying to kill me.

I let them approach first. My shotgun could fire faster than a machine gun and the closer they got the deadlier it became. I opened up on the nearest squad when they were twenty meters away, killing the lead brute and two jackals before return fire caused me to dive for cover. I popped up and fired a couple of shots, trying to discourage them from coming to close. I mostly missed, but after about a minute I had tallied two grunt kills. Their numbers were down by a third and I still had two drum magazines to burn through in addition to my grenade launcher.

Things were going according to plan, for once. The brutes sent the grunts forward, making for easy kills. After I had killed a few grunts and a jackal they tried flushing me out with grenades, but the only one that they managed to land behind my cover I easily returned before it detonated. The grunts weren't strong enough to toss the plasma grenades without coming too close.

I was just thankful that they didn't have any sharpshooters amongst them.

"Come on, come on…" I urged one of the brutes.

It read my mind and charged as its compatriot provided the sloppiest covering fire I had had the fortune to witness. I popped up and fired one shot and then ducked for good measure. The brute howled when I hit it, but it didn't die, not immediately at least. I left it there and shifted my position a couple of meters to throw off the other brute squad leader. I looked over cover and saw that the two surviving jackals were moving forward, shields up. Four grunts complemented them, walking behind them with their weapons shaking in their ugly hands. I waited for them to get close and then tossed my only grenade in a perfect arc. The shrapnel took out two of the jackals and one grunt. The other aliens were wounded but quickly fell prey to the automatic shotgun.

That left only a dying brute and one intact specimen.

The last brute got smart. It had seen two squads disappear in a little less than ten minutes. Instead of letting its base urges dominate it and rush me in an attack doomed to fail it instead slinked back behind cover and disappeared. I kept aiming at the portion of wall where it had been firing from, but it never popped back up. After five minutes of no further developments I decided that I had to move. I slowly walked across the street, making as little noise as possible. Once I reached the brute's hiding spot I quickly pivoted and aimed.

The brute was gone.

I immediately turned around, fearing one of those cliché attacks from the back that had no plausible way of actually happening.

There was nothing there.

I sighed and decided that I could afford to let one brute leave. The way things were looking for me I needed to move and do it fast.

The spaceport was far away and hijacking a car was literally impossible. Unless I had Angel's hacking skills I wouldn't be able to get one of the abandoned vehicles to work for me. I could make the distance before the day was over, but it would be dark by the time I got there. Hell, it was already getting darker than I would've liked. I groaned. I had woken up extra early this morning and then spent a large portion of the day crawling around in the highlands. Hell, I don't think I even got the minimum three hours of sleep.

I bitched internally as I moved as stealthily as possible. In truth, the darkness would hide me from prying eyes, but it also meant that Covenant activity would be increased and I would be at a disadvantage, even with my VISR.

The neighborhood had been completely plowed by the artillery barrage, but interestingly enough, the shells had landed mostly amongst the houses. It was easy to forget just how precise artillery was nowadays, but I couldn't help but wonder why they'd bring down only the buildings. I occupied my mind with that question as I weaved through the piles of debris, occasionally going inside the gutted skeleton of what had once been a residential building. I nodded to myself when I realized that the only reason why the UNSC would want to keep the roads intact was if they thought we would get the chance to use them again.

Maybe a counter-attack wasn't coming up right now, but at least it was still a viable option.

On that same vein, the fact that they decided to firebomb a large portion of the city wasn't exactly promising. We might've blown at least a third of our artillery shells in that barrage alone. I, however, kept spotting shredded bits of Covenant bodies and dropships that had been completely wrecked by one or two shots. If we had fired all that metal, then it sure looked like it had been worth it.

I heard rock hitting rocked and ducked, twisting around to aim at the source of the noise. I slowed down my breathing even as my heartbeat raced. The sound came again, this time louder and closer. I tightened the grip on the ACS and exhaled slowly, expecting to see a dazed jackal or a dumb brute climbing out of a small pile of rubble.

I almost shot Gunny as it came out and up to me.

"Shit, dog," I sighed. "You've been following me?"

Once again, I found myself feeling like an idiot for talking to a dog and expecting an answer. Gunny was covered in dust, making him look almost completely grey. I rubbed some of it off its face, holding it by the collar so it wouldn't scurry away. I disliked the idea of having the dog here, if I hadn't seen it after Pavel's place was attacked it would've been a simple matter of convincing myself that it had gotten away. Now that it was here with me I would either make it with it or I would see it die.

I didn't like it when dogs died. I especially didn't like it when a dog I had bought for my best friend died.

"Come on, Gunny. Stay with me."

Pavel had trained this dog exceedingly well. Scratch that, Amber had trained the dog exceedingly well. It stayed by my side and didn't run forward or lag behind. It most certainly didn't dart around and start sniffing at corpses. By no means did I expect the doggy to be a killing machine and save my life, but it was comforting to know that it wouldn't go running into plasma fire because it got over excited.

"Stay," I muttered when I heard plasma fire.

Gunfire was heard in response, but it was only a single MA5 against what had to be three or more plasma rifles. It was too far away for me to do anything about it and I would've had to move away from my route. I was already a third of the way there and already the buildings were less and less damaged. Instead of being piles of rubble with an occasional upright wall they were mostly upright walls with no floors of ceilings.

Talk about improvement.

The gunfire died out.

"Let's move up," I told the dog. "Come."

I realized that I was talking to it much like I did with my actual real men.

"They're not that smart either," I told Gunny, who just raised its head to look at me before going back to its walk.

Gunny and I had a couple of close calls, but I managed to keep the dog quiet as soon as I spotted movement. It made for slow going, but we weren't getting shot at. The more I advanced the more dangerous it got. There were some firefights going on, if you could call them that. Basically they consisted of an unlucky soldier or two getting caught by a larger Covenant squad in the open. This was no-man's-land, everybody was out to get each other, but for some reason they had more survivors here than we did. My guess is that they gave the word for everybody to fall back and regroup.

"So far it's not looking too good," I told the dog.

Gunny sniffed a little before making a sound that seemed close to a sneeze.

"Let's go."

Four blocks and I would stop, I decided. There was a large Walmart up ahead, but what interested me was a small store in front of it that sold what they claimed to be genuine Spanish aged meat. I don't know whether it was genuinely Spanish, but it was sure as hell delicious. It also happened to be owned by an actual Spaniard that had fought in the Catalan secession conflicts. There was bound to be a gun here or there. Those kind of people never failed to be paranoid. It was the reason that I had eight separate pistols in my own house. Katie always hated that. Marina thought it was unnecessary, and Hanna just accepted it.

"Damn," I muttered to myself.

The Walmart was just a hundred meters away and the little Spanish boutique butchery was half that distance away. I tried sniffing, only to slap my visor when I realized that the helmet would dull the smell, especially at this distance. I could usually smell the well-aged meat from blocks away. The guy liked hanging the big-ass legs on the shop front.

Loved the place.

Just one more thing that I would never get to experience ever again.

I sighed and crossed the street with Gunny on my right side.

I heard a whistle.

"Get down!"

The shout was instinctive, but it got the meaning across. Gunny went prone as I ducked. Whatever flew above us sounded like a UNSC shell, but the explosion was more way too big. Either it had been a Daemon or there had been something big where it hit. I twisted my head and saw the bright blue that denoted plasma explosions.

Probably a human shell targeting a known Covenant plasma storage house.

I don't know why I needed to know what was going on, but I had to solve that little mystery before I could react. The explosion sent some debris around me, but it didn't hit me. Gunny whined but stayed where he was. Three brutes appeared from the Spanish meat store, one of them carrying a hammer.

"Shit, go, go!"

The dog got up and all too happily ran with me hot on its tail. The bodyguards fired their spikes at me, but missed by a nice little berth. I followed Gunny into the remains of the destroyed house and hopped over what remained of the walls and into cover. Gunny tried running, but I grabbed its hind leg and pulled it towards me. It would've been a suicide run. The dog was fast, but it couldn't outrun spikes.

"Stay!" I shouted. "Stay!"

The dog yelped and complained, but it curled into a ball.

A stick grenade landed right next to me and beeped once. I cursed and grabbed it by the bottom. I spun once and released it at one of the bodyguards. The explosive slammed into its chest and exploded just as a second grenade landed an inch from Gunny's tail.

"Go!" I urged the dog. "Go, go!"

This time I would make myself a bigger target and hope they didn't hit the dog. I grabbed the grenade and sent it rolling up in the air, where it detonated and sent the sharp spikes into the brutes. The chieftain stopped briefly and the surviving bodyguard covered its head from the high-velocity fragmentation. I raised the ACS and fired all that was left in my magazine into the chieftain, bringing it down to its knees. I hit the magazine release and threw my only grenade at the bodyguard. The explosion tore its right leg completely off and launched jagged pieces of metal into its torso.

I reloaded and moved up towards the chieftain. The brute got itself back to its feet as I raised my shotgun again. It swung its hammer, grabbing it by the very bottom. I had to duck underneath it, surprised by the incredible range the brute managed. Despite the minor setback I did get three quick shots off, hitting the massive alien in the chest and knocking it back down. I moved towards it and fired twice at each wrist before aiming at its head.

Another brute appeared right in front of me, head covered by a helmet with a single eyepiece and dark-colored armor protecting it. I tried raising my shotgun, but the brute stalker kicked it back down and then grabbed me by the chest piece before tossing me at least ten meters back to the wrecked house that I had just used for cover.

I grunted, first in surprise and then in pain. I had seen brutes break men in half and tear arms from bodies without much effort. Those beasts could take a shotgun blast to the face and then punch you hard enough to break your ribs. I don't know why I was that surprised at being tossed a complete football down and into polycrete.

I opened my eyes and looked down at my feet. I had miraculously managed to hang onto my ACS even as the rebar had gone through my torso in between the fourth and fifth ribs from the top.

I breathed in and almost passed out from the pain, but at least my left lung was functional.

I raised my shotgun as much as I could and fired as soon as I saw the stalker's silhouette approach over the top of the short wall. The brute growled but stayed back. I half expected it to try to cloak itself and vault over, only to be exposed to my gunfire as soon as my VISR identified it and outlined it.

No, this brute was at least moderately smart. I had been coming across too many of those recently. I coughed a little bit and almost shat myself when Gunny came up to me and settled down on my left side, putting its nuzzle on my shoulder.

"Come on," I muttered, shifting my body slightly to the side in order to get Gunny to move.

The dog growled lightly and then fixed its position a little bit. For being one of the smartest dogs in existence, I was starting to think it was pretty damn stupid. It was also incredibly sweet.

"You're going to die," I told it. "Run."

Gunny said nothing.

A spike grenade landed to my right, just out of arms reach.

I sighed.

* * *

><p><em>Thanks to <strong>Colonel-Commissar2468<strong> and General **TheDyingTitan** for proofreading this chapter._

_ I'm back bitches. Sorry for the long delay, but life's been hitting me pretty hard. By that I mean that I left all my college applications until the last second and had to write my essays instead of giving you your fix. Again, apologies for the suffering and angst that I may have suffered, but if it makes you feel better, I did have one hell of a kickass vacation._

_Thanks to all of you for your reviews. Keep 'em coming._

_Nice cliffhanger by the way, right? Right? Of course it is. Kind of a dick move to come back after almost a month's absence and decide to give you this shit ending. Worry not, next update will probably be a lot quicker than this one._

_Stay strong._

_-casquis_


	209. Math and Blood

Chapter CCIX: Math and Blood

**August 25, 2552 (UNSC Calendar)/**

**Esztergom (Ezhtergom), Viery Territory, Reach, Epsilon Eridani System**

**Gunnery Sergeant Pavel Klaus**

* * *

><p><em>"As a NCO, people expect you to be an asshole. As an NCO serving directly under a monumental asshole, the pressures of the job become a little too much."<em>

* * *

><p>"I hate it when this happens."<p>

"It happens way too often," Grigori muttered in agreement.

"Longworth, give me something good!" I snapped.

"Nothing, Gunny," he replied. "I can't get through to either of them."

I cursed and kicked an empty can of cola. Some brand called Pepsi or something weird like that. It was just my luck to be in charge of this bunch of conceited, arrogant bastards. Grigori I could work with, Miranda, Andy, and Snark were fine. The rest of the men were just growing to be more and more in love with themselves. Even Bee.

Those bastards.

"Marv, did you get the information?"

"Yes I did, Gunny."

"Do tell," I urged him irritably.

"The Covenant set up a gigantic network of drone jammers. They're hovering over the land that they are holding as well as the contested neighborhoods. Apparently they act as jammers and transmitters. They block us out and keep their conversations safe without need for encryption."

"Why haven't they moved them over here?" Lady asked, crossing her arms.

"We still have some counter measures, but not enough to take down the small fleet that they have unless we wipe the ground with their asses," Marv replied.

Grigori shook his head almost imperceptibly. From the way Marv painted the situation it wouldn't be easy. From what I knew, it would be fucking impossible. The Navy was already punching the Covenant fleet out of the way, but they would come back and there was nothing we could do about the SAMs that they were setting up in the outskirts of the city. The evacuation ships were going out slowly, but they needed our anti-missile batteries for protection while they left the atmosphere. I didn't even know if Amber and Lavanya had made it out yet.

"Fucking Christ…" I muttered.

"So what's the plan?" Bee asked me.

"We stay here and wait for Grass," I replied. "Nothing else we can do."

"What about the lieutenant?" Snark asked, leaning on his rifle.

Tank shifted uncomfortably while Dotsenko rolled his neck around.

"You saw what happened," Lady told him. "We all did."

"We've all seen him come out from worst things," Bee said. "I've seen him cheat death more times than I can count."

"That's true," Snark agreed. "You've only known El-tee for a while. Back in the day we called him Sarge."

"Regardless," Lady went on. "Are we going to try search and rescue?"

I sat down and sighed. Frank was my best friend, but crashing from a Hornet at that speed was nearly impossible to survive. I would've said it was completely impossible, but I knew Frank. He always found a way. This time was different though, he always checked in soon after. It was only a short scare when things like this happened. And they happened too damn often.

"No," I said finally. "There's no use in going to no-man's-land. Command wants to level the whole place, even if Frank made it… They're gonna level my fucking house. My goddamned dog is in there."

"Relax, Gunny," Snark said.

I noticed that he didn't try to convince me that my fucking dog would make it out alive. When the UNSC Artillery Corps were told to bring the pain they made sure to set a new standard for using that phrase. I had seen nice green meadows turned into muddy pits with no trace of grass in little under five minutes. Our artillery could bring down Covenant corvettes or take out an elite field marshal sixty kilometers away with a non-explosive shell. They were damn good and were probably one of the few units that everybody treated with the utmost respect. Unfortunately, it is highly complicated to provide danger close covering fire when in the middle of a high-intensity firefight with anti-personnel shells, which is why we rarely called them in to provide support in that kind of close range scenario.

The fact that the Army kept the corps for their large-scale operations didn't help much either.

"They're beginning in around five minutes," Tank said. "They're only targeting the buildings, right?"

"And making a certain number of holes to keep tanks from coming in," Lady added. "Not exactly apocalypse type scenario, but that whole neighborhood is going down."

I growled.

"It's the only way to stop the Covenant advancing troops in time," Caboose told me, placing his hand on my shoulder. "I know it's your home, but your family is safe. At least you have that."

I nodded and sighed. I hated it when Frank wasn't commanding the unit. I was an angry person, but when I stood next to him I felt like the voice of reason. Well, it was hard to _not_ feel like the voice of reason around this bunch of cerebrally impaired jackasses. Longworth was pacing around, trying to look cool while he did so. Lady somehow managed to give of the impression that she was that hot girl in high school that everybody hated but everybody wanted. Frankly I was a little impressed, she had the attitude down to an art. Everybody else was sitting down or leaning against a wall, but their positions were just a little bit unnatural.

I crossed my arms, trying to ignore the fact that I also instinctively adopted a cool pose. Being in this alpha environment really played havoc with your mind.

"Alright, alright," I relented, stretching my neck and wincing as I heard a particularly loud crack. "Frank is MIA."

"Again," Bumblebee muttered.

"As is Pitcher," I went on. "That leaves us with thirteen on our little squad."

"Not the noblest of numbers," Crow said.

I looked at the man and was thankful for the bandages covering his face. Most of the skin had melted and was now left hanging. The doctors hadn't had time to give him any kind of reconstructive surgery and had only managed to keep the skin from blocking the eyes and nostrils. His mouth was well enough, but I think that he wasn't able to open it completely, explaining his slightly different voice. I hoped that he made it; I would hate to die with a face that wasn't my own.

"There is no chance for any S and R mission, at least for the immediate future. I want everyone with full ammunition loads. Andrea, you're in charge of getting us biofoam and medical supplies, Lady, I want you to get stims and see if you can secure a box of MREs while you're at it."

"Sending the pretty ladies to do the hard work, I see," Miranda said in a perfectly neutral tone.

I rolled my eyes.

"You'll get to do both next time," I assured her.

Women and their inferiority complexes. Of the three women in the squad, Miranda was probably the one that I was most attracted to. She had that slightly dark skin that some Balkans tended to have. I remember a girl from my high school back in Poland…

But I digress, even if both Lady and Andy could've scored perfect tens I only sent them and not Miranda because they could keep eye contact in and be bitches when they needed to. Miranda was just too sweet for her own good.

"Ammunition?" Tank asked, hefting his battle rifle by the stock and stretching his back. Damn, every time I got used to his size I looked at him again and realized just how insanely big the man was. The fact that he was black and had an uncomfortably mean face didn't help much either.

"Ammunition shouldn't be a problem," I told him. "Grass can procure that for us as can Captain Flatt."

"Where are they, by the way?" Dotsenko asked.

I looked at him curiously. He had spoken very little since Ramirez had been killed. A few days ago Sasha had been all smiles and jokes. A great guy to have alongside you in a battle. Now he was just scowls and mutterings. Frankly, it was beginning to annoy me, but Frank specifically told me to let him deal with his pain. It wasn't every day you lost your best friend.

I looked towards my neighborhood, several kilometers away.

If Frank had somehow survived that fucking Hornet crash he would need to be extremely lucky to find reliable cover during the barrage that was to come soon. It pained me, but this was as close to death as Frank had ever been. He had survived far more things than any human being had a right to. My brush with death had come when a jackal sniper fired a beam through my body, but after that I hadn't been in any serious life-threatening circumstances. By that I mean that my injuries were never too severe. Life-threatening circumstances come in my job description.

Frank had been slammed against a tree branch that went through his back, has his back slashed open, received spikes to the back, brute chieftain stomping his chest, that rebar that went millimeters from his femoral artery, and recently he received an energy sword through his left kidney. I knew he had some superhuman shit going on, but I was surprised the man could still function.

I shook my head to myself and sat down on the floor. Frank might be dead, but it was not a sure thing and I could deal with the loss later.

_Shit, I don't want to tell Katie… Or Liz for that matter._

I wondered who would take it worse. Katie loved Frank with all her heart, but Liz had some sort of infatuation with him too. She knew that her older cousin had a very real thing with Frank and would never make a move, but even if there wasn't anything romantic between them I think she still loved him for all he did for them back in Paris IV. I used to think that Frank's girl troubles weren't really troubles since he always had pretty women lining up to give him a nice little fuck or two, but a few years of maturity and seeing the effect that they had on his personal life I decided that I was perfectly fine not being able to talk my way into sleeping with any woman I desired.

The poor man actively encouraged every girl that he came across before some part of him decided that he was being too much of an asshole and stopped, leaving the girl in question confused and angry.

I'm pretty sure that both Andrea and Lady had some serious crush on him at some point.

I scoffed at my own thoughts, drawing a look from Serge and Caboose.

"I don't know where Grass or Flatt are," I said finally. "Flatt should be coordinating whatever is left of the AAG and Grass was working on getting us all a ship in case we have to evacuate."

"We're not leaving, are we?" Lady asked, for once losing her bitchy façade. "I mean, Viery might be a lost cause, and that's a bit of a stretch, but the rest of Reach is still untouched."

I nodded. "That is true, but losing Viery means that the covvies can set up anti-ship cannons, denying us the space above. After that it's only a matter of time. We have to push them out now."

"He's right," Caboose said, rubbing his left thigh. "Viery is too big to afford to lose. They have numbers enough to fight us to a stalemate and their ships are damned hard to kill."

"So we might as well give up then?" Lady pressured him.

"Don't you have something to do?" I asked her. "Andrea, I don't see you moving your ass either."  
>"Sorry Gunny," they both apologized, straightening their backs.<p>

Being in charge had its perks.

I closed my eyes when the artillery guns started firing and did my best to ignore the repeated booms and the distant explosions. Once they finally subsided I allowed myself to open my eyes, knowing that my home and everything in it were gone. I had worked very hard for everything inside my home, it was sad to know that it was all gone. Gunny had been a great dog, too. I would have to thank Frank. Frank was probably dead too. The strike had brought down all the buildings and all the streets had been hit. Either his body was a bunch of bloody ribbons or his limbs were.

Fuck.

"Pavel."

I looked up at Grass and stood up.

"What?"

"Captain Flatt is working on securing us planetary extraction."

"Anything promising?"

She nodded. "Rumor has it that some ship that was supposed to do a secret mission is parked at Aszod. That's one possibility."

"Do I know the ship in question?"

Grass shrugged. "UNSC _Pillar of Autumn._"

I frowned, the name sounded familiar. "Isn't that a _Halcyon_?"

"Yes," she said. "It was re-commissioned in 2550. Flatt couldn't find much more than that."

"Really? I thought she had all sorts of security clearance."

"She does," Grass confirmed. "And so do I, but the operation that the _Autumn _was supposed to perform appears to be all kinds of top secret."

"What's the name of the op?" I asked out of curiosity.

"RED FLAG."

"Nope, doesn't ring a bell," I admitted. "Have you tried asking Team Falcata?"

"They're unavailable right now," she said. "They have them working on the frontlines."

"Those guys don't get tired, do they?"

Grass smiled and shook her head. "Not really. Kind of like Frank, aren't they?"

"More than you know," I told her, smiling to show that I was joking.

Grass held her own smile for a second before she looked in the direction of my neighborhood, the last spot where Frank had been seen alive. I knew she cared for Frank, even after being in different units and her going to a desk job we had all remained good friends. I regretted not keeping in touch with her more often. Reaper had truly been something special.

Most of Reaper was still alive, but it wasn't the same. Whatever magic we had was gone. Sutton's death was the beginning, but the breakup of the group came later. When Angel decided to disappear we finally became something else.

Look at me, reminiscing like an old man. I hadn't even hit forty and I was beginning to think like I was into my eleventh decade of life. No, no, I still had at least eighty more years to go before I became a senile wreck. I was barely done with the first third of my life, I still had at least one decades of being able to school young kids in what it was to be a soldier and a decade more before my body started giving up on me. Modern medicine and technology would keep me a badass motherfucker for as long as possible.

"What's the other option?" I asked her.

"Not an option in particular," Grass said, snapping out of her small trance. "There's another shipyard where two or three frigates are bound to land."

"Kartal?" I asked.

"Yes."

"I didn't know that place was still running."

She shrugged. "Did you know that Kartal is a neighborhood in Budapest that used to be a small town?"

"No Cam," I said. "I didn't know that."

"Well, now you do."

She smiled a little bit, but she was worried. Damn it, I was worried too. I didn't want Frank dying, it was the last thing we needed. If he died then the whole fucking team would collapse. Well, maybe not, but it would be a serious hit to morale. We had all seen him walk on water.

"What's our next step?" I asked.

"Army is taking the brunt of the Covenant charge," she told me. "They're slowing them down and making them pay for it, Marines are moving back and preparing kill zones. The Army guys are ready to fall back quickly and lure the Covenant in before fortifying the inner lines of the city, letting the Marines duke it out for a while. Things are chaotic right now, we have little to no reliable intel and our drones are being shot down at an alarming rate. It's all we can do to keep their drones from invading our airspace."

"So we sit back and wait?"

"Yes," she said. "We both know that your skills are being wasted in a battle like this."

"It's never stopped the brass before," I reminded her.

She rolled her eyes. "Stop bitching."

I laughed. "Once upon a time that would've gotten you night watch duty."

Grass smiled, this time more genuinely. "Once upon a time you were my superior."

"I'm pretty sure that I still am," I reminded her.

Grass smiled and shrugged. She really had a killer smile that one. When Frank first showed me the dossiers of what would become Reaper I had refused to believe that he had picked her out of merit alone. She certainly proved that she could pull weight in any military unit and more. Now she proved that she was probably worth more outside of the battlefield than in it. Cam had an IQ that rivaled that of most geniuses currently alive.

And they had her shooting aliens or running errands.

Well, as far as us simple grunts were concerned.

"Hey, Gunny, think there's a chance we'll get the opportunity to go and see if Gunny or Pitcher made it?" Marv asked.

I looked up at him and then glanced at Grass. "I don't know, kid. You saw how it was."

"Gunny, I'm sure that Marina could drop us off there. El-tee and Pitcher should be either dead relatively close to the Hornet or they are alive," Bee said.

I pursed my lips. "It's dangerous out there."

"That's why we need to hurry up," Marv chimed back in. "If there's any way at all that El-tee is alive then we should get him. He's done the same for all of us."

I sighed and stood up. "Very well then, I'll talk to Marina. The girls should be back with the supplies soon. Marina can drop us off for a quick search op."

"You just said that there was no way we could do search and rescue, do you remember that?" Grigori asked me, leaning on his MA5K to stand up. Despite his words he didn't appear to be complaining much. Everybody loved the El-tee for reasons that still escape me.

The guys were smiling by the time Andy and Lady showed up. When we told her what the plan was they started smiling too. Marina had parked her Pelican next to the rest of our remaining air assets. It was a short walk from our position, a couple of clicks from the spaceport. As I walked I thought for the eleventh time just how lucky we were that city planners made sure to pack all important buildings close together in pre-planned cities. Esztergom had its spaceport, airport, MagLev station as well as government buildings in a very small radius. They had been set up when the city was first built.

I could've done with a full-sized military base to serve as a stronghold, but we'd have to do with the original small outpost that was as old as the city itself.

"Think Marina is going to be up for it?" Bee asked out loud.

"Of course she is," Tank replied. "She owes El-tee."

I snorted. "Marina is the only person that Frank owes to."

"I've saved his life," Longworth noted calmly.

"And how many times has he done the same for you?" Miri asked him.

He shrugged.

"Looks like you owe him," I said.

Snark stopped walking and looked up.

Everybody else followed after him and spread out slightly, preparing their weapons for action. Snark was an amazing sniper, and that meant that he had to have superior senses to most. His sight was amazing, but his hearing didn't lag far behind Frank's bat ears.

"I hear it," Marv said a second later.

The raid sirens started wailing.

"Ah, fuck."

Six Phantoms uncloaked about three hundred meters to our left, hovering above a short building. Triple-A opened up on them with AP ammunition, but the Phantoms were here to drop troops. Several squads of what looked like brutes jumped out as the Phantoms fired wildly at anything they could hit before they were brought down. Five of the dropships were put in the ground before ten seconds had passed, but the brutes had jumped out in time.

"How do they keep doing that?" Snark asked irritably.

"Snark, I want you up top!" I shouted. "Tank, you're on sharpshooter duty with him. Everyone else, on me!"

And just like that we abandoned the mission to find Frank, Pitcher or whatever was left of them.

"Spread out!" I ordered. "Grass, you with us?"

"For old time's sake," she answered.

Grass was clad in a very light armor and had even taken off most of the unnecessary parts. She wouldn't survive a single hit, not to mention the fact that she had no helmet, instead only sporting a small earpiece with a small screen over her left eye. She had an M7 SMG with her, not the deadliest of weapons, but us ODSTs favored it for a reason.

"Grigori, take the west wing!"

"Andy, Longworth, Dotsenko, Serge, Crow! On me!"

I was left with Lady, Miri, Marv, Bee and Grass and we broke off to the left. Already there was some heavy gunfire coming from inside the building, letting us know that we hadn't been caught completely unawares. Our first order of business would be to clear this building as fast as possible and prevent it from being used as a beachhead. Grass was frantically yelling into her mouthpiece, trying to get birds up in the air and redirecting our few surviving drones overhead to get thermal imagery. She must've been doing something right, because within a couple of seconds we got a small screen on our HUD showing us the enemy's position.

"Move, move, move!" a voice came from the stairwell.

"Soldier!" I stopped the man that busted out. "What's the status?"

"We took out a few of them, but they outnumber us!"

"Move up!" I shouted to my small squad. "You with us?"

The soldier and his men looked at each other before nodding and flipping themselves around. We climbed up the emergency stairs and caught the charging brutes by surprise. They expected a retreating squad, not two attacking ones.

"Suppressing fire right!" I shouted, spraying the whole right quadrant, keeping the stream of bullets over the heads of my men. "Targets dead ahead!"

I covered for Lady and Grass, leaving Marv and Miri to cover my slow advance. The other squad of soldiers moved up on the left and center, throwing grenades. It was always fun to see grenades detonate indoors, but the large room was big enough that we weren't in direct danger. Unfortunately, the cubicles and desks minimized the spread of shrapnel, making the grenades less effective.

"Jackals advancing!"

"Switching left!" I boomed.

I stopped the jackals dead in their tracks and then kept them from moving forward with short bursts, buying precious seconds for Lady to move up to their side in order to get an angle on their arms or legs. As soon as she hit the one on the edge Marv popped from cover and helped take it out. Miri and Grass laid out the one next to it and let me finish the other two as their wall collapsed. Grunts started advancing, meeting our wall of bullets.

"Keep moving!" a soldier shouted.

We had moved halfway through the room, but the lack of brutes was worrying me. There were a fair number of them, but I had seen the Phantoms drop a larger amount of dumb apes on the rooftop.

"Snark here, they're setting up fortifications on the roof."

"Can you hit them?" I asked.

"Negative," he admitted. "Not immediately at least. There's two jackals that are keeping me from getting a good shot. I sent Tank on a distraction run, should be around a minute."

"Take care of it," I ordered.

"Left corner, left corner!"

Dotsenko sprayed that area, hitting the cubicles and cutting down the short walls, sending pieces of polymer and paper everywhere. The squad of soldiers reloaded their weapons simultaneously when the last brute was brought down as my men moved up through the door.

"Grigori, news?"

"Nothing too heavy," he said. "Why isn't Snark providing support?"

"Two jackals."

"Ah."

With that we ended the conversation and moved up the next floor.

The climb was quick and bloody. One of the soldiers got herself killed when she forgot to take cover before reloading, but for the most part our advance could not be denied. We moved quickly and efficiently. The soldiers slowed us down a little bit, but for not being trained for this kind of breach and clear scenarios they were doing just fine. We all stopped right before the stairwell that led to the rooftop.

"Grigori, what's your position?"

"Sixth floor," he said. "One more."

"We're going ahead without you," I told him.

"Roger."

"Snark?"

"On it."

"Grass, can you get me real time?"

"Got them."

I saw the small screen pop into my HUD and let my men arrange themselves in a breaching formation. I motioned for the soldiers to form up behind us and positioned myself behind Dotsenko and tapped him on the shoulder.

"I can take the chieftain," Snark said immediately after two faint booms reached my ears. "Give me the word."

"Go," I said.

I heard two more booms, but by that point Marv had kicked the door open and was moving to the left, making space for Lady and Dotsenko to advance. I waited for Dotsenko to pivot to the right and Lady to take a knee before moving forward at a walking speed, firing at the closest brute in my quadrant. Grass moved up behind me, using my body as a shield and firing over my left shoulder, stunning the other three aliens in my sector long enough for me to switch my attention to them.

Snark fired as we moved, helping us by taking out the brutes farther away from our position. Grigori's unit kicked down the door on the other end of the rooftop, catching the aliens from behind and taking out a dozen of them before they could take cover. The soldiers advanced to either of our sides and began moving forward.

"We take turns," I told Grigori. "Give the word when you're about to fire so that we can take cover."

Friendly fire was no funny business.

We used the covvie fortifications to our advantage and with Snark and Tank's help we quickly cleansed the rooftop of any filth.

"You've got two grunts left," Snark said. "I'll leave them to you."

"Move up," I said. "Two grunts."

I began moving towards a weird antenna that the Covenant had set up. It looked like one of their regular communication antennas, but it was pulsing. Might have to destroy it for good measure.

I caught a flash of movement and saw a grunt clad in black armor running. I aimed at it, but the little bastard fired twice at me before I could get a bead on it. One shot hit me in the chest before I managed to squeeze the trigger and get off a nice burst. The grunt was in the air when the bullets hit its chest, its hand reached for the spire, hitting what appeared to be a console at its base.

"Shit."

The spire glowed and emitted a light blue pulse.

My HUD went haywire for a few seconds before disappearing.

"Shit."

Electronic warfare was a complicated matter. Our weapons and helmets were typically hardened against that kind of attacks, but the covvies were by no means stupid, and every now and then they'd find a way to bypass our measure. Whenever that happened we'd upgrade and move on, but they'd manage to get past them at unpredictable intervals. An EMP meant a hard restart for all UNSC gear. It took less than thirty seconds for vital systems like radars and SAMs, radio contact was iffy, but it could usually be reestablished in less than ten minutes.

You only needed five seconds to put a hundred dropships past our anti-air envelopes.

"Shit," I said for a third time.

"What the hell was that?" a soldier asked.

"That was them winning the battle," Lady informed him.

For being such a bitch she was pretty smart.

"What's she saying, Gunny?" Bee asked.

He, on the other hand…

"That pulse just took down all our electronics," Grass explained. "It was definitely part of a coordinated strike."

"We took them down early," I said. "Maybe we ruined it."

"Don't think so, they must've had ships on standby," Grigori said.

"What now?" Snark radioed himself into the conversation.

"Meet in the rotunda," I said. "Grass, where's Captain Flatt?"

"Follow me," she said.

"We'll meet on her position, take orders. Grass, can you establish radio contact?"

"I'm trying," she answered. "I'll let you know."

"Alright, everybody move out!"

I hated when it all collapsed. It was when the battle really started taking its toll. I had been doing this long enough to be used to it, but fighting in an obscure mountain range in order to secure a key pass is very different from fighting in a large city, let alone your home. Every battle had that one time when everything started breaking apart. You could always tell. Frank and I had the distinction of having been present for numerous moments. Most soldiers fought and died without even being part of the key fight, Frank and I and the men of Team 7 were trained to fight there.

It wasn't fun. If we had moved two seconds faster we would've succeeded. If _I_ had hit that grunt we still would've had a chance.

"Get down!"

I ducked just as plasma torpedoes began landing to our left. Normally those would be taken out with laser, destabilizing the magnetic fields and letting the plasma fizzle out into vapor before getting anywhere remotely close to UNSC troops or assets. They were so effective that the Covenant had stopped using them altogether. They kept them in backup, but rarely did we get the opportunity to see them in action. I hated to see those things go to work, they were not nearly as accurate or deadly as our own artillery corps, but they came damned close.

"Move up!" I shouted. "They're firing to the left of our position!"

We moved as far to the right as possible and advanced behind Grass. She was just short of a sprint, but I didn't blame her. A single misfired torpedo or a change of target and we would have hell raining all around us.

"I just got through to Flatt!" Grass shouted over the barrage and explosions. "They're deploying everything!"

"Who's they?" I asked, instinctively ducking after a nearby detonation.

"The Covenant, they're pushing all they've got past our lines…" She paused and I could tell that she was listening to what Flatt was saying on the other end of the line. "The 1st and 67th are using their pods and launchers to bring down as many as they can. Our air wing is deploying and we've got tanks moving to the most likely landing positions. Command is decentralizing everything."

"They're going to turn this into a fucking free-for-all," Grigori muttered with an uncharacteristically high amount of emotion in his voice.

Grass nodded in response. "No chance for an organized retreat that way, but there's a small opportunity that we'll come out on top, save the city."  
>"And then what?" I muttered quietly to myself. This strategy guaranteed at least half a million casualties if what Grasss was saying was true. With 500,000 dead we could hardly mount a successful defense of the city, even if we took out the million plus estimated soldiers that the Covenant had at their disposal. In all likelihood we were looking at 750,000 dead men and women in the next five hours, and that's not taking the civilians into account.<p>

"It's going to be a bloodbath," Miri said.

"They're sending a large armored battalion to defend the spaceport, but everyone else is on its own," Grass told me.

"Let's move," I shouted. "Marina has a Pelican and it's waiting for us."

"And then?" Longworth asked.

"And then we do whatever the hell I decide to do," I told him. "Let's go, take point."

Longworth nodded and moved ahead as everyone settled into formation. We were closer than we would've been on a forest or field, but still far enough away from each other that a small explosive would not wipe out more than two of us. I was near the front of the formation, leaving Dotsenko and his SAW to cover our rear from any rushing assaults.

"Airfield is two hundred meters in front of us," Longworth said. "No movement."

"Dropships haven't made it this far yet," Grass said. "Our manned AAA is keeping them on their toes, slowing them down."

"Let's get moving," I gave the word. The last thing I wanted was for Phantoms to begin firebombing the Pelicans on the ground.

Longworth led the way and we moved without really checking our corners. Snark kept his head snapping from side to side while searching for movement and Grass was engaged in a frantic and cryptic conversation with Captain Flatt. The rest of the guys were quiet, for the past couple of days it had seemed like we might've been able to stand our ground here in Esztergom, but the recent events had proved us wrong. They were just too numerous, too implacable.

"Grass, can you patch me to Marina?" I asked after checking my radio. "I'm not getting anything."

"On it," she answered.

The chain link gates were conspicuously abandoned, but there was plenty of movement on the part of pilots and mechanics on the ground. Most of the Pelicans were shut down, but a couple of them had their engines on and were likely waiting for ground personnel to hop inside before bailing. Say what you say about military aviation, but they did what you expected them to.

"Where's Marina?" I asked.

"Patching through…"

"Pavel, is that you?" Marina asked me.

"The one," I confirmed. "Where are you?"

"Line H," she said. "My bird's still down, but I'm working on it… Do you have any news about Frank?"

"Not yet," I told her. "We're headed your way."

I overheard some of the aviation people shouting at each other and asking for tools and gear. A few of the Army foot soldiers were standing guard on top of the dropships with launchers on their shoulders and an eye on the horizon. People were packing some serious heat into the Pelicans, moving additional missile pods and fuel tanks on the wings. The pilots were expecting some serious air combat and in all likelihood wanted to have the option of bailing and making a run for it. Last I heard Tribute was still held by UNSC forces. It might be an option.

"Pavel, over here!"

I jogged to Marina and waited for her to say something.

"What?" she asked.

"You're the boss here," I told her. "What's the sitrep?"

"Hard restart is almost done," she said. "My girl's got a full ammo load right now. She's ready for anything. What's the plan?"

"I was thinking of falling back to the spaceport," I said. "It's going to be the only reliable stronghold."

"What about Frank?" she asked.

"Marina…"

"I won't believe he's dead until I see a body," she said adamantly.

"I can't risk their lives like that, it's the last thing Frank would want."

"This is Frank we're talking about," she replied. "How many-"

"Marina, we can't," I said firmly. "Frank's Hornet fell in no-man's-land."

"I wouldn't have gotten my sorry ass shot down," Marina grunted. "If I had been there…"

"But you weren't," I told her. "Through no fault of your own. If Frank is somehow alive then it is up to him."

"If anyone can make it, it's him."

It was strange, to see her so adamantly sure that Frank was alive. Out of our little trio, Marina was usually the one that I'd call the most grounded in reality. She was the most normal person, although for some reason she had never settled into what you would call a normal life.

"When can we move?" I asked her.

"Should be good to go," she said, moving inside the cockpit.

"Everybody in!" I shouted. "Let's go!"

The moment I put my boot on the cargo bay the Pelican next to ours blew up.

"Get in!" Marina shouted.

She pulled her ship up, narrowly avoiding a torpedo from a Seraph. I almost fell backwards, but Tank and Dotsenko grabbed my arm and pulled me back inside as Marv moved towards the rear door gun and pulled back the slide as Marina began banking furiously.

"I've got two Banshees!" she shouted. "Ready!"

She spun the Pelican and gave Marv an opening. I fired my M247L from my position, joining his barrage and taking down the lead flier, driving the other away. Marv took it down before it could escape his field of fire. The second Banshee exploded in a fireball as Marina began pulling up at uncomfortably fast speeds. I strapped myself in and gripped my weapon tightly.

"I've got a Seraph tailing me!" she warned. "Hold on!"

The G-forces that followed were enough to make my stomach churn. Marv let go of the gun, but he had harnessed himself in when Marina gave out a warning. His body thrashed before slamming into the rooftop, where he managed to grab onto the netting. Marina spun her Pelican one more time before stabilizing it and breaking. It was a horrible sensation, especially when the ship was fully vertical. She rolled on the horizontal axis so that we were upside down and then spun a couple of times before hitting the thrusters. I heard the missile pods firing and soon after the rumbling of the forward cannon.

"I've got a blip on our six," Marina announced, all cool and collected.

"Marv!"

He let go and landed on the floor in a three-point stance. He grabbed the gun and started looking for something to fire at, but we had made it up into the clouds and the darkness wasn't helping.

"I see it!" Snark shouted. "At your three, around twenty degrees!"

Marv began firing even as he moved the gun, letting the tracers light up the night sky as they coursed through the clouds. Soon enough he pinpointed the Banshee chasing us and had it putting out smoke in a few seconds. The pilot disengaged and took off before he could destroy it, but it assured our survival.

"Marina, where are we?" I asked.

"Not where we want to," she answered. "Shit, I'm heading to ground level, we're out in the open here."

Even that simple task wasn't simple. Two AA torpedoes had to be avoided and we were almost caught in a flak explosion before Marina finally managed to get below the buildings and stabilize our altitude at about one hundred feet from the ground.

"What now?" Crow asked.

"We stick to the plan," I said. "It'll be slow, but we'll get there."

Marina flew slowly, flanking damaged buildings and occasionally speeding up in order to avoid shoulder-mounted rockets. The spaceport was pretty distant, but we couldn't afford to move higher and faster. Even then we were making good progress, but the buildings crowded around us and the turns left us exposed at the intersections.

"Captain Flatt made it to the spaceport," Grass said suddenly. "Captain Nezarian's team was with her."

"What's their status?" I asked. They were the only team remaining in the once-great AAG.

"They're at about thirty percent," Grass said. "Not good. Nezarian is still alive, though."

"Then they're doing better than we are," Lady said.

Nobody argued with her, the more time that passed the more likely it was that my best friend was dead.

"Pavs, I'm getting transmissions from a Marine platoon," Marina shouted from the cockpit. "They're fortifying an apartment building."

"We can't stop for them," I replied. "The spaceport is our best shot at making it through the next day."

"I'm getting more transmissions… heavy Covenant presence in front and to our left," Grass informed us. "Looks like they're making a move for the spaceport."

"Fuck," I cursed.

I knew my family was first in line to evacuate, but it didn't hurt to confirm if they had made it out. After the first dozen ships the Covenant had started shooting down the others with ground-based weaponry. It wasn't enough that they torched the place, they wanted to slaughter everyone here too.

"Alright, stop with the Marines," I ordered. "Might as well bunker down."

"Understood," Marina said, turning the Pelican to a narrow side street and decreasing her altitude.

"Now what?" Lady asked.

"We wait," I told her. "Now we wait."

* * *

><p>"Snark, tell me we're good."<p>

There was silence on the other end of the line. "I couldn't get them all."

"Shit. We're made," I announced. "We best get ready!"

There was a collective groan from my men and the rag tag bunch of Marines, soldiers, and even Air Force personnel. They all cocked the bolts on their rifles and started moving towards their designated defensive positions. Out of the two hundred fifty men we had Snark was our only sniper. There were more designated marksmen, but no SRS-99 rifles. I wanted to blame him for letting that patrol get away, but I knew it wasn't his fault. At least not entirely his.

"Do we have a plan two?" Grigori asked me quietly, checking the magazine on his carbine.

I nodded. "Marina's sticking with us. Some of the Hornet pilots are going to hang back in case they need to evacuate."

"So what, we save like twenty two people tops?" he asked.

"Tops," I confirmed. "It's better than making a useless last stand here."

"I hate free-for-alls," Caboose grunted.

"We usually win at those," I reminded him, heaving my heavy machine gun.

"And then we can be kings ruling over this pile of rubble."

I sighed. He was right.

"Let's go," I ordered. "Don't want to be late to the party."

"And Frank?"

I looked down and tapped my foot twice.

"He's dead, Grigori. We all know it."

He looked at me and sighed. It was the closest to sad I had ever seen him to sadness. It made me feel like giving up.

"Alright," he said.

* * *

><p>"That was my last rocket!" Bee shouted. "Cover me!"<p>

"Covering fire!" I yelled, firing my machine gun and letting everybody join me.

Bee rushed through the narrow street, throwing his missile launcher to the side and pulling out his assault rifle. He fired blindly, aiming over his head as needles shattered at his feet. Tank reached out and yanked him into cover, slamming him into the wall. Snark fired twice at a brute that had gone berserk, needing both shots to take the crazed beast out.

"I'm running low, Gunny," he informed me.

"Prioritize targets," I ordered.

"We're way past that."

I growled. "How's the west flank?"

"Army guys are holding," Grass said, "But they're getting hit hard."

"Did they take care of their Daemons?"

"It's not the tanks," she said. "Covvies moved a plasma cannon unit to their sector."

"Tank! I need you and Marv to provide some support to the Army guys!"

"On it, Gunny!" he shouted, letting Bee cover his spot.

Marv slid back behind a small debris trench and started running back behind the relative safety of the apartment complex. I strafed two grunt squads to keep them from firing as my men exposed themselves. Two grunts died in the barrage, but the rest of the covvies had us outnumbered. Unless we could come up with a quick solution to that one surviving Daemon we'd need to pull out the Hornets. Those were our hidden aces, nobody wanted to reveal those just yet.

"Marines are falling back to their second line!" Grass announced. "They've got two Locusts!"

"What?" I asked. "Fuck! I can't spare any more men."

"Pavel, I'm bringing the Hornets out," Grass said. "Or we're losing the whole platoon right now."

"Do it," I told her. "This is about to get worse."

Brute after brute came in to replace those that had died. Grunts and jackals stepped over the bodies of their dead comrades without slowing down. They were heavily packed before the small gap in between us and them, needing deployable covers to link their positions together into a line of sorts. We had gotten by with Snark's sniper work, targeting chieftains and captains and letting the lower ranked brutes fight for the leadership, but there were just too many covvies waiting for the word to go. If they rushed we'd have to fall back inside the buildings.

"Gunny, any tips for taking out the Daemon?" Marv asked.

"Daemons have sensors right next to the barrel," Grass answered for me. "They're self-healing, but if you keep them down for long enough we might get a shot."

"You're the boss-lady," Marv said.

"We could do with Hoff right about now," I said to myself.

"Why is that?" Andrea asked me.

"You remember his arm, don't you?"

She chuckled a little bit. "Grenade into the barrel?"

"He could nail that shot at forty yards nine times out of ten," I said. "And that's confirmed."

"Miss that guy," Andrea admitted. "I miss them all."

"Don't get all weepy on me," Miri told her. "Not now."

"Miranda taking the initiative," Andy said. "I like it."

"Chyeah," Miri scoffed, killing a jackal.

A minute later I ordered my men to fall back into our second line.

"This is not going well, Grass," I told her.

"The Hornets just took out the Locusts," she said. "That's gonna earn some attention."

"This is attrition," I said. "Pure and simple. We don't have the materiel to win this."

"What are you suggesting?"

"Wait for a lull," I told her. "Marina and the Hornets get packed up with people and blast their way through their perimeter. Hover for twenty seconds, killing anything that moves and buying time for the rest of the guys to make a run for it."

"You're telling me that you want a hundred and forty men, some of them wounded, to try and break through the siege. On foot."

"The wounded stay," I told her. "We can rig the place to collapse."

"We can put the wounded on the Pelican," she began.

"And take them where?" I asked her. "How many wounded do we have? That can't move."

"Ten."

"Criticals?"

"In current conditions?" she asked. "Three."

"Alright, so it's only seven men I'm leaving to die," I told her. "Spread the word."

"Pavel, it's too early to-"

"Which is why we have the best chance now," I said. "Begin preparations."

There was a brief pause. "Right away."

I sighed. She knew it just as well as I did. If we held out for longer we would get more casualties and would still need to attempt a last minute charge to escape. If we did it right now it would be a lot more likely that we would succeed and more men would make it past the siege to fight another day. It seemed brutal, risking heavy casualties and leaving behind the wounded as death traps, but it was the best solution. Either we lose a high percentage of our men now, in the space of one minute, or we lose almost all of them over the next two hours. It was math, pure and simple.

_We're close to home_.

_Yeah,_ I answered to myself.

I began wondering whether it would be a viable option to make a move to my neighborhood. It was a lot closer here, and it was in all likelihood in the direction where we would attempt to break through. The artillery barrage had destroyed anything there and made it tactically useless. It was still a strategic location, but you might as well just try and take the surrounding neighborhoods. Besides, the UNSC had given up on that particular point of interest when they ordered it firebombed. We might even see if we could find Frank's body.

I could feel my eyes watering.

"Goddammit, Frank," I muttered, clenching my fist. "I can't throw away lives like you do."

It was true. The lost lives weighed heavily upon Frank, but he wasn't wired like the rest of us, he could live through it. Already I was beginning to wonder whether those seven men that I would force to remain behind had families that were expecting them back.

They probably did. We all had families.

Even Frank, had his brother. Fuck, now I'd have to track him down.

"They all said yes," Grass checked in. "Not a lot of arguing."

"They're not idiots," I said. "And neither are you."

"Doesn't mean I have to like it," she said, a bit snappishly too.

"Just be ready," I told her. "We're going to be heading to my old house."

"Figured. Any ideas?"

"There's the old subway station," I told her. "It should be at least partially covered by debris, so it will make a nice hiding spot."

"And the tunnels?" she asked me.

"We'll save some explosives."

"I don't think we can spare many. We're bringing three buildings down as it is."

"Frank was good at that kind of thing, wasn't he?" I asked her.

"So was Angel for that matter. Even better than Frank."

I laughed. "Few people are better than Frank at anything."

"Makes me feel special," Snark cut in.

I shook my head. "Just be ready to evacuate, alright?"

Six minutes later we got our opening. I was hopping into Marina's Pelican just as the Hornets began emptying their missile reserves on the enemy positions. All our surviving men rushed out in a crazy charge. The sheer audacity of it had the covvies confused for the first few seconds, buying time for the men at the front of the rush to make it to their positions and open up on them. The enemies on our sides caught up soon and began opening fire on their exposed flanks. I did my best to suppress any enemy fire from the Pelican, but even with the Anvil missiles and the two Hornets giving it everything they had we couldn't stop every alien from firing. When all was said and done we had lost eighty-seven men, over half our number.

"Let's go," I said to Marina. "They're good to go, it's an hour long trip to the subway station."

I looked at the line of dead bodies trailing all the way back to the apartment complex as Marina sped off. I clenched my eyes shut after they disappeared behind a building. Almost ninety men had died so that fifty could make it out. It was a good trade. It was the best trade we could've gotten under these circumstances. There was no way I could've saved them all, or even more than fifty. People looking back on this would call my decision a smart one, the only decision that could've been taken. It was that or risk worse casualties. No other option.

The sound of the explosives going off reached my ears a few seconds later, dull and muted by the distance.

Maybe we could come across Frank and Pitcher, get some closure. Yeah, some closure would be nice.

* * *

><p><em>Thanks to <strong>Colonel-Commissar2468<strong> and General **TheDyingTitan** for proofreading this chapter._

_ Sorry for the delay, but I've been busier than expected in real life. I'll try to be a bit quicker, but I can't promise you guys anything. Anyways, I hope you enjoyed this chapter. A bit different, wasn't it._

_Still haven't gotten closure on that cliffhanger... Like you don't know what's going to be the outcome._

_Members of the AAG-7 that are still alive: Frank, Pavel, Caboose, Bumblebee, Snark, Serge, Miranda, Marvin, Andrea, Dotsenko, Crow, Tank, Lady, and Longworth. Tell me who your favorites are and they might survive. Or not, I guess it depends on my mood._

_Stay strong._

_-casquis_


	210. Convergence

Chapter CCX: Convergence

**August 26, 2552 (UNSC Calendar)/**

**Esztergom, Viery Territory, Reach, Epsilon Eridani System**

* * *

><p><em>"I'm going to tell you a story, a story that you won't believe..." - Anonymous UNSC servicewoman<em>

* * *

><p>The dog growled lightly and then fixed its position a little bit. For being one of the smartest dogs in existence, I was starting to think it was pretty damn stupid. It was also incredibly sweet.<p>

"You're going to die," I told it. "Run."

Gunny said nothing.

A spike grenade landed to my right, just out of arms reach.

I sighed.

For the first time since I had seen my father die, I gave up.

The long fuse just made it worse.

I closed my eyes, but nothing flashed in front of them. I just felt a whole lot of pain from the piece of rebar going through me and curiosity as to whether I would be able to feel the jagged pieces of hot shrapnel tearing me to pieces.

Then I heard a bark.

That's the first time I found myself rooting for the dog to die.

I opened my eyes just as Gunny hopped over me and clamped its jaws around the spike grenade. The medium-sized Australian Shepherd bit into the grenade's handle and in an instinctive response that had been hardwired into its brain by years of playing fetch with Pavel and Amber, he took off. Gunny dragged the heavy spike grenade, jerking its head to get the spikes at the edge from debris and loose rocks. It seemed like an eternity, but the dog broke the three meter kill radius and then went even further, jumping over the ruined wall and disappearing from sight. I closed my eyes as I heard the detonation, thankful that there hadn't been a yell of pain. Gunny's head had been torn to shreds, the dog hadn't even had time to process its death.

"Fuckers gonna pay," Schitzo growled dangerously.

I was angrily screaming and tearing at the rebar on my chest when the brute stalker hopped over the wall, dragging behind it the chieftain's gravity hammer. Predictably, it pressed my chest back into the ground with its heavy foot. I slammed my knife deep into its ankle and propped up my shotgun . I squeezed the trigger once, but it deflected the blast with the bottom of the gravity hammer. I kicked wildly, ignoring the extreme pain and connecting with the stalker's left knee. The alien roared and fell to the ground next to me. I grabbed onto the rebar coming out of my chest and pulled hard as I used my other arm to push myself up. The rock behind me creaked a little bit, but I dragged the foot-long piece of metal out, freeing my body.

I kicked the brute again, this time in the face. As its body turned around I grabbed the mauler it had attached to its belt and fired three times into the back of his head.

The brute's leg kicked out once and then stopped moving.

"Fuck you!" I shouted, kicking it again. "Fuck you, fuck you, fuck. You!"

I cried out, half anger and half pain.

My legs finally gave way underneath me and I fell on my ass, crying as I tried to hold back the pain. I could hardly breathe. I knew that I had survived many injuries that should've killed me, but none of those had amounted to having a piece of metal sticking out from your chest after going through your entire torso. I had seen guys survive with the weirdest things, but they always had the luxury of a medic, biofoam, and a speedy medevac. Hell, Tank had survived that injury through his thigh and a snapped femur. Two weeks later and he was good to run.

Modern medicine had made dying a very hard thing to achieve, yet I might as well have been living in the middle ages.

"Except we're not," Schitzo said, squatting by my side. "It's the twenty-sixth century, bitch. And you're not dead yet."

"No we're n- I'm not," I said, agreeing. "Ok, ok… Phew. Let's go. Alright, I got this."

"Debatable," Schitzo shrugged. "But I don't have the luxury of betting on anything else."

I grabbed my shotgun and aimed at the head of the gravity hammer. I pressed the muzzle against the spot where the handle became the head and fired three times. The strange metal was durable and designed to absorb the shock that came from the hammer's gravity explosions, but it wasn't made to take fully-automatic buckshot. The head fell off and I grabbed the handle, as tall as myself, and heaved it as a staff. I slowly dragged myself to my feet, wheezing to get air into my good lung.

"North?"

"I don't want to look at the dog," Schitzo said, "so we might as well."

"North it is then."

I started shuffling down the street and never looked back. Not once.

* * *

><p>I could hardly get enough oxygen into my body. I was no expert, but at least one of my lungs wasn't working. Well, it wasn't working at full capacity. The rebar was keeping my lung airtight, keeping most of the air from escaping and letting the organ do its job at least halfway properly. I was already beginning to feel the blood come up my throat again. The metallic fluid was leaving a stale taste in my mouth and the inside of my visor was stained with drying blood. Every time I coughed the pain was magnified tenfold.<p>

I coughed and more blood came out.

"Shit," I croaked.

"It's a good thing you didn't pull the rebar out," Schitzo said.

"Yeah," I agreed.

"Lung would've collapsed completely and you would be choking on your own blood."

Not only was the rebar keeping my lung airtight, it was also keeping large quantities of blood from clogging the organ. Respiration was a complex process, throw a little bit of trouble into the mix and things can go south very quickly.

It hurt like a bitch.

"So what are you doing?" Schitzo asked me. "What's the plan, Francisco?"

"There's no plan," I replied. "I'm going to keep walking until I come across friendlies or I am killed."

"That's no plan."

"It's what I said," I replied. "No plan."

Schitzo rubbed the bridge of his nose and sighed. It seemed like such a familiar gesture, but I don't remember him ever doing that before.

"What?" I asked.

"You've got a piece of steel impaling your chest. I think we need a plan."

"My helmet can't access anything," I said. "I can't get to a med station and even if I did odds are that it'll be destroyed. You know the Covenant target those."

"How about increasing your odds to get to a friendly unit then?" Schitzo asked. "That might be a good start."

"Yeah," I agreed. "And how would be go about that?"

"That is your problem."

"Wrong, it's both of our problem."

"I don't think that's the proper grammar."

"English isn't your first language, dipshit," Schitzo complained.

"That means it isn't yours either, fucking dick."

Schitzo laughed and then disappeared, leaving me alone.

I sighed. This wasn't getting any easier. I could breathe a little bit, but that was bound to change. Stab wounds to the lung were deadly if you failed to get any medical attention. A med bay could potentially patch me up, but those things were notoriously unreliable. Even the companies that set them up admitted that nothing could compare to attention provided with a human doctor in charge. Still, a little bit of biofoam wouldn't have harmed me.

I winced as a pang of pain shot through my chest and I coughed up more blood. I kept on coughing and for a moment I thought I would choke. I went on one knee and removed my helmet before I managed to spit out a sizeable chunk of blood and tissue. A little bit of my lung had gone there. I took in as much air as possible, wheezing as it entered my body.

I looked up ahead and pulled myself to my feet.

* * *

><p><strong>Gunnery Sergeant Pavel Klaus<strong>

"How's the tunnel exploration going?"

"Good, we're blocked going north and the southern side has a car there that funnels everything into the right side," Marv told me.

"Can we see about blocking it?" I asked.

"We're setting charges," he told me.

"Alright then, looks like we're good for now."

"Pavel, I'm getting some transmissions from the Marines and soldiers, should I relay our location?" Grass asked me.

"Negative, give them the subway stop we're at. They should be able to figure it out that way," I said.

"You're being paranoid," Grass let me know.

"Am I?" I asked her. "Am I really?"

Grass shrugged but otherwise said nothing.

My men had mostly settled down. Marina had parked her Pelican right outside the entrance, providing an additional machine gun for defensive purposes as well as quick evacuation. The Hornets were also close by and we were prepared to bail at any second, the pilots had helped out in establishing a perimeter in the surface and already we were getting some of the first evacuees at our position. Apparently the majority of the survivors had clustered together before moving here. I hoped they weren't set upon by the Covenant before they got here. We had no way to provide any support for them.

"Tank, how are things looking up top?"

"Pretty good, Gunny," he said. "No Covenant activity to report."

"Good," I replied. "Snark?"

"Likewise, sir."

"Don't call me sir," I told him.

"I was saying sir in a respectful way, like one would address a senior."

"Snark, you might be younger than me, but three years still means you're in your mid-thirties."

"Don't remind me," he huffed. "I can already feel my knees beginning to get stiff."

I rolled my eyes.

"Just keep your eyes peeled," I said in my best Frank impression.

"El-tee always said open instead of peeled," Snark said. "But yeah, wilco."

The subway station was fairly large, with enough space to keep all the survivors there. It would be a wee bit crowded, as they say, but the entrance was perfectly defensible and had a very low profile, with it being surrounded by mountains of debris and everything. It would hold for the time needed. We had a sizeable supply of ammunition and enough food to go for at least three days. If every Marine and trooper had at least half a standard load then we would go for around a week. The vending machines were even partially stocked. Looters hadn't gotten to them in time, I guess.

"So we wait?" Lady asked when I walked past her.

"So we wait," I confirmed. "Is that going to be a problem?"

"No."

She was less snappy than usual. I don't know if her attitude problem was finally getting fixed or if it was just being tired, but it was relieving.

"Why so blue?" I asked her, surprising myself. I usually avoided her.

Lady looked up at me and sighed. Usually she had the tough bitch act down to a t, but it seemed like she was starting to crack. "I'm just tired, Gunny. Not like body tired, you know?"

"I know exactly what you mean," I told her.

"Does it get better?"

I shook my head. "You got to keep fighting, that's what separates the good from the great."

"That sounds like something El-tee would say," she noted.

"It does, but that actually came from somebody else. Colonel Zavala, I miss the old man."

"What happened to him?"

I shrugged. "Never did find out. They retired him from the _Inconvenience_ and then he disappeared."

"Well, he might still be alive then," Lady said. "That's more than can be said for many others."

I looked at her quizzically. She didn't ever go into bouts of depression, she was too proud to even let it show.

"Well, listen to me now, eh?"

I snorted a little bit and shook my head. "Get some rest Tash."

"Please don't call me that," she said. "It's what my father calls me."

"I'll call you as I damn well please, whether it be Tash, Natasha, or Lady. Now get some sleep."

Lady shrugged slightly and then slid so that she was using the bench as a bed. I looked at her for a moment before making my way towards the entrance. The escalators had stopped working a while ago and the elevator for handicapped people was all but useless. I climbed up the stairs three at a time before coming up on the small hall. Bits and pieces of wall and ceiling had fallen down, leaving a nice coating of dust that was slowly being pushed towards the sides as boots left their mark. Immediately to my left was Marina's Pelican, parked tightly in between two piles of debris and providing the support of its rear gun.

The Hornets were behind me, only a short climb away. The two support craft were very well hidden, but I still hoped that we wouldn't require their use.

I left the subway and looked at the sky. One couldn't usually see the stars in Esztergom and today was no different, even with most of the lights off there was still enough dust and smoke in the air that we couldn't see anything. I could, however, see that the dark night sky was beginning to light up.

I turned around and looked at the subway station's rooftop. Tank was belly down, his battle rifle propped on the edge of the roof as he scanned for any enemy movement. He gave me an acknowledgement signal with his right hand and I kept moving. Our perimeter was only a hundred meters or so, and even then it was a very weak perimeter. Snark could catch anything that came at us from the front or left, Tank could do front and a bit of our right flank. We had the Hornet pilots and the first three men that arrived on watch behind us, but that was about it. My own men were tired, even if we had been on board the Pelican we had been awake for longer than most. Marv and Serge were exploring the caves and the rest of the guys were getting busy with a plan of action or resting.

And Frank was dead.

I stopped walking as I thought that.

"Gunny?" Tank asked after what seemed like an eternity.

"What?" I asked.

"Something wrong?"

Frank wasn't dead. There was no way in hell that fucker would go down without burning down half the planet before. I hadn't risked all those men in an attempt to save as many as possible, that had only been a happy coincidence. Frank was not dead until I saw the body and I needed the Hornets to look for him.

"No," I said. "Get the pilots to board their Hornets. Get me Snark, Serge, and Andrea."

"Sir?"

"Tank, fucking do as I say."

Two minutes later the Hornets were taking off and I was flying home.

* * *

><p><strong>First Lieutenant Francisco Castillo<strong>

The pain was starting to recede a little bit now. I don't think there should've been a particular reason for that, so it was slightly worrisome. I shook my head. I was gripping the hammer's grip so tightly that my palms were beginning to burn. I would be getting some blisters. If I survived, that is. I kept shaking my head like a drunkard, but that was the only way I could stay awake. I could barely see beyond my own feet and pulling my head up to look ahead was more effort than I could manage. More than a few times I had surprised myself when I realized I was crawling on my knees.

"Shit," I grunted.

"Alright Frank," Schitzo said. "You're bleeding out."

"Who'd have thought it? Bleed out before dying of trauma."

Schitzo muttered something intelligible. "You need to stop the bleeding."

"No shit," I said. "I've got a fucking piece of metal through my chest, that ought to be enough."

"Well, obviously it's not."

I sighed. "What do you suggest?"

"Duct tape always works," he said. "But I think gauze and bandages would be better."

"Hardware store?" I asked.

"What the fuck did I just say?"

"I can't see anything," I sighed. "My head is pounding and I'm very cold. Just give me something."

"You still don't understand how this works, right?"

"Yeah, yeah, you give me hints and I figure it out."

"Because I'm in your subconscious," Schitzo added helpfully.

"Yes."

"Ok, so hardware store or medbay. I could do with a blood transfusion."

"Medbays are probably not an option anymore," Schitzo said. "They're usually targeted first."

I nodded. "I know. Blood transfusion isn't an option then. Duct tape or any kind of tape would be easier to find and use than bandages."

"I don't know about use…"

"Fine, but it's probably more abundant."

Schitzo stopped pacing and turned to look at me, he grabbed my helmet forcefully with both hands and lifted my head, straightening my back. I blinked at the bright sparks in my eyes and turned towards the left. There was a surprisingly intact house there. It was a strange fit in the pre-planned, modernistic city. It reminded me of those joke pictures about life in the twentieth century. Only one floor, a slanted rooftop that met at a point in the middle of the house, with what was obviously a garage to the side.

"It's one of those nutjobs that want to live in the past," I said to myself. "Probably has an ethanol-powered car or something stupid like that."

"And?"

I squinted. Bee had made me go through enough films from the twentieth and twenty-first centuries that I knew garages weren't exclusively used to store cars. Manly men would have workbenches with power saws and maybe a rack with a shotgun on it. Fucking dumbasses.

"It'll do, pig," I thanked Schitzo as I waved my hand through his body and shuffled towards the house. "It fucking better."

The house was easy enough to break into. The guy must've had a fancy security system if his door was made of hollow wood and had crystals on it. I simply punched one of those in and opened the door from inside. Just like in Bee's movies. It was a simple turn to the left and I walked into the garage. The stupid fellow had built himself a series of wooden shelves and had stacked them against the wall. Funnily enough, they seemed to be handmade too. With nails and everything.

I couldn't avoid a chuckle.

"Wacko."

I promptly felt a stabbing pain and fell to my knees. That was my cue to start tearing the content of the shelves apart. I kicked and threw boxes and containers away until I finally found that little roll of gray tape. It rolled away from me and hit a wall, stopping and falling on its side. I slowly made myself walk towards it and picked it up slowly. My vision was beginning to go dark, but if I could survive with this much blood in my system then I wouldn't die from blood loss.

I began patching myself up. Taping myself up would be more appropriate perhaps, but after a few minutes of frantic jerking and more than a few tears of pain I finally had the places where the metal met skin completely covered with duct tape. Now all I needed was to get me a pint of blood.

"Get some sugar," Schitzo said. "Kitchen."

My head cracked as I got to my feet. It had been hanging down for a while and it had gotten a bit stiff. I stumbled towards the kitchen and opened the fridge. Once again, it was white and old-fashioned. A pungent smell hit my nostrils even through the filters of my helmet. It took a moment for the smell to be blocked, but I already felt like throwing up.

"Freezer," I told myself.

Opening it I saw that the result was no different at all. Rotten meat and ice cream.

I sighed and moved to the pantry. In there I finally found what I was looking for. Sweets.

I grabbed a bag of candy and sat down at the table. I took my helmet off, ignoring the smell, and began cramming my face with stale chocolates. I must've had around three before I felt a little bit dizzy and against my instincts, fell asleep.

* * *

><p><strong>Sergeant Naveen "Snark" Avninder<strong>

Riding in a Hornet was always a bit of a bitch. The turbines roaring above you tended to be incredibly loud and the craft vibrated so much that your ass ended up sore for the next four days. If you wanted to avoid a sore ass you could crouch, but that was only good if you wanted to kill your thighs with cramps. Either way, one could not win when he was riding a Hornet.

"Stabilize for me, will you?" I asked the pilot.

"Stabilizing."

The Hornet stopped circling and instead hovered at eighty feet above ground. I stretched my left leg out and propped the tip of my rifle on the foot. It provided a slight increase of accuracy, but otherwise just served to get my muscles from cramping.

"What are they doing?" the pilot asked me.

"Going through the rubble," I told him. "Gunny used to live here."

"Hmm," the pilot muttered.

"They should be back up soon," I said. "Nothing's left down there."

The Hornet pilot mumbled something and held his position above Pavel's. The place had been completely wrecked by the artillery strikes. A wall of the building was still up, but for the most part it was only rubble and debris. I watched as Gunny, Andy, and Serge searched through the debris with an astounding degree of urgency. The pilot of the other hornet kept watch, holding his SMG at eye level.

"Gunny, found something," Andrea said. "Is this yours?"

I saw as Gunny awkwardly walked through the debris and met up with Andy as Serge watched with mild interest. Gunny knelt down near a safe.

"Yeah, that's mine. Here, help me turn it."

They groaned as they turned the metal box on its side, revealing that it was open.

"Son of a bitch," Gunny muttered.

"What?"

"This is where I kept my ACS."

I chuckled. I remember when Gunny used that big-ass shotgun. It would throw an elite back on its ass and then shred through its torso in the span of a second and a half. Rather impressive. I always wondered why he never used it…

"Did he figure out the password?" Andy asked.

Pavel nodded. "I'm never going to hear the end of it."

"Why?" Andrea asked.

"Not important. We do know that Frank survived that fall."

I winced slightly. We had found the other crashed Hornet and Pitcher's mangled corpse. We hadn't gone down to examine them, but instead had to move on when a small Covenant patrol fired on us. Pavel's was just a small distance away, so we could start our search there and double back if we didn't find anything. It seemed like our cowardice had paid off.

"Where to now?" Andy asked.

"Back towards our lines. Or wherever our lines were half a day ago. Frank's smart enough to know that."

"Ok then, let's move."

The pilot on my Hornet moved his craft down to the ground and let Serge hop on board as Pavel and Serge moved on top of the other one. The two pilots flew close enough that I could've tossed my rifle to the former French legionnaire without straining myself too much. Pavel kept his eyes down, looking for any sign of Frank. We managed to find something soon enough. A trail of dead grunts and a brute or two were a clear sign that El-tee had made his way through here, but after that we couldn't find anything concrete.

"Split up?" Andy suggested.

"No," Pavel said. "Keep moving."

The ruined city reminded me of countless battles in the past, from Catamaran to Paris-IV, but the thing it reminded me most was the Mumbai outskirts where I had grown up. The Tea Wars had killed my parents, at least that's what they told me in the orphanage, the turmoil that followed and tense political relations meant that no international aid could get through. By the time the country got itself back on track I had already enlisted. I had grown up in the outer neighborhoods most affected by the fighting and made my home in craters covered with tarps and tank wrecks.

I sighed a little bit louder than usual, sometimes I could almost see my friends getting gunned down by rival gangs or being stabbed after a successful day of pickpocket work.

I clenched my teeth when I remembered the first time I was stabbed. It had been by far the worst, I still had that scar next to my navel thanks to it. George had been the only person I ever talked to about that. Despite our different upbringings he had found himself in some trouble as a kid; he could identify with me more than anyone else I had known before him.

Then he got himself killed in the most horrific way possible.

"What's that?"

"Let me check," I said. "Brute, brute, brute. All dead. Chieftain and a stalker. Wow, that's quite a bit of blood."

"Looks like Frank?"

"Definitely the work of the El-tee," I said. "Some shotgun shells here and there. Nothing else."

I could feel Gunny smiling even through his visor. I was smiling myself for that matter. The El-tee could be a little bit superhuman sometimes. In fact, ever since he had drafted me into Reaper I felt like I needed to try harder just to keep up with him. I was lucky I played the role of sharpshooter and sniper. With the caliber of men and women we had on our team I felt like I had to try too much just to stay in the same league. If not for my ability with the SRS I might've not been on the team. I was mediocre at best with assault rifles and I could only hold an accurate burst with the SMG for five seconds. To be fair, that was two seconds longer than most men in the UNSC, but when you have four brutes coming at you for killing their leader it came in handy.

"Snark, see anything?"

"A whole bunch of dead buildings, Gunny."

"Anything that might point out to the location of your commanding officer?"

I waited and scoped the street. The brutes had been blown up rather violently by what appeared to be spike grenades. There even appeared to be more body parts than the number of brutes warranted. Some of the fur even seemed to be brown, but under the dust it all looked gray to me. I found a trail of blood soon enough. It was redder than the brutes' blood and clearly human.

"Huh, blood. Human."

"How much?" Andrea asked.

"A fair amount," I said. "We need to move slowly if you want me to see it."

"Alright, you heard him, boys," Gunny told the pilots. "Andy, Serge, eyes up. I don't want a missile hitting us on the side."

I sighed at the grim comment and looked through my scope, following the little droplets of blood as they moved from the head of that gravity hammer and down the street.

Suddenly, I had a very revolting suspicion of what those extra body parts had been.

* * *

><p><strong>First Lieutenant Francisco Castillo<strong>

_Alright, I'm alive. That's a good sign._

I got my head up from the kitchen table and leaned back. The rear end of the rebar stuck in my chest scraped against the chair and a bolt of pain shot through my body. I snapped from my drowsiness and clenched my jaw tightly. I sighed and got up.

* * *

><p><strong>Gunnery Sergeant Pavel Klaus<strong>

I was worried. The blood splatters were surprisingly regular. Frank had lost a lot of blood just getting here.

_If it even is Frank…_

It had to be. Nobody else could've opened my safe and there was no way it had been broken that cleanly. Snark could track the trail of blood droplets no problem, but it was slow going and exposed us. So far we had only encountered some jackal scavengers that got a bit too excited to see us. Those we could handle, after all, they were most likely deserters from the main body of the Covenant army trying to find themselves something valuable. If we came across anything larger than a squad we could potentially find ourselves in trouble, especially at this altitude and with the speed we were maintaining.

"Merde. Movement, movement!" Serge warned, two words more than usual coming from him.

"Pull up!" I shouted, banging on the Pelican's hull. "Go!"

The two pilots were good at their shit; they hadn't survived this long with no chain of command by luck alone. They were already speeding up and gaining altitude before Serge had finished his warning. I heard then saw three plasma spheres fly past my Hornet and disappear in the distance. The ambushers had missed on their opening barrage and now found themselves on the wrong side of a Hornet. The pilots began turning towards whoever had fired at them, spooling the massive gatling guns. I aimed my machine gun at the windows and opened up, trying to hit anything. The Hornet pilots were considerably more successful. Their ammunition was faster than mine and larger. The houses exploded as the large caliber bullets punched through the polycrete bricks like it was tin foil. The pilot strafed the hornet as two green fuel rods flew at us. One of them nearly took my head off, but the grunt exposed itself as it fired. I hit the little alien with a sustained burst and the pilot fired two missiles into the window, blowing half of the house into oblivion.

The other Hornet was having a little less luck. Instead of a simple two-story house they had some sort of warehouse, four stories tall. I awkwardly switched my position to fire at the windows while the pilot circled around the warehouse, positioning itself on top.

"Do you have thermal?" I asked the pilot loudly.

"Don't tell me how to do my job," he replied calmly.

I shrugged as the man positioned his Hornet along the longest axis of the warehouse and spooled its cannons. He began firing through the rooftop while the other Hornet brought the pain in from the side. It must've been hard to have all that depleted uranium raining down on you with absolutely nothing to stop them other than your bodies.

I chuckled. Poor fuckers didn't have a chance.

"Alright, I'm out," the pilot said. "No more ammo."

"Did you get them all?"

"Oh, I got them alright," he said. "Some are still alive."

"I'm not wasting ammo on those," the other pilot said.

I sighed. "Serge, Andy."

"We've got it," she said.

The two of them hopped off as the Hornets hovered over the rooftop and went inside. It took them just a minute to go in and execute the survivors. It wasn't strictly necessary to kill them, but this was no-man's-land and there was a chance that they might be rescued and patched up to fight another day. I had participated in a fair amount of counter-insurgency operations, but those had been almost exclusively assassinations. To be honest, the rules of engagement were a bitch, with the Covenant it was simple: shoot on sight and shoot to kill.

"We're good, we're good," Andrea checked in. "Moving back up."

Once they were up in the Hornets again we began moving. Snark tracked the blood perfectly. We had to hover for a few moments in a spot where the blood drops were slightly more concentrated, probably because Frank had stopped there. Snark noticed that the blood led to a weird little house on the side of the street.

"Yeah, he went in there," Snark said. "Punched through the glass on the door, I think."

I scoffed. "What kind of weirdo builds a house to have the security capabilities from five centuries ago?" After that little rant I sighed. "Set us down. I'm going in. Andrea, I need you with me."

"I've got all manners of needles and ointments ready," she said.

As my feet hit the pavement I was suddenly worried that Frank was not going to greet me with a cocky smile. He had made it so far and done so much with whatever injury he was carrying. It was entirely plausible that he had bled out. I tried to reassure myself, but with every step I took towards the door my heart started pounding louder. The door was slightly ajar and another door that led to the garage on my left had been opened. Inside the garage I could see scattered boxes and ancient woodwork supplies.

"Gunny…"

I stopped looking at the mess that had been made in the garage and walked down the hall before turning into the kitchen and past Andrea. Sitting face down at a table was a man in full ODST armor. I would've been skeptical, but the shoulder pieces were certainly Frank's. One could hardly confuse that right pauldron with four spikes still embedded into it. The crimson stripe going through his left arm and the front of both his boots were also familiar colors to me. Frank wasn't wearing his helmet, showing his hair with the shape of the helmet still pressed into it.

Despite everything, the thing that drew my attention the most was the two foot long piece of rebar coming out of his back and his chest.

"Pieprzyc."

Neither of us moved. I had seen Frank stomped in the chest by a brute chieftain, but even then he had put his hands up and managed to slow down the deadly move. Andy had seen him get shot, stabbed, and beaten. She had also patched up more injuries than I could count. A piece of grooved steel half an inch thick going through your chest was a little bit different.

"He walked all this way?" Andy said in barely-concealed awe. "There must've been at least twelve dead covvies!"

"Pieprzyc," I repeated, watching the unmoving body of my friend, leaning on a crappy table as if taking a nap.

Suddenly Frank's head moved slightly and my heart started beating again. He slowly turned his head to look at me. His face was so pale that it looked blue from the veins underneath. His eyes had a triple set of bags around them. Most of his face was white as paper except for a spot in his forehead near the hairline where he had been cut open and his mouth and chin were completely covered with dried blood.

Frank blinked twice and smiled, showing blood-stained teeth in a disgusting grin that brought joy to my heart. I had felt happier only twice in my life, when I got married and when I saw my daughter for the first time.

"You're alive!"

"I don't think so," he replied softly as Andrea moved towards him. "Are you here to take me? You're not dead too, are you?"

Andy tapped the edge of the rebar lightly, drawing a grimace from Frank that almost made me feel his pain and made the scar on my belly tighten.

"You're alive Frank," I assured him. "You're all good."

Frank scoffed with an expression very close to annoyance and then leaned his forehead on the table as Andrea began to frantically work on him.

* * *

><p><em>Thanks to <strong>Colonel-Commissar2468 <strong>for proofreading this chapter. I want to apologize for the delay and for the relatively short delivery. Titan, the fucker that he is, went to vacation on Hawaii in order to get away from this fucking cold. I don't want to throw shit at Colonel, but he did take a little bit longer than usual. I'm sure he had his reasons, but you can flood his inbox with angry PMs if you feel like it._

_Well, we now know what happened to Gunny, the single most heroic dog in existence of ever. We also know that Pavel is probably the most savvy character in this universe and that Frank is one badass motherfucker. To be fair, having rebar shoved through your torso would probably kill you, but I did some (admittedly limited) research and people can in fact survive with something through their lung. I agree that I might've stretched the boundaries of imagination, but I am justified in doing so because that is motherfucking badass, as they say in my home country._

**_Rackushun:_**_ Pavel is a bit more passive than Frank, but he had to step up his game a little bit. Plus, he's still an ODST, so passive is relative._

_Next chapter: Frank heals up and gets ready to kick some ass. The Battle of Reach is slowly turning into the Fall of Reach. Hell will rain down upon the planet and scorch everything! People will be badass too._

_I hope you enjoyed and if so, please do let me know what you thought._

_Stay strong._

_-casquis_


	211. Punching in the Gut

Chapter CCXI: Punching in the Gut

**August 28, 2552 (UNSC Calendar)/two days later**

**Esztergom, Viery Territory, Reach, Epsilon Eridani System**

* * *

><p>"<em>We were crippled and our backs broken, but we punched the Covenant in the jaw and by God did we knock them down."<em>

* * *

><p>Painkillers were good. They were very good. They were good enough that you would stop feeling all pain even if your intestines were falling out and you were doing your best to push them back in. I had had so many painkillers over the course of my career that my body had developed partial immunity to them. The last two doctors had told me that a set of new kidneys would do me a world of good in the few days to come. Well, the point I'm getting at is that despite the massive amount of drugs they were streaming into my system, my body could still register pain in my chest, my back, and my head.<p>

I couldn't really walk in a straight line and would sometimes start giggling at nothing in particular. It was just like sophomore year of high school all over again. I tried to clear my mind, focusing on one point in particular while I did my best to get Grass' voice to form coherent sentences. I kept frowning in an attempt to focus, but I hadn't had a single sober thought since the moment I went under in that shitty house. The drugs were beginning to wear off now, my lung had been treated as soon as I arrived into a decent hospital, the infection had been eradicated, and biofoam had begun patching everything up.

I was only thankful that I hadn't been awake for when they yanked that piece of metal from my chest.

How the fuck am I alive?

The light was beginning to look like actual light and not like some wonky rainbow shit. I rubbed my eyes and saw the walls become smooth as the last of the painkillers wore off. My chest had been hurting for a while now, but my brain hadn't cleared up completely until just now. It felt good to be able to think clearly. Alcohol I could manage, pain I could live with, but this painkiller shit was bullshit. I got up from my bed. My bandages had been constantly changed after I got here, but now I was left with some weird elastic fabric that molded itself to the shape of my body. There was only a small drop of blood in the front and presumably a similar mark in the back.

More scars. At one point they would've made interesting stories, now they were just painful memories.

"Castillo."

"I'm up," I said. "Considerably less out if it too."

"Good," Captain Flatt said. "Come with me."

I sighed as I got up from my bed and reached for my shirt. I had been sleeping and living in the same fatigues and underwear for the last two days. Grass had been able to get me a new undersuit and replace the parts of my armor that had been pierced by the rebar. Unfortunately, the undersuit was the version that they gave to Army Airborne or Rangers, olive green. I was going to look like a fucking clown.

"What's going on?" I asked. "Is my team alright?"

"They're fine," she said. "It's not about them."

I rolled my eyes as I followed her out of my room. If she didn't want to tell me then she wouldn't. Captain Flatt was a spook through and through. Secretive and annoying is what she was, but she was better than most spooks. She could hold herself in a fight and had put her neck on the line for AAG-7 and me more than a few times.

Our current headquarters consisted of the largest subway station in Esztergom and a small college campus next to it. The city was still embroiled in battle, but the campus and our station was as close as we had to safety. From what I had gathered in my drug-induced daze, there were still several other UNSC strongholds in the city, but the Covenant had managed to bring in more ships through our fleet, bolstering their numbers and turning the tables on us. The majority of the civilians had been butchered in the first day of battle, yesterday had been brutal, with over a third of a million casualties, today wasn't shaping up to be best of days either, with most of our air assets reduced to wrecks and our armored quickly being ground down to join them in oblivion. Not to say that the Covenant was faring any better, but now they had the ironic advantage of a halfway decent supply chain while we now didn't have any resources to spare anywhere in the planet.

Fucking hell, this was the planet where all of our military might resided and we were running out of troops. They were killing us too fast.

Seven hundred and fifty thousand casualties, most of those KIAs. Fucking hell. It had only been one fucking day for that many people to die and this shit was only halfway over.

Flatt wordlessly led me through the subway station and up the surface, where the sounds of war once again flooded my ears. I felt naked with only a shirt and fatigues, but some of the wounded were lying out in the open, exposed to the elements and unprotected from any shrapnel.

"Where are we going?" I finally asked.

"The war room," she replied after a pause. "Colonel Holland's in there."

"What does SPECWAR want to do with me?" I asked. "Isn't that Nezarian's department?"

"It very much would be," Captain Flatt admitted. She paused. "Captain Nezarian and what remained of AAG-29 were killed in action twenty minutes ago. Their Pelican was shot down en-route to a mission."

"En-route?" I asked.

"Yes."

"Shit."

Getting killed on a way to a mission was as bad as it got in combat. You never got to accomplish your objective, whichever it may be, and you usually realized that you were going to die when the Pelican hit the ground.

"Shit," Flatt echoed.

"What was their mission?"

"Take down an AA emplacement," she said. "It was highly critical, they had to enlist a group of Spartan-IIIs for the job."

"Why didn't they send them in the first place?"

"They were defending around two thousand civilians from a Covenant division."

I looked up and closed my eyes. Those people were all dead now.

"Where do I come into play here?"

"You'll see," she said. "Let's go."

I walked inside the college halls, covered with dust and blood. Flatt led me the rest of the way in silence until we entered a lecture hall. The holographic displays could be made to show military maps and data easily enough, and there was enough space in the middle for an actual holotable and for a few field grade officers to talk about sending men to their deaths.

"Captain," an Army colonel nodded in our direction. He was Holland, I knew him by reputation, but I had never met the man.

"Colonel," she said with a small dip of the head. She also acknowledged to other officers, one of them a Marine colonel that looked like he had seen one too many deaths and an Army brigadier general.

"Sirs," I added, snapping a quick salute as I walked.

"General, this is Lieutenant Castillo," Holland said, pointing at me. "One of our best."

I tilted my head slightly at the compliment, as if trying for modesty.

"I've heard about you," the brigadier said. "All that's left of the infamous Asymmetrical Assault Group, eh?"

"It would appear so," I confirmed, clasping my hands behind my back. I was the tallest man in the room and these officers were starting to go into that age where looking physically imposing was harder.

"Ever heard of Sword Base?" Holland asked, circling the table.

"ONI research base, right?" I asked.

He nodded. "I'm surprised you know about it."

"I keep stumbling into crap I have no business being around, sir."

He chuckled. "Well, lucky you."

"What about Sword Base, sir?"

"I'll get to it," Holland said, motioning towards the Marine officer of the same rank.

"Son, we've got more than enough trouble on our hands," he began, "of particular interest to us is the presence of an Elite field commander. Goes by the name of Shin'jee or some such bullshit. It's not of consequence, but the elite's face popped up in our recognition software, he's been fighting with the Covenant Army since New Constantinople."

I whistled.

"He was one of the top leaders during the Siege of Paris IV. An excellent tactician and talented leader," the man went on. "He leads from the front and tends to leave corpses behind him."

"And you want me to kill it?" I asked.

"Yes."

"Or do something involving this Sword Base?" I asked Holland.

"Yes."

"Can I have any specifics as to what you want me to do in Sword?"

He shook his head. "I'm afraid you'll have to accept before I can reveal any details. If your team chooses not to we'll have a unit of ODSTs take your place."  
>I nodded thoughtfully. "I don't often get to pick."<p>

"Well, today's the day," the brigadier said. "Sword or hingehead commander."

"I don't want to go blind," I said finally. "An assassination is always complicated business, but at least we're familiar with those."

"Very well then," the general said, uncrossing his arms.

The two colonels nodded, not showing any emotion.

"Well, if you'll excuse me," Holland said, moving to the exit.

"Sir, please give Noble my regards," I called out before he left.

"I'll be sure to do so," he assured me. "They like working with you."

"The feeling is mutual."

Holland nodded slowly and walked out of the lecture hall.

"To be honest, son," the marine colonel began, "I'm glad you chose to kill that hingehead fucker. The units under his direct command are wreaking havoc with our men. They're torching everything they go through, so they have nothing to fall back on. To them it's advance or die."

"Very fantasy-esque," I noted.

"Indeed it is," he agreed. "This fellow has the respect as well as the fear of his subordinates. It's painful to admit, but… my men can't handle him. They're steamrolling through."

I nodded understandingly. "Do you have reliable intel as to its position?"

"Yes," he said. "Captain?"

Flatt nodded and moved to the table. "This particular elite is a blood knight. He's headstrong, stubborn, and will always be in the thick of it. Like most of its kind, it is a skilled fighter, unlike most of them, it can appropriately choose as to whether its own life is more important than killing a couple of humans. It moves around, there are around six ultras that follow it, much like bodyguards."

"So we're dealing with a chieftain?" I scoffed. "Only it's an elite."

"More or less," Flatt said.

"Terrible combination," I grunted.

"And now we want you to off him," the general said. "This is how it'll work. That elite is spearheading the Covenant advance. We'll put all that's left of our artillery to put a dent in their line and send in a battalion to make a lot of noise."

"Do these men know what they're getting into?"

The general scoffed.

"No," the colonel said.

I sighed.

"I've lost a hundred thousand men today," the general told me matter-of-factly, "What's a thousand more?"

"Will it be worth it?" I asked.

"It has to be," the colonel said.

"I'll do it."

"Good," Flatt chimed in. "Suffice to say, don't get too involved in the physicality of it, you're still healing."

"I'll stay out of trouble," I assured her. "I promise. Sirs."

"Dismissed, lieutenant."

I walked out, side by side with Captain Flatt.

"Ma'am, I'm not sure I'm ready for combat," I told her once we had exited the room.

"I'm not either," she agreed, "but we need this. Worst-case scenario, you hang back, do a sniper job or let your men do it. They're competent enough."

"That they are," I agreed. "When will they be here?"

"Should be two or three hours," she replied. "Get some rest, I'll get you some accelerated healers, try and prevent your lung from being ripped open again."

I made a grimace. Those things burned like shit and didn't mix well with painkillers. "Right."

"Such is life, huh?"

"And life's a bitch."

* * *

><p>My chest burned like hell. The pain wouldn't go away, but it was manageable and I could walk a ten-meter stretch before having to stop and press my hands against my chest. An hour and a half ago it had been bad, but it was getting better gradually. I'd have to get myself scanned a day or two from now to confirm that the accelerated healers hadn't caused any tumor-like growths in my lungs. According to the study made it only happened once in every million or so cases, but I didn't want to die a month from now because my lung was more tumor than lung.<p>

"Can you reestablish contact?" I asked Captain Flatt.

"No, Frank."

I growled lowly. "It's been four hours. My pain has almost worn out."

"Are you complaining?"

"I'm complaining about not knowing where my men are," I told her. "How are we on those drones?"

"They're up, but they're taking other aerial pictures on their way there," she said, sliding her chair over to a different screen.

"No live-video?"

"We're working on it, but we can only send data in short bursts, the enemy jammers are killing our logistics."

"How are our jammers doing?"

"A little bit better, I'd say," she replied. "We still haven't managed to isolate the frequency where the Covenant jammer is working."

"Do those things work in frequencies?" I asked.

She turned to look at me and raised an eyebrow. "Do you really want me to explain that to you?"

I shook my head.

"How's the new armor treating you?" she asked, changing the topic.

I lifted my arms slightly and looked down. Most of the torso was new except for the abdomen belt. The vest had been replaced by one fresh out of the factory. It was supposed to be slightly more heat resistant than the past versions in account of a different formula. It was certainly lighter. The chest piece was what it usually was, a highly resistant piece of titanium that would stop just about anything under a sniper rifle and dissipate heat well enough that you could take one or two plasma shots to the chest under most circumstances.

"It's alright," I said. "I don't like the green undersuit though."

"You'll live," she assured me, returning to her monitors. "Wait, I'm getting something on radar. Right where Marina set down."

"Did they take out the SAMs?" I asked, leaning close behind to look at the radar screen.

"Not that I could tell, no," she replied.

I peered closer and for some reason I placed my hand on Flatt's shoulder.

She cleared her throat.

"Sorry," I apologized. "I swear I'm not trying to intentionally create some sexual tension."

"I can't blame you for wanting some of this, but it's never going to happen."

I paused and turned to look at her. "Did you just make a joke?"

"There!" she pointed at the screen. "That's certainly a Pelican."

"Can you get through to it?" I asked. "Can you identify it?"

"Not right now."

"Fuck, get them some air support!" I shouted, a little bit louder. "What can we do?"

Captain Flatt sighed and leaned back. "Nothing."

I stood back and crossed my arms, watching the stupid bleep move closer and closer in an incredibly confusing pattern. The Pelican was under fire, but I couldn't tell whether it was Marina piloting the ship, judging a flying style from a vague dot was not an easy task.

"They're getting closer."

I tilted my head above the tarps closing off Flatt's little office. The university's open areas had been cleared for landing pads, with the trees cut down and turned into spikes to surround the perimeter. Sketchy at best, but better than nothing. Marina's Pelican was supposed to land here, at least this is where she had taken off from. She had been recruited into becoming our personal pilot. Not that she minded, she knew we were the best and that way she was part of the more crucial missions.

"Yeah, the Pelican's headed here!" Flatt called out as I left the little office.

I ran through the grass and stood in the middle, looking up. The sound of the Pelican's engines soon reached my ears and the tip of one appeared soon after. I walked backwards as Marina's Pelican deployed its wheels and slowly hovered down. I moved towards the back of the craft and raised an eyebrow when I saw that the rear hatch was closed.

"Open up!" I shouted, banging on the side.

Pavel was the first one to hop out, behind him came another 11 of my men.

"Where's Tank?" I asked.

"I'm sorry," Pavel sighed. "He didn't make it."

"Shit," I grunted. "Alright, we're back in action. Get some stims and power bars, we've got another mission."

"You coming?" my friend asked me as the rest of my men tiredly moved towards the ammunition boxes.

"Yeah," I told him. "I'll hang back."

"Ok. About Tank…"

"We can be sad later," I told him. "Right now we're getting some indirect revenge."

He nodded and joined the rest of AAG-7 in stocking up with ammunition.

I looked inside the Pelican. Tank's body wasn't there. It must've been impossible to recover the body if Pavel hadn't brought him back. I shook my head sadly and climbed on board the Pelican, moving towards the cockpit. Marina turned to look at me and smiled weakly. She had been through hell and back with me more times than I could count and still she would volunteer for missions like this. She was the best there was.

"How's it going?" she asked.

"Good," I replied. "I'm no longer seeing double, so there's that…"

She nodded slowly. "Frank, I heard that some of the evacuation ships were hit in high orbit."

"I heard that too," I admitted. "If it's true then it's not likely any of the first ones out were destroyed."

"Are you sure that Katie, Liz, Amber, and Lav were all in the first ones?" Marina asked me.

"Yes," I said, my tone gaining a little bit of an edge.

"Alright," she said. "What is this mission going to be?"

"Assassination," I told her. "We'll pound a section of their advance with artillery, rush through it with armored protection and then wait for the glorious leader of the enemy to show up, hit him where it hurts the most."

"In the balls?" Marina asked.

"Nah, Snark will probably be the one to get the kill, so between the eyes."

"Don't they teach you to go for the base of the neck in sniper school?" she asked me.

"They do," I confirmed. I had gone through sniper school during my AAG training along with the marksmen in my team. "But Snark's good enough that he can't be bothered with silly matters such as that. You know how in the movies they'll say something like if he wanted to kill him he wouldn't have missed?"

"Yeah."

"Well, that applies to Snark," I told her. "You should really see him in action sometime. It's almost a thing of beauty."

"I've seen him shooting more than a few times," Marina said. "Whenever I'm bailing his ass out of the fire."

I shook my head. "That's not true sniper work, but it's not important. Anyways, you'll be dropping us with the 3rd Viery Armored. They'll handle the rest."

"Do you need me on standby?" she asked.

"Yes, but you can return to base, get some food."

"What if something goes wrong?"

"Something always goes wrong," I told her. "And don't we figure it out?"

"There's several scars on you that would say otherwise," she told me. "But I'll trust you on this one."

"When have I let you down?" I asked her.

"In the bedroom," Marina let me know, her voice dead serious.

"To be fair, you tend to use some teeth."

"Out of my cockpit," she requested, a slight humor coloring her tone now.

"Ma'am," I said.

Pavel climbed into the Pelican, looking a bit more haggard than usual, but there was a certain decisiveness to him that I had seen before.

"Tank… How was it?" I asked softly.

"Quick," he replied. "Lady was throw to the ground by an explosion. Spike grenade. She tripped. It wasn't anything too big, we didn't expect anything bad to happen, but the moment Tank went back to help her up he was hit by a beam. Straight through the head."

"Damn."

He nodded. "Snark took out the sniper. A brute stalker. We would've dragged Tank back with us, but he was a large man and the sniper had other jackal marksmen supporting it. Snark couldn't cover them all, even with Longworth and Miri backing him up."

"Quick avenging," I said. "At least he got that."

"At least he did," Pavel agreed. "What is it exactly we're doing?"

I looked behind him to see what was left of AAG-7 begin climbing into the back of the Pelican and seat in their usual chairs.

"Sit down, I'll explain on the way."

* * *

><p>The sound of rumbling Tortoise IFVs and Scorpion tanks flooded my ears. We were finally beginning to move. After several hours of no activity, I had almost begun to think that the mission would be called off. Our artillery units had to keep pushing back as they had no reliable aerial reconnaissance and any spotter sent forward was practically guaranteed to get a spike through the shoulder blades for their effort. We had been waiting alongside the 3rd for a while now.<p>

"Get ready boys!" Major Bans, the man in charge of the platoon that we would be working with, shouted. "Lieutenant, are your men ready?"

"Ready, ready," I replied, jerking my head for Pavel to give the word.

There were 13 of us left, so we'd have to split our squad. I moved into the Tortoise, letting my men climb inside the cramped infantry fighting vehicle before I climbed in myself. There was webbing on the walls and ceiling, but the most striking aspect of it all was the ungodly amount of blood covering the insides. The driver had told me that the contingent sitting in the back had been pummeled with plasma cannon fire just as they tried to leave. Someone had screwed up and allowed an enemy unit to remain alive and attack from the rear. No survivors out of the ten men.

The driver himself had been the one that took out the cannon. A set of shots from the autocannon installed on top of the Tortoise and the grunts had been finished. Lot of good that did to the men in the back.

"Easy with the rifle," Crow muttered to Snark.

"How about you close your legs so there's enough space, eh?" Snark replied, a bit harshly.

"Move your rifle," I told Snark. "There's plenty of room for all of us."

That was a bit of a stretch. Infantry fighting vehicles like the Tortoise and the Armadillo could fit ten people as well as two wounded in a bunk bed-style hammock that went in the middle, but even with only six people inside it felt crowded and tight. Lady was the smallest of us all, but the rest of the guys were all fairly muscular and had broad shoulders. Sometimes, whenever I caught Snark shirtless, I couldn't help but be surprised at just how strong he looked. With all of us in armor he looked small and even a little bit wiry, but the man could bench 200 pounds no problem.

"How long's the ride?" Longworth asked. Another guy with broad shoulders to reduce space.

"As long as it has to be. Ideally we wouldn't have to get out at any point, our offensive would steamroll through the Covenant and we'd win the battle here and now. Unfortunately, the Outer Ring Road is now something comparable to a wall, so we'll probably have to stop before there," I said. "It should be around an hour before we dismount."

"Who'll be in charge of the machine gun?" Crow asked. He was the only one with his visor polarized, his face was still an ugly mess to look at.

"Serge," I said, pointing to the man. He was the only one that was built like the traditional special forces operator. His chest was big and so were his shoulders, but instead of being something you'd expect from a Greek statue or an underwear model it was simply big enough that he wouldn't encounter too much resistance in strength-related matters. A true pragmatist. Caboose had a similar body type as Serge. They were the two true professionals in this unit. I will admit that I put an additional hour or two in the gym just so that my body would look exactly as I wanted to.

Why be able to bench 300 in reps (I could actually do five reps of somewhere in the vicinity of 900 pounds, but that was something that I couldn't just go and show off in front of everybody, especially with my body, which was most decidedly not the one of a world-class powerlifter), when you could bench 300 in reps and have the body that teenage girls touched themselves to. There's a difference, you know.

"Pavel, you good?"

"Yeah," he said. "A bit crowded."

"It's always crowded in IFVs," I told him. "All right, we're green!" I shouted to the driver.

"Copy that, El-tee!" he called back over the engine's rumbling. "Major, we're good!"

"Forward!" I heard through the radio.

"Grass, do you copy?" I asked her. She had remained back in the university, having done a couple of ops with us.

"Loud and clear, Frank."

"We're beginning."

"I know," she said. "Artillery strike is on the way."

"Let the hell come, eh?"

The Tortoise was equipped with an old holographic projector that allowed us to see an accurate depiction of what was going on outside of us. The projector used real time data as well as satellite imagery to recreate a picture of the IFVs and tanks steamrolling through the debris-covered streets. It looked a little bit like a movie, and it was intentional too. The soldiers inside got pumped when they saw shit like this.

How couldn't they? Fifty-plus fighting vehicles were moving forward with tanks supporting them while explosive shells rained from above. Whenever a shell caught an enemy unit the hologram would zoom in on that. You could tell that it wasn't completely from a camera, but it did the job for me. Seeing brutes shredded always got me going.

"Sometimes I think God is on our side," Snark noted.

"God is most definitely not with us," Crow replied. "If there even is a God then He is sitting up there in His heaven, watching our little show."

"He's sitting in Heaven because he's afraid of our superior firepower," I said, offering a high-five to Serge, who took it without hesitation. Must've been a good joke.

"Oorah!" the driver shouted from his seat.

The Tortoise rumbled as the autocannon began firing. The vehicle was armed with a powerful 40mm autocannon that could punch through hunter's shields and even take out Wraiths with enough concentrated fire. The coaxial machine guns were excellent for cutting down infantry and punching through buildings. As if that wasn't enough, there was a separate machine gun that could be manned by one of the passengers, an M247H Heavy Machine Gun chambered in 12.7mm. That caliber was strong enough to deter hunters and Ghosts from trying to attack you and Serge knew how to handle it just fine.

"Let us know if you need the assist," I told the driver.

"So far, so good," he shouted back. "I'll let you know!"

The battle became almost hypnotic. We would plow through the weakened defenses of the Covenant, wipe them all out with coordinated fire from the multiple Tortoises and then wait for the tanks to move forward, using their main guns to open up holes in the following line. Then more hell would rain from above in the form of pinpoint accurate artillery. Rinse and repeat.

An hour in, things started bogging down. We had been continually hit from all sides. You could tell the difference between directed energy weapons like plasma rifles and repeaters or the relatively conventional ones that fired solid ammunitions by the sound that they made when hitting the hull, but soon the noise became close to unbearable. Dull thuds from spikes that embedded themselves in the armor were joined by the magnified hissing of plasma and the shattering of needles were all that we could hear.

"They are beginning to send some offensive strikes," the driver let me know. "Any time now, El-tee."

"We're ready," I said. "Grass?"

"We're sending out a small fleet of drones, Frank," she said. "You can't fail here. We're pouring a lot of assets into this one."

"When have I failed, eh?" I asked.

Silence on the other end of the line.

I went serious. "I won't fail on this one, we'll draw the fucker out and Snark will lop its head clean off."

"I trust you, Frank. Over and out."

Damn.

"Sir, if you don't mind me asking, why are they sending your unit for something like this? Couldn't a regular sniper team handle this mission?" the driver asked.

"Maybe," I said. "But this point of the advance is the one that went the deepest. You know why?"

"No, sir."

"Because they grouped the best drivers and tankers all together, then they fired the most shells in front of us and provided us with the most assistance. Again, why? Well, just so that my men and me could get as close to the enemy as possible. Once here we'll make a lot of noise."

"More than a group of fifty Tortoises?" the pilot asked.

"We're good at what we do," Longworth told him. "Our target won't be able to resist us."

"At least, that's what our xeno-psychologists say," Snark jumped in.

"If you say so, sir," the driver replied, sounding a bit strained.

"You good?"

"Things are getting a bit hot," he admitted. "I could do with some air support."

"What you have is what you get," I told him. "You know the plan, right?"

"Your sniper stays here, and I let him do his- holy fuck!"

Our Tortoise was rocked violently and the interior temperature increased dramatically. We started moving a little bit more slowly and the pilot began shouting for help to the other tanks and IFVs.

"Right flank, right flank. I need someone up there!"

Serge was on it in a flash. He popped the hatch open and within an instant empty shell casings were falling at our feet. Serge shook violently from the recoil, but his helmet camera showed him hitting the side of a long building, turning the façade into dust and splattering blood on the walls behind the windows.

"Ready," I told the rest of my guys.

Lady nodded and shuffled towards the door.

"Pavel?"

"We're good," he said. "You?"

"We were hit, but we're still mobile and functional."

"Good," he replied. "Things are about to get heavy. We get one last little nudge."

"Rocket artillery, right?" Pavel asked.

"Yes," I agreed. "Old-fashioned missiles. Guided, small, accurate, but a bit easier to kill than a hunk of depleted uranium."

"Can we expect them to be effective?" he asked.

"Pavel, we'll be deploying everything for this. They'll be hard pressed to stop even half of them."

"Let's do this shit," he growled. "Give me the word."

"A little bit longer."

Four minutes and the Daemon tanks began pouring in. Two of our Scorpions were blown up in the initial barrage, but we still had the advantage in numbers. The other sections of the counter offensive on either side of us were prepared to begin closing in pincer style, cutting off a large section of the Covenant's forces from the main body of their army. They would do that even if it involved sacrificing a third of their troops.

"It's a mess out there, sir," the Tortoise driver said. "I wouldn't go out there even if they paid me to."

"Well son, I do get paid to do just that," I let him know.

"Ready," Lady told me.

I nodded slowly and looked at my men. They all nodded back. Tank had been killed just a few hours ago and we wouldn't let an affront like that go unpunished. Blood would flow.

"Frank?" Pavel's voice came in.

"Go!"

The hatch opened to reveal an incredible amount of noise that only a large-scale battle could replicate. I knew that several companies would be dismounting along with us. Flatt and Grass had coordinated with Army Aviation to deploy a battalion's worth of heavy infantry. It wasn't very often that you got to see them in action, they were a bit outdated and expensive, but the guys in the heavy infantry were fun to watch in a fight. They all carried modified rifles designed to fire faster and their armor was almost as good as an ODSTs. Not only that, but they had the old fashioned wheel-barrel cannons. Those things were basically a small tank tread with an anti-armor autocannon mounted on top.

I was concerned for their wellbeing, seeing as heavy infantry was typically deployed alongside regular infantry battalions and tank battalions. I'm not really sure who had decided to bring back heavy infantry in the medieval sense of the word, but the guy had certainly had a penchant for awesome.

"I've got Shortswords headed your way," Grass said. "Air Force pulled two squadrons of Gryphons and a few SkyHawks to help."

That was the moment that I realized that this wasn't just an assassination anymore. We had committed too many forces for this operation and it had now become the decisive battle for the city. We had overstepped a little bit, but it wasn't necessarily a bad thing. Better to play this out on our terms.

The noise was the first thing my mind registered, but as soon as I turned the corner of the IFV and came out facing the front I saw just what the scale of the battle was. Entire buildings and houses had been flattened down to form gigantic piles of rubble while the artillery corps had struggled to leave most of the main roads open. It was what you'd expect from a science fiction film about the end of the world. Well, the situation wasn't too far from that scenario, just switch the planet and we'd be right there.

"Enemy, dead ahead!" Longworth shouted.

"Move forward!" I screamed, my voice hoarse. I hated not being able to be in the front, but I'd have to trust my men on this one. A small mistake from me could cost us the advance and our momentum.

Longworth took point, Lady, Serge, Crow, and myself followed closely behind, with me hanging a little bit to the back. Pavel and the rest began moving from a different Tortoise. I could see at least twenty of the big vehicles moving forward slowly. All of them were scorched and damaged and all of them were letting troops out. Marines began moving forward with us, firing at the enemy defensive lines in front of us. Tracer rounds flew from the Tortoises and HEAT shells streaked from the Scorpions. I could hear the screaming of airplanes and the droning of gunships in the distance, but I didn't catch sight of any through all the smoke and dust.

Green artillery bolts slammed into the debris, raising mountains of rock and showering us with hot gravel. I ducked and flinched when I heard the sound of those coming at us, but in this visibility we didn't have any choice but to move forward. I could catch glimpses of the line of short buildings that the covvies were using as defensive positions. Those were just a few dozen meters from the Outer Ring Road. Those buildings would be perfect for Snark to set up. In the chaos of battle no one could see him without actively scanning the area where he was. The buildings on the outside edge of the road were all two or three stories tall, mostly residential. We could lure the target into Snark's range and get it done with.

"To the buildings," I said, broadcasting it over the main channel. "Direct fire to the top!"

Some of the Tortoises followed the order, but the rest were busy fighting back the Daemon tanks that were coming at us. I was almost thrown to the ground when a shell exploded a dozen meters from me. Longworth began moving towards our first rally point. A large bomb crater along the side of the street. There we would meet with Pavel and the rest of the team before spreading out, form a line and see if the armored support could give us an opening through to the buildings.

"We've got three Daemon tanks in front of us!" Pavel shouted.

"I'm hitting the first one," Bee called out. "Cover me!"

"Snark, Miri, you're on it," I ordered, frantically craning my neck to see which units were closest to us.

The two Tortoises that had dropped us off were hanging a bit back. In fact, the one with Snark still on it had moved back a hundred meters. The rest of the Tortoises were slowly moving forward, but they were having an incredibly hard time going against the Daemon tanks and the Wraiths. We had been plowing through the Covenant lines with help of our artillery strikes, but now we were meeting the meat grinder.

It was supposed to be the other way around.

"I've got Echo to the right," Pavel said. "They've got heavy weapons."

"Echo, Echo, this is AAG-7," I checked in. "We've got three Daemon tanks in our way."

"Understood, El-tee," the captain in charge of the company answered. "Redeploying."

The little tags marking the location of Echo Company started shuffling slowly towards us until they were less than sixty meters away. I couldn't help but wince every time one of the tags disappeared as they slowed their advance and exposed their flank to the enemy. Still, they managed to reach a small apartment building with three of its walls still standing and took position there.

"I got one down," Bee said. "Useless but not destroyed."

"Tag it," Echo requested. "We'll blow up the other two."

Echo was not strictly an anti-armored company, but they were part of the mechanized infantry, which meant that they could very well take out a small tank unit if they had to clear the way. The five platoons that made up Echo actually consisted of enough people to form three standard-sized platoons. It was hard to see units that had taken hard beatings like this, but my own team had gone through 35% casualties.

"When's our support coming in?" Pavel asked after a quick dash to cover.

"Final stretch," I said, running forward, hitting a trio of grunts trying to climb back over a mountain of debris. "We need them when it counts."

"It would count right about now, sir," Crow said.

He was right, it was a miracle that we hadn't been hit yet.

"We need to get over that pile," I said, pointing at a wall-like mount of debris. "Once we've got a few Tortoises on the other side we'll be able to hit the buildings better."

"Just a kilometer, eh?" Andrea asked.

"A bit more," I corrected.

"But who's counting?" Marv added.

The advanced slowed down, but we were still moving forward far faster than we should've in this situation. We had mechanized infantry on either of our flanks while the 3rd Viery Armored was literally sacrificing itself to get us to push forward. We were now less than 30 meters away from the Daemons, only safe because the artillery before had provided us with cover and concealment.

"Echo?" I asked.

Marines liked explosions almost as much as Army Engineers, but unlike the Engineering Corps, they tended to give little to no warning when blowing shit up. For example, if an engineer was going to blow up a bridge, he'd give a warning and countdown. If a Marine was going to blow up a bridge he would wait for his CO to ask what was taking so long and then answer by clicking the detonator. It wasn't nearly as dramatic when you saw the missiles streak through the air for a half a second before the actual explosion came, but it was pretty close.

"You might want to bail," I told the captain. "Made yourselves a pretty big target."

"We know the drill," he replied.

The little target indicators in my HUD started moving just as the plasma fire directed at the building they had been occupying intensified. Echo got some limited support from the unit adjacent to their right and Snark did his best, but the Tortoises were busy engaging a small fleet of Ghosts that was coming hard at them. They'd have to stop or stall them before they reached our position or we'd find ourselves in the middle of a vehicular melee.

"Shit, Banshees coming up!" Miri warned.

"They're headed towards Echo," I noted. "Bee, give them a hand."

"Reloading," he said. "I need a moment."

"Serge, Marv, Dotsenko, pepper them!"

The three guys opened up on the Banshees, but without tracer ammunition they had a hard time hitting them. Two of the Banshees broke off from the main formation and instead moved in our direction. They started strafing early, eager to get the kill, but Bee surprised them with two head-on missiles. The wrecked hunks of metal slammed into the ground and we were moving again. We had to get past the spot where the three Daemons had been left useless, but those things still had the plasma cannons on top as well as well as the infantry contingent supporting them. The unit on our left flank was beginning to engage in order to distract them and give us a window to hit fast and hard.

"Pavel, Dotsenko, set up top," I ordered. "Miri, with them. Split up, split up!"

We separated into three groups. Two fireteams of four and five men each and the three people on overwatch. The Daemon tanks were in an intersection. The side streets had been blocked with debris and a large portion of the avenue that led to them was covered, forming a funnel. Had we tried to blast our way through with Scorpions and Tortoises we would've met a very swift death.

"We're set," Pavel called out.

"Fire, fire!" I shouted. "Move!"

Longworth led the first fireteam and Marv the second one while I trudged behind. I snapped a couple of shots at jackal sharpshooters while my men drew the attention of the gunners on top of the Daemons. The elites manning the turrets were quickly hit with automatic fire from Pavel and Sasha. They started redirecting their fire only for Miranda to cap off one of them. The other two targeted them, but Longworth's squad had moved close and to their side, hitting the elite's unprotected shoulder and head. The third elite got smart and began firing quick bursts to keep us down, trying to buy an opportunity for the dwindling infantry with it to knock us out of the fight. It was a brave effort, but it only lasted for forty five seconds before Miranda drilled it through the neck.

"Snark, you got eyes on us?"

"Barely," he said. "It's an artillery shower out here, we can't move forward just yet," he said. "You move past that debris wall and I won't be able to see you."

I nodded understandingly. "Alright, wish us luck."

From here on out to the row of buildings that we wanted to reach was just five hundred meters of open ground away. It had once been several houses and small businesses, but they had been brought down to form a nearly uniform field of rocks and rubble. There were a few ups and downs here and there, but there would be no cover for the tanks or IFVs after that wall. Some of the vehicles of the 3rd had made it to the edge of the wall and were waiting for more units to reach that position before moving forward. We had closed in most of the distance to our target at the cost of 20% casualties.

"Frank," Grass checked in. "The Pelicans are on the way, you've got some serious firepower headed there for help. This better be worth it."

"Have you spotted the target yet?" I asked.

"Negative, Frank," she replied. "We'll give you the word."

"Ok then," I acknowledged. I turned to my men. "We've got reinforcements on the way, the Pelicans will use their Anvils on the enemy positions, they'll be our go signal."

My men nodded and I broadcast the new modified instructions to the rest of the units belonging to our spearhead. We had about three thousand men and women within a square kilometer of us, most of them to our direct left or right. Echo Company had withered down to almost nothing after the Banshee strafing runs and we now had 5th and 12th platoons covering our right flank. The surviving Tortoises were slowing for some last minute repairs, getting rid of any scrapped armor that might hurt the treads and switching the damaged pieces for replacement ones. The IFVs that didn't have spares simply let their engines run on idle and waited for the word to come.

"Five hundred meters!" I called out. "It's what you guys would call point blank, isn't it?" I asked Major Bans.

"Indeed," he replied, standing up on top of his Tortoise. "Target-rich environment too."

"Then you won't have too much trouble finding something to kill, will you?"

He shook his head. "I don't think the Covenant will have that particular problem either."

I looked around me and saw the hundreds of soldiers and dozens of vehicles that were preparing to head to their deaths just to give me and my twelve men the opportunity to take out a single elite that had been giving us some trouble. I would not let them down.

"Sir, courtesy of Captain Flatt," I turned around to see a young private dismount form a Warthog. Immediately behind him another identical vehicle.

"Pavel, Bee, you get passenger seats," I gave the word. "Serge, Caboose, you two drive."

I looked at the rest of my men and wondered who should take the guns in the back. "Marv, Lady."

That left Longworth, Crow, Dotsenko, Andrea, and Miranda with me. Three and three. The Warthogs wouldn't be able to go any faster than twenty miles per hour in this terrain, but they'd provide us more power projection as well as mobility. With Tortoises on our flanks, Pelicans above, and heavy infantry all around, we had a fairly decent opportunity.

I heard the explosions that marked the Shortswords' opening bombing run. Seconds later I heard the screaming of Gryphon atmospheric fighters and SkyHawks. A pair of Gryphons exploded right above our heads as they were hit by AA plasma torpedoes, but we barely had time to see the wrecks zoom forward before the Pelicans dashed above our heads.

"Let's go!" I screamed.

The two Warthogs roared, their wheels digging into the loose ground and shooting dust out the back. The Scorpions had less trouble during the climb, their quad treads digging in and pulling them up. I ran uphill with my men on foot, joined by the Marines and soldiers to our sides and back. The first tank to go up the wall was hit in the bottom before they could clear the gap. The next two suffered the same fate, exposing their vulnerable underbelly as they climbed. After that the Covenant had too many targets to take them out all at once. I narrowly avoided losing my head to a beam rifle and then almost lost my hearing as the Tortoise behind me began firing its autocannon, slowly rumbling past us. Above us the SkyHawks hovered and spun, pounding the ground with their heavy machine guns and occasionally shooting a Scorpion anti-tank missile. Most of those were destroyed before they could hit their target. The Covenant had some serious anti-missile defenses going on. Sometimes I could even see the lasers as they lit up the smoke they burned through.

"Artillery right, artillery right!"

I ducked instinctively as a blast lifted a ton of dirt and brought it back down on top of the Scorpion closest to us. The tank struggled for a few seconds, but two blasts killed it in a huge fireball before the tanker could get his vehicle out. Banshees decided to join the fray and began pestering the SkyHawks. Our strike fighters were nearly overwhelmed, but support from ground units saved the majority of them and allowed the pilots to turn the tables. Our Gryphons would've helped, but they were busy engaging the Seraphs and Phantoms that had risen up to take them out.

It was a bout between heavyweight boxers. Heavyweight boxers with tanks, planes, and artillery support.

"Targets, targets!"

A platoon of covvies had risen up from the ground directly in front of us. Longworth was the first to fire, hitting the lead elite in the head and knocking it to the ground, wounding it. Dotsenko did his job right and nearly emptied his magazine on the grunts and jackals, giving us all an opening to move forward and into good cover before joining them. We slowed down enough to take them out, but we couldn't afford a luxury such as safety, not now. Pavel and the two Warthogs were now thirty meters in front of us, their guns lit up and the tracer rounds made their way towards the row of buildings we wanted to get to. This was going to be the longest five hundred meters of my life.

"Ghosts!"

"Get down!"

I ducked just in time, as a barrage of plasma hit our position. My men had gone down at the same time I did, but a few of the Marines amongst us hadn't been quick enough. I saw a young girl get hit in the face, and fall down to the ground, headless. Two other soldiers were killed and several more were wounded before the plasma barrage could be countered with 40mm explosive ammunition and HEAT rounds.

"Forward!" I shouted. "Push!"

The Pelicans carrying the heavy infantry were now turning around and leaving. About half of them hadn't made the drop, but even as they fell back they were being shot down. I did some quick calculations in my head, most of the heavy infantry should've survived. The Pelicans were flying slow and close to the ground. The flat ground would've made them skid a bit before slowing down.

Judging from my HUD, around 90% of the Army's toughest were still alive, but that number would dwindle fast if we didn't reach them. They were still in front of us and trying to handle the wall of death that the row of buildings were.

A Pelican erupted in flames a hundred and fifty meters in front of us. It began sputtering and crashed down before skidding over the rubble spinning and finally flipping on its side and barrel rolling down to our position. Serge narrowly avoided being splattered, losing his life and that of the two men in the back of his 'Hog. The Tortoise behind him wasn't so lucky, but the driver might've survived the hit. Even then, the Pelican pilot was most certainly dead.

"Go, go!" I shouted. "We can use it for cover!"

Dotsenko was firing like a madman now. His SAW was designed to be able to fire almost continuously for hours at a time, the alloy making up the barrel and hand guard would feel little more than warm if I touched it right now, but even then I was afraid that he might strain his gun. Jams and malfunctions were rare, but the more you fought the more likely you had to go through one of those.

"Frank, we need those rockets!" Pavel shouted.

"I agree, Lieutenant!" Major Bans jumped in. "My men are getting slaughtered."

"A hundred meters!" I replied. "We need to make it there!"

Bans wasn't happy about it, not even remotely amused by my insistence to keep our ace up the sleeve hidden a bit longer. Half his vehicles were up in flames now and the rest were struggling just to move forward. It's not like the Covenant had much to show for it, but we were getting slaughtered.

Two aircraft collided in front and to my right, a Banshee and a SkyHawk from the looks of it. The airspace was getting crowded. Crowded in the traditional sense of the word, not the Air Force usage. We had a few dozen aircraft in a space of 500 square meters, with most of them clustered a lot closer than that. Missiles and torpedoes flew and lit the dust raising up before hitting the ground or their targets. Two Banshees nearly slammed into my group and one hammered a boy into the floor, producing a splash of blood that seemed a little bit too cartoonish.

"Grass, give me those missiles!" I shouted as I got past a hunk of metal that had once been a Wraith. "Now!"

"On their way!"

I don't know why she was screaming, maybe because she was watching the battle in real time and had access to a thousand different points of view.

The missiles screamed, their sound was even more ominous than that of Banshees, but unlike the enemy strike craft, the missiles were guaranteed to get kills. The first ones were disappointing, detonating in the air above or behind us as the Covenant anti-missile technology took them down, but then more and more of the missiles started flying in and the system became overwhelmed. Banshees exploded in orange fireballs first, then little explosions began dotting the space in front of us, hitting anything from Wraiths, to Daemons, to grunts with fuel rod cannons. Our assault regained traction and we moved forward, now we only had to close the distance and clear the buildings.

"Lovely."

A few of the missiles screamed just mere inches from our heads, their pinpoint-accurate guidance systems weaving through the tanks and other vehicles. The sheer amount of explosions started out into what one could describe as multiple snapping noises and turned into just one massive ongoing explosion. My ears started hurting from all the vibrations even if my helmet blocked most of the noise off. The last leg of the dash was almost easy, with my men and me stepping over the dismembered corpses of dead Covenant soldiers. It was easy to tell where the missiles had hit. The high-heat explosions burned near-perfect spheres in the ground, oftentimes the edges of the little craters were splattered with alien blood.

"Fifty meters!" Longworth called out.

The two Warthogs had been hit several times, but miraculously none of my men had been hit. Pavel's Warthog was bogged down, its two front tired had been melted and the rims were struggling and failing to gain some traction. Caboose's own vehicle had suffered a near miss before slamming head on into a piece of wall. Lady had hit her chest against the body of the machine gun, but she was alive and conscious. Her aim was a bit off, but not enough that we'd suffer.

"Frank, there's heavy movement on the other side of the buildings," Grass checked in on my radio.

"What is it?" I asked, slowing down and crouching behind a Ghost. "Grass!"

"Rangers, jackals and elites. It's a shitload of them, Frank."

"Rangers are coming up!" I shouted. "Eyes on the sky, eyes on the sky!"

The majority of the unit commanders acknowledged my warning within instants of me shouting it, but the elites and jackals with jetpacks showed up above the short buildings. We already suffered from being on the low ground, but now we had the rangers raining down on us.

The term vertical ambush really doesn't do justice to the panic and tension that goes on while seven foot aliens with state of the art ballistic armor and energy shields land all around you.

Lady began firing upwards, two elites died before they could land, but a third one landed on her chest, knocking her down behind the edge of the 'Hog. I turned to fire at the elite, but a pair of jackals landed on either side of me and I had to address them first. One of them grabbed my rifle, the other began bringing its carbine up to bear, but I kicked it back down. It was a move that I had made use of too many times. Andy shot the jackal in the back as it brought the carbine back up, allowing me to throw the other bird into the ground and fire a burst into its face.

Meanwhile, Lady had been knocked out and the elite prepared to finish her with a thrust from his energy dagger. Bee hopped off the Warthog and tossed his SPANKr, one-handed, at the back of the alien's head. The elite stumbled forward and turned around just to receive a sustained burst from Bee's MA5.

Suddenly we found ourselves in the midst of enemies. Elites and jackals were both quick and deadly, but they didn't have Tortoises on their side. Despite their significant disadvantage we were still not fully prepared for them.

"Shit, help!"

Crow was struggling to throw a jackal off his back while trying to hit the elite rushing at him. He turned just as the elite fired and used the jackal as a shield. Miri knocked the elite down to the ground with three shots from her DMR, allowing Andy to finish it off.

"Get to the buildings!" I shouted. "Move, move!"

Bee dragged Lady up and put her across his shoulders, stumbling on the ground before Pavel stopped him and helped him drag her. Serge and Caboose had hopped off the Warthogs and were opening up a corridor through the rangers with their shotguns while Marv kept firing the 'Hog's LAAG. I hung back a bit, letting my own men slowly move forward. Miri fired at the jackal rangers, who were continually hopping around and shooting needles at us.

"Fuck!" Andy fell as a needle punched through her thigh. "I'm alright, I'm alright!"

She moved back to her feet, this time it was Dotsenko who picked her up and offered support.

"Marv, let's go!"

He jumped down from the Warthog and the LAAG went silent. Just as that happened a gold-clad elite jumped down from the second floor of the buildings. It drew a sword and slashed at Bee, Lady, and Pavel. Both of the conscious guys stopped and purposely fell backwards, narrowly avoiding the slash. Marv and Longworth fired at the field marshal, but they found themselves under fire as soon as they did. Instead they were forced to take cover and the rest of my men had to fire at the aliens in the second floor.

I ran forward, narrowly avoiding a burst from a plasma repeater. I hit the field marshal twice with bursts, but before I could get a third one off a plasma bolt slammed into my chest and knocked me into my ass.

I groaned and rolled on the floor, clutching my chest.

"Move, Bee!"

Pavel yanked Lady from the ground as the elite stabbed into the ground. I might've heard her shoulder popping or it might've been rock hitting rock. Either way, I struggled to move while Bee emptied what was left of his magazine into the elite marshal. Pavel dropped his M247L and grabbed Lady, tossing her to the side. The marshal brought its sword around as Bee's rifle clicked empty and ran him through.

"No!"

Pavel was the first one there; he was only a few feet away. He threw an unprimed grenade at the elite's head, knocking it to the ground where he then proceeded to fire an entire magazine from his pistol into its chest, draining the shields. With that done, Pavel drew his knife and slammed it on the elite's neck.

"Inside!" I groaned. "Inside!"

Two Marines picked me up and helped me the rest of the way into the building. Pavel moved back to get Lady and got her through the door while Dotsenko got Andy inside. The rest of my men dragged Bee, leaving behind a trail of blood.

"The building isn't clear!" I shouted as soon as I regained my bearings. "Caboose, take point."

A Marine sergeant started barking orders as more and more men came into the building, the wounded were left on the floor, writhing in agony. I felt like the Tortoises shouldn't be firing at the top floors of the small buildings, but we needed a bit of help if we wanted to clear this place quickly.

"Pavel, go!" I shouted.

"Are you ok?" he asked me.

"I'm fine," I growled. "Bee?"

He looked at him and shook his head.

I nodded. "Andy, can you walk?"

"It went clean through, give me biofoam and half an hour."

"Get to it."

Andy started self-medicating while I slowly dragged myself to my feet. The two Marines that had helped me up had left to begin clearing the ground floor and gunfire soon boomed through the walls. I moved towards Bee, he was still holding onto his assault rifle loosely, but it didn't take much time to confirm what I already knew. The field marshal hadn't only stabbed him, it had twisted the energy sword about fifteen degrees, leaving two massive gaping holes on his torso, one of which had all but obliterated his heart.

Bee was dead.

"Damn," I said, crouching next to him. "Ten years and it ends like this…"

"Sir?" Andrea asked. "Are you alright?"

I took a deep breath and nodded slowly. I would've said something, but I was afraid that my voice would break.

Bee made the eighth number that I'd have to ink into my arm. It wasn't going to be enough to honor him. It wasn't enough to honor anyone.

I reached into his neck and yanked free the dogtags, adding it to the eight other ones that were wrapped around my left forearm. After that was done I removed his yellow chest piece and examined it for damage. The sword had gone through and left nearly half of it useless, so I was better off keeping my own chest piece, even if it had just barely survived a direct hit.

"Snark, move forward," I ordered. "We're clearing the buildings."

"I'll be there in a minute," he replied. "Sir?"

"Bee's dead."

Silence. "Copy that."

"Andy, I want you to stay here, ok? You'll stick with Snark while he does his thing. Plenty of wounded are going to be coming in, alright?"

"Yes, sir."

"Sir, we can clear some of the rooms to make space for the wounded," a Marine reported to me.

"Get to it," I said. "Corporal Livingston will be helping out, do anything and everything she tells you to."

"Yes, sir."

"For starters," Andy began, "I'll need you to help me up."

"Yes, ma'am."

Andy stumbled through the hallway and into a room where the rest of the wounded were being funneled to, leaving my in the hall with a bunch of tired Marines and soldiers that didn't seem to know where the rest of their unit was.

"Pavel, Caboose?"

"We're working on the third floor," Pavel shouted back. "They've dug in!"

"Call for help from Bans," I told him. "I'm on my way up."

Major Bans ordered two Scorpions to blast the surviving covvies from the building just as I made my way to the second floor. Perhaps doing that while he had friendly troops in the building wasn't strictly smart, but we were past the point where we cared what was smart and what was not. Besides, they had just killed one of my best men, that wasn't going to be left alone.

"Grass, are there any air raid sirens still working in the area?" I asked.

"Ummm, yes, those things are designed to last."

"Can you access them?"

"Yes indeed," she replied. "What do you want?"

"Play us some inspiring shit," I requested. "These men want to kick some ass, get them in the mood."

"On it. Frank, Rob just flatlined…"

"Yeah, I can confirm he's KIA."

"Shit," Grass sighed. I could see her leaning back on her chair and pushing her hair back. "Ok. Acknowledged."

A few seconds later I could hear the opening notes of They Hit Without Warning coming through. It was one of Bee's favorites.

"We're clear," Pavel announced.

"We're clear," I broadcast. "What are we missing?"

"All buildings are clear," a captain checked with me. "We can move to phase two."

"Bans, did you catch that?"

"Affirmative," Major Bans replied. "I'm patching in Colonel Ochoa."

"Colonel, pleasure to meet you," I greeted the man. "Your men really helped out there."

"And they took a beating for it too," the leader of the heavy artillery troops said. "I've got my troops setting up defensive positions, flipping this little wall around. We're repurposing plasma cannons and some intact AA Wraiths."

"Hmm," I muttered. "I don't like it."

"Nobody does," Ochoa agreed, "but we need a shitload of firepower and I'm not about to turn my back on that right now."

"Understood Colonel," I said. "Major Bans, what's the status of the 3rd?"

"We're down to 40% operational capacity," he said. "Most of our casualties were Tortoises, but our Scorpions took a beating."

"Is that enough to move into phase two?" I asked.

"Yes," he said.

It was insane. He knew that if he chose to go ahead with this his unit would be almost completely destroyed, but his men were prepared to make the sacrifice. I was going to do everything that I could to make any deaths today worth it.

"Colonel Ochoa, do we have any mortars available?"

"We have some short range launchers," he said. "Maximum range of 300 meters."

"That should be enough," I said. "I need the Outer Ring Road bombarded before we move through."

"I'm moving my surviving Tortoises into column formation behind the blue building," Bans said. "My men are already setting it to collapse towards the ring road."

"Let's go over this quickly," I said. "I'm going to need a serious distraction over to the left flank."

"I've got my tanks and half my infantry moving that way," Bans said. "They'll attempt to pass through the wreckage of Bridge O1."

"I'm sending four platoons as well," Colonel Ochoa added.

"They should have a decent amount of sniper and heavy weapons support from the buildings," I said. "The 7th should do a good job at providing backup."

"They make some noise," Major Bans went on, "if they do go through, all the better."

"Then you blow up the blue building," I said. "Are you sure you'll be able to traverse the debris?"

"My demolition teams are the best in the universe," Bans said confidently.

"Excellent," I said. "Which means that you'll put… what, twenty Tortoises?"

"Twenty-three," he corrected. "They'll pour through. Lead ten will try and cross the road, set a little wall on the other side. The other ones will spread out to either side, protect your team and any infantrymen that go through."

"How many men are we feeding into the grinder?" I asked.

"Two companies on my side," Bans said.

"Three here," Ochoa added.

"That's five hundred men, give or take," I said. "Very well. Do they all know the buildings they are supposed to capture?"

"We're still working on that," Major Bans said. "But they all know that once we move through the ring we'll have to move to the left flank and try to link up with the distraction team or wait for them to come to us."

"Good, good," I said, tapping Pavel's shoulder. "It sounds like a plan."

"We're green," Colonel Ochoa let me know. "Good to go on your word, El-tee."

"My men need a few minutes," Bans said. "I'll give you the word."

"Roger that, over and out," I said. "Pavel, all good?"

"Yeah, Lady's still unconscious?"

I nodded. "They took her into our improvised hospital. Andy's taking care of her."

"Bee?"

"Didn't make it," I said, a comment that drew sighs from my men. "Snark's on his way, we've got to move towards the column."

"Frank, this part of the mission wasn't supposed to be done with just nine men," Pavel said.

"Shit happens," I replied. "We have done more with less."

Pavel looked out of the roofless building and towards the ground that we had just gained. Dozens of smoking tanks and IFVs littered the already apocalyptic landscape. I could see human corpses adding to the Covenant ones, smoke came from UNSC and alien vehicles alike, darkening the sky. A crashed SkyHawk strike fighter shook in the ground as one of its engines refused to turn off. A squad of soldiers fired into the engine from a safe distance, finally neutralizing the useless fighter before moving to check if the pilot might've survived. It was not a pretty sight.

"I'm not so sure this time," Pavel said.

"We have to go on," I told him. "It's become more than it was intended to be, we can take advantage of that."

"Never took you for a disciple of Rommel," Caboose noted.

"I'm more of a Galeana kind of person," I told him. "We green?"

My men nodded. "Ok, let's move. There'll be ammunition at the Tortoises."

The New Earth, another one of Bee's favorites began playing it's deceptively slow opening as we climbed down. It was by Audiomachine, Bee's epic music band of choice. He kept telling me how versatile they were and tried to explain how they just seamlessly merged epic with drama and some such bullshit. I just liked the sound.

On the way to the blue building I could hear a couple of men commenting on the song and saw a tired squad nodding their heads in beat to the music. Halfway through the song I heard the distraction team begin their attack. It became almost loud enough to block the raid sirens, but some of the Scorpions had begun playing the music in their own speakers, pumping up the infantry with them.

My men and I had gone into battle countless times, and more often than not Bee would play some music of his to get our blood flowing. It had become so normal that nobody ever made note of it anymore, it was part of the background noise until it felt like your own heart was beating to the pace of the song, fast and hard. This time it was different: even if I had tried, I could not ignore the music, it was too loud and it was coming from all over. The slight difference in time as the sound reached me just gave it an even more impressive effect.

"Lieutenant, the explosives are set," Major Bans called out from the top of his Tortoise. "My men are getting ready."

"We're good to go," I said. "Just need some ammunition."

"Come," he waved us over. "My Tortoise has enough of that."

The nine of us moved towards the Tortoise and began filling our pouches with additional ammunition. Pavel and Dotsenko pressed the large magazines into their chests and bellies, sticking it with Velcro while also shoving magazine after magazine into their rucksacks. They and Marv were the only ones with their rucksacks still. Most of us had gotten rid of the extra weight long before, but Marv oftentimes kept ammunition of all kinds in his little backpack, ready to dispense us with it.

"Are you ready?" I asked Major Bans.

He nodded and climbed out the top hatch and looked behind at his men. "Ready?!"

"Oorah!"

Major Bans nodded to himself just as the song ended and another one with heavy electric guitar and a bass drum in the background. "Anything you want to say?"  
>I was already patched through to the whole division so I just spoke into my helmet.<p>

"The name of this song is To Glory," I noted as trumpets joined the guitar, "a fitting title for a day like this. I intend to get myself a little glory today, are you up for it?"

This time the Oorah was louder and more enthusiastic. It might've been the song or it might've been my words, but the men were ready.

"Blow it up!" Bans ordered.

What I saw next was one of the most beautifully choreographed explosions that I had seen outside of Angel's handiwork. The blue building was nearly shattered into tiny little pieces by dozens of small explosions. A larger shaped explosive had been attached to the roof and secured to the floor with retractable cables, as soon as the primary explosions happened the cables were released in a precise order. The bottom cable hit harder, sending the explosive upwards and countering the effect of gravity ever so slightly. By that point the rest of the building was beginning to fall down, but the final and largest explosive detonated here. It had been shaped to direct most of the blast towards one direction.

I could almost catch the half-sphere of a shockwave push dust and smoke back before it made contact with the shattered building, sending it flying away from us and over the Outer Ring Road.

"Forward!" Major Bans boomed.

I hopped inside his Tortoise just before it sped forward and Colonel Ochoa gave the order for his men to start firing their mortars, carpeting the ground in front of us with anti-personnel mortar rounds. The explosions almost overwhelmed the music, but Bee's spirit was with us, and awesomeness would not be denied.

The Tortoise next to me exploded as it was hit by two Wraith mortars simultaneously, but the rest charged forward, moving over the debris littered road with what one could say ease. When we hit the concrete dividers separating one direction from the other we slowed down a bit, but the heavy IFVs plowed through them without too much effort and then began spreading out.

"Infantry forward!" I shouted. "On me!"

Fuck that shit about hanging back. Bee had died and heads would roll.

"Move!"

Explosions shook the ground, heavy explosive ammunition whistled as it flew above my head, and men cried out in anger and defiance as they fired their rifles. The Covenant had barely had any time to move their troops in accordance to our latest movements. Our feint to the left had fooled them and now they didn't have the numbers to stop our crazy attack. I put my foot on a ramp of debris that led out of the road and into the other side of the Esztergom.

An elite came out to fire, but I killed it. I killed the next one that tried to do the same and then did the same with two grunts before I reached the top of the debris ramp. On the other side were dozens of dead aliens and several more that were struggling to get a hold of the situation. To my side Pavel roared crazily, spraying the clearing-like area with his machine gun. Us two were the first ones to cross the road and the first ones to make it up the ramp. Like madmen we moved forward and like madmen we were followed.

Despite the inherent craziness of this attack, nobody here was actually crazy, except perhaps yours truly. We hit with deadly accuracy and used the surviving Tortoises for cover and support. One of the vehicles was hit by two fuel rods from Banshees, Banshees that were quickly brought down with SPANKr fire. A Daemon shell nearly took my head off and sent me to the ground before it hit the back of the debris ramp, sending a squad of men flying, limbs missing.

"Daemon forward!" Caboose shouted. "Take it out!"

Two men with launchers took a knee and fired the two missiles in their weapons. One of them was hit by carbine fire in the chest and neck. He pressed his hand to his neck to try and keep the blood in before two medics arrived to help. One of the medics was killed by another carbine shot, but Miri fired wildly at a window in the distance, sending a jackal down. Bans' Tortoise moved to the front and placed itself perpendicular to the Daemon, presenting it its side. Its autocannon fired at the gaps in the armor that the four rockets had made. The explosive 40mm ammunition tore through the weakened metal and killed the pilots and gunners inside the Daemon.

"Enemy to the left!"

"Fire, fire, fire."

"Frag out!"

I moved up, waving crazily while struggling to give orders to everybody. The men were all looking at me to tell them what to do and after leading them in this crazy charge I wasn't about to let them down. We needed to get at least a block forward before we started moving to the left and linked up with the Scorpions. Once there we could slow down just a little bit and let the third and fourth waves of troops bolster our lines.

"Tortoises forward," I said. "Bans, have them hug the right side of the street! Heavy infantry, I want you working building by building to our left. I need two platoons to set a perimeter to our right, secure the ramp. Get me two other Tortoises from the road and get the ones on the left to begin moving up and down the road, pummel enemy positions."

It was a lot and it was not exactly detailed, but everyone got the gist of it and they began moving.

"AAG-7, we move forward and lead the way. That intersection there is our goal."

My men acknowledged my orders and began moving, keeping close to Bans' Tortoise. We fired at the windows and doors, but the majority of the houses here had been completely destroyed by our preemptive artillery strikes. Most of them were useless for fortifying and only provided decent cover for a squad or even less. It was prime attack terrain for us, especially with an armored column moving to our side.

"Block off the street," I ordered the Tortoise pilots. "Wall it off, wall it off!"

"Form the wall," Bans shouted. "Three Tortoises. Everyone else, we link up with the distraction team!"

"Rally Point Alpha," I said. "From there we move forward!"

"Frank, what about our target?" Pavel asked me.

"Fuck the target, if he shows up we'll deal with it. We're fucking winning this battle!"

"Sir, I've got eyes on you," Snark let me know. "I can cover you all the way to Rally Point Alpha, but I'll need to relocate once you get there."

"Roger that," I said. "Move however you deem it appropriate."

The road to Alpha was short, but it was a grueling task. The covvies suddenly found themselves between a rock and a hard place, and we were shooting at them too. Miranda and Longworth targeted elites exclusively while I stuck to jackals and some grunts. Pavel and Dotsenko, however, carried the weight of our assault. They, alongside the heavy infantry, poured enough lead into the street that ricochets became a very real danger to the covvies. They only slowed down when the street turned and we faced the danger of friendly fire. Most of our troops had to move to either side of the street in order to fire diagonally. The tanks and Tortoises coordinated their shots carefully, but we reached Alpha without too many casualties.

"I'm getting seismic activities," some nerdy-sounding Marine broadcast. "They're four hundred meters away."

"Snark, what do you see?"

"A whole lot of dust and some houses crumbling," he replied. "If I had to take a guess…"

"Scarab," I said with a quick nod. "Grass, did you catch that?"

"I'm trying to get Air Force to send in some strike bombers, but they're down to their last dozen aircraft. Looks like you'll have to take it on your own."

"No artillery?" I asked her.

"Flatt is coordinating the strikes, but there are three different armies working side by side with you now, Frank. At this point it makes tactical sense to support them and let them catch up, use that to form up a line."

"Understood," I said, no trace of sarcasm or anger in my voice. "Bans, Ochoa, we've got a Scarab headed our way."

"Scorpions ready!" Bans roared. "Knee shots exclusively, I want my Tortoises ready to rush it, draw its fire away from the tanks!"

"Snark, out of curiosity, that golden marshal wasn't the target, was it?" Pavel asked as he reloaded his weapon.

"Negative, Gunny. I double checked, facial recognition doesn't match."

"Alright, just curious."

The Scarab groaned and creaked as it finally got to its feet. Everyone cursed when they saw that it was one of the big ones.

"Front right knee!" Bans ordered. "Fire!"

We hit first and we hit hard, four Scorpions had the shot and all four took it. The massive walker buckled as its knee joint was all but shattered and its belly touched the ground. Next we targeted the cannon, but the Scarab covered it with the armor flaps.

"Move forward!" Bans ordered.

"Watch out, Locusts!"

A Tortoise was thrown off course as a pulse laser nearly burned through the thick front armor, probably scaring the driver half to death. A second locust hit the stalled Tortoise and finished the job, roasting the man and his gunner inside.

"Don't forget enemy infantry!" someone shouted.

"I've got the Locusts," Bans boasted. "Move forward!"

Rockets and explosive ammunition took down the first Locust walker and lowered the shields of the second one, but eight more rushed forward to take on the six Tortoises and buy time for the Scarab to get up. Two Scorpions joined the Tortoises in the battle of heavyweights. One of the tanks was hit in the front treads and stopped as its wheels were melted together by the pulse laser. It still got a shot off before it the Scarab's tail cannon destroyed it with driver and all.

"El-tee, I caught a flash of marshal armor on the Scarab," Snark called me. "I don't have the best vantage right now and can't afford to move fast enough. Can you confirm?"

"We're a ways off," I said. "Grass?"

"Drones are circling overhead," she said. "Draw him out."

"Bans! I need you to speed it up!" I shouted.

It felt like shit asking more of the man, three of his Tortoises were useless now, two of them had been taken out with no survivors and the other one wouldn't be moving without extensive repairs. The Scorpion tank on his side did help, it dispatched the last surviving Locust and then began rolling backwards as the tail cannon from the Scarab zeroed in on it. The driver got a shot, damaging the tail cannon, but not destroying it. The Scorpion itself exploded as a stream of green plasma made contact with it.

"Move, draw the infantry contingent out," I ordered. "Marv, Longworth, on me."

"I've got your back," Miri shouted. "Grigori?"

"Backing you up," he replied.

Serge said nothing, but he aimed his rifle at the Scarab.

"Loud, loud!" I shouted, firing my BR55 wildly at the Scarab, hoping to get someone's attention.

"I'm getting some infantry movement," Grass said. "That's definitely some marshal armor. Snark, ready?"

"I can't see it," he muttered. "No line of sight. Draw him out."

"Hey, you pussy fucker!" I shouted loudly. "Fight like a man!"

Marv and Longworth soon joined me in calling out the most infantile insults that they could think of, all the while hoping that no infantry would hit us and that the Scarab itself wouldn't target us.

"Are you a coward that you don't face me?" I boasted. "I've killed thousands of your kind, what's one more?"

I never did see the elite, but I heard the distant boom of Snark's SRS.

"Kill," he said. "Can't confirm identity, Grass?"

"Hold up…" she said. "Drones are getting a usable image. Yeah, that's a 99% match. Target terminated."

"Good job," I complimented my sniper. "We still have that Scarab to take care of."

"I'd give you a hand, but I left the Sledgehammer at home."

"Bans, this is all you," I said.

"Hit the right knee!" Major Bans ordered. His men were already doing just that, but it never hurt to be sure.

The Scarab was now doomed. It certainly had shock power, but we had dealt with them before and the 3rd Viery Armored had made it this far into the battle, so they had gotten their own share of scuffles against the walkers. The speed with which they handled the Locusts was a testament to their experience. As the right knee began buckling some of the tanks redirected their fire to the rear turret, damaging it so that it couldn't destroy them. It wasn't enough to prevent two squads of heavy infantry from being vaporized as they set up their wheel barrel cannons, but the Scarab began to crumple under the blows.

"Cease fire!" I ordered. "Cease fire!"

"Cease fire!" Bans confirmed.

"We're going up!" I shouted. "Caboose, Serge, cut us a path!"

The two men switched to their shotguns and jumped into the Scarab after climbing through a pile of debris conveniently placed to its side. They were the first ones to go in, firing their shotguns at the grunts that tried to stop them. A few jackals appeared on the top walkway, but I shot them down with Miranda's help. Marv and Longworth tossed grenades down the ramp that led into the Scarab's interior before Caboose and Serge went down. The sound of their shotguns was magnified in the enclosed space, but the operators of the machine were all taken out in the span of a few seconds.

"Clear!" Caboose called.

"We're good," I broadcast. "Move up!"

I bet that some of the men were surprised to hear that order. When you go head to head against a Scarab and win you usually wait for evac, reinforcements, and go over how you'll tell this story in a way that people will believe it. It was only on very rare occasions that the destruction of a Scarab didn't symbolize the end of the battle. Here it was just another bump in the road, a bump that had barely slowed us down.

"El-tee, there's nothing else planned out," Bans replied through a private channel. "What now?"

"We kick some ass, Major," I said. "We are close by to some of the maglev transit stations, they are useful as defensive positions. There are also two private academies in this sector, walled off I believe."

"Roger that, Colonel, did you catch that?"

"Affirmative," Ochoa said. "We're moving up."

An assassination had turned into an offensive that was changing the course of the battle.

"Frank," Grass said. "Captain Flatt is talking with the 1st Army Group, they're sending some forces our way."

"Now they commit?" I asked.

"The city is no longer a lost cause," she said. "We can expect SpecOps teams within two hours and the bulk of their forces will arrive in waves after that."

"That's great news, Cam," I said, calling her by her given name. "Tell Flatt I owe her one."

"Will do," she acknowledged. "Good luck."

"What of us?" Pavel asked me, watching absent-mindedly as Dotsenko and Longworth sawed through the head of the elite marshal and Serge looked for a piece of rebar through the debris.

"We'll wait on Snark," I said. "Move with the first wave."

Pavel nodded and told Longworth to hurry it up, but nonetheless he didn't stop my men as they stabbed the bottom of the dead elite's head and propped it up on top of the Scarab, using the headless body of the elite as a base. It was a powerful image, one that Pavel and I had used several times before and had passed onto our men. We certainly hadn't invented the insult, but I am sure we partook in it a bit more than was necessary.

"Y'all done," I asked, regressing to that so-called southern accent that some of the more recent Anglo population of Mexico City spoke.

I shook my head to myself as Pavel raised an eyebrow at me and Miri held back a snigger.

"I'm two minutes out," Snark said. "Moving up."

This was still a warzone though, and it wasn't nearly as safe as we could've made it, but we were on a roll and the Covenant was too busy falling back instead of firing on us. We truly had them in disarray. The alien forces here had all been well-trained and presumably had fought in other engagements, but we had broken their will in a matter of hours. It had cost us tens of thousands of men and more would die before the day was over, but the Covenant had lost more and were slowly losing all the ground that they had fought so hard to gain for the past week.

"You're getting ODSTs," Grass let me know. "God is being nice to us today."

"It's been a while since that last happened," I noted drily.

Snark got here and we raided the ammo that Bans' Tortoise still had left in it. We climbed inside the infantry fighting vehicle and waited while the third wave, consisting almost entirely of Army forces, barreled past. They had Tortoises and an older troop transport craft that was basically a small IFV without a roof, rear hatch, or heavy weaponry to speak off. They had been used as police vehicles in insurrection-prone planets and were incredibly good at pacifying civilian uprisings. After all, they looked like a fucking tank to your average civilian. In here they would serve as little more than decoys, with no significant armor to speak of they would simply move troops before being targeted and destroyed.

Not that the Army guys would mind, they were going to be deployed and the actual Armadillos would come in after the covvies had spent a good amount of their explosives on the flimsy transport craft.

They whooped and hollered as they drove past the Scarab. They were pumped, epic music was still playing in the raid sirens and Grass had been talking to unit commanders in order to link up all transports with sirens and have them play the exact same song. I looked up to see the little orange dots that marked the entrance of Helljumpers into the atmosphere and wondered if they were listening to our song too or maybe they were just playing their own thing.

The song was called Protectors of the Earth.

* * *

><p>"Wind speed is negligible," I noted. "Distance is still a thousand meters."<p>

"Alright," Snark muttered back. "I got it."

I wondered, and not for the first time, just how that plasma bolt had managed to damage all the systems in Snark's Oracle scope except for the zoom itself. He could usually function by himself, and even without his instruments he did a fine job as a sniper, but things had died down a little bit since we had started the unplanned phase three of the assault. The counteroffensive had lost its momentum, but not thanks to the Covenant. We had slowed down due to a lack of vehicles to transport troops. We had suffered casualties approaching 60%, but the Covenant had started sacrificing themselves by the dozens if it meant taking out an Armadillo or a Tank. We were now using Warthogs to transport entire companies.

"Are those ODSTs still resting up?" I asked Snark. "Can't see them."

"I can't see them either, but nothing has come out of their hole."

"Still no communication?" I asked in the squad channel.

"Negative," Pavel replied. "Marv and Longworth can do a Mongoose run, check if they're alive."

"Give it a moment," I said. "Snark?"

He fired.

"That's a hit."

"Alright," I muttered. "Pavel, give them the green light."

I traced the ATV move across the ruined street. A few plasma bolts streaked towards them, but a quick burst from my rifle sent the grunts scurrying back down behind cover. I might've been able to hit them if I had tried, but the distances were pretty extreme for the BR55. Marv drove rather expertly, weaving through the debris and drifting around as to maintain maximum speed. To be honest, it really wasn't that impressive or even worth describing, but I was bored. My adrenaline high was dying down and a firefight every couple of minutes seemed almost quiet compared to what had transpired over the last few hours.

"We're there," Longworth needlessly pointed out when they stopped. "Going in."

The ODSTs had taken cover in what appeared to be a basement or some such thing. We had barely managed to help fight off a Covenant platoon that was trying to finish them off and now we were waiting for some armored to roll through.

"Looks like they're alive," Marv called out. "Injured and barely alive, but still not dead."

"How many?" I asked.

"Two. The rest are KIA."

I nodded slowly. "Keep them company, we should have our reinforcements in ten minutes."

And true enough, it was only ten minutes before a pair of Army Armadillos lazily rolled up. They were damaged pretty bad. Almost too bad, I would say, but out of the couple of million troops that we had started this battle with less than 500,000 men remained alive. About a third of those were wounded and a large portion of that third would die since we had run out of all available medical supplies.

It wasn't pretty, but we had Esztergom. Even despite the loss of Manassas, from here we could launch a larger offensive to retake Viery and maybe even push the Covenant back all the way to New Alexandria.

"Give it a minute," I said. "Let them handle it."

The two Armadillos, crippled as they were, took out the Covenant squad entrenched a kilometer away. It was almost painful to watch. The IFVs slowly moved forward, their treads rattled and the engines sputtered but the guns made that sweet roaring sound when they fired. The troop contingent didn't even have to dismount.

"These men need some serious medical help," Marv said. "And fast."

I sighed. We had used up all of our biofoam on ourselves and Andy was still limping through the improvised hospital, probably covered in blood up to her shoulders. Those men wouldn't be getting any medical attention anytime soon. They would stay there and would either make it or not. No one was about to pull them back to safety.

"What are they injuries?" I asked, standing up and moving back towards the ladder.

"Adrian?" Marv asked.

"One of them is lucky to be alive. I count three different needle injuries, two of them punched completely through, the other one… well, he's going to lose the arm. Legs are in pretty bad shape, plasma burns. I think I can see the bone."

I shook my head. "The other one?"

"She might just survive this one. Plasma burns to the abdomen mostly, she's holding in her intestines with one hand, but that seems to be the extent of it."

"Shit," Crow muttered. "What the hell happened to them?"

"I'm guessing sword?" Snark suggested. "Anyone?"

I ignored the insensitive comment and shook my head. "Do what you can for them."

"Will do," Marv said.

The rest of my men were waiting down on the street. They had all been injured to some degree or other, with all of us still in an action capacity. We hadn't heard from Lady or Andrea, but there had been no reports of anything that could've endangered them. Our injuries were mostly minor burns or small shrapnel cuts, so we didn't really need to be pulled out for medical treatment just yet, but I'd have to see about getting some antibiotics to prevent infections.

"How are you doing, Sasha?" I asked Dotsenko.

"Good," he said gruffly. "Good."

I nodded slowly. It pained me to see him like this. Dotsenko had been talkative most of the time. Usually it involved him laughing or joking around with Ramirez, but ever since the death of his best friend he had been more quiet and subdued. It didn't help the way that he'd often look to his damaged prosthetic arm and experimentally move the fingers of the mechanical arm.

"Crow?"

"Same," he replied.

Unlike Dotsenko, his injuries were only external, but they had left him completely disfigured. He hadn't taken off his bandages in public one time. It was a miracle that he was alive and could see straight, but the skin had melted off his face. I have said this before, but the one time I got to see his face as it was I had to suppress myself from swallowing and closing my eyes. He knew he looked like shit and it pained him. The UNSC provided free reconstructive surgery if the injury was deemed disfiguring, which was a fancy way of saying that anything you got over the neck you could get removed. Mostly because it was hard to survive anything above the neck nowadays, but there had been no news stories about a random veteran that had been denied the procedure.

Crow would be fine when we got out of here, but in the meanwhile he would be an ugly motherfucker, with half his face melted off.

"Are those Hornets?" Miri asked.

"Sounds like," I muttered. "Sounds like they are headed north."

"What's north?" Crow asked.

"North End," Snark replied.

"Nothing," Pavel explained. "The Covenant abandoned the area when the Army started moving in. The place is literally nothing but dust now."

"You do realize that they don't have to be heading directly to North End, right?" Miri reminded him. "They could just be flying through it."

Pavel looked at her and shrugged. "Shut up."

We settled into silence and watched as the two Armadillos quietly disappeared behind piles of debris, occasionally firing short bursts from their autocannons. The sounds of battle were still loud and frequent, but they had receded significantly. Looking back I couldn't help but think that some divine intervention had been needed for nobody in my team to die. Two million men and women had died in the span of a week.

And now Esztergom was almost ours again. We only had to wait for our reinforcements and we could call this pile of dirt a stronghold once again. Two million was a large number, but the ease with which I shrugged that number off bothered me.

"Frank, I've got a little request," Grass came in. "Are you well rested?"

I looked at Pavel, who just smiled back at me.

"Yeah," I said. "Sure."

"Great. We've got the first wave of the 1st Army Group showing up. They are going to need safe places to land, but they also want to help in the final push, so they're requesting landing zones."

"You want us to clear something up?" I asked.

"Correct, I'm marking the spot on your HUD. It's nearby, not a lot of enemies present."

"Roger that, ma'am," I said in an all-too-respectful voice. "AAG-7, you catch that?"

"Yes, sir."

I rolled my neck. "Eight minutes' walk, let's go."

Longworth and Marv caught up with us after a squad of Army soldiers replaced them as caretakers for the two ODSTs. We moved at a steady jog, being careful of our noise level and keeping our eyes peeled for sharpshooters. Our assault had been so fast that the possibility of Covenant units that had been completely bypassed was very real. Snark in particular seemed irked at the gigantic number of sniper perches that could be used to ambush us at any given moment and Crow was a little bit more jumpy than an elite fighter should've been in this situation.

"What's that? Pavel asked. "A park?"

"Looks like," Caboose said. "I can see a lookout tower."

"I'll move up," Snark said.

"Crow, Longworth, Dotsenko, take the left flank," I said. "Pavel, Caboose, see that Warthog? We're moving there."

"Playing bait?" Pavel asked.

"Yes," I said. "Miri, you and Serge can hang a bit back and to the left. I want you drawing fire if things get a little hot for us."

"Yes, sir," she said.

"Well, let's go."

The firefight erupted quickly. A jackal lookout spotted us and began firing with a needle rifle. Caboose fired back while Pavel and I rushed to cover and then I shot the jackal, letting Caboose move up. Snark immediately began tagging enemies and their red outlines appeared on our HUDs. He was saving his ammunition for targets that would be worth it. Crow's group slowly climbed a pile of debris that had once been a house and prepared for a flanking maneuver.

"Warthog is only twenty meters away," Pavel said.

"I've got the machine gun," Caboose said.

"Move, move," I shouted.

Pavel and I both fired wildly at the nearest Covenant trench. We sent grunts back for cover as Caboose slid behind the Warthog. He examined the LAAG in the back briefly before hopping on and spooling it. The Warthog might've been completely useless as a vehicle, but the machine gun in the back was perfectly functional.

It was almost pathetic to fight against the broken Covenant soldiers that were defending this park. Odds were that they weren't even defending it; they were likely just trying to stay alive. It wasn't surprising to see their half-assed attempt at a defense, especially after Snark drilled the lone elite in the unit with a headshot. The large alien fell and the defense immediately slackened.

"I'm getting some movement," Longworth said. "Damn. Looks like they're surrendering."

I raised an eyebrow. "Nobody fire, let them all come out."

"You might want to tell them that," Pavel said.

"Cease fire!" I shouted after a heavy eye roll. "Let them come out!"

I waited patiently while three jackals and eight grunts slowly moved out of cover with their hands raised over their heads and carefully made their way towards us.

"Grass?"

"We don't need them."

"Open up!"

The eleven aliens were killed in the span of one second.

"Alright, we're clear."

"Army troops are headed your way," Grass said. There was an awkward pause on her end of the line. "I'm sending Marina to pick you up, we've got a little situation."

I groaned. "What is it?"

"Looks like we're going to need some defensive units protecting the generators for the Orbital Defense Platforms."

That statement sent chills down my spine. The only reason why those generators would need defenses is if they were at direct risk by enemy ground troops. That would only happen if even more Covenant troops were showing up. That train of thought stopped at its logical conclusion: there were additional Covenant vessels entering the system.

Esztergom was ours, but Reach would still fall.

"Alright, good work," I told my men. "We're being picked up soon. Spread out, secure the area, and wait for the troopers to show up. We'll get some rest on the Pelican."

"What is it?" I heard Crow quietly ask Dotsenko.

"Bad news," Caboose muttered as he passed behind them.

* * *

><p><em>Thanks to <strong>Colonel-Commissar2468 <strong>and **General TheDyingTitan** for proofreading this chapter._

_Well, that just happened. Bee showed up for the first time in Chapter 24: The Tide Turns Twice. His first line was "Hasta la vista, baby!" And now, like so many characters before him, he's gone. It hurt a little bit to give him an ending like this, it hurt even more to make it so quick and just not glorious in any way at all. Stabbed through the chest and there was nothing he could do about it. Well, war is hell, as they say._

_Other than the death of Bee, we also have Tank, who'll forever be forgotten for dying offscreen in the same chapter as Robert "Bumblebee" Agnarsson. _

_I would like to know if I managed to give the feeling of a large battle with combined arms and military branches all fighting at the same time at an incredibly brutal pace. I strived to make this whole chapter be epic in scale. I think this chapter in by itself qualifies for the genre of epic, speaking in a literary way of course, but that might just be my head swelling a little bit too much for my own good. Any and all feedback is welcome, and I'll read your angry reviews as well as your positive ones with equal attention. _

_Small detail, Frank could've been one of the ODSTs that help Noble attack Sword Base, but he turned that down. Was that for better or for worse? We never did find out what happened to those ODSTs. Oh well, what happened happened and as soon as I click the post button it will be forever cemented in bits and bytes. You know what they say about the internet, it stays there forever._

_To all of those who reviewed last chapter, thank you for your words and your time. I say this a lot, but I can never properly express how much each review means to me and how they help me write better and better. To **GuntherRiechwald** in particular, I would've PMd you because I am a rather friendly guy, but you have PM disabled (I checked this yesterday, so that might have changed). Other than that, there weren't any questions that I can answer, so there's that._

_Oh, quick note Karen Traviss (the one that wrote the Kilo-Five Trilogy) is a skilled writer, but she butchered previous characterization. Although I have to admit, the way she wrote things did set an interesting foundation for the second Halo trilogy, even if it did go against pretty much everything that had been established before that. Sorry for that little rant, but even though being a writer is about expressing your ideas through written word, it's not about changing everything about a universe just so that you can express those particular ideas more easily._

_Looks like that was all... Yeah, I don't think I'm missing anything, other than bragging about how I wrote a chapter of 18,000+ words. _

_Stay strong._

_-casquis_


	212. Hoc Habet

Chapter CCXII: Hoc Habet

**August 30, 2552 (UNSC Calendar)/**

**Viery Territory, Reach, Epsilon Eridani Territory**

* * *

><p><em>"Vae victis."- Brennus<em>

* * *

><p>I paced around the back of the Pelican nervously. I had been high on victory a few hours ago, we had just made it safely through the worst meat grinder in the history of warfare and came out on top, but it looked like it was going to be for nothing. The orbital defense generators were likely targets and hard to defend.<p>

"We're ten minutes out," Marina's voice echoed through the silent compartment.

Bee's death had finally hit us all.

"Ready," I muttered. "We're headed towards ODG Facility A-331 and will be working to defend it. There's a-"

"Frank, I've got Grass and Admiral Whitcomb," Marina interrupted.

"Danforth Whitcomb?" I asked.

"The one and only," Marina replied.

"Patch them through."

"Admiral, pleasure," I greeted. "What can I do for you?"

"I'll be brief, Lieutenant," a vaguely familiar gruff voice replied. "Your friend here has briefed me on your team's qualifications and expertise. I find myself in need of a unit to pick up very important materiel."

I nodded slowly. "Sir, we're en route to defend an ODG right now, I'm not sure what could be important enough that-"

"Listen son, it is more important," he cut me off. "Besides, Miss Seppa tells me that you were en route to A-331."

"That is correct, Admiral," I said.

"Well, the unit I sent to gather the materiel had to go to A-331, so you have that covered."

There was an explosion in the background.

"Sir, what about yourself?" I asked.

"I'll survive this," Whitcomb assured me.

"Understood admiral, we'll secure that materiel."

"That you will, El-tee, I'll send additional instructions your way."

With that he signed off.

"What the hell was that, Grass?" I asked angrily. "What the hell is Whitcomb doing asking us to secure his pet project?"

"Sorry Frank," she said. "Wait, didn't he pin a medal on you?"

"That was fifteen years ago," I said dismissively. "He doesn't even know who I am. That doesn't matter. What the hell, Grass?"

"Frank, HIGHCOM was hit. No survivors."

"Shit. Does that mean Whitcomb is the ranking officer on the planet?" I asked her. "A fucking _vice_ admiral in our military hub? Fuck that."

I could see Grass rolling her eyes. "Alright, his pet project, as you called it, is actually pretty important. Ever heard of a NOVA bomb?"

"What, Starship Troopers? Bee would be proud."

"Frank…"

I sighed. "Yeah, the name rings a bell. Might've seen a folder with that codeword on it. What is it?"

"Well, it's basically the same thing that the Nova bomb in Starship Troopers is," Grass said.

I paused. "A planet cracker? We have a viable planet cracker? Do you know what that means?"

"Of course I know what that means!" she exclaimed. "It means that if we can deploy those in space we can change the tide of the battle in a matter of instants."

"Those? As in more than one?"

"That is correct. Your job is to secure them. There are Covenant units near the ONI facility they're housed in and you know that those are like catnip for them.

They'll definitely make a move on them."

"We'll hold them off," I assured her. "Any chance we can still win this I'll take."

"Good luck, Frank," she said. "This is important."

_No shit._

"I might be meeting you there later," she went on. "To… help handle matters."

"Yes ma'am," I said very sarcastically. "Over and out."

"What was that all about?" Marina asked me.

"Top secret shit," I grunted. "They want us help move some nukes that can turn the tide of the battle."

"And this is actually legit?"

I nodded. "I don't think Whitcomb is the kind to lie to himself like that. At least from what I've heard of the man."

"Great strategist, isn't he?" Marina asked. "Kinda sucks for him that he'll never outdo Admiral Cole."

"May he rest in peace," I interjected briefly.

"Or Lord Hood for that matter," Marina went on without a pause. "Well, he can rest knowing that he was the third best officer the UNSC Navy had to offer."

"Officer? I asked, "maybe just admiral. There are plenty of lower-ranking officers around."

"If you say so," she shrugged. "Ok, I just got the new coordinates. Should be twenty minutes."

The Pelican tilted a little bit as she corrected her course and we sped through Reach's sky, breaking the sound barrier. We only flew for seventeen minutes before the cockpit started blaring with dozens of different alarms as we were targeted with lasers, radar, and an endless amount of rays on all ends of the light spectrum. I could recognize the alarm that told us we were being targeted as well as the one that said we already had torpedoes on our trail.

"Buckle up!" Marina shouted. "Now!"

I dashed for an empty seat, only just making it before she banked up as hard as she could. I was slammed into the wall, with my leg hitting Lady's recently concussed head. I barely heard her complaining before the aircraft jerked violently, this time from a direct impact.

"What the hell was that, Marina?" Pavel asked. "Marina?"

"Right wing," she replied. "Shut up."

I could feel us falling slightly to our right, but we hadn't slowed down the slightest. We began spinning suddenly and the edge of my vision began growing dark as the g-forces started hurting the blood flow to my head. We stopped spinning suddenly and slowed down abruptly before dropping. I couldn't see the ground from the small window in the rear hatch, so there was absolutely no point of reference other than the sky. My helmet banged against the wall behind me and I finally had enough consciousness to buckle my upper body completely. The aircraft was shaking violently from the impact we had taken, but the twists and turns that Marina was pulling off were completely insane.

"What the hell is going on out there?" Crow asked, on the verge of panic.

He almost got an answer when a small explosion took out half the rear hatch. The explosive decompression yanked one of the empty ammunition boxes from the webbing on the ceiling and hit Dotsenko, knocking him out cold.

"Hold him!" I shouted. "Make sure he stays there!"

I could see dozens of tiny torpedoes following us at alarming speeds. They seemed to be circling each other for some sort of dramatic effect that nobody ever got to see. Chaff and specially designed debris was flying out of the Pelican's tail section. Some of the small torpedoes flew at those, hitting them and exploding harmlessly, but still more came at us. The smaller ones were joined by bigger torpedoes that zoomed at us even faster, but before I could see anything else Marina began doing her fancy shit again and I struggled just to keep my eyes inside their sockets.

"Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck," someone shouted.

"Calm your shit!" I heard myself scream.

Things started getting loud, the wind flowed in through the hole in the back and soon enough there were other smaller holes in the floor and ceiling of the Pelican too. The Covenants rarely used AAA, but when they did it was almost as deadly as their torpedoes. I opened my eyes and focused for long enough to see that none of my men had been hit. Grass was screaming something into my ear, but an explosion drowned out her words. A section of the Pelican's tail was torn from the rest of the craft and soon we were careening towards the ground.

"Marina!" I shouted.

"Lost both rear thrusters," she called out perfectly calm. "Right wing thruster is damaged and nonresponsive. I can land us."

She was lying.

I had known her for over fifteen years and she was lying through her teeth. I don't know why she lied, but Marina was scared and that was something that never happened when she was piloting her Pelican.

I had known fear before, hell, I practically lived in that state. I had learned to embrace that fear and push it deep back into the corner of my mind. I would constantly fear death, failure, or seeing my friends and family killed. It was something that I was used to, but for some reason this moment hit me hard. I felt myself shaking even despite the Pelican tumbling down.

Marina was doing her best, she was using the left wing thruster at full capacity in order to slow down our fall. If we came down we had a higher chance of survival at an angle. The troop bay of the Pelican was built much like a roll cage, the walls and floor might shred, but it would remain structurally solid under all but the worst of impacts. With us strapped down as we were, we were more likely to survive a violent impact if we rolled instead of just slammed down.

The Pelican was moving almost sideways, I could picture Marina straining to hold the craft in place despite the various alarms and warning that told her she was compromising the ship. The fucking Pelican was already completely useless.

"Prepare for impact!" Marina called out, her voice still perfectly calm. "Eight hundred meters! Seven, six hundred!"

The speed at which we were falling slowed down a little bit if her warnings were anything to go by, but it didn't seem like it would be enough.

"Impa-"

A loud noise cut Marina off and I felt myself jerking violently forward. The straps securing my upper body were torn from the Pelican's wall and I felt the belt around my waist dig in hard before I lost any notion of what was up and what was down. I felt a flailing arm hit my neck and then something collide against my chest, pushing my head back into the wall. I tried opening my eyes and all I saw was my men struggling to hold on to their straps before another spin sent my head into the back of the Pelican and everything went black.

* * *

><p>I came back soon. Couldn't have been more than thirty seconds. The Pelican was still rocking gently. My hearing came back first. I could hear the sound of fuel or coolant leaking as well as the crackling of sparks and flames. As I slowly regained my vision I got up. I was concussed as fuck.<p>

"Belt," I told myself.

The last thing I expected was to fall into the Pelican's ceiling when I unbuckled myself, but that impact made me regain at least some of my orientation.

"Fuck," I said.

My ears started hurting from all the noise and before I could know it I felt bile rising up my throat. I barely had enough time to pull my helmet upwards before throwing up all over my chest and arm. I groaned with disgust and spat twice more before rolling in my stomach and looking up. All of my men were still strapped to their seats except for Serge, who appeared to have been thrown off the buckles.

"Anyone up?" I managed to slur.

"Present," Lady said weakly. "I can't feel my legs."

"Try wiggling," I said.

She did and I saw them move.

"You're good," I told her.

I moved slowly, pushing myself to one knee and then putting myself on my feet. The world seemed to twist and turn and the Pelican being upside down didn't help. I slowly moved towards Lady and helped her climb down. She was anything but gracious as she made her way down. There was a little bit of blood coming from her calf, but I thought it prudent not to make a big deal of it, especially if she hadn't done the same already.

"Check on Serge," I ordered. "Wait for the rest to wake up."

She nodded and got to her feet. Bitch that she might have been, she was still firmly in the top 200 deadliest human beings in the galaxy. Lady steadied herself and moved her arms experimentally before making sure that her pistol was still on her thigh and then moved to the back to get Serge.

I moved in the opposite direction, towards Marina.

The cockpit was dark, the glass was almost completely covered by dirt and the lights that usually illuminated it were all dark. I turned on my helmet flashlights and ducked before moving inside, stepping on the ballistic glass cockpit. Marina was not moving, but she was still firmly strapped to her chair.

"Frank, is that you?" she asked.

"Yeah," I said.

I moved a bit closer only to see that one of the bars that crossed the cockpit windows had broken from its frame and had dug straight through the middle of her chest, coming back out the other side of the seat.

"Shit, huh?"

"Shit," I agreed, trying to keep tears from forming in my eyes. "I'll get you out in a moment."

"No you won't," she said. "We have no power tools to cut this with. It went through my heart, at least partially."

"Does it hurt?" I asked her.

"Like a motherfucker," she managed.

"I'll miss you."

"Odds are we'll meet in a couple of days."

I shook my head. "I don't think we're going to the same place."

She looked at me. "You're better than you think."

I shook my head again. "Don't go. You can't leave me here."

She laughed, it was a surreal and almost harmonious sound. "As a matter of fact I can. It is in my job description. We drop you off and leave. You know the motto."

"We deliver," I said.

"We de-"

And then she was gone. Fifteen years of my life gone just like that.

Her helmet was still on her head, but the visor had been slid up. At least she had closed her eyes halfway through the conversation. The last thing I would've wanted was to have to look into those eyes as I closed them.

"Lady, give me a sitrep," I called out, my voice hoarse.

"Everyone's alive," she said. "Serge is still unconscious and everyone else is coming to."

"I need you to scout out and establish a safe zone."

"Is Marina…"

"Go outside," I repeated.

I looked at her dead body for a few seconds. There was no way that I could get her body out without any power tools. I pressed my eyes shut hard before taking a deep breath and reaching for her neck. It was hard, especially when I felt her skin through my gloves. Hundreds of memories hit me at once and then they all seemed to just vanish when I yanked her dogtags.

Just another number. Another KIA.

"Alright," I muttered to myself. "Alright, alright."

"Frank," Pavel greeted me at the entrance to the cockpit. "You ok?"

I nodded. "Want to pay your respects?"

He looked at me for a second before ducking underneath the entrance and disappearing inside the cockpit. I looked at a shaken up Caboose, who managed to focus long enough to gently shake his head at me. He had respected Marina as a pilot and a colleague, but she had never been his friend. The rest of the guys hadn't gotten to know her too well, most of them just thought of her as our pilot ever since we got here. It had only been about a month for them.

"Who are the most able right now?" I asked.

Marv and Longworth threw their hands up, prompting me to roll up my eyes. They were so annoyingly good at everything they did that sometimes I wondered if everyone else saw me like that.

"I want you two to move out with Lady and establish a perimeter. Dotsenko and Crow, drag Serge to the edge. Andy, think you can man the machine gun?"

"If I can flip it sideways then it'll be fine," she said weakly.

"Miri, how are you feeling?"

"Weak," she admitted. "I… I… damn."

"How far are we from the ONI facility?" I asked.

"I'm looking that up right now," Snark chimed in, cradling his ruined SRS between his hands. "Five clicks. She got us close… Sir, mind if I-"

"Go ahead," I told him, gesturing towards the cockpit. "Grass, Grass, do you copy? This is Lieutenant Castillo, AAG-7, does anyone copy?"

There was only static.

"Try the backups," Andy suggested.

"This is Lieutenant Castillo, AAG-7, does anyone copy? I repeat, this is Lieutenant Francisco Cas-"

"Frank!"

"Grass, that you?" I asked. "Grass?"

"Frank, you're coming through, but I can't hear you!"

"Grass, you're a bit patchy," I replied "You're patchy. Grass? Can you- Grass!"

"…ment!"

I waited.

"Frank?"

"Better," I told her. "Some static there. We were shot down. Marina is KIA, one wounded, unconscious. A few concussions but we should be ready for action soon."

"Copy that, Frank. I'm sending a relief team from the ONI facility, they should be there within ten minutes. Sorry about Marina, she was a good friend to us all."

"Yeah," I told her. "Tell the relief team to bring something for concussions and headaches. We can't afford to go through the symptoms right now."

"Will do," she said. "Frank, I'll need to talk to you in three or four hours, alright? It's important."

"Understood," I replied. "Thanks for the assist."

"So we're getting help?" Crow asked.

"We are," I confirmed. "Ten minutes."

At that point the concussion really started hitting me. It felt unusual, almost like I was drunk and couldn't completely focus, but at the same time I had one of the most horrible headaches that I had ever had. I'd have to be scanned for confirmation that my brain wasn't swelling. The rest of my men were in similar shape, some slightly better than me and Miri was plain funny to look at.

"Sir, three Warthogs," Lady reported.

"Signal them," I said. "They're getting us out."

A minute later a duo of bag-eyed Marines jumped into our wrecked Pelican and helped us out. Outside we were assisted by a civilian doctor. The man seemed tired, but he didn't appear nervous at all to be treating us here in the open. I wondered what kind of stuff he had witnessed already. All of us were scanned and then given some pills from orange prescription bottles. Civilian bottles.

"What are those?" Snark asked.

"New thing," the doctor said. "Designed specifically for gravball and football athletes. You give it to them after a hard hit to the head and it tricks the brain into reducing the swelling. Really quite fancy."

I grabbed a couple of pills and eyed them before swallowing them.

"How do they work?" Dotsenko asked. It had been a while since I had last heard him speak without being prompted to.

The doctor smiled and waited for my gunner to swallow the pills. "Nanobots."

I winced and tightened my jaw, knowing that tiny little robots were racing towards my head. That was the last place I wanted nanobots.

"Fuck," Lady muttered, making involuntary gagging noises.

"Calm down," I muttered despite my own misgivings. "Everyone on a 'Hog, we still have our own part to play."

"The pills should do their thing in five minutes. After that you're scot free, maybe some residual headaches over the next two days."

"I'll take it," Pavel said.

"Sir, the pilot?" one of the Marines asked.

"Dead," I said.

"Should we take the body?"

I shook my head. "She'll be fine."

"Yes, sir."

I hopped on board the closest Warthog's passenger seat and looked at the Pelican, eyeing the white inscription naming it Little Lamb.

* * *

><p>The ONI facility had been hit recently. Nothing too bad, concentrated Banshee bombardment near the main gate and some minor artillery damage all around that same side. The two towers on either side of the gate had been almost demolished, but they still stood high enough that they'd provide a decent vantage point. Unlike Mendez Base, this place was built into the mountains around it, which meant that we had a pretty respectable high ground to three of our sides. I could see the crash site of the Pelican, in the small valley below. It didn't take an expert to tell that Marina getting us there and making all of us survive that shitstorm had taken skill beyond anything normal.<p>

"We're not prepared to deal with a large scale assault," the Marine driver told me. "There's just two platoons assigned here and we received heavy casualties during the opening bombardment. They targeted us almost exclusively."

"Were you all clustered at the towers?" I asked.

She nodded. "Bad tactical decision. It cost us."

"What about the packages?"

"They're large, Lieutenant. Most of them were several clicks underground in armored bunkers. Not that those would do any good if the rumors are true."

"Don't worry," I said. "The only way those will explode is if someone makes them."

"I know," she said. "I'm worried someone will decide that's a good idea."

She had a good point.

"Do you have any details on how they're going to be moved?" I asked. "This wasn't supposed to be our job."

"We're working on moving a small fleet of Elephants up here. Air transports are too risky and the warheads are too large for anything smaller than a Pod or two Albatrosses."

"One warhead per Elephant?" I asked. "Those things must be huge!"

"They are," she said. "And the road is too narrow for two Elephants, so it'll be one up and one down for the last ten kilometers."

"That'll be slow going," I muttered. "Will your unit be evacuating?" I asked.

She nodded slowly. "Halfway through. Captain mentioned something about us pulling out before he was killed."

"I'll talk to command, make sure," I told her. "Otherwise we're good for now."

"Yes, sir. This should be your stop."

"Thanks. Pavel, get everyone in defensive positions. I want Snark watching that valley and a guarantee that nobody will climb up that cliff."

"Right away," he replied. "You heard him! Spread out, Dotsenko, you get that tower!"

My men spread out rapidly and I began moving towards the base's entrance. There was a large building built outside the rock face, but there was also a large cave right next to it, perfectly round and very evidently not natural. At the edge of the cave stood a single, massive, silver cylinder. It was the largest nuclear device that I had ever seen, and I had seen explosives with yields of 500 Megatons.

I whistled and crossed my arms.

"She's a beauty, isn't she?" a man in a lab coat said as he approached me. "Nine nuclear fusion warheads of the highest yield-"

"Highest yield?" I asked, cutting his info dump halfway through.

"Oh yes, they use a very complicated process that allows their yield to exceed ten teratons, give or take a couple. Anyways, the warheads are encased in lithium triteride."

"Is that a real thing?" I asked.

"We made it one," the scientist went on, unfazed. "The material contains the blast for just a split second and then multiplies it a hundredfold."

"Are you talking petatons here?" I asked.

He nodded.

Suddenly I felt the urge to get on the nearest spaceship and dip. Not just the planet, the whole system.

"Awesome, aren't they?" he asked. "In the biblical sense of the word."

"Awe inspiring indeed," I said. "Has one ever been used?"

He shook his head. "No."

"Well doc, that might change soon."

"How did you know I was a doctor?" he asked.

"You seem to be the scientist in charge of a top secret ONI project, if you don't have several PhDs I will shoot myself in the foot."

"Well, looks like you won't have to do that."

"Are there any other members of your team still here?" I asked him.

"No, all of them evacuated a few hours ago."

"Why are you still here then?"

"Someone has to see the handling of these babies," he replied simply. "I'll be the last man out. Or thirteenth to last if your men will go after me."

"Thirteenth to last, huh?" I asked, looking at my men.

"Were there more than twelve of you?" he asked.

"We were twenty a month ago."

"I'm sorry," he said. "My family was in New Alexandria."

"Did they-"

"No, their transport ship was shot down," he sighed sadly. "I might be joining them soon, but I'll make sure I get all these puppies shipped out and ready for action. I even wrote my wife and kids' names on a few of them."

"Nice touch," I noted. "If these… puppies, are nearly as destructive as I think they are, they'll be well avenged."

"That's pretty much all I can do now," he admitted. "Anyways, let's talk about happier things. Like how to operate the carts and cranes that will move the bombs. They are mostly automated, but our AI went offline, so we can expect some glitches."

I nodded and listened as he explained the operation of the complicated pieces of equipment in detail. It was enough of a distraction that I didn't think of Marina once until the first Elephant arrived in the base.

"Alright, let's make this fast!" I shouted. I barked some orders to my men while the massive bomb slowly moved forward. The Elephant buckled under the weight of the explosive, but it turned around in the center of the base before heading back down the road. The first bomb had been moved up without a hitch. Despite the initial success, I could tell that the following ones wouldn't be as easy; what limited recon we had available to us was easy to read. The regiments that were attacking ODG Facility A-331 had splintered off some platoons and they were fanning out in our direction. It wouldn't be tough for us here in the base, but the Elephants might run into some trouble.

The next Elephant showed up, this time with three soldiers on board. Each was manning one of the machine guns in the front or sides. They eyed the explosive as it was lowered into the vehicles and then made sure that their weapons were good to go as the Elephant turned back around and headed down the mountain road.

"How much longer?" Pavel asked me.

"We might get three of those off if we're lucky," I replied. "After that the Elephants are going to be harassed. I might assign Snark and Miri to climb down and up as guard duty."

"On foot?"

"Nah, on board the Elephants, they can make the switch down the road."

Pavel hummed for a bit. "I guess it's better than nothing. What about an attack here?"

"They don't have the numbers," I said. "Not yet. Unless those regiments decided they want to give us some shit, we'll be fine."

True to my expectations the next two NOVAs were moved without any major incidents, but I was beginning to pick up distress signals. After the breather that Esztergom had provided, we were now once again desperately falling back. I was behind our own lines, but the main battle sites were getting closer and closer by the minute. Already I could see massive fires in the distance, lighting up the sky behind the mountains. So far no Covenant ships were moving into position, but if the ODGs were knocked offline then that'd change soon.

"I hope the Navy is giving them hell," Crow muttered.

"They are," Pavel assured him. "They always do."

The next Elephant showed up amidst plasma and gunfire. The left side was full of black scorch marks and chips where needles had hit, but the three men manning the guns were alive and well.

"Snark, Miranda, you're on guard duty," I ordered. "Up and down."

The two of them rushed through the base and climbed on board the Elephant just as the next Nova bomb was placed there. The vehicle slowly rumbled past me and I waved a salute at my men in there, who nodded back. It didn't take more than a couple of minutes for plasma fire to reach my ears, quickly followed by a loud bang from Snark's rifle.

"Sir, you've got a squad of elites headed up the road," Snark checked in. "Be ready."

"Dotsenko, that's you," I told him. "Longworth, help him dispatch them."

They waited a little bit too much for my comfort, but the elites were tricked into thinking that the base was abandoned. Once they were close Dotsenko fired on them draining their shields and killing half of them before Longworth had to jump in with the assist. The elites weren't typically this sloppy, but something told me that we wouldn't get a break like this one again. The road up here had no cover to speak of and there were no trees in the vicinity, but the next time they came they wouldn't expose themselves like that.

"You bet your ass they won't."

I turned to look at Schitzo.

_And here I thought you were gone…_

"You know better than that," he sighed. "Nobody in your life is really gone unless they're dead. Me, your mother, Layla… your brother."

_I have no brother_.

"Whatever works," he shrugged. "Heads up."

"Get down!"

It was a heavy shell, there was no other possibility. The explosion threw me back before I could jump down. It tore a massive chunk of the cliff face and nearly blocked the entrance to the cave. There was still a way out for the NOVAs, but it had been awfully close to making this whole mission a failure. A second later another shell landed in the middle of the facility's courtyard, nearly killing the doctor.

"Where's it coming from?" I asked. "Grass, Grass, do you copy?"

"Shit… I'm working on it. Keep your heads down."

The bombardment went down for ten solid minutes while Grass took care of it. It was fortunate that the gunners were targeting the base itself almost exclusively. The entrance to the cave remained unblocked and untargeted and the courtyard only received two more impacts. I wondered why the gunners behind that artillery piece weren't hitting the road up to the base in order to block the road. It seemed pretty plausible that the elites just wanted to kill the survivors in order to get themselves a little piece of glory, but in all likelihood they hadn't really noticed the Novas being moved into the Elephants.

"You should be good," Grass said. "Relatively speaking, there are three Spirit dropships moving at you."

"Bee. Shit. Who's got rockets?" I asked.

"That'd be me," Crow replied. "What do you need?"

"We have three Spirits inbound, I want at least one of them dead before it gets here."

"Consider it done, lieutenant."

Crow was no artist like Bee, but he got the lead Spirit to crash down a click away from our position. The other two responded with a barrage of plasma on his position, heating up the rocks around him as he took cover. Small arms fire peppered the dropships as they approached, but they didn't seem affected at all. One of them circled around the base before dropping a platoon of troops right in our midst while the other one instead dropped its troops near the entrance.

"Don't let them take the gate!" I shouted. "Pavel, it's on you and Sasha!"

"We'll handle them," he said. "Just cover our backs."

"Everyone, on me!" I ordered. "Doc, stay down!"

The enemy was fast, taking cover in the craters and moving towards the caves. Longworth and I hit the ones running towards the cave before they made it, stopping them from entrenching themselves and disrupting the machines that moved the bombs. An elite in white armor commanded this platoon, barking orders in that piss poor excuse for a language. I targeted it almost exclusively, but being ugly didn't mean you were a bad fighter.

The Covenant inside the base outnumbered us and we didn't have the luxury of our machine guns. However, we had them nearly surrounded and also had the advantage of high ground and defensive positions. The craters provided cover, but they also meant that they were trapped in there. Slowly but surely we bagan killing them, starting with careless grunts and then graduating to elites and jackals. The platoon was almost eradicated after five minutes.

"We're nearly there," Snark radioed in. "Just a bit more and I'll have the platoon outside within range."

"About time," Pavel growled. "We can't get around those rocks."

The sounds of my man's sniper rifle was clearly heard in the back of my head, but the surviving covvies inside the base were beginning to get desperate, taking bigger risks. One of the Marines got hit in the back of the leg as he moved to a flanking position. Serge only managed to drag him behind cover before a plasma grenade nearly killed them both.

"Come on!" Marv growled, frustrated.

We started liberally using grenades by that point. It took a lot more than I would've liked but a few minutes later we were all moving towards the main gate and helping finish off the enemy platoon. They had been trapped between out gates and the Elephant, meaning that they had absolutely no place to run. Despite their disadvantageous situation they didn't give up. They couldn't give up. We wouldn't have let them.

"Get the next bomb up," I said briskly. "Grass, we're going to need more bang."

"I know," she replied. "I'm doing the best I can, things are deteriorating very quickly Frank…"

"Is that what you wanted to talk about?" I asked.

"Yes," she said. "Flatt and I got a way out of the planet for your team. The UNSC _Obsidian._"

"Sounds like a prowler," I said.

"Stealth frigate," she corrected. "Basically a big prowler."

"Where is it?"

"It's planetside, for repairs," she said. "Flatt knows the captain, they can get us out."

"How long?"

"Before the day is over," Grass said.

"And the battle? How's it looking?" I asked.

"We've lost, Frank. The battle is all but over."

I sighed softly. "We'll finish this one."

"Just what I thought," she said. "I'll arrange for a Pelican with extra supplies to head there. Might throw in a little gift too."

"Thanks. Over and out."

The day was only halfway done at this point, and even despite the orange color in the distance, it was still a clear and beautiful day that hid the chaos that was going on outside the atmosphere. A lone cloud colored the sky. There was smoke and dust impeding my vision, but if you looked up at just the right angle you would not be able to tell that you were in the middle of a warzone.

"Next Elephant," Pavel said. "Move it around!"

The Nova was placed on the vehicle just like the ones that had come before it. It seemed almost routine except for the scorch marks in one side. The next ones would show up with the same damage on them, and it would only get worse from there.

"What did Grass want to talk about?" Pavel asked.

"Our way out of the planet," I said calmly. "Battle is lost, all that's left is to bloody their noses."

"I won't settle for anything less than braking their knees."

"That's what I like to hear," I told him. "Either way, Grass and Flatt got us a stealth frigate, the UNSC _Obsidian._ Heard of it?"

"Nah," he shook his at me across the base. "Probably one of those fancy hybrids."

"Should have viable prowler technology at least," I said. "Grass will confirm more later."

"Now what?"

"What do you mean what?" I asked. "We fight, we kill, we enjoy ourselves a little bit. Same as we always do."

"And then?"

"Hopefully, we'll meet the girls at Earth, otherwise we're going to have to track them down to whatever colony they went to."

"What makes you think we're headed for Earth after this?"

"Home plate baby, that's the last stop."

"It's been a while," he muttered. "Too many years."

"More for me," I said in agreement. "The closest I've been to it was during bootcamp. Mars."

"It'll be sweet," he sighed. "I haven't seen my parents in years. My mom is going to kill me."

"I…"

"What are you going to do?" he asked. "Are you visiting?"

"What's the point?" I asked. "I haven't seen my mom in over thirty five years. It's just going to make me depressed."

"Whatever you do," Pavel began. "Just don't fuck it up."

"And here I thought you were going to say something sweet, you fuck."

Pavel chuckled and made an obscene gesture at me before reloading his machine gun. The rest of the guys looked in my direction, but by this point they were used to Pavel and I having private conversations. Caboose and Snark knew that we were talking about things that really weren't any of their business, or we were talking about things that concerned their lives. There really was nothing in the middle when we made our conversations private.

"Sir, Lieutenant," the doc came up to me. "Not to sound like an untrained and inexperienced civilian, but how much longer is that going to take?"

"As long as it has to, sir," I told him. "My job is to make sure these NOVAs get out of this place and wherever Command wants them to go."

"Off of the planet, most likely," the man said.

"You never told me your name, doc."

"Doc will do," he said. "Everyone calls me that."

"Doc it is then. You should've gotten out when you had the chance."

"Misguided feeling of duty?" he asked. "I'm not the only civilian that stayed either."

"The actual doctor," I nodded. "The one with the nanobots."

"He gave you those?" Doc asked. "Damn, weird shit, huh?"

"Yeah," I agreed. "My head doesn't hurt at all."

He smiled. "Technology."

"Tell me about it," I muttered, looking at the next Nova bomb making its way up the cave entrance. "Listen Doc, get you and your other real doctor buddy to safety, you are not needed here at this moment. Any wounded we have will be sent your way. Our medics can handle the rest."

"Alright then."

"We'll keep you safe," I promised.

* * *

><p>"One more!" Marv shouted. He had begun shouting more often during battle. I don't know whether that marked the beginning of his mental downfall or something else, but he was as effective a fighter as he had always been.<p>

He was right, however. There was one more Nova bomb to move. One more Elephant transport to protect and we would be good. We had done an excellent job, a job that wouldn't have been possible without the four platoons that were sent here as reinforcements or the toys that Grass brought with her. I had been surprised to see her in the Pelican. I had been more surprised by the fact that Sam Fightmaster had been piloting the Pelican itself. When Grass hopped off the blood tray and pulled back the bolt on her MA5 with a cocky smile, I just about creamed my pants.

Kidding.

"Get those pods over here!" I ordered. "Crow, double time it. Now!"

"How the fuck did they sneak a Scarab in here?" someone cursed.

"Fire right!"

"Left, left!"

Snark's shots rang out, only a faint boom above a multitude of similar noises. The courtyard was covered with Covenant corpses, but there were more than enough dead humans in there as well. I fired a long burst at a grunt, hitting it in the leg and waist. It struggled to move as two other grunts grabbed its arms and began dragging it. I let them take a couple of steps before switching to single fire and tapping them in the back of the head. The grunts were highly trained, disciplined and brave, however, that made them predictable. It meant that they had survived a few battles together and would not abandon comrades to their deaths. Unfortunately for them, they were still grunts, and that meant that I was a million times more skilled than any of them could ever hope to be.

"Bang, bang," Schitzo shouted. "Motherfucker!"

I rolled my eyes before diving from one crater into a pile of sandbags. Longworth was just a few feet from me and gave me a nod. I nodded back and he fired three shots from his BR55. I shuffled into a more comfortable position and fired onto the hunters moving up the trail. The Elephant was already inside and Andrea was working to lower the Nova manually. By manually I mean she was using a crane, but she had to operate it.

"Get me some heavy fire on those hunters!"

Our heavy fire consisted of several HMG machine guns, but we couldn't afford to expose our most valuable weapons while there was a Scarab slowly moving up the valley. We would have to take it out before even considering letting the Elephant make the trip down. It was easier said than done when the thing self-repaired every time we took down their legs. The Scarab kept moving forward, firing on our lines every time its gun cooled down.

"I've got a shot lined up," Crow called out. "I'm going to need some suppression!"

"We'll provide," Dotsenko called back out. "Give the word!"

Shit was getting loud. I could begin to feel my reflexes slowing down a little bit. It was too much distraction for perfect concentration. These things got to you. This, and the battle in Esztergom.

"Shit, shit, shit."

I didn't even know who was saying what by this point.

"Grass, what's the deadline?" Caboose asked.

"Deadline is as soon as we take out that Scarab we can move our asses!" she shouted back, firing at a pair of jackals. "Take those hunters out!"

"Fire, fire, fire!"

I popped up and fired with the rest of the men and women in this line. Most of those people were Marines from the reinforcement platoons, but nobody had any heavy weapons. The hunters simply crouched behind their massive metal shields and took the punishment like champs. The fire volume was enough that they had to slow down, however. I aimed at the exposed bits and pieces of armor. Everybody did, we weren't amateurs or idiots here. The hunters could normally trust their armor, but they had both taken a few grenades during the tortuous climb up the road. It wound down to just how good the armor protecting their feet was. Turned out it wasn't good enough to take that many bullets. The closest hunter suddenly stumbled as its leg armor gave up and a few dozen bullets destroyed the eels underneath. A second later it fell on its face and exposed the fleshy orange neck, where several well-trained Marines then proceeded to put bullets into.

Then the other one roared and things got simultaneously intense and easier.

It fired on our positions, disregarding its own safety. Here is when things became matter of luck. It didn't target me, which meant I didn't get killed. It burned three Marines before it was put down, but the damage to our lines was done and the covvies behind were now rushing, using the various pieces of vehicle debris for cover.

"Three hours ago this place was almost beautiful," Lady complained.

"Three hours ago you were still a bitch," Snark reminded her.

Lady would've replied, but the cliff face in front of us exploded as the Scarab fired its main gun, raining down tons and tons of rock down upon us. A few Marines made a run for it before they were buried alive and the Elephant pilot struggled to move the massive vehicle before its rear was trapped underneath the rock. I saw one girl get hit in the head with a heavy rock before she was buried, but the rest of her squad mates made it alive.

The blast from the Scarab was immediately followed by two squads of elite rangers jumping upon us. We couldn't afford to target them actively and instead provided covering fire as Crow aimed our missile pod. He fired eight missiles in quick succession, five of which hit the Scarab's cannon before the flaps could cover it. The damage was heavy, and it wouldn't be able to self-repair for at least a couple of hours. Now we only had the tail cannon to focus on.

"Don't let them surround us!" Pavel shouted. "Hit the elites, goddamnit!"

The rangers landed amongst us and went to work. They were in a near suicide mission, exposed and surrounded by us, but they had the advantage of shields and superior armor. They began firing upon the closest Marines and a few of my men. I did my best to actively target the ones gunning for members of AAG-7, not even regretting leaving other people to die. Longworth and I brought down three elites in as many seconds, promptly drawing the attention of the rest of the squad. We would've been in trouble had Marv not thrown a grenade in their midst, killing one and wounding the two others.

Dotsenko then finished them off, saving our asses and giving us the opportunity to target the other squad. Things were hot, but we still had a decent chance to get out of here alive.

"We need to get that NOVA moving, Frank," Grass said. "And soon."

"Well, we might want to get that Scarab down first," I shouted.

"Anyone up for boarding action?" Marv asked.

I sighed and rolled my eyes. "Get some of those jump jets off the elites."

"Wha- seriously?" Lady asked.

"Now!"

A few men moved towards the dead elites and began yanking the jump jets from the armor. It wouldn't have been my first choice under most circumstances, but recent tests had shown that it was possible to commandeer and use those. Grass had certainly taken a crash course on it and I had gone over the paper a few times, but I had certainly never practiced with them. Hopefully the human-made jump jets would be similar enough that I'd know how to handle them.

"Grass, Marv, Caboose, and me," I said. "We'll need to draw in the Scarab a bit more and then jump to our deaths."

"When you put it like that…" Marv sighed.

The jump jets were incredibly big and bulky for our frames. Not to mention heavy. I was certain that at least one of us would overshoot on the first try, but we had no choice if we wanted to take the Scarab. It wouldn't get close enough that we would be able to board it and now that it knew we could hurt it it would be more careful about shooting at us. And everybody was now actively targeting Crow and his missile pod.

"Ready when you are," Grass said.

"I'll make sure to record this," Pavel said. "Andy, you've got a good perspective, make sure everyone can see how they crash and burn to their deaths."

"Will do, Gunny."

"We'll be fine," I assured him. "We always are."

"That's becoming more and more of a lie every time you say it," he muttered.

I shrugged.

"Ready," Caboose said.

"Ready," Marv echoed.

"Ok, Scarab's that way and I assume you all know at least the theory of these jetpacks. Land, clear, destroy. Should be simple," I said, making sure the jetpack was tight enough to my body that I wouldn't suddenly find myself falling down into the hard rocks of the valley floor without a rocket strapped to my back.

"Simple is nev-" Marv didn't finish his sentence, he must've tapped the button that activated the jetpack and found himself flying upwards at an increasingly dangerous speed.

"Cover us!" I shouted, following after him.

My head was pushed to my chest before I could get control of the jetpack. It was way more sensitive to my movement and a light tap would send me a lot further than the UNSC ones, but it was the same concept. We reached the top of our arc and I grabbed my battle rifle with my left hand, controlling my descent with my right. Marv landed first, rolling to absorb some of the shock from the hard impact. The elite jump jet was dislodged from his back a moment later and he opened fire on two grunts and an elite.

I landed on an elite coming up behind Marv, both feet on its back. The elite fell, its rifle dug into its stomach and fired once. The plasma dissipated against the metal floor, but I landed with several thousand pounds of strength on its back. Its armor might've helped absorb some of the shock, but I completely obliterated its back. I cursed myself when I felt my ankle almost giving, but a light tap on the jetpack slowed me down just enough. I turned around and sprayed a jackal and a grunt, sending the grunt tumbling down the side of the Scarab. The jackal bunkered down behind its shield, but I walked towards it and kicked it against the floor before stomping twice.

My helmet marked the location of my allies on the Scarab. We had all landed on the combat platform and were clearing the sides while moving towards the center. We'd have to wait for Caboose to come down to take point. He would shotgun the shit out of the interior and pave the way for us.

"Lower right side clear," Grass called out.

"Working on lower left," I replied.

"Top clear," Caboose said. "Moving to the ramp."

"Front is clear," Marv said. "Joining Caboose."

I fired four quick bursts at an elite moving towards me, the fourth one hit the neck and chest, sending it tumbling down. I almost fell out of the Scarab when the walker moved suddenly, but I managed to hold on to a turret emplacement. I grunted and pushed myself back inside the Scarab before moving towards the ramp, where Marv and Caboose were waiting for me. Grass appeared on the other side and gave me a nod which I then redirected to Caboose.

"Breaching," he said simply, raising his shotgun.

He blasted cartridges into the ramp at least six times in two seconds, firing pretty damn fast. I could tell the difference when the pellets hit metal or flesh, and there was not a single ping coming from the interior of the Scarab. Marv moved second with me third and Grass fourth. We were barely doing any mop up duty, seeing as Caboose handled nearly everything by himself. Marv threw a grenade and that was that.

Once you were inside a Scarab things were easy. A grenade or two and that shit was done. Not that hard at all.

When you talked to a tanker about it he would fume and growl angrily. A single Scarab was worth around ten Scorpions, maybe five if it was one of the smaller ones. A well-trained tanker could take out a small Scarab with just another Scorpion for help, but well-trained often meant experienced and grizzled as well, which meant only veterans of Scarab conflicts would be efficient fighting Scarabs. The thing is, Scarabs didn't often leave survivors, especially if you happened to be in a tank.

"Scarab down," I radioed in to Pavel. "Board the Elephant, that shit's our way out of here."

"Will do," he said. "Shouldn't have trouble fitting everybody in…"

"Silver lining," I replied, equally cynical in my tone. "We'll jump back your way."

My men moved back out, leaving me to set a small brick of explosives on the control panel. I always carried some plastic explosives with me, ever since my young days I had possessed a certain knack for demolitions. Normally I would've shaped all the charges, but Angel was simply magical with them, which meant that I had slackened during the times he was in Reaper, after that I had a multitude of men that were almost as good as I was and could take that role in a dedicated way.

It always felt good to mold that clay into something that would be effective, but today I just had to set it against the wall and the damage would be done.

"And there we go," Schitzo said. "Can I do the honors?"

_You're not physically able to hold the detonator._

"A man can dream."

I moved out of the Scarab's interior. Marv and Caboose were already strapping on their jetpacks and were looking eager to go. Grass threw me mine, but just as I reached to catch it a blast threw me to the floor. A second later the Scarab groaned and began toppling sideways. Three Seraphs screamed overhead before hitting the ONI facility with plasma bombs. I grabbed into something and pushed myself to my feet, but the jetpack had disappeared. Suddenly I was tackled by Grass and we were taking off. I hugged her tight, but then found myself going back down towards the ground.

It was a short fall, thankfully, and both Grass and I hit at a good angle. By that I mean that we didn't slam down as hard as we thought we would, but I had the wind knocked out of me and almost blacked out from the pain.

"El-tee, watch out!"

I looked up to see the Scarab sliding through the rock and towards us. I immediately found myself trying to outrun the thing before catching myself for committing the standard action movies error and trying to outrun the rolling rock. I switched to a diagonal run and then jumped sideways when I was near the very end of the Scarab. I looked down to the walker as it slid a few more meters and then finally slowed down.

"Grass?"

"Over here," she coughed. "Close one."

I moved in the direction of her voice and helped pull her up from the ground. The facility was at least eight hundred meters away from us and there were enemies in between. We weren't going to get there and get that NOVA away in time.

"Up for a run?" I asked Grass.

"Do I have an alternative?"

"Nope, I'm giving you a direct order."

She chuckled despite our precarious situation. "You always did like doing that."

We set into a quick run towards the bottom of the valley. There were some shrubs there that would provide concealment. It would be better if we reached them before anyone was smart enough to look at the Scarab and see if there had been any survivors. That's assuming that they weren't still thinking friendly fire had just taken out their most powerful asset.

"Pavel, we're on foot," I said. "We'll meet you later."

"Where?"

"Bottom of the road is tentative first option," I told him. "I'll see if Grass can get Fightmaster to risk his hide and get us earlier."

"Not likely," Grass chimed in. "He's supposed to pick up AAG-7 and take them to the _Obsidian."  
><em>

"Alright then, I'll figure something out," I said finally, watching as the Elephant slowly rolled down the distant road, plasma peppering its sides. "I always do."

"Hurry up, Frank," Pavel growled. "I mean it."

"I will," I promised. "Come on, Cam. We don't want to be left behind."

"Nope. Not at all."

* * *

><p>"Twenty clicks," I said. "That's the distance we have to cover."<p>

"Over mountain terrain," Grass added, heaving heavily. "We don't have the time, Frank."

I nodded. She was right. The mountains had been covered with Covenant units trying to hunt down human survivors for the past two hours. We had been forced to cease any radio contact with my team after they left Camp Independence, leaving one of the NOVAs in Vice Admiral Whitcomb's possession. Why the man would want one of those for personal use was beyond me, I had a hard time believing that he would detonate it even in the event of a total loss against the Covenant, but I wasn't in any position to question him.

"Our fleet's gone by now," Grass went on as we settled into a fast jog. "Gone gone."

"Think the _Obsidian _will wait?" I asked her.

"They will," she said. "But they're a stealth frigate, not a prowler. Their stealth systems aren't nearly as effective as those. At some point they're going to have to bail."

"And we don't have the time to make the journey on foot," I repeated. "We need a vehicle."

"Nothing but wilderness between us and the ship," she told me. "We know that."

"We'll come across something," I said, not really believing my own words.

Two minutes later something came across us. Grass was nearly decapitated by an elite, but she dropped just in time for the energy sword to miss her. I fired at the recently uncloaked elite, hitting it with two bursts before it camouflaged again and disappeared. Grass got up and pressed her back against mine, raising her assault rifle and cursing in three different Slavic languages.

"Shh," I hissed.

We heard the stomping of hooves and turned towards the sound. I fired as soon as I saw the shimmering, with Grass following my lead. The elite seemed surprised to have been made so early, but it charged on nonetheless. I kicked Grass whilst simultaneously pushing myself out of the way of the charging elite. We both spun and shot at its back, killing it.

"Keep moving," I said, pulling Grass back to her feet. "It's not alone."

In our haste we almost left the cover of the forest and fell down a sudden drop in the terrain. I stopped myself and jumped behind a tree. Several elites and grunts were climbing the rocky ascent towards our direction, leaving behind a Daemon tank and a few jackals to protect it.

"Something came along, eh?" Grass said.

"Can you drive that?" I asked.

"Yes."

Now we had the matter of taking out two platoons and disabling the crew of the tank without rendering it useless. They made things too easy for us.

"Grenade?" I asked her.

"Just two left."

"One for me," I muttered. "Alright, here goes."

I grabbed the grenade and threw it as hard as possible, going through the short trees and hopefully escaping the notice of the Covenant. With my added strength it should've gone at least seventy meters, maybe a little bit less. The grenade detonated far away from our position, giving the Covenant another sound to move towards. Grass and I patiently waited for a few very tense seconds while the covvies slowly changed their direction and began speeding towards the detonation, hoping to catch us with our pants down.

That left four jackals and an elite guarding the Daemon tank. It should be simple enough.

"You take the two on the left," I said quietly. "I'll hit the elite first."

"Roger that," Grass acknowledged, pressing a fresh magazine into her rifle. "What about the tank?"

"Front hatch is open," I pointed out. "Fire everything you have into it. Try and avoid hitting the console."

"Easier said than done," she muttered. "Tanks are cramped… Ready?"

"Ready," I said. "On my lead."

I zeroed in on the elite leading the jackals and then squeezed the trigger. I moved out of cover before firing again and was running downhill as I fired my third and fourth bursts. The last one knocked the elite down, where a quick follow-up burst killed it. Grass had taken out two jackals in the same amount of time and was moving her rifle to hit a third one. I fired at the remaining bird, hitting it in the chest, going through the thin armor like it was paper. The infantry protecting the Daemon were gone, but we still had a tank to contend with. Those weren't usually easy to kill, but fortunately, we weren't trying to destroy this one.

"I'm taking the hatch!" Grass shouted, jumping at the tank. "Cover me!"

I slowed myself down a little bit before jumping up to the rear section of the Daemon and slowly climbing. The driver realized something was up and began moving, but I already had a good grip and could move to the top of the turret. Grass began firing into the open hatch, keeping her armored boot as a safeguard to keep it from closing. I grabbed the top hatch and pulled; surprisingly enough, it opened. I mentally shrugged before firing into it, targeting the elite gunner. It tried to draw a plasma pistol, but there was no way for it to survive.

I grabbed it by the armpits and pulled it out with some effort before hopping in. I had no idea how to control the turret, but in here I was protected up to my chest and could duck under cover at any time.

"Frank, there's still an elite in there!" Grass warned.

"What? Shit."

I looked down and saw that the turret was connected to the main body of the tank. One dead elite was slumped over in its seat, but another one was pressed tightly against a wall, out of Grass' reach and aiming a plasma pistol up the hatch to keep her from getting the angle she needed to kill it. The elite saw me at the same time I saw it. We both fired at each other, but my bullets hit first, throwing its aim off. Despite the minor advantage it was pretty much impossible to miss, and a plasma bolt caught me right above the left knee before I could take out the elite.

"Shit. Cocksucker!"

I growled and sat down, clutching the wound, putting pressure on the area around it. The pain was intense, but I swallowed it down with another growl and pushed myself back to my feet after grabbing my battle rifle.

"Frank, you ok?"

"I'm fine," I said. "Get this shit moving!"

"I'm putting out the turret."

"What?"

Before she could explain herself a small compartment opened up and a plasma cannon appeared next to the hatch. I raised an eyebrow, wondering why someone would keep the cannon under cover as opposed to just leaving it up at all times, but instead of asking I simply clutched the twin grips and aimed at the edge of the forest that we had just left. Just in time too, the platoons were just beginning to realize what the hell had happened and were rushing to defend the tank.

I fired as grunts and jackals poured out of cover, the superheated plasma boiled the flesh away from their bones, killing them as fast as they came out. The elites lasted slightly longer with their shields, but the cannon burned through those easily enough. I ducked as the gun overheated, instead bringing up my battle rifle to keep the covvies on their toes.

"Grass!"

"Give me a moment," she shouted back. "Almost got it."

The Daemon had slammed into the ground when Grass killed the elite pilot, but it whirred and came alive once again, floating up and making that familiar humming noise.

"Show time," she said.

The entire turret spun slowly, sending the advancing covvies retreating in order to get away of the blast radius.

"Frank, I'll need you to fire."

"How do I do that?" I asked.

She sent me an image. A diagram of the gunner's station filled with tags of what button did what. I gave it a quick read and rolled my eyes before sitting down in the oversized elite seat. A small screen displayed the ground outside, with a targeting reticle pointing the exact spot where the plasma shell would hit. I waited an extra couple of seconds for Grass to spin the turret and then fired, taking out a whole squad of retreating Covvies.

Empowering.

"I'll need you to personally handle the turret while I drive this thing," Grass said, sending me another diagram. "Should be simple. Like a videogame."

She really wasn't lying. UNSC engineers and designers tried to make everything as easy to handle as possible. Tanks were no exception, they tended to be a lot more complicated than your standard sedan, but everybody in the military could make a Scorpion move without crashing into a building if they had to. Even some swabbies had the training for that. The Covenant appeared to follow a similar mentality when it came to building their tanks. A simple joystick moved the turret and cannon while a smaller one was used for fine-tuning when you needed to hit something that was a few miles away.

I moved it around and experimented with it for a few minutes, leaving Grass to do the driving.

"Ok, from cartographical maps of the area… it should be a fifty click trip around, we have to go through several mountains. No tunnels and only a couple of bridges."

"Do we want to avoid those?" I asked her.

"One of them," she admitted. "The other we might be able to power through."

"Do we have IFF?" I asked. "We could just sneak by."

"Maybe," she said. "They'll try to contact us though. Our translators will do their job, but we don't know Sangheili."

"What if we just speak plain English?" I asked. "Hope that they don't notice it's a translator?"

"And if they notice?"

"We have a tank."

"Better than nothing," Grass said. "Did you know that pound for pound a Scorpion is more powerful than a Daemon?"

"Why don't we make them bigger then?" I asked her.

She chuckled. "Scorpions are pretty massive, Frank. Especially when they're not those lame ones with downsized guns."

I nodded to myself. Lately we had been coming across several Scorpions with 90mm cannons as opposed to the standard bigger ones. Not to say that 90mm of high-tech tungsten weren't appreciated, but if you had to pick between 90 and 140 you would certainly pick the latter. The UNSC was just so massive that it took a very long time to standardize something, not to mention that it was a logistical hell for the bureaucrats too.

I looked at the screens, watching Reach rush past us. The screens on the tank were of incredibly high definition. Nothing that would've made me drool, but they were better than the ones on the Scorpion. Everything was there in high detail with incredibly clarity. It made looking at the landscape just a little bit harder, knowing that in a few hours everything would be burning. It already was hard… seeing the beautiful base hills covered with corpses and craters. We passed hundreds of dead humans, civilian and military alike, in the first few minutes. The Covenant had evidently paid the price, leaving behind countless bodies and wrecked vehicles, but the odds were decidedly against us.

"How can we be outnumbered?" I asked. "Here. In Reach."

"We were always outnumbered," Grass replied. "We're just one race. They're an alliance of many and they're all more advanced than we are. At least as a collective they are… Stories with odds like these don't have happy endings, not in real life."

"So what happens when we lose?" I asked.

I could see Grass shrugged. "It'll take time, eradicating a species is hard work. Earth will not fall without a fight, and maybe someone will escape, hide, and survive."

"And that's that," I muttered. "I dislike this… I do not plan on going out with anything less than a magnificent bang."

Grass laughed. "I wouldn't expect anything less, Frank. And we just might get your chance."

I looked at one of my screens to see that a Scarab, one of the smaller ones, walking slowly in an interception course. I heated up the cannon while Grass tensed up, not changing our direction. Hopefully nobody would think twice of the bloodstains on the side of our Daemon and the infantry on board wouldn't say anything to us.

"We just need to make it to that corner," Grass said. "Once there we should be good."

Silence.

"They're trying to contact us," she sighed. "Here goes."

"Greetings brothers," the deep rumbling voice of an elite came in. "Why is your assault carriage not headed towards the frontlines?"  
>I looked at Grass. "Sell it."<p>

"Greetings," she replied. "Our main gun was rendered useless by those vermin, we are getting repairs before rushing back to battle."

Silence.

"Of course," the elite replied. "Have a speedy journey."

"Thanks, brother," Grass said, barely able to contain her relief.

A second later a second voice contacted us. I wouldn't have been able to tell the difference, but our translators could. "Brother, the main body of our forces was cut off by the human retreat. If you keep heading in that direction you will have to go through them."

"A challenge!" Grass exclaimed, eyeing me. "Thanks for the warning, brother." She turned towards me. "Ready the cannon."

"If I may ask, what unit are you with?"

Grass said nothing for five seconds.

"Brother?" the elite probed, its voice containing a bit of an edge.

"Apologies, I did not hear your question," she stalled.

I looked at the screens and saw that three elites were standing at the front of the Scarab, eyeing our Daemon as moved towards the next hill and relative safety. The walker's rear gun was now tracking us.

"What unit are you with?" it repeated.

I looked at Grass and nodded.

"Asymmetrical Action Group, Team-7, Office of Naval Intelligence, UNSC."

"Oorah, motherfucker," I added for good measure.

I barely caught the elite's order to fire on us as I spun the turret. I fired at the three elites. They were merely five hundred meters away. Practically knife-range for a tank like this one. The plasma shell hit in their midst, incinerating them all. At the same time Grass strafed sideways, narrowly avoiding the opening of the Scarab's blast, but the rest of the superheated plasma scorched the side of our Daemon. I saw the walker begin to open the flaps covering its main cannon as the rear gun cooled down.

"Come on, come on," I urged my own gun. "Fire, fire, fire!"

I tapped furiously until the shell left, hitting one of the knee joints at a slight angle. The Scarab buckled slightly and we disappeared behind the hill before it could get a second shot off. Evidently, the surviving officers on board the Scarab weren't about to let a measly tank like ours spit in their face and leave. The walker began chasing after us. As fast as we moved, we had to zigzag around the hills, following the road that had been cut through them. The Scarab just plowed through, climbing the steep hills and completely bypassing the short cliffs that deterred us from going in a straight line.

"Got a plan?" Grass asked me.

"You're the tank commander," I deflected. "Hit the knees, that's what we're supposed to do."

"Fuck it," she said. "I'm transmitting on an open channel."

I glanced at the screen that showed the top of the Scarab slowly gaining on us. "We're dead either way," I said with a shrug. "Knock yourself out."

"Transmitting to any and all UNSC units," Grass began. "This is Operative Camilla Seppa with AAG-7. We are currently on a hijacked Daemon tank and have a Scarab on our tail. Is there anybody within range that can provide assistance?"

I knew that even as she spoke every Covenant unit in the area was picking up the unsecured transmission and pinpointing our location. The Scarab would do the same and try that much harder to get to us first.

Grass waited a second before repeating the message with slightly more urgency in her voice.

"Copy that Operative," a scratchy voice came in. "We're going in for the assist."

"Roger, thanks. Can you identify?" Grass asked.

"Team Falcata."

"Well, the world is small indeed," Schitzo noted.

I patched myself into the conversation. "Jonah, is that you?" I asked. "This is Lieutenant Castillo."

"Negative on that, El-tee. Jonah is MIA, this is Eduardo."

"Copy," I said. "Good to hear from you."

"Likewise El-tee. We'll see you in a few."

Despite the assurance of help we didn't stop moving. I kept trying to land a hit on the Scarab while the Grass banked around corners furiously. However, the hills and cliffs weren't eternal, and less than six minutes after we had gone in we came to the end. Grass accelerated, trying to gain as much open ground between us and the Scarab in order to be able to move out of the way of the plasma streams. I turned the turret around and aimed at the walker. My first blast bounced right off the side, hitting above the leg joint. I cursed and aimed again, trying to compensate for our movement and the distance.

"Go right!" I screamed.

The stream hit the ground just to our immediate left and I could feel the entire Daemon tilting sideways as the explosion lifted us. I fired another shot, this one bouncing off the top of the Scarab before detonating against the column that held the rear gun. The shell did almost nothing against the hard armor, leaving a big dent that did us absolutely no good.

"Coming in hard," Eduardo-G271's voice announced.

I barely caught sight of three objects slamming into the top of the Scarab. A few seconds later the walker stopped moving as its energy core was overheated. The Scarab started making loud noises and several aliens jumped off the side, trying to avoid death by incineration. I considered shooting them all with the main cannon, but I remembered that I had a ring-mounted plasma cannon just above me and proceeded to use it.

The range was nearly eight hundred meters, but since every round was a tracer when it came to plasma weaponry, I had relative success. The three Spartans of Team Falcata helped finish the job before signaling to meet up with us. Grass turned the Daemon around and sped towards them while they did the same.

"Good to see you, sir," Eduardo said. "Shame it couldn't be under less dramatic circumstances."

"You did good, kid," I told him. "You and your team. Where's the sniper… Alex?"

"She was hit in the head," he said. "Knocked unconscious. Hasn't woken up yet, but if she's not dead then she'll soldier through it."

"Good, good." I didn't ask about Jonah. "Need a ride?"

"I was just about to ask, sir. We're moving towards the _Obsidian._ It is my understanding that you are headed there as well?"

"Correct," I confirmed. "Hop on."

I slid back down the hatch, making room for Eduardo to man the weapon that I had just been using. Miranda-G192 climbed down the front hatch and moved the dead elite from its seat, taking the place of what I assumed was the radio operator while Kevin-G111 stood in that same hatch, manning our other heavy plasma cannon. I noticed that the main gun on the Daemon just narrowly went above his head. I wouldn't want to be smacking him every time I moved to aim.

"Grass, let's roll."

We sped again, this time taking full advantage of the small plain in between mountains. Technically speaking we were moving to a different mountain ridge, but the two were so close that it made more sense to consider them one unique geological feature. Reach had some amazing mountain formations, and this wasn't the exception. I looked at the screens that showed the massive mountain in front of us but made sure to pay careful mind to the foothills at the bottom that we'd have to move through before going around the mountain.

"I'm not detecting any aircraft inbound," Miranda said after a while. "We've been cut off from the battle net, but I mapped out the last known location of Covenant forces."

"We'll have to punch through at least two of those," Grass said. "From the information I'm getting here it seems like there's nothing larger than a platoon."

"Think they'll be able to predict our moves?" Eduardo asked.

"Elites aren't dumb," I acknowledged. "But we only have enough time to take the direct route and can't really afford to move through any other road. They are twice as protected as this one."

"True," Eduardo admitted.

"Did you know that tanks were originally invented to bypass enemy trenches and troops?" Grass asked.

I raised an eyebrow. "I'm a bit sketchy on my history, but I'm calling bullshit on that."

"She's right," Eduardo chimed in. "World War One."

I shrugged. "Oh we-"

A heavy shell hit us right in the front. I vaguely registered Kevin ducking before I felt the hit and a blast of heat came in through the open hatches. A second later Eduardo climbed down and sealed the hatch above me as Grass began to strafe sideways at ever changing speeds.

"Where did that come from?" I asked.

"I've got an eye on two Daemons," Miranda-G192 said. "Tagging them."

"I got them," I replied. "Ah shit."

Another shell flew past us, this time nicking our side and hitting the ground behind us, detonating harmlessly. I ignored the blast and aimed at the Daemon on the left, zooming in until it looked like I was no more than twenty meters away. I zoomed back out a little bit so I could see where my shell flew in case I missed. I fired my first shot, the explosive hit. It was a direct hit too, not a glancing shot. I raised an eyebrow in incredulity.

"Minimal drop," Miranda reported. "They are moving towards us at a speed of 42 kilometers per hour. Wind is a negligible factor."

I nodded to myself and fired again at the same time the first enemy Daemon did the same.

Grass couldn't do anything, but the enemy blast missed just as my shot connected. It hit a little bit higher than I had intended it to, but that was a small miracle by itself. The plasma shell lodged itself between the turret and the main body of the tank, detonating viciously and tearing the bearings that let the turret spin apart. The tank could still fire and move, but it couldn't aim. It was, for all intents and purposes, useless.

The other tank was still a threat though, and Grass was forced to turn in order to present it our side. The armor there was marginally weaker, but we couldn't risk another frontal hit, not with the firepower that the Daemons packed. The other gunner fired and hit us dead center. Sparks and fire started coming from my left side, but Eduardo promptly handled those, leaving me to focus on hitting the enemy. I aimed and fired, but out movement threw my aim off and I hit the bottom of the tank. The wind-like structure that houses fuel and thrusters was heavily armored, but not as much as the main body itself. The plasma shell went through most of the armor before exploding, hitting the top of a thruster system. The Daemon was still perfectly serviceable, but the tip of its left side was carving a small groove on the ground and it most definitely tilted sideways.

"We need a solid hit, Frank!" Grass shouted.

"I'm working on it," I grunted, adjusting my aim and calculating for the speed at which we were moving. I fired just as the enemy did the same and braced myself for impact.

Both shells missed by a hair.

"Goddamn," Kevin muttered.

It was a few tense seconds as the Daemon self-loaded a new plasma shell into the cannon. Near silence dominated the interior of our commandeered tank and I can only imagine that the same went for the other one. I had to try my luck and aim for the turret instead of the main body of the other Daemon. I fired, once again it was at the same time as the other Daemon.

"Brace for impact."

We were hit and our screens went blind for a second, not letting me confirm the hit. When they came back online I saw that I had hit my intended target and that the enemy Daemon now had a useless cannon. I whooped before aiming at it again and finishing it off. The other Daemon tank had been struggling to aim at us, but with no way to account for increase or decrease, it had no success. It began turning away to retreat a little bit too late and my shell caught it in the weak rear, tearing through the armor protecting the energy core and exploding the whole thing in a magnificent fireball.

"What's the sitrep?" Grass asked after the second Daemon was down.

"Front and left armor is compromised," I said. "Our left thrusters are only at 50% power, but we can still do a decent speed. Weapons are hot and intact, but I wouldn't recommend presenting our left flank to anything heavier than a plasma repeater."

"Roger that," Grass acknowledged, correcting our course and heading towards a gap between two small, sharpish hills.

We successfully avoided any enemy contact for the next hour and a half. It took hiding and long detours, but we weren't made a single time. Despite our success, time was running short, and it soon became clear that with the amount of Covenant troops on the planet, we wouldn't be able to avoid them all as we approached the shipyard. Especially as we approached the shipyard.

"Eight kilometers from the moment we touch on the highway," Grass said after several minutes of silence. "It's going to be crowded."

"Try moving through the enemy," Eduardo suggested. "Stealth it up."

"At least for a little bit," I said. "Spartans, I need one or two of you outside with your camouflage on. Can you run alongside us?"

"If you keep it at thirty miles we should be able to handle it," Eduardo said.

"Alright, go," I ordered them. "There are handholds on the sides… but you already know that."

Eduardo chuckled. "We make it a point to be experts in all things Covenant."

I nodded and watched as he and Kevin jumped out, their legs becoming almost invisible before they completely left the tank. Miranda moved from her spot at the communications station to the front turret but made sure to keep her head under cover.

"Let's go," I told Grass. "Home stretch."

"Home stretch," she said, assenting. "Moving to thirty miles per hour."

I felt the Daemon accelerate slightly as we began advancing. It was eight kilometers of moving in a straight line. We could manage to move through half of those without being made, holding our fire and completely ignoring any infantry in front of us. Eduardo and Kevin would handle anybody that decided to get too curious about our damaged Daemon. I couldn't see them through the screens, but my helmet identified them as standing directly behind the wings of the tank and just to the side. They must've been running really fast.

The first platoon of Covenant soldiers we encountered let us pass without any comment. Some of the grunts even cheered and pumped their fists up in a decidedly human gesture. I ignored the urge to kill them all and let Grass do the driving. I couldn't hear any of the exterior noise inside the tank, but I knew that the closer we got to the shipyards we'd be in more danger. I didn't want to meet my end taking a rocket from Crow.

"Don't worry," Grass said, as if reading my mind. "We'll make sure they understand what side we are on before we get there."  
>We advanced slowly, but there were no immediate incidents. We only got into trouble when an elite ultra commanding a squad of rangers stood in the middle of the road raised a hand to stop us. I cursed in Spanish and tightened my fists in preparation for a battle. The ultra moved toward us and jumped on the wind before climbing towards the hatch in the front. Spartan Miranda readied her combat knife.<p>

The ultra opened the door and before it could react it was dragged inside and its throat slit so violently that the head was only secured to the rest of the body by the spine itself. The squad of rangers took a few moments to realize what had happened, and before they could react they were set upon by two invisible enemies. I have to admit that I enjoyed the sight of heads being lopped off and throats being slit.

"Speed up," Eduardo said. "We'll hold onto the tank."

Grass complied and advanced to a speed of fifty miles per hour, or at least whatever the approximate in Covenant units of measure was. It would be a minute before the nearest unit realized what we had done and another few minutes before they managed to pinpoint our Daemon as the perpetrator. By that time we would have hopefully crossed the gates and be on our merry way to Earth.

"Frank, you see them?"

"Yeah, two Daemons and a Wraith," I acknowledged. "They're engaging the outer wall of the shipyard."

"Are we within range?" she asked. She knew damn well we were, she was just asking if I felt confident enough that I would hit them.

"I don't see why not," I replied. "Aiming."

I targeted the armor that protected the power core of the Wraith and did some calculations as to our speed. We were moving straight at them and the Daemon didn't appear to be moving at all. Since there was no change in altitude it should've been a dream shot.

And it was. I might've not been a trained tanker, but I could move a joystick and click a button. The Covenant had designed this to be simple enough for a grunt to handle and it didn't get much simpler than that. The target exploded, the entire main section was turned into a giant fragmentation device, shredding through at least four aliens that were standing within ten meters. The explosion was completely unexpected and I grinned when I realized that the other Daemon and the Wraith hadn't realized where they were getting shot at.

"Alright, round two," I said.

My next shot hit slightly to the left of where I wanted. The Daemon tank could hardly not notice us after that. It began turning its turret and main body in an attempt to shield itself from a second shot, but the Covenant tank couldn't completely forget about the very well-trained forces defending the shipyard. Two SPANKr missiles slammed into the side of the Daemon, leaving it dead in the ground and open for a second shot from my cannon.

Feel free to make a penis joke.

Now our other main threat was the last Wraith.

The mortar tanks of the Covenant, despite their bulky appearance and more than deadly cannon, were relative weaklings when you put them side by side with a Daemon main battle tank. The pilot must've been incredibly confused, and not wanting to expose its vulnerable rear to the defenders, chose to keep firing at them. To be fair to the alien driving that thing, there was absolutely nothing it could've done to survive that situation. Its cannon was dislodged from the main body and flew up at least thirty feet before coming back down with a dull noise.

"One click," Grass announced. "Almost there."

"Infantry units concentrating at the gate," Miranda-G192 said.

"Firing," I replied.

Tiny little alien bodies flew everywhere as I fired the heavy plasma cannon into their midst. Miranda took the opportunity to hop on the front turret and start firing on the infantry as well. A few plasma bolts started flying in our direction, but they were cut down almost immediately. I was willing to bet that the Covenant were hating every second of this more than any Marine ever would. You didn't go into battle expecting your own tanks to start firing at you from behind while going against a veritable fortress.

"Pavel, do you read? This is Grass, Pavel?"

"Copy that, holy shit! We thought you had been cut off!" Pavel shouted. "We're opening the gates!"

So he was alive too. Good news for us.

"Fifty meters," Grass said.

And that's when we were hit. Hard.

The Daemon stopped moving and stalled, hitting the road and digging into it before stopping abruptly. I hit my head against one of the screens, leaving me dazed for a couple of seconds.

"Out, out!" I ordered. "We'll run!"

I climbed out as hurriedly as I could, ignoring the needles that nearly took my head off. I slipped and fell down the front of the tank before hitting the road. I groaned and got to my feet, taking one step before falling on my face. I had magically forgotten about the plasma bolt that had hit me in the leg. I cursed and complained, but Spartan Kevin picked me up and helped me walk. He was carrying most of our weight.

Two plasma shots hit him in the back when we were twenty meters away from the gate, but he kept moving.

"Shoot the bastards," I ordered. "I can walk."

"Yes, sir," Kevin thanked me.

I leaned on my good foot and hopped forward, falling into Andrea and Serge as they rushed out to meet us. They carried me towards the gate while the three Spartans provided deadly covering fire. Grass sped past us and took cover to the side of the gates while Pavel and Dotsenko fired from the defense towers on either side, not letting up one bit.

Then Andrea got hit.

I almost fell down as the support disappeared. Serge soldiered on and pushed me all the way to safety before going back out without pausing for an instant. The three Spartans were forming a triangle around Andrea, killing anything that dared show its head. Serge moved towards Andy, who didn't appear to be moving and had smoke coming out of her back, before taking a glancing hit on the shoulder. He grunted but said nothing as he threw Andy over his shoulders and began the march back.

I was watching all this happen from behind cover, fumbling with my rifle to get it up and help provide covering fire. I screamed like a madman when I saw the blue orb arching towards them. Serge couldn't do anything even as everybody began screaming at them. I barely registered Spartan Eduardo turn his head around and begin moving towards them before the grenade landed right on Andrea's waist.

"No!" Pavel shouted.

The detonation threw Serge twenty feet forward and completely obliterated Andrea in a bloody blue explosion. I cursed in both Spanish and English and moved towards Serge's body before anyone could stop me. He was evidently still alive, but his legs were gone below the knee as was most of his back. I could see his spine and ribs.

"Shit," Schitzo said, turning away from the sight.

"Serge, Serge, can you hear me?" I asked. "Serge!"

He weakly tilted his head to face me. "Merde."

"He's gone, Frank!" Pavel cried. "We have to fall back to the ship. There's a division coming our way."

"Shit, shit, fuck," I cursed, looking in the direction of the explosion crater. "Alright, let's fall back. Close the gates and fall back!"

We started jogging, with Dotsenko helping me move on my injured leg as we abandoned the planet and left behind so many dead friends.

"We're going home, Francisco. We're going home."

* * *

><p><em>Thanks to <strong>Colonel-Commissar2468 <strong>and **General TheDyingTitan** for proofreading this chapter._

_Well, that's that. Reach is past us now and so are several of our beloved characters. I'll let you rant about it in the comments and smile a little bit while I go over them. War is hell, or so I hear. It was hard to kill three guys and get rid of one so suddenly, especially after I had lived with them for two years of my life. I created those characters, in the case of Marv I just gave him personality traits, but everyone else was straight from my imagination. It takes a bit more than you'd expect to just kill of someone, especially if it's not glorious at all._

**_cew1088:_**_ I'm not a big anime watcher, perhaps I've watched about six seasons total, but Jormungand is one of the ones I've watched._

**_Mike: _**_I "played" cornerback, but for all intents and purposes I warmed the bench._

**_Fucking Rant:_**_ Ah, a Halo purist I see. Personally, I liked Halo 4 and yes, even Spartan Ops. To be honest though, I enjoyed the plot more than the gameplay itself._

**_Ultimate idiot:_**_ Good to hear from you. I feel like you've been with this story for the longest time._

**_Mobspawner:_**_ I added as many vehicles as I dared into this battle, but the Mantis is a post-war creation and Halopedia says that the Lich was so overwhelmingly powerful that it wasn't properly documented until the end of the war because there were rarely any survivors. Plus, it was probably very rare too._

_To everyone else who reviews, rest assured that I go over every single one of your words, wether they are nice or not, and they help me be a little better for the next chapter. I'll try and speed up next chapter, but sometimes life gets in the way of my writing. Little side note, you might want to translate the latin title and quote, got them from a quote dictionary my gramps gave to me. Very interesting book._

_That'll be all for now I guess. Stay strong._

_-casquis_


	213. Pale Blue Dot

Chapter CCXIII: Pale Blue Dot

**September 23, 2552 (UNSC Calendar)/three weeks later**

**UNSC **_**Obsidian, **_**Sol System (en route to Earth)**

* * *

><p><em>"Well, that was unexpected."<em>

* * *

><p>After three weeks of nothing but slipspace with very brief pauses, it was a relief to once again be able to see stars through the viewports of the ship. I stood in one of those right now, looking out the window as we slingshotted around Pluto to begin our burst towards Earth. The gravity of the ship had increased slightly as we used our conventional thrusters to speed up during our orbit of the planetoid, but the extra weight I had to carry didn't bother me in this position.<p>

Andrea and Serge. So fast.

I had had time to grieve and think about all the men that I had lost in Reach, starting with Polly and ending with Serge. I had had nightmares every single day that I hadn't spent in cryo. Considering how crowded this ship was, it meant that I had had nightmares for the past three weeks.

I closed my eyes and frowned as I saw Andrea in my reflection, her midsection torn apart and bloody.

"Breathe," Schitzo said. "I don't like being this close to _him._"

"It was inevitable," I sighed quietly. "Inevitable."

I opened my eyes, this time to see Ramirez looking back at me. A moment later he became Dana Bamber, from a few years ago. So many faces and all of them had died under my command, having trusted me to lead them into victory, not death.

And then there was Marvin. Nobody had heard anything about the _Autumn_ since Reach, but an observation post in tribute confirmed that it jumped out of the system with several ships in hot pursuit. Marv was alive, but the question was where.

I shook my head softly and crossed my arms. There had been several UNSC Marine Corps officer uniforms on board the ship and I had been issued one after my second day here. In fact, I had been issued the whole set. I had my dress uniform, my semi, and my work uniform all neatly folded in room. The uniform marked me clearly as a first lieutenant, but there was no nametag.

It was a good look, especially now that I was in my late thirties. Marina would've said that it made me look distinguished. Katie would've smiled and tried to fix something that didn't really need fixing before planting a quick kiss on my lips.

Katie… now that was another problem. Her ship had successfully evacuated. At least the ship that she was supposed to be in had. Amber, Lavvie, and Liz had all been in the ship with her, so they were alive.

In theory.

The evacuation ships had all arrived on Earth here alongside a few million survivors from Reach and other Epsilon Eridani colonies that had managed to evacuate. Some ships from Tribute had begun coming in as well. The numbers weren't very encouraging, but it was hard to have high hopes after seeing the carnage that had gone on in Reach. Esztergom had seen millions dead in just days, and that's a battle that we had _won_. The rest of the planet hadn't fared any better.

Almost a billion dead. Seven hundred million to be precise. Just three million had gotten out. Three million people. A sliver of Reach's population.

"Fuck!" I cursed, punching the window.

The glass didn't even crack. It was armored against heat and projectiles, designed to take anything that the plates that went over it failed to.

The last three weeks had been hard for all of us. From the moment that Polly died I had blocked out everything and instead focused on fighting and keeping the rest of my men alive. The same happened with everyone else. It hurt to see them go, but I didn't allow myself to grieve over them. Now that we were safe and death wasn't looming over our heads my mind had finally given in to the loss. I hadn't cried once, I hadn't allowed myself to, but there was hardly a waking or sleeping moment that I didn't spend thinking about one of the men and women that had died. I remembered all the times I screamed at them for the sake of being an asshole and when I drank with them to take a break from everything. Many of them had died saving my own life, but not all of them had been granted what you'd consider a good death.

Serge had saved Andy, but Andy herself had been unconscious when she died. Marina had suffered after saving my men. Bee had barely been able to avoid a few slashes before he felt the energy sword go into his chest. Preacher had a building fall on top of him, Payat was killed while saving the civilians in the hospital, Ramirez and Mata had gone both died in Olympic Tower as well.

The rest of my men were dead inside as well. Or at least we were dangerously close to being that.

"Lieutenant."

I turned around halfway and saw Captain Flatt looking at me. She was a bit more unkempt than usual, but at least she looked better than she had when she first boarded the ship. The poor woman had been coordinating too many units for too long a time. After HIGHCOM was razed she was one of the few officers remaining that could give reliable information and so found herself flooded with requests from a few million soldiers.

She had ignored many of those, prioritized the ones that might have a chance to survive and tried to get them to safety. She hadn't succeeded with anything close to a majority.

"Captain," I replied in kind.

"You should get something to eat," she said. "Your men are already in the mess hall."

I nodded and looked at Pluto for a few more seconds before turning around and following after her. We walked in silence, coming across a pair of sleepless Navy technicians that saluted us.

I got three rations from the cook. After so many days of MREs and other equally tasteless meals we were finally getting the real deal before going to Earth. The real deal here meant lasagna. Or pasta cake if you will. I moved my tray towards the table that my men were occupying and sat down next to Pavel and Lady. She eyed my extra large serving with a raised eyebrow but otherwise said nothing. Caboose was sitting across me, his left forearm was bandaged where needle shrapnel had cut through it, leaving several nasty scars. Crow sat next to him, his face covered with bandages that left his mouth and chin uncovered. Snark sat as far away from him as possible, lately the two of them had been clashing a lot.

"Six hours," Pavel said. "Then we go down."

"Have you heard where we're landing?" I asked him, taking another huge bite of the lasagna. I knew that the meat was vat grown, but it was pretty good when mixed with the cheese.

He shook his head. "Segundo Terra came up, but I also heard something about Diego García."

I sighed. "Do you have plans?"

"I'll see if I can get someone to find out about my family… and Katie too, but it's going to take a while to find them and their refugee camp. I think it's time to see my family…"

"You'll have to introduce me someday," I said. "Grass, what about you?"

Grass looked up from her meal and shook her head a little bit. "Sorry?"

"What are your plans?"

"Visit the parents," she said. "Espoo probably hasn't changed all that much since I left. Wow, it's been a very long time."

"When was the last time you were here, sir?" Longworth asked me.

"Back when I was eleven years old," I said. "Same year that the war started."

He whistled. "Helluva homecoming, sir."

"Homecoming…" I said, as if tasting the word. "Might be."

"Captain Flatt mentioned that you might be debriefed before you can go planetside. Or before they let you take a break."

I sighed. "What could they possibly want to know?" I asked. "Why can't they just debrief Falcata?"

"They are going to do that," Grass guaranteed me. "But you had the misfortune of being everywhere of relevance."

"Just our luck, eh?" I muttered.

"What are you doing?" Pavel asked me. He and Grass knew about my family's situation. Caboose presumably knew every detail and Snark garnered that I didn't want to talk about it, but the rest of the team hadn't heard much from me or anyone else.

"I don't know," I admitted. "There's nothing here for me."

"What about him?" Schitzo asked.

"You can stay with me and my folks once I manage to settle things down."

"We're probably going to be deployed soon," I said.

"Deployed where?" Lady asked. "There's nothing in between Reach and Earth."

"Space is large," Crow reminded her. "There's plenty of directions that the Covenant can move."

"You believe that?" Snark asked in a mocking tone.

"Enough," I said.

But they weren't done yet. For some reason the two of them had taken out their frustrations on each other ever since Reach. They had never been particularly close, but I had never seen them fighting over anything until we abandoned Reach.

"Well, I know for a fact that there's more than one direction an object can move in," Crow said, moving his hand to demonstrate.

Snark didn't take kindly to someone giving him a dose of his own medicine, especially someone who he disliked very intensely.

"That's rich," he said. "I have a hard time taking you seriously when half your face is molten."

Crow leaped to his feet and pushed Snark into the ground. To his credit, he let the smaller man get to his feet before hitting him in the stomach. Snark held onto Crow's fist and elbowed it twice before kicking at his thigh. Crow didn't budge though, and he threw a vicious punch at Snark's ribs. By that point I was already there and tore them apart from each other.

"I said enough!" I shouted, throwing Crow into the ground.

"And don't get up, bitch!" Snark made the mistake of shouting.

I turned around and swung at his jaw as hard as I dared.

Snark fell into the ground, his jaw broken.

"What the fuck is wrong with you?" I asked him. "And you, Stapleton, you should know better than losing your cool like that."

"Sir," he said quietly.

"What was that?" I asked, getting in his face. "I don't want to hear a word from you at all! Not fucking now, not fucking ever! Now pick up Snark and take him to the infirmary. Right. Fucking. Now. There will be no fighting in my squad or so help me God I will beat you into friendship."

He nodded and picked up a moaning Snark from the ground, leading him away from the mess hall. The rest of the men and women were staring, but a quick glare quickly sent them back to their own meals without a comment.

"That was harsh," Pavel said as I sat down.

"He'll get over it."

Pavel sighed. "Excuse me," he said, getting up. "I'm going to bed."

The rest of the guys did the same, hastily finishing their meals. I often exploded in anger, but never this viciously and certainly not with one of my own men. They didn't want to be left alone with me after this. Grass was the only one that remained, examining a piece of meat on the end of her fork before switching her attention to me.

"You need to calm down," she said.

I didn't answer.

"The men understand what just happened. Hell, even Snark will admit that he had it coming, but if that happens again…"

"It won't," I assured her.

"Damn right you won't," she said, getting close to insubordination. "You could be court martialed for what just happened. The fact that you could've knocked his head off had you wanted to doesn't make it any better. You can't lose control like that."

I took a deep breath. "I won't."

She nodded at my fork, which had been completely crushed in my grip.

"See to that," she told me, getting up and leaving.

* * *

><p>"You nervous?" Schitzo asked me.<p>

I shook my head.

"Of course you are," he said. "We're going home."

"Not yet," I whispered as softly as I could.

"You ready?" Captain Flatt asked from the other end of the Pelican. She was wearing a little bit of makeup and her hair was done up in immaculate bun. She was holding her cap underneath her right arm and was tapping her fingers against her left leg.

"Yes, ma'am," I replied, getting up and straightening my uniform. I didn't really care how I looked for the brass, but it would ease the captain a little bit.

"Let's go then," she muttered just as the door opened, letting in a flash of light.

Sol's light.

Flatt stepped off the Pelican and into the landing pad below. I walked towards the edge and stopped, taking in the sight of HIGHCOM Facility Bravo-6. The headquarters of the United Nations Space Command. Thousands of men and women worked here, but it was an honor to be invited here, even if it was just for a debriefing. Captain Flatt knew that, I knew that, the difference is that her higher rank meant that her career could be either made or destroyed in here. And I reflected on her. I wouldn't have enjoyed being in her position either.

"Lieutenant?" Flatt asked after I didn't immediately step off.

I looked down at the polycrete surface. It wasn't earth in the strict sense of the word, but it was Earth.

"It's been a while," I said.

I closed my eyes and stepped into Earth.

I don't know what I expected, but the ground was just like every other piece of dirt I had ever stepped on. Even then, I managed to feel a certain degree of relief.

"Shall we?" she asked, nodding towards the Warthog waiting for us.

I nodded and followed after her.

They drove us to a nondescript building after which we were taken to an underground level. I knew that we weren't all the way down to the bottom of the base, but we were underground enough that spying on whatever we would be asked would be nearly impossible. It was supposed to be flattering, but I dreaded talking about Reach, it would only stir fresh memories.

The rest of my men were headed towards their friends or family or had just gotten together to get shitfaced at a bar with the rest of the survivors from Reach and I was stuck with members of the brass who wanted to know whatever I had to tell them.

"Lieutenant, Captain," an ONI officer greeted us as we stepped off the elevator. "Come with me."

I rolled my eyes, knowing full well that a million different cameras had captured that motion. I didn't care, I just wanted to get this over with to get drunk and then do what I had to do. The ONI man led me into a small conference room where three intelligence officers greeted me before taking Captain Flatt away. One of the intelligence officers was obviously ONI, the other one belonged to the Marine Corps, and a third man was a member of the Army, which struck me as weird.

"Sirs," I said politely, sitting down as they did the same.

"I'm Major Brody," the Marine said.

"Lieutenant Commander Rand, we've all been briefed as to your enhancements as well as your mental condition, so there's no need to hold anything back," the spook added.

I looked at the Army man, ignoring what the spook had just said.

"I'll just be on observer for this one," he said.

"Very well, Colonel…" I replied, pressing for a name.

"Ackerson," he relented.

I nodded again. "Let's get started, shall we?"

* * *

><p>Sydney was one of the largest cities in the planet. Along Chicago, Mexico City, Mombasa, Karachi, Jakarta and Guangzhou. Of those cities, only Jakarta and Mombasa had orbital elevators, but they had seen impressive population growth in the last two centuries. Jakarta itself had always been a large city, but after the creation of its space tether it had undergone an explosive population growth that had covered pretty much the entirety of the island of Java in an urban sprawl. Demographers often argued about which city was the largest in the planet. Some said that Jakarta was the obvious choice, seeing as the city itself had a population somewhere around 300 million people. Others argued for Mexico City, which had long since assimilated the neighboring cities of Toluca, Queretaro, Puebla, and Pachuca in order to occupy the entirety of the Valley of Mexico, turning it into an ugly grey mess with a population that rivaled that of Jakarta. Some others would instead put forward Karachi and Guangzhou as the biggest cities, since there were contiguous settlements for miles on either side of the cities, but that would have to depend on what your definition of a city is.<p>

Sydney itself was the smallest of the number, but that didn't mean much when it had a population of some 40 million. The presence of UNSC facilities in the city had meant that thousands of families had moved there, the subsequent population growth had brought in trade and immigrants. After that it just kept growing. It proved to be a good thing overall, at least for the UNSC. A disproportionate number of soldiers in the UNSCDF came from Australia.

"Your flight leaves in five hours," Captain Flatt told me. "Don't miss it."

"I won't," I assured her.

"And make sure to report to Segundo Terra in a week."

"Will do," I said. "Is that all?"

"For now," Flatt said. "Good luck."

"You too captain."

That meant that I had five hours to get shitfaced. I proceeded to do just that, giving the bartender very specific instructions to put me in a cab to the airport as soon as there was only one hour before my flight left. I barely remember any of those hours, but my memory started coming back after I found myself throwing up in the bathroom of the airplane. I shook my head and wiped vomit from my face, wondering how I had gotten there. It was not a stretch to think that I had been sleeping in the restroom for a few hours, but at least the plane was still in the air, if the vibrations were anything to go by. I threw some water on my face and shook my head. I had shaved for the meeting, but my hair was still a bit longer than regulation and the bangs fell awkwardly, covering the top third of my forehead. I tried getting them to stay up and to the side with water, but I failed miserably. I opted instead to put on my service cap and moved out of the restroom and back into the seats. I could not for the life of me remember where I had been sitting before, so I simply sat on one of the empty seats.

"Feeling better?" the lone attendant asked me, offering my Sprite.

"A little bit," I said. "Thanks."

"We've almost landed," she said. "You might want to get some of that in your system."

I raised the soda in thanks before taking a few sips from it.

The soda was sweet and sticky, but it managed to get some moisture into my body. I rubbed my temples and prepared for the landing. The plane had to decelerate and since the airline claimed maximum comfort, it took an extra minute or two in order to make the deceleration unnoticeable. There weren't a lot of passengers in the airliner, but I was the last one to step out.

The majority of the passengers began moving towards the terminal a few meters away, but a Marine corporal was waiting for me next to a civilian Warthog.

"Lieutenant Castillo?" he asked in Spanish.

"Si," I replied. "You're my lackey?"

He chuckled. "Indeed I am, sir. Should I take you to your hotel?"

"Not yet," I said, throwing my duffel bag in the back. "Hospital Santisima Trinidad."

"Yes, sir. It was my understanding that you weren't from Earth, may I ask who you plan to visit?"

"I was born here," I informed him. "But I left twenty seven years ago."

My tone of voice must've told the corporal that I didn't want to talk about it, because he was silent for the rest of the trip to the hospital. I took in the sights of the city, noticing how unplanned it all seemed, especially comparing it to cities in colony worlds. Here you could see a building from the 22nd century right next to modern skyscrapers. The majority of the houses or buildings were more recent, built on top of older ones, but the multi-level metropolis was an amalgam of styles and eras. The closer you got to the downtown area the more stylish skyscrapers you saw, but I knew that near the Zócalo, the old square, you only had buildings that were almost a thousand years old. A stark contrast to the rest of the city.

The hospital in question was one of the several present in the city and of no particular importance except for the fact that my mother had been kept there since we had been hit by that semi.

"Wait," I ordered. "It'll only take ten minutes."

"Yes, sir."

I had called in advance, letting the hospital know that I would be visiting. The lady on the other end of the phone had seemed very surprised and asked twice for confirmation that I was going to in fact visit that patient. They had told me that someone would be waiting for me at the front desk.

"Mr. Castillo?" a young doctor asked as I walked in.

"Yes," I said.

"My name's Doctor Mochon. I'm in charge of patients that have conditions similar to that of your mother."

"Aren't you a little young?" I asked Mochon.

He shrugged. "That's what everybody says. Now, if you'll follow me."

"How many patients are there here?" I asked him.

"Forty-one," he said. "We keep their bodies strong and healthy, using a variety of minerals and fluids. We also have seven nurses that will provide physical therapy to the patients, keeping the muscles well-worked in order to prevent any atrophy."

"So they're comfortable."

"Very much so," he confirmed. "We also play a variety of audio books, television shows, and movies… You know, just in case."

I nodded understandingly. People that suffered from persistent vegetative state were sometimes trapped inside their own bodies, conscious but unable to move. Some people said it wasn't true, but there was no way to disprove it and evidence showed that it was indeed a common occurrence in cases like this. The doctor was basically telling me that they kept the patients entertained to keep them from going crazy.

"Mr. Castillo, out of curiosity…" Mochon began. "Ummm, you see, normally patients in the same situation as your mother are disconnected after a while, but you kept paying for your mother's stay here. Such an arrangement is oftentimes expensive."

"It has been," I agreed.

"And you're a UNSC soldier?" he asked.

"Officer," I corrected. "In the Marine Corps."

"Well, I'm not going to lie, that was not what I would've imagined."

"What did you imagine?"

He laughed nervously. "Well, sir, the payments always came precisely at the same day of the month, never late. After they kept coming for such a long time without visits or any requests at all. Well, people began talking. My predecessor had a few theories of her own."

I didn't want to hear them, so I said nothing.

"So, how are you related to her, sir?"

"I'm her son."

"I thought her son-"

"Her other son," I cut him off.

Mochon cleared his throat and stopped in front of a door. I didn't fail to notice that a few nurses had stopped what they were doing to look at me.

"I think you should stay outside," I told Schitzo.

"Of course," he replied with a bow of the head.

"If that's what you prefer," Dr. Mochon said.

The door slid open and I stepped inside. The room was like any other hospital room. I had spent months of my life in rooms like this one, watching crappy shows on the television and pushing the terrible food down my throat. I looked at the small body peacefully lying down in the bed. I could see neatly trimmed hair fixed to the side. The woman in the bed was one that I barely remembered. I had failed to take any pictures of her when I left Jericho-VII for training and then they were all destroyed during the attack on the planet. She looked young for her age, with only small marks around the corner of her eyes. The rest of her looked as if she could've been sleeping, with her chest slowly going up and down.

"Hello mom," I greeted.

Several of my men were looking at me as I talked to her. Some were dead, some were dying, all had their eyes on me. It was unnerving. Coupled with the fact that I was speaking to a woman that might've been hearing everything I said, it made me feel very nervous.

"It's me," I went on. "Frank."

Marina sat down in front of me, a hole in her chest. Andy stood next to her, blood covering her midsection. Bee joined them, crossing his arms in an attempt to cover the two energy sword holes in his chest. I closed my eyes in an attempt to make them disappear and then opened them again, sighing with relief when the room was empty once again.

"Francisco," I corrected. "Pancho. I always hated when you called me like that. That much I remember."

I felt like an idiot. I didn't even know this woman. I had spent little more than a quarter of my life with her and half of that I couldn't even remember. It was painful, because she was my mother and I loved her, but also because I didn't know why. I _had_ to love her. That's how things worked. You loved your family.

_Funny how things work…_

"I just came to visit. There's a lot to tell, but most of it is classified stuff. I'm a soldier, in the Marines. Like Uncle Manuel. Oh, umm, he died a few years ago. He was a son of a bitch though. You might not know this, but we're in the middle of a war against aliens of all things, pretty harsh stuff."

I stopped myself again. "Anyways, I'm just visiting. I'll stay here a little longer and then visit my brother and my dad."

I sat down on a stool next to hers and felt an invisible hand squeeze my shoulder. I didn't know if it was Marina, Bee, or even Scarecrow, but I didn't turn around to find out. Instead I closed my eyes and held my mother's hand for the first time in years. It felt nice.

* * *

><p><strong>September 25, 2552 (UNSC Calendar)**

**Mexico City, URNA, Earth, Sol System**

Last night I had slept better than I had in ages. I didn't have bad dreams and woke up with every bone in my body feeling exactly in place. My muscles weren't sore, my scars weren't aching, and my brain wasn't turning against me. It was more than I could've ever hoped for.

The corporal whose name I kept forgetting was now in the process of driving me to a cemetery, the place where my dad had been buried. Visiting my mom had done me well, perhaps getting some closure with my dad would help me even more. Schitzo hadn't showed up since the last time I had seen him and neither had any of my dead comrades, but I wasn't making myself any illusions.

"Do you want me to drop you off near the grave?" the corporal asked. "Or would you prefer to walk?"

"I'll walk," I told him. "Might be around half an hour. Get yourself something to eat, will you?"

"Alright sir, I hear there's an excellent carnitas stand nearby. I wouldn't mind trying it out."

"Let me know," I said. "I haven't had genuine carnitas in decades."

"Will do, Lieutenant," he said with a smile.

I hopped off the Warthog and made my way to the sidewalk. The cemetery was very large. Very large in the way that the Atlantic Ocean is very large. I knew exactly where my dad was located, but there were a few million bones crumbling to dust in between him and me. This was one of the more recent cemeteries from what I gathered, but in a city as large as this one, it meant that there were several thousand new corpses every day. Law dictated that you had to be cremated, but that was a law that was never followed strictly to the letter, especially considering that Catholic views on cremation were still a little bit bipolar. Technically speaking you could be cremated as a Catholic, but it was discouraged. If I remember correctly, both of my parents had been Catholics, my uncle took me to non-denominational mass, but he was a strict Catholic himself. I began to wonder whether I should throw in a cross tattoo somewhere in there.

_My childhood was a mess…_

The walk down the cemetery was a pleasant one. The place was kept tidy and beautiful. In fact, the grass was as green as it got, but there was nothing that could be made about the polluted sky. Even then, the marble and rock graves gave the cemetery a certain air of peaceful beauty that only places like this could manage.

I made it all the way to my dad's tomb and stopped before I could read it. I knew where it was and could see it two gravestones over, but I still felt nervous about standing in front of it.

I steeled myself with a deep breath and walked towards it.

"Beloved husband, and father…" I muttered. "Hey dad."

A wave of memories came into my head, more vivid than I would've liked. I got the good memories first, the ones that I struggled to remember, I also got the bad ones, my dad drinking beer after beer. My mom crying and clutching her face as he yelled at her. The sting of his buckle when I made him run out of patience. Then came the confusing ones, like him throwing away several crates of the beer that he loved so much and him crying in front of my mother, constantly apologizing for something that I didn't understand while she clutched her belly.

The memory ended right there.

Her belly…

"You were a son of a bitch, weren't you?" I asked the gravestone. "But at least you were trying to change… Did you ever succeed?"

I shook my head slowly and closed my eyes. When I opened them the gravestone next to my dad's caught my attention.

"Daniel Castillo," I read out loud. "Born March 13, 2524, died January 15, 2525."

That was on day before the accident…

Then it all came back to me.

"That bitch."

* * *

><p><em>It was late and Mom would be angry if she caught me up. Dad would've been angry too and I didn't want to anger him. I knew that he had stopped drinking beer, which made him angry and mean, but I could still feel the sting of the buckle if I thought hard enough. I looked up at the ceiling of my roof, with the holographic lights that Dad had bought for me two days ago. He said it was a belated gift or an early birthday gift. I was just happy for the lights. I didn't like the dark.<em>

_It took me a minute to make up my mind, but Dani had been crying the whole night and maybe he needed someone to sit down with him to fall asleep like I used to when I was little. My dad would understand, he had been smiling a lot more lately and yesterday he even took me out to watch a fútbol game with some of his work friends. The game had been fun, but my dad's friends swore a lot and it made me nervous._

_I walked through the hall with my hand on the wall, but I noticed that Dani's door was slightly open and there was light coming out. No wonder he had been crying so much. Before I could go in, however, I realized that he had stopped crying. I debated whether I should go back to bed. I decided to turn off the light before doing just that and walked inside the room._

_I was surprised to see Mom sitting down next to Dani's crib. She was holding a pillow and was staring at the wall. It took her a moment to realize that I was there and even then she said nothing. It was scary and I began wondering if this was a dream._

"_Your brother's sleeping," she said._

_There was something wrong with that, I don't know how but I could tell. I moved towards the crib, sometimes I would watch Dani sleeping because he looked funny with his big head and drooling lips. He drooled a lot. I peeked over and leaned in, my eyes still adjusting to the brightness. Something was wrong, there were dried tears on his face and his face looked a little bit blue, like mine had last week when I threw up all night._

"_Mom, what's wrong with Dani?" I asked. "Mom?"  
><em>

_She wouldn't answer._

"_Dani, wake up. Dani. Daniel!"_

_No matter how loud I screamed he wouldn't wake up. I began shaking him, but Dani's eyes were still closed._

"_Mom. Help! He's not moving. Mom!"  
><em>

_She said nothing, instead staring distantly into nothing. My screams must've woken up Dad because he rushed into the room with his signed football helmet in one hand. I stepped back from the crib and stumbled into my mom's lap, she held on to me and put her arm across my chest._

"_What did you do?" Dad asked._

"_He wouldn't shut up," she replied._

"_Mom?" I asked, not understanding. "Mom wh-" I was cut off as her arm moved higher and squeezed my neck a little. It hurt._

"_Let him go," Dad said._

"_You can't tell," she muttered. "You can't tell."  
><em>

_"Let my son go," Dad replied._

"_No," she answered after a quick pause._

_My parents often fought, but it was usually screaming and crying. Sometimes Dad would punch Mom when she got too annoying, but he had stopped doing that after Daniel was born. This was scaring me._

"_You will take me out of the city," she said. "And then you will hide him and never speak of it."  
><em>

_My mom sounded scary and her arm was hurting my throat, but I couldn't get away and Dad looked like he did before he hit Mom or me so I didn't want to go to him either._

"_Promise you'll let him go," he asked._

_I felt her nodding behind me._

_A lot of things happened, but before I knew it we were in the car and going for a vacation. It wasn't a vacation that I looked forward to. We had left Dani in the house and he still hadn't moved since I last saw him. Dad tried to calm me down a little bit, but when I kept crying he told me to shut up and squeezed my wrist very hard before buckling me into place._

_Flashing blue and red lights woke me up. It wasn't the sirens, so we hadn't been pulled over, but there was a cop car behind us. I could see my mom tensing on her seat and noticed that the car started going a little faster._

"_What are you doing?" Mom asked._

_Dad didn't reply, instead just accelerating very fast. Mom started screaming wildly and then reached for the wheel. I heard the sirens behind me and then the car swerved a little bit, making my hit my head against the window and start crying again. The car turned to the side very fast and I saw a big semi truck that was coming from the other side. It was going to hit me._

_My dad hit my mom very hard with the elbow and then hit reverse, but the truck hit us and I was instantly knocked out._

_I don't know how, but my body broke through the window and then landed under the rolled car. My leg hurt a lot, more than when Dad hit me. My side hurt really bad and I couldn't cry without it hurting, but it hurt so much I couldn't stop crying. I knew boys weren't supposed to cry, but I screamed loudly, calling for my mom to help me._

_The driver of the semi got here first. He looked at the ruined car and then at me before running his hands through his hair. He began babbling before asking me if I was fine._

"_What have I done?" he kept asking himself._

It wasn't your fault.

* * *

><p>I realized that I had fallen to my knees and was gripping Dani's gravestone tightly. I opened my eyes to look at the green grass before looking back up. I didn't know how to feel, but there was an incredibly amount of what one could only describe as wrath.<p>

Schitzo was standing behind Dani's gravestone with his arms crossed behind his back.

"Dani?" I asked him.

"Nope. I'm all you," he replied.

"I thought you were him," I said. "I thought you were my _older_ brother."

"You're the eldest kid, Francisco," he told me. "There never was an older brother."

"What the hell is wrong with me?"

"Genetics," he replied. "Your mother was a psychopath or something, you just so happened to get the genes. Your father was an alcoholic and wife-beater and that damaged you. Gotta admit, you have one hell of a suppression reflex. I'm surprised that it took you this long to break past those barriers."

"Fucking hell," I grunted, standing up. "I had a shit fantasy world in my head for the past thirty years and the reality was even worse."

"What can I say?" he asked. "You're fucked up."

"The came ONI?" I asked.

He sighed. "That's what I don't know for sure. You were always a ticking time bomb, but whatever they did to you might've made it worse. I mean, you're talking to a hallucination in the middle of a cemetery for God's sake."

"Fuck. This. Shit," I said. "Half my team just died, I make peace with my mother, and now I find out she killed my younger brother because he was crying? She killed my fucking dad!"

"Just when he was trying to be better, too," Schitzo added.

"That fucking bitch."

"What are you going to do about it?" he asked.

"She ruined my life."

"Yes."

"She killed my brother."

"Yes."

"My father."

"Yes."

"Uncle Manuel wouldn't have died if not for her!"

"Yes."

I kicked softly at the ground, suddenly eerily calm. The wind was blowing softly and the sounds of a megacity seemed to fade into little more than background noise. My head had been pounding but the pain disappeared and my heart started beating slower and slower until it went back down to its usual rhythm. I felt a lot better than I had before that trip to the past. I sighed and stretched myself to my full height. I took a deep breath and started walking back out. I felt like having some carnitas.

* * *

><p>"You know, I get a lot of vague description by kids that want to piss off their rich parents."<p>

"Maybe you shouldn't have gained a reputation for being the best tattoo artist in the city," I replied.

"Western hemisphere," he corrected with a small shrug. "Although there are a few in Miami that might disagree."

"For what you're charging me, I hope you're right."

He laughed. "I am," he assured me. "What's your name again?"

"Frank," I said. "Or Lieutenant."

"Alberto, or Beto if you want. You're UNSC or Mexican Defense Forces?"

"UNSC. Whatever happened to the URNA Army?"

"Didn't stick," he said. "Canadians didn't want that. Something about their independence and whatnot."

"I'm surprised the Americans went with it in the first place."

"They were happy to," he said. "Ever since their civil war… Look at me rambling about events that happened centuries ago. What was it you wanted again?"

"My left arm. I want it inked."

He sighed. "Alright. Take off your shirt."

I complied and sat down.

"Nice bod, man. Got an impressive set of scars too. Turn around."

I did so after a quick roll of my eyes.

Beto whistled. "Shit dawg. That's one nasty back you've got. It's going to be hard to work around those scars, especially the long one."

"I don't want my back tattooed," I said.

He chuckled. "They all say that. I notice you already have some ink. Oh, ODST? Should I be concerned."

"No."

"Don't worry, I get a lot of your type. Shock Troopers take their ink seriously. They'll pay top dollar for it. You know, whoever tattooed your right arm did a good job. Was he the instructor?"

"Yeah," I said. "One of them. Used a needle gun too."

"Most people now use molds, crappy things if you ask me, but they're good if you just want letters or numbers."

"So I've heard."

"Who did your left arm?" he asked. "It's a weird combination, but they are obviously in the same style." Beto grabbed my arm and examined the ink. "Huh, they're not even from the same session, are they?"

I looked down at the three tattoos in the arm. One of them was a raven or a crow, I had put it there to honor Scarecrow's memory many years ago. Stefánia had done a great job with it, above it was a black cross for Almers, and above that a Corpsman insignia with highly angular wings instead of the more traditional curved ones. Two dates stood on either side of the insignia, the birth and death dates of Hanna Lockley. I rarely talked about that one, but it was always present in my mind.

"So, what do you want?" he asked for the second time, gesturing for me to sit down. "So far you've mentioned three things, a grim reaper, a knife, and Mary's little lamb. Odd trio, even by tattoo standards."

I shrugged.

"You know," he went on, "tattoos are supposed to have a meaning. This shit will stay in you forever, you might as well make it important."

"Curious attitude for a tattoo artist."

He laughed. "And it looks beautiful too. But all kidding aside, why do you want that. In fact, I would like to know what those three in your left arm mean if I'm going to merge them with a sleeve."

I sighed. "Bird near the wrist is after a man I lost in combat. He wasn't the first, but it hit me hard. We called him Scarecrow."

"Alright, seems like straight up symbolism. Cross?"

"Our squad medic. Sander Almers."

"Why do you have a corpsman insignia over that then? Not the official one either, a little bit stylized."

"Hanna, she was my girlfriend," I explained calmly. "She wasn't in my unit, but she was a corpsman too."

"And that's what you got?"

I nodded. "I didn't know what else to do. To this day I feel like I should've gotten something else, but it is who she was. A medic that died helping other people."  
>Beto leaned a bit back in his stool and spun side to side. "The serial numbers I can figure out… How long have you been in the Marines for?"<p>

"A long time," I sighed. "I enlisted back in '33."

"Huh, about to get your big twenty. If you're still alive by then feel free to come back and get something to celebrate. I'll even give you a discount."

"Don't expect it," I said. "Back to the tattoo."

"Yes. A knife, why?"

I shrugged lightly before reaching down to my ankle and pulling out the Damascus steel knife and showing it to him. "This puppy's saved my life more times than I can count."

"Beautiful blade," he said, admiring the pattern. "May I?"

"Go ahead."

He grabbed it and spun it a couple of times. "Terrible balance."

"It throws well," I assured him.

"How long have you had this for?"

"Nineteen years."

"No wonder you can throw with it, it's a lovely knife, feels strong too, but I get the feeling that it wasn't made for throwing."

"It is a hybrid blade," I explained. "The center of gravity is not where you'd expect it because it was designed to be both a knife and to have a certain degree of throwing capabilities. Took a long time to get used to it."

"I bet," he agreed. "Do you want this blade design exactly?" Beto asked.

"If you could, it would be ideal."

He smiled and rubbed his hands together. "I love a challenge, and those patterns are going to be fun to paint. One recommendation though, I'd keep it with dark grays, reds and blacks."

"You're the artist."

He nodded. "Very well then, forearm?"

"Yeah, outside."

"Good, good. Now, why the reaper?"

"My squad's call name. We made it through a lot. Some of them still fight with me."

"Good, good. Any particular preference? Do you want a skull, just the cloak, a little bit of both?"

"I'm not really sure about that one," I admitted. "Any suggestions?"

"As a matter of fact I do," he said. "I've been working on a design. Here, wait a sec."

He reached back and pulled a datapad from inside a drawer before tapping it and then producing a picture. It was a curious design, mixing fantastic and current elements. The skull itself was vaguely human, but most of the lower part was covered with the cloak. However, the design of the cloak was what interested me, it was made to look like a type of misty darkness, straddling the line between solid and gas. The cloak itself didn't seem to cover the chest of the reaper, which looked like you'd expect a man that had died of hunger to look like, but Beto had made the reaper to look strong and powerful as opposed to starving. Let's not forget about the scythe, no reaper is truly a reaper without its tool of the trade. It was a bit wider than your usual staff and the cloak seemed to merge with it. The only thing I wasn't sure of was the blade itself, it was still traditionally curved, but it was fixed upwards, like a spear.

"I like it," I admitted. "But it could be better."

"I'm open to suggestions, it's you I'm putting this on."

"Not convinced by the scythe, it's a spear, not a scythe. Then there's the chest. I like how you made it look, but it looks vulnerable."

"It's hard to make it look more powerful when I'm going for the starving look," Beto said defensively.

"Think you can make it look like ODST armor?" I asked him. "Not actual ODST armor, but maybe make the cloak kind take that form in the chest?"

He smiled. "I can do that. I take it this one will go on the upper arm?"

"Yeah."

"Good then. Now we only have to talk about that little lamb."

"Another friend of mine," I said. "Her name was Marina Bogdanovic. She was the best damn pilot I ever knew. Braver than most ground troops in any case. For a long time she was the one in charge of dropping and picking up my team. She never failed us and not once did she let us down. She'd go into areas that would be considered death traps by most sane men."

"And why do you want a little lamb?"

I smiled. "Her first Pelican was painted with streaks and she called it Mary's Little Lamb . The name was painted on the side below the cockpit."  
>Beto smiled with me. "Sounds like a hell of a gal."<p>

"She was," I agreed.

"I know just what to do," he said. "It's hard to make a little lamb badass, especially when it's going next to reaper and a knife. Then again, we're forgetting about the other important aspect of a lamb. When it becomes a ram."

I shook my head with a small smile. "You got an idea?"

"Yeah, let me sketch you something."

It took him around a minute before he presented me with a piece of paper. He had drawn a ram from a head-on perspective, it looked like it was about to, well, ram you. The horns looped one full time before turning to the sides and the animal looked like it meant business.

"I was thinking we do all black for the head," Beto said. "A little shading, but no features other than the shades for depth."

"I like it," I admitted. "Now, should it go near my elbow or inside of my arm?"

"Inside of your arm," he said. "Bicep is a pretty good place for this one."

"We have the three things I wanted," I said. "But how do you link them into a sleeve?"

"Patterns," he said. "Or we can add smaller tattoos that merge them. In all likelihood I'll end up filling in the unused skin with a pattern that fits the main theme, but having other tattoos would be good."

"Hmm…" I hummed.

"You know what's been popular lately?" he asked. "I take it you've heard of the so-called Legendary Symbol?"

I chuckled and nodded. "Hunter shield, elite skull, and crossed knives?"

"Or any variation thereof," Beto said with a nod and a smile. You like it?"

"I could see myself getting that somewhere."

"What about the bottom third of your upper arm and top of the elbow?" he asked. "I can make it around five by five centimeters. Hell, I can probably fit three different ones in there. You get your standard elite skull and knives one, then slight variations."

"Human skull with battle rifles," I said. "I liked that when I saw it."

He scribbled something down in the piece of paper. "Want a third one?"

"No," I said. "I want the human skull in the inside and the elite skull on the outside."

"Alright… There's going to be some leftover space, not a lot, but some."

"We've got time," I said. "We'll need to fill out the skin between the knife and the other tattoos in the forearm," I added.

"Yeah," he agreed. "No need to rush it though."

"Let's get started then," I said. "Wait, there's a list of numbers I want you to add to my right forearm. Ten numbers."

Beto nodded solemnly. "Should be twenty minutes before I get to the real work. You've got anywhere to be?"

I shook my head.

"Good, cause I want to see this puppy when it's done and I don't want to wait. It's going to take a few hours. Around seven if I do it right."

"That's why I showed up early," I told Beto. "You'd better not mess this up."

"I won't," he promised. "It'll be my best work."

I took a deep breath and leaned back on the chair, closing my eyes as the tattoo gun started whirring and Beto began doing his thing.

* * *

><p>The arm felt numb, but no longer stung as bad. I had to switch the phone to my right hand and pressed it against my ear.<p>

"Hospital Santísima Trinidad, how may I help you?"

"Put Doctor Mochon on please. It's Francisco Castillo."

"One moment please."

"Lieutenant Castillo? Good to hear from you."

"Likewise Doctor," I said.

"What can I help you with?"

"Disconnect her."

"What?"

"Disconnect her. Send me all the forms you need to have filled out."

* * *

><p><em>Thanks to <strong>General TheDyingTitan<strong> for proofreading this chapter.__ I intended to submit this one three days ago, but my other beta couldn't be contacted. Then I went skiing for spring break and all that._

_So that's one mystery solved. I'd say more, but I just came from several hours of snowboarding and I'm what you'd call fucking tired as fuck, so I hope you enjoyed this chapter. Let me know what you thought._

_Stay strong._

_-casquis_


	214. Inhale

Chapter CCXIV: Inhale

**October 2, 2552 (UNSC Calendar)/one week later**

**Mexico City, URNA, Earth, Sol System**

* * *

><p>"<em>Take a deep breath…"<em>

* * *

><p>The city outskirts were as ugly as I remembered. As the cities of Pachuca, Puebla, and Queretaro had slowly become engulfed by Mexico City, there had been various different areas that you could consider downtown, but that space in between cities that hadn't once been suburbs was now a bunch of building blocks arranged in different ways. You'd get a pyramidal arrangement here and a kilometer later it would be the outline of a cube followed by a more traditional skyscraper before becoming a slum and then switching back. It was interesting to watch if nothing else.<p>

"So this is where you lived, huh?" Pavel asked. "Why'd you make me come here, again?"

"I didn't make you come here," I reminded him. "You said that you wanted to come here, get a nice breath of polluted air."

He inhaled. "Not even that polluted. Technology keeps it cleaner than it was back in Paris IV."

"Gotta agree with you there. Any news?"

"No. Well, other than the fact that their ship left the system there's no new development. At least they are alive and well. I just want to see them again."

"I want to see Katie too," I said, squeezing his shoulder. "But we have to settle for knowing that they are alive."

Pavel leaned back on his plastic chair and sighed. The chair creaked a little bit at his weight, but it held. The place we were eating could hardly be called a restaurant, with a small kitchen and three tables indoors. Pavel and I were sitting on one of the two tables in the sidewalk while the lone waiter sat inside watching a soccer game while glancing at us to see if we needed him.

So far our table was full of empty plates. This place specialized in tortas, which is basically a massive sandwich with as many ingredients crammed into it as possible. If you wanted to die of a heart attack, you could have it deep-fried or even marinated. We had both started with the house special, which was breaded steak, beans, string cheese, tomato, lettuce, and Chihuahua cheese. It wasn't particularly heavy, which is no doubt one of the reasons why it was so popular. Then we both asked for a second torta and then a third. I'm not going to lie, they were damn good.

"So how are you dealing?" he asked.

"With?"

"Mommy dearest."

"What's done is done," I told him. "It's in the past. Hopefully it'll give me some closure."

Pavel sighed and groaned much like his chair had a minute ago. "Frank, you've never had closure for anything in your life. Whatever you call mourning, it goes from anger, to melancholy, to self-blame, but it never quite makes it to closure. You seal it in and then get a tattoo."

"It works for me," I said.

"I'm just worried man, one day it'll all want to come out and it won't be pretty."

"Well, hopefully I'll be dead by then. Way things are going, I probably will."

"We'll all be dead soon," Pavel admitted. "Hopefully not too soon."

I took a sip of my drink. "Remember when I told you this was going to be a good year?"

He smiled and nodded, raising his own beer in reply.

"And for a few months I was almost right."

"Near miss is still a miss, Marine."

"Easy there cowboy," I laughed. "You sound like my instructor. I don't like being in the same system as that son of a bitch."

"Want to pay a visit?" he asked. "I know I want to tell the 105th DJP instructors that they fucking suck."

"I don't think it's their fault you got overwhelmed."

"I know. I just think they're assholes."

"If you don't think that then they didn't do their job right," I said.

"What's with the tattoo anyways?" he asked. "Some things I can get the meaning of, the rest, seems like you just made shit up."

"Not everything has to have a meaning," I said. "Some things don't."

I looked down at my left arm. Beto had added a thin scroll that went around my forearm in between the three tattoos on the inside and over the knife. It had been a nice touch, especially because it provided the opportunity to write some badass shit in it. The Latin no longer gave me a nerd boner like it had back in the day, but it still had a certain degree of dignity to it. Despite that, the scroll didn't have only Latin in it.

"Brothers in arms are brothers for life," Pavel said, reading along my arm. "True enough."

I flipped my arm around.

"Hey Scarecrow," Pavel said. "Almers, Hanna… Exoriare aliquis nostris ex ossibus ultor."

"Let an avenger be born from my ashes," I translated for the second time. "Pretty badass huh."

I had let Beto write that phrase there because it was amongst my fallen comrades. It was from their ashes that the avenger rose, pardon my poeticism. I intended to be that avenger and I think that I had succeeded more often than not, but it would serve as a reminder of one of the reasons I fought.

"And the Spanish?" he asked. "You didn't translate that one."

I looked at my bicep and rolled up my sleeve a little. Separating the reaper from the ram were two different phrases. One of them was in the front, on the top of the bicep. It was originally a quote by Roman general Pompey Magnus. It was a curious quote, mostly because it inverted what all those life coaches told you.

"It's not about living, but about winning," I said. "Roughly translated."

Pavel snorted. "That's our life right there. That quote I like."

On the opposite side, separating the outside of my upper arm from the inside was another separate tattoo. It wasn't a quote in itself, instead it was just four letters. ODST. I hadn't been able to resist. I already had those letters on my right arm, but being a Helljumper isn't exactly something you hide about yourself. You wear it with pride and rightly so.

"And the rest?" he asked, pointing at the two Legendary symbols in my arm. "What's with the grid?"

One of the symbols was on the outside and the other on the inside of the arm, but Beto had suggested something to fill in the space. He had gone for a grid design, using hexagons that were each the size of a quarter. He had filled in those hexagons with what he called stacked cubes and shaded them appropriately to give them a tri-dimensional look. It was pretty good and went from the bottom of the reaper and the ram to the top of the knife and the corpsman insignia, about as wide as my hand. It had hurt a bit when he tattooed my elbow, but nothing I couldn't handle. The only space that had been left blank had been the sides of my forearm in between the knife and the inside of my forearm. The scroll went around two times, occupying most of that space. Beto had suggested a few ideas to fill in those four small areas. I had come up with two ideas that I liked. The top spaces were now filled with the formula for Titanium-A on the left side of the knife and Colonial Cross on the right. Titanium-A had saved my life a million times and a million times again, the Colonial Cross was the highest award that could be issued to anybody and I had earned it.

"You're too much, Frank," Pavel said. "Too much."

"That might be," I admitted. "How are your folks?"

"Angry that I never visited. Still, we kept in contact and they were happy to see me. I'm a bit mad that my dad is still taller than me."

"I'd like to meet the man," I said. "And also the woman that managed to push those shoulders through her vagina."

Pavel shook his head, disgusted. "You're disgusting."

I laughed and waved the waiter over, telling him that we were done.

"We've got another week of leave," I said. "They just told me that at Segundo Terra, so why not enjoy it? Take a vacation or something."

"I don't know… I've been catching up with friends and family."

I sighed.

Pavel laughed. "You're welcome to come, man. They'd love you. So long as they don't get to know you too well."

I smiled and laughed. I had never been to Poland before.

* * *

><p>Poland was ok, I guess. People tended to picture sloping green hills. That or cavalry charges against tanks. It had been half a millennia since that event and the world would still not let the Poles get over it. I didn't mind Poland, from what little I saw, it was a lot nicer than Mexico City, namely because not everything consisted of various shades of grey and instead you could actually spot grass here and there. Truth be told, the air seemed a lot cleaner in here.<p>

"Think your folks are going to like me?" I asked Pavel, clinging to his arm and running my fingers through his chest.

"Get off me!" he said, shoving me to the side. "Weirdo."

I smiled and then chuckled a little bit. "I'm just excited about this, feels like a big step in our relationship."

Pavel turned his head to look at me. "Frank, we've seen each other naked and had sex with the same woman."

"Not at the same time," I cleared up. "Plus, that was a long time ago."

"She was really good, wasn't she?" he asked after a pause.

"Oh yeah," I agreed. "A real animal."

So far my experience in Europe had been a relatively good one, but I had only been in one country of the Union so far. Might be interesting to visit the Balkan States now that they had finally allowed themselves to stop fighting over bullshit, but knowing the recent history they'd probably explode into high-intensity warfare within a few years. France wasn't a good place to visit right now either, the civil unrest coupled with the incredibly brutal policies that their army had when dealing with enemies meant that being killed in a riot wasn't extremely hard to picture.

"Did Poland sign that no army protocol?" I asked Pavel.

"Nope," he said. "I think that was only some South East Asian countries, none of them ratified it though."

It made sense. All nations were unified under the UEG banner, which meant that the UNSC was supposed to be the one providing their armed forces, but the countries were still countries and had their own small-scale national interests regarding the planet Earth. Conflicts over colonies were nonexistent, but start talking about a few square miles and shit gets serious. Pretty much every country had a small standing army. In paper they were supposed to be something like police forces, but for all intents and purposes they were an individual armed forces. I feared that all of them would be forced to fight under UNSC command against Covenant forces pretty soon.

"Have you heard anything from the rest of the team?" I asked.

"Not since yesterday. They all checked in where they had to and when they had to, but the extra days of leave mean that they'll be doing their own thing until we have to check in again."

"Run me through their whereabouts again," I said.

Pavel took a deep breath. "Grigori last reported in Cairo. Miranda and Snark in Istanbul. Longworth and Stapleton both checked in in Camp Pendleton and Dotsenko was in Kamchatka. Lady signed her name in St. Petersburg."

"How's Crow doing?" I asked. "Is his face bearable again?"

Pavel sighed and shrugged. "I talked to Longworth, but seems like most of the grafting is done. His face still looks like a truck ran over it, but it looks like a face at least. Next round of surgeries should be in two weeks or so."

"Funny how not a lot of guys are spending their leave together," I pointed out. "Hell, Cam is not even with us right now."

"Well, she does want to see her family," Pavel excused. "And I hear Scandinavia is lovely this time of the year."

"So is Scotland," I said.

"Are you going to visit Rob's family?" he asked.

I nodded. "I was planning on it. Not exactly excited about it, but I think that they'd appreciate it. Why do you ask?"

"Bee was my friend too, I think I'd like to pay Mr. and Mrs. Agnarsson a visit."

"You're welcome to come," I said. "I was planning on traveling there tomorrow, maybe stop by Paris and see if it's as great as they say."

"I don't think being in France right now is a good idea," Pavel murmured. "Maybe Spain? At least you speak the language there."

I shrugged. "We'll see what happens."

Pavel stopped and parked near a four story house. It seemed like a nice enough place, brick walls and tall windows with a large green wooden door. We weren't exactly in downtown Warsaw, but we were near enough to the main body of the city that the apartment seemed a bit picturesque. Sure, it was a lot larger than the other more conventional houses on either side of it, but very old-fashioned if you ask me. I shrugged to myself and walked out of the car, letting Pavel in front of me as he opened the door.

"W sam raz," an old voice said.

"Mama, Tata. Przyniosłem znajomych. English please."

"Hello!" Mrs. Klaus said as soon as she saw me. "You must be Francisco."

"Frank," I said with a smile. "Pavel never talks about you, Mrs. Klaus."

That got me a soft punch to the ribs from my best friend. I chuckled and shook Mrs. Klaus' hand. She looked a lot like Pavel, except her features were softer. She was a tall woman, about 5'9 or somewhere along those lines. She was a tad bit overweight, but not enough to be noticeable. Her eyes and hair were exactly like Pavel's, bright blue and light blonde respectively.

"I've heard a lot about you," she said.

"All good things, I hope," I replied, making a worried face.

"Mostly," she said. "Here, let me introduce you to my husband. Kochanie?"

Mr. Klaus was a veritable giant. He was as tall as Pavel, but his shoulders were even wider than my friend's were. Pavel's dad looked even larger than my friend because in his old age he had acquired some extra meat around the chest and belly, making him look like a bouncer or something, but the man had an impressive physique.

"Mr. Klaus," I said, shaking his hand firmly. "I see where Pavel gets those shoulders of his from."

"Call me Jakub," he said with a broad grin. "So you're Frank, eh? How many times have you saved my son's life?"

"At least the same number that he has saved mine," I replied. "What would that be?"

"A couple dozen?" Pavel replied with a shrug.

"Ha!" Jakub exclaimed before hugging me, trapping my arms against my body. "Any man that saves my son is family. Sit down, sit down, we were just about to eat."

I laughed and struggled to get some air into my lungs before he put me down. He might've been in his early sixties, but the man was built like a slab of metal.

I slapped his upper arm in thanks for the gesture and then moved towards the table, where a chuckling Mrs. Klaus shook her head and an embarrassed Pavel rolled his eyes.

They were a nice family, no wonder Pavel could go through what I had gone and come out without any emotional scarring.

"That's what a good upbringing will do for you," Schitzo said.

* * *

><p><strong>October 4, 2552 (UNSC Calendar)**

**Aberdeen, Scotland, United Kingdom, Earth, Sol System**

I had never imagined that Rob's family would be so large. We rarely talked about our family in Reaper and the situation had been the same in AAG-7. I knew that he loved his home in Scotland, but that was about all I knew about it. I had known the man for a very long time and would like to think that he thought of me as family, but his own personal life on Earth was something that I barely knew about. He knew how my parents had died, but that was about it. He also knew my uncle died in Jericho-VII, but again, that was basically all he knew about my life before Reaper.

Sitting in the living room of Mr. and Mrs. Agnarsson's house were some twenty relatives of Robert. Most of them were not immediate family of course, but there were a few that looked enough like him that I could tell they were at least siblings.

Bunch of redheads here too. A few of Bee's cousins or aunts were very attractive too.

I mentally cleared my throat before redirecting my attention to Bee's mother.

"So you were my son's commander?"

"For most of his career, yes," I said with a small nod. "I don't know if he told you, but we actually came across each other a long time before, in New Constantinople."

"That was his first deployment," Rob's father told me. "We were so scared when we heard that he had seen combat."

"Intensive combat too," I added. "Your son distinguished himself. In fact, a few years later I was asked to put together a team, I requested your son for it."

It was a small lie. Bee bad been one of the several names put into the file but someone other than me, but the moment I recognized him he made it into the team.

"He was always good at fighting," one of his relatives said. A cousin, by the looks of it.

"One of the best," I conceded. "He was like a brother to me."

Rob's mom smiled a little bit. "Funny, by the way you treated him he thought you hated him."

I smiled back. "I'm not a nice man, ma'am, but trust me when I say when I loved your son."

"It would take either family or a dumb man to love him," his dad said.

"Well, fortunately for him I am both."

There was polite chuckling from the family.

"Pavel wanted to be here," I went on, "but his mom was in an accident so he stayed with her."

"Pavel is… Gunny, correct?"

"That's right," I confirmed. "Did Rob talk about us a lot?"

"He left a lot of messages," another of the Agnarsson's said. "Usually directed to the whole family and usually complaining about one thing or other, but he did talk about Reaper and Jaguar Company."

"He was a good man," I said. "He didn't talk about his family a lot though."

"I'm not surprised," Mrs. Agnarsson said. "He often complained about how there were so many of us that he would never be the best at anything."

"Well, I'll be damned if he wasn't the best heavy weapons specialist I ever served with. In times like these, we could use more men like him. He got my team and me out of rough situations more than one time."

After that I got several different questions from most members of the family. A few wanted to know how he behaved, if he was still the same guy that they had known before he left for his first deployment. Some others wanted to know random things about him, but it was clear that despite Bee's constant messages back home, none of the guys here knew him very well.

"Did he still watch those old movies?"

I smiled. "Oh, that he did. He watched old movies and listened to old music. I'm a bit ashamed to admit it, but it caught on in the squad. We had movie nights were he would pick what we would watch and it wasn't strange for him to pick the soundtrack for our missions."

His siblings smiled and shook their heads. That was a trait that they clearly remembered and no doubt had annoyed them in their younger years.

"Lieutenant, may I ask how my son died?" Mrs. Agnarsson asked. The room went quiet and her husband gripped her hand tightly.

"We were in Esztergom," I said. "The city had seen a rough couple of days and our line had been pushed back almost out of the city. Command decided to give our team an assassination mission, put a large number of tanks and armored vehicles with us. Our push went a little bit too well and soon enough our mission had turned into part of a larger offensive to retake the city. We were coming through several blocks that had been flattened to piles of debris and towards some buildings. Rob was driving a Warthog and an elite knocked out his gunner. Natasha." I paused to see if they were all bearing with me. "He jumped out to help her, killing the elite. He picked her up under fire and started dragging her towards the buildings. Pavel met him and they both dragged Natasha, but when they were about to get there an elite marshal jumped down. You've seen the videos, right?"

They all nodded.

"Marshals are the best of the best that the enemy has to offer. They carry swords into battle and have shields that are incredibly hard to break. Your son had killed a few of them. Well, this elite slashed at them with his sword, Rob jumped back, letting go of Natasha and avoiding the cut. Pavel grabbed her and dragged her to safety. We all tried to help your son, but the buildings hadn't been cleared yet and we were under fire. I myself got hit in the chest. Your son bought Pavel just enough time to get himself and Natasha to safety, firing his rifle at the elite at point blank distance before the elite stabbed him."  
>There were a few seconds of silence.<p>

"Was it painful?" his father asked.

I shook my head. "He was dead before he hit the floor. Mr. and Mrs. Agnarsson, in my line of work people die from horrible ways and often without any chance to fight back or even knowing that the enemy was there. I know it's probably not any consolation, but your son died during one of our most successful offensives in Reach, an offensive that wouldn't have happened without him, and he died saving the life of a teammate."

Mrs. Agnarsson broke down into tears at that point and his dad just looked at me and mouthed a quick thank you before hugging his wife. The rest of the family seemed unsure about what to do before Bee's siblings came over and asked me if I wanted to have a drink. I nodded and went with them to the kitchen, where they made some small talk with me.

"Thanks for doing this," one of them said. "When they got the letter they didn't really know much."

"That was partly my fault," I apologized. "I had to write it in a hurry and sometimes ONI censors some things. I should've been more forthcoming about what happened."

"It's not your fault," another said. "Our brother admired you, you know."

I shook my head. "He shouldn't have. I am good at my job, but that's about all I'm good at."

One of them shrugged. "He admired you nonetheless. It's good to know that you cared for him."

"He was like family to me," I replied with a small shrug. "We went through a lot together."

"Lieutenant, can I ask you something?" his sister asked.

I nodded.

"What is going to happen with this war? We hear rumors, and if Reach fell…"

I sighed. "The war isn't going well," I said in an understatement. "We are losing. We are losing badly. I've given the best I could and still I've been overwhelmed, the UNSC is doing the same, but the Covenant is too strong."

"What should we do?" one of the brothers asked.

"Leave Earth," I said. "Take a year-long vacation. If nothing's happened before then, then it should be relatively safe to come back."

"That bad?" he asked, taking a long swig from his beer.

"That bad," I confirmed.

* * *

><p><strong>October 5, 2552 (UNSC Calendar)**

**Barcelona, Spain, Earth, Sol System**

I cracked the knuckles on my right hand with a loud noise and went to crack those on my left before stopping. After my chat with the Agnarssons I realized that there Bee had earned himself a spot on my body. I would not allow another artist that wasn't Beto to add to the sleeve itself, but I had gotten a small something from another artist here in Barcelona. She had drawn an ODST drop pod that went from my knuckles to my wrist and filled it in with yellow and black alternating lines, like a bee. On the right side of the pod stood a SPANKr rocket launcher, on the left stood a Spartan Laser. Bee's weapons of choice.

I cracked the knuckles on my left hand carefully, making sure not to disturb the bandage.

"So long as you don't start getting tattoos on your face, you can do whatever you want," Cam said. "I do think Bee would've liked it though."

"Hope so," I replied, drinking from the beer in the table and looking at the beach. "I don't understand why this nude beach fad isn't more popular."

"No nude beaches on Jericho-VII?" she asked, sipping from her own beer.

"Not that I was aware of," I admitted. "Otherwise I would've spent a lot more time there."

"Did you know that nude beaches first became popular in France?"

"Leave it to the French," I said, letting my eyes linger on a middle aged woman with a very firm body. There was something about nudity in this situation that took most of the eroticism from it, but that's not to say that I didn't enjoy looking at naked beautiful women.

"Men," Camilla snorted.

I smiled and shrugged lightly. "Nice place. Glad I came here."

"Another month later and we'd be wearing jackets," she said. "Or at least long sleeves. No nude ladies down on the beach, that's for sure."

"We wouldn't want that," I admitted. "What time is it?"

"Still early," she replied. "Why, are you getting hungry?"

"A little bit," I said. "But I feel like we've been waiting for a while now."

"We were both early. And trust me, you'll love this place."

"If you say so."

It didn't take much longer for Snark and Pavel to get here. Cam had offered Grigori an invitation, but he had politely declined, citing errands that he needed to run. It took a moment to hit, but by the time Snark sat down we had all that was left of Reaper Squad in the same table.

Scarecrow had been the first to go, then Angel went AWOL, and now Bee was gone too. There were four of us in this table, half of what we had started out with. Grigori was still alive and well, but it was easy to forget that he was also part of the team, especially in times like these, where we weren't in combat.

"Nice place," Snark noted. "Some of those ladies down there must be feeling a bit chilly."

Pavel shook his head and chuckled.

"How's your mom?" I asked.

"Embarrassed still," he admitted. "It's not often that you break your arm in four places by tripping down the curb. At least she's being a good sport about it, once the pain was gone Dad really started laughing at her clumsiness."

"Four places?" Snark asked. "That's actually really impressive."

"How was Istanbul, by the way?" Cam asked. "I've heard great things about it."

"I didn't know whether to call it Byzantium, Constantinople, or Lygos."

"Surprised you didn't mention New Rome," Cam said, waving over the waiter. "We'll have–"

"Three of everything in the tapas menu," I cut her off in Spanish. "And some wine, I'll leave that to your better judgment."

"En seguida, caballero," the waiter replied in that Spanish accented Spanish. It wasn't very often that I heard the Spaniards' way of speaking the language. It always made me want to smile. It seemed slightly ridiculous and a little bit pretentious. Kind of like British English would appear to Americans I presume.

"What are we getting?" Pavel asked.

"Tapas," I said. "A bit of everything."

"Did you know-"

"Yes, I do," I interrupted Cam for a second time.

"But they don't," she shot back. "Did you know that tapas are called that way because back in the day when patrons would come to restaurants to drink wine the glasses would be covered with a flat bread in order to keep flies from landing on it? Cooks began adding to the flat breads in order to get more costumers and eventually the tapas became even more important than the wine itself."

"What does tapas mean?" Snark asked.

"Lid," I said. "Top, covering, the thing you cover something else with. Cap, lid."

"Thanks," he said.

The waiter needed some help when he brought the tray, I told him to set all the dishes in the middle of the table and then listened to the obligatory explanation regarding the wine. I wasn't one to dine on fancy places, but on the strange occasion when my uncle had taken me or when I had wanted to impress a girl enough that I would spend some serious money on her I made sure to know how to behave. Wine wasn't my thing, when I drank alcohol I wanted to get shitfaced and wine gave a horrible hangover. However, I had to admit that sometimes those pretentious douche bags had it right. The wine did bring out the flavor of the meal.

"Someone shoot him," Schitzo grumbled.

"Take a pick and eat," I said. "We can do seconds later."

Everybody seemed to enjoy the meal. If the check was any indication of course. Cam had heard of this place through someone or other, but I was quite satisfied with her choice. By the time we were done the sun had long since disappeared and the beach was pretty much empty except for some youngsters that were ten times as drunk as we were. We split the check in equal parts before slowly standing up. A lot of young people were walking through the boardwalk and I found myself walking slowly, listening to the ocean. It reminded me of Jericho-VII. I got the urge to strip into my underwear and swim in the sea for a while. Unfortunately for the ladies present here, I opted against it.

"Well, I've got an early flight tomorrow," Cam said, stretching her hands behind her.

"Where were you going again?" I asked her.

"Cairo," she replied. "Station. Just for a couple of days."

"That's what you get when you're a spook," I told her. "Constant debriefings."

"Yeah," she said. "I'll stay in touch."

"What about you Pavs? Going back to Poland?"

He nodded. "Gotta catch up. What about you?"

"I've got nothing going on," I said. "Maybe go back to Mexico, see if a tour helps out."

"Tour of the country?" Camilla asked.

"Of the city," I replied. "Important places in my past, revisiting everything. Not sure to be honest. I'll come up with something by tomorrow."

* * *

><p><strong>October 20, 2552 (UNSC Calendar)two weeks later**

**Mexico City, URNA, Earth, Sol System**

"Pavel, it's too early," I grunted. "It's not even- It's just past midnight, what the fuck?"

"This one's worth it," he assured me. "They woke me up for this too."

"Not at midnight," I grunted. "What is it?"

"The ship that they're on just jumped into the system."

"Katie?" I asked.

"And Amber and Lavanya," he added eagerly.

"That's great!" I exclaimed, jumping up from my bed. _I haven't gotten laid in a month._

"I know!" he shouted back. "They should get here within a few hours!"

"Finally," I grunted. "It took them long enough. Do you know where they're making landfall?"

"Not sure, probably in one of the refugee camps in Central Africa," he replied. "I'll get more details later, but for now we-"

"Pavel? Pavel, you there? Pavel?"

"Lieutenant Castillo, do you copy?"

"Flatt?" I asked. "Captain, what the hell?"

"Bad news Castillo," she said.

"How the hell did you patch into my call?"

"It looks like the Covenant have found us."

"What?" I asked.

"It looks like the Covenant have found us."

"Shit."

"Agreed," she said. "I'm contacting all your men, we're meeting up in New Mombasa."

"Why there?" I asked. "Italy makes more sense."

"Most bases are already beginning to flood with troops, there are not enough Pelicans to get contingents into orbit. HIGHCOM is trying their best to get troop complements into the ODPs and Army is already mobilizing. Some of the standing national armies have already begun cooperating with the UNSC."

"What's our role here?" I asked her.

"Your unit and some S-III squads are being moved to cruisers and destroyers. We don't expect you to be needed, but if we happen to need a rapid reaction force somewhere on Earth we'll have you and several ODST battalions ready."

"Why Mombasa?" I asked again.

"That's the closest orbital elevator to the Covenant's predicted approach. You're asking too many stupid questions Frank."

"Sorry," I apologized. "I'll get my things."

"Hurry up Frank," she said. "Your men will be there to meet you when you get there."

* * *

><p>"What are you?" I asked the three teenagers. "Fourteen, fifteen tops?"<p>

"It's classified," the leader replied.

I chuckled and leaned back on the Pelican, stretching my arms to either side and cracking my neck. "You guys look different without your armor on, you know that? Gammas I take it, otherwise you'd be older?"  
>I didn't really have to have this conversation with them, but for some reason I liked to display my knowledge of classified matters as often as possible. It gave me a small degree of satisfaction. The three Spartan-IIIs looked at each other before the leader turned towards me and gave me a curt nod.<p>

"I worked closely with Falcata during Reach," I said. "Good team."

"You knew them?"

I nodded. "Professionally I guess."

"We stopped hearing from them after that business in Aszod."

"They made it out," I said. "They were on the same ship I was. The _Obsidian._ Well, at least most of them were there. Jonah was MIA before we took off."

They all nodded almost in unison.

I sighed and leaned back against the seat. The pilot had given us an ETA of ten minutes and I had already put on most of my armor, leaving the chest piece and helmet for last. I rolled my neck and shot the unarmored Spartans another look before turning my attention to the rear hatch. The pilot had opened it as we began to slow down. I could see the outskirts of Mombasa as well as the old city in the mainland. We were headed almost straight towards the orbital elevator, but I couldn't tell from this angle. As the pilot gave a warning we all stood up and waited for the craft to land.

"Frank," Pavel greeted me with a grunt. "Good to see you."

"Likewise," I replied. "Everybody here?"

"Snark was the last to get here, but he beat you by a few minutes. "Cam is geared up and ready to go with us."

"That makes ten," I noted with a smile. "Good. Nice round number."

"Yeah. By the way, you should've seen Lady when she got here. She was wearing an evening gown."

I raised an eyebrow. "Really?"

"Yeah," he chuckled. "Only Crow and I got to see it."

I chuckled with him. "Should've taken a picture. Anyways, we're headed up, a destroyer will pick us up there and we'll be a backup rapid reaction force."

He nodded. "Captain Flatt briefed me. We're last in line, HIGHCOM wants the Spartan-III units up in orbit first."  
>I shrugged. "Whatever makes them feel better."<p>

Raid sirens started blaring loudly just as I opened my mouth to begin speaking to my men.

"The hell?" Crow muttered.

The first thing I noted was that his reconstructive surgeries were still not finished, but he looked pretty well compared to how he had last time I saw him. The second thing I noticed was that the alarms that were blaring weren't exclusively military ones, they were also ringing throughout the city. Not a good sign.

"Grass?" I asked, drawing a small shrug.

I put on my helmet and tried contacting Captain Flatt as soon as possible. I would've made contact with another officer closer to me, but I still wasn't strictly sure where I fell in the chain of command.

"Captain, you copy?"

"Give me a moment, Lieutenant," her voice snapped. "Hold… Ok, bad news. An assault carrier broke through the ODP network."

"What's that mean for us?"

"For starters, you're staying groundside, it's headed for Mombasa."

"Fucking hell."

There was a short silence as Flatt processed everything and presumably worked furiously on a datapad or a terminal. "Ok, situation is bad, but it could be worse. The city is defended by the 17th Marine Regiment as well as the 12th and 13th Rifle Battalions, those last two are Army."

That was less than 8,000 troops total. Not a good look, especially considering the fact that the Covenant ship that had gotten through was a fucking assault carrier.

"What about NMPD?"

"They might enter the fray," she said. "It's too soon to tell. They're going to have their hands full with the civilians."

"Where do we fit?" I asked.

"You're going to fall under Colonel Omondi, of the 17th, he'll be giving you orders from now on."

"Roger that, ma'am," I replied.

"Patching you through," she said.

"Colonel?" I asked.

"Pleasure, El-tee," a gruff voice replied. "I'm sending a Pelican your way. Captain Flatt tells me you're the best there is, so you won't have any problem being in the thick of it."

"I wouldn't have it any other way, sir."

"Good, you're on standby for now, you'll get further objectives as the situation develops."

"Yes, sir."

The screaming began in earnest once the assault carrier got close enough that we could see it with the naked eye. It wasn't too hard, the thing was five kilometers of death and plasma. The ship slowed itself down and then hovered almost directly overhead, occupying the northern end of New Mombasa. I could see it shoot out individual pods as well as dropships almost immediately.

"Here we go," Schitzo sighed sadly.

* * *

><p><em>Thanks to <strong>Colonel-Commissar2468 <strong>and **General TheDyingTitan** for proofreading this chapter. Small side note, in last chapter I made a joke about Colonel-Commissar2468 not delivering the proofread chapter, which he actually did. For some reason I didn't get it (whether I deleted it by accident or something on his end), but the did in fact proofread it and believed he sent it, so it wasn't his fault at all. Just putting that out there._

_Snowboarding was fun, if anyone cares. Other than that I've had a weird week, some good stuff for the most part but a bit tiring. coming back from spring break was a tough one, but it's good to see my friends again. It is also good to see you guys again, you're looking good, but the light from your computers makes your skin look pasty, you should have that checked up by a doctor. Or go to my good homeland of Mexico for a nice little tan. At least those of you that are from the United States. Everyone else can do that too, but I'm not sure how your spring break equivalent works. In Mexico we had two weeks of vacation, since everybody is Catholic we would have Easter Week and Holy week, which was pretty fucking cool. My friends are going on vacation in a few weeks I think. Good for them. Assholes._

_Chapter-wise, it was once again a series of vignettes to move along the time. While nothing really important happened here, I did do some things that I feel like Frank would do. Namely go to Bee's family and get a tattoo especially dedicated to hi (props to **Mike** for reminding me). I also had a small Reaper reunion, no biggie, but it shows that they are more than just coworkers. They are friends. They actually tolerate each other enough to split the check on a meal. An expensive meal mind you. Spanish food is amazing, but more often than not those tapas restaurants will drain your money like nobody's business._

_It was a short chapter, for that I apologize. The best is yet to come. Earth is the last bastion of human power, but we all know that the important stuff doesn't happen in our little blue dot. The fic might be coming to an end, but it is going to end with a bang._

_Stay strong._

_-casquis_


	215. Step and Go

Chapter CCXV: Step and Go

**October 20, 2552 (UNSC Calendar)/**

**New Mombasa, East African Protectorate, Earth, Sol System**

* * *

><p><em>"Pardon our dust."<em>

* * *

><p>Sometimes hell comes all at once, but sometimes it trickles down gradually. Personally I have no particular preference, I've experienced both and can attest that it always ends up being the same thing. Mombasa was in a weird funk. Some areas were reportedly under complete control of the Covenant and some others were in the same state that they would've been had on a regular Tuesday. We could see the mass of civilians evacuating towards the bridges and docks. Many of them were moving to the military bases in an attempt to get evacuated by air. The city was being emptied at an astonishingly quick rate. I wondered how Old Mombasa was doing, the district had seen some heavy Covenant presence if reports were anything close to accurate. Initial estimates put the civilian casualties at around 10,000 with a third of those being deaths.<p>

"That's the building," I said. "Everyone ready!"

My men simultaneously stood up, reaching towards the security grips that popped from the ceiling. Multiple AA rounds streaked through the air, a majority of those were Covenant, owing to a lack of military ordinance in the city proper. A green explosion shook the plane and made me close my eyes, but the blast didn't harm anything or anyone.

"Ready!" the pilot shouted from the cockpit.

The Pelican abruptly slowed down near the landing pad on top of the building. We all rushed towards the exit and jumped out as the craft slowly inched forward, trying to keep moving. Longworth had to roll backwards in an attempt to minimize the impact from the jump, but everyone else managed to either stumble or awkwardly maintain their footing. The blast from the Pelican's engines nearly threw us back down as the pilot sped off away from the danger zone, but the poor fellow was caught by four different shells as he began to turn, tearing his Pelican into shreds and instantly killing the man.

"Keep moving," I said, looking around for my men. "Crow, take out that Wraith!"

I had considered who would be our new heavy weapons specialist since Bee had died. Crow seemed the obvious choice, everyone else was as good as he was, but they did some things better.

The man rushed forward, toting the newest model of the SPANKr and took a knee. He fired the two guided missiles at the AA Wraith with one second between each of them, standard procedure. The guiding mechanism wasn't needed in this situation, as the Wraith was on top of a building and had limited maneuvering space. The warheads penetrated the armor and detonated, giving Crow a tank kill. As the Wraith tore itself apart with secondary explosions we moved through the rooftop and inside. Our mission was clearing the building's ten floors as soon as possible. Members of the 17th had been dropped off a few blocks away in territory we controlled, but they had to get through a particularly feisty section of the Covenant invasion force in order to link with the 13th Rifle Battalion. Once that happened we would have a nice little ring around the orbital elevator. It was our first priority, even ahead of protecting the civilians.

"Caboose, take point. Grass, with him," I ordered. "I want this top two floors cleared as fast as possible."

I had a good reason for that. Everyone and their mother had seen us land. By now the covvies in the building were either fortifying their positions or rushing to meet us. The ones occupying the nearest floors would have less time to prepare for obvious reasons. That wasn't the only thing either, I wanted Snark doing sniper work with a roof over his head. Once we moved to the lower floors we'd be lured near the windows so that the covvies could get their own sniper support. Snark would counteract that. It'd be a shooting gallery for him while we acted as one for the jackals and elites.

Caboose cleared the first room almost by himself, killing two elite minors with blasts to the chest and neck. He then put some buckshot in the grunts behind them letting Grass take the last one. Longworth split to the left, firing his DMR with Miranda going with him. Lady and I moved to the right, leaving behind Snark and our two gunners. I hit a couple of elites as Lady focused her assault rifle on the smaller aliens. It took less than thirty seconds to clear the whole floor and five more to meet up on stairwell.

"Pavel, did you find it?" I asked.

He raised his hand and nodded. Suddenly a small screen appeared over my ammo counter, showing a camera view of the hallway under this one. Currently the city's superintendent was doing its best to help UNSC forces coordinate and keeping the infrastructure working in our favor. The countless security cameras in the city would be a godsend until the Covenant managed to neutralize them.

Four elites and six grunts were moving towards the stairwell. Pavel and Dotsenko aimed at their feet and began firing. It was curious seeing how the bullets penetrated the floor and then watching the results in the camera. The other eight of us climbed down the stairs and finished the job for them, moving forward as the machine guns fell silent. Snark used his SMG to pepper jackals' shields, letting heavier weapons finish the job. He would get his turn soon enough.

A minute later we were clear.

"I have my spot," Snark announced, moving towards a different room.

Pavel and Dotsenko climbed down and proceeded to fire through the floor at another group of Covenant troops waiting for us. The aliens freaked out and shot back, but their plasma weapons couldn't penetrate the floor. However, the needlers and carbines had more than enough penetrating power to do just that and then some. My gunners made sure not to fire for long enough to give away their position, but their shooting really helped out, wounding grunts and weakening elite shields.

By the time we reached the second floor Dotsenko was almost out of ammunition and Snark had had to pull us out of more than one ugly situation when a sniper pinned us down from another building. Luckily, no one was injured in that march.

"Twenty four minutes," I announced. "We're late."

"Better than failure," Grass replied with a small shrug.

"Colonel Omondi, this is Castillo. Colonel?"

"Copy, status?"

"We're green on the target building. My sniper is taking care of enemy sharpshooters as we speak."

"You're late," he replied. "My men are moving up."

"We'll provide cover," I said. "Over and out."

The 17th didn't have much armored with them. They had some thick skinned vehicles, but for the most part they were modified Warthogs. The 12th and 13th were rifle battalions, but curiously enough, they were exactly what they sounded like, no integrated armored. Omondi and other Brass were working on getting us some heavy-punching vehicles while we moved the Scorpions and Tortoises into the island. Old Mombasa was having a better time in that department.

"Spread out," I ordered as soon as we deemed the ground floor empty. "Cover the entire plaza."

We did that in the fourth floor, giving ourselves a reasonable vantage point while staying low enough to also be playing sitting duck. It wasn't the most pleasant of situations, but we trusted Snark.

"Just like the old days, huh?" Grass said quietly, aiming at the opposite building.

"We missed having you on the team," I told her.

She nodded. "I know, but I could do more good working with ONI. Sounds like an oxymoron, I know, but it's the truth."

"I believe you."

"Do you resent me?"

"No," I said truthfully. "If I could I would find a way out of this life, but this is the only thing I know how to do. Plus, you lost your arm."

She awkwardly twisted her artificial limb. With the armor covering it you would not be able to tell that she had once been crippled. She could karate-chop through concrete and pulverize flesh by squeezing with her hand. I had seen her tear a brute's throat out with it, very gruesome, very useful.

"So did Dotsenko, and he didn't quit."

"He couldn't afford to. You know you're the smartest person in this squad. Probably in the city."

She chuckled. "If you say so."

The lead elements of the 17th were beginning to come through to the plaza. It wasn't exactly the terrain that anybody would want to find themselves in, especially in hostile terrain, but this plaza would become a fortress once we could secure it. Just three ways to come in, easily defensible buildings, and terraces that would function as walls. It was every defensive planner's wet dream.

"We see you," I checked in with them. "Don't be surprised if you start taking fire, but we've got a man on the job."

"Well that's reassuring," the reply came. At least they were good natured.

I didn't know if the 17th had seen action. I assumed that some of the members had been deployed, but I wouldn't have been surprised if the whole unit was stationed on the planet and didn't do much. The 12th and 13th Rifle Battalions would presumably be completely unprepared for what was coming, but they were going to be very well trained indeed. The Covenant wasn't going to have an easy time going through us, not if we got our armored and air support.

"Do you have any word on the armored?" I asked Grass.

"Not yet," she replied. "Most of the fleet was scrambling to meet the Covenant fleet. I heard rumors that the enemy fleet was only a dozen ships."

"That doesn't sound right," I muttered.

"And then I heard another unconfirmed report about an assault carrier being taken out in orbit."

"Well, if the dozen enemy ships are all assault carriers then we aren't exactly in a good spot, are we?"

She shook her head. "Still, I don't think that's the case."

"Why aren't we getting support from the Navy?" I rolled my right shoulder to try and work out a knot. "At least a couple of ships should be coming down to drop Marines."

"Logistics are shit right now," Grass told me. "I think that the Navy is preparing for a second attack, setting up a defensive perimeter. Still, I heard that one or two frigates might be showing up soon. You know the _In Amber Clad_?"

"You mentioned it in your email," I acknowledged with a small nod, watching as the lead platoons of the 17th fanned out and entered the other adjoining buildings. "Wasn't that the ship with that lady commander? Keyes' daughter."

"Yeah. Which brings me…"

"What?"

"Master Chief was supposed to be up in Cairo Station earlier this morning," she began. "I missed him by a couple of hours, but I did get to see Commander Keyes and overhear some chatter. Apparently he was in a series of Top Secret operations or some such thing. Very shush-shush, even I couldn't get clearance."

"That doesn't sound like you," I said.

"Well, regardless of what he did, I heard that the Chief left Reach in the UNSC _Pillar of Autumn._"

The name was one that I knew. As soon as she said that my heart skipped a beat and my hair stood on its end. I suddenly felt very cold.

"Did Marv make it?" I asked.

"Two people survived," she said. "From what I gather. Master Chief and Staff Sergeant Avery Johnson, but the names Staff Sergeant Pete Stacker, and Private First Class Chips Dubbo were dropped as well so the overall number might be four. There was some talk about another Spartan, but everything was too vague and black. I'm lucky I got this much information."

"So Marv's dead?" I asked.

"In all likelihood," she said with a sad sigh. "I'll try and pull some favors, see if I can see what happened exactly, but for now it's best if we assume the worst."

I sighed and closed both my eyes for a moment. "God-fucking-dammit."

"I'm sorry Frank," she offered. "I thought I should tell you first."

"I'll tell the men later," I told her calmly, working on that knot on my shoulder again. "I'm sure he took countless bastards with him."

"If he died," I said. "Which we don't know for a fact. You saw him fighting. He was the toughest SOB around."

"In a team with you, Pavel, and Grigori. Unlucky him, eh?"

I shook my head. "He could go toe to toe with Caboose and probably outfight Pavel."

"Not you?"

"I know better than to be modest with you," I told her.

"True."

The 17th flooded the plaza after the adjoining buildings. There were audible gunshots and Snark had to join in to provide support for the teams clearing the buildings, but for the most part the Covenant couldn't really do anything in the face of overwhelming numbers.

"Looks like we have the plaza," Grass noted. "How many Wraiths did we count on the rooftops?"

"At least four more," I told her. "We'll handle them."

"Frank, we good?" Pavel asked.

"Yeah, looks like we're good for now," I replied over the radio. "Give it a minute."

And of course a minute was all it took.

"Shit, shit, shit, shit. Incoming!"

Plasma shells hit the building opposite us from above. The explosions tore glass and steel from the polycrete, sending debris flying down at the Marines below. I watched as more and more shells tore larger sections of the building until finally the top began collapsing. Everyone started running away from the section of death and rock falling at them, but at least thirty men and women were trapped by the building as it fell. Immediately after that eight Banshees streaked past, strafing the survivors near the mountain of rubble.

"Phantoms approaching," Snark broadcast on the open channel. "Ready!"

Crow fired off two rockets, filling the adjoining room with smoke and drawing some curses from his teammates, but the missiles each collided with an enemy Banshee, sending them crashing into the damaged building in fiery explosions. The Phantoms then approached, targeting Crow's room with their heavy front cannons. Grass and I were forced to duck under cover as plasma splashed around us and destroyed what was left of the windows. I popped back up just in time to see an elite get shot in the head as it jumped from a Phantom. Snark hollered and fired again, this time shooting at another one on the ground.

"Targets right, targets right!" I shouted. "Pavel, light them up!"

His M247L roared loudly, taking down a dozen grunts that had just hopped out of a hovering Phantom. The elite and jackal leaders of the unit tried to take cover, but Longworth and Miranda brought them down before they could reach safety. We had to stop our onslaught when the other Phantoms began returning fire on our positions.

"Move out, move out!" I ordered. "This is AAG-7, we need someone to take out those Phantoms!"

"We're on it, sir!" a Marine squad leader replied almost immediately.

"Grass, come on!"

I dragged her by her good arm and threw her into the hallway just as two heavy explosive rounds hit the floor of our room, tearing it apart and throwing me to the floor. I pushed myself back to my feet and moved to the stairs as fast as I could. Blue-hot plasma punched through the walls behind me, inches away from atomizing parts of my body. I could hear missiles flying and some detonations, but I could not see what was happening.

"Target down, target down! Redire- shit!"

Another large explosion.

"Grass, why don't we have any air support?" I asked.

"All of our Pelicans are busy transporting troops," she said. "Or evacuating civilians. We're on our own for now."

I cursed and climbed to the seventh floor with the rest of my men. Once there we could fire at the Phantoms from above. By we I mean Crow. He had to wait until they presented their underbelly before shooting, and he had to lean out of a window while one of us held him by the belt. It was a tricky operation, but we succeeded in bringing another dropship down before the rest had to fall back. Despite our best efforts there were at least 150 Covenant troops on the ground and in control of the western end of the plaza. The 17th was still in the game, but they had to bring the troops around the debris, leaving the few survivors inside the plaza pinned down and outnumbered for the next few minutes.

"Alright, they're going to need support," I said. "Pavel, Dotsenko, how's your ammo?"

"Bad," Pavel said. "Last drum."

"Shit," I muttered. "Alright, fuck it. Everybody open up, prioritize and let them have it."

It wasn't very often that I let my men do whatever they wanted. For the most part we had to follow the golden rule of combat. Don't let the enemy know where you are. Usually we would kill those that knew our position first and then move on, taking out the important targets without letting them know where we were. For the most part it worked, there were obviously exceptions to that rule, but I preferred to follow it as often as possible. In this particular instance we had the advantage of seven stories worth of height as well as the impenetrable cover of floors and walls. We were at a definite advantage, but that's not to say that we weren't vulnerable to…say, an elite with a plasma launcher or a grunt with a fuel rod. Shit happens.

Not that my men seemed to care, they immediately opened fire at the Covenant in the plaza.

I sighed.

"Thanks for the assist, Lieutenant!" a sergeant transmitted.

"We can't maintain it for long," I told him. "Tell your men to hurry up."

"Will do, sir."

The Marines in the plaza weren't pushovers either, but they were outnumbered two to one and had the disadvantage of being on the end of the plaza without much cover. Their right flank was protected by the mountain of debris, but everything else was pretty much exposed save for a few stray rocks. The Covenant on the other hand, had the advantage of three destroyed Phantoms for cover. It was giving me a headache just trying to target the leaders.

"Snark, can you spot the one in charge?" I asked.

"Negative. Should be an ultra or a major, but I don't see anything."

"Keep looking," I told him, drilling a blue-armored elite through the skull. "Keep them disorganized."

"What was that?" Miranda asked suddenly.

"I heard that too," Longworth growled.

"It came from the rooftop," Snark said.

"Caboose, with me," I ordered. "We'll check it out."

The two of us climbed the way back up to the rooftop. Just as we climbed the final flight of stairs the metal door flew at us. I ducked and Caboose pressed himself to the side as the door spun through. We both looked up to see a hunter blocking the light.

"Is it…"

"Gold?" I finished the question.

To be honest, other than the trivia value, I didn't really care. Caboose was of the same opinion, as he fired two blasts into the alien's midsection before I could bring my rifle to bear. I switched to auto as I stood up and emptied my magazine into its neck and face. The hunter recoiled from the impacts before bringing its shield up and raising its cannon. The confined space made it nearly impossible for it to aim properly, but we had to jump back and around the corner as a stream of green plasma flooded the stairwell.

"Gold. Seriously?" I asked.

"Beats me. Didn't seem any bigger than the average ogre," Caboose said.

We shrugged just as the stream of green plasma finished and popped back out. I had to fire low while Caboose hit the head with buckshot. The hunter had somehow been stupid enough to walk through the doorframe and inside the building where it was as good as trapped. I kept firing while reaching for a grenade with my left hand and timed the toss. I threw it over the hunter's shoulders, bouncing it off the ceiling and into the floor. The explosion tore one of its legs off, but the hunter wasn't dead yet. It simply pushed itself into a sitting position and aimed.

"Well, color me impressed," I said. "Want to take it?"

Caboose nodded and tossed a grenade upstairs without leaving cover. The explosion was mildly muffled by a fleshy sound and a pair of long orange eels landed at our feet, torn apart by the shrapnel. I looked at one of them and then popped out of cover. There was no other hunter roaring in anger.

"That's weird," I said. "Let's clear the rooftop."

We moved up and checked to make sure that there was no one there and indeed the only sign of life there was a pair of cracks where the lone hunter had landed. I couldn't help but wonder why there would only be one hunter here, but if they were giving us a freebie then I didn't really have any right to complain.

"All clear," Caboose said.

"Looks like it," I agreed. "Let's mo-"

"Lieutenant," Colonel Omondi came in. "I'm sending a bird to pick you up."

"Sir, we're assisting the 17th in taking the plaza," I responded. "The airspace is not secure yet."

"We've got two Scarabs moving towards the elevator, I need your team to move there. I'm already deploying several squads to stop them."

I sighed. "What about the Spartan units, sir?"

"They're not available," Omondi informed me. "The Pelican is on the way."

"Yes, sir."

I had my men up in the rooftop just as the bird landed. Fifteen Marines hopped out of the Pelican and moved towards the rooftop, firing down at the Covenant still in the plaza. My men climbed inside and began filling their pouches with magazines. I jumped with them and did the same thing, keeping my eyes on the AA Wraiths that hadn't been taken out yet. One of them fired at us, but the Pelican turned around a building and easily avoided the flak. The city was now completely lit up by explosions and gunfire. For a moment I wondered how the evacuation was going before we banked hard to the left.

"What the hell was that?" I asked.

"They set up AA guns," the pilot shot back. "I'm ducking under the buildings."

It was a lose-lose. Under the buildings we had no maneuvering room to avoid the smaller projectiles fired at us even if they were slower and less deadly. If we went out in the open the big AA cannons would shoot us down in a matter of seconds. The Covenant sure did love it when they had air superiority. The Pelican rocked as flak from AA Wraiths exploded behind us. I would've felt safer with Marina at the helm.

"Almost there," the pilot called out. "You're in for a tough one, El-tee."

"We've had worse," I assured him. "Trust me."

"Good luck," the pilot said as he slowed down and dropped us off on yet another rooftop.

This time we were on top of a very large warehouse near the orbital elevator. It is hard to get across just how mind bogglingly large this warehouse was. Actually, that's a lie, the warehouses surrounding this particular elevator weren't even close to being the largest in existence, but they were still incredibly large. This one in particular must've had a surface area of around 30 football fields. And that's just in the ground level. Anyways, the size doesn't really matter, it is the proximity to the orbital elevator at our backs. Now that, that is something that you could call mind bogglingly large. Perhaps long would be a better word, considering how the cables could wrap themselves around the planet if the elevator were to collapse. Not to mention the size of the base itself, it was truly a thing of greatness this space elevator.

"Lieutenant," Omondi checked in. "There are two Scarabs in the sector, one of them already broke through our lines and is headed your way. There's no doubt that they are preparing to storm the elevator."

"Why not take it out?" I asked.

"The risk of damaging their assault carrier it's too great," Grass said.

"Correct," Omondi agreed. "And they would facilitate transport of goods since the UNSC isn't willing to target the single greatest engineering achievement in human history without a good reason."

"Makes sense," I agreed. "What are our resources for dealing with it?"

"I'm moving troops to block off the Scarab, we'll funnel it in your direction. Specs indicate that it is only a few meters shorter than the building you are standing in."

"Boarding action?" I asked.

"Yes. I hear you're good at such things."

"There's no one that is actually good at that," I grunted. "But we've done it before. I'm going to tell Flatt to stop bragging about us."

"You'd better, otherwise I might use you for everything that goes wrong. Omondi out."

"Well, we're in for a good one," Crow grunted.

Snark scoffed. "Nothing we haven't done before."

"Because you're the one that's usually safely behind cover providing sniper support," Crow shot back.

To be fair, none of them were exactly the main guys when it came to storming a Scarab. Caboose was the best one for sure, he had the most experience. Longworth was a natural at all things violent, nearly as good as Marv had been and tied for third best fighter with Pavel. Lady could kick anybody's ass, Miri would have a hard time climbing, but she could easily participate. Pavel and Dotsenko would stay on the side, lay down suppressing fire on the top of the Scarab.

"Frank, you're pacing," Pavel said after what must've been a minute.

"Sorry," I grunted. "Spread out along the length of the building. We keep quiet and don't draw attention. Snark, that goes for you too. Pavel and Dotsenko, I want you at about a hundred meters apart on either end of me. Caboose, you're on me."

My men spread out, it took a lot longer than expected, but the length of the warehouse was quite intense.

"I'm green," Crow stated.

"Ok, we're all good. Now we wait."

Again, short wait.

"Lieutenant Castillo, this is Sergeant Perez, the Scarab is right around the corner! My men are pushing it into the-" an explosion cut him off. "Shit! It's one of the big ones, sir! It's turning around!"

"I see it!" Crow shouted. "I see it!"

"Stay down!" I ordered. "Perez, I need you to do me a solid, alright? How are you herding it?"

"Warthogs and Mongooses, sir!"

"I need you to send two Warthogs to the front of the Scarab on my word. You need to slow it down enough to guarantee my men a safe landing."

"Holy shit, sir! They'll be sitting ducks!"

"Just for a few seconds," I told him. "We need to take this walker out, Sergeant!"

Already Crow was running parallel to the Scarab, trying to keep up. Lady would have to begin running pretty soon if the Scarab didn't slow down. Two missiles flew past the walker, taking a sharp turn before colliding against a building. Tracer rounds flew through, hitting the hard armor of the Scarab.

"Half a click," Caboose said.

That meant that Miri was already sprinting alongside Crow and Lady. The Scarab was beginning to overtake them.

"Longworth, get your ass over here!" I shouted. "Now!"

Longworth began running as fast as he could. Considering just how fit and athletic that man was, it was incredibly fast for your average human being. By that I mean that it took the Scarab a few extra seconds to catch up and overtaking him. Pavel would let the walker through, but it wouldn't do him any good if he could only fire at the rear.

"Goddamit! Sergeant, send your men now. Now!"

"On it!"

I could vaguely hear the two vehicles speeding up in the street. I got up and looked down at the Scarab. There was a single elite in golden armor standing at the top, looking down the side at the Warthogs driving underneath. The two Warthogs passed through the Scarab's front legs and then dashed forward, weaving through abandoned cars and trucks, avoiding hitting cargo crates and the like. I began jogging down the side of the warehouse, with Caboose following next to me. The Scarab was moving fast, it would be just him and me for the initial assault.

"Snark, you ready?" I asked.

"As soon as it comes by I'll join you," he said. I could hear him switching his rifle for his submachine gun.

"I'm coming at you," Grass said. "Don't rush this."  
>The Scarab had already crossed half the length of the warehouse and was less than thirty meters behind us. We dashed past Dotsenko, running faster and faster.<p>

"Take out the zealot," I heaved in between breaths. "Time your jump."

"Don't I always?"

I laughed and stepped on the short wall before jumping at the Scarab. Time slowed down a little bit. The first thing that went through my mind was that I had miscalculated the jump distance. The Scarab was fifteen feet below and at least that distance away. The elite was right on the edge. I realized that I would not hit the elite, but Caboose was flying next to me and he was certainly going to make the shot.

I stretched out my arm while holding my rifle and hit the elite in the chest. I made sure not to make my arm too stiff so that Caboose could do his own thing.

I landed on the Scarab and rolled forward. I heard boots hitting armor behind me and turned around to see Caboose slide past the elite.

I turned and fired at its side before jumping at its arm as it began drawing an energy sword. I pinned its arm like I had done countless times before Caboose ran at us and kneed it in the head. He stood up and blasted his shotgun into its face.

"Good work," I complimented him, grabbing my own battle rifle as two jackals emerged from the interior.

I fired at the lead jackal, but it shot back. I ducked behind nothing just as the blast hit my rifle. I fired another burst, but the plasma had damaged the bolt. I cursed and dropped it, drawing my sidearm.

"Heads up!" Grass shouted.

I saw her rolling behind me, near the front of the Scarab. She fired her rifle at the jackals, who had now put their shields up. I cursed in Spanish as the two birds used the walls to their advantage and slowly moved forward. Caboose tried to close in on them and make use of his shotgun, but they fired at him, nearly taking his head off. I would've used a grenade, but the Scarab was moving too much for a reliable throw.

"Fuuuuuuuuuuck," I grunted from behind cover.

"More aliens are moving behind," Grass said. "Two elites, majors."

"Shit, shit," I cursed.

"El-tee, my men are in position!" Sergeant Perez shouted.

"Fire at the knees!" I ordered. "Slow it down a bit!"

"Yes, sir! We'll do it!"

I was thrown to the floor when a missile detonated against the Scarab's knee joint.

_Maybe I didn't think this one completely through._

"Almost there!" Longworth shouted. "Hold it there!"

"Perez, hold it there!" I repeated.

"On it!"

A second and third missiles hit the Scarab, once again shaking us all violently. The front cannon began powering up.

"Get out of there, Sergeant!" I shouted. "Now!"

"Move!" he shouted, presumably at some of his men. "Move!"

The blast caught one of the Warthogs, but I couldn't afford to look. I popped from cover to fire at the jackals only for an elite to barrel through me and tackle me towards the front of the Scarab. I barely caught a glimpse of the other major engaging Grass while Caboose took care of the jackals, leaving me alone to handle the elite. It tried tossing me down the front of the walker, but I grabbed onto its wrist, nearly bringing it down with me. The alien was a strong one, however, and it managed to pull me back inside the Scarab. Once I had my footing back the elite found itself facing an opponent that was out of its league.

All arrogance aside, the situation was a little bit humorous. On one side we had an eight foot tall, 350 pound biped that combined the best of a tyrannosaurus with the best of a gorilla with the best of a wolf and a number of other cool animals. Throw in some intelligence in there and you've got yourself a death machine. On the other side there was little old me. Relatively tall at 6'4 and a bit heavy for my size in account of the denser muscles, but the elite still had a hundred pounds on me.

I grabbed the top of its plasma rifle and held it down before gripping its other wrist. I jumped up and headbutted it in the jaws. It was then that I let go of the right wrist and brought my knee up into its groin. I'm not entirely sure if the pain was as great as it would've been on a human male or a brute, but the elite certainly felt it. I took the opportunity to grab my knife and slash at the gaps in the armor. Hip, shoulder, throat. The elite fell to its knees clutching its severed throat. I grabbed its helmet with my left hand and stabbed it through the right eye.

I looked up to see that Grass had emptied her magazine into the elite's belly and that Caboose had taken out one of the jackals, but more aliens were flooding out of the Scarab's interior.

"We're there!" Longworth shouted.

He jumped off the warehouse along with Lady and Miri.

Days later I would thank Providence for having my helmet cam on at the time. You don't get any more badass than that. The sun was hitting them at a right angle and if you paused at the right time there was a lens flare crossing diagonally across the three of them. Thrown in the top of the Scarab at the bottom of the frame as well as the orbital elevator in the background and you had a shot that seemed to be almost too good to be real. Longworth was in the middle with his DMR held tightly against his body. Lady was on his left with her assault rifle held by the guard in the front with her right arm over her head to keep her balance. Miri had also jumped awkwardly to Longworth's right and slightly behind him, holding her own DMR and aiming it upwards one handed with her left arm extended behind her.

Like I said. Picture perfect.

They hit the Scarab's top and rolled to absorb the shock. You should've seen them coming out of their rolls and literally tackling the lance of jackals from the side. Longworth pressed his DMR into a bird's neck and then pushed down, breaking its trachea. Miri and Lady were more pragmatic in their approach, drawing their sidearms and shooting once. The few aliens still in the upper deck suddenly found themselves surrounded by three of the deadliest killers in the galaxy. It was no contest. My three men made short work of the aliens on top and then jumped down to the main deck, helping us finish the few survivors. I made sure to pick up my pistol and rifle as Caboose threw grenades down the ramp, discouraging any attempts to storm us.

"Caboose, take point!" I ordered. "Grass, Lady, follow him."

The three of my men moved down and cleared the room in a very short amount of time. We joined them and called in the success of our operation.

"We're clear, Colonel."

"I'll be damned," Omondi replied. "Very well, can you climb down?"

"Uh, negative, sir. We're a bit stuck for now," I admitted. "We could rope down."

"You do that, Lieutenant, I'm firing a missile to take out the Scarab."

"Very well, sir. I'll let you know once we're clear of the blast zone."

"Alright, you heard him!" Caboose shouted. "Get some rope and slide down. Move it!"

"Pavel, meet us on the ground," I told him. "After the Scarab is destroyed."

I slid down last, hitting the ground a little bit harder than I would've liked. I shook myself up and moved towards Sergeant Perez's unit. The man was exhausted, but he thanked us for the assist on taking out the walker. I wondered how many other men had died herding this thing our way. Considering the fact that it was one of the bigger Scarab models it wouldn't have surprised me if the number approached a couple of hundred. I sighed and jogged towards the edge of the blast zone.

"You know what I haven't seen in a long time?" Lady said all of a sudden.

"What?" I asked after no one prompted her to go on.

"Hellbringers."

I frowned slightly. The flamethrower specialists were very desired commodities in urban warfare. The weapons they carried had an incredibly long range and could make anything short of a Locust useless in a matter of seconds. The chemical fuel in their flamethrowers could burn through shields and melt the flesh off the bone in less time than it took me to snap a grunt's neck. I had seen the guys fire a sustained burst at a Wraith and leave the tank completely useless. Granted, their death rate was as high as it got. Prior to the war the ODST took pride in their impressive kill/death ratio even when you accounted for entry casualties. Now that we were sent into the most dangerous missions on a regular basis our death rates had skyrocketed, but the Hellbringers and some rather unlucky units still had the advantage on us.

Not that I minded, but I'm sure that AAG didn't have a stellar survivorship rate. Even my own team had a 45% survival rate at two years. Grass hadn't been in the team to begin with, so her presence here didn't really count in that particular aspect. Forty-five percent. Imagine twenty of your closest friends and then imagine over half of them gone. That's how much it is. Half doesn't sound like much, but when it comes to human lives, it is a lot indeed.

"Duck," I ordered half-heartedly once the missile began its descent.

Nobody ducked. It wasn't really necessary. The missile would punch through the top armor of the Scarab and detonate inside. We could've used explosives to destroy the control system, but that wasn't a guarantee that the Covenant couldn't repair it and use it against us again. The missile would leave the Scarab completely useless for anything other than scrap metal. Once the battle was won then ONI would come in and examine the remains. It wasn't very often that they had the chance to do that. For that to happen you'd have to kill a Scarab, which was difficult enough in itself, and then win the battle in order to be able to transport it behind the frontlines.

"Good work, Lieutenant," Colonel Omondi congratulated me again after the missile hit. "It cost me a lot of good men, but we stopped the Scarab."

I didn't want to think about the trail of destruction that the walker had left behind it. Those things were no walk in the park.

"Are we getting armored soon, sir?" I asked.

"Negative, El-tee, "I'm directing all of my available armored to Old Mombasa, there's another Scarab there and it's plowing through the defenses."

"What about reinforcements?"

"The UNSC _In Amber Clad_ just deployed several Pelicans. Not heavy on the numbers, but they have a lot of special operators or so I hear."

"What about us?"

"Stand by… Alright, you've earned a short break. I will let you know."

"Thanks, Colonel."

My men sighed with relief at the news. Sergeant Perez and his own unit also nodded thankfully when they heard that. They looked exhausted. We already had a semblance of a line it seemed, but it would be at least an hour before it could be properly plugged. In the meanwhile there were going to be a few Covenant squads sneaking past us and causing some problems, but the elevator was secure, at least for now. I looked in the direction of Old Mombasa, wondering how the situation on the other side of the canal was. The faint explosions in the distance indicated that it wasn't too good, but then again, it wasn't exactly quiet in New Mombasa either.

"Alright, we're moving towards you," Pavel let me know.

"I'll be waiting," I replied.

I moved towards a hastily assembled line of road barricades blocking off one of the intersections. A few of the men from the 12th had set up shop there, working together with the elements of the 17th Marine Regiment that had made it up there. The men and women were too shocked to engage in any inter-service rivalry, they were instead being productive as they worked, fortifying the position and moving what few vehicles they had to provide excellent overlapping field of fire. Textbook really.

"You alright, sir?" Lady asked.

"What?"

"You're limping."

I looked down. "My ankle," I explained. "Must've hurt it during the landing."

"If you didn't notice until now it should be fine."

"Indeed it should," I agreed, surprised that she was behaving in such a civil manner. "How's Earth turning out for you so far?"

She scoffed. "Not pleasant at all, sir. The moment I made landfall I already had a dozen different associates of my father trying to get me to talk to them. They know damn well I don't have any say in how my father does business."

"Ah, that explains that evening gown I heard about."

She gave me that look that everybody in the squad was so familiar with. The impact was even greater through the depolarized visor of her helmet, framing her face in a way that made her seem even angrier than you'd think possible. I returned her look with a stern face, daring her to say something. She had improved over the last year, but sometimes Lady needed a bit of reminding of just who was in control here.

"A gala," she then said simply. "In my honor. Will you believe it?"

I suspected that she had enjoyed every moment of it. She was the kind to bask in the attention, after all.

"What happened to the dress?" I asked out of curiosity.

"Dumped it," she said with a careless shrug.

"How much was it?"

She gave me a figure.

I whistled. Rich bitch. "Sometimes I wonder why you would be stupid enough to enlist, but then I remember that you're still alive and it becomes clear that you're not quite _that_ stupid."

"Lieutenant, I don't apprec-"

"Can it, Lady. I don't care," I growled. "Off you go."

She muttered something in Russian and walked away angrily.

"And she was just beginning to act a little nicer," Grass said, walking up next to me. "You're a mean fuck, you know that?"

"Grass…"

"Sorry," she sighed. "But it wouldn't hurt you to be nicer."

"No. But it also doesn't hurt anybody if I am the way I am."

Grass shook her head. She did it in the way she reserved for when she was annoyed at me. It was a weird shake, one that mixed in disapproval as well amusement. She struck me as the team mom.

"Get some water," Pavel ordered. "You might not feel it, but it's hot out there."

And some other times it was Pavel that seemed to have that role.

I considered his words carefully though, not all of us had the luxury of an undersuit. In fact, it was only Miri, Longworth, and myself. The rest of the guys had been yanked from whatever place they were spending their leave in and had a short amount of time to gather their gear. I had the climate control functioning at 100% effectiveness. The other guys had their armor cooling them down, but the heat would get through the gaps, especially when they began moving around, sprinting and rushing.

"Thirty-three degrees, eh?" I muttered to myself. "Hot for October."

"Fucking global warming," Pavel said.

"I'm not entirely sure global warming is at fault here," Grass said, jerking her head in the direction of the carrier and then towards the elevator. "Those things heat shit up?"

"Do they?" Snark asked. "I don't think that's right."

For once, Grass seemed to consider her previous words. For all I know she could be right, maybe the two massive objects did produce enough heat to visibly affect the temperature of the city, but her words did sound like bullshit.

"Well I-"

At this point I don't even know why it still surprised me.

"Take cover!" I shouted after the initial explosion. "Down!"

"Fire! Fire!"

Someone returned fire from one of our Warthogs. My men put their helmets back on, dropping their canteens and spilling water everywhere. Snark fumbled his rifle as another nearby explosion sent him to the ground. I cursed as a plasma bolt nearly took off my shoulder and then dropped down to the ground in an attempt to minimize my profile. Caboose and Longworth took cover behind a marble pillar as Grass dove behind one of the barricades. I crawled forward towards the Warthog, listening to Pavel and Dotsenko deplete their magazines at an enemy that I couldn't see. Another explosion took apart a large section of our barricade, sending a trooper flying backwards at speeds too fast to survive.

I flinched when the corpse of the man that had been manning the Warthog's turret fell backwards, two big smoking holes in his chest. I rolled my eyes and hopped up, grabbing the LAAG and aiming at the newly appeared enemies. There was a Spirit dropship that must've showed up out of nowhere. Hunters and elites were shooting at us, firing plasma repeaters from the hip. The only thing I could not make out was the source of the explosions.

"They've got artillery support," I said in realization. "Shit."

That's why they waited so long to attack us, they needed to pinpoint our coordinates. And now they were giving us hell for it.

"Hunters first, goddamit!" I cursed, aiming at the massive creature. "Hit the exposed spots!"

Almost immediately there was a visible shift in fire. The men and women not on my team were probably targeting the elites because their rapid firing and faster speed made them more visible, but everyone that has seen combat knows that the first thing you target is the fucking tank, especially if the fucking tank can reduce your fortified position to nothing, letting the elites do what they do best. Kill.

"Frank!"

I jumped out of the vehicle and then took another jump forward as a blue flash sent the Warthog spinning over me. I had to push myself backwards to avoid having my left arm crushed by the falling Warthog and then roll out of the way once again as it fell back, upside-down.

"Lieutenant, I need your men to plug another gap."

"We're a little busy, sir!" I shouted back. "There's an enemy unit breaking through our lines."

There was a pause. "Shit. I'm redirecting troops and equipment your way. Can you hold three minutes?"

"Yes, sir," I assured him. "But not much longer before we have to fall back."

Crow grabbed me as I struggled to get to cover and pulled me to safety before popping back out and shooting at an elite that approached. The two other Warthogs fired at the lead hunter, finally bringing it down at a distance of about fifty meters. The Spirit was still in the background, shooting heavy bolts at people who stayed out of cover for too long. It couldn't open up completely, unless it wanted to risk falling prey to Crow's missile launcher.

"Want me to take it out?" Crow asked, as if reading my mind.

"No," I told him. "I got this one."

I holstered my rifle and grabbed his SPANKr from his back, shouldering it. The weight was familiar and comfortable, but it had been a while since I had handled a rocket launcher in a combat situation. Not to say that I wasn't good with it, but it still felt a little bit strange.

"Cover me!"

My men knew what that meant. The others did not. Still, the sound of gunfire intensified and drowned out that of plasma. I walked out and aimed at the Spirit. It was hovering very close to the ground, the rear cannon was nearly at shoulder level. I aimed, squinted slightly, and fired. The missile crossed the distance in less than half a second. The impact was nearly enough to take the turret from its hinges, but the explosion certainly finished the job. An elite had to dodge out of the way as the missile nearly took its head off. My second shot was aimed at the thrusters. It was a tricky shot because I couldn't get a direct hit from this angle.

Predictably, I missed. However, I missed because an elite jumped out from behind a car in what was certainly a misguided attempt to fire at us. The missile exploded against its shields and completely reduced the alien to a steaming pile of hamburger meat. I had to go back behind cover, grabbing a set of missiles from Crow and reloading the SPANKr as fast as I could.

"Pavel, what's the status on that hunter?"

"Pissed but keeping its cool," he grunted. "Can't get around its shields."

"Can you give me a window?" I asked.

"Maybe," he replied. "A small one."

I thought about it for a moment and then gave him the order to go for it. I might've not been the best rocket man in existence, but I did have two missiles in my launcher. I called in for some covering fire, pinpointed the Hunter's location, and then popped out of cover for the second time. I aimed at the behemoth of an alien and then adjusted a little bit. If I hit its shield directly I would tear its arm off, but the hunter might survive to angrily rush us and kill us all. Another rocket would solve that, but I wasn't one to waste ammo. Not to mention that I wanted to kill it with only one shot.

The explosion happened just next to its left foot. The fireball itself was enough to tear the leg completely apart from the body. The concussive blast in addition to the limited shrapnel penetrated deep into the hunter's torso, killing the thousands of worms that composed it. In the end it wasn't a particularly spectacular kill, but it was enough to grant us brief respite. The elites were now on more even terms with us and had to take cover. The dead hunters allowed us to focus our turrets on the enemy dropship and drive it away, smoke coming out of the left section.

"Hold them where they are!" I ordered, once again behind cover. "Pin them down, Perez, I want your men to prepare to flank them."

"We still have a Mongoose, sir!" the sergeant replied almost eagerly.

"Send two men with heavy weapons," I said. "Machine guns."

"Yes, sir!"

The Pelican with reinforcements arrived before they could get around the block and hit the enemy from behind. The dropship used its powerful front cannon to pepper the enemy positions, making a trio of cars explode in a fiery blaze before firing some of its Anvil missiles at the survivors. The few elites still alive were taken out by more conventional methods without too much trouble. Only then did the Pelican finally settle into a hover and drop off fifteen Marines.

"Alright, hop in!" I ordered. "We're redeploying!"

Once again my ten men boarded a Pelican. I took the opportunity to take my helmet off and rub my forehead clean of sweat. I rolled my head around and kicked at the blood tray before sitting down. Pavel tossed me a couple of magazines which I promptly stashed in my empty pouches. The Pelican rocked as it traveled and Crow moved to man the rear gun, but the trip was mostly a silent one. I was surprised to find myself back in the base suddenly.

"What the hell are you doing here?" a corporal asked as soon as I stepped off.

"We got dropped off here," I replied with an edge on my voice. "Colonel Omondi said-"

"Are you Lieutenant Castillo?" he asked, looking at a datapad.

"Yes."

"Shit, you should be heading to the bridge ASAP!"

I rolled my eyes and contacted the colonel for a quick confirmation. Once that small matter had been settled we all jumped back in the dropship, having lost valuable time. The pilot repeatedly apologized for his mistake. I felt bad for the kid, but his inexperience was no excuse for dropping the ball, especially in moments as critical as the ones we were living through. About halfway through I was contacted by a Marine lieutenant.

"Lieutenant, the reinforcements from the _In Amber Clad _were shot down by a Scarab. The Walker is pounding through everything that we have in the old city, it's headed towards the bridge."

"Can we blow it up?" I asked.

"Too valuable," the woman replied. "We're holding it off at the entrance, back away slowly. Hopefully we'll bring it down."

"That's the spirit," I said. "Any backup?"

"There's an Army unit at the end of the bridge, in the tunnels."

"Roger that. I'll see you there, Lieutenant."

I looked at my men, all of whom rolled their eyes or avoided mine. We had just taken out a Scarab in an inspired ambush. Granted, we weren't the ones that came up with it, at least not fully, but AAG-7 had undoubtedly been the one to deliver the killing blow. I didn't like the idea of hundreds of men and women having to die in order to take out a Scarab, hell, I didn't even want to think about all the civilian casualties due to the crossfire.

"Sir, there are a couple of Gauss Warthogs on this end of the bridge," the pilot reported.

"Drop us off there," I ordered. "We'll drive the rest of the way."

"Yes, sir."

The ship rocked slightly as the pilot slowed down. It was very unlike the smooth riding that I was used to with Marina. I couldn't help but roll my eyes, but the pilot sounded young and was probably nervous. This was certainly his first time experiencing combat. The same held true for most of the 17th Marines. As the Pelican slowed down in the small space between the bridge and the tunnels linking the old city to New Mombasa we hopped down. I was not very surprised when a Banshee attempted to strafe our position, getting shot down before it could begin its run and splashing into the water.

"To the Warthogs!" I shouted. "Let's go!"

Turns out the lone Banshee wasn't the only one. Two more began strafing once again, the Warthogs in question were blown up by dead-on fuel rod cannon strikes, sending shrapnel flying our way. I ducked as pieces of metal flew above me and the Pelican took off. Some of the troopers already here fired at the Banshees, damaging one's wing and sending it crashing down into the tunnel walls. I had a vague sense of where my men were before follow-up detonations threw me down to the ground. I turned around on the floor and looked up just as the surviving Banshee screamed past, tracer rounds following after it. The Pelican pilot turned his ship around and fired two Anvils at the enemy. The Banshee was destroyed, but the Gauss 'Hogs were already gone.

"Get up!" I ordered. "Pavel, is everyone fine?"

"We're good," he coughed. "What's the plan? Hol-"

A green stream of superheated plasma crossed the entirety of the bridge, just a few feet outside of the cables that propped it up. I followed it with my eyes and winced as it hit our Pelican, melting through the cockpit and igniting the fuel cells. The explosion made me close my eyes and look away. By the time I looked back up the Pelican was gone and there was a loud splash as its remains hit the water. I shook my head and drew my rifle.

"Lieutenant, what happened?" the officer in charge of the bridge defense asked. "Lieutenant!"

"We made it out," I said. "Warthogs are gone and so is the Pelican. We're crossing the bridge on foot, I repeat, we're crossing the bridge on foot."

"Negative Lieutenant, it's at least a mile of open ground. You'll be taken out immediately."

I growled lowly. "Not if we have rockets up…"

Crow looked at me and shook his head slightly.

"Looks like we don't," I said. "Do you have any transports available?"

I heard another blast from the Scarab's main gun.

"Not anymore we don't," she said. "We'll stop the Scarab."

"Good luck," I said. "Alright, AAG-7, move to the mouth of the tunnel, keep your eyes in the sky."

The way the bridge went up meant that we couldn't see what was going on with the Scarab, but the lack of human-made explosions was not a good omen. I scarcely picked up any screams on the radio, instead just the occasional cry for additional fire. It took all of thirty seconds for the walker to eliminate the platoon and then a minute for it to begin crossing the bridge. I groaned as I saw the massive Scarab. It was the same model of the one we had helped destroy about an hour ago, but it seemed heavier, as if it had more armor on it.

"Shit," Snark grunted. "It's keeping the front legs extended, I can't get a shot on the deck."

"That means it can't fire at us either," Lady pointed out.

"Do we have anything to take it down with?" Pavel asked me.

"Negative, and neither do the troopers," I said, gesturing in the direction of the Army unit.

"Fall back?" Pavel asked.

"Through the tunnel?" Caboose asked. "It won't be long before the Ghosts pull up."

"What makes you say that?" Longworth asked.

"Terrain," I said. "Ideal for mechanized forces." In fact, I was surprised that the Covenant hadn't sent Ghosts and Spectres forward yet.

"Shoulda blown the bridge," Lady put forward.

"Colonel Omondi," I tried checking in. The line was busy. No wonder.

"We need to make a decision soon, Frank."

I looked over at the Scarab, three Wraiths were using their boosters to dash underneath the walker and heading towards us. The Army unit had begun unpacking and was heading towards the entrance of the tunnel. I jerked my head at Pavel and he shouted for my men to follow after him. A few moments later it was just me and Caboose standing outside of the tunnel while I frantically tried to make contact with Command.

"No shame in running," Caboose said.

"Like I don't know that," I replied. "We run too often for my comfort. I want to let him know we're running."

"Can't we do that while we're on the run?" he asked, his eyes tracing the arc of a mortar shot.

The explosion happened several meters in front of us, not close enough to harm or even shake us.

"Maybe that would be a good idea," I said. "Does the tunnel have those barricades that pop up?"

"On it," he replied, dashing towards one side of the tunnel. I hadn't seen a terminal, but those things tended to be hidden. I wondered if Caboose even knew the override code for all of the city's machinery. What was I saying? Of course he knew it.

"Alright, accessing," he said.

"Good," I replied, beginning to walk backwards as a second Wraith fired at us, this time with even less success. "We've got Banshee's coming up. Shit, Shadow troop transports."

"Frank, we can go through the storm drains and into the Kilindini Park Cultural Center," Pavel radioed in. "We're almost there."

"Radio for extraction," I ordered. "We're on your ass. Caboose?"

"And- shit!"

I looked towards him as a beam nearly severed his arm and hit the terminal.

"You've got to be shitting me!" he exclaimed as the terminal collapsed upon itself and once again hid in the wall.

"Shadows," I said. "We gotta move!"

We began running as the turrets on the troop transports fired on our positions. Plasma flew just a little bit slower than a regular bullet did, giving the appearance of leisurely travel almost. We both knew that a single one of those heavy bolts would bisect us or at the very least sever a limb. Caboose and I ran as fast as we could, weaving through the cars and vehicles that had been abandoned or wrecked as the civilians tried to escape. None of us were professional practitioners of parkour, but we'd been on the run in similar scenarios enough times that moving through the cars seemed like a fairly routine thing to do.

"Frank, I'm raising the barricades to block off the tunnel," Pavel said. "Just give me the word."

"Not yet," I said. "We need to get there."

More and more plasma bolts rained around us, hitting the walls and cars nearby but miraculously missing. I allowed myself a quick look over my shoulders as the lead Shadow transport plowed through two small sedans. The enemy vehicle slowed down before getting partially stuck. A dozen jackals jumped out of the Shadow and began firing at us.

Up until this point both of us had been hopping on car's hoods and roofs, avoiding the more tiring job of climbing up and down. We had to jump down to street level once they entered the mouth of the tunnel, decrease our profiles. Another quick look backward showed that the Shadow was once again plowing through the abandoned cars, pushing them to the sides.

"Almost there," I told Pavel.

"Longworth and Snark are waiting for you," Pavel said. "It's a climb."

"I see it," I heaved, shooting a look at the sidewalk-like thing on the side of the tunnel. "Almost there."

"I see you El-tee!" Snark exclaimed. "Hurry!"

I scoffed even despite my fatigue. I had probably been running for just over a minute, but it felt like a lifetime. Climbing over and under cars while heavy bolts hit everything around you wasn't particularly pleasant.

"Take Snark," I told Caboose.

Once we got to the storm drain we both jumped to the side. I couldn't help but mentally wince as Snark offered me the tip of his rifle. Had any firearms instructor seen the action that was unfolding he probably would've cried himself to sleep. I grabbed the barrel with my left hand and pulled myself up as Snark yanked. Caboose and Longworth did something similar, hopping into the sidewalk and then through an open storm drain.

"Close the barricades," I ordered Pavel. "Now!"

The four of us jogged through the storm drain, trying to regain our breath desperately. I came out the other end and into the sun just as the Army platoon disappeared under what appeared to be like a short cliff. Pavel waved at me and jogged towards me.

"I've got us a Pelican for evacuation. Army boys are moving out through the reserve and into the city."

"Good job," I said. "Where are we getting picked up?"

He gestured at a weird circular sculpture-like thing with ramps up the sides. It was a weird design, but everything seemed like art nowadays.

"Ok, let's move up," I said. "When's the Pelican due?"

"About five," he said.

"Establish a perimeter and all that," I sighed. "Snark, I want your sights primed on the storm drain, we'll keep watch for anybody else that tries to show up."

Suddenly I was feeling really horny. I don't know why, but I was. Katie was in the system, which was closer than she was to me for the majority of the time, but my penis wasn't that large.

Snark fired.

"Jackal," he said. "Hold on to your trousers."

"Miri, back him up," I ordered. "Everyone else, ready for exfil."

There were some uncomfortable minutes of near silence. The only noise was the sound of the Scarab approaching. Foreboding shit.

"Pelican inbound," Pavel said. "Did you report to Omondi?"

"Shit," I cursed, trying to contact him. "Line's still busy. By now he knows we are either dead or fell back."

The Pelican began approaching and to our surprise it was loaded with a Gauss 'Hog and fifteen Marines. I began wondering what the hell Command wanted to do by sending the complement here until I realized that it made sense to hold this area. The Covenant would have to come through the drain, forming a bottleneck of sorts. Unless of course they made use of their rather sizeable air assets, which wasn't outside the realm of the imagination.

I tried contacting Omondi again. Unsurprisingly, he was busy.

"Who the hell is he talking to if he doesn't have time for me?" I wondered out loud.

"Probably something more important, eh?" Longworth joked.

"Preparing for approach," the Pelican pilot said. "Clear the- oh shit!"

The Scarab appeared over the walls of the reserve.

"Get down!" I shouted, waving at the Pelican. "Down!"

The pilot complied with my order just in time. A green blast nearly killed the pilot and everyone on board as the Pelican ducked until it almost hit the ground. The pilot strafed sideways until he was safely under a small bridge. The fifteen Marines hopped out of the bird and the Warthog was unlatched. My men began moving towards the dropship as small arms fire from the Scarab peppered our position. I heard more than a couple of curses as Miri and Longworth fired back at the aliens on the deck of the Scarab.

"What the hell are you doing?" I asked as three Marines rushed from underneath the round sculpture thing. "Stay down!"

The Marines ignored me, one of them aimed a rocket launcher up at the Scarab but didn't have the time to fire before two fuel rods incinerated him and his two companions. I shook my head and pressed myself against the walls as the walker made its way through the cultural center. We suddenly found ourselves under fire as Covenant infantry poured out from the storm drains.

"Should've stayed down," a Marine sergeant said, shaking his head. "El-tee, we were told to bail you out."

"Not the words I would've used…" Schitzo muttered angrily.

"We didn't have the weaponry to take out the Scarab or hold the tunnel," I said.

"I've heard. Name's Stacker by the way."

"Castillo," I reciprocated. "Want to use that big jeep of yours?"

"Not until that walker's gone. I'm not risking any more of my men. In the meantime, could use your help to slow down the flow."

I raised an eyebrow. Not because the request was unreasonable, but because of the way it was phrased. Noncoms were known for being smartasses and oftentimes disrespectful towards superior officers. While keeping an exterior appearance of civility, that is. However, it wasn't very common for a sergeant to talk to a lieutenant in Helljumper armor like he expected him to do as he said.

"Wanna throw in a sir there for good measure?" I asked.

"Sorry, sir," he apologized. "It's been a long day."

"Damn right it has," I grunted. "Dotsenko, Pavel, suppressing fire. Snark, help out."

For now those three could handle everything. The rest of my men moved to the hatch of the Pelican and began resupplying. I once again tried to contact Colonel Omondi, but this time he was there.

"Lieutenant, glad to hear from you."

"Colonel," I acknowledged. "We've got a bunch of enemy infantry coming out of the tunnel, should we stay and help?"

"Negative. We're getting reports of a secondary push by the Covenant. We're sending spare units their way."

"Sir, with all due respect, my team is most useful stopping the Scarab."

"Negative, Lieutenant. Troops from the _In Amber Clad_ are handling the Scarab."

"You sure that-"

"Yes I'm sure. Now get your asses on that Pelican."

"Yes, sir," I replied with a roll of my eyes. "AAG-7, board the Pelican."

The pilot only had to wait for a quick nod from me before taking off once my men were inside. That left Sergeant Stacker and his men against a lot of enemy infantry. Pavel used the rear gun to fire at the enemy, hitting several of them and buying the Marines some time. The pilot moved to give us a longer window, but just as he did that a Phantom arrived, hitting us with plasma and preparing to drop troops.

"Get out of here!" I shouted at the pilot.

The man happily complied and accelerated out of the Scarab's range and away from the Phantom. As we approached the target I saw that Colonel Omondi had been understating the situation when he said he was spending spare units. Two Scorpion tanks were rolling down the street alongside several trucks full of troops. Only a couple of Warthogs were with the convoy, but we were the third out of four Pelicans moving in between the buildings.

"Where are we headed?" Crow asked.

"To war," Longworth said dramatically.

Dotsenko bumped his shoulder and shoved him back into his seat. Longworth began to complain, but the glare he got from Lady shut him right up.

"What about the police?" Caboose asked suddenly. "NMPD are renowned for their… efficient brutality."

"And corruption," Lady threw in. "Easy to do business in here. If you have the money for it."

I rolled my eyes. For all her skill, she did enjoy being the center of attention. The sad thing is that it worked; everyone in the Pelican was no wondering just what kind of work her father had done. I didn't have to wonder, I could've asked for her files and gotten every last bit of information about her, but for some reason I hadn't. Her dad was a trillionaire; he could build his own personal space elevator if he wanted to. Once again I asked myself how the hell she had ended up doing the dirtiest work known to mankind.

"The Covenant are making the push near the docks," I said. "Amphibious landing combined with dropships and some limited air support. Doesn't seem like they have artillery for now."

"Amphibious? We don't get many of those," Crow noted.

"Typically there's no need for a beach landing when you've got a kilometer long ship that can hover," Snark said.

"But we're getting one now," I cut in before the two went at it again. "We've got the usual job of leading the way. It should be good marksmanship practice."

My men nodded slowly to themselves, small smiles forming on their faces.

The smiles were wiped off when we were dropped next to a gigantic wall. I mentally slapped the back of my head. Without any polar caps left, most of Earth's cities had built massive walls to keep the water at bay. Mombasa was no exception.

"What now?" Pavel asked.

"Lieutenant, I was told you'd set explosives to blow the wall," a captain radioed in. "We're placing units on either side and above. The water surge will draw in the enemy."

It was an amazing plan. I'll be honest with you.

"We can do that," I said. "But we don't have the explosives for it."

"Shit. Alright, I'm sending a Mongoose your way."

The small vehicle was at our position within a minute. The poor man was carrying several pounds of C-10. I would've preferred to work with the more powerful C-12 explosives, but the C-10 would do just fine. I gave the order for my men to spread out and fall back and began placing the charges at regular intervals. I wasn't sure about the exact width of the water wall, but it couldn't have been more than a couple of meters. I had enough explosives to make several holes in the base, but I wanted the whole thing to collapse, bringing in a hellish storm into the city.

"Captain, half the sector will be flooded," I said as I worked.

"Negative, we've sealed off the area."

"Roger that," I acknowledged.

The wall in question, or at least the section we wanted to blow up, was one hundred meters long. About a football's field worth of meters. Not the longest wall in the history of the world, but long enough that I found myself breathing heavy by the time our window began to close. I got more and more requests to hurry up and even my own men began asking if it was going to take much longer.

"Alright, bombs are set," I said. "Give me the word when-"

Something went wrong. Two Banshees hit our positions on one of the sides and brought down a section of the road, sending dozens of Marines falling down to their deaths. A series of booms and noises followed as the two Scorpions returned fire. Three dropships appeared over the walls and descended behind us, just a few dozen meters behind us.

"Shit," the Mongoose pilot cursed. "Sir, hurry!"

I ran faster and jumped in the back as the man began accelerating.

Then something else went wrong.

To be honest, I should've been expecting it by now. It was something different, but within the realms of possibility. Someone panicked and detonated the charges too early. The explosions were enough to take out the nearest dropship, but it was the following wave of water that really did in the other two. The Marine floored it, but the water caught up with us. I felt like a sledgehammer hit me in the back and for a moment my vision blacked. I did my best to hold onto the Marine, knowing that he didn't have an airtight helmet like I did. I gripped his body tightly and then up was down and everything became a blur.

I hit something and the Mongoose was torn from my feet. Something hit me and I slammed into something else. The murky water blocked my vision as I tried to make sense of everything, but the only thing I knew for certain was that the man in front of me was responding to my squeezing and held tight onto me. I almost blacked out when the water currents made me hit a building wall pretty hard, but I managed to remain conscious and keep my grip on the poor man. By now we had been under for at least forty seconds. The guy must've been getting nervous.

I let go of him with one hand and used my other hand to grab onto a ledge in the building. My eyes could make out shapes going through the current, some of them were unmistakably alien. There was some minor fascination as I saw them twist and turn by, certainly going to their deaths.

"Come on, Frank, poor guys' going to die."

I turned the man around. He looked at my visor, squinting his eyes. I tapped him in the shoulder and made the ok sign with my right hand, still holding onto the building with the left. The Marine let go of me with one arm and used his free hand to shake his head violently. I couldn't tell, but he must've been purple by now.

I pointed up and propped my feet against the wall. I gave myself a moment to feel where the current was going and jumped upwards and towards the light. I was immediately yanked sideways by the water, but my upwards momentum remained. I kicked violently and felt the other man doing the same. It seemed like forever, but we both made it out of the water. I heard him gasp and then we were back under again. I looked through the water and made out a street lamp.

I kicked towards it and reached out with my hand. I managed to grab onto the corner where the pole bent sideways. My arm was nearly torn from my socket, but I held. I used my considerable strength to hold onto the Marine and pulled him up before he kicked and fought his way to the pole and held onto it himself.

"You alright!" I shouted.

"Yes, sir!" he managed to croak back, water coming out of his mouth. "Thanks for-"

A beam cut through his mouth and he let go of the metal, leaving behind a trail of blood that was quickly engulfed by the water. I cursed and went underwater after noting the position of the jackal. The fucking bird had survived and now was clinging on for dear life to a windowsill of what had previously been four stories above ground. I had to commend it for its aim though, not a lot of people could've pulled that one off.

I drew my rifle and pulled myself back up. Two bursts was all it took to kill it.

"Fucking hell," I grunted.

I craned my neck towards the wall, but it was out of sight. I could see, however, several enemy vehicles just around the corner, most of them were rapidly sinking, but I could still hear gunfire.

"Pavel, do you copy?"

"Shit Frank, don't scare me like that," he said. "Put a beacon up."

"Negative," I said. "I'm waiting for the current to die down. I'll get inside a building and make my way towards you."

Water bubbled around me, but it was now less vicious than it had been before. A few grunt corpses popped up, some of them weren't completely dead, something which I quickly remedied. The plan had been good and nothing short of spectacular, but there was room for improvement. I waited two more minutes until I was sure that there weren't any more whirlpools and then pushed myself towards the nearest building. I swam under the water in an attempt to minimize my profile. When I emerged to bash in a window my choice was proven wise. Three needles shattered against the building's side and I had to duck underneath the water again. I sighed and fired at the window on the floor below. The glass shattered and I was sucked in. I kept my feet down current and prepared for impacts. I hit a couple of desks and struggled to hold onto my rifle before I finally came against a wall, but everything turned out fine. Once the water had all poured in I moved to the emergency stairs. It was easy, the floor hadn't been completely flooded yet and the water was sliding through the doors into the stairs. I reached the doors and opened them, once again holding tight against the surge of water. It took a few seconds for the levels to even out, but once I managed that I swam towards the stairs and climbed out. The next floor was on the same level as the road where we had set up the ambush.

"On my way," I told Pavel.

"Hurry up, this is a turkey shoot."

I had been in enough of those, but every time it was a very good experience. Enjoyable and therapeutic.

"Hell, we've got Pelicans with supplies coming in."

I kicked open the stairwell doors. I could've opened them by hand, but I was angry and tired. I jogged through the offices, only just realizing how tired I was. I came into a secondary lobby and walked out to the street. A few squads of Marines were moving into position to join the turkey shoot and I followed after them. I immediately located my men and rushed to join them.

"Get down!" Pavel shouted.

I could only hear it through the radio, but I could see as Snark fell backwards. I couldn't tell whether it was a carbine or a needle round, but something had gone through his body. I began running faster and just as Pavel turned around to pick up Snark he too was hit.

I lost sight of them as a Pelican landed in between us. The dropship was immediately stripped of the ammunition boxes it was carrying. I jumped inside and commanded the pilot to stay where he was, overriding all his complaints with rank and threats. The man finally complied and I walked back outside. Pavel and Snark were unconscious and bleeding on the ground, but their vitals marked them as alive. Longworth and Caboose picked them up and dragged them back behind the edge of the street-bridge before I ordered them to get them in the Pelican.

"I need you to drive us to the hospital!" I shouted at the pilot.

"I've got orders to return to the _In Amber Clad_, sir!" he yelled back.

I cursed. "That'll do. Everybody, get on board!"

"Sir, you're not authorized to board the-"

"Two of my men are dying!" I said, this time letting pure anger color my voice. "You will get them to the ship and make damn sure that they live."

"Yes, sir," the pilot said uneasily. "Prepare for takeoff."

My men secured the two wounded as Miri began administering first aid, first on Snark and then on Pavel. My friend had been shot through the chest, a little bit to the left of the heart. Snark had been shot right through the middle of the chest. The shot could've nicked the heart, but it didn't seem like it had severed one of the several important breathing tubes down there.

"Lower trachea or bronchus," Schitzo helpfully threw in.

I said nothing as the Pelican sped off towards the UNSC frigate. The ship was small and keeping its distance from the assault carrier, which in turn didn't seem terribly worried by the presence of a small frigate about a tenth of its length. We entered one of the hangars and several of the mechanics preparing to load additional boxes of ammunition into the Pelican loudly complained and objected as my team poured out of the hatch.

"Attention all personnel, close down the hatches and prepare for takeoff," the loudspeakers blared.

I didn't stop to wonder why the hell we would be doing that, all I wanted was to get Pavel to the medical wing of the ship. One of the mechanics was level-headed enough to realize that two men would die if they didn't give us some help and emptied a pair of trolleys upon which we propped up our wounded. We began running through the small hangar and then into the hallways before we reached an elevator. Once again I ignored the loudspeakers and the alarms that were typically activated before a ship started moving in atmosphere. It had been a long time since I had been stationed on a frigate, but I remembered the sound from my days in the _Inconvenience._

Everyone fell down as the ship accelerated violently. In space this wouldn't have been an issue, but inside the atmosphere it was too hard for the inertial dampeners to neutralize. Miraculously, neither Snark nor Pavel fell from the trolleys, but some of their blood sprayed around. I pushed Pavel out of the elevator, hoping that the ship's captain hadn't gone insane and decided to attack the assault carrier with a little puny frigate. Hell it seemed to be a _Stalwart_-class from what I had seen of the outside.

More alarms sounded as we entered the infirmary, which was surprisingly empty. This time it was the alarms that were typically used when you expected an impact of sorts.

"Son of a bitch," Crow cursed.

And suddenly my stomach lurched.

"Did we just…" Lady began.

"Holy shit," I said.

"That was a jump," Caboose confirmed.

"We didn't initiate it," Miri noted.

There was only one possible explanation, no matter how impossible it was.

"In atmosphere… holy shit," Dotsenko said, whistling.

We had just piggybacked a slipspace ride on a Covenant assault carrier into who knows where.

_Ah, fuck._

* * *

><p><em>Thanks to <strong>Colonel-Commissar2468 <strong>for proofreading this chapter._

_Well, that was all of Mombasa that we get to see, at least for now. We all know what's going to happen next, but sadly it means that there will be no dreary night fighting in the city. So Halo 3: ODST will be pretty much completely bypassed, which is rather unfortunate. At least according to my beta here, he would've preferred if we stayed in Mombasa a bit longer. So it's Mombasa vs. Halo... I know damn right which one you prefer._

_As for just spending one chapter here I apologize, however, you must remember that the Prophet of Regret spent only a couple of hours on Earth before bugging out. True, thousands of reinforcements arrived just minutes later, but we're not interested in that. I could potentially have kept Frank and Co. in the planet and dragged out the battle for a lot of chapters much like I did with Reach and Paris IV, but I've been wanting to go to Halo for a long time, which means that the story will have to be just a little bit shorter. I have some entertaining plans for Delta Halo, and there's one particular event that will allow me to have out beloved gang have their own set of adventures without having to play second fiddle to Master Chief (although to be honest, everybody pretty much does that already). It'll be fun._

_I believe that some questions were answered, which is my way of saying that I do indeed read your reviews and will occasionally go out of my way to address them in-story. Am I not just the greatest guy ever? Damn right I am. It took me only nine days for an update, not my best time, but better than what I've been doing recently. Again a quick apology for not making this chapter insanely long, but I had to skirt around the canon elements of Halo 2 without directly involving AAG-7 in the main plot and it was insanely hard to fit a lot of action to the short timeframe. Also, if you picture that water dike coming down it's one of the most awesomest things ever if I do say so myself._

_Stay strong._

_-casquis_

_PS: Actually, there's no PS, just hope you enjoyed this chapter._


	216. Vacillations

Chapter CCXVI: Vacillations  
><span>

**October 24, 2552 (UNSC Calendar)/four days later**

**UNSC **_**In Amber Clad**_**, Slipspace [Unknown destination]**

* * *

><p><em>"I think we're just getting started."- Master Chief Petty Officer John-117<em>

* * *

><p>Three and a half days I had been in this fucking lump of metal. Three and a half days of Earth vulnerable to follow-up Covenant attacks. Nobody knew anything, but I was no idiot. If fifteen Covenant ships had made their way to Earth they had been all but pulverized by the ODPs, but if they hadn't sent out their location or let anybody know which particular coordinates they'd be visiting then God Himself had had a direct hand in that event.<p>

Rarely was our beloved deity so nice to us, which meant that Earth was in the middle of a royally screwed up battle fifteen times worse than Reach had been in. How many billions had been killed already? How many innocents had suffered at the hands of the Covenant? I know that just my presence wouldn't have turned the tide of the battle, not a battle of that scale at least, but I could certainly help and give it my best. But here we were, stuck in a ship while the largest battle in the history of the universe unfolded in our home world.

"Frank, you seem tense," Pavel noted.

I blinked twice. "Yeah, sorry."

"There's nothing we can do now," he said, reading my mind. "All I can do is hope that the ship with my wife on it turned right back around."

"If we survive we'll have hell to go through just to find them," I told him. "I mean, does the captain reasonably expect us _not_ to exit slipspace in the middle of a Covenant fleet?"

My friend shrugged. It was very unlike himself to give such a small shrug, but bedridden as he was he couldn't do much more than that. Snark was worse though, his heart had barely survived the impact and when we got him on the table he was already dead. The doctor managed to revive him and get him conscious for a few minutes, but then for some reason or other they had to put him in a medically induced coma until he healed. Seven days, he had said when I asked him today. Pavel, on the other hand, had only received a damaged lung, broken ribs, and a shattered shoulder blade. All he had needed was a little bit of surgery in the front, a little bit of surgery in the back and he'd be as good as new. The fractured shoulder blade would take a while to completely heal, but the bone-growth fluids would be completely finished in a week and a half. Until then he should take it easy.

"Let's just hope that doesn't happen," Pavel said. "And we've fought our way out of worse situations, it shouldn't be too hard to come up with something."

"I hear Phantoms have slipspace drives," I offered. "And with the Chief here, well, anything is possible."

Pavel snorted. "And here I took you for a cynic. Do you remember what you said to him the first time you saw him?"

I nodded.

"Asshole," Pavel said.

I smiled. "Well, those were the days. Everything was black and white."

"Everything is still black and white," he reminded me. "They try to shoot us and we beat them to pulp. No prisoners, no surrender."

"Good point," I agreed. "Anyways, how's the shoulder?"

"Good. It's the lung that hurts. It's still hard to breathe."

"Ah well," I sighed. "At least you're alive."

"Indeed I am," he said. "It'll take more than that to kill me."

I squeezed his good shoulder. "I know, big guy… I'll leave you to it, I've got to talk to Keyes now. Bitch finally decided to let me have it. Keep an eye on Snark for me, will ya?"

"Kid hasn't moved in ages, I'm pretty sure I can handle that. And Frank… don't give her a reason to throw you in the brig."

"I'll try," I said. "I'll try."

Like always, I had been provided with a uniform. It wasn't the typical uniform that I tended to wear, but a regular Marine officer variant would do for now. It was fancy, but not nearly as utilitarian as that of the ODST. Well, it was better than walking around in just my undersuit. Johnson had been actively trying to get me and my team some spare Helljumper fatigues, but the ship didn't seem to have any spares and the complement on board wasn't willing to share theirs. That thought gave me a little bit of a pause, making me wonder why the frigate had such an oversized ODST complement.

Not that I would mind during combat, but the pissing contests were just annoying. I hated to think that I had been one of the instigators back in the day, hell, for the most part I still was.

I alternated between ignoring the stares I got from personnel crossing the hallways or shooting them glares that would've made Marina proud. For some reason that I couldn't fathom (I'm lying, I knew the reason) we were seen as outsiders. That previous parenthesis I put in the last sentence refers to the little incident where I forced a Pelican pilot to bring us into the ship despite regulations against it. Normally that wouldn't have been a big deal seeing as it meant two of Earth's best were now alive and would fight again, but apparently I had drawn my sidearm and aimed it at the pilot's head.

That worried me. I had no memory of doing that, but it didn't surprise me in the least that I had done it. Schitzo had made some cryptic references to such an event.

Once I was immediately outside the captain's quarters I took a deep breath and knocked, making my presence known.

"Ah, Lieutenant Castillo, Commander Keyes is waiting for you."

"Thanks Cortana," I told the AI as it opened the door for me. I had a brief flashback to Eliza and the _Inconvenience_. It was the same layout that Captain Brooks' quarters had, down to the same utilitarian furniture. Captain Keyes was seated behind a wooden desk, she was looking tired, but was avidly reading something on her terminal. I clasped my hands behind my back and cracked my neck to the left. It came off as douchier than I would've liked, but you can't please everyone.

First thing I had noticed about Commander Keyes was that she was pretty attractive, today she didn't look nearly as good as when I had first seen her, but I could picture myself ramming her from behind.

"Some pent up sexual aggression there, huh?" Schitzo asked. "Shit man."

"Lieutenant," she said, not looking up. "Have a seat."

"Ma'am," I said, moving forward to sit down across her.

"I assume you know why you're here?"

"To discuss the circumstances that find me on your ship."

She stopped reading and closed her terminal. "That is correct."

I met her gaze evenly but otherwise made no move to continue the conversation.

"A lot of my men here dislike you," she eventually said. "Not only because you forced your way in here at gunpoint when a little bit more insistence would've done it."

"Two of my best and oldest friends were dying, ma'am. With all due respect, I would have shot your pilot in the head if that meant they would survive. Fortunately that wasn't necessary."

Keyes looked in my eyes, that intensity turning into irritation.

"Cortana," she said.

"Lieutenant Francisco Castillo, UNSC Marine Corps. Went through ODST basic on Mars, 19th Battalion. First deployment was in Eden, we all know how that went, and then it's all just black ink. I could tell you more, but I can't access the fleet records because of our current situation. All I can find right now is that he is in the roster of the Asymmetrical Action Group, Team-7."

"Black ink," Keyes said, tasting the words in her mouth. "Somehow word got around the ship."

"I blame Johnson," the AI jumped in.

"And now the ODSTs think you're an upjumped Helljumper that thinks he's too good for them. There's a Spartan on board too, which means tensions are running high, but they can't take it out on a Spartan, he would kill them in the blink of an eye."

I couldn't help but roll my eyes.

"When did military life turn into a soap opera?" Cortana mused out loud.

I had to agree with the construct.

"Does that resentment extend to Navy personnel?" I asked, obviously meant to gauge how she felt about my presence here.

"No. Not for the most part, at least. Some of the flyboys obviously dislike you, you threatened their friend. That in itself would have been enough to put you in the brig, I too stand by my men." She paused and then examined me more carefully. "Fortunately for you, you had Sergeant Major Johnson vouch for you. And the Chief."

I had to raise an eyebrow at that. I didn't expect _him_ to remember me at all.

"The Master Chief? What did he say?"

Keyes allowed herself a small smile. "That he had worked with you and so had some of his fellow Spartans."

So just the fact that he could remember me by name was what had kept me from being arrested by the MPs then. I could do worse. In fact, I was beginning to feel strangely elated at the thought of the hero of humanity remembering my name. To imagine that a decade ago I would've retched at the thought of that.

"You'll be absorbed into the ODST complement," she said, interrupting my train of thought. "You're going to be following whatever orders you're given."

"Yes ma'am," I said. "If I may say so, my men's talents could be better used if-"

"We already have a Spartan, Lieutenant. And I would take Sergeant Johnson over you any day of the week."

I frowned but stopped. To be fair, the man _had _beat me in a fair and square boxing match. Not a lot of people could've claimed such a feat.

"Yes ma'am. Thank you ma'am."

"And Castillo, don't cause any trouble."

I turned back around before walking out. "And if trouble finds me?"

Keyes shrugged.

"Well, I could use a show," Cortana put in cheekily.

Yeah, she definitely had shades of Eliza.

* * *

><p><strong>November 1, 2552 (UNSC Calendar)one week later**

**UNSC **_**In Amber Clad**_**, Slipspace [Unknown destination]**

"How's it feeling?" I asked Snark.

"You can never really tell with these holographic ranges," he replied, still prone. "I don't think I'm fully a hundred percent yet, though."

He had been put out of his coma two days ago, less time than expected, but he had only been let out of bed this morning. Not that I hadn't insisted to the doctor, but the man had been adamant. Snark had needed multiple surgeries to get his heart working again. He wasn't exactly happy with the scars either.

"Doctor said three days of no strenuous activity," I reminded him.

"That's why we're using fake bullets with no recoil," he grunted angrily. "If I could get the fucker that got me."

"Yeah, we know," I said. "Same fucker shot Pavel too, remember?"

"Yes, sir."

"How are you feeling?"

He sighed. "Not well to be honest, my chest is still sore. I think the scars aren't properly healed yet."

"Inside?"

"Doesn't feel weird to be honest. I might take a light jog later, test myself."

"Make sure to take someone with you," I said. "Dotsenko or Longworth might be ideal."

"Lots of tension, huh?"

I nodded slowly.

"Have you killed anyone yet?" he asked. "You seem like you need to, El-tee."

"Not yet. I haven't even gotten in a fight yet. Not thanks to the lack of them trying…"

"They're trying to get you to instigate?"

"It's been a rough week."

"You can always get John and Natasha spar with you, kick the living shit out of them. They can't do anything to you then."

"It's John now?" I asked. "Not Crow? That prick?"

Snark said nothing and I didn't press him. He probably had gone too far to have any chance at ever being friends with Crow ever again, but at least he seemed like he'd thought about it a bit more.

"Alright, let's go."

"So soon?" he asked.

"Yeah, we've got schedules for the range."

Snark scoffed. "I'm kind of surprised the rules apply to us."

"Tell me about it," I said.

The firing range door opened just as Snark picked up his rifle. Five men in black fatigues walked in. I couldn't help but inwardly groan at the sight of them. Then my inward groan had an inward groan of itself when I realized that I was seeing ODSTs and I was seeing them as the enemy. Two of them on the edge put their heads close to each other and whispered something.

I wasn't surprised then one of them bumped into me. Hard.

"Watch it," I growled.

"What did you say?" the man asked, obviously happy that I was finally reacting.

I turned around and looked at him, getting close so that the height difference was that more obvious. "I said: watch it."

"Really? What are you going to do about it?"

The four men prepared themselves to beat the living shit out of Snark and me, or at least to try. Fortunately for them, I had had one full week to come up with all the possible alternatives to this conversation. Pop culture tended to influence the way people talked, and if I knew something I knew Helljumpers. It was simply a matter of trying to think of all the things that I would've said in their situation.

"Well, I'm going to let you throw the first punch and then I will break your arm in three different spots. If your friends decide to join then I will leave them peeing out of a fucking tube."

It was as close as you could get to telling them to go fuck themselves without using those actual words. In fact, I think my own words might've been a bit worse. They had directly wounded his pride and dared them to try and punch me. That's why I was surprised when I didn't immediately get clocked in the face. Evidently someone had talked to these Helljumpers and told them not to initiate a fight with me. I doubt that it had been because they would end up losing, but maybe Keyes had made personally sure everybody would keep calm. Especially if we considered the very real possibility that we'd likely end up crashing into an assault carrier in a desperate attempt to storm the ship and thus save ourselves.

"It's the most likely possibility," Schitzo said.

"What are you gonna do about it?" Snark asked the other ODST.

The four men tightened their fists and for a moment the tension in the air was high, but they miraculously backed down. I had used the word miracle and its derivations at least thirty times in the last three years, but if I had to pick one time that I would assign the word's actual meaning to, it would certainly be this situation. They had the numerical advantage and the reason to go against us; I still have no idea why they decided to back down. Nobody would've blamed them if they hadn't. Nobody.

I considered throwing the punch, it felt very anticlimactic, but in the end cooler heads prevailed. That's not a phrase that one uses very often in the presence of Helljumpers.

"Let's go for that jog," I told Snark once we were out of earshot. "Some of the guys were in the gym."

"Who?" he asked.

"Not sure," I admitted. "Tash is probably struggling to make her ass as great as Cam's, Longworth and Miri might be there too."

"How's Pavel doing, by the way?" he asked.

"He's taking it easy," I replied. "Doctor's orders."

The ship felt crowded. Nobody at all had been put in cryo. It made sense, after all, we could come out of slipspace any moment with just a few minutes' warning. We had two separate drills as well as a couple of EVA missions to the outside of the slipspace bubble. From what we could tell, there were several pieces of Mombasa in here with us, mostly cars and some debris, but pieces of buildings had been brought along for the ride as well. I hadn't seen any pictures or footage, but it hardly seemed logical to make stuff like that up for the sake of lying. Interestingly though, the assault carrier was only barely detectable as a blip. Slipspace was weird, and we could only be thankful that we hadn't been made just yet and hopefully we would remain hiding for the remainder of the trip.

"I suddenly don't feel like a run," Snark muttered when he saw just how crowded the ship's gym was.

I had to agree with him. In a ship full of restless men and women, the gym was the obvious destination for many of them. You had your bulkier Marines benching and then you had your more wiry ones going at a fairly fast pace in the treadmills. A few guys were using the boxing ring for sparring and yet some others were using machines and free weights. I stood near the entrance for a few seconds until I spotted Natasha and Miri. Both of them were doing leg extensions, go figure.

I acknowledged them with a small nod and then started moving towards one of the unoccupied treadmills. A couple of men shot me dirty looks as I walked past them, but that was the extent of the hostility, at least for now.

"Aight, hop on," I ordered Snark.

He began at a slow jog before settling into a more speedy pace, the one that you'd expect on a distance runner.

"How is it?"

"Good," he replied. "Chest hurts a bit."

"That's to be expected," I said. "Scars haven't completely healed."

"It's not my heart then?"

"I wouldn't expect so."

Snark kept running for a few more minutes, giving me periodic reports of his situation. I asked him to speed up some and slow down some and all seemed to be fine. He did look a little bit more strained than usual, but for the most part all he could complain about was the aching from the scars, his heart was working properly and pumping blood like it should've.

"Ok, give me some sprints and stops," I said. "Fast, fast, fast."

He nodded and tapped a few commands on the console of the treadmill. There was already some sweat forming around his forehead and his breathing was slightly heavier than it had been, but for the most part he seemed fine.

"Shouldn't I stretch?"

"Do you stretch before combat?" I asked.

"If I get a heads up yeah."

I tilted my head slightly sideways and crossed my arms.

"Fine."

He kept at a jog for a few more seconds and then sped up, slowly at first before suddenly exploding. The sensors on the machine moved the fabric under his feet accordingly and kept up with him. I looked in approval as he ran the designated one hundred meters. He clocked in at 10.9 seconds. Not overly impressive considering just how athletic you had to be to become an ODST, let alone an AAG operator, but it would do. He frowned at his slow time and then stopped as the treadmill abruptly slowed down.

This wasn't anybody's favorite mode on the machine, it made slamming into the front a very real possibility, but it was excellent for explosiveness training when you just didn't have the room or didn't feel like running around in the hangars in plain view.

"Again."

He sped up again, this time clocking a more respectable 10.8 seconds for one hundred meters. That in itself was impressive, seeing as he had just done a full sprint and had just gotten out of a hospital bed this morning. He slammed his feet down repeatedly and slowed himself down before settling once again into a nice jog, this time his chest was rapidly rising and falling.

"How's that feel?"

"A little bit worse than usual," he admitted. "But it's been a while since I last did that."

"Sounds to me like you're all cleared for action," I said. "If the need arises of course."

"What do you mean?" he asked, stepping out of the treadmill.

"Odds are we'll get vaporized as soon as we leave slipspace," I said. "We're sharing a bubble with an assault carrier."

Snark paused. He had obviously considered it, but nobody here wanted to think about it.

"Why'd the captain go ahead with that decision?" he asked me.

"I can't speak for Commander Keyes," I replied. "But I can't say I agree with her decision to abandon Earth."

I realized then that our little conversation was probably one we should be having in private, especially considering the loyalty that Keyes' men seemed to have for her. I had heard about her before this incident, and not only because of her more renowned father. If you made a name for yourself in the UNSC Navy, then odds were you could kick some ass in space combat. That naturally meant your men would be proud of serving with you and would be even prouder to defend anyone questioning your integrity.

Navy boys have it easy…

"No they don't," Schitzo said, reminding me of their sacrifices in orbit. The Navy always fought to the last ship, knowing full well that they'd be annihilated.

"Well, you need some rest," I told Snark, slapping his upper arm. "How about you head to your quarters. And take those pills they gave you."

"Yes, sir."

Sometimes I would phrase orders like questions just for the hell of it.

"Where's the rest of the team?" I asked Miri as I approached her and Natasha.

"Gunny's got some of them doing drills," she replied. "For being smartasses."

"How'd you two get away from that?" I asked.

They both looked at each other and shrugged.

"Is everyone with Pavel?"

Natasha nodded.

It was hard to keep from noticing how attractive the two of them were. I oftentimes let my eyes wander when around them and I'm not ashamed to admit it. I think that any hot-blooded male would be ashamed _not _to look at them when they were wearing workout clothes. Natasha was used to it and basked in the attention, ignoring the guys and sometimes bending over a bit too much. Miranda was used to it and became her old shy self and would blush slightly and look away nervously. Please, like she didn't know everybody here wanted to fuck her.

At least when they were doing leg extensions on the machine they didn't bend forward or backward, so the male crowd was not overly interested in them at the moment. It's not like the guys were incredibly overt about it too, they might've enjoyed sneaking a peek or two, but they didn't want to get caught. It was all part of the game.

"Life would be so much easier if everyone just fucked everyone," Schitzo mused.

"Has anyone been giving you shit?" I asked, my voice quieter.

Miranda shook her head, but Natasha took a little bit longer to do the same.

"What is it?" I asked her.

"Nothing, but sometimes I feel like a certain group of Helljumpers wants to jump me."

I nodded to myself slowly. She not only was an AAG operator, she was also a Special Warfare Operator, Navy. That meant there was not a shred of camaraderie between her and the Helljumpers. I had been wondering why there was so much antagonism between them and us. It wasn't completely out of the norm, everyone knew ODSTs were notoriously unstable and would tweak at the slightest perceived offense. However, it wasn't very often that so much shit was given to a group that was mostly Helljumpers from various units.

"Think they are angry about abandoning Earth?" I asked myself.

"And they're taking it out on us?" Miranda asked back.

"That and the fact that El-tee held someone at gunpoint to board this ship," Natasha helpfully added.

A glare wiped the grin from her face, but she did have a point.

"Do you think a fight would solve things?" she asked. "Get things out of their system?"  
>I raised an eyebrow. Tash might've been an arrogant bitch in the truest sense of the word, but she knew damn well that I could pretty much kill anything short of a brute with my bare hands. A measly ODST wasn't going to give me a run for my money, not even close. If I fought and won against four guys it could either make a statement or just make us bigger targets. That's how it worked with us Helljumpers, we were always one step away from going postal.<p>

After that brief talk I decided to stay in the gym and do my workout. I typically did that a few hours later into the day with Pavel or Dotsenko, but I might as well kill some time. Like always I started with bench pressing. I kept it on a reasonable level for a guy my size. Well, I might've been overdoing it a little bit with two 45-pound plates on either side to start, but it wasn't anything out of the ordinary. I did incline and decline with less weight and then switched the target muscle. It was dull stuff, but it was also something that calmed me down.

I was almost done with the workout, working on some crazy awesome biceps, when Pavel and Dotsenko walked into the gym. Pavel looked like he always did and Dotsenko was evidently tired and had a lingering look of annoyance in his face. I chuckled when I realized that Pavel must've been tiring them out just for kicks. He could say what he wanted, but Pavel was also a mean son of a bitch.

"What's that you're laughing at?" an ODST asked me threateningly.

"Your fucking face," I snapped back. "If I hear you talking like that to a superior officer ever again I will make sure you can't laugh at anything at all."

The speed and viciousness of my reply threw him out of balance. I was ready for him to fight me. I wanted him to fight me. Fortunately (or perhaps unfortunately) a commotion on the other end of the room distracted him.

This is where the unfortunate part comes in.

I had been so focused on not losing control and snapping someone's neck that I had assumed none of my men would be the ones to find themselves in that situation. I turned just in time to see Dotsenko, in his 250 pounds of glory, slug an ODST that he had at least 40 pounds on. The poor man flew across the floor and slammed into a rack of dumbbells, knocking the smaller ones to the floor and grunting as the air was knocked out of him.

Pavel had to step backwards in order to avoid being seized by two other men and put up a nice boxing guard, ready for anything. I could tell he wasn't happy about the situation, especially with his still-healing chest and shoulder.

Dotsenko, having the virtue of initiating the fight, was targeted. Two men rushed at him. One punched him and was blocked, the other connected a nice solid jab to the chin. Dotsenko reeled backwards and was saved as Pavel barged in, palming a guy's shirt, shoving him into the other one and then taking another step back. I saw a multitude of ODSTs begin to rush my two friends and I started running to join them.

A strong arm stopped me. I began to turn around with the intent to kill until I saw the one and only Avery Johnson. He had aged considerably since I last saw him. It looked like he had been through worse hells than I had. He chomped on an unlit cigar and shook his head before dragging the cigar out of his mouth.

"Let it play out."

I turned back around and saw Dotsenko struggling to fend off a Helljumper, kneeing him in the ribs and receiving a flurry of hits to the side of the face in response. Pavel was faring slightly better. He was still one of the best hand-to-hand fighters that I knew, having the virtue of knowing what you were going to do before even you did. I couldn't help but raise an eyebrow as he ducked under a hook from a female ODST and then came up with an uppercut, knocking her out.

"Equal opportunity violence, eh?" Johnson muttered, referencing the ages old joke from when women were finally put into the same training (and by extension, sparring) units as men. "I like him."

Dotsenko shook off the man, using his considerable weight to lift him off the ground and then slam him into the mirror behind him, cracking it visibly and leaving a not insignificant amount of blood there.

"Uh oh," I muttered, clenching my fists.

"I'll stop it," Johnson told me as he began approaching the commotion.

It took us about ten seconds to get there. Pavel got kicked in the leg hard, Dotsenko received a vicious strike to the nose that drew a lot of blood and another hard punch to the right eyebrow, coloring his face red. He gave as good as he got though, hitting the ODST that had wounded him three times in the face before the man could rip himself from Dotsenko's grip.

Things started getting a little bit too violent and finally Pavel put an end to things when he managed to catch Dotsenko's opponent by the neck, kick him in the side of the knee and bring him down. Pavel didn't let go, keeping the man on his knees and squeezing the side of his neck hard. With his free hand he reached for a 50-pound dumbbell and raised it above his head, as if to bring it down on the man's skull and kill him.

"Enough!" he shouted, kneeing the guy in the solar plexus for good measure.

A fight was all good and well, but nobody wanted to clean up brains from the floor.

Three ODSTs began circling Pavel and Dotsenko.

"Think you can hold that up forever?" one of them asked.

"Exactly, you dipshit," Dotsenko growled through his broken nose. "Where do you think it's going to fall down?"

The ODST that was on the floor looked up nervously, not attempting to get out of Pavel's vise grip on his neck.

"Alright boys, what seems to be the issue here?" Johnson suddenly boomed. "Did somebody steal someone else's lunch?"

The reaction was interesting to say the least. Some of the guys looked stunned at the broken silence and everybody was confused, myself included.

"Aw, don't tell me you've got a scuffle between Orbital Drop Shock Troopers?" he asked, his voice loud and his syllables clearly enunciated. "The way I see it, three of you stupid dipshits tripped and put some blood on this prime quality equipment!"

I looked at the weights, they looked at least a couple of decades old. They had probably trickled down from bigger ships' gyms over the years.

"Back in my day we didn't have the benefit of gyms! If you wanted to work out you'd go to the hangar and help the flyboys load and unload their Pelican's guns. Manually!"

That did seem a little bit far-fetched. Although the process could be done manually, the machinery for it was so simple and the ammo so heavy that it was just ludicrous to think that someone would actually load a Pelican manually.

Suddenly I found myself very impressed by Pavel's ability to hold the weight above his head for such an extended period of time.

"Now ya'll are going to get up and brush yourselves up some. When someone asks you why you don't look so pretty you'll tell them that you ran into a doorknob."  
>Ships didn't have doorknobs. Doorknobs were actually strange sights in any given location.<p>

"And that the doorknob punched you back for being so goddamn clumsy!" he added. His voice then took a more threatening and serious tone. "Or so help me God I will personally see that each person here has to use crutches to walk for the rest of his life."

There was a short silence.

"Put the weight down," I ordered Pavel.

He complied, letting it fall down loudly next to the man he was holding, who let out an audible sound of relief.

"Let him go," I added.

Pavel didn't disappoint, shoving the poor man forward so that he was on all fours before kicking him in the ass. There were some mutterings and Johnson glanced at me sideways, but for the most part nobody reacted. I began taking in the damage. Numbers along would call this fight a certain victory for my team, considering that Pavel had knocked out one person and put another one out of the fight while Dotsenko had eliminated one opponent and hurt another two.

On the other hand Dotsenko was bleeding badly and his face would be swollen for the next couple of days. Pavel himself hadn't escaped completely unscathed, with a big black eye already forming as well as clutching his lower right side slightly. I don't think he had any broken ribs, but he was obviously in pain.

"Now everyone who happened to get assaulted by a doorknob will be leaving this gymnasium right now!" Johnson ordered.

He had a commanding voice and an even more commanding presence. The people in the ship must've worked with him before, because all the Helljumpers complied with his order without even bothering to complain. They certainly knew how much of a badass Johnson was. If there's one thing that ODSTs respect, it's the level of badass someone else has. Now that they knew that my two men were quite badass indeed, badass enough to fend off multiple attackers simultaneously, maybe they'd leave them alone.

"Thanks," I whispered to Johnson as people began vacating the premises or returning to their workouts respectively.

"Anytime, marine," he replied. "Now be sure to instill in your men some good old-fashioned knowledge about what the word restraint means."

"Will do Sarge."

Johnson gave me a curt nod before heading out of the gym himself.

"El-tee they-" Dotsenko began.

"Can it," I cut him off. "I'm getting too old for this shit."

* * *

><p>Pavel and Dotsenko were leaning back on lounge chairs and icing their respective injuries. Dotsenko's whole face was swollen but it was already beginning to subside. Pavel looked simply annoyed and winced every now and then as the bag over his eye shifted and put too much pressure on the bruise. His side seemed to be fine and fortunately for him none of the stitches had given. It was too late for something like that to happen, the doctor had cleared him for physical activity in the morning after all.<p>

The rest of the team stood around them, arms crossed or clasped behind their backs. They all seemed pretty laid back when everything was considered, but I had just given them a good dressing down after the little incident earlier today. The impact was lessened by the fact that I couldn't really do anything too bad to them in a ship I was unfamiliar with. Instead I had decided to make them all check out their pistols from the armory and assemble them and disassemble them repeatedly. It sounds like an easy job, especially considered that the pistols only have a few pieces nowadays in order to make such a process as simple as possible. They didn't count on me getting them a set of screwdrivers to completely disassemble them before going back at it again.

Pavel and Dotsenko would have to suffer through their injuries as punishment for now. Maybe get a few resentful glares as punishment. In truth, this was done not to show those two what they shouldn't do, I knew they wouldn't get in a fight again. It was to make sure the rest of the team didn't make the same mistake.

"Why do you think we haven't seen the Chief?" Crow asked Longworth.

"Gee, I don't know. Maybe he doesn't want to walk around in public with everyone gaping?" Natasha said. "You're an idiot, John."

"Does anybody want to do this with sniper rifles?" I asked. "Because it seems like you do."

They all immediately quieted down and resumed their meticulous operation. I planned to keep them doing that well into the early morning hours, but just before midnight the alarms started blaring. My men looked at me and assembled their guns with unprecedented speed before joining me and running towards our rooms to get our armor. Hundreds of men were going in all directions through the hallways. However, everything was very orderly, with most people keeping to the right and letting traffic flow smoothly. The alarms kept blaring all the while, a loud and annoying noise in the background.

Everyone stopped briefly when they felt the ship exit slipspace. There was a noticeable look of worry in all faces as we expected to be blown up by the assault carrier, but when that didn't happen we kept going. I had my men in their armor in record time. Crow had replaced his old chest piece with an ODST variant and both Snark and Pavel had new armor for their torsos. It was always interesting to see the mix and match of armor that we wore, sometimes we didn't even have time to paint them all the same color scheme that we wanted, but today we were all in ODST black no matter what branch we came from.

"Frank, are we on the drop bay?" Pavel asked.

"Negative," I replied. "Not right now."

"We're on standby," Grass said. "Master Chief's got point on this one."

I suddenly realized how I now no longer thought of her as Cam or of Lady as Natasha. They were now called by their call signs. Even Caboose was no longer Grigori, but Snark was always Snark. I think he liked it better than Naveen.

"We're stationed in Hangar C," I said. "Let's go back down."

As we moved towards the elevators we came across the Master Chief. Everyone stopped to let the imposing figure pass. He shot me an almost imperceptible nod before keeping on walking, a cadre of Helljumpers led by Sergeant Johnson at his back. Looks like they were the ones that had the honor of fighting alongside Chief. I felt a pang of jealousy.

"Let's move," I ordered, breaking the spell.

The hangar was full of Marines and some Helljumpers. I knew that the ship had a battalion of regular Marines on board minus a few casualties taken at Mombasa plus a company of ODSTs. It was a little bit over the norm for a _Stalwart_-class frigate, but that's around what your typical _Charon_-class frigate would carry with it. I looked to either side and saw that all the starboard hangars were not closed off, allowing freedom of movement amongst them.

"Listen up!" I shouted at my men. "I want full assault loads. Rucksacks on, ammunition heavy. Knives, guns, the works. We are going to be participating in this party and we're going to be the ones everybody will talk about the next morning."

My men rushed to the ammunition cart and began loading themselves with additional magazines. I checked my battle rifle, pulling back the slide and making sure that there was a bullet in the chamber. It was one of the few HB versions on board the ship, but I had managed to snag it for myself. I missed the grenade launcher that I had used a few times in Reach, but experimental weaponry is uncommon. Hence the term experimental.

My rifle, a heavy pistol, my three knives, and grenades. I had no secondary weapon today. Caboose, on the other hand, carried his MA5K, his M90 shotgun, and a pistol. Crow was laden with an M41 rocket launcher and an MA5K. Lady had her usual MA5C and an SMG, Grass had an MA5B, much less accurate than Lady's version, but it had twice as many rounds, making it almost a downsized machine gun. It was funny; she was also carrying a machete that was strapped to her right thigh, under her sidearm's holster. I hadn't seen her make use of that in years. Longworth and Miranda carried DMRs with an extremely oversized ammunition load and their sidearms. Snark kept to his usual SRS and SMG loadout. Pavel didn't surprise anybody and neither did Dotsenko, getting an M247L and a SAW respectively. We were carrying a bit more weaponry than was the norm for a squad our size. It wasn't the amount of weaponry however, it was the diversity.

"Lieutenant Castillo?"

"The one and only," I replied, turning around.

"Chief Warrant Officer Kwan," the Pelican pilot introduced himself, shaking my hand firmly. "Taxman."

"Pleasure," I replied. "You'll be flying us around?"

"For the time being, yes," he said. "As long as there's no guns pointed in my face I should be fine."

"That shouldn't be a problem," I replied. "How long have you been flying for, son?"

"Eight years," he said. "Started doing combat missions right out of flight school."

"You can pick up my men under heavy combat zones?"

"Better than anybody else."

"Hmmm, we'll see," I replied. "I look forward to working with you."

"Thanks, El-tee."

I couldn't help but notice that he didn't reply in kind, but then again, I had aimed a gun at his friend's face. I really wished I had a recollection of that.

"Attention all personnel. Attention all personnel."

The hangar immediately quieted down.

"We've come out of slipspace into an unknown solar system, designation: Coelest. There appears to be no Covenant presence other than that of the primary target. The carrier is moving towards the fourth planet in the system and an artificial object that is orbiting. The object in question is ring shaped with a diameter of approximately 10,000 kilometers and width of around 318 kilometers."  
>That was very large. If the Covenant had built something this large it was bound to be incredibly important.<p>

"The object is not of Covenant origin."

"What the hell?" Longworth burst.

Murmuring flooded the hangar. If yet another alien civilization entered the fray it could very well mean the end of our race or victory for us. _Not of Covenant origin… _It also seemed unusual that the voice speaking didn't belong to Cortana. She was the ship's AI, after all.

"Two primary targets have been located. Squad leaders and commanding officers are receiving briefings that they will relay to their men. Pilots and other support personnel will receive the appropriate information. All ground forces prepare for combat operations within an hour."

It was a long announcement, but I was grateful for the information, even if it raised more questions than it answered.

"El-tee, what the hell was that all about?" Crow asked me. "Another alien race, that's the last thing we need!"

"They could be friendly," Grass pointed out, not sounding too convinced at all.

Lady chortled.

"Quiet down," I ordered. "Form up."

My men sighed as one before lazily moving into a line, facing me.

I received a datapad from one of the hangar knuckle-draggers and dismissed him. I opened it and went through the first couple of paragraphs, taking in only the important words. There was a picture of the object in question at the cover. It was a massive ring. There's pretty much no other way to describe it. Massive in the truest sense of the word. It wasn't massive like your traditional ringworld, which surrounded a sun along an orbital plane, but it was massive nonetheless.

"Listen up," I began. "The object in question is designated Delta Halo."

That name arose more questions than it answered. Why not just Halo? I mean, if it was the first one that we found it made more sense… _Shit… No, calm yourself down, no need to jump to theories._

"Preliminary scans indicate Earthlike environment, survivable without pressure suits. Environments range from arctic to tropical… Regular air pressure, gravity akin to that of Reach… Ok, we're going to be fighting in familiar ground then, nothing to be worried about."

The men breathed with relief. Fighting in low or heavy G was hell, there was a reason very few colonies were established on small moons, not only was it bad for the inhabitants, but it completely messed up the logistics.

"Information is scarce at the moment," I read on. "Obviously. Two targets have been located. The first one is directly under the enemy assault carrier, designation: Temple."

I examined the bad-quality picture that came with it. It had obviously been taken by an unmanned probe, but it showed the edge of the carrier and a small construction in the middle of a lake. Another picture zoomed further in was grainy, but it gave more details on the design of the Temple.

"The second target's designation is Library," I said. "Its size indicates that it is a building of importance. That and the presence of a wall surrounding it make it a valuable asset to the UNSC. "

The picture that came with that was strangely of good quality. I couldn't help but notice that it seemed to have been taken by an in-atmosphere drone. If we had already put those in there… no, that was impossible, maybe it was a rendering.

"Delta Halo, Francisco," Schitzo whispered in my ear.

_Alpha, Bravo, Charlie, Delta…_ I asked myself. _Alpha, Beta, Delta?_

Shit. This was some top secret shit.

My mind was brought back to an incident that had happened years ago. Pavel and I had been brought down a shaft that dug deep into the crust of a planet that had been attacked. I tried remembering its name but failed. There was an installation there that couldn't have possibly been built by humans. Not unless a wonky wealthy man had decided to create a whole new architectural design with cutting edge technology. No, even back then the Covenant had fought ferociously to keep that place. Pavel and I had long known that we weren't alone in the universe, it wasn't just us and the covvies, there were bound to be more, but it was hard to believe that there was another race that could build this ring and we hadn't come across them yet. Not this ring, these rings.

"Questions?"

All hands shot up.

"Good, I'll give you our mission specifics when I get them."

There were no further developments for the next half hour. I could tell that we dropped off the Chief and the ODSTs following him. I saw Johnson walking towards a Pelican and hopping inside as a Warthog was attached to the back. The hangar he was on was sealed off and the Pelican took off. A minute later the walls came down and a tank rolled into the hangar.

"What was that all about?" Crow asked to himself.

"Probably providing support to the ground troops," Longworth replied. "If they're going to need a tank then I assume that the Covenant have had time to fortify their positions."

The alarms blared again, this time the sound was the one made to signal the word for deployment.

"Hop in everybody!" Taxman shouted. "Everyone on board!"

My men rushed into the cargo bay and I was partially surprised when the same boy that had handed me a datapad told me that an ammunition ground drone would be coming with us. There was going to be one with most ODST-laden Pelicans.

"We have orders to strap some vehicles and set them down on the surface. It seems like you're going to have the pleasure of having a Scorpion tanker on the craft with you."

"Sounds good, make it fast."

The Scorpion was attached in a matter of seconds and the driver then hopped off, jumping into the Pelican with us. I watched as every single Marine jumped on board one of the Pelicans before letting the remote drone roll past me and into the cargo bay. I followed it and gave the word for my men to secure it. The smallest accident and that thing would become 600 pounds of death as it rocked around the compartment.

The rear hatch closed just as the walls began separating the starboard hangars from one another. The Pelican was dark and we were only illuminated by the red lights on the ceiling.

"You excited, sir?" the tanker asked me.

"Concerned is the word I would use," I replied. "Why do you ask?"

"I didn't get to see any action on Earth," he said. "My tank was undergoing some maintenance and they couldn't get it ready for action in time. I hope there's prime tank terrain down there."

"I hope not," I disagreed.

He chuckled. "Good point, sir."

"For what it's worth," Snark chimed in as he ran his hands along his sniper rifle. "I hope there's prime tank terrain there too."

The sound of air escaping the hangar made its way through the Pelican walls before we shot forward and then gravity was gone. I felt the contents of my stomach move around before they sort of settled. It had been worse than other times, but it was still something I could handle.

"ETA fifty seconds," the pilot called over. "Atmosphere reentry might be a bit rocky."

The entrance was no rockier than usual, with the Pelican heating up as expected and then shaking as it went through layers of air that got progressively thicker. It did seem strange, however, because the whole experience took a lot less time than you'd expect on a rocky planet.

"I have a bad feeling about this," Grass muttered.

I received a message from the _In Amber Clad_. It was our mission briefing. Certain teams would be moving forward to scout and engage some minor Covenant presence fifty kilometers off the Library. We would be making a quick pit stop near a hill with very prominent slopes in order to establish a temporary base of operations. We would be dropping the Scorpion and its operator at the base before moving up.

I transmitted the information to my men, who simply listened to what I had to say with silent expressions. The tanker nodded repeatedly and smiled to himself. He was a bit too eager for my taste.

I got up and moved towards the cockpit, eager to examine the surface of this ring. Taxman turned his head to look at me before returning his attention to the landscape. It didn't seem much stranger than any planet I had stepped on. The surface underneath us consisted of slopes and small, rolling hills. It reminded me a little bit of the Scottish countryside without the mountains. Except for one tall, sharp hill, everything was beautifully green. There were no artificial structures visible anywhere around, it was all perfectly pristine. To our left flew four other Pelicans and to our right just one. That was the only presence of anything not natural.

Until you looked up, that is. I could see the sides of the ring extending upwards and then meeting directly overhead, 10,000 kilometers away from where we were. If you didn't look sideways it looked almost like an arch. You could see cloud formations, oceans, deserts, and forests on the surface of the ring.

"Well, well," I said as Taxman set his bird down. "Ain't that something."

* * *

><p><em>Thanks to <strong>Colonel-Commissar2468 <strong>and **General TheDyingTitan** for proofreading this chapter._

_Well, we finally made it to the artifact that provides the title to the series. Halo. Not the first Halo, but a Halo nonetheless. Personally speaking I was always intrigued by Delta Halo, compared to the first one this had a certain aura of mystery that the other one just didn't despite the fact that it's the second one. Why, you may ask. Well, because we saw the first Halo and know that it was perfectly well-preserved, but this one has ruins and damaged surface. Whatever could've happened to cause that? Well, you know damn well why it's in ruins. Still, there's a very important side of this Halo that wasn't particularly explored in the games. Remember how Johnson and Keyes make it to the index? You think it was just them that breached the Quarantine Zone? Think again. There was a hell of a battle to get there. And I'm going to make sure that this battle is as drawn out as possible. After all, the UNSC was only in Delta Halo for a day and a half tops. Shit will be awesome, mostly because a certain you-know-who shows up. Yeah, that's right._

_To put all doubts to rest: Marvin Mobuto is dead. Go to halopedia and look him up. That should explain some things._

_Thanks for the kind and pretty much positive reviews that you all gave me for last chapter. I thought it was pretty decent. This one is a little short, but it is filler, after all. I just wanted to make clear a couple of things. First of, the other ODSTs aren't any more of an asshole than Frank and Co. The difference here is that our beloved AAG-7 is an outsider group and the fact that the ship was forced to abandon Earth has tensions high and the obvious target is AAG-7. Couple that with Frank pulling a pistol on a pilot and you've got a recipe for distaster. However, you can't forget that AAG-7 is a whole tier above the regular ODSTs in the _In Amber Clad._ They kick some serious ass as can tell. I just hope that I didn't make the other ODSTs look like wimps. They are, after all, humanity's best. Second thing I wanted to clear up is the naming of the installation. It doesn't make sense for Keyes or Cortana to reveal that the Halo in question is Installation 05. These things are heavily classified for obvious reasons and they don't want people spreading the word about five or potentially more gigantic rings that can be inhabited._

_Other than that I think we're good. If you feel like stopping by the tvtropes page for this fanfic feel free to do that and maybe add some content. Hey, free advertising, right? If not, then that means that you have to automatically leave a lengthy and constructive review. It's the law. Hope you enjoyed this chapter._

_Stay strong._

_-casquis_


	217. The Gates of Hell

Chapter CCXVII: The Gates of Hell

**November 2, 2552 (UNSC Calendar)/**

**Delta Halo [orbiting Substance], Coelest System**

* * *

><p><em>"Do not be afraid. I am peace; I am salvation."<em>

* * *

><p>I jumped out of the Pelican, first in my squad to have boots on the ground. Pavel and Longworth came out, rifles held loosely across their chests. The ammunition drone rolled down the ramp with a loud noise and then the rest of my men joined me. The pilot on the Pelican wished us good luck before taking off back towards our temporary base of operations. I could see other dropships far in the distance, setting down other ODST squads to scout the terrain around the Library for our main assault.<p>

"Ok, spread out," I ordered calmly. "We don't have any maps of the region yet, so keep your eyes peeled. Snark, I want you to clear every possible ambush location before we move ahead."

"Yes, sir."

"Grass, do you have anybody you can milk for information?"

"Negative, Frank. Not in this ship."

I sighed. "Oh well. Let's move."

The drone was in the middle of our formation, Caboose standing just a few feet away. Everyone else was at a fair distance from one another in no particular formation. Miranda was up front, at least fifty meters ahead of the group. Snark was closest to her, ready to run forward and shoot at any enemies she spotted with his rifle. The rest of us kept our distance, not wanting to be reduced to ashes by a single blast. For a moment nobody talked, everybody forgot their professionalism in order to glance around and take in this massive structure that we were walking on.

"Would you call this a space station?" Longworth asked, breaking the silence.

"What's the definition of space station, Grass?" Pavel asked.

"Umm, spacecraft that's designed to remain in orbit and support a crew," she replied. "That's not quite dictionary definition, but I think it's close enough."

"So this is a big-ass space station then?" Longworth wondered.

"I wouldn't call it that," Lady said. "When was the last time you heard about a space station that can fit around Mars with room to spare."

"An hour ago, give or take," Snark said.

I chuckled quietly.

"Personally I would call it a megastructure," Miri put forward. "An order above orbital elevators and skyhooks."

"Or a couple of orders maybe," Pavel added. "Will you look at the size of this thing…"

"It's almost as wide as your mom's vagina, eh Longworth?" the normally quiet Dotsenko said.

The team laughed as Longworth insulted Dotsenko, but a burn like that was impossible to get out of. I wished that combat consisted of this. Walking down a beautiful landscape and just having a conversation with your friends. I could've had that for a few years, working at the docks or at the stations in Jericho-VII. I have no doubt I would've made some friends with the men there, sit down for a beer and talk about nonsense after our shift was over…

I never would've met Pave, Layla, Marina, Hanna, or even Katie. I wouldn't have met any of the important people in my life.

"You probably wouldn't have met me either," Schitzo dropped.

"There's a small forest up ahead," Miranda announced. "Not too dense, I can see through it."

"Is it clear?"

"As far as I can tell, yeah."

"Alright," I said. "Eyes open everybody. Snark, keep an eye on the trees."

The forest was very little indeed, maybe as small as a hundred by three hundred meters give or take some. The interesting thing was that the trees were very familiar. They looked like pine trees.

"Huh. If those aren't Japanese red pines I will eat my boots," Grass said.

"What about the shorter trees?" Crow asked her.

"Those I can't tell. They don't look particularly exotic though…"

"Log it in the journal," I said. "We can discuss botany later."

That promptly shut my men up and we walked through the small forest in near absolute silence. The only thing that could be heard was our footsteps and a breeze that rustled the leaves and made a comforting noise. The branches swayed with the breeze and for a moment I thought about taking my helmet off in order to feel it in my face, but decided against it. Instead I focused on making sure that no invisible elite decided to attack us or a jackal fired from the top of one of the pines.

_How the hell did that pine get here? _ I suddenly asked myself. No wonder Grass had been so interested in the tree.

"Looks like we're going downhill," Miranda said once she reached the edge of the forest.

"Hold up," I ordered, motioning for my men to catch up with her.

ODSTs are loud by nature. It's not a cockiness thing or anything like that, although it certainly helps. The thing is, even in stealth operations we can be very loud, our helmets are sealed and block off the sound of our voices. If you were to see a Marine squad moving through a forest you would only hear them stepping on the ground, occasionally whispering something to each other. If you were to see an ODST squad moving through a forest you would only hear them stepping on the ground. The difference here was that we were constantly talking to one another, confident that our helmets would transmit our words to each other without the need for any intermediaries, meaning that the signal was completely safe from prying ears. It was pleasant, it allowed us to bond and talk, keep ourselves busy with something that didn't involve just your imagination.

Our silence when we saw the Library may or may not have been more significant, but the building was still enough to make us shut up.

"The wall wasn't on the picture," I said, finally breaking the silence.

"That's one hell of a wall," Crow noted.

"It's throwing up shields," Grass said.

"How can you tell?" I asked.

"Snark, link up your scope to our helmets," she ordered. "See those pillars?"

A small screen showed what Snark was seeing. The pillars in question were evenly spaced through the wall. They were producing a blue light, not strange in of itself, but the light extended in a 360-degree two-dimensional circle before it faded out.

"Those are not Covenant shields," Lady said.

"Alright," I sighed. "Let's move up."

Before we stepped out of the forest, however, four Phantoms and six Banshees streaked past, nearly directly overhead. I cursed and ducked, having no idea how we didn't hear them come. My men traced the flight of the aircraft with their rifles until they were far enough away that we could breathe calmly again.

"Well, so much for our head start," Snark said.

"Think they've spotted the shields?" Longworth asked with a chuckle.

"Of course they did," Pavel told him.

Ironically enough, the lead Banshee slammed into the shields and exploded, prompting the rest of the aircraft to brake and pull up in an attempt to avoid them. Sadly, they all succeeded.

"I take that back," Pavel said.

"Hold this position," I ordered. "Wait until the Phantoms take off. Grass, call it in."

"Yes, sir," she said. She had a way of making that sound more ironic than even Lady did.

It only took a few minutes. The Phantoms dropped troops and began flying parallel to the wall, presumably looking for a hole to jump through and get to the Library. The massive building stood imposingly behind the walls. The ground around it was not green and beautiful like the fields here, it was gray and rocky, with mountain formations that came seemingly out of nowhere. I had to remind myself that this place was artificial and that was the reason things seemed odd. No geology here, I would assume.

"Banshees are coming back…" Lady said.

"Stay down."

The five surviving attack craft returned following the same general line that they had been on their approach to the library. That brought them directly overhead us. I held my breath as they approached and then cursed as the rearmost Banshee circled around for another pass. Crow slowly switched his rifle for the rocket launcher and kept it ready, refraining from painting the target and alerting it to our presence.

"Looks like it didn't see us," I said. "Crow, keep eyes on it. Everybody ready to move."

"Frank, Command is advising us to move forward and refrain from engaging the enemy, we only need to do some scouting before they send in the heavies," Grass said.

"Roger that."

"Sir, the Banshee's spinning back," Crow said. "Looks like… oh shit. It's strafing!"

We spread out to the side as a rain of plasma punched through the trees that we had been so freaked out by. Wood chips and pine needles were lit up in flames as the tree trunks themselves became shrapnel. I raised my left hand with my rifle and used it to cover my head as neck as I ran. My right hand reached instinctively for my sidearm, but I stopped myself from drawing it. An explosion sent a tree flying, followed by another set of plasma bolts hitting the ground.

"Crow, get it!"

"Give me a moment, sir!" he shouted back.

I turned back to see my men raising their heads to look at the Banshee as it sped away in order to get a good angle for a second strafing run. Crow was nowhere to be seen. I groaned and ran towards his position on my HUD, finding him just as he threw off a large tree limb from his chest and grabbed the M41 rocket launcher. He nodded at me and began jogging towards the tree line.

"Longworth, Miri," I shouted. "Hit it!"

Their DMRs began snapping as they fired shots at the Banshee. The aircraft tilted slightly in order to fire at them and slowed down just enough to begin its strafing run. Crow ran out of cover and took a knee. He aimed and fired. The missile flew true, but the pilot on the Banshee did a fucking backflip. The missile missed by less than a meter. The Banshee regained its balance and began approaching us again.

"Fire!" Longworth urged Crow.

"Wait," he replied.

I followed the path of the missile as it circled around and sped back towards the Banshee. This time the pilot was too late. He began putting his craft into a barrel roll, but the explosion took out the rear end of the Banshee as well as both wings, sending it hurtling into the ground.

"Clear that," I ordered Longworth and Miranda. "Everyone else regroup on me."

Once the team was around me and the Banshee pilot was confirmed KIA I started informing them about the plan.

"Alright, there are about a hundred enemy hostiles down there, nothing we haven't encountered, but I'd prefer if we engaged them with at least some support. Nonetheless, we're moving forward, the basin is rocky and there's enough cover and concealment to hold off for a while. Snark, I want you on the back, do not fire unless you decide to knock off an ultra or higher… Miri, what was the pilot?"

"Minor. Brute."

"Brutes," I cursed. "Oh well. What's life without a challenge?"

We began the descent. It wasn't very steep, but the high amount of loose rocks made for relatively slow progress. I knew that someone was bound to have seen the Banshee making two passes as well as crash into the ground. We had to assume that the Covenant were aware of both our position and numbers. Which begged the question: why the hell would we go down there? Well, because we are the best of the best.

Grass reported our progress to Command, who replied and assured her that the armored forces were already preparing to move and that spare troops were being called in from other parts of the ring. We had been in this place for only three hours and already we were taking the lead. From what Grass could gather the Chief had been successful in his initial mission and was beginning to approach the prophet that we wanted to assassinate so badly. I had no doubt that he would succeed, but I wanted that big guy helping out on our end of the battle too.

"Sir, I'm seeing movement," Snark informed. "On a side note, it's getting darker. Why is it getting darker?"

"I've noticed too," Caboose pointed out. "It shouldn't be this dark."

"Grass?" I asked.

"Geometry of the ring doesn't account for that," she replied after a quick glance up. "My guess is that this area is artificially dimmed."

"Talk about ominous shit," Lady said.

I had to agree with her.

"What movement?" I asked Snark.

"Can't tell. Give me a moment."

That moment extended into two, then five, finally we reached ten minutes of no word from Snark.

"Well?" Pavel asked.

"I'm not seeing anything," he replied.

"Shit," I muttered. "Move forward."

Caboose was almost hit as he climbed over a rock, only for Miri to pull him back behind cover. Grass opened fire with her assault rifle, aiming for some unseen enemies. Longworth and Lady joined, firing down the slope. Snark reported in, saying that he couldn't see anything. Dotsenko began spreading out to the left while Pavel moved to the front to set up his machine gun. I left cover and aimed down my scope, quickly spotting the enemy targets. Three jackals and a grunt were firing on our position, using plasma pistols and needlers. The boulders were covering from the sides, making it impossible for me to hit them from my position.

"Frag out!" I shouted instead.

My grenade traced a smooth arc before landing exactly where I wanted it to. I allowed myself a small prayer that the rocks wouldn't mitigate the shrapnel too much before it detonated.

"Three KIA," Grass reported.

"Four," Longworth added after a single shot.

"Snark, what the hell was that?" I asked.

"I can't see them," he excused. "Sir, they came out of nowhere."

"That's the fucking problem, Sergeant," I told him. "Shit."

"Eyes open for the leader," Pavel said. "Sasha?"

"I'm set up," Dotsenko called back. "No movement."

"Hold your position," I ordered. "Caboose, move up with Lady."

We had to be more careful now. There was bound to be at least some brutes around. We moved past the carcasses of the dead aliens, all of them bleeding heavily from countless shrapnel wounds. One of the jackals had a nice little round hole in its neck in addition to some other wounds on its leg.

"Hear that?" Lady asked suddenly.

A brute jumped from behind a large boulder and slammed her against the ground before swatting Caboose's shotgun aside. I aimed and fired a burst, but the brute positioned itself in between my man and me, negating my ability to provide support. Caboose backpedaled, drawing his sidearm with his right hand and getting his carbine up with his left. The brute covered its face and received several gunshot wounds to the arms before jumping backwards and climbing out of sight. A single shot rang out as Snark fired.

"That's a hit," he said.

"Grass, confirm that," I ordered. "Someone check on Lady."

"I'm fine," she coughed from her position. "He just surprised me, that's all."

"Looks like she's telling the truth," Caboose said, before hopping towards his shotgun.

"So was Snark," Grass called out. "KIA."

"Snark, what's your distance?" I asked.

"Rangefinder has me at one-point-one clicks from you."

"Ok, move up," I ordered. "I don't want you at more than one kilometer from me at any given time, roger that?"

"Roger that, sir."

We soldiered on. Not to say that we found ourselves in a bad condition mind you. Other than some minor pain from Pavel's scars and bruising on Lady's back, we were pretty well off. The brute's ambush had scared us though, and we were moving as carefully as we could without slowing down to a total crawl. I wondered if the armored transports would be moved in by Pelican or if there was a viable descent through the slope. I didn't think a Scorpion would have much trouble climbing down this pile of rocks, but sometimes it's better to take the safe road and not risk blowing your transmission.

"I'm seeing a small enemy patrol," Longworth said. "Two hundred meters, brute, two jackals and three grunts."

" You and Miranda take out the brute," I ordered. "I'll handle one of the jackals. Lady?"

"I can take the other one," she assured me.

"And Dotsenko will handle the grunts," I finished. "See them?"

"Positive on that one."

"Good," I said. "Miranda, we fire on your word."

"Three, two, one, mark."

Longworth and Miranda fired simultaneously, with Lady and I letting out bursts just a second later. The brute's head popped open and the two jackals were dead before anyone knew what was happening. The grunts jumped in fright and began running for cover, but Dotsenko cut them off with a sustained burst. We took the patrol out in less than five seconds. Not bad at all.

I wondered if that would've been possible with a squad of regular Marines. Not that they weren't good fighters, but they weren't nearly as accurate as a Helljumper had to be.

"Move up," I ordered. "Wall is less than two kilometers away."

There were no further engagements until we were within a football field's worth of distance away from the wall. The wall was very tall indeed. I aimed through my scope and scouted out the terrain. The Covenant had set up some minor defenses and didn't seem to be in the best of moods. Several jackals were up in a guard tower arguing amongst themselves while one of them made a show of aiming in our general direction.

"Snark, keep an eye on them," I ordered.

"Yes, sir."

The rest of the covvies were clustered around what could only be described as an entrance. It was several meters tall and wide enough to fit two tanks.

"Grass, contact Command," I ordered. "Tell them that there are around seventy hostiles."

"We can pin them inside the gate with some luck," Pavel said. "Throw some grenades in and we're good."

"Yeah, but we need to block them from running past the gate," I said. "Those pillars give them some limited cover."

"Agreed," he admitted. "So?"

"We're going to have to wait this one out," I said. "Unless we get fired upon, that is."

"Frank," Grass said. "There's an ODST unit about four hundred meters to our left. They are within sight of the gate."

"Excellent," I said. "Establish contact with them."

"Roger that."

It took two tries, but we got through to them. "ODST unit, this AAG-7, do you copy?" Grass asked.

"AAG-7, this is Prophet 1-3," the unit leader replied. "Over."

"Patch me through," I told Grass. "1-3, you're within sight of the gates, are you?"

"Affirmative."

"My men are in position to take out the jackals on the tower and drive them towards your position. Think you can do some ambushing? Push them into the gate and then finish them off."

"Um, roger that. Hold up for three."

I waited the three minutes before contacting them again.

"Prophet 1-3, do you copy?"

"We copy, AAG-7."

The squad leader then went on to give me a modified version of the plan, to which I responded with another few modifications. Once we agreed on the plan he told me to wait for his word as his men moved to better positions and that we could initiate once Prophet 1-3 was ready for action. Six minutes after initial contact between our two units we were ready to initiate the ambush. The odds weren't good on paper, but nobody messes with the Helljumpers.

"We fire on your mark, Snark," I said.

"Mark," he replied.

His shot took out no less than three jackals. I had no doubt he had been hoping that something similar happened, but to have the targets align themselves so perfectly was very fortunate indeed. Miranda finished off the other bird standing in the watchtower as Longworth and I opened fire on a brute captain. The alien received what one could refer to as a fistful of lead. Technically it wasn't lead, more like depleted uranium, but the fistful was probably an accurate measurement of the slugs it took. As the brute fell backwards, half its face missing, Pavel and Dotsenko opened fire. They made sure to target grunts and jackals close to the edge exclusively. That sent the rest of the enemy unit running towards the gate and in the direction of Prophet 1-3.

My whole squad was now firing at the enemy infantry. The few that were lucky enough to make it to cover tried to return fire, but there wasn't nearly enough cover for all covvies to be safe. We must've killed twenty of them in the first minute of the firefight before driving them towards the gates. The ambush went without a hitch, as several dozen of the aliens kept on running past the gates in order to avoid being pinned down. A lot of them took cover behind the two pillars and the occasional boulder, firing on our position. We returned fire diligently, making sure that they exposed their backs to Prophet 1-3.

About fifteen seconds later they struck. The poor aliens were hit from the side by incredibly accurate fire. By that point they had very little good cover and Snark made sure to exploit that. Brutes began dropping like flies as my sniper made sure to spend his ammunition as efficiently as possible. Within seven minutes we had killed all the Covenant soldiers that weren't inside the gates. There were about twenty or so of them still alive inside, but they weren't about to move outside.

"We're relocating for a better angle," Prophet 1-3 informed me.

"Same," I replied.

Once we were both happy with our positions we began firing at the gates. The bullets went in and killed the aliens. It was incredibly simple. There was no cover inside other than the bodies of their comrades, and those were soft enough. Pavel and Dotsenko did most of the heavy lifting on our part, but Miri and Longworth occasionally joined with a shot or two. Prophet 1-3 had a little less firepower than we did, but they had a slightly better angle. After a minute of nearly continuous firing we stopped.

"We're moving to clear," I said. "Cover us."

"Copy that."

Most of my squad moved forward, leaving Snark behind. I sent Caboose and Grass to the other side of the gate and waited for them to circle around behind cover and to get to their position. As soon as they gave me a nod I slapped Lady on the shoulder. She and Crow tossed grenades deep into the hallway and moved in to clear it. Caboose and Grass joined them and finally I followed, leaving Longworth and Miri to guard the entrance. The place was covered with blood, flesh, brains, and bullet holes. The poor aliens had tried to move as far back as possible to no avail. I even had a hard time walking over all the corpses. In the end it seemed like not a single alien had survived their encounter with us.

"Clear," I finally said. "Snark, take that platform. Grass, call it in."

I moved further into the hallway, examining the angular walls with interest. It was a very unusual design, but for some reason it struck me as closer to human's taste than Covenant's. Perhaps it was all the hard angles and flat surfaces. Perhaps it was the carpet of dead Covenant corpses.

"Door," Caboose pointed out. "I suggest waiting."

"I'm not going to open it," I told him.

He shrugged.

We moved towards the door, having to toss back a few grunt corpses in order to be able to stand in front of it. It was wide and tall, easily big enough to let those Scorpion tanks I was talking about past. There was a small circle to the right of the doors with what appeared to be a hologram over it.

I approached it and tapped it.

"Huh," I muttered.

"What?" Caboose asked.

"It's solid."

Suddenly sensors were going all over my body and Caboose raised his shotgun, trying to find their source.

"They're coming out of the walls," he said.

"Stand down," I ordered, stepping back from the door.

"Frank, what's wrong?" Pavel asked.

"Nothing," I assured him. "Stand down."

I felt highly exposed as I was scanned multiple times by the sensors until finally the small circle with the hologram on top lit up and became a straight line. It began emitting a noise, pulsating as it did.

"What's going on?" I asked.

"Beats me," Caboose said. "Sounds like a language though," he said.

"Grass?"

She approached slowly and carefully. "It does sound like a language."

"Is it trying to communicate?"

"You probably just activated some sort of subroutine or something similar," Grass said.

"And it's still working after all these years?" I asked. "That's some pretty good proofing."

She shrugged.

"What now?" Caboose asked.

"Greetings, Reclaimer."

_What. The. Hell._

"Who is it talking to?" I asked.

"The breach in containment merits an immediate activation of this installation," the hologram went on.

"It doesn't seem like an AI," Grass noted. "More like a computer program."

"Yeah," I agreed.

"The absence of a monitor to guide you through-"

"Stand back Lieutenant!"

I turned around to see Johnson striding towards my position, a squad of Marines flanking him.

"When did you get here?" I asked him.

"Very recently," he said. "Stand away from the door."

I looked at him before complying. Johnson then had everyone evacuate the hallway that led to the door and form a perimeter. Several Pelicans had already landed and a sizeable number of our troops were beginning to get ready to breach the doors. I couldn't help but notice that the Master Chief wasn't here with us.

"Where's the Chief?" I asked.

"He has more important matters to attend to," Johnson told me, waving over a pair of Scorpion tanks. "Care to explain what you were doing?"

"Clearing the entrance so that you jarheads wouldn't chip your nails while doing it," I replied. "Want to tell me what the hell this place is?"

He looked at me and paused. Johnson took a deep breath before shaking his head. "Sorry son, it's classified."

"If whatever's classified kills my men…"

"Captain's orders, she'll make the call."

I shook my head and simply moved towards my squad as the rest of the _In Amber Clad's_ contingent spread out and formed up respectively. Johnson was obviously in command despite his rank. He made sure that four Warthogs formed up in tight formation next to one another and moved them into the hallway. One there he had two Scorpions get in line behind them and began barking orders for the Marines to be ready in his perpetual theatricality.

"What happened in there?" Pavel asked me.

"A hologram popped up," I told him. "Called me reclaimer and asked that I help with something."

"What?"

"Not sure, it said something about a breach in containment."

"What the hell does that mean?" Pavel asked, sighing.

"I don't know. Odds are it's referring to the Covenant or even to us."

"Mh-hm," Pavel muttered, not completely assured.

"Don't over think it," I said. "Let's rest up some; we have a few minutes before we go through."

My men and I sat down near the edge of the rocky slope, watching as the UNSC forces began preparing for an assault through the gate. I don't know why Johnson was being so nitpicky about this, everything seemed to indicate that there was no Covenant presence through the walls, especially if you considered that they hadn't been able to open the doors at all. I observed as the men checked and rechecked their weapons. A few Pelicans flew sorties to recover the various ammunition ground drones that had been abandoned at the top of the slope and deposited them here, where the teams that had participated in combat replenished their ammunition.

I started feeling rather worried about concentrating all of our available ground forces so close to one another. Granted, we were setting up a relatively defensible perimeter and there were a few Pelicans running recon missions around the surroundings, but the bulk of our forces could be taken out with a decent-sized airstrike.

"Why do you think they want that building so bad?" Crow asked.

"Have you seen it?" Longworth replied. "It's a veritable fortress. Once we're in there we're set for life."

"Until we run out of food, honey," Lady said, petting his head.

"If push comes to shove, I'll eat you."

"I'm sure you wouldn't have any idea what to do," she replied, prompting me to raise an eyebrow.

"Ouch," Crow said, slapping Longworth's shoulders hard.

"Replenish your ammo," I ordered, not wanting them to get a little bit too comfortable with their surroundings.

"What do you think is waiting for us in there?" Crow asked Longworth.

"The full might of an ancient empire," the man replied. "Who locked themselves away due to misguided religious extremism and now seek to destroy anybody who is not them."

"So. The Covenant?" Crow replied, shooting a glance sideways.

"I admit my originality is a little bit lacking."

"Is that why Lady says you're bad in bed?" Snark asked him, sliding a large bullet into a magazine for his SRS.

Longworth shook his head. "I gave her the bad treatment, finished and left. She's a little bit hurt by that."

"If I ever decided to let you look at me naked you'd cream your pants before you could finish pulling your pants down," Lady calmly assured him.

"Not with that ass you don't," Grass said, leaning back and slapping Lady's rear. "The size is okay, but the definition is a little bit lacking."

"You would know, wouldn't you?" Pavel laughed, giving Grass a playful squeeze in the butt.

"My, my. What would your wife think?" Grass immediately realized that it had been the wrong thing to say. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to-"

"It's alright," Pavel said. "She's alive. So is my daughter for that matter."

We went from joking to silent in a matter of seconds. The only sound you could hear was that of bullets going into magazines as my men replenished the magazines that they hadn't completely finished. The rest of the Marine complement was ready for action and prepared to go through the gates. Johnson was finishing preparations, shouting angrily at some Marines that weren't digging fast enough.

It seemed like we'd leave one of the tanks in here, nicely dug in. A tank and presumably a small squad would be left behind, covering our rear. It was the perfect defensive position, but only as long as they could fall back into the hallway and through the gates. If the Covenant managed to make it through the gates then they'd have a tank there to welcome them. Or it could just be a bloodbath. A squad of Marines was still moving Covenant corpses out of the ways.

"Should we make some warning signs?" Caboose asked me.

"I'll leave that to Johnson's judgment," I replied, although the idea of putting some Covenant corpses on sticks seemed appealing. "Doesn't seem like we'll need them though."

Johnson barked orders. "Set that missile pod over there! I want the missiles inside the hallway, outside of air strike range." He turned and looked at my squad as he walked, letting out a low growl. "Every Warthog that is not assigned to defend the wall will go through the wall with us! Once we have… Alright, listen up! Aerial reconnaissance shows what can only be described as another wall inside this big-ass hula hoop. Why on Earth they'd need two walls is beyond me, but the people that built this place don't strike me as overly grandiose for no reason do they?"  
>I couldn't tell if he was trying to be ironic or not. Building an artificial construct of this size and in this shape was practically the definition of grandiose. Apparently a few Marines thought the same way I did, because they let out a few chuckles.<p>

"Now in my own limited experience," he went on. "Walls are used for two things: to keep people out, or to keep them in. We're hoping for the best here, but then again, you sissies could use a schooling."

With that he hopped down from the Scorpion he had been standing on and retreated away from the group in order to talk to someone on his comm. He seemed to be very close to Keyes, or at least close enough that he would be allowed to take command of this whole operation. Wait a moment, why the hell was a sergeant major in charge of commanding a battalion? I knew for a fact we had a major here.

"Why is Johnson in charge?" I asked Pavel.

"Beats me. Special forces experience?"

"Not to disparage the man," I started, "but more than us?"

"That does strike me as unlikely," he admitted, "but not impossible."

"When was the last time my experience put me in command?"

"To be fair Frank, platoons defer to your better judgment often."

I rolled my eyes at him. "When was the last time a whole battalion of Marines turned to me for leadership in a situation that didn't involve constant shooting?"

"Never."

"That's right," I said. "Want to come here?"

"What are you gonna do?" he asked.

"Nothing."

"Something wrong?" Grass asked.

I shook my head. "Stay here."

"What are you gonna do?" Pavel repeated.

"Low-level soldiers are put in command of large units when they have vital knowledge. Never because of more experience or superior skills. Johnson knows something."

"I wouldn't want to push it, Frank."

"I'll just ask one question."

"Sure."

Johnson had just finished his conversation with whoever was on the other end of the line. Impeccable timing on my part.

"Sarge," I began. "Care to tell us what's on the other side of that wall?"

"Son, now what the hell kind of-"

I knew that the man wasn't one to back off easily, but upon seeing the look I gave him he slowed down and sighed. "I don't know El-tee. I just don't know."

"But you're worried about something."

"I'm always worried about something. A life of serving in the Corps doesn't leave a man unscathed."

"You know what I mean Sarge. Marine to Marine."

"I don't know what is in there," he reasserted. "And in all likelihood all we'll find is a robot or maybe two."

I frowned slightly. "Is there something _you're_ worried about?"

"Yes. I'm always worried Lieutenant, but I never let that get in the way of doing my job."

"Subtle," I noted. "What do you want me to do?"

"Your unit is the most combat experienced unit in this whole circlet with the exception of the Chief and myself. The ODSTs here are tough as nails and then some, but I'd put you on point any day."

It felt like my dad was telling me he was proud of me.

"Thanks."

"Don't mention it," he said. "I want your squad to take recon positions in the front. I'm not willing to risk this one."

"Anything we should know?" I pressed him.

"Terrain is crap. Jagged and the occasional structure. Shield distorts optics and sensors, but that's as far as we've got."

"Movement?"

"Not that we can see."

"Should be a cakewalk, right?"

"Right," he replied.

I jerked my head back towards our squad and Pavel took off.

"Ten minutes," Johnson told me. "Everyone listen up! Ten minutes! Spread the word!"

Ten minutes.

* * *

><p>The gates rumbled to life. Or at least that's what I imagined would happen. They slid open with a barely audible hiss. Two of the Warthogs rolled forward and then spread to the sides. The following two kept going straight, only stopping after they went thirty meters. The two Scorpions rolled forward and spread out some, leaving some room for us regular infantry grunts to spread out. A Marine threw up a short range drone and the little robot disappeared, using passive sonar as well as an array of sensors to map the area. My HUD was immediately updated with the geography of this area and we began moving.<p>

"Alright, we're in for a slow crawl," Johnson's voice came through the battalion's comm. channel. "If someone wants to fight without a tank feel free to shoot yourself in the head, everyone else, protect the Scorpions at all costs. Recon teams, fan out."

"That's us," I informed my men. "Let's go!"

Four ODST teams would be taking point with two more on standby. Us and Prophet 1-3 were in the middle, with Prophet 1-1 to our left and Boxer 1-3 to the far right. For backup we had Boxer 1-2 and Prophet 1-2 standing ready with an additional load of M247H machine guns and a Warthog. It was a good configuration, but the more we moved forward the more spread out we would be. I assumed that Boxer 1-2 and Prophet 1-2 would fall in with us and additional units would provide backup as our line extended. It was all pretty standard, but we had enough troops and Warthogs for the distance involved. We would be travelling in the shape of an amorphous blob that was front-heavy. Sure, they liked to draw it like a nice arrow-shaped formation or sometimes an oval in officer school, but you couldn't have people marching in perfect order in a combat zone.

"I don't like the terrain at all," Pavel muttered.

"Neither do I," Snark agreed, glancing around at the labyrinth-like rock formations. "My rifle is useless here."

"Switch it out," I said. "There were a couple of EMRs back in the drones."

Snark seemed to consider it, but in the end he just shouldered his rifle, South African style with the barrel facing up, and drew his M7 SMG, extending the stock. He had gotten hold of a few good attachments, making it as similar to the SOCOM version that most ODST units favored. He had thrown in an extended barrel with picatinny rails and then thrown in a small flashlight and a laser pointer. Instead of a red dot he had slapped a short-range telescopic sight for it. It looked like a bigger, badder version of your usual SMG. Cool shit, if you ask me.

"Ready?" I asked my men. The rest of the scout teams were already moving forward.

I got a series of nods.

"Let's go," I ordered. "Miranda, take point."

She jogged forward and we began moving. The terrain was too complicated to be fully natural. Cliffs, crags, tunnels, arches, and other geological features. Nothing too tall mind you, but a hundred foot fall could kill you just as effectively as a bigger one. Fortunately, the labyrinth in question seemed to consist of a fairly straightforward road. The geology was just an obstacle that made you twist and turn as much as possible.

For a moment I felt like smiling. This was obviously an artificial feature, and if someone had put it here then it was for defensive purposes. If you wanted to keep something in you would make sure that the surface was as flat as humanly possible in order to discourage any rushing. If someone wanted to defend this place, they would've engaged us already.

We stayed in a relatively tight formation, not as close to one another as we would've stayed on a building, but closer than usual. The architecture of this place wasn't exactly something that I enjoyed, there were way too many blind points in front of us and we had to keep our eyes up at all times. Miranda was jerking the tip of her rifle around so much I thought she was going to pull a muscle.

"Down!" she urged.

I raised my fist and took a knee.

"I've got movement, it's not Covenant."

I slowly approached, making myself walk as slow as possible. Miri was standing behind cover, with only half her face peeking out at whatever she had seen. She looked at me and waited for me to get to her position before she started talking.

"It's near our nine," she said.

We switched spots and I prepared to pop out. Once I did I saw that the area ahead was relatively open, with the labyrinth-like formations briefly disappearing in order to make what I could only call a clearing. I immediately spotted the movement. It was a drone, but it wasn't one of ours. It didn't take long to see that it wasn't a Covenant drone either, its design was incredibly similar to the architecture of the Library. Angular and with a glowing eye in the middle. It seemed that the thing wasn't in the best condition, because it was strafing side to side and moving a little bit erratically over the same area, but the fact that it was functioning proved to be a bit discouraging.

I took cover just as it began turning towards me.

"Shit," I said. "This is the last thing we need."

"What is it?" Pavel asked.

"A drone. Robot kind. It's not one of ours."

"What?" Grass asked. My men began murmuring amongst themselves. "Is it weaponized?"

"Not sure, design is a little bit aggressive, so I wouldn't be surprised."

"What do we do now?" Crow asked.

"We move up," I said. "I want Snark to keep his rifle trained on it. If it moves to attack we shoot it."

The murmuring stopped and my men began approaching.

I popped my head from cover to look at it again and all but shat my pants when I saw the drone an inch from my face. I remained motionless, but gripped my rifle tighter.

"What is it?" Miri asked.

"It's right on my face," I replied.

The drone hummed slightly and I made sure to keep my helmet camera trained on it in order to get some good footage of its design. I myself didn't have a lot of time to examine it. I knew that I was being scanned by the machine. After a few seconds it beeped. The eye in the middle displayed some sort of sign, a circle with a handle at the bottom and two arm-like parts that made another, smaller circle, getting thinner as they went higher. The symbol stayed there as the drone emitted a few sounds in an unrecognizable language and hovered off.

"Johnson, come in."

"Lieutenant?" he replied almost immediately.

"We came across alien drone constructs," I said. "Construct. One."

"Hostile?"

"Negative. It scanned me and tried to communicate before leaving."

"Huh… let me know if anything changes. Don't let your guard down, if there are more they might still attack you."

"Let's hope not," I replied.

"Lieutenant, scans indicate open ground two hundred meters from your position. I want you and the lead scout teams to hold position there, let the tanks catch up."

"Copy that." I turned to my men. "Let's move. Snark, keep your gun trained on that thing. I don't want it suddenly deciding it doesn't like us all that much."

We moved through the clearing as a group. The drone hovered and didn't do much. It didn't even bother to turn and look at us, but I did feel safer once we had left it behind. I couldn't help but get a feeling of… creepiness from the drone. There were two, no three, possible explanations for it. One was that the thing was a few hundred thousand years old give or take, another one was that there was an automated facility that produced them, presumably to take care of the whole ring and make it self-sufficient. The last one unnerved me. It had been built by someone and there was a new faction about to enter the fray.

My job wasn't to think. Not this much. I couldn't even afford a small distraction.

As we moved forward we began spotting some other things. Not other drones, but what appeared to be terminals or platforms. At one point we were walking over a metallic grey floor instead of rock. This place was weird, mixing constructed parts with the weird geological formations. The fact that we came across more artificial stuff made me a bit nervous. Never mind the fact that the whole ring was artificial.

"I feel like somebody should be home," Crow said.

"Agreed," Lady muttered. "Why build this thing and then abandon it?"

"Who says they abandoned it," Grass said. "Maybe they were forced out."

"Maybe they never left," Pavel growled.

None of those two options made me happy.

"All we need to know is that if anything shoots at us we'll kill the shit out of it," I said to reassure my men. "We've got a hundred meters to go."

That was easy for me to say, the road there was weaving and twisting throughout the rocks. Sometimes we were underground and sometimes we were above it, but for the most part we had two solid wall of rock on either side of us. I jumped a little bit when I heard a hail of gunfire accompanied by more unfamiliar sounds coming from our left.

"Prophet 1-1," I radioed in. "Do you copy?"

The gunfire went on for a little longer before finally stopping.

"Prophet 1-1 here," I heard, allowing me a sigh of relief. "Sarge, we were attacked by those drones."

"Copy," Johnson said, jumping in the conversation. "Hear that, Lieutenant? They're hostiles."

"Understood. Should we fire on sight?"

Johnson hesitated.

"It burned a hole right through Skinner," the leader of Prophet 1-1 said.

"Attack on sight," Johnson finally said. "If those things are trying to kill us, then we're going to show them how the Corps treat upjumped robots."

"Copy that," I said. "You hear that, men? Those drones are hostiles."

"Should I take that one out?" Snark asked, jerking his head at the direction we had come from.

"Not yet," I said. "I still want you expecting an attack from it."

That being said we began moving forward once again. With a defined target and parameters for unknowns I felt a little bit better. If I shot down a drone and started an intergalactic war with yet another hostile alien race I could just blame it on Johnson for having given me the order to do that. That was the beauty of the chain of command, even if technically speaking I was supposed to hand orders to him.

"What's the plan for taking those out?" Grass asked me.

"We shoot them until they come down. According to Prophet 1-1 they have heat based weapons, plasma or lasers. Standard procedures should apply I think. Just picture the drones as… well, drones."

"I'd rather be facing down the bugs," Longworth said. "At least those are familiar."

"And loud," Lady added. "You can usually tell where they are."

They had a point, but we hadn't yet come across anything else that was of interest. It was beginning to become a bit unnerving, if only because I had worked myself into expecting anything and everything to jump out of the corner. In truth, I was slightly relieved that we wouldn't be forced to engage any enemy forces right away, but my body was pumped full of adrenaline and the situation was a bit confusing physiologically speaking.

"Thirty meters," Miri said. "Looks like pretty much a straight line."

We had been thirty meters away from our target several times, but the weaving and twisting that we had to do made the progress a lot slower.

"Set up shop," I ordered her.

"Yes, sir."

It took us just a little bit longer to catch up with her, but once we were there we saw that the ground became less of an insult. It was still rocky, but it seemed like it sloped downwards for a good portion before it stopped at a second, smaller wall. The wall was pretty far away, highlighting just how large the building itself actually was. At a distance of around five kilometers we could cross it relatively quickly if we had vehicles, but the flatter land didn't mean prime vehicle terrain, there were still some outcrops and what appeared to be abandoned buildings littered over the landscape.

"Hold the position," I ordered. "Wait for reinforcements. Johnson, AAG-7 is in position."

"Roger that, hold."

I confirmed the order and moved a bit back before sitting down in a rock. I placed Snark and Miri at the front in case anything charged us and let Caboose and Lady guard our rear. The rest of us basically milled about and sat down. Grass and Pavel came up to me and remained standing.

"Weird stuff," Pavel noted.

"Amen," Grass said.

"You can't say amen," I told her. "I thought you were an atheist."

"I am."

"You shall burn in hell," I said.

Pavel shook his head, smiling. Grass just chuckled.

"Since when are you religious?" she asked.

I smiled. "Oh, you know me. Hardcore fanatic. Catholic."

The topic of God wasn't one that came up very often. I had been raised to believe in Him and truth be told, I did believe, but at the same time I didn't exactly think God was much of a person. At least not a very nice one. Why concern myself with something I can't control, right?

"Don't go ragging on Catholics," Pavel warned Grass. "Poland is full of those."

"What would they say if they saw this?" she wondered.

"What would anybody say?" I asked her. "Look at this thing."

A fucking ring. Halo.

"Space is weird," Grass finally muttered with a sigh. "And big."

"Just think about all the things that we could be missing," Pavel said.

"Did you know that this whole war has only taken place in the Orion Arm of the Milky Way?" Grass said, giving us some useless trivia.

"A lot of space out there," I said. "We should look for other potential allies or something."

"The last thing we need is more ugly fuckers trying to kill us," Pavel told me. "We're doing bad enough as it is."

We were silent for a few seconds.

"Why do you think they built this?" I asked.

"Habitation," Grass said. "Ring shape is usually the best one for this kind of thing or so I hear."

"Why not just grab a planet?" Pavel asked.

"Too boring, maybe? We'll never know."

Just as I was about to say something I saw the channel that linked Boxer 1-3 and us open up before going silent. Things like that weren't unusual, false alarms or simply not paying attention would have that happen. Like a pocket dial if you will. It happened all the time, nothing to be alarmed by. Standard protocol dictated that you should contact the unit/person, but nobody ever did that. Why? Because you'd just get a mildly annoyed reply telling you that nothing was wrong. If a guy opened a channel and was killed before he could utter a single syllable, then you could start crapping your pants.

I smiled. My own men routinely did that to Covenant units.

"What's in the Library, again?" Pavel asked.

"Beats me," Grass admitted.

"Books?" I suggested.

"Information," Pavel furthered. "Information about his place. Damn, that could be pretty useful in the war effort."

"True," I agreed. "If we have even a little bit of information that could help us get some good tech…"

"Like what?" I asked.

"Laser blasters?" he replied with a shrug.

"Did you know that laser blasts as commonly depicted in media cannot be actual lasers? They are represented as visible light traveling below light speed, which would make them something like ionized plasma."

"Covenant plasma?" I asked.

"No, the real kind."

The physics of plasma were complicated; the physics of the thing Covenant used in their weapons that we happened to call plasma were even more complicated. It had been impossible to replicate or reverse-engineer even their plasma pistols. In thirty years we hadn't been able to do just that. It didn't speak volumes about our scientists, but then again, we had created so many other wonderful things.

"Sir, I'm seeing some sort of movement," Snark said. "Uhhh…"

"What?"

"It looks like the ground is moving in some places. Very hard to catch," Miranda said.

I growled a little bit. That was the last thing we needed.

"Distance?" I asked.

"Around 800 meters last time I checked," Snark said.

"Longworth, help them out," I ordered. "Everybody ready for contact."

I got another pocket dial, this time from Prophet 1-3 to our direct right. That wouldn't have been weird, even with the recent one by Boxer 1-3, but the movement talk unnerved me. I waited a few seconds for the channel to close and then attempted to contact them, getting no reply. My heart started beating just a little bit faster.

"Prophet 1-1," I contacted the unit to our left. "Do you copy?"

"That's correct," the leader replied, slightly irritated. "What is it?"

"Hold on." I switched channels. "Boxer 1-3, Boxer 1-3, this is AAG-7. Do you copy?"

Silence.

"Boxer 1-3, come in."

Silence.

"Prophet 1-1, can you contact them?" I asked.

"Negative," the man replied, sounding concerned. "I didn't hear gunfire."

"Same here."

"Prophet 1-2, move up and make contact with Prophet 1-3 and Boxer 1-3," the leader of Prophet 1-1 said.

Silence.

"Prophet 1-2," I began, contacting the backup squad. I got silence from them. My hairs stood on edge. Their silence meant that the whole sector to our right was dark. That made sense if we were being ambushed or attacked from that direction. "Prophet 1-2?"

"Shit," Prophet 1-1 said. "Boxer 1-2?" he asked, contacting the other backup unit.

"Oi, whatsup?" we got the reply. "Need an assist?"

"Eyes open," I warned them. "Very open."

"I'm seeing some more movement, sir," Snark said. "It looks like life forms, but they're moving from cover to cover."

"They know our position," Miri said ominously. "They're hiding from us."

"Johnson, do you copy?"

"Copy, Lieutenant. Getting impatient?"

"Negative Sarge, we lost contact with Boxer 1-3, Prophet 1-3, and Prophet 1-2."

"All of them?" he asked after a slight pause. The fact that he asked me to repeat myself showed just how shocked he was.

"All of them."

"Shit, I'm sending up Warthogs and getting a Scorpion to move up. Eyes open El-tee."

"Yeah. We're seeing some movement of sorts," I said. "Can't define it yet."

"What about Prophet 1-1?" he asked.

"We don't see anything," they replied. "Quiet."

"Boxer 1-2, move to the right, make contact with them," Johnson ordered. "Double time it, Helljumpers!"

"Oorah, Sarge!"

All this unit designations were throwing me off a little and I would've gotten confused if not for the helpful arrows with unit names next to them. Those little arrows in my HUD map unnerved me too, they showed that none of the three units that we couldn't talk to had moved from their last position.

Until a moment after Johnson gave that last order.

"They're moving," I said. "Prophet 1-3, 1-2, do you copy?" I asked. "Boxer 1-3…"

I realized that their unit arrows were moving in a straight line through the rough terrain. They'd move fast and then stop, fast and then stop.

"Are they fucking flying or something?" Pavel asked. "Fast climbers."

"Must be a glitch," Grass said.

"Movement!" Snark shouted, firing his rifle.

"What the hell is that?" Miri asked loudly, echoing Snark's choice to open up. "There's a ton of them!"

Longworth joined them soon after and seconds later Dotsenko was firing full auto at something that I couldn't see. I kept my eye on the three units that we had lost contact with, they were coming our way and they were moving fast. Something told me to prepare for a fight and I raised my rifle lightly.

"What are we doing?" Pavel asked for orders.

"Lady, Caboose, get over here," I ordered. "Eyes on those friendlies."

"Sir?" Lady asked.

A creepy shriek rang throughout the area. It was disturbing, being both high-pitched and roar-like at the same time. However, what disturbed me the most was that it sounded right on the edge of being human.

The missing units had all converged on the other side of a short cliff to our right. They were about twenty meters away, separated by solid rock. I started sweating and even as the gunfire intensified and my men fought off that unknown enemy I tuned them out. The shriek came again, rattling me to my bones and making Pavel and Lady take a step back. Grass' knees shook a little bit and even Caboose gripped his weapon tightly, making his gloves groan. More sources added to the loud shriek, some higher pitched and some sounding like roars.

Then the three units jumped. I knew that they jumped because as soon as they began approaching I looked up and saw them over the short cliff, coming down at us like demons straight out of heaven.

* * *

><p><em>Thanks to <strong>Colonel-Commissar2468 <strong>and **General TheDyingTitan** for proofreading this chapter._

_ There were only a couple of review questions, questions that I can't answer for plot reasons. Other than that thanks to the ten reviewers for letting me know what they thought to the other guys that didn't review, thanks for reading nonetheless, seeing the hits in my story is also a pretty good feeling._

_Well, we've come to the good part of Delta Halo. You may remember that this is the part where you're playing as the Arbiter and if you're anything like me, some of the most challenging levels of the second game. It is the part where the UNSC is the enemy, the rival that you're trying to beat to the big prize. The Activation Index. What does that mean? It means that there is very little established canon for what happens in the Quarantine Zone, it means that I can mold that clay into an awesome piece of holy shit did that just happen or I can mold it into a boring piece of nothing. Which one do you think will happen? The next couple of chapters will be intense, I can promise you that. That little enemy that we all hate so much shows up and will be acquainted to Frank and Co. Who's going to end up regretting that? I think we all know._

_Other than that I certainly hope you enjoyed this chapter. Not a lot of combat but a lot of tension instead. I'm hesitant to make Johnson dialogue-heavy because I'm not sure I can appropriately portray him, I think I might've mentioned this in one of his earlier appearances._

_Stay strong._

_-casquis_


	218. Threesome

Chapter CCXVIII: Threesome

**November 2, 2552 (UNSC Calendar)/**

**Quarantine Zone, Delta Halo [orbiting Substance], Coelest System**

* * *

><p>"<em>Not exactly the first thing that comes to mind when I think threesome."– Sergeant Naveen "Snark" Avninder<em>

* * *

><p>It was human.<p>

That was my first thought. A fraction of a second passed and then I realized that I had been wrong. It _had_ been human. Sure, the head and limbs were all there, but not in the way they should've. Perhaps it took me a bit longer to realize that I wasn't facing something human because from the waist down it looked just how you would've expected a Helljumper to look. Boots and armor were all in relatively good shape, but once you got to the waist things started getting frightening.

The thing landed a meter away from me, letting me take a closer look. The armor had been partially covered by a growth that looked like both a tumor and a nasty keloid scar growth. The color wasn't right though, it was the color of rotting flesh. The right arm of the former Helljumper carried a battle rifle that hung almost all the way to the ground, the left arm had become a monstrosity that could best be described as a cross between a tentacle and a spider leg. They popped from the middle of the forearm, which was now encompassed by the same growth that covered the belly.

I ran my index finger through the fire selector of my rifle, switching to full automatic.

The thing that made my stomach lurch, however, was the torso and head. A massive tumor had pushed everything out, with the chest piece hanging near where the armpit had been and the rest of the armor ripped or completely covered by it. Three red tendrils as long as my forearm reached out, trying to grab me. The head wasn't where it should have been, it was back and to the right, hanging limply and swinging slowly from the impact of the landing. The ODST helmet's visor had been shattered and removed almost completely, allowing me to see a face that was nearly intact except for an expression of pure horror and eyes closed in fear. The back of the head seemed to be fused to the growth on the shoulder.

My first shots hit the rifle arm of the creature. Huge chunks of brown flesh were removed by the large bullets, but the creature didn't even flinch. I raised my rifle slowly, redirecting my fire from arm to shoulder to head. I cursed inwardly when I saw the face disappear in blossoming bullet wounds before a large chunk of gooey flesh slid down the front end of the helmet, landing in the floor. The creature paused for the briefest of instants before swiping at me with its tentacles. I barely had any time to react, stumbling backwards a bit and avoiding the brunt of the impact. I was spun on my feet three times before I fell down, my shoulder and arm hurting. My rifle flew somewhere in the confusion and as I landed on my ass I reached for my sidearm.

Johnson was screaming something into the general channel, issuing orders.

Caboose fired his shotgun, destroying the torso of one of the creatures and knocking it back several feet.

I raised my pistol and emptied the cartridge on the former Helljumper. Most of the bullets tore through it, exploding against the soft flesh. They slowed it down, but it wasn't until my last shot hit the tendrils that the entire body collapsed and fell to the ground, letting me breathe and reload my pistol. I spotted my rifle on the other end of the crag and began reaching for it.

"Get it off me, get it off me!" Longworth cried.

"Stay. Still!" Miri replied.

I saw a brown little thing move through the ground at prodigious speeds. My first thought was that it was visually similar to a potato, my second thought was the realization that it had the same red tendrils on the torso of the dead Helljumper. I watched with confusion and uncertainty as it moved into the body of the creature I had just killed. A second later the dead Helljumper was once again at its feet, turning towards me. This time it only took one shot to bring it down, but I got up and promptly set to work, viciously stomping the dead enemy's torso, letting my boots sink in all the way to the ankle on the soft flesh and making a huge mess of things.

"Center mass!" Johnson was yelling. "Fire center mass! Stay away from the little critters!"

"Fire at the chest!" I shouted, dashing for my rifle as Pavel reduced another former Helljumper into a pile of mush. "Hit the red tendrils!"

I grabbed my rifle and turned around. Grass had lost her rifle and was in the process of severing the claws of one of the creatures, hacking at it viciously while holding the thing by the chest. Her artificial hand dug into the growth easily and she began pushing harder. A second later she yanked her hand, a chunk of meat inside her fist. She punched the creature's tendrils, drawing a loud pop as the body collapsed. I turned my eyes to Caboose, who fired another shell at a creature. The blast removed its left arm, and a huge chunk of its shoulder, but it did not bring it down. A second blast fixed that.

Pavel turned to look at us and then moved around the corner to provide support to the second half of the squad. I jerked my head in his direction and the rest of my men followed. Lady seemed unnerved, but she had held off one of the creatures by herself, taking it out with the second half of her magazine before stomping its head in.

"Destroy the bodies!" I shouted. "They can be reanimated!"

On the corner of my eye I caught the rest of the IFF tags, now hostile, moving towards the bulk of our forces. I was about to give Johnson a warning when one of those potato things jumped to my head. I dropped my rifle and tried to grab it, but its tendrils gripped my helmet. I saw it trying to get through my visor and felt it digging into my neck, trying to get through my undersuit. I couldn't get it away from my face, but I started squeezing with both hands until it finally pop. The small explosion that followed sent me back to my ass and scratched my visor lightly. I grabbed my rifle and growled, wiping fluids form my visor.

I turned the corner to see Miranda punching a potato-creature from Snark's helmet before turning around and hitting another with a backswing. Snark fell to the floor, leaving Longworth to drag him back as he fired his DMR at a horde of small creatures, making them pop with each hit. Pavel and Dotsenko linked up, firing their automatic weapons at anything that moved. Two more of the human creatures jumped over the cliff, landing in our midst. I knew now where to target them, but they were both facing away from me. I settled for shooting at the one closest to me. My bursts hit its back and made a brown mess. Some bullets pinged off the leftover armor, but after a third burst it fell down in a heap.

"Friendly fire, shit Frank!" Pavel complained.

"Are you hit?" I asked as Grass and Lady neutralized the other hostile.

"Negative!" he shouted back angrily.

"Center mass!" I repeated loudly. "Center mass, red tendrils!"

Two more were brought down and the sea of smaller creatures receded as our automatic fire dwindled their numbers. They exploded which such violence and viciousness that they took out more of their number if they were close enough.

"Snark's hurt!" Miri shouted.

I was closest to him after Longworth, so I dashed towards him and knelt next to him.

"Cover me!" I ordered Longworth. I was trusting him with my life.

Snark was bleeding. I quickly turned him around to reveal a massive gash in the back of his neck. The undersuit had been ripped open and something had tried to dig into his neck. A portion of the spine was visible.

"Shit," I said.

"Is it bad?" he asked, fearful.

"Not too bad," I told him, reaching into my pouch and grabbing a can of biofoam. "Hold on."

He cried out in pain as the chemical began acting on the wound. I then reached for a bandage and used it to cover up the wound. Once that was done I turned Snark back around and shook his head slightly, trying to see how he responded to the pain.

"It hurts," he said.

"I need you on your feet."

"My rifle was going right through them," he told me. "No damage."

"Then don't use your rifle," I told him.

Snark seemed to be snapped out of his shock by that and nodded slowly, wincing at the injury in the back of his neck. He drew his submachine gun and slowly moved forward, firing at the receding tide of potato aliens.

I really needed a better name for them.

"Johnson, you've got hostiles headed your way!"

"No shit!" he shouted back. "Regroup with Prophet 1-1 and Boxer 1-2 and then rejoin forces with us. I'm sending the Warthogs and Scorpion to the following coordinates, they will assist you."

"Prophet 1-1, do you copy?" I asked.

"We copy, what the hell is going on?" the leader replied.

"Meet up with us. Shoot anything that moves. We have hostiles that look like UNSC forces, be wary."

"Frank, I'm working on switching the IFF tags to identify deceased UNSC personnel as hostiles," Grass told me, heaving.

"Get on that," I replied. "Boxer, are you there? Boxer 1-2!"

"Contact!" the sergeant was shouting. "El-tee, they're overwhelming us!"

"Fall back on our position Boxer 1-2! Fire center mass, hit the red tendrils."

"Red tendrils, red tendrils! Shoot them in the chest!"

My men were already running towards our rendezvous point with Prophet 1-1. Caboose cocked his shotgun and took position in the rear. Roars and shrieks rumbled through the rocks. The creatures didn't seem to want to die, but we had one key advantage. We could see the larger ones coming on our HUDs.

I half-carried Snark, making him go at a breakneck pace with his neck injury and all. He hissed and cursed with every step, but he didn't complain one bit. Pavel and Dotsenko were clearing the way, turning enemies into piles of mush as they fired their machine guns. I was frustrated at these new hostiles; they seemed to possess enough intelligence to make use of ambush tactics and were more durable than an unshielded brute if you didn't hit the sweet spot. My men were breathing heavily, but they weren't tired enough for that, they were scared. They were scared shitless and so was I.

"Watch out!"

A creature landed in front of Pavel. My friend didn't hesitate and opened up on it, jabbing the muzzle into its chest as he depressed the trigger. The explosions of flesh and fluids reduced the enemy to a pair of legs with a vaguely recognizable torso. Pavel stomped the creature three times for good measure.

"Zombies? Fucking zombies?"

There was no amusement in his voice.

"Keep moving!" I shouted.

We were going pretty fast, only slowing down from a sprint because Snark couldn't move that fast. Despite our progress the creatures were catching up. The little ones ran along the walls and the bigger ones jumped up. Thankfully we could usually tell where they were going to land by their IFF tags on our mini-maps. We were being constantly pestered and our ammunition reserves were being depleted at an impressive rate, but we were holding.

"Prophet 1-1 is up ahead!" Longworth shouted. "They're engaging hostiles!"

"Prophet 1-1, we're coming up your three," I warned. "Do not engage!"

"Copy that! Hurry!"

Our units linked up and soon enough our firepower was doubled. I barked instructions as fast and loud as I could, getting the other squad up to speed. While I did that we began moving towards Boxer 1-3, making sure to have a wide field of fire and our sides completely covered. Luckily, two of their number had shotguns, which greatly increased our defensive capacities. Our only casualty came from an unlucky member of the friendly squad. The man cried out and fell to the ground. Before anybody could reach him tentacles grabbed and dragged him behind a boulder, where he screamed and called for help before suddenly going quiet as his vitals went blank.

"Keep moving," I said.

"They're falling back," Pavel muttered.

"They're regrouping," I told him. "Let's do the same."

We moved fast. Boxer 1-3 was still active, but they had suffered heavily. They had been engaged from three different directions and had barely managed to hold off the enemy. They had lost five of their men, leaving only three survivors, two of which were wounded. The leader was now a lance corporal holding a smoking shotgun and leaning against a rock. The two others had a mangled arm and bullet wounds on the leg respectively. Not good for us.

"They were everywhere," the lance corporal said simply. "We couldn't kill them."

"They're tough," I admitted. "But they're as killable as anything else. You understand that?"

He nodded.

"You understand that?" I repeated, loudly.

"Yes, sir."

"Same goes for the rest of you!" I shouted, trying to instill the confidence I was lacking into my men.

"Oorah!"

"Damn right!" I agreed. "We've got two 'Hogs and a Scorpion tank inbound. Let's meet up with them and clear these fucking zombies out of the way."

The silence was overwhelming. Or it would've been, if the bulk of our forces hadn't been engaged in a desperate battle for survival. The gunfire coming from their direction was truly something that would damage your hearing. I growled to myself, but the noise that they were making meant that they still had the numbers and coordination to provide firepower that impressed me.

"Vehicles close by!" someone shouted.

The three vehicles turned the corner. I smiled as I saw the promised Scorpion tank. The two Warthogs did a u-turn and waited for us to enter their midst. Before we could join them, however, one of those zombies tackled a Marine from the turret and pummeled him in the ground. Blood flew everywhere before Longworth took the creature down with three shots to the chest. The smaller aliens crawled from the rocks, popping when they were hit. The Warthog that had been attacked was overwhelmed by numbers and the two Marines cried out in pain and panic. I let go of Snark and sprinted towards the vehicle, aiming my rifle at the little creatures that danced around, taking them out by twos and threes. The screams of the two men didn't subside, instead becoming louder and louder with every crunch and pop. I got there just in time to see skin torn open and claws erupt from a forearm. Blood droplets landed on my visor, but it was less than it should've been. I heard the spine creak before it snapped, the neck popped backwards and the head fell sideways. The chinstrap made sure the helmet remained in place, but the growth that bubbled from the shoulders pushed it into the chin, cutting through the dead skin. The dead Marine twisted twice, bones groaning and popping with every violent convulsion.

I decided that I had had enough and fired at the tendrils that were beginning to emerge from the chest, making sure to jab my rifle deep into the dead Marine.

The passenger somehow swung up and stood on top of the Warthog, looking down at me. It screamed loudly, making my blood go cold. Gunfire hit it from the side, sending it to its knees and making it an easy target for me.

I groaned and dragged the bodies from the Warthog, giving Caboose the order to get behind the wheel and allowing Snark to hop on the passenger seat. The rest of the men crowded the rear of the two Warthogs as well as the Scorpion. Once we were all on top of a vehicle we began speeding back towards the main group. Our speed drew complaints from the passengers as they struggled to hold onto the tank and Warthogs, but they were half-hearted. They knew speed was of the essence here.

Johnson's group was behind well defended emplacements. By emplacements I mean rocks, but he had apparently rushed to a defendable position as soon as we testified to contact. A few Marine corpses littered the landscape, but most of them were evidently reanimated bodies. The other ones were rapidly being dragged behind our lines to keep them from being turned into enemies. I made sure to run over every single dead body that I could on our climb to the small plateau that Johnson had taken position on, making them useless to our enemies.

"Lieutenant!" Johnson shouted. "Is this everything?"

"That's all the survivors," I confirmed.

"God-damn!" he shouted, pausing in between the two syllables of the word. "Alright, everybody better listen up!"

He yelled even though there was no need to, everyone could hear him just fine through the channel.

"The creatures attacking us and taking possession of our dead comrades have been encountered by UNSC forces once before. They are known as the Flood. Intel is very scarce on them, animated corpses are known as combat forms, you can take those out with a shot to the tendrils or with some good ol'-fashioned destruction of the body. The smaller ones, the ones that look like bloated potatoes that is, infection forms, weak as the aforementioned potatoes, but dangerous if they get close. They are scary and tough, but we can take 'em. You guys were a sorry bunch before I came across, being dead will only make you worse, but now you have me on your side! Shoot for the chest and avoid the infection forms. We'll be in the Library in less than two days even if we have to fight our way through it!"

As far as inspirational speeches went, it wasn't a good one, but it certainly shed some light on the situation. Knowledge of the threat, even just a name, was worth volumes. I suddenly felt more confident now that I could name them.

The Flood.

"Hell of an ominous name," Snark noted. "Those fuckers."

"Switch out your rifle," I told him. "You said it didn't work."

"Yes, sir!"

"Get extra ammo," I told the rest of the men. "Fast."

"First order of business is getting to that ridge!" Johnson went on. "Scouts say that the ground becomes more advantageous to us after we start going down!"

It was true, less cover for them. More open ground for us to see them coming.

There was shrieking in the distance. Loud and close enough to give me a pause.

"Warthogs to the front!" Johnson shouted. "Shotguns are best!"

As soon as Caboose and Snark returned I moved to the front of our advance, I was driving one handed, keeping my right hand on my pistol, ready to shoot anything that was yellow. Gunfire erupted from the main group, but the Marines were now better prepared to face off that enemy. Our own Warthogs remained undisturbed as we moved forward, slow enough that the men could keep up on foot. Pavel and the rest of my squad had been left behind, but they seemed to be doing just fine, shooting potatoes, infection forms, with near impunity.

"I'm not seeing combat forms," Grass said.

"They're probing us," Pavel told her. "Want to see where we are strongest."

"Are they even intelligent?" Longworth asked.

"Seemed plenty smart to me," Crow said.

A trio of infection forms jumped out from behind a small boulder, but Snark popped them with his newly acquired assault rifle. The three creatures popped loudly and we went on. Caboose hadn't needed to fire his machine gun yet, but I dreaded the moment when it would be needed. He made sure to keep his eyes on the ledges of the ridges to either side of him, not wanting to suffer the same fate of the last gunner of this Warthog.

"Right flank!" the Warthog behind us shouted.

Four combat forms jumped out, they were immediately targeted, but flying bodies are hard to hit. One of them landed on the hood of my car, where Caboose promptly pulverized it. The other three landed behind. The other Warthog hit the one closest to it, ramming it under the hood and making it pop, fluids going everywhere. The other two jumped out of the way and the Warthog bumped into our rear bumper, unable to brake completely. I cursed and drove, turning sideways to give Caboose a field of fire. The two combat forms were killed before they could charge us.

"Sorry," the driver said. "Fluids must've made me skid."

"No problem," I replied.

Our advance went much like that, with both of us fidgeting nervously and weaving in an attempt to avoid the Flood creatures landing directly on top of our hood. Our Scorpions were useless in this terrain, pretty much being only a platform for a machine gun. Two tanks followed us, hanging back and letting the Marines to the side do most of the firing.

"Shit," I said. "Canyon walls get narrow."

"Can we transit?" the lead tanker asked.

"Looks like it," I said, "but we're not going to have a field of fire."

There was plenty of cursing.

"Ok, I want ground troops to move forward," I ordered. "You'll be between the two Warthogs, hopefully we'll be able to target any enemies that want to drop before they do. You should have a good chance of hitting them before they fall down."

The men bitched and then complied. I drove up ahead, with Caboose aiming as high as the gun could go and a little behind us, switching between the top of the left and right canyon walls. Snark kept his assault rifle trained almost directly overhead. The Marines settled into a two column formation behind us, leaving plenty of space in between them. The other Warthog quickly positioned itself behind the Marines and we began advancing at a jogging speed.

Flood silhouettes appeared in front of us at the top of the canyon walls, barely visible through the dim light.

The rear Warthog started firing on them, hitting one and sending rock flying everywhere. Caboose kept aiming behind us, covering the other Warthog. Combat forms dropped, two were hit as they fell, but four others made it down. Snark opened up, taking down one. I slowed a bit and let the Marines catch up. Two of them moved up to the sides of my 'Hog and opened fire on the advancing combat forms. They collapsed before they could reach us.

"Good job," I said, hitting the accelerator again.

A third of the way down the narrow canyon they attempted the same ambush, this time with larger numbers. We repeated the same process, but more combat forms appeared behind us, prompting Caboose to open fire. The gunners on the Scorpion tanks joined him, but their machine guns didn't have the same inclination that the ones on the Warthogs had. I stopped the Warthog and hopped off, joining the infantrymen in shooting at the combat forms. I took down one with my first burst and a Marine took a knee next to me, firing a long burst.

"Whoo!" she exclaimed as she killed one.

Her celebration was short-lived though. A bullet hit her in the shoulder, jerking her sideways and another bullet then made contact with her face. I fired back at the killer and knelt next to her, but the bullet from the pistol had gone straight through her right eye, leaving a massive exit wound in the back of her head. I dragged her backwards while firing and tossed her corpse into the back of the Warthog to keep her from being reanimated. I was just in time to see a mass of infection forms drop down the walls. They popped by the dozens, but there was just too many of them.

"Don't let them get to you!" I shouted.

Marines began firing at the ground, jumping up and down while trying to stomp the little critters. A Flood combat form jumped into the midst of the group and slammed one of the Marines into the wall, where the body left a large bloodstain before being promptly reanimated. I fired at the combat form's chest and ran towards it, jumping up and down on its chest with both feet before a mass of infection forms brought me down.

I rolled and punched and kicked, finally managing to draw my knife and stabbing one of the creatures in my face. The explosion nearly forced me to drop the knife, but I managed to hold on to it just barely. The short blade helped me kill two more infection forms before I could pick up my rifle. Once armed I saved two Marines on the verge of being infected, but three more couldn't be helped. All of our firepower was turned on the three unfortunate souls, reducing them to a messy pulp.

"That was Taylor," a survivor muttered.

"And Sarah. Where's Sarah?"

"Holy shit, holy shit, holy shit…"

"Let's keep moving!" I ordered, my voice wavering. Our number had been cut by a third and the enemy hadn't even used firearms. "Almost there!"

The rest of the canyon run was without incident and we came out the other end just next to our target area. The Scorpions rolled forward and to the sides as the Marines struggled to get away from the cliff and into open ground. My map showed more units reaching their targets, but everyone avoided the narrow canyon we had just gone through.

"Some of those combat forms were elites," Caboose told me after we stopped. "That's bad news."

"They have a whole assault carrier to feed from, maybe more."

As if on cue, a Covenant ship appeared in the distance, orbiting the Halo ring near where the prophet's carrier was. Seconds later another appeared and more, and more. I tried to keep count, but there was just too many of them. A gigantic space station joined the massive fleet of ships. There were thousands of them, it was the largest Covenant fleet I had ever seen. It was the largest Covenant fleet anyone had ever seen.

"Aw shieet," I muttered. "They do not concern us," I said, louder. "The Library is our only concern. Is that understood?"

"Yes, sir!"

I didn't believe that myself. The Flood scared the shit out of me on multiple levels, but I was still sane enough to understand the danger that a fleet of that size posed to us: hell, to humanity!

There were some uneasy mutterings, but the fleet began moving behind the edge of the Halo and into the distance. Out of sight, out of mind.

"Help!"

It was one of the tankers. A Flood combat form had landed on the hood of the Scorpion and had bashed the poor gunner to death, decapitating him with a strike. I saw the head fly and drew my rifle, aiming from my position on the Warthog. I was about to open fire but the combat form was faster, using its claw tentacles to aim and fire the mounted machine gun in our direction. I dropped from the Warthog and rolled underneath it, coming out the other side. Bullets hissed and bounced off the armored hood, but several of them shattered the plastic windshield. Caboose returned fire with his heavy machine gun but jumped off when he was fired upon. His distraction bought me enough time to aim and take out the Flood form.

"You two!" I pointed at a duet of Marines. "Move up, destroy the combat form and secure the body."

"Oh hell naw," one of them said.

"Now!" I roared, pointing at the Scorpion.

Caboose was hopping back in the turret and the Scorpion driver was moving even further away from the rocks behind us. Several units were already moving down the slopes of the basin and into more open terrain, Warthogs were doing the same, slowing down to fire on combat forms. I looked to the right to see a flamethrower torching an entire line of boulders. The range of fifty meters indicated that it was a portable flamethrower, but the thing was bound to have a devastating effect on the Flood. At least on the infection forms, that is.

"Burn the fuckers!" someone shouted on the battlenet.

I couldn't agree more.

A rally point waypoint appeared on my HUD, prompting me to get moving again. The surviving Marines hopped on my 'Hog and on the Scorpions, allowing us to move faster that way. We were one of the first units to reach the rally point, meaning that we had to fire at the Flood forces charging our positions. It was now becoming evident that more and more of the enemy consisted of elites. I was just happy we hadn't seen brutes or worse yet.

I hated the fact that every time I looked away from a section of the battlefield the corpses disappeared. Reanimated and hidden from view. It was nearly impossible to kill them for good with a battle rifle, even Caboose and the Warthog's LAAG had trouble destroying them, but the beer bottle-sized bullets certainly helped. The problem is that he couldn't afford to fire short bursts at the unutilized corpses, instead having to fire at the active ones and at the infection forms.

Roars and shrieks filled the air.

"Frank, we're coming up on your six," Pavel shouted.

"Roger that!"

Pavel and the rest of the squad were in good shape, if a little bit covered with brown fluids. With them were a couple of Marine squads and a damaged Warthog with five bodies in the back. If we kept being hit this hard we wouldn't be able to take all the bodies with us. One less on our side would effectively mean one more on their side.

More troops conglomerated on the area, moving the Warthogs and tanks to form a barrier around the infantry. Heavy machine gun fire drowned out most attempts to communicate. The Scorpion tankers simply kept their main guns silent, not willing to waste the HEAT and HE shells on soft targets.

"I'm seeing Sentinels!"

_What the hell's a Sentinel?_

A few people voiced my question out loud through the battlenet, but soon enough it became clear what they were. The drones had decided to come into the picture again, firing at the infected human and Covenant. I watched as beams shot from the little robots and burned through the fleshy Flood creatures. A few men whooped and hollered even as the combat forms leaped a hundred feet to strike down the Sentinels. I kept myself from joining them though, I hadn't forgotten that they had already killed one of our men.

My fears proved to be founded and the Sentinels began attacking us as well, turning this into a ménage-a-trois.

"Not exactly the first thing that comes to mind when I think threesome," Snark noted.

I agreed, but was unable to voice that as a red beam hit the windshield and almost severed my head. I ducked, feeling the heat in my back. When I got back up there was a hole in the windshield and in the seat. I got on my feet and fired from inside the 'Hog, targeting the closest Sentinel. Caboose did the same thing, shooting tracers right above my right shoulder. I made sure not to move too suddenly, last thing I wanted was to lose my head to friendly fire.

Snark cursed as his SMG peppered the robots. It wasn't inaccurate by any mean, especially in his hands, but it wasn't as powerful as his SRS. He could've used the rifle here.

"What the hell is that?" Crow shouted.

It was a Sentinel, but bigger. Simple as that.

The larger Sentinel fired dozens of tiny rockets at a Warthog. The occupants barely had time to get out of the way before the explosion destroyed the vehicle. Two of them were set upon by the Flood before they could get to safety, screaming and twisting in agony as their bodies convulsed.

"That's a target," a tanker answered Crow, lifting the barrel of his Scorpion.

The first blast took out one of the shield-like holograms in front of the robot and sent it backwards A second shot from a different tank took it out. Crow fired a rocket at a Sentinel, sending it careening to the ground. The Scorpions began rolling forward, using their coaxial machine guns as well as their main guns to target a trio of large Sentinels that were coming to join the party.

"Frank!"

I ducked just as bullets flew past me. Snark fired at the Flood that had shot me and Caboose cursed, falling on his ass.

"I'm hit," he said, more angry than anything.

I turned to look at him, but he was already coming back to his feet, pulling himself up. From the looks of it he had been shot to the side of the belly, near the kidney if I had to guess. Blood poured from the wound, but he ignored it and instead fired on a group of elite combat forms.

"Shit, they keep the shields!" he shouted.

Plasma was beginning to join the gunfire staccato, making the sounds of battle slightly more familiar. Everything else was still beyond my comprehension. I watched as one of the larger Sentinels descended upon the lead Scorpion. The robot used its two clamps to grab the tank and started flying back up. Concentrated Warthog fire destroyed the robot just as it began crushing the Scorpion, bringing it down with a loud explosion.

"Someone get me out of here!" the tanker shouted. "My gunner's dead!"

I could see the rear treads moving from here, but they were barely working, the thing must've damaged them when it began crushing the Scorpion.

"Don't let them get on top of you!" Johnson shouted. "Them uglies have some tricks!"

That was putting it lightly.

I hated this beyond anything I had gone through. One moment I would find myself struggling to lower the shields on a combat form only for a Sentinel to help me finish the job and then I'd have to duck behind cover to avoid the beam from that same Sentinel. Next thing one of the bigger Sentinels would shoot some needle-like beams accompanied by lobbed mortar rounds. The big ones were really beginning to take a toll on our offensive capabilities, opening the way for the Flood to take more of our troops.

Rockets flew at the last surviving large Sentinel. The shields were overwhelmed by the multiple explosions and the Scorpions fired at the thing, taking out for good. The rest of the Sentinels regrouped and started falling back, firing on the Flood as they went, taking out a few of them for us. We were back to a more traditional fight. Against zombies. Fast zombies.

"I hate fast zombies," I grunted.

"Bee always hated them too," Snark said from the passenger seat. "Said they took from the traditional zombie genre and made everything lame."

Lame was not the word I would've chosen right now, more like deadly.

"Anything about zombies that can handle weapons?" Longworth asked.

"They lose their zombie status as soon as they get smart enough to use tools," Snark explained. "At least that's what Bee kept saying."

"Go for the head and all that, eh?" Longworth told him. "Fucking useless now."

I had to agree with him as I targeted a rapidly moving combat form, missing two bursts before hitting it in the chest with the third. The creature collapsed unceremoniously and Caboose pounded it with machine gun fire, tearing the upper body to pieces and reducing its capabilities if it were to be reanimated. More marines were beginning to crowd around us, using whatever meager cover they could find to fight off the dwindling Flood troops. We must've burned through half of our ammunition reserves, but the Flood fell back and gave us a brief respite.

"Reload!" Johnson's tired voice boomed through the battlenet. "Don't lose your frostiness!"

I jerked my head at my men, who promptly moved towards the ammunition drones that we still had with us. They brought back crates of ammo as well as an EMR to be placed in the Warthog. Snark would make full use of the powerful battle rifle if he needed to take down any Sentinels.

As I replaced my empty magazines with full ones a wave of information came to my helmet. The larger Sentinels had been codenamed Enforcers, the ones with shields were Aggressor Sentinels. We also got more information on the Flood, albeit in a very limited manner. A new form that we hadn't seen yet was introduced to us, a bulbous mess that was called a carrier form. It looked like a pimple with legs. The image showed the creature collapsing before blowing up violently, sending infection forms everywhere. With each enemy came a vague set of instructions on how to best take them down. Sentinels were vulnerable to overloaded plasma pistol shots. How we had acquired that intel I had no idea. Carrier forms were meant to be shot at until they blew up, preferably away from any allies.

"Lady, hop on the driver's seat," I ordered. "Hold position."

She jogged here and nodded, not giving me any lip for once.

I moved towards Johnson's position, ignoring his vicious shouting of orders.

"McKenzie, get those extra magazines!"

"Johnson, what now?" I asked.

"Well we move forward, Lieutenant," he said as if it was the most obvious thing in the world. Ringworld.

"Johnson, see that thing?" I asked. "It's another goddamned wall. Last thing we need is to come into that thing and have no way in."

"I didn't take you for one to give up, Castillo."

"I don't want my men to die."

"I've had a third of the battalion die in the past hour, Castillo. Do you think I take this mission lightly?"

"What's so important about this building anyways?" I asked. "We should be nuking this place from orbit."

"That is not an option," Johnson said. "Frank… would I sacrifice so many men if this wasn't worth it?"

"You don't seem like the type…" I reluctantly admitted.

He placed a hand on my shoulder and looked into my eyes. "This mission is the most important thing you'll ever do in your life, and I am willing to let every single man woman and even myself die if it means we succeed."

I returned his look. "Classified?"

"Classified."

"Promise me Johnson, promise me that it is as important as defending Earth. Promise me that we didn't come to this stupid place just because Keyes is a glory hound?"

"She wants to live up to her father's name, that's for sure, but this," he stomped the ground. "This right here, is more important than Earth, than Reach, than Paris IV."

I took him at his word. I had to. If anyone exaggerated that much he was a fucking idiot or a nutjob. Johnson was neither.

"Do we still have drones in the air?" I asked.

He nodded. "We've detected two entrances in the second wall. So we're good there. Additionally, it seems like the Covenant have also penetrated the wall and are headed to the Library."

"A race?" I asked.

"A race," he replied. "Higher stakes than you could even imagine."

"I'd better put my running shoes on, then," I muttered. "I'm trusting you on this one, Johnson."

He nodded in acknowledgement and turned his attention to his own personal squad, giving quick orders and ignoring my presence. The dismissal allowed me to rejoin my men, who were clustered around the Warthog and were taking turns reloading their weapons. Snark was gently tapping the back of his neck, probing the injury and shaking when the pain was worse than he had anticipated. For the most part my men were in good shape, with the exception of Lady, who was still battered from that ambush by the brute. I could see her limping slightly, perhaps from a twisted ankle.

"What I wouldn't give for some air support…" Pavel said.

"Shield wall," Grass said. "Remember?"

I drew my pistol and pulled back the slide, realizing that it was empty. I ejected the magazine and replaced it, grabbing another one to keep my load at its maximum. We hadn't made good use of our grenades, but they were still beginning to dwindle little by little, leaving us with an absurdly high number of smoke screens and even a few flashbangs to fight an enemy that didn't appear to make use of eyes.

"Hear that?" I asked.

Little by little the sounds of plasma weaponry arrived to our ears. They were distant, but it was clear that at least a squad was engaging an enemy. The return of gunfire indicated that the enemy in question was the Flood and they were fighting the Covenant. This had just turned even more interesting.

"We don't have time to waste!" Johnson shouted after hearing that. "Let's move!"

Engines roared and Marines shouted. The dead were piled up on Warthogs, face down so that the gunner wouldn't accidentally stomp on them while aiming. I kicked Lady out of the driver's seat and made the engine roar before moving forward. We were getting closer to our goal. Once we were in the interior wall I assumed that we could bunker down and rest. Not a lot of people would be willing to go against a force like hours in a well-defended position. The Flood had fallen back, which indicated that they were not stupid or that they at least had a self-preservation instinct.

Shrieks came from our right flank. They noises were more familiar now, but they didn't scare me any less.

I looked in their direction to see a dozen combat forms pop from behind cover and jump. I shouted a warning when I saw one of them was toting a rocket launcher. The missile flew before anyone could do anything about it, it turned slightly before hitting one of our remaining Scorpions in the front left tread. The Marine that had been sitting there was torn to pieces and the armor of the tank was damaged, but it could still move.

"Salvage that!" I shouted as Caboose worked on mowing down the rest of the attackers.

"It's too far away!" Pavel shouted.

I didn't have any particular need for a rocket launcher right now, especially considering the fact that for all their deadliness the Flood were unarmored enemies. The fact was that the Flood could use that rocket launcher against us again and again just by reanimating corpses next to it unless we removed it from the equation.

"Hold on!"

I floored the accelerator and sped towards the rocket launcher. I ran over a combat form that was too slow to avoid me as Caboose maneuvered his LAAG to take out the enemies around us. Snark fired his SMG at infection forms that tried to swarm our Warthog as we sped past them, popping them by the dozen. Bullets hit the windshield, making it turn nearly opaque as it was cracked. The hole in front of me from the sentinel beam was the only thing that kept me able to see where I was going.

"Fuck. This. Shit." Snark leaned back as he said that and propped his feet on the dashboard before kicking at the weakened windshield. There was no way he would be able to break the ballistic plastic, but he could tear its weakened hinges. "Duck!" he warned.

Caboose complied just as the battered windshield flew off and backwards, hitting the turret in the rear. Caboose was back on point in no time, though, firing at a duo of elite combat forms.

"Snark! Get it!"

I slid into a stop a few meters away from the rocket launcher. Snark jumped from out of the Warthog and killed a combat form with a long burst. I popped up and fired at several infection forms rushing to take a bite at my friend while Caboose kept the larger threats at bay. I saw one of the carrier forms that we had been shown waddling towards Snark from behind cover. I began firing at it, trying to take it out, but it seemed to just absorb the damage. Snark grabbed the SPANKr and ran back to the Warthog, jumping inside. I turned back around and floored it, leaving Caboose to kill the carrier form. It fell forward and exploded.

The explosion was way more violent than I had expected, lifting the rear of our Warthog and sending infection forms in all directions. Three of them landed in the hood of the 'Hog. I drew my sidearm and swerved, trying to get them off. They held on and began rushing towards me. I managed to pop one before the other jumped at my arm. Snark bashed one against the dashboard, killing it, before grabbing the one pinning my right arm and bringing it down to his knee repeatedly, finishing it for good.

"Caboose?"

"All good!"

He was shot, but if he told me could fight, I didn't see why not.

I floored it back towards the main body of our group, tracer fire flying both ways even as plasma joined the fray.

"Grass! Hop on, Caboose, you're out!"

I stopped the Warthog and Caboose climbed out, holding his side and putting pressure on it. Miranda caught him as Grass climbed up and picked up where we had left off. Snark tossed the SPANKr to Crow, who caught it with both hands before handing it to a Marine who promptly put it on one of our surviving ammunition drones. I slowly moved the 'Hog forward, using it to cover my men and praying that no bullet would hit me.

"No exit wound," Miri announced as she hastily checked Caboose. "Shit."

I could relate to that. None of us had practice dealing with bullet wounds. Some might say that shrapnel is very similar and they wouldn't be entirely wrong, but our bullets were designed to bend and shred into a dozen pieces. I was just thankful that he hadn't been hit by a pistol round or he'd have a fist sized hole in his belly. Oh sure, blood and flesh would immediately fill that hole, but they would just be a pile of mush.

"Pull it out?" Lady suggested.

"At least the main shard," Grass shouted over the roar of the LAAG. "Pull out anything you can."

Caboose was tossed on the top of one of the closest ammunition drones and Miri produced a set of large tweezers before a Marine approached and handed her a scanner.

"Where's your corpsman?" she asked him.

"Dead, ma'am!"

Miri cursed and scanned Caboose, using the scanner to pinpoint the location of the shrapnel. Without any further ado she went in. Caboose cried out before catching himself and then just grunted. Miri was being very blasé about the whole thing, operating on a man in the middle of a battlefield while her operating table slowly rolled in uneven terrain. My bad, Caboose was the one being blasé considering the situation.

"Nice word… blasé," Schitzo said, experimenting with it.

It was then that our right flank was hit by three different purple mortars. We were lucky to be away from the explosions, but several Marines didn't have that same fortune. Two were immediately vaporized and several more were thrown around like ragdolls. The Scorpion that was the target of the shots escaped with some heavy damage and a dead gunner, but the tanker promptly returned fire, presumably killing one of the unseen enemies.

"Scatter!" Johnson shouted. "Get away from the tanks!"

It was only a temporary measure while the Revenants were taken out, but it would expose the infantry to the Flood and the Sentinels. Our enemies didn't fail to notice and their assault intensified, killing several Marines that now had no cover. The tankers furiously tried to outmaneuver the Revenants, but the pilots were doing a good job at staying behind cover while firing back.

"Frag out!" Snark shouted.

I slowed down a little bit to keep from being reached by the shrapnel and watched as the explosion took out three combat forms, leaving them completely useless to the infection forms that moved past them. Grass was mowing down the little potato-looking monstrosities, popping them in the hundreds while occasionally redirecting her attention to a Sentinel or an Aggressor. I was just happy that we weren't facing any more of the larger Enforcers, their mortars had been terrible to deal with.

"Those Revenants are crewed by live covvies!" someone shouted.

"Get out of there!"

I barely managed to see a trio of Marines dive out of cover just in time to avoid a carrier form explosion. The infection forms poured out only to be hit by a burst from Johnson's battle rifle. He grabbed one of the men from the ground and tossed him back like a doll before moving forward, shooting down two combat forms and making three others stop their assault and roll into cover. He then tossed a grenade, killing two of the three and shouted for the Marines to move forward.

We were dying like rats, but we were making progress.

"There's a hilltop!" Dotsenko shouted, breaking silence for the first time in a while. "There's no one there yet!"

It was true, the Flood had been so busy trying to kill us all that they hadn't fortified that position yet. A grievous oversight on their part, but a vital opportunity for us.

"Double time!" Johnson shouted after hearing that. "Tanks on the flanks!"

They would absorb the majority of the gunfire while the infantry ran along the center. I positioned the Warthog near the rear of the formation and Grass began firing at the combat forms chasing us while Snark fired at the jumpers that tried to land in the middle of the formation. We were down to a dozen 'Hogs, but our Scorpions were giving it as good as they got and then some. No Revenant blasts came flying our way.

"Covenant units spotted on our right flank! They have Ghosts!"

"I can't target them!"

"I need three Warthogs to keep them from approaching!" Johnson shouted. "Castillo, Blake, Lin. Go!"

I slowed down and banked to the right, lifting two of the wheels on the 'Hog into the air. Grass kept firing at the Flood as long as she could until we didn't have an angle. After that she immediately turned the turret forward and I positioned myself into a formation with the other two Warthogs. Four Ghosts appeared from a rock formation, firing at us. We swerved to avoid the plasma even as our LAAGs fired on them. I cursed as a bolt hit the hood and the splash heated my head, making me feel like I was in an oven. Two of the Ghosts were taken out and the other two turned and fell back. One of them was destroyed before it could get out of the way and the other got to safety.

"Blake!" I shouted to the man driving the 'Hog to my left. "Chase it down and scout the enemy!"

"Yes, sir!" he replied, turning his wheel to chase down the Ghost. Ten meters in a mortar shot landed on the hood, stopping the Warthog on its track and killing the driver and passenger.

The gunner's stomach dug into the LAAG but he managed to stumble out of the wreck and make his way to our position. I approached him, but a beam rifle cut through his neck, decapitating him.

"Sniper!" Grass shouted, firing at the origin of the shot. "Seventy meters!"

The other Warthog's gunner joined her, pulverizing the rock from which we had been fired upon. Snark took it upon himself to switch out to the EMR and fired three times, cursing as the uncalibrated sights made him miss. His fourth shot must've hit, because he stopped firing after that.

"Anybody else?" I asked.

"Just the one," he replied. "Jackal."

"Hang back," I ordered the surviving Warthog. "Discourage incursions."

We did just that, but we made sure to inch closer and closer to the hilltop that our forces were currently storming and fortifying. The occasional plasma volley would fly our way, but Snark could call out a warning for us more often than not, taking out one or two Covenant soldiers before they could fire.

"They're SpecOps," Snark said. "Grunts are armored and they're being dragged behind cover when I hurt them."

"I thought you only shot to kill," I said.

"Well, they're fucking armored, sir."

I chuckled.

"Flood," Grass warned in a low growl.

The other Warthog fired first, taking out a squad of rushing combat forms, most of them elites. At the same time the Covenant units on the other side of the rock formation opened fire, but not at us. The shields on the combat forms held just long enough until they could take cover behind some boulders. Plasma grenades flew out in our direction, lifting dust and dirt and blocking our vision. We both accelerated and switched positions, but we were pummeled with plasma weaponry from the Flood. I cursed and ducked as I saw a blue bolt fly at us, Snark pressed his back against the seat and the bolt flew in front of me and over my back, missing both of us.

"Whoa!"

"Watch for grenades!" Grass shouted.

I turned to the left, hard.

"Sentinels!"

The other Warthog braked hard to avoid an explosion, making themselves a prime target for the Flood and the Sentinels. The gunner was hit three or four times and fell out of the 'Hog when they accelerated again, dead or dying. The passenger cursed and began climbing out of the open roof while the driver accelerated away from the enemy fire.

"Johnson! We need an assist!" I shouted into my helmet radio.

The man didn't reply, but a few seconds later three Scorpions turned their main cannons our way and fired on the Flood, reducing them to that ugly brown mush that was already making me gag. The Sentinels, on the other hand, were still up there. I swerved and banked when they fired while struggling to keep it steady when Snark fired back. Grass was doing a fine job of discouraging them, but they were far enough away that aiming the massive chaingun wasn't an easy task.

Two Sentinels exploded and another four were shot down as missiles flew at them from the small hilltop that our forces had taken. The rest of them slowed their assault and fired a couple of inaccurate sustained bursts our way. We began speeding back towards our lines, only breathing easily once we passed through the outer lines of Marines.

"Johnson, why are we stopping?" I asked, hopping of the 'Hog and taking off my helmet. "Johnson!"

"We have too many wounded, son," he replied. "They're slowing us down."

"Can we take those barriers down?" I asked, pointing at the outer wall. "If we could pull them back…"

"Commander Keyes has all our birds on standby, but we can't take down the shields from here. There are two nodes within our range. There's reason to believe that the Covenant are heading towards the closest one."

"How do we know that?" I asked.

"Some of our drones spotted a Phantom flying towards a hole in the wall a few hours ago," he said. "Right before it was shot down."

"How are our drones here faring?" I asked him.

"Not too good, they're faster than the Sentinels, but they're being actively hunted down."

"Shit. Any word on help from the Master Chief?"

"No word yet," he said. "Keyes said that if the wall goes down she'll bring the _In Amber Clad _through for support."

"What if the wall goes back up?" I asked.

He shrugged. "Then the Flood is trapped in here with us."

I snorted. "That's not how I'd put it."

"My, my, Lieutenant. I didn't think you'd back away from a challenge."

I suppressed myself from rolling my eyes, especially considering the fact that my helmet was off. I sighed and said nothing, instead moving back to my unit as the shrieks from the Flood became louder and the cries of agony intensified. We were close to the inner wall now, just a little push to get there and then some more to reach the Library.

We weren't even halfway there.

"Good news boys and girls!" Johnson said as soon as I reached my men. "We have five hundred thousand tons of pure UNSC might headed our way. Keyes is going to torch the ground between us and the inner wall."

There was a stunned pause and then cheering.

"About time those swabbies finally did something," Crow muttered, looking up at the dark sky.

"Damn right," Longworth agreed.

We heard the explosion before the missile. It was weird, the Archer was traveling faster than the speed of sound, so we saw it hit, heard the explosion, then heard the missile streaking through the air, and then felt the shockwaves. The process was repeated three times before we saw the UNSC _In Amber Clad _approaching in all her glory, meager as it might be when compared to a Covenant ship. I cheered as loud as any other guy, whooping when the explosions made huge craters and burned hostile Flood forms, leaving them useless. Here and there a Sentinel was caught by the explosion and were reduced to useless scraps.

"Move out!"

This time we had Pelicans covering us from above, firing heavy machine gun rounds into anything that was moving outside of our perimeter. Our wounded were being all put together in the middle of the circle and a single Pelican came down to pick up the most critical of the wounded before we got to the inner wall. Once there everybody spread out a little bit, making a nearly impenetrable perimeter. My own men took cover behind a rocky outcrop and aimed down at the outside, hoping nothing would crawl through the death land that the _In Amber Clad, _now floating above us, had created.

"Can the Flood reach that?" Lady asked nervously.

"No," Grass assured her. "Not without aircraft."

Everyone instinctively looked in the direction of the three Pelicans that were currently grounded and being filled with the wounded and the dead. The hangar jockeys would not be happy about having to unload so many dead men and women and just leaving them in the floor. We, on the other hand, were very happy at not having to deal with familiar faces on our Warthogs or Scorpions.

"Everyone! We move in ten. Commander Keyes will be joining us."

I groaned, but this time I wasn't the only one. Mutterings of doubt and disagreement were raised by all the survivors. Having an officer of her rank on the ground for a combat mission was not completely unheard of, but in these circumstances… And her wanting to be here, too. It was going to be hard to keep her safe.

"Johnson," I began.

"I can't change her mind, son. I want your unit to escort hers alongside some of my men."

I sighed and looked down, kicking a loose rock down the short outcrop. I turned to look at the door that would lead us through the inner wall and then at the Pelicans as they took off. "Understood," I said.

More Pelicans flew sorties, dropping a ridiculous amount of ammunition as well as a few additional Warthogs and another Scorpion that hadn't participated in the initial attack, bolstering our numbers up somewhat. More importantly, two flatbed trucks with barricades and defensive equipment were deployed to follow us. Not that anybody intended to actually use the barricades, but those trucks were damn hard to kill and would house our wounded. Not as good as Armadillos or Tortoises, but the frigate apparently didn't carry any of those.

"How's everyone doing?" I asked my team.

"Good," Pavel replied. Sarcasm was obviously evident.

"Snark?" I asked.

"My neck hurts really bad, El-tee. Painkillers aren't doing much for me."

"Can you fight through it?" I asked him.

"Don't I always?"

"Good. Lady?"

She sighed. "I'm in a bit of pain. I didn't think it was that bad, but I might've pulled something."

I nodded. If she of all people was admitting to it then it meant it was bad enough that most regular humans would be content to sit down for a couple of days.

"Anything to report?" I asked.

Shaking heads.

"We're escorting the commander," I told them. "I don't know Keyes but I assume that she can shoot straight. Better than a cop but not as good as a jarhead. Our main priority is to keep her from getting herself killed. Our secondary priority is to keep any hostiles from killing her. See how they intersect?"

Nods.

"Johnson with us?" Pavel gruffly asked.

I nodded back. "His squad and ours will be working together for the rest of this operations. For the most part at least."

"Who's on babysitter duty?" Caboose asked.

I hesitated. I needed Snark, but he was obviously in a lot of pain from the wound in his neck. Lady was the obvious choice, but we usually preferred to have at least two men on our VIP.

"Lady," I said. "We'll rotate, but I'm putting Crow for starters."

He nodded, hefting his SPANKr and putting it over his shoulder, grabbing instead his MA5K.

"We still have the 'Hog," I said. "We'll be staying close though. Snark and Grass, you're with me. Pavel, you'll take care of the rest, coordinate with Johnson."

"Sounds good to me," he said, checking his venerable M247L for obstructions before slapping the bolt down hard. He was in a bad mood.

No wonder, he hadn't seen his wife in months and the same held true for his daughter. What made him angrier though, was their presence in Sol just as a Covenant fleet attacked. Granted, we beat them back, but that didn't mean much. They'd come back with even larger numbers and we were missing the greatest battle fought on this side of the galaxy. I imagined hundreds of ODPs taking down an equal number of Covenant ships while the Home Fleet struggled to hold off the invaders.

I shook my head, trying to get rid of those thoughts. Any victory we could get could hardly be called so. I just hoped that enough civilians had been evacuated, that way we could let them land on the planet and make liberal use of nuclear weapons, destroying their forces without fear of killing our own. The Covenant would regret the invasion for sure, but we wouldn't be any better.

And here we were, on who knows which side of the galaxy and fighting against zombies, ancient robots, and the old-fashioned Covenant aliens. From the sound of things, the Covenant had gotten a pretty decent-sized force through the wall and were now trying to get to the inner wall before we did. Unfortunately for us, that most likely meant that they wouldn't thin out the ranks of the Flood, but swell them instead. It was that delicious irony that only a true cynic could find humorous.

"That's Keyes," Grass said, pointing at a Pelican that was coming down.

We approached the bird just as Commander Miranda Keyes stepped out, clad in her grey uniform. She hadn't even changed into fatigues. I knew that Navy officers' uniforms had plates and fabrics that were designed to increase your chance of survival in case you found yourself in the middle of an exploding ship, but then again, so did the Marine battle dress. I shook my head slowly as she examined an M7 SMG and proceeded to have a short conversation with Johnson.

"We're ready to move on your word ma'am," Johnson told her. "Castillo's and my men will be by you every step of the way."

"Good, we have no time to waste," she said. "We have to get there before the Covenant."

"Stacker! Banks!" Johnson shouted. "You heard the commander, we're moving out! Take point through the doorway!"

Two squads of grizzled Marines moved up even as four Pelicans descended upon our Scorpions attaching them to their cargo bays and leapfrogging them over the inner wall. Our Warthogs dashed through the gate alongside one lone Scorpion and the remainder of our forces followed. Johnson looked at me and gave me a quick nod before slapping another magazine into his battle rifle and clearing his throat.

"Let's go men! We've some zombies to kill!"

* * *

><p><em>Thanks to <strong>Colonel-Commissar2468 <strong>and **General TheDyingTitan** for proofreading this chapter._

_ Good one, don't you think? My betas seemed to think so. I have to say that I agree with them. The Flood is one of the scariest enemies that you could possibly face. I clearly remember the first time I played Halo: Combat Evolved (after playing Halo 2) and came across the little potato-looking things. I panicked so bad that I started shaking and sweating, but I fought those fuckers off like the badass that I was and still am. Thing is, my brother and I called them radishes. We would see them coming and I'd shout: "Radishes coming at us!" They do look very much like a vegetable, especially in an old TV with the Halo: CE graphics. Not that I'm complaining, I loved every minute of it. _

_The guys in my story don't. They're being slaughtered and have no idea how to fight against an enemy like this. Johnson does, but he can't carry several hundred men behind him. With a few of the ODSTs killed before the battle even began and yet more killed when helping John-117 beat the shit out of Regret, it is left to out squad of heroes and Johnson's squad of badasses to lead the way. Sure, a few tons of tank here and there might help, but we all know how that ends. After all, the level Quarantine Zone in Halo 2 isn't full of human vehicles for no reason._

**_ 1: _**_I've read that it was pointing up, but then again my source might be wrong._

**_outcast's redeemer:_**_ I think you've mentioned this song before but I've forgotten to reply to your comment. It's a good song, in fact, I have it right on my computer. Should listen to it soon... However, I'm feeling like Frank might mix things up a little music-wise next chapter. I do love me some Katy Perry *wink wink*_

**_just curious:_**_ I was going for an ACOG kind of look in my head, but to be fair, it isn't really a big deal. But yeah, you're basically right about the look._

_A lot of people are getting bad feelings here. A few more and we might think ourselves in a Star Wars convention (nerd joke that really shouldn't be obscure). Anyways, it does make sense to get bad feelings. After all, this is fucking zombies created by an infinitely advanced race out of spite. They're unbeatable is what they are, even after the firing of the Halo Array those fuckers were still there. As for the bad feelings, you're all safe for now... as for what the next chapter shall bring, that I cannot tell you just yet._

_Stay strong._

_-casquis_


	219. Foursome

Chapter CCXIX: Foursome

**November 2, 2552 (UNSC Calendar)/**

**Quarantine Zone, Delta Halo [orbiting Substance], Coelest System**

* * *

><p><em>"And then there were four."<em>

* * *

><p>I could've used some music right about then, if only to distract myself a little bit. I had several days' worth of music stored in my helmet; most of the songs in there were ancient and courtesy of Bee. He had stored a lot of different music in there and I just hadn't been able to bring myself to listen to it since his passing. Some epic songs here and there yes, but not the other lists that he had told me I should listen to. There were some very specific playlists such as "Summer 2017 Hits" and some other vague ones like "Rap-2." With Bee it could be anything. I scrolled through the options while we emerged on the other side.<p>

Surprisingly enough, my boots crunched down on a layer of snow.

"Great," Longworth muttered.

Nobody else voiced their annoyance, but I did sigh a little bit louder than usual before hopping on the Warthog and slowly rolling forward. I had expected at least a little bit of respite, but the Flood wasn't about to give us an inch. Dozens of infection forms came from all directions, surprising a few unprepared Marines before we returned fire. No combat forms yet, but it was only a matter of time until we came across those. I kept one hand on the wheel and the other on the butt of my pistol. The lack of a windshield meant that both Snark and I felt more exposed than we would've liked, but it doesn't get any more exposed than a Warthog when it comes down to vehicles.

I looked back at the two trucks and confirmed that they were not being attacked just yet before I resumed my slow advance. Johnson was barking orders like crazy and Keyes kept an impassive face. I wondered whether she was cold, but then I remembered that naval officers get incredibly fancy uniforms that control the body temperature. Her face would be a bit cold, but the rest of her considerably attractive body would be just fine. Johnson's squad wasn't as close to Keyes as mine was, but they were very obviously protecting her, standing in a semi-circle and providing a wall of flesh between her and any would-be attacker.

"Commander, maybe you'd like a Marine uniform?" I suggested. "You stand out."

Keyes looked in my direction but kept moving forward.

"There's no time to stop," she replied.

"As you wish ma'am," I said, shrugging to Snark who just shrugged back.

"There they come!" Johnson shouted. "Give them a taste of lead!"

The shrieks were frightening. Very frightening. I shivered and it was bad enough that I knew Snark had spotted it. It wasn't because of the cold. Caboose spooled the machine gun and began firing on the assaulters, joining the rest of the Marines. Several combat forms fell after we opened fire, but the survivors returned fire in a mixture of plasma and gunfire. I heard a few rounds ping off the hood of our 'Hog and saw others scorch it. I kept an impassive face, but several Marines had been hit in the barrage. We were out in the open and didn't have the best of cover.

I cursed when I saw rockets and green fuel rods flying towards a Scorpion, but it was too late. The explosives hit and did exactly what they were designed to. The turret flew up and sideways as the ammo cooked up.

"Snark!"

He fired his rifle, hitting at least one of the two combat forms that fired, but the other one slid back into cover before he could hit. Snark cursed at the missed opportunity as well as the pain in the back of his neck. Caboose fired at the Flood. I drove forward, staying close to Keyes and Johnson.

"Shit, they're blocking our way," I said. "Johnson!"

"I see them!" he replied. "Stacker, Banks, this one's on you!"

The two lead squads began moving forward, opening a path through the ocean of Flood forms trying to eat them.

"Proceed to the objective, we'll hold out as long as we can!" Stacker shouted, firing at a carrier form. The creature exploded and sent a single infection form flying at Stacker. "Get it off me!" he shouted, dropping his rifle

"Suppressive fire, suppressive fire!" Sergeant Banks ordered his men.

Keyes started running, with Crow and Lady keeping pace with her easily. She looked ridiculously small next to either of my men, but particularly Crow. I suddenly realized that we were not doing too well, the Flood was outnumbering us heavily now.

"Doorway!" I shouted as soon as I spotted it. The terrain became hostile, turning into two walls that narrowed until they came together at a doorway, making this whole area a sealed sector. "Get to it!"

Our forces moved forward, with Banks and Stacker keeping the Flood from getting too close. Our tanks helped, but the Flood didn't seem to be afraid of them and they were now targeting them with shoulder-mounted weaponry. It was only through luck and Snark's eyes that we kept all of our tanks as they moved towards and through the door. One by one I saw the Marines make their way past.

"Johnson, take her for now," I said.

Keyes and Johnson disappeared through the giant doorway, as did most of my men. I kept the Warthog near the door, but provided covering fire, hopping out to aim my battle rifle with more ease. Snark shot down combat forms, hitting the red tendrils with every shot. I wasn't as accurate as he was, missing more than I would've liked as the Flood jumped around. Sergeant Stacker and Sergeant Banks' squads began falling back slowly, firing at carefully timed intervals so that everybody could reload.

Suddenly a barrage of plasma flew our way, killing four of Banks' men and two of Stacker's. I nearly lost my head, but I fired back.

"Are those Covenant?" Keyes asked.

"Negative ma'am! They are _not_ Covenant!" Stacker replied.

Combat and infection forms started jumping down the wall and behind the Marines. To my surprise, they moved towards the doorway and not to the exposed men.

"Cover that doorway!" I shouted at Caboose.

He turned his whole body and fired at the oncoming group, heavily thinning their tanks but exposing the battered two squads to the larger group. I was forced to abandon them and join Caboose, leaving only Snark to protect them. Normally it would've been more than enough, but the infection forms were a factor that we weren't used to, and if they got to you it usually meant that you were dead. Snark had been miraculously saved, but obviously he wasn't in top shape and the wound in his neck was much deeper than we had first thought.

I glanced at him. He was in pain.

"Snark?"

"It hurts, El-tee, more than before."

"We'll take a look when we can," I said. "Bear through it."

"Not like I have much of a choice," he growled.

Combat forms came at us by the dozens, concentrating on the Scorpions and jumping in massive leaps that made it nearly impossible to target them. We only had two flamethrowers, but the men manning those were the victims of a disproportionate amount of attention. They could only fire briefly before they were forced to dive for cover. We were doing a fairly decent job at keeping them safe, but we couldn't keep them like that forever, especially if they killed more of our tanks.

"Johnson, we can't take this much longer," I said. "We need a new strategy."

A Scorpion blew up as if to drive my point across.

"Understood," Johnson growled.

It was no longer just us, the Covenant had entered the race a little bit late, but they were there. I could hear Wraiths firing and other heavy plasma weaponry. If it had been firing on us it might've been the Flood, but that battle was taking place away from us, over the cliffs, perhaps a mile or two to our side. I saw several blue orbs streak upwards and collide with a Sentinel ship. I say ship because it looked like a ship and was floating several hundred meters above the surface. The whole thing came crashing down in flames to our right before exploding.

"The Covenant will divert some of the attention from us," Keyes said. "We have to keep moving forward!"

"Ma'am," I began. "I really must protest."

"Duly noted," she replied. "Move forward!"

The Marines cried out, voices hoarse and tired, but they complied. Many left cover to push forward, getting shot in the process. Nonetheless our advance proved to be fruitful as we pushed the Flood back and finally came into open ground. Open ground is almost a literal saying here, as the area that we came into was full of holes that apparently had no bottom. Rock arches acted as bridges, connecting several of them.

"There's a structure on the other side!" Grass called out.

"That's our objective then," I replied. "Move, ah shit!"

Brute spikes hit the seat next to my head, hot and glowing. I ducked as more spikes flew my way, failing to hit the interior of the Warthog.

"Are those Flood?" I asked.

"Negative!" Caboose shouted back. "We've got brutes!"

Great.

I had never seen anything like this. A Sentinel would fire at a squad of Marines only for a combat form to knock it down. The Marines would thank the Flood by shooting it dead and would then fall under brute shot fire, diving for cover or being blown up. Our tanks were now wasting ammunition like there was no tomorrow, firing AP rounds into grunts and clusters of infection forms. For many of the tankers there would be no tomorrow.

"Enforcer!"

For a moment all three organic factions redirected their attention at the gigantic robot. A squad of brutes shot down one of its arm-like appendages, exposing themselves for long enough that Snark could kill three of them with well-placed headshots. A squad of Flood forms moved up, firing pistols and plasma rifle at its front shields, making them pulse. One of our tanks aimed up, taking several pulse laser hits in the process before firing and taking out the Enforcer's shields.

Caboose fired at it, joined by at least three different races.

The enforcer went down and Flood forms immediately used its wreckage for cover, firing on one of our front squads.

"Commander, stay down!" Lady shouted, pulling her by the shoulder into the snow.

Keyes tried to get up again, but Dotsenko pushed her face into the snow and fired his SAW one-handed at two brute combat forms that jumped down at their position. He braced for an impact but Lady kicked the brute's waist, knocking it sideways and right into Johnson's crosshairs. A burst was all it took and the empty carcass collapsed.

"Perez! Make sure it can't get back up!"

A Marine ran forward and stomped the brute's head viciously. I heard crunching and cracking as Perez stomped on the dead brute viciously, reducing the torso to a gory mess. Standard operating procedure, it seemed.

"Commander, maybe it's best if you hop on the Warthog," Johnson suggested.

Keyes seemed unsure, but after a moment she nodded and began heading towards us, moving from cover to cover with my two men right behind her. They stopped behind a boulder away from us.

"Go," Dotsenko told her, popping to provide covering fire.

Lady began moving with her, but a combat form landed on her back, pushing into the ground.

"Shit," Snark muttered.

The combat form was about to kill Lady when Snark popped the little tendrils in its chest, but three more landed next to it and began chasing Keyes. Dotsenko turned around just in time to avoid a swipe and roll away. Snark popped one target right before it got to Keyes and then fired twice at another just as it jumped. I pulled my pistol out when I saw that it was going to land in the Warthog. It came down on the hood, rocking us forward. I fired at it, but it was putting its clawed arm in front for protection. Snark inched backwards, but he instinctively recoiled forward as his injured neck pressed against the seat.

The human combat form swiped at him. The blow was hard enough that it tore him from the Warthog and into the snow headfirst. I didn't hear a crack, but I could feel it.

Caboose and I opened up at the combat form, hitting it with enough lead to leave it useless for anything other than… well, useless.

Keyes came at the car right after Dotsenko killed the combat form engaging him and dragged Lady back behind the boulder.

"Caboose, cover me!" I shouted.

I hopped off and began moving towards Snark, but several brute shots fired at me, exploding at my feet and sending me backpedalling before falling on my ass. On the other side I saw Dotsenko steel himself as he sprinted towards Snark, sliding in the snow. Caboose fired at the brutes, killing one or two of them.

"He's dead, sir!"

"Fuck!" I shouted, punching the snow. I punched it again. "Get him over here!"

Dotsenko grabbed Snark's leg and unceremoniously dragged his body through the snow and behind cover.

"The neck," he said. "Broken."

I nodded and gestured for him to be placed in the back of the 'Hog.

"The Flood are not touching him," I said. "Commander, are you alright?"

"I'm alright, Lieutenant."

I nodded. "Lady?"

"Conscious but in pain, might've broken her collarbone."

"Let's pick her up," I said.

We drove across the gap and behind the boulder, where Lady was able to hop into the back of the Warthog by her own power. We stayed there as Johnson's men and my own squad moved sideways to our position, letting the rest of the Marines do the heavy lifting. A Pelican flew, firing its entire payload at enemy infantry in the ground before dropping down a Scorpion tank and taking off like a bat out of hell.

The additional Scorpion allowed the Marines to move to the structure and secure it.

"Snark?" Pavel asked.

"Dead," I said.

Grass turned to look at me. "Really?"

I nodded.

"Shit."

And then there were four. Reaper was dwindling.

"Commander, the door is ours," Johnson said. "We should move."

"Let's go," Keyes said, propping herself up on the Warthog.

And so we moved forward.

Keyes remained silent, but her eyes had a kind of determination that you rarely saw. She was going to get to the Library and do all she had to achieve her objective. Her SMG hadn't been used much, but she had certainly pulled her weight. For a naval officer, that is. Johnson and his men were doing well too, managing to keep up with my own squad. At times it seemed like everybody was trying to keep up with Johnson. The man had a ridiculous accuracy with his battle rifle. I don't think I had seen him miss a shot yet.

I wished he had been closer when Snark was killed, maybe he could've saved him. I should've been able to do that. The combat form was right there, less than a meter in front of me and I hadn't been able to kill it in time.

I clenched my fists around the worn wheel and took a deep breath just as we crossed the next door. Now we were indoors, going through tunnels. I wasn't happy about this, but the Flood would have less maneuvering room and there weren't any vents or other small passageways from which they could go all xenomorph on us.

"I want eyes front and back!" Johnson shouted. "Warthogs in the front and back! Move your asses!"

There were less than a hundred Marines left now. A Scorpion had been left behind to cover the entrance. The man was none too happy about his role, but he would die before any Flood filth made it through the door. We had been decimated and then some, but we were Marines.

"Semper Fi, motherfucker," Schitzo said.

Just in time too.

The hallway in front of us was suddenly crowded with hundreds of little infection forms. Nobody hesitated even for a second and we began popping them and torching them. The sound of gunfire vibrated from the angular walls and back, making this tunnel the loudest little hole in the Halo. Carrier forms and combat forms began pouring in as well, but we didn't slow down. Our lead Warthog took a pounding and the driver was forced to duck behind the dashboard after the passenger was killed, but he kept inching forward, providing cover for the men behind. The Warthog behind and to the side did the same. Two gunners was something very difficult to beat in a narrow hallway, but the dozens of Marines behind them made it all but impossible. The ground I was driving over soon became a bit slippery as it was covered with brown liquid. A few men muttered disgustedly and yet others complained as the smell of burnt fuel from the flamethrower flooded their nostrils.

"There's the exit!" someone shouted.

A little push was all it took to kill the rest of the Flood in the hallway. Just as we began pouring out we heard the sound of the Scorpion firing its main cannon behind us. Johnson cursed and shouted for everyone to hurry. Once we were all out he set two of his men to locking the door. I watched as they struggled to understand the alien mechanism before slapping a universal lock on it. The UNSC device could shut down any electric doors that it was familiar with or understood. Basically it meant that if it could access it then it would be shut down.

The door glowed a faint red.

"Huh," I muttered.

"Technology's a wonderful thing," Johnson said. "Now what are we going to do about that?"

I looked at the massive chasm that was separating us from the library. The cliff had an ominous fog filling it and looked more scary than anything nature would make. There was only about fifty meters of flat ground before the cliff. There was cursing and complaining. I began wondering how many men we could transport on our Pelicans and how dangerous it would be, but a few scouts spotted a structure hidden around a slight bend to our right, only a kilometer away, no hostiles in view.

Yeah right.

"It looks like there's cables of some sort," one of the Marines said.

"Are you sure about that?" Johnson asked her. "Like a gondola?"

"There was a structure that seemed to be separate from the docks."

"So a gondola?"

"Yes, Sergeant Major."

"Then that's where we're going," Keyes said, standing up on the seat in my Warthog. "Let's go, we're short on time!"

Everybody stood up, pushing themselves up from the snowy ground and sighing tiredly. Several Marines left bloodstains where they had been sitting down and more needed help to get up. I couldn't fail but notice that we had lost one of our trucks along with all the dead and wounded that had been thrown on board. The other one was still in working order, but that's being generous.

"One tank, four Warthogs, and a truck that's only good for carrying bodies," Pavel said. "We've been in worse shape, I guess."

"Have we?" Grass asked. "I don't think I recall a situation that comes close to this."

"Reach was bad," Longworth noted.

"Well, so is Earth for that matter," Lady said.

"And the faster we're done here the faster we can get back to fight," I told them. "Focus on the mission."

My men grumbled yessirs and moved forward. Like the rest of the Marines we kept moving. As soon as we made it around the little bend we saw the gondola that the scouts had mentioned. It was large, at least a hundred meters high. I wasn't looking forward to climbing on that thing if it was supposed to move across that canyon of doom.

"Commander," I said as we drove forward. "Can we get the Pelicans to move us across?"

"Johnson's working on it, Lieutenant. The Covenant and Flood have ways to shoot us down so we're evaluating our options."

"Yes ma'am," I said.

"I'm sorry about your man, Lieutenant."

"So am I, Commander. So am I."

I turned my head to look at Lady. She was walking just fine, but her left arm was hanging limply to her side. A medic would've improvised a cast for her, but all of our medics had already been killed. Our battalion had been reduced to a few dozen men. No squad of ODSTs had escaped without casualties and most had suffered over 50% losses. The Marines had fared even worse, with most squads completely obliterated and the survivors forced to fight in ragtag groups full of wounded men.

A Pelican flew overhead. At first I thought it was going to drop supplies or pick up the wounded, but it just kept flying, as if it hadn't seen us. Johnson gave orders for one of his men to train a SPANKr on it and we waited patiently. The Pelican seemed unsure of where to go even as Johnson warned everybody not to make contact.

Then it stopped and hovered in place, turning around. It faced our direction, letting us see its frontal side in all of its glory. Military designers oftentimes made their vehicles as practical and useful as possible, but there was an unspoken rule that called for a design that would make you crap your pants. Our Warthogs were scary-looking, our Scorpions were scary-looking, our Pelicans were no different. They were even scarier when you realized that they had anti-tank missiles and a massive gun that could take out pretty much anything you could produce.

"Fire," Johnson ordered his man.

Three missiles flew forward as two Marines fired. The Pelican strafed sideways and opened fire on us. Its flying was erratic, but nonetheless two Marines were hit by the heavy caliber bullets. Even a glancing impact from one of those would be enough to kill you. The two Marines weren't lucky enough to survive, having been hit in their midsection.

The Pelican received all three impacts to the right wing, taking it out and prompting it to start spiraling down into the ground rapidly.

"Shit," I said. "Flood?"

"Looks like it," Caboose muttered in reply. "Shit."

I hated it when he swore. That's when I knew things were bad.

"Taxman, Taxman, do you copy? Taxman, are you there?"

The channel opened up, but all I heard was gunfire. Shit.

"Taxman!" I repeated.

For a moment there I was thankful Marina was dead. If she wasn't I just knew she would've found herself here and would have to fight those monsters. I didn't want that for her.

"I'm here!" he shouted. "Lieutenant, somebody brought them back! They're in the ship!"

"Fuck, Commander, did you hear that?" I asked Keyes.

"Copy that," she replied, sounding angry. "There's nothing we can do. Damn."

"That's an understatement," I said.

No ship, no way out of this hell.

"Taxman, get out of there," I said. "Tell all Pelican pilots to evacuate."

"I'm not sure there are any pilots left," he said. "Fuck, fuck, fuck, they're closing on my girl."

"Get out of there," I said. "We're going to need your Pelican soon."

"Launching now El-tee, this is bad."

He wasn't losing his cool despite the situation, well, at least his voice seemed calm even when his words were not. I heard some movement and vaguely familiar noises. As I looked up towards the _In Amber Clad_ I saw the grey clouds only just managing to make out the outline of the frigate. I couldn't see anything from here, it certainly didn't appear that the sailors in there were going through a hell that was quite possibly worse than ours as the Flood tried to make it to the bridge. It would've been a tough situation without the Marine complement on board, with all able-bodied men down here… well, it wasn't very likely that we'd find survivors.

"Ma'am," I said.

"First the Library," Keyes replied. "We'll worry about my ship after that."

"Understood."

Taxman reported saying that he would set down away from our position and would fly up when we had reached the gondola. He was our only air asset so far and Keyes didn't feel like risking our only possible way out of this place.

"Sentinels," Caboose growled, spooling the turret. "Sentinels!"

Sentinels indeed. A veritable fleet of them accompanied by three Enforcers. We fired first, but they fired hard. Our Scorpion took out one of the Enforcers before the bulk of the missiles reached it. It got a third shot off and knocked out the shields on a second one before exploding in the fireball. The wounded Marines that had been using it for transports didn't have better luck.

Dozens of beams shot out, hitting men and women as they tried to take cover. Crow hefted his rocket launcher and fired the two missiles at the Enforcer, taking it out before it could fire a second volley of missiles. Only then did we start firing back on the smaller sentinels, trying to get them while they were bulked together and before they got amongst us, making our heavy machine guns as effective as possible. I was left to move around in erratic patterns while Caboose fired the machine gun.

"Get Keyes to safety!" Johnson shouted. "The truck!"

I spun around, the tires slipping in the snow. Caboose grunted at the violent shaking and cursed as a beam burned his arm slightly. He was lucky it wasn't burned off. I sped towards the truck just as a beam melted through the side window and killed the driver, stopping it short. I put the Warthog behind the truck, leaving Caboose a little firing room and hopping off to bolster his firepower.

"Stay behind the tires ma'am," I told Keyes. "We'll handle this."

"Like hell I will," she said, moving to the edge of the truck and firing at the sentinels with her M7 SMG.

I rolled my eyes. "Try to keep your head down ma'am."

My squad was close by, just a couple dozen meters away and taking cover behind a boulder formation. Dotsenko and Pavel were doing most of the heavy lifting, taking out Sentinel formations with sustained fire. They were the only two men left with machine guns in the whole unit and they had to assist every other Marine still alive and fighting.

"Flood!"

I saw the combat forms just as they started coming down. The lead elements of their assault force smashed down the Sentinels closest to us, saving our asses and providing perfect targets. The second wave landed amongst our positions, making a mess of things and throwing our fields of fire completely off.

"Time to get moving!" Johnson shouted. "Let's haul ass!"

I climbed on the passenger side of the truck and shoved the dead Marine out the other side. I'd rather deal with one more Flood form than have all those wounded in the back die. Keyes hopped on the passenger seat and I rolled forward, leaving Caboose exposed. Dotsenko and Crow began moving towards the Warthog in order to get Caboose out of there, but halfway through a blue Sentinel beam fell upon them. Dotsenko was hit, but he put his right arm up and used the prosthetic to block the beam. He cursed as the beam heated the metal but he couldn't move before someone took out the Sentinel. Crow switched to his carbine and did it, but not before the prosthetic arm had been melted off.

"Shit," Dotsenko muttered, examining the metallic stump. "I guess I'm driving."

Crow nodded and pulled him up again. Dotsenko struggled to hold the SAW properly with only one hand, eventually using his shortened metal stump to help aim it up as he ran. He slung it over his shoulder and hopped in the driver's seat. If he couldn't fire from the passenger seat then he was useless, but he could at least drive one handed.

Not the best idea for a combat driver, mind you.

I followed the Warthog, maneuvering the large truck as best as I could. Red beams flew at me and I had to shove Keyes' head under the dashboard to avoid one of them. I swerved hard to the left and almost tipped the truck over to avoid a missile from a combat form. Caboose took the threat out, but more Flood jumped up and landed on the truck.

"Commander!" I shouted, swerving from side to side in order to get rid of them.

She said nothing as she grabbed her SMG and fired at the two combat forms mounted on the hood, spraying brown fluid everywhere. She then leaned out and fired at the roof of the truck, trying to see if she could hit anything. I positioned the truck parallel to the Warthog and Caboose began firing, bullets whizzing right above our heads.

"You're clear!" he shouted.

"Get back in here, Commander!" I told Keyes, dragging her by the belt as Sentinels began firing at us again.

"Lieutenant, watch out!" she shouted.

A Sentinel flew straight at me, nearly crushing me against the seat behind me. I managed to avoid it, but I had to dodge sideways. The only way to go was out of the truck.

Let me put this in context. We were moving at 40 or 50 miles per hour on uneven terrain with an abyss to our left. The door swung open as I dodged the Sentinel battering ram, leaving me hanging above the bottomless pit as the truck kept speeding on snowy ground with no one at the wheel.

"Keyes!" I shouted, forgetting all about protocol.

She reached over the crashed Sentinel and swerved to the right, slamming the door closed and forcing me to open it again. I was now relatively safe, but the truck was slowing down and the Flood was catching up. Most of the Marines were already dead or had made it to the gondolas along with Johnson. I was wondering how they made it there so quickly as I tried to get the piece of wreckage off the driver's seat in order to get there.

"It's stuck!" I shouted.

"Hold the wheel," Keyes ordered.

I reached around the broken windshield and did as I was told. She then began kicking at the Sentinel until she managed to dislodge the metal from the seat and send it tumbling out the window. By that point we had almost slowed down to a complete stop and Dotsenko had stopped the Warthog to provide cover for us. Only one hundred meters to go and we'd be relatively safe behind a defensible position.

"Get in!" Keyes shouted.

I was already flooring the pedal when she finished saying that and my head slammed back against the seat cushion as we accelerated. Caboose fired at the approaching waves of Flood forms as best as he could, but they were beginning to catch up and climb on board of the Warthog. I cursed repeatedly, I couldn't help them.

"Dotsenko, you can't bring those into the dock," I said.

"Understood," he replied. "Crow, Sarge, take them out!"

It's not like they weren't trying, because they were, but there was just no way that they could take out the swarm of creatures that was boarding the Warthog. Dotsenko could barely afford to let go of the wheel to fight off infection forms and Crow was bashing away at the smaller monsters with all his limbs while Caboose filled the bigger ones with lead.

"I can drive the car off the cliff, sir!" Dotsenko said.

"That's hardly necessary, Sasha," I told him.

"Slow down a bit, lure them and drive off the edge. Jump out right before, obviously."

I frowned. Keyes and I were already there. Safe.

"Do it."

"Ok, everybody re-"

I only saw what happened because I was moving towards them to provide covering fire. Dotsenko's body jerked before his head fell on the wheel and the Warthog began moving to the side, slowing down.

"Oh hell no!" Crow shouted.

Dotsenko fell out the side, his body crushed by the rear tire as he landed on the snow. A wave of infection forms hid his body from view.

"Covering fire!" I shouted, "Pavel!"

We opened up, but it was hard to hit anything. The Flood was too close to Caboose and Crow and the Warthog had slowed down too much.

"Shit, shit, shit," I grunted. "Longworth!"

"I'm with you El-tee!" he replied, rushing forward before I even had to order him to do it.

The two of us ran through the snow, firing as we went. Caboose was still dutifully manning the LAAG on the Warthog as Crow tossed infection forms in all possible directions and stomped down on an ever-growing mass of brown. He was firing with his pistol in one hand and the MA5K on the other. A combat form jumped up at him and knocked him down, but a flurry of bullets flew through the Flood form and it went limp, a gigantic mess was all that remained of the midsection.

"I'm dry!" Caboose shouted.

"Get over here!"

"I'll hold them!" Crow screamed, struggling to his feet as dozens of little tendrils slashed and probed through his undersuit, trying to find a way to his skin and through. "Run!"

I saw Crow get to his feet, barely managing to do that under the weight of all the Flood on top of him. He took three steps, firing his pistol at random directions but hitting something every single time. I hated having to look at this, but I knew what was going to happen. I barely saw the first grenade land on the ground next to him. I didn't see the other two he managed to activate, but I did see his body torn into a million pieces as the detonations sent shrapnel flying everywhere, decimating the Flood that had been crowding around him and making a big dent in their numbers. Four combat forms were killed alongside the dozens of infection forms nearby.

Caboose was limping, clutching his side. The bullet injury was still there and wouldn't go away just yet, but my man wouldn't stop fighting until his body gave up. If I knew Grigori, then that wouldn't happen anytime soon.

"Castillo, get back in here!" Johnson shouted.

"Frank! Hurry!"

A wall of lead and depleted uranium covered the three of us as we retreated back to safety, Caboose leaving a trail of blood as Longworth and I helped him move through the snow. We moved past a pair of large Marines flanking the small entrance. My men were manning the waist-high walls that served as a natural defense.

"Did you get Sasha?" I asked Miranda.

She aimed down her sight and shook her head.

"Get him."

She fired.

I nodded as she sighed sadly.

"Load up, Marines!" Johnson shouted. "It's the home stretch!"

Groans abounded, but there were only a few men left to shout. Johnson's squad had only four men now. McKenzie, Perez, a girl named Knight, and Johnson himself. AAG-7 had been reduced to… shit. Seven men.

Shit.

I was still up and running, Pavel, Caboose, Longworth, Miri, and Lady remained as well as Grass. We had Miri as a sharpshooter, but nobody here was a heavy weapons specialist. Pavel could handle suppressing fire, Caboose and Longworth could fight and both Grass and Lady were skilled enough to do what they were needed to. Shit.

"Frank?"

"Yeah?" I asked.

Grass was looking at me, slightly concerned. I looked down at her hand and took the trio of magazines for my battle rifle before taking them and putting them in my empty pouches.

"Hell of a day, eh?" I asked her.

"Yeah," she agreed. "If you had told me zombies were a thing a few hours ago…"

"Bee would've had a blast," I told her.

"Yeah," she said. "I miss him."

"I do too," I admitted.

Grass sighed and checked the ammo counter on her rifle. She shook her head slightly and moved up to a position in the short wall, ready for anything that the universe threw at us. I looked at Pavel, who just gave me a quick nod before returning to his own business. Johnson and Keyes were arguing with each other until finally Johnson relented.

"Lieutenant," he said. "Taxman is on his way to this position. The commander and I will be moving up ahead in the gondola alongside most of the forces we have left. Your men and a few others will remain here, secure our way out. If worst comes to worst, you'll have to pick us up on the other side."

Flying across the canyon didn't seem like a particularly good idea with all the Sentinels going around.

"Anything else?" I asked. I was too tired to point out the imbecility of splitting up in this situation. Any other day it would've made sense, but not today.

"Negative, Lieutenant," Johnson said. "Taxman's got a few crates of ammunition, but that's all there is."

I nodded. We had been burning through ammunition like crazy. Right now we had a surplus of rifles and other weapons taken from dead Marines, but nobody had died without spending more than two thirds of their ammunition. The wounded were working on transferring the bullets to other magazines in order to fill them up and reduce the need to reload. I estimated that with some luck we'd have two thirds of a load with all the ammo that was left. Not enough by a long shot, but with Taxman's drop we might get enough ammo to last several hours.

"Any estimate on how long we'll be waiting?" I asked.

He shook his head. "We're still trying to get this damned thing moving, but you should expect at least an hour of wait."

"Lovely," I said. "You take off as soon as Taxman gets here?"

"Correct," he said, pointing up. "There he comes."

"Intact too," I noted. "Isn't that a thing…"

"Indeed," Johnson agreed. "Frank, I expect you to hold this place at all costs."

"And I expect you to get whatever is so important that you've sacrificed the whole complement on this ship."

He nodded.

"Johnson," I continued. "I have six men to keep alive. If I don't hear from you I'm bailing."

He looked as if he was about to begin chastising me but then he examined the tired, scared, and even crying Marines all around us. "Very well. We'll radio in when we get there, when we get the objective, and on our way back."

"That should do it," I said. "And Johnson?"

"Yeah?"

I offered my hand and he shook it.

"It' has been an honor," I told him.

He laughed. "Ha! I still owe you a second boxing match, don't I? My first victory wasn't overwhelming enough."

I smiled back. "Good luck, Sergeant Major. You're gonna need it."

He nodded, all seriousness now. "First, Third, and Eighth Squads! On your feet! Tonight you become heroes!"

More than half of the men needed help being put back on their feet. Some of them refused to get up, crying and clutching their knees until someone slapped them hard or kicked them. Nobody wanted to go, but in the end even the traumatized Marines knew that they had to get out of here. The few that remained behind at the dock would be the ones fending wave after wave of Flood and Sentinels with a canyon at our backs and nowhere to go.

Not to say their situation was any better, but there were only so many places from which the enemy could jump at their gondola.

Marines moved heavy machine guns to the gondola and set them up around as everyone else took positions. Some carried barricades from the truck and put them in certain weak spots, but for the most part they left the majority of the barricades to our group. We're the ones that needed to turn this place into a fortress. Something that would not happen any time soon, and especially not with our supplies.

"Where do you want everybody?" Pavel asked me.

"I want the truck with its back against the cliff," I said.

"In case we need to drive away?"

"In case we are overwhelmed. I'm not letting the dead be taken by the Flood."

He nodded.

"I want heavy machine gun fire on the top and back. Those walls will pack the Flood tightly if they want to come at us. I still want a dedicated pair of eyes tracing the top in case they make their way up and decide to jump down at us. All grenades should be put in a crate and then spread out along the perimeter. Taxman is coming in and we can use his rear gun to complement our fire. How many men do we have available?"

"Us seven and an ODST squad and a regular squad for a total of twenty," he replied.

"Should be good enough. They can come at us from two places, front through the cliff or our right where we came from. Both directions have little cover for them."

"We couldn't ask for a better killing field," Pavel told me.

I nodded.

"You with me, Pavs?" I asked him.

He smiled and nodded, offering his hand. I clasped it and pressed my shoulder to his, hugging him.

"Always," he replied. "Frank… If anything happens."

I rolled my eyes.

"If anything happens. Take care of them."

"I will," I said. "That's a promise."

"Good, because putting Lavanya through college is gonna be a pain in the ass."

"I'll be sure to break some knees if anyone tries to date her," I said. "But I don't plan on doing that alone."

"Well, hopefully you won't have to," he said, smiling.

"Watch the gap!" someone shouted.

The gondola began moving. I realized only how large that thing was when it distanced itself from us. The thing was over a hundred meters tall and half again as wide. It fit all of our troops there and then some. We could've put a couple of tanks in there and had some space left over. I looked at it as it went away, grinding and scratching as it moved through the old metallic bearings that kept it in place. I also noticed that it was moving with the help of some antigravity device, seeing as there were no cables to which it held onto.

"Hear that?" Pavel said. "Plasma."

"The covvies are catching up," Miranda added. "There's another gondola a few hundred meters further up."

"It's gonna be close…" Longworth declared.

"It'll suck for them when Johnson kicks their asses," Caboose told them. "Now back to your positions."

Twenty men against whatever they threw at us. We'd have to split up evenly, with ten men watching over each side that we could be hit from. The main entrance had high walls on either side that looked like they had once been a tunnel and the side had a cliff and an abyss. Small blessing in a very bad situation.

Screeching and whirring came from the other gondola, far away from us. I climbed up and zoomed into the structure. I spotted an elite or two moving behind a wall before loud screeching and roaring forced me to redirect my attention to the more dangerous enemy. The Flood had presumably taken out the majority of the Sentinels now, seeing as the flying robots hadn't made their presence known for a long time now.

"They're coming on our right flank!"

And coming they were. Dozens of combat forms jumped from the top of the cliff down into the snow that we had come through. I could almost hear the crunching as they came down around the flaming Warthog. The few corpses that hadn't been consumed by the Flood were quickly reanimated by infection forms and joined the assault on our position. Pavel opened up first, quickly followed by everyone else defending the right flank. Taxman raised his Pelican and pivoted so that the rear was facing the attackers. He quickly moved from the cockpit to the rear and began firing with his chaingun, tearing through the fleshy wall that was coming at us.

"Don't let them get within leaping distance!" I shouted. "Combat forms are a priority target, the little ones can wait."

Everyone had enough common sense to do that, but I still felt the need to let them know. The popping noises from the small infection forms joined the roars of anger coming from the combat forms. I hated the fact that they were mostly humans with some elites and brutes. Most of the attackers were grossly disfigured, but the armor plating that the Flood had grown around was very effective in protecting the infection forms. The ODSTs that had been infected were even harder to kill, taking several bursts just to crack through the chest plate alone.

"If you can't kill 'em take out their legs!"

It was a reasonably effective tactic, albeit only good for delaying them. They seemed to just cure themselves from any bullet wounds that came.

"Pavel, do we have flamers?" I asked.

"I think there's one left," he said. "Man in the truck."

"I got it," Longworth said. "Lady, cover my sector."

Longworth took off after tossing his DMR to Lady and rushed through the enemy gunfire, keeping his head covered. Once in the truck he rifled through the bodies until he found the man carrying the flamethrower. He cursed as he was forced to rustle through the straps and hefted the heavy backpack himself before coming back out, carrying the whole thing in his arms.

"Take your time, son," an ODST said, laying out suppressing fire.

Longworth set down the backpack and only barely aimed the business end before firing. The stream of flammable fluid shot out, catching fire and creating a firestorm. The fire landed on snow, rock, Flood, and stuck there. It took a few seconds for the Combat forms to be completely consumed by the flames, but after they collapsed it was guaranteed that they would not get back up again. After a quick two second burst the assault on our right flank had completely stopped and the few survivors were taken out as they stubbornly kept moving towards us.

"Front side!"

"Taxman!" I shouted. "Shift fire!"

He moved back to his Pelican's cockpit and moved it back to its original position. Longworth shouldered the backpack and moved to the front as Pavel began opening up on the Flood forms. Tracers illuminated the darkness, allowing us to see as chunks of flesh were torn from the Flood form. All twenty of us participated in the defense, with Pavel and Taxman doing most of the work for us. Caboose kept pressing his injury and grunting in Russian. Longworth had become a primary target and had already been nicked twice in the left arm by gunfire. The rest of the men were in relatively good shape, but a few had been hit in non-vital areas.

"I'm getting some brute forms!"

I aimed at two brutes, two deformed brutes, and fired. The one I shot recoiled backwards as a hole the size of a grapefruit suddenly appeared on its chest. The other one began rushing forward to meet the same fate. The first one quickly hopped back to its feet as an infection form climbed into the cavity. I kept firing at the second one, reducing the corpse to uselessness. It cost me a full magazine, but I took it out of the game.

"I'm not hearing enough grenades, men!" I said. "Target clusters!"

Sure enough two grenades flew out, clearing a whole section of the canyon. Flood fluids flew everywhere, painting the walls brown and yellow with some dried blood in there for good measure. It was truly a disgusting sight, not because of how unrecognizable everything was, but because there was still enough to recognize what had once been a human organ.

"They're jumping down!"

The Marine that gave the warning was crushed as a combat form landed on his shoulders, breaking his neck and back. The Flood looked down and then straight at me, roaring. I wasted no time in putting a burst through its chest, but four more had already jumped down. Grass was the first to come to the rescue, but before she could shoot the combat forms jumped at us, crowding us. Her assault rifle was batted aside and she was forced to draw her machete. The large knife was sharp and she knew how to wield it. Add the power of a prosthetic and she could cut through pretty much anything. She did just that as she severed the claws from the combat form nearest to her while reaching for her sidearm to finish it off.

I fired full auto at the forms approaching me, hitting its belly and chest but missing the tendrils that I was aiming for. The Flood screeched and swiped at me, I ducked and stabbed the thing with the barrel of my gun. I squeezed the trigger of the gun until it ran dry before throwing down the corpse and stomping on its chest. I caught sight of Grass decapitating a brute form and then stabbing down through the shoulder and halfway to the belly. The tendrils shook violently before Grass pulled out the machete and stabbed them repeatedly.

The last form had taken advantage of the two of us being focused on the first three and attacked two Marines. The first one was unlucky enough to be hit in the head by a swipe from those claws. I could hear the neck snapping all the way over here, but the other Marine emptied his magazine at the combat form's chest and kept going even after the thing fell to the floor, avenging his friend and making sure it couldn't be used against us.

"Grass, throw them down the cliff," I ordered. "Can you do that?"

"Yes, sir!" she shouted, grabbing the arms of the combat forms and dragging them through the grey floor, leaving fluid trails behind her.

"Longworth, torch them!"

"My pleasure."

He raised the flamethrower and fired. The weapon was quite possibly the best choice to fight any enemy in this situation. Pair the high walls with the narrow canyon and you had a deathtrap. Throw in a little bit of magic fire and you had something badass enough to make a movie out of it. The sticky fluid stuck to walls, floor, and flesh as it landed. The fire shined brightly even as the Flood roared and screeched in anger more than any pain. Little pops were heard as the gasses in the bodies were ignited and the infection forms were destroyed. You could tell them apart by the exact nature of the sound.

"Cease fire!" I ordered. "Reload!"

"Stay ready!" Pavel shouted. "Keep those eyes open!"

I followed my own advice and reloaded my rifle. Two ODSTs dragged an ammunition box out of the Pelican past Taxman and began filling empty magazines with bullets with speed that came from years of practice. Bullets hit the ground when their shaking hands missed, but they were filling magazines at a rate of two every two minutes. I know because we only had two minutes of respite before they had to return to firing.

"Pavel, you good?" I asked my friend, slapping his shoulder.

"Grazed," he said. "Didn't break the skin, but I'm gonna bruise."

"Where?"

He slapped his left leg lightly. I could see the groove in the thigh armor that the bullet had left, but the armor was still relatively intact. Another hit there might succeed in fragmenting the plates, but heat weapons would theoretically still be dissipated by the titanium. Theoretically.

"How about you?" he asked.

"Still no hits," I said. "I'm going to try to keep it that way."

"I thought you liked scars."

"I liked showing them off," I said. "Katie doesn't like it when I get new scars."

"Yeah, Amber's the same way with that. I bet that Eliza does like them though."

I rolled my eyes. We were in this fucked up situation and Pavel still had time to tease me about Katie's younger cousin. I don't know whether she still had a crush on me, but she certainly acted like that sometimes. I think she was just giving me a hard time, she always seemed to have one guy or another at her heels if Katie's word was anything close to reliable.

"Think they're safe?" he asked.

"They have to be," I replied. "Our girls are fine."

"I'm scared, Frank," he admitted. "What if we go back and they're not there? What if we don't go back at all?"

"We always go back," I said. "You and I, as long as we stick together, we're always going to go back."

He looked at me and nodded. That was all he had to do. We had been together for longer than any two people had a right to. He was my family, more than my uncle, more than my father, my brother, and certainly my mother. Pavel was a brother in all but blood. He had saved my life countless times and I had done the same for him. I was never worried for him, I knew him well enough that he would be able to handle any situation that was thrown his way with ease and even flair. In the back of my head I knew that if things were bad enough that he would die then I would be there with him, but it was never a thought I have much time to.

But now I was afraid. I was afraid for him, for Grass, for the squad, for myself, and even Caboose. I didn't want anyone else to die, but Reaper was dwindling, I couldn't take it if more of them went down. Snark had died just an hour ago, killed by a monstrosity few could fathom in real life. Dotsenko and Crow had gone down too, fighting and kicking as they died. I knew that Snark's death would hit me hard soon, but I didn't know whether it would overwhelm the pain of having lost Dotsenko and Crow or if those two would just make it even worse.

For a moment there I wished that I didn't make it out so that I wouldn't have to deal with the real world.

"This is not our time," Schitzo said, "but this is our real world. And in _my_ world, we fight."

"In my world, we fight," I agreed. "We fight! Listen up, men! The Flood are not about to stop, but if we can make them pause for a moment again and again they'll realize that nobody messes with the UNSC Marine Corps! Nobody messes with badasses like you and me; if they do, they will get their fucking asses kicked. We've got ammo, a defensible position, and a Pelican with us. Bigger battles have been won with less."

A screech came through the front approach.

"A man once asked his men if they wanted to live forever and I'm asking you that question once again. Hold this line. Let Keyes get what she wants and you will be heroes. Only one thing is more important than Earth and that is humanity."

The roars were getting louder.

"Survive this fucking clusterfuck and you will all be saviors of humanity, living and in the flesh."

That was a lie, ONI would cover this shit up as soon as the sun rose, but they didn't need to think about that right now.

"Oorah?" I finished.

"Oorah!"

"Now let's kill some fuckers!" Pavel shouted.

If there was any time to capitalize on the situation with music, then this was it. I was going to hit my traditional go-to epic music playlist, but for some reason I decided to play one of the playlists that Bee had left me before he died. Rap. I had listened to some of that and it was either a hit or miss for me. It was empowering most of the times. Bee claimed that it was the best music for a workout, but I had not really acquired the taste for it.

Flood began coming out of the smoke just as my helmet was connected to the loudspeakers on the Pelican. Someone hit something and then a lot of people hit a lot of somethings. A chorus started harmonizing and a man quickly joined them, speaking to an invisible audience or to himself. Schitzo raised an eyebrow at that one, but the beat was certainly matching the mood. We were going to kick ass and we were going to be damn good at it too. Nothing was going to stop us now.

_Who can catch lightning in a bottle? Set fire to water?_

The rap started strong and loud, the loudspeakers on the Pelican filled the gondola dock with noise and a few Marines whooped as they began firing at the Flood, thinning their numbers as they came. Gunfire and explosions almost managed to drown the music, but everyone was playing it in their helmets now. They might've not enjoyed the music, but they could not deny the power that it carried.

The music was good and all, but there was a shitload of Flood mass coming at us.

"Pavel, keep your eye on the right," I told him. "Taxman, ready to shift fire."

The combat forms dropped only to get back up again and the infection forms rushed through the floor and walls, using their mass to stop our bullets from killing the more dangerous combat forms. Plasma and gunfire started flying at us, severely reducing our capacity to fire back at them and sending several men diving for cover. I was almost hit as a bullet pinged off the floor in front of me and bounced between my legs. I steeled myself and fired back.

"Should I light them up?" Longworth asked.

We were low on fuel.

"Hold it!" I ordered.

I mentally shook my head at having to fulfill one of the worst war movie clichés and held my hand up, giving the signal to hold.

"They're getting closer, sir!" Longworth shouted back, playing along unknowingly.

"Hold!"

They were getting closer indeed. Less than fifty meters. Forty now.

"Hold!"

Twenty… ten…

"Fire!"

The poor combat forms that were in the front were thrown back by the fluid and then were burned completely through. The jet of fire was one single solid stream of death that burned through the first line and the second and third without pausing. The flammable jelly did not start spreading out until the fifty meter mark, but by that point everything in front of us had been lit up. The biomass would act as fuel, severely hampering the transit ability of the infection forms.

"Burn the fuckers!" someone shouted. "Let them burn!"

They were getting crispy alright, but the smell wasn't that strange yet appealing smell that came from burn flesh, it smelled like rot. It was bad enough that I had to activate my helmet's filters. Some of the Marines gagged visibly as the smell got more intense, but they would have no time to get used to it before the second wave showed up, almost as if nothing had happened to the first.

We kept firing, it's not like we had anything else to do.

"Castillo, we made it across," Johnson suddenly checked in. "There's a Phantom flying in the area, got a few of our men… we might need to risk that pickup."

"I'll tell Taxman," I said. "We're still holding this position."

"Keep holding," he said, signing off.

Combat forms leaped past our first line of defense. Caboose stepped up with his shotgun, limping from the gunshot wound in his belly. He blasted two combat forms down into the ground as the third one sprayed a Marine in the back, killing her. More of the Flood kept moving at us, with a wave of carriers waddling our way. They burst and sent veritable oceans of infection forms our way.

"The flamethrower's dry!" Longworth shouted.

"Move back!" I ordered. "Move back to secondary line!"

The secondary line was a bunch of ornamental walls that were behind the first line. It wasn't anything close to being something we could call a line, but it was all we had.

"We haven't had any attacks from the right flank," Pavel said. "Suspicious."

I agreed. "Longworth, Lady, do we have explosives?"

"Nothing too large." Lady was having a bit of trouble covering her sector, but the ODSTs still alive were doing even worse. "What are you thinking?"

We could blow the narrow entrance at the front or take down the cliff walls to our right. Either option would block the assault route and allow us to focus on one side only. The narrow entrance funneled them in, the right corridor in between the cliff walls didn't. If they started pushing large numbers of attackers through there we'd be in more trouble.

"Blow the rocks on the right side," I ordered. "Hurry!"

They took off a moment after getting the explosives. We were forced to fall back and sacrifice our first line completely after they left, leaving us with fewer men. Miranda even had to cover them with her DMR, taking out the occasional infection form while they climbed and planted the explosives. They did a horrible job of it, but the explosion would bring down enough rocks to block our right flank.

"Kinda funny how we're trapping ourselves here, eh," Schitzo suggested.

"Oh fuck off," I replied.

"Where's the detonator stick?" Longworth asked.

"What?" Lady replied.

There was a collective groan. It might've even been humorous if men weren't dying.

"Miranda!"

"I'm on it!"

I watched as she grabbed a pouch of detonator sticks and dashed out of cover to give them to Longworth and Lady. She stomped on an infection form and avoided three others as she rushed. I would've covered her, but we were on the edge of being overrun. I caught glimpses of Miranda maneuvering through the snow, but I was distracted by the enemy.

"Here, hand me those!"

"No don't drop them!"

"Hurry the fuck up!" Pavel shouted.

"Lieutenant, we've got enemies coming on the right!" Taxman screamed, his voice hoarse. "Tell your men to hurry up!"

"Almost there!" Longworth called back.

"Hurry up," Lady told him. "Adrian!"

"I'll catch up," he said. "Go!"

I turned to look at Miranda and Lady as they ran back, leaving Longworth behind to finish the job. Dozens of Flood combat forms were approaching, firing at him as they ran. Longworth cursed but otherwise finished the job, letting himself fall down and rolling backwards to absorb the force. He cursed again and got up, limping away from the explosives that had been set in the cliffs. He fired blindly at the attackers behind him, missing by a mile and then some. A bullet hit him in the back of the leg. I saw as the round exited right above his knee, trailing blood behind it. Longworth grunted and fell down, pushing himself back up and using his battle rifle as a crutch of sorts.

"Blow the fucking charges!" he shouted.

He was still within range.

"Hold!" I told Lady. "On my word!"

I was firing at the front and eyeing the right. The last thing I wanted was to screw up both. I sighed and stopped shooting, instead focusing on the wave of Flood jumping and leaping from our right flank. Longworth was hopping on his good leg and leaning on the BR55 HB. He was bending the barrel, any more damage and the gun would be useless.

The Flood was less than ten meters behind him.

"Fuck it. Blow it up!" I shouted.

Lady clicked on the detonator before I finished giving the order. I could see the shockwave push snowflakes and air out of the way. The Flood was less fortunate, with some of them being thrown over the edge of the cliff before the fireball engulfed those within range. The sound of the explosion was almost drowned out by sound of the rocks falling, but I kept looking at Longworth as he struggled to move forward on his good leg. Eventually he fell over forwards, knocked down by the shockwave.

Miranda and Lady sprang into action, they doubled back, with Lady moving faster and Miranda firing at the few Flood survivors as she ran. She hit every single target at a running speed with just a single shot, prompting me to raise an eyebrow. Lady grabbed Longworth and picked him up, spraying at a trio of infection forms with her assault rifle. Longworth groaned again but kept moving.

When the dust cleared I saw that our little foray had worked. Now we only had to focus on the front, paying minimal attention to the right flank.

"Keep shooting!" I ordered loudly. "Come on!"

We were firing at an unstoppable enemy, hitting them with everything we had and still failing to kill them all. Our numbers were slowly but surely being chipped away and the Flood could just pick up whatever body was still useful. Infection forms would distract us, make us backpedal, and reanimate corpses without a second thought. We had more wounded men than healthy ones. The Marines were almost completely gone now. Caboose was grunting loudly after every shot, pressing his hand against his side. Longworth had sat down in the Pelican, firing from a seating position as his leg put out drops of blood.

"What the hell is playing?" Pavel asked, reloading his machine gun.

_Human beings in a mob. _

_What's a mob to a king? What's a king to a god?_

_What's a god to a non-believer who don't believe in anything?_

A quick look to my HUD told me the name of the artist and the song, but before I could shout it out to Pavel a rocket launcher-toting Flood combat form landed a little bit too close for comfort and fired. The shot flew straight at the Pelican.

Longworth ducked down and rolled, Taxman jumped out of the way, but he was too late. The explosion hit the magnetic clamps that would carry vehicles or cargo in the tail section, close to one of the thrusters. The explosion engulfed Taxman and destroyed the machine gun in the rear, leaving us without one of our crucial sources of firepower. Taxman's corpse landed a mangled mess while Longworth struggled to keep moving away. The Pelican seemed to be in working order, but it would have to be kept that way.

"Kill it!"

Everybody was now looking at the rocket enemy, it didn't take long for the former Marine to be reduced to paste. With smoke coming out of the Pelican and with the speakers damaged I had to shut down the music. The relative silence was disturbing at first, but soon I forgot about Bee's playlist and focused on fighting for my life. My rifle was a bit awkward now, we were too close to the enemy for comfort. I backpedaled slowly, trying to remain behind cover, but that was becoming scarcer every second.

"Frank, we're in the Index Room," Johnson said. "We're down to four men here. I'm going to need that Pelican exfiltration."

"Just say when, Johnson," I replied. "We're hard-pressed here, too!"

"Keyes is getting the objective, McKenzie and Perez should be able to secure an exit."

"There was a gondola full of Covenant troops behind you," I reminded him.

"They went through a tunnel with Flood, their numbers should be thinned out significantly. Still I'll keep my eyes open. Shit, Keyes is about to do something stupid. Ten minutes Frank."

"If you don't call we're bailing in fifteen," I said. "Good luck."

Fifteen minutes. We could do that.

The Flood attack slowed down a bit. Looks like they finally ran out of corpses to throw at us and instead focused on keeping us on our toes, firing from the hard-fought ground that they had taken. They even took cover and provided suppressing fire as they advanced. Our own numbers were terribly depleted, with two of my men wounded and all but one of the Marines dead. Two other ODSTs were healthy and two others were wounded beyond any fighting capacity. We put those two in the blood tray of the Pelican, but they'd die soon if they didn't receive medical attention.

"How are you, Grass?" I asked.

"Good," she replied. "Tired."

"Still know how to pilot this shit?"

"Please, you know I can pilot any vehicle that you put in front of me."

"Good, because way things are looking we might need to highjack a Phantom out of here."

She sighed. "Not a good idea, Frank. You have any idea how difficult that's going to be?"

"We were made by surviving difficult," I reminded her. "You lost an arm and you're still here, fighting. A little thing like losing my ship never stopped me before and it's not going to stop me now."

"That might be the case for you," she said. "But not everyone here can survive what you do."

I fired at a combat form that remained out of cover for too long, taking out the tendrils. I aimed at it and killed two swarms of infection forms before one of them got past me and moved the corpse back behind cover, prompting a sigh.

"We'll survive, Grass. We always do."

"Not all of us," she replied.

A bullet hit me in the neck. I fell on my ass and put my hand to the left side of my neck as blood sprayed out. I cursed and pressed hard, feeling the sting from the bullet. It took me a few seconds to mentally check to see if I could still breathe and a few others to wiggle my toes, make sure I hadn't suffered a spinal injury. Grass dove to my position and pulled out a piece of fabric, torn fatigues from the look of it, and started wrapping it around my neck.

"Too tight," I said.

"It has to be. Missed big arteries it looks like, but there's a shitload of blood going to your head."

"Think I don't know that," I muttered. "Ah!"

"Easy," she said. "Pavel, lay down suppressing fire!"

"What's going on?" I asked. "Grass, what's happening?"

The increased sound of gunfire was enough of an indicator. The last Marine was hit in the chest by blue plasma bolts before falling down. Miri grabbed his body and dragged it back beyond the range of any combat forms as Caboose blasted away at the enemy with his shotgun. We were out of explosives, grenades, and flamethrower fuel. Our ammunition was dangerously depleted and the Pelican's rear gun was done for. Johnson had asked for two more minutes and I was going to give them to him.

"Right side of the wall, right side!"

I was left to press down on the wet bandage with one hand while using my right knee to prop my rifle up. Things were getting too bad for my taste and when Johnson failed to check in after ten minutes I began panicking.

"Five minutes!" I shouted. "Ready!"

The gunfire was dying down. The Flood was beginning to catch up and we were reduced to shooting the ones that were a direct threat. The bodies were beginning to pile up on the entrance and inside. Snow hit us from the side as a strange wind picked up and plasma and gunfire landed all around us. One of the ODSTs was killed when a combat form hit him hard enough to break his back before he was swarmed by infection forms. Caboose was blasting away with his shotgun and switching out to an assault rifle, letting Longworth do the reloading.

"That's fifteen minutes," Grass said.

"Johnson, what the hell's the situation?" I asked. "Johnson, do you copy?"

"Shit," Pavel said.

"Johnson? Keyes, Commander Keyes?" I went on. "Avery! Where the hell are you?"

There was no reply. None at all.

"Shit, shit, shit," I said. "Fuck it, let's get out of here. Humanity can go fuck itself. Everyone fall back!"

It was like Christmas. Every single survivor dashed backwards, forgetting almost everything they had learned about orderly retreats. Pavel sprayed everything that moved while Grass got the Pelican going. I helped Longworth stumble into cover and extended my arm to the other ODST survivor, but the man was hit in the back by a brute shot projectile, covering me with blood and gore. I fell backwards, more than a little disturbed as Grass took off. Pavel grabbed the back of my vest and secured me as we took off hard.

There were seven survivors plus the two wounded ODSTs. There was only seven of us and in all likelihood we were all that was left of the UNSC _In Amber Clad_ in this little circle of hell.

* * *

><p><em>Thanks to <strong>Colonel-Commissar2468 <strong>and **General TheDyingTitan** for proofreading this chapter._

_ So that happened. Sorry for the delay, all I can say is that I've been very busy with sex and all that manly stuff. All hot girls too. I'm literally banging the hotest girls in school at least three times a day. Just kidding, except not. Before, during, and after finals._

_Thanks to everybody for reading and reviewing, you know that I take your questions, comments, and concerns very seriously and will usually take the time to reply to them or even work them into my story. I'm cool like that I guess. Winky face. Anyways, other than the apology for the insanely long delay in updating I don't really have much to say. _

_I hope you enjoyed this chapter._

_Stay strong._

_-casquis_


	220. Adrift

Chapter CCXX: Adrift

**November 3, 2552 (UNSC Calendar)/**

**Quarantine Zone, Delta Halo [orbiting Substance], Coelest System**

* * *

><p><em>"There really wasn't a good plan."<em>

* * *

><p>There was near absolute silence as Grass did her best to fly the Pelican out of the Quarantine Zone. We were fired at by both Flood and Sentinels alike. There might've been some Covenant forces in there too, but it was nearly impossible to tell in the dark. Snow obscured our view, but we knew that the only place we wanted to go was away from here. The Pelican was hit repeatedly, small impacts that amounted to significant damage. No one said anything.<p>

Silence was broken when Miranda leaned back from one of the wounded ODSTs.

"He's gone."

"The other one?"

She shook her head. "Not much longer."

I nodded.

It only took a few minutes for us to make it out of the Quarantine Zone, but as soon as Grass gave the clear signal we all collectively sighed with relief. I lazily got up, feeling my neck throbbing. My men barely raised their heads as I walked past them. They were sleeping, resting their bodies from the injuries and the fatigue. My own body felt like giving up. It was hard to compare it to something, but when you've had too much to drink and you can feel yourself just falling asleep would be a good place to start. Throw in some pain and multiply it times eleven and it would probably be how I was feeling. If it wasn't for the stimulants in my blood I would've surely collapsed in exhaustion by now. It had only been a few hours worth of battle, but it had been completely nonstop.

"Camilla, how are you?"

"Good," she replied. Blood was leaking out of her armor. Not in significant quantities, but enough to warrant a concerned frown. "I got a couple of interesting readings on the sensors."

"What is it."

"Well, I detected several small pings, probably Sentinels. I also got a few Banshees, but their flying patterns are too bad to be Covenant so… Anyways, two Phantoms flew out of the Library moments before we took off. I didn't see the initial trajectory so I'm making a big assumption there, but their flight paths seemed to indicate that they would meet up with the Covenant fleet and the space station."

I looked up through the cockpit, unsurprisingly enough, the size of the station was big enough that I could see it even in whatever passed for nighttime in this ring. It looked like a meteor with a metal spike embedded at the bottom. I couldn't begin to understand how they had gotten a slipspace engine mounted on that thing and made it work.

"What does that tell us?"

"Nothing really," she admitted. "Johnson and Keyes might've been killed by Covenant forces. Seems like we lost whatever we were trying to get."

"Sir," Caboose interrupted, walking into the cockpit. "I managed to get a link to Keyes' transponder. It only worked for a few moments before the computer died on me."

I raised an eyebrow. "A for initiative. What's the situation?"

"Looks like those Phantoms might've taken her after all," Caboose said. "It was high up in the air."

"Cross check it with the Phantom's flight path," I ordered. "Cam, put us down in one of the staging areas where we first landed. See if we can find anything."

"Yes, sir," they both replied.

My body was not getting any better, but my head cleared up some and the dark edges of my vision receded just a little bit. It wasn't much, but it was improvement. I looked at the cargo bay of the Pelican and counted. Grass and Caboose were in the cockpit, Pavel was sitting near the hatch, his M247L propped up against his knee, Lady and Longworth were both quite evidently asleep, and Miri was leaning against her DMR, sitting in the ground next to the two corpses of the unknown ODSTs.

We could escape from this hellhole or we could try and stage a rescue mission for Keyes. Either would likely end up in our deaths, but the question was which one would provide the higher survival chance. With our ammunition reserves as low as they were and our mental state as it was we wouldn't do too well in any engagement.

Escape seemed like the likely option. Hell, maybe we'd all get medals and bonuses if we made it.

Not bloody likely.

"Ok, I've got a site," Grass said. "Ten minutes ETA."

"It's a stop and go," I said. "Once there I want you to put us as far away from the Quarantine Zone as possible. Stay close to the ground and avoid anything that moves."

"Roger that."

"Caboose, you're coming down with me."

He nodded, but it was a weak nod. The man was not bleeding anymore, but he still had a bullet wound in him. Not exactly something that will perk you up.

"You alright?"

"Always, sir."

I shrugged slightly. I had never cared for the man much, so I wasn't about to stop him from doing physical labor with a bullet wound. I'd rather Pavel have a break and the rest of the men were in no shape to even walk. Funny how it was the members of Reaper that could still walk around. I had handpicked them and they were the best, nothing could ever change that. The other three… well, the other three were Reaper material for sure, but they hadn't passed the trial by fire that we had. They just needed practice, and I intended them to have that opportunity.

Our staging point was basically a bunch of tread marks on the muddy grass as well as an abandoned stretcher. There were some items of interest, however. A crate of ammunition had been opened and thoroughly looted, leaving only a small box of 7.62mm ammo inside it. I promptly got that and kept looking around. Caboose was heading towards a trio of small Pelican-dropped pods. He looked in each of them and produced an M90 shotgun with a full bandolier of ammunition as well as a BR55HB with half a load of magazines. He limped back towards my position and handed me the shotgun. We looked around for a little bit longer, coming across useless equipment for a Warthog and two spare magazines for a pistol. It was a very good find overall, but the CO would've been appalled at the sight of all this unused ordinance left behind by a group of well-trained Marines. In fact, the inner sergeant in the back of my head was shaking his head in disapproval.

"Looks like that's all for now," Caboose said. "Maybe we should've stopped at the main entrance."

"Too late for that now," I said. "Risk was too big anyways."

He nodded weakly, hefting the battle rifle and climbing inside the Pelican. I gave the word for Grass to move out as soon as I was standing inside and we took off once again. Our hydrogen fuel cells could take us anywhere in the ring and back a couple of times. We could even make long trips inside the system if we really needed to. Provided we didn't mind spending a few weeks cooped up inside the back of the dropship that is.

The ride was uneventful. We were less than fifty meters above the surface of the ring, going at several times the speed of sound. Nobody was saying much. In fact, it looked like Grass and I were the only ones still awake. My eyes began closing for a moment and I had to shake myself awake again. Grass could move us as far away from the Flood as possible, but that meant that we were going to be getting closer to the Covenant.

"Cam, set it down when you find a spot. We need some breakfast."

"Check the compartment before, will you?"

Only Pavel and her could get away with talking to me like that. It actually made me smile a little bit, despite how fucked up the situation was.

"Fully stocked. At least we're not dying of hunger," I said.

"There's a plateau a few clicks off. We're setting down there."

"How big?" I asked.

"Take a look for yourself."

I moved back into the cockpit and leaned against her seat, feeling my thirty-seven years of age more than I should've. I frowned and squinted a little bit until I saw what she was talking about. It reminded me of one of those imposing-looking mesas near New Phoenix. I had never travelled there, but I had often seen the pictures of the buttes in the Colorado Plateau, tall and imposing, red rock standing starkly against the blue sky in the background. Some of them even had the New Phoenix skyline in the background.

It annoyed me that this butte was more beautiful than anything that could ever be made naturally. It annoyed me to no end.

"Why are we stopping?" Pavel asked as soon as we touched down.

"Breakfast," I said. "We need some nutrients, water, anything."

He nodded softly, still half asleep. Grass immediately got out of the cockpit and grabbed two MREs and the accompanying water rations. I wasn't precisely surprised, but you have to understand that an MRE is a dense thing. A soldier will typically finish his and feel pretty satisfied, but that's because they were designed that way. Having two MREs is not unheard of, but it usually means you just ran a marathon or that you're pretty tired.

I grabbed three.

We sat down and chowed down hard. Even Lady went through her first ration like a monster before going hard onto the second one. We ate in resigned silence, occasionally stopping to take loud gulps from the water bottles. We ended up with more water running down our chins and necks than our throats, but it felt like glory. It was the best meal that I had ever had. I tossed my second MRE into the ground and some of the slop landed on an ODST's boot.

"What about them?" Pavel asked in between bites.

"We take our boys home," Grass said.

"And I'm not leaving them to become monsters either," I added. "Longworth, Lady, get them in body bags and tie them down as soon as you're done. Strip them of their armor as well."

"Yes, sir," they mumbled through their food.

I quickly did a check for wounds. My own neck injury was throbbing and the blood loss had me feeling a little bit weak, but I wasn't in immediate danger. Caboose could get an infection, but the injury had been treated well and cleaned. Pavel had a few scratches and blows from bullets that his armor had deflected, none of them too serious. Lady was in pain from the brute tackling her before we even made into the Zone, but otherwise fine. Longworth couldn't walk without help, at least he couldn't walk too fast. Grass was fine, surprisingly enough. She'd have some bruising on her abdomen from bullet impacts, but that was about it. Miranda hadn't been hit, but she was the best person in the room and looked like the ordeal had scarred her more than us. At least for the time being, she had a way about dealing with things.

"Ok, brainstorm," I said. "What do we need?"

"Ammo," Pavel said. "Guns. A rocket launcher would be fine."

"Disinfectant," Grass threw in. "Biofoam. Any medical supplies."

"Silencers," Longworth added.

Miranda looked up calmly. "A sniper rifle or a good pair of binoculars."

We knew that we didn't need any food. We couldn't go through the rations fast enough. If we died it was going to be from trauma.

"That it?" I asked.

Nods.

"Now, there are two spots where we can get gear from," I said. "The temporary base we set up outside the Quarantine Zone or the _In Amber Clad._ None of them are exactly feasible at the time, are they?"

Shaking heads.

"What about commandeering weapons from Covenant forces?" Caboose asked.

"We've come that low, eh?" Lady muttered. "I guess that works."

"Not a fan," Pavel admitted. "But it seems like our only good option now. We need an FTL-capable ship now if we're getting away from here."

"Phantom?" Grass asked.

"Not bloody likely we're getting anything bigger, is it?" I asked. "Taking one should be easy enough, but luring a lone dropship out in the open…"

"We can figure that out later," I said. "We have evidence that Johnson at the very least is alive and captured by the Covenant."

"What about him?" Lady asked.

"With all due respect, sir," Miri started, "he may very well go fuck himself."

"That's one way of putting it," Pavel said. "She has a point. We can't just waltz into that big-ass station, can we? It must be hundreds of kilometers long."

"Johnson will have to survive on his own," I said.

"Or die on his own," Schitzo added.

"He'll figure it out," I said with extreme confidence in my voice. "We need to find an isolated Covenant staging area. At this point sneaking in seems like our best option. Miri can provide overwatch of some sort and Longworth can stay with her. Ideally we'd have Snark but…"

"But he's dead," Pavel gruffly said.

"Yes," I agreed. "Catch a Phantom on the ground, pilot it back to you guys and then take off, back to Earth and the good fight."

"Sounds like a plan," Grass said. Very ironically.

"We've done more with less," Pavel told her.

"I can vouch for that," Caboose furthered. "We have a good starting point."

Relatively.

"Finish your meals," I said finally. "I'll move this bird, Cam, take a nap."

"Cam?" Lady asked.

"That's my name," Grass told her, getting up and sitting down near the cockpit. I walked past her and sat down on the pilot's seat. My first thought was of how much I missed Marina. She would've gotten everybody out: For some reason I was certain she could've saved all of us.

Hanna and her had been my angels in the battlefield. I missed them both.

A lot.

"You remember how to fly this bucket?" Pavel called out.

I smiled as Marina's hands guided mine to the appropriate controls. I rapped the joystick slowly and almost went too hard. She didn't have to say it, but I could feel that Marina was telling me to take it easy, maybe throwing a sexual joke in there. As soon as we had takeoff I aimed the nose a little bit upwards and then moved my right hand to the thruster handle. It felt nice to have Marina's hands gripped around mine for that moment. Her reflection smiled at me from the cockpit window and then disappeared.

Sometimes being mad had its perks.

For a fleeting moment I was truly happy.

The reality sunk back in, the colors became duller, sounds became less intense, and grimness took over. Business as usual.

The ring nature of Delta Halo allowed us to use the Pelican's cameras and sensors to get a relatively accurate reading of everything that was going on at the surface. The Covenant had two main staging areas. Initially they had moved above the Temple where the prophet had first landed, but then they had moved further back and regrouped. A smaller force had been sent to another structure a ways from our current position and it looked like they were still there. That's where we were headed then. One hour flight time before we were close enough to slow down and start planning for action.

One hour and then we would gamble it all.

"Almost makes surrendering to the Covenant seem like it's worth it, eh?" Schitzo suggested. "Almost."

"Almost," I whispered.

Flying was an experience that a lot of people found to be soothing, but truth be told, I wasn't a big fan of it. I had gone through the basic flight school as an ODST and could move a Pelican around with jerky motions if need be. Going in a straight line at high speeds was considerably easier for me and a lot of people could do that even with the most basic and rudimentary training. The rumbling of the air screaming outside could be heard through the hull, but otherwise it was calm. My men were sleeping, quiet as can be. I kept shifting my eyes across the various instruments in the dashboard, checking the altimeter and the sensors more often than anything else. The airspace around us was clear, but I was afraid that soon enough we'd have Flood-commandeered vehicles flying all around us.

I slowed down the craft more abruptly than necessary when a thought came to my head.

"Sir?" Miri asked, having been awakened by the change in motion.

"What was the Chief's last known position?" I asked.

"Chief. Master Chief?" she asked. "Did we really not think about him."

"Looks like it," I said. "Temple. He was going to the Temple with an ODST complement of troops."

"The Temple was glassed," Grass said. "Covenant forces saw to it."

"Was the Chief caught in the blast?" I asked.

"No way to know. I don't know how to contact him. If we had a link to the _In Amber Clad_ I might be able to get him on a radio link."

"Is it smart to go to the Temple?" I asked. "It's not quite doubling back to the Quarantine Zone, but it's close."

"How far away is it?" she asked.

"Forty minutes at max speed," I said. "We might come across ODST pods, UNSC materiel…"

"It's worth a shot," Miri said.

"Agreed," Grass said. "We need supplies and that's the place to get it."

Without further discussion I circled the Pelican around in a motion that would've given Marina a stroke and got my bearings. Ideally we wouldn't need much ammunition to sneak past anything, but ideally was just a concept that had long since stopped having any real meaning.

* * *

><p>It was strange. It reminded me a little bit of the Buddhist temples in the jungles of Southeast Asia back on Earth. Not in the architecture, but in a vague overall sense. The temples were tall and tower-like, rising out of the untamed jungle around them, like little islands of safety. The buildings here were similar, small or large structures connected by little bridges that were raised above a lake. A lake that was displaying the occasional Covenant corpse with increasing frequency.<p>

"There's movement down there," Pavel confirmed. "We'd better prepare for combat."

"Avoid it if possible," I said. "We came here to get ammunition."

We had found it, but we hadn't quite gotten to it yet. Grass was keeping the Pelican flying close to the ground, but far enough up that a combat form couldn't jump at us. From what we had seen, those things had quite the vertical leap. I could almost see the human muscles crunching at such effort, but the Flood wasn't human.

Our target was a large platform with a cupula of sorts in the middle. A Pelican had dropped several resupply pods, only two of which had been raided. There were infection forms moving around, raising their tendrils tentatively in our direction, almost appearing to screech in anger at their lack of capabilities. My neck tingled as I remembered the creature that Snark had fought off, receiving a painful wound to the back of his neck as a prize for his survival.

Snark could've easily taken them out for us. A lot easier than anybody else.

"Miri, your DMR," I ordered. "Take my rifle."

We switched weapons and I propped my shotgun against a chair.

"Cam, get the Pelican as steady as possible. Pavel, Miranda, and Lady, you three are fastroping down to the ground. Clear the platform and secure the pods. We'll cover you from above, but we can't have a hidden form take out the Pelican."

"Copy," Pavel said. "You girls ready?"

They nodded, not really feeling it.

It took a minute to secure the ropes and make sure everyone was ready. Caboose moved up to the edge along with Longworth. The three of us looked down our scopes, aiming at the infection forms that were beginning to congregate below the Pelican. I fired a shot with my DMR, taking out one directly and two others in the subsequent pop. Caboose sprayed the ground, clearing the landing area and sending several infection forms running away for cover. Longworth kept his sight trained on potential danger spots, breathing deeply.

"Go," Pavel ordered.

He was the first to go, letting his machine gun hang down his back as he slid and then drawing a sidearm. He kept his pistol trained on a pair of infection forms as Lady and Miranda dropped after him, drawing their sidearms as well. I saw the three of them move across the ground, firing their pistols only a couple of times each before reaching the canisters. Cam moved up and shifted to the opposite side of the courtyard and cupula, giving us a full view of the ground.

"Looks like it's clear," Pavel said after a few moments. "As clear as it's going to get."

He was talking about the occasional infection form that made a run for it, trying to jump at any of my men in order to get a host. They would inevitably get destroyed by accurate gunfire.

"Alright," I said. "Tie them up, I don't want to touch down."

"Copy that," Pavel replied, reaching for the rope that was hanging from the Pelican. "Don't take too long."

"That's up to you, buddy," I reminded him.

"Easy for you to say," he grunted. "Lady, Miranda, cover my ass."

The two women switched out from their pistols to their rifles. I noticed how both of them hit the fire selector to single fire. I waited for Pavel to give me the signal to raise the pod, aiming down the scope while I did that. I hoped this raid would be worth it, because we had spent some ammunition, and that's the last thing that we needed right now. My team had the incredibly ability to burn through ammunition like rookie soldiers did. We made it worth it, but still, it was impressive just how fast we did that.

"That's a heavy one," Pavel said. "SMGs and ammo, enough for a squad."

"Roger," I said. "Longworth."

He hit the button and the small engine that the rope was attached to started pulling it up. The Pelican shook a little bit as the engine struggled to get the pod out of the hard ground, but we didn't have to fly up and use the Pelican's thrust to achieve that. Caboose and I positioned the pod inside the blood tray and untied it as fast as possible before tossing the rope back to Pavel, who started getting to work on the second pod. By the time he was done we had more ammunition than we could carry comfortably, but it still felt like it wasn't enough.

"Alright," I said. "We're out."

"I'm touching down," Grass said.

I sighed and gave her the go.

The Pelican touched the old rocks on the courtyard and they cracked in some places. My men moved towards the dropshipjust as the whole structure began shaking. I frowned at the occurrence, but Grass was already taking off. She knew that an artificial construct like this wouldn't have any tectonic activity with which to have earthquakes. The Pelican shot up seconds before the whole thing collapsed. Nobody said anything about it, instead opting to pat themselves on the back for a job well done. I looked at the rock and metal falling to the lake and for a moment there I thought I saw a Flood tentacle gripping the base of the platform as it crumbled, but it was too dark to tell.

One hour until sunrise. Might as well spend it asleep.

* * *

><p>"How long was I asleep?" I asked.<p>

"Two hours. And a half," Pavel said. "You looked too tired to wake up."

"You don't get to choose that."

"Nothing we can do about it now, I guess," he said with a shrug. "Grass and Caboose came up with a preliminary plan. We were waiting for you to wake up to run it through."

I groaned. "Any developments?"

"Some strange movements in the enemy fleet. Grass says it looks like they're preparing to attack. A bunch of flotillas have adopted combat formations."

"Anything else we don't know of?"

"Negative, our sensors don't cover the whole system. At least not properly that is, but we could easily miss a UNSC fleet."

Not that any UNSC fleet would have a chance to go against the Covenant station and the ships defending it. They numbered in the thousands.

"Not our concern," I said, not really meaning it. "How far away are we from our target then?"

"Fifteen minutes," he said. "We're flying slow and low. Target is an island with a structure in the middle. Scans don't show anything particularly interesting present there, but there appears to be something worth the Covenant's time, because they placed a corvette directly overhead."

"Why is our target a corvette?" I asked.

"Here's where it gets interesting," Pavel said, leaning closer to me. "Longworth managed to pick up a link with one of our UAVs. The last one up, it seems. A couple of fly-bys show that the structure in the island is flooding with troops. That was hours ago, they went inside a pair of doors and haven't come back."

"The Flood?" I asked.

"We can't tell," he replied, "but the majority of the Corvette's complement is gone. A few Phantoms remain inside the hangar. That much we can tell for certain. Some Spirit dropships are hovering near the ground, troop bays open and empty."

"So the corvette may or may not be a sitting duck?" I asked. "If we had another squad we could take it?"

"Hey, I'm not one to brag, but it is a possibility. Still, best option right now seems to be to stick with the small craft," Pavel told me. "Easier and less risky."

"If we get a Phantom we jump out of the system just like that?" Lady asked.

"Just like that," Pavel told her, "but we need to get it first."

I stood up, my whole body throbbing. "Very well, we'll need to assign ourselves one target and commit to it. There's Phantoms in the hangar and those seem like our best option right now. We could drop through the shield walls and be on our merry way."

"What about the Spirits on the ground?" Miranda asked.

"Too cramped. They're designed strictly to drop troops, not to carry them for extended periods of time. We'd need to pack our rations too…" I scratched the back of my head, getting a piece of dirt from out of my hair. "Phantom is the way to go."

"What about a relay?" Pavel asked. "Sneak in at sea level, board a Spirit, and then climb on board the corvette?"

"More parts," Caboose said. "Increases the odds that something will go wrong."

"Corvettes depend on a Seraph complement for point defense, don't they?" Longworth asked.

"They do," Grass called out from the cockpit, "but they have pretty deadly point defense weaponry. For a Pelican, that is."

"Can you maneuver us through that?"

"Not by myself I can't," she admitted. "If there were other targets to flood their systems maybe, but there aren't. So no."

"Relay operation it is then," I muttered. "Alright, do we know where we can find a grounded Spirit?"

"There are two locations, both on this side of the island. The only difference between them is the geography," Pavel started. "From what we could tell the second spot has a more even slope and less pointed ridges to the side. It is only marginally less of a killzone."

"Ok then," I said. "I'll take your word for it. Enemy presence?"

"Our drone saw no movement, we could try another flyby."

"That's risky," Caboose chimed in. "It's a miracle that they didn't spot it on our first flyby alone."

"I agree," Longworth said. "We know where the target is and that there aren't heavy defenses. I think we can manage any infantry defenders."

"We?" I asked. "You're staying in the Pelican as fire support."

Longworth said nothing and nodded.

"Same goes for you, Grass," I said. "What's the ammo count on the front cannon?"

"Four."

"What?"

"Four rounds."

I raised an eyebrow. "That's fucking useless."

I could picture her shrugging. "It's four kills."

"Ok, this is how it goes, we do a quick circling to spot enemy positions before dropping down right on top of the Spirit. Caboose will be tasked with boarding it and clearing the cockpit. Once there I'm fairly confident he can figure out the controls?"

"I've studied them, yes."

"Very well, I want you to put the ship on a low hover, scare any defenders and gun them down if possible. It has to be quick, we can't let the Covenant forces on the Corvette get too much information on us. Once we've handled them we'll transfer to the Spirit. Grass and Longworth will remain in the Pelican under cover."

"Then we board the hangar and switch to a Phantom?" Pavel asked. "It's awfully easy to remember."

"See?" I said. "Even a certified idiot could manage it."

"Six minutes," Grass said.

"Lock and load," I ordered. "Pavel, you're going to be firing a lot. This time we'll be taking enemy weapons."

My men slowly stood up, nursing their various injuries with care and grabbing their weapons after throwing on their helmets. My whole body was sore and tight, so I began stretching a little bit. I made sure my legs were stretched out and then cracked my neck a couple of times, shaking my head after the vertebrae popped. It was kind of painful considering the wound that hadn't closed yet, but it was also a relief. Lady bounced on her toes to get a bit warm and my men gripped their rifles tightly. It was going to have to be very fast if we wanted this to work out fine. With most of my men wounded and "most of my men" being a ridiculously tiny force we couldn't risk any major engagements.

"Thirty seconds," Grass said. "Ready!"

"Ready!" I called out. I looked at Caboose and gave him a quick nod as we both switched to our shotguns. Grass opened the rear hatch and Pavel hefted his machine gun up, preparing to spray the enemy with sustained automatic fire and send them running for cover.

I was nervous. We were in bad shape and this raid would determine the outcome of our lives. I wanted to return to Earth, live to fight another day. See my girlfriend and fuck her until I couldn't go anymore. I wanted to do a lot of things. No man should die before hitting forty, especially in this day and age. I still had two thirds of my life in me. Well, probably less, but I wanted at least three more years until I hit forty.

"Ten seconds!" Grass shouted.

I saw the ocean give way to sand that promptly transformed into rocky ground that had a few signs of Covenant presence there. Grass circled around hard enough that everyone struggled to stay upright as we were subject to the g-forces. Grass might've been the best pilot in the boat, but she didn't have the finesse and precision that Marina had had. I spotted the Spirit almost immediately, it was hard to miss the purple forked dropship as it stood in stark contrast to the dark rocky floor. I saw two grunts look up in confusion and then fear, but nothing else.

Miranda fired two shots, taking out the first grunt, but the other one ducked back under cover. Grass touched down a second later and we received a little bit of return fire from the single grunt, but a single bullet to the neck was all it took to suppress the alien.

"Secure the area," I ordered. "Those two can't be the only ones."

"Lady, with me," Pavel ordered, taking the left side.

Caboose and Miri moved as one, checking the right side of the Spirit as I fanned out to the right to keep an eye on the ridge for any patrolling aliens. Grass moved her Pelican just enough to give Longworth an angle over the left side of the dropship before touching down. No gunshots were fired and no plasma flew our way. I listened carefully for movement before running up the ridge and aiming past it.

"Shit," I said.

"What?" Pavel asked.

"Corpses, they were piled up."

The pile must've contained at least a dozen assorted Covenant bodies, next to it were a few tools that I recognized as burning implements that the Covenant tended to use on occasion. It didn't take a scientist to connect the two dots. They had been prepared to burn the bodies and the only reason they would do that was if the Flood was a factor in this little island. I was wondering how they could've made their way here so fast when I saw a single infection from running at the pile.

I jumped up and fired at it with the shotgun, making it pop. Three more began approaching and all met the same fate as the first one. I let the shotgun dangle in front of me while I reached for my pistol and grabbed one of the burning tools. It looked enough like a gun that I knew how to handle it. I fired at another duo of infection forms running for the pile of corpses and messed around with the switches on the machine before managing to produce a hot stream of plasma. I aimed at the pile and fired, coating it in blue fire.

"Damn," Pavel muttered.

"There's Flood in the island," I said.

"Sir, there's someone trying to communicate with this dropship!" Caboose shouted.

"Stall them," I replied.

Caboose was inside the cockpit, he hit the button that would let him talk and said nothing, instead firing with his rifle and then shooting a grunt's plasma pistol. He repeated this a couple of times before he stopped firing his rifle altogether, giving the impression that the Covenant had managed to suppress the enemy. I gave him a curt nod as the Covenant on the other end of the channel tried to communicate with us.

"Lance leader, report! Our sensors indicate the sounds of human weapons. Is it the parasite?"

Parasite? Huh. Fitting.

Caboose cursed in Russian and began tapping away at the controls. He managed to get a message in reply.

"How's your Covenant?" I asked him.

"I sent the runes for damage, wounded, and victory," he replied. "We should go up before they come down."

I nodded quickly. With luck they'd think we were bringing wounded on board.

"Let's go," I said. "Grass, hold your position, but be ready to bail. Longworth, silencer?"

"Just for my pistol, sir."

"Looks like you're gun slinging," I said, hopping on one of the troop compartments in the Spirit. "Men, we've got to be fast and brutal. No room for error here."

I was hoping that there wouldn't be many troops on the hangar that we wanted. If there were, Caboose would have to use the cannon on the Spirit and then the whole ship would know we were there. If there were only a few troops we could neutralize them before the alarm got out and ten be on our merry way. That seemed to be the recurring idea. Luck. We needed a lot of luck to pull this one off.

The Spirit hummed as Caboose controlled it. Our ascent was nearly vertical and considerably slow, but I knew he was dropping us off where we needed to be dropped. The opaque metal coverings had a holographic screen of sorts inside that permitted me to see what was going on outside. It made sense, letting the troops see just exactly what they were going to be dropped into before they were riddled with bullet holes.

The Covenant corvette got larger and larger before Caboose found the hangar on top. He slowly fixed the position of the dropship before setting us down. I could see only four targets. Two elite minors and two small grunts without heavy armor. They seemed to be mechanics of some sort, but the elites had rifles at their sides.

"I've got the elite on the right," I said, grabbing my shotgun tightly. "Miri and Lady, you need to take out those grunts."

"Yes, sir."

"Caboose, Pavel."

"We've got it," Pavel replied.

The landing was rough, but I am sure it was intentional. The two elites approached the cockpit while the grunts stayed a safe distance away.

"Brother, are you wounded?" one of the elites asked, banging his fist on the wall. "Brother?"

Caboose opened the hatches and I jumped out. The elite closest to me only had time to turn and look at me before I filled its face with buckshot. Pavel pummeled the other one with automatic fire before it went down. The two grunts were taken out by a short burst and a headshot. All in all, this had taken three seconds. No alarms were raised.

"Perfect," I said, sighing with relief.

Then the alarms sounded.

I began panicking, but only after a few moments did I realize that it wasn't emergency alarms.

"What are they saying?" I asked. "My translator didn't pick that up."

"Something about visitors," Caboose said. "They said brutes."

"I caught Jiralhanae as well," Pavel said.

"Wait, are they coming here?" I asked. "Now?"

Caboose shrugged.

"Hide the bodies," I ordered. "Put crates or something over the blood. Hurry!"

"Frank, what's going on?" Grass asked.

"Stay where you are, Cam," I told her. "Unforeseen complication. We'll handle it."

We had tossed the bodies inside the cockpit and covered the bloodstains with crates and random equipment with a few seconds to spare. I ordered my men inside one of the Phantoms just as another dropship of the same type descended through the shield walls and into the hangar. A dozen brutes clad in heavy armor jumped out. The leader barked orders and they spread out, as if they expected resistance. Things got tense for us, the brutes sniffed the air and seemed to sense something was wrong. Two of them were walking closer and closer to our position. If they looked inside the Phantom we'd have nowhere to hide.

A door slid open and three elites appeared. There was an elite ultra and two majors, all of them with plasma repeaters. Behind them was a long column of grunts and jackals, formed up.

"You have no one to receive us? Split chin?" the brute leader asked.

The elite was evidently confused, but replied with a similar barb. "Only honored guests are received with respect."

There was some growling, but nothing escalated.

This was interesting to witness, to say the least.

"We have orders from the hierarchs to inspect the ship, see it is up to standard," the brute leader said. "Especially with news that this ship has come across the parasite."

"We've contained it within the structure. Nothing comes out."

"But you've lost most of your men while doing it."

The elite seemed to tense but said nothing. "Are you going to banter or are you going to do your job, ape? Do not waste my time any longer."

The brute chuckled in a very human way before nodding to his men to follow and the majority of the aliens disappeared through the door. Only one of the elite majors and two brutes remained behind.

"Shit," Lady whispered quietly.

"Word of the day, it seems," Schitzo told her.

I signaled for my men to wait. I could see all three Covenant targets from this position. They were ready to go at each other's throats. My money was on the brutes. One of them had a brute shot and the other had a pair of maulers strapped to his legs. Those little shotguns would be useful if I could get my hand on them. About ten minutes passed before one of the brutes began pacing. The elite seemed nervous, but otherwise didn't say anything. The other brute was running its hands through the grip of his maulers.

"What is that smell, split chin?"

"Probably you, vermin. I know your kind don't wash themselves."

The brute growled. "Why don't you come a little closer when you say that?"

The elite happily obliged and the two brutes faced the smaller enemy side by side.

"We haven't been given the order yet," one of them said.

"It's coming soon."

"What are-"

The elite was cut off as its shields were drained by a blast from the maulers. He nonetheless recovered quickly as it produced an energy dagger and stabbed the brute in the gut. The brute grabbed the elite's wrist and pulled the blade out before breaking its arm. With a nearly effortless maneuver the brute slung the elite over its head and slammed it against the floor. Once there he pressed the elite against the floor with its foot and pulled its arm, yanking it form the body. The elite cried out in agony, but it was soon silenced as the other brute brought down his bayonet, decapitating it with the massive blade.

"You've always been impatient."

The two brutes paused and looked at the ground.

"See, the order came."

Immediately after he said that I began hearing the sounds of a firefight coming. The two brutes hopped inside the Phantom and manned the guns. A force of elites and jackals appeared from one of the other doors only to be cut down by the two brutes.

"What the hell?" Caboose asked.

He wasn't often confused.

"Miri, get those brutes for me, will you?" I asked. "Lady, Pavel, help her out."

The two brutes weren't expecting the surprise attack. One of them was killed by a burst to the head, but Miri missed the second one as it turned. Pavel hit it with sustained machine gun fire and pinned it behind cover. Caboose and I began flanking as Lady and Miri looked for a kill shot. The brute vaulted over cover, absorbing the gunfire before running straight into two shells of buckshot to the face.

"Get the brute shot," I told Caboose even as I grabbed the two maulers and the plasma repeater. "Back to the Phantom."

Five minutes later four brutes returned, all of them wounded and bleeding. It was all that remained of the expedition. The leader growled when he saw his two dead men but didn't inspect their wounds, instead simply hopping inside the Phantom. An elite appeared, missing most of its left hand and carrying a fuel rod cannon on its other arm. It limped forward and fired at the brute's Phantom. The brutes fired back, but the shells had already zoned in. Two more brutes were killed in the explosion and the Phantom's engines were disabled.

"Lady, hit them," I ordered.

The two survivors suddenly found themselves under attack by a third and unknown faction. They struggled to find cover, but it was too late. Lady used the plasma cannon on the side of the Phantom with extreme skill, burning through their fur and flesh before they could fire back.

"What weapons do we have?" I asked.

"There's a full load of carbines and plasma pistols inside," Lady said. "Four needlers."

"That'll have to do," I said. "Grenades?"

"Not that I can see."

"Caboose, get us out of here," I ordered.

As we left the corvette I saw that a _CCS_-class battlecruiser was approaching. I cursed as Caboose yanked the craft in a near dive towards Grass' Pelican. We landed pretty hard, damaging the bottom of the Phantom but leaving the heavy cannon intact. Caboose apologized as Longworth was helped on board by Grass. Pavel and I reached inside the Pelican to grab all the MREs while Miri and Lady put all the supplies and ammunition we had inside the Phantom.

"Covenant dropships inbound," Grass warned. "Shit, they're firing torpedoes at the corvette!"

Well, this was bigger than I thought.

"Let's get out of here!" I shouted. "Pavel, let's go!"

Grass accelerated violently, pushing us back and sending Longworth to the floor in a heap. I managed to maintain my footing and looked for a button or something that would close the hatches on either side. I cursed as I went, failing to meet my goal.

"They're hailing us!" Grass shouted.

"Ignore them!" I replied. "Get us as far away from here as possible."

"Yes, sir!"

* * *

><p>I hated being in this Halo, but it couldn't be helped. Grass needed a bit of time to figure out the FTL controls on the Phantom before we could risk going out. Something was happening to the Covenant. We could see the explosions in orbit from here. They were fighting each other and the little debacle with the corvette hadn't been an isolated incident. They were in the middle of a civil war and that was the best news I had heard in my entire life. It didn't feel like it though, Grass was trying to figure out how the FTL worked while Caboose made some calculations. They only had their own limited knowledge as well as the translator software to help them, but the audio receiver wasn't precisely stellar when it came to translating visual input.<p>

"Miri?"

"They haven't moved yet," she said. "They definitely know we're here though."

"Do they know we know they know?" Pavel asked.

"Seems like it."

"Stay hidden," I told her. "Lady, I want you on standby."

"Yes, sir."

I sighed. The damaged Phantom had landed a mere kilometer away a second or two after we did. They had tried contacting us twice before stopping halfway through their second transmission. I don't think they were dead, but my guess is that they suspected we were members of the opposing faction currently fighting them.

"No sign of the Flood yet," Pavel told me, approaching slowly. "What do you think?"

"Not sure," I said. "The _In Amber Clad_ is obviously under their control. I'm actually hoping the Covenant shot it down, I don't know if they were able to purge the databases."

"Bridge crews are good at that, it only takes a few seconds," Pavel said. "I'm sure they did."

I nodded. He was right. All ships could have their databases purged of sensitive information with approval from the ranking officer or acting captain. There were some safety measures to ensure a whacko didn't do that for no good reason, but the process was designed to be fast and efficient. The last thing we wanted was the Covenant to bypass all of our planets and get to Earth. Not that it mattered anymore, seeing as they had already found us and were currently fighting the UNSC in our home planet.

The thought made me angry.

"Movement," Miri reported calmly. "It's elites. Five of them and three grunts."

"Odd number," Lady noted.

"They're headed our way. They seem alert."

"Don't open fire," I ordered. "Let them pass. We'll ambush them with the plasma cannons. You can shoot the survivors as they run back down the hill."

"Yes, sir."

"Pavel, take the cannon," I said.

"With pleasure."

"Uh-oh," Miri said. "Brutes."

I looked up the hill and signaled for my men to stay even as I jogged up, going prone before I hit the ridge. I was able to see just as a squad of four brutes, one of them a chieftain, ambushed the elite unit. The elites returned fire even before the first brute shot detonated, but the barrage killed the three grunts and one of the squid heads. I watched with more than a little satisfaction as two brutes fell from sustained plasma fire, their fur igniting in flames that quickly died out. The chieftain roared and charged, waving its hammer and strafing from side to side to avoid being hit. The other brute managed to kill one other elite before being taken down, leaving a three against one for the finale.

Intriguing indeed. My money was on the brute.

The first swing was a miss, but a minor got too eager with that and was completely crushed by the backswing even as the two other elites hit the chieftain with sustained fire. The brute swung at the foot of one of the elites with the back of his hammer, taking him down before stomping on his ankle. The elite only survived because his comrade hopped on the back of the brute and started violently stabbing with his energy dagger. The chieftain threw him from over his head and to the ground. Once there he started stomping viciously. The poor elite was reduced to mush as the chieftain stomped and stomped again.

The one that had remained on the floor fired his plasma rifle. The burst hit the head of the hammer and somehow managed to melt through the metal that secured it to the staff. The brute growled angrily and began approaching the elite, baring its fangs.

"Take it out, Miri," I ordered, standing up.

Two bullets hit the chieftain's temple. It was all that was needed to break through its thick skull on both ends of the head. The elite looked in our direction.

"Hit its rifle."

Miri complied and I began walking down. The elite tried to get up, but its leg was crushed beyond use and could barely hop for a few steps before coming down. It was a two-minute walk until I finally made it to the battlefield. The elite had almost managed to reach a weapon twice, only for Miri to shoot it useless. The third time I kicked it out of reach and stood in front of it.

It growled.

I should've killed it, but I was curious.

"What happened?" I asked.

"A fight."

"I see," I replied. "Why?"

"The brutes. They betrayed us."

I shrugged. "I hear you guys are bastards. I don't blame them."

The elite growled angrily, but it looked up at the space station. "They killed my friends, my comrades. Even my grunts weren't spared. We only made it out because one of them sacrificed himself. Brave little creature. His sacrifice saved us from certain dead."

I looked around at the battlefield.

"You should've told him not to bother."

"Silence! He died a hero, that's a better death than anyone could hope for."

"Certainly more heroic than your friend over there," I said, pointing at the splattered elite. "Or those two that got torn apart by the explosions."

The elite growled once again, but his face was contorted by a grimace of pain. "Spare me, human, and I can intercede on your behalf with the fleetmasters."

"Oh can you, now? What makes you think I want anything to do with your split chin kind?"

"Are you blind?" it asked. "Your kind has been losing this war from the start. You've managed to drag it on long enough to hurt our sacred Covenant, but not enough to save you. This schism in the pact is your only chance to be saved from extinction."

I paced around and looked up at the space station, its vague outline seemed to fuse with the sky at the edges.

"Help me to my ship and you'll have a chance for survival."

"What if I want to stay here?" I asked.

"At the mercy of the Parasite? This sacred ring will be cleansed."

"You'll burn it? Not very sacred is it?"

"Better for its beauty to be tarnished than for it to remain at the hands of the Parasite."

"You're a bit smart than the last elite I encountered," I told it. "Perceptive. Tell me more about this schism and I might consider helping you." The elite looked at me and gave me a short nod. "And then you'll help me?"

"Maybe," I said. "I have my own ship, I might just jump out of this system and leave you to rot."

"You'll be shot down by either faction," it assured me.

"Well, looks like I have to help you then. So do tell."

It took a deep breath. "The brutes have been the lapdogs of the High Hierarchs even as they called us the same, but it is they who follow their orders blindly without question or debate."

"Don't you do the same?" I asked. "Our intel is very clear. They're the brains and you're the brawn."

"Not like the brutes," it defended.

"If you say so."

"I do say so and it is so… The brutes were always jealous of our standing, trying to take privileges that didn't belong to them."

"Seems like a pretty basic struggle for rights," I interjected. "I'm surprised the grunts haven't tried that before."

"They have, several times."

I raised an eyebrow. "Looks like it didn't work, eh?"

"No."

"The brutes are having better luck, it seems."

"The Hierarchs put them in a position of power. They replaced us as holy guards and less than a day later they made their move. The council was arrested and probably executed, several of our highest ranking officers were assassinated and our fleets were left in disarray."

I smiled. It was all very good news.

"Looks like your prophets betrayed you for the dumb apes. It must not be a very good feeling."

"The prophets haven't betrayed us! They were tricked."

For all I knew it could be true, but if they had replaced the elites and hours later the brutes had started killing them all it did seem a little fishy to me. This guy was a treasure trove of intel. I was enjoying this chat with him.

"So I help you up and what? What then?"

"An alliance," it said. "Many of my brethren believe that your kind has earned the right to be inducted into the Covenant."

"I'm not sure I'd like that," I told it. "Or that any other human would."

"It's that or your extinction."

"We'll see."

There was a short silence.

"Will you help me?"

"I don't see why not," I told it.

I offered it my hand and the elite took it. I pulled it up and pressed my pistol against the roof of its mouth before pulling the trigger, spraying its brains all over the grass.

"Miri, Lady, get down here. Let's see if we can salvage anything useful from that other Phantom."

"Yes, sir!"

I went through the Covenant corpses as they searched the Phantom further away. There wasn't much useful equipment. The grunts had a surprisingly high amount of containers that looked like food and the elites were carrying an obnoxious amount of grenades and other weaponry. I cut the bandoliers free of their armor and sling the grenades over my shoulder. On their way back Lady and Miri grabbed a brute shot each and dragged it through the ground, leaving a furrow as the bayonet cut the dirt.

"Maybe next time, pal," Schitzo told the elite as we made our way back to the Phantom.

"Have you figured it out?" I asked Grass.

"Yeah," she said. "There's a slight problem."

"We don't have time for those," I told her. "Not at all."

"It's minor," she assured me. "We've figured out the controllers, but the coordinate input is nothing like that of UNSC slipspace engines. A minor miscalculation could send us on a very different location."

"And you're saying we can't shut it off?"

"We can," she said. "But we might be in the core of a planet or inside a star."

I rolled my eyes. "Space is large, Cam. Odds are we're not going to be inside a solar system at all. It's a risk that I'm willing to take."

"I wouldn't mind looking into it a bit more," she said.

"Ditto," Pavel agreed.

I sighed. "Alright. If we see enemy aircraft we're moving out. Where the hell's Longworth?"

"I'm taking a crap, sir," he said through the radio.

"You can do that in your armor. You know that, right?"

"Sir, nobody likes doing that."

It was true. I hadn't taken a shit in over a day to avoid the feeling of wet poop on my ass until the suit absorbed it and processed it out. Rumor had it that the liquid in it was purified to make the water we drank much like our own urine was. I didn't mind drinking water that had once been my urine, but drinking water that had once been my poop wasn't exactly something I could easily stomach.

"Make it quick," I said. "I want you in my sight."

"Yes, sir," he said.

"And don't wipe with the plants, last thing you need is an allergic reaction to some weird shit."

"Uh… Yes, sir."

Pavel looked at me and shook his head with a smile.

Grass and Caboose worked on figuring out the FTL for a little bit longer as Lady and Miri kept watch. Pavel stretched his back multiple times, eager to be out of here. I think all of us were blocking out the horror that the Quarantine Zone had been for as long as possible before our brains crashed. We had napped for a few hours, but nothing major. Before we knew it we'd have to have a real night's sleep and that's when the nightmares would come. I knew that with too much certainty.

"Holy…"

I looked up to see what Pavel was seeing just in time to see what appeared to be a Seraph slam into the ground a few hundred meters from our position. There was no explosion in the traditional sense, but little brown shapes flew up. It didn't take long to figure out it was some kind of Flood form or mass.

"Regroup on the Phantom!" I ordered. "Longworth, get over here!"

"Already on my way, sir!"

"Why the hell didn't anybody go with him?" I asked.

Longworth emerged from the small forest with a Covenant carbine acting as a crutch. He was making good time considering his knee was all but gone.

"There's a squad on our left flank!" Grass warned.

"Pavel, get them!"

He switched sides and grabbed the other cannon, burning through the Flood creatures even as they began firing back with Covenant weaponry.

"Some of them have shields!"

Fun.

"Hurry the fuck up, Adrian!" I ordered. "Grass, are we ready to go?"

"Yes, sir!"

Longworth tripped.

"Longworth you've got to be fucking kidding me!" I shouted, running towards him.

"I'm sorry, sir!" he apologized, getting back to his feet. He went two steps before a fucking Flood hunter landed behind him and impaled him through the chest with a spike the size of a tree trunk. I backpedaled furiously as I saw the blood splatter. Longworth's vitals immediately flatlined and this new Flood creature roared and rumbled. It began to contort and twist before emerging as a different creature. By that point I was already back inside the Phantom and Caboose was burning through the creature. At least it wasn't a hunter.

"Hit Longworth," I ordered him. "Destroy his body."

Caboose seemed to hesitate, but he redirected his fire to destroy Longworth's corpse in a blaze of plasma and guts. It was an ugly sight, but it was better than the alternative. As soon as Longworth was reduced to a gory mess Caboose began hitting emerging waves of Flood creatures. I couldn't help but wonder how they had all fit inside the Seraph, but I fired at them nonetheless. Grass took off as we were peppered with plasma fire and needles. A few dark spikes joined the barrage, making the back of my head curious but otherwise just adding to the danger. Grass fired the main cannon a few times before we sped away. Caboose stepped back from the door cannon angrily and sat down on the floor. He wasn't happy about defiling Longworth's body, but he was too much of a soldier to voice that. Pavel remained on his station as Lady and Miri secured the baggage with some weird cables. I stood up and walked inside, closing the hatch on this side.

"Cam, where are you taking us?"

"I don't know, Frank. I'm… I'm… I just want this to be over."

"It's almost done," I told her, squeezing her shoulder lightly. _There's only six of us left now…_

"Attention all surviving UNSC forces. This is Sergeant Major Avery Johnson. If anyone copies, head to the following coordinates. More instructions to follow."

"I guess this isn't over just yet," Grass said. This time there was a definite tone of relief in her voice. "Johnson made it."

"That means that there's some other UNSC troops there as well," I added. "Everyone hear that?"

"Yes, sir!"

"Alright. Take us there, Cam. Let's go back to our friends."

* * *

><p><em>Thanks to <strong>Colonel-Commissar2468 <strong>and **General TheDyingTitan** for proofreading this chapter._

_Now, I'm deeply sorry for the delay. It's been almost a full month since the last update and that doesn't usually happen. However, I went back to the homeland for summer and there was an issue with the internet at my grandfolks' and it wasn't fixed until a day ago. The proofreading was done in a rushed way and I uploaded this as quickly as I got the files back from my betas. Good news is that I'm almost halfway done with the next chapter, should get it out in less than a week if all goes according to plan. If Brazil beats Mexico I might go into a funk and die so... yeah..._

_Anyways, I'd love to go back over all your reviews and reply, but I just want this up as fast as possible. Again, sorry for the delay and I hope that you've enjoyed reading this chapter._

_Stay strong._

_-casquis_


	221. Alea Iacta Est

Chapter CCXXI: Alea Iacta Est

**November 3, 2552 (UNSC Calendar)/**

**Delta Halo [orbiting Substance], Coelest System**

* * *

><p><em>"Alea iacta est."– Julius Caesar<em>

* * *

><p>"Frank, come here," Grass said. "The coordinates that Johnson gave us are just past those canyons."<p>

I nodded. "Slow down, I want to see what happens. Caboose, have you managed to pick him up again?" I asked.

"Negative, sir."

"Well I-"

The column of light that shot out from the ring's surface was like something out of a fantasy film. I watched the bright light travel upwards at a prodigious speed. Grass slowed down the Phantom to a hover as we approached the coastline. There were several flaming wrecks that had once been Wraiths or Ghosts and a metal platform large enough to house a fleet of Phantoms.

"Land us there," I told Grass.

"Radio is gone," Caboose said. "As soon as the thing lit up."

Grass touched down on the gigantic platform and I stepped out so I could have a better view of the pillar of light. The rest of my men secured the empty platform quickly before gaping in awe at the gigantic pillar. It seemed to be moving, but I could make out the end of it. It hadn't reached the other side of the ring, seemingly staying in place. I tried not to think too much about it, some things were beyond my understanding.

"Uh, sir?" Lady said. "There are some dead brutes here."

I looked at them with some curiosity and saw that they had been killed by plasma weaponry. What intrigued me, however, was the presence of a few bullet casings. I had no idea how they had gotten there, but there was only one plausible answer. Johnson and his men had gotten free of the brutes and then somehow managed to activate the biggest flashlight in the universe willingly or by mistake. It was annoying, to say the least, to be this misinformed about what the hell was going on.

"What now?" Pavel asked.

"Johnson is there," Miri said.

"Or was," I muttered. "Goddamn. I don't feel like moving that way."

Pavel shrugged. "What else can we do?"

"Nothing much," I said. I sighed. "Ok then, I guess we have to move closer towards the stream of light of unknown origins."

"Seems almost angelic," Miri noted drily.

"So is calling this ring Halo, but there's nothing angelic about it," Grass said. "Are we going?"

I looked up once again. "Yeah."

The squad slowly moved back inside the Phantom, leaving behind the dead brutes and the strange platform. Grass moved through the canyons very slowly, staying close enough to the top that she could avoid something fired from above by diving or something fired from below by climbing up. It was not a pleasant spot to be in under any circumstances, but we didn't know whether Johnson was still alive.

Pavel and Caboose were manning the cannons, but they seemed entranced by the signs of battle in the ground. Everything from Ghosts to Shade turrets to dead infantry was dead on the ground. Some flaming Banshee husks had smashed against the canyon walls at high speeds, leaving scorched craters behind. It was either good news or bad news. The presence of such a large battle indicated that Johnson had more men with him, probably some units that had been taken prisoner during the chaos that the Quarantine Zone had been. Maybe even a few members of the _In Amber Clad's_ crew had survived the assault by the Flood forces.

We turned one final corner before emerging into a larger area containing a building similar in architecture to that of the Library. The stream of light was coming out of the top of the pyramid-shaped structure. Other interesting details that jumped to mind were the Scarab and the hole that had been punched through the building's entrance, high above the ground.

"Shit," Grass said, instinctively banking sideways to avoid a blast from the Scarab. "It's targeting us, but it isn't firing."

"Keep strafing," I ordered. "Is it friendly?"

"That would be a first," Pavel said. "If Johnson managed to hijack it."

"If anyone can do it, it's him," I replied.

"Sir, not to disagree with you, but Scarabs aren't good to be around," Lady said. "I suggest we fall back and wait for that light to fade and reestablish radio contact."

I was inclined to agree with her, but as I leaned out I saw a human walking out the Scarab. I couldn't make out his face, but the man was clearly human, that much was evident. A big grin was formed on my face and I gave the word for Grass to touch down on top of the walker, putting the Phantom on a hover. I jumped out and was greeted by none other than Sergeant Banks.

"You're alive," he stated in disbelief.

"As are you," I replied.

He shook his head. "There are some-"

"Hostiles!" Pavel shouted.

They began firing at some enemies that I could identify, but I was running to join them before Banks could even draw his sidearm. Several elites had appeared on the edge of the gaping hole that the Scarab had punched through the entrance and were firing back at us. Two of them fell, dead from sustained machine gun fire, before the rest could take cover.

"Cease fire! Cease fire!" Banks shouted. "Cease fire!"

"What?" I asked.

"They're friendly! For now at least. We're working together."

"What?" I repeated.

"Exactly what you heard, sir. There's some feud going on between the squid heads and the brutes, they-"

"That much I know," I said. "How the hell did we agree to an alliance."

"Beyond our pay grade," Banks replied. "Not let's hope to God this misunderstanding doesn't destroy this alliance. Elite units, do you copy? This is Sergeant Banks. We have- Goddamit! Fucking radio is gone."

As if the powers that be were listening to Banks, the column of light disappeared.

"Elite units at the gate, do you copy? This is Sergeant Banks, cease fire. I repeat, cease fire. We have incoming UNSC units, they were unaware of any truce."  
>There was a short reply that I couldn't hear before Banks snapped back. It was obvious that nobody was happy to be in this situation right now.<p>

"Where's Johnson?" I asked.

"Inside," Banks said. "With Keyes."

"So she made it too, huh? Incredible. Cam take me there. Caboose, you're with me."

"Frank, are you sure?" Grass asked.

"Yeah," I replied.

"I'm coming with you," Pavel said, hopping back on board the Phantom before anybody else.

"Banks, tell them not to fire or we'll make sure they meet their makers. Lady, Miri, stay here."

"Yes, sir."

Grass moved the Phantom the necessary distance for us to hop out. I jumped first, landing with a grunt and moving out of the way for Pavel. Caboose jumped down very carefully, with both of us catching him. He still had that bullet in him. I wanted to give him some medical assistance before we moved out. The bullet could remain there for all I cared, I just didn't want the thing to get dislodged or the wound to get infected. He didn't seem to be in a bad condition other than some discomfort and pain, but the wound was still open.

"Frank…"

"I see them," I replied.

The elites had their weapons trained on us and we reciprocated in kind. There was four of them and three of us, but Caboose and I both had our shotguns out, which evened out the odds a little bit. There were two majors and two minors. The two majors had bullet holes in their armor and were bleeding a little bit. I couldn't help but smile a little bit. With some luck we would've been facing a lone elite minor. It suddenly occurred to me that facing down three elites whose friends we had just killed was not a smart idea, but to be fair, I was a medically certified nutjob.

"Guns down," I whispered. "Just a little bit."

It was a gamble, but we had no other option right now. The elites didn't put their weapons down, but they let us pass through them and into a weirdly designed hall. Several brutes were littering the ground, bleeding from sword wounds and plasma blasts. Someone had burned through the defenders of this location with near impunity. From the looks of it, the attackers had been elites, but there was always room for Marines toting Covenant weaponry.

We took a right turn and emerged into a massive room that appeared to be bottomless. The room had a trio of platforms with a hole in the middle. That's where the light had come from. A dozen elites in very impressive armors were standing in a short platform that was separated from the three large ones by a gap. I saw zealots and field marshals as well as special operators. The elites dismissed us after one quick glance. They probably thought we wouldn't last long with them. Judging from their armor they were right, but that didn't mean we wouldn't kill a few of them.

"You've got to stop thinking like that," Schitzo said. "They're our allies now, remember?"

I nodded back.

"Your human is down there," an elite said without shooting me a look. "With the Arbiter."

I frowned slightly at the mention of that title. The frown turned into a scowl when I saw a large elite with an ancient-looking ceremonial armor.

"Didn't I kill one of those?" Pavel asked, stepping into the small gondola that would take us across the gap.

"Yeah. I've got the scar to prove it."

"Feel like evening the count?" he asked. "If I remember, a shotgun will do the trick."

I glanced at Caboose, who just shrugged.

"Johnson!" I shouted. "What the… What the hell is that thing?"

"These here we call elites, but they prefer Sangheili," he replied offhandedly.

"No, the light bulb."

He chuckled. "A friend, or an ally, at least."

"Lieutenant, are you three the only ones that made it?" Keyes asked.

My spine stiffened slightly and I saluted. "Negative, Commander. There's three more of my men. We commandeered a Phantom from a corvette, we were about to jump out of the system before we heard Sergeant Johnson's hailing call."

Keyes glanced at him.

"My apologies ma'am, if compromising our position allowed for more troops to help kill Tartarus… then it was a good risk."

"With the fate of the universe at hand, I'm inclined to agree," Keyes said.

The elite shuffled uncomfortably at that.

"Who's this?" I asked.

"The Arbiter, the leader of the elites," Johnson replied. "He helped broker the alliance with the elites."

"Uh-huh," I said. "They won't stab us in the back."

"You have my word," the elite rumbled in near-perfect English. I was very impressed.

"Your word doesn't mean much. My best friends have been killed by your kind. I've been maimed by your kind. Someone wearing that same fancy armor, in fact."

"Lieutenant…" Keyes warned.

"I won't be the one to break the truce," I said, "but I'll be the first one to fight them when they do."

"Very well," Johnson said. "Why don't we head back out, Castillo. The Arbiter needs to talk to his men."

"Arrange for a ship to take us to Earth, fight off the invasion and then we'll help you find the Ark," Keyes told the elite.

"Very well, ship master," the Arbiter replied. "I cannot promise you that the fleets of the Sangheili will make haste. The matter of the brutes must be dealt with."

"Let's go, Frank," Johnson said, grabbing my shoulder. "I have much to tell you."

* * *

><p>We were flying in formation with two other Phantoms, both of them carrying all elites. My squad was half of the human survivors from the UNSC <em>In Amber <em>_Clad_: My six men, Johnson, Stacker, Banks, Keyes, and two other Marines. Everyone else was dead. Snark was dead, Dotsenko was dead, Crow was dead, and Longworth was dead. Their faces were beginning to come back, things would get difficult for me over the next few weeks and I don't think they'd get any better after that. I shook my head slightly to make them go away and watched the Phantom's hatches close as we reached high altitudes. The wind hit the Phantom pretty hard for a few seconds before we made it out.

"Lady, you alright?" Miri asked.

"My head," she said. "It's been killing me ever since that brute hit me."

"Are you alright?" I asked her again. "How does it feel?"

"Migraine," she said. "I just have to wait it out."

"The brute did hit her pretty hard," Miri said. "Sometimes I get headaches a day or two after I'm hit in the head."

"I just want it to go away," Lady growled.

"Wait it out," I told her, before moving to the cockpit.

Commander Keyes and Sergeant Johnson were both sitting there while Grass piloted the ship. I could see the space outside as a screen similar to the one on the Spirit. The three Phantoms were flying away from Delta Halo and towards a cluster of elite ships. The massive space station was hovering away fast enough for me to tell that it was moving, probably falling into a decaying orbit around Substance. With luck the whole infestation in there would die as the pressure became too much.

"I've never been on an assault carrier," I noted drily.

"Today's been a day of firsts," Johnson said coolly.

An assault carrier was the largest ship the Covenant possessed barring the supercarrier, which was just a kick to the balls. They could easily handle anything the UNSC could throw at them short of a fleet of _Marathon_ cruisers or defense platforms. Sometimes a single assault carrier would eradicate the entirety of human presence on a planet. Something like that was not uncommon, but it didn't happen often since assault carriers weren't seen as being worth wasting on such puny planets. Even though I had seen them, been underneath them, and generally just suffered in their presence, being this close to one was a new experience. It was highly unnerving for all of us. The storage bay for the ship was immense. The Phantoms were one of the few that were flying, but we were by no means the only ones.

Johnson whistled in amusement.

"You could fit a frigate in here," I muttered.

"Maybe even two," Commander Keyes said.

"Prepare to touch down," Grass told us. "Over there."

I moved to the back of the Phantom and gave the signal for my men to get up and be ready. Caboose was the last one to get to his feet, but he managed it without too much trouble. He leaned on the wall until the hatches opened, at which point you wouldn't have been able to tell anything was wrong with him. We descended with our weapons lowered, but everybody was ready for trouble. Several dozen elites in unconventional harnesses were there, ready to receive us. A few of them positioned themselves around us in non-threatening positions while the majority instead went to the Phantom containing the Arbiter. A few helped the wounded elites get down from the other ship, but they were reluctant to accept even a shoulder to lay on.

"Arbiter, you've taken a big risk," one of the elites said. He was clad in white ultra armor. "The Demon?"

"He was in High Charity, but he got on board the Prophet's ship."

I raised my eyebrow slightly and positioned myself on Keyes' left flank while Johnson got on the right. The two elites in charge talked for a little bit more while the elephant in the room, namely us, was ignored briefly. No matter how long they talked about the treason of the Prophets they weren't able to ignore the twelve very well armed humans standing in the middle of the hangar bay.

"Ship Master," the ultra said, addressing Keyes.

"Ship Master," she replied in an equally polite tone.

"My name is Rtas 'Vadum and this is my ship, the _Shadow of Intent. _Circumstances have made us allies, but you are still guests in my ship. You shall be treated like a visiting Covenant ship master would be. Nothing more, nothing less."

"What about my men?"

"Barracks will be provided. I recommend that they stay there unless they want trouble. I cannot be accounted for the behavior of every single one of my troops."

Keyes nodded. "Some of my men are wounded and we don't have supplies."  
>The elite grunted in a way that could barely hide a chuckle. "We'll provide medical supplies, but our doctor isn't trained to treat humans."<p>

"We'll manage," Keyes said.

_Our doctor? As in just one?_ That seemed like a little bit of overkill.

"N'Tho!" Ship Master 'Vadum boomed. "Usze! Lead our guests to their quarters."

"If you'll excuse me, ship master," Keyes interjected. "There are some things I need to discuss with you first."

"Very well," Rtas said after a brief pause.

"Castillo, take care of the men," she ordered me. "Johnson, I want you with me."

An elite in crimson assault armor approached me. "Follow me, human," it said in passable English.

Another massive elite in blue armor settled into position behind the rest of our unit. Both of the elites were around eight and a half feet tall, on the end of the spectrum for Sangheili height. It was a bit unnerving, as oftentimes you came across large elites, but the majority of them were just eight feet tall. Hell, even the Arbiter and the ship master was less than eight feet. These two special operators were uncomfortably large if you asked me, but they would not be able to handle my whole unit if we decided to take them down. I took some small comfort in that.

The hallways in the ship were no different from those on a corvette. They were large enough to allow even the largest of hunters to walk through, but not large enough that they could march in a formation of five abreast. It was weird how the hallways were a little bit too similar in size to those on UNSC ships when you took into account the size of the species that crewed these ships. I saw plenty of little grunts moving through the hallways, but most of the elites appeared to be elsewhere. Several of the grunts were wounded and helping each other move, but moving nonetheless. I saw no jackals on board the ship, something which seemed odd, as I would imagine at least a few of the birds would pick the elites over the brutes if they were going to side with anybody in this conflict.

"Your quarters are near," the elite in blue, N'Tho, said after we left a large elevator. His English was very decent indeed. "Just about there."  
>The usage of that idiom just about made my jaw hit the floor.<p>

"Here," the other one, Usze, said, jerking its head towards a large set of doors.

Grass led the way, carrying herself with dignity and grace as well as a sway on her hips that only a human male could appreciate. The doors slid open and revealed a very large room. There were several beds all placed in a circle around a pillar of sorts in the middle of the circular room. The pillar appeared to have holographic terminals of some sort and the beds were all bunk beds with cabinets in between and below them.

It all looked very futuristic, but I preferred the utilitarian look that the UNSC favored. Not to talk about grey. Here the purple was hurting my eyes.

"We'll need those supplies," I said. "One of my men is in need of medical attention."

"It will be done," N'tho said.

"Stay here," Usze told its compatriot in Sangheili, "I'll fetch the physician."

There was a certain contempt placed on that last word that I couldn't really place. The red elite in assault armor left the room, leaving us with the other massive blue alien. My men eyed him with distrust and even Banks and Stacker didn't seem at ease with the alien in our midst.

"Are you staying here?" I asked it.

"I was ordered to guard you," it replied.

I shrugged a little bit uncomfortably and ignored it. "Ok, listen up, pick your beds and try and get some rest. I'd order you to change, but from the looks of it these are the only clothes we have. Oorah?"

"Oorah."

"I call bottom bunk," Pavel said, moving one of the Marines to the side and throwing his weapon in it.

Miri and Lady shared a bunk and Caboose tossed his things on top of Pavel's bed. Grass looked at me and I pointed at the top bunk. She sighed and threw her weapons up top one by one. I watched as the Marines and my ODSTs carefully took off their armor. Caboose began by himself, but once it became clear that the pain was becoming too much he sat down and let Miranda help him. I sighed tiredly and put my shotgun and my rifle on the bed before taking off the forearm protectors. I let them clatter loudly and then moved on to my shoulder armor. Once my arms were bare I removed my chest armor piece by piece before finally taking off the abdomen belt armor and letting it drop. By the time I was done there was a little pile of equipment in the floor next to my soon-to-be bunk.

I kept my armored boots and thigh armor. Not because I wanted to, but because I didn't have other shoes and I needed at least a sidearm on me at all times. I leaned down to grab the abdomen belt and removed the sheath with my knife on it before doing the same with my chest knife. I had barely given them thought since coming to Halo.

I had only my undersuit to get me through the next few days. It was covered in blood, sweat, and other fluids. Ideally it would absorb them, purify them, or get rid of them, but right now it smelled like seven hells. I ignored it and examined myself for damage. There were plenty of spots where the suit had hardened in response to an impact, but no bullet had penetrated my armor. There were, however, two holes, one on my upper left arm and another below my artificial ribs. Both of them had a little bit of blood covering the skin that was exposed, but they were barely glorified scratches.

"Looks like we're going to be wearing our armor at all times," I said.

"I don't think a lot of us were planning on going without armor in this place," Sergeant Stacker said, giving the elite a once over.

"Hey, you," I said to the elite. "The Phantom we came in here with has a load of food that we can eat. Can you see about getting that in here?"

"I shall as soon as Usze is back."

"Some of us are hungry," Lady told it.

"My orders are to remain here."

"Uh-huh," she muttered.

"Get some rest," I told her. "Same goes for everybody else. I don't want people to die of exhaustion."

"Sounds good," Lady replied. "My head is killing me."

I frowned with concern, but she _had_ been hit pretty hard by the brute. I was surprised that she got up so fast back then, but once she was on her feet I'd assumed that it hadn't been that big of a deal.

Two elites walked through the door, one of them was the large one with red armor and the other one was presumable the physician. The physician brought with him various instruments that appeared to be operation implements as well as other bulky apparatuses that were presumably scanners and other such things. It growled in Sangheili at the elite in red and then looked towards Caboose, who was leaning weakly against his bed.

"You," it said. "Here."

Caboose looked at me and rolled his eyes before stumbling forward. Blood was still coming out of his gut in short spurts and now that I could see the wound it was evident that we had neglected it a lot. The bandages applied had long since been soaked completely through and were falling apart. A little bit of biofoam would've gone a long way, but we ran out of that early on. I walked with him towards the physician.

"Who your medic?" it asked me.

"Dead," I replied, thinking about Andrea. "But we are all trained."

"Get best medic," the physician said. For an alien, he certainly had the superior air human doctors did. "What problem?"

"Bullet," I said. "In his gut. We're not sure if it split or went out."

"I see. Familiar with this injury."

"Well?"

The physician ignored me and produced a small device with a pistol-like grip. He aimed it at Caboose's belly and held it there for a while before then setting it down. A hologram popped up, it showed Caboose's organs as well as the trajectory that the bullet had followed through his belly. It hadn't gone out, obviously, but there were two foreign objects inside my man.

"Bullet must've dragged a piece of armor with it," Miranda said. "Looks like the armor cut an artery. Aaaand it's also keeping it plugged. Shit."

"It's not a terribly vital artery," Grass said. "We can pull it out then stitch him up. Wait, elites use some sort of fabric that works in a similar way to biofoam. It allows tissue to grow over it and also doubles as that same tissue while the body grows it again. Shit, I should know what they're called."

"We use them for lung injuries," N'Tho said. "They adapt to all Sangheili. I've even seen it used on a grunt once. A waste, if you asked me, but the critter lived."

"Do you have any of those?" I asked the physician.

It nodded and produced a grey piece of fabric. It didn't look very medical if you ask me, but I was willing to go out on a limb.

"We can leave the bullet there," I told Caboose. "That shouldn't be too much of an issue. The piece of armor, however, we need to pull that out."

"It's closer to my back, isn't it?" he asked.

I nodded.

"Will their anesthetics work on me?"

I shrugged. "I don't even know if these guys use anesthetics, but you could get a big allergic reaction from that."

"True," he said.

"I can put you under," I told him. "Choke you out for a few seconds, let you go unconscious."

He waited for a second before nodding in reply.

"Physician, are you going to operate?" I asked.

The elite nodded after a pause longer than Caboose's.

I looked at him and received yet another curt nod. Caboose positioned himself in front of me and I put him in a choke lock. He took a deep breath and I started squeezing. To his credit, he didn't flay or move one single bit as I cut off the blood and oxygen flow to his head. He would faint for a minute at the most, but it should be enough for the elite doctor to do the first cut and maybe even pull out the piece of shrapnel that was causing him so much trouble. As soon as I felt him go limp I positioned him face down on the floor. The physician set himself to work immediately. He produced a scalpel that, surprise, worked with plasma. The device opened his back immediately and the room was flooded with the sweet smell of burnt meat. Once the cut was made the elite looked at the hologram and then moved a little bit more. Caboose was still unconscious, but evidently could feel the pain. The physician opened up the incision with his hands and Caboose woke up.

"Stay down," I ordered. "Pavel, Cam, help me restrain him."

Pavel grabbed his legs while Cam and I each pressed his shoulder hard against the floor. The majority of the occupants of the room were looking in some kind of morbid fascination, but amusingly enough, it was N'Tho, the blue elite, that seemed most interested. The physician ignored the grunts of pain emanating from Caboose and quickly located the little shard of metal in his body. I had to give him credit, he went in fast and hard and located the thing without severing the artery that we wanted to patch up. The elite deftly plucked the tiny piece of metal with its two oversized fingers and tossed it away. A bloody spurt hit him in the face, making him instinctively turn it away, but a moment later he was placing a tiny patch of the magic cloth over the tear in the blood vessel. Blood bubbled through for a few seconds before stopping.

The elite went on and put some more of the fabric all along the edges of the incision that he had made before producing another device. This time the device turned out to be nothing other than a staple gun that he started using without a warning. Caboose actually yelled in pain a little, clenching his fists as the three metal staples went in.

"Done," the physician said. "No fast movement."

With those words he got up, gathered his things, and left. The physician left behind an agonizing Caboose and a pool of blood on the ground. My man was pale and would need some rations to get some sugar in him.

"Good job," I said, patting Grigori's shoulder. "Now you."

"N'Tho," the elite said.

"We need our food, and water."

"You can get water from the pillar," he replied, moving forward and tapping a few runes in the thing before a bit of water plopped into the floor. "Keep pressing the button for more."

Everybody that had a canteen moved forward to fill them with water. We had all but run out of fluids a long time ago and soon I tasted sweet water as it went down my throat. Even Caboose, half knocked out from the pain managed to ask Miranda to splash some water on his head and mouth. Lady was the only one that didn't join in the fun, already sleeping on her bed.

"The food?" I asked.

"Some grunts will bring it," Usze said. "The Ship Master has given word for you and your men to remain guarded at all times. N'Tho and myself will be outside."

"Where are Keyes and Johnson?"

"The other two humans? They're with the Arbiter. An honor too great for them if you ask me."

"I didn't," I told it. "We'll let you know if we need anything."

The doors slid shut as the two elites left us humans alone.

"Don't antagonize the lizards," Pavel said.

"I have to agree with him," Sergeant Stacker told me. "Our odds aren't very good if they decide to take us out."

I shrugged and sat down on the floor, too tired to make it to my bed. My neck was throbbing occasionally, but the injury was under control. It didn't look like it was infected just yet and an infection would take a while to kill me. I had to shake my head violently to wake myself up and saw Pavel offering me his hand. I took it and almost jumped up in order to get some blood flowing.

"I need to know what's going on, I don't like not knowing what's going on."

"Tell me about it," Grass said. "For a few years I knew pretty much everything about what was going on."

"Let Keyes handle this. She seems capable enough and Johnson is by her side," Pavel said. "We deserve some rest."

"That's true," I admitted. "Still, I don't-"

I went silent as the blue elite walked in. "Castillo, Lieutenant?"

"Present," I replied.

"Your ship master wants to see you at the bridge."

I looked at Pavel and Grass, who just shrugged at me with small frowns. I moved towards my bunk and grabbed the shotgun I had been using, slinging it across my chest and then behind my back. I had only one knife on me, but most of the time that was all I needed. N'Tho jerked his head for me to follow him as the red one, Usze, stood calmly while holding a carbine. The two elites were rather large, it was a bit intimidating, but there were some gaps in N'Tho's armor that I could exploit with my knife.

"The ship is too large to walk," he explained as we got inside a tram. "These move us throughout it."

"How impressive," I said.

"It's clever," the elite agreed. "It took our engineers several cycles to come up with them."

I almost gaped at it. If you built something that was five kilometers long, you built it with those trams in the first place. You don't pat yourself on the back for throwing in something that should've been a feature in the first place. Nonetheless I remained silent.

We rode in silence, alone. That changed as soon as we reached the bridge section. Several elites were moving around, barking to one another in that ugly language of theirs and stomping carelessly. I saw elites with little to no armor and elites with very unusual configurations. Most importantly, I saw grunts. They were being careful not to get stepped on, oftentimes carrying equipment in their backs. I gripped my shotgun a bit more tightly when I saw a hunter pair flanking either side of a large door. The hunters were a bit larger than the norm, but the door itself seemed to be screaming that something important was behind it.

"Very subtle," I noted.

"What do you mean?" N'tho asked.

"Anyone looking for an important place to blow up will look behind those doors," I told it. "Even if we didn't have schematics of your assault carriers."

The elite seemed a little bit confused by what I said but otherwise remained silent. He instead looked at the hunters and spoke in Sangheili. I couldn't understand without my translator, but the meaning of the words was clear enough. The hunters nodded as several other elites looked down at me and let us pass through the doors. I entered the control room of the assault carrier, escorted by an ally. It was a situation that I'd never prepared for. It was different, to say the least.

The bridge was rather large, a bit larger than you'd find on a UNSC carrier. In fact, it was a lot larger than that. It reminded me a little bit of the bridge design that Covenant corvettes had, but it wasn't quite the same. It had a massive holotank in the middle, but it was rectangular instead of round. Other than that it was a lot of wide open spaces, with pillars arranged in a circle around the holotank. Normally there would've been elites working on the terminals in the pillar stations, but right now they all appeared to be listening intently to the conversation that was going on in the middle of the room between the ship master, the arbiter, Keyes, and Johnson.

"Enough!" the elite captain boomed, his white armor sparkling clean. "We have a new visitor."

All heads turned to look at me.

"N'Tho," the ship master began, "why does he have a weapon?"

"You said to extend them the same courtesies we would visitors from the Covenant."

I almost chuckled.

"Human, I am told you are a lieutenant? What would that be, one of our majors?"

"More or less," I said. "Perhaps a major officer. Lieutenant can command up to fifty men in standard conditions."

The elite nodded slowly. "Your ship master tells me that… Johnson… is of a lower rank than you."

"He is," I said.

"Why aren't you here instead of him?"

"We're both here," I countered.

Keyes shot me a warning look.

I sighed. "My presence on board the _In Amber Clad _stemmed from unusual circumstances, and Johnson has at least as much combat experience as I do, if not more. Commander Keyes knows and trusts him, I am not surprised or offended that she picked him to come over me."

"Very well," it said, sounding almost as if it had solved a mystery. "Ship Master?"

Keyes seemed unsure whether she was the one being addressed at first, but the direction that the ship master was looking in made it clear that he wanted her to bring me up to speed.

"Fleet Master 'Vadum and I are of different minds. He wants to take care of the brute problem first, while I insist that we head straight back to Earth."

"I am a bit biased, Commander," I told her. "I see no reason for us not to head back to Earth."

"As you say, you are biased," 'Vadum said.

I looked at the Arbiter and then back at him. "Isn't your prophet going back to Earth anyways?"

"He's not our prophet, not anymore."

"Well, he's still the leader of all the brutes, jackals, and grunts not following you," I said. "If we kill him, we cut he head off the snake."

"Human expression," Johnson interjected. "The leadership would be eliminated."

"Indeed," 'Vadum agreed.

"Even now the brutes will be fighting each other," Keyes said. "Without Tartarus to guide them there'll be plenty of factions trying to climb to the top. If we go to Earth and kill Truth then the brutes will stop fighting."

"The humans are right, Ship Master," the Arbiter spoke. He had a deep, powerful voice that reminded me a little bit of the way hunters rumbled sometimes.

"Truth's lies have been clouding our judgment for too long. He deserves to die. Our honor must be upheld."

"That is true," Ship Master 'Vadum muttered. "But our fleets are scattered, our brothers are confused. Already hundreds of ships are meeting at Joyous Exultation under the banner of Imperial Admiral Xytan 'Jar Wattinree."

"What a mouthful," Schitzo muttered.

"They are meeting to discuss steps to come. My own fleet remains with me, but millions of our brothers are flocking to Xytan."

"You have to convince him not to make war on the humans then," the Arbiter said. "But Truth cannot be forgotten."

"I will loan you a ship, Arbiter. With that you can go to Earth and as soon as the talks are over, we can take the next step."

"Thank you, Ship Master."

And that was that.

Keyes looked at Johnson and then at me. I shrugged.

"Thank you, Ship Master," Keyes echoed. "The UNSC is grateful for your assistance."

"Let's get this done as quick as possible," 'Vadum said. "I'll have one of my corvettes dock in the cargo bay. You can leave before the day is over."

The news was surprising. My men and I had just installed ourselves in the ship, moving to a different one would be an annoying process, but we would get it done. I waited for Keyes to start moving, who in turn waited for the Arbiter to do something. The elite was the one that had been loaned the ship, after all, not us pesky humans.

"How fast can the ship be here, Ship Master?" the Arbiter asked.

"Within the hour, I recommend you make haste. I want to move my fleet quickly now."

"Fleet Master! There are ships coming out of High Charity! Fleet of Righteous Vigilance confirms that they have Flood on board!" an elite barked suddenly.

"Damn them," Rtas 'Vadum said. "Arbiter, we'll have to speed up this process, the Flood can't be allowed to leave High Charity and Fleet Master 'Refum won't be able to hold them all."

"Castillo, get your men to the hangar," Keyes ordered. "Johnson and I will go with the Arbiter."

"Follow me," N'Tho said. "I'll lead you to your men."

"Don't stand there waiting," I told it. "Let's go!"

N'Tho seemingly fumbled after me, but alarms had begun blaring and everybody was moving to combat positions. I took careful note of the process in case the information was ever useful again. I watched as Keyes and Johnson made their way into a different tram than N'Tho and I. This time we were forced to share with at least a dozen elite warriors, many of which gave me dirty looks. I made sure to meet their stares and make them feel uncomfortable, but the elites didn't seem to care that much. After all, I was surrounded by a multitude of them.

"Almost there," N'Tho said. "Usze has told me that your men are packing up their things."

We were running at a pretty solid speed now. I bumped grunts out of my way before making it into my room. All of my men and the Marines were ready to go and Usze had already started to lead them out.

"Where's Lady?" I asked.

"Shit, nobody woke her up," Miri said.

"How the hell did that happen?" I snapped, dashing to her bed. "Lady! Lady!"

I shook her but she didn't move. It wasn't until I saw that blood had been leaking out of her ears that I cursed. I dragged her out of the bed and slung her over my shoulder. "Cam, Miri, get our armor and shit. Let's move!"

"Follow me," Usze said.

We had Caboose limping and I was moving Lady on my shoulders, but we made it back into the hangar rather quickly. A Covenant corvette had just docked inside the massive space. No matter how hard I looked around I couldn't spot the elite with ornamental armor that wouldn't have been out of place in a fantasy movie. Instead I followed the two elites and entered a gravity lift, momentarily grateful for the lack of weight on my shoulders. I considered that I hadn't even stopped to check in on Lady, but there just wasn't time it seemed.

"Lieutenant, I need you at the bridge!" Keyes' voice reached me as soon as the gravity lift put us into the corvette.

"Follow me, Lieutenant," N'Tho said. "It's this way."

The corvette was infinitely shorter than the assault carrier, but it still took a solid minute to reach the bridge. Once there I saw that Johnson and Keyes were looking at an obviously enhanced display of the battle. As N'Tho and I approached I felt the corvette decoupling and move. On the holographic display I saw Covenant vessels exchanging shots with one another. The vessels coming out from the station appeared unorganized and more than a little bit stupid, but they were starting to gain some ground on the defensive line of ships.

"Fleet Master 'Refum will hold them," the Arbiter was assuring Keyes. "He is one of our best soldiers. In Reach alone he destroyed three of your stations serving under my command."

"Lovely," I muttered.

"Lieutenant, we are departing the system. The Arbiter informs me that a short jump to a neighboring solar system will only take an hour at the most. From there we'll plot a course directly to Earth."

"Earth?" I asked.

"Yes."

"Ma'am, I really must protest. This alliance is tenuous and temporary at best. We've been killing the elites for the past thirty years. We can't jus-"

"My decision is final, Lieutenant," Keyes cut me off. "I am merely informing you as a courtesy. We're jumping to Martian orbit first, after that we'll communicate with the UNSC Home Fleet and explain our situation."

"Your call ma'am."

"We should be there within the week," Keyes told me. "Let's hope it's not too late."

"Ma'am," Johnson chimed in, "with over three hundred defense platforms, I think that it might be too late for the Covenant."

"If only it were so," the Arbiter rumbled.

"Dismissed," Keyes told me. "You too, Johnson."

N'Tho had long since left the bridge and Johnson and I were walking back towards the hangar when I heard heavy footsteps behind me. I instinctively began reaching for my weapon, but I stopped. We both turned to look at the Arbiter, who despite being relatively short for an elite, towered over both of us.

"Arbiter," Johnson said.

The alien nodded in acknowledgement. "I wish to speak to your Lieutenant briefly."

Johnson looked at me and cleared his throat before shrugging and resuming his walk towards the corvette's hangar bay.

I looked at the elite. The scar of my back it itched slightly at the thought of an energy sword cutting through it.

"You are Lieutenant now, is it?"

"Correct. First Lieutenant."

"Francisco Castillo?"

He butchered the pronunciation of my name.

"How do you know that?" I asked.

"Not many people can kill an Arbiter and have it remain a secret."

"I didn't kill an Arbiter," I said. "I only helped."

"You were the ranking officer, as you say, in that engagement. And you personally took part in my predecessor's demise."

The elite's body language wasn't threatening, but I still prepared to jump back and blast it three times in the face with a shotgun of need be.

"Your name is well known by some. As is your face. You've grown older."

"And you're telling me this why?"

"I am merely curious, Lieutenant. Not everyone has the talent to kill an Arbiter, least of all humans. You imps are rightly feared by the lesser Covenant races and respected by the rest, but not even the most delusional of Unggoy would expect a couple of humans to be able to kill an Arbiter."

"He was just another elite, wearing fancy armor. Maybe a bit harder than most, but nothing to brag about."

"You've killed many, haven't you?"

"Have you?"

"Yes, I have burned millions of humans with the cleansing beams."

"I have killed thousands of your kind. On even terms. Fuck that, they're not even at all. You have energy shields, directed energy weapons, superior firepower, and worst of all, you're physically superior to us in every aspect. I've killed thousands of you while having the bad end of the stick. You haven't killed millions, you've murdered and butchered them."

I couldn't help getting angry.

"Perhaps it is so. The prophets' lies clouded our judgment. Now I fear that the Sangheili as a whole will never be able to atone for our sins."

"Have you ever thought that you don't deserve to?" I asked him.

"Perhaps, Lieutenant. Perhaps."

With that, I walked away.

* * *

><p>"Frank!" Pavel called out as I walked into the hangar.<p>

"How's Lady?" I asked.

"She- She's dead."

I sighed and looked up at the purple ceiling. "What happened?"

"Cam says that the hit on her head burst some blood vessels. Hematoma."

"How come she didn't die sooner?"

"Lucid interval or some such shit. Cam says that if the autopsy concurs with her Lady might have broken some kind of record. Longest amount of time being able to function normally with blood flooding your brain."

"Lotta good that does her now."

Pavel nodded. "She was a bitch."

"She was changing. Just a little bit, but she was getting better."

"Aye."

I looked over at the squad, which was now reduced by one more. Caboose, Grass, Miri. Pavel and I. Five people. It was a nice number, but that was about it.

"She died in her sleep," I noted. "I don't think I've ever known anyone like that. Lucky."

"Very," Pavel agreed. "I don't know how bad her headaches were, but it didn't seem like she suffered a lot."

I sighed loudly again. Cam got up from the floor and walked towards us, standing with her arms crossed. She had her undersuit on, but it was form fitting. I kept having those thoughts at the most inappropriate of times, but what else was I going to do? With Katie somewhere in Limbo I didn't know whether to try and begin accepting her death or whether to keep hoping. Her ship had made it to Sol, which was enough to keep the hope alive, but Sol was the largest battlefield that the universe had ever seen right now and that didn't bode her well.

Then there was Amber and Lavvie. I didn't want them gone either, the loss of his family would destroy Pavel. My best friend seemed to go through everything and take it in stride, but I just knew that he wouldn't be able to come out of that. If his steel mettle failed him then I'd have nothing to lean on. Nothing at all.

"What can we do with her?" Pavel asked, breaking my train of thought.

"I'm sure that the Covenant has some sort of freezer where we can put her. Once we get to Earth she'll get a proper burial. I'll see to it."

"So we _are_ going to Earth then," Cam said.

"Yeah," I confirmed. "In a stolen Covenant ship. Borrowed."

"Cole Protocol?"

I shook my head.

Pavel raised both eyebrows in surprise.

"The elites are on our side now, for better or worse," I said. "We're trusting them with the coordinates of our home world if they didn't know them already."

"The die is cast," Cam said, looking down at the metal floor.

* * *

><p><em>Thanks to <strong>Colonel-Commissar2468 <strong>and **General TheDyingTitan** for proofreading this chapter._

_Now, for a brief note from the latter, who asked that this be put in the Author's Note._

Editor's Note:

Three years, almost one million six hundred thousand words, 221 chapters, six editors, close to two thousand reviews, and becoming the most reviewed, and longest and one of the best written Halo fics ever. The only thing that remained the same during that time was Casquis' dedication and conviction to this story. It had humble beginnings as a self insert by a Mexican teenager whose first language was not even English! That grew and took a life of its own transforming into not just another story but a work of art, it eclipses the Lord of the Rings series in length by three and a half times, and yet it still grows. But soon all too soon it will have to come to an end. It will be a bitter sweet moment that will signify the end of a era in my life that was devoted to wondering what will happen next, and waiting for the next chapter. As a reader I am sad that this is coming to a close so soon it feels like it was just started yesterday, but as Casquis' editor and friend I am happy for him to have been able to complete something that so few can do.

Till later,

General TheDyingTitan

_And I appreciate everything that he's done for me and this story over the years. I would like to disagree with the part where he says it started out as a self insert, but to be honest he's right. And now we're here. The story has evolved and become so much more than that thanks to great people like GTDT and all of you, my readers, betas, and reviewers. And I thank you for that. Three days ago this story turned three years old and six hours ago Mexico beat Croatia and qualified for the next round in the World Cup. It's the little things that matter. I'd like to thank all of you that have read this story for staying with me and managing to go through all the bad to get to the good. The Life wouldn't be anything without you._

**_cannonfodder _**_I have not, but I'll be sure to check them out if I have the time._

**_Anon22_**_ we shall see_

**_TehMaskedWarrior_**_ I've missed you, man_

**_Electric2097 _**_until the end of Halo 3_

_Well, that's all the questions that I could address in this author's note. At least all the ones that were asked it seems. I'd love to interact with you some more, but there's only so many things that I can say. Another one bit the dust in a bit of realism that was bound to hit this fic eventually. In the words of Colonel-Commissar2468 "Well, it's kind of depressing that a brain drowning in blood is the nicest death anyone's had in this entire story."  
><em>

_Well. (Sh)It happens. _

_Stay strong._

_-casquis_

_PS: On the 30th of June I will be traveling overseas for an entire month. This means I won't be able to post new chapters or even write anything at all. I'll try to get one out before that happens, but no promises and well... sorry._


	222. I'm Back

Chapter CCXXII: I'm Back

**November 8, 2552 (UNSC Calendar)/**

**CNV **_**Unrelenting Patience,**_** in orbit above Mars, Sol System**

"So we haven't been blasted to Kingdom Come," I noted drily. "That's good news."

"Silence," Keyes said. "Lord Hood should contact us shortly."

The bridge was more crowded than usual, with all human survivors as well as the Arbiter, N'tho, Usze and the Sangheili bridge crew present. Things had been tense still, but there had been no altercations between the two factions, but mostly because Johnson and I had done everything possible to keep the elites from interacting with us and vice versa. Except for N'tho. He was always hovering around, asking questions about whatever we happened to be doing. In truth, it was like talking to a precocious child sometimes. A precocious child that could crush a human skull with its weak hand if you pressed it hard enough.

N'tho was standing behind me, a little to the right and next to Caboose. My own man was now in good shape. Not tip top shape, but close enough that he could fight. The magic fabric that the Covenant had lent us had worked as well as biofoam and then some. The wound was all but healed and now the only thing left was to remove the bullet still lodged inside him. Only if something happened, most doctors would advice against an unnecessary operation to begin with.

Johnson and Keyes stood closest to the Arbiter, who seemed slightly aghast at the current situation. We were already within range of two UNSC frigates, and I knew damn well that a MAC shot from either of those would gut this corvette bow to stern without slowing down.

"Commander Keyes," Lord Hood's face appeared on the screen. "It's good to see you again."

"Thanks Admiral, same goes for you."

Hood looked down and to the side. "Biometrics confirm that you are on board that Covenant corvette. An alliance you say?"

"Correct, Admiral."

Hood had gone straight to the point.

"We've seen crews of elites gunned down by brutes. It's not entirely surprising if the Covenant is fighting a civil war. Very well, we'll discuss this further on board the _Cairo_. You understand that I cannot let the ship past our defenses?"

"Yes, sir."

"A small dropship, however, will be just fine."

"We can handle that."

For a moment Hood's eyes centered on the Arbiter before returning to Keyes. "Very well, Commander. I'll see you soon."

Hood had gone _straight_ to the point. I was impressed.

"I will prepare a Phantom for you, Arbiter," the ship master of the _Unrelenting Patience_ announced. "It has been an honor having you on board."

"The honor has been mine, Ship Master. I thank you for your assistance."

Preparations were quick. We were running low on UNSC ration packs and everybody had been living in the same clothes for the past week. We smelt better than we looked, but only because we had showered with our clothes several times to get the smell of sweat and death out of them. My own undersuit was so scratched that it wouldn't be good for much else after I took it off. Even my armor didn't look very good. Bullet scratches and plasma burns covered the upper half of my armor while the boots had had all the paint chipped away from it and looked almost completely grey. The kneepads were no different, with only the edges still having intact paint on it. At least my weapons were all in working order.

We all turned solemn when the elite-sized coffin carrying Natasha Krieger hovered through, pushed by Pavel. The coffin was the first thing to go inside the Phantom that would be moving us to the _Cairo._ After that everyone else climbed in and strapped on. The humans had to use the straps designed for jackals, with some minor problems, but otherwise things worked out fine. Three elites and eleven humans made their way towards the two UNSC frigates, who promptly used their thrusters to pivot and escort us to the orbital defense platform. It was a short trip, with our boosters giving it everything they had and the frigates easily keeping up.

It was hard to ignore the multiple weapons systems that were targeting us at the moment, even if we couldn't see them. We were navigating within a few kilometers of both frigates, collision range on space terms, but that only meant that their shots would take a fraction of a millisecond to reach us and there was nothing we could do about it.

I might've been crazy, but N'tho and Usze appeared a little bit nervous. The two massive elites were looking at each other and holding their weapons uncomfortably. They each had large duffel with several Sangheili supplies, but other than that they'd have to live on human food and water. Not terribly uncomfortable, our MREs were pretty good sometimes, even if every single bite you took felt a little bit denser than it should've.

"Ok, I want you to listen very carefully," Miranda told the room. "Humans are going to be the first ones to hop out of the ship. I want the Arbiter and both of the Sangheili behind everybody, with Sergeant Stacker and Banks behind them. That way if someone gets an itchy trigger finger they might think twice about shooting through friendly forces."

"Your fleet master promised safe passage," the Arbiter said.

"Yes," Keyes agreed. "But planning for the worst doesn't hurt. Either way, you won't be treated terribly nicely once we unload on the _Cairo._"

"I see…" he, it, whatever, replied.

I started feeling a little bit tense, I didn't want to get caught in a crossfire because someone had an itchy trigger finger. I wouldn't have minded if the three elites were brutally killed as soon as they stepped down, but I knew that something like that happening would doom any possibility of a truce or an alliance with the elites. Or the Sangheili, as those pretentious fucks liked to call themselves. The Phantom shook a little bit, probably because we banked or something, but it wasn't unusual.

"All right," Keyes said after a short wait. "_Cairo_ is in sight. Lord Hood and the welcome committee will be there waiting for us. Johnson, Castillo. Left and right."

I nodded as Johnson chuckled quietly. None of us moved though, we still didn't know which side we'd be exiting from. I felt the gravity difference as we entered the station, but the Phantom walls had become completely opaque and I could no longer see anything outside. The Phantom maneuver slowly and begin to descend. The elites weren't very calm, but the Arbiter was positively a pillar of stone. Impressive, all things considered.

"Opening the doors."

The hatch opened with an unfamiliar hiss and light came inside. The dim interior of the Phantom had made my pupils dilate and it took a moment for my helmet visor to begin filtering the light from the hangar in _Cairo_ station. In front of me were at least three platoon's worth of Marines, all of them in triple file to the front, left and right. Someone else might've confused them for a reception party, but no one here was under those illusions. In the middle were three men dressed in white officers uniform. They were flanked by men in power armor. Spartans. Spartan-IIIs to be more specific.

I raised an eyebrow.

Keyes hopped off first, landing with a little dance step. Johnson and eye came down with two feet, looking more intimidating than the commander. Lord Hood began walking towards us, imposing despite his unarmored status. He was a man that commanded the entirety of the armed forces that humanity had at its disposal. Even if technically he only had authority over the Navy and Marines he was now universally agreed upon by generals and admirals alike to be the best that humanity could rally behind. Lord Hood was right up there with Admiral Preston Cole. Living legends that not even the Spartans could reach. Cole, Hood, Master Chief, then the rest of the Spartans. That's how I, and probably the rest of humanity, rated the humans with the biggest impact in this war.

I could see the Marines tense as the elites stepped down, but nobody raised a rifle. The two Spartans moved forward only a couple of steps before hanging back, still within arms reach if they needed to yank back Hood or any of the two other officers. My face flashed with recognition at one of them. Fleet Admiral Harper. I had once pulled him out of a warzone, several years back. I hadn't really tracked his progress, but the man was now right behind Hood in authority with the Navy. The other man I didn't recognize by name, so he must've been one of the admirals in charge of the home fleet.

"Miranda, it is good to see you," Hood said. "Circumstances could've been better, but if the… talks… go well then I'm not one to complain." The man turned towards the large elites, but zeroed in on the Arbiter.

"Arbiter," he said. "I've heard some things about you."

"Fleet Admiral," it replied. "The bounty of your head is enough that it would make a Jackal act bravely."

I chuckled.

"Let's get straight to the point," Hood said. "We are fighting a losing battle for our _home planet._ Elite help would be very appreciated. Shall we discuss some preliminary terms?"

"What about me?" Keyes asked.

"You'll assist."

"And my men?"

Hood looked at us. "Bonuses, of course. I'd give them leave, but we can't afford to turn away men right now. One day worth of break for each of them and then we'll send them down."

"The ODSTs are not with my unit, they're stowaways technically."

I rolled my eyes.

"Commander, do you mind talking about that later?" Hood asked.

"Sorry," she promptly apologized. "It's been a rough couple of weeks."

"Keyes, Arbiter, Harper, and Hu, you're with me."

Ordering around the spiritual and war leader of our enemy, ballsy.

And just like that, N'tho and Usze were left alone in the hangar, surrounded by a hundred armed men with every reason to hate them and even kill them. I could smell the nervousness coming from them. It didn't last for long, as a mayor approached and ordered us to go with him. We gladly complied that order and followed him, the two elites trailing behind with two squads in columns behind us. We passed conspicuously empty hallways before coming into an empty storage room that had been fitted with temporary beds and, check this out, a cooler. That meant one thing only. Liquor.

"The elites are staying here as well," the mayor said. "Men will be guarding the door at all times. ONI will probably want to interview y'all. You can't really leave this room an- who am I kidding? Y'all know the drill, right?"

We nodded in reply.

"Aight. Good luck."

The door slid shut, leaving us all alone in the room with two elites.

"I think your bunks are over there," Johnson told them, pointing towards a corner.

"That's beer," Pavel said. "Vodka, whiskey, rum, and tequila."

"Mixers?" Miri asked.

"Plenty."

I sat down in the nearest bunk while Johnson eyed me curiously. I was the highest ranking person in this room, but we both knew that he was the leader. For some reason or other I didn't mind it all that much. I trusted the guy's instincts and abilities more than I did my own. I would've preferred him to be a Shock Trooper such as myself, if only so that my men were more at ease with him. I shrugged at him and he shrugged back. Already my men were pulling out some beers from the giant cooler while the elites watched with a certain degree of curiosity. It only took a few seconds for Sergeant Bank and Stacker to join in. They weren't drinking to celebrate, they probably just needed to fall into deep sleep. It seemed like a good idea to me. I leaned back on my bed as my men quietly finished beer after beer. They stayed away from the hard stuff for now. We'd have some of that later. We didn't want to be wasted during a debriefing, did we?

The next couple of hours went by in a blur. I fell asleep, but it was no deep sleep. I'd wake up and shuffle around in my bed, hear a few of the men talking to each other and then eyeing the elites warily. I'd go back to sleep and have dreams, dreams where my friends had tentacles for fingers and seemed intent on wrapping my face with them. A couple of times I woke up with cold sweat in the back of my neck and lower back. I finally sat up and took off my armor and undersuit, grabbing one of the boxer briefs that they had left under my bunk. I was going to throw my undersuit on, but the tiredness caught up to me and I went back to bed.

"Sir?"

I felt a hand on my shoulder and instinctively gripped it tightly.

"Sir."

I opened my eyes and looked up to see Miranda looking down at me, Pavel standing nearby. They had both changed into all black ODST fatigues. The design had changed since I last saw them. I had seen some ODSTs in reach wearing the new fatigues, but I hadn't had time to get them. They were still completely black, but the cut of the pants was slightly different.

"Get dressed, Frank, they want to talk to you," Pavel said.

I nodded and sat up on the bed. Miranda pointedly looked away. To be fair, my underwear was kind of tight. I sighed and put my clothes on. The t-shirt didn't have my name on it, but it did say ODST on it. It was a little bit tight around the armpits. I didn't like that, it was uncomfortable. I always wondered how Pavel fared with t-shirts, considering just how large his shoulders were.

"Did they mention what they wanted?" I asked, trying to tame down my hair a bit. It was getting long.

"Not sure," Pavel said. "Debriefing, but maybe something else. Well, the debriefing should be a lot more than they can handle for now."

I cracked my neck and moved out, two ONI personnel were waiting for me, looking fancy and professional in their uniforms. They told me to follow me and led me through the station into the debriefing room. After that it was standard procedure. A slightly older man asked me a bunch of questions about the deployment in Reach and in Halo before suddenly switching to the Flood. I answered them all truthfully and thoroughly. The man seemed a bit put off by the stories I told of the Flood, but he kept his cool. I just wanted this to be over.

"Will that be all?" I asked after what seemed to be about four hours.

"Yes, you're dismissed, Lieutenant."

"I need to find someone," I said as I stood up. "Refugees from Reach. My girl's ship made into the system before we left. I want to know if she made it."

The ONI guy looked up at me. "The refugee situation is a mess. A few ships were docked in Europa, but most had to make their way to Mars, Luna, and Earth."

"What's the situation there?"

"Luna had to be evacuated, there's been a few minor skirmishes there. Mars is… well, we were defeated there, but the Covenant are ignoring it."

"If I give you the names can you help me?"

"I'm a busy man, Lieutenant," he replied. "I'll pass them on, but there's no guarantee."

"That's all I'm asking for."

_I'm going to have to go through more channels…_

After that dismissal I returned to the room, where the two elites were still in. One of them, Usze, was sleeping while the other one kept watch. They might've had our word that they wouldn't be harmed, but they weren't stupid. Until a few days ago we would've killed each other on sight and now we were on the verge of becoming formal allies. It had only taken twenty-seven years.

Johnson and his men weren't currently present in the room, but Cam was there. She looked rather amazing for a girl that had barely showered for the past week and had lived in the same bloody and sweaty outfit for twice that. It always amazed me just how good she managed to look.

"What?" she asked.

"Nothing," I replied, looking away. "You look well."

"You look like shit," she replied with a smile. Her smile turned into a concerned frown. "Are you sure you're fine?"

"When was the last time I was fine?" I asked her.

She shook her head. "A long time ago. But then again, none of us have been fine for a while."

"Do you get the nightmares too?"

"Every day," she replied, sitting down on my bunk. "I've been fighting for years. A lot of my friends have died too."

"Did that break help?" I asked. "Working at ONI, I mean."

"I don't know," she said. "I stopped thinking about fighting twenty-four seven, but everything in my job revolved around the war. I saw a lot of ugly reports."

"They were just reports," I told her.

She nodded. "But every time I couldn't help but wonder if I could've helped had I been there. Stupid, I know, but…"

"So it doesn't get better, huh?" I asked, leaning back and looking at the grey ceiling. It was dull and seemed worn. "Even if we live."

"Even if we live… Are we going to?"

"No," I answered. "What else is there for us to do? We don't have lives outside of war. Even with the elites…"

"We might just pull it off with their help," she said, sounding uncertain.

I looked over at Usze and N'tho. "Maybe, maybe not."

"They've got a lot of ships."

"They're about to have less," I said. "A lot less. Then there's the Flood."

"Why are you so negative?" she asked. There was no humor in her voice.

"I don't know. When was the last time you had hope? Even if by some miracle we come out of this alive I don't know what I'll do."

"You have me," she said, putting her arm around my shoulders. "You have Pavel, Miranda, and yes, even Grigori is there if you need him. Not to mention Katie."

"I don't even know if she's still alive," I said, closing my eyes. "I don't know what will happen if she's not. Amber and Lavvie are with her too… So's Liz for that matter. You remember Liz?"

"She seemed like a handful," Cam replied. "Good looking girl."

"Yeah, she's a good friend. I don't want her to die either."

"I don't want anyone else to die," she said. Her arm was still around my shoulder, squeezed against the bed. She awkwardly shuffled it out and placed it on her belly, drawing chuckles from me.

"I don't want anyone else to die either," I replied. "But who knows? If Heaven is real it might be for the best."

"I think I'd life Heaven."

"If Heaven is real, I'm not sure that I'll end up going there," I sighed sadly. "I'm tired, I want to sleep."

"Me too," she said. "If only for a little bit."

It really didn't take long for me to fall asleep. I was so tired that I didn't even care about the two massive elites sleeping in the same room. I just closed my eyes and let sleep take me, praying that the nightmares would be brief and not bad enough to wake me up.

* * *

><p><strong>November 9, 2552 (UNSC Calendar)**

**UNSC **_**Cairo, **_**in orbit above Earth, Sol System**

I cracked my neck. It was loud. The noise drew some curious looks from the two younger elites. The Arbiter stood next to Johnson and Keyes, both of whom looked a lot spiffier than they had in the last hours. I felt cleaner and better as well. The station's doctor had given all of us some pills. They were supposed to release dopamine or some shit, because the depression was fading away now and it was being replaced with a sense of anger and purpose. Good, even if it was artificial it was better than feeling the whole weight of reality crushing me.

I cracked my knuckles, popping them one by one. The two elites looked at each other subtly after I was finished. I shook my head slightly. We had also been given a range of other meds, we all felt fresh like lettuce and were on the verge of being… happy. It was weird, like being buzzed but not quite drunk. You knew that there was something slightly wrong with you but you felt so good that you didn't care. According to the doctors the meds would counter any alcohol still left in our bloodstream. It wasn't a lot all things considered, but we might be in the midst of battle in a few hours.

"Johnson, Banks, Stacker," Keyes said. "You are coming with me down to the Crow's Nest. The Arbiter and his men will join us down in Kenya. Lieutenant Castillo, you and your men are being sent down to a different region, correct?"

"Yes, ma'am," I said with a polite nod. "I'll brief them myself."

"Good. Best of luck, Lieutenant. It's been a pleasure."

"Likewise ma'am," I lied. "Give them hell."

She nodded and then jerked her head for the rest of the individuals to follow her into a Pelican. The elites instinctively crouched because of the relatively short ceiling, but they fit inside just fine. The Pelican had four large crates on its tail, presumably armament for this Crow's Nest place. The Pelican hovered and took off towards the hatch doors, disappearing as they closed down, leaving my men and I alone in the hangar along with a couple of techs and the Pelican pilots.

"Well," I said as the hatches hissed shut. "The situation is this. Our blue marble down there is a fucking mess. Major battles outside of major cities. Paris, Moscow, Havana, Mexico City, Cleveland, Casablanca, Karachi, Kabul, Mumbai, Hangzhou, Pyongyang, Lagos, Sydney, and New Mombasa. You name it. Most of those locations are still in our hands, for now, a few are hotly contested as of right now. The Covenant have control of a few regions. East Africa, Ross Sea, Cleveland, Northern France, Hindu Kush, the Urals, and Yucatan and Cuba."

Pavel whistled.

"Over half of the civilian population evacuated before the Covenant could get here, the rest has been moving out as fast as possible, but the process has lagged," I continued. "However, that doesn't concern us. The UNSC's job is to kill every single hostile currently on the planet, collateral damage be damned. We can rebuild later.

"Our job is simple, kill any motherfucker that we are told to kill. Who is going to be telling us what to shoot, you wonder? Well, the answer is none other than the 19th Shock Troops Battalion, the very unit that I originally belonged to."  
>There was a half-hearted whoop from Cam, who shook her head with a small smile after I raised my eyebrow at her.<p>

"Details are a bit vague right now," I told them, "but we're dropping down to Afghanistan. The area is hotly contested right now, and a large force of Covenant infantry and space assets is in the region, pinned down by our own illustrious navy."

"Where are we going?" Caboose asked.

"Pakistani border," I said. "Our forces are being pushed east, we're dropping in for asymmetrical warfare. It's what we do."

"Are we dropping?" Pavel asked.

I nodded. "They're moving us to a frigate and we'll drop in on Afghanistan, reinforce the Kushan Mountain Pass, west of Kabul. There's a detachment of ODSTs and some local army there."

"So we're just holding the fort down?" Pavel asked.

"For the most part," I replied with a nod. "But we are Helljumpers, we're not just simple soldiers. You can bet your ass we'll be doing more things."

There was a moment of silence while everybody took in the information before I jerked my head and they moved inside the Pelican, each carrying a trunk with a couple of changes of clothes and other things that you'd need for a deployment. The deployment could be a day long or a year. I had a feeling that this battle would drag on for more than a couple of years. This was Earth, after all.

I was the last one to board, tossing my trunk and watching as Miranda and Caboose strapped it down. I sat down in my usual seat and we were shuttled to a UNSC frigate that had been badly damaged. Most of the starboard section had been torn from the main body of the ship, but apparently the UNSC _Hexagon _had managed to take out a _CCS_-class cruiser by itself. The commander on the ship had been given a promotion for her actions. Posthumous. We walked through the hangar, filled with corpses that had been recovered from the space. Mercifully, they were covered with bags, blankets, shirts, and anything the survivors could find. A dazed tech received us with a robotic salute before leading us to the drop bay.

"Thanks, kid," I said to the tech, squeezing his shoulder slightly.

The contact seemed to get him out of his funk for a moment.

"Good luck down there, sir."

"Thanks, kid," I repeated. "You, too."

Putting the trunk inside was a bit of a mess, the drop pods were designed to fit them, but we had to remove a section of the seat and then wrestle the trunks inside and then secure the seat back in. It wasn't particularly difficult, just laborious. Once the last of us was done we all turned our backs to the pods and looked at each other. We were all hopped up on drugs and meds, but we were tired. We had been tired for a long time and we only just started to feel it. Fighting in the streets of Mombasa had been when it started, but then the Flood just busted through whatever walls kept us functional members of society.

"How do we go?" I asked.

"We go feet first!" they shouted back at me.

Good, they had the fire in them still.

Hatch door closed. The light in front of me changed from red to yellow to green. My stomach lurched as the pod left the gravity on the _Hexagon._ It was how you were supposed to feel; nervous, giddy, scared, and pumped. Not everyone was cut out for it, but the thrill that came with it was undeniable. Looking down I could see the imposing Hindu Kush and further to my left were the massive Himalayas that had been almost mythical for centuries. Directly below was Afghanistan, the graveyard of empires. I could make out the Gulf of Oman as well as Pakistan and Iran. The border between those two countries, fortified since the twenty-second century, had stopped the Covenant from advancing into Pakistan, but you could see the scars of battle in Iran.

Looked like the covvies had paid for their advance.

It was a perfect jump. The calculations for the angle of entry and speed had been done a million times. The myriad of weather satellites knew exactly what was going to happen once we entered the atmosphere.

It was the most beautiful jump I had done since my first training jump.

The snow-capped mountains closed in on us, growing larger and larger by the second. Red areas popped in on my HUD. A few of them had tags, friendly units. The rest were enemy positions. They were all red so any moron with half a brain would know not to hit anything red.

"They're shooting flak!" Pavel warned.

"Power through!" I ordered.

Last thing I wanted was to land on top of a Marine. Green explosions rocked the HEV violently, but we kept going down the intended path. I watched as the Covenant troops opened fire on the UNSC positions only to be hammered by them in return. I shook my head to myself and tightened my grip on the handles. My helmet started tagging the Covenant soldiers and emplacements that it could make out, sending them out to the troops on the ground. The thrusters fired, and a second later we hit the ground hard. I grabbed my battle rifle. It was the same one that had survived Delta Halo with me, battered, bruised, and refitted. I shot at the first red outline I saw, it was shaped like a brute and it died like a brute. It might've not been in the spirit of the game to have technology that allowed me to see through the dust and snow and steam, but war isn't about fighting fair.

My men had landed right behind the edge of the fortifications in the pass. There were several troops a dozen or so meters ahead. The snow had been moved to the sides in order to make a trench-like network of roads. I moved through those and jumped over the steaming snow as plasma landed to get to the fortifications in the front. It was hard to see, not only was it the steam, but there was a storm formation surrounding the mountains around this area. I fired at the enemy positions with sustained bursts as Pavel kept close behind me. I felt his hand on my shoulder and prepared for the rattling of his machine gun right next to my ear. The world became almost muted as my helmet protected my eardrums, but I could still see the tracer rounds from the M247L hitting the lead elements of the enemy attack.

I stopped behind cover next to a pair of soldiers in a non-standard uniform. I caught the Afghan flag on their shoulder pads. They also seemed to be lax on facial hair rules, seeing as both men had very bushy and rather impressive beards covered with frost. They were talking to each other in what I assumed was Pashto before directing their attention to me.

"Are you our reinforcements?" one of them asked.

"Yeah, all five of us," I replied.

"I only see two," the other soldier told me. "Shit, stall the rushers, we need time to get the mortars into position."

"Sounds easy enough," Pavel said, propping his gun up and firing.

I shrugged and followed suit, occasionally popping out to hit one or two targets, sending them diving for cover into the snow. The grunts weren't wearing any winter gear from what I could tell, but the brutes did seem to have a slightly different armor. I hit a couple of jackals moving to the right, trying to reach the slopes of the mountain and climb up. The pass was well defended, with a nice little wall extending from one edge to the other. It would be nearly impossible for someone to get through.

I heard the familiar roaring of a LAAG machine gun and saw heavy rounds pouring out of an emplacement to our right. I could hear shouts in Pashto and Hungarian as the ODSTs of the 19th and the Afghan Army began focusing their attacks with more effectiveness. It was beginning to escalate on both ends of the firefight and soon we found ourselves having to look up for Wraith mortar rounds.

"Where are those mortars?" I asked the Afghans.

"They're setting them up!" they replied. "It takes time!"

I cursed and fired at a brute, hitting it in the right knee and leg, breaking the bone. I chuckled and moved on to a different target. Caboose was leading the rest of the fireteam to our left, next to a group of ODSTs with an old-looking rocket launcher. The thing looked old, but it seemed to fire some heavy-caliber rockets.

A Wraith appeared right over the edge of the road, about a kilometer away from our position.

The ODST fired the rocket launcher and less than half a second later the missile slammed into the Wraith and punched completely through before detonating behind it. There were some curses from the ODSTs. It was reasonable to be angry, if the missile had worked like it intended to the Wraith couldn't have been able to be used as cover later on.

"Frank, they need you to target ranking officers on the right flank."

"There's like a hundred hostiles in the right side of the field," I replied. "Grass, I can barely see."

"Sir, there's a sniper rifle waiting for you over there," one of the Afghans said not five seconds later, pointing to the back. "Our perch was shot down weeks ago, but you can shoot from here."

I nodded and gave him my rifle before running towards the spot he had pointed at. I felt ten years younger when I was taking orders instead of giving them out, but I had just gotten here and needed to know just what the hell was happening. Instead I grabbed the sniper rifle from a rack, brushed some snow off it and dashed back. Plasma bolts were coloring the misty sky and a couple of Wraith mortars landed too damn close for comfort, sending scalding hot water at me. I cursed despite being protected by my undersuit but I powered through the melting snow and slid back into the front wall.

"Back so soon?" Pavel asked.

I looked at one of the Afghans, he was covered in blood and was struggling to stabilize his friend, who appeared to have been hit right above the collarbone with a needle round. Blood was squirting everywhere and his legs were kicking, but it wasn't a lethal wound.

"Well shoot those fuckers!" the healthy one said.

"That's shoot those fuckers, sir," I clarified, propping the sniper rifle and drilling a brute through the head.

I chuckled for the second time in the day. Those meds seemed to be some powerful shit. I kept switching targets, but the brutes all seemed to be wearing similar armor. I cursed with every new brute that I targeted before I finally sighed, realized I had approximately thirty rounds in the bandolier I had picked up plus three others in the mag. I settled in on a target and fired away. I killed a brute and moved on.

"You're drawing their fire to us," Pavel said. "Might be a good idea to relocate."

"He's right, sir!" the Afghan said.

"Fuck that," I replied, killing another brute and reloading. "Grass, find me something valuable to kill!"

I realized that perhaps going all out like this was not a smart idea. The Covenant attackers still had Wraiths and snipers tended to be priority targets under pretty much all circumstances. Nonetheless I kept firing until the mortar shots began getting too close for comfort. After one explosion sent steam hurtling at my face and pushed me on my ass I gave the order to move out of this position. Pavel helped with the wounded Afghan while I covered our retreat. I might've endangered all four of us, but the right flank of the attackers was in complete disarray and I was almost out of ammunition.

"There are command bunkers back there," Pavel pointed out. "Do we have tanks?"

"They were sent down for repairs," the Afghan said. "You came here because we needed reinforcements pretty bad."

"Go figure."

"We expected more than five people…"

"We'll do," I told him.

"We usually do," Pavel agreed, patting him on the shoulder and grabbing my rifle from him.

A shell from a Daemon tank slammed into the wall, tearing a hole through. It was not fifty meters from our position. Several Afghan soldiers and a few ODSTs began moving towards it to patch the hole. It was a smart move. Now that there was a breach the Covenant would throw everything in this assault to punch through. I hate the swarming techniques the covvies used. They were not idiots about them either, they'd swarm you with numbers and by the time they were done there'd be a lot less dead Covenant than you imagined there would be.

"Wall of fire, wall of fire!" someone ordered, prompting everyone to open up full auto.

It was a crude technique, but it was the most fun you got during combat. Pavel and I got at the end of the suppressing fire, but we helped target the first brutes and grunts to make it close. They had enough time to drop a pair of deployable covers, which bought enough time for two squads of aliens to make it to the wall and through. Everyone immediately started moving back. It looked like they had practiced this before. The first squad was caught in the crossfire and all eight aliens were killed before they could do much, but the brute leading the second one took out an ODST with his brute shot before the grunts and jackals started firing at the rest of us. I almost lost my head to an overcharged plasma shot before Pavel sprayed three grunts and stunned them long enough that an Afghan soldier tossed a grenade in their midst. It was a nice toss, taking out almost the whole squad except the brute leading it.

Surprisingly enough it went berserk.

It slammed an ODST into the ground, but the man wriggled free as sustained fire stunned the brute. Pavel hit the brute with nearly a third of his magazine before it went down. Its power armor seemed to be a bit stronger than usual for a brute this rank.

"The mortars are set," someone said.

"Well start firing them!"

The mortars were some old model, but they probably had an effective range of about 9 kilometers. I wondered why they hadn't been available immediately when the battle began, but nonetheless I watched as the shells streaked down from the sky and detonated amongst the cowering Covenant troops. A Wraith was busted up, and another one was completely destroyed before they had the chance to fall back. The mortars kept firing for a while, finally sending the attackers back.

There were some scattered cheers, but for the most part the defenders remained quiet. I looked around, looking for whoever commanded this post. It had evidently been crewed by members of the Afghan Army for the majority of the initial conflict, but you could see UNSC defensive emplacements around the old wrecks.

"Frank, I've got someone here wants to talk to you," Grass radioed in.

I jerked my head for Pavel to follow me through the melting snow and began walking towards the rest of my squad. All of them seemed to be alright, no scorch marks or conspicuous injuries.

"Get the crates," I told them as I identified another ODST. "Stack them."

The ODST was tagged as Lieutenant Tarkov, which sounded vaguely familiar. The man didn't look young enough to have joined the Corps as an officer. His plate was colored bright yellow

_Tarkov, Tarkov, Tarkov._

"Lieutenant Castillo?" he asked in a heavy Reach Hungarian accent.

"That's me," I said, shaking his hand firmly. "Lieutenant, I was briefed on the general situation, not on the specifics…"

"Of course," he said. "Lieutenant, your name seems familiar… have we met each other before?"

I shrugged. "I don't know, but your name also rings a bell."

Lieutenant Tarkov shrugged slightly and told me to follow him into the command bunker. ODST troops and Afghan soldiers were moving around the snow, trying to help with the repairs. They would be packing snow into the breaches, throwing some ice to make it hard and slippery before there was a chance to prop up an actual barrier or time to get some polycrete here.

The command bunker had been placed right over the middle of the road that traversed this pass, yet another obstacle for the Covenant forces if they made it through. On the way there I saw anti-tank defenses, dragon's teeth to be precise. The rock pyramids were going to play hell with the movement of the Wraiths, Ghosts, and Prowlers, but they wouldn't stop them forever. I assumed that there were other measures in there, like mines to hit the trapped tanks and vehicles, but for the most part a rearguard would be taking out the stalled vehicles.

I made out a couple of well-camouflaged pillboxes on the left, probably empty now, but they'd make for excellent sniper nests. Other than those actual fortifications the pass was mostly unfortified. The snow was good enough to block plasma and to prevent the enemy from spotting you if we piled it up high enough, but it would melt too fast. If it wasn't for that wall traversing the width of the pass this place would've been long gone.

The command post was similar to the dozens or perhaps hundreds of similar posts that I'd been to before. It was almost cozy, perhaps because it had been personalized and had several lights in order to keep the various maps and satellite pictures illuminated and visible.

There was a large, empty ammunition crate in the middle where several maps and datapads were spread out. No holotank for us, it seemed.

"This is the situation," Tarkov began leaning over the table and taking off his helmet. "And this, is why you're here…"

* * *

><p><em>If this chapter seems rushed, it's because it was. It wasn't proofread at all.<em>

_Ask me about my trip to Europe, but for now, I'm back, bitches._

_Stay strong._

_-casquis_


	223. Kushan

Chapter CCXXIII: Kushan

**November 9, 2552 (UNSC Calendar)/**

**Kushan Pass, Afghanistan, Earth, Sol System**

* * *

><p><em>"Sometimes you want to make a show, some other times you just want to go home. Thing is, this was home."<em>

* * *

><p>It wasn't particularly bad. It was just going to be hotly contested. It had been hotly contested for the last few days and it wasn't going to get any better. For us or for the Covenant.<p>

"So we have what, two Rhinos?" I asked.

"Correct."

"And ten Scorpions," I added. "A few Mongooses for errands, and those IFVs that the Afghan Army brought with them. How many of those, again?"

"The Mk. 87s? Four," Tarkov replied. "It's nothing to scoff at, but the Covenant have three or four time as much. Not to mention the fact that they have reinforcements more readily available than us."

"Irony at its finest," I said. "But we have two mountains to protect our flanks and the whole Hindu Kush to use to our advantage. How many men?"

"At last count I had a hundred and four men at my disposal," Lieutenant Tarkov said. "Probably down to the low nineties after that last attack. There's twenty-two ODSTs, the rest are Afghan Army."

"How are they?" I asked.

"Very well trained, skilled, disciplined. I've hardly seen soldiers as disciplined as them."

"But?" I asked.

"But they aren't really tested. A few of them have seen some low-intensity combat against the occasional terrorist and separatist. Afghanistan still had some problems with the mountain tribes, apparently."

"Isn't this the twenty-sixth century?" I asked.

"Yeah," Tarkov agreed, "and the Turks are still bitching about Kurdistan."

I chuckled. Earth politics were a completely different animal. Colonies were usually sparsely populated in comparison to Earth and ever since the beginning they were united communities. Sure, there were feuds here and there and angry nations that occasionally made war with each other, but Earth had ten thousand and more years of history to learn how to hate each other. Hell, even my birthplace of URNA had some strong divisions after 400 years of being a nation. In Earth it always seemed like the past was doing something wrong.

"We had some towers around the wall, but they were the first thing the covvies targeted. They still haven't managed to hit the pillboxes in the slopes."

"You've kept the bottoms of the towers hidden by the snow, right?"

"Correct," he said. "We keep our troops outside of them so that the Covenant don't know we still have the protection. The walls are fine, a couple of holes, but we got those patched up pretty quick."

"When are the tanks moving up here?" I asked.

"By the end of the day."

I looked down at the maps and frowned slightly. "We're digging them in, right?"

"Yes, there are trenches on the slopes already."

"They've got good firing angles?"

"As good as can be from this position," Tarkov told me. "We're putting four and four on each side and keeping two in reserve over here. I was working on getting snipers to the pillboxes, but our sharpshooters were all KIA early in the battle."

"How often are the covvies attacking?" I asked Tarkov.

"Small firefights two or three times a day. We can expect a large one every other day."

"And what was this one?" I asked.

"One of the smaller ones," Tarkov admitted. "I dislike the scale of this conflict."

"Tell me about it," I said with a sigh, sitting down. "Tarkov. Camp Mars IX, 2533?"

"Yeah," he said. "At first."

"I remember you," I told him. "You've changed. You didn't have those scars for one."

"First deployment," he said. "New Algiers. Almost died that one time."

I chuckled humorlessly. It was the only chuckling I could do nowadays. "You have any word on Mars?"

"There was a big fight at Mare Erythraeum, Army boys bought us a lot of time over there. Some Colonel Ackerson was leading them."

I raised an eyebrow. "I think I've met the man. Maybe. There should be dozens of Colonel Ackersons in the UNSC."

Tarkov shrugged lightly, pacing around the command tent. We could hear voices outside, not alarmed, just men talking to each other as they worked. I took a moment to examine the topographical maps of the surrounding area. It was nearly impossible for anything without a pair of wings to traverse the Hindu Kush, let alone a whole Army. There were several SAM emplacements hidden around this area. And I do mean several. Plenty were a century old or more, relics from a time long past where the Afghans had had to defend themselves against incursions from the defunct Timurid Republic. They worked just fine against Phantoms and Spirits.

I also examined the information about our available support. In addition to the Scorpions and Rhinos we had a small battery of mortars that we had already used once, the Afghan Air Force had been completely destroyed in the Battle for Iran, inflicting heavy casualties on the enemy at the cost of their own effectiveness as a fighting force. The Pakistanis had committed their whole standing army to the UNSC and the troops were now fighting in merged battalions. The Pakistani Air Force had joined the UNSCAF, but they were too busy running sorties to Mumbai to provide much support for us over here.

"No plans to take back Kabul?" I asked.

"No," Tarkov said. "That place is nothing but a pile of smoldering rocks now. I lost some good men there."

I nodded quietly. "Sorry to hear that. From the look of it we're just here for a delaying action."

"Correct. It's more likely that we'll manage to yank Mumbai from their grip than Kabul. That with Diego Garcia and Socotra and all those bases. Mumbai might not be much by the time we're done with it, but it'll be ours."

"What about the Chinese? I take it the UNSC is diverting a lot of resources for them?"

"Correct," Tarkov confirmed. "As are the Covenant for that matter. The Russians have it hard. It's a rough autumn up there I hear."

"Well, give it some time and the covvies will start drowning in the mud. It happens all the time," I said. "How is it that the only person who invaded Russia in the summer got his ass kicked so hard?"

"Don't mess with the Russians," Tarkov said. "It should've been made clear by now."

I laughed, this time with a bit more real humor in my voice. "Anything on Mexico? I'm from there, you know."

"URNA? Well, covvies landed in Cleveland, haven't glassed it for some reason. There's been minor landings in British Columbia and Florida, Yucatán Peninsula's got it the worst. Heavy concentration of Covenant troops there."

"And Mexico City?" I asked.

"It's not intact," Tarkov began, "there's been several landings in the city, they're trying to stop the reinforcements from Segundo Terra, but apparently things are very contained."

"Good," I said with a nod of relief. I don't even know why I was relieved. There was absolutely nothing back there that I had any ties to. "And you? Hungary? Reach?"

"Reach," Tarkov said after a short pause. "Were you there?"

I nodded.

"I was in Tribute for the duration. Could not get out, will you believe it? They moved this whole battalion of Army ground pounders to Reach but they didn't have enough time to get us Helljumpers there. Most of my unit originates from Reach, you know? It would've been good to step on home for one last time."

"And watch it burn?"

"Watch it burn up close, watch it burn in the distance, what's the difference? At the very least I could've made sure my family wasn't dead."

"Are they?"

"I'm not sure, am I?" Tarkov told me. "Weighs on my conscience."

"I know what you feel," I said.

"You've got family?"

"Not anymore," I muttered, shaking my head.

"Wife?"

"Girl."

Tarkov shrugged. "Well, I hope she's alright, if that means anything."

"Thanks. I hope so too."

The two of us stood there for a few seconds, making a show of examining the maps. Tarkov reached into one of his pouches and pulled out a battered pack of cigarettes. "Shaan, they ship them over from India. You want some?"

I shook my head. "Never did acquire the taste."

"Nor did I. I hate them, but they do relax me."

I watched as he held the cigarette in between his lips, his scars contorting slightly as he lit the cigarette with an old-fashioned zippo lighter. I smiled absent-mindedly. Those things were as obsolete as they came, but there was just something about them that made people keep buying them. They looked cool, I guess. Tarkov pocketed the lighter as he exhaled the smoke, sighing slightly more than was required as he did so.

"Camp Mars IX, huh?" I asked, just to make some conversation.

"Indeed," he replied. "What was that fucker's name?"

"Gabuka."

He smiled and nodded. "Well, I guess we've got him to thank for our survival."

"Or curse," I replied. "I take it the whole gang is dead? Him, Skinny, Bulldog?"

"I'd be betting on it. Drill sergeants don't retire until… what? Sixty or seventy?"

"It varies," I shrugged. "But it's close."

"No way any of them backed out when the Covenant came knocking. I hope they gave them half as much hell as they gave us."

I nodded. "I would've enjoyed seeing them. Strange as it may sound, I would've liked them to be a bit proud. As I kicked the shit out of them."

"Helljumpers, right?"

"Helljumpers," I replied.

Tarkov faced away from me and placed both of his hands on a cabinet before cracking his neck loudly. He then turned around and looked at me carefully, as if appraisingly. For a moment there I wondered how hard it would be to take the man. He looked dangerous, more dangerous than many Helljumpers I had seen, but he didn't have the air of power that Johnson or Marv had around them. Still, I wouldn't go looking for a fight with him.

"I'm thinking you should have command of the right flank. We'll use tanks and artillery in coordination. I'll maintain command of our left flank and we'll have to share the center."

I nodded. "How many of your men are you delegating to me?"

"What do you need?"

"I need heavy weapons specialists and a couple of machine gunners at least. You said you're out of sharpshooters?"

"Correct."

"We'll handle that," I told him. "A few squads should do the job."

"I'll give you twenty five of my own Helljumpers, bolster them up with the Afghan soldiers and your own men."

"Want to round it up to thirty?" I asked. "You'll still have around two-thirds of your Shock Troopers."

Tarkov seemed to consider it. "Fine."

"I'll need the codes for artillery and air strikes. I also need to talk to the Rhino commanders and get the channels for the Scorpion tankers. Where do we fall back to?"

"Small temporary base right outside of range, around eight clicks to our rear. From there we move to Salang. The tunnel there is defensible, but we'll just collapse it on top of them. Shame. Old structure."

"And after that?"

"I don't know," he admitted. "We might run straight to Pakistan or down to Sector Six. We'll see."

I shrugged. It didn't hurt to know how to proceed if the worst happened, but it appeared that we only had the next step in the process. I started getting up, grabbing my helmet and reaching for my battle rifle and the sniper.

"Lieutenant, one question," Tarkov asked.

"Yes, Lieutenant?" I said, slinging the sniper rifle over my shoulder.

"Ever since you left Mars, how's the life been?" He seemed genuinely curious.

I smiled and looked back at him. To my surprise Tarkov's scars were being distorted in a similar smile to mine. "You wouldn't believe me if I told you."

* * *

><p>"Hello boys," I greeted my men. They were seating around my trunk. To my pleasure they all stood up when I walked up to them. Pavel was the last, groaning as he came to his feet.<p>

"Good?" he asked.

I shrugged. "We've seen worse."

"Haven't we always?" Grass said.

"Esztergom was bad," Miri noted. "So was Paris IV."

"I wasn't there for that," Grass admitted.

"We were using spears at some point."

"We still won," Pavel told them both. "Remember that."

"Just the battle," I reminded him. "Now, we've got tanks and Rhinos and some fancy shit. Lieutenant Tarkov put me in charge of the right flank of this pass. He's got control of the left and we'll defend the center in tandem. Pavel and Grass, you two are going to be my voice here."

"Sniping?" Pavel asked me.

"Correct," I nodded. "Up in one of those pillboxes. I'm going to be bunking down there."

Miri began shuffling away.

"Why don't you put my trunk up there, Miranda?" I ordered. "Let me know when you're done."

She sighed and hefted the trunk up with a grunt. It was heavy, but any trooper could manage it no problem. The climb was kind of rough too, it got steep at the end.

"Miri?"

"Yes?"

"There are some half-track Mongooses over there," I pointed. "Knock yourself out."

She sighed with relief and I could tell that there was a smile behind her visor. I looked back at the rest of my men. The only survivors of the original Reaper Squad. Hell, maybe Angel was somewhere up in there, holed up with a bunch of supercomputers slowly redirecting money to his accounts and masturbating furiously. He was certainly the type to do that.

Well, I had three men here. My best friend, the next best thing with an even greater ass, and then there was Caboose, as fine a soldier as they came. If this was a fantasy novel, he'd have been that grizzled sergeant that got the newcomer through his first battle. What a jackass. The three of them were now the closest thing I had to family. Maybe Katie still qualified, but for now she was in a limbo, neither alive nor dead. The three of them were dear to me. I don't think I could survive much longer if any of them died. Even Caboose. Even Grigori Konstantinov, whom I had never liked at all. To think that I could tell the exact moment that I was about to break down.

"You'll be fine," Schitzo told me. "You have to. For both our sakes."

I almost laughed out loud. Me talking to me about me. Hysterical.

"Pavel and Grass, you're going to be my voice down here. Caboose, you'll need to lead by example. I don't intend on moving out of the walls, but if the moment comes, I want men to follow you."

He nodded.

"They're going to throw all they've got at us within a couple of days. In all likelihood they'll overwhelm us, but we'll make them pay in blood. Standard protocol."

"Oorah," Pavel said half-heartedly.

"Don't let it be our blood," I said. "I don't want anyone else to die."

"Will do, Frank," Pavel said.

"I mean it, Pavs. I'm on the edge here."

There was a silence.

"We all are, sir," Caboose said earnestly.

Pavel and Grass nodded.

"It'll take some time for Miranda to get here," Grass said. "But I can see it in her eyes."

"Well, let's not make it worse than it already is," I said. "I'm tired enough of this shit as it is. I've been in this game almost twenty years. I'm too old and I'm not even forty years old."

"Tell me about it," Pavel said, slapping my shoulder. "Hey, we'll lean on each other, right?"

"Right," I agreed. "But I don't expect you to fall back from this wall."

"Back to the matter at hand, I see. Well, if there's any reason I'm friends with you is because you are a pillar made of stone."

_Which might mean I'll break into a million pieces sooner rather than later._

"I think a more apt metaphor would be erosion," Schitzo said. "But I get the meaning."

"I'll tell Tarkov's men to report to you. I'd like you to establish a rapport with them, be cooperative, be friendly, act like cops are supposed to act most of the time. I don't want a dick-measuring contest. This is Earth. This is our home planet. This is it, alright? We might not win here," I stomped the snow-covered ground for effect, "but we'll kick their sorry asses out of this planet and then some. Coming here was a mistake that they'll pay for."

They nodded.

"I'm off to the pillbox," I said. "Send up an M247 and a pair of binoculars when you can. And a box of sniper ammunition."

"You'll be overwatch, eh?" Pavel asked. "It's been a while… Remember when we did solo missions?"

I covered my eyes. "Please, stop. We were a duo of jackasses."

"Still are," he reminded me with a huge smile behind his visor that I regretted not being able to see.

* * *

><p><strong>November 10, 2552 (UNSC Calendar)**

**Kushan Pass, Afghanistan, Earth, Sol System**

The pillbox was an ugly structure. Round, dug deep into the ground and with a small slit that covered the entirety of the pass. The slit was a bit wider than usual since we had to get a decent angle downwards if you wanted to hit anything walking down. Thing is, it also meant we could fire at low-flying aircraft approaching on bombing vectors. Interesting location for a pillbox, but I didn't really look forward to making myself a target in this big, ugly structure. I hadn't dealt with bunkers like this one in ages. The good thing is that this one had been put in as a permanent structure. It was practically indestructible. Built to take artillery calibers of anything up to 200mm. This thing was a fucking monster. Sure, maybe the plasma would end up melting through the metal composites, but it would take a long enough time that my odds of baking myself in here would be higher than actually getting hit. Long story short, I could afford to make myself a target. At least until the Covenant decided to dedicate Daemons to my position.

Tarkov had another man on the opposite side of the pass. Not a sharpshooter, but an ODST nonetheless.

There was one black scorch on the inside. On the ceiling of this pillbox. Right where that jackal had almost managed to drill a hole clean through my head. A good sniper, that one, it took me almost ten minutes to find it. It got a bit too bloodthirsty, and some of the troops down on the wall took it out at my behest. The effectiveness of coordination and combined arms.

I sighed. The last skirmish had been tiring and I needed some sleep.

At least I had taken a shit before that battle, otherwise I'd have to do that in the cold night air and I wasn't looking forward to it. I thanked silently for that small gift and leaned back against the wall of the pillbox, closing my eyes and taking a couple of deep breaths.

"Pavel, let me hear it."

"Three wounded. One of them out for the count," he said almost immediately. "Minor injuries, scratches and burns, nothing that really counts."

"Our boys? And girls."

"We're all fine," Pavel said. "Thankfully. The wall took some hits from those Daemons, center left is not doing too well. Tarkov's men took heavier punishment."

"What's their status?"

"Two KIA. One out for the count, wounded. Double amputee."

"Legs?"

"Arms."

I cringed.

"Well, Pavs, I'm taking an hour long nap, alright? Have someone watch my sector. Someone that's well-rested, hopefully."

"I can find someone," Pavel said. "Half the men are pulling back for some nap time, the rest are standing guard."

"Good, two hour shifts?"

"That was the plan."

"You'd make one hell of a company sergeant, Pavel."

"Thanks," he replied. He was being sarcastic even if I wasn't. He was almost old enough to be the stereotypical sarge, too. Or gunny, in his case. "Wake me up for the second shift, alright?"

"Will do, I'll stay up for the first one."

"Stay safe."

"Will do," he said again.

I opened my eyes, cracked my neck, closed my eyes, and fell asleep.

* * *

><p>"Frank."<p>

I looked at my clock. It said one hour and fifty-seven minutes.

"What's wrong?"

"We're seeing movement all along the bottom of the pass," Pavel said. "Looks like the big one."

"Everyone up?" I asked, reaching for the sniper rifle. "Rhinos need to warm up."

"I think Tarkov is taking care of that. Mortar battery is already prepared."

I smiled. "You let me sleep a little bit extra."

"Damn right, I'm a good friend. Good as fuck."

"Thanks."

"Anytime."

"Get your sergeant voice ready," I told him. "You're going to be relaying my orders. I'm scouting."

"Let me know."

I propped the SRS on the slit, looking through the Oracle scope. It wasn't a very recent model, but that didn't mean I couldn't spot a fly bothering a grunt at a distance of seven miles. The Oracles were the best out there; it was precisely why the UNSC used them for their sniper rifles. Their night vision might've been a little bit worse than you'd like, but it did the job just fine. I watched through the greyscale, trying to identify any significant movement. It wasn't very hard. I could see some of the Wraiths passing through the rocks. Their turrets, more like. I counted at least five before they stopped moving through. I didn't know if the Daemons had already hovered by.

"Shadows," I muttered. "Tarkov? You see these?"

"Give me a screen."

I complied and aimed at the slow-moving Shadow transports. They carried a lot of infantry inside them and had the ability to make our day very, very hard. They were ugly as fuck, too. I counted at least a dozen and their numbers were growing by the minute. They weren't moving at their full speed, instead spreading out in a line. Yeah, this was definitely it. I tagged them for the rest of the defenders to see them and then began scouting for more.

"Wait, go back to the Shadows," Tarkov said. "They've got to know we see them."

"They're not trying to hide," I agreed. "Even if it's the middle of the night."

"Sun's about to come up, in another couple of hours."

"It's going to hit them right in the eyes," I noted. "Not terribly smart."

"Maybe they want to have this place before sunrise," Tarkov replied. "Not terribly smart either."

We both seemed to consider what was going on.

"All right," I said. "Start pounding at them. We've got the ammunition to spare."

"Agreed," Tarkov replied. "Fire at will."

I nodded grimly and opened up a line to the Rhino gunner that was assigned to me. He was a little bit sleepy, probably because he had been napping like the rest of us. The man even yawned once before making a raspberry noise and shaking himself awake.

"Mark the spot, sir."

"I'm tagging Shadows for you. I'm thinking cluster bombs?"

"Yeah, agreed. Lieutenant, you might want to check this shit out. We got new projectiles. They're a beauty to look at."

"Don't keep me waiting."

The rounds were fast, but it still took a few seconds for them to land. The Shadows weren't moving fast at all, so the gunner barely had to make any calculations, leaving most of the work to his targeting computer. I watched the round streak past me insanely fast before curving down, seemingly against the laws of physics. I was awaiting the multiple explosions, but all I got was one incredibly large fireball. By the time it all cleared out I could see two Shadows, completely flattened.

"You see, Lieutenant, the shell releases three smaller shells which in turn put out this highly flammable and explosive compound, the main section of the shell acts as a fuse and ignites the compound while at the same time slamming against the target to ensure maximum damage. The rapidly expanding fireball compresses anything under it while also causing debilitating damage all around."

"Did you read that off somewhere?" I asked.

"Yeah, it's in the pamphlet."

"Keep using them," I said. "I like them."

"It's better than napalm, sir!"

Over the course of the next few minutes I saw just how true that statement was. It didn't burn as long as napalm did nor did it stick as much, but its raw destructive power more than made up for those deficiencies. The Shadows began moving forward faster, breaking the relatively ordered line in order to get away from the killing field. My gunner kept asking for new coordinates and I gave them to him, watching the massacre through my scope.

"Rhinos watch out," I said. "Plasma bombardment headed your way."

I watched the blue streaks cross the sky at prodigious speeds, leaving behind a trail of ionized air that made tracking the source all the simpler. They were out of sight, but we could get the general location out with some satellite imagery. I promptly contacted our liaison to see if he could work on it and made sure to keep the Rhinos updated whenever the Covenant bombarded in their direction.

"Castillo, you've got the imagery?" Tarkov asked.

"Just received it," I replied. "I see the artillery, it's blurry, no grid lines."

"Work it out quick, the covvies are zeroing in on our Rhinos."

"I'm working on it," I said.

I pulled out older satellite imagery and compared it with the recent image. It was harder, since none of the photos were on the same scale. I found a landmark that I could move from and estimated the distance from there to the Covenant artillery pieces. It was a rough guesstimate, but it would be good enough to get a shell to flyby with cameras and sensors. I gave the location to the Rhino gunners and a minute later they were pounding away at the Covenant artillery, destroying the threat for good. The distraction bought time for the Shadows and Prowlers to move forward, dropping brutes and grunts at eight hundred meters. I could catch glimpses of jackal energy gauntlets even without my scope.

"They've got boots on the ground," I said. "Eight hundred meters and closing. Their vehicles are moving up."

"Roger that," Pavel said. "Men are at the ready."

I contacted the mortar battery. They already had the perfect killing field set up. They'd fire as soon as I gave the order. I wanted the field to fill up with enemies before I gave them any holes to take cover in.

"Uh-oh," I noted.

Those Wraiths I had spotted began pulling their weight, moving up the road in single file, plenty of space in between them. There was no way they could be taken out more than one at a time. The gunners began firing at our fortifications, the plasma flying awful close to their infantry soldiers.

"They're slowing down a little bit," I informed Pavel. "Shit, they're digging in."

"Move the mortars up a hundred meters," he said. "Shit. I thought they'd try swarming."

"They're being smart about it," I told him. "Tarkov?"

"I see it. Do as your man says, talk to the artillery, I'm going to coordinate our Scorpions."

"Understood," I replied.

The commander of the battery didn't seem too fazed by the change of plans and immediately began ordering her men to change the angles. As soon as that was done I gave the word to fire at random intervals, full capacity. I could see the explosions downhill, watch the dirt and snow fly to the sides and up. Sometimes, I could almost see the blood, but I knew that was my imagination.

The Wraiths began landing some hits behind our wall, nothing serious, but worrisome. I was trying to keep track of everything, relaying new information to my men and giving orders so that they could adapt to the changes. For a few minutes we managed to keep the Covenant from getting their positions set up, but after a constant barrage of mortar fire we ended up helping them out. It wasn't unexpected, in the end I just hoped that we gained more than they did from the constant firing.

It took around an hour, the sky began lighting up a little bit more, and I had to take a more direct approach to participating. I was their eyes up here, but I also had a high-powered rifle which was technically anti-materiel.

"Hunters first," I whispered to myself.

It was still dark enough that I needed to use the night vision, but I could see the shadows becoming more distinct with every passing moment. I scanned the battlefield, watching the spots that more tracers hit and looking at the craters that the Scorpions made. It was a simple matter of seeing what drew more attention and then locating the more valuable target. I was tempted to start hammering away at the poor grunts and jackals in the frontline, but those wouldn't be nearly as harmful in the long run as the brute captains and chieftains. Hunters were a priority, they always were.

I located a pair near the front of the Covenant advance. They seemed to be moving slowly, finding something to shoot at as they walked, hunkered down. I targeted the lead hunter and zoomed in. There was little to no wind and the distance was pretty much minuscule when it came to the SRS. I accounted for the drop, zoomed in heavily, and let the Oracle scope do the rest of the calculations. A squeeze of the trigger and a few seconds later I saw half the hunter's head fly off. I aimed and fired a second shot, hitting the hole that I had just opened and punching out the back. The hunter struggled for a next step before falling down belly first. Its companion failed to realize immediately, but a couple of seconds later it roared, raising its arms in anger and defiance.

The defenders down in the wall had seen the first one go down and knew what was going to happen. The moment the second hunter left itself unprotected several turret emplacements switched their fields of fire to target the hunter, tearing it apart and slowing down the advance in that sector. I smiled with a certain degree of self-satisfaction and then started looking for something else to shoot, aware that there would be jackal sharpshooters looking for me now.

Brute chieftains were not making the appearances I expected them to, but the enemy advance was progressing rather quickly. They now had their lines around fifty meters from our wall. It was sprinting distance, even for grunts. I prepared my battle rifle in case I needed to target unarmored covvies, but kept the sniper rifle propped up and aiming downwards. The range was about a hundred and fifty meters for me, extreme close range for the rifle.

"I'm not seeing any chieftains," I told Pavel. "How's it going down there?"

I knew it was about to explode in a bad way, the volume of plasma flying was intensifying by the second, and that's not counting the spikes and grenades that I couldn't see flying around.

"Start shooting," Pavel replied.

"Yessir," I acknowledged.

First to go down was a brute major. Easy target, bloodthirsty and eager to get within close combat range to tear shit up. The grunts behind it ducked and cowered, but I was already looking for the minor to step up and try and lead the platoon. It was something that wasn't always evident at first, but it became more obvious as you became used to it. I took aim and fired another shot, hitting the brute in the upper chest, right above its power armor. That sent the platoon into disarray as the others tried to get themselves in a position of leadership. That would buy some time for the wall.

"Pavel, patch the squad leaders up to me," I ordered. "If they need anything."

"Will do."

The requests came slowly at first. A plasma turret here, a grunt with a fuel rod there, but soon enough more and more Covenant troops began arriving and they came close to overwhelming us. The two Rhinos had burned through half of their ammunition reserves in order to take out the Shadows and the Wraiths. They were now playing at finding the Daemons that were harassing our Scorpion tanks. I would've liked a couple of Hornets to make sorties, but you couldn't have everything.

I took out a brute captain with a fuel rod cannon and moved on to the next target. I was beginning to run low and had to ask Pavel to send a runner on the Mongoose with more ammunition for the sniper rifle. I had gone through sixty rounds already and it didn't even feel like I was halfway done. The M247H that they had brought up here was already attached to the tubular rail on the pillbox and ready for use, but I didn't want to light up the night sky with my position.

"You can hardly call this a night sky," Schitzo noted. "Dawn is coming."

"Indeed," I replied. "Jackass."

I aimed down the sights and recoiled as a beam burned through my shoulder armor, tearing it from the rest of the suit. I ducked back down and examined my shoulder. The undersuit was slightly singed, but it didn't seem like I had been hurt. I cursed and examined the smoldering remains of my shoulder piece. That one had been with me since the days of the _Inconvenience._

"Sniper," I said. "Near that Wraith with no left wing. I need someone to saturate the area with gunfire."

"Will do, sir," an Afghan sergeant replied almost eagerly.

I waited for his signal and popped out again, aiming for the area where I had been shot at. There was no jackal in immediate sight, but I remained there. After the squad stopped firing I kept my scope zeroed in on the most likely sniper spots and waited for some movement. It took three minutes to draw the animal out, but I took out the threat, hitting a large jackal right between the shoulder plates. After that I shot a grunt just to take out some frustration and then moved on.

"Pavel, where's that ammunition I asked for?"

"You haven't gotten it? I sent a runner up like ten minutes ago."

I looked left to the slope, trying to see if the Mongoose had been hit on its way up, but I couldn't find anything.

"He's not here."

"The Mongoose is right behind the pillbox, Frank. I can see it from here."

"What?"

I turned back, but the column in the middle of the pillbox kept me from seeing the exit. I sighed and looked back down my scope, hitting the brute major that had been manning a plasma cannon. I still had two magazines left; I'd check when I was done with them. The poor man was probably bleeding to death out in the cold, but my work was keeping other men from suffering that same fate.

I killed a grunt with a fuel rod and paused.

If he had made it he would've cried for help already. He could've died as soon as he stopped, but that seemed unlikely.

I turned back around and this time I saw something. I let go of my sniper rifle and managed to grab onto the twin bayonets of a spiker before they impaled me. I squeezed tightly, ignoring the sharp edges as they began slicing through my gloves and into my skin. The brute stalker behind the bayonet growled and pushed me against the wall, but I managed to get my neck in between the two blades. Right in front of the barrel.

The brute realized this, but it was a fraction of a second slower than me. I used a burst of strength to push the spiker away and slightly to the side. The spike flew right next to my ear, grazing my helmet. I let go of one of the two blades and jumped up, doing a backwards spin-kick that I had seen in a movie once. It was not supposed to hurt, but it got me some time and a better position. I drew my pistol and fired half the magazine before another brute tackled me into the ground.

"Fucking hell," I cursed, hitting the brute's head as hard as my augmented muscles could manage. It obviously hurt enough, because it let go of my arm and I managed to put six bullets into its belly, weakening it enough that I was able to draw one of my knives and stick it in its spine.

I sighed as I saw the other alien take aim with its spiker and pushed the dead brute's arm up to cover me. I cursed as the spikes hit the chunk of meat and reached for the other brute's mauler. I fired blindly, emptying the weapon as the other alien kept firing. It must've been somewhat surreal, both of us firing at each other and yelling as loud as possible, hoping to hit and not to get hit.

The spiker fire stopped and I carefully looked out, the smoking mauler still in my arm. Those things had some serious recoil.

The brute was alive, but there were two holes in its chest. I locked eyes with it and jumped on it, reaching for another of my knives. The brute covered its face, but I began stabbing at its uncovered chest repeatedly. The knife was long enough that it could hit something vital, but the brutes were simply so large that stabbing at the midsection wouldn't kill it. It would certainly hurt it though, and weakening that ape would allow me to slash its fucking throat. Sure enough, a dozen or so stabs later the brute's arms fell down and I dug the knife into its throat, viciously jerking it around before slashing it out. Blood sprayed on my chest and helmet, but the threat was neutralized.

"I've got brute stalkers in the camp!" I shouted. "They got to the pillbox!"

"Shit," Tarkov cursed before presumably switching channels to warn his men.

"Pavel!"

"I hear you!"

Suddenly gunfire started echoing from our rear, it was faint and not clearly audible, but it was evident enough where it was coming from. The mortar men had been engaged. I tried looking behind, but they were too far away and behind cover. I couldn't help. Instead I switched to thermal, subconsciously wincing as the early morning sky lit up with reds and oranges. I adjusted the settings slightly until I could make out the individual troops down on the wall and started looking for the telltale signs of brute stalkers. Namely the heat signature and the size.

The ease with which I found them astounded me. There were at least six stalkers clearly visible moving around behind our line. They weren't directly attacking them; they seemed to be setting up explosives. Admirable restraint, coming from those animalistic beasts.

"Die," I muttered as I shot the first Stalker. "Die," I repeated. "Die, die, die!"

I was angry, my whole body hurt from that tackle. My hands were bleeding and the handle on the rifle was beginning to feel slippery. I missed a shot as I failed to properly grip the trigger, pulling to the right and alerting the stalker, sending it behind cover. I tagged their positions as best I could and watched as dedicated squads moved away from the wall to hunt down the Stalkers. I kept shooting, trying to save as many of our men before I ran out.

Which I did, with my next shot.

I quickly switched out the Oracle scope and grabbed my battle rifle. I pretty much yanked the scope on the BR55HB and put the Oracle on. Progress would be slower now, but I couldn't afford to go for the sniper rifle ammunition and put it into magazines, not when everything could go to shit so fast.

"My sniper is dead," Tarkov told me. "They have the pillbox."

"The two that came after me didn't have ranged weapons," I said. "I'll take care of them when I can."

"Make it fast, I don't want to get shot from the back…"

"Tarkov, you might want to move a couple of tanks and a squad to cover our rear," I ordered, hitting a brute in the legs and finishing it off.

Pavel and my squad were now together, helping four other ODSTs hunt down the brute stalkers. I watched as a pair of those jumped from behind cover and savaged four men, three Afghans and an ODST. The ODST managed to put one of them down before the other impaled him with the spiker bayonet. I tried to help, but I didn't get a clear shot until the men were dead. The ODST fell to the floor and pressed the injuries. Two more soldiers got to his position and tried to help him, but I was already looking for something else to shoot.

"Is that a Banshee?" I asked suddenly. "Why the hell are they putting them up?"

"_How_ are they putting them up?" Grass muttered back.

Last I checked this whole place was a deathtrap of SAM batteries.

"Fuck."

This engagement suddenly got a lot bigger than it already was.

"Tarkov, can you-"

"They're not responding! All of our SAM sites are dark."

"EMP?"

"Not bloody likely!"

The Banshee became fifteen and suddenly we were not fighting to hold this line, we were fighting for our fucking lives.

"Hold!" Pavel shouted. "Get one of those IFVs up here!"

"I need someone to patch that hole!" Grass was yelling. "They can't get through!"

I dropped my battle rifle and moved towards the machine gun. I pulled back the bolt and aimed at the Banshees as they approached. I hated firing at those things. One moment they were doing the speed of sound and the next they were hovering. I cursed and fired nonetheless, hoping to take out at least two before they started strafing the camp in the middle of the pass.

One of the Banshees exploded in flames and more gunners joined me as I tried to hit them, but the rest of the group started firing fuel rods at the wall, tearing it to pieces slowly but surely. As they broke formation and began hunting soldiers on the ground or circling around for second passes they became more difficult targets. I managed to bring another one down, but I had to duck down when two others targeted my position, breaking off pieces of the pillbox.

"Fuck."

"Multiple outposts are reporting Covenant troops sighted near SAM outposts. How didn't we spot them?" Tarkov reported.

"This was a feint…" I realized. "This thing was a fucking feint!"

"Where the hell are they going to attack next? There's no other place!"

"The airspace is open until Salang," Grass chimed in. "They don't have to bypass us."

"Wait, they need to take us out first," I said. "We're a large enough threat, which means that we can still salvage this. We need to start falling back."

"Or stop them," Tarkov said.

"If they risked taking down all the SAMs then this is the big one," I disagreed.

"Full force, huh?" Tarkov said. "Fine. We hold and we fall back later. We need to organize this… Bring the tanks up to the front, form a wedge. Put our wounded in the Mk. 87s. Shit. It's a lot."

"We can hold a little more," I said. "We'll manage."

"I'll organize the retreat," Lieutenant Tarkov told me. "I'm counting on you, Lieutenant."

"Leave the fighting to me," I said.

Soon enough we were shooting down the Banshees with machine gun fire and rockets. There weren't Phantoms or Spirits coming in yet, but they were bound to come soon. The bottom of the pass was beginning to fill up with more enemy personnel and materiel while our own numbers became depleted with each passing second. An unfamiliar voice reported that the mortar battery was now clear of enemies but they had suffered heavy losses.

"Pack up all the mortars you can't man," Tarkov ordered. "Keep firing the rest."

"Yes, sir!"

Our two Rhinos and the Scorpions stepped up their game, shooting as often as possible and trying to kill as many troops as possible. Machine gun crews were forced to target Banshees and Ghosts, letting the Prowlers and Choppers move up and around until a rocket ended their rampages. I fired my machine gun at the vehicles, occasionally trying to suppress an enemy squad that got a little bit too feisty. The barrel began to overheat and the casings almost made me twist my ankle a couple of times as I stepped on them.

I switched out the last box of ammunition and ducked behind cover as what seemed to be a whole company hammered my position. I cursed and called for suppressing fire even as needles, spikes, and bolts made it through the narrow slit and hit the anti-ricochet column in the middle of the pillbox. The fire volume decreased eventually and I began firing again, bagging another Banshee kill before I ran out of ammunition for the machine gun, leaving me with my battle rifle again.

The sun was now on our backs, hitting the attackers right in the eyes as they climbed the slope to reach the wall. Long shadows were cast by the mountains to either side of us.

"Ah, shit," I cursed as I saw a barrage of plasma shells arc up into the sky. "Take cover!"

For five minutes the firefight died and was replaced by the overwhelming noise of constant Wraith explosions. I heard cries and curses and Scorpions returning fire, but small arms died for those few minutes as us soft targets frantically tried to stay safe in that barrage.

"What the hell are you waiting for?" I asked as the barrage began dying down. "Don't stop shooting!"

I followed my own order and shot as many targets as I could. There were plenty of those and I killed them more often than not. I fired through the Shortsword firebombing and fired as our wall was finally breached. I kept shooting, covering the retreat of the last of the squadrons and then hid down in the bunker. I moved outside, grabbing the box of SRS ammunition from the hands of the dead soldier. I tried to ignore the organs lying on the snow, barely connected to his body. Once back inside I tossed the box to the floor, sending bullets flying everywhere. It was easier to pick them up that way and I began packing them into the empty magazines I had gone through.

"Frank, what the hell are you still doing there?" Pavel asked. "Move your ass!"

"I'm on my way," I said.

I filled up three more magazines to bring the total to five and put them in the empty bandolier crossing my chest. I put the rest of the empty magazines into the ammo box and grabbed as much of the bullets as I could before tossing them inside the stupid metal box. I grabbed it, placed the SRS and the BR55HB under my arm before moving outside, jumping over the corpse and putting it in the back of the Mongoose. I strapped it down and put the SRS in the holster behind me before hopping on.

A plasma bolt hit me in the side, right on the ribs. The force threw me off the Mongoose, which was a blessing in disguise, since more plasma flew directly overhead, nearly killing me for good.

"Ah shit," I muttered, looking at my bloody hand. Some of the blood had come from the hand, but most came from my torso. I cursed in Spanish, but I knew that my artificial ribs had stopped the plasma from penetrating, even if the skin was badly burnt around them.

"Alrighty Francisco, we'll just have to go through this like we do through everything. Get some biofoam in there, shoot the fucker that dared hurt us, and then get the hell out of this. You've got the high ground, but this makes us visible."

"Alright," I muttered, grabbing the biofoam can and putting it over the wound on my side. It burned as per usual, but I was up and about before it stopped hurting. I shot three grunts that had made a third of the climb and then I shot three jackals that were behind them. I looked for more possible perpetrators before hopping on the Mongoose and speeding away. Sure enough, plasma flew my way, but the bulk of the Covenant forces were concentrating their fire on the bulk of ours.

It wasn't a pleasant ride. My side was still hurting and I had to pull the Mongoose hard sideways so it wouldn't roll downhill. The tread on the back threw snow and mud behind, leaving a clearly visible trail to all that cared to look in my direction. Several stray needles flew in my direction, but all failed to hit my Mongoose or me. I began approaching our lines, realizing just how much longer I had stayed behind. Stupid choice for me, but I had probably bought some time for the troops down on the pass proper.

"Bank to the right," Pavel told me. "Cliff coming up."

I turned the Mongoose to the right and immediately sped up as I started going almost directly downhill. Snow flew in my face and my hands started hurting. I'd need to bandage them as soon as I got down if I wanted to stop them from burning every time I gripped something. I saw two spikes embed themselves on the hood of my Mongoose but kept going.

"Hit those Daemons!" Tarkov was barking. "I want them done for!"

As we began to go down the pass there was a gap between the Covenant and us. Suddenly we were briefly out of sight from them. Our vehicles and men started moving faster and mortar fire intensified. I began crossing abandoned corpses and a pair of smoking Scorpions. One of them was covered with burnt bodies of men and women. Banshees kept up with us, firing and harassing us best they could, but we managed to contain them and send them flying back.

"Frank, is that your blood?" Pavel asked.

"Most of it," I grunted, suddenly realizing that I was in a lot of pain.

"Stop by on my position," he said. "I'm strapping four wounded to a sled. A "sled." Can you drive them to base? It's seven clicks."

"Can you handle the retreat?"

"Tarkov is doing most of the job, but we'll do just fine."

I silently thanked him. I didn't like to abandon the battlefield, but there was a gaping hole in my torso and that was not usually a good sign. I changed my course and weaved through troops and tanks before finally stopping where Pavel and my men were. He greeted me briefly and then grabbed the sniper rifle and the box of ammunition. A man with a bandaged head hopped on and grabbed my right shoulder, his hand resting on the butt of his pistol. As he jumped up, Caboose and Miranda tied a piece of metal plating to the rear of the Mongoose. There were four injured soldiers on it. Three of them had lost limbs recently. Grass threw a tarp over them and secured it to our improvised sled.

"Don't brake too hard," Pavel told me. "There're no brakes for the sled."

"I'm not a moron."

"Debatable. Now go!"

He liked ordering me around whenever he could. It was a nice change of pace. For him. Dick.

The slope downwards was relatively calm. We traversed the previous position for the mortar men and saw the bodies of the brutes and the soldiers manning the mortars. It was carnage, with most of our men torn to pieces by the bayonets on the brutes' weapons. I avoided the mortar trenches and the dead bodies before making it through. There were only a dozen mortars still firing and they looked like they were about to pack up.

The base was pretty empty, with only a token force there to protect it, but it was a strong position and would be enough to deter a continued attack as we prepared to move out. Tarkov told me that the Salang tunnel had more defenders there, they would send transport for us to move over there, an airlift wasn't out of the question and we had enough wounded that the UNSC would need to divert some resources from Mumbai to us. Pelicans, we would need at least six of them to get everyone out. The tanks could move on their own, risky for them, but not overtly so.

We were received by the sergeant in charge, a young fellow that seemed fresh out of basic. He was wearing UNSC gear, but by the looks of him he could've been an Afghan.

"Get our medics over here!" he shouted. "Lieutenant, are you alright?"

"I'm fine!" I shouted back, loudly. "Get those men some medical attention."

"Priya, get some bandages over here! Sir, you need attention as well, sit over there."

"I'm fine," I insisted.

"Sir, you got a direct hit. Here, sit down and let me bandage you properly."

I glared at the young man, but he was right. I nodded and sat down in a tall stool he brought as I began taking off my upper body armor. A girl, Priya, applied more biofoam and asked me to raise my arms. I looked down and saw that the bolt had actually hit lower than I had thought, only making contact with two of my titanium ribs.

"It's not too bad," she said, her voice catching. "Looks painful."

"It is," I admitted. "But I'll manage. As soon as we get some time I can get some quick grafting done. Painkillers and biofoam will have to do for now. Easy!"

"Sorry," she apologized. "Hold this for me, please. Sir."

I gently held the gauze against my torso. It was one of those fancy styles, they had micro something or other that would help with the process of healing, sticking the damaged skin together. It made for a very messy scar, but it was a very fast one and ensured that keloid masses wouldn't form. Priya wrapped the bandage around my torso and secured it with foolproof clips. She helped me wiggle back into my undersuit and scrammed when I told her I could do my own armor.

The vest didn't have one large hole in it, more like sections of it had been melted and there were tiny little holes that had been melted completely through. The abdominal belt was now more or less a mess, but it still protected my front, back, and left sides. The belt also held most of my battle rifle magazines, so I needed it armor or not. I looked down at the hole. It was around four centimeters in diameter, but the area around it that had been melted was significantly larger. I'd need to borrow an abdominal belt from a dead Helljumper if I found the opportunity.

I realized that I had forgotten two of my knives and for a moment I panicked. I realized that my Damascus steel knife was still in my boot and breathed easily. I sighed and grabbed my battle rifle before slowly moving towards the walls of the base. The sergeant had moved the wounded inside the infirmary. There should've been a doctor or two as there were in every base of this type. Whoever that guy was I pitied him.

"No one's manning the turrets?" I asked. "Get someone on those LAAGs!"

"Right away, sir!"

Some soldiers moved up to the two towers with the machine guns and aimed down the sights. The rest began preparations to receive the contingent and to defend the walls. There were already several beds and stretchers set up for the wounded and the sergeant had begun talking to someone and requesting air assets to help us pull out. Soon someone would be setting charges to deny this base to the enemy and within a few hours we'd be pulling back out. Hopefully.

* * *

><p>The latest explosion hit the barracks building. It was empty, but now there wasn't a single intact building in the base. That's including the walls. I ducked as yet another blast shook the crater I was using for cover. The snow had melted a long time ago and the puddle at the bottom was now mud and blood. Not mine, but unfortunately it belonged to an ODST that had been hit clean through the nape of the neck. I had struggled to stop the bleeding, but the man had died within a minute. I had burned through most of his ammunition and only had a couple of magazines left in my own pouch.<p>

Our lone remaining Scorpion fired twice in quick succession before rolling forward, covering the retreat of the second batch of Pelicans. Pavel and Caboose were manning one of the LAAGs that had been on the towers, keeping the Ghosts and Choppers at bay. I peeked up and saw Tarkov and his men in another, bigger crater. This crater had a destroyed Scorpion flanking its front and right, providing extra cover for them. Tarkov was a good and able leader. He'd kept the morale on the men high and made sure to evacuate the forces without any bias at all. Not even I could claim that same thing.

Suddenly memories of Paris IV flashed back and I saw those people that I had sentenced to death. I hadn't seen them die, but I had made them die.

I shut my eyes tightly for a few seconds and waved the thought away. Even Schitzo seemed quiet at my distress. That was something that I didn't want to think about now or ever again.

Carbine rounds whistled past me, smacking against the rocks on the opposite side of the crater. Machine gun fire flew back from the ruins of one of the buildings. I could see the tracers clearly now that the sun had set. There was still some light in the distance, but it was beginning to go away faster and faster. I popped out and fired at a jackal trying to climb over the ruined walls. It had been just a dozen meters from Pavel's position. Someone should've taken it out before it got that close, but that someone was probably dead.

"Ten minutes!" Tarkov shouted. "Hold for ten and we're all out of here!"

The cavalry had helped us three times now. When the Pelicans came they fired their ANVILs, peppered the enemy with their heavy cannons. They killed dozens, pushed the rest back, and bought us time to regain some of our positions. This last time the Covenant had managed to regain some of the ground even before the Pelicans left.

"Grass, what's the status?"

"Good for ammo!" she shouted. "We just need to hold!"

"Caboose?"

"We need someone on our right flank, we're exposed on the right!"

"I'm moving up, cover me!" Tarkov shouted. "Go, go!"

His squad moved up while everybody provided covering fire. The Scorpion fired another time, hitting a Daemon in the distance. I could hear the tanker hollering in excitement at the confirmed kill. I grabbed the last two magazines from the dead man and dashed forward, jumping over two craters before sliding into a third one. Two dead ODSTs greeted me, each with burns to the chest and face. They had probably been victims of an accurate plasma cannon burst.

I ducked just in time for another burst of said weapon.

"Pavel, who's firing that cannon?" I asked.

"They keep moving it," he muttered. "I can't see much."

"Try and take it out, will ya?"

"Sure thing, boss," Pavel replied, obviously frustrated.

I fired a few rounds at shapes, hitting a couple. It wasn't easy with all that volume coming at us, but the Covenant were holding back their deployable covers, opting to move in the cover of darkness and keeping us guessing. I had to duck down behind the edge of this crater a few times as carbine rounds send pieces of rock flying at my visor, stunning me briefly. I cursed myself back to action and shot at the last position that I had been fired upon, trying to shoot something to death in order to feel better about myself.

"Banshee!"

Contrary to common sense, our fire intensified as the flier screamed down. Tracer rounds illuminated the night sky in order to find it before it could fire. Our Scorpion began moving, firing one last round at the enemy infantry before a green fuel rod exploded against its right rear tread. The Scorpion sputtered briefly before moving again, functional. The Banshee began putting fire out the side before diving to the ground and exploding behind our lines, putting out a huge fireball.

"Move to the right," I ordered. "They're trying to push through there!"

A few men had already realized that and had anticipated my order, but a sniper hit two of them as they left cover, sending the head into the ground. The two soldiers were still alive, but one of them was missing his right arm and the other girl wouldn't live past this minute. I zeroed in on the source of the shot and fired three bursts, failing to hit the jackal. I shook my head and climbed out of the crater and dashed towards the remains of one of the towers. Needles flew past me but I didn't stop, instead struggling to slow down as I crashed into the tower. I climbed up the flight of stairs, only stopping when they stopped against the rubble.

"That's a chieftain!" someone yelled. "Concentrate your fire on it!"

I struggled to see the brute, but I only saw it when it glowed gold, activating its invincibility. I sighed and prepared for an annoying fight with a few dead ODSTs before we took it down. The brute would die certainly, but all of us would have to work together to bring it down and the rest of the Covenant would advance on us and take the wall. Once they did that a lot more of us would die.

The chieftain closed in at terrifying speeds for such a large animal, but it was stopped short as our Scorpion fired.

The round hit it right in the chest, exploding on contact and sending it forty meters backwards even faster than it had gotten here. The bright golden lump remained there for a second before the Scorpion fired a second time. I couldn't see the brute disappearing into a tiny million pieces, but I did know that that was exactly what had happened to it.

The Covenant advance stalled slightly, but only for a little bit.

"Two minutes and we're good!" Tarkov shouted. "Get ready!"

We needed to get out of here as soon as possible, and that wasn't just a matter of everyone running for the closest Pelican. There was a method to the madness. Fifteen men per Pelican, falling back in a slow and organized collapsing pocket while the copilot of the Pelican burned through all of its ammunition. Only one Pelican wouldn't be firing, the one that would help get the Scorpion out of here.

The missiles came first. They usually did, flying as fast as they did.

The ground lit up with fire. It was beautiful. Not because it looked beautiful, but because of what it symbolized. Around fifteen seconds later the Pelicans came in, firing their powerful front cannons as close as the front walls. I left cover and began dashing towards my men. Pavel and Caboose continued firing their machine gun as much as possible while Miranda and Grass fell into step with me. My two men stopped firing as soon as I was close enough and they began jogging towards our Pelican. A squad of ODSTs covered us while we climbed in and we fired over their heads as they moved backwards and climbed on board. The third and final five-man squad climbed on board a little bit more haphazardly, rushing as the enemy returned fire.

I watched as the Scorpion was attached to the tail of a Pelican and then recoiled as another of our dropships exploded in a giant fireball, crashing down into the ground with a metallic groan. Curses flew around, but we were already flying away as small arms hit the back of the Pelican.

I looked at Pavel.

"We held."

I laughed. "For a day."

"Sometimes that's all it takes," he said, shrugging weakly and sitting down.

"I have a feeling that this is not one of those times."

* * *

><p><em>This chapter was proofread by <strong>Colonel-Commissar2468<strong>. Fun fact, he wrote this in his in his post-chapter note:_

"I have to admit, I felt the foreshadowing of major-league character death going here. But it was much worse.

IT IS ONE THING TO KILL A BELOVED CHARACTER, OR EVEN TWO, BUT THE CALLOUS DISCARDING OF TWO LOVED CHARACTERS IS APPALLING!

HOW DARE YOU KILL OFF FRANK'S KNIVES!

Ahem. Rant over. Cool job here."

_I didn't even think he would be that affected, although I have to admit that it was a bit rough for me to get rid of a part of the story that had been here for so long. And I couldn't even get rid of the main knife. Imagine how I feel every time I kill off a character. I suspect that's the reason I drink. I'm kidding it's not. And I don't. That was a lie. Anyways, I start college pretty soon and I don't know how well I'll adapt to the whole thing and if I'll be able to write as much. I suspect I will for the most part, but that is yet to be seen._

**_Guest: _**_in the Halo universe beyond the games the Covenant landed all over the planet. Books and other sources mention landings in Ross Island, Cuba, Yucatán, Cleveland, Afghanistan, and at least some damage to Sydney. I used all this places and expanded upon them, the Covenant fleet numbered in the hundreds and humanity had presence everywhere in the planet, it makes sense that they'd land in multiple locations that are of interest to them. I'm not breaking canon, I'm just expanding it a little bit. I just want to clear that up, I take pride in doing my best to adhere to Halo canon._

_Other than that little clearing up thing I have another thing to add. I accidentally fucked up on my Afghan geography, which isn't really surprising considering I have never even been to Asia and don't know all that much about the country of Afghanistan. I thought that Kushan and Salang passes were east of Kabul, when in reality they're to the north of it (according to Google Maps), so there might be a slight inconsistency with this chapter and the next one. I tried fixing it in the next one and it shouldn't be too noticeable. In any case, I apologize to any Afghan readers I might have or anyone who actually knows Afghan geography. To be honest I don't know why that little mistake is so worrisome to me but I don't have too much to write about unless you want to hear about the crazy and irresponsible shit I did in Europe in this author's note section._

_To those who ask: Yes, I will keep writing fanfiction after this. A Halo/Mass Effect crossover. Not nearly as long as this one, of course, but it may or may not contain cameos by beloved The Life characters._

_Stay strong._

_-casquis_


	224. Salang

Chapter CCXXIV: Salang

**November 11, 2552 (UNSC Calendar)/**

**Salang Pass, Afghanistan, Earth, Sol System**

* * *

><p><em>"THe human skin is but a weave of pain and boredom; you cannot rest from one of those sufferings without falling in the other one." – Jaime Sully<em>

* * *

><p>"Well, I'll be damned," I said, looking at the tunnel. It ran the length of the side of the mountain, with columns instead of a wall. That wasn't the entirety of the tunnel, but it was a good portion of it. "I don't know if that makes it easier or harder to collapse."<p>

"Why do you say that?" Miranda asked.

"We'll draw them in through the tunnel," I said.

"It bypasses the pass, higher up," Grass told her. "It can fit a lot of people there."

"I see…" she muttered. "So we don't have to blow it all up, do we?"

I shook my head. "Just the sides right there and the ends, seal them in. Might even drop in some canisters of poison for the kicker," I told her.

"How are we going to draw them all in? They'll suspect foul play," Pavel said.

"It'll have to be quick," Caboose spoke up. "Let them gain the whole tunnel quickly. Maybe a chase or something, throw in a couple of weak barricades. Once they're at the very end we stop them, blow it up."

"Sounds risky," one of the other ODSTs said. "A lot can go wrong. It's a long tunnel. Almost three clicks long."

"We'll have support for this one," I said. "Bagram Airfield."

"I'm not sure, sir," the man said. "They might throw us to the wolves. It's what they did in Kabul once it became clear it was going to fall."

"What happens once we move out of Salang?" another trooper asked.

"We'll probably be on our way east," Pavel said. "If they link up with the forces on the north they'll go back to Kabul, regroup there and then head east to Pakistan."

"So we're really just stalling for those guys on the border?"

"Yeah," I said. "And we need to do a great job of it."

"If we hold them long enough maybe they'll launch an offensive, link up with us instead?"

I laughed. "We'd need to hold them for a solid month at least. That's not going to happen. If the Covenant fought with any concern for their lives maybe we could stretch it a week or two, but we'll be on our way out of here in three days at the most."

"How do you know that, sir?"

"I've been doing this a long time," I replied.

My own men didn't seem particularly comfortable with my words, but they knew it well. Still, sometimes men liked to hear everything was going to be alright. It was good for morale. But it was worse for morale if they _thought_ everything was going to be alright before suddenly realizing they had been lied to. Strained leadership's position.

"We're landing!" the pilot said. "Moving up to the other side."

"Alright, move out!" I ordered. "Let's go!"

Tarkov was right there, landing on the Pelican before ours. He spoke briefly with a wounded sergeant before turning in my direction and striding like he meant it.

"Castillo, we moved half our forces through to the other side and twenty men up to the pass proper. The Covenant are going to be here in a few minutes."

Well, the two passes were technically within sight of each other.

"Are we blowing the tunnel?" I asked.

"Yeah, we're drawing them in, stalling them. We might have to give them the pass, though."

"The pass is where we stall them, Tarkov," I said. "Otherwise they can just move their ground forces up the top."

"Still, it'll take them a few extra days," he told me. "We don't have the capabilities to hold Salang Pass. There's no defensive emplacements there, Command is not giving us much else. We have our tanks, the IFVs and that's about it."

"They're your men, Tarkov, but we need to give them time."

He shook his head. "I'm sorry, I'm not putting them through any more if I can avoid it."

I grinded my teeth together before giving him a short and curt nod. "Very well. Have you started setting explosives on the tunnel?"

"The men just started," he said. "It should take around an hour to get the whole tunnel rigged."

"The covvies are pretty much around the corner," I said.

"Then we'd better get moving."

I sighed and turned around to my squad, examining the men that Tarkov had put under my command as they looked at me with looks of expectation.

"Alright men, we stay outside the tunnel and hold back for exactly one hour! We're going to be moving back through the tunnel at a brisk jog once the rigging is done, draw them in. This is vital, we need to sell it. BY that I mean that everyone here needs to get as many kills as possible. Think of it as a contest, shall you? Whoever wins and doesn't die is the best. Everyone else is a rotten chicken."

"Talk about inspirational," Pavel said as the men began moving. "At least we got some barricades. And an extra Warthog."

I looked at the vehicle. That's the one that my men and me would be using to move out at the end of this little holding action. Five men 'Hog with a nice little roll cage. Pavel on the back with Caboose and Miranda, Grass in the front with me on the wheel. There was a Scorpion inside the tunnel, just far back enough that it could fire down the road without hitting us. Another Warthog with your standard turret remained there. The three vehicles were going to be the last thing, plugging this thing shut and firing on the Covenant as they came at us. They'd have to send Choppers and Ghosts at some point, try and take us out. Hopefully our Scorpion would keep everything at bay.

It was at that moment that I realized that the Warthogs were there as a shield in case they got a Daemon to get a shot at the tank while inside the tunnel.

I groaned.

"They're here!"

That they were. Prowlers and Ghosts. They opened up on our fortified positions as soon as they got there. The Scorpion hit the two lead Prowlers right as they sent their troops down. One of them exploded, the other one just stalled as the shell tore its back apart. The turret was still usable though, we' d have to keep an eye on it.

"Keep an eye on the turret!" I shouted. "Miranda, that's you. Don't let the Ghosts move up, keep them boxed down the road."

The road wasn't very wide. It had been built five hundred years ago, same as the tunnel. Sure, there had been several hundred renovations and other similar construction projects to modernize the road and tunnel, but it didn't take from the fact that it was some new pieces on a 1980 chassis. Not a terribly good one at that. I mean, it had probably been a fine engineering project back in the day, but nowadays it was pretty ugly. People used it, but only because they had to. Mostly tribesmen moving around from one side of the Kush to the other I think. I'm no expert in Afghan geography.

"Get down!"

Heavy plasma blasts hit the top of the tunnel sending some rock down. An ODST was hit in the shoulder and cursed. From the chatter I could tell that his collarbone had been broken pretty bad. It wasn't good to lose an able body so soon, especially to things like that. Still, the men moved forward a little bit, looking at the rocks above with wary eyes. I also directed a look to our right at the snow on the slopes. It wasn't a lot, it was still early for the heavy snows, but there was enough for a decent sized avalanche.

"Grass, can you tell me where it's likely that the snow is about to fall," I asked. "To our right. Avalanche."

"I'm not a mountaineer, Frank," she replied, firing a suppressive burst.

"Can you or can't you?"

She sighed. "I can give it a shot."

"And that is why we have a multidisciplinary genius on the team," I chanted. "Thanks, darling."

"Mhmm," she muttered.

A needle whistled past my head and I ducked behind one of our few metal barricades. We'd been lucky to have this much gear given to us. Hopefully we'd get some more help.

"Castillo!" Tarkov called out. "I've got word from Bagram. They're evacuating the base. We're getting Pelicans to evacuate us and a flight of SkyHawks to help hold the line and escort us out, but that's it!"

Not terribly bad for an engagement, but this was supposed to be a holding action. Now it seemed like we were trapped here when instead we could've simply flied east to avoid this whole battle.

"I know," he continued. "I told them to go fuck themselves too. Command had decided to put in all our chips on the Khyber Pass."

"Pakis must not be very happy about that," I said. "Hell, I'm not happy about this!"

Sometimes it was easy to forget that you were in the middle of a firefight when you got really angry at the brass. Usually they knew best, but that didn't mean that a few hundred men didn't get screwed over in the process.

A steady wave of bullets was flying downhill towards the Covenant, but the return fire was growing by the second. We had the luxury of virtually unlimited ammunition and solid cover emplacements, but with every Ghost we destroyed the Covenant had more to take cover behind. It was harder with the Prowlers, they were too thick for anything less than a Scorpion shot to bust through and could hide a couple of squads behind it.

Pavel was spraying down the road, hitting the squads as they moved up and peppering the Prowlers with fire in order to slow them down a bit. Tarkov's men were doing pretty much the same thing, but they weren't as effective as my best friend was. My own squad tried to set the pace in other areas, but I found that Tarkov ran a tight ship. His men were well trained and disciplined. The five Afghans that had remained with us were helping prepare for the retreat while occasionally shooting downhill to help us out. They were mostly occupied setting the explosives near the mouth of the tunnel and calling in targets for the Scorpion.

"Frank, I can't really tell with this angle, but the snow up there, down by that ridge, seems close to falling."

"Obviously not too close, if this noise isn't bringing it down," I muttered. "Thanks, Grass. Scorpion?"

She looked back over her shoulder and then shrugged. "He's certainly got the angle."

"Alright," I sighed. "I'm calling it in."

The Scorpion pilot put the order in the backburner, it didn't make sense to do that right now, considering how many smaller vehicles the Scorpion was targeting right now. I traced the road as it went down and then curved to our left before disappearing down to the right. We were lucky to have the higher ground and cover. From here we could hit them with near impunity, it was only dangerous once they turned the curve and were in front and not to our side. Our Scorpion was our biggest asset, it had an angle on all Covenant positions except those it couldn't see. There was a brief pause in the enemy advance and the tank fired. It fired slightly to the left, right above the road as it curved back here except several hundred feet up the steep slope. The round detonated with a dull bang that echoed over the mountains, barely audible over the rest of the racket. For a moment nothing happened, but it didn't take long for the consequences to show.

At first it was only a few rocks, which surprised me considering it wasn't snow, but the white goodness came a few seconds later. It became clear that it wasn't a simple avalanche, the Scorpion had triggered a rockslide, an avalanche, and had combined them both. I raised an eyebrow as the snow and rocks flew down and hit the road, burying the Covenant forces under tons of mud and snow. That wasn't the whole damage though, the edge of the road was torn off and brought down the cliff. Not that it meant much, since the other section was buried under mud and snow. We had slowed their advance.

"Good call, Grass," I said, patting her shoulder appreciatively before giving it a light squeeze. "Wow, that was impressive. Very impressive."

Cheers flooded the mouth of the tunnel as everyone complimented the Scorpion tanker before he very graciously gave the credit to me who in turn bestowed it upon Grass. By that point the emotion had died and she didn't get nearly as many comments as the Scorpion guy had gotten, but she was still close to beaming. In Reaper people didn't get many compliments, no matter how impressive the feat was. People rarely good genuine compliments from me, whenever I told them that they had done a good job I made sure that it sounded professional and polite, not genuine. I don't know why I did that, it wasn't truly necessary, but it made every compliment I gave them all the worthier.

I felt like an asshole. She should've been very proud of her achievement, especially considering just how much she had stalled the enemy advance, but the fact that she had the body language of a girl that had just gotten her first kiss really did tell me that I probably should act differently.

Oh well, it was too late for that now.

"Sometimes I think you're bipolar," Schitzo said.

I chuckled.

"Oh shush," Schitzo told me with a smile. "You know what I mean."

Rocks fell down on us as a Wraith fired at the slope above. It was too wide a miss for it to have been an accident. They were obviously trying to give us the same treatment we had applied on their sorry little butts. I looked up with concern, but I knew that the Afghan Road Authority or whatever had kept the area directly above the tunnel mouth particularly clear of debris. Sure, the snow was a factor you couldn't always take care of, but you didn't want a rockslide blocking the tunnel entrance and then hundreds of commuters to die of carbon monoxide poisoning.

"If they're all driving trucks from four hundred years ago, maybe," Schitzo said, annoyed.

More and more shots began coming in above us. Snow, steam, and water landed on us, but it was really the rocks and pebbles that bothered me. Nothing large enough to kill or even hurt too seriously, but I didn't want more people with broken collarbones. Still, for the time being it was enough that the Covenant weren't firing on us directly while the Scorpion took out the two Wraiths that were within sight. The tanker then fired one warning shot at the edge of the road before it curved again out of sight. After that it was only a matter of us working to slow down and kill the ones past the slide.

The covvies weren't particularly stupid about what came next. They sped past the Scorpion in Ghosts. Strangely, these Ghosts happened to be carrying two grunts. The little animals weren't worth a sniper round and at this range it was hard to hit them without a battle rifle. I set myself to work, but they had already put up some deployable covers. They began digging by hand, but the Covenant had diggers that were as good as ours.

It would take them hours to get one up here. Grass had given us a huge score.

"Good one," I repeated. "They're going to need to dynamite that or bring diggers."

"And dynamite could make it worse," she finished.

It bought us less time than I expected. I cursed when I saw two Locust walkers turn the corner. They were moving fast, skittering like bugs around the highway. Their shields flashed multiple times as they were targeted. One of them was almost tipped over when the Scorpion hit it, but its shields held. The two Locusts made it to the rockslide and began firing. Their cannons melted through the snow and broke down the rock. They kept firing, moving up behind the cover of the shiny little fucking walls that the grunts had set up while the little uglies cleared out the rubble from the road. They were making incredibly fast progress.

"How are we on the charges?" I asked Tarkov.

"Five more minutes," he replied. "We're basically set."

"I want those two Locusts gone before we start moving back," I said. "I hate the walkers."

"Don't we all?" Tarkov replied with a grunt. "I don't usually talk this much, Lieutenant."

"I'm sorry?"

He grunted something intelligible and resumed his work. He was firing an old DMR, a battered thing. I frowned before realizing that it was one of the Afghan Army rifles, it had a different color scheme and everything. His M7 SMG was strapped to his back until things got more personal. I noticed that most of his men carried the weapon that ODSTs were most identified with. Weird, despite the glamour of that weapon I didn't know lots of men who liked it. It was as great as they came for close quarters, but we rarely got to use it to its full capacity and it didn't have much versatility outside of house-to-house urban combat.

"Leave that to me, sir!" the tanker chimed in eagerly.

The Scorpion managed to take one of the two Locusts out before they moved through the slide completely. By that point most of our men had already evacuated to the first line of defense, two thirds of the way through the tunnel. Remaining behind were four of Tarkov's men counting the lieutenant himself, three Afghan soldiers, and my own squad. It was the exact number of people we could mount on our vehicles while still managing to keep the vehicles fully operational.

The tank killed the second Locust, but already a swarm of Covenant vehicles was making their way through the highway and the recently cleared pass. They moved slow, ripe for the picking, but they were more than we could kill. We all prepared to fall back when we needed to.

"Tarkov?" I asked.

"Wait."

I shrugged and waited, burning through my ammunition reserves as brutes ran to our position, seemingly forsaking all cover in order to get here as fast as possible. The occasional carbine or needle rifle round would streak past us through our left, but we had stopped firing on them, instead focusing on slowing down the onslaught coming directly to us. Had we had more numbers and time we would've killed scores of them as they moved through the highway below and to our side, but we needed to spring this trap quickly and leave if we wanted the airspace to still be clear. Salang was still covered by a couple of SAMs, but the little stunt that the Covenant had pulled off had still knocked out enough batteries that they could sneak in air support.

"Cover the right side!" Pavel shouted. "They're massing behind the Prowler!"

"I want someone on that jackal!" I ordered, shifting my fire. "Miranda, why are those sharpshooters still alive?"

"I'm on it, sir!"

Green explosions suddenly threw her back. She shook her head on the floor and scurried backwards as fast as she could, taking cover. One of Tarkov's men had to dive for his life when a plasma grenade landed right next to him. They were getting too close.

"Tarkov?" I asked again.

"It's time," he said.

"Alright everyone fall back!" I shouted. "Let's go!"

The first person was one of the ODSTs, he climbed on the Warthog and began firing the LAAG at the enemy infantry with as little discrimination as he could manage. The three Afghans moved back while firing their rifles before hopping on board the Scorpion. Normally one of them would've manned the turret, but this tank was one of the versions with a coaxial machine gun. Another of Tarkov's men hopped on board the last available spot in the Scorpion while the rest of us moved back at a slow pace, firing our weapons.

I turned on the ignition and the Scorpion's engine roared as it began moving backwards. The Covenant realized what was going on and began their pursuit. Nine or ten brutes died at the mouth of the tunnel as the Scorpion fired its machine gun and Tarkov's Warthog used its LAAG to great effect. My own men, Miranda in particular, targeted them with a greater degree of precision. Pavel secured his own M247L and prepared to use it. They were naked back there in the roll cage of the Warthog and they knew it.

It didn't take long for Ghosts and Prowlers to be sent after us, and once that happened the chase was on. Our tank was struggling to target and hit all the Covenant vehicles as we moved through the narrow tunnel. My head vibrated with every single shot and the tunnel seemed to rock violently with the explosions. Tarkov's 'Hog fired almost continuously, with the man on the gun attempting to take out whichever vehicles the Scorpion wasn't targeting.

Pavel was firing short bursts, aiming for the grunts and brutes piloting the Ghosts. He wasn't having much success, but he was discouraging them from moving too close. Miri was the one that managed to hit more of the drivers. Occasionally I would catch a glimpse of a brute's skull flying in pieces through my rearview mirror. She was a good shot. It impressed me just how far she had come from that shy girl that I first saw. She still had some of that in her, but the way things were going it would soon disappear and she'd be just as jaded as the rest of us.

The columns on our left flashed by. I knew that they'd soon become a wall as the tunnel actually went into the mountain instead of just on its side. I turned to look at them and the mountains beyond, but just as I examined the sight a blast from something hit one of the columns and pieces of rock landed all over the two Warthogs. I cursed as a rock hit the side of my head, making me turn the wheel and nearly slamming into the wall.

"Shit!" I cursed.

A second blast hit the ceiling of the tunnel and this time the rocks hit me in the back of the head, making me hit the wheel and flooding the tunnel with the sound of the horn. I cursed again, this time in Spanish as I punched the wheel with my left hand. Tarkov stalled just as a fuel rod blast landed in front of his 'Hog, right where he would've been had he not slowed down. The explosions were being caused by Banshee fliers coming at us through the sides.

"How long until there's a wall between us?" Pavel asked.

"Just a little bit more!"

The Scorpion fired one shot, taking out a Banshee before it could fire on us, but allowing the ground vehicles inside the tunnel to gain some ground. Tarkov's gunner was grazed by a shot from a Chopper. It was merely a graze, but those rounds were large and they left his whole side bleeding and torn. He cursed and sat down, pressing his side to stop the bleeding.

Everyone was cursing. More so than usual.

The ODST on the passenger seat turned around and climbed back to the turret, being careful to avoid stepping on his friend. He fired a long burst at the Banshees as they came at us again, but the last portion of the burst embedded itself against the tunnel wall. Safe at last. Only from the Banshees, but it was a start.

Now we had to contend with the ever-increasing number of Ghosts and Choppers chasing at us. They had to boost in order to keep up, but once they did they'd stop to fire a few solid bursts at us. We could usually swerve to avoid them, letting them hit the ceiling or simply fly past us, but they'd get one lucky shot eventually and that's all it took to kill a man. The Scorpion was great at slowing it down, but with the four men on board it couldn't absorb the punishment that we'd have to take. Just a little bit more until the next outpost, once there we'd be able to hop off, kill all the vehicles and maybe spread out. I hope they had left at least a Warthog there waiting for us. One of those IFVs would've been ideal though.

We slowed down before reaching the barricade. The Scorpion stopped to let the men hop off and us on the Warthogs pass through. Several heavy plasma bolts hit the frontal armor, scarring the tank with black scorch marks. I stopped the 'Hog and dusted myself off, clearing the floor of some pebbles that had made driving more complicated than I would've liked. Pavel was cursing as he reloaded his weapon. Miranda and Caboose were quieter, but Grass immediately began ordering the few men in the barricade to prepare to cover the entire tunnel with bullets as soon as the Scorpion passed them. I saw what looked like an abandoned pickup truck waiting to move some of the men along with the Mongooses. It was enough to carry everyone out of here without the need to put men on the Scorpion.

"I don't care what you hit as long as it's something!" Grass shouted.

Tarkov was barking something in Hungarian to his men as they moved the Warthog up so that the Scorpion could pass before settling into a position that allowed them to fire down the tunnel. The man grabbed his wounded underling and helped him up on the back of the pickup truck just as all of our guns lit the tunnel up. It was loud. Incredibly so.

It only got louder as the Scorpion joined, mostly with machine gun fire, but the occasional shell would send vibrations down my spine, making everything seem out of focus for a moment.

Explosion after explosion came as the Covenant vehicles exploded. I saw Shadow transports drop of troops that took cover behind the wrecks and returned fire. They had mostly heavy weaponry in order to bust through our defenses, but they couldn't get enough troops in the tunnel with the Scorpion racking up an insanely high kill count.

"How's your side?" Pavel asked.

"Better," I told him. "It burns."

"You need a hospital."

"There'll be one at Khyber Pass. From what Tarkov says it is a fortress right now."

"You'll need new armor as well."

"That can be managed."

"…Any word from those ONI guys?"

I shook my head. "Not last time I checked. I'll be sure to let you know once we are on the air."

"Alright. This is my family Frank, I need to know."

"They're fine," I assured him. _They have to be._

Blast after blast of plasma launchers and fuel rods hammered away at our defenses, slowly chipping them away until we began sending some of the men back. They took the machine guns with them, we weren't willing to abandon those valuable resources just yet. Pavel and the gunner on the Warthog were lifting most of the weight here, but Miranda and I were doing a lot as well, shooting away at the grunts with our rifles. I had switched back the Oracle scope to the regular one on my battle rifle and I could feel it as it bounced around inside one of my empty pouches. I felt it hit a can of something when an explosion blasted the portion of the barricade I was taking cover behind and sent me a full three meters backwards, landing on my ass.

"Fuck!" I cursed, loudly. "The hell?"

"Daemon!"

"Get out of here!"

Caboose pulled me to my feet and nearly tossed me towards the Warthog as the Scorpion began rolling backwards. Pavel and Grass hopped on right after I did, pulling Miri up as I began moving forward. Tarkov got his two men on board the Warthog and they began shooting, but their bullets were ineffective as they bounced off the sloped armor on the Covenant heavy tank. Both tanks fired at each other nearly simultaneously, but the armor held on both ends.

I rolled my neck, the Daemon had a stronger armor than the Scorpion. It usually took about three or four shots to bring it down, while the Scorpion could be put out of the fight with one or two shots.

"Get behind me!" the tanker shouted as a second shot nearly destroyed Tarkov's Warthog. "I got this!"

I didn't hesitate to comply. The tank could sacrifice itself for us and I'd be more than happy to let him do it if it meant that my men survived this. I accelerated through the left and took cover, leaving enough room for Pavel to fire over the tank's treads as much as he needed to.

"That's the end of it!" I said.

"Not just yet!"

"The tunnel, you fucking moron!"

The Daemon fired, hitting the back tread of the tank on our side. The explosion sent the Warthog flying, nearly tipping it over. I struggled to keep the vehicle upright as it balanced precariously on two wheels. My men used their weight as leverage, but we were going too fast for it to make much difference. The tank slowed down a lot, but it got another shot off, hitting the Daemon right next to where it had been hit before. The Scorpion was still moving, miraculously.

Tarkov's Warthog sped by past us and towards the end of the tunnel. The Scorpion and the Daemon each got off a third and final shot, killing each other in two bright fireballs. The shockwave and shrapnel mostly hit the underside of the Warthog. I screamed as I thought we were going to tip over but instead we landed on all four wheels and spun out of control before finally regaining it before crashing against the opposite wall. I whooped, but a brute Chopper fired and hit out rear tire, sending us into yet another rolling sequence. This time we made right before the end of the tunnel before stopping, our front facing the wrong direction.

The brute Chopper was approaching us quickly, bearing down. It stopped firing its cannons and obviously seemed intent on tearing us through pieces with the gears in the middle of the front section that gave it its name. I drew my rifle, propped it up and squeezed off one quick burst after aiming. The bullets flew through the middle of the vehicle and hit the brute driver in the face, killing it.

"Being an asshole goes both ways," I quipped as the Chopper slowed down to a halt next to me.

"Everyone get out!" Pavel shouted. "To the Pelicans!"

It wasn't that simple, of course. It rarely was. Plasma bolts streaked past us as the Ghosts began catching up and hit one of the men waiting for us at the tunnel's exit. Several of the ODSTs were forced to dive for cover and stop moving forward, leaving only one man firing back at the Covenant.

I hopped off the Warthog and took cover behind the gigantic Chopper before moving forward. I dragged the bloodied corpse of the brute out of the seat and hopped on the oversized chair. The Chopper immediately levitated and it turned violently as I moved the controllers. I shook my head and looked through the gap in the middle of the front section, using the crude iron sights to aim down the tunnel before I started firing the heavy cannons.

My first targets were other Choppers as they had the more powerful weapons and were less maneuverable than the Ghosts. I killed one and sent two others running back. One of the brutes I managed to hit with two rounds, tearing its chest and head from the rest of the body. I began moving forward as I fired, trying to regain some ground.

"Get back here!" Pavel shouted. "Frank!"

I ignored him, they needed me to buy them some time. Two Ghosts began approaching and fired at my Chopper. The blasts were mostly harmless as they hit the front section, but a couple nearly hit my head. I fired back at one and moved towards the other, preparing to hit the accelerator that would activate the spinning saw-like gears in the middle of the engine. I screamed loudly as the first Ghost exploded and then hit the button a dozen meters in front of the other vehicle. My neck jerked backwards as the craft accelerated viciously. I prepared myself for the collision but I could barely feel the bump as the spinning blades completely destroyed the small scout vehicle.

I began backing up, firing at other Choppers as they came at me. I managed to destroy two before my own vehicle started putting out smoke, but I didn't want to risk making a run for it this far from the end of the tunnel. I muttered to myself when I saw a Prowler full of brutes approaching me at full speed. I tried backing away faster, but the vehicle was too damaged for more speed. I prepared myself for an impact and hit the boosters just as the enemy vehicle was about to hit mine. The impact was pretty hard, but the spinning blades absorbed enough of the force that I wasn't thrown out of my seat. My Chopper slid backwards for a little bit before coming to a halt.

"Puta…" I groaned, reaching for the side of my head as I dizzily slid sideways. "Damn."

I caught myself before falling down and shook my head.

A brute hopped on top of the Chopper's front section and aimed at me with a needle rifle. It growled something that not even my translator could make any sense off before aiming.

I clicked the boosters and watched as the brute's lower body was completely destroyed by the still-functional blades in the front. I was sprayed with an unhealthy amount of blood, covering me completely in the sticky liquid. I hopped off the seat, alert and ready for the other brutes on the Prowler. Before anything else transpired another Prowler stopped into position next to me. The turret on top spun to face me, but Miranda clocked the brute manning it with two straight headshots.

I shot at the passenger, emptying my mag and bringing it to the ground. Suddenly Caboose was next to me, firing a shell into the wounded brute before pivoting around and hitting the other passenger as it began to come around the front of the vehicle. I shot at the driver with my pistol, sending it scurrying for cover. Caboose chased it down the other side just as two brutes from the first Prowler hopped on either side of me.

I hadn't seen them coming. One of them absorbed the rest of my pistol rounds before batting aside my arm. I kicked it in the balls and slowed it down some, but the second one had already raised its spiker to bring it down on my head.

_I could lose my left arm, draw my knife and stick it in his throat before turning around and doing the same to its friend. Shit… This is going to hurt._

The bayonet blades hit my forearm armor, but it was only a light tap. A tomahawk axe had appeared on the head of the brute. The axe was buried pretty deep in the brute's face, almost a third of the blade was out of sight. I grabbed the axe as the brute fell to its knees and turned around, swinging as hard as I could without really aiming at the other alien. I made contact with something and the brute roared. I turned the rest of my body and yanked, pulling the axe from the brute's chest and slamming it down hard on the side of its neck, producing yet more blood to cover myself with.

I looked down at a large ODST on the other side of the useless Chopper. He was still awkwardly holding his rifle from when he had thrown the axe to save my ass. One of Tarkov's men. I gave him a nod of thanks and respect before tossing his weapon back to him. He deftly caught it in a reverse grip and put it in a specially made sheathe before nodding in return.

Caboose appeared on the other side of the Prowler.

"You're getting sloppy," I said.

"I can't be everywhere at once," he countered.

I looked at my forearm armor where there were two considerably deep scratches and shrugged to myself before the three of us began moving back to the exit of the tunnel. I hopped past the flaming Scorpion as plasma flew out direction. Some of the other ODSTs had moved up to fire in return while Tarkov was organizing the surviving men. One of the Mk. 87s was being clamped into a Pelican as the wounded from the pickup truck climbed up into the cargo bay. The Pelican began taking off, but as it flew into the distance it was hit by several plasma blasts, producing smoke from its right wing. I couldn't see whether it crashed or not, but the lack of hails probably meant that they had made it out safe, even if injured.

I ran faster, but I could only watch as heavy bolts from an unseen source pounded the pickup truck, making it explode. Several of the men were hit, mostly Afghan troops who had tried to return fire, but a few of the ODSTs still there were also wounded and killed. The Pelicans on the ground tried taking off, but one of them was destroyed before it could get off and the other one was hit several times before it could escape, bringing it down near the entrance of the tunnel. Several ODSTs climbed inside, trying to see if the pilots were still alive.

"Goddamnit," Pavel shouted. "Back into the tunnel. Get that 'Hog behind cover!"

Tarkov shouted something in Hungarian as well, urging his men to find refuge from whatever Covenant craft was shooting at them from the side of the mountain. I slowed down to a stop and fired back at the numerous vehicles and soldiers that were approaching. I jogged back to the Scorpion and took cover behind it. Caboose and the other ODST joined me and the three of us opened fire, seeking to stall the enemy while we figured out a way to take out the Covenant ship on the outside so that we could blow this tunnel to kingdom come.

"Tarkov, how were the explosives rigged?" I shouted over the roar of my rifle.

"Single switch!" he shouted. "We needed to bring it down all at once!"

"Fuck me!"

We could've stopped the flow of enemies. Even if we didn't get as many we would still block the road for long enough and could focus on the gunship or whatever.

"Someone get some rockets on that Phantom!" Pavel shouted. "Who has rockets?"

"They're in that Pelican over there!" someone replied.

"Fucking hell," he cursed.

The other Pelican was a good hundred meters of open ground away from the closest one and nearly twice as that from my own position. We still had the Warthog, which could provide for a viable option, but Warthog on a straight path with no cover against the Phantom would end up dead no matter what. There was a small possibility that the jeep could make it through intact enough that one or two men could climb out of the wreck and into the Pelican, retrieving the SPANKrs and hitting the Phantom. Once it was gone we would haul ass and call in an evac.

"Tarkov, where are those gunships we were promised?" I asked.

"The SkyHawks just called in, they were engaged by Seraphs ten minutes out! Two of them managed to keep heading our way."

"And our exfil?"

"I'm contacting Bagram, th- Shit! Someone suppress those turrets!"

The Covenant had stopped brazenly advancing now they knew they had us pinned down against an anvil. They'd simply take their time and bring in the heavy weaponry. I hit two jackals trying to move up to a destroyed Chopper and ducked behind as the return fire suppressed me. Caboose was spraying brutes with his carbine while the other ODST fires his MA5B. He had propped it up on the Scorpion with a bipod. That brought a raised eyebrow. Nobody had bipods unless they were sporting a DMR or SRS-99. We were doing a fairly good job, taking turns and popping out of cover at intervals, letting each other reload before firing again. We didn't have unlimited ammunition, however, and would need to get more or fall back.

"Frank, we need someo- No you fucker, what the hell are you doing? Stop!"

I turned my head as the Warthog roared, jerking forward violently as the driver floored the accelerator. The driver was alone, having decided to take the risk without consulting anybody else. I shook my head. Two bolts hit the back of the 'Hog before the guns properly zeroed in on the vehicle. It took all of one second before the thing exploded under the sustained fire from three plasma cannons. It had barely made it ten meters in front of the first Pelican.

"Asshole doomed us," Pavel said, rather loudly and offending several of the aforementioned asshole's friends.

"I can't hit the gunners," someone complained.

"They're fucking brutes, that's why. They have overcharged shields."

"Someone thought this through," a third person mentioned.

They had indeed. Showing an unusual degree of resourcefulness for brute-led forces. Not to say that this was an entirely surprising development. The brutes, like all sentient creatures, learned from their mistakes. Maybe they were dull and a lot slower than other races, but despite their ingrained instincts and berserk rage they somehow managed to find the will to survive.

Fucking fuckers.

"Grass, Miranda, get that fucking brute off the gun!" Pavel roared, evidently frustrated. "You, you, help me dismount the door gun from that Pelican!"

I couldn't track their progress, but I did hear multiple curses in various languages. Tarkov was fighting with someone on the other end of the line while most of his men were moving down the tunnel to help hold down the line. Several ODST squads could do wonders about anything that was thrown at them. The men of the 19th were brave, experienced, and best of all: they were Helljumpers.

It was pleasing to work with such a large number of my brethren. None of them were old enough to have been on my training class. I was very surprised that Tarkov and I had come across each other here of all places. Mars would've been more fitting, but it was still surprising. He was a good and able leader from what I had seen of him. I had not seen his actual fighting skills up close, but I assumed that he had considerable talent if his men respected him this much.

His men were good, they fought in a style similar to Reaper. The new Reaper, the last five of us. They moved around a lot, even if the current situation didn't allow for movement I could tell that they were itchy for something to happen that would allow them to use the full extent of their fire and maneuver abilities, but for now they were settling for firing. They shot for long enough that any other Marine would've considered them stupid and reckless, but in reality they just had better situational awareness than most and knew exactly when it was time to get down.

I ducked behind cover before a burst of plasma could hit me.

"I'm out," Caboose said. "No more seven-six-two."

"Keep that buckshot in check," I told him. "How are you on grenades?"

"Two."

I looked down, I had three strapped to my body.

"One for me," the other ODST said.

"Ah shit," I said. "Alright, give me your frags."

"How far can you throw, El-tee?" the man asked. He had a surprisingly deep voice. It reminded me a little bit of Scarecrow. The thought brought back painful memories.

"Give him your grenade," Caboose said.

I had already dropped my rifle and grabbed my first frag. I settled into a nice little baseball pose and tried to remember just exactly what motion Hoff would go through before his throws. Another painful tug at the heartstrings that was, he had been a good man. Strong fighter. I sighed and threw it in the direction of a trio of deployable covers. I could've thrown further, but I didn't want to risk a completely horrible shot. The grenade landed right in front and bounced back a little bit before exploding, taking down the shields.

The ODST to my side took advantage of that and killed the four jackals taking cover. They didn't have time to activate their gauntlets before they died. I repeated the process with different targets, shredding a destroyed Ghost and Chopper before firing further down the enemy lines, attempting to get some direct kills.

"Last one," Caboose said.

"Pavel, how far is the Phantom from our position?"

"A hundred and fifty meters at latest count. It's not coming much closer."

I looked at Caboose. "I can make that throw."

The ODST snorted. "You're telling me you can throw a grenade five hundred feet?"

I ignored him. "Pavs, is it strafing?"

"Heavily. Your aim isn't particularly good, Frank, and you'd need to lob it high up in order to get that distance. It won't land inside. Top explosion won't do the trick."

"Ah well, worth a shot," I sighed, throwing the last grenade down the tunnel.

The explosion marked the last of the grenades in this little trio, but the rest of the ODSTs weren't particularly well stocked on the fragmentation devices. I heard three more explosions before they stopped completely. We were burning through our ammunition and equipment very fast. It wouldn't last much longer, especially considering the numbers that the Covenant could throw at us. They literally had an army on the other side of the tunnel and more coming up.

Soon they began pushing us back. We were forced to take cover further behind and then some. We made them pay with blood. Their dead were astounding. Each ODST here was a crack marksman with his weapon of choice and once they picked a target they didn't miss. The leftover Afghans were providing high-quality supporting fire and pulling their own weight with flying colors. I could see that they had a look of steely determination in their faces. They wanted to make the Covenant pay for their losses. This tunnel was all that was left of UNSC presence in Afghanistan. I knew there'd be some tribesmen hiding in the caves. There probably would be for years unless the Covenant decided to glass this place. It was their modus operandi, so the tribesmen didn't have that long if we lost the fight.

We weren't going to lose this fight. No way in hell. Earth was where the Covenant died.

"Shit, shit, shit," Pavel muttered. "Get out of the Pelican. Leave the gun!"

I saw four men dash out as fast as they could before the Phantom pummeled the crashed dropship with heavy fire. They concentrated on the turbines where the fuel cells were housed. The explosion reduced most if not all of the cover capability that the Pelican, destroying the gun in the back. The four men were all Helljumpers, which meant that the pilots hadn't survived the initial impact.

"Frank, we're going to need a miracle," Grass said.

"When did you get here?" I asked her.

"When you pulled back from there," she replied. "Good to see you."

"Likewise, honey," I said. "We're fucked."

"Yeah…"

"Ideas?"

"I'm dry," she admitted.

"Watch out!"

I turned around to see that the Phantom had closed in and was hovering a few feet above the road. It had a perfect angle to empty all three of its cannons into the tunnel. We were as good as dead.

"Now it comes down?" I exclaimed, annoyed.

Grass cursed in Finnish instead and hopped over cover, exposing herself to the Covenant infantry but securing her survival against the Phantom. It was her call, I guess. Nobody here would survive. I just hoped Tarkov would be able to bring down the tunnel on top of everybody.

I sighed and began sprinting forward, trying to do something. I would never make it before I was gunned down, but it was worth a try. I shot at the brute manning the side plasma cannon, but the alien zeroed in on me faster than I would be able to kill it. Two bolts flew past my head on the right and the next flew to my left. I blinked, preparing myself for the worst. I wondered what death would feel like. It wasn't the first time that had happened and it would be the last. I hoped I could meet my brother there, see what kind of man he would've become. My dad would be waiting there with a cold beer for me, smiling like he did when he was a little bit tipsy without being angry. My men would be standing at attention behind Marina and Hanna, who would both be grinning at seeing me again. Katie wouldn't be there, I wouldn't see her for a long time. While she came I would talk with my men, drink with them, spend time with them. Hanna and Marina would spend endless nights with me as well.

I almost smiled at the thought of making love to both of them at the same time. I could barely see the following blasts as they began closing in on my head. I could, however, see the gas coming out of them and the snarl on the brute's face as it strived to kill me. I didn't really feel the recoil on my shoulder as another burst was fired and I knew that I wasn't floating, that it was just a sprint step and that I would come back to the ground eventually, dead more likely than not.

Scarecrow would greet me right after my family. Knowing the man he would likely embrace me in a bear hug and lift me up. Seeing him would make me unbearably happy. He hadn't been the first man I lost, but George Sutton had been the first one that I truly cared about. After him would come the members of Reaper, Platoon-5, Jaguar Company, AAG-7… Too many people would greet me there, far more than I would've liked. Sometimes I didn't remember which of my friends were dead and alive.

Was Jen alive? I think she was. Dom? Shit… Reeves had been discharged before he could die. Shit. Andy would be there to greet me, so would Serge. I suspected that I would get to hug Marv up there, too. I didn't like it much down here, but up there it would be a party. To be finally done with everything, free of the struggle that I had suffered for nearly twenty years now. It would be a relief. All of Reaper would be together again, barring Angel, who would come late to the party.

No. None of that would happen. I was going to die and nothing was going to happen. My soul would not go anywhere. It wasn't real. I'd die and I would stop being. My life would end miserably and all this would've been for nothing. Earth would fall, humanity would be wiped out from the face of the universe.

The Phantom tilted a little bit to its right and the plasma bolts all missed me. I slowed down from my sprint to try and take in the situation. Only when I saw the top left side of the enemy dropship engulfed in flames did I realize that it was under UNSC fire. The SkyHawks had made it here in time. I blinked hard as tears of joy, anger, confusion, and sadness formed in my eyes. I didn't like coming to face with my own death. It made my doubt myself, my beliefs and convictions.

As for now I decided to be happy that I wasn't going to die. I chose to take cover behind a damaged barricade and waited as the SkyHawk gunships took down the dropship. After the Phantom hit the ground in a fireball everybody ran out of the tunnel and then some. Miraculously no one was killed as we made an abrupt exit. Despite out urge to move out we did it in an orderly fashion, covering our asses and suppressing enemy fire.

"Tarkov!" I shouted.

"My pleasure!"

The tunnel blew up. It's hard to describe. It was only the tunnel that collapsed, but the sudden movement of tons of rock caused the rock above it to fall, which in turn became a rather large rockslide the entire length of the tunnel. Nothing inside survived and everything on the other side of it would be in for a spectacle. We watched as the rocks fell and rolled downhill, small smiles on our faces at the realization that we were all alive. The cavalry had arrived in the nick of time. The fashion in which it had come was truly dramatic. It had been worthy for a cheap action flick or an award winning drama.

"Sorry about the delay, boys," the pilot broadcast. "We got caught up in a little engagement due east of here. So how are ya'll doing?"

She seemed very satisfied that she had gotten here in time to save our sorry asses. I was very satisfied with her too.

"We owe you," Tarkov spoke up. "Flight leader said two made it past the Seraphs?"

"Two of us made it out, only I made it here."

"Sorry," he said. "But you have the gratitude of all the men here."

"It's in the job description. I'm moving up, scouting for enemy aircraft. I think there are Pelicans on the way?"

"Correct," Tarkov confirmed.

"Good luck."

Grass put her hand on my shoulder and I turned to give her a massive bear hug, lifting her into the air as she yelped in surprise before breaking into laughter. I spun her once before setting her down on the floor, mere feet away from the wreck of the second Pelican. She chuckled for a little bit and the rest of the ODSTs shook their heads and slapped each other's shoulders. A couple sat down, head hanging low, but the rest of us were happy to be alive, no matter how many had died, we were still going to be making a difference.

"You're stuck with me for a bit longer," I told Grass with a big grin on my face.

"God forbid," she replied, drawing a snort from Pavel, who began walking our way.

Miri and Caboose also joined the remnants of Reaper, their shoulders hunched and tired, but there was also a sort of strut to their pace. We had defeated an army. An actual army. We had had help, of course, but that didn't diminish our accomplishment.

I was going to die someday maybe I would be up in a cloud having infinite threesomes with two women that I had loved or maybe I would just be rotting in the ground, but this was not the day that I would die. No, sir.

* * *

><p><em>This chapter was proofread by <strong>General TheDyingTitan.<strong>_

_This was a good chapter. I enjoyed writing this. At first I was afraid that I would have to add unnecessary combat in order to make it a decent length (read: my standard length), but for the most part it seemed to write itself. I particularly enjoyed writing that scene at the end. It seemed nice, fitting in a certain way._

**_Electric2097:_**_ I'd recommend any of the stories on my favorites or any of the stories by my favorite authors to be honest. Hitchups in particular is an amazing fan fiction (It's by The Antic Reparte)._

_Everyone else: I'd like to congratulate you all on helping me break the 2000 review mark. That means that of the thousands of readers I've had enough of you cared to say positive (and sometimes negative) things about my fic and I appreciate it immensely. You are as much a part of this as me and I hope you are able to realize that. I look forward to hearing what you think about this chapter and the ones to come for as long as there are people reading this story._

_Stay strong._

_-casquis_


	225. Run to the Hills

Chapter CCXXV: Run to the Hills

**November 14, 2552 (UNSC Calendar)/three days later**

**Torkham, Pakistan, Earth, Sol System**

* * *

><p><em>"Run for your life."<em>

* * *

><p>I tossed the ball up and then moved my hand to catch it before it hit my face. It was a disappointing throw, the last several ones I had barely had to move my hand. It was all in the wrist. The red ball looked old-fashioned. It had a good feel to it, nice and hard. I had never before in my life seen a cricket ball or even heard the word cricket in anything that wasn't related to the insect. It was an interesting sport, even if I had absolutely no idea how it was played.<p>

A loud clack rung outside as Pavel or Caboose hit the other cricket ball with a wide bat that they had found.

"That is not how you play it!" Grass shouted. "I told you!"

"Shut up, woman!" Pavel roared, drawing laughter from men known and unknown.

I chuckled a little bit myself, although the cinder blocks that surrounded me didn't let me see. This was an old building, perhaps as old as two hundred years. It had been abandoned for at least half that. It was basically four walls with half as many windows and a door. Not to say that there was any actual windows or doors instead of a hole where they should've been. A farmer had probably built it and then realized he didn't really need this tiny shack for anything special.

It was only a minute away from the rest of the town and then another couple of minutes until we reached the highway. There was nothing special about this place except that it was next to a football field. Soccer, if you will.

I tossed the ball up one more time, but Miranda caught it as it was coming down.

"What?" I asked.

"They found a ball," she said.

I smiled and got up. It was a little bit chilly, even with the heavy sweater that we had been issued. The black fatigues weren't particularly thick, but they did more than fine to help me against the cold. It was the boots that I was a bit uncomfortable with. They weren't bad boots, but with the Covenant moving closer with every passing hour I would've preferred to have my armored boots on instead of a more traditional pair of regular boots. It was something that I had gotten used to over the past two days, but two days couldn't beat decades of experience.

The day was cold outside, at least for this time of the year. It shouldn't have been cold enough to need a sweater to be comfortable. Some of the local troops said that it was never this cold this time of the year, but the amount of dust put up in the atmosphere was already blocking the solar rays and cooling the global temperatures significantly. This would be an ecological catastrophe.

"There," Miranda pointed. "I don't know how they found it."

"Well, we need something to kill some time," I told her.

"Alright!" the man with the ball was yelling. "I need twenty-two men split into two teams. Standard rules for football. You should know this by now!"

"Helljumpers against Pakistan!" someone suggested.

Cheers received the suggestion.

"Wait, what about regular Marines?" someone asked.

"You can play the winner," the man with the ball replied. "Alright, hurry up!"

I bumped my way into the ODST team. I did have the highest rank here. Pavel looked at Caboose, who shook his head and sat down the side of the field, waiting for the game to start. I ended up on a team with Miranda, Grass, and Pavel as well as a bunch of ODSTs from the 19th. There was some discussion about who should play what and my status as ranking officer immediately disappeared. I did, however, have some experience playing football. It was the most popular sport in the universe and Jericho-VII was no exception, I had grown up playing in the street and occasionally shooting at an impromptu goal while my uncle lazily acted as a goalkeeper. Hell, I had even been on the high school team.

One guy kept trying to make us get a complicated system, but in the end we settled for four defenders, three centers, and three forwards. It was basically an elementary school offensive system, but it was enough that a bunch of untrained men could handle it without too much trouble. I ended up as a left center and cracked my neck as we waited for the game to start.

"All right! Listen up! You know the rules of the game. Slide tackles and actual tackles are encouraged, but don't lose your calm, will you? First goal wins!"

Then began the greatest football game of my entire life. As Helljumpers we obviously began with a very aggressive approach, pushing forward and playing a physical game, the Pakistani soldiers complained about the roughness that we played with, but several shrugs form the ref later they were hitting us equally as hard. They were being smarter about it, too. I almost fell flat on my face when two men slammed into either side of me at the same time, making me lose control of the ball. Pavel was close by and slid in front of the ball. He missed, but he very cheekily raised his foot in order to trip the Pakistani man.

Nobody whistled and the game went on. The other Pakistani ran forward before slowing down and passing the ball into the box, hoping for one of his teammates to hit it into the goal. My breath caught when I saw a tall man drive a powerful header into the net, but Grass easily caught it with one hand and gave a taunting smile.

"Hey, no fair! She has a prosthetic hand!"

"Normally that'd be a handicap!" one of our ODST teammates shouted back.

She kicked the ball hard into the midfield and a man in a black shirt put it down with his chest and then passed it to Pavel who in turn passed it back to another man. I called for the ball and got a long pass that I struggled to control for a little bit before I made use of my great speed and stretched the field on the left side of the field. Four other men joined me as I moved and began positioning themselves near the center of the box.

I struggled with myself a little bit. Back in the day I had given several assists into the box, nothing too great, but I hadn't done it in long enough that I didn't want to risk doing it now. I sighed and went for it, hitting a nice little volley into the box. It fell short, but the bounce positioned it close to one of my teammates, who slammed it left-footed into the crossbeam through two defenders. The ball bounced back and landed at the feet of a Paki defender and they had control of the ball once again.

I smiled. I was enjoying this.

Miranda began running forward and intercepted a pass, but a large man slammed into her from the side and stole back the ball. There were some calls of complaint, but those stopped when Pavel and another Helljumper hit the man with a tackle and slide tackle respectively, sending him face first into the grass. I would've enjoyed being closer to hear the noise that his face made with the impact.

We managed to get two more attempts on goal, but the Pakistani keeper knew his business. He did block one of the two shots with his face rather than his hands, but a block is a block.

The game went on; I missed an attempt on the goal and managed to stay in the midst of the action. However, I could tell that the Pakis were better as a team than we were, often bypassing our physical superiority with honed skills. Football was certainly a game of athleticism, but you also needed to know how to kick the ball straight. It was only a matter of time until they scored. I watched helplessly as a powerful shot flew at our goal. Grass jumped, stretching herself and blocking it. The ball was deflected and bounced against the cross beam, lobbing itself high up and coming back down. Right at the feet of the man that had shot it in the first place. The second shot wasn't a miss.

There was a collective groan coming from the ODST team.

"All right, Marines! We're up!" a man shouted and a swarm of green-clad men and women flooded the field as we lazily moved out.

"Good effort!" Miri said happily. "We'll get them next time!"

I smiled a little bit, rolling my sweater sleeves up before finally deciding to simply remove it. The cool air was comfortable against my sweaty shirt and it felt relaxing. I moved back towards the little abandoned house and grabbed my canteen before heading back outside to watch the game. Sadly, the Marines were a lot better than we were. This was going to be a good game.

"Lieutenant Castillo? Is there a Lieutenant Castillo here?"

"That's me," I said. "What do you want, Private?"

"Here, sir. This is for you."

The man handed me a datapad which I promptly took. I looked back at him and thanked him as he left back towards the town. I sat down and opened the datapad. The screen showed me a list of messages and emails that I had gotten before the last time I checked. There were some bank statements, PSAs, a few unread messages from AAG and Captain Flatt.

Shit, Captain Flatt! I had forgotten all about her.

The most recent message was from the woman herself. God, I missed her. She was the best liaison to Command that I had ever had. She was damn good at getting us the support we needed and despite her occasional bitchiness cared for our team.

_Frank,_

_I'm offended you haven't tried to communicate with me since I got here. _

_It came to my attention that you are looking for a particular ship that evacuated from Reach and haven't been able to find it yet. I've put a couple of men on the task, but there are other far more important matters than that. Only thing we've found so far is that the ship made it into this system, but I suspect you already know that. I will keep you updated._

_I'm glad to know you're alive at least. I'd appreciate a response._

_Flatt_

I went over the letter twice before drafting a quick reply.

_Sorry, Cap, I've been busy. I don't know what you've heard since we last talked, but Longworth, Agnarsson, __Avninder, and __Krieger are dead. It was a long week. There's only five of us left now. I appreciate the help, please let me know if you find anything about that ship. Pavel's family was aboard as well._

_I hope you're doing fine. I think I owe you a couple of drinks._

It was fairly decent. I pressed send.

I went over some of the bank statements telling me how much money I had and whether or not the interests had changed and whatnot. I always surprised myself a little bit when I went over my savings. I knew that I was rich. I had shitloads of combat pay, I got bonuses for working in Special Forces, I got my bonuses from the 19th, AAG, and UNSC Marine Corps all at once. I also had some investments in weapons manufacturers that kept getting more and more valuable. Not to mention the fact that I never had a home of my own so I never paid for that. I was more well off than any low-rank officer had any right to be. Perhaps I should've blown all my money on hookers and blow before it came to the end of the world.

I saw an email, tagged two days ago. It was from a blocked address.

_Lieutenant Castillo,_

_I went through a lot of trouble to get your address. This would've been a lot easier if the UNSC didn't insist on the archaic tradition of delivering deceased notices in a physical form. I have to say, the letter you wrote about my daughter was very touching. It almost had me believing that it didn't come from a form letter. I know that Natasha was a bit of a handful, but she spoke of the members of her unit with the utmost respect, something that apparently I never really did earn in her eyes. What surprised me the most, however, was the admiration with which she spoke about her squad leader. I think she might've had a small crush on you._

_Well, it's of no importance, not now that she's gone at least. She might've been a huge bitch, but she was my daughter and I take full responsibility for the way I raised her. Or rather the lack thereof. I didn't interact with her much after she joined the Navy, but she was somewhat changed after she joined your outfit. She seemed happier, calmer somewhat. I take a small comfort in the knowledge that she died surrounded by people that she cared about and that cared about her. I don't know if she really did die in her sleep or if the truth is more violent, but she knew what she signed up for._

_What I'm getting at, Lieutenant, is a thank you. A thank you for watching after my daughter and for helping her become a better human being. God knows that she needed some help with that and I wasn't the one to give her that._

_Now you must know or suspect that I am a man with plenty of means and assets. If you ever get tired of fighting in this war or if we somehow manage to end this without being burned to hell, feel free to contact me for anything that you need. It is the least that I can offer you. Let me know if you need anything right now, if not, I'll gladly wait._

_Heinrich Krieger_

This one prompted a double eyebrow raise. Her father was a trillionaire. Having a man like him on my side would be incredibly helpful under any circumstances whatsoever. That man could buy himself a small country. Or a large one if he wanted to. Hell, the man probably owned several asteroids and maybe even a small moon. I was surprised there wasn't more information about him floating out there, but he was very private for a man this rich. He was probably balls deep in several illegal ventures if you ask me.

Damn. Well, it was nice to know that someone had appreciated me, even if it was Lady.

I missed her sorry ass. I missed her bitching and her frowning and the fact that she fully believed that she was better than everyone on the team. It was a shame that we hadn't had access to any piece of medical equipment after she hurt her head. We could've done something about it and maybe she would be here playing football with us and her father wouldn't feel the need to put his considerable assets at my disposition.

An ODST sat next to me and groaned. He had his combat belt on and on the belt was an axe.

"Nice piece," I said. "Can I see it?"

"Sure," he replied, voice deep as thunder.

It was heavy, heavier than I would've expected it. There must've been some sort of weight on the head of the little axe. It was little only relatively. The handle was about the length of my forearm, a little bit thicker than a broomstick and with a worn grip near the bottom. The grip became flat near the top and merged with the head. It was, of course, all black except for a few painted bible verses.

"I never thanked you for covering my ass back there," I told the man. "I would've lost my hand."

"Or your head," he said.

I shook the very appendage he talked about. "Nah, just my hand. The brute was dead."

"You sound confident."

I shrugged. "What's your name?"

"Grayson Young, Corporal."

"Pleasure, Corporal Young."

"Where are you from, Lieutenant? I know that Lieutenant Tarkov is from Reach, most of my friends are from there, too, but you don't have the accent."

"I was born in Mexico City," I said, leaning back on the soft grass.

"Billings."

"Montana or Luna?"

"Montana," he said. "Born and raised."

I twirled the tomahawk a few times. The heaviness of the axe head was very different from what I was used to with my knives. It wasn't a particularly heavy implement; it just had a different weight distribution. I would've loved to throw this little puppy around. It probably would have much more killing power than my own knives. I was at one knife at the moment; I needed to get replacements for the other two.

I clenched my fist tightly. Those two knives had been with me for a long time, I didn't like them being gone.

"El-tee said that my squad might be working in tandem with yours during the following weeks, just came to introduce myself."

"Tarkov didn't mention anything to me," I said.

"It's tentative."

"Well, pleasure," I told him. "If you can keep saving my men or me you'll be more than a pleasure to work with."

"I'll do my best, sir."

I didn't have to dismiss him. He simply grabbed his axe as I offered it to him and walked away. There was something weird about the way he walked. He was tense, as if he was expecting someone to jump him at the very moment. It was subtle, but I had seen enough men with trauma to know that he was probably wrestling with some issues right now. Hell, I was the expert in that matter.

"Who's that?" Grass asked, coming to sit down next to me. "He's cute."

I scoffed.

"Oh, you know that I think you're more attractive," she said, putting her hand on the back of my head and scratching it lovingly.

I hated it when she did that. It felt too good.

"Grayson Young. His squad might be working with us."

"You don't see too many men with axes," Grass noted. "A bit unwieldy when you're not using them."

"Pros and cons," I said.

"He's the one that saved you, isn't he?"

I nodded.

"Then that's good enough for me. What's with the datapad?"

"Some personal messages," I said. "Flatt contacted me; she's trying to find Katie and Amber."

Her hand dropped at the mention of Katie. I didn't like what that implied. I didn't like it at all. The last thing I needed was another distraction and the distraction being Camilla Seppa made it all the more uncomfortable.

Her hand reached for the datapad, dispelling my fears and grabbing the device. She went through Flatt's email before handing it back.

"They're fine," she assured me. "It's just going to take a while to get this whole mess sorted out."

"I don't think I can lose more people," I told her. "And then there's Pavel's family. I don't know how he'll deal with that."

"Even if the worst happens you have us, we'll be here for whatever you need."

"Oh yeah?" I asked. "You and Grigori?"

"Me and Miranda," she said. "And Grigori too, if need be. You might not like each other much, but you know damn right that you care about him as much as he cares about you."

"Gay," I said.

She laughed. "You're not twelve."

I sighed and nodded slowly, looking at the grey sky. It wasn't cloudy, it was just grey. "How's your family?"

"They're fine. I've managed to keep in touch with them."

"The Covenant haven't hit the Scandinavian countries, right?"

"No, they're focusing mostly on Russia right now. They hit Moscow from the east for a change. The Urals are pretty much under their control."

"I almost want them to keep them for the duration of the winter, see how that works out for them."

"It's not working out for them well at all," Grass said. "You know how the Russians are. They've got some of the best armed forces in the universe. Hell, their domestic tanks are worth three Scorpions each."

"Yeah, those are true MBTs," I agreed. "They've always been good at making tanks, haven't they?"

"And at defeating invaders," Grass added. "We'll win this one. There's less than a fourth of the original Covenant fleet left here."

"Same for us," I reminded her.

She shrugged. "We have the ODPs, it's a standoff right now, but even with the enemy reinforcements I think we can manage to pull this one. Give it two years."

"That's a long time," I said.

"We've been fighting for all our lives," she reminded me. "Two years won't make much of a difference. Besides, we might break the Covenant here."

"Might, might not," I muttered. She sounded awful optimistic and I didn't want much of that rubbing on me. It might turn out that we'd lose this in a week and it would hit me that much harder. "Why were you complaining about him having an axe? You used to have a homemade machete, remember?"

Grass laughed. Melodiously. She could've been a freaking movie star, radio host, PhD, or anything she wanted and here she was, sitting next to me and fighting the good fight as a glorified ground pounder. And she was excellent at that, too.

"What are you thinking about?" she asked, her voice suddenly softer.

"Where do you think we would be if there wasn't a war going on?" I asked her. "What would you be doing?"

"I don't know," she admitted. "I was always very good at anything I tried."

"What do you like?"

She shrugged and leaned back in the grass with me. "I wanted to be a vet when I grew up."

I laughed. "You, a vet?"

"Hey, I like animals!"

"Yeah, it just seems so… basic."

"What do you mean?"

"I always pictured you as a scientist, you know?"

"Maybe," she admitted. "I like all that stuff. Besides, white lab coats look amazing on my frame."

I rolled my eyes. Anything looked amazing on her frame. We called her Grass because she had a great ass, but it was a tough competition with the rest of her body most of the time, not to mention that face.

"And you, Frank?" she asked.

"I would be in the ODST regardless," I said. "I might've made it to sergeant by this point."

"That, now that I can see," she admitted. "And if you didn't join the Armed Forces?"

"That's all there ever was for me, you know. Ever since I left this clump of rock for Jericho-VII it was all about the military. I like it that way. I don't have to think as much and my decisions are made for me most of the time."

"You're better than that, you know."

"Thanks."

There was some silence, both of us listening to the game more than watching it. There were cheers, jeers, laughter, and groans of pain. I loved the sound that the ball made when someone kicked it. It reminded me of my childhood. In Mexico I had many friends, I played with them in school and outside of school. In Jericho-VII I had people I liked and that liked me back, but I never truly had friends. Sure, I was invited to parties and greeted warmly and hung out with some of the other guys after school, but it always felt a little bit empty. Maybe it was the usual teenage angst, but then again, maybe it wasn't.

I sat up abruptly. Just as I did that Corporal Young was walking a few meters in front of us. He stopped and turned to watch the game, displaying his impressively wide shoulders.

"You think?" I asked Grass.

"Hmm?"

I pointed.

"Nah."

"Are you sure?" I pressed.

"Pavel's shoulders are wider," she said.

I frowned a little bit, looking around for Pavel, but he was nowhere to be seen. "Maybe, but not by much."

"Pavel can do unlimited chin-ups and unlimited shoulder presses," Grass said. "His shoulders are wider."

She was probably right. She usually was.

"The man looks like a linebacker," I said.

"Some of us ODSTs really don't know when to stop."

"I think I'm in perfect shape," I said defensively.

"I didn't mention you," she sassed back. "I think you look very well-proportioned."

Now she had to be fishing for compliments.

It was true though, I might've been arrogant about a lot of things, but I was very proud about the way my body looked. Not only did I train for maximum strength and speed, but I also did my best to keep my body looking good. Thankfully, those two aspects had a very large overlap. Wide shoulders and chiseled chest meant strength. You'd be surprised though, most of what a Helljumper needed was incredible stamina as well as legs of steel. Nobody here skipped leg day.

"Do you want me to flex for you?" I asked.

"Oh please don't. I don't think I could resist."

We both laughed and watched as the Marines mounted an offensive against the Pakistanis. It was a fairly fun game to watch.

"How's your side?" she asked.

"Good. Grafts are coming in nicely. I've got one less scar now."

"Until the skin completely adapts, that is?"

"Yeah," I said. "Right now it just looks uncomfortably pale. Have you ever seen a black man with a recent graft?"

She nodded.

"It's almost comical," I went on. "How long does it take for the melanin to move into the graft?"

"Two to three days," she said. "It takes more the darker your skin is. You should be almost set."

I lifted my shirt a little bit. One could clearly see the edge of the graft. It was a lot better than the ones on my back. The doctor had told me that this would not leave me any scar at all.

The Marines scored, winning the game.

"Looks like we're up," I said, getting back on my feet. "Try not to fuck it up this time."

* * *

><p>"One and two," Pavel said. "Not a bad record."<p>

"Could be worse," I agreed.

"That was so much fun!" Miranda said. "I love football."

"Doesn't everybody?" Grass asked.

"And the games weren't interrupted either!" she exclaimed. "We were even allowed to finish that last one."

It had been pretty decent of them.

I opened the trunk and grabbed my undersuit. Brand-spanking-new. It was in a different color, with greys and blacks without camouflage patterns. It pretty much looked like a skiing outfit or a gravball winter uniform. As soon as I put it on the discomfort disappeared. Those things were truly wonderful. Sometimes it was hard to squeeze into it, but once you were done putting it on you felt more comfortable than you would if you were naked. After that, it was a matter of the practiced motions of putting on the armor that you fought in.

"Tarkov confirmed that he's going to be putting one of his squads directly under my command. I've already talked to Corporal Young, seems like a good man."

"Not a Hungarian?" Miranda asked.

"No," I said. "All his men are fluent in English in case you were wondering."

"Do they know Romanian?"

"Shut up," I ordered. "Young will have command of his squad, the rest of you will work like we normally do. I don't want to make things too complicated, even if everyone here is his rank or higher."

"Have we gotten our assignment?" Pavel asked.

"Yes," I said. "We're moving up, Falcon gunships are dropping us down a couple of clicks from this position. We're mostly going to do scouting and recon for the main line of defense here. Pack light, but get water and food for two days. I don't plan on getting in serious firefights."

"What about our satellites?" Miranda asked, confused.

"You didn't hear?" Grass asked. "They were shot down in anticipation for this offensive. And as fate would have it, there's no more drones to go around."

"None at all?" Miranda asked, sounding genuinely annoyed. "We are defending a national border. You're telling me there's no drones? At all?"

"None at all," I confirmed. "Most of them are in Mombasa and getting shot faster than we can make them. Most countries aren't sharing theirs and Pakistan happened to make the mistake of using all of theirs in India and Afghanistan in an attempt to keep their borders from being crossed. Mongols are untouched, they've set their whole infrastructure to building cheap, disposable drones. They can't fly very high and they're pretty much made of plywood, but they have cameras and transmit images."

"Do we have some of those?" Pavel asked.

"No."

"When will we have some of those?"

"Three days," I said. "That's what the brief said. Fucking drones…"

"Can't live without them," Pavel said. "Well, you know what I mean."

"We're going to be taking two things that we don't usually take," I went on. "Camera and radio. You know how it is with the mountains, this has better range than our helmets, but chances are we're not going to be in touch for extended periods of time. Scratch that. Hours at a time, but this mission is a quick one. We're going to report their numbers, maybe call on some artillery strikes and then, if all goes well, fall back."

"Wow," Pavel said. "That's very…"

"Expected of Special Forces?" Grass finished for him.

"Yeah," he agreed. "I thought they'd have us hunting Scarabs with water guns or something."

"We've done more with less," Grass said.

Caboose snorted, surprising everybody. "That should be our motto."

Everyone looked at him and then at each other. It was a good idea. I liked that.

"I want suppressors. Pavel this means you might need an M7."

"I'm used to lugging weight around."

"Hence the shoulders," Grass whispered to me, drawing a chuckle.

"Hey, what was that?" he asked.

"Nothing," I said. "No AA for us, no sniping tools. Miranda, you're packing an EMR?"

"And an SMG," she said.

"Jesus, does nobody listen? I said to pack light."

"There's only five of us," Pavel said. "We'll take light ammunition loads, but we need to be able to respond to all types of threats."

"I know, I know," I said while I rubbed my temples. "Fine. Only two spares for your M7, Miri."

"Caboose?"

He raised his shotgun and then his carbine. No surprise there.

"Alright. Grass?"

"MA5," she said. "As per usual."

"No surprise there," I said. "Two grenades. Grass, you take the colored smokes."

"Yes, sir," she said, shooting me a perky salute.

"Young and his men have their orders, they'll meet us on the tarmac."

"You mean the main road?" Pavel asked.

"Shhh, let's pretend we're in a base."

I gave my moment some time to finish grabbing all their gear and ammunition. I noticed that everybody took their own can of biofoam and stocked up on some other medical supplies. I didn't blame them, ever since we had lost… well, all of our medical experts things had been a bit rough. I missed Andy a lot, too. Shit, I missed everybody.

Our little impromptu base was not a terribly bad position. We were a few kilometers from the summit of the Khyber Pass and right next to the border separating Afghanistan and Pakistan. The fences separating the countries were sturdy but had been neglected over the years as relations improved. Fences or no fences, the terrain around the town of Torkham was rough. The Hindu Kush once again helped us out immensely. Terrain is something that we had to use to our advantage as much as possible. Afghanistan has the roughest terrain in the world according to some, the Covenant were probably cursing their gods to hell and back now that they've found out just how bad it was. Not to mention that they were about to slam themselves against a few battalions of very pissed of men and women that would put them through the grinder.

It wasn't an impossibility that we would stop their advance right here. Especially if one remembered that the array in Sector Six further south needed to be held for as long as possible if we wanted to have any coordinated actions at all.

"Where are our Falcons?" I asked one of the men near the designated landing areas.

"Lieutenant Castillo?" he asked. "Slight change of plans, Pelicans now."

I shrugged and moved towards one of the dropships, my team in tow. Corporal Young and his squad were already there waiting for us. The man had five other men with him, bringing the ODST number up to eleven. They were carrying a similar amount of gear, with one of their number also toting an EMR similar to Miranda's but with a slightly different configuration of attachments. Everybody has their preferences. Young himself was carrying his scoped MA5B, M7 submachine gun, and not one but two pistols. One more weapon than I'd have opted for, but he had nodded when I told him to pack light. I noticed that in addition to his Tomahawk he also had a machete strapped to his right thigh below the pistol holster.

The rest of his men were mostly carrying MA5B assault rifles, although they were toting the considerably stripped down versions that made them lighter and easier to carry around. All of them had silencers attached to their weapons.

"Y'all good?" I asked.

"Yes, sir," Corporal Young replied.

"Let's go," I ordered.

* * *

><p>"Good luck out there, boys," the pilot said. "Stay safe."<p>

"Thanks," Grass replied. "Will do."

We were back on the middle of nowhere. There were trees all around us and the change in altitude had made the temperatures lower, but my undersuit protected me from the uncomfortable effects of cold. I polarized my visor and carefully moved on the slope of the mountain, approaching the men that would be under my command for the duration of this mission.

"Lieutenant Tarkov, we're in position," I said into my helmet.

"Copy that," he replied. "Good luck."

He also had a couple of squads working a few clicks away from our position, but the man himself had remained back at Torkham to coordinate the rest of the 19th as they defended the town.

"Young, take your men down to the first two quadrants. We'll meet in the next valley."

"Yes, sir."

As Young and his men disappeared from sight I mentally went over all the information I had. We had completely destroyed the roads that led into Torkham, making it difficult for the Covenant to move through but not impossible. We knew that they were going to be moving through that same general area, probably right on top of the damaged highway, but they'd have scouts out and other units that they'd want to keep away from prying eyes. We worked in a similar manner, trying to fuck with their heads a little bit, but I assure you that nothing quite does that like seeing a Scarab pop out of nowhere.

"Eyes open," I said. "Keep all communications intra-helmet, sound carries far here."

After that order my men went silent. Not because they couldn't talk, but because they didn't appear to feel like it. I walked near the center of the group, keeping tabs on Miranda as she scouted ahead of us, nearly out of sight. The trees were not as densely packed as I would've liked and the cold had stripped some of the leaves from it, leaving us even more exposed. Afghanistan was a country of very diverse climate. Mountain forests this valley and a desert in the next one. Frankly I'm not sure how it worked, but it made things more difficult for all parties involved.

There were a couple of minor incidents where someone kicked a rock or stepped on a dead branch, but glares from multiple visors promptly had everyone watching their step. We saw nothing of particular interest until we came down to the bottom of the slope and into the next valley. It was a narrow thing that could almost be called a cliff, but not quite. Young and his men were already there, having just gotten there.

"Nothing," he said.

"Let's move up the next peak," I ordered.

It should've been a quick climb, no more than an hour at the most. It wasn't going to be fun; however, it was steep enough that we had to move up tracing s-shaped lines. The trees in this side weren't as thick as the ones on the other peak. It was a little bit annoying, if I'm going to be frank with you, but not a major concern. I wished we had camouflage like the elites and brutes had. Click a button and become invisible to the naked eye. Sure you'd put out enough heat to cook marshmallows, but nobody would be able to do that if you put a knife in their back.

Miranda raised her fist and the whole group halted, going down on one knee and preparing their weapons.

"Shhh," she said instinctively. "Anyone else hear that?"

"Is that a bear?" one of Young's men asked.

"Quiet," I said.

"Yeah, it's a bear," Grass said.

"Are you sure?" Young asked.

"Trust her on this one," Pavel told him.

"She's never wrong," I admitted.

There was an explosion, it was less than twenty meters downhill. The ground grumbled and suddenly it gave way. I cursed and ran towards a tree, but the whole thing was torn off the ground and I realized that the entire slope was sliding down. There was swearing and cursing as everyone began running, the ground moving past their feet. As long as there was some sort of structural integrity to the sliding slope we could walk on it, but a mudslide rarely worked like that.

The ground under my feet crumbled and I cursed loudly, attempting not to fall down. I saw one of Young's men fall on his ass and before I could do anything the force of the slide brought me down and everything became a huge confusion.

"Fuck!"

"Watch out!"

"Mother of-"

"Miri, help!"

I finally slowed down and stopped. I opened my eyes but everything was dark. I started struggling and realized that I had been fortunate enough to have been buried in only a thin layer of dirt.

"Ah, fuck," I grunted. "Report."

"Pavs here."

"I'm alive," Caboose grunted.

"Same," Grass said.

"I managed to stay out of it," Miri said. "You are all the way down the valley."

I uncovered myself completely, not letting go of my rifle in the process. There were some grunts of annoyance all around, but it appeared like the men hadn't suffered horribly. No doubt that our armor had protected us.

"Young?" I asked, looking up at Miri as she waved down at us.

"My men are accounted for. Perez is buried too far down it seems. He'll need some help."

"Alright, get to that," I said. "Miranda, I need you to watch over us for a bit, ok? Don't move out. Did anyone see what hit us?"

"It sounded like a Daemon," Grass said. "Well, sorta."

"I didn't hear a blast," Pavel said. "I mean the gun firing."

"We all heard the blast," I groaned. My whole body was hurt. "Let's help out Perez."

The man was buried underneath about fifteen feet of dirt, deep enough that we all had to dig together to pull him out. The man seemed more annoyed than anything else and once we got him out and he had dusted himself off we were all set once again. The problem was that the close explosion of currently unknown origin had not deigned to come again. I was not sure whether we had been located or not.

"Could've been a random shot," Miranda suggested. "A misfire?"

"If it was then it was the biggest coincidence in history," I muttered. "Or have we had luckier events?"

My squad looked all at one another before shrugging and shaking their heads. Corporal Young's men went through a similar process before shaking their heads as well. I looked up to the sky, wondering if there would be a flight of Banshees suddenly coming in to finish us off. I had to ignore the disturbing event and gave the word to move out of the valley. It wasn't as narrow as the last one, but it had more cover. I didn't want to rush this; we still had a couple of hours until we got to the most likely route that the Covenant would take.

"There's a small plateau over this next hill," Grass said after a long walk. "We can stop for dinner there."

"Sun will go down soon, then we can start moving," Pavel said. "Let's go."

The plateau was very small, perhaps the size of three football fields at the most. There were some trees here and there, but not enough that we could move freely without watching our cover.

"This looks like a good spot," I said. "How-"

There was a roar.

"Was that…"

"A bear," Grass said. "Definitely a bear."

"Is it close?"

"Sounded close," I said with a sigh. "Miri, can you keep an eye on it, make sure it doesn't maul us to death."

"That'd be a sad ending to this life," Grass noted.

"Pathetic more than sad," Pavel told her. "Well, it could be both, I guess."

Miranda moved forward a little bit as we carefully took out our planned meals for the day. It wasn't anything particularly heavy, it just happened to have more than enough calories that we could last a day from the nutrition that it provided us. As I took the first bite of my meal bar, a chewy and disgusting piece of crap, Miranda alerted us to Covenant presence. Bars were quickly stashed away and everyone spread out, rifles up and ready for action.

"Brutes," Miranda informed us. "Three of them. Lightly armed."

"Keep an eye on them," I ordered. "We're spreading around them. Do they know we're here?"

"Doesn't look like it."

"Hold your fire," I ordered. "They might lead us back somewhere important."

So we waited, all of us calmly looking down our sights or remaining behind solid cover while the three brutes milled about. They seemed to be waiting for something, but were obviously not practicing any kind of discipline, instead just talking to one another much like college freshmen would at a high school party. Thinking they owned the world.

The bear roared again and the brutes looked in its direction, getting seemingly excited. I realized what was going on. They had taken a little detour in order to go hunting. It was very unprofessional, but what did you expect from a race of glorified monkeys with the aggressiveness of a crazed out badger. I watched as they began moving towards the bear, following them carefully and remaining quiet. Corporal Young was right behind me, holding his rifle at the ready.

"They're hunting the bear," Miranda said. "One of them is-"

"I see them," I told her. "Quiet down."

The three brutes spread a little bit around the bear, holding their weapons loosely and not appearing ready to use them at all. The bear saw them and seemed to ignore them for a bit, but one of the brutes began roaring and growling, to which the bear responded by standing on its hind legs and roaring back, a classic intimidation technique. The brute kept making his animalistic noises and pounding its chest, getting the bear more agitated.

Young raised his rifle, to which I shook my head and made him lower it with my hand.

The brute charged, but the bear was a lot faster than the alien. It was a large bear, a lot larger than I would've expected for a mountain bear in this region, but maybe it had been forced to emigrate from a different area as the Covenant invasion drove them out. The bear got up and managed to claw the brute across the face once before it was tackled down. Both opponents were nearly on equal ground when it came to size and weight, but the brute had the very valuable advantage of being sapient. Young obviously didn't like what was going on.

"Relax." I murmured.

"They're going to kill it."

"Yes," I agreed.

The fight lasted a lot longer than I expected, with the bear managing to really hurt the brute by getting a nasty bite in the torso, but after that it began pounding at the poor animal. The bear was large enough that it took dozens of hits to finally bring it down in pain. Most of its ribs were broken and its snout was bleeding profusely. The brute itself was clutching one of its sides and both its forearms were also putting out a lot of blood, but its adrenaline had it on its feet. It finally straddled the bear and with some effort managed to snap its neck.

"Fucker," Corporal Young cursed.

"Shh," I ordered.

The two other brutes seemed to be laughing and mocking their companion while at the same time giving him compliments. They grabbed the dead bear and slung it over their shoulders, leaving their wounded friend to walk back wherever they had come from.

"There," I said. "Follow them, don't let them spot you. We're downwind from them, Miri. Don't fuck this up."

"I won't, sir," she assured me.

The brutes were moving slowly, what with carrying a dead carcass as well as a wounded friend, but there was so much blood that it was hard not to catch their trail. Miranda kept sight of them at all times and the rest of the team moved back slowly. Corporal Young and his squad were on our left flank, ready to break off and do their own recon elsewhere if need be, but these three brutes could be headed anywhere from a small camp to a large base of operations. The latter would be fortunate or certain death, but it would still help to have six other men at our backs for support.

"Looks like a forward post," Miranda said about four hours into the night. "A battalion, maybe?"

"Vehicles?" I asked.

"Not a lot. I'm patching you up."

I got her helmet feed and saw the three brutes heading down a slope and into a largish camp with purple lights. There were six sniper platforms and a couple of Ghosts that I could see, but it seemed like that was the extent of the vehicles there. No, there were four Choppers on the opposite side of the camp and two Banshees grounded next to them. The camp looked very temporary. It had all the makings of a temporary operations post. Probably meant to guard the flanks of a larger force or to give early warning in case of unexpected attacks. Well, it was good news that we wouldn't give them enough time to get a warning out.

"Hold position," I ordered. "Everyone else, move up to her location."

I took a few pictures with the camera that they had given me. The pictures were immediately transmitted towards our base in Torkham. Once there a man would see them, go over their value and contact me having determined whether the location was enough of a target to be worth blowing up. Judging from the size of this find I was going to assume that we'd have an artillery barrage coming in within five minutes. The Pakistani Army had some pretty legit artillery corps if the rumors were true. They had pieces designed to fire over a mountain and then come right back down at the steepest angle possible. The UNSC could do that too, but we weren't as good at it and had to call in specialists more often than not. The Pakis did more with less technology it seemed.

"Lieutenant Castillo?"

The radio lit up, but the sound only came on my helmet's speakers. Clear as day.

"Speaking," I replied.

"Anything the pictures don't show?"

"Seems like they cover everything," I said. "You've got our location?"

"Affirmative, lieutenant. Correct me if I'm wrong: the enemy encampment is three grid squares north of your position?"

"Looks like it," I said. "Are you going to need lasering?"

"Negative, we'll do this unguided. Expect the barrage to land in… nineteen seconds."

I nodded even though the man couldn't see it. "Young. One second before the artillery lands you can shoot that brute."  
>The corporal looked at me for a few instants before settling into position and aiming at the brute through his scope. The MA5B was notoriously inaccurate when compared to the other versions of the rifle. The spray was almost comparable to something that you'd expect from an SMG, but I was pretty confident that Young would get the shot. He made sure that his considerable bulk was in position and precisely a second and a half before the artillery shells hit he fired a seven round burst. The subsonic rounds alerted the brutes before they hit, but the designated target had all seven rounds hit the back of the brute's head. I could only imagine the pile of mush that its face was when the AP bullets punched out, but precisely point-seven seconds after the bullets made impact the artillery came down hard.<p>

It was strange. The barrage consisted of a few dozen HE and anti-personnel shells landing within an inch of where they were supposed to hit, but that was it. No follow-up, no second round. The first few shells had hit exactly what they were supposed to and that was that. Every single Covenant troop in the camp was now dead.

"Miranda, watch for survivors and scouts on the slopes," I said. "Pavel, stay back, we might need you to provide supporting fire if shit goes down."

"Got it."

"Young, want to take the neighboring sector?" I asked.

"Will do. Think we can expect enemy presence? This camp looked almost designed to stall or warn against other attacks."

I shrugged slightly. "Odds are that one of our squads will find hostiles. You know what to do."

"Yes, sir."

They broke off once again, this time nearly in an opposite direction. It wasn't terrible, the valleys curved back and we would meet a few kilometers from here after clearing them out, but both valleys were long and wide, perfect to move around large numbers of troops. From there they'd have to climb through two rough passes and then the next valley sloped down towards Pakistan. It wasn't easy terrain, but if they soldiered through it then they'd be able to hit Torkham from the side and nearly bypass our defenses. To be fair, they'd be able to completely bypass most of them and their sheer numbers would soon have us falling back to the Khyber in order to get a good defensive line going. It wasn't going to be easy if they succeeded in that.

The enemy encampment was full of dead Covenant troops. The best kind there were. I smiled a little bit at the sight of the brute that Young had drilled through the head. There was enough of its upper torso left that you could tell which one it was. The other two had been hit by a shell and nearly torn apart completely. I found it surprising that the bear itself seemed nearly untouched by the shell. There was only a small amount of blood coming from its nose.

"You put up a brave fight, buddy," Grass said, kneeling next to it and rubbing its head. "You took one for the planet."

I would've rolled my eyes, but I was feeling similarly about the bear. We could've saved the poor animal, but then we wouldn't have been able to find this encampment as quickly and easily. It was a good sacrifice.

"Enemy equipment seems thoroughly destroyed," Caboose pointed out lazily. "I'm not seeing any movement. Those Pakis know their work."

"They've learned to target terrorists and hostile tribesmen over the years," Grass said. "Arguably the best artillery corps in the universe, but the Afghans themselves would disagree."

"Well, they were blown to bits when Kabul went down," I said. "So the Pakis are there regardless."

Grass shrugged.

"Alright," I said. "Come down, we need to move up."

This little spot was no longer of any relevance. There was barely enough smoke coming up as it was and the wind would dissipate it before anyone would suspect any different. Years ago this place had been drier and more arid, but nowadays the forest and trees would help mask some of the smoke. It was another advantage that this terrain was providing us.

"How would the Afghans feel about Pakistan firing shells into their territory?" Miranda asked. "Don't they have strained relations?"

"Not anymore," Grass said. "Not technically, at least, but the history is still present in the people's minds. It would be like Argentina allowing the presence of Uruguayan troops in their territory. Even if for humanitarian reasons."

"So the answer is…" Miranda prompted.

"They gave their explicit permission for Pakistani and even Iranian forces to shoot into their territory if it meant that they were targeting Covenant forces."

"Ah," Miranda said, satisfied.

"Lieutenant Castillo," my radio chimed a few seconds later. "You copy?"

The signal was a bit wonky, but I could hear. "Copy. Tarkov?"

"Yes. Is Grayson with you?"

"Negative, Young and his men took off for Valley… 21. My own squad is doing recon in 20."

"I've lost contact with him."

"They're in a dead zone, I think," I said. "I'll try and raise them on the radio. Don't worry."

"I'm not worried that they're dead," he told me. "I'm worried that they won't be able to call in the artillery and rockets like they're supposed to."

"They're Helljumpers, they'll find a way."

"That bunch would find a way to fuck up basic arithmetic," Tarkov grumbled. "Let me know if you can raise them on the comm. My other squads have run into heavy enemy presence but have not been made yet."

"Looks like they're taking us seriously," I said. "Will do, Castillo out."

Valley 21, as it had been designated by the UNSC, was large enough that we couldn't be sure it was empty. It was also a lot more densely forested than I would've expected. Those old reforestation programs had worked out great in some places, but the true savior of Earth's species had probably been DNA storage. In any case, we were making slow progress, trying to make completely sure that the place was empty. If we missed a couple of hostiles it would be alright, those things happened, but that's nothing we wanted.

"Can you hit up Young?" Grass asked.

"You sound awfully interested in him," I told her.

"Maybe. Are you jealous?"

I was caught off-guard, but Pavel's chuckle covered for me. "I can't, there's heavy interference and no signal out of this valley…"

She just nodded and kept on moving, same as the rest of the team. We were awful quiet for some reason. Reaper had always been the best team, but like I had repeatedly stated, we weren't the most professional. We were always talking, breaking radio silence, doing a bunch of things that probably cost us blood, sweat, and tears. It was what made all the pain worth it, listening to Bee ramble about a movie that nobody cared about but we would end up watching anyways or trying not to snicker at Snark's comments that were too clever by half. Hell, even Grass filled the void by giving us some of her stupid, useless facts.

"It's quiet," I said.

"Yes," Pavel agreed.

"That's not what I meant."

"Oh."

Despite that brief exchange nobody made a move to start a conversation. It was slightly unnerving. I don't know why it bothered me. We had been silent plenty of times, but this was one of those moments where it felt appropriate to have a conversation and the lack of one was really agitating me. I knew it wasn't normal for me to feel like this, but I could feel myself start shaking.

"Breathe," Schitzo advised with a little concern. "Calm down."

I breathed deeply and opened up my music library, looking for something interesting and new. I smiled when I saw a song that Bee had been talking about for a while. He hadn't played it before his death; he liked to build up the ones he really liked in order to blow us away. Sometimes it worked and sometimes it didn't.

"_Carry on my wayward son…"_

"Are you sure that-" Grass began before abruptly cutting herself off.

We listened to the song as a guitar solo drowned most of the other instruments and the singer stopped after having just sung one line. As we listened to this band, for some reason named after a former state, I remembered Robert Agnarsson. He said he heard this song played in a television show. I'd have to find it for him.

* * *

><p>"How much longer?" I asked. "It is only a matter of time until they reduce these boulders to powder."<p>

"We're getting our guns back online," the dispatcher replied calmly. "Your support would be there if the recon teams hadn't let sabotage squads sneak past them."

"My men weren't the ones that fucked up," I reminded him. "Withhold support from them instead, why don't you?"

"Whoever they sneaked past, the guns won't be back online for a few more minutes. I'd love to send some bombers your way, but we're strictly prohibited from using them before the Covenant attacks Torkham."

"I know, I know," I muttered. "Give me a heads up, will you?"

"Will do, Lieutenant… Good luck."

Another Daemon shell detonated against the large boulder, sending pieces of pulverized rock over us. Miranda and Pavel raised their hands instinctively, but everyone else just let the tiny rocks hit their armor harmlessly. Grass looked almost annoyed at the small inconvenience.

"Everyone good?" Corporal Young asked. "I can't see you from here."

"We're fine, Corporal," I assured him. "Sitrep."

"Pretty similar," he said softly. "They haven't moved their Daemon tanks from the previous positions. They moved up a platoon, but they haven't made it past the first cliff."

"What about the front squads?" I asked.

"No change. We've got them tagged and are ready to take them out if they get within range."

"Hold off on that," I ordered. "You're still within range."

"I know, sir."

Yet another blast shook the boulder with a loud groan, almost as if the rock itself was in pain.

Occasionally we would get a couple of plasma bursts would make it past the edge of the boulder and hit the ground, torching whatever vegetation was still alive. I was impressed at the amount of firepower that the Covenant had let loose at us, they had started more conventionally, of course, but the terrain had quickly turned their advances into a bloodbath while my own men didn't even take a single hit. Young and his men had arrived a little bit later, but I had ordered them to keep it down. They were a lot further up and to our flank, ready to provide excellent support fire if need be, but there were two very sharp cliffs at our feet, one of which the Covenant were finding troublesome indeed. Even with jump packs the brutes were making slow progress, mostly because the moron in command of the artillery had refused to cease firing on our position in order to get the kill.

"At least we are buying time," Miranda said with resignation.

I shrugged.

"Bombing should take out the Daemons, that's a big plus when they finally hit Torkham."

"You stay positive," I told her.

Another explosion sent dirt and rock over us, but this shell had hit the side of the boulder, spraying us with hot rock from the sides. Those were the worst ones. Not because they hurt us, but because the dirt was flying faster. It was like being punched by a coked up toddler, but it added up. I sighed as the pebbles settled and grunted as another shell shook the entire boulder, drawing yet another painful creak. They were carving pieces of rock bit by bit, but with some luck they could just break this thing. If that happened, we'd have to climb down, towards them. It would be more of a fall than a climb.

Bee had showed me a movie about a group of elite forces from the 21st century. It was set in Afghanistan as well. Anyways, there were a couple of scenes were the unlucky fuckers rolled downhill in order to escape from the enemy. They had it shitty, but we'd have to roll downhill towards the enemy in order to avoid the artillery. Even then we didn't have a guarantee that the artillery would stop firing even at the cost of their own men.

"Lieutenant, there are two brutes in position to jump on top of the boulder," Corporal Young warned. "They're prepping grenades."

I sighed. "Thanks. Tag them will you?"

"Yes. Sorry."

"Miranda," I said. "What do you think?"

"Gamble at best," she replied. "I can hit and kill at least one, but there's the fact that-"

"A tank could shoot you in the face if you leave cover," Grass said.

I sighed again. "Well."

This time it was Miranda's turn to sigh. "Fine."

We waited a few seconds, closer to the edge of the boulder than she would've liked, but ready for a few shells to hit in quick succession. Once that happened she ran towards the edge, but the brutes also jumped, seeking to take advantage of the lull in fire. Miranda muttered something in her native tongue and stopped, tracking the elites through the boulder with her rifle and waiting for them to appear as they jets carried them into our field of view. The rest of the team raised their weapons, but the brutes were already overhead and within sight. One of them pulled its arm back, ready to throw a spike grenade.

Miranda fired a single burst. The shot was far more accurate than anyone would've expected. I'm sure that she herself was surprised at her success. The single bullet hit the primed grenade and detonated it prematurely. Dozens of spikes were sent into the brute, killing it instantaneously. The other jump jet brute was hit by a lesser, non-lethal number of spikes, but the alien's trajectory was disrupted and it fell back down the cliff, presumably smacking against the rocks.

Young's wincing noise made it clear that the second brute had not suffered a pretty fate.

"Wow," Pavel said.

"Good shot," I agreed. "You should do that more often, Miri."

She regressed to her old self briefly, looking away awkwardly and presumably blushing under her visor. She shook it off and just nodded a quick thank you before returning to the center of the boulder where it was safest. Another shell exploded and we resumed our waiting game, hoping for that artillery to take out the enemy.

"Lieutenant?" the man at dispatch came in. "We're sending an artillery strike. Have your men designate targets, tag the high value ones first."

"About time," I said. "Young, you hear that?"

"Already on it, sir!"

"You got them?" I asked the dispatcher.

"Nice and bright," he replied. "Forty seconds."

"Thanks for the assist," I said, groaning it. "About time."

"Happy to help," he replied, equally sarcastic.

After a couple of hours of being trapped behind that large boulder forty seconds felt as short as it was. We saw the screaming shells come crashing down much like last time, but this time it was a barrage much, much larger than the first one. Multiple shots were fired by each piece back in Pakistan. We even got a few rockets carrying highly explosive payloads. I didn't get to see the results, but the feed from Young's sharpshooter showed me where everything that I needed to see. The first ones to go were the Daemons, quickly followed by Wraiths and Revenants. Prowlers and Shadows were destroyed just milliseconds after but it was hard to tell from the feed alone. I'd have to go back over it in super slow motion to figure out the exact order, because all I could see was how the entire valley was suddenly lifted up in a fountain of dirt, metal, and blood. It was a good show.

"Young, clear the survivors," I ordered. "Focus on those near us."

"Yes, sir," he said.

Gunfire started ringing out.

"Grass, suggestions?"

"We can make our way around," she said. "Meet up with Corporal Young's squad and go over the next valley. If there was a detachment this large here it means there might be more enemies there."

"That'll be outside the artillery range," Pavel noted. "Valley is too narrow. Maybe we'll get some rocket support."

"Then we move up?" I asked. "We should be able to get the artillery there."

"Range is becoming extreme," Caboose said. "It's almost morning, they might need to pull us back soon."

"We still don't have that order," I noted. "As long as we're supposed to scout the terrain we'll keep doing that. Let's meet up with Young."

My team nodded and began moving. With care, of course, there were still some survivors in the area that Young's sharpshooter would be taking care of. The trees were all gone and we had little concealment to speak of, but there was something to work with.

"Looks like there are a few enemy troops left," Young said. "We've got them pinned down against the rocks."

"Keep them there," I ordered. "We need to make our way to the other end of the valley before sunrise. We've only got a few hours left."

"Yes, sir."

* * *

><p>"Don't give an outline," I said.<p>

The ridge that turned this valley into the next valley was a few meters up ahead. The red sun was already beginning to peak through the mountains behind us and gave the sky behind us a red hue will the clouds in front of us remained a dark purple. Young's men were the first to move up, careful to roll over the cliff. It was still a bit dark in the next valley, but anyone that was looking could see the human shaped silhouette in stark contrast against the red sky.

The music was playing in my helmet again. All of my squad was calmly listening to it. It wasn't half bad. All of us had been introduced to rock in some way or another through Bee. It was one of those genres that was timeless, as they say. For the most part he had taught us some good songs, but we took it from there. I was particularly fond of U2 and Styx, but Bee really knew all the good songs out there.

It was hard to roll my eyes at the guy when he had made this playlist before he was killed. Boston was damn good.

"That's a lot," Pavel noted.

I had to agree with him. The whole valley was filled with Covenant vehicles slowly moving through the bottom and towards a mountain pass on the other side. It was not an encouraging sight, but we knew what to expect. The whole bulk of the Covenant force preparing to attack Torkham was there. We looked at it for a while and realized that no matter how long the artillery corps fired for they wouldn't be able to take them all out. It seemed like something out of a fantasy film where the evil army moves through the ground.

One of Young's men whistled at the same time that Pavel did. The two looked at each other before shrugging.

"Dark zone," Grass said. "Artillery strikes won't make it here."

"We can't do anything on our own," I noted, shuffling the high-tech camera that we had been issued for the mission for the first time. It was a large device, capable of zooming in a distance of multiple miles and able to make out decade-old scars at that distance. Some amateur astronomers used it to take pictures of the moon and map out the craters and cities.

I looked down and started taking multiple pictures. The camera took a few hundred high-res pictures with every click as well as video for the whole duration. I zoomed in and out, pinpointing targets of value and clusters of enemies. I couldn't make out much myself, especially at this distance, but the thousands of images would be processed by an AI which in turn would spot the brute chieftains and cross-reference them with previous battle data. The pictures would also help establish a number for the enemy vehicles and materiel.

"Lieutenant, we're getting pictures and video feed from you," dispatch checked in. "From the looks of it you won't be able to move forward much more."

"That's very much true," I said. "Orders?"

"We're pulling you back. "Enemy scout units have been spotted closer to our lines. Additional intel suggests that the group you're looking at isn't the only Covenant army moving towards us."

"So you're saying there are two of those?" I asked.

"At least."

There were three whistles this time.

"We're sending Falcon gunships your way. Four of them should be on the way soon."

"Where?"

"I'm sending the coordinates."

I nodded and sighed, giving the signal for my men to move back towards the designated evacuation point and hoping that I wouldn't have to engage any other enemy units. The Pakistani artillery would cover us if we really needed it, but having them spend ammunition before the real battle even began was not something that I wanted. I was a bit tired, we had been walking for most of the night and the stims were beginning to wear off. They managed to keep us up, but they didn't keep the boredom away.

"Play some music, will you, Frank?" Grass asked, slowing down to walk next to me. "Something relaxing."

I smiled at the comment. Bee had left us with a playlist appropriately titled "chill."

* * *

><p>The pilots had done a good job, but in the end, there really wasn't anything that they could do. I covered my face as the green explosion took out the right rotor and sent hot metal towards me. I felt a couple of blows in my forearm, but the screaming was what drew my attention. The two other Falcon pilots had valiantly slowed down and dropped off the men they were carrying in an attempt to give them a chance to survive. Pavel and I remained on board our own Falcon with Grass. We pounded the Banshees and did our best to make it as close to our lines as we could, but I had long since run out of ammo for the M247 machine gun and Pavel was about to do the same. Grass and I had been having limited success in driving off the Banshees on our side, but in the end we only had small arms to go against the vehicles.<p>

"I'm on the ground!" Caboose reported. "We're making our way in the forest!"

"Keep your heads down," I ordered. "We'll catch up."

It was a ballsy statement, especially when the Falcon was spiraling out of control and the pilot struggled to maintain a semblance of up and down.

"Brace yourselves," she said. "I'm aiming for the trees, soften up our landing."

"We know the drill," I shouted back, trying to make myself heard over the sputtering engine and wind. "Pavel!"

"I'm strapped in!"

"Grass?"

"Ready to go, Frank!"

I caught sight of one of the other Falcons being blown up by a pair of strafing Banshees as it attempted to regain altitude. The third one was nowhere to be seen, but it had probably suffered the same fate. I cursed silently. If only they hadn't caught us by surprise we might've been able to hold them off long enough, but with only three instead of four gunships we never had a chance.

"Ok, here we go!"

The mountainside just disappeared past me as the Falcon tilted and the trees in the valley floor got larger at an astounding rate. It was nothing I hadn't experienced before. Like I had told the pilot, we all knew the drill. I had crashed in multiple Falcons, Hornets, Pelicans, and other aircraft. Hell, I crashed into the ground and high speeds for a living, but it wasn't quite the same. Every time I was on a Pelican I remembered Marina, every time I was on a Hornet or Falcon I remembered Emily Hardwick. It was hard, I hated being able to associate so many things with so many dead friends. Rocket launchers, sniper rifles, grenade launchers… Frigates and dropships. I hated it.

The Falcon hit the trees and my head slammed against the butt of the machine gun, knocking me out for a minute.

"Frank!"

"I'm up!" I shouted. "Fucking hell, I'm up!"

My vision was barely back, with the edges blurry and unfocused. I grunted in mild pain. My shoulders and neck hurt from the straps and the whiplash. I closed my eyes and took one deep breath, blocking out the shouts from the ODSTs on the ground. I opened my eyes and realized that I was hanging at an angle, the harness was the only thing keeping me from falling thirty feet to the ground. Directly below me were Grass and Pavel, with my best friend sitting down and examining his ankle while Grass looked up at me.

"Where's my rifle?" I asked.

"You dropped it," she called out. "Grigori's got it."

"Pilot?"

"I'm here, sir," the pilot replied. "Buckle is jammed, I'm cutting through the straps."

"Need help?" I asked.

"Yes, but I wouldn't recommend it. Banshees will come in and blast us any second."

I nodded to myself and moved back, getting a good grip so that I wouldn't fall down when I undid my straps. I couldn't jump the ten meters straight down, I would need to grab onto a tree branch and then let go. I looked around for good candidates, but many of the branches had been torn away by pieces of shrapnel from the Falcon, but the trees themselves seemed intact enough. I took a deep breath and prepared for my jump. I couldn't even see straight for God's sake.

"Shit, shit, shit!"

I barely made sense of the pilot's words before I decided it was time to jump out of this fucking death trap. I slammed my head into a tree trunk, but was somehow able to hug it tightly with my arms and legs. I slid down the bark before my foot caught a branch stump and I was thrown off. I slammed on my back, letting out all of the air in my longs with a loud _oof_. I opened my eyes just in time to see the Falcon explode as something hit it. The metal groaned and it began moving, falling straight towards me.

I felt two hands on my shoulders as Pavel and Grass pulled me back away from the metal flaming ball of death. I nearly lost a foot to the Falcon, but in the end I was mostly unscathed.

"Holy shit," Pavel muttered.

"How's the ankle?" I asked.

"Twisted, I can walk on it."

I nodded slowly. "Thanks for saving my ass. Now where's Caboose?"

"They're shooting at us!" one of Young's men called out. "That's definitely small arms plasma fire."

"Where are they?" Corporal Young called back. "You see them."

"South of our position, uphill."

We started heading back towards the bulk of the ODSTs, I did not fail to notice that there were three missing men from Young's squad, incinerated when the first Falcon had fallen prey to the Banshee ambush. I still hadn't figured out how we hadn't seen them coming. There were now only eight of us, Young, two of his men, and Reaper. The blue dots were aligned in a semi-circle facing uphill, preparing for the firefight to come.

"How'd they get here so fast?" I asked.

"Must've been a Phantom," Miranda replied. "I didn't see it, but it had to be there."

"Watch out!"

Her theory proved to be true when a Covenant dropship did an overhead pass, bombarding their position with heavy plasma cannons. My men scampered down for cover, but nobody was hit or killed.

"Watch the charge!" I shouted.

The brutes were already moving forward far quicker than could be considered safe, expecting us to have our heads down and be unprepared for them. Their plan almost succeeded, but they had been too far away in the first place, so the first two met a wall of lead that tore them to shreds.

Pavel threw me his SMG while he set up his machine gun and I fired a burst, sending a couple of the advance troops back to cover. Our little unit had taken cover where one of the Falcons had crashed near a very large log, giving us a good amount of protection from the enemy uphill. All eight of us bunkered down close to one another, waiting for the Covenant to move up again.

"Caboose, where's my rifle?"

"Miranda has it," he replied.

"Just a moment, sir," she told me. She was taking cover behind a medium-sized boulder on the other end of the Falcon. There was a small gap between the rock and the gunship and she didn't want to risk moving through to pass me the weapon. I shuffled around the other men, all the time dreading the silence.

"Do you see anything?" I asked.

"Negative, no movement," Young replied. "I've got the location of two grunts and a jackal, but they're not moving."

"What about further up?" Pavel asked. "Forest is too thick."

"I can't see much," one of Young's men noted.

"Keep your eyes on our flanks," I said, "we don't want to-"

A grenade or two exploded against the Falcon tipping the craft a little bit before it came back down and inaugurating the second attempt to kill the rest of this scout team. Pavel was the first to fire back, simply letting go at full-auto in an attempt to suppress the enemy. He drew attention to himself, but he had position his gun in such way that he could fire without exposing more than his trigger finger.

"They set up a plasma cannon up and right!"

"I need you to funnel them to the right side and keep them there."

"Get down, get down!"

I saw bright spikes fly overhead and slam into the trees further down with dull thunks.

"Shifting fire!" Pavel roared, his voice sounding like his machine gun.

"Get me some tags!" I ordered. "I can't see them!"

It was a little bit unusual, Pavel firing his loud machine gun, roaring as his bullets splintered wood and rock, but the rest of our guns had suppressors on which gave the shots an odd kind of sound, especially as we kept firing through them, making them less useful with every passing second.

"We're gonna need to move out of this position," I said. "Where are we right now?"

"Give me a second," Grass said, immediately digging into her helmet to find our position relative to base. "We're eight miles away."

There were curses. In mountain terrain that was as good as a day worth of walking if not more.

"We need to get these fuckers off our head if we want to even consider moving out," Pavel said.

"Let's get to it then," I muttered.

It was a strange firefight. They would fire often, but not in huge barrages. They knew exactly where we were but we didn't know their location. It was one of the first times that I had felt like I was in danger of being outsmarted by the Covenant. Bolts would fly far too close to my head and then stop for a few seconds before Pavel's location was on the receiving end of a quick series of shots and then quiet again. We could occasionally hear a squawk or a growl in the distance, but that was it.

"Where the hell are they?" I muttered.

"I can't pin them down," Grass said. "They're firing too sporadically."

"I think we should fall back, sir," Corporal Young suggested.

"Agreed," Caboose said.

I was inclined to give the order to move back, but I wasn't completely sure if it was a good idea. Instead I told my team to slowly move back and to the right in a diagonal line, cutting across. They began moving under the cover of Pavel's machine gun, lighting up the entire slope with automatic fire. Young and his men moved first without any incident crossing the big log and then taking cover further down the slope while my own squad positioned itself for a quick exit. Once we moved out of this position we would make our way back to the other crashed Falcon gunship before we hauled ass. Ideally we would be on our merry way before the enemy realized that we were gone.

"It's clear," Young said.

"Ok, go," I said. "Pavel."

"I'm on it," he replied, firing as he pushed himself up and back. There were only a couple of plasma bursts fired when he stopped and the forest went quiet.

"Move, move," I urged my men. "Don't stop."

The only sound we could hear was our boots stomping the ground as we moved sideways across the mountain slope. My breathing was starting to get even heavier and my head was hurting even more than before. It was not the moment to stop or complain, however, we had to keep going. I heard a few loud squawks from jackals and angry growls from brutes before they realized we had dipped. It had been done masterfully on our part. Nearly no sign that we were gone.

"We need to move one click this direction to make it into the next valley," Grass informed. "Should be downhill and easy for the most part, but there's a bunch of boulders we'll have to climb over or go around."

"Which is faster?" Pavel asked.

"Climbing. But we'll be exposed."

"Let's go around, staying hidden is more important," I decided.

We didn't stop our progress, but we were forced to turn back uphill and begin moving around the boulders. The change in direction got us closer to the enemy, but going down would've taken longer. The gamble cost us, because just before we made it past the final and largest boulder we were set upon on our left flank. Fire peppered Miranda, our lead scout and she dropped backwards on her ass to avoid being killed. Young's men shot back while Pavel moved up and took cover before he started shooting. By that point Miranda was already back up and had made it around the boulder, positioning herself behind cover.

"Three jackals," she shouted. "That's all I see."

"I'll cover you!" Pavel shouted.

"Go!" I ordered.

They moved slowly, one by one as Pavel once again provided cover. On the other side of the boulder we set up positions quickly and provided a wide cone of fire for Pavel as he moved up slowly. There was some subdued cursing, but we completed the maneuver in relatively short time and then were on our merry way while trying to keep our asses out of sight and alive.

"Hey, are you ready to give me my rifle back?" I asked Miri.

"Huh? Sorry."

She tossed the rifle and just as I caught it a heavy round detonated in the ground between us. For a moment I lost sight of her as bright plasma and dirt blocked her from sight. I was too busy covering my face as the dirt and shockwave sent me tumbling back into a tree. My head was once again knocked hard and this time I wouldn't wake up until a lot later.

* * *

><p><strong>November 15, 2552 (UNSC Calendar)**

**Momand Dara District, Afghanistan, Earth, Sol System**

"What?"

I grunted.

"What," I repeated

"Quiet," Miranda said.

"What?"

"Hush," she told me, this time a bit more forcefully.

I remained quiet and immobile. She might not have been in Reaper for long, but she had been under my command for several years now. I trusted her. It was dark and I couldn't see anything, but that was because I was positioned to face against a dark rock wall. My helmet was off, not giving me any feedback. I turned the HUD back on to receive several delayed concussion warnings. It seemed like I was doing a little bit better now, but I was still advised to not partake in any physical activity for the next three days.

As if.

Five minutes passed, then ten. I said nothing and didn't move. Not because I didn't want to, but because the ground was oddly comfortable. I knew that it was because of my concussion or whatever had gotten me so shaken up, but it felt oddly comfortable down here, almost as if the ground was rocking me to sleep.

"I don't think Afghanistan is earthquake heavy," Schitzo said, "but don't quote me on that one please."

The rocking was too rhythmic for it to be a simple act of God. It seemed more of rapid one-two-three-four kind of beat. Not completely rhythmic, but close to it. The mechanic grinding was only audible to my blurry consciousness a few seconds after I realized that we were in the vicinity of a Scarab.

I slowly reached for my pistol in my thigh holster, gripping its butt tightly and hoping that I wouldn't need to use it. Miranda seemed to notice that I was alert now and shot me a quick glance over her shoulder before making a hushing motion. I nodded quietly and waited for the noise to pass us, but it only seemed to get louder. Were we in a fucking cave? I couldn't see any of the other team members in my HUD map, only Miranda showed up and I wasn't on the radio channel anymore. It made me slightly nervous, I doubted everyone was dead, but several hours had passed since I had last had any shred of consciousness. A few seconds ago I had been on a Falcon. No, I had been getting out of the crashed Falcon and then… running? Yeah. Running.

* * *

><p><strong>November 15, 2552 (UNSC Calendar)three hours earlier**

**Momand Dara District, Afghanistan, Earth, Sol System**

**Lance Corporal Miranda Novak**

I covered my eyes just as El-tee disappeared from sight. The blast was probably from a Daemon tank, but thank God that it seemed to be an AP round, which meant it dug a little bit into the mountain before exploding. I thought of this just as the ballooned upwards. It was a pretty sight, that fraction of a second before the actual plasma tore through the ground. I was lost in my thoughts as the shockwave sent me reeling backwards, helped by the dirt and other random debris.

I came flat on my ass, my head shaking. El-tee was slumped on the ground. Not moving. I moved towards him and grabbed his wrist, dragging him and the rifle I had just handed him. Gunny, well, Master Sergeant now, began barking for everybody to keep moving. Grigori was on my side in a heartbeat, but a second later he grabbed El-tee's other arm and helped drag him down the slope as yet another blast came at us.

"What's hitting us?" Corporal Young shouted. "What's-"

"Get down!"

Banshees strafed our location heavily, sending every member of our little team down to the ground. My head was pressed against the ground by Grigori's body before we got back up. Gunny was the only one shooting, firing at one of the Banshees with his machine gun before anybody else even knew what was going on. Grigori aimed up, tracking one of the enemy fliers with his rifle but holding his fire. How did he know where it was? I couldn't even figure out how many there were.

"We gotta make it over the next ridge!" Grass shouted. "Someone get me Frank's radio!"

I grabbed the modified radio and then tucked it into my belly as another series of strafing runs sent us all back to cover. Someone cried out, it seemed to be one of Young's men, thankfully. I had never really been grim, I felt bad for the man, but I didn't want my friends to die before that person.

"Contact dispatch!" Camilla ordered loudly. "Tell them our location and ask for a weapon's drop right over the next ridge."

I liked Camilla. Well, I tolerated her. Actually, it wasn't that bad. We hadn't interacted much. I guess she hadn't gone out of her way to talk to me since she had officially joined the squad back in Reach. At first her artificial black arm had unnerved me, but she seemed incredibly talented as a combatant. I had no idea why they had put her in a desk job at first, but then it became obvious she was the smartest person I had ever met.

Pretty, talented, and smart. It made me want to pull my hair out.

That being said, I was glad to have her fighting alongside me. In the UNSC you had mostly average. It made sense, that's what average meant. Each squad had the guy you relied on during combat. Then you had people like Airborne, Special Operators Rangers, and Helljumpers. In that order. _Then_ you had the folks that could single handedly could change the tides of war. Yevgeny Nezarian had been one of those, Marvin had been one of those, and Gunny was one of those. Adrian Longworth, Snark, Camilla, and Grigori were very close to achieving that status, at least in my book. Then there was El-tee, he was just too much. Sometimes I wondered whether we held him back. Every time we were in risk of certain death he'd do something, pull it out of his ass and shove it up the Covenant's if necessary. If we weren't there slowing him down he might do even more amazing things. Maybe he'd have died by now, but his feats would be the stuff of legends.

Maybe…

"Command, Command, do you copy? This is Reaper Squad, anyone copy?"

"Give it time!" she shouted.

She had somehow assumed the role of commander, at least half of it. Gunny was barking out more action-oriented orders to the rest of the guys, setting up a formation. I realized that I was absently following his instructions while screaming into the radio and helping Grigori drag El-tee's unconscious body through the ground.

"This is Command, what's your situation, Reaper?"

"We were shot down!" I shouted. "Can you get our location?"

"We see you," the man said, obviously tapping away furiously at some keyboard or other. "Can you identify enemy targets?"

"Negative, we can't see where they are, they're hitting us with small arms and artillery."

"You're out of range," the man said. "Any help would take-"

"I know!" I interrupted. "We're making our way over the next ridge and within artillery range. We need- _damn!_ We need a weapons drop. Spartan Lasers, SPANKrs, and SAWs. Backup ammunition for all of those and we need it to be there exactly when we get there."

"Ok, I can work that, I'm transmitting you the coordinates… They're gonna send it a little bit below your position, directly on the other side of the mountain."

"Send me a map," I shouted as two needles dug into a tree, glowing dangerously without blowing up. "We need a waypoint."

"Done. Pakis are deadly accurate, stay out of the impact zone."

"Understood. Gunny!"

He growled acknowledgement before giving the order for everyone to move up. Young's men were good to go, but one of them had been hit by something and was bleeding out of his calf. Young himself seemed a little bit shaken up physically, but he was still alert and cool-headed. He seemed like an able fighter, good-looking guy as well. His shoulders were a little bit too wide, much like Gunny's. Not my cup of tea I guess.

"It's not far," Young said. "We need to get moving."

El-tee started mumbling something and trying to get up, but he was slurring his words and mumbling nonsense. His head had been hit hard. He tried to reach for his rifle strapped on my back before Grigori batted his hand away.

"Put him under," he ordered me.

I nodded and pulled out my only tube of anesthetic. It was for emergencies only. The kind of emergency where you needed to amputate someone's leg or arm in order to save their lives. Pull out a sizeable chunk of metal from a stomach, push intestines back into the thoracic cavity. It was certainly not intended to be used to knock someone out because they were going to be annoying, but right now El-tee would pose a danger to himself and to us.

"Easy now," I said gently.

His hand gripped my wrist and I almost cried out from the pain. It was like a clamp and it only kept squeezing more.

"Grigori!"

Grigori reached down for El-tee's hand and tried to get it away to no avail. I began tearing up from the pain. If he squeezed any harder he'd break my wrist. I dropped the tube and caught it with my other hand before stabbing it in his neck. The microscopic needles were thin, specially designed to break through the material of the undersuit without compromising its vacuum capabilities. Grigori pressed El-tee's other hand against the floor, using his entire body to keep him pinned down and even then struggling. El-tee didn't seem to understand what was going on, but soon enough he was knocked out.

"I got him," Grigori said, sliding him over his shoulders in one smooth motion. "You ok?"

I nodded.

"Let's move!" Pavel roared angrily.

So we moved, we moved quickly even with injured and unconscious men. It was unusual. Not that we hadn't done this before, it's just that we had never had El-tee physically present with us and him not being conscious and leading us into victory or at the very least survival.

"Miranda, I want you covering our rear," Pavel ordered me. "Don't let anything shoot at us."

"Yessir," I replied quickly, pivoting and moving backwards.

There was some fire, but nothing heavy or accurate. I struggled to find the source of the enemy fire but didn't shoot back, not wanting to give away our position. With every shot I got closer to pinpointing at least one of the jackals on our ass. They were moving very fast if they were keeping up with us, but we had the disadvantage of injured men, meaning we'd move slowly as a result. That could be made into an advantage, as the jackals would maybe get too close to us and expose themselves. Then I'd be able to get a bead on them and hopefully get the kill.

_You'll get the kill, worry not,_ I told myself. _There, on the right, that was movement._

_Here's to hoping,_ the other side of my brain replied, echoing my younger self.

I finally managed to catch a flash of jackal and squeezed off a single shot, feeling the butt of my rifle hit my shoulder. The shot connected, but it wasn't a kill shot. Response fire was heard, but it was not accurate.

"One is out," I said. "I think…"

"Either it is or it isn't, Miri," Pavel said. "Where'd you hit?"

"Lower chest."

"Then it's out, simple as that."

I hated it when he did that. He was trying to make me sound more confident. I knew I needed it, especially in my line of work, but I couldn't help but feel as if he was being a little bit patronizing.

I was stuck thinking about that, which in turn made me think about why I was behaving like a high school girl in regards to their attitude, Camilla, and everything.

_Because everyone in this squad is stuck in high school._

_I think all people are._

_I don't think that's true._

_It could be._

_Stop talking to yourself._

_Ok._

The slope became a little bit more difficult, but we were almost across the ridge. Once we made it over we would be armed and dangerous. Even more so. We had to go down for a couple of inaccurate Banshee strafing runs, but no one was hurt. Grigori was huffing from the effort of carrying El-tee, I knew that he was deceptively heavier than one would expect from a man his size. Not to say that 6'4 was small, but he sometimes seemed like he had more metal in his body than just those ribs.

"I see the ridge," one of Young's men called out. "East face of the mountain is right here."

"Drop is incoming," I replied.

"Move faster!"

Gunny stopped to fire at a Banshee through the foliage. I could barely see the craft, but I could clearly hear the rounds hitting and then an explosion further downhill. The rest of the Banshees screamed away, trying to evade Gunny's machine gun. He didn't bother shooting back, instead just running forwards faster. I heard the rocket impact into the side of the mountain with a loud groan. Everyone sped up, even Grigori found it in him to move faster. I remained behind, aiming for those jackals chasing us. Once we turned to the other side of the mountain they'd need to go through the ridge, where they'd be more likely to expose themselves.

"Tree cover is more scarce on the other side, " Camilla informed us dully. "We're going to need to take out those Banshees fast."

No one replied, we knew what we had to do. Grigori hopped over just second before I did, the angle of the mountain slope suddenly switching to face eastwards. I moved back furiously, noting the sudden lack of thick forest foliage above me with some frustration. I slid downwards into cover behind a large boulder and waited for the jackals to come through. It wasn't going to be an easy shot, there were still enough trees to impede vision, but it was going to be easier than the other side.

"Grass, take the Spartan Laser," Gunny ordered. "I want those two rockets out flanking her on either side. Banshees will move in on her after the first shot, I want you to take them out before they can strafe."

"Got it," Young said. "Let's move!"

A jackal tried to move up, but I hit it without hesitation. My shot got it right in the middle of the chest, going through the weak armor plates that they sometimes used. A second jackal attempted the same thing, but I drilled it in the head, killing it. I kept my eye out of the scope, searching for movement before zooming in on it.

"Hurry up on those Banshees!" I said.

Not half a second later I heard the familiar sound of a Spartan Laser charging and then firing. An explosion followed as expected and the Banshees screamed as they turned and started bearing down on Camilla's position. The noises that they made were always frightening, there was something primal about those Banshees that scared me to this very day.

"Fire!"

I didn't really know who gave the order, but the dull thuds of four missiles being fired was clearly audible. It was a noise that one began to adore and almost venerate. It always brought good news with it, no matter what the situation. I heard four distinct explosions and even saw one of them as the Banshees were unable to avoid the homing missiles. Camilla fired another time with her Spartan Laser and then there was relative silence.

"Caboose, get Frank over here," Gunny ordered, "I'll take him for now. I want everyone to pack everything up, we're hauling ass now. Grass, get all those batteries, we might need the laser."

"Right away."

I was stuck carrying two rocket packs, not terribly heavy, but a little bit burdensome considering I was already stuck with El-tee's rifle and his secondary ammunition belt. He really did like packing as many magazines in there as humanly possible.

When Gunny said hauling ass he really did mean hauling ass. We were on the verge of sprinting in mountain terrain. It was horrible, painful, and bad for our bodies, but it was a matter of life and death. We had learned to do this, carry more weight than most humans would be comfortable at a speed that most humans couldn't maintain. We were assisted by stims that blocked pain to an extent and the unrelenting pace that was set for us.

It made me wonder how Gunny had been able to keep up with El-tee for all these years. He was a hero in his own right.

"There's a narrow gorge up ahead, it connects to an old tunnel," Grass said. "Used by 23rd century terrorist groups."

"We don't care what the tunnel was used for," Gunny told her a little bit irritably. "Where does it lead?"

"Across the mountain," she replied, "it should still be unblocked."

"And if it's not?" Young asked.

"Then we're not in a good situation," she said nonchalantly.

That was a bit of an understatement, something that we'd expect to hear out of El-tee's mouth right before he charged into a field of Scarabs with a dull knife and a pointy rock. I shrugged it off, but it was weird coming from someone that wasn't him.

Much like Camilla had said there was a narrow gorge, perhaps only ten meters across. We moved through it with more confidence than before, mostly because it was nearly impossible for someone to sneak to our flanks without taking a huge detour to climb on the sides of the cliffs. I kept a good eye on our rear, making sure that no enemy managed to get us within their sights. I could occasionally make out movement, but for the most part the enemy didn't know where we were.

Gunny stepped up the pace and we entered the tunnel that Camilla had told us about. It was narrow, narrow enough that I got a slight feeling of claustrophobia. Corporal Young switched to the back, toting the SAW that had been airdropped. A sustained burst of that weapon would clear the entire tunnel of hostiles. Ricochets would ensure that every bullet flew out the mouth of the tunnel. I moved forward slightly, walking behind Young's two other men. One of them was limping rather badly and bleeding, but he seemed to have it under control. They hadn't addressed their fallen comrades yet, but there would be time for that later I hoped.

We moved fast, but the tunnel was long and completely blocked off our radios from the outside. Normally we should've been able to communicate with Command, but the various interference posts that the Covenant had set up around the area had us jammed.

"There's the exit," Gunny noted. "Miranda, scout it out."

I nodded and squeezed past all the other Helljumpers before jogging forward. My helmet helped with the sudden bright light, automatically shutting off the flashlights as well. The exit was similar to the narrow cliff where we had come, but it wasn't as vertical, in fact it was climbable without any gear, but not something I'd look forward to. I moved past the first few trees, densely packed and full of branches that blocked the entrance from sight. I moved slowly and methodically like El-tee liked to walk. There was an absurdly high amount of trees near the entrance, but once I passed them all I was very exposed. I stopped and looked around. There were signs of Covenant presence on the ground, old footprints and discarded methane tanks. They appeared to be at least a day old. Probably from one of their scout teams.

"It looks clear," I spoke into the radio. "But I'm seeing signs of covvie presence."

I looked around for a little bit more, moving from cover to cover. Just when I was about to turn around and wait for my team I heard the faint sound of rocks cracking upon one another.

Either some very small rocks had just been disturbed or the sound had come from far away. The echoes didn't allow me to immediately pinpoint its direction, but after a few seconds the sound repeated itself.

"What's that?" Corporal Young asked, his voice as deep as the rumbling of those rocks.

"Hush," I said.

There was silent for a solid thirty seconds, making me even tenser.

Then I heard the sound again, louder and closer. I turned almost completely around just in time to see a very large Scarab emerge from the peak of the mountain. It had been climbing it. I cursed silently, feeling myself blush as I did so. The Scarab then climbed down, knocking down tons and tons of rock as it slid towards the valley, right in my direction. It moved faster now that it was going down and I covered my face as the wave of dust reached me. I moved back away from it instinctively, but within seconds I felt the Scarab's legs hitting the ground closer to me. Gunny was arguing with Camilla about something, but I could see their IFFs moving closer to me and out of the tunnel. The Scarab kept moving, ignoring our presence or choosing to dismiss it. A quick sprint sideways almost had me squashed, but I succeeded in getting away from its path as the dust began settling.

"Hide," I urged them. "Now!"

None of them had to be told twice and by the time my vision was unimpeded again I could not even see my own team. The Scarab kept walking the length of the narrow valley, leaving deep furrows on the sharp slopes of the hills. I watched as it stopped at the mouth of the valley and pivoted, facing our direction. It suddenly became clear that it was blocking our exit or waiting for infantry reinforcements, but it wasn't going to move from there any time soon.

"We're going to need to take it out," Gunny said finally.

"And how are we going to do that?" Young asked. I had thought him a bit slow at first, but he was just very soft spoken, as if he chose his words with the utmost care.

"Caboose?" Pavel asked.

"We have a Spartan Laser and rockets," Grigori replied quickly. "That's all we need to disable it. We need to take out two legs at least, it's too far away to shoot a grenade into its core and the El-tee is indisposed."

"Look where it's positioned," Young countered. "We won't be able to get off good shots from this distance."

While they argued I slowly moved up the slope and into a little cave where I was protected. Finally they decided upon a plan, not a terribly complicated one, but it relied on the reactions of the brutes captaining the walker far too much for my liking. Once Grigori had carried El-tee up to my little cave and everybody had gotten to their positions I took a deep breath.

"You ready, Miri?" Gunny asked me.

"Always am," I said. "You know that."

I could see him nod through my scope. He was way too close to the Scarab.

"We go on your signal," he said.

I peeked out of cover and propped my EMR up and zoomed in on the Scarab. The range was on the edge of being extreme. I vaguely heard Young saying a quick prayer before I identified a target. I accounted for height, distance, wind, and all the other variants before shifting my aim just a little bit. I fired and watched. The shot flew exactly where it was supposed to. The brute flinched as the bullet went an inch from its head and turned around, looking close to my direction. I didn't move, instead waiting to see what was going to happen. The sound of the shot was clearly audible to me, but the suppressor on my Enhanced Marksman Rifle was still somewhat functional.

"Give it a minute," Camilla said.

We gave it just that.

El-tee stirred a little bit.

"What," he mumbled.

I didn't move.

"What?" he repeated, clearer this time.

"Quiet," I whispered, nervous.

"What?"

"Hush," I hissed in frustration.

The Scarab had begun moving this way and several jackals had moved to the top deck, scouting around for my location. I was nervous but I didn't move. I knew that I was nearly impossible to locate unless I fired again. I just dreaded the moment when that happened. I looked over my shoulder to see that El-tee hadn't moved, but his hand was now gripping the butt of his pistol loosely.

"Three hundred meters," I said finally.

"Must be nice," Camilla said, who was only a third of that distance away from the Scarab. Gunny and Grigori where even closer, with Young and his men around 150 meters away from it.

I aimed and squeezed another shot, hitting a jackal in the chest. I switched targets and aimed at a second jackal. The bird was too slow to react and lost half its brains as a consequence. The rest of the jackals, however, proved that they weren't terribly incompetent and began firing on my position, but by that point they were all caught off-guard and fell prey to my continued firing. I killed three more and a brute before taking cover.

"It's opening its cannon," Young said, mostly for my benefit.

"Good work," Gunny complimented.

"On my signal," Camilla said, followed by a short pause. "One. Two. Three. Two."

She said the numbers at irregular intervals. With every number came one shot from a SPANKr. It was carefully coordinated so that they all hit at the exact same time except for the fourth one, a safety measure. I heard one large explosion followed by a smaller secondary one before something important in the Scarab blew up. It was at that point that Camilla began charging her Spartan Laser. That was my cue to leave cover and begin firing again, buying her time for a second shot. I saw the flash of red as the laser pierced the knee joint of the rear right leg of the Scarab, nearly toppling it. Gunny and Grigori began moving, even if I couldn't see them. I merely focused on the grunts taking position on the side-mounted plasma cannons, taking them out before they could begin firing. Camilla got off her second shot, damaging the front right leg and sending the Scarab completely to the ground. I could see sparks as it tried to self-repair.

"Almost there," Gunny grunted.

I didn't see them move up, but I heard the faint echoes of Grigori's shotgun before they tossed the last of our grenades into the energy core. The Scarab began shaking and I saw several brutes try to escape, but Young and his men combined their efforts with mine in order to keep them from escaping the explosion. It took a solid minute, but the belly of the walker exploded as the plasma and fuel overheated past stable temperatures and tore the Scarab apart.

"Like clockwork," Grigori muttered, satisfied with his plan.

"What happened?" El-tee asked quietly.

"Nothing interesting," I said. "We're about to begin moving again. Can you walk?"

He nodded weakly.

I gave him his rifle back and he clutched it tightly before slinging it over his shoulders. He got up very slowly but as soon as he was back on his feet he made me feel smaller than I really was again. Even in this state he was an intimidating presence. I helped him down the slope and into the valley floor. There I met up with Young's men.

"Great job," Corporal Young said with a radiant voice, slapping my shoulder gently.

"You too," I stammered in reply. It really spoke volumes that I wasn't used to receiving compliments like that.

"Lieutenant, I see you're feeling better."

El-tee just nodded. "What's the plan of action?"

"Move past the Scarab and down past the mountains. We can probably arrange a pickup before the next ridge."

"You guys took a Scarab out?" El-tee asked.

"And all without you," Gunny said braggingly.

"Well, you might just become real Helljumpers," El-tee replied with what I could only assume was a satisfied smirk.

* * *

><p><em>Thanks to <strong>Colonel-Commissar2468 <strong>and **General TheDyingTitan** for proofreading this chapter._

_Well, sorry about the delay I guess. College has been fun so far, but the workload has me pretty occupied most of the time. That and this is quite likely the longest chapter I've written in over a year, but it's still not an excuse for the delayed post. If you're interested in my college life all I can say is that it is exactly like the movies. I feel safe saying that watching the latter American Pie films prepared me for this. She's the Man was also a film I watched multiple times for research. Other than that I'm having a good time, I enjoy it here._

_I want to thank you all for your reviews of last chapter as well as every single review you've ever posted. They give me warm and fuzzy feelings._

_**Matt**: I don't plan on going past Halo 3 in this fic, sorry._

_I liked writing this chapter, it took too long to write and I had to go back and read it to avoid any continuity mistakes, but for the most part it was very enjoyable. Not particularly heavy on the action but still had some decent stuff in there as well as a good old-fashioned Reaper moment to satisfy our cravings. I hope that it takes you a solid while to read this chapter because I kinda feel bad for not posting in such a long time. Either way, I hope you enjoyed it immensely._

_Stay strong._

_-casquis_


	226. We're All There Is

Chapter CCXXVI: We're All There Is

**November 16, 2552 (UNSC Calendar)/**

**Torkham, Pakistan, Earth, Sol System**

* * *

><p><em>"I still think I am the greatest." - Kanye West<em>

* * *

><p>"No, I can hear you fine," I said. "Yeah, yeah, it was a concussion, things are a bit blurry still."<p>

"Why are you in the frontlines?" Captain Flatt asked me. "You are endangering yourself."

"That's literally in my job description," I said. "And I do mean literally."

"Have it your way," she sighed; she sounded tired.

"Are you ok?" I asked.

"Not as good as I could be. I haven't slept in a long time and all I do is look at casualty reports all day and decide which units to salvage."

"Different scale, right?"

"Not even Reach was this bad," Flatt admitted. "They didn't send us the civilian casualty reports there, at least there's that."

I nodded slowly. The battle was getting more intense outside of the command tent, but it was still a lot tamer than it had been an hour ago. We had the advantage of emplacements and fortifications as well as days of preparation. The Pakistani Artillery Corps were providing pinpoint accurate artillery support and the Afghan and Pakistani ground forces were fighting tooth and nail to keep the enemy from making it through the border. The survivors of the 19th Battalion as well as several regular UNSC units were here to patch up the holes. Normally I wouldn't be incredibly happy to be working with so many different units, but everyone had agreed what the chain of command was and stuck to it. It was beautiful cooperation.

"How's everything in East Africa?"

"They're contained to the Mombasa area," she said. "But mostly because they haven't attempted to move outside. They busted through most ODPs in the area coming down and we barely have enough to cover that area, let alone pose a threat to all of the ships in there."

"Navy isn't doing too good, is it?"

"Not at all. They're at less than two thirds operating capacity."

"Overall?"

She laughed humorlessly. "It's probably even lower than that overall. Home Fleet has done damn fine in this past weeks. They have a 1 to 1.3 kill/death ratio. That's never happened before."

"I'm sure the boom sticks helped."

"I'm sure they did," she agreed. "Can't deny the advantage of 300 Super-MACs."

An explosion rocked the large tent and I heard some faint cries of pain through the walls.

"Did you find out more?" I asked, my voice quiet.

"The ship made into the system," Captain Flatt started. "It made a stop in Jupiter along with a few dozen other evacuation craft. Conditions weren't the best, they were overcrowded and not well supplied. At least that's what the report says for all transports that landed. A couple of mining craft helped distribute the load. It took them a couple of days to sort that out. I see the names of Pavel's wife and child as well as your girl and her sister in the manifest."

I sighed with relief. "That's good news."

"It is," she agreed, "but after that the trail disappears again, I'm doing my best to find what ship they hopped on after, but without a dedicated AI I have to go through thousands of names by hand. I can't do this full-time, my job takes priority."

"Can't you delegate?"

"Here? In this battle?" she asked. "I wish. I'm doing the work of ten men by myself and if this doesn't end soon I will shoot myself in the leg so they put me in a hospital and I can have a break."

"Don't say that," I told her. "As soon as we manage to coordinate all our forces and the chaos dies down it will be back to business as usual. Their armies will be completely gone and we'll only need to take care of Mombasa. We can nuke that place into oblivion if need be."

"That's the plan so far," she admitted. "But first we need to actually win the ground battle. They outnumber us, Frank. In our own homeworld. The Russian Front is gone, they're playing at guerillas up there. The same goes for North Africa. The Nigerians are barely holding their front and we can't supply them with troops so long as the Covenant still have a presence in Paris. That city is nothing but rubble now. China is doing better than most, but even their combined forces and UNSC troops couldn't save the Korean Peninsula. It's not looking good, Frank."

"We've stabilized Cuba and the Yucatan," I said. "Cleveland is back under UNSC control. We're still holding Pakistan and Northern India well enough and the British broke their record for landing troops in Normandy for the fourth time. We could be doing a lot worse."

"Agreed, but it's a coin flip. It could go either way at this point and I don't like what that means. This is it, Frank. Some thought it was Reach, but this is it. It's bigger. It's the last battle."

"We'll win this," I assured her. "I'll make sure of that. Personally."

There was a pause on Flatt's end of the line. "Thanks, I mean it. Say hi to everyone for me, will you? I know you must've had a difficult couple of weeks… Good luck."

I looked at the phone for a few seconds after she ended the call before sighing and setting it down just in time for another explosion to rock the command tent. This time even more violently than last. I grabbed my helmet and put it on, making sure to pick up my rifle and an extra bandolier as I left the room. The main room of the command tent had been vacated in order to be turned into a room for the wounded. The only reason we had done that was because there were other buildings in the town where the brass could coordinate and do their own thing. This place was more secure than most non-polycrete buildings and half of those that were made out of the magic formula despite it being labeled a tent.

The moans of the wounded and barking orders of medics and surgeons flooded my ears as soon as I stepped inside. I kept my eyes down, making sure to avoid stepping on any fingers that would invariably end up broken or sliding on blood. I tied my bandolier and adjusted it, feeling the weight of the extra bullets on my left shoulder.

"How's the team?" I asked as I stepped out, wincing at the sound of a shell screaming right overhead.

"We're restocked and ready to go," Pavel replied immediately. "Tarkov and his men are taking a huge beating, Pakis aren't willing to move the lines, they say the situation is too risky."

"En la madre…" I sighed. "He's holding back the worst of the assaults."

"I know," Pavel said. "They have us moving back a little bit to his left, not close enough to provide direct support though. We're bolstering a machine gun nest."

I moved towards my team, catching up to their position behind a t-shaped polycrete wall. It was about ten feet tall and maybe twice as wide. The rest of the pieces that had made it up had been pummeled into powder, at least in the neighboring vicinity. A few other men were using the remains as recliners or pillows, hoping that a shell wouldn't land on them while they recovered from their stint at the frontlines.

"Everyone good?" I asked.

Nods.

"What is the news?" Pavel asked.

"Good," I replied. "Nothing definitive."

"They're gonna send us forward soon," Grass said.

"I know," I said.

They gave us the word a few minutes later. It was an interesting sight, hundreds of Marines and soldiers got up from wherever they were resting and began moving forward. We each had carefully planned paths from cover to cover, using some of the buildings and additional barricades to avoid sharpshooter fire and the occasional artillery piece. Nobody moved through the main highway though, not even the tanks. We jogged forward through Torkham until we reached a small gap in between the border wall and several buildings that had been pounded into near nothingness.

Each unit called the squad or platoon they were being brought in to replace and gave them the signal. The fire from our frontline intensified and the artillery strikes sped up some, buying cover and time for us crossing the mostly exposed gap. I ran while avoiding the sketchy areas that could result in a broken ankle before reaching a new set of fortifications near the border wall. The machine gun nest in question was on the top of a small hill nearby. The men had dug it into the hill, placing a decoy tent and sandbags on top. Even then their position had been shelled to hell and back again. We would be setting up on one of the slopes of the small hill, near the base.

"Lieutenant Castillo!"

"That's me," I replied over the sound of gunfire.

"We're being hit mostly by brute-led infantry, small squads try and move forward every now and then, they're coming from behind points A and B, I tagged them for you. We occasionally get a Prowler attempting to strafe or a Chopper that got lost. Gotta keep your head down when you hear the Wraiths."

"Anything else?" I asked the tired sergeant.

"There's one jackal sniper out there, got one of my men, but we weren't able to catch it."

"I'll do my best," I assured him.

"That's all I ask, Lieutenant."

I waited a minute or so for my men to set up their positions before telling the sergeant that he was good to go. He thanked me one more time before they left under the cover of gunfire and artillery. So we began our second stint on the front line.

Lately we had been used in a manner that was not typical of ODSTs. In fact, this had been a trend that had started early in the war and had only gotten more and more common these last year. ODSTs were tools for attack. Much like a hammer or a knife. I've used the comparison multiple times, describing my unit as a scalpel. A couple of swift cuts to the back of the knee or the jugular are all it takes. The Army is a sledgehammer, able to crush opposing forces with one massive blow but also able to use the handle to fend off similar attacks. We were still used in our intended fashion more often than not, but we tended to find ourselves as just another unit in the line very frequently. It wasn't bad, but our talents and expertise were not fully used this way. I still knew that we were infinitely better than any other squad that could be put in our place, but we could only be so good in this position.

"Miranda, I want you on watch for the sniper," I said. "Pavs, strafing to a minimum, I want accuracy."

"Yes, sir."

"Got it."

The Covenant were really throwing out a steady flow of troops at us. We weren't the ones doing the most damage by far, but we called in artillery strikes every so often, helping the Artillery Corps rack up the highest kill count in this battle. Miranda and I kept our firing to a minimum, making sure that we only took out high value targets without exposing ourselves to the sniper that had left two corpses in this very trench.

Pavel and Caboose were doing most of the heavy lifting here, with two machine guns going at very infrequent intervals to try and lure the Covenant out of cover. They were by far racking the highest kill count. Grass was doing her own thing, helping direct their fire and noting whatever she saw. Caboose looked slightly uncomfortable in his job, especially because he didn't get to handle a SAW as often as Pavel used his M247L. Nobody would've been able to notice if they didn't know them as well as I did. His accuracy was way down from what he could manage with his MA5K and the reloading process was a little bit sketchy. After an hour or so he'd be a lot smoother, but not an expert, at least not by ODST standards.

"They're stacking up to our right, by those walls," Grass said.

"I see them."

"Are they trying to hit the nest?" Miranda asked. "Should we tell them?"

"They see them," I replied. "See how they're firing bursts around the walls? I'm not sure if that's a frontal attack or a distraction."

"They don't have a chance if they go head-on," Pavel said. "But they're not that stupid. At least they shouldn't be by this point in the battle."

"Keep an eye on them, Grass," I ordered.

She seemed like she would reply, but two separate beam shots hit our positions. I ducked, feeling fortunate that the shot had been weakened and deflected by the sandbags in front of me. The beam still managed to make some contact with my chest piece, tossing me back even as I dropped to the ground. I grunted as I fell on my ass, seeing Grass crouching a few meters away, clutching her rifle as blood came out of her arm. Miranda popped fully out of cover and fired six times in rapid succession before a beam narrowly missed her neck. She pivoted ever so slightly and squeezed the trigger once before crouching behind cover, a flurry of plasma screaming overhead seconds later.

"Lieutenant!" Miranda said, moving towards me.

"Check on Grass," I said, pulling myself up so that my back was straight against the trench wall. "Now!"

"Frank?" Pavel asked.

"I can't breathe," I muttered.

A second later my friend was kneeling next to me and helped me release the clamps on the chest piece. I took in a huge breath of air, ignoring the pain in my sternum as my lungs finally got in some oxygen to my body. I closed my eyes and nodded slowly.

"Are you alright?" Pavel asked.

"Back to your station," I replied, wincing from the pain. "It was just a hard hit. Armor was compressing my chest."

"You sure?"

"I am, back to your station."

He nodded and took off without questioning me further. He knew me damn well. Probably better than I knew myself.

I cracked my neck and took off my helmet. It was not a particularly smart decision, but I needed to be able to look down at my chest. I pressed my chin downwards and saw that the vest under the chest piece was a little bent inwards, nothing big, only just noticeable. The surrounding area was slightly scorched, again, nothing big, but this time it was very noticeable. I pressed my finger against it and felt the heat through my gloves, but more importantly I felt the pain in my sternum. It wasn't horrible so it wasn't cracked. I knew how that felt.

"How's Grass?"

"She's-" Miri began.

"I'm fine, shot grazed my upper arm. Messy wound, nothing serious."

"It's gory, it will scar," Miranda said. "No tendons were hurt, muscle will probably have trouble moving certain ranges."

"I can shoot."

"Patch her up," I told Miri. "Make sure it's tight and clean."

"Wow_,_"Schitzo said. "Word choice."

"The wound," I added.

"I know, sir," Miri snarked.

I took a couple of deep breaths, getting used to the pain in my chest. It was slowly receding. The beam had acted like a very hard punch. My sternum would be bruised and sore for a while, but the pain wasn't going to get much worse. I reached back for my chest piece, which was still producing a fair amount of steam. I blew on it to cool it down before trying to see if I could still wear it comfortably. Granted, there was a hole the size of my thumb in the middle, but the area around it was perfectly fine. The underside was slightly bent inwards, but the beam had mostly melted through, except for the final bit. I sighed and strapped it back on, grunting uncomfortably at the pressure on my sternum before putting my helmet back on and grabbing my rifle.

By that point Grass was almost done with her bandage and had moved her arm around experimentally to see how it felt. Miranda was firing again and I joined her, targeting the newly aggressive Covenant assaulters seeking to pounce on the opportunity.

The machine gun nest to our right was roaring non-stop. It was beginning to get more than a little bit annoying to be honest. It wasn't the traditional come and go of a regular battle, it was more like a constant drone that never faded or increased. If it had been white noise it might've been pleasant. The thing is it wasn't white noise, it was a dozen machine guns of different calibers and makes all firing simultaneously.

"They are really going overboard to our right," Pavel muttered.

"Us or the Covenant?" Miri asked.

"Them," he said. "Look, they're all firing at us from over there, they're about to do something."

"I don't like it," I admitted. "They're not stupid enough to just come out without any armored support."

"They don't have much in the way of fighting vehicles, do they?" Grass asked. It was a rhetorical question.

"No," I replied nonetheless. "Shadows get close. Not really armored."

"Not really _that_ armored," Pavel corrected.

We could've continued the conversation, but everybody got an automated message that there was an impending artillery strike in this sector of the line. We waited a couple of seconds and ducked precisely when told to. The sensors or scouts or whatever had done this warning was spot on. A couple of seconds after we could hear and feel the dozens and dozens of artillery shells landing right upon us. Waves of plasma tore the earth and barricades apart, but we were all deep inside our tranches. The Covenant artillery oftentimes relied in volume over accuracy, but even then they lagged far behind our own artillery corps in all but the strangest of situations. Shell after shell landed on our positions, creating large, glassy craters and occasionally incinerating some of our number.

The hill to our flank was taking a huge pounding, but it didn't take a genius to understand that the area that was going through the worst was where Tarkov and his men had been posted up. For whatever reason the covvies had decided to make their break through there and they weren't going to change their mind. They had committed and there was no stopping them now.

I began talking to Command about it, but Tarkov and his men had already realized it and had asked for support. Some of the troops that had just gotten rest were being phased back to the front in hopes to contain the assault. The response made us realize that the massing of troops to the right was a lot more serious than we had initially believed. I managed to convey the information to my men over the sound of the exploding shells. Even with the helmets dampening the noise to keep it from hurting our ears it was difficult to make out anything other than plasma shells blowing up right over our heads. That and there was still this fear of being completely incinerated without being able to a thing about it.

"What are we supposed to do about that?" Miranda asked loudly.

"Fuck if I know!" Pavel grunted. "We don't even know what they're going to do!"

I peeked over the edge of the trench, risking my head. My eyes widened when I saw a column of Covenant transports speeding through the open ground, hopping around on the uneven terrain. Shadows were moving forward in an uncomfortably tidy column three transports wide at the front. Their guns were silent, not firing even as friendly fire landed all around them, managing not to destroy them.

"They're crossing!" I shouted on the open channel. "They're crossing over!"

It didn't take much, one warning and a couple of people peeked over. The gunners in the machine gun nest had dipped their heads down out of pragmatism and laziness. I didn't blame them, no sane commander would have their troops go through that barrage of artillery without letting up. There was always the chance of shrapnel or misfire. Plasma didn't let out shrapnel and I doubt the brute commander really cared about its subordinates.

We started shooting back. By God did we start shooting back.

I watched as an incredibly high amount of ammunition was emptied into the first row of Shadows, blowing up the one in the middle and nearly shredding it to pieces as the entire machine gun nest fired at the same time at the same target. The two other spread out a little bit to avoid the barrage, but they suffered the same fate. Still, it was difficult to hit all the transports. They were closing ground fast. A few Ghosts were dropped off from the bellies of the Shadows and sped forward, boosting through their own artillery. One of them was destroyed when a shell landed on it, but the three others braved machine gun fire to jump over the trenches and crash through the damaged walls. The gunners were forced to address the immediate threat, eliminating the four scout vehicles within seconds, but giving valuable ground to the column going through. Plasma cannon fire started flying back at the nest, less powerful but more accurate. Miranda and I started hitting the gunners, hoping that we could kill them fast enough. Mortar shells and the occasional rocket hit the Shadows, but still they came. Prowlers and Choppers joined the fray, pummeling our positions with heavy fire and reestablishing a certain rhythm to the battle. The only difference was that the artillery still hadn't stopped and now we had our own artillery corps firing hip shots at our general area. A couple of shells even landed behind our trench, sending shrapnel over our heads.

"Banshees!"

This was it. Their decisive push.

A red line crossed the sky before punching clean through one of the Banshees, sending it crashing down into a damaged Prowler, blowing them both up. I managed to pick up someone screaming for air support, but I was forced to shut off the general channel as the Covenant reached the machine gun nest and our own lines. The first to reach us was a brute in a Chopper shot to hell. It rammed through the leftovers of a defensive wall, sending dust and bits of rock in our direction before crashing into the trench and getting stuck in the ground as its front spikes dug in.

Grass turned and bashed the brute driver in the head and into the ground. There Caboose stomped its unprotected head into mush with two quick stomps before dropping his carbine and reaching for his shotgun. I was firing at the other attackers, already trying to pick off priority targets as they climbed the gentle slope that led to our trench.

"Grenades, throw grenades!" I shouted.

It was too hectic, and I barely heard anyone acknowledge the order before two squads of brutes and grunts jumped over the wall and rushed the trench. I fired blindly, ducking behind cover as plasma flew my way. A couple of spikes embedded themselves on the side of the useless chopper, shining brightly. Caboose fired his shotgun at something and then ducked, moving to the side from his previous position to avoid a surprise attack from the top. I tossed a grenade right over my head and moved underneath the brute chopper. I looked up at the spinning blades and groaned.

Two giant legs smashed into the ground next to me as a brute minor stormed the trench. I fired a burst into its knee and then another one at its face. The grunts it had been leading stumbled into one another, providing plenty of time for Pavel to gun them down. On the other side of the chopper Grass had drawn her machete and was firing her rifle, holding it steady with her artificial hand while she slashed at a brute's hand, making it drop its pistol. Miranda took it out before being set upon by a tackling grunt. I fired a burst at another grunt before teaming up with Grass to take down the brute as it reached for a rather large blade on its belt. Miranda shoved her fist into the grunt's mouth before stabbing it four or five times in the belly. One more grunt shook in fright, raising its hands in surrender just in time for Grass to decapitate it. Moments later we were all back on our feet and firing down the trench.

"They're moving to the nest and further down," Pavel said. "They're basically ignoring us."

That was technically a lie, seeing as they were firing on our position, but the bulk of the Covenant forces were heading to our right.

Chatter indicated that they were targeting the position just to the right of the nest, where Tarkov and his men were positioned. That area was hard to defend, with several houses and stores right behind them that would serve as great cover for the Covenant if they made it there. Most other areas of the Torkham line had a sizeable gap between the houses and the first defensive line, but not Tarkov's sector. The ODST Lieutenant and his men had been working closely with the Afghan forces for the last month and a half and had gained a reputation as a reliable unit. It was bad luck, seeing as they were now facing a completely disproportional amount of enemy troops coming at them in a difficult position to defend.

"Tarkov, what is happening?"

The reply didn't come immediately.

"We're being fired from our left and front; they made it into the trenches next to the nest! We can't get vehicles through the buildings; our Scorpions have to go around and through the front: we're stuck here!"

I wanted to help, but my own squad was defending a section of the line. It wasn't nearly as vital, but if they broke through here then they'd lay siege to the machine gun nest and overrun Tarkov's position. A couple of Pakistani Army squads were defending the area to our left, but they wouldn't be able to stretch themselves thin enough to cover our sector.

"Grass, get someone to send a tank or a Mk. 87 this way, plug in our hole while we move to assist Tarkov."

"On it!"

I could barely hear Grass struggling to communicate as I aimed down the range. There were enough targets that soon I lost count of how many kills I had under my belt. Caboose alternated between his carbine and shotgun, dispatching grunts and jackals that made it within thirty yards with a storm of buckshot. Pavel did his own thing, strafing down grunts and jackals by the dozens, leaving the hardier brutes to Miri and my own more accurate weapons. It was not that hard now that only a small number of Covenant were charging this way, but they were smart enough to keep us relatively suppressed. Still, the assault was not taking part here, and if we dedicated too many units to the spearhead and ignored the rest of our line they could break through there.

"They're sending in two Marines squads!" Grass suddenly cried. "They're taking our sector."

"What's their ETA?" I asked, ducking under carbine fire.

"Three minutes."

"Lieutenant Tarkov, do you hear me? Tarkov?"

"I'm still here!" he replied.

"We'll be there in five," I promised.

"You'd better not be shitting us…"

"We'll be there in five," I repeated.

Three minutes later, like clockwork, the two squads arrived. We left even before they had taken positions, drawing complaints and angry comments, but they knew that they didn't have it too bad in here. I advised to keep watch on the right in case we were overwhelmed from there.

"If they bust through we'll fall back," one of the squad leaders assured me.

I didn't blame him.

We started moving across trenches and walls, there were a few dead men in our way, but they had been killed a while ago. It didn't take much to reach the hill and enter the system of caves and pillboxes. Once inside the barrage of gunfire echoed across all the walls. A man hailed us, his machine gun pointed neatly at the door in case the Covenant attempted to bust through. We moved past him wordlessly, the entire hill shaking as shell after shell landed on it. The opposite side was similarly protected, but this time it was three men with an LAAG and two SAWs. They knew which side carried the biggest risk.

"Good luck," one of them said as we opened the hatch and moved out.

We hadn't been underground long enough for our eyes to be blinded by the light, but I still noticed my visor readjusting to the brightness. I saw the husks of burning Shadow transports as well as Wraiths, Daemons, and dozens of Ghosts. I took a fraction of a second to look at the sky as Banshees strafed the ground and dueled with UNSC craft. Further up Seraphs were engaging SkyHawks and other fighters I barely caught a glimpse of.

It seemed funny. The mass of enemy troops was firing colorful weaponry onto a small position held by UNSC troops. Tarkov and his men were holding fast. I could see the canisters that had been dropped around them and as I ran down the hill I saw rockets streak into the mass of Covenant troops, destroying a Shadow transport and creating yet more cover for the infantry moving in.

"Watch your heads," I advised.

We ran hard and fast but stayed behind cover. There had been a couple of squads bolstering Tarkov's unit, but their emplacements had been shot to hell and they were all dead. We only stopped to pick up a SPANKr from a dead man. It still had a full load inside, so it was valuable. Grass tossed it to me and we began moving towards Tarkov.

"We're almost there," I called out to Tarkov.

"Go around the-"

I heard his warning just as we _didn't_ go around the-. A Daemon shell missed us by this much and slammed into a pile of debris to our side. Dust and dirt flew everywhere as my squad scattered and dove for cover. I rolled and brought up the rocket launcher. I let the dust settle and looked down the scope. It showed the tagged vehicles, but I had one particular target in mind. The Daemon tank was there, 800 meters away and closing.

"Die," I muttered.

I shot the two missiles the moment they locked in. They barely had to adjust their trajectory as they closed in on the tank. The first one punched a hole in the joint between the turret and the body and the second one disabled the turning of it. The tank could still strafe and aim that way, but it was greatly diminished in its capacity as a threat. I smiled to myself and secured the now empty launcher before moving forward. I almost made it, but another Covenant attack got in my way, this time it was a strafing Banshee.

"Shit!" I said. "Tarkov, we're close!"

"That's close enough!" he called back. "I need you to split their focus."

"Fucking great…" I muttered.

"We aren't exactly in a good position, Frank!" Pavel said.

I turned to look at him. Cover consisted of road barriers that had been badly damaged and several trenches that now looked more like craters. The area my squad was spread around was probably the size of half a basketball court and there was around forty yards distance in between Tarkov and us. Prime distance to provide support to each other, but not when it came to facing down a battalion or two in poorly defensible ground.

"We've done worse," I shrugged, smiling. "Play some music."

Pavel chuckled and complied.

Heavy electric guitars.

"They're paradin' baby!" Pavel said.

The Covenant weren't exactly bulls, but they behaved enough like them that it was very appropriate. One of Bee's favorites, this song was very similar to modern flip, but I found it good only for this kind of situations, it wasn't something I would listen to by myself.

The lyrics had just started when I hit my first target. The grunt's brains covered the small alien behind it. I saw its mouth open to scream, but I finished it before it could panic. The music roared and I felt like yelling as I fired. I could feel the heat going through my veins, the battle was making my heart pump adrenaline into every bit of my body and suddenly everything felt like a game. It felt like it had felt back in the day, when it was only Pavel and me fighting against hordes of enemies that would just collapse against us, like water against the rocks.

They might've made us smaller and weaker, eroded us with time and effort, but we were still rocks and they didn't stand a chance against us, not unless they had twenty more years.

"Which they don't," Schitzo said, clad in full battle armor, and with a large kukri strapped to his shoulder. He looked a bit like Emile.

My whole squad opened fire at the same time and we opened fire hard. None of us held back. Caboose was using the SAW that he had kept on his person since the excursion to the mountains and he put it to good use. The man was carrying three different weapons on him and was equally efficient with all of them.

"Castillo, I'm patching you up to the artillery. They'll drop ammunition canisters for you," Tarkov said, sounding almost desperate. "Anything you need."

"Rockets and a Spartan Laser would be a good start. Grenades too."

"Roger that," the artillery liaison jumped in. "I'm going to be listening in. Tell me whatever you need."

"You heard him!" I shouted. "Don't feel bad about it!"

I kept firing and the song kept playing. The guitar was intense and violent, I liked it. It matched the blood that we were spilling. Time after time I was forced to duck behind the thick polycrete barricade. I would feel the bits and pieces of rock hitting my helmet. It didn't matter, the song was all that mattered. It wasn't that good. It was just fitting.

"Your drop is coming in," the man said on my helmet. "Don't move."

I'm glad I didn't. Two large canisters landed within arm's reach of my position. The hatches popped and dropped, revealing a Spartan Laser and six rockets. I grabbed the rockets first, loading my SPANKr and setting the others next to it before grabbing the Spartan Laser and shouldering it. I sighed and scanned my visor for the tagged vehicles.

There were far too many for my liking. Strike aircraft pilots often called this a "target-rich environment." That is pretty self-explanatory. Up there you're not in as much danger as when the targets in the aforementioned environment are actively shooting at you.

"Banshee," I decided.

I loaded the laser to half charge and popped out. This strategy gave me scant instants to zero in and aim at the aircraft, but it was flying straight at me in a strafing formation. The Splaser easily cut through the front armor, the front hull, the front of the face of the pilot, and gutted the rest of the thing behind that. The Banshee crashed down thirty meters in front of us and exploded as its fuel tanks overheated. I tracked a piece that landed close by before taking cover again, spikes and needles smashing against my cover.

"Keep your eyes on those jackals," Miranda said. "Tagging their position."

"Someone get me support on that squad," Caboose said. "I'm pinning them."

"Force them away from Tarkov," I ordered. "Split the assault. Where the hell are those tanks?"

"I've been asking the same thing for the past hour," Tarkov spat. "I'm sending Grayson up to plug the gap between our positions."

"I hear you!" I replied. "Young is approaching our right flank, give him some protection!"

"I got it!" Pavel acknowledged.

I heard him shift his fire slightly as four black figures began moving from Tarkov's position down our way. They used the dust as cover, casting long shadows down the ground. The move was tricky, the ground had been hit with so much artillery that every single bit of polycrete had been cracked and was close to becoming debris if it wasn't already.

They settled into position near a two-story house. The front of the building was almost completely gone, but there were a few sandbags there that could be used as proper cover. Young sent one of his men to the top to act as a sharpshooter and kept the rest of his squad around the front, away from the house itself in the event of a collapse. The guy on the top might be able to survive in that situation, but I bet he wouldn't be very happy if it actually happened.

_N-n-now that don't kill me_

_Can only make me stronger_

_I need you to hurry up now_

_Cause I can't wait much longer_

"That is a lie," Grass noted calmly.

"That Kanye West guy was a fucking retard," Pavel said.

"Helluva musician though," I said.

"True," he admitted.

The rap beat flooded my helmet, nearly blocking out all the other sounds in the battlefield. I barely heard the Daemon tank shell whistle past my head and detonate dozens of meters behind me. Pavel's machine gun was a soft rumble as the bass and vocals flood hit my ears and got my heartbeat pumping even harder. Rockets were beginning to fly from behind me as a rocket artillery battery was hastily set up by the Marines. The small projectiles detonated against soft armor and flesh, sending blood and debris everywhere. Soon there were plasma launchers and fuel rod cannons flying that way, a scant few feet above my head. I took advantage of the opportunity and switched to my battle rifle, targeting the bearers of those powerful weapons with my battle rifle and working together with Miranda. Soon Pavel was taking cover right next to me, having lost most of his previous cover to a series of explosions that had covered his armor with soot and dust.

He looked good. He looked like he was enjoying himself.

And isn't that what they say? That you're supposed to love your job or you'll hate your life?

"Somebody's got to do it," Schitzo said with a shrug, tossing a grenade down the range.

A stream of machine gun fire was coming from above, one of our Hornets had broken through the enemy Banshees and began strafing, the engines facing completely forwards to increase speed. The moment we saw that brave pilot risking it all for us we all switched our fire from priority targets to threats to the bird. Caboose sprayed a machine gun crew and I started taking out gunners on Shadows and Prowlers as fast as possible, but the sky was soon full of colorful lights that seemed to converge just short of the Hornet's position.

I saw as its heavy canons landed amongst the bulk of the advancing enemy forces, neutralizing Ghosts, Choppers, and infantry squads as the heavy rounds raised plumes of dust ten feet tall. Blood sprayed the sandy ground as dozens of covvies were killed without any sort of cover, but soon the Hornet was hit. One of its thrusters failed and it went into a spin, barely holding altitude. I ducked as the bullets from its canons nearly hit my position and only heard the explosion and crash as some alien took advantage of the easy target, bringing down our air support.

_Bow in the presence of greatness_

_Cause right now thou has forsaken us_

_You should be honored by my lateness_

_That I would even show up to this fake shit_

Guy certainly had the mindset that some ODSTs had. Would've been interesting to meet him.

"Phantom coming down!"

"Pavel, help me out!" I said. "Grab the rockets!"

"Caboose, pick up my slack!"

It all happened very quickly, but soon the SAW was buzzing nonstop and Pavel and I were both kneeling outside of cover. He fired first and second, both his missiles having left their tubes before my Splaser was charged. Still, I hit the Phantom first, gutting it from stem to stern and damaging some vital systems. Still, the dropship didn't go down until the two missiles collided, detonating inside the armor and shredding the cockpit and front of the ship almost completely. It came down right on top of a small group of brutes, crushing and splattering them.

"Good work," I said, bumping Pavel's fist as he discarded the empty rocket rack and replaced it, smoke coming out of the used one.

"Danke," he replied, grabbing his machine gun.

I began shooting again, this time under duress. I would've been content to sit down and let the Covenant spend their ammunition coming at us, but they were advancing with recklessness that was nearly unrivaled in anything I had seen. Few times had the ground been covered with so many bodies, but the brutes drove their soldiers forward like slave masters, slashing with their bayonets and their claws. Hapless grunts could only hope to catch a quick death in the meat grinder.

Slowly but surely, they were making progress, setting the occasional barricade that made use of a destroyed Chopper or a downed Banshee in order to cement their advance. Tarkov and his men were a bit closer to being overrun, but they were holding steadfast while the tanks and IFVs behind us managed to get past the kill zone imposed by the Covenant air assets. I could barely look up without seeing a Banshee engaged in furious combat with a Hornet or a Falcon gunship. Even those, the pride of the Army, could not do the job that they were designed to do, attempting to outmaneuver the faster Banshees and avoid their blue hot plasma while they looked for an angle. One Falcon nearly crushed Miranda as it came down, flaming and smoking.

"Are you alright?"

"Yeah!" she shouted back. "Pilot's alive!"

That quickly changed when three carbine shots punched through the cracked windows and splattered blood everywhere. I cursed out and took down the responsible jackal with a headshot and three shots to the chest. It fired one more shot into the ground before falling on its ass, blood gushing from its headless corpse.

"Are the machine guns intact?" Grass asked her.

"The one facing my side is," Miranda said. "Where do you want it?"

"Set it to the side, we might need the firepower soon."

The M247H that the Falcons were equipped with fired 12.7x99mm explosive rounds. It was usually good enough to stop anything short of a Seraph or Scarab. Not much could take continuous pounding from that kind of weapon. It was basically an upsized version of Pavel's machine gun that fired explosive bullets.

"Keep it away," I ordered. "Use it on hunters and maybe big vehicles only."

If we wanted to cut grunts in half we'd ask for her help, but for the moment we'd settle for giving them grapefruit sized holes in their chests and bodies.

"They're getting closer, Frank," Pavel told me. "Range is now twenty meters."

"Shotguns will come in handy," I noted. "I'm still targeting vehicles." I patted the Spartan Laser as I said that and shrugged lightly.

"I've got you," he assured me.

"I know," I replied.

The Spartan Laser was a tool of destruction. It was designed to melt through all but the toughest of armors and even then it was incredibly effective at that. I had hit so many Prowlers, Shadows, and Banshees that my little spot was beginning to draw too much attention. Granted, the attention was well handled by Miranda's EMR and Pavel's M247L, but at the same time I wasn't exactly comfortable with the amount of firepower raining down on my position.

"We should move," I said.

"Agreed."

"Aight. Gimme some cover fire!" I ordered. "Hit those turrets!"

My men and Young's squad redirected their fire briefly, allowing me to dash out of cover and jump behind a couple of piles of debris before finally sliding back behind a t-wall about ten feet tall. Well, it had originally been ten feet tall, now it was about five and a half. It looked like a Wraith had hit right on the top, melting through the polycrete and making a puddle of rock around it.

"Ok, I got it," I said.

"Want me to move there?" Pavel asked.

"No, I'll draw their fire this way soon, you'll be able to provide support from there."

It was true, he was only a few dozen feet away from my position.

"What about the rockets?"

"They're your responsibility now," I said in a faux-deep tone. Making it seem like the fate of the world was on his hands. It wasn't but nowadays it wasn't much of a stretch imagining it was.

"I've got two shots left," I said. "Want to drop anything else?"

"Laser batteries are in short supply," the artillery liaison said. "This drop is the last one we can give you."

"Sounds fair. What else can you drop for me?"

"How about an M515 with seven loads?"

"Seven?" I asked. "Do it."

"Thirty seconds, don't move."

Once again, it was clockwork. I had barely taken down one Banshee when the canister hit next to me. The artillery corps somehow managed to land it exactly next to the wall, giving me an extra foot of cover if I needed it. I smiled and grabbed the batteries as well as the M515 Multiple Grenade Launcher. It had the seven loads I had been promised. The grenades it fired ranged from HEAT to AP to regular HE, but all of them were smart and rocket propelled. Those things could be fired indirectly and 9 out of 10 times they'd find the intended target.

"Technology," Schitzo said.

"Agreed," I replied.

_Stand tall for the beast of America!_

_Lay down like a naked dead body!_

_Keep it real, for the people workin' overtime_

_They can't keep living off the government dime_

"I always kind of thought the song's lyrics didn't match the tone," Schitzo said.

_This is literally the first time we've heard this song, moron._

"Hey, if I thought it you must've arrived to that conclusion somehow."

I rolled my eyes and prepared the grenade launcher. It made me smile a little bit, fond memories of Carver surfacing. 83671-10236-DC. That number was on my forearm, it was all that remained of him after Paris-IV.

"High-Explosive," I muttered to myself. "Look at the tagged targets closest to our line… set the impact zones…"

I pivoted out of cover, using the canister to protect my body from the navel down. I aimed in the general direction of my intended target and fired all of the grenades. The range was extremely close, so they barely sped out of the barrel before the rockets sent them nearly straight down. The ground lit up as the projectiles collided with their designated targets, bringing up pounds and pounds of dirt tinted with blood. The front of the advance completely collapsed after that, Pavel, Caboose, and Young's gunner annihilating the survivors and sending the rest back to the seventy meter line.

"Good job," I said. "Keep them there."

That was only wishful thinking, of course. They outnumbered us more badly than any of us could have imagined in the beginning of the battle. And that is saying a lot, we had what we believed to be very accurate aerial imagery. Turns out it wasn't. My grenade launcher was down to its final two loads and there were four Locust walkers approaching, speeding through the field. I had to suppress chuckles when I saw them squish an unfortunate ally, but I knew that they were going to go through us and with that our line would break. However, when they overran us we would be able to break the seal, if you will, piss on them with the entirety of our firepower. We might get some urine on our pants and make a mess of ourselves, but they're the ones that would be drowning in our piss.

"You're certainly one for metaphors," Schitzo muttered

"Get the lead-"

Young's words were cut short as the lead Locust walker fired on his position. I saw the beam of plasma cut through cover and explode, sending dirt and rocks everywhere. I caught a glimpse of his man hopping off the rooftop of the building and landing hard before the beam hit the ruined structure, completely collapsing it.

"Bring it down!" I said. "Miri, use the machine gun!"

I fired first, hitting the shield with the Spartan Laser. I couldn't get a direct shot though, a burst of plasma threw my aim off and my shot only just glanced the shield, lighting up the air around as the shields flared. Pavel hit it almost half a second later with two rockets, finally taking out its shields. Miranda brought the killing blow with a nice, sustained burst to the cockpit. I saw the bits and pieces of armor fly everywhere before the Locust in the front collapsed. By that point I was down to one last Splaser shot, the M515 MGL was down to the last load, and the other three locusts were less than thirty meters away and closing fast.

"Fall back," I said. "Fall back!"

"Castillo, what are you doing!" Tarkov shouted. "We can't give this land away now!"

"Fall back!" I ordered loudly.

The first Locust nearly squished me into the ground, destroying my now meager cover. Pavel, very stupidly, fired a rocket at it while I was less than fifteen feet away from the Locust. The shot nearly brought it down, but the shields held and the impact merely stunned the walker. I rolled away and dove behind a crater as the second Locust walked overhead, firing at an unseen target. I got up again and ran perpendicular through the battlefield. The artillery corps had dumped a couple of smoke screens in order to allow us to fall back. A godsend almost, seeing as I ran into a brute that didn't see me before I bashed its head with the stock of my Spartan Laser. I bashed it three more times before kneeling and firing at a Banshee, discarding the useless weapon. The brute grunted, receiving a boot to the throat for its pluckiness.

"Pavel, pull them back… get behind something solid."

"Copy, UNSC has Scorpions rolling forward, you need to watch yourself."

"I'll be quick."

Tarkov's own unit was in disarray, severely depleted and full of injured. Corporal Young wasn't replying to my hails. None of his men were. I could help him out, but Tarkov would have to fend for himself.

"Young!" I shouted when I got to his position. "Where the hell?"

"I'm here," he wheezed. "Beam fried my helmet."

I looked down and saw him, half his body pinned down below a huge slab of rock.

"Are you hurt?"

"No," he said, "I just can't move."

"Give me a second," I said as I began moving around so I could push the rock up.

"Watch out!"

I looked up and then ducked just in time. My crotch pressed right against Young's helmet and into the ground as a Brute chieftain with a plasma cannon sprayed. I fired a couple of shots from the ground. Normally that wouldn't have been enough, but grenades are typically a lot more powerful than regular bullets. The shots hit the ground in front of the brute, tossing it backwards sans two legs.

"Huh," I muttered, moving back up and lifting the heavy rock one-handed. I supported its weight with my shoulder and dropped the grenade launcher, firing over the rock with my pistol while Corporal Young scrambled out of the hole and grabbed my grenade launcher.

"Take out the captains," I ordered, the weight of the rock tiring me quickly. I could feel the impacts on the other side, but we only needed a little bit of time.

Young fired precisely three times, destroying the brute leaders almost completely. Blood sprayed everywhere, some of it even landing on my shoulder.

"That was too close," I grunted.

"We should move out," Young replied, far too calm considering what the situation was.

"Pavel?"

"We're too far back," he replied.

I smiled. He knew me too well. He knew what I wanted and replied before I even asked. It just happened to amuse me.

"Ok, we move back on my count," I said, holstering my pistol and drawing my rifle. I grunted as a heavy shot hit the rock, forcing me to my knees as Young helped hold the heavy slab, moving some weight off my shoulders. "Where are your men?"

"Beam fried my circuits, I can't contact them. Perez was right over there."

"Let's move that way," I said.

We moved on three. It was a lot easier said than done, but the smoke screens really helped us. I nearly slammed face first into a Locust walker through the smoke, but I stopped just in time as the walker kept advancing. I crouched with Young right next to me. He drew his axe, prepared to take out the infantry escort. It wasn't a bad call, because a couple of seconds later we saw Covenant silhouettes begin approaching us. I drew my knife and dashed towards the closest brute, slashing its throat with one quick motion. Young used his axe to kill two grunts before bringing it around on a jackal's skull, shattering it more than actually breaking it.

I reversed the grip on my knife and moved towards the other brute in the squad, I ducked under its spiker, batting it away and slashing at its elbow before jumping up at it, grabbing onto its fur. I always forgot just how big brutes were when you were fighting them hand-to-hand. I dismissed my feeling of smallness and stabbed it twice in the neck. My stabs were one next to the other, puncturing the carotid and the trachea both. I hopped off just as the brute fell to the ground.

"Over there," Young pointed, breathing hard.

We moved in the direction he was pointing at and hopped over a tall wall. Behind it we were greeted by a jumpy Perez nearly blowing his squad leader's head off. There was some hushed cursing before they both calmed down a little bit. Perez lifted his DMR and waited for Young to give him a sitrep. I kept an eye out, hoping that the smoke would be able to keep us hidden, but I was forced to fire when a jackal spotted us. I shot it dead and then began hitting the unprepared grunts, taking them out with full-auto bursts before ducking back behind cover.

"Let's get Griff from the building, I think he's still alive," Perez said. "He was able to hop off."

"I saw that," I concurred. "Worth a shot."

"Let's move then," Young said.

We began running once again, keeping our backs bent to minimize our profiles. It was hard to see, the few enemies that had their signatures tagged onto the battle net were promptly taken out by a sharpshooter, but the rest of them were running through the smoke, almost bumping into us a number of times. I guess that I should've been thankful for the incredibly low visibility, but it was frustrating not being able to see where I was and what was around me. The house came up quicker than I imagined, but that was not bad news.

"Over there," Perez pointed. "Cover me."

He doubled around the house, hopping over debris and rubble before finally coming to a halt and letting out a curse.

"He's dead," Perez called out. "House fell on his face."

"Shit," Young sighed. "Grab his ammo belt and move out."

"On it."

We were starting to dash back towards our second line, past the smoke and into open ground. I ran as fast as the other two Helljumpers could, pressing them just enough that they wouldn't collapse before crossing the open, coverless, ground. The smoke got thinner and thinner before I realized that I could see everything in front of me without much trouble. I looked back around and stopped, deciding that I'd provide some cover for Young and Perez. The two men barely gave me a nod before they disappeared from my field of vision. I fired a burst at a grunt and then did the same to two others. I ducked as plasma flew my way, suddenly realizing that there was absolutely no cover nearby. Several tracer rounds hit the edge of the slowly dissipating smoke, taking out a few hostiles and buying time for me to catch up with the two others.

I suddenly jerked to the right, feeling something coming. I didn't know exactly why I did it, I just know that it was necessary. A moment later Perez fell down, his leg severed below his knee. I dropped as more plasma hit around us, but a long burst of machine gun fire later the attack stopped. I reached Perez just as Young started getting up and between the two of us we managed to get the screaming man to stand up and begin hopping to safety.

"Frank watch out!"

Pavel's warnings were well-intentioned, but he knew that there was absolutely nothing I could do. Instead we all kept moving as fast as possible, hoping that the pilot of the Banshee would miss. It was a very close call as plasma bolts lit us up without quite touching us. I felt the hot air from a bolt nearly hit my damaged chest plate before slamming into the ground a couple yards away from me. Perez was screaming very loudly, but no matter how much pain he was in he kept on hopping, using my shoulders as support for his leaps.

"Lieutenant, over here!" a soldier waved his hand at us.

We adjusted our path and I basically threw Perez over what was left of the wall and then jumped.

"Get your head down!" the soldier said, shoving me face first into the ground as the biggest artillery strike of the battle began raining down a few yards away from our position.

**November 17, 2552 (UNSC Calendar)/**

**Torkham, Pakistan, Earth, Sol System**

"You think they're gonna pull us out of here soon?" Young asked.

I shrugged, carefully peeking past the edge of the window, trying to use some of the scant moonlight to my advantage. The only water tower in the whole town and we had lost control of it. Command was a bit nervous about knocking it down and now we had to deal with a pair of jackal sharpshooters in a prime location. I managed to see where one of them was and quickly ducked back behind cover as a beam scorched the edge of the window frame, leaving a dark mark on the other side of the room. About a square foot was almost gone from repeated fire. I was trying my luck too hard, but doing this allowed for troop movements in other areas. Soon we'd be in position to take out the snipers and maybe fight off the platoon at the base of the tower.

"Not sure," I finally said, giving words to my shrug. "We have a decent perimeter. They're cut off from their supplies."

"They're also fighting really hard," he said.

"That means they're desperate," I told him. "They might drag us through hell, but it only means that they're close to losing."

"They damn well better be," an Afghan soldier said in heavily accented English. "They have no right setting foot in my country."

"Or this one for that matter," a Marine added.

"Are you sure it's desperation?" Corporal Young asked. "It could be just frustration…"

"What campaigns have you gone through?" I asked, suddenly changing the topic.

"Reach," he said. "And Paris IV before that."

"Where in Paris IV?" I asked, curious.

"Udinia," he said. "Everybody fought there at some point or other. Most of my fighting was done hurting their supply trains."

"I did some of that," I said. "And Reach?"

"Our unit was assigned to some of the strikes before the counteroffensive. Standard ODST stuff."

"Just that?"

"We were pulled out to help defend New Alexandria, but my unit was ambushed. I was taken to the hospital."

I sighed. "I had a man defending the hospital. Payat. Good man. He died there."

"I didn't," Young told me. "We barely got to out of there, they put me on a transport while I was under."

"What unit where you on?"

"Pardon?"

"Lieutenant Tarkov didn't fight in Paris IV or Reach," I reminded him. "What happened?"

"Bad things," he said sadly. "I was lucky. God saw it fit to let me survive."

"God doesn't have anything to do with that, son," I told him. "You surviving is all you."

"I guess we have different views on life," he said, not entirely comfortable with my comment.

"Sir," he began after a bit, "If we don't get orders soon we need to move out, Perez needs some medical attention ASAP and-"

"No," I cut him off. "There are a dozen men and women in this building. All of them are under my command. Perez is one man and I can't risk everyone just to make sure he gets some help that he might not need."

"Sir, I could go alone with-"

"No," I said, once again peeking out the window. "Perez is fine. His leg is patched up and he is napping like a baby. Let him be. We'll get tanks rolling down the street as soon as my men and your lieutenant do their job."

"We haven't heard-"

"Young, do me a favor and shut up," I interrupted him for a third time. "Calm down. Relax. Have a full meal, that's an order."

"Sir…"

"Do it," I said.

Corporal Young took one visible deep breath before giving me a short nod and heading downstairs. The Afghan soldier took his place, standing against the corner, watching the street in case the squad down the block tried to storm our position.

"Should we do something about them?" he asked.

"Later. Second Squad should give us the signal that the snipers are down any time now."

"What will the signal be?" the Afghan asked.

"They'll radio us," I told him.

"I wish I had a fancy helmet like that."

"Not everybody is good enough," I said, earning a scoff in reply.

Two SRS shots boomed through the quiet town.

"Was that the sign?" the Afghan asked.

"Signal," I corrected, waiting for radio confirmation. "Yeah, we're good. Tell our gunners to move to the roof and open up on that house."

"Yes, sir!"

"Alright men," I said. "Quiet time is about to be over, once we suppress those fuckers enough Command will deem that it's time to send the armor down the street. If all goes good we should be able to trap the Covenant inside the town and annihilate them in good old fashioned no holds barred warfare. We'll fight as a unit, but we'll trickle back into our original postings whenever possible. You know this, don't fuck it up, alright?"

There were assorted hooahs and oorahs and yessirs and various other sounds of acknowledgement. I rolled my eyes.

Seconds later the gunners began pounding away at the building the covvies had taken shelter in, the first shots of this portion of the battle.

"Is there a Lieutenant Castillo around? Lieutenant Castillo?"

"Doesn't your helmet work?" I asked.

"Are you Lieutenant Castillo?" the girl asked.

"That's me," I said, hopping down from the fence, being careful with my left ankle. "What do you need?"

"Command called for you," she said, handing me an actual piece of paper.

"All remaining platoon leaders…" I said, reading the opening words of the letter. "Is that a good idea?"

"None of my business, sir," she said with a shrug, rolling her neck. "Things are quiet enough for now."

I sighed. "Am I legging it?"

"No sir, they told me to give you my Mongoose."

"Aight, thanks. Corporal Young?"

"Yes, sir?"

"You're in command now. Everyone got that?"

"Yes, sir!"

"Good."

I grabbed onto the Mongoose and sped through the town. It had only been an hour since we started pushing back, but the defense had been intense. The Covenant had refused to give up a single house, fighting tenaciously to hold onto the ground that they had gained. They had fought well, for covvies, that is. Somehow they managed to sneak more Locusts and Daemons into the town than anyone could've expected. They seemed to have a never-ending bag of goodies. Still, our armored had given them a nice pounding, even if we were down to only four Scorpions and a dozen armored vehicles now.

Our command post had been moved back to the east of the town, the safest place in Torkham. We had already began some preparation in case we needed to evacuate, but unless the Covenant came with a miracle rally just now we were almost guaranteed to win this one. They had made a mistake overextending themselves and now we had them almost completely surrounded. For some reason they still refused to evacuate through the narrow corridor they still had control of. Stupid of them, but good for us.

Command had been a deployable tent, now it was a large house. It was filled with cables lying around to power the holotables and the rest of the equipment necessary to keep track of everything. I carefully walked around some of the equipment before reaching the main holotable. It was easy to tell it was the main one because it was the biggest one and had a mockup of the town with quickly updating information.

Tarkov was already standing there, his arms supporting his battle rifle. Half his armor was gone, replaced by bloody bandages and gashes. His helmet was by his feet, the visor was cracked but still intact.

"Tarkov," I nodded.

"Castillo."

His whole company was pretty much reduced to nothing now. Few had survived the Covenant assault on their position and even less had made the retreat back into the town. I knew Young was still there along with half of his fireteam, but it seemed like the Third Company of the 19th was now down to squad strength.

Two other lieutenants, one of them from the Pakistani Army and another from the Marines were standing there, looking every little bit as ragged as Tarkov and sporting wounds. I was expecting a captain from the Afghan armed forces to be here, but instead there were only two sergeants as well as another man of the same rank from the Army.

"Ah, shit," I muttered.

"A few minutes ago a Seraph crashed into the house across the street. Most of our leadership was gathered there to discuss upcoming plans of action," the Pakistani said.

There were unanimous groans and one gasp. Most of the men here were veterans, they weren't particularly horrified by the death of our commanders as much as annoyed by the complications that it posed.

"Most were not killed outright," he went on, "but as you can tell, they're not in terribly good condition."

"So what are we doing?" one of the Afghans asked.

"Plan stays the same, encircle and destroy for now," he said. "The Major is barely conscious, as soon as he's back up we'll go back to taking orders from him."

"So?" I asked, echoing the question everyone had. "Who's ranking officer?"

"You have seniority over the lieutenants," one of the Pakistanis said.

I smirked. "And some experience in similar situations, but Tarkov has been working with the Afghans and cooperating with your forces for longer."

"True," an Afghan sergeant agreed

"Lieutenant Tarkov?" the Pakistani lieutenant asked, turning towards him.

The man sighed. He was very tired. "Very well. We need to establish a corridor where we can pull back our wounded. Shouldn't be too hard, but for the most part we're just sending them back however we can right now. We still have tanks, we should use them. I know that there's the possibility of enemy Daemons still present in the town, but we can't have infantry bearing the entire brunt of the attack."

"I agree," I jumped in. "We should put a Scorpion and two Mk. 87s on the main street, a column of Marines behind."

"Punch deep and then spread out, take those highway buildings from them, that way we can take the houses further into the town with flanking support," Tarkov finished.

"I'll give the word," the Marine lieutenant said, putting his helmet on. "I can have twenty-five men ready to go in ten."

"Do it," Tarkov said. "I want the Afghan troops that are in reserve to help speed up the process in the south side of the town. Pakistanis in the northern edge. I want the Covenant out of here as soon as possible."

"My men?" I asked.

"Right by the highway, support for the Marines. My men will be doing the same."

"Front and center, got it," I said. "When should we start?"

"As soon as we can," Tarkov said. "I want to sleep."

"Alright, let's move it then," I said. "Get your men ready. Now!"

"I guess we're ramping up the offensive," Tarkov told me when the room was empty. "I'm not rated to be leading this many men."

"It happens," I shrugged. "And we have tanks. Tanks make everything better."

"True… Thanks."

"Tanks?"

"That'd a bad pun," he pointed out, putting his helmet back on.

I chuckled to myself and did the same thing. "Pavel, we're speeding it up."

"What?"

"Get everyone close to… ummm… Aight, I'm setting a waypoint."

"Want us to get anything?"

"Just what you have on you," I said. "I'll meet you there."

I grabbed a couple of spare magazines and caught up with Tarkov, who was already giving the orders to his own men as the majority of the troops in the town relocated in order to better finish this fucking fight. We hadn't heard any news from Mumbai in a while. The communication satellites were shot down and someone in orbit was scrambling to install encrypting hardware before we could communicate across long distances in Central Asia.

So for now it was mostly helmet radios and some antennas that hadn't been destroyed yet. Nothing out of the usual.

I stuck with Tarkov until he met his men, then I split off and crossed our section of the highway before finally bunkering down in a single-room house with no roof. The wind was howling and even though there were large troop movements going on all over the place it seemed awfully quiet. There'd be an occasional DMR shot and return plasma fire, but that was about it for now. It seemed awful weird considering we were about to kick their sorry asses into pulp.

"We're a minute away," Pavel said. "Someone had trouble crossing that last alley."

"Fuck off," Grass said.

I chuckled. Those two where my best friends.

"Ok, don't shoot us," Pavel said a minute later. "Coming in."

My four men barged in, looking a bit eager to get this done with. It would be probably done within a couple of hours if it all went well. Considering the amount of effort and troops we were putting on this action, it would be done quickly, but the number of casualties would depend on the execution.

"What are we doing?" Pavel asked.

"We're moving everything up," I said. "Command was hit by a crashed Seraph, everyone dead or wounded so us El-tees are in charge."

"Uh-oh," Grass said, drawing a chuckle from Miranda.

"We're moving down this side of the highway while Tarkov and his men do the same on the opposite side. A couple of minutes from now we'll have a couple of tanks roll down the middle of the street."

"Tanks?" Grass asked.

"Tank and two armored vehicles," I said. "They'll tear down everything and the Marines will basically pick up the trash. We're only here to provide support and prevent any flanking attempts."

"We've had this one in the bag for a while," Caboose pointed out.

"Glad we sped it up," Pavel said.

"I'm just the best," I said.

"Indeed," Grass agreed.

I didn't know whether she was jokingly agreeing or not and that made me uncomfortable.

"You can't start with this now," Schitzo said. "You know you can't flip flop on your shit again."

I nodded.

"We'll move in standard formation," I said. "Still, we have to account for the exposed left flank. Stick close to the highway, be ready to jump into the gutter at any given notice."

"Wow, I've never known you to care so much," Pavel said.

"I'm a big teddy bear at heart," I said. "Grass and Caboose are out front and Miranda on the back. We've done this a million times before."

"True," Miranda agreed, loading her rifle with a fresh magazine.

_Do we subconsciously do that for effect?_

"Lieutenant, are you ready?" Tarkov asked through the radio. "My men are set."

"I'm good to go soon as tanks give the word," I replied.

"They're on their way."

And on their way they were. The massive Scorpion tank rolled by, firing a shot just as it passed us, shaking the house. Two smaller Mk. 48s moved up right behind it, each with a column of heavily armed Marines formed up behind them. Those two began firing their weapons, targeting every moving target that they could see. This was a destroy and destroy kind of operation. It was hard not to find a target in this situation. The only problem was taking them out before the rest of their reinforcements could do something from the outskirts of the city.

"I've got the buildings," Miranda said. "Move when you want."

"Ok, let's go," I said. "Grass, lead the way."

Grigori and her moved out, keeping their heads low and close to the ground as they trotted right next to the highway. Pavel and I moved behind them, with Pavel a little bit in front of me so I could provide better cover for them. Miranda was behind all of us, using her powerful scope to make sure that there was absolutely no possibility of a sharpshooter taking aim at us.

"Ok, we're getting closer," I said. "Targets in that house."

"I see it," Grass said. "Grigori, take the first floor window."

"Got it."

Just as we began engaging the house, buying the Marines some cover, a Pelican circled overhead. That was surprising for two reasons: we hadn't called in any air support and every single aircraft we had was shot down hours ago. The place was littered with carcasses of charred aircraft. I hadn't personally counted, but no matter how many Banshees and Seraphs I saw, it always seemed like there were more Hornets and Falcons.

"What the hell?" Pavel asked.

The Pelican fired a shitload of missiles as Pelicans usually do before it circled again, this time emptying its main gun on various different targets.

"Lieutenant Tarkov?" a voice crackled on the radio. "We were told you were in command."

"That's me," Tarkov said. "What's the problem?"

"We need your unit."

"I'm coordinating an assault, what is the problem?"

"Classified. Convoy was ambushed and they need support while they get away."

Tarkov sighed. "I can't abandon this right now."

"Sir, this mission is top priority."

Tarkov waited a few seconds. "Castillo?"

"I can take my men," I said, offering help.

"That'll work," he said. "I'll split up my squads to cover your flank as well."

"Holding position," I replied, signaling my men to halt.

"Sir," Corporal Young said. "We're coming in on your left."

"Roger that."

I kept an eye on my mini map, looking at Grey and his men slowly shuffling in our direction, using fire and maneuver. The Pelican circled twice, firing its powerful main gun at targets that some infantry soldier in the front was designating. It fired a couple of other Anvil missiles at hard targets before falling back and setting down on the street, its cargo bay facing my men. I waited a few seconds for Grey's squad to jump down the highway and then ran towards the dropship.

"Holy shit, get down!"

I never found out who cried that, but the entire town rocked with explosions. It took me a few seconds to realize that it was artillery. Artillery that we thought the Covenant didn't possess anymore. Our own artillery pieces had been engaged with theirs in a battle of attrition and now the Pakis had less guns and virtually no ammunition. Not to mention that the crews were completely exhausted. I pushed myself back up and looked at the Pelican, still holding its position.

"Tarkov?" I asked.

"Move!" he shouted. "Get on the bird!"

More and more artillery started landing, this time closer to our positions. Pavel moved past me before stopping and turning. I knew what look his face sported even if his visor didn't allow me to see him. He didn't know what we were supposed to do. We had been fighting for this fucking town for a very long time and I was not exactly happy that we'd be leaving it just as the shit hit the fan. I looked at him and then at the Pelican, jerking my head towards it.

"Get inside!" Pavel roared.

I watched as my reduced squad climbed inside the Pelican, but turned around at the last second. It seemed like something straight out of hell. Torkham was going up in blue fire. Plasma shell after plasma shell exploded, with the town slowly disappearing from the west towards here. I never realized that the Covenant even had that much artillery available in here.

"Frank!"

I sat down on the hatch door and the Pelican took off as I kept my eyes on the quickly disappearing town. I averted my eyes and disconnected from the general battle net. It was all cries of pain and fear.

"Wait, there's only five of you?" a man asked.

I turned around and got up and inside.

"That's all you need," Grass told the man.

The man in question was obviously an ONI operative. He was clad in some sort of light armor and had a modified M7 SMG that didn't meet any particular specifications that I was familiar with.

"What do you need us for?" I asked.

"I was expecting Lieutenant Tarkov, I need to get clearance to brief you," he said with a frustrated sigh.

"Really?" Pavel asked. "I mean, really?"

"Really," he said. "Only five people?"

"We're all there is," I said.

* * *

><p><em>Thanks to <em>**_Colonel-Commissar2468_**_ for proofreading this chapter. This was a rush proofreading and I didn't double check it. _**_Titan_ **_hasn't checked in yet, but I have made you wait long enough._

_I am sorry that the wait has been this long. It would've been about two weeks shorter but my computer got fucked up. Everything worked except for the internet. I had to take it to the shop twice and managed to get the problem fixed. By wiping the whole drive. Worry not, I backed the important things such as The Life, schoolwork, and that's it. Lost gigs worth of music, funny pictures, and porn. It was a sad day. Anyways, things are fixed and I'm back in the mix of wiping forced me to rewrite the beginning of next chapter, but I do have several pages ready now._

_The end is nigh. This fic is close to its end. It saddens me a lotta bit. It's been a great journey so far, but I'll leave all the sentimental shit for later._

_I love your reviews and hope you keep them coming. It is a little bit like an addiction, because everyone loves flattery and I love hearing whatever you guys think about my fic. This is me saying that you should review more, yes. Inflate my ego. INFLATE IT!_

_Stay strong._

_-casquis_


	227. I'm All That's Left

Chapter CCXXVII: I'm All That's Left

**November 16, 2552 (UNSC Calendar)/**

**Barmal Province, Afghanistan, Earth, Sol System**

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><p><em>"I'm all that's left."<em>

* * *

><p>I didn't expect it to take long and it didn't. In fact, I would've been surprised if Tarkov had a higher clearance than me. The ONI operative came back from the cockpit with a slightly bemused look on his face.<p>

"So?" Pavel prompted.

"You check out," he announced, surprising no one. "This is the situation. A convoy carrying vital cargo was en route to Sector Six, but it was attacked by large number of enemy troops and it is currently pinned down. The situation is getting worse by the minute."

"What do you want us to do?" I asked. It was a question that I found myself asking far too often and liberally. It usually ended with us knee deep in somebody else's shit with a comically small mop to clean it up.

"There's an ODST detachment already with the convoy. Their mission is to tag a vital target to the UNSC."

"Nature of the target?" Grass asked.

"It's a Covenant ship," the operative said, leaning into the side of the Pelican, checking his datapad as if to assure himself.

"It and its escorts broke through the entire Navy detachment sent to stop them and destroyed the ODPs in the immediate vicinity."

"Why are we tagging the ship?" I asked. Not an important question, but it was curious that infantry was being sent to tag a ship that was presumably being tracked by any and all sensors on this side of the planet.

"The ship itself is of secondary importance. There is a UNSC asset onboard the enemy ship."

I raised my eyebrows.

"Who's the lucky bastard?" Pavel asked in a voice that sounded more like a grunt than anything else. He was curious now.

"Sierra-117," the ONI operative replied.

I whistled in dry amusement.

"Damn," Miranda said simply. "How'd he end up there."

The ONI man shrugged. "Beyond my paycheck."

"Alright, what do we have to work with?" I asked, back to business.

"ODST troops from the 2nd," he said. "You have the 3rd Unit, platoon strength as well as a battalion of Marines to back you up. Situation might've deteriorated but we were badly outnumbered even before this. Sector Six had a couple of Army squads defending the relays, but they're most likely gone. You've got armor in the form of Tortoises and one Scorpion. No Warthogs or Mongooses, but we're working on that."

"Ok. Why do you want us there'" I asked. "Why the backup?"

The man finally sat down. "The UNSC doesn't have access to many designators in this part of the globe, there was only one we could track down, but we still don't have hands on it. We lost contact with the team carrying it and need to find the designator before our window closes. You'll help hold off the Covenant while the designator is retrieved or if worst comes to worst you'll retrieve it and tag the target yourselves."

"Understood," I said.

"Lieutenant, this is a mission that may secure the fate of the entire galaxy."

Those were big words that felt ominous on my shoulders. A few months ago I might've snorted, but after Delta Halo I knew that there were things out there that we had no way of understanding. The galaxy was bigger than humanity, and if this man was using the former instead of the latter, I was inclined to believe that what we were about to jump into was indeed a big fucking deal.

"We're closing in," the pilot warned calmly.

"You're in," the ONI man said. "Best of luck."

I nodded in appreciation.

The hatch opened and the operator grabbed the machine gun. My men positioned themselves to exit the Pelican at a run if we needed to. We had all replenished our ammunition and grenades and drank copious amounts of water in order to stay hydrated. First we'd feel regretful because the nerves would make us feel like we were about to piss ourselves, but we'd come to appreciate the extra H2O in our systems sooner rather than later.

"Alright, go!"

I couldn't see as much of the battlefield from my position, but it didn't look very good. The UNSC Convoy had been a fairly large group of vehicles in standard convoy formation with light vehicles in the ends getting heavier towards the middle and a couple of Elephants at the center. The two Elephants were still functional from the looks of it and had been placed in a wedge formation as defensive walls with a small gap in the middle so the lone Scorpion tank that had survived the assault could be put to use.

The bulk of the survivors were taking cover behind and around the Elephants, but there were several fireteams and individuals that hadn't made it to cover and were using polycrete walls and destroyed vehicles as cover.

"This place looks like a fucking labyrinth," I muttered as I hopped down.

Plasma hit the ground in front of us, prompting Miranda to shoot towards the source of the fire. She hit and wounded a brute, sending it back into cover and clutching its chest. I could hear the enemy growling, they were getting a lot closer.

"Sir, are you it?" an ODST sergeant asked.

"We're it," I shouted back.

"Fuck it," he replied. "I have a team working on breaking through the walls and out of Sector Six to pick up the designator, they're doing their best."

"Where do you need us?" I asked.

"Help hold the line for now," he replied. "Things will change soon enough."

So far it was pretty standard. It was our job. We held the line. We had been doing this for over a decade now. It was not a fun job, but there were certain advantages to being in a defensive position as opposed to a straight offense. Sure, if we remembered the fact that we were usually defending entire planets against a homicidal alliance we would realize that the position was not so enviable, but from a purely tactical standpoint we often had advantages.

"Ok, spread out," I ordered. "Keep it simple for now, we'll see how it develops."

It developed and it developed quicky. No more than two seconds passed after I finished that sentence before two explosions landed on the closest Elephant. I failed to see the proper result, but the secondary detonations sent me flying backwards and slamming into another Marine and knocking her into the ground. I looked up only for a dozen or so fuel rod explosions to send tons of dirt flying into the air just a mere handful of meters from my position.

"Stay down!" I cried at the Marine, who had curled up into a ball in an attempt to minimize her profile as much as possible.

Someone was returning fire, but I could not really look up as the Banshees were strafing with their plasma cannons now. I followed the example of the girl and curled into a tight ball, making myself as small as possible. One bolt hit the ground right in front of my face, sending heated pieces of dirt into my visor. I heard the next bolt hit the ground behind me, but the sound that came right after was a cry of pain.

I turned on my stomach to look at the Marine, clutching a stump where her leg had once been. She was screaming to hell and back, trying to stop the blood flow.

"Somebody get a medic!"

I jumped over her body and helped press down on the messy stump, looking at what was left of her foot ten feet away in the other direction. She bit her tongue and cursed, but it was all for naught as a moment later another Banshee strafed the same area, this time hitting her right in the head and vaporizing everything above her neck. I recoiled away from the impact, blood spraying my visor.

"Shit, shit," I cursed, firing at the Banshee as it sped past us. "Who has rockets?"

"We're firing as soon as we can, sir!" a voice replied.

"Get a man on those guns!"

"I can't, there's a sniper!"

"Why the fu-"

"Medic!"

Pavel roared a set of orders and my men fanned out to the edge of the destroyed Elephant, attempting to hold the advance that was sure to come. There were various walls on the other side, many of which were severely damaged, but the Covenant would have no shortage of cover on the other side.

It dawned on me just how fucked the situation was.

"I'm scared," Schitzo said. He looked younger.

_Ah shit._

I moved up towards the Elephant. There was a bunch of sections missing and fire was boiling out of the front of the vehicle, but the back was very much intact. I moved up along with a couple of Marines and opened the firing holes. We all made it a point to ignore the charred pieces of meat encased in molten metal that had once been human bodies. I was thankful that my helmet blocked the pungent smell, because it was not pleasant when you enjoyed the smell of charred meat that was coming from your dead friends.

"Edge of that wall, brutes are moving up," I said. "Target the edge, hit them in the head."

"They're coming in droves!"

"That's not my fucking problem," I said. "Do your job!"

"Frank!"

"I'm here, Pavs," I said. "What's the deal with those Banshees?"

"Nothing we can do about them?"

"What about ONI guy?"

"Oscar 6 can't provide direct support, sir," a Marine next to me said. "They're with Bravo Team."

"Who the fuck is Bravo?" I asked.

"Squad sent out to retrieve the package," he told me. "They've been silent for a while."

"Ah fuck," I cursed. "If they're dead?"

"We just send someone else."

"Why don't we send the fucking tank and all of our fucking men?" I asked politely.

"They outnumber us too badly. We'd be fucked before we made it halfway through."

"Shit be going down," another Marine said.

There was some light chuckling, but it all died down the moment a Daemon shell punctured the weakened Elephant armor and broke the man that had made the joke in half, spraying us all with blood.

"Tank!" I shouted. "Watch out for the fucking tank!"

"Grenade out!"

"Someone keep an eye on the walls!"

People were shouting too many things. Too many things were going down at once. The Banshees were still circling, attempting to get a straight angle for a run while a group of Marines with SAWs shot at them if they looked like they were coming our way. They did not have enough ammunition or numbers to keep it up for long, especially with the limited rocket reserve that we appeared to have. The other Elephant still had a functional LAAG and an M247H, but the gunners were too busy keeping the onslaught of grunts and jackals on their side suppressed to be of any real use against the Banshees.

"What are their numbers?" I asked.

"Anywhere between three hundred and four thousand," the Marine replied. "I'm leaning towards the latter."

"What's your name, Marine?" I asked him, firing at a brute that tried to move past the closest wall.

"Scottlee, sir."

"Where's the leadership? I thought this was a battalion."

"It was," he agreed. "They hit us really bad. They planned this one very thoroughly and our own recon dropped the ball. Every field officer was killed in the opening salvo, half our men were casualties within the first ten seconds. We barely got out of the killzone alive. The 3rd Unit really pulled through for us, they got us out of the ambush and across to high ground, but they lost a third of their number in the process."

"Sounds bad," I told Scottlee, firing at movement through a stack of smoke. "Keep suppressive fire near that column."

"Aye, aye, sir."

"Frank, we're burning through our ammunition fast," Pavel said. "We need to transition somewhere else."

"No can do," Scottlee told me. "Target is coming up south of us, we need the high ground to have a guarantee of spotting it."

"What angle?" Grass asked.

"I have no fucking clue."

"Well, we're not staying here," I asserted. "We need to start moving back and soon."

"Sir, I really must insist-" Scottlee began, but he was cut off as yet another explosion rocked the Elephant, engulfing another unlucky Marine in a cloud of shrapnel that tore him to bloody ribbons.

"Move that Elephant backwards!" I ordered. "Scorpion, hug its movement."

There was some confusion as the vehicles prepared to move, but soon enough the Marines were standing behind the massive pieces of cover and preparing to move backwards towards the walls. This place was a fucking maze. It looked like a paintball arena. It played to both our advantage and our disadvantage.

Mostly disadvantage it seemed.

"Plug that gap over there with the Elephant," I ordered. "I want HE suppressive fire all along that wall. Give me some fireworks."

The squad leaders immediately started barking the appropriate orders, efficiently dividing the surviving Marines and ODSTs into effective units. I watched as the volume of fire changed direction while slightly increasing and began moving backwards, Scottlee and I the two survivors from the Elephant. I let the Marine pass me and waited for my squad to get inside the flaming vehicle before they caught up with me.

They looked dusty, but other than that none of them had been hit.

"Hey, sir?" Scottlee called out. "We're losing our cover pretty soon."

"Don't worry, we're getting a move on," I replied. "Isn't that right, Miri?"

"Yes, si-"

She stopped suddenly as a spike protruded from her belly. She took a step back before three others appeared right over her hip, moving closer towards her chest. She fell on her ass as a giant shimmering shape glowed. The brute stalker didn't have a prayer as Pavel, Caboose, and I laid into it. The alien was left without a head and half a chest within a second.

"Miranda!" Caboose shouted, moving towards her.

"I'm fine," she groaned weakly.

"Sir!"

Scottlee was interrupted in a similar manner, but he managed to get his rifle in between the Spiker and himself. His battle rifle was left useless as the second stalker swiped at him with the twin bayonets. I turned just in time to see the Marine block the strike, costing him his foothold and exposing his back. By that point I had jumped onto the brute's back and was pulling back on its helmet. It took only a moment to drop my rifle and grab my knife from behind my back. I stuck it deep in the brute's throat and yanked to the side. Blood sprayed all around me as the brute reached up, trying to hold the fluid in.

"Move out," I huffed, picking up my rifle and securing my knife. "Miranda?"

"I'm fine," she repeated.

"Losing blood," Caboose told me. "Fast."

"Let's get her out of here," I ordered. "Move behind the Scorpion, let's go!"

Caboose dragged Miranda by her armpits, letting Grass pick up her feet as they moved behind the tank, taking cover. When the Elephant began moving they were forced to hustle up in order to keep up, but soon enough a medic approached them with a stretcher. Miranda was strapped to it in a matter of seconds and then taken away by the medic and another random Marine. I could see Scottlee moving up through the dust that the Elephant was raising and soon enough blue and green bolts began cutting through the cover or the dust cloud.

"Wall is clear!" someone shouted.

"Set up around the edge," I ordered. "Who was in charge before I got here?"

"Nobody, sir! Platoon leader left with Bravo Team."

"So this be fucked up," I muttered. "Move around the back! Make sure we can't be flanked. I want thermal lookouts, no stalkers get past us, alright?"

Two different sergeants nodded at my order. There were only four ODST survivors in this unit, all of them appeared to have taken the brunt of the fighting if the state of their armor was anything to go by.

"Where the fuck is Bravo?" I asked. "We need to get the package!"

"Sir, they're gone," Scottlee said. "They've been silent for a while."

"That means there's hostiles behind us," Grass said.

"I know," Pavel growled.

"Keep suppressing fire," I ordered, losing some of my coherence.

I took long strides towards the position of the four ODSTs. Their group looked much like ours, battered and beaten, but nowhere near broken.

"Who's in charge here?" I asked.

"Me, sir," one Corporal T. Rymann said. "What can I do for-"

He stopped mid-sentence as an explosion rocked the wall. Two of his men fell to the ground from the impact but quickly regained their footing.

"How long ago did Bravo leave?" I asked.

"Bravo Team?" he asked. "Bravo Actual took them around two hours ago. They're either well and fully dead or jerking off while walking backwards."

"KIA it is," I muttered. "I need you and your men to take over the mission."

"Roger that, sir," he replied. "We were about to go do that anyways."

"Good, hurry it up. Constant radio contact with Oscar 6 or us, understood?"

"Yes, sir," he said, looking at his rifle and checking the slide. "Hartley, you have that backup tracking device?"

"Right here, sir," a private replied, showing the device.

"We're all set, sir," Corporal Rymann said.

"Grab what you need," I said. "And get a move on."

"Yes, sir."

The four troopers grabbed ammunition from inside the Elephant, letting a squad of Marines take over their position. I tracked them with my eyes as they began moving away from the wall. Banshees flew overhead, one of them exploded as a missile caught up to it and came crashing down close to the Elephant. I kept my eyes on Rymann and his men, Alpha Team, as they disappeared from the minimap.

I turned around and walked into the Elephant, looking for Miranda.

"How is she?" I asked the medic.

"Not good," the woman replied. "She's unconscious and losing a lot of blood. We need supplies if we want to keep her alive."

"She'll pull through," I said. "She always does. Make sure she's comfortable."

"This is the best I can do, sir."

"Make sure she doesn't die, then," I told her angrily. "Pavel!"

"Yeah?"

"What's the outlook?"

"Grim, we're barely managing to keep them back, if they hit the Scorpion…"

"We'll see what happens then."

It was a firefight like many others. One side moves, the other side not so much. It was the most standard a firefight could get. We were even buying time for an important objective to be fulfilled before we moved out. It was, however, a firefight of absolute and total desperation. Everyone here knew exactly what the mission was and as such knew the stakes. I doubt there was a human being in this universe that hadn't heard of the exploits of Spartans, ONI had made sure of that. John-117, known as Master Chief to humanity at large. Soldier, hero, legend… He was humanity's best hope and right now it seemed he was humanity's only hope.

Everyone here would die before we gave up.

Nobody here had even seen the Master Chief in person, but they were ready to give their lives for a man that was probably more machine than flesh. A man that was never seen without armour, a man that never spoke or bothered to say anything. Still, he inspired. ONI propaganda or not, that man inspired. He was a legend, worthy of having his name said before Achilles, Hercules, Gilgamesh, and the legendary warriors of old. Except he was very real and so was the threat he was fighting.

Everyone here would die before we gave up. But we didn't all need to die.

"You in the tank, I want you to fuck shit up, as they say."

"I was told to conserve ammunition, sir."

"Light up every fucker you see," I told him. "You have no shortage of 7.62mm. Save explosives for squads and vehicles. Do not let up. What we need now is time."

"Roger that, sir."

"Frank, what are we doing?" Pavel asked.

"We're making sure that we get out of this alive," I said.

"We've done worse," he told me.

"Barely," I said. "Just barely."

He turned to look at the battlefield in front of us. "It doesn't look that bad, does it?"

"It doesn't," I agreed. "But it is, you know it."

He sighed. "I just wish I could've seen Amber one more time."

"You'll get to do that," I promised him.

"We don't even know if they're alive."

I paused before answering. He was right. I was scared of that myself.

"They're fine," I said. "And we have to survive if we want to see them again."

He gave me a quick nod and returned to his position, bracing himself for the battle to come. The Marines were giving it their all, firing at a near constant rate in order to keep the brutes from swarming us. Despite our best efforts we weren't getting too many kills, the walls were a huge advantage to both sides, but it seemed like the small gap in between them would keep us safe for the time being.

"They're not letting up, sir!"

"Then neither are we!" I barked back. "No one moves from their position!"

I climbed to the top of the Elephant, taking position near one of the gunners and surveying the area. We had a pretty good view of the walls where the brutes were taking cover, but the gunners were too busy fending off Banshees to actually do much about the infantry. I took a couple of pot shots, hitting two brutes and managing to kill one of them before unseen sharpshooters targetted my position.

"They're not dumb," the gunner said, spooling his LAAG as a trio of Banshees turned for a strafing vector.

"I wish they were," I said.

The three Banshees began firing early, landing some inaccurate shots all over the place. The gunner kept his cool and only started firing when he knew he had a killshot guaranteed. One of the Banshees went down in flames and the other two broke off, one of them putting out a fair amount of smoke.

We were not doing terribly bad, but this was not a good situation. We were in one of our outposts, but nowhere near an armory. There was a single Pelican helping our cause and it was not on our specific sector of the battle. Oscar 6 was likely way up in the sky, tracking Alpha Team or moving about in order to get Alpha Team a vehicle or heavier weapons.

"Bravo-23 is KIA," Corporal Rymann reported calmly. "We're pressing forward."

"Copy that," I acknowledged. "Pavel, redirect to that third grid, will ya?"

"Roger."

We managed to be consistent for a fair amount of time as Alpha Team closed in on the target. Pavel was doing a superb job in handling the fire on the ground level while Grass coordinated the Scorpion and sharpshooters to take out any threat to the tank. Grigori mostly remained close to the Elephant while bolstering the wall, pointing out targets to the Marines and leading by example. We were doing a lot of work for four individuals, but we were used to this.

"Oscar 6, Oscar 6, do you copy?" I asked. "What's the status on support or reinforcements?"

"We've acquired one Warthog, Reaper-Actual," the ONI operative replied almost immediately. "It's not for you, however."

"No incoming support?" I asked.

"I'm afraid not. Radio contact outside of here is blocked by jammers."

"Well fuck," I muttered. "Keep trying, will you?"

"That's basically all I'm doing, El-tee."

I climbed into the Elephant's cockpit. The glass window was stronger than most titanium compounds, but it was really hard to see through the glass now that multiple plasma shots had melted it into looking more opaque than not. The embedded spikes weren't being particularly helpful either. I crouched a bit and looked through one of the corners, making out a little bit of movement behind one of the closest walls. I called it in and watched as tracer fire hit their position, sending bits of rock over the Covenant troops. Someone managed to land a grenade behind cover and took out at least three brutes while destroying a solid portion of the wall.

I smiled and moved back to the roof to fire at brutes. The gunner was getting rattled, the Banshees were making it extremely difficult for him to target them and he was beginning to run low on ammunition. I could tell that his arms were going completely numb from all the shaking on the gun, but still he held his position, nearly coverless except for a small column and the shields that protected his chest and face.

"Grass, where are we at rockets?" I asked.

"Six," she said. "No, seven."

"Seven rockets," I repeated to myself. "With some luck that will be seven dead Banshees."

"They do say seven is a lucky number," Grass agreed.

"Sir, there's a Phantom incoming," the gunner reported calmly.

"Target the front cannon," I ordered. "Caboose, fire at its side gunner as it moves past us."

"We're letting it through?" a random Marine asked.

"Yes we are," I said.

The Phantom was moving fast, but the pilot seemed to have the intention of strafing us as it moved above. Unluckily for that asshole, our gunner was a crackshot. He put a nice and long burst within his target area and there was a minor explosion as the plasma supply ignited and destroyed the front cannon. The Phantom sped up, predictably. It tried to give the side gunners a better firing angle, but we were prepared for that. I looked up and fired from cover at the brute on the side gun, shooting through its neck and watching it tumble over before it could get a single shot out. On the ground, Caboose and his men pummeled the other gunner, but they had less of an angle and they lost one man to a couple of plasma shots.

"Good work," I said, watching the Phantom speed away.

Well, now we had one more threat behind us and Alpha Team had more shit to get through. I trusted Oscar 6 to guide them through the terrain and towards their objective because if they didn't get there we'd have to go on a mad rush in order to find the designator. It was certainly plausible, but we weren't going to hold much longer as it was and if my men left the Marines then they'd collapse a lot sooner. It would not be pleasant to have a couple of Covenant battalions on our asses without any cover or possibility to return fire. There was also the matter of Miranda…

"They're using jump jet troops!"

I sighed. This was gonna suck.

"Watch for incoming!" I cried out. "You! Stay on the Banshees!"

"Sir, but-"

"I'll cover your ass," I assured the gunner.

I stood up, firing at the surging jetpack brutes in full automatic fire. I did everything possible to draw fire my way instead of the man on the gun. My recklessness paid off, allowing him to shoot down two Banshees that got too eager on their approach vectors while most of the brutes went for me. I killed two of them before they came down, but another two landed on the roof. I shot at the one closest to the gunner, taking it out with a burst to the face. The other one grabbed the barrel of my rifle and pushed it away before I could fire. I immediately let go of my right arm as I pulled with my left. The brute didn't let go on instinct, but it extended its arm enough that I was able to put five bullets on its armpit with my sidearm. The brute roared in anger, giving me a very large hole to put three more bullets in, spraying brains all over the roof.

"Damn…"

"Keep shooting," I growled, turning to the side to fire at the brutes that had landed amongst my troops.

It was hard to see what was going on with all the chaos, but a brute was a brute and they were sufficiently distinct from Marines that I could target them properly. I was supremely confident in my abilities. I knew that when push came to shove my own augmented features would pull through for me and those that I was protecting. Time slowed down just enough and my arms moved more accurately. It was not something that I could control, but I knew when it was coming and when it came it truly helped.

The only risk here was that one of my bullets would go through the brutes and hit a Marine behind. It was unlikely, considering just how much trouble regular firearms had with brutes as it was, but these unarmored brutes were a bit more likely to have bullets go through them than their power armoured counterparts. I exhaled and fired.

First target went down easily. Brute with little armour. The gaps were big and accessible. As the alien went down I was already firing at another one. This one had just skewered an unfortunate Marine and was on the receiving end of an assault rifle burst from a comrade of the deceased.

"Everybody drop!" Pavel's voice boomed loudly.

Two full squads of Marines complied with his order. A wonderful display of trust for a man that they had met scant minutes earlier. I watched Pavel spray the brutes at waist level and stun them, allowing me to take out the ones he didn't with precise head shots. A couple of the Marines on the ground contributed with quick bursts as they turned around. When Pavel's little stunt was over nine brutes had died.

I ran across to the other side of the Elephant's roof and watched Caboose blast a nice little hole through a brute that landed in front of him before dispatching two others with his shotgun. I got one of the assaulters off the back of one of the Marines with two bursts before killing a late arrival with a shot to the hip followed by a burst through the neck.

"Sir, there are Banshees incoming!"

"Do your best," I said. "Grass?"

"We'll need to break out the SPANKrs," she said after a brief pause.

"You, shoot," I ordered the gunner. "Down there! You three, get your SAWs on those fliers ASAP!"

The three machine gunners struggled to move up the frontline, joining the Scorpion's coaxial gun in targeting the Banshees. The tank took down two of the craft, one with its main gun, an incredible feat in its own right and the other with the machine gun. The tank kept firing, dispersing the left flank of the flight formation while the SAW gunners pummeled the center alongside the gunner on the Elephant. I fired in vain, trying to up the pressure on the birds before they were close enough for accurate fuel rod blasts.

"Move back!" I shouted at the Scorpion driver. "Get out of there!"

It didn't take a master strategist to see what the primary threat was. The Covenant were evidently getting annoyed by the Scorpion's nearly endless onslaught and they were obviously trying to take it out first. The tanker knew this, but had held his positions as per my orders. When I gave him the possibility to find some security he immediately floored the reverse, narrowly avoiding no less than three fuel rods. The Scorpion fired, missing the Banshees by a wide margin as they screamed overhead.

"They're coming back around!"

Of course they were.

I ignored the Banshees at my back, instead letting the gunners handle it. I heard the sound of one rocket being fired but kept my eyes front. Two brutes tried to make a dash for our line, but I promptly brought them down. I finally was forced into cover by suppressive fire. I turned just in time to see the surviving Banshees hit the Scorpion with two fuel rods. One of the fliers was shot down and slammed into the tank, totaling it in a fireball that consumed four Marines, killing three of them and prompting the screaming survivor to pull out a sidearm in an attempt to commit suicide only for the fire to kill him first.

I averted my eyes, a death like that was something I did not want to think about.

"Fill the gap," I ordered. "We hold for as long as we can."

"Sir, we can't hold them back without any-"

"We hold!" I barked. "Don't you understand what is at stake here?!"

"We hold, sir," the Marine replied. "Fill the gap! Give me a fire curtain on that corner!"

Corporal Rymann kept giving periodic updates on his unit's situation. With only three men they were moving quite a bit slower than I would've liked, especially as there appeared to be greater numbers of brutes behind our lines than we would've expected.

"Pavel, help patch up that hole," I said. "Actually, scratch that, Caboose, you're up."

"Where do you want me?" Pavel asked.

"Fill in for him," I said. "Watch out for sharpshooters."

"Sir! They're flying wide!"

I looked at the gunner in slight confusion before catching two Banshees moving past us way in the distance. They were completely bypassing us. Normally that wouldn't have made sense, as they actually needed to physically take us down if they wanted their infantry to get through. It didn't make sense unless they knew there were other valuable targets behind us.

"Think they picked up our chatter?" I asked. It was an open question.

"It's almost certain, sir," Scottlee said. "They came at us hard for a reason."

"Fuck," I said. "Alpha Team, Alpha Team, do you copy?"

"This is Bravo-21," Rymann replied. "We copy."

"You've got troop movements your way. Expect heavier resistance."

"Copy that, sir."

The brutes were becoming increasingly violent, but they were still displaying tactical genius that I would have never expected from their like. Four of them advanced, throwing out a bubble shield that landed halfway through the open ground and hid inside for a few brief seconds. The rest of the brutes still behind the walls then opened up with an overwhelming barrage of spikes, plasma, and needles that forced even our gunner to redirect fire that way. I fired a couple of bursts, but the firepower was too much to actually leave cover.

"Caboose!"

"I got them!"

I looked down the Elephant to see Caboose move up, pumping a shell into his shotgun and raising it just in time for a large brute to jump over the tank. The brute didn't even get to raise its weapon before Caboose put a shell's worth of buckshot through its mouth. The blood had barely fallen into the ground when a second and third emerged from the smoke. He took one of them out with a blast to the chest, but the other one dodged the full brunt of the buckshot, instead taking a blow to the leg. Even as the brute fell on its knee it fired a burst of spikes at Caboose, most of them missed, but one of them landed square on his chest. Caboose fired another blast and the brute's head and then fell on his ass.

"Are you alright?" I asked, keeping an eye on the fourth brute as two Marines overwhelmed it with sustained fire.

"I think so," he replied. "Doesn't seem like it made it past the armor. Hurts like a motherfucker."

The medic chick grabbed him and nearly had to drag my stunned underling behind cover to start removing his armor and check for injuries. She effectively cleared him and then sawed off the spike to give him more mobility before returning the chest plate to him. I picked off a brute major with a grenade launcher, hitting it a few times in the neck before it finally went down. I was beginning to draw too much attention to myself and the gunner was starting to pay for it. I heard him cry out and turned my head to see a spike go clean through his thigh.

"Fuck! I'm fine, I'm fine." He fired at a very specific point. "Missed the femur."

I paid attention to him and frowned slightly. There was a lot of blood.

"And it hit the femoral," I said. "Get over here!"

He looked down. "Shit."

The man let go of the gun and started moving my way as I prepared a biofoam can. The gunner stumbled, his leg obviously hurting as life literally poured out of it. His face was looking very pale and I wasn't sure whether it was the blood loss or the panic. He only needed to take a couple of steps to get here, but right before he got to me he got shot straight through the helmet.

He dropped down neatly, blood coming out of his head and leg.

"I'm taking the gun!" I shouted. "I need a sharpshooter up here!"

"On my way up, sir!" Scottlee called out. "Cover me!"

It was an open request, but the majority of the men within earshot complied with the request. I pulled back the lever on the LAAG just as the staccato of gunshots increased. I aimed at a brute and fired a short burst, popping its head off. Three more brutes hopped over that same spot, absorbing an unhealthy amount of the bullets I was firing at them before collapsing halfway through the no-man's-land. I heaved the gun so it was aiming up and fired at an incoming Banshee. I needed to use my helmet's zoom capabilities to help take it down, but it wasn't hard to kill the craft as it came in a straight line.

"I'm here, sir!"

"Take care of those two wall corners," I ordered Scottlee. "Get their heads down."

"Yes, sir!"

"Caboose?"

"It's good," he said. "I'm waiting for the next attempt."

The next attempt turned into one continuous wave as the brutes used their superior numbers and firepower in a hybrid swarming technique, firing an insane amount of material our way while they moved. They mostly succeeded in suppressing the vital targets, leaving the Marines on the ground to handle the ones jumping over the tank. Caboose was doing most of the work, killing several of them with single shots to the upper chest and having a nice little pile of corpses obstructing the way for the next ones to come. Grass was firing sideways, on the edge of hitting the Marines but never quite seeming to miss her actual targets.

"Phantoms incoming. Shit, get down!"

No sooner than I had uttered those words did the Phantom turn sideways to present a brute chieftain with a fuel rod. I fired a quick burst, but there were already several green shells flying this way. I pretty much tackled Scottlee into the interior of the Elephant, slamming into the second level before rolling down into the bottom, nearly landing on top of a body bag.

The explosion sent bits and pieces of molten metal flying over the injured.

"The gun is done," Pavel said.

"We need to handle that chieftain," I said. "Keep pestering it."

"Copy that," Grass said.

"Force it down," Pavel told her.

It was easier said than done, but Grass worked out a clever strategy involving a rocket and a timed grenade shot. I had to throw the grenade, nobody else was strong or accurate enough to make the shot. I threw it just as the Phantom banked to avoid the missile. It landed inside and detonated. The chieftain jumped out from the ship covered in smoke and flames before the missile spun around and hit the damaged Phantom near the engines in the back, bringing it down crashing.

The Phantom tore down a section of our wall, but it plugged it all the same. Pavel and his Marines were forced to deal with the chieftain as it landed amongst them. I caught a glimpse of a poor woman being thrown several dozen feet into open ground by the chieftain before Pavel surprised it from behind. The chieftain found a barrel jammed into its gaping mouth. I winced, imagining just how painful that must've been in and of itself, but my concern disappeared when the chieftain's head did the same.

"We need to move back," the medic told me. "The wounded are all beyond my help and we're getting pounded hard out here."

"Are the wounded dead?" I asked.

"Most of them. Two are about to die. Your injured is stable but unconscious."

"Conscious?"

"Sir, you can't ask them-"

"I can and I will," I cut her off. "Give them one rifle each."

"Sir."

"Pavel, start preparing to move back. Scottlee, grab a squad and go with him. Grass and Caboose, you're going to hold the gap, just the two of you. The rest of you, form up in a half circle, we're going to be moving back pretty fucking fast."

I walked inside the Elephant again and moved towards Miranda and carefully cradled her up. I began moving backwards to find a nice place to put her in before ordering the retreat. I didn't get to see the men go through the maneuver, but the radio chatter kept me updated. Pavel and his squad was slightly behind me, but I was basically in the open at this point. I finally emerged from the maze-like system of walls into an open area. It was around a hundred meters wide and the same length. In the middle was a bunch of banged up dividers with two dead brutes. I ran towards it and hopped over, sliding Miranda into a sitting position next to a few dead Afghan soldiers. I checked them for ammunition only to confirm that Rymann or the team sent before him had already stripped them of it. The brutes still had their spikers there. I was about to run back when Miranda woke up.

"You ok?" I asked.

"Yeah," she said weakly. "What-"

"Bad things," I said. "We're falling back. I want you to wait here and play dead, alright?"

She looked at the spike on her stomach. "Shouldn't be too hard."

"Not at all," I agreed. "I'll be back."

"Frank."

"What?"

"There."

I turned my neck and saw that one of the brutes had a mauler pistol strapped to its belt. I smiled and grabbed the thing, holstering it on my left thigh and shoving the spare ammunition into my empty pouches.

"Stay strong," she told me.

"Don't I always?"

She smiled and I hopped back out of the circle. I came across my men nearly three hundred meters from that position. They were holding a position around seventy meters back from out original starting spot. I noted that our numbers had gone down, but the position was highly defensible. Relatively speaking that is.

"Bravo 21, you copy?" I asked. "Give me a sitrep."

"Copy, sir. We're a bit stuck, brute squads managed to flank us, but we're getting through them."

"We don't have the luxury of time," I told them.

"True," Oscar 6 said, jumping into the conversation. "The re-entry time has been calculated."

"Is it an approximate?" I asked as the clock appeared on the top of my HUD.

"Negative. Not unless the ship backtracks in the middle of atmospheric re-entry."

"Twenty-two minutes," I said. "You'd better haul ass, Alpha Team."

"We live on that," Corporal Rymann replied.

Pavel walked up to me. "We lost a couple of men in the process. Grass and Caboose are up front, he was grazed by a plasma pistol. Ribs. Armor held."

"He's taking a beating."

"We all are," Pavel told me, pointing at several Marines standing tall while they bled.

I nodded slowly. "Good job, men! The Master Chief is about twenty minutes away from making landfall on this beautiful clump of rocks. We will hold for every last second until our mission is accomplished. Then I will buy twenty cases of your choice beer."

"Probably won't need to buy more than a couple," Scottlee said, drawing some dry chuckles.

"Probably," I admitted with a small shrug. "You'll definitely be getting medals."

"What good will they be?" someone asked grumpily.

"They'll be good enough that someone will be reading what exactly you did to save the planet and the human race. The fact that there'll be someone alive to actually give them to you, dead or alive, should be good enough," I replied. "Oorah?"

"Oorah."

"Let's make them fuckers pay in blood, shall we?"

"Comes in the job description," Pavel agreed. "Let's go!"

The brutes had moved fast, stampeding against our positions. Their speed and numbers meant that we failed to contain some of them, but for the most part we dealt with them. I helped move a large brute off of a wounded Marine and then fired down range, hitting two brutes as they moved and sending them back to cover. I kept an eye on their position before ducking back down as a flurry of plasma flew at me. Banshees were not flying overhead, but they could only hit us from a certain angle with walls both in front and behind us. They weren't very eager to come at us, especially after we thinned their numbers significantly.

"There's only a few Banshees in the area," Oscar 8 reported. "But the enemy ground presence is still significant."

"Copy that," I acknowledged.

Pavel looked at me and we both shrugged.

It was more difficult than it had been, but the brutes no longer had the advantage of a wide battlefield. They had to go through the narrow gaps between the walls and we had to hold them back. It would've been a lot easier for us if the walls had extended miles in either direction, but we needed to make absolutely sure that we weren't flanked. I sent two squads out to either side to make sure, but there was still the risk of the brutes going even further to the sides. If they came at us straight from behind we'd likely see them coming first, but it would not be a pleasant experience. I realized that my throat was getting hoarse from barking so many orders, but I was not the only one. Everyone was crying out enemy positions, status, or calling for help. The brutes were taking casualties, but so were we.

"We can't hold much longer like this, sir!" the corpsman shouted. As soon as she said this an explosion sent pieces of wall towards her and she disappeared underneath it.

"Coney!" Scottlee shouted. "Someone get her out of there!"

"Cover them!" I ordered, pushing Pavel's shoulder in that direction. "Grass, hold that gap!"

"I can't hold every fucking gap!" she shouted back.

"Well you're going to fucking hold that one!" I told her. "Move!"

She switched positions just as I advanced to the edge of the wall, pointing at two Marines to follow me. I stopped and then fired at two brutes, taking one down and helping bring the second one to its knees alongside one of the two Marines. The brutes weren't dead, but follow-up bursts quickly took care of that. I covered one of the Marines and sent him to the other side.

"Tough day, sir?" the other one asked me, reloading her rifle.

"Just another day at the office," I told her. "Lay some suppressive fire on that right wall, will you?"

"Top or side?"

"Side."

We switched positions and I prepared a grenade while she took a deep breath. She began firing on the wall while a couple of spikes passed her, embedding themselves in the wall behind us. I threw the grenade at brutes, lobbing it over their walls and then switching back to my rifle to see if any wounded brutes stumbled out. None did, but there was a nice little patch of blood that hadn't been there before. A solid chunk of the wall had been destroyed and Pavel flooded that hole with his machine gun. Caboose was striving to push back a foursome of brutes that were using a heavy plasma cannon to pummel our position as they moved forward, dragging the weapon with them. I would've helped, but they were outside of my range and a jackal was making good use of its carbine to keep us from actually having a decent field of fire.

"Somebody take that bird down!" Pavel called out. "I'm firing on its position!"

"We could use some support right about now," Schitzo told me.

_The time for big battles already passed._

"The skirmish that saved the world…" he mulled it over. "It does have a nice ring to it."

_Maybe…_

"Think our names will be written down somewhere?" Pavel asked.

"Rymann's will probably be there somewhere," I said. "But aren't ours already pretty historical?"

"Damn right," he agreed.

"I'm sure we'll sneak into a textbook or war book," Grass said. "Maybe even a documentary."

I laughed. "When do you think ONI will declassify everything?"

"Twenty years?"

"Sounds good," I agreed.

"I think more," Pavel said. "But hopefully I'll be able to see myself on the big screen."

A brute captain with a brute shot walked through the gap, firing on our position. We were forced to move away from the edges of the wall to avoid the explosions, more than likely giving away this wall to the Covenant. Pavel ordered his men to fall back and Grass led them several walls back. I did the same, radioing the squads protecting our flanks to fall back on our position. One of the squad was set upon by brutes on their way here and only one man made it back, torn and bloodied with his left arm reduced to bloody tatters.

"Get him help," I ordered Corpsman Coney. "ASAP."

"Right away, sir!"

"Are there more jump jet troops?" Grass asked.

"I don't think so," Caboose replied. "But they're hoping over the walls, crossing the distances between."

"That's why we have shotguns," I told him. "Let them come."

"Within reason," he grumbled back, pushing three shells into his shotgun.

Three Banshees screamed overhead, shaking me as they flew by. I followed them with my eyes until they disappeared and then just fired at a brute that peeked out. The bullets bounced off its helmet and it darted back into cover. I did the same thing and reloaded my rifle, making sure I still had some ammunition on me. I'd have to dig into my pistol soon and then my borrowed mauler would be seeing some use.

"It's just me and Bravo-22 now, sir," Corporal Rymann reported. "We're close to the target now."

"We're counting on you, Alpha Team," I said.

"Two hundred meters," Oscar 8 told them. "Brute presence is significant."

"Roger that."

"On our end of things…" Pavel said, pointing at a duo of brute captains carrying their grenade launchers "Get back!"

I looked up at the clock, we still had 16 minutes to go. It seemed like a whole fucking lifetime had passed since the last time I had checked it, but the seconds were moving and they were sure as hell taking their time. Alpha Team only had two members in it, so it was more like Alpha Fireteam now, but those two had a task that was simpler than its consequences would imply.

"Back to the next line!" I shouted, spit coming out of my mouth and into my visor. "Get those-"

Two Banshees had approached without anybody actually seeing them come at us. It was understandable but unforgivable. They both fired into our midst and the fuel rods alone engulfed eight men, killing all of them. Two others were killed in the strafing run, losing limbs and having giant holes torn through their bodies. I was slammed into the ground and knocked my head on a rock, dizzying my already beaten skull. I looked up to see brutes already moving in, killing even more Marines. Pavel grabbed a dazed Caboose and pulled him by the scruff, saving him from a brute shot that sent them both careening to the ground. I fired at the brute as it approached, killing it with a well-placed shot to the neck. I tried to get to my feet, but another ape fired on my position, sending me on a roll.

"Frank, behind you!"

Grass was great at warnings, she had this sense of perception that allowed her to see most of the things going on in the battlefield. It is one of the main reasons she was such a great fighter and an incredible strategist. This time her warning had little use, but it was the brute that fucked up. I have no idea how it got there without me seeing it, but the hit on the head might've had to do something with it. I barely felt the brute's stomp as it grazed my side and slid off the armor. I had to restrain the urge to smile as I dug my knife through its foot and into the ground before drawing the mauler and putting one single shell through the underside of the brute's jaw.

The alien collapsed and I rolled to avoid it, grabbing my knife and rifle as I dashed towards cover.

"Damn, sir. You alright?" Scottlee asked, helping me behind cover. "Want Coney to check you over?"

"I'm fine. Pavel, report."

"We're safe," he said. "To your right."

He waved at me from a different position.

"Alpha, what's your status?"

There was no direct response, but Rymann clicked a green acknowledgement light.

"Fifteen meters ahead, turn right!"

"You got Banshees moving in on your position, Team Two!" Pavel warned.

"Team Two?" I asked.

He shrugged.

"Scottlee, what's the backup plan?"

"There's a bunker deeper inside Sector Six, sir!" he replied. "After we were ambushed we were planning to go there and wait for extraction."

"But?"

"But shit happens," he shrugged.

"Watch out for brutes, Alpha Team," Pavel advised again.

"How far away is that bunker?" I asked.

"One click," Scottlee informed me. "It's doable, but we can't sprint it, we need a holding team to cover us."

"We'll start heading that way as soon as they have the package," I said. "Everyone catch that?"

"Yes, sir!"

"Bingo. Got it!" Private Hartley said. "Package retrieved, need immediate evac, over. Package retrieved."

"Roger that, Team Two. Warthog inbound," Oscar 8 said.

Pavel pointedly looked at me when the pilot used the same designation that he did, drawing a dry laugh from me. I ordered to contain the brute advance while we started moving back. The Marines were doing an excellent job, but their skills weren't as polished as ours and with every burst that they missed we were closer to running dry and failing Alpha Team's mission.

"Frank, are you alright?" Grass asked, patting my shoulder after I took cover to reload.

"Yeah," I said. "You?"

"Long as you're still alive," she told me. "I…"

I smiled at her and gave her a light headbutt. "What?"

She smiled back.

"We're fine," I assured her. "We always are."

She put her artificial arm up and wiggled her fingers, the black fabric seeming unnatural.

"Almost always," I corrected.

Her eyes were pretty. They were a little bit like Katie's in that you were drawn to them.

I still didn't even know if she was alive.

"What?" she asked me, this time her tone concerned.

I shrugged. "We'll worry about that later."

"Yes, sir," she said.

"Pavs?"

"Yeah?"

"What are you at?"

"Two boxes left," he said. "Pistol is full and I grabbed a bandolier of MA5 ammo so all I need is a rifle."

"Pick one up now," I said. "You're going to be burning through a lot of ammunition."

"Aye, aye, captain."

"Scottlee, cover him some, will you?"

"Yessir."

"Caboose, I want you on the back, there's enemy presence on our rear. Clear them out."

"On it, El-tee."

I liked giving orders. I was good at it and my orders were usually good. I could've retired from active combat and lived to be a fat and lazy drill sergeant. I could've had some semblance of stability while still shaping humanity's finest into the heroes that we needed them to be. I could've started a family with Katie and had five or six little critters running around the house, dominating every sport they tried and getting every girl they wanted. I would not have girls, of course, I don't believe I could handle them dating. Hell, I got protective of girls I barely knew because I was easily jealous.

"You just want everything to yourself," Schitzo said. "Take a look at Cam, for example."

_Shut up._

"Lieutenant, Bravo-22 got hit," the ONI operator reported.

"Can't he suck it up?"

"Negative, he needs a medic."

I paused for a solid five seconds.

"Castillo?"

"Alright, Scottlee, take the rest of the Marines," I said. "Head towards the bunker and hold off the brutes while Alpha gets to you, we'll hold them here."

"Sir, you-"

"Do it," I ordered. "And make one hell of a sprint for it."

"We'll make it, sir."

"Expect opposition," I said, "there's enemy troops all around us, do not lose your focus."

"Of course not, Lieutenant," Scottlee assured me. "Marines! Form up on me!"

"Sir-" Corpsman Coney began.

"Go," I ordered. "They need your expertise. Now!"

The Marines were prepared to leave in no time, formed up and providing virtually no support to help hold the line. I gave them the order to leave one last time, Pavel went loud to provide a degree of cover and a multitude of grenades were tossed into known enemy positions as the last of Reaper Squad prepared for their deaths.

"Just fight hard," I said simply. "We'll fall back to Miri when we have to."

"Yes, sir," Caboose replied.

Pavel and Grass just looked at me and each other before hefting up their weapons. Pavel had his machine gun and was about to run out of ammunition, but he had several magazines for the assault rifle that he had picked up, Grass had stocked up on ammo as well, but she only had about half a standard combat load, enough to keep her alive for fifteen minutes in this environment. Caboose had a third of his shotgun shells still available and maybe half of his magazines, leaving me with just six magazines for my battle rifle.

We all had pistols with spare magazines as well, but those were effectively firecrackers to the brutes. At least until they tore us apart and their blood lust disappeared, revealing the dozens of holes in their body.

"Oh well," Schitzo muttered. "It's been a good run."

_Why are you so sure we're going to die? We've faced worse._

"Maybe, but you've always had support."

_I've always been alone, Pavel, me, and the rest of the universe against us two._

"You've always had support," he reaffirmed. "Aztlan was an exception, and even then you had a place to go to and guaranteed evac. Paris IV was big, but the UNSC was always by your side, same with Reach and everything else."

_It's like surviving the __apocalypse __only to be killed by a robber._

"Precisely."

I'm not dying. Not today. Nobody is.

"Let's go!"

The brutes had sensed weakness and it had their blood boiling. They realized that there were now only four of us and a hundred of them. Easy kills. Dozens of them hopped over the walls, ready to come at us. We could not take them all out at once, but Pavel hit so many of them in the legs that the assault briefly faltered before we were forced to fall back into the walls right behind us. Brutes came in through the gap, eating buckshot and depleted uranium left and right, but they moved faster than we could kill them and their weapons were still deadly. Blast after blast of plasma hit the wall I was behind and spike grenades landed past it, forcing me or any of my men to toss it back into the brutes.

"Twelve minutes," Oscar-6 checked in.

"What does that mean for us?" Pavel asked, tossing aside his trusty M247L machine gun for what was the last time he would ever fire it.

"It means twelve minutes," I replied, resolute.

"Watch out!" Grass cried.

An explosion sent pieces of wall everywhere, I tumbled backwards but somehow managed to retain my balance. It was lucky, as two brutes came through the rubble and dust a second later. I shot them both with a quick burst, stunning them but not killing them. Grass laid out some suppressive fire, sending one of them scampering back behind cover and putting the other one on the ground for good. Caboose helped me behind cover and fired his shotgun blindly to the other side of the wall. The brute survivor grunted as the buckshot hit it and then died as Caboose fired again.

"Fuck!" Caboose shouted, dropping his shotgun.

"What's wrong?" I asked.

"Nothing," he growled, showing me his left hand, it was missing the pinky and ring fingers. He pulled out his MA5K and kept shooting.

"Next wall is twenty meters out," I said. "Different angle."

"Who designed this fucking labyrinth?" Pavel asked.

"The person I will personally thank for our survival," Grass replied.

"Or our death," Pavel countered. "They have just as much cover as we do."

"Sir, explosives?" Caboose asked me.

"One block," I replied. "As always."

"Set it here, blow the wall, deny them cover and gain some time."

I nodded and produced my personal C-12 putty and spread it into as small pieces as I could while keeping it functional. I only had enough for three different spots, but it should be enough to bring a large section of the wall down. The section that mattered at least.

"Detonators?" he asked.

"It's coded to a frequency," I said. "No need for physical detonators."

I set them all up, running down the wall and plastering them against it. We would be able to wait for the brutes to take cover and then hopefully get a few of them in the blast. It wasn't a bad idea, but it would only buy us a couple of minutes at the most.

"You done, Frank?" Pavel asked, firing perfectly timed bursts at brutes I couldn't see.

"Yeah!" I replied, grabbing my battle rifle. "We moving?"

"Just about!"

I fired from my wall, crouching underneath Caboose and ignoring the occasional empty casing that landed on my helmet or shoulders. Everybody was bleeding, both us and the enemy. There were at least a dozen dead brutes on the ground and several other wounded were trying to move away from the battle. We mostly ignored those, saving our ammunition for the real threats. It wasn't until two brutes holding a large piece of Warthog hood moved up, using the metal as cover, that we were forced to back down. Plasma fire followed us all the way to the next wall, nearly blasting my right leg off and almost hitting Grass square in the back. We made it safely, all four of us taking cover behind the same wall.

"What's it look like?" I asked.

"They're setting up behind," Grass said.

I detonated the explosives, sending shockwaves everywhere and producing a rain of light debris that banged against the wall we were using as cover. I peeked out and saw that the entire section of wall that I had rigged was gone and there were three shallow craters on the ground. Brute bodies and body parts were visible.

"Nice," I complimented myself. "Pavel, Caboose, cross over to the other side, we'll cover for you."

The two of them moved out, taking advantage of the confusion as Grass and I targeted the dazed brutes, easily taking down seven or eight before they reacted and fired back. We reloaded and set to work.

"So?" she asked.

"So what?"

"So what's next?"

"We'll go to Miranda," I told her. "There we hold, wait for Alpha Team to do their shit and come pick us up."

"Is it defensible?"

"As much as it can be in here," I told her, firing at an advancing brute major before it could shoot its brute shot. "Hold your position, I'll go around and try to flank them."

"Be careful," she said.

I ran parallel to the wall and then took a hard right, bringing up my rifle. The wall ended and there was another tall sction preventing me from actually flanking the brutes, but this was a very advantageous angle for me to shoot at. I could fire at one side of the opening with near impunity and had excellent view of all the open ground.

"Here we go," I said, switching to single fire.

I aimed carefully and drilled one brute through the unprotected portion of its head. One single bullet was all it took. The one next to it couldn't even wipe the blood off its face before it met the same fate. Three others were quickly killed before I took cover, letting them try and figure it out. I could probably not stretch this for long, but another shooting session could be pulled off without giving away my position. But that was very hopeful.

Normally this situation wouldn't have been entirely out of our control, but we were on our own and the brutes were more than willing to die to get through. Usually we could've kept them pinned down for hours, but they really wanted to stop Alpha. I kept wondering how they knew what our mission was, but at this point it really didn't matter.

_I wonder what happened to Torkham and Tarkov…_

Brutes came in to fill the spots that I had just left empty. I waited a few seconds for them to get comfortable in their firing positions before aiming carefully and taking out two large specimens. The third spotted me and fired on my position, but I was faster than it and managed to kill it right as plasma hit the ground in front of me. I stood up and propped myself against the wall, bracing myself for the incoming fire. At least the brute firepower was now divided on two spots and one of the sides that they were attacking from was completely exposed to my flanking fire.

"Keep them there!" Pavel shouted.

I popped in and out of cover, hitting and wounding some brutes while taking heavy fire. I stopped shooting when I heard grunts on the other side of the wall that kept me from doing a full flanking maneuver. I slid towards that and pressed my ear against it. Once I realized brutes were there I prepared a grenade, but before I could throw it I heard a dull thunk.

I wasn't exactly sure what it was, but I backpedaled violently as the wall exploded in my direction. The rubble hitting me promptly had my fat ass sitting down on the ground as two brute captains emerged from the spot where that wall had once been. I threw my grenade as hard as possible, hitting the frontmost brute in the face and breaking something. Unfortunately, I had not primed the device, but it sent the brutes diving for cover. I fired from the ground, hitting the furthest brute in the legs and waist. The other one got up and fired at me, but I rolled avoiding four spikes and firing back, sending it reeling backwards towards the wall and looking for cover. I furiously dragged myself backwards while trying to hit the brute in the ground with panicked and inaccurate bursts. I missed completely, still trying to find any degree of cover that I knew wasn't there.

"Pavel, lay down some fire over here!" I shouted.

"On it!"

A stream of bullets started hitting the wall, completely missing the brutes but keeping them on their toes. I dropped my rifle as it clicked empty and drew the borrowed mauler. I aimed at the brute on the ground and fired, the buckshot hit it dead in the forehead, destroying any trace of face or helmet. The other brute was moving behind cover, but I managed to hit it in the back before it made it to safety.

"That's good!" I thanked Pavel as I dashed forward.

The brute was in evident pain, but the armor on its back had kept it alive. I drew my pistol and kicked it in the ribs before putting one bullet in the back of its neck. As I got back up two overcharged plasma shots hit the wall above me. I looked right and fired my pistol instinctively. My shots missed, but the brute firing ducked behind cover. I holstered my mauler and put both hands on the pistol, aiming at the spot through the small scope. The brute popped out again and ate two rounds that completely unhinged its jaw from the rest of the skull and then fell on its ass. A final bullet took care of that matter.

"I'm heading back," I said. "Hold on until I get there."

"Easier said than done," Pavel growled.

"Suck it up," I replied, grabbing my rifle from the ground as I sprinted back around the walls. The rest of Reaper was taking a lot of fire and there were several brutes chasing me, forcing me to fire at them after every corner in order to gain more ground. I managed to kill one and wound a pair of unarmored brute minors, but they were moving a lot faster than I could run.

"Grass, I'm going to be needing some precision fire from you!" I said. "I'll stick to the right side!"

"What?"

I've got brutes on my ass!"

"Copy."

I turned the last corner and gave the word to Grass. I moved to the right, right in the open ground, but the brutes would be coming closer to the left. Grass pivoted and fired continuously, the bullets whistling right past my head and brutes growling behind my back. I reached Grass and turned around, shooting past her as Pavel and Grigori moved to the last wall before we needed to link up with Miranda. I gave her the word to move as I reloaded, pinning down the brutes behind the corner and backpedaling to the last wall before we reached the divider circle where I had placed Miranda in.

"What about it, huh?" Grass asked me.

"Blaze of glory, babe," I replied. "In't that right, Pavs?"

"Sure is, El-tee, sir!"

"Caboose?"

"Blaze of glory," he agreed.

I don't think I had ever seen my men fight better, with more grit and accuracy, than they were fighting right now. They burned through their ammunition with deadly precision and efficiency, not wasting a single round. Brutes fell and didn't get back up, those that did were promptly put back down. Caboose was ignoring his missing fingers and the pain in his chest. Everybody was bleeding from some place or other, but we still fired.

"You ok?" I asked Grass after she bit back a curse.

"Yeah, hit my fake limb. Can't move my thumb."

"You'll have to make it work," I told her. "We're almost there."

"I know, I know."

Pavel was on his right knee, shooting at three brutes that were using the Warthog hood. He hit them all in the legs and let them stay there for a bit, waiting for others to come help. Caboose shot mostly at the shoulder joint, hitting his target every time. It was a good feeling, seeing my men give it their everything and come out so strong.

"Fall back," I said calmly. "Fall back."

Pavel and Grass provided cover while we moved back to Miranda's position. Caboose and I ran as fast as we could, vaulting over the dividers and approaching Miranda. Her hand had stopped putting pressure on her wounds and was instead resting further down her belly. The three spikes were still there, dull and wicked-looking. A rather large pool of blood had collected around her and her head was tilted slightly sideways.

"Miranda," I snapped at her.

Caboose removed her helmet and grabbed her face, struggling to get his gloved fingers to find a pulse while smearing blood from his wounds on her pale face. Her eyes were wide open and had a glassy look to them.

"She's gone," I said. "Grigori…"

"I know," he replied, grabbing his carbine and checking the ammunition count.

"Twenty-four plus thirty-two," he told me. "Then I'm on pistol rounds."

"Not too bad," I lied.

Pavel and Grass vaulted over. They looked at us before glancing towards Miranda before slowly shaking their heads. Grass had barely gotten to know her, but Pavel was hit by her loss as hard as Caboose and I.

"Three magazines," Grass said.

"Two," Pavel told me.

"Three for me," I said. "Mauler and pistol. Grenades?"

"Three," Caboose said.

"One," Grass added.

Pavel just shrugged. For once in his life it didn't seem like his shoulders were being dislocated as he did that. It was kind of disturbing. He looked so tired.

"Alright, get ready," I said.

Oscar 6 and Alpha Team were exchanging some chatter, things didn't seem to be going too well on their end either, but at this point it was too late to really do anything for them. We were now fighting for our lives. Even if we had wanted to abandon the mission we wouldn't have been able to survive without fighting. We had to kill them all now. We probably didn't even have enough rounds for that. Whole pack of brutes, probably raised from their beds to stage a hasty ambush from the looks of it, but they were brutes nonetheless and they were still deadly foes.

"See that?" Grass asked.

I looked up where she was pointing to see what looked like a meteorite. Well, that was our ship. Not a graceful reentry, but something that big and sturdy didn't really need to come at a good angle.

"Watch out!"

Pavel and Caboose put down four brutes that barreled out of cover before the rest wisened up. I heard growling and barking, but it didn't take a translator to know that they were moving around the wall in order to get through to the opening to our left. A few were able to cross to the other side without being killed and soon enough we were being flanked to our right as well. It wouldn't take much for them to put some troops behind us and then we'd be in some serious trouble.

"I'm burning through this!" Pavel shouted. "Reloading!"

"Give me some cover!" Grass called out.

"Throw those frags!" I ordered. "Left side, left side!"

The fire was getting intense and desperate, much like ours. A spike grenade landed inside the circle of dividers. Pavel grabbed it and threw it back where it came from. Grass shot, spraying three brutes' legs and taking two down. The other had to be put down by Caboose.

"I'm out," Pavel grunted, drawing his pistol. "Shit."

"Make them count," I told him.

"Headshots only," he said. "Haven't used this baby in ages."

"I'm done," Caboose said seconds later, throwing his carbine to the ground and pulling out his own pistol. He pulled back the slide and began firing with nary a word. I was the next to run out of ammunition, pulling my pistol out and hitting as many brutes as I could while keeping the mauler ready for when they came close. I could take out three or four with that thing before they realized, especially if they swarmed us in their blood rage.

"Out," Grass said finally.

"Welcome to the club," I told her.

"Glad to be here," she replied.

"That was a lie," Pavel said.

She shrugged and then fired.

It was a bit sad, but we got a few of them down. The brutes were beginning to thin out, but they still outnumbered us pretty badly.

"Draw them close," I said finally. "Bayonets ready and I'll put the mauler to good use."

They complied without a complaint. The first three brutes to hop over lost their faces to the power of the mauler. The fourth took two shots to put down and the fifth lasted a bit more, but it still ended up dead. After that one more vaulted as I reloaded, but Grass stuck it in the leg with her bayonet and brought it down. There Caboose stabbed through the back of its neck before moving out of the way of a burst of plasma.

Pavel still had some pistol ammo and was putting it to good use, discouraging the brutes from moving our way. I fired at his targets with the mauler, scattering a squad and killing the captain leading it.

"Good job," he said, patting my back.

"You know how I am," I said. "The very best."

"The very best," he agreed. "We always made a pretty good team."

"The very best," I repeated.

"I'm going to miss you," he said.

"We'll see each other," I promised him. "No matter where. We'll wait for Amber, Lavvie, and Katie to catch up with us. While they do it will just be us boys."

Pavel grinned. "Sounds like-"

* * *

><p><strong>November 17, 2552 (UNSC Calendar)**

**Sector Six, Afghanistan, Earth, Sol System**

**Master Sergeant Pavel Klaus**

"How many do you think we're at, Pavs?" Frank asked me.

"What?" I asked, dazed. I could barely make out his silhouette, the sun on his back.

"I'm thinking about twenty each," he said. "It might be a bit conservative, but better to err on the side of caution, right?"

"What are you doing?" I asked as I felt him move his hands on my legs.

"Hey, did the chief already separate?"

"Wha-?" I muttered. "I can't see the ship. Never mind, he did. I see two falling objects."

"Humanity is saved," Frank said, not a touch of sarcasm in his voice. It was very surprising.

"Where are-"

"Shhh," he cut me off.

"Why aren't you wearing a helmet?"

His face was not terribly beaten up compared to other times. There was a nasty gash right on his forehead that was bleeding, but it seemed like he had landed face first on the dirt ground because that entire side looked more dirty than bloody. On the other side he had a nice bruise on his cheekbone where the padding had probably pushed too hard into his face. Sweat and blood were competing for the most abundant fluid on his head. That is not necessarily a bad thing, Frank was not a terribly heavy sweater.

"Old thing is useless," he told me, pointing at his helmet, cracked visor and all. "Yours isn't much better."

I suddenly realized that I was looking at Frank through a hole in my visor. My HUD was completely gone and it had me lost for a couple of seconds. I shook my head and coughed.

"What are you doing?"

"Camilla and Grigori are unconscious," he told me, his voice now serious. "She lost her arm, the fake one, thankfully. Grigori… well, he might not make it, but he doesn't seem to be on the verge of dying."

"Ok…" I said, still not fully understanding everything.

Frank peeked above the divider and promptly ducked back. "There's two chieftains."

"Shit."

"Yeah," he agreed. "There's one round left in my mauler."

"That won't cut it," I said.

"Pavs, I don't want you to panic, ok?"

"What?"

I suddenly realized that Frank was standing in a very awkward position. He had one leg completely across my waist and the other one was underneath him on the other side. He looked like a douchy college kid that was trying to hump my face in an attempt to get attention. He carefully moved his leg back until he was crouching regularly next to me. His eyes met mine and I slowly moved my line of sight down to my legs.

When I saw is when I started feeling the pain.

"It hurts," I said, swallowing and tightening both hands into fists.

"I patched the left one as best I could," Frank said. "The right one… well, it'll hurt later."

I looked down to see but there was no bandage stopping the bleeding.

"I used the muzzle of the mauler," he explained. "Tried to cauterize the arteries."

"The fuck?!"

He shrugged and smiled. "Used the barrels of the pistols, rifles, everything. Worked better than expected, we had been firing almost non-stop."

"Frank!"

"You won't bleed out," he assured me. "You won't die. And right now that's all that matters."

"There's two chieftains out there," I shouted. "We are going to die."

"Not if I can help it," he said, drawing his colorful knife from his boot.

"Frank…"

"I was built for this," he said with a shrug. "What else is there after this for me?"

"Earth will need you," I pleaded.

"Right now it's you three that need me," Frank countered. "I might not die. Still, make that shot count. I'm fairly sure I can take at least one. They won't be able to resist the challenge." He looked back at his helmet. "I wish I could video this one. It'll be good."

"Wait for someone!"

He shook his head. "I'm all that's left."

With that he hopped over.

"Frank!"

"Life goes on Pavel!" he shouted. "And so will you."


	228. Epilogue

Epilogue: Life Goes On

**January 12, 2553 (UNSC Calendar)/two months later**

**Cairo Veteran's Hospital, Cairo, Egypt, Earth, Sol System**

**Operative (Staff Sergeant) Camilla Lilja Seppa**

* * *

><p>"Good day, Mrs. Seppa."<p>

"Miss," I corrected. "Cam will do."

"It's not hospital policy to-"

"Yeah, I know, you've told me countless times."

"Me?"

"Receptionists," I said. "Just check me in."

"Right away, ma'am."

Ma'am, I wasn't a ma'am, no woman wanted to be a ma'am. I hated being called that, even when it was only because I was higher ranking. I was never called by my rank anymore. I don't even know if my real rank counted anymore. Ever since I had left Reaper I had become nothing more than an operative. Staff Sergeant Pretty Liaison they had nicknamed me at first, but that role had been pretty much a temporary front while I adjusted to my actual job. Unfortunately, Pretty Liaison proved to be popular with the press and civilian population at large. Despite myself I smiled, I had done good for the war effort and it was always nice being recognized in the street.

The hospital walls and floor were a pristine and polished white. It was a lot different from what they had looked like just a couple of weeks ago. Fighting had died down around Christmastime when the last surviving enemy combat group was encircled while trying to cross the Gobi. The massacre had been televised. I remember hearing the Marines cheer and everyone clap as thousands of tired and fearful Covenant troops were obliterated with all types of firepower. Not a single infantry soldier took part in that battle except for cleanup. That was televised too. I cheered with them, every part of the way.

Back then there had been blood in every wall and floor. Thousands of Marines, soldiers, airmen, and sailors had been shoved inside this building as soon as we realized that moving large numbers of troops by air was a possibility. I was in the first wave, Pavel and Grigori weren't. They were moved somewhere else as they were in critical condition.

It had not been a pleasant week. Or weeks, I should say. There was so much shrapnel inside me that the doctors didn't know where to start. Eventually they settled from a top to bottom approach and began removing everything that could pose a risk while patching the broken blood vessels. They left the smaller pieces, but it took three days for the rest of the shrapnel to simply start moving around in my body, getting closer to my heart. That meant even more surgeries to remove every last trace of shrapnel. The burns were healing quite nicely, but we were doing it the old fashioned way now. Every last skin insert had been used, every last cloned organ had been transplanted, every last can of biofoam had been spent, and fishing wire was needed to stitch up crude wounds that would become nasty scars.

I picked at my thigh, where I had three nasty scars that a nurse had called a tiger scratch. It wasn't that bad, to be honest, but I didn't like scars as much as my male colleagues seemed to. With that in mind I traced my fingers through my left cheek. That one would heal nicely, they told me. Only a shallow cut they told me.

"Camilla."

I looked towards the source of the voice.

"Captain Flatt?" I asked, not terribly surprised. "What are you doing here?"

"I was trying to find our dearest mutual friend."

"Well, bad news, he-"

"I know," she said. "I was hoping to talk to Pavel or you."

"Not Grigori?"

"Not him," Flatt said, cracking her neck. "We've already talked to him."

"Sometime you're going to have to talk to me about his connections to ONI," I said, sitting down on the bench next to her.

"He never talks."

"He's not allowed to," she said. "There's a long story behind that man. He's gone through a lot."

"Yeah, he has," she agreed. "Have you talked to him?"

"Just a few times," I said. "He likes his privacy. I was thinking about visiting later."

"He's still in that hotel room?"

"Yeah, until we get orders."

Flatt sighed. "Not a lot of people are going to be getting orders, not at hospitals, at least. We're still good on numbers for what we need and… well…"

"We won," I said.

"We won," she agreed with a huge smile on her face. It was hard not to grin like she was.

"So what's next for us?"

"I'll still be working a desk job," she said. "You'll be given the opportunity to sign an extension, but you probably won't."

"I probably won't," I agreed. "Finland was almost completely untouched. My family is still there."

"Klaus won't do that either…"

"Yeah," I agreed.

"Did he tell you?"

I nodded.

"It's such a shame."

"You don't know," I told her. "You don't know how much he loved her. Both of them."

"Like I'm sure Frank loved Ms. Ayers."

"I didn't get any specifics from Pavel," I said, prompting her to shake her head.

"Ship was boarded, refugees repelled the assault, ship was blown up."

"Fuck," I cursed. "Fuck."

"He was more subdued."

I looked at her with an annoyed look on my eyes.

"I'm sorry, Cam. We've all lost someone. He lost more than most."

"I think he knows that."

There was an uncomfortable silence for a few seconds before we realized that we didn't need to talk to each other. We had worked in tandem many times before and would not really mind being in silence. Sometimes it surprised me just how quickly you bonded with people during war. Captain Flatt wasn't a permanent fixture in my life, but ever since I came back to Reaper we had been forced to become a team and that was the best icebreaker you could ask for.

"Why are we waiting?" I asked.

"They're talking to him."

"They?"

The door slid open and four men in pristine uniforms stepped out. One of them was head and shoulders taller than the rest, dressed in a suit that could only have been custom made but somehow still seemed out of place. He turned towards me and gave me a quick smirk of confusion followed by amusement.

"Staff Sergeant," he acknowledged me. "Have you changed your mind?"

"I'm afraid not, sir," I replied. "I'm just here to visit a friend."

The Spartan looked over his shoulder and back in his room.

"He's doing better, his head is not wholly right though… Decision-making is not the best right now."

"I guess some of us got hit in the head one too many times," I replied with a shrug.

He chuckled lightly. "Well, the offer won't be open forever, Staff Sergeant, but for the time being, you know how to find me."

"Yes, sir."

"Have a good day."

"You too."

"Captain," the Spartan saluted Flatt.

"As you were," she said, returning the salute.

The Spartan and his three cronies departed from the hospital, prompting several nurses to stare in awe at the gigantic man with completely normal proportions and a body that seemed to have been sculpted by one of the great renaissance artists.

It was kind of disturbing, to be honest.

"Let's go," I said.

Pavel was in a bed, not surprising considering the amount of surgeries that he had gone through. I have no idea how he managed to remain awake for long enough to tell us what happened with Frank. He not only lost both of his legs, but he also had dozens of shrapnel fragments all over his body. He had told me several times already that he was immensely thankful that his penis and testicles had escaped almost unscathed. I have no idea what that meant, but he seemed relieved when he said that so I just nodded in agreement.

"Hey there, Pavs," I greeted. "Was that a no?"

"They visited you as well?" he asked, sounding moderately angry.

"Yeah."

"Well, apparently being a cripple is not cause for rejection from the Spartan Program," he said. He was trying very hard to sound like he was annoyed, but the pride in his voice was difficult to miss. It was a good sign, for the last month he had been depressed to have both his legs taken from him.

"Lemme see them," I said.

"Cam-"

I pulled the bedsheets hard as Pavel struggled in vain to hold them. He was still in a weakened state in account of his, you know, near death experience. His right leg was gone right below the knee, which meant he could still bend it. The left one had been torn in so many places that they had to cut another section even higher up, about a third of the way up the thigh. There were fresh bandages covering them, with a few spots of blood here and there. His mutilated appendages weren't what I was looking for, however. As an amputee myself, I was interested in what he had gotten. For the last month he had been living with ill-fitted temporary prosthetics to get around.

"Nice," I said.

"They don't look nice," he disagreed.

That wasn't strictly true. They were a bit more utilitarian than my sleek black arm, which had thankfully been fixed, but they weren't exclusively military. Both legs must've cost the UNSC enough to outfit a platoon for a couple of weeks. They were made out of some sort of titanium alloy much like everything these days, but they were a pair of good looking legs. A lot wider than most prosthetics, the shins were shaped vaguely like ODST boots, but they had clasps to fit actual armor on top of them. His left prosthetic widened at the knee and the metal above looked like you'd expect a normal leg to look, but there were also small clasps for additional armor.

"They said I can also attach these small plates if I don't want my pants to look weird," he said.

"That's some fine hardware there," I said. "How's it feel?"

"Good," he admitted. "Or at least a lot better than I expected. I tried walking around for a bit, but some of my wounds opened so I went back to bed."

"Smart."

"It's not as close as the real thing, Cam. Sometimes I feel an itch in my knee and no amount of scratching will make it go away."

I nodded solemnly. I had gone through a similar phase with my own prosthetic. These modern implants could do wonders for your life, but there were some psychological aspects that the technology couldn't handle. The merger of nerve with machine was probably as good as it could possibly get, but the fact remained that even with cloned limbs you had a prosthetic that just wasn't part of the body you had been born with. Mechanical prosthetics tended to be a bit worse, but it all boiled down to the amputee's state of mind. It had only taken a couple of weeks for my forearm to stop itching at random intervals. I hoped Pavel wouldn't experience any actual pain.

"Hey, Captain," Pavel said suddenly. "Sorry."

"No worries," she replied with a smile on her face. "Feeling better?"

He shrugged. It was weird when he did that, he seemed so half-hearted now.

"I miss my family, you know," he said.

"I know," I told him, sitting on the bed and putting my hand on his shoulder. "I know."

He didn't cry. He had done plenty of that the last few weeks, but now he just seemed to accept the fact that he was never going to see his wife or baby daughter ever again and wouldn't even get to bury their bodies.

We sat there for a few minutes until he finally took deep breath and sighed.

"Want some jello?" he offered.

"I'm sick of jello," I groaned.

"I'm not," Flatt said, reaching for one.

We chuckled lightly.

"Hang in there, Pavel," Flatt said. "I just wanted to make sure you were fine."

"Thanks, Cap."

"Anytime," she replied, standing up. "You two and Grigori are unofficially under my command for the time being, so anything you need you come to me."

"And Frank?"

"I'm getting some pressure to label him AWOL, but his contract expires pretty soon. I'm trying to delay it until that."

"He fucking deserves that," Pavel said. "Dick."

"Pavs," I began.

"I know," he cut me off. "He needs this, but I need him too."

"So do I," I admitted, looking away and thinking about Frank, "but you know how he is."

"Crazy?" he asked.

"Crazy," I agreed, the grin on my face echoing his.

* * *

><p>"…this is it for me. I'm sorry," I finished, holding back tears and clenching my fist until my nails dug into my skin.<p>

"Camilla?"

"Yeah?" I said, my voice breaking. "That bastard."

"That bastard," he echoed. None of us really meant it.

"What- what did he… do?"

"Slit his wrists," I said. "He used his combat knife. Deep vertical cuts."

"Who found him?"

"They found him on his bed, blood pooling on the sheets. Apparently there wasn't a bathtub in the room." I said. "They came in to recruit him too. Jun was just leaving before I got here. Handed me his letter."

"Was it painful?"

"As painful as gouging six cuts on either forearm can be," I replied, the images of his arms flashing in my head.

"Grigori was never afraid of pain," Pavel said. "You know, with his nickname I always thought he'd be the last one to go. I could've sworn that asshole would've outlasted us all except for maybe Frank."

"I guess that was wrong," I said. "Still, he outlasted a lot of people."

"I can't believe he would do that," he groaned.

"What did he have to live for?" I asked him. "His only purpose in life was gone."

"He could've found a new one," Pavel muttered, his voice wavering. "He should've found a new one. We are here for him. We were here…"

I sat down on the curb, looking at the stretcher. He was wearing a thick winter hat like he usually did and there had been a small smile on his face. The man looked like he was finally able to rest peacefully.

"I will say hi to everyone for all of you, tell that to Francisco. We're all waiting for him here, wherever Helljumpers go to die," his note had said.

I looked at the note and shook my head. The paramedics were waiting for me to be done with my call, standing uncomfortably to the side, well within earshot. I watched as the UNSC transport carrying Jun and his entourage turned around the corner, disappearing. I looked back at the stretcher before closing my eyes.

"I need Frank," I finally said, tears were running down my cheeks freely. "I want him here."

"That's not going to happen," Pavel said.

"Why would he leave?"

"I'm sure he had his reasons."

"Were they good ones?"

"They had to be."

I stood up and wiped the tears off my face, thankful that I hadn't put on any makeup. I always got so much shit for putting on mascara before combat missions. To be honest, it wasn't the most practical of decisions, but at the same time it's practically irrelevant. That's what I always told Frank when he casually brought it up after blood had sprayed my helmet or something. Had he been here he would've made a joke and put his arm around my shoulder, rubbing my arm lightly like he always did before letting go and squeezing the back of my neck softly, letting go just in time for the skin there to get goosebumps.

That son of a bitch.

"Ma'am?"

I moved towards the stretcher and covered Grigori's peaceful face with the sheet before sniffling and nodding for them to take him.

"Cam?" Pavel asked, "you still there?"

"Yeah, I'm still here… What are you doing?"

"I'm flying back to Poland, spend some time with my family. After? I don't know."

"I'll go back to my folks," I agreed. "I'm tired, I just want to rest."

"I want to be alone," he admitted. "I don't want to deal with anyone. I want a farm or some shit like that, I'm just… I just… I understand why he did it."

"Don't say that," I warned him.

"I won't do it. I couldn't, but you know what I mean."

Suddenly I felt very sad.

"I need my family," I said. "I just don't know, Pavs, what's next?"

"Things won't be quiet, we're going to have to take care of business…"

"I've already done that, that's why I said no to Jun."

"Then just get over it, move on with your life."

"And what? Start over?"

"Yeah."

"I'm too old to start over," I assured him.

"No one is," he said, "and right now that's what we both need."

"Start over?" I said, tasting the words in my mouth.

"Yeah," Pavel said. "No Frank, no Reaper, no Grigori, no UNSC, no nothing."

I took a deep breath and heard him doing the same thing.

"Life goes on," I finally said, allowing myself half a smile.

"Life goes on."


	229. Author's Note

**Author's Note**

* * *

><p>It's finally over.<p>

After three years of writing like a maniac at times (the word count will attest to that) it's finally over. I can't really find the words to explain what I feel. Mostly because I'm so relieved that I don't have to write this shit anymore, but at the same time this has been such a big part of my life that I'm not really sure that what comes next will be any close to how good this is. I am supremely proud of what this has become. Some of you should be proud, too, sticking with me through the horrible, horrible first part of this until you could finally get to the good part. A few of you brave souls somehow managed to be a part of The Life for almost as long as I have been.

From the first reviews that both inspired me to keep going and creeped me out more than just a little bit the the guest that very rudely bitched about the time it was taking me to post the final chapter I am happy for every single one of your reviews and you should be as well, they're most of what kept me going for such a long time, dragging on battles for additional awesomeness and more kickass scenes that you appear to like so much.

Special thank yous go to my various beta readers, many of whom you bitched about and many of whom you didn't, but all of them helped make this story a little bit better. **Sniper Fodder, SilasWhitfield, Alshep, SpartaLazor, defarcher, Colonel-Commissar2468,** and **General TheDyingTitan**. Their proofreading was invaluable to me throughout the writing of this fan fiction. A fan fiction that wouldn't have been possible if not for Bungie and 343 Industries and the wonderful universe that their hard work created for me to play with.

I don't know what else there is to say, sometimes my author's notes at the end of chapters go on for a while explaining what I liked about the chapter and what I didn't as well as whatever reason it took so long to post or whatever. Here I won't bother with that. This is all about what The Life has become. I know that I did all the heavy lifting, I won't be modest about that, but I will admit that none of this would've been possible without every single one of you. From the million and a half words (1,621,654 per last count) to the 2,185 reviews, to the 604,819 views that this fic had, from the 429 favorites and the 406 of you that put me on your alerts to the four communities that deemed my story great enough to be inducted. Every last one of these things made The Life possible. Without you I would've skipped half the war and ended the story a year and a half ago as a less experienced writer with readers that would not have been anything close to what I have now in terms of satisfaction.

I did this, but you helped. I want each and every one of you to remember that just like I want each and every one of you to remember the trials and tribulations of Frank and Co. Whenever you hear the word reaper I want you to think about Reaper. I want you to look at a train set and think about Grigori Konstantinov when you see the caboose. I want you to remember that grass stands for great ass and that Pavel was too good for a stupid nickname. There are many things that I don't want you to forget and there are many things that I certainly won't forget.

This has been an experience, ladies and gentlemen. I can say with full confidence that I am happy. Happy with my story and what it became. Could it be better? Absolutely, but does that really matter at this point? Hell no, The Life is what it is and it is fucking great.

Stay strong, for you have kept me strong. It's finally over.

-casquis


	230. After

After

**February 1, 2558 (UNSC Calendar)/five years later**

**UNSC **_**Infinity,**_** in orbit above Quito, Sol System**

**Spartan Logan Parker**

* * *

><p>This was a kickass ship, as they said. The Master Chief himself had walked these halls. I was busy looking at the massive hangar space when I bumped into a large man, another SPARTAN-IV like myself.<p>

"Hey, watch it, gramps!" I snapped at the older-looking fellow. He was well into his thirties if my judgement was anything to go by.

Before I knew it my feet had been swept from underneath me and I had slammed to the floor hard. I wasn't able to react before my left arm was twisted almost to the base of my skull and my right arm had been pinned to the ground. I didn't want to move because I honestly didn't feel like having my shoulder snapped in half so early into my deployment.

"Captain!" an authoritative voice barked. "Get off your recruit!"

"I can assure you he deserves it, Sarah."

"Palmer."

The man pinning me down chuckled.

Something must've passed between Sarah and the captain because a few seconds later they both chuckled and the strength of the grip on my arms decreased until I was able to free myself. I stood up, as confused as I had been in recent days and looked at the old man, who now looked a lot scarier than he did old. His hair was ever so slightly above regulation length and there was a certain cockiness to his face that I recognized as belonging to an ODST. Sarah Palmer was a beautiful woman, it was hard to argue against that, but she had a hard face, almost as hard as the captain's.

"I see you've already met your squad leader," Palmer said, shaking my hand. "I'm Commander Palmer."

I snapped to attention.

"At ease," she replied. "You have a good record, Parker."

"The very best," the captain agreed.

Palmer looked me over. "You'll be a good fit for Crimson I think. Frank, give him the grand tour."

"With pleasure, Sarah," he said. This time the commander let it go. "Spartan Parker, from now on you will answer to my every whim in and out of combat, I am your squad leader, I am your captain, I am your god. While I do realize that those honorifics are probably a mouthful, I'm going to let you call me Captain Castillo."

He turned to look at me with a weird expression. His eyes had a mixture of emotions that made me get goosebumps. It seemed somewhere between apprehension and hope with dozens of other things I couldn't identify. This man had lost people.

"Welcome to Crimson, son," he finally said. "We are going to have a good time."

At that point I realized two things: that my shoulder hurt and that I didn't know why, but I liked this asshole.

THE LIFE


End file.
